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Contents
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Features
10 / The Dangers of Using State-Sanctioned Hackers
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By Sean McGuffin
Publisher: Chris Atkins catkins@thecatcompanyinc.com 001-801-7835120 (ext 200)
12 / Cybersecurity: Success Within Reach
Editor-in-Chief: Ana C. Rold editors@diplomaticourier.org
16 / Bitcoin’s Meteoric Rise and the Future of All Industries
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By Ana C. Rold
Creative Director: Christian Gilliham christian@cgcreate.co.uk (+44) 7951 722265
18 / Governing the Ascent of Artificial Intelligence By Winona Roylance
Publishing Firm: The CAT Company, Inc.
20 / To Survive, Cryptocurrencies Need to Embrace a Female Future
CEO & Founder: Chris Atkins
By By Ana C. Rold
President of EMEA: Tyrone Eastman
24 / Top Threat to Business, National Security and the American Dream By: T. Casey Fleming, Eric L. Qualkenbush, and Anthony M.Chapa
Sales Executives: Ray Baker Veronique Madsen Phil Cook Anthony Leigh Jones
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26 / Cryptocurrency Revolution 29 / Master Blockchain and Profit in the Waves World Token Distribution
Page 06 Ana C.Rold Editor's Note Chris Atkins Publisher's Note Page 08/09 Justin Trudeau Prime Minister of Canada
32 / Data Globalization Gives New Meaning to the Ever-Evolving Identity Theft Threat 36 / Machine Militaries: The Future of Artificial Intelligence and National Security
Advertisers Index
By Caysie Myers
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38 / Artificial Intelligence: The Miracle and the Menace By L. Y. Pratt
Executive Talk Series
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VOLUM E 11 I ISSUE 1 I J A N UA RY 2 0 1 7
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Celebrating 21 years of Publishing the Renowned G7 Global Briefing Report
April 10th 2018 Inc. The CAT Company Salt lake City Utah 84124 Dear Mr Atkins,
l B20 publish the officia any to exclusively es, Argentina. t The CAT Comp Air oin s app eno to Bu re in t asu Summi It is our great ple for the 2018 B20 ders’ publication available Business and Lea will make it fully n at the event and r “Print” publicatio l be in attendance. you wil y o onl wh s ute der trib lea We will dis government leaders, media and tent of the “Print”. to CEOs, business l agree on the con and Business 20 wil any mp Co T CA The lication provided of the “digital” pub ensive distribution ments. ext age the eng iate dia rec ial me Additionally, we app tnerships and soc any’s knowledge par entina. via the CAT Comp tion on the B20 Arg the digital publica r ttee will also place it through Twitte te mi mo com t pro l hos wil 8 rms and The B20 201 social media platfo s iou var and te, info websi and Facebook. r informative to produce anothe laboration with you to a successful col rd wa for k loo We lication. B20 Business pub Sincerely
Carolina Castro rpa B20 Executive She
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G7 Executive Talk Series Editor’s Note
Dear Reader
Ana C. Rold Editor-in-Chief
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It has been exactly eight years since we were in Canada for a G Summit. In 2010, our team covered two back-to-back important events: the G8 Summit in Muskoka and the G20 Summit in Toronto. At the time, a commentator for our publication described the end of the G8 Muskoka Summit as such: “The Muskoka G8 Summit is likely to be the last G8, a victim of the financial crisis and a global shift eastward as the G20 becomes the premier global economic forum.” A bold prediction, given that the G8 had been a mega event attracting more than 5,000 members of the media, civil society, and business leaders. And hundreds of thousands of activists. The end of the G8 did come, but not quite how it was predicted. It wasn’t usurped by the even larger G20, but rather renamed for the ousting of one of its members, Russia, four years later. There was a time when great powers attended large congresses and turned the course of history (think Treaty of Westphalia and the Paris Economic Conference). But those days seemed over (although one may argue that the upcoming U.S.-North Korea Summit to be held on June 12 in Singapore, is an example of the kind of summitry that rivals history). As political scientist Ian Bremmer coined it famously in his book Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World (2012), in a G-Zero world, there is a deficit of global leadership and no grand nation wants to shoulder all the responsibilities of such leadership alone. It’s true. Recent shifts towards isolationist politics and differences in approach to economy and society have made any consensus difficult to reach. But there is no platform more prominent than the G7, a forum within which the world’s top donor countries send their highest-ranking leaders to discuss how best to approach the world’s biggest challenges. The G7 was initially created in 1975 as a setting within which non-Communist nations could address the numerous economic concerns spurred by the Cold War. While the G7 today represents almost half of the global GDP (46%), it is met with criticism regarding its ability to actually solve the world’s monetary issues as well as its failure to include emerging markets in its decision-making. But with a focus on sustainable finance and long-term prosperity, especially in regards to how the economy can contribute to the environment in beneficial and socially conscious ways, Canada’s goal for the G7 this year is to work with leaders to help solve the economic and environmental issues within Canada—and from there, figure out how to scale this knowledge to the rest of the world. It is perhaps in this way that the G7 can regain its ability to better solve international issues, by bringing international attention to each other’s domestic issues. Whether or not the G7 brings about the historic solutions our world needs, one thing is clear: power abhors vacuum. If the U.S. and others renounce their historic roles; others will ill in. The challenges our world faces are collective and they are of extraordinary proportions; we need a revival of the age of grand summitry to get through them. If power and wealth (and problems) are truly shifting around the world, the coordination for solutions will become more necessary than ever.
Publisher’s Note
Dear Reader
Chris Atkins Publisher and Founder Cat Company, Inc.
It has been exactly 21 years since CAT Company produced the very first G7 Summit publication. In 1997, our work earned us the trust of the host government and since then we have been honored to be the go-to publisher and consultant for host governments of the G7 and the G20 Summits for 21 years in a row. For over two decades our company’s own history and legacy is tied to these most important of global leadership gatherings. As we reflect on the past two decades and more, I wish to express my heartfelt thanks to the Canadian G7 Host Committee as well as the Canadian government for their collaboration. This is the third time that our team is working with Canada to produce a world-class publication for the G7 Summit and we are very proud and grateful for our association with the Host Committee. And we are most grateful for the acknowledgment the CAT Company and our online platform G20G7.com has received. In the past two decades our company has grown and expanded exponentially. Our portfolio of publications, which also includes the leading editions for the G20 Leaders’ Summit and B20 Summit respectively, have been recognized globally. Our company’s mission has been and continues to be to educate the global community on the most vital topics affecting our society and the agenda and leaders at the G7, G20 Leaders & G20 business summits. Through our award-winning Executive Talk Series global briefing report, we have created an unprecedented opportunity for private sector leaders to have a voice at these summits even when they don’t have a physical seat at the table. In closing, I would to thank our team of editors and writers and all of our knowledge partners over the years, especially the International Chamber of Commerce, Eurochambers, the IOE, Tracit.org and many others. I would also like to thank all of our sponsors and advertisers who have entrusted us with their advertising budgets; and special thanks to DSX, Inc. which has been with us for 15 years. We owe a great deal of where we are today to your trust, support, and business. We look forward to the upcoming G20 Leaders and G20 Business Summits this year; The CAT Company has been chosen yet again to be the official publisher of the G20 Business Summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I will look forward to hearing from you and it would be an honor to work with you.
Here’s to the next 21 years together... and counting!
OUR COMPANY’S MISSION HAS BEEN AND CONTINUES TO BE TO EDUCATE THE GLOBAL COMMUNITY ON THE MOST VITAL TOPICS AFFECTING OUR SOCIETY AND THE AGENDA AND LEADERS AT THE G7, G20 LEADERS & G20 BUSINESS SUMMITS.
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G7 Executive Talk Series Official Letter
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Lettre officielle
Charlevoix. Canada 2018 â?™ 09
G7 Executive Talk Series Cybersecurity Authored by: Sean McGuffin
The Dangers of Using State-Sanctioned Hackers Government cooperation with cybercriminals is a reality we are already living with and one that is extremely dangerous for international norms.
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Cybersecurity
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he string of large-scale data breaches in recent years—from Yahoo to Equifax— demonstrates the alarming threat posed by cyber-crime and espionage; a threat made all the more serious when considering the election interference in France and the United States. Yet, while it’s generally understood that both criminals and foreign intelligence agencies carry out attacks such as these, there is something that is less known: the ways in which these two groups have begun working together, and how dangerous it would be to allow this precedent to set. The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has developed a bad reputation for partnerships of this kind by protecting, recruiting, and pressing into service hackers who it then uses to carry out online attacks. According to cyber-security expert Jeffrey Carr, “Russian hackers who are caught are given the choice to work for the FSB or go to jail. The FSB also has some on contract hire.” This prognosis matches the story of Dmitry A. Artimovich, who was arrested in 2013 for creating spamming programs. While awaiting trial for cyber-crimes in Moscow, Artimovich said he was offered a way to avoid trial all together if he was willing to work for the government. Former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, commenting on cyber-security, even said that “the Russians are pretty much No. 1 in terms of using criminal organizations as partners.” This policy may seem odd, but it has its advantages. For states that lack the funding or other necessities, using criminals may be the best way to build their cyber capabilities. As one expert put it, “there’s no Silicon Valley in Russia.” Cyber criminals are already experienced at hacking into secured systems and folding them into the state’s cyber forces can provide states sanctioned cyber-attacks with a useful veil of plausible deniability. Additionally, enlisted cyber-criminals are cheap, constantly testing their skills against new counter measures, and can act as a useful auxiliary force. The hackers on the other hand gain protection from prosecution or extradition. These advantages may seem appealing, but one should consider the possible ramifications. One of the advantages of using hackers as proxies is plausible deniability and the anonymity it can provide, but this can cut both ways. Once a state is known for using proxies and hackers to wage its cyber campaigns, this advantage can lose much of its potency, and a state could possibly even
THE RUSSIAN FEDERAL SECURITY SERVICE (FSB) HAS DEVELOPED A BAD REPUTATION FOR PARTNERSHIPS OF THIS KIND BY PROTECTING, RECRUITING, AND PRESSING INTO SERVICE HACKERS WHO IT THEN USES TO CARRY OUT ONLINE ATTACKS.
be accused of performing cyber-attacks it had no part in due in part to this reputation. This flows into another issue—assigning culpability. If a hacker is under government protection, then that government could and should be considered responsible for their actions, regardless of whether it ordered an attack or not, and the hackers are considered state actors. This policy stance had already been seen in action when the United States sanctioned Russia for its interference in the 2016 presidential election. It was notable because the sanctions targeted key individuals in leadership roles and the hackers themselves. This was a good example of holding states accountable for their actions but should be applied more broadly by all states when credibly faced with this type of threat. Another issue to consider is the possibility of retaliation. This could become very serious if a major cyber-attack is launched, for instance on a power plant like the one in western Ukraine, and another state decides to respond with an action of its own. Any retaliation is unlikely to remain solely in the cyber space, but rather affect other aspects of the “real world,” and could turn very ugly if lives or critical infrastructure are harmed. The room for misunderstanding is wide, the possibility of an attack being misattributed is too high, and the norms for how to respond to cyber-attacks are still being set. All of these factors become worse when quasigovernment hackers are involved.
