News — At The Edge — 11/9
Individually and collectively, articles this week — failed capitalism, dishonest politicians, disinformation, attacks on cryptography, national Internets, Terminator technologies — show how dangerously backward-looking civilization has become.
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A scholar of inequality ponders the future of capitalism —
“[A] single social system lends support to…history as a march towards progress…[yet] belief that liberal capitalism will…be the destination has been weakened by financial and political dysfunction in the rich world, and by the rise of China….
[Our] capitalism before 1914, through the social-democratic capitalism of the mid-20th century, to ‘liberal meritocratic capitalism’ in much of the rich world, in particular America…[versus] the ‘political capitalism’ found in many emerging countries, with China as the exemplar….
Liberal meritocratic capitalism…is more egalitarian…thanks to welfare states…[with] distinguishing feature a tolerance for inequality…by people of extraordinary talent.
Political capitalism…[relies] for legitimacy on their ability to foster economic growth…[with] a ‘zone of lawlessness’ that allows the state to suppress…interest groups…[and] rule of law…would enable a merchant class to become a new center of power…for political reforms, thus limiting the actions of the ruling elite….
Whether political capitalism does better than liberal capitalism at fostering growth remains unclear…[but] global status quo may not be….Slower growth in China may…erode the legitimacy of the ruling party.
And liberal systems may converge toward authoritarian ones, rather than the other way round…[because] structural forces within liberal meritocratic capitalism work towards greater inequality…[as] elites use its economic power to cultivate political power, pushing societies toward the establishment of a permanent ruling class that cannot be dislodged….
In 2016 the top 1% of the top 1% accounted for 40% of campaign donations…[and] elected leaders are more attuned to the interests of the rich than those…down the income scale.
Other aspects of political capitalism are creeping in…from the pay-to-play proclivities of the Trump administration to the tendency of both Democrats and Republicans to leap from government service straight into lucrative private-sector jobs…[thus] an erosion of liberal values…[because] money is the ultimate measure of worth…[and] elites increasingly…are willing to do anything not outright illegal that increases their wealth….
But the costs are becoming apparent — when firms bow to Chinese censorship in order to retain access to lucrative markets…or when governments accept flagrant tax avoidance as the price of unimpeded capital flows….
If so, capitalism…without the moderating influence of those values, could reach its own historical dead end.” https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2019/11/02/a-scholar-of-inequality-ponders-the-future-of-capitalism
Politicians pay a surprisingly small price for dishonesty —
“[W]hen people make moral decisions, they are influenced by emotion…[thinking] they are weighing evidence but…made in the blink of an eye…[and] reasons they give afterwards merely reflect these emotions, like a dog wagging its tail…particularly apt at a time when lying has come to define politics more than usual.
Dictatorships have always been built on lies….Soviet Union…main newspaper Pravda (‘Truth’)…was a lie….
Politicians in democracies have always mangled the truth: denying affairs and downplaying the ill effects of their policies.
What is new is the degree…voters are prepared to back leaders who seem to revel in their mendacity….
[For] Trump, whole websites are devoted to his truthlessness…[with] 13,435 false or misleading statements while in office….
Yet their duplicity seems to cost politicians little, if anything, in electoral support….[Why?]
One possibility is that lying on a Trumpian scale is so unusual — so frequent, shameless and easily falsified — that people do not know how to react….[Another] is that people trust leaders for whom they have voted, whatever those people say…even if [lying]…[as] supporters may even relish deceits. If you believe that all politicians are liars, those outraged by Mr. Trump’s falsehoods are hypocrites….
[Still] people find it hard to spot liars…[even] those whose job is…to dig out hidden truths, such as police officers or intelligence agents, are no better than ordinary folk….
Humans are hard-wired to assume that what they hear is true — and [so]…’hard-wired to be duped’…[or] suspend their critical faculties when given orders by a superior….
Fake news may be exacerbating people’s inbuilt gullibility…[because] ‘falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper and more broadly than the truth’…[especially] for fake political news…with a smorgasbord of facts and lies from which to pick and choose….
[Thus] an uncomfortable fact: voters appear to support liars more than they believe them…..[Why?] If voters’ judgments are rooted in emotion and intuition, facts and evidence are likely to be secondary….
[It] is the pervasiveness of confirmation bias — the tendency to seek out and interpret information that confirms what you already think….To oversimplify, Democrats read the New York Times; Republicans watch Fox News….
A new version of confirmation bias is ‘identity-protective cognition…[whereby] people process information in a way that protects their self-image…they think others have of them….As people become more partisan, more issues are being taken as markers of the kind of person you are…[so] in America, guns, trade, even American football…give rise to the acceptance of bias….
[Unfortunately] the brighter people are, the more deftly they can conjure up post-hoc justifications for arguments that back their own side…[and] ignore facts which support their foes.” https://www.economist.com/international/2019/10/31/you-really-can-fool-some-of-the-people-all-of-the-time
Disinformation ‘works better than censorship,’ warns internet freedom report —
“A rise in social media surveillance, warrantless searches of travelers’ devices at the border and the continued spread of disinformation are…reasons why the U.S. has declined… for the third year in a row. Last year’s single-point drop was blamed on the repeal of net neutrality.
