911 + 25

Twenty five years and one day ago I went to sleep after watching The Late Show with David Letterman.  The next morning,, the television still on, I woke to see the Twin Towers of the World Trace Center - except there was only one tower and that was billowing smoke from the upper stories. And then it collapsed in on itself. 

I don't recall what I did the rest of the day.  But I do remember when David Letterman cam back on a week later.  He monologue was somber and well calibrated for the moment.   

The only moment as memorable for me was the storming of Congress by Trump's supporters nineteen years later.

The last quarter century has been tumultuous and consequential: the financial crisis of 2008, the rise of the tea party and it's morphing into MAGA. The rise - and rapid evaporation of Occupy Wall Street. Barack Obama's presidency, when I felt we were in safe honest careful hands.  Trumps' first term and the chaos he brought with him, but protected from his worst over-reach by the flimsy 'guard rails' of competent and patriotic civil servants. The blocking of Obama's Supreme Court nomination by Mitch McConnell. The storming of the Capitol. Two failed impeachment attempts. The decline of Biden's mental capacities and his hubristic run from a second term. And now the corrupt sociopathic second term of our current president and his unqualified, incompetent lackeys, Russia's war with Ukraine, the war with Iran, Trump's trade war with US allies, the rise of China and of AI. 

The world seemed a simpler place twenty five years and one day ago.  Though I didn't appreciate it then, I know now that those were the best of times. And the worst of times seem like they are here to stay.  911 was a terrible day. But in the days and weeks that followed it seemed like something good could come out of tragedy. Now it seems as though that hope was misplaced.  It's sad, just very, very sad.     

   

The instability of order

I think most people assume that the world tomorrow or next week, next month or next year will be pretty much the same as yesterday, last week, last month, last year. But it might not. Change may appear incremental, even glacial, but sometimes there can be inflection points, a rupture that transforms the world we think we know out of all recognition. I suppose (since I haven't read the book :( ) that's what Malcolm Gladwell was writing about in "The Tipping Point".

Here are some indicators and some worrying currents. First, Donald Trump. As a human wrecking ball, he is, intentionally or not, demolishing institutions, structures and the trust that supports them, things we have considered relatively stable and enduring. NATO, the international rule-based order, international relations with allies, and through the Supreme Court, years of what was widely considered settled law; all have been eroded or eviscerated in a fraction of the time it took to create them and the trust on which their efficacy depends. And his break with precedent, clearly signaled in his first term but now operationalised at scale, is the blatant "pay for play". Money comes into the Trump family enterprise and, miraculously, government positions and policies change.

The second is generative artificial intelligence. The speed at which it is developing is seemingly unprecedented, and the implications in terms of job replacement and the consequent societal disruption are terrifying. What happens when half the white-collar jobs disappear in fewer than ten years?

My next example is Mexico, where apparently drug cartels have become so wealthy that they are building their own arms and weapons factories. What struck me here is that I had always assumed that the state was ultimately sufficiently powerful to dominate criminal enterprises. Of course, the state can be subject to regime change, but even when one set of state institutions is superseded by another, the state is recognizably still in charge. The new regime is still at least overtly working on behalf of "the people" (even if they take a few moments to enrich themselves in the process). But when a criminal enterprise amasses more money and more weapons than the state, all bets are off. 

Finally, thanks to reporting by 60 Minutes, I am struck by the similarity in tactics between some fast-growing far-right hate groups and Hamas and Hezbollah. Both these Islamic terrorist organizations understood that they could exercise power as long as they did "good deeds" for at least some of their people. While relatively new white supremacist groups like Active Club are still only using disaster tourism to generate publicity as they grow in number, will it be long before they become a state within a state, providing "protection" for their kind (whites) and driving out "the other" (people of color, Jews, gays, all those who hold more tolerant, more inclusive views, whom they label their enemies)?

I was also struck by the video footage of what I imagine were newly recruited ICE agents; their "dress code," if you can call it that, camo, sneakers, balaclavas and bandannas covering their faces, carrying semi-automatic rifles, seemed strikingly similar to the way far-right militias dress. That got me wondering if indeed that's where they had been recruited from. There is additional evidence, albeit circumstantial, that the current administration is deliberately courting far-right constituencies. ICE recruiting materials frame the mission in terms that closely mirror far-right ideology: immigrants are cast as "undesirables," the enemy within, to be purged. Couple that with the Pentagon's recent promotional content around military action, which intersperses real bombing footage with AI-generated imagery and presents it in a cartoonish, almost video-game aesthetic. This seems to be a deliberate communication choice, and the audience it is designed for is one that finds violence entertaining and its victims less than human. These are not isolated aberrations. They represent the state itself beginning to speak the language of what were once considered right-wing "fringe" elements, small enough to be considered relatively harmless. Their views and language, considered reprehensible by the vast majority of thinking Americans, were tolerated thanks to their First Amendment rights to free speech. But they may no longer remain just a small, crazy fringe group; when their actions are legitimized by the government, societal inhibitors to their growth are stripped away.

So how do these seemingly disparate elements converge? First, AI is going to create high rates of unemployment. That leads to poverty and increasing disillusion with the ability of the state to provide for everyone. When the poor are a small minority, the government can ignore their needs; when government continues to do so as they grow to a significantly sized minority, things become unstable. Enter the far-right hate groups. Such conditions of disillusion and hardship create fertile recruiting ground for right-wing extremists. As these groups grow in number and membership they may well make common cause, coming together as a loosely coupled single movement. They will use tactics similar to Hezbollah and Hamas to win support from "their people" (whites), providing services they claim (possibly with some justification) that the government cannot. As they grow they will need funding, and then we may well see the imposition of "taxes," much as the mafia did (or does?). With money comes the ability to acquire weapons and, as in the Mexico example, acquire sufficient lethal power to overwhelm legitimate law enforcement; the balance of power shifts from the state to the militias. And while they may initially be a loosely coupled alliance, that is likely to fade, leading to literal turf wars and a complete breakdown of law and order. In other words, America becomes a failed state.

