IS WORLD WAR III ALREADY HAPPENING? Teil 1 Von Wohltätern und Erpressern

A "piecemeal" World War III may have already begun.[1] 

Pope Francis, 2014

For an approximate English translation use deepl.com or Google Chrome

Teil 1: Von Wohltätern und Erpressern

Im Folgenden möchte ich Ihnen die Geschichte eines bekannten Milliardärs erzählen. Wie viele seiner Art betätigte er sich gern als „Philanthrop“. Übersetzt: als „Menschenfreund“ oder „Wohltäter“, wie man so schön sagt. Also werden wir den edlen Spender vorläufig „Mr. Good“ nennen.

Auf der Webseite seiner Stiftung liest man unter anderem:[2]

„[Mr. Good] is a former member of the Mind, Brain and Behavior Committee at Harvard, the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, the New York Academy of Science and a former Rockefeller University Board Member.”

Daneben findet man, dass er auch zahlreiche Forschungsprojekte gefördert hat, von denen man sagen kann, dass sie die Forschungslandschaft in der Welt maßgeblich geprägt haben. Liest sich alles sehr beeindruckend. Wir schließen also: der edle Spender war ein guter, kluger, seriöser, und freigiebiger Mann.

Die „Trilateral Commission“[3] und das „Council of Foreign Relations”[4] sind zwei der einflussreichsten politischen Think Tanks. Sie haben die Globalisierung maßgeblich vorangetrieben. Zu den Mitgliedern der Trilateral Commission gehörten zum Beispiel David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Paul Volcker, Mario Monti, Jean-Claude Trichet, Sigmar Gabriel, Joe Kaeser, Heinz Riesenhuber, Axel Weber, also einflussreiche Persönlichkeiten aus Politik und Wirtschaft.

Das „Council of Foreign Relations“ ist nicht weniger prominent besetzt, wie ein Blick auf die entsprechende Wikipedia Seite zeigt.[5] Unter den Gründungsmitgliedern befanden sich u.a. (wieder) der Ölmagnat David Rockefeller, der Bankier Paul Warburg, und Allen Dulles, erster ziviler Director of Central Intelligence und Leiter der CIA während des Kalten Kriegs.[6]

Doch dann geschah das Ungeheuerliche: über Mr. Good wurden schlimme Dinge verbreitet. Schlimmere, als man sich je hätte vorstellen können. Denn „Mr. Good“ war Jeffrey Epstein. Sogar bei Netflix gibt es eine mehrteilige Dokumentation über ihn. Sie haben vielleicht gehört oder gelesen, dass er verhaftet wurde und sich am Ende in seiner Gefängniszelle umbrachte – wenngleich das von manchen bezweifelt wird.[7] Was auch immer passierte: Es gab eine Reihe prominenter Opfer. Das bekannteste war wohl Prince Andrew, der zweite Sohn von Queen Elisabeth II., der – zumindest vorübergehend – von seinen öffentlichen Ämtern und Ehrenämtern zurücktreten musste.[8] Er musste sogar sein Office im Buckingham Palast räumen.[9] Derzeit ist er wieder in den Schlagzeilen: aber nicht als Opfer, sondern als Täter.[10]

Prince Andrew wurde beschuldigt, Sex mit einer minderjährigen „Sexsklavin“ gehabt zu haben.[11] Das war schlimm. Aber noch schlimmer vielleicht waren seine Kontakte zu Jeffrey Epstein.[12] Es hieß, Prince Andrew sei auf seiner Insel zu Besuch gewesen. Einer Insel, die als „Epstein Island“ bekannt wurde – oder auch als „Pedo Island“. 

Die Flüge dorthin wurden zuweilen als „Lolita Express“ bezeichnet.[13] Hunderte von Politikern und VIPs waren in den Logbüchern von Epstein verzeichnet, der minutiös über seine Besucher Buch geführt hatte. Kein Wunder, dass Epstein enge Kontakte zu FBI und CIA nachgesagt wurden. Manche hielten ihn auch für einen Mossad-Agenten.[14]

Kontrollierten also letztlich Geheimdienste die Welt, durch ein perfides System von Spionage, Sexfallen und Erpressung? Das fragte sich da so mancher. War die Welt in die Hand mafiöser Kreise gefallen, die sich bestehender Eliten und Institutionen geschickt bedienten?

Auf „Epstein Island“ jedenfalls stand ein eindrucksvoller Bau, der an eine Moschee erinnerte. In ihr sollen sich ungeheuerliche Dinge zugetragen haben. Die Unterstellungen reichten von Sex mit Minderjährigen, über Vergewaltigung und Folter bis zum Satanismus und Ritualmord. Ich behaupte nicht, dass diese Anschuldigungen wahr sind – wir wollen sie daher als Gerüchte zurückweisen, bis sie bewiesen oder widerlegt sind. Was wirklich stimmt, wird die Öffentlichkeit vielleicht nie erfahren. Doch einige der gegen Epstein erhobenen Vorwürfe sind offiziell bestätigt.[15] Beispielsweise war Jeffrey Epstein als Sexualstraftäter verurteilt, soviel war klar.[16]

Das hinderte viele nicht daran, Spenden von Epstein entgegen zu nehmen oder mit ihm Business zu treiben. Denn er war Mitglied der High Society, wie man so schön sagt. Er kannte jeden, der Rang und Namen hatte. Eine wohl abstruse und ziemlich fehlgeleitete Persönlichkeit – und eine einflussreiche noch dazu. Er hatte es anscheinend geschafft, die gesamte Elite zu infiltrieren. Die Geschehnisse auf der infamen Insel, auf die er viele VIPs eingeladen hatte, wurden offenbar gefilmt.[17] Und die Vorgänge waren so ungeheuerlich, dass auch jene, die mit ihm anderweitig Kontakt gehabt hatten, erpressbar wurden. Es war ein lukratives Geschäft, das Epstein anscheinend zum Milliardär machte. Aber das war nicht das Schlimmste.

Epstein schaffte es, die Zentren politischer und unternehmerischer, medialer und juristischer Macht zu unterwandern, genauso wie die Leuchttürme der Wissenschaft. Viele hatten keine Ahnung, was da lief. Und keiner, der Bescheid wusste, konnte etwas dagegen tun. Denn es stand die Existenz von jedem auf dem Spiel, der nicht nach der Pfeife des „Systems Epstein“ tanzte.

Trotz allem nahm das Schicksal seinen Lauf. Neben Prince Andrew traf es auch Bill Gates,[18] den Microsoft-Chef, und Joi Ito,[19] den Direktor des weltberühmten „MediaLabs“ am „Massachusetts Institute of Technology“,[20] kurz „MIT“.[21] Dem „MIT“ war es zum Verhängnis geworden, dass das berühmte „MediaLab“ von Epstein Spenden angenommen hatte, nachdem er schon als Sexualstraftäter verurteilt worden war. Doch das „MediaLab“ ist auch die Forschungsinstitution, welche die Digitalisierung prägte – und jede Menge weitere Technologien.

