Garry Kasparov's Blog, page 43

“REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER” | NOV 18TH, 2018

OVERTIME

WEB Summit 2018

Hacking a smart home with Garry Kasparov, Avast Security Ambassador

A smart home is only as secure as its weakest link. At Web Summit, Avast will demonstrate the scenario of a smart home hack, performed by security researcher Vladislav Iliushin, and narrated by Garry Kasparov, who has a long history of trouble with machines. He will comment on the hack, first invading the smart home via its security camera, then infecting a series of smart devices in the home. Garry will draw comparisons to his famous chess matches against the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue, where his battle against a machine was actually against the humans behind it. Addressing the wider context of IoT security, Ondrej Vlcek, Avast EVP & CTO, will address the state of IoT security, and showcase how to keep smart home environments secure, using new technologies, including AI.

Ray Dalio and Garry Kasparov chat AI. Artificial intelligence is making more and more of our decisions for us. Is this capacity limitless or are there some things only human intuition can determine?

Last week, between November 6-8, we attended WebSummit in Lisbon with Garry Kasparov, Ondrej Vlcek and Vlad Iliushin, who delivered a presentation on IoT security and privacy, including a live smart home hack in front of over 1,000 attendees. The smart home presentation received positive feedback by the WebSummit organizers and the audience, who were engaged and receptive throughout. Following the presentation, we were approached by Kaspersky’s SAS organizer who said they were “super impressed” by our presentation, and invited us to speak at their 2019 conference.

Garry, Ondrej, and Vlad presenting about smart home security at Web Summit in front of over 1,000 people (the audience

Prior to the presentation, Ondrej and Garry held a press conference in front of over 30 journalists on the topic of IoT security, data privacy and human rights, followed by a fireside chat between Garry and Ray Dalio, Founder of Bridgewater Associates. This discussion focused on AI and algorithmic decision making, where Garry was presented as an Avast representative to an audience of 1,000 people.

Garry in a Fireside Chat with Ray Dalio, Founder Bridgewater Associates, in front of 1,000 people

Before and after these presentations, Garry and Ondrej held interviews with La Repubblica (Italy), Exame (Brazil), RTP and Observador (Portugal), ZDNet (UK), TV Nova (Czech Republic) and El País (Spain).

Ondrej and Garry holding an Avast press conference; Garry in an interview with El País, Spain

To date, coverage of the demo and the interviews with Garry and Ondrej has appeared in the following publications:

Observador, a tier one Portuguese national newspaper, which ran three stories: one on the smart home hack demo, another on geopolitical developments and online privacy, and a third which included a statement from Garry calling for more “digital hygiene” and greater appreciation for the right to privacy among consumers

La Repubblica, a tier one Italian daily, published an article on the abuse of the internet by political institutions, quoting Garry

Globo / Epoca Negocios, a tier one Brazilian business outlet, wrote a piece on our smart home hack demo, along with Portuguese economic newspaper Eco and public interest news outlet Visao. Leading Portuguese tech and business publication Exame Informatica also covered the smart home security topic and quoted Vlad from the presentation. Ukrainian tech publication KO mentioned Garry speaking about smart home security at Web Summit, as did Czech title Tyinternety.cz, which also linked to a video of the presentation

The Spanish/Catalan daily El Periodico published a quote from Garry from his press conference with Ondrej, expressing the concern that the internet was built to support free speech, despite it being abused for spreading fake news. The Portuguese radio station TSF also reported on the press conference discussion quoting Ondrej and Garry on smart home security.

The social media team supported our activities at Web Summit with posts of photos and videos we shared with them. Here is an update from Jas:

The majority of the activity took place over Twitter, with our content being shared, in addition to where we engaged with people who tweet content related to our Summit activities.

This event was soleley based on a free speaking opportunity with Web Summit that we secured, Avast did not sponsor Web Summit.

WebSummit was attended by approximately 70,000 people from the tech industry, the majority of whom were management and representatives of tech businesses and startups.

Garry Kasparov on the Rise of Intelligent Machines | Bloomberg TV | 06.27.2017

Garry Kasparov is the greatest chess player in history. He became the youngest ever world chess champion at 22, defeating Anatoly Karpov in a historic chess match in 1984-85. In 1997 Kasparov also became the first world chess champion to lose a match to the IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer.

He sat down with Bloomberg’s Amanda Lang to discuss the need for both intelligent machines and human creativity, what he’s learned from chess and his battles with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. (Source: Bloomberg)

Fight for Liberty: Defending Democracy in the Age of Trump

 

Fight for Liberty is the first project of the Renew Democracy Initiative. RDI came into existence in early 2017 to defend the foundational values of freedom and liberal democracy and to combat the extremism and tribalism that makes debate impossible. This book is our attempt to create a teaching tool that advocates for the principles that made America the most successful nation in history as well as a model and beacon of hope for so long—a status that is very much at risk today.

