The "People's Vote" might have a people problem - here's why

Despite gaining support from visibly large crowds of people in the UK, the "People's Vote" campaign for a second Brexit referendum vote demonstrates serious problems engaging with the broader British public on social media.

Local chapter pages of the "People's Vote" movement based on Facebook have insignificant numbers of followers and unremarkable levels of engagement, with the only page with a significant following being a single page that makes heavy use of advertising, titled People's Vote UK. In the case of this page itself, more problems appear.

Looking to the page's posts and the responses is no useful way to assess how British people actually perceive its message, since these posts are likely to have been shared by pro-EU groups and individuals. However, the group does target ads to the general public, and here its claims of popular support begin to look dubious.

Negative comments are being left when the ads appear in people's news feeds

Most visitors to People's Vote UK social media pages are leaving positive comments, but the majority seems to shift to negative comments when the group tries to target the broader public with advertising through news feeds. The resulting barrage of negativity has an effect of drowning out the voices of exasperated EU supporters, who can't tell why they are suddenly faced with offensive comments.

This could be the work of trolls trying to demoralize the pro-EU movement in the UK. But, if so, why are such comments only flooding the page's content when the group tries to advertise to the public? One explanation is that the negative response to the People's Vote campaign actually originates with the campaign's own target audience - the British public.

What is described above hints that the poll data supposedly showing a shift in favor of the UK remaining in the European Union could be dodgy, and there are numerous ways such data could be seriously flawed.

"Leave" may simply have turned quiet and content in their victory, rather than actually losing supporters as the "Remain" camp is fond of claiming. When directly provoked by flooding their news feeds on Facebook they do appear to respond viciously as described above.

Data favoring "Remain" could be flawed because, as well as more eagerly taking part in polls, EU supporters never stopped campaigning. This creates the unrealistic sensation that they have more influence or power, or have now won the debate. Their desire to keep their cause alive through constant adverts, polls, petitions, columns, etc. is clear. The "Leave" campaign, in contrast, is undertaking no similar project to maintain public backing and isn't even watching the polls. Their sole position is that the debate is over and they already won.

So, even if polls and news stories supporting a people's vote do show an accurate cross-section of the population, these are a poor basis to predict a pro-EU victory in a second referendum. The anti-EU side has yet to counterattack or produce its own new slogans and talking points, as it is too busy in power. A decisive lead for pro-EU forces in the polls, while the other side is not campaigning, might become irrelevant as soon as the other side begins a counter-campaign if its plans are really contested.

Treat all this as speculation. Unfortunately, comments on Facebook ads are extremely difficult to capture or prove because Facebook withholds the data once ads go inactive and takes them out of the page's feed itself, allowing posts that receive negative responses to quickly be buried while the page only displays posts that received positive responses. However, you can easily view the comments for yourself if you catch the ads while they are running or see them in your news feed.

Don't take our word for it. Give it a go!

#article: Detailed review: #Corbyn (2016) - @hjbentham review of @leninology book https://t.co/ecTQwCEdif #bestreads pic.twitter.com/mckGAPWZS3 #UK #Labour

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) January 31, 2019

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Buying a Robot Army: are drones the future of defense?

This essay argues that there is a path to the replacement of armies with a national defense system consisting entirely of automated responses and weapons. Based on the future many national armies already see in unmanned weapons, this culmination of military evolution may be closer than it seems. Should we continue reacting with horror to unmanned weapons? They may be inevitable, and we could hope they will form part of a strong deterrent structure that minimizes violence and helps push us to pacifism.

It is well-known that many countries manufacture and operate unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as weapons,[1] and this is leading to an interest in solutions to guide similar armed drones without the need for remote control by humans. We can see this already in the concept of "drone swarms", groups of semi-autonomous drones that could participate in battles.[2] Weapons equipped with artificial intelligence (AI), are pursued by the US, Russia and China.[3] Russia's military chief Valery Gerasimov considered in 2013 that "a fully robotized unit will be created, capable of independently conducting military operations."[4]Taken together, such news reports suggest the seemingly fictitious pursuit of robot armies by states is real.

Relying mostly on news reports, this essay will consider the merger of two different areas of military technological innovation. The first is the development of reliable unmanned aerial, naval and ground combat units. The second is the more hypothesis-laden topic of military artificial intelligence (AI), which may be applied to coordinate individual combat vehicles and eventually entire units on at least a tactical level. Military experts have not suggested the breakthrough of artificial general intelligence referred to by AI experts[5] is necessary to hit targets or outperform a human tactician, so that concept will be irrelevant here. This essay will be new in its attempt to make possible the concept of a complete national defense system that can consist wholly of automated units, reliant on automated responses and measures, to entirely replace a manned army. In doing so, this essay will address some military and political challenges such a national defense system could face and argue that its creation is achievable.

Before addressing the present direction of the two major areas of innovation concerned, we can consider an example of a similar defensive initiative. Unmanned defenses and automated retaliatory measures are not new ideas, although similar projects have never been seen as desirable. Nuclear weapons in Russia have been considered as possible components of an automated retaliatory system, in response to the close proximity of NATO forces to the Russian capital. In such a system, launches of the opposing (US) side's nuclear missiles would be detected and automatically trigger a retaliatory strike from Russia without requiring any human authorization.[6] If such powerful weaponry can be launched automatically, why not much less drastic military options deployed in a purely defensive manner?

On the less ambitious end of the spectrum, automated defenses including self-aiming stationary defenses like turrets with machine-guns already exist[7] and intelligent mines have already been advanced as ideas.[8] What seem to be persistently absent from this mix are unmanned anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) launchers and other towed or man-portable launchers. Even the most advanced such weapons known to exist only gained "fire-and-forget" technology and still require crews exposed to danger[9] to perform loading and firing. If better types of stationary defenses were to be relied on more heavily in future wars, they could significantly reduce the need to endanger human personnel with the low-value task of guarding a single point and help deter the most common low-tech threats.

Beyond stationary point defense is the adoption of mobile unmanned weapons. Russia,[10] China,[11] the US,[12] the UK[13] and others[14] all fund programs that consider drones as essential players in the future of warfare. Unmanned weapons such as these are best examined when divided into the different domains of ground, naval, aerial, and space combat and will be addressed in that order here. For a state to fully automate its defense, it would need to have capable responses to threats in all military domains.

The biggest current obstacles to unmanned warfare exist on the ground. Hostile personnel, being flexible and fast, can present a never-ending source of confusion and challenges to drone tanks. Such remote-controlled tanks, called unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), have been trialed in combat by the Russian Federation but are hindered by difficulties in signal,[15] cheap and unreliable design features,[16] and optics.[17] One summary of such problems may simply be that engineers have so little historical experience of creating full-scale unmanned vehicles, in contrast with manned vehicles, that almost all the problems are new and the solutions are still decades away.