Inflection points in society generally come about when people are aware of trends but fail to see the implications of their confluence, or are too invested in their particular ideologies or interest groups to act for the greater good. That's where we are now. I am not trying to predict any particular outcome. Rather, I am suggesting that we are approaching a point at which the future becomes highly unpredictable, and the signs suggest that when the rupture comes, violence is likely to follow fast on its heels.

How can you tell...

... an ICE agent from a Oath Keeper / Proud Boy / III%er / or other para-military member?

An  Oath Keeper / Proud Boy / III%er / or other para-military member...

• wears a balaclava to mask his identity
• carries an long gun, grenade launcher, and a side arm
• wears regular sneakers and body armor
• has no name badge on his clothing 
• doesn't have a body camera
• expresses disdain / hatred for immigrants (or more specifically people of color) 

By contrast, an ICE agent

• wears a balaclava to mask his identity
• carries an long gun, grenade launcher, and a side arm
• wears regular sneakers and body armor
• has no name badge on his clothing 
• doesn't have a body camera
• express disdain / hatred for immigrants (or more specifically people of color)

Damn - it's harder than I thought...

( Perhaps there's some overlap ? )  

Time Passages

Pamela and I were Married on November 2^nd.  She was gracious enough to let me select the music played at our wedding.  Music has always been very central in my life. I grew up in a household which was almost entirely classical, and nothing later than the romantic era and only came to appreciate other genres in my teens. The pieces I selected tell a story, albeit in a rather roundabout way, of my musical journey and perhaps more importantly, the people who influenced it. They are arranged by length rather than chronologically in order to mix genres randomly.