Iceland and Estonia remained at the top of the charts…with China and Iran ranking with the least-free internet….
[The] digital platforms…[are] the ‘new battleground’ for democracy…[with] disinformation and propaganda to distort facts and opinions during elections in dozens of countries over the past year….
[Key is] propaganda works better than censorship….
Disinformation — or ‘fake news’…[that’s] deliberately misleading and false information has become more prevalent, lawmakers have threatened to…legislate against the problem…[others] including the U.S…[are] ‘co-opting’ social media platforms for their own benefit.
Both the U.S. and China are among the 40 countries that have expanded their monitoring of social media….’Law enforcement and immigration agencies expanded their surveillance of the public, eschewing oversight, transparency, and accountability mechanisms that might restrain their actions’….
[Since] most social media platforms are based in U.S….[it] has to be a ‘leader’ in promoting transparency and accountability…’to stop the internet from becoming a Trojan horse for tyranny and oppression.’” https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/04/disinformation-censorship-freedom-house/
The top FBI lawyer who tried to force Apple to backdoor its crypto now says working crypto is essential to public safety and national security —
“[Jim Baker] presided over the FBI’s attempt to force Apple to undermine its cryptography…[for] San Bernardino shooters…[and] long been a prominent advocate for mass surveillance, but…[now] believes that governments should not seek to introduce defects into cryptographic systems….
[Says] rejects the idea that…can create cryptography that works perfectly…to protect good guys, but fails completely when bad guys try to use it…[so] any effort to ban…cryptography would…send American criminals to offshore…access to working crypto, and…much harder for…law enforcement to spy on its adversaries….
[He] describes US communications networks becoming ‘zero trust networks,’ that can’t be trusted to protect their users’ privacy — and…[says] well-designed cryptographic tools are America’s best defense…[so] PLA can’t make sense of it….
No US law allows government officials to ‘force manufacturers and service providers to unlock devices and decrypt communications — that is, to rewrite software’….
The framers of the US Constitution explicitly rejected the idea that people should be forced to arrange their affairs to make life easy for law enforcement….[They] never passed a law requiring letter-writers to use indelible ink and fireproof paper so that cops could read them later…[nor] a law requiring every restaurant to put a hidden mic in every salt cellar so that potential lunchtime plotters could have their whispers played back after a robbery….
Countries like Russia, China, Iran, Australia and the UK have adopted laws banning working crypto….
If [AG] Barr managed to produce a working ‘solution’ to the problems that Baker raises, we still shouldn’t use it, because Americans have the right to make choices that enhance their own security, privacy and integrity, even if that makes cops work harder….
[Snowden’s] about upholding the Constitution; Baker is…[about] impossibility of having his security cake and eating it too.” https://boingboing.net/2019/10/28/san-bernadino-conversion.html
Russia rolls out its ‘sovereign internet.’ Is it building a digital Iron Curtain? —
“[Moscow’s] to erect a sort of digital Iron Curtain…[as] Putin signed into law…the creation of a national network that can operate independently from the rest of the world…[and] allows Roskomnadzor, Russia’s telecoms agency, to shut the country off from external traffic exchange, creating a purely Russian web….
[It’s] part of an effort to…fence-off national network…[if] foreign power interferes with Russian cyberspace…[and] easier for the Russian government to censor, reroute or switch off internet traffic to block access to politically sensitive content….
[T]he law requires all internet providers in Russia to install special hardware…[for] Deep Packet Inspection (DPI)…which involves data processing that looks in detail at the contents of the data [sent]…[and] used in by China for its Great Firewall to filter content it deems harmful….
’Building silos and restricting the flow of information to Russia’s more than 100 million internet users threatens to suppress the growth of commerce and stifle innovation’….
[Also] new laws allow authorities to jail or fine those who spread fake news or ‘disrespect’ government officials online….
A court in Moscow banned Telegram after…refused to provide encryption keys to the FSB…[and] bypass the ban…[so] still widely available in Russia.” https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/01/tech/russia-internet-law/index.html
‘Terminator’ at 35: How AI and the militarization of tech has evolved
“James Cameron…first ‘Terminator’ movie in 1984…before the advent of autonomous drones and advanced machine learning…[but] advancements in AI and robotics have brought…‘Terminator’ closer to reality….
[So] the developments that people have made in AI and military technology could create their own kind of ‘Judgement Day’….
[AI] already rivals and in some cases surpasses human intelligence across a range of applications….[Most] agree…a computer will eventually surpass [us]…[yet] it’s not clear it will be possible to program enough safeguards for humans to remain the apex programmers….
Cameron compared the drive to expand…AI to the race to split the atom in the 1930s and 1940s, which led…to the development of nuclear weapons…[and] destruction of two cities and hundreds of thousands of people. So, the idea that it can’t happen now is not the case….
[DARPA] successful test of an autonomous drone swarm that has military applications…[and] where we cross the threshold to outsourcing killing to machines’…[yet] there are no universal standards or ethics…applied as nations and corporations…[for] the most powerful…and possibly the last [weapon]….
’[I]f risk is equal to likelihood times consequence, then even if the likelihood is small…potential consequence is…loss of all life on Earth’” https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/terminator-35-how-ai-militarization-tech-has-evolved-n1068771
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Doc Huston
