Technology
The Gilded Cage: Technology, Development, and State Capitalism in China – review
In The Gilded Cage: Technology, Development, and State Capitalism in China, Ya-Wen Lei explores how China has reshaped its economy and society in recent decades, from the era of Chen Yun to the leadership of Xi Jinping. Lei’s meticulous analysis illuminates how China’s blend of marketisation and authoritarianism has engendered a unique techno-developmental capitalism, writes George Hong Jiang.
Twenty years ago, people inside and outside China were wondering whether the country would eventually capitulate to dominant capitalist and democratic models. American politicians such as Bill Clinton were enthusiastically looking forward to the future integration of China into globalisation. When this happened, millions of ordinary people would get rich and become the middle class through fast-growing international trade and domestic labour-intensive industries. However, this judgment quickly proved ill-made. China has simultaneously emulated the US in high-tech industries but also become an unparalleled authoritarian state which polices its citizens through intellectual technology and high-tech instruments. How has it achieved this, and what are the effects of this? Lei tries to untangle these questions in her book, The Gilded Cage: Technology, Development, and State Capitalism in China.
The author was inspired by the “birdcage economy” of Chen Yun when choosing the title of the book.[…] Statist control is the cage, and private economies, like captive birds, are only allowed to fly within the cage.
The author was inspired by the “birdcage economy” of Chen Yun when choosing the title of the book (5). Building the planned economy in the early 1950s and supporting economic reforms in the 1980s, Chen Yun was one of the most important architects of economic systems in communist China. While he was a proponent of giving more space to private economies, Chen Yun staunchly believed in the efficacy of governmental regulations. Statist control is the cage, and private economies, like captive birds, are only allowed to fly within the cage. Chen Yun was particularly cautious about liberalist reforms, such as deregulation of finance and fiscal decentralisation, and distinctly opposed to privatisation. After he died in 1995, Deng Xiaoping and his disciples, including Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, carried out deregulation bravely until the late 2000s. But the ideal of Chen Yun’s “birdcage economy” is never abandoned by communists who fear losing control over the society.
The 2008 financial crisis started China’s big turn of macroeconomic policies. In order to stimulate the deflated economy, the government reacted fast and invested enormous capital into a few key strategic industries, including bio-manufacturing industry and aircraft and electronic manufacturing. Ling & Naughton (2016) believe that this action signalled the watershed of China’s economic orientation. The government’s budget poured into these industries, and bureaucratic units responsible for supervision and regulation turned to interventionist policies. The trend was further strengthened after Xi Jinping, who believes that the combination of the free market economy and Leninist political principles is the best blueprint for China, ascended to the presidency in 2012.
New leadership since the 2010s wants to emulate western high-end development rather than provide low-end, cheap and labour-intensive products for the West.
The ambition to develop high-tech industries runs in tandem with the unique political system of China. Economic growth has helped sustain political legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since the 1980s. Since socialism was smeared by the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and its disastrous economic consequences, economic growth has been identified as the most important source of political legitimacy. Economic performance has become the indicator of bureaucratic promotion, which has fused China’s politics and economies together. This political organisational mechanism makes it easier for leaders to push through any desired change and it is on this that China’s turn to techno-development (Chapter Three) is precisely based. New leadership since the 2010s wants to emulate western high-end development rather than provide low-end, cheap and labour-intensive products for the West.
Still, a key question must be answered: why are Chinese bureaucrats who care primarily about social stability and political monopoly willing to replace human labour with robots, which tends to reduce employment in the short run? In Chapter Five, the author traces the process of robotisation in firms which previously rely on cheap labour, including Foxconn. While the benefits of robotisation might be obvious to entrepreneurs aspiring to reduce costs by any means, potential instability could cause trouble for communist bureaucrats. The answer lies in the possibility that technological upgrades will lead to an enlarging economy capable of digesting more workers than it kicks out. However, it results in a dilemma: if the growth rate slows down, the appetite for mechanisation and robotisation could stir social tensions.
Seeing the chance to surpass the West in the development of high-tech industries, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is more than willing to strengthen control over public spheres and civil society and increase investment in the sector to achieve this.
Seeing the chance to surpass the West in the development of high-tech industries, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is more than willing to strengthen control over public spheres and civil society and increase investment in the sector to achieve this. As the author puts it, “the Chinese state is an unwavering believer in intellectual technology and instrumental power and employs both to enhance governance and the economy” (9). It is highly possible that with the help of an authoritarian regime and its will to develop technological capability, the dismal future that Max Weber once predicted – ie, the “iron cage of bureaucracy” in which depersonalised and ossified instrumental rationality will dominate every sphere in the society – will come sooner in China than in the West.
Economic growth is mainly driven by high-tech industries that private and state-owned capital foster, both of which must be under the control of the government, with the unified aim of rejuvenating the Chinese nation.
Karl Marx argued that productive power, including technological conditions, determines relations of production. This idea is being justified in China. A mix between marketised economies and authoritarian rule, which is penetrated by high-tech instruments, facilitate the rise of techno-developmental capitalism, as the author proposes in Chapter Nine. On the one hand, large tech companies in China have hatched one of the biggest markets in the world. On the other hand, tech professionals’ increasing demand for institutional (if not political) reforms (Chapter Eight) renders bureaucrats gradually more concerned about their social influence. For instance, Jack Ma, the boss of Alibaba, attacked the state-owned financial system and instantly got punished by the authority. China is developing a new variant of capitalism: economic growth is mainly driven by high-tech industries that private and state-owned capital foster, both of which must be under the control of the government, with the unified aim of rejuvenating the Chinese nation.
Techno-developmental capitalism is not the result of contingency, but path-dependent outcome, the direct result of China’s polities.
The author includes an excellent range of relevant materials into the book, spanning academic literature and personal interviews with private entrepreneurs and IT practitioners. Lei also bravely applies the term “instrumental rationality” in relation to China’s socioeconomic reality. In so doing she identifies the Janus-faced nature of China’s technological development, whereby the society enjoys higher productivity but becomes more rigid and occluded due to the omnipotent techno-bureaucracy. Nonetheless, the book could have been improved if Lei could take China’s political-economic structure into account when explaining the motivation to develop high-tech industries. While Lei focuses on the era after the 2000s, the rise of techno-developmental capitalism is deeply rooted in the persistent logic of the CCP since the late 1970s. In other words, techno-developmental capitalism is not the result of contingency, but a path-dependent outcome, the direct result of China’s polity. In spite of this lack of fully examined historical dimensions, Lei presents a good guidebook for China’s holistic development, not just within the last two decades but also in the decades to come.
Note: This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image credit: B.Zhou on Shutterstock.
Elon Musk Fought Government Surveillance — While Profiting Off Government Surveillance
Ten years ago, the internet platform X, then known as Twitter, filed a lawsuit against the government it hoped would force transparency around abuse-prone surveillance of social media users. X’s court battle, though, clashes with an uncomfortable fact: The company is itself in the business of government surveillance of social media.
Under the new ownership of Elon Musk, X had continued the litigation, until its defeat in January. The suit was aimed at overturning a governmental ban on disclosing the receipt of requests, known as national security letters, that compel companies to turn over everything from user metadata to private direct messages. Companies that receive these requests are typically legally bound to keep the request secret and can usually only disclose the number they’ve received in a given year in vague numerical ranges.
In its petition to the Supreme Court last September, X’s attorneys took up the banner of communications privacy: “History demonstrates that the surveillance of electronic communications is both a fertile ground for government abuse and a lightning-rod political topic of intense concern to the public.” After the court declined to take up the case in January, Musk responded tweeting, “Disappointing that the Supreme Court declined to hear this matter.”
