The left is keen to sever connections with the gangsterish new American administration, de Gaulle-style. Indeed – at a minimum, Europe must be able to make its way on its own, and certainly America can no longer aspire to leadership amongst liberal democracies, even if a fair election took place in 2028 in which J.D. Vance was defeated, which we might doubt. Until MAGA has burned out totally, America will be an unreliable partner, and Europe must stand on its own two feet. The transition will be painful and expensive, and will probably involve swallowing a lot of nonsense from President Donald Fart, but it will be worth it in the end.

The left is pleased to remind us it told us so, although so did Enoch Powell, in more or less the same terms. However, it’s not obvious it has processed the implications of independence. In particular, Europe’s giant welfare states, whose influence has crept into almost every corner of public life and many aspects of private life too, was made possible because we outsourced our defence to America, as well as our economic growth to Chinese importers. Have the anti-Americans, vindicated by the appalling behaviour of their traditional bogeymen, the courage and intellectual clarity to realise that we need to prioritise soldiers before welfare, materiel before equality, cybersecurity before diversity, a credible nuclear deterrent before inclusion, and a modus operandi with our hostile neighbours before exporting Western human rights doctrine?

The outlines for peace in Ukraine have been clear for a couple of years now – unsatisfactory, but the only sustainable solution. It needed muscle to be applied to Russia, which neither the inept Biden administration nor the EU were prepared to apply. Despite the horrifically warm words emanating from President Donald Fart and his increasingly gangsterish regime, at least Washington has expressed impatience. Putin is being given more than he hoped, but he doesn’t have any choice but to accept.

As I wrote the other day, Europe has had eight years to adapt to the new reality. Throughout modern history, Russia has been either too chaotic to be a threat, or a bad actor – one or the other. At the moment, it is the latter. Since the turn of the century, a string of incompetent American Presidents have driven American nationalism. We Europeans both within and without the EU need to recognise this and adapt to it. Note for example that Western failure to defend Ukraine wholeheartedly led directly to the victory of the pro-Russian party in Georgia.

A peace settlement for Ukraine needs to split the country. In his classic Clash of Civilizations, Samuel Huntington argued strongly that the boundary between Western and Orthodox civilisations divided Ukraine. He also asserted that Russia would never invade – oops. Of course he was writing in the chaotic Yeltsin years, not the Putin boot-in era.

It is essential for European security that this is as far as Russia gets. As this is not in the direct interests of America, it needs to be secured by the Europeans. This entails a series of measures.

First, we need to attempt to get Ukraine into NATO – after all, it now has the most battle hardened, and on some measures largest, army in Europe. It is absurd not to learn from it, and not to try to discipline its inexperienced command. If this is vetoed, as it probably would be by either America, Turkey or Hungary, then a European military alliance must be crafted to facilitate cooperation, support and learning.

Second, Russia is itself battle-hardened in a way that it patently wasn’t in 2022. European defence budgets have to be increased radically, and adapted to new styles of warfare, and the European political class needs to get serious about its own defence. Attempts must be made to persuade the populist right that this, not capitulation to Russia, is the patriotic thing to do.

Third, there must be troops on the ground. Ultimately, Russia (and Belarus) must face a wall of steel from the Black Sea to the Arctic Ocean. The temptation, following President Fart’s betrayal, for Putin to roll tanks into the Baltic States, the North of Finland, or Moldova, or sail into Gotland, or exploit friendly alliances with Belarus or even Hungary to push the frontier Westward will now be strong. This must be deterred, especially as no-one can now be blind to the extent of the war crimes, torture, sexual violence and murder of civilians that follow Russian occupation.

Fourth, particular note should be taken wherever there are large populations of Russian origin. Putin has made no secret that he regards Greater Russia as extending into such areas. The Russian diaspora is an enemy within, and should be regarded as such. It needs to be put under surveillance, and its political organisations challenged and disrupted.

Fifth, Europe needs to rebuild Ukraine. There is no way that Russia will rebuild the Donbas region – the contrast must be to the benefit of democracy.

