The Imitation Game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5CjKEFb-sM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra

I would recommend it (of course it was an indep. film), and it was a new angle on the WWII unsung hero story (how nerds/misfits helped win the war in a big way, and struggled with skeptics/haters and big moral decisions).

Reflecting on WWI-WWII, I think it was one of the greatest tragedies in modern history that the Western powers allowed GER to fall into extremism and aggression. Like Russia's revolutions and purges were of course a terrible waste of human capital, but Russia was pretty much a 3rd world country until recently.

For GER, they were world leaders in various scientific and cultural disciplines, and of course had a robust military and industries. Sure they did some bad things during WWI, but they weren't clear "villains", and the punishment imposed on them was unjust - I guess fueled by victor's hubris and other irrationality.

As far as UK-FRA were concerned, they wanted to kick GER down a few notches so they wouldn't ever again be a rival for preeminence in W Eur? But I suppose no one ever considered trying to make GER an ally in order to gain strength and plan for a potential face off with Russia/Bolshevism. Well, WWI and postwar leaders in UK-FRA were not exactly impressive.

Clearly the EU learned that lesson the hard way, but I wonder what history would have been like if the Allies approached post-WWI GER with a Marshall-plan/NATO mentality rather than the typical European to-the-victor-go-the-spoils approach. I know we can't expect those leaders to have implemented ideas ahead of their time, but I'm fairly sure there were some intellectuals who were proposing similar things but getting dismissed. Heck they idealistically made the League of Nations, even though it was terribly flawed.

So you wonder how much better the world would be today if Western powers harnessed GER's potential to advance humanity and modern values, vs. all the resources allocated for WWII activities (and WWII just led to another wasteful military buildup that fortunately didn't escalate). Maybe the same can be said about post-Napoleonic France, but that was still the monarchic period, and leaders were understandably scared of Fr. Revolutionary thinking.   

But all that shows how even advanced nations can so quickly devolve into xenophobia, ultra-nationalism, and barbaric aggression with the proper external/internal pressures and extremist messages from leaders. Trump and white-working-class anger are milder manifestations, and I don't think the US is at risk in the forseable future, but it is a shame any time a world power with so much potential for good strays off the higher path and instead becomes a negative force in the world.

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And re: Alan Turing and Project Ultra, it's very sad but typical that the gov't he worked hard to preserved ended up screwing him and literally killing him (he was outed as gay, and the backward laws/medicine at the time prescribed hormonal therapy with bad side effects - he committed suicide a year after treatment began). And if you're gay and smart, of course you're a commie spy, so life must not have been pleasant for him during the postwar years (esp. since he couldn't tell the world his wartime actions, so no one knew he was a hero).

Imagine all the other great contributions he could have made to society had he not been persecuted to an early death. And in the context of WWII, the conflict is depicted as good vs evil, and tyranny vs freedom. But if you were a woman, black, gay, Jew, or another minority, neither the Axis nor Allies treated you very well. of course the Axis treated those groups worse, but if you were a member of one of those groups, you had to wonder WTF you were fighting for. I guess it's like US blacks during the Civil War too - it's not like they had it so great if the Union won, and Abe Lincoln was probably the most pro-equality president (it took him a while, but he really became a champion) until LBJ and Obama. But they were in a tough position to support the least evil side (but not nec. a good side for them, which unfortunately did not exist).

So a woman who was brilliant at maths but couldn't get a professional job in the UK because of her gender, and a math genius who had to hide his sexuality in the UK, significantly contributed to the Allies defeating the Nazis faster, with potentially millions of lives saved on both sides. That should be a big lesson about what social values we should fight and die to protect, and what harm we cause when we marginalize, exclude, and block our neighbors from reaching their potential (yes I'm looking at you, 2016 GOP).

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Lastly, we know of the WWII folks as the Greatest Generation, and despite their prejudices and ignorance, I really do think they were great in terms of prudence and discipline. As depicted in The Imitation Game, the UK gov't first had to identify a path to victory (partly by cracking the Enigma settings puzzle), then recruit, fund, and trust a team who could deliver in time (a group of "rejects" with unorthodox methods). They had to let them do it their way, and not stifle their creativity with bureaucracy/meddling. Then once the puzzle was solved, they had to keep it a secret and strategically select interventions that had the highest statistical probability to (a) win the war fastest, and (b) not tip off the Nazis that Enigma was cracked. The same can be said of the Manhattan Project, but Ultra was more complicated from a game theory perspective, because there was the element of the German's actions/reactions that they couldn't control but had to predict.