The court’s refusal to take the case on ended X’s legal bid, but the company and Musk had positioned themselves at the forefront of a battle on behalf of internet users for greater transparency about government surveillance.
However, emails between the U.S. Secret Service and the surveillance firm Dataminr, obtained by The Intercept from a Freedom of Information Act request, show X is in an awkward position, profiting from the sale of user data for government surveillance purposes at the same time as it was fighting secrecy around another flavor of state surveillance in court.
While national security letters allow the government to make targeted demands for non-public data on an individual basis, companies like Dataminr continuously monitor public activity on social media and other internet platforms. Dataminr provides its customers with customized real-time “alerts” on desired topics, giving clients like police departments a form of social media omniscience. The alerts allow police to, for instance, automatically track a protest as it moves from its planning stages into the streets, without requiring police officials to do any time-intensive searches.
Although Dataminr defends First Alert, its governmental surveillance platform, as a public safety tool that helps first responders react quickly to sudden crises, the tool has been repeatedly shown to be used by police to monitor First Amendment-protected online political speech and real-world protests.
“The Whole Point”
Dataminr has long touted its special relationship with X as integral to First Alert. (Twitter previously owned a stake in Dataminr, though divested before Musk’s purchase.) Unlike other platforms it surveils by scraping user content, Dataminr pays for privileged access to X through the company’s “firehose”: a direct, unfiltered feed of every single piece of user content ever shared publicly to the platform.
Watching everything that happens on X in real time is key to Dataminr’s pitch to the government. The company essentially leases indirect access to this massive spray of information, with Dataminr acting as an intermediary between X’s servers and a multitude of police, intelligence, and military agencies.
While it was unclear whether, under Musk, X would continue leasing access to its users to Dataminr — and by extension, the government — the emails from the Secret Service confirm that, as of last summer, the social media platform was still very much in the government surveillance business.
“Dataminr has a unique contractual relationship with Twitter, whereby we have real-time access to the full stream of all publicly available Tweets,” a representative of the surveillance company wrote to the Secret Service in a July 2023 message about the terms of the law enforcement agency’s surveillance subscription. “In addition all of Dataminr’s public sector customers today have agreed to these terms including dozens who are responsible for law enforcement whether at the local, state or federal level.” (The terms are not mentioned in the emails.)
According to an email from the Secret Service in the same thread, the agency’s interest in Dataminr was unambiguous: “The whole point of this contract is to use the information for law enforcement purposes.”
Privacy advocates told The Intercept that X’s Musk-era warnings of government surveillance abuses are contradictory to the company’s continued sale of user data for the purpose of government surveillance. (Neither X nor Dataminr responded to a request for comment.)
“X’s legal briefs acknowledge that communications surveillance is ripe for government abuse, and that we can’t depend on the police to police themselves,” said Jennifer Granick, the surveillance and cybersecurity counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “But then X turns around and sells Dataminr fire-hose access to users’ posts, which Dataminr then passes through to the government in the form of unregulated disclosures and speculative predictions that can falsely ensnare the innocent.”
“Social media platforms should protect the privacy of their users.”
“Social media platforms should protect the privacy of their users,” Adam Schwartz, the privacy litigation director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed an amicus brief in support of X’s Supreme Court petition. “For example, platforms must not provide special services, like real-time access to the full stream of public-facing posts, to surveillance vendors who share this information with police departments. If X is providing such access to Dataminr, that would be disappointing.”
“Glaringly at Odds”
Following a 2016 investigation into the use of Twitter data for police surveillance by the ACLU, the company went so far as to expressly ban third parties from “conducting or providing surveillance or gathering intelligence” and “monitoring sensitive events (including but not limited to protests, rallies, or community organizing meetings)” using firehose data. The new policy went so far as to ban the use of firehose data for purposes pertaining to “any alleged or actual commission of a crime” — ostensibly a problem for Dataminr’s crime-fighting clientele.
These assurances have done nothing to stop Dataminr from using the data it buys from X to do exactly these things. Prior reporting from The Intercept has shown the company has, in recent years, helped federal and local police surveil entirely peaceful Black Lives Matter protests and abortion rights rallies in recent years.
Neither X nor Dataminr have responded to repeated requests to explain how a tool that allows for the real-time monitoring of protests is permitted under a policy that expressly bans the monitoring of protests. In the past, both Dataminr and X have denied that monitoring the real-time communications of people on the internet and relaying that information to the police is a form of surveillance because the posts in question are public.
Twitter later softened this prohibition by noting surveillance applications were banned “Unless explicitly approved by X in writing.” Dataminr, for its part, remains listed as an “official partner” of X.
Though the means differ, national security scholars told The Intercept that the ends of national security letters and fire-hose monitoring are the same: widespread government surveillance with little to no meaningful oversight. Neither the national security letters nor dragnet social media surveillance require a sign-off from a judge and, in both cases, those affected are left unaware they’ve fallen under governmental scrutiny.
“While I appreciate that there may be some symbolic difference between giving the government granular data directly and making them sift through what they buy from data brokers, the end result is still that user data ends up in the hands of law enforcement, and this time without any legal process,” said David Greene, civil liberties director at EFF.
“The end result is still that user data ends up in the hands of law enforcement, and this time without any legal process.”
It’s the kind of ideological contradiction typical of X’s owner. Musk has managed to sell himself as a heterodox critic of U.S. foreign policy and big government while simultaneously enriching himself by selling the state expensive military hardware through his rocket company SpaceX.
“While X’s efforts to bring more transparency to the National Security Letter process are commendable, its objection to government surveillance of communications in that context is glaringly at odds with its decision to support similar surveillance measures through its partnership with Dataminr,” said Mary Pat Dwyer, director of Georgetown University’s Law Institute for Technology Law and Policy. “Scholars and advocates have long argued the Dataminr partnership is squarely inconsistent with the platform’s policy forbidding use of its data for surveillance, and X’s continued failure to end the relationship prevents the company from credibly portraying itself as an advocate for its users’ privacy.”
The post Elon Musk Fought Government Surveillance — While Profiting Off Government Surveillance appeared first on The Intercept.
Tech Official Pushing TikTok Ban Could Reap Windfall From U.S.–China Cold War
Among the many hawks on Capitol Hill, few have as effectively frightened lawmakers over Chinese control of TikTok as Jacob Helberg, a member of the U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission. Helberg’s day job at the military contractor Palantir, however, means he stands to benefit from ever-frostier relations between the two countries.
Helberg has been instrumental in the renewed legislative fight against TikTok, according to the Wall Street Journal. “Spearheading the effort to create the bipartisan, bicoastal alliance of China hawks is Jacob Helberg,” the Journal reported in March 2023. The paper noted collaboration between Helberg, previously a policy adviser at Google, and investor and fellow outspoken China hawk Peter Thiel, as well as others in Thiel’s circle. The anti-China coalition, the Journal reported this past week, has been hammering away at a TikTok ban, and Helberg said he has spoken to over 100 members of Congress about the video-sharing social media app.
From his position on the U.S.–China commission — founded by Congress to advise it on national security threats represented by China — Helberg’s rhetoric around TikTok has been as jingoistic as any politician. “TikTok is a scourge attacking our children and our social fabric, a threat to our national security, and likely the most extensive intelligence operation a foreign power has ever conducted against the United States,” he said in a February hearing held by the commission.
Unlike those in government he’s supposed to be advising, however, Helberg has another gig: He is a policy adviser to Alex Karp, CEO of the defense and intelligence contractor Palantir. And Palantir, like its industry peers, could stand to profit from increased hostility between China and the United States. The issue has been noted by publications like Fortune, which noted in September 2023 that Palantir relies heavily on government contracts for AI work — a business that would grow in a tech arms race with China. (Neither the U.S.–China commission nor Palantir responded to requests for comment.)
