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Conversations with Tyler / episode intelligence

Henry Farrell on Weaponized Interdependence, Big Tech, and Playing with Ideas

23 Oct 2019 22 published claims 2 attributable people
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Speakers in the public record

Tyler CowenHenry Farrell

Claim mix

belief 11prediction 5evaluation 4uncertainty 1recommendation 1

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The useful parts, with receipts.

22 published records

01 / uncertainty

We don’t know. But we know that if it’s Huawei 5G, they can intercept any communications they want by manipulating Huawei, which is not quite a state-owned enterprise, but it’s state controlled, as are most or maybe all major companies in China.

“We don’t know. But we know that if it’s Huawei 5G, they can intercept any communications they want by manipulating Huawei, which is not quite a state-owned enterprise, but it’s state controlled, as are most or maybe all major companies in China.”
Speaker
Tyler Cowen
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

02 / belief

To the extent that it is true, I think that if one wanted to come up with a half-baked social science theory which might or might not be correct, it might be because the valences of the service are much more about their quasi solidaristic .

“To the extent that it is true, I think that if one wanted to come up with a half-baked social science theory which might or might not be correct, it might be because the valences of the service are much more about their quasi solidaristic .”
Speaker
Henry Farrell
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

03 / belief

Obviously, there are lots of other people who are doing good things on it, but if I think about the other work that I’m doing with people like Cosma Shalizi, who you are familiar with, with Hugo Mercier and Melissa Schwartzberg, these are the kinds of ideas that we are trying to get at.

“Obviously, there are lots of other people who are doing good things on it, but if I think about the other work that I’m doing with people like Cosma Shalizi, who you are familiar with, with Hugo Mercier and Melissa Schwartzberg, these are the kinds of ideas that we are trying to get at.”
Speaker
Henry Farrell
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

04 / belief

I think that he captures something real. And if you want, alternatively, to say what Polanyi gets right, I think that there is something that can be said very plausibly about the ways in which many of the aspects of Trump are, alternatively, what we see happening with people like Orban and Kaczynski in Central and Eastern Europe, that these can be explained as being reactions against overly harsh market forces of one sort or another.

“I think that he captures something real. And if you want, alternatively, to say what Polanyi gets right, I think that there is something that can be said very plausibly about the ways in which many of the aspects of Trump are, alternatively, what we see happening with people like Orban and Kaczynski in Central and Eastern Europe, that these can be explained as being reactions against overly harsh market forces of one sort or another.”
Speaker
Henry Farrell
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

05 / belief

First of all, I would say, insofar as there is anybody who’s identified with neoliberalism in Ireland and has another family member who has an uncle who was the deputy prime minister of Ireland, Michael McDowell, who I’m very fond of and who I have strong political disagreements with.

“First of all, I would say, insofar as there is anybody who’s identified with neoliberalism in Ireland and has another family member who has an uncle who was the deputy prime minister of Ireland, Michael McDowell, who I’m very fond of and who I have strong political disagreements with.”
Speaker
Henry Farrell
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

06 / belief

If one wants to think about the standard story about how interdependence, at least under some circumstances, creates peace because businesses have an incentive to try and create peaceful and happy relations between nations in order to secure their commerce, I think that there’s something to it, although as my work with Abe on weaponized interdependence suggests, there also are some clear limits to that as well.

“If one wants to think about the standard story about how interdependence, at least under some circumstances, creates peace because businesses have an incentive to try and create peaceful and happy relations between nations in order to secure their commerce, I think that there’s something to it, although as my work with Abe on weaponized interdependence suggests, there also are some clear limits to that as well.”
Speaker
Henry Farrell
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

08 / belief

If I want to think about this as an individual, what I would say is that I’m not at all happy with what the European Union is doing in specific here, but I do think that there needs to be much greater regulation of platform companies. And in the absence of the United States, I think that the European Union is the most plausible actor which has got the regulatory clout and the willingness to do so in a manner which is at least somewhat compatible with broad liberal norms.

“If I want to think about this as an individual, what I would say is that I’m not at all happy with what the European Union is doing in specific here, but I do think that there needs to be much greater regulation of platform companies. And in the absence of the United States, I think that the European Union is the most plausible actor which has got the regulatory clout and the willingness to do so in a manner which is at least somewhat compatible with broad liberal norms.”
Speaker
Henry Farrell
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

09 / belief

I would summarize it as Proust with rocket ships and ray guns. So I would say — “summarize Proust” — to summarize Wolfe, Wolfe is Proust with rockets and ray guns.

