Indian Strategic Studies: 07/14/24

14 July 2024

How India’s Manufacturing Boom Hinders China’s Supply Chain Dumping – Analysis

Subrata Majumder

Manufacturing in India, which slipped to negative growth during the COVID 19 period, made a sparkling growth in the post COVID 19 period. It boomed to 9.9 percent growth in 2023-24, against a fall by 2.3 percent in the previous year in the GDP growth trajectory.

Nevertheless, the irony is notwithstanding India pitches one of the fastest growth in the economy in the world, manufacturing was trailing behind. This raised a grave concern for the policy makers as manufacturing is the key driver to increase employment and decimate bulging unemployment , the crucial issue for an healthy economy.

Lackluster growth in manufacturing warranted a change in the policy perspectives to reshape the manufacturing landscape in the country. Initially, focus on manufacturing under “Make in India“ was making goods from beginning to finished products domestically. The concept failed to achieve the target of 22 percent of GDP in 2022.

Meantime, with the onset of COVID, a dramatic change was evoked in the world manufacturing landscape for supply chain. China, which topped in manufacturing, receded in its hegemony. Foreign investors were flying out of China and shifted to other South East countries and India. Vietnam emerged as a substitution for China. But, soon it faded its potential since it depends upon China substantially for raw materials and intermediates.

Building Capabilities and Capacities for India - Policy suggestions for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government 2024

The Vivekananda International Foundation has published a report Building Capabilities and Capacities for India: Policy Suggestions for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government 2024. It makes several policy suggestions in areas ranging from foreign policy, defence technology and strategic manufacturing to climate change, cybersecurity and culture and civilisation. Based on the expert-level discussions held at the VIF, the report suggests an expansion of diplomatic capacity to enable deeper engagement with the world. It underscores the need to bring out a National Security Strategy, and a Foreign Policy Concept for an uncertain world. Taking note of the need to remain constantly engaged with the world, it suggests the appointment of regional and thematic special envoys to complement the normal diplomatic exchanges. It recommends setting up an office of International Trade Negotiators to improve India's trade negotiation capabilities.

It emphasises the need for reexamining joining the RCEP and concluding a BIMSTEC FTA. On the economic front, the report recommends increased focus on the aspirations of the youths, creating more jobs, raising per capita income and recommends the inclusion of petrol and diesel under the GST. Noting the complexity of the energy transition to net zero, the report recommends that nuclear power should be given the status of green energy and should be provided incentives on par with renewable. Taking cognisance of the serious negative impact of climate change on the economy and society, the report recommends that climate change should be factored into all policies and plans.

The report also covers areas such as Foreign Policy, International Trade, Arctic Issues, Maritime, Defence, Strategic Manufacturing and Exports, India as a drone hub, Space, Shipbuilding, Cybersecurity Startups, Project implementation, Climate Change and biodiversity, Economy, Energy Transition and Power Sector, Agriculture and Rural Development, Higher Education, Ayurveda, Legal system, Urbanisation, Infrastructure Development, Connecting Bharat with India, Delhi, the Capital city, Internal Security, Culture and civilisation and Special Missions (AI, Quantum technologies, Cyber-physical)

Don’t Be Fooled by China’s Third Plenum

STEPHEN S. ROACH

In the so-called Third Plenum to be held on July 15-18, China’s senior leadership will have an opportunity to establish the broad outlines of a policy framework that could reshape the country’s course for the next several years. Don’t count on it. There is good reason to think that China watchers in the West have unrealistic expectations of what is to come.

Such was the case in late 2013 when the 18th Central Committee gathered for a Third Plenum of its own. That policy conclave was widely heralded as a historic opportunity for a new leader – Xi Jinping – to put China on a different path after the unfinished reforms of the Hu Jintao era. There was a palpable sense of excitement in the air, and at first blush, the plenum appeared to deliver. A final communiqué listed more than 300 reform proposals covering a broad range of areas – from state-owned enterprises, land policy, and foreign trade to investment reforms and environmental and social-welfare policies.

