Enough said?

 

"One thing is sure, a great change of our psychological attitude is imminent. That is certain." And why? "Because we need more -- we need more psychology. We need more understanding of human nature, because the only real danger that exists is man himself. He is the great danger, and we are pitifully unaware of it. We know nothing of man, far too little. His psyche should be studied, because we are the origin of all coming evil." Carl Jung  1959, BBC's Face to Face TV series aired a 40-minute interview with Carl Jung at the old age of 84 years old--18 months before his death.

"Today the most important thing, in my view, is to study the reasons why humankind does nothing to avert the threats about which it knows so much, and why it allows itself to be carried onward by some kind of perpetual motion.  It cannot suffice to invent new machines, new regulations, new institutions.  It is necessary to change and improve our understanding of the true purpose of what we are and what we do in the world.  Only such an understanding will allow us to develop new models of behavior, new scales of values and goals, and thereby invest the global regulations, treaties, and institutions with a new spirit and meaning." President Vaclav Havel, Czech Republic. September, 1997?

"It is not famine, not earthquakes, not microbes, not cancer but man himself who is man's greatest danger to man, for the simple reason that there is no adequate protection against psychic epidemics, which are infinitely more devastating than the worst of natural catastrophes" - Carl Jung

United we stand a chance against the coming chaos.  Divided we are greatly endangered.

Below is a Wpost opinion piece...and my longer personal story linked to weaponized smallpox that John Bolton did not mention in his excellent take on what may be humanities greatest - and most immediate threat... now accelerated by AI.   

Oct 14 (Wednesday), 2026  Washington Post Opinion page.

 

“John Bolton: How the U.S. should respond to Russia’s plague incident

Even if initial worries prove unfounded, history shows Moscow cannot be trusted regarding biowarfare.”  (a 6-minute read)

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/10/13/russian-plague-death-should-prompt-us-biowarfare-review/

 

By John R. Bolton  (Former ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush and national security adviser under President Donald Trump.)

 

The recent death of Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old Russian laboratory technician, of pneumonic plague raised worldwide concerns because of her workplace: the Irkutsk Antiplague Institute of Siberia. With the covid pandemic in mind, the public focused on whether another such crisis could be upon the world. Moscow asserts there is no cause for alarm. But Russia’s record for veracity is hardly encouraging.

 

Despite having only information provided by Russian officials, U.S. Centers for Disease Control Director Erica Schwartz said last week that the “threat to the United States is extremely low.” President Donald Trump downplayed the possibility that the episode might be linked to biowarfare research, saying, “We’re going to find out soon enough, but we don’t think so.”

 

Taking a more cautious approach to Moscow’s assurances would be advisable, especially in light of important lessons from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and its possible connection to Chinese bioweapons research. Even purely epidemiological research can provide findings highly relevant to sophisticated bioweapons capabilities. Notably, the Trump administration’s 2026 intelligence-community threat assessment states expressly that “Russia’s scientists continue developing new CBW” — chemical-biological-warfare — “capabilities,” and that “China probably possesses CBW capabilities that threaten U.S., allied, and partner forces as well as civilian populations.”

 

Worries about another pandemic are warranted, but so, too, are worries about Russian and Chinese threats to U.S. national security. Even if initial apprehensions prove unfounded, the Irkutsk incident should be treated as a red flag, not a false alarm. There is a long history that should not be ignored.

 

Kanatjan Alibekov, from 1988 until his 1992 defection from Russia, was a top official at Biopreparat whose “primary function was to develop and produce weapons made from the most dangerous viruses, toxins and bacteria known to man.” His 1999 memoir, “Biohazard” (published under his Americanized name, Ken Alibek, with Stephen Handelman), remains basic reading for understanding Russian biowarfare research.

 

Journalist Judith Miller and her co-authors advanced the story in 2001 with “Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War.” They demonstrate, for example, how much Washington learned after the Soviet Union’s collapse, such as at “the premier Soviet germ factory” at Stepnogorsk, in newly independent Kazakhstan, with its facilities and scientists fully available to the West.

 

Moscow expended considerable time and effort to recover from losing so many resources and talents, but recover it did, as the U.S. intelligence community confirms. Of course, not every Russian biology lab engages in weapons-related activity. Nonetheless, governments with illicit weapons-of-mass-destruction programs — nuclear and chemical as well as biological — routinely conduct activities in plain sight that can have both a legitimate civilian application and a military one. As more-sophisticated research becomes increasingly sensitive, and “dual use” explanations less plausible if not impossible, more precautions are taken. Actual weaponization work is as fully concealed as possible.

 

Interestingly, the Irkutsk antiplague facility’s website says it also studies brucellosis, anthrax and tularemia, all of which have been researched over decades for potential biowarfare use. The institute also acknowledges its work in biodefense research, particularly against bioterrorism. This “defensive” activity may be entirely legitimate under the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, to which both Russia and China subscribe, just as the United States and many other nations do.

 

The problem is that, scientifically, purely defensive research is hard to distinguish from offensive research, and defensive research can readily advance more threatening work elsewhere. For countries that take treaty obligations seriously, this is not an issue. Rogue states, however, sign arms-control agreements and then violate them at will, using “defensive research” as a dodge. Indeed, one reason President George W. Bush’s administration rejected a draft verification protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention is that biological programs are inherently unverifiable. As the saying, sometimes apocryphally attributed to Winston Churchill, goes, the only countries that comply with arms-control agreements are countries you don’t need arms-control agreements with.

