General officer

Nuclear war would be more devastating for Earth's climate than cold war predictions – even with fewer weapons

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, August 1, 2023

A war in which even a fraction of these bombs were detonated would create blast waves and fires capable of killing millions of people almost instantly.

Key Points: 
  • A war in which even a fraction of these bombs were detonated would create blast waves and fires capable of killing millions of people almost instantly.
  • For the last four decades, scientists modelling the Earth system have run computer simulations to find out.
  • And second, this global layer of smog would block out sunlight, causing conditions at Earth’s surface to become rapidly colder, dryer and darker.
  • Climate modelling shows the reduced sunlight would plunge global temperatures by up to 10˚C for nearly a decade.

Clear and present danger

    • At the height of the arms race in the mid-1980s there were over 65,000 nuclear weapons.
    • What starts with one tactical nuclear strike or a tit-for-tat exchange between two countries could escalate to an all-out nuclear war ending in utter destruction.
    • A global nuclear war including the US, Europe and China could result in 360 million people dead and condemn nearly 5.3 billion people to starvation in the two years following the exchange.

The threat remains

    • The international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize that same year for its work in highlighting the catastrophe that would result from any use of nuclear weapons.
    • The threat of nuclear war has not gone away, and a nuclear ice age which would doom much of life on Earth for millennia is still a possibility.
    • Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue.

ESMA performs an analysis of the cross-border investment activity of firms

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, July 19, 2023

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the EU’s financial markets regulator and supervisor, and national competent authorities (NCAs) completed an analysis of the cross-border provision of investment services during 2022.

Key Points: 
  • The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the EU’s financial markets regulator and supervisor, and national competent authorities (NCAs) completed an analysis of the cross-border provision of investment services during 2022.
  • The increase in the cross-border provision of financial services has benefits for consumers and firms, as it fosters competition, expands the offer available to consumers and the market for firms.
Next steps
    • [2] Firms that provided investment services to less than 50 retail clients in any other Member State where not included in the scope of the data collection exercise.
    • This approach has allowed for clear proportionality in conducting the exercise, with no burden for firms below the materiality threshold.


      Further information:

Solveig Kleiveland

Scammers impersonate funeral home staff to prey on mourning families. Can it get any lower?

Retrieved on: 
Friday, July 14, 2023

The imposters pretend to be from the funeral home and say that, unless the family pays more money immediately, the funeral will be canceled.

Key Points: 
  • The imposters pretend to be from the funeral home and say that, unless the family pays more money immediately, the funeral will be canceled.
  • If there was a Scammers Hall of Shame, this one would make the Top 10 List, without question.
  • Use a phone number that you know is real, not one you got from the scammer’s text, email, or phone call.
  • If you don’t know it, you’ll find it on the General Price List you got from the funeral home.

Highlights - Debates on Primacy of EU law and Protocol No 3 on the Statute of the CoJ - Committee on Legal Affairs

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, July 12, 2023

Debates on Primacy of EU law and Protocol No 3 on the Statute of the CoJ

Key Points: 
  • Debates on Primacy of EU law and Protocol No 3 on the Statute of the CoJ
    12-07-2023 - 14:00
    During the meeting on 19 July, JURI Members will vote on a mandate for the rapporteur to submit amendments to the General budget of the EU for the financial year 2024.
  • The Members will also consider amendments to Protocol No 3 on the Statute of the COJ (2022/0906(COD)) and the draft report on the principle of primacy of EU law (2022/2143(INI)).
  • The Committee will hold an exchange of views on virtual worlds (2023/2062(INI)) and hear a reporting back on the JURI-AFCO mission to Brno, Czech Republic, on the subject of principle of primacy of EU law.

What is 'AI alignment'? Silicon Valley's favourite way to think about AI safety misses the real issues

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, July 12, 2023

Governments, researchers and developers have highlighted AI safety.

Key Points: 
  • Governments, researchers and developers have highlighted AI safety.
  • The EU is moving on AI regulation, the UK is convening an AI safety summit, and Australia is seeking input on supporting safe and responsible AI.

What is ‘AI alignment’?

