Bitcoin Clark

Trade, Terror, Oil Spills Bitcoin expansion is vital to Somalian remittances---banks blocking them now Jon Matonis 12, Forbes, "The Somali American Remittance Dilemma", 5/12, www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/05/12/the-somali-american-remittance-dilemma/ By threatening to close their Wells Fargo and U.S. Bancorp accounts this week, a group representing Somali Americans has pushed the ongoing hawala remittance issue to a head. For months now, Somalis in Minnesota have been barred from making the small regular transfers to their family members in Somalia that they have been making for years. ¶ According to American Banker, “Bank

officials say they sympathize with the plight of the expatriates but that there is no clear way to process the payments comfortably within federal rules. The problem lies in Somalia’s money services businesses. Remittance there is done through a loose network of MSBs known as hawalas. U.S.-based hawalas work with banks to wire the money to hawalas in Somalia.” Since hawalas in Somalia are unregulated, the U.S. government worries that such intermediaries could assist in funding terrorism.¶ Unfortunately, it’s not an isolated incident. This scenario is likely to happen more and more as onerous Bank Secrecy and USA Patriot Acts make it increasingly difficult for financial institutions to be in full compliance with anti-money laundering regulations. Instead of trying to comply, they are electing to opt out so as not to encounter heavy federal fines. It sure would be nice if the world had a decentralized peer-to-peer digital currency that could be transferred to mobile devices in a secure fashion .¶ Wait a minute! Doesn’t bitcoin allow for rapid and trustworthy international value transfer? Isn’t bitcoin fairly easy to obtain in the developed economies of North America and Europe? Doesn’t Somalia have good telecommunications infrastructure supporting mobile phones?¶ Here’s how the bitcoin money remittance process would work. A hard-working honest Somali American wishes to send the equivalent of $150 to his mother in Somalia so he purchases bitcoin at one of the many exchanges that accept cash deposits at banks for bitcoin. Alternatively, our would-be remitter could use the Bitcoin OTC (over-the-counter) exchange and arrange a person-to-person sale based on reputation history. Once the bitcoin is stored safely in the remitter’s client wallet, he would ask the overseas recipient to generate a bitcoin receiving address using one of the many bitcoin wallet apps for Android. [Sorry but Apple's App Store is currently restricting bitcoin wallet apps with send or receive capability.] ¶ After his mother in Somalia has received and confirmed the bitcoin transaction (approximately 10 minutes), she would be able to maintain the bitcoin balance or change it out into her local currency, the Somali

Bitcoin exchangers are already springing up in many countries around the world including Brazil, Latvia, and Philippines. If it hasn’t happened already, a savvy merchant in Somalia will start accepting bitcoin for Somali shillings. Or a traditional currency exchange dealer could get in on the action too — the spreads are certainly there.¶ In September 2010, the mobile penetration rate in Somalia was estimated at 25.84% shilling.

over a population estimate of 9.9 million. Since the financial flow would be principally in U.S. dollars to bitcoin to Somali shillings, several aggregators could make a market in bitcoin and then sell their bitcoin in the market to other intermediaries. All it takes is a few Somalia-based bitcoin outlets to open up their economy to the rest of the world economy. ¶ As

a distributed network, bitcoin possesses the capability to route around interference and disruption. In fact, this was a key design consideration as resiliency has grown to become an imperative for privacy-enhancing electronic cash. Its detractors remind me of the holy papacy being fearful of the printing press because it allowed for individual interpretation and diminished mankind’s reliance on the anointed biblical teachers . All remittances have stopped now---new avenues like Bitcoin are vital to preventing al-Shabaab terrorism and piracy Madeleine Moreau 2/24, Global Risk Insights, "Halt of remittances threatens stability in Somalia", 2015, globalriskinsights.com/2015/02/halt-of-remittances-threatens-stability-in-somalia/

Increasing pressure on U.S. banks has led to a complete halt of remittance payments from Somali immigrants to family and friends back home. The decision puts banks in a frustrating position between government officials who cite the need to monitor cash transfers to terrorist groups and humanitarian experts who say remittances are an integral part of Somalia’s national

Last week, the last U.S. bank accepting money transfers from Somali immigrants to relatives living back home officially halted all transactions. Government institutions have made it a priority to monitor these cash transfers more closely , including stepping prosecution of banks when transfer agencies they service have been caught sending cash to illicit recipients. ¶ The U.S. Treasury Department and the FBI cite concerns that economy.¶

Somali immigrants could be sympathetic to radical Islamic groups such as Al Shabaab operating within Somalia and use the money to fund their operations .¶ Humanitarian institutions such as Oxfam America, however, explain that remittance payments are a large part of Somalia’s national economy. Somali immigrants living in the U.S. warn of family and friends not being able to survive. ¶ To strike a balance of these political risks, a better system need to be put in place to both ensure greater transparency in cash transfers while also encouraging the economic opportunity that remittance payments offer .¶ Remittances key to national economy¶ Somalia is one of the poorest, most unstable countries in the world. As a result of years of civil war and violence, thousands have fled the country in hopes of a better life. The U.S. hosts some 80,000 Somali migrants who work and send portions of their income to family and friends back home.¶ A study by Oxfam America indicates that of the $1.3 billion in remittances being sent to Somalia annually, $215 million

cash transfer are significant, because after years of war Somalia still does not have a central banking system. There are also no official international transfer companies such as Western Union in the country.¶ As a result, families living abroad have had to rely upon informal networks known as “hawalas” to deliver money to relatives back home. One-third of the nation’s economy is believed to be dependent on these remittances. The Merchants Bank of California, the last U.S. bank to shut down remittance transfers, handled 60-80% of these payments.¶ Humanitarian experts say that the money being sent from families abroad is key to filling in the gap of a poor central banking system, and could have a devastating effect on the health of citizens living there.¶ In an interview with Al Jazeera, Ifrah Ahmed, a 25-year-old law student in New York who was born in Somalia come from immigrants living in the US. ¶ These

but raised in Seattle, used to send $100 to $300 a month back home to relatives. She stresses the importance of these funds in supporting her family:¶ “Even though you send remittances to one person, the amount of people that money affects is incredible. If we send money to my aunt, not only will she feed her children, she will feed her neighbors as well, because they may not get remittances from abroad.” ¶ Fear of terrorist

Government institutions, however, have put increasing pressure on banks that offer cash transfers to Somalia so as to ensure that the funds are not being used to fund terrorist operations . funding¶

Officials explain that because the cash transfers are operated by the informal hawala networks, it is harder to monitor where remittance payments are being sent exactly.¶ The

added pressure has made these transactions very risky for U.S. banks, which is why many of them shut down transfers .¶ Treasury Undersecretary David S. Cohen said in a recent statement that there are “real money laundering and terrorist financing risks” associated with these cash payments. The government is working to establish a more secure system so that “legitimate customers” are receiving funds.¶ In addition, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki has also said that these cash transfers are not as significant to the nation’s economy, saying it would be a “stretch” to connect remittances to economic opportunity in Somalia. ¶ The U.S.

Al Shabaab a terrorist organization, as it continues to carry out violent operations in Somalia that threaten US interests. Officials also note the rise of piracy off the coast of the country, which has seized government deems

U.S. ships in the past.¶ Last month, law enforcement officials arrested a man from Northern Virginia who was allegedly funneling money toward

cutting off these funds could exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in Somalia and actually strengthen the appeal of terrorism and piracy. Terrorist groups could exploit this removal of economic opportunity by offering payments of their own to win over support .¶ Striking a political risk balance¶ Overall, authorities seek a balance between engaging in an effective counter-terrorism campaign without running the risk of funding terrorist organizations such as Al Shabaab. Greater banking illicit activities.¶ At the same time, critics say that

transparency, in other words, is needed to make sure funds do not end up in the wrong hands. ¶ Engaging with officials on the ground in Somalia that handle the hawala transfers is a first step in ensuring legitimacy of the customers receiving the payments. This would require an investment in infrastructure to improve regulation, which would ultimately strengthen Somalia’s poorly managed financial institutions and thus encourage indigenous economic growth.¶ however, could

Failing to establish some sort of system to allow remittance fund to go through ,

have reverse counter-terrorism effects and push Somalia into a deeper humanitarian

crisis. That collapses global trade, causes devastating oil spills, and finances terror networks Roger Middleton 8, consultant researcher in the Africa Programme at the Chatham House, the Royal Institute of Economic Affairs, "Piracy in Somalia", October, http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/public/Research/Africa/1008piracysomalia.pdf

What piracy does to international trade Clearly a company whose cargo is prevented from reaching its destination on time will lose money. Add to this the cost of paying ransoms and already the damaging economic effect of Somali piracy can be seen. The consequences are not limited only to

companies whose vessels are hijacked; of wider concern is the growth of insurance premiums for ships that need to pass through the Gulf of Aden. The danger means that war risk insurance premiums must now be paid: premiums are reported to have risen tenfold in a year. 32 If

the cost of extra insurance becomes prohibitive, or the danger simply too great, shipping companies may avoid the Gulf of Aden and take the long route to Europe and North America around the Cape of Good Hope. Indeed this option is mentioned by shipping industry insiders as a very real possibility. The extra weeks of travel and fuel consumption would add considerably to the cost of transporting goods. At a time when the price of oil is a major concern, anything that could contribute to a further rise in prices must be considered very serious indeed. ¶ Potential Environmental Catastrophe¶ Large oil tankers pass through the Gulf of Aden and the danger exists that a pirate attack could cause a major oil spill in what is a very sensitive and important ecosystem. During the attack on the Takayama the ship’s fuel tanks were penetrated and oil spilled into the sea. The consequences of a more sustained attack could be much worse. As pirates become bolder and use ever more powerful weaponry a tanker could be set on fire, sunk or forced ashore, any of which could result in an environmental catastrophe that would devastate marine and bird life for years to come . The pirates’ aim is to extort ransom payments and to date that has been their main focus; however, the possibility that they could destroy shipping is very real. ¶ Possible co-opting by international terrorist networks ¶ The other worst-case scenario is that pirates become agents of international terrorism. It should be emphasized that to date there is no firm evidence of this happening. However, in a region that saw the attacks on the USS Cole, seaborne terrorism needs to be taken very seriously.

a large ship sunk in the approach to the Suez Canal would have a devastating impact on international trade. Terrorism at sea could take many forms: direct attacks on naval or commercial shipping, such as the 6 October 2002 For example,

attack on the MV Limburg, 33 hostages from pleasure boats being used as bargaining chips for terrorists or high-profile victims of an atrocity, and hijacked ships being used as floating weapons.

Terrorist networks could also use the financial returns of piracy

to fund their activities around the world. The potentially massive consequences of this scenario must be taken into account along with the more likely scenario that piracy money is being routed to Al-Shabaab. 34 As has been seen over the last year, pirates in Somalia have become ever more dangerous, but it is impossible to tell what will happen next. It is best to act to prevent the worst-case scenarios rather than try to solve the problem once it has escalated.

Nuclear terror causes accidental US/Russia nuclear war---extinction Anthony Barrett 13, PhD, Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University, Director of Research, Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, Fellow in the RAND Stanton Nuclear Security Fellows Program, Seth Baum, PhD, Geography, Pennsylvania State University, Executive Director, GCRI, Research Scientist at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, former Visiting Scholar position at the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions at Columbia University, and Kelly Hostetler, Research Assistant, GCRI, 6/28, “Analyzing and Reducing the Risks of Inadvertent Nuclear War Between the United States and Russia,” Science and Global Security 21(2): 106-133

War involving significant fractions of the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, which are by far the largest of any nations, could have globally catastrophic effects such as severely reducing food production for years,1 potentially leading to collapse of modern civilization worldwide and even the extinction of humanity.2 Nuclear war between the United States and Russia could occur by various routes, including accidental or unauthorized launch; deliberate first attack by one nation; and inadvertent attack. In an accidental or unauthorized launch or detonation, system safeguards or procedures to maintain control over nuclear weapons fail in such a way that a nuclear weapon or missile launches or explodes without direction from leaders. In a deliberate first attack, the attacking nation decides to attack based on accurate information about the state of affairs. In an inadvertent attack, the attacking nation mistakenly concludes that it is under attack and launches nuclear weapons in what it believes is a counterattack.3 (Brinkmanship strategies incorporate elements of all of the above, in that they involve intentional manipulation of risks from otherwise accidental or inadvertent launches.4 ) ¶ Over the years, nuclear strategy was aimed primarily at minimizing risks of intentional attack through development of deterrence capabilities, though numerous measures were also taken to reduce probabilities of accidents, unauthorized attack, and inadvertent war. For purposes of deterrence, both U.S. and Soviet/Russian forces have maintained significant capabilities to have some forces survive a first attack by the other side and to launch a subsequent counterattack. However, concerns about the extreme disruptions that a first attack would cause in the other side’s forces and command-and-control capabilities led to both sides’ development of capabilities to detect a first attack and launch a counter-attack before suffering damage from the first attack.5 ¶ Many people believe that with the end of the Cold War and with improved relations between the United States and Russia, the risk of East-West nuclear war was significantly reduced.6 However, it has also

inadvertent nuclear war between the United States and Russia has continued to present a substantial risk.7 While the United States and Russia are not actively threatening each other with war, they have remained ready to launch nuclear missiles in response to indications of attack.8¶ False indicators of nuclear attack could be caused in several ways . First, a wide range of been argued that

events have already been mistakenly interpreted as indicators of attack, including weather phenomena, a faulty computer chip, wild animal activity, and control-room

terrorist groups or other actors might cause attacks on either the United States or Russia that resemble some kind of nuclear attack by the other nation by actions such as exploding a stolen or improvised nuclear bomb ,10 especially if such an event occurs during a crisis between the United States and Russia.11 A variety of nuclear terrorism scenarios are possible.12 Al Qaeda has sought to obtain or construct nuclear weapons and to use them against the United States .13 Other methods could involve attempts to circumvent nuclear weapon launch control safeguards or exploit holes in their security.14 It has long been training tapes loaded at the wrong time.9 Second,

argued that the probability of inadvertent nuclear war is significantly higher during U.S.-Russian crisis conditions,15 with the Cuban Missile Crisis being a prime historical example. It is possible that U.S.-Russian relations will significantly deteriorate in the future, increasing nuclear tensions. There are a variety of ways for a third party to raise tensions between the United States and Russia, making one or both nations more likely to misinterpret events as attacks.16 Trade prevents war---best new game theoretical studies Matthew O. Jackson 14, William D. Eberle Professor of Economics at Stanford and Stephen M. Nei, PhD Student in Economics at Stanford, “Networks of Military Alliances, Wars, and International Trade”, October 2014, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2389300

This instability provides insights into the constantly shifting structures and recurring wars that occurred throughout the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries.6 Wars, however, have greatly subsided in parallel with the huge increase of trade (partly coincidental with the introduction of containerized shipping in the 1960s): between 1820 and 1959 each pair of countries averaged .00056 wars per year, while from 1960 to 2000 the average was .00005 wars per year, less than one tenth as much . We see this pattern quite clearly in Figure 1.7 These changes also follow the advent of nuclear weapons, which impacted the technology of war. Indeed, we show how nuclear weapons can lead to some changes in stability, but does not generate peace on its own . Indeed, in order to capture the actual patterns that have emerged one must add other considerations - such as trade considerations - since the base model shows that networks of alliances would not be stable with nuc lear weapons but without trade.8¶ Thus, the second part of our analysis is to enrich the base model to include international trade. Indeed, there has been a rapid increase in global trade since World War II (partly coincident with the growth of container shipping among other stimuli). The empirical relationship between war and trade is an active area of research, with strong suggestions (e.g., Martin, Mayer, and Thoenig (2008)) that network concerns may be important . So, we introduce a concept of a network of alliances being war and trade stable, which allows countries to form alliances for either economic or military considerations. In this richer model, an alliance allows countries to trade with each other and to coordinate military activities, and so can be formed for either reason. This restores

Trade provides two helpful incentives: first it provides economic motivations to maintain alliances, and the resulting denser network of alliances then has a deterrent effect; and second, it can reduce the incentives of a country to attack another since trade will be disrupted. This reduces the potential set of conflicts and, together with the denser networks, allows for a rich family of stable networks that can exhibit structures similar to networks we existence of networks of alliances that are stable against the addition or deletion of alliances.

see currently.¶ We provide some results on the existence and structure of war and trade stable networks of alliances, showing that structures similar to those observed over the past few decades are economically stable under apparently reasonable parameters. It is important to note that another dramatic change during the post-war period was the introduction of nuclear weapons, which changes the technology of war and is generally thought to have greatly increased the defensive advantage to those with such weapons.9 Our model suggests that although world-wide adoption of nuclear weapons could stabilize things in the absence of trade, it would result in an empty network of alliances as the stable network. To explain the much denser and more stable networks in the modern age along with the paucity of war in a world where nuclear weapons are

We close the paper with some discussion of this potential role that the growth in trade has played in reducing wars over the past half century, and how this relates to the advent of the nuclear age .¶ Before proceeding, let us say a few words about how this paper contributes to the study of war. The literature on war provides many rationales for why wars limited to a small percentage of countries, our model points to the enormous growth in trade as a big part of the answer.

occur. Our analysis here fits firmly into what has become a “rationalist” tradition based on cost and benefit analyses by rational actors, with roots seen in writings such as Hobbes (1651) Leviathan, and has become the foundation for much of the recent international relations literature.10 ¶ To

there are no previous models of conflict that game-theoretically model networks of alliances between multiple agents/countries based on costs and benefits of wars . 11 There are previous models of coalitions in our knowledge,

conflict settings (e.g., see Bloch (2012) for a survey). Here, network structures add several things to the picture. Our model is very much in a similar rationalist perspective of the literature that examines group conflict (e.g., Esteban and Ray (1999, 2001); Esteban and Sakovicz (2003)),

This allows us to admit patterns that are consistent with the networks of alliances that are actually observed , which are far from being partitions (e.g., the but enriching it to admit network structures of alliances and of international trade.

