Garry Kasparov's Blog, page 44

The Helsinki summit marks a new low in the history of the U.S. presidency | Washington Post | July 17th, 2018

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By Garry Kasparov

President Trump and Russian president-for-life Vladimir Putin’s news conference in Helsinki on Monday was the lowest point in the history of the American presidency. Standing next to a dictatorial leader accused by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement of attacking the foundations of American democracy, Trump often appeared confused and incoherent — and those were his best moments at the podium. The rest of the time he spent praising the KGB dictator to his left and attacking the institutions he swore an oath to defend. It was a Russia First performance, from beginning to end.

Even for those of us who had very low expectations, and who considered the mere existence of this summit to be a catastrophe, the reality of it was much worse. Trump did such a thorough job of presenting the Kremlin line that Putin barely had to exert himself to respond with his habitual mix of denials and deflections. It was a brutal reality check for those still deluded enough to hope that Trump represents the national interests of the United States, or the interests of anyone other than himself and Putin.

For Putin, the summit was a great success before it even started. Without the recurrent legitimacy of the ballot box — I assume no one still believes that Russia’s elections are real — dictators crave ways to demonstrate their credibility and to pass off their own interests and power as those of the nation. The tried and true methods are war, hosting sporting spectacles and appearing with important foreign leaders, especially democratically elected ones. Putin has managed a hat trick with his invasion of Ukraine still ongoing, the World Cup that ended in Moscow on Sunday and an imposing performance in Helsinki next to a feeble and cowed American president.

Other than Putin wanting it badly, there was no purpose behind this spectacle in Helsinki. Putin’s wish list is transparent: legitimacy as the ruler of Russia and stature on the global stage; Russia as power broker in Ukraine, Syria and Iran; weakening the United States’ commitment to its Group of Seven allies, NATO and the European Union; lowered Western defenses against his attacks; and Trump’s help in all these things. Putin also wants the United States to end sanctions and recognize his annexation of Crimea, but he senses that that would be too much to ask right now, and that they could be taken out of Trump’s hands if he pushes too far. In contrast, there is nothing the United States needs from Putin other than to stop the hostile acts that he uses to achieve his ends. He must be stopped, not negotiated with.

Despite the long list of Putin’s suspected atrocities, including the downing of Flight MH17 over Ukraine and aiding Bashar al-Assad’s massacres in Syria, Trump eagerly applied the Kremlin’s patented technique of moral equivalence, saying, “I hold both countries responsible” and that “we’re all to blame” for poor Russian America relations. To this I can only cite Polish writer Stanisław Jerzy Lec: Just when you think you’ve reached the bottom, someone knocks from below.

Last year I wrote that eventually Putin would boast about successfully influencing the U.S. election, leaving Trump as the last person on Earth still denying it. That moment is coming closer. Putin admitted that he wanted Trump to win, and then smirked as Trump contradicted U.S. intelligence services, who, along with those of other nations, have confirmed repeatedly that Russia was behind massive hacking and propaganda operations during the 2016 election. Trump also brushed off the new depths of detail included in last week’s indictment of a dozen Russian military intelligence operatives in the special counsel’s investigation.

Trump is quite bold on Twitter and when attacking American allies and his White House predecessors, but that so-called straight talk and nationalistic fervor were nowhere to be seen in Helsinki. He blasts former president Barack Obama for slow and weak responses to Putin’s annexation of Crimea and hacking of the U.S. election — accurately so, in my opinion, as I said at the time — but has only praise for the man who actually committed those crimes. Trump bullies democratic leaders like Germany’s Angela Merkel for not being tough enough on Russia — again, I concur — which makes no sense when in the next breath he says that Russia isn’t a threat.

Monday’s news conference marked a big step beyond such incoherence and into … something else. After spending two hours alone with Putin, itself an unacceptable risk at this point, Trump took to the stage to criticize his own country and to flatter Putin about the “extraordinary relationship” he was hoping they would have. Trump’s loyalists in Congress and on Fox News were shaken by this abject capitulation, as well they should have been. But the time to merely criticize Trump is long past. He’ll be on to the next outrage on Twitter in a matter of hours, and what happened in Helsinki must not be pushed off the front page or forgotten. The security and integrity of the United States and the free world are in danger. This is uncharted territory, and action is needed. Trump, like Putin, must be stopped before he does any further damage to American democracy and the world order.

“Avoiding accidents on the cyber highway” | Avast Blog Post | June 16th, 2018

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by Garry Kasparov

Garry Kasparov explores how regulations can protect us and how important it is to develop good personal cybersecurity habits.

I spoke on politics and human rights at an important forum in New York last May, and my fellow speakers included many current and former politicians and academics there to talk about everything from North Korea to press freedom to cybersecurity. Former US Congressman Mike Rogers was one of them, and he gave a polished presentation about many of the risks we are facing today in the digital sphere, both for personal and national security. As the former Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, he was faced with these urgent concerns on a daily basis. (Unfortunately, the Committee has now become a political battleground, a very dangerous situation because security shouldn’t be a partisan issue.)

