Garry Kasparov's Blog, page 45

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Consumers can lead the way in pressuring tech companies to respect security and democracy | Avast Blog | March 21st, 2018

by Garry Kasparov

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We are now a few months into 2018 and the scope of malicious digital activities is already expanding.

The example on everyone’s minds is, of course, Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, now further confirmed by special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. The Kremlin’s use of social media to stoke existing partisan tensions in the U.S., achieved through a sophisticated multi-million-dollar operation, resulted in the indictment in February of thirteen Russian nationals and three companies.

We see the dangers of our high-tech lives in the news headlines every week, and it’s essential to distinguish hysteria from the bigger threats. On the same day as the first fatal accident involving a self-driving car, Facebook came under fire after it was revealed that a voter-profile company had harvested over 50 million Facebook profiles. The pedestrian death in Arizona is a tragedy, of course, and it reminds us that there are always setbacks and dangers in racing ahead with any new technology. The Facebook news, however, and what has already been revealed about how the platform was exploited by Russian propaganda and fake news, is far more relevant about the threats we, and our society, face in our high-tech environment.

Exchanging your personal data for services is so common because it works. As the expert Zeynep Tufekci describes the Facebook story in the New York Times, this wasn’t technically a data breach, it’s a business model. For users, it feels like getting something for nothing, and that may be true on a personal level, at least in the short run. Having everything about you—and your social network—sold to advertisers or political operatives might feel a little creepy, but is it so bad? First, keep in mind that all the personal data you share in exchange for services doesn’t stay in one place. It’s frequently sold, traded, and stolen. Second, it’s exploited in ways that have great risks for society, allowing targeting and manipulation on a scale only possible in the digital age.

None of us is going to go “off the grid” or delete all our social media accounts. (Although users leaving and others threatening a boycott is likely the most effective way to push the balance back toward user privacy.) We can, however, protect ourselves better. Most social media platforms have privacy settings that offer very little privacy by default; you can make them stricter. Some browsers allow this as well in their settings, and some third-party security applications can do an even better job. And if the idea of a company or hacker browsing your browser history makes you nervous, a VPN is becoming a common choice. If this sounds like a hassle, so is locking the doors to your car and house and brushing your teeth every day. We do these things for health and safety, and digital hygiene is just as important.

Two other recent events highlight the potential for government abuses in cyberspace. Such events are happening all the time, whether they are covered extensively by the media for a few days or stay under the radar until a major scandal breaks. There are changes we can push for in our technology infrastructure that will help make us safer, although the companies that create and maintain that infrastructure must also be pressured to make the environment more secure. Systemic changes are necessary to ensure that the products of digital innovation contribute to human flourishing, and not to authoritarianism and repression.

Macau, an autonomous territory in the south of China, recently put forth new cybersecurity legislation. If passed into law, they would establish a draconian surveillance regime in the region. All internet users would have to identify themselves fully, using their real names, in all of their online activities; internet service providers, ISPs, would be required to keep logs of this activity for one year. Local and centralized cybersecurity committees would be created to keep track of this information, working in conjunction with government departments, ostensibly to prevent cyberattacks. In short, the legislation would lay the groundwork for mass state surveillance under the guise of increased national security.

Macau, a Portuguese outpost until 1999, still has some vestige of democratic liberties, which is the only reason news about this program became available at all. In the rest of China, as in so many other authoritarian states, a totalitarian digital infrastructure is already in effect. As I always do, I remind you that while many free countries also have powerful data collection capabilities, they are part of the push-pull with government oversight, media, NGOs, and empowered citizens. None of those exist in a dictatorship. How a government treats the people is what matters.

Also in February, Facebook-owned social media platform Instagram recently removed posts by Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny after a complaint by the Russian government, followed by threats to ban entire services in Russia. The posts provided evidence for corruption, containing images and video footage taken on a private yacht that suggest a bribe was offered by a prominent oligarch to the deputy prime minister.. Russia demanded that the video be taken down and Instagram complied, although the video remains available on Google’s YouTube.

It is deeply concerning to see U.S.-based companies, who achieved their success thanks to the openness and competition of the free world, bending so willingly to the demands of authoritarians. In a country like Russia, where the government has a virtual monopoly over traditional media, social media is a key way for activists to reach their supporters. When Facebook takes down sensitive information at the behest of a dictatorship, it directly supports that regime’s suppression of dissenting voices. There is also leverage in calling these regimes bluffs. Actually banning Facebook and Instagram, or Google and YouTube, or iPhones, would result in a serious backlash in Russia and elsewhere. Instead, these regimes enjoy a double standard while bullying and censoring these American-owned platforms.

Companies like Facebook, Google, and Apple must articulate the principles they stand for. Technological progress is not a human value. Neutrality does not exist. Claims that they are apolitical are deflections, and even by doing nothing they become complicit. Companies from the free world that empower the world’s most repressive regimes should be held to account. The myth that economic engagement alone will help liberalize authoritarian governments has been refuted time and again. Dictatorships use these powerful tools against their own people and against the nations that created them. They may not have been designed as weapons, but they are used as weapons.

The tech giants must end this double standard—or lack of standards—even if that means staying out of certain markets. They must recognize that they wield enormous power in shaping the future and, moreover, that it is their own long-term interests to protect freedom and democracy. These are the bedrocks of innovation—a world without them is one in which human potential is left unrealized and future technological advancements are never are achieved. Consumers have the power to drive these changes, which is preferable to government regulation that risks inhibiting innovation.

