2016 is just around the corner and there’s a lot to keep an eye on in Asia in the first month of the year. In January 2016, we’ll see elections in Taiwan, the formal operational launch of China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the possible resumption of peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban, the first steps toward renewed comprehensive talks between India and China, and the possible disintegration of a recently concluded controversial deal between the Japanese and South Korean governments on comfort women. Here’s your guide to starting off the new year with an eye to some early developments of geopolitical significance in the Asia-Pacific:...
Replacing Judgment with Algorithms →
China is considering a new "social credit" system, designed to rate everyone's trustworthiness. Many fear that it will become a tool of social control -- but in reality it has a lot in common with the algorithms and systems that score and classify us all every day.
Human judgment is being replaced by automatic algorithms, and that brings with it both enormous benefits and risks. The technology is enabling a new form of social control, sometimes deliberately and sometimes as a side effect. And as the Internet of Things ushers in an era of more sensors and more data -- and more algorithms -- we need to ensure that we reap the benefits while avoiding the harms.
Right now, the Chinese government is watching how companies use "social credit" scores in state-approved pilot projects. The most prominent one is Sesame Credit, and it's much more than a financial scoring system.
Citizens are judged not only by conventional financial criteria, but by their actions and associations. Rumors abound about how this system works...
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This is what social control looks like in the Internet age. The Cold-War-era methods of undercover agents, informants living in your neighborhood, and agents provocateur is too labor-intensive and inefficient. These automatic algorithms make possible a wholly new way to enforce conformity. And by accepting algorithmic classification into our lives, we're paving the way for the same sort of thing China plans to put into place.
It doesn't have to be this way. We can get the benefits of automatic algorithmic systems while avoiding the dangers. It's not even hard.
The first step is to make these algorithms public. Companies and governments both balk at this, fearing that people will deliberately try to game them, but the alternative is much worse.
The second step is for these systems to be subject to oversight and accountability. It's already illegal for these algorithms to have discriminatory outcomes, even if they're not deliberately designed in. This concept needs to be expanded. We as a society need to understand what we expect out of the algorithms that automatically judge us and ensure that those expectations are met.
Obama said gun owners would support his new restrictions. He was right. →
A new CNN-ORC survey of 1,000 Americans finds that the public supports Obama's plan by a 2-to-1 ratio: 67 percent of respondents favored the executive actions, while 32 percent opposed them. Even more striking, a similar share of people in gun-owning households -- 63 percent -- supported the measures.
Even more striking: 51 percent of Republicans support Obama's executive action on guns. When's the last time 51 percent of Republicans agreed with Obama on anything?
We are Terrorized: Why U.S. Counterterrorism Policy Is Failing, and Why It Can’t Be Easily Fixed →
The fact that Americans remain fearful of terrorism is surprising in several respects. Judged in purely probabilistic terms, terrorism poses a far less significant threat to human life than a host of hazards, from lightning strikes, to collisions with animals, to falling household furniture. “An American’s chance of being killed by a terrorist,” note Mueller and Stewart, “has been, and remains, one in four million per year with 9/11 included in the calculation, or one in 110 million for the period since 2001.” More Americans have been killed by weather incidents in the last two weeks than have been killed by attacks by Islamist extremists on U.S. soil in the last 14 years.
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But we generally refuse to assess the costs and benefits of different counterterrorism measures. Our reactions to terrorist events that claim tens or hundreds of lives differ from other horrific events, from hurricanes to wars, which kill thousands or millions. Extreme anxiety about terrorism leads to far greater tolerance for public policies that impinge on individual liberty, even though they may or may not actually reduce our likelihood of being killed or injured by a terrorist attack.
Responsible counterterrorism policy, therefore, must not merely disrupt terror cells, impede their planning, and thwart their ability to attract new recruits; it must also tackle the fear that terrorists seek to induce.
Wind, solar power soaring in spite of bargain prices for fossil fuels →
Wind and solar power appear set for a record-breaking year in 2016 as a clean-energy construction boom gains momentum in spite of a global glut of cheap fossil fuels.
Installations of wind turbines and solar panels soared in 2015 as utility companies went on a worldwide building binge, taking advantage of falling prices for clean technology as well as an improving regulatory and investment climate...
Lethal Force as First Resort: Tamir Rice’s death is what happens when we don’t require police to accept risk →
More broadly, police are empowered to take control of all situations by any means necessary, even those that aren’t criminal. They have no obligation to survey a situation to seek the least violent resolution. Taken together, these prerogatives—established time and again, by departments across the country—encourage police to use lethal force as the first resort.
It’s tempting to see this with sympathy. Police, after all, are just ordinary people. They want to go home to their friends, partners, and children. Blue lives matter, goes the mantra, police have a right to go home safely. This is true, but only to an extent. Part of policing is risk. Not just the inevitable risk of the unknown, but voluntary risk. We ask police to “serve and protect” the broad public, which—at times—means accepting risk when necessary to defuse dangerous situations and protect lives, innocent or otherwise. It’s why we give them weapons and the authority to use them; why we compensate them with decent salaries and generous pensions; why we hold them in high esteem and why we give them wide berth in procedure and practice.
What we see with Tamir Rice—and what we’ve seen in shootings across the country—is what happens when the officer’s safety supercedes the obligation to accept risk. If “going home” is what matters—and risk is unacceptable—then the instant use of lethal force makes sense. It’s the only thing that guarantees complete safety from harm.
It’s also antithetical to the call to “serve and protect.”...
President Obama's boldest action on guns yet, explained →
It's largely about making sure background checks take place (closing loopholes, adding staff to run more checks in a timely manner).
The Tamir Rice Decision Is the Breaking Point →
...Police officers don’t steer clear of these kinds of consequences merely because they stay quiet about the misdeeds of other cops. They have help. Not only are there structural standards for legal killings that favor an officer’s “objectively reasonable” survival instincts over the life of an unarmed citizen, but also the very lawyers charged with seeking punishment for the officers can enforce those standards. The Tamir Rice investigation is the clearest example yet of why independent investigators and prosecutors must be assigned by state authorities to every case of police violence.
That was made clear at Monday’s press conference, where Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty announced that a grand jury had determined that no criminal charges would be filed against Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback, the two Cleveland police officers involved in Rice’s death. Given the lack of success lately in that arena, the Rice family had been girding themselves for this outcome. But the grand jury got a big push from McGinty himself, who revealed that he’d recommended that no charges be filed, in direct contradiction to the mandate of his elected office: to faithfully seek indictments and prosecute cases so as to make his jurisdiction a safer place to live. “That was also my recommendation and that of our office after reviewing the investigation and the law,” he said on Monday.
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It was a presser you might see a defense attorney give. Their performance lent credence to earlier criticisms from Tamir’s mother, Samaria, and her attorneysconcerning the behavior of McGinty and his office before the grand jury: badgering and mocking expert witnesses provided by the family, weakening their own case while defending the officers’ due process. Having committed this obvious a dereliction of duty and then crowing about it, McGinty should resign immediately.