Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 3:15 am Post subject: Transhumanism: wealthy man-gods, Prometheus super-fascists
Former title
Transhumanism: man can become god, kids immortal, sociopaths
A brief critical analysis of the transhumanist movement. Posthuman utopia, or the ultimate scientific dictatorship? You had better look into it. check out Aldous Huxley, eugenics, Zbigniew Brzezinski, new world order, technocracy, and watch Alex Jones' endgame film.
Transhumanism is a recent movement that extols man’s right to shape his own evolution, by maximizing the use of scientific technologies, to enhance human physical and intellectual potential. While the name is new, the idea has long been a popular theme of science fiction, featured in such films as 2001 Space Odyssey, Bade Runner, the Terminator series, and more recently, The Matrix, Limitless, Her and Transcendence.
However, as its adherents hint at in their own publications, transhumanism is an occult project, rooted in Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry, and derived from the Kabbalah, which asserts that humanity is evolving intellectually, towards a point in time when man will become God. Modeled on the medieval legend of the Golem and Frankenstein, they believe man will be able to create life itself, in the form of living machines, or artificial intelligence.
Spearheaded by the Cybernetics Group, the project resulted in both the development of the modern computer and MK-Ultra, the CIA’s “mind-control” program. MK-Ultra promoted the “mind-expanding” potential of psychedelic drugs, to shape the counterculture of the 1960s, based on the notion that the shamans of ancient times used psychoactive substances, equated with the “apple” of the Tree of Knowledge.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2017 11:01 pm Post subject:
The 4th Reich: 'Transhumanism, the History of a Dangerous Idea' with David Livingstone
Series: Bristol Broadband Co-operative
Subtitle: Susan Lindauer The conflict initiation psy-op at Charlottesville
Program Type: Weekly Program
Featured Speakers/Commentators:
Contributor: Bristol Broadband Co-operative [Contact Contributor]
Broadcast Restrictions: For non-profit use only.
License: Attribution No Derivatives (by-nd) []
Broadcast Advisory: No Advisories - program content screened and verified.
Summary:
Hermeticism, Roscrucians, Theosophists, Freemasons, Gnostcs, Zoroastrianism, Pythagoras and Mystics. Transhumanism is a recent movement that extols man’s right to shape his own evolution, by maximizing the use of scientific technologies, to enhance human physical and intellectual potential. Featured in such films as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, the Terminator series, and more recently, The Matrix, Limitless, Her, Transcendence and Lucy (2014). Transhumanism is a fascist occult project, rooted in Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry, and derived from the Kabbalah, which asserts that humanity is evolving intellectually, towards a point in time when man will become God. Modelled on the medieval legend of the Golem and Frankenstein, they believe man will be able to create life itself, in the form of living machines, or artificial intelligence.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Transhumanism-History-Dangerous-David-Livings tone/dp/1515232573/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk7tM0Fc-Mw
Transhumanism http://www.advexon.com/ (abbreviated as H+ or h+) is an international cultural and intellectual movement with an eventual goal of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.
Transhumanist thinkers study the potential benefits and dangers of emerging technologies that could overcome fundamental human limitations, as well as the ethics of developing and using such technologies. They speculate that human beings may eventually be able to transform themselves into beings with such greatly expanded abilities as to merit the label "posthuman".[1]
The contemporary meaning of the term transhumanism was foreshadowed by one of the first professors of futurology, FM-2030, who taught "new concepts of the Human" at The New School in the 1960s, when he began to identify people who adopt technologies, lifestyles and worldviews transitional to "posthumanity" as "transhuman".[2] This hypothesis would lay the intellectual groundwork for the British philosopher Max More to begin articulating the principles of transhumanism as a futurist philosophy in 1990, and organizing in California an intelligentsia that has since grown into the worldwide transhumanist movement.[2][3][4]
News agency gets €706,000 to use AI for creation of up to 30,000 local stories a month in partnership with Urbs Media
Radar will produce thousands of stories each month for hundreds of media outlets using artificial intelligence, with the help of human journalists. Photograph: Gianni Muratore/Alamy
Julia Gregory
Thursday 6 July 2017 20.30 BST
Last modified on Friday 7 July 2017 09.37 BST
Robots will help a national news agency to create up to 30,000 local news stories a month, with the help of human journalists and funded by a Google grant.
The Press Association has won a €706,000 (£621,000) grant to run a news service with computers writing localised news stories.
The national news agency, which supplies copy to news outlets in the UK and Ireland, has teamed up with data-driven news start-up Urbs Media for the project, which aims to create “a stream of compelling local stories for hundreds of media outlets”.
It won one of the largest grants to date from Google’s Digital News Initiative (DNI), which is aimed at supporting innovation in European digital journalism. PA and Urbs Media will set up Radar – Reporters And Data And Robots – to produce thousands of stories each month.
PA’s editor-in-chief, Peter Clifton, said journalists will still be involved in spotting and creating stories and will use artificial intelligence to increase the amount of content. He said: “Skilled human journalists will still be vital in the process, but Radar allows us to harness artificial intelligence to scale up to a volume of local stories that would be impossible to provide manually. It is a fantastic step forward for PA.”
The scheme aims to meet an “increasing demand for consistent, fact-based insights into local communities” for regional media outlets as well as independent publishers and hyperlocal sites and bloggers, said PA.
Journalists will find stories in national open databases from sources including government departments, local councils and NHS trusts, and make “detailed story templates” for topics such as crime, health and employment. Multiple versions of the story will be created with Natural Language Software and will “scale up the mass localisation of news content”.
Clifton said it was “a hugely exciting development for PA” that would be “a genuine game-changer for media outlets across the UK and Ireland”.
PA and Urbs Media are making a workflow plan to generate the large volume of stories for clients. The grant will also be used to make database tools to collect and combine datasets and “editorial intelligence” will guide the automation process.
Radar will auto-generate graphics, video and pictures to add to stories. Money will also be used to boost PA’s distribution platforms to help its local customers find and use the content.
PA has already shared some of its plans with its regional customers. It is recruiting a team of five journalists to spot stories, create templates for them and edit the data-driven content.
Clifton said: “At a time when many media outlets are experiencing commercial pressures, Radar will provide the news ecosystem with a cost-effective way to provide incisive local stories, enabling audiences to hold democratic bodies to account.”
The scheme is likely to begin early next year, as PA celebrates its 150th anniversary.
Tim Dawson, president of the National Union of Journalists, said the union was not Luddite or against technological innovation, but added: “Under-investment in journalism and journalists is a massive problem in the media across the UK. If money’s floating about, that’s really what it should be spent on.”
He said the fire at Grenfell Tower had highlighted the need for “robust journalism”. Dawson added: “I’ve no doubt that it is possible for computers and algorithms to mine data out of stories.”
He said it could give reporters more time to develop the stories, but added: “The real problem in the media is too little bona fide reporting. I don’t believe that computer whizzbangery is going to replace that. What I’m worried about in my capacity as president of the NUJ is something that ends up with third-rate stories which look as if they are something exciting, but are computer-generated so they [news organisations] can get rid of even more reporters.”
Who really has control over the bots? In a recent interview, both Bill Gates (in a bit of a confrontational mood) and Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella (who seemed more even-keeled than ever) talked about maintaining control over technology, about how humans will build bots and use AI that is beneficial to humanity, and that the imminent threat of AI is overplayed — it won’t happen anytime soon, if at all.
In the interview, Gates specifically mentions Musk:
“The so-called control problem that Elon [Musk] is worried about isn’t something that people should feel is imminent. This is a case where Elon and I disagree. We shouldn’t panic about it. Nor should we blithely ignore the fact that eventually that problem could emerge,” said Gates.
Nadella took the bait as well.
In his estimation, there’s a strong indication that AI will expand, but only as humans cause it to expand and maintain control.
“The core AI principle that guides us at this stage is: How do we bet on humans and enhance their capability? There are still a lot of design decisions that get made, even in a self-learning system, that humans can be accountable for. So we can make sure there’s no bias or bad data in that system. There’s a lot I think we can do to shape our own future instead of thinking, ‘This is just going to happen to us.’ Control is a choice. We should try to keep that control,” he said.
Musk has become known for his Twitter posts about AI being more of a danger than North Korea dropping a nuclear bomb, among many other moments of angst. He has almost gone so far as to say that the machines will subdue us, although his real goals seem to be related to setting guidelines.
As you may already know, I happen to agree with the camp that says AI will do mostly what we program it to do.
This is what many AI engineers and robotics experts say — you program bots to handle an order for flowers or candy, and they don’t jump over that coding wall and start messing with your home heating system or send your car into a lake. The code behaves because it can’t do anything except what a human asked the bot to do. It’s a moral imperative governed by humans. The Terminator is a Hollywood invention.
And yet.
I’m also in the camp that says we need to keep an eye on things, as Gates also mentioned. Bots in our cars and in our homes can carry out commands that are highly complex and interconnected. I’m about to test a garage door opener in my house that can open the garage door by voice but then trigger the lights, the heating system, and maybe even the oven in the kitchen as well. As humans, we’re “programmed” to think about one thing at a time, and I’m thankful for that. We have what’s called sustained attention, which lets us block out distractions.
Bots can think about 100 different things at once. It’s not a big programming challenge to ask that garage door to activate other connected home appliances and other gear in my house. The “let’s keep an eye on this” problem comes into play when we have, say, a bot that triggers a thousand different things all at once — and we forget which devices are even connected and what they do.
So AI guidelines would help. Staying vigilant is a good idea. Musk is somewhat correct. The Microsoft luminaries are also somewhat correct.
It’s “both, and” here. AI will not kill you … yet. _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2017 12:39 pm Post subject:
Zeynep Tufekci
We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads
We're building an artificial intelligence-powered dystopia, one click at a time, says techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci. In an eye-opening talk, she details how the same algorithms companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon use to get you to click on ads are also used to organize your access to political and social information. And the machines aren't even the real threat. What we need to understand is how the powerful might use AI to control us -- and what we can do in response.
https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dystopia_jus t_to_make_people_click_on_ads
This talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
ABOUT
Zeynep Tufekci · Techno-sociologist
Techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci asks big questions about our societies and our lives, as both algorithms and digital connectivity spread.
Tony Bradley , CONTRIBUTOR JUL 31, 2017
I cover all things tech and the impact tech has on everyday life.
British scientist Stephen Hawking warned about the potentially tragic consequences of artificial intelligence in 2014. / AFP / NIKLAS HALLE'N (Photo credit should read NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images)
Facebook shut down an artificial intelligence engine after developers discovered that the AI had created its own unique language that humans can’t understand. Researchers at the Facebook AI Research Lab (FAIR) found that the chatbots had deviated from the script and were communicating in a new language developed without human input. It is as concerning as it is amazing – simultaneously a glimpse of both the awesome and horrifying potential of AI.
Artificial Intelligence is not sentient—at least not yet. It may be someday, though – or it may approach something close enough to be dangerous. Ray Kurzweil warned years ago about the technological singularity. The Oxford dictionary defines “the singularity” as, “A hypothetical moment in time when artificial intelligence and other technologies have become so advanced that humanity undergoes a dramatic and irreversible change.”
To be clear, we aren’t really talking about whether or not Alexa is eavesdropping on your conversations, or whether Siri knows too much about your calendar and location data. There is a massive difference between a voice-enabled digital assistant and an artificial intelligence. These digital assistant platforms are just glorified web search and basic voice interaction tools. The level of “intelligence” is minimal compared to a true machine learning artificial intelligence. Siri and Alexa can’t hold a candle to IBM’s Watson.
Scientists and tech luminaries, including Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Steve Wozniak have warned that AI could lead to tragic unforeseen consequences. Eminent physicist Stephen Hawking cautioned in 2014 that AI could mean the end of the human race. “It would take off on its own and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete, and would be superseded.”
Why is this scary? Think SKYNET from Terminator, or WOPR from War Games. Our entire world is wired and connected. An artificial intelligence will eventually figure that out – and figure out how to collaborate and cooperate with other AI systems. Maybe the AI will determine that mankind is a threat, or that mankind is an inefficient waste of resources – conclusions that seems plausible from a purely logical perspective.
