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(music)

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My name is Nikoli, a.k.a. Socrates

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and you are watching Singularity One On One

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If you guys enjoy this show you can help me
make it better

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in two ways. Number one is you can write

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a review on ITunes. Or number two, you can

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simply make a donation. Today, my guest

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on the show is Robert Steele. Robert Steele

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is not only the author of 
Open Source Everything Manifesto,

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but he's also a former spy, 
and CIA intelligence professional,

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Marine Corps infantry officer, honorary hacker,

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past presidential candidate and a top

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Amazon reviewer devoted to non fiction

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in 98 categories, who has done 
more than 1700 book reviews.

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So, Hi Robert. Thanks very much 
for joining us tonight.

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Oh, it's a pleasure to be with you.

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Fantastic. So Robert, I introduced you

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in kind of a very impressive paragraph

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but, if I were to ask you to put yourself

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in a sentence or two, how would you best do

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that yourself?

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Lived all over the world, had a great

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many experiences and I am just stunned that

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as a human race, we are not doing better.

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Ah, interesting. We are not doing better.

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So, let me ask you then, would you say that

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in your view, we are making progress

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or are we making regress? Are we going

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forward or backwards?

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You know, the answer is always some of each.

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We have certainly made progress in poverty

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and infectious disease and a few other areas,

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but we have also managed to destroy the world

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in the last fifteen years. We've gone from

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25 failed states to 175 failed states. The policies

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of the U.S. neo conservative government

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not just under the Bush/Cheney administration

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but, under Obama/Biden have essentially

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destabilized the world. Europe is suffering

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a two million illegal immigrants and I predicted

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this in my second book in 2002.

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I basically said, if you don't take care of

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the poor, the poor will come to you.

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This is fascinating, and there's so many

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things I want to grab, so, I don't even know

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which one to get first, but...Let me ask

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you this. You said, 175 failed states, can you

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please give us; elaborate on this more because...

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Well, I don't have the graphic in front of me,

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but if you look it up, just look up the

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number of failed states. My point is, that

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the United States government has chosen to

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be the best friend of dictators, rather

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than a champion of democracy. And, so for

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example, in Saudi Arabia, which has an 
unemployment rate of 29 percent

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among its young, we have chosen to allow

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Saudi Arabia to export terrorism in the form of

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wahabbism. We've asked Saudi Arabia to

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create ISIS as a way of bringing down Syria

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which is a totally unnecessary 
destabilization effort.

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And, we are just generally allowing some

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very bad things to happen. For example in

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the Ukraine, we supported a neo Nazi fascist takeover.

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And, the division of the country. We supported

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a number of color revolutions all inherently

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aimed at Russia, rather than at improving

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the lives of the people in those countries.

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Wow, you are already blowing my mind

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here in the first couple of minutes,

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so let me grab just one point. You said,

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Saudi Arabia created ISIS. Can you elaborate on that?

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If you look up online, who created ISIS, you'll

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find out that ISIS was in fact created

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out of the Libyan intervention, which was

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started by the French, but exaggerated by the Americans

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and CIA wanted to create a form of jihadist force

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such as they created for Afghanistan and their

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focus was on destabilizing and ultimately 
kicking Assad out of power

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Assad has long been a Soviet client.

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Some people call him a Soviet agent.

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I personally think he's simply

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the guy in charge of the country and we have no

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business trying to kick him out of office.

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I am totally opposed to the American

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penchant for regime change. It should not

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be our business to change regimes. It should

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be our business to foster peace and prosperity.

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So, okay, as a former political science

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student myself, those are all very interesting

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and very deep and profound and important,

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vitally important topics, but, I'm going to 
actually have to pass on on that

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and move on to the topic that I would like

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to focus on today, which is, kind of, in a way, maybe

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arguably more important than these particularities

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so, let me ask you this, what is the

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Open Source Everything Manifesto about?

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Well, one of the things, I started the 
open source intelligence revolution

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in the 1980's and as a spy I realized

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one day how little we knew, because we were

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focusing only on stealing secrets and so, I did an

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inventory of what could be known using

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open. legal, ethical methods and it turned

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out that the U.S. government, because it relies

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only on secrets, is working with roughly

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2 percent of the available information.

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It hasn't put into place a vehicle for actually

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reaching out in 183 languages to collect

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local knowledge and expert wisdom in languages

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we don't speak from people we don't talk to.

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And, so I created the open source intelligence

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revolution and my soundbite at the time was

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"Do not send a spy where a school boy can go."

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Then I discovered the open source software

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and open source hardware revolutions led by

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among others The Free Software guy,
...(Richard Stallman)... Yes, exactly, RMS,

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whom I admire very much. After looking at

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open source software and open source hardware

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I realized that they really weren't worth much

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unless they also had open access, open data and

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open spectrum and so then I started to

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create a typology of opens. And, in 2007 I was

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invited to be the key note speaker at Gnomedex

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in Seattle and so I did a briefing on open source 
everything

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and I identified about 30 opens. Then around

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2011 I decided to write the book, 
The Open Source Everything Manifesto

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and I was able to list about 60 opens.

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Then after I published the book and got some 
attention,

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the Guardian did a profile of me in 2014

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by Nafeez Ahmed, then I realized that the opens

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were chaotic. They were an arhcipelago.

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They were not talking to each other. They

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weren't collaborating with each other.

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So, I worked with Michel Bauwens from the

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Peer to Peer (P2P) Foundation and Marcin Jacobowski

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from Open Source Ecology and we created a

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construct of 9 core opens and within those

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9 core opens, we picked 3 sub-opens for each

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and our hope is that eventually we get all

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of the opens to work together and create

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smart cities that are not just on broadband

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but, smart cities that eliminate all waste.

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Mellissa Sterry is one of the wonderful people that

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I listen to and pay attention to. She talks about

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a bionic city and what would a city look like

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if nature designed it? If nature designed

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a city, it would have no fraud, waste or abuse.

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It would have no agricultural waste, it

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would have no energy waste. It would have

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no waste of materials, housing and office

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construction. It would have no wasted water.

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We have systems, even if India builds

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smart cities, they are about to builds 20

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smart cities and they are making a huge

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mistake, because they're defining their

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smart city as solely and exclusively centered

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on having broadband access. That's not a

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smart city. That's a dumb city with access.

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I have to agree with that part on India

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and what smart city entails would be

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much broader and bigger and deeper and

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more profound then just broadband, but let

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me push a little bit back on what you said,

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"If nature designed a city, we'd have no fraud,

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waste or abuse." I mean when I look at

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nature, I see what Thomas Hobbs called

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life being nasty, brutish and short and

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often violent, so we have usually the

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stronger killing the weak and old being

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killed by the young, etc... etc... So, in

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a way, maybe you could say that there is

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no waste in nature because everything is

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being recycled and reused but, I certainly

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would say that it doesn't lack any abuse

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or suffering or violence, but actually all

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of those are abundant in my view.

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Well, I take a more positive view and what

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I am really thinking about in relation to

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nature is energy and entropy. I'm not

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thinking about the violence. You are

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absolutely correct, but the bottom line

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for me, is that we design things that are

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very, very wasteful. For example, London

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right now, is trying to create a smart city

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and an internet of things and they're doing

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absolutely nothing to get rid of all those

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ugly highways. They are doing nothing to

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reduce their dependence on petrol driven

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vehicles. They are doing nothing to create

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bicycle and pedestrian access. So, that's

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not a smart city at all. That's a city, and

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this is IBM's problem, that's a city in

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which you are retro fitting gee-whiz

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technologies for communications to really

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absurd, wasteful, legacy, industrial era

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artifacts. A smart city would actually be

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a small city. It would be a city in which

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agriculture would be integrated into every

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neighborhood. it would be a city that you

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could walk to work. It would be a city in

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which all of the jobs were actually worth

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doing. It would be the city in which the

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arts and humanities would be present on

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every level and in every neighborhood. So,

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for me, we haven't had the conversation

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about what a smart city really is and this

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article that I have done for you on human

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intelligence and open source technologies

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is perhaps the beginning of that conversation.

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I have to say that I really enjoyed your

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article and I'm just about to publish it

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so it should actually be published at the

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time we publish the final edit of this

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interview, so people will be able to check

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it out and I have to say, as a cyclist myself,

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and someone who is very concerned and

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interested in sustainability and not wasting

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things, I totally agree with you on the idea of
a smart city. But you

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know what? Allow me to, please roll back

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the tape start at the beginning because

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there is a kind of a seeming paradox

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between your background and what you're

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saying, so I want you to lead us through

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the story of what led you to be where you

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are, because, basically, you, in your book

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even you say that in the 1980's you were

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a republican, Reaganite, believer in trickle

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down economics...

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I WAS WRONG! I have repented my sins.

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(Both laugh)

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Okay but, but the question then is why

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and how?

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Well, let me tell you the story.

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That's a very, very big shift.

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I grew up as the son of an oil man. I went

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into the marine corp as an infantry officer

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and then from the Marine Corp the CIA came

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in and pulled me out and I became a

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clandestine service case officer. Now the

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Marine Corp and the CIA are inherently

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conservative organizations that do not

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question authority. They basically obey

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orders and do what they're told to do.


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In 1988 I was asked by the Marine Corp to

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leave the CIA and become the senior civilian

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responsible for creating the Marine Corps

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Intelligence Center, and I did that and I

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spent twenty million dollars on very secret

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equipment to access all secret information

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and in one little corner I had a PC connected

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to the internet and back in 1988 the internet

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was something called "the Source", that was

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the google of it's time. Well imagine my

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surprise when all of my analysts started

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lining up for the PC. And, I went to them

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and I said, I've just spent twenty million

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dollars so you can access everything that

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NSA and CIA knows and you're standing in

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00:14:06,096 --> 00:14:10,275
line fora PC? And, they said, yes, because

259
00:14:10,275 --> 00:14:13,273
CIA and NSA don't know anything about

260
00:14:13,273 --> 00:14:17,316
Burundi, Haiti or Somalia, they only know

261
00:14:17,316 --> 00:14:19,888
things about the Soviet Union and China

262
00:14:19,888 --> 00:14:24,368
and North Korea and Iran. That was my

263
00:14:24,368 --> 00:14:28,724
awakening. That was when I realized that

264
00:14:28,724 --> 00:14:33,073
we had a cold war government with cold war

265
00:14:33,073 --> 00:14:36,718
institutions that were focused obsessively

266
00:14:36,718 --> 00:14:40,304
on a few heavy targets, like Russia and

267
00:14:40,304 --> 00:14:42,356
China and were ignoring the entire rest

268
00:14:42,356 --> 00:14:44,896
of the world. So, I started the Open Source

269
00:14:44,896 --> 00:14:47,493
Intelligence revolution and in fact, I

270
00:14:47,493 --> 00:14:51,520
testified to the Aspin-Brown Commission and

271
00:14:51,520 --> 00:14:54,729
they asked me to do a competition of me

272
00:14:54,729 --> 00:14:58,480
and my phone against a sixty billion dollar

273
00:14:58,480 --> 00:15:01,220
a year intelligence community, and I won.

274
00:15:01,220 --> 00:15:05,109
They set the target as Burundi and they

275
00:15:05,109 --> 00:15:07,734
asked me to get whatever I could on Burundi

276
00:15:07,734 --> 00:15:10,226
over night, it was over a weekend actually

277
00:15:10,226 --> 00:15:13,760
and they asked the entire U.S. Intelligence

278
00:15:13,760 --> 00:15:15,769
community to provide everything they had

279
00:15:15,769 --> 00:15:18,223
on Burundi. They had nothing on Burundi.

280
00:15:18,223 --> 00:15:21,468
Nobody cares about Burundi, but Burundi is

281
00:15:21,468 --> 00:15:24,307
where the Marine Corps goes. I was able to

282
00:15:24,307 --> 00:15:29,202
produce one to fifty thousand Russian combat

283
00:15:29,232 --> 00:15:32,262
charts, maps for Burundi, French imagery,

284
00:15:32,290 --> 00:15:35,640
spot imagery of Burundi, cloud free, less

285
00:15:35,800 --> 00:15:37,760
than four years old, in the archives at the

286
00:15:37,760 --> 00:15:41,866
1 to 50 level. Jane's Information Group,

287
00:15:41,866 --> 00:15:43,876
my friend Alfred Rollington called in an

288
00:15:43,876 --> 00:15:45,786
analyst for the weekend and he created an

289
00:15:45,786 --> 00:15:48,998
order of battle for the tribes, not just the army

290
00:15:48,998 --> 00:15:51,855
the U.S. intelligence community only does

291
00:15:51,855 --> 00:15:53,989
armies that where uniforms they don't do

292
00:15:53,989 --> 00:15:56,989
tribal orders of battle. I was able to get

293
00:15:56,989 --> 00:15:59,218
from the Institute of Scientific Information

294
00:15:59,218 --> 00:16:01,279
that the top hundred academics writing on

295
00:16:01,279 --> 00:16:04,843
Burundi and Rwanda. From Lexis/Nexis I got

296
00:16:04,843 --> 00:16:06,847
the top journalist writing on Burundi and

297
00:16:06,847 --> 00:16:09,149
Rwanda, and I don't care what they've written

298
00:16:09,149 --> 00:16:13,301
I just want them for debriefing. And, from

299
00:16:13,301 --> 00:16:15,698
Oxford Analytica, I got the last twenty

300
00:16:15,698 --> 00:16:18,100
reports they had done on the geo-political

301
00:16:18,100 --> 00:16:20,280
implications of genocide in Burundi and

302
00:16:20,280 --> 00:16:26,072
Rwanda. With five or six phone calls in one

303
00:16:26,072 --> 00:16:29,840
day, I was able to put together more on

304
00:16:29,840 --> 00:16:32,548
Burundi then the entire U.S. secret intelligence

305
00:16:32,548 --> 00:16:36,280
community in the last ten years...

306
00:16:36,280 --> 00:16:39,376
Because I knew who knew and was able to

307
00:16:39,376 --> 00:16:41,280
reach out in the open source world and I

308
00:16:41,280 --> 00:16:44,273
was able to pull this together. Okay? So,

309
00:16:44,273 --> 00:16:47,479
that was my awakening. That's when I started

310
00:16:47,479 --> 00:16:50,113
to realize U.S. government was actually a

311
00:16:50,113 --> 00:16:53,000
military industrial complex that exists to

312
00:16:53,000 --> 00:16:56,069
spend money to enrich the few. It's not

313
00:16:56,069 --> 00:16:59,165
actually focused on furthering democracy

314
00:16:59,165 --> 00:17:02,081
or creating prosperity for the average American.

315
00:17:02,081 --> 00:17:05,549
And, what year was that again, when you...

316
00:17:05,549 --> 00:17:07,079
1988.

317
00:17:07,079 --> 00:17:08,357
I see.

318
00:17:08,357 --> 00:17:11,840
In 1989 I ghost wrote an article for

319
00:17:11,840 --> 00:17:14,304
Gen. Al Gray, in which I talked about

320
00:17:14,304 --> 00:17:17,723
emerging threats as being non state actors

321
00:17:17,723 --> 00:17:22,435
with off the shelf weapons, with no order

322
00:17:22,435 --> 00:17:24,277
of battle, with no rules of engagement,

323
00:17:24,277 --> 00:17:28,027
precisely what ISIS is today and the

324
00:17:28,027 --> 00:17:30,469
Marine Corps tried to get the U.S. government

325
00:17:30,469 --> 00:17:33,779
to invest money in preparing to go against

326
00:17:33,779 --> 00:17:37,338
ISIS like capabilities and everybody refused.

