Contents
Courts Updates ............................................................................................................................................. 2
Courts AFF Updates................................................................................................................................... 3
Congress Counterplan Answers: Court Key to Democracy .................................................................. 4
Human Rights Add-on ........................................................................................................................... 5
Courts NEG Updates ................................................................................................................................. 7
Human Rights Add-On Answers ............................................................................................................ 8
AFF Case Updates........................................................................................................................................ 10
Economy Updates ................................................................................................................................... 11
Economic Decline Impact Extensions.................................................................................................. 12
Economic Decline Impacts--Racism .................................................................................................... 17
Internet Advantage Extensions ............................................................................................................... 18
Internet Key to Economy Extensions .................................................................................................. 19
Internet Key to Tech............................................................................................................................ 26
Internet Solves Disease ....................................................................................................................... 28
Bigotry Advantage Extensions ................................................................................................................ 30
Bigotry Advantage is Utilitarian .......................................................................................................... 31
Legalism K Answer ...................................................................................................................................... 36
Terrorism DA Updates ................................................................................................................................ 38
Terrorism UQ: ISIS is losing now ........................................................................................................ 39
Links: NSA Surveillance Stops ISIS Attacks ......................................................................................... 40
Impacts: Bioweapons are Feasible/Possible ...................................................................................... 42
ISIS Impacts ......................................................................................................................................... 46
Terrorism Link Turns ................................................................................................................................... 50
Terror Link Turns ..................................................................................................................................... 51
Politics Link Turns........................................................................................................................................ 56
Politics Link Turn ..................................................................................................................................... 57
Terrorism Non-Uniques .............................................................................................................................. 60
Afro-Pessimism Links .................................................................................................................................. 64
Courts Updates
Courts AFF Updates
Congress Counterplan Answers: Court Key to Democracy
(--) Courts prevent democratic backsliding:
Sam Issacharoff, 7/1/2015 (American law professor @ NYU School of Law, “Fragile Democracies: An
Interview with Sam Issacharoff,” http://balkin.blogspot.com/2015/07/fragile-democracies-interviewwith-sam.html, Accessed 7/21/2015, rwg)
JB: You are one of the foremost experts on American election law. How did you get interested in the constitutional problems of emerging democracies? Sam
Issacharoff: Two events in the U.S. had the paradoxical effect of directing my attention abroad. The precipitating events were the debates over the trade-offs
between liberty and security in the wake of 9/11 and the role of the Court in resolving the contested presidential election of 2000. Each struck me as a familiar
point of crisis in democracies: a threat to the political openness of democratic politics, and a succession crisis and the risk of a vacuum of leadership. I realized that
I did not have a good command of how these matters were dealt with in countries that faced real threats to security more regularly. And, I watched with some
The
more I looked at newly minted democracies, as in Mexico and South Africa, the more I was struck by the
generalizable pattern of courts serving as stabilizing institutions during periods of what I would term
democratic fragility. JB: A key claim of the book is that courts can play an important role in keeping
emerging democracies from backsliding into authoritarianism and dictatorship. Why are courts able to do this? Sam Issacharoff:
The paradoxical claim of the book is that courts can help stabilize democracy at the moments when political power is
most contested. Since courts notoriously lack the power of the purse or the sword, the paradox is why there should be any expectation that they can play
amazement as the Mexican Supreme Electoral Tribunal handled the 2006 presidential election contest (their equivalent of Bush v. Gore) with relative ease.
this role. In many instances when courts have tried to intercede, they have failed catastrophically, with Peru and Russia as ready examples. But there are too many
counterexamples of courts
reining in political power and that demands some explanation. The main one offered in the book is that courts
help lower the stakes of what is up for grabs in any election. The problem of the post-colonial periods of state consolidation of
the twentieth century, and particularly the third wave of democracy after the fall of the Soviet Union, is that most of the new countries were democracies without a
well-established demos, to borrow from Joseph Weiler. An election in such circumstances risks becoming a one-shot referendum on who will hold state power to
do in the rivals. An earlier effort to lower the risk was based on consociationalism, formalized power sharing. The new efforts at democracy try to lower the
Constitutionalism is then entrusted to
courts that have strong powers of judicial review and offer an institutional ally to those that stand to
lose in the electoral process. This is a strategy I call “democratic hedging.”
downside risk by imposing a strong set of constitutional constraints on what governments can do.
(--) NSA surveillance crushes democracy:
JIMMY WALES and LILA TRETIKOV, 3/10/2015 (the founder of Wikipedia, is a board member of the
Wikimedia Foundation, of which Lila Tretikov is the executive director, “Stop Spying on Wikipedia
Users,” http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/opinion/stop-spying-on-wikipedia-users.html?_r=2,
Accessed 7/22/2015, rwg)
SAN FRANCISCO — TODAY, we’re filing a lawsuit against the National Security Agency to protect the rights of the 500
million people who use Wikipedia every month. We’re doing so because a fundamental pillar of democracy is at
stake: the free exchange of knowledge and ideas. Our lawsuit says that the N.S.A.’s mass surveillance of
Internet traffic on American soil — often called “upstream” surveillance — violates the Fourth Amendment, which
protects the right to privacy, as well as the First Amendment, which protects the freedoms of expression and association. We also argue that
this agency activity exceeds the authority granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that Congress amended in 2008. Most people
search and read Wikipedia anonymously, since you don’t need an account to view its tens of millions of articles in hundreds of languages. Every
month, at least 75,000 volunteers in the United States and around the world contribute their time and passion to writing those articles and
keeping the site going — and growing. On our servers, run by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, those volunteers discuss their work on
everything from Tiananmen Square to gay rights in Uganda. Many of them prefer to work anonymously, especially those who work on
controversial issues or who live in countries with repressive governments. These volunteers should be able to do their work without having to
worry that the United States government is monitoring what they read and write. Unfortunately, their anonymity is far from certain because,
using upstream surveillance, the N.S.A. intercepts and searches virtually all of the international text-based traffic that flows across the Internet
“backbone” inside the United States. This is the network of fiber-optic cables and junctions that connect Wikipedia with its global community of
readers and editors. As a result, whenever someone overseas views or edits a Wikipedia page, it’s likely that the N.S.A. is tracking that activity
— including the content of what was read or typed, as well as other information that can be linked to the person’s physical location and
possible identity. These activities are sensitive and private: They can reveal everything from a person’s political and religious beliefs to sexual
orientation and medical conditions. The notion that the N.S.A. is monitoring Wikipedia’s users is not, unfortunately, a stretch of the
imagination. One of the documents revealed by the whistle-blower Edward J. Snowden specifically identified Wikipedia as a target for
surveillance, alongside several other major websites like CNN.com, Gmail and Facebook. The leaked slide from a classified PowerPoint
presentation declared that monitoring these sites could allow N.S.A. analysts to learn “nearly everything a typical user does on the Internet.”
The harm to Wikimedia and the hundreds of millions of people who visit our websites is clear: Pervasive surveillance has
a chilling
effect. It stifles freedom of expression and the free exchange of knowledge that Wikimedia was designed to enable.
Human Rights Add-on
A) Curtailing NSA surveillance bolsters international human rights:
Alex Sinha, 3/25/2015 (Aryeh Neier Fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights
Watch, “Better Privacy Protections Key to US Foreign Policy Coherence,”
http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2015/03/better-privacy-protections-key-us-foreign-policycoherence/108469/, Accessed 7/22/2015, rwg)
While Washington has nominally supported internet freedom around the globe, its surveillance
programs have undermined human rights. For all its interest in promoting human rights around the
world, you’d think the United States would be more sensitive to the ways its own surveillance policies
undermine those very rights. Over the last few years, U.S. officials say they have spent more than $125 million to advance Internet
freedom, which the State Department describes as a “foreign policy priority.” The U.S. rightly links Internet freedom with the freedoms of
expression, peaceful assembly, and association, as well as with the work of human rights defenders. It makes sense, therefore, that the U.S.
also actively funds human rights defenders, and calls out other governments for mistreating them. Yet surveillance
conducted by the
U.S. government—some of it unconstitutional and contrary to international human rights law—compromises Internet freedom,
undermines the rights the government seeks to promote, and directly harms human rights defenders. Two weeks ago, the ACLU
filed a lawsuit challenging the NSA’s “upstream” surveillance, which involves tapping the Internet backbone to copy and search countless
communications as they enter and leave the country. Among the plaintiffs in that suit are human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch
and Amnesty International. Both organizations send researchers around the world to document and report on human rights abuses, often in
conflict zones or countries with oppressive governments. Both rely on local human rights defenders to help collect evidence, and both often
solicit the testimony of victims and survivors of atrocities. Upstream surveillance undermines this critical work by raising the costs of
communicating securely and exposing and frightening away sources. Those sources are understandably reluctant to provide sensitive
information when they know it can easily be collected by the U.S. and shared with other governments—sometimes the very governments they
have spoken out against. Today, we are releasing a report that analyzes state obligations to protect privacy under the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights, or, a treaty that imposes legal obligations on the U.S. and many other signatories. Our report urges the U.N. body
that monitors state compliance with the ICCPR, the Human Rights Committee, to update its authoritative analysis of the right to privacy. This
analysis, called “General Comment 16,” was published in 1988, and some of its standards have fallen behind the times. Since its publication, we
have become so heavily reliant on information technologies—cell phones, the Internet and more—that there now exist detailed digital records
of our daily lives. Meanwhile, government capacities to gather, store, and analyze those records have grown exponentially. The U.N. calls this
the “digital age.” The State Department calls it “an inflection point in human history.” But whatever label we use, this new reality explains why
we’re calling on the Human Rights Committee to establish modern standards that give governments much needed guidance on how to meet
their privacy-related human rights obligations. Our report is designed to help the committee revisit General Comment 16. It draws on a broad
range of existing human rights laws and standards to collect and organize relevant data points, distilling the requirements they reflect. And,
until the committee updates its analysis, our report will also help human rights advocates in their continuing efforts to ensure that their
governments respect the international human right to privacy. Despite
its lofty rhetoric about promoting Internet
freedom and associated human rights, the U.S. needs a new general comment on privacy as much as
anyone. It has resisted modernizing international privacy protection standards in the same statements it uses to reaffirm its commitments to
privacy rights. It simultaneously funds secure communications technology and weakens the security of such technology. Its surveillance
programs have had chilling effects here at home on the exact rights it aims to promote around the world. Now it’s being sued by major human
rights defenders for hindering their work, even as it trumpets its commitment to their cause. Privacy lies at the center of this tangle of
contradictions. Of course, we
believe the U.S. should respect the human right to privacy because it’s legally obligated to
do so. But if that’s not a good enough reason, there is another: It’s the first step toward a coherent foreign policy on
human rights.
B) Human rights prevent global slavery and war.
William W. Burke-White, 2004 Lecturer in Public and International Affairs and Senior Special
Assistant to the Dean, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University
The Harvard Environmental Law Review Spring, 2004 LN
The second effect of institutionalized protections of human rights is to set a minimum floor of treatment
for all citizens within the domestic polity. Even in a non-democracy, minimum human rights protections
ensure that [*266] rights are accorded to individuals not directly represented by the government. By
ensuring a minimum treatment of the unrepresented, human rights protections prevent the
government from externalizing the costs of aggressive behavior on the unrepresented. In human rights
respecting states, for example, unrepresented individuals cannot be forced at gunpoint to fight or be
bound into slavery to generate low-cost economic resources for war, and thus restrain the state from
engaging in aggressive action. On the other hand, in a state where power is narrowly concentrated in
the hands of a political elite that systematically represses its own people, the state will be more able to
bear the domestic costs of war. By violating the human rights of its own citizens, a state can force
individuals to fight or support the military apparatus in its war-making activities. Similarly, by denying
basic human rights, a state may be better able to bear the political costs of war. Even if such a state had
fair elections, denial of freedom of thought and expression might well insulate the government from the
electoral costs of an aggressive foreign policy.
Courts NEG Updates
Human Rights Add-On Answers
(--) No modeling: different countries interpret human rights laws differently:
Eric Posner, 1/14/2015 (professor at the University of Chicago Law School, “Charlie Hebdo proves just
how broken human rights law is,”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/01/14/human-rights-law-is-basically-deadthats-a-good-thing/, Accessed 7/23/2015, rwg)
You might think our international human rights treaties would guide us to the answer. But in reality,
these treaties are broad and do not resolve conflicting sets of values. For example, Article 19 of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights says that the right to freedom of expression is “subject to certain restrictions [as] are necessary [f]or the
protection of national security or of public order … or of public health or morals.” But countries
interpret these restrictions for
public order and morals in greatly different ways. In the United States, we hardly ban any offensive speech
or images. But child pornography is forbidden, as is offensive language on public broadcasts. In Europe, many countries ban
various forms of hate speech, including Holocaust denial, but not images of Mohammad. In many Islamic
countries, a wider range of images and text deemed offensive or blasphemous are banned.
(--) International human rights laws not taken seriously:
Eric Posner, 1/14/2015 (professor at the University of Chicago Law School, “Charlie Hebdo proves just
how broken human rights law is,”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/01/14/human-rights-law-is-basically-deadthats-a-good-thing/, Accessed 7/23/2015, rwg)
Most governments did not take these treaties seriously when they ratified them. Moreover, human
rights treaties are often so vague as to be almost meaningless, and unenforceable even when a meaning
can be discerned. Article 19 of the ICCPR is just one of many examples where countries are permitted to balance an interest protected by
a right with the interest in order and morality. The treaties also contain numerous rights unfamiliar to Americans—social and economic rights
that guarantee a minimum income, health care, education, and pensions. Developing countries have interpreted these rights to give them a
“right to development,” and their citizens a “right to security”—which mean that governments can sacrifice political rights when those rights
interfere with efforts to reduce poverty, fight crime, and battle insurgencies. In some cases, governments go too far, but in others, they make
reasonable tradeoffs between freedom and security that westerners do not face, in light of moral traditions westerners do not understand. * *
* The
vagueness of the treaties is no accident. It derives from fundamental disagreement about what
they are supposed to accomplish—about what is the human good, and what is the role of the government in advancing it. During
the Cold War, two diametrically opposed ideological visions—liberal democracy and communism—flourished.
(--) Multiple alternate causes to the US living up to human rights law:
Eric Posner, 1/14/2015 (professor at the University of Chicago Law School, “Charlie Hebdo proves just
how broken human rights law is,”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/01/14/human-rights-law-is-basically-deadthats-a-good-thing/, Accessed 7/23/2015, rwg)
Even western countries often fail to live up to the values they espouse. The United States has used torture,
targeted killing, and mass surveillance to defend itself from these new threats. Wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and
Libya, fought in part under the banner of human rights, brought anarchy rather than improvement in
people’s lives. Many Europeans have turned against their Muslim immigrant populations, some of whom cheer on Islamist radicals in their
homelands. You can expect French security forces to strengthen reliance on profiling and administrative detention after the most recent
terrorist attacks.
(--) Human rights treaties can’t be enforced:
Eric Posner, 1/14/2015 (professor at the University of Chicago Law School, “Charlie Hebdo proves just
how broken human rights law is,”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/01/14/human-rights-law-is-basically-deadthats-a-good-thing/, Accessed 7/23/2015, rwg)
The human rights treaties cannot stop these tidal currents. The various institutions created to enforce
them—like the UN Human Rights Council—are paralyzed by disagreement and starved of funds. Russian and
Chinese leaders have deftly exploited ethnic and nationalist sentiments in their populations. Leaders of most non-western countries know that
while significant minorities crave liberal freedoms, the western lifestyle—secular, consumerist, individualist—is repulsive to most of their
people, who no longer believe (if they ever believed) that western human rights are compatible with the practices they cherish. What is there
to do about this? We can start by recognizing three facts: that the
goals of the international human rights movement are
not universally accepted; that the full panoply of western-style rights is not appropriate for all countries;
and that efforts to implement them in foreign countries through law and coercion are not effective ways
of improving people’s lives. Human rights law is a dead letter.
(--) Torture and drone strikes are alternate causes to US human rights credibility:
Eric Posner, 12/4/2014 (professor at the University of Chicago Law School, “The case against human
rights,” http://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/dec/04/-sp-case-against-human-rights, Accessed
7/23/2015, rwg)
We live in an age in which most of the major human rights treaties – there are nine “core” treaties – have been ratified by the vast majority of
countries. Yet it seems that the human rights agenda has fallen on hard times. In much of the Islamic world, women lack
equality, religious dissenters are persecuted and political freedoms are curtailed. The Chinese model of development, which combines political
repression and economic liberalism, has attracted numerous admirers in the developing world. Political authoritarianism has gained ground in
Russia, Turkey, Hungary and Venezuela. Backlashes against LGBT rights have taken place in countries as diverse as Russia and Nigeria. The
traditional champions of human rights – Europe and the United States – have floundered. Europe has turned inward as it has struggled with a
sovereign debt crisis, xenophobia towards its Muslim communities and disillusionment with Brussels. The
United States, which used
torture in the years after 9/11 and continues to kill civilians with drone strikes, has lost much of its
moral authority. Even age-old scourges such as slavery continue to exist. A recent report estimates that nearly 30
million people are forced against their will to work. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
(--) Human rights treaties have empirically failed to improve human rights:
Eric Posner, 12/4/2014 (professor at the University of Chicago Law School, “The case against human
rights,” http://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/dec/04/-sp-case-against-human-rights, Accessed
7/23/2015, rwg)
The truth is that human rights law has failed to accomplish its objectives. There is little evidence that human
rights treaties, on the whole, have improved the wellbeing of people. The reason is that human rights
were never as universal as people hoped, and the belief that they could be forced upon countries as a
matter of international law was shot through with misguided assumptions from the very beginning. The human
rights movement shares something in common with the hubris of development economics, which in previous decades tried (and failed) to
alleviate poverty by imposing top-down solutions on developing countries. But where development economists have reformed their approach,
the human rights movement has yet to acknowledge its failures. It is time for a reckoning.
(--) China prevents successful international human rights regime:
Eric Posner, 12/4/2014 (professor at the University of Chicago Law School, “The case against human
rights,” http://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/dec/04/-sp-case-against-human-rights, Accessed
7/23/2015, rwg)
The rise of China has also undermined the power of human rights. In recent years, China has worked
assiduously behind the scenes to weaken international human rights institutions and publicly rejected international
criticism of the political repression of its citizens. It has offered diplomatic and economic support to human rights
violators, such as Sudan, that western countries have tried to isolate. Along with Russia, it has used its veto in the UN
security council to limit western efforts to advance human rights through economic pressure and military intervention.
And it has joined with numerous other countries – major emerging powers such as Vietnam, and Islamic countries that fear western
secularisation – to deny many of the core values that human rights are supposed to protect.
AFF Case Updates
Economy Updates
Economic Decline Impact Extensions
(--) Econ decline leads to nuclear war—empirics prove
LaRouche, 11 (Lyndon LaRouche's standing as an internationally known economist, and his
exceptional successes as a long-range forecaster, are the outgrowths of his original discoveries of
physical principle, dating from a project conducted during the 1948-1952 interval. He forecast, that, if
the dominant powers resorted to a combination of increasingly rapacious, monetarist forms of austerity
measures, the result would be, not a new cyclical crisis, but, rather, a systemic crisis, a general
breakdown crisis of the global system. Since the October 1987 U.S. stock-market crisis, and the strategic,
economic, financial, and monetary decisions of the 1989-1992 interval, the existing global financialmonetary system has become locked into the presently erupting series of seismic-like shocks expressing
such a global systemic, or general breakdown crisis. The most recent famous conclusion by LaRouche
came in his July 25, 2007 webcast, on the cusp of the first visible signs of the current world financial
breakdown crisis, when he said, without hedging, that the current bankrupt financial system was
finished. Since that time, LaRouche's credibility in certain limited, but significant U.S. professional
economic circles, and internationally, has skyrocketed, and his international campaign for the return to a
Glass-Steagall standard of banking, and a new agreement among sovereign nation states for a fixed
exchange rate credit system, has gained increasing international support, 11/11/11, “How Economic
Collapse Can Lead to World War”, http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2011/eirv38n4420111111/23-27_3844.pdf). SZ
Wars—world wars especially—tend to come on in a certain way. It’s been that way during this century. It was that way with
World War I; it was that way with World War II. World War I began with the assassination of U.S. President McKinley, which resulted in a fundamental
change in policy under Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were allies, in effect, of the British monarchy, in
the British monarchy’s plan for a war against Germany under Edward VII, a war which actually broke out in 1914. The war was obvious; it was coming. It was clear
from 1905 on. It
was associated with a series of international financial and related economic crises. In the
United States, for example, where we had the famous 1907 crisis, 1905-1907 crisis. The Russian-Japanese war of 1905. The
Balkan Wars. They kept coming and coming. And then, suddenly, there was World War I. And then there was World War II. World War II was
essentially set into place when the former chief of the Bank of England, Montagu Norman, together with other British
influences and with support from the Morgan and Harriman banking interests in New York, put Hitler into power in Germany
in January 1933. Once Hitler was consolidated in power, with the death of Hindenburg in 1934, then the march toward World War II became inevitable. One of
the conditions which made this connection, was the fact that the world had gone into a great post Versailles
worldwide depression, which broke out officially with the U.S. stock market collapse in 1929; which became
consolidated with the 1931 collapse of the British pound sterling. And under these conditions, processes unleashed
led to war in 1939. It led to war involving the United States on Dec. 7, 1941. Similar conditions exist now. The world has been, especially
since a foolish decision by President Nixon in 1971, when he destroyed the existing world monetary system, and set into motion a new, so-called floating-exchangerate monetary system—the present IMF system—the world has been sliding downhill overall. Though many people are deceived by lying propaganda, to believe
that there’s prosperity in the United States, there
is no prosperity in the United States, except for the upper 20% of
income brackets. They have more money, more cash. The 80% of the population, does not. ... [LaRouche also describes the economic crisis in Europe and
Africa.] These are the realities. It is in this condition, as this present financial system approaches collapse, that the danger
of war begins to emerge. Now this—the current danger of war came to the surface beginning August of 1998. What happened? Well, the previous
November, October-November, there had been a major financial collapse which had been bailed out with hyperinflationary growth and asset values. That is, the
central banks began printing money, in effect, and pumping money into financial markets— stock markets and other financial markets. So that had led into a new
situation by the Summer of 1998. The blowout occurred. It started with the Russian bond debt. In August of that year, at the same time that President Clinton was
being distracted by being called to testify before the Special Prosecutor, Russia declared bankruptcy, state bankruptcy. As a reaction to this effect, [Vice President]
Al Gore and others, behind the back of the President, pushed through, fraudulently, a bombing attack on a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. I believe, now the
President knows that was fraudulent; but nothing has been done effectively to correct it. That was the beginning.... You
have a system which is
intrinsically, systemically bankrupt. It cannot be saved. The only thing that can be done, is action by governments
to put the bankrupt financial system and the bankrupted monetary system, into government-supervised financial reorganization; in other words, to apply the
thinking of a Franklin Roosevelt to the current emergency situation. This
creates a crisis, a crisis in which powerful financial interests
are totally panic-stricken, are driven mad by the fact that the system in which their investments are located, is about to be liquidated; that the nationstate which they thought they were eliminating with globalization, is the only institution which can save nations from total destruction. It is under these
conditions that plans to move toward military adventures, even wars, even general wars, and that risk of nuclear war is
pushed by madmen; some in the United States, some in the Congress who don’t even know what they’re doing, as well as in Britain and elsewhere. This
is the situation....
(--) Econ decline will cause nuclear war by 2025
McCoy 2010 (Alfred W. McCoy is the J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of WisconsinMadison. He is the author of A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, "From the Cold War to the War
on Terror." Later this year, "Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise
of the Surveillance State," a forthcoming book of his, will explore the influence of overseas
counterinsurgency operations on the spread of internal security measures here at home, 12/6/2010,
“How America will Collapse (by 2025)”, http://www.salon.com/2010/12/06/america_collapse_2025/).
SZ
A soft landing for America 40 years from now? Don’t bet on it. The demise of the United States as the global superpower could come far more quickly
than anyone imagines. If Washington is dreaming of 2040 or 2050 as the end of the American Century , a more realistic assessment of domestic and
global trends suggests that in 2025, just 15 years from now, it could all be over except for the shouting. Despite the aura of omnipotence most empires project, a
look at their history should remind us that they are fragile organisms. So delicate is their ecology of power that, when things start to go truly bad, empires
regularly unravel with unholy speed: just a year for Portugal, two years for the Soviet Union, eight years
for France, 11 years for the Ottomans, 17 years for Great Britain, and, in all likelihood, 22 years for the
United States, counting from the crucial year 2003. Future historians are likely to identify the Bush administration’s rash invasion of Iraq in that year as the start of America’s
downfall. However, instead of the bloodshed that marked the end of so many past empires, with cities burning and civilians slaughtered, this twenty-first century imperial
collapse could come relatively quietly through the invisible tendrils of economic collapse or cyberwarfare. But have no doubt:
when Washington’s global dominion finally ends, there will be painful daily reminders of what such a loss of power means for Americans in every walk of life. As a half-dozen European nations
imperial decline tends to have a remarkably demoralizing impact on a society, regularly
bringing at least a generation of economic privation. As the economy cools, political temperatures rise,
often sparking serious domestic unrest. Available economic, educational, and military data indicate that,
when it comes to U.S. global power, negative trends will aggregate rapidly by 2020 and are likely to reach a critical mass no later than 2030. The
have discovered,
American Century, proclaimed so triumphantly at the start of World War II, will be tattered and fading by 2025, its eighth decade, and could be history by 2030. Significantly, in 2008, the U.S.