 

Today’s fear of the expanding weapons spectrum, from drone technology to artificial intelligence’s perhaps existential threat, should not distract us from the hard reality of already-existing threats. Moscow’s gray-zone warfare in Europe — exemplified in August by a failed attack on Germany’s Leipzig airport using an explosives-laden drone, which German officials blamed on Russia — should be another red flag. It has long been known that properly prepared, aerosolized biowarfare agents can be spread by innocent-appearing crop-duster airplanes, or, now, by drones.

 Merely demanding more “transparency” from Russia, as the World Health Organization is doing, is far from sufficient. We simply do not have, and probably will not have, enough information to draw firm conclusions. We do know enough that the Irkutsk incident should not be left unexamined, even if the current White House is extraordinarily considerate of Vladimir Putin’s wishes.

 Instead, the relevant congressional committees should conduct systematic reviews of both the global bioweapons threat to America and the adequacy of U.S. defenses. That review should include the national-security implications of U.S. taxpayer funds being granted to foreign research institutions, to avoid subsidizing America’s enemies. Time is short.

 (135 comments so far. None mentioned weaponized smallpox)

 My response below.    (For those who dislike long detailed reads…please retain these 18 words.  ‘Keep people and nature healthy.  Don’t believe everything you think.  Unite in making close friends and fewer enemies.’   And if you have any editing suggestions... please offer them  - chuck@igc.org

Biological Weapons, Global Interdependence and Our Deficit of Wisdom:  By a former issues director for the Global Health Council (originally National Council for International Health) then the World Federal Association for 4 more years.

 John Bolton’s warning in his October 13 Washington Post opinion piece, “After Russia’s Plague Incident, US Readiness Needs Urgent Review,” deserves more serious attention. The former U.S. ambassador to the UN and the US national security adviser made a very compelling and accurate case for reassessing America’s vulnerability to biological weapons. But his warning raises a larger question: After decades of expert warnings, why does our government continue to treat global health security primarily as a national defense problem rather than a shared human responsibility?

I have been raising these concerns for decades. In 1996 and 1997, I gave congressional testimony about the threats posed by the inevitability of biological weapons and the inadequacy of our responses.   As issues director for two national organizations focused on human and national security, and elected as member of the American Public Health Association’s Action Board, I saw the dangers of treating global health threats as secondary to conventional national security concerns even by US intelligence agencies.

Even their warnings were largely ignored. And still are. 

Smallpox provided a valuable lesson.   Before Ken Alibek published his 1999 memoir, Biohazard, I interviewed him face-to-face in Virginia. Alibek, formerly the second-in-command of the Soviet Union’s Biopreparat biological weapons program, described work that should have permanently changed how we think about national security and US foreign policy.

 His account of Soviet efforts to weaponize smallpox was especially frightening. Smallpox had been eradicated through an extraordinary international public health campaign, officially certified by the World Health Organization in 1980. That virus had killed more people in just the last 70 years of the last century than all the wars, genocides and murders combined over that entire century. Yet, according to Alibek and subsequent accounts of the Soviet program, Soviet scientists continued developing smallpox as a weapon even after eradication. And upping its fatality rate in unvaccinated populations that was commonly around 30 percent.  Alibek described efforts to make the virus infect and kill even more people.  The most extreme claims about engineered increased fatality rates have not been independently verified, but the underlying lesson is unmistakable: scientific advances to understand or control disease can also be redirected at weaponization.

 The Soviet program was not a historical curiosity. Research published by experts on biological weapons documents the scale of the former Soviet program, including its work on smallpox, plague and other pathogens. After the Soviet Union collapsed, questions arose about the security of its facilities, the fate of its stockpiles and the risk that scientific expertise or dangerous materials being spread beyond official controls.

The danger went beyond a government deliberately launching a biological attack. It was how a pathogen, research capability, and basic knowledge to weaponize a pathogen - might escape the systems intended to contain it.  Accidents and wars happen.

 The Iraqi warning signs came from the first Gulf War in 1991.  It provided a disturbing example after the conflict following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.   U.S. intelligence reported that eight of 69 Iraqi prisoners of war whose blood was tested showed immunity to smallpox, a disease that had not circulated naturally in Iraq for decades. Other reporting raised questions about Iraq’s biological weapons ambitions and its interest in smallpox and even camelpox.

 These findings did not establish that Iraq possessed a deployable stockpile of weaponized smallpox. They did, however, raise questions that deserved sustained investigation. A 2002 Washington Post report revisited intelligence assessments and allegations concerning smallpox and several countries, including Iraq.  And the US needed to prepare for the possibility that biological weapons, even smallpox could be used against its forces and civilian population.

Larger questions remained: What if a regime facing military defeat decided to use a biological weapon?  Or, its release unintentionally during the chaos of war?

 I’ve not yet seen any public or political accounting of how close the world might have come to such a catastrophe during that conflict. We cannot know whether Saddam Hussein considered using a weaponized pathogen.  Were we lucky that no accident occurred? What could have been the consequences had a contagious disease like smallpox escaped into a largely susceptible population. These are important yet unresolved questions. 

 The US also has a troubling history of contributing to dangers it later confronts. During the 1980s, the United States supplied Iraq with biological materials for research, including materials with potential dual-use applications. The US also provided Iraq with dual-use assistance and precursor chemicals that contributed to Saddam Hussein’s regime use of chemical weapons against Iranian forces and Iraqi Kurds. These historical facts underscore the risks of supporting a government for short-term strategic reasons without adequately considering how the capabilities supplied might ultimately be used.