“I would summarize it as Proust with rocket ships and ray guns. So I would say — “summarize Proust” — to summarize Wolfe, Wolfe is Proust with rockets and ray guns.”
Speaker
Henry Farrell
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

11 / belief

I suspect that if we were in a world in which everything was at the scale of 8chan, rather than having a mixture of companies at the scale of 8chan and companies at the scale of Facebook, that the likelihood of this stuff spreading and becoming epidemic across the entire community of internet users would be far, far less.

“I suspect that if we were in a world in which everything was at the scale of 8chan, rather than having a mixture of companies at the scale of 8chan and companies at the scale of Facebook, that the likelihood of this stuff spreading and becoming epidemic across the entire community of internet users would be far, far less.”
Speaker
Henry Farrell
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

12 / belief

I worry that this discussion is going to be dominated by the security side of the House, but to the extent that privacy advocates, privacy officials are able to get into this debate as well, I think that one could plausibly come up with something which is going to be reasonably respectful of civil liberties.

“I worry that this discussion is going to be dominated by the security side of the House, but to the extent that privacy advocates, privacy officials are able to get into this debate as well, I think that one could plausibly come up with something which is going to be reasonably respectful of civil liberties.”
Speaker
Henry Farrell
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

13 / prediction

This led to this very, very complicated ballet dance in which the Treasury sought to both extend the sanctions and to specify them in ways that would allow for the unwinding, at least the nominal unwinding, of Deripaska’s formal control of the company, so as to create an exit strategy. But one can see that, as we’re going to have more and more countries trying to do this stuff, and as they are doing so in a competitive way rather than one country trying as a unipolar power to impose it on everyone else, that the possibilities of mistakes being made and mistakes leading to escalation, and minor trade wars blowing up into substantial spats and even outright economic warfare — I think that that possibility is going to get much, much worse.

“This led to this very, very complicated ballet dance in which the Treasury sought to both extend the sanctions and to specify them in ways that would allow for the unwinding, at least the nominal unwinding, of Deripaska’s formal control of the company, so as to create an exit strategy. But one can see that, as we’re going to have more and more countries trying to do this stuff, and as they are doing so in a competitive way rather than one country trying as a unipolar power to impose it on everyone else, that the possibilities of mistakes being made and mistakes leading to escalation, and minor trade wars blowing up into substantial spats and even outright economic warfare — I think that that possibility is going to get much, much worse.”
Speaker
Henry Farrell
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

14 / evaluation

I remember being told by a lawyer what they did was, they used to effectively take bids from Huawei in order to scare Ericsson and Nokia and other companies into offering them better terms, but with the presumption that they were never going to use Huawei because this would get them into too much trouble in security.

“I remember being told by a lawyer what they did was, they used to effectively take bids from Huawei in order to scare Ericsson and Nokia and other companies into offering them better terms, but with the presumption that they were never going to use Huawei because this would get them into too much trouble in security.”
Speaker
Henry Farrell
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

15 / prediction

The European path forward, I think, if Europe wanted to try and minimize its exposure, would be to start to impose a much clearer and more substantial mandate upon SWIFT to effectively force SWIFT — under circumstances where the United States tells it to do one thing and Europe tells it to do another — SWIFT would effectively have much stronger reasons than it does at the moment to comply with the European threats.

“The European path forward, I think, if Europe wanted to try and minimize its exposure, would be to start to impose a much clearer and more substantial mandate upon SWIFT to effectively force SWIFT — under circumstances where the United States tells it to do one thing and Europe tells it to do another — SWIFT would effectively have much stronger reasons than it does at the moment to comply with the European threats.”
Speaker
Henry Farrell
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

16 / prediction

Or whether the month has an R in it. This is something that I’ve actually been struggling with and thinking about because there’s another interesting aspect to this as well, which is, if one thinks, for example, about a possible Warren administration — which is quite plausible at the moment, as the most plausible candidate perhaps at the moment on the Democratic side, although who the hell knows — then I think that what we’re going to see is, we’re going to see the Warren administration trying to pursue a much more energetic foreign policy agenda, especially on economic policy, than we have seen for a number of years.

