1NC---Westminster R4

OFF
 1NC
Offsets CP

The United States federal government should decrease fiscal redistribution in the
United States by exempting innovative activities from taxation and expanding Social
Security Medicaid enrollment to 138% of the federal poverty level as a legitimate use
of Congressional Taxing and Spending Power.

It COMPETES---The CP is a PIC out of the mandate that Medicaid Expansion is part of

an ‘increase’ in fiscal redistribution.
‘Increase’ means on net.
Words and Phrases ‘8 [Words and Phrases; 2008; English language dictionary; v. 20a, p. 264-265]
Cal.App.2 Dist. 1991. Term “increase,” as used in statute giving the Energy Commission modification jurisdiction over any alteration,
replacement, or improvement of equipment that results in “increase” of 50 megawatts or more in electric generating capacity of existing
thermal power plant, refers to “net increase” in power plant’s total generating capacity; in deciding whether there has been
the requisite 50-megawatt increase as a result of new units being incorporated into a plant, Energy Commission cannot ignore
decreases in capacity caused by retirement or deactivation of other units at plant. West’s Ann.Cal.Pub.Res.Code § 25123.

Exempting innovative activity from taxation catalyzes innovation across all sectors.
Hart ’19 [David and Elizabeth Noll; December 2; Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University,
Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Senior Fellow with the ITIF’s
Center for Clean Energy Innovation; Energy and environmental policy consultant, M.Sc. in Public Policy
from the Georgia Institute of Technology; Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, “Less
Certain Than Death: Using Tax Incentives to Drive Clean Energy Innovation,”
https://itif.org/publications/2019/12/02/less-certain-death-using-tax-incentives-drive-clean-energy-
innovation/]
Tax Incentives as Energy Innovation Policy

Taxation is one of the most powerful tools in the policy tool kit. As the old saying goes, along with death, it is one of
only two certainties in the human experience. Yet, like all such admonitions, this one is not always true. Indeed, the power to exempt
an activity from taxation is almost as potent a tool as taxation itself.
U.S. lawmakers have long recognized and utilized this tool. Many policies that are implemented directly by governments in other countries are
carried out through tax incentives in the United States. The federal tax code contains a large array of provisions that support particular
activities, industries, professions, and other groups of taxpayers.

Although some of these incentives make little economic sense, this

tool can be a powerful and efficient one to drive
innovation and growth. For instance, tax incentives can and should be used to stimulate firms to
support research that benefits their competitors or the public, as well as themselves. Such incentives
compensate firms for the risk that the research they fund may “spill over” in this fashion. Virtually all
leading countries performing research and development (R&D) provide tax incentives for private research spending.
The United States was the first to enact such a policy, but its generosity now lags well behind its competitors.12
Similarly, tax incentives for capital goods may lead to private investments that spill over to the rest of
society. Firms purchasing new capital equipment receive only about half of the returns these investments provide. Customers, workers,
other industries, and even competitors share in the gains.13

A similar line of thought allows us to identify when tax incentives are most likely to drive clean energy innovation. If a tax incentive encourages
economic actors to carry out an activity that benefits society as well as themselves, then it is well targeted. If the activity only benefits the
economic actor, then it is most likely an unwarranted subsidy.

The technology adoption “S curve” provides a framework for making this distinction. As pictured in figure 1, the curve
shows that the uptake of a new technology is very slow in its early stages, when the costs and risk of adoption are high. As the
technology becomes better, cheaper, and more familiar, it may hit the takeoff stage, when the pace of
adoption is quickest. As the market becomes saturated and the technology matures, the pace slows again.
Figure 1: The technology adoption “S curve”

Figure 1 is highly stylized. The slope of the curve varies dramatically across technologies. Some technologies are widely adopted in just a few
years, while others take decades. Some never reach takeoff, flatlining instead. Still other technologies go through a series of S curves, regularly
reinvigorated by successive technological breakthroughs.

The sources of technological progress change as one moves along the curve. To the left of the curve, in the early stages of adoption, R&D
investments are the driving force, and may be made by the public or private sector (aided by R&D tax
incentives), or both. To the right of the curve, in the late stages of adoption, mass production leads to cost reduction
through economies of scale. Profits and private investments provided by capital markets typically fuel
these stages.
In the middle, as technologies move through the takeoff stage and enter the steepest part of the curve, the sources of progress are more
numerous and complex. They include learning by doing in production and implementation, and learning through feedback from early adopters,
as well as R&D and scale-up. Ideally, adoption and innovation feed off one another in this stage, thereby forming a virtuous cycle.14

However, takeoff may be slowed or interrupted for a variety of reasons, such as when capital is scarce,
as is likely when the market is small, or if imitation is cheap, thereby discouraging risk-taking. Technology-specific tax
incentives may overcome such obstacles by reducing the risks of adoption in this stage, as they give the buyers
of early versions of innovations a discount. Lower prices mean higher sales. Higher sales provide funding for R&D, learning, and scaling up, all of
which, in turn, should lead to further innovation, resulting in even lower prices and better performance.

Public-private risk sharing in the takeoff stage of clean energy innovation makes sense because the public
benefits along with private investors—assuming large-scale adoption can be unlocked and the curve made steeper. In
the earlier stages of adoption, the public must bear most of the risk because the benefits are difficult for private investors to capture. In the
later stages, the benefits are largely privatized, as long as there is a carbon price or regulatory policy that addresses the environmental
externality.

Proper targeting of tax incentives therefore strongly influences their effectiveness. Some innovations are not
mature enough to respond quickly to the market signals incentives provide. In such cases, the problems encountered by early adopters do not
lead to learning, and few mainstream adopters are drawn into the market. In these cases, developers must go back to the drawing board and
do more R&D. Innovations that have already taken off, on the other hand, are so far up the adoption curve that the incremental market growth
provided by incentives does relatively little to drive down costs or improve performance. Rather, they subsidize private interests without
creating a public benefit.

Robust protections are key to strong aerospace.

Bera ’22 [Rajendra; May 13; Aerospace engineer, member of Fellow Institution of Engineers India,
chief mentor, Acadinnet Education Services; Social Science Research Network, “The importance of
patents in aeronautical design,” https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4109392]

Aerospace engineering is not just a glamorous branch of engineering and technology, it is also one of the most intellectually
demanding on innovative talent and a prolific source of cutting edge technologies. They must therefore be
protected by intellectual property rights (IPR) especially those that embody high scientific intellectual content
with potential for commercial application in ultra-high-valued products. Ideally, at the university level, imparting knowledge on
IPR should therefore be part of any aircraft design curriculum. It usually is not. This paper introduces a historical perspective and provides
examples of how new technologies in the past were advanced, their IPR protected and fought when patents were alleged to have been
infringed. The intent is to encourage aerospace departments in universities to include IPR as a core component in their design courses.

Key words: aircraft design, intellectual property rights, patent litigation, history of aircraft design.

1. Introduction

Intellectual property rights (IPR) underpin today’s global economy. It is therefore necessary for those in R&D, S&T, and business management
to be knowledgeable in IPR, understand their relevance to the business of their company or institution, and determine when it is cost-effective
to invest in and protect an IP portfolio.

Engineers are agents of cultural change. Creating designs

and new inventions are core activities of the engineering profession.
Inventions and designs, made in the context of socio-economic activity, frequently give rise to great economic value. This
paper highlights the need for protecting that economic value when it is warranted.

In the 1960s, nothing perhaps underscored the remarkable breadth of human ingenuity in developing technology than accomplishing the safe
landing and walking on the Moon by two U.S. astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, on 20 July 1969 and their subsequent safe return to
Earth on 24 July 1969 with the event being broadcast live on TV to a global audience. In Adam Smith’s days (1723-1790) such a feat was
possible only in science fiction, fairy tales and mythology.

Since late 1980, technology has advanced

at a phenomenal pace and expanded on an unprecedented scale. Advances in
automation, electronics, plastics, communications, biotechnology, super-conductivity, nanotechnology, and
more have fundamentally changed society including the goals, ambitions, and lifestyles of the masses. Today, trillions of dollars,
millions of jobs, and economic and geopolitical power flow from the exploitation of technologies with deep roots in science rather than from
raw materials and smoke belching factories.

Future technologies will be even more breath-taking given the R&D strides already made in biotechnology (stem cell
manipulations, synthetic DNA, rapid DNA sequencing, etc.), nanotechnology (carbon nanotubes, graphene, etc.),
super-fast switching of quantum light sources, cloud computing, data analytics, efficient conversion of
solar energy to electricity, and so on. The source of economic prosperity is no longer the brawn but the brain.
It is now evident that highly industrialized nations became so not because of science alone but because they also assiduously built the “vital underlying institutions of property rights, scientific enquiry, and capital markets.” Over
time, these factors have become encoded in their culture and broke their chains of poverty. The industrial stage emphatically showed that recovery from disaster, such as World Wars, is faster and surer when property rights are
guaranteed. In the post-industrial economy, manufacturing has steadily lost ground to knowledge-intensive services, which require lesser land and labour but need huge capital investment and a very talented, university educated
workforce grounded in science-rooted innovative technologies that can support global markets.

The average-skilled workforce in the service sector is scalable due to its natural ability to self-learn, learn by association with others in the community or be trained in large groups. It is the continuous need for highly skilled people
in the knowledge services that is not easily scalable—it requires world-class research universities to maintain the quality of this workforce, which, in turn, must continuously stay on a learning curve to be competitive. Finally, the
post-industrial society, whose potential for growth appears to be even higher than ever, requires an informed citizenry, versatile policy makers, and undoubtedly, new forms of government.

In the post-industrial society, economic growth depends on its ability to create knowledge and efficiently use it to produce marketable products and services. The industrial economy dealt with mainly physical stuff – chemicals,
steel, minerals, etc. The knowledge worker of that age, though important, was more focused on what the future could be than the immediate present. That is, the temporal (time) gap between scientific discovery and its
application in industry was large; today that gap has greatly shrunk, especially in aerospace, nanotechnology, and biotechnology.

Physical stuff is subject to the laws of scarcity; prices of material goods depend on demand and supply. Knowledge on the other hand increases and is embellished as education spreads, and the sharing of knowledge spreads it
further; knowledge catalyses new ideas. There is no ceiling on new ideas, and modern-day communications permit global seeding of ideas instantly.

“Necessity is the mother of invention” no longer dominates industrial growth; invention-driven necessity does. Obvious examples include the mobile telephone, the credit card, the Internet, and the Windows computer operating
system—each became widespread enough to become a daily necessity. These facts have accelerated the creation of innovative, marketable and desirable products that in turn drive the global economy. Economic growth is now
limited only by the availability of innovators.

2. Ideas are not physical

There are important differences between physical property and intellectual property. Physical properties have well-defined boundaries; a physical property owned by one cannot occupy the same space as that of another.
Protection of physical property depends on this fundamental fact. Intellectual property is derived from ideas that occur and reside in human minds. The acquisition (by legal or illegal means) and use of one person’s idea by another
does not alter the amount or availability of the idea to the former. In fact, the latter may even enhance and embellish the idea further without trespassing. Indeed, most new ideas are built upon old ideas, frequently in
unpredictable ways. The ethereal nature of ideas, the fact that they do not occupy physical space, and that different people may have overlapping ideas, requires a different set of rules to decide ownership of intellectual property
and means of protecting that ownership from those of a physical property. Ownership of ideas is far less easily protected.

A related question immediately arises – which intellectual property should belong to the public domain and which to the private and for what duration and with what levels of protection against infringement. Law makers, jurists,
knowledge producers, and economists continue to struggle with these questions, since the answers they choose will decide how the interests of innovators and of the beneficiaries of their inventions are balanced. For example,
inventors from developing countries are more likely to improve upon already patented inventions. They will therefore face the problem of cumulative innovation, i.e., how the new contributions are dependent on and intermingle
with earlier innovations. This becomes important in litigation because multiple inventors may try to claim common territories, while patent law apparently presupposes clear boundaries among the inventions. Such contentious
issues often lead to expensive and lengthy litigation.

Intellectual property is a nation’s new treasure. To protect and increase it, a nation must provide IPR
protection to novel and non-obvious inventions, to works of art and literature, to distinguishing marks that indicate the
source of a product or service, to new varieties of plants, to new industrial designs and layout-designs of integrated circuits. Patents, in
particular, form the backbone of the global economy. The fact that developed nations with their towering research universities, R&D labs, pools
of innovators, and mega corporations have already established a natural monopoly in building massive IP portfolios has placed lesser developed
nations at a disadvantage substantial enough to antagonise them towards patent monopolies. Such disadvantaged nations not only lack
inventors but also lack expertise to make informed IPR policy and develop enforcement capacity. Their current inferior IPR assets and their
inability to compete in such assets in the near future makes them wonder if the aggressive IPR protection regime being thrust upon them by
developed nations is indeed a conspiracy hatched by these nations to use IPR to subjugate and exploit them in perpetuity. The political
debate must, therefore, be sensitive to such perceptions and seek an equitable balance that allows the widest
possible availability of advanced technologies for useful economic exploitation and generation of economic activity, creation of
advanced knowledge, and training of future work-forces.

Every hotspot explodes.

