Garry Kasparov's Blog, page 36

“Garry on Lockdown” Episode 7 | Avast | April 7, 2021

Are you familiar with online tribalism?

"These groups believe the real truth about something is being hidden & only their tribe knows the real facts," shares @Kasparov63 & @FrankLuntz. "This is the heart of every #conspiracytheory."#GarryonLockdown https://t.co/E0ntyMxz4H.

— Avast (@avast_antivirus) April 8, 2021

The Future of Intelligent Work: a Conversation with Garry Kasparov

Are humans and machines really in competition with each other? Why do we think they are?

How can we use AI to organize more efficiently?

How can we create inclusive teams where humans work together with machines?

The Real World AI Experiment | Appian Blog Post | April 1, 2021

As #AI continues to expand the future of what’s possible, the need for human ingenuity at its core is vital. In his inaugural Appian blog, former chess champion @Kasparov63 provides a fresh take on bridging the gap between people & tech. For his thoughts: https://t.co/ABL32VQG6l pic.twitter.com/j0jSjiRBp7

— Appian (@Appian) April 2, 2021

Garry Kasparov
April 1, 2021

Few people can understand the difference between theory and practice more clearly than a chess Grandmaster. Our little 64-square laboratory has space for centuries of ideas. With more moves than atoms in the solar system, my ancient boardgame has limitless complexity for the human mind—and was even enough to stump the world’s fastest computers for decades.

But chess isn’t a science, not in practice. When facing an opponent over the board—or, increasingly, over the internet—it becomes an intensely competitive sport. Head to head battle is where all your lovely theories and careful preparation meet the fog of war. An equally well-prepared opponent is set on thwarting all your plans. The ticking clock makes a shambles of your calculations. Victory goes not to the flawless, but to the frail human who made the next-to-last mistake. That’s chess, and that’s business, and that’s life.

A nice saying, incorrectly attributed to Winston Churchill like so many others, goes, “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.” This fits with a statement correctly attributed to Nobel-winning physicist Richard Feynman: “It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is … If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong.”

Theories start us down the road. Praxis is the road.

Since my match loss to the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue in 1997, I’ve had many theories about how to combine human creativity and intuition with machine speed and objectivity. In 1998, I created Advanced Chess, where human Grandmasters faced off while assisted by chess software at the same time. After all, if you can’t beat’em, join’em, right?

It was interesting, but it wasn’t a huge success, far from my vision of achieving chess that approached perfection. It became much more interesting when amateurs took the idea online, leading to the discovery that what was most important wasn’t machine speed or human chess talent, but the ability to create the best process to combine the two. Weak players skillfully “coaching” weak computers to work as a team defeated supercomputers and Grandmasters alike, even elite human players using strong computers.

That real-world chess experiment provided an important example and metaphor, as chess so often has in its history as the “drosophila” of human and machine cognition. Process is king. Superior interface and agility can produce better results than expertise and data with an inferior process.

I’m always looking out for people and companies trying to implement theories, either as lab experiments or as corporate initiatives. I’ve had fascinating discussions everywhere from Nick Bostrom’s Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford to Google and Apple. When I was on tour for my 2017 book Deep Thinking, I had the chance to meet many remarkable people and see real-world projects bringing AI into the mainstream. Smart drones delivering blood in Rwanda. Intelligent agents matching therapists with at-risk youth. There have also been plenty of failures, too, but just like losing at the chessboard, that’s how we learn best.

This history is my long-winded attempt at an explanation for why I’m working with Appian. When I first talked with CEO Matt Calkins, I saw the company as the real-world application of many of my theories about AI and the human-machine relationship. I’ve written much about how we can build bridges between humans and AI, while keeping humans centered in the equation instead of being left behind. Appian is actually building those bridges and traffic is already moving across them.

With all the utopian and dystopian silliness in the news about AI these days, my interest in low-code and off-the-shelf AI solutions might seem mundane. But that’s just it! All the fantasies about the singularity or killer robots make you wonder if the guys in Silicon Valley are taking too many cues from their neighbors in Hollywood. I’m all for moonshots and aiming high, but we also need the nuts and bolts, proof of concept productivity.

It’s also important that we make progress not at the speed of thought, or speed of light, or whatever the catchphrase is these days, but at the speed of society. AI is tremendously powerful and will be more beneficial the more ambitiously we use it. It also requires a constant process of calibration to keep humans centered at every phase of development. We cannot just turn our clever algos loose into the oceans of data and hope it all works out.