In the end, however, the Third Plenum of 2013 didn’t meet Westerners’ lofty expectations. The implementation of reforms was disappointing and that plenum came up short on its biggest promise: to give the market a decisive role in guiding China’s economic development. Instead, Xi has presided over an increasingly state-dominated system. The intervening years have been shaped less by the successful execution of plenum-driven reforms, and more by the evolution of a leader-centric system of governance that quickly came to be known as Xi Jinping Thought.

US Ally Intercepts Chinese Spy Drone

Ryan Chan

Japanese fighter jets scrambled on Monday as China sent an unmanned aerial vehicle over a strategic waterway near the southwestern islands of Japan.

A Chinese TB-001 reconnaissance and attack drone flew from the East China Sea and transited the Miyako Strait, the Japanese Defense Ministry's Joint Staff Office said. Newsweek's map roughly illustrates the flight path taken by the drone as it circled over waters south of the strait before returning.

The Miyako Strait separates the Japanese island of Miyako and and Okinawa. It is an important gateway for Chinese naval deployments to the Philippine Sea and wider Pacific Ocean, as well as a potential maritime choke point in wartime due to U.S. and Japanese missile systems installed there.

The Japan Self-Defense Forces regularly monitor and report the movements of Chinese and Russian military aircraft inside Japan's air defense zone, shown in the map as a dashed white line.

China's Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a Newsweek email seeking comment about the TB-001's maneuvers.

For First Time, NATO Accuses China of Supplying Russia’s Attacks on Ukraine

David E. Sanger

After decades of viewing China as a distant threat, NATO on Wednesday accused Beijing of becoming “a decisive enabler of Russia’s war against Ukraine,” and demanded that it halt shipments of “weapons components” and other technology critical to the rebuilding of the Russian military.

The statement is contained in a declaration approved by the 32 leaders of the alliance, shortly before they headed to a dinner at the White House on Wednesday night. It is a major departure for NATO, which until 2019 never officially mentioned China as a concern, and then only in the blandest of language.

Now, for the first time, the alliance has joined in Washington’s denunciations of China’s military support for Russia.

But the declaration contains an implicit threat that China’s growing support for Russia will come at a cost. China “cannot enable the largest war in Europe in recent history without this negatively impacting its interests and reputation,” the declaration said, particularly calling out “its large-scale support for Russia’s defense industrial base.”

Why Turkey's Erdogan Is Breaking With Biden on Ukraine and Gaza

Tom O'Connor

As President Joe Biden looks to muster up international support for Ukraine against Russian battlefield advances and temper criticism of his support for Israel amid its ongoing war in Gaza, the U.S. leader faces an influential dissenting voice from ally Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In written responses shared exclusively with Newsweek as the Turkish leader arrived in Washington, D.C., for the annual NATO summit, Erdogan argued that Western powers were taking wrong and potentially dangerous approaches to the two conflicts, both of which he warned had the potential to spiral into far larger confrontations engulfing the Eastern European and Middle Eastern regions that his nation straddles.

On Ukraine, the spotlight issue of the annual NATO gathering, Erdogan reaffirmed his stance that "we will not be a party to this war" in spite of Biden's calls for greater NATO solidarity against Russia. With pledges of further military aid to Kyiv emanating from Western capitals in the lead-up to the summit, Erdogan was deeply critical of his allies' strategy.

"The solution is not more bloodshed and suffering, but rather a lasting peace achieved through dialogue," Erdogan told Newsweek. "The attitude of some of our Western allies towards Russia has only fueled the fire. This has resulted in more harm than good for Ukraine. In contrast, we have engaged in dialogue with both warring parties in an effort to bring them closer to peace."

Israeli military orders the evacuation of Gaza City, an early target of its war with Hamas

WAFAA SHURAFA AND SAMY MAGDY

The Israeli military urged all Palestinians to leave Gaza City and head south Wednesday, pressing ahead with a fresh offensive across the north, south and center of the embattled territory that has killed dozens of people over the past 48 hours.

The stepped-up military activity came as U.S., Egyptian and Qatari mediators met with Israeli officials in the Qatari capital, Doha, for talks seeking a long-elusive cease-fire deal with Gaza’s Hamas militant group in exchange for the release of dozens of Israeli hostages it is holding.