Bach	Brandenburg Concerto #3	These two pieces were staples of  Sunday mornings. my father would play at the weekends before lunch.
Mozart	Overture to The Marriage of Figaro
Stravinsky	Firebird Suite - Finale	The processional - A suitable piece for Pamela’s entrance I thought...
Handle	Arrival of the Queen of Sheba	The recessional - after the formal part of the ceremony is over ...
Pink Floyd	Pigs on the Wing Pt 1	Nick Hokin, who set next to me in math class in high school and took delight in wrapping my knuckles with a wooden ruler, encouraged me to buy Pink Floyd’s latest album. When I went to Boots to buy the record – the very first I’d ever bought – the lady behind the counter offered to play something from the album to see if I liked it. This was the first track and as it turned out, not in the least bit  representative of the rest of the album.
Handel	Music for the Royal Fireworks	A transcription of this piece I played on the treble recorder with Alex Spofforth at Broadwater Manor House School (age 8 to 13).
The Beatles	I will	Antony Lewis, another highschool friend lent me the Beatles Double Red album – the very first “pop” music to cross my father’s threshold. Although it was never played while my parents were home as a teenager, I’d play it whenever they went out in the evening.
Led Zeppelin	Bron Yr Aur	Nick Hokin again – he encouraged me to listen to Zeppelin. Presence had just been released (but this is from III).
The Beatles	Here There and Everywhere	As a teenager I didn't date; perhaps I was too shy, or just not someone anyone wanted to go out with.  So I imagined what a relationship might be like and this song resonated with my fantasy. What's strange is that I now have the love  and companionship I imagined as a teenager
Bach	Cello Suite #1 in G major	A friend who my father had met on holiday in Mürren and who knew members of the Amadeus String Quartet persuaded her to introduce the members of the quartet to him. Our family became quite good friends with Martin Lovett, the quartet’s cellist. My father, bless him, browbeat Martin to bring his cello to a new year’s even party one year. H e was gracious enough to play this for a tiny group (Suzi, Martin's wife, Betty and Derek Gardiner, my parents, and me).  The Gardiner family (Derek and Betty, their daughter, Sally and two sons, Mar and Ben)  were my parents closest friends and Mark and Ben were the closest thing to siblings I had growing up.
Janáček	Sinfonietta 4th movement	One of my father’s favorite pieces (and mine)
The Beatles	Fixing a Hole	I love the imaginary of this song. Another one that I’d play whenever my parents left for the evening.
The Beatles	Because	According to Jon Lennon’s telling the chord progression is that of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata played backwards.
Genesis	Fly on a Windshield	In high school, I idolized Mike Tier, a fellow class mate and an accomplished guitarist. At just 15 years old, Mike and hist friend Graeme Foy formed a band, ARB, and I’d hang out with them as often as I could. Mike was a fan of Genesis and lent me the Lamb Lies Down album. This is one of the more dramatic instrumental tracks.
Taste	What's Going On	On holiday in Spain in about 1975, Susan, Judy and Penny Edwards and their friends introduced me to Taste, Rory Gallagher’s (fairly experimental ) group. That holiday was the first time I rode a bike, a Yamaha DT 175. The following year my father bought me the same bike and I was finally independent. No longer did I have to rely on my parents to ferry me back and forth to Worthing (or cycle a  grueling 6.5 miles over the South Downs).
Suzanne Vega	Night Vision	I did visit Tom's Diner (actually Tom's Restaurant on the upper west side of New York) and there's a small framed newspaper  cutting  on the wall that mentions Susanne Vega's work.
Queen	You're My Best Friend	While I was at Imperial, I tried out for a couple of bands (and didn’t get the gigs). There was a music practice room bands could use at the top of the Union Building. When Brian May was beginning his PhD (before my time) he and his mates (Freddie Mercury, Brian May, and Roger Taylor,) practiced there in their very early days.
Weather Report	Teen Town	Sally Gardiner’s then boyfriend and later husband, Peter Thorn, introduced me to Weather Report and so to Jaco Pastorius, a legendary bass player.
David Bowie	Sound and Vision	After university, eight of us rented a house in Bayswater (49 Kildare Terrace). David Bowie’s two albums, Heros and Low, were often on the turntable in the living room in the evenings.
Beethoven	String Quarter 16 F Op 135 II (Vivace)	Beethoven’s String quartets, particularity the Late Quartets are remarkable pieces. When I visited the Beethoven museum in Bonn with my parents, I was stuck by the tragedy of a composer whose hearing had almost completely gone and who was struggling with debilitating pain when he composed theses works.
ARB	Live at Bar 42 - Exposure	Mike Tier and I reconnected in my late 20s when I was moving from France to the US. I wondered if he wanted my Trace Elliot (he didn’t) and we’ve kept in touch ever since. One of my bucket list ambitions was to play with ARB. Mike was indulgent enough to set up a gig at Bar 42 and Will (drums), Graeme (lead) Mike (rhythm) , Andi (vocals) and me (bass). This was one of their songs.
Sky	Cannonball	My mother booked most of the family’s cultural events, Chichester Theater, Glindbourne and the Brighton Festival were the three I remember most. One year she saw that John Williams was playing. Williams was a renowned classical guitarist who’d made lots of recordings with Juilan Breame. As we walked into the auditorium at the Brighton Pavilion I was surprised to see large mixing desk in the middle of the hall – very unusual for classical guitar recital (which were never amplified). As it turned out we were there (by accident) for the very first concert of John William’s classical rock fusion band who’d been together for just 3 to 4 weeks. Not only was the music not quite what my parents had expected, Williams was playing Gibson Explorer!
Donal Fagan	Green Flower Street	Donald Fagan's album Nightfly was released while Malcolm 'Riz' Risby, Mark Fisher, Antony Broadbent and I, rented a house at 39 Kildare Terrace the year after we all graduated from IC.
Led Zeppelin	Dancing Days	Not much to say other than this is another track from a band that evolved tremendously from it's beginnings.
Eric Clapton	Wonderful Tonight	At INSEAD I joined what was loosely called the INSEAD band.  We played at some of the (in)famous national themed parties, the Scandinan party being a memorable one partly because of the copious amounts of Swedish hard alcohol being served.  Simon Hall, a management consultant, and Bart Bronnenberg, now professor of marketing  at the Tilburg School of Economics and Management, on guitar.
Abba	Dancing Queen	One of Pamela's favorite Abba songs.  She loves to dance.
Al Stewart	Soho (Needless to say)	Al Stewart tells some great stories in song. He said in an interview that he was renting a room in Soho while trying to make it as a musician. In the flat next door was none other than David Bowie. As he listened to Bowie writing and playing his own songs, Stewart realized he had to find a different niche and hence he started writing songs based on historical events that became his thing.  Tim Whitaker, Nick Hokin and I tried to form a band in high school.  We did play a couple of gigs, one at Imperial, with Graeme Foy guesting on lead guitar.
Abba	Take a Chance on Me	This is another of Pamela's favorite songs.
Beatles	Now and Then	This is "our song". When I first heard it I thought of Pamela and sent her a link to the song while she was away on a cruise with Bev Hahn.
Mendelssohn	Octet in Eb	One of my father's favorites, and a stable of Sunday mornings while my  mother cooked the roast for Sunday lunch.
Rush	Limelight	Rush was another band Nick Hokin introduced me to.   Hemispheres was the first Rush album I bought but this is from Moving Pictures.  Geddy Lee is the son of Holocaust survivors. One of my customers when I was working at IBM owned a jewelry store called The Great Frog somewhere south of Bond Street. Carol Lehtonen, the store’s owner and designer told me she’d sold rings to Rush. The store was a go-to place for musicians – I didn’t buy any as it was neither the kind of thing an IBMer was supposed to wear and it was anyway (probably) out of my price range.
Joni Mitchell	Black Crow	It was Sally Gardiner who introduced me to Joni Mitchell. Hissing of Summer Lawns was the first album I listened to.  Sally was (and still is) four years older that I was, a quite big gap when you're a teenager, so I only got to know her as an adult.
Gerry Rafferty	Night Owl	After high school I managed to get a job as a waiter in a rather nice hotel in Sils Maria, Switzerland. My roommate, Dick Williams, was a talented chef from London who’d worked under Anton Mosimann at “the Dorch”. Dick had a boombox and a handful of cassettes. Night Owl and City to City were two and through Dick I was introduced to Gerry Rafferty. Dick left after a couple of months and I’ve often wondered where he ended up...
Fleetwood Mac	The Chain	I came across Fleetwood Mac accidentally. The second part of this song was used by the BBC for its coverage of Formula 1 events.
Dvorak	Slavionic Dances Op 46 No 8	More music from my father’s homeland.
Caravan	Land of Grey and Pink	Another song from that holiday in Spain with Penny, Judy Susan, Niki and her boyfriend and the two bikers (whose names I’ve forgotten). It was my first and only encounter with marijuana. And after sleeping on the floor (it was very cold too as I recall) I came back to England with a mild septicemia.
Steely Dan	Black Cow	After graduating I took my first job as a systems engineer at IBM in London Central Branch, in Wigmore Street. We’d not sorted out the Kildare Terrace house yet so in the mean time I rented a room over the summer in Linstead Hall, the same hall  I’d lived in for two years as an undergrad. I took a handful of cassettes and a small portable cassette player. Steely Dan’s Aja album was one and the music that I most closely associate with my first weeks at IBM.
Brahms	Cello Sonata #1 in E minor, second movement	I don’t remember how I cam across Brahms's cello sonatas, but I still have the DG vinyl recording with Mistislav Rostropovic and Svatoslav Richter.
Miles Davis	Blue in Green	Derek Gardiner, Uncle Derek  knew me longer than anyone except my parents - he was a photographer and took pictures of me the day after I was born.  He was immensely curious, highly intelligent and pretty scary. You couldn't get away with any sloppy thinking when discussing things with him.  One lunchtime when I was having lunch with his family Derek came back from the studio clearly very irritated with a client who had been in the studio while he was working and had  tried to tell Derek how to do his job.  His comment was "" I'm difficult enough to argue with when I don't know what I'm talking about"". I was pretty terrified of him until much later in life.  I'd call Betty and if Derek answered, after a few pleasantries he'd say "I suppose you want to talk to Betty now" and pass her the phone.   Only after Betty dies did we have a stronger relationship, with long conversations about the state of the world.  He died last year and I will miss him greatly (as I do Betty).
Led Zeppelin	Fool in the Rain	Zeppelin aficionados have tended to dismiss their last album, ‘In through the Out Door’ as “not their best work”. That critique notwithstanding I love it; some of my favorite tracks were too long to include but this one I like in part because of it’s rhythm and its bass line.
Wishbone Ash	King Will Come	Tim Whitaker and I tried unsuccessfully to start a band and write our own songs. Tim went on to work at the Beeb, and at some point designed a lighting control system use in Starlight Express when it was playing in the West End .
Bartok	String quartet #5 1st Movement	Derek eventually persuaded my father to listen to music from the 20th century. He maintained that while you had to “really work at it” it was ultimately rewarding. This isn’t music you can enjoy 'out of the box', but I came to see what Derek was talking about.
Dire Straits	Telegraph Road	At IC I joined the HiFi society. We had a number of really interesting guest speakers. Scott Strachen, the designer (and builder) of the Syrinx PU2 tone arm was one. We also had a presentation of one of the very first compact disks - I don’t remember the presenter - and a spirited discussion of the merits of analog over digital . The track used to demonstrate the dynamic range of the that CD player was Telegraph Road. When I moved to the Sierra Foothills I drove 120 between Oakdale and Manteca to get to work in San Jose (and still do). That long stretch of road with the power lines running along the south side of the road make me think of this Dire Strait’s wonderful tale of hope and disillusion.