Sixth, let’s drop the idea that freedom, democracy and capitalism are universal values, and let’s stop trying to spread them where they are not wanted. They are part of the European way of life, arguably superior to alternatives, but the priority must be to defend them where they were nurtured. If the Russians prefer gangsterism, then that is their business. They will never be fair dealers with the West, and will cosy up to their friends – China, North Korea, Iran, Turkey, India, the BRICS. We can’t break these connections, or isolate Russia to that extent. Sanctions are fine as far as they go, but they won’t go very far. Much better to declare Russia an enemy, see to our own defence, keep it at arm’s length, and ensure we are not reliant upon them for any resources, even if we end up restoring some trading relations. And trust them not one single inch.

Seventh, none of this will come cheap. Europeans have to face this. Economic growth and productivity are essential to finance the continuation of European civilisation, and state funding will have to be diverted from butter to guns, from welfare to defence. The sooner European leaders agree this among themselves, explain this to their populations, and at least try to bring recalcitrant populists into the broad fold of patriotic defence of Europe, the better.

The opening of my forthcoming book with Edward Elgar, Blockchain Politics, setting the scene for its analysis of trust in the context of the zealotry of left and right:

21st century politics are utterly bizarre. Despite relatively few people engaging directly with extremes, we seem to have been transported to the 17th century world of Matthew Hopkins, Witchfinder General. On one side we have a puritan, compassion-free, vengeful, punitive regiment of unsmiling moral police determined to suppress all trace of old sinful ways and to purge wicked traditions, contemptuous of due process and untarnished by presumption of innocence. They face a pugnacious mob of snarling, swivel-eyed, snaggle-toothed peasants with pitchforks, impervious to reason, disdainful of calls for calm, scornful of authority, oppugnant to the Riot Act, and utterly convinced by their preachers that they are beset by every kind of sprite, gargoyle and demon that ever featured in a story book.

To talk of political trust in these circumstances is heroic. Like the humane, sherry-tippling squire of 1647, we are trapped in a pincer by two terrible Manichaean movements, who agree only on the immanence of the apocalyptic struggle of Good versus Evil, cooperate only to drown moderate voices in a torrent of manufactured invective. The impediment under which we labour today, unlike the hapless squire of yore, is that ideas spread far more quickly and effectively with networked digital technology. And the technology that both sides use to automate their mobs is increasingly defended as a means by which society can be run devoid of trust. It wasn’t so long ago that trust was seen as the glue that held societies together and allowed them to prosper. Now, Puritans and Peasants alike see it as a dangerous vulnerability to be transcended.

J.D. Vance’s Munich speech seems to have shocked everyone, but it shouldn’t have. His attack on Europe, presumably cleared with his boss (or at least designed to impress him), centred around charges of a retreat from democratic values, and exclusion of legitimate views. It was rude, and unhelpful, but we had heard most of it before, if not in such a concentrated form.

More to the point, there was a kernel of truth in the criticism. It underlined lessons that the EU (and Britain) have had eight years to learn (eleven, if we take Russia’s first illegal invasion of Ukraine as the starting point), and have ignored.

Firstly, the United States, whoever is in the White House, is no longer a reliable ally. Even had Harris won in November, the MAGA movement would have remained an ongoing threat to Western unity. Hence global Western unity is dead already.

Second, Britain has a far more natural connection with Europe than America. We should be improving that relationship on as many fronts as possible. That means not only movement from Britain, but also from the EU, whose inflexible bureaucratic legalism has made rapprochement harder. It does not mean rejoining the EU, but rather constructive interaction between Britain, the various individual governments and the Commission.

Third, we Europeans have a common enemy – Russia. Since Russia does not directly threaten America, America won’t necessarily commit to helping us defend ourselves. We need far more resources devoted to the defence of Europe’s Eastern flank, and also far more creative thinking about how individual European nations can cooperate and develop synergetic defence policies. Given that the Russian economy is a rounding error compared to the European one, it is absurd that it is outspending us on defence. Ultimately, we need more recruits, more materiel, better cybersecurity, and a credible nuclear deterrent. The peace dividend is gone, and 2% of GDP won’t cut it.

