Are we the Mongols of the Information Age? - Los Angeles Times: "New revolutions in military affairs, possibly centered on biotechnology and cyber-war, promise to give smaller states or sub-state actors more destructive capacity. Imagine the havoc that could be caused by a genetically engineered contagion combining the worst properties of, say, smallpox and the Ebola virus. Or imagine how much damage our enemies could inflict by using computer viruses — or directed-energy weapons — to immobilize critical bits of our civilian or military computer networks. In theory, it's possible to crash stock markets, send airliners plowing into the ground and blind our most advanced weapons systems."

Are we the Mongols of the Information Age? - Los Angeles Times: "We have an insurmountable advantage in high-end military hardware. No other state is building nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, stealth fighters or unmanned aerial vehicles. In fact, we spend more on the development and testing of new weapons — $71 billion this year — than any other country spends on its entire defense. But all that spending produces weapons systems that aren't much good for pacifying Baghdad or Kandahar."

Are we the Mongols of the Information Age? - Los Angeles Times: "The Information Revolution of the late 20th century upset the seemingly stable postwar order. The Soviet Union had no Silicon Valley and could not compete with the United States in incorporating the computer into its economic or military spheres. U.S. prowess at waging war in the Information Age was showcased in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, which, along with the collapse of the Soviet empire, left the United States standing alone as a global hegemon."

Are we the Mongols of the Information Age? - Los Angeles Times: "Until the 15th century, the mightiest military forces belonged to the Mongols. But strong as they were in the days of bows and arrows, the Mongols could not keep pace with the spread of gunpowder weapons and the rise of centralized governments that used them. They fell behind, and Europe surged to the forefront. In 1450, Europeans controlled just 15% of the world's surface. By 1914 — following not only the Gunpowder Revolution but also the first Industrial Revolution — their domain had swollen to an astounding 84% of the globe. "

Are we the Mongols of the Information Age? - Los Angeles Times: "GREAT POWERS cease to be great for many reasons. In addition to the causes frequently debated — economics, culture, disease, geography — there is an overarching trend. Over the last 500 years, the fate of nations has been increasingly tied to their success, or lack thereof, in harnessing revolutions in military affairs.
"

Gmail - FUTUREdition Volume 9, Number 14U.S.: 'Keep Out of My (Outer) Space' -- (ABC -- October 18, 2006)
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=2583812&page=1
The White House has quietly put out a new National Space Policy - a document that, among other things, makes it clear that the Bush administration will not sign any treaty that limits America's ability to put weapons in orbit. The policy states, "... the United States will preserve its rights, capabilities and freedom of action in space … and deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national interests."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "China's global strategy, including in the Middle East, has been to avoid antagonizing the United States. Rather, China has sought -- through quiet diplomacy and by boosting trade ties and creating interdependence -- to present itself as an alternative and benign power with a global reach. Yet, its late arrival in the Gulf, and given the United States' entrenched presence and unparalleled power, will prevent China from emerging as a definitive power in the Gulf for the time being. Instead, China will have to be content as a power among secondary powers such as Britain and France. For as long as China can continue to secure energy sources, expand its own exports to the region and present itself as a responsible power, time is on China's hands. "

KurzweilAI.net
Is all of this too implausible to consider? Will Homo sapiens really give way to Cyber sapiens that seamlessly integrate the molecular and digital worlds just as our ancestors merged the technological and biological worlds two million years ago? Evolution has presided over stranger things. It took billions of years before the switching and swapping of genes brought us into existence. Our particular brain then took 200,000 years to get us from running around in skins with stone weapons to the world we live in today. Evolution is all about the implausible. And the drive to survive is a relentless shaper of the seemingly impossible. We ourselves are the best proof.

KurzweilAI.net
So it seems the long habit of our inventiveness has placed us in a pickle. In the one-upmanship of evolution, our tools have rendered the world more complex and that complexity requires the invention of still more complex tools to help us keep it all under control. Our new tools enable us to adapt more rapidly, but one advance begs the creation of another, and each increasingly powerful suite of inventions shifts the world around us so powerfully that still more adaptation is required.

