Stolen Headlines 5: ‘My Corona’

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In this Stolen Headlines, we invite show supporters Tim Reutemann and Mendel Skulski to discuss Coronavirus - how various world governments have responded so far, and the role information technology has played in detecting, containing and eradicating the disease. Tim introduces the informal hackathon he's initiated along with this wife, as a platform for people to do something about the virus.

We discuss: how Taiwan has approached containing Coronavirus, and whether the surveillance provisions set up in order to contain the disease could persist after it's resolved. And we argue about whether modern, data-driven totalitarian societies like China are proving themselves more efficient than free-market economies in addressing Coronavirus, and whether this points to any unexpected advantages this new state form may have over the Western model in the future.

Tim brought the stolen headlines for this show (via Google Translate). The first piece we discuss looks at how the first Swiss citizens became infected with the virus and how the Swiss government has responded to the infection.

The second is a detailed reflection from blogger Alex Kunz on his experience of Coronavirus in Taiwan.

Joey & Tim's Coronavirus Hackathon is organizing itself via Discord. There's already a couple of investors staking cash to help the best ideas get realised. If you'd like to help out, you're welcome to join -- you'll also find me there! Come say hi at: https://discord.gg/tfsCfk2

On The Frontline Of The Code War, with John P. Carlin

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In this episode Jamie meets up with John P. Carlin, author of Dawn of the Code War and former Assistant Attorney General for the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Security Division to discuss the ongoing network war with China -- one that's about to ratchet up, as 5G connects billions of devices via a technology heavily dependent on China's Huawei.

What does it mean to wage war in the era of distributed networks? How do networks change the very idea of 'Command and Control' towards leaderless, non-hierarchical memetic structures? We dig into crowdsourced terrorism' of Al Qaeda and look at some similarities with Anonymous and the QAnon phenomenon.

Finally, we discuss the widespread idea that there's a kind of break with authority going on in the online era—what could be described as an 'epistemological crisis' created by our hyper-informational environment—one that's being exploited and amplified by various lords of chaos to create new and unpredictable political realities.

‘The Assassin’s Mace’: Strange Asymmetries In The Soft War With China

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In Fighting For The Perimeter: Huawei & The 5G Surveillance Empire. I looked at 5G as a new global surveillance surface, one largely dependent on Huawei, a company run by ex-officer of China's military.

Using the documentary American Factory as a springboard, this episode looks at how and why the West has allowed a strategic adversary to occupy key elements of its economic infrastructure. Transnational capital was supposed to create a world of free-market democracies. Instead, China has used the free market system to maintain and grow itself into a dominant ‘command economy’, based on a highly technologized form of authoritarian capitalism. 

What are the consequences of hooking up our factories, nuclear power production, and networking infrastructure to a Chinese state which is openly seeking empire and hegemony? 

This is a kind of precursor to the next episode in this sequence, which will look at the role information technology is playing in the success of China’s centralised command economy. Why might a state based on centralised control succeed, in today's digital environment, where others in the past have failed?

STOLEN HEADLINES #2 ‘Treason & Trust’

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In this second installment of Stolen Headlines, cybersecurity experts Sean Lynch and Adam Burns discuss why Peter Thiel thinks Google's co-operation with China on AI is treasonous; how governments around the world are increasingly employing internet shutdowns as a political tool; and what to do about the fact that Android is increasingly rife with malware.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/01/opinion/peter-thiel-google.html
https://www.accessnow.org/keepiton/

Fighting For The Perimeter: Huawei & The 5G Surveillance Empire

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In this episode, I consider the inter-state struggle over 5G, the rollout of which will create a new global surveillance surface. Who will control this massive new opportunity to surveil the world's data? If China gets its way, it will be Huawei, run by ex-Chinese-military officer Ren Zhengfei. And if the precedent of the world pharmaceutical market - almost completely controlled by China - is anything to go by, there may not be much anyone can do to stop them.