Fourth, the European liberal capitalist democracies are the most successful societies in human history on virtually all measures. They need to be preserved – but not be free riding on American largesse. We have a joint identity that should be celebrated and shored up.

Fifth, the populist right, rejected by the European mainstream, is now overwhelmed by suitors, with the Trump administration and Russia competing for its favours. It will not go away. Far better, I believe, to try to swing at least some of the far right behind the project of shoring up European liberal democracy as a matter of patriotism and preserving European civilisation, rather than letting them stew on the fringe with their 15-30% of the vote, disrupting politics and undermining social trust. That means engaging with them, dropping the counterproductive cordon sanitaire. It means crafting an ecumenical political project to defend the liberal West from its many enemies that can motivate those of left and right, as well as the mainstream.

The two most important works on international relations at the moment are Christopher Coker’s The Rise of the Civilizational State, and Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations. They describe the world we are living in, where cosmopolitan universalism is not going to cut the mustard, and indeed has been largely outed as an offshoot of Western liberal thinking. This is a loss, but it need not be our loss, if we can reinterpret our liberalism as a local tradition that has contributed to the dramatic success of European societies, enabling them to adapt to and thrive in modernity – a tradition to be preserved, not undermined by illiberal identity politics of left or right. A tradition to which we should be loyal, and of which we should be proud.

European democracies are attractive – witness the large number of people who wish to live in them – prosperous and free. They are under threat, from within (by left wing ideologues and right wing populists alike) and without. We need to stand on our own feet and defend them, intellectually, economically and militarily. If the Americans want to help, then great, but even if they do, they cannot underwrite the cheques we need to write.

In recent weeks, Wendy Hall and I have begun to adapt our ideological/geopolitical view of Internet governance, which we expressed in our book Four Internets, to the governance of AI, publishing short pieces with Sciences Po and the Atlantic Council. Broadly speaking, we have seen an analogous pattern emerge, with existing attitudes carrying over into five Artificial Intelligence Management Strategies, which we call 5 AIMS.

The 5 AIMS each encapsulate a basic view of the good or bad effects of technology. They can be mixed and matched, combined, combated or denied, but they can’t be eliminated. The Open AIMS valorises openness and innovation; the Bourgeois AIMS rights; the Paternal AIMS safety and protection; the Commercial AIMS market solutions to collective action problems; and the Hacker AIMS the power of the individual coder to undermine centralisation and self-declared authority.

After a series of AI get-togethers which usually produced outcomes of harmony and agreement (if not necessarily clarity), the French/Indian AI Summit in Paris ended more rancorously, with the US and the UK refusing to sign the communiqué and its exhortations to ensure that “AI is open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy, taking into account international frameworks for all” and to make it “sustainable for people and the planet”.

Maybe there is a limit to the amount of motherhood and apple pie an industry can consume. But what we are really seeing is the friction between the 5 AIMS which previous summiteers have managed to suppress. The EU approach in legislation and rhetoric has focused on the Bourgeois AIMS, on the rights of citizens, with the addition of some concern about safety, which brings in the Paternal AIMS with its risk-based approach. Paternalism is an approach on which many can agree, because safety concerns, even when genuine, are a useful cover for control. China has long been a paternalist regulator of digital technologies, and its mantra of preserving social stability is popular in the country as a whole, with the agreeable side-effect of delegitimising attacks on the Communist Party. Hence China’s signing of the communiqué, to the surprise of some, but consistently with the 5 AIMS view.

However, there have long been worries that a focus on rights and safety will undermine innovation and raise compliance costs for start-ups, concerns of both the Open AIMS and the Commercial AIMS. It is perhaps not a surprise that it took a senior representative of the Trump administration to shatter the illusion of consensus. The administration itself may be deeply conflicted between its MAGA devotees, who are chiefly interested in undermining the state and promoting the independence of citizens, and its tech bros, who basically want to make money, but all in this perhaps shaky coalition agree that “ethical, safe and sustainable” stand in the way of “effective, productive and valuable”. The British reasons for declining to sign the communiqué were less clear, but a one reason may have been to disavow Britain’s historical role in outlining the safety agenda.