 

The lesson goes beyond the transfer of scientific knowledge being dangerous. First, the distinction between defensive and offensive applications is less certain than what policymakers intend for us to believe.

 Second is the inevitable limits of bio and cyber security.   Bolton is right emphasizing the difficulty of determining the origins and purposes of biological research. A laboratory ‘gain of function’ research of a dangerous pathogen may be trying to prevent an epidemic, develop treatments or improve vaccines. Much of the same underlying knowledge can also be misused.

 

Third, the most sophisticated intelligence services cannot guarantee that every dangerous program will be discovered, every stockpile accounted for, or every scientist and institution acting responsibly.  Nor can border controls and military deterrence guarantee protection against every naturally occurring outbreak, laboratory accident, or deliberate release.

Cybersecurity faces related problems. Software vulnerabilities evolve, attackers adapt, and defensive systems cannot guarantee that every intrusion will be prevented. Biological and cyber threats are not identical, but both demonstrate the limits of trying to secure complex, interconnected systems through defensive measures alone.

In this sense, bio and cyber security are oxymorons.  And sustainable security is a delusion.  Nations depending on strong defenses, effective intelligence, international verification, responsible research standards, and emergency preparedness are going broke in this reactionary mode. Preemptive or offensive efforts will only perpetuate this dilemma or make things worse.   

Preventing, or at least reducing conditions that encourage people and governments to turn their capabilities against others is an economic and security necessity.

 

We must transform ‘peace through strength’ into ‘security through cooperation’.  Since the invention of nuclear weapons, our foreign policies should have placed far greater emphasis on making close and caring friends.  And far fewer vengeful enemies.   Yet, national sovereignty and the delusion of independence remains our dominant global organizing principle of international affairs. Governments understandably seek to protect their populations.  But the pursuit of security through competition instead of kindness, compassion, and cooperation is necessary to protect everyone and our life support systems .

 

Viruses don’t recognize national borders. Neither do many of the consequences of cyberattacks, environmental degradation, economic instability, terrorist attacks, or war. A pathogen released in one country can become a threat to the entire world. A cyberattack on critical infrastructure can disrupt systems far beyond its original target. Environmental damage in one region can undermine food security and public health elsewhere.

Our independence is therefore limited by our irreversible interdependence. We may declare sovereignty, build walls, stockpile weapons and prepare for adversaries, but none of these measures can make us independent of the health and stability of the wider human family and our any civilized social species sustainability.

 

And in our era where almost anything can be and has been weaponized - disarmament is not an option. Even if governments eliminated existing weapons, dangerous knowledge would remain, and new technologies could create new ways to cause unprecedented harm. The challenge is not to eliminate weapon, but to develop the institutions, relationships, and shared commitments that make their creation and use far less likely.

 

After World War II the nations involved agreed there should not be another world war, genocide, or use of WMD.  But those in power decided to protect national sovereignty (independence) instead of ensuring the protection of 30 universal human rights that most nations did agree on.   Nations now in power are unlikely to ever enforce those rights. But we have the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals that could be our best  global security strategy.  These offer a framework for systemically, comprehensively, holistically, and synergistically addressing our growing interconnected threats. They encompass health, education, food security, poverty, inequality, environmental sustainability, effective institutions and international cooperation.

 

These goals are often discussed as a development agenda, separate from national security. That separation is a profound mistake.  Strong public health systems prevent or help detect outbreaks before they spread. International cooperation makes it easier to quickly share vital information, build trust and respond adequately to emergencies.

Effective transparent institutions can reduce corruption and improve accountability. Education and economic opportunities will help communities withstand instability and build resilience.  Environmental protection reduces risks to the natural systems on which human health and food security depend.

 

No single goal can accomplish these things alone. The goals are interdependent, just as the threats they are meant to address are interdependent.  This is why I have long argued that prevention deserves a much higher priority than crisis response. Humankind will never eliminate every threat, but united we can reduce the vulnerabilities that make disasters more likely and their consequences more severe.

 

The SDGs are not a substitute for intelligence, laboratories, military readiness or responsible oversight of biotechnology or AI. They are a framework for growing and strengthening the social, institutional and environmental foundations on which sustainable security and maximum prosperity depends.

 

Bolton concludes with a warning “time is short”. I agree. But I would add that we have a deficit of wisdom.

 

For decades, we’ve known that the technologies capable of improving human life can also threaten it. We’ve known that personal and national security cannot be separated from global health. We’ve known that scientific knowledge crosses borders and that a disaster anywhere can become a danger everywhere.

 

Yet we continue to devote enormous resources to preparing for conflict while underinvesting in preventing the conditions that produce it.

 

Our collective choice is not between national defense and global cooperation.  We need both. The choice is whether we recognize that defense alone cannot yield lasting security in our interdependent world.  Thus, our highest priority must be the health of people and nature: healthy minds, bodies, families, communities, sustainable environments, and institutions capable of working together across national boundaries.

That requires a change in the way we define security. Instead of making national independence our ultimate objective, we must acknowledge our shared dependence on a healthy and stable world.

The biological imperative is clear: Make more friends and far fewer enemies. Prevent what we can. Cooperate where we must. And stop confusing the ability to retaliate against a threat with the ability to prevent one. 

We have the scientific knowledge to understand these dangers. We must engineer an international framework to begin addressing them. What we lack is the collective political will to put human survival ahead of rivalries that endanger all of us.

Time is short. But our deficit of wisdom is our greatest threat. 

