Hawks, stocks and peril: Iran-America brinkmanship

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Visit optum.com to learn more. Hello and welcome to The Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. People have become used to the idea that online behavior is monitored, recorded, monetized, But as facial recognition technology improves, there's much more concern about surveillance in the real world. You can turn off your phone, but you can't turn off your face. And you know all that advertising that plays to stereotypes about men who can't cook and women who can't park? In Britain anyway, there's soon going to be a lot less of it, thanks in part to regulators clamping down and to consumers who increasingly dislike being told what they can and can't do. But first— Amid escalating tensions with Iran, America's Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement on Tuesday outside the U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida.

We have been engaged in many messages, even this moment right here, communicating to Iran that we are there to deter aggression. President Trump does not want war, and we will continue to communicate that message while doing the things that are necessary to protect American interests in the region.

But also this week, the Trump administration announced it will send 1,000 additional troops to the Middle East. This came in the wake of last week's attacks on 2 oil tankers in a crucial shipping lane in the Gulf of Oman.

It is the assessment of the United States government that the Islamic Republic of Iran is responsible for the attacks that occurred in the Gulf of Oman today.

Iran denied responsibility for the attacks and for an incident last month involving oil tankers off the coast of the United Arab Emirates. The country did, however, announce on Monday that it will soon breach the 2015 nuclear deal. Its stockpile of enriched uranium will exceed limits set by the deal by next week. And this morning, Iran claimed to have shot down an American drone in its airspace.

For a moment, it seemed that America and Iran were stepping back from the brink of conflict.

Roger McShane is our Middle East editor.

Shinzo Abe, Japan's prime minister, had gone to Tehran with an offer of talks that seemed to have the approval of Donald Trump, and the Iranians rejected that offer. And since then, we've seen this cycle of escalation sort of repeat itself with the attacks on commercial shipping, with Iran saying it was going to abrogate parts of the nuclear deal, and then with America's response of sending 1,000 more troops to the region. Some of this is sort of testing on both sides, hardliners seeing how far they can push the escalation without triggering a war. But the worry is that you can easily stumble into a war when you start shooting down drones, when you start shooting at ships, and when you start sending more and more troops to the region.

So about the troop movements, how significant a move do you think that is? That seems much more kind of tangible, boots on the ground.

Well, it's only 1,000 troops, so this isn't an invasion force. Most of those troops deal with logistics and intelligence. It's not like America is about to launch an offensive on Iran. You do see hawks in America making the case for a more forceful response, people like John Bolton, people like Mike Pompeo. You have officials going to Congress and sort of playing up rather tenuous links between Iran and al-Qaeda. The reason for this is because if the Trump administration did choose to launch an offensive on Iran, they don't want to have to go back to Congress for approval. So basically, they're making the case that they already have the approval to launch an offensive under the war on terrorism.

But what about the dynamic within the American administration? It's clear that Mr. Trump doesn't seem to want war, and yet he has these hawkish figures who are doing some of the driving recently.

Yeah, I mean, Trump, for all his impetuousness, actually seems quite dovish, especially compared to his advisers. So, I mean, he almost shrugged off the attacks on commercial shipping in the Strait of from news, said it wasn't really a big deal, was much more concerned about Iran's nuclear program. I think the attacks in the straits are actually more important than Mr. Trump lets on. Two quite small attacks on tankers drove up the price of oil, significantly drove up the price of insurance premiums on shipping. So even the smallest of attacks can actually have quite a big effect on the world economy.

But you say what he's more interested in, what he's more worried about, is around breaching the nuclear deal, which on Monday it reminded us it was going to do. How do How do you think President Trump will react once that starts to bite?

Yeah, I think that's what really makes him and his advisers nervous. The way Iran is about to sort of breach the nuclear deal is by exceeding stockpiles on low-level enriched uranium. The more serious worry is when they start enriching uranium to higher levels that could possibly be used in a bomb. I mean, the irony here is that this was all taken care of under the nuclear deal. There were thresholds on to what level Iran could enrich uranium, and the nuclear deal laid out an inspection regime for Iran's nuclear program, but what the administration wants and what the nuclear deal doesn't cover is it wants to stop Iran from enriching uranium, full stop.

So how much do you think that promise of continuing to enrich uranium and possibly getting towards weapons-grade level is a real risk, or is this just nose-thumbing?

I think it's mostly provocation. I mean, look, the specifics of uranium enrichment are complicated, but basically, what Iran is potentially doing is moving that much closer to a nuclear weapon. Now, it says it's not doing that. It says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. But basically, it's putting pressure on America to ease up on its sanctions, and it's putting pressure on Europe to help deliver some of the economic relief that was promised in the nuclear deal. And so far, European efforts to help Iran out have fizzled out.

But I mean, where do you see this leading? The provocations seem to continue and continue. Today, we've seen Iran claim to have shot down a US drone. How do you think things could escalate further?