It was good to hear Rogers talk about many of the themes I’ve brought up here, including the dangers presented by nation-state actors who consider aggressive hacking to be a national priority. Rogers listed Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea as the most common sources of these threats, with the goals of collecting intelligence, stealing research and money, and, in a few cases, doing physical damage by sabotaging systems like power grids.

Rogers also talked about consumer privacy and security, and he brought an amusing prop to help make his point. He asked the audience about the “most successful spy in history” and then brought out a Barbie doll. The “Hello Barbie” version was released in 2015 and could talk with kids using wifi and speech recognition. There were two huge problems. First, the toy collected a lot of personal information in these conversations. (“Tell me about your family!”) Second, security flaws were discovered that would allow hackers to access the user’s data, effectively turning Barbie into a household super-spy.

Last year, another internet-connected doll, called Cayla, was banned in Germany over privacy concerns, which are of course heightened when it comes to protecting children. Just a few days ago, a similar situation led to major US retailers halting the sale of a the CloudPets toy, after the Mozilla Foundation protested their spying capabilities and data breaches. These cases got attention, but the root problem is a lack of standards to inform consumers—and accountability when things go wrong. As a Mozilla representative said, “Some smart toys are better at security than others, but we felt like CloudPets was an egregious example. Our goal was to reach out to retailers to make sure they knew exactly what kind of product they were selling.”

One report cites online reviews of the Hello Barbie that are a perfect example of what Rogers and I both warn about, that people care more about features and “saving two seconds” in Rogers’ words, than about privacy. “Many parents, however, still have decided to buy the doll. ‘I read all the hacking stuff but I’m sorry if big brother was going to spy he’s already doing it through your smart phone.’” Every time a consumer says something like this a hacker gets his wings…

Ironically, we seem to be far less concerned about our privacy as adults, despite having far more valuable information to protect. Nor do we seem to have any more self-control than children begging to have the latest cool toy. We download apps and updates, click through the security information without pausing, and are shocked when it makes the news how much information these apps have about us, and are selling it with other companies and political organizations.

We even have less fun version of household spies, devices that are far more popular and potentially invasive than any toy. When Rogers asked his rhetorical question about the “most successful spy ever,” many of us in the audience whispered “Alexa!”, the ubiquitous virtual assistant that runs on Amazon’s Echo devices as well as phones and just about any computing device. Add Apple’s Siri, Google’s Home, Microsoft’s Cortana, and we’re all virtually surrounded by these virtual helpers. There have been some amusing and some not-so-amusing abuse incidents with these devices already.

The fierce competition between these US tech giants ensures two circumstances that are at odds. One, they will work very hard on security because any breach will lose customers to their competition. Two, the rush to introduce new devices and features ahead of the competition inevitably leads to security holes. It’s a delicate balance, a balance that is tipped depending on how consumers and government react to security and privacy violations. If the companies see that they aren’t punished for the security flaws, they have little incentive to prevent them. That’s the free market at work, for better and for worse.

Common sense tells us that the more common these devices become, the more security problems there will be. But as so often happens, common sense isn’t entirely correct here. There will likely be more incidents in sheer quantity at first, but, paradoxically, the percentage of problems will likely go down as the technology matures and becomes standardized. Regulations will be clearer, consumers and companies will learn their obligations and risks, and the chain of responsibility won’t be so obscure.

This tendency reminds me of what traffic pattern researchers call the Dutch cycling effect, or, more generically, safety in numbers. Whenever cities contemplate adding more bike lanes, critics warn that there will be more accidents. And while there might be an initial rise in the raw numbers, studies show that the percentage of accidents per cyclist go down, and then, the numbers themselves start to go down, too. When drivers and pedestrians get used to cyclists, and the laws and practices to accommodate them, it becomes safer for everyone. Drivers in cities with relatively few cyclists, like New York City, generally aren’t expecting bikes, don’t look for them, and don’t know who has the right or way or responsibility for interacting with them. But in Amsterdam or Copenhagen, where there are as many or more bikes on the road than cars, everyone knows what is expected, the conventions are in place and respected. (Except by foreign tourists, who are often startled by the highways of bicycles.)

This creates a virtuous cycle when increased safety leads to even more people cycling. Or, to end this extended metaphor, leads to more people adopting digital devices when they see that they are secure, and understand the digital “rules of the road” for keeping themselves and their data safe.

We aren’t there yet, but if you can judge by the recent wave of new terms of service agreements issued from every site and service, we are making strides. These are in response to the European Union’s “General Data Protection Regulation,” or GDPR, legislation, which went into effect on May 25, 2018. There will surely be changes and improvements, as with any new laws that are so broad and global, but it’s a good beginning at creating accountability on the corporate side for giving users more awareness and control over their own data. My next column will focus on the practical upsides and downsides of the GDPR and other legislation. Most importantly, it doesn’t free consumers from the responsibility of staying informed and active regarding their privacy and security. Information isn’t worth much if you don’t act on it.

Regulations may help protect us all in the long run, but it’s equally essential to develop good personal cybersecurity habits, just like an experienced cyclist or driver develops good habits. A truck running a red light is illegal, but you should still look both ways when you cross the street. Otherwise, while law might hold the driver accountable for the accident, that’s small comfort when you’re as flat as a blini on the internet superhighway.

