With Respect to the Truth ...

Review by Bill Doughty

Here's a mind-expanding book that offers cosmic advice for the future – and the advice is most welcome today. 

Can we distinguish between facts and beliefs? Do we understand why some people reject science and secular values of truth, compassion, equality, freedom, courage and responsibility? Are we ready for a world in which humans could be irrelevant but under the control of more authoritarian leaders? Oh, and by the way, "what is the meaning of life" (and why is that the wrong question)?

According to philosopher-scholar Yuval Noah Harari in "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" (Spiegel & Grau, Penguin Random House, 2018), twin revolutions of infotech and biotech are bringing about big data algorithms and bioengineering as the world races to embrace artificial intelligence.

"What we are facing is not the replacement of millions of human workers by millions of individual robots and computers; rather, individual humans are likely to be replaced by integrated networks," Harari writes.

USAF maintainers prepare an MQ-9 Reaper drone at Ali Al Salem Air Base, Kuwait, July 23, 2019. (SSgt. Mozer O. Da Cunha)

This is a challenge already for the U.S. Air Force as it accelerates artificial intelligence technology:

"AI might help create new human jobs in another way. Instead of humans competing with AI, they could focus on servicing and leveraging AI. For example, the replacement of human pilots by drones has eliminated some jobs but created many new opportunities in maintenance, remote control, data analysis, and cybersecurity. The U.S. armed forces need thirty people to operate every unmanned Predator or Reaper drone flying over Syria, while analyzing the resulting harvest of information occupies at least eighty people more. In 2015 the U.S. Air Force lacked sufficient trained humans to fill all these positions, and therefore faced an ironic crisis in manning its unmanned aircraft."

Harari said the future may see "the rise of a new useless class" as we experience higher unemployment and a shortage of skilled workers. "Today, despite the shortage of drone operators and data analysts, the U.S. Air Force is unwilling to fill the gaps with Walmart dropouts."

In a rapid explanation of human history – from the African savannah through the Crusades and effects of the Industrial Revolution to today's Nuclear Age and into tomorrow – Harari provides an ominous warning:

"The challenge posed to humankind in the twenty-first century by infotech and biotech is arguably much bigger than the challenge posed in the previous era by steam engines, railroads, and electricity. And given the immense destructive power of our civilization, we just cannot afford more failed models, world wars, and bloody revolutions. This time around, the failed models might result in nuclear wars, genetically engineered monstrosities, and a complete breakdown of the biosphere. We have to do better than we did in confronting the Industrial Revolution."

Why worry about the growing influence of algorithms? Harari says the shift in authority from human control to networks of algorithms "might open the way to the rise of digital dictatorships."

One important question for our time, he says, is "who owns the data?"

Harari reminds us how George Orwell in "1984" warned of televisions watching us and controlling free will and freedom of choice. Biotechnology, memory storage capability and data assimilation are advancing exponentially and can be controlled centrally. Imagine the new technologies in the hands of authoritarian leaders.

"In fact, we might end up with something that even Orwell could barely imagine: a total surveillance regime that follows not just all our external activities and utterances but can even go under our skin to observe our inner experiences. Consider, for example, what the Kim regime in North Korea might do with the new technology. In the future, each North Korean citizen might be required to wear a biometric bracelet that monitors everything that person does and says, as well as their blood pressure and brain activity. By using our growing understanding of the human brain and drawing on the immense powers of machine learning, the North Korean regime might be able for the first time in history to gauge what each and every citizen is thinking at each and every moment. If a North Korean looks at a picture of Kim Jong-un and the biometric sensors pick up the telltale signs of anger (high blood pressure, increased activity in the amygdala), that person will be in the gulag tomorrow morning."

Harari warns, "Democracy in its present form cannot survive the merger of biotech and infotech," where authoritarian governments could control citizens "even more than in Nazi Germany."

In "Mein Kampf," Hitler wrote about the importance of constant repetition; his propagandist Joseph Goebbels said, "A lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth."

Using lies and intimidation, dictators like Hitler and Joseph Stalin in the previous century controlled people's minds through a cult of personality, belief and anger. "The dictator might not be able to provide citizens with healthcare or equality, but he could make them love him and hate his opponents," writes Harari.

Stalin shamelessly embraced false stories and propaganda as he controlled minds, persecuted dissenters and killed millions of people, including in Ukraine, where his imposed famine became a weapon.

More recently, after Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine and occupied Crimea in 2014 he lied about Russian troops being involved. Later, he and Russian nationalists claimed Ukraine is not a sovereign nation and should be part of Mother Russia.

"Ukrainian citizens, outside observers, and professional historians may well be outraged by this explanation and regard it as a kind of 'atom bomb lie' in the Russian arsenal of deception. To claim that Ukraine does not exist as a nation and as an independent country disregards a long list of historical facts – for example, that during the thousand years of supposed Russian unity, Kiev and Moscow were part of the same country for only about three hundred years. It also violates numerous international laws and treaties that Russia has accepted and that guarantee the sovereignty and borders of independent Ukraine. Most important, it ignores what millions of Ukrainians think about themselves. Don't they have a say about who they are?"

Fortunately, the U.S. Navy stands with its friend, the democratic nation of Ukraine.