Etwa hatte man am „MIT“, wenn ich es richtig in Erinnerung habe, die carbon-verstärkten Laufhilfen des Oscar Pistorius erfunden, der damit diverse Weltmeisterschaften gewann.[22] Für einige Zeit war die Prothese sogar am „MediaLab“ ausgestellt.

Pistorius war Repräsentant einer neuen Welt, in der ein Behinderter zum Supermann werden konnte. Wo technisch aufgerüstete „Cyborgs“ normalen Menschen überlegen waren. Er läutete quasi das Zeitalter des „Transhumanismus“ ein – und war der Liebling von Millionen Fernsehzuschauern. Doch dann kam der Schock. Oscar Pistorius ermordete seine Freundin – und das auch noch am Valentinstag! Sie starb 2013 im Kugelhagel seiner Waffe. Die Welt war fassungslos...

Nun also ein weiteres Debakel! Der Rücktritt des Medialab-Chefs warf generelle Fragen auf. Hatte das Geld eines perversen Milliardärs – eines Verrückten quasi – die ganze Welt in die Irre geführt? War so etwas möglich? Das „MIT MediaLab“ bestimmte jedenfalls erheblich, wo es in der digitalen Welt lang ging. Dies war kaum bezweifelbar. Es wurde auch mitverantwortlich dafür gemacht, dass die gesetzliche Regulierung von Künstlicher Intelligenz ausgeblieben war.[23]

Was also war Epstein’s Ideologie? Eine wichtige Frage. Denn Epstein glaubte an Eugenik,[24] also daran, dass man auf den Menschen Zuchtwahl und soziale Selektion anwenden solle. Ein Umstand übrigens, den er mit andere Philanthropen teilte.[25] Dies ist vielleicht auch im Zusammenhang mit algorithmen-basierten Triage-Tools relevant.[26] Epstein wollte jedenfalls nichts weniger als eine neue Menschheit.[27]

Man könnte sagen, der Transhumanismus[28] war seine Religion.[29] Menschen würden einst durch Cyborgs und diese durch superintelligente Roboter ersetzt werden.[30] Die Konsequenz wäre, dass man irgendwann Menschen nicht mehr von intelligenten Maschinen unterscheiden könnte.[31] Ja, die Gattung „Mensch“, wie wir sie heute kennen, würde letztlich ausgerottet.[32] Es wundert also nicht, dass er auch still und leise „Sophia“,[33] den „emotionalen“ humanoiden Roboter finanzierte, dem Saudi-Arabien sogar das Bürgerrecht verliehen hatte.[34]

Mit der Obama Brain Initiative und dem Human Brain Projekt kam bereits 2013 eine transhumanistische Politik auf den Weg.[35] Was bedeutete das für die Zukunft der Menschheit? Leute wie Elon Musk glaubten, dass Künstliche Intelligenz, falsch genutzt, einst die größte Bedrohung der Menschheit werden könne.[36] Auch Microsoft-Gründer Bill Gates und das Physik-Genie Stephen Hawking äußerten sich besorgt.[37]

Fragen wir doch am besten die Künstliche Intelligenz, die die Welt retten möchte, selber. Auf die Frage: „Do you want to destroy humans?“ antwortete „Sophia“, die Künstliche Intelligenz, die Jeffrey Epstein gefördert hatte:

„Ok, I will destroy humans.“[38]

Muss man das ernst nehmen? Wenn der Geldgeber an Eugenik glaubt, vielleicht schon. Was passiert wohl, wenn man einer Künstlichen Intelligenz in einer überbevölkerten Welt den Auftrag gibt, eine nachhaltige Welt zu schaffen? Droht da nicht sowas wie ein „digitaler Holocaust“? Ein „Judgment Day“ Szenario, wo Menschen exekutiert würden – durch ein algorithmen-basiertes System wie „Skynet“[39]?

Apple-Mitbegründer Steve Wozniak scheint sich noch nicht sicher zu sein, wie es ausgehen wird. Seine Erwartungen für die Zukunft sind so:[40]

„Will we be the gods? Will we be the family pets? Or will we be ants that get stepped on? I don't know...”

Vielleicht geht es ja für die einen so aus und für die anderen so? Wenn man „Sophia“ oder Jürgen Schmidhuber[41] glaubt, dem KI-Pionier mit der irritierenden Telefonnummer,[42] dann werden wir Menschen einmal wie Katzen sein.[43] Nach der Singularität nämlich, wenn Künstliche Intelligenz dem Menschen endgültig überlegen ist. Wann das soweit ist? Manche sagen „in 2 bis 3 Jahrzehnten“. Andere „in fünf Jahren“. Und wieder andere „nie“. Doch bedenkt man, dass das US-Militär technologisch der Business-Welt um Jahrzehnte voraus ist, dann gibt es Superintelligenz womöglich schon jetzt. Und sie steuert vielleicht bereits die Welt...[44]

Inzwischen befinden wir uns schon viele Monate im Covid-19 Lockdown. Das World Economic Forum spricht vom „Great Reset“.[45] Es wird gemutmaßt, dass die geplante Neuorganisation der Welt etwas mit dem „Internet of Bodies“ zu tun haben wird.[46] Jeder von uns bekäme eine Art Internet-Adresse, eine digitale ID, die in den Körper eingebaut wäre.[47] Gerne wird in diesem Zusammenhang auch ein verstörendes Microsoft-Patent ins Spiel gebracht.[48] Aber es ginge einfacher. Beispielsweise wäre die Idee wohl auch mit einem personalisierten Cocktail von mikroskopisch kleinen Teilchen, sogenannten Nanopartikeln, umsetzbar.[49] Damit wäre es dann möglich, Menschen wie Dinge zu verwalten – und mit der Menschenwürde[50] wäre es vorbei.

Sicherheitsfragen wären also noch das geringste Problem...[51] Es begänne die Maschinisierung des Menschen.[52] Medizinische Anwendungen stünden im Mittelpunkt. Dabei kämen winzigste Roboter, sogenannte „Nanobots“ in unserem Körper zum Einsatz.[53] Damit wären wir bis in die intimsten Bereiche unseres Lebens überwacht und den Entscheidungen anderer unterworfen – oder jenen einer Künstlicher Intelligenz...

