{"id":60696,"date":"2022-09-08T05:38:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-08T03:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistaidees.cat\/analisis\/diari-de-les-idees\/diari-de-les-idees-67\/"},"modified":"2022-12-29T12:41:00","modified_gmt":"2022-12-29T10:41:00","slug":"diari-de-les-idees-67","status":"publish","type":"newspaper","link":"https:\/\/revistaidees.cat\/en\/analisis\/diari-de-les-idees\/diari-de-les-idees-67\/","title":{"rendered":"Diari de les idees 67"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A new course is beginning and with it a new edition of Diari de les idees<\/em>. It will undoubtedly be a complex course from many points of view: the war in Ukraine has been going on for six months now and there is no sign of an end in the short term. In the coming weeks, two countries, Italy and Brazil, will face elections that could have a considerable impact on European and South American politics. At the same time, the Chinese Communist Party Congress in October should enable Xi Jinping to strengthen further his leadership. And the winter looks set to be particularly difficult in Europe from the energy point of view as a result of the war in Ukraine, especially since Russia has just suspended gas supplies to Europe via the Nord Stream pipeline1, making their restoration conditional on the lifting of the sanctions imposed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the field of international politics, one of the most important news has been the death of the former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev. Vladislav Zubok analyses his controversial legacy in Foreign Policy<\/em><\/a> and argues that he never knew how to rule his complex country without running headlong into its authoritarian roots and that the former Soviet leader’s main mistake was in the economic sphere. Economic decline and problems such as the disincentives of a full employment system based on some pretending to work and others pretending to pay wages were structural and chronic. However, to claim that this decline inevitably had to lead to the collapse and demise of the USSR as it happened is absurd. The Soviet Union was a hugely industrialised society, with enormous resources, as can now be seen from the impact Russia is having on food and energy markets. Likewise, the gigantic steelworks in Mariupol or the largest nuclear power plants in Europe at Zaporizhzhia also date from the Soviet era. Thus, the USSR had a huge economic potential that was highly inefficient because of the lack of incentives, central planning and the absence of private property, among other structural issues. That was what had to be changed. Zubok believes that Gorbachev did not seize the opportunity for radical market reform. It would have been a very painful decision, but with a great benefit, which is that with this kind of transformation people start to think about having money and not so much about political or ethnic rivalries. That is what happened in Poland, when all the pro- and anti-Solidarno\u015b\u0107<\/em> factions disintegrated after the economic reforms. Gorbachev had the opportunity to do the same in the spring of 1990, but he missed it because he feared the shock to the system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Catalonia, Manuel Manonelles pays homage in El Nacional<\/em><\/a> to the last leader of the USSR and states that the death of Mikhail Gorbachev awakens a series of reflections that take on even greater significance in contrast to the current context of war in Ukraine. He stresses that it is worth remembering that he was responsible for glasnost<\/em>, the set of openness and reform policies in the political and media spheres. As well as perestroika<\/em>, the economic reform policies that together with the aforementioned glasnost<\/em> would put an end to the Soviet dictatorship, the Iron Curtain and, unintentionally, the Soviet Union, favouring the birth of a series of new states in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. And he did so in a virtually bloodless manner, which is especially commendable given the particularly destabilising potential that a nuclear-armed Soviet Union could have had, or if we compare it to the current situation in Ukraine. Gorbachev was also the person who decided to withdraw, in 1989, the Soviet troops that had invaded Afghanistan in 1979, aware that the situation was untenable. In addition, he was also instrumental in preventing a major disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which would have had far more catastrophic consequences, despite the falsehoods and concealment of information by most of the Soviet bureaucracy about what was really going on in the spring of 1986. This is sadly ironic given the current situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, also in Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In connection with the war in Ukraine, Igor Delan\u00f6e argues in Le Monde Diplomatique<\/em><\/a> that, while at the end of March it still seemed possible to obtain the withdrawal of Russian troops from the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in exchange for Ukrainian concessions, it is now illusory for Russia to return these territories. The option of creating “people’s republics” seems to have been abandoned as this model has proved to be a failure. Instead, a process of absorption is now underway under the leadership of Sergey Kirienko, head of domestic policy in the presidential administration, who has visited the Russian-controlled