Latest news with #SrijanaMitraDas
Time of India
3 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
‘Palm oil prevails from soap to napalm — it feeds billions but pollutes Earth'
Jonathan E. Robins Jonathan E. Robins is Associate Professor of History at Michigan Tech University. Speaking to Srijana Mitra Das at Times Evoke , he discusses the story — and challenges — of palm oil: What is the history of palm oil? ■ This product had been used for thousands of years in Africa. But the beginnings of the transatlantic slave trade in the 16th and 17th centuries brought people, food and products outside Africa. Palm oil was used to feed enslaved captives on slave ships. It was also used as a cosmetic — before they were auctioned off in America, it was applied to make the skin of enslaved people look shiny and healthier. It also played a role in the colonial scramble for Africa — palm oil was an important motivation for European empires to seize territory, trying, for instance, in Nigeria and Cameroon to secure and monopolise access to oilproducing regions. Later, it reached Southeast Asia — in the 19th century, the British began to expand their control over the Indian Ocean area. They transferred oil palm seeds and other plants they thought were economically useful across the region. The Dutch were also involved — a consignment of oil palm reached then-Dutch East Indies in 1848, taking root there. Who were the workers growing this crop? Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Redefine Your Future with a Top Online MBA SRM Online Enquire Now Undo by Taboola by Taboola ■ Initially, in Southeast Asia, there was little local interest in palm oil because coconut was a well-established industry. In the 20 th century, when prices for all commodities, but particularly edible oils, began to skyrocket around WWI , high prices for oil drew Europebased companies to invest in oil palm plantations in the region. They copied the established business model for rubber, where colonial governments took land from local people and leased it to European companies — they then imported workers from India, Java or China, often under indenture contracts. The wages these plantations paid were simply not high enough to attract locals — they thus relied on recruiting labour from places with fewer opportunities, limited access to land, overpopulation and often, famine conditions which compelled people to seek overseas work, even at low wages. How did palm oil then get involved in post WWII development plans? ■ In the 1950s-60s, the World Bank and former colonial powers, like the British and French, began looking for projects that could create jobs in ex-colonies and increase supplies to address what many believed was an impending global food crisis. Being a labour-intensive crop, the palm oil industry provided a lot of employment while creating a material useful for food and other products. Eventually, that became part of the development narrative of post-colonial economies like Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, etc. Instead of rejecting colonial crops, independent governments embraced them as a source of revenue that could be channelled into other development projects. What is the history of palm oil, fats and 'an industrial diet'? ■ This story begins in the 19th century when a series of discoveries in chemistry revealed new ways of manipulating natural fats from plant and animalbased oils. Manufacturers were seeking to reduce costs — one way was by making raw materials interchangeable. So, they used chemistry to modify fats from different plant and animal sources. The cheapest products using palm oil first were candles and soap — it then found itself in food. In the late 19 th century, new products, like margarine, cooking and frying fats, began to be developed. They were simply sold as new 'industrial' fats — one week, they might be made with hydrogenated cottonseed oil, another week, with palm oil. For manufacturers, these fats being substituted so easily was very appealing. Palm oil became such a significant part of this system because the plant is an extremely efficient producer of fats and has both unsaturated liquid components and saturated fats, which makes it applicable across industries. Can you tell us about its presence in modern soap? ■ West Africans made soap using palm oil centuries ago — in the 18th century, European travellers there described such locally-made soaps. Europeans began using it first as a colouring agent. Raw, unrefined palm oil has a striking red or orange colour — when fresh, it also has a very interesting scent. This combination made palm oil an attractive ingredient for early soap manufacturers. In the 19 th century, as Britain moved to abolish the slave trade, British merchants and shipping companies began exporting more and more palm oil to make up for that commercial loss. Its price fell and as it became cheaper, soap makers began to use it as their main ingredient. How did it make its way into weaponry? ■ The main connection is through a product that all fats contain called glycerine — for years, this had been discarded as a waste product but then, chemists discovered it could be used to make, among other things, explosives. Nitroglycerin was the first major explosive based on this. A series of other applications derive from this use of palm oil — napalm was initially developed using palmitic acids drawn from it, a thickened sort of gasoline product that burns. Later manufacturing shifted to other materials — yet, palm oil was important enough to give this weapon its name 'napalm'. What are palm oil's environmental impacts? ■ The Southeast Asian industry in particular grew at the expense of destroying primary forest which was first targeted by colonial plantations. This continued post-independence. Deforestation is also of great concern in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. But other impacts include water pollution — factories extracting palm oil use enormous amounts of water. Until the 1980s, most byproducts of this process were just dumped into local waterways, causing pollution. This is still a problem in many 'frontier' areas where oil palm is a newly developed industry. The mills started there often don't have the equipment and infrastructure to safely process waste — hence, deforestation combined with water pollution produces very negative impacts. PROFUSE, YET UNSEEN: Palm oil is widely used Palm oil employs millions though — are there sustainable ways forward? ■ It's a challenge because palm oil is often invisible in the products we consume — rarely can we see its colour or taste its flavour. Those components have been intentionally removed from most palm oil added to consumer products. I'd suggest people think about palm oil with curiosity and concern. It is a very important food product, it sustains billions and converting it now, for instance, into biofuel is a concern for some who worry that the rush to embrace biodiesel and 'green fuels' will not only accelerate deforestation but also increase food prices. These issues are one reason I use a commodity approach in my research — this allows us to grasp onto physical objects that connect us to different regions, organisations, governments, corporations and real people who produce and consume these things. Commodities help us avoid abstractions — they ground our understanding of global challenges, environmental to economic, in a way where we can see their origins in history and hopefully use that to address our own world.