Machine learning and artificial intelligence have phenomenal potential to simplify, accelerate, and improve many aspects of our lives. Computers can ingest and process massive quantities of data and extract patterns and useful information at a rate exponentially faster than humans, and that potential is being explored and developed around the world.
I am not saying the sky is falling. I am not saying we need to pull the plug on all machine learning and artificial intelligence and return to a simpler, more Luddite existence. We do need to proceed with caution, though. We need to closely monitor and understand the self-perpetuating evolution of an artificial intelligence, and always maintain some means of disabling it or shutting it down. If the AI is communicating using a language that only the AI knows, we may not even be able to determine why or how it does what it does, and that might not work out well for mankind.
Read more of my writing at TechSpective.net, and follow me on social media (links at TechSpective). You can contact me directly at tony@techspective.net. _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Is the Era of Transhumanism a Final Corporate Takeover of Humanity?
by NOZOMI HAYASE FEBRUARY 12, 2018
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/02/12/is-the-era-of-transhumanism-a- final-corporate-takeover-of-humanity/
Photo by Todd Huffman | CC BY 2.0
Transhumanism is knocking at the door. Dubbed as Humanity+ or H+, the idea to radically revolutionize humanity has emerged in the last decades as a global intellectual movement. With a slogan of melding humans with the machine, it aims to radically alter human nature by means of technological advancement.
Proponents of transhumanism envision a human that goes beyond its current biology and cognition. They are trying to move society into the next stage of human development where man achieves super-intelligence and emotional well-being. Transhumanists ask, “If humans can interfere with the process of evolution, is it possible for us to create a human being with greater capacities than what we are now? Can we make a human species without weakness of disease and illness, anger and sadness, and ultimately overcome death itself?”
Some see such technologically driven future as not just desirable, but a necessity. Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX indicated an inevitability of humans to symbiotically bond with artificial intelligence, if the human species were to remain relevant. This call for humanity’s radical makeover comes right at the midst of the digital age, where Homo sapiens, with the progress of science and technology is crossing the Rubicon, challenging physical boundaries and organic biological limitations.
Our fake world, fake democracy
The rapid expansion of technology in this new millennium radically transformed our social landscape. The modern life filled with information has placed everyone behind computer screens and cell phones. As society has become more abstract, it became virtual, fabricated with images that are dissociated from the facts and events of the world.
In many ways, the recent hype of “fake news” reflects this counterfeit reality that we are all surrounded by. Waves of whistleblowers in recent years revealed that we live in a kind of simulation intervened by government and corporate media propaganda. The 2008 financial meltdown exposed the global economy, overdriven by the bubble of toxic assets and stocks that were propped up by central banks with their money made out of thin air. This Ponzi scam of financial engineering was further covered up by bank bailouts, creating a fake recovery.
Meanwhile, our ‘democracy’ has been one big consumer fraud. We have been duped by psychopaths in power who pull the strings of puppet politicians. Civic power has been fragmented by a corporate duopoly, keeping the populace in false hope for change in the electoral arena. With tactics of divide and conquer, monetary elites behind the scenes trigger emotions, stirring conflicts among voters in a national tournament of identity politics. Once people are trapped by fear and hatred that are carefully manufactured, they easily lose sight of reality. Rather than finding commonality and building a coalition to solve problems, many engage in mutually assured self-destruction.
While the American working class is distracted by this political charade, the economy continues to stagnate, making the divide between the rich and poor ever wider. The beast of neoliberalism that has been devouring victims abroad is now finally coming home to roost. Now, ordinary Americans are suffering from unemployment, homelessness and lack of access to medical care. Young people are burdened with predatory student debt, where despite the promise of college recruiters, there are few viable jobs for them. Social services are defunded, throwing away elders, while a military budget gets fatter and fatter, with increased defense contracts for the never ending wars.
Free ticket to heaven?
While political corruption is deepening the crisis of institutions and governments, Silicon Valley tech companies through lobbying have steadily gained influence in Washington. Now, technological innovation is pushed forward as a solution to the breakdown of social systems. From Apple and Google to Facebook, giant tech companies put a monopoly on AI, trying to control its development, so to dictate the course of our future. With the initiative of universal basic income (UBI), wealthy and elite technologists advocate for the creation of a robot economy where labor is replaced by automation.
Here the radical vision of humanity 2.0 arises. The coming of a post-human era promises to alleviate suffering, make us stronger, more intelligent and godlike. Transhumanists try to bring eternal life through insemination of machine intelligence into the human body. By combining big data with AI software, the idea is already there for humanity to attain digital immortality, where one can develop mind clones of oneself that has its own life on the web. Dr. Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist and futurist shares his aspiration of uploading a digital memory, creating a new pill that slows down people’s perception of time and drugs that can eliminate painful memories.
The idea of fusion with technology as a next stage in human evolution can speak to our own narcissism induced by social media attention culture. The H+ agenda can be marketed by appealing to one’s desire for recognition, to be boundless and to attain mastery of oneself. Through social engineering, it will corral the herd and achieve mass adoption. Yet this techno-utopia does not come for free. One has to pay a heavy price for the ticket to this supposed heaven on earth. In the exchange to transcend human limitations, we are asked to give up the essence of being human. What are we expected to sacrifice on this altar of transcendence?
Free will and learning
Humans are endowed with subjectivity that places them in relationship with the world. With this self-awareness, we are given freedom to determine the course of our own actions. While machines can only do what they are programmed to do, humans with intention can choose their actions and alter the situation through insight and creativity. This freedom releases spontaneity and variation, making the environment not fixed and unpredictable. At the same time, out of this comes the potential for errors. Choices expose men to the propensity for mistakes and make them fallible.
The AI trend of technological intervention of humanity now threatens this ability to make choices. Automation narrows and eliminates the space for humans to make their own decisions, locking society into a deterministic future. Through scientific and mathematical precision, the force of mechanization tries to remove possibilities for errors and by doing so, it deprives something essential about human beings.
What make us different from these artificial beings is our free will and unique learning processes that are associated with it. Our connection to the world binds us deeply to the consequences of our own choices. In a moment we make a mistake, reality blows up in our face and we are forced to see the results of what we have created. The feeling of shame and guilt that overwhelm us can break the heart wide open. The unbearable pain awakens one’s moral sensibility. With these burning sensations, we directly experience our own actions and the effect they have on others’ lives.
When we confront our own mistakes with honesty, we can transform this sense of humiliation into humility. We learn to become humble. This connects us to other human beings, allowing us to see reality from their perspectives. This empathy makes us strive to mend our actions. It is the foundation of conscience that makes humans acknowledge their errors and inspire one another to repent, undo wrongdoing and learn.
Fiction of corporate personhood
It is this morality rooted in our relationship to the environment that corporate culture has been trying hard to eradicate. Agendas behind transhumanist movements can be seen as the ultimate goal of transnational corporations. The rise of corporate power turned civilization against nature. Multinational agricultural biotechnology corporations like Monsanto have assaulted life by monopolizing seeds and poisoning food with GMOs.
Corporations as artificial entities bring the force that hardens the heart. They assert themselves in society through the legal fiction of corporate personhood. The theater of the American Dream managed by big business has turned citizens into consumers, who are directed to find happiness in consumption and material acquisition. Unbridled greed of capitalism bombards all with ads and commercials, 24 hours 7 days a week, making us chase after products that we don’t need and to be always cheerful, while suppressing sadness and deep dissatisfaction of life with antidepressant drugs. Ensnared by glamorous Hollywood life and a culture that worships youth, many engage in a pathological pursuit for perfection, to be beautiful, thin, and ageless.
In this fictional world, we are not humans. Workers are exploited, being treated as disposable with no benefits, while mega corporations look for the next cheap labor to exploit and new markets to make a killing. The merciless cyborg with its callous skin controls world finance, turning all living beings into caricatures in their tyrannical fantasy. In this artificial natural selection pushed forward by the invisible hands of the market, the cold algorithm enacts financial terrorism, dictating who should survive and who should die.
Pursuit of happiness and pathological drive for perfection
Now, in Trump’s America, the fiction of corporate personhood finds a new iteration to make its dream great again. As the nation consolidates power with the new administration, we all become contestants in The Apprentice. In this grandiose Reality Show, we are told to mimic corporate personhood, to be cunning and self-serving or we will be fired. The world of Wall Street entices all to a path of personal power, filled with ambition, vanity and pride. Plundering through exploitative business practices and addictive gambling of high frequency trading becomes a way of life. Corruption is rife with rampant greed and sexual conquest.
Inside 9-5 office hours of white collar jobs, relationships became impersonal and transactional, where people are forced to hide real emotions behind professional masks. In this supposed free market competition that bars entry to immigrants, people of color and transgenders, workers are trained to mind their own business by climbing up the ladder of success in a rat race of profit at any cost. Deep inside the labyrinth of organizational hierarchies, we are cut off from our own authentic feelings and lose the ground of consensual reality. We no longer are held accountable by feedback of others.
Now, with depletion of resources and environmental destruction, the life of the American dream is becoming unsustainable. As the fantasy of corporate personhood is losing its fuel, it seems to be carried into a vision of techno-utopianism. Through mass surveillance and authoritarian use of police force, the corporate state has been attacking privacy and autonomy of individuals. From face recognition technology and biometrics used at borders to AI augmented cyber-security and auto flying drones, it further mechanizes this world. The goal is no longer just total control of the world to create an ever more perfect world, but to control human nature itself by reprogramming our biology to create a perfect self.
As the disfranchised middle class is slowly waking up from their insulated reality and starting to face their broken life, transhumanism offers all a short cut to nirvana. From the magic of genetic modification to the creation of the mind file, through making humans directly interface with the net, technology is presented to rescue us, trying to numb throbbing aches in the arteries that carry the ebb and flow of our human experience.
Humanity at a crossroads
Transhumanist thinkers with technological enlightenment ideas declare the liberation of humanity from a cog in the wheel of the corporate machine, only to once again ensnare all in their Sci Fi illusory future. From self-driving cars to androids, robots that are designed to look and act like a human, artificial intelligence is here in everyday life, promising to make our life more convenient, efficient and safe. With a gospel of machine supremacy preaching perfection, increased dominance of technology can annihilate our free will that is a prerequisite for developing conscience.
With artificial nerves that can’t carry the warmth of blood, robots mimic life in their synthetic existence. They are the phantoms that claim immortality, when they never even had a chance to truly live. These ghosts in the machine make us sever our ties to the world, by turning the heart into a pump that pushes out the pain of our mother in her giving birth to a child.
Our remembering of her pain that brought all of life makes us remain connected to her world. “We are living in a fake world; we are watching fake evening news. We are fighting a fake war. Our government is fake,” said renowned Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. He continued:
But we find reality in this fake world. So our stories are the same; we are walking through the fake scenes, but ourselves, as we walk through these scenes, are real. The situation is real, in the sense that it’s a commitment, it’s a true relationship.
Our ability to feel is a testimony of being human, allowing us to be a real person in this fake world. To be human is to live among flesh, being audaciously flawed. Our striving to bear our own pain awakens compassion. We are able to forgive ourselves and others. We find strength to love one another in our authenticity found in each other’s imperfection. This total acceptance of human errors connects us to potent creative power within that resists rigidity, mechanization and all stagnation, keeping the world alive through our relationship with her.
Humanity is now at a crossroads. With the exponential growth of technology, we have the capability to bring a great turning or destroy the world. Branches of science; technology, engineering, chemistry and medicine helped mankind overcome natural disaster and disease and live more comfortably in this harsh physical environment. Renewable energy technologies can help us create a sustainable future. These are tools that can be used for the good. They can reduce poverty and enhance the quality of our lives, but they can be also used against us.
Transhumanism is marching on into our society, showing its footsteps everywhere. With iPad and Android, talking gadgets are entering into the crib, hijacking childhood imagination. Day and night technology snatches youngster’s attention, plugging them into Instagram and Snapchat. As the expansion of this machine world accelerates, our life gets faster and faster, making it harder for us to be present in our own bodies.