    • Alignment research tends to focus on hypothetical future AI systems, more advanced than today’s technology.
    • There are a host of technical and philosophical proposals with esoteric names such as “Cooperative Inverse Reinforcement Learning” and “Iterated Amplification”.
    • OpenAI, the company behind the ChatGPT chatbot and the DALL-E image generator among other products, recently outlined its plans for “superalignment”.

Why is alignment supposed to be so important?

    • Advocates of the alignment approach to AI safety say failing to “solve” AI alignment could lead to huge risks, up to and including the extinction of humanity.
    • Even leaving those concerns aside, alignment (let alone “superalignment”) is a limited and inadequate way to think about safety and AI systems.

Three problems with AI alignment

    • Alignment research typically aims at vague objectives like building “provably beneficial” systems, or “preventing human extinction”.
    • A super-intelligent AI could meet them and still do immense harm.
    • Making safe AI will involve addressing a whole range of issues including the political economy of AI development, exploitative labour practices, problems with misappropriated data, and ecological impacts.
    • Finally, treating AI alignment as a technical problem puts power in the wrong place.

If not alignment, then what?

    • The idea of “AI alignment” positions AI companies as guardians protecting users from rogue AI, rather than the developers of AI systems that may well perpetrate harms.
    • While safe AI is certainly a good objective, approaching this by narrowly focusing on “alignment” ignores too many pressing and potential harms.
    • As a social and technical problem to be addressed first of all by acknowledging and addressing existing harms.

Highlights - EU Budget 2024 - budgetary amendments - 19.7.23 - Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, July 12, 2023

EU Budget 2024 - budgetary amendments - 19.7.23

Key Points: 
  • EU Budget 2024 - budgetary amendments - 19.7.23
    11-07-2023 - 14:25
    On Wednesday, 19 July 2023, the FEMM Committee will vote on the budgetary amendments to the General EU budget for the financial year 2024 - all sections.
  • Members tabled amendments to the EU general budget 2024 focusing on increases in the budget lines on items such as gender equality, sexual and reproductive health (including fertility treatment), gender based violence, and EIGE's staffing needs.

Donald Trump has been charged under the US Espionage Act – but is this 1917 law still up to the job?

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, June 29, 2023

He has been charged with 37 violations of the US Espionage Act, and pleaded not guilty.

Key Points: 
  • He has been charged with 37 violations of the US Espionage Act, and pleaded not guilty.
  • The Espionage Act of 1917 could have a better name.
  • Those who violate it are not necessarily spying on the US or selling its secrets to a foreign adversary.
  • Simply mishandling secret information could be a violation if done wilfully, or if that mistake was covered up.

Millions have clearance

    • Today, 5.1 million people in the US have a security clearance – of whom 1.25 million have top-secret clearance.
    • As a privilege that takes months to obtain, it is understandable that some people like to brag about their access.
    • Listening to the CNN recording, one might conclude that Trump was also showing off Pentagon plans to a staffer not cleared to see them.
    • Espionage Act violations come in many different forms and can result in a wide variety of punishments, if any at all.

Changing times

    • In a perfect world, public officials would see these as a lodestar for their service.
    • Of course, these principles are vague and impossible to codify into law.
    • By that standard, every MI6 employee should be fired immediately, but what would that do for national security?

Latest news - DLAT Meeting of 26 June 2023 - Delegation to the Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, June 28, 2023

DLAT Meeting of 26 June 2023

Key Points: 
  • DLAT Meeting of 26 June 2023
    27-06-2023 - 16:24
    The last meeting of the Delegation to the Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly (DLAT) took place on 26 June 2023 and was dedicated to the preparation the 15th EuroLat plenary session to take place in Madrid from 24-27 July 2023 and the Preparation of the Message by the Co-Chairs to the EU-CELAC Summit, taking place in Brussels (Belgium) from 17-18 July 2023.
  • It also included an Exchange of views on the conclusions of the XXVIII Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government that had taken on 25 March 2023, in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, with the participation of Andres Allamand, Secretary-General of the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB www.segib.org).
  • It also included an Exchange of views on the conclusions of the XXVIII Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government that had taken on 25 March 2023, in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, with the participation of Andres Allamand, Secretary-General of the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB www.segib.org).