Of course, even if the major tech giants institute this courageous and forward-thinking approach, we will still face threats. China and Russia can develop their own tools. We have already seen Russia exploit weaknesses in the internet architecture (and human nature) to tamper with elections around the globe. China, meanwhile, has an immense population advantage that helps it gather vast amounts of data, which is key for progress in the sphere of artificial intelligence. Nevertheless, the free world still holds a decisive advantage; we have tremendous brainpower, creativity, and a major head start. We must fight to keep this edge.

With all of that said, I would like to conclude by paying tribute to one of the greatest visionaries of the internet, and one of its most unwavering optimists. John Perry Barlow, the founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), passed away last month at age 70. The EFF is a non-profit focused on defending freedom of expression and privacy online through expert analysis, legal advocacy, and grassroots campaigns.

I support the EFF’s mission and Barlow’s pioneering efforts to realize the incredible promise of the internet. But perhaps due to my Soviet background, my philosophy diverges in a key way. While the world always needs utopian visionaries to help us realize our potential and inspire our dreams, my realist side reminds me that fulfillment of any technology’s potential depends on the intentions of the people who use it. While the internet offers a space that can seem to transcend traditional power dynamics, it has become, inevitably, another arena for the same global conflicts that rage offline. The online world is inseparable from our human one—we cannot escape the problems of bad government and hateful values through the seductive illusion of a cyber-utopia. It must be possible to influence the architecture of the internet to make it more difficult for criminals and dictatorships to abuse its power without losing the freedom and innovation it enables in the free world.

As part of the fight against repression, then, we must ask major tech companies to do their part, as well as institute commonsense technological design measures that make the misuse of digital tools more difficult. Oversight, transparency, and accountability are always the cornerstones; there is no other way to build the trust that distinguishes the free world from the unfree world. In conjunction with a broader societal push for freedom and democracy, these steps can help transform the appealing vision of internet optimists like Barlow into an enduring reality.

Garry Kasparov: World Cup 2018 and the ugly side of the beautiful game | ESPN | March 27th, 2018

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by Garry Kasparov

Editor’s Note: With Russia hosting the 2018 World Cup, this is an op-ed on his native country from former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, chairman of the NY-based Human Rights Foundation and the author of ‘Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped’.

Sport can provoke human passion like nothing else, perhaps aside from true love. Every loss, every victory, can provoke heartbreak or exultation — and that’s only the fans. Sports fandom also has an unmatched ability to unite people across borders and boundaries of every kind. Young and old, rich and poor, all can be swept up together to celebrate excellence and competition that provides us an escape from the concerns of daily life.

Sports also creates bonds and memories that last a lifetime. I don’t remember exactly how old I was when I learned to play chess, but I clearly remember the 1970 World Cup when I was 7. On our black-and-white TV in Baku, Azerbaijan, I watched Pele and the extraordinary Brazilian champions, the legendary semifinal between West Germany and Italy, and the controversial extra-time goal that eliminated the Soviet Union in the quarterfinals against Uruguay. (The ball was out!)

Forty-eight years later, the World Cup is taking place in Russia for the first time. I won’t be there to enjoy it, however, having left my country in 2013. While the dictatorship of Vladimir Putin — in my dictionary, the only accurate description when one man has been in total power unchallenged for 18 years — is not hospitable for dissidents or democrats, it is very welcoming to grand sporting spectacles like the World Cup and the Olympic Games.

Just four years ago, Russia hosted the Winter Olympics in Sochi, a subtropical resort that required the most expensive Olympics in history (summer or winter) to slap together venues and residences that were falling apart even before the torch went out. Fifty-one billion dollars doesn’t buy what it used to when so much of the money is funneled away. I joked at the time that most of the Sochi gold went to Switzerland, Panama, and the Cayman Islands even before the Games began.

Keep in mind that Russia is not a country with money to spare. The oligarchs buy English football teams and Miami condos, and oil and gas revenue can make for rosy GDP numbers, but most Russians are getting by on less than $500 a month. Even for wealthy countries with low levels of corruption — South Korea and Japan co-hosting the Cup in 2002 comes to mind — these events tend to be boondoggles. In a country like Putin’s Russia, one of the least free in the world, it’s a colorful distraction and a way to fulfill the kleptocratic mandate: privatize the profits, nationalize the costs.

The World Cup will be Sochi times 12, that being the number of host venues across the vast expanse of Russia. Stadium readiness has been a struggle despite the use of prison labor and immigrants from Central Asia and North Korea working in conditions that have resulted in dozens of deaths.

With the Russian economy collapsing, Putin will boast about how he can still bring these events to Russia. The tournament draw put Russia into the weakest group in World Cup history, and Putin will be quick to annex (ahem) any success by the Russian squad for himself, as he did in Sochi.

It’s just as clear why FIFA and the IOC like having their events hosted by autocratic regimes, despite their tired pabulum about ideals. In the wake of the Sepp Blatter-era corruption scandals, FIFA is moving to make the World Cup bidding process more transparent. This is laudable, although my personal experience battling the international chess federation, FIDE, taught that these transparency initiatives are often designed to buy time to find better ways to hide the money. International sports organizations often exploit a legal limbo between jurisdictions, a quasi-diplomatic status that is easily abused.

What is to be done? As a sportsman who represented my country for decades, the Soviet Union and then Russia — and yes, chess is sport if you’re doing it right — I have trouble with boycotts that unfairly punish athletes. Had a unified international response against Russia hosting the World Cup come early enough it might have been possible to relocate it. Qatar is still scheduled to host the Cup in 2022 despite numerous abuses and scandals, and after North Korea’s propaganda coup at the PyeongChang Winter Games this year, it’s clear that collective response is a lost cause.

Everyone moves on to the next event, the next crisis. Russia has already been forgiven for the worst doping scandal in history. FIFA’s massive 2015 corruption case is still in the courts.

