Sums it up:
“Vance just dumped water all over that. [It] was like, ‘Yeah, that’s cute. But guess what? You know you’re actually not the ones who are making the calls here. It’s us,’” said McBride.
“Vance just dumped water all over that. [It] was like, ‘Yeah, that’s cute. But guess what? You know you’re actually not the ones who are making the calls here. It’s us,’” said McBride.
Those with the biggest economies and/or most guns has changed a few times but the behaviours haven't and probably never will.
And the extent of which you can do global enforcement (which is often biased and selective) is limited by the reach of your economic and military power.
Which is why the US outspends the rest of the world military powers combined and how the US and their troops have waged ilegal wars and committed numerous crimes abroad and gotten away with it despite pieces of papers saying what they're doing is bad, but their reaction was always "what are you gonna do about it?".
See how many atrocities have happened under the watch of the UN. Laws aren't real, it's the enforcement that is real. Which is why the bullies get to define the laws that everyone else has to follow because they have the monopoly on enforcement.
Well, yes. This is why people have been paying a lot of attention to what exactly "rule of law" means in the US, and what was just norms that can be discarded.
"If you are not capable of violence, you are not peaceful. You are harmless"
Unless you can stand on equal field - either by alliance, or by your own power - you aren't a negotiating partner, and i say that as European.
this is exactly the value that caused so much war and death all over the world, for decades and thousands of years. still, even in 2025, it's being followed. are we doomed, chat?
Eg. birds abandoning rather than defending a perch when another approaches.
We're typically not happy to do that, though you can see it happening in some parts of the world right now.
Some kind of enlightened state where violent competition for resources (incl. status & power) no longer makes sense is imaginable, but seems a long way off.
The idea though is that if everyone suddenly disarmed overnight it would be so highly advantageous to a deviant aggressor that one would assuredly emerge.
yes.
i would also recommend The Prince as light reading to better understand how the world works.
Where it was used in a rhetorical tantrum throwing response to their power refuse to do the impossible like make an encryption backdoor 'only for good guys' and have the sheer temerity to stand against arbitrary exercises of authority by using the courts to check them only to their actual power.
If actual 'more powerful than the states' occurs they have nobody to blame but themselves for crying wolf.
The danger of something like AI+drones (or less imminent, AI+bioengineering) can lead to a severe degradation of security, like after the invention of nuclear weapons. A degradation in security, which requires collective action. Even worse, chaos could be caused by small groups weaponizing the technology against high profile targets.
If anything, the larger nations might be much more forceful about AI regulation than the above summit by demanding an NPT style treaty where only a select club has access to the technology in exchange for other nations having access to the applications of AI from servers hosted by the club.
For smaller countries nukes represented an increase in security, not a degradation. North Korea probably wouldn't still be independent today if it didn't have nukes, and Russia would never have invaded Ukraine if Ukraine hadn't given up its nukes. Restricting access to nukes is only in the interest of big countries that want to bully small countries around, because nukes level the playing field. The same applies to AI.
Regarding an increase in security with nukes, what you say applies for exceptions against a general non-nuclear background. Without restrictions, every small country could have a weapon, with a danger of escalation behind every conflict, authoritatrians using a nuclear option as a protection against a revolt etc. The likelihood of nuclear war would be much more(even with the current situation, there have been close shaves)
You don't justify or define "severe degradation of security" just assert it as a fact.
The advent of nuclear weapons has meant 75 years of relative peace which is unheard of in human history, so quite the opposite.
Given that AI weapons don't exist, then you've just created a straw man.
I do claim that it is obvious that widespread acquisition of nuclear weapons by smaller states would be a severe degradation of security. Among other things, widespread ownership, would also mean that militant groups would acquire it and dictators would use it as a protection leading to an eventual use of the weapons.
Yes, the danger of AI weapons is nowhere at that level of nuclear weapons yet.
But, that is the trend.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/25/opinion/karp-palantir-art...
They need to dismantle bureaucracy to accelerate, NOT add new international agreements etc that would slow them down.
Once they become leaders, they will come up with such agreements to impose their "model" and way to do things.
Right now they need to accelerate and not get stuck.
But politics aside, this also points to something I've said numerous times here before: In order to write the rulebook you need to be a creator.
Only those who actually make and build and invent things get to write the rules. As far as "AI" is concerned, the creators are squarely the United States and presumably China. The EU, Japan, et al. being mere consumers sincerely cannot write the rules because they have no weight to throw around.
If you want to be the rulemaker, be a creator; not a litigator.
Create things? Or destroy them? Seems in reality, the most powerful nations are the ones who have acquired the greatest potential to destroy things. Creation is worthless if the dude next door is prepared to burn your house down because you look different to him.
Exactly what I'd expect someone from a country where the economy is favoured over the society to say - particularly in the context of consumer protection.
You want access to a trade union of consumers? You play by the rules of that Union.
American exceptionalism doesn't negate that. A large technical moat does. But DeepSeek has jumped in and revealed how shallow that moat really is for AI at this neonatal stage.
I'm Japanese-American, so I'm not exactly happy about Japan's state of irrelevance (yet again). Their one saving grace as a special(er) ally and friend is they can still enjoy some of the nectar with us if they get in lockstep like the UK does (family blood!) when push comes to shove.
In 2008 EU had more people, more money and bigger economy than US, with proper policies we could be in a place where we could bitch slap both Trump and Putin. And not left to wonder whose dick we have to suck deeper to get some gas.
People and countries who make and ship products.
You don't make rules by writing several hundred pages of legalese as a litigator, you make rules by creating products and defining the market.
Be creators, not litigators.
That is completely wrong, at least if rules = the law. You might create fancy products all you like, if they do not adhere to the law in any given market, they cannot be sold there.