U.S. is currently allied with both Israel and Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and India, just to mention a couple of many prominent examples). More importantly, our Theorem 3 provides a first model in which such non-partitional such structures are stable and provide insight into peace.

the observed patterns of wars and of alliances are not partitional, and so this provides an important advance in moving the models towards matching observed patterns of wars, trade and alliances.¶ Our model thus serves as a foundation upon which one can eventually Moreover, as we already mentioned above,

build more elaborate analyses of multilateral interstate alliances, trade, and wars . It is also important to emphasize that the network of international trade is complex and can in fact be stable (and prevent conflict) precisely because it cuts across coalitions. This is in contrast to coalitional models that generally predict only the grand coalition can be stable or that very exact balances are possible (e.g., see Bloch, Sanchez-Pages, and Soubeyran (2006)). Again, this is

our model illuminates the relationships between international trade, stable network structures, and peace , something not appearing in the previous literature - as the previous literature that involves international trade and conflict generally revolves around bilateral something illustrated in our Theorem 3, and which does not exist in the previous literature. Finally,

reasoning or focuses on instability and armament (e.g., Garfinkel, Skaperdas, and Syropoulos (2014)) and does not address the questions that we address here.¶ The complex relationship between trade and conflict is the subject of a growing empirical literature (e.g., Barbieri (1996); Mansfield and Bronson (1997); Martin, Mayer, and Thoenig (2008); Glick and Taylor (2010); Hegre, Oneal, and Russett (2010)).

literature not only has to face challenges of endogeneity and causation, but also of substantial heterogeneity in relationships, as well as geography, and the level of conflict. The various correlations between conflict and trade are complex and quite difficult to interpret, and a model such as ours that combines military and economic incentives , and others that may follow, can provide some structure with which to interpret some of the empirical observations, as we discuss in the concluding remarks. The

Carribean Growth And, Bitcoin expansion’s key to massive Caribbean economic growth Paul Vigna 2/26, with Michael J. Casey, both authors and economy and finance journalists for the Wall Street Journal, “Bitcoin for the Unbanked,” 2/26/15, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/143162/paul-vigna-and-michael-j-casey/bitcoin-for-the-unbanked

2.5 billion adults in the world don’t have access to banks, which means somewhere in the order of 5 billion people belong to households that are cut off from a financial system that the rest of us take for granted. They can’t start savings accounts. They don’t have checking accounts. They can’t get credit cards. They live in places where banks don’t want to go, and because of this, they remain effectively walled off from the global economy. They are called the unbanked. But they are not unreachable, not by a long shot, and one of the biggest and most exciting prospects bitcoiners talk about is using their cryptocurrency to bring these billions of people roaring into the twenty-first century .¶ The Caribbean is an area of the emerging-market world where a strong case can be made for locals to use bitcoin to get around a restrictive financial system. ¶ Jamal Ifill, a young, soft-spoken artist with a head full of dreadlocked hair and a warm smile, has been Roughly

blowing glass in Barbados for 11 years and has had his own one-room studio-cum-showroom for five years. One of his latest pieces is a two-foothigh, rectangular, latticework lamp that to our New York eyes looked like one of the Twin Towers. He sells his artwork locally and has attracted some attention; a piece he made was presented to Princess Anne when she visited the island in 2011. He wants to expand into the U.S. market, but the logistics and costs of moving money from there to here are prohibitively high, so most of his business remains local. ¶ “I tried everything,” Ifill says, sitting at the desk that doubles as his office and workspace in his small glass-blowing studio in Bridgetown, Barbados. “Credit cards, PayPal, Western Union. They’re too expensive.” ¶ Leroy McClain, managing director of the government-run Barbados Investment Development

big international banks are happy to provide merchant-banking services to companies in the United States and Canada, but they make island businesses jump through far more hoops for the same services.¶ Ifill understands the problem all too well. In fact, he has all the problems of an international business. Corp., explained why that is: The

The particular glass he uses must be imported from Ukraine. His customers are not only on the island, but overseas. He is competing with foreign artists who aren’t hamstrung by the costs that tie him up. He tried e-commerce—through a local company—but gave up on it because not enough customers were using it, which meant he wasn’t getting any business out of it. A vicious circle. “I even tried Etsy,” he says, the online arts-and-

problem stems in part from the difficulty in shifting money around the region’s island nations, which requires constant and costly currency exchanges. Barbados and virtually every nation in the British West Indies has its own, sepa rately printed currency—each called the dollar, each fluctuating in value against the others and against the better-known U.S. dollar. And the former Spanish, Dutch, and French colonies all have their own pesos, guilders, and gourdes. craft site. Again, he couldn’t compete on costs with U.S. artists. ¶ Ifill’s

The governments of the region have long talked about creating a monetary union to deepen the region’s free-trade arrangement, the Caricom common market. But as with the development of that free-trade area, progress toward building a single monetary authority and the other

A Caribbean dollar remains a pipe dream.¶ To make matters worse, a number of central banks impose capital controls on their citizens . Barbadians such as Ifill, for instance, are limited in institutions needed for a common currency has been fitful.

the amount of foreign currency they can buy. That Barbados, the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, and other Caribbean nations serve as tax havens

This mix of monetary systems and financial regulations, and the frustration that it breeds, make the sunny islands of the Caribbean ripe for bitcoin—or so says Gabriel Abed.¶ Abed, 27, turned to cryptocurrencies as the answer to a for hedge funds and other foreign financial institutions is an irony not lost on the region’s tightly controlled residents.

problem: how to expand e-commerce. He is the CEO of Web Designs, a local business that sells Internet domain registrations, Web site designs, maintenance, and e-commerce platforms. The last has been a particularly tough sell. Because of the costs of foreign exchange, credit cards, and PayPal, which can add up to eight or nine percent, he said, most merchants—Ifill was one of them—simply avoid selling abroad.¶ Abed learned of bitcoin early on and saw its potential to solve this problem. He began with the idea of a Caribbean cryptocurrency, which he dubbed CaribCoin, but realized quickly it was a bigger project than he wanted to take on. He pivoted to the idea of a bitcoin exchange, and a merchant service that he could bundle with his Web-design and hosting service, and began building Bitt (the URL is actually bi.tt, the .tt being the domain for neighboring Trinidad and Tobago). He also began mining his own bitcoins—in Trinidad, taking advantage of relatively low electricity costs there, and using the profits from that and from Web Designs to fund Bitt. ¶ Bitt is designed as a Caribbean-focused online exchange and merchant service, providing trading between different cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies, as well as a module for helping local businesses adopt digital currencies for payment. His appeal to them is simple: What if I can give you a payment option that costs only one percent? ¶ The catch is that the

To say that cryptocurrencies are not big in Barbados would be an understatement. They effectively don’t exist on the island, and neither does mobile commerce. While virtually everybody has a cell phone, the proverbial badge of a digital citizen, people use them only for texting and talking. E-commerce is barely getting started, as is online banking .¶ The way to get over the one percent fee comes with bitcoins, which as of this writing can’t buy you much in Barbados.

chicken-and-egg problem and encourage adoption, Abed believes, is to focus on the merchants. He believes that if he can offer them a

dramatically cheaper payment method, they can be talked into accepting that method at their shops. But he has his work cut out for him. ¶ EARLY

The chicken-and-egg dilemma will require incentives. The promise of saving money is certainly one of one hope is that if big firms or institutions whose relationships run deep in the economy start using bitcoin, they can create incentives for their suppliers and customers to use it.¶ Patrick Byrne, the CEO of Salt Lake City-based online retailer Overstock.com, which began accepting bitcoin in early 2014 to ADOPTERS¶

them. But there are others. As in the developed world,

become what was then the biggest revenue-earning merchant to do so, believes his firm can play such a catalytic role creating a bitcoin

Byrne explained that he viewed bitcoin as a way to widen economic opportunity, if only he could get people to accept it. He was still figuring out the carrots he “ecosystem” in the developing world.¶ When we met in June 2014 in Utah,

would use, but he had some ideas. “In the world of payments and dealing with vendors, there’s all this sensitiv ity around the terms of payment. Vendors will sometimes give you a two percent discount for shaving off 20 days, because to them that’s like a 36 percent cost of money over the year. That affects all kinds of things. The very fact that vendors offer those terms means there’s an enor mous opportunity for bitcoin to step up in this area.” A few weeks later, Byrne announced he would not only be paying bitcoin-accepting vendors one week early, but that he’d also pay his employee bonuses in bitcoin. ¶ What companies such as Overstock are trying to do with digital-currency payments has parallels with what Walmart achieved by pioneering communications technology to revolutionize supply-chain management in the 1990s and early 2000s. The Arkansas-based retailer famously developed a sophisticated network with which to tie all of its suppliers worldwide into a single, integrated database for managing the goods and services flowing in and out of Walmart’s warehouses. Along with big improvements in shipping logistics, this allowed the company to optimize its just-in-time inventory management, which drastically cut costs. Walmart parlayed those cost savings into the cheapest prices anywhere in the United States, which turned it into the iconic and, to some, infamous behemoth that now dominates American suburbia. ¶ Just as important, its high-tech network had a feedback effect on suppliers, contributing to the concentration of manufacturing in hubs such as China’s Pearl River Delta. As Walmart became an increasingly powerful but relentless hunter of the cheapest manufacturing sources, and as other Western buyers caught on to its high-tech lead, factories paying low wages in the de veloping world would congregate in locales where it was most efficient to tap into Walmart’s network. Byrne now sees similar opportunities for firms like his to build influence by leveraging bitcoin in its international payment relationships and thus creating a tipping point from which change starts rippling over

As a group of businesses in one region begins adopting the currency, it will become more appealing to others with whom they do business. Once such a network of intertwined businesses builds up, no one wants to be excluded from it. Or so the theory goes.¶ “Just as American retail collapsed into Walmart, who knows how much can collapse into us? And I don’t mean Overstock. I mean bitcoin,” Byrne said. “ You start getting network effects. You are incentivizing everyone—it’s like we have the first fax machine but nobody else has a fax machine, so it doesn’t do you any good. But you start adding other nodes and making incentives to add nodes and eventually get a critical mass. Now people aren’t just faxing us, they are faxing each other.” the global economy.

Growth is key to Caribbean stability Christine Lagard 14, Manager Director of the International Monetary Fund, June 27th, 2014, "The Carribean and the IMF---Building a Partnership for the Future," https://www.imf.org/external/np/speeches/2014/062714.htm Given this legacy, the

Caribbean was vulnerable going into the global financial crisis, and was hit with its full force. Six years on, output has still not returned to pre-crisis levels , and public debt is still at record highs— almost 100 percent of GDP in tourism-dependent countries, and 140 percent of GDP here in Jamaica. ∂ As always, the poor and the vulnerable were hit hardest by crisis. Across the region, about a third of young people are out of work . In Jamaica, the poverty rate doubled to 17½ percent. ∂ With the doors of opportunity barred for so many, the result is disengagement and disenchantment . Exclusion creates an inflammatory cocktail of crime and insecurity, and a steady deterioration in the quality of life .∂ Clearly, then, the crisis was a major wake up call. Caribbean leaders understand the need for change—not just to free themselves from the grip of crisis, but to adapt to the challenge of the global new normal. ∂ Think about it. The global economy is more interconnected than ever before. The engines of growth are shifting away from traditional markets in North America and Europe to the far-flung shores of Asia.

The cozy comfort of trade

preferences is long gone. The specter of climate change hovers over the small island states. ∂ As Derek Walcott put it, “the future happens, no matter how much we scream”. ∂ Change begins with restoring economic stability—this establishes a platform for rising and shared prosperity. Caribbean instability collapses global hotspot management---escalates conflict everywhere Tim Gorrell 5, Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army, “CUBA: THE NEXT UNANTICIPATED ANTICIPATED STRATEGIC CRISIS?”, US Army War College Research Project, 3-18, http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA433074) Regardless of the succession, under the current U.S. policy, Cuba’s problems of a post Castro transformation only worsen. In addition to Cubans on the island, there will be those in exile who will return claiming authority. And there are remnants of the dissident community within Cuba who will attempt to exercise similar authority. A power vacuum or absence of order will create the conditions for instability and civil war. Whether Raul or another successor from within the current government can hold power is debatable. However, that individual will nonetheless extend the current policies for an indefinite period, which will only compound the Cuban situation. When Cuba finally collapses anarchy is a strong possibility if the U.S. maintains the “wait and see” approach.

The U.S. then must deal with

an unstable country 90 miles off its coast thousands will flee creating a refugee crisis. . In the midst of this chaos,

criminals; this time the number could be several hundred thousand fleeing to the U.S.,

the island. During the Mariel boatlift in 1980 125,000 fled the island.26 Many were

Equally important, by adhering to a negative containment policy, the U.S. may be creating its next series of transnational criminal

problems. Cuba is along the axis of the drug-trafficking flow into the U.S. from Columbia. The Castro government as a matter of policy does not support the drug trade. In fact, Cuba’s actions have shown that its stance on drugs is more than hollow rhetoric as indicated by its increasing seizure of drugs – 7.5 tons in 1995, 8.8 tons in 1999, and 13 tons in 2000.27 While there may be individuals within the government and outside who engage in drug trafficking and a percentage of drugs entering the U.S. may pass through Cuba, the Cuban government is not the path of least

the opportunity for radical fundamentalist groups to operate in the region increases. If these groups can export terrorist activity throughout the hemisphere then the war against this extremism gets more complicated. Such activity could increase direct attacks and disrupt the economies, threatening the stability of the fragile democracies that are budding throughout the region the U.S. may deploy military forces The ramifications of this action could very well fuel greater anti-American sentiment throughout the Americas resistance for the flow of drugs. If there were no Cuban restraints, the flow of drugs to the U.S. could be greatly facilitated by a Cuba base of operation and accelerate considerably. In the midst of an unstable Cuba,

from Cuba to the U.S. or

. In light of a failed state in the region,

be forced to

to Cuba, creating the conditions for another insurgency.