In Sochi, activists used the international media presence to expose Russia’s anti-LGBTQ laws, although Putin was quick to clamp down as soon as the Games were over. An environmental activist arrested during the Games was put in prison for two years for spray-painting a protest message on a fence.

But during the World Cup, the police might be relatively cautious in handling foreign visitors and journalists. The bold should exploit this to peek behind the curtain and report truthfully on the dire conditions in Russia.

We can support the beautiful game without supporting the world’s ugliest regimes.

Kasparov warns of a Russia increasingly devoid of freedoms | LA Times | March 20th, 2018

By ANN M. SIMMONS

MAR 20, 2018

READ ORIGINAL ARTICLE AT THE LA TIMES

Until his retirement from the professional game in 2005, Garry Kasparov was widely considered to be the greatest chess player of all time. These days, the Russian grandmaster has moved from battling opponents at the checkered board to fighting for democracy and civil rights.

He is the chairman of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation, whose mission is “promoting freedom and human rights around the world and … supporting dissidents, no matter what cause they stand for, as long as it’s creative dissent,” he said.

Dominating its recent agenda is Russian President Vladimir Putin. Earlier this month, the foundation held PutinCon, a conference in New York dedicated to examining the Russian leader’s rise to power, his 18 years at the helm and his vision for the country’s future.

The gathering came two days before Putin was reelected to a fourth term as president and at a time when Moscow faces drastically deteriorating relations with the West, including U.S. financial sanctions and diplomatic expulsions from Britain following accusations that Putin sanctioned the poisoning of a former Russian spy living in England.

So are you expecting human rights to deteriorate further with the reelection of Putin?

The situation will deteriorate because … we have a dictator that made it very clear that he would not go anywhere voluntarily. This dictatorship will not end by the ballot. They totally control everything and the grip on power in Russia has reached a point where you can hardly expect any social uprising that can lead to the demise of the regime, unless the regime is being weakened by geopolitical defeat.

How do you respond to supporters of Putin who say that Russia doesn’t want a democracy like the West, that Russians want and need control by the proverbial “iron fist”?

It’s absolute nonsense. First of all, I don’t want anybody to speak on behalf of Russians. What I want is just for people of my country to be able — as in America or Europe — to express their views freely, without fear of being punished for their dissent. And then we’ll see what happens.

And if Putin is so popular … why are his critics and potential opponents either being jailed or pushed into exile or killed?

People are saying, “Oh, he’s very popular.” How do you evaluate popularity in a dictatorship? If you have one restaurant in town selling food and all the other restaurants are burned to the ground, is this [sole] restaurant popular?

Also, polling in this country and elsewhere in the world means that someone calls you — a stranger — and asks your opinion. Now, what do you expect [of] Russian people, many of whom were born in the Soviet Union? They still know what the KGB is. They know that a KGB lieutenant colonel is in power now. Do you expect them to be frank telling the stranger on the phone what they think about Putin?

We can see clearly that people given the opportunity to live in the free world always perform better, because at the end of the day progress is based very much on our ability to challenge the status quo, our ability to go against authority, our ability to accept failure as a part of our road to success.

The central planning economy, the communist dictatorships, they cannot accept failure because it contradicts the notion of … supreme power.

What kind of lessons and strategy from being a chess grandmaster could be transferred to your human rights work?

I could start reading a long lecture about the lessons from the game of chess that can help you make decisions, strategize, be creative, read the opponent’s mind. The problem is … that in Putin’s Russia it didn’t help me at all, because in chess we have fixed rules and unpredictable results. In Putin’s Russia it’s exactly the opposite. The result always stays the same, while the rules are what the Kremlin thinks today is the most convenient to attain their goals.

Former chess world champions Garry Kasparov, right, and Anatoly Karpov play an exhibition rematch in Valencia, Spain, on Sept. 22, 2009. (Alberto Saiz / Associated Press)

 




You were once a beloved chess champion. Everyone knew you. How do you feel Russians view you today?

There are a lot who are either on the [Kremlin’s] payroll or some who have crazy ideas that Russia should be in confrontation with the West, and many of them believe that I am a bad guy. But I still believe I have a massive following, and if you want free and fair elections, I would be very happy to debate Mr. Putin, or whoever he appoints, on Russian television. The problem is that Putin has never participated in a single debate in his life.

How do you envision Russia post-Putin?

The collapse of the Putin regime — which I believe is inevitable — doesn’t automatically mean that the next day you have representative democracy.

I always warn people not to expect immediate changes because it’s not about just building democracy on the rubble of dictatorship. It’s about giving people a chance. Unfortunately they can very often miss [this chance]. They can blow it up.

I can guarantee you that as long as Putin stays in power nothing will happen. There will be no positive changes, and moreover we could see that this paranoid dictator is getting more and more concerned about his own physical safety. Unlike dictators of the past, he has his finger on the nuclear button. And in the last few months you could hear him contemplating nuclear conflicts. He’s reaching a point where he doesn’t see the world without him being in power. And that’s very dangerous. That’s why every year he stays in power, every month, even every day, puts us in more danger.

The only way for the free world to confront this very dangerous development is to make sure that some of his close associates will be forced to choose between their personal interests and their fortunes kept outside of Russia, and deciding if they want to follow Putin’s criminal orders.

So the only way for us to see the split between Putin and the Russian elite is if the free world actually demonstrates political will to fight for our values and to make sure that any attack on our interests — on American elections, on European elections, God forbid on America’s electrical grid — will be met with an overwhelming response.

You’re very passionate and outspoken against Putin. Do you fear for your safety?

Would it help? People kept asking me when I left Russia, why I chose New York and not London. They’re not asking anymore.