Cmdr. Tyson Young, right, CO of USS Carney (DDG 64), meets with a Ukrainian Navy music conductor after a Ukrainian Navy performance during exercise Sea Breeze 2019 in Odesa, Ukraine, July 4, 2019. Sea Breeze is a U.S. and Ukraine co-hosted multinational maritime exercise held in the Black Sea and is designed to enhance interoperability of participating nations and strengthen maritime security and peace within the region. (MC1 Kyle Steckler)

Unfortunately, people throughout the world are unaware of verifiable facts. We are ill-equipped to deal with future "deep fake" attacks, attempts to interfere with free elections, and mind control by digital dictators.

Harari shows that human nature makes us susceptible to false information, and the so-called post-truth era may have started millennia ago with belief systems that reject science and objective reality. Fiction, for many people, is more palpable and believable than fact.

What to do? Harari says we should meditate in order to achieve greater consciousness, which he calls the greatest mystery in the universe. He says, "The big question facing humans isn't 'what is the meaning of life?' but rather 'how do we stop suffering."

This book is a good companion to Harari's other works, "Sapiens" and "Homo Deus." As with his previous works, "21 Questions" goes beyond nations, ethnicities, religions and human consciousness to present a cosmic perspective in examining big questions in search for ultimate truth and wisdom.

Navy's Crowded Future

Review by Bill Doughty

Rosenblatt with the Perceptron in the late 1950s.

While we rightfully focus on the achievements of computer pioneer Rear Adm. Grace Hopper, we can also make room for another scientist who worked on a project funded by the Navy – an early attempt to develop artificial intelligence. This relatively obscure thinker, Frank Rosenblatt, came up with a theory how to teach machines, in the same way people learn language: through repetition, context and feedback.

"One of the first digital machines that learned in this way was the Perceptron, a U.S.-Navy funded attempt at building a thinking, learning machine led by Frank Rosenblatt, a scientist at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory. The goal with the Perceptron, which debuted in 1957, was to be able to classify things that it saw – dogs versus cats, for example. To this end, it was configured a bit like a tiny version of the brain."

So write Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson in "Machine Platform Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future" (W.W. Norton, 2017), a book recommended by Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. John Richardson.

The Perceptron is a tiny example of one of three "rebalancings" happening now, in this case "machines," where we see daily examples of how technology, often held in our hand, takes care of basic math, data transmission and record-keeping.

To show how far we've come from a time of paper-only business, the authors give an example of an area today where machines are not yet fully implemented. It hits close to home, reminding us of what it was like in a time of carbon paper, file carts and file cabinets:

"A disturbing window back to this time exists today at the 'Paperwork Mine,' an underground nightmare of inefficiency operated by the U.S. government's Office of Personnel Management. The site exists to handle the necessary administrative steps when a federal employee retires. Because these steps have not been computerized, however, the routine tasks require 600 people, who work in a supermarket-sized room full fo tall file cabinets; for baroque reasons, this room is located more than 200 feet underground in a former limestone mine. Back in 1977, completing the (quite literal) paperwork for a federal retirement took, on average sixty-one days. Today, using essentially the same processes, it still takes sixty-one days. The state of Texas, which has digitized its process, currently does it in two."

CNO Adm. John Richardson sees innovations at the Naval Surface Warfare
Center, Dahlgren, Va. Jan. 18, 2017. (Photo by MC1 Nathan Laird)

Properly resourced and run, OPM, like other areas of the government could benefit from 21st century innovations. At the beginning of the 1900s electrification changed the face of manufacturing, opening new fields but ending businesses that couldn't or wouldn't adapt.

The authors think about thinking. They outline two systems humans use to think. The two ways mirror nature and nurture – our animal instincts versus "evolutionarily recent" human ability to contemplate and reason.

They cite Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman for his work in behavioral economics and for how he documented two thinking systems. Thinking system 1 is reflexive and relies on biases, intuition, emotions resulting in a reactive response. Thinking system 2 is more reflective, reasoned, based on data and other evidence.

Guess which type of thinking is more machine-like and more likely to have positive results. 

The future is now. Artificial intelligence in machines is making quantum leaps in development, thanks to research and development, and with help from other machines.

Is this something to fear? Is there a dystopian post-Singularity world on the horizon under the banner of Skynet, as depicted in "Terminator"?

The authors are optimistic about the future, even as they run through all the areas that have been transformed in our society, where the Internet is a "shatterer of worlds" and platform for new platforms. 

Here are the worlds shattered, as we once new them: newspapers, music industry, photography, magazines, phone companies, radio, malls and shopping. It was poignant to be reading this book when Toys"R"Us made their announcement this week about going out of business.

In the chaos, however, is opportunity.

We read how Facebook, Apple and Google platforms are transforming our world, both in accessibility and ease-of-use. The authors describe the success of apps like Dropbox, Fitbit, ClassPass, Uber, Waze, 99Degrees Custom, Airbnb, and others.

Einstein said, "Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler," and so we see limitations and balance in changes here and yet to come. In the spirit of Einstein: Make things as free and open as possible but not without security.

"It seems unlikely that the U.S. Department of Defense will ever turn to a digital platform to source the military's next fighter plane or submarine. This is because the market contains very few possible participants (only one buyer and very few sellers). In addition, the transaction is incredibly complex and requires enormous amounts of communication. Markets in which players are few and offerings are complicated will probably be some of the least amenable to platforms."