Press to Purchase on Amazon Now!

Fight for Liberty’s illustrious contributors and RDI’s long list of signatories hail from all parts of the globe and the ideological spectrum. What we all have in common is a firm belief that we must act now to preserve and promote the tradition of individual rights and rational debate over ideas. We are pushing back against the forces of extremism, authoritarianism, and demagoguery and igniting a passion for principles with intellectual firepower.

 

We are facing a crisis, as expertly diagnosed in this book. We can no longer afford to treat politics like the weather, discussing it but not doing anything about it. Complacency must end and the moderate majority must act to form an independent path forward to repair our broken institutions and inspire the next generation with shared positive goals, not fearmongering and hatred of the other side. This is your call to action!

 

Learn more about RDI (501c3 pending) and how you can be a part of this vital project at Renew-Democracy.org.

Garry Kasparov | Machine Learning Everywhere 2018

SEE ORIGINAL ARTICLE AT THE CUBE

Garry Kasparov at FICO World 2018

Keynote speaker Garry Kasparov, Chess Grandmaster and Expert on Human-Machine Collaboration at FICO World 2018.

Putin’s Next Move: A Conversation with Garry Kasparov & Ian C. Kelly | September 17th, 2018

2018 Oslo Freedom Forum in New York

September 17, 2018

How can foreign policy leaders push back against Vladimir Putin? Russian democracy advocate Garry Kasparov sits down with former statesman Ian C. Kelly to discuss how the free world should address the monumental challenge that Putin presents to international peace and security, as well as human rights in Russia itself.

Thinking Machines | Garry Kasparov | Interview | September 27, 2018

An interview with the Grandmaster himself: Garry Kasparov. In 1985, he earned international fame when he became the youngest world chess champion at just 22-years-old. He went on to defend his title for more than a decade. But it’s his 6-game match against IBM’s supercomputer “Deep Blue” in 1997 that will be remembered as a defining moment in the history of chess — and artificial intelligence.

“Vladimir Putin Is Basically Tywin Lannister” | WIRED PODCAST | August 11, 2018

READ ORIGINAL ARTICLE AT WIRED.COM

FORMER CHESS CHAMPION Garry Kasparov sounded the alarm about Vladimir Putin’s regime in his 2015 book Winter Is Coming. The title echoes the motto of House Stark from the HBO series Game of Thrones, and that’s no accident.

“As you can guess, I’m a big fan,” Kasparov says in Episode 321 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “I recently had a great experience touring some of the spots when they were shooting in Belfast, taking my wife and my daughter, who are also big fans of the show.”

https://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/geeksguide321final.mp3

Kasparov sees many parallels between life in Westeros and real-world politics. He says that Americans—like our fictional counterparts—are so consumed with petty squabbles that we’ve ignored a gathering threat.

“People are not ready for the challenge, for the evil that is coming from the North,” he says. “We have to make sure that we are ready for the challenge, because the damage caused by this too-bleak winter will depend very much on our ability—or inability—to make ourselves ready to defend the values of the free world.”

According to Kasparov, the Game of Thrones character that Putin most resembles is the wealthy lord Tywin Lannister. “I don’t think anybody is even close to Putin in terms of the amount of money this person—or group of people—can move around,” he says.

But unlike Tywin Lannister, Putin was not born into great wealth and power. In some ways that makes his early career more like that of Littlefinger, the master schemer who pulls strings from behind the scenes.

“Littlefinger was engaged in conversations with top players, and he was very good in actually finding their weaknesses, and ways to get under their skin, and make them comfortable by talking to him,” Kasparov says. “And that’s exactly what Putin did in the early years of his presidency.”

Listen to the complete interview with Garry Kasparov in Episode 321 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.

Garry Kasparov on Advanced Chess:

“The best players are used to playing their own game, so even recognizing the fact that the machine is much stronger today—and in most cases you should rely on the machine’s judgment—for top players, for a world champion and other players who are close to him by strength, it would be psychologically difficult—very challenging, almost impossible—to recognize this fact during the game when the emotions are running high. So that’s why you should find this golden balance of a good player—a decent player, who understands how to play—but at the same time will understand the requirements of this very machine. … To make sure that [any mistakes] can be solved by very gentle human interference.”