But another agenda is also becoming clearer: AI nationalism. The promotion of domestic AI industry is of a piece with a view of AI as of strategic importance. The collapse of the rule-based order, and the rise of the civilisational state have resulted in the spread of the view that this is a zero sum game. That really a variant of the Paternal AIMS safety view (safety of the nation in a hostile world, rather than of the individual citizen), but it is now a widespread concern, including in America.

This was clear in J.D. Vance’s anti-China remarks in Paris – interpreting the Paternal AIMS not as a means to protect citizens against hypothetical dangers, but rather to advance the interests of the nation. His warning against authoritarians was pointedly not a criticism of authoritarianism, merely a suspicion of cooperation and openness. “Some of us in this room have learned from experience partnering with [authoritarian states] means chaining your nation to an authoritarian master that seeks to infiltrate, dig in and seize your information infrastructure.” India’s adoption of the Hindutva cultural ideology in the Modi years has similarly had the effect of promoting paternalism, and we have already noted China’s view. In transactional geopolitics, openness goes as far as the border, no further.

I’m very excited to see my forthcoming new book, Blockchain Politics: Ideology and the Crisis of Social Trust, appearing on the website of the publishers, Edward Elgar.

It sets out a three-stage argument, trying to diagnose our problems with political populism from first principles. The first stage sets out the theory of trust that I developed some years ago in a bit more detail, with emphasis on the social and the political contexts. Incidentally, in the next year or two I’ll be applying this trust theory to the governance of Artificial Intelligence with my long-time colleague Dame Wendy Hall, extending our work on Internet governance which we published with Oxford University Press as Four Internets.

The second stage looks at the philosophy of conservatism, again using my own research and definitions from earlier work. In this stage, I show that conservatism of the Burkean variety has a strong affinity for social trust and trustworthiness, by valuing the institutions and practices which underpin them. This, as far as I know, is a new and, to me at least, exciting combination of themes.

The final stage goes back to the debates between populism and the far left liberalism which have dominated politics for the last few years. I take it for granted that far right populism is destructive of trust, and thrives when trust is low – my book is not targeted at this kind of populism, although I am very much opposed to it, and have written on the topic elsewhere. My point is rather that liberalism, critical theory and identity politics between them are equally destructive of trust, and connive with the populists, each enabling the other, to undermine it.

This all matters, because the key tasks of government – the defence of the West against our geopolitical enemies and rivals, addressing climate change, adapting to ageing populations, provision of increasingly complex and critical infrastructure etc. – can only be dealt with politically with measures that will extend beyond the four or five year electoral cycle. That requires mutual trust in and across the political class, which will take some forging. In the book I muse about how it might be forged, but there must be consensus about our political project.

Why Blockchain Politics? Well, technology is part of the story of how trust got undermined. In particular, blockchain – which is a brilliant invention, I can say with my comp sci hat on – has promoted the idea of trustless trust, that trust can be manufactured by mechanisms and technology. No it can’t. It’s a human requirement that places constraints upon what will work, as I argue in the first two stages of the book. Until we understand that, and until our political elites, the Farages and Rayners, the Trumps and AOCs, understand it, we will be condemned to the empty ping pong that masquerades as politics nowadays, and those key governmental tasks will remain undone.

It’s good news that Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government is going to push AI as a means for increasing productivity in Britain. Its rhetoric about ‘turbocharging’ AI and ‘mainlining’ it into Britain’s veins, as well as being an early contender for mixed metaphor of 2025, is obvious and silly hyperbole. But it is evidence of a sensible willingness to explore its possibilities in administration and industry, while ignoring the absurd suggestion  that AI somehow poses an existential risk.

However, what it will not and cannot do on its own is raise productivity. In the first place, its positive contribution to productivity will be long term, even if it comes good on its promise. At the moment, it costs a fortune, is environmentally problematic, and no-one has discovered a way of making money out of it. Neither democratic governments nor even venture capitalists can afford to subsidise it sufficiently, which is why the tech giants are taking the lead. More employees use it than employers.