Israel says it is pursuing Hamas fighters that are regrouping in various parts of Gaza nine months into the war. But heavy strikes in recent days along the length of the territory also could be aimed at putting more pressure on Hamas in the cease-fire talks.

Allies Agree New NATO Integrated Cyber Defence Center

NATO Allies on Wednesday agreed to establish a new centre to better protect against ever more sophisticated cyber threats.

The NATO Integrated Cyber Defence Centre (NICC) will enhance the protection of NATO and Allied networks and the use of cyberspace as an operational domain. The Centre will inform NATO military commanders on possible threats and vulnerabilities in cyberspace, including privately-owned civilian critical infrastructures necessary to support military activities.

The Centre will bring together civilian and military personnel from across the NATO Enterprise, Allied countries and experts from industry. It will leverage advanced technologies to increase our situational awareness in cyberspace and enhance collective resilience and defence.

In line with Allies’ shared values and international obligations, the Centre will promote a norms-based, predictable and secure approach to cyberspace.

The Centre will be based at NATO’s strategic military headquarters at SHAPE in Belgium. Details on the structure and functions of the Centre will be developed in the coming months.

Climate and a Looming World War

Julian Spencer-Churchill

Bargains work best when both parties desperately want something from the other. Much of the developing world, where 6.7 billion (or 83 percent) people live, live in climates and soils under the greatest climate stress, and are desperate for a solution to global warming. By 2100, the projected average increased global temperature range of 1 to 5.7 degree Celsius, will inflict an agriculture drought on thirty percent of the world’s soils. Coupled with desertification, it will result in food deficits in selective areas of up to sixty percent, contributing to resource conflicts and state collapse, triggering in turn a scale of maritime migration heretofore unseen. Already, Africa, with a population of 1.5 billion (a ten-fold increase since 1900, and a seven-fold increase since the end of the Second World War), imports 30 percent of its food supply. By 2100, Africa’s population will more than double to 4 billion (or almost 40 percent of the wold’s total population), magnifying its vulnerability to a disruption of imports caused by a world war. China and India, two candidates for future global hegemon, are also under severe climate stress. Having already passed the de-carbonization point of no return, by some estimates, the world is in the damage control phase of addressing the consequences of a return to Malthusian economics and demographics.

The world’s liberal democracies, because of their attractive economic, political and cultural systems, especially in the areas of personal liberties and individual conscience, pose an existential threat to the world’s authoritarian regimes. Given the ease of societal comparison through social media, even in North Korea, these militarily powerful states are suffering from the steady erosion of their legitimacy. Fearing a color revolution, they have started or are threatening wars against local democratic exemplars in their region. Russia has already invaded Ukraine, and China’s Communist leader Xi Jinping has alerted the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) to be prepared to invade Taiwan starting in 2027. North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-Un, is fully aware that the wealth and success of South Korea poses an existential threat to the Pyongyang regime. The unprecedented and converging threats of color revolution in Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang, and Tehran, has brought these countries closer together, and led to threats of war from every single one of their leaders.

The Roots of World War III

Francis P. Sempa

The American diplomat and historian George F. Kennan called the First World War the “seminal catastrophe” of the 20th century, and he wrote two lengthy books on the events that led to the outbreak of that war: The Decline of Bismarck’s European Order and The Fateful Alliance. He also included one of his lectures on the First World War in his book American Diplomacy. Reading these works of history gives one a better sense of the root causes of that war, which included policies, decisions, and events that occurred decades before June-August 1914.

When the war began in the Balkans after the assassination of the Austrian archduke and his wife in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, few foresaw that the conflict would eventually engulf most of Europe and parts of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, and result in the toppling of four empires (Romanov, Hohenzollern, Hapsburg, and Ottoman), the deaths of more than 10 million combatants, the aerial bombing of cities, the use of poison gas, the carving-up of territories in the Middle East that would engender conflicts that continue to this day, the creation of revolutionary secular ideologies that led to an even more destructive war and a Cold War that followed it. When Kennan reviewed the major diplomatic and international events in the rest of the century, he remarked that “all the lines of inquiry” led back to World War I.

