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Cybercrime groups are on the lookout for poorly defended parts of the digital supply chain to attack companies and governments. (Bill Hinton/Getty Images)

Cracks In The Cyber Supply Chain

Post author By Robert Hannigan
Post date December 16, 2019

Robert Hannigan chairs the international division of BlueVoyant, a cybersecurity company. Until 2017 he was the director of GCHQ, the U.K. signals intelligence agency, and he established the country’s National Cyber Security Center. He is a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

This summer, Elizabeth Denham, the U.K.’s information commissioner, issued an important ruling that sent quiet shockwaves through European corporate boardrooms. The ruling effectively expanded the responsibility of companies in relation to their software and technology supply chains.

The key development came from the fallout of the Marriott data breach, announced by the company almost exactly a year ago. The data loss itself, albeit a large one involving the personal and financial data — including names, addresses, credit card information, passport numbers and travel plans — of some 380 million customers across many countries, might once have been greeted with a shrug, embarrassing to the company’s reputation but just another in a list of similar breaches that customers are becoming wearily familiar with.

Yet the consequences of this attack are just beginning to unfold. The company faces multiple lawsuits in the U.S. and other jurisdictions. Accenture, to which Starwood, a Marriott subsidiary, and subsequently Marriott itself outsourced much of their IT operations, is also the subject of litigation.

“Traditional investment, due diligence and risk assessment processes need to catch up with the speed and sophistication of cyber threats.”

Denham announced in July that she intended to impose a fine of $123 million on the hotel group. While this is not a trivial amount for any company to face, the wider impact came in the report itself. Denham judged that the fine was appropriate because “Marriott failed to undertake sufficient due diligence when it bought Starwood.” In short, Marriott had acquired a company that had already been severely compromised by hackers, probably in 2014, and only spotted the breach two years after the integration of Starwood and the cross-infection of the wider group.

The regulator appears to be saying what ought to be obvious: traditional investment, due diligence and risk assessment processes need to catch up with the speed and sophistication of cyber threats. The data rooms of the future will need a much richer picture of cyber data and what it can tell us about a company’s relative cybersecurity readiness, what needs to be done to remediate the extant cyber risks and how much this will cost.

But due diligence in cyber is not only a concern for mergers and acquisitions. The same attempt to assess unquantified cyber risk is worrying every major company, especially in financial services, which understands this better than any sector. Even the best-protected institutions are increasingly aware that the thousands of vendors and suppliers connected to them are potential vectors for attack — weak links in their shields. As defenses are hardened, cybercrime groups are looking for poorly defended parts of the supply chain as an ideal way in. From IT providers to law firms and small investment houses to recruitment agencies, suppliers are a popular route for these attackers. Financial regulators, too, are increasingly focused on how to measure the cyber risk presented by individual banks to the wider system, both in the interests of systemic resilience and consumer protection.

“As defenses are hardened, cybercrime groups are looking for poorly defended parts of the supply chain as an ideal way in.”

At the high end of cyber threats, notably against the defense sector, risk in the supply chain has been a major national security concern in recent years. The Department of Defense inspector general sounded the alarm in July about the inadequacy of cyber due diligence in procurement decisions, highlighting the threats from hostile nation-states that may be embedded in off-the-shelf products and household-name services.

Situated at the critical end of the cyber-threat landscape, defense illustrates the problem of complexity: even understanding the hardware and software supply chain of a new network-enabled warship or aircraft is challenging. Thousands of companies are involved, each with a different level of access to sensitive information. It also shows that traditional methods of vetting are necessary but insufficient: even if the company flies a U.S. or allied flag, the nature of modern software development makes it hard to know where code was actually written, and by whom. And nearly all commonly available IT hardware is manufactured in China.

Of course, worrying about third-party risk is arguably a step forward: It points to the progress made by companies in addressing their own cyber exposure. It also suggests that we are having some success in raising the bar by hardening defenses, displacing cybercrime to softer targets. But all that will be little consolation: A piece of malware delivered through a weakly defended third party can be every bit as destructive as a spear-phishing email, with which we are all familiar, sent directly to our company.

