Under the guise of rising death toll from the epidemic, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo urges billionaires to build a high-tech dystopia
On Wednesday, May 6, during the daily coronavirus briefing, Andy Cuomo's dull face, which we have seen on screens over the past few weeks, momentarily lit up with something like a smile.
“We are ready for anything,” Cuomo said. “We are New Yorkers, and this is our honor and we are proud of it. We understand that change is not just inevitable - it is actually beneficial if done right.”
This unexpected burst of eloquence was inspired by Eric Schmidt, the former Google CEO, who joined the video conference briefing and announced that he will chair a government commission to transform New York City's urban life in the aftermath of the epidemic, with a focus on integrating high tech across all spheres. activities.
"The priority areas in our work," said Eric Schmidt, "are telemedicine, distance learning and broadband technologies … We need to look for solutions that can be applied today and developed tomorrow, we need to use technology to make life better." If there were no doubts that the intentions of the former director of Google are exceptionally good, then gilded angel wings behind his back should be added to his image on the screen.
Just a day earlier, Cuomo announced that a similar agreement had been made with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a "smart education system". Calling Gates a “visionary,” Cuomo said that the coronavirus pandemic has created “the kind of historical environment in which we can implement and develop [Gates's] ideas … all these schools, all these audiences - what is all this for when we have modern technologies?" This question from the lips of the governor sounded, obviously, rhetorical.
Recently, although not immediately, some completely logical doctrine on countering the pandemic began to emerge. Let's call it the “new digital course”. This future is much more high-tech than anything that was created during previous natural disasters. It is being built in great haste right now, while mountains of corpses are still piling up, and in this approach, the past few weeks of physical isolation is not seen as an emergency measure, dictated by the dire need to save human lives, but as a working laboratory in which long-term (and extremely profitable) contactless future.
Anuja Sonalker, CEO of Maryland-based company Steer Tech, which develops automatic parking solutions, recently summarized the emerging trends that the pandemic has driven. “Ideas of non-human contactless technology are no doubt in the air,” she said. "Man is a biological threat, but the machine is not."
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This is a future in which our homes will never be exclusively personal space. Thanks to high-speed communication technologies, they will also become for us a school, a doctor's office, a gym and - if the state decides so - a prison. Of course, for many of us, these very homes became a permanent workplace and entertainment center even before the pandemic, and surveillance of neighbors "in the neighborhood" flourished before that. However, on the way to the future that is now hastily being built, all these trends are gaining noticeable acceleration.
This is a future in which, for privileged segments of the population, almost everything will be delivered to their homes - either virtually, using streaming and cloud technologies, or physically using self-driving cars or drones. This future will leave many teachers, doctors and drivers unemployed. It does not require cash or credit cards (which will be done under the pretext of fighting the virus), there will be almost no public transport, and living art will practically disappear. Everything will ostensibly be controlled by "artificial intelligence", in reality, society will be held by tens of millions of nameless workers hidden in warehouses, in data centers, in factories for content moderation, in sweatshops for the production of electronics, in mines for the extraction of lithium. on industrial farms,in meat processing plants, as well as in prisons, where they will be defenseless in the face of both disease and overexploitation. This is a future in which every step we take, every word we say and all our connections can be tracked and calculated thanks to an unprecedented level of cooperation between the state and technology giants.
If all this looks familiar, it’s only because even before the pandemic, we were being sold this kind of future, driven by applications and based on free income, for the sake of convenience, reliability and emphasizing our own individuality. However, many of us showed concern. We were concerned about the unreliability, poor quality, and unequal availability of telemedicine and online learning. About the fact that unmanned vehicles knock down pedestrians, and delivery drones crash along with the load (sometimes falling directly on people). About the fact that location technology and cashless trading rob us of our privacy. About how the unscrupulousness of social networks poisons our information environment and undermines the mental health of our children. Regarding the fact that smart city technologies,stuffed with sensors, supplant local government. About good jobs that go missing. About the bad jobs that are being created.
What we worried most, however, was that democracy would be threatened by the power and wealth that was concentrated in a handful of tech corporations whose leaderships are very good at washing their hands. They absolve themselves of all responsibility for the destruction in the areas where they dominate - be it the media, retail or transportation.
But all this remained in the distant past under the name "February". Now, most of the then well-founded fears were literally washed away by a wave of horror, while the already well-known dystopian scenarios began to hastily rewrite in a new way. Today, against the background of the unfolding tragedy with many dead, such a future is presented to us under the guise of a certain dubious prediction, as if such technologies are the only possible way to protect society from a pandemic, and there is simply no other way to save us and our loved ones.
