“The first inning’s prevailing ethos was that any technology that makes the world more open by connecting us or makes us more equal by empowering us individually must, in and of itself, be a force for good,” Seidman began. “But, in inning two, we are coming to grips with the reality that the power to make the world more open and equal is not in the technologies themselves. It all depends on how the tools are designed and how we choose to use them. The same amazing tech that enables people to forge deeper relationships, foster closer communities and give everyone a voice can also breed isolation, embolden racists, and empower digital bullies and nefarious actors.”
.. “The world is fused. So there no place anymore to stand to the side and claim neutrality — to say, ‘I am just a businessperson’ or ‘I am just running a platform.’ ”.. In the fused world, Seidman said, “the business of business is no longer just business. The business of business is now society. And, therefore, how you take or don’t take responsibility for what your technology enables or for what happens on your platforms is inescapable... “Software solutions can increase our confidence that we can stay a step ahead of the bad guys. But, fundamentally, it will take more ‘moralware’ to regain our trust. Only one kind of leadership can respond to this kind of problem — moral leadership.”.. What does moral leadership look like here?“Moral leadership means truly putting people first and making whatever sacrifices that entails,”
.. “That means not always competing on shallow things and quantity — on how much time people spend on your platform — but on quality and depth. It means seeing and treating people not just as ‘users’ or ‘clicks,’ but as ‘citizens,’ who are worthy of being accurately informed to make their best choices. It means not just trying to shift people from one click to another, from one video to another, but instead trying to elevate them in ways that deepen our connections and enrich our conversations.”
.. It means, Seidman continued, being “fully transparent about how you operate, and make decisions that affect them — all the ways in which you’re monetizing their data. It means having the courage to publish explicit standards of quality and expectations of conduct, and fighting to maintain them however inconvenient. It means having the humility to ask for help even from your critics. It means promoting civility and decency, making the opposite unwelcome.
.. At the height of the Cold War, when the world was threatened by spreading Communism and rising walls, President John F. Kennedy vowed to “pay any price and bear any burden” to ensure the success of liberty.
John Bolton Is Right About the U.N.
The U.N. is a never-ending scandal disguised as an everlasting hope. The hope is that dialogue can overcome distrust and collective security can be made to work in the interests of humanity. Reality says otherwise. Trust is established by deeds, not words. Collective security is a recipe for international paralysis or worse. Just ask the people of Aleppo.
.. Contrary to the belief that the U.N. runs on a shoestring, total expenditure for the U.N. system in 2016 was around $49 billion. That’s up 22 percent since 2010. And the abuse of the U.N. system by states such as Russia to protect clients like Bashar al-Assad is a feature of the system, not a bug.
.. “If you locked a team of evil geniuses in a laboratory, they could not design a bureaucracy so maddeningly complex, requiring so much effort but in the end incapable of delivering the intended result. The system is a black hole into which disappear countless tax dollars and human aspirations, never to be seen again.”
.. The U.N. adopted what were supposed to be landmark reforms more than decade ago. Yet the mismanagement, corruption, abuses and moral perversities remain.
- Iran sits on the executive board of the Commission on the Status of Women. The
- Syrian regime is represented on the U.N.’s Special Committee on Decolonization, dedicated to “respect for self-determination of all peoples.” In October, Zimbabwe’s
- Robert Mugabe was named a good-will ambassador by the World Health Organization, until an outcry forced the director general to think better of it.
.. “Imagine if the U.N. was going to the United States and raping children and bringing cholera,” Mario Joseph, a Haitian lawyer seeking compensation for the U.N.’s victims, told The A.P., “Human rights aren’t just for rich white people.”
Can North Korea Trust Us?
on a few questions there is real consistency across his years as a public eminence.
- One is his belief, which may give us new steel tariffs, that America is a big loser from the international trade system.
- Another, which may give us a Trumpian tête-à-tête with Kim Jong-un, is his belief that he alone can solve the problem of nuclear proliferation.
In 1984, near the peak of Reagan-era nuclear fears, he told The Washington Post that he should lead nuclear deal-making with the Soviets.
Six years later, he warned Playboy that “the greatest of all stupidities is people’s believing [nuclear war] will never happen.”
In 1999, flirting with a presidential bid, he promised to “negotiate like crazy” to prevent North Korea from going nuclear.
.. But we also have no clear example to offer Pyongyang of a denuclearization that worked out for the authoritarian regime that accepted it.
.. Where denuclearization has happened successfully, it has generally followed a
- transition from dictatorship to democracy (as in Brazil and Argentina), been
- part of such a transition (Ukraine) or been
- a prelude to regime change (as in South Africa).
.. Ukraine, which gave up its nuclear weapons in return for guarantees from Russia and the United States, only to find that guarantee a dead letter in an age of Putinist aggression.. Then there is the case of Iraq... Any authoritarian regime observing that history might reasonably conclude that nuclear weapons should be sought and never be given up ….. Especially since our next president decided to tacitly confirm that lesson, by pursing regime change in Libya after the Libyan dictator had agreed to close down his own W.M.D. program. The spectacle of Qaddafi getting murdered by a Libyan mob, however roughly just, was also an object lesson in the downsides of believing that the Americans will care about a W.M.D. deal if the opportunity arises to remove you afterward... Despite our official commitment to nonproliferation, then, the revealed preference of our foreign policy elite is often for other priorities — NATO expansion, humanitarian intervention, regime change.
.. the deal that Kim dearly wants to extract from us — a limited denuclearization in return for our withdrawal from the Korean Peninsula — would probably have disastrous effects for regional security and the larger Pax Americana.
- .. persuade Pyongyang that we might attack if they keep raising the nuclear ante and
- that we really don’t care about toppling them otherwise.
How Does War Teach Soldiers About Love?
Journalist Sebastian Junger was embedded with soldiers in the Korengal Valley during the war in Afghanistan. One of the reasons some veterans miss war, he says, is because it fulfills a deep human need to belong to a trusted group.
Many soldiers experience intense connections, without fully understanding what they experienced.
How does this experience of a common enemy compare to Rene Girard’s ideas about the first scapegoating process.