In the disruptive, often chaotic revolution we are all navigating, McAfee and Brynjolfsson provide this guidebook to explain changes in egalitarianism, connectivity and empowerment.

By the way, the authors believe in capitalism, while lauding President Teddy Roosevelt's trust busting more than a century ago. "Capitalism can be an enormous force for good, but 'crony capitalism' – the act of distorting markets so that friends of the powerful an enrich themselves –should always be rooted out," they write. 

The final area of change in this digital revolution involves the Crowd, another reason for optimism for a world in which freedom of ideas and expression is widespread and spreading.

"For the first time in human history a near majority of humans are now connected," they write. What does this mean in the long run for oppressive regimes in countries that restrict freedom of speech, expression and assembly as the people learn more about free and democratic societies.

Can incidents such as the recent eye-rolling Chinese journalist be quashed once they become viral, or are they out there forever for freethinkers to access and contemplate.

If libraries and hardbound encyclopedias represent the "core" of what's come before, as examples of centers of knowledge, the Internet and Wikipedia show the new "crowd," where collective intelligence and sharing information, centered on Thinking system 2 and properly verified, can educate and enlighten.

In its early years, Wikipedia, which was created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger and relied on public participation, was questioned for its veracity, but as the "Machine Platform Crowd" authors note, there are more good and honest people in the world than there are trolls and other bad actors. Today Wikipedia is nearly always accurate and carefully sourced.

After reading about the Perceptron, I went to Wikipedia to learn more about Rosenblatt and his work.

From Wikipedia: "In a 1958 press conference organized by the US Navy, Rosenblatt made statements about the perceptron that caused a heated controversy among the fledgling AI community; based on Rosenblatt's statements, The New York Times reported the perceptron to be "the embryo of an electronic computer that [the Navy] expects will be able to walk, talk, see, write, reproduce itself and be conscious of its existence."


The new in-crowd allows everyone's voice to be heard. People on the front lines often have the best ideas for improving processes. Smart bosses ask for their workers' suggestions and empower them to be innovative in their approach to their jobs while, wherever possible, including stakeholders.

Aviation Boatswain's Mate 3rd Class Donovan Hampton launches an F-35B assigned to the "Green Knights" of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 121 (VMFA-121) off the flight deck of the amphibious assault ship USS Wasp (LHD 1) March 2, 2018 as part of a routine patrol in the Indo-Pacific region. The Wasp Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG) was conducting a regional patrol in the East China Sea meant to strengthen regional alliances, provide rapid-response capability, and advance the Up-Gunned ESG concept. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Levingston Lewis)

"Smart organizations are figuring out how to take advantage of the crowd to get their problems solved, and for many other purposes," the authors write. Their advice: "decentralize," which is at the heart of the Internet: "The web has already greatly democratized access to information and educational resources."

Thanks to forward thinkers, the Navy is also part of the digital future.

Facing Future with CNO Richardson, former CHINFO Kirby

CNO Adm. Richardson meets with tactics instructors at SNA. (Photo by Lt. Matthew A. Stroup) 

By Bill Doughty

At this week's Surface Navy Association Symposium in Virginia, someone asked Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson what he's reading. 

The CNO reminded the questioner, "Y'know, I actually have a reading list." 

After the crowd chuckled and applauded, the CNO answered that – in addition to the Navy Professional Reading Program list – he has been reading two books that are "future-looking" and not on NPRP. Richardson recommended books that reinforce each other's subjects into a congruent theme.

He suggested "Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future" by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson (W. W. Norton & Company, 2017). The book is a follow up to the authors' "The Second Machine Age." Anyone curious about technological singularity and artificial intelligence will be interested in informed theories about how the world – and the Navy – will change in the decades ahead.

Richardson also recommended "Humility Is the New Smart: Rethinking Human Excellence in the Smart Machine Age" by Edward D. Hess and Katherine Ludwig (Berrett-Kohler, 2017). 

Barnes & Noble published a "Humility Is the New Smart" recommendation by former CNO Adm. (ret.) Gary Roughead: “The forces of the Smart Machine Age are already upon us, and like time and tide they cannot be held back. Hess and Ludwig are out front with this insightful, practical, and compelling guide to navigating, transforming, and leading organizations for this new age in which the nature of work and the workforce will be dramatically different.”

Former CHINFO, Pentagon and State Dept. Spokesperson John Kirby.

Discussion at the SNA symposium included a focus on the future and on the importance of humble, confident leadership to counter insecurity and hubris. 

CNO Richardson advised reading about history, especially World War II history. "Read well-written history," he said, "Hornfischer, Toll ... Pick up any book by those folks and start reading."

On Thursday, Jan. 11 at the U.S. Pacific Fleet Public Affairs Symposium at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, keynote speaker Rear Adm. (ret.) John Kirby, former Chief of Navy Information, Pentagon spokesperson and State Department spokesperson, not only recommended two books but also read passages to make his points.

He also is interested in the future – and how the future has already arrived for communicators and the military.