Time of India
13-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
India and China were the world's richest nations — rice grew their wealth: Francesca Bray, University of Edinburgh
Francesca Bray is Professor Emerita of Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. Speaking to Srijana Mitra Das at Times Evoke , she outlines the history of rice — and its workers: What is the core of your research? Over my career, I've looked at multiple aspects stemming from my original research, which was on the history of agriculture in China . From that came an interest in agrarian networks and social systems linked with these. Gender, with its associated crops, was one such topic — this is when I grew particularly interested in rice. Does rice represent global commodity networks? Rice is rather special in today's world — wheat and corn are global commodities, bought and sold between countries in greater quantities than usually consumed in their home economies. Rice is an exception — although it has world markets, most rice produced is actually consumed within the societies that grow it. Rice has resisted the large-scale industrial monoculture model and rice fields are still smaller than wheat, soybean or industrial maize. Rice encourages smaller farmers and more diversity of crops and occupations. IT'S AT SO MANY LEVELS: Rice, grown in a variety of ways by small farmers, from flat paddies to layered terraces, evolved its own technological development and sparked entrepreneurship — Live Events Did rice cultivation shape pre-colonial societies? With the ability of its farms to remain small, rice did away with feudal relations — the management of farms by small agriculturalists meant their labour was not directly controlled by a landlord. As long as they paid their rent, they were fine. Secondly, it encouraged small farmers to become entrepreneurs, working at household scale or with local manufacturers and often buying land of their own. In southern China, the notion of wealth growing within generations was strong because people could change their status. In Malaysia, peasants contributed taxes to a king's coffers but they weren't feudal labour — they were independent farmers. How do you view the characterisation of ricebased economies being slower and less technological than wheat-eating nations? The historian Roy Bin Wong's book 'China Transformed' suggests the principle of symmetrical comparison — instead of saying 'Europe went this way and China and India didn't, so what did they do wrong?', we should ask what people wanted there and whether they were successful at managing it. The south Chinese rice-centred economy actually grew enormously over the centuries, becoming a global powerhouse. It didn't give rise to an Industrial Revolution like England's and mechanisation wasn't big but many systems for raising capital, making it available at a distance, etc., developed there. The 19 th century onwards, interactions in the Indian Ocean-Pacific world between Western capitalism and what was supposed to not be capitalism in Asia had several financial systems which came from South India, East Asia and Islamic nations. WERE YOU ALWAYS PEARLY? Rice includes harsh realities like colonialism and forced labour India and China were actually the richest economies on Earth — rice was a significant factor in this wealth and the social organisation of businesses around it helped produce capitalism. So, it's not helpful to say, 'They were slow and got overtaken', because if you look in detail at the interactions, there was mutual influence — of course, since the people writing such books were English or Dutch, they preferred to say they were the ones bringing progress. How did colonialism then impact rice? Rice was an essential product in the rise and expansion of colonialism and the emergence of a global industrial economy — during the colonial era, rice became a cheap staple food for poor workforces around the world. By 1700, rice was the main provision of the slave trade between West Africa and the Americas — it then became the staple of colonial labour across the tropical zone. In the 18 th century, rice plantations in Brazil and South Carolina harnessed African skills to grow the crop for export to Europe and the Caribbean. Through the 19 th century, as they expanded colonies in Asia, British, French and Dutch powers carved out export-based rice zones in Indochina and Indonesia — they also priced the rice industries of America out of the market. Independent kingdoms in Southeast Asia like Siam (Thailand) also entered the fray and opened new rice frontiers to feed miners, plantation workers and growing urban populations. A latecomer colonial power, Meiji Japan , met its expanding resource needs by annexing