I have been thinking about the situation in the Middle East and also the rise of oil prices, peak oil, and the problem of a world economy based on energy scarcity rather than abundance. There is, I believe, a way to solve the problems in the Middle East, and the energy problems facing the world, at the same time. But it requires thinking “outside the box.”

Middle Eastern nations must take the lead in freeing the world from dependence on their oil. This is not only their best strategy for the future of their nations and their people, but also it is what will ultimately be best for the region and the whole world.

It is inevitable that someone is going to invent a new technology that frees the world from dependence on fossil fuels. When that happens all oil empires will suddenly collapse. Far-sighted, visionary leaders in oil-producing nations must ensure that their nations are in position to lead the coming non-fossil-fuel energy revolution. This is the wisdom of “cannibalize yourself before someone else does.”

Middle Eastern nations should invest more heavily than any other nations in inventing and supplying new alternative energy technologies. For example: hydrogen, solar, biofuels, zero point energy, magnetic power, and the many new emerging alternatives to fossil fuels. This is a huge opportunity for the Middle East not only for economic reasons, but also because it may just be the key to bringing about long-term sustainable peace in the region.

There is a finite supply of oil in the Middle East — the game will and must eventually end. Are Middle Eastern nations thinking far enough ahead about this or not? There is a tremendous opportunity for them if they can take the initiative on this front and there is an equally tremendous risk if they do not. If they do not have a major stake in whatever comes after fossil fuels, they will be left with nothing when whatever is next inevitably happens (which might be very soon).

Any Middle Eastern leader who is not thinking very seriously about this issue right now is selling their people short. I sincerely advise them to make this a major focus going forward. Not only will this help them to improve quality of life for their people now and in the future, but it is the best way to help bring about world peace. The Middle East has the potential to lead a huge and lucrative global energy Renaissance. All it takes is vision and courage to push the frontier and to think outside of the box.

If Middle Eastern nations annually invested hundreds of billions of dollars into research and development of alternative fuels and alternative energy technologies, they could definitely capture and lead the market in post-fossil-fuel energy technologies. They could provide energy itself to the global grid, as well as technologies for utilizing or generating non-fossil-fuel energy such as new kinds of engines or components, generators, batteries, fuel cells, and more.

By doing this, they could achieve two important goals: Their land would no longer be strategically important to other nations and so the foreign military presence in the region would diminish and eventually leave altogether, and secondly, they could ensure a tremendous long-term revenue stream for their nations (via patents, manufacturing, and supply of products). The Middle East could become a world center of excellence in alternative energy. This is really the future of the Middle East. They must sell abundance, not scarcity. They must lead the world in this.

Middle Eastern nations have another huge asset besides what is under the ground — it is what is above the ground — the sun and space itself. They have a lot of open space and a lot of sunlight annually. It is the perfect place to create enormous solar collection farms, and wind farms.  It would also be an ideal location to position rectennas for receiving space-based solar power (via microwave transmission). These are just the near-term opportunities. Longer-term, the Middle Eastern nations should and can develop specialized R&D labs, university programs, and major global corporations to develop, license and sell green energy, and alternative energy technologies to the rest of the world.

There are of course other very difficult political and social issues to resolve — for example the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the rise of Islamic radicalism, corruption, human rights, terrorism, etc. But I believe that the best way to make really positive progress towards resolving these problems is to focus on improving the level of education, economic prosperity and stability, self-esteem, and long-term opportunity in the region.

If the oil issue wasn’t there complicating all of the other problems in the region, it would change the game radically for everyone and might open up a range of new potential solutions that today are not even possible to consider.

My personal belief is that terrorism and war are obsolete and never solve problems. Violence begets violence and that will never lead to peace or prosperity in the Middle East. The solution is economic prosperity, education, human rights, and freedom. With regard to Israel, I believe that peaceful co-existence between Israel and other Middle-Eastern powers can and must be achieved, but that this will be
easier to achieve once the oil issue is off the table. Why? Because once the oil issue is off the table, much of the funding for terrorism will vanish. Similarly much of the foreign interest in a strong military presence in the region will also vanish. This will
significantly de-escalate and de-militarize the conflict for both sides, thus making it more likely that a peaceful, lasting solution can be found.