. A proactive policy now can mitigate these potential future problems. U.S. domestic political support is also

turning against the current negative policy. The Cuban American population in the U.S. totals 1,241,685 or 3.5% of the population.28 Most of these exiles reside in Florida; their influence has been a factor in determining the margin of victory in the past two presidential elections. But this election strategy may be flawed, because recent polls of Cuban Americans reflect a decline for President Bush based on his policy crackdown. There is a clear softening in the Cuban-American community with regard to sanctions. Younger Cuban Americans do not necessarily subscribe to the

The U.S. can little afford to be distracted by a failed state 90 miles off its coast. The administration does not have the luxury or the resources to pursue the traditional American model of crisis management. There is justifiable concern that Africa and the Caucasus region are potential hot spots for terrorist activity, so these areas should be secure. North Korea will continue to be an unpredictable crisis in waiting. We also cannot ignore China. What if China resorts to aggression to resolve the Taiwan situation? Will the U.S. go to war over Taiwan? Additionally, Iran could conceivably be the next target for U.S. pre-emptive action. These are known and potential situations that could easily require all or many of the elements of national power to resolve hard-line approach. These changes signal an opportunity for a new approach to U.S.-Cuban relations. (Table 1) The time has come to look realistically at the Cuban issue. Castro will rule until he dies. The only issue is what happens then?

, given the present state of world affairs,

The President and other government and military leaders have warned that the GWOT will be long and protracted. These warnings were sounded when the administration did not anticipate operations in Iraq consuming so many military, diplomatic and

economic resources.

. In view of such global issues, can the U.S. afford to sustain the status quo and simply let the Cuban situation play

out? The U.S. is at a crossroads: should the policies of the past 40 years remain in effect with vigor? Or should the U.S. pursue a new approach to Cuba in an effort to facilitate a manageable transition to post-Castro Cuba? ANALYSIS OF POLICY ALTERNATIVES The U.S. can pursue three policy alternatives in dealing with Cuba: SUSTAIN THE CURRENT POLICY AND FULLY ENFORCE THE ECONOMIC EMBARGO The crux of the argument for this policy is that sanctions and other restrictions will exert tremendous pressure on the Castro regime, in hope that the regime will fall prior to Castro’s death. There is little indication that this policy will succeed. The U.S. is virtually the only country pursuing a policy to isolate Cuba. In the 1990s Castro was able to develop new trade and markets. While Cuba is not a prosperous country, it has nonetheless managed to endure. The loss of Soviet subsidies, which amounted to 25% of Cuba’s national income, and the loss of the Eastern European bloc as trading partners, which amounted to 75% of Cuba’s import/export trade, left Castro with no alternative but to implement economic changes both internally and externally.30 These initiatives have stimulated steady, but modest, economic growth. Today in Cuba, 160,000 people (or 4% of the workforce) are self-employed.31 These entrepreneurial endeavors include small restaurants, taxi drivers, repairmen, and other service industries. If the present course of sanctions continues, the gains of these small reforms will be suppressed leading to significant deprivation for the people involved. Also, Cuba trades with over 100 countries worldwide, so while trade with the U.S. would certainly improve Cuba’s economic well-being, it is debatable whether the lack of U.S. trade is bringing the regime to its knees. The point is that sanctions are not hurting Castro, but are hurting the Cuban population. Restricting trade and travel hurts the small businesses, the tourist industry and others whose livelihood depends on a service economy. It also degrades the quality of life of those Cubans whose financial support comes from family members in the U.S. Strategists who subscribe to current policy argue that these limitations/hardships will eventually promote an uprising among the populace to overthrow Castro. There is no substantial evidence that this will occur and much that argues against it. While Castro will not live forever, he has outlasted over 45 years of such U.S. policy. He is 78 years old and his father lived to be 80 under significantly less desirable conditions.32 If the present policy course is to wait Castro out this could potentially take another 5-10 years. The wait equates to 5-10 years of despair for the Cuban people, further decay of the country’s infrastructure and more dire conditions that would make democratic reform all the more difficult and costly when Castro actually expires. Pursuing the present steady state policy will further alienate the Cuban people at home and abroad. The U.S. often has a myopic vision in regard to other cultures. In the case of Cuba, by focusing only on Castro and ignoring the Cuban peoples’ culture and traditions, U.S. policy makers are blinded and have failed to see a future Cuba. RETAIN SANCTIONS AGAINST CUBA, BUT ENFORCE THEM IN VARYING DEGREES DEPENDING ON THE POLITICAL CLIMATE AND THE CUBAN REGIME’S CONDUCT IN REGARD TO AMERICAN INTERESTS Throughout the past 15 years, the U.S. has experimented with a variable enforcement option. During the Clinton administration, restrictions were occasionally eased. For example, in March 1998, President Clinton announced: 1) the resumption of licensing for direct humanitarian charter flights to Cuba; 2) the resumption of cash remittances up to $300 per quarter for the support of close relatives in Cuba; 3) the development of licensing procedures to streamline and expedite licenses for the commercial sale of medicines and medical supplies and equipment; and 4) a decision to work on a bipartisan basis with Congress on the transfer of food to the Cuban people.33 In January 1999, President Clinton ordered additional measures to assist the Cuban people, which included further easement of cash remittances, expansion of direct passenger charter flights to Cuba, reestablishment of direct mail service, authorization for the commercial sale of food to independent entities in Cuba, and an expansion of people-to-people exchanges (i.e. scientist, students, athletes, etc.)34 This policy ended when the new administration failed to see any reciprocal progress from Castro. Fragmenting the policy process may do more harm than good. It does too little too late and causes hard feelings among Cubans and American businesses. The carrot-stick diplomatic approach will not make Castro yield. Such policy breeds inconsistency as it can vary from administration to administration, as it has between the Clinton and Bush administrations. The rules constantly change and thus have a ripple effect on American businesses and the quality of life of Americans, Cuban-Americans and native Cubans. Cuban trade has already declined to a trickle since the Bush administration sought to further squeeze the Castro government. Prior to the Bush administration’s trade crack down, 2004 was emerging as a record year for U.S. imports to Cuba. By the end of December 2004 U.S. suppliers and shippers were projected to have earned some $450 million, a 20% increase over 2003 sales.35 Imposing restrictions, as the Bush administration did in June 2004, perplexed American businesses with unpredicted problems. These businesses make adjustments, as do Cuban- American citizens, then must abruptly alter their business strategies because of a Congressional vote or an Executive order. This political tug-of-war does not move the U.S. any closer to realizing its security objectives. On the Cuban American front there is eroding support for this U.S. policy position. In the 2000 presidential election, President Bush won 81% of south Florida’s Cuban-American vote. A recent poll by the William C. Veleasquez Institute-Mirram Global indicates that his support today has fallen to 66%.36 This decline signals a negative response to policy that limits travel, restricts the amount of goods people can bring to their relatives, and places limitations on sending money to family in Cuba. Cuban-Americans believe that this only hurts their poor relatives in Cuba. According to Jose Basulto, head of Brothers to the Rescue, and Ramon Raul Sanchez, head of the antiCastro Democracy Movement, the U.S. government is using the Cuban people to harass Castro.37 Applying policy in a give-and-take manner, accomplishes little to facilitate the fall of Castro. The Cuban people enjoy brief periods of limited benefits, only to have these benefits withdrawn should the President or members of Congress wish to take another jab at Castro. American civilian businesses are also negatively affected. LIFT ALL SANCTIONS AND PURSUE NORMAL DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS WITH CUBA Normalcy is the only policy that the U.S. has not attempted. The present policy misses the security implications, alienates allies and others worldwide, harms U.S. businesses, and is losing support domestically. First, the U.S. must reassess the threat posed by Cuba. There is, in fact, virtually no security threat. Further, policies that were applicable in the past, when there was a threat, should not be applied to the current environment. The U.S. Cuban policy is perplexing because it appears to conflict with the ends, ways and means that the National Security Strategy is applied in other regions of the world. The U.S. has normalized relations with Vietnam and Libya and has certainly opted for an open dialogue with Communist China. Likewise, there is abundant evidence that a new policy toward Cuba could very well achieve the ends that 43 years of embargo have failed to accomplish. Secondly, Cuba currently trades and has diplomatic ties with much of the world. The goal of U.S. sanctions is to isolate the Cuban regime; however, they have only slowed, not deterred economic growth. On 4 November 2003 the United Nations voted, for the 12th straight year, 173 to 3 (with 4 abstentions) against the four-decade U.S. embargo against Cuba.38 Voting with the U.S. were Israel and the Marshall Islands. The U.S.’ staunchest allies, the 15 members of the European Union, along with Japan, Australia and New Zealand, all object to the “extra-territorial” effect of U.S. legislation that they feel violates their sovereignty. 39 There are two schools of thought regarding trade and democracy. The first is that economic growth will promote democracy. The other questions this notion and argues that democracy must come first.40 There is strong opinion, however, that in Cuba’s case economic engagement will bring about the desired results. Certainly many Cuban-Americans and perhaps some others in the world would not agree with this course of action. However, there is evidence that a significant number of people both within the U.S. and abroad favor a policy change. In 1992 a pastoral letter from Cuba’s Bishops stated that the US embargo “directly affects the people who suffer the consequences in hunger and illness. If what is intended by this approach is to destabilize the government by using hunger and want to pressure civic society to revolt, then the strategy is also cruel.“41 The third consideration is U.S. business. Under the current rules, U.S. businesses are permitted to sell agricultural produce to Cuba.42 Today 27 firms from 12 U.S. states are doing business with Cuba, making Cuba 22nd among U.S. agricultural markets.43 These business activities are greatly influenced by Cuban-Americans and members of Congress. The economic power of the U.S. can be our most powerful weapon. The possibilities of economic engagement offer a myriad of branches and sequels that could promote a rapport between the American people and the Cubans. The aggressive pursuit of these endeavors would go far in ensuring an orderly transition to a post-Castro Cuba. It is an erroneous assumption to believe that Castro’s demise will miraculously trigger reform and all the problems of the last 40 years will vanish. A visionary policy, albeit constrained within the parameters of the Castro regime, will go far in setting agreeable social-economic conditions in Cuba both now and in the future. Finally, public opinion in the U.S. favors a new policy direction. A 1997 Miami Herald poll found that a majority of Cubans under the age of 45 supported “establishing a national dialogue with Cuba,” whereas for the most part their elders opposed such dialogue.44 Former President Jimmy Carter, writing in the Washington Post after his May 2002 visit to Cuba, reported that he found an unexpected degree of economic freedom. Carter went on to say that if Americans could have maximum contact with Cuban, then Cubans would clearly see the advantages of a truly democratic society and thus be encouraged to bring about orderly changes in their society. 45 Castro himself appears willing to consider greater reform. In 1998 he permitted Pope John Paul II to visit Cuba; Cubans are permitted to own property; he has opened trade; and in 2002 he broadcast former President Jimmy Carter’s address at the University of Havana.46 Additionally, he indicated that the Cuban government would return any of the Guantanamo detainees in the unlikely event that they would escape.47 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION U.S. policy makers need to confront the real Cuba of today in order to build a “free” Cuba of tomorrow that is capable of taking its place in the world community as a responsible, democratic nation. Given the history of the past 100 years, and particularly our Castro centric policy, the U.S. needs to make a bold change toward Cuba. The U.S. has pursued a hard-line approach toward the Castro regime for over 40 years. While this policy was easily justified during the Cold War era and, to a certain degree, during the 1990s, it fails to address the present U.S. national security concerns. The globalization trends of the 21st century are irreversible, Fidel Castro is in the twilight of his life, and a new generation of Cuban-Americans is supportive of new strategies that will ease the transition to a post-Castro Cuba while buttressing economic and social opportunities in the near term. Furthermore, there is a new dimension that U.S. policy strategists must take into account in deciding the course of U.S.-

World-wide asymmetrical threats to U.S. interests, coupled with the potential for any one of the present hot spots (i.e. Iran, North Korea, Taiwan, etc.) to ignite, should prompt strategic leaders to work harder to mitigate a potential Caribbean crises. The prudent action would then be to defuse situations before they require the U.S. to divert resources from protecting its interests in the GWOT Cuba relations – the GWOT.

develop strategies that can

Iraqi occupation and the

or neutralize these .

Global nuclear war James Hardy 14, Asia-Pacific Editor of IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly, “5 Places Where World War Three Could Break Out”, The National Interest, 10-17, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/5-places-where-world-war-three-could-break-out-11487?page=show It seems these days the

world is literally on fire. Conflict continues on and off in Ukraine, there are tensions throughout the Asia-Pacific, Ebola is on the rampage, ISIS continues its bloody war of attrition throughout Syria, into Iraq and on and on. Yet, could

something even worse be on the horizon—a conflict with more-severe global ramifications? Before we begin this foray into the five places where World

War Three could break out, I should note a few qualifiers and weasel words. First off, what’s World War Three? As illustrated by the Ukraine crisis and the Obama administration’s struggle to define what is going on in Syria/Northern Iraq, “20th-Century Industrial War” is out of fashion and has been for some time. Some of the predictions below envisage regime collapse that leads to war, while the specter of a terrorist WMD attack has the capacity to turn apocalyptic very quickly. That said, this might just be a phase: state-on-state violence will still be theoretically and practically possible as long as nation-states possess the means to expend blood and treasure. That’s why most of the predictions below examine the possibility of conventional strike and counterstrike between nations. No

nuclear-armed power—whether it is the United States, China or Russia—would accept defeat to a peer competitor in conventional warfare without then inflicting the maximum penalty on its opponent. That is one very good reason why World War Three as we know it is unlikely to happen; it is also why all of the possibilities mentioned below involve nuclear-armed—or potentially nuclear-armed—entities. North Korea vs. the World: News out of Pyongyang over the last several weeks that Kim Jong-un is feeling unwell has reminded people that Northeast Asia contains its very own brand of extremist Kool-Aid drinkers. The smart line on North Korea is that its “provocations,” to use the accepted term, are graduated steps in a controlled game of escalation that Kim plays to receive concessions in the form of aid or economic largesse from the international community. The current talks between North Korea and Japan over the longstanding abduction issue are just one particularly cruel variation on this, where Pyongyang is trying to leverage the political importance of the abductees in Japan at a moment where both sides are short of allies in Northeast Asia. The “provocation” theory works fine until you realize that at the end of the day, North