327
00:17:37,888 --> 00:17:41,234
Today we spend one percent on the infantry.

328
00:17:41,234 --> 00:17:44,305
The other ninety nine percent is spent on

329
00:17:44,305 --> 00:17:46,535
very heavy expensive things that don't do

330
00:17:46,535 --> 00:17:49,299
what they're suppose to do and it turns out

331
00:17:49,299 --> 00:17:51,577
that the U.S. government, U.S. military is

332
00:17:51,577 --> 00:17:54,347
in the business of building really, really

333
00:17:54,347 --> 00:17:58,399
expensive things that enrich a few corporations

334
00:17:58,399 --> 00:18:01,215
but don't actually do anything to reduce

335
00:18:01,215 --> 00:18:04,157
the number of amputees and dead, wounded

336
00:18:04,157 --> 00:18:08,700
and suicides that we have. We do not have
a human centric

337
00:18:08,700 --> 00:18:12,398
military. We have a military that exists for

338
00:18:12,398 --> 00:18:14,344
Lockheed Martin's convenience.

339
00:18:14,344 --> 00:18:17,519
Yeah, and the F35 is a good example.

340
00:18:17,519 --> 00:18:20,156
Absolutely, in fact the F35 is killing pilots

341
00:18:20,156 --> 00:18:23,010
because nobody thought about the fact that

342
00:18:23,010 --> 00:18:25,219
the chemicals that are associated with the

343
00:18:25,219 --> 00:18:28,045
stealth covering would bleed into the 
cockpit

344
00:18:28,045 --> 00:18:29,559
and kill pilots.

345
00:18:29,559 --> 00:18:32,510
Wow, I didn't even know that.

346
00:18:32,510 --> 00:18:36,258
Yeah, we are creating a lot of garbage and

347
00:18:36,258 --> 00:18:38,601
oh, by the way, the Air Force doesn't know

348
00:18:38,601 --> 00:18:41,156
how to run secure satellites so now all of

349
00:18:41,156 --> 00:18:43,069
the Navy captains are learning celestial

350
00:18:43,069 --> 00:18:47,120
navigation, and the army officers are trying

351
00:18:47,120 --> 00:18:48,200
to figure out how they are going to know

352
00:18:48,200 --> 00:18:50,456
where they are when the GPS goes out.

353
00:18:51,346 --> 00:18:54,846
You shut down the GPS and the U.S. military

354
00:18:55,090 --> 00:18:57,909
grinds to a halt. And, that's why I also

355
00:18:57,909 --> 00:19:00,597
started getting interested in redundancy and

356
00:19:00,597 --> 00:19:02,535
sustainability and survivor-ability.

357
00:19:02,535 --> 00:19:05,433
I essentially realized that we have

358
00:19:05,433 --> 00:19:08,567
a government that is spending a lot of

359
00:19:08,567 --> 00:19:10,632
money creating things that don't actually

360
00:19:10,632 --> 00:19:12,750
produce peace or prosperity.

361
00:19:13,200 --> 00:19:16,513
Wow, and again, very dense answer with lots

362
00:19:16,513 --> 00:19:18,957
of topics there, so let me see if I can

363
00:19:18,957 --> 00:19:21,721
sort of lead the way to sort of reveal your

364
00:19:21,721 --> 00:19:24,361
thesis and hopefully the most conducive way

365
00:19:24,361 --> 00:19:28,091
possible. So, tell us... Perhaps the next step

366
00:19:28,091 --> 00:19:31,160
will be best if we discuss sort of the

367
00:19:31,160 --> 00:19:34,267
dichotomy or the tension or the opposition,

368
00:19:34,267 --> 00:19:36,462
if you will, between secrecy on the one hand

369
00:19:36,462 --> 00:19:39,253
and open source on the other hand, because

370
00:19:39,253 --> 00:19:41,560
they do seem to be mutually exclusive.

371
00:19:41,560 --> 00:19:44,027
So, we did already see your background

372
00:19:44,027 --> 00:19:48,386
sort of, your 'A Ha' moment, your amazing

373
00:19:48,386 --> 00:19:51,322
competition against the whole intelligence

374
00:19:51,322 --> 00:19:53,930
community gathering that much on Burundi

375
00:19:53,930 --> 00:19:57,699
over a weekend. So, now talk to us about

376
00:19:57,699 --> 00:20:01,229
the shift from secrecy into open source

377
00:20:01,229 --> 00:20:03,785
and how is that reasonable or the best

378
00:20:03,785 --> 00:20:04,459
way forward?

379
00:20:04,459 --> 00:20:07,893
(pause)

380
00:20:07,893 --> 00:20:10,358
First, let's go back to the beginning of

381
00:20:10,358 --> 00:20:12,330
the U.S. Secret Intelligence community,

382
00:20:12,330 --> 00:20:14,405
people are only now starting to realize

383
00:20:14,405 --> 00:20:16,801
that Allen Dulles was a traitor.

384
00:20:16,801 --> 00:20:21,033
Allen Dulles went against Eisenhower and against

385
00:20:21,033 --> 00:20:24,053
Kennedy and he single handedly rescued the

386
00:20:24,053 --> 00:20:27,157
Nazi regime and much of the wealth of the

387
00:20:27,157 --> 00:20:31,194
Nazi regime. Allen Dulles helped Nazi's

388
00:20:31,194 --> 00:20:35,215
escape justice. He imported thousands of Nazi's,

389
00:20:35,215 --> 00:20:38,120
not just scientists but leaders and people

390
00:20:38,120 --> 00:20:40,241
that had run death camps and so forth.

391
00:20:40,241 --> 00:20:48,199
--- We also captured all of the gold in

392
00:20:48,199 --> 00:20:50,639
the Philippines, that the Japanese had

393
00:20:50,639 --> 00:20:52,371
taken from China and elsewhere and then

394
00:20:52,371 --> 00:20:53,945
they buried it in the Philippines when our

395
00:20:53,945 --> 00:20:56,523
submarines were interrupting the return of

396
00:20:56,523 --> 00:20:59,899
the gold to Japan. That gold, it's a story

397
00:20:59,899 --> 00:21:02,455
that's told in a book called "Gold Warriors"

398
00:21:02,455 --> 00:21:05,161
by Peggy and Sterling Seagraves, that gold

399
00:21:05,161 --> 00:21:08,539
became the Black Lilly covert action fund

400
00:21:08,539 --> 00:21:12,349
and Allen Dulles used that fund to restore

401
00:21:12,349 --> 00:21:16,804
fascists in Italy, Japan and Germany and it

402
00:21:16,804 --> 00:21:18,586
became.... what's that?

403
00:21:18,586 --> 00:21:20,089
Guatemala perhaps?

404
00:21:20,089 --> 00:21:24,051
Also. We love fascists. We love fascists

405
00:21:24,051 --> 00:21:27,575
in Indonesia as well. Essentially CIA became

406
00:21:27,575 --> 00:21:30,800
a, something that Harry Truman never, ever

407
00:21:30,800 --> 00:21:33,760
anticipated. And, Harry Truman himself wrote

408
00:21:33,760 --> 00:21:37,512
a letter in the Washington Post in 1968 that

409
00:21:37,512 --> 00:21:39,640
said that he had never intended for CIA

410
00:21:39,640 --> 00:21:42,419
to become a covert operations organization.

411
00:21:42,419 --> 00:21:46,086
But, it was able to use secrecy under

412
00:21:46,086 --> 00:21:48,290
Allen Dulles to escape accountability.

413
00:21:48,290 --> 00:21:51,760
I have testified to the Secrecy Commission

414
00:21:51,760 --> 00:21:56,640
of Senator Patrick Moynihan and I testified

415
00:21:56,640 --> 00:22:00,246
to the effect that secrecy nine times out of

416
00:22:00,246 --> 00:22:03,093
ten is not used for good reasons, it's used

417
00:22:03,093 --> 00:22:05,583
to avoid accountability and it's used to

418
00:22:05,583 --> 00:22:08,680
do evil in our name, without being discovered.

419
00:22:08,680 --> 00:22:14,608
Now, openness is actually important because

420
00:22:14,608 --> 00:22:18,537
openness is subject to audit. One of the

421
00:22:18,537 --> 00:22:20,995
problems with the secret community is that

422
00:22:20,995 --> 00:22:22,680
it believes in what are called bi-lateral

423
00:22:22,680 --> 00:22:25,891
relations. So, for example Americans will

424
00:22:25,891 --> 00:22:28,099
meet with the Germans one on one and they

425
00:22:28,099 --> 00:22:28,938
will meet with the French one on one then

426
00:22:28,938 --> 00:22:31,427
they will meet with the Jordanians one on one

427
00:22:31,427 --> 00:22:33,976
and what happens is that two governments

428
00:22:33,976 --> 00:22:37,521
lie to each other...because there is no third

429
00:22:37,521 --> 00:22:40,709
party present, there is no real quality

430
00:22:40,709 --> 00:22:43,672
control. Now the neat thing about the

431
00:22:43,672 --> 00:22:46,524
openness environment is it's multi-national.

432
00:22:46,524 --> 00:22:49,299
And not only is it multi-national, but you

433
00:22:49,299 --> 00:22:51,714
have eight tribes. I call these eight

434
00:22:51,714 --> 00:22:55,453
tribes of information. The academic tribe,

435
00:22:55,453 --> 00:22:57,560
the civil society tribe, which includes labor

436
00:22:57,560 --> 00:23:00,759
unions and religions, the commerce tribe,

437
00:23:00,759 --> 00:23:03,905
which is especially small business, 
governments,

438
00:23:03,905 --> 00:23:06,419
especially local, law enforcement, media,

439
00:23:06,419 --> 00:23:08,795
military, media, including bloggers like

440
00:23:08,795 --> 00:23:12,780
yourself. And then, military and
non-governmental.

441
00:23:12,780 --> 00:23:15,648
Now, I did my first graduate thesis on

442
00:23:15,648 --> 00:23:17,370
predicting revolution. My second graduate

443
00:23:17,370 --> 00:23:19,999
thesis was on strategic information 
management

444
00:23:19,999 --> 00:23:21,800
and what I discovered was that the

445
00:23:21,800 --> 00:23:24,052
government was essentially operating on

446
00:23:24,052 --> 00:23:27,521
two percent of the relevant information.

447
00:23:27,521 --> 00:23:30,423
Most of the information that we need in

448
00:23:30,423 --> 00:23:33,640
order to make good decisions is known to

449
00:23:33,640 --> 00:23:36,719
people who haven't put it on-line, don't

450
00:23:36,719 --> 00:23:39,112
speak English, don't have security clearances

451
00:23:39,112 --> 00:23:41,200
and generally don't like the U.S. government,

452
00:23:41,200 --> 00:23:43,005
but because of the way in which we are

453
00:23:43,005 --> 00:23:45,427
structured...If you look at a typical

454
00:23:45,427 --> 00:23:48,220
embassy overseas, the diplomats are

455
00:23:48,220 --> 00:23:50,633
outnumbered, by all the other people from

456
00:23:50,633 --> 00:23:52,899
other agencies that don't trust the Department

457
00:23:52,899 --> 00:23:55,706
of State to do it right. The embassy officers

458
00:23:55,706 --> 00:23:57,921
don't have money with which to buy legal

459
00:23:57,921 --> 00:24:00,320
ethical information from private investigators,

460
00:24:00,320 --> 00:24:03,599
or investigative journalists or information

461
00:24:03,599 --> 00:24:06,279
brokers, or commercial intelligence companies,

462
00:24:06,279 --> 00:24:08,228
the only people with money are the spies

463
00:24:08,228 --> 00:24:10,812
and the spies insist that you commit treason

464
00:24:10,812 --> 00:24:12,593
before they'll listen to you.

465
00:24:12,593 --> 00:24:16,290
This is a very perverted way of collecting

466
00:24:16,290 --> 00:24:18,864
information. So, what you end up with

467
00:24:18,864 --> 00:24:22,743
is a country team, that essentially collects

468
00:24:22,743 --> 00:24:25,320
twenty percent at best of what can be known

469
00:24:25,320 --> 00:24:28,096
and then, because they are supposed to

470
00:24:28,096 --> 00:24:30,373
coordinate anything that goes out 
electronically,

471
00:24:30,373 --> 00:24:33,774
instead of coordinating electronic messages that can

472
00:24:33,774 --> 00:24:36,160
be shared with everybody, they send what

473
00:24:36,160 --> 00:24:38,021
they collect back in the pouch, a physical

474
00:24:38,021 --> 00:24:41,238
pouch. And, what that means is we spill

475
00:24:41,238 --> 00:24:43,627
eighty percent of what we collect,

476
00:24:43,627 --> 00:24:46,388
because once it gets back in a hard copy

477
00:24:46,388 --> 00:24:48,791
volume to a desk officer that's overworked,

478
00:24:48,791 --> 00:24:50,739
that desk officer will either file it or

479
00:24:50,739 --> 00:24:54,167
throw it away. They will not exploit it.

480
00:24:54,167 --> 00:24:57,186
And this comes to the whole big data issue.

481
00:24:57,186 --> 00:25:00,118
Mary Meeker has said we process less than

482
00:25:00,118 --> 00:25:03,073
one percent of the big data that we collect.

483
00:25:03,073 --> 00:25:05,120
While the intelligence community and the

484
00:25:05,120 --> 00:25:06,960
U.S. government are in the same position,

485
00:25:06,960 --> 00:25:10,326
we have spent the last fifty years developing

486
00:25:10,326 --> 00:25:14,782
collection systems. We haven't been developing

487
00:25:14,782 --> 00:25:16,561
processing and analytic systems.

488
00:25:16,561 --> 00:25:19,935
I wrote a forward to a book on cyber hosting

489
00:25:19,935 --> 00:25:22,814
by Stephen Arnold and my forward outlines

490
00:25:22,814 --> 00:25:24,806
the failures of the intelligence, of the

491
00:25:24,806 --> 00:25:27,776
information technology community over the

492
00:25:27,776 --> 00:25:32,410
last fifty years. We focus on big,
expensive ways

493
00:25:32,410 --> 00:25:35,366
of collecting and storing information, we

494
00:25:35,366 --> 00:25:37,754
have not focused on ways to help people

495
00:25:37,754 --> 00:25:40,293
share information and make sense of

496
00:25:40,293 --> 00:25:42,113
information across all boundaries.

497
00:25:42,113 --> 00:25:43,707
Wow... (smiles)

498
00:25:43,707 --> 00:25:50,977
Okay... Fascinating. So, basically

499
00:25:50,977 --> 00:25:54,760
intelligence, as you describe it is in a

500
00:25:54,760 --> 00:25:58,001
big mess but, let's perhaps define.

501
00:25:58,001 --> 00:26:01,833
What do you mean by the term "intelligence"

502
00:26:01,833 --> 00:26:04,545
when you speak of it? What is it that you

503
00:26:04,545 --> 00:26:05,233
are referring to?

504
00:26:05,233 --> 00:26:07,251
I'm so glad you asked that because

505
00:26:07,251 --> 00:26:09,849
properly understood, intelligence means

506
00:26:09,849 --> 00:26:15,358
decision support. Data is a single element

507
00:26:15,358 --> 00:26:18,356
whether it's a signal or an image or a

508
00:26:18,356 --> 00:26:23,380
text document, that's data. Information is

509
00:26:23,380 --> 00:26:25,990
data that has been integrated and had value

510
00:26:25,990 --> 00:26:28,372
added and is then broadcast generically.

511
00:26:28,372 --> 00:26:32,083
So, for example a newspaper is information,

512
00:26:32,083 --> 00:26:34,980
where all these journalists have taken all

513
00:26:34,980 --> 00:26:37,214
these sources of data, they've created these

514
00:26:37,214 --> 00:26:39,421
generic articles and then they broadcast them.

