Crooked Media -- my new favorite podcast emporium

If you are a Republican Trump supporter and listen to a full Crooked Media episode, I will listen to a podcast episode of your choice.

Crooked Media, which produces several political podcasts, was started by Jon Favreau, Barack Obama’s head speechwriter from 2005–2013, Jon Lovett, previously a speechwriter for Hillary Clinton and President Obama and Tommy Vietor, who spent nearly a decade as a spokesman for President Obama, specializing in foreign policy and national security issues. They are highly qualified and well connected so are able to attract high-ranking interview guests from government and academia.

They started Crooked Media because they "couldn’t find a place to talk about politics the way actual human beings talk" and are unabashed, but critical, Democrats. Their motto is "Do Something -- Tweets are not The Resistance" and they have plans to go beyond podcasting.

This might sound kind of wonky and dull, but it is actually wonky and funny and relaxed -- you really need to check them out. Not convinced? Check out the following excerpts from two interviews conducted by Tommy Vietor on his foreign policy podcast, PodSavetheWorld.

To whet your appetite, I created two excerpts dealing with US-Cuba policy. (I chose these excerpts because they are typical of Crooked Media interviews and I have an interest in Cuba).

One excerpt is from an interview of Dan Restrepo, who served as a top Latin America advisor to President Obama. Restrepo had written a Cuban-rapprochement roadmap for candidate Obama during his first campaign and he returned to the topic in 2013. He says Obama was playing a "long game," knowing that his executive authority was limited and he could not move faster than US public opinion. Restrepo characterizes Obama's strategy as a bet that by creating a degree of freedom among the Cuban people, for example by expanding reparations and undermining Castro's excuse of blaming all problems on the Evil Empire, the Cuban government would be forced to change. He noted that the blame-US game was a hard sell after the Cuban people saw the Evil Emperor, who looked more like them than the current Cuban leaders, giving a speech on TV or at a baseball game with Raúl Castro.

The excerpt (14:20) is here and the full podcast (48:37) here.

The second excerpt is from an interview of Ben Rhodes, who served as a speechwriter and emissary for President Obama and was one of two White House staff members handling the negotiations leading up to our opening with Cuba. Rhodes and his colleague Ricardo Zuniga traveled to Canada for 12-15 secret meetings with Cuban representatives while working out the rapprochement details. At the start, they were only negotiating for the release of Alan Gross because Obama reasoned that rapprochement would be politically unacceptable if Gross remained in a Cuban prison. Early in the negotiation for Gross, they realized more was possible and the scope of the discussion broadened. Only a few people in the White House knew of these negotiations, but the Vatican was informed early and played a key role. (If you are unfamiliar with the Alan Gross case, click here).

The excerpt (11:30) is here and the full podcast (1:00:48) is here.

Even if you are a Republican Trump supporter, check out Crooked Media's podcasts. (If you are a Republican Trump supporter and listen to a full Crooked Media episode, I will listen to a podcast episode of your choice).

Politicians using media, from Roosevelt's fireside chats to Obama's Ask me Anything

President Roosevelt used radio -- "fireside chats" -- to communicate with the American people. President Eisenhower was the first to campaign on television and Kennedy used it effectively. One can argue that President Obama is the first president to effectively use the Internet.

The most recent example of his use of the Internet was the live "ask me anything" (AMA) session he held at Reddit.com earlier this week. Reddit users typed questions for the president and he answered the ones that were voted up. The questions he took and his replies are shown below.

In our class, we talk about the implications of the Internet for individuals, organizations and society. Internet chat and AMA provides a new way for a candidate to campaign and for an official to interact with the public. In that sense it is reminiscent of President Roosevelt's fireside chats.

You can see the questions President Obama replied to along with his answers below. It is a mix of personal (he's a Bulls fan, eats with his family then goes back to work, and plays a game of basketball or golf every week) and political dialog. You also hear a conversational tone -- "Hey everybody -- this is barack" -- not the polished public speech voice.

Here is what he had to say:

"Hey everybody - this is barack. Just finished a great rally in Charlottesville, and am looking forward to your questions. At the top, I do want to say that our thoughts and prayers are with folks who are dealing with Hurricane Isaac in the Gulf, and to let them know that we are going to be coordinating with state and local officials to make sure that we give families everything they need to recover."

SharkGirl: We know how Republicans feel about protecting Internet Freedom. Is Internet Freedom an issue you'd push to add to the Democratic Party's 2012 platform?

Obama: Internet freedom is something I know you all care passionately about; I do too. We will fight hard to make sure that the internet remains the open forum for everybody - from those who are expressing an idea to those to want to start a business. And although their will be occasional disagreements on the details of various legislative proposals, I won't stray from that principle - and it will be reflected in the platform.

PartyInYourMouth: How are you going help small businesses in 2013 and 2014? and what if any bills are you going to impliment for small businesses, in 2013, and 2014?

Obama: We've really focused on this since I came into office - 18 tax cuts for small business, easier funding from the SBA. Going forward, I want to keep taxes low for the 98 percent of small businesses that have $250,000 or less in income, make it easier for small business to access financing, and expand their opportunities to export. And we will be implementing the Jobs Act bill that I signed that will make it easier for startups to access crowd-funding and reduce their tax burden at the start-up stage.

karlfranks: Who's your favourite Basketball player?

Obama: Jordan - I'm a Bulls guy.

Silent1mezzo: What's the recipe for the White House's beer?

Obama: It will be out soon! I can tell from first hand experience, it is tasty.

Suzmerk: What are you going to do to end the corrupting influence of money in politics during your second term?