Well, I don't think you're going to see, you know, American troops marching on Tehran anytime soon. I think you're going to see more of the same. Iran shooting at ships, perhaps America increasing its patrols in the Strait of Hormuz. You're going to see Iranian proxies grow more aggressive in places like Yemen, Iraq. Syria, and you're going to see much more disruption to the world economy and to regional economies if things escalate.

But all of this seems to point to at least the risk of miscalculation, of sort of an accidental escalation. When you have all these skirmishes going on on all these fronts, don't you think there's an increased risk of tumbling into greater conflict?

Yeah, I think that's true, even more so because you have hawks in America and hardliners in Iran who really control policy now on each side. And so it's not really clear where this cycle of escalation ends.

Roger, thank you very much for your time.

My pleasure.

Last month, San Francisco became the first American city to ban its agencies from using facial recognition systems. It's not the only sign that attitudes toward the technology are hardening. Congress has begun investigating its impact on civil rights and liberties. Amazon has recently seen off two challenges for an independent study into its own facial recognition platform. In Britain, the South Wales Police Force is awaiting the outcome of a judicial review of its own use of the technology.

Facial recognition technology is not widely used in precisely the way that people fear.

John Fassmann is our Washington correspondent.

The technology is not really good enough to capture what's called a one-to-one in the wild. It can't really match you if you're walking or in bad light or the camera's at a bad angle. It does a very good job of identifying people then. Where it works is in extremely controlled settings. So, for instance, when you go through customs at Heathrow, or I think even JFK in Atlanta now, your face will be captured and it can recognize you from that. And then the databases that police are using are usually comparing mugshot to mugshot. It works well enough that people are using it in extremely controlled settings, but in the wild, it's not widely used yet at all.

But this technology will of course develop, and when it does, it'll be used, as you say, in the wild to greater and more concerning effect.

Yep, I think that's the fear. I think the fear is that as it develops, it will eventually reach a point where police can put it in body cams. They will be enabled. You know, it'll probably start with them walking around and just comparing pictures to sort of people in their mugshot databases, known criminals. But it will very easily go beyond that. What happens when you have a protest? That may be unruly but not illegal, when you capture the faces of everyone on those body cams, do they then not go into a database? I think that's hard to imagine. So I think it really does have a uniquely nasty potential.

More so than other technological means? I mean, why is this different from the kinds of surveillance that, you know, we've become accustomed to worrying about in the online sphere?

Well, I'm not sure about online, but let's think about it in the real world. So your cell phone follows you wherever you go. You can always leave your cell phone at home. An automatic license plate reader can track location, sort of your movements in your car, for however long they keep that information for. You build a sort of database of everywhere you've gone for the past year, but you can always walk or take public transport or take a taxi. You can't leave your face at home. This is attached to your body in a much sort of deeper, more permanent way than any other surveillance tech that's now used in the wild.

And so you think this move by San Francisco to ban its agencies from using facial recognition is an appropriate response?

It is entirely appropriate for people concerned about privacy, which should be all people, to view this tech with extraordinary skepticism, even if it doesn't work terribly well right now. I think that people are trying, by getting in front of it, by doing what San Francisco did, by doing what Congress is starting to do and holding hearings on facial recognition, people are getting in front of the concerns so that we are not reacting when the tech is already sort of out there and used to monitor people for non-illegal activities.

What about the police and the agencies that are trying to or thinking about deploying this technology? What do they say about it?

Well, the agencies that have used the Munkshot database, the officers from the two that I've spoken to, one in Canada and one in Oregon, they say it makes identifying suspects easier. And they say that they're very careful to say that we would never affect an arrest based entirely on facial recognition. That it is just a lead, just like any other lead, and we have to follow and investigate it. But they say it saves a tremendous amount of time, you know, and they also— the police officers are citizens too, so they are concerned about the spread of facial recognition technology that could be used in illiberal ways, but it makes their job easier. That's what they think about it mainly.

And what about the companies that are developing these technologies? What do they make of the pushback? How are they dealing with it?

Well, I think there's a whole lot of eye-rolling from companies that develop this technology, but there's also a lot of thoughtfulness. Last month I went to see Rick Smith, who is the CEO of Axon, the company that used to be called Taser. It makes tasers and it has branched into body cams. Have you been tased?

7 times.

7 times? Yep.

Good Lord.

Yeah. I had a cop who famously told me, "Once is curious, twice as stupid." And so I didn't want to ask him, "What does 7 mean then?" And he was extremely thoughtful in talking about privacy.

His company has set up an AI ethics board.

So the main idea was to bring in experts, some technical experts, so we have, you know, some AI experts, some civil rights-oriented experts, some constitutional experts, and then people who also represent policing.

And they sort of are brought in-house to think about the privacy implications of the tech that Axon makes.

The world shouldn't find out about it when we're rolling it out, or— because I think putting the ideas out there gives you a chance to understand, you know, more so what some of the risks will be, and then you can calibrate around, okay, are those risks worth it or not? And at least when you bring something to market, it's, it's better thought out.

