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Sam wages a different kind of cyberwar:

Evil Google: What you don’t know just might hurt you

Google as a company has a policy”You can make money without doing evil“, but the question is with a corner on the search market of the Internet and rolling out a variety of tools is that motto even possible to uphold. In a dictatorial and autocratic world where the span of the Internet crosses international borders can Google even claim to be “nice”.

To make our case that you may be in grave jeopardy up to and including national security consider this. What if the government bound by law not to gather personal information about citizens (Privacy Act 1974 could instead just purchase a large volume of information about citizens. Just such a deal was made by the government to purchase what it could not gather from ChoicePoint. Of course, ChoicePoint is the company that also sold records and personal identification information to Nigerian scam artists. Also, ChoicePoint is not above purportedly acting in an illegal manner as a corporation. We as individuals though think we have nothing to hide. That might be the case if the rest of the world was as ethical as we think we are.

And Sam has more:

….When challenged by this argument the luddites among us will of course say they do not even use GMAIL so therefore they are safe from the minions and Googliers. Of course they are right up until Google actually started taking pictures in our back yards. There is nothing like having our private lives instantiated on the web for the entire world to peruse.  You may have no expectation of privacy, but the recording of events, without your knowledge is a violation of your privacy. An argument that can be fought by different nations from different cultures. Do not worry though. Google was more than willing to violate peoples property rights to impact their privacy rights as they sought to record things they should not have had access too. One aspect is that regardless of how you feel about the technologies privacy aspects these same tools can be used by terrorists to impact national security . Of course when you have a satellite partially purchased by and used to assist the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Of course Google Earth can look down on our back yards behind our fences we erect for privacy to peer into our lives without our knowledge .

Read the rest here.

With governmental units trying to find all kinds of reasons to acquire records our DNA, we may soon see our own unique genomic code being used in massive databases to the financial benefit everyone else who can pay for the aggregation of data and to our own disadvantage. Corporations and government bureaucrats using such information (or misusing it, leaking it, altering it, deleting some of it) to make life-altering decisions for individuals or groups, most likely in secret, without notification or review. Can’t happen? Think about the shenanigans that can be inflicted (and are) upon critics and political opponents with the data already at the government’s disposal by vindictive idiots with access .

Does that worry you ?

Let’s see…..

UPDATED!

Top Billing! Dr. Mark Drapeau -“Government 2.0: Rise of the Goverati”

Some dread excess Obamoptimism here but an interesting and thoughtful take on how the new White House crowd are digital natives and successfully assimilated digital immigrants. Then again the twitter page for the Obama administration has not exactly been a house of fire. Neither has the White House blog which continues to underwhelm.

CTOvision – “Foreign Spies Make Recession Worse and Steal Part of Our Future”

Updated trend of the old Soviet bloc desire to steal as much as possible through industrial espionage, something that goes back to the days of AMTORG – and yes, we still suck at stopping it.

The Telegraph –  “CIA warns Barack Obama that British terrorists are the biggest threat to the US”

As long as we are on a CI kick today, maybe the easiest thing to do is to start social network mapping adherents of radical mosques for a strict scrutiny list regarding travel or funds transfer into the U.S. You want to attend services with a guy who preaches my murder and enslavement, fine, just don’t expect to come over here for a visit or to get an education or a job here or that we’ll easily let your relatives in either.

SEED –  Blogging the Origin

Doing for Charles Darwin what Chicagoboyz is doing for Carl von Clausewitz . The Smithsonian also has What Darwin Didn’t Know up.

SEED x 2 Here’s something important to consider for all COIN and 4GW enthusiasts:

“Chaos begets Chaos”

“A new study supports the controversial claim that people can be morally swayed by the state of their surroundings.”

Foreign Policy – Parag Khanna “The Road to Kabul Runs Through Beijing (and Tehran)”

Not endorsing but interesting. Good follow up on Nexon yesterday.

THANKS! to those who linked to my interview with Tom Barnett at SWJ last week, including Andrew Sullivan, FP’s This Week at War, HG’s World, Rethinking Security, Global Guerillas , MountainRunner…

TDAXP offers up the Hitler Downfall collection

Open the Future – Flunking Out

Like AE, Jamais Cascio is unimpressed with Singularity U.

That’s it!