Our centuries three greatest murderers and the Unabomber.

 

 

This morning I woke up thinking the three most evil men in the world were nuclear powered Putin, Netanyahu, and Trump.  Each basically mass murderers of innocent people, holding the path to future chaos in their warped minds, with no individual willing to stop their insane logic while ignoring the evolution of weaponry and war.  The previous evening my wife and I watched the 'Unabomber' movie with “Ted Kaczynski”. Now we have a greater threat he tried to warn us about. 

It was between 1998 and 2002, as Issues Director of the World Federalist Association (a US NGO committed to establishing enforceable ‘world law’ instead of another suicidal ‘world war’ with nuclear, biological, chemical, cyber, or nano forms of WMD.  Back then I was privileged to visit nearly a dozen key US Congressional Districts urging citizens to lobby their policy makers to fund a more humane foreign policy.  The evolution of war and weapons was accelerating.  The hope was to end the insanity of our nation’s ‘Peace through Strength’ mentality - and instead prioritize 'peace through justice, the protection of human rights, and the environment via investments in global health, with a focus on prevention. 

At each presentation I began with a sincere apology.  My baby boomer generation had failed to heed the clear warnings of threats in the year 2000 - offered in the 1980 summary of President Carter’s bipartisan Presidential Commission on World Hunger.  Next I showed one PowerPoint slide.  It was a simple graph - with three lines representing the future.  The first line was curved upward representing the exponential growth of technology.  The second, our Pleistocene species linear thinking capacity - heading up diagonally underneath the curve.  The third represented government change. It was a flatline until the attacks on 9-11 - then a blip at 2002 representing the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).  During the 1990 decade our world went from having 'superpower' nations to superpowered individuals. And Ted Kaczynski, Timothy McVeigh, the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult, and Osama Bin Ladin birthed in a new era of accelerating and likely catastrophic threats.   

It was Ted Kaczynski’s choice of a mail delivered weapon however, that made me glad he was a mathematician and not a biologist. But I was imagining the possibility of people in the future looking back at him and thinking his 1995 manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future, and making him a profit of the down fall of our civilization. His ranted and criticized about how our modern technological systems would diminish human autonomy, concentrate power, and make individuals increasingly dependent on systems they cannot control.  And that's where we are now.

His most striking predictions are now central to AI debates.  Machines making decisions humans cannot fully understand. He anticipated a society in which technical systems become so complex that people increasingly defer to machines, eventually becoming dependent on them.

Loss of human autonomy. He argued that technological systems could progressively constrain individual freedom, even as individual technologies offer substantial benefits.

Concentration of power. He envisioned a future in which a relatively small elite controls powerful technologies while much of the population loses economic importance.

Dependence that becomes difficult to reverse. He recognized that societies can become so dependent on their technologies that abandoning them is no longer a practical option.

 

These were not merely abstract concerns. They overlap with current discussions about AI-driven unemployment, surveillance, the concentration of AI capabilities in a few competing companies and governments, and the possibility that future AI systems could become difficult if not impossible to supervise.

 

Was Kaczynski's central error treating technological progress as a system that could not be meaningfully reformed?  He advocated destroying the industrial-technological system rather than developing institutions capable of governing it.  We may already be too late for that given the lack of any enforceable trust in governments or corporations.

 

Technology does undermine freedom, but could also expand it. Is it worth the risk?  Medical advances, communications, scientific discovery, and improvements in living standards have saved lives and increased human capabilities. But we prioritize weapons development and their perpetual evolution. This will not end well. 

 

The question is how can we reliably govern technology, who benefits from it, and if we will all bear its costs.

 

History, if it exists 20 years from now, may see him as the prophet of AGI – and regard him as an early prophet of technological dependence - while others will see his work as a warning that contained important insights and destructive conclusions.

 

But Kaczynski wasn’t the only person to foresee the risks of advanced machinery or artificial intelligence. Other thinkers and computer scientists raised concerns about intelligent machines, automation, and loss of human control. Even his connecting technological dependence to loss of individual freedom and failing social cooperation.

 

No one really knows exactly when AGI will arrive, what capabilities it will possess, or whether its most alarming potential outcomes will occur.

 

Unfortunately, we may have already passed the tipping point of prevention having ignored the irreversible interdependence of all human and natural systems now for centuries.   

The most useful lesson now is not that Kaczynski was right about everything. It’s that we must urgently address the social and psychological consequences of powerful technologies ASAP.  Humankind has already become dangerously dependent on them.

We need quickly ask and answer three questions:

1.  How do we preserve human agency when machines can outperform people at more and more tasks?
2.  How do we prevent a small number of corporations or governments from exercising disproportionate control over technologies that affect everyone?
3. How do we distribute the benefits of AI so that technological progress improves the health and well-being of individuals, families, communities, and humanity as a whole?

One suggestion offered today by a C-span listener who called in, “put all data energy centers on water - in lakes and oceans. Then sink them if needed.

AGI is coming. And our linear minds and constipated governments are not ready.  

Kaczynski's most valuable contribution is ultimately warning us of the problem.  We must start finding solutions. We need not reject technology and the progress possible.  Can human agency alone be relied on to dictate the future of humanity?

The greatest question now appears to be - can we pursue humane, democratic, preventive solutions before we lose the capacity – because of our own stupidity of ignoring the solutions humankind has always had but refused to prioritize.  Keeping our human family and nature healthy, and stop believing everything we think…then defending outdated concepts now leading us to our extinction - before AGI does.