Taiwan and Korea and taking control of their rice production. Chinese merchants controlled most of the rice trade across Southeast Asia. FROM STAPLE TO SPECIAL: Rice is many- splendoured The area under rice increased as colonial workforces expanded — by the mid-19 th century, new technologies for draining, pumping and levelling meant swampy deltas and flood plains could now be turned into paddy fields. In Indochina, rice industries were set up to feed migrant workers in mines and plantations — in Punjab and Bengal, the British intensified rice systems developed by the Mughals to expand commercial cropping of indigo, cotton and sugarcane. Colonial policies drove the emergence of what the historian Peter Boomgaard calls 'monotonous rice bowls', monocrop zones depending on intensive labour by workers who had little opportunity to diversify or increase their incomes. Typically, they were tied down by debt — colonial governments introduced taxes that had to be paid in cash while moneylenders charged high rates of interest. It was in this fertile soil that the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s was planted. What role has gender played in rice? IT'S NOT JUST HIS-STORY: The chronicles of women rice farmers are often wilfully erased Even between China and Japan, which were very close in many respects, the gender coding of rice cultivation was different. China was a particularly intense example of a gender coding where men were supposed to be in the fields growing grain and women in the house, weaving cloth. This view dated back to the early imperial period in China and outlived the eventual switch to monetary payment. The notion that men should be out in the fields and women at home remained fundamental in Chinese political economy and concepts of identity, gender and morality. It seemed to fit with Chinese circumstances since many rice regions in China were textile producers, which did start with women producing the textiles. As the economy commercialised though, more and more men came into the textile industry which began to expand to workshops outside the home. Meanwhile, in many regions, women were out working in the rice fields — but since this wasn't regarded as 'proper' or 'ideal' women's activity, their hard work was often erased from the history books.
Time of India
13-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
‘India and China were the world's richest nations — rice grew their wealth'
'India and China were the world's richest nations — rice grew their wealth' Francesca Bray is Professor Emerita of Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. Speaking to Srijana Mitra Das at Times Evoke , she outlines the history of rice — and its workers: What is the core of your research? Over my career, I've looked at multiple aspects stemming from my original research, which was on the history of agriculture in China. From that came an interest in agrarian networks and social systems linked with these. Gender, with its associated crops, was one such topic — this is when I grew particularly interested in rice. Does rice represent global commodity networks? by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Secure your family's future! ICICI Pru Life Insurance Plan Get Quote Undo Rice is rather special in today's world — wheat and corn are global commodities, bought and sold between countries in greater quantities than usually consumed in their home economies. Rice is an exception — although it has world markets, most rice produced is actually consumed within the societies that grow it. Rice has resisted the large-scale industrial monoculture model and rice fields are still smaller than wheat, soybean or industrial maize. Rice encourages smaller farmers and more diversity of crops and occupations. IT'S AT SO MANY LEVELS: Rice, grown in a variety of ways by small farmers, from flat paddies to layered terraces, evolved its own technological development and sparked entrepreneurship — Did rice cultivation shape pre-colonial societies? With the ability of its farms to remain small, rice did away with feudal relations — the management of farms by small agriculturalists meant their labour was not directly controlled by a landlord. As long as they paid their rent, they were fine. Secondly, it encouraged small farmers to become entrepreneurs, working at household scale or with local manufacturers and often buying land of their own. In southern China, the notion of wealth growing within generations was strong because people could change their status. In Malaysia, peasants contributed taxes to a king's coffers but they weren't feudal labour — they were independent farmers. How do you view the characterisation of ricebased economies being slower and less technological than wheat-eating