Pfaltzgraff ’10 [Cain; 2021; Robert L. Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of International Security Studies
at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, President of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis; Final
Report of the IFPA-Fletcher Conference on National Security Strategy and Policy, “Air, Space, &
Cyberspace Power in the 21st-Century,” p. xiii-9]
The United States as an Aerospace Nation: Challenges and Opportunities

In his address opening the conference, General Norton A. Schwartz, Chief of Staff of the Air Force (CSAF), pointed out how, with its
inherent characteristics of speed, range, and flexibility, airpower has forever changed warfare. Its advent
rendered land and maritime forces vulnerable from the air, thus adding an important new dimension to warfare. Control of the air has
become indispensable to national security because it allows the United States and friendly forces to maneuver and
operate free from enemy air attack. With control of the air the United States can leverage the advantages of air and space as well
as cyberspace. In these interdependent domains the Air Force possesses unique capabilities for ensuring
global mobility, long-range strike, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). The benefits of airpower extend
beyond the air domain, and operations among the air, land, maritime, space, and cyber domains are increasingly
interdependent.
<<TEXT CONDENSED, NONE OMITTED>>
General Schwartz stated that the Air Force’s challenge is to succeed in a protracted struggle against elements of violent extremism and irreconcilable actors while confronting peer and near-peer rivals. The Air Force must be able to operate with great precision and lethality across a broad spectrum of conflict that has high and low ends but that defies an orderly taxonomy. Warfare in the twenty-first century takes on a hybrid complexity, with regular and irregular elements using myriad tools and tactics. Technology can be an enabler but can also create weaknesses:
adversaries with increased access to space and cyberspace can use emerging technologies against the United States and/or its allies. In addition, the United States faces the prospect of the proliferation of precision weapons, including ballistic and cruise missiles as well as increasingly accurate mortars, rockets, and artillery, which will put U.S. and allied/coalition forces at risk. In response to mounting irregular warfare challenges American leaders have to adopt innovative and creative strategies. For its part, the USAF must develop airmen who have the creativity to
anticipate and plan for this challenging environment. Leadership, intellectual creativity, capacity, and ingenuity, together with innovative technology, will be crucial to addressing these challenges in a constrained fiscal environment. System Versatility In meeting the broad range of contingencies – high, low, regular, irregular, and hybrid – the Air Force must maintain and develop systems that are versatile, both functionally (including strike or ISR) and in terms of various employment modes, such as manned versus remotely piloted, and penetrating versus stand-off systems.
General Schwartz emphasized the need to be able to operate in conflict settings where there will be demands for persistent ISR systems able to gain access to, and then loiter in, contested or denied airspace. The targets to be identified and tracked may be mobile or deeply buried, of high value, and difficult to locate without penetrating systems. General Schwartz also called attention to the need for what he described as a “family of systems” that could be deployed in multiple ways with maximum versatility depending on requirements. Few systems will remain inherently
single purpose. Indeed, he emphasized that the Air Force must purposefully design versatility into its new systems, with the majority of future systems being able to operate in various threat environments. As part of this effort further joint integration and inter-service cooperation to achieve greater air-land and air-sea interoperability will continue to be a strategic necessity. Space Access and Control Space access, control, and situational awareness remain essential to U.S. national security. As potential rivals develop their own space programs, the United States faces
challenges to its unrestricted access to space. Ensuring continuing access to the four global commons – maritime, air, space, and cyberspace – will be a major challenge in which the USAF has a key role. The Air Force has long recognized the importance of space and is endeavoring to make certain that U.S. requirements in and for space are met and anticipated. Space situational awareness is vital to America’s ability to help evaluate and attribute attacks. Attribution, of course, is essential to deterrence. The USAF is exploring options to reduce U.S. dependence on the Global
Positioning System (GPS), which could become vulnerable to jamming. Promising new technologies, such as “cold atoms,” pseudolites, and imaging inertial navigation systems that use laser radar are being investigated as means to reduce our vulnerability. Cyber Capabilities The USAF continues to develop cyber capabilities to address opportunities and challenges. Cyber threats present challenges to homeland security and other national security interests. Key civilian and military networks are vulnerable to cyber attacks. Preparing for cyber warfare and refining critical
infrastructure protection and consequence management will require new capabilities, focused training, and greater interagency, international, and private sector collaboration. Challenges for the Air Force General Schwartz set forth a series of challenges for the Air Force, which he urged conference participants to address. They included: • How can the Air Force better address the growing demand for real-time ISR from remotely piloted systems, which are providing unprecedented and unmatched situational awareness? • How can the USAF better guarantee the credibility
and viability of the nation’s nuclear forces for the complex and uncertain security environment of this century? • What is the way ahead for the next generation of long-range strike and ISR platforms? What trade-offs, especially between manned and unmanned platforms, should the USAF consider? How can the USAF improve acquisition of such systems? How can the USAF better exploit the advantage of low-observables? • How can the Air Force better prepare itself to operate in an opposed network environment in which communications and data links will be
challenged, including how to assure command and control (C2) in bandwidth-constrained environments? • In counter-land operations, how can the USAF achieve improved target discrimination in high collateral damage situations? • How should the USAF posture its overseas forces to ensure access? What basing structure, logistical considerations, andprotection measures are required to mitigate emerging anti-access threats? • How can the Air Force reduce its reliance on GPS to ensure operations in a GPS-denied environment? • How can the USAF lessen its vulnerability
to petroleum shortages, rising energy prices, and resulting logistical and operational challenges? • How can the Air Force enhance partnerships with its sister services and the interagency community? How can it better collaborate with allies and coalition partners to improve support of national security interests? These issues were addressed in subsequent conference sessions. The opening session focused on the multidimensional and dynamic security setting in which the Air Force will operate in the years ahead. The session included a discussion of the need to prioritize
necessary capabilities and to gauge “acceptable risks.” Previous Quadrennial Defense Reviews (QDRs) rested on the basic assumption that the United States would be able to support operations simultaneously or nearly simultaneously in two major regional contingencies, with the additional capacity to respond to smaller disaster-relief and/or stability operations missions. However, while the 2010 QDR1 maintains the need for U.S. forces to operate in two nearly simultaneous major wars, it places far greater emphasis on the need to address irregular warfare challenges. Its
focus is maintaining and rebalancing U.S. force structure to fight the wars in which the United States is engaged today while looking ahead to the emerging security setting. The QDR further seeks to develop flexible and tailored capabilities to confront an array of smaller-scale contingencies, including natural disasters, perhaps simultaneously, as was the case with the war in Afghanistan, stability operations in Iraq, and the Haiti relief effort. The 2010 QDR highlights important trends in the global security environment, especially unconventional threats and asymmetric
challenges. It suggests that a conflict with a near-peer competitor such as China, or a conflict with Iran, would involve a mix, or hybrid, of capabilities that would test U.S. forces in very different ways. Although predicting the future security setting is a very difficult if not an impossible exercise, the 2010 QDR outlines major challenges for the United States and its allies, including technology proliferation and diffusion; anti-access threats and the shrinking global basing infrastructure; the possibility of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) use against the U.S. homeland and/or
against U.S. forces abroad; critical infrastructure protection and the massed effects of a cyber or space attack; unconventional warfare and irregular challenges; and the emergence of new issue areas such as Arctic security, U.S. energy dependence, demographic shifts and urbanization, the potential for resource wars (particularly over access to water), and the erosion or collapse of governance in weak or failing states. TECHNOLOGY DIFFUSION Technology proliferation is accelerating. Compounding the problem is the reality that existing multilateral and/or international
export regimes and controls have not kept pace with technology, and efforts to constrain access are complicated by dual-use technologies and chemical/biological agents. The battlefields of the future are likely to be more lethal as combatants take advantage of commercially based navigation aids for precision guidance and advanced weapons systems and as global and theater boundaries disappear with longer-range missile systems becoming more common in enemy arsenals. Non-state entities such as Hezbollah have already used more advanced missile systems to target
state adversaries. The proliferation of precision technologies and longer-range delivery platforms puts the United States and its partners increasingly at risk. This proliferation also is likely to affect U.S. operations from forward operating locations, placing additional constraints on American force deployments within the territories of allies. Moreover, as longer-range ballistic and cruise missiles become more widespread, U.S. forces will find it increasingly difficult to operate in conflicts ranging from irregular warfare to high-intensity combat. As highlighted throughout the
conference, this will require that the United States develop and field new-generation low-observable penetration assets and related capabilities to operate in non-permissive environments. PROLIFERATION TRENDS The twenty-first-century security setting features several proliferation trends that were discussed in the opening session. These trends, six of which were outlined by Dr. Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr., President of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of International Security Studies, The Fletcher School, Tufts University, framed
subsequent discussions. First, the number of actors–states and armed non-state groups–is growing, together with strategies and capabilities based on more widely available technologies, including WMD and conventional weapons. This is leading to a blurring of categories of warfare that may include state and non-state actors and encompass intra-state, trans-state, and inter-state armed conflict as well as hybrid threats. Second, some of these actors subscribe to ideologies and goals that welcome martyrdom. This raises many questions about dissuasion and deterrence
and the need to think of twenty-first-century deterrence based on offensive and defensive strategies and capabilities. Third, given the sheer numbers of actors capable of challenging the United States and their unprecedented capabilities, the opportunity for asymmetric operations against the United States and its allies will grow. The United States will need to work to reduce key areas of vulnerability, including its financial systems, transportation, communications, and energy infrastructures, its food and water supply, and its space assets. Fourth, the twenty-first-century
world contains flashpoints for state-to-state conflict. This includes North Korea, which possesses nuclear weapons, and Iran, which is developing them. In addition, China is developing an impressive array of weaponry which, as the Commander of U.S. Pacific Command stated in congressional testimony, appears “designed to challenge U.S. freedom of action in the region and, if necessary, enforce China’s influence over its neighbors – including our regional allies and partners’ weaponry.”2 These threats include ballistic missiles, aircraft, naval forces, cyber capabilities, anti-
satellite (ASAT) weapons, and other power-projection capabilities. The global paradigm of the twenty-first century is further complicated by state actors who may supply advanced arms to non-state actors and terrorist organizations. Fifth, the potential for irregular warfare is rising dramatically with the growth of armed non-state actors. The proliferation of more lethal capabilities, including WMD, to armed non-state actors is a logical projection of present trends. Substantial numbers of fractured, unstable, and ungoverned states serve as breeding grounds of armed non-
state actors who will resort to various forms of violence and coercion based on irregular tactics and formations and who will increasingly have the capabilities to do so. Sixth, the twenty-first-century security setting contains yet another obvious dimension: the permeability of the frontiers of the nation state, rendering domestic populations highly vulnerable to destruction not only by states that can launch missiles but also by terrorists and other transnational groups. As we have seen in recent years, these entities can attack U.S. information systems, creating the possibility
of a digital Pearl Harbor. Taken together, these trends show an unprecedented proliferation of actors and advanced capabilities confronting the United States; the resulting need to prepare for high-end and low-end conflict; and the requirement to think of a seamless web of threats and other security challenges extending from overseas to domestic locales.

<<PARAGRAPH BREAKS RESUME>>

Another way to think about the twenty-first-century security setting, Dr. Pfaltzgraff pointed out, is to develop scenarios such as the
following, which are more illustrative than comprehensive:

 A nuclear Iran that engages in or supports terrorist operations in a more assertive foreign policy
 An unstable Pakistan that loses control of its nuclear weapons, which fall into the hands of extremists
 A Taiwan Straits crisis that escalates to war
 A nuclear North Korea that escalates tensions on the Korean peninsula

What all of these have in common is the indispensable role that airpower would play in U.S. strategy
and crisis management.
 1NC
T-OASDI

INTERPRETATION: ‘Social Security’ with both Ss capitalized includes only elderly,

survivor, and disability benefits.
LII ’23 [Legal Information Institute; “Social Security Law: An Overview,” page last updated May 22,
2023, https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/social_security#:~:text=social%20security%20law%3A%20an
%20overview,full%20burden%20of%20such%20occurrences.]
Social Security

social security law: an overview

Social security is designed, as the title suggests, to provide security. To protect individuals from unforeseen catastrophes, the government
spreads certain risks among all members of society so that no single family bears the full burden of such occurrences.

In the United States, the Social Security Program was created in 1935 (42 U.S.C. 401 et seq.) to provide old age,
survivors, and disability insurance benefits to workers and their families. Unlike welfare, social security
benefits are paid to an individual or his or her family at least in part on the basis of that person's
employment record and prior contributions to the system. The program is administered by the Social Security
Administration (SSA). Since the establishment of the Medicare program in 1965, it and Social Security have been closely linked. While
the original act used "Social Security" in a broader sense, including federally funded welfare programs
and unemployment compensation within its scope, and the Medicare legislature took the form of amendments to that act,
current usage associates the phrase with old age, survivors, and disability insurance.

The Federal Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program pays out monthly benefits to
retired people, to families whose wage earner has died, and to workers unemployed due to sickness or accident. Workers qualify for its
protection by having been employed for a minimum amount of time and by having made contributions to the program. Once an individual has
qualified for protection, certain other family members are, as well. Financial need is not a requirement but continuing to earn substantial sums
is inconsistent with eligibility for certain benefits (disability insurance) and can reduce the benefit amount with others (including retirement or
survivors benefits).

VIOLATION: Medicaid is distinct.

Abraham ’79 [Arthur Abraham and David L. Kopelman; 1979; of the New York Bar; Former Chief
Executive Officer for the Bureau of Health Insurance of the Social Security Administration in the
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; Federal Social Security, “Introduction,” Ch. 1]

In the public mind, the term social security includes not only social insurance but also welfare programs
generally. Viewed in this light, social security includes general assistance, old-age assistance, assistance to families with dependent children,
public health programs, aid to the blind and disabled, and vocational rehabilitation. Throughout this book, however, the term social
security will be limited to social insurance programs, that is, old-age and survivor's insurance, disability insurance,
and hospital and supplementary medical insurance. It will not include supplemental security income
programs, which are assistance programs. These programs will be mentioned, however, when necessary for a proper
explanation of social insurance programs and their impact. Medicaid will also be excluded from discussion, since it is a
public assistance program. The fact that the Social Security Administration administers a program, such as the "black lung" program,
does not automatically make it a social security program within the context of this book. Workmen's compensation and unemployment
compensation are also outside the ambit of this book, although reference will be made to these programs.

STANDARDS:
1---LIMITS AND GROUND. Allows a litany of reforms to any social insurance program
including but not limited to Medicare, welfare, or unemployment benefits. Each could
be a separate topic!
2---PREDICTABILITY. It’s the most precise definition and outlines current usage.
 1NC
Advantage CP

The United States federal government should:

[Urbanization]

--- invest in sustainable urban planning;

--- create a virtual library for sustainable urban ideas and technologies;
--- establish worldwide early warning systems for pandemics;
--- destroy stocks of extinct plagues;
--- impose a code of ethics on scientific research;
--- establish a human right to prohibit mass surveillance;
[Warming]

--- not conditionally preempt states;

--- ban the use of conditional preemption against states;
--- implement a border-adjusted carbon tax;
--- invest in carbon capture and storage;
[Isolationism]

--- increase active diplomatic, economic, and military engagement with Europe;
--- guarantee military security to Saudi Arabia;
--- not militarily withdraw from the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan; and
--- create international back-channel communication networks between scientists and
nuclear experts to limit nuclear risk.

Planks 1-6 solve urbanization.

1AC Cribb ‘17, Julian Cribb is an author, journalist, editor and science communicator. He is principal of
Julian Cribb & Associates who provide specialist consultancy in the communication of science,
agriculture, food, mining, energy and the environment. 2017. “The Urbanite (Homo Urbanus).” Surviving
the 21st Century, Springer, Cham, pp. 147–169. link.springer.com, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-41270-2_8.

