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Category: Books

  • Book review: Chip war

    Book review: Chip war

    Once every couple of years (or months) you come across a topic you’ve never really been interested in, or perhaps haven’t even heard of. Or it’s a topic in the back of your head, that you’ve never been able to verbalize properly before. Suddenly it falls within scope and it is the only thing your mind is focused on for some time. After listening to The Ezra Klein Show with Chris Miller about his book Chip war, this has been the case for me. (Dmitri Alperovitch also talks to Miller on the Geopolitics Decanted podcast.)

    Semiconductors, you ask? Vaguely, you’ve heard of compontents crucial to technological infrastructure. Or phones, perhaps? You are right. Semiconductors are omnipresent in a technological society: phones, cars, computers, tablets, certain bins (!), satellites, dishwashers, speakers, washing machines, code locks, medical equipment – you name it. Since the 1950’s they’ve taken over society as a whole and most countries wouldn’t function properly without them. Semiconductors are in many ways the equivalent to oil – without it, no society. Chris Miller tells the story of how semiconductors were created, why they were created, and how they are used.

    Really, this is one of the best history books I ever read. And it’s not only about history, it’s not like your usual history book (I love history books)! It contains quite technical details of how semiconductors are constructed, and although it’s far from detailed (because it cannot be), it’s so intruiging and exciting I don’t want to lay down this book. I want it to continue endlessly. There are many aspects of the tech industry and the technological world I simply wish could disappear, so many dismal, awful and depressing aspects that haunt us and seem to increase each year. Read Ron Deibert’s Reset to get the state of the world. Generally, I have no high hopes for the future. In ways I do not really comprehend though, this books inspires hope. Perhaps it’s the implications of this specific piece of equipment, or the creation of the technology, or the suitable use and functions that allure to me.

    I cannot stop being impressed, even though I’m aware of the environmental and climate implications, of machines, that produce photolitography, comprised of almost 460.000 components, taking almost 20 years to develop, shooting objects through vacuum approximately 50.000 times each second. How can I not be impressed by the sheer (awesome) ingenuity to create a software program keeping track of every single component in one of the these machines, for it not to stall production? How do you track that many components? Of course I cannot be so impressed I lack the ability to review, but the storytelling and the technical details are impressive.

    History of semiconductors and Moore’s law

    The semiconductor itself stems from the US. Then it, generally, moved eastwards (BTW, a very cute game) to Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, the two latter the present superpowers in advanced semiconductors. See, there’s a difference between semiconductors and advanced semiconductors. The latter being inserted into machines general, while the later is used in more advanced machines or weapons.

    Most likely, you’ve heard of Moore´s law, based on the probablistic relationship between scientific progress and production, uttered by Gordon Moore (BTW, he died in March this year). Ostentatious is the scentific progress, but Miller stresses the workers efforts and import in doubling the number of transistors on a “chip” every two years. Without many dextrious, low wage women this “law” would never have occured.

    The anticipated fight between the superpowers: China vs US

    A portion of the book is dedicated to the conflict between China and the US, after the subsiding conflict between Japan and US in the (primarily) 1980’s and 1990’s. On the one hand, it’s fascinating, on the other, it’s completely terrifying. The conflicting sides compete for semiconductors, advanced semiconductors even more so, to fill their societies with computers, phones, gadgets and all the other things, but also competing for the military edge. Advanced weapons, semi-autonomous among them, are really scary, from your worst nightmare, and they’re becoming reality (I truly hope Eric Schmidt and Bob Work are right in that autonomous weapons are forbidden in every way and semi-autonomous weapons are subordinated humans).

    I’m happy to read that the swing in the US policy towards China changed parts due to Matt Pottinger. It confirms the view I hold of him being a good, knowledgable deputy national advisor. Generally I hold the view that the Trump administration was a disaster for the US (although several politically handpicked staff were talented and good), but this man was fantastic at his job. He lasted approximately 47 Scaramuccis.

    Very few companies are actually creating semiconductors, especially the advanced ones (TSMC, Samsung, UMC and GlobalFoundries), and only one create the blueprints, so to speak: ASML. This business is extremely concentrated. Drilling after oil can be done pretty much without advanced equipment, rudimentarily, but creating 14,8 billion transistors on one single chip is almost beyond conception of the mind and takes decades and billions of dollars in investment to complete, not to mention very skilled workers.

    Taiwan, together with South Korea and Japan, is at the very centre of this looming conflict. Without Taiwan, approximately 37 % of the advanced chips vanish and it would be disastrous to most of the industrial world, since these chips are part of industrial processes, military equipment (without them, no guidance), servers, and an abundance of other things.

    In Taiwan, some people argue they have a “silicon shield” protecting them from Chinese invasion. Why would China want to trigger a conflict, quickly sinking the world economy and advanced societies into a nightmare. Miller, however, argues that this shield is far from a guarantee, and I couldn’t agree more. Taiwan is perceived a province of China and too bold moves from the Taiwanese leadership and China will attack. Unfortunately, the situation is that simple.

    Superfluous summary

    Well. What can I say? This book is a must-read. If you wish to know more about semiconductors or the state of the world regarding semiconductors – read!

    Unfortunately, the book was issued when the CHIPS and Science Act was enacted and new export control measures on semiconductors were implemented, omitting these two very important steps in the conflict between China and the US. If you’re interested, listen to Alperovitch’s discussion with Miller in the aforementioned podcast.

    The single best aspect, an underestimated one, of this book’s layout is the short chapters. I cannot stress enough how much I appreciate chapters of approximately 10-15 pages each. For me, reading a book with hundreds of pages belonging to one single chapter isn’t a problem, but I find this layout so much easier, so much more appealing, to digest.

