Tag Archives: freedom

There’s Help, and There’s Help

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Recall that Alphabet Inc, through its Google arm, has refused to help the US defend itself by refusing to work with DoD on the application of artificial intelligence to military projects.  After the resignations described at the link, Alphabet pulled its Google arm out of the project altogether, with effect in 2019 when its current contract expires.

On the other hand, Alphabet is enthusiastic about its Google working within the People’s Republic of China.  Mobvoi Inc, headquartered outside Beijing, makes smart watches and smart speakers for sale within—and outside—the surveillance state.

Its engineers build apps using TensorFlow, Google’s free set of development tools for artificial intelligence.

And

Now those allies [like Mobvoi] will likely be crucial as Google embarks on a broader China expansion strategy.

Indeed,

In his three years as Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai has been a frequent visitor to the region, meeting with top Chinese officials and encouraging businesses to use Google’s free open-source tools like TensorFlow….

Alphabet won’t work on AI projects with DoD, but they’re perfectly happy to make much of their AI capability freely available to the PRC.

Hmm….

Free Speech

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Christopher Mims had a piece up in his Thursday Tech column concerning the “usefulness” of good-guy bots to help combat filter bubbles, hate speech and harassment, and state-sponsored disinformation, along with other troll-ish speech.

Mims, unfortunately, is operating from the false premise that speech should be censored. Apart from obvious attempts to incite criminal violence, of course it should not be. Free speech must be free, bad speech—whatever that is; the definition varies from person to person and time to time—can only be answered with more speech.

As one commenter on Mims’ piece noted further,

The idea of algorithms controlling which information is disseminated to the people strikes me as the fast lane to the Orwellian world of Big Brother or perhaps Wells’ future in the Time Machine.
…
Ensuring that our political and educational systems prepare people to maintain their common sense and independence is probably a better defense than leaving it to the machines.

NLMSM

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They’ve completely thrown in the towel on their job and on their highly self-touted role as the Fourth Estate.  Even Fox News‘ Jon Scott, on his Sunday 1700CST/1800EST program, made the conscious decision to make pressmen’s hurt feelings from President Trump’s picking on them the lede and centerpiece of his “reporting.”

Our economy is going gangbusters after years of doldrums, our immigration situation is in flux, there’s a tariff conflict in progress, there’s an election later this week in a key Congressional district, the Russians are doing things, the PRC is doing things, northern Korea is doing things, Iran is doing things, the EU is doing things, and the Trump administration is doing things about all of those.

Scott, though, chose to wallow—at the top of his lungs while quoting persons of the NLMSM from other media outlets who were wallowing at the tops of their lungs—in the misery of his hurt feelings.

Because pressmen are the center of our nation’s doings, and not those doings themselves.

It’s disgusting, and it would be shameful, except the pressmen of the NLMSM don’t have the grace to know shame.

Some Thoughts on NATO

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Stephen Walt, writing in Foreign Policy, had some, and as a result, so do I.

Walt’s first thought concerns the actual content of NATO’s Article V: it’s not a tripwire for war.  On this, he quoted the salient part of that Article [emphasis his]:

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence … will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area….

Then he emphasized his highlighted part:

Article 5 does not commit any of the parties to use military force, although the use of force is clearly an option. Rather, it calls upon all the parties to “assist” the members that were attacked, but it does not specify the precise form such assistance would take.

Fair enough.  But his piece is downhill from here.

His second thought is that NATO is not a club and that there are no dues for membership.

Rather, each state decides how much it is willing and able to spend on defense, and the alliance as a whole tries (with varying degrees of success) to coordinate these defense preparations in order to produce a more capable force.

It’s true that there are no dues; however, each state, in deciding what it is willing and able to spend on defense, agreed with all of the other states—and they agreed this several years ago—to commit at least 2% of their GDP to NATO defense spending.  Further, they also committed to spending the bulk of those 2% on upgrading and acquiring new equipment along with increasing the number of personnel (and training them) in their NATO-committed/earmarked forces.

Then Walt asserts that expanding NATO was a mistake.

NATO expansion poisoned relations with Russia and played a central role in creating conflicts between Russia and Georgia and Russia and Ukraine.