Logan in [[GREEN]]
By the mid-twenty-first century the world’s cities will be home to approaching eight billion inhabitants and will carpet an area of the planet’s surface the size of China . Several megacities will have 20, 30, and even 40 million people. The largest city on Earth will be Guangzhou-Shenzen,
which already has an estimated 120 million citizens crowded into in its greater metropolitan area (Vidal 2010). By the 2050s these colossal conurbations will absorb 4.5 trillion tonnes of fresh water for domestic, urban and industrial purposes, and consume around 75 billion tonnes of
metals, materials and resources every year. Their very existence will depend on the preservation of a precarious balance between the essential resources they need for survival and growth—and the capacity of the Earth to supply them. Furthermore, they will generate equally
phenomenal volumes of waste, reaching an alpine 2.2 billion tonnes by 2025 (World Bank)—an average of six million tonnes a day—and probably doubling again by the 2050s, in line with economic demand for material goods and food. In the words of the Global Footprint Network “ The
global effort for sustainability will be won, or lost, in the world’s cities” (Global Footprint Network 2015). As we have seen in the case of food (Chap. 7), these giant cities exist on a razor’s edge, at risk of resource crises for which none of them are fully-prepared. They are potential targets
for weapons of mass destruction (Chap. 4). They are humicribs for emerging pandemic diseases, breeding grounds for crime and hatcheries for unregulated advances in biotechnology, nanoscience, chemistry and artificial intelligence. Beyond all this, however, they are also the places
where human minds are joining at lightspeed to share knowledge, wisdom and craft solutions to the multiple challenges we face. For good or ill, in cities is the future of civilisation written. They cradle both our hopes and fears. Urban Perils The Brazilian metropolis of Sao Paulo is a
harbinger of the challenges which lie ahead for Homo urbanus, Urban Human. In a land which the New York Times once dubbed “the Saudi Arabia of water” because its rivers and lakes held an eighth of all the fresh water on the planet, Brazil’s largest and wealthiest city and its 20 million
inhabitants were almost brought to their knees by a one-in-a-hundred-year drought (Romero 2015). It wasn’t simply a drought, however, but rather a complex interplay of factors driven by human overexploitation of the surrounding landscape, pollution of the planetary atmosphere and
biosphere, corruption of officialdom, mismanagement and governance failure. In other words, the sort of mess that potentially confronts most of the world’s megacities. In the case of Sao Paulo, climate change was implicated by scientists in making a bad drought worse. This was
compounded by overclearing in the Amazon basin, which is thought to have reduced local hydrological cycling so that less water was respired by forests and less rain then fell locally. This reduced infiltration into the landscape and inflow to river systems which land-clearing had engorged
with sediment and nutrients. Rivers running through the city were rendered undrinkable from the industrial pollutants and waste dumped in them. The Sao Paulo water network leaked badly, was subject to corruption, mismanagement and pilfering bordering on pillage. Government
plans to build more dams arrived 20 years too late. “Only a deluge can save São Paulo,” Vicente Andreu, the chief of Brazil’s National Water Agency (ANA) told The Economist magazine (The Economist 2014). Depopulation, voluntary or forced, loomed as a stark option, officials admitted.
Although the drought eased in 2016, water scarcity remained a shadow over the region’s future. Sao Paulo is far from alone: many of the world’s great cities face the spectre of thirst. The same El Nino event also struck the great cities of California, leading urban planners—like others all
over the world—to turn to desalination of seawater, using electricity and reverse osmosis filtration (Talbot 2014). This kneejerk response to unanticipated water scarcity echoed the Australian experience where, following the ‘Millennium Drought’ desalination plants were producing 460
gigalitres of water a year in four major cities (National Water Commission 2008)—only to be mothballed a few years later when the dry eased. By the early 2010s there were more than 17,000 desalination plants in 150 countries worldwide, churning out more than 80 gigalitres (21 billion
US gallons) of water per day, according to the International Desalination Association (Brown 2015). Most of these plants were powered by fossil fuels which supply the immense amount of energy needed to push saline water through a membrane filter and remove the salt. Ironically, by
releasing more carbon into the atmosphere, desalination exacerbates global warming and so helps to increase the probability of fiercer and more frequent droughts. It thus defeats its own purpose by reducing natural water supplies. A similar irony applies to the city of Los Angeles which
attempted to protect its dwindling water storages from evaporation by covering them with millions of plastic balls (Howard 2015)—thus using petrochemicals in an attempt to solve a problem originally caused by … petrochemicals. These examples illustrate the ‘wicked’ character of the
complex challenges now facing the world’s cities—where poorly-conceived ‘solutions’ may only land the metropolis, and the planet, in deeper trouble that it was before. This is a direct consequence of the pressure of demands from our swollen population outrunning the natural
capacity of the Earth to supply them, and short-sighted or corrupt local politics leading to ‘bandaid’ solutions that don’t work or cause more trouble in the long run. Other forms of increasing urban vulnerability include: storm damage, sea level rise, flooding and fire resulting from
climate change or geotectonic forces; governance failure, civic unrest and civil war exemplified in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria over the 2010s; disruption of oil supplies and consequent failure of food supplies; worsening urban health problems due to the rapid spread of pandemic diseases
and industrial pollution and still ill-defined but real threats posed by the rise of machine intelligence and nanoscience (Gencer 2013). The issue was highlighted early in the present millennium by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who wrote: Communities will always face natural hazards,
but today’s disasters are often generated by, or at least exacerbated by, human activities … At no time in human history have so many people lived in cities clustered around seismically active areas. Destitution and demographic pressure have led more people than ever before to live in
flood plains or in areas prone to landslides. Poor land-use planning; environmental management; and a lack of regulatory mechanisms both increase the risk and exacerbate the effects of disasters (Annan 2003). These factors are a warning sign for the real possibility of megacity
collapses within coming decades. With the universal spread of smart phones, the consequences will be vividly displayed in real time on news bulletins and social media. Unlike historic calamities, the whole world will have a virtual ringside seat as future urban nightmares unfold.

[[THEIR CARD ENDS]]

[[TEXT SHRUNK AND CONDENSED, NONE OMITTED]]

