Jared Cohen of Google Ideas speaking at SAVE conference in 2010, which stands for "Summit Against Violent Extremism". Photo by Amir Farshad Ebrahimi
I've been thinking about the definition of cyberwarfare and cyberterrorism as I discussed here in the debate with Ethan Zuckerman.
Meanwhile, I happened to find an old article from 2011 by Will McCants, who is an expert on terrorism I've noticed in the Joshua Foust Twitter circles. He writes about a Google-organized conference organized in Dublin with ex-State Department official Jared Cohen, about whom I've written critically -- a conference I heard about in my circles and wondered if anything would ever come out about it -- it seemed secretive. Well, actually Will McCants was allowed to write about it -- I simply missed it.
For a long time "Google Ideas" anti-extremism program *was* secretive and there still isn't an awful lot on their newish website about it. It's very spare, just like any Google site with very stark graphics and very simple instructions. First it was popularized in the press when Cohen gave some interviews about it, then he spent some time at the Council on Foreign Relations as a visiting scholar and at Google thinking and organizing around this, and now gradually some papers are coming out -- although there's not an awful lot there -- it's like a placeholder that they made to have something to send people to if they asked questions. The mission statement says:
Google Ideas is a think/do tank that convenes unorthodox stakeholders, commissions research, and seeds initiatives to explore the role that technology can play in tackling some of the toughest human challenges.
But just how much money is involved, who gets the seeds initiatives, and what they do with them is all very vague, although we know from the New York Times that Cohen has made a partnership with Robert Bernstein, founding chairman of Human Rights Watch, who left the organization because he became critical of its bias (an assessment I share) and who has formed his own organization, Advancing Rights, which has supported Cyberdissidents.org These are all good people I have known for years and worked with in the past and present, but this issue is too big and too burning to keep to a small cadre. With the tremendous resources that Google does have, there should be a lot more happening than a conference, some papers, and a few websites.
So, as McCant explains, it turns out that the government even has formal programs on "countering violence and extremism" (CVE) in which they study all this with an aim to curbing terrorism. I know of the counterpropaganda efforts against Islamists that the government has operating, I didn't know there was an acronym to go with it.
I can't help thinking that less reduction of funding for international broadcasting and more active polemicizing on social media might help. Today I had an exchange with Pakistanis about which I must write more another day -- like so many American leftists, they were convinced that the US "created" the Taliban and felt they could score points in any argument about Hamas and Israel, or Afghanistan by invoking this truthiness, without recognizing where the need to even help the mujahadeen in the first place came from -- the Soviet killed one million Afghan civilians and displaced many more, creating refugee camps in Pakistan that set the stage for the Taliban. I even had young indignant Pakistanis telling me that the ISI didn't support the Taliban. This isn't a problem of education; this is a problem of the need for relentless counter-propaganda and polemicizing. The art of political polemicizing, which used to be done in journals which the US used to support, seems to have died out, as most people retreat to their own red or blue states and red or blue blogs, and such polemics as there are have mainly migrated in a much less intellectual form online in social media with few exceptions. Even so, work with what you got. Talk back. Make the arguments? Why isn't there more of this?
Will also uses that fun buzzword of the experts in his circle -- "kinetic solutions". "Kinetic" means "doing things in the real world," you know, like killing people.
McCants says:
The conference, as the identity of its host would seem to imply, was heavily focused on the power of technology to combat radicalism. Former militants and aggrieved mothers can dissuade youth from joining violent groups; competing networks can distract them; and outlets for positive activism can channel their energy toward more productive ends. In each area, Cohen says, technology will be the key to "engineer[ing] a turn away from violence." Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, the BBC reports, harbors an "almost messianic conviction that new technology can eventually help prevent angry young men from drifting into a life of violence and extremism."
But the idea that technology is going to "engineer" young men away from violence is just wack -- it amplifies and enables their violence against us all even better.
