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“If I Were A Spy For The Russians, Why The Hell Was I Trapped In Any Airport For A Month?”

February 24, 2015 in Excerpts, Film, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

I seriously doubt Edward Snowden will be used as a pawn in the current gamesmanship between Russia and much of the rest of the world. He’s really not that valuable in any practical sense. He proved something–that the U.S. became a surveillance state in the wake of 9/11–which was already pretty obvious to everyone, and apparently approved of by most Americans. And I don’t see how his revelations will change much (except superficially) since technology isn’t going to move sideways or backwards. Regardless of laws, there will be more spying and more leaks proving it. At the same time, I believe in strong protections for whistleblowers who are not gathering information for their own spying purposes.

Snowden, Glenn Greenwald and Oscar-winning Citizenfour director Laura Poitras just did an AMA at Reddit. Some Snowden exchanges follow.

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Question:

Can you explain what your life in Moscow is like?

Edward Snowden:

Moscow is the biggest city in Europe. A lot of people forget that. Shy of Tokyo, it’s the biggest city I’ve ever lived in. I’d rather be home, but it’s a lot like any other major city.

Question:

Russian journalist Andrei Soldatov has described your daily life as circumscribed by Russian state security services, which he said control the circumstances of your life there. Is this accurate? What are your interactions with Russian state security like? With Russian government representatives generally?

Edward Snowden:

Good question, thanks for asking.

The answer is “of course not.” You’ll notice in all of these articles, the assertions ultimately come down to speculation and suspicion. None of them claim to have any actual proof, they’re just so damned sure I’m a Russian spy that it must be true.

And I get that. I really do. I mean come on – I used to teach “cyber counterintelligence” (their term) at DIA.

But when you look at in aggregate, what sense does that make? If I were a russian spy, why go to Hong Kong? It’s would have been an unacceptable risk. And further – why give any information to journalists at all, for that matter, much less so much and of such importance? Any intelligence value it would have to the russians would be immediately compromised.

If I were a spy for the russians, why the hell was I trapped in any airport for a month? I would have gotten a parade and a medal instead.

The reality is I spent so long in that damn airport because I wouldn’t play ball and nobody knew what to do with me. I refused to cooperate with Russian intelligence in any way (see my testimony to EU Parliament on this one if you’re interested), and that hasn’t changed.

At this point, I think the reason I get away with it is because of my public profile. What can they really do to me? If I show up with broken fingers, everybody will know what happened.

Question:

Don’t you fear that at some point you will be used as leverage in a negotiation? eg; “if you drop the sanctions we give you Snowden”

Edward Snowden:

It is very realistic that in the realpolitik of great powers, this kind of thing could happen. I don’t like to think that it would happen, but it certainly could.

At the same time, I’m so incredibly blessed to have had an opportunity to give so much back to the people and internet that I love. I acted in accordance with my conscience and in so doing have enjoyed far more luck than any one person can ask for. If that luck should run out sooner rather than later, on balance I will still – and always – be satisfied.

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Question:

How can we make sure that people still want to leak important information when everyone who does so puts the rest of their lives at stake?

Edward Snowden:

Whistleblower protection laws, a strong defense of the right for someone charged with political crimes to make any defense they want (currently in the US, someone charged with revealing classified information is entirely prohibited from arguing before the jury that the programs were unlawful, immoral, or otherwise wrongful), and support for the development of technically and legally protected means of communications between sources and journalists.

The sad truth is that societies that demand whistleblowers be martyrs often find themselves without either, and always when it matters the most.

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Question:

Mr. Snowden, if you had a chance to do things over again, would you do anything differently? If so, what?

Edward Snowden:

I would have come forward sooner. I talked to Daniel Ellsberg about this at length, who has explained why more eloquently than I can.

Had I come forward a little sooner, these programs would have been a little less entrenched, and those abusing them would have felt a little less familiar with and accustomed to the exercise of those powers. This is something we see in almost every sector of government, not just in the national security space, but it’s very important:

Once you grant the government some new power or authority, it becomes exponentially more difficult to roll it back. Regardless of how little value a program or power has been shown to have (such as the Section 215 dragnet interception of call records in the United States, which the government’s own investigation found never stopped a single imminent terrorist attack despite a decade of operation), once it’s a sunk cost, once dollars and reputations have been invested in it, it’s hard to peel that back.

Don’t let it happen in your country.•

 

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“These Cataclysmic Events In France Struck Americans As Amazing And Distressing”

February 24, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

You could argue that Tunisia’s uprising was the match that lit the Middle East, as some struggles reverberate beyond their borders because they speak to a widespread dissatisfaction. The Paris Commune was viewed this way by outsiders during the late 1800s. Via the lovely Delancey Place, a passage from James Green’s Death in the Haymarket about the American interpretation of the French uprising:

When the French army laid siege to Paris and hostilities began, the Chicago Tribune’s reporters covered the fighting much as they had during the American Civil War. Many Americans, notably Republican leaders like Senator Charles Sumner, identified with the citizens of Paris who were fighting to create their own republic against the forces of a corrupt regime whose leaders had surrendered abjectly to the Iron Duke and his Prussian forces.

As the crisis deepened, however, American newspapers increasingly portrayed the Parisians as communists who confiscated property and as atheists who closed churches. The brave citizens of Paris, first described as rugged democrats and true republicans, now seemed more akin to the uncivilized elements that threatened America — the ‘savage tribes’ of Indians on the plains and the ‘dangerous classes’ of tramps and criminals in the cities. When the Commune’s defenses broke down on May 21, 1871, the Chicago Tribune hailed the breach of the city walls. Comparing the Communards to the Comanches who raided the Texas frontier, its editors urged the ‘mowing down’ of rebellious Parisians ‘without compunction or hesitation.’

La semaine sanglante — the week of blood — had begun as regular army troops took the city street by street, executing citizen soldiers of the Parisian National Guard as soon as they surrendered. In retaliation, the Communards killed scores of hostages and burned large sections of the city to the ground. By the time the killing ended, at least 25,000 Parisians, including many unarmed citizens, had been slaughtered by French army troops.

These cataclysmic events in France struck Americans as amazing and distressing. The bloody disaster cried out for explanation. In response, a flood of interpretations appeared in the months following the civil war in France. Major illustrated weeklies published lurid drawings of Paris scenes, of buildings gutted by fire, monuments toppled, churches destroyed and citizens executed, including one showing the death of a ‘petroleuse’ — a red-capped, bare-breasted woman accused of incendiary acts. Cartoonist Thomas Nast drew a picture of what the Commune would look like in an American city. Instant histories were produced, along with dime novels, short stories, poems and then, later in the fall, theatricals and artistic representations in the form of panoramas.