New Plagues From the point of view of an infectious microbe, like the fl u virus, ebola, zika, cholera or drug-resistant TB, a megacity is an orgy of gourmet and reproductive opportunities. Th e larger the city, the more billions of human cells it harbours, on which the bug delights to dine, or in which it can multiply. Furthermore, cities have carefully equipped themselves with the most effi cient means for spreading infectious microbes: international airports, schools and kindergartens, air-conditioned offi ces, steamy night clubs, dating agencies, sporting facilities, hospitals, pet
and pest animals, insects, not-so-clean restaurants, markets and food factories, polluted water supplies and rivers, leaky waste dumps and cemeteries. From a microbe’s perspective the modern city is nirvana. It was those ancient Roman kings, the Tarquins—a dynasty that always received a spectacularly bad press from subsequent republican historians— who laid the essential foundation for the modern city when they built the Cloaca Maxima, the world’s fi rst sewer, to move the growing city’s fi lthy waste further down the Tiber River (Hopkins 2012 ). Without this simple,
enclosed stream draining sources of infection to a safer distance, Rome could never have fl ourished. Th e resulting reduction in disease and especially infant death rates in one of the largest concentrations of people at the time led to population growth, economic expansion and, especially, enough surplus males to maintain the standing army on which the city’s subsequent ascendancy was built. One of the world’s earliest examples of public health intervention, it also laid the foundations for modern urban planning—as well as the fatbergs of the future. Th e Cloaca
Maxima was also a classic case of another ancient human tradition which still survives today: the habit of relocating a problem from A to B and then regarding it as ‘solved’. When cities were relatively small, there was plenty of spare land and ocean around the world to absorb their foul emissions, they could aff ord to pollute and generally get away with it. But with the emergence of the megacities and a globalised economy in the modern era this has all changed. Megacities that do not self-cleanse and re-supply their resources risk drowning in their own fi lth, poisoning
their citizens and cultivating waves of pollution and infectious disease which can then travel internationally in a matter of hours. 8 The Urbanite (Homo urbanus) 151 Th e World Health Organisation identifi es 14 major pandemic disease threats to the global population: avian infl uenza, cholera, emerging diseases (e.g. nodding disease), Hendra virus, pandemic infl uenza, leptospirosis, meningitis, Nipah virus, plague, Rift Valley fever, SARS, smallpox, tularaemia, haemorrhagic fevers (like the Ebola and Marburg viruses), hepatitis and yellow fever (World Health Organization
2015a ). To this formidable panoply of scourges it adds the worldwide emergence of a new wave of drug-resistant organisms, such as tuberculosis, golden staph, streptococcus, salmonella and malaria, which pose a rising hazard to human health not only from the diseases they cause that resist treatment, but also from the accompanying loss of antibiotic protection for surgical procedures, cancer therapies and the like. “Epidemics are common occurrences in the world of the 21st century,” WHO explains. “Every country on earth has experienced at least one epidemic since
the year 2000. Some epidemics, such as the H1N1 2009, Avian Flu and SARS pandemics, have had global reach, but far more often, and with increasing regularity, epidemics strike at lesser geographic levels. Devastating diseases such as the Marburg and Ebola haemorrhagic fevers, cholera, plague, and yellow fever, for instance, have wreaked havoc on regional and local scales, with much loss of life and livelihoods” (World Health Organization 2015b ). By redistributing disease-carrying mosquitoes worldwide, as in the case of the Zika virus, climate change is also augmenting
the risks of pandemics, according to the New York Times : “Recent research suggests that under a worst-case scenario, involving continued high global emissions coupled with fast population growth, the number of people exposed to the principal mosquito could more than double, to as many as 8 billion or 9 billion by late this century from roughly 4 billion today” (Gillis 2016 ). Of the 60 million or so people who die in our world each year, as many as 15 million die from an infectious disease—the rest perishing chiefl y from lifestyle diseases and a much smaller number from
accidents and wars (World Health Organization 2014 ). Th is underlines the dramatic change in the modern era, in which infectious disease has become a far less common cause of death than was the case throughout most of human history—thanks chiefl y to the advent of vaccines, antibiotics and sound public health measures. It also highlights the dramatic rise in deaths from self-infl icted disease and the almost complete failure, so far, of preventative medicine. However, a diet of disaster movies and highly-coloured news reports has left the public with the erroneous
impression that the risk from infectious disease is much greater than, for example, the risks posed by our own poor food choices, air or water pollution, whereas the opposite is in fact true. If there exists an Andromeda 152 Surviving the 21st Century Strain -style agent capable of wiping out the whole of humanity, 1 it has yet to come to the attention of science—and, for good biological reasons, it probably doesn’t exist unless somebody artifi cially creates it: natural organisms seldom eliminate all their hosts, as to do so is not a good strategy for their own survival. Instead
they attenuate and adapt—a lesson humans need also to contemplate. Viewed from the perspective of a direct threat to the existence of civilisation or the human species as a whole, the risk from infectious disease per se comes a long way behind that of nuclear war, climate change, global toxicity, famines and some of the other technological perils described in this chapter. However, pandemics frequently arise as a synergetic consequence of war, famine, poverty, mass migration, climate change, ecological collapse and other major disasters and therefore play an
amplifying role in endangering the human future. Th e classic case was the 1918–1919 infl uenza outbreak which arose in the immediate aftermath of World War I largely as a consequence of the world-wide movement of soldiers and refugees at a time when many populations were weak from hunger. Th e ‘Spanish’ fl u infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide, killing between 20 and 50 million of them. 2 Th e organisms which pose the greatest pandemic dangers in the twentyfi rst century—such as avian fl u , Ebola , HIV and SARS —mostly originate in wild or
domesticated animals and often arise out of some sort of environmental decline. As human numbers grow and people push into areas formerly dominated by wildlife and forests, more of these zoonotic diseases (animalsourced infections) will probably transfer into the human population: as we replace their natural hosts with large concentrations of people, the viruses have little option other than to jump species, if they are to survive themselves. However, the very fact that their likely origins are understood, if not always precisely known, makes it possible to establish
detection, early warning and prevention systems, which are the current goal of world health authorities (McCloskey et al. 2014 ). In the second category of threat are diseases which transfer into humans from domesticated livestock—seasonal infl uenza outbreaks, the Nipah, Hendra and MERS viruses and food-borne infections like E. coli, salmonella and listeria . Here too, early detection and prevention hold the key to arresting pandemics. Unknown diseases can strike without warning out of the world’s fragmenting environments, as shown by the cases of HIV, Ebola,
Nipah and Zika. HIV originated with SIV, a relatively harmless virus of African monkeys and 1 Th e Andromeda Strain was a classic 1971 science fi ction movie. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066769/ 2 1918 Flu Pandemic. History Channel. http://www.history.com/topics/1918-fl u-pandemic 8 The Urbanite (Homo urbanus) 153 apes which crossed into humans, who had no resistance to it, during the mid- twentieth century—nobody yet knows how for sure (Cribb 2001 )—and by the early 2010s had claimed 25 million lives and infected a further 35 million individuals, most of
whom will eventually die from it. However, the development of preventive strategies, education, better drug therapies and vaccines all promise to reduce the toll. Ebola, a frightening infection in which victims leak contagious blood and convulse, is thought to originate in bats or rodents and fi rst emerged as a human disease with outbreaks in the Congo in 1976 and 1979. A major eruption in West Africa in 2013 infected 25,000 people within a year and killed 10,000. Despite the alarming speed of its onset, the infection was contained and most patients with access to good
healthcare made successful recoveries (Th e Economist 2015b ). Th e experience in these cases suggests that new pandemic diseases crossing into humans from wildlife can be contained and, even if they have large initial local death tolls, they do not pose an existential threat to humanity at large. However, it is far easier to limit their impact by taking eff ective medical, public health and quarantine action close to the point of origin—and this depends heavily on the local government, its skills and resources, and its willingness to co-operate with others, nationally, regionally
and globally. Th e best candidate for a twenty-fi rst century version of the ‘Black Death’ is still the fl u virus, in one of its newer evolutions, its close relatives such as the avian infl uenza H5N1, or SARS. Th e reason is that these viruses can be transmitted in airborne droplets from coughs and sneezes, not just in bodily fl uids as is the case with HIV and Ebola. Robert Webster, a professor of virology division at St Jude Children’s research hospital in the UK explains: “Just imagine if the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was transmitted by aerosol. If fl u was just as lethal. If H5N1
[avian fl u] was as lethal in humans as it is in chickens – and studies have shown that it only takes about three mutations to make it highly lethal. It’s not out of the realms of possibility” (Woolf 2014 ). One reason fl u mutates so often is because the virus is constantly cycling between diff erent poultry, pig and human populations: each host presents it with fresh genetic challenges, forcing it to evolve novel strains in order to adapt: sometimes these prove more infectious, or more deadly, making it a very clever virus. Australian virologist the late Frank Fenner—one of the
heroes of the world campaign to eliminate smallpox—once stated that a neuropathogenic strain of avian fl u (one which infects the brain and central nervous system of birds and kills them rapidly) was the plague he most feared because it was both highly infectious and highly lethal: in theory, a sneeze on an airliner could kill most of the passengers. So far, however, such a strain has yet to cross from birds to humans. Projections for a major outbreak of a new and deadlier strain 154 Surviving the 21st Century of fl u suggest that it would infect between 100 and 1000 million
people and kill from 12 million to 100 million of them, depending on how quickly and eff ectively the outbreak was suppressed (Klotz and Sylvester 2012 ). Two other major killers which could potentially account for a large part of the population if widely released are smallpox and SARS. Smallpox , one of the worst human plagues throughout history which used to kill up to two million people a year, was declared eradicated in 1980 following a global immunization campaign led by WHO. Th e last known natural case occurred in Somalia in 1977. Since then, the only other
reported cases were caused by a laboratory accident in 1978 in Birmingham, England, which killed one person and caused a limited outbreak (World Health Organization 2015c ). However, the virus has not been eliminated from the Earth: both the United States and Russia are thought to maintain stocks in their biological warfare laboratories, perpetuating the risk of either a laboratory escape or deliberate release. To the end of his life, Fenner campaigned for the complete destruction of all smallpox virus stocks worldwide. In a far-sighted paper published in 1996 Paul
Ehrlich and Gretchen Daily argued that, while a pandemic would be a horrible way to end the human population surge, reversing human population growth voluntarily is a wise and sensible way to reduce the risks of future pandemics (Daily and Ehrlich 1996 ). Man-Made Killers Th e potential for the rapid global spread of a new plague agent was highlighted in 2002–2003 with the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). In this “a woman infected in Hong Kong fl ew to Toronto, a city with outstanding public health capabilities. Th e woman caused infections in
438 people in Canada, 44 of whom died.” Ultimately the disease infected 8000 people worldwide and killed nearly 800 of them. “What if the next infected person fl ies to a crowded city in a poor nation, where surveillance and quarantine capabilities are minimal? Or to a war zone where there may be no public health infrastructure worthy of the name?” asked Lynn Klotz and Edward Sylvester, writing in Th e Bulletin of Atomic Scientists . Checking around, they identifi ed no fewer than 42 laboratories worldwide which keep live stocks of potential pandemic pathogens
(PPPs) such as SARS and the 1918 fl u virus for ‘scientifi c and military purposes’ (Klotz and Sylvester 2012 ). Th e risks of a man-made plague were highlighted in a scientifi c row which broke out in 2014 over the work of Wisconsin University microbiologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka who, as part of an experiment to understand the evolution 8 The Urbanite (Homo urbanus) 155 of fl u viruses, had deliberately engineered a strain of the 2009 killer H1N1 virus into mutated forms to which humans were completely susceptible and had no immune protection. Professor Kawaoka
claimed his mutant strains were intended purely to help in the development of vaccines, but other scientists pointed out that if they either accidentally escaped or were deliberately released from his medium-security laboratory, the eff ects could be horrendous (Connor 2014 ). Th e episode underlined the lack of ethical oversight of scientists worldwide engaged in designing new and potentially deadly life-forms. Th at the intentional release of a pandemic agent from even the most secure government facility can happen was proved beyond doubt by the 2001 American
case in which fi ve people died and 17 became sick following the mailing of anthrax spores to offi ces of the US Senate and to media. When analysed, the anthrax turned out to be the ‘Ames strain’, a type specifi cally engineered by American biowarfare scientists from a microbe found in a Texan cow, and subsequently distributed to 16 laboratories across the US. After intensive investigation by the FBI, it was concluded that the microbes had been mailed by a mentally-unbalanced employee of the US biowarfare facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland, in the wake of the 9/11
terrorist attacks, to highlight America’s vulnerability to this form of attack and to frighten the Congress into increasing funding for biowarfare research . He succeeded. However, since the suspect committed suicide soon afterwards, his motives were never clarifi ed beyond doubt (US Federal Bureau of Investigation 2016 ). Th e important take-home lesson from the event is that no laboratory anywhere in the world, no matter how secure, is proof against malicious distribution of plague agents, whether natural or artifi cial, by a crazy or fanatical employee, a government
acting in its perceived national interest, an undercover enemy agent or just by plain accident. All biowarfare laboratories- and indeed, many ordinary biotech labs – thus represent an ongoing existential threat to humanity whose safety, like that of nuclear materials, cannot ever be guaranteed. Th is was highlighted in early 2016 when James Clapper, U.S. director of national intelligence, issued a warning that even gene editing (such as by the technology known as CRISPR) should be added to the list of weapons of mass destruction, adding that it “increases the risk of the
creation of potentially harmful biological agents or products”. (Regalado 2016). Other scientists warned that genetically modifi ed lifeforms could be used to target specifi c groups of humans carrying certain genes, or if released in agricultural ‘designer crops’ might result in uncontrollable plagues. Th ey cautioned that gene editing technology is far cheaper and easier to access than nuclear or chemical weapons. Of the dangers of ‘ synthetic biology’ —the artifi cial making of novel lifeforms—the Global Challenges Foundation says “Th e design and construction 156 Surviving
the 21st Century of biological devices and systems for useful purposes, but adding human intentionality to traditional pandemic risks…” constitute one of the 12 major existential threats it identifi es to humanity in its 2015 report: Attempts at regulation or self-regulation are currently in their infancy, and may not develop as fast as research does. One of the most damaging impacts from synthetic biology would come from an engineered pathogen targeting humans or a crucial component of the ecosystem. Th is could emerge through military or commercial bio-warfare,
bioterrorism (possibly using dual-use products developed by legitimate researchers, and currently unprotected by international legal regimes), or dangerous pathogens leaked from a lab. Of relevance is whether synthetic biology products become integrated into the global economy or biosphere . Th is could lead to additional vulnerabilities (a benign but widespread synthetic biology product could be specifi cally targeted as an entry point through which to cause damage) (Global Challenges Foundation 2015 ). Machine Minds In 2014 the world received a startling wakeup
call when eminent British cosmologist Stephen Hawking, one of the world’s best-known scientists and a man who has personally benefi tted from super-smart technologies to overcome the physical handicaps imposed by his motor neurone disease, uttered a warning that artifi cial or machine intelligence could be the undoing of humanity. “Th e development of full artifi cial intelligence could spell the end of the human race,” he told the BBC. “It would take off on its own, and redesign itself at an ever increasing rate,” he said. “Humans, who are limited by slow biological
evolution , couldn’t compete, and would be superseded” (Cellan-Jones 2014 ). It wasn’t a new thought: science fi ction writers have been grappling with the potential for confl ict between human and machine intelligence for decades: it was a key theme of Isaac Asimov’s robot stories written between the 1940s and 1960s; it was central motif in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 epic fi lm 2001: A Space Odyssey , in which HAL, the suavely paranoiac computer, tries to eliminate the human crew of a starship after concluding they are a threat to his mission. But in the words of Hawking,
who has used latest generation AI to enhance his thought, word and speech contact with fellow humans and was impressed by its ability to interpret his wishes, it held a certain arresting quality. Hawking wasn’t alone. Tesla Motors and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk , regarded as one of the world’s technological visionaries, also expressed deep disquiet. 8 The Urbanite (Homo urbanus) 157 Commenting on the emerging power of internet-based artifi cial intelligence he told a group of science thinkers calling itself the Reality Club: “Th e risk of something seriously dangerous
happening is in the fi ve-year timeframe. 10 years at most. Please note that I am normally super pro technology, and have never raised this issue until recent months. Th is is not a case of crying wolf about something I don’t understand” (Rosenfeld 2014 ). Elaborating on this comment in a talk at Massachusetts Institute of Technology he said: “I think we should be very careful about artifi cial intelligence. Our biggest existential threat is probably that … Th ere should be some regulatory oversight at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do
something very foolish. With artifi cial intelligence we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it’s like, he’s sure he can control the demon. Didn’t work out.” Like many two-edged technologies before it, AI promises to insinuate itself into our hearts, minds and wallets by taking over all the hard, dirty, inconvenient, boring and costly tasks that humans prefer not to do—and few of us have the penetrating gaze of a Hawking or a Musk to see where it all may lead. As with all new technologies, its boosters
talk it up: its intelligent critics are heard far more rarely. Of this powerful new technology, the journal Scientifi c American said “Like next-generation robotics, improved AI will lead to signifi cant productivity advances as machines take over—and even perform better—certain human tasks. Substantial evidence suggests that self-driving cars will reduce the frequency of collisions and avert deaths and injuries from road transport, because machines avoid human errors, lapses in concentration and defects in sight, among other shortcomings. Intelligent machines, having faster
access to a much larger store of information and the ability to respond without human emotional biases, might also perform better than medical professionals in diagnosing diseases” (Meyerson 2015 ). Th e issue received a major airing in January 2015, when over 4000 of the world’s leading technological minds—including Hawking and Musk—signed an open letter to the Future of Life Institute, which stated: Th ere is now a broad consensus that AI research is progressing steadily, and that its impact on society is likely to increase. Th e potential benefi ts are huge, since
everything that civilization has to off er is a product of human intelligence; we cannot predict what we might achieve when this intelligence is magnifi ed by the tools AI may provide, but the eradication of disease and poverty are not unfathomable. Because of the great potential of AI, it is important to research how to reap its benefi ts while avoiding potential pitfalls. Th e progress in AI research makes 158 Surviving the 21st Century it timely to focus research not only on making AI more capable, but also on maximizing the societal benefi t of AI. We recommend expanded