“The nature of modern software development makes it hard to know where code was actually written, and by whom.”

If we are to avoid a future in which our entire global supply chain is increasingly untrustworthy, we will need a new approach to trust and verification. For governments, this will mean regulation of cybersecurity standards, some of which is already emerging. For companies, it will not be acceptable to take the word of suppliers that their security is good, and questionnaires allowing them to mark their own homework will no longer constitute due diligence.

Instead, companies will need to look at their vendors as an attacker would: from the outside, assessing their vulnerabilities, insisting on minimum security controls and practical remediation where necessary. And they will need to monitor the performance of these suppliers regularly, rather than taking a snapshot and hoping for the best.

In the cyber age, a company’s responsibility, like its attack surface, no longer stops at its own corporate boundary.

It’s time for countries to unite behind bold climate action and protect the future of the children of their nations. (Visoot Uthairam/Getty Images)

The Human Rights Of Children Depend On Urgent Climate Action

Post author By Mary Robinson
Post date December 10, 2019

Mary Robinson is the former president of Ireland, former United Nations high commissioner for human rights and chair of The Elders. Peter Kalmus is a climate scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, speaking on his own behalf.

Today, 16 children sent letters to the governments of Norway and Canada with a simple but bold request: that these nations uphold their commitments to safeguard children by responding with urgency to the climate crisis, and that they be held accountable for running in the wrong direction, disregarding science and violating the right to life and health of children everywhere.

These children represent the United States, Sweden, the Marshall Islands, Brazil, Italy, Germany, Tunisia and other countries. The letters call out Norway and Canada for recently approving new projects designed to expand fossil fuel production, further accelerating the climate crisis. For example, over the next 20 years, Canada plans to increase its production of oil and gas by roughly 60 percent and 35 percent, respectively, even though science tells us that humanity must end its dependence on fossil fuels. These countries are not alone, unfortunately: Too many world leaders continue to make investments in fossil fuels despite the climate crisis.

Fossil fuels have been undeniably useful to the human project. Modern civilization is built on them. But now we know the dangers they present. Global heating of only 1.1 degrees Celsius (2.0 degrees Fahrenheit) is already supercharging heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, storms and floods around the globe. It is already contributing to the widespread decline and death of ecosystems like tropical and boreal forests and coral reefs at a sickening pace. It is threatening food and water supplies, as well as geopolitical stability. As if this weren’t enough, air pollution from all the burning of fossil fuels is the single greatest threat to health on the planet. Every new day that we burn fossil fuels makes all of this worse.

“Too many world leaders continue to make investments in fossil fuels despite the climate crisis.”

We find ourselves at an extraordinary moment. Our glorious, living planet has already been pushed too far by our use of fossil fuels. Our window of opportunity to stave off the bad has closed, and now humanity’s collective back is against the wall to prevent the catastrophic. The scientific consensus is that humanity must cut global emissions in half by 2030 or sooner for a fighting chance to remain below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of global heating. However, many scientists, including one of us, feel that even this is too slow. Furthermore, wealthy developed nations must go even faster since far more of their fossil fuels are burned for “wants” as opposed to “needs.”

We have the technology to accomplish such a massive, rapid transition. But governments and fossil fuel companies — even the ones that understand the dangers posed by the climate crisis and have voiced a commitment to address it — remain in a state of denial, accelerating humanity headlong toward catastrophe and possible global genocide. In so doing, they cast aside children’s right to survive and develop healthily. In so doing, they may even divert the collective future of humanity from a path of prosperity, peace and collective self-discovery to something unthinkably dark and effectively permanent from the perspective of humans. This is a devastating breach of trust.

Every additional fraction of a degree of warming has the potential to set off a domino effect of irreversible changes to our planet that will deteriorate the quality of life for humanity so much that even the most basic of human rights will be rendered untenable.

One mechanism to prevent this is contained within the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child, which states that whenever adults make decisions, or do anything that affects children, they should always think about what is best for the child. Children have the right to voice their opinions and be taken seriously when decisions affecting their futures are being made.

“Whenever adults make decisions, or do anything that affects children, they should always think about what is best for the child.”

