On 31 Dec 2017, at 14:11, Brian Holmes wrote:
the idea of 'dual-use' technologies... is mostly a clerical
distinction
So the people behind the DARPA Grand Challenges are clerics?
Ted, we could have a relatively boring discussion about how US
military investments have played a role parallel but not analogous to
that of central-planning agencies like Japan's MITI when it comes to
steering technological development - but either I misunderstand you,
or you seem behind the curve on this one? What exactly is your
objection?
DARPA / etc certainly aren't clerical, and their impact has been beyond
comprehension. And they're also just a vanguardist face of a much larger
force. If anything, people tend to grossly underestimate the range and
depth of military activities on the fabric of everyday life.
Not so long ago the bucket of stuff we call 'technology' was mostly
artisanal: variations on themes whose boundaries were defined by
specialized types of labor. In a world were that legacy was still
dominant, it made more sense to declare X or Y technologies 'military'
and/or 'peaceful.' That's what I meant by 'clerical': file under ____.
But times have changed.
More and more energy has gone into filling in the blanks between X and
Y: systematic efforts to assemble libraries of knowledge, techniques,
and resources that turn the difference between (two arbitrary examples)
a 'gun' and a 'ship' into a smooth continuum. So, to offer a silly
example, a few centuries ago you'd go to a gunsmith or a shipwright; a
few centuries from now you'll say here's the challenge, and the system
will spit out some bespoke system that's that's sort of a gun and sort
of a ship. But it could just easily be a 'sock' and a 'carburetor' or a
'bobblehead' and a 'stethoscope.' The endpoints matter less than the
ability to fill in *all* the blanks between them: resourcing, materials,
manufacturing, application, deployment, maintenance, and of course
financial.
Biochemistry is a good applied example: if you need a protein with
receptors A/B/C arranged in spatial configuration X/Y/Z, then the
challenge is to (a) identify the biochemically inert molecular scaffolds
that'll support those specifications, then (b) work backwards to figure
out which would be most efficient to manufacture, given resources D/E/F.
But the boundaries that define biochemistry (or any other field) are
becoming porous: increasingly it's just one approach among many for
manufacturing whatever.
In such a world, it becomes much harder to declare X or Y technologies
'military' and/or 'peaceful' — or, rather, the definition become more
capricious. And, when every aspect of this relies on Turing machines,
what exactly are we trying to define? This problem came into clear focus
in something Morlock mentioned in earlier, ITAR, the US regulatory
structure aimed at limiting 'International Traffic in Arms Regulations,'
which until ~1997 classified cryptography as a weapon. Cypherpunks-type
led the challenge to that by arguing that math is a form of speech, that
you can't prohibit the laws of the universe, etc. But that was just the
tip of the iceberg.
With every passing day, we see how seemingly benign things can be
'weaponized.' We could dismiss that phrase as just some lite/pop
appropriation of a bureaucratic distinction, but I think that's
backwards on every level. It assumes that things that were seen as
benign or beneficial are now being misused. But I think the reality is
that, for many people, those things were never entirely benign or
beneficial — they were just the perks that one part of the population
enjoyed. It's not an accident that the weaponization of everything is
happening precisely when a certain world order shows signs of collapse.
The pearl-clutching classes will look around and tell themselves that
the world is changing *because* evil-doers are weaponizing the stable
ideas and institutions of society — for example, that Trump won
*because* Russia manipulated the US elections. That may be true, but the
analysis doesn't end there: we could look back at US efforts to bring
down the USSR, or US interventions in others' elections, or the US's
neglect of its own electoral machinery, or whatever. But beyond those
debates, which are usually moral, we can see how the idea that things
are being 'weaponized' is less about how they're being used than who
they're being pointed at — 'us.'
Hence my objection to the idea of 'dual-use' technologies: it assumes
there are separate domains, war and peace, military and civilian. The
freedom to apply that distinction is precious indeed, and it's becoming
very fragile. We can respond by quoting lines from Yeats's Second Coming
and praying that our retirement savings lasts longer than we do —
basically what the 'centrist' US is doing. Or we can recognize what lots
of people have been saying all along, that the distinction was never so
clear.
Cheers,
Ted
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