 Okay, it must be Tuesday. Orientation is a time and space. I'm Jay Fidel, this is ThinkTech. I'm the guest host, and that's Ethan Allen. He's the host guest, and you're here on likable science because it's likable. This is all likable. Okay, I'm going to talk today about something that's actually emerging in the news, and it's the age of global enlightenment to perhaps not, and it all has to do with AI, artificial intelligence, and 5G, and tariffs, and little wars that our president is creating with China, and how that affects things. So it could be the age of global annihilation instead, right? Yeah, global enlightenment, annihilation. The two are close. It depends on what you say to him. It's a hamburger or what. Anyway, so yeah, I think it's a worthy discussion to inquire because why? Because it's an economies of scale issue. If you're creating a brand new technology, hardware, software, that has global effect, that is a global consequence, then you have to have cooperation and collaboration. I mean, we know that in industry and in technology and in academia, in general, for a long time, you do better when you collaborate, and if you go and talk to the people, the scientists at UH, for example, they're all in collaborations all over the world, and they've been that way, and I would call that an age of enlightenment until recently. That's how science works, basically. That's how science works. Really, these days with the sophistication of science and scientific discovery, it's the only way science can move ahead without it. Okay, so we have two significant technologies that promise to change the world, and that they're not just limited to the United States. They're really global technologies, and you could say that China has taken some of it from us, and it's probably so in some ways, but you could also say that inevitably, we would have to be a global collaboration, not only the US and China, but other countries, Europe and many countries. So the question really is, what is happening now in terms of that level of collaboration in the two technologies we're talking about, one, artificial intelligence, which is really a software technology, and the other 5G, which is a combination of software and hardware for telecom. So when we start out with the tariffs, we start out with these trade wars that our president has created with China, and we wonder how that sort of gets in the way, because at the moment these trade wars started, at the moment we started getting into crosswise with China, which I think is going to be a long-term thing myself. Then we had some really good things going. We had artificial intelligence, and they were picking up on that. We were competing with your rivals, if you will, but rivals who cooperate are, it's a good result. And 5G, which has been talked about for, oh, two or three years at least, maybe more, it's coming of age now, and it's revolutionary as far as telecom is concerned. It's faster, it's more ubiquitous, it's going to strap the world together in terms of telecom, it's going to change your cell phone dramatically in terms of speed and power and function. So these things are major technologies, and the question is, I don't like to ask you easy questions, is how stunted is the development of these technologies in a world where we're arguing with people who, countries who might otherwise be our collaborators? I mean, quite right. In a better ideal world, we would be cooperating with them on both these things, on the 5G, putting 5G out smoothly, hooking in AI to it, and working for everyone's good, right? And the world hadn't thought of that. The two technologies, what an intersection that is, because the AI sort of will help organize the 5G, if you will, and tell which pieces to talk to which other pieces, and so they really work in synergy with one another. And it seems, well, what was it that Putin said about two years ago, basically, sort of said that this whole field of artificial intelligence basically is the next thing that's going to determine really who runs the world. And basically, whoever comes out on top of that is basically going to win the world. Absolutely true. It's scary, but true. Yeah, and that's what I think, as I see it, what the US is very scared about it, is with China becoming a global leader in the 5G, we're going to lose out, and we don't want to lose out on that. We are very worried if we lose out on that, we'll become a second-class nation. Did you hear that thing about Russia? Russia is testing on the determination of internet connections with places outside of Russia. They're going to isolate themselves electronically, just for tests, to be sure that they know who's coming from outside and who's coming from inside, because they want to be in a position to terminate anything from the outside and be completely self-reliant on the inside. Why am I concerned about that? It's not collaboration, it's something else. No, one of the articles I was reading today, and I think it was in four of us, points out what AI seems to have done somehow is spawn this sort of every nation for itself mentality. It could be Trump did that. The whole nationalist