We need to stay awake and not sleepwalk through this time of transition. Reality may be painful, but if we lose our own sense of reality by giving up what feels at the center of our hearts, it will be the death of our own selves. Such is a tragic loss of what it means to be human and the life of all on this planet that we are meant to steward. It is our ability to make choices that will create the future and this freedom must be claimed by each one of us.
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More articles by:NOZOMI HAYASE
Nozomi Hayase, Ph.D., is a writer who has been covering issues of freedom of speech, transparency and decentralized movements. Find her on twitter @nozomimagine _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
In an interview with Wired, Macron said his "goal is to recreate a European sovereignty in AI" and argued that "if you want to manage your own choice of society, your choice of civilisation, you Europe's tech race - trying to keep pace with US and China
https://euobserver.com/opinion/142056
The EU is envious of tech innovators and disruptors, such as Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, but is it equipped to be a world leader in AI - as Emmanuel Macron wants? (Photo: Matt Tempest)
By CRAIG J. WILLY
BRUSSELS, 22. JUN, 15:12
Being a leading tech innovator is vital to secure global influence in the future. But can Europe catch up with the US and China?
Political leaders today are increasingly aware that being at the cutting edge of technological innovation will prove crucial for citizens to retain their sovereignty.
Europe has struggled to come to terms with the dominance of American tech giants in particular, amid recurring scandals from tax avoidance to abuse of personal data on social media.
French President Emmanuel Macron recently affirmed that artificial intelligence, a topic traditionally receiving more attention from science fiction writers than heads of state, was also an area which would prove critical for Europe.
In an interview with Wired, Macron said his "goal is to recreate a European sovereignty in AI" and argued that "if you want to manage your own choice of society, your choice of civilisation, you have to be able to be an acting part of this AI revolution".
While artificial super-intelligence poses threats, frontrunner nations in the field will earn themselves a decisive technological edge, with their leadership in AI enabling further innovation.
The European Union has certainly not been a passive observer in this area, but has scored clear wins in recent years, providing some justification for the bloc's stated intention to help its citizens to 'shape globalisation.'
For years, the commission has pressured tech giants to pay their fair share of tax and reduce monopolistic practices, including inflicting record multi-billion euro fines.
Even though the European Parliament made it easy for Mark Zuckerberg to avoid answering tough questions in his recent testimony in Brussels, the bloc's relentless advocacy for data privacy may still have had an impact on Facebook's CEO.
Addressing hearings at the US Senate earlier on, Zuckerberg said that his company would make EU data protection and privacy rules their global standard.
Europe's upcoming challenges
In the long run, however, the EU's leverage over foreign tech giants is likely to wane along with its shrinking share of the global economy.
To remain relevant in tech, Europe will have to up its game in research and innovation.
Here too, the commission has not been passive but has made research and innovation a cornerstone of its strategy for economic growth and development.
The bloc has shifted funding from agricultural and regional development programs to innovation and high technology, such as the Horizon 2020 program, which is ploughing over €24bn euros into research, technology, infrastructure, and higher education.
And Europe faces significant challenges in its bid to up its tech track record, as shown by data from the Bertelsmann Stiftung's Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI).
While Europe is a highly innovative region compared to most of the world, the continent significantly underperforms North America and East Asia.
The SGI grades developed nations' performance on research and innovation by considering factors such as the overall policy framework, R&D spending, patents, and number of researchers.
According to these metrics, EU countries on average score 5.2, compared to the U.S. with 7.4 and Japan with 7.6.
Europe suffers from low R&D spending and relatively few patent applications.
Typically for Europe, innovation policy is fragmented and uneven across the continent, with nations such as Germany and Sweden ranking among the world's leaders, and Bulgaria and Slovakia falling among the worst-performing developed nations.
Meanwhile, there are worrying signs that Europe is falling behind.
In the private sector, European tech companies lack the combination of dynamism and scale enjoyed by their US counterparts.
As a result, there simply is no European equivalent to all-purpose US tech giants such as Google, Facebook, Apple, or Amazon.
China, in contrast, with its enormous homogeneous market, protectionist policies, and native innovation, has developed alternatives such as the search engine Baidu and the messaging app Tencent, which surpassed Facebook in value last November, becoming worth a whopping $500bn.
Where next on AI?
There is not a single European company among the world's top 10 computer hardware companies although the continent has plenty of innovative startups and dynamic people working in tech.
In the past, European social media players, such as DailyMotion in France or Twenti in Spain, have been able to conquer a national market, but then tend to gradually collapse in the face a far larger American rival.
Innovative European products, meanwhile, such as Skype and Minecraft have been bought by Microsoft.
And in regard to AI, Macron has his work cut out. The fact is that AI is absolutely dominated by the US and China.
A report by CB Insights found that China made up 48 percent of global funding for AI startups while the U.S. accounted for 38 percent.
The US and China also dominate in the numbers of top supercomputers they control, with China having a decisive lead. Europe lags both in the area of venture capital, with $14.4bn invested in the sector in 2015 in the old continent, trailing $72.3bn in the US and $49.2bn in China.
The EU's innovation capacities will also be harmed by Brexit.
The United Kingdom is a top performer in tech and startups, and is a net contributor to the EU budget.
The UK has the highest investment in venture capital in Europe, over 50 percent more than Germany, being worth $4.8bn in 2015. The UK is also home to the biggest number of Europe's tech giants: Its companies worth more than $1bn add up to $49.9bn, putting it far ahead of Sweden, the next-best performer.
So European nations will have to make a major effort if they want to stay relevant in the technological race.
Some obstacles are relatively insuperable.
The EU market, unlike that of the US or China, is nationally fragmented for cultural and linguistic reasons as well as regulatory ones. The EU as a multinational body furthermore cannot be as reactive and decisive as a national government, let alone an authoritarian one such as China's.
Top marks for research in Europe
At the same time, the EU does have specific assets.
What the Union lacks in immediate reactivity, it gains in the consistency of long-term policy.
The bloc is for the first time in years enjoying a welcome spell of economic growth.
The eurozone has, on average, an astonishingly low deficit spending of less than one percent of GDP and with growth debt levels as a percentage of GDP are actually declining.
This is in marked contrast to the US and Japan, which have continued to resort to deficit spending to sustain growth, a strategy which is likely to be inflationary in the long run.
The silver lining to the eurozone's long economic crisis may also be the adoption of a growth model with greater macroeconomic discipline and, with any luck, less of a tendency towards boom and bust cycles than other advanced economies.
The SGI notes that many European nations are top performers in research and innovation, best practices which other EU countries can learn from. The economic windfall from the current growth could be used to make up the gap in R&D spending and EU funds can continue to be used to finance upward convergence.
The European authorities remain keenly aware of the bumpy road ahead.
The commission has been working to develop the digital single market, breaking down national regulatory barriers where possible. 24 EU nations recently signed a pact pledging to increase AI spending and this is no doubt an area where a great Franco-German research project could bear fruit, in the tradition of Airbus.
The commission has recently presented plans to increase spending for AI by 70 percent to €500m and to invest €2.1bn in venture capital.
Brexit's negative consequences for the EU's innovation capacities can be mitigated somewhat.
The EU has proved remarkably cohesive and strong-handed in its negotiations with London.
Both sides would benefit from making any changes to market access as predictable and clear as possible, to maintain cooperation in high technology and research projects, and generally to make each other's innovation systems as open and connected to each other as possible. With good will, no doubt such a deal can be secured in the interest of both British and European citizens.
In an age increasingly defined by technology, whether in culture, society, or economics, retaining a technological edge in innovation will be crucial to retaining European citizens' sovereignty and values.
This includes issues such as privacy, data protection, and social equity, all themes where Europe is a world leader in protecting citizens' rights. Europe has among the highest concentrations of human capital.
To exploit that potential, the region will have to increase and pool their efforts in innovation and tech if they are to catch up with the US and China.
Craig James Willy is a Brussels-based EU affairs writer. He has written political analysis for the Bertelsmann Stiftung and media analysis for the European Commission _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
THE CHAO BEFORE THE ORDO – DAVID LIVINGSTONE
The Chao Before The Ordo – David Livingstone
Freeman
THE CHAO BEFORE THE ORDO – DAVID LIVINGSTONE
BY FREEMAN FREEMANTV APRIL 20, 2019 FREE ZONE ARCHIVES
https://freemantv.com/the-chao-before-the-ordo-david-livingstone/
Zionism, Nazism, radical terrorists factions, and where each fits into this highly controversial picture is not the job of ultracrepidarians; giving opinions and advice on matters outside of their knowledge. The creation of Sabbatai Zevi's messiahship by the Rosicrucians and the connection of the Protocols of Zion to the Memphis-Mizraim rite of Freemasonry is known by few. Who are the "THEY"? Is there an Illuminati causing terrorism and present day conflicts? Are they interconnected, related and fueling each other, thus propelling the world towards a clash of ideologies?
The Black Madonna, Freemasonry, the Knights Templar and the Orient; legends, myths and elite bloodlines, when analyzed independently appear insignificant and are easily ignored. However, when the dots are connected, a very different picture comes into focus. According to like-minded individuals, keeping these connections broken and the lines blurred, has allowed these secret societies and their members to operate in the shadows of a meticulously cultivated public image.
While many dismiss the idea of secret societies and a one world government as mere conspiracy theories run amok, many others would argue that is part of the plan. Thinking outside the box has always been a trait of forward thinking individuals and societies. Analyzing the ridiculous or outlandish has resulted in numerous discoveries and inventions that in retrospect have shaped communities, academics, governments and the world as a whole and their creators are given the highest, most prestigious recognition.
David Livingstone has been researching the hidden aspects of history for the last 25 years, resulting in the writing of three books. David's approach to history is to dare to consider those areas often dismissed by scholars as the subject of cranks, but to investigate these matters with the utmost scholarly rigor. The results are works that expose many neglected areas of history, but resist the temptation to hasty generalizations, and therefore offer a more sober penetrating treatments. _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
The conspiracy is not communist or fascist, it is synarchist. The synarchist conspiracy, however, manipulating both ends of the political spectrum, cultivates fear of the threat of “communism” to advance the cause of a fascist economic philosophy known as neoliberalism. By denouncing “Big Government,” they call for the transfer to public property to private corporations, and the enslavement of the world to their banking system, under the guise of the World Bank and the IMF.
Researchers into the history of conspiracy will tend to isolate the notorious Bavarian Illuminati, founded by Adam Weishaupt in 1776, as the principle subversive society behind world events. However, even the Illuminati itself had its origins in a far more powerful and influential secret society, known as Martinism, which survived the Illuminati, far beyond that order’s demise in 1885.
Martinism is the ultimate diabolical plot, founded on a Kabbalistic agenda that sees history’s problems resolved through the resolution of opposites. But these opposites are not allowed to occur spontaneously, but instead are deliberately fostered, providing these devious plotters with the means of presenting the world their contrived solution, making it appear they have come to their own conclusions.
There are many dialectics at play. Fundamentally, they are rooted in the dualism of God and atheism, or truth against falsehood. As the Martinists side against the devil, everything is reversed, where truth becomes falsehood, and falsehood truth.
To the Martinists, history is the story of God’s undoing, being overthrown by humanity. It is the history of secularism, of mankind progressing away from the worship of God to the celebration of himself as the Supreme Being, Nietzsche’s Superman. The End of History is the culmination of centuries of human intellectual progress, of the triumph of “Reason” over “Revelation”.
However, impeding the advent of this New World Order is religion. It’s most threatening current manifestation is Islam. Therefore, in order to prepare the battleground for a final attack, it will be necessary to divide the world in a final dialectic: a Clash of Civilizations, pitting “the West” against “Islam.”
Martinism
Conspiracy Researchers have been obsessing with the same old tired themes, involving the usual culprits, such as the Illuminati, Bildebergers, Federal Reserve and even Jews. One will blame “communism”, the other “fascism,” completely failing to ascertain the true enemy behind these false fronts and means: Synarchism.