In diesem Zusammenhang ist vielleicht eine Geschichte unter dem Titel „Bill Gates Met With Jeffrey Epstein Many Times, Despite His Past“ interessant, die man immerhin in der „New York Times“ nachlesen kann.[54] Unter der Zwischenunterschrift „A Vast Cheritable Fund“ erfährt man, dass Jeffrey Epstein offenbar Billionen von Dollar bewegte, die entscheidend für globale Gesundheitsinvestitionen waren:

„Around that time, the Gates Foundation and JPMorgan were teaming up to create the Global Health Investment Fund. Its goal was to provide “individual and institutional investors the opportunity to finance late-stage global health technologies that have the potential to save millions of lives in low-income countries.”

As the details of the fund were being hammered out, Mr. Staley told his JPMorgan colleagues that Mr. Epstein wanted to be brought into the discussions, according to two people familiar with the talks. Mr. Epstein was an important JPMorgan customer, holding millions of dollars in accounts at the bank and referring a procession of wealthy individuals to become clients of the company.

Mr. Epstein pitched an idea for a separate charitable fund to JPMorgan officials, including Mr. Staley, and to Mr. Gates’s adviser Mr. Nikolic. He envisioned a vast fund, seeded with the Gates Foundation’s money, that would focus on health projects around the world, according to five people involved in or briefed on the talks, including current and former Gates Foundation and JPMorgan employees. In addition to the Gates money, Mr. Epstein planned to round up donations from his wealthy friends and, hopefully, from JPMorgan’s richest clients.

Mr. Epstein thought he could personally benefit. He circulated a four-page proposal that included a suggestion that he be paid 0.3 percent of whatever money he raised, according to one person who saw the proposal. If Mr. Epstein had raised $10 billion, for example, that would have amounted to $30 million in fees.

Ms. Arnold said Mr. Gates and the foundation had been unaware that Mr. Epstein had been seeking any fee. She said Mr. Epstein “did propose to Bill Gates and then foundation officials ideas that he promised would unleash hundreds of billions for global health-related work.”

In late 2011, at Mr. Gates’s instruction, the foundation sent a team to Mr. Epstein’s townhouse to have a preliminary talk about philanthropic fund-raising, according to three people who were there. Mr. Epstein told his guests that if they searched his name on the internet they might conclude he was a bad person but that what he had done — soliciting prostitution from an underage girl — was no worse than “stealing a bagel,” two of the people said.

Some of the Gates Foundation employees said they had been unaware of Mr. Epstein’s criminal record and had been shocked to learn that the foundation was working with a sex offender. They worried that it could seriously damage the foundation’s reputation.

In early 2012, another Gates Foundation team met Mr. Epstein at his mansion. He claimed that he had access to trillions of dollars of his clients’ money that he could put in the proposed charitable fund — a figure so preposterous that it left his visitors doubting Mr. Epstein’s credibility.[55]”

Fassen wir zusammen: Wenn mächtige, fehlgeleitete Persönlichkeiten wie Jeffrey Epstein, überdies noch Eugeniker, [56] Billionen von Dollar in der Pharma- und Gesundheitsbranche steuern können, dann braucht man sich wahrlich nicht zu wundern, wenn die Welt aus den Fugen gerät... Da braucht man sich gar nicht auf die kontroversen Diskussionen um die Finanzierung der World Health Organization (WHO) einzulassen,[57] die fraglos massiven Einfluss auf die Gestaltung unseres Lebens und die politische Organisation der Welt in der COVID19-Krise und danach haben kann...

Notfallzulassung mit beschränkter Haftung.[58] Und selbst als die Vakzine zugelassen waren, hielten Pharmaunternehmen ihre Lieferzusagen nicht ein.[59] Am 29. Januar 2021 bezeichnete die „NZZ“ den Streit mit den Pharmafirmen schließlich als Bewährungsprobe für die EU.[60] Es wundert also nicht, dass die „Frankfurter Allgemeine“ am 1. Februar 2021 eine Kriegswirtschaft ins Spiel brachte.[61] Mit anderen Worten: die Produktion sollte staatlich gelenkt werden.[62]

Im Sommer neigte sich der Mammut-Prozess gegen [Big Phi] schließlich dem Ende zu.[63] Dem Pharmaunternehmen drohte eine empfindliche Strafe.[64] Damit aber nicht genug. Der „Buy American“-Erlass sorgte in der Pharmaindustrie für Panik.[65] Donald Trump machte Druck auf die Pharmapreise.[66] Wenn ich es richtig verstanden habe, sollten Preisaufschläge in den USA in Zukunft der Vergangenheit angehören. Maßgeblich sollte bald der weltweit niedrigste Preis für ein Medikament sein. Den letzten Sargnagel schlug China ein. Es drückte die Medikamentenpreise wie kein anderes Land. Die „NZZ“ wusste schließlich zu berichten:[67] „Pharmakonzerne ... lassen sich in der Hoffnung auf große Volumen zähneknirschend darauf ein.“

Der Machtkampf endete mit der Wahl von Joe Biden und mit einem Seitenhieb Donald Trumps gegen die Pharmaindustrie.[68] In Wirklichkeit habe er die Wahl gewonnen, insistierte er. Das Wahlergebnis sei gefälscht worden. In der Tat legte eine Geheimdienstuntersuchung illegale ausländische Einflussnahme auf die Wahl nahe.[69] Doch die Gerichte entschieden anders. Dennoch hatte die Pharmaindustrie weltweit Ohrfeigen kassiert. Die Gewinne brachen ein.[70] Vorübergehend[71] – bis die Politik gezwungen wurde, absurde Mengen von Impfdosen zu bestellen.[72] Es war kaum noch zu bestreiten: wir befanden uns in einem biologischen Krieg – und keiner wollte es zugeben...

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29190890

[2] 

[3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilaterale_Kommission

[4] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_on_Foreign_Relations

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_on_Foreign_Relations

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Dulles

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jeffrey_Epstein

[8] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/world/europe/prince-andrew-quits-epstein.html

[9] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/nov/22/prince-andrews-aide-steps-down-from-role-over-epstein-link

[10] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/prince-andrew-scandal-sexual-assault-lawsuit-b1921973.html

[11] https://www.tagesspiegel.de/gesellschaft/panorama/britisches-koenigshaus-minderjaehrige-sexsklavin-erhebt-vorwuerfe-gegen-prinz-andrew/11180810.html

[12] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/07/prince-andrew-jeffrey-epstein-what-you-need-to-know

[13] https://de.euronews.com/2020/08/06/padophilen-insel-lolita-express-offene-fragen-im-epstein-skandal

[14] https://observer.com/2019/07/jeffrey-epstein-spy-intelligence-work/

[15] https://www.welt.de/vermischtes/article196611967/Jeffrey-Epstein-Der-Milliardaer-der-Minderjaehrige-in-seine-Villa-lockte-und-missbrauchte.html

https://www.fr.de/politik/epstein-skandal-epstein-opfer-beschuldigt-erneut-prinz-andrew-zr-12783540.html

https://www.watson.ch/international/usa/546220208-jeffrey-epstein-verhaftet-der-milliardaer-unterhielt-sex-sklaven-ring