At COP25, the annual climate conference taking place in Madrid right now, the future of our planet is being plotted, for better or worse, for action or inaction, on timescales longer than humans have existed. Children are right to be concerned about those decisions.

If the world’s nations do not rapidly act on the climate emergency, they will allow it to become the biggest and longest-lasting human rights crisis humanity has ever faced. It’s time for countries to demonstrate the courage to keep their promises and protect the children of their nations — of all nations. It’s time for countries to unite behind the science and lead us into a future free of fossil fuels.

Like the children bringing forth these letters, and the millions more who have risen up in protest over the past year, we are angry and terrified. But also like the children, we know real change is coming. The countries that take the lead now and guide us toward ecological civilization will literally save humanity, and protect the rights of children for generations to come.

An Iraqi demonstrator during anti-government protests in Najaf

Iraq And Lebanon Should Heed Tunisia’s Lesson

Post author By Jordan Reimer
Post date November 20, 2019

Jordan Reimer is a Middle East policy analyst at the RAND Corporation.

“We want a country,” rings the cry around Baghdad’s Tahrir Square. “The people want the fall of the regime.” Mass protests have filled the streets in Iraq and Lebanon for weeks now. Despite the prime minister of Lebanon resigning at the end of October and his Iraqi counterpart agreeing to do the same, there is no end in sight to the demonstrations.

The current turmoil bears some resemblance to the 2011 Arab Spring protests that swept the region, but are better described as the “Bizarro Arab Spring” or one taking place in “the Upside Down.” The desire for sweeping political change has a crucial difference this time: the type of government protesters seek to replace. Where the original Arab Spring protests removed authoritarian leaders, the current demonstrators are trying to topple popularly elected governments, which could have dramatic implications for the future of representative democracy in the Middle East.

In Lebanon today, protests have centered around the demolishing of an explicit sect-based political system that’s been in place since the end of the civil war in 1990. And in Iraq, there are calls for a presidential system to replace the current parliamentary system, which operates with an implicit sectarian dimension.

Much as the original Arab Spring countries were led by corrupt elites unwilling or unable to provide basic services to the public, so too the elected governments in Lebanon and Iraq have proven unresponsive to the daily needs of their citizens. The consociational model in Lebanon entrenched a political class with no real fear of losing power no matter how (in)effectively they served their respective religious constituencies. And Iraqi parliamentary coalition-building has been so dominated by attempts to appease potential spoilers — particularly those with ties to Iran — through ministerial allotments and nepotistic hiring that governing and service provision has often been relegated to an afterthought.

“Elected governments in Lebanon and Iraq have proven unresponsive to the daily needs of their citizens.”

In a dictatorship, there are no legitimate means of political expression. The only way for the people to “vote” is with their feet, making their political desires known through mass protest and ultimately revolution. But in a democracy, even a fragile one, citizens’ desires can be made known via the ballot box or by the power of free speech and assembly to indicate dissatisfaction with the status quo. A democratic government has the ability to respond or change accordingly as politicians are incentivized to comply, lest they get voted out of office or lose their coalition partners scrambling to heed public sentiment.

Importantly then, a demand for “regime change” in a democracy is not a recipe for government to be more representative; it is, more likely, the exact opposite. In socially, religiously and ethnically fractious societies such as Lebanon and Iraq, dismantling de facto or de jure sect-based coalitional systems easily could lead to majoritarian ones, where the interests of individual communities are marginalized and the social fabric is forever torn. Rather than work within the confines of the current system, the masses are sending out a call for extra-constitutional change — and an open invitation for would-be populist autocrats to seize the mantle of popular discontent and elevate themselves to power.

That is exactly what befell Egypt in the summer of 2013. The first democratically elected president in Egypt’s history, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi, faced mass protests a year into his term in office. The Egyptian military, declaring itself in service to the “people’s demands,” arrested Morsi and suspended the constitution. Then-minister of defense General Abdel Fattah el-Sissi has been in charge ever since. As President Trump’s moniker for el-Sissi — “my favorite dictator” — makes clear, there is no more democracy in Egypt.