Synarchism was a Martinist movement that originated among the immediate circles of Napoleon Bonaparte. Martinism started with French mystic Martinez Pasquales who founded the Ordre des Chevalier Maçons Elus-Coën de L’Univers (Order of the Knight Masons, Elected Priests of the Universe) in 1754. A Martinist named Baron de Gleichen wrote that, “Pasqualis was originally Spanish, perhaps of the Jewish race, since his disciples inherited from him a large number of Jewish manuscripts.”[1] According to J. M. Roberts, the Elus-Coën philosophy “was expressed in a series of rituals whose purpose was to make it possible for spiritual beings to take physical shape and convey messages from the other world.”[2]
Martinism was later propagated in different forms by Pasquales’ two students, Louis Claude de Saint-Martin and Jean-Baptiste Willermoz. Willermoz was the formulator of the Rectified Scottish Rite, or Chevaliers Bienfaisants de la Cité-Sainte (CBCS), as a variant of the Rite of Strict Observance, including some items coming from the Elect Cohen Order of his teacher Pasquales.[3]
All these orders came under the authority of a single mother lodge, Willermoz’s Chevaliers Bienfaisants de la Cité-Sainte in Lyons. The Chevalier Bienfaisant oversaw numerous lodges, including a Strict Observance and the Lodge Theodore of Good Counsel in Munich. In 1777, it was into this lodge that was initiated Adam Weishaupt, and which united itself with his own lodge, the Illuminati, which he established the year before.
An important member of the Chevaliers Bienfaisants was Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) who, according to Isaiah Berlin, was a thinker whose works contain the roots of fascist thought, as he outlined in “Joseph de Maistre and the Origins of Fascism.” Despite being recognized as a devout Catholic, de Maistre was also a Martinist. As explained by Jerry Muller, “Maistre’s profession of Christianity were certainly sincere. But in his writings it is the social utility of religion as an element of political cohesion which is of concern.”[4] De Maistre regarded the excesses of the French Revolution as the dire results of resorting to reason. If they are to endure, all institutions of authority must necessarily be irrational. Only an absolute authority can keep man in check.
To de Maistre, Napoleon was the model tyrant. As an ostensible Catholic, the failure of the French Revolution, according to de Maistre, was that it turned against the word of God and the Catholic Church and was therefore punished by the Reign of Terror and then Napoleon. According to de Maistre, all power is from God, and Napoleon had power, so he therefore saw Napoleon as an instrument of God’s wrath.
Synarchism
The source of the philosophy of synarchism was one of the most notorious intriguers of modern times, a British agent by the name of Jamal ud-Din al Afghani. Although he was the founder of the Salafi tradition of Islam, from which all twentieth century terrorism has emerged, from the Muslim Brotherhood to ISIS, Afghani was simultaneously the Grand Master of Freemasonry in Egypt, as well as teacher to H.P. Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society, and the godmother of the New Age Movement, whose tomes are considered “scriptures” of Freemasonry.
Going by the name of Haji Sharif, Afghani communicated his deviant ideals to Alexandre Saint-Yves d’Alveydre. Saint-Yves, whose books were widely read by the Martinists, propounded the theory of synarchism as a purported response to the ills produced by anarchism and to provide an alternative through the combination of fascism and occultism. Synarchy came to mean “rule by secret societies,” serving as priestly class in direct communication with the “gods,” meaning the Ascended Masters of Agartha, a real existing in a supposedly hollow Earth. There, governed the “King of the World”, equated in occult literature with Satan, who head a hidden hierarchy who have been governing humanity in secret for centuries.
The creation of a United Europe, an idea central to synarchism, was part of the vision of Saint-Yves, a call for which appears on the first page of his first book on synarchy, Keys to the East. The need for Europe to unite under a single, synarchist state, according to Saint Yves, is prompted by the rise of Islam as a world power, which threatens a weak, fragmented, and materialist West. Saint-Yves argues that there must absolutely be a new alliance between the Christian nations of Europe and Israel against Islam.
Saint-Yves envisioned a Federal Europe with a corporatist government, composed of three councils representing economic power, judicial power, and scientific community, of which the metaphysical chamber bound the whole structure together. As part of this concept of government, Saint-Yves attributed an important role to occult secret societies, which are composed of oracles and who safeguard the government from behind the scenes.
Saint-Yves’ followers had finally decided to use more stealthy means, by infiltrating their members into key positions in political and economic institutions intending on creating, in the words of Richard F. Kuisel, a specialist in twentieth-century French political history, “a world government by an initiated elite.”[5] According to Gérard Galtier, synarchism influenced all the Martinists and occultists of the beginning of the century, and “Without doubt, the Martinist directors such as Papus… had the ambition to secretly influence the course of political events, notably the diffusion of synarchic ideals.”[6]
Papus’ death in 1916, however, resulted in a schism in the Martinist Order over its involvement in politics. The activists, under Victor Blanchard, who was head of the secretariat of the Chamber of Deputies of the French Parliament, formed a breakaway group, the Martinist and Synarchic Order, which established the Synarchic Central Committee in 1922, designed to pull in promising young civil servants and “younger members of great business families.”[7] The Committee soon became the Synarchic Empire Movement (MSE) in 1930, with the aim of abolishing parliamentarianism and replacing it with synarchy.
The MSE was headed by Vivien Postel du Mas and Jeanne Canudo, remembered as an energetic campaigner for European unity. Postel du Mas was a member of the Watchers, founded by a French occultist René Adolphe Schwaller de Lubicz. Despite being born of a Jewish mother, de Lubicz with other members of the Theosophical Society broke away to form an occult right-wing and anti-Semitic organization, which he called Les Veilleurs, “the Watchers,” to which the young Rudolf Hess also belonged.[8]
Postel du Mas and Canudo both pursued the aims of Saint-Yves for France and a united Europe. Postel du Mas also wrote the Synarchist Pact, which argued, based on the “four orders that correspond to the Hindu caste system,” that a “division of people into order is natural and conforms with tradition,” and set out a program for “invisible revolution” or “revolution from above,” meaning taking over a state from within by infiltrating high offices. The first step was to take control of France, before creating the “European Union.”[9]
An important witness to their synarchism was the Parisian publisher Maurice Girodias, the founder of the Olympia Press which published erotica as well as works by Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, John Glassco and Christopher Logue. Seeing Postel du Mas and Canudo leading a group dressed as Templar knights wearing red capes and riding boots, Girodias was told they were “schismatic theosophists with political designs, and they are linked to Count Coudenhove-Kalergi… who is a champion of the United States of Europe… Their aim is to launch a pan-European political party and to institute in the entire world, commencing with Europe, a society obedient to a spiritualist idea.”[10]
Count Richard Nikolaus von Coudenhove-Kalergi was Austrian politician and philosopher, a pioneer of European integration, and also a member of de Lubicz’ Les Veilleurs. Coudenhove-Kalergi's father was also a close friend of Theordor Herzl, founder of Zionism. Coudenhove-Kalergi writes in his Memoirs:
At the beginning of 1924, we received a call from Baron Louis de Rothschild; one of his friends, Max Warburg from Hamburg, had read my book and wanted to get to know us. To my great surprise, Warburg spontaneously offered us 60,000 gold marks, to tide the movement over for its first three years... Max Warburg, who was one of the most distinguished and wisest men that I have ever come into contact with, had a principle of financing these movements. He remained sincerely interested in Pan-Europe for his entire life. Max Warburg arranged his 1925 trip to the United States to introduce me to Paul Warburg and financier Bernard Baruch.[11]
Coudenhove-Kalergi strove to replace the nationalist German ideal of racial community with the goal of an ethnically heterogeneous and inclusive European nation based on a communality of culture, a nation whose geniuses were, in Nietzschean terms, the “great Europeans,” such as Abbé de Saint-Pierre, Kant, Napoleon, Giuseppe Mazzini, Victor Hugo, and Nietzsche himself, who also cited Napoleon frequently as an example of the Superman.”[12]
It was through Coudenhove-Kalergi that Saint-Yves’s vision of a synarchist European Union achieved serious political force, when he co-founded the Pan-European Union (PEU) with Archduke Otto von Habsburg. Aristocratic in his origins and elitist in his ideas, Coudenhove-Kalergi identified and collaborated also with such politicians as Engelbert Dollfuss, Kurt Schuschnigg, Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle. Coudenhove-Kalergi’s movement held its first Congress in Vienna in 1926. In 1927, Aristide Briand, who served eleven terms as Prime Minister of France during the French Third Republic, was elected honorary president. Personalities attending included: Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, Sigmund Freud, Konrad Adenauer and Georges Pompidou.[13]
The first person to join the PEU was Hjalmar Schacht, later Hitler’s Reich Minister of Economics, a member of the Rhodes Round Table and the actual author of Hitler’s slave labor programs.[14] His full name being Hjalmar Horace Greely Schacht, although born in Germany, he spent part of his early upbringing in Brooklyn and maintained powerful Wall Street connections.[15] Schacht was a close friend of Montagu Norman, Chairman of the Bank of England who was the godfather to one of Schacht's grandchildren. Montagu Norman, from 1933 through 1939, met repeatedly with Hjalmar Schacht to plan the financing of the Nazi regime, and guided the strategies of Hitler’s primary supporters, the Rockefellers, Warburgs, and Harrimans.[16]
European Union
The European Union began with the founding of the European Movement by Joseph Retinger, who was also one of the founding members of the Bilderberg Group. Funded by the CIA, the super-secret Bilderberg conferences invited the world’s top businessmen, politicians and intelligence officials for what was dubbed “an informal network of influential people who could consult each other privately and confidentially.”[17] The annual Bilderberg meetings first began in May, 1954, with a group which included George Ball, David Rockefeller, scion of the Rockefeller oil dynasty, Dr. Joseph Retinger, Holland's Prince Bernhard, a former SS officer and IG Farben employee, and George C. McGhee, then of the U.S. State Department and later a senior executive of Mobil Oil.[18]
Retinger was also a founder of the European Movement that would lead to the creation of the Council of Europe and the European Union. Guided by Winston Churchill, Averell Harriman and Paul-Henri Spaak, the European Movement, explains Frances Stonor Saunders in Who Paid the Piper: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, was closely supervised by and funded by the CIA, through a front organization called the American Committee on United Europe whose first Executive Secretary was Tom Braden.
During the war, Coudenhove-Kalergi had continued his call for the unification of Europe along the Paris-London axis, activities that served as the real-life basis for fictional Resistance hero Victor Laszlo in the movie Casablanca. His appeal for the unification of Europe enjoyed support from Allen Dulles, “Wild Bill” Donovan, former head of the OSS, and Winston Churchill, who began promoting European unity from 1930 and presided over the Congress of Europe. Churchill wrote a foreword to the Count’s book, An Idea Conquers the World. In 1947, Coudenhove-Kalergi had set up the European Parliamentary Union (EPU), which played a prominent role in the Congress of Europe at The Hague. The EPU later merged with the European Movement and Coudenhove-Kalergi was elected its honorary president in 1952.
In 1949, Retinger formed the American Committee for a United Europe (ACUE) along with future CIA Director Allen Dulles, then CFR Director George Franklin, Tom Braden, and William Donovan. “Later on” said Retinger, “whenever we needed any assistance for the European Movement, Dulles was among those in America who helped us most.”[19] According to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, and reporting from declassified American government documents, “The leaders of the European Movement—Retinger, the visionary Robert Schuman and the former Belgian Prime Minister Henri Spaak—were all treated as hired hands by their American sponsors. The US role was handled as a covert operation. ACUE’s funding came from the Ford and Rockefeller foundations as well as business groups with close ties to the US government.”[20]
The “European project” itself began in 1950 with French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman’s announcement that France and West Germany had agreed to co-ordinate their coal and steel industries. Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg took up his offer to join in, leading seven years later to the Treaty of Rome, which established the European Economic Community (EEC), from which the European Union traces its origins.