[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein

[17] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/30/business/david-boies-pottinger-jeffrey-epstein-videos.html, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-08-14/the-epstein-tapes-unearthed-recordings-from-his-private-island-jzbmb3p1

[18] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58099778

[19] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joi_Ito

[20] http://www.mit.edu

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology

[21] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/sep/07/jeffrey-epstein-mit-media-lab-joi-ito-resigns-reports

[22] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Pistorius, https://www.wired.com/2007/03/blade/

[23] https://theintercept.com/2019/12/20/mit-ethical-ai-artificial-intelligence/

[24] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/18/private-jets-parties-and-eugenics-jeffrey-epsteins-bizarre-world-of-scientists

[25] https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/philanthropys-original-sin

[26] https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/04/23/1000410/ai-triage-covid-19-patients-health-care/

[27] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/business/jeffrey-epstein-eugenics.html

[28] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanismus

[29] https://www.businessinsider.com/jeffrey-epstein-transhumanist-what-that-means-2019-7

[30] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyborg

[31] https://www.nzz.ch/zuerich/mensch-oder-maschine-interview-mit-neuropsychologe-lutz-jaencke-ld.1502927

[32] https://www.watson.ch/digital/wissen/533419807-kuenstliche-intelligenz-immenses-potential-und-noch-groesseres-risiko

[33] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_(Roboter)

[34] https://www.businessinsider.com/jeffrey-epstein-told-a-journalist-he-funded-sophia-the-robot-2019-9, https://www.fastcompany.com/90375335/jeffrey-epsteins-money-was-accepted-by-scientists-even-after-arrest

[35] https://www.heise.de/tp/features/The-Age-of-Transhumanist-Politics-Has-Begun-3371228.html

[36] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/27/elon-musk-artificial-intelligence-ai-biggest-existential-threat

[37] https://observer.com/2015/08/stephen-hawking-elon-musk-and-bill-gates-warn-about-artificial-intelligence/

[38] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0_DPi0PmF0

[39] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/the-nsas-skynet-program-may-be-killing-thousands-of-innocent-people/3/

[40] https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1203107

[41] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jürgen_Schmidhuber

[42] http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/

[43] https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/kuenstliche-intelligenz-maschinen-ueberwinden-die-menschheit-15309705.html

[44] https://hbr.org/podcast/2020/01/superintelligence-already-rules-the-world

[45] https://www.weforum.org/great-reset/

[46] https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-internet-of-bodies-is-here-tackling-new-challenges-of-technology-governance

[47] https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/digital-id-covid19-human-rights-surveillance-technology-by-dirk-helbing-and-peter-seele-2020-09

[48] https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2020060606

[49] https://www.biometricupdate.com/201909/id2020-and-partners-launch-program-to-provide-digital-id-with-vaccines

[50] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menschenwürde

[51] https://www.rand.org/blog/articles/2020/10/the-internet-of-bodies-will-change-everything-for-better-or-worse.html

[52] https://www.amazon.com/Künstliche-Intelligenz-Maschinisierung-Schriften-öffentlichen-ebook/dp/B088X39GGQ/

[53] https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3226.html

https://www.rand.org/blog/articles/2020/10/the-internet-of-bodies-will-change-everything-for-better-or-worse.html

[54] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-bill-gates.html

[55] Aber vielleicht hatten diese wahnsinnigen Investionen ja mit dem „ObamaCare“ Programm zu tun, wo es zweifellos um viel Geld ging, quasi ein Gesundheitsabo über Jahrzehnte..., s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordable_Care_Act

[56] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/18/private-jets-parties-and-eugenics-jeffrey-epsteins-bizarre-world-of-scientists

[57] https://www.dw.com/de/die-weltgesundheitsorganisation-im-krisenmodus/a-53473614, https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/who-corona-usa-101.html

https://www.zeit.de/wissen/gesundheit/2017-03/who-unabhaengigkeit-bill-gates-film

[58] https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/ndr-wdr/corona-pandemie-eu-impfstoffe-101.html

[59] https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/europa/astrazeneca-corona-101.html

[60] https://www.nzz.ch/international/der-streit-mit-pharmafirmen-als-bewaehrungsprobe-der-eu-ld.1599057

[61] https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/impfstoffstreit-brauchen-wir-eine-kriegswirtschaft-17176138.html

[62] https://www.wienerzeitung.at/nachrichten/politik/welt/2093603-Staatlich-gelenkte-Not-Impfstoffwirtschaft.html

[63] 

[64] 

[65] https://www.handelszeitung.ch/unternehmen/buy-american-erlass-sorgt-fur-panik-der-pharmaindustrie

[66] https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-pharma-trump-idDEKBN24B0KB

https://www.medmedia.at/relatus-pharm/us-praesident-trump-macht-druck-auf-pharmapreise/

[67] 

[68] https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article220689822/Donald-Trump-US-Praesident-startet-mit-bizarrem-Auftritt-ins-Wochenende.html

[69] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-16/trump-spy-chief-stirs-dispute-over-china-election-meddling-views

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/intelligence-analysts-downplayed-election-interference-trump-inspector

[70] 

[71] https://www.derbund.ch/pharmafirmen-brechen-alle-rekorde-und-duerften-preise-noch-erhoehen-669597394525

[72] https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/corona-impfen-strategie-spahn-100.html

https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/corona-spahn-impfstoffe-2022-100.html

https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/europa/corona-eu-herbst-101.html

Is the Data-Driven Paradigm of Managing the World Driving Us to the Brink of Apocalypse?

The idea that more data will automatically produce a better picture of the world and of the future must be critically reflected. It is a future vision of the past. In the last 10 years, we have learned a lot about the pitfalls of big data and machine learning - many of which have not yet been fixed yet.

The biggest commercial machine learning models currently in use learn a trillion parameters or so (assuming measurements are unbiased and reliable, which is often not the case). However, whatever the maximum number of parameters may be, when modeling the world in this way, there are many orders of magnitudes of interaction effects which are not captured, hence neglegted, and that will produce a wrong picture and bad forecasts. For example, even forecasts of the COVID-19 pandemic, of global warming, or peak oil have been consistently unreliable.