“Or whether the month has an R in it. This is something that I’ve actually been struggling with and thinking about because there’s another interesting aspect to this as well, which is, if one thinks, for example, about a possible Warren administration — which is quite plausible at the moment, as the most plausible candidate perhaps at the moment on the Democratic side, although who the hell knows — then I think that what we’re going to see is, we’re going to see the Warren administration trying to pursue a much more energetic foreign policy agenda, especially on economic policy, than we have seen for a number of years.”
Speaker
Henry Farrell
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

18 / evaluation

But if you’re thinking about maintaining the underlying conditions for a democracy, which presumably is a good thing for markets and for capital, then having something like labor unions is necessary. And I think that the way that Niskanen has moved and, in particular, the way that people like Brink Lindsey, together with Steve Teles, have moved towards endorsement, albeit with a certain amount of grudgery of labor unions, really points to the realization by smart people on the center right and on the libertarian-tinged center right that this is something that maybe libertarians have gotten wrong over the last couple of decades.

“But if you’re thinking about maintaining the underlying conditions for a democracy, which presumably is a good thing for markets and for capital, then having something like labor unions is necessary. And I think that the way that Niskanen has moved and, in particular, the way that people like Brink Lindsey, together with Steve Teles, have moved towards endorsement, albeit with a certain amount of grudgery of labor unions, really points to the realization by smart people on the center right and on the libertarian-tinged center right that this is something that maybe libertarians have gotten wrong over the last couple of decades.”
Speaker
Henry Farrell
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

19 / recommendation

For example, if you want to understand where Elizabeth Warren is going, you want to go back to Mancur Olson’s book, The Rise and Decline of Nations, because I think what Elizabeth Warren is pursuing is very much an Olsonian view of how markets work: that drag and dross and corruption builds up and that in order to allow markets to achieve their full potential, you basically need to cleanse them at a certain point.

“For example, if you want to understand where Elizabeth Warren is going, you want to go back to Mancur Olson’s book, The Rise and Decline of Nations, because I think what Elizabeth Warren is pursuing is very much an Olsonian view of how markets work: that drag and dross and corruption builds up and that in order to allow markets to achieve their full potential, you basically need to cleanse them at a certain point.”
Speaker
Henry Farrell
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

20 / prediction

Many of those sanctions are plausibly going to implicate the European Union. So, when one looks at the policy debate in the EU at the moment, a lot of that policy debate is gearing up for perceived likely fights with the United States over the relationship between Europe and the Russian economy because, of course, Europe depends much more heavily on Russia for energy and has a wide variety of other economic relations with Russia.

“Many of those sanctions are plausibly going to implicate the European Union. So, when one looks at the policy debate in the EU at the moment, a lot of that policy debate is gearing up for perceived likely fights with the United States over the relationship between Europe and the Russian economy because, of course, Europe depends much more heavily on Russia for energy and has a wide variety of other economic relations with Russia.”
Speaker
Henry Farrell
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

21 / evaluation

What he gets better is the sense of massive complex systems that don’t work particularly well — the kinds of constraints that they impose upon individuals and the kinds of ways that people try to respond to those constraints. And also, of course, the sense of a profound unreality in his novels, which I think is really why Dick, much more than, say, Orwell or Huxley or any of the other people you might think of — Zamyatin — is really the person who captures the kind of dystopian characteristics of the society that we live in at the moment, which isn’t a society where we have a state telling everybody what to think, but it’s a world in which nobody knows quite what to believe is true anymore.

“What he gets better is the sense of massive complex systems that don’t work particularly well — the kinds of constraints that they impose upon individuals and the kinds of ways that people try to respond to those constraints. And also, of course, the sense of a profound unreality in his novels, which I think is really why Dick, much more than, say, Orwell or Huxley or any of the other people you might think of — Zamyatin — is really the person who captures the kind of dystopian characteristics of the society that we live in at the moment, which isn’t a society where we have a state telling everybody what to think, but it’s a world in which nobody knows quite what to believe is true anymore.”
Speaker
Henry Farrell
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

22 / prediction

I think that’s where we’re moving towards — a world which is much less going to be about trying to pare things down to the minimum in search of economic efficiency and much more about robustness, redundancy, and trying to think carefully through the fact that we live in a fundamentally insecure world.

“I think that’s where we’re moving towards — a world which is much less going to be about trying to pare things down to the minimum in search of economic efficiency and much more about robustness, redundancy, and trying to think carefully through the fact that we live in a fundamentally insecure world.”
Speaker
Henry Farrell
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler
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