Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
PaperclipPerfector
6mo ago
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Transnational Thursday for October 31, 2024
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Notes -
Somebody asked last time I posted a list like this what the background was. I'm coming from an EA/forecasting background, but then realized that although there might be something to being worried about catastrophic risks, reponses to this were top-down, trying to conceptualize risks long beforehand. I grew very unsatisfied with this, particularly for AI, and ended up raising some money to run a foresight/fast response team. We produce weekly minutes here, and the below feeds into that.
Some general topics:
South Korea’s military intelligence agency told lawmakers Wednesday that North Korea has likely completed preparations for its seventh nuclear test and is close to test-firing a long-range missile capable of reaching the United States.
An article looks at the growing alliance between China, Russia and other powers
Jamie Dimon, the head of the financial giant JP Morgan, makes the argument that we are already in a WW3.
Animal testing of H5N1 gives some data about how well it's adapting
Russia launches exercises simulating retaliatory strikes
Pakistan vows to emphasize military ties to Russia, and collaborates on anti-terrorism exercises.
At least 100 people have died so far (and about 1000 are "disappeared") in flash flooding of Spain’s Valencia. Bridges collapsing, and overall very striking videos on social media. The city got what would have been a freak tornado, but such events might become more common as climate change continues changing up weather patterns.
A teen who went into a murderous rampage was also cooking ricin.
Israel ordered a whole Lebanese city evacuated
Geneva convention rules are being weakened, and civilians aren't being shielded from the worst harms in Ukraine or Gaza.
Finland seized Russian assets over compensation linked to invasion of Crimea
A Boeing satellite exploded into 500 pieces. The worst case scenario in events like this is Kessler syndrome but so far reporting doesn't point to something like this, though early simulations don't look great
The US and China are fighting over dominance in the depths of the South China sea
The WHO activated the global emergency corps to deal with monkeypox. Implications unclear, as it seems more like a "reserve of experts that advise" and less like a "reserve of nurses and doctors"
A cyberattack from Iran hit an Israeli bank, and maybe credit card users generally, blocking users off.
Cyberattack against French Internet Service Provider
New agreement between Germany and the UK will tighten cooperation
Ballot box arson attacks in Oregon.
More cyberattacks in Australia
Fire in UK shipyard which builds nuclear submarines
The 2025 geomagnetic storm season might be pretty big
France depends on Russia for nuclear fuel
Some Russia military bases are empty. Some experts suggest this is for sabotage operations in the Baltics
First case of mpox Ib clade in London
Floods also caused havoc in Africa
Putin launches drills of Russia's nuclear forces simulating retaliatory strikes
India is expanding nuclear capabilities with fast breeder reactor
The US CDC issued an alert for "walking pneumonia"
A man with 120 guns and 250,000 rounds of ammunition in his home was arrested for shooting at a Democratic Party office
in Tempe
AI "Will Enhance" Nuclear Command and Control, Says nuclear command general
North Korea likely to ask for nuclear technology from Russia in exchange for troops, South Korea says. This would mirror an agreement between Iran and Russia.
The US army is preparing for a possible confrontation with China
Hezbollah new leader might agree on a ceasefire
More coral bleaching
Israel is using AI tools with little oversight to determine whether an individual is a Hamas operative.
North Korea conducted an ICBM test.
H5N1 detected in pig. Previously only in cows
I'm not sure what is actually being reported here. So far I see two facts being alleged - that Israel is using AI system to figure out who could be Hamas operative, which is 90% accurate (spectacular number if true, to the point I even suspect they are being over-optimistic), and that Israel is using phone tracking to locate specific suspects. The latter has nothing to do with AI, as for the former - I am not sure what is supposed to happen after a certain person has been identified as "90% likely to be Hamas operative". The article uses phrases like "automated kill chain", but there's no evidence or even allegation such thing actually exists in any meaning of the word "automated" - do they mean if the system identifies a person, he would be automatically targeted by some killing machine without human supervision? If so, why don't they say it explicitly and describe what this system is and how they know about it? If no, then what "automated" means?
And on the other hand, I am not sure what kind of oversight you would put on such a system. Let's assume you indeed had a system which with probability of 90% can tell you whether or not certain guy in Gaza is in Hamas. Now, how would you verify it? Obviously, if you had some better system, you'd use that one from the start. You could review the data yourself - but do you have better than 90% accuracy? I mean, if you spot some hilarious bug in the system - on the level of "black vikings" and other hilarious bugs in public LLMs, sure. You can block that. Like if the system marked every guy with name "Muhamad" as Hamas member, than you can notice it and overrule the system. But let's say you didn't notice that. Moreover, you tried it 100 times and went out and captured those guys and 90 of them admitted that yes they are in Hamas, or you found Hamas membership card on them and so on. E.g. let's assume 90% is true. How do you oversight that system then? Verifying each person manually is impossible - there are like 50 thousands of them, and most of them are hiding and it's impossible to verify anything about them until they are either captured or dead. So what do you base your supervision on?
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