Is this really what it takes?

Jimmy Kimmel's late night shows was back on the air (at least in most of the country) on Tuesday.  

Last week the Disney Corporation "preempted" (i.e., temporarily cancelled) Kimmel's show after being threatened by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a one time defender of free speech. But after what appears to have been pushback from subscribers looking up how to cancel their Disney and Hulu subscriptions, the company did a one-eighty. 

Two things are now a little clearer. First, corporate bosses seem to have slept through the course on Business Ethics (try BUS 186 - you can register through the Open University).  Just as Sukhinder Sing-Cassidy didn't spot the moral quagmire of putting servers into China just after the Chineses government had jailed a Yahoo subscriber for what they viewed as a "seditious email", Disney's top management team failed to put principle before dollars when Carr threatened to make life difficult.  I know I talk about shareholder value in my course, but I also remind my students that they may have to deal with situations in which doing the right thing may not be in their shareholders (or their own) financial best interests; and they will have to decide whether their principles are more important to them that money.

The second is that what appears to have outraged the American people is not the litany of improper ways in which the neo-authoritarian Trump regime has flouted ethics, principles, tradition, and often the law in its quest for power and vengeance, but when a comedy show is pulled.  One can only conclude that either very few Americans care about ethic, principles, tradition or the rule of law. Or that they simply haven't been paying attention. Either way, that's not a good sign for the future of the country.

Who are the "Cancel Culture" warriors now?

Jimmy Kimmel’s “indefinite suspension” is  the latest in a long line of capitulations by broadcasters, law firms, and universities to the political demands of the Trump administration. The response from Democrats has been, to put it politely, pathetic, disorganized; and utterly ineffective.

Since I've been in the US, now more than a quarter century, Fox "News" has lied brazenly, dragging public sentiment to the right.  It's right wing bias allowed Trump an outlet for his authoritarian rhetoric which ultimately won him, astonishingly, a popular vote majority. Conservatives who for years bitched and moaned incessantly about “cancel culture” had no problem with Fox because its lies served their political ends. But when comedy shows, not news, not policy forums, but comedy, dare to mock Trump, they’re shut down by threats and intimidation from the Trump administration.   And those crusaders for free speech who inveighed against "cancel culture" are, unsurprisingly, nowhere to be found. The one exception is Ted Cruise who was the only conservative brave enough to take his head out of the sand and point out that what is good for the goose might be good for the gander.  

What to do? One possibility is to hunker down and hope that the storm blows over. But that's three and a half years and will any of those whose shows have been forced off the air want to wait that long?  

A second is to create an internet streaming subscription service (imagine Comedy Central 2.0 a comedy somewhat akin to F1 TV) that isn't beholden to the FCC and so remains out of the immediate clutches of an authoritarian government, clearly committed to silencing any dissenting voices. All the "cancelled" comedy shows would find a home there as bog name "anchor" shows that draw in viewers.  The channel would have a variety of other comedy too; sitcoms, stand up routines from up-and coming artists, and comedy specials. Dave Chappelle might even be persuaded to appear.     

A third is to get down into the gutter with the MAGA authoritarian venture; when (an assumption to be sure) Trump is ousted and a Democrat sits in the Oval office, take the gloves off and shut down Fox News for its biased disinformation. If Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and (soon Jon Stewart) are canceled by what amounts of blackmailing by the Trump administration, then Democratic leaders should send a very clear message that they will take similar action against what they see as dangerous speech in the media. The dilemma for the left is that their brand is built on playing by the rules; but clearly that isn't working. No one seems to care when the rules are broken when norms are trampled on a long standing precedents are overturned.  But abandoning that ordered society will further stoke division and take us further down a path that ultimately leads to another civil war.  But the alternative is to acquiesce to an authoritarian regime that wields power for its own self-interested ends.

It is deeply ironic that Kimmel's show was suspended for his on-air comments relating to the murder of Charlie Kirk, someone who was committed to free speech.

Moving Beyond the Limits of AI Omniscience

​Much has been made of the lacklustre advance of ChatGPT-5. Many believe it points to the diminishing marginal returns from ever larger, unitary models.

That suggests that progress will come not through size but structure. Humans long ago abandoned the pursuit of omniscience, relying instead on cognitive specialization and the emergence of fields and disciplines. Development of AI will likely follow a similar path, moving away from unitary models towards systems in which a coordinator LLM breaks problems into parts, delegates them to smaller, specialised models, and integrates the answers.

​While general-purpose models will struggle to be “all things to all men”, firm-specific assemblages will flourish. ​Progress will be less about consumer-facing chatbots and more about firms’ internal operational systems.  Building effective structures and coordinating mechanisms will be critical. Firms will experiment with different approaches and while most will fail to deliver distinctive competitive advantage, a few will. And as with any innovation, variation, selection and retention will separate the wheat from the chaff.