Garry Kasparov on killer robots:

“Being a doomsayer is good business. People are fascinated by this dystopian vision of the future. But I’m just looking at the facts, and at the latest developments of the machines, and I’d rather rely on people like Demis Hassabis, my very good friend, the man behind the Alpha Zero program, and other people who are at the cutting edge of computer technology, and who are not seeing any real threat to humanity. It’s not about the extinction of humanity, it’s about the promotion of human brains. I see no reason for entering into these useless debates, because at the end of the day, we have to deal with revolutionary technology, as we have many times, for many centuries in the past. Crying wolf doesn’t change the parameters of the problem.”

Garry Kasparov on dictators:

“When you look at the other side of the world, the unfree world, then you have very powerful players who don’t care about the rules, whether it’s the Chinese dictatorship, whether it’s Putin, whether it’s Iranian mullahs, or some quasi-state operations. They’re always looking for an opportunity to break through and to steal our data and to do us harm. … Data collection by Google might be unpleasant, but it’s not the same as data collection by Chinese security or the KGB. So it’s very important for us to understand that right now we have to look at this problem rather than wasting our time talking about killer robots and about The Terminator and The Matrix and some distant threat that may never materialize.”

Garry Kasparov on Bill Maher:

“Many Americans laughed at my assumption that one day Putin would attack America in the heart of its democracy. I remember my appearance at Bill Maher’s show on HBO in May 2015, and when I talked about threats coming from Putin, he said—this is almost verbatim—’Wake me up when he takes over Poland.’ And I jumped out of my chair and said, ‘That’s almost exactly what we heard from Chamberlain in 1938.’ It took the 2016 election for many Americans who shared this point of view—including Bill Maher himself—to change their views, and blast Putin for his interference. And of course I responded on Twitter, teasing him, and said it seemed Putin decided to skip over Poland and went straight to Wisconsin.”

Congress, contain Trump: We cannot let him continue to bend to Vladimir Putin | NY Daily News | July 22, 2018

by Garry Kasparov

READ ORIGINAL ARTICLE AT THE DAILY NEWS

On Thursday, the news broke that President Trump has invited Russian leader Vladimir Putin to the White House, proving once more that Trump has an unparalleled ability to surprise. It’s like inviting the man who burglarized your house, just in case he forgot to swipe any of the fine silver.

It also illustrates the scandal-driven dynamic of the Trump administration: No outrage is so bad that it cannot be driven from the headlines by an even worse one.

Still, it is important not to lose track of what is causing this desperation. The investigation into the Kremlin’s meddling in the 2016 election continues to heat up, with a dozen new indictments of Russian military intelligence operatives by special counsel Robert Mueller. An alleged Russian undercover agent has been charged with attempting to influence U.S. politics, including extensive connections with the National Rifle Association.

These are acts of foreign aggression, direct attacks on the integrity of the American political system. Call it hybrid war or whatever you like, but a war is what it is. Putin understood this many years ago and has been investing heavily in the weapons with which this new type of war is fought: propaganda, cyberwarfare, supporting extremists on all sides, and dividing allies.

That his targets are still arguing about what to call it instead of fighting back is why Putin has had such success.

So it’s an odd time for the U.S. to be rolling out the red carpet for Putin, who directs these actions and is surely plotting more. Perhaps like any good real-estate agent, Trump just wants to give Putin a personal tour of the house he purchased online. It’s hard to imagine any legitimate reason for such a scandalous invitation, especially after the debacle of their summit last week in Helsinki.

As has already been written in the annals of ignominy, Monday, Trump had a private meeting with Putin and then joined him in the most disturbing press conference spectacle most of us have ever seen. Trump’s subservient display has been well-described already, so I won’t waste time detailing how the American President presented the Kremlin line better than Putin himself.

I’ve spent many years countering Kremlin propaganda that tries to put America and other free world nations on the same ethical plane as Putin’s murderous and repressive mafia state. “There is no good or evil,” it goes. “We all do bad things, so don’t judge. Let’s do business and forget about democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.”

Listening to the U.S. President make such moral equivalence arguments — standing next to a KGB-trained dictator, no less — was infuriating and heartbreaking.

The backlash was strong enough to force Trump to publicly “clarify” some of his Helsinki statements criticizing American intelligence services and defending Putin. While it suited Trump to pretend to apologize, and for his ardent supporters to pretend to believe him, Helsinki marked a turning point. The idea that the American President is somehow compromised by the Kremlin is no longer a far-fetched conspiracy theory touted only by his political opponents. It has become the most logical, if not the only, explanation for Trump’s devotion to an enemy of the United States.

Trump and his supporters apparently wouldn’t mind receiving more assistance in 2018 and 2020. Despite repeated warnings from top security officials, the Trump administration has declined to direct federal agencies to harden election systems. On Thursday, Republicans refused to include state funds for election security in an appropriations bill. This is what happens when national security is sacrificed to political partisanship.