Ukrainian territories several times. The rouble has been circulating there since the end of May, while a presidential decree has made it possible to simplify the issuing of Russian passports to the population. Preparations are also underway to hold a referendum on the integration of the occupied territories into the Russian Federation. The evolution of the conflict depends largely on what is happening in the rear rather than at the front. Both sides are convinced that they are on the right side of history and believe that time is on their side. Nevertheless, for how long? The Ukrainians are counting on both the impact of sanctions that have been piling up on Russia since 24 February and new weapons deliveries. Moscow, for its part, is betting on an economic collapse, even a political implosion of Ukraine, as well as an erosion of Western financial assistance. In a context of galloping inflation in Europe, Moscow is no longer hesitating to aggravate the situation by adopting restrictive measures on its gas exports in Europe, especially via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. We can also wonder to what extent Ukraine’s objectives coincide with those of NATO countries providing military assistance, without which Ukraine would not have been able to resist until now. In the short term, the financial and military assistance provided by the West aims at preventing a collapse of the Ukrainian military and power, but it is unclear what the desired end is. While the White House hinted, before being denied by the State Department, that the aim was to provoke regime change in Russia, the Pentagon wants to diminish Russian power by wearing it down in the battle in Ukraine. For its part, the UK aims to build an ‘Eastern Dam’ from the North Sea to the Black Sea to contain Russia, thus restoring the canons of balance of power that have structured centuries of British diplomacy on the Old Continent. In the meantime, Europeans are divided between Eastern European countries that advocate unfailing firmness against Moscow, and the “old European states” more inclined not to corner Russia altogether. Only one thing is certain: the resolution of the Ukrainian conflict will be a step towards the establishment of a new security order in Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For his part, Jean-Paul Michel Lar\u00e7on stresses in The Conversation<\/em><\/a> that the war in Ukraine has not only affected Europe’s trade with Russia. It has also greatly redefined overland trade routes with China, changing the gateways for goods into Europe and prompting companies to further reconfigure their supply chains. Prior to the conflict, 95 per cent of goods transported by rail between China and Europe passed through the Northern Corridor of the China-Europe Express, the Silk Road railway linking China to Germany via Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus and Poland. Because of international sanctions and the risk of confiscation of transported goods, the volume of Eurasian rail freight – mainly computers and electronic devices, machinery and car parts – dropped by 80 per cent. In this context, the Trans-Caspian Corridor has gained importance as an alternative rail route. However, this route is more difficult than the norther: it passes through countries with very different cultures and geopolitical orientations, such as the Caucasus countries, and involves crossing two seas: the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea. In ports, transit times are lengthened by poor cargo handling infrastructure and the small size of terminals. This results in longer voyage times (30 days instead of 20). At the same time, the development of new corridors requires significant investments in rail and port infrastructure. The European Union, with the Transport Corridor Europe-Caucasus-Asia (TRACECA) programme, has been interested in the development of the Trans-Caspian Corridor since 1993. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) also plans to invest more than 100 million euros in Kazakhstan. Within the EU, Bulgaria and Romania are well placed to benefit from the development of trade through the Trans-Caspian Corridor and the connection between the ports of Poti in Georgia and Constanta in Romania is the subject of new intermodal solutions. In this respect, the European Commission has recently approved the allocation of 110 million euros for the modernisation of a rail corridor in Bulgaria between Sofia and the Serbian border as part of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With respect to international affairs, Matthew Kroenig argues in Foreign Policy<\/em><\/a> that we are entering an increasingly multipolar world where the United States undoubtedly remains the leading power but where China now ranks second in military and economic power and Europe is an economic and regulatory superpower in its own right. At the same time, a more aggressive Russia maintains the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons and the great powers of the developing world, such as India, Indonesia, South Africa and Brazil, are opting for a new non-aligned path. Political realists argue that multipolar systems are unstable and prone to major miscalculations. World War I is a classic example. Multipolar systems are unstable in part because each country has to worry about multiple potential adversaries. Indeed, the US Department of Defence currently fears possible simultaneous conflicts with Russia in Europe and China in the Indo-Pacific. Realists also focus on