 

Ukraine has struck a blow at Putin’s assassins. Why aren’t we celebrating? | Washington Post | June 2nd, 2018

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by Garry Kasparov

On Tuesday, Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko was murdered in his apartment building in Kiev, Ukraine — or so we thought. I was in Norway, hosting the 10th annual Oslo Freedom Forum in my role as the chairman of the Human Rights Foundation. We issued a strong statement condemning the killing. That night I wrote a column memorializing him, sickened over the death of yet another comrade for opposing Vladimir Putin. “I feel grief, exhaustion, and outrage,” I wrote. “But not surprise.”

The surprise came the next morning, when we learned that Babchenko was in fact alive. The Ukrainian intelligence services had staged his murder as part of an elaborate sting operation to break up Putin’s assassination network in Kiev, which has been busy for some time. The authorities revealed that they had already captured the man targeting Babchenko, and they hoped he would lead them to those who had ordered the killing. The details are still coming out, but apparently the bait was taken and a  was made. There are hopes that the entire network may be unraveled.

At a news conference, Babchenko apologized for the pain he had caused his friends. (He hadn’t even told his wife, so his health may still be in danger!) He accepted responsibility and said that he would never have taken such desperate measures if the situation weren’t so dire. Those of us forced into exile by Putin’s crackdown on dissent are in a perpetual state of mourning for our colleagues, and so I cannot be anything but happy that Arkady is alive. I have lost too many friends to bullets and beatings to spend my anger on anyone other than the assassins and the man in Moscow who commands them.

Some are making the argument that this ruse damages public trust in Ukrainian authorities and bolsters Kremlin propaganda. I don’t accept that. As Babchenko said to his critics on social media: “Let us see you face your killer and choose between professional ethics and survival. I chose survival.” That a form of disinformation was used to ensnare the agents of the man who has made so much use of it is ironic, but not contradictory or self-defeating.

Here’s the real headline: There’s a war going on in Europe, and Ukraine is on the front line. Babchenko and others like him are targets of a system of assassins run by Russia around the world. Putin is also backing Bashar al-Assad’s brutality in Syria, hacking elections in the United States and Europe, and spreading lies and propaganda. He began this war years ago, and he won’t stop until he and his gang are faced with isolation and the loss of their power, riches and access to the West.

Putin’s critics ultimately have no protection against his bombs, bullets, nuclear isotopes and nerve agents. The only real defense is deterrence, by making the penalty for such acts unbearably high. Russian dissidents and journalists have no way to inflict such penalties on Putin and his thugs, of course, so the responsibility falls to the leaders of the free world, where the value of human life supposedly still has meaning.

Nor are the victims exclusively Russians. On May 24, the same day the Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team announced Russian forces were responsible for shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014, killing all 298 on board, French President Emanuel Macron was in St. Petersburg, where he was making energy deals with Putin. On the day of Babchenko’s “murder,” German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier reasserted Germany’s commitment to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which will increase the amount of gas Germany gets from Russia, thus making it even more dependent on the Kremlin. All this despite Putin’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine.

This is what appeasement looks like. But today it doesn’t come in the form of a treaty promising “peace for our time.” Today it’s all about fat contracts for Russian gas and oil. That’s how Putin funds his hybrid war on the West. That’s the money he uses to pay people to kill us.

After the news that Babchenko was alive spread through our event in Oslo, I took the opportunity to remind him that expectations for the rest of his career were now very high, as with everyone who has ever been resurrected. I had last seen him in March in New York City, where he was a speaker at PutinCon, a conference put together by the Human Rights Foundation. Babchenko  has no illusions about the United States finding common ground with Putin’s Russia. “Putin’s main weapon is propaganda,” he said in his talk. He spoke about his service in the Russian army, fighting in two horrific wars in Chechnya — also a part of Russia, don’t forget. “We soldiers were told that the Chechens hated us, so we had to hate them and kill them. Now Putin has Russians hating you.”

We are lucky to have people such as Babchenko to speak the truth. But we won’t have them around for long unless we can protect them.

Author Talks: Edge of Chaos: Dambisa Moyo with Garry Kasparov | May 7th, 2018

Intelligent Machines Will Teach Us—Not Replace Us | WSJ | May 7th, 2018

by Garry Kasparov

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Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov on the overblown fears about AI

Over the centuries, humans have created countless technologies to save ourselves from backbreaking physical labor and mindless routine. AI continues that progress by taking over many rote cognitive tasks that don’t require human judgment, strategic planning or creativity. Whether it’s browsing millions of legal documents or scrutinizing CT scans, machines can now do much expert work faster and more precisely than their human creators. New forms of artificial intelligence will surpass us in new and surprising ways, thanks to machine-learning techniques that generate their own knowledge—and even their own code. Humans, meanwhile, will continue up the ladder to management.

We’re not being replaced by AI. We’re being promoted.

My chess loss in 1997 to IBM supercomputer Deep Blue was a victory for its human creators and mankind, not triumph of machine over man. In the same way, machine-generated insight adds to ours, extending our intelligence the way a telescope extends our vision. We aren’t close to creating machines that think for themselves, with the awareness and self-determination that implies. Our machines are still entirely dependent on us to define every aspect of their capabilities and purpose, even as they master increasingly sophisticated tasks.

