Thanks Pieter, Yes; good to have. Well ordered too.
Eric > On Aug 25, 2025, at 5:50, Pieter Steenekamp <[email protected]> > wrote: > > Eric, > > There have been many interesting responses, but I think I still owe you a > reply to your question: “What things do you think you see, Pieter?” > > Here’s what I see: > > 1. Some statistics > > According to Our World in Data, the frequency of “extrastate conflicts” (wars > between states) has been declining significantly since the early 1800s: > https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/conflict-data?Conflict+type=Extrastate+conflicts&Measure=Conflict+rate&Data+source=Correlates+of+War+%E2%80%93+Wars&Sub-measure=All+ongoing+conflicts > > <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fourworldindata.org%2fexplorers%2fconflict-data%3fConflict%2btype%3dExtrastate%2bconflicts%26Measure%3dConflict%2brate%26Data%2bsource%3dCorrelates%2bof%2bWar%2b%25E2%2580%2593%2bWars%26Sub-measure%3dAll%2bongoing%2bconflicts&c=E,1,6NyGzUnFEYKp7aF1owtmwCsXjx9u_eGdx28EB1ujsN1EzVfo7mTNXhM735PLbRP-_lR-ZSdxBAfPX4G8PdtqV_U8N1gPDuWzowDu0sVLAgUsf4o,&typo=1> > > So, despite the noise and the occasional flare-up, the long-term trend line > points downward. > > 2. A narrative inspired by Harari (on Ukraine) > After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I listened to Yuval Harari’s > analysis (I don’t have the exact reference, so this is partly memory plus my > own interpretation). His point — which resonated with me — was that Russia > had already “lost” the war within months, if measured by its objectives. > > Even if Ukraine were somehow to collapse entirely, Russia has still suffered > immense losses: > > Putin lost credibility and influence in the broader post-Soviet region. > > Russia’s economy took a deep hit, and future growth prospects are now stunted. > > NATO was strengthened, with Finland joining and Sweden soon after — exactly > the opposite of Russia’s stated aims. > > By the yardstick of “what was hoped for vs. what was gained,” Russia’s net > loss is obvious. > > My takeaway: this sends a powerful message to other leaders who might > consider territorial aggression. The costs, in today’s world, can outweigh > the short-term gains. > > 3. Another narrative (Harari-inspired, expanded) > In Sapiens, Harari describes how language and gossip helped strengthen > altruism. Among chimps, altruism exists but cheating is rampant. With humans, > gossip ensured that cheaters were exposed, reducing the payoff from cheating > and encouraging cooperation. > > Extending this to modern times: before mass communication, altruism worked > inside groups but violence between groups was common. Today, with global > media and social networks, “gossip” operates at a planetary scale. Leaders > can’t hide what they do. > > Take Putin as an example: in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, the world > complained but largely let it slide. This time, the “global gossip network” > has made him an outcast. Other ambitious leaders are watching and calculating > whether they could afford the same kind of isolation. > > 4. The American context > After Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the American public has little appetite > for another large-scale foreign war. A president who tries to drag the > country into one risks enormous pushback from the electorate. This is not a > guarantee against future misadventures, but it is a strong counterweight. > > 5. Something else I see (the technology factor) > There’s one more thread that seems worth adding. Modern technology makes war > both harder and less rewarding in some cases: > > Drones and cheap precision weapons allow even small countries to inflict > significant damage on larger powers. > > Economic sanctions, while imperfect, can be deployed faster and with more > coordination than in the past. > > Supply chains are global, which means that aggressors risk cutting themselves > off from the very technologies and markets they depend on. > > In other words, the tools of modern globalization — finance, trade, tech — > double as tools of deterrence. You don’t need a world government to stop > wars; you just need a world that is so interconnected that aggressors quickly > pay unbearable costs. > > So, to sum up: > > Long-term statistics suggest wars are declining. > > Ukraine shows the dangers of aggression in today’s interconnected world. > > The “gossip effect” of global communication makes cheating (and invading) > harder to hide. > > The American public is wary of more endless wars. > > Technology and globalization add new forms of deterrence. > > That’s what I see. > > On Sun, 24 Aug 2025 at 14:35, Santafe <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> What things do you think you see, Pieter? >> >> I am not following the announcements about U.S. foreign policy w.r.t. arms >> closely at this point (for a variety of reasons mainly of attention >> bandwidth). It has seemed to me that the largest aspect of U.S. behavior in >> this regime has been erraticness, partly because that is the way trump >> defaults to doing things generally, but also partly as an intentional >> strategy, with the premise that giving no predictability or interpretability >> to anyone about anything they do is somehow an advantage for their aims. I >> don’t know what I would guess the aims to be, or why they believe that >> maximizing chaos is to their advantage, but that would be my >> completely-amateur one-line characterization of them. >> >> I do see what seems to be a sea change in a slightly different area, and I >> wonder in how far it might be driving other changes: >> >> In 2019, when I was first back in China after more than a decade away, I had >> a sense that China had made a particular long-term decision. They had seen >> that big data and big computing as a technology had introduced the potential >> for a new thing that I call “information totalitarianism” of a form never >> possible in human life before. I would frame this in terms of a concept of >> “guard labor”, written about by Sam Bowles among others, as a >> characterization of state power and social structure more generally. In >> even the most authoritarian states, you can only redirect so much of the >> country’s entire labor into various military/policing/surveillance/coercion >> activities, before there is nobody left to do necessary work. Tiny states >> (back in the before-times) with extractive economies powered by the world >> market (think