Obama: Money has always been a factor in politics, but we are seeing something new in the no-holds barred flow of seven and eight figure checks, most undisclosed, into super-PACs; they fundamentally threaten to overwhelm the political process over the long run and drown out the voices of ordinary citizens. We need to start with passing the Disclose Act that is already written and been sponsored in Congress - to at least force disclosure of who is giving to who. We should also pass legislation prohibiting the bundling of campaign contributions from lobbyists. Over the longer term, I think we need to seriously consider mobilizing a constitutional amendment process to overturn Citizens United (assuming the Supreme Court doesn't revisit it). Even if the amendment process falls short, it can shine a spotlight of the super-PAC phenomenon and help apply pressure for change.

Fifth Surprise: What was the most difficult decision that you had to make during this term?

Obama: The decision to surge our forces in afghanistan. Any time you send our brave men and women into battle, you know that not everyone will come home safely, and that necessarily weighs heavily on you. The decision did help us blunt the taliban's momentum, and is allowing us to transition to afghan lead - so we will have recovered that surge at the end of this month, and will end the war at the end of 2014. But knowing of the heroes that have fallen is something you never forget.

Daveforamerica: What is the first thing you'll do on November 7th, win or lose?

Obama: Win or lose, I'll be thanking everybody who is working so hard - especially all the volunteers in field offices all across the country, and the amazing young people in our campaign offices.

hmlee: I am recent law school graduate. Despite graduating from a top school, I find myself unemployed with a large student loan debt burden. While I'm sure my immediate prospects will improve in time, it's difficult to be optimistic about the future knowing that my ability to live a productive life -- to have a fulfilling career, to buy a house, to someday raise a family -- is hampered by my debt and the bleak economic outlook for young people. I know that I'm not alone in feeling this way. Many of us are demoralized. Your 2008 campaign was successful in large part due to the efforts of younger demographics. We worked for you, we campaigned for you, and we turned out in record numbers to vote for you. What can I say to encourage those in similar situations as I am to show up again in November? What hope can you offer us for your second term?

Obama: I understand how tough it is out there for recent grads. You're right - your long term prospects are great, but that doesn't help in the short term. Obviously some of the steps we have taken already help young people at the start of their careers. Because of the health care bill, you can stay on your parent's plan until you're twenty six. Because of our student loan bill, we are lowering the debt burdens that young people have to carry. But the key for your future, and all our futures, is an economy that is growing and creating solid middle class jobs - and that's why the choice in this election is so important. The other party has two ideas for growth - more taxs cuts for the wealthy (paid for by raising tax burdens on the middle class and gutting investments like education) and getting rid of regulations we've put in place to control the excesses on wall street and help consumers. These ideas have been tried, they didnt work, and will make the economy worse. I want to keep promoting advanced manufacturing that will bring jobs back to America, promote all-American energy sources (including wind and solar), keep investing in education and make college more affordable, rebuild our infrastructure, invest in science, and reduce our deficit in a balanced way with prudent spending cuts and higher taxes on folks making more than $250,000/year. I don't promise that this will solve all our immediate economic challenges, but my plans will lay the foundation for long term growth for your generation, and for generations to follow. So don't be discouraged - we didn't get into this fix overnight, and we won't get out overnight, but we are making progress and with your help will make more.

gobearss: How do you balance family life and hobbies with, well, being the POTUS?

Obama: It's hard - truthfully the main thing other than work is just making sure that I'm spending enough time with michelle and the girls. The big advantage I have is that I live above the store - so I have no commute! So we make sure that when I'm in DC I never miss dinner with them at 6:30 pm - even if I have to go back down to the Oval for work later in the evening. I do work out every morning as well, and try to get a basketball or golf game in on the weekends just to get out of the bubble. Speaking of balance, though, I need to get going so I'm back in DC in time for dinner. But I want to thank everybody at reddit for participating - this is an example of how technology and the internet can empower the sorts of conversations that strengthen our democracy over the long run. AND REMEMBER TO VOTE IN NOVEMBER - if you need to know how to register, go to Gottaregister.com. By the way, if you want to know what I think about this whole reddit experience - NOT BAD!

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You can see the transcript and thousands of comments on Reddit.

Optimistic speculation on what Elon Musk might do with Twitter

Elon Musk is a self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" which leads some to worry that Twitter will be open to the sort of thing one finds at gab.com if his purchase of the company is completed. I have no idea what Musk plans to do with Twitter but let me offer some optimistic speculation.

For a start, I don't believe Musk will use Twitter to advance right-wing candidates or policy. He recently tweeted "I strongly supported Obama for President, but today’s Democratic Party has been hijacked by extremists." He also tweeted a cartoon showing him not changing his views since he supported President Obama in 2008 while the left and right have diverged. Don't forget that Musk (and many others) resigned from Trump's American Manufacturing Council and Strategic and Policy Forum shortly after they were formed. 

Musk sounds more like a pro-Obama centrist than a right-wing extremist.

The algorithms

Musk has said he wants "to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spambots, and authenticating all humans.” I am all for defeating spambots and authenticating (not "identifying") humans but open sourcing the algorithms that rapidly decide which tweets to present to a given user is insufficient. The goal, the objective function, of current social media algorithms is to increase engagement and therefore advertising revenue and that has had catastrophic side effects.

In the early 1990s, the US National Science Foundation Network, which was central to the nascent global Internet, had a policy limiting acceptable use to supporting open research and education. Most of us were naive when that policy was phased out, but by 2011, when Eli Pariser published The Filter Bubble, the danger of an Internet financed by personalized advertising was becoming clear, and terrorists were using the Internet for operations and recruiting. In 2014 Aljazeera was asking whether Facebook was amplifying hate speech and violence against the Rohingya and there was evidence of Russia hacking US elections as early as 2008. That was nothing compared to subsequent presidential elections or Russia's Ukraine war propaganda. 

The objective function of today's social media algorithms must be changed -- for example by adding goals like reducing political division or increasing voter participation rate. This is an ill-defined, challenging problem, but that is nothing new for Musk. It would also reduce Twitter's revenue and Musk is a businessman, but he is motivated by more than increasing profit and shareholder value.