Plans to overcome signal problems and the threat of jamming by making drone tanks drive autonomously may be complicated by the "cluttered and unpredictable" nature of battlefields.[18] Whatever targeting software is involved also appears to be too simple to deal with the huge array of threats from a speedy and proficient enemy.[19] The answer to such problems seems to lie in machine learning analogous to the same elusive way image recognition bots are developed.[20] For weapons, that would mean testing them repeatedly with the help of massive volumes of recorded data from real and simulated combat situations until results are promising enough for them to learn in real situations.

Done tanks appear to be the most challenging of all types of military robot to develop. Commercial self-driving cars are likely to remain drastically ahead of them for the foreseeable future. Due to their relationship, advances in self-driving car software can be expected to result in successes that filter down into the technologies carried aboard drone tanks.[21] The weapons will become more reliable as this happens. Self-driving car software appears to already be based on the same machine learning mentioned previously,[22] verifying that this is the likely route that will be taken to create smarter autonomous weapons. Machine learning used for image recognition should be just as applicable to all other data, including audio, radar and sonar, that may be recorded and acted upon in a combat situation.

The future of naval drones shows promise, with the adoption of unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs).[23] With the most concerning challenges to armed drones arguably existing in the domain of ground warfare, potential dangers to naval drones are not as significant. Naval armed drones are being trialed in various countries,[24] including a Russian drone torpedo called the Poseidon that acts as an autonomous nuclear-armed, nuclear-powered torpedo[25] and has strengthened Russia's nuclear deterrent.[26]

UUVs may have some of the best prospects as unmanned weapons in actual combat, since a non-operating drone underwater could at least be difficult for an enemy to locate. Such a drone could lose signal and be useless for a time, but not be truly lost or surrendered like its air and land counterparts. It can be hypothesized that an underwater drone could be created with the option to remain inert on the seabed, in order to gain an opportunity to reactivate and attack when the enemy is not ready.

Air-to-ground drone warfare is often thought to be fully developed already, but is totally ineffective in contested airspace.[27] Present technology appears to be inadequate to challenge a human pilot. Air-to-air drone warfare may remain too difficult at present, but development in that direction does seem to be of interest to China.[28] The most common use of lethal drones so far seems to be in ethically questioned assassinations by the US.[29] Because these are aimed at non-state targets, with the expectation that they will be undefended and unaware that they are being targeted, the effectiveness of drones as front-line weapons remains untested by the US. What is clear is that current drones and other unmanned weapons are effective only when acting in uncontested and remote spaces. It can be concluded that current unmanned weapons are very far from being flexible enough to compete with enemy manned weapons or enemy personnel in direct combat. Just as with drone tanks, however, this would be overcome by making the weapons autonomous and capable of learning.

Space warfare can already be considered entirely unmanned, because all space objects with potential military value are unmanned satellites[30] heavily dependent on computers and mission control centers on Earth. The fact the only presence held by states on other planets is robotic, too,[31] warns us that robots will be central to space militarization if and when it speeds up. Creating a "space corps", meaning military combatants stationed in orbit,[32] could prove to be a catastrophic mistake while space flight continues to be such a fragile task. This is because opposing states may instead solely focus on robotic satellites[33] that are much less vulnerable and much more menacing in the vacuum of space than any pressurized vehicle or suit. Small satellites, new missiles,[34] and intentionally placed debris[35] created by a desperate enemy could easily inflict overwhelming losses on a space corps and bring them burning down to Earth. Unmanned craft could also survive longer away from the Earth without resupply. Of all the different areas of warfare today, therefore, space warfare would be the most likely to see effective dominance of unmanned weapons, and that is because personnel would be too hard to sustain there. Space is already favorable to the non-living.

Lack of autonomy in drone weapons is their greatest handicap. They are little more than oversized remote-controlled toys in their present form, not much different than their World War 2 era predecessors, remote-controlled "Goliath" mines.[36] They may be even more vulnerable because signals can be disrupted and jammed[37] and obstacles can block signals,[38] potentially surrendering vehicles and their armaments to the enemy or leaving aerial drones vulnerable to interception by a much cruder enemy aircraft.

We can see the creation of lethal autonomous weapons (LAWs) is being pursued by states despite the push for international prohibitions against them.[39] Engineers are likely to consider autonomy important to overcome aforementioned problems inherent to remote-control by human operators, especially in the case of drone tanks. Given the current situation, military competition between states can reasonably be expected result in significant strides in the development of autonomous drone weapons in coming decades, possibly as commercial self-driving software filters into military software.[40] If Russia's military chief is correct,[41] this will lead to robotic units that can continue to carry out decisive combat actions even when their signal is severed, and perhaps fight to restore their connection with their commanders. These designs could, we can speculate, be able to defend their own technology from capture and even self-destruct when parts of their casing are opened by unauthorized personnel. Whether this is possible or useful will have to be explored by the relevant professionals.

Beyond the future engineering breakthroughs in lethal autonomous weapons, it is predictable that a whole different form of warfare will emerge in the long-term. This form of warfare will be the result of artificial intelligence continuing to be incorporated onboard military drones[42] or in the signals infrastructure used to control them from afar, or both. Although a completely automated army is not a stated goal of any country, evidence of amazing military engineering will make it increasingly plausible to propose much heavier funding for such projects in the future. It may not even emerge as a specifically funded project at all, but a simple reorganization of robotic forces and integration of future weapons and other systems into that national defense system once the machines are reliable.

Whether leadership of tactical-level decisions for drones could be handed over to a form of artificial intelligence like a robot general is a much more difficult topic to address than the drones themselves, so the following is highly speculative. The breakthroughs to artificial general intelligence and "super" AI[43] are almost certainly not necessary, although the state achieving these first may have a big advantage.[44] The success of computers in chess[45] and various games[46] can be viewed as precedent they can already make swifter and superior decisions than a human expert, but we must respect the fact real wars are much more complicated than any game.[47] It is possible some biological elements of creative thought and aggressiveness are required to act decisively in the fog of war and turn the tide of a battle, but it is not clear if these require anything like a human mind. What is clear is that, because war is so complex, it will be hard to maintain the flow of sufficiently detailed data between drones and an artificial general to allow it to make the type of fast or well-informed decision it would make in a game. This brings us back to the issue of maintaining signal. Whereas food and medicine would never be issues, a whole set of new baggage and responsibilities would drive the actions of an army consisting only of robots.

