@dgolumbia @ruchowdh @pluralistic I haven't checked here in awhile. Bad mistake! Thanks for reposting my #ComputingAsOppression article. I'd LIKE to think that we're not helpless against it. Where is Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (#CPSR)?!

@MadKane

Trump's impenetrable dome proposal reminds me of a 1985 sequence in the Doonesbury comic strip, from the time when Reagan had proposed to do the same with his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which was nicknamed "Star Wars" after the Star Wars movie series (episode IV was released in 1977 and VI in 1983, so it was a familiar and exciting popular metaphor, and, if you'll pardon the pun, offered a new hope).

The comic makes its point well. Everyone should read it:

https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1985/11/22

Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR), a lovely but now defunct organization that created forums where I learned a great deal about technology ethics, originally focused on debunking the notion that it was a good idea to rely on AI and SDI to protect the US or to guide 'launch on warning' systems at speeds that would not involve humans.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Professionals_for_Social_Responsibility

We need CPSR or something like it today. Too much is happening in tech that is unchecked. Although organizations like eff.org and epic.org have continued to field some of the issues, and there are some new ones like Center for Humane Technology (CHT) that give me fresh hope in the ethics arena.

https://www.humanetech.com

But tech is a big area and there's always room for more ethics.

And by ethics I don't mean cute rules about how to do things right, I mean relentless asking of hard questions about whether what we think is right is really right. It is the asking and even re-asking of hard questions in a dynamically changing landscape, not any particular static plateau of answers, that keep us ethically honest.

In the modern fast-paced world of tech we tend to defer ethics until we can see what it can do. Then later when we know what it can do, we say it is too entrenched to go back. So pesky ethics is never in play. That is a very dangerous way to run a society. Star Trek,and science fiction generally, is full of cautionary tales about the myriad paths to disaster that can happen when ability outpaces wisdom.

Historically it's lucky people did stay in the loop, asking hard questions. Anyone who doesn't know the story of Stanislav Petrov should take a moment to read and ponder it:

Stanislav Petrov: The man who may have saved the world
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24280831.amp

Also the idea of something impenetrable gives the sense of an arms race, undoing all the work done to reduce nuclear threats no side can win.

The modern risk is from within, not by remote launch, but Trump believes in massive expenditures on infallible walls. It is a metaphor for his belief in racism; or vice versa, I'm not sure, but the two are intertwined. It's about insulating and purifying us. He believes safety is achieved by separating Good People from Bad People in order to allow some resulting Utopia to thrive. It's a gross fantasy from start to end.

This dome folly would also bring huge cost with little benefit, modern warfare having changed to be so much more asymmetric in ways that this would not address. But it WOULD likely delight the capitalist military industrial complex, who will surely find a way to toss donations his way.

Sadly ironic that the party that adores telling us we must spend within our means and that government programs must pay for themselves will line up lobbyists to tell us "but not in this case". Reagan spent out of control, ballooning the national debt, in ways Trump seems excited to repeat.

#Doonesbury #SDI #Trump #Reagan #Nuclear #Tech #Technology #risk #risks #CPSR #CHT #StarWars #Capitalism #AI #ethics #Warfare #DebtLimit #Military #MilitaryIndustrialComplex #Racism #SciFi #StarTrek #politics #society