Kirby recommended "War in 140 Characters: How Social Media Is Reshaping Conflict in the Twenty-First Century" by David Patrikarakos" (Basic Books, 2017) and "Overload: Finding the Truth in Today's Deluge of News" by Bob Schieffer with H. Andrew Schwartz (Rowman &  Littlefield, 2017).

John Kirby, who helped put together former CNO Adm. (ret.) Mike Mullen's Navy Professional Reading Program and shared his own reading list, which we featured on Navy Reads several years ago, is now a commentator on CNN.

Kirby advises: "Read widely, read well."

On his reading list Kirby recommended the best book for writers, the late William Zinsser's "On Writing Well."

Accelerating Change: How to Survive and Thrive

Review by Bill Doughty

The Navy operates in an age of acceleration in a "post-post-Cold War" era. Scientists show we're moving headlong from the Holocene into the Anthropocene, where human population growth, globalization, climate change, and loss or biodiversity are forcing change at exponential speed, and where the United States, China and Russia continue to compete for influence and resources. Meanwhile, Islamist extremists like ISIS coalesce and threaten thanks to social networking and cell phone technology.

That's some of the scene Thomas L. Friedman sets in his latest, "Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016). Friedman is author of "From Beirut to Jerusalem," "The World Is Flat," "Hot, Flat, and Crowded," and "That Used to Be Us."
Globalization affects the interconnected economies of the world. Carbon (now above 400 ppm) causes changes in the atmosphere and biosphere. And Moore's law explains how technology grows exponentially. Combined, these forces bring us to either a precipice or a new beginning – a chance for the United States and the world to "reimagine how we stabilize geopolitics," according to Friedman.

Three-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist/author Thomas Friedman speaks to a packed auditorium
 in Ingersoll Hall, Naval Postgraduate School, June 24, 2016. (Photo by Michael Ehrlich)

"It's important to remember that America is such an important player on the world stage that even small shifts in how we project power can have decisive impacts. And it's this combination of shrinking American power in one part of the world plus the reshaping of the world more broadly by the accelerations in the Market, Mother Nature, and Moore's law that defines the era we are in today, which I call the post-post-Cold War world. It is a world characterized by some very old and some very new forms of geopolitical competition all swirling together at the same time. That is, the traditional great-power competition, primarily among the United States, Russia, and China, is back again (if it really went away) as strong as ever, with the three major powers again jockeying over spheres of influence, along golden-oldie fault lines such as the NATO-Russia frontier or the South China Sea. This competition is propelled by history, geography, and the traditional imperatives of great-power geopolitics, and is reinforced today by the rise of nationalism in Russia and China. It's contours will be determined by the balance of power between these three big nation-states."

As evidence of exponential acceleration of change, Friedman presents the work of Will Steffen published in Anthropocene Review, March 2, 2015, that concludes, "We are now in a no-analogue world." The danger is in how we've (1) breached, (2) almost breached or (3) are about to breach "nine key planetary boundaries": climate change, biodiversity, deforestation, geochemical flows, ocean acidification, freshwater use, atmospheric aerosol loading, introduction of novel entities, and stratospheric ozone layer.


The latter boundary – ensuring the ozone layer is appropriately thick enough to reduce the threat of harmful UV radiation – is a success story and a sign of hope, according to Friedman. "After scientists discovered an ever-widening ozone hole caused by man-made chemicals – chlorofluorocarbons – the world got together and implemented the Montreal Protocol in 1989, banning CFCs, and, as a result, the ozone layer remains safely inside its planetary boundary of losses not greater than 5 percent from preindustrial levels."



Both Mother Nature and humankind can innovate and be highly adaptive, Friedman contends. Nature evolves through natural selection. Humans have the capability to learn, control and adapt their behavior if they have the knowledge, wisdom and will.

In growing acceleration within societies, we see examples of rapid changes. Typewriters are antiques (to be collected by Tom Hanks). Cassette players are now used as a quaint plot devices in movies like "Guardians of the Galaxy." The Confederate Flag came down in South Carolina after the shooting in Charleston in 2015. In recent years the U.S. military changed its attitude about lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender people and their rights to equality. The future will reward resiliency and entrepreneurial adaptability.

Those who will survive and thrive during and after the great acceleration are those who embrace innovation, science and education, based on a bedrock of truth and trust, says Friedman. The future belongs to lifelong learners willing to constantly better themselves and unwilling to accept the average or mediocre.

"We have to make our newfound power of one, the power of machines, the power of many, and the power of flows our friends – and our tools to create abundance within the planetary boundaries – not just our enemies. But organizing ourselves to use them that way will require a level of will, of stewardship, and of collective action the likes of which we have never seen humanity display as a whole. Every day there are new breakthroughs in solar energy, wind power, batteries, and energy efficiency that hold out the hope that we can have clean energy at a scale and price that billions can afford – provided we have the will to put a price on carbon so these technologies can rapidly scale and move down the cost-volume curve. As environmentalists have often noted, we have been great at rising to the occasion after big geopolitical upheavals – after Hitler invaded his neighbors, after Pearl Harbor, after 9/11. But this is the first time in human history that we have to act on a threat we have collectively made to ourselves, to act on it at scale, to act before the full consequences are felt, and to act on behalf of a generation that has not yet been born – and to do it before all the planetary boundaries have been breached."