National Intelligence Council admitted for the first time that America’s global power was indeed on a declining trajectory. In one of its periodic futuristic reports, Global Trends 2025, the
Council cited “the transfer of global wealth and economic power now under way, roughly from West to East” and “without precedent in modern history,” as the primary factor in the decline of
the “United States’ relative strength — even in the military realm.” Like many in Washington, however, the Council’s analysts anticipated a very long, very soft landing for American global
Under
current projections, the United States will find itself in second place behind China (already the world’s second largest economy) in
economic output around 2026, and behind India by 2050. Similarly, Chinese innovation is on a trajectory toward world leadership in applied
preeminence, and harbored the hope that somehow the U.S. would long “retain unique military capabilities… to project military power globally” for decades to come. No such luck.
science and military technology sometime between 2020 and 2030, just as America’s current supply of brilliant scientists and engineers retires, without adequate replacement by an illeducated younger generation. By 2020, according to current plans, the Pentagon will throw a military Hail Mary pass for a dying empire. It will launch a lethal triple canopy of advanced
aerospace robotics that represents Washington’s last best hope of retaining global power despite its waning economic influence. By that year, however, China’s global network of
communications satellites, backed by the world’s most powerful supercomputers, will also be fully operational, providing Beijing with an independent platform for the weaponization of space
and a powerful communications system for missile- or cyber-strikes into every quadrant of the globe. Wrapped in imperial hubris, like Whitehall or Quai d’Orsay before it, the White House still
seems to imagine that American decline will be gradual, gentle, and partial. In his State of the Union address last January, President Obama offered the reassurance that “I do not accept
second place for the United States of America.” A few days later, Vice President Biden ridiculed the very idea that “we are destined to fulfill [historian Paul] Kennedy’s prophecy that we are
going to be a great nation that has failed because we lost control of our economy and overextended.” Similarly, writing in the November issue of the establishment journal Foreign Affairs, neoliberal foreign policy guru Joseph Nye waved away talk of China’s economic and military rise, dismissing “misleading metaphors of organic decline” and denying that any deterioration in U.S.
65
percent of Americans believed the country was now “in a state of decline.” Already, Australia and Turkey,
traditional U.S. military allies, are using their American-manufactured weapons for joint air and naval
maneuvers with China. Already, America’s closest economic partners are backing away from Washington’s opposition to China’s rigged currency rates. As the president flew
global power was underway. Ordinary Americans, watching their jobs head overseas, have a more realistic view than their cosseted leaders. An opinion poll in August 2010 found that
back from his Asian tour last month, a gloomy New York Times headline summed the moment up this way: “Obama’s Economic View Is Rejected on World Stage, China, Britain and Germany
Challenge U.S., Trade Talks With Seoul Fail, Too.” Viewed historically, the question is not whether the United States will lose its unchallenged global power, but just how precipitous and
wrenching the decline will be. In place of Washington’s wishful thinking, let’s use the National Intelligence Council’s own futuristic methodology to suggest four realistic scenarios for how,
whether with a bang or a whimper, U.S. global power could reach its end in the 2020s (along with four accompanying assessments of just where we are today). The future scenarios include:
economic decline, oil shock, military misadventure, and World War III. While these are hardly the only possibilities when it comes to American decline or even collapse, they offer a window
three main threats exist to America’s dominant position in the
global economy: loss of economic clout thanks to a shrinking share of world trade, the decline of
American technological innovation, and the end of the dollar’s privileged status as the global reserve
currency. By 2008, the United States had already fallen to number three in global merchandise exports, with just 11 percent of them compared to 12 percent for China and 16 percent
for the European Union. There is no reason to believe that this trend will reverse itself. Similarly, American leadership in technological
into an onrushing future. Economic Decline: Present Situation Today,
innovation is on the wane. In 2008, the U.S. was still number two behind Japan in worldwide patent applications with 232,000, but China was closing fast at 195,000, thanks to a blistering 400
: in 2009 the U.S. hit rock bottom in ranking among the 40 nations surveyed by the Information
when it came to “change” in “global innovation-based competitiveness” during the previous
decade. Adding substance to these statistics, in October China’s Defense Ministry unveiled the world’s fastest
supercomputer, the Tianhe-1A, so powerful, said one U.S. expert, that it “blows away the existing No. 1 machine” in
America. Add to this clear evidence that the U.S. education system, that source of future scientists and innovators, has
been falling behind its competitors. After leading the world for decades in 25- to 34-year-olds with university degrees, the country sank to 12th place in 2010.
The World Economic Forum ranked the United States at a mediocre 52nd among 139 nations in the quality of its
university math and science instruction in 2010. Nearly half of all graduate students in the sciences in the U.S. are now
foreigners, most of whom will be heading home, not staying here as once would have happened. By 2025, in other words, the United States is likely to face a critical shortage of
talented scientists. Such negative trends are encouraging increasingly sharp criticism of the dollar’s role as the
world’s reserve currency. “Other countries are no longer willing to buy into the idea that the U.S. knows
best on economic policy,” observed Kenneth S. Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. In mid-2009, with the world’s central banks
percent increase since 2000. A harbinger of further decline
Technology & Innovation Foundation
holding an astronomical $4 trillion in U.S. Treasury notes, Russian president Dimitri Medvedev insisted that it was time to end “the artificially maintained unipolar system” based on “one
formerly strong reserve currency.” Simultaneously, China’s central bank governor suggested that the future might lie with a global reserve currency “disconnected from individual nations”
(that is, the U.S. dollar). Take these as signposts of a world to come, and of a possible attempt, as economist Michael Hudson has argued, “to hasten the bankruptcy of the U.S. financial-
After years of swelling deficits fed by incessant warfare in distant lands, in 2020, as long expected, the
U.S. dollar finally loses its special status as the world’s reserve currency. Suddenly, the cost of imports
soars. Unable to pay for swelling deficits by selling now-devalued Treasury notes abroad, Washington is
finally forced to slash its bloated military budget. Under pressure at home and abroad, Washington slowly pulls U.S. forces back from hundreds of
overseas bases to a continental perimeter. By now, however, it is far too late . Faced with a fading superpower incapable of paying the bills,
China, India, Iran, Russia, and other powers, great and regional, provocatively challenge U.S. dominion
over the oceans, space, and cyberspace. Meanwhile, amid soaring prices, ever-rising unemployment, and a continuing decline in real wages,
domestic divisions widen into violent clashes and divisive debates, often over remarkably irrelevant issues. Riding a
political tide of disillusionment and despair, a far-right patriot captures the presidency with thundering
rhetoric, demanding respect for American authority and threatening military retaliation or economic
reprisal. The world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence. Oil Shock: Present Situation One casualty of America’s waning economic power has been its lock
military world order.” Economic Decline: Scenario 2020
on global oil supplies. Speeding by America’s gas-guzzling economy in the passing lane, China became the world’s number one energy consumer this summer, a position the U.S. had held for
over a century. Energy specialist Michael Klare has argued that this change means China will “set the pace in shaping our global future.” By 2025, Iran and Russia will control almost half of the
world’s natural gas supply, which will potentially give them enormous leverage over energy-starved Europe. Add petroleum reserves to the mix and, as the National Intelligence Council has
warned, in just 15 years two countries, Russia and Iran, could “emerge as energy kingpins.” Despite remarkable ingenuity, the major oil powers are now draining the big basins of petroleum
reserves that are amenable to easy, cheap extraction. The real lesson of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was not BP’s sloppy safety standards, but the simple fact
everyone saw on “spillcam”: one of the corporate energy giants had little choice but to search for what Klare calls “tough oil” miles beneath the surface of the ocean to keep its profits up.
Compounding the problem, the Chinese and Indians have suddenly become far heavier energy consumers. Even if fossil fuel supplies were to remain constant (which they won’t), demand, and
so costs, are almost certain to rise — and sharply at that. Other developed nations are meeting this threat aggressively by plunging into experimental programs to develop alternative energy
sources. The United States has taken a different path, doing far too little to develop alternative sources while, in the last three decades, doubling its dependence on foreign oil imports.
Between 1973 and 2007, oil imports have risen from 36 percent of energy consumed in the U.S. to 66 percent. Oil Shock: Scenario 2025 The United States remains so dependent upon foreign
oil that a few adverse developments in the global energy market in 2025 spark an oil shock. By comparison, it makes the 1973 oil shock (when prices quadrupled in just months) look like the
proverbial molehill. Angered at the dollar’s plummeting value, OPEC oil ministers, meeting in Riyadh, demand future energy payments in a “basket” of Yen, Yuan, and Euros. That only hikes the
cost of U.S. oil imports further. At the same moment, while signing a new series of long-term delivery contracts with China, the Saudis stabilize their own foreign exchange reserves by
switching to the Yuan. Meanwhile, China pours countless billions into building a massive trans-Asia pipeline and funding Iran’s exploitation of the world largest percent natural gas field at
South Pars in the Persian Gulf. Concerned that the U.S. Navy might no longer be able to protect the oil tankers traveling from the Persian Gulf to fuel East Asia, a coalition of Tehran, Riyadh,
and Abu Dhabi form an unexpected new Gulf alliance and affirm that China’s new fleet of swift aircraft carriers will henceforth patrol the Persian Gulf from a base on the Gulf of Oman. Under
heavy economic pressure, London agrees to cancel the U.S. lease on its Indian Ocean island base of Diego Garcia, while Canberra, pressured by the Chinese, informs Washington that the
Seventh Fleet is no longer welcome to use Fremantle as a homeport, effectively evicting the U.S. Navy from the Indian Ocean. With just a few strokes of the pen and some terse
announcements, the “Carter Doctrine,” by which U.S. military power was to eternally protect the Persian Gulf, is laid to rest in 2025. All the elements that long assured the United States
limitless supplies of low-cost oil from that region — logistics, exchange rates, and naval power — evaporate. At this point, the U.S. can still cover only an insignificant 12 percent of its energy
needs from its nascent alternative energy industry, and remains dependent on imported oil for half of its energy consumption. The oil shock that follows hits the country like a hurricane,
sending prices to startling heights, making travel a staggeringly expensive proposition, putting real wages (which had long been declining) into freefall, and rendering non-competitive
whatever American exports remained. With thermostats dropping, gas prices climbing through the roof, and dollars flowing overseas in return for costly oil, the American economy is
paralyzed. With long-fraying alliances at an end and fiscal pressures mounting, U.S. military forces finally begin a staged withdrawal from their overseas bases. Within a few years, the U.S. is
functionally bankrupt and the clock is ticking toward midnight on the American Century. Military Misadventure: Present Situation Counterintuitively, as their power wanes, empires often
plunge into ill-advised military misadventures. This phenomenon is known among historians of empire as “micro-militarism” and seems to involve psychologically compensatory efforts to salve
the sting of retreat or defeat by occupying new territories, however briefly and catastrophically. These operations, irrational even from an imperial point of view, often yield hemorrhaging
expenditures or humiliating defeats that only accelerate the loss of power. Embattled empires through the ages suffer an arrogance that drives them to plunge ever deeper into military
misadventures until defeat becomes debacle. In 413 BCE, a weakened Athens sent 200 ships to be slaughtered in Sicily. In 1921, a dying imperial Spain dispatched 20,000 soldiers to be
massacred by Berber guerrillas in Morocco. In 1956, a fading British Empire destroyed its prestige by attacking Suez. And in 2001 and 2003, the U.S. occupied Afghanistan and invaded Iraq.
With the hubris that marks empires over the millennia, Washington has increased its troops in Afghanistan to 100,000, expanded the war into Pakistan, and extended its commitment to 2014
and beyond, courting disasters large and small in this guerilla-infested, nuclear-armed graveyard of empires. Military Misadventure: Scenario 2014 So irrational, so unpredictable is “micromilitarism” that seemingly fanciful scenarios are soon outdone by actual events. With the U.S. military stretched thin from Somalia to the Philippines and tensions rising in Israel, Iran, and
Korea, possible combinations for a disastrous military crisis abroad are multifold. It’s mid-summer 2014 and a drawn-down U.S. garrison in embattled Kandahar in southern Afghanistan is
suddenly, unexpectedly overrun by Taliban guerrillas, while U.S. aircraft are grounded by a blinding sandstorm. Heavy loses are taken and in retaliation, an embarrassed American war
commander looses B-1 bombers and F-16 fighters to demolish whole neighborhoods of the city that are believed to be under Taliban control, while AC-130U “Spooky” gunships rake the rubble
with devastating cannon fire. Soon, mullahs are preaching jihad from mosques throughout the region, and Afghan Army units, long trained by American forces to turn the tide of the war, begin
to desert en masse. Taliban fighters then launch a series of remarkably sophisticated strikes aimed at U.S. garrisons across the country, sending American casualties soaring. In scenes
reminiscent of Saigon in 1975, U.S. helicopters rescue American soldiers and civilians from rooftops in Kabul and Kandahar. Meanwhile, angry at the endless, decades-long stalemate over
Palestine, OPEC’s leaders impose a new oil embargo on the U.S. to protest its backing of Israel as well as the killing of untold numbers of Muslim civilians in its ongoing wars across the Greater
Middle East. With gas prices soaring and refineries running dry, Washington makes its move, sending in Special Operations forces to seize oil ports in the Persian Gulf. This, in turn, sparks a
rash of suicide attacks and the sabotage of pipelines and oil wells. As black clouds billow skyward and diplomats rise at the U.N. to bitterly denounce American actions, commentators
worldwide reach back into history to brand this “America’s Suez,” a telling reference to the 1956 debacle that marked the end of the British Empire. World War III: Present Situation In the
summer of 2010, military tensions between the U.S. and China began to rise in the western Pacific, once considered an American “lake.” Even a year earlier no one would have predicted such a
development. As Washington played upon its alliance with London to appropriate much of Britain’s global power after World War II, so China is now using the profits from its export trade with
the U.S. to fund what is likely to become a military challenge to American dominion over the waterways of Asia and the Pacific. With its growing resources, Beijing is claiming a vast maritime
arc from Korea to Indonesia long dominated by the U.S. Navy. In August, after Washington expressed a “national interest” in the South China Sea and conducted naval exercises there to
reinforce that claim, Beijing’s official Global Times responded angrily, saying, “The U.S.-China wrestling match over the South China Sea issue has raised the stakes in deciding who the real
future ruler of the planet will be.” Amid growing tensions, the Pentagon reported that Beijing now holds “the capability to attack… [U.S.] aircraft carriers in the western Pacific Ocean” and
target “nuclear forces throughout… the continental United States.” By developing “offensive nuclear, space, and cyber warfare capabilities,” China seems determined to vie for dominance of
what the Pentagon calls “the information spectrum in all dimensions of the modern battlespace.” With ongoing development of the powerful Long March V booster rocket, as well as the
launch of two satellites in January 2010 and another in July, for a total of five, Beijing signaled that the country was making rapid strides toward an “independent” network of 35 satellites for
global positioning, communications, and reconnaissance capabilities by 2020. To check China and extend its military position globally, Washington is intent on building a new digital network of
air and space robotics, advanced cyberwarfare capabilities, and electronic surveillance. Military planners expect this integrated system to envelop the Earth in a cyber-grid capable of blinding
entire armies on the battlefield or taking out a single terrorist in field or favela. By 2020, if all goes according to plan, the Pentagon will launch a three-tiered shield of space drones — reaching
from stratosphere to exosphere, armed with agile missiles, linked by a resilient modular satellite system, and operated through total telescopic surveillance. Last April, the Pentagon made
history. It extended drone operations into the exosphere by quietly launching the X-37B unmanned space shuttle into a low orbit 255 miles above the planet. The X-37B is the first in a new
generation of unmanned vehicles that will mark the full weaponization of space, creating an arena for future warfare unlike anything that has gone before. World War III: Scenario 2025 The
technology of space and cyberwarfare is so new and untested that even the most outlandish scenarios may soon be superseded by a reality still hard to conceive. If we simply employ the sort
of scenarios that the Air Force itself used in its 2009 Future Capabilities Game, however, we can gain “a better understanding of how air, space and cyberspace overlap in warfare,” and so
begin to imagine how the next world war might actually be fought. It’s 11:59 p.m. on Thanksgiving Thursday in 2025. While cyber-shoppers pound the portals of Best Buy for deep discounts on
the latest home electronics from China, U.S. Air Force technicians at the Space Surveillance Telescope (SST) on Maui choke on their coffee as their panoramic screens suddenly blip to black.
Thousands of miles away at the U.S. CyberCommand’s operations center in Texas, cyberwarriors soon detect malicious binaries that, though fired anonymously, show the distinctive digital
fingerprints of China’s People’s Liberation Army. ADVERTISEMENT The first overt strike is one nobody predicted. Chinese “malware” seizes control of the robotics aboard an unmanned solarpowered U.S. “Vulture” drone as it flies at 70,000 feet over the Tsushima Strait between Korea and Japan. It suddenly fires all the rocket pods beneath its enormous 400-foot wingspan,
sending dozens of lethal missiles plunging harmlessly into the Yellow Sea, effectively disarming this formidable weapon. Determined to fight fire with fire, the White House authorizes a
retaliatory strike. Confident that its F-6 “Fractionated, Free-Flying” satellite system is impenetrable, Air Force commanders in California transmit robotic codes to the flotilla of X-37B space
drones orbiting 250 miles above the Earth, ordering them to launch their “Triple Terminator” missiles at China’s 35 satellites. Zero response. In near panic, the Air Force launches its Falcon
Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle into an arc 100 miles above the Pacific Ocean and then, just 20 minutes later, sends the computer codes to fire missiles at seven Chinese satellites in nearby orbits.
The launch codes are suddenly inoperative. As the Chinese virus spreads uncontrollably through the F-6 satellite architecture, while those second-rate U.S. supercomputers fail to crack the
malware’s devilishly complex code, GPS signals crucial to the navigation of U.S. ships and aircraft worldwide are compromised. Carrier fleets begin steaming in circles in the mid-Pacific. Fighter
squadrons are grounded. Reaper drones fly aimlessly toward the horizon, crashing when their fuel is exhausted. Suddenly, the United States loses what the U.S. Air Force has long called “the
ultimate high ground”: space. Within hours, the military power that had dominated the globe for nearly a century has been defeated in World War III without a single human casualty. A New
World Order? Even if future events prove duller than these four scenarios suggest, every significant trend points toward a far more striking decline in American global power by 2025 than
anything Washington now seems to be envisioning. As allies worldwide begin to realign their policies to take cognizance of rising Asian powers, the cost of maintaining 800 or more overseas
military bases will simply become unsustainable, finally forcing a staged withdrawal on a still-unwilling Washington. With both the U.S. and China in a race to weaponize space and cyberspace,
tensions between the two powers are bound to rise, making military conflict by 2025 at least feasible, if hardly guaranteed. Complicating matters even more, the economic, military, and
technological trends outlined above will not operate in tidy isolation. As happened to European empires after World War II, such negative forces will undoubtedly prove synergistic. They will
combine in thoroughly unexpected ways, create crises for which Americans are remarkably unprepared, and threaten to spin the economy into a sudden downward spiral, consigning this
country to a generation or more of economic misery. As U.S. power recedes, the past offers a spectrum of possibilities for a future world order. At one end of this spectrum, the rise of a new
global superpower, however unlikely, cannot be ruled out. Yet both China and Russia evince self-referential cultures, recondite non-roman scripts, regional defense strategies, and
underdeveloped legal systems, denying them key instruments for global dominion. At the moment then, no single superpower seems to be on the horizon likely to succeed the U.S. In a dark,
dystopian version of our global future, a coalition of transnational corporations, multilateral forces like NATO, and an international financial elite could conceivably forge a single, possibly
unstable, supra-national nexus that would make it no longer meaningful to speak of national empires at all. While denationalized corporations and multinational elites would assumedly rule
such a world from secure urban enclaves, the multitudes would be relegated to urban and rural wastelands. In “Planet of Slums,” Mike Davis offers at least a partial vision of such a world from
the bottom up. He argues that the billion people already packed into fetid favela-style slums worldwide (rising to two billion by 2030) will make “the ‘feral, failed cities’ of the Third World… the
distinctive battlespace of the twenty-first century.” As darkness settles over some future super-favela, “the empire can deploy Orwellian technologies of repression” as “hornet-like helicopter
gun-ships stalk enigmatic enemies in the narrow streets of the slum districts… Every morning the slums reply with suicide bombers and eloquent explosions.” At a midpoint on the spectrum of
possible futures, a new global oligopoly might emerge between 2020 and 2040, with rising powers China, Russia, India, and Brazil collaborating with receding powers like Britain, Germany,
Japan, and the United States to enforce an ad hoc global dominion, akin to the loose alliance of European empires that ruled half of humanity circa 1900. Another possibility: the rise of
regional hegemons in a return to something reminiscent of the international system that operated before modern empires took shape. In this neo-Westphalian world order, with its endless
vistas of micro-violence and unchecked exploitation, each hegemon would dominate its immediate region — Brasilia in South America, Washington in North America, Pretoria in southern
Africa, and so on. Space, cyberspace, and the maritime deeps, removed from the control of the former planetary “policeman,” the United States, might even become a new global commons,
controlled through an expanded U.N. Security Council or some ad hoc body. All of these scenarios extrapolate existing trends into the future on the assumption that Americans, blinded by the
arrogance of decades of historically unparalleled power, cannot or will not take steps to manage the unchecked erosion of their global position. If America’s decline is in fact on a 22-year
trajectory from 2003 to 2025, then we have already frittered away most of the first decade of that decline with wars that distracted us from long-term problems and, like water tossed onto
desert sands, wasted trillions of desperately needed dollars. If only 15 years remain, the odds of frittering them all away still remain high. Congress and the president are now in gridlock; the
American system is flooded with corporate money meant to jam up the works; and there is little suggestion that any issues of significance, including our wars, our bloated national security
state, our starved education system, and our antiquated energy supplies, will be addressed with sufficient seriousness to assure the sort of soft landing that might maximize our country’s role
and prosperity in a changing world. Europe’s empires are gone and America’s imperium is going. It seems increasingly doubtful that the United States will have anything like Britain’s success in
shaping a succeeding world order that protects its interests, preserves its prosperity, and bears the imprint of its best values.
(--) Econ decline cause nuclear war
Lieberthal and O’Hanlon, 2012 (Kenneth Lieberthal and Michael O'Hanlon are foreign policy
scholars at the Brookings Institution and coauthors with Martin Indyk of "Bending History: Barack
Obama's Foreign Policy, 7/3/12, “The Real National Security Threat: America’s debt”,
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/03/opinion/la-oe-ohanlon-fiscal-reform-20120703). SZ
Drones, kill lists, computer viruses and administration leaks are all the rage in the current political debate. They indeed merit serious scrutiny at a time when the rules of war, and technologies
available for war, are changing fast. That said, these issues are not the foreign policy centerpiece of the 2012 presidential race. Economic renewal and fiscal reform have become the
preeminent issues, not only for domestic and economic policy but for foreign policy as well. As the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm.Michael G. Mullen, was fond of saying,
national debt has become perhaps our top national security threat. And neither major presidential candidate is doing enough about it.
This issue needs to be framed as crucial not just for our future prosperity but for international stability as well. The United States has been running trillion-dollar deficits, resulting in a huge
explosion in the country's indebtedness. Publicly held debt now equals 70% of gross domestic product, a threshold many economists consider significant and highly worrisome. Making matters
, half of our current deficit financing is being provided by foreigners
worse
. We are getting by with low interest rates and tolerable levels
of domestic investment only because they find U.S. debt attractive, which may not last. COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS: Presidential Election 2012 According to the nonpartisan Committee for a
Responsible Federal Budget, President Obama's long-term budget plan would allow publicly held debt as a fraction of GDP to rise further, up to 75%, within a decade. Mitt Romney's proposal,
featuring tax cuts and defense spending increases and as-yet-unspecified (and thus less than fully credible) entitlement reform, appears worse. It would probably drive publicly held debt to
95% of GDP over the same period. Put differently, though both are serious and pragmatic men, neither major party's presidential candidate is adequately stepping up to the plate, with
? First, we are headed for a level of debt that within a decade
could require us to spend the first trillion dollars of every year's federal budget servicing that debt.
Much less money will be left for other things. That is a prescription for a vicious cycle of underfinancing for our infrastructure, national education efforts,
science research and all the other functions of government that are crucial to long-term economic growth. Robust defense spending will be
Romney's plan the more troubling of the two. Why is this situation so serious
unsustainable too. Once we get in this rut, getting out will be very hard. Second, such a chronic economic decline would undercut what
has been 70 years of strong national political consensus in favor of an activist and engaged American
foreign policy. One reason the United States was so engaged through the Cold War and the first 20 years of the post-Cold War world was fear of threats. But the other reason was
that the strategy was associated with improvements in our quality of life as well. America became even more prosperous, and all major segments of society benefited. Alas, globalization and
. Another decade of
underinvestment in what is required to remedy this situation will make an isolationist or populist
president far more likely because much of the country will question whether an internationalist role
makes sense for America — especially if it costs us well over half a trillion dollars in defense spending
annually yet seems correlated with more job losses. Lastly, American economic weakness undercuts U.S.
leadership abroad. Other countries sense our weakness and wonder about our purported decline. If this
perception becomes more widespread, and the case that we are in decline becomes more persuasive,
countries will begin to take actions that reflect their skepticism about America's future. Allies and
friends will doubt our commitment and may pursue nuclear weapons for their own security, for example;
automation trends of the last generation have increasingly called the American dream into question for the working classes
adversaries will sense opportunity and be less restrained in throwing around their weight in their own neighborhoods. The crucial Persian Gulf and Western Pacific regions will likely become
Major war will become more likely
less stable.
. When running for president last time, Obama eloquently articulated big foreign policy visions: healing America's
breach with the Muslim world, controlling global climate change, dramatically curbing global poverty through development aid, moving toward a world free of nuclear weapons. These were,
and remain, worthy if elusive goals. However, for Obama or his successor, there is now a much more urgent big-picture issue: restoring U.S. economic strength. Nothing else is really possible if
that fundamental prerequisite to effective foreign policy is not reestablished.