515
00:26:39,421 --> 00:26:44,818
Intelligence is decision support that seeks

516
00:26:44,818 --> 00:26:47,947
to answer a very specific question by a

517
00:26:47,947 --> 00:26:52,178
very specific decider or decision group.

518
00:26:52,178 --> 00:26:55,548
When I was lecturing in Spain, one of the

519
00:26:55,548 --> 00:26:58,338
things I found, was that, when I asked people

520
00:26:58,338 --> 00:27:00,623
who was the client, they would say, oh well

521
00:27:00,623 --> 00:27:02,956
IBM is the client or the trade ministry

522
00:27:02,956 --> 00:27:05,960
is the client, I would say, no. The client

523
00:27:05,960 --> 00:27:08,880
is the specific human being that is going

524
00:27:08,880 --> 00:27:12,767
to be making the decision. If you aren't

525
00:27:12,767 --> 00:27:15,930
focused on what that specific human being needs

526
00:27:15,930 --> 00:27:18,320
to know, wants to know and has to know

527
00:27:18,320 --> 00:27:21,740
than you are nothing more than a classified

528
00:27:21,740 --> 00:27:22,604
newspaper.

529
00:27:25,321 --> 00:27:28,946
So, we've described how intelligence fails

530
00:27:28,946 --> 00:27:31,153
today. We've defined it. Now let's take

531
00:27:31,153 --> 00:27:33,827
the next step.

532
00:27:35,745 --> 00:27:38,121
What is open source intelligence

533
00:27:38,121 --> 00:27:43,987
as being distinctive from secretive classic

534
00:27:43,987 --> 00:27:45,679
traditional intelligence?

535
00:27:45,679 --> 00:27:48,880
Well, one of the dirty little secrets of

536
00:27:48,880 --> 00:27:51,759
the secret intelligence community is that

537
00:27:51,759 --> 00:27:53,695
it doesn't really produce a lot of useful

538
00:27:53,695 --> 00:27:56,884
information. It doesn't actually produce

539
00:27:56,884 --> 00:27:58,883
decision support. I wrote an article for

540
00:27:58,883 --> 00:28:01,096
Counterpunch called, "Intelligence for the

541
00:28:01,096 --> 00:28:04,705
President and Everybody Else", the CIA for

542
00:28:04,705 --> 00:28:07,400
example does not produce useful decision

543
00:28:07,400 --> 00:28:09,160
support for the Department of Agriculture,

544
00:28:09,160 --> 00:28:11,912
the Department of Energy, the Department

545
00:28:11,912 --> 00:28:14,387
of the Interior, the Department of Housing,

546
00:28:14,387 --> 00:28:16,868
Health and Human Welfare, it doesn't do

547
00:28:16,868 --> 00:28:19,882
decision support, for the rest of the
government,

548
00:28:19,882 --> 00:28:22,913
and part of the problem, which is understandable,

549
00:28:22,913 --> 00:28:24,761
is that they think that they are in the

550
00:28:24,761 --> 00:28:27,433
business of secrets for the President, and

551
00:28:27,433 --> 00:28:30,033
they believe that open source intelligence

552
00:28:30,033 --> 00:28:32,680
should be done by the customers themselves.

553
00:28:32,680 --> 00:28:36,512
And that's a mistake. Because the craft of

554
00:28:36,512 --> 00:28:38,430
intelligence, I've written ten books...

555
00:28:38,430 --> 00:28:41,456
One of my favorite books is my second book

556
00:28:41,456 --> 00:28:43,976
"The New Craft of Intelligence - Personal,

557
00:28:43,976 --> 00:28:46,440
Public and Political". More recently I've

558
00:28:46,440 --> 00:28:49,221
written a book called, "Intelligence for Earth -

559
00:28:49,221 --> 00:28:51,599
Clarity, Diversity, Integrity and Sustainability"

560
00:28:51,599 --> 00:28:53,839
and that's more or less my magnum opus.

561
00:28:53,839 --> 00:28:57,313
It has over a thousand five hundred links in it,

562
00:28:57,313 --> 00:28:59,261
so, if you buy the kindle version, you can

563
00:28:59,261 --> 00:29:01,854
then link to all of my book reviews and all

564
00:29:01,854 --> 00:29:03,994
of the other documents that I support it

565
00:29:03,994 --> 00:29:07,806
with. Okay? The craft of intelligence is

566
00:29:07,806 --> 00:29:10,360
about having an objective, professional

567
00:29:10,360 --> 00:29:15,035
group that is able to craft a requirement

568
00:29:15,035 --> 00:29:16,418
and partnership with the person being

569
00:29:16,418 --> 00:29:18,513
supported. That's requirement's definition.

570
00:29:18,513 --> 00:29:20,981
Then they do collection management,

571
00:29:20,981 --> 00:29:22,981
they know who knows, they go out and they

572
00:29:22,981 --> 00:29:24,904
pull in all these sources from many different

573
00:29:24,904 --> 00:29:27,661
places, and this can also be done discreetly

574
00:29:27,661 --> 00:29:29,436
whether you are doing it open source or

575
00:29:29,436 --> 00:29:31,833
closed source. Then they do processing,

576
00:29:31,833 --> 00:29:34,513
man machine processing and one of the

577
00:29:34,513 --> 00:29:36,911
problems that we have with machine processing

578
00:29:36,911 --> 00:29:41,722
is that I was ignored. In 1988 I told the

579
00:29:41,722 --> 00:29:44,365
General Defence Intelligence Program Committee

580
00:29:44,365 --> 00:29:47,169
that we had to have geo-spatial attributes

581
00:29:47,169 --> 00:29:50,680
on every datam or we would never be able

582
00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:54,300
to do machine speed visualization of all

583
00:29:54,300 --> 00:29:57,104
data all the time. We still don't have that.

584
00:29:57,104 --> 00:30:00,801
Okay? So, machine processing is actually

585
00:30:00,801 --> 00:30:03,938
severely limited due to lack of the geospatial

586
00:30:03,947 --> 00:30:07,485
attributes on every datam. And then you do

587
00:30:07,485 --> 00:30:09,851
man processing, one of problems that we have

588
00:30:09,851 --> 00:30:13,155
in both the intelligence community and the

589
00:30:13,155 --> 00:30:16,921
customer base, is we have a mix of young

590
00:30:16,921 --> 00:30:20,264
people and political appointees, not subject

591
00:30:20,264 --> 00:30:23,620
matter experts. I wrote an article for the

592
00:30:23,620 --> 00:30:28,341
U.S. Institute for Peace in 1997 and we

593
00:30:28,341 --> 00:30:31,705
talked about the chasm, the gap between

594
00:30:31,705 --> 00:30:34,672
people with power and people with knowledge,

595
00:30:34,672 --> 00:30:39,200
that gap is now catastrophic. Decisions are

596
00:30:39,200 --> 00:30:42,255
made in Washington on the basis of who has

597
00:30:42,255 --> 00:30:46,740
paid for that decision, not on the basis of

598
00:30:46,740 --> 00:30:48,800
evidence or the public interest.

599
00:30:48,800 --> 00:30:52,075
So, Open Source intelligence is the

600
00:30:52,075 --> 00:30:54,433
application of the craft of intelligence

601
00:30:54,433 --> 00:30:58,793
legally and ethically to create smart cities,

602
00:30:58,793 --> 00:31:02,594
smart nations, smart companies, smart citizens.

603
00:31:02,594 --> 00:31:06,361
It's about not being a sheep.

604
00:31:09,144 --> 00:31:12,776
--- Wow. Okay, not being a sheep.

605
00:31:12,914 --> 00:31:14,132
Bahahahaha...

606
00:31:14,132 --> 00:31:16,306
---

607
00:31:16,306 --> 00:31:18,680
I love that. I absolutely love that.

608
00:31:18,680 --> 00:31:25,593
So, but you are going to be giving the tools

609
00:31:25,593 --> 00:31:28,521
for people not to be sheep any more, but

610
00:31:28,521 --> 00:31:34,033
then you have to really kind of presume or

611
00:31:34,033 --> 00:31:36,073
assume that they would care to do that,

612
00:31:36,073 --> 00:31:37,006
wouldn't you?

613
00:31:37,006 --> 00:31:39,680
You know, one of the things I've decided

614
00:31:39,680 --> 00:31:41,891
that if I ever work for a President and I'm

615
00:31:41,891 --> 00:31:43,679
ever offered my dream job, I want to be

616
00:31:43,679 --> 00:31:46,217
Secretary of Education, Intelligence and

617
00:31:46,217 --> 00:31:48,711
Research, together.

618
00:31:49,195 --> 00:31:51,314
One of the problems we have, is we have

619
00:31:51,314 --> 00:31:53,814
an educational system that trains sheep.

620
00:31:53,814 --> 00:31:56,515
---

621
00:31:56,515 --> 00:31:59,516
It basically requires kids to sit still for

622
00:31:59,516 --> 00:32:02,756
eighteen years. That's a crime against

623
00:32:02,756 --> 00:32:07,291
humanity. It beats the creativity out of children.

624
00:32:07,291 --> 00:32:10,600
It tries to teach children to not question

625
00:32:10,600 --> 00:32:13,694
authority. It completely closes them

626
00:32:13,694 --> 00:32:16,773
off from the real world. I think we need to

627
00:32:16,773 --> 00:32:19,437
radically alter education, and we need to make

628
00:32:19,437 --> 00:32:23,032
education a life long endeavour, at the same

629
00:32:23,032 --> 00:32:25,716
time that we make meaningful work and creative

630
00:32:25,716 --> 00:32:28,680
artistic work, including the arts and music,

631
00:32:28,680 --> 00:32:30,680
and everything. I mean music helps your

632
00:32:30,680 --> 00:32:32,705
brain. The arts help your brain.

633
00:32:32,705 --> 00:32:37,009
So, we have, we're at the end of the

634
00:32:37,009 --> 00:32:39,062
industrial era. The industrial era was

635
00:32:39,062 --> 00:32:42,380
about turning the population into obedient

636
00:32:42,380 --> 00:32:45,651
sheep and factory workers and now we're

637
00:32:45,651 --> 00:32:47,836
getting into an era, and part of the problem

638
00:32:47,836 --> 00:32:50,507
with the singularity approach is it doesn't

639
00:32:50,507 --> 00:32:54,065
understand the true costs. Okay? So, you're

640
00:32:54,065 --> 00:32:57,353
smart phone for example has at least 5 dead

641
00:32:57,353 --> 00:33:01,787
Chinese in it, because the Chinese are

642
00:33:01,787 --> 00:33:04,476
required to dip their hands into class A

643
00:33:04,476 --> 00:33:07,771
carcinogenic in order to build that smart

644
00:33:07,771 --> 00:33:10,827
phone and what that means is that the

645
00:33:10,827 --> 00:33:12,874
Chinese that have touched and built your

646
00:33:12,874 --> 00:33:15,153
smart phone have essentially come down

647
00:33:15,153 --> 00:33:17,940
with leukaemia and they are now in a

648
00:33:17,940 --> 00:33:20,291
leukaemia ward or they're dead and buried.

649
00:33:20,291 --> 00:33:24,707
So, there is a human cost to the singularity

650
00:33:24,707 --> 00:33:28,138
that has not been properly evaluated.

651
00:33:28,138 --> 00:33:30,800
That sounds a little bit too much to me,

652
00:33:30,800 --> 00:33:32,912
I mean in the sense that I totally agree

653
00:33:32,912 --> 00:33:35,663
on the, on the, sort of, carcinogenic

654
00:33:35,663 --> 00:33:39,640
things but, Apple has sold, on their own

655
00:33:39,640 --> 00:33:42,271
like hundreds of millions of phones, if we

656
00:33:42,271 --> 00:33:44,888
had five dead people for each phone, the

657
00:33:44,888 --> 00:33:47,113
whole Chinese population would disappear.

658
00:33:47,113 --> 00:33:50,141
All right, you just killed my math, but,

659
00:33:50,141 --> 00:33:51,828
it's a very good idea, we need to run the

660
00:33:51,828 --> 00:33:55,665
number up to five. Look for an article...

661
00:33:55,665 --> 00:33:59,130
Nikoli: (inaudible)....if you were more specific.
Roberts: ...I have a link, I have a link

662
00:33:59,130 --> 00:34:00,440
I have a link in my article for you called,

663
00:34:00,440 --> 00:34:05,540
"The Human Cost of Computing" and so you'll

664
00:34:05,540 --> 00:34:08,433
see the data there on Chinese coming down

665
00:34:08,433 --> 00:34:10,497
with Leukaemia, you're probably right. You

666
00:34:10,497 --> 00:34:12,651
are probably talking one Chinese for every

667
00:34:12,651 --> 00:34:15,455
thousand phones, or something like that.

668
00:34:15,455 --> 00:34:17,880
I don't know what the number is. The point

669
00:34:17,880 --> 00:34:20,104
is people do come down with leukaemia

670
00:34:20,104 --> 00:34:22,476
while building smart phones.

671
00:34:22,476 --> 00:34:25,603
And I agree on that point, I just disagree

672
00:34:25,603 --> 00:34:27,412
it's going to be five because I actually think

673
00:34:27,412 --> 00:34:28,383
that that's actually...(inaudible)

674
00:34:28,383 --> 00:34:31,103
You've got me. I'm wrong. I confess my sins.

675
00:34:31,103 --> 00:34:36,320
Yeah...okay... And one of the ones that I

676
00:34:36,320 --> 00:34:38,080
liked from those examples you have listed

677
00:34:38,080 --> 00:34:40,252
there is actually a very kind of obvious

678
00:34:40,252 --> 00:34:42,796
one, in a sense that, for example each

679
00:34:42,796 --> 00:34:47,044
plastic water bottle requires water equal

680
00:34:47,044 --> 00:34:50,113
to six or seven water bottles.

681
00:34:50,113 --> 00:34:51,513
It's insane.

682
00:34:51,513 --> 00:34:54,610
Right. To hold one water bottle worth

683
00:34:54,610 --> 00:34:55,321
of water.

684
00:34:55,321 --> 00:34:57,891
Then now, what's interesting is in the last

685
00:34:57,891 --> 00:35:01,041
few years, several excellent processes have

686
00:35:01,041 --> 00:35:05,512
come up for recycling plastic, but we're

687
00:35:05,512 --> 00:35:08,480
still not doing it. There is just this

688
00:35:08,480 --> 00:35:11,871
attitude of waste. I think the

689
00:35:11,871 --> 00:35:15,067
day is going to come when trash dumps

690
00:35:15,067 --> 00:35:16,946
become gold mines.

691
00:35:16,946 --> 00:35:19,426
That's part of the singularity crowd though.

692
00:35:19,426 --> 00:35:22,040
I like that. I didn't know that.

693
00:35:22,040 --> 00:35:25,518
Yeah...The sort of, the fact that there will

694
00:35:25,518 --> 00:35:29,480
be lots of treasure buried there for recycling

695
00:35:29,480 --> 00:35:31,826
and for future entrepreneurs, at least

696
00:35:31,826 --> 00:35:33,244
that's one of the ideas anyway.

697
00:35:33,244 --> 00:35:34,556
It's a good one.

698
00:35:34,556 --> 00:35:38,081
But, how and when it's about to be seen

699
00:35:38,081 --> 00:35:39,634
at least the the scale, to the exponential

700
00:35:39,634 --> 00:35:41,924
scale that we are hoping it will be.