News of the Commune seemed exotic to most Americans, but some commentators wondered if a phenomenon like this could appear in one of their great cities, such as New York or Chicago, where vast hordes of poor immigrants held mysterious views of America and harbored subversive elements in their midst.•

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“His Body Should Have Been Burned In A Trash Bin”

February 24, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

In the last 50 years, LBJ was arguably the only U.S. President more a more liberal domestic agenda than Richard Nixon, who seriously pursued the establishment of universal healthcare and a minimum-income guarantee for all Americans. But though he may have backed some noble policy, his ignoble mien and criminal methods made him a walking caricature of pure evil, an immoral mountebank meant for mockery. Hunter S. Thompson, for one, was not a fan. From “He Was a Crook,” the journalist’s classic and caustic postmortem of the disgraced President at the time of his death in 1994:

The family opted for cremation until they were advised of the potentially onerous implications of a strictly private, unwitnessed burning of the body of the man who was, after all, the President of the United States. Awkward questions might be raised, dark allusions to Hitler and Rasputin. People would be filing lawsuits to get their hands on the dental charts. Long court battles would be inevitable — some with liberal cranks bitching about corpus delicti and habeas corpus and others with giant insurance companies trying not to pay off on his death benefits. Either way, an orgy of greed and duplicity was sure to follow any public hint that Nixon might have somehow faked his own death or been cryogenically transferred to fascist Chinese interests on the Central Asian Mainland.

It would also play into the hands of those millions of self-stigmatized patriots like me who believe these things already.

If the right people had been in charge of Nixon’s funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.

These are harsh words for a man only recently canonized by President Clinton and my old friend George McGovern — but I have written worse things about Nixon, many times, and the record will show that I kicked him repeatedly long before he went down. I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it. He was scum.

Let there be no mistake in the history books about that. Richard Nixon was an evil man — evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency. Nobody trusted him — except maybe the Stalinist Chinese, and honest historians will remember him mainly as a rat who kept scrambling to get back on the ship.•

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“The Biggest Gains In Labor Savings Will Occur In Nations That Are At The Forefront Of Deploying Industrial Robots”

February 23, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

“Labor savings” sounds great except if you’re part of the Labor part being “saved.” Then you’re heading to the margins of the economy, perhaps in search of a giant mustache that you can affix to your automobile. The Boston Consulting Group, which I disagree with somewhat about the near-term future of autonomous cars, believes Weak AI, and the technological unemployment it will bring, is at an inflection point. It’s great in the aggregate but maybe not so much for you. Yet you wouldn’t want your nation to be left behind, either. An excerpt from the Robotics Business Review about which countries BCG thinks will own the sector:

Five nations will take the lead

“The biggest gains in labor savings,” says the BCG report,  “will occur in nations that are at the forefront of deploying industrial robots, such as South Korea, China, the U.S., Japan, and Germany.

“Manufacturing labor costs in 2025, when adjusted for normal inflationary increases and net of other productivity measures, are projected to be 18 to 33 percent lower in these economies when advanced robots are factored in.

“In China, one of the world’s largest markets for robots, greater use of automation could compensate for a significant part of the loss in cost competitiveness that is expected to result from rapidly rising factory wages and the growing challenge of finding manufacturing workers.

“Economies where robotics investment is projected to lag—and where low productivity growth is already a problem—are likely to see their manufacturing competitiveness deteriorate further over the next decade. Such nations include France, Italy, Belgium, and Brazil.”•

“How Close Are We To A Full Scale Armed Conflict?”

February 23, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Vladimir Putin is a Western capitalist by another name no matter the pose, but unlike of the Cold War Soviet Union, which was ideologically opposed to the United States but usually more glacier than inferno, he’s a reactionary given to ad-hoc governance–and that’s dangerous. Paul Sonne, the Moscow correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, gets to the heart of the matter in a very lucid AMA at Reddit. A few exchanges follow.

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Question:

I think that the question that is on everyone’s mind is: How close are we to a full scale armed conflict that has Russia on one side and the EU/US on the other?

Paul Sonne:

Very good question. I don’t think we’re there yet. Though the risk is real. It has become a much more pressing question amid the debate over whether the US should or should not provide lethal arms to Ukraine (so far Washington has said it has provided only non-lethal aid). Those who are against providing weapons have warned of the possibility of sort of sleepwalking into a full-scale confrontation with Russia, because if the weapons do not serve as a deterrent, and Russia escalates in response by providing equally powerful weaponry to the rebels, then what does the US/EU do? The good news is that I do think EU and US leaders are aware of this risk, which is probably why we have yet to see any weapons deliveries.

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Question:

How noticeable an effect are the Western sanctions having? Are they affecting everyday life for the average Russian?

Paul Sonne:

Though the main reason Russia’s currency has plummeted is the plunge in oil prices, I think it’s fair to say that the sanctions were a contributing factor – and most every Russian is certainly feeling the effects of the ruble’s stark devaluation. Russia’s response to the sanctions (banning an array of foodstuffs from the EU and the US) has been felt in supermarkets. Some higher-end stuff (such as Italian mozzarella) is now unavailable, but that affects only a smaller slice of the population. The broader population has felt a rise in food prices more generally.

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Question:

What is your impression of the Russian people and their perception of the crisis in Ukraine? Do you find that many are heavily influenced by Russian State Media?

Paul Sonne:

Yes. Polls repeatedly show that Russians are indeed heavily influenced by state television. You can find an article on one of those polls here.

The effects are palpable. For example, even though most of the rest of the world believes Russia-backed rebels downed MH17, polls show that the bulk of Russians believe the airliner was downed by Ukrainian forces – something Russian state television has been alleging since minutes after the crash.

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Question:

in your opinion, is another cold war or worse likely in the near future?