Economic Decline Impacts--Racism
Econ decline leads to more racism
Connor 14 (Steve Connor is the Science Editor of The Independent and i. He has won many awards for
his journalism, including five-times winner of the prestigious British science writers’ award; the David
Perlman Award of the American Geophysical Union; four times highly commended as specialist
journalist of the year in the UK Press Awards; UK health journalist of the year and a special merit award
of the European School of Oncology for his investigations into the tobacco industry. He has a degree in
zoology from the University of Oxford and has a special interest in genetics and medical science, human
evolution and origins, climate change and the environment, 6/9/14, “Financial hardship can make
people more racist, scientists claim”, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/financial-hardshipcan-make-people-more-racist-scientists-claim-9516092.html). SZ
People unwittingly become more racially aware and less generous towards those of a different skin tone
when they feel financially squeezed, according to a study showing how racism thrives in an economic
recession. A series of psychological tests has revealed the deep-seated prejudices of white people towards black faces
when they experience financial pressures resulting from an economic downturn similar to the global crash of 2008. When
times are hard, people are more likely to judge mixed-race individuals as “black”. Previous research in the US has shown
that the more prototypically black a person is judged to be, the more likely they are to be socially
excluded, shot when unarmed in police training tests, or sentenced to death after a guilty verdict The latest
findings indicate that racial stereotyping and discrimination in a recession is not just to do with institutional racism
but a psychological frame of mind, the researchers have suggested. “When the economy declines, racial minorities are
hit the hardest. Although existing explanations for this effect focus on institutional causes, recent psychological findings suggest that scarcity may also alter
perceptions of race in ways that exacerbate discrimination,” according to Amy Krosch and David Amodio of New York University. “We tested
the hypothesis that economic resource scarcity causes decision makers to perceive African Americans as ‘blacker’
and that this visual distortion elicits disparities in the allocation of resources,” they write in the journal Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences. The study involved a series of tests. The first investigated how non-black volunteers judged the race of an individual based on a series of 110 morphed faces that
ranged from 100 per cent white to 100 per cent black. Those who believed that white and black people were competing with one another for resources – judged from questionnaires – were
more likely to categorise mixed-race faces as “black” compared with people who did not see competition between the races. The same test was run when the volunteers were exposed to
“subliminal” messages in the form of key words flashed on a screen for a few milliseconds. When words indicating a heightened sense of resource scarcity were used, the volunteers showed a
lower threshold for identifying mixed-races faces as black, the researchers found. A further test showed that the non-black volunteers were more likely to judge a face as “black” when they felt
the blacker the perceived skin tone of an individual,
the more discrimination they face in predominately white society. “It is well known that socioeconomic disparities between white
Americans and racial minorities expand dramatically under conditions of economic scarcity,” said Professor Amodio, the study’s senior author. “Our findings indicate that scarcity
changes the way that the people visually perceive another person’s race, and that this perceptual
distortion can contribute to disparities,” he said. Racial disparities in household wealth are known to
increase significantly between white Americans and African Americans during a recession and this has
been largely explained by institutional racism but the latest findings suggest a subconscious form of
racial prejudice, said Ms Krosch. “The study’s findings point to a new challenge to discrimination reduction, since perceptual effects appear to operate without a person’s
they had been short-changed from a hypothetical endowment. The researchers point out that
awareness. People typically assume that what they see is an accurate representation of the world, so if their initial perceptions of race are actually distorted by economic factors, people may
not even realise the potential for bias,” she said.
Internet Advantage Extensions
Internet Key to Economy Extensions
(--) Internet k2 econ development
Palis, 12 (Courteney Palis is a writer for the Huffington Post,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/20/internet-economy-infographic_n_1363592.html, “Internet
Economy: How Essential Is The Internet To The U.S.? (INFOGRAPHIC)”, 3/20/12). SZ
Over the last 10 years, the Internet has grown to become a fundamental part of our society. According to
Nielsen data, 274.2 million Americans were hooked up to the Internet in 2011 (more than double the number with
access in 2000) and spent 81 billion minutes on social networks and blogs. And now that the Internet is almost always at
hand -- last year 117.6 million people visited the Internet via a mobile device, per Nielsen -- it's not much of a surprise that
Americans spent a total of $256 billion on retail and travel-related purchases online in 2011, a 12-percent
increase from 2010, as noted in data released by comScore in February. So exactly how essential has the Internet become to the U.S. economy
offline? Global management consulting firm Boston Consulting Group (BCG) sought to explore that question with $4.2 Trillion Opportunity: The
Internet Economy in the G-20, a March 19 report focusing on the Internet's impact on the world's top economies. The report, a second release
for BCG's Connected World series states that
by 2016, there will be approximately three billion Internet users
globally. (To put that into perspective, the total number of global 'net users is currently pegged at 2.267 billion, based on Internet World
Data's latest figures from December 2011.) In the same year, the combined Internet economy among G-20 member
nations is expected to reach nearly $4.2 trillion. Furthermore, BCG senior partner and co-author of the report David Dean said
in a company press release, "If [the Internet] were a national economy, it would rank in the world's top five,
behind only the U.S., China, India, and Japan, and ahead of Germany." The report finds that in the coming years,
online economies will play an even larger role in the economies of both developed and developing
countries. In the U.S., the Internet economy accounted for 4.7 percent of the country's 2010 Gross Domestic
product (GDP) of $14.5 trillion, or approximately $68.2 billion. That number is expected to pass $100 billion in 2016,
when the Internet economy is projected to comprise about 5.4 percent of the country's estimated GDP
of $18.6 trillion. At present, the Internet contributes more of a percentage to America's GDP than traditional
industry sectors like information and technical services, construction, education, agriculture, and arts,
entertainment, and recreation. And it comprises about 5 percent or $252 billion of all retail. BCG researchers
also asked U.S. 'net users how much online access meant to them. According to BCG's report, 73 percent of Americans would give up alcohol,
77 percent would give up chocolate and 21 percent would give up sex instead of going without the Internet for a year. Outside of the U.S., the
Internet's impact on the economies and societies of other G-20 nations has also been large. According to the report, there
are 800
million people surfing the web in developing G-20 countries. That's more than the combined number of
Internet users in all developed G-20 countries. One of these developing nations, India, has an Internet
economy growth rate of 23 percent, second only to Argentina's 24.3 percent, reported The Times of India. Indian online
consumers find the Internet so essential that 36 percent told BCG that they would forgo showering for a year, 64 percent would cease eating
chocolate, and 70 percent would give up alcohol -- just to keep Internet access. Meanwhile, the U.K.'s Internet economy comprises a larger
percentage of its whole economy than that of any other country. According to the BBC, the Internet contributes about 8.3 percent to the
country's whole economy and will continue to grow as the years pass.
(--) Internet k2 econ
Dean et al, 12 (Dr. David Dean is a Senior Partner, Senior Advisor, and Managing Director at The
Boston Consulting Group GmbH. Dr. Dean served as a Senior Vice President at The Boston Consulting
Group GmbH. For several years, he was the global leader of BCG's technology, media and
telecommunications practice. For more than 28 years, he has worked with many high-tech and
telecommunications companies around the world on issues of strategy and corporate development,
globalization, organization, “The Internet Economy in G-20”,
https://www.bcgperspectives.com/content/articles/media_entertainment_strategic_planning_4_2_trilli
on_opportunity_internet_economy_g20/?chapter=2#chapter2, 3/19/12). SZ
Since the day the first domain was registered in 1985, the Internet has not stopped growing. It has sailed through
multiple recessions and one near-collapse and kept on increasing in use, size, reach, and impact. It has
ingrained itself in daily life to the extent that most of us no longer think of it as anything new or special. The Internet has become,
quite simply, indispensible. By 2016, there will be 3 billion Internet users globally—almost half the world’s population.
The Internet economy will reach $4.2 trillion in the G-20 economies. If it were a national economy, the Internet economy would rank in the
world’s top five, behind only the U.S., China, Japan, and India, and ahead of Germany. Across the G-20, it already amounted to 4.1 percent of
GDP, or $2.3 trillion, in 2010—surpassing the economies of Italy and Brazil. The Internet is contributing up to 8 percent of GDP in some
economies, powering growth, and creating jobs. The scale and pace of change is still accelerating, and the nature of the
Internet—who uses it, how, and for what—is changing rapidly too. Developing G-20 countries already have 800 million Internet users, more
than all the developed G-20 countries combined.
Social networks reach about 80 percent of users in developed and
developing economies alike. Mobile devices—smartphones and tablets—will account for four out of five broadband connections by
2016. The speed of these developments is often overlooked. Technology has long been characterized by exponential growth—in processing
speed, bandwidth, and data storage, among other things—going back to Gordon Moore’s observation nearly five decades ago. The Intel 80386
microprocessor, introduced in the same year as that first domain name, held 275,000 transistors. Today, Intel’s Core i7 Sandy Bridge-E
processor holds 2.27 billion transistors, or nearly 213 times as many. As the growth motors along, it is easy to lose track of just how large the
exponential numbers get. The power of exponential growth is illustrated by an ancient fable, repopularized by Ray Kurzweil in his book, The Age
of Spiritual Machines. It tells of a rich ruler who agrees to reward an enterprising subject starting with one grain of rice on the first square of a
chessboard, then doubling the number of grains on each of the succeeding 63 squares. The ruler thinks he’s getting off easy, and by the thirtysecond square, he owes a mound weighing 100,000 kilograms, a large but manageable amount. It’s in the second half of the chessboard that
the real fun starts. Quickly, 100,000 becomes 400,000, then 1.6 million, and keeps growing. By the sixty-fourth square, the ruler owes his
subject 461 billion metric tons, more than 4 billion times as much as on the first half of the chessboard, and about 1,000 times global rice
production in 2010. The Internet has moved into the second half of the chessboard. (See Exhibit 1.)
It has reached a scale and level
of impact that no business, industry, or government can ignore. And like any technological phenomenon with its scale
and speed, it presents myriad opportunities, which consumers have been quick and enthusiastic to grasp.
Businesses, particularly small and medium enterprises (SMEs)—the growth engine of most economies—
have been uneven in their uptake, but they are moving online in increasing numbers and with an
increasingly intense commitment. There are threats too, some misunderstood, and policymakers and regulators alike are
challenged to make the right choices in a fast-moving environment. As is often the case with fast-paced change and complex issues, many
governments are still trying to determine what their role should be. Meanwhile the rice pile on the next square keeps getting bigger. This report
assesses the far-reaching economic impact of the Internet. It shows how the benefits are large and getting larger, identifies the
drivers behind them, and examines their clout. It quantifies gains—economic growth, consumer value, and jobs—in the context of the
no one—individual, business, or government—can afford to ignore the ability of the
Internet to deliver more value and wealth to more consumers and citizens more broadly than any
economic development since the Industrial Revolution. The economic impact of the Internet is getting bigger—just about
everywhere—and it already has an enormous base. In the U.K., for example, the Internet’s contribution to
2010 GDP is more than that of construction and education. In the U.S., it exceeds the federal
government’s percentage of GDP. The Internet economy would rank among the top six industry sectors
in China and South Korea. Policymakers in developed countries cite with envy the GDP growth rates of 5
to 10 percent per year being achieved in China and India, particularly in today’s troubled economic
environment. At the same time, they can often look past similar, or even higher, rates close to home. The Internet economy in
the developed markets of the G-20 will grow at an annual rate of 8 percent over the next five years, far
outpacing just about every traditional economic sector, producing both wealth and jobs. The contribution to
GDP will rise to 5.7 percent in the EU and 5.3 percent for the G-20. Growth rates will be more than twice as fast—an average
annual rate of 18 percent—in developing markets, some of which are banking on a digital future with big investments in broadband
infrastructure. Overall, the Internet economy of the G-20 will nearly double between 2010 and 2016, when it
will employ 32 million more people than it does today. The growth is being fueled in large part by two factors: more users
economies of the G-20. It demonstrates that
and faster, more ubiquitous access. The number of users around the globe will rise to a projected 3 billion in 2016 from 1.9 billion in 2010.
Broadening access, particularly via smartphones and other mobile devices, and the popularity of social media are further compounding the
Internet’s impact. In the developing world in particular, many consumers are going “straight to social.” (See Exhibit 2.) National levels of
Internet economic activity generally track the BCG e-Intensity Index, which measures each country’s level of enablement (the amount of
Internet infrastructure that it has in place), expenditure (the amount of money spent on online retail and online advertising), and engagement
(the degree to which businesses, governments, and consumers are involved with the Internet). Big differences are apparent among the 50
countries examined, with five clusters emerging according to their performance on the index in absolute terms and relative to per capita GDP.
(See Exhibit 3.) Consumption is the
principal driver of Internet GDP in most countries, typically representing
more than 50 percent of the total in 2010. It will remain the largest single driver through 2016. Investment, mainly in
infrastructure, accounts for a higher portion of the total in “aspirant” nations as they are in the earlier stages of development. Several
“natives” on BCG’s e-Intensity Index—the U.K., South Korea, and Japan—are among those nations with
the largest Internet contributions to GDP. China and India stand out for their enormous Internet-related
exports—China in goods, India in services—which propel their Internet-economy rankings toward the top of the chart.
Mexico and South Korea have also developed significant Internet export sectors. Among G-20 “players,” the
United States benefits from a vibrant Internet economy, while Germany and France tend to lag. The picture will change by 2016 as, for
example, the Internet economies of India and the EU-27 grow rapidly to move into the top five. (See Exhibits 4 and 5.) Retail represents almost
one-third of total GDP in the G-20, and online retail contributes a significant and increasing share in many countries. (See Exhibit 6.) Nowhere is
the impact more apparent than in the U.K. Thanks
in part to high Internet penetration, efficient delivery
infrastructure, a competitive retail market, and high credit-card usage, the U.K. has become a nation of
digital shopkeepers, to paraphrase Adam Smith. Several European economies—Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the U.K.—to
name but four—perform strongly on BCG’s e-Intensity Index. But various barriers hold back the EU as a whole, the world’s biggest single
market, when it comes to cross-border e-commerce. In January, the European Commission announced plans to catch up, removing these
impediments and creating a “digital single market.” The commission believes that
e-commerce can double its share of overall
retail sales by 2015. As significant as the GDP figures are, they capture only part of the story. In retail alone, G-20 consumers
researched online and then purchased offline (ROPO) more than $1.3 trillion in goods in 2010—the
equivalent of about 7.8 percent of consumer spending, or more than $900 per connected consumer.
ROPO is a bigger factor in developed economies, as one would expect, but consumers everywhere research a wide variety of products online
before purchasing them elsewhere. In China, groceries are a popular ROPO purchase; in the United States, cars; India, technology products;
Brazil, electronics, appliances, and travel packages. Multiple factors affect e-commerce and ROPO. In addition to regulatory barriers like those
cited above, the state of infrastructure for online and bricks-and-mortar retail plays a big role, as do Internet penetration, credit-card use, and
consumer confidence in online payment systems, delivery, and fulfillment. ROPO spending is higher than online retail in virtually all the nations
we studied. (See Exhibit 7.) In
the U.S., online retail sales totaled $252 billion in 2010, and ROPO added another
$482 billion. ROPO dwarfs online retail in Turkey—$37 billion compared with $2 billion—owing in large part to poor delivery infrastructure
and consumer concern over fulfillment. In Mexico, although low credit-card penetration and security concerns over online payments hold back
online commerce, Mexican consumers without credit cards can pay for their online purchases at 7-Eleven stores. Like the U.S., Japan has a busy
online retail market, which totaled $89 billion in 2010. ROPO added $139 billion because Japanese consumers still prefer the experience of
shopping in stores. Across the G-20, ROPO would add an additional 2.7 percent if it were counted as part of Internet GDP. Mobile
shopping—using a smartphone to identify deals, compare products and prices, and “seal the deal” while
on the go—is growing in popularity worldwide. As device prices fall, especially in developing markets, increased smartphone
penetration will have a dramatic impact on both retail commerce and e-commerce—further blurring the lines between online and offline
buying. Mobile
apps such as RedLaser, Google Shopper, and Amazon Remembers make it ever easier for consumers to
research products, compare deals, and make purchases as they see fit at any given moment. Retailers of all
stripes face an especially fast-changing and increasingly competitive environment in the years ahead. With the rapid growth of e-commerce and
its potential to disrupt both the top and bottom lines, retail may be ripe for a transformation similar to the one seen in media. A multichannel
offering that captures sales wherever they occur will become a “must have” for most businesses.
Online advertising, a $65 billion
business in the G-20 in 2010, is forecast to grow 12 percent a year to almost $125 billion in 2016. In
countries with more developed Internet economies, 15 to 30 percent of advertising spending has
migrated online. Online advertising spending in the U.K. overtook spending on television advertising in 2011—and it now exceeds
spending on all other media categories. Consumer-to-consumer Internet commerce is a big factor in China, facilitated by websites such as
Taobao, a marketplace for goods of all sorts. More products were purchased on Taobao in 2010 than at China’s top-five brick-and-mortar
retailers combined. The Internet is having a big impact on how enterprises do business and interact with one another, too. Cloud-based data
storage, integrated procurement systems, and “enterprise social networks” that facilitate communication within and among organizations in
real time are helping companies address a host of procurement, coordination, communication, and fragmentation issues. With
spending
in the $3 trillion range, both the U.S. and Japan lead the world in business-to-business e-commerce, but
penetration is picking up in other countries. South Korea’s percentage of business-to-business e-commerce is approaching 50 percent, as is
Japan’s.
(--) Internet k2 accessing every privilege level, economic sector, healthcare, and
financial services.
Dean et al, 12 (Dr. David Dean is a Senior Partner, Senior Advisor, and Managing Director at The
Boston Consulting Group GmbH. Dr. Dean served as a Senior Vice President at The Boston Consulting
Group GmbH. For several years, he was the global leader of BCG's technology, media and
telecommunications practice. For more than 28 years, he has worked with many high-tech and
telecommunications companies around the world on issues of strategy and corporate development,
globalization, organization. “The Connected World; The Digital Manifesto: How Companies and
Countries Can Win in the Digital Economy”,
1/27/12https://www.bcgperspectives.com/content/articles/growth_innovation_connected_world_digit
al_manifesto/ ). SZ
The Internet is for real. In many countries, it has become both a vital economic force and a driver of growth.
In 2010, it contributed up to 8 percent of overall GDP in some of the leading G-20 nations. While the size of the Internet economy is much
smaller in emerging markets, many of these countries are making big investments in broadband infrastructure that will pay future dividends.
The Internet also conveys sizable economic benefits that do not get captured directly by calculations of
GDP. In the G-20 nations in 2010, consumers researched online but purchased offline more than $1.3 trillion in goods—the equivalent of
about 7.8 percent of consumer spending in those nations. In addition, in many leading G-20 nations, the Internet generated a consumer surplus
of about 4 percent of GDP. (This consumer surplus is the value that consumers place on the Internet above what they pay for it in device,
application, and access costs for everything from live streaming coverage of the Arab Spring and Justin Bieber videos to e-mail and video chats.)
Further economic benefits include business-to-business e-commerce and collaboration within and
across companies. Not all countries, however, are created equal. The BCG e-Intensity Index provides a picture of the depth and reach of
digital activity across countries. It measures a nation’s level of enablement (the amount of Internet infrastructure that it has in place),
expenditure (the amount spent on online retail and online advertising), and engagement (the degree of involvement of businesses,
governments, and consumers with the Internet). Big differences were apparent among the 50 countries we examined, with five clusters
emerging according to their performance on the index in absolute terms and relative to per capita GDP. (See the exhibit below.) But it takes
more than a strong broadband infrastructure to become a “native”—one in the top cluster of countries—on the BCG e-Intensity Index.
Investments in fixed and mobile infrastructure need to be accompanied by other strengths, such as a favorable regulatory environment, strong
payment systems, consumer protection for e-commerce transactions, and a willingness on the part of governments, businesses, and consumers
to go online. While the basic macroeconomic story provided by the e-Intensity Index gives a broad overview of the economic punch and
prospects of the Internet, the view is more nuanced at the intersection of microeconomics and human behavior—that is, in terms of the ways
in which companies and consumers are using the Internet. It is a scene of rapid change, disruption, uncertainty, and potential. Companies have
a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reinvent everything about the way they do business.
Twenty years ago, at the Internet’s
commercial birth, its use was restricted to the relatively wealthy. Today it is almost literally everywhere.
Residents of many villages around the world are more familiar with Internet content than with indoor plumbing or air conditioning. By 2016,
3 billion consumers, or 45 percent of the world’s population, will use the Internet. This shift from a luxury good
to an ordinary good is one of just several changes under way as the Internet matures and becomes fully embedded in everyday life. From Fixed
to Ubiquitous Access. When
the Internet gained popularity in developed nations, users accessed it through
and viewed it as an adjunct to the PC. No longer. Increasingly, the Internet is everywhere—not just on
mobile phones but also in cars, refrigerators, and watches. In emerging markets, in particular, most consumers are more
familiar with a mobile than with a landline phone. By 2016, mobile devices will account for about 80 percent of all
broadband connections in the G-20 nations. From Developed to Emerging Nations. Emerging markets have
become a major engine of online commercial activity. The Internet economy of China will approach the size of the U.S.
Internet economy in 2016. In China, consumer-to-consumer transactions through online marketplaces are also sizable. These “resales” are not
part of official GDP calculations but nonetheless have big ramifications for brands and retailers. By 2016, China will have nearly 800 million
Internet users, about the same number as France, Germany, India, Japan, the U.K., and the U.S. combined. Emerging nations will be responsible
for about 34 percent of the overall Internet economy of the G-20 nations and for 48 percent of their growth. From Passive to Participatory.
Social media have taken hold everywhere, especially in emerging markets. Indonesia has the second-largest number of Facebook users. More
than 90 percent of Internet users in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico participate in social media, a higher
percentage than in any developed nation. Across all nations, social media are responsible for most of the new time spent on the Internet—22
percent of total Internet minutes. Some are predicting the death of e-mail, since Millennials prefer the instantaneous nature of messaging and
social media. Consumers have far
more power than before, and companies will need to discover ways to
meaningfully engage with them. The shift to a participatory Web fundamentally changes the nature of companies’ interactions with
customers, from messages delivered to passive recipients to conversations conducted in real time. As the Internet becomes ubiquitous, it
naturally takes on the contours of the particular nation’s economy, reflecting its structure and norms. Just as the ocean looks very different
depending on whether you are at the coast of Maine, Mexico, Morocco, or Malaysia, so too does the Internet. The Evolving Local Experience.
As a tangible presence in national markets, the Internet can help enhance the strengths and overcome
the structural weaknesses of the traditional economy. The U.K., for example, has become a nation of digital shopkeepers,
but the Netherlands has not, even though the fixed-broadband infrastructure is much stronger there. The reason: the Dutch are light creditcard users. The Czech Republic has a relatively strong e-commerce market, reflecting the poor retail experience in its physical stores. Hong
Kong, which also has a strong Internet infrastructure, has relatively weak business-to-consumer activity because traditional merchants in this
densely populated “shoppers’ paradise” have an easier time holding on to nearby customers. India’s relatively small e-commerce market, on
the other hand, is hampered by the nation’s poor distribution network, but dating and online betting sites are highly popular. It is easier to
make a payment using a mobile phone in Kenya than in Kansas. Kenya is unencumbered by the infrastructure, regulations, and inertia that
hamper mobile payments in developed markets, and consumers are eager to access banking services. In China, the shortage of television
programming and weak enforcement of intellectual property laws have made the Internet a prime vehicle for entertainment. About 83 percent
of Internet users listen to music online, compared with 34 percent in the U.S.; 76 percent watch videos online, compared with 68 percent in the
U.S. Moreover, the nation’s one-child policy encourages the use of chat rooms and social networking among young people with no siblings at
home.
In emerging markets, social media are the Internet medium and mobile is the access medium of
choice. Consumers have leapt past e-mail, portals, and the other stages of the Internet experience in much the same way that they jumped
straight to mobile phones, bypassing landlines altogether. Straight to social and mobile-only access are powerful new trends that are most
prominent in emerging markets but are also prevalent among young consumers in developed markets. The Retail Experience. Online purchases
will account for more than 20 percent of retailing in the U.K. and between 8 and 12 percent in other leading economies by 2016. But online
retail is affecting the shopping experience in all nations, even those without a large e-commerce footprint. By allowing businesses and
consumers to conduct fast and high-quality interactive research, it is creating better-informed shoppers and improving the offline shopping
experience as well. For example, the online tools at Ikea’s website allow shoppers to see how a piece of furniture will actually look in their
home. The world is rapidly becoming populated by companies of all shapes and sizes that have the Internet in their DNA and have built up
strong digital balance sheets. They are Main Street’s version of Amazon.com. For example, Wiggly Wigglers, a U.K. organic-garden-supply shop,
and Hiwave Dry Seafood, a Hong Kong vendor, were founded prior to the creation of the commercial Internet and figured out how to thrive on
it. The services industry is not immune either: Open English, a company “born in the cloud,” teaches English to Latin Americans. All three are
companies in traditional categories that are comfortable seeing the world as their marketplace, creating an online brand and presence,
analyzing data patterns, using apps in the cloud, and taking advantage of the network effects that accrue to companies that build a loyal
customer base early. Small Is Beautiful. Many smaller companies, which do not have the advantages of scale and market position but can
innovate more quickly, are leading the way. Small
and medium enterprises (SMEs), historically the growth engine of
national economies, are also becoming Internet successes. Over the last 18 months, BCG has surveyed employees at more
than 15,000 companies with fewer than 250 employees in the world’s biggest economies (in the U.S., the cutoff was 500 employees). We
divided the survey respondents into four groups: high Web, medium Web, low Web, and no Web. The Internet
is driving sales and
job growth at these companies. In the U.K., the overall sales of high- and medium-Web businesses grew by 4.1 percent annually
from 2007 through 2010—about seven times faster than the overall sales of low- and no-Web businesses. In Hong Kong, 79 percent of highand medium-Web businesses reported higher sales over the past five years, compared with 63 percent of no-Web businesses. In the U.S, highand medium-Web businesses expect to grow by 17 percent over the next three years, compared with 12 percent for their low-Web and noWeb counterparts. High- and medium-Web businesses have also increased the size of their workforces to support their Internet operations
over the past three years, an otherwise dire period for job growth in the developed economies. One
of the most interesting
findings is that in most nations, high-Web businesses tend to engage their workforces more broadly
than their low-Web peers. Employees other than owners and founders at these companies have a much
greater ability to introduce new online services and initiatives. From flower shops to restaurants to real estate
operations, SME owners who do not feel comfortable with technology themselves look to their employees to help them build a social-media
presence and exploit online business opportunities. SMEs are rapidly adopting social-media tools to increase the richness of their interactions
with customers and employees. Over
40 percent of these businesses in the U.S. and the U.K. report using socialmedia tools. Among high-Web businesses, 60 percent use social media as a source of new ideas from
customers, and more than 45 percent have created social-networking groups. Digital Champions. Some large
companies, too, have figured out how to thrive in the digital world. In many of its markets, Tesco is the leading retailer, with the traditional
advantages of infrastructure, brand, locations, and distribution. In South Korea, however, Tesco was trailing the market leader, E-mart, in sales
and number of stores. So it turned to the Internet to design an innovative strategy. It created virtual shops in subway stations—billboards
designed to replicate the look of store shelves, down to the arrangement of products. With their mobile phone, commuters can scan the QR
code of any item on display, buy it, and have it delivered to their homes that day. These virtual displays enabled Tesco to turn the time spent
waiting for a train into shopping time—and become South Korea’s number-one online supermarket and its second-largest supermarket overall.