I roll my eyes here, because I'm recalling the story of a boy's first arrest at the age of 13, when two other boys threatened him when he strayed on their "turf," which was an artificial concept in a public park anyway. While angry words were exchanged, some of the bullies picked up their cell phones and texted all their friends to come and protect the turf. Some of them began putting it on Facebook. Before you know it, there was a mob, and the boy -- without a cell phone -- went home and got a wrench and came back to the park. Eventually the police arrested them all, charging some with possession of a weapon and some with gangwarfare -- all of which was overblown, but all of which had been made possible by the Internet and cell phones. Eventually it was all dialed back -- but since I've seen this sort of thing played out over and over again, having to come to the rescue of kids in angry furors or tears over Facebooks or texts and seen the violence incited all around me with this, sorry, I'm not buying the technological saviour package here.
The idea that human nature is changed by technology is messianic and utopian -- and ultimately crass and craven for Google because it's about gaining new markets in areas that are too hostile to Internet freedom -- and selling more ads and services. Better-worlding gilding doesn't make this look better.
McCants seems to concede at least that technology extends militancy and doesn't curb it, at least with Youtube videos. But he doesn't seem to have back of that any theory about human nature and whether it can be changed -- such philosophical backdrops can be ignored by IR specialists.
McCants is absolutely uncritical of the CVE programs that our government already has. I'm skeptical of their worth, given the lack of evidence of success, but perhaps McCants benefits from them in some way, if not with contracts, with peer acceptance or access. That may explain why his recipe for dealing with extremism is simply to have the US CVE programs do more of what they do -- and pay for them better, by convincing Google, a wealthy Big IT firm, to provide more corporate philanthropy. I could suggest that Google also be more open about creating a foundation and a granting system with open and visible granting criteria and encourage applications, rather than doing this secretively.
McCants even wants to build an incentivized (gamified?) system for corporations to place expensive ads on "CVE sites" (I'd love to see some examples of what this really is all about -- peace poetry? Anti-war songs? Journaling to get in touch with your feelings?) and in exchange, get breaks for ads elsewhere. Yes, I'm sure the market will really respond to this lol.
But Will McCants has an even better idea about how Google can help make a better world for us all -- put its considerable snooping capacity to work seeing what jihadists on Arabic forums are searching for in Google, and putting it together with their forums chat:
Google has more data than anyone else in the world about the interests and habits of radicals. There are privacy issues of course, but that should not stop Google researchers from looking at anonymized data to discover patterns and information that can help create better CVE programs and campaigns. I spend an unhealthy amount of my time on Arabic-speaking jihadi discussion boards, and in doing so I have learned a great deal about the news preferences, geographical locations, and reading habits of that community. Imagine what you could learn if you could see everything the discussion-board participants search for outside the forums. Google Ideas can pull that information together.
Indeed! Library organizations worked very hard to establish the principle that the government could not come fishing with public or private libraries and ask what books people took out. I was given a strict lecture on this value at the age of 15 as a library worker and told not to divulge to others the fact that people took out "Ramparts" or "The Joy of Sex" or "The Autobiography of Malcolm X".
So Google gets to do this sort of instrusive operation for the "better world"? Why? Google hasn't suggested this; but McCants, the expert on terrorism has.
Again I come back to what I feel is a more holistic understanding of this state of affairs. Human nature is not fixable; it's governable at best. Through the rule of law, democracy, institutions, civic groups, you can make it possible for violence to be alleviated, people to help each other. Technology isn't paramount in this; people are. Technology does just as much damage as it alleviates. The theory for this alleviation isn't sound and doesn't come from a pure place. I'm all for corporations doing corporate philanthropy, but there is too much cultism in the Google enterprise. Brin wants to remove political parties completely. What sort of nonsense is that when you need institutions in society that help people govern themselves?
The idea that technological interfaces that themselves induce MIPS, as c3 calls it (media/Internet psychosis syndrome) are going to help this process isn't supportable. Especially when unaccountable geeks who admire authoritarian ideologies are engineering it.
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