Ultimately, for a long-term peace in the Middle East to take place, moderates on all sides need to be driving the process. But moderates lead only when civilizations are prosperous and safe — when their people feel they have a good enough quality of life and future that they don’t want to risk losing that. A major step in this direction is to improve the economic situation for lower and middle-class citizens of Middle Eastern countries. People who have happy families, good incomes, and bright futures generally do not want to fight wars or become suicide bombers. Instead of pouring money into terrorism, counter-terrorism, military might, secret weapons, etc, money should be poured into creating and building more opportunity and prosperity for everyday citizens of the Arab world.

Fossil fuels are the real enemy of peace and prosperity worldwide: they are finite, dwindling, and controlled only by a minority as well as outside influences. This must change if peace and prosperity for the Middle East is truly important. In fact, there is a much great opportunity in renewable energy and alternative energy than fossil fuels. We must shift our world from one that is based on control of finite resources, to one that is based on distribution and use of abundant and/or renewable resources. This is the really the best path for the Middle East, and the rest of the world.

This article in the Atlantic Monthly presents the best analysis I’ve seen of the strategic situation on the Korean penninsula, and various US options (and potential mistakes to avoid). It’s really a fascinating read, and quite educational, for anyone concerned about what might happen in that arena.

The recent negative hype about the lack of privacy in search results got me thinking about the needs of online services versus those of individuals. Is there a way to satisfy both constraints?

AOL’s accidental data release was one thing that worried me. Google’s "personal search" feature, where the log of all your searches is displayed, was another. The fact that everything you search for and click on, during your entire life, could potentially be logged, owned, accessed, and shared, by and with parties other than yourself, without your consent or even your knowledge, is a step towards a world I wouldn’t want to live in.

The arguments in favor of allowing this to continue either hinge on commercial needs or homeland security and law enforcement. Regarding commercial needs: just as in other situations where commercial needs pose risks to individual privacy (such as medical records for example), the government needs to step in and regulate if the industry can’t do an adequate job of self-regulating. And regarding industry self-regulation, it can easily become a case of wolves guarding sheep, and so has to be carefully regulated by government on a meta-level. As for the needs of homeland security and law enforcement, access should be strictly regulated (and in theory, it already is). 

The thing is, even if governments and industry stepped up and took responsibility for regulating this situation, one can never be
sure that future regime change, accidents, or individuals or groups
with both access and a motive won’t lead to future privacy violations. As a result
even ironclad assurances, laws, and strict procedures by organizations
and governments, won’t protect anyone against such unknowns. The only truly safe solution is one that puts all of the control, and all of the responsibility and liability, for one’s own private data, in one’s own hands. In a digital world, where everything is potentially recorded and logged forever, this is really important.

The solution is, I think, that individuals, rather than search companies, should own and control their searchstreams and their clickstreams such that they can make use of that information for their own personalization needs, and they can selectively (and either authentically or anonymously) share it with other services if and when they want to. Someone should build an infrastructure that enables this and then make it an API that all services and apps can use. The folks at Attention Trust and Root Markets are on the right track. This is a very interesting business opportunity.

I would like to see a search engine and a search toolboar for Firefox that enable you to search anonymously. I did a little research (on Google, how ironic) and found Proxify, Kaxy and Mezzy. They seem interesting although perhaps a little clunky seeming. What we need is a high-profile, really polished, professional, well-funded, simple anonymous proxy for Google. And a Firefox toolbar to go with it.

If a service like what I am describing existed (and there was some level of independent audit that could assure me that it really didn’t capture or save anything private without my permission — for example if all the code was open source and vetted), then I would definitely always use it instead of going directly to Google. Does it exist already? Let me know. If not, someone should build it. In fact, I wouldn’t mind if it showed me ads, just like Google does. So it could make money from my searching. I would bring my business there as would most people who have educated themselves about this issue.

Finally, wearing my corporate hat for the moment, as someeone building an online service in the search space, if there was a suitable (and that is the key term here…) way that the service my company is building could give individuals control of their private data while also still being able to learn from it in aggregate and/or anonymously for individuals, that would be great. As an online service provider I don’t really want to have to worry about keeping such private information and all the overhead and potential liability that goes with it.

Online services do need to learn from the behavior of their users in order to personalize content and target ads, etc. But they don’t need to necessarily house that data themselves, nor do they need to necessarily be able to key it to the real identities of their users. If there was an infrastructure that enabled my service to learn, personalize and target, without having to hold and manage the dataset underlying that capability, that would actually be a potential savings to my business, and a reduction of risk, and a benefit to my users. The thing is, while early attempts to enable this do exist, they aren’t mature enough to rely on, and nobody knows how well they will scale or whether they will have enough funding and traction to last. So in the meantime those of us building online services are in a gray area — we need certain features for our services to function well, and we also would like to find a way to protect privacy for the individual. This is the connundrum of the moment. It’s a business opportunity for someone out there.

