What is happening in Russia right now with regards to non-military development of artificial intelligence? Samuel Bendett and Robert J. Marks discuss Russian non-military development of AI, entrepreneurship, and free enterprise. Show Notes 00:46 | Introducing Samuel Bendett, advisor with the CNA Adversary Analysis Group 01:37 | Samuel Bendett’s background 02:14 | Russian non-military development of AI 09:28 | Taking…
In college, I hated Plato. We read his Republic, and, as a patriot and an idealistic young (small “d”) democrat, I was appalled at the hegemony of the Guardians and at Plato’s disdain for democracy. It seemed to me that his Guardians were the archetypal totalitarians, and that it was a fundamental human right — enshrined in the Constitution — to be ruled only by consent of the governed. In my dotage, I am more sympathetic to Plato — it’s remarkable how much smarter the old philosopher has gotten in the past 40 years! I am still uncomfortable with Guardians, at least of the secular sort. But I think John Adams got it right when he observed that “our Constitution…
The Federal Reserve (the Fed) can throw the economy into a recession whenever it feels that it is in our best interests to be unemployed — typically because the Fed is convinced that an unruly inflation needs to be tamed by the discipline of unemployment. For example, in 1979, as the rate of inflation peaked above 13 percent, the Fed moved to make borrowing prohibitively expensive. When Fed Chair Paul Volcker was asked if the Fed’s policies would cause a recession, he replied, “Yes, and the sooner the better.” Interest rates reached 18 percent on home mortgages and were even higher for most other bank loans. Households and businesses cut back on their borrowing and spending and the unemployment rate…