Our outdated vocabulary stokes our fears. “Artificial intelligence” sounds like an unnatural rival of our own, as an artificial sweetener is to sugar. We should instead think of AI as “augmented intelligence.” Our increasingly intelligent machines are making us smarter, just as our past technology—from pulleys to hydraulics, and sailing ships to rocket ships—made us stronger and faster. For the first time, machines aren’t just giving us answers more quickly and accurately. They are generating new knowledge that helps us better understand the world. Imagine a chess program with the potential to trounce human opponents and explain its moves to us, revealing the patterns that turn knowledge into practical wisdom, like a father teaching chess to his daughter or son.

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That day may be close at hand. In December, Demis Hassabis at DeepMind, an artificial-intelligence unit of Google parent Alphabet Inc., unveiled his latest chess program, the first of its kind. The project, called AlphaZero, is a generic machine-learning algorithm with no chess knowledge beyond the rules. After playing against itself for several hours, AlphaZero crushed one of the world’s strongest traditional programs, which, like every other successful chess program in history, had been programmed with existing human knowledge of how best to play the game.

AlphaZero’s domination was produced with no opening library of moves, no human input about the relative value of the pieces—nothing at all. This unique creation generated its own knowledge to become the strongest chess-playing entity in history; human experience would have held it back. For decades, better programming and processors led to incremental improvements in AI. AlphaZero was a sudden leap—the sort we should expect to see more of as machine-learning models move into disciplines like cancer screenings, asset management, law enforcement and education, to name a few. With only minor exaggeration, in four hours AlphaZero taught itself all the chess knowledge—and more—that computer science had long assumed would come from human masters.

 That is the real promise of this new generation of AI: creating new knowledge, not just good results. Instead of processing human instructions at incredible speed, they create their own guidelines from scratch and discover patterns invisible to us. Instead of analyzing millions of human games to find the best way to play, they can generate their own data and find rules that apply to the real world. These machines will be able to go beyond “what” and tell us “why.”

Whenever there’s a brilliant advance in robotics or machine intelligence, people send it to me on social media with messages proclaiming, “We’re all doomed!” But the notion that these machines could become human-hunting Terminators is absurd. Intelligence and autonomy of movement don’t equal free will and killer instinct.

So please stop fretting. Technology is the reason most of us are alive to complain about technology. Be concerned about how humans might abuse new tech, because humans still have a monopoly on the capacity for evil. But quailing about awesome robots is like refusing to get into a car without a driver or an elevator without an operator.

Garry Kasparov is the author of “Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins,” a security ambassador for Avast Software and a member of the Foundation for Responsible Robotics’ executive board.

Saving America from itself: Trump is a symptom, not the disease | Daily News | May 6th, 2018

 

By GARRY KASPAROV



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American friends, you might not like to hear this coming from a Russian, but your Founding Fathers did not trust you at all. Don’t feel bad, because that most remarkable constellation of 18th-century intellect and courage didn’t trust anyone.

The first modern democratic republic was founded on this healthy distrust of human nature, which led the Founders to construct a web of checks and balances to create the first nation of laws, not of men. The Founders were so skeptical because what they were attempting had no precedent. They prepared for the worst because they saw it all over the world: a world ruled by monarchs and dictators and warlords.

The authors of the Constitution fretted about a democracy that might slide into mob rule, or a President who might fashion himself emperor. They worried that too much political influence could accrue to small groups with extreme positions, and that a largely uneducated populace could be easily swayed by a demagogue who preyed on voters’ basest instincts and self-interest.

They were concerned that elected officials might exploit their powers of office to seek private gain instead of the public good. You might say that the Founding Fathers saw Donald Trump coming, 229 years in advance — although if they had also foreseen Twitter, they might have reconsidered a few things.

The safeguards the Founders built into the U.S. Constitution have held up remarkably well not by being rigid, but by being able to adapt and improve.

The Founders did not trust even themselves and had no pretentions of infallibility. A nation of laws it is, but the system has also allowed for the greatness of individuals to manifest, for the right man at the right time to lead the nation, even the world, through times of great change or trouble.

Abraham Lincoln is the most obvious example, although, focusing on foreign policy alone, I wonder how different the world would look today had individuals of weaker character been in the Oval Office instead of Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan.

This elasticity also means it’s possible for the wrong man at the wrong time to do significant damage if the checks decline to check and the balance becomes unbalanced. It has been 44 years since the test of Richard Nixon, and the American system has become loose and lax from a generation of partisan pushing and pulling.

Every abuse by one party is in turn embraced and expanded on by the other, and so on in a vicious downward spiral. As the institutions weakened, the people’s faith in them — and the belief in the principles underlying them — have weakened as well.

Perhaps the most visible evidence of this decay is in foreign policy, where it is now generally accepted that the President has nearly complete autonomy to direct diplomacy and war, although this is far from what the Founders planned.

“Only Congress can declare war” has become little more than an oft-cited anachronism. While literally true, U.S. Presidents from both parties have lobbed hundreds of cruise missiles and expanded military action with special forces, drones and covert operations that are barely overseen by Congress, let alone authorized.