research aimed at ensuring that increasingly capable AI systems are robust and benefi cial: our AI systems must do what we want them to do (Russell et al. 2015 ). Although this sounds a bit like asking chemists to come up with better antibiotics but not monkey with poison gas or high explosives, or asking physicists to design better electronic devices but not build better nuclear bombs, it does at least inject the issue of ethics into the early-stage development of a potentially plenipotent and disruptive new technology. Propelling such concerns is the sharp increase in the use
of by various countries of robot vehicles, primarily airborne drones, capable of dealing death to those with whom their operators disagree in opinion, interest, politics, belief or culture—as well as to disturbingly large numbers of innocent bystanders, or ‘collateral damage’. Th is has prompted a group of international scientists and peace activists to form the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots , which demands a moratorium on all new ‘autonomous executions’ until international law has been developed to deal with the issue 3 . Th e campaigners explain: Rapid advances in
technology are resulting in eff orts to develop fully autonomous weapons. Th ese robotic weapons would be able to choose and fi re on targets on their own, without any human intervention. Th is capability would pose a fundamental challenge to the protection of civilians and to compliance with international human rights and humanitarian law. Several nations with high-tech militaries, including China, Israel, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, are moving toward systems that would give greater combat autonomy to machines. If one or more chooses to
deploy fully autonomous weapons, a large step beyond remote-controlled armed drones, others may feel compelled to abandon policies of restraint, leading to a robotic arms race (Campaign to Stop Killer Robots 2015 ). Th e killer robots are a fresh case where technology has outrun society and its ability to manage and regulate it. Remote-control military drones were barely in use for a decade, and were still unfamiliar to most of the world’s citizens, before technicians were hard at work developing pieces of machinery capable of roaming at will and making their own
decisions, under certain rules, about whom to murder. By the mid-twenty-fi rst century such machines will be a commonplace in the military arsenals, police forces and security agencies 3 See http://www.stopkillerrobots.org/2015/03/ccwexperts2015/. 8 The Urbanite (Homo urbanus) 159 of most countries and maybe even of multi-national corporations—on the pretext of ‘better security’. Like the warhorse, the musket and the aircraft in ages gone by, ‘mindless’ machine killers could become a tactical game-changer, capable of hunting down individuals, menacing entire
nations, corporations, regions, cities, leaders, executives or systems of belief and—in the hands of a malignant group or country—of threatening global civilisation as a whole. However, the greater risk from AI may stem less from autonomous weapons, which operate to some extent under human direction, than from machine intelligence which might seek—for reasons of its own—to dominate, supplant or eradicate humans. Although this may sound like science fi ction, it is the issue that so alarmed Hawking and Musk and is based on technologies which already exist or
else are now in development. Th e Global Challenges Foundation explains: Th e fi eld [of AI] is often defi ned as “the study and design of intelligent agents”, systems that perceive their environment and act to maximise their chances of success. Such extreme intelligences could not easily be controlled (either by the groups creating them, or by some international regulatory regime), and would probably act to boost their own intelligence and acquire maximal resources for almost all initial AI motivations. And if these motivations do not detail the survival and value of
humanity, the intelligence will be driven to construct a world without humans. Th is makes extremely intelligent AIs a unique risk, in that extinction is more likely than lesser impacts. Th ere is also the possibility of AI-enabled warfare and all the risks of the technologies that AIs would make possible. An interesting version of this scenario is the possible creation of “whole brain emulations”, human brains scanned and physically represented in a machine. Th is would make the AIs into properly human minds… (Pamlin et al. 2015 ). Th e Foundation points out that such risks are
not standalone; very often they intersect with, compound or trigger other risks in a domino-like chain. Th e risks from machine intelligence, for example, could easily complement and exacerbate threats from nanotechnology and biotechnology, producing a technology-dominated environment in which mere humans could not survive: for example, the use of drones to distribute viruses engineered to attack only humans carrying a particular set of genes. Of all the various risks facing humankind in this century, the Foundation rates artifi cial intelligence as the most
technologically diffi cult to overcome, and the hardest of all to form partnership to oppose it, since so many people may have vested interests in its development. In short, the control of AI is liable to prove as problematic, disputed and intractable as the control of the Earth’s climate, the control of nuclear weapons or toxic chemicals. 160 Surviving the 21st Century Th e precise process whereby machine intelligence would eliminate humanity is not described in any of these scenarios, but the common concern is that any AI created by humans would inherit both our own
competitive instincts and ruthlessness, and unlike humans this would not be moderated by a ‘moral’ obligation to protect our species. It may therefore be motivated to eliminate all potential competitors or perceived risks to its own survival, including its creators. Th e still unanswered question in all this is the Asimovian one: can a machine be endowed with morals? Nanocracy A second dimension in which the march of technology imperils the human future is through the rise of the ‘nanocracy’, 4 a condition in which close surveillance and information about individuals
throughout the whole of their lives will be maintained by a network of governments, commercial corporations and law enforcement agencies (Cribb 2007 ). As whistleblowers Mark Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange exposed, modern society and all who dwell in it are already potentially subject to intensive surveillance (Pope 2014 ). All of our fi nancial, computer and mobile phone records, our health details, purchasing decisions, travel, tastes, hobbies and preferences, our appearances on security cams in shops, offi ces, taxis and public places all over the
modern city, are available to the state— and many of them to private corporations equally powerful. Testifying to the rapid spread of surveillance devices, as early as 2013 Britain alone already had six million CCTV cameras—one for every 11 citizens—according to the British Security Industry Authority (BSIA). Our smart phones, satnav vehicles and airlines can report wherever we go with them. ‘Intelligent’ TVs, voice- controlled household devices and smart phones can potentially monitor, record and report our conversations and utterances even in the privacy of our own
homes (BBC 2015 ). Our computers can scan our faces and work patterns for signs of boredom, resentment or dissidence. Technologies to interpret our brain patterns are already in their infancy, as Hawking has warned. All that is missing are computers capacious, fast and powerful enough to store, retrieve and interpret every piece of data on each individual from the moment of birth to the moment of death. Th ese are now just around the corner, thanks to quantum technology. 4 Th e neologism is derived from nanos, Greek for a dwarf, which is the stem of the words
nanotechnology and nanometre and describes particles which are ultra-small, and kratos, Greek for power. It means power conferred by very small devices and the people who operate them. 8 The Urbanite (Homo urbanus) 161 A quantum computer is a device that goes to the next level of superminiaturisation, using quantum particles (or qubits) which can exist in several superimposed states instead of the familiar binary digits (or bits), which exist in only two. Th e result is a device of massively more speed, power and memory capacity than conventional technology, or
colloquially, ‘a supercomputer the size of a room in a matchbox’. Researchers from the University of New South Wales, who created the world’s fi rst working quantum bit in 2012 (University of NSW 2012 ), told media at the time the world’s fi rst quantum computer was probably only 5–10 years away. Dr Andrea Morello said that quantum computers “promise to solve complex problems that are currently impossible on even the world’s largest supercomputers: these include data-intensive problems, such as cracking modern encryption codes, searching databases
(author’s italics), and modelling biological molecules and drugs.” Google and NASA claim to have built the most powerful computer ever—the D-Wave 2X— trumpeted as a major breakthrough for artifi cial intelligence (NASA 2015 ). Wall Street and banks like Goldman Sachs are investing in quantum computing, in a race to turn atomic particles into fast cash (Bloomberg 2015 ). Airbus is using an early version to design jet aircraft of the future (Th e Telegraph 2015 ). IBM and the US intelligence research agency IARPA are building the most powerful spying machine in history
(IBM 2015 ). By the 2030s, thanks to quantum computing and t he universal spread of the internet and electronic devices such as smart phones and closed-circuit cameras, it will probably be feasible to observe and monitor virtually every individual in society for most of their life, automatically and without their consent: our genetic details and unique identifi ers like personal smell or other biometrics, all we do and say or is done or said to us, everywhere we go and everyone we meet, all our fi nancial transactions, private documents and photos, our unique brain patterns
and biological indicators, all the vision we generate, every keystroke or touch on a mobile device, every website we visit, TV program we watch or book we read. Th is can potentially be stored, mined and sifted at light-speed using ‘quputers’—and interpreted by artifi cial intelligence directed according to the purposes of the person (or intelligence) who authorised the search. For those who may attempt to isolate themselves from this universal electronic espionage, drones or swarms of microscopic ‘nanobots’ will provide close surveillance (Motherboard 2014 ). Th e
Orwellian notion of a single, centralised ‘big brother’ surveillance brain is misplaced in the modern world. In reality, the information on individuals in the developed world already exists in hundreds, even thousands of separate databases, most of them owned by the private sector—your bank, your Facebook or email account, your internet service provider, your phone 162 Surviving the 21st Century company, your car fi rm, your supermarket, doctor, golf club or travel agent. By the 2030s these will become retrievable and searchable in microseconds by any agency or
corporation with the power to do so—and a quantum computer to do it. Advanced data mining and pattern recognition technology will enable ‘targets’ to be picked out of the population on the basis of their words, thoughts, habits and deeds automatically, without the individual ever having previously come to the attention of law enforcement, security services, political or religious ‘thought-police’ or commercial marketers. And once you have been selected as a target it will be almost impossible to get off the database. Th e oft-repeated claim that ‘the innocent have
nothing to fear’ is nonsense: everyone, guilty or innocent, will potentially be subject to unblinking, 24/7 AI scrutiny throughout their lives. Th ese are, of course, no less than the enabling technologies for a global surveillance state—though nobody is admitting as much. While it is logical that a complex society of ten billion people requires more laws, regulations and enforcement that a nineteenth century world of half a billion humans, the advent of quantum surveillance will over-ride and eliminate most aspects of individual freedom. Without strict safeguards, transparency
and public oversight, it could potentially render everyone, in eff ect, state property. On present trends, this will probably be accomplished with the co-operation of the private sector, via internet companies and banks, and with the gullible consent of voters reassured by government claims that spying on everyone is ‘essential to national security’. With many transnational corporations now larger, wealthier and more powerful than individual countries or governments, one of the chief and most intrusive objectives of universal surveillance will be marketing—to precisely
target every individual with an avalanche of products and services to anticipate their every whim, before they even know they have it. And fi nally, political parties and religious bodies may exploit the technology not only to spy on their opponents but to ensure the loyalty of supporters, who may then be coerced by threats to expose aspects of the private lives. Th is is the dawn of the nanocracy, the rule of the Dwarf Lords (see Pamlin et al. 2015 ). Like all advanced technologies—and despite all the self-serving hype by the scientists working on it—there is no guarantee
such omnipotence will be used wisely, benignly, ethically or well, be regulated, publicly supervised or even its details widely known. Indeed, the odds are it will fi rst be employed by political, economic and religious elites to spy on and control those they deem a threat to their power, beliefs, wealth or freedom of action—or else an opportunity to spot customers, recruits or agents of infl uence. Edward Snowden, who witnessed the birth of the secretive age of universal espionage and blew 8 The Urbanite (Homo urbanus) 163 the whistle on it, told Australia’s ABC in May
2015 that the power to search both our content and metadata is “incredibly empowering for governments, incredibly disempowering for civil society”. It could lead to what he termed a ‘turnkey tyranny’ in which governments claim to follow due process but secretly ratchet-up their level of intrusion into private lives without disclosing it. “Th ey are collecting information about everyone, in every place, regardless of whether they have done anything wrong,” he warned (Snowden 2015 ). While most people will regard such electronic intrusion mainly as threats to individual
liberty or privacy, there is in fact a far more dangerous aspect to them, which aff ects the fate of our species. One of the most striking lessons from communism, Nazism, McCarthyism, Jacobinism or the religious fanaticism of the past two centuries is the way they enforced surveillance on their societies, compelling citizens to inform on one another, and driving individuals to self-censor even to the point of suppressing private thoughts contrary to the prevailing doctrine. Th e risk such a development on a universal scale poses to the human future in the twenty-fi rst century
is its potential to chill or prevent the very debate and change which are vital to our survival. Evidence that surveillance can discourage public discussion or the expression of opinion has already appeared in a study by Wayne State University’s Elizabeth Stoycheff which found “the ability to surreptitiously monitor the online activities of … citizens may make online opinion climates especially chilly”, adding “While proponents of (mass surveillance) programs argue surveillance is essential for maintaining national security, more vetting and transparency is needed as this study
shows it can contribute to the silencing of minority views that provide the bedrock of democratic discourse” (Stoycheff 2016 ). Many people are by nature explorers of new ideas, adventurers, challengers of accepted opinion, reformers, liberals, researchers, conservationists, pioneers, creators and innovators. Th ese gifted individuals have led every major social and technological transformation since civilization began. Th ey are the foil to our natural conservatism and apathy, the navigators and sources of inspiration in the human ascendancy. Progressive, prosperous and
dynamic societies rely on such individuals to inspire and lead us to greater, bolder, wiser futures. However, under the nanocracy such people will be easily picked out and ‘discouraged’, especially if the changes they propose threaten those who most profi t from the status quo . Even if they are not directly censored, most people will self-censor rather than invite scrutiny. Historically, reformers, visionaries and dissidents from Socrates and Jesus to Galileo, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela often pay a high personal price. Under the nanocracy such people won’t even
have the opportunity. Th ey will be quietly identifi ed by AI and hushed long before they have a chance to cause trouble. 164 Surviving the 21st Century A human race deprived of its radicals, visionaries, liberals, evangelists, innovators and adventurers will be a lobotomized species, more like a termite mound than a society. It may be stable, organised and industrious—but it will also be less progressive, less creative and less resilient, because it would tend to suppress warning voices and views that contest social norms or which argue for reform. It will be a species less able
to avoid the main existential threats because—as with climate change and pandemic poisoning—to do so may threaten the self-interest of ruling elites. Th e advent of quantum computers and universal surveillance may thus herald a profound fork in the path of human evolution, creating a species less wise, less fi t for survival at the precise moment in history when that survival is most in play (Cribb 2016 ). The Wealth Divide Worldwide, while there is abundant evidence that humanity is becoming wealthier and achieving higher living standards as a whole, there is also
evidence that wealth is being distributed less evenly across many societies and is concentrating in fewer hands: to quote the old saw, the richer are getting richer and the poor—relatively—poorer. Th e World Bank maintains an index which ranks countries according to their income equality/inequality (World Bank 2015b ) which tends to bear this out, while the international aid agency Oxfam argues that half the world’s wealth is now held by just 1 % of its people. Th ese wealthy individuals have generated and sustained their vast riches through their interests and activities
in a few important economic sectors, including fi nance and insurance, and pharmaceuticals and healthcare. Companies from these sectors spend millions of dollars every year on lobbying to create a policy environment that protects and enhances their interests further. Th e most prolifi c lobbying activities…. are on budget and tax issues; public resources that should be directed to benefi t the whole population, rather than refl ect the interests of powerful lobbyists (Hardoon 2015 ). According to Th e UK Guardian , in 2014, 80 individuals on Earth controlled more wealth
than the poorest 3,600,000,000: (Elliott 2015 ). Th e Credit Suisse Wealth Report in 2015 came up with a similar estimate, that 1 % of the population controlled half the household assets in the world (Credit Suisse Research Institute 2015 ). In his book Capital in the 21st Century, economist Th omas Piketty showed that income inequality in North America, Britain and Australasia had climbed steadily for three decades, and by the 2010s was 8 The Urbanite (Homo urbanus) 165 back on a par with where it was in the 1920s–1930s! (Piketty 2014 ). In the United States, the top 1
% of earners controlled almost one dollar in every fi ve of the nation’s income (up from 8 % in 1980 to nearly 18 % by 2010). Th e United Kingdom’s rich share rose from 6 to 15 %, while Canada’s grew from 8 to 12 %. Many commentators have been quick to attribute the rise of extremist politics and demagogic fi gures to the disillusion among voters over their dwindling share of national prosperity—since, as the New York Times put it: “the wealthy bring their wealth to bear on the political process to maintain their privilege” (Porter 2014 ). Th e argument that income
inequality leads to legislative stalemate and government indecision was advanced by Mian and colleagues in a study of the political outcomes of the 2008–2009 Global Economic Recession (Mian et al. 2012 ), stating “…politically countries become more polarized and fractionalized following fi nancial crises. Th is results in legislative stalemate, making it less likely that crises lead to meaningful macroeconomic reforms.” It also aff ects intergenerational cohesion, explains Nobel economics laureate Joseph Stiglitz: “Th ese three realities – social injustice on an unprecedented
scale, massive inequities, and a loss of trust in elites – defi ne our political moment, and rightly so…. But we won’t be able to fi x the problem if we don’t recognize it. Our young do. Th ey perceive the absence of intergenerational justice, and they are right to be angry” (Stiglitz 2016 ). From the perspective of the survival of civilization and the human species, fi nancial inequality does not represent a direct threat—indeed most societies have long managed with varying degrees of income disparity. Where it is of concern to a human race, whose numbers and demands have
already exceeded the fi nite boundaries of its shared planet, is in the capacity of inequality to wreck social cohesion and hence, to undermine the prospects for a collaborative eff ort by the whole of humanity to tackle the multiple existential threats we face. Rich-against-poor is a good way to divert the argument and so de-rail climate action, disarmament, planetary clean-up or food security, for instance. Disunity spells electoral loss in politics, rifts between commanders and their troops breed military defeat, lack of team spirit yields failure in sport, disharmony means a
poor orchestra or business performance, family disagreements often lead to dysfunction and violence. Th ese lessons are well-known and attested, from every walk of life. Yet humans persistently overlook the cost of socioeconomic disunity and grievances when it comes to dealing with our common perils as a species. For civilisation and our species to survive and prosper sustainably in the long run, common understandings and co-operation are essential, across all 166 Surviving the 21st Century the gulfs that divide us—political, ethnic, religious and economic. A
sustainable world, and a viable human species, will not be possible unless the poverty and inequity gaps can be reduced, if not closed. Th is is not a matter of politics or ideology, as many may argue: it is the same lesson in collective wisdom and collaboration which those earliest humans fi rst learned on the African savannah a million and a half years ago: together we stand, divided we fall. It is purely an issue of co-existence and co-survival. Neither rich nor poor are advantaged by a state of civilisation in collapse. An unsustainable world will kill the affl uent as surely as the
deprived.