Paul Sonne:

We’re already seeing a level of confrontation between Russia and Europe/US that is reminiscent of the Cold War. But we’re not going to see a return of the same thing, because the world is different, more globalized and connected. One of the key differences is that Russia doesn’t have an explicit opposing ideology in the way that the Soviet Union did during the Cold War. Much of the Cold War was directed by the concept that democracy had to triumph over communism – it was not just a geopolitical confrontation but also a battle over how countries and the world should be run. Though the Kremlin of late has tried to emphasize how much Russia’s ideology differs from European liberalism, it’s not a full-scale articulation of an alternative system. What we see in Russia today is more a modified version of what you see in Europe or the US, not a completely different way of organizing society as you had in the Soviet era.•

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“It Is Next To Impossible To Attain An Understanding Of Foreigners By Living Alongside Them”

February 20, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Robots can’t do all the work in graying Japan, not yet anyway, so a staunchly homogenous country is turning to immigration at least as a bridge to an automated workforce, which isn’t sitting well with some conservative voices, one of which recently suggested an embrace of Apartheid for a model of living with “others.” From an Economist report:

THE Sankei Shimbun, a Japanese daily, has a reputation for illiberal commentary. Last week it outdid itself by running a column that lauded the segregation of races in apartheid-era South Africa—and urged Japan to do the same. Ayako Sono, a conservative columnist, said that if her country had to lower its drawbridge to immigrants, then they should be made to live apart. “It is next to impossible to attain an understanding of foreigners by living alongside them,” she wrote. 

Ms Sono’s views got an airing as the government of Shinzo Abe, the prime minister, appears set to promote immigration in all but name. They caused a stir in South Africa, whose ambassador to Japan called them “scandalous”. In Japan, however, the reaction has been oddly muted. The media scarcely picked up on the ambassador’s letter. The Sankei initially greeted criticism with bemusement. It then issued a pro-forma reply defending its right to run different opinions.  

Japan’s government is considering allowing 200,000 foreigners a year to come to Japan to help to solve a deepening demographic crisis and shortage of workers. The population fell by nearly a quarter of a million in 2013. An advisory body to Mr Abe says that immigrants could help stabilise the population at around 100m, from a current 127m. Not since the ancestors of Japan’s current inhabitants arrived in the islands from Korea two millennia ago has there been an example of immigration on the scale of that proposed.•

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“Rudy May Have Forgotten The Half-Dozen Deferments He Won Ducking The Vietnam War”

February 20, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Rudy Giuliani, the President of Broward County, has always been a miserable man. His recent comments about President Obama not loving America and not being raised like you or I is just more of the gutter-level Birtherism that looks at Black and sees Other. Wayne Barrett’s New York Daily News takedown of Giuliani is a thing of utter beauty. An excerpt:

The onetime presidential candidate also revealed at the party that Obama “doesn’t love America,” an echo of a speech he’d delivered to delirious cheers in Arizona a week earlier when he declared: “I would go anywhere, any place, anytime, and I wouldn’t give a damn what the President of the United States said, to defend my country. That’s a patriot. That’s a man who loves his people. That’s a man who fights for his people. Unlike our President.”

Rudy may have forgotten the half-dozen deferments he won ducking the Vietnam War, even getting the federal judge he was clerking for to write a letter creating a special exemption for him. And remember Bernie Kerik? He’s the Giulaini police commissioner, business partner and sidekick whose nomination as homeland security secretary narrowly preceded indictments. He then did his national service in prison.

Giuliani went so far as to rebuke the President for not being “brought up the way you were and the way I was brought up through love of this country,” a bow no doubt to the parenting prowess of Harold Giuliani, who did time in Sing Sing for holding up a Harlem milkman and was the bat-wielding enforcer for the loan-sharking operation run out of a Brooklyn bar owned by Rudy’s uncle.

Though Rudy cited Harold throughout his public life as his model (without revealing any of his history), he and five Rudy uncles found ways to avoid service in World War II. Harold, whose robbery conviction was in the name of an alias, made sure the draft board knew he was a felon. On the other hand, Obama’s grandfather and uncle served. His uncle helped liberate Buchenwald, which apparently affected him so deeply he stayed in the family attic for six months when he returned home.•

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“There Is Shared Danger And A Sense Of Strong Commitment That Is Very Impressive”

February 20, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

As surprising as it is that so many middle-class youths are drawn today via social media to ISIS, Patty Hearst, practically American royalty, being kidnapped in 1974 by the Symbionese Liberation Army and then converted somehow to its terrorist cause, completely stunned the world. She didn’t go willingly, but she became a willing accomplice, brainwashed probably, though a lot of Americans were unforgiving. It seems like some of the same factors that work for ISIS may have helped the SLA remake the debutante as “Tania.” Whatever the situation, USC psychiatrist Dr. Frederick J. Hacker, whom the family hired while she was still on the lam to help them understand their daughter’s descent into terrorism, probably should not have discussed the case with Barbara Wilkins of People magazine while she was still at large, but he did. An excerpt:

Question:

Why did the Hearsts consult you?

Dr. Frederick J. Hacker:

I had published a book on terrorism in Germany in 1973—dealing with the Olympic tragedy in Munich and the Arab-Israeli situation. In September ’73, I became a negotiator in Vienna between the government and two Arab terrorists. After that, I was invited to speak at Harvard and the State Department and to testify before the House Committee on Internal Security. That was how the Hearsts heard about me and my work.

Question:

When did you get involved in the case of Patricia Hearst?

Dr. Frederick J. Hacker:

When a Mr. Gould of the Hearst newspapers called me up, on behalf of the family, about four weeks after the kidnapping. I went up to Hillsborough to visit the Hearsts. I told them to take the SLA at face value, to take the political message seriously. And I urged them to get a concession for every concession they made.

Question:

What have you discovered about Patty Hearst?

Dr. Frederick J. Hacker:

I had not known her before, of course. By now everyone has read what her life had been. She was an average, intelligent girl. She lived an unspectacular life with her former tutor. She was more liberal than her family but was still relatively conservative. She was totally without political interests. She was sheltered. She’d gone to Europe with some other girls and, prior to Steve [her fiance Steven Weed], she’d had three or four other boyfriends. She was never very close to any of her sisters. The oldest sister, a polio victim, had deep religious convictions. Patty had a bad relationship with her mother, but a fairly good one with her father. They could talk. When she was kidnapped, Patty was picking out her silverware pattern, because she had talked Steve into marrying her.

Question:

What is the lure of the SLA for a girl like Patty Hearst?

Dr. Frederick J. Hacker:

In spite of everything, the sense of close proximity among these people gives a feeling of family, of community and caring. There is shared danger and a sense of strong commitment that is very impressive to the uncommitted.

Question:

Was Patty’s conversion voluntary?

Dr. Frederick J. Hacker:

Everybody asks how voluntary her conversion was. I raise the question, “How intentional was the SLA’s conversion of Patricia?” Maybe they didn’t want to convert her at first. Let’s look at it this way. She’s kidnapped, and she’s frightened and inclined to believe these people are really monsters. Then they treat her very nicely. She begins to talk to them, to the girls. She finds they are very much the kind of people she is—upper-middle-class, intelligent, white kids. She finds a poetess, a sociologist. They tell her how they have found a new ideal and how lousy it was at home. Perhaps she started to think, “Well, at my home it wasn’t so hot either.” This may be what happened. There is a strong possibility, of course, that she was brainwashed. Maybe they did use drugs, although none was found in the bodies after the L.A. shoot-out. …

Question:

Was Patricia in on the kidnapping from the beginning?

