Pushing Back on Pushwoosh

And other ways the government is addressing data and national security concerns.

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(Photo by Getty Images.)

Burying Huawei and ZTE 

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted last week to ban the import and sale of all communications equipment made by Chinese telecommunications companies Huawei and ZTE, saying these products pose “unacceptable risk” to U.S. national security. In a prepared statement, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, said, “The FCC is committed to protecting our national security by ensuring that untrustworthy communications equipment is not authorized for use within our borders, and we are continuing that work here.” 

While government actions against Huawei, ZTE, and other Chinese technology makers have increased over the last five years, this is the first time the FCC has voted to prohibit the authorization of new equipment based on national security concerns.  

Here’s what I’m thinking (HWIT): 

The wisdom of this action should be obvious. This newsletter, and increasingly other media, frequently discuss the now undeniable risks associated with Chinese and Chinese-linked technology companies. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) exercises decisive control over these entities and employs them as extensions of the government for economic, social, and political espionage. Preventing this within our country is among the most basic actions we can take for our self-preservation and I’m glad it’s happening. 

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Odds of a Terminator scenario, Klon? I’m asking seriously. I don’t trust AI.

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    Bill B

    On the AI Diplomacy game-playing. That makes me a bit nervous.

    Bruno de Mesquita who I came across in college back in the 80's came up with EUM utility and PG prediction models that offered very reliable forecasting. The CIA ranked the EUM model 90% accurate. I believe some of those models may be classified and no black boxes. It would be interesting to know if those are incorporated in AI models.

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  3. Vaddeman

    I'm reminded of the Star Trek episode 'A Taste of Armageddon'

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  4. Jack O. Zentrist

    When reading stuff like this one begins perhaps to feel like Pascal, when he was face to face with the infinite abyss of the space-time continuum. I heard the other day that the Webb telescope is going to be able to "look back" to "events" that actually occurred billions of years ago. Is it true that the Chinese are ahead of us in quantum computing? This was stated quite matter-of-factly on CGTN, during one of their amazing shows.

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    Brian

    I don’t see any reason to get queasy about these moves. China and Russia have made it crystal clear they’re not friends or partners, and we’d be naive and irresponsible to just let them have their way with our open society. Their philosophies and actions have to have consequences.

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  6. Avatar photo
    Philbnichols

    Klon Kitchen, could you spend some TheCurrentspace soon reckoning the nature of self awareness as it pertains to AI, and why that 'hole out of which we cannot dig ourselves' is safely either unattainable or distant?

    'hole out of which we cannot dig ourselves' - ALSO, it seems unfalsifiable to me that the nanosecond any machine on earth connected to the www becomes self aware, before a human can make one keystroke, that computer will have imbedded the self-awareness idea so deeply and widely that it would take a team of genius humans looking specifically for that idea a hundred years to find. Therefore self aware machines win, every time. Of course these machines will have learned our persuasion and deception to a level beyond even the most sinful, genius humans. If you disagree, could you briefly explain why?

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    Michael McGuire

    We are already seeing AI models being generated in such a way as to _explain_ their responses. I think this is the key next step for AI that is intended to augment human intelligence. Without that, the black box that is an ML model can by hard to trust.

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    Kcorthell

    I am, as usual, impressed by how readable and insightful your work is. I am more aware and prepared today than I was before reading this newsletter. Many thanks!

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  9. Q02b02

    As long as our Colossus and their Guardian don't make a deal we should be ok.

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  10. Emily

    As someone working towards becoming a professional translator, I sometimes read stories like this about AI advances and get a bit worried about being replaced by **shudder** machine translation software. I worry that, if the new CICERO AI is that good at processing natural language, the day when translation apps can replace human translators may not be too far off. But then I go onto Google Translate and let it take a whack at translating a newspaper article and feel much better. AI is getting better, but there's still a very long way to go before it can communicate as well as humans.

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    1. Avatar photo
      WKDawson

      Certainly, Google translate is a very useful tool for getting a general idea in many cases. It has improved a lot from the early years. However, the more "foreign" the language, the more it is likely to be next to useless or very misleading. It is really hard to get the sense with Japanese sometimes. It's not just the words, but the culture that affects the understanding. If it is an instructions manual, that can go reasonably well, but there are so many different colloquialisms that it can fall apart pretty easily (in a less formal conversation).

      Since AI has to be "trained", the training set is probably a typical Western mentality. That could also be remedied of course, but that broad awareness is often a problem. The more you know, the more you realize that you don't know anything.

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