Garry Kasparov speaks during a rally in central Moscow in April 2007. (Maxim Marmur / AFP/Getty Images)

 

ann.simmons@latimes.com

“The Truth About Putin” | The Weekly Standard | March 13th, 2018 |

READ ORIGINAL ARTICLE AT THE WEEKLY STANDARD

The March 18 elections are nothing but a sham—the Russian dictator will serve just as long as he pleases

MAR 13, 2018 | By GARRY KASPAROV

On March 18, the popular leader of Russia, Vladimir Putin, will be reelected to another six-year term as president. This is both a plain statement of fact and a complete falsehood. In American political parlance, this statement can be taken literally, but not seriously.

The conundrum is due to the weakness of language and how we allow even the simplest words to be manipulated and distorted. That simple sentence about Putin and the Russian presidential election on March 18 is wrong in every possible way aside from the date and Putin’s name.

Before we unpack the many fictions in that statement, let us begin with what will happen, literally, on March 18 in Russia. Many people will go to polling stations and cast votes for different candidates. Putin and the other candidates will be shown on television dropping their paper ballots into boxes and smiling as the cameras flash. Vladimir Putin will receive a healthy majority of the vote, likely around the 64 percent he got in 2012. He will appear on television to thank the Russian people for their continued support and for returning him to the presidency for another six years. The Russian press will report on the world leaders who call to congratulate Putin on his victory, a cohort likely to include the president of the United States of America.

That very last part leans into speculation, I admit, although it would be ungrateful of Donald Trump not to send a kind word to Putin, who invested far more time and effort on Trump’s election than he has on his own. In fact, the Kremlin has worked harder to promote the other candidates in the Russian election than to advertise the incumbent, so desperate are they to pump up turnout among a demoralized citizenry that is well aware that Putin isn’t going anywhere after 18 years in power.

But let us turn to the first lie in that opening sentence, that Putin is being elected on March 18. There is no real selection taking place. When I retired from professional chess in 2005 to join the Russian pro-democracy movement against Putin, I was frequently asked how my chess experience might help me in politics. My answer was that it wouldn’t help much at all, because in chess we had fixed rules and uncertain results, while in Russian politics it was exactly the opposite. That is even truer today, when the rules are whatever the Kremlin decides that day, and the results have been known for years. The domain name “putin2018.ru” was registered in 2010, during the Obama administration’s infamous “Reset” with Russia and its dreams of Dmitry Medvedev liberalization. Putin2024.ru, putin2030.ru, and putin36.ru have also been locked up, in case you were wondering.

Putin will continue in power as if by birthright, and calling this an election soils the meaning of a word that should be treasured. Yet the media of the free world persist in referring to “elections” in dictatorships like Putin’s Russia because they have no vocabulary to call it anything else—a predicament undemocratic regimes exploit very well. Even calling Putin a “president” is at best inaccurate and abominable propaganda at worst. A president is “the elected head of a republican state” according to my dictionary, while Putin isn’t elected and Russia isn’t a republic. He may have been a president when he first came to power in 2000, that I will grant. But since 2012, when he returned to the presidency, unconstitutionally, after allowing Medvedev to warm the chair for four years while ceding none of his power, there has been no doubt at all that Putin should simply be called a dictator.

Let’s move on to the next major lie in my opening statement, the idea of Putin’s popularity in Russia. I could not begin to count the number of times I’ve been forced to address this myth, the persistence of which I again attribute to our lack of language to describe modern dictatorships. Terms like “polls” and “popularity” as applied to politicians in the free world have very different meanings in authoritarian regimes. I’m fond of asking in response to questions about Putin’s “popularity” if a restaurant is popular if it’s the only one in town and every other restaurant was burned to the ground.

This is not to say that a dictator or his policies cannot have popular support. The problem is defining what support means after 18 years of a personality cult and 24/7 propaganda that portrays Putin as a demigod protecting Russia from deadly enemies without and within. A year of fake news trolling and half-baked social media memes had half of America and its vaunted media running in circles in 2016. Imagine what it does to a population when that’s all there is, every hour, every day, for nearly two decades.

The same definition issue arises with the word “election.” In a free society, the day of the vote is the culmination of a long democratic process that depends on equal access to an unfettered media, fair conditions, debates, etc., none of which have existed in Russia for nearly 20 years. Postulating that Putin would win anyway even if the March 18 election were honest is a meaningless exercise. If he and his policies were truly popular, in the real sense of the word, he wouldn’t need to spend so much time and effort dominating the media, eliminating rivals, and rigging elections large and small. Persecuting bloggers and arresting a single protester standing in the town square with an anti-Putin sign does not strike me as the behavior of a ruler who believes in his own popularity.

As for polling, when an anonymous caller reaches a Russian at home to ask his opinion of the man who controls every aspect of the Russian police state, it would take great courage to report anything less than enthusiastic support. It is a testament to the bravery of many of my countrymen that Putin does not yet receive the 99 percent approval scores that Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi enjoyed up until the minute they no longer had the power of life and death over their own citizens.

* *

With even his nominal opponents openly conceding that Putin will rule for as long as he pleases, the Kremlin has become obsessed with turnout this year. Empty polling stations make it more difficult to keep up the charade of democracy. So this year a wider selection of opponents has been allowed to appear on the ballot. Most previous elections followed a formula of including one Communist and one Nationalist candidate to frame Putin as the moderate protecting Russia and the world from these dangerous extremes. It says quite a bit about how tired this tactic has become that the Nationalist being trotted out, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, first ran for president against Yeltsin in 1991. The longtime Communist, Gennady Zyuganov, has at least finally ceded his role to a successor.

