Danger: Something's going to give

Michael Malone has a good read on today's world threats. As in 1914, they sit out there for all to see, but there seems little effort to avoid some all-too-predictable big calamities.

Malone writes:

Now Jeff [Skoll] asked me a question. You’re always looking into the future, he said, what should I be reading right now?

Strangely, without a millisecond’s thought, I knew what to tell him: Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August and William Davidow’s Overconnected.

The first, of course, is a classic history of the events leading up to the outbreak of the First World War. It is the infuriating, and ultimately heart-breaking, story of how European governments, sensing the horrors to come, tried hard to stop the slide into war . . . but because of treaty entanglements, pride and momentum ultimately couldn’t keep the dogs of war at bay. Even Germany, whose militarism created this volatile situation, had second thoughts – but once the Moltke plan was switched on, there was no switching it off. And so, the flower of Europe died in the mud of Passchendaele and the Somme. ...

So it was shocking when I read a manuscript of Overconnected and realized it was a warning from a worried man. Simply put, the thesis of the book is that the networking of the modern global economy has presented some extraordinary, and unprecedented, benefits to mankind. But the fact that all of those servers and networks, storing and transferring much of the world’s financial and intellectual capital are also interlinked via the Web with few protections and no kill switch, is enormously dangerous. It gives the global economy, says Davidow, an unprecedented volatility and vulnerability to tiny events that can chain react at light speed into world-wide crises. ...

The world is always a dangerous place; but in the last few years that danger seems to have spread. Equatorial and sub-Saharan Africa may be about to tip over into another hellish era of tribal warfare. China, when it isn’t being arrogantly expansionist seems to be dancing on thin demographic ice. As its hordes of men grow up without women, its thinkers now write about the value of ‘small’ wars. In Russia, faced with economic collapse if oil prices slump, Vladimar Putin has made himself de facto Tsar – or worse. And in Europe, the aging population, trapped between rioting welfare junkies and unassimilated Muslim immigrants, fervently hopes (they don’t pray anymore) that they will die before their long vacation from economic reality ends.

Comforting wishes. In a world more enlightened than ever, there seem to be far too many smart people just wishing their troubles away. Wishes might be comforting, but they don't heat the house or block incoming missiles.

Frank Warner

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