701
00:35:41,924 --> 00:35:44,040
But, I'm not seeing it yet and I'm on

702
00:35:44,040 --> 00:35:47,056
your side to the extent that waste and

703
00:35:47,056 --> 00:35:50,552
sort of negative actualities that we see

704
00:35:50,552 --> 00:35:52,517
in the exponential production of many of

705
00:35:52,517 --> 00:35:53,520
these things.

706
00:35:53,520 --> 00:35:56,045
Well, let's talk exponential and scale.

707
00:35:56,045 --> 00:35:58,332
One of the reasons open source engineering

708
00:35:58,332 --> 00:36:00,934
is so important a concept is because

709
00:36:00,934 --> 00:36:03,958
open source everything engineering is also

710
00:36:03,958 --> 00:36:07,760
distributed, no barrier to entry engineering.

711
00:36:07,760 --> 00:36:12,179
So this means that anybody can recycle

712
00:36:12,179 --> 00:36:15,882
waste. Anybody can be an entrepreneur

713
00:36:15,882 --> 00:36:18,246
without having to get a lot of capital

714
00:36:18,246 --> 00:36:20,751
investment without having to create large

715
00:36:20,751 --> 00:36:23,482
organizations and fixed plans and things

716
00:36:23,482 --> 00:36:26,448
like that. So, the whole concept behind

717
00:36:26,448 --> 00:36:29,013
Open Source Everything is that you have

718
00:36:29,013 --> 00:36:32,724
open money, open politics, open standards,

719
00:36:32,724 --> 00:36:35,715
you have open energy, open food, open water.

720
00:36:35,715 --> 00:36:39,995
All of this is way of unleashing entrepreneurial

721
00:36:39,995 --> 00:36:42,953
capabilities among humans.

722
00:36:42,953 --> 00:36:46,335
Yeah, and I agree with you on that end and

723
00:36:46,335 --> 00:36:50,480
I have huge problems personally with the

724
00:36:50,480 --> 00:36:52,915
(inaudible) system as it is right now etc...

725
00:36:52,915 --> 00:36:55,321
But you know, the classic counter arguments

726
00:36:55,321 --> 00:37:00,652
to that is of course is the issue of innovation

727
00:37:00,652 --> 00:37:03,664
and, or the incentive to innovate, so, how

728
00:37:03,664 --> 00:37:06,531
do you address that? If we open source

729
00:37:06,531 --> 00:37:08,911
everything, people say, no one be innovating

730
00:37:08,911 --> 00:37:10,840
any more because people don't get any

731
00:37:10,840 --> 00:37:11,679
incentive...

732
00:37:11,679 --> 00:37:14,388
I, I, I, I don't think that's true. Now I

733
00:37:14,388 --> 00:37:16,913
will grant you there is still a lot of

734
00:37:16,913 --> 00:37:20,133
struggling about Open Source revenue models.

735
00:37:20,133 --> 00:37:22,184
The way that...

736
00:37:22,184 --> 00:37:24,634
I'm a good example of that myself.

737
00:37:24,634 --> 00:37:28,158
No, I understand and one of the discussions

738
00:37:28,158 --> 00:37:30,590
I've had with the Open Source software guys

739
00:37:30,590 --> 00:37:33,375
is that essentially the open source software

740
00:37:33,375 --> 00:37:37,571
that they create is in theory a calling card.

741
00:37:37,571 --> 00:37:41,178
It's an example. It's a way of announcing

742
00:37:41,178 --> 00:37:44,284
themselves and then, in theory, they get

743
00:37:44,284 --> 00:37:47,613
paid for being part of a larger team that

744
00:37:47,613 --> 00:37:51,146
goes on to migrate and transform and so forth.

745
00:37:51,146 --> 00:37:53,459
There's actually a number of open source

746
00:37:53,459 --> 00:37:55,989
revenue models and what they all seem to

747
00:37:55,989 --> 00:37:58,640
focus on is that the money is not made in

748
00:37:58,640 --> 00:38:00,962
the foundation, but in the finish.

749
00:38:00,962 --> 00:38:05,800
It's made on the edges. I, myself have not

750
00:38:05,800 --> 00:38:08,082
been in a normal job since the first of

751
00:38:08,082 --> 00:38:12,232
January 2008. I have been working on the

752
00:38:12,232 --> 00:38:16,367
edges, on the margins. I mean, today

753
00:38:16,367 --> 00:38:18,362
I gave a briefing for a thousand dollars

754
00:38:18,362 --> 00:38:23,869
and, it's a very uncomfortable existence,

755
00:38:23,869 --> 00:38:25,457
it's a very....

756
00:38:25,457 --> 00:38:28,993
unpredictable and (inaudible)

757
00:38:28,993 --> 00:38:32,883
Yes! Yes! Now part of this larger concept

758
00:38:32,883 --> 00:38:36,736
is a basic income for everybody.

759
00:38:36,736 --> 00:38:40,403
In an open source world with an open

760
00:38:40,403 --> 00:38:42,516
government that is totally honest and

761
00:38:42,516 --> 00:38:45,011
transparent you would no longer have the

762
00:38:45,011 --> 00:38:47,680
concentration of wealth. You would no

763
00:38:47,680 --> 00:38:49,730
longer have the tax avoidance of the

764
00:38:49,730 --> 00:38:52,515
very rich. You would in fact have more

765
00:38:52,515 --> 00:38:54,786
then enough wealth for everybody. If we

766
00:38:54,786 --> 00:38:58,305
had... If we had gone into Afghanistan and

767
00:38:58,305 --> 00:39:00,499
Iraq with all the money that we spent

768
00:39:00,499 --> 00:39:03,479
destroying those two countries, and we had

769
00:39:03,479 --> 00:39:07,826
instead given everybody an annual salary and

770
00:39:07,826 --> 00:39:09,987
created two story houses with swimming

771
00:39:09,987 --> 00:39:12,400
pools with water and electricity and free

772
00:39:12,400 --> 00:39:15,240
internet for the kids, the middle east

773
00:39:15,240 --> 00:39:17,921
would be a better place today and we

774
00:39:17,921 --> 00:39:19,658
probably would only have spent half as

775
00:39:19,658 --> 00:39:22,320
much money and we would not have all

776
00:39:22,320 --> 00:39:24,479
these residual costs of the Falluja

777
00:39:24,479 --> 00:39:27,498
uranium babies, and the Iraqi military

778
00:39:27,498 --> 00:39:29,807
officers now running ISIS units

779
00:39:29,807 --> 00:39:35,760
in opposition. So, I talk about holistic

780
00:39:35,760 --> 00:39:38,059
analytics, true cost economics and

781
00:39:38,059 --> 00:39:40,502
open source engineering and all three

782
00:39:40,502 --> 00:39:42,880
need to be together. The problem that we

783
00:39:42,880 --> 00:39:46,746
have right now is that we are at the very

784
00:39:46,746 --> 00:39:50,558
end of the proprietary technology,

785
00:39:50,558 --> 00:39:53,480
scientific, financial paradigm. And that's

786
00:39:53,480 --> 00:39:55,759
the paradigm which says everybody is a

787
00:39:55,759 --> 00:39:58,920
slave and I own the intellectual property

788
00:39:58,920 --> 00:40:01,800
and I can sell it and profit from it and

789
00:40:01,800 --> 00:40:03,075
become a millionaire.

790
00:40:03,075 --> 00:40:04,979
And do you think we are at the end of it

791
00:40:04,979 --> 00:40:08,133
because international treaties like for

792
00:40:08,133 --> 00:40:10,924
example, TPPA most recently...

793
00:40:10,924 --> 00:40:15,840
TPPA is a crime against humanity and anybody

794
00:40:15,840 --> 00:40:17,495
who voted for that should be impeached.

795
00:40:17,495 --> 00:40:21,474
Well, the Canadian government believe it

796
00:40:21,474 --> 00:40:23,417
or not is kind of considering it now and

797
00:40:23,417 --> 00:40:26,671
I'm huge opponent of them doing it, but

798
00:40:26,671 --> 00:40:29,248
that was negotiated in secret by the previous

799
00:40:29,248 --> 00:40:30,836
government and I don't even know...

800
00:40:30,836 --> 00:40:32,920
It was negotiated in secret, it has secret

801
00:40:32,920 --> 00:40:36,257
clauses, it is essentially a fascist treaty.

802
00:40:36,257 --> 00:40:39,893
It allows corporations to tell governments

803
00:40:39,893 --> 00:40:41,104
what to do.

804
00:40:41,104 --> 00:40:44,419
And sue them and force them to do stuff

805
00:40:44,419 --> 00:40:45,880
in their own country.

806
00:40:45,880 --> 00:40:48,198
Look, one of the cool things about the

807
00:40:48,198 --> 00:40:52,235
future is that absentee landlords have no

808
00:40:52,235 --> 00:40:57,152
standing. The day is going to come when all

809
00:40:57,152 --> 00:40:59,415
these big agricultural tracks are taken

810
00:40:59,415 --> 00:41:03,069
over by individual human beings. And,

811
00:41:03,069 --> 00:41:05,106
there is going to be nothing that the big

812
00:41:05,106 --> 00:41:07,272
agricultural landowning companies can do.

813
00:41:07,272 --> 00:41:10,728
They are literally going to lose their land.

814
00:41:10,728 --> 00:41:13,740
Because it's not their land. I believe in

815
00:41:13,740 --> 00:41:15,969
the French and the Mexican system with

816
00:41:15,969 --> 00:41:18,456
community land ownership. This is the

817
00:41:18,456 --> 00:41:21,500
original indigenous Native American concept

818
00:41:21,500 --> 00:41:24,755
so that a family can have a hundred year

819
00:41:24,755 --> 00:41:29,840
lease that is transmittable forever to

820
00:41:29,840 --> 00:41:32,489
other family members, but it cannot sell

821
00:41:32,489 --> 00:41:35,637
the community land, it can use the community

822
00:41:35,637 --> 00:41:38,846
land that is assigned to it to make a profit

823
00:41:38,846 --> 00:41:42,154
but it cannot do any harm to the land.

824
00:41:42,154 --> 00:41:45,641
So, for example no Monsanto GMO seeds

825
00:41:45,641 --> 00:41:48,420
no pesticides. You know, we're...

826
00:41:48,420 --> 00:41:53,013
There's a book called "1491" that says that

827
00:41:53,013 --> 00:41:55,469
the average Mayan head of household had

828
00:41:55,469 --> 00:41:59,138
to work sixty days a year in order to

829
00:41:59,138 --> 00:42:03,614
support a family of five. The rest of the time

830
00:42:03,614 --> 00:42:06,184
they were doing arts and crafts and

831
00:42:06,184 --> 00:42:07,508
killing each other.

832
00:42:07,508 --> 00:42:10,867
Okay, so again, many, many things there.

833
00:42:10,867 --> 00:42:16,281
So, but, if TPPA is what it is, then it seems

834
00:42:16,281 --> 00:42:18,740
to me that that regime that you're saying

835
00:42:18,740 --> 00:42:21,640
is coming to an end, I think, the way I

836
00:42:21,640 --> 00:42:24,036
see it is pretty strong and powerful and

837
00:42:24,036 --> 00:42:27,514
perhaps ever present and overwhelmingly

838
00:42:27,514 --> 00:42:28,238
so ...

839
00:42:28,238 --> 00:42:31,680
It's an illusion...It's an illusion that has been

840
00:42:31,680 --> 00:42:35,854
carefully crafted using movies and the media

841
00:42:35,854 --> 00:42:39,080
and the educational system. There is

842
00:42:39,080 --> 00:42:42,300
a wonderful cartoon of the ninety nine

843
00:42:42,300 --> 00:42:45,975
percent standing on a plank and the other

844
00:42:45,975 --> 00:42:48,043
end of the plank is out over the grand

845
00:42:48,043 --> 00:42:50,714
canyon and the one percent is standing

846
00:42:50,714 --> 00:42:52,876
on the end of the plank that is out over

847
00:42:52,876 --> 00:42:56,457
the grand canyon and on the ninety nine

848
00:42:56,457 --> 00:42:59,105
percent side, one of the 99%er's turns

849
00:42:59,105 --> 00:43:02,320
and says why are we standing on this plank?

850
00:43:02,320 --> 00:43:06,451
That day is coming..

851
00:43:06,451 --> 00:43:11,138
I sure hope so, but then the concern is,

852
00:43:11,138 --> 00:43:13,678
of course, how is that look like, because

853
00:43:13,678 --> 00:43:17,400
there's many ways, shapes and forms that

854
00:43:17,400 --> 00:43:21,790
can come of it and there's many alternative

855
00:43:21,790 --> 00:43:23,990
visions to the world that that can come...

856
00:43:23,990 --> 00:43:27,221
And I think the answer to that, I've read

857
00:43:27,221 --> 00:43:30,541
a number of books on self determination

858
00:43:30,541 --> 00:43:33,121
and secession, Quebec for example,

859
00:43:33,121 --> 00:43:35,881
I believe will be it's own country within

860
00:43:35,881 --> 00:43:37,752
the next five to ten years. Catalan will

861
00:43:37,752 --> 00:43:39,600
be it's own country within five to ten

862
00:43:39,600 --> 00:43:41,859
years. Scotland will be it's own country.

863
00:43:41,859 --> 00:43:44,760
Hawaii will be it's own country within

864
00:43:44,760 --> 00:43:46,693
five to ten years. There are five

865
00:43:46,693 --> 00:43:48,892
thousand secessionist movement around

866
00:43:48,892 --> 00:43:50,756
the world. There are twenty seven

867
00:43:50,756 --> 00:43:52,874
secessionist movements in the United States.

868
00:43:52,874 --> 00:43:55,985
Vermont, Alaska, Texas, Hawaii and a portion

869
00:43:55,985 --> 00:43:58,255
of California and also Oregon and

870
00:43:58,255 --> 00:44:00,600
Washington among others, Long Island,

871
00:44:00,600 --> 00:44:03,881
New York City has talked about leaving the

872
00:44:03,881 --> 00:44:06,064
state of New York, but my point is

873
00:44:06,064 --> 00:44:09,485
I think eventually we are going to get to

874
00:44:09,485 --> 00:44:12,598
a world in which diversity is appreciated again.

875
00:44:12,598 --> 00:44:15,376
We have centralized too much.

876
00:44:15,376 --> 00:44:18,243
I think we call that Canada, where I come

877
00:44:18,243 --> 00:44:20,321
from, but anyway, that's of course a partial

878
00:44:20,321 --> 00:44:25,021
point of view and I don't see the...I see

879
00:44:25,021 --> 00:44:26,900
what your saying and I agree with most of

880
00:44:26,900 --> 00:44:29,102
it, the Quebec example I kind of tend to

881
00:44:29,102 --> 00:44:31,513
disagree with because most of the young

882
00:44:31,513 --> 00:44:33,954
people that I talked to today from Quebec

883
00:44:33,954 --> 00:44:38,840
are not concerned with that issue as

884
00:44:38,840 --> 00:44:40,880
one of the major issues of our time.

885
00:44:40,880 --> 00:44:42,921
They're more concerned with ecology,

886
00:44:42,921 --> 00:44:46,670
with the economy, with security, with their

887
00:44:46,670 --> 00:44:49,541
future job prospects, with things like that

888
00:44:49,541 --> 00:44:55,202
and, probably Quebec as a sovereign state

889
00:44:55,202 --> 00:44:58,639
is not probably even in the top ten, and

890
00:44:58,639 --> 00:45:00,336
certainly not in the top five, as far as I

891
00:45:00,336 --> 00:45:05,276
can tell. But, the other ones maybe I see

892
00:45:05,276 --> 00:45:08,200
that more in Catalonia for example, of what

893
00:45:08,200 --> 00:45:10,954
you're talking about and we see lots of

894
00:45:10,954 --> 00:45:13,489
recent signs of it. I don't see those signs

895
00:45:13,489 --> 00:45:15,108
in Canada per say.