[[PARAGRAPH BREAKS RESUME]]

1. Replan the world’s cities so they recycle 100 % of their water, nutrients, metals and building materials
Pathway: primarily the role of urban planners and civic leaders, many have already begun to develop

‘sustainable cities’. Th ese cities are sharing their knowledge, technologies and experiences with one another round the planet via the internet. Th is is
placing cities, often, far in advance of nations in dealing with issues such as climate, water, energy, recycling etc. Probably the most useful

development would be a virtual ‘Library of Alexandria’ through which all urban plans, ideas,
technologies, advice and solutions can be shared at lightspeed to cities all around the globe. Partnering
between advanced and underdeveloped cities will help. Th e recycling of water and nutrients is top priority.

2. Stop
destroying rainforests and wilderness, which forces animal viruses to take refuge in humans. Pathway: Global
awareness and education is needed that new diseases usually come out of ruined ecosystems, and those
environments are being ruined by our own dollar signals as consumers. Consumer economics thus drives the growing risk of pandemics — and equally off ers a
solution through informed consumers, ethical corporations and sustainable industries. Strengthen international eff orts to restore soils, water, landscapes and
oceans. Build price signals into food and other resource-based products that enable reinvestment of natural capital.

3. Establish worldwide early warning systems for new pandemics. Publicly fund a major global eff ort to develop new
antibiotics and antivirals. Pathway: WHO and world medical authorities are already working on this. It needs to be coupled with predictive systems for ecosystems
facing profound stress, whence new pathogens are likely to spread.

4. Destroy all stocks of extinct plagues. Outlaw the scientifi c development of novel pathogens with potential to harm humans. Pathway: like
nuclear weapons, this pathway is blocked by the refusal of militarised nations to disarm. Only citizen and voter action can compel them.

5. Impose a code of ethics and public transparency on all scientifi c research— on pain of dismissal, refusal to publish
and criminal penalties—with potential to create autonomous machine intelligence or robotic devices which take their own decisions to kill people. Pathway: it is
time for all scientifi c disciplines to impose a code of ethics on their practitioners, to reduce the likelihood of science being used for evil or dangerous existentially
risky purposes. Discussion at global scientifi c congresses should begin at once.

6. Establish a new human right to prohibit mass surveillance of entire populations and to restrict cradle-to-grave
data collection on individuals not suspected of a crime. Pathway: Constitutional reform will be necessary in most cases to prevent governments, and stronger
privacy laws to prevent corporations, from amassing data on all citizens and misusing it. Citizen and voter action will be essential to drive this. Transparency about,
and public control over, data collection must become a fundamental pillar of democracy.

7. End poverty in all countries and redistribute human wealth more equitably as a primary requirement for the social cohesion necessary to preserve civilisation
through its greatest challenges ever. Pathway: ending poverty is already cemented in global planning by the Sustainable Development Goals, however it is necessary
to engage transnational corporations more fully in this task , since they now control most of the world’s wealth. Dialogues around
this have begun, but need to make swifter progress driven by awareness of the existential risk to all which disunity bring

Banning conditional preemption solves the second advantage by not preempting the
states.
Planks 10-12 solve isolationism. Insert.
1AC Nouriel Roubini 17, professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business and Chairman of Roubini Macro
Associates, was Senior Economist for International Affairs in the White House's Council of Economic
Advisers during the Clinton Administration, 1/5/17, “Nouriel Roubini: Trump and global peace,”
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/nouriel-roubini-trump-and-global-peace-c2f83e32-57da-
4cc6-9328-7cb8ca9499b2

LOGAN IN [[GREEN]]

Without active US engagement in Europe, an aggressively revanchist Russia will step in. Russia is already
challenging the US and the EU in Ukraine, Syria, the Baltics, and the Balkans, and it may capitalize on the EU’s looming collapse by reasserting its
influence in the former Soviet bloc countries, and supporting pro-Russia movements within Europe. If Europe gradually loses its US security
umbrella, no one stands to benefit more than Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump’s proposals also threaten to exacerbate the situation in the Middle East. He has said that he will make America energy independent,
which entails abandoning US interests in the region and becoming more reliant on domestically produced greenhouse-gas-emitting fossil fuels.
And he has maintained his position that Islam itself, rather than just radical militant Islam, is dangerous. This view, shared by Trump’s incoming
National Security Adviser, General Michael Flynn, plays directly into Islamist militants’ own narrative of a clash of civilizations.

[[THEIR CARD BEGINS]]

Meanwhile, an “America first” approach under Trump will likely worsen the longstanding Sunni-Shia proxy wars between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
And if
the US no longer guarantees its Sunni allies’ security, all regional powers – including Iran, Saudi Arabia,
Turkey, and Egypt – might decide that they can defend themselves only by acquiring nuclear weapons, and
even more deadly conflict will ensue.

In Asia, US economic and military primacy has provided decades of stability; but a rising China is now
challenging the status quo. US President Barack Obama’s strategic “pivot” to Asia depended primarily on enacting the 12-country
Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Trump has promised to scrap on his first day in office. Meanwhile, China is quickly strengthening its own
economic ties in Asia, the Pacific, and Latin America through its “one belt, one road” policy, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the New
Development Bank (formerly known as the BRICS bank), and its own regional free-trade proposal to rival the TPP.

If the US gives up on its Asian allies such as the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan, those countries may
have no choice but to prostrate themselves before China; and other US allies, such as Japan and India, may be forced to militarize and challenge

Thus, an American withdrawal from the region could very well

China openly.

eventually precipitate a military conflict there.

As in the 1930s, when protectionist and isolationist US policies hampered global economic growth and trade,
and created the conditions for rising revisionist powers to start a world war, similar policy impulses
could set the stage for new powers to challenge and undermine the American-led international order. An
isolationist Trump administration may see the wide oceans to its east and west, and think that increasingly ambitious powers such as Russia,
China, and Iran pose no direct threat to the homeland.
But the US is still a global economic and financial power in a deeply interconnected world. If left unchecked,
these countries will eventually be able to threaten core US economic and security interests – at home and abroad –
especially if they expand their nuclear and cyberwarfare capacities. The historical record is clear: protectionism,
isolationism, and “America first” policies are a recipe for economic and military disaster.

Scientific networks plank solves---that’s 1AC Wolf.

 1NC
Death K

Invocation of death impacts is a celebration of body counts that produces violence and
detached subjects. Vote NEG to reject it, this is a gateway issue.
Bjork ’93 [Rebecca Bjork; 1993; Former Associate Professor at the University of Utah; Reflections on
the Ongoing Struggle; Debater's Research Guide 1992-1993: Wake Forest University, Symposium,
http://groups.wfu.edu/debate/MiscSites/DRGArticles/Oudingetal1992Pollution.htm]
I remember listening to a lecture a few years ago given by Tom Goodnight at the University summer debate camp. Goodnight lamented what
he saw as the
debate community's participation in, and unthinking perpetuation of what he termed the "death
culture." He argued that the embracing of "big impact" arguments--nuclear war, environmental
destruction, genocide, famine, and the like-by debaters and coaches signals a morbid and detached fascination
with such events, one that views these real human tragedies as part of a "game" in which so-called "objective
and neutral" advocates actively seek to find in their research the "impact to outweigh all other impacts"--the round-winning argument that will
carry them to their goal of winning tournament X, Y, or Z. He concluded that our
"use" of such events in this way is
tantamount to a celebration of them; our detached, rational discussions reinforce a detached, rational
viewpoint, when emotional and moral outrage may be a more appropriate response. In the last few years, my
academic research has led me to be persuaded by Goodnight's unspoken assumption; language is not merely some transparent
tool used to transmit information, but rather is an incredibly powerful medium, the use of which inevitably has real
political and material consequences. Given this assumption, I believe that it is important for us to examine the
"discourse of debate practice:" that is, the language, discourses, and meanings that we, as a community of debaters and coaches,
unthinkingly employ in academic debate. If it is the case that the language we use has real implications for how we view
the world, how we view others, and how we act in the world, then it is imperative that we critically examine our own discourse
practices with an eye to how our language does violence to others. I am shocked and surprised when I hear myself saying things like,
"we killed them," or "take no prisoners," or "let's blow them out of the water." I am tired of the "ideal" debater being defined as one who has
mastered the art of verbal assault to the point where accusing opponents of lying, cheating, or being deliberately misleading is a sign of
strength. But what I am most tired of is how women debaters are marginalized and rendered voiceless in such a discourse community. Women
who verbally assault their opponents are labeled "bitches" because it is not socially acceptable for women to be verbally aggressive. Women
who get angry and storm out of a room when a disappointing decision is rendered are labeled "hysterical" because, as we all know, women are
more emotional then men. I am tired of hearing comments like, "those 'girls' from school X aren't really interested in debate; they just want to
meet men." We can all point to examples (although only a few) of women who have succeeded at the top levels of debate. But I find myself
wondering how many more women gave up because they were tired of negotiating the mine field of discrimination, sexual harassment, and
isolation they found in the debate community. As members of this community, however, we have great freedom to define it in whatever ways
we see fit. After all, what is debate except a collection of shared understandings and explicit or implicit rules for interaction? What I am calling
for is a critical examination of how we, as individual members of this community, characterize our activity, ourselves, and our interactions with
others through language. We must become aware of the ways in which our mostly hidden and unspoken assumptions about what "good"
debate is function to exclude not only women, but ethnic minorities from the amazing intellectual opportunities that training in debate
provides. Our nation and indeed, our planet, faces incredibly difficult challenges in the years ahead. I believe that it is not acceptable anymore
for us to go along as we always have, assuming that things will straighten themselves out. If the rioting in Los Angeles taught us anything, it is
that complacency breeds resentment and frustration. We may not be able to change the world, but we can change
our own community, and if we fail to do so, we give up the only real power that we have.
 1NC
Politics DA

Ukraine aid passes now---PC’s key.

Lim 10/13 [Naomi; reporter for the Washington examiner, 10/13/2023, "Slew of vexing international
crises confront Biden a year out from Election Day,"
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/biden-foreign-policy-president]
Biden, a former Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman during his 36 years in the chamber as a Delaware Democrat, also had a
considerable foreign policy portfolio as vice president for eight years under President Barack Obama. And since
Russia's February 2022
invasion of Ukraine , Biden and his administration have steered U.S. foreign policy toward the beleaguered
Eastern European nation.
To be sure, these international crises have strong domestic components. With the Israel situation, there's a direct U.S. tie, with American
citizens among those being held hostage. And up to 25 Hamas attack casualties are dual Israeli-American citizens.

Convincing the American public of a direct interest in the U.S. to support Ukraine amid its defensive war
against Russia is a tougher sell . Though military aid to Ukraine commands majority support in
Congress , a deep isolationist streak runs through Hill Republicans. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), Rep. M arjorie T aylor
G reene (R-GA), and a vocal minority of their GOP colleagues , fervent Trump supporters, contend Ukraine aid saps
financial resources needed for domestic concerns .

The Biden administration may try a workaround by including in its Israel military aid funding request materials for
Ukraine as well as Taiwan, which is facing a military threat from China. Funding to strengthen security of the U.S.-Mexico border could also
be included.

Border funding was a casualty of wrangling between the Republican majority House, Democratic Senate, and Biden White House during the
final days of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's (R-CA) nine-month tenure in his chamber's top job. McCarthy brought to the House floor a
"clean" funding bill, minus aid for Ukraine and the border. The measure passed but enraged some of the most conservative House Republicans,
who wanted much broader budget cuts. McCarthy soon was ousted, likely to be succeeded by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), who
is a big Israel supporter but has been coy on Ukraine aid.

Biden , in a Tuesday speech, promised to ask Congress "to take urgent action to fund the national security
requirements of our critical partners."
Biden noted the cause's bipartisan support.

"This is not about party or politics," he said. "This is about the security of our world, the security of the United States of America."

Israel's Counteroffensive

It's an open question how these foreign policy crises confronting Biden come together. But it has the potential to be bad news for Biden, just
over a year out from Election Day.

Israel's war with Iran-backed Hamas, coupled with the slow progress of Ukraine's counteroffensive against Russia and uncertainty regarding
future Ukraine support, "paints a picture of an administration taking backwards steps in foreign and security policy," said retired Army Col. Rich
Outzen, an Atlantic Council senior fellow.

"Our friends remain under threat, Iran and Russia have not been deterred or adequately punished for their aggressive behaviors, and there is
little consistent vision or leadership coming from the White House," Outzen, a former State Department adviser, told the Washington Examiner.
"Instead, there are a lot of mixed messages."

Alexander Hamilton Society Executive Director Gabriel Scheinmann said Biden's foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, is in "shambles"
after he distanced himself from Israel and Saudi Arabia while he "sought to legitimize or acquiesce Iranian power."
"From the desire to re-enter the Iran nuclear deal, from the amount of sanctions relief that the administration basically gave the Iranians, not
just the hostage money recently, but the oil revenues are really the big one, over the course of two years," Scheinmann told the Washington
Examiner.

Ukraine's Fight for Survival

While there's somewhat less overt support for backing Ukraine , tying the two foreign crises together may
help achieve financial support for both .

Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the Israel-Hamas war will " complicate
matters more for those who are opposing funds for Ukraine ."
Goldberg added, "We now have two democracies under assault by anti-American forces, both in need of sustained U.S. military support, both
willing to do all the fighting without a single American soldier being put in harm's way."

Goldberg, who in the Trump administration was the director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction for the White House National
Security Council, said of the Biden administration funding strategy, "If the White House requests a
supplemental that combines emergency assistance for Israel with emergency assistance for Ukraine , the pro-
Putin caucus in the House will have a difficult time maneuvering."

Social Security expansion causes backlash.

Thakker ‘23 [Prem; Republicans Are Bringing Back Their Plan to Gut Social Security and Medicare, New
Republic, https://newrepublic.com/post/173661/republicans-bringing-back-plan-gut-social-security-
medicare; 6-14-2023]///KirK
Republicans have claimed over and over again that they are not trying to cut Social Security and Medicare. Heck, Joe Biden got them to agree
they would not make cuts to the programs, in a memorable verbal maneuver during his State of the Union speech earlier this year.

And yet the Republican

Study Committee (of which some three-quarters of House Republicans
are members) just released its desired 2024 budget, in which the party seeks to, you guessed it, cut
Social Security and Medicare.

And note their seriousness. “The RSC Budget is more than just a financial statement. It is a statement of priorities,” the party assures
in the document, released Wednesday.

The proposed budget would effectively make cuts to Social Security by increasing the retirement age for
future retirees. The document seeks to assure people that there would only be “modest adjustments” but does not list what Republicans
think the new retirement age should be.

On Medicare, Republicans propose requiring disabled Americans to wait longer before getting benefits and turning Medicare into a “premium
support” system, a long-floated Republican idea that essentially turns the government program into a voucher scheme. Such a scheme would
remove the guarantee for seniors to have affordable access to Medicare.