China’s Tencent has a broad portfolio of Internet services , but it is known mainly for its messaging service, QQ, which offers its more than 700
million users games and opportunities to purchase virtual goods. Its success, however, is built on more than just a fad. Tencent is relentlessly
focused on understanding consumers and delivering services that are in demand. It has tailored its products to the specific interests, needs, and
usage profiles of Chinese Internet consumers. It has recognized local trends, such as the popularity of instant messaging and social networking,
and the unmet demand for online and home entertainment in a nation where television penetration is still low. By following a deliberate
strategy to build traffic, create stickiness, and then generate revenues, Tencent has become the number-two global leader in creating
shareholder value over the past five years. Many companies not under immediate threat are nonetheless taking steps to use the Internet to
their advantage. In emerging markets, traditional companies wanting to build their online retail presence are creatively overcoming constraints.
In Mexico, for example, 7-Eleven stores allow offline payment for online purchases. In China and India, cash on delivery is becoming a standard
form of payment in online transactions. In Argentina, where poor roads and heavy congestion make home delivery difficult, Wal-Mart limits
deliveries to the immediate neighborhood surrounding its stores and encourages store pickup of online purchases. Burberry, a British fashion
house founded in 1856 that allocates 60 percent of its marketing budget to digital initiatives, has generated a boost in sales through such
efforts. It broadcasts live 3D video streams of fashion shows in its stores and on the iPad. Shoppers can order clothes before they are available
on store shelves. When Burberry recently launched a new fragrance, Body, it received 225,000 requests for samples through Facebook. Industry
Disruption. Many industries have been and will be disrupted by the Internet. While posing challenges, disruption can also create opportunities.
For example, over time and to varying degrees, record companies have discovered how to live in the digital world. Universal Music, the largest
record label, has diversified away from recorded music. A
material portion of its revenue now comes from
merchandising, licensing, ticketing, touring, e-commerce, and digital-music partnerships. Health care is
an industry that could be ready to experience the disruptive force of the Internet. It took $300 million
and 13 years to map the first human genome. Now, less than ten years later, the cost is only $3,000, and
every five months it is cut in half. Soon the cost to fully sequence a human genome will be $100. But
unlocking the causes of illness and developing cures do not depend only on falling per-unit costs. The health care industry also
needs to mine and combine genomic data and to synthesize this information with medical records and
data about costs and patient outcomes. If the leading health-care and insurance providers fail to figure
out how to deliver better diagnoses, medicines, and treatments—and better value in the process—an
attacker certainly will. The same type of information explosion is occurring in financial services, where
the proliferation of smart cards, debit cards, and mobile payments is creating rich veins of intelligence
about consumer behavior that are waiting to be tapped. Likewise in the utility industry, smart meters and connectivity
between the grid and the Internet are creating an environment in which information about energy usage is almost as important as energy itself.
In developed countries, the Internet can support a return to economic growth. In emerging economies, it creates the potential for enormous
economic and social development. But the growth of the Internet economy is not a foregone conclusion. Our projection of a $4.2 trillion
Internet economy among the G-20 nations by 2016 is grounded in analysis but also assumes that governments will not take actions that impede
progress.
(--) The internet creates jobs and bolsters the econ
Manyika and Roxburgh 11 (James Manyika and Charles Roxburgh are directors at Mckinsey Global
Institute in San Fransisco and London, October 2011, “The great transformer: The impact of the Internet
on economic growth and prosperity”
http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/high_tech_telecoms_internet/the_great_transformer ). SZ
In a paper prepared for the Foreign Commonwealth Office International Cyber Conference, MGI examines what more can be done to fully
capture the benefits of the Internet. The
Internet is changing the way we work, socialize, create and share
information, and organize the flow of people, ideas, and things around the globe. Yet the magnitude of this
transformation is still underappreciated. The Internet accounted for 21 percent of the GDP growth in mature
economies over the past 5 years. In that time, we went from a few thousand students accessing Facebook to more than 800 million
users around the world, including many leading firms, who regularly update their pages and share content. While large
enterprises and national economies have reaped major benefits from this technological revolution,
individual consumers and small, upstart entrepreneurs have been some of the greatest beneficiaries
from the Internet’s empowering influence. If Internet were a sector, it would have a greater weight in
GDP than agriculture or utilities. And yet we are still in the early stages of the transformations the Internet will unleash and the
opportunities it will foster. Many more technological innovations and enabling capabilities such as payments
platforms are likely to emerge, while the ability to connect many more people and things and engage
them more deeply will continue to expand exponentially. As a result, governments, policy makers, and
businesses must recognize and embrace the enormous opportunities the Internet can create, even as they
work to address the risks to security and privacy the Internet brings. As the Internet’s evolution over the past two decades has demonstrated,
such work must include helping to nurture the development of a healthy Internet ecosystem, one that boosts infrastructure and access, builds a
competitive environment that benefits users and lets innovators and entrepreneurs thrive, and nurtures human capital. Together these
elements can maximize the continued impact of the Internet on economic growth and prosperity.
(--) The Industrial Internet of Things create new markets and enable workers to
undertake more advanced tasks
Daugherty, 15 (Paul Daugherty is Accenture’s chief technology officer and also leads the Accenture
Technology Innovation & Ecosystem groups, writing for Forbes, “Transforming Economic Growth With
The Industrial Internet Of Things”, 1/21/15,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/valleyvoices/2015/01/21/transforming-economic-growth-with-theindustrial-internet-of-things/) SZ
As the world struggles to leave behind a period of weak demand and poor productivity growth, many
business and government leaders are looking to the next wave of technology innovation to revitalize
their economies. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) could be the largest driver of economic growth
and employment in the next decade. But much of its potential is at risk of being lost as companies and policy makers fail to exploit
the opportunity. The IIoT will create new markets as data from billions of connected devices unleashes an
era of services innovation that will generate new revenue streams for manufacturers and those who
serve the industrial sectors. Its impact will extend to two-thirds of the world economy. It could add as
much as $14.2 trillion to 20 of the world’s major economies over the next 15 years, according to the latest
analysis from Accenture. It also promises a greater fillip to hard-pressed, mature economies than to their emerging market competitors. This
would help restore a more healthy trade balance in the global economy. The Industrial Internet of Things is already here. Today,
global
positioning system (GPS) navigation, smart phone health kits and connected vehicles make life more
convenient for consumers. But the industrial world has barely begun to take note. Where it has, companies have used Industrial
Internet of Things effectively to reduce costs, enhance worker safety or improve efficiencies. Oil refiners use wearable devices
that protect workers with gas sensors that can call for help when they detect dangerous events. Miners
use remote-controlled equipment to dig with greater precision and realize higher rates of output. The
opportunity for new revenue streams comes from unlocking the value of the data that can be captured
and shared by smart, connected devices. As a result, engine manufacturers can go beyond selling
products to charging fees for the reliability that can be achieved by pre-empting equipment failures. This is
the outcome economy—the delivery of measurable results that are tailored to the needs of customers and how they use products. While digital
technology will automate more routine tasks, its capacity to create new markets and enable workers to undertake more advanced tasks will not
only spawn new categories of jobs, but also increase the sophistication of jobs and inspire greater collaboration to deliver outcome economy
services. The vast majority of businesses are not ready for this opportunity, however. In a survey of more than 1,400 business leaders, half of
whom are CEOs, 71 percent confess that their companies have yet to make any concrete progress with the Industrial Internet of Things. Just
seven percent have developed a comprehensive strategy with investments to match. This slow start may be due to the fact that many countries
do not have the sufficient underlying conditions to enable this new digital revolution to sweep through their economies. Accenture analysis
shows while the Industrial Internet of Things could lift the annual gross domestic product (GDP) of United States, the Nordics or Switzerland by
at least 2 percent by 2030, Spain and Italy look likely to enjoy gains of about half that. That dramatic difference can, in part, be attributed to the
quality of their infrastructure, technology skills and innovative capacity, as well as the ease of creating new business models. Rather like the
advent of electricity, which saw some countries lead in the wide application of the new technology throughout their economies, we can expect
a similar variance today. The
United States was the first to use electricity to power assembly lines and
transform manufacturing. It then went on to pioneer new electricity-based markets, from domestic
appliances to software. The IIoT presents a similar opportunity to transform economies for those
countries willing to put in place the necessary conditions. If the IIOT is to be harnessed to drive both productivity and
growth, business and government leaders need to work together in three key areas. They must prepare for entirely new and more open
organizational structures as business models arise from the shift to a more sophisticated outcome economy. They need to collaborate across
industry sectors and borders to establish standards to promote the security and interoperability of data and machines, as well as create
governance structures that encourage and reward the appropriate sharing of valuable data. Finally, they will need to invest in the new skills
that will be needed in working environments which increasingly blend digital and human labor. The potential of the Industrial Internet of Things
to kick start greater innovation and growth is clear. The evidence is that business leaders and policy makers need to do more to make the best
of the opportunity.
Internet Key to Tech
A) The internet can develop tech from drug development to biofuels.
Boyle, 11 (Alan Boyle, since joining NBC News Digital (a.k.a. MSNBC.com) in 1996, Boyle has won
awards from the National Academies, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the
National Association of Science Writers, Sigma Delta Chi, the Society of Professional Journalists, the
Space Frontier Foundation, IEEE-USA, the Pirelli Relativity Challenge and the CMU Cybersecurity
Journalism Awards program. He is the author of "The Case for Pluto," a contributor to "A Field Guide for
Science Writers," the blogger behind Cosmic Log — and an occasional talking head on MSNBC, NBC's
TODAY and Nightly News, “Gamers solve molecular puzzle that baffled scientists”, 9/18/11,
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/gamers-solve-molecular-puzzle-baffled-scientistsf6C10402813). SZ
Video-game players have solved a molecular puzzle that stumped scientists for years, and those
scientists say the accomplishment could point the way to crowdsourced cures for AIDS and other
diseases. "This is one small piece of the puzzle in being able to help with AIDS," Firas Khatib, a biochemist at the University of Washington, told me. Khatib is the
lead author of a research paper on the project, published today by Nature Structural & Molecular Biology. The feat, which was accomplished using a
collaborative online game called Foldit, is also one giant leap for citizen science — a burgeoning field that enlists Internet users to look for
alien planets, decipher ancient texts and do other scientific tasks that sheer computer power can't accomplish as easily. "People have spatial reasoning skills,
something computers are not yet good at," Seth Cooper, a UW computer scientist who is Foldit's lead designer and developer, explained in a news release. "Games
provide a framework for bringing together the strengths of computers and humans." Unraveling a retrovirus For
more than a decade, an
international team of scientists has been trying to figure out the detailed molecular structure of a
protein-cutting enzyme from an AIDS-like virus found in rhesus monkeys. Such enzymes, known as
retroviral proteases, play a key role in the virus' spread — and if medical researchers can figure out their structure, they could
conceivably design drugs to stop the virus in its tracks. The strategy has been compared to designing a key to fit one of Mother Nature's locks. The problem is that
enzymes are far tougher to crack than your typical lock. There are millions of ways that the bonds between the atoms in the enzyme's molecules could twist and
turn. To design the right chemical key, you have to figure out the most efficient, llowest-energy configuration for the molecule — the one that Mother Nature
herself came up with. That's where Foldit plays a role. The game is designed so that players can manipulate virtual molecular structures that look like multicolored,
curled-up Tinkertoy sets. The virtual molecules follow the same chemical rules that are obeyed by real molecules. When someone playing the game comes up with a
more elegant structure that reflects a lower energy state for the molecule, his or her score goes up. If the structure requires more energy to maintain, or if it doesn't
reflect real-life chemistry, then the score is lower. More than 236,000 players have registered for the game since its debut in 2008. The monkey-virus puzzle was
one of several unsolved molecular mysteries that a colleague of Khatib's at the university, Frank DiMaio, recently tried to solve using a method that took advantage
of a protein-folding computer program called Rosetta. "This was one of the cases where his method wasn't able to solve it," Khatib said. Fortunately, the challenge
fit the current capabilities of the Foldit game, so Khatib and his colleagues put the puzzle out there for Foldit's teams to work on. "This was really kind of a last-ditch
effort," he recalled. "Can
the Foldit players really solve it?" They could. "They actually did it in less than 10
days," Khatib said. A screen shot shows how the Foldit program posed the monkey-virus molecular puzzle. University of Washington One floppy loop of the
molecule, visible on the left side of this image, was particularly tricky to figure out. But players belonging to the Foldit Contenders Group worked as a tag team to
come up with an incredibly elegant, low-energy model for the monkey-virus enzyme. "Standard autobuilding and structure refinement methods showed within
hours that the solution was almost certainly correct," the researchers reported in the paper published today. "Using the Foldit solution, the
final refined structure was completed a few days later." Khatib said the Seattle team's collaborators in Poland were in such a celebratory mood that they insisted on
organizing a simultaneous champagne toast, shared over a Skype video teleconference. "Although much attention has recently been given to the potential of
crowdsourcing and game playing, this is the first instance that we are aware of in which online gamers solved a longstanding scientific problem," Khatib and his
colleagues wrote. The parts of the molecule that formed the floppy loop turned out to be of particular interest. " These
features provide exciting
opportunities for the design of retroviral drugs, including AIDS drugs," the researchers said. Looking for new problems to
solve The monkey-virus puzzle solution demonstrates that Foldit and other science-oriented video games could be used to
address a wide range of other scientific challenges — ranging from drug development to genetic
engineering for future biofuels. "My hope is that scientists will see this research and give us more of those cases," Khatib said. He's not alone in
that hope. "Foldit shows that a game can turn novices into domain experts capable of producing first-class
scientific discoveries," Zoran Popovic, director of University of Washington's Center for Game Science, said in today's news release. "We are currently
applying the same approach to change the way math and science are taught in school." That's something that Carter Kimsey, program director for the National
Science Foundation's Division of Biological Infrastructure, would love to see happen. "After this discovery, young people might not mind doing their science
homework," she quipped. One caveat, though: Playing Foldit isn't exactly like playing Bejeweled. "Let's be honest, proteins aren't the sexiest video game out there,"
Khatib told me. Give the game a whirl, and let me know whether it's addictive or a drag. Tale of a Contender The final decisive move in the Foldit Contender Group's
solution to the monkey-virus puzzle involved twisting around that floppy loop, or "flap," in the structure of the enzyme. The paper published today notes that one of
the Contenders, nicknamed "mimi," built upon the work done by other gamers to make that move. I got in touch with mimi via email, and here's the wonderfully
detailed response she sent back today from Britain: "I have been playing Foldit for nearly three years, and I have been in the Contenders team for two and a half
years. "Although there are 35 names on the members list on the website, when you take off duplicate names and non-active players, it comes down to about 12 to
15 people. "The team members come from a wide range of backgrounds, chiefly scientific or IT [information technology], although our best player is from neither.
"One of the main features of Foldit is the ability to communicate via chat within the game. There is both global chat, which everyone can access, and individual
group chat, which allows team members to talk easily to one another. The Contenders are spread out between Canada, USA, UK, Europe and New Zealand, so this is
essential. "Each player can work on a solo solution to a puzzle, but we can also exchange solutions between the team and add our own improvements to achieve a
better result. Often the evolved solution for a team scores higher than the top solo score. "The game is not only an interesting intellectual challenge, allowing you to
use your problem-solving skills, 'feel' for protein shapes, and whatever biochemical knowledge you have to obtain a solution to each puzzle, but it also provides a
unique society of players driven by both individual and team rivalry with an overall purpose of improving the game and the results achieved. A body of knowledge
has been built up in the Wiki by contributions from players, and ideas are constantly fed back to the game designers. "In the case of the Mason-Pfizer monkey virus,
I had looked at the structure of the options we were presented with and identified that it would be better if the 'flap' could be made to sit closer to the body of the
protein — one of the basic rules of folding is to make the protein as compact as possible — but when I tried this with my solo solution, I couldn't get it to work.
However, when I applied the same approach to the evolved solution that had been worked on by other team members, I was able to get it to tuck in, and that
proved to be the answer to the structure. I believe that it was the changes made by my colleagues that enabled mine to work, so it was very much a team effort.
"We were all very excited to hear that we had helped to find the answer to this crystal form, especially since it had been outstanding so long and other methods had
been unsuccessful. The feeling of having done something that could make a significant contribution to research in this field is very special and unexpected. Foldit
players have achieved a number of successes so far, and I hope we will go on to make many more. "You may be aware that we asked for accreditation for the Foldit
Contenders Team within the article, rather than being named individually. "Many of the people playing the game are known only by their user name, even within a
team. "I would be grateful if you could refer to me as 'mimi' rather than using my full name." Update for 12:45 p.m. ET Sept. 20: I've added an MSNBC video about
the Foldit project, and I've also heard back via email from another one of the Contenders, a player known as "Bletchley Park": "We are all very excited about the
discovery, to see the story unfold now is very gratifying. The main motivator of the Contenders group, and most Foldit players for that matter, is the advancement
of science. It is very typical for mimi not to have her real name listed or even to claim the discovery as her own. "Contenders is a group of like-minded individuals.
The strength lies in comradeship, cooperation and perseverance. Most of us have been 'folding' for several hours each day over the past years. "To be part of this
adventure is a very fulfilling experience. Quite a few of us have or have had family members who suffered from the modern terminal diseases and find energy in
those experiences to keep folding with the intention to make a difference."
(--) Strong tech sector key to US military dominance and solving war around the globe:
Dr. Mary L. Good, 1996(Chair, Undersecretary for Technology, Dept. of Commerce, Technology in the
national interest, accessed via google books)
Technology and the National Defense On the battlefield, technology can be the decisive edge.
America’s technological
superiority has provided our men and women in uniform the wherewithal to protect the freedom, democracy, and security of the United
States. Beyond our own borders, U.S.
military strength—built on a foundation of high-technology—has enabled
the United States to stand in defense of our allies, preserve the peace, deter hostilities, repel aggression,
and foster fledging democracies around the globe. During the Cold War, an arsenal of advanced weapons allowed the
United States to field a technologically superior force to counter the numerically superior Soviet threat. Today, these high-technology weapons
and the transportation and logistics systems that support their deployment provide the United States with the ability to undertake global
military operations and conduct surgical strikes on strategic military targets—as in recent operations in Iraq and Bosnia—while minimizing the
Continued technological leadership is essential to U.S. national security, military
readiness, and global influence.
risk to U.S. soldiers and civilians.
Internet Solves Disease
A) Internet is k2 reduced costs and transparency of early detection of disease
outbreaks
Wilson and Brownstein, ’09 (Kumanan and John S. From the Department of Medicine (Wilson),
Ottawa Health Research Institute, University of Ottawa, Ottawa Ont., the Children’s Hospital Informatics
Program (Brownstein), Children’s Hospital Boston; and the Department of Pediatrics (Brownstein),
Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA, “Early detection of disease outbreaks using the Internet”, 3/12/9,
http://www.cmaj.ca/content/180/8/829.full). SZ
Rapidly identifying an infectious disease outbreak is critical, both for effective initiation of public health
intervention measures and timely alerting of government agencies and the general public. Surveillance
capacity for such detection can be costly, and many countries lack the public health infrastructure to
identify outbreaks at their earliest stages. Furthermore, there may be economic incentives for countries
to not fully disclose the nature and extent of an outbreak.1 The Internet, however, is revolutionizing
how epidemic intelligence is gathered, and it offers solutions to some of these challenges. Freely
available Web-based sources of information may allow us to detect disease outbreaks earlier with
reduced cost and increased reporting transparency. A vast amount of real-time information about
infectious disease outbreaks is found in various forms of Web-based data streams.2 These range from official public health
reporting to informal news coverage to individual accounts in chat rooms and blogs.3–5 Because Web-based data sources exist outside traditional
reporting channels, they are invaluable to public health agencies that depend on timely information flow
across national and subnational borders. These information sources, which can be identified through Internet-based tools, are
often capable of detecting the first evidence of an outbreak, especially in areas with a limited capacity for public health surveillance. For
example, the World Health Organization’s Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network relies on these data
for day-to-day surveillance activities.3,4 Revised international health rules have authorized the World Health Organization to act on this information to issue
recommendations to prevent the spread of diseases.6 Canadians were leaders in introducing Web-based surveillance technologies to the world. In the 1990s, Health Canada created the Global
Every 15
minutes, the network obtains information from news feed aggregators based on established search
queries. Although automation is a key component, the Global Public Health Intelligence Network also employs trained analysts who provide essential linguistic, interpretive and
analytical expertise. These data are disseminated to various public health agencies, including the World Health
Organization, which then perform public health vetting of the informal report. The value of this network
was demonstrated when the system identified the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome in
Guangdong Province, China, as early as November 20027, more than 2 months before the World Health
Organization publically published details on cases of the new respiratory illness. A parallel pioneering effort in Internet-based
surveillance was started by the International Society for Infectious Diseases’ Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases. 8 Rather than rely on automated news
scanning, this program draws from its membership to find, comment and disseminate reports on
emerging disease threats through a freely available and open mailing list. This program is now one of the largest publicly available
emerging disease and outbreak reporting systems in the world. There are a number of online resources that deliver similar real-time
intelligence on emerging infectious diseases to diverse audiences, from public health officials to
international travelers on user-friendly, open-access websites. These systems combine freely available data sources and open-source
Public Health Intelligence Network.7 Its software application retrieves articles that provide relevant information pertaining to the possibility of a public health emergency.
software technology to create online surveillance systems. For example, HealthMap is a freely accessible, automated real-time system that monitors, organizes, integrates, filters, visualizes
and disseminates online information about emerging diseases.9 The site pulls from over 20 000 sources every hour, many of which come from news aggregators such as Google News.
Syndromic surveillance has emerged over the last decade as a new strategy for early detection of outbreaks. In this form of surveillance, efforts are focused on monitoring symptoms or other
Unlike traditional surveillance efforts, an
outbreak investigation would be triggered when certain health-related outcomes exceeded expected
baseline levels. Examples of this type of surveillance include examining increases in visits to emergency departments, the volume of calls to health advice lines and the sales of
evidence of a disease, which may be identified before the diagnosis is confirmed and formally recognized.10
prescription or over-the-counter medications. A new frontier in syndromic surveillance has emerged that uses Web-based clickstream- and keyword-searching aggregated across Internet
users. This application has the opportunity to provide important insights into public health trends for a fraction of the cost. Eysenbach originally demonstrated the potential value and costeffectiveness of such a strategy for surveillance of influenza in Canada.11 Similarly, recent efforts that used data from Google12 and Yahoo13 have shown that search query data can be
harnessed as a form of collective intelligence where patterns of population-level searching mirror and may even predict disease outbreaks. Google Flu Trends, for example, now provides both
public health professionals and the general population with a real-time geographically specific view of influenza search activity in the United States. Analysis of the recent listeriosis outbreak in
Canada that resulted from contaminated deli meat provides some interesting insights into the potential power of these tools. We investigated data sources other than traditional reporting
that may have been available at the time of the outbreak. The public was officially informed by federal officials that 1 death and 16 cases were linked to a listeriosis outbreak on August 20,
2008.14 HealthMap collected 89 original articles that provided detailed information about the outbreak, the earliest of which appeared on August 17, although the majority of reports followed
the federal announcement. However, search-term surveillance using the word “listeriorisis” showed a spike beginning in mid to late July, nearly a month before the declaration of the public
outbreak. Interestingly, peak searching for “listeriosis” correlated more with the retrospective epidemic curve (Pearson correlation = 0.62, p = 0.005) than with the publicity of the outbreak
(Pearson correlation = 0.55, p = 0.014) as measured by news volume. In comparison, a massive increase in searching for the word “Listeria” coincided perfectly with news media attention
(Figure 1). Therefore, it appears that there was a clear Internet signal related to “Listeria” that preceded the official federal announcement. A potential explanation for these findings is that the
term “listeriosis” is more technical and that the data reflect queries by food inspection or industry officials investigating the possibility of the outbreak. Or it could have reflected queries by
family and friends of people diagnosed early or people concerned about the initial voluntary recalls. A question that arises from this analysis is whether knowledge of this information, either
by public health officials or members of the public, could have prompted an earlier response that may have reduced exposure to the contaminated products. These data and aggregating Webbased technologies provide valuable information, but there are important limitations (Box 1). Although the utility of news media scanning is better established than surveillance of Internet
search terms, there is limited evidence of the ability of these systems to detect emerging threats before signals from more traditional systems.4,15,16 Clearly, these data sources require indepth evaluation, especially with respect to false positives and gaps in coverage.17 Lack of specificity, in particular, may be a primary limitation of these technologies (i.e., spikes in search
terms or news stories potentially related to a disease outbreak may not necessarily mean that an outbreak exists). This may be less of an obstacle if the analysis is supported by trained public
health officials who can investigate signals as they develop. However, these inefficiencies create the possibility of overload of signals that require verification and suggest that further work be
conducted to determine how much of a change from baseline warrants further investigation. Public awareness of such signals, if they are openly accessible, could create problems in terms of
risk communication for public health officials. The operating characteristics of these technologies need to be more precisely defined, as do their ability to detect disease before conventional
systems and their application to a wide spectrum of diseases. Privacy implications are also need to be considered and balanced with the public health need to drill down to the highest possible
geographic resolution.18 Given that search data contains associated internet provider information, which can be identified to the level of the household, appropriate decisions need to be
made as to the level of appropriate spatial aggregation.18 Another potentially major obstacle to the use of these technologies is the requirement for Internet access. This is especially true in
the dissemination of hand-held devices and mobile phones that
connect to the Internet and have the ability to use short message service, or SMS, can help fill in
technology gaps in resource-poor settings.19 In the future, we expect that the diagnostic accuracy of these instruments will be improved through an
iterative process and that search term surveillance will be expanded to other diseases. Internet scanning represents an important advancement
in health surveillance, and search term surveillance is a provocative new tool that has much potential.
developing countries where surveillance is important. However,
However, both technologies merit further evaluation. The new application of these technologies could provide earlier access to information on potential disease outbreaks and promote
. Most importantly, these technologies may provide important benefits to
outbreak control at local, national and international levels, ultimately reducing the health consequences
of these outbreaks. Internet surveillance tools can assist in the early identification of disease outbreaks and raise public awareness about emerging disease threats. Surveillance
greater transparency in disease reporting
based on trends of specific terms entered into search engines offers the potential to assist in earlier detection, but this technique requires further evaluation. Search engine queries of the term
“listeriosis” demonstrated a possible signal of an outbreak before the official announcement was made in Canada.