  • Book review: How to lose the information war

    Book review: How to lose the information war

    I first noticed Nina Jankowicz while reading the report Malign Creativity: How Gender, Sex, and Lies are Weaponized against Women Online. However, I didn’t know Nina was specialized in Central and Eastern Europe, that she has been stationed in Ukraina and knows Russian (thus also being able to understand Polish, Czech and Slovak). Her second book is focused on that same geographical region and, as the title implies, information warfare, directed by Russia. But she weaves the information war of the Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Poland and Ukraine with that of the US, and concentrates on the way to loose information war, but also how to try and tackle it.

    “With the advent of the internet and social media, individual citizens are now ‘news’ outlets themselves.” This fact countries like Russia uses against democracies in order to spread false narratives. In the introduction Nina gives us a more thorough dive into The Mueller Report about Russia’s interference prior under during to the presidental election of 2016. It was far more insidious and elaborate than arranging one protest and counterprotest at the same time and location. The Internet Research Agency (IRA) managed to run popular Facebook pages like Blacktivist and Being Patriot, as well as arrange unseemlingly fun and popular protests in Washington D.C.

    Nina takes us to five countries that in different ways have tried, and are trying, to fight against Russian information warfare: the Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Poland and Ukraine. In discussions with government officials, politicians and alternative media, she paints a picture of the different ways these countries try to combat Russian interference and pressure. These could provie the US with lessons on how to lose the information war.

    The lesson of lessons

    When it’s in front of you, it’s completely obvious. You ask yourself why you never saw it or verbally was able to say it out loud. Nina does just this. In the chapter of Estonia, she delves into the issue of the Russian minority, how it’s discriminated against and can’t be part of the Estonian society. This Russia uses to its advantage, to cast doubt on the Estonian government and majority. How to solve?

    Whenever we discuss issues related to technology, we tend to see technical solutions. Probably because the tech industry wants it no other way. Probably because we are entranced by technology, living in a technoreligious society, believing in technology as a good force in itself. So, why not simply throw in a tech solution to a tech problem? Like she writes: “How can any administration that intends to protect free speech censor the authentic opinions of its own citizens?”

    Why not solve this societal issue with a societal solution instead? Simply put: restore trust in government, give the minority chances to become part of the society as a whole. Try not to evoke bad feelings and animosity between people, heal the rifts. Two important pillars of media literacy (that Taiwan has tried) are schools, as in Finland, and public libraries and the powerful information and searchability librarians hold to guide citizens in the endless stream of information and literature. Thus Russia can no longer use this issue to splinter relations between people and create even bigger rifts. Because one thing Russia does is never to invent new issues, but use the old societal problems to sow discord and splinter society and the nation.

    Downsides

    Four downsides with the book:

    It was published just after Joe Biden was installed as president of the Unites States, thus missing the Biden administration’s take on cyber warfare, dual-use technologies, spyware and transnational repression. It differs from previous administrations.

    It was published one year before the Russian war against Ukraina in 2022, which renders some of the politics described obsolete. For instance, Estonia has once more turned more suspicious of the Russian minority, meaning that, for instance, the chapter on Estonia is not up to date, although it’s still relevant as a historical lesson. Settings for information warfare have changed rather drastically in one year.

    Somehow, I really dislike fictional writings “capturing” a technology and its implication in the present or future. Carissa Véliz does it in Privacy is power. Nina does it, and it’s erroneous, partly because it’s written before Biden’s presidency, partly because it’s the usual bleak, dry, predictable onset to an issue now, set in 2028.

    In the chapter about Ukrainian efforts to provide positive aspects of Ukraine in the Dutch election about EU-legislation should have been problematized more. Even though the Russians seemed to have played a part in negative campaigning, the Ukrainian part could also be considered foreign interference in an election. Julia Slupska’s piece on election interference is well-worth a read.

    Summary

    The book is true to its’ title. Information warfare pervades the book, and it doesn’t confuse information warfare with espionage or cyber warfare. Terms here are very important and so are the differences between them. Although Russia is the focal point, which narrows the scope of information warfare, that’s an advantage here. To write about information warfare in general or include Chinese, Iranian, American or any other country, would water it down. One can’t cover everything to make a topic or an issue interesting.

    Lessons from the book are important and relevant. Countries must learn from one another, can’t hide from information warfare, and develop a battery of counter measures. And those counter measures are seldom technological, but rather societal, economical and political. That’s the most important things I learned reading this book.

  • Book review: Click here to kill everybody

    Book review: Click here to kill everybody

    For those who don’t know of Bruce Schneier, he’s one of the world’s most famous and prominent cybersecurity experts. If there’s one person you’d like to guide you and hold your hand while in need, Schneier is the one. This book is about basics of cybersecurity, not the technical aspects, but rather about security on the Internet and the Internet+, the interconnected world of the Internet of things.

    Driverless cars, thermostats, drones, locks on doors, baby dolls and monitors, and pacemakers are interconnected – without any concern for security. Virtually all companies except for Apple and Microsoft sell inadequate and incomplete consumer products without testing, whereas in the the airplane industry a line of code can cost millions of dollars and pass through very rigorous testing before being applied in reality.

    “Click here to kill everybody” is a thorough and deep book about how this neglect of cybersecurity has consequences for people, society, companies and governments/authorities. It depends on rushed incentives and meddling from many governments.

    I love the metaphor “The Four Horsemen of the Internet Apocalypse – terrorists, drug dealers, pedophiles, and organized crime” that states and companies use to frighten people. If we standardize encryption in texting, telephone calls, files on your phone, the dark sides will become even stronger and the good forces will fail at catching and prosecuting villains (is the usual comments). The paradox is that states use front companies to do some of these works as well, like North Korea and organized crime and drugs. Even China (companies connected to the People’s Liberation Army), Russia (Internet Research Agency, under the now-well-known-name Yevgeny Prigozhin) and the US (the military-industrial complext and NSA-connected entrepreneurs) are all engaging companies to do their bidding, no strings attached.

