Search Results » @author Res Publica

No, I understand what you’re saying perfectly well. I just think you’re well intentioned but shipping profoundly stupid ideas: the kind that get people killed in conflicts you are too smug and ignorant to prepare for

And what, exactly, do you think 2.5°C of warming will cause? A spontaneous outbreak of peace, love and eternal human brotherhood? If we’re facing the kind of climate disruption you’re describing, then we’re also potentially talking about food and water …

Two frigates has sufficed for ANZAC’s. We’ve operated two ANZACs. That’s not quite the same thing as two having been considered sufficient. The original 1997 defence assessment (which we should remember was written in a far more benign strategic …

Why should our defence capabilities and requirements be determined by the outcome of US elections? We should decide what capabilities New Zealand needs based on our own strategic requirements, geography, commitments and relationships. If we’re concerned …

Sweden also invested heavily in its own indigenous military-industrial capability throughout the Cold War. They built their own fighter aircraft, submarines, armoured vehicles, surface combatants, artillery, missiles, radar and other weapons systems. Their …

Tony, at what point will you actually be satisfied? Labour was behind. Then level. Now they’re narrowly ahead, and apparently the problem is that they’re not ahead by enough. What result would make you say, “Yep, Labour is doing well”? Yes, you and I might …

Because if we simply declare ourselves non-aligned, potential conflicts and security risks will politely go away? Non-alignment is a foreign-policy choice. It isn’t a force field. You can choose not to regard another country as an enemy. You can choose not …

I think there is a perfectly reasonable argument to be had about whether frigates represent the best use of New Zealand’s defence budget. If there is a better force structure for the money, then by all means make that case. But this doesn’t really make it. …

The neat part is they probably don’t. All it really requires is for the EU to regulate it. GDPR is the obvious example. The EU set a privacy standard for access to its market, and large multinationals often ended up treating that as the default baseline …

“Smarter” is a loaded term when talking about AI tooling. Because LLMs aren’t really all that smart in the way we normally mean it. What they’re very good at is generating possible solutions, observing what happened, and iterating until they find something …

Exactly. It hasn’t invented a new attack vector or drastically expanded the surface area available to an adversary. It can just do this stuff at scale and much faster that a human.

More not-terrible, vaguely competent and reasonably well-thought-out policy. I could get used to this.

If I understand you correctly, I think we’re actually reasonably close on this. I’m certainly not arguing that AI is harmless, or that we should ignore catastrophic risks simply because they seem unlikely. Nuclear weapons are a pretty good example of why …

I think that’s basically my sticking point. I can see credible pathways from increasingly capable AI to serious cyberattacks, infrastructure disruption or even mass-casualty events. I find it much harder to work out how you realistically get from there to …

Ouch! I only compared you unfavourably to a toddler. No need to get nasty and accuse me of getting a personal thrill out of people being surveilled and murdered. Especially given that you’re the one spending this thread making excuses for a brutal …