KurzweilAI.net
If this is true, all of our technologies are an extension of us, and each human invention is really another expression of biological evolution.

KurzweilAI.net
Even if these technological adaptations were outside what we might consider normal biological bounds, the effect was just as profound, and far more rapid. In an evolutionary snap, that first flint knife changed what we ate and how we interacted with the world and one another. It enhanced our chances of survival. It accelerated our brain growth which in turn allowed us to create still more tools which led to yet bigger brains.

KurzweilAI.net
It is strange to think of the invention of machines, even robotic ones, as having anything to do with Darwin’s natural selection. We usually regard evolution as biological—a world of cells, DNA and “living” creatures. And we think of our machines as unalive, unintelligent and shifted by economic forces more than natural ones. But it isn’t written anywhere that evolution has to be constrained by what we traditionally think of as biology. In fact each day the lines between biology and technology, humans and the machines we create are blurring. We are already part and parcel of our technology.

KurzweilAI.net
Our current situation is unlike anything nature has seen before because we are not simply a by-product of evolution, we are ourselves now an agent of evolution. We are this animal, filled with ancient emotions and needs, amplified by our intellects and a conscious mind, embarking on a new century where we are creating fresh tools and technologies so rapidly that we are struggling to keep pace with the very changes we are bringing to the table.

KurzweilAI.net
Now after six million years of evolution, where do we go next? How will evolution, our newly arrived intellect, our primal drives and the powerful technologies we continually create, change us?

BBC NEWS | UK | Human species 'may split in two': "Human species 'may split in two'
Different human sub-species predicted by Dr Oliver Curry
Humanity may split into an elite and an underclass, says Dr Curry
Humanity may split into two sub-species in 100,000 years' time as predicted by HG Wells, an expert has said."

CreativeMan.pdf (Objet application/pdf)The late agrarian age, before the invention
of the steam engine, was in many ways a time of harmony in the sense that the three basic groups of human needs – material needs, social needs and personal
growth needs – were satisfied in about equal measure. However, for most people, this equal measure was less than satisfying.
Creative Man - Logics

The Theory of Lateral Pressure

The core part of the research generating the Theory of Lateral Pressure examines a quantitatively constructed "global" system, where processes and structures are reduced to three "master variables", namely Population, Technology and (natural) Resources - from which, interactively, all ‘intervening’ and 'dependent’ variables derive. For states and empires in a global context, differential and successive levels and rates of change in the master variables play central role in shaping ”profiles” of growth and development. These differentials affect the derivative processes and structures in international relations, as well as the position of each country within the system relative to other countries; the linkages with other countries; and the potentials for impact upon both natural and social environments. The specific challenge is to identify the nature of the intervening processes as well as the conditions under which different outcomes prevail, and the various ‘paths’ connecting ‘causes’ to ‘consequences’ – and how interacting processes within and among states in the system alter the entirety (whole) of the system and its (individual) parts.

Accompanied by powerful strategic and environmental changes, the current globalization process is creating major shifts in international relations and new challenges for policy and decision. The central proposition of this research is that different patterns of growth and development of groups and states generate different patterns of socio-economic and political behavior, and different forms of environmental damages. While this proposition is intuitively obvious, the details are less clear. We seek to develop robust ways of characterizing these patterns, understanding conditions under which socio-economic as well as environmental pressures lead to ‘system breaks’, conflict or violence. The detailed specifications are articulated in the Theory of Lateral Pressure.

Welcome to the Home of INTERNATIONAL FUTURES by Barry B Hughes, Denver: IFs is heavily data-based and also deeply rooted in theory. It represents major agent-classes (households, governments, firms) interacting in a variety of global structures (demographic, economic, social, and environmental). The system draws upon standard approaches to modeling specific issue areas whenever possible, extending those as necessary and integrating them across issue areas.

Welcome to the Home of INTERNATIONAL FUTURES by Barry B Hughes, Denver: "International Futures (IFs) is a large-scale integrated global modeling system. The broad purpose of the International Futures (IFs) modeling system is to serve as a thinking tool for the analysis of long-term country-specific, regional, and global futures across multiple, interacting issue areas. "

Welcome to the Home of INTERNATIONAL FUTURES by Barry B Hughes, Denver: "International Futures (IFs) is a thinking tool for our global future. It was developed to assist people who are interested in personal and social choices lying ahead.