“Democracy isn’t perfect, but it offers the chance to get it right the next time.”

In contrast, Tunisia’s government responded to a period of mass protest and political unrest much differently. That same summer, after a spate of assassinations led to calls for the overthrow of the democratically elected Islamist government, civil society groups were able to come together and constructively work with the government to hold a series of national dialogues that eventually produced new elections and a new constitution. Rather than accede to nihilistic calls for the overthrow of the government, social and political leaders came together to address protesters’ demands responsibly, earning the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts.

The future of democratic governance in the Middle East is better served if Lebanon and Iraq follow the Tunisian model rather than the Egyptian one. Of course, that will require, above all, responsible behavior from the leadership in each country. Those still holding on to power would be wise to heed the lessons of summer 2013: Listen to the people. Work across the political spectrum. Create true broad-based reform, which may involve fundamental changes to the constitutional system.

Those in the street also should be careful what they wish for. Democracy isn’t perfect, but it offers the chance to get it right the next time. Following a revolution, there may not be a next time.

An engineer demonstrates how the Blue Force Tracker system works.

Drawing The Line Against Data Abuse In Open Societies

Post author By Nathan Gardels
Post date September 7, 2018

Algorithms and surveillance based on electronic data are penetrating all aspects of modern society, from medical diagnosis to monitoring domestic violence to illegal immigrants awaiting asylum hearings. As is the case with digital technology generally, the positive intent carries with it the collateral damage of misinformation and invasion of privacy. Where to draw the red lines that separate the benefits of these fast-arriving innovations from their abuse is becoming a central issue for all open societies.

In The WorldPost this week, we look at specific cases that illustrate the challenge of how and where to draw those lines.

Adam Hofmann discusses how algorithmic screening tools that are used to identify depression or prevent self-harm and suicide can misdiagnose mental illness — a label that could then stick with the person. He writes about our online behavior: “A series of emojis, words, actions or even inactions can communicate how you feel at a given moment and when collected over time, comprise your ‘socionome’ — a digital catalogue of your mental health that is similar to how your genome can provide a picture of your physical health.”

“As a physician,” he continues, “I see the risks and consequences of algorithmic overreach in mental health falling into two camps: there are the risks of ‘false positives,’ of labeling healthy people as being mentally ill, and the risks of ‘false negatives,’ of missing cases of mental illness that actively require our attention.”

He concludes: “While the medical application of the socionome holds a great deal of potential, how data science influences medical diagnostics raises thorny issues. Doctors, after all, are not allowed to practice untested diagnostics on patients, never mind on large numbers of unsuspecting social media users, and then go on to share that data with others without their patients’ consent. If social media data is health data, and data scientists are using it to diagnose mental illness, then we must ask ourselves: shouldn’t we hold them to the same privacy and health standards as medical practitioners?”

Criminologists Edna Erez and Peter Ibarra look at court-ordered GPS monitoring of individuals accused of perpetrating domestic violence. “In response to lethal cases of separation assault,” the authors report, “a growing number of state legislatures have passed or are considering passing legislation that mandates or permits the electronic monitoring of domestic violence defendants — most recently with GPS tracking ankle monitors — to ensure they comply with judges’ stay-away, protection or restraining orders. While most defendants comply with such orders, a minority of alleged abusers with a long history of violence regard them as a mere ‘piece of paper.’ Requiring GPS monitoring is hence a way of giving the orders teeth.”

While such monitoring is mostly effective and is reassuring for the victims, according to the authors there can be a downside. “Given the perils of surveillance and the loss of privacy that such individuals face,” Erez and Ibarra ask, “should defendants who are accused of a crime, but have yet to be convicted of one, be placed under electronic monitoring?”

In the end, the authors conclude the benefits outweigh the risks to privacy. “Monitoring is no panacea for domestic violence. It does, however, level a playing field that is often stacked against victims, and it can afford them and their families peace of mind, freedom from abuse and harassment, and importantly, the fairer legal process they deserve.”