Now, you know, is this any more than window dressing or a PR exercise? I would hope so, but it's better than doing nothing.

What about other sort of innovations that are perhaps a little less worrying in terms of all the kinds of tech development that's going on for law enforcement and the like? Are there other developments of note that we should worry or not worry about?

Well, it's interesting. Last month I went to the International Association of Police Chiefs tech conference in Jacksonville, where you had a lot of police talking about how they use tech in their jobs, and you had a lot of vendors trying to sell things to the police. The biggest concentration of vendors was not— they weren't selling neat new gadgets or overt sort of public-facing tools. They were selling a lot of things to help the police organize and streamline and sort through the data they already collected. And the thing is, police collect an enormous amount of information about people, and with body cams it's even more. But they've historically not made terrific use of it, and certainly not made use of it in ways that would enable them to know everything they knew as soon as they needed to know it. So I think the sort of the next tech revolution as far as police are concerned will not be citizen-facing tech. It'll be sort of data-herding material that will help the police use the information they gather more efficiently. I mean, I suppose there's a reason to— some people might be worried about it. It doesn't strike me as something terribly frightening. It strikes me as broadly a good thing if we can help police be more efficient. And it's certainly less frightening than cameras that recognize your face everywhere you go.

John, thanks very much for joining us.

My pleasure, anytime.

Every woman needs to be herself at times. Your answer? Baking. Baking good, baking often with Gold Medal Flour. Companies often perpetuate sexist stereotypes with advertisements depicting men who can't do housework.

Oven Pride.

So easy, a man can do it. Or women doing chores while men relax. Behind every great Christmas, there's mum. And behind mum, there's Asda.

What's for tea, love?

Those companies could now face more official criticism in Britain thanks to new regulations that came into effect this month.

Ads that have harmful gender stereotypes in them are banned, or rather can be reported to the watchdog, the Advertising Standards Authority. To look at.

Sasha Nauta is The Economist's public policy editor.

They're defining harmful as ads that are likely to cause harm or serious or widespread offense. Now, typically, the sort of examples they give is basically ads that show men failing at something that would be seen as a stereotypically female thing to do, such as changing nappies or caring for children, or the other way around, so women failing to do DIY or parking a car, that sort of thing. You get the gist.

So how does that work in practice though? How does one define what is likely to cause widespread offense and what is just playful?

That is exactly what they will struggle with. So they've got a year now to implement this rule and then they're gonna review it again. And I think the practicalities of how you implement this will be a massive headache. Harm, serious offense, widespread offense, they're all very, very subjective. Harm to who? What counts as offense? I mean, you and I will be offended by different things. And then of course, this being Britain, the role of humour in ads is quite relevant here. But companies that will hide behind banter, as we call it, are unlikely to pass the Advertising Standards Authority, who have already said that that is unlikely to be a valid excuse for harmful gender stereotypes. I think they will struggle massively, but in practice it will mean that if you see something on the telly or on social media that you think falls within that definition, then you can call up the Advertising Standards Authorities, and then they say they will handle it on a case-by-case basis, and they will look at context and content and decide case by case whether an ad indeed should be banned under the new rule.

And how much do you reckon the way that genders are portrayed in advertising really matters?

I mean, we know that, you know, particularly young people can be heavily influenced by what they see in adverts. We're not just talking about television here, but of course also online. It can, you know, restrict our ideas of what we might aspire to ourselves, or what sort of products or professions might be available to us. So I certainly think it matters a great deal, and in fact we know from a number of surveys that many viewers would agree with this. Nearly half of both men and women say that TV commercials show too many outdated gender stereotypes. So certainly the Advertising Standards Authority are on to something in saying there's quite a bit of rubbish on television and on social media. The question is sort of what do you do about it?

Well, it seems to kind of reflect changes that are happening in society anyway, and the last thing an advertiser would want to do is to offend anyone anyway. Do you think the ad industry was heading in this direction anyhow and just needs a bit of a push?

I think the good parts of the ad industry were heading in this direction anyway, and the question is indeed if it needed a push you know, a kick or just a carrot. And my own sense is particularly sort of the younger generation of consumers are very aware, and increasingly so, of wanting to buy products and be affiliated to brands that have the values that they aspire to. And therefore, I personally think that the better advertisers and the better brands were heading in this direction anyway. Things like the un-stereotype Alliance, which is an alliance from UN Women together with a bunch of brands like Unilever and Alibaba, who've all signed up to say we are going to tackle harmful gender stereotypes proactively as businesses. I didn't necessarily think they needed a rule or a ban. They can see the commercial imperative of doing so anyway. And frankly, we should probably trust consumers to basically start boycotting, as they already have up to a point, brands that just aren't catching up with the times.

So either through regulation or in addition through just market forces, gender equality, at least in advertising, seems to be coming.

Exactly.

Sasha, thank you very much for your time.

Thanks a lot, Jason.

That's all for this episode of The Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. And you can subscribe to The Economist at economist.com/radiooffer. 12 issues for $12 or £12. See you back here tomorrow.