896
00:45:15,108 --> 00:45:17,681
Well, I guess what I want to say to you,

897
00:45:17,681 --> 00:45:19,793
there is an excellent book by a former

898
00:45:19,793 --> 00:45:22,120
Professor of mine, Charles Bednar, called,

899
00:45:22,120 --> 00:45:25,248
"Transforming the Dream", and what he talks

900
00:45:25,248 --> 00:45:28,758
about essentially is that the industrial era

901
00:45:28,758 --> 00:45:32,872
paradigm has now reached the end of it's

902
00:45:32,872 --> 00:45:36,009
supportable life. We're going to see

903
00:45:36,009 --> 00:45:38,320
increasing collapses. I'm looking for

904
00:45:38,320 --> 00:45:40,334
an economic collapse in the United States

905
00:45:40,334 --> 00:45:43,769
in the next year. I'm looking for a collapse

906
00:45:43,769 --> 00:45:47,508
in Europe. This whole... I mean, we've had

907
00:45:47,508 --> 00:45:50,230
two million illegal immigrants go to Europe

908
00:45:50,230 --> 00:45:54,512
in the last two years. Two million! Okay?

909
00:45:54,512 --> 00:45:57,947
So, what's happening now is that governments

910
00:45:57,947 --> 00:46:01,161
are no longer legitimate in the eyes of a

911
00:46:01,161 --> 00:46:04,360
majority and you have concentrated wealth

912
00:46:04,360 --> 00:46:08,400
and I, I, I don't have it in my article for you

913
00:46:08,400 --> 00:46:10,555
but, I can certainly share it with you.

914
00:46:10,555 --> 00:46:13,519
The most popular graph on my website

915
00:46:13,519 --> 00:46:15,948
is "The Preconditions of Revolution Graphic",

916
00:46:15,948 --> 00:46:18,983
because it outlines all the things that

917
00:46:18,983 --> 00:46:21,476
can go wrong in political, legal, socio-

918
00:46:21,476 --> 00:46:24,640
economic, ideal cultural, techno-demographic

919
00:46:24,640 --> 00:46:27,663
and natural geographic terms. And what's

920
00:46:27,663 --> 00:46:29,936
happening right now in the west is all of

921
00:46:29,936 --> 00:46:31,480
those conditions are present.

922
00:46:31,480 --> 00:46:34,674
Do you think that the situation in Europe

923
00:46:34,674 --> 00:46:37,455
and the United States and Canada is all

924
00:46:37,455 --> 00:46:39,094
the same, because I see...

925
00:46:39,094 --> 00:46:40,953
No. They are all different.

926
00:46:40,953 --> 00:46:43,798
Right. That's how I see it. I see that

927
00:46:43,798 --> 00:46:45,948
first coming to the United States if

928
00:46:45,948 --> 00:46:49,241
any where, and secondly is that necessarily

929
00:46:49,241 --> 00:46:50,586
a good thing or not?

930
00:46:50,586 --> 00:46:53,785
Well, you know, going back to your comment

931
00:46:53,785 --> 00:46:56,174
about nature being nasty and brutish,

932
00:46:56,174 --> 00:47:02,160
if the United States government is so

933
00:47:02,160 --> 00:47:06,479
stupid as to not focus on the well being

934
00:47:06,479 --> 00:47:10,339
of its population, then all of the chaos

935
00:47:10,339 --> 00:47:13,459
that occurs in the United States has been

936
00:47:13,459 --> 00:47:16,251
brought on by the U.S. government and what's

937
00:47:16,251 --> 00:47:19,640
going to happen is the states are going to

938
00:47:19,640 --> 00:47:22,620
devolve. They are going to begin nullifying

939
00:47:22,620 --> 00:47:24,320
federal regulations. They're going to be

940
00:47:24,320 --> 00:47:26,886
ending federal ownership of land.

941
00:47:26,886 --> 00:47:28,493
The federal government was intended to

942
00:47:28,493 --> 00:47:30,573
be a kind of administrative convenience.

943
00:47:30,634 --> 00:47:33,384
It's the United States of America, not the

944
00:47:33,384 --> 00:47:37,679
united people of America. It was the states

945
00:47:37,679 --> 00:47:40,822
that created the federal government and

946
00:47:40,822 --> 00:47:43,320
I believe the future is going to eventually

947
00:47:43,320 --> 00:47:46,240
see the federal government forbidden from

948
00:47:46,240 --> 00:47:49,897
owning land or taxing citizens directly.

949
00:47:49,897 --> 00:47:53,507
And the states will be providing a portion

950
00:47:53,507 --> 00:47:56,815
funding for services of common concern.

951
00:47:56,815 --> 00:48:00,069
I expect the U.S. military to be cut back,

952
00:48:00,069 --> 00:48:03,981
not quite to Canada's scale, but I expect

953
00:48:03,981 --> 00:48:07,580
some major, major cuts in how we spend

954
00:48:07,580 --> 00:48:09,368
money. I expect an end to borrowing.

955
00:48:09,368 --> 00:48:13,600
I expect a balanced budget. We're, I mean,

956
00:48:13,600 --> 00:48:16,765
we've literally been living a criminal dream.

957
00:48:16,765 --> 00:48:21,360
Okay, but, to me, what you're saying

958
00:48:21,360 --> 00:48:25,496
sounds like, I mean, from a former political

959
00:48:25,496 --> 00:48:28,673
scientist, as I am, the definition of a state

960
00:48:28,673 --> 00:48:31,996
is "that body which has the monopoly over

961
00:48:31,996 --> 00:48:34,001
the organized means of violence."

962
00:48:34,001 --> 00:48:36,990
In a certain graphical.. (inaudible)

963
00:48:36,990 --> 00:48:39,495
Well McIver wrote a wonderful book,

964
00:48:39,495 --> 00:48:42,055
"The Origin of the State" and he talks about

965
00:48:42,055 --> 00:48:44,846
a number of functions not just the ownership

966
00:48:44,846 --> 00:48:47,768
of violence. Chris Hedges wrote a book

967
00:48:47,768 --> 00:48:50,680
recently on wages of rebellion and, of course,

968
00:48:50,680 --> 00:48:55,179
Russell Brand has written a wonderful book

969
00:48:55,179 --> 00:48:58,320
on revolution. Revolutions happen when

970
00:48:58,320 --> 00:48:59,059
three things ...

971
00:48:59,059 --> 00:49:00,059
The comedian Russell Brand?

972
00:49:00,059 --> 00:49:00,847
What?

973
00:49:00,847 --> 00:49:05,452
Yes. Yes. He wrote a book that I reviewed on

974
00:49:05,452 --> 00:49:08,313
revolution. I liked it very much. Three

975
00:49:08,313 --> 00:49:11,141
things are coming together. First is

976
00:49:11,141 --> 00:49:14,987
concentrated wealth together with unemployment

977
00:49:14,987 --> 00:49:16,789
which is no less then twenty three percent

978
00:49:16,789 --> 00:49:19,548
in the United States today. In some groups it's

979
00:49:19,548 --> 00:49:23,027
forty percent. Single Mom's with a kid,

980
00:49:23,027 --> 00:49:25,681
people of colour, young people with new

981
00:49:25,681 --> 00:49:27,304
college degrees and older guys like myself

982
00:49:27,304 --> 00:49:29,960
it's forty percent unemployment. Okay? So,

983
00:49:29,960 --> 00:49:30,867
concentrate...

984
00:49:30,867 --> 00:49:33,237
Why do official statistics are so different?

985
00:49:33,237 --> 00:49:34,930
Because the government lies.

986
00:49:34,930 --> 00:49:37,561
The government doesn't count everybody

987
00:49:37,561 --> 00:49:39,408
that's given up looking for work, doesn't

988
00:49:39,408 --> 00:49:41,725
count people are holding three part time

989
00:49:41,725 --> 00:49:44,640
jobs with no benefits. It's literally a

990
00:49:44,640 --> 00:49:46,873
theatre, I mean Chris Hedges wrote a

991
00:49:46,873 --> 00:49:49,315
wonderful book called "Empire of Illusion"

992
00:49:49,315 --> 00:49:51,639
The End of Literacy and the Triumph of

993
00:49:51,639 --> 00:49:55,381
Spectacle. More recently he's written a

994
00:49:55,381 --> 00:49:57,060
book called "Wages of Rebellion" which

995
00:49:57,060 --> 00:49:58,944
contains the third condition for revolutiion.

996
00:49:58,944 --> 00:50:02,010
The first two are concentration of wealth

997
00:50:02,010 --> 00:50:03,560
and illegitimate government in the eyes of

998
00:50:03,560 --> 00:50:08,121
the people. The third is when the military

999
00:50:08,121 --> 00:50:11,532
and law enforcement stop enforcing the law

1000
00:50:11,532 --> 00:50:17,701
and no longer support the elites in their

1001
00:50:17,701 --> 00:50:20,676
control of the population, we are very

1002
00:50:20,676 --> 00:50:21,921
close to that point.

1003
00:50:21,921 --> 00:50:27,590
But to me that sounds like a very concerning
(inaudible) thing (inaudible)... you know,

1004
00:50:27,590 --> 00:50:36,546
to me, that sounds like a civil war.
I mean, one of the French

1005
00:50:36,546 --> 00:50:40,220
revolutionaries, I can't remember who it was,

1006
00:50:40,220 --> 00:50:42,362
but he said, "Revolution is a blood thirsty

1007
00:50:42,362 --> 00:50:44,669
monster that once let out, you cannot easily

1008
00:50:44,669 --> 00:50:46,442
put back in."

1009
00:50:46,442 --> 00:50:47,728
It's true but...

1010
00:50:47,728 --> 00:50:49,840
all of them got guillotinized in the end.

1011
00:50:49,840 --> 00:50:52,161
Well, let me point out to you the difference

1012
00:50:52,161 --> 00:50:55,018
between a civil war and a war of succession.

1013
00:50:55,018 --> 00:50:59,252
A civil war is one where you are trying to

1014
00:50:59,252 --> 00:51:02,400
become the owner of the state and have a

1015
00:51:02,400 --> 00:51:04,977
monopoly on violence and be in control

1016
00:51:04,977 --> 00:51:10,200
of everything. A war of succession is much

1017
00:51:10,200 --> 00:51:14,104
easier to win. A war of succession says

1018
00:51:14,104 --> 00:51:17,727
do what you want, I'm out of here. You no

1019
00:51:17,727 --> 00:51:19,931
longer have authority in my state.

1020
00:51:19,931 --> 00:51:22,381
Take the state of Texas for example,

1021
00:51:22,381 --> 00:51:25,356
that is a state that could very, very

1022
00:51:25,356 --> 00:51:27,584
easily kick the federal government out

1023
00:51:27,584 --> 00:51:30,280
and there is absolutely nothing Washington

1024
00:51:30,280 --> 00:51:31,277
can do about that.

1025
00:51:31,277 --> 00:51:33,846
Really, but Washington commandeers the

1026
00:51:33,846 --> 00:51:36,240
army, Texas has just some militia.

1027
00:51:36,240 --> 00:51:40,632
Texas has the Texas National Guard and

1028
00:51:40,632 --> 00:51:43,699
I think you will find that two out of three

1029
00:51:43,699 --> 00:51:46,486
U.S. soldiers will not fire on U.S. citizens.

1030
00:51:46,486 --> 00:51:49,720
I hope so, but I'm not sure about that

1031
00:51:49,720 --> 00:51:53,830
because if you look at the1960's, there was

1032
00:51:53,830 --> 00:51:58,088
this famous case, I forget which University

1033
00:51:58,088 --> 00:51:59,265
was it that...(inaudible)

1034
00:51:59,265 --> 00:52:00,412
Kent State.

1035
00:52:00,412 --> 00:52:03,844
Right. And, people got killed and those

1036
00:52:03,844 --> 00:52:05,423
were protesters and many of those...

1037
00:52:05,423 --> 00:52:07,760
One person got killed and it created

1038
00:52:07,760 --> 00:52:11,653
national outrage. Look, the times have

1039
00:52:11,653 --> 00:52:14,637
changed. I mean the videotaping of

1040
00:52:14,637 --> 00:52:15,989
Rodney King.

1041
00:52:15,989 --> 00:52:18,117
Look how many black people get shot

1042
00:52:18,117 --> 00:52:19,436
all the time.

1043
00:52:19,436 --> 00:52:22,463
And what is happening now is that the

1044
00:52:22,463 --> 00:52:25,773
police are now under scrutiny. I mean,

1045
00:52:25,773 --> 00:52:27,959
we, the police killed 140 people in

1046
00:52:27,959 --> 00:52:31,754
March of last year. What's happening

1047
00:52:31,754 --> 00:52:34,845
is that the internet is making cell phone

1048
00:52:34,845 --> 00:52:38,110
cameras a major resource for citizens

1049
00:52:38,110 --> 00:52:43,798
and it is helping share outrage. Where I

1050
00:52:43,798 --> 00:52:47,632
think we're going and I'm actually optimistic,

1051
00:52:47,632 --> 00:52:49,831
because for example Lady Lynn Rothschild

1052
00:52:49,831 --> 00:52:53,071
ran a conference on inclusive capitalism.

1053
00:52:53,071 --> 00:52:56,800
That's code for stop the pitchforks. There are

1054
00:52:56,800 --> 00:52:59,289
silicone valley billionaires talking about

1055
00:52:59,289 --> 00:53:02,157
redemptive capitalism. That's code for

1056
00:53:02,157 --> 00:53:03,888
stop the pitchforks.

1057
00:53:03,888 --> 00:53:07,400
Tony Blair use to call that capitalism with

1058
00:53:07,400 --> 00:53:08,604
a human face ...

1059
00:53:08,604 --> 00:53:11,281
Or compassionate capitalism. Frankly, I

1060
00:53:11,281 --> 00:53:13,604
think capitalism is a bad term that should

1061
00:53:13,604 --> 00:53:17,833
be ex-sponged, because laborism is the

1062
00:53:17,833 --> 00:53:20,440
human side of it. I think we need to

1063
00:53:20,440 --> 00:53:23,391
reorient our economies to people and

1064
00:53:23,391 --> 00:53:26,524
communities and we need to get away from

1065
00:53:26,524 --> 00:53:31,558
these, these, huge supply chains that have

1066
00:53:31,558 --> 00:53:34,040
absolutely no respect for true costs.

1067
00:53:34,040 --> 00:53:36,851
If you look at a single...It took one of my

1068
00:53:36,851 --> 00:53:40,354
guys a whole year to identify the true cost

1069
00:53:40,354 --> 00:53:43,614
of a single cotton t-shirt. And, I include

1070
00:53:43,614 --> 00:53:45,524
that in your article, in the article that

1071
00:53:45,524 --> 00:53:45,842
I did for you.

1072
00:53:45,842 --> 00:53:46,360
Yes.

1073
00:53:46,360 --> 00:53:49,110
I mean, a single cotton t-shirt has

1074
00:53:49,110 --> 00:53:51,520
x gallons of water and all this fuel

1075
00:53:51,520 --> 00:53:53,876
and toxins and child labor.

1076
00:53:53,876 --> 00:53:58,138
We need to start doing more localized

1077
00:53:58,138 --> 00:54:00,447
manufacturing. I mean Buckminster Fuller

1078
00:54:00,447 --> 00:54:03,393
was the first person to say, that most

1079
00:54:03,393 --> 00:54:05,371
people's jobs are not worth the petrol

1080
00:54:05,371 --> 00:54:07,961
they use to get to and from work.