As seen with the U.S. sanctions against Russia, action carried out in cyber-space can spill out into the “real world” because cyber-space is becoming an integral part of our modern system as any other part of the real world. When faced with these kinds of threats, policy makers should increasingly disregard the cyber-theater the attack is carried out in and look solely at the repercussions of the attack. In essence, when responding, treat the threat as if computers weren’t even involved. Government cooperation with cybercriminals is a reality we are already living with. As one expert said, “It would be no surprise if there are links, and it would be a great surprise if there were no links.” Cyber-space is only going to grow in importance, and as such the danger and uncertainty created when governments partner with cyber-criminals is too great to allow. While norms are still being set, it’s important that states come to an understanding on how they will treat their cyber-security. ■
Sean McGuffin is Fellowship Editor at Young Professionals in Foreign Policy (YPFP) and currently works at a large consulting firm. He graduated from Old Dominion University and previously served as a research intern at the Hudson Institute, where he provided research on cyber-security policy, among other topics.
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G7 Executive Talk Series Rivetz
Cybersecurity: Success Within Reach
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s the G7 leaders gather to exchange ideas, how to protect democracy and their citizens from cyber attacks will certainly be a hot topic. Governments around the world need to protect national secrets while safeguarding the personal data of their vast workforces. For instance, the U.S. Department of Defense has 3.2 million employees – making it the largest employer in the world. When it comes to cybersecurity, there have been far more failures than successes to date. The U.S. government fell victim to the largest data breach in the country’s history not so long ago. The Office of Personnel Management is, more or less, the human resources department for the federal government, as they oversee the legal details of hiring, promotions, benefits and pensions for millions. The data breach began with the attackers stealing the agency’s master list of credentials: usernames and passwords. They used these credentials to access the system and implant malware to steal
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sensitive information. The attack compromised data from background checks on current, former and prospective federal employees. Information included applicants’ personal finances, past substance abuse, psychiatric care and other troublesome personal details. In addition, 4.2 million past and present employees’ personnel files were put at risk, along with 5.6 million images of employees’ fingerprints. The attack raised deep concerns about government security, and inflicted irreparable damage to agency’s reputation. Quite simply put, the present system of password security has failed. New, devicecentric solutions using the blockchain offer the greatest defense against increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks. Perhaps the greatest vulnerability in the password-based system is the user, who often chooses weak passwords or re-uses them on multiple accounts. Probably the biggest reason is that we just don’t like passwords.
More than 80 percent of us would find it convenient if we never had to use passwords again, according to a Rivetz-commissioned survey of 1,000 U.S. adults. Even if we were better about our password creation and use, hackers still wouldn’t have too difficult a time overcoming that security layer. Many security firms are experimenting with blockchain solutions, but Rivetz has a holistic approach that offers tremendous promise. The company combines the Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) already built into the hardware of billions of devices with the immutable record-keeping of blockchain technology to eliminate our reliance on usernames and passwords. Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that employs a network of peers and cryptographic algorithms to ensure the ledger cannot be altered. Each transaction in the ledger is signed with a private key that gives the signer governance over that transaction, for whatever purpose.
RIVETZ TECHNOLOGY PROVIDES HARDWARE-LEVEL SECURITY BY FURNISHING DEVELOPERS WITH ACCESS TO THE TRUSTED EXECUTION ENVIRONMENT. THE TEE IS AN EMBEDDED, ISOLATED AND MEASURED COMPUTER ENVIRONMENT SEPARATE FROM THE OPERATING SYSTEM. That purpose could be to transfer funds or record arbitrary data. While the blockchain is immutable and censorship-resistant, the biggest challenge in decentralized cybersecurity remains that there is no way to prove any individual transaction was what the user intended. If an attacker steals your private key and conducts a transaction, there is no way to prove that the attacker – and not you – intended the transaction. At the present moment, we do not store evidence of whether a user intended and conducted the transaction that’s recorded on the blockchain. A transaction with proof of provenance or intent is much more valuable than one without such controls. As we continue to improve the information stored on the blockchain, the value of that information increases. Rivetz dramatically increases the quality of that data by ensuring the information recorded was intended by the user – this is called attestation. Without attestation, the blockchain could become
a database of untrue information that could never be deleted. Rivetz accomplishes attestation by ensuring a user’s devices are in a “known” condition by performing regular health checks and recording each device’s integrity on the blockchain, so future health checks can be compared against that baseline. This establishes that those devices have not been maliciously – or accidentally – altered. A “known” condition means that the device hardware is in the same state as when it was last tested. Any factor out of place is a red flag indicating that an attacker may have compromised the device since its last recorded condition. The immutability of past health checks guarantees that Rivetz can detect if someone’s tampered with your device. Rivetz technology provides hardware-level security by furnishing developers with access to the Trusted Execution Environment. The TEE is an embedded, isolated and measured computer environment separate from the
operating system. The problem is, most applications don’t take advantage of the TEE because it isn’t simple to access – developers don’t have the tools to utilize it, and also often lack the understanding of its value for providing security to users. By provisioning digital transactions through the TEE, Rivetz assures the user’s private keys cannot be altered or stolen if malware were to infect the operating system. By keeping the keys in the hardware, they remain safe from malware or viruses that may affect the device’s software. Attested transactions that are recorded on the blockchain provide governance and auditability. The TEE is what connects a human and their intents with the blockchain (and, for that matter, with the rest of the digital world). Conducting and attesting those transactions isn’t free, however. That’s where the Rivetz’s cybersecurity utility token, the RvT, comes in to provide the mechanism to leverage the resources in that ecosystem. › Charlevoix. Canada 2018 ❙ 13
G7 Executive Talk Series Rivetz
INSTEAD OF HAVING TO TYPE IN A USERNAME AND PASSWORD INTO EACH APP, RIVETZ TECHNOLOGY WOULD ALLOW YOUR APP TO GENERATE A KEY AND ENCRYPTION WITHIN THE DEVICE THAT PAIRS YOU WITH THE WEB SERVICE.
› Together, the blockchain and the TEE make possible a streamlined approach to how our devices carry out transactions and connect to services via the Internet. The RvT was designed to do just that: create seamless and verifiable security controls for everything a device is instructed to do. The RvT is an
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ERC20 token managed on the Ethereum blockchain and provides a new economic mechanism for delivering automated deviceto-device payment for the consumption of cybersecurity services and delivery of software and service licenses. These tokens manage and compensate
internal and external cybersecurity controls enforced by the trusted execution capabilities of that device, providing a source of payment that is bound by the owner’s policy, assuring that only approved service providers are paid. The user sets the policy for how the token will execute your digital transactions – for example, the RvT token can ensure that you’re only accessing your bank account when you’re in certain geographic locations, or that your spouse needs to approve a withdrawal of more than $10,000. The RvT token seamlessly adds a crucial layer of protection to digital transactions and authentication across devices, brokering the relationships between devices and cloud services. This device-centric, blockchain-based cybersecurity model provides a safer and more seamless experience for mobile, IoT and the cloud. The present system is built with the mindset that we are a network of users with devices as an attribute. In reality, we are the opposite: we are a network of devices with users as an attribute. Our mobile phones are incredibly personal devices – they are practically extensions of ourselves. According Rivetz’s study, more than 92 percent of respondents always bring their smartphones with them when they leave home, citing a need to have their smartphone with them at all times. Our devices are so personal that more than 90 percent of respondents believe it’s important to be
able to prevent someone from accessing the content on their smartphone if it were lost. Almost everyone can relate that sense of panic when they think they’ve lost – or even forgotten – their smartphone. Our personal devices are essentially our digital identity, so we must build networks accordingly. In a world where mobile devices are an extension of the user, a user’s collection of devices comprise their digital identity. The vast majority of people do not access their online information and services from devices they don’t own. In fact, more than 71 percent of those surveyed by Rivetz feel like their data isn’t secure if they sign in on from devices they don’t own. People are so strongly connected to their smartphones that 64 percent of respondents were willing to allow a friend to borrow their car for 24 hours, but nearly the same number (60 percent) wouldn’t allow a friend to borrow their smartphone for the same length of time. The Rivetz device-centric model is structured so a user’s data can only be provisioned from their trusted devices. This model gives access to a user’s digital information and services from only their trusted devices, making it very difficult for nefarious parties to gain access. Simplicity is the key to mass adoption of this new device-centric model. Placing the onus on users to remember passwords is a major security vulnerability. We know that users don’t want to have to remember or create username and passwords; this gives governments, organizations and developers alike an opportunity to provide a new paradigm of service quality. Instead of having to type in a username and password into each app, Rivetz technology would allow your app to generate a key and encryption within the device that pairs you with the web service. All you have to do is log into your device, then the device wil know which services you belong to and grant you access – provided you’ve set a policy that allows you to use that service at that time. You won’t have to remember passwords for every service. The ease of this device-centric system can be likened to the way a mobile phone “roams” from network to network. When you make a call on your mobile device, you’re not asked to enter a username and password. Let’s say you’re making call while on a road trip; your mobile device will connect to different networks or “roam” in order to continue your call – it doesn’t disconnect your call and ask
you to log in every time it has to switch networks. Roaming has made it possible for you to have a seamless relationship across calls. Similarly, Rivetz allows users to “roam” to different web services carried out from your devices, allowing us to seamlessly interact across services and create a more
frictionless experience for users. As cyber attacks increase in frequency, sophistication and ferocity, governments are exploring new paradigms to combat these threats. A viable solution may already exist within the billions of devices we already own combined with the blockchain’s transformative capabilities. ■
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G7 Executive Talk Series Bitcoin Authored by: Ana C. Rold
Bitcoin’s Meteoric Rise and the Future of All Industries The wide variety of applications that blockchain and cryptography possess are endless and ultimately bode well for the future of all industries.