Brute force was enough for a supercomputer to beat me at chess, and for many other useful applications, but the future of machine intelligence is teamwork. Will it improve our quality of life? Does it allow humans to be “more human” by making their work more creative, less routine? Will it make the workforce happier? As AI keeps getting more powerful, we have to ask these questions even more.

I see Appian as the ongoing experiment to prove that process is also king in bringing AI and humans together in the business world. The tools are built not for raw power, but for maximum adaptability—something more important than ever in a crisis, by the way. What good is a powerful tool that doesn’t suit your needs at the moment? What good is a mighty hammer when you need a saw, or a pencil? Creating flexible interfaces that always have the right tool for the right job might not grab headlines like a dancing robot or beating the world chess champion, but they’re a lot more useful.

Chess is a handy sandbox, where we build little model castles to see if they can resist the tide. The real world is where there are real outcomes—profit and loss and human happiness and the health of society. Seven decades after Alan Turing developed the first chess program—without the existence of a computer to run it on—I’m excited to be a part of another great experiment.

Garry Kasparov is the former world chess champion and author of Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins.

Opinion: In Russia, it’s not Navalny vs. Putin. It’s democracy vs. authoritarianism. | Washington Post Op-Ed | March 22, 2021

Opinion by Alexander Vindman and Garry Kasparov

READ ORIGINAL ARTICLE AT THE WASHINGTON POST

Alexander Vindman, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and former director for European affairs at the National Security Council, is a Pritzker Military Fellow at the  Lawfare Institute . Garry Kasparov is chairman of the  Human Rights Foundation  and the  Renew Democracy Initiative .

On Feb. 25, Amnesty International stripped away the status of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny as a prisoner of conscience. By singling him out, the move was a blunder, one that undermines the Russian people’s fight against Putinism. If international attention remains focused only on the person rather than the protest movement, this will hinder the development of an opposition movement in Russia and inhibit the democratic world’s response to Putin’s authoritarianism.

Russian security services know it is easier to tarnish and eliminate a man rather than a movement. Amnesty’s announcement has aided the Kremlin’s desire to incapacitate the most serious challenge to the Putin regime in almost a decade. Now, with Navalny imprisoned and the protests ruthlessly subdued, the regime may be poised for another attempt on Navalny’s life, after the failure of his poisoning last year.

The sixth anniversary, on Feb. 27, of the murder of another Russian opposition leader who fought for a vision of a free and democratic Russia — Boris Nemtsov — provides a sobering reminder of the Putin regime’s willingness to shamelessly eliminate opponents. President Biden’s calling Vladimir Putin a “killer” on Wednesday is being portrayed in some quarters as provocative when it is simply accurate.

Meanwhile, a debate has emerged around Navalny. Some argue that Navalny should receive the Nobel Peace Prize, or compare him to Mohandas Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. By contrast, others question his personal and political beliefs, especially in connection to ethnonationalism and Ukraine. The praise and scrutiny are warranted, but they are distractions.

Holding this debate now puts the cart far in front of the horse. Russians may eventually elect a presidential candidate such as Navalny, but free and fair elections remain on the distant horizon in Putin’s Russia. The issue at hand is whether one is for or against authoritarianism. Supporting Navalny as a political candidate is not a prerequisite for supporting Navalny’s release and a democratic Russia.

There should be no cult of personality around Navalny as the democratic heir apparent to Putin. This point is vital, given that protests without a leader attract more sympathy from the average Russian. Rather than being portrayed as a power struggle between two individuals, the attempted assassination and unjust imprisonment of an opposition leader must be framed within the confines of an anti-authoritarian movement.

Navalny’s greatest gift has been galvanizing anti-authoritarian protests in a country where such actions have historically been difficult to inspire. However, if a healthy democratic front is going to coalesce, then the opposition must survive and flourish in Navalny’s absence. There is a real possibility that Navalny will perish during his prison term. The movement cannot die with him, otherwise his return to Russia will be rendered meaningless.

Navalny has received the lion’s share of media attention, but his corrupt trial and imprisonment are among thousands currently taking place, including the Kremlin’s most recent crackdown on an opposition forum for independent municipal council members in Moscow.

These Russians who brave freezing temperatures, truncheons and arrests to fight for a voice in their future and the future of their country must become the focus of international attention. After more than 20 years, Russians, especially the younger generation, are weary of Putin and rampant corruption, frustrated by the erosion of their liberties and by tangible failures like rising food and utility prices. They are fighting for the freedom to choose a different path, not to place Navalny atop the Kremlin.