Republicans also call for “pro-growth tax reform” (read: cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations);
“work requirements” (imposing more requirements on poor people trying to attain social services); and
“regulatory reforms that increase economic growth” (encouraging the sort of deregulation that
welcomes crashing financial institutions, corporate-poisoned rivers, and more than 1,000 train
derailments a year).

Funding Ukraine prevents US-Russia war.

Yu 10/12 [Alan; Senior Vice President, National Security and International Policy, 10/12/2023, "5
Reasons Why Congress Must Approve Aid to Ukraine Right Away,"
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/5-reasons-why-congress-must-approve-aid-to-ukraine-right-
away/]
The failure of then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to include aid to Ukraine in a stopgap spending bill has sent an ominous signal, not
only to Kyiv but also to our European allies, calling into question our commitment to defend Ukraine “for as long as it takes.”

The Ukrainian people, beleaguered and under relentless and unjustified attack, have demonstrated remarkable resilience in a fight with
implications for America’s core values and interests. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in his December 2022 address to a joint session of
Congress, declared:

The battle is not only for life, freedom and security of Ukrainians or any other nation which Russia attempts to conquer. This struggle
will define in what world our children and grandchildren will live.

Now, decisions made in Washington will shape the trajectory of U.S. interests in Ukraine and in the world for years—if not
decades —to come. But not everyone in Washington is as clear-sighted. A small core of far-right extremists seeks to vacate the
U.S. commitment to Ukraine. This short-sighted push is oblivious to the long-term strategic benefits that a free
Ukraine provides to the United States and the world. Immediate assistance to Ukraine is a critical part of addressing core
American equities.

1.Immediate assistance is required to stand up to Russian aggression and prevent an escalation of U.S.
involvement in an overseas conflict

Continuing robust aid to Ukraine is a powerful deterrent to future Russian aggression . A Russian victory in
Ukraine could encourage President Vladimir Putin’s territorial ambitions , possibly leading him to target a
member of NATO . That could lead to a direct U.S.-Russia conflict that would put American lives at risk and
increase the possibility of a broader war . Funding Ukraine now is a strategic investment to prevent
greater costs later .

2. Immediate assistance would help meet Ukrainian security needs at an acute moment

The resilience and bravery of the Ukrainian people is buttressed in large part by the steady support of the
United States and its allies. But Ukraine’s military is under operational strain . Ammunition is depleting
rapidly , as troops fire 2,000 to 3,000 artillery shells daily. The United States has supplied more than 2 million 155mm artillery rounds,
but the demand persists . Russia’s extensive land mines have slowed the counteroffensive, pushing Ukraine to rely
even more on distant artillery targeting. Senior U.S. military officials warn that gaps in funding could delay essential military
supplies as Russia prepares for a winter offensive . A funding impasse now sends the wrong signal to the
Ukrainians amid brutal fighting.

3. Immediate assistance to Ukraine strengthens European resolve

Putin is taking a long-game approach to the war in Ukraine, hoping he can outlast the will of the United States
and other allies to continue help to Ukraine. The current dysfunction in House leadership and certain developments in Europe
may be validating the Kremlin’s bet.

Shifts in European politics underscore the urgency . Slovakia, for instance, recently saw the election of Robert Fico,
who campaigned on a pledge to end Slovak military assistance to Ukraine. Poland, one of Kyiv’s closest and most vocal
allies, announced it would cease weapons transfers to Ukraine after a dispute over Ukrainian grain exports to the European
Union. It is imperative that the alliance remains unified , and all members continue to move military assistance to
Ukraine at this critical moment, including the United States, Slovakia, Poland, the rest of NATO, and other allies and partners. The
United States is the fulcrum for this effort; our continued assistance is critical for fulfilling this role too.
It was U.S. leadership on Ukraine that first solidified and then strengthened the NATO alliance, demonstrated most notably by Sweden’s and
Finland’s swift moves to seek NATO membership as well as steps by Germany and other NATO allies to bolster their own military capabilities.
U.S. leadership continues to be central to sustaining and directing NATO’s strategic approach to countering
Russia’s aggression.

4. Assistance to Ukraine is a strategic and affordable investment

Ukraine stands as a bulwark against Russian aggression and absorbs most of the associated costs. As some critics lament a $76.8 billion tab in
total U.S. assistance to Ukraine, including $46.7 billion in military aid, it is essential to put this figure into perspective. The amount represents a
mere 0.65 percent of total federal spending over the past two years.

The U.S. approach to the Ukraine conflict is, in fact, smart strategically and fiscally . The United States provides
material and financial support to a partner as it counters and weakens a dangerous adversary. U.S. troops are not pulled into the conflict,
driving to zero the risk of American battlefield casualties as well as the financial burden required by U.S. military deployments. This is critically
important, as conflict escalates in the Middle East and as the Department of Defense faces China’s increasing military strength.

5. Sustained assistance to Ukraine influences China’s strategic calculus

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has pointed out that China is keenly watching the world’s response to Russia’s
aggression in Ukraine. Any perceived inconsistency in U.S. support for Ukraine risks emboldening China
for its far-reaching territorial ambitions, notably in Taiwan . Taiwan’s representative in Washington, Bi-khim Hsiao, contends that if
the West abandons Ukraine, that would signal to the Taiwanese people that they are alone, which plays
into Beijing’s propaganda .

Blinken has further highlighted the evolving China-Russia relationship, raising concern over how this authoritarian
axis is
threatening the rules-based international order. In this context, steadfast support for Ukraine is not just about a
single nation’s sovereignty; it is a strategic stance to reinforce global norms .

Conclusion

In moments of crisis, as seen in Ukraine—and now in Israel and Palestine—the world looks first to the United
States for leadership and help. In each case, there are core U.S. interests at stake as our partners seek support for their critical
security needs. Just as Congress has shown staunch historical support for America’s ally in Israel, now is the time for Congress to

demonstrate its support to our partner Ukraine in its time of greatest crisis .

Extinction.
Cotton-Barratt 17 [Dr. Owen; Research Associate at the Future of Humanity Institute, 2/3/2017,
“Existential Risk,” Global Priorities Project, https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/Existential-
Risks-2017-01-23.pdf]
1.1.1 Nuclear war

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki demonstrated the unprecedented destructive power of nuclear weapons.
However, even in an all-out nuclear war between the United States and Russia, despite horrific casualties, neither country’s
population is likely to be completely destroyed by the direct effects of the blast, fire, and radiation.8 The aftermath could be much worse:

the burning of flammable materials could send massive amounts of smoke into the atmosphere, which would
absorb sunlight and cause sustained global cooling, severe ozone loss, and agricultural disruption – a
nuclear winter.
According to one model 9, an all-out exchange of 4,000 weapons 10 could lead to a drop in global temperatures of around
8°C, making it impossible to grow food for 4 to 5 years. This could leave some survivors in parts of Australia and New Zealand, but they
would be in a very precarious situation and the threat of extinction from other sources would be great.
An exchange on this scale is only possible between the US and Russia who have more than 90% of the
world’s nuclear weapons, with stockpiles of around 4,500 warheads each, although many are not operationally deployed.11
Some models suggest that even a small regional nuclear war involving 100 nuclear weapons would produce a nuclear winter serious enough to put two

billion people at risk of starvation,12 though this estimate might be pessimistic.13 Wars on this scale are unlikely to lead to outright human

extinction, but this does suggest that conflicts which are around an order of magnitude larger may be likely to threaten
civilisation. It should be emphasised that there is very large uncertainty about the effects of a large nuclear war on global climate. This remains an area where
increased academic research work, including more detailed climate modelling and a better understanding of how survivors might be able to cope and adapt, would
have high returns.

It is very difficult to precisely estimate the probability of existential risk from nuclear war over the next century, and existing attempts leave very large confidence
intervals. According to many experts, the most likely nuclear war at present is between India and Pakistan.14 However, given the relatively modest size of their
arsenals, the risk of human extinction is plausibly greater from a conflict between the United States and Russia.
Tensions between these countries have increased in recent years and it seems unreasonable to rule out the
possibility of them rising further in the future.
AT: Healthcare Access ADV---1NC
 AT: Inequality---1NC
1---Inequality has zero effect on war
Gal Ariely 15, senior lecturer in the Department of Politics & Government, Ben-Gurion University of
the Negev, PhD from the University of Haifa’s School of Political Sciences, “Does National Identification
Always Lead to Chauvinism? A Cross-national Analysis of Contextual Explanations,” Globalizations, 2015,
https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/43980028/Ariely_Globalizations_2015.pdf?
AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1515397197&Signature=78lnbbHNRVjhLgOKyRPK
m%2BK8M1o%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename
%3DDoes_National_Identification_Always_Lead.pdf

With respect to internal explanations,the effects of income inequality and ethnic diversity are presented in Table 3. Models 3.1 and 3.2
indicate that neither directly affects chauvinism. H4 is therefore not supported. The results suggest, however, that both have a
negative effect on the national-identification slopes. Contrary to our expectations, countries with higher
levels of economic and ethnic division appear to exhibit a weaker relation between national identification
and chauvinism. While these findings might seem to contradict H5, the pattern was caused by outliers. After excluding South Africa—the most
unequal and ethnic diverse country in our sample—the effect of ethnic diversity is not even of borderline significance. After excluding Chile—the most

unequal country in our sample—the interaction effects for economic inequality were also far from significant.
The results, therefore, do not support H5.21¶ Conclusions¶ During the historic phone call between President Obama and Iranian President Sheikh Hasan Rouhani in September 2013, the latter
stated that his country’s nuclear program ‘represents Iran’s national dignity’.22 This declaration reflects the common perception that Iran’s nuclear program mobilizes Iranians in support of
resisting further national humiliation at the hands of foreigners (Moshirzadeh, 2007). This reflects the important role national feelings play in the contemporary international arena. Evidence
from other examples—such as the Israeli-Palestine conflict—indicates that national identity serves as a key factor in conflict resolution. The prominence of national feelings is not limited to the
Middle East, their effect on public attitudes towards international issues, and conflicts also being manifest in the West (Billig, 1995; Kinder & Kam, 2010).¶ It is thus hardly surprising that

scholars seeking to develop a better understanding of conflicts adopt a social-psychology perspective,

replacing the deterministic view that identification with one’s in-group necessarily leads to antagonism
towards out-groups with an examination of the broader social context. In line with this approach, the present paper focuses on the
way in which political and social contexts encourage chauvinistic views towards the international arena and how they affect the relation between national identification and chauvinism.¶
Integrating various social and psychological theories, we investigated two external contextual explanations (globalization and conflict) and an internal explanation (social division). Employing
cross-national survey data, we examined the relation between national identification and chauvinism across 33 countries. The findings indicate that a positive relationship exists between
national identification and chauvinism across most of the countries, although the level differs from country to country. Using a multilevel regression analysis, we tested to see whether
globalization, conflict, and social division correlate with this variation. The results indicate that social and political contexts are related to chauvinism and the ways national identifi- cation and
chauvinism are linked. Although a closer relation exists between national identification and chauvinism in more globalized countries, globalization failed to explain the variation in chauvinism
itself. These findings support the notion that globalization highlights the importance of national identity (Calhoun, 2007; Castells, 2011). While those sections of globalized societies that are
attached to their country also tend to resist international cooperation and endorse hostile views, the complexity of the phenomenon—as evinced by the divergent findings of previous studies
(e.g. Jung, 2008; Norris & Inglehart, 2009)—calls for further research of this interpretation. The fact that the current study is cross-sectional must also be taken into account, the findings
adducing the relation but not the causal relations between the variables. In contrast to experimental studies, the present design is similarly limited in its ability to offer a robust control for
alternative explanations.¶ Another external factor found to be relevant—to a certain degree—was conflict. Countries that suffered large numbers of deaths in conflicts and mobilized resources
and personnel exhibited higher levels of chauvinism. When other indices for conflict were used, however, these results were not replicated. A possible explanation for this finding lies in the
inherent limitation in the way in which conflicts are measured across various countries. Measuring international conflicts is a challenging task (Anderton & Carter, 2011). While the ways of
measuring conflict were chosen because they reflect different dimensions of conflict in order to be representative of a wide range of countries, the problem of comparability cannot be
ignored. An alternative explanation may derive from the fact that only deaths from conflict and resources/personnel mobilization are sufficiently significant to contribute to chauvinism. The
limitations of our measurements of conflict and research design mean that this idea must remain speculative, however. In addition, it is important to emphasize that the sample of countries is

Contrary to what the divisionary theory

also limited as many countries are not involved in conflict and there is also limited variation in the types of conflicts.¶

of national mobilization would lead us to expect, neither economic inequality nor ethnic diversity were
related to chauvinism or affected the relation between national identification and chauvinism. This finding
might also be explained by the limitation of the current research design. The number of countries included in the ISSP 2003 National Identity Module being relatively small and the sample only
covering countries with available survey data, the results relate solely to this specific sample of countries. Across another set of countries, social division might play a far more significant role.
Another explanation might be the meaning given to national identification and chauvinism across the countries. While evidence exists for the comparability of the scales across most of the
countries, the divergent meaning probably attributed to them in Germany, the United States, and Israel might form an additional limitation.
 AT: Food Prices---1NC
2---No impact.
Vestby et al. ‘18 [Jonas; Doctoral Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo; Ida Rudolfsen;
doctoral researcher at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University and PRIO;
Halvard Buhaug; Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO); Professor of Political
Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Associate Editor of the Journal
of Peace Research and Political Geography; 5-18-2018, “Does hunger cause conflict?”, Climate & Conflict
Blog, https://blogs.prio.org/ClimateAndConflict/2018/05/does-hunger-cause-conflict/]

It is perhaps surprising, then, that there

is little scholarly merit in the notion that a short-term reduction in access to
food increases the probability that conflict will break out. This is because to start or participate in violent
conflict requires people to have both the means and the will. Most people on the brink of starvation are
not in the position to resort to violence, whether against the government or other social groups. In fact, the
urban middle classes tend to be the most likely to protest against rises in food prices, since they often have the best opportunities, the most
energy, and the best skills to coordinate and participate in protests.

Accordingly, there
is a widespread misapprehension that social unrest in periods of high food prices relates
primarily to food shortages. In reality, the sources of discontent are considerably more complex – linked
to political structures, land ownership, corruption, the desire for democratic reforms and general
economic problems – where the price of food is seen in the context of general increases in the cost of living. Research has
shown that while the international media have a tendency to seek simple resource-related explanations
– such as drought or famine – for conflicts in the Global South, debates in the local media are permeated by
more complex political relationships.