Korea is still developing a nuclear-weapons program and mobile systems to deliver atomic-tipped warheads. Meanwhile, South Korea is building its own deterrent in the form of the “kill chain,” which ambitiously proposes knocking out Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons before they can leave the ground. Throw in the fact that China appears to have lost patience—and more importantly, influence—in North Korea since the purging and execution of Jang Song Thaek, and the situation on the peninsula becomes a lot less predictable. For sure, North Korea’s behavior is grounded in the absolute logic of regime survival. But if Kim dies or can no longer ensure that the Pyongyang elite benefit from his rule, then all bets are off. China vs. India (vs. Pakistan) The border confrontation between India and China that was finally de-escalated on September 27 after nearly three weeks is the latest illustration of just how uneasy relations can be between these two massive neighbors. The recent arrival of a PLA Navy Type 039 submarine in Sri Lanka—China’s westernmost foray with a submarine—is another sign that Delhi and Beijing’s strategic priorities may clash. Other than history and bloody-mindedness, there is no real reason why the two countries would be destined to go to war. China has concluded a number of successful negotiations with its land neighbors over border disputes—the Line of Actual Control is the only remaining dispute, in fact—and India has the strategic position and military power to exert regional supremacy over the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). The natural borders of the Himalayas and southeast Asia have created geographical spheres of influence that should keep both sides happy. However, Beijing’s “all-weather friendship” with Pakistan and its moves into the Indian Ocean threaten India’s regional hegemony, while India’s “Look East” policy is unwelcome to China because it allies Delhi with Vietnam and Japan. This kind of strategic

competition—along with bad decisions at

flashpoints such as Ladakh and Kashmir—could lead to escalation from which neither side could step away. Middle East Imbroglio The ongoing situation in the Middle East—whether it’s the Islamic State, Iraq, Gaza, Syria, Iran, Israel, Lebanon or the fallout from the Arab Spring—is so perplexing, confusing, horrific and insurmountable that the only thing we can say in its favor is that at least it has not led to World War Three. For this to happen, the nuclear balance in the region would

have to go irrevocably out of kilter. One obvious way this could happen: Iran getting the bomb and in response, Israel using its “widely suspected unmentionables.” Another possibility deserving more scrutiny than it gets is whether the Saudis would upgrade their DF-3 ballistic missiles with DF-21s—something that is heavily rumored—or fit the older, less accurate DF-3s with nuclear warheads. Another element of this scenario is the question of which way these missiles would be pointed—at Iran or Israel? Other regional wildcards include the North Koreans helping out the Assad regime, or the Islamic State somehow capturing a previously unknown stockpile of fissile material and having the brainpower to weaponize it. In this light, U.S. attempts to prevent Iran from getting the bomb make even more sense; why it is not equally scrutinizing Saudi Arabia’s intentions in this area, less so. Russia vs. NATO: Before the air campaign against the Islamic State took over the news cycle, the biggest story of the year was what exactly was going to happen in east Ukraine. The shooting down of an airliner, multiple border violations by Russian troops and the annexation of Crimea had added up to force a major reevaluation by the West of its relationship with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The speed and intelligence of the Russian campaign bodes ill for NATO and other multilateral organizations such as the EU, which have been hamstrung by a committee-led approach to decision making that slows down their response times. In fairness to NATO, the alliance is aware of this and has made a number of attempts to bolster its position in eastern Europe. At the Wales summit in September, it began to work out of the details of a Readiness Action Plan that will include very rapid reaction forces and deploying pre-positioned equipment and supplies along its eastern frontier. The new force will be in contrast to what IHS Jane’s correspondent Brooks Tigner brilliantly described as “the distinctly un-rapid NATO Response Force (NRF), which currently needs months to deploy its full force of 20,000-plus troops and equipment.” NATO also needs to work out a way to win the information war, which Putin has managed as adeptly as any confrontations on the ground in Ukraine. These tactical considerations aside, at the heart of the issue is NATO’s eastward move, which Russia unsurprisingly opposes, and Moscow’s assertion that it had the right to “protect” Russian-speaking minorities in other countries, which NATO would have to react to if member nations such as the Baltic states or Poland were threatened. China

vs. America (via Taiwan, Japan or the South China Sea) Last and definitely not least, the biggest potential conflict of all. The threat of the “Thucydides Trap”—that of a rising power and a preeminent power ending up at war—has become a notable talking point in Sino-U.S. relations in recent years. Some analysts argue that

China’s rise and military buildup changes the balance of power and dangerously affects enough points of friction in northeast Asia. The most dangerous feature of these friction points is that they involve third parties: the South China Sea, Japan, Taiwan or North Korea could all spark a localized conflict that quickly gets out of hand. The most Thucydides’ analysis of the Sparta-Athens relationship is a poor analogy for that between China and the United States. However, it is undeniable that

dangerous, in my view, are the territorial disputes that could be contested in the maritime sphere: that is, in waters and territories close to China that Beijing claims and would likely contest if the status quo changed against its interests.

Innovation Virtual currency expansion leads to adoption of blockchain technology Carney 15 [Michael Carney, associate @ Upfront Ventures, former managing director of Worldvest, 3-16-2015, "Nations might not adopt pure bitcoin, but IBM's blockchain-based alternative has a chance," Pando, https://pando.com/2015/03/16/nations-might-not-adopt-pure-bitcoinbut-ibms-blockchain-based-alternative-has-a-chance/] Imagine you’re a disruptive new technology and you’re looking for mainstream support among consumers, businesses, and regulators. What’s the

IBM. Reuters reports that the granddaddy of tech blue chip brands is experimenting with the same blockchain technology that underpins the often controversial digital currency and wants to see central banks do the same. Reuters explains: International Business Machines Corp is considering adopting the underlying technology behind bitcoin, known as the "blockchain," to create a digital cash and payment system for major currencies, according to a person familiar with the matter. The best endorsement you could get? You’d be hard pressed to do better than bitcoin did last week, getting a nod of approval from

objective is to allow people to transfer cash or make payments instantaneously using this technology without a bank or clearing party involved, saving on transaction costs, the person said. The transactions would be in an open ledger of a specific country's currency such as the dollar or euro, said the source, who declined to be identified because of a lack of authorization to discuss the project in public. According to Reuters and earlier reports, IBM has been in discussions with the US federal reserve and other central banks about such a money transfer system. Naturally, IBM is hoping to build and likely maintain the necessary infrastructure for such a project. Whether the company has the personnel and experience

IBM doesn’t appear to be offering a full endorsement of bitcoin. Put another way, the company isn’t trying to convince Fed Chair Janet Yellen to adopt bitcoin straight away. Rather, the plan, as Reuters describes it, calls for a bitcoin-like currency – or currencies, with the report indicating it might create different digital fiat replacement for each government – built on the same underlying blockchain distributed trust ledger system, but managed by global central banks. The thinking is that such a currency would to build out the software side of things is another matter entirely. Positive as the development may be,

be less expensive to maintain, allow for quicker settlements, and more convenient for consumers to carry and use. Reuters' source says: "These coins will be part of the money supply. It's the same money, just not a dollar bill with a serial number on it, but a token that sits on this blockchain." Bitcoin, as it currently exists, is decentralized, meaning that no single government or company (or group thereof) controls the issuance of new currency units or the maintenance of the ledger. Bitcoin’s ledger is publicly available, and maintained by a community of professional and amateur “miners,” who use specialized computers to solve cryptographic problems in exchange for bitcoin-based compensation. One thing that this report fails to address is how IBM and the Fed might convince banks to embrace such a new currency. Checking and savings accounts are not the revenue centers for most banks that the were decades ago, but they still produce non-trivial fees and interest income. More importantly, however, banks use low-margin checking and savings account relationships with consumers and businesses as a source of generating higher-margin business like lending and investments. In a decentralized, digital currency world, the role of banks will certainly change, if not disappear, at least in part. It’s hard to imagine the need for separate checking and savings accounts, which today serve to keep people from hiding stacks of paper currency under their mattress. In a digital currency world, it requires effectively no more space to store $1 as it does $1 million, and the security demands for each are the same. Early bitcoin wallet leaders like Coinbase, Circle, Blockchain.info, and Xapo offer a glimpse into the fee models that might emerge in a digital currency-dominated world, but those have hardly been tested at global economy scale. But

the fact that IBM and seemingly multiple central banks are even considering a blockchain-based currency solution confers a great deal of positive endorsement on bitcoin, and offers a counter point to fears over, among other things, security and money-laundering risk. These discussions remain informal and governments nevertheless,

rarely move at anything like startup speed.

That secures IP rights and ensures patent security Leswing 15 [Kif Leswing, editor at Futurism and IBT, 5/22/2015, "Why The Deed To Your House Could Soon Be A Bitcoin," International Business Times, http://www.ibtimes.com/why-deed-your-house-could-soon-be-bitcoin-1935315]

Several enterprising companies are using the blockchain to keep track of objects with substantial value, including stocks and art and land. And it’s not just startups and cryptocurrency fanatics who are embracing the blockchain -- major institutions are experimenting with it as well, including Nasdaq, which runs the second largest stock exchange in the United States. What Is The Blockchain? The reason bitcoin works is the blockchain, which works like this: A network of computers around the world checks every bitcoin transaction and records it in a database, which is how you can be sure your bitcoins are yours and haven’t been spent before. Essentially, it’s a

The beauty of the blockchain is that it can timestamp anything -- sort of like a notary. This isn’t theoretical. If you’d like to prove that your business plan -- or novel or a prediction -- exists, you can embed a note in the blockchain using an inexpensive service called Proof of Existence. The service, ledger that millions of computers agree on.

created by Manuel Araoz, essentially takes your document and slices it up to create something mathematicians call a hash -- a string of letters and numbers that uniquely and provably corresponds to your document and the time it was uploaded. That hash is then listed in the comment section of a tiny bitcoin transaction, say, a cent or two, creating a record that your document exists -- but not a copy of your document itself -- on computers around the world. For example, here’s proof that my first draft of this story existed at 12:15 pm EDT. You can also find that proof here, here, and here. But Araoz isn’t satisfied with providing a notary service. He tells International Business Times he’s working on a new blockchain

application -- for tracking land. Digital Gold In The Hills Araoz isn’t the only entrepreneur who thinks the blockchain is a great fit for real estate. Last week, Reuters reported that the country of Honduras entered into a deal with American bitcoin startup Factom to build a land title registry using blockchain-based technology. “Using the blockchain with land is more of a longer play. You’re going to need a nation or region or state to connect the legal dots,” said Peter Van Valkenburgh, director of research at bitcoin lobby Coin Center. Instead of passing a deed when you sell your house, the deed could be a hash included in a fraction of a bitcoin. That piece of Internet money then becomes a “colored coin.” That colored coin might be involved in a transaction that’s only a few cents, but you’re actually passing an asset. Factom CEO Peter Kirby’s pitch is that his technology will reduce fraud. Currently, Honduran land is managed by the government, which means corrupt cronies could potentially steal prime real estate. But if all land needs to have a title confirmed by the blockchain,

not even well-connected criminals could claim

they own something they don’t. It’s like writing on a dollar bill that the owner of that bill also owns 123 Real Street. Only the ownership of that bill is public and can be checked by anyone with access to the Internet. Nasdaq is taking a similar approach to using the blockchain for keeping an eye on private equity. Although publicly traded stock holdings are regulated and watched by the Securities and Exchange Commission, smaller, private companies often track their owners through certificates. The Nasdaq Private Market subsidiary will start using blockchain technology to supplement that process in the fourth quarter. Nasdaq’s program is small scale, and it’s only a pilot program. But it’s still an important sign. As IBM’s UK financial technology lead Richard Brown writes, “we now have a brand-name firm experimenting for real.” It’s not just big companies that might be able to benefit. Artists could use it to prove a work’s

blockchain can be better than a certificate of authenticity -and might eventually lead to the end of unattributed pictures floating around sites like Tumblr and Instagram. “Blockchain is very useful to secure intellectual property , but unless it can touch the lives of everyday provenance. A German company, Ascribe, thinks the

creators, it won't be adopted,” Ascribe CTO Trent McConaghy wrote in an email. “This will be a multibillion-dollar business across many industry verticals.”

IP security and patent protection is key to sustainable innovation IPP 12 [Innovation Policy Platform, joint initiative developed by the World Bank and OECD, composed of top policy practitioners around the world, 2012 (most recent date given), “Intellectual Property Rights for Innovative Entrepreneurship,” https://www.innovationpolicyplatform.org/content/intellectual-property-rightsinnovative-entrepreneurship]

Intellectual Property (IP) systems can be critical in helping new ventures transform their innovation potential and creativity into market value and competitiveness. Intellectual Property rights (IPR) allow innovative entrepreneurs to protect their inventions . They may also have multiple other functions, such as signaling current and prospective value to investors, competitors and partners, accessing knowledge markets and networks, and preventing rivals from patenting related inventions. However, IP systems can also create

Evidence at the firm level indicates a positive correlation between patenting and new ventures’ growth, access to venture capital and survival. Data shows a huge upsurge in patent applications in the last decade, with a strong variation in the share of young patenting firms across countries. Effective IP systems can facilitate access to finance and the development of markets for technology, both of which help innovative entrepreneurship. Such systems also provide incentives to invest in R&D and innovation, and can encourage technology co-operation with firms, obstacles to the development of entrepreneurial ideas and hamper knowledge diffusion and innovation.

universities and PRIs. IP systems need to fully take into account the new roles played in the economy by patents and other types of IP, and in particular how they relate to innovation (e.g. the increasing use of patents in opportunistic litigation). IP systems also need to adapt and modify IPR in order to better match it with the characteristics of today’s innovative world. [Table of Contents Omitted] What is the IP system? General definition of intellectual property rights (IPR) Intellectual Property (IP) is divided into two categories: Industrial property, which includes inventions (patents), trademarks, industrial designs, and geographic indications; and Copyright, which includes literary and artistic works. Intellectual property rights (IPR) refer to the general term for the assignment of property rights on these assets (seeTypes of IPR). The rights allow the holder to exclude other agents from the commercial exploitation of their intellectual property for a predetermined period. IPR is also designed to foster knowledge diffusion (see Access to knowledge and inventions). The granting of such rights is conditional on disclosing the content of the invention, so individuals can freely access the existing stock of protected IP and use it as the basis or inspiration for new and original intellectual assets. However, applicants can act strategically and avoid disclosing relevant or complementary information, making the disclosure less effective. Different forms of intellectual property protection Patents are the most well known form of IPR, but several other IPR instruments have been developed in order to address the large number of different forms of intellectual assets, reflecting the multidimensional nature of innovation. In most jurisdictions, the following types of formal IPR are available: trademarks, copyright, utility models, registered designs, lay-out designs of integrated circuits, new plant varieties, geographical indications and non-original database rights (WIPO, 2004) (seeTypes of IPR). IPR, however, is not the only tool to protect innovations. Rather, survey evidence suggests that in most industries it is not the most important one (Cohen, Nelson and Walsh, 2000). A number of different strategies are also employed by firms to manage their intellectual assets, either as an alternative or complement to formal IPR. They include secrecy, confidentiality agreements, lead-time, complexity of design, building-in of specialist know-how and open source (OECD, 2011) (see Innovation

The acquisition and management of IPR are critical in helping firms transform their innovation potential and creativity into market without IP). How does the IP system affect innovative entrepreneurship? The IP system as an asset for innovative entrepreneurship

value and competitiveness. This is particularly the case for new enterprises, as these rely heavily on exploiting intellectual capital in their business models. Protecting an invention is only one of the many roles that IPR may play in innovative firms. Other functions that companies fulfill with IPR (OECD, 2011; Cohen, Nelson and Walsh, 2000) are: positioning in global markets, by opening up new commercial pathways or by segmenting existing markets signaling current and prospective value to investors, competitors and partners accessing knowledge markets and

The role of IPR in accessing external finance is particularly important , especially in the risk capital market (see IP and markets for finance). For knowledge-intensive start-ups, patents are often the only asset entitlement they can use to raise funding. The emergent secondary market for patents should facilitate entry by these firms by providing a salvage value for those that fail (Hall and Harhoff, 2012). Shane (2001) also stresses that an effective IPR system allows entrepreneurs to have more time to grow their businesses before their ideas are imitated. For a new firm, time is crucial in order to collect funding, develop the supply chain and reach the market – all aspects in which incumbents have a competitive advantage. Furthermore, effective patent networks defending themselves from patent infringement suits blocking rivals from patenting related inventions using patents in negotiations over technology rights.

protection may allow a new firm to compete on the basis of differentiation rather than on the basis of costs. This is another a crucial asset for new ventures , since incumbent firms generally have a strong comparative advantage in producing at a lower cost.

