The relationship between security and safety lies at the heart of modern regulatory frameworks – which is precisely why JD Vance seems determined to tie it to a cross-shaped stake and set it ablaze in the name of only one particular race of people “winning the future.”
In 2017, Ross Anderson and colleagues issued what now reads as a distressingly precise warning about security being weaponized against safety. Today, with the subtlety of a sledgehammer to a thermostat, Vance demonstrates exactly what they feared.
We weren’t sanguine about the inclusion of public concerns in AI safety, as envisioned at Bletchley Park in 2023, the first AI summit. In Paris, we witnessed a shift from more expansive considerations of AI safety towards a far narrower AI for defense. […] AI safety was always vulnerable to being weaponized and, therefore, easily reduced to improving algorithmic performance and making a nation-state safe. AI safety has now become almost exclusively national AI security, both defensive (e.g. cybersecurity) and offensive (e.g. information warfare). It also has solidified into a panicked race for market dominance. Additionally, AI safety as AI security represents a gold rush for border tech surveillance companies, especially for the Canada-US border, the longest in the world. Soft laws and soft norms (in the case of defense) are insufficient to protect us from unaccountable companies.
Let’s examine the smell of Munich after Vance opened his fascist-loving mouth (yes, Munich – the irony could crush coal into diamonds). Vance declared:
The AI future is not going to be won by hand-wringing about safety.
Won? One wonders what precisely Vance thinks we’re “winning” by abandoning safety frameworks that prevent catastrophic disasters and massive debts. Perhaps he’s counting on the fact that millions of dead people can’t complain about societal impacts? That kind of winning? Like hello Munich, I’m here to ask if you have thought about the upside to your nation committing genocide?
Anderson and colleagues wrote all about this years ago, apparently in vain because Vance wasn’t listening:
Safety engineering is both about applications such as transport (where licensed drivers and pilots can be assumed to have known levels of competence), and also about consumer applications (where products should not harm children or the confused elderly). The same applies to security and privacy. The security engineer’s task is to enable normal users, and even vulnerable users, to enjoy reasonable protection against a capable motivated opponent.
Imagine that – protecting vulnerable users! The mere mention of safety frameworks, however, has apparently been making Vance very angry for many years. He really, really hates safety, according to his voting records.
- Transportation “Safety”
- Opposed vehicle safety standards until politically expedient
- Supported railway safety only after his constituents got a front-row seat to what happens without it (East Palestine disaster)
- Pattern: Wait for disaster, then pretend to care while actually making things worse
- Gun “Safety”
Senator Vance has consistently put gun industry profits over the safety of American communities… supports concealed carry reciprocity and extremist judges. He opposes universal background checks and has called red flag laws ‘a slippery slope.’
Ah yes, the slippery slope – that evergreen refuge of those who can’t be bothered to make actual arguments. Next up: Seatbelts are a slippery slope to mandatory bubble wrap.
- Banking “Safety”
His Bank Failure Prevention Act (S.2497) might as well be called the “Foxes run the hen-house Act”
…converting state-chartered banks that have at least $100 billion in assets to nationally chartered financial institutions overseen by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, as opposed to the Federal Reserve or Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
Because nothing says “preventing failure” like removing oversight!
As CNN’s Nick Paton Walsh observes with admirable restraint about the Munich disaster:
Vance uses half-truths to lecture a European audience well aware of the threat of authoritarian rule. It felt like a speech, if delivered on X.com, laden surely with community notes… Vance had clearly long prepared this tirade as a starting gun for the second Trump administration’s bid to refuel populism across Europe. The continent he spoke to is a little wiser now…
Vance practically shed a tear as he apparently begged on his knees for Europe to please, please allow another Hitler.
Seriously, in Munich of all places, Vance accused European safety regulators of “Soviet-style” authoritarianism while he advocated for them to setup an authoritarian state reminiscent of Nazism. He laid out precisely the kind of opaque, unaccountable security state that would make actual totalitarian bureaucrats demand to know how Vance could just rock up and pitch Europe on the future that America swore it would never allow to happen.
The immediate effect of Vance’s military-grade doublespeak to invoke the next Hitler rise to power is visible in Britain’s AI institute rushed retreat rebrand, which dropped:
- References to “societal impacts” (given impacts to society are just hand-wringing, right? Millions of dead means just a little more wringing than the last time.)
- Concerns about “unequal outcomes” (inequality means the privileged cheats win even harder! Right, right? Who had the most unequal outcomes ever, I mean could it be Adolf?)
- Public accountability measures (given accountability is just for all those losers who aren’t winning the future by cheating without any care for impacts.)
This perversion of social consciousness mirrors Vance’s broader legislative agenda to spin, and spin, and spin:
- PRESERVE Online Speech Act (S.2314): Because nothing says “preserving” like the act of dismantling
- Drive American Act (S.2962): Making America’s air quality great again, one coal-rolled asthma attack at a time
- Bank Failure Prevention Act (S.2497): Preventing bank failure by making failure easier and faster than ever!
Vance’s Orwellian approach to political gamesmanship, like a pig who keeps dumping mud on all the farm animals, consistently replaces:
- Systematic safety frameworks → Whatever is the opposite
- Public accountability → Private profit by a few elites
- Protection of vulnerable users → Protection of powerful donors
- Long-term sustainability → Short-term power gains by a few elites
Anderson’s paper concluded with what now reads like a prophecy:
The task is to embed adversarial thinking into standards bodies, enforcement agencies, and testing facilities. To scope out the problem, we studied the history of safety and standards in various contexts: road transport, medical devices and electrotechnical equipment.
The security community must recognize this pattern before Vance turns “security” into such a mockery that we’ll have to invent a new word for actually keeping people safe. Anderson warned us. The least we can do is not pretend to be surprised when the fox eats the hens.
And if you’re reading this, Mr. Vance: Safety is what keeps your constituents alive long enough to vote. Though perhaps that’s not a selling point for you. I mean, after all, Elon Musk kills more Tesla customers than cars he can produce and look at how his completely corrupted stock price keeps going up as sales go down dramatically. Magic isn’t it?