GPS monitoring of asylum applicants awaiting a hearing is less clear-cut, says the American Civil Liberties Union’s Ruthie Epstein. “We know almost nothing about the ways ICE handles the data from these devices,” she writes, referring to GPS tracking ankle bracelets, “whether it’s what information is collected, how long it’s retained by the government, who has access to that information or for what purposes it’s used.”

Epstein notes that ICE claims it is using ankle monitors as an alternative to detention. “Instead,” she argues, “it appears that it’s using the devices as an alternative form of detention that enables it to expand the total number of people under its supervision. Since 2004, BI Incorporated — a subsidiary of the GEO Group, the second-largest private prison company in the country — has run ICE’s ‘alternatives to detention’ program, which relies on ankle monitors. At its inception, the program received $14 million from Congress. By 2017, its budget had grown to $183 million, an increase of 13 times, which suggests that the use of ankle monitors has also increased.”

Epstein argues there are other alternatives, from bail to “humanitarian parole” to community-based case management services, that could replace the use of GPS monitoring. “Given the significant downsides, ankle monitors should never be used unless no other alternative short of actual detention or jail will ensure court appearance,” she concludes.

The core reality of the digital age is that where there is connectivity, there is surveillance.

Sorting out how this reality benefits society, where it infringes on personal liberty — either by the state or private corporations — and how to regulate it, is part and parcel of the great technological transformation under way. The best way to weigh the pluses and minuses is by examining actual situations instead of turning to blanket solutions for these complex and multifaceted problems, which extend across so many realms of daily life.

This was produced by The WorldPost, a partnership of the Berggruen Institute and The Washington Post.

Does surveilling alleged domestic abusers violate their rights?

Post author By Edna Erez
Post date September 6, 2018

Edna Erez and Peter Ibarra are professors of criminology, law and justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

In the United States, about one in three women in intimate relationships experiences abuse, including rape, battery, intimidation and stalking. But those who report domestic violence to authorities or attempt to leave their abusers are at risk of experiencing harassment and separation assault, which can sometimes be deadly. They are also vulnerable to being coaxed by an alleged abuser into backpedaling their story. These are forms of witness tampering that interfere with a victim’s ability to testify.

In response to lethal cases of separation assault, a growing number of state legislatures have passed or are considering passing legislation that mandates or permits the electronic monitoring of domestic violence defendants — most recently with GPS tracking ankle monitors — to ensure they comply with judges’ stay away, protection or restraining orders. While most defendants comply with such orders, a minority of alleged abusers with a long history of violence regard them as a mere “piece of paper.” Requiring GPS monitoring is hence a way of giving the orders teeth.

To place a defendant on electronic monitoring, courts generally require either a history of abuse, a record of violating restraining orders or a police report that raises serious alarms with prosecutors or judges about the alleged victim’s safety, such as if a defendant threatened a victim in the presence of an arresting officer. But given the perils of surveillance and the loss of privacy that such individuals face, should defendants who are accused of a crime, but have yet to be convicted of one, be placed under electronic monitoring?

At a minimum, a domestic violence defendant placed on GPS monitoring is forced to avoid certain “exclusion zones” — typically areas where the victim is routinely present, such as the home or workplace. But there can also be lifestyle restrictions, such as the imposition of a curfew or prohibitions on the use of alcohol. Some jurisdictions seize firearms owned by the defendant for the duration of an abuse case. There can even be unannounced home visits, during which defendants’ personal property is subject to warrantless searches.

For survivors of domestic violence, such restrictions may not only enhance their quality of life but also save their lives. Current or former partners can be tireless in their efforts to batter, stalk, ambush, control and menace their victims. In extreme cases, they may end up killing them. Over half of homicides of women in the United States are perpetrated by their intimate partner.

When their alleged abusers are placed on ankle monitors, survivors of abuse can have some assurance that “this time he is staying away.” They can reimagine their lives, furnish dependent children with a secure home and revive dormant social and family ties that had atrophied during abusive relationships. Importantly, they may be more willing to tell their story on the witness stand. Historically, a substantial majority of domestic violence charges are dropped or dismissed because victims are reluctant, ambivalent or fearful about testifying against their alleged abuser, who can harass or intimidate them into not appearing at trial or into recanting their stories. As the staff members of programs who help such women told us, some victims whose abusers were placed on ankle monitors felt empowered and willing to testify.