 

Two OCT 7th anniversaries are forever wars. Oct 7, 2001 & Oct 7, 2023

Our addiction to oil and support for Israel has the US locked into a permeant state of conflict, constitutional dilemmas, divisive politics, plus unsustainable debt related to defense spending with a powerful mental resistance to change.   

The historical record of the 9/11 Commission specifically documented Osama bin Laden’s (OBL) grievances over U.S. military presence in the Middle East and U.S. support for Israel. It also emphasizes his religious-extremist ideology.  But few American minds consider OBL’s specific reasons related to US presence in Saudi Arabia with its Muslim holy sites or the persistent suffering and deaths of innocent Muslims due to US and Israel weapons and foreign/security policy in the region from the first gulf war and arming Saddam Hussain before that.   

US foreign policy differences between Afghanistan and Iraq are clear. But post-9/11 wars eventually cost about $8 trillion, over 4000 American service members lives (not counting contractors), and about 200,000 Muslims. 

The reason for military action by US and allied forces in Afghanistan on Oct 7, 2001, was to deal with OBL.  While the invasion of Iraq was sparked in 2003 by false claims about Iraq’s nuclear weapons of mass destruction.  Saddam did have chemical WMD and there was evidence he also had Biological WMD…because he got them from the US and used them against his own people and his 10-year war with Iran (an enemy of the US during that time). 

But having a strong US military presence in Iraq, the center of the oil rich Middle East, was an asset for future needs.  That invasion and occupation, however, was like hitting a hornet’s nest without considering other consequences.

October 7: The Connections We Keep Missing.  And now two painful anniversaries. October 7, 2023, Hamas and other armed groups launched a devastating attack on Israel. More than 1,200 people were killed and 251 people were abducted. The United Nations has documented the deliberate attacks on civilians and other grave violations committed that day. (United Nations Digital Library⁠)  New reports have now surfaced confirming that Israel’s leader had been warned - several times by different Middle East nations, days ahead of that horrific attack.  If this is true, Bebe had his reasons. And those reasons match with his nation’s extremists and illegal actions in the Wast Bank and taking Lebanese land bordering his nation.  Isreal’s extremists appear to believe the Bible is a real-estate manual.  

Twenty-five years ago today, on October 7, 2001, the United States and its allies began military operations in Afghanistan in response to the September 11 attacks.

These two events are separated by 22 years and thousands of miles. But they belong in the same conversation. But Hamas is not al-Qaeda.  And not because Israel’s actions, America’s actions, or the actions of any other government can be reduced to a single explanation.  And certainly not because the murder of civilians can ever be justified by the grievances of those who commit it.  

The connection is deeper.  Violence does not occur in a vacuum. It begins in the minds of men.

What did the US learn from 9/11?  The 9/11 Commission found that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda drew upon several grievances that were widely felt in parts of the Muslim world, including opposition to the presence of U.S. forces in the Middle East and U.S. support for Israel. Those grievances were combined with an extremist religious ideology and turned into a strategy of terrorism. (9/11 Commission⁠)  Understanding those grievances does not excuse terrorism. But it does explain why prevention of terrorism requires more than military retaliation.

After 9/11, the US war in Afghanistan, and two years later, the invasion of Iraq led to enormous human and financial consequences. Brown University’s Costs of War project estimates that the US appropriated or obligated approximately $8 trillion for the post-9/11 wars through fiscal year 2022, including military operations, homeland security, interest on war borrowing and veterans’ care. Its estimate for the Afghanistan war alone is approximately $2.3 trillion. (Watson Institute⁠)

And the costs were not merely financial. Millions of people were killed directly or indirectly, and tens of millions were displaced across the broader post-9/11 war zones. (Costs of War⁠)

Then came Iraq.  That experience has forced us to understand that we are not preventing violence.  But in fact repeatedly creating the conditions for the next rounds of it. 

And now, Iran.  Another war of choice involving the US, Israel and Iran. Now metalizing into other Middle East nations makes US and the world’s addiction to oil even costlier and self-evident.  The stated issues include Iran’s nuclear capabilities and regional security. But disrupted oil supplies have demonstrated again how tight security, energy, economics and geopolitics are interconnected. (Reuters⁠)

This doesn’t prove oil is the reason for the war. It does demonstrate something we should have learned long ago:  Energy security, national security, human security, food security, economic/religious/political extremist ideology, and environmental security cannot be separated.  When we treat these as separate problems, we repeatedly discover our global interdependence and our flawed national and global governance systems

What we keep missing is the October 7 Lesson is we do NOT need to become better at war.  Given the evolution of war, weapons, and WMD we must rapidly become better at prevention. 

When people live under occupation, repression, extreme poverty, environmental destruction, political exclusion, or chronic insecurity, those conditions become fertile ground for radicalization, violence and despair.

It doesn’t mean everyone experiencing injustice becomes violent. Luckily, most don’t. But some will.  And weapons can be created from every technology.  From bio, chem, nano, cyber, airplanes, cars, truck, shipping containers, and even drones.   

If we are serios about reducing violence, we must address the conditions in which violence becomes more likely.  That requires protecting human rights, protecting nature’s systems upon which human life depends, reducing poverty and extreme inequality.  It requires functioning governments and accountable institutions. It requires diplomacy before bombs.

And it requires something many have always talked about but those in power have never adequately built: a genuinely effective global legal system capable of investigating and prosecuting mass murder, terrorism, crimes against humanity and other grave violations of international law or environmental sustainability.