Because Cuomo has partnered with billionaires (including a deal with Mike Bloomberg for virus testing and video surveillance), New York State has become a glittering showcase for this grim future to be paraded - though the plans are so ambitious that they go far beyond the boundaries of any one state or even state.
And none other than Eric Schmidt is in charge of all this. Long before Americans realized the dangers of coronavirus, Schmidt vigorously popularized and promoted the version of the future that is literally shown in the TV series Black Mirror. Cuomo only authorized him to put these plans into action. The main idea of this approach is to unite the government and the industrial giants of Silicon Valley into one whole, and leave most of the basic functions in such areas as education, medicine, law enforcement and military affairs at the mercy of private technology corporations (at a considerable price).
These plans were promoted by Schmidt as head of the Defense Innovation Board, the agency that advises the Department of Defense on military applications of artificial intelligence. In addition, Schmidt ran another influential agency, the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI). The task of this commission is to advise Congress on "the implementation of artificial intelligence and the development of machine learning systems and related technologies" with the aim of addressing "issues of national and economic security of the United States, including economic risks." Both departments include many influential directors and senior executives from various Silicon Valley corporations,including such giants as Oracle, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, and, of course, there are Schmidt's colleagues at Google.
As head of these departments, Schmidt, who still owns $ 5.3 billion in shares of Alphabet (which owns Google) and large stakes in other firms, was, in essence, extorting funds from Washington in the interests of Silicon Valley. The main goal of these two departments is to ensure that government spending on the development of artificial intelligence and technological infrastructure such as the 5G communication standard grows exponentially. Such investments go directly to those corporations in which Schmidt and other members of these departments hold significant stakes.
First in closed-door presentations and then publicly, in various interviews and articles, Schmidt defended the thesis that, since the Chinese government is going to spend unlimited amounts of money on building high-tech infrastructure for video surveillance, and Chinese companies like Alibaba, Baidu and Huawei are allowed appropriating profits from commercial applications, then, in this case, the leading position of the United States in the world economy is shaken.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center, relying on the Freedom of Information Act [1], requested a presentation that Schmidt gave to NSCAI a year ago, in May 2019. It contains a number of alarmist statements about how China, with an insatiable appetite, is loosening digital surveillance regulations, leading to its dominance over the US in a number of areas such as AI in medical diagnostics, self-driving cars, digital infrastructure, smart cities, ride sharing and cashless payments.
Schmidt points to many reasons why China is ahead of the United States. This includes a significant number of consumers who shop online; and “the absence of outdated banking systems”, which allowed China to leap from cash and credit cards directly to building “a huge e-commerce and digital services market” using “digital payment systems”; and a critical shortage of doctors, which has forced the Chinese government to work closely with tech corporations such as Tencent to implement AI to create “preventative” medicine. The presentation also points out that in China, tech corporations “can easily overcome regulatory barriers,while American initiatives are drowning due to the need to comply with HIPAA [2] and obtain FDA certifications [3]."
However, the most significant factor determining China's advantage, the NSCAI department cites the desire of the Chinese government to forge a partnership between public and private initiative in the field of mass video surveillance and data collection. The presentation touted the Chinese practice of "direct support and intervention from the state, for example, in the field of facial recognition technology." It also states that “video surveillance is the 'best consumer' of AI technology” and further that “mass surveillance is the most effective way of deep learning [artificial intelligence]”.
A slide titled "Government Databanks: Video Surveillance = Smart City" indicates that China, together with Google's closest competitor, Alibaba, is ahead of the US in the race.
This is all the more remarkable as Alphabet, which owns Google, has tried to implement its elaborate visions by transforming much of the Toronto waterfront into a smart city through its Skywalk Labs division. However, this project was scrapped after two years of endless disputes over the fact that Alphabet collected a huge amount of personal data, could not sufficiently protect personal information, and the benefits for the city as a whole remained questionable.
In November, five months after compiling this presentation, NSCAI submitted an interim report to Congress, in which it continued to sound the alarm that the United States needed to catch up with China in introducing this kind of controversial technology. This report, which the e-Privacy Clearing House obtained through the freedom of information law, states: “We are in a strategic race. The importance of AI will only grow. The future of our national security and economy is at stake.”
At the end of February, Schmidt spoke to the public, perhaps realizing that the increases in budget expenditures called for by his department are unlikely to be approved if they do not meet with broad public support. His column for the New York Times was titled “I Am A Former CEO of Google. Silicon Valley is losing out to China. " In this article, Schmidt called for "the closest possible cooperation between government and industry" and, again, sounded the alarm:
The only solution, according to Schmidt, here could be powerful budgetary infusions. Schmidt praised the White House for requesting double funding for research in artificial intelligence and quantum informatics: “We need to double our investment in these areas again to increase production capacity in the form of laboratories and research centers … At the same time, Congress it is necessary to satisfy the president's demands and raise funding for defense research and development to the maximum in the last 70 years, and the Ministry of Defense needs to invest allocated funds in breakthrough research in the fields of AI, quantum information science, hypersonic technologies, as well as in other priority areas."
