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ControlsFreak
6d ago
The "S" in IoT stands for Secure
Boy, looong ago now, I broached the topic of security standards for techno-mabobs. At that time, I mentioned that the UK was considering some legislative proposals on the matter. I can't find the comment where I described what I viewed as the core driver of the tension over the topic - the culture of tech folks. That is, they are so used to the 90s consensus that software is gee wiz magic that is pure and sanctified, is the solution to world peace and all of life's problems, and can never possibly be the cause of anything bad, ever. The 90s conclusion was that government absolutely can. not. touch it. Hands off. No regulation whatsoever. No liability whatsoever. No matter what happens, they must have an absolute immunity stronger than even the strongest version that Donald Trump could have ever dreamed of claiming.
Justifications for this view have shifted, but I've always felt they've had a flavor of, "We can't be regulated! We're autistsartists! We make unique snowflake masterpieces! We have to move fast and break stuff! If we're ever held accountable for breaking anything, even for the most egregious of practices, then the entire economy will grind to a halt!" Whelp, after years of incident after incident exploiting the IoT-of-Least-Resistance, including things like ransomware takedowns of major corporate networks and huge botnets of smart refrigerators, we're about to see how true that really is.
Hitting the wire last week, the UK has dropped regulation for smart devices that are sold there. In my original comments five years ago, they were proposing three items; I had only asked for one (the most incredibly basic one - don't have every bloody device have the same default password). I really feel like it's a case of, "If you resist and throw enough of a shitfit over the really simple stuff, it's going to come back around in a much stronger way that you really won't like." The full document of "Baseline Requirements" speaks to fourteen items:
● No universal default passwords
● Implement a means to manage reports of vulnerabilities
● Keep software updated
● Securely store sensitive security parameters
● Communicate securely
● Minimize exposed attack surfaces
● Ensure software integrity
● Ensure that personal data is secure
● Make systems resilient to outages
● Examine system telemetry data
● Make it easy for users to delete user data
● Make installation and maintenance of devices easy
● Validate input data
● Data protection provisions for consumer IoT
Each area is broken down into one or more specifics. There's a helpful table on page 32, detailing whether the requirement is Mandatory, Recommended, and/or Conditional. This is important to know, because a bunch of them are truly just recommendations, but even many of the ones that are Capital M Mandatory are also Conditional, which is actually displaying quite a sense of care about the diversity of devices and possible situations. For example, they acknowledge things like "constrained devices", which is a "device which has physical limitations in either the ability to process data, the ability to communicate data, the ability to store data or the ability to interact with the user, due to restrictions that arise from its intended use". Here, they give some explicit examples, like "The device cannot have its software updated due to storage limitations, resulting in hardware replacement or network isolation being the only options to manage a security vulnerability."
I think this truly is a culture war between the culture of technokings and the culture of They Can't Keep Getting Away With This, and no culture war offensive ever comes without a counteroffensive. Will major corporations, either American or Chinese, bow the knee? Will they pull out of the UK in a weird, polar opposite anti-security stance to the position that has led other companies to pull products like Signal/Telegram from countries that threatened to make them less secure? The UK may be the sixth largest economy in the world by GDP, but that's still only about 4%. Will they go full tizzy and make separate products, where the secure versions go to the UK and the less secure versions go elsewhere? If they don't pull out and don't make different versions, than everyone in the world just got a huge security upgrayyyed. If they don't pull out and make different versions, other countries have a green light to mandate that they should also get the good stuff. So, if they're even thinking about pulling out, they've gotta rally the troops, punish any defectors, and really make the UK feel blockaded as a warning shot to the rest of the world.
My guess is that they'll bow the knee and just do this stuff for everyone. It's pretty much all stuff that everyone has known that they should be doing for quite a while now. Will it cost a little extra? Sure. Will they have to deal with some annoyed developers who feel constrained by law, as basically every other industry ever does, and eventually have to bring their culture into the Industrial Age? Sure. I doubt that having to pay $9 for a smart plug instead of $6 is going to change much about the economics of wiz bang gizmos... but it just might be a step toward not having newspapers filled with nightmare exploits causing millions in damage... at least not every week.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
6d ago
The cost of compliance -- which is to say, the reams of paperwork and signoffs necessary -- will make this impractical for startups. The large companies making this stuff will do it -- eventually, with the UK getting delayed releases. The Chinese knockoffs will continue to be sold unlawfully, and a lot of new stuff just won't appear in the UK at all.
Justifications for this view have shifted, but I've always felt they've had a flavor of, "We can't be regulated! We're
autistsartists! We make unique snowflake masterpieces! We have to move fast and break stuff! If we're ever held accountable for breaking anything, even for the most egregious of practices, then the entire economy will grind to a halt!"
Sneer all you want (I guess you're a Real Engineer), but I think a big reason bits have continued to grow while everything else has stagnated is the regulators haven't caught up with the bits yet.
ControlsFreak
6d ago
the reams of paperwork and signoffs necessary
My read is that they literally just need to fill in that table that I mentioned on page 32. That's not a lot of reams.
I guess you're a Real Engineer
I am most decidedly not a Real Engineer.
I think a big reason bits have continued to grow while everything else has stagnated is the regulators haven't caught up with the bits yet
Like I mentioned, we will see if the economy of bits will grind to a halt... or if they'll take the couple days necessary to not have a default password and to write "Yes, we don't have a default password" in the table on page 32. Perhaps you could formulate your prediction in numerical terms? Maybe something about growth rates in the tech sector over the next ten years? Maybe something about stock prices and how they'll reflect this immense stagnation? Or maybe an explanation for why the market hasn't already priced this in and had a massive drop in valuations in the past week in response to oppressive new regulation?
cjet79
5d ago
Government Programs Should Have Legible Budgets
This kind of rule may come across as obvious, pointless, or doomed depending on your perspective.
There is an impulse among many to see a problem in society and turn to government for a solution. I strongly disagree with this impulse. But I also think that these people and myself could come to terms on some shared "rules of engagement".
To start we should agree on some basic things:
- There is an unlimited number of things people might want to "fix" about our society, but a limited amount of resources to spend fixing such things.
- There should be a way to determine how many resources we want to spend fixing a particular problem.
- Paying to fix the problems should be done in a fair and above board way. (i.e. reverse lotteries where you randomly get fucked over are bad).
There are many devils in the little details, but what these three basic things suggest is that there should be: A set way of collecting taxes. A budget using those taxes that pays out to various social causes. The determination of that budget can be debated upon in some agreed way (maybe by electing representatives to a 'congress'). And that all social programs must go through this set of procedures.
To address the criticisms:
"This is pointless we already do things this way."
Sometimes governments do it this way, sometimes they don't.
The Americans with Disabilities Act does not follow these rules. Private individuals are given the ability to sue other private individuals to provide accommodations for them. The threat of getting sued also encourages a lot of preemptive work on the part of companies. How much does all of this suing and preemptive work cost? No one knows. How much will it cost you to provide for people with disabilities? Maybe a standard amount. Maybe you'll be one of the unlucky ones that gets sued in a new novel interpretation of the law and you'll win a reverse lottery.
How much do you think it is worth it to help disabled people in this country? It seems like a valid political question, but right now the American Government is basically on a blind autopilot path. It cannot know how much is spent. It cannot control how much is spent. And it cannot work out more lucrative and appealing deals for edge cases.