As the benefits of scale run out, the new frontier will be AI “teamwork”: systems of models working in concert, shaped not by grand design but by competition.

The killing of Charlie Kirk last week was shocking, though perhaps not surprising. America has a long history of political violence, and Kirk’s death is only the most recent addition to a grim list. The assassinations of Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy; the shooting of Ronald Reagan; the more recent attack on Donald Trump; the attempt on George Wallace; and the shooting of Congressman Steve Scalise at a baseball practice all sit alongside the January 6th insurrection and the plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Violence has touched both left and right, and it has become something more than a series of isolated tragedies. It has become a recurring feature of American politics.  

The diagram shows two interlocking self-reinforcing cycles. On the left is the fast cycle, where events escalate in a matter of hours or days. Social media platforms amplify divisive rhetoric, which fuels hate and anger. That emotional energy spills into political violence, and each act of violence feeds straight back into anger and more polarizing rhetoric. At the same time, anger leads to divisive rhetoric and that rhetoric drives engagement on social media platforms.  

On the right is the longer cycle, which unfolds over months and years. Here, social media platforms and divisive rhetoric contribute to information fragmentation (everybody has their own curated version of the news). Information fragmentation increases political polarization and gridlock which in turn reduce the perceived responsiveness and effectiveness of government and so to declining trust in government. That loss of institutional legitimacy creates reliance on guns in the absence of trusted protections, especially in a society where the Second Amendment is central to political culture. Greater access and reliance on firearms, in turn, make political violence more lethal and more frequent, further deepening the erosion of trust.

The fast cycle of outrage and retaliation injects energy into the longer cycle of institutional decay and gun reliance, while the slower process of erosion makes each flare-up of violence more dangerous. Together, they form a feedback system with no internal dampening: anger leads to violence, violence to distrust, distrust to more reliance on guns, and guns to more violence. 

In my lifetime I can recall only two high-profile killings of British politicians: Jo Cox in 2016 and David Amess in 2021. Before that, you would have to reach back into the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which was closer to religiously motivated civil conflict than to the ordinary functioning of parliamentary politics. Both countries are increasingly politically polarized, both are exposed to the same social media platforms that amplify outrage, and both have populist figures who thrive on divisive rhetoric. Yet in the United States violence is woven into the fabric of politics, while in Britain it remains an exception.  While there are several way in which the United States and the United Kingdom differ (the length of their histories and traditions, their experience with immigration, their constitutions - one written, one unwritten) one that seems particularly salient relates to the Second Amendment.  

In the United States, the Second Amendment has created not only access to guns but also a sense of security and the perception that they are the "last line of defense", a last resort when government fails.  As trust in government has declined, the logic of arming for self-protection has grown. Geography reinforces this dynamic: in remote rural communities, law enforcement cannot always be relied on to respond quickly, while in large cities police forces are often underfunded, overstretched, or poorly trained. In both contexts, cities and remote rural communities, the perception is that the state cannot protect you, so you must protect yourself.  However there is an unintended side-effect; as more people own guns, the likelihood that political disputes escalate into political killing rises. 

The United Kingdom differs not because its social media platforms are less corrosive but because there are important cultural and structural differences of which there are many. Britain's democratic  institutions are underpinned by longer democratic traditions and norms. Its “unwritten constitution” rests on conventions that still command legitimacy; but perhaps most importantly guns are not seen as an essential backstop for settling disputes. And without either the provisions of the Second Amendment nor strong public support for the liberalization of gun control, firearms are harder to obtain. While political extremism is arguably as common in both countries, with less access to guns, the likelihood of a political fanatic actually shooting a political figure is far lower. 

In America, violence begets anger, anger feeds divisive rhetoric, rhetoric spreads through platforms, and trust erodes further. Guns are a significant contributor to this cycle, ensuring that when anger erupts, the consequences are more often fatal. The result is a self-reinforcing system where every act of violence makes the next more likely. That is why the killing of Charlie Kirk feels both shocking and inevitable. Without something fundamentally changing this cycle will continue to accelerate, not slow down.  But change requires a sober collective approach in which both sides coming together to solve the problem and this cycle, like all cycles of escalating violence, pushes us further apart rather than bringing us together. 

After every shocking act of political violence in America, we hear the now all-too-familiar chorus: “This is not who we are.” But while it may not be who we are as individuals, it is, sadly, who collectively we have become as a society. We have allowed a system to evolve in which violence is endemic, and we have failed to take meaningful action to change it. If we fail again, as we have so often in the past, then we must also be honest enough to acknowledge the consequences.

The Great Negotiator

For reasons that still escape me, news media pundits have been analyzing (in my view foolishly in real time) the Putin–Trump summit. It is a pointless exercise for several reasons.

Historically, summits are the culmination of painstaking preparation by lower-level staffers working through most issues in advance. The leaders then arrive to finalize details and present an apparent breakthrough to their domestic audiences. A great summit is one in which substantive progress is achieved; a good summit is one in which there are no surprises. In Alaska, the meeting was neither: the surprise was the United States appearing to back down and accept Putin’s position. Yet in another sense the outcome was entirely predictable. President Trump has always rejected this model of diplomacy, insisting that his unrivaled personal negotiating skills could secure any outcome he wanted at the table. Experience from his first term, most notably the failure of his direct diplomacy with North Korea, demonstrated the fallacy of that approach.

Let's be clear: the Alaska summit was never intended to produce a settlement of the war in Ukraine. Its principal purpose was domestic. Trump needed something to distract media attention from the damaging Epstein files controversy.

More than two hundred days after loudly proclaiming he would end the war in Ukraine on his first day in office, the summit did nothing to bring peace any closer.  But there were unexpected gains--for Russia. Trump backed away from his call for a ceasefire, muted his threats of further sanctions, and effectively accepted the military status quo. In return he received little more than flattery from Vladimir Putin, who has long understood that the currency Trump values most is personal adulation. More broadly, the summit served to restore Russia’s diplomatic standing, allowing Putin to appear once again as a legitimate player on the international stage. 