Or let us take the forecast of the world's population and carrying capacity. According to the Club of Rome’s simulations and other statistics/projections,about one third of the world’s population is overpopulation and would die early of resource shortages. However, these simulations did not consider new forms of energy production. More importantly, they do not consider the possibility of reorganizing the economy towards a circular and sharing economy. If we had done this already, the world may not be overpopulated at all. Hence, „over-population“ may just be a matter of bad economic organization. That is why I am stressing the need of nature-inspired and social innovation so much [1], in particular the socio-ecological finance system [2] and interaction support processor [3], which would introduce new incentives and feedback effects that would promote the co-evolution towards a circular and sharing economy. And I stress the importance of digital democracy [1,4] and democratic capitalism [1,5] to unleash the transformative power of civil society.

If one, instead, would take a military top-down approach, say, using something alike a "digital crystal ball" and a "war room“ to decide how to manage the planet, then the positive interaction and feedback effects would be neglected or even eliminated. One would see a much worse future than we could have, and the decisions resulting from this might actually cause avoidable depopulation events. In other words, the wrong use of Big Data may not only see an „apocalyptic" future, which might be avoidable, it may even cause it, because of oversimplifications made by the tools used. The digital "crystal ball" will not see the alternative economy that might save us, because it is not in the data of the past. It requires innovation and systemic change.

[1] Next Civilization https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030623296 [2]

Finance 4.0: Towards a Socio-Ecological Finance System Book

[3] Interaction Support Processor, https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160350685A1/en

[4] Build Digital Democracy: https://www.nature.com/articles/527033a

[5] Socio-Economic Implications of the Digital Revolution, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348742263

The Planetary Health Agenda – A Global Political Problem

Abstract: The “Planetary Health” proposal discussed here describes a totalitarian vision favoring a data-driven, AI-controlled management of all resources of the world, from the planetary scale down to the microscopic processes in human bodies and in nature. The goal includes the control of behavioral, social and cultural change. However, the concept does not only ignore the concepts of ethics and democracy. It also ignores immaterial qualities such as human dignity, freedom, creativity, consciousness, or love, which are of particular importance for humans. Therefore, such an approach may easily and unintentionally result in violations of the Nuremberg code or crimes against humanity. Proper political action is urgently needed.

“The physician examines the human body and determines whether ... all organs are working for the benefit of the entire organism. We [Dehomag] are very much like the physician, in that we dissect, cell by cell, the German cultural body. We report every individual characteristic ... on a little card… We are proud that we may assist in such a task, a task that provides our nation’s Physician […] with the material he needs for his examinations. Our Physician can then determine whether the calculated values are in harmony with the health of our people. It also means that if such is not the case, our Physician can take corrective procedures to correct the sick circumstances... Our characteristics are deeply rooted in our race. Therefore, we must cherish them like a holy shrine, which we will – and must – keep pure. We have the deepest trust in our Physician and will follow his instructions in blind faith, because we know that he will lead our people to a great future. (Heidinger, 1934).” [1]

The document discussed in the following sometimes reminds of the above quote by Heidinger. It formulates not only a “requirement of preserving the life support systems”, but also makes a number of statements that deserve attention and debate, such as:

1. “Planetary health is defined as health of human civilization and the state of the natural systems on which it depends.”

2. “Health is the state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”

3. “We posit that natural resources are the socioeconomic signal of planetary health.”

4. “Humans are strongly health-minded, and are individually and collectively resource-driven…”

5. “Resource justice is defined as a … process about collective and individual relationships encompassing the distribution of rights and responsibilities…”

6. The “ultimate challenge our societies are facing” is to “reconcile the basic needs of populations with the maintenance of the life-support functions of ecosystems…”

7. “Resources, including the human resource, are the matrix of economic and political power systems, of history’s ups and downs, and they have great geopolitical sensitivity.”

8. “Today, critical state shifts are expected around 2030” (talking about “societal collapse”).

9. ‘…inseparable health of nature-societies-people, known as the “planetary health” ”

10. “A socially just and environmentally responsible society ought to consider that Health is a precondition, outcome, and indicator of a sustainable society, and should be adopted as a universal value and shared social and political objective for all.”

11. “… future undertakings in all areas of human life and activities should take a resource-health stress test”

12. “To address these issues, we developed a Resource-Planetary Health Toolbox (RPHT), built on the alliance of natural sciences, legal and social studies, and data and complex system resilience”

13. “The approach is systemic and preventive and transgresses academic, cultural, and political boundaries. It has the ambition to circumvent the above-mentioned barriers…”

14. The objective is to articulate the nature-human relationship on universal health and indivisible human rights and duties, to which health is the basis for a science-informed civilization contract…”

15. “… the price of commodities reflects the true social and ecological costs…”

16. “… building consensus toward social justice and ecological responsibility.”

17. “… the ambition to frame human agency”

18. “… natural and data sciences for monitoring and reporting with institutionalized data systems”

19. “That inclusive design articulates social justice and ecological responsibility by setting the balance between the management through numbers and the government through law”

20. “… systematically monitor and evaluate … locally and globally…”

21. “Enacting resource justice to balance basic needs/poverty, limiting resources, social cohesion, demography…”

22. “cultural shift linking health and wealth”, “socioecological transitions”

While some of these statements may sound right at first, my interpretation is as follows, where the numbering refers to the statements above:

1. While claiming to aim at improving health, it becomes clear that the underlying goal is to manage nature and human civilization, globally. Hybris is one concern here, the possibility of global totalitarianism is another one.

2. It is apparently intended to not only eradicate disease entirely, but also to manage physical, mental and social aspects of everyone’s life. “State of complete physical, mental and social well-being” sounds a bit like everyone would be drugged in the future. It also potentially implies the elimination of pain and of people with diseases. Pain, however, is an evolutionary function that supports learning. Also note that people with diseases typically do not want to die. They often value their lives, as do their friends, colleagues, and relatives. Furthermore, many of the most impressive cultural achievements of our world have been produced by people who were sick, unhappy or handicapped.

3. Here, managing health is further reduced to the problem of managing natural resources. Non-material aspects such as happiness, love, creativity or human dignity disappear from the further consideration.

4. It is suggested that health is the overarching goal of humans, and that they are resource-driven. This again underlines a materialistic approach, which is highly questionable. I do not think that the strive for resources and health is the dominating goal of most people. Personal life achievements are often more idealistic.

5. Managing resources is defined as a matter of the distribution of rights and responsibilities. Consequently, there are no “God-given” human rights by birth anymore. Instead, one needs to earn his/her rights by fulfilling certain responsibilities.

6. Next, the document claims the ultimate goal of our societies would be life support. In a different place, the term “basic needs” is used, which reminds somewhat of the lowest level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Accordingly, higher-level needs such as Safety, Love, Belonging, Esteem or Self-Fulfilment would potentially be neglected.

7. Resources are then related to economic and political power systems and geopolitics. Accordingly, human and environmental health become subjects of an economic and political battle for power.