nations? The historian Roy Bin Wong's book 'China Transformed' suggests the principle of symmetrical comparison — instead of saying 'Europe went this way and China and India didn't, so what did they do wrong?', we should ask what people wanted there and whether they were successful at managing it. The south Chinese rice-centred economy actually grew enormously over the centuries, becoming a global powerhouse. It didn't give rise to an Industrial Revolution like England's and mechanisation wasn't big but many systems for raising capital, making it available at a distance, etc., developed there. The 19 th century onwards, interactions in the Indian Ocean-Pacific world between Western capitalism and what was supposed to not be capitalism in Asia had several financial systems which came from South India, East Asia and Islamic nations. WERE YOU ALWAYS PEARLY? Rice includes harsh realities like colonialism and forced labour India and China were actually the richest economies on Earth — rice was a significant factor in this wealth and the social organisation of businesses around it helped produce capitalism. So, it's not helpful to say, 'They were slow and got overtaken', because if you look in detail at the interactions, there was mutual influence — of course, since the people writing such books were English or Dutch, they preferred to say they were the ones bringing progress. How did colonialism then impact rice? Rice was an essential product in the rise and expansion of colonialism and the emergence of a global industrial economy — during the colonial era, rice became a cheap staple food for poor workforces around the world. By 1700, rice was the main provision of the slave trade between West Africa and the Americas — it then became the staple of colonial labour across the tropical zone. In the 18 th century, rice plantations in Brazil and South Carolina harnessed African skills to grow the crop for export to Europe and the Caribbean. Through the 19 th century, as they expanded colonies in Asia, British, French and Dutch powers carved out export-based rice zones in Indochina and Indonesia — they also priced the rice industries of America out of the market. Times evoke Independent kingdoms in Southeast Asia like Siam (Thailand) also entered the fray and opened new rice frontiers to feed miners, plantation workers and growing urban populations. A latecomer colonial power, Meiji Japan , met its expanding resource needs by annexing Taiwan and Korea and taking control of their rice production. Chinese merchants controlled most of the rice trade across Southeast Asia. FROM STAPLE TO SPECIAL: Rice is many- splendoured The area under rice increased as colonial workforces expanded — by the mid-19 th century, new technologies for draining, pumping and levelling meant swampy deltas and flood plains could now be turned into paddy fields. In Indochina, rice industries were set up to feed migrant workers in mines and plantations — in Punjab and Bengal, the British intensified rice systems developed by the Mughals to expand commercial cropping of indigo, cotton and sugarcane. Colonial policies drove the emergence of what the historian Peter Boomgaard calls 'monotonous rice bowls', monocrop zones depending on intensive labour by workers who had little opportunity to diversify or increase their incomes. Typically, they were tied down by debt — colonial governments introduced taxes that had to be paid in cash while moneylenders charged high rates of interest. It was in this fertile soil that the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s was planted. What role has gender played in rice? IT'S NOT JUST HIS-STORY: The chronicles of women rice farmers are often wilfully erased Even between China and Japan, which were very close in many respects, the gender coding of rice cultivation was different. China was a particularly intense example of a gender coding where men were supposed to be in the fields growing grain and women in the house, weaving cloth. This view dated back to the early imperial period in China and outlived the eventual switch to monetary payment. The notion that men should be out in the fields and women at home remained fundamental in Chinese political economy and concepts of identity, gender and morality. It seemed to fit with Chinese circumstances since many rice regions in China were textile producers, which did start with women producing the textiles. As the economy commercialised though, more and more men came into the textile industry which began to expand to workshops outside the home. Meanwhile, in many regions, women were out working in the rice fields — but since this wasn't regarded as 'proper' or 'ideal' women's activity, their hard work was often erased from the history books.