With a renewed focus on the movement rather than the man, the West must bolster its support for a free and democratic Russia. Expressions of “deep concern” and the current sanctions regime are not enough. These measures only punish the puppets while letting the puppet masters go free.

As Swedish economist Anders Aslund writes in “Russia’s Crony Capitalism,” “the two biggest offshore havens offering a vast capacity to receive anonymous investment are the United States and the United Kingdom.” That must change, but other democratic nations should similarly back away from Putin’s regime. Germany, in particular, should reconsider its business ties to Moscow — specifically the Nord Stream 2 natural-gas pipeline which is nearing completion.

U.S. and British officials are already reportedly weighing additional sanctions ranging from measures against oligarchs to targeting Russia’s sovereign debt and Nord Stream 2. The measures must be part of a concerted effort to punish the Kremlin for its blatant violations of human rights and unrestrained repression of opponents both at home and abroad.

If we in the circle of democratic nations fail, Putin, his oligarchs, his enablers and the mafia-state structure built around them will know that they can snuff out the stirrings of democracy with beatings, arrests and murders — and we will be complicit. The moment demands action, not debate.

AI Should Augment Human Intelligence, Not Replace It | Harvard Business Review | March 18, 2021

by David De Cremer and Garry Kasparov

READ ORIGINAL ARTICLE AT THE HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

Summary.   

“Will smart machines really replace human workers? Probably not. People and AI both bring different abilities and strengths to the table. The real question is: how can human intelligence work with artificial intelligence to produce augmented intelligence. Chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov offers some unique insight here. After losing to IBM’s Deep Blue, he began to experiment how a computer helper changed players’ competitive advantage in high-level chess games. What he discovered was that having the best players and the best program was less a predictor of success than having a really good process. Put simply, “Weak human + machine + better process was superior to a strong computer alone and, more remarkably, superior to a strong human + machine + inferior process.” As leaders look at how to incorporate AI into their organizations, they’ll have to manage expectations as AI is introduced, invest in bringing teams together and perfecting processes, and refine their own leadership abilities.”

In an economy where data is changing how companies create value — and compete — experts predict that using artificial intelligence (AI) at a larger scale will add as much as $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030. As AI is changing how companies work, many believe that who does this work will change, too — and that organizations will begin to replace human employees with intelligent machines. This is already happening: intelligent systems are displacing humans in manufacturing, service delivery, recruitment, and the financial industry, consequently moving human workers towards lower-paid jobs or making them unemployed. This trend has led some to conclude that in 2040 our workforce may be totally unrecognizable.

Are humans and machine really in competition with each other though? The history of work — particularly since the Industrial Revolution — is the history of people outsourcing their labor to machines. While that began with rote, repetitive physical tasks like weaving, machines have evolved to the point where they can now do what we might think of as complex cognitive work, such as math equations, recognizing language and speech, and writing. Machines thus seem ready to replicate the work of our minds, and not just our bodies. In the 21st century, AI is evolving to be superior to humans in many tasks, which makes that we seem ready to outsource our intelligence to technology. With this latest trend, it seems like there’s nothing that can’t soon be automated, meaning that no job is safe from being offloaded to machines.

This vision of the future of work has taken the shape of a zero-sum game, in which there can only be one winner.

We believe, however, that this view of the role AI will play in the workplace is wrong. The question of whether AI will replace human workers assumes that AI and humans have the same qualities and abilities — but, in reality, they don’t. AI-based machines are fast, more accurate, and consistently rational, but they aren’t intuitive, emotional, or culturally sensitive. And, it’s exactly these abilities that humans posses and which make us effective.

Machine Intelligence vs. Human Intelligence

In general, people recognize today’s advanced computers as intelligent because they have the potential to learn and make decisions based on the information they take in. But while we may recognize that ability, it’s a decidedly different type of intelligence what we posses.

In its simplest form, AI is a computer acting and deciding in ways that seem intelligent. In line with Alan Turing’s philosophy, AI imitates how humans act, feel, speak, and decide. This type of intelligence is extremely useful in an organizational setting: Because of its imitating abilities, AI has the quality to identify informational patterns that optimize trends relevant to the job. In addition, contrary to humans, AI never gets physically tired and as long it’s fed data it will keep going.

