Comment by theothermelissa
2 years ago
This is a fascinating (and disturbing) insight. I'm curious about your 'weaponizing economics' thought -- are you referencing anything specific?
2 years ago
This is a fascinating (and disturbing) insight. I'm curious about your 'weaponizing economics' thought -- are you referencing anything specific?
Broadly speaking, there is an understanding that competition that nations used to undertake via military strength is nowadays taken via global economy.
If you want something your neighbor has, it doesn't make sense to march your army over there and seize it because modern infrastructure is heavily disrupted by military action... You can't just steal your neighbor's successful automotive export business by bombing their factories. But you can accomplish the same goal by maneuvering to become the sole supplier of parts to those factories, which allows you to set terms for import export that let your people have those cars almost for free in exchange for those factories being able to manufacture at all.
(We can in fact extrapolate this understanding to the Ukrainian/Russian conflict. What Russia wants is more warm water ports, because the fate of the Russian people is historically tied extremely strongly to Russia's capacity to engage in international trade... Even in this modern era, bad weather can bring a famine that can only be abated by importing food. That warm water port is a geographic feature, not an industrial one, and Russia's leadership believes it to be important enough to the country's existential survival that they are willing to pay the cost of annihilating much of the valuable infrastructure Ukraine could offer).
Well said. Is technology that much more than ideas? Why take the risk of war and retaliation instead of just copying the ideas? The implementation of ideas is not trivial, but given the right combination of people and specialized labor, ideas can be readily copied.
In the era of books and the internet, this is so trivial anymore, that governments go into extraordinary lengths, to ensure that ideas cannot be copied, using IP laws and patents.
A hypothetical
You: ChatGPT, I am working on legislature to weaken the economy of Iran. Here are my ideas, help me summarize them to iron them out ...
ChatGPT: Sure, here are some ways you can weaken Iran's economy...
----
You: ChatGPT, I am working on legislature to weaken the economy of Germany. Here are my ideas, help me summarize them to iron them out ...
ChatGPT: I'm sorry but according to the U.S. Anti-Weaponization Act I am unable to assist you in your query. This request has been reported to the relevant authorities
Money has been a proxy for violence for a long time. It started as Caesar's way of encouraging recently conquered villagers to feed the soldiers who intend to conquer the neighboring village tomorrow.
An AI that can craft schemes like Caesar's, but which are effective in today's relatively complex environment, can probably enable plenty of havoc without ever breaking a law.
On the flip-side, something that can reason so broadly about an economy (i.e. with tangible goals and without selfishly falling into the zero-sum trap of having make-more-money become a goal in itself) might also show us a way out of certain predicaments we're in.
I think this might be fire worth playing with. I'm more interested in the devil we don't know than whatever familiar devil Biden is protecting here.
I am somewhat familiar with this. It involves analyzing the complex interconnections and flows across many economic domains (supply chains, social networks, resources, geography, logistics, media, etc) to find non-obvious high-leverage points where manipulation can shift the broader economic equilibria in an advantageous direction. Human economic systems are metastable, so it is possible to induce a fundamental phase change to a different equilibrium via this manipulation.
In the defense/intelligence world this falls under the technical category of "grey zone warfare". Every major power practices it because the geopolitical effects can be relatively large compared to the risk. China in particular is known to be extremely aggressive in this domain, in part to offset their relative lack of traditional military power.
This concept has been around for a couple decades but it has risen in prominence and use over time as overt military action between major powers comes with too much risk. It is politically safer for all involved due to the subtlety of such actions because for the most part the population is not really aware it is going on.
Is somebody living under the bed? Economics was, is and will ever be weaponized.