“It is a clear conflict-of-interest to have an advisor to Palantir serve on a commission that is making sensitive recommendations.”
Experts told The Intercept that there didn’t appear to be a legal conflict that would exclude Helberg from the commission, but the participation of tech company officials could nonetheless create competing interests between sound policymaking and corporate profits.
“It is a clear conflict-of-interest to have an advisor to Palantir serve on a commission that is making sensitive recommendations about economic and security relations between the U.S. and China,” said Bill Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and scholar of the U.S. defense industry. “From their perspective, China is a mortal adversary and the only way to ‘beat’ them is to further subsidize the tech sector so we can rapidly build next generation systems that can overwhelm China in a potential conflict — to the financial benefit of Palantir and its Silicon Valley allies.”
Big Tech’s China Hawks
Helberg’s activities are part of a much broader constellation of anti-China advocacy orbiting around Peter Thiel, who co-founded Palantir in 2003 and is still invested in the company. (Helberg’s husband, the venture capitalist Keith Rabois, spent five years as a partner at Thiel’s Founders Fund). Thiel, also an early investor in Pentagon aerospace contractor SpaceX and weaponsmaker Anduril, has for years blasted the Chinese tech sector as inherently malignant — claims, like Helberg’s, made with more than trace amounts of paranoia and xenophobia.
Thiel’s remarks on China are characteristically outlandish. Speaking at the MAGA-leaning National Conservatism Conference in 2019, Thiel suggested, without evidence, that Google had been “infiltrated by Chinese intelligence” — and urged a joint CIA–FBI investigation. In 2021, at a virtual event held by the Richard Nixon Foundation, Thiel said, “I do wonder whether at this point, bitcoin should also be thought [of] in part as a Chinese financial weapon against the U.S.”
For Thiel’s camp, conflict with China is both inevitable and necessary. U.S.–China research cooperation on artificial intelligence, he says, is treacherous, and Chinese technology, generally, is anathema to national security. As he inveighs against Chinese tech, Thiel’s portfolio companies stand by with handy solutions. Palantir, for instance, began ramping up its own Made-in-the-USA militarized AI offerings last year. Anduril executives engage in routine fearmongering over China, all the while pitching their company’s weapons as just the thing to thwart an invasion of Taiwan. “Everything that we’re doing, what the [Department of Defense] is doing, is preparing for a conflict with a great power like China in the Pacific,” Anduril CEO Palmer Luckey told Bloomberg TV last year.
Palantir is making a similar pitch. In a 2023 quarterly earnings call, Palantir Chief Operations Officer Shyam Sankar told investors that the company had China in mind as it continues to grow its reach into the Western Pacific. On another Palantir earnings call, Karp, the company’s CEO and Helberg’s boss, told investors the more dangerous and real the Chinese threat gets, “the more battle-tested and real your software has to be. I believe it’s about to get very real. Why? Because our GDP growth is significantly better than China’s.” Even marketing images distributed by Palantir show the company’s software being used to track Chinese naval maneuvers in the South China Sea.
Thiel is not alone among Silicon Valley brass. At a February 2023 panel event, a representative of America’s Frontier Fund, a national security-oriented technology investment fund that pools private capital and federal dollars, said that a war between China and Taiwan would boost the firm’s profits by an order of magnitude. Private sector contributors to America’s Frontier Fund include both Thiel and former Google chair Eric Schmidt, whose China alarmism and defense-spending boosterism rivals Thiel’s — and who similarly stands to personally profit from escalations with China.
TikTok, Bad! China, Bad!
Repeated often enough, anti-TikTok rhetoric from tech luminaries serves to reinforce the notion that China is the enemy of the U.S. and that countering this enemy is worth the industry’s price tags — even if the app’s national security threat remains entirely hypothetical.
“Just like tech had to convince people that crypto and NFTs had intrinsic value, they also have to convince the Pentagon that the forms of warfare that their technologies make possible are intrinsically superior or fill a gap,” Shana Marshall, an arms industry scholar at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, told The Intercept.
Marshall said bodies like the U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission can contribute to such conflicts because advisory boards that encourage revolving-door moves between private firms and government help embed corporate interests in policymaking. “In other words,” she said, “it’s not a flaw in the program, it’s an intentional design element.”
“The tensions with China/Taiwan are tailor made for this argumentation,” Marshall added. “You couldn’t get better cases — or better timing — so grifters and warmongers like Helberg and Schmidt are going to be increasingly integrated into Pentagon planning and all aspects of regulation.”
Forcing divestiture or banning TikTok outright would not trigger armed conflict between the U.S. and China on its own, but the pending legislation to effectively ban the app is already dialing up hostility between the two countries. After the House’s overwhelming support last week of the bill to force the sale of the app from Chinese hands, the Financial Times reported that Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin accused the U.S. of displaying a “robber’s logic” through legislative expropriation. An editorial in the Chinese government mouthpiece Global Times decried the bill as little more than illegal “commercial plunder” and urged TikTok parent company ByteDance to not back down.
“There are a lot of defense contractors that are discussing the China threat with an eye out on their bottom line.”
Of course, self-interest is hardly a deviation from the norm in the military-industrial complex. “This is the way Washington works,” said Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group. “There are a lot of defense contractors that are discussing the China threat with an eye out on their bottom line.”
Although it’s common for governmental advisory boards like Helberg’s U.S.–China commission to enthusiastically court the private sector, Amey said it would be important for Helberg to make clear when making policy recommendations whether he’s speaking as an adviser to Palantir’s CEO or to Congress, though the disclosure wouldn’t negate Helberg’s personal interest in a second Cold War. Such disclosures have been uneven: While Helberg’s U.S.–China commission bio leads with his Palantir job, the company went unmentioned in the February hearing. Given the ongoing campaign to pass the TikTok bill, Helberg’s lobbying “certainly raises some red flags,” Amey said.
He said, “The industry is hawkish on China but has a financial interest in the decisions that the executive branch or Congress make.”
The post Tech Official Pushing TikTok Ban Could Reap Windfall From U.S.–China Cold War appeared first on The Intercept.
Love and Technology: An Ethnography of Dating App Users in Berlin – review
Fabian Broeker‘s Love and Technology: An Ethnography of Dating App Users in Berlin explores how dating apps mediate intimacy among young Berliners. Presenting an immersive ethnography of app usage, users’ experiences and perceptions and Berlin’s particular dating culture, Jiangyi Hong finds the book a rich work of contemporary digital anthropology.
Love and Technology: An Ethnography of Dating App Users in Berlin. Fabian Broeker. Routledge. 2023.
With the advent of digital communications technology, dating apps have provided new avenues for finding and nurturing romantic relationships, while also raising many critical questions for social scientists. A recent concern in digital anthropology is that of social relationships and interaction patterns. Intimacy, which people desire in their primary relationships, is now often mediated by dating apps that intervene in one’s lived experience. Fabian Broeker’s Love and Technology: An Ethnography of Dating App Users in Berlin is an immersive ethnography exploring the mediation of intimacy in personal relationships in Berlin.
Through a combination of digital ethnography and narrative methods, Broeker provides an in-depth exploration of the romantic lives of young, Berlin-based dating app users. The ethnographic research entailed online and offline participant observation of how young people in Berlin use dating apps and how the apps shape the experiences, behaviours and perceptions of individuals seeking romantic relationships, sexual experiences and love.