These qualities mean that AI is perfectly suited to put at work in lower-level routine tasks that are repetitive and take place within a closed management system. In such a system, the rules of the game are clear and not influenced by external forces. Think, for example, of an assembly line where workers are not interrupted by external demands and influences like work meetings. As a case in point, the assembly line is exactly the place where Amazon placed algorithms in the role of managers to supervise human workers and even fire them. As the work is repetitive and subject to rigid procedures optimizing efficiency and productivity, AI is able to perform in more accurate ways to human supervisors.

Human abilities, however, are more expansive. Contrary to AI abilities that are only responsive to the data available, humans have the ability to imagine, anticipate, feel, and judge changing situations, which allows them to shift from short-term to long-term concerns. These abilities are unique to humans and do not require a steady flow of externally provided data to work as is the case with artificial intelligence.

In this way humans represent what we call authentic intelligence — a different type of AI, if you will. This type of intelligence is needed when open systems are in place. In an open management system, the team or organization is interacting with the external environment and therefore has to deal with influences from outside. Such work setting requires the ability to anticipate and work with, for example, sudden changes and distorted information exchange, while at the same time being creative in distilling a vision and future strategy. In open systems, transformation efforts are continuously at work and effective management of that process requires authentic intelligence.

Although Artificial Intelligence (referred to as AI1 here) seems opposite to Authentic Intelligence (referred to as AI2 here), they are also complimentary. In the context of organizations, both types of intelligence offer a range of specific talents.

Which talents – operationalized as abilities needed to meet performance requirements – are needed to perform best? It is, first of all, important to emphasize that talent can win games, but often it will not win championships — teams win championships. For this reason, we believe that it will be the combination of the talents included in both AI1 and AI2, working in tandem, that will make for the future of intelligent work. It will create the kind of intelligence that will allow for organizations to be more efficient and accurate, but at the same time also creative and pro-active. This other type of AI we call Augmented Intelligence (referred to as AI3 here).

The Third Type of AI: Augmented Intelligence

What will AI3 be able to offer that AI1 and AI2 can’t? The second author of this article has some unique insight here: he is known for winning championships, while at the same time he also has the distinctive experience of being the first human to lose a high-level game to a machine. In 1997, chess grand master Garry Kasparov lost a game from an IBM supercomputer program called Deep Blue. It left him to rethink how the intellectual game of chess could be approached differently, not simply as an individual effort but as a collaborative one. And, with the unexpected victory of Deep Blue, he decided to try collaborating with an AI.

In a match in 1998 in León, Spain, Kasparov partnered with a PC running the chess software of his choice — an arrangement called “advanced chess” — in a match against the Bulgarian Veselin Topalov, who he had beaten 4-0 a month earlier. This time, with both players supported by computers, the match ended in a 3-3 draw. It appeared that the use of a PC nullified the calculative and strategic advances Kasparov usually displayed over his opponent.

The match provided an important illustration of how humans might work with AI. After the match, Kasparov noted that the use of a PC allowed him to focus more on strategic planning while machine took care of the calculations. Nevertheless, he also stressed that simply putting together the best human player and best PC did not, in his eyes, reveal games that were perfect. Like with human teams, the power of working with an AI comes from how the person and computer compliment each other; the best players and most powerful AIs partnering up don’t necessarily produce the best results.

Once again, the chess world offers a useful test case for how this collaboration can play out. In 2005 the online chess playing site Playchess.com hosted what it called a “freestyle” chess tournament in which anyone could compete in teams with other players or computers. What made this competition interesting is that several groups of grandmasters working with computers also participated in this tournament. Predictably, most people expected that one of these grandmasters in combination with a supercomputer would dominate this competition — but that’s not what happened. The tournament was won by a pair of amateur American chess players using three computers. It was their ability to coordinate and coach effectively their computers that defeated the combination of a smart grandmaster and a PC with great computational power.

This surprising result underscores an important lesson: the process of how players and computers interact determines how efficient the partnership will be. Or, as Kasparov expressed it, “Weak human + machine + better process was superior to a strong computer alone and, more remarkably, superior to a strong human + machine + inferior process.”

Recommendations

The enhancing and collaborative potential that we envision stands in stark contrast to the zero-sum predictions of what AI will do to our society and organizations. Instead, we believe that greater productivity and the automation of cognitively routine work is a boon, not a threat. After all, new technology always has disruptive effects early on in the implementation and development phases and usually reveals its real value only after some time.

This reality, however, does not mean that we have to wait patiently until when this value eventually reveals itself — very much the opposite! Our principal challenge as business people is to anticipate what artificial intelligence means in relationship to how humans think and act, and work to integrate the new technologies ambitiously and strategically into our organizations. We can’t just passively wait for it to overtake traditional methods. So, what is it that we can then do at this moment to ensure integration of the different AI’s to make our organizations work effectively?