    The situation we’re in: From bad to worse

    An entire chapter is named “Everyone favors insecurity”, a telling title. What it basically comes down to, is that companies are unwilling to pay for security, very much like ecofriendly products are more expensive, because taking ecological consideration into account costs more than not caring. Apple and Microsoft are two of the very few companies that actually pay attention to security, making sure that products are released when they’re as secure as possible. Most companies follow the former Facebook motto “Move fast and break things” and release rather delay and miss the launch.

    What people, and companies and authorities, then miss is the fact that our overall security is decreased, in peril, simply because it’s considered too expensive or too troublesome.

    Security should default, like encryption should be default, not optional or thought of in clear hindsight. When products are ready for sale, they should be as complete as possible. The ideal of move fast and break things should be abolished.

    Regulation

    Authorities need more transparency, less secrecy, more oversight and accountability, Schneier argues (and he isn’t alone). FBI, NSA and others don’t want encryption and want backdoors. This is completely contradictory security-wise. If the population is being preyed upon, if rogue elements can infect and steal from people, companies and authorities will also be easier targets. The more people who risk being infected and preyed upon, the more who will be in peril. Less security for civil society and people means states are less secure, although authorities want to weaken encryption, install backdoors – everyone gains access to damage, everyone looses.

    An argument often lost in the debate on regulation is that losing parties in this debate of regulation are small companies without assets or time on their side, and favour big corporations, who can much easier adapt. Big corporations are also prone to being in the attention span of the regulators and tended too, whereas smaller companies are seldom even seen, mostly overlooked. I think this is one of the most important aspects of the entire book.

    Another issue with regulation is its tendency to focus on particular technologies. Schneier’s suggestions is to “focus on human aspects of the law” instead of technologies, apps, or functions. Also, it’s better to aim for a result and let experts work to achieve that result rather than, again, focus on a specific technology.

    Summary

    Rights of the computers scientists / software developers / programmers are still very strong and they can develop pretty much what they want. We’re too short-sighted and can’t, or refuse to, see possible outcomes and changes from longer perspectives. “We accepted it because what they decided didn’t matter very much. Now it very much matters, and I think this privilege needs to end.” Just because products are digital doesn’t mean they have more right to exist, and living in a society where technology has become some kind of religious belief doesn’t mean technology is impervious to critic or bad things.

    Schneier argues that only states should have the capability to confront cyber attacks, not companies or other organizations. Considering they industry of spyware (or mercenary spyware as it’s called) I concur, though companies can help being part of cyber defense.

    One of Schneier’s guesses is that the security issues with “Internet+ will creep into their networks” in unexpected ways. Someone brings a device to work, which connects to the Internet and starts to leak data. Suddenly a company or authority realizes it has serious issues with real life implications.

    If you need a basic book about cybersecurity, without any technical details or prerequisites, this is a book for you. It’ll teach you what cybersecurity is about.

  • Book review: Reset

    Book review: Reset

    “We can reclaim the internet for civil society. The principle of restraint should be our guide.”

    The end.

    Basically, I could stop here and write no more. These are the last two sentences of the book Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society of Ronald J. Deibert and the profound solution to problems with internet, social media, tech companies, surveillance, espionage, cyberwars, is about.

    Deibert founded The Citizen Lab in 2001 as a research group with a mission he had came up with: the dirty backside of the Internet. For once I read a boo by an author who doesn’t need to restort to the creepiest descriptions and depictions on what could happen – he controls this subject totally. You can read it between the lines, see it in the examples given, often from the research of the Citizen Lab and from various other sources, not the usual ones, he doesn’t inundate you with details and a massive amount of examples about everything that is inherently wrong with internet (for that, listen to Grumpy old geeks), and because of the chapters he’s chosen to focus on. He knows this stuff without the restless need to show how well he has (begun) to master this subject after a couple of years. The combination of chapters are his strength.

    Causes

    Surveillance capitalism as a concept is the first subject Deibert touches, writing about the omnipresent tech in our lives, the gadgets we surround ourselves with day and night, for most reasons. This has been covered by Carissa Veliz, Adam Alter (review coming) and (obviously) Shushana Zuboff (review coming), to name a few. Deibert writes about different absurd apps, ideas to capture more personal data and dangerous paths taken by companies, paths that can easily lead to authoritarian perspectives on society and societal change.

    How our addictive machines are used to spread propaganda, disinformation, misinformation, to destabilize societies, divide and rule among foreign adversaries is another bleak chapter. Companies, state actors, organisations are playing a very perilous game with democratic states and risking all progress on human rights. Insititutions are seemlingly falling apart, or at least being unable to thwart a slide towards more fragile societies.

    Thirdly, intrusive powers is about how technology is used to circumvent human rights and deliberation by (nation) states. Abuses of power become harder to track, inhibit and hold accountable. Technology is more often used to suppress minorities and people rather than elevate them.

    Aspects of climate and environment are usually completely excluded from books written by tech-related authors. The link to the natural world is many times exempt from being questioned. Two of the few eexceptions are Kate Crawford and Tung-Hui Hu, both of whom I’ll cover in time.

    I worked in politics for almost seven years and I concur with Deibert that “material factors play a major role in shaping political outcomes”, must be taken into account and politics should, at times, adapt to societal changes rather than neglecting them. Sometimes you simply follow, not lead. And tech is very much physical, material.