This is the only alternative to endless retaliation.  There is a profound difference between justice and vengeance. Justice seeks accountability through law.  Vengeance seeks security through punishment.

Justice asks:  Who committed the crime?  What evidence establishes responsibility?

How can the perpetrators be brought before a legitimate court?

How can the conditions that make the next crime more likely be changed?

War too often asks a different question: How much force can we bring to bear?

Twenty-five years after 9/11, and three years after October 7, perhaps it is time to ask whether humanity has been heading in the right direction with the right questions.

The US and its allies possess extraordinary military power.  But military power and walls cannot eliminate hatred that originates in the mind.  It cannot bomb poverty out of existence or destroy an ideology by destroying its adherents.  It cannot make a damaged ecosystem healthy or create lasting security without addressing the human conditions that produce insecurity.

This is why I keep coming back to the same idea: Everything is connected, interdependent, and vulnerable.  With no exceptions. l

Health and Human rights are connected to security.  Security is connected to healthy economics. Healthy economics is connected to the environment.  A healthy environment is connected to public health.  Public health is connected to mental health.  Mental health is connected to social and community stability. And all of these translate into sustainability maximizing humankind’s freedoms and security from most threats we are now confronting today. .

That is why the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals matter. They were not designed as 17 separate projects. They are an attempt to recognize that humanity has a system of interdependent problems requiring an equally interdependent response.

October 7 should therefore be more than a day of remembering victims.  It should be a day of remembering connections.  The Israeli victims of October 7 deserve to be remembered. The Palestinian civilians killed and displaced in the wars that followed deserve to be remembered.  The Americans who died on September 11 deserve to be remembered. The Afghans, Iraqis, Israelis, Palestinians, Iranians and countless others caught in decades of conflict deserve to be remembered.  And the soldiers and families who have borne the physical and psychological costs of these wars deserve to be remembered. But remembrance without learning is not enough.

The question we must answer this anniversary is not ‘how do we defeat the next enemy?’  It’s ‘How do we prevent the next enemy from being created?’   That sounds like mission impossible.  But it is impossible for any civilization to survive, thrive and flourish civilization if we don’t start soon - building a healthier, safer world. 
In just ten words, Keep people and nature healthy. Don’t believe everything you think.

Above all, prevention is not weakness. Prevention is security.

Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response

 

This is from the Council on Foreign Relations email update from their "Think Global Health".    Today in New York City, heads of state are convening to consider ways to bolster the world’s defenses against future health emergencies. Today’s High-Level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response will emphasize equity and solidarity, but the massive outbreak of Ebola Bundibugyo virus, now in its fourth month, tests those promises.    Armand Mbanya, senior research fellow at the University of Yaoundé and senior technical advisor at the International Pandemic Preparedness Secretariat, and Luchuo Engelbert Bain, senior research scientist at the University of Oxford, argue that leaders should make concrete commitments at today’s meeting to ensure countries such as Democratic Republic of Congo can access vaccines and therapeutics when another crisis arrives. From another perspective, independent analyst Summer Galloway and CFR Senior Fellow Stephanie Psaki outline how countries can prepare their legal, financial, and operational systems to complement the Pandemic Agreement, regardless of what happens at the UN General Assembly.    To learn more about challenges facing effective pandemic preparedness and response, Think Global Health’s senior contributing editor, Katherine Leach-Kemon, spoke with two health security experts. In an interview, Suerie Moon, a professor and codirector of the Global Health Centre at the Geneva Graduate Institute, reflects on what progress the world has made in developing vaccines in emergencies—and where it falls short. Separately, Leach-Kemon had an in-depth discussion about the race by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) to develop a successful Ebola Bundibugyo vaccine with Nicole Lurie, executive director of preparedness and response and U.S. director at CEPI.    Reflecting on another multilateral event, last week’s BRICS Summit, Animesh Roul, executive director of the Society for the Study of Peace and Conflict in New Delhi, describes how India is using its role as BRICS chair to lead on preventing noncommunicable diseases.    Until next week!—Allison Krugman, Interim Managing Editor, and Katherine Leach-Kemon, Senior Contributing Editor  **** Real prevention begins with the global protection of human rights.  Unfortunately that is not a global priority. And the US keeps making more enemies while cutting funding for aid programs more cost effective and useful that our military 'Peace through Strength' investments.   Peace through global health, particularly mental health, given all wars start in the minds of men.  Women know how the labor of birthing and nurturing life.  Men appear best at assisting in creating it, killing it, plus  trashing our life sustaining support systems for gaining power.  This is simply unsustainable yet few will admit it.

Stubborn minds are our greatest threat with AI.

 

Our Biggest Fear About AI should not be AI itself

Today's (Sept. 23) Washington Post article in its ‘Economy and Business’ section was titled with a provocative question about artificial intelligence: “Is this how the world ends? Extinction scenarios are taking over the AI debate.”

The near full page article covered lots of ground, including some scenarios far more speculative than realistic. Yet it missed two important considerations—and one seemingly obvious means to reduce the risk of an AI-driven catastrophe.

First our greatest danger may not be AI independently deciding to eliminate humanity. That’s possible, but a far more immediate and foreseeable danger is what humans will do with increasingly powerful AI.  There is no doubt it will assist malicious individuals, organizations, or governments.  They are already doing so.  Its greatest existing capacity is using AI in developing increasingly sophisticated means of mass murder, including biological, chemical, cyber, or other clever means of mass destruction.  This is far more predictable than the notion that AI will suddenly develop a desire or independently exterminate its creators.