changes in the balance of power and worry about the rise of China and the relative decline of the United States. Power transition theory says that the fall of a dominant great power and the rise of a rival often results in war. Some experts worry that Washington and Beijing may be falling into this renowned “Thucydides trap”. In this new Cold War that some are foreseeing, international institutions have become arenas of competition and Russia and China are using them against their original purposes. We cannot forget that Russia chaired a UN Security Council meeting while its army was attacking Ukraine in February. Likewise, China used its influence at the World Health Organisation to stop an in-depth investigation into the origins of COVID-19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For his part, Alexis Rodr\u00edguez-Rata warns in La Vanguardia<\/em><\/a> that there is growing concern about access to the microchips essential for the manufacture of the most sophisticated weapons such as missiles, drones, fighters, satellites, decryption and optoelectronic systems, etc. In the midst of the war in Ukraine, growing tension between the US and China in the Pacific and widespread rearmament, it is worth noting that sub-10 nanometre semiconductors, the most powerful, efficient and necessary for state-of-the-art weaponry, are only produced in two countries: 92% in Taiwan and the remaining 8% in South Korea. Access to the most advanced chips thus depends on a Taiwanese and Korean duopoly, two private companies, TSMC and Samsung Foundry. Taiwan is the world’s leading exporter of integrated circuits worth more than $135 billion a year and that 15% of its GDP comes from microchips. It is also worth noting that China is Taiwan’s main market for these components. In view of this situation, China has plans to produce them on its territory, as do the US and the EU.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Conflits<\/em><\/a> magazine, Bernard Lugan takes stock of nine years of Western presence in the Sahel, now that the French army has left Mali without resolving the country’s structural problems and the causes of terrorism. According to the author, France and the West made a series of mistakes from the beginning of the intervention that have led to the current impasse, as the situation now seems out of control. The political results of a decade of French involvement are catastrophic and the disaster lays on a misdiagnosis at the outset, as jihadism in the Sahel overlaps with multi-secular ethnic conflicts. Therefore, it is now imperative to stop viewing the Sahel issue through the prism of European-democratic ideologies. Resituating current events in their regional historical context has to be the first priority, as they are linked to a past that largely conditions the choices and engagements of the parties to the conflict. The four main mistakes that explain the current deterioration of the situation are as follows. First, to have “essentialised” the issue by systematically labelling any armed bandit or even any armed person as a jihadist. Second, the failure to question the bad faith of supposed local “experts” who did not tell that those they described as jihadists were in many cases traffickers who claimed to be jihadists in order to disguise their criminal activities. Third, the failure to understand the intricacies of ethnic, social, mafia and political grievances, suitably cloaked in a religious veil. And finally, the failure to understand the ethno-historical and political constants of the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuing with Africa, Ana Monteiro and Tom Hancock reveal in Bloomberg<\/em><\/a> that China has decided to cancel debt in 17 African countries and has announced that it will transfer $10 billion of its International Monetary Fund reserves to African nations. Since 2000, Beijing has announced several rounds of interest-free loan debt forgiveness to African countries, cancelling at least $3.4 billion in debt by 2019, according to a Johns Hopkins University study<\/a>. However, the vast majority of China’s recent loans in Africa, such as concessional and commercial loans, have never been considered for possible cancellation, the report adds, although some have been restructured. According to the World Bank, Beijing, which has been criticised for its lending practices to poorer nations, accounts for almost 40 per cent of the bilateral and private creditor debt that the world’s poorest countries have to repay this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another major topic is the rejection of Chile’s new constitution by 62% of the electorate in a referendum in which vote was mandatory. Noam Titelman analyses in CTXT<\/em><\/a> the causes of the rejection of the world’s first constitution, which proclaimed the existence of a climate and ecological crisis and obliged the state to take all the means of prevention, adaptation and risk reduction to limit the effects. It points to two main lines of interpretation, which are not mutually exclusive. The first places the emphasis on the “average voter”, who has gradually dissociated himself from the ethos<\/em> of the social outburst of three years ago. The second attributes it to the traditional reactive identity that has been consolidating against the constitutional proposal and which implies recognising that the revolts of 2019 had a clearly anti-elite component, but not necessarily a left-wing one. Nevertheless, there seems to be a relatively broad consensus that constitutional