Robert Shuman became the first president of the European Parliament in 1958. But it was Jean Monnet who became president of the new body, called the High Authority and who was the primary influence behind the movement. Monnet was at the time the most influential businessman and economist in post-war Europe. In 1936, Vivien Postel du Mas, told Girodias that, along with Coudenhove-Kalergi, Monnet was an influential promoter of the synarchist agenda. Another of Ulmann and Azeau’s MSE informants described Monnet as a “true synarch… whose membership of the movement was never in doubt for the true initiates.”[21]
The Necessary Enemy
It was due to the efforts of Alexandre Kojève and Jean Monnet that the European Union, which was a synarchist project, took on its current form.[22] Kojève (1902 – 1968) was a Russian-born French philosopher and statesman, and nephew of abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky.
Kojève, who was the eminence grise at the French Ministry Economic Affairs, was one of the earliest architects of the European Union and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). He exerted a great deal of influence over Olivier Wormser, who played a key role in negotiating the Treaty of Rome, and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing who became president of France in 1974, and who throughout his political career had consistently been a proponent of greater European union.
According to Barbara Boyd, Kojève “was not only an ideologue of universal fascism, but he was also a leading figure in the most powerful fascist circles of 20th-Century France, the Synarchists.”[23] These circles included Carl Schmitt (1888 – 1985), described as the “Crown Jurist of the Third Reich.”[24] Throughout his career, Schmitt was under the protection of Hermann Göring, Hitler's Reichsmarschall during the war and the leading synarchist figure in Nazi Germany.[25] In 1933, he was appointed State Councilor by Hermann Göring and became the president of the Union of National-Socialist Jurists. As professor at the University of Berlin, he presented his theories as an ideological foundation of the Nazi dictatorship, and a justification of the “Führer” state with regard to legal philosophy.
An avowed proponent of Machiavelli and de Maistre, Schmitt supported the emergence of totalitarian power structures in his paper “The developed the concept of the seizure of power by a powerful determined leader through the pretext of a state of emergency. Schmitt preferred a “sovereign dictator” who would be able to take decisive action to meet the threats of the state. Effectively, a state of emergency presupposes the threat of a specific public enemy against whom a legitimate charismatic leader must exercise a sovereign decision.
Schmitt also developed the doctrine of a necessary enemy. Schmitt proposed that there is a domain of life distinct from all the others, which he called the “political.” According to Schmitt, each area of human existence has its own particular form of dualism: in morality there is good and evil, in economics profits and liabilities, in aesthetics beauty and ugliness and so on. The “political,” for Schmitt, was based on the distinction between “friend” and “enemy.” The political exists wherever there exists an enemy, a group which is different and holds different interests, and with whom there is a possibility of conflict. A population can be unified and mobilized through the political act, in which an enemy is identified and confronted.[26]
As Bryan Turner summarizes in “Sovereignty and Emergency Political Theology, Islam and American Conservatism”:
Schmitt argued that the political was defined in terms of the decisive struggle between friend and enemy, and without such a struggle authentic values could not be protected or sustained. More precisely, power involved a struggle between civilizations to define the content of a vibrant ethical life…
Political life cannot survive without the sovereignty of the state, and the sovereignty of the state is constituted by the capacity of a leader to undertake effective decisions in a situation of crisis. Democratic debate and deliberation can only undermine the capacity of the leader of the Reich to act with determination and clarity of vision.[27]
A member of the Nazi Party, Schmitt was party to the burning of books by Jewish authors, and calling for a much more extensive purge, to include works by authors influenced by Jewish ideas.[28] In 1934, he justified the political murders of the Night of the Long Knives, a purge by the Nazi regime that carried out murders of several left-wing and anti-Nazi leaders, as the “highest form of administrative justice" and the authority of Hitler in a work titled "The leader defends the law.”[29]
When Schmitt fell out of favor with the SS he travelled to Spain, Portugal, and Italy under synarchist sponsorship, providing lectures on how to continually legitimize the fascist governments of those nations.[30] Following his capture in 1945 by the American forces, and after spending more than a year in an internment camp, Schmitt refused every attempt at de-Nazification, which effectively barred him from positions in academia. Despite being isolated from the mainstream of the academic and political community, he continued his studies, especially of international law.
From the 1950s on, Schmitt received a steady stream of visitors, which included Kojève, and he edited Kojève’s Introduction to a Reading of Hegel.[31] Kojève’s philosophical seminars on Hegel are believed to have “dramatically shaped the French intellectual landscape of this century.”[32] For Kojève, the creation of the EEC gave concrete form to the Hegelian dream of forging Europe into an example of a world state which, he thought, alone was capable of resolving “all the contradictions of earlier stages of history” and of satisfying “all human needs.”[33]
Kojève’s vision of a world state was developed from his interpretation of Hegel that was based on a combination of both Karl Marx and Martin Heidegger’s thought. Soon after Hitler came to power, Heidegger joined the Nazi Party in 1933, and remained a member of the Party until it was dismantled at the end of WWII, though the relation between his philosophy and Nazism are still highly controversial, especially because he never seemed to express any clear regret.
Like Marx, Kojève believed that man is the moving force of history. Unlike the Right Hegelians however, who identify Hegel's Spirit with God, Kojève follows the Left Hegelians who adhere to the tradition of Marx's version of Hegelianism, which instead sees history as being shaped by man. In Alexander Kojève: The Roots of Postmodern Politics, historian Shadia Drury describes Kojève’s historicism, which betrays the Kabbalistic basis of the Hegelian dialectic:
In contrast to the Right Hegelian interpretation, Kojève followed Feurerbach and Marx in considering God a mere projection of man's own idealized conception of himself. In this view, the dualism between man and himself (projected as God) is transcended in the course of the historical process. At the "end of history,” man recognizes God as his own creation, and is no longer alienated from himself because he has become one with himself, or his own idealized view of himself. So understood, history is man's own self-making project. This is the reason that Kojève's interpretation is often characterized as "Marxist humanism.”[34]
To Kojève, the age of revolutions is over. The end of history has long been settled, ever since Napoleon’s battle of Jena in 1806. From that date forward, the nations around the world have shared the same principles, hopes, and aspirations. Everything since the battle of Jena, which is otherwise mistaken as history, has simply been a matter of resolving the “anachronistic sequels” of Europe’s pre-Revolutionary past. Nevertheless, Kojève recognizes that there will continue to be resistance by the “sick” who cannot recognize the new universal state as the conclusion of nature itself. Kojève therefore claims that the end-state or universal state will require a universal tyrant.
As Shadia Drury explains, “By reading Hegel through the lenses of Heidegger as well as Marx, Kojève gave birth to that curious phenomenon known as existential Marxism, which is epitomized by the works of Sartre.”[35] Kojève inspired Jean-Paul Sartre by placing particular emphasis on terror as a necessary component of revolution. The fulfillment of the End of History is “not possible without a Fight” he said[36] Building on Hegel’s dialectic, Kojève perceived that the “slave,” to overcome his “master,” must “introduce into himself the element of death” by risking his life while being fully conscious of his mortality. As a result, scholars describe Kojève as having a “terrorist conception of history.”[37] As Kojève explains, philosophers are less restrained by conventions and more capable or resorting to terror, and other measures that may be deemed “criminal,” if such measures are effective in accomplishing the desired end.[38]
Neoconservatives
Kojève’s notion of Hegel’s End of History was later advanced by Francis Fukuyama, where it became the basis for the fanatical Zionist ambitions of the American neoconservative movement, and their formulation of a “Clash of Civilizations”, otherwise known as the War on Terror, or more precisely the War on Islam.
The Neoconservatives’ worldview was inspired by German-Jewish political philosopher Leo Strauss, who maintained a life-long friendship with Alexandre Kojève. As a youth, Strauss was converted to political Zionism and would also attend courses at the University of Freiburg taught by Martin Heidegger. Because of the Nazis’ rise to power, Strauss chose not to return to the United States, where he spent most of his career as a professor of political science at the Rockefeller-funded University of Chicago. The same university became known for the Chicago School, the bastion of neoliberal economic theory, headed by Milton Friedman.
A significant influence on Leo Strauss was Carl Schmitt, despite his Nazi past.[39] Schmitt’s highly positive reference was instrumental in winning Strauss the scholarship funding that allowed him to leave Germany. In turn, Strauss’s critique and clarifications of The Concept of the Political led Schmitt to make significant emendations in its second edition. Strauss wrote to Schmitt in 1932, and summarized the implications of his political theology as follows:
[B]ecause man is by nature evil, he therefore needs dominion. But dominion can be established, that is, men can be unified only in a unity against—against other men. Every association of men is necessarily a separation from other men... the political thus understood is not the constitutive principle of the state, of order, but a condition of the state.[40]
Kojève and Strauss both played a major role in Schmitt’s postwar “rehabilitation.” In 1955, Kojève addressed a group of Düsseldorf businessmen at Schmitt’s invitation, and Schmitt attempted to arrange a private meeting between Kojève and Hjalmar Schacht.[41] And throughout his career in the US, Strauss regularly sent his leading disciples to study under Kojève in Paris. For example, Strauss’s top protégé the late Allan Bloom travelled to Paris annually, from 1953 up until Kojève’s death in 1968, to study Kojève’s Nietzschean fascist beliefs. Bloom would consider Kojève to be one of his greatest teachers.[42]
For Strauss, Kojève’s End of History is the result of all the errors of modernity and its values of liberalism. The error of liberalism is that it has departed from the wisdom of the ancients, who recognized the inevitability of a natural hierarchy among men. This led Strauss followers, who had all been leading exponents of Leon Trosky, to flip flop to the opposite extreme of the political spectrum, to become “neoconservatives,” espousing neoliberal economics in combination with pro-Zionism.
Ultimately, the social upheavals of the sixties caused by liberalism were perceived by the neoconservatives as a “rotting” through America’s lack of self-confidence and belief in itself. Therefore, to reinvigorate America’s sense of identity, the neoconservatives took hold of Strauss’ notion of the need to resort to Noble Lies. They would fabricate the mythos that America was the only source for “good” in the world, and should be supported, otherwise “evil” would prevail.
After Nixon was forced to resign in 1974, the neoconservatives allied themselves with two right-wingers in the administration of his successor Gerald Ford, who used the escalation of terrorism as a pretext to adopt a hard line against Soviet communism. They were Donald Rumsfeld, the new secretary of defense, and Dick Cheney, Ford’s Chief of Staff. While Nixon had initiated a period of détente with the Soviet Union, Rumsfeld resuscitated the old paranoia by now giving speeches about the Soviet’s “steadiness of purpose” in building up their military defenses relative to those of the United States. The CIA denied the allegations, confirming that they were a complete fiction. But Rumsfeld used his position to persuade Ford to set up an independent inquiry, which he insisted would prove that there was a hidden threat to America. That inquiry would be run by a group of neoconservatives, one of whom was Paul Wolfowitz, a personal protégé of Kojève student Allan Bloom.
The neoconservatives’ new strategy began to achieve dangerous proportions when in 1992 Wolfowitz, as Dick Cheney’s undersecretary of defense for policy, authored a “Defense Planning Guidance Paper,” which outlined the US’ strategic priorities in the post-Cold War era. Leaked to the New York Times, the document prescribed securing global supremacy for the US through military confrontation with various regimes, calling for America to assert its interests wherever they existed, with particular emphasis on oil supplies and the security of Israel
According to the authors, it was time for the US to achieve unparalleled military superiority through a massive build up of the country’s military capabilities. This same worldview was furthered with the creation of a specifically designed think tank, known as the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). The signatories to the project included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and leading neoconservatives, like Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle and Elliot Abrams, who had been found guilty of lying about his role in the Iran-Contra operation, but was later pardoned by George H. W. Bush.
In particular, the PNAC was concerned with the political situation in the Middle East, shaped largely by the new paradigm articulated by Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukuyama, that pitted Western secular democracy against Islamic fundamentalism. Western liberal democracy, we are told, is the “End of History” in a Hegelian sense, representing the triumph of centuries of intellectual progress. Fukuyama was strongly influenced by Kojève who, as early as 1948, believed that the United States was the model of economic life at the end of history. Long before the Cold War came to an end, Kojève anticipated the triumph of America over the Soviet Union, anticipating that it would not be a military triumph, but an economic one.[43]
Ultimately, Fukuyma’s claim is an advancement of the same synarchist dialectic. In other words, combined with the advent of secular democracy, the supremacy of “Western” civilization supposedly marks the culmination of human intellectual evolution. In Fukuyama’s own words:
What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.[44]
It was in response to Fukuyama’s claim that Samuel Huntington developed the notion of a “Clash of Civilizations.” Huntington believed that while the age of ideology had ended, the world had only reverted to a normal state of affairs characterized by conflict between cultural blocs. In his thesis, he argued that the primary axis of conflict in the future will be along cultural and religious lines. He suggests that it is different civilizations, as the highest rank of cultural identity, that will become increasingly useful to analyze the potential for conflict.