While Friedman is optimistic, he's also realistic. Rapid acceleration and globalization is a double-edged sword.

"Globalization has always been everything and its opposite – it can be incredibly democratizing and it can concentrate incredible power in giant multinationals; it can be incredibly particularizing – the smallest voices can now be heard everywhere – and incredibly homogenizing, with big brands now able to swamp everything anywhere. It can be incredibly empowering, as small companies and individuals can start global companies overnight, with global customers, suppliers, and collaborators, and it can be incredibly disempowering – big forces can come out of nowhere and crush your business when you never even thought they were in your business. Which way it tips depends on the values and tolls that we bring to these flows."

Recent headlines and scandals about online misbehavior show the challenge to leaders in the accelerating world Friedman describes.

"It turns out that social networks, cheap cell phones, and messaging apps are really good at both enabling and impeding collective action. They enable people to get connected horizontally much more easily and efficiently but they also enable individuals at the bottom to pull down those at the top more easily and efficiently – whether they are allies or enemies. Military strategists will tell you that the network is the most empowered organizational form in this period of technological change; classical hierarchies do not optimize in the flat world, but the network does. Networks undermine command-and-control systems – no matter who is on top – while strengthening the voices of whoever is on the bottom to talk back. Social media is good for collective sharing, but not always so great for collective building; good for collective destruction, but maybe not so good for collective construction; fantastic for generating a flash mob, but not so good at generating a flash consensus on a party platform or a constitution."

A U.S. Navy EA-6B Prowler refuels in Operation Inherent Resolve mission March 20, 2017,
an extended fight against ISIS. (Photo by Senior Airman Joshua A. Hoskins)

Speaking of double-edged swords and "collective destruction"... Misplaced values in the name of what some call a deranged interpretation of Islam and the Koran is at the heart of radical extremists like Daesh/ISIS/ISIL and similar groups that form a "diffuse movement," one that can best be defeated by other Muslims standing up to the death cults, Friedman shows. Till then, the rise of the terrorists has created a "new balance of power."

"During the Cold War, if you wanted to assess the global balance of power you would likely look at the annual survey "The Military Balance," published by the London-based International institute for Strategic Studies, and self-described as the most 'trusted military data on 171 countries: size of armed forces, defense budgets, equipment.' That book would tell you the relative strengths of their armies, navies, and air forces (their hard power), and their 'soft power': the relative strengths of their economies, their societal appeal, and the degree of entrepreneurship in their culture. And if you added up all those numbers, you would have a rough measure of the balance of power between different nation-states. Not anymore. Assessing today's balance of power requires a much wider lens."

Trees grow tall in suburbs in Minnesota, anchoring Friedman's optimism.

Getting to that wider lens requires us to not act like the proverbial frog being slowly boiled and lulled into unconsciousness (put a frog in boiling water and it jumps out; put it in cool water and gradually raise the temperature, and the frog might not act till it's too late). "We are hardwired to consider nature limitless because for so many years nature seemed so limitless – and we were so relatively few and so relatively light a force upon it; how could it be that we cannot devour as much as we want." 

Friedman tells a great story about his encounter with a parking lot attendant (and blogger) at the beginning of "Thank You for Being Late." Throughout the  book he enlightens us with topics as diverse as in Syria, artificial intelligence, Madagascar, Hadoop, generative design, and Brandi Carlile, among dozens of others.

He concludes this book with a personal and heartfelt story about his "anchoring" roots, symbolized in the trees he remembers in his hometown of St. Louis Park, Minnesota.

"Those trees and I had both grown up and out from the same topsoil, and the most important personal, political, and philosophical lesson I took from the journey that is this book is that the more the world demands that we branch out, the more we each need to be anchored in a topsoil of trust that is the foundation of all healthy communities. We must be enriched by that topsoil, and we must enrich it in turn."

During a recent visit to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, geobiologist and author Hope Jaren ("Lab Girl") invited us to think about how plants – seeds, roots, trees, etc. – are depicted and reflected in books. Of course that came to mind in reading the last few pages of Friedman's latest must-read. Highly recommended.

For more on how the Navy must operate in a rapidly accelerating world, branch out and read the CNO's "Design for Maritime Superiority."

'Killing Game'–ISIS & Augmented Reality

Review by Bill Doughty

Radical jihadist movements like ISIS, al Qaeda and Boko Haram attract young people with mental problems–men and women who are subject to addictions and delusions, drawn to hatred, with access to guns, bombs and other weapons, according to author Mark Bourrie, "The Killing Game: Martyrdom, Murder and the Lure of ISIS" (2016, HarperCollins). 

Canada's Bourrie helps us get not only an international perspective but also the historical and scientific context of homegrown terrorism while dissecting the family dynamics of turncoat terrorists.

The international perspective is timely in the wake of recent rampages in Nice, Orlando, Brussels, Baghdad, Bangladesh, Somalia, Turkey and Afghanistan by ISIS-inspired killers.

Today at least 80 people are dead in Kabul after a jihadist suicide bomb attack, and ISIS claimed responsibility.

Recruitment of terrorists has deep roots in history.

Great Britain helped the Confederacy recruit Canadians to fight in the U.S. Civil War. During the Spanish-American War young men from Canada fought in the Spanish Republican Army because they looked "to fascism for solutions to their personal problems and economic messes..."