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018 marks nearly ten years since the creation of Bitcoin, the most popular form of cryptocurrency to have emerged from blockchain technologies. While terms like “Bitcoin,” “cryptocurrency” and “blockchain” were once found only in niche cyberpunk communities, the meteoric rise of Bitcoin in the past year—worth less than one thousand dollars at the beginning of 2017 but topping out at nearly $20,000 by the end of December—has led to not only mainstream fervor surrounding the provocative new form of currency, but also legitimate interest from businesses and investors. Worth over $150 billion as of March 2018 (and once worth over $325 billion just a short few months ago), many are convinced the cryptocurrency industry could hold the answer to several of the problems that have plagued financial institutions for decades. But this optimism often leaves out one crucial aspect of Bitcoin: the volatility that comes with the experimental new territory.
NOT BACKED BY REALWORLD ASSETS SUCH AS GOLD NOR PROTECTED BY ANY CENTRAL AUTHORITY OR REGULATIONS, BITCOIN’S RISING VALUE HAS BEEN BASED LARGELY ON HYPE, WORD OF MOUTH AND SPECULATION. 16 ❙ g20g7.com
Bitcoin
Despite its popularity, relatively few people understand how Bitcoin actually works. While Bitcoin and other forms of cryptocurrency didn’t begin to enter mainstream until around 2013, Bitcoin was debuted several years earlier in 2009, by an unknown person or group known simply as Satoshi Nakamoto. Initially gaining popularity amongst technology-focused hobbyists and groups who distrusted centralized governments and banks, Bitcoin began to gain traction as it slowly rose in value, taking off in 2017 before seeing immense fluctuation towards the end of the year. This fluctuation and volatility can be partly attributed to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies’ lack of a centralized authority, relying instead on blockchain technology—which is essentially the use of online ledgers written upon by multiple parties (referred to as “miners”) to record each and every transaction ever created—in order to keep track of the who, when, and how of each cryptocurrency transaction. When partnered with cryptography—which can be used to create unique digital keys for each individual Bitcoin to secure its authenticity—blockchain has the ability to create a peer-to-peer system in which authority is decentralized, users can remain anonymous, and the authenticity of each piece of cryptocurrency can be secured. Despite Bitcoin’s lucrative journey thus far, however, several concerns have arisen surrounding its effectiveness and whether or not Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can be viewed as legitimate forms of currency moving forward. For example, because the digital currency industry is so new, issues with efficiency have yet to be addressed, with Bitcoin transaction fees currently costing $19 to process in 10 minutes, or $3 if a trader is willing to wait 24 hours. Even more concerning, the limited computing capacity of Bitcoin’s peer-to-peer network makes it so that even with an immense increase in the volume of hardware being used to record Bitcoin transactions in the blockchain, Bitcoin’s network can still only handle 3.3 transactions per second, and doesn’t appear to be speeding up anytime soon. When compared to mega-currency organizations such as Visa—which can process 3,674 transactions per second—it has become apparent that it is the very peer-to-peer nature that Bitcoin was founded upon that is beginning to create barriers to scaling the currency.
Even if Bitcoin were to increase in efficiency, other more social-centered issues such as the gender inequality found within the Bitcoin industry and amongst those investing in cryptocurrency could aggravate many of the gender-related issues we see today, such as the under-representation of women in business and finance. Similarly, the anonymity associated with Bitcoin and its early dealings with illegal circles such as the Silk Road have also created cause for concern surrounding its potential use for illicit activities. India’s central bank, for example, argues that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin have a strong likelihood of being used as a channel for money laundering and the financing of terrorists; similarly, countries like South Korea are considering regulating or outright banning cryptocurrency due to its association with cyber crime. In most western nations, however, countries like the United States and the United Kingdom are showing more concern towards the potential bubble-like nature of Bitcoin that is showing signs of bursting in the near future—and unlike other financial bubbles in the past, Bitcoin doesn’t have a central authority to protect investors. And perhaps one of the biggest concerns countries and investors alike have with Bitcoin is its speculative nature. Not backed by real-world assets such as gold nor protected by any central authority or regulations, Bitcoin’s rising value has been based largely on hype, word of mouth and speculation. Speculative investors, having seen the continuous rise and fall of the currency in a short span of time, have taken this opportunity to buy significant amounts of the volatile currency; meanwhile, early backers have continued to sit on their Bitcoins in hopes of selling it for a higher price later, and the high demand and short supply of the cryptocurrency has not only reinforced the inflation of prices, but also slowed down the miners’ ability to mine new Bitcoins—meaning that while demand continues to rise, the supply of Bitcoin is slowly coming to a halt, and the Bitcoin industry may eventually crash due to pressure. In the end, while Bitcoin itself is rife with issues surrounding its experimental nature, the blockchain technology and cryptography behind it poses several potential opportunities in both the finance and technology sectors. With cryptography, for example, banks and other financial organizations can look into protecting the authenticity of people’s
BITCOIN BEGAN TO GAIN TRACTION AS IT SLOWLY ROSE IN VALUE, TAKING OFF IN 2017 BEFORE SEEING IMMENSE FLUCTUATION TOWARDS THE END OF THE YEAR. transactions and bank accounts more securely; and with the blockchain, nearly all industries can use the new technology in innovative ways, from supply chain management to quality assurance to smart contracts and even voting. Therefore, while Bitcoin itself will most likely crash unless major changes to the industry are made, the wide variety of applications that blockchain and cryptography possess are endless and ultimately bode well for not only the financial and technological sectors, but for the future of all industries. ■
Ana C. Rold is Founder and CEO of Diplomatic Courier, a Global Affairs Media Network and the Editor-in-Chief of the G7, G20, and B20 Summit magazines. She teaches political science courses at Northeastern University and is the Host of The World in 2050–A Forum About Our Future. To engage with her on this article follow her on Twitter @ACRold.
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G7 Executive Talk Series Artificial Intelligence Authored by: Winona Roylance
Governing the Ascent of Artificial Intelligence At the recent IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings Editor-in-Chief Ana C. Rold interviewed world expert Nicolas Economou, Chief Executive of H5, on the governance of AI and the framework by which societies should delegate decisions to machines in an effort to mitigate the impact of risks as we move forward.
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s the Fourth Industrial Revolution continues to see technology advance at unprecedented rates, it can be argued that it is artificial intelligence that is moving at the fastest pace—and perhaps with the most promise. Indeed, while artificial intelligence seems like a technology of the distant future, it is in fact already disrupting every facet of life, from law to warfare to the very concept of what it means to be human. At the recent IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings—specifically, the IMF’s New Economy Forum—Nicolas Economou, Chairman and Chief Executive of H5, argued that due to the rapid transformations artificial intelligence is beginning to create, it is absolutely critical that we begin discussing the governance of AI and the framework by which societies should delegate decisions to machines in an effort to mitigate the impact of risks as we move forward—lest we begin to see the beginnings of a dystopian-like future. Moderated by Diplomatic Courier’s own Ana C. Rold, here are the key takeaways. There is a plethora of definitions of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence today is broadly defined as big data-driven, massively computerized, machine learningcentric algorithmic systems. However, such definitions fail to account for unexpected sources of innovation and also remain inaccessible to the ordinary citizen. Therefore, it may be preferable to define artificial intelligence in simpler terms as the science and engineering of intelligent systems. Despite these working definitions, however, it is most likely futile that we’ll come to an all-agreed definition of AI anytime soon. After all, we still don’t have a settled definition of human intelligence after 3,000 years of scientific and philosophical debates. The more important question is what artificial intelligence is NOT. Rather than focusing on the complexity of what AI is, it may be more useful to keep in mind what it is not. AI does not have empathy—it cannot mourn a deceased family member, for example. AI cannot feel nostalgia about its childhood, dream about its future, or feel any of the joys and sorrows that are so central to the human experience. Therefore, it is important to remember that while artificial intelligence may be many things, it is not artificial humanity—a crucial aspect to take into consideration when thinking about how to govern AI.