IFs is a computer simulation of global systems for classroom and research use. IFs can be used to teach about or study demographics, economics, food, energy, the environment, and international politics. It is especially suitable for analysis of sustainable development and for examining the human dimensions of global change."

GamePresentation.pdf (Objet application/pdf)
Some IR Simulations International Futures – Denver University
Theory-based
http://www.du.edu/~bhughes/ifswelcome.html
Seven Futures – CSIS thinktank
Political goals
http://216.12.139.57/discover/index.cfm
SimCountry – Game
Imaginary countries
Automated
http://www.simcountry.com/ QPawn -Web-based
Real countries
Run by moderators, forum-based
http://www.angelfire.com/oh/qpawn/

Network_Project_Presentation3_28_06.pdf (Objet application/pdf)
Trade…
Forces cultures to interact;
Is a mode of communication for ideas;
and Is a mode of communication for technology.

Network_Project_Presentation3_28_06.pdf (Objet application/pdf)
The World is A Network of Networks
Countries are linked to other countries often
in quantifiable ways:
– Migration;
– Investment;
– Aid payments;
– Troop Deployments; ..

People's Daily Online -- Globalization gains by sharing: "In the history of human development, every economic change has created both winners and losers. The key point here is that changes to the world economic structure should be made to allow people to share the world's wealth. Creating a new wealth distribution mechanism has always been a challenge. To eliminate inequalities caused by the process of economic globalization in a practical way, governments should compensate and assist vulnerable groups by providing a better social security system."

Annihilation omens - Commentary - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper: " In a nanosecond of history, the evolution that took millions of years from primates to Homo sapiens will jump into the unknown. Homo connectus will relegate the obsolete nation-state and its dysfunctional institutions to artifacts of history, quaint but useless. This gigantic leap of history will 'obliterate all previous notions about military power, pose a fundamental challenge to all religions, and eventually upend human civilization.' "

Foreign Affairs - Global NATO - Ivo Daalder and James Goldgeier: "On September 12, 2001, NATO members took the unprecedented step of invoking the North Atlantic Treaty's collective defense provisions, under which an attack against one alliance member is deemed to be an attack against all of them. At first, the Bush administration rejected any direct NATO involvement in military operations in Afghanistan. But it later realized that such involvement was necessary to help it meet the challenges of the global age, particularly because the deployment of forces to Iraq left the United States needing more help in securing and rebuilding Afghanistan."

Knowledge Services from IDS: "Drawing on the collective expertise and experience of IDS Knowledge Services staff, the guide highlights websites that are a good place to start searching for information on over 30 development themes. And if these starting points inspire you to explore the Internet further, we've included some handy hints on how to improve your search results."

k_delic_4.pdf (Objet application/pdf)This vision of the IE represents the magical and compelling challenge of
creating large-scale artifacts that closely resemble nature-born living
organisms -- very much like the Darwinian picture of the world in which
species are created, evolved and morphed into better forms and superior
organizations. Some of these species have disappeared and can only be
seen today in museums. There is no reason that something similar may
not happen to some contemporary enterprises. It seems that the lessons
from Mother Nature should be studied carefully by scientists,
technologists, business people and dream-driven futurists.

k_delic_4.pdf (Objet application/pdf)The question may arise why we are comparing engineered systems to
biological, natural systems? And why do we assume that adaptation is a
key behavior? This comes from our belief that both systems share the
same ultimate objective: to survive in an evolving environment and
changing circumstances. To achieve this, a system should be able to sense
its environment, to understand the situation and to create a viable plan
that will be then reliably executed. A system should also exhibit learning
behavior. Engineered systems will likely never reach the level of
sophistication, elegance and beauty of nature-born systems, which from
the pragmatic point of view serve as the ultimate ideal to strive for.