Not a bit of it.  What poisoned relations with Russia was the rise of Vladimir Putin to power.  Putin, recall, grew up in the old KGB, has said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a geopolitical tragedy of historical proportion, and he’s been bent on restoring Russia to that empire preeminence from the start.  Nothing NATO might have done would have nothing to do with Putin’s drive for Russian empire restoring building.

Nor is Putin’s acquisitiveness unsurprising in light of Bush the Elder’s alleged promise not to expand NATO “one inch eastward” following German reunification as Walt suggested.  This suggestion is simply irrelevant since Bush made no such commitment.  What he did commit to was to not move to expand reunified German economic power eastward.

Finally, Walt’s assertion that NATO is an anachronism.  Quoting NATO’s first General Secretary General Hastings Lionel Ismay’s remark that the purpose of NATO was to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down, Walt claims that this is anachronistic with that collapse of the Soviet Union.  Russia’s invasion, partition, and occupation of Georgia and Ukraine, its cyber attacks on each of the Baltic States, and its redeployment of nuclear weapons near Russia’s western border and into Kaliningrad demonstrate the error of the assertion.  The error is compounded by Germany’s empirically demonstrated reluctance even to arm itself sufficiently to support NATO—there’s no nation here to keep down.  The error is proven by America’s loud insistence that the member nations honor their 2% commitment, thereby showing our own interest in staying in.

Walt also tried to claim the irrelevancy of Russia in any event by insisting that

Russia is in fact a declining power that poses no threat to dominate Europe. Its population will decline over time, its median age is rising rapidly, and its economy remains mired in corruption and overly dependent on energy exports whose long-term value will probably go down as well. Remember, we are talking about a country whose entire economy—the ultimate foundation of national power—is smaller than Canada, South Korea, and Italy.

All of that is true, but those factors only emphasize the danger from Russia at the least in the near- and mid-term.  That danger is illustrated by those invasions, cyber attacks, and nuclear weapons redeployments.

Based on What Law?

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Federal District Judge Robert Lasnik of the Western District of Washington has blocked, temporarily, the online distribution of blueprints for printing 3-D guns.  Lasnik’s temporary restraining order is subsequent to a settlement reached between Defense Distributed and State (which previously had blocked the posting of the plans) that functionally set aside State’s security objections to the posting.  The State of Washington, et al., then sued to reinstate the prior block.

In decrying the settlement that’s the subject of his TRO, Lasik wrote

the parties reached a tentative settlement agreement which, as described in the first paragraph of this order, will allow Defense Distributed to place downloadable CAD files for automated weapons printing on its website. No findings of fact or other statements are provided in the agreement that could explain the federal government’s dramatic change of position or that alter its prior analysis regarding the likely impacts of publication on the United States’ national security interests.

And

The proliferation of these firearms will have many of the negative impacts on a state level that the federal government once feared on the international stage….

Regardless of the merits of these concerns, though, they are political concerns, not judicial ones.  Lasik was wrong to intrude himself into the matter rather than referring it to the political arms of our government.

Illustrating the irrationality of a judge intruding into inherently political matters, Lasnik also wrote [cites omitted]

Under the Arms Export Control Act (“AECA”), the President of the United States is authorized “to control the import and the export of defense articles and defense services” “[i]n furtherance of world peace and the security and foreign policy of the United States.” “Defense articles and defense services” includes all firearms up to .50 caliber and all technical data related to such firearms, including information that “is required for the design, development, production, manufacture, assembly, operation, repair, testing, maintenance or modification of” the firearms.

Replicas of Hawkin muzzle-loading rifles are of .50 caliber, or less.  Would Lasnik seriously entertain blocking export or import of these, too?

On the other hand, there’s this:

Some firearms experts played down the danger of these guns, saying most 3-D printers use materials that aren’t strong enough to produce a reliable firearm.

This is irrelevant.  The technology surely will evolve, and full-up, durable and reliable weapons will become 3-D printable, and the printers involved will come down in cost.  What is relevant here is the principle of the matter: should a US citizen be able to exercise his rights under our Bill of Rights and post such plans, or not?

Lasnik’s TRO can be seen here.