B) Diseases cause extinction
Guterl ’12 [Fred, award-winning journalist and executive editor of Scientific American, worked for ten
years at Newsweek, has taught science at Princeton University, The Fate of the Species: Why the Human
Race May Cause Its Own Extinction and How We Can Stop It, 1-2, Google Books, online]
Over the next few years, the bigger story turned out not to be SARS, which trailed off quickly, bur avian influenza, or bird flu. It had been making the rounds among
birds in Southeast Asia for years. An outbreak in 1997 Hong Kong and another in 2003 each called for the culling of thousands of birds and put virologists and health
workers into a tizzy. Although the virus wasn't much of a threat to humans, scientists fretted over the possibility of a horrifying pandemic. Relatively few people
caught the virus, but more than half of them died. What would happen if this bird flu virus made the jump to humans? What if it mutated in a way that allowed it to
spread from one person to another, through tiny droplets of saliva in the air? One
bad spin of the genetic roulette wheel and a deadly
new human pathogen would spread across the globe in a matter of days. With a kill rate of 60 percent, such a pandemic
would be devastating, to say the least.¶ Scientists were worried, all right, but the object of their worry was somewhat theoretical. Nobody knew for certain
if such a supervirus was even possible. To cause that kind of damage to the human population, a flu virus has to combine two traits: lethality and transmissibility. The
more optimistically minded scientists argued that one trait precluded the other, that if the bird flu acquired the ability to spread like wildfire, it would lose its ability to
kill with terrifying efficiency. The virus would spread, cause some fever and sniffles, and take its place among the pantheon of ordinary flu viruses that come and go
each season.¶ The optimists, we found out last fall, were
wrong. Two groups of scientists working independently managed to create bird
flu viruses in the lab that had that killer combination of lethality and transmissibility among humans . They did it for
the best reasons, of course—to find vaccines and medicines to treat a pandemic should one occur, and more generally to understand how influenza viruses work. If
we're lucky, the scientists will get there before nature manages to come up with the virus herself, or before someone steals the genetic blueprints and turns this
knowledge against us. ¶ Influenza is a natural killer, but we have made it our own. We
have created the conditions for new viruses to
flourish—among pigs in factory farms and live animal markets and a connected world of international trade and travel—and
we've gone so far as to fabricate the virus ourselves. Flu is an excellent example of how we have, through our technologies and our dominant presence on the
planet, begun to multiply the risks to our own survival.
Bigotry Advantage Extensions
Bigotry Advantage is Utilitarian
Solving for discrimination is utilitarian – millions of minorities are surveilled
Cyril 15 (Executive Director of the Center for Media Justice, an organization that cultivates grassroots movements for a
more participatory democracy; Malkia Amala, “Black America’s State of Surveillance”, The Progressive, April 2015,
http://www.progressive.org/news/2015/03/188074/black-americas-state-surveillance, RX)
law enforcement
agencies are now able to collect massive amounts of indiscriminate data. Yet legal protections and policies have not
caught up to this technological advance. Concerned advocates see mass surveillance as the problem and protecting
privacy as the goal. Targeted surveillance is an obvious answer—it may be discriminatory, but it helps protect the privacy perceived as an earned
privilege of the inherently innocent. The trouble is, targeted surveillance frequently includes the indiscriminate
collection of the private data of people targeted by race but not involved in any crime. For targeted
communities, there is little to no expectation of privacy from government or corporate surveillance.
Instead, we are watched, either as criminals or as consumers. We do not expect policies to protect us. Instead, we’ve birthed a
In an era of big data, the Internet has increased the speed and secrecy of data collection. Thanks to new surveillance technologies,
complex and coded culture—from jazz to spoken dialects—in order to navigate a world in which spying, from AT&T and Walmart to public benefits programs and
beat cops on the block, is as much a part of our built environment as the streets covered in our blood. In a recent address, New York City Police Commissioner Bill
Bratton made it clear: “2015 will be one of the most significant years in the history of this organization. It will be the year of technology, in which we literally will
give to every member of this department technology that would’ve been unheard of even a few years ago.” Predictive policing, also known as “Total Information
Awareness,” is described as using advanced technological tools and data analysis to “preempt” crime. It utilizes trends, patterns, sequences, and affinities found in
data to make determinations about when and where crimes will occur. This model is deceptive, however, because it presumes data inputs to be neutral. They
In a racially discriminatory criminal justice system, surveillance technologies reproduce injustice.
Instead of reducing discrimination, predictive policing is a face of what author Michelle Alexander calls the “New Jim
Crow”—a de facto system of separate and unequal application of laws, police practices, conviction rates,
sentencing terms, and conditions of confinement that operate more as a system of social control by
racial hierarchy than as crime prevention or punishment. In New York City, the predictive policing approach in use is “Broken
aren’t.
Windows.” This approach to policing places an undue focus on quality of life crimes—like selling loose cigarettes, the kind of offense for which Eric Garner was
choked to death. Without oversight, accountability, transparency, or rights, predictive policing is just high-tech racial profiling—indiscriminate data collection that
drives discriminatory policing practices. As local law enforcement agencies increasingly adopt surveillance technologies, they use them in three primary ways: to
listen in on specific conversations on and offline; to observe daily movements of individuals and groups; and to observe data trends. Police departments like
Bratton’s aim to use sophisticated technologies to do all three. They will use technologies like license plate readers, which the Electronic Frontier Foundation found
to be disproportionately used in communities of color and communities in the process of being gentrified. They will use facial recognition, biometric scanning
software, which the FBI has now rolled out as a national system, to be adopted by local police departments for any criminal justice purpose. They intend to use body
and dashboard cameras, which have been touted as an effective step toward accountability based on the results of one study, yet storage and archiving procedures,
among many other issues, remain unclear. They will use Stingray cellphone interceptors. According to the ACLU, Stingray technology is an invasive cellphone
surveillance device that mimics cellphone towers and sends out signals to trick cellphones in the area into transmitting their locations and identifying information.
When used to track a suspect’s cellphone, they also gather information about the phones of countless bystanders who happen to be nearby. The same is true of
domestic drones, which are in increasing use by U.S. law enforcement to conduct routine aerial surveillance. While drones are currently unarmed, drone
manufacturers are considering arming these remote-controlled aircraft with weapons like rubber bullets, tasers, and tear gas. They will use fusion centers. Originally
designed to increase interagency collaboration for the purposes of counterterrorism, these have instead become the local arm of the intelligence community.
According to Electronic Frontier Foundation, there are currently seventy-eight on record. They are the clearinghouse for increasingly used “suspicious activity
reports”—described as “official documentation of observed behavior reasonably indicative of pre-operational planning related to terrorism or other criminal
activity.” These reports and other collected data are often stored in massive databases like e-Verify and Prism. As anybody who’s ever dealt with gang databases
knows, it’s almost impossible to get off a federal or state database, even when the data collected is incorrect or no longer true. Predictive
policing
doesn’t just lead to racial and religious profiling—it relies on it. Just as stop and frisk legitimized an
initial, unwarranted contact between police and people of color, almost 90 percent of whom turn out to
be innocent of any crime, suspicious activities reporting and the dragnet approach of fusion centers
target communities of color. One review of such reports collected in Los Angeles shows approximately
75 percent were of people of color. This is the future of policing in America, and it should terrify you as much as it terrifies me. Unfortunately, it
probably doesn’t, because my life is at far greater risk than the lives of white Americans, especially those reporting on the issue in the media or advocating in the
halls of power. One
of the most terrifying aspects of high-tech surveillance is the invisibility of those it
disproportionately impacts. The NSA and FBI have engaged local law enforcement agencies and
electronic surveillance technologies to spy on Muslims living in the United States. According to FBI
training materials uncovered by Wired in 2011, the bureau taught agents to treat “mainstream” Muslims
as supporters of terrorism, to view charitable donations by Muslims as “a funding mechanism for
combat,” and to view Islam itself as a “Death Star” that must be destroyed if terrorism is to be
contained. From New York City to Chicago and beyond, local law enforcement agencies have expanded
unlawful and covert racial and religious profiling against Muslims not suspected of any crime. There is no
national security reason to profile all Muslims. At the same time, almost 450,000 migrants are in detention facilities throughout the
United States, including survivors of torture, asylum seekers, families with small children, and the elderly. Undocumented migrant communities enjoy few legal
protections, and are therefore subject to brutal policing practices, including illegal surveillance practices. According
to the Sentencing Project,
of the more than 2 million people incarcerated in the United States, more than 60 percent are racial and
ethnic minorities. But by far, the widest net is cast over black communities. Black people alone represent 40 percent of those
incarcerated. More black men are incarcerated than were held in slavery in 1850, on the eve of the Civil War. Lest some misinterpret that statistic as
evidence of greater criminality, a 2012 study confirms that black defendants are at least 30 percent more likely to
be imprisoned than whites for the same crime. This is not a broken system, it is a system working
perfectly as intended, to the detriment of all. The NSA could not have spied on millions of cellphones if it
were not already spying on black people, Muslims, and migrants. As surveillance technologies are increasingly adopted and
integrated by law enforcement agencies today, racial disparities are being made invisible by a media environment that has failed to tell the story of surveillance in
the context of structural racism. Reporters love to tell the technology story. For some, it’s a sexier read. To me, freedom from repression and racism is far sexier
than the newest gadget used to reinforce racial hierarchy. As civil rights protections catch up with the technological terrain, reporting needs to catch up, too. Many
journalists still focus their reporting on the technological trends and not the racial hierarchies that these trends are enforcing. Martin Luther King Jr. once said,
“Everything we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.” Journalists have an obligation to tell the stories that are hidden from view. We are living in an
incredible time, when migrant activists have blocked deportation buses, and a movement for black lives has emerged, and when women, queer, and trans
the Internet also makes possible
the high-tech surveillance that threatens to drive structural racism in the twenty-first century.
experiences have been placed right at the center. The decentralized power of the Internet makes that possible. But
Solving for discrimination is utilitarian – millions of minorities are surveilled
Cyril 15 (Executive Director of the Center for Media Justice, an organization that cultivates grassroots movements for a
more participatory democracy; Malkia Amala, “Black America’s State of Surveillance”, The Progressive, April 2015,
http://www.progressive.org/news/2015/03/188074/black-americas-state-surveillance, RX)
In an era of big data, the Internet has increased the speed and secrecy of data collection. Thanks to new
surveillance technologies, law enforcement agencies are now able to collect massive amounts of indiscriminate data. Yet legal protections and
policies have not caught up to this technological advance. Concerned advocates see mass surveillance as the problem and protecting privacy as
the goal. Targeted surveillance is an obvious answer—it may be discriminatory, but it helps protect the privacy perceived as an earned privilege
of the inherently innocent. The trouble is, targeted surveillance frequently includes the indiscriminate collection of the private data of people
targeted by race but not involved in any crime. For targeted communities, there is little to no expectation of privacy from government or
corporate surveillance. Instead, we are watched, either as criminals or as consumers. We do not expect policies to protect us. Instead, we’ve
birthed a complex and coded culture—from jazz to spoken dialects—in order to navigate a world in which spying,
from AT&T and
Walmart to public benefits programs and beat cops on the block, is as much a part of our built
environment as the streets covered in our blood. In a recent address, New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton made
it clear: “2015 will be one of the most significant years in the history of this organization. It will be the year of technology, in which we literally
will give to every member of this department technology that would’ve been unheard of even a few years ago.” Predictive policing, also known
as “Total Information Awareness,” is described as using advanced technological tools and data analysis to “preempt” crime. It utilizes trends,
patterns, sequences, and affinities found in data to make determinations about when and where crimes will occur. This model is deceptive,
however, because it presumes data inputs to be neutral. They aren’t. In a racially discriminatory criminal justice system, surveillance
technologies reproduce injustice. Instead of reducing discrimination, predictive policing is a face of what author Michelle Alexander calls the
“New Jim Crow”—a de facto system of separate and unequal application of laws, police practices, conviction rates, sentencing terms, and
conditions of confinement that operate more as a system of social control by racial hierarchy than as crime prevention or punishment. In New
York City, the predictive policing approach in use is “Broken Windows.” This approach to policing places an undue focus on quality of life
crimes—like selling loose cigarettes, the kind of offense for which Eric Garner was choked to death. Without oversight, accountability,
transparency, or rights, predictive policing is just high-tech racial profiling—indiscriminate data collection that drives discriminatory policing
practices. As
local law enforcement agencies increasingly adopt surveillance technologies, they use them in
three primary ways: to listen in on specific conversations on and offline; to observe daily movements of
individuals and groups; and to observe data trends. Police departments like Bratton’s aim to use
sophisticated technologies to do all three. They will use technologies like license plate readers, which the
Electronic Frontier Foundation found to be disproportionately used in communities of color and
communities in the process of being gentrified. They will use facial recognition, biometric scanning software, which the FBI
has now rolled out as a national system, to be adopted by local police departments for any criminal justice purpose. They intend to use body
and dashboard cameras, which have been touted as an effective step toward accountability based on the results of one study, yet storage and
archiving procedures, among many other issues, remain unclear. They will use Stingray cellphone interceptors. According to the ACLU, Stingray
technology is an invasive cellphone surveillance device that mimics cellphone towers and sends out signals to trick cellphones in the area into
transmitting their locations and identifying information. When used to track a suspect’s cellphone, they also gather information about the
phones of countless bystanders who happen to be nearby. The same is true of domestic drones, which are in increasing use by U.S. law
enforcement to conduct routine aerial surveillance. While drones are currently unarmed, drone manufacturers are considering arming these
remote-controlled aircraft with weapons like rubber bullets, tasers, and tear gas. They will use fusion centers. Originally designed to increase
interagency collaboration for the purposes of counterterrorism, these have instead become the local arm of the intelligence community.
According to Electronic Frontier Foundation, there are currently seventy-eight on record. They are the clearinghouse for increasingly used
“suspicious activity reports”—described as “official documentation of observed behavior reasonably indicative of pre-operational planning
related to terrorism or other criminal activity.” These reports
and other collected data are often stored in massive
databases like e-Verify and Prism. As anybody who’s ever dealt with gang databases knows, it’s almost
impossible to get off a federal or state database, even when the data collected is incorrect or no longer
true. Predictive policing doesn’t just lead to racial and religious profiling—it relies on it. Just as stop and frisk legitimized an initial,
unwarranted contact between police and people of color, almost 90 percent of whom turn out to be innocent of any crime, suspicious activities
reporting and the dragnet approach of fusion centers target communities of color. One review of such reports collected in Los Angeles shows
approximately 75 percent were of people of color. This is the future of policing in America, and it should terrify you as much as it terrifies me.
Unfortunately, it probably doesn’t, because my life is at far greater risk than the lives of white Americans, especially those reporting on the
issue in the media or advocating in the halls of power. One of the most terrifying aspects of high-tech surveillance is the invisibility of those it
disproportionately impacts. The NSA and FBI have engaged local law enforcement agencies and electronic surveillance technologies to spy on
Muslims living in the United States. According to FBI training materials uncovered by Wired in 2011, the bureau taught agents to treat
“mainstream” Muslims as supporters of terrorism, to view charitable donations by Muslims as “a funding mechanism for combat,” and to view
Islam itself as a “Death Star” that must be destroyed if terrorism is to be contained. From New York City to Chicago and beyond, local law
enforcement agencies have expanded unlawful and covert racial and religious profiling against Muslims not suspected of any crime. There is no
national security reason to profile all Muslims. At the same time, almost 450,000 migrants are in detention facilities throughout the United
States, including survivors of torture, asylum seekers, families with small children, and the elderly. Undocumented migrant communities enjoy
few legal protections, and are therefore subject to brutal policing practices, including illegal surveillance practices. According to the Sentencing
Project, of the more than 2 million people incarcerated in the United States, more than 60 percent are racial and ethnic minorities. But by far,
the widest net is cast over black communities. Black people alone represent 40 percent of those incarcerated. More black men are incarcerated
than were held in slavery in 1850, on the eve of the Civil War. Lest some misinterpret that statistic as evidence of greater criminality, a 2012
study confirms that black defendants are at least 30 percent more likely to be imprisoned than whites for the same crime. This
is not a
broken system, it is a system working perfectly as intended, to the detriment of all. The NSA could not
have spied on millions of cellphones if it were not already spying on black people, Muslims, and migrants.
As surveillance technologies are increasingly adopted and integrated by law enforcement agencies
today, racial disparities are being made invisible by a media environment that has failed to tell the story of surveillance in the
context of structural racism. Reporters love to tell the technology story. For some, it’s a sexier read. To me, freedom from repression and
racism is far sexier than the newest gadget used to reinforce racial hierarchy. As civil rights protections catch up with the technological terrain,
reporting needs to catch up, too. Many journalists still focus their reporting on the technological trends and not the racial hierarchies that these
trends are enforcing. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Everything we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.” Journalists have an
obligation to tell the stories that are hidden from view. We are living in an incredible time, when migrant activists have blocked deportation
buses, and a movement for black lives has emerged, and when women, queer, and trans experiences have been placed right at the center. The
decentralized power of the Internet makes that possible. But the
Internet also makes possible the high-tech surveillance
that threatens to drive structural racism in the twenty-first century.
We should solve for discrimination even in a utilitarian framework
Burkhart et al. 7 (Students at Leeds School of Business, Laurie, “The Effect of Government Surveillance on Social
Progress”, Ethica Publishing, http://www.ethicapublishing.com/confronting/5CH1.pdf, RX)
Under utilitarian, duty-based, and rights-based ethical theories the act of heavy government surveillance policy
is an ethical violation. From a utilitarian perspective, one must look at the consequences of an action,
and determine which consequence would be the most desirable for the greatest number of people
involved. In this case, the government is not acting in line with what is the greatest good for the greatest
number. The greatest good is allowing a society to have the ability to freely participate and change the
system in order to adhere to what is best for the people. By limiting radical political groups the government can effectively
take away this ability. In taking the ability to change and progress away from the people in a democratic
system the government violates the greatest good for the greatest number. The use of government surveillance to
hinder radical movements is causing a “chilling effect” on political participation and results in an obstruction of social progress. The
consequences of these government actions are undesirable, the actions are considered to be unethical
under utilitarian or consequence-based theory.
Even in a utilitarian framework, discrimination from warrantless surveillance
outweighs – it suppresses people’s thoughts
Fournier 13 (Universite de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France, graduate teaching assistant at City University of
Hong Kong, internally quoting Research Professor of Law Daniel Solove; Knut; “The Right to Anonymity in Political Activities: A
Comparative Look at the Notion of Political Surveillance”; Digital Democracy and the Impact of Technology on Governance and
Politics; http://tinyurl.com/pebzd6a; 2013; RX)
Utilitarianism has been used to justify a massive warrantless surveillance of all electronic
communication on US soil: the theory that acts are morally justified if their outcome, in terms of well-being, is overall positive
(Cohen. 2010, p. 178). In the justification of the TIA, this justification, which has been used by the Bush administration, is flawed. Indeed the
justification in the fight against terrorism, following 9/11. is the prevention of further attacks. However, no such an extreme and
disproportionate way of preventing crime is put forth by governments to prevent other forms of criminality, despite the overwhelming danger
that it represents for the civilian population. compared to the terrorist threat. From that perspective, the
harm caused to the right
to privacy by warrantless surveillance data mining and analysis cannot be seriously justified by the
harm it is trying to prevent. A second aspect of the justification of this blanket surveillance is the 'nothing to hide' argument,
expressed by a majority of the population when the surveillance by the government is mentioned. According to this popular belief. meaningless
information, and non-sensitive data about law-abiding citizen could be amassed by the government, since those who have nothing to hide have
nothing to be afraid of. The feeling expressed by people who agree, tacitly or not, to data collecting and mining from the government is also a
utilitarian one (Solove, 2007, p. 753). Solove, in his classification of information collection and usage, identifies clearly which step of the
government surveillance disrupts the idea that only people engaged in illegal activities should be afraid of this type of surveillance. The
“decisional interference”, in which
the individual, knowing that his privacy is constantly violated, modifies his
behaviour constantly as well (Solove, 2007. p. 758). He becomes his own censor, and sees the shadow of the
guard at the centre of Bentham's panopticon. What begins, and is presented as a simple 'information collection,' ends up
controlling people's behaviour through a self-censorship mechanism that is simply logical: none of us acts totally in the same way
when alone, and when we know that we are watched. Individuals cannot constantly evolve under the eye of the rest of the
society (or under the eye of a watching minority). and require moments of complete privacy. Thus, the violation of privacy is the
start of multiple violations: through the harm caused to a right that has asocial value, the government,
and consenting individuals or groups, infringes other fundamental political freedoms such as free speech
(Solove. 2007, p. 764). That all information mined by the TIA computer system have been disclosed by the individuals concerned is not enough
to overcome the necessary condition of expectation of privacy that might protect individuals in that type of situation. The aggregate of the
information, which has not been authorized, neither tacitly nor specifically by citizens, combines with the inhibiting power of a constant
surveillance to delegitimize a dis-proportionate practice that is a political project, as opposed to a simple policing tool as stated.
Discrimination affects a large portion of the Muslim community – solving for it does
the most good for the most people
Knefel 13 (Independent journalist, John, “Police Spying on American Muslims Is a Pointless Shame”, Rolling Stone, 11
March 2013, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/police-spying-on-american-muslims-is-a-pointless-national-shame20130311, RX)
Civil liberties groups led by the
Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition released a new report today detailing the
detrimental effects of the NYPD's spying on Muslim communities in recent years. The report, called Mapping Muslims:
NYPD Spying and its Impact on American Muslims, alleges that more than a decade of surveillance of Muslims throughout the
Northeast "has chilled constitutionally protected rights – curtailing religious practice, censoring speech
and stunting political organizing." They describe their communities as being under "a pervasive climate of fear and
suspicion" that affects "every aspect of individual and community life." The report combines publicly available
documentation about the NYPD's snooping regime – including the Associated Press' groundbreaking investigations into the department's Demographics Unit – with
original interviews of 57 Muslims in New York City. But the
significance of this report reaches far beyond New York's Muslim
community – and even beyond the American Muslim community at large. The authors have provided a needed rebuttal to
the common argument that surveillance isn't a problem if you have nothing to hide, and that spying itself is essentially value-neutral so long as you don't become a
target of an investigation. The
Muslims interviewed in the report describe a terrifying reality where trust and
privacy are virtually impossible, and where lives are severely harmed by spying alone. The pervasive
spying regime has effectively intimidated many would-be critics. "Many of the Shi'a organizations who
were approached by activists to speak up or speak out were hesitant to do so," says community organizer Ali Naquvi in
the report. "A lot of it seems to be fear. They don't want to be targeted for additional surveillance." Discouraging this legitimate, constitutionally protected behavior
isn't simply an unfortunate by-product of total surveillance, but rather a primary and predictable outcome. As anyone who has ever suspected themselves of being
under surveillance will tell you, that fear changes the way you think and act. Instilling such fears is an extremely effective form of social control. And whether
limiting civil rights and liberties in this way was the stated aim of the Intelligence Division doesn't really matter. That has been the effect – one that was entirely
foreseeable. So what has all this surveillance, this so-called "intelligence gathering," gotten us? A terrorized local Muslim population, a police department that
grossly exaggerates the terror plots it has disrupted and a crown jewel investigation of a troubled man named Ahmed Ferhani that was so problematic even the FBI
– recently dubbed "the terror factory" by one author because of its role in manufacturing plots that its own agents then disrupt – wanted nothing to do with it. And
as the report reminds us, Thomas Galati, the commanding officer of the NYPD's Intelligence Division, "admitted during sworn testimony that in the six years of his
tenure, the unit tasked with monitoring American Muslim life had not yielded a single criminal lead." While
Muslims in the Northeast are the
people most directly affected by this surveillance, it is a national problem – both in the sense that all of
our rights are infringed if anyone's are, but also in a more concrete way. The state's capacity for surveillance is already
enormous, and will only expand as technologies, including domestic drones, continue to increase in sophistication . When total surveillance of one
population becomes normalized, we are all at a greater risk of being illegally spied on. This report is an important
document that illustrates just how damaging that can be.
Legalism K Answer
(--) Alt Fails- Cedes the Political
Orly Lobel 2007, University of San Diego Assistant Professor of Law, The Paradox of Extralegal Activism: Critical Legal Consciousness and
Transformative Politics,” 120 HARV. L. REV. 937, http://cdn.harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/lobel.pdf
Error! Bookmark not defined.
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Both the
practical failures and the fallacy of rigid boundaries generated by extralegal activism rhetoric permit us to
broaden our inquiry to the underlying assumptions of current proposals regarding transformative politics - that is,
attempts to produce meaningful changes in the political and socioeconomic landscapes. The suggested
alternatives produce a new image of social and political action. This vision rejects a shared theory of social reform, rejects formal programmatic
agendas, and embraces a multiplicity of forms and practices. Thus, it is described in such terms as a plan of no plan, n211 "a project of
projects," n212 [*984] "anti-theory theory," n213 politics rather than goals, n214 presence rather than power, n215 "practice over theory,"
n216 and chaos and openness over order and formality. As a result, the contemporary message rarely includes a comprehensive vision of
common social claims, but rather engages in the description of fragmented efforts. As Professor Joel Handler argues, the
commonality
of struggle and social vision that existed during the civil rights movement has disappeared. n217 There is no
unifying discourse or set of values, but rather an aversion to any metanarrative and a resignation from theory. Professor Handler warns
that this move away from grand narratives is self-defeating precisely because only certain parts of the
political spectrum have accepted this new stance: "The opposition is not playing that game ... . Everyone else
is operating as if there were Grand Narratives ... ." n218 Intertwined with the resignation from law and policy, the new bromide of "neither left
nor right" has become axiomatic only for some. n219 The contemporary critical legal consciousness informs the scholarship of those who are
interested in progressive social activism, but less so that of those who are interested, for example, in a more competitive securities market.