v7i38_ai.pdf (Objet application/pdf)We are surrounded by the host of omnipresent, complex systems (cells, markets,
companies, supply networks, etc) for which elucidation of closed-loop control
patterned after natural, biological systems combined with knowledge
representation, learning and analytic techniques may lead the creation of largescale
embodied systems. As is Intelligent Enterprise, for example, system of the
high, practical value and important scientific relevance [see The Rise of The
Intelligent Enterprise - http://acm.org/ubiquity/views/k_delic_4.pdf].We
believe that the future of AI will be far more successful as research in Complex
Systems over the next 50 years.

v7i38_ai.pdf (Objet application/pdf)Chess, go and backgammon machines able to compete against champions, global
search engines capable of searching billions of web pages, embedded car and
consumer device technologies, automated robotic production lines, financial
screening and automated trading engines, decision support systems, space
exploration voyagers, multi-player Internet games, and mobile intelligent agents
are only a few notable examples of AI-inspired technologies that have attained
serious deployment in consumer, business, and scientific systems.

October 4, 2006: U.S. Population Reaches 300 Million, Heading for 400 Million: No Cause for Celebration: "The costs of increasing congestion and longer commuting times are high. Traffic congestion in the United States in 2003 caused 3.7 billion hours of travel delay and wasted 2.3 billion gallons of fuel. The total bill for all of this was $63 billion."

October 4, 2006: U.S. Population Reaches 300 Million, Heading for 400 Million: No Cause for Celebration: "The United States, with its 226 million motor vehicles, has paved some 4 million miles of roads—enough to circle the Earth at the equator 157 times. In addition to roads, cars require parking space. Imagine a parking lot for 226 million cars and trucks. If that is too difficult, try visualizing a parking lot for 1,000 cars and then imagine what 226,000 of these would look like."

October 4, 2006: U.S. Population Reaches 300 Million, Heading for 400 Million: No Cause for Celebration: "Sometime this month, the U.S. population is projected to reach 300 million. In times past, reaching such a demographic milestone might have been a cause for celebration. In 2006, it is not. Population growth is the ever expanding denominator that gives each person a shrinking share of the resource pie. It contributes to water shortages, cropland conversion to non-farm uses, traffic congestion, more garbage, overfishing, crowding in national parks, a growing dependence on imported oil, and other conditions that diminish the quality of our daily lives."

Foreign Policy: Empires with Expiration Dates: "Empires do not survive for long if they cannot establish and sustain local consent and if they allow more powerful coalitions of rival empires to unite against them. "

Foreign Policy: Empires with Expiration Dates: "The empire states of the mid-20th century were to a considerable extent the architects of their own downfalls. In particular, the Germans and Japanese imposed their authority on other peoples with such ferocity that they undermined local collaboration and laid the foundations for indigenous resistance. That was foolish, as many people who were “liberated” from their old rulers (Stalin in Eastern Europe, the European empires in Asia) by the Axis powers initially welcomed their new masters. At the same time, the territorial ambitions of these empire states were so limitless—and their combined grand strategy so unrealistic—that they swiftly called into being an unbeatable coalition of imperial rivals in the form of the British Empire, the Soviet Union, and the United States. "

Foreign Policy: Empires with Expiration Dates: "Why did the new empires of the 20th century prove so ephemeral? The answer lies partly in the unprecedented degrees of centralized power, economic control, and social homogeneity to which they aspired. "

Foreign Policy: Empires with Expiration Dates: "Today’s world, in short, is as much a world of ex-empires and ex-colonies as it is a world of nation-states. Even those institutions that were supposed to reorder the world after 1945 have a distinctly imperial bent. For what else are the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council if not a cozy club of past empires? And what is “humanitarian intervention,” if not a more politically correct-sounding version of the Western empires’ old “civilizing mission”?
"

Foreign Policy: Empires with Expiration Dates: "Empires, more than nation-states, are the principal actors in the history of world events. Much of what we call history consists of the deeds of the 50 to 70 empires that once ruled multiple peoples across large chunks of the globe. Yet, as time has passed, the life span of empires has tended to decline. Compared with their ancient and early modern predecessors, the empires of the last century were remarkably short lived. This phenomenon of reduced imperial life expectancy has profound implications for our own time. "

Global Politician: "The relationship between Japan and China will shape the main characteristic of East Asian international relations in the years to come. At the same time, the US policy toward the region and more importantly, the nature of Sino-American relations will be a key defining factor behind Sino-Japanese relations. Japanfs China policy is becoming the main obsession of Japanese foreign policy makers and their decisions are mainly influenced by how the United States will deal with China."