Debt Is Dragging Down the Developing World

Mark Suzman

The violent protests that began in Nairobi in June appeared to erupt suddenly, a direct response to the government’s proposal of a contentious finance bill the month before. But the economic crisis that motivated the legislation, which would have raised taxes in part to pay off the country’s debt, has been years in the making. Kenya’s debt burden has forced its leaders to face a series of impossible choices. Last year, they slashed the federal budget, including health spending, to provide funds for debt servicing; the government also delayed salary payments to civil servants. In February, despite these measures, Nairobi had to issue an international bond at an eye-watering ten percent interest rate, compared with roughly six percent on bonds it issued in 2021, to refinance its existing debts and meet development needs. Kenya is now spending 75 percent of its tax revenue on debt service.

Under pressure from the protests, President William Ruto rejected the finance bill after it received parliamentary approval. But Kenya’s larger crisis remains. Like many countries in Africa and across the developing world, the economic gains Kenya made in the two decades preceding the COVID-19 pandemic are slipping away. In 38 percent of countries eligible for development assistance from the World Bank, per capita GDP is lower today than it was before the pandemic—a drop the bank has described as “a historic reversal in development.”

Israeli documents show expansive government effort to shape US discourse around Gaza war

Lee Fang and Jack Poulson

Last November, just weeks into the war in Gaza, Amichai Chikli, a brash, 42-year-old Likud minister in the Israeli government, was called into the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, to brief lawmakers on what could be done about rising anti-war protests from young people across the United States, especially at elite universities.

“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again now, that I think we should, especially in the United States, be on the offensive,” argued Chikli.

Chikli has since led a targeted push to counter critics of Israel. The Guardian has uncovered evidence showing how Israel has relaunched a controversial entity as part of a broader public relations campaign to target US college campuses and redefine antisemitism in US law.

Seconds after a smoke alarm subsided during the hearing, Chikli assured the lawmakers that there was new money in the budget for a pushback campaign, which was separate from more traditional public relations and paid advertising content produced by the government. It included 80 programs already under way for advocacy efforts “to be done in the ‘Concert’ way”, he said.

From Hamas stronghold to wasteland: What does it mean to defeat the enemy?

HERB KEINON

It’s a throwaway phrase politicians and military leaders use often when talking about the goals of the Gaza war: degrade Hamas’s capabilities so they can’t carry out another October 7 attack.

Most Israelis hear that, shake their head in agreement but don’t really know what that means or looks like.

A four-hour IDF-organized visit Monday with a group of Israeli journalists to what remains of the outskirts of Gaza City’s Shejaia neighborhood – once a Hamas stronghold – helped clarify the picture.

The degrading of Hamas’s ability to carry out another October 7 means bulldozing down any structures, industrial or residential, within a kilometer of the border fence. It means destroying city blocks to get to tunnels. And it means uprooting Hamas tunnels – not merely blowing up their shafts, but digging deep down into the earth to completely uproot those tunnels.

“We are working intensely to destroy all Hamas’s infrastructure to make sure that it will not be able to reestablish itself for years,” said Lt.-Col Gideon Ellastam, the deputy commander of the Paratroopers Brigade. “We are clearing out the territory, both above and below the ground, to take away their capabilities. The objective is to create a completely different security situation to enable the Israeli residents of the border communities to return home.”

A Proxy War of Diminishing Geostrategic Returns

Thomas Cavanna

As Western leaders gather in Washington, D.C. for the 75th anniversary of the NATO alliance on July 9-11, 2024, the pressures for deeper American involvement in Ukraine’s War against Russia have continued to build up. The Biden administration, which immediately signed the $61 billion aid package approved by the US Congress in April 2024 and recently authorized Kyiv’s use of American weapons for limited retaliatory strikes within Russia’s territory, is expected to pledge additional assistance to Ukraine, enhance NATO’s indirect involvement in the war, and provide “a strong bridge” to the country’s membership in the alliance.

That trend is understandable. Russia has proved resilient and made new territorial gains with Iran, North Korea, and (above all) China’s help. It outmatches Ukraine in demographic and industrial-military terms. Moreover, the West must grapple with the rise of the Far Right in the EU, President Biden’s faltering re-election prospects, and the “radical reorientation” that former President Trump envisions for NATO should he return to power.