movement is very much that way, and AI somehow seems to be sort of helping that, and it's clearly not in the world's best interest. I mean the world is a very small place these days, and what we throw up in the air lands in some other country, and what they throw up in the air lands in ours, what you dump in your water ends up around the world in their water. We can't get away from the fact that we're all connected. The more we learn, the more we see how deeply we're connected. Yeah, so to be isolationist and nationalistic now, it runs against the grain. We have an organic phenomenon happening, and that stops it. Yeah, I mean if you think of it, since the end of World War II, we've basically been in a pretty sort of stable position, sort of geopolitically, right? I mean there have been some big powers, there's been some lesser powers. Yes, there's been a few other little wars and things like that. Part of that was the United States as a winner, so to speak, of World War II, set the global order, and for a long time, you know, even though we were sometimes better, sometimes worse at it, we had a positive influence on the world order. Now, under this president, and under Putin and Xi Jinping, we're not setting the world order so much anymore. Right, right, and exactly, and some of these other nations are developing themselves and sort of walking away from our influence. It's really frightening. I mean, if you think about that, the whole business of how the nations interact with one another is rapidly shifting and becoming very unclear now because of 5G, because of AI, and if that gets sort of goes a little askew and gets involving like weaponry and things, suddenly we can be in a real mess. Yeah, you know. But let's look at the, you know, the best case analysis and the worst case analysis. Let's assume that we don't have this nationalistic thing going on. Let's assume, you know, we're in Alice in Wonderland, okay, and everybody is working with everybody else, and it's like, you know, the best model for academia and industry and so forth, and of course you have patent rights and all that, but mostly people are willing to collaborate. If we do that, if we were committed to doing that, we're not, I think, but if we're committed to doing that, and Russia and China were also committed and Europe and so forth, what would the best result look like? Well then you've got things like international cooperation on water, you've got everyone sharing their technology so everyone can run agriculture better, so every sort of garden plot is functioning at sort of maximum efficiency, growing the right things at the right time, the right amount of water, nutrients are being delivered, everything runs much more efficiently, you don't need to transport stuff this far, you don't have these big emergencies, everyone's sharing data so that when they see a storm coming across another country, they tell people downstream sort of, you know, if you need to withhold water behind a dam or something, you can let your downstream neighbors know well in advance, you're going to have to do this and, you know, they can take appropriate precautions. I mean all of this stuff has, the world could be just a much, much better place for everyone involved. And given the reality of climate change, sounds to me like this helps us deal with climate change, as a matter of fact, without collaborating, we can't deal with climate change, it's global. Yeah, exactly. You know, the maps and projections indicate there's going to be parts of the world that are really going to be much less habitable than they are right now. The places currently that are hot and dry are going to be hotter and drier and a lot of people just aren't going to be able to live there anymore and they're going to have to find somewhere to go. Where do you think that is? You know, it's to places that are wetter. Migration, there's a migration involved in this. Borders and migration is also a function of this nationalistic thing and would be improved if we could come together on it. Right. So how would we come together? I mean, I want to go a little further on that, on that model. Would we come together by breaking down the borders? Would we come together by electronics, by telecom, by better software that is shared? How would we come together? I think to some extent by all those things, yeah, we would recognize that oftentimes it's actually good to have an influx of new people in your country. A lot of the data says that really improves your economy. There are new ideas in there. People are doing a new job. It's the people who have been doing the one job, maybe get to go out and do more exciting things themselves. There are potentials for a lot of nice things to happen, a lot of very positive things to happen. Yeah. And it sounds like, you know, that if we could use this technology together, I mean, it requires a kind of spirit of togetherness, then we could have a kind of global order where everybody who had a sort of democratic position, the playing field would be leveled, where we would all benefit by anything that was good that happened. Exactly. I mean, there's this idea