The Communist bogeyman wasn’t just a prop back in 1996, when many liberals, including me, made the profound mistake of supporting Boris Yeltsin against Zyuganov to the point of turning a blind eye to Yeltsin’s abuse of power to win the election. He did lasting damage to Russia’s democratic institutions. Russians were still in shock after the collapse of the USSR, and our new country was foundering thanks to rampant corruption and the first Chechen war. Russians had been under the illusion that democracy would lead directly to a better standard of living, as if ballot boxes were ATMs. The free Russian press—yes, one existed for a while, yellow and raucous as it was—enjoyed blasting Yeltsin as a lackey of our former archenemy, America. Many Russians were starting to wonder if a return to communism would really be so bad.

Yeltsin was anything but a firm hand, but the reformers had known all along that the advertised benefits of liberalization would take a while. Handing the fragile Russian state over to the Communists while the ink was not dry on our new constitution was a terrifying thought to anyone who hoped to see Russia finally join the community of free and stable nations.

Yeltsin was saved in 1996, at the high cost of failing to build up the strong democratic institutions the country desperately needed. Four years later, a leader far more ruthless and anti-democratic came along, and Putin found it all too easy to bend and break these feeble institutions. It’s still unfathomable that Russia went from joyously celebrating the end of totalitarianism to electing a KGB lieutenant-colonel in just nine years. Never take your liberty for granted, and be careful whom you vote for because it may be the last election you’ll ever have.

In 2012, oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov was added to Zyuganov and Zhirinovsky to spice up the election theater a bit. Prokhorov was even allowed to make some muted criticisms of Putin’s record. He collected a meager 8 percent, barely outstripping the clownish Zhirinovsky, and quietly returned to his normal duties of draining capital out of Russia and owning the Brooklyn Nets.

That 2012 presidential election took place in the shadow of the largest Russian political protests of the post-Soviet era. Starting in December 2011, hundreds of thousands took to frozen streets across the country to protest parliamentary elections that were corrupt even by Putin’s low standards. Anger over the particularly blatant vote-rigging reached its peak on December 24, when 120,000 people gathered at Sakharov Prospect in Moscow to protest “the party of crooks and thieves,” as opposition leader Alexei Navalny had dubbed Putin’s United Russia, under the banners of “For Fair Elections” and “Russia Without Putin.” Here were speakers—I was one—who, unlike the Kremlin-sponsored candidates for president, were not shy about putting the blame on Putin. For the first time since I helped launch the relatively sparse Dissenters’ Marches in 2005, it looked like there might be enough popular disgust to change the Kremlin’s power calculations.

“I see enough people here to take the Kremlin or White House,” said Navalny—referring to a Russian government building, not the home of the American president. “But we are a peaceful force—we won’t do that, for now.”

It is easy to say in hindsight that this was our opportunity to risk all. Had we set up a camp that day, would the people have supported us in demanding new elections? Had we marched to Red Square, would a million Muscovites have come out to join us in demanding Putin’s exit? We’ll never know. In chess, we say that the player with the initiative is obliged to attack, otherwise the initiative will be lost and the counterattack will likely be decisive. In December 2011, we had the initiative, but we did not attack. Putin did not make the same mistake.

Protests continued well into 2012, but the crucial momentum had been lost. A series of draconian laws were passed to crack down on dissent. Prison sentences for civil disobedience went from days to years. Police attacked the “March of Millions” in Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square a day ahead of Putin’s inauguration on May 7—the Kremlin quickly labeling the rally “riots by extremists aimed at destabilizing the country.” Afterward, instead of merely targeting the organizers as usual, dozens of Bolotnaya protesters were arrested and prosecuted. The homes and businesses of opposition leaders and their families were raided, resulting in political show trials not seen since Soviet days. Putin’s gloves were off. By spring 2013, I understood that I could not return safely to Russia, and I joined my wife and daughter permanently in New York. In February 2015, the opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was gunned down in front of the Kremlin.

* *

The implicit, or even explicit, offer made by authoritarians is stability in exchange for liberty. High oil prices allowed Putin to keep this bargain for a while, aided by an international community that lost interest in promoting liberty as soon as the Berlin Wall fell. Putin was welcomed by the G7 as an equal while destroying democracy and civil society at home. Imagine how difficult it was for us in Russia to attack Putin’s regime as undemocratic while he was being embraced by the leaders of the free world. Even Putin’s invasion of neighboring Georgia in August 2008 resulted in no censure or sanction. He was rewarded by Obama and Hillary Clinton’s reset a few months later, confirming to him that a move into Ukraine would also go unchallenged.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2014 and soon announced the annexation of Crimea. This time the United States and the rest of the West did respond, but by then Russia was a very different place. Putin had consolidated power beyond any challenge at home, building up the military, the security forces, and the propaganda machine he was about to unleash on the world. Energy prices had plummeted, and Putin needed some way to justify his eternal hold on power. And so he made the fateful turn that every dictatorship eventually must when it needs enemies more than allies.

The vile anti-American and anti-E.U. rhetoric in the Russian media reached new levels of hatred and fear-mongering. Only recently have Americans and Europeans seen up close how much damage these toxic disinformation campaigns can do even in small doses, but Russians have been immersed in them for years. Every channel, every paper, every online forum and social platform—it’s a barrage, a flood of poison.

This isn’t the old Communist scheme of heavy-handed state censorship and official party lines. (The old joke about the two main Soviet papers, Pravda (“Truth”) and Izvestia (“News”), was “There’s no news in the Truth and no truth in the News!”) Nor is it the labor-intensive “Great Firewall of China” model of real-time censorship and high-tech filtering. Befitting Putin’s KGB roots, he instead built an alternate reality of propaganda, one in which there are hundreds of sources and opinions that all may contain elements of fact and fiction while always making sure to keep the larger truths well hidden—and reinforcing support for Putin above all.