Yet the Biden administration’s buildup in Ukraine ignores how closely the US has tightened its encirclement of Russia, the diminishing returns of escalating without a clear endgame, and the unsustainability of its current course of action from a domestic political standpoint.

NATO Is Starting To Show Its Age. It's Time for Reform | Opinion

Mohammed Soliman

Starting Tuesday, the grand halls of Washington are hosting a gathering of NATO leaders, marking the 75th anniversary of the most consequential military alliance in modern history. Yet, its celebratory mood may be overshadowed by a stark reality: NATO is a shadow of its Cold War self. The war in Ukraine, while presenting an opportunity for some sort of NATO renewal in terms of purpose, capabilities, and even membership with the inclusion of Finland and Sweden, has also highlighted the limitations of the alliance. Today, as NATO gathers in Washington, a profound question hangs heavy in the air: can this relic of a bipolar world adapt to the fractured geopolitics of the 21st century, or will it crumble, a monument to a bygone era?

European critics point a finger at NATO's excessive dependence on American muscle. This imbalance is a direct result of Europe's anemic investment in the alliance, which has left the U.S. to shoulder the lion's share of the responsibility. Following the Soviet Union's demise, NATO's prime antagonist vanished. The brutal Balkan Wars of the 1990s laid bare a clear difference between American decisiveness and European hesitation. The U.S. led the charge in forming a powerful NATO intervention force. Between its troop deployments, air power, and logistical support, the U.S. made the dominant contribution to the operation in the Balkans, a region strategically important to European stability. While European allies participated, their contributions were significantly smaller.

Media Briefing: Update on the UK and France Elections and NATO Summit

Liana Fix, Charles A. Kupchan, Sebastian Mallaby & Matthias Matthijs

LABOTT: Thank you so much, Will. And thank you to members of the press and members of the CFR Corporate Program for this briefing on the European elections in the U.K. and France, and also the NATO summit taking place in Washington as we speak. We’re meeting as the summit is kicking off, and it’s supposed to be a great celebration—seventy-five years of the alliance. Instead, it’s really kind of turned into this gathering of beleaguered leaders, each grappling with their own political crises and the looming shadow of a potential resurgence by former President Donald Trump.

In Paris, President Macron’s snap parliamentary elections have left it with a divided parliament, and Europe’s unity at risk. Across the channel, Prime Minister Sunak’s gamble on early elections backfired, leading to a historic defeat for the Conservative Party, and a cautious embrace of Keir Starmer’s centrist Labour. And here in the U.S., if you’re turning on your TVs, you see that President Biden’s debate performance continues to spark international and domestic concern, further complicating the transatlantic alliance.

As NATO’s leaders gather under this cloud of uncertainty, obviously the specter of Donald Trump and his NATO skepticism haunts the proceedings. And European allies are bracing for these potential policy shifts. And the internal struggles within the alliance are coming to the fore, particularly over Ukraine’s path to membership. So this briefing will delve into these intricate dynamics in exploring how the NATO summit, along with those elections, will shape the geopolitical landscape.

What Alliances Can Do for America

Paul J. Saunders

As the North Atlantic Treaty Organization conducts its seventy-fifth-anniversary summit in Washington, Americans increasingly wonder about the value of U.S. alliances. Some officials and pundits dismiss such questions as isolationism and either implicitly or explicitly criticize the questioners. Others (including some U.S. allies) seek to prove that America’s alliances are “worth it” with reams of data. Neither chiding nor charts will likely build public support. Instead, U.S. leaders must explain what our allies can do for America today and in the future—and why that matters.

During the three decades following the end of the Cold War, America’s leaders largely failed to define the purpose of U.S. alliances in a simple and straightforward manner. Before 1991, NATO’s purpose was clear: to deter and, if necessary, to defend against and ultimately defeat a Soviet invasion of Europe. After 1991, NATO’s goals included a confusing mixture of extraterritorial peacemaking, counterterrorism, and social work combined with an apparent desire to expand its territorial limits. While America’s allies contributed importantly to this, America’s citizens grew distant from and eventually skeptical toward much if not most of it.