of disruptive technologies. And in a sense, AI is basically poised to be sort of a disruptive, disruptive technology. Yeah. You know, sort of disruptive square, because it's going to impact with 5G, basically everything on how the world would run. Yes. You know, it's not going to just impact one sector. It's going to impact all the sectors. So everybody, you know, for example, one piece of technology, I'm sure it's AI, with instantaneous translation of any language. Right. Okay. I want to talk to Putin or somebody I pick up the phone and he hears English and I hearing whatever. Here he is Russian and I hearing. So you don't have those barriers and you have sort of a global community, a global society where everybody is in one order, in one society. Exactly. And this technology would make that happen. But also, that kind of society would advance the technology. It's a spiral up. Exactly. Everyone's collaborating, sharing their good ideas, tracking stuff, watching what's happening in the oceans, taking appropriate actions to protect the remaining fish stocks and help them. I mean, it's just, yeah, every sort of every facet of every industry is going to be impacted. Kudal will be positive. Yeah. So, but since the Trump administration has started, we have seen and he has accelerated this move, this movement to national nationalism, which is really isolationism, whereas, you know, each one for his own self and be damned the rest, which is change things. And, you know, I think we can see, don't you think we can see indications of the effects of that already? We can see how that affects the possibility of global cooperation. Right. Yeah. I mean, we see it right now, of course, over in Europe with the whole Brexit issue. Good example there. That's already, I mean, devastating impacts on Britain's economy. Wait till the deadline in March. Yeah. Right. Well, that happens. Yeah. People are really worried that there's going to be just a whole lot of ugly following that could reignite the whole Ireland, North Ireland conflict very easily because they're going to have to put up a border there. You know. So, I think we've established that geopolitical events and environments affect the technology and the advance of the technology and the technology, likewise, in the right environment will affect geopolitics both ways. It will certainly affect it. How it affects it depends on that. And now we have a problem because we have a geopolitical environment that's not positive, that's nationalistic and competitive is the wrong word, adversarial. Right. Okay. And that's affecting the worldwide collaboration on the new technologies and limiting it to country by country. Right. So, this is not particularly a good idea. We come back for this break, Ethan. I would like to ask you the dark side. I asked you, you know, the best analysis now I want to ask you, what happens if we continue to do this separation of nations? We'll be right back after this break with Ethan Allen, our likable scientist, our chief scientist. You'll see. Hello, I'm Dave Stevens, host of the Cyber Underground. This is where we discuss everything that relates to computers that's going to scare you out of your mind. So come join us every week here on ThinkTechHawaii.com, 1pm on Friday afternoons. And then you can go see all our episodes on YouTube. Just look up the Cyber Underground on YouTube. All our shows will show up and please follow us. We're always giving you current, relevant information to protect you. Keeping you safe. Aloha. Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, host of Beyond the Lines on ThinkTech Hawaii. My show is based on my book, also titled Beyond the Lines. And it's about creating a superior culture of excellence, leadership, and finding greatness. I interview guests who are successful in business, sports, and life, which is sure to inspire you in finding your greatness. Join me every Monday as we go Beyond the Lines at 11am. Aloha. Okay, we're back. We're live. Ethan Allen, our likable scientist. And we're talking about, you know, I guess it's the end of the age of enlightenment technology is, you know, right on our doorstep here. And so, you know, I wanted to ask you where this all goes, if we take a trend, a trend line, a sea change on the current state of affairs, which is clearly a movement toward nationalism and isolationism, not only in the U.S., but in other places. It's catching like a virus. And I think it teaches us, one more point, it teaches us that a negative leader of a powerful, a formerly powerful country, okay, can have huge effects on other countries. And he can create negativity really everywhere. And that's global negativity. And if you PS, if you have global negativity around the world, what does that lead to exactly? It leads to war. Yeah. Well, anyway, so we have this global negativity that we have seen can be established or enhanced by one negative leader, very interesting phenomenon in the human species. So the question is, where does this go? What is this sea change take us to, you know, on the dark side, on the pessimistic approach? Right. Okay, let's just play out this 5G scenario. We put Canada in a very tight spot, right, by having them arrest the leader of Huawei technologies, right? China is now super unabated us and Canada. Canada is probably super annoyed at us for having put them in this rather awkward situation where they're caught in Iraq in a hard place. This could all break down. This could lead to severing diplomatic relationships. And then business relationships, business relationships fall apart, isolationism increases, national academic relationships, more, more finger pointing back and forth. They think we're we're essentially trying to cut them out of the game of technology, hostility, termination of collaboration, trying to infiltrate and learn all of our secrets. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Very rapidly. This could lead to very, very, very bad things. So in the case of China, China has plenty of AI right now. And actually, it was contemplating competing with us and being part of a 5G, you know, expansion that would go not only in China, but everywhere. I'm using Huawei or one of the one of the telecom companies over there as the as a vehicle for doing this. And we said, no, no, no, no, we're afraid of that. So the result is that China will do it by itself. Okay, so I give you a the possibility of a global expansion of 5G using artificial intelligence or the possibility of China, you know, retrenching, you know, folding in on itself and doing, you know, this technology development is this fabulous technology all by itself. So a, does that work as well? And B, has it affect the United States if they do it by themselves? Yeah, I mean, this, this could be very bad, right? The European leaders already have looked at the Chinese and their 5G and basically said, yeah, there might be some issues with it, but we think we can basically work around it, we can do our own security overrides on it, and we think we can make it work. If they basically buy into it, China continues to trade with them, the US is left out in the cold as sort of trying to run our own systems, which probably won't work with theirs. We are suddenly an isolated unit. We then become a very small island as it were, basically, with the rest of the world all being run by China. And what good does that sort of do for us? And China's Silk Road increases, their trading partners are developed. We meanwhile would get increasingly cut off from these same, these same parties who were already seen like we're on the road to making enemies out of our former friends. And our former rivals like China reorganized their own relationships and they fly over us. That's what you're saying. And so for example, if they decided that the market was better for them, I think it's an easy decision in Europe or Africa or other parts of Asia, then they can advance their technology and thus their influence without us. Exactly. We're a flyover. We become irrelevant. And we become irrelevant. I think AI affects financial transactions, 5G affects and the combination clearly affects financial transactions. So our ability to invest and do financial connections with other places in the world is undermined. And thus, and here's one thing that would flow from, in my opinion, flow from that. We are the reserve currency. The dollar is the reserve currency. We don't have to be the reserve currency. If other countries and continents lose faith, you know, in our ability, in our participation in the world order, they'll find another currency that will do better, maybe the one. Yes, exactly. It won't be the English. It won't be the pound. No, it won't. It probably won't be the euro either. But clearly the U.S. position as the leader in financial arrangements and financial standards will change. So I think the world order will change and we will not be in the same position we are now when that happens. Right. Now, there is this new American AI initiative, Trump announced the other day and the five points that are investing in the infrastructure and the human capacity and freeing up the resources and all the usual stuff. And I mean, if this really works in some sense, it's all of the good. But again, we've seen nothing from the current administration to suggest that they're interested in collaborating much with the rest of the world and something like this has to be done collaboratively. We can't run our own system now. And the other aspect of that is that a president has a way with the truth. He also has a way, a way with following up and actually doing things. We've heard so many initiatives of his that go nowhere. So, you know, he had a thought about AI one day, made a tweet over it. That doesn't mean it's going to happen. I guarantee that before it happens, there's going to be a lot of humbug and there's a fair chance it won't happen. It'll happen right after the space force. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Now, I mean, this is, this is sort of, it's, well, it's deeply worrisome, right? We can't, we don't want to proceed down the road. Anyone to look at that road and sort of say, being nationalistic and isolationist in the realm of advanced intelligence, artificial intelligence, advanced technologies, it leads nowhere. It leads you right off a cliff, basically. Right. And particularly if the rest of the world is starting to play together a little bit now, maybe the rest of the world will all fall apart too. And everyone will get isolationist, in which case we'll probably break out in a dozen small wars somewhere and we'll solve global warming by setting off a bunch of nukes and, you know, won't that be fun? Well, yeah, but you're right. I mean, the both of the alternatives, given our isolation or bleak, one is the rest of the world unites against us, does its own thing, which is a real possibility. And I want to talk about how the One Belt, One Road initiative in China demonstrates this. And the other possibility is that the whole world falls apart. Right. And they're unable to create a new world order. And so we fall into this, you know, general global hostility and war in nukes. And that'll be the level of technology, nuclear technology. I mean, it will resemble what Europe was in sort of medieval times, tried a bunch of little tiny nation states, hurdling stuff and throwing troops at one another. Yeah, this is reminiscent of, what's it, Barbara Tuckman and the Guns of August, which was the description of how Europe worked on the eve of World War One. And it was all a trip hammer. If this happens, then that nation will, you know, be an aggressor on that nation. And everybody had a war plan. And when the Duke of Serbia, whatever, the Archduke, Ferdinand, when he was shot, then it started the chain reaction all around Europe. And nobody really realized that it was going to have this huge effect. But with, hey, with nuclear weapons, that whole possibility is enhanced now. So the prospects are not so good here. And I feel that it's probably going to be in a sequence. First, China, looking at One Belt, One Road as a successful initiative. And there's some arguments that it's not as successful as they say, you know, makes hay right into Europe, right into, you know, the Middle East, and into Central Asia, and into Africa. I mean, they've already done that. In fact, in South America, you know, the Chinese are in South America, including Venezuela. And so are the Russians. I mean, the world, these guys are taking the pickings from the world. They're trying to get resources. They're trying to develop influence. They're trying to make investments. They're trying to own infrastructure in various places around the world. And we're not doing that. We've retreated from that. So give it a few more years, and we will be less than relevant in every continent you can think about, including our own southern border, including our own, you know, the border that Trump doesn't like, including all of South America is a good target for these countries that would like to try out their technology and get resources from South America. So what do we do about this, Ethan? This is pretty serious. I know it's a political question. But how do we stop this? I mean, suppose we made you, our likable scientist, the president of the United States, and we told you there has been incalculable damage already during this administration to, you know, the influence and the authority and the contribution of the United States of the world. How would you, and these things in some way, you know, they're irreversible. You can't get back. You have to go forward. So how would you correct this? How would you fix this? What would you do? I give you as much authority as a president should have. I mean, at this stage, I would think you'd want to call an international meeting of the sort of the best and brightest political, scientific, humanitarian, religious, philosophical, academic leaders from around the world and get everyone together and begin to say, let's look at this as a global challenge. Let us consider this and let us find the best way to move forward together. Because it's one of these situations where, I mean, what do they say during the American Revolution if we don't hang together, we'll surely all hang separately, right? Yeah. And it's sort of that kind of thing. If we don't work in a collaborative situation, we are very likely to fall apart into this chaotic state. And nobody wants that. It's no one's best interest. So you really get the key leaders of the world together and say, look, let's stop our squabbling and bickering, throw some of this in front of the World Court if we need to for arbitration, try to extend a little bit of hand to friendship and a little bit of trust where we can and try to rebuild the relationships. So about relationships, yeah. Well, I mean, there's a carrot and a stick in what you say. The carrot is obviously we can do better together. We can make this technology serve everyone. And the stick is, and this really was pretty persuasive, we have to deal with climate change. We have to use every resource we can. We have to collaborate all over the world to deal with climate change. And if we don't, we will hang separately. We all of us will hang separately. So that's pretty persuasive. And I know that you could do this. That's why I'm voting for you. Ethan Allen for president, right away. Thank you, Ethan.