Innovation is key to respond to every transnational challenge Barker, 2k – electrical engineer, and manager of corporate communications for the Electric Power Research Institute and former industrial economist and staff author at SRI International and as a commercial research analyst at USX Corporation (Brent, “Technology and the Quest for Sustainability.” EPRI Journal, Summer, infotrac)

accelerating productivity is an imperative to provide the wealth for environmental sustainability and to provide an economic ladder for developing nations opportunity for technology lies in its potential to help stabilize global population The key is economics. Global communications have brought an image of the comfortable life of the developed world into the homes of the poorest people, firing their own aspirations for a better quality of life, through economic development If we can make the prosperity --more accessible and affordable the cultural drivers for producing large families will be tempered, quickly From a social standpoint,

not an option but rather

for the future. It is necessary in order

, to support an aging population in the industrialized world,

. The second area of

at 10-12 billion sometime

in the twenty-first century, possibly as early as 2075.

, from television to movies to the Internet,

either

developed world

basic tools of

in their own country or through emigration to other countries.

--infrastructure, health care, education, and law

in the

, recent history suggests that

relatively

and without coercion. But the task is enormous. The physical prerequisites for prosperity

in the global economy are electricity and communications. Today, there are more than 2 billion people living without electricity, or commercial energy in any form, in the very countries where some 5 billion people will be added in the next 50 years. If for no other reason than our enlightened self-interest, we should strive for universal access to electricity, communications, and educational opportunity. We have little choice, because the fate of the developed world is inextricably bound up in the economic and demographic fate of the developing world. A third, related

opportunity for technology is in decoupling population growth from land use and decoupling economic growth from natural resource consumption through recycling, end-use efficiency, and industrial ecology. Europe and North America crossed the "zero threshold" meaning that no additional land is needed to support additional children and that land requirements will continue to decrease the pattern of returning land to nature will continue to spread throughout the world, eventually stemming and then reversing the current onslaught on the rain forests. Time is critical if vast tracts are to be saved and success will depend on how rapidly economic opportunities expand for those now trapped in subsistence and frontier farming , more broadly,

Decoupling population from land use is well under way. According to Grubler, from 1700 to 1850 nearly 2 hectares of land (5 acres) were needed to support every child born in North America, while in the more crowded and cultivated regions of Europe and Asia only

0.5 hectare (1.2 acres) and 0.2 hectare (0.5 acre) were needed, respectively. During the past century, the amount of land needed per additional child has been dropping in all areas of the world, with fastest decreases. Both

experiencing the

in the past few decades,

in the future. One can postulate that

great

from being laid bare,

largely

. In concept, the potential for returning land to nature is enormous. Futurist and scholar Jesse Ausubel of the Rockefeller University calculates that if farmers could lift average grain yields around the

world just to the level of today's average U.S. corn grower, one-half of current global cropland--an area the size of the Amazon basin--could be spared. If agriculture is a leading indicator, then the continuous drive to produce more from less will prevail in other parts of the economy Certainly

with shrinking agricultural land requirements, water distribution and use around the world can be greatly altered

, since nearly two-thirds of water now goes for irrigation. Overall, the technologies of the future will, in the words of Ausubel, be "cleaner, leaner, lighter, and drier"--that is, more efficient and less wasteful of materials and water. They will be much more tightly integrated

through microprocessor-based control and will therefore use human and natural resources much more efficiently and productively. Energy intensity, land intensity, and water intensity (and, to a lesser extent, materials intensity) for both manufacturing and agriculture are already heading downward. Only in agriculture are they falling fast enough to offset the surge in population, but, optimistically, advances in science and technology should accelerate the downward trends in other sectors, helping to decouple economic development from environmental impact in the coming century. One positive sign is the fact that recycling rates in North America are now approaching 65% for steel, lead, and copper and 30% for aluminum and paper. A second sign is that economic output is shifting away from resource-intensive products toward knowledge-based, immaterial goods and services. As a result, although the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) increased 200-fold (in real dollars) in the twentieth century, the physical weight of our annual output remains the same as it was in 1900. If anything, this trend will be accelerating. As Kevin Kelly, the editor of Wired magazine, noted, "The creations most in demand from the United States [as exports] have lost 50% of their physical weight per dollar of value in only six years.... Within a generation, two at most, the number of people working in honest-to-goodness manufacturing jobs will be no more than the number of farmers on the land--less than a few percent. Far more than we realize, the network economy is pulling us all in."

from population and economic growth

Even pollution shows clear signs of being decoupled

. Economist Paul Portney notes that, with the exception of greenhouse gases, "in the OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] countries, the favorable

experience [with pollution control] has been a triumph of technology That is, the ratio of pollution per unit of GDP has fallen fast enough in the developed world to offset the increase in both GDP per capita and the growing number of 'capitas' themselves." The fourth opportunity for science and technology stems from their enormous potential to unlock resources not now available, to reduce human limitations, to create new options for policymakers and businesspeople alike, and to give us new levels of insight into future challenges. Technically resources have little value if we cannot unlock them for practical use. With technology, we are able to bring dormant resources to life. For example, it was only with the development of an electrolytic process late in the nineteenth century that aluminum--the most abundant metal on earth--became commercially available and useful. Chemistry unlocked hydrocarbons. And engineering allowed us to extract and put to diverse use untapped petroleum and gas fields. Over the course of history, technology has made the inaccessible accessible, and resource depletion has been more of a catalyst for change than a longstanding problem. Technology provides us with last-ditch methods (what economists would call substitutions) that allow us to circumvent or leapfrog over crises of our own making. Agricultural technology solved the food crisis of the first half of the nineteenth century. The English "steam crisis" of the 1860s, triggered by the rapid rise of coal-burning steam engines and locomotives, was averted by mechanized mining and the discovery and use of petroleum. The U.S. "timber crisis" that Teddy Roosevelt publicly worried about was circumvented by the use of chemicals that enabled a billion or so railroad ties to last for decades instead of years. The great "manure crisis" of the same era was solved by the automobile, which in a few decades replaced some 25 million horses and freed up 40 million hectares (100 million acres) of farmland, not to mention improving the sanitation and smell of inner cities. Oil discoveries in Texas and then in the Middle East pushed the pending oil crisis of the 1920s into the future. And the energy crisis of the 1970s stimulated the development of new sensing and drilling technology, sparked the advance of non--fossil fuel alternatives, and deepened the penetration of electricity with its fuel flexibility into the global economy Thanks to underground imaging technology, today's known gas resources are an order of magnitude greater than the resources known 20 years ago, and new reserves continue to be discovered. Technology has also greatly extended human limits. It has given each of us a productive capability greater than that of 150 workers in 1800, for example, and has conveniently put the power of hundreds of horses in our garages. In recent decades, it has extended our

But global sustainability is not inevitable there is the potential for all of this to backfire before the job can be done. people sometimes turn in fear on technologies, that openly foster an ever-faster pace of change voice and our reach, allowing us to easily send our words, ideas, images, and money around the world at the speed of light.

. In spite of the tremendous promise that technology

holds for a sustainable future,

There are disturbing indications that

and anger

industries, and institutions

. The

current opposition to nuclear power genetically altered food, the globalization of the economy and the spread of American culture should give us pause. Technology has always presented a two-edged sword, serving as both cause and effect, solving one problem while creating another that was unintended and often unforeseen. We solved the manure crisis, but automotive smog, congestion, and urban sprawl took its place. We cleaned and transformed the cities with all-electric buildings rising thousands of feet into the sky. But while urban pollution was thereby dramatically reduced, a portion of the pollution was shifted to someone else's sky. Breaking limits "Limits to growth" was a popular theme in the 1970s, and a best-selling book of that name predicted dire consequences for the human race by the end of the century. In fact, we have done much better than those predictions, largely because of a factor the book missed--the potential of new technology to break limits. Repeatedly, human societies have approached seemingly insurmountable barriers only to find the means and tools to break through. This ability has now become a source of optimism, an

Today's perceived limits are global in nature and larger in scale and complexity than ever before. Nearly 2 billion people in the world are without adequate sanitation, and nearly as many are without access to clean drinking water. AIDS is spreading rapidly Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are climbing steadily. Petroleum reserves may last only another 50 years the biodiversity of the planet could become as threatened in this coming century as it was at the end of the last ice age, when more than 70% of the species disappeared All these perceived article of faith, in many parts of the world.

, however, look and feel different. They

, multicultural,

in the regions of the world least able to fight it.

more than 30% greater than preindustrial levels and are

, expected to be tapped by over a billion automobiles worldwide by 2015,

of large mammals and other vertebrates in North America

-100

. And without careful preservation efforts,

(along with 29% in Europe and 86% in Australia).

limits require innovation of a scope and intensity surpassing humankind's current commitment. The list of real-world problems that could thwart global sustainability includes war, disease, famine, political and religious turmoil, despotism, entrenched poverty, illiteracy, resource depletion, and environmental degradation We should put our technology to work, striving to lift more than 5 billion people out of poverty while preventing irreversible damage to the biosphere and irreversible loss of the earth's natural resources. is long and sobering. It

. Technology can help resolve some of these issues--poverty and disease, resource depletion, and environmental impact, for example--but it offers little recourse for the passions and politics that divide the world.

The likelihood is that we will not catch up and overtake the moving target of global sustainability in the coming century, but given the prospects for technology, which have never been brighter, we may come surprisingly close.

Increasing the rate of innovation is key – the impact is extinction Heaberlin, 4 – nuclear engineer, led the Nuclear Safety and Technology Applications Product Line at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (Scott, A Case for Nuclear-Generated Electricity, p. 31-40)

because without that use of fertilizers we couldn't produce the food to feed the population. We just couldn't do it. Here are some comparisons." If you used no fertilizers or pesticides you could get 500 kilograms of grain from a hectare in a dry climate and as much as 1000 kilograms in a humid climate. If you got organic and used animal manure as fertilizer, assuming you could find enough, you might get as much as 2000 kilograms per hectare. For a sense of scale, the average in the United States, where recall we only get half the food value to hectare as the intensively farmed Chinese crop land, we get about 4500 kilograms per hectare on the average. In serious cornfields with fertilizer, irrigation, and pesticides, the value is 7000 kilograms per hectare. Modern mechanized, chemically supported agriculture produces 7 to 14 times the food that you would get without those advantages. Even the best organic farming would produce only 30 to 45% of the food value you would get from the same sized chemically fertilized farm, and that is assuming you could get the manure you needed to make it work. In very stark terms, without the chemically enhanced farming we would have probably something like one-fifth the food supply we have now. That means four-fifths the population would not be fed, at least as we are organized now. So, no, just giving up on fertilizers is not in the deal. However, we could get the hydrogen and energy from sources other than Well, then let's not do that, huh? Well, no, not hardly,

natural gas. Nuclear energy could be used to provide electricity to extract hydrogen from water and produce the process heat required to combine the hydrogen and nitrogen from the air. That is just a thought to stick in your mind. While we are looking at energy use in agriculture, here are a few more numbers for you.10 If you look at the energy input into agriculture and the energy you get out, you see some interesting facts. By combining the energy used to make fertilizers and pesticides, power irrigation, and run the farm machinery in the United States, we use about 0.7 kcal of fossil fuel energy for each 1 kcal of food we make. This doesn't include the energy needed to process and transport the food. In Europe where they farm more intensely, the amount of energy out is just about the same as energy in. In Germany and Italy the numbers are 1.4 and 1.7 kcal energy input to each 1 kcal output respectively. The point is you need energy to feed people, well at least a lot of people. Which gets us back to Cohen and his question. One of the studies he examined looked at a "self-sustaining solar energy system." For the United States, this would replace all fossil energy and provide one-fifth to one-half the current energy use. The conclusion of the study was that this would either produce" a significant reduction in our standard of living ... even if all the energy conservation measures known today were adopted" or if set at the current standard of living, "then the ideal U.S. population should be targeted at 40-100 million people." The authors of that study then cheerfully go on to point out that we do have enough fossil fuel to last a

you can go to a "self-sustaining" energy economy as long as you are willing to shoot between 2 out of 3 and 6 out of 7 of your neighbors. And this is a real question. The massive least a century, as long as we can work out the pesky environmental problems. So,

use of fossil fuel driven agriculture to provide the fertilizers and pesticides, and power the farm equipment, is a) vitally important to feed everyone, and b) something we just can't keep up in a business-as-usual fashion. Sustainable means you can keep doing it. Fossil energy supplies are finite; you will run out some time. Massive use of fossil energy and the greenhouse gases they produce also may very well tip the planet into one of those extinction events in which a lot of very bad things happen to a lot of the life on the earth. O.K. to Cohen's big question, how many people can the earth support? What it comes down to is that the "Well, it depends" answer depends on • what quality of life you will accept, • what level of technology you will use, and • what level of social integration you will accept. We have seen some of the numbers regarding quality of life. Clearly if you are willing to accept the Bangladesh diet, you can feed 1.8 times more people than if you chose the United States diet. If you choose the back-to-nature, live like our hearty forefathers, level of technology, you can feed perhaps one-fifth as many people as you can with modern chemical fertilized agriculture. The rest have to go. And here is the tough one. You can do a lot better, get a lot more people on the planet, if you just force a few things. Like, no more land wasted in growing grapes for wine or grains for whiskey and beer. No cropland used for tobacco. No more grain wasted on animals for meat, just grain for people. No more rich diets for the rich countries, share equally for everyone. No more trade barriers; too bad for the farmers in Japan and France, those countries would just have to accept their dependence on other countries for their food. It is easy to see that at least some of those might actually be a pretty good thing; however, the kicker is how do you get them to happen? After all, Mussolini ll did make the trains run on time. How could you force these things

Cohen looked at all the various population estimates and concluded that most fell into the range of 4 to 16 billion . Taking the highest without a totalitarian state? Are you willing to give up your ability to choose for yourself for the common good? It is not pretty, is it?

value when researchers offered a range, Cohen calculated a high median of 12 billion and taking the lower part of the range a low median of 7.7 billion. The good news in this is 12 billion is twice as many people as we have now. The bad news is that the projections for world population for 2050 are between 7.8 and 12.5 billion. That means we have got no more than 50 years before we exceed the nominal carrying capacity of the earth. Cohen also offers a qualifying observation by stating the "First Law of Information," which asserts that 97.6% of all statistics are made up. This helps us appreciate that application of these numbers to real life is subject to a lot of assumptions and insufficiencies in our understanding of the processes and data. However, we can

What it comes down to is that if you choose the fully sustainable, non-fossil fuel long-term options with only limited social integration, the various estimates Cohen looked at give you a draw some insights from all of this.

number like 1 billion or less people that the earth can support. That means 5 out of 6 of us have got to go, plus no new babies without an offsetting death. On the other hand, if you let technology continue to do its thing and perhaps get even better, the picture need not be so bleak . We haven't made all our farmland as productive as it can be. Remember, the Chinese get twice the food value per hectare as we do in the United States. There is also a lot of land that would become arable if we could get water to it. And, of course , in case you need to go back and check the title of this book, there are alternatives to fossil fuels to provide the energy to power that technology. So given a positive and perhaps optimistic view of technology, we can look to some of the high technology assumption based studies from Cohen's review. From the semi-credible set of these, we can find estimates from 19 to 157 billion as the number of people the earth could support with a rough average coming in about 60 billion. This is a good time to be reminded of the First Law of Information. The middle to lower end of this range, however, might be done without wholesale social reprogramming. Hopefully we would see the improvement in the quality of life in the developing countries as they industrialize and increase their use of energy. Hopefully, also this would lead to a matching of the reduction in fertility rates that has been observed in the developed countries, which in turn would lead to an eventual balancing of the

the near-term future of the human race depends on technology. If we turn away from technology, a very large fraction of the current and future human race will starve. If we just keep on as we are, human population. The point to all this is

with our current level of technology and dependence on fossil fuel resources, in the near term it will be a race between fertility decrease and our ability to feed ourselves, with, frankly, disaster the slight odds-on bet. In a slightly longer term, dependence on fossil fuels has got to lead to either social chaos or environmental