A little while ago (maybe a decade) some university (maybe MIT) decided to put all of their classes online for digital consumption, for free. Sometime later they were forced to take down the entire archive, because they were not subtitled, and a deaf person could not access them. The deaf person wanted them all subtitled. Subtitling a free online resource would have been too expensive and not worth it. So they were instead just removed for everyone. This is the kind of problem that a competent government middleman can solve:
[In the alternative universe where the ADA creates a government middleman agency for solving disability issues.] Each deaf person is allotted $5,000 a year to solve for their disability. They can choose to spend this on hearing implants, or on paying towards having some work transcribed. If enough deaf people want a thing transcribed it gets done. No business owner or non-profit is suddenly held hostage. No single person or entity is stuck paying enormous costs. Things aren't removed from public consumption just because a disabled person can't access it. We know how much is spent on deaf people per year. Medical companies that want to solve or fix a disability have a clear customer market for potential solutions.
This is doomed people would rather have the costs hidden and less obvious.
As I said above, sometimes the government does follow the good set of rules. I'd consider an agency like NASA a good example. The American people give some vague indications of how important they think space science and exploration is to their elected representatives. Those elected representatives can talk with the scientists, engineers, and managers at NASA to determine if maybe there are some important research projects that the general public doesn't know about but might want if they did know about it. NASA's budget is paid through taxes and is a clear line item on the federal budget. For the last two decades NASA has been about 0.5% of the federal budget. Which sounds vaguely correct to me in proportion to how much Americans care about funding Space related stuff.
The cynical reason why I believe that programs have hidden or "laundered" costs is that I don't believe voters would be actually willing to fund them if the true costs were obvious. If a party has a temporary political victory the best the best way to leverage it is through hidden and laundered costs. Pass a medicare act that doesn't really change the rules until you are out of office. Pass a civil rights act with murky enforcement that can be slowly ratcheted up every year.
Despite politicians doing this pretty often, I don't think it is what voters actually want. There is a huge amount of frustration from people over these sorts of policies. Hanania's book the Origins of Woke kind of blew up one of these issues recently. But they are all going to become problems, because when you remove the funding control from government there is no funding control. There is no countervailing force to push down the costs of these various programs. And the only way to get rid of them is often just destroy them altogether. So while people might have supported the ADA if it was 1% of the budget, they might start getting pissed at the program when it balloons up to 10% of the budget and a bunch of reverse lottery sob stories start showing up in the news. And suddenly instead of 10% or even 1% of the budget, you get 0% for your cause and no one trusts you with a 1% allotment cuz they will all remember the horror days of 10%. I don't know how likely a full reversal to 0% is for any of these policies. But that seems to be whats on the table as far as alternatives go.
There is also an ongoing legal weakness to many of these policies. Now that the supreme court is mostly conservative it could start invalidating different laundered cost schemes that have been liberal policy staples for decades. Affirmative action has taken a hit. Paid housing for the homeless might get hit next.
Conclusion
In general I think we should be suspicious of any public program that tries to hide its costs, or launder those costs onto private actors. Anything that expands the scope of things that one individual can sue another for is laundering costs. If you want a social program done or accomplished, you need to be willing to raise taxes and pay for it. If voters can't stomach raising taxes to pay for a particular social program, then too bad! Nothing is free. Start comparing the costs and fighting for them in the agreed upon battlefield.
SlowBoy
4d ago
It's been a long time since we've discussed Trump, and there have been a number of developments in the court cases against him, and so I'm here to say that our long mottizan nightmare of peace and tranquility is finally over.
Florida
CNN: Federal judge indefinitely postpones Trump classified documents trial
Trump's trial in Florida over classified documents has been indefinitely postponed. (Jack Smith had requested it start the day after Trump's New York trial ended.) It turns out that new revelations made in documents Trump's lawyers requested have upended the case. CNN doesn't elaborate on what happened, for which I'll turn to this story:
Prosecutors admit key evidence in document case has been tampered with
“Since the boxes were seized and stored, appropriate personnel have had access to the boxes for several reasons, including to comply with orders issued by this Court in the civil proceedings noted above, for investigative purposes, and to facilitate the defendants' review of the boxes,” Smith’s team wrote in a new court filing to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon.
“There are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans,” the prosecutors wrote.
Smith’s team in a footnote also conceded it had misled the court about the problem by previously declaring that the evidence had remained in the exact state it had been seized.
“The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court,” the footnote said.
It turns out that when the government alleged that Trump had classified documents he was not supposed to have, the government itself did not accurately know which documents Trump had, or which documents Trump was even supposed to have. Actually, worse than that, it turns out they fabricated some or all of the accusations. For instance, that famous picture of classified documents with cover sheets raided from Mar-a-Lago? It turns out those documents didn't have cover sheets, the FBI staged them before photographing, and they didn't even correctly label all of the documents they supposedly took:
The DOJ's Doctored Crime Scene Photo of Mar-a-Lago Raid
“[Thirteen] boxes or containers contained documents with classification markings, and in all, over one hundred unique documents with classification markings…were seized. Certain of the documents had colored cover sheets indicating their classification status. (Emphasis added.) See, e.g., Attachment F (redacted FBI photograph of certain documents and classified cover sheets recovered from a container in the ‘45 office’).”
The DOJ’s clever wordsmithing, however, did not accurately describe the origin of the cover sheets. In what must be considered not only an act of doctoring evidence but willfully misleading the American people into believing the former president is a criminal and threat to national security, agents involved in the raid attached the cover sheets to at least seven files to stage the photo.
In order to prove Donald Trump had documents he wasn't supposed to have, the goverment took documents Trump had (that the NARA gave him in mislabeled boxes) and added cover sheets for photographs to them.
Whoops!
Judge Cannon has indefinitely postponed trial while Jack Smith's prosecutors work out answers to the questions posed by all these new revelations.
Georgia
News-watchers will remember that, several months ago, it turned out that Fulton Prosecutor Fani Willis was hiring her secret lover to work on the Trump election fraud case. He was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars while they dated and went on vacations together, for which she insisted (without evidence) that she always paid him back. This posed a serious concern of misconduct and the risk that Fani Willis would be forced off the case entirely. After weeks of wrangling, Judge McAfee ruled that Willis could stay on the case, as long as Nathan Wade did not. Trump's team appealed the ruling, and now, the Georgia Appeals Court will hear the decision:
The court's decision to grant Trump's appeal will likely delay the start of any trial, though no date has been set for it to begin. The case in Fulton County is one of four Trump is facing as he mounts a third bid for the White House. His first criminal trial is currently underway in Manhattan, where local prosecutors charged him with 34 counts of falsifying business records. He pleaded not guilty to those charges.
Re-hearing the Fani Willis conflict of interest decision might lead to a repeat of the earlier hearing, where Fani repeatedly shouted over the courtroom and judge:
Fiery DA Fani Willis loses it on lawyer during misconduct hearing: ‘Don’t be cute with me!’
“It’s a lie! It’s a lie!” Willis screamed into the microphone, prompting Judge Scott McAfee to immediately call a five-minute break.
[...[
Willis told Merchant she was “extremely offended” by the implication that Willis slept with Wade after her first time meeting him at a conference in October 2019.
Earlier in proceedings, witness Robin Yeartie — a former employee in the DA’s office who claimed to be a longtime friend of Willis’ — said she had “no doubt” that Willis and Wade were already romantically involved in 2019.
So the question of prosecuting Trump over the 2020 election in Georgia will have to wait until it's determined how much of a liar the prosecuting DA might or might not have been.