Dr. Frederick J. Hacker:

She was undoubtedly a genuine victim. All the talk that she was in cahoots is nonsense. All the evidence, in fact, is against it, including the testimony of her boyfriend, who has no conceivable reason to lie. Why did she have her identification with her? A kidnap victim doesn’t—unless someone else grabs it and takes it along.

Question:

What makes a terrorist?

Dr. Frederick J. Hacker:

A number of different things. Usually the terrorist is imbued with the righteousness of his cause, and fanatacized by the idea of remediable injustice. For example, as long as you could tell women that it was God’s will that they were mistreated by men and that it was irremediable, there was no movement to change things. As soon as it becomes clear that an injustice is not fated, is not obligatory, and that there are alternatives, then the dominant group is in trouble.

Question:

Are there different kinds of terrorists?

Dr. Frederick J. Hacker:

I distinguish three categories—the criminal, the mentally deranged and the political. With the SLA, it is not easy to confine them to one category. They are criminally involved because some of their tactics are criminal. Some actions are loony and the details are ludicrous. When Cinque’s body was found, he was wearing heavy pants, army boots up to his calf and three pairs of woolen socks—in Southern California where the temperature was 80°. He had a compass and a canteen. That’s inappropriate. They stole from that sporting goods store, but they certainly did not need the money. Hundreds and hundreds of dollars were found on all the bodies. Only the outside of the folded money burned. There were nutty elements. What kind of an army is 20 people, or 10 people? They were also political, and that is what made it so hard.

Question:

These radical movements seem to attract middle-and upper-middle-class children rather than the lower-middle-class and poor. Why?

Dr. Frederick J. Hacker:

You are asking who becomes a revolutionary. The leaders of a revolution don’t come from the class they are trying to liberate. The to-be-liberated group doesn’t have the means to lead itself out of oppression.

Question:

What can be done about terrorism?

Dr. Frederick J. Hacker:

First, you must change the “remediable” conditions that produce the terrorist solution—for instance, somehow you get rid of the Palestinian refugee camps. Second, the mass media must effect restraint so that terrorist crime does not become fashionable. Finally, I believe we must establish task forces led by law enforcement executives who are advised by responsible behavioral scientists.•

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“Over Time Robots ‘Can Leave All Future High-Tech Workers And, Potentially, All Future Low-Tech Workers Worse Off”

February 19, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

A highly automated society needs coders until there is a critical mass of code and then the machines can take over. Whither will the high-tech worker go? From Victoria Stilwell at Bloomberg:

Have you ever worried that robots would one day be the ruin of humanity? According to a newly published paper, you might not be too far off base. 

Four researchers from Boston University and Columbia University simulated an economy featuring two types of workers – high-tech employees who produce new software code, and low-tech workers who produce human services (people such as artists, priests, psychologists and the like). 

At first, high demand for code-writing high-tech employees increases their wages. However, over time, the amount of legacy code grows. As this happens, and as some smart machines become better able to learn tasks, writing new code becomes redundant, the authors state.

Demand for code-writing high-tech workers then becomes limited to those who are needed for general code maintenance like updates and repairs. The rest of the high-tech workers end up going into the service sector, which consequently pushes down wages for employees in that industry. And lower incomes reduce the amount of goods and services that workers are able to buy.

While there can be several of these so-called “boom-bust” tech cycles, over time robots “can leave all future high-tech workers and, potentially, all future low-tech workers worse off,” the paper states. “In short, when smart machines replace people, they eventually bite the hands of those that finance them.”•

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“It’s A Sort Of Blasphemous Prayer”

February 18, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Audio of Oriana Fallaci being interviewed in 1972 by Stephen Banker at the time of the publication of Nothing, and So Be It, her account of the dangerous season she spent as a war correspondent in Vietnam.

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“The Question Of Automation Is Becoming Obsessive”

February 17, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

The 1960s video report embedded below about computers includes footage of American college students asking concerned questions about automation and the coming technological unemployment. No different than today, really. Luddite-ism is never the answer, though political solutions may be required. A couple weeks back, Newsweek referred to its 1965 cover story, “The Challenge of Automation.” An excerpt:

In 1965, America found itself facing a new industrial revolution. The rapid evolution of computers provoked enormous excitement and considerable dread as captains of industry braced themselves for the age of automation.   

Newsweek devoted a special edition to discussing “the most controversial economic concept of the age” in January 1965. “Businessmen love it. Workers fear it. The government frets and investigates and wonders what to do about it,” the report began. “Automation is wiping out about 35,000 jobs every week or 1.8 million per year.”•

“They May Be Worried About The High Prices, But They Are Really Afraid Of The Existential Threat”

February 17, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Israelis may be at a tipping point, struggling under the twin burdens of a weak economy and endless war. Bibi Netanyahu, a perplexing and unpopular Rumsfeldian figure, has maintained power with nimble behind-the-scenes maneuvering and by playing the politics of fear. Of course, those fears aren’t baseless. Isaac Herzog, a candidate for Prime Minister approaching the center from the left, hopes to take Israel in a new direction. Nicola Abé and Juliane von Mittelstaedt interviewed him for Spiegel. An excerpt:

Spiegel:

The journalist Ari Shavit wrote that “People don’t like Bibi, but they sleep better when he’s in charge.” So they may be worried about the high prices, but they are really afraid of the existential threat posed by Hamas, Islamic State and Iran. Can you overcome this fear, especially in a country that has shifted to the right for the last 20 years?

Isaac Herzog:

Oh, I am not sure the country has substantially shifted to the right. Israelis are demanding peace, and they are demanding that the Palestinians don’t shoot at us. And, I think, they want to know that if I negotiate peace, I will not sell them out. That’s legitimate. However, Israelis are fed up with the prime minister’s politics of fear. They are fed up from hearing the same music again and again. He’s been prime minister for six years, and yet he has failed substantially in providing Israelis a decent economy and prospects for peace and security.

Spiegel:

Some people say that Labor can only win if it has a former general at its helm.

Isaac Herzog:

Netanyahu was a captain and I am a major in one of the country’s famous intelligence units. I don’t think that matters at all. This is old politics.