N. Korea, Liberia) are the only ones who can take guard labor >> to such a large fraction of the society that there is no longer any degree >> at all of “consent of the governed”, because the world market can support a >> gangster state with no limits. But by the time one gets even as large as >> the Russian Federation, the country itself is so big relative to the world >> market for its extracted goods, that one needs to maintain some level of >> consent of the governed for the state’s constituency at any given period to >> hold on to power. >> >> But like anything industrial, big data allows one to burn fossil fuels (or >> now nuclear fuels) to provide a force amplifier, where the same >> guard-functions can be performed with far less of the manpower of the >> society re-apportioned to guard labor. I had wondered whether this means >> that “consent of the governed” can be eliminated as any kind of constraint >> for much much larger societies, even those that make up big chunks of the >> whole world economy. My belief was that China thought this would be >> possible, and was all-in to pursue it. That was before the full >> ramifications of social media were being widely seen and discussed by >> psychologists and pundits, and well before the outbreak of chat-AI >> introduced entirely new ways of masking reality for people’s entire >> experiential theater. The same concept would now be glaringly obvious to >> anybody, and available to be developed in far more dimensions, with control >> being pro-active and developmentally oriented as well as reactive and >> coercive. >> >> The Tech Oligarchs in Sili Valley saw something similar, but they didn’t see >> it (back in 2019, as it seemed to me) the way a centralized state does; they >> were still significantly viewing it from the company perspective of >> competitors. So one saw specific changes, like the selling of electoral >> public-harvesting to the republican operatives (through whatever the U.K. >> consulting company was). And more recently, one of the few fully novel >> things I have heard said by Scott Galloway, which seemed right to me, was >> that Musk’s performance of “The advertisers can fuck themselves” was his >> moment of realization — the first in the industry to do so — that the >> revenue model no longer needed to be based in advertising. “Services” could >> be provided entirely advert-free to users — so no advertiser revenue at all >> — in a limit, because the company’s revenue stream was to use the “services” >> as honeypots to harvest user data that could then be sold, at high price, as >> a bespoke service, to third parties who would pay for it as the tool they >> needed to enforce complete “enclosure”, as it used to be called in old >> British conflicts over land use. Only now it is “enclosure” of every aspect >> of life. >> >> Anyway (to try not to digress too tediously), once Musk saw it, in a way, it >> became visible to The Industry as a whole. They may not all abandon >> advertising as a revenue model entirely or all at once, but they now >> understand, across the industry, what China understood since the 2010s, that >> information-control for power will be the Big Leash that drags everything >> else around. This whole cut-and-run change that I imagine I see, where the >> Tech Oligarchs all line up behind trump, isn’t some kind of “Obeying in >> advance”, as Tim Snyder has used the term, but rather a fully voluntary >> change of “business model” on their part. And it makes the N. American >> technosphere much more like a level of whole-state coordination than it was. >> All sides now see Information Totalitarianism as the next major thing, and >> their whole attention is consumed by the race to see who will capture it >> first. >> >> Why did I go into all that, which seems tangential to the core of Pieter's >> thread? At the same time as I do think these industry-guys are capable of >> seeing and doing new things, and that because of their positioning in >> technology and society they can be incredibly powerful, I don’t think they >> are geniuses or are all that foresighted. They tend, in herds, to pursue a >> few things at a time, and to simply let everything else fall away in their >> pursuit of whatever the emphasis of the moment is. The “intellectuals” of >> the movement (to my mind, largely ex-post just-so-story tellers) may say >> this is the “rational” thing to do, since the Next Big Thing is clearly what >> will entrain and drive everything else as “secondary” things, so they are >> fine to ignore the secondary things for now; it will all get swept up later. >> But really, it is just that they aren’t by temperament, portfolio >> diversifiers. They are profit-extractors. In the “explore/exploit” >> language that some Complexity-Theory types have liked for the past 30 years, >> these guys are far to the “exploit” side, as contrasted, say, with academic >> sciences which would like to claim they stay toward the “explore” side (and >> to some degree, sometimes do). >> >> So to Pieter's point about whether the wars are being dropped, and the >> influence of military-industrial contractors a little-bit sidelined, I >> wonder if it is just that they are “falling into neglect" because everybody >> with power and money is chasing what they believe to be a much bigger fish. >> >> ?? >> >> Eric >> >> >> >> >> >> > On Aug 23, 2025, at 22:08, Pieter Steenekamp <[email protected] >> > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> > >> > Disclaimer: This is not about Trump. He has many bad personal traits, full >> > stop. >> > >> > This post is about America’s long history of “forever wars.” >> > >> > I don’t have proof, so I’m not claiming that private military contractors >> > are the ones pushing wars to make money. What I do say is this: for the >> > last few decades, politicians from both parties have acted in ways that >> > look exactly like that. Maybe there are other reasons, but to me the >> > result is the same — endless wars. Bad for America, bad for the world. The >> > only people who clearly benefit are the shareholders of the military >> > industry. >> > >> > Now, in the last six months, it feels like something might be changing. >> > Maybe it’s just noise and nothing will shift. But the optimist in me hopes >> > that America is starting to move away from fuelling wars abroad and will >> > take a more responsible role in world affairs. >> > >> > Of course, there will always be exceptions. 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