While most defendants resent the devices, particularly those in jurisdictions that put them under onerous restrictions, some defendants perceive benefits in being monitored, as the tracking devices provide them with a constant alibi, shielding them from the prospect of a vengeful ex-partner’s false accusations. Indeed, some defense attorneys we interviewed urged their clients to volunteer for monitoring — they viewed it as leaving a paper trail that would only help them win their case. After all, electronic monitoring is a temporary measure, usually limited to a case’s adjudication period, which lasts from arrest to disposition, an average of three months. Under some circumstances, the condition can even be lifted through a motion filed by the defendant or others, including the victim.

Still, given the restraints on defendants’ liberties, it is essential that courts are cautious about who is placed in their program’s ranks and are flexible in managing defendants. Restrictions that could potentially affect defendants’ ability to conduct their affairs — including earning a living — ought to be minimally intrusive without compromising the alleged victim’s safety. Programs vary in their willingness to accommodate defendants’ personal circumstances — an area where improvement may be required. For instance, programs could allow defendants to leave for work early so that they do not have to break their curfews or they could draw smaller exclusion zones so that defendants do not have to take an additional bus line to avoid them. Some agencies even make defendants pay for the cost of daily GPS monitoring. This should not be a condition of enrollment, as the fees may be a financial burden on the defendant or his dependents.

In itself, this sort of monitoring is no panacea for domestic violence. Nor is it foolproof or problem free. It does, however, level a playing field that is often stacked against victims. It can afford victims and their families peace of mind, freedom from abuse and harassment, and importantly, the fairer legal process they deserve.

This was produced by The WorldPost, a partnership of the Berggruen Institute and The Washington Post.

What Happens When An Algorithm Labels You As Mentally Ill?

Post author By Adam Hofmann
Post date September 4, 2018

Adam Hofmann is an internal medicine physician and founder of Medmo.ca and Preventia Clinics.

SAINT JEROME, Canada — While you might think that your mental health is known only to you, your health practitioner or those closest to you, you might be unwittingly revealing it to strangers online. A series of emojis, words, actions or even inactions can communicate how you feel at a given moment and when collected over time, comprise your “socionome” — a digital catalogue of your mental health that is similar to how your genome can provide a picture of your physical health.

Today, a number of efforts have been made to design algorithms to scan online behaviors for markers of mental illness. Crisis Text Line, a messaging service that connects users to crisis counselors, uses a chatbot to flag callers at risk of suicide and bump them to the front of the helpline. The services’ data scientists have found, for example, that when a caller texts the word “Advil” or “Ibuprofen” to Crisis Text Line, his or her risk of attempting suicide is up to 14 times higher than that of the average caller.

Social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have also implemented or been used to deploy algorithms attempting to identify or even prevent people at risk of suicide from self-harm by directing them to the appropriate health services. And while there are certainly potential positive applications of using technology to identify and address mental health, such as redirecting people to professional help, the potential negatives are significant and must be addressed.

To start, the tools themselves might be crude or rudimentary, designed by people untrained in psychiatry or psychology and thus, unmoored from their usefulness in a clinical setting for determining whether a patient is depressed or not. In 2013, Microsoft’s research subsidiary, Microsoft Research, reported that a depression screening tool used data gleaned from over 69,000 social media posts to predict depression with roughly 70 percent accuracy. To the non-physician, this number might seem impressive. But as most clinicians know, this level of accuracy is low. For statistical reasons, tests below the 85 percent threshold are rarely useful.

Microsoft Research’s technology was based on common clinical criteria established by the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression, which has a higher rate of screening for depression in patients at roughly 87 percent. Similarly, two scholars, a psychologist and computer scientist created a tool to determine whether Instagram users were clinically depressed based on pixel-by-pixel analysis of their posts. This tool had, at best, less than 70 percent accuracy as a screening test. Under certain test conditions, it performed only slightly better, and even sometimes worse, than a coin toss.