1081
00:54:07,961 --> 00:54:12,833
That's a very profound observation.

1082
00:54:12,833 --> 00:54:17,548
I would agree like with a couple of street

1083
00:54:17,548 --> 00:54:19,884
blocks in New York City and here in Toronto

1084
00:54:19,884 --> 00:54:22,374
we call it Bay Street by the way. We don't

1085
00:54:22,374 --> 00:54:24,444
call it Wall Street we call it Bay Street.

1086
00:54:24,444 --> 00:54:27,808
I would agree with that mostly, but

1087
00:54:27,808 --> 00:54:33,000
I don't know. Especially for the Texan

1088
00:54:33,000 --> 00:54:37,334
example, going back again to it. I don't

1089
00:54:37,334 --> 00:54:40,840
see Texas going to laborism any time soon,

1090
00:54:40,840 --> 00:54:43,886
myself. I see Texas even if it succeeds,

1091
00:54:43,886 --> 00:54:47,506
being very kind of laissez-faire, hard core

1092
00:54:47,506 --> 00:54:51,230
Baptist, Presbyterian, Capit...

1093
00:54:51,230 --> 00:54:55,201
Laissez-faire is the key term. Live and let live,

1094
00:54:55,201 --> 00:55:01,030
But laissez-faire is kind of the libertarian

1095
00:55:01,030 --> 00:55:03,049
pro-capitalist moniker isn't it?

1096
00:55:03,049 --> 00:55:06,370
Yeah, and one of the concerns, I was going

1097
00:55:06,370 --> 00:55:08,298
to run as a Libertarian candidate for President

1098
00:55:08,298 --> 00:55:10,245
but it became clear, they didn't want me.

1099
00:55:10,245 --> 00:55:13,650
One of the problems with Libertarians is

1100
00:55:13,650 --> 00:55:17,255
that they don't understand communitarianism.

1101
00:55:17,255 --> 00:55:20,800
It sounds like communism to them.

1102
00:55:20,800 --> 00:55:24,386
Well, they're so individual that they think

1103
00:55:24,386 --> 00:55:27,665
that an individual who is owning land

1104
00:55:27,665 --> 00:55:29,833
for example at the beginning of a river

1105
00:55:29,833 --> 00:55:32,480
has the right to crap in that river

1106
00:55:32,480 --> 00:55:36,119
and never mind the people downstream.

1107
00:55:36,119 --> 00:55:41,281
So, you have to have a community spirit

1108
00:55:41,281 --> 00:55:44,646
in which you have holistic analytics and

1109
00:55:44,646 --> 00:55:48,473
true cost economics and everybody understands

1110
00:55:48,473 --> 00:55:51,960
what the costs and the benefits are for

1111
00:55:51,960 --> 00:55:54,800
having civilized codes of behavior.

1112
00:55:54,800 --> 00:55:57,259
Okay, let's move on our conversation here

1113
00:55:57,259 --> 00:56:01,175
to a couple of examples and a couple of

1114
00:56:01,175 --> 00:56:04,330
terms, terms that you use in your book that

1115
00:56:04,330 --> 00:56:08,397
important, I believe. Let me just bring

1116
00:56:08,397 --> 00:56:10,570
in a couple of criticisms or critical

1117
00:56:10,570 --> 00:56:14,035
points of view. So if we are going

1118
00:56:14,035 --> 00:56:16,060
Open Source Everything, for example,

1119
00:56:16,060 --> 00:56:18,011
one of the things that we are open sourcing,

1120
00:56:18,011 --> 00:56:20,746
engineering, software engineering, all of

1121
00:56:20,746 --> 00:56:24,061
software, etc..etc... So, let me ask you first,

1122
00:56:24,061 --> 00:56:26,226
Are you a Linux user yourself?

1123
00:56:26,226 --> 00:56:30,066
No, but my next computer is going to be an

1124
00:56:30,066 --> 00:56:32,607
open source computer that only runs one

1125
00:56:32,607 --> 00:56:36,120
program at a time. With no Microsoft.

1126
00:56:36,120 --> 00:56:38,377
I still have a computer that's seven years

1127
00:56:38,377 --> 00:56:42,274
old. So I'm still using my company computer.

1128
00:56:42,274 --> 00:56:44,221
And, what OS is it running?

1129
00:56:44,221 --> 00:56:47,278
It's Microsoft.

1130
00:56:47,278 --> 00:56:49,115
It's Windows.

1131
00:56:49,115 --> 00:56:51,235
Yeah. Which is horrible. In fact, I just

1132
00:56:51,235 --> 00:56:54,434
found out if I deleted all the Windows Live

1133
00:56:54,434 --> 00:56:56,065
stuff, my computer runs better.

1134
00:56:56,065 --> 00:57:00,440
One of the shortfalls that we've had in

1135
00:57:00,440 --> 00:57:02,974
recent years is, is we haven't had a proper

1136
00:57:02,974 --> 00:57:05,774
open source laptop. Now there are a couple.

1137
00:57:05,774 --> 00:57:08,754
There's a company, a penguin company,

1138
00:57:08,754 --> 00:57:11,136
that builds an open source laptop. There's

1139
00:57:11,136 --> 00:57:13,121
another company that just came out and

1140
00:57:13,121 --> 00:57:15,096
they build a laptop in which they advertise

1141
00:57:15,096 --> 00:57:17,986
that every single software and hardware

1142
00:57:17,986 --> 00:57:19,351
has no back doors.

1143
00:57:19,351 --> 00:57:21,832
Yeah, and those are all Linux based.

1144
00:57:21,832 --> 00:57:24,200
I mean, no, what I meant to say is they

1145
00:57:24,200 --> 00:57:25,991
have no messaging, they have non of this

1146
00:57:25,991 --> 00:57:27,902
unauthorized stuff that goes on in the

1147
00:57:27,902 --> 00:57:29,568
background. One of the things that

1148
00:57:29,568 --> 00:57:33,107
infuriates me about Microsoft is all of

1149
00:57:33,107 --> 00:57:36,003
the processes are running without control

1150
00:57:36,003 --> 00:57:38,001
when all I want to do is type a memo.

1151
00:57:38,001 --> 00:57:41,055
That's the only thing I want running, not

1152
00:57:41,055 --> 00:57:43,803
all that other stuff, but no, I'm not a coder,

1153
00:57:43,803 --> 00:57:45,781
I am more of a meta-guy.

1154
00:57:45,781 --> 00:57:50,576
Yes. Yes. Clearly. But, so anyway, so you're

1155
00:57:50,576 --> 00:57:52,822
leaning toward Linux but you're not quite

1156
00:57:52,822 --> 00:57:55,965
there yet. Because, the reason that I ask

1157
00:57:55,965 --> 00:57:57,795
this or one of the reasons anyway was that

1158
00:57:57,795 --> 00:58:01,982
I don't know. You've read a lot of books,

1159
00:58:01,982 --> 00:58:03,795
a lot of books. Have you read Jaron Lanier's,

1160
00:58:03,795 --> 00:58:07,393
"I Am Not a Gadget" and then I forget what

1161
00:58:07,393 --> 00:58:08,471
his latest ...

1162
00:58:08,471 --> 00:58:11,740
I like him very much. He has a chapter in

1163
00:58:11,740 --> 00:58:13,721
a book that I published called,

1164
00:58:13,721 --> 00:58:16,194
"Collective Intelligence, Creating A Prosperous

1165
00:58:16,194 --> 00:58:19,514
World at Peace". I know him and I like him.

1166
00:58:19,514 --> 00:58:22,270
He's a big opponent of open source software,

1167
00:58:22,270 --> 00:58:24,881
he says in his book that all of the

1168
00:58:24,881 --> 00:58:28,762
innovation, historically speaking, has

1169
00:58:28,762 --> 00:58:31,265
happened in for-profit software and

1170
00:58:31,265 --> 00:58:34,227
the open source community at best has

1171
00:58:34,227 --> 00:58:38,245
always been just following behind and

1172
00:58:38,245 --> 00:58:42,037
kind of implementing the innovation that

1173
00:58:42,037 --> 00:58:44,083
has been done by (inaudible) ...

1174
00:58:44,083 --> 00:58:46,160
Well I would disagree with him and

1175
00:58:46,160 --> 00:58:49,920
I'll tell you why. Time is the one

1176
00:58:49,920 --> 00:58:52,280
strategic variable that cannot be bought

1177
00:58:52,280 --> 00:58:55,844
and cannot be replaced. Time really matters.

1178
00:58:55,844 --> 00:59:01,155
And, right now all of the proprietary technology

1179
00:59:01,155 --> 00:59:05,432
if we wanted to transfer it to the five billion

1180
00:59:05,432 --> 00:59:09,545
poor, it's unaffordable, it's not interoperable,

1181
00:59:09,545 --> 00:59:10,885
and it will not scale.

1182
00:59:10,885 --> 00:59:12,615
You think open source can do that?

1183
00:59:12,615 --> 00:59:16,117
Yeah. I do. Yes I do and in fact I proposed

1184
00:59:16,117 --> 00:59:19,814
an Open Source Technology's Agency in a

1185
00:59:19,814 --> 00:59:22,480
memorandum which I link in this artlicle

1186
00:59:22,480 --> 00:59:24,105
that I've given you.

1187
00:59:24,105 --> 00:59:26,396
And, why would it be able to accomplish such

1188
00:59:26,396 --> 00:59:28,293
scaling for five billion people whereas,

1189
00:59:28,293 --> 00:59:32,513
the alternatives from be it Microsoft or

1190
00:59:32,513 --> 00:59:34,106
be it Apple will not?

1191
00:59:34,106 --> 00:59:38,640
Because it's open. Because it's adaptable,

1192
00:59:38,640 --> 00:59:41,800
cause it's transparent. Because it will

1193
00:59:41,800 --> 00:59:45,040
essentially harness the distributed intelligence of the

1194
00:59:45,040 --> 00:59:47,120
five billion poor. See part of the problem

1195
00:59:47,120 --> 00:59:52,079
with proprietary technology is it's not

1196
00:59:52,079 --> 00:59:55,315
teaching people how to fish. It's 
giving them

1197
00:59:55,315 --> 00:59:58,241
a closed program. It's giving them a

1198
00:59:58,241 --> 01:00:01,903
closed box. If you give them an open box

1199
01:00:01,903 --> 01:00:04,112
then they will invent new things with it.

1200
01:00:04,112 --> 01:00:07,745
And I don't have all the answers, but what

1201
01:00:07,745 --> 01:00:10,078
I do know with certainty is that what we

1202
01:00:10,078 --> 01:00:12,545
are doing now is not working and it's not

1203
01:00:12,545 --> 01:00:14,500
scalable. Now I wrote a white paper for

1204
01:00:14,500 --> 01:00:16,041
the United Nations called,

1205
01:00:16,041 --> 01:00:17,835
"Beyond Data Monitoring" and that's also

1206
01:00:17,835 --> 01:00:20,158
linked in this article that I've done for you.

1207
01:00:20,158 --> 01:00:24,022
And, I make the point that the current plan

1208
01:00:24,022 --> 01:00:26,523
to achieve the sustainability development

1209
01:00:26,523 --> 01:00:29,896
goals is ridicules. Not only are the donor

1210
01:00:29,896 --> 01:00:32,100
promises not going to materialize, but

1211
01:00:32,100 --> 01:00:34,879
eighty to ninety percent of the money is

1212
01:00:34,879 --> 01:00:36,850
then consumed by United Nations and

1213
01:00:36,850 --> 01:00:39,800
intermediate organizations. Less than ten

1214
01:00:39,800 --> 01:00:41,587
percent of the money gets to the village

1215
01:00:41,587 --> 01:00:44,556
level. Now if you combine an open source

1216
01:00:44,556 --> 01:00:47,458
everything approach together with what

1217
01:00:47,458 --> 01:00:49,521
Ghani from Afghanistan has recommended,

1218
01:00:49,521 --> 01:00:51,921
which is electronic bank accounts at the village

1219
01:00:51,921 --> 01:00:55,468
level, then you can put one hundred percent of

1220
01:00:55,468 --> 01:00:59,520
the money to the village level and bypass all

1221
01:00:59,520 --> 01:01:01,463
these intermediaries that are buying

1222
01:01:01,463 --> 01:01:03,142
themselves first class tickets around the

1223
01:01:03,142 --> 01:01:03,733
world.

1224
01:01:03,733 --> 01:01:07,832
Yeah, that's a good point per say.

1225
01:01:07,832 --> 01:01:09,850
I think the whole idea of an

1226
01:01:09,850 --> 01:01:12,383
open source world is you move away from

1227
01:01:12,383 --> 01:01:14,022
the fenced commons.

1228
01:01:14,022 --> 01:01:17,867
I mean, proprietary technology is a way of

1229
01:01:17,867 --> 01:01:21,741
fencing the commons and it is too

1230
01:01:21,741 --> 01:01:25,121
restrictive for the kind of scale that we

1231
01:01:25,121 --> 01:01:26,850
need to achieve in the next ten years.

1232
01:01:26,850 --> 01:01:29,553
You see, and I agree with you entirely on

1233
01:01:29,553 --> 01:01:32,798
the theoretical end of things and I've been a,

1234
01:01:32,798 --> 01:01:35,477
a strong sympathizer to open source software

1235
01:01:35,477 --> 01:01:38,675
yet, I've been using Microsoft myself and

1236
01:01:38,675 --> 01:01:41,496
the last time I did actually a deeper analysis

1237
01:01:41,496 --> 01:01:44,923
on the potential for me migrating to Linux

1238
01:01:44,923 --> 01:01:47,361
was maybe a couple of years ago and at the

1239
01:01:47,361 --> 01:01:50,181
time there were all kinds of issues with

1240
01:01:50,181 --> 01:01:54,295
drivers for video cards and you know, video

1241
01:01:54,295 --> 01:01:59,720
codecs, which are of course proprietary and

1242
01:01:59,720 --> 01:02:01,680
you know I am a blogger and a podcaster

1243
01:02:01,680 --> 01:02:03,929
so I need to be able to edit my audio and

1244
01:02:03,929 --> 01:02:06,143
or video for things like that...

1245
01:02:06,143 --> 01:02:07,897
But, imagine if you had an open source

1246
01:02:07,897 --> 01:02:09,506
alternative for every single one of those.

1247
01:02:09,506 --> 01:02:13,270
Yes, that would be fantastic, but there

1248
01:02:13,270 --> 01:02:16,583
were problems because of course the

1249
01:02:16,583 --> 01:02:18,680
companies are creating those motes, those

1250
01:02:18,680 --> 01:02:20,514
barriers, those impediments.

1251
01:02:20,514 --> 01:02:24,692
In 1994 we talked about Microsoft and how

1252
01:02:24,692 --> 01:02:27,808
it mutates and migrates it's application

1253
01:02:27,808 --> 01:02:30,787
program interfaces. I mean Microsoft has

1254
01:02:30,787 --> 01:02:32,818
done some great things, but it has set

1255
01:02:32,818 --> 01:02:35,032
information technology back twenty years

1256
01:02:35,032 --> 01:02:39,879
because it has retarded the ability to create

1257
01:02:39,879 --> 01:02:41,920
sense making programs and data

1258
01:02:41,920 --> 01:02:43,899
management programs and all these other

1259
01:02:43,899 --> 01:02:46,667
things. Microsoft basically said, just,

1260
01:02:46,667 --> 01:02:49,466
this is just like Facebook, Facebook is making

1261
01:02:49,466 --> 01:02:51,895
the same mistake with facebook basic.