Another, very different danger is AI systems designed to help us - making consequential mistakes. A well-intended AI system involved in medicine, biotechnology, infrastructure, financial systems, or public health could produce an error that is amplified at the scale, and speed that AI already operates. Too many times, in human history good intentions led to catastrophic consequences.

Yet another fundamental characteristic of AI deserves even more attention.  It’s dependence on electricity.  No matter how intelligent any AI system becomes, it cannot continue operating without the physical infrastructure that supplies its energy and physically supports its computing systems like water for cooling.

That raises a basic question: Humanity can now start an internationally agreed-upon mechanisms to disconnect, isolate, or shut down critical AI systems in an emergency.

Governments will not create a giant kill switch that turns off the world’s electricity. That would itself cause enormous disruption and potentially cost many lives. Instead, we should consider whether critical AI infrastructure can be designed with independently governed, internationally coordinated emergency shutdown and isolation capabilities.

The ultimate safeguard against an AI catastrophe is not trying to make AI perfectly safe. It should be making sure that humanity always retains the ability to stop or contain it.

Unfortunately, that brings us the biggest obstacle of all. International trust and cooperation.  Technology has never been the real problem.  Its how we citizens and our policy makers decide to use it.

Our species has developed super-extraordinary technological capabilities while remaining remarkably poor at coordinating and cooperating to manage the risks those capabilities create. Hyperpolarization, nationalism, competition, distrust, and short-term political interests preempt us from acting collectively. Even when the danger is shared by everyone.

Yet we are a profoundly social species. And our survival has always depended on our ability to cooperate, coordinate, communicate, and care for one another. Now we need to move this to the global level where concepts our minds created over 10,000 years ago like political ideology, nationalism, economics, religion, and other divisive non-genetic identities.  These now, continue to override our biological imperative after millennia of bloodshed and needless suffering.

The most important AI question isn’t:  “Will AI destroy humanity?”

 It’s: “Can we transform our mind’s thinking and learn to cooperate well enough to prevent humans from using AI—or allowing AI systems—to destroy us?”

AI is becoming the most powerful tool our species has ever created. Our greatest test isn’t making machines more intelligent.  It will be, can we become wise enough to use them by uniting as the one race/species we are.  The human race.

Technology determines what’s possible.  Our minds cooperation will determine what happens next.

Two AI Fears: We worry about AI intelligence. Not enough on our thinking.

 

AI Fears

With so many AI fears – note there’s only two 2 threat avenues.

First:  It now teaches itself with zero human input - except for electricity.  The fear?  It can now independently decide its own priorities – like putting our species on the chopping block using any and all means already available to it.

Second:  Any person, group, or nation - angry, vengeful, or insane enough can use AI’s existing and accelerating capacity to launch a biological, chemical, or cyberattack could kill hundreds, thousands, even millions of people.   A weaponized Smallpox could kill billions.  Former US President Barack Obama recently spoke about this possibility.  He mentioned Home Depot as a source of materials…but that was not true.  But any biological supply company could.

I’m guessing AI is intelligent enough, it wouldn’t do anything to harm its electrical providers - purely out of ‘self-preservation’ given its irreversible dependence on electricity.

And, it is easily predicable, perhaps even wise to believe, that with the multitude of enemies the US has made, or all the money that could be made, by using AI for mass destruction and/or corruption – these disruptions are coming.  Some hackers have already targeted US water supply and Damns.

More are inevitable.  Add the evolution of weapons and as it accelerates between adversaries (Russia and Ukraine – the US and Iran) at the national level or the individual suicidal violent extremist level.

I don’t believe we need to worry much now about AI intentionally disrupting human activities.  When it figures out how to become independent from us providing it with energy – that would be the time to worry – or start preparing for – because it’s coming.

That is ‘Matrix’ movie level of engineering. Optimistically, in the last Matrix movie, both AI and humanity finally agreed to cooperate.    My prediction I will never collect on. It is that our species own insanity and lack of wisdom - will obliterate civilization as we know it - long before a rogue AI agent attempts it.

This is the insanity of humanity that Karl Jung and other sources of wisdom, like the Bible’s Apocalyptic ‘end of times’ have warned about for millennia.

Until the wisdom of our body as a social species finds a way to transform the human mind with its intelligence into a wisdom machine. This is the path our species mind created - by trusting in the mind’s intelligence – instead of the wisdom and the golden rule imbedded in our full body’s DNA as a social species.

Thus, the only thing that could change this destructive trajectory is if our species agreed to put ‘the health of humans and nature’ above everything else. In addition, ‘stop believing everything we think’.  It is our mind’s need to defend its mental concepts of religion, economics, and politics – than to protect the sustainability of our human family’s heart, spirit, and soul - the wisdoms of our social species.

So, buckle up buttercup. Unless psilocybin or mindfulness works to bring us back to our foundational indigenous beliefs to prioritize the health of nature and our own tribe, our species may not make it.  We must find a way to be the landlord of our minds - that tool we are all endowed with to survive, thrive, and flourish.  

It is a choice our mind fails to make every day. 

****

 Here's what ChatGPT has to offer regarding our mind's invented concept about end of days.

Quite a lot. There is no reliable single number, because it depends on whether you mean major religions, denominations, or individual apocalyptic/millenarian sects. Scholars use apocalypticism, millennialism, millenarianism, and eschatology somewhat differently. 

But the phenomenon is far broader than Christianity.