    No other expert, that I have encountered, has been able to combine all these issues and subjects into one coherent text about the state of the internet and democracy. A fellow Canadian and political scientist at that, Taylor Owen (yes, listen to his podcast), is the closest one we’ve got.

    Solutions

    Deibert’s a political scientist at heart, although you might think (or decieve yourself) he’s a computer scientist, and it shows when he delves into solutions. He presents the ideas and theory of republicanism, the theory “to tie down and restrain the exercise of power not only domestically, but also across borders.” Politics usually move rather slowly in democratic states and rightfully so, argues Deibert and the republicans, because decisions should take time and deliberation is necessary so as not to react emotionally or irrationally due to some fancy. Deliberation has become a word with negative connotations. Things should be decided quickly, without thoughtful processes, almost impulsively. Deibert argues that deliberation offers restraint, inhibits decisions to be simple (and often stupid) reactions to very contemporary issues. As such, restraint should be exhibited much more, in social media, in politics, on technologically related decisions. Deliberation should be a guideline, not an insult.

    At first my thoughts were similar to my reading of Beijmo’s De kan inte stoppa oss – basically, we’re f*cked. After a while I actually feel hope. For once, here’s a person with vast experience and knowledge of how bad things have turned for more than two decades, who can show us real adequate and suitable actions on a systemic level. Here are no individual recommendations on “block cookies”, “encrypt all your communications” or “refuse to use social media”. Deibert has spent more time than most humans on these issues, so what he writes is very much what we should do. We should move slower, more deliberately, in order to reclaim internet for civil society, not for states or companies.

    Conclusion

    If there’s one book to rule them all, this is the one.

  • Two sides of Cambridge Analytica

    Two sides of Cambridge Analytica

    I reminisce sitting on the bus to Arlanda Airport, frantically reading interviews with someone named Christopher Wylie in The Guardian, the breaking news on every other news channel I could possibly find on the 18th of March 2018: Cambridge Analytica and it’s role in manipulating democratic elections.

    Mindf*ck by Christoper Wylie

    Chris Wylie is a self-taught computer guy with a nack for analyzing data, especially electoral data from Canada, England and the US. He worked for the Liberal democrats in Canada, moved to England and started working for the Liberal Democrats in England. Later he started working for a small data company named SCL Group, (Cambridge Analytica was part of the Strategic Communications Laboratories Incorporated, shortened SCL or later the SCL Group) and later Cambridge Analytica (shortened CA).

    CA worked with military clients and one direction was to influence the minds and behaviour of people, especially “the enemy”. Wylie introduces the reader to the history of psycological operations, psyops. For this they needed data and data to analyze, so they turned to social media, mainly. CA began operating for parties in elections in countries, often poor ones, with weak democratic institutions.

    Wylie tells the story of how Dr. Kogan came up with the app (This is your digital life) that harvested data points and personal data on approximately 87 million Facebook users (Kaiser also tells this); how he met Steve Bannon and how Cambridge Analytica came to be baptisted.

    One of my favourite parts, and the one I remember the most, is how he travelled for CA to interviews lots of people. Countless field studies became a backbone of the Trump campaign, alongside all the digital data points collected through (primarily) Facebook. I think this side, and importance, of the story is rather underappreciated, how people like Wylie sat with hundreds or thousands of people to interview them, to better understand why they voted for conservative ideas, how to trigger people online, how to microtarget individuals or small groups. Wylie and his colleagues understood that talking to real persons in real life is where you really, basically understand people.

    Crucial to the story is that Wylie quit CA in 2014, two years before the Brexit election and the American presidental election of 2016.

    Targeted by Brittany Kaiser

    Before buying Wylie’s book I noticed another person defected from Cambridge Analytica, or actually, the SCL: Britanny Kaiser, to most people an unheard of name. After some time I watched the documentary The Great Hack on Netflix and Britanny Kaiser stepped into my mind for the first time, outside the book reviews.

    She was devoted to human rights and tireless work for NGO’s internationally. She also worked for Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign. According to her, she needed money for the parents, and got hired by SCL. She became a travelling salesperson, working somewhat closely (yet loosely) to Alexander Nix, the head of both companies, for years. She was very much involved in American politics, first with the campaign of Ted Cruz and later with Donald Trump’s campaign.

    AggregateIQ (AIQ), also called SCL Canada, was one of the companies belonging to SCL Group (Wylie also writes about the company), who became involved in the Brexit election, doing business for leave campaigns, using lots of personal data on social media and involving money the campaigns were not supposed to have.

    The most fascinating thing and that really stuck with me is Siphon and the details Kaiser provides on microtargeting people. Siphon was a dashboard with which “the campaign could keep track of ad performance in real time”. The dashboard users could adjust campaigns after going into details about every single ad (and there were many thousands) they ran. Kaiser presents costs for presenting ads to Hispanics deemed persuadables with political interests in “jobs, taxes, and education” or white women in Georgia, deemed persuadables, with interests in “debt, wages, education, and taxes”. The entire US turned into a video game, states representing theatres to be won.

    All in all: Wylie vs Kaiser

    Both Wylie and Kaiser perceive Cambridge Analytica’s work as dangerous. They give plenty of examples of how CA tried to manipulate and influence voters and suppress people from voting. One issue is that they exagerate their own and CA’s clout. They definitely were meddling in the contested elections in the US and UK, but there are so many other actors involved, and Bannon or the Mercers are not flawless superminds who work in the shadows, able to influence and manipulate everyone. Things are usually always complex. I think the main reason the story of Cambridge Analytica became so big is that it showed how social media, personal data and the dirty tactics of today work.

    There are real differences between Wylie and Kaiser, some that I need to address.

