Issue 37 - There is no World War 3

Welcome to issue 37, which for readers in the Northern Hemisphere comes to you in a brief period of pleasant spring, before what is anticipated to be another brutally hot summer. Expect it to arrive earlier than desired.

Table of Contents

• The Death of Diplomacy And Decline of Nations

• Farming and Food

• Need More Compute

• Ask the Virtual Receptionist

• By The Grace of the Influencer

• Hold It Now, Hit it

The Death of Diplomacy And Decline of Nations

This past weekend saw an increase in geopolitical volatility.

The most notable was Iran’s calculated attack on Israel. Calculated because while it was extensive, it remained largely symbolic, and perhaps deliberately ineffective. Iran needs to be seen as doing something, but is not ready for all out war with Israel and the US.

Iran had to respond to Israel because as part of their conflict in Gaza, the IDF has been striking targets across the region, including Iran’s consulate in Damascus. Under normal circumstances, launching a missile strike on a diplomatically protected property would be a major international incident, but these days the IDF has no fucks to give. While the US may be telling them to lay off the war crimes, the government of Bibi Netanyahu cares little about the rule of law.

Speaking of which, in Ecuador, where the rule of law is arguably already obsolete, a growing internal conflict has severed the country’s diplomatic relations with Mexico. A former Vice President of Ecuador sought refuge in the Mexican embassy in Quito, applying for political asylum after being convicted of corruption and sentenced to serve six years behind bars. The Ecuadorean police and military illegally entered the Mexican embassy to seize him, injuring some diplomatic staff in the process.

While these two incidents are quite different, they reflect a larger break down in the post world war two order. The end of this multidecade era is not only undeniable, but many are going further to argue that we’re now in the early days of a third world war.

We disagree with this analysis, while recognizing that diplomacy as we know it is dead. We’re entering an era of prolong crises, and pervasive political unrest. The ultimate loser or casualty of this change will be the nation state, and all of us who are subject to it. A world war requires nations to fight each other, and what we’re witnessing is far less organized, and far greater in scale.

Instead we’re already a decade or so into a massive information war, where conspiracy has supplanted journalism, and faith matters more than ideology. Instead of proxy wars, we’re witnessing avatar wars, where cyber attacks and narrative contests transcend battlefields and conflict zones. Conventional conflicts and terror attacks are part of this, but tragically come second to the battle for attention and perspective.

Might may be right, but perception still provides the basis for power, even if it requires a lot of bombs to back it up.

Farming and Food

For example, the politics of farming and food is already infested with extremist beliefs and religious fervor. Recently farmers in Europe have been staging sensational and powerful protests to push back against attempts to regulate industrial agriculture and encourage climate friendly practices.

Images of tractors blocking highways, and shutting down traffic, have been shared around the world, especially in agricultural communities, as proof that farmers are standing up to the bureaucrats in cities who don’t understand how food is produced. If we’re going to feed the world, they say, then we can’t have carbon taxes and restrictions on fossil fuels.

While farmers in general face tight margins, buying retail and selling wholesale, the current anti-climate narrative is nonsense. The rural urban divide is real, but the reliance on fossil fuels is entirely artificial, and a reflection of deeper geopolitical issues.

It may be easy to lament the rise of the far right among farmers, but sadly not enough people know where their food comes from and why. If we want a more sustainable and climate friendly agricultural sector, we’re going to need a lot more farmers, and new farmers, who bring new ideas, and new perspectives.

Yet there are considerable obstacles, political, economic, and cultural, that not only keep people disconnected from their food, but also make it super difficult to become a farmer.

Need More Compute

The same can kind of be said about AI. On the one hand, like food, it has become something we all use, whether we realize it or not, and like food, we rarely think of where it comes from, or how much energy and labour is required to produce it. We’d like to believe that unlike food, we don’t rely upon AI, but that may no longer be true in a social, political, and economic sense.

Yet on the other hand, like farming, AI is resource intensive, and the barrier to enter the industry is incredibly high, and growing. Like agriculture, AI depends upon a vast sea of underpaid and indentured labour, although the high end of the AI food chain is incredibly well compensated. A reflection of how few there are with the appropriate skills. Is that a vision for the future of farming? Probably not.

If you listen to the leaders of the AI industry, their current obsession is with their need for “more compute”. Compute is how they now describe the commodity they depend upon to build and grow greater AI models that can achieve greater accuracy. If only they had more compute, they say, then their models would not offer wrong answers or glitchy images.

So what would it take to get more compute? More energy. Does that mean burning more fossil fuels? The AI boys don’t want that, even though many don’t care. The answer they say is to be found in nuclear power. That can solve both the AI problem and the climate issue according to these billionaires.

A hail Mary for the faithful, but a sure thing for the effective accelerationists. Too bad existing regulatory regimes and electoral systems stand in their way. Although they never really believed in the nation state anyway. Empires have far more appeal, and in America the two have always been synonymous.

Ask the Virtual Receptionist

The cliché of our moment in time is that there is no help line, and all the incoming calls are from bots or scammers. If you have a problem at the grocery store, nobody responsible is on site. Google only provides support to business customers, and even then at a premium.

For years the AI industry promised that they’d fix this. And now they have. Kinda. The automation is not on the people side, but on the scale side, which combined with remote work, creates this future:

@404.media

virtual in-person cashier? #zoom #nyc #automation

This video is particular interesting because it shows the same virtual receptionist at multiple buildings:

@irynaai

Omg, this is insane! This is already happening! This is the future of work! 🤯😱 #ai #artificialintelligence #aitool #aitools #remotework #s... See more

By The Grace of the Influencer

We wrote about Keith Lee a few issues back, and he recently brought his family and media schtick to Toronto. Suffice to say it was a big hit, and as usual, Torontonians were flattered by the attention. Here’s a video from Keith summarizing some of the impact of his visit:

@keith_lee125

Toronto Food taste test 💕 would you try it ? 💕 #foodcritic @SUMAQ IRAQI CHARCOAL GRILL @Old Nassau @Biscuits To Baskets @The Brandon Gonez... See more

Just to reiterate and spell out the business model here. Keith Lee gets paid by TikTok for views per video (which average in the millions). He also gets sponsorship deals with companies like DoorDash. He’s now making a lot of money by travelling and reviewing restaurants that are sourced by his viewers. Any restaurant he gives a good review to, is immediately inundated with new business. The Keith Lee effect is not just about the restaurant getting a lift, but the ecosystem around Keith Lee growing into a larger cultural economic entity.

This offers a model of the influencer as politician. As a kind of representative for a constituency that believes and supports them. Keith Lee has power because people believe in him. This attentional and emotional power is now translatable into economic power. How long before it can be (easily) translated into political power?

Hold It Now, Hit it

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