stalemate is not a viable option. Moreover, there seems to be broad agreement that a new constitutional process will have to include more citizen participation. This is likely to involve the convening of a new Convention and a plebiscite to ratify a renewed constitutional proposal. In other words, it is highly likely that Chile will face a third constitutional plebiscite in a few months’ time. The challenge facing Chilean politics is to reach an agreement that will finally enable a new constitutional text to be brought forward with broad and transversal popular support, since 78% of citizens are in favour of a new Magna Carta that repeals the Pinochet Constitution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the coming weeks the focus will remain on South America, where presidential elections will be held in Brazil on 2 October. Phil Clark Hill analyses in The New Statesman<\/em><\/a> what is at stake in an election between current president Jair Bolsonaro and former president Lula da Silva. When he was president (2003-2010), Lula was considered the most popular politician in the country and among the most popular in the world. For many Brazilians, these were years of prosperity and social mobility, deforestation in the Amazon was drastically reduced, social policies were deployed and a middle class with a better quality of life was created. The current president’s legacy stands in stark contrast to Lula’s: Bolsonaro is a right-wing populist who at times resembles Donald Trump, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n, and Brazilian public opinion is highly polarised towards him and his policies. In 2018, he the candidate of the far-right PSL party, but he now runs for Brazil’s main party, the PL (Liberal Party). It is his ninth political party in a 30-year political career. During his presidency there have been more than 680,000 officially recorded deaths from COVID-19 (around 10% of overall fatalities) while throughout the pandemic, he consistently denied the threat of the virus. A parliamentary investigation into the country’s handling of the pandemic proposed that he should be charged with several crimes, including crimes against humanity. During his term in office, the country has also seen devastating forest fires and increased deforestation in the Amazon. Now that the country is suffering from the highest inflation in years and a major economic recession, it is difficult to say that his presidential term has been a success. In view of the upcoming elections, where polls show him with 32% of the vote in the first round compared to Lula’s 45%, Bolsonaro has already begun to talk about possible electoral fraud, spreading criticism and doubts about the electronic voting system. However, unlike what happened in the US, Brazil has fewer check-and-balance mechanisms, and with the memory still very much alive of a military dictatorship that Bolsonaro admits to longing for, the October elections are a decisive moment for Brazilian democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With regard to Catalonia, Nura Portella highlights in El Nacional<\/em><\/a> that the UN Human Rights Committee has published its decision on the complaint filed in 2018 by Oriol Junqueras, Ra\u00fcl Romeva, Josep Rull and Jordi Turull against Spain. The Committee now considers that Spain violated the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights by suspending them from their position as Members of Parliament. This decision represents a new finding that the political repression of the Catalan independence movement by the Spanish state has seriously violated human rights, in this case, an essential political right in a democracy. The UN had already taken a position on this conflict, as the pre-trial detention was declared arbitrary by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in 2019. A year later, it was established that Spain did not comply with the decisions and neither released them nor redressed the violation of rights, as required by the 2019 decisions. The 2019 report was an initiative of British international law and human rights lawyer Ben Emmerson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Midcat pipeline has also been one of the topics of debate during the month of August. Having been paralysed for three years now, it has come to the forefront after gaining the full support of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro S\u00e1nchez. Enric Juliana argues in La Vanguardia<\/em><\/a> that the proposal to resume the Midcat pipeline has become a symbol of a greater rapport between Germany and Spain in the current European moment. It is clear that the Midcat would not resolve the situation, but its existence would strengthen the European gas supply network at such a critical moment. Midcat has thus become a symbol of the role that the Iberian peninsula could play as a platform for energy exports across the Pyrenees to the rest of Europe (electricity, methane gas, green hydrogen in the future) and of a greater strategic connection between Germany, the Iberian peninsula and North Africa at a time of urgency and readjustment. France, however, opposes the resumption of work on the pipeline. Emmanuel Macron has just declared that there is no need for new gas interconnections with Spain because the current ones are far from saturation, and that the pipeline that Berlin, Lisbon, Madrid and even the European Commission saw as a solution to the lack of Russian gas is not justified on energy or environmental grounds. The French government plans to