However, if we accept that it is technology that makes us human, that technology uniquely identifies us as the only animal that can choose its future, we can choose to live, choose to make it a better world for everyone and all life. This means more and better technology. It means disaster. There are no other end points to that road. It doesn't go anywhere else.

more efficient technology that is kinder to the planet but also allows humans to support large numbers in a high quality of life. That road is not easy and has a number of ways to screw up. However, it is a road that can lead to a happier place, a better place. Two Concluding Thoughts on the Case for Technology Two more points and I will end my defense of technology. First, I want to bring you back from all the historical tour and all the numbers about population to something more directly personal. Let me ask you two questions. What do you do for a living? What did you have for breakfast? Don't see any connection between these questions or of their connection to·the subject of technology? Don't worry, the point will come out shortly. I am just trying to bring the idea of technology back from this grand vision to its impact on your daily life. Just as a wild guess, your answer to the first question was something that, say 500 years ago, didn't even exist. If we look 20,000 years ago, the only job was" get food." Even if you have a really directly socially valuable job like a medical doctor, 20,000 years ago you would have been extraneous. That is, the tribe couldn't afford you. What, no way! A doctor could save lives, surely a tribe would value such a skill. Well, sure, but the tribe could not afford taking one of their members out of the productive /I getting the food" job for 20 years while that individual learned all those doctor skills. If you examine the "what you do for a living" just a bit I think you will see a grand interconnectedness of all things. I personally find it pretty remarkable that we have a society that values nuclear engineers enough that I can make a living at it. Think about it. Somehow what I have done has been of enough value that, through various taxpayer and utility ratepayers, society has given me enough money for food and shelter. The tribe 20,000 years ago wouldn't have put up with me for a day. You see, that is why we as humans are successful, wildly successful in fact. We work together. "Yeah, sure we do," you reply, " read a newspaper lately?" Well, O.K., we fuss and fight a good deal and some of us do some pretty stupid and pretty mean things. But the degree of cooperation is amazing if you just step back a bit. O.K., what did you have for breakfast: orange juice, coffee, toast, maybe some cereal and milk? Where do these things come from? Orange juice came from Florida or California. Coffee came from South America. Bread for the toast came perhaps from Kansas; cereal, from the Mid-West somewhere. The jam on the toast may have come from Oregon, or maybe Chile. Milk is probably the only thing that came from within a hundred miles of your breakfast table. Think about it. There were hundreds of people involved in your breakfast. Farmers, food-processing workers, packaging manufacturers, transportation people, energy producers, wholesale and retail people. Perhaps each one only spent a second on their personal contribution to your personal breakfast, but they touch thousands of other people's breakfasts as well. In turn, you buying the various components of your breakfast supported, in your part, all those people. They in turn, in some way or another, bought whatever you provide to society that allowed you

think about what ties all the planetwide interconnection, Yep, you guessed it: technology. Without technology, you get what is available within your personal reach, and what you produce is available only to those who are near enough that you can personally carry it to them on your own two feet. Technology makes our world work. It gives you personally a productive and socially valuable way to make both a living and to provide your contribution to the rest of us . I want you to stop a minute and really think about that. What would your life be like without technology? Could you do what you currently do? Would anyone be able to use what you do? Would anyone pay you for that? "But I am a school to buy breakfast. Pretty amazing, don't you think? Now when you look at all that,

teacher," you say, "of course, they would pay me!" Are you sure? Why do you need schools if there is no technology? All I need is to teach the kid how to farm and how to hunt. Sons and daughters can learn that by working in the fields along with their parents. See what I mean? Now, I have hopefully reset your brain. Sure, you

Hopefully, you are a bit more shielded against that din, and you have been given some perspective to balance that message and are prepared to see the true critical value of technology to human existence. The point is that technology is what makes us human. Without it, we are just slightly smarter monkeys. You may feel that 6 billion of us are too many, and that may very well be . I personally don't know how to make that value decision. Which particular person does one select as being one of the excess ones ? However, the fact is that there are 6 billion of us, and it looks like we are headed for 10 to 12 billion in the next 50 years, Without not only the technology we have, but significantly better and more environmentally friendly technology, the world is going to get ugly as we approach these numbers, On the other hand, with the right technologies we can not only support those numbers, we can do it while we close the gap between the haves and havenots. We can make it a better place for everyone. It takes technology and the energy to drive it. Choosing technology is what we have to do to secure the evolutionary selection of us as a successful species , are still going to be hit with daily "technology is bad" messages.

we are not the chosen, unless. Unless we choose us . We humans have the unique ability and opportunity to choose either our evolutionary success or failure. A choice of technology gives us a chance. A choice rejecting technology dooms us as a species and gives the cockroaches the chance in our place . Nature doesn't care what survives, algae seas, dinosaurs, humans, cockroaches, or whatever is successful. If we care, we have to choose correctly. As an aside, let me address a point of philosophy here. If any of this offends your personal theology, I offer this for your consideration. Genesis tells us Remember, some pages back in discussing the unlikely evolutionary path to us, I said This is what I meant. We are totally unique in all of evolutionary history.

God gave all the Earth to humanity and charged us with the stewardship thereof. So it is ours to use as well as we can. That insightful social philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli put it this way in 1501: "What remains to be done must be done by you; since in order not to deprive us of our free will and such share of glory as belongs to us, God will not do everything Himself." O.K., you are saying, "I give." You have beaten the socks off me. Technology is good; technology is the identifying human trait and our only hope. But what is this stuff about choosing technology or not? Technology just happens doesn't it? I mean, technology always advances, it always

technology. It doesn't always just happen, and people have chosen to turn away from technology. In what might have seemed at the time to be a practical social decision, huge future implications were imposed on many has, so why the big deal? Well, that is my last point on

generations to come. It has happened. Let me take you on one more trip through history. I think you will find it enlightening. In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond explores the question of why the European societies came to be dominate over all the other human cultures on earth. It is a fascinating story and provides a lot of insight into how modern societies evolved. In moving through history, he comes across a very odd discontinuity. He observes that if you came to earth from space in the year 1400 A.D., looked around, and went home to write your research paper on the probable future of the earth, you would clearly conclude the Chinese would run the entire planet shortly. Furthermore, you could conclude they would do it pretty darn well. If those same extraterrestrial researchers were to pop into their time machine and come back to earth in any year from say 1800 to now, they would be totally amazed to see China as a large, but relatively backward, country, struggling to catch up with their European and American peers. To understand the significance of this, you have to go on that research trip with the extraterrestrials and look at China before 1400. In The Lever af Riches, Joel Mokyr dedicates one chapter looking at the comparisons of technology development in China to that in Europe. He lists the following as technology advantages China had in the centuries before 1400: • Extensive water control projects, alternately draining and irrigating land, significantly boosting agricultural production • Sophisticated iron plow introduced sixth century B.C. • Seed drills and other farm tools, introduced around 1000 A.D. • Chemical and organic fertilizers and pesticides used • Blast furnaces and casting of iron as early as 200 B.C., not known in Europe until fourteenth century • Advanced use of power sources in textile production, not seen in Europe until the Industrial Revolution • Invention of compass around 960 A.D. • Major advances in maritime technology (more in a bit on this) • Invention of paper around 100 A.D. (application as toilet paper by 590 A.D.). In the year 1400 AD., China was a world power, perhaps the only true world power. Their technology in agriculture, textiles, metallurgy, and maritime transportation were far in advance of any other country. They had a strong central government and a very healthy economy. Their naval strength provides a real insight into the degree of this dominance. Dr. Diamond sends us to an extremely readable book When China Ruled the Seas-The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne 1405-1433 by Dr. Louise Levathes. Dr. Levathes takes us on an inside tour of the Chinese empire during these years. She focuses on the great treasure fleets that China set forth in these early years of the fifteenth century. In her book she has a wonderful graphic that overlays a Chinese vessel of the treasure fleet (-1410) with Columbus's St. Maria (1492). At 85 feet in length and three masts, the St. Maria is dwarfed by the nine-masted, 400-foot-long Chinese vessel. The Chinese sailed fleets of these magnificent vessels throughout oceans of South Asia, to India, and even as far as the eastern coast of Africa. With this naval domination China claimed tribute from Japan, Korea, the nations of the Malay Archipelago, and various states within what is now India. Through both trade and the occasional application of military force, China provided an enlightened and progressive direction for all the nations within this sphere of influence. If two princes in India were fighting over a throne, it was the recognition, or lack thereof, from the Chinese emperor that decided who would rule. Setting a policy of religious inclusion and tolerance, the Chinese engaged the Arabian traders and calmed religious disputes within Asia.

With applications of power sources in textiles and advanced metallurgy, the Chinese were in the same position in 1400 as the British were in 1750, ready to launch into the Industrial Revolution. They traded with nations thousands of miles from home with vast, sophisticated shipping fleets. They were poised to extend this trade all the way to Europe and perhaps find the New World by going east instead of the

But if we pop into that extraterrestrial time machine and drop into China in 1800, we find a technologically backward nation, humbled by a relatively small force of Europeans with "modern" military technology who wantonly imposed their will on the Chinese. The Chinese have been struggling to catch up with European's going west in search of the rich Chinese markets.

European and American technology ever since and so far not quite being able to do that. The domination of China by the Japanese during World War II shows how complete the turnaround was. In 1400 Japan was but one of many vassal states huddled about the feet of the Imperial Chinese throne. In 1940 the Japanese military

What could have happened to turn this clear champion of technology, trade, enlightened leadership with all its advantages over both its neighbors and yet-distant foreign competitors into such a weak, backward giant? Mokyr goes through a pretty complete list of potential causes. He looks at diet, climate, and inherent philosophical mindset crushed the Chinese government while marching on to control much of South Asia.

rejecting each as a credible actor mainly on the bases that all of these conditions were present during the period of technological and economic growth as well as the subsequent stagnation. Therefore, these were not determining factors in the turnabout. In the end he concludes, as does Diamond and Levathes, that

it was just

politics . Yep, that is right. It was good, old human politics. Dr. Levathes gives us a delightful insider's view of the personalities and politics of Imperial the party that had been in control during the expansionist period supported the great treasure fleets, commerce with foreign nations, use and expansion of technology, and a rather harsh control of the rival party. The rival party was based on Confucian philosophy that preached a rigid, inward-looking, controlled existence. When the Confucian party gained control of the throne, they had their opportunity to push back on the prior ruling party that had oppressed them so harshly for so long. And they did. They wanted nothing to do with foreigners; we have all we need at home, here in China, they said. The fleet was disbanded and the making of ocean-going vessels forbidden. Technology was no longer "encouraged." Again, their position was what we have is good enough, stop with all this new nonsense. Over a period of just a few years, the course of the progressions during this critical time period. To make a short story of it,

entire nation was shifted from what would have appeared to be a bright future as the leading power in the world to a large, but relatively insignificant, backwater, rich in history and culture, but all backward looking to a former glory. That was it. A shift in the political agenda. At the time, to the leaders in control, one that made sense. Focus at home, use what you have now, create order, discipline, control. In 50 years Japanese pirates controlled the coast of China, and the former ruler of the seas from Asia to Africa could not get out of their harbors safely.

So, you see if the "technology is bad" message gets

incorporated into too many of our daily decisions , we can turn from our bright future into something else. The difference is that this time the stakes are much higher than they were in fifteenth century China. If we, in the developed nations, make the wrong choices, we doom all of humanity by our folly. It is not just that we miss the potential bright future, we miss the chance to avoid the combined human population growth and resources exhaustion disaster coming at us like a runaway train. Technology is the only way to prevent that train wreck . We can hear the siren's call of anti-technology, come back to nature and let the train run us down in a bloody mess, or we can try our best to use technology wisely and win free to make a better life for everyone.

African Growth Bitcoin solves African growth – status quo guarantees collapse Handa 8-22, Nikunj Handa is one of the entrepreneurs behind VC4Africa listed and DEMO Africa 2014 selected company Kitiwa, based in Accra, Ghana. Nikunj was most recently a Technology Teaching Fellow at the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST), Bitcoin: a financial revolution driver in Africa & the developing world ?, http://vc4africa.biz/blog/2014/08/22/bitcoins-a-financialrevolution-driver-in-africa-the-developing-world/ As a result, merchants in major African economies like Nigeria (GDP: 262 bn) find themselves largely cut off from the global payments network. While PayPal has slowly begun introducing some of its services to Nigerians (Nigerians can now pay for certain goods online using PayPal), it is still impossible for a Nigerian merchant to accept payment through Paypal because the company blacklists the entire nation from its merchant services. A quick conversation with a Nigerian merchant will also make it clear that getting a Visa or MasterCard merchant account is a complete bureaucratic nightmare. While it’s understandable that these payment companies are attempting to guard against the fraudulent actions of Nigeria’s infamous “419” criminals, the thousands of Nigerian merchants with legitimate businesses are unfortunately also affected. These issues are not only prevalent within the countries themselves. It is extremely expensive, difficult and slow for those living outside their home countries to send sums of money (or remittances) back home. Companies like Western Union and MoneyGram charge an average fee of 12% and take up to 2-3 days to deliver remittances. In addition, these companies primarily use a traditional agent model where people have to physically pick up cash from brick-andmortar outlets. There is a relatively low integration with local mobile money solutions, resulting in a highly inconvenient experience. In some more unfortunate developing nations, public financial governance is also an issue. Some currencies are losing their value so rapidly that people in those countries are switching to more reliable forms of payment, like the US Dollar or the Euro. This, however, is often illegal. An excellent example of a country struggling with this is Argentina (the Argentine Peso has fallen over 50% over the past year). These problems create a vicious cycle of deterioration . Expensive online payments reduce spending. Expensive money transfers promote the illegal importation of foreign currencies (often hidden like drugs in suitcases). Rapidly devaluing currencies lead to the emergence of underground forex markets and cause merchants to illegally accept, and consumers to illegally spend, foreign currencies within their countries. All of this increases the amount of “black” or untaxed money within a nation, hindering the country’s progress and development. There is a need for innovation to alleviate these issues, and one of those innovations comes in the form of Bitcoins. Bitcoins are a crypto-currency that have a different way of working behind the scenes. But to a non tech-savvy consumer, they’re pretty much the same as the US Dollar or the Euro. They can be exchanged to and from fiat currencies (currencies that a government has declared to be legal tender, like the US Dollar in the United States) on websites like Coinbase or Bitstamp and can be spent by consumers or accepted by merchants using services like Bitpay. Bitcoins, however, are fundamentally better for the developing world due to the fact that they are decentralized. They are not subject to incompetencies in financial governance by a single entity, and can be used by anyone with access to the internet or text messaging (using Coinbase SMS Service, 37Coins, Coinpip) for instant and extremely inexpensive money transfers. The median Bitcoin transaction fee over the past year has been just $0.004 as compared to the $30 SWIFT fee charged by banks. This allows anyone in the world to make payments, accept payments and make transfers using Bitcoins. All that’s needed is an effort

by companies in the developing world to allow residents to exchange Bitcoins for their local fiat currencies and increase adoption and education on Bitcoins within the community. Companies currently doing this around the world include Kitiwa (Ghana, Nigeria), Bitpesa (Kenya), ICE3X and BitX (South Africa), BitPagos (Argentina), Coincove and Bitso (Mexico) and Coins.ph (Philippines). In the majority of countries that have passed Bitcoin regulation, Bitcoins are not considered a currency but a digital asset. This allows people in countries with rapidly devaluing local fiat currencies to hold Bitcoins legally. BitPagos in Argentina, a company that allows Argentinian companies to accept payments in Bitcoins and convert them to the local Argentinian Peso, has realised that most of its merchants prefer to hold Bitcoins rather than convert them to the local Peso. They find Bitcoins to be a more reliable store of value and, as Bitcoin is not a currency, this process is entirely legal. But will it continue to be legal? Most governments of developing nations are taking the wait-and-see approach and have not yet formally regulated Bitcoins. This is one of the most uncertain aspects for Bitcoin companies in the developing world.