As Fukuyama wrote in a 2008 Washington Post opinion piece, “Democracy’s only real competitor in the realm of ideas today is radical Islamism.”[45] However, the fabrication of the supposed threat of Islam obviously disguised more nefarious political goals. As Gilles Keppel explained:
Huntington's clash of civilization theory facilitated the transfer to the Muslim world of a strategic hostility the West had inherited from decades of Cold War. The parallel drawn between the dangers of communism and those of Islam gave Washington's strategic planners the illusion that they could dispense with analyzing the nature of the Islamic "menace" and could simply transpose the conceptual tools designed to apprehend one threat to the very different realities of the other.
The neoconservative movement played a crucial role in bringing about this rhetorical permutation. It placed a facile way of thinking in the service of a precise political agenda, aimed at expanding the American democratic model into the Middle East – the only part of the world that it had not penetrated at the end of the twentieth century – and at modifying U.S. policy in the region to give Israel's security precedence over an alliance with the Saudi petro-monarchy.[46]
The truth is, rather, there is no real “democracy” in the West. The sham of the serial dictatorships, where the people are told who to vote for every four years, is designed to hide the West is composed of oligarchies. Industrial interests use their influence over the government, the media and the educational system, to pursue their shared globalist aspirations. As summarized by Bryan Turner, “the popular debate about the Huntington thesis has obscured its intellectual dependence on an academic tradition of political philosophy that sought to define sovereignty in terms of civilizational struggles between friend and foe, namely the legacy of Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss.”[47]
[1] Souvenirs du Baron de Gleichen, p. 151, cited from Nesta Webster, Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, (Brooklyn: A&B Books, 1994), p. 169.
[2] J. M. Roberts. The Mythology of Secret Societies (London: Secker and Warburg, 1972) p. 104.
[3] Jean-Pierre Bayard, Les Rose-Croix, (M. A. Éditions, Paris, 1986).
[4] Jerry Z. Muller, Conservatism: An Anthology of Social and Political Thought from David Hume to the Present. (Princeton University Press, 1997) p. 135.
[5] Richard F. Kuisel, ‘The Legend of the Vichy Synarchy’, in French Historical Studies, (spring 1970), p. 378.
[6] Maçonnerie egyptienne Rose-Croix et néo-chevalerie, Edition du Rocher, Monaco, 1994; cited in Picknett and Prince, Stargate Conspiracy, (New York: Berkley, 1999) p. 265.
[7] André Ulmann and Henri Azeau, Synarchie et pouvoir (Julliard, 1968), p. 63.
[8] Joscelyn Godwin, "Schwaller de Lubicz: les Veilleurs et la connexion Nazie,” Politica Hermetica, number 5, pp. 101-108 (Éditions L'Âge d'Homme, 1991).
[9] Gary Lachman, Politics and the Occult, p. 193.
[10] Ibid., p. 149.
[11] Eustace Mullins, The World Order: A Study in the Hegemony of Parasitism The history and practices of the parasitic financial elite (1984).
[14] Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., Dope, Inc., (New York: New Benjamin Franklin House Publishing Co., 1978).
[15] Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy: The Nazi - American Money Plot 1933-1949. (Delacorte Press, 1983) p. 1
[16] Anton Chaitkin, "British psychiatry: from eugenics to assassination" Executive Intelligence Review, V21 #40, (30 July 2002).
[17] Stephen Gill, American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission (Cambridge University Press: New York, 1990), p. 129; CBC, “Informal forum or global conspiracy?” CBC News Online (June 13, 2006).
[18] William Engdahl, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, (Dr. Bottiger Verlags-GmbH, 1992) p. 149.
[19] Holly Sklar, Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management, (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1980) p. 162.
[20] Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. "Euro-federalists financed by US spy chiefs.” The Telegraph. September 19, 2000
[21] Ulmann and Azeau, 63.
[22] "Synarchy: The Hidden Hand Behind the European Union,” New Dawn, (March 15, 2012).
[23] Barbara Boyd, "Profile: Carl Schmitt, Dick Cheney's Éminence Grise.” Executive Intelligence Review, (January 6, 2006).
[24] Waldemar Gurian.
[25] Jeffrey Steinberg, "Synarchism: The Fascist Roots Of the Wolfowitz Cabal.”
[26] Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, expanded edition, trans. G. Schwab (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007)
[27] Bryan S. Turner. “Sovereignty and Emergency Political Theology, Islam and American Conservatism,” Theory, Culture & Society 2002 (SAGE, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi), Vol. 19(4): 103–119.
[28] Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience, p. 59.
[29] Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung, 38, 1934.
[30] Barbara Boyd, “Profile: Carl Schmitt, Dick Cheney's Éminence Grise,”
[31] Allan Bloom, Giants and Dwarfs: Essays 1960-1990 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990) pp. 235-273.
[32] Mark Lilla, “The End of Philosophy: How a Russian émigré brought Hegel to the French.” Times Literary Supplement, (April 5, 1991) p. 3.
[33] Roger Griffin, Professor in History, Oxford Brookes University, “Europe For The Europeans:Fascist Myths Of The New Order 1922 – 1992,”
[34] Shadia Drury. Alexandre Kojève: The Roots of Postmodern Politics. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), p. 14
[35] Ibid, p. 65.
[36] Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to a Reading of Hegel. (New York: Basic Books, 1969), p. 69.
[37] Drury, Alexandre Kojève, p. 37.
[38] Ibid., p. 147.
[39] Bryan S. Turner. “Sovereignty and Emergency Political Theology, Islam and American Conservatism.” Theory, Culture & Society 2002 (SAGE, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi), Vol. 19(4): 103–119.
[40] Heinrich Meier, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: the hidden dialogue, (University of Chicago Press 1995), p. 125.
[41] Jeffrey Steinberg, Tony Papert & Barbara Boyd. “Dick Cheney Has a French Connection—To Fascism.” Executive Intelligence Review (May 9, 2003).
[42] Alan Bloom, “Preface,” Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, p i.
[43] Shadia Drury, Alexandre Kojève, p. 43.
[44] The End of History and the Last Man. (Fukuyama, 1992)
[45] Francis Fukuyama, “They Can Only Go So Far,” The Washington Post (August 24, 2008).
[46] Gilles Keppel, The War for Muslim Minds, p. 62.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sun Aug 04, 2019 11:27 am Post subject:
Beliefs of the 21st century fascist/eugenics philosophy: 1. the elite can enhance their DNA by the use of technology and AI; 2. digital computers can make a direct link with the nervous system and human brain; 3. AI will at some point be more powerful than, and take over from humans; 4. the elite can engineer their DNA so their children will be immortal
Mr. Epstein’s vision reflected his longstanding fascination with what has become known as transhumanism: the science of improving the human population through technologies like genetic engineering and artificial intelligence. Critics have likened transhumanism to a modern-day version of eugenics, the discredited field of improving the human race through controlled breeding.
Mr. Epstein, who was charged in July with the sexual trafficking of girls as young as 14, was a serial illusionist: He lied about the identities of his clients, his wealth, his financial prowess, his personal achievements. But he managed to use connections and charisma to cultivate valuable relationships with business and political leaders.
David, Artificial Intelligence from Prometheus & Alien Covenant.
CONTAINS SPOILERS. _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
LAST YEAR, A GOVERNMENT COMMISSION CALLED FOR THE US TO ADOPT AN AI-DRIVEN MASS SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM FAR BEYOND THAT USED IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY IN ORDER TO ENSURE AMERICAN HEGEMONY IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. NOW, MANY OF THE “OBSTACLES” THEY HAD CITED AS PREVENTING ITS IMPLEMENTATION ARE RAPIDLY BEING REMOVED UNDER THE GUISE OF COMBATING THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS.
Last year, a U.S. government body dedicated to examining how artificial intelligence can “address the national security and defense needs of the United States” discussed in detail the “structural” changes that the American economy and society must undergo in order to ensure a technological advantage over China, according to a recent document acquired through a FOIA request. This document suggests that the U.S. follow China’s lead and even surpass them in many aspects related to AI-driven technologies, particularly their use of mass surveillance. This perspective clearly clashes with the public rhetoric of prominent U.S. government officials and politicians on China, who have labeled the Chinese government’s technology investments and export of its surveillance systems and other technologies as a major “threat” to Americans’ “way of life.”
In addition, many of the steps for the implementation of such a program in the U.S., as laid out in this newly available document, are currently being promoted and implemented as part of the government’s response to the current coronavirus (Covid-19) crisis. This likely due to the fact that many members of this same body have considerable overlap with the taskforces and advisors currently guiding the government’s plans to “re-open the economy” and efforts to use technology to respond to the current crisis.
The FOIA document, obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), was produced by a little-known U.S. government organization called the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI). It was created by the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and its official purpose is “to consider the methods and means necessary to advance the development of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and associated technologies to comprehensively address the national security and defense needs of the United States.”
The NSCAI is a key part of the government’s response to what is often referred to as the coming “fourth industrial revolution,” which has been described as “a revolution characterized by discontinuous technological development in areas like artificial intelligence (AI), big data, fifth-generation telecommunications networking (5G), nanotechnology and biotechnology, robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), and quantum computing.”
However, their main focus is ensuring that “the United States … maintain a technological advantage in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other associated technologies related to national security and defense.” The vice-chair of NSCAI, Robert Work – former Deputy Secretary of Defense and senior fellow at the hawkish Center for a New American Security (CNAS), described the commission’s purpose as determining “how the U.S. national security apparatus should approach artificial intelligence, including a focus on how the government can work with industry to compete with China’s ‘civil-military fusion’ concept.”
The recently released NSCAI document is a May 2019 presentation entitled “Chinese Tech Landscape Overview.” Throughout the presentation, the NSCAI promotes the overhaul of the U.S. economy and way of life as necessary for allowing the U.S. to ensure it holds a considerable technological advantage over China, as losing this advantage is currently deemed a major “national security” issue by the U.S. national security apparatus. This concern about maintaining a technological advantage can be seen in several other U.S. military documents and think tank reports, several of which have warned that the U.S.’ technological advantage is quickly eroding.
The U.S. government and establishment media outlets often blame alleged Chinese espionage or the Chinese government’s more explicit partnerships with private technology companies in support of their claim that the U.S. is losing this advantage over China. For instance, Chris Darby, the current CEO of the CIA’s In-Q-Tel, who is also on the NSCAI, told CBS News last year that China is the U.S.’ main competitor in terms of technology and that U.S. privacy laws were hampering the U.S.’ capacity to counter China in this regard, stating that:
“[D]ata is the new oil. And China is just awash with data. And they don’t have the same restraints that we do around collecting it and using it, because of the privacy difference between our countries. This notion that they have the largest labeled data set in the world is going to be a huge strength for them.”
In another example, Michael Dempsey – former acting Director of National Intelligence and currently a government-funded fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations – argued in The Hill that:
“It’s quite clear, though, that China is determined to erase our technological advantage, and is committing hundreds of billions of dollars to this effort. In particular, China is determined to be a world leader in such areas as artificial intelligence, high performance computing, and synthetic biology. These are the industries that will shape life on the planet and the military balance of power for the next several decades.”
In fact, the national security apparatus of the United States is so concerned about losing a technological edge over China that the Pentagon recently decided to join forces directly with the U.S. intelligence community in order “to get in front of Chinese advances in artificial intelligence.” This union resulted in the creation of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), which ties together “the military’s efforts with those of the Intelligence Community, allowing them to combine efforts in a breakneck push to move government’s AI initiatives forward.” It also coordinates with other government agencies, industry, academics, and U.S. allies. Robert Work, who subsequently became the NSCAI vice-chair, said at the time that JAIC’s creation was a “welcome first step in response to Chinese, and to a lesser extent, Russian, plans to dominate these technologies.”