Spiegel:

Do you think the time of the macho politician is over? Is Israel ready for a softie in power?

Isaac Herzog:

I think so. And more than that, Israel is ready for a serious, considered and experienced leader. For something else.

Spiegel:

Netanyahu’s most important topic is Iran. He warns about the potential of an Iranian atomic bomb and doesn’t believe it will give up its nuclear program. Do you believe the ongoing negotiations could bring about a compromise?

Isaac Herzog:

Iran is a hateful regime that spreads hate. I think that the international community that is negotiating with Iran has to be stern. However, I think one needs to talk, in a quiet, professional manner, without any blame game, but with all options on the table. That is where I differ from Netanyahu.

Spiegel:

Are you in favor of an easing sanctions?

Isaac Herzog:

It think it has to be part of a process, when we know that they are liquidating their nuclear program.

Spiegel:

What about the other unsolved conflict — the one with the Palestinians? Why is the peace process playing virtually no role in your election campaign? Do you want to focus only on social issues and economy?

Isaac Herzog:

I want to be frank about this. The current situation with the Palestinians is one of the worst ever. Abu Mazen (President Mahmoud Abbas) has decided to act unilaterally against Israel, so there’s not much confidence among Israelis regarding the prospect of a negotiation process. But Livni and I are both identified with the peace process, and yes, we want to reignite that process. Because our great advantage is that we know much better than Netanyahu how to protect the interests of Israeli citizens.•

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“The Numbers, However, Make Clear That Inequality Isn’t Destined To Rise”

February 17, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

As soon as George Washington University economist Steve Rose looked at the numbers and determined that income inequality has actually decreased since the Great Recession, others in the field immediately pushed back. More certainly will. Whomever you believe, even the bearish on the topic think wealth inequality is still at dangerous levels. Of course, depending on how policy is enacted, it’s not destiny. From a post about Rose’s conclusions by David Leonhardt in the New York Times:

The income of the top 1 percent – both the level and the share of overall income – still hasn’t returned to its 2007 peak. Their average income is about 20 percent below that peak. Yet we have all become so accustomed to rising inequality that we seem to have lost the ability to consider the alternative. Maybe it’s because many liberals are tempted to believe inequality is always getting worse, while many conservatives are tempted to believe that the Obama economy is always getting worse.

The numbers, however, make clear that inequality isn’t destined to rise. Not only can economic forces, like a recession, reduce it, but government policy can, too. And Washington’s recent efforts to fight inequality – as imperfect and restrained as they’ve been – have made a bigger difference than many people realize.

The existing safety net of jobless benefits, food stamps and the like cushioned the blow of the so-called Great Recession. So did the stimulus bill that President Obama signed in 2009 and some smaller bills passed afterward. “Not only were low-income people protected – middle-income and some higher income-households had much lower losses because of these public policies,” Mr. Rose said. “For those who think government programs never work, maybe they need to think again.”

Before diving into the numbers on the government’s role, let’s start with the pretax statistics. These are the data on what’s happened before the government redistributes income through taxes and benefits.•

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“Human Redundancy May Follow The Creation Of Copyable Human Capital”

February 16, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

A collection of brief notes about the potential future of AI from the “Emerging Risks” section of the Global Challenges Report, which outlines species-threatening possibilities:

1. The advantages of global coordination and cooperation are clear if there are diminishing returns to intelligence and a plethora of AIs, but less clear if there is a strong first mover advantage to the first group to produce AI: then the decisions of that first group are more relevant than the general international environment.

2. Military AI research will result in AIs built for military purposes, but possibly with more safeguards than other designs.

3. Effective regulatory frameworks would be very difficult without knowledge of what forms AIs will ultimately take.

4. Uncontrolled AI research (or research by teams unconcerned with security) increases the risk of potentially dangerous AI development.

5. “Friendly AI” projects aim to directly produce AIs with goals compatible with human survival.

6. Reduced impact and Oracle AI are examples of projects that aim to produce AIs whose abilities and goals are restricted in some sense, to prevent them having a strong negative impact on humanity.

7. General mitigation methods will be of little use against intelligent AIs, but may help in the aftermath of conflict.

8. Copyable human capital – software with the capability to perform tasks with human-like skills – would revolutionise the economic and social systems.

9. Economic collapse may follow from mass unemployment as humans are replaced by copyable human capital.

10. Many economic and social set-ups could inflict great suffering on artificial agents, a great moral negative if they are capable of feeling such suffering.

11. Human redundancy may follow the creation of copyable human capital, as software replaces human jobs.

12. Once invented, AIs will be integrated into the world’s economic and social system, barring massive resistance.

13. An AI arms race could result in AIs being constructed with pernicious goals or lack of safety precautions.

14. Uploads – human brains instantiated in software – are one route to AIs. These AIs would have safer goals, lower likelihood of extreme intelligence, and would be more likely to be able to suffer.

15. Disparate AIs may amalgamate by sharing their code or negotiating to share a common goal to pursue their objectives more effectively.

16. There may be diminishing returns to intelligence, limiting the power of any one AI, and leading to the existence of many different AIs.

17. Partial “friendliness” may be sufficient to control AIs in certain circumstances.

18 .Containing an AI attack may be possible, if the AIs are of reduced intelligence or are forced to attack before being ready.

19. New political systems may emerge in the wake of AI creation, or after an AI attack, and will profoundly influence the shape of future society.

20. AI is the domain with the largest uncertainties; it isn’t clear what an AI is likely to be like.

21. Predictions concerning AI are very unreliable and underestimate uncertainties.•

“Ageless Iraq Is No Longer A Remote, Isolated Country”

February 15, 2015 in Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Narrated 18-minute newsreel portrait of Iraq in 1953, as the state made a push toward modernization.

“Once We Create It, It May Be Out Of Our Hands Entirely”

February 15, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Marc Goodman, law-enforcement veteran and author of the forthcoming book Future Crimes, sat for an interview with Jason Dorrier of Singularity Hub about the next wave nefariousness, Internet-enabled and large-scale. A question about the potential for peril writ relatively small with Narrow AI and on a grand scale if we create Artificial General Intelligence. An excerpt::

Question:

Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, and Bill Gates have expressed concern about artificial general intelligence. It’s a hotly debated topic. Might AI be our “final invention?” It seems even narrow AI in the wrong hands might be problematic.

Marc Goodman:

I would add Marc Goodman to that list. To be clear, I think AI, narrow AI, and the agents around us have tremendous opportunity to be incredibly useful. We’re using AI every day, whether it’s in our GPS devices, in our Netflix recommendations, what we see on our Facebook status updates and streams—all of that is controlled via AI.