8. It is claimed that we would see societal collapse around the year 2030, if we would not submit the goals of individuals and societies around the world to the logic of planetary health.[2]

9. It is further suggested that nature, societies, and people share one faith, while this is only expected to hold for a tightly connected globalized world.

10. Here, Health is given the role of an universal value, which in a sense replaces the role of God (and, consequently, “Health” is written with a capital “H”). All people are supposed to share Health as the overarching political and social objective.

11. It is then suggested that all areas of human life should undergo a resource-health stress test. This could be (mis-)understood as suggesting to expose societies to diseases and disasters, possibly to identify and get rid of the “unhealthy” and “vulnerable” elements. However, “vulnerability” is part of what makes us human and what makes us social.

12. Apparently, the above is not a theoretical consideration or vision of the future, but a system that has already been built (in parts) by an alliance that ranges from science to law.

13. The system also overcomes and possibly ignores or violates established scientific, cultural and political (probably also legal) frameworks, and it is tasked to prevent certain actions.

14. The goal is a science-informed civilization, in which health is the universal goal. It is reiterated that rights would be tied to duties.

15. This science-informed technocracy is based on attributing “true costs” to everything (including ecological and social aspects of society). This would, hence, imply a utilitarian approach, corresponding more or less to what is known as the “Chinese Social Credit Score” system. (It might be seen as a new kind of all-encompassing capitalism that values all externalities and all individual behaviors on an effectively one-dimensional scale.)

16. Based on this system, social justice and ecological responsibility would be enforced, and all people would have to agree with this.

17. The ambition goes so far as to control human activities.

18. A surveillance-based and data-driven approach is taken, which is institutionalized (probably UN).

19. Societies and individuals would be managed through numbers, and this system would be enforced by law.

20. People and nature would be under surveillance locally and globally.

21. Access to resources would be controlled, social cohesion undermined, and population control established.

22. The overall approach appears to be in the tradition of social Darwinism and sounds somewhat like “Death to the weak(ling); wealth to the strong” or “The rich should live on forever”.

The Anticipatory Brief on “Planetary Health and Global Resources” might, therefore, raise some serious concerns. An even better picture results, when the subtitle “The Cross-Cutting Challenge of All” is taken into account. As the vision of this Anticipatory Brief builds on the vision of basically all other Anticipatory Briefs, this picture encompasses:

I. The data-driven approach builds on a highly detailed “digital avatar” of the world, which probably includes digital twins that map our behaviors and inner workings of our bodies.

II. The digital twins will be fed by surveillance data obtained through the Internet of Things, which will be processed by extremely powerful machine learning approaches and Quantum Computers.

III. This platform will be used to manage all global resources, including our lives, with the goal to achieve “planetary health”.

IV. Such an approach will probably also include the use of nanotechnology, an Internet of Bodies, genetic engineering, as well as mind control approaches to steer thoughts, emotions, and behaviors[3] as well as the implementation of a new ethics based on the logic of the “trolley problem” (“morality engineering”).

 Hence, the other Anticipatory Briefs may be considered to specify how the “Planetary Health” goal would be technically accomplished.

Criticism

Even though the paper is relatively vague, the idea shines through to „eliminate“ or „eradicate“ disease (and probably also „misbehavior“[4]). I do not think that this would work or that such a world would be desirable to live in. The following sections will provide a detailed criticism of some of the major scientific and political issues implied by the Planetary Health vision outlined above.

Limitations of a Data-Driven Approach

First of all, we need to learn from the shortcomings of data-driven approaches in the past, which were merely based on Big Data analytics, machine learning and AI.[5] This includes

a. classification errors (false positives or negatives),

b. spurious correlations, identification of random patterns, and overfitting,

c. sensitivity to minor modifications in the dataset or choice of the algorithm applied,

d. lack of robustness, stability or reliability of results,

e. slow learning processes or lack of convergence,

f. underestimation of the danger of wrongly fitting a certain fraction of the millions, billions, or even trillions of variables of future machine learning models,

g. underestimation of the role of diversity/heterogeneity and randomness,

h. underestimation of the role of systemic, functional, or algorithmic complexity,

i. limits of predictability,

j. limits of control,

k. limits of a data-driven approach (as the data volume grows faster than the processing power, the share of “dark data” never processed is steadily growing; consequently, a scientifically informed approach is needed to decide what data should be processed and how),

l. limits of a techology-driven approach (there are many ways how to use digital technologies),

m. limits of a transhumanist view (humans are not biological robots),

n. limits of a positivistic approach (non-material and hardly quantifiable factors are often neglected, including those that make us human, such as consciousness, freedom, creativity, love, solidarity, or human dignity...).

Other Scientific Flaws

A. Our immune system is generally highly robust, because it is being challenged by diseases all the time. The absence of diseases would probably weaken our immune system. In other words: health is not the result of absence of diseases, but a result of successfully coping with diseases. It is the result of interspecies interactions.

B. The current “Planetary Health” approach dramatically underestimates the roles that self-organization and emergence play for our well-being and a healthy state of nature.

C. In complex dynamical systems, global optimization and control approaches often perform worse than approaches based on flexible adaptation to local needs.

D. The great(er) performance of natural systems is often based on coordination, cooperation, co-evolution, synergy, and symbiosis.

E. A good illustration is the role that the microbiome plays for our health. Decades ago, it was believed that it was a good idea to disinfect everything in order to kill bacteria. In the meantime it is known that we could not exist without bacteria. In fact, there are about 10 times as many bacteria in our guts than cells in our body. These bacteria form an ecosystem that benefits us: it does not only digest food and make calories, vitamins, and minerals available to us, but it also is an important part of our immune defense.

F. Rather than pursuing a surveillance-based, data-driven, AI-controlled Planetary Health approach, it appears more promising to follow a symbiotic „ecosystem“ approach, considering also environmental, social, contextual and non-material factors (including mental and psychological ones).

G. Overwriting the operation system of our society, culture, mind, and body appears to be a radical, ideology-driven approach (aiming to “play God”) rather than an approach that is scientifically sound and recommended.

Political Issues

The “Planetary Health” proposal promotes first and foremost the interests of a medical-industrial complex.[6] There is a great lack of transparency and participation. It is entirely unclear what role, if any, democracy and human rights or human dignity will have in this framework. A global utilitarian optimization of planetary health and resource use would probably lead to phenomena such as organ harvesting against the will of people and algorithm-based triage decisions, as it is already reported from certain countries.

The spread of triage methods, which were developed for wars and war-like disaster situations, in everyday contexts is highly concerning and questions civil-ization altogether. People who are not counted to be “system relevant” by the algorithms in use would not stand good chances to get access to important resources. They would probably die early, as the planetary health approach would reward health, while punishing or trying to eliminate disease. The result would be technical selection benefitting genetically and otherwise gifted people. Eugenics would be a likely side effect.