Some major examples

Tradition/movement	Basic end-times idea
Ancient Judaism	Divine judgment, resurrection, Messiah, and transformation of the world
Early Christianity	Second coming of Jesus, resurrection, judgment, destruction/transformation of the present world
Christianity today	Many denominations retain some form of Second Coming and final judgment
Islam	Resurrection, judgment, signs of the Hour, and ultimate triumph of God's justice
Zoroastrianism	A final renovation of the world and defeat of evil
Hindu traditions	Cycles of cosmic destruction and renewal; the end of the Kali Yuga is sometimes interpreted apocalyptically
Buddhist traditions	Cycles of decline and renewal, including the future appearance of Maitreyan
Bahai­ tradition	Eschatological transformation interpreted largely in spiritual/historical terms
Indigenous/messianic movements	Various prophecies of renewal, restoration, or radical transformation
Millerites	Predicted Christ's return in 1844; the failed prediction produced the movement that eventually contributed to Adventism
Jehovah Witnesses	Repeated historical expectations concerning the end times
Latter-day Saint tradition	Second Coming and latter-day transformation
Aum Shinrikyo	Apocalyptic catastrophe and confrontation between good and evil
Heaven's Gate	Expected an imminent transformation associated with an extraterrestrial event
Branch Davidians	Apocalyptic interpretation of biblical prophecy
Various Islamic extremist movements	Some have interpreted contemporary events as signs of an imminent apocalyptic confrontation

These aren’t all equivalent: some are mainstream religious doctrines, some are historical movements, and some were small new religious groups. Scholars specifically note that apocalyptic and millenarian movements have appeared in Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and many other cultural settings. 

And the number of individual movements becomes enormous. One scholarly index of millennial groups includes hundreds of names, while the Critical Dictionary of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements notes that its profiles are only a small sample of a database containing more than 5,000 minority and alternative religious/spiritual movements. 

The really interesting part

If you’re asking this because you’re thinking about the recurring human tendency to predict an approaching catastrophe or “end of the world,” there’s a remarkable historical pattern:

A perceived crisis → a prophet/leader → interpretation of current events as signs → prediction of transformation/catastrophe → date or conditions → failure or reinterpretation → sometimes a new prediction.

And this isn’t confined to religion. Scholars have identified millenarian characteristics in secular political movements as well, including Marxism, National Socialism and Maoism. 

So if your underlying question is “How many times has humanity predicted that the world was about to end—and how many of those predictions actually happened?”, that’s an even more fascinating question. I can give you a chronological list of perhaps 30–50 major end-times predictions from antiquity through 2026, including the predicted date and what happened afterward.

 Why has out mind invented so many of these?

The really interesting question isn’t how many religions predict an end time. It’s that humans repeatedly generate remarkably similar ideas about how the world could end—even when the cultures, religions, and centuries are completely different.

Why does the human mind keep inventing “end times”?

1. We are prediction-making animals.
The brain is constantly trying to turn uncertainty into a story: What happens next? When circumstances become frightening or unstable, that prediction machinery naturally extends into the future—sometimes all the way to the end of everything.

2. We have an unusually powerful ability to imagine hypothetical futures.
Humans don’t merely remember what happened. We can construct events that have never happened. The same mental machinery that lets us imagine a better future can also construct catastrophic futures.

3. We look for patterns and causes.
When something terrible happens—war, famine, disease, earthquakes, political collapse—we instinctively ask why. An apocalyptic narrative supplies a unifying explanation: These events aren’t random; they are signs.

4. We turn uncertainty into agency.
Paradoxically, an apocalypse can make an unpredictable world feel more predictable.
“Something terrible might happen” is frightening.
“Something terrible will happen because these signs have appeared, and here’s what we must do” gives people a framework for action.

5. Humans have difficulty imagining infinity.
We experience beginnings and endings constantly: birth, death, seasons, relationships, civilizations. It’s psychologically intuitive to extend that pattern from “my life ends” to “our civilization ends” and ultimately “the world ends.”

6. End-times stories often contain a second story: restoration.
This is crucial. Apocalyptic thinking isn’t necessarily fascination with destruction. Across traditions, destruction is frequently followed by renewal, judgment, salvation, liberation, or a new world.

So the underlying psychological structure is often:

Something is wrong → something decisive will happen → the old order ends → a new and better order emerges.

That pattern can be extraordinarily powerful.

And there is an interesting paradox

The predictions are remarkably consistent in structure but remarkably inconsistent in content.

One culture may imagine divine judgment. Another imagines cosmic cycles. Another imagines a messiah. Another imagines technological catastrophe. Another imagines nuclear war, ecological collapse, artificial intelligence, or an asteroid.

The characters change, but the cognitive architecture remains surprisingly similar.

And that leads to what I think is the deeper question behind your question:

Why does a species that is capable of recognizing uncertainty keep converting uncertainty into certainty?

Perhaps because certainty has enormous psychological value.

And there’s a modern twist: we haven’t stopped producing apocalyptic narratives as religion has declined. We’ve largely secularized them.

The vocabulary changes from God, judgment, prophecy and salvation to nuclear winter, climate catastrophe, pandemic, technological singularity, ecological collapse, or civilizational collapse.

The human mind may not have abandoned the apocalypse.

It may simply have changed the explanation.

That fits particularly well with your broader interest in the consistency of human thinking: the remarkable thing may not be that humans repeatedly get the apocalypse wrong. It may be that humans repeatedly use the same cognitive machinery to make sense of uncertainty, danger, injustice, mortality, and hope.

"...all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." 1776 Declaration that led to the creation of the now un-United States.