With regard to AGI, however, I put myself firmly in the camp of concern.

Historically, whatever the tool has been, people have tried to use it for their own power. Of course, typically, that doesn’t mean that the tool itself is bad. Fire wasn’t bad. It could cook your meals and keep you warm at night. It comes down to how we use it. But AGI is different. The challenge with AGI is that once we create it, it may be out of our hands entirely, and that could certainly make it our “final invention.”

I’ll also point out that there are concerns about narrow AI too.

We’ve seen examples of criminals using narrow AI in some fascinating ways. In one case, a University of Florida student was accused of killing his college roommate for dating his girlfriend. Now, this 18-year-old freshman had a conundrum. What does he do with the dead body before him? Well, he had never murdered anybody before, and he had no idea how to dispose of the body. So, he asked Siri. The answers Siri returned? Mine, swamp, and open field, among others.

So, Siri answered his question. This 18-year-old kid unknowingly used narrow AI as an accomplice after the fact in his homicide. We’ll see many more examples of this moving forward. In the book, I say we’re leaving the world of Bonnie and Clyde and joining the world of Siri and Clyde.•

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“I Had This Sense Of Surreality”

February 12, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Donald Trump, a human oil spill, apparently requested that the Obama Administration make him czar of the BP cleanup effort, according to David Axelrod’s new book. From Amy Chozick in the New York Times:

Question:

Some anecdotes in the book make clear that, as a senior adviser to the president, you dealt with some odd requests. Donald Trump asked you to put him in charge of cleaning up the BP oil spill.

David Axelrod:

You owe it to the president to be polite and to give folks a hearing. But even as I was going through these conversations, I had this sense of surreality. I was watching the scene and thinking, Man, this is really bizarre. I gotta write about this someday. Nobody will believe this.•

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“The Traditional Family Unit Is Falling Apart In Iran”

February 12, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

The nuclear family seems a fleeting arrangement, one that a society eventually advances beyond, remaking the idea with more complex entanglements, like a welter of telephone wires that cross and recross one another yet work just fine. Iran’s young are rejecting early marriage (and sometimes all marriage), and the conservative government is reacting with the expected ham-fisted response. From an Economist report:

AT A loss to explain why most youngsters are delaying marriage or altogether shunning the idea of a happy union, Iran’s government is taking action. In Hamedan province, a senior ayatollah recently warned unmarried public workers to find a spouse within a year or risk losing their jobs. A gentler approach, announced in January, is the launch of a matchmaker website which, the government hopes, could lead to as many as 100,000 marriages.

For those who fret about such things, there is much to stoke concern. The traditional family unit is falling apart in Iran, as elsewhere: around one in three marriages in the capital, Tehran, fails.

The Shia form of Islam practiced in Iran allows sigheh, or temporary marriage that can last for as little as an hour. The government would prefer more durable pairings, however.

In any case, under-30s, who make up 55% of Iran’s population of 77m, seem far more interested in brief flings than marriage. Hence some 300 “immoral” Western-style dating websites have sprung up of late. Unable to close them all down, the state’s moral guardians have decided to turn matchmaker instead.

But its website, which launches later this month, is unlikely to make much impression beyond religious neighbourhoods where, in any case, there is little premarital nookie. “I would never put my name on a government-run site… no matter how desperate I felt,” says Farhad, a 32-year-old who has been single for the past three years.•

“Every Intimate Aspect Of Your Life Is Under Potential Bureaucratic Scrutiny”

February 11, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I think the most defining negative quality of bureaucracy is simply incompetence. Look at the example of relief efforts in New York City in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. When the federal government was in charge, FEMA did quite well. But when $100 million was shifted to the city, the efforts were a fiasco. A program called Build It Back was established by Mayor Bloomberg, and in his final 14 months in office not a single destroyed home was built back. Not one. Local homeowners living in ruins or in shelters were summoned to government offices numerous times to provide information, but while paperwork piled high, no one was helped. (So far during the de Blasio Administration, a little more than 300 homes have been completely repaired out of more than one thousand where work has begun.)

When David Graeber looks at bureaucracy, he senses something more sinister than ineptitude. He sees the potential for routine violence. In an interview about his forthcoming book, The Utopia of Rules, with David Whelan of Vice, the anthropologist looks into our future and believes an Orwellian nightmare may be headed our way. I don’t agree with Graeber’s vision of technological dreams vanishing or of library fines being commonly treated as felonies, but we’re already living in a society where “quality-of-life” policing is often used as racial punishment and certainly we’re being more tracked and quantified each day. An excerpt: 

Vice:

OK, say we’re 50 years from now, this moment. What’s happening?

David Graeber:

Research investment has changed. Flying cars are scrapped. They say to hell with going to Mars. All this space age stuff is done. Money moves elsewhere, such as information technology. And now every intimate aspect of your life is under potential bureaucratic scrutiny, which means fines and violence.

Vice:

What happens if you step out of line?

David Graeber:

Bureaucratic societies rely on the threat of violence. We follow their rules because if we don’t there’s a chance we’ll get killed. A good way to think of this is through libraries.

Vice:

Libraries?

David Graeber:

Say you want to go get a book by Foucault from the library describing why life is all a matter of physical coercion, but you haven’t paid an overdue fine and therefore you don’t have a currently valid personal ID. You walk through the gate illegally. What’s going to happen?

Vice:

A smacked bottom?

David Graeber:

Men with sticks will eventually show up and threaten to hit you.

Vice:

Wait. This actually happens?

David Graeber:

Yeah. Check out the UCLA Taser incident in 2006. They Tasered him, told him to get up, then Tasered him again.

Vice:

What’s the point in that?

David Graeber:

The point is bureaucracy. They don’t care who he is or why he’s there. It doesn’t matter who you are. You just apply the same rules to everybody, because that’s “fair.”

Vice:

But if you’re at the top of the bureaucratic tree, those rules don’t apply.

David Graeber:

Bureaucracy provides an illusion of fairness. Everyone is equal before the law, but the problem is it never works like that. But to advance in a bureaucratic system the one thing you CANNOT do is point out all the ways the system doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to. You have to pretend it’s a meritocracy.•

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“It Was The Software That Did It – A Clear-Cut Case Of What Economists Call Technological Unemployment”

February 10, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Working off futurist Martin Ford’s forthcoming book Rise of the Robots, Zoë Corbyn of the Guardian analyzes the next phase of labor, in which many of the human laborers will be phased out. The opening:

It could be said that the job of bridge toll collector was invented in San Francisco. In 1968, the Golden Gate Bridge became the world’s first major bridge to start employing people to take tolls.