Broeker is primarily concerned with Tinder, Bumble, and OkCupid, the three most popular apps encountered in the fieldwork, and describes different dating experiences, finding that young people in Berlin often use more than one app. Throughout this study, Broeker mentions the notion of “affordances” (1), which occur when particular actions and social practices are made easier or preferable due to “a specific cultural context and setting” (2). Broeker foregrounds the affordances dating apps allow without neglecting the fluid relationship between the user, social and material environment, and technological artefacts.
‘Each app on a phone act[s] as a certain canvas of projection’ (25) that shapes and is interpreted based on young dating users’ own experiences, social circles, and cultural values.
In his fieldwork, Broeker explored what each dating app means to participants, the experiences each app could enable, and the coded notion of intimacy in each app (eg, Tinder is associated with primarily brief sexual encounters). Broeker unfolds the complex relationship between users and dating apps, paying particular attention to how “each app on a phone act[s] as a certain canvas of projection” (25) that shapes and is interpreted based on young dating users’ own experiences, social circles, and cultural values. Positioning dating app users alongside this understanding of intimacy, Broeker astutely observes that for these users, switching between different dating apps is not only about browsing their availability to chat with potential partners but also “symbolises about their own identity and the community their membership would align them with” (37).
As Broeker discusses, in the context of this affordance environment, it is worth considering how other forms of mediated communication affect the dating rituals of Berlin’s dating app users. Therefore, he acknowledges in the field survey the importance “within dating rituals of moving from dating apps to other communication services within the framework of users’ mobile devices and the particular social and technological implications of such transitions” (50). Using the term “ritual”, Broeker tends to view dating as an activity that entails multiple actions within underlying meanings and emphases, some being pivotal moments in the development of the relationship and intimacy. Broeker’s work continues along that trajectory, showing not only how the recognition of the courtship rituals inherent in the dating app affects young people in Berlin, but also the significance of traditionally gendered heterosexual dating rituals, (eg, men taking the initiative in dating).
One area where Broeker succeeds is his nuanced discussion of awareness of social manipulation of space (eg, date locations) and personal understandings of intimacy among dating app users in Berlin.
As Broeker contends, the city space is an important arena in which people use dating apps. That space is formed of social relations and carries a plethora of nuanced social cues and rituals. Broeker spent a lot of his time going to different participants’ workplaces or residences and completed interviews with participants in different streets and neighbourhoods. One area where Broeker succeeds is his nuanced discussion of awareness of social manipulation of space (eg, date locations) and personal understandings of intimacy among dating app users in Berlin. This is significant because previous studies about users’ dating experiences often overlooked multiple interpretations of how people move in and choose to occupy cities. This book speaks directly to that aspect – for example, the perception of a user’s choice for a date location will affect people’s first dating impression; different places integrated into the self-presentation of impression management when people design their profiles; and the choice of the location of the first meeting is regarded as reflecting their personality. Therefore, as Broeker explains, city space is positioned as a stamp of dating users’ identity. How to interpret identity and project their values and desires into city space has become a key moment for users to consider on dating apps.
The dating culture of Berlin is included in the idea of an ‘anything is possible’ city hosting limitless hedonistic possibilities.
Berlin is not only a series of spaces but also an area for dating app users to explore and navigate, and it “is built upon a collective imagination” (133). Broeker interprets participants’ conversations and personal descriptions of the dating experience to show that the city is “a particularly free, inclusive and open metropolis”, giving Berlin “the reputation of a particularly free hedonistic paradise” (133). Therefore, the dating culture of Berlin is included in the idea of an “anything is possible” city hosting limitless hedonistic possibilities.
Another important contribution Broeker makes is his analysis of Berlin’s particular dating culture, with a broader understanding of the intimate relationships that the city’s youth form through dating apps. Broeker discusses Berlin’s unique dating culture through two practices, “stories” (119) and “screenshots” (123). Stories are a form of social currency in people’s social activities, traded in conversation. People share their dating experiences by talking with others and trying to narrate unique dating stories, a common topic in their social circles. Broeker suggests that some people even want to have bad experiences to attract others.
Broeker argues that while the app expands the interaction of potential partners, the use of apps limits the narrative of intimate relationships, making encounters less romantic and special.
Screenshots also play a role in dating experiences. Broeker points out that sharing screenshots is not only a central means by which dating users in Berlin communicate their dating experiences, but also a tool for Berlin young people to “see” dates through visual or textual images on communication platforms. This exploration of storytelling and screenshots circles back to a discussion of dating culture in Berlin. Broeker notes that although the dating app provides a tangible nucleus for users around which dating stories can be constructed and explored, respondents still focused on the idea of nostalgic romantic narratives. Thus, he argues that while the app expands the interaction of potential partners, the use of apps limits the narrative of intimate relationships, making encounters less romantic and special.
While the book’s in-depth presentation and excellent analysis of ethnographic details and theory are impressive, some readers may find its academic nature and use of technical terms difficult. Broeker’s assumption of some knowledge of academic discourse (such as the assumed knowledge of rituals of intimacy and academic definition of polymedia) may be off-putting and inaccessible for the general reader. Overall, Love and Technology is an intelligent and perceptive contribution to the field of digital anthropology. Readers can gain important insights into the intricate interplay between technology, culture and intimacy from Broeker’s work. This book will inspire and provoke thought, regardless of whether you are a scholar interested in modern intimacy and its relations to technology or a general reader interested in the ways that technology impacts our romantic lives.
Note: This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image credit: Studio Romantic on Shutterstock.
The sordid geopolitical saga of TikTok
The US considers TikTok a national security threat. It wants to ban TikTok or transfer its ownership to an American company. In doing so, it is displaying the very behaviour that that it ascribes to China and of which it does not approve. This is clearly reflected in the statement of the US ambassador to Continue reading »
America is dumbing itself down. Banning TikTok won’t halt the slide
The US has created the conditions for the decline of its own society. TikTok being banned in the USA is not the issue. The fact is, this is a ban on any current or future successful technology owned by a potential adversary and, let’s not make any mistake about it, China, where the ownership of Continue reading »
Industrial Policy in Turkey: Rise, Retreat and Return – review
In Industrial Policy in Turkey: Rise, Retreat and Return, Mina Toksoz, Mustafa Kutlay and William Hale analyse Turkey’s industrial policy over the past century, highlighting the interplay of global paradigms, macroeconomic stability and domestic institutional contexts. The book offers a timely analyses of industrial policy’s past and possible future trajectories, though it stops short of interrogating exactly how cultural, social, political and economic factors shape state-business relations and bureaucracy, writes M Kerem Coban.
Industrial Policy in Turkey: Rise, Retreat and Return. Edinburgh University Press. 2023.
Is industrial policy back? The Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act, or the 2016 UK industrial policy are only two contemporary examples. These policies seek to address value chain bottlenecks, as well as the question of how to “take back control” in manufacturing and key sectors, along with concerns about gaining or sustaining economic edge and autonomy
In this context, the Turkish experience is illustrative for making sense of the trajectory of industrial policy in a major developing country. Mina Toksoz, Mustafa Kutlay and William Hale examine the evolution of industrial policy in Turkey. They present an accessible, detailed account of the trajectory and evolution of the policy since the establishment of the Republic, which argues that we had better study “the conditions under which state intervention works, rather than whether the state should intervene in the economy” (26, emphasis in original).
[The authors] suggest that effective industrial policy is the outcome of the interaction between global development policy paradigms, macroeconomic (in)stability, and the domestic institutional context.