African growth solves AIDS, instability, deforestation, and the ozone Stetter 9 (Ernst, Secretary General of Federation for European Progressive Studies, “Why Africa matters! – The economic crisis and Africa,” Contribution to the Shadow GN 2009, February 4 and 5, http://www.feps-europe.eu/fileadmin/downloads/globalisation/090204_Stetter_Africa.pdf) If there is no doubt that Africa is endowed with abundant natural resources, it is also true that Africa is still struggling to address the multiple challenges facing the continent, this includes poverty, underdevelopment, protracted conflicts, environmental degradation, HIV/AIDS pandemic, tuberculosis and malaria. It has been suggested that all over Africa, poverty is a common denominator and it is not surprising that people’s immune systems have been damaged. Reports on Africa’s HIV/AIDS pandemic have all come to the conclusion that HIV/AIDS on the continent is closely associated to poverty . It is clear that the absence of technological investment and the contemning human resource capacity has prevented Africa from making optimal use of its abundant resources for the benefit of its people. Nevertheless, the new scramble for natural resources in the continent is likely to create a new awareness of the geopolitical importance of the African region. Therefore, Africa remains a critical partner for the world’s economic viability . However, for Africa to benefit more from its vast natural resources it must be finally enabled to add value to these products rather than export them raw to Europe and elsewhere in the developed world. Africa needs to be helped in manufacturing value-added products that yield higher profit and income to African economies. In addition, there are, at least, five significant factors that provide a plausible explanation as to why Africa matters, especially concerning Europe: Firstly, it is the history of Africa and its relationship with Europe. The history of Africa has been a history of integration into the European economy and markets. Therefore, Africa has historically held a significant place in the European economy, trade and investments . If Africa matters to Europe it matters also to the globalised world. Secondly, there is also the inherent link between environment and sustainable development. While the history of Africa and its integration into the European economy is clearly defined by historical circumstances, the environmental aspects are not clearly discernible. Environmentally, Africa matters to the world because it provides the largest capacity in the world necessary for maintaining equilibrium in the biosphere and avoid further depletion of the ozone layer . At the same time the rapid of depletion of Africa’s biodiversity including its tropical forests, medicinal plants remain threatened by the levels of poverty on the

continent. Africa’s most prevailing source of energy is biomass which means depletion and an exponential raid of its forestation. If this is left to continue, the World will suffer serious climate change which is likely to erode its socio-economic prosperity and a consequent negative impact to its population. This is an area which needs a strong partnership with the rest of the world, to protect its environment and avoid further depletion of the ozone layer. Thirdly, Africa matters because it still provides easy market access to Europe, the US and China and can give, in some cases, extraordinary investment opportunities with high rates of return. With the changing political climate in the continent towards democracy, respect for the rule of law and protection of human and people’s rights the investment climate in Africa could rapidly change. The historical and cultural links, geographical proximity, and deep knowledge and understanding of the continent gives international European investors a comparative advantage over Northern America and Asia, including China. With these investments the average rate of growth in Africa has been increasing most significantly in most African countries ranging from 3% to 7% in many countries during recent years. The income disparities in the continent have been narrowing and the purchasing power parity increasing. This, coupled with the population of the continent, provides a market with huge potential especially for European goods. Indeed, any visitor to Africa would quickly realize that there is still a very significant quantity of European products traded in the continent. However, if you are in Europe you can hardly see the presence of African products on the market. This is mainly because Africa cannot compete in the European market either because of European subsidies or other protectionist measures that stifle Africa’s competitiveness and ability to sell in the European market. This problem needs to be addressed to ensure the sustainability of African-European partnership. Fourthly, Africa matters because of its abundance nature of human resources which provided the backbone of industrialisation in Europe. Africa is a rich continent and not as poor as it is depicted elsewhere in the world. Africa is richly endowed with mineral reserves. The continent ranks first in terms of the amount of global reserves of bauxite, chromites, cobalt, diamond and gold. It also ranks first in terms of palladium, phosphates, platinum group metals, titanium minerals, vanadium and zircon. Africa was, and still is, among the world’s largest exporters. An ecological survey realised by the mineral industries of Africa has estimated that production in Africa alone accounts as much as 80 % of the world’s platinum group metals, 55% of chromites, 49 % of the palladium, 45% of the vanadium and up to 55 % of the world’s gold and diamond. Moreover, Africa has emerged as a critical exporter of cheap and skilled labor that has been instrumental in moving Europe’s economy forward.

AIDS causes extinction Spignesi 4 New York Times bestselling author and university professor who writes about historical biography, American and world history (Stephen, “Catastrophe! The 100 Greatest Disasters of All Time”, p. 12) Regardless of the means of transmission of the HIV virus or the societal groups most affected, the reality is that AIDS is one of the worst pandemics ever to strike mankind. If the virus happens to mutate and become airborne contagious, AIDS could very easily wipe out life on earth . The need for a vaccine and a cure is paramount, since we cannot be sure that AIDS will burn itself out, as did the Black Death and influenza.

Instability causes global war Glick 7, Middle East fellow at the Center for Security Policy, Condi’s African holiday,http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2007/12/condis-african-holiday.php?pf=yes The Horn of Africa is a dangerous and strategically vital place . Small wars, which rage continuously, can easily escalate into big wars. Local conflicts have regional and global aspects. All of the conflicts in this tinderbox, which controls shipping lanes from the Indian Ocean into the Red Sea, can potentially give rise to regional, and indeed global conflagrations between competing regional actors and global powers.

African forests solve extinction Strieker 2k, Gary Strieker, Cable News Network, Http:www.cnn.com/, 2/21/2000 There have been rhetorical advances as of late in African rainforest conservation. It remains to be seen whether talking the talk leads to walking the walks. Planetary survival depends upon making it so. Commercial logging consumes nearly 40,000 square kilometers of African forest each year, an area the size of Switzerland. Much of it falls to chainsaws in the vast central African rainforest. Second in size only to the Amazon, is Africa's wild plants and animals. Many endangered species face certain extinction if destruction on this scale continues.

The ozone’s key to survival Busman 98 (Dept. of Geological Sciences, University of Michigan, http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/society/ozone.htm) The ozone layer is essential for human life . It is able to absorb much harmful u ltra v iolet radiation, preventing penetration to the earth’s surface. Ultraviolet radiation ( UV) is defined as radiation with wavelengths between 290-320 nanometers, which are harmful to life because this radiation can enter cells and destroy the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) of many life forms on planet earth. In a sense, the ozone layer can be thought of as a UV filter or our planet’s built in sunscreen (Geocities.com, 1998). Without the ozone layer, UV radiation would not be filtered as it reached the surface of the earth. If this happened, cancer would break out and all of the living civilizations, and all species on earth would be in jeopardy allows life, as we know it, to exist.

(Geocities.com, 1998). Thus,

the ozone layer essentially

Economy I have more cards that says this also but haven’t cut them yet. Bitcoin key to the economy---centralized banking makes more catastrophic failures inevitable Michael Casey 15, senior columnist covering global economics and markets at WSJ, Masters Degree from Cornell University, 1/23/15, Bitcoin and the Digital-Currency Revolution, www.wsj.com/articles/the-revolutionary-power-of-digital-currency-1422035061 But there is no such thing as the digital equivalent of a dollar bill. Bitcoins exist purely as entries in an accounting system—a transparent public ledger known as the “blockchain” that records balances and transfers among special bitcoin “addresses.” Owning bitcoin doesn’t mean having a digital banknote in a digital pocket; it means having a claim to a bitcoin address, with a secret

This ledger is what gives bitcoin its potential to disrupt global finance. In the current dollar-based monetary system, we entrust banks and other fee-charging intermediaries to act as gatekeepers to nearly every transaction. Those centralized institutions maintain closely guarded in-house ledgers and, with that information, determine whether their customers have enough credit to write checks, buy goods with credit cards or wire money.¶ With bitcoin, the balances held by every user of the monetary system are instead recorded on a widely distributed, publicly displayed ledger that is kept up-to-date by thousands of independently owned, competing computers known as “miners.”¶ To understand how it works and why it is more efficient and less expensive than the existing system, let’s take a single example: buying a cup of coffee at your local coffee shop. password, and the right to transfer its balances to someone else.¶

If you pay with a credit card, the transaction seems simple enough: You swipe your card, you grab your cup, you leave.¶ In fact, the financial system is just getting started with you and the coffee shop. Before the store actually gets paid and your bank balance falls, more than a half-dozen institutions—such as a billing processor, the card association ( Visa , MasterCard , etc.), your bank, the coffee shop’s bank, a payment processor, the clearinghouse network managed by the regional Federal Reserve Banks—will have shared part of your account information or otherwise intervened in the flow of money.¶ If all goes well, your bank will confirm your identity and good credit and send payment to the coffee shop’s bank two or three days later. For this privilege, the coffee shop pays a fee of between 2% and 3%.¶ Now let’s pay in bitcoin, assuming that your favorite coffee shop accepts it (more than 82,000 merchants world-wide already do). If you don’t already have bitcoins, you will need to buy some from one of a host of online exchanges and brokerages, using a simple transfer from your regular bank account. You will then assign the bitcoins to a wallet, which functions like an online account.¶ Once inside the coffee shop, you will open your wallet’s smartphone app and hold its QR code reader up to the coffee shop’s device. This allows your embedded secret password to unlock a bitcoin address and publicly informs the bitcoin computer network that you are transferring $1.75 worth of bitcoin (currently about 0.0076

your transaction is immediately broadcast to the world (in alphanumeric data that can’t be traced to you personally). Your information is then gathered up by bitcoin “miners,” the computers that maintain the system and are bitcoin) to the coffee shop’s address. This takes just seconds, and then you walk off with your coffee.¶ What happens next is crucial. In contrast to the existing system,

compensated, roughly every 10 minutes, for their work confirming transactions.¶ The computer that competes successfully to package the data from your coffee purchase adds that information to the blockchain ledger, which prompts all the other miners to investigate the underlying transaction. Once your bona fides are verified, the updated blockchain is considered legitimate, and the miners update their records accordingly.¶ ¶ It takes from 10 minutes to an hour for this software-driven network of computers to formally confirm a transfer from your blockchain address to that

new digital currencies are able to finalize transactions within seconds.¶ There are almost zero fees, and the personal information of users isn’t divulged. This bitcoin feature especially appeals to privacy advocates: Nobody learns where you buy coffee, the name of your doctor or—if you’re into that sort of thing—where you of the coffee shop—compared with a two- to three-day wait for the settlement of a credit-card transaction. Some

buy your illegal drugs.¶ Because the fees in the current credit-card system are paid by merchants and because banks indemnify cardholders against theft of their personal data, such savings and

The advantages of digital currency are far more visible in emerging markets. It allows migrant workers , for example, to bypass fees that often run to 10% or more for the international payment services that they use to send money home to their families. ¶ Bitcoin’s unidentified creator—a person or persons operating under the pseudonym of privacy benefits often don't impress American consumers. But even if we don’t bear those costs directly, we pay them through hidden fees and pricier cups of coffee.¶

Satoshi Nakamoto —has provided a novel solution to a problem that has dogged societies for centuries: the distrust among strangers in commercial transactions with one another. In any exchange, how could someone feel secure unless there is a face-to-face handover of physical currency or some other valuable good?¶ When banks were invented in Florence in the late 1400s, a centralized solution emerged: People didn’t have to worry about trusting strangers anymore; they could just trust their banks to absorb the credit risk. Using internal ledgers to keep track of

Banking unleashed the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution and the modern age. But a new problem arose: As the world’s monetary intermediaries, banks became powerful—perhaps overly powerful—repositories of information and influence. The financial system was and remains vulnerable to bank failures , as we were painfully reminded during the financial crisis of September 2008.¶ One month after that meltdown, Satoshi Nakamoto released the initial document describing bitcoin. For the first time, people had a decentralized solution to the financial-trust problem. Here was a new form of currency that could be transferred online without involving fee-imposing, third-party institutions. ¶ But many still ask: How can a bitcoin everyone’s balances, banks became the middlemen through which exchanges could now occur.¶

have value if it isn’t “backed” by gold or a government? If you can’t hold a currency in your hands, if it doesn’t bear some central authority’s insignia, how can it be worth anything?¶ Here we have to remind ourselves of some economic fundamentals: Money’s essence doesn’t reside in tangible currencies, which have no intrinsic value—beyond, say, a dollar bill’s modest usefulness as a bookmark. Much the same can be said of bitcoins, which are made up of bits and bytes.¶ In the broadest sense, money is, instead, an all-encompassing, society-wide system for keeping up with

Physical currencies are simply symbols or tokens in that system, representing a shared standard of value for tracking wealth holdings. What Nakamoto’s blockchain invention offers is an online, decentralized and fully public mechanism for recording those shifting balances. It deals who owns or owes what.

directly with the essence of money.¶ As promising as that idea may seem, there hasn’t been much public buy-in, largely because of the concerns about volatility, insecurity and criminality that have continued to dog bitcoin. Although many companies now accept bitcoin (the latest and biggest being Microsoft Corp. ), global usage of the digital currency averaged just $50 million a day in 2014. Over that same period, Visa and MasterCard processed some $32 billion a day.¶ Still, a “Who’s Who” of Internet pioneers is betting on a bright future for bitcoin. Ignoring its careening exchange rate, such investors as Netscape founder Marc Andreessen and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman put $315 million into bitcoin-related projects last year— triple the venture-capital investment of 2013, according to the digital-currency news site Coindesk. And 2015 has kicked off with an announcement by the digital wallet provider Coinbase of a $75 million injection of new funds by investors including the New York Stock Exchange and the venture arm of the Spanish banking giant Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA .¶ What most excites these investors is bitcoin’s promise as a platform whose future applications are almost unimaginably broad. They see a precedent in the core Internet protocols adopted in the 1980s, when no one foresaw such things as Facebook , Twitter or Netflix . Already, hundreds of specialized apps are being built on top of the digital-currency blockchain software, which is seen in this context as a kind of base operating system.¶ Some developers are building digital-currency tools for the world’s 2.5 billion “unbanked” people, in a bid to bring them into the global financial system. Others are packing additional information into the core programs to create applications well beyond currency transfers: software-managed “smart contracts” that need no lawyers, automated databases of digital assets and copyright claims, peer-to-peer property transfers and electronic voting systems that can’t be rigged.¶ A key idea here is that data in a blockchain ledger is made irrefutable by the computing consensus that goes into it. A blockchain is distributed across many independent computers rather than residing on a central server. So, unlike bank- or merchantbased data, such information is, in theory, invulnerable to attack or corruption. It is considered impossible for an outsider to hack thousands of computers simultaneously and there are no insiders to manipulate the central server’s software. This, in theory, makes blockchain data reliable and incontrovertible.¶ As innovation in digital currency accelerates, it will matter less whether Mom and Pop own bitcoin or even know what it is. Big multinationals and financial institutions could incorporate its decentralized technology into their payment and database systems while we obliviously keep using our dollars or euros.¶ If bitcoin thus becomes an ubiquitous if largely invisible part of the world economy, many believe that its price will rise. A small but growing number

the growth of digital-currency technology has even more profound implications. It could reduce financial costs overall and leave more money in people’s pockets. At the same time, it could spell job losses—potentially rendering obsolete millions of positions in traditional intermediary services.¶ These aren’t idle concerns. of hedge funds and family investment offices are betting on just that, taking stakes in bitcoin-investment vehicles.¶ But

Wall Street bankers and Federal Reserve staffers are discussing ways that this technology could make the financial system more efficient. Regulators in New York’s Department of Financial

governments of the U.K. and Mexico are exploring the use of blockchain technology to enhance financial networks and strengthen economic governance.¶ Despite the scandals and price swings in bitcoin’s brief history, the financial establishment is taking notice. One key reason, as former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers told us, is that the “substantial inefficiencies” of an outdated financial system make it “ripe for disruption .” That Services and elsewhere are designing rules to reduce the risks from digital currencies even as they encourage innovation. The

alone means it would be “a serious mistake to write off [digital currencies] as either ill-conceived or illegitimate,” Dr. Summers said.¶ In the end, the rise of digital currency may be a matter of

The Internet has disrupted and decentralized much of the world economy, but the centralized world of finance remains stuck in the 15th century. Digital currency can help it adapt and survive. evolutionary destiny.