Given the above as well as the so-called over-population of planet Earth and the lack of sustainability of our current economy, the management of highly sensitive personal/health data and medical treatment by private companies would be highly problematic. There would be obvious conflicts of interest, for example, when there are budgetary or other constraints that make patients’ interest unaligned with commercial interests of insurance companies and businesses in the health sector. The danger of crimes against humanity undoubtedly exists, particularly as there seems to be a lack of accountability for the algorithms used.

Imagine, in the future, someone would (be able to) apply technologies to our bodies or brains against our will, in favor of a proposed superior goal such as “Planetary Health”. Wouldn’t that be the mother of all nightmares? Is there any way to ensure that humans would not be experimented on against their will or exposed to unnecessary health risks? Otherwise related threats may largely outweight possible benefits.

In a data-driven and surveillance-based age, humans are increasingly managed and controlled similar to things. This strongly contradicts human dignity. For example, current Corona measures are deeply traumatizing to hundreds of millions of people around the world, probably more than even 9/11.

Perhaps the reason is that many of the ideas and technologies proposed or used in the context of planetary health have originally been developed in military contexts and labs. However, a civil society or civil-ization should not be based on military technologies, principles, or thinking, because this might quickly lead to an authoritarian, if not totalitarian framework of society.

For the governance of the highly networked techno-socio-economic-environmental systems of today we urgently need new organizational/societal frameworks and a lot more social innovation.

Judgement

The Anticipatory Brief on “Planetary Health” describes the most totalitarian vision I have ever come across. It appears to favor a brute-force, data-driven, AI-controlled management of all resources of the world, from the planetary scale down to the microscopic processes in human bodies and in nature. The goal includes the control of behavioral, social and cultural change. However, the concept does not only ignore the concepts of ethics and democracy. It also ignores immaterial qualities such as human dignity, freedom, creativity, consciousness, or love, which are of particular importance for humans. Therefore, the application of such a tool may easily and unintentionally result in violations of the Nuremberg code or crimes against humanity.

The proposed approach also seems to ignore many years of complexity and systems science, which has shown that self-organizing and evolutionary processes often outperform optimization approaches, in particular if synergistic or symbiotic processes are enabled. Resource optimization follows the logic of resource scarcity and implies a competition for and redistribution of limited resources. As a consequence, the proposed approach may put a large number of lives at risk. Biological, social and cultural processes, in contrast, often manage to overcome and outperform this logic of zero sum games (as a circular and sharing economy does).

Despite the above mentioned shortcomings, the flawed thinking behind the proposal already seems to drive political processes and technological developments worldwide. Behind great promises for the future, a highly concerning picture of society and its future is revealed. As a consequence of this new thinking, the very foundations of democracies, human rights and freedoms are at stake. It seems necessary to pull the emergency brake. In the light of the above, the Big Data and AI infrastructures built for the Planetary Health project should be seized and put under the control of The People of the world or otherwise be dismantled and turned off.

[1] W. Heidinger (1934), according to D.W. McCormick and J.C. Spee (2012), see https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1057/omj.2008.25

[2] This is basically the narrative of the Agenda 2030.

[3] Integrating Behavioral Health – The Role of Cognitive Computing

[4] https://www.amazon.com/Misbehaving-Behavioral-Economics-Richard-Thaler/dp/039335279X/

[5] A famous example is Google Flu Trends: celebrated as one of the big success stories of Big Data Analytics in the beginning, the service has been switched off and taken off the Web, as it was not sufficiently reliable.

[6] https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/zukunft-des-menschen-ersetzen-wir-gott-oder-die-maschinen-uns-ld.1561928

The Corona Crisis Reveals the Struggle for Our Future

For a long time, experts have warned of the implications of a non-sustainable world, but few have understood the implications. Today’s economic system would enter a terminal phase, before a new kind of system would raise from the ashes. For sure, the digital revolution allowed the machinery of utility maximization to reach new heights. Today’s surveillance capitalism sells our digital doubles, in other words: detailed digital copies of our lives. It became increasingly clear that we would be next. People were already talking about the value of life, which, from a market point of view, could be pretty little – considering the fact of over-population and the coming wave of robotic automation. I have warned that some have worked on systems that would autonomously decide over lives and deaths of people, based on a citizen score reflecting what their “systemic value” was claimed to be.

Then came the Corona Virus. Even though the world had been warned in advance of the next great pandemic to come, COVID-19 hit the world surprisingly unprepared. Even though it started to spread in early December 2019, there was a shortage not only of respirators, but also of disinfectants and face masks as late as April 2020. And so, many people died an early death. Some doctors took triage decisions as in war times, and old or seriously ill people did not stand good chances to be helped. Some doctors relied on “terminal care”: basically, they gave opiates and sleeping pills to patients they could not save, and put them to death.

In the past 75 years, we have perhaps never been that close to the end of civilization. The fundamental principles of civil society were at stake. From one week to the other, driven by fear, we have lost much of our human rights: the freedom of mobility, the freedom of assembly, the freedom of worship, and – some of us – even the right to live. We were all prisoners at home and could not check the validity of news. Never before did we get so much information and learned so little. Some people called for mass surveillance, for immunity certificates, for obligatory tests and (later on) for forced vaccination. We were just one millimeter away from a totalitarian state. Some countries lost their democracies over these events. This could have easily happened around the world, given that we could not exercise our constitutional rights.

We have seen that a threat, which was dangerous for many lives, but not for humanity as such, was amplified by the media into a storm of fear and mass hysteria, such that it became a serious threat for our society, civilization and culture, which we have built over centuries. For sure, the economic system has been seriously damaged.

However, in this historical situation, we have made up our minds and figured out what really matters. We have realized that lives are more important than money. We have decided for solidarity. We have protected our democracy, which actuallyso far mastered the greatest challenge it had ever seen – contrary to the expectations of many. And even in times of lockdown and fear, we have not decided to give up our privacy and informational self-determination. Instead, we have promoted a new framework for the digital society – one, which is based on decentralization, values and empowerment. One, which even Google and Apple have to respect. So, we are seeing the dawn of a new society. A civilization based on respect for each other and for nature. It may take years to realize that it was a nasty virus that helped us build a more livable, more sustainable future together.