    Wylie’s contempt for Alexander Nix is unmistakable, whereas Kaiser is more forgiving and can see beyond Nix’s influence and work, and see someone charming, someone human. Wylie really has/had some difficulties getting along with people and isn’t afraid of mentioning it.

    Where Kaiser is skeptical and suspicious of The Guardian’s reporting, and Carol Cadwallar in particular, about CA, Wylie is completely dependant on this newspaper and Cadwallar in particular.

    Mind also that Wylie claims Kaiser isn’t a whistleblower, just an opportunist saving herself before the boat sank. Kaiser, on the other hand, claims Wylie was a simple low-lever worker she never really heard of, who over-exaggerated himself and his importance, while actually leaving before of the crucial years of 2015-2017. One can see the similarity to Edward Snowden’s story, proclaiming he had more power and insight than he actually did, when Wylie fills his story with conversations with the important persons (Steve Bannon and Rebecca Mercer for instance), while Kaiser doesn’t seem to understand how important she actually was to CA. She was there with Ted Cruz and Kellyanne Conway during his campaign, she was present with Steve Bannon, Conway and Donald Trump on election night in 2016. She was part of the team.

    All in all, I think her book is slightly more sincere. She acknowledges faults and mistakes, blind spots, things she refused to see during the years of 2014-2017. She didn’t seem to ask the necessary questions, albeit, in her defense, she wasn’t immersed in the technical issues or the field research the way Wylie actually was. He admits the jolt of interest and excitement of interviewing a New Age woman who is into Donald Trump, sitting in her house asking questions. Meanwhile Kaiser is constantly on airplanes brokering deals. Should she had suspected something? Shouldn’t she? Should he? Shouldn’t he? Does anyone acknowledge one’s side as “evil”, “bad” or “wrong”? Most people on this planet presume their on the right side, the good side. If I tell you your boss might be using surveillance programs on your work computer, should you examine if I’m right or do you presume I’m wrong? Are you too lazy to check, do you think me a liar, a conspirator for asserting such a thing, are you more comfortable remaining in the unknown unknown?

    Kaiser and Wylie were both useful fools, running fool’s errands for years, for rich people who understood how social media, media, elections (for instance, how few votes in specific districts are needed to winan election there) and people work. People, like Bannon, John Bolton, and the Mercers, pull strings in order to turn politics in their direction. They use a variety of companies to gather personal data, to sway people’s minds, to insert news into social media and media, to manipulate tiny details in order to turn the whole into something different. Insidious and genious.

    Still, after all, how many people actually question their jobs, their vocations, their circumstances as they happen, and not simply in hindsight? These two persons did question jobs before Cambridge Analytica really came into the headlights, even if their views and opinions differ. Their stories are well-worth reading, particularly because they differ.

  • Ukraine: The Gates of Europe and Bloodlands

    Ukraine: The Gates of Europe and Bloodlands

    Despite my interest in history I’ve never read about the history of Ukraine. Through the years I’ve read some about the Czech Republic and the Soviet Union, but that’s basically all regarding what’s considered Eastern Europe. To overlook the eastern parts of Europe is a common trait in westerners (just like our tendency to count the Czech Republic to the “East” when it’s right in the middle of Europe (if you exclude parts of Russia)).

    The Gates of Europe

    Due to the war between Russia and Ukraine one book especially popped up as an excellent recommendation and choice for learning more about Ukraine as a part of the world: The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine by Serhii Plokhy, professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard University.

    The story begins a very long time ago and stops right after a certain comedian had become president of a beleagured nation pressed by the most powerful president of the world in a notorious telephone conversation.

    Throughout the centuries, Ukraine has been divided into the Left bank and the Right bank of the Dniepr river. Look at a map and think you are sailing downstreams towards the Black Sea: The Left is to the east of that river, whereas the Right is to the west. Lviv, once a city in Poland, in thus on the right side of the Dniepr (west then), whereas Charkiv is on the left (east then). This is a very important fact about this complex land.

    Plokhy takes you back to the Scythians, the Slavs, the Greeks, the Khazars, and the Byzantines, the founding and the special relations of the Orthodox church here, the Vikings, the Tatars, the Mongols, the Muscovites, the Swedes, the Poles, the Latvians, the Austrians, the Germans… the list of people coming here seems endless. It’s obvious and apparent how often Ukraine has been ravaged by other countries, the people there threatened by other people. Millions upon millions killed by invaders mostly. And just recently have they received a complicated independence, once again threatened by Russia. The latest version of the book was revised just after the impeachment of Donald Trump for blackmailing Vladimir Zelensky about evidence against Joe Biden’s son. It really puts into perspective what’s it like being in Sweden: on the outskirts of the world.

    Two very crucial facts he gives the reader is i) the discourse on the Rus (once a Scandinavian word probably meaning men who row), the Ruthenianand the derivation of “the Little Russians”; and ii) how Russia came to be more autocratic, more nationalist, more traditionally Orthodox, whereas Ukraine more leans towards Europe, has a more pro-democratic legacy and has had a special church, the Uniate church.

    If you’re interested to learn more about the most talked about nation on the planet and willing to learn more about people like Putin’s thoughts, feelings and ambitions – read this book.

    Bloodlands

    Roughly ten years ago another book was published, mainly focused on the fight over Ukraine, Belarus and Poland between 1933-1945: Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale University and specialized on Ukraine. Josef Stalin had managed to remove competitors and ruled the USSR with an iron fist, implementing cruel policy after cruel policy. Then came Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany which didn’t even bother to abduct and murder people in the cover of darkness.

    This is a very tough book to read. Not linguistically, not due to uninteresting content. Contentwise, it’s extremely bleak, it reaks of blood, murder, genocide, and a complete and utter negligence of and contempt for human life. I’ve read about plenty of genocides before, but reading this book made me almost depressed and sick. Page after page is filled with death.

