asked about new directions in power/AI/IOT, main comments were about China and Trump

First, the new directions. I am grateful that IEEE folks offered to pay my way to give an invited talk at WCCI 2018 (http://www.ecomp.poli.br/~wcci2018/ ) on what the "new AI" could do for the world electric power system, affecting everything from renewables to security to cars to survival. I was also happy that the paper was reviewed (like all papers for the conference) and that they encouraged us all to seek more comments before making the paper final. The accepted draft is at:

http://www.werbos.com/E/GridIOT.pdf

I will take comments until April 8, after which I will rewrite and "push the buttons".
This is just a special session paper, but after seeing it one of the society presidents said: "Too bad we can't make it a plenary, but plenaries two years in a row in the same conference would be irregular."

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I am grateful to have received useful feedback from 5 people so far, two at great length.
One of those two said I was too critical of China, and the other said I was too gentle. (China was not the main theme, but China is involved in all these technologies.) As I hear really crazy and technically uninformed stuff both pro and con on CNN... maybe I should post my immediate thoughts on that issue, even before I revise the paper. And add some details, commenting on news of the day, e.g. about tariffs.

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My main responses:

To the friend who said I was too harsh on China:

I will try to rephrase section 4 to create less of that impression.

In truth, I had a mix of positive but worried reactions to an excellent documentary Luda recommended to me on IIAB and the policies behind it:

https://www.amazon.com/Backlight-Chinese-World-Jos-Putter/dp/B074T4Y72M/

I have long said very strong favorable things about Confucianism, about Meng Tzu in particular, and what I saw visiting ShanDong province. But circa 1000AD, degenerate forms of MANY positive ideas sprung up. We have also visited the "Thousand year academy" in Changsha, where a guy named Zu Xi (sp?) taught HIS version of Confucianism... where Mao went to school, and rightly had a negative reaction. Just as garbled versions of Aristotle have driven folks like Ted Cruz to try to acquire power by attacking civil rights, there are fplks who followed garbled versions of Meng Tzu in ways which led to serious problems with excess nepotism, warlords, and a lot of other stuff, which are still a potential problem within China. In summary, I worry about China and I worry about the US, both, and I worry even more about folks like Erdogan who have gone totally over the edge. 

My key point is that NEITHER the DNA system NOR the money system are a sufficient basis for solving urgent challenges facing us. The IIAB documentary (which perhaps I should cite) rightly questions systems which tend to force people to be too focused on money, but excess focus on family values is just as limited and risky in its own way. 

But again, I thank you for flagging this, which should help me to be clearer.

To the friend who said I was too complimentary to China (and maybe too harsh to the US):

I do worry about how easy it is to ignore problems that any major organization faces, including nations, and then to fall into typical human wishful thinking. The truth is usually a complex middle, but (1) I certainly do not want to claim that any major organization on earth is ALREADY on path to save itself or the rest of us, given the difficulty of what is coming down the pike in many sectors; and (2) I have done a lot of thinking in the last few days about the ups and downs of China and of Trump in particular. (Russia more the days before.) 

The intelligent grid is far from dead, but that's another matter. 

China really was unique for awhile, under Jiang Zemin (despite his horrible policies against all things spiritual, even home grown Chinese exercise traditions, though his lieutenants Bo Xilai and Zhou were the worst), because it was relatively free of the extreme excess narcissism which tends to warp all large powers. But as China recovers its pride, I see worrying signs here and there, and do not take it for granted, despite the true positive things I have said in the past. All big nations also have a mix of good and bad people -- more complicated than that, but true enough. 

Of course, anyone serious about the future of humanity also thinks hard and realistically about the Middle East. I heard Prince Mohammed's interview here a few days ago, and it was quite impressive. But he is also realistic about people in the area he has good reason not to trust; it is important that we not take him for granted so much that it hurts him and us and everyone else. (Let us not create another Shah!) Nuclear reactors in the Gulf strike me more as an example of how people can make mistakes through inadequate foresight, unless they are intended to allow quick response to any Iranian return to weaponization. I do think we need to think harder about how to eventually come to a more benevolent relation with Iran, tricky as that may be.

Regarding Trump... it still looks as if he could end up EITHER canonized or lynched in the end, depending on what he does.  He has lots of chips on both sides of the table. Will he really understand the swamp enough to drain it, or will he make it worse? Of course, a little global economic depression on the side would make it less uncertain which of the two it is in any case. The lynching process and its aftermath may represent serious problems on the other side. 

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In mid 2016, I wrote on this list about the serious risk that the US might undergo problems similar to what Brazil recently experienced (a real disaster), when the new President -- EITHER Hillary Clinton OR Donald Trump -- took office, and encountered, yes, a real witch hunt due to forces I understood moderately well by then, because of my links to many government agencies in the neighborhood where I like.  

And so... I sense intense support AND opposition out there, even in the SAME people. 

The firing of McCabe should have been a plus for Trump, because it addresses the cabal which would have lynched EITHER candidate. But when Trump so viciously turned it into something partisan, and hired partisan extremists to carry through -- it's just like the firing of Comey, when it was an action called for objectively but it was a classic case of "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory" because he made statements of intent which any judge woulkd rightly take very seriously, which also degrade democracy.

The swamp needs to be drained. Anyone intelligent enough, seeing my paper, would get some insights into the swamp -- though I have carefully held back discussing the most lurid concrete things I have seen. The swamp is NOT Hilary Clinton's apparatus, though Trump's statements have mobilized some irrationality on the left as well. His fault. The swamp is NOT "the deep state." The biggest risks of tyranny are NOT from the controlled civil service created by Teddy Roosevelt (history we should never forget), but from those "outside secret society meetings" funded by folks who outside the government are unobserved and unconstrained, using both selected purchased congressmen and political appointees to corrupt the system to a much greater degree than most Americans would imagine. If Trump goes beyond McCabe to break the wrong kinds of wires, we still have hope of restoring democracy (it is already that serious, folks!) and of him becoming a hero. But if McCabe was a one-off and if he empowers folks to destroy democracy EVEN MORE... well, the lynch mob is ready, and it would be illogical even to assume that civil war is impossible. (My paper talks a little about a few of the sources of instability, and some positive solutions, but in 8 pages one cannot cover everything.)

On the trade front, I was surprised how it is the opposite of the McCabe firing: a scary kind of action, but words which were very much aimed at a fair balance. Most economists remember the Smoot-Harley (sp?) tariffs which caused the Great Depression, but if the outcome is fair and not scary threats, maybe.

But: a big nit: Trump was grossly inaccurate in blaming imbalance on other nations. It was the same old stakeholder systems, folks in the US who were unrestrained in seeking money at the expense of others. Tim Kaine (VP candidate in 2016, still our senator) said: "TPP is fine in theory. What's wrong are the sneaky arbitration/judgment rules snuck in there which erode protections for environment and workers, especially US workers." I have seen a LOT of that kind of in-the-dark insertion stuff in DC. I was shocked that China did not AGREE with Kaine, to defend all the workers of the world... but it seems they still have a corruption problem of their own. Neither Communism nor Christianity have counterbalanced other folks. Congresswoman Debbie Dingell was especially scary in her statements about NAFTA, pushing hard to just get rid of ALL protections, making life even worse for workers and environment and for inequality in general. Sure, true socialism is impossible and silly, but at the present time the risk is more from GROWING inequality and lack of fair competition (which includes equal opportunity), and degrading of human culture in general. 

Can we come up with a more sjustainable way forward? "Killing the bad guys" is not the answer. My new paper gropes for just a few elements of what we need, urgently.. and our lives are at risk.