Indeed, an interesting recent development has been the rise of "conservative public interest lawyering." n220 Although
"public
interest law" was originally associated exclusively with liberal projects, in the past three decades
conservative advocacy groups have rapidly grown both in number and in their vigorous use of traditional
legal strategies to promote their causes. n221 This growth in conservative advocacy [*985] is particularly
salient in juxtaposition to the decline of traditional progressive advocacy. Most recently, some thinkers
have even suggested that there may be "something inherent in the left's conception of social change focused as it is on participation and empowerment - that produces a unique distrust of legal expertise."
n222 Once again, this conclusion reveals flaws parallel to the original disenchantment with legal reform. Although the new extralegal frames
present themselves as apt alternatives to legal reform models and as capable of producing significant changes to the social map, in practice
they generate very limited improvement in existing social arrangements. Most strikingly, the cooptation effect here can be explained in terms
of the most profound risk of the typology - that of legitimation. The
common pattern of extralegal scholarship is to describe
strategies, n223 and then to assume that
specific instances of counterhegemonic activities translate into a more complete transformation. This
an inherent instability in dominant structures by pointing, for example, to grassroots
celebration of multiple micro-resistances seems to rely on an aggregate approach - an idea that the multiplication of practices will evolve into
something substantial. In fact, the myth of engagement obscures the actual lack of change being produced, while the broader pattern of
equating extralegal activism with social reform produces a false belief in the potential of change. There
are few instances of
meaningful reordering of social and economic arrangements and macro-redistribution. Scholars write about decoding
what is really happening, as though the scholarly narrative has the power to unpack more than the actual conventional experience will admit.
n224 Unrelated efforts become related and part of a whole through mere reframing. At
the same time, the elephant in the
room - the rising level of economic inequality - is left unaddressed and comes to be understood as natural and
inevitable. n225 This is precisely the problematic process that critical theorists decry as losers' self-mystification, through which marginalized
groups come to see systemic losses as the [*986] product of their own actions and thereby begin to focus on minor achievements as
representing the boundaries of their willed reality. The explorations of micro-instances of activism are often fundamentally performative,
obscuring the distance between the descriptive and the prescriptive. The manifestations of extralegal activism - the law and organizing model;
the proliferation of informal, soft norms and norm-generating actors; and the celebrated, separate nongovernmental sphere of action - all
produce a fantasy that change can be brought about through small-scale, decentralized transformation. The emphasis is local, but the locality is
described as a microcosm of the whole and the audience is national and global. In the context of the humanities, Professor Carol Greenhouse
poses a comparable challenge to ethnographic studies from the 1990s, which utilized the genres of narrative and community studies, the latter
including works on American cities and neighborhoods in trouble. n226 The aspiration of these genres was that each individual story could
translate into a "time of the nation" body of knowledge and motivation. n227 In contemporary legal thought, a corresponding gap opens
between the local scale and the larger, translocal one. In reality, although there has been a recent proliferation of associations and grassroots
groups, few new local-state-national federations have emerged in the United States since the 1960s and 1970s, and many of the existing
voluntary federations that flourished in the mid-twentieth century are in decline. n228 There is, therefore, an absence of links between the
local and the national, an absent intermediate public sphere, which has been termed "the missing middle" by Professor Theda Skocpol. n229
New social movements have for the most part failed in sustaining coalitions or producing significant
institutional change through grassroots activism. Professor Handler concludes that this failure is due in part to the ideas of
contingency, pluralism, and localism that are so embedded in current activism. n230 Is the focus on small-scale dynamics simply an evasion of
the need to engage in broader substantive debate? It is important for next-generation progressive legal scholars, while maintaining a critical
legal consciousness, to recognize that not
all extralegal associational life is transformative. We must differentiate, for
example, between inward-looking groups, which tend to be self- [*987] regarding and depoliticized, and social movements that participate in
political activities, engage the public debate, and aim to challenge and reform existing realities. n231 We must differentiate between
professional associations and more inclusive forms of institutions that act as trustees for larger segments of the community. n232 As described
above, extralegal activism
tends to operate on a more divided and hence a smaller scale than earlier social
movements, which had national reform agendas. Consequently, within critical discourse there is a need to recognize the
limited capacity of small-scale action. We should question the narrative that imagines consciousness-raising as directly translating
into action and action as directly translating into change. Certainly not every cultural description is political. Indeed, it is questionable
whether forms of activism that are opposed to programmatic reconstruction of a social agenda should
even be understood as social movements. In fact, when groups are situated in opposition to any form of
institutionalized power, they may be simply mirroring what they are fighting against and merely
producing moot activism that settles for what seems possible within the narrow space that is left in a rising convergence of ideologies.
The original vision is consequently coopted, and contemporary discontent is legitimated through a
process of self-mystification.
Terrorism DA Updates
Terrorism UQ: ISIS is losing now
Squo solves for terrorism
McNeill et al 11. Jena Baker McNeill is a senior director of government relations at the U.S. Travel
Association. In this∂ position, she performs outreach to advance U.S. Travel’s legislative priorities in
Congress. She also∂ creates policy messages and thought leadership efforts that will engage lawmakers
on travel issues,∂ working in conjunction with U.S. Travel’s communications and research teams. [39
Terror Plots Foiled Since 9/11: Examining Counterterrorism’s Success Stories” The Heritage FoundationBy Jena Baker McNeill, James Jay Carafano, Ph.D. and Jessica Zuckerman May 20, 2011 URL:
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/05/39-terror-plots-foiled-since-911-examiningcounterterrorisms-success-stories] JC
Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, at least 39 terror plots against the United States have
been foiled thanks to domestic and international cooperation, as well as efforts to track down terror
leads in local communities. Such a successful track record of preventing terror attacks should garner the
attention of policymakers around the country as both Congress and the Administration wrestle with the
difficult decision of where to best spend precious security dollars. The death of Osama bin Laden serves
as a reminder that the war on terrorism is not over, and as a call to focus on strategies that have made
the nation a harder target for terrorism, while examining which reforms are still necessary.
ISIS is losing
Harris 15
(Johnny Harris, 4-15-2015, "ISIS is still a ruthless group, but it no longer has the territorial advantage it
has enjoyed.," Vox, http://www.vox.com/2015/4/15/8410501/ISIS-losing-Iraq, DSG)
After ISIS's seemingly unstoppable nine-month rise, the group is being turned back in Iraq. The Iraqi
army, along with Shia militias and an international air power coalition, is retaking territory.
ISIS's successes relied in part on Arab Sunni support in western Iraq. But ISIS made a mistake in
approaching the city of Erbil, the Iraqi Kurdish capital. The Kurds, who have an independent fighting
force, were able to stall ISIS's advance. Shortly after, the US intervened with airstrikes.
Airstrikes don't usually work very well on terrorist groups, whose strategies often depend on hiding
among civilians. But ISIS is different. It is obsessed with acquiring land, a key aspect to its mission. The
group seeks to establish a state, complete with justice, governance, and, most important, territory. This
obsession has left them in plain sight for airstrikes.
Since the US airstrikes started last August, ISIS's territorial ambitions have been significantly disrupted.
The Iraqi army, the Kurdish peshmerga, and Shia militias (which are often sponsored by Iran) have been
pushing them back. This is why many analysts are confident ISIS will soon lose it territory in Iraq and
once again end up where it started a year ago, a delusional group of hardened warriors festering in the
chaos of a Syrian civil war.
Links: NSA Surveillance Stops ISIS Attacks
NSA Surveillance key to stop ISIS attacks
Carroll 15
(Before joining The Guardian Rory worked as a reporter for the Irish News in Belfast. He was born in
Dublin and holds degrees from Trinity College Dublin and Dublin City University., Rory Carroll, 4-1-2015,
"NSA surveillance needed to prevent Isis attack, claims former intelligence chair," Guardian,
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/22/mass-surveillance-needed-isis-attack-mike-rogers,
DSG)
Mass surveillance should be retained because of the prospect of Islamic State attacks within the United
States, a key Republican ally of the National Security Agency has claimed. Mike Rogers, the former
chairman of the House intelligence committee, said the NSA needed to preserve its wide powers in case
Isis used its bases in Syria and Iraq to unleash atrocities on the US homeland. “Now you have a very real
face on what the threat is,” Rogers told the Guardian on Tuesday. “Somebody calling back from Syria to
Minnesota, either recruiting somebody or giving the operational OK to do something. That’s real and it’s
serious. Before it seemed all hypothetical. Now you can see it.” He added: “Think about how many
people are in Syria with western passports or even American passports. I want to know if they pick up
the phone. If they’re calling back to the States, I don’t know about you, but I want to know who they’re
talking to and what they’re talking about.” Rogers gave the warning as negotiators in the House of
Representatives wrangled over a revamp of the USA Freedom Act, a bill that aimed to stop the NSA from
its daily collection of US phone records in bulk which failed in the Senate in 2014, and is now returning
to Congress. A coalition of civil libertarian groups on the left and right wants a landmark law to reform
the intelligence services in the wake of revelations to the Guardian by Edward Snowden, the NSA
whistleblower. Part of the Patriot Act known as section 215, which the NSA uses to justify domestic
mass surveillance, expires on 1 June. Reformers hope that deadline will give them the leverage to make
sure the Freedom Act only reauthorises those provisions on condition of much greater privacy
protections. Republicans, however, are signalling possible resistance. Senator Charles Grassley, the
powerful chair of the Senate judiciary committee, whose support is crucial, told reporters on Tuesday he
had concerns about “finding a balance between national security and privacy” in the bill. The National
Journal reported that the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, may try to thwart reformers by
introducing a bill that would reauthorise section 215 until 2020. Rogers, speaking in a brief interview
after addressing the Rand Corporation thinktank in Los Angeles, sought to persuade Democrats and his
fellow Republicans of the need to keep extensive surveillance, and expressed hope that “cooler heads”
in Congress will renew section 215 without ceding big concessions to reformers. Nadia Kayyali, an
activist with the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, said reauthorising the provision
without comprehensive reform would be against the constitution. “Ending the bulk collection of phone
records under section 215 is the first step in reforming the NSA. The time for Congress to take that step
is now.” She said NSA defenders would falsely claim that it was necessary to keep the mass surveillance.
“But the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, the President’s Review Group, and senators who are
familiar with how bulk phone records collection works have all said we don’t need the program.” Kayyali
accused reform opponents of peddling fear and discredited claims, such as mass surveillance having
stopped 54 terrorist attacks. “We hope at least Congress has some frank, truthful discussion about NSA
spying as we head towards the 1 June deadline.” In his address to the Rand Corporation audience
Rogers, a former FBI agent, painted a dark picture of terrorists and other enemies exploiting the naivety
and complacency of certain Americans – including Barack Obama – who did not grasp the urgency of
nurturing and projecting US power. He lamented that the uproar over Snowden’s leaks gave the public a
“completely wrong” impression about NSA collection of metadata, which he compared to a postman
noting an envelope’s addressee and sender. “It got so distorted, as if the government was collecting
everything and hoarding it in the basement and couldn’t wait to find out about Aunt May’s bunions. The
political narrative got ahead of the facts. It was very frustrating.” Rogers, a close ally of John Boehner,
the House majority leader, expressed confidence Congress would strike an acceptable balance. “I’m
hoping cooler heads will prevail knowing what we have now. I mean, Isis is a mess. And this
interconnected world we live in, with these folks having the ability to get back to the United States, is
really troubling. We better have some mechanism to protect ourselves and still protect our civil rights.”
NSA Surveillance foiled an ISIS plot on the Capitol
Friedman 15
(Dan Friedman joined the Washington bureau of the Daily News in December 2012. He covers Congress,
the White House and the New York delegation., Dan Friedman, 1-16-2015, "Boehner credits NSA for
stopping ISIS plot against Capitol," NY Daily News,
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/boehner-credits-nsa-stopping-isis-plot-capitol-article1.2080689)
National Security Administration snooping helped stop an ISIS backer’s plot against the Capitol, House
Speaker John Boehner said Thursday.
He credited the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, saying: "We would have never known about this
had it not been for FISA program and our ability to collect information on people who pose an imminent
threat.”
Speaking at a news conference at a retreat for House and Senate Republicans in Hershey, Pa., he Ohio
Republican said he wanted to emphasize the issue because Congress will consider renewing the FISA act
in coming months.
"Our government does not spy on Americans, unless they are Americans who are doing things that
frankly tip off our law enforcement officials to an imminent threat," he said. "It was those law
enforcement officials and those programs that helped us stop this person before he committed a
heinous crime in our nation's capital."
The FBI arrested Christopher Cornell, 20, of Green Township, Ohio, near Cincinnati, Wednesday, and
charged him with plotting to detonate pipe bombs in the Capitol building.
Caldwell is an apparent Islamic State supporter and talked of setting up an ISIS cell in the United States,
authorities say. He was charged after sharing his plans with an uncover informant dispatched by the FBI.
They received a tip that Caldwell was making pro-ISIS statements on Twitter under an alias.
'I hope that he gets the help that he needs.' Michael Hoyt, 44, was indicted last week on charges of
threatening to shoot or poison Boehner.
Impacts: Bioweapons are Feasible/Possible
ISIS is trying to build bioweapons
Ynet ‘14
(Israel’s largest and most popular news and content website, “ISIS laptop reveals project to build
biological weapons”, Israel news, September 1, 2014, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L4566367,00.html, DSG)
US intelligence officials discovered that one of the world's nightmare scenarios may have some base in
reality as, according to a report in Foreign Policy last Friday, a laptop was recently discovered in war-torn
Syria, detailing the attempts and ambitions of the Islamic State (ISIS) to build and use weapons of mass
destruction. According to the report, the computer was discovered in the city of Idlib in north-western
Syria, near the Turkish border after fierce battles in which other resistance groups captured the area,
and with it an ISIS post. An ISIS militant brandishes a knife over captured Syrian soldiers. (Photo: AP) An
ISIS militant brandishes a knife over captured Syrian soldiers. (Photo: AP) Foreign policy said that the
computer belonged to a Tunisian national who studied chemistry at two separate universities in his
home country before leaving to join ISIS in Syria. The Syrian rebels who captured Idlib didn't know what
was on the computer or what importance it may have and therefore passed it on to Foreign Policy
reporters who initially thought that the laptop was empty. Only after further investigation did they
discover tens of thousands of folders and documents in French, English and Arabic. The computer's
contents were originally unsurprising for a terrorist organization like ISIS. Reporters found old videos of
Osama Bin Laden, a guidebook for building a bomb and stealing a vehicle, and how jihadists should use
disguises and fake identities to travel from country to country without being caught. Finally, after hours
of filing through the computer's documents, Foreign Policy reporters found documents proving that the
Tunisian had taught himself how to construct biological weapons for attacks that would astound the
world. Perhaps the most alarming of the documents however, detailed ISIS sanctioned work to
weaponize the bubonic plague and other viruses that would have an even greater affect than that of a
localized chemical attack. "The benefits of a biological weapon are that it doesn't come up often, and
the losses are massive," said the instructions on the laptop. "When a mouse is injected by the bacteria,
the symptoms of the disease begin to show after 24 hours. It's best to use in places like underground
trains or soccer fields and it can be used in a suicide attack as well." Alongside the instructions was also a
message of religious approval for the use of such weapons - part of a Fatwa which says that, "If the
Muslims can't overwhelm the infidels in any other way, they are allowed to use weapons of mass
destruction to kill everyone and erase them and their descendants from the earth." While the idea of
ISIS establishing such devastating weapons can easily conjure fear, this isn't the first time that terrorist
organizations have brought the issue of biological weapons to the forefront of the war on extremism.
Even before the September 11 attacks in the US, al-Qaeda was involved in attempts to use chemical
weapons in Afghanistan. In a CNN report from 2002, members of the extremist group could be seen
using toxic gas on dogs. The US invested substantial efforts to prevent al-Qaeda from getting biological
weapons, but the information on the laptop from Syria proves that terrorist organizations are still
working to develop such weapons, which can kill thousands of people in one breath. The fear is that the
longer ISIS continues to exist, the more specialists may join its ranks and use labs in the areas already
capture by ISIS to work toward chemical weapons capabilities. Such labs exist in Mosul in Iraq and Ar
Raqqah in Syria, both in the hands of ISIS militants.
Al-Qaeda is a Bioweapons threat
Soffer ‘13
(The managing editor of Arutz Sheva, Ari, “Experts Warn of Al Qaeda Biological Weapons Threat”, Arutz
Sheva, October 16, 2013, http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/172897#.Vaz4cPlViko,
DSG)
As international attention in Syria focuses on efforts to dismantle the Assad regime's chemical weapons
stockpile, British experts are warning of another, potentially more lethal threat. Experts from the Henry
Jackson Society (HJS) have issued a stark warning over what they say is the "clear and present danger" of
Al Qaeda gaining possession of the Assad regime's stockpile of biological weapons, claiming to have
substantial evidence that Al Qaeda-linked groups may already have possession of toxic agents. Unlike
chemical weapons, which utilize chemical agents to poison victims, biological weapons make use of
diseases, toxins and other contagious agents. Biological weapons have the potential to kill far greater
numbers, and are also far harder to detect or protect against. Both are banned under international
treaties, but the Syrian government possesses active programs in both fields. However, whilst the use of
chemical weapons during the Syrian civil war has been seen on numerous occasions - most notably, but
by no means exclusively, during the August 21 attack which killed more than 1,000 people in a number
of Damascus suburbs - biological weapons have not been used by either side. That is likely because
bioweapons are notoriously difficult to control or contain. But the HJS report, released on Tuesday, says
that jihadists in Syria are actively seeking to gain control of the regime's biological weapons' stockpile
and, chillingly, suggests they may already have done so. The report claims that the Assad regime is losing
control of its bioweapons arsenal, in part because it was never centrally-controlled in the way the
country's chemical weapons stockpile has been. "Unlike chemical weapons, maintained in military
designated stockpiles which are generally identifiable and which Assad maintains command and control
over, the structure of Syria's biological warfare programs are latent, compartmentalized and spread
across its remaining bio-pharmaceutical infrastructure. The programs are designed to be highly agile to
allow swift production if required." Worryingly, the report suggests that the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front
may already have possession of "biological pathogens or weaponized agents either of which would pose
a threat to the international community." It points to the widespread looting of bio-pharmasuitical
laboratories throughout the country, and cites a "credible eyewitness" as claiming to have personally
witnessed "a looted pharmaceutical laboratory," near Aleppo, where Syria's biological weapons program
is concentrated, "which was probably a cover for a biological weapons production site." The fact that a
Malaysian Al Qaeda operative named as Yazid Sufaat, identified as "Al Qaeda's primary biological
weapon expert", was arrested in February as he attempted to enter Syria, was said to indicate the clear
interest that the group has in developing such a program in the country. Other Al Qaeda branches, most
notably in Yemen and North Africa, have previously attempted to obtain such weapons, and the group's
founder, Osama Bin Laden, had expressed an interest in them prior to the infamous 9/11 attacks. While
the report does not cite any clear and definitive evidence of Al Qaeda physically possessing biological
agents, the circumstantial evidence paints a fairly alarming picture. On the other hand, analysts will find
some solace in the fact that neither Al Qaeda nor any other terrorist group has successfully
manufactured and deployed biological weapons to lethal effect. But HJS's Associate Fellow Dr Bellamy
van Aalst, a former EU and NATO bio-defence consultant, warned against complacency, in light of the
relative availability of already-weaponized and readily-deployable biological weapons in Syria.
“Establishing the extent to which Assad may have developed biological WMDs is extremely difficult,
given that their production is indistinguishable from benign biological lab processes. “But this is certainly
a risk to which we should not turn a blind eye. If Assad has been developing biological weapons, as the
evidence suggests, and if those weapons fall into the hands of extremists, global health security could be
in grave danger.”
Al Shabaab trying to get bioweapons
Kelley ‘13
(Maria Kelley is a well-rounded intelligence professional with experience in four distinct areas of analysis
as both a service member and a civilian. While deployed she was devoted to understanding and
dismantling terrorist networks and analyzing their ideology. She holds two Bachelor degrees in Law and
was inducted into Golden Key International Honour Society for academic excellence. While earning her
Master's in Intelligence with a concentration in Analysis she was again academically recognized and
inducted into Pi Gamma Mu. She is currently working on expanding upon her research on WMDs and
applying it to other terrorist organizations., Maria, “Terrorism and the Growing threat of Weapons of
Mass Destruction- Al-shabaab”, GRIN, August 5, 2013, http://www.grin.com/en/ebook/230939/terrorism-and-the-growing-threat-of-weapons-of-mass-destruction-al-shabaab, DSG)
In 2008, the then Director of National Intelligence, J. Michael McConnell, told the US Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence that the safety of the United States was threaten by the “ongoing efforts of
nation-states and terrorists to develop and/or acquire dangerous weapons and delivery systems” (Spiers
2010, 90). Mr. McConnell was right to be concerned; some chemical and biological weapons can be
produced easily and inexpensively, hence the reference “poor man’s atomic bomb” (Spiers 2010, 96).
There is some suspicion that some countries are secretly pursuing nuclear capabilities while others are
openly seeking these capabilities.
(1) al-Shabaab, given its current area of operation, control, and affiliations, already possesses the ability
and capability of obtaining materials and producing chemical and biological weapons of mass
destruction. (2) The most common reason these chemical and biological cocktails have not been used is
that the best method of delivery has not been ascertained by al-Shabaab. (3) The effectiveness and
potential success of the weapons is still undetermined by al-Shabaab.
ISIS is trying to use ebola as a bioweapon
Fitzgerald ‘14
(A writer, journalist, and analyst for newsmax, Sandy, "ISIS Could Turn Ebola Into Bioweapon, Security
Expert Warns," Newsmax, October 10, 2014, http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Ebola-ISISterrorists-bioweapons/2014/10/10/id/599965, DSG)
The Islamic State (ISIS) may be thinking of using human carriers to infect its enemies with the Ebola
virus, a national security expert claims, saying terror groups would not have to weaponize the deadly
virus to spread the disease. "In the context of terrorist activity, it doesn't take much sophistication to go
that next step to use a human being as a carrier," Retired Capt. Al Shimkus, a professor of national
security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, told Forbes. Shimkus said the "individual exposed to the
Ebola virus would be the carrier," and with West Africa in an open epidemic, it would not be difficult for
terrorists to steal infected bodily fluids to use elsewhere. Shimkus said that ISIS or another terror group
could also send some operatives into an outbreak region so they could intentionally expose themselves
to the virus, and once exposed, they could head to a target city or country. Troops have been using
human carriers to spread disease for centuries, even during the Middle Ages, said Shimkus, when they
threw corpses of people who had died of the bubonic plague over enemy walls to spread the disease.
Shimkus is not alone in believing Ebola could be used as a weapon, Forbes reports. Amanda Teckman,
who wrote the paper "The Bioterrorist Threat of Ebola in East Africa and Implications for Global Health
and Security" says "the threat of an Ebola bioterrorist attack in East Africa is a global health and security
concern, and should not be ignored."
Al-Qaeda is already attempting to strike the US with bioweapons
Bell ‘13
(a professor and endowed professor at the University of Houston where he founded and direct the
Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and head the graduate program in space
architecture. His background deals extensively with research, planning and design of habitats, structures
and other support systems for applications in space and extreme environments on Earth. he have
recently written a new book titled "Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global
Warming Hoax"., Larry Bell, 10-20-2013, ""Black Wind To America": A Deadly Terrorist Bioweapon
Program Agenda?," Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/10/20/black-wind-to-americaa-deadly-terrorist-bioweapon-program-agenda/, DSG)
Larry, while we can’t be certain, the advisor to the European Union on bioweapons has told them of the
evidence of smallpox being tested on prisoners in Syria—and that was years before the current uprising.
The word “smallpox” was also found written on incubation containers in Iraq after the first Gulf War.
More recently there has been chatter of a “black wind to America”. After the attack in Spain, the
Brigade of Abu Hafs al-Masri said, claiming to speak for al-Quaeda, “We announce the good news for the
Moslems in the world that the strike of the black wind of death against America, is now at its final stage,
90 percent ready and it is coming soon, by God’s will.”
Some have interpreted this as a reference to a bio-attack. Again, we can’t be sure that’s what they are
referring to, but it would be a mistake not to plan for every contingency.
ISIS Impacts
ISIS causes causes toxic warfare
Karasik 14
(Dr. Theodore Karasik is a Gulf-based analyst of regional geo-political affairs. He received his Ph.D in
History from UCLA in Los Angeles, California in four fields: Middle East, Russia, Caucasus, and a
specialized sub-field in Cultural Anthropology focusing on tribes and clans., Theodore, 7-23-2015, "ISIS
and the potential for toxic warfare," No Publication,
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2014/07/13/ISIS-and-the-potential-for-toxicwarfare.html)
Reports over the past few days of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) capturing chemical and uranium
compounds is bringing to light the issue of how violent terrorist groups may use such materials for
nefarious purposes. If ISIS incorporates these materials into its capabilities and can justify their use, it
means Caliph Ibrihim and his lieutenants will find an important tool that can cause psychological panic.
Neighboring states and the international community need to be fully aware of the potential impact and
be ready to implement mitigation strategies necessary to halt this potentially destructive problem,
resulting in potential “Toxic Warfare” scenarios.
ISIS appears to have an increased interest in weapons that incorporate harmful materials that are
inexpensive and relatively easy to acquire. Such “toxic weapons” provide a means for non-state actors in this case ISIS - to improve their capabilities to achieve goals within the context of asymmetrical
warfare. In basic terms, toxic warfare refers to the use of chemicals or harmful materials to hurt or alter
the behavior of an opponent during kinetic operations. Toxic warfare does not, however, require the use
of traditional weapons but seeks to psychologically damage an opponent and create havoc.