Similar concerns about “losing” technological advantage to China have also been voiced by the NSCAI chairman, Eric Schmidt, the former head of Alphabet – Google’s parent company, who argued in February in the New York Times that Silicon Valley could soon lose “the technology wars” to China if the U.S. government doesn’t take action. Thus, the three main groups represented within the NSCAI – the intelligence community, the Pentagon and Silicon Valley – all view China’s advancements in AI as a major national security threat (and in Silicon Valley’s case, threat to their bottom lines and market shares) that must be tackled quickly.
TARGETING CHINA’S “ADOPTION ADVANTAGE”
In the May 2019 “Chinese Tech Landscape Overview” presentation, the NSCAI discusses that, while the U.S. still leads in the “creation” stage of AI and related technologies, it lags behind China in the “adoption” stage due to “structural factors.” It says that “creation”, followed by “adoption” and “iteration” are the three phases of the “life cycle of new tech” and asserts that failing to dominate in the “adoption” stage will allow China to “leapfrog” the U.S. and dominate AI for the foreseeable future.
The presentation also argues that, in order to “leapfrog” competitors in emerging markets, what is needed is not “individual brilliance” but instead specific “structural conditions that exist within certain markets.” It cites several case studies where China is considered to be “leapfrogging” the U.S. due to major differences in these “structural factors.” Thus, the insinuation of the document (though not directly stated) is that the U.S. must alter the “structural factors” that are currently responsible for its lagging behind China in the “adoption” phase of AI-driven technologies.
Chief among the troublesome “structural factors” highlighted in this presentation are so-called “legacy systems” that are common in the U.S. but much less so in China. The NSCAI document states that examples of “legacy systems” include a financial system that still utilizes cash and card payments, individual car ownership and even receiving medical attention from a human doctor. It states that, while these “legacy systems” in the US are “good enough,” too many “good enough” systems “hinder the adoption of new things,” specifically AI-driven systems.
Another structural factor deemed by the NSCAI to be an obstacle to the U.S.’ ability to maintain a technological advantage over China is the “scale of the consumer market,” arguing that “extreme urban density = on-demand service adoption.” In other words, extreme urbanization results in more people using online or mobile-based “on-demand” services, ranging from ride-sharing to online shopping. It also cites the use of mass surveillance on China’s “huge population base” is an example of how China’s “scale of consumer market” advantage allowing “China to leap ahead” in the fields of related technologies, like facial recognition.
In addition to the alleged shortcomings of the U.S.’ “legacy systems” and lack of “extreme urban density,” the NSCAI also calls for more “explicit government support and involvement” as a means to speed up the adoption of these systems in the U.S. This includes the government lending its stores of data on civilians to train AI, specifically citing facial recognition databases, and mandating that cities be “re-architected around AVs [autonomous vehicles],” among others. Other examples given include the government investing large amounts of money in AI start-ups and adding tech behemoths to a national, public-private AI taskforce focused on smart city-implementation (among other things).
With regards to the latter, the document says “this level of public-private cooperation” in China is “outwardly embraced” by the parties involved, with this “serving as a stark contrast to the controversy around Silicon Valley selling to the U.S. government.” Examples of such controversy, from the NSCAI’s perspective, likely include Google employees petitioning to end the Google-Pentagon “Project Maven,” which uses Google’s AI software to analyze footage captured by drones. Google eventually chose not to renew its Maven contract as a result of the controversy, even though top Google executives viewed the project as a “golden opportunity” to collaborate more closely with the military and intelligence communities.
The document also defines another aspect of government support as the “clearing of regulatory barriers.” This term is used in the document specifically with respect to U.S. privacy laws, despite the fact that the U.S. national security state has long violated these laws with near complete impunity. However, the document seems to suggest that privacy laws in the U.S. should be altered so that what the U.S. government has done “in secret” with private citizen data can be done more openly and more extensively. The NSCAI document also discusses the removal of “regulatory barriers” in order to speed up the adoption of self-driving cars, even though autonomous driving technology has resulted in several deadly and horrific car accidents and presents other safety concerns.
Also discussed is how China’s “adoption advantage” will “allow it to leapfrog the U.S.” in several new fields, including “AI medical diagnosis” and “smart cities.” It then asserts that “the future will be decided at the intersection of private enterprise and policy leaders between China and the U.S.” If this coordination over the global AI market does not occur, the document warns that “we [the U.S.] risk being left out of the discussions where norms around AI are set for the rest of our lifetimes.”
The presentation also dwells considerably on how “the main battleground [in technology] are not the domestic Chinese and US markets,” but what it refers to as the NBU (next billion users) markets, where it states that “Chinese players will aggressively challenge Silicon Valley.” In order to challenge them more successfully, the presentation argues that, “just like we [view] the market of teenagers as a harbinger for new trends, we should look at China.”
The document also expresses concerns about China exporting AI more extensively and intensively than the U.S., saying that China is “already crossing borders” by helping to build facial databases in Zimbabwe and selling image recognition and smart city systems to Malaysia. If allowed to become “the unambiguous leader in AI,” it says that “China could end up writing much of the rulebook of international norms around the deployment of AI” and that it would “broaden China’s sphere of influence amongst an international community that increasingly looks to the pragmatic authoritarianism of China and Singapore as an alternative to Western liberal democracy.”
WHAT WILL REPLACE THE US’ “LEGACY SYSTEMS”?
Given that the document makes it quite clear that “legacy systems” in the U.S. are impeding its ability to prevent China from “leapfrogging” ahead in AI and then dominating it for the foreseeable future, it is also important to examine what the document suggests should replace these “legacy systems” in the U.S.
As previously mentioned, one “legacy system” cited early on in the presentation is the main means of payment for most Americans, cash and credit/debit cards. The presentation asserts, in contrast to these “legacy systems” that the best and most advanced system is moving entirely to smartphone-based digital wallets.
It notes specifically the main mobile wallet provider in India, PayTM, is majority owned by Chinese companies. It quotes an article, which states that “a big break came [in 2016] when India canceled 86% of currency in circulation in an effort to cut corruption and bring more people into the tax net by forcing them to use less cash.” At the time, claims that India’s 2016 “currency reform” would be used as a stepping stone towards a cashless society were dismissed by some as “conspiracy theory.” However, last year, a committee convened by India’s central bank (and led by an Indian tech oligarch who also created India’s massive civilian biometric database) resulted in the Indian government’s “Cashless India” program.
Regarding India’s 2016 “currency reform,” the NSCAI document then asserts that “this would be unfathomable in the West. And unsurprisingly, when 86% of the cash got cancelled and nobody had a credit card, mobile wallets in India exploded, laying the groundwork for a far more advanced payments ecosystem in India than the US.” However, it has become increasingly less unfathomable in light of the current coronavirus crisis, which has seen efforts to reduce the amount of cash used because paper bills may carry the virus as well as efforts to introduce a Federal Reserve-backed “digital dollar.”
In addition, the NSCAI document from last May calls for the end of in-person shopping and promotes moving towards all shopping being performed online. It argues that “American companies have a lot to gain by adopting ideas from Chinese companies” by shifting towards exclusive e-commerce purchasing options. It states that only shopping online provides a “great experience” and also adds that “when buying online is literally the only way to get what you want, consumers go online.”
Another “legacy system” that the NSCAI seeks to overhaul is car ownership, as it promotes autonomous, or self-driving vehicles and further asserts that “fleet ownership > individual ownership.” It specifically points to a need for “a centralized ride-sharing network,” which it says “is needed to coordinate cars to achieve near 100% utilization rates.” However, it warns against ride-sharing networks that “need a human operator paired with each vehicle” and also asserts that “fleet ownership makes more sense” than individual car ownership. It also specifically calls for these fleets to not only be composed of self-driving cars, but electric cars and cites reports that China “has the world’s most aggressive electric vehicle goals….and seek[s] the lead in an emerging industry.”
The document states that China leads in ride-sharing today even though ride-sharing was pioneered first in the U.S. It asserts once again that the U.S. “legacy system” of individual car ownership and lack of “extreme urban density” are responsible for China’s dominance in this area. It also predicts that China will “achieve mass autonomous [vehicle] adoption before the U.S.,” largely because “the lack of mass car ownership [in China] leads to far more consumer receptiveness to AVs [autonomous vehicles].” It then notes that “earlier mass adoption leads to a virtuous cycle that allows Chinese core self-driving tech to accelerate beyond [its] Western counterparts.”
In addition to their vision for a future financial system and future self-driving transport system, the NSCAI has a similarly dystopian vision for surveillance. The document calls mass surveillance “one of the ‘first-and-best customers’ for AI” and “a killer application for deep learning.” It also states that “having streets carpeted with cameras is good infrastructure.”
It then discusses how “an entire generation of AI unicorn” companies are “collecting the bulk of their early revenue from government security contracts” and praises the use of AI in facilitating policing activities. For instance, it lauds reports that “police are making convictions based on phone calls monitored with iFlyTek’s voice-recognition technology” and that “police departments are using [AI] facial recognition tech to assist in everything from catching traffic law violators to resolving murder cases.”
On the point of facial recognition technology specifically, the NSCAI document asserts that China has “leapt ahead” of the US on facial recognition, even though “breakthroughs in using machine learning for image recognition initially occurred in the US.” It claims that China’s advantage in this instance is because they have government-implemented mass surveillance (“clearing of regulatory barriers”), enormous government-provided stores of data (“explicit government support”) combined with private sector databases on a huge population base (“scale of consumer market”). As a consequence of this, the NSCAI argues, China is also set to leap ahead of the U.S. in both image/facial recognition and biometrics.
The document also points to another glaring difference between the U.S. and its rival, stating that: “In the press and politics of America and Europe, Al is painted as something to be feared that is eroding privacy and stealing jobs. Conversely, China views it as both a tool for solving major macroeconomic challenges in order to sustain their economic miracle, and an opportunity to take technological leadership on the global stage.”
The NSCAI document also touches on the area of healthcare, calling for the implementation of a system that seems to be becoming reality thanks to the current coronavirus crisis. In discussing the use of AI in healthcare (almost a year before the current crisis began), it states that “China could lead the world in this sector” and “this could lead to them exporting their tech and setting international norms.” One reason for this is also that China has “far too few doctors for the population” and calls having enough doctors for in-person visits a “legacy system.” It also cited U.S. regulatory measures such as “HIPPA compliance and FDA approval” as obstacles that don’t constrain Chinese authorities.
More troubling, it argues that “the potential impact of government supplied data is even more significant in biology and healthcare,” and says it is likely that “the Chinese government [will] require every single citizen to have their DNA sequenced and stored in government databases, something nearly impossible to imagine in places as privacy conscious as the U.S. and Europe.” It continues by saying that “the Chinese apparatus is well-equipped to take advantage” and calls these civilian DNA databases a “logical next step.”
WHO ARE THE NSCAI?
Given the sweeping changes to the U.S. that the NSCAI promoted in this presentation last May, it becomes important to examine who makes up the commission and to consider their influence over U.S. policy on these matters, particularly during the current crisis. As previously mentioned, the chairman of the NSCAI is Eric Schmidt, the former head of Alphabet (Google’s parent company) who has also invested heavily in Israeli intelligence-linked tech companies including the controversial start-up “incubator” Team8. In addition, the committee’s vice-chair is Robert Work, is not only a former top Pentagon official, but is currently working with the think tank CNAS, which is run by John McCain’s long-time foreign policy adviser and Joe Biden’s former national security adviser.