Musk has the technical skill in his current companies to implement and maintain Twitter algorithms. One of his companies, Neuralink, is working on understanding the brain and SpaceX satellites and Tesla cars rapidly process large amounts of data to make decisions to avoid collisions. He and his employees are well versed in decision-making technology, but he will need people with backgrounds in marketing, social science, and politics to revise the algorithms to incorporate social goals. 

Musk is a manufacturing and design genius and a manager with an unprecedented span of control who is nevertheless deeply involved in project details (as illustrated in this interview), but he lacks the temperament and judgment to revise the Twitter algorithms. (He has described himself as autistic and is prone to unrealistic predictions and sophomoric tweets).

Musk needs trusted advisors if he plans to revise the Twitter algorithms. How about President Obama? He would bring empathy, wisdom, and political skill to the project, and, as evidenced in a recent talk at Stanford University, he understands the problems with today's social media algorithms and considers them to be a threat to democracy as well as causing more concrete damage like killing people by spreading COVID misinformation.

Musk and Obama have complementary skills, and if social media can be modified and saved, I can't think of a better team than them to do it. If Musk is unwilling or unable to engage President Obama as an advisor, how about a podcast like the one Obama did with Bruce Springsteen? Coming back to reality -- Musk should at least invite Obama to visit Twitter and give a talk to and engage with the Twitter staff. 

Update 5/7/2022

I learned something after writing this post that has increased my optimism. 

Twitter has a company-wide initiative called Responsible Machine Learning (ML), based on the belief that "responsible technological use includes studying the effects it can have over time" and the fact that with hundreds of millions of Tweets per day Twitter's design can have unintended consequences. 

Twitter's Machine Learning, Ethics, Transparency, and Accountability (META) group is responsible for understanding the impact of ML decisions and applying what they learn to improve Twitter. In 2021, Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey and the board of directors made Responsible ML one of Twitter's main priorities. META group funding was increased, and prominent researchers were hired. They have access to Twitter's data, the decision-making algorithms, and the people who design them.

But, isn't Elon Musk a "free speech absolutist?"

Yes, he tweeted that, but how much thought went into the tweet, and what exactly does he mean by it? I don't know, but I do know that Musk is iconoclastic and willing to question himself. When speaking or being interviewed, he seems at times to pause, to debate with himself before making a statement or giving an answer. During a recent in-depth interview, he listed his engineering principles, beginning with a recognition that “Everyone’s wrong. No matter who you are, everyone is wrong some of the time.”

I can't think of any team better qualified to mitigate social media dysfunction than Twitter's META group, the technicians with access to the current algorithms and data, and Elon Musk. (And maybe President Obama).

Finally, here is a little more optimistic speculation:

Jack Dorsey: 

• Called Musk "the singular solution he trusts".

Bill Gates:

• “You wouldn’t want to underestimate Elon. What he did at Tesla is amazing, helping with climate change, what he did at SpaceX ..."
• “I don’t know specifically what he’ll do, but there’s an opportunity, and we need innovation in that space.”

Elon Musk: 

• “The goal that I have, should everything come to fruition with Twitter, is to have a service that is as broadly inclusive as possible, where ideally most of America is on it and talking.”
• "I don't care about economics at all.

A quick look at the use of the Internet in the 2012 election

In an earlier post, we looked at the election coverage on the Internet. Now, we take a quick look at the way the campaigns used he Net.

As in the last election, both campaigns used Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, but this time they moved on to the targeted advertising we are now used to on the Internet -- white males saw different campaign ads than their wives. (See articles in both The Economist and The New York Times.

Perhaps Obama was a more aggressive in tracking clicks than Romney.  The Times checked Obama and Romney's Web sites during the campaign, and found that Obama was using 76 click tracking services and Romney 40.  I checked yesterday and found that Obama was down to 32 and Romney only one (click on the image to the right to see which ones).

In another article on the use of the Internet in the election, The New York Times gave the Obama campaign the edge in their use of the Net in organizing volunteers for door to door canvasing, phone calls and fund raising. They did that using a Web site called Dashboard and mobile apps that could access it.

A couple of factoids to establish context: The Economist quotes Borrell Associates as estimating online ad spending in 2012 at $160 million, six times what it was in 2008, but it remains a small percent of the estimated $6 billion spent on the election. This understates the impact of online campaigning, because it costs very little -- the Obama campaign built about 200 different programs that ran on Amazon's cloud services.

Obama uses the Internet after the election

This New York Times article describes the role of the Internet in the presidential campaign. As we saw earlier, both candidates used the Internet for fund raising, mobilizing and organizing volunteers, videos of speeches, etc.

Now Barack Obama is using the Internet in the government transition process, see change.gov. The change.gov blog will inform the public of upcoming events, appointments, and other news during the transition. There are also descriptions of the administration agenda in 25 policy areas.

But they want the site to be more than a one-way broadcast of their message. We have discussed structured means of soliciting user input, and they have taken a step in that direction by allowing the public to "tell us your story in your own words about what this campaign and this election means to you" or "share your vision for what America can be, where President-Elect Obama should lead this country."

You can also apply for "non-career" jobs in the administration. Some of those are in high positions, requiring Senate approval.

The current site is clearly just a start. Links to the "Obama National Service Plan" and "Find a way to serve" are still under construction, and when you complete the job application form, you receive an email saying they will get back to you with a more detailed application in a few days. There is plenty of room for the site to improve, and I am confident that it will.

It seems that President Elect Obama is using the Internet to reiterate President Kennedy's admonition that you ask yourself what you can do for your country.

Can the Internet facilitate government "by the people?" Would you consider applying for a job in the new administration? Have you a story or suggestion you would like to share with them?

Has the Internet enabled lying, crooked Donald?

We are in the early days of the Internet as a political medium and hopefully it will co-evolve along with our society and education system.