In more mature fields of medical research, such as pharmacology and therapeutics, physicians and other health professionals know that prior to unleashing any new drugs or devices to the public, whether curative or diagnostic, they must test them extensively to prove that they demonstrate significant benefits and minimize the likelihood of harm. The medical field is also subject to strict health and privacy laws for safeguarding patient data.

Fields involving artificial intelligence and algorithm-based diagnostic tools are not subject to this level of scrutiny and regulation, even when it affects a person’s well-being. There was no regulation, for example, in the creation of the Samaritans Radar app in 2014, which notified users of who among their Twitter followers was at risk of suicide based on phrases such as “help me” and “need someone to talk to.” It was only after significant public outcry about the risks of publicly flagging Twitter users’ emotional state, which could subject already vulnerable people to bullying, that the controversial mental health app was shuttered.

As a physician, I see the risks and consequences of algorithmic overreach in mental health falling into two camps: there are the risks of “false positives,” of labelling healthy people as being mentally ill, and the risks of “false negatives,” of missing cases of mental illness that actively require our attention.

Could false positives, for example, lead people who are not yet depressed to believe they are? One’s mental health is a complex interplay of genetic, physical and environmental factors. We know of the placebo and nocebo effects in medicine, when blind users of a sugar pill experience either the positive or negative effects of a medicine because they have either positive or negative expectations of it. Being told you are unwell might literally make it so.

Then imagine if those labelling tools, accurate or not, were used by third parties — insurers, employers or even the government. Would a person be ineligible for life insurance based on the color scheme or filters used in a series of Instagram photos? Could a government agency decide to rescind an individual’s right to bear arms based on his or her Twitter posts?

New technological tools for the screening and identification of mental illness could also lead to dangerous false negatives. Microsoft Research’s new algorithm, for example, raises the possibility, as the company notes in a paper, of creating “a social media depression index that may serve to characterize levels of depression in populations” — in other words, a heat map for depressed people. From the perspective of a public health official, this might be used to appropriately direct resources such as counsellors, crisis centers or doctors to an at-risk region or perhaps serve as an early-warning system for a substance abuse epidemic, such as with our current opioid crisis.

But false negatives may result from inadvertently excluding certain populations from these heat maps. For example, rural and poor communities, which already suffer from fewer mental health resources, are at risk of being left out because they are more likely to be technologically under-represented. Under the direction of a misguided algorithm, we may be distracted from helping the sick by overanalyzing the digitally-active healthy.

While the medical application of the socionome holds a great deal of potential, how data science influences medical diagnostics raises thorny issues. Doctors, after all, are not allowed to practice untested diagnostics on patients, never mind on large numbers of unsuspecting social media users, and then go on to share that data with others without their patients’ consent. If social media data is health data, and data scientists are using it to diagnose mental illness, then we must ask ourselves: shouldn’t we hold them to the same privacy and health standards as medical practitioners?

This was produced by The WorldPost, a partnership of the Berggruen Institute and The Washington Post.

To rejuvenate, China must continue opening up

Post author By Yan Xuetong
Post date August 23, 2018

Yan Xuetong is dean of the Institute of International Relations at Tsinghua University and author of “Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power.”

BEIJING — The U.S.-China trade tensions this year have bolstered protectionist forces in both countries that support a tit-for-tat trade war, posing a serious threat to China’s development. Since it started opening up its economy in 1978, China’s rise has been inextricably linked to globalization. For it to realize its goal of general prosperity, that link must be maintained and strengthened.

There are four main reasons why China must bolster its efforts to further open up:

1. Opening up determines the success of a rising power’s reforms.

The successful rise of a major power requires constant adjustment and continuous reforms. Opening up exposes a country’s policymakers to other nations’ development achievements and enables officials to devise policies that address defects in their own countries. Having an objective understanding of what works and what doesn’t is key for devising sound policies.

The closed environment of the Cultural Revolution, for example, prevented an objective understanding of how the outside world was developing, resulting in a mistaken belief that class struggle was the way to modernization. Under such misguided thinking, policy adjustments led to retrogression. For 10 years, China missed out on strategic opportunities to help the nation rise.