The Alaska summit reaffirmed what has been evident since his descent on the gilded escalator over a decade ago: Trump treats governing as theater, subordinating policy to spectacle and the national interest to his own need for attention and profit. Yet nine years after Trump first entered the White House, the broadcast media still has not figured out how to cover him. Analysts continue to treat his appearances as though they were good-faith attempts at governance when in fact they are performances of often unintelligible babble, interspersed with "alternative facts" masquerading as policy. At least on The Apprentice his performances were loosely anchored in a domain where he had some experience. In office, they rest only on his fantasies of what strong leaders do. 

Marshall McLuhan, in his 1964 book "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man" warned us that "the medium is the message", The folly lies not only in Trump’s theatrics, but in the media’s pointless attempts to interpret them as though substance mattered; with Donald Trump, it has always been about the performance.

What Happens When No One Clicks? AI and the Collapse of the Attention Economy

As The Economist noted last week ("AI is killing the web. Can anything save it"), the rise of large language model (LLM) chatbots is transforming how people find information online, whether they’re looking for the most stylish sneakers or the best treatment for hypertension. But this shift isn’t just a challenge for search engines. It threatens the entire ecosystem of companies that, over the past two decades, have built their business models around internet search, relying on it to attract visitors, sell products, and convert clicks into revenue.

Now when you Google a product or service, or worse, ask ChatGPT, instead of getting a page of links, many of them sponsored, you get a neatly packaged summary, pulled from what the AI “knows” or finds though its own searches in the background. That means fewer clicks, fewer ad impressions, and ultimately less revenue for companies dependent on search-driven discovery. Ad revenues are falling. Click-through purchases, if they haven’t declined already, soon will.

Where does this all lead? One clear implication is that companies which previously advertised on Google—I use Google here as a stand-in for search generally, but with nearly 90% of global search ad revenue, it's effectively the platform—will need to find new ways to reach audiences. Firms that once paid to appear in search results may instead start blocking AI scraping or begin charging them for access. Rather than relying on search-based advertising, they may pivot toward more targeted outreach through social media, and place more content behind paywalls.

This shift also brings back a debate around proprietary information and copyright. AIs like Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT generate responses by aggregating and summarizing content created by others but without compensating the original authors. As more of the web moves behind paywalls or becomes inaccessible to web crawlers, AI “information aggregators” will only be able to draw from what is left in the public domain. The result will be a narrower and potentially distorted AI knowledge base, increasingly shaped by what’s freely available rather than what’s most accurate, insightful, or commercially valuable.

One long-discussed but still unrealized solution would be to embed copyright metadata into online content and implement an automated micropayment system. Under this model, AIs would compensate content creators whenever their work contributes to a response. Though the idea has been discussed for years yet never operationalized, the rise of generative AI may finally create the incentive to bring it to fruition. Perhaps we’ve now reached the tipping point where that vision becomes reality.

Derek Walter Gardiner

Although Derek's life was honored in a service this last January and I posted some thoughts shortly after, I wanted to express some things that my rather clinical posting then didn't.
 
Derek Walter Gardiner - for years "Uncle Derek" (and Aunty Bet) - were my parents' closest friends.  Strangely, I think I have more abiding memories of Derek than I do of my father.  That may be because my father and I were somewhat estranged for the last 15 or so years but nevertheless Derek was a huge influence in my life.  

I took up large and medium format photography (Derek was a photographer). I dabbled in wood carving because of him (and I am blessed to now have one of his carvings). From him I came to enjoy Bartok, Prokoviev and Miles Davis.  

He had a rather mischievous, impish sense of humor.  But he could also be stern and intimidating.  He was a very serious person.  Yes, he could speculate as he did at many new years eve parties with my parents but it was always grounded in deep knowledge of current events and trends. 

I'd often go with them to plays at the Chichester Festival. Usually we'd go to a Chinese restaurant after the play. And because Derek had to go somewhere I used his ticket to see the second half or the Glyndebourne production of the Magic Flute with stage designs by David Hockney.  

I spent a lot of time in the Gardiner household growing up. I would go to tea at least once a week after school. Betty and Derek would be guests of my parents frequently probably once a month or more.  Since Derek worked not far from home, he'd often come home for lunch.  On one occasion I remember very clearly, he came home irritated and exasperated. He'd spent the morning with a "difficult" (one of his favorite descriptions) client who'd been telling him how to do his job.  "I'm a difficult enough person to argue with when I don't know what I'm talking about" I recall him telling Betty. That was so true.  His mental acuity made him a formidable person to take on.    

He and Betty were always there for me after my mother died.  And when my father refused to come to my graduation from INSEAD's PhD program - a spectacularly memorable event in the Salle des Colonnes d'Or in the Château de Fontainebleau, by the way - Betty and Derek made the trip.   

After my mother passed almost thirty five years ago, Betty and I'd talk, often once a week. If Derek answered the phone we exchange a few pleasantries and then he say "I suppose you want to talk to Betty" and pass her the phone.   It wasn't really until Betty died seven years ago that I got to know Derek a little better.  I'd visit him every time I was back in Worthing and we spoke from time to time, perhaps once every couple of months, on the phone. He remained sharp and engaged with the world right to the end. 

He met (and really liked) Pamela when we visited in December of 2023 and had dinner on Worthing Pier. He met Graeme and Mike the year before when we all went to lunch on the sea front.  I saw him last in September of last year when I went back to London from the Imperial College Physics 40th class reunion. It was a very quick visit but I'm so glad I did.  I can still see him in the rear-view mirror of my rental car, standing in front of the small, now unused garage by the steps that led to the garden and then to the house, waving as I drove away.  I know he understood how important he'd been in my life and for that, and for his gift as a role model, I'm forever immensely grateful.         

The truth is irrelevant...

The media is all excited that the MAGA base might break with Trump because suddenly he doesn't want to release the Epstein files. "Nothing to see here" according to AG (and Trump sycophant) Pam Bondi.  "Why would anyone want to know all this sordid stuff anyway" says Trump (despite fuelling the conspiracy by retweeting the daft idea that Hillary Clinton had Elstein murdered while in prison awaiting trial).  