This article came out exactly two weeks before the coronavirus outbreak was declared a pandemic. Not a word was said that the goal of such a grandiose technological breakthrough is to protect the health of Americans. These measures were supposedly necessary only in order to overtake China. But, of course, soon everything changed.
Schmidt's initial demands were to make massive budgetary investments in infrastructure and high-tech research, to pivot towards a "public-private partnership" in AI, and to ease the many security and privacy constraints. two months later they are served from completely different positions. Now all these (and even more drastic) measures are offered to society as the only hope for salvation from the new virus that will remain with us for the coming years.
All the tech corporations with which Schmidt is closely associated and all the government departments he heads have suddenly changed their records and now proclaim themselves selfless advocates of public health and generous champions of "everyday heroes", ordinary workers (many of whom, such as drivers, will lose their jobs when these corporations get their way). Less than two weeks after the New York quarantine was announced, Schmidt wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal in which he not only changed his tone, but also made it clear that Silicon Valley will do everything possible to ensure that the current crisis leads to long-term change:
Schmidt promotes his ideas with truly unremitting enthusiasm. Two weeks after this article was published, he unveiled the hastily-made home-teaching software for schoolchildren that teachers and families alike had to struggle with during this health emergency by participating in a “massive experiment with distance learning . The purpose of this experiment, as Schmidt himself said, was “to find out how students can learn remotely. This knowledge will enable us to build better distance learning tools that, once in the hands of the teacher … will enable children to learn better.” During the aforementioned video call hosted by the Economic Club of New York, Schmidt called for more telemedicine, more 5G technology,more digital commerce - and further down the list. And all this for the sake of fighting the virus.
However, his most eloquent statement was the following: “These corporations, which we so willingly denigrate, bring us enormous benefits in building communications, in the field of medicine, thanks to them we also get access to information. Think about how you would live if there was no Amazon in America. " He added that people should "be somewhat more grateful that these corporations have capital, invest, develop the tools we use, because they really help us out."
Schmidt once again recalled the wave of public discontent that until recently rose against these corporations. Presidential candidates openly discussed prospects for phasing out big technologies. Amazon had to abandon its plans to move its headquarters to New York due to protests from local residents. Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Google, was unable to get out of the ongoing crisis, while Google employees themselves were unwilling to develop video surveillance technology for military use.
In short, democracy - the inconvenient public involvement in building critical social institutions for some - turns out to be the most serious obstacle to the ideas that Schmidt promoted, first as a top manager of Google and Alphabet, and then as head of two influential departments under Congress and the ministry. defense. As NSCAI documents show, these inconveniences stemming from the power held by members of society and the grassroots employees of megacorporations, from the point of view of people like Schmidt or Jeff Bezos, the head of Amazon, are causing a horrific slowdown in the AI arms race. do not allow potentially lethal self-driving cars to be released onto the road, do not give employers access to medical secrecy (and thusthey cannot use this information against employees), do not allow the introduction of a network of facial recognition software into the urban space - and much, much more.
Now, with fears of the future growing amid massive deaths from the epidemic, these corporations seem to believe the time is right to destroy any democratic engagement. They want to have the same power as their Chinese competitors, who are not constrained by restrictions on labor or civil rights.
And all this is developing extremely quickly. The Australian government has awarded Amazon a database storage contract for the infamous coronavirus tracking application. The Canadian government also struck a deal with Amazon for the delivery of medical equipment, which has already raised quite reasonable questions about why they did not resort to the services of the state postal service in this case. Within days of the first week of May, Alphabet, through its Sidewalk Labs division, launched a new $ 400 million urban redevelopment project. Josh Marcuse, chief executive officer of the Defense Innovation Division, led by Schmidt, said that he is leaving this post to lead the strategy and innovation sector at Google - thushe intends to help this corporation capitalize on the opportunities that have opened up to it thanks to his and Schmidt's propaganda efforts.
In truth, there is little doubt that new technologies will play a key role in public health in the coming months and years. The question is different: will these technologies develop within the framework of democratic practices and under public scrutiny, or will they be implemented in a feverish haste, in an emergency mode, without asking critical questions, the answers to which will shape our life for decades to come? For example, the questions are: if we really admit that digital communication technologies are so indispensable during a crisis, is it really necessary to transfer these communications and our personal data into the hands of private players, that is, companies like Google, Amazon or Apple? And if so much public money is spent on it,then shouldn't the citizens themselves own and control these corporations? And if in many ways we can no longer do without the Internet - and this is really so - then shouldn't it be considered as a non-profit public service?