The biggest engineering problem, even in the exceedingly hypothetical idea of a fully automated military, may not be the creation of competent artificial generals to manage artificial armies but the already discussed problem of maintaining communication in a chaotic environment. It makes sense that such a problem would only be further compounded if a remotely-based artificial intelligence was giving instructions to robotic units and waiting for their feedback. The data being transmitted to and from the units would be immense. Time delays would exist. However, it is possible that the challenges would then be overcome simply by building ever more specialized and larger drones. Antenna-carrying models could be assigned to carry signals over buildings and other troublesome objects and overpower jamming attempts. These hypothetical vehicles may need to be very large, costly, and high-powered to provide maximum coverage. They would become high-value targets that require significant protection from other drones. Other types of supporting drone could be created specifically to attack sources of interference detected by them. Some drones could be adapted to act as commanders by interpreting many signals from lower-ranking drones and issuing orders back to them.

What is not speculation is the way funding and policy preferences of governments are going to be the deciding factors in whether defense becomes more automated, and to what degree. Current military robots and drones can be accurately described as being of limited variety and low cost,[48] indicating governments fund them grudgingly and wait for results before deciding what to do next. The production of war machines capable of acting autonomously and being led by other machines will likely depend on the creation of many more ambitious variants of military drone, with ever increasing size and cost. Whether this is purely science fiction talk or the next big revolution in warfare will depend on the choices of political leaders in the country prepared to take that leap.

The crossover from human warriors and their horses to machines as the main agents of warfare has been in the works for hundreds of years already, but may be close to its ultimate conclusion. It can be argued that drone armies and AI will eventually overtake humans in their ability to win wars. The end result, although still remote, may be that humans become obsolete in all domains of war. Over sufficient generations, it can be hoped that this reduces the militaristic upbringing and values of much of the population and reduces warlike sentiments and policies. Whether that is a helpful prediction has not yet been discussed in any literature so far and is worth further inquiry.

Harry Bentham

Exclusively for The clubof.info Blog

[1] Dillow, C., "All of These Countries Now Have Armed Drones", http://fortune.com/2016/02/12/these-countries-have-armed-drones/, Fortune, 12 February 2016, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[2] Lendon, B., "U.S. Navy could 'swarm' foes with robot boats", https://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/06/tech/innovation/navy-swarm-boats/index.html, CNN, 13 October 2014, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[3] O'Connor, T., "Russia's Military Challenges U.S. and China By Building a Missile That Makes Its Own Decisions", https://www.newsweek.com/russia-military-challenge-us-china-missile-own-decisions-639926, Newsweek, 20 July 2017, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[4] LaPointe, C., and Levin, P. L., "Automated War", https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2016-09-05/automated-war, Foreign Affairs, 5 September 2016, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[5] Dickson, B., "What is Narrow, General and Super Artificial Intelligence", https://bdtechtalks.com/2017/05/12/what-is-narrow-general-and-super-artificial-intelligence/, TechTalks, 12 May 2017, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[6] Bender, J., "Russia May Still Have An Automated Nuclear Launch System Aimed Across The Northern Hemisphere", https://www.businessinsider.com/russias-dead-hand-system-may-still-be-active-2014-9?IR=T, Business Insider, 4 September 2014, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[7] Parkin, S. "Killer robots: The soldiers that never sleep", http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150715-killer-robots-the-soldiers-that-never-sleep, BBC, 16 July 2015, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[8] Bergstein, B., "'Smart' land mines, with remote control", http://www.nbcnews.com/id/4664710/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/smart-land-mines-remote-control/, NBC News, 4 April 2004, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[9] "Antitank guided missile", https://www.britannica.com/technology/antitank-guided-missile, Britannica.com, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[10] Majumdar, D. ,"Russia Is Developing a Mysterious Unmanned Strike Aircraft", https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/russia-developing-mysterious-unmanned-strike-aircraft-23941, The National Interest, 4 January 2018, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[11] Huang, K. "The drones that have become part of China’s military strategy", https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2161354/drones-have-become-part-chinas-military-strategy, South China Morning Post, 26 August 2018, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[12] "Predator C Avenger Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS)", https://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/predator-c-avenger-unmanned-aircraft-system-uas/, Airforce Technology
[13] "Taranis", https://www.baesystems.com/en/product/taranis, BAE Systems, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[14] Dillow, C., "All of These Countries Now Have Armed Drones", http://fortune.com/2016/02/12/these-countries-have-armed-drones/, Fortune, 12 February 2016, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[15] Mizokami, K., "Russia’s Tank Drone Performed Poorly in Syria", https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a21602657/russias-tank-drone-performed-poorly-in-syria/, Popular Mechanics, 18 June 2018, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[16] "Russian Uran-9 unmanned combat vehicle tested in Syria", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MiiUOjmqLo, Binkov's Battlegrounds, YouTube, 20 July 2018, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[17] "Combat tests in Syria brought to light deficiencies of Russian unmanned mini-tank", https://defence-blog.com/army/combat-tests-syria-brought-light-deficiencies-russian-unmanned-mini-tank.html, Defence Blog, 18 June 2018, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[18] "Unmanned Ground Vehicle Technology Issues", Autonomous Vehicles in Support of Naval Operations, The National Academies Press, 2005, pp. 148-153
[19] "Russian Uran-9 unmanned combat vehicle tested in Syria", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MiiUOjmqLo, Binkov's Battlegrounds, YouTube, 20 July 2018, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[20] "What is the Working of Image Recognition and How it is Used?", https://www.marutitech.com/working-image-recognition/, Maruti Techlabs, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[21] Wall, R. "Armies Race to Deploy Drone, Self-Driving Tech on the Battlefield", https://www.wsj.com/articles/armies-race-to-deploy-drone-self-driving-tech-on-the-battlefield-1509274803, WSJ, 29 October 2017, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[22] "What is the Working of Image Recognition and How it is Used?", https://www.marutitech.com/working-image-recognition/, Maruti Techlabs, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[23] Rees, M., "General Dynamics Demonstrates Naval Unmanned Systems C3 Capabilities", https://www.unmannedsystemstechnology.com/2018/09/general-dynamics-demonstrates-naval-unmanned-systems-c3-capabilities/, Unmanned Systems Technology, 11 September 2018, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[24] "Unmanned Warrior", https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/unmannedwarrior, Royal Navy Website, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[25] "Russia Begins Sea Trials of Nuclear-Capable ‘Poseidon’ Underwater Drone", https://thediplomat.com/2018/07/russia-begins-sea-trials-of-nuclear-capable-poseidon-underwater-prone/, The Diplomat, 21 July 2018, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[26] "Russia’s new weapons, nuclear parity and arms race: What’s going on?", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4LejOtYiyw, RT, YouTube, 26 March 2018, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[27] "NATO report highlights drone limitations in 'contested environments'", http://www.natowatch.org/newsbriefs/2014/nato-report-highlights-drone-limitations-contested-environments, NATO Watch, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[28] Axe, D., "Dark Sword: China's Mysterious (and 'Robotic') Stealth Fighter Has Arrived", The National Interest, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/dark-sword-chinas-mysterious-robotic-stealth-fighter-has-26175, 8 June 2018, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[29] Masters, J. "Targeted Killings", https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/targeted-killings, Council on Foreign Relations, 23 May 2013, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[30] Adams, D., "Weaponized Satellites and the Cold War in Space", https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/weaponized-satellites-and-the-cold-war-in-space/, Digital Trends, 1 May 2018, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[31] Mindell, D. A., "Robotic exploration of Mars is equivalent to human presence on Mars.", http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2015/10/robotic_exploration_of_mars_is_equivalent_to_human_presence_on_mars.html, Slate, 23 October 2015, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[32] Gould, J., "US Space Corps could launch in 3 years, key lawmaker says", https://www.defensenews.com/space/2018/02/28/2021-a-space-odyssey-space-corps-could-launch-in-three-to-five-years-key-lawmaker-says/, Defense News, 28 February 2018, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[33] Gertz, B., "China’s Space Weapons Threaten US Satellites", https://freebeacon.com/national-security/chinas-space-weapons-threaten-us-satellites/, Washington Free Beacon, 26 February 2015, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[34] Erwin, S., "U.S. intelligence: Russia and China will have ‘operational’ anti-satellite weapons in a few years", https://spacenews.com/u-s-intelligence-russia-and-china-will-have-operational-anti-satellite-weapons-in-a-few-years/, SpaceNews.com, 14 February 2018, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[35] Stenger, R., "Scientist: Space weapons pose debris threat", https://web.archive.org/web/20120930100948/http://articles.cnn.com/2002-05-03/tech/orbit.debris_1_low-earth-orbits-space-junk-international-space-station?_s=PM:TECH, CNN, 3 May 2002, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[36] "Back to the Drawing Board – The Goliath Tracked Mine", https://www.military-history.org/articles/back-to-the-drawing-board.htm, Military History Monthly, 12 July 2012, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[37] Kube, C., "Russia has figured out how to jam U.S. drones in Syria, officials say", https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/russia-has-figured-out-how-jam-u-s-drones-syria-n863931, NBC News, 10 April 2018, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[38] Mizokami, K., "Russia’s Tank Drone Performed Poorly in Syria", https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a21602657/russias-tank-drone-performed-poorly-in-syria/, Popular Mechanics, 18 June 2018, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[39] " Pathways to Banning Fully Autonomous Weapons", https://www.un.org/disarmament/update/pathways-to-banning-fully-autonomous-weapons/, UNODA Website, 23 October 2017, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[40] "Russian Uran-9 unmanned combat vehicle tested in Syria", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MiiUOjmqLo, Binkov's Battlegrounds, YouTube, 20 July 2018, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[41] LaPointe, C., and Levin, P. L., "Automated War", https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2016-09-05/automated-war, Foreign Affairs, 5 September 2016, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[42] Lee, P., "Drones will soon decide who to kill", http://theconversation.com/drones-will-soon-decide-who-to-kill-94548, The Conversation, 11 April 2018, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[43] Dickson, B., "What is Narrow, General and Super Artificial Intelligence", https://bdtechtalks.com/2017/05/12/what-is-narrow-general-and-super-artificial-intelligence/, TechTalks, 12 May 2017, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[44] Allen, G. C., "Putin and Musk are right: Whoever masters AI will run the world", https://edition.cnn.com/2017/09/05/opinions/russia-weaponize-ai-opinion-allen/index.html, CNN, 5 September 2017, Retrieved 5 October 2018
[45] Gibbs, S. "AlphaZero AI beats champion chess program after teaching itself in four hours", https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/07/alphazero-google-deepmind-ai-beats-champion-program-teaching-itself-to-play-four-hours, The Guardian, 7 December 2017, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[46] McConnell, M., "The AIs Are Winning: 5 Times When Computers Beat Humans", https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/ais-winning-5-times-computers-beat-humans/, MUO, 10 May 2016, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[47] "What Computer Games Get "Wrong" about War", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peNU5EffPYU, Military History Visualized, YouTube, 22 November 2016, Retrieved 3 October 2018
[48] Mclean, W., "Drones are cheap, soldiers are not: a cost-benefit analysis of war", https://theconversation.com/drones-are-cheap-soldiers-are-not-a-cost-benefit-analysis-of-war-27924, The Conversation, 26 June 2014, Retrieved 3 October 2018