It looks awkward that despite the MAGA base baying for Epstein's "list" to see "who was involved", suddenly Trump wants nothing to do with releasing the DoJ's files. "Aha" cries the press. "It will drive a wedge between Trump and his MAGA faithful".

But here's the thing; well two actually. First, the MAGA base will swallow any bitter pill, so devoted are they to Trump, even to the point of pretending they were never that interested in the Epstein files in the first place. And second, Trump will spin some ridiculous and entirely incredible story that there never was a list and it was all a hoax made up by the left wing media and Democrats working in the "Deep State" to sink his second bid for the White House.  To the MAGA faithful, the truth isn't important. Power and loyalty matter more.

Brave Living-room

Living-room was once Boiler-room cat. Judith  found here living in the boiler room and brought here in to live with the rest of the menagerie of cats.  She came into the house probably 10 years ago.  

It's been a while and I don't recall exactly when she arrived, partly because she took up residence under the LazyBoy recliner by what was (or should have been) the front door. She came out to eat and use the litter box - but otherwise she stayed hidden from sight and the other cats under that big ugly chair. For seven long years!

Then something changed, I don't know exactly when, but she began venturing out. I think it was after Judith died and I'd rearranged the furniture in the living room. If I sat on the couch she'd come out and sit in my lap.  Gradually she ventured out further and further from the ugly chair that had been her home for so long. 

She began exploring, first annexing the spare room, eventually coming to eat with the rest of the cat family in the kitchen.  As she got braver and more comfortable around the house she become more vocal, demanding noisily to be fed. 

She'd been undernourished all her life she she was always under-weight. We took her to the vet in January as she seemed to be getting even thinner. She was diagnosed with renal failure but lived a happy and energetic life almost until the end. She declined very quickly, from running into the kitchen at meal times to being unable to stand and a matter of days.  I was proud and happy for her that for the last few years of her life she found the courage to venture out from under the ugly chair to leave a normal cat's life. Way to go Living-room!  

Farewell Puggleberry-pooh

Fluffy Pug Face, Puggles for short, faded slowly out of my life today. Puggles, Pug-pooh, occasionally Puggleberry or Puggleberry-pooh, had been with me fourteen years and I'll miss her.  She was, like all my cats, a rescue.

It wasn't a hard decision. Her kidneys had begun to fail in January. By March she was eating less and less, drinking constantly to stay hydrated, and losing weight. Today she was just 5lbs.

She was an almost constant companion, sleeping on the right side of the bed or on my shoulder. Since she got sick she'd become even more attached. Her eyesight had gone a few months ago but she managed - not as well as Jack who was blind from a very early age, but well enough. She would ask to be lifted into my lap when I was working, her two front paws grabbing onto the side of my chair. Then she'd walk circles over my desk and across the keyboard. After she'd been put back on the floor several times, she'd sit just under my chair. Puggles was quiet and affectionate, with the most amazing blue eyes, and a little vain.  But she was very special and I miss her.

Flight to gold

Commentators have been wondering why, when equities declined sharply over the tariff debacle, money didn't go into treasuries, typically a safe haven in times of uncertainty.  Perhaps I'm missing something but that fact that Trump has threatened to turn fixed date securities into perpetual bonds might be the reason.  Why would anyone buy an instrument with a fixed maturity if there is a significant risk they would never be able to get their initial capital back?  It appears investors who have sold equities have moved into gold instead.     

The Gulf

Why not The Gulf of America?  The coastlines that border the Gulf are about the same length give or take a hundred miles. Mexico will continue to call it Golfo de México.  Two names for the same place aren't unheard of.  The French call the stretch of water between France and England "La Manche" while the Brits call it "The English Channel".  So let's not sweat the small stuff. There are bigger fish to fry, though they don't come out of the Gulf.  

Jim Jordan, where are you now?

Does anyone remember Jim Jordan serving on the House Select Committee on Benghazi? During what seemed like weeks of hearings, in which he and his GOP colleagues tried to blame Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the deaths of  United States Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith, Jordan lambasted Clinton for sending email on her private email server that should have been deemed classified at the time they were sent, including 65 emails deemed "Secret" and 22 deemed "Top Secret". 

(As an aside, Jordan and Gowdy's efforts to keep the matter in the public eye, and James Comey's decision to reopen the investigation which he has previously closed were likely significant contributors to Trump's election victory in  2016).   

Nine years on we have what appears to be an far more more egregious lapse in security.  Peter Hegseth, Trump's (utterly unqualified) Secretary of Defense used a group chat on the Signal platform to circulate information about an impending US military strike on Houthi terrorist leaders in Yemen.  

While the chat never explicitly labeled the details as 'war plans'", Hegseth's claim that this wasn’t a disclosure of 'war plans'—despite listing targets, timing, and tactics—is laughable; and that he couldn't come up with a better defense speaks volumes in and of itself.   

So where is Jim Jordan, defender of our national security and the rules on classified information that we need to keep our operational military personal safe and our military interventions effective?  Clinton endured eleven hours of televised questioning and a months-long FBI probe. Where's Jordan on Hegseth's screw-up?  Is he calling for an FBI probe, public hearings, resignation? Of course not; he's complete silent!  His grandstanding was never about national security.  It was always about scoring political points.  

Turbulent Priests and the return of the monarchy

Henry II of England, in a moment of anger, asked rhetorically "Will nobody rid me of this turbulent priest"?  Some in his court took him both literally and seriously and killed Thomas Beckett, Archbishop of Canterbury in Canterbury Cathedral. Trump used this device when he summoned his supporters to the Capitol on January 6th and encouraged them to disrupt the lawful transfer or power to the next administration.  He claimed that he never actually instructed them to storm the Capitol but anyone reading between the lines could see that was what he wanted, a view reinforced by his unwillingness to intervene while he watched the violence from the Oval Office.      