The Senate is also required to approve treaties with other nations, but President Obama’s Iran nuclear deal was just the latest example of how easy it is for the executive to sidestep such constraints. Instead of an open debate on agreement’s merits, we got constitutional jousting, executive waivers, lawsuits and hasty lawmaking that shouldn’t please anyone on either side.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, but compromises on principle are the streetlights.

And what do you do if the executive simply refuses to nominate people for key positions? The Trump White House has left hundreds of positions vacant, gutting the State Department in particular. The bloated bureaucracies in D.C. could use some trimming, but not having U.S. ambassadors in hotspots like Egypt, Turkey and South Korea isn’t a sane way to do it.

While much work is simply left undone, undelegated power accrues upward, to the Oval Office, which is right where Trump wants it, free of oversight and public scrutiny. This has left the least-prepared, most unstable individual in the history of the presidency to conduct foreign policy by Twitter.

The charades and parades taking place between the Koreas right now is a perfect example. The photo-ops and proclamations are hollow at best, and at worst they risk empowering and prolonging the life of the North Korean concentration camp nation for years.

North Korea’s nuclear weapons make this a far deadlier version of the game that Obama played as well, making grand peacemaker statements about Russia, Cuba, Iran and Syria that have cost lives, not saved them.

It was wrong of Obama and it’s wrong of Trump, much as Obama’s 2009 Nobel Peace Prize was as much of a mockery as South Korean president Moon Jae-in saying that Trump now deserves one.

For what? Perhaps they can make the statuette out of North Korean uranium, because that’s the only way Kim Jong-un is going to give any up.

“If my guy does it, it’s fine. If your guy does it, it’s not” is a recipe for disaster that was prepared and cooked to perfection with Trump’s election.

Previous Presidents bent the letter of the law to advantage, but there was rarely a sense that doing so was itself the point. Trump’s administration has gone to combative new extremes while ignoring or subverting congressional and court decisions on everything from implementing sanctions against Russia to banning immigrants from specific countries.

“Can Trump really do that?” is often asked by Americans who never realized how much of their government’s operation had become based on the honor system. Obama may have acted out of misplaced idealism and Trump act out of cynical self-importance, but the rule of law is harmed either way.

These dangerous trends are what led me to form the Renew Democracy Initiative a year ago. I first reached out to some friends who were horrified by what the Republican Party had become under Trump’s influence. The original group included Octavian investor and publisher Richard Hurowitz, and prominent conservative intellectuals Anne Applebaum, Max Boot and Bret Stephens.

We all agreed that Trump is a symptom, not a cause. The populist nationalism he represents is like an opportunistic infection that takes advantage of an immune system weakened by years of poor diet and heavy smoking. A healthy body politic cannot produce a President like Trump any more than a healthy political party could choose him as its nominee.

To get to the root of the crisis, we knew we had to expand our group both ideologically and geographically. We reached out across the aisle and across the ocean with a manifesto that decries the extremism and hyper-partisanship that has made it increasingly difficult to discuss politics without hatred and hysteria.

I’m delighted that many leading lights on the left have joined us, from renowned legal scholar Laurence Tribe to proud “Hollywood elite” Rob Reiner. Historians Jon Meacham and Elizabeth Cobbs have signed on, and novelist Richard North Patterson has become a most eloquent critic of this age of unreason.

They, too, understand that it’s not enough to be anti-Trump, or anti-anything. We are united despite our many political differences because we realize that none of our goals can be achieved if the democratic institutions we all believe in aren’t functioning.

Meanwhile, the virus of illiberalism is spreading, and not just within its old Cold War borders in places like Poland and Hungary. Nationalists and demagogues are also thriving with considerable domestic support in free world bastions like Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States.

NATO member Turkey has moved into the “unfree” column, the Philippines is on its way, and the U.S. President praises their autocratic leaders as strong and popular.

For half the population of the U.S., the Soviet Union I was born in might as well be ancient Troy, the stuff of legends. The existential Communist threat that focused the free world’s mind so effectively is long gone, and good riddance.

But in its place are dozens of smaller threats, none big enough to earn the attention necessary to do much about it, but cumulatively destabilizing: Islamist terror, Russian hybrid wars, corruption and kleptocracy, failed states and waves of refugees.

The free world’s political fractures make it nearly impossible to meet these external challenges, not to mention the internal ones of skyrocketing debt and rising economic inequality.

The center is still there, being shouted down by the fringes. Radical rhetoric that would once have drawn condemnation from all sides is finding an audience among people who are increasingly convinced that the only answer to extremism is equal and opposite extremism.

But wise elders touting sanity and centrism aren’t going to motivate many of the 13 million Americans who voted for Bernie Sanders, let alone Trump’s 63 million or the even more critical 90 million who didn’t vote at all in 2016.

It is therefore vital to produce a positive agenda for real action. We want to look to the past not for solutions, but for inspiration. Young people desire grand challenges and we have failed to offer them outlets for their ambition and creativity. The Founders believed that each generation would find ways to keep democracy alive and it’s time to prove them right.

We must make building things up more attractive than burning them down. After you’re done watching “The Avengers: Infinity War,” it’s time to really save the world.