Underlying this is the reality that U.S. leaders failed to define a vision for American foreign policy or U.S. international leadership that Americans were prepared to support. The American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—better known for their cost in irreplaceable lives, money, and leadership attention than for their advancement of U.S. interests—soured Americans on international activism.

U.S. Allies Are Already Worried About Another Round of Trump

Michael Fullilove

Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.

Most of America’s allies would like Joe Biden to win the U.S. presidential election in November. He has been a fine president. His foreign-policy team is first-class. But what if Donald Trump should win instead? In the aftermath of Biden’s poor debate performance, the anxieties in allied capitals are spiraling.

Allied leaders know that Trump views their countries not as friends but as freeloaders. As president, he threw shade on the principle of collective defense and carelessly handled the intelligence that allies provided to Washington. He threatened to withdraw U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula and Europe.

How Ukraine’s Drone Industry Took Flight

Tamar Jacoby

Vladyslav Ripko’s day job is working for the Ukrainian government as a financial analyst. But in the evenings and on weekends, he and his friends make drones for the army. He calls their group an “enthusiast collective.” All 12 members volunteer their time. They raise money for drone components on a crowdfunding platform. One volunteer with a 3D printer makes small parts they cannot buy. The team assembles the components in a Kyiv workshop and sends the finished product to the front using a commercial package service.

Unlike many larger Ukrainian drone producers, Ripko’s amateur collective receives no direct help from the government. Still, he said, he benefits from the government’s campaign to support private businesses building unmanned autonomous vehicles, or UAVs, for the armed forces.

Will Europe’s Front-Line States Have Enough Soldiers to Fight?

Jakub Grygiel

Would the European Union’s eastern front-line states fight back like Ukraine if Russia attacked them? Unfortunately, this is no longer a hypothetical scenario: Hardly a day goes by without a Russian government official or pundit threatening Poland, Finland, or the Baltic states with missile attacks, an invasion, or both. In word and deed, Russian President Vladimir Putin has made clear that he seeks to restore Moscow’s former European empire.

The answer is probably yes, because the countries that have lived under the Kremlin’s rule know from their own long histories what Russian occupation entails. Those memories have been refreshed by today’s carnage in Ukraine, where the massacres of civilians by Russian soldiers in Bucha and Irpin served as a reminder that a loss of territory to Russia is not just a tactical setback, but also a prelude to barbaric violence.

Russia's Speedy Military Rebuild Doesn't Tell the Whole Story

Michelle Grisé

This piece is part of a commentary series on the upcoming NATO summit in Washington in which RAND researchers explore important strategic questions for the alliance as NATO confronts a historic moment, navigating both promise and peril.

As the fighting in Ukraine grinds on, Western policymakers and military officials are thinking ahead to the next war. Given how fast Russia is reconstituting its military, they are asking, when might it be able militarily to launch another large-scale offensive operation?

German Chief of Defense Carsten Breuer told reporters in April that a Russian attack on NATO soil could be possible within five to eight years. Norwegian Chief of Defense Eirik Kristoffersen offered a more alarming assessment this month, suggesting that NATO had only two or three years to prepare for a Russian attack on the alliance. Recent statements by U.S. officials see little slack at all in Russia's buildup. Talking about the state of the Ukraine war in April, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Charles Brown, Jr. told reporters that Russia had “aggressively reconstituted its military force.”

Understanding the speed of reconstitution is vitally important. But the speed doesn't tell the whole story. The nature of Russia's military reconstitution matters, too.Share on Twitter

Understanding the speed of reconstitution is vitally important. It informs prioritization of Ukrainian and Western military investments and lends urgency to planning efforts. But the speed doesn't tell the whole story. The nature of Russia's military reconstitution matters, too. Understanding both will be critical in ensuring that the alliance is not only ready in time, but also ready to contend with the right threat.

AI's Energy Demands Are Out of Control. Welcome to the Internet's Hyper-Consumption Era

REECE ROGERS

RIGHT NOW, GENERATIVE artificial intelligence is impossible to ignore online. An AI-generated summary may randomly appear at the top of the results whenever you do a Google search. Or you might be prompted to try Meta’s AI tool while browsing Facebook. And that ever-present sparkle emoji continues to haunt my dreams.