2AC Addon Bitcoin solves cyber security Higgins 8-21, staff writer at Coin Desk, FireEye Founder: Bitcoin Could Secure Our Global Payments Infrastructure, http://www.coindesk.com/fireeye-bitcoin-secure-global-payments-infrastructure/ **internally cites Ashar Azis – a cybersecurity entrepreneur and founder of malware solutions provider FireEye For example, bitcoin mining company PeerNova announced in July that it had received funding from Ashar Aziz, a cybersecurity entrepreneur and founder of noted malware protection solutions provider FireEye. Aziz explained in a new interview with CoinDesk that the strengths of bitcoin are most obvious when you look at the infrastructure of today’s mainstream payment systems. This infrastructure, which he labeled primitive, reflects the evolution of 20th century styles of payment. For this reason, Aziz argued, a new approach has to be taken, and that bitcoin may be the key to unlocking this future. Aziz told CoinDesk: “As we’ve seen over the past several years, more and more of our traditional transactions have moved to the Internet and are leveraging Internet speed for what used to be typical offline transactions. The value exchange is somewhat limited and primitive in their mechanisms, and bitcoin’s underlying technology provides a good, cryptographically secure platform for exchange.” Beyond payments, the actual procedural aspects of bitcoin could be applied to other types of digital infrastructure, Aziz said. To Aziz, bitcoin payments are the first application of what may become a litany of additional use cases that fortify the Web’s security for the long term. Legacy systems out of date Aziz believes that the various elements of today’s payments infrastructure don’t work fluidly enough to handle the needs of a global economy. He called credit card systems archaic and unfit for the digital age, saying that the technological holes make it easy for cybercriminals to acquire sensitive data and subsequently commit fraud. When asked how digitized payment systems will evolve in the years ahead, Aziz called the situation amorphous, owing to the many companies involved and the complexities in the infrastructure itself. From a security perspective, however, he said that change will have to take place as the stark realities of securing payment networks becomes more apparent, explaining: “It’s a large and complex problem, and many enterprises struggle to even understand where their valuable digital assets are, much less effectively secure them. So, if we can shrink the attack surface down to a small set of objects, which can then be very easily secure, that makes the attacker’s job much harder .”

Extinction – the risk is high Habiger 10 (Eugene, Retired Air Force General, “ CYBERWARFARE AND CYBERTERRORISM: THE NEED FOR A NEW U.S. STRATEGIC APPROACH,” The Cyber Security Institute, February 1) However, there are reasons to believe that what is going on now amounts to a fundamental shift as opposed to business as usual. Today’s network exploitation or information operation trespasses possess a number of characteristics that suggest that the line between espionage and conflict has been, or is close to being, crossed. (What that suggests for the proper response is a different matter.) First, the number of cyberattacks we are facing is growing significantly. Andrew Palowitch, a former CIA official now consulting with the US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), which oversees the Defense Department’s Joint Task Force‐Global Network Operations, recently told a meeting of experts that the Defense Department has experienced almost 80,000 computer attacks, and some number of these assaults have actually “reduced” the military’s “operational capabilities.”20 Second, the nature of these attacks is starting to shift from penetration attempts aimed at gathering intelligence (cyber spying) to offensive

efforts aimed at taking down systems (cyberattacks). Palowitch put this in stark terms last November, “We are currently in a cyberwar and war is going on today.”21 Third, these recent attacks need to be taken in a broader strategic context. Both Russia and China have stepped up their offensive efforts and taken a much more aggressive cyberwarfare posture. The Chinese have developed an openly discussed cyberwar strategy aimed at achieving electronic dominance over the U.S. and its allies by 2050. In 2007 the Department of Defense reported that for the first time China has developed first strike viruses, marking a major shift from prior investments in defensive measures.22 And in the intervening period China has launched a series of offensive cyber operations against U.S. government and private sector networks and infrastructure. In 2007, Gen. James Cartwright, the former head of STRATCOM and now the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the US‐China Economic and Security Review Commission that China’s ability to launch “denial of service” attacks to overwhelm an IT system is of particular concern. 23 Russia also has already begun to wage offensive cyberwar. At the outset of the recent hostilities with Georgia, Russian assets launched a series of cyberattacks against the Georgian government and its critical infrastructure systems, including media, banking and transportation sites.24 In 2007, cyberattacks that many experts attribute, directly or indirectly, to Russia shut down the Estonia government’s IT systems. Fourth, the current geopolitical context must also be factored into any effort to gauge the degree of threat of cyberwar. The start of the new Obama Administration has begun to help reduce tensions between the United States and other nations. And, the new administration has taken initial steps to improve bilateral relations specifically with both China and Russia. However, it must be said that over the last few years the posture of both the Chinese and Russian governments toward America has clearly become more assertive, and at times even aggressive. Some commentators have talked about the prospects of a cyber Pearl Harbor, and the pattern of Chinese and Russian behavior to date gives reason for concern along these lines: both nations have offensive cyberwarfare strategies in place; both nations have taken the cyber equivalent of building up their forces; both nations now regularly probe our cyber defenses looking for gaps to be exploited; both nations have begun taking actions that cross the line from cyberespionage to cyberaggression; and, our bilateral relations with both nations are increasingly fractious and complicated by areas of marked, direct competition. Clearly, there a sharp differences between current U.S. relations with these two nations and relations between the US and Japan just prior to World War II. However, from a strategic defense perspective, there are enough warning signs to warrant preparation. In addition to the threat of cyberwar, the limited resources required to carry out even a large scale cyberattack also makes likely the potential for a significant cyberterror attack against the U nited S tates. However, the lack of a long list of specific incidences of cyberterrorism should provide no comfort. There is strong evidence to suggest that al Qaeda has the ability to conduct cyberterror attacks against the U nited S tates and its allies. Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations are extremely active in cyberspace, using these technologies to communicate among themselves and others, carry out logistics, recruit members, and wage information warfare. For example, al Qaeda leaders used email to communicate with the 9‐11 terrorists and the 9‐11 terrorists used the Internet to make travel plans and book flights. Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda members routinely post videos and other messages to online sites to communicate. Moreover, there is evidence of efforts that al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations are actively developing cyberterrorism capabilities and seeking to carry out cyberterrorist attacks. For example, the Washington Post has reported that “U.S. investigators have found evidence in the logs that mark a browser's path through the Internet that al Qaeda operators spent time on sites that offer software and programming instructions for the digital switches that run power, water, transport and communications grids. In some interrogations . . . al Qaeda prisoners have described intentions, in general terms, to use those tools.”25 Similarly, a 2002 CIA report on the cyberterror threat to a member of the Senate stated that al Qaeda and Hezbollah have become "more adept at using the internet and computer

technologies.”26 The FBI has issued bulletins stating that, “U. S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies have received indications that Al Qaeda members have sought information on Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems available on multiple SCADA‐related web sites.”27 In addition a number of jihadist websites, such as 7hj.7hj.com, teach computer attack and hacking skills in the service of Islam.28 While al Qaeda may lack the cyber‐attack capability of nations like Russia and China, there is every reason to believe its operatives, and those of its ilk, are as capable as the cyber criminals and hackers who routinely effect great harm on the world’s digital infrastructure generally and American assets specifically. In fact, perhaps, the most troubling indication of the level of the cyberterrorist threat is the countless, serious non‐terrorist cyberattacks routinely carried out by criminals, hackers, disgruntled insiders, crime syndicates and the like. If run‐of‐the‐mill criminals and hackers can threaten powergrids, hack vital military networks , steal vast sums of money, take down a city’s of traffic lights, compromise the Federal Aviation Administration’s air traffic control systems, among other attacks, it is overwhelmingly likely that terrorists can carry out similar, if not more malicious attacks. Moreover, even if the world’s terrorists are unable to breed these skills, they can certainly buy them. There are untold numbers of cybermercenaries around the world—sophisticated hackers with advanced training who would be willing to offer their services for the right price. Finally, given the nature of our understanding of cyber threats, there is always the possibility that we have already been the victim or a cyberterrorist attack, or such an attack has already been set but not yet effectuated, and we don’t know it yet. Instead, a well‐designed cyberattack has the capacity cause widespread chaos, sow societal unrest, undermine national governments, spread paralyzing fear and anxiety, and create a state of utter turmoil, all without taking a single life. A sophisticated cyberattack could throw a nation’s banking and finance system into chaos causing markets to crash , prompting runs on banks, degrading confidence in

markets, perhaps even putting the nation’s currency in play and making the government look helpless and hapless. In today’s difficult economy, imagine how Americans would react if vast sums of money were taken from their accounts and their supporting financial records were destroyed. A truly nefarious cyberattacker could carry out an attack in such a way (akin to Robin Hood) as to engender populist support and deepen rifts within our society, thereby making efforts to restore the system all the more difficult. A modestly advanced enemy could use a cyberattack to shut down (if not physically damage) one or more regional power grids. An entire region could be cast into total darkness, power‐dependent systems could be shutdown. An attack on one or more regional power grids could also cause cascading effects that could jeopardize our entire national grid. When word leaks that the blackout was caused by a cyberattack, the specter of a foreign enemy capable of sending the entire nation into darkness would only increase the fear, turmoil and unrest. While the finance and energy sectors are considered prime targets for a cyberattack, an attack on any of the 17 delineated critical infrastructure sectors could have a major impact on the United States. For example, our healthcare system is already technologically driven and the Obama Administration’s e‐health efforts will only increase that dependency. A cyberattack on the U.S. e‐health infrastructure could send our healthcare system into chaos and put countless of lives at risk. Imagine if emergency room physicians and surgeons were suddenly no longer able to access vital patient information. A cyberattack on our nation’s water systems could likewise cause widespread disruption. An attack on the control systems for one or more dams could put entire communities at risk of being inundated, and could create ripple effects across the water, agriculture, and energy sectors. Similar water control system attacks could be used to at least temporarily deny water to otherwise arid regions, impacting everything from the quality of life in these areas to agriculture. In 2007, the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit determined that the destruction from a single wave of cyberattacks on critical infrastructures could exceed $700 billion, which would be the rough equivalent of 50 Katrina‐esque hurricanes hitting the United States all at the same time.29 Similarly, one IT security source has estimated that the impact of a single day cyberwar attack that focused on and disrupted U.S. credit and debit card transactions would be approximately $35 billion.30 Another way to gauge the potential for harm is in comparison to other similar noncyberattack infrastructure failures. For example, the August 2003 regional power grid blackout is estimated to have cost the U.S. economy up to $10 billion, or roughly .1 percent of the nation’s GDP. 31 That said, a cyberattack of the exact same magnitude would most certainly have a much larger impact. The origin of the 2003 blackout was almost immediately disclosed as an atypical system failure having nothing to do with terrorism. This made the event both less threatening and likely a single time occurrence. Had it been disclosed that the event was the result of an attack that could readily be repeated the impacts would likely have grown substantially, if not exponentially. Additionally, a cyberattack could also be used to disrupt our nation’s defenses or distract our national leaders in advance of a more traditional conventional or strategic attack. Many military leaders actually believe that such a disruptive cyber pre‐offensive is the most effective use of offensive cyber capabilities. This is, in fact, the way Russia utilized cyberattackers—whether government assets, governmentdirected/ coordinated assets, or allied cyber irregulars—in advance of the invasion of Georgia. Widespread distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks were launched on the Georgian governments IT systems. Roughly a day later Russian armor rolled into Georgian territory. The cyberattacks were used to prepare the battlefield; they denied the Georgian government a critical communications tool isolating it from its citizens and degrading its command and control capabilities precisely at the time of attack. In this way, these attacks were the functional equivalent of conventional air and/or missile strikes on a nation’s communications infrastructure.32 One interesting element of the Georgian cyberattacks has been generally overlooked: On July 20th, weeks before the August cyberattack, the website of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was overwhelmed by a more narrowly focused, but technologically similar DDOS attack.33 This should be particularly chilling to American national security experts as our systems undergo the same sorts of focused, probing attacks on a constant basis. The ability of an enemy to use a cyberattack to counter our offensive capabilities or soften our defenses for a wider offensive against the United States is much more than mere speculation. In fact, in Iraq it is already happening. Iraq insurgents are now using off‐the‐shelf software (costing just $26) to hack U.S. drones (costing $4.5 million each), allowing them to intercept the video feed from these drones.34 By hacking these drones the insurgents have succeeded in greatly reducing one of our most valuable sources of real‐time intelligence and situational awareness. If our enemies in Iraq are capable of such an effective cyberattack against one of our more sophisticated systems, consider what a more technologically advanced enemy could do. At the strategic level, in 2008, as the United States Central Command was leading wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, a cyber intruder compromised the security of the Command and sat within its IT systems, monitoring everything the Command was doing. 35 This time the attacker simply gathered vast amounts of intelligence. However, it is clear that the attacker could have used this access to wage cyberwar—altering information, disrupting the flow of information, destroying information, taking down systems—against the United States forces already at war. Similarly, during 2003 as the United States prepared for and began the War in Iraq, the IT networks of the Department of Defense were hacked 294 times.36 By August of 2004, with America at war, these ongoing attacks compelled then‐Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz to write in a memo that, "Recent exploits have reduced operational capabilities on our networks."37 This wasn’t the first time that our national security IT infrastructure was penetrated immediately in advance of a U.S. military option.38 In February of 1998 the Solar Sunrise attacks systematically compromised a series of Department of Defense networks. What is often overlooked is that these attacks occurred during the ramp up period ahead of potential military action against Iraq. The attackers were able to obtain vast amounts of sensitive information—information that would have certainly been of value to an enemy’s military leaders. There is no way to prove that these actions were purposefully launched with the specific intent to distract

The potential that an enemy might use a cyberattack to soften physical defenses , increase the gravity of harms from kinetic attacks, or both, significantly increases the potential harms from a cyberattack. Consider the gravity of the threat and risk if an enemy, rightly or wrongly, believed that it could use a cyberattack to degrade our strategic weapons capabilities. Such an enemy might be convinced that it could win a war—conventional or even nuclear—against the U nited S tates. The effect of this would be to undermine our deterrence‐based defenses, making us significantly more at risk of a major war. American military assets or degrade our capabilities. However, such ambiguities—the inability to specifically attribute actions and motives to actors—are the very nature of cyberspace. Perhaps, these repeated patterns of behavior were mere coincidence, or perhaps they weren’t.