Signal: NATO’s Not-So-Magic Number – Data Dystopias – Jupiter In Versailles

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NATO NUMBER-CRUNCHING

Today, the yearly summit of NATO opens in Brussels. The meeting comes at a critical moment for the security alliance, as Alex noted yesterday, but important discussions about its future are likely to be overshadowed by President Trump’s repeated calls for members to make good on their collective commitment to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense.

Given all the attention, we can’t help asking: where did that number come from, and does it really matter? Here’s Gabe with some perspective:

The oft-touted 2 percent of GDP target was officially adopted as a collective NATO goal at a 2014 summit in Wales. The idea was to start a long-term process that would see European members carry more weight on defense at a time when the US was looking to expand its military commitments elsewhere in the world (read: Asia). The target is a goal, not a requirement, that the 29-member alliance has agreed to fulfil by 2024. Five countries currently satisfy it, and 16 are now on target to do so by 2024.

As an indicator of countries’ contributions, the two percent target has its limits. It’s a barometer of domestic spending, rather than direct contributions of troops or other support to specific NATO operations. And it offers little perspective on whether funds are funneled towards collective objectives – such as upgrading equipment or investing in new technologies – or largely spent on domestic concerns, like paying soldiers’ pensions. NATO members have also agreed to a lesser known, but arguably more important, goal to spend 20 percent of their defense budgets on major equipment upgrades and R&D of lasting value to the alliance.

The upshot: While the 2 percent target offers a broad gauge of countries’ defense investment, it obscures important information about their long-term commitment to NATO. That won’t stop President Trump, who prides himself on getting Americans their money’s worth, from using it as ammunition. But as you follow the almost inevitable combustion set to take place as he squares off against other alliance members over the next two days, remember that 2 percent is just a number.

CHINA’S PAPER DYSTOPIA

Few issues generate as much concern about our technologically-driven future as China’s ambitious social credit system.

In case you haven’t heard, China wants to build a giant database to track the behavior of its 1.3 billion-plus citizens. It then plans to reward “sincere” or “trustworthy” conduct, such as paying bills on time, while punishing bad actions, like jaywalking or ignoring a court judgment – all in the name of creating a more harmonious society. Beijing’s vision has sparked all sorts of breathless headlines and comparisons to Black Mirror or the all-seeing Big Brother from George Orwell’s 1984.

Here are three things to keep in mind as you ponder what it all means.

China has a real problem it is trying to solve: how to effectively govern a sprawling country of 1.3 billion increasingly demanding citizens, where tax evasion, fraud, and other social ills are rife. Sure, Beijing is doing so in a top-down, authoritarian fashion. But as much as people might be creeped out by the fact that their government is publicly shaming jaywalkers by posting their photos on billboards, its approach could prove widely popular if it makes the country easier to govern and improves people’s lives.

The system is more human than you think: China’s tech-driven totalitarianism isn’t as tech-savvy as it appears. Chinese authorities may be using sophisticated facial recognition software to corral Uighurs, an ethnic minority group concentrated in the country’s northwest, but jaywalkers whose faces show up on billboards in Xinjiang are still picked out of the crowd by flesh-and-blood people. There is real potential for this system to be used to stifle dissent on an unprecedented scale with as-yet undeveloped technologies that can then be exported to governments around the world. But there’s a huge gap between China’s ambitions to make the system work reliably at the scale of a billion-plus people and where the technology is today.

This is already happening to you, dear reader: Here in the West, it’s corporations (not the government) that control the keys to a massive surveillance machine. We’re accustomed to credit bureaus tracking our every financial move, employers conducting background checks, social networks and search engines scooping up our personal information, and ride-hailing apps asking us to rate the quality of our drivers. China’s plans for a surveillance state may be startling to Western observers, but they’re driven by the same underlying trend: using massive amounts of personal data to shape how people behave. There are big differences around who determines what happens with that data, and how that authority is regulated, of course. But China’s social credit experiment is not totally without competition.

A message from Microsoft:

The Beep Heard Around the World, and Other Lessons From History

Changes in technology often mean changes to our everyday lives. In the Today in Technology series, Microsoft looks to the past as it considers the developments of the future. Explore the stories of Bertha Benz, who showed the world how to drive; the day in 1922 when the horse lost its job; and the launch of Sputnik, the beep heard around the world. Visit → Today in Technology

PHOTO OF THE WEEK: JUPITER IN VERSAILLES

You’ve got to hand it to Emmanuel Macron (pictured above, on Monday): it takes serious nerve for a French President who is struggling in the polls to deliver a speech about the need to reform the welfare state from Versailles palace using cake as a rhetorical device. No, seriously – that really happened. Let’s assume that the 40-year-old former investment banker, who has already taken flak from domestic opponents for his aloof, allegedly king-like approach to the presidency, is acting rationally.

What message was he trying to send here? We’ve noted before that Macron, like Donald Trump, is a political outsider who wants to project strength. By reveling in the ceremony and trappings of office – whether it’s riding a military jeep to his inauguration or walking between rows of ceremonial guards, at an estimated cost of $350,000, to deliver a State-of-the-Union-like address at Versailles – Macron is signaling that the xenophobic nationalists who are threatening to unwind decades of liberal democracy in Europe don’t have a monopoly on patriotism. There’s a risk that by trying too hard to inject gravitas into his presidency, he ends up alienating more voters than he charms. But it does help explain the puzzling optics. 

GRAPHIC TRUTH: WHAT THE PEOPLE THINK OF NATO

Foreign policy will dominate the agenda at the NATO summit this week, but Donald Trump isn’t the only world leader who will be thinking about his domestic audience while in Brussels. So, how do people in different member countries view the world’s most important military alliance? We pulled some numbers to find out. 

HARD NUMBERS

 169 million: Africa-based tech startups raised $169 million in the first half of 2018, more than they raised in all of 2017. Kenya and Nigeria, both of which have large English-speaking populations and burgeoning financial centers, were the top destinations for venture capital investment on the continent.

667,000: More than 667,000 foreigners have left Saudi Arabia since the beginning of 2017, the biggest-ever exodus of expatriate workers in the kingdom. A combination of tighter government regulations on foreign workers and a sluggish economy are causing trouble for this group that amounts to about one third of Saudi’s population and more than 80 percent of its private sector workforce.

51.3: Last week, the temperature at a weather station in Ouargla, Algeria hit 51.3 degrees Celsius – or 124.3 degrees Fahrenheit. If confirmed, that would be the hottest temperature ever recorded on the continent. Multiple studies suggest that higher temperatures can lead to higher rates of violence – an additional challenge for already strained governments across Africa.

46: Germany’s aging fleet of Tornado fighter jets will have been in servicefor 46 years by the time the Luftwaffe, Germany’s air force, starts phasing them out 2025. The ongoing debate within Germany over their replacement is another reminder of the country’s long reliance on US military resources and equipment for its security, which could shift in the coming years as the Trump administration pushes European nations to bolster their defense spending.

36: The last time two British cabinet ministers resigned within 24 hours of each other outside a routine government reshuffle, as happened earlier this week, was 36 years ago in 1982. While pressure on May to leave office has eased temporarily, the embattled British prime minister still faces a tough road ahead in managing the UK’s exit from the European Union.