New York
This trial is the juiciest of all, as it is currently in session in New York, with the judge threatening to have Trump locked up:
CBS: Trump held in contempt again for violating gag order as judge threatens jail time
Judge Juan Merchan said Trump violated his order on April 22 when he commented on the political makeup of the jury.
"That jury was picked so fast — 95% Democrats. The area's mostly all Democrat," Trump said in an interview with the network Real America's Voice. "It's a very unfair situation, that I can tell you."
In his written order, Merchan said Trump's comments "not only called into question the integrity, and therefore the legitimacy of these proceedings, but again raised the specter of fear for the safety of the jurors and of their loved ones."
Trump has promised, in interview and social media post, that he's willing to go to jail for exercising his First Amendment rights to criticize Judge Merchan, having said in April that it would be his "great honor" to go to jail for violating Merchan's gag order.
The issue really stems from Trump's accusations of political bias in the New York courtroom. The gag order was imposed after Trump attacked Merchan's daughter for working for Democratic fundraisers:
Dem clients of daughter of NY judge in Trump hush-money trial raised $93M off the case
Two major Democratic clients of the daughter of the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush-money trial have raised at least $93 million in campaign donations — and used the case in their solicitation emails — raising renewed concerns that the jurist has a major conflict of interest.
Another such example is that one of Bragg's prosecutors working the case is Matthew Colangelo, who left the #3 position at DOJ under Merrick Garland to work the Trump case:
In December 2022, Colangelo, the high-flying third most senior official in President Joe Biden's Justice Department, astonished colleagues by packing his bags and leaving for the Big Apple to take a less senior role working for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Judge Merchan himself, it turned out, donated (a small amount) to the Biden campaign:
Judge Juan Merchan, who is overseeing Trump case, donated to Biden campaign in 2020
The state is arguing, in effect, that Trump, by paying Stormy Daniels in 2017, falsified business records that should have rightfully been marked as a campaign contribution, and thus constituted a conspiracy to undermine the 2016 election. The count of falsifying business records is a misdemeanor under New York State Law, but can be elevated into a felony charge if the business records were falsified with the intent to commit another crime. Curiously, Alvin Bragg has alleged that Trump falsified business records to commit another crime, but has not charged him with committing any other crimes:
The New York Case Against Trump Relies on a 'Twisty' Legal Theory That Reeks of Desperation
Ordinarily, falsifying business records is a misdemeanor. But it becomes a felony when the defendant's "intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof." Bragg says Trump had such an intent, which is why the 34 counts are charged as felonies.
Bragg had long been cagey about exactly what crime Trump allegedly tried to conceal. But during a sidebar discussion last week, Colangelo said "the primary crime that we have alleged is New York State Election Law Section 17-152." That provision says "any two or more persons who conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means and which conspiracy is acted upon by one or more of the parties thereto, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor."
In other words, Bragg is relying on this misdemeanor to transform another misdemeanor (falsifying business records) into a felony. But the only "unlawful means" that he has identified is Cohen's payment to Daniels. And while Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to making an excessive campaign contribution by fronting the hush money, Trump was never prosecuted for soliciting that contribution.
Section 17-152 has never actually been prosecuted to this effect, so the case is entirely novel. New York is arguing, in effect, that Donald Trump engaged in a conspiracy to undermine the 2016 election by falsifying business records in 2017.
This case is a hot one as it is currently in trial, and will likely be resolved with a few weeks. The question of whether the jury can be unbiased in such conditions is ongoing.
I will omit Trump's last criminal court case, the January 6th case run out of DC, as it is currently pending on a Supreme Court decision as to whether Presidents can even be tried for official acts in the first place, which would throw the whole case back down to the lower courts to disentangle which of Trump's actions on January 6th constituted private action. It goes almost without saying that, if Trump were elected in 2024, he could have the authority to fire Jack Smith and derail both this case and the documents case in Florida.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
6d ago
if they'll take the couple days necessary to not have a default password and to write "Yes, we don't have a default password" in the table on page 32
I don't think you understand how this works if you think that this is the only necessary step once this becomes an obligation by law.
Since this is a potential liability, someone will have to be responsible for filling that form, and they'll also have to have sufficient means to enforce that the form is true. That person is most likely a lawyer and not technical themselves, which means they'll have to rely on auditors, which means not only that you'll have to pay money to get those audits done, you'll also have to find a company that will do them on the tech stack that you are running and is familiar with the intricacies of the particular legislation you're trying to abide by.
And once the bureaucratic machine gets started like this it doesn't stop, standards will get more complex, there will be people whose whole job is to ensure that they are followed and the costs will balloon accordingly.
Compliance is a huge industry. If following the law was that simple, it would not be.
maybe an explanation for why the market hasn't already priced this in and had a massive drop in valuations in the past week in response to oppressive new regulation
Like Bastiat says, there is what is seen and what isn't seen.
What is seen is the valuation of established companies that have compliance departments and who'll be able to integrate regulation with a marginal cost change they can pass on to the consumer. What isn't seen is how much harder it is or will be to get funding for a startup that designs novel appliances because the costs to enter the market are now higher.
ControlsFreak
6d ago
Compliance is a huge industry.
Weird. I hear about that from my friends in literally every other industry ever. They still seem capable of operating.
What isn't seen is how much harder it is or will be to get funding for a startup that designs novel appliances because the costs to enter the market are now higher.
I'm always sympathetic to concerns of regulatory capture putting barriers to entry in front of small businesses. Totally agree that this is the single strongest argument against these types of requirements. I just doubt that these particular requirements are that onerous. Plenty of smaller shops that actually care about not being a security clusterfuck already do these kinds of things, and you can do most of them without too much difficulty as a hobbyist. In any event, if you're a start up that can't figure out how to not have a default password on all your devices, I actually kind of don't want you selling stuff, anyway.
Today is Eurovision! For you Americans this is like the Super Bowl, only with power ballads, ABBA nostalgia, residuals of nationalism and flamboyant glittery gayness. The European song contest is often watched ironically in a party setting with family or friends, we print out sheets of the participants and give them points and have a competition who can make the most snarky comment, but deep down under the snark, irony and sarcasm we love it!
This year it is sadly very very political, because of the participation of Israel. The songs name was named „October rain“ but had to be changed, together with lyrics, to remove references of the Hamas attack. So there isn’t plausible deniability that it is an unpolitical love song.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/eurovision-israel-eden-golan-protests-gaza-palestine-072826896.html
He said the majority of the crowd were booing and shouting 'free Palestine' with very few people cheering for her. Mina said: "I could see people arguing in the standing section, and people were shouting at others that were booing to shut up."
For television the sound engineers did amplify applause and mute the boos which also gives a nice discussion about truth and Orwell etc. It will be very interesting what sound from the audience will be broadcast at the final show today.
Surprisingly (or not) Israel doesn’t have only haters, their betting odds improved massively, they actually have a chance to win the contest!
https://twitter.com/DrEliDavid/status/1788690154133012637
Italian TV accidentally revealed their televoting percentages during tonight's #Eurovision semi-final, according to which the Israeli 🇮🇱 song is leading by 40%, with a huge margin ahead of all others.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
6d ago
They still seem capable of operating.
Where is the innovation in any other industry over the past decades exactly? You know, since they brought these in.
How expensive is it to build a bridge now, versus a hundred years ago, adjusted for inflation? "capable of operating", what a joke.