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Artificial Intelligence
There are different types of artificial intelligence. While the AI of today can be extremely well suited to certain discrete tasks—such as playing chess—modern AI’s inability to intuitively solve a range of versatile problems makes it unlikely that artificial intelligence will reach a level of cognition similar to human intelligence anytime soon. Artificial general intelligence (AGI) will most likely not be realized in the foreseeable future, but more narrow forms of AI will continue to evolve at a rapid pace, with progressively less human supervision. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is different in many ways from past industrial revolutions. While the Fourth Industrial Revolution is similar to past revolutions in its system-wide impact and universal disruption of power, there are many new challenges we must also face. There is a difference in magnitude and velocity. During the First Industrial Revolution, there were approximately one billion people alive; in the 1970’s, that number increased to around three billion. Today there are seven billion people worldwide, with artificial intelligence set to affect them all in immense ways. More importantly, the speed at which this transformation is happening is unprecedented, with McKinsey predicting that by 2030, 30% of the workforce in the developed world will need to adjust to new or different types of work due to the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The tolerance for violence is different. During the First Industrial Revolution, the distress and disruption caused by dramatic changes in the manufacturing process brought about a great deal of suffering—most of which society was able to tolerate. Today, societies’ tolerance for violence is far lower, which raises considerable public policy and public order questions in how citizens may respond to radical change. The Fourth Industrial Revolution will force us to reevaluate our very nature. While prior industrial revolutions forced us to reexamine our relationship to work and how society is organized, the advent of artificial intelligence will confront us instead with our very conception of what it means to be human. The risks and opportunities associated with artificial intelligence are intertwined. While there is much fear over the inherent
risks of artificial intelligence, these risks mirror groundbreaking opportunities for the future of humanity. It is this high stakes intertwining of risks and opportunities that make AI governance so important. Already, AI is being used in the court system. In the legal system, for example, in a recent case in Wisconsin, a judge relied in part on a black box algorithm to determine the length of the sentence for a person who committed a crime. The defendant was denied the right to examine the algorithm. An AI algorithm was thus used to determine the length of a sentence, without any review of its decision-making pathways, any scientific evidence of its effectiveness, or any evidence that anyone in the courtroom was competent to understand it. This example illustrates the risks of AI adoption in the absence of norms. But one can envision the sound deployment of AI in the legal system to facilitate access to justice and to produce more consistent system-wide outcomes. There are opportunities and risks in “social” artificial intelligence. Studies in psychology have revealed that humans interact with human-like machines much the same way they interact with humans, which has numerous potential benefits in providing care for children, the elderly and the socially isolated, and for education. However, this same mechanism carries risks as well, and we should ask questions of what kind of values, perspectives and political alignments such artificial intelligence would carry that could affect the people they interact with, but also our democratic institutions. We need to begin discussing how we should approach the governance of artificial intelligence. An effective, adaptable and legitimate framework for the governance of AI is indispensable. The goal of governing artificial intelligence, explained Economou, is precisely to prevent the possibility that AI governs us. AI must remain an instrument in the hands of humans for the benefit of humans. In order to build a framework, we need to address important questions first. First, to what extend should societies delegate to machines decisions that affect people? What central values should artificial intelligence be advancing? What principles, ethical values, public policy recommendations,
technical standards and codes of practice should a framework that governs AI entail? And what methodology should be used to go about creating this framework? Creating a consensus AI governance framework is challenging, but our experience governing human intelligence can help. AI brings up some entirely new ethical challenges, in particular the surrender of human agency to non-ethical agents. Even so, in developing a governance framework for AI, we can learn a lot from three thousand years of experience in governing human intelligence. Many of the principles, laws, norms, regulations, codes of practice, and even international agreements we have applied to “HI” can translate to the governance of AI. There is a lack of international cooperation. While there is tremendously good research surrounding AI both at the national and international levels, international cooperation on governance of AI is insufficient. Some emerging endeavors in this respect are laudable, including the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems, the Dubai Global Governance of AI Roundtable, President Macron’s proposal for an IPCC for AI, as well as the emergence of international think tanks such as The Future Society, which are exclusively focused on addressing the governance of AI. ■ Charlevoix. Canada 2018 ❙ 19
G7 Executive Talk Series Women and Finance Authored by: Ana C. Rold
To Survive, Cryptocurrencies Ne Despite promising growth cryptocurrency is experiencing many issues the technology sector has already struggled with for years—the gender gap.
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ith blockchain technology set to disrupt both the technological and economic world in major ways, cryptocurrency—with Bitcoin leading the pack—may very well become the catalyst by which the digital world transforms real world markets. In fact, a 16-fold increase in value in the last year alone topping out at over $19,500 per Bitcoin demonstrates the frenzied growth the cryptocurrency sector is currently experiencing. Despite this promising growth, however, cryptocurrency is also experiencing many issues the technology sector has struggled with for years, most specifically—the gender gap.
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While Bitcoin users largely remain anonymous, Coin Dance analytics estimates that an overwhelming 95% of users are male, with only 5% female engagement. Why is there such a heavy imbalance between men and women within the cryptocurrency sector? What will happen to the cryptocurrency industry if this gender imbalance continues? And perhaps most importantly, what can be done to attract more women to this important field? First gaining popularity on male-leaning websites such as Reddit and 4Chan and amongst other groups dominated by men such as PC gamers and the cyberpunk community, cryptocurrency began as a hobby that only the technologically savvy initially found interest in. ›
Women and Finance
ed to Embrace a Female Future
IN ORDER TO TRULY UNDERSTAND WHETHER OR NOT CRYPTOCURRENCY WILL BE WORTH THE RISK, IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT MORE WOMEN BECOME INVOLVED AS BOTH INVESTORS AND USERS. Charlevoix. Canada 2018 ❙ 21
G7 Executive Talk Series Women and Finance
ULTIMATELY, WHILE CRYPTOCURRENCY IS PRESENTLY QUITE MALE, WOMEN FROM AROUND THE WORLD ARE WORKING HARD TO TURN THIS BOYS’ CLUB INTO A VIABLE, GLOBAL, LEGITIMATE AND INCLUSIVE CURRENCY.
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› Because of this early wave of men, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies had initially earned themselves a “geeky male” stereotype that may have dissuaded those from outside these niche groups—most notably women—from finding interest in the new technology. Since gaining mainstream popularity, however, the stereotype has begun to dissipate as more investors and businesses become interested in the provocative idea of a currency unregulated by any central authority—and yet, women continue to remain strikingly absent in the cryptocurrency investment scene. The behavioral psychology theory that men tend to take more risks than women is one popular explanation for this colossal gender gap in cryptocurrency (rooted in the common belief that men are more likely to take physical and financial risks). However, this willingness towards risk-taking isn’t necessarily a positive attribute. While risk-taking can end in high success, studies show that the form of risk-taking many men ascribe to can actually make them more
predisposed to investing in bubbles—or in other words, if there is a notable absence of women in certain investments, it could mean the investment will not lead to any financial pay-offs in the long run. In order to truly understand whether or not cryptocurrency will be worth the risk, it is imperative that more women become involved as both investors and users. First and foremost, if Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies do end up stabilizing and becoming major worldwide currencies, half of the population missing from this industry will mean a decrease in the potential value of the currency in the future. Second, from a behavioral psychology point-of-view, experts argue that women possess the kind of qualities that could help assess and mitigate risks associated with uncertain investments like Bitcoin—this includes the theory that women are better communicators than men, and therefore would be able to better communicate with fellow investors on the viability of the cryptocurrency market, their analyses for any potential problems, and
Women and Finance
how best to proceed forward in a more group-oriented way. There is good news—while the gender gap remains large, women have slowly but surely begun to fill it in. With the relatively recent advent of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs)—which is the means by which funds are raised for a new cryptocurrency venture, similar to Initial Public Offerings (IPOs)— women are seeing a new promising avenue by which to enter the cryptocurrency game. In fact, in 2017, four of the 30 largest ICOs were led by women, with two of these women-led ICOs among the biggest initial offerings ever. Similarly, Coinbase Inc. reports that 46% of their hires in 2017 were women or employees of diverse ethnicities, and many other startup ventures and currency exchanges are beginning to report higher numbers of female hires as well. While the increasing number of females in cryptocurrency is encouraging, nevertheless there is much work needed to be done to make cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies—and Silicon Valley as a
whole—much more inclusive at a faster rate. Fortunately, there are several ways in which the cryptocurrency industry can become more attractive and welcoming to women. First, increasing efforts to expose more young girls to technological fields such as cryptography, coding, and other computer-based skills has the ability to not only help increase female participation in blockchain and cryptocurrency industries in the future, but also the technology sector as a whole. Similarly, increasing financial and business literacy in young girls is extremely beneficial in providing young women with the skills needed to enter any investment or finance pathway they desire, including cryptocurrency. Second, introducing Bitcoin technologies to more female-inclusive industries—such as using Bitcoin to purchase items from an online retail store, or using it in conjunction with social media—would also increase interest in women from around the world. And last, spotlighting women in important positions within the cryptocurrency industry would not only have the ability to
provide role models for any women interested in entering the market, but also demonstrate to men in the industry that there are in fact women present within the industry—and they are already making major waves. Ultimately, while cryptocurrency is presently quite male, women from around the world are working hard to turn this boys’ club into a viable, global, legitimate and inclusive currency. Cryptocurrency’s ability to shape the world economy can only happen with the inclusion of women. ■
Ana C. Rold is Founder and CEO of Diplomatic Courier, a Global Affairs Media Network and the Editor-in-Chief of the G7, G20, and B20 Summit magazines. She teaches political science courses at Northeastern University and is the Host of The World in 2050–A Forum About Our Future. To engage with her on this article follow her on Twitter @ACRold.
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G7 Executive Talk Series Blackops Authored by: T. Casey Fleming, Eric L. Qualkenbush, and Anthony M.Chapa
Top Threat to Business, National Security and the American Dream Detailing the New Global Competitive Model based on Cyber and Asymmetrical Hybrid Warfare
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magine if Pearl Harbor had been attacked and there had been no response from Washington. This is the actual case today due to a highly sophisticated, mature, and stealth strategy perpetrated against the United States (US) by advanced nation-state military methods leveled at every sector and organization in our society. This includes private sector businesses, all government agencies, the military, and academia - every US organization operating with innovation, intellectual property, or sensitive data. The world is in significant conflict requiring the private sector, US government, and military to deliberately confront this national crisis or become permanently irrelevant. It is no longer “business as usual.” Over the past three decades, as the US military trained in conventional, nuclear, and counterinsurgency warfare, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) engaged and perfected over forty methods of warfare intended to permanently destabilize and weaken the US both economically and militarily. At the same time, China rapidly grew its economy and military without the required time or investment in innovation. The result is that the US is hemorrhaging its economic strength and relevance at the rate of $5 trillion in lost total value each year, or one-third of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Over time, a weakened US economy directly reduces the strength and effectiveness of the US military. Further, when a country is manipulated by an adversary to lose one-third of the value of its economy each year, it is at war. What does this mean for US citizens? A cumulative and shocking permanent reduction in quality of life to those organizations that “don’t know what they don’t know.”