    Neither Stalin nor Hitler had any qualms whatsoever about letting millions of people die theoretically, through plans, and later physically through agents. They could simply not be wrong or wronged, so people had to die to prove these leaders right every single time.

    The story is set in the so called bloodlands, fertile, productive and beautiful, of Poland, Belarus and Ukraine, a very special place for the Russians and Slavs (as mentioned earlier) and to the Nazis. This is where dreams converged.

    Snyder lets people speak through (mainly) their letters and notes, many which were written in desperation and in very bad situations. It’s difficult to remain untouched by many of them, especially written by children awaiting death.

    To me, it’s obvious the Germans for many decades deluded themselves when claiming that Wehrmacht (the regular army) were never really involved in mass murder or killings. Not even a blind or deaf German soldier could have missed being a part of a war machine so systematically killing millions of civilians, prisoners of war and soldiers. Even asserting that Wehrmacht was somehow “clean” and not to blame seems, in hindsight, completely crazy. Naturally parts of Wehrmacht knew exactly what they were doing in Eastern Europe for years.

    Somehow impressively frightening (I do not find any better combination of words) is the NKVD’s ability to adjust to the circumstances and continue to kill anyone who seemed like a collaborator or traitor when the Nazis seized lands. NKVD remained organized in many places and managed to kill Nazis and civilians on all sides, no matter how hard the Nazis tried to uproot and kill them. That’s how deeply entrenched and vital NKVD were to the Soviet system.

    The craziness gets even deeper and worse when allegiances shift weekly or monthly. A hamlet did away with Jews under German occupation. One month later the Communists returned and cleansed the village from people who helped the Germans. One year later the Germans returned and annihilated all those who seemed linked to the NKVD. Another example is how some of the most oppressive and murderous guards in German concentration and extermination camps were Ukrainians, and some of the (unwilling) collaborators inside the camps were Jews. Religious roots, ethnic roots, family roots all matter in such a complicated way that it makes the civil war in former Yugoslavia seem like a walk in the park in comparison.

    The lands were flooded with human blood.

    However bleak the book may be, despite all the death and blood, at least parts of this book are necessary to understand important history is to people, how history affects people long after certain events have happened.

    It’s also a reminder of how wonderful democracy can be, no matter how flawed it can be and how utterly horrid the alternatives are.

  • Book review: Computational propaganda

    Book review: Computational propaganda

    Oxford Internet Institute is a go-to-zone whenever I need some knowledge about cyberspace, cybersecurity, Internet research or many other topics. It’s a fascinating interdisciplinary institute, blending what is called social data science, data science with social science (sociology or political science for instance), looking at algorithms, artificial intelligence, disinformation campaigns large scale. They have a score of PhD-students and scientists doing very interesting and exciting research. Occasionally, the scientists release books, such as this one: Computational propaganda: Political Parties, Politicians, and Political Manipulation on Social Media, edited by Samuel C. Woolley and Philip N. Howard. The book comprises case studies of digital disinformation efforts (a main focus is certain types of bots) in nine countries, ranging from Canada and Poland to Russia and, naturally, Ukraine.

    Ukraine was hit several times on a large scale, both by cyberattacks and computational propaganda. The Russians used bots of various kinds: impact and service bots, amplifiers, complainers and trackers. Research found that civil society drove the response, which was decentralized, in contrary to the centralized focus and power of the Russian attackers. Computational propaganda was used to manipulate opinion, sow discord, discredit various Ukrainian actors and support others.

    Russia is surprisingly interesting. It was, until about two weeks ago, a country where VKontakte and Yandex competed with Facebook and Google and were the bigger actors without an askewed market. But most fascinating is that the blogosphere, and parts of social media, rely on good reporting, which results in well-built fake news. In the blogosphere posts needed to have well-founded arguments and evidence “right away, preferably with detailed, often highly technical, reports on the matter”. If that failed, hackers were brought in to expose personal mails and grievances which could be exploited against journalists or the political opposition. It meant that evidence was very important. Since 2011 the situation has deteriorated though. Perhaps the abovementioned is why the Putin regime now has completely limited access to social media, to foreign sources of information, forbidden any reporting on the war, because evidence is not to be found, not to exploited by journalists or the opposition?

    As mentioned, bots are used in various ways on the Internet, and comprise a fairly large focus in several chapters, one reason being “bots […] can operate at a scale beyond humans”. In the chapter on Canada, election interference becomes an issue in the illusive question “how can free speech be weighed against foreign interference?” How can national authorities and legislation know a foreign actor isn’t buying bots to spread information in an election, or even know parties or affiliates aren’t using bots or cyborg accounts (humans and programs together) to affect the election? Julia Slupska wrote purposefully about this, discussing the fine lines of foreign interference in elections, national sovereignty, freedom of speech, the right to reflect and make choices on our own, and how liberal democracies made attempts to limit digital interference with elections. Bots complicate online speech drastically, because anyone can use bots and cyborg accounts: parties, citizens, companies, organizations. And who is to say who is a citizen, by the way, and who constitutes a foreign interest?

    Taiwan has tried media literacy as a way to counter desinformation compared to, for instance, Canada. In both countries “positive” bots are deployed to fact-check news (which, by the way, is how some journalists work, by deploying bots to check facts before publishing news).

    Zeynep Tufekci has written about activists and the same conclusions about them can be drawn here: human rights activists and alike are targeted and trolled with, especially public ones. When the Euromaiden protests broke out in 2014, activists were instantly barraged, with harassments and threats raining down on them. Fake accounts, bots and foreign interests makes it very difficult to know who exactly is behind the wall. Still, do people change their opinions, and if so, when?