When the Supreme Court in its 2024 decision Trump v. United States granted the president immunity from criminal prosecution for "official acts", the need for such plausible deniability is moot.  If, as Justice Sotomayor asked, "the president decides that his [political] rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?" 

In reply Trump's lawyer, D. John Sauer, argued that the President has absolute immunity from prosecution for all official acts unless successfully impeached and convicted by Congress.  But with Congress now irrevocably divided along a hyper-partisan party lines, impeachment and conviction is no longer a threat if the President's party holds one or other of the two houses. 

We we now have what is to all intents and purposes a medieval monarchy. The King aka. the President can threaten violence against his enemies with impunity and no one can rein in his powers. The only distinctions between medieval times and the present day are term limits (which Trump is working to change) and the inheriting of high office. That aside, Trump's acolytes are already paying obsequious deference and flattery as plainly as members of Henry II's court. 

The Best Government Money Can Buy

Many elected members of Congress enter politics with a desire to effect change. But at least in the public's perception, they are widely seen as corrupt [1,2].  Despite efforts to prevent insider trading by members of Congress, it is still widespread and highly lucrative [3].  According to Business Insider, seventy eight members of the 117th Congress violated the STOCK act. 

Leaving aside the restrictive "quid-pro-quo" requirement established by the Supreme Court in McCormick v. United States, the "delayed gratification" version of corruption in which members work to help private business interests while in office and are rewarded afterwards with a lucrative appointments as lobbyists for the companies they previously dealt with as lawmakers, creates the very strong appearance of corruption.  So why do people who were initially motivated by their principles end up compromising them for money?         

The answer may be a combination of envy and a feeling of inequity.  Members of congress are paid well by most people's standards but very poorly compared to the people they mix with in Washington: the industry leaders, the wealthy donors, not to mention highly paid ex-colleagues who are now lobbyists.  As they are wined and dined by people who they see as their equals or even their inferiors, they may come to resent the fact they they are being much less well rewarded for the hard work they do than they deserve to be.  That may lead them to relax any standards they had about public service and the appearance of impropriety.  From there it's a short step to becoming one of them.   

[1] https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/51398-most-americans-see-corruption-as-serious-problem?utm_source=chatgpt.com

[2] https://news.gallup.com/poll/656891/trump-job-approval-rating-congress-jumps.aspx?utm_source=chatgpt.com

[3] https://www.ballardspahr.com/insights/alerts-and-articles/2024/10/politician-trading-if-you-cant-stop-them-join-them?utm_source=chatgpt.com 

Europe's "fork in the road"

American isolationism isn't a new phenomenon.  Were it not for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, America would likely not have come to Europe's defense in the Second World War. Trump's threat to leave NATO and leave Europe to defend itself should not be seen as an unprecedented shift in international policy but rather a "regression to the mean", a return from an outlier event to a more normal--meaning more frequently occurring--state of affairs.  The US' role in establishing and being the strongest defender of the international rules-based order might be seen as an aberration rather than the new normal†.

One of the reasons that the US favored the international rules-based order is international trade.  The General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) and its successor, the World Trade Organization (WTO) established the Most Favored Nation rules which were designed to open the foreign markets to US exporters, markets that had previously been protected by tariff barriers. Similarly, access to international labor markets allowed American manufacturers to produce at lower labor cost than had production been carried out in the US. 

While free trade economists are right that moving activities to the places that create the most value (i.e., are performed at the lowest possible cost) is Pareto optimal, at a national level they ignore the social implications of how that newly created wealth is distributed. Some of the value has gone to the labor forces of the countries to which jobs have been outsourced; much has gone to the shareholders of the corporations that took advantage of offshoring. Little has accrued to the hollowed-out working and middle classes.  Cheaper Chinese-made goods are of no benefit to families who can't afford to put food on the table (or their next prescription). 

While government might have addressed the problem with a more progressive redistribution of wealth, America's emphasis on individualism made this nigh on impossible, so the rich have gotten richer while everyone else has been left in the dust.  The result has been disillusion with the system and the international trading system.  

Enter Donald Trump. While some of what he wants to do with tariffs is wield geopolitical influence, he also appears to want to reshore jobs that were offshored over the last 30 years.  As the economic rationale for the international rules-based order dissipates, so does America's interest in maintaining it. That bolsters America's isolationist tendencies.  Providing a security umbrella for Europe is expensive and constraining. As the US considers its interests vis-à-vis China and Taiwan, being tied to the defense of Europe may seem to Trump to be an anachronism with little value for America.  Hence Vance's vitriol towards "the Old World" and Trump's threat to leave NATO.  

Hence Europe's "fork in the road".  If it can no longer rely on the protection of the US' military might and its nuclear umbrella, it faces a choice: either create a European defence alliance strong enough to deal with Russian territorial ambitions, or make an alliance with one of the other two world powers, Russia or China. Since Europe seems incapable of the kind of economic and political commitment that would be required to mount a credible military defence against Russia, an alliance looks like the only viable option.

Russia is an economic disaster and wields power largely through two levers; its stockpile of nuclear weapons and its willingness to provide access to markets to countries that have been barred from the world's "regular" trading system. However, allowing Russia to reemerge as the Eastern Bloc would be a betrayal of its values and its commitments to the ex-Soviet Bloc countries that have joined the European Community.      

That leaves China. China's (or rather Xi's) objectives are murkier than Putin's. Perhaps it simply wants to establish a new world order that is not dominated by America.  If that is indeed the extent of its ambitions, then an alliance with China looks like a "better deal" for Europe and with Russia. However, as we return to a mercantilist world order, Europe must come to grips with the fact that even a Sino-European alliance almost certainly will not afford the military protections America provided in the latter half of the 20th century. 

So in the last analysis, Europe must either bury its many hatchets, and emerge as a viable collective military force or face a future in which it becomes a pawn on the geopolitical chessboard, buffeted by the whims of three powerful and self-interested actors, Russia, China, and America.           

† Many of the things we have thought of as "normal" may in fact be temporary departures from the norm. Communism in Russia and China have both given way to some form of individual incentive-based systems that might broadly be termed "capitalism".