The book is divided into five chapters. Chapter One discusses the political economy of industrial policy and sets out an analytical framework. The authors assert that analyses should go beyond dichotomies (eg, horizontal vs. vertical policies; export-led vs. import-substituting industrialisation) and that a broader understanding requires identifying the factors and conditions of effective industrial policy. They suggest that effective industrial policy is the outcome of the interaction between global development policy paradigms, macroeconomic (in)stability, and the domestic institutional context. Global development policy paradigms evolved from étatism of the 1930s, import-substituting industrialisation in the 1960s and the 1970s, neoliberalism of the 1980s, and the return of industrial policy after the 2008 Financial Crisis. Macroeconomic (in)stability drives (un)certainty regarding economic policies and instruments and the trajectory of economy, which, in turn, regulates investment decisions. Finally, the domestic institutional context concerns how state-society, or state-business, relations are structured, whether the state capacity is sufficient to resolve conflicts, discipline and coordinate actor behaviour, and whether bureaucracy has capabilities to formulate and implement policies. Figure 1 seeks to summarise the main argument of the book.
Figure 1: Flow chart summarising the book’s main argument. Source: M Kerem Coban.
Chapter Two focuses on the longue durée between 1923 and 1980. From the ashes of incessant wars that ruined the already unsophisticated infrastructure and demographic challenge, the new Republic had to build a new nation. Yet the rise of the state interventionist era in the 1930s drove policymakers towards the first industrialisation plan and the opening of many industrial sites across the country. When the Democrat Party assumed power, the interventionist, planning-based industrial policy was scrutinised for liberalisation that even included state-owned enterprises to be released to set up their own prices (73).
At the same time, business was encouraged to invest. For example, the fruits of these included Otosan or BOSSA (75). Between 1960 and 1980, the authors underline the second planning period with the establishment of the State Planning Organisation (SPO). SPO boosted bureaucratic and planning capacity and capabilities for disciplined, systematic industrial policy during the era of import-substitution.
Between 1980 and 2000 […] Turkey shifted to export-led growth and liberalised trade and financial flows. These shifts had profound implications for bureaucracy
The third chapter examines demoted industrial policy between 1980 and 2000 when Turkey shifted to export-led growth and liberalised trade and financial flows. These shifts had profound implications for bureaucracy: SPO was sidelined, parallel bureaucratic networks of Ozal were implanted with the opening of new offices or agencies. Consequently, the role of state became less coherent, as political uncertainty driven by unstable coalitions eroded the market-shaping role of the state. The financial sector did not help industrial policy, since banks were dominantly financing chronic budget deficits during a period of high inflation (111). What is more, business, including Islamic conservative SMEs in Anatolia, reduced or ignored investments in manufacturing given the clientelist state-business relations that incentivised construction, real-estate development (115), emphasis in original). Finally, the external conditions were not disciplinary: accession to the Customs Union with the European Union and the World Trade Organization ruled out export support and import restricting measures, among other trade regulatory instruments.
The fourth chapter claims that industrial policy retreated between 2001 and 2009. The first years of this period was marked by political instability and a local systemic banking crisis and its resolution, and Justice and Development Party (AKP in Turkish) assumed power. During this period, industrial policy was dominated by institutionalisation of the regulatory state and the privatisation of state-owned enterprises, the establishment of autonomous regulatory agencies and are structured banking sector. While the regulatory capacity of the state increased, privatisation and the regulation of the market were highly politicised. For example, “a major cycle of gas privatisation saw ‘politically connected persons’ winning fifteen out of nineteen metropolitan centres and serving 76 percent of the population” (161). In such a politically compromised setting, which was accompanied by the institutionalisation of the capital inflow-dependent credit-led growth model that prioritised “rent-thick” sectors, industrial policy could not flourish.
While the regulatory capacity of the state increased, privatisation and the regulation of the market were highly politicised.
The fifth chapter locates the policy within the global ideational and political economic context that marks the return of industrial policy in various forms. In line with policy documents such as the 11th Development Plan, horizontal measures, private and public R&D spending on high-tech initiatives, electric vehicle manufacturing attempt, and most notably the advancements in defence sector have constituted the revival of industrial policy. At the same time, the authors point to several challenges such as eroded academic research and quality and a lack of investment in ICT skills. Additionally, R&D subsidies or other industrial policy measures require thorough performance criteria and measurement to discipline actor behaviour and regulate the incentive structures.
Industrial Policy in Turkey is a timely contribution to the current debate. Its historical account and analysis of current policies, instruments, and the potential trajectory of industrial policy are its main strengths. Still, there are several caveats. First, the book’s framework is not systematic, which causes some confusion. For example, the book does not demonstrate a convincing link between the role and impact of autonomous agencies on industrial policy. Second, the book leaves the reader with more questions than answers, one of which relates to the effect of bureaucratic fragmentation in shaping industrial policy. Another is around the implications of state-business for bureaucracy, and consequently, industrial policy.
The book leaves the reader with more questions than answers, one of which relates to the effect of bureaucratic fragmentation in shaping industrial policy.
Third, the trajectory of industrial policy cannot be considered independently from the shifts in growth models. Yet the fact these shifts occur because the country depends on hard currency earnings for capital accumulation and to finance consumption and investments: Turkey either relies on capital flows or export earnings, in addition to tourism and (un)recorded (illicit) flows. Pendulums between these channels imply that the country cannot design and implement disciplined, systematic industrial policy. Put differently, there are macroeconomic and financial structural impediments against generating hard currency earnings. Industrial policy is one of the remedies, however, the macroeconomic and structural transformative consequences of the latest episode of emphasis on industrial policy and the export-driven growth experiment in Turkey are yet to be seen.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the book tends to relegate a core problem of coordination, long-term policy design and implementation to “governance issues”. Deeper cultural, social, political and economic factors determine the clientelist state-business relations and their effect on bureaucracy and bureaucratic autonomy. Such deeper ties have been masked by instrumentalised “democratisation reforms” or higher economic growth rates in the previous years. In this context, is the more critical problem the purposefully immobilised or challenged infrastructural power to coordinate societal actors? If that is true, then should we make interdisciplinary attempts to identify this problem’s core determinants?
Note: This interview gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image credit: Chongsiri Chaitongngam on Shutterstock.
Reviving the Philosophical Dialogue with Large Language Models (guest post)
“Far from abandoning the traditional values of philosophical pedagogy, LLM dialogues promote these values better than papers ever did.”
ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) have philosophy professors worried about the death of the philosophy paper as a valuable form of student assessment, particularly in lower level classes. But Is there a kind of assignment that we’d recognize as a better teaching tool than papers, that these technologies make more feasible?
Yes, say Robert Smithson and Adam Zweber, who both teach philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. In the following guest post, they discuss why philosophical dialogues may be an especially valuable kind of assignment to give students, and explain how LLMs facilitate them.
[digital manipulation of “Three Women Conversing” by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner]
Reviving the Philosophical Dialogue with Large Language Models
by Robert Smithson and Adam Zweber
How will large language models (LLMs) affect philosophy pedagogy? Some instructors are enthusiastic: with LLMs, students can produce better work than they could before. Others are dismayed: if students use LLMs to produce papers, have we not lost something valuable?
This post aims to respect both such reactions. We argue that, on the one hand, LLMs raise a serious crisis for traditional philosophy paper assignments. But they also make possible a promising new assignment: “LLM dialogues”.
These dialogues look both forward and backward: they take advantage of new technology while also respecting philosophy’s dialogical roots. Far from abandoning the traditional values of philosophical pedagogy, LLM dialogues promote these values better than papers ever did.
Crisis
Here is one way in which LLMs undermine traditional paper assignments:
Crisis: With LLMs, students can produce papers with minimal cognitive effort. For example, students can simply paste prompts into chatGPT, perhaps using a program to paraphrase the output. These students receive little educational benefit.
In past courses, we tried preventing this “mindless” use of LLMs:
- We used prompts on which current LLMs fail miserably. We explained these failures to students by giving their actual prompts to chatGPT during class.
- Because LLMs often draw on external content, we sought to discourage their use through prohibiting external sources.