Haj Amin al-Husseini and Adolf Hitler on 28 November 1941

Similarly, foreign fighters were attracted to Nazi Germany, according to Bourrie, especially in the last years of World War II. "Hitler and his murderous henchman Heinrich Himmler had a strange fascination with Islam. It was, and still is, reciprocated."

Today, the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) and related extremists use sophisticated ways to reach, teach and recruit young people worldwide. They employ new media, promote video games and develop apps, pushing their message of hate and violence on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other platforms. When it comes to ISIS, or ISIL, "No other organization ... set out to find brutal ways to kill and novel ways to publicize atrocities."

"So much of ISIS's war-porn propaganda is directed at ... bored young people who aren't engaged by the consumer ethos of their own society and who feel that adventure is passing them by. They want to step into the video games that have become so important to them and be the heroes that they play on the small screen. As Abu Sumayyah al-Britani, a British fighter with ISIS, posted on Twitter, war is the ultimate in virtual reality."

According to Bourrie, young people grow up playing violent games so routinely that they are "desensitized to the sight of killing."

This affects–and effects–parts of the brain.

Bourrie notes that researchers in China studying the impact of Internet addiction have found that excessive online gaming leads to depression, irritability and impulsiveness and can affect the structure of the brain.

"Anyone who can tap into the minds of young people and connect with their desires and insecurities can exploit them," Bourrie writes. "ISIS's brand of religion, with its simple answers to complex and disturbing modern questions, appeals to people in shattered societies."

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

Fear leads to an attraction to authoritarianism. After World War I, "Mussolini offered a return to the Roman Empire. Hitler offered Germany domination of Europe. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ISIS's leader and self-styled caliph offers the return of the glory days of Islam, when armies ravaged what was left of the eastern Roman Empire."

Bourrie reminds us that millions of Americans struggled to give meaning to the attacks of September 11, 2001, "just as they struggled to turn Pearl Harbor into a crusade against fascism and militarism" in 1941.

How can Western nations prevent ISIS recruitment of mentally unstable, deluded or sociopathic young people in their societies?

Can young would-be terrorists be deprogrammed and reeducated? One of the most important keys lies in the Muslim community, Bourrie writes:

"Radical Islam is vulnerable to several counterattacks. The most potent comes from persuasive, learned Muslims who can argue back against ISIS's simplistic and violent interpretation of Islam. This is already happening, but more Muslims need to get involved, and they need the media skills to be able to face ISIS on the Internet. Moderate Muslims also need to ensure that their mosques and social groups aren't dominated or hijacked by radicals. At the same time, authorities in Canada and other Western countries should back these people up and do more than just arrest terror suspects. They need to look at the way European states work with the families of extremists and develop a ... system that provides effective intervention and support for the relatives of people drawn to extremism. Right now, some Muslims feel intimidated by the extremists. They need protection so they can speak out."

Canada's Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Brian Dickson

He says, "There needs to be even more international cooperation to share information and fight jihadi recruitment." And he says marginalization of Muslim communities is not the answer; hatred is not the answer. He includes a quote from Supreme Court of Canada's Chief Justice Brian Dickson about the dangers of hate speech:

"Hatred is predicated on destruction, and hatred against identifiable groups therefore thrives on insensitivity, bigotry and destruction of both the target group and the values of our society. Hatred in this sense is a most extreme emotion that belies reason; an emotion that, if exercised against members of an identifiable group, implies that those individuals are to be despised, scorned, denied respect and made subject to ill-treatment on the basis of group affiliation."

Hate begets hate. People who fear and hate, for different reasons, cause death and destruction every day. Only a small percentage of violent deaths in the United States are caused by violent Islamist extremists. 

Remembering victims in Nice, France.

Bourrie reminds us of mass murders by white supremacists in Charleston, South Carolina (9 African Americans gunned down); Oslo, Norway in 2011 (77 people, mostly children, murdered); and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 2001 (when Timothy McVeigh assassinated 168 men, women and children). An attack in Munich, Germany yesterday killed 9 people and occurred five years, to the day, of the Norway massacre.

But it's sobering to consider the scale of hatred and killing in the name of Islam worldwide in recent decades, especially in the last few years. Wikipedia publishes a list, which as this gets posted hasn't been updated with the most recent attacks–including today's horrific suicide bombings in Kabul, reportedly part of ongoing Sunni-Shiite hatred.

Bourrie concludes:

"It's my view that we're seeing the beginning of a general war in the Islamic world. It may be fought simultaneously, or the fighting may move from one country to another. Internal forces will tear apart Saudi Arabia and continue to threaten the regime in Iran. Shiites, backed by Tehran, push against Sunnis backed by the Saudis. The regime in Egypt, the most populous country in the region, survives because the army still has the ability to suppress Islamism, but time may be running out for Egypt's generals."

Meanwhile the radical jihadists and other extremists continue their spew of propaganda, trying to entice young people with promises of sex, glory, kittens and personalized iPhone covers. "One fact ISIS propaganda never mentions is that–if the fates of known Western fighters are any indication–ISIS fighters don't usually live long." 