As Kulak is fond of saying, the reason we don't have flying cars isn't that they haven't been invented, it's that they've been made illegal. They were commonly flown (and shot down) by teenagers in the 1910s.
if you're a start up that can't figure out how to not have a default password on all your devices, I actually kind of don't want you selling stuff, anyway
This is the tired same equivocation that motivates all such regulatory barriers. I complain about having to fill forms, you retort about the justifications for the form existing as if I didn't also have such a concern.
There are other answers to the problems of humanity than increasing the size of the bureaucracy. Just no other that fits into managerialism.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
3d ago
Lol now TheMotte is getting into trump assassination territory....Should I stop coming here and start watching fox news?
ControlsFreak
6d ago
Where is the innovation in any other industry over the past decades exactly?
You know, since they brought these in.
Let's go with a simple one - the shale fracking revolution in the oil/gas industry. But nobody is actually going to go counting these things, because no one really has any sort of consistent argument for which sorts of regulations stifle innovation. Again, I totally realize that they do sometimes, in some ways. But what sort of massive innovation is going to be stifled by requiring devices to not have default passwords? Like, surely we can agree on that one. We could at least leave open arguments for other requirements, and I would welcome a wide-ranging debate on them. But if we're stuck with just theoretical arguments, totally disconnected from any specifics, in a way that can't capture basic truths like, "Being forced to not have default passwords is not a significant barrier to innovation," then we're not going to get anywhere.
I complain about having to fill forms, you retort about the justifications for the form existing as if I didn't also have such a concern.
Ok, so you also have a concern about default passwords. What are you going to do about your concern?
The time when Trump sabotaged immigration restrictions, and the alt-right cheered
I’ve long held that most of politics is overwhelmingly dominated by some combination of 1) direct self-interest, and 2) vibes. Any notions of ideological consistency should be regarded as mere “happy accidents” rather than the norm. In the US, this issue cuts roughly equally across both parties. One particularly stark example happened a few months ago with immigration. In short, Trump sabotaged the most conservative immigration reform bill in a generation for blatantly self-serving reasons. This directly contradicts what many of his more hardline alt-right supporters want, yet instead of punishing him for doing this, they actively cheered him on. They simply like Trump’s vibes far more than they like Biden’s vibes, so they convinced themselves that the bill was akin to “surrender” through extremely strained logic.
This episode is rapidly fading from public memory given that the bill didn’t pass, but it’s such a great encapsulation of vibes-based motivated reasoning that I feel it should be highlighted before it’s forgotten completely.
Illegal immigration so far
The chart here shows migrant encounters at the US-Mexico border. While some slip through the cracks and are not counted, this still gives a good sense of the contours of illegal immigration over the past few presidential administrations.
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Migrant numbers were quite high during the Bush years, with yearly peaks corresponding to agricultural labor needs.
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Obama was quite hawkish on illegal immigration. Numbers were already decreasing from the Bush years, and the economic turmoil from the GFC brought numbers down further. Importantly though, Obama’s enforcement was instrumental in keeping numbers down even as the economy recovered.
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Illegal immigration fell to its lowest point at the beginning of Trump’s term, but rapidly increased after that to meeting, then exceeding the numbers under Obama. Numbers crashed again at the onset of COVID.
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Illegal immigration has exploded after Biden took office.
There are a couple of points worth noting here. The first is that while enforcement has an undeniable impact on illegal immigration numbers, exogenous factors should also be considered. Periods of economic prosperity in the US act as a “pull” for migrants, while recessions do the opposite. Likewise, civil turmoil in immigrant-sending countries can act as a “push” for migrants, while relative stability again does the opposite. That peak in May 2019 under Trump was due in part to a period of turbulence in Northern Triangle countries.
The second point worth noting is that Trump wasn’t really much better than Obama in countering illegal immigration, contrary to popular belief. This point deserves some elaboration.
Trump and Biden’s border policies
During Trump’s 2016 campaign, immigration was frequently at the forefront despite the historical lows of illegal immigrant activity. Upon ascending to the presidency, Trump at least tried to keep his promise. He signed the infamous “Muslim Ban” in his first week, suspending entry for citizens from 7 predominantly Muslim countries from entering the country for 90 days. He would continue with additional policies throughout his presidency, including preventing sanctuary cities from receiving federal grants, phasing out DACA, implementing a zero-tolerance policy and family separation at the border, creating new restrictions for who could apply for asylum, and many others.
The problem with all of these was that they were executive orders. Executive orders require less political capital to implement since they don’t have to go through congress, but they’re far more brittle and subject to legal challenges or revocation when a president of a different party comes to power. Indeed, practically all of Trump’s EO’s on immigration faced stiff legal hurdles. The Muslim Ban was rejected by courts twice, and only a watered down version passed on the third attempt. The family separation policy and restrictions on asylum were similarly watered down heavily. The policies on sanctuary cities and the phaseout of DACA were basically killed entirely.
Another issue with Trump’s implementation is that it was done with little tact. Any sort of reform will encounter pushback, with bigger changes tending to lead to more of a backlash. This can be mollified somewhat by a good PR campaign. Indeed, the ability to push through substantial reforms without angering huge swathes of the country can be seen as one of the key skills of a successful politicians. Trump and his team did not do a very good job of this. Few efforts were made to get buy-in from moderates. Instead, Trump’s modus operandi was typically controversial unilateral action, followed by doubling down with rhetoric like “shithole countries” that may have flattered his base, but was very poorly received among Democrats and independents. Trump had this problem in many more areas than just immigration, as Scott Alexander noted in 2018.
The end result was that while Trump certainly talked up his immigration policies as successes, most of them were little more than PR stunts. Illegal immigration surged substantially every year for the first three years of his presidency and peaked in 2019 at a level far higher than what Obama ever had. Likewise, legal immigration measured by the number of lawful permanent residents added per year was basically the same as during Obama’s presidency, only dipping substantially in 2020 with the onset of COVID. Furthermore, all of the hostile rhetoric Trump used created a backlash that (at least partially) helped propel Biden to the White House in 2020, and ensured he had a clear mandate to roll back Trump’s policies.
And that’s exactly what Biden did. In his first day in office, he axed the majority of Trump’s executive orders with the stroke of a pen. The first 100 days of Biden’s presidency were defined by “undoing Trump” in practically every area, and in terms of immigration that meant less hostility, fewer rules, and a more welcoming attitude. Cracks began to show almost immediately as illegal immigration soared, and then kept soaring month after month. It surpassed Trump’s worst month, and then kept climbing even higher before settling at a rate unseen in at least the past 3 administrations. December 2023 marked the worst month at nearly 250K encounters, with several preceding months having >200K encounters. For reference, Obama’s second term only saw a brief period above 50K encounters before declining to a steady-state of around 30K-40K encounters.
This rapidly became a political liability for Biden. Despite deploying Kamala Harris with her infamous “do not come” speech, illegal immigration kept increasing and Biden seemed helpless to address it, effectively getting himself caught between a rock (giving fodder to Republicans) and a hard place (alienating his base, reneging on promises, etc.). Ominously, things only seemed to be getting worse. Biden tried to use Trump-era COVID restrictions to limit some immigration through Title 42, but COVID couldn’t be used as a justification forever. What’s more, Biden’s actions significantly worsened a loophole in the system through abuse of a particular asylum designation. This article discusses it in detail. To summarize:
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When the DHS encounters an illegal immigrant, it has two options: standard removal, or expedited removal.