    Many of the authors have interviewed people inside various companies (PR, software developers, media companies etc), which brings an interesting insight into how fake accounts are set up, bought/sold, how bot networks work, how they track and generate data on social media users, how agenda setting and opinion targeting are really working.

    Three conclusions in, and a fourth from, the book:

    1. Focus on what is said rather than who is speaking.
    2. Social media must be design for democracy.
    3. Anyone can use bots.
    4. For computational propaganda to work, it’s necessary to influence opinion leaders (on social media) and the agenda setting media. Study how Steven Bannon worked before the election to the European parliament in 2019 or watch The Brink.

    If ever you find yourself in need of a deep introduction on computational propaganda, this book is a necessity.

    —

    Night and blur – The Bilinda Butchers

  • Book review: The perfect police state

    Book review: The perfect police state

    This could well be a follow-up to Beijmo’s De kan inte stoppa oss. Instead of Syria as the main stage, the story and its focus is China. As Europe was an outlier in Beijmo’s book, Turkey and the US are the outliers here.

    Writer Geoffrey Cain presents himself early as the journalist he is, when travelling Xinjiang in western China, though the main character in the narrative is Maysem, an Uighur who has escaped Xinjiang. Cain introduces “the Situation”, the extreme oppression of Uighurs and other minorities in Xinjiang and the equally extreme surveillance there created by the Chinese Communist party. Its war on the three evils (terrorism, separatism and extremism) has created an omnipresent surveillance like no other, a dream of predecessors like Gestapo, Stasi and the KGB, much in the form of Sky Net (yes, sounds like Terminator) and Integrated Joint Operations Platform. Purposes are reeducation (brain wash) and genocide (e.g., by sterilization) and to dismantle the entire culture by sowing distrust between every person.

    Cain does a much better job than Beijmo at explaining his sources, his knowledge of things usually hidden, why he cross-checked interviewees, reasons for altering names and how he ended up covering this dire subject.

    Excerpt from pages 6-7 in the book, where Cain watches heavily equipped counterterrorism officers in the city of Kashgar:

    “I casually snapped a photo of the scene with my cell phone, and started to walk away. One of the police officers was wearing sunglasses with a built-in camera linked to China’s Sky Net surveillance database; the camera was connected by a wire to a minicomputer in his pocket. He turned left and glanced at me. If I were a local resident, he could probably see my name and national ID number on his lenses within seconds. Before I knew it, I was surrounded by police. I didn’t know where they came from, or how long they had been watching me. […] It’s likely that I’d been watched from the moment I arrived. Fellow journalists had warned me that my hotel room would be bugged and any laptops or smartphones I left in my room would be scanned. With 170 million cameras nationwide, some able to identify anyone from up to nine miles away, and government devices called Wi-Fi sniffers gathering data on all smartphones and computers within their range, the state probably knew a great deal about me the moment I stepped off the plane.”

    This occurred in 2017, just a couple of years after Beijmo’s story. Much has happened, albeit another country, in technology. It reminds me of the planes with cameras circling Baltimore, recording every vehicle and person in the city, as told by Bloomberg in 2016.

    By retelling Maysem’s story, and the stories of multiple other persons, we’re given a glimpse of the horrible oppression of the ethnic minorities in Xinjiang: reeducation centers, concentration camps, forced labor for Chinese and international corporations, the propaganda emanating from the Communist party, the male watchers allowed to sleep in female Uighurs homes and beds. Technologically, it’s on a totalitarian scale the Nazis could only have dreamed of. Despicable and omnipresent a system, the retelling is haunting, even if it’s not as blunt and violent as in Syria.

    Part in the creation of the surveillance stands the technological giants of China, with an unwitting Microsoft initiating the search for ever better surveillance many years ago. Some of the tech giants are Huawei, Hikvision and Tencent, the creator and holder of WeChat.

    Then, what is the actual difference technologically from our Western societies? Facebook Messenger and Alphabet/Google registering as much as they can about us on any device and with any trackers they can get hold of. Facebook with their glasses, Alphabet with their glasses and their watches. Android as an operating system with Google services installed allowing, by default, unrestrained data collection. Tech companies wish to create AI with our information and sell us as products to advertisers and corporations. In China, the Communist party wishes to create AI and control people in order to create a harmonious society without friction. The Citizen Lab released a report in 2020 named We Chat, They Watch, revealing how WeChat is used to spy on non-Chinese residents and to train AI.

    Cain’s book is a good read, and the seriousness of the issue is written on every page. To follow Maysem’s story, you need to read the book, because I won’t give you any more details. Usually, I don’t bother with graphics or design, but the cover of the book (in hardcover) is appealing.

  • Russian cyberwar in the dark forest?

    Russian cyberwar in the dark forest?

    Russia has been turned into a dictatorship in two weeks. No journalists are allowed to mention the word “war” in combination with “Ukraine”, resulting in several journalists or news agencies shutting down their activity or agreeing to self-censorship. Many foreign journalists are thus going home for fear of their reporting being in conflict with these hard measures.

    Protesters face fines, but also being conscripted and sent to the frontlines of the war, in a very cruel irony. Furthermore, the Russian authorities are shutting down or blocking access to various social media. They still lack the capacity to hunt down everything said and written, so they resort to complete blocking, I guess. Simultaneously they can use Internet Research Agency (IRA) and others to spread disinformation about the war, foreign interventions and try to gain support for this military operation (Z, anyone?). Lastly, they have the opportunity to limit the influence of foreign actors.