Kudos to Patrick Crean Editions and HarperCollins for the disconcerting cover with blazing blue eyes, remarkably similar to the face of a great folk singer who is the antithesis of hatred and is instead dedicated to understanding, hope and love–James Taylor ("You've Got a Friend" and "Fire and Rain")–which makes the impact of the cover that more powerful.



Here's to "understanding, hope and love" in the real world and in augmented reality now and in the future.

Reading China's Big Changes in 'Little Rice'

Review by Bill Doughty

Shanghai at night.

Like his landmark "Here Comes Everybody" (Penguin Press, 2008), Clay Shirky begins "Little Rice: Smartphones, Xiaomi, and the Chinese Dream" (Columbia Global Reports, 2015) with a story about searching for a phone.

This time Professor Shirky is the one looking. What he finds in a Shanghai subway station mall – and the discoveries it reveals – are captured in this slim book about China, a country "open to business but closed to criticism."

Xiaomi (pronounced "show" as in "shower" and mi as in "me") makes smartphones and is compared by some as the Apple of China. How do smartphones, social media and access to information mesh in the "Middle (Central) Kingdom"?

Using Xiaomi and the phone as a platform, Shirky writes about China's evolution especially since the passing of communism and rise of autocratic capitalism. "Beijing wants a country whose citizens enjoy a high degree of economic freedom, a high degree of personal freedom, and a low degree of political freedom."

Using the market, Deng Xiaoping led China away from the devastating policies of Mao Zedong, in which tens of millions of Chinese died from famine. Poverty "plummeted in a single generation, from 84 percent in 1981 to 13 percent by 2008," from "bare subsistence to broad comfort."

President Xi Jingling during a summit visit to Washington D.C. in September 2015.

In the face of growing wealth and income inequality President Xi Jinping oversees the current Chinese Dream, Shirky writes. The dream is tied to better communication, transportation and housing, "very much like the American one," where "if you work hard, your life will improve, and that improvement will include material comfort of a home and a car."

"This market-supported bargain has worked better than almost anyone expected, but the days when the rising tide really did lift all boats, and where the economic tide was rising consistently quickly, are now ending. The Chinese Dream is Xi's attempt to deal with the end of the easy growth. The moderately prosperous society he is proposing to (comprehensively) build is a way of trying to deflate the rising expectations of the middle class for both marked economic and political improvement. These are all entries in his longer-term goal of bringing China's single-party system into some sort of self-governing norm, while at the same time convincing the Chinese masses to accept a slowing economy and significant income inequality."

Clay Shirky at a TED Talks presentation.

Shirky's "Little Rice" (the literal definition of Xiaomi), follows insights he revealed in "Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity In a Connected Age" (Penguin Press, 2010) about collaboration, innovation, intrinsic motivation and civic engagement.

Shirky riffs on human nature, a new drive for quality and innovation in China, and the role of smartphones in society.

"Xiaomi also means something for how the world will get connected. Mobile phones are the most broadly desired category of complex goods in the world, beating out their only rivals, cars and televisions, by a country kilometer. The mobile phone is also becoming the universal source of connectivity for most of the world's population, increasingly the gateway to every form of content other than paintings, and to every form of commerce other than haggling. Thanks to the mobile phone, the developing world, and therefore a majority of the human population, has gotten connected in the last twenty years. In the next ten, a majority of them will move from simple phones to real networked computers. Though Apple invented the smartphone, and Samsung spread it, it is Xiaomi who showed the world how to create a defensible market between luxurious and crappy, and to scale up to meet the rising demand of the rapidly expanding and increasingly global middle class."

New York University library in Shanghai.

Shirky, who teaches at New York University, Shanghai, says we are experiencing a "golden age of writing about China." He provides a list of "further readings" at the end of "Little Rice."

Evan Osno's "Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China" (FSG, 2014). "This is simply the best book on China today."

Peter Hessler's "Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present" (Harper, 2006) and "Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory."

James Fallows's "Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China" (Vintage, 2008) and "China Airborne" (Pantheon, 2012).

Ezra Vogel's "Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China" (Belknap Press, 2011).

Jonathan Spence's "The Search for Modern China" (Norton, 1990).

Harvard University's ten-part online class by professors Peter Bol and William Kirby, and narrated by Christopher Lydon, "China" available at www.edx.org/xseries/chinax.

Shaun Rein's "The End of Copycat China: The Rise of Creativity, Innovation, and Individualism in Asia" (Wiley, 2014).

Edward Tse's "China's Disruptors: How Alibaba, Xiaomi, Tencent, and Other Companies are Changing the Rules of Business" (Portfolio, 2015).

Susan Shirk's "Changing Media, Changing China" (Oxford University Press, 2010).

Innovators: Free Your Mind & The Rest Will Follow

Review by Bill Doughty

2015! Time to take a deep breath and consider the most important inventions affecting our lives: the computer and the Internet. Time to think of their creators: "pioneers, hackers, inventors, entrepreneurs," as Walter Isaacson calls them in his recent book "The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution."

Milestones revealed from a 2015 perspective (not meant to be all-inclusive):

• 80 years ago, 1935 – Tommy Flowers pioneers use of vacuum tubes as on-off switches in circuits; two years later Alan Turing publishes "On Computable Numbers," and Howard Aiken proposes construction of a large digital computer. (Aiken, born in Hoboken, New Jersey, would later become a commander in the Naval Reserve.)