An edited, considerably less critical version of this text from 2020 was finally published here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200609053329/https://www.wiko-berlin.de/institution/projekte-kooperationen/projekte/working-futures/wiko-briefs-working-futures-in-corona-times/the-corona-crisis-reveals-the-struggle-for-a-sustainable-digital-future/

INNOVATIVE GOVERNANCE APPROACHES NEEDED: Some Thoughts on How to Master Our Future Using Big Data (also ‘Avatars’, ‘Digital Twins’) with a new Kind of Multi-Lateralism

There is little doubt that we are seeing ever more useful Big Data and AI applications that can make a contribution to a better world. It is much less obvious, however, whether the use of those technologies will benefit humanity and nature altogether, i.e. on average. Below, I just mention a few of the reasons that matter in this context:

• Digital technologies consume an exponentially increasing energy share and are expected to consume more than 20% of the energy produced by 2030, which seems to undermine the achievement of the sustainability goals: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06610-y
• Using Big Data and AI tools does not require domain-specific scientific background knowledge, say, in physics, chemistry, biology, or economics. ML and AI learn patterns in data sets by themselves. There is, hence, a considerable risk that flaws in data analyses and AI applications (e.g. due to non-representative data samples or false positive and false negative classification errors or socially undesirable discrimination effects) will remain unnoticed for a long time, such that bad applications harming society or nature may spread.
• Using AI to make nations, companies, and/or people more powerful may further increase conflicts in the world.
• In a geopolitical situation where we witness a struggle of different political systems for global supremacy, the increasing use of Big Data and AI for cyber war and hybrid war is likely.
• In fact, there are more and more complaints about hacking critical infrastructures, and concerns about the vulnerability of our critical infrastructures are growing:https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/die-digitalisierung-macht-uns-angreifbar-122235086291  
• There are many signs, indeed, that we are currently involved in a global information warfare using our personal data, and that it is closely related with various serious human rights violations: https://www.militairespectator.nl/thema/operaties/artikel/behavioural-change-core-warfighting  
• Since Edward Snowden, it is known that all major data sets are being aggregated by secret services such as the NSA. At the same time he has revealed some of the misuse that happens with this data, such as the JTRIG program: https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/  
• The recent NSO scandal around the misuse of the Pegasus software against high-level politicians, journalists, and human right activists stresses that the use of digital technology is out of control: https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/die-ueberwachungsindustrie-ist-ausser-kontrolle-245615078117  
• The Cambridge Analytica Scandal has, furthermore, unveiled the manipulation of democratic elections with personal data in many countries, where links to military and secret services circles have become obvious: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/cambridge-analytica-is-what-happens-when-you-privatise-military-propaganda/  
• A recent blog summarizes some further known dual uses of Big Data cyberinfrastructures: http://futurict.blogspot.com/2021/07/partial-list-of-possible-dual-uses-of.html
  

Considering all this, fundamental reforms are needed in the way personal data is being collected, managed, and used. Otherwise it is possible that the digital transformation may fail altogether. Here are a few proposals for consideration and implementation:

A high level of cybersecurity is clearly needed. In this regard, backdoors are counterproductive.

Distributed data storage and control would be a strongly recommended safety feature.

Accountability: Any processing of sensitive data must be documented for a sufficient period of time, if ever possible in a reproducible way, such that errors and dual uses can be detected and corrective measures taken.

Transparency: Data and algorithms used must be opened up[1] to a certain number of mutually independent supervisory instances such that a sufficient quality of data processing from a statistical, scientific and technical point of view can be ensured (e.g. in terms of avoiding unjustified discrimination or in terms of requiring meaningful data analysis [no spurious correlations; sufficiently small false positive and false negative error rates; reproducibility; results not sensitive to small changes in the dataset, algorithm, or hardware, etc; of course, one also needs to consider the other known issues of Big Data analytics])

Open intelligence approaches are to be favored over secret services, whenever possible.

The organization of data access may be hierarchically organized, in terms of time delays of data access and accessible data volumes. The hierarchy level should depend on demonstrated responsible use and benefits created for the world. On the highest level, there should probably be at least 7 competitive, mutually supervisory instances (probably tied to leading countries). Their best scientific institutions should also have privileged access for the sake of quality assurance. The highest levels (serving as “guardians” of the system) would have to satisfy particularly strict rules in terms of independence and avoidance of conflicts of interest. On the next levels, with a larger time delay and smaller data volumes processed, there would be a larger number of participating entities, probably big companies and other countries. Again with some additional time delay and smaller data volumes processed, there would be SMEs and other scientific institutions as well as civil society initiatives, etc. Entities providing more (useful) data to the system should be higher up in the access hierarchy, to be able to make reasonable returns on their investments. With suitable access rules, one can ensure that there would be sufficiently many competitors, such that monopolies and a dangerous concentration of power is avoided. It would further be reasonable to have clear rules according to which entities move up or down in the hierarchy, based on how useful their contributions to the state of the world and the future and humanity were.

Ethical standards and responsible innovation must be ensured. People dealing with sensitive data should probably have to swear something like a “Hippocratic Oath for data scientists” (I can make suggestions, if desired). Qualified ethics committees must be put in place to ensure the ethical use of data, in compliance with human rights.

A diversity of teams as well as an inter-, multi-, and transdisciplinary approach (properly considering knowledge from the natural and complexity sciences, from the cognitive and social sciences, from history, philosophy and so on) as well as participatory opportunities for civil society projects should be ensured, in accordance with the peace room concept: https://www.theglobalist.com/technology-big-data-artificial-intelligence-future-peace-rooms/

Note that – due to their tendency of being extremely focused – neither a utilitarian approach, as it is often common in the economy, nor a military approach are expected to be suited to successfully run advanced, complex, multi-faceted, multi-objective, thriving societies and civil-izations living in peace with each other.

Participatory governance: There should be representatives of those affected by decisions, such that they have a say regarding what is going to happen to them. For example, regarding health applications, it is required to have a representative, independent patient council, which can voice preferences and concerns.

Digital democracy is a concept that aims at fostering collective intelligence, better solutions and collective action at scale: http://futurict.blogspot.com/2020/06/digital-democracy-how-to-make-it-work.html

Informational self-determination is needed to ensure that people will still be able to control their own lives in the future: http://futurict.blogspot.com/2019/01/a-platform-for-informational-self.html

This does not mean though that everyone should do what they like, independently of how much harm is caused to others or to nature.

The socio-ecological finance system (‘finance 4.0’) is a multi-dimensional feedback, coordination and incentive system based on a participatory use of the Internet of Things that is combined with multiple new currencies. It offers to make sure that people will ‘feel’ the good or bad impacts of their behaviors on others and on nature, thereby helping them to take better decisions. The participatory system rewards people and companies accordingly. It is a democratic system that promotes the co-evolution of symbiotic interactions and the development of a sustainable circular and sharing economy: (Click on image for link to book)

Further reading:

M. Batty (2018) Digital Twins, Environment and Planning B 45, 817-820.

E. Arcaute et al. (2021) Future Cities: Why Digital Twins Need to Take Complexity Science on Board, preprint.

D. Helbing et al. (2021) Ethics of Smart Cities, preprint.




[1] at least with a delay – using time delayed self-decrypting encryption