Given this, it can only function as one of a suite of measures comprising a general and coherent strategy toward productivity. Here, as so often, the Labour government has disappointed, by neglecting vital elements of productivity strategy. The most obvious two are transport and education. In transport, funds for vital investments have been cut, partly because of the dire state of the public finances, but more importantly because of the need for the government to placate its environmentalist supporters. In education, Bridget Phillipson may be about to undo one of the previous Conservative government’s few successes. In a natural experiment, England’s educational results, as measured by PISA surveys, have improved dramatically, while those of Scotland and Wales, run by the devolved governments, have plummeted. Incredibly, moves may be afoot to bring England into line with the Scots and Welsh, rather than the other way around. Again, one suspects Labour’s need to remain on good terms with ‘progressive’ supporters and public sector unions.

AI will make little difference to productivity in the short term, and can’t do very much anyway on its own. In this, as in many other areas, Sir Keir’s government disappoints.

I’m looking forward very much to delivering my Royal Institute of Philosophy Lecture, Insta-Worthy Memories and Filtered Truth, on Thursday 23rd Jan at the Senate House Building on Malet St. It’s one of the Institute’s London Lecture series for 2024-25, on the always-relevant topic of Remembering and Forgetting.

It’s great to be working in that space once more. I was involved in a fair bit of memory research about 15-20 years ago, under the heading of Memories for Life, which examined how new technologies were changing our relationship with the past. I produced a number of papers at the time, some of which have been quite well cited. In particular, one paper on the then-new practice of lifelogging, written with the lovely Mischa Tuffield (then a student, now probably a multi-millionaire somewhere with a dozen unicorn startups to his name), raised the likelihood that the practice would become social.

Well, since those days we’ve seen all sorts of innovations, to create what I have called digital modernity. The smartphone has become ubiquitous, and a greater variety of social media more integrated into ordinary life. Photography has become a social practice. Apps improve facial appearance in photos, leading to a boom in plastic surgery. Image-sharing on social media leads to the physical world being altered to become ‘Insta-worthy’. Physical reality is augmented by smartphones or headsets, virtual realities may be created, and in extreme cases, AI-created deepfakes are almost undetectable. As recording has been transformed, how will it affect the way we recall the past?

WORLD CUP QUARTER FINAL, 1954

Switzerland five, but

Moxie insufficient, so

Austria seven.

There seemed to be an extraordinary sleight-of-hand in today’s coverage of Rishi Sunak’s decision not to meet his Greek counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis. According to No.10, Mr Mitsotakis had agreed not to raise the issue of the return of the Parthenon Marbles or Elgin Marbles while on his UK visit, but he broke that agreement by discussing them with Laura Kuenssberg on TV, alongside public comments. This is surely sufficient reason for No.10 to pull out of the talks.

Yet Chris Mason presented them on the Today Programme as a kind of childish electioneering, down more to Mr Sunak’s desire to impress the reactionary right, and to a huff after Mr Mitsotakis also met with Sir Keir Starmer. The news report did give No.10’s point of view, while giving far more space to Mr Mason’s theories and the Greek reaction, but Mr Mason’s report itself failed to mention the official reason to call it off.

No doubt electioneering was involved in the decision – these are politicians after all. No doubt Sir Keir was also pleased, with his electioneering hat on, with the outcome. And the Greeks have politics too, so Mr Mitsotakis’ comments were presumably aimed at his own voters, not Britain’s. But the official reason, and the Greeks’ bad faith, were sufficient to call the meeting off, and it is extraordinary that they were barely mentioned.

This has nothing to do with the marbles themselves – my own view, not that anyone cares, is that they should be given back, as they are a running sore from which we benefit not at all. A loan, as Sir Keir seems to be advocating, would be the worst of all worlds, because the Greeks would never return them. Better hand them over and stop the fighting. But while we are arguing, let’s report the arguments accurately.