Time of India
06-07-2025
- Science
- Time of India
Southeast Asia: ‘Rice was grown 10,000 years ago — it first linked India and Southeast Asia'
Dorian Q. Fuller is Professor of Archaeobotany at University College London. Speaking to Srijana Mitra Das at Times Evoke, he discusses rice's roots: What is the core of your research? I am both an archaeologist and a botanist. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now I collaborate on archaeological excavation projects where we recover preserved plant remains, consisting of the remnants of crops, weeds and wild, gathered foods as well as the wood fuel people used for cooking and fires. From that, we study which crops existed in past cultures and different places and how agriculture, plants and the human diet have changed. Where was the earliest evidence of cultivated rice found? First, I should specify there are two distinct species of rice. There's an African rice, cultivated traditionally in parts of West Africa which has a separate origin, and there's Asian rice, grown in India, China, Japan, etc. Within Asian cultivated rice, there are two subspecies — Indica and Japonica, the former more dominant in South Asia, the latter in East Asia. In terms of the earliest evidence for cultivation, that seems related to the Japonica subspecies or its ancestors in China — this comes from parts of the Yangtze River Basin , the Middle Yangtze, like Hunan province, the lower Yangtze around Zhejiang and tributaries to the north, like the Huaihe river. There's a good case to be made for multiple independent starts of cultivation in China going back 10,000 years. Quite separately, you have an early use of wild rice in parts of northern India, especially in the Ganges River Basin, stretching into the Upper Ganges-Yamuna areas. When that was cultivated and domesticated is much debated — I'd say there is evidence for early cultivation in India 5,000 years ago and possibly even 9,000 years ago. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Importantly, genetic evidence today shows there was ancient hybridisation between East Asian Japonicas and the ancestors of Indica. Introduced rices from East Asia mixed with local varieties in India and produced something new — Indica rice as known today. That explains our picture from modern genomes and archaeological evidence. I think the hybridisation occurred around 4,000 years ago, with an introduced variety that came to India via trade from East Asia. Did rice cultivation change landscapes? Yes — rice is unique among cereals in that it's a wetland species. It likes a lot of water, in contrast to wheat, barley or millets, all semi-arid dryland species. As rice needs water, its initial cultivation, whether in the Yangtze or Ganges Valley, was in naturally flooded areas. As rice agriculture spread upland and southwards through the Deccan in India, it reached dry areas requiring irrigation. People then created bunded paddy fields that trapped rainwater — they started making artificial wetlands. That was transformative of the landscape. Did this also change social structures? Creating artificial wetlands and irrigation systems demands a lot of labour, alongside irrigated rice is highly productive and feeds many more people. As rice cultivation expanded in India and Southeast Asia , it encouraged population growth and density, early urbanisation and the rise of social hierarchy — the control of land, rice and labour to build irrigation works fed into more hierarchical societies. Did rice also impact animal life? Artificial wetlands are a challenge to plough — the water buffalo became suitable. They are native to India, where their domestication happened in the Harappan world independent of rice. As its cultivation grew, its use increased. Paddy fields also attract wetland small fauna and fish like carp. Some became sources of protein in traditional Southeast Asian systems and a comanagement of various kinds of fish in rice paddies developed. Did rice entail interactions across these ancient societies? Yes. With the establishment of rice-based agricultural systems and early urbanisation in north India and the Ganges plains in the Iron Age around 3,000 years ago, craft specialisation started. Fine ceramics, stonework, beads, metallurgy, etc., began — these got traded over long distances. Our earliest evidence for contact between India and Southeast Asia is from then — you see the arrival of Indian-made ceramics, beads, etc., in Southeast Asia, alongside other Indian crops like mung and toor lentils turning up in sites in southern Thailand. Later, ideas of Buddhism and Hinduism spread in Southeast Asia but the first interaction was about craft and agriculture, supported by rice. What are some of the most fascinating archaeobotanical rice relics you've seen? I've worked on the Tianluoshan site in China, discovered in 2004. It was one of the first places where we could recover the spikelet base of rice, a very small structure that attaches the grain to the plant — it undergoes a key morphological change as a result of domestication, where the plant loses the ability to disperse itself by shattering and now requires planting and harvesting by humans. In this archaeological material, we could see the actual gradual change of the population away from the wild, shattering type towards the domesticated type. In 2006, I also visited the Lahuradeva site managed by the Uttar Pradesh State Department of Archaeology . It shows how people there were consuming rice 6,000 years ago, the debate being over how domesticated or wild that food was. What are the implications of climate change for rice — and vice versa? There are arguments that rice contributes to climate change because its wetland environments produce methane — that's not from rice itself but the methanogenic microorganisms in the wetland waters. Of course, most global warming is from fossil fuel use. But there is research now on ways to grow rice that reduce methane output while ensuring productivity. Meanwhile, climate change is altering rainfall distribution in time and space — that is challenging for ricegrowing because it may increase water shortages and drought. Hence, more drought-tolerant species, like millets, are another direction for research. How different is the rice we eat today, compared to ancient varieties? There are continuities and changes. Interestingly, wild rice populations had red grains — now, that's relatively rare compared to white or brown rice today. Earlier, people selected varieties partly for aesthetics and because it was thought white rice cooks faster and tastes different. People also selected for fragrance, from basmati to jasmine. There is no evidence that any of the wild rices were fragrant, though, so that's a mutation. There's been selection for stickiness in Southeast Asia with glutinous rices, which also didn't exist in wild varieties. So, in its long cultural history, humans have changed rice, from a more standard wild form to very different kinds across diverse cultures.