install a floating regasification plant in the port of Le Havre to reinforce the capacity to receive liquefied gas. On the other hand, France has a score to settle with Germany. Germany’s rejection of nuclear energy is detrimental to the interests of a country whose energy and military security revolves around atomic energy. Fifty-six nuclear reactors guarantee France\u2019s energy autonomy, when they are working at full capacity (which is not the case today due to serious maintenance problems in half of France’s power plants). Germany’s commitment to the Iberian Peninsula also means strategic projection into North Africa. Germany has just made peace with Morocco and maintains a good relationship with Algeria, and has plans to stimulate the production of green hydrogen in both countries. This is not to the liking of France, which has always considered that European policy in the Mediterranean and North Africa has to come first from Paris and not Berlin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On European affairs, Max Bergman analyses in Politico<\/em><\/a> two of the main challenges facing the EU: enlargement in the Western Balkans and treaty reform, and argues that without treaty reform, enlargement will not be properly implemented. While Ukraine was granted candidate status at the European Council summit in June, the Western Balkans got nothing. Moreover, the French president’s statements that Ukraine’s accession timeline could take decades and his proposal for a European Political Community that includes non-EU member states demonstrate little willingness to contemplate EU enlargement as it is currently structured. Therefore, launching another round of enlargement will require another round of treaty reform. At the same time, linking the two aspects helps to build momentum: Eastern European countries that oppose treaty reform would have incentives to compromise. Meanwhile, opponents of enlargement would gain a better functioning EU. The author, while admitting that these processes are full of pitfalls, argues that the EU often finds ways to take courageous action in response to crises. Moreover, now is the right time: support for Ukraine is high across the Union and strengthening the EU seems very popular: even traditionally Eurosceptic Denmark has opted to join the EU’s common security and defence policy. Ultimately, the treaty reform needed to accommodate Ukraine would allow for a new round of enlargement with Western Balkan countries to begin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the UK, Liz Truss has become Boris Johnson’s successor and is the third British Prime Minister after Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May. Truss faces a difficult challenge given the legacy left by her predecessor and the economic, social and energy crisis that is hitting the country. The Guardian<\/em><\/a> editorial warns that rising gas prices could lead to power cuts this winter, that the UK could see a wave of strikes in the industrial and service sectors not seen for 50 years, and that the threat of economic stagnation is very real. Truss believes that Britain needs economic growth through tax cuts, whether VAT, income or business rates, but ignores the fact that it is the persistent under-investment of UK businesses that explains the poor productivity relative to other countries in its immediate neighbourhood such as the Netherlands, France and Germany. Moreover, instead of promoting new technologies and using them to curb greenhouse gases, Truss wants to authorise new North Sea oil extraction and end the moratorium on fracking. Finally, having failed to put forward concrete proposals during her campaign to tackle the simultaneous crises facing the country, only two-thirds of Britons say they have little or no confidence in the new Prime Minister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the Italian elections on 25 September, Lorenzo Castellani reviews in Le Grand Continent<\/em><\/a> the career of Georgia Meloni, the candidate of the post-fascist Fratelli d’Italia<\/em> party, who is widely tipped to be the next head of the Italian government. He says that for the past few years, Meloni has been running an ambitious and complex operation to bring together a so-called “centre-right” coalition. Aware of her cultural and institutional disadvantage, he says, Meloni is looking for ways to build a power system, an identity, a repository of ideas and people from which to draw collaborators if it is up to Fratelli d’Italia<\/em> to govern the country as the first party in the centre-right coalition. At the political level, the prospects for a possible centre-right government are still difficult to define. One hypothesis is circulating among authoritative circles in the Italian establishment: if the centre and the left lose the elections, the right-wing coalition will not be able to govern in a very complicated international and economic context. However, it is not obvious that the fall of a right-wing government with a solid majority would be quick. This will depend on the number of seats the coalition wins in parliament, the political actors and the international situation. In case of victory, the coalition will have to choose between a classic political co-optation among party militants to form the new government, or explore a different experience: bringing together politicians and technocrats in the government, being attentive to the explicit and implicit suggestions of Mario Draghi, who is said to have a good relationship with Meloni. It could also