Asia & the Pacific

Joseph Nye argues hat the major threat to U.S. power comes from its internal divisions. These are serious liabilities but they were not created by the invasion of Ukraine.

Joseph Nye argues that prudence results from the fear of creating unintended consequences in unpredictable systems and can develop into a norm of nonuse or limited use of certain weapons or a norm of limiting targets. Something like this happened with nuclear weapons when the superpowers came close to the brink of nuclear war in 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis. The Limited Test Ban Treaty followed a year later.

The cryptocurrency depends on the integrity of the blockchain. But China's censors, the FBI, or powerful corporations could fragment it into oblivion, warn Barath Raghavan and Bruce Schneier.

Joseph Nye writes that the world is increasingly obsessed with the ongoing power struggle between the United States and China. But the technology-driven shift of power away from states to transnational actors and global forces brings a new and unfamiliar complexity to global affairs.

Bruce Schneier writes that the 5G network has plenty of security weaknesses, including ones the United States doesn’t want to fix since they help its own surveillance efforts.

Bruce Schneier writes that when it comes to 5G technology, a trustworthy system needs to be built out of untrustworthy parts.  It is not even really known how to build secure systems out of secure parts, let alone out of parts and processes that aren't trustworthy and that are almost certainly being subverted by governments and criminals around the world.

Bruce Schneier  explains that there is no escaping the technology of inevitable surveillance. Consumers have little choice but to rely on the companies that build their computers and write their software, whether in  smartphones,  5G wireless infrastructure, or subway cars.  China is more likely to try to get data from the U.S. communications infrastructure like the United States does rather than try to produce a subway car outfitted with surveillance apparatus.

The authors recommend that the United States should increase funding for AI research and  continue to treat it as an open scientific endeavor. Surveillance is no justification for machine learning, and real progress in AI does not need it.