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Standard removal requires a court case with lawyers present to give evidence, while expedited removal is a streamlined, unreviewable process meant to reduce the burden on the DHS and the court system.
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Illegal immigrants can indicate they intend to apply for asylum by establishing “credible fear”. While the threshold to asylum is fairly high, the “credible fear” threshold is very low, which at least starts the process towards asylum and thereby prevents use of expedited removal.
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While standard removal is ongoing, the US has 3 options for where to keep them: (1) Parole them out into the US, (2) keep them in ICE detention centers, or (3) kick them back to the country from which they entered from, i.e. Mexico.
Obama did (1), but apparently the loophole wasn’t well-known enough to be a huge issue yet. Trump tried to go after asylum directly, but those efforts mostly fizzled in court. He then tried to do (2), but this caused a huge overcrowding problem as detention centers weren’t built big enough to accommodate the huge influx. After some bad press, he tried to do (3), which sort of worked when courts weren’t throwing spanners into the works, which they did frequently. Biden reverted back to (1), but now it was well-known that you could come to America illegally, utter the magic words “credible fear”, and you’d be let out into the community. Some derisively referred to this as “catch and release”. From this point, some immigrants simply didn’t show up to their court hearing, while others received court dates so far in the future (up to a decade or longer in some cases) that it didn’t matter. This became a vicious cycle, as more immigrants abused this loophole it clogged the courts further and further making the loophole more effective, which further incentivized anyone who wanted to come to the US to give it a try due to this One Crazy Trick ICE Doesn’t Want You To Know About.
The Senate compromise deal
After a few years of spiraling migration problems, it became clear that the center could not hold. Biden capitulated and signaled that he was willing to give concessions to Republicans to get immigration back under control. This willingness coalesced around the same time that an important foreign aid package was being discussed, with some Republicans stretching credulity a bit when they claimed that illegal immigration was functionally indistinguishable from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Thus, the idea of a “compromise” bill was born, where Biden would give in to Republican demands on immigration in order to get his foreign aid passed. This came to the fore in late January and early February of 2024.
You can read the full text of the bill here, but non-lawyers trying to read actual bills written in thick legalese is like trying decipher jabberwocky growls. A much more scrutable summary is available here.
Division A is all about the foreign aid. This chunk would eventually be passed in April in a standalone vote.
Division B is the immigration part. This was primarily negotiated by Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma. Notably, this would have been the first major immigration reform bill (NOT executive order!) passed since Reagan. Everything else since then has been done through unilateral presidential action or the courts. Since this would have had the backing of Congress, its provisions were quite sweeping compared to the piecemeal efforts that came before. It:
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Includes billions of dollars for immigration enforcement, including money for detention centers, 2700 new border agents, asylum case officers to break the vicious cycle, deportation flights, etc. It’s hard to understate how much money this bill would have ladled on to border protections, with the biggest increases going to the usual agencies like ICE and CBP, with smaller chunks going to ones that I wasn’t even aware were part of border enforcement, like FEMA and the US Marshals Service. It also gives case officers a permanent 15% raise over the standard GS schedule of government pay.
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Gives a bit of money to USAID for stanching immigration at its source, in the Northern Triangle countries and elsewhere.
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Restarts and funds building of Trump’s wall, which Biden canceled early in his presidency.
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Modernizes border infrastructure generally, such as adding more sophisticated monitoring equipment and accepting fingerprint cards or biometric submissions for use in immigrant processing. You know, things that would be nice to have given the last major immigration bill is almost 40 years old at this point.
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Raises the threshold on “credible fear” substantially to actually close the loophole. Currently, credible fear is evaluated using the lower “significant possibility” standard.
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Raises the threshold on asylum generally even after they pass the first hurdle, and it funnels as many cases as possible into the expedited removal process.
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Ends “Catch and Release” and formalize the “Remain in Mexico” policy. Those who arrive at ports of entry are placed under government surveillance, while those who arrive between ports of entry are detained outright, with funding provided for new detainment beds.
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Establishes an additional asylum bar if there are reasonable grounds to believe an individual could have internally relocated in their country of origin or country of last habitual residence, in lieu of seeking protection in the United States.
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Creates a Border Emergency Authority, a “break in case of emergency” power if the border became overwhelmed. This requires the DHS to ignore all asylum requests except those that fall under the Convention Against Torture, which has a high bar. It also further streamlined the expulsion process, allowing for immediate deportation in a range of scenarios. There was to be no public notification for this authority to be enacted, so an immigrant arriving would never be sure if it was active or not. This is the closest the US would come to “closing the border” for an extended period of time that wasn’t due to a national emergency like what happened after the JFK assassination or 9/11. To prevent this emergency tool from simply becoming the new normal, the Authority could only be activated if border encounters exceeded 4000 over a 7 day period. Conversely, it also prevents abuse in the other direction, i.e. a president deciding never to activate it, as it would be required if there were 5000 border encounters over a 7 day period. Note that border encounters were far higher than 5000 when the bill was being debated, so Biden would have had no choice on the matter.
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Does NOT include any significant amnesty, even for DREAMers. Almost every serious attempt at reforming immigration had previously settled on the compromise of amnesty for current illegal immigrants in return for enforcement at the border. The most recent major attempt at immigration reform under the Gang of Eight did exactly this. Trump himself acknowledged this political reality in his first State of the Union address in 2018 when he came out in favor of giving amnesty for DREAMers. The fact that this is nowhere to be found in this bill is a significant implicit concession.
There are also a handful of concessions to the Democrats:
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Allows processing and conditional permanent residence for Afghan collaborators.
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Authorizes an additional 50,000 immigrant visas each year for the next five fiscal years.
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Establishes a carveout in some of the rules above for unaccompanied minors, which in 2024 have made up <5% of all encounters.
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The Border Emergency Authority requires a lower limit of 4000 encounters per day as discussed above, so a future Republican president wouldn’t be able to use it as the new normal unless there was an actual emergency. It also sunsets after 3 years unless renewed.
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Republicans likely wanted restrictions on all asylum claims, but Dems kept a carveout for the Convention Against Torture.
Those concessions are really tiny. The last 3 bullet points are just minor restrictions on the new powers that would be in place. Only the first 2 bullet points are concessions in any meaningful sense. Helping Afghans who collaborated with the US is a one-off now that the war is over, and is a good idea since the US doesn’t want to get a reputation of abandoning those who help it. The 50K new legal immigrants a year is time-limited to 5 years, and is much, much less than the status quo of 200k+ illegal immigrants per month that is happening now. Heck, it would have only been 2-3 months worth of illegal immigrants encountered under average Trump or Obama years, so it’s a very small price to pay.
The bill received endorsement from the National Border Patrol Council, the union that represents Border Patrol agents, endorsed the proposal and said it would drop illegal border crossings nationwide. The group in 2020 endorsed in Trump and has been highly critical of Biden’s border policies.
It’s also interesting to compare this bill to the Border Coalition Letter that was submitted to Congress in 2022. This letter was sent on behalf of a bunch of conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, Conservative Partnership Institute, and several that I’ve never heard of, like the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which the SPLC classifies as a hate group. The letter demanded exclusion of amnesty of any type, creating an Authority to immediately expel illegal immigrants, increase restrictions on asylum, mandate resources for the border wall, increase funding for the CBP and ICE, end the abuse of parole authority. The bill shares a striking resemblance to this letter. Granted, it doesn’t do everything, as there are a few carveouts for stuff like asylum under the Convention Against Torture, and the letter also asks for states to overrule the federal government when it comes to border enforcement (something that Texas has been motioning towards recently). But overall, the bill does the vast majority of what was asked for by some of the most conservative immigration groups in the country.