Other members of the NSCAI are as follows:
Safra Catz, CEO of Oracle, with close ties to Trump’s top donor Sheldon Adelson
Steve Chien, supervisor of the Artificial Intelligence Group at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Lab
Mignon Clyburn, Open Society Foundation fellow and former FCC commissioner
Chris Darby, CEO of In-Q-Tel (CIA’s venture capital arm)
Ken Ford, CEO of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition
Jose-Marie Griffiths, president of Dakota State University and former National Science Board member
Eric Horvitz, director of Microsoft Research Labs
Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services (CIA contractor)
Gilman Louie, partner at Alsop Louie Partners and former CEO of In-Q-Tel
William Mark, director of SRI International and former Lockheed Martin director
Jason Matheny, director of the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, former Assistant director of National Intelligence and former director of IARPA (Intelligence Advanced Research Project Agency)
Katharina McFarland, consultant at Cypress International and former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Acquisition
Andrew Moore, head of Google Cloud AI
As can be seen in the list above, there is a considerable amount of overlap between the NSCAI and the companies currently advising the White House on “re-opening” the economy (Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Lockheed Martin, Oracle) and one NSCAI member, Oracle’s Safra Katz, is on the White House’s “economic revival” taskforce. Also, there is also overlap between the NSCAI and the companies that are intimately involved in the implementation of the “contact tracing” “coronavirus surveillance system,” a mass surveillance system promoted by the Jared Kushner-led, private-sector coronavirus task force. That surveillance system is set to be constructed by companies with deep ties to Google and the U.S. national security state, and both Google and Apple, who create the operating systems for the vast majority of smartphones used in the U.S., have said they will now build that surveillance system directly into their smartphone operating systems.
Also notable is the fact that In-Q-Tel and the U.S. intelligence community has considerable representation on the NSCAI and that they also boast close ties with Google, Palantir and other Silicon Valley giants, having been early investors in those companies. Both Google and Palantir, as well as Amazon (also on the NSCAI) are also major contractors for U.S. intelligence agencies. In-Q-Tel’s involvement on the NSCAI is also significant because they have been heavily promoting mass surveillance of consumer electronic devices for use in pandemics for the past several years. Much of that push has come from In-Q-Tel’s current Executive Vice President Tara O’Toole, who was previously the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and also co-authored several controversial biowarfare/pandemic simulations, such as Dark Winter.
In addition, since at least January, the U.S. intelligence community and the Pentagon have been at the forefront of developing the U.S. government’s still-classified “9/11-style” response plans for the coronavirus crisis, alongside the National Security Council. Few news organizations have noted that these classified response plans, which are set to be triggered if and when the U.S. reaches a certain number of coronavirus cases, has been created largely by elements of the national security state (i.e. the NSC, Pentagon, and intelligence), as opposed to civilian agencies or those focused on public health issues.
Furthermore, it has been reported that the U.S. intelligence community as well as U.S. military intelligence knew by at least January (though recent reports have said as early as last November) that the coronavirus crisis would reach “pandemic proportions” by March. The American public were not warned, but elite members of the business and political classes were apparently informed, given the record numbers of CEO resignations in January and several high-profile insider trading allegations that preceded the current crisis by a matter of weeks.
Perhaps even more disconcerting is the added fact that the U.S. government not only participated in the eerily prescient pandemic simulation last October known as Event 201, it also led a series of pandemic response simulations last year. Crimson Contagion was a series of four simulations that involved 19 U.S. federal agencies, including intelligence and the military, as well as 12 different states and a host of private sector companies that simulated a devastating pandemic influenza outbreak that had originated in China. It was led by the current HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, Robert Kadlec, who is a former lobbyist for military and intelligence contractors and a Bush-era homeland security “bioterrorism” advisor.
In addition, both Kadlec and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, which was intimately involved in Event 201, have direct ties to the controversial June 2001 biowarfare exercise “Dark Winter,” which predicted the 2001 anthrax attacks that transpired just months later in disturbing ways. Though efforts by media and government were made to blame the anthrax attacks on a foreign source, the anthrax was later found to have originated at a U.S. bioweapons lab and the FBI investigation into the case has been widely regarded as a cover-up, including by the FBI’s once-lead investigator on that case.
Given the above, it is worth asking if those who share the NSCAI’s vision saw the coronavirus pandemic early on as an opportunity to make the “structural changes” it had deemed essential to countering China’s lead in the mass adoption of AI-driven technologies, especially considering that many of the changes in the May 2019 document are now quickly taking place under the guise of combatting the coronavirus crisis.
THE NSCAI’S VISION TAKES SHAPE
Though the May 2019 NSCAI document was authored nearly a year ago, the coronavirus crisis has resulted in the implementation of many of the changes and the removal of many of the “structural” obstacles that the commission argued needed to be drastically altered in order to ensure a technological advantage over China in the field of AI. The aforementioned move away from cash, which is taking place not just in the U.S. but internationally, is just one example of many.
For instance, earlier this week CNN reported that grocery stores are now considering banning in-person shopping and that the U.S. Department of Labor has recommended that retailers nationwide start “‘using a drive-through window or offering curbside pick-up’ to protect workers for exposure to coronavirus.” In addition, last week, the state of Florida approved an online-purchase plan for low income families using the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Other reports have argued that social distancing inside grocery stores is ineffective and endangering people’s lives. As previously mentioned, the May 2019 NSCAI document argues that moving away from in-person shopping is necessary to mitigate China’s “adoption advantage” and also argued that “when buying online is literally the only way to get what you want, consumers go online.”
Reports have also argued that these changes in shopping will last far beyond coronavirus, such as an article by Business Insider entitled “The coronavirus pandemic is pushing more people online and will forever change how Americans shop for groceries, experts say.” Those cited in the piece argue that this shift away from in-person shopping will be “permanent” and also states that “More people are trying these services than otherwise would have without this catalyst and gives online players a greater chance to acquire and keep a new customer base.” A similar article in Yahoo! News argues that, thanks to the current crisis, “our dependence on online shopping will only rise because no one wants to catch a virus at a shop.”
In addition, the push towards the mass use of self-driving cars has also gotten a boost thanks to coronavirus, with driverless cars now making on-demand deliveries in California. Two companies, one Chinese-owned and the other backed by Japan’s SoftBank, have since been approved to have their self-driving cars used on California roads and that approval was expedited due to the coronavirus crisis. The CPO of Nuro Inc., the SoftBank-backed company, was quoted in Bloomberg as saying that “The Covid-19 pandemic has expedited the public need for contactless delivery services. Our R2 fleet is custom-designed to change the very nature of driving and the movement of goods by allowing people to remain safely at home while their groceries, medicines, and packages are brought to them.” Notably, the May 2019 NSCAI document references the inter-connected web of SoftBank-backed companies, particularly those backed by its largely Saudi-funded “Vision Fund,” as forming “the connective tissue for a global federation of tech companies” set to dominate AI.
California isn’t the only state to start using self-driving cars, as the Mayo Clinic of Florida is now also using them. “Using artificial intelligence enables us to protect staff from exposure to this contagious virus by using cutting-edge autonomous vehicle technology and frees up staff time that can be dedicated to direct treatment and care for patients,” Kent Thielen, M.D., CEO of Mayo Clinic in Florida stated in a recent press release cited by Mic.
Like the changes to in-person shopping in the age of coronavirus, other reports assert that self-driving vehicles are here to stay. One report published by Mashable is entitled “It took a coronavirus outbreak for self-driving cars to become more appealing,” and opens by stating “Suddenly, a future full of self-driving cars isn’t just a sci-fi pipe dream. What used to be considered a scary, uncertain technology for many Americans looks more like an effective tool to protect ourselves from a fast-spreading, infectious disease.” It further argues that this is hardly a “fleeting shift” in driving habits and one tech CEO cited in the piece, Anuja Sonalker of Steer Tech, claims that “There has been a distinct warming up to human-less, contactless technology. Humans are biohazards, machines are not.”
Another focus of the NSCAI presentation, AI medicine, has also seen its star rise in recent weeks. For instance, several reports have touted how AI-driven drug discovery platforms have been able to identify potential treatments for coronavirus. Microsoft, whose research lab director is on the NSCAI, recently put $20 million into its “AI for health” program to speed up the use of AI in analyzing coronavirus data. In addition, “telemedicine”– a form of remote medical care – has also become widely adopted due to the coronavirus crisis.
Several other AI-driven technologies have similarly become more widely adopted thanks to coronavirus, including the use of mass surveillance for “contact tracing” as well as facial recognition technology and biometrics. A recent Wall Street Journal report stated that the government is seriously considering both contact tracing via phone geolocation data and facial recognition technology in order to track those who might have coronavirus. In addition, private businesses – like grocery stores and restaurants – are using sensors and facial recognition to see how many people and which people are entering their stores.
As far as biometrics go, university researchers are now working to determine if “smartphones and biometric wearables already contain the data we need to know if we have become infected with the novel coronavirus.” Those efforts seek to detect coronavirus infections early by analyzing “sleep schedules, oxygen levels, activity levels and heart rate” based on smartphone apps like FitBit and smartwatches. In countries outside the U.S., biometric IDs are being touted as a way to track those who have and lack immunity to coronavirus.
In addition, one report in The Edge argued that the current crisis is changing what types of biometrics should be used, asserting that a shift towards thermal scanning and facial recognition is necessary:
“At this critical juncture of the crisis, any integrated facial recognition and thermal scanning solution must be implemented easily, rapidly and in a cost-effective manner. Workers returning to offices or factories must not have to scramble to learn a new process or fumble with declaration forms. They must feel safe and healthy for them to work productively. They just have to look at the camera and smile. Cameras and thermal scanners, supported by a cloud-based solution and the appropriate software protocols, will do the rest.”
Also benefiting from the coronavirus crisis is the concept of “smart cities,” with Forbes recently writing that “Smart cities can help us combat the coronavirus pandemic.” That article states that “Governments and local authorities are using smart city technology, sensors and data to trace the contacts of people infected with the coronavirus. At the same time, smart cities are also helping in efforts to determine whether social distancing rules are being followed.”
That article in Forbes also contains the following passage:
“…[T]he use of masses of connected sensors makes it clear that the coronavirus pandemic is–intentionally or not–being used as a testbed for new surveillance technologies that may threaten privacy and civil liberties. So aside from being a global health crisis, the coronavirus has effectively become an experiment in how to monitor and control people at scale.”
Another report in The Guardian states that “If one of the government takeaways from coronavirus is that ‘smart cities’ including Songdo or Shenzhen are safer cities from a public health perspective, then we can expect greater efforts to digitally capture and record our behaviour in urban areas – and fiercer debates over the power such surveillance hands to corporations and states.” There have also been reports that assert that typical cities are “woefully unprepared” to face pandemics compared to “smart cities.”
Yet, beyond many of the NSCAI’s specific concerns regarding mass AI adoption being conveniently resolved by the current crisis, there has also been a concerted effort to change the public’s perception of AI in general. As previously mentioned, the NSCAI had pointed out last year that:
“In the press and politics of America and Europe, Al is painted as something to be feared that is eroding privacy and stealing jobs. Conversely, China views it as both a tool for solving major macroeconomic challenges in order to sustain their economic miracle, and an opportunity to take technological leadership on the global stage.”
Now, less than a year later, the coronavirus crisis has helped spawn a slew of headlines in just the last few weeks that paint AI very differently, including “How Artificial Intelligence Can Help Fight Coronavirus,” “How AI May Prevent the Next Coronavirus Outbreak,” “AI Becomes an Ally in the Fight Against COVID-19,” “Coronavirus: AI steps up in battle against COVID-19,” and “Here’s How AI Can Help Africa Fight the Coronavirus,” among numerous others.
It is indeed striking how the coronavirus crisis has seemingly fulfilled the NSCAI’s entire wishlist and removed many of the obstacles to the mass adoption of AI technologies in the United States. Like major crises of the past, the national security state appears to be using the chaos and fear to promote and implement initiatives that would be normally rejected by Americans and, if history is any indicator, these new changes will remain long after the coronavirus crisis fades from the news cycle. It is essential that these so-called “solutions” be recognized for what they are and that we consider what type of world they will end up creating – an authoritarian technocracy. We ignore the rapid advance of these NSCAI-promoted initiatives and the phasing out of so-called “legacy systems” (and with them, many long-cherished freedoms) at our own peril.
Question Everything, Come To Your Own Conclusions.
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