Last June, Donald Trump began calling Hillary Clinton "lying, crooked Hillary" and established a Web site of the same name. Leaving Trump's coarseness aside, is the allegation fair? (His coarseness calls for a separate post).

Politifact is a fact-checking Web site run by a Florida newspaper. They rate political statements on a six-level scale ranging from True to Pants on fire:

True – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing.
Mostly true – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.
Half true – The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.
Mostly false – The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.
False – The statement is not accurate.
Pants on fire – The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim.

They justify their ratings with reasoned, sourced analysis and have been awarded a Pulitzer Prize. (You can read the details on the rating rubric here).

The following are summaries of the Politifact ratings of statements by President Obama, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. (Click the image to enlarge it).

As you see, Clinton is a bit more honest than President Obama and lies much less frequently than Donald Trump. The ratings of Obama and Clinton have changed little since January. Trump is telling the truth a little more frequently, but over half of his statements were found to be lies.

I retrieved the September ratings from Politifact this morning and retrieved the January ratings using the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

I guess all politicians lie, but few, if any, lie as frequently as lying, crooked Donald. (The "crooked" part calls for yet another post on his business dealings).

The Internet has changed political campaigns just as newspapers, radio and television did. Candidate's statements are archived and Politifact and others can analyze them, but the Internet also enables the dissemination of lies like this faked image of Hillary Clinton and Osama bin Laden, which can be found on many Web sites:

(To be fair, a lot of democrats shared a fake image showing President Bush holding a picture book upside down at the time he was informed of the 9/11 attacks).

The Internet also increases the odds that we will see lies we might "like." As Eli Pariser points out in his book The Filter Bubble, ad-driven sites like Facebook have an incentive to send us things we agree with to keep us on their sites longer.

The Internet enables us to easily create and disseminate lies and it also enables us to discover and expose them, but does that matter? Has the Internet brought us to what William Davies calls the age of post-truth politics? After all, Politifact shows that over half of Donald Trump's statements are lies, yet millions of Americans are willing to vote for him. While Hillary Clinton and President Obama lie less than Trump, they also have millions of supporters who are ignorant of or indifferent to their lies.

That is discouraging, but remember that we are in the early days of the Internet as a political medium and it may co-evolve along with our society and education system to bring us something better. For perspective, check out this early use of television in a political campaign:



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Update 10/23/2016

The Internet facilitates the repetition of lies and exaggerations and we tend to become more polarized as search engines and news services show us things we are likely to agree with. On the other hand, the Internet facilitates fact-checking services and Duke University tracks over 100 such sites:

Interactive map of over 100 fact-check sites

The Internet, like other technologies, can be used for good and bad -- the Internet doesn't tell lies, people tell lies.

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Update 11/10/2016

Well, the election is over, so I made a final check at Politifact. Donald Trump ended up with 34% false and 17% pants on fire statements and Hillary Clinton ended up with 10% false and 2% pants on fire. Trump ended up with 4% true and 11% mostly true and Clinton finished with 25% true and 26% mostly true. These were close to their earlier scores, so it seems that lying was not much of a factor in determining the outcome of the election.

I find that disturbing. It is an indication that slogans, groundless claims, incivility and outlandish statements and promises count for more than truth on our attention-deficit Internet.

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Update 11/15/2016

Here are the Politifact ratings of statements by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump after the election. Clinton clearly lied less frequently than Trump.

Ratings of Clinton and Trump during the campaign

We will never know whether Bernie Sanders would have beaten Donald Trump, but Politifact also finds him to be much more honest.

 Bernie Sanders' honesty rating

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Update 12/9/2016

University of Havana Professor Armando Camacho has translated this post into Spanish -- read it here.

The FCC under Trump -- a long shot

Tom Wheeler surprised us as head of the Federal Communication Commission -- might Trump?

Obama and Roberts

In May 2013, President Obama picked Tom Wheeler to head the Federal Communication Commission. The Internet community generally disapproved because Wheeler had been a lobbyist for both the cellular and cable industries and a major contributor to the Obama campaign. Internet service providers AT&T and Comcast lauded the appointment and a few months later, the President was spotted playing golf with Brian Roberts, chief executive of Comcast.

It looked like a Washington insider deal.

But after looking at Wheeler's blog posts and his service on a Presidential commission, I speculated that Wheeler might be a "wolf in sheep's clothing" and, by August 2013, we had mounting evidence that Wheeler was in fact acting in the public interest, not that of the ISP industry.

Now that Donald Trump has been elected President, the Internet community is understandably worried. There is speculation that Trump will reverse Wheeler's stance on network neutrality and he has chosen Jeffrey Eisenach, an (often paid) oponent of regulation as his telecommunication "point man." (You can see his testimony on net neutrality here).

Obama and Wheeler

That seems consistent with Trump's promise to get rid of red tape and regulation and let big business do its thing, but using the words "Trump" and "consistent" in the same sentence is oxymoronic. He also promises to fight the elites in support of ordinary people. That would seem to call for pro-competitive measures to weaken the grip of the Internet service giants.

Tom Wheeler surprised industry insiders by supporting net neutrality, raising the speed used to define "broadband," fighting to curb state legislature power to stop municipal broadband, pushing for a standard TV-interface box combining the functions of today's set-top boxes and Internet interfaces, favoring sharing of Federal spectrum and scrutinizing transit Internet agreements.

Will Donald Trump surprise us and work to make the American Internet Great Again?

(I doubt it, but, if Trump can be elected president, anything is possible).

The TikTok ban in context

The TikTok affair is unimportant when compared to Trump's general tariffs and high-cost trade war against Huawei.What is our long-run goal with respect to China?

Donald Trump recently issued an executive order banning TikTok on the grounds that it was necessary to deal with the national emergency he had declared in an earlier executive order. He says he is concerned that TikTok might turn user's "information such as location data and browsing and search histories" over to the Chinese government.