Kasparov is the chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative and of the NY-based Human Rights Foundation.

Kasparov: Armenia Unrest Is Political Bellwether | Voice of America | April 25, 2018

ORIGINAL ARTICLE AT VOICE OF AMERICA

by Danila Galperovich

Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov is today one of the most renowned figures of the Russian opposition and was the organizer of the recently concluded Free Russia Forum in Vilnius. In an exclusive interview with Voice of America’s Russian service about the latest dramatic events in Yerevan, he said that the will of the people in Armenia for change was a key factor in the development of the situation in that country.

“History is not over, but there is one very important lesson we can learn from there: When people are lied to, they get tired of it; when they are ready to defend their freedom and their right to choose who will lead them, power retreats,” said Kasparov, who is half-Armenian. “The main lesson is that it’s a demonstration of the unity of the nation. When we see students, workers, priests, some in the military [participating in the protest], it makes it impossible for the authorities to suppress it by force.”

Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan resigned unexpectedly Monday after days of protests against him by opposition supporters who claimed he was clinging to power after serving the maximum 10 years as president.

Armenia’s turmoil deepened Wednesday as tens of thousands of people took to the streets after the opposition accused the ruling Republican Party of refusing to cede power following Sargsyan’s departure. Later in the day, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, the Republican Party governing partner, announced that it had quit Armenia’s ruling coalition, calling for the election of a prime minister with “the people’s confidence.”

Domestic focus, honest elections

In a region dominated by “strongman” politics, the grass-roots demonstrations, which protest leaders have been careful not to paint as pro-Western or anti-Russian, are focused on a domestic agenda led by honest elections.

Armenia, which seceded from the Soviet Union in 1991, has, like neighboring Caucasus nations, struggled to overcome the legacy of central planning and remains dependent on Russia for aid and investment.

But Kasparov believes that prevailing conditions in Armenia are nonetheless specific to that country.

“It is a special situation there: a practically monoethnic state, three decades of war — one day sluggish, another day turning into a more acute phase,” he said. “There is the Karabakh clan [Karabakh military], and there is the Yerevan party — that is, there are many specific factors that do not apply to Russia.”

The opposition figure also noted that Russia’s powerful influence on the situation in Armenia continued. Russia, which maintains a military base in the country, has said that it is “very attentively observing what is happening in Armenia,” but ultimately considers the unrest a domestic issue.

On Wednesday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement calling on political forces in Armenia to engage in dialogue and act within the law to resolve the situation. They also dismissed any parallels to events that inspired Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan revolution.

The United States responded to developments by thanking Sargsyan for his many years of service and called for a transparent democratic process to determine his successor.

Russian influence

“Armenia is effectively under the all-powerful influence of [President Vladimir] Putin’s Russia, and it is clear that the majority of enterprises are one way or another controlled by Russian oligarchs. These ties were formed over a very long time, including military ties,” Kasparov said. “Armenia, unlike Ukraine, has no borders with the West. It is trapped between Azerbaijan, Turkey; Iran, Georgia are also there; you can’t go too far [without reaching] either Turkey or Russia, if we talk about the border.”

Nevertheless, according to Kasparov, Sargsyan’s resignation is a bellwether for Russia.

“Today, the whole world is in motion. Revolutionary changes are taking place everywhere,” he said. “Many of them are negative and destructive, but it is clear that we have entered a period of change. Armenia, I think, is a bellwether, showing that attempts to preserve the situation in Russia, attempts to return to the past … all the same end with a revolutionary explosion. Armenia is simply this bellwether indicating that change is inevitable. And the question is how peaceful and nonviolent these changes will be.

“Armenia has avoided, largely due to its national peculiarity, bloodshed and violent confrontation/ The extent to which this is possible in Russia is difficult for me to say. I fear that we missed the possibility for such a peaceful, nonviolent transition in 2011-2012, and that the changes in Russia will, of course, be more volatile.”

Thus, he said, it is necessary to prepare for such changes.

“It is necessary now, it seems to me, to think about what will happen in Russia when the day comes that patience completely runs out,” Kasparov said. “Why will that happen? There are landfills that make it impossible to breathe, corruption is monstrous, a sharp deterioration in living standards, banking collapses. There are many examples in history when such a combination of factors produced this explosive combination. And what needs to be done, I think, is what we talked about at the last Free Russia Forum in Vilnius: We need to prepare for this moment in order to propose a plan of action.”

Darker outlook for Russia

While former Soviet republics such as Armenia may see long-term political changes emerge from this week’s protests, Kasparov believes that the situation in which changes could arrive in Russia is less favorable than the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“We cannot again, as in 1991, be caught by surprise. That will be unforgivable,” he said. “Because if at that time it was unexpected — and any change then seemed good — then today Russia has no such window of opportunity. There is no such upside. There was still economic and industrial potential then, but today the situation is different. It is much worse. Russia is mired in corruption, industrial devastation and wars. And its international reputation is actually much worse than it was 27 years ago. And society does not have the potential for change, the desire to make the country better, the desire to become part of the civilized world.”