But in 2013 the bridge where it all began went electronic. Of its small band of collectors, 17 people were redeployed or retired and nine found themselves out of work. It was the software that did it – a clear-cut case of what economists call technological unemployment. Licence-plate recognition technology took over. Automating jobs like that might not seem like a big deal. It is easy to see how it might happen, just as how we buy train tickets at machines or book movie tickets online reduces the need for people.

But technology can now do many more things that used to be unique to people. Rethink Robotics’ Baxter, a dexterous factory robot that can be programmed by grabbing its arms and guiding it through the motions, sells for a mere $25,000 (equivalent to about $4 an hour over a lifetime of work, according to a Stanford University study). IPsoft’s Amelia, a virtual service desk employee, is being trialled by oil industry companies, such as Shell and Baker Hughes, to help with employee training and inquiries. Meanwhile, doctors are piloting the use of Watson, IBM’s supercomputer, to assist in diagnosing patients and suggesting treatments. Law firms are using software such as that developed by Blackstone Discovery to automate legal discovery, the process of gathering evidence for a lawsuit, previously an important task of paralegals. Rio Tinto’s “mine of the future” in Western Australia has 53 autonomous trucks moving ore and big visions for expansion. Even the taxi-sharing company Uber is in on the act – it has just announced it will open a robotics research facility to work on building self-driving cars.

The upshot will be many people losing jobs to software and machines, says Silicon Valley-based futurist Martin Ford, whose book The Rise of the Robots comes out this year. He forecasts significant unemployment and rising inequality unless radical changes are made.•

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“The Sharing Economy Only Works For People Who Already Have Financial Stability”

February 10, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

If you don’t need a great job, the Peer Economy is for you. If it’s an elective weekend gig to make a few extra bucks, you’re okay. But if you took the bait and were drawn into such employment on a full-time basis, you’re probably living on the margins now, and you may be joined there by others whose jobs you unwittingly disrupted. From “I Am Not an Uber,” Annie Julia Wyman’s n+1 report about Los Angeles drivers employed by the ridesharing service:

A few men said they had made as much as $3,000 a week when they started working for Uber in 2012; some gave up other jobs in order to drive full-time. When Uber dropped fares drastically, supposedly in order to compete with Lyft (a rideshare app most successful on the West Coast and whose brand, at least, is friendlier, more transparent, and community-based), some drivers to whom I spoke said they found themselves earning as little as a few dollars an hour. One man texted me PDFs documenting his pay in October 2013 and his pay in October 2014. On the 2014 report, the driver’s total income is much lower, but you can’t see the number of trips he completed. This omission of the trip number column is intentional, he says: Uber wants to hide the fact that it is hurting its drivers. Meanwhile, company representatives maintain that drivers can earn $25.79 an hour and that drivers are provided with both weekly emails with policy updates and with 24-hour support. Uber’s stated intent is to “help drivers build their own small businesses” and to keep creating jobs. As of December 2014, Uber claims to have created fifty thousand of them, including jobs for military veterans, who drive without paying anything to the company at all.

The roughly twenty-eight men and two women at the meeting stressed that they all work full time, sometimes up to fifteen hours a day. They call part-time drivers “weekend warriors” and cite them as evidence that the sharing economy only works for people who already have the financial stability to treat driving as a kind of mildly lucrative hobby. One man took me aside and outlined his typical Monday, stressing that he couldn’t spare the money for more than one cup of coffee or the time for bathroom breaks. “I’m not a big thinker,” he said, pulling his knit cap down over his eyes, “I’m not a philosopher or a lawyer. But the country will be better when people like me are treated better.” He laughed and insisted that he, unlike many Americans, would pay his taxes. He then scrutinized my notebook to make sure I hadn’t written down his name, a strong hint that he—and probably other drivers at the meeting—was an undocumented worker.•

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“About 1.2 Million Additional Advanced Robots Are Expected To Be Deployed In The U.S. By 2025”

February 10, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

 

It’s possible that the robotization of the workplace will lead to growth in new and more interesting industries yet imagined, but it’s worth searching for solutions right now should that scenario not play out to the degree that’s necessary. From Paul Davidson at USA Today:

Manufacturers will significantly accelerate their use of robots in U.S. factories over the next decade as they become cheaper and perform more tasks, constraining payroll growth, according to a study out Tuesday.

The development is expected to dramatically boost productivity and slow the long-standing migration of factories across the globe to take advantage of low-cost labor, says the Boston Consulting Group report.

“Advanced robotics are changing the calculus of manufacturing,” says Harold Sirkin, a senior partner at the management consulting firm.

A handful of nations, including the U.S. and China, are poised to reap the biggest benefits of the automation wave.

About 1.2 million additional advanced robots are expected to be deployed in the U.S. by 2025, BCG says. …

Within two years, the number of advanced industrial robots in the U.S. will begin to grow by 10% a year, up from current annual growth of 2% to 3%, the study says.

The impact on U.S. factory workers is mixed.

Replacing employees with robots is projected to result in a manufacturing workforce that’s 22% — or a few million workers — smaller by 2025 than it otherwise would have been. But factory payrolls are still expected to rise because of an expanding economy and the growing tendency of manufacturers to move some production back to the U.S. from overseas — a trend known as reshoring, Sirkin says.•

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“As Far As The Eye Can See, What’s Left Of Civilised Society Is Sheathed In Glass”

February 10, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

What would it be like if the worst dream came true and climate change killed most of us, made the majority of the Earth uninhabitable? How would the relatively small band of survivors carry on should this ingenious machine we’ve built for ourselves no longer be sustainable? The opening of “Scorched Earth, 2200 A.D.,” Linda Marsa’s excellent Aeon speculation about life among the ruins:

Stare out the window from my tiny flat on the 300th floor, hermetically sealed in a soaring, climate-controlled high-rise, honeycombed with hundreds of dwellings just like mine, and survey the breathtaking vistas from my lofty perch more than half a mile above ground: the craftsman cottages with their well-tended lawns, the emerald green golf courses, the sun-washed aquamarine swimming pools and the multimillion-dollar mansions that hug the sweeping sands from Malibu to Palos Verdes. These images evoke feelings of deep nostalgia for a Los Angeles that doesn’t exist anymore, back in the halcyon days before my great-grandparents were born, when procreation wasn’t strictly regulated and billions of people roamed freely on Earth.