Trump does not site evidence of TikTok having shared data with China and TikTok says they have never shared user data with the Chinese government or censored content at its request. Furthermore, Kevin Meyer, CEO of TikTok and COO of its parent company Byte Dance, is an American, and TikTok US user data is not stored in China.

TikTok publishes a transparency report on government information requests and the report ending the second half of 2019 shows that the US government made 100 requests for information on 107 accounts, and 82% of those resulted in the transfer of data. Only India, with 302 requests on 408 accounts 90% of which made data transfers, requested more than the US. (Facebook received 51,121 US requests during the same period).

The format of the data TikTok reports to the police is shown below and its terms of service note that the company may also send law enforcement logs of a user's videos, comments, and interactions (source) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security actively monitored TikTok for signs of unrest during the George Floyd protests. It seems they are cooperating with the US government.

This background and Trump's track record convince me that the TikTok ban was politically motivated -- he wants to seem "tough" on China and get revenge for the way TikTok users tricked his campaign into projecting huge crowds for his disastrous Tulsa campaign rally.

Regardless, let's zoom out.

The TikTok affair is unimportant when compared to Trump's general tariffs and high-cost trade war against Huawei. What is his goal for US-China relations in general and for the Internet in particular? Is he seeking total self-sufficiency and independence from China? A bifurcated Internet?

When one considers the cost of reciprocal tariffs, the supply chains for manufactured goods, and the Chinese market for US goods like iPhones, it is clear that financial and industrial disengagement from China would be an economic disaster for both China and the US. 

The Internet is already bifurcating.  China already has more Internet users than the US, Russia, Mexico, Germany, UK, France, and Canada combined, and the US trade war on Chinese technology has accelerated its push toward self-reliance. China is also innovating --  Huawei, Tencent, and Xiaomi are among Derwent's  top 100 innovators and China has passed the US as the top scientific publishing nation in the world.

The Internet was conceived of and has served as a tool for collaboration, and existential global threats of economic inequality, climate change, pandemics and biological and other weapons require global collaboration. We need them and they need us.

Let me be clear -- there are no good guys here. China bans Facebook and Twitter, plays dirty tricks on the Internet, and imprisons and surveils citizens, but we seem to be caught in a prisoner's dilemma game in which both sides have defected and that could be fatal. 

There may not be a way out of our dilemma, but our recent relations with Cuba suggest a strategy worth considering. President Obama published a new Cuba policy and began rapprochement negotiations. He visited Cuba and made several Internet-related announcements, but the response was disappointing while Raúl Castro was in charge. His successor, Miguel Díaz-Canel, is a pro-Internet engineer and there may have been an opportunity for change when he replaced Castro if Trump had continued President Obama's policy, but that did not happen. Trump has made no substantive Internet-related policy changes regarding Cuba, but his politically-motivated rhetoric and Cuba Internet Task Force have assured continued hostility. 

We will never know how Díaz-Canel would have reacted had Trump continued President Obama's policy, but the outcome could not have been worse for the Cuban people or better for the expansion of China's Digital Silk Road. 

Whether we try the sort of engagement Obama tried with Cuba or something else, we cannot do it alone -- we must work with like-minded allies, which is surely not Trump's way. 

It's time for a change.

Update 8/26/2020

TikTok has answered Trump's executive ban and filed a law suit challenging it on the grounds that they were denied due process. They say they have never shared data with the Chinese, opened their publishing algorithm to show there has been no censorship, employ many Americans, provide a platform that is used by Americans for expression and income, and more.

While the suit asserts that TikTok was banned without due process -- claiming that the Administration has "ignored their extensive efforts to address its concerns," I wonder about the First Amendement guarantee of press freedom. TikTok is a publisher. What is the essential difference between banning TikTok without presenting evidence that it posed a threat to national security and banning the Washington Post because it had publishhed or might one day publish fake news that undermined national security?

In another twist, it turns out that Microsoft had been negotiating to purchase TikTok, and shortly before issuing the ban, Trump said the U.S. Treasury should collect a “very substantial” portion of the sale price. That sounds like a mob shakedown -- if you don't sell your company and give me cut I will shut it down leaving you with nothing. I can see the tweet -- "I got the Chinese to sell their company to Microsoft, created THOUSANDS of American jobs, stopped espionage and got a cut for the taxpayers as well."

Update 5/27/2021

Comparatech Editor Paul Bischoff points out that Trump’s executive order set a deadline of 45 days, but it was largely ignored and is techcally still in play. He reports that US national security officials are in talks with TikTok's parent company ByteDance about data security and preventing US user data from being accessed by the Chinese government.

In the meantime, TikTok was the most downloaded app in the first quarter of 2021 and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee unanimously passed a bill that would ban U.S. federal workers from downloading the TikTok onto U.S. government devices.

This puts President Biden in a political bind. Young voters like TikTok but the President is concerned about China's economic and political power. That being said, TikTok is insignificant in the long run -- we need to learn to cooperate and coexist with China in the face of global challenges like climate change, epidemics and economic inequality.

Obama perpetuates an Internet urban legend ... not

In a recent campaign speech in Roanoke Virginia, President Obama defended government, pointing to its role in projects like building Hoover Dam, putting a man on the moon or creating the Internet. Regarding the Internet, he said:

The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

That remark led Wall Street Journal columnist and former publisher Gordon Crovitz to write an opinion article giving "full credit" for the invention of the Internet to the Xerox Corporation.

Crovitz' article ignores so much that it would be hard to know where to start in refuting him, but I don't need to do that. The LA Times, Wired Magazine, arstechnica and countless others have shot the article down. (For an in-depth, nuanced discussion of the invention of computer networks by the people who actually did it, subscribe to the Internet History list).

Let's switch gears and ask what might have motivated Mr. Crovitz to embarrass himself and the Wall Street Journal by writing the article. A cynic might think this was a deliberate attempt by the Wall Street Journal to deceive voters, but, jaded as I am, I can't imagine them explicitly deciding to do that.