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Will the mainstream media be deleted on Twitter tomorrow?

After March 23, Twitter could go through a kind of update to detect and suspend users with bot-like behavior. The move is designed to counter "Russian bots".

The problem is, many non-Russian users and even newspapers sharing news about the evils of Russian bots behave like Russian bots and will also get deleted if any serious action comes out of this.

They are guilty of the same behavior they accuse Russian botnets of, and new algorithms won't be able to tell the difference between them and the Russians.

If your app or service includes features which allow users to perform simultaneous actions across multiple accounts, you should make changes to bring it into compliance with this policy by March 23, 2018. Failure to comply with these rules could result in enforcement action, up to and including the suspension of associated applications and accounts. 

 Automation and the use of multiple accounts

See below examples of suspicious Twitter bot accounts sharing a BBC article about Russian bots. Their behavior makes them Russian bots, according to the article they are spamming, where it is written that "Networks of bots can be identified if multiple profiles tweet the same content almost simultaneously".

"Posting duplicative or substantially similar content... is never allowed." (https://t.co/fyA6UiP5Ur) And attached below are examples of "#RussianBots", based on the clever way @Twitter will automatically detect them and suspend them soon. pic.twitter.com/xxyzIv5R1I

— L'Ordre (@LOrdreNet) March 18, 2018

Automated content shared by anti-Russia campaign accounts and media is often about Russian bots and how to spot them, but is being shared using automation tools and fake identities. Accounts campaigning against Russian bots have therefore been behaving exactly like the alleged Russian bots by sharing the same content repeatedly, over and over, through multiple fake handles on Twitter. In fact, bots and "duplicative or substantially similar content" seem to be a favorite tactic of all political campaign groups and media organizations.

Twitter algorithms may hunt and delete the mainstream media for spam as well as Russian media

Twitter handles too much information to check if every bot account is Russian before deleting it. Twitter engineers will write algorithms to delete suspicious accounts automatically. Many of the deleted accounts may belong to the mainstream media.

Syndication by mainstream newspapers and television violates Twitter rules

Syndication is the widespread online business practice of pushing the same content through as many as hundreds of additional local publications, and is also common of television stations. It is a common practice of the mainstream media, and results in duplicated content across social media. A clear violation of the new rules at Twitter.