An open environment, meanwhile, emancipates the mind through knowledge and spurs innovation. During the information age, which coincided with post-Cold War globalization, innovation became the principal driver of social development.

The main reason China’s coast developed faster than its interior was its greater openness and interaction with the outside world. Given this exposure, people there tend to think more outside the box, more easily accept new and unfamiliar concepts and thus help heighten innovation. To continue to rise in the age of globalization, China needs to attract as much world-class talent as possible to strengthen its innovation. Further opening up is a necessary condition for this.

2. Opening up stimulates reform through competition.

When there is little external competition, a rising nation may lapse into maintaining the status quo and lose the motivation to reform. At the start of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), China initially opened itself to foreign influence, which enhanced its competitiveness and led to the development of the world’s most powerful navigational capability at the time. But China swiftly instituted protectionist trade policies and banned international maritime trade. Overseas competition disappeared, as did China’s navigational superiority.

When external competition increases, however, the rising state must carry out reforms to stay competitive. Opening up is a way of eliminating backwardness as it pushes internal reform through external pressure. Since China joined the World Trade Organization in the early 2000s, it has faced huge external pressures, which has pushed it to eliminate backward production capacity.

The opening up of higher education forced Chinese universities to compete with foreign universities to attract and retain top faculty and encouraged the Chinese government to formulate an education reform plan in 1998 for building world-class universities. Likewise, the recent U.S. decision to sanction computer chip supplies to the Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE bolstered China’s resolve to strengthen its scientific research. There is now newfound motivation for the government to encourage technological innovation and for enterprises to strengthen independent research and development capability.

Today, China’s foreign trade is more open than its financial institutions. Consequently, the former is more competitive than the latter. China is the world’s largest trader, but the renminbi is not even a principal settlement currency let alone the world’s principal reserve currency. Likewise, state-protected enterprises aren’t yet internationally competitive, but unprotected private enterprises such as telecom firm Huawei are.

As China’s experiences over the past 40 years reveal, the more open a field the faster its competitiveness grows, whereas the more protected a field the harder it is to be competitive.

3. Opening up helps domestic economies adapt to the global economy.

Domestic and international affairs are integrated, and a country cannot adapt to globalization without opening up. In 2006, Chinese leaders made the strategic decision to integrate domestic affairs and international affairs into one, so that national policies would be consistent instead of in conflict with the trends of the times.

The principle of “national treatment” after the Cold War also forced WTO members to manage domestic and foreign enterprises with uniform policies. China thus upgraded its opening-up policy from “bringing in” to “bringing in and going out.” As a result, China’s overseas interests expanded rapidly.

Clashing domestic and foreign policies, however, will prevent a rising nation from expanding its national interests worldwide. For instance, different management policies for domestic and foreign currency transactions would undermine the domestic currency’s international reputation, thus hurting its chances of becoming a main global reserve currency and curbing the nation’s financial influence abroad.

4. Opening up furthers globalization, which makes interdependence less vulnerable.

The danger in economic dependence is that a country may suffer catastrophic consequences from changes in another country’s economic policies. But because post-Cold War globalization has reduced barriers to entering foreign markets and accessing foreign goods, enterprises affected by a foreign country’s policy changes can find alternative markets or products relatively easily. This makes interdependence less vulnerable.

As a rising nation’s international interests grow in speed and scale, the vulnerabilities of interdependence decrease and the security of its overseas interests increase. Similarly, the more open a state is, the more opportunities it has to enter foreign markets and seek alternatives. If there is reciprocal opening up, the rising state would have larger relative benefits than other countries due to its larger overseas interests. But with reciprocal closing up, the rising state would have more to lose.

Whether it’s overcoming the trade spat with the United States or other obstacles, China’s rise can only be guaranteed by continuing to open up. China’s leader has promised that “the more developed China becomes, the more open it will be.” How much the Chinese government turns this into practice will decide the fate of China’s national rejuvenation.

Produced by The WorldPost, a partnership of the Berggruen Institute and The Washington Post, this article is a translated adaptation of an essay in the Quarterly Journal of International Politics.