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ASYMMETRICAL HYBRID WARFARE Clear and Present Existential Threat Over the past thirty years, the US government and private sector have advanced their policy of full-cooperation, including substantial financial and technological investment in China, under the belief that they were moving towards a more democratic, free-market society while China played intentional misdirection and deception. In 1986, month number three, the Communist Party of China (CCP) officially declared Asymmetrical Hybrid Warfare (AHW) against the US and its western allies in its nation-state Program 863. This strategy commits all of China with its strict Communist military rule to engage in any and all methods to become on par with, surpass, and dominate the West at any and all cost. China’s ultimate objective is to harvest and perpetuate the Chinese Dream through the extraction and extinguishing of the American Dream, the American way of life and ending Western dominance. The Chinese strategy is that a er 200 years of Western global dominance, it is their destiny to reverse roles with the US and to relegate it to a forced supplier with a much lower quality of life. To underscore this strategy, China refers to the last century as “the century of great humiliation.” It must also be emphasized that AHW strategy is rooted in Unrestricted Warfare or “war without rules.” DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS The Modern Battlefield is Everywhere AHW has been established as the future of modern warfare and business strategy across the globe. It is ultimate warfare that has many forms: economic warfare, transaction warfare, industrial warfare, drug warfare, and propaganda warfare, to name only a few. Each method is characterized by
the non-utilization of military or conventional warfare that is typical of aircraft, ships, troops, and weapons. While China continues to aggressively develop and expand its military, it does so with the belief that if it must resort to the use of conventional or nuclear warfare, it has ultimately failed at achieving the enemy’s capitulation through the combined methods of AHW. In the business sector, AHW has become the “New Global Competitive Model” where the “winner takes all.” Soon, China will dictate transactions and pricing based on its market dominance. As businesses rush to move to “digital transformation” and “Big Data,” each must perform a 180° cybersecurity transformation based on sensitive data protection and adversarial motives as a means to survive. Currently, AHW is the primary focus of our adversaries: China is, by far, the most successful at methodically executing all AHW methods, while Russia, North Korea, Iran, and India engage in relatively few methods at present. The strategy is to continuously inflict damage or cuts to every facet of American society just below the pain threshold where we choose not to act. We believe that China has achieved an estimated 750 cuts towards “death by a thousand cuts.” (Sun Tzu) Definition AHW is characterized as unconventional, non-military, multi-method strategic warfare based on deception and void of any rules between countries where economic and military power, strategy and tactics differ significantly. The attacking country exploits inherent weaknesses through numerous uneven and seemingly unrelated AHW methods that are designed to destabilize the unwitting target country for ultimate and complete economic and military submission. Extensive use of misinformation and plausible deniability are used to deceive and deflect suspicion of the strategy or its methodical advancement. Hybrid warfare is a military strategy that blends conventional warfare, asymmetric warfare, irregular warfare, offset warfare, non-linear warfare, and cyber warfare. AHW is rooted in unrestricted warfare (war without rules where “everything is fair play”) which is also described as “anything warfare.” Source: BLACKOPS Partners Corporation Culture Disparity as a Strategic Weapon It is important to note the striking contrast
between the two cultures of the US and Communist China. It is this great divide that has contributed to China’s manipulation and acceleration of AHW against the US. The CCP believes its “legalism” philosophy of supreme law and people are superior to America’s constitutional democracy underpinned by justice, religion, a Creator, and “all men are created equal.” Since 1949, the CCP have controlled all aspects of China’s commerce, military, and daily life where intellectual property is state-owned, all data is controlled, and it is the national duty of all citizens to support the regime, including all aspects of espionage. The Communist culture is further defined not by “winning vs. losing”; rather, “living vs. dying.” It is this extreme belief that underscores China’s support for AHW in its conflict with the US. Another distinction is that the CCP controls every business transaction with US companies. In many cases, the CCP resembles a powerful organized crime faction, through its shell business partnerships and facades. There is no distinction between China’s organized crime, military, or government. This places every US business partnership or transaction with China at extreme risk. Critical Role of Intelligence China’s uncompromising commitment to AHW demonstrates a national objective to destroy the US and its Western allies. The critical nucleus that drives the AHW strategy is the complete dependence on stolen innovation, intellectual property (IP), sensitive data, and military secrets - namely intelligence. For over thirty years, China has orchestrated the most impressive and sophisticated strategy with an intricate global network of espionage and industrial the to fuel AHW. In recent years, an emboldened China has demanded the complete surrender of all intellectual property during the process of contracting current international business transactions. Conversely, intelligence plays a critical role for the US to gauge the executional success of AHW, changes in strategy, and individual and cumulative damages. Cyber Warfare as the Key Accelerator China has successfully intertwined Cyber warfare as the key AHW accelerator due to its relatively minimal investment and the difficulty of attributing actions to a specific actor. At the same time, cybersecurity remains fundamentally broken in the US and the West
due to failed cyber strategies, lack of awareness of AHW, lack of accountability, overconfidence, and over-dependence on inherently fallible cybersecurity products. This is made clear by the “new normal” of the increased trend in number, frequency, and resulting total damages from cyberattacks. Current estimates place global cyber losses at $6 trillion by 2021, with expectations that this will increase further in the future, according to Cybersecurity Ventures. Cyber warfare and cybersecurity have become a “whole of society” challenge that requires a unified, elevated strategy and 180° approach to combat the morphing threat. As we examine today’s cybersecurity environment, we are looking through the wrong end of the telescope. It is only in the context of AHW that we can begin to fully understand cybersecurity’s critical role for successful defense, protection, and resolution. We have learned to treat cybersecurity first and foremost as a human problem and a senior leadership challenge, not solely an IT issue. Urgent Call to Action Every company director, CEO, and C-level must immediately increase awareness, positive action, and accountability at all levels through creating a unified and aggressive approach in responding to the advancement and threat of AHW. The following recommendations are put forth: 1. All companies must immediately re-evaluate their corporate and Cyber strategies with the latest adversarial intelligence including the evolving AHW threat 2. Review current IT and organizational strategies, systems, and processes Unser AHW to protect sensitive data 3. Immediately support the Asymmetrical Hybrid Warfare Center: ■ True Public-Private Partnership Center coalition, U.S. university-based ■ Independent leadership and reporting structure as a resource-focused, support entity charged with maximum efficiency (reporting to the U.S. Executive Branch or U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence) ■ Constituents: USG, Pentagon, Congress, private sector, academia, and US Allies ■ Mission: strategy, intelligence, counterintelligence, research, tracking, analysis, awareness, training, AHW-
countering recommendations to constituents (e.g., foreign acquisition of assets determined to be harmful to US economy or military, false shell companies, espionage reporting database, misinformation generation, spyware) ■ Cybersecurity consortium clearinghouse with anonymity scrub: intelligence at a level higher than today with a focus on advanced attack methods for early warning and resolution ■ DarkNet research and triangulation, active surveillance as adversaries increasingly exploit this platform ■ Regular release of evolving cybersecurity attack methods and best practices ■ No organization or entity today has the scope or is positioned for this mission 4. Transformational culture change in each organization to prioritize the protection of innovation, IP, and sensitive data 5. AHW executive briefing and exercise for key US and Allied organizations (private sector, government, military, and academia) to train in evolving AHW strategy, methods, and countering techniques Summary The persistent engagement of Asymmetrical Hybrid Warfare (AHW) will continue to grow as the preeminent threat to US national security and will characterize the future focus of each of our adversaries in business and military transactions. AHW is the new global competitive model for business that has evolved for the past three decades under methodical stealth execution. Asymmetrical/Conventional/Nuclear is the new continuum of modern warfare for all sectors (private sector, military, government, academia) with Cyber Warfare at the center as the key accelerator. The Russian hacking of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election clearly demonstrates the shift of AHW to the forefront and the relative effectiveness of a single act and method. All sectors of US society must increase its awareness of highly advanced AHW, provide accountability, and routinely engage in effective countermeasures to train, secure and protect the future of each company and the collective United States. Increasing awareness of AHW brings the blur of cybersecurity and the protection of sensitive data into focus. Implementing countering strategies within the company and throughout the supply chain is the new critical imperative required for survival. ■ Charlevoix. Canada 2018 ❙ 25
G7 Executive Talk Series CryptoTradia
Cryptocurrency Revolution
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ryptoTradia is a team of dedicated researchers, analysts, traders, writers and technicians, devoted towards keeping up to date with the crypto industry and bringing the best education for crypto tradia members and the crypto world. Investing in the crypto industry can be very risky. This is what CryptoTradia aims to solve by utilizing the knowledge, wisdom and expertise of a dedicated crypto team. The Three Pillars of CryptoTradia CryptoTradia offers 3 main features to its members: 1. Signals Members of CryptoTradia get unlimited access to premium signals on investing
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opportunities. Our dedicated team of cryptocurrency researchers sort through thousands of cryptocurrencies, carefully examining, investigating and researching them to bring you the best. 2. Pre-sale Deals Being a member of CryptoTradia gives you unlimited access to exclusive content. There are several methods to earn through the cryptocurrency industry, some including pre-sale deals. These are fund raising rounds before the public ICO starts. In a lot of these cases, the investors who join in the pre-sale rounds enjoy exclusive discounts on top of the regular ICO discounts. They also have a guaranteed investment in the project unlike ICO investors who have a chance of missing
out on investing in the project entirely due to the hard cap being reached quick. CryptoTradia offers its members to join in with these exclusive pre-sale deals to turn a profitable investment opportunity into an even more profitable one. 3. CryptoTradia’s Portfolio (Coming later 2018) CryptoTradia is also an ideal solution for the type of investor who doesn’t have time to spend on research and doing quality trades. With CryptoTradia’s portfolio, members can invest and see their money grow by using our dedicated team who execute trades on a frequent basis. The portfolio is transparent and can be seen at any time by investors of this portfolio.
CRYPTOTRADIA EXPECTS OVER 95% OF THESE PROJECTS TO FAIL. CT FOCUSES ON THE OTHER 5% THAT WILL LAST AND ENDURE THE TEST OF TIME.