While Russian publications like RT and Sputnik do share very similar content, and both they and Iran's Press TV often agree, they are only copying the behavior of Western propaganda organizations. Organizations like the BBC and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp are much worse in that they repeat the same articles verbatim across a huge empire of publications and share exactly the same videos across their accounts (they all tend to have associated Twitter accounts). This is especially true when an article relates to local events and gets reprinted across a spectrum of local and national publications. The use of bots is also obvious through a brief look at the wave of sharing that always occurs without fail by numerous accounts when these publications post anything.

If algorithms are to be used to hunt this media practice down and ban accounts, many mainstream newspapers in the US and Britain will witness their Twitter accounts being suspended or suddenly deleted as possible Russian bots.

The price of hypocrisy and censorship

Twitter resents the political pressure put on it by the US and UK to thwart foreign media. It seems to be gearing up for indiscriminate censorship that will hit both sides by targeting all "suspicious" behavior, i.e. all attempts by campaigners and publications to punch above their real weight using social media.

The campaign against Russian bots is the result of pressure by myopic, frustrated journalists who don’t understand that their own media are engaged in the same behavior as the Russian media and will also be banned. It is reminiscent of how AlterNet suffered losses in revenue after Google took steps against the "fake news" AlterNet itself was calling for action against. AlterNet had called for action against fake news without realizing its own alternate views would be detected as fake news.

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Mont society includes Kevin Carson

The Blog

The Mont Order society includes Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS) writer Kevin Carson on its lists as of 14 August. Writings by Carson are henceforth a key part of the feeds promoted by several Mont services and pages.

Kevin Carson's "free market anti-capitalism", the mission of the Center for a Stateless Society, combines hopes for popular social and technological liberation as captured in books such as The Homebrew Industrial Revolution.

Among the demands advised by the anti-statist commentator is the view that artificial scarcity, intellectual property and mandatory high overhead enforced by states to benefit monopoly capitalism must all be abolished. The state colludes with capitalists, liberals and the "vulgar libertarians" of the political right to create an environment in which a leaner, more efficient economy cannot develop.

Of course, such abolition need not be imposed from above. The people in general can circumvent corporate monopolies, in much the way pirated software is shared and movies uploaded to online services such as Putlocker.

It isn't hard. Thanks to the widespread adoption of personal technologies, apps, and internet sites, everyone's lives are connected. Creators are connected without the need for owners and masters.

Even better, the costs for success in media have declined so substantially that, starting in this "immaterial" realm people can already reject and build alternatives against large brands. Networked organizations can outmaneuver hierarchic ones, and even the costs of physical production are declining so rapidly that eventually a real-world economic revolution in manufacture and delivery of goods will take place.

With the lies and pillars of modern industrial civilization being gnawed at by the "smart rats" once described as such by Julian Assange, governments in the West will descend further into crisis. As they rot away, they will be replaced by a stateless, tolerant and anti-authoritarian culture.

While not all Mont Order friends are likely to endorse such ideas, they boost the existing counter-state dissident credentials of the Mont Order in a Western context.

Visit Kevin Carson's articles at the Center for a Stateless Society

Opinion: NATO "ought to be disbanded": The BlogUS presidential candidate Donald Trump's thinks NATO membershi... https://t.co/XuYhjk0aBO

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) August 12, 2016

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The Homebrew Industrial Revolution

The Blog

The following are selections from the foremost global transhumanist publication H+ Magazine's review of Kevin Carson's book, The Homebrew Industrial Revolution (2010).

If you don't have time to read books or even reviews, at least read these few observations.

With the technology of individual creativity expanding constantly, the analysis goes, “increasing competition, easy diffusion of new technology and technique, and increasing transparency of cost structure will – between them – arbitrage the rate of profit to virtually zero and squeeze artificial scarcity rents” (p. 346)...

“The worst nightmare of the corporate dinosaurs”, Carson writes of old-fashioned mass-production-based and propertied industries, is that “the imagination might take a walk” (p. 311). Skilled creators could find the courage to declare independence from big brands...

But “as the system approaches its limits of sustainability”, “libertarian and decentralist technologies and organizational forms” are destined to “break out of their state capitalist integument and become the building blocks of a fundamentally different society” (p. 111-112)...

The decentralization brought by computers has meant “the minimum capital outlay for entering most of the entertainment and information industry has fallen to a few thousand dollars at most, and the marginal cost of reproduction is zero” (p. 199).

If the “transferrability” of individual creativity and peer production “to the realm of physical production” from the “immaterial realm” is a valid observation (p. 204-227), then the economic singularity means one thing clear. “Knowledge is free” shall become “everything is free”.

Abolish artificial scarcity, intellectual property, mandatory high overhead and other measures used by states to enforce the privileges of monopoly capitalism, the author tells us (p. 168-170). This way, a more humane world-economy can be engineered, oriented to benefit people and local communities foremost. Everyone in the world may get to work fewer hours while enjoying an improved quality of life, and we can prevent a bleak future in which millions of people are sacrificed to technological unemployment on the altar of profit.

Inspired? Go and read the full review by Harry J. Bentham at H+ Magazine

Turkish regime's "collapse" possible: The BlogDespite the triumph of the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan o... https://t.co/YoB0JvFPOQ

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) August 5, 2016

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Two years of posts end at Beliefnet

Harry J. Bentham

My work for the L'Ordre blog held at Beliefnet is at its close. All posts will be retained by the website as its intellectual property.

In descending order, I would like to embed some of my most memorable Beliefnet posts below, with their greatest relevance to The clubof.info Blog's mandate to watch technology, politics, and technopolitics.

Synthetic biology… but will dragons exist? - a @beliefnet #LOrdre post on #synbio https://t.co/OQ6zoAtPgz via @po_st

— Harry Bentham (@hjbentham) March 20, 2016

"The @lifeboathq includes the heat death of the universe on its list of top existential threats" https://t.co/hhLrakw00D

— Harry Bentham (@hjbentham) May 10, 2016

Is ignorance a choice? Too much information https://t.co/bviTBAJnQb @beliefnet #LOrdre

— Harry Bentham (@hjbentham) April 17, 2016

Will of the universe: does an impersonal god exist? https://t.co/rnCjlgLwxR @beliefnet #LOrdre

— Harry Bentham (@hjbentham) April 4, 2016

Will you make history? Will history make you? https://t.co/w2TmmE6HyB @beliefnet #LOrdre

— Harry Bentham (@hjbentham) March 30, 2016

Who are your influences? My post on the #LOrdre blog @beliefnet https://t.co/nrNq3Jy9C5 pic.twitter.com/1CzBvORktR