    Many are surprised the Russians haven’t attacked, or crushed, Ukraine through cyberwar yet. This was expected regarding all the attacks Ukraina has endured since (at least) 2015: attacks on energy plants, the electric grid, authorities, banks and so on. It was also expected because of the Gerasimov doctrine (Gerasimov happens to be highest ranking military (as I understand it)) in Russia, overseeing the invasion of Ukraine.

    There are things destabilizing the Internet, such as cyberattacks on authorities, power plants and a virtual flood of spam mail, though nothing (yet) near the total cyberwar between nation states. One important aspect complete havoc has not hit us could be linked to the dark forest theory.

    The dark forest theory is developed by science fiction writer Cixin Liu in the second book of The Three-Body Problem Trilogy (spoiler alert ahead!): The Dark Forest. In my eyes it could be applied here, even if it originally concerns cosmic civilizations. Instead of a dark forest inhabitated by scattered civilizations, we see a planet with many different countries in various stages of cyber capabilites. The three strongest are the US, Russia and China. The former two are in economic war, and the US supports a fourth nation being attacked by Russia militarily. The US also has allies in the form of the Five Eyes (the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada) and the EU (which is not a cyber power in itself). On the outskirts are enemies of the US, North Korea and Iran, to keep it simple.

    Russia attacks Ukraine and the US declares its support of Ukraina, all in concert with the EU. The Five Eyes have exposed the Russian planes for months and boosted the Ukrainian defense for years, both military and the cybersecurity. All eyes are focused on Ukraine and Russia. So, to apply the dark forest theory here, all nations are separate persons sitting or standing next to a tree each, in a dark forest. Every single one is a hunter and game at the very same time. (Even if, for instance, the US, Russian and China are comprised of several agencies and authorities (and companies) each, they are reduced to one person here.) The nations/persons have all surveilled and hacked one another for years now, so they know pretty well who sits or stands next to a tree, and about where that tree is situated. Now they are poised for stronger, more devastating cyberattacks than ever before, perhaps on such a scale that it can cripple an entire person for years to come. And they can’t afford more than one chance, here meaning they have three choices:

    1. Sit/stand still
    2. Shoot
    3. Run

    The first implies trying to hide and remain, in best case, undetected, or it means remain vigilant but inactive.

    The second means attacking, thus revealing and exposing themselves by standing up and shooting. Everyone in the dark forest will instantly hear the shot. The closest, or most able, will even see the shot, perhaps even the shooter.

    The third means trying to relocate and, if succesful, hide behind another tree. It entails standing up, running, avoiding being shot and hiding behind another tree, hopefully not to close to another person.

    Unlike a real person, Russia can cause some minor disturbance for others, just like other nations might cause small disturbances, because they are comprised of so many smaller actors within themselves. But still, the nation has only have one single chance of doing something powerful: taking down an opponent/enemy.

    What upsets the dark forest theory here is allies. In the original dark forest theory there is no such thing as ally or friend. Everyone is a mortal enemy. Russia has no allies to speak of. The US is in a group of five, and aligned beside them are friendly allies, such as France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. Let’s say Russia chooses to attack the US, wreaking havoc in revenge for the support of Ukraine. They can take down some agencies, companies, municipalities and cripple many others. But since the Americans aren’t all situated in the US, many cybercapabilites will remain (the opposite is also true, though the Russians have fewer capabilites abroad). And most importantly, the allies will definitely attack Russia in turn. Since Russia has no allies, they will be the quarry.

    To speak with dark forest theory: Russia can choose to shoot. But they cannot run to another tree. They will turn from hunter to game the moment they reveal themselves. They will be fatally shot and destroyed by all the other hunters in the forest (especially considering how strained their other capablities are: military, economy, clout). That’s why I believe (and I could be very wrong) there has been no cyberwar to speak of so far (that we’ve seen). Russia simply cannot attack without being completely destroyed.

    Another main reason for this is the approach formulated by former secretary of defense Jim Mattis. In 2018 he outlined a new approach by the US in case of a major, devastating cyberattack: to consider such an attack as a nuclear attack, thus reciprocate with nuclear weapons. This is something the Russians know. Of course, this concerns an attack on the US itself, but where to draw the line when cyberattacks on one actor can spread unintentionally to others?

  • Book review: De kan inte stoppa oss

    Book review: De kan inte stoppa oss

    Mattias Beijmo is a Swedish public speaker, opinion writer and analyst focused on technology and its implications for privacy, democracy and society. In the book They can’t stop us, Beijmo tells us a story of the Arab spring mainly through the lens of two young Syrians. Bassel is the outstanding tech-savvy guy with a promising, global future. Noura is the aspiring jurist, defending human rights in a dictatorship. Both want more, but none of them are prepared to leave Syria, despite the looming protests and clashes with police and security forces.

    As the clashes turn into a looming civil war, in the mezzanine of severe oppression but not outright war, Bassel and other democracy protesters receive help from hackers internationally. One group is based in Sweden, named Telecomix. They do their best in helping protesters avoid surveillance and tracking. Unfortunately, another Swedish presence presents itself to the Syrian dictatorship – Ericsson (also other companies). They can help track people. And so, the technological war also begins.

    Another of Beijmo’s intention is to reveal digital weapons, or should I say how seemingly benign digital equipment can be turned into weapons with devastating effects, especially for people who believe in democracy, freedom of speech and human rights.

    In recent years, Swedish media has disclosed how several more Swedish companies sell equipment to dictatorships in Belarus and Myanmar, with the purpose of surveillance and tracking of dissidents. Some scenes from the book are imprinted on my mind. And dare I mention, they are not happy. Reading it (it only exists in Swedish though) might give you cold shivers down your spine again and again. But if you’re a proponent of democracy, or at least prefer living in a democracy, you should read it.