- We told students about the dozens of academic infractions involving LLMs that we had prosecuted.
Despite this, many students still submitted (mindless) LLM papers. In hindsight, this is unsurprising. Students get conflicting messages over appropriate AI use. Despite warnings, students may still believe that LLM papers are less risky than traditional plagiarism. And, crucially, LLM papers take even less effort than traditional plagiarism.
The above crisis is independent of two other controversies:
Controversy 1: Can LLMs help students produce better papers?
Suppose that they can. Even so, the crisis remains. This is because the main value of an undergraduate paper is not the product, but instead the opportunity to practice cognitive skills. And, by using LLMs mindlessly, many students will not get such practice.
Controversy 2: Can we reliably detect AI-generated content?
Suppose that we can. (We, the authors, were at least reliable enough to prosecute dozens of cases.) It doesn’t matter: our experience shows that, even when warned, many students will still use LLMs mindlessly.
Roots of the crisis
With LLMs, many students will not put the proper kind of effort into their papers. But then, at some level of description, a version of this problem existed even before LLMs. Consider:
- Student A feeds their prompt to an LLM.
- Student B’s paper mirrors a sample paper, substituting trivial variants of examples.
- Student C, familiar with research papers from other classes, stumbles through the exposition of a difficult online article, relying on long quotations.
- Student D merely summarizes lecture notes.
Taking the series together, the problem is not just about LLMs or even about student effort per se (C may have worked very hard indeed). The problem is that students often fail to properly appreciate the value of philosophy papers.
Students who see no value at all will be tempted to take the path of least resistance. Perhaps this now involves LLMs. But, even if not, they may still write papers like B. Other students will fail to understand why philosophy papers are valuable (see students C and D). This, we suggest, is because of two flaws with these assignments.
First, they are idiosyncratic. Not expecting to write philosophy papers again, many students will question these papers’ relevance. Furthermore, the goals of philosophy papers may conflict with years of writing habits drilled into students from other sources.
Second, with papers, there is a significant gulf between the ultimate product and the thought processes underlying it. If students could directly see the proper thought process, they would probably understand why papers are valuable. But, instead, they see a product governed by its own opaque conventions. This gulf is what enables students to submit papers with the wrong kind of effort.
For instructors, this gulf manifests as a diagnostic problem. We often wonder whether someone really understands an argument. We want to ask further questions but the paper cannot answer. In the Phaedrus, Plato himself laments this feature of writing. For Plato, written philosophy was always second best.
The Value of Dialogue
The best philosophy, thought Plato, involves active, critically-engaged dialogue. In place of the above flaws, dialogue manifests two virtues.
First, dialogue manifests the social character of philosophy. Most students are already familiar with discussing philosophical issues with friends and family. And, looking ahead, dialogue will be the main context where most students use their philosophical skills. (Imagine, years from now, a former student serving on a delicate case. She will converse with her fellow jurors, explaining subtle distinctions, asking careful questions, and identifying crucial issues.)
Second, dialogue draws us near to students’ actual thought processes. With papers, the gulf between thought process and product made it possible for someone to submit work with the wrong kind of effort. But it is difficult to imagine this in a dialogue with an experienced interlocutor.
A Promising Alternative to Paper Assignments
We all know the value of philosophical conversation. But our assessments often look different, This is because dialogues have always been difficult to administer in a fair, practical way.
But LLMs can help revive dialogue as a pedagogical instrument. We propose that, at least in intro classes, instructors shift emphasis from papers to “LLM dialogues”: philosophical conversations between the student and an LLM.
We have used many versions of this assignment in recent courses. Here is one example:
To show the assignment’s promise, here is an excerpt from a recent student’s ensuing dialogue (ChatGPT speaks first):
We offer several observations. First, the above student practiced philosophy in a serious way. In particular, they practiced the crucial skill of tracking an argument in the direction of greater depth.
Second, the transcript clearly exhibits the student’s thought process. This makes it difficult for students to (sincerely) attempt the assignment without practicing their philosophical skills.
Third, this dialogue is transparently similar to students’ ordinary conversations. Accordingly, we have not yet received dialogues that simply “miss the point” by, e.g., copying class notes, pretending to be research papers, etc. (Though, of course, we still have received poor assignments.)
Certainly, it is possible for students to submit dialogues that merely copy notes, just as this is possible for papers. But there is a difference. With papers, these students may genuinely think that they are completing the assignment well. But, with dialogues, students already know that they must address the interlocutor’s remarks and not just copy unrelated notes.
Cheating?
But can chatGPT complete the dialogue on its own? If so, LLM-dialogues do not avoid the crisis with papers.
Here, we begin with a blunt comparison. From the 500+ dialogues we graded in 2023, there were only two suspected infractions (both painfully obvious). From the 300+ papers from 2023, we successfully prosecuted dozens of infractions. There were also many cases where we suspected, but were uncertain, that students used LLMs.
What explains this? First, there are technical obstacles. Students cannot just type: “Produce a philosophical dialogue between a student and chatGPT about X”. This is because one can require a link (provided by OpenAI) that shows the student’s specific inputs.
Thus, cheating requires an incremental approach, e.g., ask chatGPT to begin a dialogue, copy this output into a new chat and ask chatGPT for a reply, copy this reply back into the original chat, etc., for every step.
But this method is difficult to use convincingly. The difficulty is not merely stylistic. There are many “moves” which come naturally to students but not to chatGPT:
- Requesting clarification of an argument
- “Calling out” an interlocutor’s misstep
- Revising arguments to address misunderstandings
- Setting up objections with a series of pointed questions
Of course, one can get chatGPT to perform these actions. But this requires philosophical work. For example, the instruction “Call out a misstep” only makes sense in appropriate contexts. But identifying such contexts itself requires philosophical effort, a fact that makes cheating unlikely. (Could LLMs be trained to make these moves? We discuss this issue here.)
There are also positive incentives for honesty. Because most students already understand why dialogues are valuable, these assignments are unlikely to seem like mere “hoops to jump through”. Indeed, many students have told us how fun these assignments are. (Fewer students have told us how much they enjoyed papers.)
A Good Tool For Teaching Philosophy
LLM dialogues help students practice many of the skills that made undergraduate papers valuable in the first place. Indeed, far from being a concession to new technological realities, LLM dialogues are a better way to teach philosophy (at least to intro students) than papers ever were.
This brief post leaves many issues unaddressed. How does one “clean up” dialogues so that they are not dominated by pages of AI text? What is the experience of grading like? If students are just completing dialogues, how will they ever learn to write?
We address these and other issues in a forthcoming paper at Teaching Philosophy. (This paper provides a concrete example of an assignment and other practical advice.) We hope at this point that philosophers will experiment with these assignments and refine them.
The post Reviving the Philosophical Dialogue with Large Language Models (guest post) first appeared on Daily Nous.
Biometrics Giant Accenture Quietly Took Over LA Residents’ Jail Reform Plan
In November 2020, Los Angeles voters moved to radically transform the way the county handled incarceration. That year, Angelenos filled the streets, joining worldwide protests after the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The mood was ripe for change, and a ballot initiative known as Measure J passed with 57 percent support, amending the LA County charter so that jailing people before trial would be treated as a last resort. Ten percent of the county’s general fund would be allocated to community-led alternatives to incarceration that prioritized diversion, job training, and health programs.
But years later, as Measure J finally, slowly, gets implemented, advocates say that changes meant to divert money from law enforcement might instead just funnel it back to them.