try to establish a partnership with President Mattarella in the choice of key ministers and pursue economic policies that convince the markets and a collaborative attitude with the rest of European leaders. To materialise, this second scenario requires a more difficult political path, because it presupposes the political unity of the parties and the elimination of rivalries between leaders, as well as the end of ambiguities in the international arena. In short, the outcome of the Italian elections will inevitably be a test for the centre-right and for Italian politics as a whole. Also for European politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the economic front, Christina Lu stresses in Foreign Policy<\/em><\/a> that one of the main problems facing Europe is the escalation of energy prices, especially gas prices, which increases inflation, puts industries on the edge and makes citizens suffer. In addition, it must be borne in mind that during the winter there will be peak demand and there are doubts as to whether supply will be sufficient. The main supply problem is a consequence of the war with Ukraine and Russian suppliers who have raised prices and reduced supplies, which normally represented 40% of the European total. Moreover, the drought has dried up rivers, many nuclear power plants (especially in France) have had to shut down and the volume of hydroelectric production has dropped considerably. Europe therefore has to rely on imports of liquefied natural gas from other countries and to position itself in a market with many competition and high prices. On the other hand, it is also trying to find new suppliers in Algeria, Azerbaijan, Norway or Qatar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Europe, according to The Economist<\/em><\/a>, is not very prone to change. For months now, Europe has been preparing for the coming winter in order to be able to keep homes heated and factories running without Russian gas supplies. At the same time, the summer has proved unexpectedly challenging with a drought that has worsened many problems already faced because of the war in Ukraine and the effects of COVID-19, all with the prospect of having to adapt to a warmer world. Immediate concerns relate to what is happening to food supply, energy and the cost of living. Europe is rich and can replace the food it cannot produce. However, the same is not true for energy. Successive heat waves have forced France to shut down some of its nuclear power plants because water drawn from rivers to cool the reactors could not be safely returned to the waterways. Norway is concerned about low reservoir levels and has already warned that it could reduce hydroelectricity exports to countries such as Germany. The electricity crisis in Europe’s largest economy could be solved by burning coal – that is, if the barges that transport it could once again navigate a Rhine with dwindling flows. For Europeans, the threat of climate change has so far been just that: a threat. However, this summer has shown that Europe is at a critical point. Rich countries like Japan and the United States have a long tradition of dealing with natural disasters, be they hurricanes, earthquakes or droughts. By contrast, until now Europe has only had to suffer occasional local floods or forest fires. In addition, the problem is that Europe has a penchant for keeping things as they are. No economic history of Europe is complete without mentioning its mild climate, fertile soils and waterways used as the first roads. Nevertheless, that may well not last much longer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the field of sustainability, Ana Valdivia wonders in El Salto<\/em><\/a> whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be a viable tool to combat climate change, as despite AI’s dependence on natural resources, the technology has been proposed in recent years as a solution to tackle climate change. A report<\/a> published by BCG Gamma in July 2022, proposes AI as an essential tool in the fight against climate change. Some of the solutions proposed are the use of AI to reduce and eliminate carbon emissions, predict catastrophes or facilitate climate research. Nevertheless, the question is whether AI can become this tool given the scenario of scarcity and heat waves. For example, the extreme heatwave in London last July, with record-breaking temperatures, knocked out the Google and Oracle data centres due to cooling system malfunctions. Moreover, the shortage of minerals to make chips puts at risk the creation of more computers and data centres for AI programming. In addition, the energy crisis in Europe may lead to AI becoming a technology only for those who can afford the energy consumption. On the other hand, AI has also contributed to the climate crisis. One of the impacts that has recently been analysed is the carbon footprint, as for example training the algorithm that types text automatically has the same carbon footprint as a car journey to the moon and back. But the climate impact of the AI industry goes beyond the carbon footprint, as little is yet known about the upstream and downstream: from the mining of minerals to build the physical infrastructure of AI, to the waste in electronic landfills. AI, however, could also serve the common good by sharing data, making code accessible, designing public digital infrastructures and re-appropriating AI to serve the common good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Foreign Affairs<\/em><\/a>, Vivek Wadhwa and Mauritz Kop warn of the