8 ms·
Why Spy Agencies Say the Future Is Bleak
- Mobleysoft 5y agoHere is link without the paywall: https://archive.is/Y1sm1 https://archive.is/Y1sm1
- andai 5y agoThe article is a summary of this government report: https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/GlobalTrends_2040.pdf https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/GlobalT...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- redis_mlc 5y agoPro tip: delete your post and stop acting like there's really UFOs. Work on yourself.
- redis_mlc 5y agoThe topic of nuclear weapons proliferation is one that keeps experts awake at night as that becomes more imminent. A lot of tyrants would love to have a button to push that would launch nuclear-tipped ICBMs.
- AlexanderDhoore 5y agoCO2 levels at 418 ppm right now. It's not just rising but accelerating up. When are we going to start fixing this exactly? https://www.co2.earth/daily-co2 https://www.co2.earth/daily-co2
- one2three4 5y agoNot much. But I guess COVID did much more to this front than the aggregate of the policies of decades before that.
- gonzo41 5y agoIf you could plant a forest about the size of Australia, or some crop that you could cut down regularly, dry out, and compress and then bury it. All using clean energy of course. That may help. C02 in the atmosphere is grim problem. Disperse source pollutants suck.
- ben_w 5y ago15 years ago, I was extremely concerned about CO2. Now? CO2 is the single major environmental issue that I think is now certain to work out fine. Why? Because PV and wind are now the cheapest forms of energy, because even when you add the cost of batteries those are still cheaper than coal and oil, and because the factories to make them are being made as quickly as possible because the eco-friendly solution is so much cheaper than fossil fuels. The current trend line for PV is an exponential that started in 1992, going up by a factor of ~9000 in 29 years. Keep it up just until the end of this decade and all power — electric, heating, transport; domestic, industrial — is PV by around 2030, and the only reason to expect reality to fall short is that transitioning the final few bits is going to be harder than the first few bits. I’m still worried about biodiversity losses, phosphorus, antibiotic resistance, etc., but not about CO2.
- AstralStorm 5y ago2030 is easily way past due date, and fossil fuel deployments have increased lately too.
- ben_w 5y agoWhile it isn’t ideal, there is no hard cut off point between “that’s fine” and “we’re screwed”. And the recent CO2 emission trend is irrelevant compared to 37%/year compound growth for PV. Second half of the chessboard and all that.
- Isinlor 5y agoYou should not focus on the easiest emissions to eliminate. The issue is with the most difficult. Some 10% of our emissions are from steel and cement. There are no cheap green solutions here.
- ben_w 5y agoFocusing on the easiest gives us breathing room for the hardest. And in any case, I’m not going to solve any of the problems as I’m a software engineer rather than a civil or electrical or chemical engineer.
- tomjen3 5y agoNever. Most humans are not willing to make the changes that are required to fix this. Instead we should focus on mitigation and adaptability.
- bhdy55 5y agoIt would be rather surprising were a spy agency to say "the world is fine and living in harmony, guess you don't need us spies anymore ..."
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mjreacher 5y agoThere's a difference between a report that is overly alarmist and near fabricating things and a report that points out things are worse now than they were in previous years, which seems to be the case here. While intelligence agencies obviously have their own agendas they still play an important role in modern governments and it would be a fools errant to ignore what they say completely.
- tim333 5y agoThe article says it's gloomy compared to the previous spy agency reports.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nickdothutton 5y agoI’ll just leave this here. https://youtu.be/1XKFQVJlmZY https://youtu.be/1XKFQVJlmZY
- arepublicadoceu 5y agoBlocked in my country because digital rights..
- atat7024 5y agoToo perfect.
- sergefaguet 5y agoA lot of what they are saying is that governments are losing legitimacy and ability to deliver what people want, and this will shift governance and power to other institutions that will take over much of how humanity interacts. I guess that is bleak for the spy agencies but not for the world overall. People will be happier with a reversal of the tendency of governments to get larger and a return to more fragmented communities that humans have evolved to be happy in. I’m surprised they have the balls to say this though
- papito 5y agoWhat you are describing is much closer to Mad Max than a Utopia. The world ended up as countries and governments for a reason.
- tomjen3 5y agoIt did, but perhaps the grounds that made countries and governments make sense no longer apply? After all nation states as we knew them today are a rather new innovation.
- papito 5y agoYou are saying that modern countries are new and out of date? This is a simple economy of scale. A government can provide stable security - police and military - consistent services, retirement benefits, certification, education, etc. How a bunch of warring feudal clans are going to be in vogue again is hard to see. I mean, all of this is in medieval history. Technology did not suddenly make people "ready". If anything, it made us worse.
- tomjen3 5y agoRelatively new, on the scale of human settled history. The Greek had city states and feudal Europe had feudal kingdoms. I agree that security can probably best be provided at a level of states, but does a kid in the Ghetto really receive a comparative level of protection, service or education as another kid in the US, chosen at random? And also the flip side of security is that oppression can also best be delivered at the state level. North Koreans would be strictly better of if NK was a bunch of warring states.
- fithisux 5y agoBecause this is how they designed it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tim333 5y agoI don't see the future to 2040 as bleak, kind of the opposite mostly as I'm kind of a Kurzweil techno optimist and think we should be able to get that sort of stuff going, possibly including uploading, immortality, interplanetary travel and the like.
- andai 5y agoThe article is a summary of this government report (from March 2021): Global Trends 2040 by the National Intelligence Council https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/GlobalTrends_2040.pdf https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/GlobalT...
- fit2rule 5y agoThe only way is up. Give me a starship, some robots, a portable industrial hub .. a few hundred likeminded folk, and we'll make a better future elsewhere. The moment we find a spot other than Earth to set up camp, and we have a frontier .. its on. Might happen sooner than the CIA thinks and/or is planning to allow/disallow happen, though .. it is after all, a truly meddlesome entity ...
- tmaly 5y agoMartin Gurri, a former intelligence analyst, wrote a book on this subject called Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium. Part of his thesis covers the power the public holds with decentralized information flow .