— Harry Bentham (@hjbentham) March 13, 2016

#ShiaSunniUnity advocated in my recent @beliefnet #LOrdre blog post "Lies about #Islam being in perpetual warfare" https://t.co/75LCUBqWkI

— Harry Bentham (@hjbentham) December 22, 2015

#Synbio-derived fuels as advanced by @JCVenter would be better than #fusion as they would be easier to share https://t.co/gDM4APXJib

— Harry Bentham (@hjbentham) December 20, 2015

#globalisation overwhelmingly refers to something good and necessary. #lordre @beliefnet https://t.co/LTkOFouumL

— Harry Bentham (@hjbentham) November 30, 2015

Just some thoughts at @beliefnet's #LOrdre blog on #BasicIncome & #TVP #ResourceBasedEconomy https://t.co/SDwjxJTY9d pic.twitter.com/Uz4BRHE2V7

— Harry Bentham (@hjbentham) November 10, 2015

Above all, #technology, not ideology, is what really changes the world: #LOrdre @beliefnet https://t.co/AqyD0YKuM2 pic.twitter.com/unF6tVq35I

— Harry Bentham (@hjbentham) November 2, 2015

Economic #sanctions on countries are an immoral armed siege. #Russia #Iran #Syria #Korea http://t.co/wlq4mDukt8 pic.twitter.com/sgvt3bz3qV

— Harry Bentham (@hjbentham) October 18, 2015

New species designed by #synbio scientists are inevitable (#LOrdre blog @beliefnet ) http://t.co/db01Fui31v pic.twitter.com/WW7fInn7Qf

— Harry Bentham (@hjbentham) October 11, 2015

#NSA disturbs centuries of tradition, invading #Catholic Church to spy on @Pontifex. #LOrdre http://t.co/970zITG45N pic.twitter.com/Ru5nHPQEdU

— Harry Bentham (@hjbentham) September 28, 2015

We speak of citizens of the world but no technology has made such a notion more factual than the #Internet http://t.co/HDAKeSuxDP via @po_st

— Harry Bentham (@hjbentham) June 21, 2015

I would like people to know that the quality and reach of my written work will only increase now I have left paid blogging behind me. From this point forward, I will release only quality book reviews and commentaries about the subjects and issues I am most passionate about.

With such works, a new chapter in my writing and political advocacy begins. These will appear at well-known web-based and possibly print-based publications as they become available, like the recent review I authored of Kevin Carson's book The Homebrew Industrial Revolution, and can be followed at my Twitter account.

In addition, I will be revising and advertising my 2013 Catalyst booklet once again as I still stand by every argument and prediction I made within that short futurist work. This could include releasing more free audio readings of sections of that book, created when I tried to prepare an audio book version of the thesis (that project turned out to be too costly).

The Mont Order reacts to world events: The BlogThe digital Mont Order society talked about world events on Ju... https://t.co/QJo1XFbAaL

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) August 5, 2016

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The West should end its own terrorism

The Blog

Rejecting the notion that the West is simply a helpless victim of murder and mayhem committed by radical (and usually Muslim) groups, Garrison Center director Thomas Knapp gives a useful reminder.

From his article, posted on 15 July in the aftermath of the terrorist attack in Nice, France:

Western (including American and French)  troops have killed hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, in the Middle East and Central Asia just since 1991.  Many (maybe most) have been innocent civilians. Their families, friends, countrymen and co-religionists have, unsurprisingly, responded in kind. We should stop supporting military adventurism not just because it inevitably results in “blowback” and dead bodies back home, but because it’s as wrong when “we” do it as it is when “they” do it.

It is indeed a hard heart that kills. Tools are mere distraction. Hearts — and minds — are where change begins."

With yet another atrocity occurring in the defenseless and open EU (many people forget the dates of individual terrorists acts now, as terrorism becomes a fact of life within the failing EU), Knapp expects more ridiculous measures by states. They may include "no drive lists" to prevent anyone with possibly radical views from driving heavy trucks, the Garrison Center director wrote on Friday.

Indeed, one consistent behavior of Western states seems to be increased monitoring and bans aimed at previously innocuous devices.

Pressure cookers, vehicles, and possibly even metal bars can expect to be deemed "weapons of mass destruction" in future, as politicians want the whole population in padded cells to enjoy "freedom and democracy".

Israel tries to drag Facebook into war?: The BlogFrom the Garrison Center on 11 July 2016, reacting to a rece... https://t.co/WTF2IKEQE3

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) July 15, 2016

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Israel tries to drag Facebook into war?

The Blog

From the Garrison Center on 11 July 2016, reacting to a recent news story from 10 July 2016:

"On July 10, [Shurat HaDin, Israel Law Center] filed a federal lawsuit on alleged behalf of the families of five Americans (one American tourist and four Israeli-American dual citizens) killed in attacks which the suit blames on Hamas, the Islamist organization governing Palestine’s Gaza Strip area. Facebook, the suit alleges, assists Hamas (in violation of the US Anti-Terrorism Act) in “recruiting, radicalizing, and instructing terrorists, raising funds, creating fear and carrying out attacks.”

"The suit seeks to punish Facebook to the tune of $1 billion for failure to censor public communications of which the Israeli government disapproves."

From Garrison Center Director Thomas Knapp's analysis and remarks on the story:

"As I previously mentioned, Shurat Hadin characterizes itself as a non-governmental organization. In reality, it seems to at the very least serve as a front for, and quite possibly to function as a de facto litigation arm of, the Israeli state...

"The US government has no business involving itself in the conflict between Israel and Hamas — nor should the  US courts allow Shurat HaDin to turn Facebook and other US firms into collateral damage in that conflict."

Colonial-Era Debt and Free Banking: Vishal WildeThe injustice of developing countries having to pay back exto... https://t.co/zWqRrkoZuz

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) July 12, 2016

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Tech leads to anti-statism: 2015 at TED

The Blog

A fascinating TED talk recently re-posted by the Center for a Stateless Society relates weakening governments with accelerating social change and popular liberation by technology.

Originally from 2015, the TED talk by William Gillis equates the state with control, and control with building perfect defenses and security measures. All of these become impossible because the spectrum of disobedience, disruption and vandalism by people increases through technology and popular access to it (just ask hackers).

"The more means by which people can act the easier attack becomes and the harder defense becomes" the speaker argued. Using a Star Wars (image courtesy) reference that would be enjoyed by fans of the sci-fi series, Gillis states, "It’s a simple matter of complexity. The attacker only needs to choose one line of attack, the defender needs to secure against all of them. This isn’t just true of small thermal exhaust ports, it’s true in our software ecosystems today and any other system with many dimensions of movement."