Case in point: In June, LA County signed over the handling of changes to pretrial detention under Measure J to the consulting firm Accenture, a behemoth in the world of biometric databases and predictive policing. Accenture has led the development of “intelligent public safety” platforms and tech-enabled risk assessment tools for national security and law enforcement agencies in the United States and around the world, including in Israel and India. An Accenture advisory panel working on the Measure J implementation includes former federal and local law enforcement agents.
Accenture’s role was further publicized Monday after Civil Rights Corps, a nonprofit focused on injustice in the legal system, sent a letter to the LA County Board of Supervisors calling on them to immediately cancel the company’s contract. The contract takes the county away from its stated vision for a “care first, jails last” approach and toward carceral policies, CRC wrote in the letter. “Already, Accenture has concluded that electronic monitoring is a ‘favorable alternative’ to incarceration, ignoring the reality that electronic monitoring is expensive, unsupported by social science, and demonstrably racially biased as applied in Los Angeles,” the letter adds. “This is unsurprising: the consultants working on the Contract have deep ties to police departments and prisons.”
Protests for Black Lives
Measure J was one of at least 20 local criminal justice reform efforts that passed nationwide in the six months after Floyd’s murder. It was also part of a string of major wins by advocates in Los Angeles, who had been pushing alternatives to incarceration and investment in social services long before 2020.
Measure J ran into predictable opposition: A group including the union for Los Angeles sheriff’s deputies sued to block the measure and delayed it from going into effect in 2021, but it was put back on track after a judge upheld it on appeal last year. Nationally, despite widespread support, the criminal justice reform wave was met by a well-funded and bipartisan opposition led by police, sheriffs, and conservative Republicans and Democrats who fearmongered about rising crime. In the years since the 2020 uprisings, efforts to reallocate police funding, implement federal and local police reforms, and invest in social services have been undone or derailed. Many of those who cheered the reform movement are frustrated that they haven’t seen the impact of so many policy wins. Accenture’s contract for Measure J shows another reason why.
Criminal justice reforms are “being cannibalized,” said Matyos Kidane, an organizer with the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, an abolitionist community group based in Skid Row. Kidane said the group organizes against reforms because of the way corporations and law enforcement groups exploit and defang such initiatives. He pointed to Axon, which has profited massively from the push to get police equipped with body cameras.
“It’s a golden opportunity for them,” Kidane said. When Measure J passed, “Accenture was ready to go once this opportunity presented itself.”
Accenture has not publicly announced the contract with Los Angeles County, which was signed in June 2023 without a competitive bidding process for a total of $8.6 million over two and a half years. The contract exceeded the $200,000 limit in state law and county charter for a sole-source contract, and the board of supervisors created a motion to allow the requirement to be skirted in order to implement Measure J. But that motion allowed for a contract of up to $3 million, far less than the final signing price. The county told The Intercept it had paid $2 million to Accenture so far. (The supervisors who signed the motion did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
“Even if it were entered into legally — which it was not — the Contract is duplicative, wasteful, and harmful to Los Angeles and should be canceled on policy grounds alone,” the Civil Rights Corp letter states.
In presentations made in August to the Los Angeles Justice, Care, and Opportunities Department, which is administering the contract (published in September by the accountability group Expose Accenture) the firm gave an overview of its project timeline and plans to engage stakeholders in focus groups, interviews, workshops, and site visits. The firm highlighted targets for “quick wins” by October 1, 2023, such as creating a county website and launching marketing and communications for “Justice Involved Individuals” (i.e., people who have been arrested) and summarized top lines of conversations with 50 such people, including the observation that there was wide support for electronic monitoring as an alternative to custody.
A spokesperson for the county CEO, which controls county budget decisions, directed questions about the CRC letter to JCOD, as did Accenture. Department spokesperson Avi Bernard did not answer specific questions about how the county raised the limit for the contract but told The Intercept that JCOD had used approved county procedures and consulted with county counsel throughout the contract process. Bernard said CRC had previously raised similar concerns. “County Counsel and Board reviewed these concerns and found no issues with continuing the contract,” Bernard said. He added that there had been “no conversations with Accenture” and JCOD related to the use of electronic monitoring.
Bernard said that so far, Accenture had designed an independent pretrial services agency for the county, incorporated input from stakeholders, and supported a hotline, website, and marketing campaign. Bernard said the firm has now deployed a three-person implementation team to launch the independent pretrial services agency and is helping JCOD develop a case management IT system.
“It’s talking left while running off with the profiteers of mass surveillance and detention.”
The fact that Accenture was even an option for implementing Measure J came as a shock to many of its supporters, who had watched the county meet with community partners interested in helping carry out its implementation. The contract was also news to some county supervisors, according to advocates with knowledge of the contract process.
“It’s worse than talk left, walk right politics,” said Nika Soon-Shiong, founder and executive director at the Fund for Guaranteed Income and a Ph.D. researcher on digital identification systems. “It’s talking left while running off with the profiteers of mass surveillance and detention.”
Accenture has pushed counterterror and policing strategies around the globe: The company built the world’s biggest biometric identification system in India, which has used similar technologies to surveil protesters and conduct crowd control as part of efforts by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party to investigate the citizenship of Muslim residents. And in Israel, Accenture acquired the cybersecurity firm Maglan in 2016 and has worked to facilitate collaboration between India and Israel aimed at “fostering inclusive economic growth and maximizing human potential.”
Accenture ballooned into a giant in federal consulting over the course of the “war on terror,” winning hundreds of millions of dollars in lucrative contracts from federal agencies like the Department of Homeland Security for projects from a “virtual border” to recruiting and hiring Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol agents. In 2006, Accenture won a $10 million contract for a DHS biometric ID program, the world’s second biggest, to collect and share biometric data on foreign nationals entering or leaving the U.S. The company has also worked with police departments in Seattle and in the United Kingdom. Jimmy Etheredge, Accenture’s former CEO for North America, sits on the board of the Atlanta Police Foundation.
Asked about Accenture’s international work on biometric identification, predictive policing, and national security, Bernard, the JCOD spokesperson, said the firm was involved in many different kinds of work. “Accenture is a large, international consulting firm with many lines of business. The specific consultants assigned to this project are part of a team in Accenture dedicated to the public sector. Their team comes from a variety of backgrounds, primarily in the health and human services industry.”
But several LA-based advocates told The Intercept that the contract is yet another development that calls into question the county’s commitment to real criminal justice reform. The county has missed all of its deadlines for a plan to close the notoriously inhumane Men’s Central Jail, even as deaths in custody continue apace. In August, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department issued a Request for Information for a biometric identification system.
“I’m genuinely confused about how we ended up with this Accenture contract, especially as someone who participated in the development of the Care First, Jails Last (ATI) report,” said Danielle Dupuy-Watson, CEO of CRC, referring to an “Alternatives to Incarceration” working group commissioned by the county. “We hoped for transparency and accountability but instead we were gaslit.”
Behind-the-scenes deals like the one with Accenture are one reason that popular reforms haven’t come to fruition, said Lex Steppling, an organizer with Los Angeles Community Action Network.
“There’s the performance of democracy on the front end where a policy gets pressured into place, and on the back end there’s no governance.”
“People vote in that direction, and then it doesn’t happen. And they chalk it up to, ‘Well, politicians ain’t shit,’” Steppling said. People assume, he added, that when policy is passed, bureaucrats work out its implementation. “What we’re learning is there’s the performance of democracy on the front end where a policy gets pressured into place, and on the back end there’s no governance. It just simply gets procured and contracted away to these consulting firms.”
That the county took a historic progressive reform and contracted it out to a firm that put the community’s plans back into the hands of law enforcement is a perfect expression of the problem, Steppling said. “There’s no democracy there. There’s no transparency there. Nobody even knows it’s happening.”
The post Biometrics Giant Accenture Quietly Took Over LA Residents’ Jail Reform Plan appeared first on The Intercept.