Toxic warfare can be used by both state and non-state actors to achieve a number of objectives. Toxic
warfare can cause casualties among opposing militaries by incapacitating and, in some cases, killing the
adversary. Toxic warfare can also halt or force delays in military logistics flows or operations and can
disrupt the functioning of the urban infrastructure through contamination or corrosion. ISIS can perhaps
use toxic warfare for a strategic advantage in their holy war against their enemies.
Toxic weapons can, moreover, derive power from the uncertainty that stems from their potential use.
Toxic substances often represent an unknown threat, and the level of uncertainty surrounding the
potential damage these substances might cause can increase their impact even when little or no
physical harm has been done. ISIS can use substances with profound psychological impact and based on
their superior information campaigns, will know how to capitalize on any potential use with full effect.
Now let’s turn to two major events that occurred within 48 hours of each other. In mid-June, ISIS
captured the Muthanna site, 56 kilometers north of Baghdad. This achievement, only reported in the
open press recently, asserted that ISIS militants now had access to Sarin and Mustard gas. Muthanna
was Saddam Hussein’s main chemical weapons facilities and was used to store the remainder of the
former despot’s stockpile. But the Sarin and Mustard gas is not of concern here because of degraded
composition. Instead, sodium cyanide is the main risk. According to a Jordanian official, ISIS took a large
quantity of sodium cyanide from Muthanna which is a very toxic chemical and a precursor for the
warfare agent tabun. During the American occupation, the tabun-filled containers were all treated with
decontamination solution and likely no longer contain any agent, but “the residue of this
decontamination would contain cyanides, which would still be a hazard.” This cyanide can be potentially
used to poison water supplies with toxic results and creating general panic.
Less than 24 hours later, news of an Iraqi government appeal dated July 8 to United Nations SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki Moon, appeared in the mass media. The Iraqi government asked for international help in
regarding 40kg of uranium compounds stolen by ISIS from Mosul University. Iraq’s ambassador to the
U.N., Mohammad Ali al-Hakim said that “terrorist groups have seized control of nuclear material at the
sites that came out of the control of the state.” At first glance, the uranium in question appears to be
used by Mosul University faculty in determining the impact of U.S. use of Depleted Uranium (DU) shells
on, for instance, local flora and fauna.
However, the tone of the request seemed to be almost alarmist for simple uranium. The Russian press
picked up the Iraqi concern while the Western press downplayed the event. Russian Foreign Ministry
spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said “the sheer fact that the terrorists ... show unmistakable interest
in nuclear and chemical materials is, of course, very alarming.”
Maybe the Kremlin should be concerned. After all, any ISIS chemical and uranium agents are indeed in
Moscow’s area of worry both geographically and logistically given the presence of Chechen leader Abu
Umar al-Shishani. According to an Arab official, shockingly, the material taken from Mosul University
was Plutonium 238: “It came from Ukraine in 2011 via personnel at the Vostochny Integrated Mining
and Concentrating Plant (VostGOK). It is completely illegal and was brought via Turkey to Iraq for use for
‘eventual Sunni/Saddamist enrichment’. The material got into Iraq through the black market with
middlemen and transport without inspection. The Mosul University work on DU studies was a cover.” If
true, this story adds an additional danger to ISIS’ capabilities as well as their ability to create a
Radioactive Dispersal Device (RDD) which is capable of spreading panic and making a unholy mess via a
vaporization process. If not true, then there are certainly questions to be asked regarding Mosul
University’s security procedures, along with missing government oversight, for their experiments given
that the uranium compounds are toxic.
Overall, the events of the last weeks regarding ISIS’s growing holdings of toxic substances raises the
question of how they will be used. The group clearly has extreme violence in its portfolio of weapons,
and toxic warfare should not be ruled out. Chemical and radiation detection will be a necessity with
clear civil defense procedures in place. In the Levant, this type of response may be practically impossible
to implement and therefore regional and international powers may have to intervene either before it’s
too late or to clean-up the resulting poisonous disorder. As a warning from ISIS, the first issue of the
Caliphate’s English language magazine, Dabiq, said “tawahhush” (mayhem) is necessary.
ISIS sparks nuclear war
Batchelor 15
(Online news reporter for daily express and freelances the ipaper, Tom Batchelor, 6-11-2015, "ISIS
fighters plot nuclear war after they obtain radioactive material to build dirty bomb," Express.co.uk,
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/583563/Islamic-State-radioactive-material-nuclear-weapon)
According to the Australian foreign minister, Julie Bishop, Nato members are growing increasingly
worried about radioactive material seized by the terror group, with fears that it could be turned into a
nuclear weapon.
It is thought that ISIS fighters have stolen or captured the toxic loot from government-controlled
research centres and hospitals across the region.
The radioactive matter is thought to have been destined for use by authorities for health and science
research - but it has now fallen into the hands of ISIS radicals.
Middle East expert Afzal Ashraf
Ms Bishop claimed the jihadi organisation had recruited "highly technically trained professionals" and
was already using chlorine as a weapon.
She added that ISIS was "prepared to use any and all means, any and all forms of violence they can think
of, to advance their demented cause.
"That includes use of chemical weapon."
ISIS supporters in Mosul, IraqAP
ISIS has been operating in its current form for just a year but has already made sweeping gains
A former commander of the British army's chemical weapons unit has spoken out in support of the
Australian foreign minister's comments, calling the development of a dirty bomb by ISIS a "very real
threat".
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon also described as "worrying" reports that ISIS fighters had got hold of
chemical weapons previously controlled by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's troops.
Middle East expert Afzal Ashraf told Express.co.uk that the group's long-term plan hinged on obtaining
the deadly weapon.
ISIS causes regional instability
World Review 14
(It is an online information platform with access to a worldwide network of experts and in-depth
research and analysis providing insight on relevant topics in geopolitics, economics, defense & security
and energy., World Review, 06-24-2014, "ISIS advance in Iraq poses threat to regional instability,"
http://www.worldreview.info, http://www.worldreview.info/content/isis-advance-iraq-poses-threatregional-instability)
Short of real and effective political power-sharing in Iraq, this group is unlikely to be pacified. Continued
political sectarianism by the Shia government will only exasperate the extremist threat with the
possibility that Iraq will splinter into three regions.
There will be consequences, particularly in terms of an increased threat of terrorism, regional instability
and possibly limited disruption to the flow of oil. The most likely scenario is that there will be no
strategic redeployment of forces or renewed military intervention.
US President Barack Obama’s decision to deploy 300 military advisers in Iraq is unlikely to lead to
'mission creep'. The protagonists are likely to fight in a replay of the 2006 eruption of the Iraqi civil war
regardless of any last-minute concessions from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to grant Sunnis real
political power - or even if he leaves office.
An ISIS victory would be regionally destabilising as a large, strategically important tract of territory will
be considered 'ungovernable space' for purposes of conventional diplomacy, politics and state craft. The
Syrian civil war would become more vicious as ISIS would be emboldened and its new-found territory
would provide a strategic military and logistical depth to its Syrian operations.
This new ungovernable space would produce more global security threats by training jihadists who
return to their home countries after being radicalised and battle-hardened during their stints fighting
with ISIS in Syria and Iraq. These people, born and bred in Western countries, are then sent home to
commit terrorist acts. This could prove to be the most serious security threat to European countries over
the next couple of years.
ISIS cyberattack leaves US vulnerable
Blosser 15
(John Blosser, 4-16-2015, "Experts Warn ISIS' Cyberattack Capabilities Leave US Vulnerable," Newsmax,
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/ISIS-computers-Islamic-State-UnitedStates/2015/04/16/id/639010/)
Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists are becoming more cyber-savvy than ever, experts warn, showing
surprisingly sophisticated capability at recruiting young computer mavens to their cause, hacking into
worldwide websites and posing a serious threat to Western emergency systems, utilities,
communications, and transportation systems.
A "cyberattack" on the U.S. "launched by foreign hackers…could cripple the country by taking down the
power grid, water infrastructure, transportation networks and the financial system," warn Mitchell
Silber, former director of intelligence analysis for the New York Police Department, and Daniel Garrie, of
the Journal of Law and Cyber Enforcement, writing in The Wall Street Journal.
"In a major U.S. city, a combined physical and cyber terrorist attack could result in hundreds wounded
and killed. It could also impair first responders’ ability to get to the scene of the attack, and the ability of
local government to communicate with the city’s population in a chaotic and confusing environment,"
the pair wrote.
Already, an ISIS group called CyberCaliphate has taken over the French TV network TV5 Monde for 24
hours and invaded the Twitter accounts of the U.S. Central Military Command (Centcom), posting the
chilling messages, "American soldiers, we are coming. Watch your back," and "We broke into your
networks and personal devices and know everything about you. You'll see no mercy, infidels. ISIS is
already here. We are in your PCs, in each military base," the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC)
reported.
Three years after Congress mandated the development of a cyber-protected national public safety
broadband network, it is still not up and running, Garrie and Silber wrote.
"To successfully prevent future attacks, whether cyber-enhanced terrorism or otherwise, federal and
local authorities in likely urban targets will need to increase their cyber situational awareness,
preparedness and resilience," the Journal reported.
Terrorism Link Turns
Terror Link Turns
False positives in big data leads to less reliable results
Nassim M. Taleb 13. Nassim N. Taleb is the author of Antifragile, which this piece is adapted from. He
is a former derivatives trader who became a scholar and philosophical essayist. Taleb is currently a
distinguished Professor of risk engineering at New York University’s Polytechnic Institute. His works
focus on decision making under uncertainty, in other words “what to do in a world we don’t
understand.” His other book is The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. [“Beware the Big
Errors of ‘Big Data’” wired.com 02/08/13 URL: http://www.wired.com/2013/02/big-data-means-bigerrors-people/] JC
Big-data researchers have the option to stop doing their research once they have the right result. In
options language: The researcher gets the “upside” and truth gets the “downside.” It makes him
antifragile, that is, capable of benefiting from complexity and uncertainty — and at the expense of
others.∂ But beyond that, big data means anyone can find fake statistical relationships, since the
spurious rises to the surface. This is because in large data sets, large deviations are vastly more
attributable to variance (or noise) than to information (or signal). It’s a property of sampling: In real life
there is no cherry-picking, but on the researcher’s computer, there is. Large deviations are likely to be
bogus.∂ We used to have protections in place for this kind of thing, but big data makes spurious claims
even more tempting. And fewer and fewer papers today have results that replicate: Not only is it hard to
get funding for repeat studies, but this kind of research doesn’t make anyone a hero. Despite claims to
advance knowledge, you can hardly trust statistically oriented sciences or empirical studies these days.
Overreliance on Big Data fails in counterterror ops
Frances Goullart 13. Francis Gouillart is the president of Experience Co-Creation Partnership, a
management education and consulting firm in Concord, Mass. and author of The Power of Co-Creation.
[“Big data NSA spying is not even an effective strategy” Fortune.com June 10, 2013
http://fortune.com/2013/06/10/big-data-nsa-spying-is-not-even-an-effective-strategy/] JC
FORTUNE — The Obama Administration thinks it can prevent terrorism by collecting and linking
immense volumes of private phone call, credit card, and Internet data. Unfortunately, as the
administration trades privacy for intelligence insights, President Obama is exchanging a cherished
American value for an unproved theory.∂ The Obama Administration loves data. It argues that the
president was reelected because of its enormous people database and use of polling and social media.
And the Affordable Care Act is built in part on a belief that massive troves of electronic health records
will pave the way for predictive algorithms that will prevent costly hospital readmissions, or identify
medical practices that lead to better patient health.∂ But the evidence for big data is scant at best. To
date, large fields of data have generated meaningful insights at times, but not on the scale many have
promised. This disappointment has been documented in the ∂ Wall Street Journal∂ , ∂ Information Week∂ ,
and SmartData Collective. Yet, for years now, corporations and public organizations have been busy
buying huge servers and business intelligence software, pushed by technology providers and consultants
armed with sales pitches with colorful anecdotes such as the Moneyball story in which general manager
Billy Beane triumphed by using player statistics to predict the winning strategies for the Oakland A’s
baseball team. If it worked for Billy Beane, it will work for your global multinational, too, right? Well,
no.∂ MORE: Spying: Good for business — as long as it stays secret∂ The worship of big data is not new.
Twenty-five years ago, technology salespeople peddled data using an old story about a retailer that
spotted a correlation between diaper purchases and beer drinking, allowing a juicy cross-promotion of
the two products for young fathers. Today, most data warehouses are glorified repositories of
transaction data, with very little intelligence.∂ Working with multinationals as a management
consultant, I have chased big data insights all my life and have never found them. What I have learned,
however, is that local data has a lot of value. Put another way, big data is pretty useless, but small data
is a rich source of insights. The probability of discovering new relationships at a local, highly contextual
level and expanding it to universal insights is much higher than of uncovering a new law from the
massive crunching of large amounts of data.∂ According to my firm’s research, local farmers in India with
tiny fields frequently outperform — in productivity and sustainability — a predictive global model
developed by one of the world’s leading agrochemical companies. Why? Because they develop unique
planting, fertilizing, or harvesting practices linked to the uniqueness of their soil, their weather pattern,
or the rare utilization of some compost. There is more to learn from a local Indian outlier than from
building a giant multivariate yield prediction model of all farms in the world. The same is true for
terrorism. Don’t look for a needle in a giant haystack. Find one needle in a small clump of hay and see
whether similar clumps of hay also contain needles.
Big data counterproductive to finding terrorism
Julia Angwin 13. Julia Angwin is a senior reporter at ProPublica. From 2000 to 2013, she was a reporter
at The Wall Street Journal, where she led a privacy investigative team that was a finalist for a Pulitzer
Prize in Explanatory Reporting in 2011 and won a Gerald Loeb Award in 2010. Her book "Dragnet Nation:
A Quest for Privacy, Security and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance," was published by
Times Books earlier this year, and was shortlisted for Best Business Book of the Year by the Financial
Times. [“NSA Struggles to Make Sense of Flood of Surveillance Data- Spy Agency Drowns in Useless Data,
Impeding Work, Former Employee Claims” December 25, 2013 The Wall Street Journal URL:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304202204579252022823658850] JC
The agency is drowning in useless data, which harms its ability to conduct legitimate surveillance, claims
Mr. Binney, who rose to the civilian equivalent of a general during more than 30 years at the NSA before
retiring in 2001. Analysts are swamped with so much information that they can't do their jobs
effectively, and the enormous stockpile is an irresistible temptation for misuse.∂ Mr. Binney's warning
has gotten far less attention than legal questions raised by leaks from former NSA contractor Edward
Snowden about the agency's mass collection of information around the world. Those revelations
unleashed a re-examination of the spy agency's aggressive tactics.∂ MORE∂ Snowden Warns of Dangers of
Citizen Surveillance∂ But the NSA needs more room to store all the data it collects—and new phone
records, data on money transfers and other information keep pouring in. A new storage center being
built in Utah will eventually be able to hold more than 100,000 times as much as the contents of printed
materials in the Library of Congress, according to outside experts.∂ Some of the documents released by
Mr. Snowden detail concerns inside the NSA about drowning in information. An internal briefing
document in 2012 about foreign cellphone-location tracking by the agency said the efforts were
"outpacing our ability to ingest, process and store" data.∂ In March 2013, some NSA analysts asked for
permission to collect less data through a program called Muscular because the "relatively small
intelligence value it contains does not justify the sheer volume of collection," another document shows.∂
In response to questions about Mr. Binney's claims, an NSA spokeswoman says the agency is "not
collecting everything, but we do need the tools to collect intelligence on foreign adversaries who wish to
do harm to the nation and its allies."∂ Existing surveillance programs were approved by "all three
branches of government," and each branch "has a role in oversight," she adds.∂ In a statement through
his lawyer, Mr. Snowden says: "When your working process every morning starts with poking around a
haystack of seven billion innocent lives, you're going to miss things." He adds: "We're blinding people
with data we don't need."∂ A presidential panel recommended earlier this month that the agency shut
down its bulk collection of telephone-call records of all Americans. The federal government could
accomplish the same goal by querying phone companies, the panel concluded.
Squo data collection increases terrorist risks
Peter Maass 2015. Peter Maass has written about war, media, and national security for The New York
Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post. He reported on both civilians and
combatants during the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is the author of Love Thy Neighbor: A Story
of War, an award-winning memoir about the conflict in Bosnia, and he wrote Crude World: The Violent
Twilight of Oil. Peter, awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012, has focused most recently on
government and corporate surveillance, and is working on a book about surveillance for Alfred A. Knopf.
He has taught writing at Princeton and Columbia universities, and he has been awarded fellowships at
the Shorenstein Center at Harvard and the American Academy in Berlin. He is on the advisory boards of
the Solutions Journalism Network, and the Program for Narrative and Documentary Practice at Tufts
University. A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, he lives in New York City. [“INSIDE NSA,
OFFICIALS PRIVATELY CRITICIZE "COLLECT IT ALL" SURVEILLANCE” May 28 2015 The Intercept URL:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/28/nsa-officials-privately-criticize-collect-it-all-surveillance/]
JC
Alexander, the NSA director from 2005 to 2014 and chief proponent of the agency’s “collect it all”
strategy, vigorously defended the bulk collection programs. “What we have, from my perspective, is a
reasonable approach on how we can defend our nation and protect our civil liberties and privacy,” he
said at a security conference in Aspen in 2013. He added, “You need the haystack to find the needle.”
The same point has been made by other officials, including James Cole, the former deputy attorney
general who told a congressional committee in 2013, “If you’re looking for the needle in the haystack,
you have to have the entire haystack to look through.”∂ NSA Slide, May 2011∂ The opposing viewpoint
was voiced earlier this month by Snowden, who noted in an interview with the Guardian that the men
who committed recent terrorist attacks in France, Canada and Australia were under surveillance—their
data was in the haystack yet they weren’t singled out. “It wasn’t the fact that we weren’t watching
people or not,” Snowden said. “It was the fact that we were watching people so much that we did not
understand what we had. The problem is that when you collect it all, when you monitor everyone, you
understand nothing.”∂ In a 2011 interview with SIDtoday, a deputy director in the Signals Intelligence
Directorate was asked about “analytic modernization” at the agency. His response, while positive on the
NSA’s ability to surmount obstacles, noted that it faced difficulties, including the fact that some targets
use encryption and switch phone numbers to avoid detection. He pointed to volume as a particular
problem.∂ “We live in an Information Age when we have massive reserves of information and don’t
have the capability to exploit it,” he stated. “I was told that there are 2 petabytes of data in the SIGINT
System at any given time. How much is that? That’s equal to 20 million 4-drawer filing cabinets. How
many cabinets per analyst is that? By the end of this year, we’ll have 1 terabyte of data per second
coming in. You can’t crank that through the existing processes and be effective.”
Curtailing drone use creates less terrorists
Hassan Abbas 13 Hassan Abbas is a senior advisor at Asia Society and the author of the forthcoming
book The Taliban Revival. [“How Drones Create More Terrorists- Militants take advantage of fearful
communities to draw new recruits.” August 23 2013 The Atlantic URL:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/how-drones-create-moreterrorists/278743/] JC
Recently, strong evidence has begun to suggest that terrorists use drone strikes as a recruitment tool. Of
course, the value of drones in the arena of intelligence-gathering and secret surveillance of foes (and
even friends) is unmistakable. In warzones too, it can support ground operations in significant and even
decisive ways. None of this is controversial, though the ones on the receiving end will certainly not like
it. What is debatable is its use as a counter-terrorism instrument in theaters that are not declared war
zones, or in cases where a sovereign state is not fully and publicly on board with this policy. Lack of
transparency in regulations that govern this new type of warfare, the unverifiable nature of targets, and
questions over the credibility of intelligence only complicates the matter.∂ Mark Bowden's important
contribution to the drone debate raises critical questions that policy makers will be wise to consider for
the future use of this new tool of war. One of the important arguments mentioned in the piece revolves
around the notion that drone strikes might be less provocative than ground assaults for terrorists,
meaning that standard warfare might create more terrorists than drones do. Lets first accept what is
obvious: more civilians are killed in standard warfare, and the history of warfare in the 20th century
sufficiently proves the point. When it comes to drones strikes, the ratio of civilian deaths is certainly
lower, but the issue is not about the number of civilian casualties alone. The inherently secret nature of
the weapon creates a persistent feeling of fear in the areas where drones hover in the sky, and the
hopelessness of communities that are on the receiving end of strikes causes severe backlash -- both in
terms of anti-U.S. opinion and violence.∂ Response to drone strikes comes in many varieties. First,
revenge is targeted at those within the easy range of the insurgents and militants. The victims of those
revenge terrorist attacks also consider the drone strikes responsible for all the mayhem. Consequently,
terrorists and ordinary people are drawn closer to each other out of sympathy, whereas a critical
function of any successful counter-terrorism policy is to win over public confidence so that they join in
the campaign against the perpetrators of terror. Poor public awareness -- which is often a function of
inadequate education -- about terrorist organizations indeed plays a role in building this perspective.
Public outrage against drone strikes circuitously empowers terrorists. It allows them space to survive,
move around, and maneuver. Pakistan is a perfect example of this phenomenon.
Bulk data tradesoff with other successful counterterror ops
Schneier 15. Bruce Schneier is an internationally renowned security technologist and author.
Described by The Economist as a "security guru" [“Why Mass Surveillance Can't, Won't, And Never Has
Stopped A Terrorist” digg.com Adapted from the book Data and Goliath March 24 2015 URL:
http://digg.com/2015/why-mass-surveillance-cant-wont-and-never-has-stopped-a-terrorist] JC
The three problems listed above cannot be fixed. Data mining is simply the wrong tool for this job, which
means that all the mass surveillance required to feed it cannot be justified. When he was NSA director,
General Keith Alexander argued that ubiquitous surveillance would have enabled the NSA to prevent
9/11. That seems unlikely. He wasn’t able to prevent the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, even
though one of the bombers was on the terrorist watch list and both had sloppy social media trails — and
this was after a dozen post-9/11 years of honing techniques. The NSA collected data on the Tsarnaevs
before the bombing, but hadn’t realized that it was more important than the data they collected on
millions of other people.∂ This point was made in the 9/11 Commission Report. That report described a
failure to “connect the dots,” which proponents of mass surveillance claim requires collection of more
data. But what the report actually said was that the intelligence community had all the information
about the plot without mass surveillance, and that the failures were the result of inadequate analysis.∂
Mass surveillance didn’t catch underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in 2006, even though his
father had repeatedly warned the U.S. government that he was dangerous. And the liquid bombers
(they’re the reason governments prohibit passengers from bringing large bottles of liquids, creams, and
gels on airplanes in their carry-on luggage) were captured in 2006 in their London apartment not due to
mass surveillance but through traditional investigative police work. Whenever we learn about an NSA
success, it invariably comes from targeted surveillance rather than from mass surveillance. One analysis
showed that the FBI identifies potential terrorist plots from reports of suspicious activity, reports of
plots, and investigations of other, unrelated, crimes.∂ This is a critical point. Ubiquitous surveillance and
data mining are not suitable tools for finding dedicated criminals or terrorists. We taxpayers are
wasting billions on mass-surveillance programs, and not getting the security we’ve been promised.
More importantly, the money we’re wasting on these ineffective surveillance programs is not being
spent on investigation, intelligence, and emergency response: tactics that have been proven to work.
The NSA's surveillance efforts have actually made us less secure.
Politics Link Turns
Politics Link Turn
Freedom Act popular and bipartisan support for Freedom Act
Dan Roberts 13 Roberts is the Guardian's Washington Bureau chief, covering politics and US national
affairs. Previously, he worked as the national editor in London and was head of business. Follow him on
Twitter and Instagram. [Congressional duo launch NSA overhaul bill and urge 'meaningful reform'”
October 29 2013 The Guardian URL: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/29/nsa-overhaulbill-legislation-usa-freedom-act] JC
The bill also calls for a special advocate to focus on the protection of privacy rights and civil liberties
before the court that oversees Fisa requests by the NSA, and requires more detailed public reporting
about the numbers and types of court orders that are issued.∂ It does not yet include reforms of
overseas activity, although such amendments are expected to be introduced soon, according to
congressional staff involved in the drafting.∂ The legislation draws on earlier reform efforts in the House
that were narrowly defeated before further NSA revelations appeared over the summer, and has
already attracted support from many members of Congress who were previously sceptical of the need
for legal change. “Washington must regain Americans’ trust in their government,” said Sensebrenner.
“|The USA Freedom Act is an essential first step.”∂ The bill has 16 co-sponsors in the Senate including
senators Mike Lee (R-Utah), Dick Durbin (D-Ill), Dean Heller (R-Nev), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn), Lisa
Murkowski (R-Alaska), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Tom Udall (D-NM), Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Tammy
Baldwin (D-Wisc), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Ed Markey (D-Mass), Mark Udall (D-Colo), Elizabeth Warren
(D-Mass), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore), Jon Tester (D-Mont), and Joe Schatz (D-Hawaii).∂ The measure also has
more than 70 bipartisan co-sponsors in the House and enjoys the diverse support of groups ranging
from the National Rifle Association to the American Civil Liberties Union.
Tech sector loves the Freedom Act
ITI 4/29 2015 The Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) is the global voice of the tech sector. As
the premier advocacy and policy organization for the world’s leading innovation companies, ITI
navigates the relationships between policymakers, companies, and non-governmental organizations,
providing creative solutions that advance the development and use of technology around the world.