Trump swoops in
So yeah. Trump blew it all up.
The reason he did this was as obvious as it was cynical: he didn’t want Biden to have a “win” on the issue. He wanted to keep the issue in the news as a liability for Biden so he would have a greater chance at winning in November. He didn’t exactly keep his motivations secret. Nor was this the first border bill that Trump sabotaged. The overturning of Roe v Wade is instructive here, as it was a major “dog catches the car” moment. Republicans loved to campaign on restricting abortion, but when the Supreme Court actually handed them the chance to do so, they quickly realized the costs it would entail. What had once been a rallying cry for conservatives turned into a liability, and now the Democrats have the wind at their back on the issue. Why do the same for immigration by actually enacting favorable policies?
Of course, it’s not helpful to be openly cynical to your supporters, so the official reason that Trump, Gaetz, and many others trotted out to oppose the bill related to the Border Emergency Authority. In essence, they boiled the entire bill down to that upper limit threshold of 5000 illegal immigrants per day. The extra enforcement, the money for border agents, the restarting of the wall construction, the closing of the asylum loophole, the end of Catch and Release? None of that mattered. It was all boiled down to that 5000 number that you’ll see repeated over and over again in Republican criticisms of the bill. What’s worse is that this number is presented as a capitulation to Democrats rather than a ceiling on the use of a draconian new power granted in a heavily conservative bill. It’s presented as if the bill mandates open borders for the first 5000 illegal immigrants every day, and only then begins to enforce some border policies. This is so laughably, bafflingly wrong that it defies belief.
Obviously the bill isn’t perfect. There are legitimate criticisms that could be levied. For instance, Republicans could say that Democrats shouldn’t get any new legal immigration in exchange for fixing the law, even the paltry 50K number that the bill would mandate. But actually analyzing the bill to any serious degree would quickly show how conservative it is, so Republican leaders mischaracterized the bill so heavily that I’d say most reasonable people would classify it as “outright lying”.
In the world of Republican vibes, there’s the idea that conservatives are always the suckers when it comes to immigration. The idea is that Reagan’s bill was supposed to fix the issue, but the Democrats skillfully reneged on their promise. There’s also the idea of the ratchet, that Republicans will compromise with Democrats, and Democrats will get a bunch of concessions but won’t actually fulfill their end of of the bargain, either because the Republicans are RINOs who don’t actually care about limiting immigration, or because the true-believer Republicans are simply outmaneuvered. Then in the next round of dealmaking, more concessions will be given, and on and on it goes until America is overrun with illegals. For example, in the first deal, “illegal aliens” are reclassified as “illegal immigrants”, and amnesty is provided for, say, 3M of them in return for enforcement of the border laws. Then the enforcement doesn’t happen, ten years go by, and another round of negotiations happens. This time “illegal immigrants” is changed to “undocumented persons” and now we need to give amnesty to the first 3M AND the 5M that arrived since then, but in exchange now we’ll totally have enforcement… pinky promise! And then it doesn’t happen again and… you get the picture.
There’s a kernel of truth to that idea, although it’s obviously extremely oversimplified and lacking in nuance. That said, those vibes are powerful enough that compromise is thoroughly delegitimized for the Republican rank-and-file. Trump’s uncompromising vibes in 2016 is a large part of what won him the Republican primary. He sustained those vibes through his presidency with his bombastic executive orders that drove news headlines but did little to fix the underlying issues. Trump used those vibes again to kill this bill, as all he had to do was vaguely point to the 5000 number in the bill, imply that was a concession, and the bill was effectively dead no matter what it actually would have done.
Other concerns with the bill
While the misrepresenting the 5000 number in regards to the Border Emergency Authority was the most frequent criticism by far, there were a couple other, less goofy criticisms that deserve examining.
The first is that Biden already had the tools to solve the border crisis, and therefore this bill wasn’t necessary. This is typically paired with vibey “Republicans cooperate, Democrats defect” arguments that I detailed in the previous section, i.e. that the bill must have been a “trap” of some sort. Vibes aside, there is some degree of truth to this. As we saw earlier in this article, Biden’s policies were indeed principally responsible for the recent explosion in illegal immigration. Probably the clearest remedy would be reimplementing the Remain in Mexico policy that has been shambling along, half dead. Biden attempted to kill this policy early in his presidency, and courts initially agreed he could do so, until they didn’t, so the policy is technically still alive. Reimplementing this would take at least some of the wind out of the vicious cycle in regards to the asylum loophole, although there would still be the omnipresent specter of legal threats, and now Mexico has said it will refuse to cooperate.
The issue with this idea is that even if Biden were to reimplement all of Trump’s executive orders, they still amounted to little more than a bandaid on a bullet hole. Critics of the bill are technically correct in pointing out that there was less blood before Biden ripped off the bandaid, but it’s ludicrous to then assume that the bandaid was all that was ever needed. US immigration law and border enforcement is fundamentally broken in a number of ways, and this bill would have gone a long way in addressing the worst problems. Recall that Trump himself tried to go after asylum laws directly, but his efforts mostly fizzled in the courts.
Another criticism that was sometimes levied is that Republicans should simply hold out for Trump to become president to truly fix immigration. Again, this typically came packaged with vibey concerns that any deal with Democrats must necessarily imply some ratcheting of concessions, and thus the only way to address the issue is unilateral Republican action, headed by a true-believer like Trump. To steelman this idea, the idea that the political capital to solve illegal immigration would evaporate if the issue was successfully mitigated is a sound one. Democrats were only willing to come to the table in the first place due to the extremely tenuous position they found themselves in with the surge of illegal immigration. This bill almost certainly would have solved that surge, which would give Trump less of a mandate to take drastic action if he wins in November.
The most obvious retort to this idea is that Trump is by no means guaranteed to win in November. As of the time of writing, prediction markets give Trump a 47% chance of winning, which we can round up to 50%. This essentially means the Republicans are gambling on a “double or nothing” approach, but even this prospect is unsteady. For starters, how much more could Trump deliver in excess of this bill, even under the best plausible conditions? HR2 is instructive here, which passed the House in 2023 but is not likely to advance any further in the current Congress. As such, it’s essentially a conservative wishlist on immigration. It is indeed stronger than the Senate bill, but it’s not massively stronger. I’d say instead of “double or nothing” it’s more like “10-20% more or nothing”, which has decidedly less of a ring to it. Furthermore, Democratic willingness to capitulate has an expiration date. If the moment isn’t gone already, then it’d definitely be gone when Trump takes office for a second time, which would mean he’d require control of both the House and the Senate to push through a stronger bill. Prediction markets currently give a 74% chance for Republicans to clinch the Senate, which we can round up to 75%, and a 44% chance to win control of the House, which we can again round up to 50%. If results from the races were perfectly independent, simple statistics shows us that Republicans only have <20% chance of achieving a trifecta. Granted, the races almost certainly won’t be uncorrelated with each other, but this still establishes a lower bound of likelihood. In essence, Republicans are gambling at 20-50% odds that they’ll be able to get a bill that’s 10-20% better. Even this is still underselling it, since it would have to go through one major final hurdle: Trump himself. Republicans already had a trifecta from 2017-2019, yet Trump chose not to prioritize immigration other than through flimsy executive orders. Who’s to say he wouldn’t choose to do so again?