1262
01:02:51,895 --> 01:02:55,287
Microsoft is saying screw you, were gonna

1263
01:02:55,287 --> 01:02:57,880
go five miles and hour and you better like it.

1264
01:02:57,880 --> 01:03:01,152
That's what Facebook is trying to do to India,

1265
01:03:01,152 --> 01:03:04,723
okay? That's insane. We ought to put Facebook

1266
01:03:04,723 --> 01:03:06,792
and Google and Microsoft out of business.

1267
01:03:06,792 --> 01:03:08,736
And, Cisco and Oracle.

1268
01:03:08,736 --> 01:03:11,573
But, the Indians turn them down I think.

1269
01:03:11,573 --> 01:03:12,486
Didn't they?

1270
01:03:12,486 --> 01:03:14,594
Yes, which is good. Which is very good.

1271
01:03:14,594 --> 01:03:16,960
Yeah, that was quite impressive and I think

1272
01:03:16,960 --> 01:03:19,074
they are going, and even in places like

1273
01:03:19,074 --> 01:03:22,631
certain municipal cities in Germany I noticed

1274
01:03:22,631 --> 01:03:26,255
just in the last couple of years they did

1275
01:03:26,255 --> 01:03:28,218
migrate from Microsoft administrative systems

1276
01:03:28,218 --> 01:03:29,337
to Linux.

1277
01:03:29,337 --> 01:03:32,840
It's not just them, the Norwegians, the Chinese

1278
01:03:32,840 --> 01:03:35,617
a whole bunch of people have said, we should

1279
01:03:35,617 --> 01:03:38,662
not require our citizens to buy a proprietary

1280
01:03:38,662 --> 01:03:40,936
product in order to read government information.

1281
01:03:40,936 --> 01:03:43,513
And that comes back to my vision for

1282
01:03:43,513 --> 01:03:46,478
open access, open data requires open

1283
01:03:46,478 --> 01:03:48,075
software and open hardware, it also requires

1284
01:03:48,075 --> 01:03:52,327
open spectrum. WIFI should be free or this

1285
01:03:52,327 --> 01:03:55,320
new thing LIFI with the light bulbs, it's
wonderful.

1286
01:03:55,320 --> 01:03:58,420
Tell us a little bit about what you called

1287
01:03:58,420 --> 01:04:02,342
the panarchy model. Can you unpack that

1288
01:04:02,342 --> 01:04:03,357
for us?

1289
01:04:03,357 --> 01:04:04,249
The what?

1290
01:04:04,249 --> 01:04:05,658
Panarchy.

1291
01:04:05,658 --> 01:04:09,855
Oh panarchy. Well that's more Micheal Bowens's

1292
01:04:09,855 --> 01:04:12,960
thing, but you know panarchy is essentially

1293
01:04:12,960 --> 01:04:18,381
informed self governance. It's extreme democracy.

1294
01:04:18,381 --> 01:04:22,553
It's everybody working together and having

1295
01:04:22,553 --> 01:04:25,099
voice and vote on any issue that they wish.

1296
01:04:25,099 --> 01:04:28,878
Let's us, pick up the pace then. Let's talk

1297
01:04:28,878 --> 01:04:31,339
about the importance of what you call

1298
01:04:31,339 --> 01:04:32,986
ethics and integrity.

1299
01:04:32,986 --> 01:04:36,198
Oh I love that question. There's a guy

1300
01:04:36,198 --> 01:04:39,718
named Robert James Beckett in the

1301
01:04:39,718 --> 01:04:43,548
United Kingdom and you can look him up on

1302
01:04:43,548 --> 01:04:45,463
my website PhiBetaIota, but he talks

1303
01:04:45,463 --> 01:04:48,158
about we're moving from the age of information

1304
01:04:48,158 --> 01:04:52,905
into the age virtue. I agree with that.

1305
01:04:52,905 --> 01:04:56,229
In their book, "The Lessons of History",

1306
01:04:56,229 --> 01:04:59,200
Will and Ariel Durant who wrote the eleven

1307
01:04:59,200 --> 01:05:02,539
volume story of civilization say that morality

1308
01:05:02,539 --> 01:05:08,420
is a strategic asset of incalculable value.

1309
01:05:08,420 --> 01:05:14,994
Ethics is about the truth and transperancy

1310
01:05:14,994 --> 01:05:19,661
and trust. Ethics is how a civilization hands

1311
01:05:19,661 --> 01:05:22,984
on the lessons of history from one generation

1312
01:05:22,984 --> 01:05:29,280
to the next. Ethics is the cultural code

1313
01:05:29,280 --> 01:05:32,976
for getting the most out of any group

1314
01:05:32,976 --> 01:05:35,492
in any situation with the least amount of

1315
01:05:35,492 --> 01:05:37,135
damage and the least amount of waste.

1316
01:05:37,135 --> 01:05:41,125
So, ethics is an operating system.

1317
01:05:41,125 --> 01:05:44,635
I love that actually. Ethics is an operating
system.

1318
01:05:44,635 --> 01:05:47,000
Yes.

1319
01:05:47,000 --> 01:05:50,579
Hmmm. I like that very much. Interesting.

1320
01:05:50,579 --> 01:05:53,910
That, I would have to ponder on that and

1321
01:05:53,910 --> 01:05:55,336
maybe I'll steal it from you.

1322
01:05:55,336 --> 01:05:57,276
You drew that out of me. That is the first

1323
01:05:57,276 --> 01:05:59,507
time I have ever said that.

1324
01:05:59,507 --> 01:06:01,835
Awesome. Excellent. And, so perhaps I'm

1325
01:06:01,835 --> 01:06:03,212
contributing a little bit which is...

1326
01:06:03,212 --> 01:06:05,671
Ethics is an operating system. You have my

1327
01:06:05,671 --> 01:06:07,167
permission to take it.

1328
01:06:07,167 --> 01:06:09,873
I'll steal it for sure but, you should...

1329
01:06:09,873 --> 01:06:11,584
No, it's open source.

1330
01:06:11,584 --> 01:06:14,492
Exactly and because it's open source it

1331
01:06:14,492 --> 01:06:18,063
wouldn't be a problem but, tell us a

1332
01:06:18,063 --> 01:06:19,485
little bit about, since we are that topic,

1333
01:06:19,485 --> 01:06:22,646
the importance of bloggers like me,

1334
01:06:22,646 --> 01:06:24,947
because you see I'm a blogger and people


1335
01:06:24,947 --> 01:06:30,236
have often a misconception that I blog

1336
01:06:30,236 --> 01:06:33,200
about technology, but I actually do not blog

1337
01:06:33,200 --> 01:06:35,212
about technology. Technology is just a context.

1338
01:06:35,212 --> 01:06:37,004
I actually blog about ethics.

1339
01:06:37,004 --> 01:06:40,627
Look, I was Ithe opening speaker at

1340
01:06:40,627 --> 01:06:43,774
Hackers on Planet Earth in 1994

1341
01:06:43,774 --> 01:06:48,436
and in my speech I said that hackers were

1342
01:06:48,436 --> 01:06:51,840
the only people who had the combination

1343
01:06:51,840 --> 01:06:56,160
of intelligence and integrity to identify

1344
01:06:56,160 --> 01:06:58,995
deficiencies in communications and computing

1345
01:06:58,995 --> 01:07:00,983
systems that the companies themselves

1346
01:07:00,983 --> 01:07:03,920
were either unaware of or trying to hide.

1347
01:07:03,920 --> 01:07:08,840
And, I said that hackers have a social

1348
01:07:08,840 --> 01:07:13,440
responsibility to reveal those vulnerabilities

1349
01:07:13,440 --> 01:07:17,049
and my proposed approach to them was

1350
01:07:17,049 --> 01:07:20,704
report the vulnerabilities to the company

1351
01:07:20,704 --> 01:07:23,320
and give them thirty days to fix it. And at

1352
01:07:23,320 --> 01:07:26,040
the end of thirty days announce it publicly.

1353
01:07:26,040 --> 01:07:28,720
So, since you are mentioning social

1354
01:07:28,720 --> 01:07:31,160
responsibility, that means that you actually

1355
01:07:31,160 --> 01:07:34,433
would remain in support of people such

1356
01:07:34,433 --> 01:07:37,121
as, for example, Julian Assange or even

1357
01:07:37,121 --> 01:07:38,503
Edward Snowdon.

1358
01:07:38,503 --> 01:07:41,360
Yes and let me point out that I think

1359
01:07:41,360 --> 01:07:43,543
Edward Snowden is a CIA operation.

1360
01:07:43,543 --> 01:07:45,360
Approved by the White House.

1361
01:07:45,360 --> 01:07:47,721
That kind of blows my mind now.

1362
01:07:47,721 --> 01:07:49,586
Well, we could talk about that.

1363
01:07:49,586 --> 01:07:52,761
Look, Snowden was a nobody. He went from being

1364
01:07:52,761 --> 01:07:55,049
a security guard to being a CIA technical

1365
01:07:55,049 --> 01:07:56,876
specialist and placed by Booz Allen in

1366
01:07:56,876 --> 01:08:00,952
Hawaii as a contractor. Snowden, and I've

1367
01:08:00,952 --> 01:08:03,073
met his parents. I like his parents very much.

1368
01:08:03,073 --> 01:08:05,901
They're loyal, patriotic Americans. Snowden

1369
01:08:05,901 --> 01:08:09,640
has all the signs of being a classic operation

1370
01:08:09,640 --> 01:08:13,546
and our state department is stupid, but

1371
01:08:13,546 --> 01:08:15,481
they are not so stupid as to take Snowdens

1372
01:08:15,481 --> 01:08:17,520
passport away so that he has to stay in

1373
01:08:17,520 --> 01:08:21,326
Russia unless we want him to stay in Russia.

1374
01:08:21,326 --> 01:08:22,660
That's an interesting point.

1375
01:08:22,660 --> 01:08:25,596
Okay well, that's another point I need to

1376
01:08:25,596 --> 01:08:27,656
Look, the bottom line is everyone has

1377
01:08:27,656 --> 01:08:32,908
different motivations. I like to quote a CEO in New York

1378
01:08:32,908 --> 01:08:37,382
Bob Seelert from Saatchi and Saatchi
Worldwide.

1379
01:08:37,382 --> 01:08:41,511
He says until you get the truth on the

1380
01:08:41,511 --> 01:08:44,506
table, no matter how ugly it is, you're not

1381
01:08:44,506 --> 01:08:48,003
in a position to deal with it. And one of the

1382
01:08:48,003 --> 01:08:50,920
problems that we with western governments

1383
01:08:50,920 --> 01:08:53,511
and western banks and western corporations

1384
01:08:53,511 --> 01:09:00,801
is that they lie. As a persistent characteristic

1385
01:09:00,801 --> 01:09:02,284
of how they do business.

1386
01:09:02,284 --> 01:09:06,986
The war in Iraq was based on nine hundred and

1387
01:09:06,986 --> 01:09:10,593
thirty five now documented lies. There's a

1388
01:09:10,593 --> 01:09:13,641
book by that title, "935 Lies" and what it

1389
01:09:13,641 --> 01:09:16,601
actually talks about is the loss of ethics

1390
01:09:16,601 --> 01:09:19,979
in politics. In theory, and I wrote a

1391
01:09:19,979 --> 01:09:22,540
wonderful post many years ago that

1392
01:09:22,540 --> 01:09:24,546
was featured in a profile in which I talked

1393
01:09:24,546 --> 01:09:30,002
about how politics and intelligence are in

1394
01:09:30,002 --> 01:09:33,300
theory the highest forms of serving the public,

1395
01:09:33,300 --> 01:09:37,714
but only when they are both ethical.

1396
01:09:37,714 --> 01:09:40,641
I agree with you completely on that point too.

1397
01:09:40,641 --> 01:09:43,840
Okay. So, what we have now, Matt Tabbi has

1398
01:09:43,840 --> 01:09:47,974
written a book called "Griftopia", and on

1399
01:09:47,974 --> 01:09:50,675
page 32 he has a quote and my summary of

1400
01:09:50,675 --> 01:09:54,066
that book is on Amazon, in which he says that

1401
01:09:54,066 --> 01:09:58,337
what we have now in the United States is a

1402
01:09:58,337 --> 01:10:02,015
state of griftopia, in which political crime

1403
01:10:02,015 --> 01:10:06,597
and financial crime have merged. The reason

1404
01:10:06,597 --> 01:10:09,280
political crime and financial crime have

1405
01:10:09,280 --> 01:10:12,555
merged is because the citizens have abdicated

1406
01:10:12,555 --> 01:10:15,892
their responsibility for paying attention.

1407
01:10:15,892 --> 01:10:21,120
Now, when I spoke at Gnomedex in 2007.

1408
01:10:21,120 --> 01:10:23,934
Gnomedex is a conference of bloggers.

1409
01:10:23,934 --> 01:10:26,993
I suggested to them that they attach

1410
01:10:26,993 --> 01:10:30,653
themselves like leeches to individual

1411
01:10:30,653 --> 01:10:32,945
corporations and individual issues and

1412
01:10:32,945 --> 01:10:36,318
that they become citizen intelligence

1413
01:10:36,318 --> 01:10:39,160
minutemen, which is a phrase that

1414
01:10:39,160 --> 01:10:43,114
Alisandro Politi coined in 1992 when he

1415
01:10:43,114 --> 01:10:44,871
attended my first conference on

1416
01:10:44,871 --> 01:10:48,359
open source solutions. So in the ideal,

1417
01:10:48,359 --> 01:10:53,520
every citizen should be a citizen intelligence

1418
01:10:53,520 --> 01:10:58,680
professional who is focused with laser like

1419
01:10:58,680 --> 01:11:02,544
intensity so that they become the world's

1420
01:11:02,544 --> 01:11:07,576
top expert on x, y or z and nothing escapes

1421
01:11:07,576 --> 01:11:10,588
their notice. I want to do for open source

1422
01:11:10,588 --> 01:11:12,844
what Linus Torvalds did for Linux.

1423
01:11:12,844 --> 01:11:15,581
In other words I want all the poverty authors

1424
01:11:15,581 --> 01:11:19,220
and all the citizens observing poverty to

1425
01:11:19,220 --> 01:11:21,525
be part of one massive global brain

1426
01:11:21,525 --> 01:11:24,755
poverty slice. The same thing for infectious

1427
01:11:24,755 --> 01:11:26,559
disease, the same thing for environmental

1428
01:11:26,559 --> 01:11:30,279
degradation. The same thing for potholes.

1429
01:11:30,279 --> 01:11:32,739
I mean, there are now wonderful apps

1430
01:11:32,739 --> 01:11:34,425
where a citizen can tap there phone and

1431
01:11:34,425 --> 01:11:37,714
report a pothole. I want to create the world

1432
01:11:37,714 --> 01:11:40,433
brain. And, in fact I have an essay on saving

1433
01:11:40,433 --> 01:11:41,439
civilization.

1434
01:11:41,439 --> 01:11:45,720
Well, tell us a little more about the concept

1435
01:11:45,720 --> 01:11:47,759
of that world brain looks like.

1436
01:11:47,759 --> 01:11:52,359
Well, I own three of the url's, worldbrain.net

1437
01:11:52,359 --> 01:11:55,710
dot org and dot com. And I have a graphic

1438
01:11:55,710 --> 01:11:59,513
on the world brain. Basically worldbrain.net

1439
01:11:59,513 --> 01:12:01,599
should be permenent identities

1440
01:12:01,599 --> 01:12:05,814
that also include anonymity and privacy

1441
01:12:05,814 --> 01:12:09,493
and rights and security and worldbrain.org

1442
01:12:09,493 --> 01:12:12,254
should be, like the global library. It's free

1443
01:12:12,254 --> 01:12:15,778
to everybody. Worldbrain.edu should be

1444
01:12:15,778 --> 01:12:19,102
global education one cell call at a time.