Trump flattered Putin well before the election took place, and Trump continues to check off items on Putin’s wish list that have nothing to do with election interference, such as weakening NATO, attacking the European Union, and, especially, appearing together at a summit and inviting him to the White House. Putin craves such legitimacy desperately, and there are no good reasons why Trump should be so eager to satisfy him while getting nothing in return.

Trump also added that his appearance with Putin was loved by people at “higher ends of intelligence.” I’ll modestly refrain from throwing my IQ around, but the given rationales for these meetings only insult our intelligence.

First there’s the old strawman argument that anyone who isn’t in favor of capitulating to Putin’s aggression is a warmonger eager for World War III. As his track record demonstrates, standing up to Putin is far less likely to lead to further conflict than giving him what he wants. As with Trump and any bully, conceding to Putin only convinces him you are weak and that he can push further.

Then there is Trump’s refrain, “shouldn’t we want better relations with Russia?” Certainly, but not at any cost. It’s easy to make deals and have good relations with dictators if you concede everything they want and ask nothing of them. Better relations with Russia should depend on the national interests of the United States, not the personal interests of Donald Trump.

While it’s irresistible to theorize about what exactly Putin has on Trump to keep him on such a tight leash, it’s more important to accept the fact that it is happening. With the Mueller investigation indicting more Russian agents and a potential Democratic takeover in the midterm elections threatening to curtail Trump’s authority, Putin is rushing to squeeze everything he can from his prized Oval Office asset before it is devalued.

Aside from a few notable exceptions like Sens. John McCain, Jeff Flake and Ben Sasse, the Republicans in Congress have been far too quiet. They are afraid of losing in primaries to Trumpist extremists, and fear has made them swallow their tongues. Many of these quietly critical Republicans hope to outlast Trump by not confronting him and his voters.

This is a dangerous delusion. For 18 months, the damage Trump is doing has come at a faster and faster pace. There’s no time to lose.

His own administration has little clue what he’s going to say or do next; perhaps only Putin knows. The announcement of Trump’s invitation to Putin came as a complete shock to Dan Coats, Trump’s own director of national intelligence.

Many of the areas in which Trump is waging his assault on American democracy and the world order were never intended to be the domain of the President at all. Constitutionally, the President has no business starting trade wars or radically changing immigration policy.

But Congress has abdicated its role as co-equal branch of government over decades, steadily conceding power to the executive. This has been done in the name of expediency, to fight partisan gridlock, and has been pushed along by each side in tit-for-tat battles. Clinton did it, so Bush had to do it. Bush did it, so Obama had to do it.

With each turn, the balance of powers became more unbalanced. If the ship of state is to be righted before the Trumpian iceberg finishes the job, Congress must take back the power given to it by the Founders. Stop tweeting and start legislating.

As for those in Trump’s White House who are horrified by their boss’ actions, I’m not convinced that honorable resignations would achieve much benefit. Trump is happy to be rid of anyone who doesn’t provide the unconditional praise he demands. Foreign policy and security experts like Coats and National Security Adviser John Bolton know that they would surely be replaced by more sycophantic and less capable individuals should they leave in disgust.

They must all answer to their consciences, and they could draw public lines in the sand without enraging Trump, the way some GOP senators have invoked the possibility of a constitutional crisis if Mueller is fired.

We have an apt phrase in chess: “The threat is stronger than the execution.” But are any Republicans ready to execute if their threats are ignored?

The Cold War was won based on the policy of containment established by President Harry Truman in 1947. The U.S. would not attack the Soviet Union, but it would not allow the USSR and Communism to expand unchallenged. When the Cold War ended, the winning containment concept was discarded in exchange for engagement, which is a major reason why all but a handful of former Soviet republics are still dictatorships today, and why liberal democracy is under attack all over the globe.

This does not happen overnight. Putin dismantled Russia’s fragile new democracy in the full view of the leaders of the free world, who expressed the usual concerns as they made deals for Russian oil and gas and welcomed Putin’s oligarch buddies and the billions they were looting out of Russia.

President Obama spent many hopeless years trying to make friends with Russia — all while Putin was liquidating his political opposition, preparing to invade Ukraine, and building the disinformation Death Star he eventually unleashed on Europe and the United States.

From Obama’s naive appeasement, we arrived at Trump’s open collaboration. Putin isn’t just emboldened, he’s coming to Washington to take a victory lap.

What’s needed today is a Trump containment policy, to limit his reach and his ability to weaken the American institutions that hold him in check. The President will always have dominion over foreign policy, and that includes inviting the leaders of hostile dictatorships to the White House. But Congress can and must begin to work now to ensure that Putin leaves only with Trump’s loyalty, and not with the rest of the silver and the keys to the country.

Kasparov is the chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative and of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation. He is the author of “Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped.”