This is a very interesting scenario showing how China could potentially trounce US forces in a single, calculated strike. While it doesn’t consider the option that US would retaliate nonconventially, shifting the game to a new playing field, it certainly makes a compelling case for China winning in a conventional conflict in their territorial waters at least. The author concludes by suggesting the US has two options — continue seeking world domination and eventually face such a situation, or take a different approach altogether and seek to lead the world in medicine, fighting poverty, and helping emerging countries — a strategy which the author believes would win the hearts and minds of people around the world, leading to longer-term gains for the US than a strategy that seeks leadership through military dominance.

es

This article is quite eye-opening. It appears the US government and military, as well as leading contractors, may have been heavily hacked by foreign governments, and it’s being kept secret.

This article is very interesting not only because it provides an unusually detailed scenario of what would happen if a nuke was detonated in the Washington DC area, but also because it provides counter-intuitive guidance for how to survive such a situation, as well as information about new medical treatments for helping both first-responders and victims to combat radiation sickness. Let’s hope nothing like this ever happens!

In a worrying development, part of a mutated human influenza virus related to the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic was found in a virus in pigs in South Korea. The question is, how did this happen and what does it indicate? It couldn’t have taken place naturally and may be evidence of the early-stages of a  bioterror attack.

A recent article on Boing Boing reports the most recent round of Chinese cyberattacks on the Tibetan government in exile.

China has increasingly aimed its sophisticated cyberwar teams at the low-tech, peace-loving Tibetans. I know dozens of Tibetan lamas and their staffs and they all use PC’s — and none of them know anything about viruses, firewalls, trojan horses, etc. They are sitting ducks for this kind of attack (maybe they should all use Macs? Fewer/no viruses! That would be a great PR move for Apple).

The Tibetans just want the freedom to practice their religion without being disturbed. It would be really wonderful if the white-hat hacker community would volunteer their services to help the Tibetans defend themselves from this state-sponsored cyberterror.

by Nova Spivack, Minding the Planet, http://www.mindingtheplanet.net

This news article reports that the FBI is investigating a situation in which mobsters deliberately contaminated their drug money with a virus in order to deter in-house theft by members of their organization. Several years ago, during the days of collective paranoia following 9-11, I started thinking about how to combat potential terrorist threats — and one of the threats I came up with was precisely this threat of contaminated money. Because money travels in a “viral” manner along social and economic networks it represents a perfect vector for spreading a contaminant. While the effects of such an attack would be minimal in terms of actual fatalities, they would potentially be enormous in terms of panic and disruption to our way of life.

I knew it was only a matter of time before this threat materialized somewhere in the world: Now it seems that an actual case has emerged. While the money in question did not represent a large sum, and although viruses (at least) have a relatively short shelf-life, it is an example of a scary new kind of threat that governments need to prepare to defend against. Below are some thoughts about a potential worst-case scenario and various countermeasures that could be implemented to protect against it.

Here is a hypothetical worst-case scenario: imagine what would happen if terrorists contaminated $30 million of small-denomination US dollar banknotes with weaponized anthrax (which can survive for a very long time outside of a lab) and then put those notes back into circulation in several major cities. A month later they then announce what they have done. By that point the contaminated notes have circulated through countless banks, ATM machines, cash registers, wallets, people’s clothing and homes — in short, a large scope of potential contamination exists. The public and the news media panic –suddenly nobody knows whether their $10, $20 and $50 bills are safe to touch, let alone use. People are advised not to use, touch or accept such notes. Leading health authorities go so far as to advise people to throw away or burn their money as well as anything that may have come in contact with it — their wallets, their credit cards, their clothing, etc. Furthermore even the act of coming into contact with potentially contaminated notes in order to dispose of them is risky –and so people don’t know what to do. People are advised to use credit cards for all transactions — but this cuts out anyone who doesn’t have a credit card as well as any business that doesn’t accept credit cards. Furthermore, since plastic credit cards may have come in contact with the contaminated notes in people’s wallets, they too are suspect and may be risky to use. Only telephone and Internet transactions are “hands off” enough to be completely safe. But not every consumer, nore very business, is capable of online payments for every single transaction they do. As a result the consumer economy grinds to a screeching halt.

Possible Countermeasures:

What is the solution? How can we prepare for, defend against, and mitigate such a situation?