The upshot
I’m sure some people will dismiss everything I’ve written here as concern trolling. They’ll assume I’m secretly a Democratic operative who wants to sow discord amongst Republicans. In reality, I’m just someone who actually wants to get immigration under control. Immigration can be a source of strength, but it must be harnessed very carefully to not cause major problems.
This bill represented the most conservative major immigration reform in a generation that actually had a chance at passing, and Donald Trump killed it for purely cynical reasons. This single bill would have done more than every one of Trump’s executive orders put together. Anyone who’s been seriously watching him knows that he’s utterly self-serving, but what was truly revolting was how the anti-immigration wing of the Republican party not only let him get away with it, but actively cheered him on. It’ll likely be totally forgotten too, wrongly dismissed as nothing more than another Democratic trap.
The worst part of the bill was that many of its provisions weren’t permanent. Some parts like closing the asylum loophole were, but the funding for extra agents would eventually run out. Similarly, other provisions like the incoherently reviled Border Emergency Authority were due to sunset in 3, 5, or 10 years. But the correct response would have been for Republicans to reach out at this golden opportunity with both hands and grasp as hard as they could. Then, they should have fought future battles to ensure the provisions were made permanent. Instead, they squandered a period of maximal Democratic vulnerability on the issue, when the Dems were not only willing to give concessions but were actively asking for them.
Illegal immigration has cooled a bit since its apex in December of 2023. In the CBP’s most recent report from March, encounters are down by 45%. This is still massively elevated from where it was before, but it will at least allow Biden to claim he’s on top of the issue. It seems he’s doing this with ad-hoc fixes, like making deals with intermediate countries that are unlikely to really solve much long-term. In killing the bill, Trump has likely undercut one of his attack vectors against Biden somewhat. When pressed in a debate about the issue, Biden can say “I tried to fix it, but you wouldn’t let me”. In the end, few peoples’ minds will be changed, and the most likely outcome no matter who becomes president is that the US continues muddling along with the status quo on immigration, which means more bandaids and can-kicking. In the off chance that an immigration reform bill actually does pass, it will likely be far less conservative than this bill would have been.
shale fracking revolution in the oil/gas industry
That is a fair one, but It's also a very good example of just what I'm saying. I was part of the few people on the quite unpopular side of the oil industry here in Europe in the 10s when it was banned, for the same reason I'm on this side of this issue now.
If the UK wants to make such regulations it will reap the same sort of benefits: no toxic chemical pollution or chinese crap botnets, but also no innovation in these respective sectors.
It's a choice.
"Being forced to not have default passwords is not a significant barrier to innovation,"
You can not like that enforcing common sense rules to an industry through state mandates is a barrier to innovation all you want. It's not going to stop being true. The debate is only on the magnitude of the effect.
What are you going to do about your concern?
I don't buy chinese crap that spies on you, I tell people not to buy chinese crap that spies on you and I shame people who do so in my social circles.
Hell, I've spent years of my life writing symbolic execution software used specifically to make edge devices secure, some of which you may be using right now. What have you done?
ControlsFreak
6d ago
If the UK wants to make such regulations it will reap the same sort of benefits: no toxic chemical pollution or chinese crap botnets, but also no innovation in these respective sectors.
So, will you then make a prediction along the lines of what I asked for in the OP? Are you predicting that tech companies will pull out of the UK rather than either upgrayyyeding their security practices for the world market or going with a dual product (one version that doesn't make absurdly basic mistakes for the UK market and one that does make those mistakes for the world market)?
The debate is only on the magnitude of the effect.
And I claimed that being forced to not have default passwords will have an incredibly low magnitude effect on innovation. Do you actually disagree with this, or do we agree?
I don't buy chinese crap that spies on you, I tell people not to buy chinese crap that spies on you and I shame people who do so in my social circles.
I do the same, but clearly that is not changing much about the world. Have you succeeded in changing the world through your evangelism?
Hell, I've spent years of my life writing symbolic execution software used specifically to make edge devices secure.
Then I'm sure you will be pleased that this work won't be going to waste by someone shaving a few cents off of the cost of your product by putting a default password on it. Honestly, hearing this, I'm really not sure what your concern is. Is it that your company's "We're Actually Secure" marketing is going to be slightly less effective, now that the floor has been raised? Did you really think that such marketing was really of all that much value in the first place? @The_Nybbler thinks that it's completely a waste and that no one would spend one red cent more for your secure product. Do you think he's wrong?
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
6d ago
So, will you then make a prediction along the lines of what I asked for in the OP?
I can easily commit to saying that no major IoT startup success is likely to be based in the UK any time soon. But that's saying nothing given they're pretty much all American already for many other reasons.
Maybe some guy at Arm will have to add one more form to some pile or something.
I'm really not sure what your concern is
Europe at large is a dying crab bucket that everybody who can make things is leaving because if you try you reap only taxes and lawsuits.
That's my concern. John Galt is my concern.
Do you think he's wrong?
Yes and no. No chinesium lightbulb maker is ever going to bother with formally proving their code is correct because they don't care. But some connected things actually need to be secure so that you don't explode, catch on fire or get robbed.
I find the actually useful non gimmicky applications of IoT are in this latter category, and that for those the customer and the manufacturer usually know better than to cheap out.
ControlsFreak
6d ago
I can easily commit to saying that no major IoT startup success is likely to be based in the UK any time soon.
Bruce Schnier noted that California had already implemented at least the number one item. Do you think that this is enough to also say that no major IoT startup success is likely to be based in California any time soon?
No chinesium lightbulb maker is ever going to bother with formally proving their code is correct because they don't care.
I don't believe anything in this requirement is aimed at formal code verification methods. I don't think that's a requirement that is on the table anywhere, except for perhaps some niche customers (e.g., military/space). Probably not even at most "critical infrastructure" places that could blow up or whatever.
I mean, honestly, if that's about all you have to say for what results from this, that no chinesium lightbulb maker is going to meet a standard that hasn't been proposed and that some critical application spaces are going to pay for good stuff anyway, that's kind of a nothingburger? Like, abstract senses about Europe (not even the UK) and wild references to John Galt aren't really "concerns" that can be addressed in context of the very specific document that we have in front of us. It really seems like you just don't have any meaningful concern that we can investigate.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
6d ago
Do you think that this is enough to also say that no major IoT startup success is likely to be based in California any time soon?
Nah, California has inertia and the funding apparatus there is still stronger than anywhere in the world, which is more meaningful. Not to mention the regulatory framework for innovation in general is looser in the US.
But it's telling that the companies that exist right now that fit the bill are also in Texas and Massachusetts these days, that used to be more rare. I wouldn't be surprised if we see some exodus. But it's probably down to the taxes than line items from small regulation.
I don't think that's a requirement that is on the table anywhere, except for perhaps some niche customers
You're forgetting automotive and think that energy grid infra is a lot looser than it actually is, but other than that it's broadly correct.
that's kind of a nothingburger?
I think we're talking past each other. This regulation in and of itself is a nothingburger. It's the tendency I'm speaking to, which is what was alluded to in the OP.
Regulation is a dynamic process, it never stops at one law and very few of its slopes are not slippery.
aren't really "concerns" that can be addressed in context of the very specific document that we have in front of us
In this house we discuss the Bailey, not the Motte.