Global Politician: "Asking Japan to remove its constitutional constraints in favor of playing a more active role in political and security affairs of the region, emphasizing US-Japan alliance and developing it to new areas like cooperation over missile defense shield and supporting US forces by Japanese Self-Defense Forces (SDF) in some necessary conditions, bringing India and Australia to a new circle of American close friends that may shoulder parts of US possible strategy to contain Chinafs rising power in future, and opposing any initiative for regionalism and institution-building in the region which may exclude the US, are among the main policies of the United States to keep its stance secured in East Asia."

Global Politician: "The United States of America is regarded as a multi-dimensional power and the leader of Western hegemony which ruling the world in visible and invisible ways. With the end of the Cold War and disappearing of its classic rival, Soviet Union, in more than one and half decades ago, the US has been determined more than ever to maintain this position and prevent any possible power-center that may stand up before the American hegemonic stance. At the same time, the global balance of power is underway to shift significantly from the West to the East. East Asia is going to become the main challenge to the West and in every measure everything is shifting to Asia (8). While China has still a long way to catch up with the United States, but it is considered as the main suspect of this fundamental shift in the current global balance of power and a potential rival which may challenge American power and Western hegemony."

Global Politician: "American foreign policy making is mainly based on realist principles and driven by political expediency without being committed to consistency. The US pattern of international relations and friend and foe making is also interlinked with its various national interests. We see, for example, that during the Second World War, Japan was the US number one enemy and China was a friend. During the early Cold War while Japan became an ally for the US, China was a foe. After the normalization of Sino-American relations in the 1970s, China became a strategic friend while Japan was regarded as an economic foe for the US (7).

Since the end of the Cold War, the US has always been asking Japan to overcome its economic difficulties and with removing legal barriers, primarily the Article Nine of the Constitution, take a more active role in regional and global affairs politically and militarily, mainly in favor of the United States. At the same time, the US voicing its serious concerns over Chinafs military expenditures, but Chinafs rising as an economic challenge and a political rival is the main target."

Global Politician: "The liberal school of international relations maintains that as a byproduct of economic cooperation and interdependence between countries, a wide range of norms, rules and institutions will emerge to coordinate and regulate their cooperation(1). In such process, they will necessary become politically integrated and the institutions that are created would foster collective actions in order to achieve their intended objectives. Based on this view, an increasing level of economic interdependence and regional cooperation could act as the precursor of political integration, with the final goal of region-building. While the story of European integration would be considered as a solid evidence of such approach, however, the region of East Asia, and more importantly, the recent history of Japan-China relationship has until now shown to be an exception to this idea. "

MediaPost Publications - 'Hourglass Society' Values Community, Ecology - 10/02/2006: "Between 2000 and 2020, the world population of people over age 50 will increase by 70 percent, and the population of 15- to-24-year-olds will increase by 11 percent"...The result will be an "hourglass society" heavily populated and dominated by two groups: the older and younger generations.

People's Daily Online -- New war tactics more brutal: "Increasingly, wars do not have a front. Armies take a more tactical approach that is less likely to endanger the lives of servicemen. Attacks are launched in the form of air and missile strikes. They try to destroy infrastructure such as roads and bridges as well as disrupt important public services like energy, communication, hospitals and schools. Some military theorists believe this is a more successful way to cripple a country than directly attacking military targets. However, this tactic is not always successful. "

People's Daily Online -- New war tactics more brutal: "War is brutal. However, no matter how furious the war, it is unacceptable to kill the innocent, and this has generally been considered one of the unwritten basic principles of conflict.

However, this principle is gradually being lost with the development of bigger and more effective weapons. Some experts believe that 5 percent of the war dead in World War I were innocent civilians; that proportion increased to 50 percent in World War II and in the Vietnam War, 95 percent of those that died were innocent victims! In the recent Israel-Lebanon conflict, many civilians were also killed. The trend is scary and relates to the development of society."