Dr. Nexon on Russian moves in Central Asia.

The Small Wars Journal has published an interview I conducted with Dr. Thomas Barnett regarding his new book Great Powers: America and the World After Bush.

“Ten Questions with Thomas P.M. Barnett”

…. 4. In Great Powers, you delve deeply into American history. What lessons did you find in our nation’s past that the diplomat overseas, the Army colonel in Afghanistan or the U.S. Aid worker in Africa should know to navigate their mission today?

This is all about frontier integration. Globalization is like America’s rapid and aggressive push Westward across the 19th century: a lot of the same bad actors and a lot of the same tools applied. So don’t be surprised when the Pinkertons show up, or when the covered wagons are attacked, or when the Injuns head to the Badlands for sanctuary. Thus, the goals of our frontline players are fairly straightforward: create the baseline security to allow the connectivity to grow. Focus on social trust and institutions as much as possible, but co-opt existing structures whenever and wherever you can. It doesn’t have to be perfect and it sure as hell doesn’t have to measure up to America’s mature standards. This is a frontier setting within globalization-treat it as such. The good news is, the settlers are already there, with more uncredentialed wealth than we realize (see Hernando DeSoto), if you respect their existing rule-sets and realize they will change only when the locals see the need themselves, so no instant rule-set packages applied by outsiders, please. Finally, acknowledge that with growing connectivity with the outside world, you will see more nationalism, more ethnic tensions, and more religious identity. These are all natural reactions, and not signs of your failure, so patience is the key.

Read the whole thing here.

Special thanks to Dave Dilegge for providing the forum and to Sean Meade and Lexington Green with editorial assistance and astute advice.

Two recent Google related items in the news.

Google and Nasa back new school for futurists

Google and Nasa are throwing their weight behind a new school for futurists in Silicon Valley to prepare scientists for an era when machines become cleverer than people.

The new institution, known as “Singularity University”, is to be headed by Ray Kurzweil, whose predictions about the

exponential pace of technological change have made him a controversial figure in technology circles.

Google and Nasa’s backing demonstrates the growing mainstream acceptance of Mr Kurzweil’s views, which include a claim that before the middle of this century artificial intelligence will outstrip human beings, ushering in a new era of civilisation.

To be housed at Nasa’s Ames Research Center, a stone’s-throw from the Googleplex, the Singularity University will offer courses on biotechnology, nano-technology and artificial intelligence.

The so-called “singularity” is a theorised period of rapid technological progress in the near future. Mr Kurzweil, an American inventor, popularised the term in his 2005 book “The Singularity is Near”.

Proponents say that during the singularity, machines will be able to improve themselves using artificial intelligence and that smarter-than-human computers will solve problems including energy scarcity, climate change and hunger.

Yet many critics call the singularity dangerous. Some worry that a malicious artificial intelligence might annihilate the human race….

As much as I am inclined to point to the shortcomings of social scientists and my fellow historians, this “Google U.” could use a few of them, plus a philosopher or two, artist and humanities types, just to create some cognitive divergence.

Drs. Fernette and Brock Eide – Google is Changing Your Brain

Neurons that fire together, wire together, so if you are reading this post, chances are you already have a Google brain. Opposing viewpoints about whether having a Google brain is a good thing or bad thing are discussed in Discover magazine’s Google is Making Us Smarter and Atlantic Monthly’s Is Google Making Us Stupid?.

….From a brain-based perspective, our bias is that expertise often comes at a cost. As more brain resources get devoted to particular tasks, others shrink and weaken.

First the PROS: Google learning…

Read the rest here.

The Eide Neurolearning Blog is a “must read” blog for me and ha been for some time. I’ve read their book as well.

Google has become a culture-shaping force and a global 800 lb gorilla of the infosphere. Tweaking their algorithims determines intellectual perceptions – what if Google chose to “mold” searches for long term, strategic, political outcomes? Or corporate self-interest? 

Search dominance is kind of like determining who gets to use the alphabet circa 500 BC. Google’s founders have – wisely in my view – tried not to arouse the jealousy of nation-states or advertise too loudly the degree of soft power the company has acquired, pushing forward their impressive financial position as the easy, ” throw-away”, target for political darts from critics and positioning themselves in P.R. vis-a-vis Microsoft, another “villain” corporation in some quarters.

Very smart.