I really don't think Western leaders and armed forces of today could have executed a project so well, and made the tough but correct decisions. You see how our "best and brightest" messed up the War on Terror and the War on Drugs - and that is when we enjoy huge resource advantages. But maybe that is the problem, advantage leads to overconfidence. We drank our own Kool Aid too much re: American exceptionalism. For the UK (and WWII Allies overall), the prospect of losing was very real (and they were losing until 1942), and it forced them to rise to the occasion.

Today, the sad truth is our best and brightest do not go into gov't and public leadership. Both the gov't and the individuals are at fault for this, but the gov't more so (reasons? just watch a session of Congress or a GOP debate). Obama and Bill Clinton are exceptions, but the majority of politicians these days do not have the "right stuff" to even make it as a mediocre middle manager or professional in the private sector. They are seriously worthy of ridicule, not admiration.

I would hope that if/when the next WWII-scale crisis arises, our best minds and leaders will participate (and be allowed to participate in the right roles). But the problem is that many of our modern problems are not acute, but slow bleeds, like climate change, injustice, and terrorism. There isn't a sense of urgency for the Zuckerbergs and Musks of the world to enter public service (not that those guys are natural leaders with great moral compasses, but they are very smart/capable, even if their EQs were borderline autistic in their earlier years as CEO). Or they cling to the unproven libertarian belief that the private sector corporate model is in the best position to solve humanity's biggest problems. I disagree; Zuck couldn't even get India to accept his free internet, so there are obvious limits as to how much good one firm (and its army of lawyers, PR, and marketers) can do.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-criticized-in-india-over-free-limited-internet-1453398493

FDA spies on dissenting staff, possibly illegally

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/us/fda-surveillance-of-scientists-spread-to-outside-critics.html?_r=1&hp

F.D.A. officials went to the inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services to seek a criminal investigation into the possible leak, but they were turned down. The inspector general found that there was no evidence of a crime, noting that “matters of public safety” can legally be released to the news media. Undeterred, agency officials began the electronic monitoring operation on their own.

Rep Van Hollen: “It is absolutely unacceptable for the F.D.A. to be spying on employees who reach out to members of Congress to expose abuses or wrongdoing in government agencies.”
Senator Grassley:  “[The FDA] have absolutely no business reading the private e-mails of their employees. They think they can be the Gestapo and do anything they want.”
Just freaking ridiculous. 6 PhD scientists at the FDA were concerned that their agency was approving scanning devices (made by GE Healthcare) for mammograms and colonoscopies that were giving patients too much radiation. They tried to voice their opinions, but were shut down. So then they attempted back-channel communications with Congressmen, the press, and even the White House to try to get some leverage against their management, whom they felt were making a mistake and putting patients at risk.

What did the FDA do about it? They hired a security firm to use off-the-shelf spyware to monitor the communications of these "trouble-makers". They have also since terminated those employees. But this could be illegal under new laws on retribution against whisteblowers. Of course when the news broke, the FDA said that was not their intent, and instead they were building a case that these employees were leaking confidential information (discussions between the FDA and companies are confidential to "protect trade secrets", though I don't think they should be). I find that argument bizarre, since it's not like Wikileaks and national security here, putting spies or diplomats in harm's way. And even if the scientists were leaking info, if GE and the FDA did nothing wrong, then they have nothing to hide. If the scanner gets approved, then we should be able to know everything about it, right? But the whole secrecy concern was moot anyway, because the moron contractors that the FDA hired to snoop on the scientists accidentally posted all the classified reports the scientists were working on online (they have since been taken down). One of the scientists happened to discover this when he was Googling one of his "co-conspirators". Obviously GE is not happy either: the Keystone Cops FDA was ostensibly trying to protect its secrets, and ended up exposing them to a worse degree. Hollywood couldn't make this stuff up.

So is this about a medical device company using its leverage to get its regulatory agency to rubber-stamp its next big-money product, even if it's not entirely safe? Those FDA managers probably want "real jobs" after they do their time in gov't, and GE is a big, rich employer. When principled, concerned scientists try to DO THEIR JOBS, then they are threatened and spied on. The FDA was concerned about those "defaming" their agency. What are they, the Islamic State of Iran? In America we TOLERATE DISSENT, especially when it's in the interest of public safety. After Nixon, I thought we weren't supposed to have "enemies lists". And it's not like one disgruntled quack scientist here; 6 were putting their careers on the line because they felt so strongly about this issue. Maybe they're not all noble saints and other things are going on here, but at least this justifies a second opinion on the scanners, especially now that Americans are starting to express their disapproval over excessive radiation and diagnostic costs imposed on us by device companies and doctors.