Economic Times
04-07-2025
- Business
- Economic Times
‘America's attitude to Britain was ruthless as it became global hegemon — China's ‘military-civil fusion' mirrors the US now'
What is the core of your research? When exactly did the 'military-industrial complex' emerge — and is this a purely American entity or a multinational force? Live Events Is there any one emerging technology which could completely redefine national security now? (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel Katherine C. Epstein is Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University-Camden. Speaking to Srijana Mitra Das , she outlines, on America's Independence Day, the rise of the US ' military-industrial complex ' — and its implications:I focus on two main issues. The first is how the two most powerful, liberal societies of the modern era — Great Britain and the United States — sought to acquire the most cutting-edge secret naval technology. Upto World War I, naval technology was the most advanced on Earth — air power was in its infancy and nuclear weapons hadn't been invented. Naval procurement presented difficult challenges though — one was the tension between the government and private sector over the control of intellectual property rights (IPRs), patents and advanced new weapons which, owing to their growing sophistication, couldn't be procured by traditional methods like in-house building in public factories. As such technology grew more complex, governments began investing in private sector research and development. This raised questions about who owned the IPRs — the contractor doing the work or the government giving subsidies? Also, these weapons were so secret, governments could assume national powers over them, forbidding exports, etc. I look at the tension here between classical liberal norms of property rights and national security interests.I also study the hegemonic transition from the Pax Britannica to the Pax Americana — this change, where the US became global hegemon over Britain, was much more contested and rivalrous than often thought. Considerable evidence shows Britain was quite unhappy — and the US, quite ruthless — about the American pursuit of power at Britain's expense. I argue the US behaviour towards Britain then anticipated Chinese behaviour towards the United States today. This is reflected in US tech imports, through pursuit and theft, which China has apparently done, and in terms of US efforts to build a navy, financial infrastructure, global telecom, etc., that rivalled Britain in much the same way China has been doing the US, the canonical description of the 'military-industrial complex' comes from President Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1961 address — Eisenhower warned this system threatened many American liberties. He defined it as the conjunction of a large military establishment with a permanent arms industry. There were huge changes in military production with World War II and the early Cold War. However, drawing from Benjamin Cooling's work, my research finds the first 'military-industrial complex' in America was naval and emerged in the late 19th century, not as a response to any one war but driven by a set of forces — these included the industrialisation of warfare and technology, geopolitical rivalries between the great powers like the scramble for Africa, the starting of globalisation and so H. McNeill's book 'The Pursuit of Power' further traces the first military-industrial complex to 1880s Britain, emerging in response to a set of global forces that caused a naval buildup in peacetime. This isn't a uniquely American phenomenon — it exists worldwide, from South America to Japan, Russia, France, Germany, etc. China's 'military-civil fusion' has several parallels with the US military-industrial complex and vice-versa. Also, although the military-industrial complex looks like a well-oiled machine from outside — a hugely profitable global ring of arms manufacturers, etc. — inside, there are large tensions between militaries and contractors, the first, often a terrible customer who sees the second as sense is that war will always remain a human phenomenon and we can be sceptical of the ability of any technology to transform warfare. Of course, torpedoes, airplanes and nuclear weapons did change warfare — today, semiconductors and artificial intelligence could do this. However, I retain some reservations about moves like restricting the export of semiconductors to China — we need to ask if this could have been relevant in a lack of smart weapons and the proliferation of dumb weapons which cause huge civilian AI , from a national security view of threats posed, this technology makes populations stupider by undermining critical thinking. The American education system is in a dreadful state and AI's role in stunting intellectual development is a huge threat for a nation that needs educated and aware AI will only deepen the trend of the growing insulation of the American people from the violence done in their names — this has increased over the 20th century, reflected in fiscal terms and how the US has resorted to borrowing to pay for its wars rather than taxation, hiding conflict's true financial costs from also been an increasing move towards 'standoff weapons', like drones, where American bodies are not at risk and the US can effectively do violence to others without risking it for themselves. In that sense, AI and semiconductors — which are about improving the ability of weapons to do what muscle power once did — are more a continuation of a trend than something fundamentally expressed are personal