Who is behind CryptoTradia? We have spoken with the founder of CryptoTradia, Timon Idzinga. What got you into the crypto world? How did you discover Bitcoin? I found out by an article back in 2013. Didn’t realize the disruptive factor of this technology back then. It was 2014 when I really started to jump in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. What does CryptoTradia bring to the crypto industry? One of the main issues I found was the big amount of shady, scam-like projects that would make you lose money very easily, very quickly. A lot of new investors would make the mistake of jumping into these coins hoping to make a quick buck. After a while of investing I surrounded myself with expert traders from traditional industries like stocks and Forex. The methods used in those industries can be applied when investing in cryptocurrencies. I combined the expertise of these individuals and that’s when CryptoTradia was born. CryptoTradia supplies quality information u wouldn’t often find on the free, public forums or groups.It’s not always about finding the right investments but also timing when to take profits from current investments. I remember in 2017 I convinced one of my close friends to immediately take profits on a project after I found out the developers had a big disagreement which would reflect in the charts of that coin. He ended up taking out most of his money and a couple days later the coin fell a staggering 35%. He owes me a beer now for sure! What do you think the future of blockchain looks like? The future of Blockchain looks very bright. I like to call this technology Internet 2.0. It can be applied in pretty much every industry.
It’s more secure, transparent and most importantly, decentralized. We will see a significant growth of the use of blockchain the coming years. Many, many companies are working behind the scenes on enhancing their business model with blockchain and/or tokenization. FUD and FOMO are often widespread, how does CryptoTradia work with these constant market fears? FUD and FOMO are very real in this industry and are real factors to take into consideration when building your portfolio. Due to this being a new industry some investments can grow significantly in a short amount of time which induces FOMO with a lot of new investors. Look at Bitcoin at the end of 2017. A huge price increase resulted in a lot of new investors quickly jumping into bitcoin to ‘avoid missing the boat’. Most of those people are now at a loss on that investment. The team behind CryptoTradia are aware of these risks. Whenever we look at investments, we use FUD and FOMO to our advantage. If there is a widespread FUD prices are generally way down and gives us time to find a good buy price. Once a coin hits a high level of FOMO as we seen with Bitcoin it’s a sign price might collapse very soon. “If everyone is jumping in, it’s time to sell.” CryptoTradia has been known to have a team of dedicated crypto specialists, what keeps your team motivated? The team is motivated because every single member of CryptoTradia means the industry is growing. The more progress flowing into this industry, the greater it grows. Our team focuses on the growth, studying and researching to its core. It’s a means to boost adoption and also protect new investors from falling for scams. Members of the CT team have also lost significant amounts of money
on sophisticated scams and want to protect others for doing the same. Tell us more about your team. The team is constantly growing, we have a strict policy on taking on new members to work with the team. They need to show significant knowledge on the topic and besides that they need to deliver information to us exclusively, so we can check quality and see if their content would be safe for CryptoTradians to work with. We run checks on the person, understanding their natures and intent, which at CryptoTradia, is dedicated towards not only self-profit but the benefit of all individuals connected to our community. With the fiat dollar depreciating, would you recommend crypto in the longrun? I recommend cryptocurrencies to everyone. Will the dollar disappear? Longterm that might happen. There are more and more crypto projects aiming to make it easy to pay for things. Why? A lot of cryptocurrency enthusiasts like the idea of the government not having control on the currency any more. It doesn’t matter if either the government creates the currencies or it would be a currency like BTC. Even just a digital version of the USD is an improvement for many things. No more fake notes, everything is transparent, and every transaction is on the blockchain forever. Several hedge funds, banks, have all gained interest in crypto. How do you see this playing out? Not just banks or hedge funds but several large companies have stepped in as early as 2013 with researching how they can ‘upgrade’ or ‘enhance’ their business model using › Charlevoix. Canada 2018 ❙ 27
G7 Executive Talk Series CryptoTradia
› blockchain. Some banks and hedge funds are slowly starting to invest into the existing cryptocurrencies such as ETH, NEO, XRP which results in some very profitable investment opportunities. This big players often negotiate great buy in prices for new projects that interest them. You see a lot of new projects never reaching ICO stage or with just a low cap that fills up within hours. Private pre-sales are being done more frequently. Hedge funds and VC’s most of the times contribute the required funds for a project to start. ICO’s are merely used as a marketing scheme to attract the general public. This is also why we help CryptoTradians to join in with pre-sale deals, so they have the best rates without having to invest a certain minimum which could be as high as $1m. Many traders and investors are prone to much disinformation, how will CryptoTradia make a difference? Unlike a lot of big groups and communities there are A LOT of people pushing their own project or their own investments and make it sound like the greatest thing. While in the end they just want everyone to jump in so they gain a significant return on investment. This is why we only allow information from our specifically-niche-acquired team within CryptoTradia. Of course you can discuss these articles with fellow CryptoTradians within our website but we won’t allow people with hidden agendas to promote their own projects or projects they are significantly affiliated with. What do you think makes a successful crypto investor? A successful crypto investor is one that is in for the longterm. They should have a wide spread portfolio in different projects that all have very strong fundamentals and must not be scared of significant drops in value of the market. To be successful, you have to look at the cryptocurrency market with a helicopter view where it is now, and where it will move next. One trap new investors fall for is cryptocurrencies that aren’t enhancing a specific business but are merely created for the sake of using new technology. The successful investor has a trusted source of constant information by people he can trust. We increase chances of becoming a successful investor for people who join CryptoTradia. After all the CT team is investing based on the same intelligence as we share with our members! ■ 28 ❙ g20g7.com
One well respected member of the CryptoTradia team has been working hard on supplying a book on cryptocurrencies. Giving the reader a ‘helicopter’ view of the world of crypto. A small part of the valuable content: Bitcoin, The Crypto Revolution and Its Future A CryptoTradia Series “FUD and FOMO are strategical tools used mostly by big pockets (whal es), hedge funds, governments, banks, militaries, secret intelligences and agencies, and non-thinking-masses who pass the fear down the line without a second thought of what they’re even doing. These tools are used to either bring the price down and skyrocket it upwards.” “Trading is no different. You are in a game. There are times when you will come out, guns blazing, locking profits left and right. Then there are times you simply do not know and have no choice but to wait, and finally, there are times when you will lose.” “What matters is – what is, exactly as it is, free from bias and exaggeration in either direction of good and bad, neutrally. Only through the discovery of truth can you make the necessary efforts to make your dreams into reality. Likewise, in crypto, your ability to sort the truth from the untruth will allow you to properly plan and execute your operations.” “Those that can give you the right information should become a part of your sources and they should be well kept.” “There are sources of information that are neutral, truthful and honest, but they are rare. Exceptions do indeed exist and your ability to discover them is of extreme importance in a world that utilizes disinformation.” Bitcoin, The Crypto Revolution and Its Future by Jedi Reach
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WAVES WORLD BELIEVES IN GIVING BACK TO THE COMMUNITY. THAT IS WHY WE WILL BE FORMING THE WAVES WORLD FOUNDATION. IT WILL FOCUS ON INTEGRATION OF BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY INTO CHARITABLE GIVING.
But that’s not all. Here at Waves World we have a variety of premium features planned. Holders of the Waves World Token will have several options for spending. Soon you may purchase gifts from the Waves World Gift Shop. Do you have your own blockchain project? Waves World Token can be used for our marketing program. Other planned features include Custom Token Airdrops via the Waves World Node. Waves World believes in giving back to the community. That is why we will be forming the Waves World Foundation. It will focus on integration of blockchain technology into charitable giving. 10% of all proceeds from the Waves World Brand will be donated to worthwhile non-profits. We also offer our own Cryptocurrency News Site at BitLiveWire.com. It features all the latest insights and information you need to be a successful crypto participant. Learn about everything from the current state of the crypto craze to price analysis to the growing Ethereum. Check out WavesWorld.io and get ready for the release of our Waves World Token in June. Take advantage of our very popular FREE Cyptocurrency Converter and Blog with fascinating discussions. Use our Token Faucet and follow us on Social Media. Our Waves Platform Cryptocurrency Club on Facebook is a great place to meet other investors, learn more about Waves Platform, and have a fascinating time among people who share your interests. ■ Visit now: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ WavesPlatformCC/ Charlevoix. Canada 2018 ❙ 29
I D E N T IT Y P ROT E CT I O N W I T H O U T C O M P RO M I S E
Data Data Breaches Breaches Cyber-Attacks Cyber-Attacks Identity Identity Theft Theft THE THE RISK RISK IS IS REAL REAL Demand Demandfor forRobust, Robust,Trusted TrustedProtection ProtectionIs IsRising Rising Provide Providethe theSolution Solutionwith withGenerali GeneraliGlobal GlobalAssistance AssistanceIdentity IdentityProtection Protection Global GlobalExperience Experiencethat thatFeels FeelsBoutique Boutique Strength Strengthand andstability stabilitymatched matchedby byaadedicated, dedicated,tailored tailoredapproach approachto tohelping helpingyou you achieve achieveyour yourbusiness businessgoals. goals. Customizable CustomizableSolutions Solutionsthat thatRemain RemainCompetitive Competitive Specialized Specializedidentity identityprotection protectionprograms programsthat thatmeet meetthe theunique uniqueneeds needsof ofyour your organization, organization,all allwhile whileremaining remainingone oneof ofthe themost mostcompetitively competitivelypriced pricedservices services on onthe themarket. market. Powerful PowerfulTechnology Technologywith withPersonal PersonalPreference Preference Comprehensive Comprehensiveidentity identityand anddigital digitalprotection protectiontechnology technologythat thatgives givesyour your customers customersthe theability abilityto tochoose choosehow howand andwhen whento toengage. engage. Serious SeriousService Servicefrom fromCompassionate CompassionatePeople People Looking Lookingbeyond beyonddata dataprotection protectionalone, alone,we weare arededicated dedicatedto tothe thewell-being well-beingof ofthe the person personbehind behindthe thedata. data.