“The most important task now is to talk seriously about constitutional reform, about what Russia should look like, what will be the path of this transition,” Kasparov said. “We have our own economic, political, social and foreign policy factors, and we need to take them all into account in order to have a sufficiently well-articulated program of action that can be proposed. The person that offers a program of action — even if it is, as articulated, radical in the opinion of many — is usually the one that inspires the people to follow.”

This story originated in VOA’s Russian Service.

The Sinquefield Effect: The Resurgence of American Chess | April 12th, 2018

By Garry Kasparov

ORIGINAL ARTICLE AT CHESS HALL OF FAME

2018 will be an eventful year in the chess world. This November, Magnus Carlsen, the reigning world champion, will defend his crown against Fabiano Caruana, who last week became the first American since Bobby Fischer in 1972 to become the challenger for the undisputed World Chess Championship.

Such a pairing would have sounded fantastical when I was climbing the chess Olympus in the 1980s, back when the mighty Soviet chess machine to which I belonged boasted a majority of the world’s elite players. Consider that Carlsen captured the title from Viswanathan Anand of India in 2013, and now, a Norwegian versus an American! Thanks largely to a generation raised with super-strong chess computers and the internet, chess has become truly global.

Just as remarkably, to the extent that chess has a new center of gravity it is the United States, and in particular, Saint Louis, Missouri. Caruana won the right to challenge Carlsen by winning the Candidates Tournament on March 27, 2018 in Berlin. Among the eight players in that tournament were two Americans: Caruana and Wesley So. Both live in Saint Louis.

Nor is this new, chess-centric Spirit of Saint Louis limited to hosting elite players. The upcoming championship clash will be followed live online by millions of spectators watching a broadcast from Saint Louis. That’s where three superbly entertaining Grandmasters will break down each move from a studio in the basement of the local chess club, a few blocks from Forest Park. These broadcasts have become a way for chess to transcend its small traditional audience, even if my cherished game is not quite ready to compete with the Super Bowl for viewers.

This April, the second floor of the same building will host the U.S. Chess Championships for the 10th consecutive year. Nearly half the participants in the U.S. Chess Championship will be Saint Louisan: Of the top 10 American players, not only Caruana and So but also Ray Robson and Varuzhan Akobian now live there. Top international players also flock to the Gateway City. In August, the world’s best will compete there in the sixth annual Sinquefield Cup, one of the world’s strongest events.

This feast of chess talent is a classic American melting pot. Caruana was born in Miami, learned to play in Brooklyn, and spent most of his teenage years in Europe. So, the current U.S. Champion, was born in the Philippines, Akobian in Armenia, and Robson in Guam. So and Robson both moved to Saint Louis to attend Webster University in Saint Louis’s suburbs, on chess scholarships. Webster’s powerhouse team, coached by the Hungarian-born Grandmaster Susan Polgar, won the U.S. college championship five years running through last year. (Saint Louis University was a credible third in 2017).

How did all of this come to pass? You can work your way back by following the money, but money without passion is often squandered. In this case, it leads you back to a man, and a family, with a remarkable passion for chess.

In 2005, Rex Sinquefield, a Saint Louis native who had made a fortune in the financial services business, moved back home. One of his goals was policy influence; a conservative-libertarian, Sinquefield is now Missouri’s biggest—and therefore most controversial—political donor. But it was a lower-profile Sinquefield project that may turn out to have even longer-lasting influence in Saint Louis and beyond. His goal was to boost the popularity of a game he’d enjoyed since boyhood, chess. Partly he just wanted more of his fellow Saint Louisans to enjoy it. But he also believed, as I do, that the game chess helps instill self-discipline and strategic thinking in young minds.

Sinquefield bought a 6,000 square foot building in an old neighborhood that evokes Washington’s Georgetown and whose residents had once included T.S. Eliot and Tennessee Williams. In July 2008, he reopened the structure as the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis, with plush furnishings, an attractive game room, and a broadcast studio in the basement. Then the club, and the Sinquefields, started to build a chess culture in Saint Louis.

It’s truly a family affair. Rex’s dynamic wife Jeanne was a driving force behind the Boy Scouts of America adding a chess merit badge. Their son Randy runs the state-of-the-art studio that brings the chess world to Saint Louis online. This isn’t just about money, but tremendous dedication and hard work. Instead of looking for a quick splash, they have built a complete system for kids, parents, coaches, and schools. Half a world away from Moscow, Saint Louis is the true heir to the Soviet chess machine. Perhaps this is why it’s the only place I feel comfortable occasionally breaking my retirement vows to test myself at the board—albeit with more enjoyment than sporting success of late.

Today there are chess programs in 140 schools across the metropolitan area, including the public schools in the city and in Ferguson, as well as in several rural districts in central Missouri. The club offers frequent tournaments, group lessons, private lessons, lectures and even summer camps. With more than 1,000 members, it’s now among the world’s largest chess clubs.

Before this Saint Louis chess Renaissance, the United States did not have a suitable venue for world-class tournaments. It didn’t have a deep-pocketed champion who would sponsor a world-class tournament out of his own pocket. It didn’t have programs to attract and develop world-class players capable of producing a gold-medal Olympiad team and a world championship challenger.