dangers of unregulated quantum computing. Indeed, they consider that the non-regulation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a mistake made by institutions, as they have left too much room for large private companies to act opaquely. This should serve as a precedent for not making the same mistake with quantum computing, which, if misused, can be a great danger. Quantum computing operates on a different basis than normal computers and if the initial projects work, these machines will be very powerful and will speed up many tasks that today’s computers would take thousands of years to do. The potential is immense as it uses a Qbit system instead of the digital one that works on a binary system. Through the Qbit overlay technique, the speed increases exponentially and can reach much more accurate problem solving and predictions. Of course, this potential can be used positively or negatively depending on the objective. Although this technology is still in an embryonic process, it has great potential in many areas and all leading research countries are investing a lot of effort. In parallel, experiments combining quantum computing with AI have also been conducted, showing great potential to train and improve machine learning and to create more sophisticated and less erratic AI. However, this also carries many risks if used for unintended purposes, as has already been seen with some AI used to go against institutions, democratic values or to generate fake news. It is therefore necessary to implement systems to control developers now and to put human rights, democratic values and freedoms first in order not to have to deal with ethical problems later on and not to make the same mistakes as with AI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, Matthew Ball argues in Time<\/em><\/a> magazine that in recent years the use of the word metaverse has increased in the digital world as well as in everyday life. Large technology corporations are investing huge sums of money in order to develop the tools necessary to make the metaverse feasible. However, it is difficult to understand the concept and see progress from the perspective of an ordinary citizen. Technological changes occur progressively and use previous advances, so it is important that as many people as possible from different areas and social levels participate in shaping the metaverse, and not leave it solely in the hands of large corporations. The metaverse has to be thought of as a parallel virtual entity involving digital technologies, but also part of the physical world, as a kind of three-dimensional Internet. Currently, the Internet alone makes up 20% of the economy, while the rest also functions through the Internet. The metaverse aims to take this further and combine reality with the virtual world, making the digital world alive, where people can interact not as external agents, but as part of and main actors in the virtual world. The potential of this universe does not only lie in the world of video games or social networks, but can also have implications for education, health, business and logistics. It is therefore important to foresee the implementation of adequate regulation, as the metaverse implies giving up more data that are private, time and relationships in a virtual space. It is therefore crucial that we, the potential users who are the citizens, play a key role in the development of the metaverse, in order to guide it – now that we still can – towards our interests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Illustration: Jane Lewis, \u201cLa Bocca della Verit\u00e0\u201d, 2011.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Xavier Company, a trainee student at the CETC, took part in this issue of Diari de les idees<\/em>.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new course is beginning and with it a new edition of Diari de les idees. It will undoubtedly be a complex course from many points of view: the war in Ukraine has been going on for six months now and there is no sign of an end in the short term. In the coming weeks, two countries, Italy and Brazil, will face elections that could have a considerable impact on European and South American politics. At the same time, the Chinese Communist Party Congress in October should enable Xi Jinping to strengthen further his leadership. And the winter looks\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":60679,"template":"","category_newspaper":[454],"segment":[],"subject":[],"class_list":["post-60696","newspaper","type-newspaper","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category_newspaper-454"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDiari de les idees 67 – IDEES<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/revistaidees.cat\/en\/analisis\/diari-de-les-idees\/diari-de-les-idees-67\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Diari de les idees 67 – IDEES\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A new course is beginning and with it a new edition of Diari de les idees. It will undoubtedly be a complex course from many points of view: the war in Ukraine has been going on for six months now and there is no sign of an end in the short term. In the coming weeks, two countries, Italy and Brazil, will face elections that could have a considerable impact on European and South American politics. At the same time, the Chinese Communist Party Congress in October should enable Xi Jinping to strengthen further his leadership. 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