I think it is an example of confabulation by Mr. Crovitz and his editors at the Wall Street Journal. We all confabulate to some extent. We are masters of subconscious rebuttal -- quick to explain away new information that undermines our beliefs. Without thinking, "yes, but ..." springs to mind.

I would be willing to bet that Mr. Crovitz is a Republican who opposes President Obama and believes that relative to private business, government is bureaucratic, inefficient, wasteful and perhaps even corrupt.

When The President said "Government research created the Internet," Mr. Crovitz internal confabulator immediately and subconsciously ginned up a response -- Xerox Corporation.

Maybe it is unfair to beat up on Mr. Crovitz. We all confabulate -- that is why newspapers and other news organizations have editors and editorial review. This article sounds more like The Onion than The Wall Street Journal. The editors blew it.

(Still, I would nominate Mr. Crovitz for the 2012 Ted Stevens memorial Internet Pipes Award).

President Obama's effort to open healthcare data is paying off

President Obama and his opponents agree that market competition is a good thing, as long as the market is fair and free. A free market requires information, and Tom Friedman's latest New York Times column is about Obama administration initiatives to make healthcare data available online.

Friedman says it started in March 2010 when Health and Human Services (HHS) met with 45 entrepreneurs and offered them access to aggregate data on hospital quality, nursing home patient satisfaction and regional health care system performance. Ninety days later, HHS held a “Health Datapalooza” — a public event to showcase innovators who had harnessed the power of that data to improve health and care.

The entrepreneurs showed up and demonstrated over 20 new or upgraded apps they had built that leveraged open data to do everything from helping patients find the best health care providers to enabling healthcare leaders to better understand patterns of health care system performance across communities.

Free markets with information for consumers — sounds like something even Tea Party members might like. They can see more at Health Datapalooza 2013 next month.

In the mean time, they can check out this "infomercial" — they'll like it.

Change from Obama -- using the Internet for transparent, two-way communication during the transistion

We've discussed Obama's use of the Internet, and the difficulty of gathering meaningful input from many users.

You may recall the Bush energy policy controversy. In his second week in office, George W. Bush created the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG), charged with developing a national energy policy.

NEPDG meetings were secret, and the administration refused to share information about them with Congress. This led to the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, filing a lawsuit against the administration. The suit was dismissed.

The Obama Transition Team will hear from many groups over the next several weeks, and, in sharp contrast to Bush's policy, they will use the Internet to open those meetings. They have established a Web site for two-way communication with the public, where one can track Transition Team meetings, read documents presented at those meetings, and offer comments. You can read more and see a short video in this press release.

Do you have an interest in any of the meeting topics at "seat at the table?" Have you posted any comments? Do you feel such feedback will be meaningful, or is this sugar coating for one-way communication?

I hope Trump keeps tweeting

I hope Trump keeps up his tweeting. They say our eyes are windows to our souls, his late-night tweets are a window to his.

Since I have a blog on the Internet in Cuba, I took a look at Trump's tweets, hoping to learn something about his likely Cuba policy. I searched his Twitter stream for tweets with the words Cuba or Cuban and Twitter returned 27 results, but only three were what I was looking for.

I was surprised to see that 20 of the tweets were about Mark Cuban, an entrepreneur, business man and outspoken Trump critic and four related to President Obama. What do those tweets reveal about Trump?

Two of the tweets illustrate his competitive nature.

In this tweet, he brags (with reason) that his reality TV show, The Apprentice, was a bigger hit than one Cuban was on, The Shark Tank.

(NBC later severed relations with Trump because of his remarks during the campaign).

This tweet refers to the Dallas Mavericks, a professional basketball team owned by Cuban:

The next tweet illustrates Trump's proclivity for personal, ad hominem attacks:

(Trump's physique has also been ridiculed).

Three of trump's Cuba tweets were shots taken at President Obama during the campaign, for example these:

An earlier tweet about President Obama was as goofy as Trump's "birther" campaign:

It turned out that only three of the tweets pertained to my initial question:

They give us a clue as to his posture on Cuba during and after the campaign, but I suspect his hard line will be tempered by practical economic and political factors. Regardless, Trump's tweets reveal more about him than about his Cuba policy.

I plan to repeat my Twitter search "Cuba from:realdonaldtrump" from time to time to see how his views evolve. I hope Trump keeps up his tweeting. They say our eyes are windows to our souls, his late-night tweets are a window to his.

The White House forms USDS and 18F to improve e-government.

The government has formed two new IT organizations in response to the HealthCare.Gov fiasco -- was HealthCare.Gov a blessing in disguise?

The White House just launched the U.S. Digital Service (USDS), headed by Mickey Dickerson, who led the team that bailed out the troubled HealthCare.Gov Web site and earlier worked on President Obama's campaign.

USDS is a management consulting firm for federal agencies, but they do not sound like typical management consultants. They are young technologists and entrepreneurs from startups, Internet companies and and e-government projects. I'm not sure, but I bet none are Harvard MBAs. (Maybe a few from Stanford).

USDS favors lean startup methods, open source and agile development by small teams. They seem more like folks who wear t-shirts to work than wear suits -- reminiscent of an earlier group of young people the government found to develop the ARPAnet.

This list of "plays" from their "playbook" gives you an idea of their development and management style:

You can see more (and comment) on the the playbook here.

USDS will complement 18F, a government agency that was formed last March. (Their office is at the corner of F and 18th in Washington). Both groups are largely staffed by former Presidential Innovation Fellows and they have a common point of view. Unlike USDS, 18F actually builds tools and implements government systems. I am sure they will work closely together.

President Roosevelt (radio) and Kennedy (TV) were leaders at using new commuication media and President Obama was the first succesful Internet campaigner. Now he hopes to modernize government IT -- he might be remembered as the Internet President.