Now the U.S. has all of those things—because Saint Louis has all of those things. I wouldn’t say that Rex Sinquefield did it entirely from scratch, however. After all, the first official world chess championship in 1886 included a brief stop in Saint Louis! But if Rex’s master strategy continues to bear fruit, the world chess championship may soon return to his beloved birthplace. It would be a fitting crowning achievement for what has become the chess capital of the world.

Kasparov Makes His Move Against Putin Ahead of 2018 Midterms | OBSERVER |April 27th, 2018

By Davis Richardson •

04/27/18

READ ORIGINAL ARTICLE AT OBSERVER.COM

Chess wizard Garry Kasparov is advising a neo-conservative challenging Vladimir Putin’s favorite congressman, Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), during this year’s midterm elections.

After attending Manhattan’s first ever “PutinCon”—a gathering organized last March by Kasparov alongside other leading Russian dissidents—longshot GOP congressional candidate Paul Martin walked away with the grandmaster’s blessing.

“We were very pleased to see someone who was challenging Rohrabacher who was one of the “heroes,’” Kasparov told Observer during a phone interview. “Very few people understand the real threat coming from Putin to America and the free world at large.”

“There’s a fog around a lot of Republicans over what’s really going on,” added Martin on the threat posed by Putin’s regime. “I see this as the single greatest crisis our nation’s facing, and I see Rohrabacher very clearly as somebody on Putin’s side who has been a supporter and lobbyist for his agenda.”

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As world leaders and U.S. intelligence agencies condemn Moscow en masse—for influencing elections, approving extrajudicial assassinations on foreign soil and supporting dictators in Middle East geopolitics—Rohrabacher’s tenure in Washington has been recast in the Soviet 2.0 lens.

The Senate Intelligence Committee interviewed Rohbrabacher extensively over multiple trips to Russia and a meeting with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in London ahead of the 2016 election. For years, the congressman opposed the Magnitsky Act, legislation passed by Congress intended to curb human rights violations after the murder of a Russian dissident, and benefited from an April fundraiser hosted by Blackwater founder Erik Prince, who himself is under investigation for allegedly establishing a backchannel between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

“Looking at Rohrbacher’s records, we can find he made statements defending Putin’s aggressive policies in 2008,” explained Kasparov. “He was the only American politician who blatantly blamed the Republic of Georgia for attacking Russia and exonerating Putin from his aggressive act…him being compromised or having significant interest in supporting Putin are two rational explanations that come to mind.”

“Best case is that Rohrabacher is so wrapped up in Russia and Putin that he’s ignoring those kitchen table issues in the district,” said Martin. “Worst case, he’s fully compromised and is some kind of Russian agent.”

Players in Orange County’s jungle primary to dethrone Rohrabacher include a pioneer of stem cell research, a former Nestle head and a Google executive-turned-global humanitarian. All question Rohrabacher’s ties to Putin, but none transformed the Russia question into the defining theme of their campaign like Martin. The candidate’s eagerness to tumble with Moscow, through his own turf in California, sparked a joint event with Kasparov in Washington, D.C. earlier this week, where both figures discussed Russian disinformation tactics and Putin’s grand strategy.

“I don’t think Putin had a clear agenda: It’s more about spreading chaos. Putin, unlike other ideologues, is not selling just one ideology for you to buy in and believe in,” said Kasparov. “He’s very good in spreading, not even lies, but rumors and stories and trying to convince you that truth cannot be known.”

“He’s trying to undermine the values that were the core of successful countries,” the chess grandmaster continued, citing the dissemination of the Soviet Empire as a time when the free world allowed Putin’s regime to rise. “Unfortunately, there’s quite an irony, where new technology and modern means of communication were invented in the free world and are now being used by Putin and alike to undermine the political foundation of the free world.”

The attempted assassination of a former Russian spy in London, which subsequently sparked a tit-for-tat expulsion of diplomats and diplomatic crises, galvanized collective action against Putin’s regime. Sensing an awakening in public perception, Kasparov is playing his own chess game against the Kremlin involving education and dialogue.

Still, he worries that what happened in London may happen to him.

“People don’t ask me anymore why I chose New York over London because they understand London is a far more dangerous place because of the number of Russians and Russian money there,” said Kasparov. “Here in New York, I have to watch out because the ability to protect myself is quite limited.”

“I want this country to recognize the threat coming from Putin,” he continued. “It’s no longer Russia, it’s no longer Russia’s neighbors. It’s a global reach. Putin’s hybrid wars will never stop.”

Kasparov on Conversations with Bill Kristol | May 5th, 2018

On the threat posed by dictators, and the need for the West to defend itself. Click “Show more” to view all chapters. For more conversations, visit http://conversationswithbillkristol.org

In his most recent appearance on Conversations, former world chess champion and human rights activist Garry Kasparov shares his perspective on threats to Western democracies from dictators abroad and illiberal movements at home. Analyzing the geopolitical situation, Kasparov argues that the challenge to the West posed by dictators like Putin remains significant and even growing. Turning to Western societies themselves, Kasparov diagnoses a dangerous complacency about the effort required to sustain political liberty. Finally, Kristol and Kasparov discuss how America can recapture the will necessary to defend itself and its principles.