First, teams will gradually become composed of humans and non-humans working together, which we refer to as the “new diversity.” The psychology of the new diversity will bring with it the risk that stereotypical beliefs and biases can easily influence decisions and team work. Machine as a non-human co-worker may be met with distrust and negative expectations as any other out-group member and as such encourage humans to share less information and avoid working with machine. Team leaders will need to be apt to respond to such negative team dynamics and trained in ways that they understand the reality of those negative beliefs and its consequences.

Second, the new shape of teams will call for leaders who are skilled in bringing different parties together. In the future, creating inclusive teams by aligning man and machine will be an important ability to be trained and developed. As the earlier mentioned examples show, to achieve better performance by employing these new diversity teams, a main requirement for leaders will be to transform themselves in being masters of coordinating and coaching team processes.

Third, team processes will need to be managed effectively and this will have to be done by a human. For humans to align the strengths and weaknesses of man and machine, they will need to be educated to understand how AI works, what it can be used for and decide — by means of the judgment abilities of their authentic intelligence — how it can be used best to foster performance serving human interests.

Augmented intelligence, as the third type of AI, is the step forward to the future of intelligent work. The future of work is a concept used to indicate the growth of employees and their performance in more efficient ways. The debate on this topic, however, has become quite ambiguous in its intentions. Specifically, because of cost-cutting strategies narratives, businesses today are in a stage where machines are often introduced as the new super employee that may leave humans ultimately in an inferior role to serve machine. An essential element of a truly intelligent type of future of work, however, means that we do expand the workforce where both humans and machine will be part of, but with the aim to improve humanity and well-being while also being more efficient in the execution of our jobs. So, augmented intelligence is indeed collaborative in nature, but it’s also clear that it represents a collaborative effort in service of humans.

US, EU to Sanction Russia Over Navalny Treatment But Remain Silent on Saudis | The Mehdi Hasan Show | March 1, 2021

Democracy activist and chess champion Garry Kasparov joins Mehdi Hasan to discuss why he believes the U.S. is trying to avoid holding Saudi officials, including MBS, accountable for Jamal Khashoggi’s death.

Online coffee talk with Chairman Weber

Animated discussion with @Kasparov63, about #Russia, #Europe, #Navalny, #Vaccine and the challenges ahead. Full video now available on my Facebook page. #MWCoffeeTalks https://t.co/aYgvM9N2Gq

— Manfred Weber (@ManfredWeber) February 26, 2021

A tale of two trials: Truth and justice have been subverted in different ways in America and Russia | Feb 20, 2021

by Garry Kasparov

READ ORIGINAL ARTICLE AT THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS”

Since the start of the year, much of the world’s attention was focused on two trials on opposite sides of the world. In one, a brave truth-teller was persecuted by a vengeful administration after stirring up his patriotic followers in protest against tyranny. In the other, Donald Trump was acquitted by the Senate.

It’s hard to imagine any similarities between Trump’s second impeachment trial and that of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Moscow, but there were a few. For example, in both trials, the outcome was known well in advance.

Trump’s legal team was cobbled together from the few people left on Earth whose reputations couldn’t be tarnished by associating with him. They barely bothered to make a case for the defense. They knew that even if Trump made a full confession to all charges of inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, there wouldn’t be 17 Republicans willing to risk their political futures by doing the right thing. It’s the Trump party and has been for some time, and there is no place in it for the truth or the rule of law.

Several of the handful of GOP dissenters, although not including the only one who also voted to convict Trump the first time, Utah’s Mitt Romney, were quickly sanctioned by their state parties for daring to vote their consciences.

Meanwhile, in Moscow, Alexei Navalny was quickly convicted for violating his probation. Having been sentenced on spurious charges of embezzlement several years ago, Navalny couldn’t make his required probation visit because he was in a coma after being poisoned by Vladimir Putin’s assassination squad last August. His real crime was failing to die as arranged, as well as cleverly exposing one of his assassins.

There is no independent judiciary in Putin’s Russia, much as the parliament has become a purely decorative branch during Putin’s 20 years in power. This is far from the case in the United States, but when the jury is compromised as in the Senate trial, there can be little expectation of justice. In both trials, the result demonstrated dysfunction and injustice at the highest level, with serious implications for each country going forward.