Do you think that this is enough to also say that no major IoT startup success is likely to be based in California any time soon?
Nah
Ok, cool. Then epsilon regulation doesn't instantly kill 100% of innovation.
I think we're talking past each other. This regulation in and of itself is a nothingburger. It's the tendency I'm speaking to, which is what was alluded to in the OP.
Regulation is a dynamic process, it never stops at one law and very few of its slopes are not slippery.
Well, then we can probably dig back into the history books to find the first actual regulation that was placed on the tech industry. Whenever it was, it was in the past. The complaint that if we have epsilon regulation, it will definitely be a slippery slope to infinite regulation was valid then, but we're past that threshold now. Now, regulation is a dynamic process; the question is whether this regulation is part of a slippery slope toward infinite regulation, or if it's actually mostly basic shit that everyone has already known they should be doing anyway.
In this house we discuss the Bailey, not the Motte.
I mean, no? It's literally TheMotte. And this betrays that your reasoning doesn't even follow the Motte/Bailey dynamics. It was:
So the motte-and-bailey doctrine is when you make a bold, controversial statement. Then when somebody challenges you, you retreat to an obvious, uncontroversial statement, and say that was what you meant all along, so you’re clearly right and they’re silly for challenging you. Then when the argument is over you go back to making the bold, controversial statement.
If anything, you're the one who is making bold, controversial statements (that innovation will grind to a halt, that no innovation happens anymore in any other industry that has any regulation). There's nothing comparable happening in the other direction. What even is the Bailey that you speak of?
EDIT: Your Bailey seems to be "an epsilon regulation grinds innovation down to zero". When someone challenges you on this, you retreat to an obvious, uncontroversial statement, like, "Regulation is dynamic," but try to sneak in some not-fleshed-out argument about a slippery slope implying infinite regulation. When pulled back to reality, and you're challenged to engage with actually-existing regulation, you're actually pretty silent, unlike at least gattsuru, who at least engages with what's actually going on rather than fever dreams. Why isn't the vastly more reasonable view that you're engaging in a Motte/Bailey argument, while not being able to point to any sort of Bailey from the other side?
It's literally TheMotte.
The fact that it's the wrong way around was remarked on at the time, newfriend.
But let me clarify since you're confused:
The Motte is "epsilon regulation doesn't instantly kill 100% of innovation", a very defensible claim. The Bailey is "I hear about [extensive compliance] from my friends in literally every other industry ever. They still seem capable of operating.", a controversial statement.
My own consistent position is that this regulation is a small advance that is inconsequential by itself but proceeds in a direction that is ultimately incompatible with innovation and that assenting to it is a slippery slope. I therefore oppose it in principle, much like I oppose other regulation that lead in the direction of encroachment of things that I cherish, no matter how reasonable it is.
You may say there are "reasonable" limits we can impose on free speech as well. I still oppose them no matter how reasonable they are.
You may then argue that slippery slope arguments are fallacious, to which I'll retort that they are only so when the slope isn't slippery, and that we have a veritable orgy of historical evidence that smaller regulation almost always lead to larger regulation.
The Bailey is "I hear about [extensive compliance] from my friends in literally every other industry ever. They still seem capable of operating."
This is a true statement about the world, not an outrageous claim, newfriend. You may be thinking that those words mean something other than what those words mean. What are you thinking they mean?
My own consistent position is that this regulation is a small advance that is inconsequential by itself but proceeds in a direction that is ultimately incompatible with innovation and that assenting to it is a slippery slope.
Great! We can surely then have a reasoned discussion about the nature of slippery slope arguments, trying to understand when they hold, to what extent they hold, and whether the premises required for them to have force are present here. I have never objected to the concept of a slippery slope arguments, but it does need some something behind it, otherwise it leaves us vulnerable to just any crazy extrapolation of anything in any domain. We probably wouldn't respond to, "Gay marriage is a slippery slope to marrying dogs!" with, "H-yup. All slippery slope arguments are perfectly valid and correct in all conclusions."
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
5d ago
This is a true statement about the world
It's a true statement about your opinion. I disagree with your assessment of what "being capable of operating" entails, as we have gone over already.
it does need some something behind it
it certainly does!
All it needs formally is demonstration that the slope is slippery. Which we can discuss in this case, but I don't really see the argument against given we have dozens of examples in this very specific field, and in other fields of engineering, of the complexity of regulation increasing to smothering levels from previously small demands. Automobiles, airplanes, even dishwashers, you can take your pick of examples.
Will you then disagree that government regulation is a slippery slope? And on what ground will you do so?
ControlsFreak
5d ago
I disagree with your assessment of what "being capable of operating" entails, as we have gone over already.
We discussed shale fracking. Now Space X, ozempic, Matt Levine gives tons of examples of financial innovation, we're damn close to self-driving cars, but the hol' up is the tech, not the regulation. The list goes on and on. I do not see any more content in your comment that is anywhere near suitable to claim that we can simply declare this "gone over already". If anything, you just dropped it, because your position didn't go anywhere.
Let's make sure we're on the same page here, so that we are at least confident that we're both actually really ready to engage the slippery slope question honestly, without leaving room for a retreat in this direction. Are other industries capable of operating with some amount of regulation? Not, "Is there a general sense of a regulation-innovation tradeoff?" We agree that there is. The straightforward statement that many other industries are capable of operating with some amount of regulation. Are you going to stick with the position that this is an outlandish Bailey? Or is it simply a true fact about the world, and we can shift the discussion toward slippery slopes?
laxam
3d ago
It has been quite the journey over the last decade seeing this general space, in its various homes, drift from being a place for a variety of dissenters, idle imaginers, original thinkers, and malcontents to being just another space for Trumpers to get together and gripe about everyone but themselves.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6d ago
MIT no longer requires diversity statements for faculty hires.
Allegedly. The only sources I’ve seen covering this are not exactly paragons of journalism, citing emails rather than anything public. MIT’s own website still describes the practice in glowing terms. I am curious whether the general population of MIT staff—the ones maintaining their websites—is in favor of this change, or if any of them were consulted.
Assuming this is credible, let’s make some predictions.
- social media backlash: guaranteed.
- news backlash, a la NYT: high. This is red meat for opinion columns, as evidenced by the fact that conservative outlets are already crowing about it. But maybe I’ve misjudged, and no one in the mainstream actually cares?
- policy reverted: low. I predict a whole lot of nothing. The people who most care about this are less likely to have leverage over MIT. If it does get rolled back, I predict it’ll be downstream of administrative drama within the school.
- policy spreads to other elite universities: medium? I have no idea which way the wind is blowing. Outlets are trumpeting their preferred conclusion. But I suspect this is going to be localized.
Conservative Mike Cernovich (1.2M followers) Tweeted "Trump needs a VP that will make him assassination proof. Anyone saying otherwise has no understanding of the time we are in. Tim Scott as VP? Trump's survivability will drop to zero. It's incredible to me that more don't understand this."
How seriously should Trump take such a threat, and how seriously does Trump take such a threat? Yes, the powers-that-be truly hate Trump and if he became president and had Scott as VP many would rejoice at Trump's death. But by what mechanism might they kill him? Obviously, it creates horrible incentives if Trump believes the threat and it causes him to consider someone such as Kari Lake, Marjorie Taylor Greene, or Sarah Palin for his VP nominee. In sort-of support of Cernovich, part of the reason that Biden might be sticking with Harris as VP is to reduce the chances he gets removed from office for senility.
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