The clearest example of this method in action was the Kremlin’s response to the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on July 17, 2014. It didn’t take long to determine that MH17 was downed by a Russian-operated BUK antiaircraft missile battery inside Ukrainian territory. If you have any doubts about this at all, it is testament to how effective the Kremlin disinformation campaign has been at sowing doubt. By this point, we have everything from radio intercepts to visual identification of the actual BUK battery being moved back and forth across the Ukrainian border.

Issuing denials and attacking all the evidence was only a small part of the Russian response. Most of the effort instead went into churning out alternative scenarios about what had happened to MH17. There were no fewer than a dozen separate conspiracy theories spread by the Russian media and their agents, ranging from saying that the BUK missile was Ukrainian to blaming the CIA or Israel. One evening on Russian television, one channel had a documentary soberly explaining how a Ukrainian Su-25 fighter jet had done the deed, while at the same time another channel was demonstrating, with equal gravity, exactly how a Ukrainian missile battery had shot it down.

There are an infinite number of ways to lie and only one truth. Propaganda today is not a wall, not a dike holding back information from reaching the people. It is a flood, overwhelming our critical thinking. The concept is not to promote a particular narrative or agenda but to create doubt and to make people believe that the truth is unknowable. There are no Russian forces in Ukraine. Russia didn’t meddle in the U.S. election. The popular Vladimir Putin was reelected on March 18, 2018.

That is what you’ll hear, over and over, after Russia’s election without selection. This year’s “Prokhorov model” of an alternative candidate is the socialite and television personality Ksenia Sobchak. She has done more campaigning abroad than in Russia. The daughter of Putin’s one-time boss, former St. Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak, she is allowed to talk tough about Russia’s problems while stopping short of criticizing Putin himself, who is rumored to be her godfather. There’s also Grigory Yavlinsky, who has been the loyal liberal opposition, alternately added to and removed from the ballot like a puppet on a string, for decades. They are the antique decorations of democracy, the props in the production. The charade must go on.

Alexei Navalny remains a legitimate opposition figure but has been banned from the election. He is now calling for the boycott we needed six years ago.

* *

Last week’s attempted assassination with a nerve agent of a former Russian spy in England reminds us that Putin is willing to poison bodies in the free world, not only minds. Why would he do this? Why would he call attention to his murderous ways now? Well, I’ll turn that around and ask instead, why wouldn’t he? Dictators don’t ask “Why,” they ask “Why not?” Putin killed FSB whistleblower Alexander Litvinenko with a radioactive isotope in the center of London in 2006, and what price did he pay? Three British prime ministers collaborated in hushing up the investigation in order not to offend Putin and shut down the countless billions in Russian cash that has flooded Britain in the last decades. After 18 years in power, Putin believes he can buy or bully his way out of anything. Will anyone prove him wrong?

Putin will push until he is pushed back. This will only take will from the West, and the methods exist. Putin cannot afford a geopolitical defeat that would make him look weak in front of his cronies in Russia. Targeted sanctions like the Magnitsky Act can force Putin’s gang to choose between their loyalty to him and their riches abroad. Isolation and deterrence work, and they are more likely to avoid war than the current track of appeasement. Like any bully, Putin only picks fights that he is sure he can win. History tells us that sooner or later, he will become so overconfident, so accustomed to his opponents folding their cards against his weak hand, that he will overstep, potentially resulting in a catastrophe on a global scale.

Russia’s election spectacle on March 18 isn’t only a domestic distraction. It provides Putin’s defenders in the free world with rhetorical ammunition, as do the approval polls and fake controversies over the fake opposition candidates. There is no form of democratic process or opposition in Putin’s Russia. Pretending otherwise makes you complicit in his propaganda. Stop calling them elections. Stop calling Putin a president. Stop calling to congratulate him on his victories. Let us begin the fight against Putin’s lies with the fundamental truth about what he really is.

Garry Kasparov is the chairman of the Human Rights Foundation and the author of  Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped.

Kasparov speaks @ IBM’s “Machine Learning Everywhere: Build Your Ladder to AI” | Feb 27th, 2018

Garry Kasparov sits down with Dave Vellante and John Walls at the IBM’s “Machine Learning Everywhere, build your ladder to AI” event in New York City, Feb 2018

“Garry Kasparov: It’s time for humans and machines to work together” | IBM Industries | Feb 20th, 2018

Read original article at Medium.com

Jordan TeicherFollow
Content Producer, IBM Industries
Feb 20th, 2018
A Q&A with the chess grandmaster and author

You might not expect Garry Kasparov — a man famous for being the first chess world champion to lose a match to a supercomputer under tournament conditions— to be a vocal advocate of friendly collaboration between humans and AI.

But that’s exactly the position Kasparov presents in his new book, Deep Thinking, which recounts his historic 1997 match with IBM’s Deep Blue and spells out his hopeful vision for a future shaped by AI. It’s the same position he brings to talks with business leaders around the world, including a web broadcast, “Machine Learning Everywhere: Build Your Ladder to AI,” with IBM.

That outlook actually shouldn’t be all that surprising to those who’ve followed Kasparov’s career beyond Deep Blue. Despite his adversarial relationship with intelligent machines in competition, the chess grandmaster has long touted their educational benefit for chess players.

Those machines have come a long way since 1997. As AI technology has advanced, its influence has transcended the chess world. Today, Kasparov said, it’s a potent force that will fundamentally transform industries.

Now, Kasparov told Industrious in a recent phone interview, it’s time for industry leaders to make their move and seize the opportunity. Our discussion has been edited for length and clarity.

Industrious: How have your thoughts about AI changed during your chess career?