The differences between these dueling courtroom dramas were more obvious. Trump was acquitted for political reasons despite overwhelming evidence against him. Navalny was convicted for political reasons despite a complete lack of evidence of wrongdoing.

Trump fled Washington for Florida and saved his attacks on Sen. Mitch McConnell until after the trial was over. Navalny returned to Russia from Germany, where he was recovering from the Putin regime’s attempt to assassinate him. He knew he would be arrested immediately by the same people who failed to kill him last year, but he refused to stay away or to cease his criticism of Putin. Trump acted like a coward even when he had nothing to lose. Navalny showed courage when he had everything to lose.

Both inevitable verdicts indicated a business-as-usual trajectory in the United States and Russia. Many Republican officials still refuse to admit that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, as clear a litmus test as could exist for supporting country over party and personal interests.

Trump will go to his grave insisting that he won, that he was the victim of election fraud so vast and insidious that no evidence of it has ever been found. This would be nothing more than the ravings of a broken mind, akin to believing he’s Jesus or Napoleon, if so many others weren’t invested in propagating the delusion. That makes it dangerous, as demonstrated on Jan. 6, and an ongoing threat to the safety and integrity of American democratic processes.

Democracy cannot function if elections are not credible. This is as Trump intended when he attacked the 2016 election, spreading the myth of millions of “illegal votes” for Hillary Clinton. You only make such accusations when you are preparing to ignore the results if necessary. Trump won in 2016, but he was clearly preparing the ground for refusing to accept the outcome of 2020. Unfortunately, he found so many co-conspirators among Republican officials like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, who are happy to assault the very electoral system that put them in office if they think it helps them attract Trump supporters.

There hasn’t been any change possible in Russian politics internally for a long time. It’s a one-man dictatorship, the kind Trump could only envy, and clearly did. Putin has had 20 years to build up his police state, an internal army funded by trade deals and energy exports with the free and unfree world alike.

Nevertheless, the recent protests supporting Navalny make Putin nervous, as evinced by the massive and violent police crackdown on peaceful marchers and activists. Putin isn’t worried that millions of Russians are finally going to drag him out of the Kremlin. He’s worried that his oligarch cronies and their business partners in the West might decide he’s become as toxic as the nerve gas he used to poison Navalny. If Putin’s lawlessness becomes a real threat to their money, assets, and the comfortable lives they and their families live in Europe and America, his support could evaporate very quickly.

Putin knows this very well, so his first move after arresting Navalny was to appear at the Davos World Economic Forum. He rushed to flex his connections and credentials, to demonstrate that the free world was still happy to do business with him even while they demanded Navalny’s immediate release.

This is the pathetic double-standard that Putin is so good at exploiting. He only cares about money, not any Russian national interests or diplomacy. When the European Union’s envoy came to Moscow, Putin sent him packing and kicked out a few EU diplomats for good measure, just to leave no doubt how little he thinks of their letters of condemnation.

President Biden and his administration have done a fair job of saying the right things, even addressing Putin directly, instead of the usual worthless diplo-babble about the Russian government. But unless they follow through with action, Putin will call the bluff and assume Biden is as much a paper tiger on his abuses and aggression as the Obama administration was.

On Friday, Biden told the Munich Security Conference that “America is back,” and would invest in the multilateral relationships Trump discarded for his “America First.” But being better than Trump is a very low bar, especially regarding Putin, and Biden is on the clock to go beyond that and establish his own strong national security and foreign policy agenda that put’s America at the forefront of defending human rights and the international rule of law.

Navalny’s group published a letter explaining what they think should be done: strong individual sanctions against Putin’s most powerful enablers and their families. It’s what many of us in the opposition have been calling for for years, instead of the piecemeal and limited sanctions Putin’s gang is content to deal with as a cost of doing very profitable business.

A good sign came on Friday, when Ukraine announced sanctions on powerful oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk, Putin’s point man in Ukraine. This came after President Zelensky recently banned three pro-Russia propaganda channels. Coming so soon after Biden’s inauguration, I have little doubt that the latest phone calls to Zelensky from the Oval Office were not about Hunter Biden, but from Joe Biden hunting for ways to loosen Russia’s grip on Ukraine.

The free speech triangle | Avast Blog Post | Feb 17, 2021

by Garry Kasparov

READ ORIGINAL BLOG POST AT AVAST BLOG

Navigating the power of new tech, new trends and new laws that shape our society.