• 70 years ago, 1945 – Six women programmers of ENIAC are sent to Aberdeen for training.The previous year Lt. Grace Hopper graduates first in her class from the Naval Reserve Midshipmen's School of Smith College in Massachusetts; in 1952 she develops the first computer compiler. The first microchip would be developed by the end of the 50s.

• 50 years ago, 1965 – Ted Nelson publishes the first article about "hypertext" and Moore's Law predicts microchips will double in power every year or so.

• 40 years ago, 1975 – Paul Allen and Bill Gates write BASIC for Altair and form Microsoft, while Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak launch the Apple I.

  

  Steve Jobs unveils the Mac.

• 35 years ago, 1980 – IBM commissions Microsoft to develop an operating system for the PC; four years later in 1984 Apple introduces the Macintosh.

• Over the past 20 years – Larry Page and Sergey Brin launch Google (1998), Ev Williams launches Blogger (1999), Jimmy Wales with Larry Sanger launches Wikipedia (2001), and the world welcomes Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. 

Isaacson presents the history of digital innovation and, critically, analyzes how success was achieved through teamwork of creative collaborators. "The tale of their teamwork is important because we don't often focus on how central that skill is to innovation."

"The Innovators" starts with a timeline of milestones, includes short biographies of key characters and walks us through the development of the computer, programming, the microchip, video games, the Internet, the personal computer, software, and online ultimate connectivity.

Questions he attempts to answer:

"What ingredients produced their creative leaps? What skills proved most useful? How did they lead and collaborate? Why did some succeed and others fail? ... I also explore the social and cultural forces that provide the atmosphere for innovation. For the birth of the digital age, this included a research ecosystem that was nurtured by government spending and managed by a  military-industrial-academic collaboration. Intersecting with that was a loose alliance of community organizers, communal-minded hippies, do-it-yourself hobbyists, and homebrew hackers, most of whom were suspicious of centralized authority."

Lady Ada conceived of the computer.

Just over 170 years ago Ada, Countess of Lovelace (poet Lord Byron's daughter), collaborated with mathematician and philosopher Charles Babbage and published "Notes" to describe the concept for an Analytic Engine – a machine matched with the ability to process numbers and any information that could be expressed in symbols to produce calculations and solve problems. "In other words, she envisioned the modern computer." She is admired today as an early champion of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

Women continued to contribute to the development of the digital age, particularly in the area of programming and language – from ENIAC at the University of Pennsylvania to Mach I at Harvard near the end of World War II, where Grace Hopper came into her own. Hopper developed the world's first working compiler, Isaacson notes, which translated mathematical code into machine language accessible to human users.

President Reagan meets then Capt. Grace Hopper in 1983.

She was the ultimate free-thinking team player.

"Like a salty crew member, Hopper valued an all-hands-on-deck style of collaboration, and she helped develop the open-source method of innovation by sending out her initial versions of the compiler to her friends and acquaintances in the programming world and asking them to make improvements. She used the same open development process when she served as the technical lead in coordinating the creation of COBOL, the first cross-platform standardized business language for computers. Her instinct that programming should be machine-independent was a reflection of her preference for collegiality; even machines, she felt, should work well together. It also showed her early understanding of a defining fact of the computer age: that hardware would become commoditized and that programming would be where the true value resided. Until Bill Gates came along, it was an insight that eluded most of the men."

Hopper eventually became a commodore (rear admiral). Her namesake, USS Hopper (DDG 70), is homeported at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. 

Among Isaacson's other conclusions:

• The importance of not just peer collaboration but also intergenerational collaboration.

• Aristotle was right that humans are social animals.

• Collaboration leads to a forged partnership or symbiosis between people and machines.

• The Digital Revolution wrested control of information from central authority only and put it in the hands of individuals at the speed of light. (Free your mind and the rest will follow.)  It's no wonder totalitarian states and ideologies want to control the Web.

• It's important to pair visionaries who come up with the strategic ideas with operating managers who can execute them tactically.

• Foresight: "The best innovators were those who understood the trajectory of technological change and took the baton from innovators who preceded them."

• Success came about through a balance in government, market, and peer sharing, where no leg of the stool is  too long.

• "Finally, I was struck by how the truest creativity of the digital age came from those who were able to connect the arts and sciences." Think Leonardo da Vinci and Vitruvian Man, pictured below.

Isaacson, who authored "Steve Jobs," "Einstein: His LIfe and Universe," "Benjamin Franklin: An American Life," and "Kissinger: A Biography," as well as other works, employs his usual detailed research, carefully selected anecdotes and remarkable insights to create this book.

Most of the profiles feature the men who achieved key milestones in the digital age. But it's noteworthy that "The Innovators" begins and ends with a focus on women, including those who conceived the very idea of the computer.

His final chapter, "Ada Forever," discusses whether machines can ever fully replicate human intelligence. In other words, as Kurzweil and others ask, will we reach the singularity predicted in 2030? Or whether, instead of replacing humans, machines will become their constant companions. For much of the world, perhaps that's already happening.

(I'm posting this during the Rose Bowl ... Check out the link between Oregon quarterback Marcus Mariota and "Unbroken's" Louis Zamperini in a recent Navy Reads post.)