Kasparov: I was quite skeptical about a machine’s ability to play good chess in the 80s. But even in 1996—during my first match with Big Blue, the match I won—I already realized it was just a matter of time before we would have to reconsider our relationship with machines. I expected it would take longer. By the rematch in 1997, I realized it was time to look to humans and machines working together.

How do we need to rethink our relationship with machines as we work with them?

With so much power now brought by machines, we have to find a refuge in our humanity. It’s about our creativity, our intuition, our human qualities that machines will always lack. So we have to define the territory where machines should concentrate their efforts. This is a new form of collaboration where we recognize what we’re good at and not interfere with machines where they’re superior—even if it hurts our pride.

What kind of fears do business people have to get over with regard to AI?

The fears are not new. There are always fears about new technology. In the past, the applications for new technologies were more or less obvious. But now, while most generally understand that AI can help us, its applications are far less certain. The vast uncertainty scares a lot of people in the top management. People are looking for universal applications. But there is no universal application for AI. The algorithm of human and machine collaboration will differ from case to case.

You’ve lamented the fact that a lot of pop culture representations of AI have been pretty negative. Why do you think we have largely not yet been able to imagine a bright future for AI and human collaboration?

I can tell you that it’s clear when you talk to big audiences that people are more inclined to buy the dark vision of the future because it coincides with their instinctive fears, rather than the more optimistic outlook. My argument is that, yes, every technology brings both bad and good and every technology can be used for good and evil but if we concentrate on the negatives we’ll never see the opportunities. There are so many opportunities waiting for us around the corner, so let’s stop talking about the negatives. The future is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

How AI Is Changing the World |Paley Center for Media | Feb 6th, 2018

Garry Kasparov, Francesca Rossi and Jason Tanz, moderator

IBM Research AI’s Francesca Rossi and former world chess champion and AI scholar Garry Kasparov discuss the dangers of AI growth and possible regulation, as well as the effect of AI on the job market.

Part I

Part II

Photos:

Artificial Intelligence: How AI Is Changing the World 

 

 

 

ABOUT THE PALEY CENTER: In an era of rapid change in media and technology, the not-for-profit Paley Center for Media explores the evolving ways in which we create, consume, and connect through media. With locations in New York and Los Angeles, and the foremost public archive of television and radio programming, the Paley Center produces and curates programs, forums, and educational activities that engage the general public, industry professionals, and the creative community in an ongoing conversation about the impact of media on our lives. The Paley Center for Media is a hub of innovation and connection for entrepreneurs, investors, and consumers with its finger on the pulse of the next big thing in media. Go to http://www.paleycenter.org to learn more.

2018 Resolution: Keep Your Tech, and Yourself, Up to Date | Avast Blog | February 1st, 2018

by Garry Kasparov

Keeping up to date on technology will contribute to your security and privacy online

As we enter 2018, I encourage everyone to include a simple resolution on their list: make sure you are well-informed about the technology you use, and avoid getting swept up in false narratives and exaggerated claims about its dangers. Let me be clear: there are genuine threats, but they don’t come from the technology itself. As I always say, technology is agnostic. The dangers come from the bad actors that are willing to use any tool at their disposal, including those in cyberspace, to do harm. Our real target should be combating these forces, not demonizing this or that latest technological development. Education about the realities of our digital world is the best antidote against misplaced fears. And, conveniently, it is also the best way to inoculate ourselves against the security issues that technology does indeed pose.

Within all our favorite devices and applications, there are always lurking security vulnerabilities waiting to be exploited. When they inevitably come to light, we become hyper-focused on them for a few days, or weeks at most, and then return to our usual practices. Even now, with so many well-publicized hacks, how many of you change your passwords regularly, turn on two-factor authentication, and follow other basic cybersecurity best practices.

Instead of repeatedly being surprised by data breaches, we should expect them. These exploits are a fact of our technological landscape. Flaws are unavoidable in a fast-paced, competitive environment, with the massive chip exploits nicknamed Meltdown and Spectre just the latest examples. Every company is striving to be faster and cheaper, which makes mistakes and related security holes nearly inevitable. The market will push back, and consumers and regulators will punish such companies, at least to a degree, but the bottom line is that exploits are a permanent reality. As I’ve noted before, the most effective way to protect yourself is to inoculate yourself against the “virus,” so to speak. Maintaining good personal security practices keeps you safer, but it’s also about herd immunity. The more people are aware of the constant threat and practicing good digital hygiene, the less likely an “epidemic” is to break out. Staying informed is the first layer of defense.

That said, once we have taken steps to safeguard our security, grave threats—at the personal, national, and global levels—remain. These threats are serious and the most difficult to address. That does not mean we should shy away from tackling them, or divert our attention to less urgent problems. As recent events demonstrate, the dangers of avoiding these challenges are mounting. Take the recent efforts of Russian hacking group Fancy Bear to penetrate the U.S. Senate and the upcoming Winter Olympics in South Korea. Far from being deterred after its 2016 hacking of the Democratic Party, the group has been emboldened by its successes and is taking on new campaigns. (And as is always the case, it’s the ones you don’t know about that do the most damage.) In its latest endeavor, it designed a sophisticated email phishingscheme to gain access to Senate emails. Concurrently, it released a batch of emails stolen from U.S. Olympics Committee officials in retaliation for their exposure of Russia’s massive state-sponsored doping program.

While all of this has been unfolding, much of our national attention has been shifted toward pushing for transparency and accountability at home. In the most recent pendulum swing in the debate, security hawks won a victory with the long-term extension of key parts of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Under the new legislation, the U.S. government has been cleared for six more years to use various online surveillance techniques, including browsing email and search histories, without warrant requirements the government calls burdensome.