As someone who has survived two very different dictatorships, hearing Americans and Europeans debate free speech always feels a little quaint. They argue about subtleties of law and meaning that are irrelevant to the half of the world’s population still living under authoritarianism, where speech is controlled by the regime.

This does not mean that these arguments are not important, even vital, in the free world, only that there should be context — and appreciation for the luxury of being able to say what you want without fearing government retaliation, which is true in almost every case. It’s also a warning to be careful what you ask for. If you’re asking for greater government oversight of speech, or more legal recourse that might limit or chill speech, it can end in places you did not want and did not expect.

One of the truisms of all governments is that power given is rarely returned, and never without a fight. People always forget this when their political side is in charge, and doing things they like. If there isn’t oversight and limits on the politicians you favor, those checks won’t be there on the politicians you don’t like.

For example, the change of administration in the United States, from Trump to Biden, is a relatively dramatic shift in policy and rhetoric. Biden immediately got to work undoing dozens of Trump actions, many of which were themselves reversals of Obama policies. This seems normal enough, but these “executive orders”, as they are called, are not deliberated pieces of legislation, passed by the Congress into law. They can, and often will, simply be undone immediately once again by the next president.

This violent back and forth, without the negotiations and compromises required in legislation, often leads to overreaction and unforeseen consequences, even with the best intentions. Parliamentary debate can be terribly slow, but that is also one of its virtues. As the saying goes, few good ideas come out of committees, but many bad ideas have died there!

Public and private forces defining the rules in democracies
Returning to free speech, this is one area where handing too much power to the government, especially the executive, is dangerous. We want to fight disinformation and misinformation, but it takes a lot of careful work simply to define those terms, let alone implement action that monitors and regulates them. If you think free speech should be absolute, perhaps you don’t remember how bad email spam used to be, or what social media looks like with no moderation or filtering by the companies that run them.

Instead of relying on the state to define everything, most systems in the democratic world rely on a combination of public and private forces and interest, pushing and pulling against each other. The foundation of this adversarial system is the people, who play for both teams at the same time. They are voters and constituents, at least in a democracy. They want their representatives and leaders to serve their interests, which, we hope, are also for the greater good.

The people are also consumers, customers, employees, and business owners. In that aspect, they want better services, cheaper and faster and more user-friendly. This creates a triangle of power that is always shifting as new technology, new trends, and new laws shape our society. Social media changed everything because it’s a two-way street, turning everyone into a “publisher” with global reach. But we cannot apply the laws of publishing to every individual, hence the ongoing debate about accountability.

“Incitement to violence cannot be defended”
Let’s look at the biggest case in history for the private version of freedom of speech —moderation and deplatforming. When Twitter blocked, and then permanently banned, the account of Donald Trump when he was still the president of the United States, it was like dropping a bomb. Everyone had a strong opinion about if it was right, and even if it was legal (it clearly was). My own view is that incitement to violence cannot be defended, and so the ban was warranted. But the key is that it was within Twitter’s rights as a private company to act in its interests and those of its customers. And who defines those interests? Well, Twitter. That’s how the private system works.

Ironically, many of Trump’s defenders compared Twitter’s ban to “Communist China” or the Soviet Union. Except it’s exactly the opposite! In authoritarian regimes, the government shuts down accounts or entire companies that displease the state. A private company turning off the account of a public official could never happen in a dictatorship. You may argue that social media companies have too much power and need to be regulated more, but don’t call it tyranny unless you wish to sound foolish.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she found the ban troubling, a statement that was quickly picked up by Trump’s defenders. But they would not like her solution, one more common in Europe, of strong regulations on speech in the hands of the state. Some of the statements by Trump and his loyalists would have qualified as hate speech or incitement in Germany and other places, resulting in a ban far more powerful than just Twitter.

Meanwhile, in the US, Trump is free to post lies about the election elsewhere, although there are other risks. After many Republicans and supporters made false accusations about the election being rigged, including by hacked or manipulated voting machines, the companies that makes those machines threatened to sue any individual or media outlet spreading these claims.

Lo and behold, they largely shut up about it, even issuing retractions, knowing they were unable to provide any evidence for slandering the company’s product and its integrity—which also isn’t protected speech. It’s a very American solution, lawsuits and private moderation, but it’s all part of the ever-shifting triangle.

Lastly, it’s important to realize that there’s no perfect equilibrium where everyone is happy, or equally unhappy. Our laws evolve with our technology, unevenly and unpredictably. It can be frustrating, but generally we move in the right direction as long as we keep our oars in the water. For most of us — the customers, voters, and citizens — that means staying involved, staying informed, and letting the companies and politicians know that we won’t be ignored.