The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens Our Businesses, Infantilizes Our Governments, and Warps Our Economies – review
In The Big Con, Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington claim that our overreliance on the consulting industry has negative consequences for society, inhibiting knowledge transfer and corporate and political accountability. The authors expose how consultancies’ goal of “creating value” may not align with addressing major issues such as climate change, arguing convincingly for greater transparency and a revitalised public sector, writes Ivan Radanović.
In their book The Big Con, Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington warn that relying on consultancies harms the public interest. Asking what happens to the brain of an organisation when it is not learning by doing because someone else is doing the doing, they conclude that societies must return public purpose in centre of attention.
The authors’ thesis is that overreliance on consultancies harms public interest, disables governments, and threatens democracy.
In 2021, the consulting industry was valued at over 900 billion dollars. Its ninefold rise since 1999 is the result of rising reliance of states on consulting agencies. The authors’ thesis is that overreliance on consultancies harms public interest, disables governments, and threatens democracy. They investigate this trend and how to reverse it.
The “Big Con” is the term Mazzucato and Collington use to mark the biggest auditing, accounting, and consulting agencies such as Ernst & Young (EY), KPMG, PwC, Deloitte, McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Accenture and others. The consulting market emerged during early industrialisation, when engineers, periodically recruited by major industrial firms, formalised their work. In the 1920s many consultants, among them James McKinsey, cooperated with American businesses. The popularity of management consultancy rose in 1970 when BCG introduced the matrix for mapping the profitability of business portfolio. After two years, this tool was used (and paid for) by more than 100 enterprises. American firms, on the wings of the Marshall plan and later IT management projects, have spread throughout Europe.
Golden years
The election of the right-wing populists Margaret Thatcher in the UK (1979) and Ronald Reagan in the US (1981) occurred after a decade of economic turmoil, led by the end of the Bretton Woods system and two major oil crises. The opinion that the responsibility for the turmoil lay in how states were run mushroomed. The neoliberal credo was that the only value creators in society are markets, and with Thatcher and Reagan, favour was refocused from the worker to the citizen-taxpayer.
The neoliberal credo was that the only value creators in society are markets, and with Thatcher and Reagan, favour was refocused from the worker to the citizen-taxpayer.
Contrary to the belief that the essence of neoliberalism is to slash public spending, Mazzucato and Collington suggest “it is more precise to describe it as public spending redirection towards the stronger role of the market” (49). In Thatcher’s era (1979-1990) government expenditure rose in real terms by 7.7 percent (43). In Reagan’s (1981-1989) federal spending rose by almost nine percent annually (43). From the US to Australia, thousands of neoliberal reforms such as privatisation, deregulation or outsourcing states had to be implemented, and advised. The authors show us that the annual public spending for consulting in the UK from 1979 to 1990 rose fortyfold – from 7.1 million to 290 million dollars. The 1980s saw the advent of a new management doctrine. In place of earlier stable forms of organisational life emerged the model of flexible “learning organisations” which view instability as an opportunity. The main goal becomes maximising value for shareholders. In the 1990s, that led to the popularisation of storytelling in politics and business. It is no longer a product or brand that is sold, but the story about value, challenges and business success through positive change, peddled by elite consultants or management gurus.
Creating the impression of value
Today, consultants are seen as experts who transfer know-how and utilise advanced management techniques to improve clients’ businesses. The enormous rise of consulting in the last four decades is explained by the “value” they create for states and companies. However, according to the authors, consultants do not always meet expectations and they seldom transfer knowledge. Created “value” is often unclear and depends on the perception of the client. Consultants hustle to create the impression of value.
Created “value” is often unclear and depends on the perception of the client. Consultants hustle to create the impression of value.
There are many examples where engaging consultancies has backfired for states. In developing countries such as Nigeria, Mexico and Angola, hiring consultancies was a condition of their IMF loan agreements (50). The authors focus on wealthy countries, arguing that even if contracting consultants experienced in the implementation of complex macroeconomic programmes could be justified in developing countries, it is less justifiable in developed countries, which should ostensibly have high competency in these areas.
Unmet deadlines, spiralling costs
Consultancies often fail to deliver on their promises. In 2010, Sweden started the construction project for a new university hospital in Stockholm which would be the most advanced in Europe. Its operations were to be grounded in “value-based healthcare”, a concept designed by management guru Michael Porter. Costs were initially valued at 1.4 billion euro, with the project set to be completed in 2015. City authorities opted for a public-private partnership which contracted consultants from PwC and EY who claimed they would ”maximise the value and keep the costs under control” (145). Representatives from the construction company Skanska stated that this model would “transfer the risk from the state and taxpayers to the private sector” (145). However, the costs immediately surpassed the projections because vital equipment had not been included in the budget The project, beset by problems, was passed to BCG, who had nine consultants working on its implementation while earning a monthly salary of almost 70,000 euros over six years. Another consultancy, Nordic Interim AB was then contracted for an additional 12 million euro, and when the hospital was eventually finished in 2018, costs a billion euros higher than the original estimate.
Absence of accountability
It is not all about money. Consultancies contribute to many undemocratic practices, maintaining what Acemoglu and Robinson named as extractive institutions. Often, they act as a mechanism for public wealth extraction, whereby states recruit consultants when they want to “hedge” the political risk of unpopular economic measures. The states maintain legitimacy, and consultants get their share of political influence. Authors emphasise the example of Puerto Rico, which faced bankruptcy in 2016. Then-President Obama initiated the creation of an Oversight Board to supervise the bankruptcy process. Keeping reputational risk low, Washington ensured that the majority of members of the Board were of Puerto Rican heritage. The Board did not hire a large staff, to avoid looking like it was setting up a parallel government. Instead, it brought in consultants. Instead of the state, McKinsey engaged in the privatisation of public enterprises, healthcare reforms “based on value”, slashing public spending and restructuring debt. Moreover, McKinsey owned $20 million of Puerto Rico’s bonds: consultants were set to profit from the very same debt they were helping to restructure.
Regaining control
Even though consultancies did not cause the maladies of neoliberal capitalism, they have profited from them. Without transparency and democratic permission, they erode the capabilities of states and enterprises. Because knowledge is not cultivated within state workforces and institutions, a dependency on the “expertise” of consultancies spirals.
[Consultancies] erode the capabilities of states and enterprises. Because knowledge is not cultivated within state workforces and institutions, a dependency on the “expertise” of consultancies spirals.
The last section of the book is about “climate consulting”. Omnipresent and long-term, climate change is ideal ground for consultants. Competition is fierce; consultancies’ “websites are replete with beautifully designed free reports on sustainability issues for every sector, from oil and gas to healthcare” (190). They promise solutions, pitching themselves as an avant-garde of change.
The key takeaway, according to Mazzucato and Collington, is that we must challenge the predominance of consultancies. With their ultimate goal of “creating value”, they advise both the fossil polluters and the governments mandated to reduce emissions. Moreover, states are catalysts of technological change for public good, while the private sector only invests in fundamental research when it becomes enticingly profitable.
Putting aside the authors’ techno-optimistic view – which holds that climate change mitigation is mostly a technical issue regarding innovations for green transition, which is being debunked – their final suggestions are valid. A new narrative and vision for the role of the state, recovering public capacities, embedding knowledge transfer into consulting contracts’ evaluation and mandating transparency are, undoubtedly, desirable. The book’s importance lies in how it reveals the political implications of the consulting industry. Whether we choose “green growth” or abandon the growth imperative, one thing is certain: democratically elected governments are key actors. Only they can mobilise the resources required for achieving “moonshot” missions, the most urgent of which is climate change.
Note: This interview gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
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