Wagner's mutiny punctured Putin's 'strongman' image and exposed cracks in his rule

Retrieved on: 
Sunday, June 25, 2023

The departing Wagner troops were given a heroes’ send-off by some residents of Rostov-on-Don – the southern Russian town they had taken control over without firing shot earlier in the day.

Key Points: 
  • The departing Wagner troops were given a heroes’ send-off by some residents of Rostov-on-Don – the southern Russian town they had taken control over without firing shot earlier in the day.
  • The events of June 24 had observers searching for the right term to describe what was going on: Was this a coup attempt, a mutiny, an insurrection?
  • More radically, Prigozhin may have hoped that he would receive support from elements in the Russian military.

Putin’s impotence

    • Prigozhin’s abortive insurrection has punctured the “strongman” image of President Vladimir Putin, both for world leaders and for ordinary Russians.
    • Putin was forced to make a televised address at 10:00 a.m. local time on June 24 describing the revolt as a “stab in the back” and calling for harsh punishment of the mutineers.
    • But it was the intervention of Belarus President Lukashenko that brought about an end to the mutiny, not any words or actions from Putin.

Nationalist discontent

    • It is hard to imagine that his propagandists will be able to argue that Prigozhin is also a tool of the West.
    • Perhaps, also, Putin had come to believe his own propaganda: that nobody could be more nationalist than Putin himself, and that Russia and Putin were one and the same thing – echoing Presidential aide Vyacheslav Volodin’s 2014 comment “No Putin, no Russia”.
    • Certainly prior to the Wagner mutiny, there were growing winds of discontent among nationalists.
    • Prigozhin may now be in the Belarusian capital Minsk, where theoretically at least he can do less damage to Putin.

A lame duck president?

    • Prigozhin’s Wagner group was created with his blessing and promoted by the Russian president.
    • It was not until July 2022 that Wagner was officially acknowledged to be fighting in the Ukraine war.
    • But over the past six months, they have played an increasingly prominent role, and have been rewarded with praise in the Russian media.
    • But there can be no doubt that the aborted mutiny has exposed profound structural flaws in the Russian system of rule.

As Ukraine takes the fight to Russians, signs of unease in Moscow over war's progress

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, June 20, 2023

The meeting was unusual: In recent months, Putin has avoided public statements about the war and postponed his annual Russia Day phone-in show scheduled for June.

Key Points: 
  • The meeting was unusual: In recent months, Putin has avoided public statements about the war and postponed his annual Russia Day phone-in show scheduled for June.
  • He similarly canceled both the June call-in in 2022 as well as his annual news conference in December.

On the defensive?

    • These developments further undermine Putin’s argument that this is a “special military operation” and not a war, and that life can continue as normal for ordinary Russians.
    • At the same time, Putin is facing a political challenge from Yevgeny Prigozhin, the erstwhile chef-turned-mercenary leader.
    • Prigozhin heads the Wagner Group, a private company that has recruited some 50,000 fighters for the Ukraine war on behalf of Moscow.
    • They played a key role in the capture of the Ukrainian city Bakhmut, which fell on May 20 after a 224-day siege.

Facing questions

    • With the background of more open criticism of a war that has now blown back across the Russian border, Putin faced some tough questions at the meeting with war correspondents.
    • Another asked why different regions are allowed to pay different bonuses to contract soldiers from their area.
    • In response, Putin could only offer that Russia is a federal system, and regions spend what they can afford.

Desperate measures

    • However, members of the Russian elite seem to share the growing unease aired among the bloggers.
    • On May 20-21, Russian officials and policy experts attended a meeting of the influential Council on Foreign and Security Policy think tank.
    • Judging by reports from people who attended, such as State Duma Deputy Konstantin Zatulin, there was a clear sense that the war is going badly.
    • Perhaps the most famous mercenary of all time, Albrecht Von Wallenstein, successfully commanded an army of 50,000 during the Thirty Years’ War.