There are only about 500 million of us left, after the convulsive transformations caused by climate change severely diminished the planet’s carrying capacity, which is the maximum population size that the environment can sustain. Most of us now live in what the British scientist James Lovelock has called ‘lifeboats’ at the far reaches of the northern hemisphere, in places that were once Canada, China, Russia and the Scandinavian countries, shoehorned into cities created virtually overnight to accommodate the millions of desperate refugees where the climate remains marginally tolerable.

What I ‘see’ outside my window is an illusion, a soothing virtual imitation of a world that once was, summoned by impulses from my brain. Yet the harsh reality is unsettling. As far as the eye can see, what’s left of civilised society is sheathed in glass – the ribbons of highways ferrying the bullet trains that encircle megacities where millions cram into skyscrapers hundreds of stories high; the vast tracts of greenhouses covering chemically enhanced farms where fruits and vegetables are grown and livestock graze; and even the crowded subterranean villages artificially lit to mimic the experience of walking outside on a sunny, spring day.

Before the seismic shocks of the great upheavals, people’s movements were unfettered, and they could breathe unfiltered air, roam in the woods or simply watch their kids play soccer outdoors. Today, the unprotected strips of land exposed to the elements are forbidden zones, plagued by drenching rains with howling 100-mile-an-hour winds, alternating with fierce dust storms, the deadly soil tsunamis that rumble up from the deserts that blanket what used to be the United States. When there is a break in the wild weather, the scorching sun relentlessly cooks the atmosphere to temperatures of 180 degrees or more by midday, making it impossible to step outside without body armour and oxygen tanks.

Our political structures have shifted, too.•

 

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“Consciousness Is A Much Different Story”

February 9, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

David W. Buchanan, one of IBM’s Watson enablers, agrees with me that Strong AI with human-extincting powers isn’t happening in the foreseeable future, but in arguing against the likelihood of our imminent elimination in a Washington Post editorial, he does concede the growing power of Weak AI, which will continue to introduce automation into more and more workplaces. That could be a great thing or a destabilizing one that encourages even greater income inequality. From Buchanan, a passage about what he terms the “consciousness fallacy”:

Science fiction is partly responsible for these fears. A common trope works as follows: Step 1: Humans create AI to perform some unpleasant or difficult task. Step 2: The AI becomes conscious. Step 3: The AI decides to kill us all. As science fiction, such stories can be great fun. As science fact, the narrative is suspect, especially around Step 2, which assumes that by synthesizing intelligence, we will somehow automatically, or accidentally, create consciousness. I call this the consciousness fallacy. It seems plausible at first, but the evidence doesn’t support it. And if it is false, it means we should look at AI very differently.

Intelligence is the ability to analyze the world and reason about it in a way that enables more effective action. Our scientific understanding of intelligence is relatively advanced. There is still an enormous amount of work to do before we can create comprehensive, human-caliber intelligence. But our understanding is viable in the sense that there are real businesses that make money by creating AI.

Consciousness is a much different story, perhaps because there is less money in it. Consciousness is also a harder problem: While most of us would agree that we know consciousness when we see it, scientists can’t really agree on a rigorous definition, let alone a research program that would uncover its basic mechanisms. The best definitions capture the idea that consciousness grounds our experiences and our awareness. Certainly consciousness is necessary to be “someone,” rather than just “something.” There is some good science on consciousness, and some progress has been made, but there is still a very long way to go.

It is tempting to conflate something that we understand better with something we hardly understand at all, and scientists are not immune to this temptation.•

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“The International System Lacks Many Of The Stabilizing Elements That Have Helped Preserve Peace In The Past”

February 9, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

President Obama’s foreign policy strategy has long been clear: sanctions, containment, diplomacy, no boots on the ground unless absolutely necessary and a reluctance to arm those fighting regimes we dislike for fear that weaponry will eventually be used against us. David Rothkopf, editor of Foreign Policy, sees flaws in this mindset, though he gives the President credit for the relatively brisk U.S. economic turnaround in the wake of the Great Recession. A few exchanges follow from the Reddit AMA Rothkopf just conducted.

_______________________________

Question:

Off the top of your head, greatest threat to world peace?

David Rothkopf:

It is tempting to say that the greatest threat to world peace is inequality or imbalances that create deep social tensions. That can certainly be a contributing factor. But just as often the threat is a leader or group that seeks to take advantage of instability or lack of order. Right now, there are many places in the world that are at risk on that front…because the international system lacks many of the stabilizing elements that have helped preserve peace in the past.

_______________________________

Question:

What do you feel has been the Obama administration’s biggest foreign policy success thus far? Biggest failure or missed opportunity?

David Rothkopf:

The biggest success of the Obama administration has been helping to engineer the U.S. economic recovery. The biggest failure has been an unwillingness to address–with a clear strategy–threats to stability in the Middle East and Ukraine.

_______________________________

Question:

Assuming there is no congressional veto override of the existing temporary agreement, what are the chances of a lasting nuclear enrichment agreement between Washington and Tehran between now and the end of the Obama administration? Could Iran be trusted to keep such an agreement if one is made?

David Rothkopf:

On Iran, a deal is likely between the US and Iranian government. Whether it actually constrains the Iranians from developing nuclear weapons in the long run is another issue–but it is certainly a goal worth trying to achieve. That said, Iran has caused a lot of problems for three decades without having any nuclear weapons and the deal will not do much to address that aspect of its foreign policy.

_______________________________

Question:

Is inaction, allowing the stalemate in Syria and Iraq to solidfy, more dangerous than overreaction?

David Rothkopf:

Inaction against IS is dangerous…as is action without a coherent strategy (which is what we currently have). Big winners to date are Iran, Assad, IS in places where the Syrian and Iraqi governments have alienated their people, and the Kurds, who, in the end, will have the state they deserve to have. (Though it will surely take too long to get there.)

_______________________________

Question:

What is Russia’s/Putin’s end-game?

David Rothkopf:

Strengthening Russia via seizing every international opening to do so…because a.) they seek to return Russia to the status it deserves in their minds and b.) because they are so hopeless at addressing their domestic economic issues at home. Much of it is very much a “wag the dog” or “bread and circuses” initiative, seeking to distract from their failures at governance, demographic crisis and, recently, the pressures associated with a downturn in the price of oil.

_______________________________

Question:

If you had to grade Americans as a whole on their knowledge of world events, what would be the grade and why?

David Rothkopf:

F. Because the average American citizen spends precious little time thinking about global affairs, we don’t teach it very well in the schools–we don’t even really teach things like geography or civics any more. And too many people get their information from websites and cable networks that cater to one political view…people hear like-minded voices and don’t get enough of a range of views.•

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