This may sound routine, since government representatives nearly always favor the expansion of government powers, no matter how much “small government” rhetoric they spout. But this development marks a reversal in the tide of the national conversation, which has favored privacy advocates since Edward Snowden’s dramatic release of NSA documents in 2013. While the discussion is absolutely an important one to continue having, I worry that it has become a distraction from much graver threats to security. North Korean and Russian hackers, after all, are not subject to Congressional oversight!

As we push for the preservation of important freedoms at home, we must stay vigilant against the actors abroad that want to undermine the very foundations of Western democracy. Often, this involves difficult tradeoffs. We want to safeguard our elections, but we don’t want the government to have excessive online surveillance capabilities. That means striking a delicate balance between privacy and security—and, sometimes, that entails sacrificing a degree of individual liberty for better collective security.

In my last post, I wrote about our willingness to exchange troves of individual data, such as biometrics, in exchange for the convenient services and capabilities companies offer in return. Trying to preserve genuine privacy in the face of such widespread collection is an exercise in futility. Instead, savvy users will take common-sense steps to protect themselves in a world where Facebook, Apple, Google, and Amazon are all competing for their information.

You can find plenty of actionable, expert advice on how to protect yourself on this site alone, from optimizing your password strategy to circumventing insecure internet connections with a VPN. At the same time as you implement measures to keep yourself safe online, I hope that you will remember that it isn’t just big public corporations competing for your attention and clicks, and it isn’t only the U.S. government accessing your communications. As fashionable as it may be in some circles to refer to these giant private companies and democratic governments as “evil,” this can distract us from the threats from the real bad guys. Don’t worry, I’m not letting the companies off the hook. More than anyone I’m sensitive to how social media has been weaponized by Russia and others while Silicon Valley shrugged its collective shoulders and counted its profits. I just want those who weaponize tech to be held at least as accountable as those who make it.

Hackers and malware are now an ever-present part of our digital reality, and authoritarian governments are increasingly able to leverage technology for their purposes. The problem is not bad technology—it’s bad people. I urge you, then, to focus on the core challenges to human prosperity: repression, illiberalism, corruption. Continue to explore the ways that technology can enhance your life, and do not fear innovation. New tools bring new opportunities, for both good and for evil. The upcoming year will present plenty of advances and obstacles alike, I am sure. With an awareness of how we each interact with technology, individually and as members of a global community, we can make sure that 2018 is a step towards greater security and freedom for everyone.

The youngest world chess champion in history in 1985, Garry first discovered the potential of AI during his famous matches against the supercomputer Deep Blue. Ever since, he’s spoken about future tech, most recently as Avast’s security ambassador.

“Vysotsky: Of course I’ll be back” | Feb 1st, 2018

During his appearance on the legendary BBC4 Radio show Desert Island Discs this week, Garry selected a Vysotsky song.

PRESS TO LISTEN TO DESERT ISLAND DISCS BBC PROGRAM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ORIGINAL RUSSIAN VERSION OF THE ARTICLE

“I don’t remember when—I may have been 12 or 13 years old—I first heard a recording of Vysotsky’s songs, but I will never forget the visceral reaction I had to the emotions that burst through from that audiocassette. Today, with a hint of irony, I remember the atmosphere of recklessness, of illicitness, everyone felt when listening to his verse while in a group. As Vysotsky put it in a song, “children are always frustrated by their age and their circumstances.” In this sense, I was no different than my peers, who were entranced by that magically hoarse voice that pulled you into the world, the world of “adults.”

Growing up, I started to gain a wider perspective and grasp the society of which Vysotsky sang. Casting aside my childish black-and-white understanding of this world and beginning to appreciate its many nuances, I could finally make an informed choice. Since then, Vysotsky has been my constant companion and guide throughout all of my life’s turning points. Every step forward along a difficult path, riddled with unavoidable risks, has brought to mind associations with Vysotsky’s poetry—that is how capably he captured the psychology of struggle and resistance.

The final stage of my ascendance to the top of chess’s Mt. Olympus turned into an unprecedented twenty-five-month marathon. Ninety-six games, played over the course of three matches, contained in them nearly the entire spectrum of human emotion: the unease of balancing on the brink of catastrophe, the bitterness of frustrated hopes, the joy of success, and the unending search for creativity. During this time, I had to rethink many things, take a fresh look at many areas of life. Now it is clear what a wide gulf separates these two versions of me: the optimistic challenger who started the battle for the crown on September 10, 1984, on the one side, and, on the other, the world champion who had withstood trial after trial and demonstrated the grit necessary to climb to the top.

Over the course of those twenty-five months, one ritual remained unchanged for me: all 96 times before battle, I received my parting words from Vysotsky. Ninety-six times, I listened to his “Horses” as they sped along the edge of the abyss. Ninety-six times, this unlikely, surreal vision forced me to find new resources for my own unending fight.

***

If you want to better understand yourself—try to live through that which Vysotsky tries to live with each one of his heroes. If you want to learn your own value, try to live up to the highest principles of citizenship, as embodied by the songs of Vladimir Vysotsky.

***

We cannot remain outside observers; we have to act and fight.

“Decide who you are—a coward or one of the chosen ones

And venture a taste of the fight.”

This simple yet ingenious formulation has been the motto of all the unrelenting seekers of destiny across time; it is the driver of all human progress and advancement.

We have to act, so that at least something changes today for a better tomorrow. We have to act in the name of the future, and in the name of those who will follow us. And, finally, we have to act so that we do not lose the lofty title of “human.” That was the axiom of Vysotsky. His life affirmed it by example.

[Excerpted from an essay in the first Soviet book about Vysotsky, an anthology published in 1987.]