My first recommendation is that banknotes should be regularly tested, according to a random sampling schedule, in several major cities, for the presence of potential contaminants. This is not so easy as it turns out that all banknotes carry a large amount of bacteria and other contaminants naturally. Therefore the testing must specifically look for unusual contaminants or unusually high levels of common contaminants.

Secondly, all banks, cash registers and ATM machines should at the very least have built-in UV emitters that destroy viruses and bacteria on any banknotes that pass through them. While this will not protect against radiological or chemical contamination it would protect against biological agents. Since most notes eventually pass through cash registers and ATM machines this measure would help to prevent the spread of any biological contaminant.

Thirdly, there should be a method for replacing contaminated banknotes on a large scale if necessary. Every banknote has an unique serial number. A system should be devised whereby people can bring their banknotes to a location that will take them and provide uncontaminated replacements. To accomplish this effectively, banks should be used as the distribution points for this process. Each bank should be provided with a system for in-taking potentially contaminated notes, logging their serial numbers, photographing them, and destroying them — and then issuing a replacement note to the customer.

Fourthly, as a short-term emergency solution there should be a system in place that can switch the entire nation or any city to digital cash immediately. To do this, every citizen and business should be provided with a free digital wallet that can be accessed via Internet or telephone. The owners of these wallets should be enabled to put money into them, and to transfer funds between them, and with draw money from them. Paypal would be a suitable infrastructure for this. This solution would not work for everyone — not everyone has a bank account or credit card or even a permanent address — but it would work for a large percentage of the population and for a short term would keep the economy running.

Couples in England with certain forms of inherited cancer will now be able to prescreen embryos to choose give birth to healthier babies. This sets a new precedent for the pre-screening and selection of embryos with other desired genetic traits.

A Russian academician has predicted that bird-flu will stem to humans and kill up to one billion people around the world within 6 months of an outbreak. He says it is highly probable that a pandemic could take place within the next year. There is no evidence cited for his claims however he refers to studies to this effect allegedly in hands of US authorities. We’ll be tracking this meme as it develops to see if it is credible. Please update here if you get further data. Editor’s Note: The World Health Organization is organizing an emergency summit to develop strategies to combat the threat of this potential pandemic.

On Thursday a mushroom cloud of approx. 2.5 miles in diameter was detected in a remote region of North Korea, near the border of China. This corresponds to the expected diameter of a 10 kiloton bomb. Strangely, the US media has not reported this event widely. It has been reported that the US intelligence community is still trying to figure out whether or not the blast was nuclear. I find that doubtful as we have satellites that can easily detect the signature of a nuclear blast anywhere in the world. If North Korea has the Bomb, we are in big trouble.

Here’s an idea to help reduce the threat of terrorism against airplanes, and to speed up those long lines at airport security: Separate flights for luggage on high-risk routes.

For example, let’s say you are flying from NYC to LAX, a “high risk route.” When you check-in, before going through security, your bags are checked through to LAX. However, instead of going on your flight (or any other “passenger flight”) your bags (including all checked bags AND smaller “carry-on” bags too — no carry-ons are permitted on the passenger flight) are loaded onto an hourly “luggage flight” that only carries luggage. Every hour this luggage flight flies from NYC to LAX carrying all the luggage from all different airlines’ flights from NYC to LAX that was checked in in the previous hour. So everyone’s bags arrive at just about the time they arrive at LAX. Since there are no passengers on the luggage flight, if there happens to be a bomb in someone’s luggage it will have minimal effect (the pilots of the luggage flight, but not hundreds of passengers at least). Since the potential damage of blowing up such a flight is minimal, terrorists would not be likely to bother and so this would in turn reduce the chances of there being a bomb in any luggage on the NYC to LAX route — what would be the point of blowing up a flight full of luggage? And as a result of this, although luggage should still be scanned prior to being loaded onto the luggage flight, even if a bag was not scanned the chances would be very low that it would contain a bomb. Now as for the “passenger flight” since passengers would not be permitted to bring carry-ons on the flight (or would have to agree to go through mandatory extra-extensive 15 minute screening at security, if they elect to bring carry-ons), the job of airport security would be much simpler because most people would not elect to bring carryons (for passengers to have encough confidence to check what they would normally carry-on, the security of carry-ons that are checked onto the baggage flight must be guaranteed and insured to full value). This in turn would free up security personnel to spend more time doing body scan screening and identity checking, making the whole process of airport security more effective.