The thermal exhaust port is a weakness in the Empire's deadly Death Star battle station featured in Star Wars. In the film, rebel hero Luke Skywalker destroys the planet-killing weapon by firing a proton torpedo through the thermal exhaust port, causing a chain reaction that destroys the Death Star.

Edward Snowden could perhaps be likened to Luke Skywalker, one man able to bring the colossal machine of tyranny down by being in the right place, at the right time, with the right technologies. Advanced technology, Gillis believes, adds concrete facts to support a form of anarchism and super individualism that previously had only been possible in theory.

In his conclusion, Gillis identified the idea of a stateless society with the posthuman society predicted by transhumanism, stating "transhumanism represents yet another arm of anarchism: a focus on expanding freedom in physical terms and a critique of timid retreat to some stultifying “human nature.""

According to Gillis and others at Human Iterations, we need a "social singularity" thinking about a post-state society filled with superempowered individuals equipped with the ultimate personal technologies, who no longer need governments to take care of themselves. It is hard to deny such a conclusion, as "The arc of human history is an arc bent by our creativity and inquiry towards more options, more ways of existing and acting."

Would a world government create war?: The BlogAny "world government" created out of the current international... https://t.co/e6njR14y3n

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) May 20, 2016

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Would a world government create war?

The Blog

Any "world government" created out of the current international system would be faced with civil war instantly, an article posted to Aral Bereux's site Dystopian News noted.

Hypothesizing that humans are still slaves to their violent instincts and territorial behavior, a short post to the site puts forward a gloomy assessment of what might happen if a powerful organization tried to make humanity clean its act up and unite under a single authority.

Unstable states faced with disintegration are suggested as examples of what would immediately happen to a world government attempting to secure its authority and legitimacy in the same fashion as existing governments.




Asking the question, "Do You Want to Live in a Stateless World?", however, could be beside the point. Most political scientists agree that states are now confused, stressed by supranational influences, and failing to provide security (and jobs) for their subjects on the greatest scale seen in modern history.

Books such as Wallerstein's Utopistics show the reason for the apparent tragedy of state erosion is not a conspiracy or because a group of people "want" it to happen, but because the historical social system (international capitalism regulated and enforced by nation-states) is at the end of its lifespan and faced with economic contradictions, migration, and new technologies.

GOP's stupid "third party" backup plan: The BlogAuthored on May 14, a short analysis at the Garrison Center r... https://t.co/itICn324eK

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) May 17, 2016

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US-Pakistan military deals unreliable

The Blog

In an analysis at the Pakistan-based Voice of East magazine, one author focuses on the way US military contracts enable the US to exploit Pakistan and treat it as a junior strategic partner. This has been contributing to "shaky Pak-US relations".

Most of America's allies around the world are treated with contempt by the US leadership, which considers them as puppets whose interests can be sacrificed to deal damage to US geo-strategic rivals. Pakistan is no exception to this rule, as the author states.

Addressing a recent deal for Pakistan to obtain newly modernized US F-16 fighter jets, Shahzad Masood Roomi writes, "This history of the US exploitation of Pakistan through military aid tells us that even if PAF pays the entire cost of these 8 aircraft now, there is no guarantee that these aircraft will ever reach Pakistan." According to the author, Pakistan has always historically suffered from political "strings which the Americans always attached with such military deals."

@VoiceofEastMag https://t.co/hrdQAApjzn this would be a smart move by #Pakistan. Su-34 as seen in #Syria would be a good buying choice

— L'Ordre (@LOrdreNet) May 11, 2016

One area of continued concern to the US regime, which is proud of its technological and military monopolies across the world, would be Pakistan's nuclear deterrent. The US is also still determined to prevent Pakistan finding any common ground with Iran, including joint oil pipelines. As with much of its relations around the world, the US will continue to feel threatened by other countries (even its allies) becoming more self-sufficient or well-armed.

The author's recommendation is for Pakistan to "revamp its entire foreign policy", re-balancing economic and politics in order to achieve equal relations between states. If successful, Pakistan would no longer need tolerate having the US regime's "strategic interests served at the cost of ours".

Millennials hate capitalism and greed: The BlogIn a May 1st article appearing at the Center for a Stateless S... https://t.co/IbAyHCSixV

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) May 10, 2016

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Mont Order society letting everyone join

The Blog

The Mont Order society, despite being called a "secret society" often, is letting everyone join it.

Recently announced over Facebook is a fairly large group called the "Friends of the Mont Order", the same term used by various actual members of the group. In a matter of hours, it had over 400 people signed up to it.

So if you ever wanted to be part of a mysterious and arcane order, now's your chance. Influence the world... or at least influence a group that is influencing the world:

Friends of the Mont Order (Facebook)

One Beliefnet blog commented, "It joins as part of a broader tapestry of groups, movements and contact circles who know of the Mont Order and are sharing its messages of global enlightenment and progress every day."

The main purpose of the Facebook group is to bring people together to talk about the "intersection of technology and politics", one of the areas of interest mentioned in the Order's code.

Info on the Mont Order

The clubof.info Blog

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Audio book of "Catalyst" coming?

The Blog

The Catalyst thesis this blog is based on may be coming in audio form soon.

As announced at a post to the L'Ordre blog on Beliefnet, "I do indeed plan to produce an audio book version of it once I get the time, narrated in my own voice of course" (Harry J. Bentham, author).

Catalyst: A Techno-Liberation Thesis is a short educational futurist book from 2013 about how to use technology to diminish monopolies of wealth and power, and liberate millions of people from poverty-stricken, economically sanctioned or oppressed regions in which they were born. The book can currently be ordered in print or, if you love your Kindle e-reader, downloaded over Amazon.

According to Catalyst, extremely consequentially technologies involved in manufacturing will continue to get smaller, and eventually the act of one person stealing single objects like synthetic life-forms or items of micro-manufacturing atomically precise manufacturing (nanotech) equipment will be able to change the entire balance of power between countries and regions of the world.

This is a good thing, Catalyst theorized quite radically, because it will undo the global exploitation perpetrated by the few high-tech western countries against large poor regions of Africa, Asia and South America.

Refugees are the west's fault, inevitable: The BlogThe "refugee crisis" is the fault of western regimes, such ... https://t.co/kMAWiHugcn

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) April 19, 2016

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Prospects for Human Survival (review)

Harry J. Bentham at the Blog

As a mathematician, Willard Wells provides much of his thought in probabilities as in his other book, Apocalypse When?, in Prospects for Human Survival. As scientifically valid as it may seem, there is reason to be skeptical of such an approach. It is hard to account for the proliferation of unknowns using probabilities based on current data.

