•• MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. “In its quest to maintain a United States military advantage, the Pentagon is aggressively turning to Silicon Valley’s hottest technology — artificial intelligence.” This is how an article in the New York Times begins, on May 13th 2016. And there is a lesson here, for those of us with an interest in global journalism. But first – the story continues: “On Wednesday, Secretary of Defence Ashton B. Carter made his fourth trip to the tech industry’s heartland since being named to his post last year. Before that, it had been 20 years since a defence secretary had visited the area, he noted in a speech at a Defence Department research facility near Google’s headquarters.” Below the news headline, and in between the sentences, the question posing itself is why news like these ought to be on a top shelf in any study of global journalism?
What is the connection between artificial intelligence, the US defence industry and global journalism? It seems like an innocent story, but reading this story is a reminder of how the entire, modern communications industry development comes full circle – for it began with military defence interests. Without it, there would have been no Silicon Valley. There would have been no Mountain View, nor any Google. As the article aptly accounts for, the bonds between an emergent computer and satellite industry during WW2 and into the 1950´s is what is behind such research centers as Strategic Research International, or SRI, in Menlo Park in Northern California. Moffett Airfields, the development of semiconductors, the development of new metal alloys used in the Apple Macintosh laptop computers – all of that has a history. As does the development of the Internet.
So here is a thought:
Take a look at this link, and you will find President Eisenhower´s original speech on the rise of the Military-Industrial Complex. This is what he says in segment number two: “We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America’s leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment”.
Later on in segment number four he goes on to say this, and I encourage you to read the rest of it, too: “This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society”.
What is to be learned from Eisenhower?
There is, in this one speech, writ large a connection between military strength and a democratic vision that continues to be a pillar and a foundation in the United States. However, one often wonders how deep that understanding actually goes in US political stakeholders? The idea that a military interest penetrate down to the core of society – in the US, as eslewhere? We live in a world of immense complexity and turbulence, where the might of the US is quite different from what it was back in the “day of Ike” – President Eisenhower. We live in a time where revelations of military intelligence penetrating civil society through means of current computing capability, ought to scare jus as much as reassure – or more.
Yet, for someone who travels to Silicon Valley regularly, there is the frequent reminder that very few people who dream big on El Camino Real from San Francisco to San José a few miles South, have an sense of history´s role in connecting the military and their own billion dollar dreaming. Sit at a table in any local restaurant and overhear hear the conversations – something which you cannot avoid in restaurants like these: There is the dream of a start-up success or of landing a job with the interesting companies already prospering.
Today, one of the largest companies in the world developing the future of artificial intelligence – is Google. The are others, some known and some not. There are small, fun ventures, like OtherLab up in San Francisco. A key area in which we see the civic uses of AI is driverless cars, but there are very many other uses – many of which will introduce new and still unthought of political paradoxes for an open society. A car like Tesla would not exist without it. Modern classrooms are or will be full of it.
As a newspaper reader, thoughts like these come to mind when I read the story on how Secretary of Defence Ashton B. Carter comes to Mountain View, home of Google — and, yes, some of the other tech giants.
Then you wonder
A key issue in Global Journalism, no doubt: How we spend military money on developing technologies that create as many political quagmires as they solve societal and civilisational needs.
There is an interesting twist to this, and here it is: The photo above, if you click it, takes you to a rather intriguing article on the Activist Post website. It is not a site I know too well, but I am getting there. It is a reminder that the open society information culture that brings the story of a Secretary of Defence in the US to me, a reader in Europe, also rests on that very technology the US Defence Industry has helped foster over decades, while at the same time allowing me to pursue channels such as Activist Post.