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Update 8/13/2014

USDS is also offering suggestions for addressing problems with the federal procurement process that leads to IT failures like HealthCare.Gov -- the TechFAR Handbook, which highlights the flexibilities in the Federal Acquisition Regulation that can help agencies implement “plays” from the Digital Services Playbook that would be accomplished with acquisition support — with a particular focus on how to use contractors to support an iterative, customer-driven software development process, as is routinely done in the private sector.

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Update
8/23/2014

18F is building tools and expanding -- hacking bureaucracy and promoting open source. They've reduced the hiring cycle from six to nine months to six to eight weeks by making Schedule A hires, which are limited to four years. That is sufficient for people used to working in "startup mode" and reminiscent of the grad students who worked on short-term grants to build the ARPANet and NSFnet.

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Update 9/9/2014

18F is building a new system for processing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

Since the passage of the FOIA in 1966, journalists and other citizens have been able to request copies of government documents, but the system is often slow and fails to find relevant documents. 18F hopes to fix that with a consolidated FOIA request submission hub.

They began the project by meeting with stakeholders, both inside and outside the government, to discuss some of the practical obstacles impeding the current FOIA experience. They are now have a rough prototype of the FOIA request system running and the development process is open to public scrutiny and participation. You can follow, comment and contribute to the project here.

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Update 11/1/2014

18F Executive Director Greg Godbout, speaking at the 50th annual TechAmerica Foundation Vision conference reported that since its founding in March, 18F has grown from 14 to 100 employees -- it is now a small business, not a startup.

He said they were not competing with Federal contractors, but were a third-party trusted adviser to the contracting agency and developer, with "no skin in the game."

Their expertise is in "agile" hiring and development and "user centered design." Let's hope these are more than buzz words and their consulting pays off.

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Update 12/4/2014

USDS is expanding, working on Healthcare.gov 2.0, digitizing the VA and collaborating with 18F.

President Obama selects Tom Wheeler as FCC chairman

The President has selected Tom Wheeler, former lobbyist for both the cellular and cable industries and a major contributor to the Obama campaign to head the FCC, and AT&T and Comcast are both lauding the appointment.

That smacks cronyism -- the revolving door between industry to government.

I signed a petition to name Susan Crawford next head of the FCC, but will keep an open mind.  Wheeler may have been a lobbyist for the cable and cellular industries, but he was also an Invited Expert by the The President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST), which issued a report calling for the use of smart radios in sharing federal spectrum. He presumably endorses (or at least understands) the report of the PCAST Spectrum group.

His October 2011 blog post Updating Spectrum Policy provides further evidence that he "gets" IP and unlicensed spectrum. Here are a couple of quotes from that post:

"Exhibit A for 21st century spectrum planning is WiFi. Operating in unlicensed spectrum, WiFi is a cacophony of competing claims for use of the spectrum. The characteristics of Internet Protocol (IP) packets allow WiFi in a Starbucks hotspot, for instance, to operate more efficiently that the licensed spectrum on the sidewalk outside."

and

"It is time to abandon the concept of perfection in spectrum allocation. The rules for 21st century spectrum allocation need to evolve from the avoidance of interference to interference tolerance. We’ve seen this evolution in the wired network; it’s now time to bring the chaotic efficiency of Internet Protocol to wireless spectrum policy."

Don't forget that fiercely anti-Communist Richard Nixon, opened US relations with China. Perhaps Dark Side lobbyist Tom Wheeler will modernize wireless IP communication.

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Update 11/11/2016

This post has turned out to be true -- Tom Wheeler has acted against the wishes of his old industry friends. He turned out to be something of a sheep in wolf's clothing. There is speculation that Donald Trump will reverse Wheeler's stance on network neutrality and I will be pleasantly surprised if his FCC appointees pursue his proposal for a standard TV-interface box that combines the functions of today's set-top boxes and Internet interfaces.

The long memory of the Internet -- Trump then and now

The Internet has a long memory -- check for yourself by googling "early Trump interviews" and filtering for videos.

In the early days of the Intenet, we naively expected its political impact to be rosy -- leading to informed, intelligent discussion and a flowering of democracy. Many of us held on to that vision as we watched the use of the Internet during the "Arab Spring," but our optimism has eroded steadily since that time. Terrorist recruiting, fake news and lying politicians have dominated recent discussion of the political impact of the Internet, but I have some good news -- the Internet has a long, albeit imperfect, memory.

This was driven home for me by a recent segment on John Oliver's TV show Last Week Tonight. After Donald Trump fired FBI Directory James Comey, he tweeted that he might have recordings of their three previous meetings. Oliver showed and commented on a Fox News interview of Trump after he admitted that he had not recorded the meetings.

Watching the interview, I was amazed by the incoherence of Trump's speech and his dull expression and tone. His wife, who was standing beside, him seemed frozen. I was so impressed by his incoherence that I searched for the clip online and downloaded and transcribed it.

Oliver introduced the interview segment by stating that:

You may remember back in May Trump suggested on Twitter that he may have tapes of his conversations with deposed FBI director James Comey. Well, on Thursday, Trump finally admitted that he had no such tapes and offered this rationale for his claim.

Here is the Transcript of Trump's explanation:

Trump: Well, if I didn't tape him you'd never know what's happening when you see that the Obama administration and perhaps longer than that was doing all of this unmasking and surveillance that you read all about it and I've been reading about it for the last couple of months about the seriousness of the and the horrible situation with surveillance all over the place and you've been hearing the word unmasking, a word you probably never heard before, so you never know what's out there, but I didn't tape and I don't have any tape and I didn't tape.

(Oliver jokes)

Trump continues:When he found out that uh I you know that there may be tapes out there, whether its government tapes or anything else and who knows, I think his story may have changed. I mean you'll have to take a look at that because then he has to tell what actually took place at the events and my story didn't change, my story was always a straight story. My story was always the truth, but you have to determine for yourself whether or not his story changed, but i did not take.