No study of existing firepower in 1943 or 1944 would have told you that bombs would be able to blow up entire cities in a single blast by 1945. The humanity-killing forces of the future will be equally sudden and unexpected. They may suddenly emerge and destroy us all tomorrow, or they may never emerge. They could be developed in secrecy, as the Manhattan Project was, making any predictions based on what we do know unhelpful. Often, such things impose themselves on civilization without any omens, invented and used recklessly before they are even known to be dangerous even to the wisest and most skilled thinkers.

In the domain of atomically precise manufacturing (APM) or nanotechnology (nanotech) as it is commonly called, Wells correctly predicts new means of assassination (p. 67-69) by programming tiny robots to kill with poison. Remarkably, he then fails to acknowledge that governments would be the biggest abusers of such technology, instead arguing that giving even more authoritarian powers and invasive surveillance technologies to states (p. 91-92) is the only solution to such threats.

Consider the behavior of governments in the modern day. Although it is not law, they seem bound by an instruction to seek out, possess and use to maximum lethality and invasiveness any technology they find. They did this with the internet. No-one who made the internet or smart phones possible saw them as a way of having a bug or a camera installed in everyone's home, a way of quickly judging who to detain or assassinate to protect a regime. But governments still managed to make this nightmare possible.

The "grey goo" ecophagy (ecosphere-eating) nanotech disaster scenario presented by Robert A. Freitas is given some attention by Wells (p. 69). This is the scenario in which microscopic robots are capable of reproducing independently using whatever matter they encounter, and proceed to "eat" the world - or more specifically the biosphere, bringing an end to life as we know it on Earth. He argues, correctly, that this danger exists (albeit extremely unlikely) but that it cannot be averted by any ban on nanotech. Such a ban might only encourage more dangerous activities to be undertaken covertly, without sufficient review or intervention by the scientific community.

Wells asserts that there must be regulation of emerging nanotechnology to prevent or detect early the formation of such a disaster. This position in itself can be rejected for the same reasons as the hypothetical ban. Heavy regulation would only have the same result of pushing risk-prone entrepreneurs to working covertly, thus the danger of "irresponsible development" proliferates exactly as it would under the nose of any government ban. More probably, having maximum freedom coupled with transparency in the development of nanotech would be the safest route, as this way everything may be seen and the "good guys" can create defenses in time, as Wells encourages.

The best defense against runaway nanotechnology may be the fact that there is no rationale for someone in search of profit to produce self-replicating robots, as Wells himself points out:

"No sane robot manufacturer working for profit would make a self-replicant on their own because their market vanishes the moment their customers start giving away surplus units (just as people give away surplus kittens)." (p. 70)

So there is no reason for corporations to make the "grey goo" creating robots, at least when we look at it as a problem of self-replicating machines. It is perhaps possible, though, that some tiny refining or mining robots could uncontrollably malfunction and begin mining or cutting up everything they come into contact with, in a belief they are collecting minerals. If they had been deployed on a large scale by a mining company to process tons of ore, they might not need the ability to replicate in order to cause massive destruction in the surrounding environment.

Wells repeatedly imagines "terrorists" being the ultimate agents behind any possible technological threat emerging in the future, but often this seems close-minded or ignores far more obvious culprits. He writes, "Terrorists want self-replicators; legitimate users want factories making factories". This is based on the assumption that "legitimate" means commercially-minded, and anything else must be irrational terrorism. However, what of state agencies? The most powerful scientific end engineering corps today, those making the greatest strides in technology and paving the way for the corporations, are not profit-hungry corporations but state agencies. Self-replicators would almost certainly be needed in space colonization, so NASA (not ISIS) are the most likely ones to place an order for self-replicating robots.

Genetic engineering and its more advanced cousin, synthetic biology, could present similar threats of consumption or infestation of the environment. Wells offers a fascinating hypothetical scenario in which some type of manmade infestation (whether biological or technological) causes the destruction of vital marine ecosystems and destroys more than half the world's oxygen supply (p. 74-78). Wells postulates "conspirators" might seek to do this intentionally. It is such a specific event that an accident seems unlikely to cause it. However, this belief in exceedingly nasty and yet highly capable inventors ought to be rejected. It is not even clear how any terrorist would benefit from doing this. No extremist ideology exists, or has existed, that would want to destroy the world's oceans and make everyone sluggish through lack of oxygen, so it seems strange to theorize about this scenario at all.

Much like the above unlikely scenario is the "mad scientist" germ attack hypothesis, which is hardly valid from any historical perspective. The idea holds that a "mad scientist" might plot to destroy humanity by engineering a virus (p. 79). However, there is no real-life example of an evil scientist of the kind found in movies and comic books, so it does not make sense to ever expect there to be any in the future.

Within Prospects for Human Survival, little attention is given to biological threats. Biological agents have been intentionally designed to destroy entire continents' food supplies, and could be a very real threat to human survival if ever used, even coming back to wipe out the side that deployed the weapon in the first place. J. Craig Venter's discovery of how to artificially synthesize entire new genomes and invent and patent new living organisms is possibly the most consequential discovery of the century, and is not mentioned at all.

Wells' attitude towards surviving nuclear war and disaster seems ill considered. The talk of preserving humanity's seed using underground survival bunkers stocked with plenty of women for breeding purposes is something right out of Dr Strangelove. Wells argues that it doesn't matter if the wealthiest one percent (likely the ones who started the war) are the only ones who get to escape into these bunkers.

The political rationale for expenditures to save humanity's genetic future in the first place is not shared by Wells. Who told him anyone wants to save humanity? Most people actually have no interest in it, and would only be concerned by the more unpleasant scenarios in which they would personally undergo pain (e.g. shredded by a swarm of malfunctioning nanorobots). Couples voluntarily exterminate their genetic future all the time using contraceptives, and for worry over finance and the world's overpopulation. Wells (and for that matter Steven Hawking, who also comments that humanity must avoid extinction) have offered no argument for why human genes are special enough to be worth saving. For most people, whether humanity endures as a species is just irrelevant, and Prospects for Human Survival fails to appeal against their philosophy.

Although I concur with Wells on a number of issues about science, I disagree with many of the book's recommendations and fail to see the rationale behind others. Although there is no good reason to fear the development of artificial intelligence at this stage, Wells' kind of authoritarian artificial intelligence appointed to watch over and farm humanity for its safety is not enticing and seems dystopian (p. 91-92).

Futurism should not be about making excuses for concentrated authority, controlled scarcity, and hubs of control and supervision. We should be making excuses for total equality, total abundance, total freedom, and humanity's ultimate achievement of technological adulthood. If humanity is "irresponsible", it should not be treated like a group of children, but raised to adulthood, even at grave risk.

Existential risks don't matter to politics: The BlogCurrent political science and ideology concentrates on the... https://t.co/4JriUXBDEh

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) March 18, 2016

Harry J. Bentham

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