There has been much recent discussion lately about alleged evidence that the Bush administration is issuing terrorist alerts for political gain. While I am not taking a position on this issue, I do have a suggestion that could eliminate any doubts, and in the process protect our upcoming elections.

In order to prevent the possibility that national terrorism alerts might be issued for political gain by an incumbent Presidential administration, the right to issue or imply terrorism alerts and the right to postpone elections, should be given to a bi-partisan committee. This policy change should be instituted immediately.

The Bush administration repeatedly claims that it is not using terrorism alerts for political gain. If this is the case, they should be happy to accept this proposed policy change. If the present administration refuses to endorse such a change in policy, we should then rightfully question their motives for not wanting to do so.

The President, the current White House administration, and its appointees in DHS and various defense and intelligence agencies should not have the right to issue a terrorism alert or interfere with the electoral process in any way, without prior 2/3 majority approval by a bi-partisan committee. Violation of this policy should have serious consequences — such as potential impeachment proceedings and/or forfeiture of an election.

This is the only way to guarantee that the threat of terrorism is not used for political gain, for example, during the upcoming elections, such as in this scenario.

I should also note that the Bush administration (or any incumbent administration) would benefit from doing this in that it would help to restore their credibility on this issue. It would also benefit the nation by removing doubt about the veracity of terrorism alerts.

If you are concerned about this issue, please pass this idea onwards to people you know who might be able to get this to key policymakers fast. This idea could very well help to save the upcoming elections, and our democracy.

Minding the Planet Channel Mob

A report has come out that the levels of asbestos in lower Manhattan were (are?) at least twice what is considered safe for humans by the FDA, and possibly worse. Levels were so high after 911 that they overloaded the tests. However, this data was purposely concealed from the public following 911.

Security agencies are monitoring the emergence of a new type of Trojan Horse that uses peer-to-peer networks of bots to mount denial of service attacks on targeted sites. Dubbed Phatbot, one such Trojan is spreading widely across the Net and is especially difficult to disable due to the peer-to-peer nature of the attack. This type of technology is something that I predicted would emerge several years ago when I was thinking about cyberwarfare. If enough PC’s had such bots installed, they could literally take a government offline by focusing their combined outputs on a set of key nodes around the network. Similarly these networks could be used by protestors, or by terrorists, to bring business and communications to a halt. The problem is, the centralized architectures of our current networks are simply impossible to defend from distributed threats. We need to start developing truly decentralized server architectures that cannot be targeted and taken offline by attacks on any one location.

Here is an article that accurately depicts the carnage in Madrid. In the USA we only get highly sanitized news and war coverage is usually very minimal — but this article tells it like it really is. Perhaps if the public was shown what was war was really like there would be less of it?

A leaked secret report by top Pentagon analysts claims that within 20 years Britain could become “Siberian” and Major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas. In addition the report warns of nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting around the world as massive climate changes reshape the planet.

I read today with disgust further testimonials of shocking atrocities from defectors from the Gulags in North Korea. If you aren’t aware of the situation, you should be. Perhaps more than any other nation today, North Korea is engaged in systematic, large-scale human rights abuses — in particular, as the above cited news report alleges — chemical weapons experiments on living prisoners, including experiments on entire families. The only word to describe this is “evil.” This regime’s utter lack of humanity really frightens me — it appears they are experiencing a mass-psychosis on a cultural level. How did it happen? Why did the world let things go so far off course in North Korea? It reminds me of the Killing Fields. How can this happen in this supposedly “civilized” day and age? The horrors taking place in North Korea are widely known among governments but almost never discussed as a public issue. I feel so sad for the people living in the living hell of these concentration camps. I think we need to raise awareness of what is going on by blogging about it. In some small way that may eventually make this issue more of a public debate.

The New Scientist published this scary article in reaction to new reports from the US Agriculture Department about unorthodox terrorist risk scenarios. It’s one more example of why uncontrolled genetic engineering is perhaps the greatest present long-term threat to the human species — far more dangerous in fact than nuclear weapons. If we regulate plutonium technology and know-how with extreme security, why aren’t we regulating genetic engineering technology and know-how just as carefully? Until we have effective means of quickly detecting and stopping genetic weapons we should be extremely careful about disseminating knowledge and technology that would potentially help terrorists or rogue states to cause harm. This is of course a very hairy ethical issue that could be debated endlessly. My point is not to limit scientific progress — but on the other hand, not all scientific progress is “good” — it’s only good if humanity is ready to handle it responsibly.