3---High food prices reduce poverty.

Heady ‘14 [Derek; Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, Higher food
prices are better for the poor in the long run, http://europesworld.org/2014/05/28/higher-food-prices-
are-better-for-the-poor-in-the-long-run/#.WIa_U_krJOp]
The mid-2000s saw some fundamental shifts in the global economy, not least the many global imbalances and policy mistakes that contributed
to the financial crisis. Less well known, however, is the dramatic reversal in international food price trends. After a long-term secular decline
over the 1980s and 1990s, food prices surged upwards from 2006 to 2008 .
The international prices of wheat and maize
approximately doubled over this period and the price of rice spectacularly tripled i n the space of a few months
between late 2007 and mid-2008. These rapid changes in the prices of mankind’s most essential commodity became known
as the “global food crisis”, but many researchers are now questioning whether it should ever have been
labelled as such, as it has since been shown that higher food prices can greatly contribute to poverty reduction
in rural communities. Of course this surge in food prices was not labelled a crisis without some justification. Few experts predicted the surge in
food prices, and few knew when it would end. Major players in the international grain trade panicked in response to this uncertainty and
withheld supply through export restrictions, or imported far more than they normally would in order to sure up stocks. The UN’s World Food
Program faced tremendous difficulties in obtaining the grains it needed to distribute to the world’s most vulnerable people. Preliminary
evidence and logic also suggested that the bulk of the world’s poor buy more food than they produce, meaning
higher food prices would reduce their disposable incomes (at least in the short term). The urban poor were particularly hard hit – since they
earn little or no income from farming – and the peak of the 2008 crisis saw food riots across many developing countries, and even the
overthrow of the government in Haiti. But although the surge in global food prices was a crisis in some ways, it is also possible that higher
food prices have helped reduce global poverty in the long term. The reason is this: While the poor invariably
spend much of their income on food, many of them also derive that income from growing food or other
agricultural commodities. Indeed, the vast majority of the world’s poor (defined by the World Bank as those living on
less than $1.25 per day) live in rural areas; perhaps as much as 75%. Most of these depend primarily on family
farming for their livelihoods, or on hiring themselves out as agricultural workers. In the short term, it is true that many
of the rural poor will not produce enough food to feed themselves, and could therefore be hurt by higher food prices. But higher food
prices also lead farmers to invest more in agriculture in an effort to increase their profits. One of these
investments is hiring more labour, and agriculture in developing countries is highly labour-intensive.
This increased demand for labour will have a large impact on the wages of the poor, especially in economies
with large agricultural sectors, especially since labour is effectively a non-tradable commodity with no international substitutes. For these
reasons, several economists are beginning to find it quite conceivable that higher food prices could
ultimately benefit the poor. Recent research at the International Food Policy Research Institute
examined the impact of higher food prices on poverty rates, in a sample that covers some 68 developing countries and
over three decades of data. Our results overwhelmingly suggest that increases in food prices predict reductions in
poverty, rather than increases. Moreover, the predicted effects are relatively large: A 1% increase in real food
prices is expected to reduce the $1.25 per day poverty rate anywhere between 0.35 and 0.64
percentage points.

The evidence also points to these benefits emerging relatively quickly – in the space of one to two years.
Two other recent studies have also suggested that wage responses to higher food prices are large enough to
overturn the idea that higher food prices hurt the poor. World Bank research on rural India, the country with
the single largest concentration of the world’s poor, found that wage responses are large enough to overturn the
initially adverse effect of higher food prices on disposable incomes. Furthermore, IFPRI researchers have
used an economy-wide simulation model to separate the short and long-term effects of higher food
prices on Uganda’s poor. As in rural India, wage responses in Uganda overturn the initial conclusion that
higher food prices increase poverty. In the long run, higher prices are actually a boon for poverty reduction.

Extinction.
MacMillan ‘14 [Andrew; former Director of the FAO’s Field Operations Division; Higher Food Prices
Can Help to End Hunger, Malnutrition and Food Waste, http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/06/higher-food-
prices-can-help-to-end-hunger-malnutrition-and-food-waste/]
Any customers who give thought to how and where all the different foods are produced and end up in their shopping trolleys will start to uncover a rather
disturbing situation. They will find that in most countries, people working at all levels in the food system – in supermarkets, in meat processing and packing plants,
as fruit harvesters or farm labourers, or as waitresses in fast-food restaurants – are among the worst paid of all workers. They will discover that many of the skilled
families that run the small-scale farms that produce most of the world’s food live precariously They are exposed to multiple risks caused by fluctuating markets,
pests and diseases and extreme weather problems, whether frosts, hailstorms, floods, typhoons or droughts. They will also learn that in most developing countries
hunger is heavily concentrated in rural areas, where some 70 percent of the world’s 842 million chronically hungry people live, largely dependent on farming, fishing
and forestry. Much
urban poverty results from people fleeing rural deprivation. And many of the conflicts that
threaten global stability have their origins in areas of extreme poverty. It seems dreadfully wrong that the very people
who produce so much of our food should be those who suffer most from deep poverty and food shortages. One reason for this apparently unjust situation is what
economists call asymmetrical relationships in the food chain. For instance, supermarkets
engage in cut-throat competition for
customers by lowering their prices, reducing what they pay to their suppliers who, in turn, cut back on
their workers’ pay. Most governments like to keep food prices “affordable”, claiming that it makes food accessible to poor families, thereby preventing
hunger and malnutrition. The main policy instruments used by rich and emerging nations include tax-funded subsidies that compensate their farmers for low-priced
food sales. They also set low taxes on most foods. The
idea that low food prices will reduce the scale of the hunger
problem is flawed since the main reason for people being hungry is that they cannot afford the food
they need, even when prices are low. Rather than, as now, shielding all consumers from paying a full and
fair price for food, it seems to make more sense to let prices rise and increase the food buying power of
the poor. As Fair Trade customers have discovered, higher retail prices can be passed back to all those involved in the
food production chain, especially farm labourers. They probably offer the best market-driven option for cutting
rural poverty and hunger. But to eliminate hunger quickly, income transfers, targeted on poor families and with their value indexed to food prices,
are also needed, at least until countries begin to manage their economies more equitably.
 AT: Urbanization---1NC
4---Can’t solve globally---ev is about global urbanization.
5---Urbanization impact card just lists out a bunch of random impacts---we get new
block impact D when they read a terminal that says it causes extinction.
6---Urbanization is good for sustainability.
Tupy ‘15 [Marian L.; senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, BA in
IR from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, PHD in IR from the University
of St. Andrews in the UK; “Urbanization Is Good for the Environment”, Cato.org/blog/urbanization-good-
environment]
Urbanization is on the rise around the world. By 2050, some 70 percent of humanity will live in the cities and that is good news for the
environment.

Many of the environmental advantages are derived from living spaces being condensed. For example, electricity
use per person in cities is lower than electricity use per person in the suburbs and rural areas .
Condensed living space that creates reduction in energy use also allows for more of the natural
environment to be preserved. In a suburban or rural environment, private properties are spread out, because land values are
relatively low. So, more of the natural environment is destroyed. In cities, property values are higher and space is used
more efficiently. That means that more people live in the same square mile of land than in the rural areas.

Another environmental advantage of cities compared to rural areas is a decrease in carbon emissions per person. In a
rural or suburban area people normally use their own vehicles to drive to work or anywhere else. Due to congestion, the use of personal cars in
the city is much less attractive. More people use public transportation instead and that means that less carbon dioxide gets released into the
atmosphere.
AT: Spending Power ADV---1NC
 AT: Federalism---1NC
1---No internal---Moncrieff is from 2015 and just says the fed could use preemption to
encourage Medicaid expansion, not that they will or are.
2---Uncooperative federalism survives---our ev is more recent.
Gerken and Resevz ’17 [Heather; Spring 2017; Professor of Law at Yale University, J.D. from the
University of Michigan, A.B. from Princeton University; Civil Attorney at the United States Department of
Justice, J.D. and B.A. in Political Science from Yale University; Democracy: A Journal of Ideas,
“Progressive Federalism: A User’s Guide,” no. 44]

Examples of uncooperative federalism abound. For example, red states and blue states alike objected to some of the
PATRIOT Act’s expansive surveillance and detention rules as an attack on civil liberties. Rather than just complaining, they instructed
their officials not to collect or share certain information with the feds unless the actions accorded with the states’ constitutions. Or consider
marijuana. Federal dependence on the states is so pronounced in criminal law that Vanderbilt law professor Robert Mikos
has argued that states can “nullify” federal marijuana law by withdrawing enforcement resources. Colorado and Washington have already done
so. These changes may be entrenched enough that even Jeff Sessions’s marijuana-hostile Department of Justice won’t be able to change the
equation. On other occasions, states have avoided a head-on confrontation with the feds and instead waged wars of attrition. For example,
consider the response to the No Child Left Behind Act, perhaps the centerpiece of George W. Bush’s domestic policy. States accepted
the federal grant money, but slow-walked reforms and often fudged testing standards. Their recalcitrance won out: The Bush
Administration gave up and granted states so many waivers that they effectively gutted the federal program. The war has continued with the
Obama Administration, which has struggled to rope states and localities into cooperating with its education agenda.

3---No spillover---uncooperative federalism over the ACA doesn’t create federalism in

other areas.
4---Internal is garbage---ev says states COULD help push warming, not that they WILL.
Ron DeSantis and every Republican governor thumps. Same applies to the isolationism
impact.
 AT: Warming---1NC
5---Can’t solve---international alt causes like China and India.
6---No impact.
Mark Bucknam 23, professor and the Director of Research and Writing at the National War College,
Ph.D. from King’s College London, 3/10/2023, “Climate Change and National Security,” Comparative
Strategy, Vol. 42, Issue 2, pp. 187-226, https://doi.org/10.1080/01495933.2023.2182108
Evidence of a Non-crisis

One of the main reasons the science remains unsettled and that more and more scientists appear comfortable bucking the prevailing narrative
is the failure of the observed climate to conform to so many dire projections. For more than three decades, a chorus of
environmentalists, geologists, and climate scientists have warned that mounting levels of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere

were leading to extreme weather events, including more numerous and more severe hurricanes, more numerous and extreme tornadoes, more
frequent and intense heatwaves, more continuous and ferocious wildfires, more widespread droughts and floods, and more rapidly melting glaciers and rising sea
levels. Fortunately, the reality of all these weather-related events is far from alarming, notwithstanding what one might hear on
the nightly news or read in newspapers. As Dr. Koonin explains in Unsettled, “ record
high temperatures in the US— they’re no more
common today than they were in 1900,” nearly a century’s worth of observations shows “human influences
haven’t caused any observable changes in hurricanes,” “the global area burned by fires each year has declined by 25
percent since observations began in 1998,” and while “sea levels…have been rising over the past many millennia…the current rate of rise (about one

foot per century)…explain[s] why it’s very hard to believe that surging seas will drown the coast any time
soon.”26 When discussing these claims, Koonin is careful to note: “Those statements are not my science. They’re not my spin on the science. They’re
what’s there in the [IPCC and US government] reports, although sometimes buried and you’ve got to read them carefully.”27 And, citing
the work of Yale’s Nobel Prize winning climate economist William Nordhaus, even if global temperatures were to go up 6 degrees
Centigrade by the year 2100—four times the target limit sought under the Paris Climate Accord and an added fivefold increase above the 1 degree Centigrade
increase since the mid-1800s—the impact on US and global GDP would be on the order of a few percent—hardly a catastrophe.28
While Koonin may be the latest, most prestigious, and impeccably credentialed scientist to point to the gaping discrepancies between terrifying claims and the
unalarming physical record, he is far from being the only respected scientist or expert to call out these inaccuracies.29 Other
researchers and
commentators such as Bjorn Lomborg, and Alex Epstein point to the stunning worldwide drop in deaths caused by
severe weather—99 percent over the past century.30 The more detached from reality the claims of climate crisis have become, the more that contrarian
experts are speaking up, even though their well-founded skepticism risks their being branded as “deniers.”31 Predictions of climate catastrophe due to human
greenhouse gas emissions have been made for nearly 35 years, and yet Earth’s
climate stubbornly refuses to lend evidence of a
“climate crisis” or the “existential risk” claimed in the Biden administration’s Interim National Security Strategic Guidance and 2022 National
Security Strategy. 32 The scary projections are always based on models, not observed trends in the climate, and those

models have proven unreliable.33

Contrary to the prevailing narrative of climate doom, Earth’s warming is mild and largely beneficial—mostly
moderating cold temperatures in northernmost latitudes and at night; there are no climate-caused dangerous trends
in global weather such as hurricanes, droughts, floods, or wildfires; human deaths attributed to extreme weather events
have declined over 99 percent over the past century; increasing levels of CO2 are a net positive—enabling photosynthesis using less water and
greening the planet; coral reefs are not threatened by warming or increased CO2; polar bear populations are

increasing; the Antarctic ice sheet is growing; the IPCC says the Greenland ice sheet under all scenarios would take centuries if not millennia to
melt; the Arctic will remain decidedly frozen in winter even if it becomes ice-free in summer—a phenomenon that would have almost no impact on sea levels as
Arctic ice is already floating on the ocean; with some natural variation, sea
levels continue to rise at the same slow rate as they
have for 5,000 years—less than a foot per century; the oceans are and will remain markedly alkaline— burning all of the
coal, oil, and natural gas on Earth would not change that—and studies show marine life adapts well to changes in pH; and, finally, there is no

evidence of mass species die-offs or a coming great extinction. These claims are so starkly counter to what everyone “knows” that it
would take a book or several books to explain and document their veracity. Fortunately, such books have been written by scientists and researchers who
understand that Earth’s climate is constantly changing and who acknowledge the planet has warmed just over 1 degree Centigrade over the past 170 years and that
CO2 and other human produced greenhouse gases contributed something to that warming. These are serious, intelligent people who have studied the evidence and
cannot be dismissed as "deniers.” The
enormous gap between the unscary reality of climate change and the dire
statements and radical, multi-trillion-dollar policies of those pushing to “fix” the climate has led critics of the climate
hype to brand it as dishonest, unscientific, and immoral.34
 AT: Isolationism---1NC
7---No uniqueness for this impact---ev does not say that the US will withdraw now---
Roubini is in the context of Trump.
8---Scientific leadership card is also bad and in the context of trump.