How Biden and the West could help Russians by reining in Putin | Washington Post Op-Ed | Feb 4, 2021

by Garry Kasparov

READ ORIGINAL ARTICLE AT THE WASHINGTON POST

Garry Kasparov is the chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative and the Human Rights Foundation.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s sentencing in a Moscow courtroom on Tuesday came, fittingly, on Groundhog Day. The aptness has nothing to do with large rodents predicting the weather, but with the 1993 film starring Bill Murray, in which the helpless protagonist wakes up to an alarm clock that starts the same day over and over.

A Russian-style Groundhog Day is watching yet another brave ally in the fight for freedom swallowed up in the maw of Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship. One after another, opposition members, activists and journalists are exiled, murdered and imprisoned — over and over.

The international responses to these events also don’t change much. “Grave concerns” are expressed. Leaders or their deputies “call on the Russian government” to “immediately” release, cease or retreat from its latest abomination.

These statements seldom mention Putin by name, falling into the trap of treating Russia like a normal country with a normal government.

The cycle started again as we watched Navalny pulled from the courtroom to begin his sentence of 2½ years for doing nothing but opposing Putin — and for daring to survive his attempted assassination. Anyone who wants Russia to be strong and free is saddened and outraged — and weary of this endless repetition.

President Biden has a chance to finally get U.S. policy toward Putin’s Russia right. Biden spoke directly at Putin in his foreign policy speech on Thursday, an important step, but he will have to back it up or Putin will know it’s all for show.

President Donald Trump — well, the less said about him, the better. But Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama misguidedly tried to engage with Putin, and instead the world witnessed two decades of aggression and atrocity, a litany that includes invasions of Georgia and Ukraine, support for Bashar al-Assad’s murderous regime in Syria, interference in the U.S. presidential election, and assassinations — some attempted, some successful — of Putin’s critics, whether in Russia or elsewhere.

Engaging with dictatorships always fails. They must be isolated and contained, or else they spread their corruption to the free world — while using the profits from engagement to fund repression at home and aggression abroad.

The traditional recipes of international diplomacy are worthless against a mafia dictatorship that cares nothing for ideology or national interests. Hurting the Russian people doesn’t bother Putin, so sanctions must target him and his gang directly. Putin doesn’t care about left or right; he cares about money.

This is why Navalny’s focus on corruption and Putin’s personal wealth so infuriates him. Navalny knows what Putin cares about, and the West should learn, too, if it wants results.

First, end Putin’s asymmetrical advantage and treat his regime like it’s the target of a criminal investigation. Even if tracking down all the ill-gotten assets doesn’t lead to arrests, exposing that information would be invaluable. No doubt Navalny’s organization would know how to use it — his recent YouTube video about Putin’s billion-dollar palace has been viewed more than 100 million times.

Second, unite on anti-kleptocracy measures. The recent U.S. ban on anonymous shell companies is a strong move, and Europe should be pressed to coordinate. There will always be another off-shore haven, but they don’t all have the security and convenience that Putin’s oligarchs crave.

Third, stop giving Putin and other authoritarian regimes leverage and legitimacy with trade deals, memberships and access. Lecturing dictators about human rights is meaningless if you’re also taking their oil, gas and cash.

Existing sanctions regimes, many based on the laudable Magnitsky Act, suffer from piecemeal application. Some of Putin’s billionaire pals can no longer visit their money in Europe or the United States, but their families are welcome to. Blocking human rights abusers and their families from travel, freezing their assets and blocking their companies from doing business in the free world would finally take the gloves off and send the message that Putin is too toxic to keep around.

Biden was part of the Obama administration, but he wasn’t calling the shots. Now he should establish his own doctrine, a foreign policy based on democratic principles and strategic planning. America remains the only country capable of leading the free world, and the past four years have shown what happens when it doesn’t.

Stopping Putin will be difficult, but it will only be harder tomorrow. I said much the same here seven years ago, after Putin invaded Ukraine. The alarm clock has gone off many times since then; will Navalny’s imprisonment finally wake up Putin’s appeasers?

In “Groundhog Day,” Bill Murray’s character tries everything to break out of the loop, from kidnapping the groundhog to suicide. In the end, what breaks the spell is his becoming a better human being.

Now the United States and its allies must look inside and examine their principles to break the terrible cycle they helped create in Russia. When that happens, and only when that happens, it will be the end of a very long day.