[Tech Encourages Congress to Act Swiftly on Bipartisan Surveillance Reform Legislation” 4/29/2015
Information Technology Industry Council URL: http://www.itic.org/news-events/news-releases/techencourages-congress-to-act-swiftly-on-bipartisan-surveillance-reform-legislation] JC
WASHINGTON – The Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), the global voice for the tech sector’s
leading companies, issued the following statement from Andy Halataei, senior vice president for
government affairs, encouraging Congress to move quickly to enact the USA Freedom Act. Reps. Bob
Goodlatte (R-Va.), John Conyers (D-Mich.), James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) and Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.); and
Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced the bipartisan legislation today:∂ "We
applaud Reps. Goodlatte, Conyers, Sensenbrenner, and Nadler; and Sens. Leahy and Lee, for their
commitment to finding a bicameral, bipartisan approach to reforming our government’s surveillance
authorities. The USA Freedom Act, H.R. 2048, builds on the foundation laid by the House Judiciary
Committee last Congress and the result is a bill that strengthens privacy protections while maintaining
the interests of national security. The bill, among other things, ends indiscriminate bulk collection of
data and enables the private sector to be more transparent about the orders it receives. These reforms
are critical to restoring user trust across the globe in both the U.S. government and U.S.-based
technology companies as well as the open and borderless Internet our innovation economy depends
upon."∂ "We urge the House Judiciary Committee to quickly approve the USA Freedom Act and avoid
harmful amendments that would jeopardize this carefully crafted bipartisan bill."∂ Earlier in April, ITI
joined in a multi tech association letter to members of Congress encouraging lawmakers to enact
needed surveillance reforms. Reforming the nation’s surveillance authorities is one of tech’s top agenda
items and ITI President and CEO Dean Garfield testified on the need for reforms last year before
committees in the House and Senate.
Tech sector dedicated to lobbying Capitol Hill, especially with surveillance
Romm 15. Tony Romm is a senior technology reporter for POLITICO Pro. He closely covers the
intersection of Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C., tracking how top tech and telecom companies lobby
in the nation's capital — from the ways the industry donates to its regulators, to the sector’s activities to
shape state and federal debates on privacy, cybersecurity, net neutrality and more. [Tech giants get
deeper into D.C. influence game- Apple, Amazon and Facebook all shelled out record amounts last year
to lobby Washington, according to new disclosures” Politico.com 1/21/15 URL:
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/tech-lobby-apple-amazon-facebook-google-114468.html] JC
Apple, Amazon and Facebook shelled out record amounts to influence Washington; Google posted one
of its biggest lobbying years ever; and a slew of new tech companies dipped their toes into politics for
the first time in 2014 — a sign of the industry’s deepening effort to shape policymaking in D.C.∂ The
sharp uptick in spending reflects the tech sector’s evolution from an industry that once shunned
Washington into a powerful interest that’s willing to lobby extensively to advance the debates that
matter most to companies’ bottom lines — from clamping down on patent lawsuits to restricting NSA
surveillance to obtaining more high-skilled immigration visas and green cards.∂ Story Continued Below∂
“There is increasingly a sense from companies that they need to engage earlier and smarter,” said Ryan
Triplette, a Republican lobbyist for Franklin Square Group, which represents companies like Apple and
Google. “They began opening up their view as their businesses have grown … and not just looking at
traditional technology issues.”∂ Apple, which mostly avoided D.C. under the watch of late CEO Steve
Jobs, grew its lobbying balance sheet to just over $4.1 million last year from $3.3 million in 2013,
according to an analysis of lobbying reports, the latest of which were filed midnight Tuesday. The iPhone
giant recently has shown a greater willingness to engage Washington under CEO Tim Cook: It even
dispatched executives to Capitol Hill in September to talk about its new smart watch and health tracking
tools hoping to assuage lawmakers’ fears about the new technology’s data-tracking abilities.∂ Amazon’s
lobbying expenses — more than $4.7 million, up from around $3.5 million in 2013 — correspond with
the company’s own Washington makeover. The e-commerce giant last year jumped into new lines of
business, expanding its pursuit of government contracts while eyeing a new drone delivery service,
prompting it to hire a slew of new lobbyists and move to a bigger downtown D.C. office. Amazon is also
fighting the Federal Trade Commission over how it handled app purchases made by kids.∂ Apple, Amazon
and Google declined to comment on the record. Facebook did not reply to a request for comment.∂ For
all their efforts, these tech giants failed to advance their political priorities in the last Congress — but
the fights are sure to return in 2015 under the Republican-majority Congress.∂ GOP leaders in both
chambers have already promised to revive the debate over patent litigation reform — a critical issue for
tech companies like Google that want to curb lawsuits from so-called patent trolls. There’s also talk of
boosting the number of foreign high-skilled workers, something industry titans have coveted as part of
broader immigration reform.∂ The looming expiration of key Patriot Act surveillance authorities means
Congress must also wade back into the fight over what data the NSA can collect — a major issue for
tech companies stung by Edward Snowden’s leaks about the agency’s spying via popular Internet
services. And lawmakers are plugging into new issues like drones and wearable technology that are
important to Silicon Valley.
Tech sector influential and lobbying in Capitol Hill
Bolluyt 15. Jess Bolluyt is a recent graduate of Cedar Crest College, where she wrote and edited for the
college's newspaper, and received a degree in English. Her work in poetry and fiction has appeared in
Lines + Stars, Pitch, Onyx and The Laconic. [“How Much Influence Does Google Have in Washington?”
The Cheat Sheet April 5, 2015 URL: http://www.cheatsheet.com/technology/how-much-influence-doesgoogle-have-in-washington.html/?a=viewall#ixzz3gY9jyt4i] JC
Nathan Ingraham, writing for The Verge, notes that Google has been a major influence on U.S. politics
for years, though it’s tried to keep that influence out of the spotlight. But as its influence grows, that’s
becoming more difficult to do. A recent report by The Wall Street Journal suggested that Google
tampered with a 2012 investigation by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) into whether the search
engine giant was engaging in anticompetitive practices.∂ “Google’s access to high-ranking Obama
administration officials during a critical phase of the antitrust probe is one sign of the Internet giant’s
reach in Washington,” wrote Brody Mullins for the Journal. “One of Google’s biggest victories is the
defeat of the FTC’s antitrust probe. A lawsuit would have challenged the core of some Google business
strategies. In a sign of the stakes, Google announced the hiring of 12 additional lobbying firms one week
after news broke that the FTC had begun subpoenaing documents related to the investigation.”∂ While
the FTC decided not to bring a lawsuit against Google — the company made voluntary changes and the
investigation was closed — reports published by the Journal indicated that the commission was deeply
divided on whether it should sue. The reports also exposed the close ties between Google and the
Obama administration. The Journal quoted an FTC staff report which characterized the evidence against
Google as “a complex portrait of a company working toward an overall goal of maintaining its market
share by providing the best user experience, while simultaneously engaging in tactics that resulted in
harm to many vertical competitors, and likely helped to entrench Google’s monopoly power over search
and search advertising.” The implication of its reporting was that Google used its influence in
Washington to influence the FTC’s decision in its favor.∂
Terrorism Non-Uniques
US losing the war on terror-ISIS Proves
Macias 15 (Amanda Macias, 6-4-2015, "The US is 'probably losing' in the campaign against ISIS,"
Business Insider, http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-is-probably-losing-in-the-campagin-againstisis-2015-6,VR)
When asked if the US-led coalition against ISIS was winning or losing, retired four-star General David Petraeus told CBS News, "These are
fights where if you're not winning, you're probably losing, because time is not on your side." Despite US
Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken's announcement that 10,000 Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh) militants have
been killed since the beginning of nine-month long campaign, Petraeus called the situation "worrisome." He added
that the loss of Ramadi, the provincial capital of the Anbar province, is"an operational and a strategic
setback, a significant one." The Obama administration contends that the lsos of Ramadi is a temporary setback, but that's not how
Iraqis are seeing it. Sunni tribes in Anbar — crucial to US success— have reportedly pledged allegiance to ISIS,
and Baghdad is relying on Iran-backed Shia militias more than ever. Petraeus continued by saying that "[ISIS] is
clearly a threat to the United States, to our allies and partners around the world, and of course, very
much in the region, where it's fomenting instability, violence and indeed, far beyond Iraq and Syria. It's
also into North Africa. It's even trying to recruit in Afghanistan and Pakistan." "This is a moment, when you sit back
and say, 'What do we need to do in the military arena? What also do we need to do in the political arena?'" ISIS Islamic State Iraq Syria
controlReuters Militarily, the Obama
administration is reluctant to commit more US troops to the fight despite
the campaign's shortcomings. Earlier this month in an interview with Frontline, America's top military officer
admitted that ISIS caught the US off guard. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin
Dempsey explained that the Pentagon was unprepared when Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, fell to
the ISIS in June 2014. When asked if there were plans on how the US could react to ISIS' possible seizure of Mosul, Dempsey responded,
"Well no, there were not." Politically, the US has allowed Iran, which is currently negotiating a nuclear deal with world powers, to entrench
itself in the sectarian government t in both Syria and Iraq. In terms of Syria, the Obama administration has pretty much ignored the civil war for
fear of upsetting Tehran.
US losing the war on cyber terror
Trugman 14 (Jonathon M. Trugman, New York Post Writer, 12-21-2014, "How the US is losing the
escalating cyberwar," New York Post, http://nypost.com/2014/12/21/how-the-us-is-losing-theescalating-cyber-war/, VR)
Last week we witnessed the repercussions of a cyberattack on American business interests like we have
never seen before. Sony Pictures, which has a massive presence here in America, was intimidated into
canceling the release of its movie “The Interview.” Sony’s stock got crushed. Its shares, which trade on
the NYSE, lost roughly 10 percent of their value as the leak of confidential corporate communications
became public. That amounts to a drop of about $2.5 billion in market value. This series of events
shows that not only any company is vulnerable to cyber-invasion, but that existing security
methodologies need to improve to combat this threat. It’s not just Sony — it also has happened with banks. In October, after
JPMorgan got hacked, CEO Jamie Dimon said the bank would probably double its $250 million cybersecurity budget over the coming years. And it has also
happened with Target, Home Depot, and on Friday, Staples said 1.1 million customers were hacked. Last
year, Target was hacked, and 40 million customers had their credit and debit card data compromised. But
the Sony attack was different, deeper and seemingly personal. And it represents a huge escalation in the cyberwar that we are
losing. With the battle charged, it’s time for our Silicon Valley whiz kids to come to the defense of the US cyber-infrastructure. Stop developing the latest
SnapTweetBook app! Get to work on a robust cyber defense shield in the US. Clearly, if hackers can gain access to embarrassing company email correspondence and
make it public, as in the case of Sony’s Amy Pascal and Scott Rudin, just imagine what they have access to we don’t know about. Dr. Georgios Portokalidis,
cybersecurity expert and professor of computer science at Stevens Institute of Technology, said, “ Security
usually comes as an afterthought
when companies are building their systems.” As opposed to doing it as an add-on to create a more secure network and system, he said, “it
must be part of the design of the systems from the design-phase principles.” Out of crisis comes opportunity, and security could become the next big growth sector
in technology. If this calling doesn’t attract the next wave of brash, brilliant, boy-band-wannabe billionaires, nothing will. There’s
a known need, and
the problem is now defined.
We are losing the war on terror-empirics prove
Rothkopf 14(David Rothkopf, CEO and Editor of foreign policy magazine, 6-10-2014, "We Are Losing
the War on Terror," Foreign Policy, http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/06/10/we-are-losing-the-war-onterror/)VR
Terrorism is spreading worldwide. Our enemies have sustained our blows, adapted, and grown. Two questions loom large as a consequence: Where did we go
wrong and what do we do now? Recent headlines and new studies support the conclusion that global terror trends are heading in an ever more dangerous
direction.
In early June, the Rand Corporation released a study that detailed the growing threat. It reports
that in 2007, there were 28 Salafi-jihadist groups like al Qaeda. As of last year, there were 49. In 2007, these
groups conducted 100 attacks. Last year, they conducted 950. The study estimates that there were between 18,000 and 42,000
such terrorists active seven years ago. The low-end estimate for last year, at 44,000, is higher than the top estimate for 2007, and the new high-end estimate is
105,000. The administration rightly argues that "core al Qaeda" has sustained "huge" damage. But "core al Qaeda" no longer poses the principle threat to the U.S.
homeland. That comes, according to the Rand report, from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. As Rand summarizes the report: " Since
2010, there has
been a 58 percent increase in the number of jihadist groups, a doubling of jihadist fighters and a tripling
of attacks by Al Qaeda affiliates. The most significant threat to the United States, the report concludes, comes from terrorist groups operating in
Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan." As legitimate as the questions that have emerged in the Bowe Bergdahl case may be, they are secondary to the
deteriorating situation associated with the war the recently released prisoner went to Afghanistan to fight. There is no denying that the contempt for Congress
shown in failing to inform it of the deal — even as perhaps 100 in the administration knew of it — starkly reveals the cynicism behind last year’s faux deferral to
Congress on Syria. But it would be far more cynical to continue with the Obama team’s variation on the "mission accomplished" misrepresentations of his
predecessor. The
war in Iraq was not over or won when we said it was. Nor is the war on terror won or the
threat it poses resolved simply by no longer using the term or suggesting our goal was merely to inflict
damage on the tiny fraction of terrorists who were associated with the 9/11 attacks. The reality is that we are still
fighting the last war on terror even as a new set of risks loom and are made worse by our minimizing their implications for political purposes. In its recent
assessment, "Country Reports on Terrorism 2013," the
State Department acknowledged the trend. It observes that last
year attacks worldwide increased almost by half, from 6,700 to 9,700. Nearly 18,000 people died and nearly 33,000 were
injured. While the report hails allied forces for making progress combating al Qaeda’s core in the AfPak region, it also notes that the group’s affiliates are becoming
more dangerous. The report takes particular note of the threat posed by foreign extremists in Syria, which has become a kind of petri dish in which a growing global
terror threat is being cultivated. Estimates on the number of such fighters range from 7,000 to over 20,000. The news that one recent suicide bomber in Syria was
an American and that one of the attackers behind the recent shooting at the Jewish Museum of Belgium spent time in Syria suggests how this threat may evolve
over time. It’s
not unlikely that, if left unchecked, the long-term consequences of a cadre of fighters trained
in Syria who will soon return to their home countries will be one of the darkest legacies of that war — a
legacy that may well echo the long-term costs associated with training jihadists in the battle against the Russians in Afghanistan in the 1980s, among whom, of
course, was Osama bin Laden.
Terrorism is running rampant and not backing down, prefer evidence from last month.
Pollard 7/7/15 (Stephen Pollard, 7-7-2015,Editor of the Jewish Chronicle, "Ten years later we are still
losing the war on extremism, blasts STEPHEN POLLARD," Express.co.uk,
http://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/589212/Stephen-Pollard-extremism-war-tenyears, VR)
Four years earlier, on 9/11 they had murdered nearly 3,000 people in the US. But 7/7 marked the first
British Islamist terrorist outrage and, significantly, was the product of home-grown extremists. Until 7/7
the security authorities had been focused on the prospect of foreign based terrorists arriving in Britain
and operating here. But that changed when 7/7 brought home with devastating clarity the threat from
the enemy within. The story since then has been a constant battle by the security services to prevent another mass terror attack. As
the murders of 30 Britons in Tunisia showed last month, we are no nearer defeating the extremists. It is,
instead, a matter of doing our very best to find out what they are up to and stopping them. But, as the old saying has it, we have to be lucky
every time, they only have to be lucky once. Which is why it is so worrying that so many so-called civil liberties types seem determined to
hamper the security services and stop them doing their best to protect us. David Davis – the man who, it is easy to forget, was favourite to
become Conservative leader in 2005 – is also doing his level best to frustrate the plans of David Cameron and the Home Secretary Theresa May
to ramp up the powers available to the security services and allow them to do their job. RELATED ARTICLES Bus chiefs not told of Tube blasts
'Everyone screaming and running' Tube commuters flee during rush... According to Mr Davis extra powers are not only wrong in principle, they
also won’t work: “Only by engaging with extremist views, opposing them and defeating them through debate can we hope to deal with the
threat of extremism.” Only by engaging with them and debating them! Is he serious? How about – for a start – infiltrating their networks,
listening to their conversations and stopping their supplies of money and arms? This
is not a game. This is life and death. We
are now on the second highest terror alert level, “severe”, which means an attack is highly likely. Last
week the Prime Minister said that at least four Islamist terrorist plots had been stopped in recent
months. But the civil liberties crowd think all we need to do is defeat them in debate. These people live
in a fantasy land where Islamist terror isn’t a real threat and, for some, the real blame attaches to our
security services. As when the husbands of two of the three women who ran off last month from Bradford to Syria with their nine
children then had the gall to blame the police. Yes, of course there is an important role for argument and debate. But a good start to that would
be for Muslims themselves to do more to debate and deal with the extremist cancer that exists within parts of their community. Reacting to the
runaways last month Bana Gora from the Muslim Women’s Council, said: “As Muslims we are getting to a point where we are really getting sick
of it. This onslaught of counter-terrorism legislation that’s coming through is not going to help matters.” Well, some of us are sick of terrorism.
And we want to give the authorities every chance of preventing it. So yes, it is going to help matters if counter-terrorism legislation stops jihadis
from murdering us. Freed from the Lib Dems’ shackles, the Government is now planning to introduce some of the necessary measures: allowing
the banning of some extremist groups, the closure of mosques that act as hotbeds for radicalism and giving the security services wider powers
to examine new technology communications. All this is made more important and more difficult, in the wake of the leaks by US traitor Edward
Snowden, which has severely hindered our capabilities. A report from the Henry Jackson Society showed that since his leaks at least three Al
Qaeda affiliates have changed their communication methods, online jihadist forums now use new encryption tools, GCHQ’s ability to track
groups has been reduced by about 25 per cent and it can now take three times as long to decipher targets’ communications. And
many
security operations had to stop after Snowden revealed details to our enemies. As Sir John Sawers, the
former head of MI6, put it: “Snowden threw a massive rock in the pool and the ripples haven’t stopped
yet.” Sir John has been explicit since he left the service and was able to speak publicly that it is simply
not possible to stop terrorist attacks without a data-sharing agreement with communications companies
to allow the security agencies to monitor people’s activity online. Of course that involves a loss of privacy but I’d rather
be alive, wouldn’t you? And we should be able to trust them not to misuse these powers. Instead of dismissing plans to allow the security
services to do their job with sneering terms such as “snoopers’ charter” we must allow them to enter the world of modern communications and
data that the terrorists long-ago started to use. It
is deeply depressing that 10 years after 7/7 we still have to have
these arguments. But the capacity for some people to act as the terrorists’ useful idiots knows few
limits.
We are losing the war against Domestic Terror, prefer evidence from this week.
Doblin 7/20/15 (Alfred P. Doblin, Editor for the New Jersey Group, 7-20-2015, "Doblin: America
chooses to lose the war against domestic terrorism," NorthJersey,
http://www.northjersey.com/opinion/america-chooses-to-lose-the-war-against-domestic-terrorism1.1377296, VR)
PRESIDENT OBAMA sang "Amazing Grace." On June 26, he went to Charleston, S.C., and sang "Amazing Grace" at
the funeral of Clementa Pinckney, one of nine people gunned down in the Emanuel AME Church,
allegedly by Dylann Roof, an avowed racist. The horror of the murders quickly shifted to the Confederate battle flag still flying
high on the grounds of the South Carolina capitol, while the federal flag had been lowered to half-staff. The swiftness with which the
battle flag was denounced — not just in the South Carolina statehouse, but also in the Sovereign State
of Walmart — was remarkable. Remarkable until you realize it is easier to pull down the Confederate
battle flag in the Deep South than it is to pass sensible gun-control legislation in Congress. Here's something I
read Saturday in The New York Times: More Marines died on American soil than in Afghanistan this year. That
sobering fact was in an article about the mass shooting at a Navy and Marine training center Thursday in
Chattanooga, Tenn. Four Marines were killed. On Saturday, the Navy announced that a sailor wounded
in the carnage had also died. The body count this time is five. These men trained to defend our nation
were shot down like targets in an arcade game by a man with a weapon that sends bullets into a body as
fast as someone can say "NRA." Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez was the armed man. It has been
reported that he had spent time in Jordan and may have been inspired by ISIS. American Muslims are fearful of
reprisals. Their fear is justified. Yet after Roof allegedly murdered nine black people, there was no national conversation about the probability
that loner white men — and they are mostly loner white men — are a menace to our society. Something
is enabling these young
men to become domestic terrorists, and it is not ISIS. On Thursday, the same day Abdulazeez killed four
Marines and a sailor, James E. Holmes was pronounced guilty 165 times for the murder and attempted
murder of moviegoers in a theater in Aurora, Colo., in 2012. Holmes has no ties to ISIS. Federal officials need to
investigate whether Abdulazeez was radicalized in Jordan and whether he was part of a terrorist cell, but let's not kid ourselves: America is
losing the war against domestic terrorism. When two high school students kill other students in Columbine, when mere babes are slaughtered
in an elementary school in Connecticut and when James E. Holmes is able to obtain the firepower to shoot wildly into a crowded, darkened
movie theater, we are in the middle of a war we choose not to win. I have been rereading the Second Amendment. I'm not one of those takeaway-everybody's-guns kind of people.
The amendment states that citizens have the right to keep and bear arms.
But the amendment is silent on what those arms are. I fail to see how so many spineless public officials can insist our
Founding Fathers meant every citizen had the right to bear an assault-style weapon. The right to keep and bear arms has become more
important than the need to stop bearing the weight of caskets at funerals.
The only people benefiting in this deranged world
besides gun manufacturers are the people they pay to advocate for them. The primary role of the
federal government is to protect and defend the homeland. If every crazy loner has the ability to get
hold of high-powered weapons, government has failed to carry out its most important mandate.
Afro-Pessimism Links
Targeted surveillance is still discriminatory
Cyril 15 (Executive Director of the Center for Media Justice, an organization that cultivates grassroots movements for a
more participatory democracy; Malkia Amala, “Black America’s State of Surveillance”, The Progressive, April 2015,
http://www.progressive.org/news/2015/03/188074/black-americas-state-surveillance, RX)
In an era of big data, the Internet has increased the speed and secrecy of data collection. Thanks
to new surveillance technologies, law
enforcement agencies are now able to collect massive amounts of indiscriminate data. Yet legal
protections and policies have not caught up to this technological advance. Concerned advocates see
mass surveillance as the problem and protecting privacy as the goal. Targeted surveillance is an obvious
answer—it may be discriminatory, but it helps protect the privacy perceived as an earned privilege of
the inherently innocent. The trouble is, targeted surveillance frequently includes the indiscriminate
collection of the private data of people targeted by race but not involved in any crime. For targeted
communities, there is little to no expectation of privacy from government or corporate surveillance.
Instead, we are watched, either as criminals or as consumers. We do not expect policies to protect us.
Instead, we’ve birthed a complex and coded culture—from jazz to spoken dialects—in order to navigate a world in which spying, from AT&T and Walmart to public
benefits programs and beat cops on the block, is as much a part of our built environment as the streets covered in our blood.
Targeted warrants is MORE racist than bulk surveillance
Lennard 14 (Former freelancer at the New York Times, Natasha, “The NSA’s Racist Targeting of Individuals Is as Troubling
as Indiscriminate Surveillance”, Vice News, 9 July 2014, https://news.vice.com/article/the-nsas-racist-targeting-of-individualsis-as-troubling-as-indiscriminate-surveillance, RX)
Revelations of the National Security Agency’s massive surveillance programs have highlighted how millions of ordinary
internet and phone users — that is, non-criminal targets — have had their communications data swept up by a vast, indiscriminate dragnet.
This has occasioned justifiable outrage, but the reaction has overshadowed discussion of how the NSA targets actual individuals — a process
that, it turns out, can
be quite discriminatory. As I noted last week, if our national security state’s dangerously loose determination of
should be as troubled by the NSA’s targeting of particular
people as we are by its non-targeted spying. The latest disclosure from The Intercept clearly illustrates why. According to
documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the NSA has been spying on five distinguished Muslim-Americans under a
law — the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) — that is meant to target international terrorists
or foreign agents. The inclusion of the email accounts of these five people in a spreadsheet listing the
targeted accounts of more than 7,000 others belies the NSA’s claim that it’s in the business of marking
only terrorist suspects. Here are the agency’s suspected “terrorists”: Faisal Gill, who was appointed to
(and thoroughly vetted by) the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush;
Asim Ghafoor, an attorney who has defended clients suspected of terrorism; Hooshang Amirahmadi, an
Iranian-American professor of public policy and international development at Rutgers University; Agha
Saeed, founder and chairman of the American Muslim Alliance and a former political science professor
at California State University; and Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic
Relations. This is anti-Muslim discrimination pure and simple. While the NSA’s broad data collection is
disturbingly total and unspecific, its targeted spying is evidently racist. Another leaked document punctuates this
what constitutes an “imminent threat” is any indication, we
point with a dull, disgusting thud: a 2005 training document explaining how to “properly format internal memos to justify FISA surveillance”
offers a sample memo that uses “Mohammed Raghead” as the name of a fictitious terrorism suspect. Your NSA at work, ladies and gentlemen!
As the existence of this document makes clear, legality is a tortured issue at the heart national security misdeeds. NSA agents are trained to
ensure that their surveillance practices fall within the letter of the law — and the law here is at fault, shaped not by a spirit of justice but by
surveillance-state paranoia. The Intercept report does not skirt around this point: Indeed,
the government’s ability to monitor
such high-profile Muslim-Americans — with or without warrants — suggests that the most alarming and
invasive aspects of the NSA’s surveillance occur not because the agency breaks the law, but because it is
able to exploit the law’s permissive contours. “The scandal is what Congress has made legal,” says Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU
deputy legal director. “The claim that the intelligence agencies are complying with the laws is just a distraction from more urgent questions
relating to the breadth of the laws themselves.”
Targeted surveillance is still racist
Miller 12 (B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1966 and Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1973, Wilbur R.,
The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America: An Encyclopedia, 7 August 2012, RX)
Racial minorities continue to serve as the primary victims of police surveillance. African Americans and Hispanics
are stopped most frequently by police and are more likely to be made subject to search and arrested, according to national statistics. In 1998,
African Americans comprised 11.6 percent of drivers stopped by police but represented 19.9 percent of the drivers arrested, while Hispanics
were 8.4 percent of drivers stopped by police but made up 11.7 percent of those arrested. Many
individuals of Arab descent have
complained of increased police surveillance and racial profiling since 9/11. The increased surveillance of
Arab Muslims in the post-9/11 world has led to a greater number of detainments, interrogations, and
arrests among Arab Muslims. Native Americans are also disproportionately made the subject of police surveillance, particularly in the
states of the Great Plains (where they make up a disproportionate number of the prison population compared to their actual population). The
prison industrial complex in the United States is disproportionately populated by people of color as a
result of targeted surveillance and unequal sentencing.