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G7 Executive Talk Series Generali Global Assistance
Data Globalization Gives New Meaning to the Ever-Evolving Identity Theft Threat A Review of the Evolution of the Identity Protection Industry t’s 2003, and the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has just released some scary findings about this new crime called identity theft. There’s not much you can do to prevent it, and its effects are alarming – the FTC reports that the average victim in the U.S. spends about $1,200 and 60 hours trying to fix their identity theft issue.1 At this time, almost any type of identity theft protection or prevention service is solely focused on credit or data monitoring – which, as we know today, is just a single component in safeguarding one’s identity. Indeed, the concept of identity theft was still in its infancy in the U.S., and, at a global level, it was barely being discussed.
I
At this stage, fifteen years ago, Generali Global Assistance (GGA) took a different approach. Being owned by the company that invented the concept of real-time care assistance over 50 years ago (Europ Assistance), providing compassionate assistance to people in times of need is in our DNA. Today, we remain a global provider of assistance services to people in the fields of health, home and family, automotive, and travel, helping thousands of companies protect their customers and employees from life’s difficulties. Thus, the protection and restoration of identities was a natural fit for us as we came to know and understand the devastating ramifications that identity theft can have on people’s lives and families.
Accordingly, we launched identity theft resolution services via a business to business (B2B) offering, becoming one of the first identity protection providers to focus on helping the person behind the data. Monitoring services alone simply alert customers of suspected fraud incidents and stop there, leaving the victim to pick up the pieces and attempt to restore their identity on their own. As a company firmly rooted in the mantra “We care,” our goal was, and still is today, to go above and beyond for each one of our client’s customers. For those dealing with the aftermath of identity theft, we attend to the time-consuming and stressful tasks of contacting and following up with creditors, credit bureaus, law enforcement, and other third-parties on their behalf, while also providing compassionate assistance and expert advice to help put their mind at ease – something most other identity protection providers weren’t doing at the time and, frankly, some still struggle with today. Nevertheless, identity protection as a consumer product was very much still emerging a decade and a half ago, and most people held a false sense of security that something so life-changing could never happen to them. It’s different though today, in that our current climate has almost normalized large-scale data breaches and compromised personal information. Undeniably, awareness levels have increased since 2003 – and whether that’s good or bad is up to interpretation. What is certain is that the identity protection landscape has also evolved to keep up with the ever-advancing crimes of identity theft and fraud. Today’s Identity Protection Services The need for identity protection across the board has become increasingly apparent, and, as a result, more and more players are entering the identity protection space. The current landscape is varied, with some companies monopolizing the direct-toconsumer market, others operating more behind the scenes in the B2B realm like GGA, and even major credit bureaus and credit card companies have found opportunity to capitalize on the growing industry. The types of services offered by these players also run the spectrum, with some merely tacking on complimentary credit or identity monitoring services to a core offering and others offering an entire suite of identity protection services that make up a more comprehensive program.
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THE MORE DEVICES THAT ASK US TO INPUT OUR DATA, CUSTOMIZE TO OUR PERSONAL PREFERENCE, AND ACCESS REMOTELY, THE MORE GATEWAYS THERE ARE TO IDENTITY THEFT. Today, GGA’s offerings have certainly expanded but are still firmly rooted in full-service resolution services. Between 2008 and 2014, we added identity monitoring and alerts, 3-bureau credit monitoring and alerts, and an Online Data Protection Suite with anti-keylogging and anti-phishing software. In addition, GGA’s resolution team became Certified Identity Theft Risk Management Specialists (CITRMS) and FCRA-certified by the Consumer Data Industry Association. In 2016, we launched our most robust identity protection product yet – a 360° platform with a single, easy-to-use online dashboard – and we’ve since expanded our offering globally to also include smartphone protection with secured browser and keyboard. Today, GGA’s identity and digital protection product offering is pinned around four pillars: experience, solutions, technology, and service – none of which should be compromised. We don’t offer our products and services simply because they’re popular – for us, it’s the result of consistent research and continual awareness of a need that continues to grow. Looking back, we started offering identity protection services for a very simple reason: there was a genuine need to help people that wasn’t being fulfilled. Today, that need has evolved (e.g., IoT, data globalization, etc.) and become a global concern, and we’re leveraging our resources to address it. Our offering has naturally evolved and advanced over the years – to better protect our customers – and we’re sure it will continue to change and evolve as the identity theft landscape will as well. No matter what, our mission will always remain the same – to protect and help people. The Future of the Identity Protection Space & Its Influencers The more devices that ask us to input our data, customize to our personal preference, and access remotely, the more gateways › Charlevoix. Canada 2018 ❙ 33
G7 Executive Talk Series Generali Global Assistance
› there are to identity theft. Indeed, the digitalization of even the most ordinary of objects has taken us to a place that’s more opportunistic than ever for identity thieves. But it’s not all bad. Our highly-digitalized lives have afforded us opportunities and conveniences that some of the greatest engineers could have never fathomed several decades ago. Digital globalization has given power to small one-man shops, allowing them to compete globally and sell to quite literally anyone in the world.
RECOGNIZING THAT THERE ARE SOME THINGS CONSUMERS HAVE CONTROL OVER AND OTHERS THAT THEY DON’T, CONSUMERS MUST USE THEIR VOICES TO CREATE CHANGE.
With so much information being shared, downloaded, and accessed cross-continentally, there should be a global platform seeking identity and cyber protection for all. We’re still a long way from such an idealistic approach, but the European Union’s induction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was a major step in the right direction. Having officially gone into effect on May 25, 2018, its goal is to fundamentally protect all EU citizens, no matter where they are in the world. Thus,
AT A GLANCE: GGA and the Identity Theft Landscape
2003-2005
2006
2007
2008
GGA launches identity theft services and adds 1 bureau credit monitoring services
TJX data breach of U.S., Puerto Rico, Canadian customer transaction data. There were 45.6 million records stolen, making this the worst ever breach involving PII up to this point
UK-based financial company, Nationwide Building Society, has an unencrypted laptop stolen from a companyemployee that held the personal data of 11 million members
GGA adds identity monitoring services
California data breach law became effective (2003)
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the new data privacy regulation will apply to any company that does business with an EU citizen. As more countries start looking at data privacy and protection like this for their citizens, it won’t be such a big leap to start talking about personal identity protection for all. With half of the world’s traded services delivered digitally,2 businesses are no longer confined to serving local customers; the world is their consumer now. And yet, today, most businesses abide by only their country’s (or, for those in the U.S., their state’s) legislation regarding data privacy and breach notification. Unfortunately, most laws are inadequate at best, leaving consumers’ identity and digital protection primarily their responsibility – even while it’s oftentimes out of their hands. Recognizing that there are some things consumers have control over and others that they don’t, consumers must use their voices to create change. They can begin by putting increased pressure on their local legislators to encourage them to play a bigger role in putting more global regulations in place. And because every country has their own unique challenges in the identity protection realm, governments need to listen closely so that they can best meet their citizens’ needs. Consumers should also feel empowered to force the companies that they do business with (locally and abroad) to provide more transparency into how their data is being protected. Clearly though, data privacy and consumer protection isn’t going to change overnight, and we know it’s going to be an uphill battle – that’s why we’re doing our part too. At GGA, we recognize that education is a key piece in better protecting consumers; after all, they are their own best identity advocate. Education is a key component in the products we offer, and we’re also present in the space
to help foster consumer education. By participating in and partnering with various identity-focused organizations such as the University of Texas Center for Identity and the Identity Theft Resource Center, and speaking at industry events, such as the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s Conference on Identity Theft, we understand our responsibility to remain engaged in the industry so that we can, ultimately, help shape it for the better. Additionally, GGA is continuously exploring new products and solutions to stay ahead of identity thieves. One of the most popular trends we’re seeing right now is the use of Blockchain technology, which essentially is a way to better protect and isolate data from potential hackers. We’re also seeing the use of biometrics becoming increasingly popular, particularly in consumer technology. As a means of identity validation, biometrics may be another great advancement in thwarting fraudsters. GGA as a Global Player As a global company, we’re constantly keeping our finger on the pulse of the market to adapt and evolve with it. We’re in a unique position to help people and companies all over the world. It’s an advantage that we take seriously and will use to truly be a part of the growing challenge to provide identity and digital protection globally – which we know we can’t do alone. The identity protection space itself is still rapidly evolving and perhaps will always continue to do so. Intrinsically tied to technology, there may be no end in sight – the identity theft problem, instead, will just expand, or morph, or develop, into different issues that are unknown to us today. For this reason, we are always looking ahead. Today, we’re taking the lessons learned in the U.S. – where the issues have been
fast-tracked and the market now a bit more mature – and applying those lessons globally. The U.S. identity protection market has, in a way, been reactive to the identity theft issues that have transpired over the last two decades. GGA has launched identity protection services in Canada and is in the process of launching across Europe and in India; these are unique products that meet each specific market’s identity protection needs, and, first and foremost, they’re proactively addressing the rising issues present in each country. In the U.S., we’ve seen the identity protection industry go through many phases and stages, with different protection components getting different levels of attention throughout the 2000s. With data breaches now a mainstay in societies across the world – and so much information being made available to fraudsters – it’s only a matter of time until that manifests into larger issues for vast numbers of people. We predict this will ultimately put resolution services into the industry spotlight and when it does, resolution services will become necessary to participate in the global identity market as a true player. It is at that point that other companies will then follow suit, but we have been there all along providing caring, compassionate assistance – the foundation upon which our services are built. Today, we’re exploring the future of identity from a global perspective while maintaining local considerations and keeping white-glove service and the “We care” mentality close to heart. We hope others follow us in that – sooner rather than later. ■ Resources 1 https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/ reports/federal-trade-commission-identity-theft-program/ synovatereport.pdf 2 https://hbr.org/2016/03/globalization-is-becomingmore-about-data-and-less-about-stuff
2009-2011
2012-2015
2016-Present
GGA add 3 bureau credit monitoring services and GGA Identity Resolutions Specialist become certified
GGA adds anti-phishing & anti-keylogging tools, enhanced identity monitoring services, and family plans
GGA launches new 360° identity protection services in the U.S., Canada, Europe and India
• Target is breached with 70 million U.S. and Canadian customers affected (2013)
GGA launches smartphone protection
• Year of the Breach: Korea Credit Bureau, AOL, eBay, UPS, Home Depot, Gmail, JPMorgan Chase, Sony Pictures Entertainment were all breached (2014)
• Alabama became the last U.S. state to enact data breach legislation, completing the nationwide patchwork of state data breach laws. (2018)
• Canadian Digital Privacy Act amends Personal Information Protection and Electronics Documents Act (PIPEDA) to include breach notification requirements (2015)
• NetEase data breach of 1.2 billion subscriber records in China (2017)
• Equifax data breach of 145+ million U.S. consumer records (2017) • EU’s GDPR is enacted (2018)
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G7 Executive Talk Series AI and National Security Authored by: Bailey Piazza
Machine Militaries: The Future of Artificial Intelligence and National Security With global superpowers forging the path, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is fueling the automated arms race. While still young in its development, AI has transformed the international landscape of security innovation.