Interviewer: That was a smart way to make sure he stayed honest in his hearings.

Trump: Well, uh, it wasn't uh it wasn't very stupid I can tell you that.

(Oliver jokes)

You can see interview (2:47) along with Oliver's commentary here:

Trump's self-defeating incoherence led me to wonder if he might be mentally impaired, so I searched for other examples online and it turns out that Trump's speech patterns today are strikingly different than when he was younger. For example this survey article compares clips of Trump's earlier interview responses with those of today. Experts interviewed for the article agree that Trump's speech has deteriorated, but all qualified their observations by pointing out that one could not determine the cause without clinical examination -- it could be the onset of dementia, but it could also be explained by normal healthy aging, being tired, stress and pressure, or it might even be a strategic appeal to relatively uneducated voters. I'd throw in narcissism and obsession with Obama as well.

Regardless, the Internet has a long memory -- check for yourself by googling "early Trump interviews" and filtering for videos.

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update 7/4/2017

An article in the Atlantic Monthly posits another possible reason for Trump's mental decline, citing research showing that power can lead to a leader's loss of mental capacity -- a phenomenon one researcher refers to as "hubris syndrome."

I experienced this personally when I spent a year and a half as a consultant to the CEO of a large corporation. I was in many meetings with the CEO and various managers and vendors. People jockeyed to sit next to him around a conference table and seldom disagreed with anything he said. It was a status symbol to refer to him by his first name. I had the strong impression that being in a status bubble all day for years had made him somewhat narcissistic and overconfident.

Similarly, Trump is the boss in business and a fan of his cheering, enthusiastic base at political rallies. Perhaps he cannot conceive of being wrong, resulting in flustered incoherence when he is criticized or asked a probing question. Few people would have a sufficiently strong character, sense of purpose or justice not to be affected by being surrounded by "yes people" for years.

The Obama Transition Team creates ad hoc threaded discussions using Intensedebate.com

The Obama Transition Team wants input on issues from citizens, and is now hosting discussion of questions like "What social causes and service organizations are you a part of that make a difference in your community".

People post their answers to the questions, and others can post a reply, check the reputation of the person who posted the answer, or vote it up or down. In the example shown below, we see that Denise C., who has 34 reputation points, submitted an answer to the question. So far, two people have voted her answer up, and the user is invited to vote up or down.

If you follow the link to a discussion question, you will see a fairly polished Web site with a short video elaborating on the question and the ensuing discussion. The Transition Team was able to quickly create this ad hoc site with a mashup in which the video is stored on YouTube and the threaded discussion, with its reputation and rating scheme, is hosted by intensedebate.com.

Would you respond to a Transition Team question? Do you think this process will generate meaningful input from the public and that the Transition Team will read it? Will it make people feel they are being listened to? Will it change politics?

PCAST presentation on spectrum policy and technology -- attention Obama and Romney

As shown here, demand for mobile connectivity is exploding. It can not be satisfied using existing spectrum allocation policy and technology.

People have been experimenting with various forms of smart radio technology for many years, and a shift to sharing spectrum in new, dynamic, highly local ways seems inevitable.

That shift will cost incumbent spectrum owners, but pay large dividends for the economy as a whole.

The companies and nations that lead the innovation and establish the new policies and technical standards will reap large benefits. (As did the companies and nation that invented the Internet).

The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) will soon issue a report calling for the use of smart radios in sharing federal spectrum.

The report is not yet out, but you can see a 23 minute video presentation (followed by 21 minutes of good questions and anwers) on the forthcoming report with specific recommendations for policies and pilot studies. You can also download a copy of the presentation slides.

The presentation, by PCAST member and venture capitalist Mark Gorenberg, reviews the situation, makes policy recommendations and calls for pilot studies using spectrum that is currently allocated to federal agencies.

(I found one thing weird -- they advocate giving agencies budget increases as an incentive to participate. Those agencies are owned by the American public -- why should we pay them to do the right thing on our behalf?).

During the question and answer period, Gorenberg estimated that modern technology could increase wireless capacity by as much as 40,000 times and he stated that the US is in a world-wide race to lead in this technology.

One hopes this report will be taken seriously -- Obama and Romney should be pinned down on this issue.

Update, July 2012:

The report was issued: http://1.usa.gov/10kJk9B

Update, May 14, 2003:

Tom Wheeler, an Invited Expert on the report, was appointed Chairman of the FCC (http://bit.ly/13IS7R8).

The Internet and the presidential election

We eventually learn to use new media, but at first we mimic old media. For example, this 1952 presidential ad for Eisenhower is like a radio jingle with crude animation:



It seems goofy today, but was made by intelligent, creative people at the time.

Many people feel that John Kennedy was the first presidential candidate to effectively use television. Checking his commercials from the 1960 campaign, we see sincere statements by the candidate, attack ads and celebrity endorsement ads as well as Eisenhower-era jingles. Kennedy also had the ability to speak directly to the voter as shown in this clip:



Earlier, Franklin Roosevelt broke new ground by communicating directly with the people in weekly fireside chats on the radio.

The Internet is today's new media. Howard Dean and John McCain pioneered in using the Net for fund raising during the 2000 and 2004 elections, and both of the current candidates are using it for position papers, fund raising, community formation, video, instant messaging, Twitter streams, email, etc. this year.

In this interview, Phil Noble of the consulting firm Politics Online says Obama may be to the Internet what John Kennedy was to television and the New York Times published this excellent article on the importance of the Internet in the campaign on the day before the election.

For more examples of presidents using radio and television, see the archives of presidential speeches at the University of Virginia and presidential campaign commercials at Living Room Candidate.

Have you registered with either (or both) the presidential campaign sites? Have you contributed to a candidate on the Internet? Have you created blogs on either campaign site? Do you see differences in the way Obama and McCain are using the Internet?