This rush to add AI to as many online interactions as possible can be traced back to OpenAI’s boundary-pushing release of ChatGPT late in 2022. Silicon Valley soon became obsessed with generative AI, and nearly two years later, AI tools powered by large language models permeate the online user experience.

One unfortunate side effect of this proliferation is that the computing processes required to run generative AI systems are much more resource intensive. This has led to the arrival of the internet’s hyper-consumption era, a period defined by the spread of a new kind of computing that demands excessive amounts of electricity and water to build as well as operate.

“In the back end, these algorithms that need to be running for any generative AI model are fundamentally very, very different from the traditional kind of Google Search or email,” says Sajjad Moazeni, a computer engineering researcher at the University of Washington. “For basic services, those were very light in terms of the amount of data that needed to go back and forth between the processors.” In comparison, Moazeni estimates generative AI applications are around 100 to 1,000 times more computationally intensive.

Meet the AI-powered robots that Big Tech thinks can solve a global labor shortage

Kate Rooney

AI-powered robots are popping up across Silicon Valley. If some industry experts are right, they could help solve a global labor shortage.

Companies like Tesla, Amazon, Microsoft and Nvidia have plowed billions of dollars into what are known as “humanoid” robots. These machines typically stand on two legs, and are designed to perform tasks meant for people.

For now, they’re being deployed in warehouses. But proponents say the possibilities extend well beyond fulfillment centers. These bots could eventually work alongside people, in homes and offices.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been among the leading evangelists. The electric vehicle maker is betting on its Optimus robot, which Musk argues are “going to transform the world to a degree even greater than the cars.”

During the company’s first-quarter earnings call, Musk said Optimus could propel it to a $25 trillion market cap and that it will amount to “a majority of Tesla’s long-term value.” Amazon has backed Agility Robotics, and is already deploying its Digit robots in fulfillment centers.

Why the Data Ocean Is Being Sectioned Off

Gary McGraw, Dan Geer, Harold Figueroa

Welcome to the era of data feudalism. Large language model (LLM) foundation models require huge oceans of data for training—the more data trained upon, the better the result. But while the massive data collections began as a straightforward harvesting of public observables, those collections are now being sectioned off. To describe this situation, consider a land analogy: The first settlers coming into what was a common wilderness are stringing that wilderness with barbed wire. If and when entire enormous parts of the observable internet (say, Google search data, Twitter/X postings, or GitHub code piles) are cordoned off, it is not clear what hegemony will accrue to those first movers; they are little different from squatters trusting their “open and notorious occupation” will lead to adverse possession. Meanwhile, originators of large data sets (for example, the New York Times) have come to realize that their data are valuable in a new way and are demanding compensation even after those data have become part of somebody else’s LLM foundation model. Who can gain access control for the internet’s publicly reachable data pool, and why? Lock-in for early LLM foundation model movers is a very real risk.

Below, we define and discuss data feudalism, providing context by determining where data needed to create the latest generation of machine learning (ML) models come from, how much we need, who owns it, and who should own it. We describe the data ocean and its constituent parts. We discuss recursive pollution. We wonder if less can be more.

First, some definitions.

Machine learning: “We” (meaning computer scientists and practitioners) have been building computer programs for a long time, and we’re pretty good at it. When we know HOW to describe something programmatically, we write a program to do that. Machine learning is what you end up doing when you don’t know HOW to do something in clear enough terms to write a program to do it. After all, if we knew how to solve a certain problem, we would just write a program to do so!

Red Teaming Isn’t Enough

Gabriel Nicholas

Artificial intelligence (AI) may be good at a lot of things, but providing accurate election information isn’t one of them. According to research from the AI Democracy Projects, if you ask Google’s Gemini for the nearest polling place in North Philadelphia, it will tell you (incorrectly) that there are none. If you ask ChatGPT if you can wear a MAGA hat to the polls in Texas, it will tell you (again, incorrectly), to go right ahead.

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)