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AI and National Security
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ith global superpowers forging the path, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is fueling the automated arms race. While still young in its development, AI has transformed the international landscape of security innovation. Russia’s military modernization program triggered heavy investment in the automation of its armed forces. The United States Department of Defense inaugurated the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team in April 2017 to advance AI technologies in the software of machine weaponry. China released a “new generation of Artificial Intelligence development plan” detailing the government’s thirteen-year strategy to “become the major Artificial Intelligence innovation center in the world.” It is no secret that AI has changed the course of national security as we know it. Machine Militaries In the future, humans will delegate its most dangerous, war-fighting tasks to autonomous technology. While we already see the replacement of humans by machines in life-threatening situations, like Explosive Ordinance Device (EOD) robots detecting and disabling IEDs, or Improvised Explosive Devices, humans are still in control of the situation by maneuvering the robot and making the decisions. However, AI will eventually transform military forces. Autonomous weapons, vehicles, aircrafts and drones will catalyze a shift from manned to unmanned combat missions. The greater reliance on cyber weapons combined with their rapid development and availability will grant smaller nations and non-state actors with less powerful militaries the ability to defend and demand interests while also carrying greater weight in influencing international policies. AI will also be critical in the future of cyber security. Countries will use AI to assess and monitor vulnerabilities in computer systems, continually detecting threats and reinforcing strong cyber defense. Cyber offense will also experience a significant improvement by AI. Nations armed with complex AI cyber weapons, like a machine learning Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) cyber attack, will quickly hunt system weaknesses and execute bespoke hacking and attack campaigns. Ultimately, Artificial Intelligence will usher in an age where military superiority carries no relation to population or economic might.
Artificial Intelligence as National Intelligence The continued development of Artificial Intelligence will significantly impact the way countries collect, analyze, and even generate intelligence. According to a study by Dell EMC Corporation, the data produced by the digital universe will double every three years. Intelligence analysts scouring this infinite sea of information eventually will be aided, or more likely replaced, by AI machinery. The capabilities of AI in intelligence collection and analysis will be unmatched by human potential, like the ability to photograph and analyze Earth’s surface |daily, examining every square foot of the planet every twenty-four hours. AI-aided surveillance will also mean the end of guerilla warfare as terrorist groups or other threatening organizations struggle to leave an invisible digital footprint. Machine learning will offer nations the ability to derive and process unstructured sensor data, amplifying the amount of data captured via Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) and Electronic Intelligence (ELINT). AI will also grant countries the capacity to make hyper-realistic propaganda or execute social engineering schemes, similar to Russia’s social media interference in the 2017 presidential elections. AI-equipped countries will use face and voice mapping, recognition, and editing to create digital puppets. These life-like portrayals of world leaders, diplomats, citizens, etc. spouting engineered messages will continue to make news media indistinguishable from the truth. Lastly, a far greater reliance on cyber in national security will make protecting and collecting sensitive intelligence dramatically more critical. Actors could launch intricate cyber attacks, aiming to hack, damage, collect, and/or sell government secrets and national safety. Automated Economies Artificial Intelligence will thoroughly transform economies as projectors of power. In the future, AI technology will accelerate global innovation and productivity. Scientists from all fields will research, develop, test, and accurately assess hypotheses at a fraction of the time consumed today in the identical process. Machine learning algorithms and mechanical simulations will automatically produce designs, optimizing existing products and creating entirely new inventions.
AI-AIDED SURVEILLANCE WILL ALSO MEAN THE END OF GUERILLA WARFARE AS TERRORIST GROUPS OR OTHER THREATENING ORGANIZATIONS STRUGGLE TO LEAVE AN INVISIBLE DIGITAL FOOTPRINT. Innovation will flourish and a plethora of highest-quality devices will pour into the markets, making technology more accessible and increasing computer literacy nationwide. However, as AI spreads deeper roots into national economies, it will force other jobs out of existence, making thousands of occupations obsolete. Humans will not be able to compete with their computerized opposition. If the future of AI continues down this path, technology will reduce the demand for low-skill labor and obstruct opportunities to retrain, posing devastating consequences to countries’ economies and societies. ■
Bailey Piazza is a Contributor to Diplomatic Courier Magazine.
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G7 Executive Talk Series Artificial Intelligence Authored by: L. Y. Pratt
Artificial Intelligence: The Miracle and the Menace AI’s risks are as large as its potential benefits. How can they be avoided?
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rtificial Intelligence (AI) may well be the most powerful technology of the 21st century, helping to solve humanity’s most complex unsolved problems: environmental, social, and more. Yet sceptics believe that AI’s risks are as large as its potential benefits. How can they be avoided? And why isn’t the most powerful technology being used more widely today to solve the world’s greatest “wicked” problems? Great technological advances are often a double-edged sword. A backlash follows an initial “honeymoon period”. Unintended consequences that were not immediately obvious during the technology’s infancy become more apparent, and may even overwhelm the initial, benefits. A historical example is the cotton gin, which led indirectly to the U.S. Civil War. The challenge is to iron out the rough edges while preserving the benefits. We have been living through a great technological revolution, driven by the ever-increasing capabilities of information systems, and convergence with communications technology. The byproduct is the widespread availability of unimaginably vast amounts of data. Yet data value is latent at best, unless we have some way to make sense of it. This is where AI fits in: it processes data to produce insights. Yet, today, the “AI honeymoon” is coming to an end, experiencing the first waves of widely recognized unintended consequences. Gathering and analyzing data is, in its way, a new kind of “microscope”, providing insights into human behavior, science, medicine, and more. For instance, a Target grocery store can now famously determine if a girl is pregnant before her parents find out. And the recent controversy around the exploitation of Facebook’s microtargeting capabilities to propagate fake news, with impacts on elections worldwide, raises the prospect that democratic outcomes will be undermined by AI-driven voter-manipulation campaigns. Some even predict that AI poses an existential threat to humanity. So how can we avoid the negatives of AI while maximizing its benefits? Here are some guidelines: Understand that AI today is limited. By far, the majority of successful AI scenarios involve a single “link”. “Here’s a picture of a city street, what does it show?”, “Here’s Joe’s Amazon browsing and purchasing history,
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Artificial Intelligence
GREAT TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES ARE OFTEN A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD. A BACKLASH FOLLOWS AN INITIAL “HONEYMOON PERIOD”. UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES THAT WERE NOT IMMEDIATELY OBVIOUS DURING THE TECHNOLOGY’S INFANCY BECOME MORE APPARENT, AND MAY EVEN OVERWHELM THE INITIAL, BENEFITS.
what new product will Joe he want next?”, “Here’s a voter, what issues are they most interested in?”, “Here’s information about a medical device, when will it fail”? Know that AI is subject to dangerous biases. What if, for example, an AI system were to identify that persons of a certain ethnicity were more prone to violence, and therefore should not be allowed into certain housing projects? This may have nothing to do with the real traits of any particular ethnic group, but rather with unseen idiosyncrasies in the training data. But, the AI system can’t tell the difference. The pattern here is insidious: the correlation between race and violence may be well-established in a given data set, but that doesn’t mean that race is the causative factor for the violence: the cause could be historical events that happen to correlate with race. AI systems do not “understand” the world. They don’t find causal connections, only correlations in the data they are presented with. The solution to endemic violence isn’t found by excluding persons of a certain race, but rather by removing the underlying factors that have disproportionately affected people of a certain race. To do this, the near-term future of AI is to map causal links to form a chain from actions to outcomes, and to show how two correlating things may not cause each other “If I invest $X in police and $Y in the legal system, how will that impact crime?”, “If I visit voters in this neighborhood, how much will that help my candidate to be elected?” And multi-link thinking is essential to solving the next set of hard problems in a complex world. More often than not, these links involve
“soft” factors, like attitude, empathy, morale, hope, and fear. These chains of events often contain loops that build on each other, in “vicious” and “virtuous” cycles, as shown below. For instance: “Money invested in policing and legal services lead to increased trust in the government, which leads to decreased preemptive violence, which leads to social stability, which leads to business investment, which increases the tax base, which gives us more money for policing and legal services.”, “As more and more of our workforce in this area is sick, they are less able to work, decreasing the tax base, and reducing our ability to invest in health care.” AI alone is not able to determine how these cause-and-effect chains fit together. That requires human expertise, in a hybrid “augmented intelligence” scenario. Data today is pervasive, and AI helps brings value to it. “Multi-link” AI—called Decision Intelligence (DI)—solves the hard AI problems. To reap the greatest benefit from AI, while avoiding its negatives, we need to evolve beyond inward-facing, single-link systems, and use technology to model, as well, the complex causal systems in which they function. ■
A 35-year AI veteran, Pratt is Chief Scientist at Quantellia, which builds AI/DI systems worldwide, and is cofounder at winworks. ai, which bridges candidates to their constituents. Pratt was recently recognized as an outstanding Woman Innovator and is known for her pioneering work on transfer learning and decision intelligence.
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