1445
01:12:19,102 --> 01:12:22,319
So, I don't care what it is that you want

1446
01:12:22,319 --> 01:12:24,185
to know you should be able to get it in

1447
01:12:24,185 --> 01:12:27,200
a five minute video that is directly related

1448
01:12:27,200 --> 01:12:29,280
to the moment in time.

1449
01:12:29,280 --> 01:12:32,514
And then worldbrain.com would be a profit

1450
01:12:32,514 --> 01:12:36,069
making activity in which communities would

1451
01:12:36,069 --> 01:12:39,801
agree to crowd fund very specific developments.

1452
01:12:39,801 --> 01:12:42,564
Well, I want to tell your listeners, if they

1453
01:12:42,564 --> 01:12:51,469
go to tinyurl.com/steele-future - and I think

1454
01:12:51,469 --> 01:12:53,491
I have this link in the article that I wrote

1455
01:12:53,491 --> 01:12:57,651
for you. but, steele-future as a tinyurl

1456
01:12:57,651 --> 01:13:00,174
has all of my latest work, including

1457
01:13:00,174 --> 01:13:03,359
the saving civilization essay and that calls

1458
01:13:03,359 --> 01:13:07,241
for a school of future oriented hi-grade

1459
01:13:07,241 --> 01:13:09,839
governance. It calls for a multi-national

1460
01:13:09,839 --> 01:13:12,223
decision support center so that the U.N.

1461
01:13:12,223 --> 01:13:14,279
will stop making decisions based on

1462
01:13:14,279 --> 01:13:17,129
American lies. It calls for an open source

1463
01:13:17,129 --> 01:13:22,904
technologies agency. Let see, what else,

1464
01:13:22,904 --> 01:13:25,160
oh, it calls for a United Nations Open Source

1465
01:13:25,160 --> 01:13:27,315
Decision Support Information Network.

1466
01:13:27,315 --> 01:13:30,142
Eventually, we should be able to connect

1467
01:13:30,142 --> 01:13:32,841
all information and all languages all the
time.

1468
01:13:32,841 --> 01:13:35,627
But let me ask you, all of those things so

1469
01:13:35,627 --> 01:13:38,000
far that you said like, open source

1470
01:13:38,000 --> 01:13:41,332
intelligence world brain connecting

1471
01:13:41,332 --> 01:13:43,569
everything, all the knowledge and all the

1472
01:13:43,569 --> 01:13:46,733
languages all the time. All those things to me

1473
01:13:46,733 --> 01:13:48,873
sound like Google. Google.

1474
01:13:48,873 --> 01:13:54,752
No, you know, I, I really like and admire

1475
01:13:54,752 --> 01:13:59,840
Vint Cerf. He and I met in 1992 when I was

1476
01:13:59,840 --> 01:14:02,760
attending The Annual Internet Society Conferences.

1477
01:14:02,760 --> 01:14:06,239
And, I bought Vint sushi before he went to

1478
01:14:06,239 --> 01:14:10,186
the dark side. You know and I said, "Vint,

1479
01:14:10,186 --> 01:14:13,573
for God sakes get Google to give us some

1480
01:14:13,573 --> 01:14:18,021
tools for making sense." And I'm sorry to say

1481
01:14:18,021 --> 01:14:19,669
that hasn't happened. Now you know, now

1482
01:14:19,669 --> 01:14:22,453
are you aware Google started basically on

1483
01:14:22,453 --> 01:14:27,603
the basis of three crimes. Google stole

1484
01:14:27,603 --> 01:14:28,816
the yahoo search engine.

1485
01:14:28,816 --> 01:14:30,490
I don't know about that.

1486
01:14:30,490 --> 01:14:33,936
Yes. They have recently paid one billion

1487
01:14:33,936 --> 01:14:37,600
dollars as a quitclaim, so Google stole

1488
01:14:37,600 --> 01:14:39,822
the yahoo search engine and then modified

1489
01:14:39,822 --> 01:14:43,000
it to become Google. They received funding

1490
01:14:43,000 --> 01:14:45,360
from the CIA Office of Research and Development.

1491
01:14:45,360 --> 01:14:49,113
And they were able to pick up all of the

1492
01:14:49,113 --> 01:14:51,866
AltaVista employees that Hewlitt Packard

1493
01:14:51,866 --> 01:14:55,843
closed down. Those are the three things

1494
01:14:55,843 --> 01:14:57,600
that created Google

1495
01:14:57,600 --> 01:14:59,912
and my friend Stephen Arnold has written

1496
01:14:59,912 --> 01:15:02,464
three books about Google. The Google Trilogy.

1497
01:15:02,464 --> 01:15:05,920
Google, in my view has done some really

1498
01:15:05,920 --> 01:15:09,219
excellent things, but Google is also a fraud.

1499
01:15:09,219 --> 01:15:13,800
It hasn't actually made money. It's operating

1500
01:15:13,800 --> 01:15:20,243
on shareholder cash, okay. Google is driven

1501
01:15:20,243 --> 01:15:24,194
by search engine advertising revenue

1502
01:15:24,194 --> 01:15:29,082
and that is collapsing. I think Google is gone.

1503
01:15:29,082 --> 01:15:32,025
And, frankly I think Facebook is gone

1504
01:15:32,025 --> 01:15:34,636
at some point. If India really, really wanted

1505
01:15:34,636 --> 01:15:36,473
to create a smart nation and smart cities

1506
01:15:36,473 --> 01:15:39,681
they should be harnessing all their universities

1507
01:15:39,681 --> 01:15:42,879
to create the anti-google and the anti-facebook

1508
01:15:42,879 --> 01:15:45,826
and then on top of it put the tools that I've

1509
01:15:45,826 --> 01:15:47,958
identified. Eighteen different tools.

1510
01:15:47,958 --> 01:15:50,600
Well, I can sympathize with sort of the

1511
01:15:50,600 --> 01:15:52,505
desire to have alternatives to Google and

1512
01:15:52,505 --> 01:15:56,453
Facebook and perhaps in sort of the

1513
01:15:56,453 --> 01:15:59,202
open source realm of, but

1514
01:15:59,202 --> 01:16:02,720
that's great, I just don't see the end of either

1515
01:16:02,720 --> 01:16:04,761
Google nor Facebook any time soon.

1516
01:16:04,761 --> 01:16:06,560
Well, I see the end of IBM

1517
01:16:06,560 --> 01:16:09,342
you know, I mean this is gonna happen

1518
01:16:09,342 --> 01:16:13,986
inevitably. Google and Facebook serfed

1519
01:16:13,986 --> 01:16:17,761
the wave perfectly. They are utterly brilliant

1520
01:16:17,761 --> 01:16:20,614
and I don't begrudge them for a moment,

1521
01:16:20,614 --> 01:16:23,592
their great success, but they're not good

1522
01:16:23,592 --> 01:16:26,033
enough and that's my bottom line.

1523
01:16:26,033 --> 01:16:30,422
Okay. Let me ask you this then. First of all,

1524
01:16:30,422 --> 01:16:32,736
it's just a curious question. How in the

1525
01:16:32,736 --> 01:16:35,640
world have you managed to write seventeen hundred

1526
01:16:35,640 --> 01:16:38,349
book reviews? Like, I read a lot of books

1527
01:16:38,349 --> 01:16:42,860
myself, probably in the five to seven,

1528
01:16:42,860 --> 01:16:45,307
eight hundred range maybe...

1529
01:16:45,307 --> 01:16:50,275
Right. Let me say first off when Google,

1530
01:16:50,275 --> 01:16:53,725
I mean when Amazon started the review
system,

1531
01:16:53,725 --> 01:16:58,320
I had already written two books and each of

1532
01:16:58,320 --> 01:17:00,801
those two books had a hundred fifty

1533
01:17:00,801 --> 01:17:04,984
annotated bibliographic entries. So I had

1534
01:17:04,984 --> 01:17:08,644
a total of three hundred mini book reviews,

1535
01:17:08,644 --> 01:17:12,160
one paragraph. I loaded all of those to

1536
01:17:12,160 --> 01:17:17,379
Amazon on the fourth of April 2000 and I

1537
01:17:17,379 --> 01:17:20,356
was instantly a top thousand five hundred

1538
01:17:20,356 --> 01:17:22,475
reviewer, because it had just started.

1539
01:17:22,475 --> 01:17:24,799
So that's three hundred reviews right there.

1540
01:17:24,799 --> 01:17:28,520
Then I was invited to speak to a parliament

1541
01:17:28,520 --> 01:17:31,220
in Europe. I can't remember, a French Parliament,

1542
01:17:31,220 --> 01:17:34,027
a German parliament, whatever and I was very

1543
01:17:34,027 --> 01:17:38,179
intimidated, so I read fifty books to get

1544
01:17:38,179 --> 01:17:40,549
ready for this mission and I wrote short

1545
01:17:40,549 --> 01:17:43,060
reviews of those fifty books and I loaded

1546
01:17:43,060 --> 01:17:44,348
that and now we are at three hundred

1547
01:17:44,348 --> 01:17:47,634
and fifty. Then I kind of got hooked and

1548
01:17:47,634 --> 01:17:49,931
buying books is a business expense, so

1549
01:17:49,931 --> 01:17:51,753
there was a time when I was spending

1550
01:17:51,753 --> 01:17:54,061
five thousand dollars a year on books.

1551
01:17:54,061 --> 01:17:56,449
And it basically boiled down to my

1552
01:17:56,449 --> 01:17:59,189
reading one or two books a week. Now I read

1553
01:17:59,189 --> 01:18:03,944
books in three ways. I glance through them

1554
01:18:03,944 --> 01:18:06,456
and if I don't like them at all I just set

1555
01:18:06,456 --> 01:18:07,833
them aside and I don't review them.

1556
01:18:07,833 --> 01:18:11,703
Some books I will read the introduction,

1557
01:18:11,703 --> 01:18:15,366
the conclusion and maybe one or two chapters

1558
01:18:15,366 --> 01:18:17,430
and the table of contents and the index

1559
01:18:17,430 --> 01:18:21,727
and then the... Some books I will start with

1560
01:18:21,727 --> 01:18:25,408
the index and then read all of the end notes

1561
01:18:25,408 --> 01:18:27,976
and then read the entire book word for word.

1562
01:18:27,976 --> 01:18:32,008
So out of the two thousand one hundred or so

1563
01:18:32,008 --> 01:18:35,041
books reviews that I have now, I would say

1564
01:18:35,041 --> 01:18:37,267
I have read every word in at least half

1565
01:18:37,267 --> 01:18:41,915
of them. And the others are partial things

1566
01:18:41,915 --> 01:18:44,660
because at my level with what I know you

1567
01:18:44,660 --> 01:18:49,442
could pick up a book and you can see very

1568
01:18:49,442 --> 01:18:51,665
quickly does this book make an original

1569
01:18:51,665 --> 01:18:55,228
contribution or is this regurgitating stuff

1570
01:18:55,228 --> 01:18:58,473
or whatever... and so my reviews do two

1571
01:18:58,473 --> 01:19:02,127
things; they summarize the book and they

1572
01:19:02,127 --> 01:19:05,080
provide ten links which is the maximum

1573
01:19:05,080 --> 01:19:08,281
allowed by Amazon. So, I've actually created

1574
01:19:08,281 --> 01:19:12,284
a collegy, a non fiction, a collegy of ninety

1575
01:19:12,284 --> 01:19:15,417
eight linked categories of books and if you

1576
01:19:15,417 --> 01:19:18,880
go to phibetaiota.net, at the top you'll

1577
01:19:18,880 --> 01:19:21,152
see the review page and then within that

1578
01:19:21,152 --> 01:19:23,939
review page I have a whole series of lists

1579
01:19:23,939 --> 01:19:27,897
of book reviews, like I have a long list,

1580
01:19:27,897 --> 01:19:31,285
list of lists of books about the future

1581
01:19:31,285 --> 01:19:34,407
and lists of lists of books about the past.

1582
01:19:34,407 --> 01:19:37,880
I have one list of three hundred books on

1583
01:19:37,880 --> 01:19:41,152
secret intelligence. I have another list of

1584
01:19:41,152 --> 01:19:44,733
books on self determination and secession

1585
01:19:44,733 --> 01:19:49,630
and so forth. So, I would certainly say take

1586
01:19:49,630 --> 01:19:52,916
a look at the review page where I also have

1587
01:19:52,916 --> 01:19:56,308
essays on leadership and education and
democracy lost.

1588
01:19:56,308 --> 01:19:59,279
And, now give me your homepage, Robert,

1589
01:19:59,279 --> 01:20:01,430
but unfortunately time is advancing here

1590
01:20:01,430 --> 01:20:04,154
I'm going to have to bring our conversation

1591
01:20:04,154 --> 01:20:06,697
to an end, but let me ask you what's the

1592
01:20:06,697 --> 01:20:09,533
best place for our viewers and listeners to find more

1593
01:20:09,533 --> 01:20:11,074
about you and your work.

1594
01:20:11,074 --> 01:20:13,509
Well, I would say the blog which has no

1595
01:20:13,509 --> 01:20:15,840
advertising and offers a free subscription.

1596
01:20:15,840 --> 01:20:19,034
That has over nineteen thousand posts

1597
01:20:19,034 --> 01:20:21,511
from over eight hundred contributors.

1598
01:20:21,511 --> 01:20:24,291
Eighty of which are active now and that

1599
01:20:24,291 --> 01:20:27,159
is PhiBetaIota.net.

1600
01:20:27,159 --> 01:20:28,040
Very good, okay, now link to it. And, then

1601
01:20:31,584 --> 01:20:32,840
the final question that I always have to ask

1602
01:20:32,840 --> 01:20:35,388
my guests on my show is this, "How do we

1603
01:20:35,388 --> 01:20:39,018
wrap up our conversation? We kind of jumped

1604
01:20:39,018 --> 01:20:42,480
all over space and time and subject matters

1605
01:20:42,480 --> 01:20:44,708
and went all kinds of...

1606
01:20:44,708 --> 01:20:46,665
Well, you're going to be publishing an article

1607
01:20:46,665 --> 01:20:51,628
that I have written for you especially and

1608
01:20:51,628 --> 01:20:55,626
what I would say is let's keep the conversation 
going.

1609
01:20:55,626 --> 01:20:59,290
Let's keep the conversation going. Interesting.

1610
01:20:59,290 --> 01:21:01,842
Okay, I like that. All right and of course, by

1611
01:21:01,842 --> 01:21:04,760
the time this interview gets published, I

1612
01:21:04,760 --> 01:21:06,597
will already have published the article, so...

1613
01:21:06,597 --> 01:21:08,784
Robert Steele thank you very much for

1614
01:21:08,784 --> 01:21:10,253
being with us tonight.

1615
01:21:10,253 --> 01:21:11,867
It's an honour. Thank you.

1616
01:21:11,867 --> 01:21:16,080
(music)

1617
01:21:16,080 --> 01:21:18,197
If you guys enjoyed this a show you can help

1618
01:21:18,197 --> 01:21:20,140
me make it better in a couple of ways,

1619
01:21:20,140 --> 01:21:22,800
you can go and write a review on Itunes

1620
01:21:22,800 --> 01:21:25,195
or you can simply make a donation.

1621
01:21:25,195 --> 01:21:31,763
(music)