There is no doubt that telecommunications technology is vital during quarantine, but the question of how humane long-term restrictive measures are remains a subject of heated debate. Consider education, for example. Schmidt is right when he says that crowded classrooms are dangerous to health - at least until a vaccine is developed. So why not hire twice as many teachers and split the classes in two? Why not make sure every school has a nurse?
Such measures could create much-needed jobs and lower critical unemployment rates, not to mention more space in classrooms. If schools are so crowded, why not divide the school day into shifts and do more outdoor activities, based on numerous studies showing that children learn new things faster in nature?
Making this kind of change in life will certainly not be easy. However, they are much less risky than completely abandoning the old tried and tested methods, when one trained person personally teaches children gathered in a group in which they themselves learn to communicate with each other.
When Andy Pallotta, President of the New York Teachers Union, learned that New York State had a new agreement with the Gates Foundation, he was quick to comment: “If we want to reform education, let's start by saying we need more social workers., school psychologists and nurses, we need more art courses, modern courses, and we need to reduce class sizes in schools across the country. " The Joint Parents' Committee also noted that if they did end up in a “distance learning experiment” (as Schmidt put it), the results are deeply troubling: “Since schools closed in mid-March, we have become much better aware how serious the challenges are for online learning."
In addition to the fact that there are class and racial prejudices in society in relation to those students who do not have access to the Internet (technology corporations want to solve this problem by the method of bulk purchases of equipment in order to profit from this), the big question remains how remote education can meet the needs of children with disabilities as required by law. Moreover, purely technical means cannot solve the problem of learning in a home environment characterized by overcrowding or abuse.
The question is not whether schools need to be transformed in view of the threat of a highly contagious virus for which there is no cure or vaccine. They will certainly be transformed, like all other institutions in which people gather in groups. The challenge, as always, is an instantaneous collective shock and a lack of public debate about how we should drive this transformation and who will benefit from it: private tech corporations or students?
The same questions should be asked about the health care system. During a pandemic, it is prudent not to go to doctors and not to appear again at the clinic. However, telemedicine has significant drawbacks. So we need a solid public debate that weighs the pros and cons of whether we should spend significant public funds on telemedicine - or whether we need more nurses equipped with all the necessary protective equipment to come on call., carry out diagnostics and provide necessary assistance to patients at home. And our most urgent need, apparently, isto strike the right balance between using virus-tracking apps (which, with proper privacy protection, can occupy a niche) and recruiting Community Health Corps, which could provide jobs for millions of Americans - not just to keep track of the contacts of those infected, but also to make sure everyone gets the supplies and support they need to stay safely in quarantine.
In any case, we are faced with a really difficult choice - to invest in a person, or to invest in technology? The bitter truth is that, in our current position, we cannot do it at the same time. When at the federal level they are unwilling to support cities and entire states by denying them the necessary funds, this means that the health crisis caused by the coronavirus inevitably leads to an artificially created problem of lack of resources. The future of public schools, universities, hospitals and public transport is in question. If tech corporations get their way by lobbying for distance learning, telemedicine, 5G communications,self-driving cars - this is their "new digital course" - then the state simply will not have money for other pressing public needs, not to mention the "new green course", which our planet desperately needs.
And vice versa: all these new gadgets will have to pay with massive layoffs of teachers and the closure of hospitals.
Technology provides us with better tools, but not every solution is necessarily technological. If we trust people like Bill Gates or Eric Schmidt with key decisions regarding the upcoming "transformations" of our cities and states, then the trouble is that they have professed the belief all their lives that any problem can be solved with the help of new technologies.
For them, as for many others in Silicon Valley, the pandemic was their finest hour, a brilliant opportunity to gain not only appreciation, but also respect and power, which, in their opinion, they were deprived of. And Andrew Cuomo, having put the former director of Google at the head of the department that will determine the appearance of the state after the release from quarantine, apparently, simply untied his hands.
Author: Naomi Klein, Translated from English by Viktor Zhuravlev, Original.
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[1] The US Federal Freedom of Information Act is a law that came into force in 1967; it allows the full or partial disclosure of information and documents of the US government at the request of any citizen. - Approx. transl.
[2] The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is the Health Insurance Mobility and Accountability Act, which was passed on August 21, 1996. - Note transl.
[3] The Food and Drug Administration is an agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services that controls the quality of foods, drugs, and certain other categories of goods. - Approx. transl.