A personal view of Australian and International Politics
Contemporary politics,local and international current affairs, science, music and extracts from the Queensland Newspaper "THE WORKER" documenting the proud history of the Labour Movement.
MAHATMA GANDHI ~ Truth never damages a cause that is just.
It
is not just the increasingly erratic changes of message by Donald Trump
that gives the conflict in the Middle East a surreal tone. (Reuters: Ken Cedeno)
It
is not just the increasingly erratic changes of message by Donald Trump
that gives the conflict in the Middle East a surreal tone.
There
seems so far to have been little real understanding of how hard the
sudden shock of loss of global oil supply is likely to hit the economy,
or of the equally global implications of the massive rundown in
defensive munitions that have been expended in the Gulf past four weeks.
While
Australian motorists are starting to hear of petrol stations that have
run out of petrol, the financial markets don't seem to know how to price
a rapidly evolving global crisis caused by the sudden reduction in the
world's supply of oil by 10 per cent with the blocking of the Strait of
Hormuz.
Sure the markets have
been subject to huge volatility — swinging violently up and down in day
trading driven overwhelmingly by the US president's announcements.
(And
that's even without the revelation that someone placed a $0.5 billion
bet on the market this week just five minutes before another Trump
announcement — leading to widespread speculation that someone in the
immediate presidential circle was engaged in insider trading.)
But it's not clear that, even with all that volatility, the markets have actually grasped how serious the situation is.
Donald Trump takes swipe at Australia over lack of support
'Mother of all nightmare scenarios'
The
US energy policy expert Jason Bordoff told Ezra Klein from the New York
Times this week that "this is the mother of all nightmare scenarios —
closing the strait".
"If
someone had said: we're going to close a strait with 20 million barrels a
day to most of its supply — you'd be talking about US$150, $200 a
barrel," he said.
"It's
striking that oil prices are just a bit over $100, which historically
is not an excessively high price. It's high, but it's not crazy high."
Bordoff thinks that is partly because of "a general market perception that this was going to result in Trump pulling back".
"I think if this goes on, we haven't seen anything yet in terms of how high energy prices are going to go.
"Right
now, the price of oil that you're reading about in the newspaper is one
that's set by traders every day based on market expectations. At a
certain point, physical reality has to catch up and prices need to rise
high enough to destroy 10 million barrels a day of global demand. We
don't exactly know what that price is, but it's really high, a lot
higher than the price is today."
There's another physical reality screaming towards the world too.
The
attack on Iran by the US and Israel — and the subsequent counterattack
by Iran on Israel and the Gulf states — is seeing a depletion of weapons
and air defences on a scale that alarms military strategists.
Global munitions stockpiles diminish
A paper published on the website of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI)
this week documented the use of various types of weapons in the current
conflict and argued that the sheer volume of munitions used raise
questions about how long the conflict can go on before these munitions
just run out. The answer? Not very long.
"A
munition becomes critical when it's replenishment is gated by thin
suppliers, long qualification cycles, or constrained components like
rocket motors and guidance electronics," the paper says.
Apart
from the fact that — wait for it — US manufacturers had not received
orders for any extra munitions as of early March, there are risks that
some of the components needed to make them, like sulphur, are likely to
be in short supply because the Strait of Hormuz is closed.
The
chief executive officer of the massive German defence manufacturer
Rheinmetall, Armin Papperger, assessed last week that global stockpiles
are "empty or nearly empty" and that if the war continues another month
"we nearly have no missiles available".
The
RUSI authors estimate that the Coalition forces had used "11,294
munitions in the first 16 days of the conflict, at a cost of
approximately $26 billion".
Or,
as German defence minister Boris Pistorius noted in Canberra this week,
"the Gulf states used more interceptors, Patriots for example, in just a
couple of weeks than Ukraine (used) in more than four years".
The
institute's paper says "the US military is approximately a month, or
less, away from running out of ATACMS/PrSM ground-attack missiles and
THAAD interceptors.
"Israel is
in an even more precarious spot, with its Arrow interceptor missiles
likely to be completely expended by the end of March.
"While
the war could proceed with other munitions, this implies accepting
greater risk for aircraft and tolerating more missile and drone
'leakers' damaging forces and infrastructure.
"The
precariousness of this 'empty bins' issue could possibly explain why
President Trump is already suggesting the "winding down" of the Iran
war; it could take years to replace what was expended in only 16 days."
Germany's
defence minister Boris Pistorius said this week that the war had been
started "without clear objectives, without a clear strategy and
especially without any exit strategy". (ABC News: Matt Roberts)
Two good reasons for an off-ramp
So
there are two really good reasons why Trump might be looking for an
"off-ramp" beyond the political optics of getting bogged down in a
conventional war: the fallout of a huge fall in oil supply (even if the
price shock wasn't enough to move him) and a lack of things with which
to repeatedly 'obliterate' Iran.
Pistorius
said this week that the war had been started "without clear objectives,
without a clear strategy and especially without any exit strategy".
And
as Trump has swung wildly between claims of peace negotiations and
ordering yet more troops to the Gulf, as the Iranians make clear that
they are not exactly crumbling, and Israel runs a noticeably separate
strategy from the US, the prospect that he could find an exit strategy
quickly seems unlikely
In an interview with me
on Thursday, Pistorius said "we see the catastrophical impact this war
has had already, in the first place, for the security of the Gulf region
and the Gulf States, which are, first in history, attacked by Iran,
and, second, by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which really has an
impact on every part of the world's economy, especially in terms of
energy supply.
"So this is a serious challenge for all of us, and therefore we need a ceasefire or peace as soon as possible in negotiations."
The fact
that the US and Israel have not been able to force a change of regime
in Iran, but if anything have helped install an even harder line regime,
isn't just a failure of a sometimes-stated war aim.
It has real world implications for the likelihood of a ceasefire.
Pistorius says that the United States cannot leave the region now unless a proper ceasefire is in place.
"I'm not in the White House. I don't know the strategy if there is one," he says.
"So
I can't really give an answer to that. I mean, withdrawing all the
actions by the US out of the region, would leave the region in a
situation of crucial and critical instability. And this is a challenge
and a threat to all the regions around — for Israel — but also for the
supply chains into all regions of the world.
"So
I'd rather prefer that the US really negotiate a cease fire, negotiate
with Iran about what is needed to be achieved, like nuclear weapons, and
so on. And then we can see how it proceeds, with for example, the
Hormuz Strait."
How concerned would the Europeans be if the US actually escalated its attack, say, by trying to take over Kharg Island?
"I
mean, having a look on Iran, this huge country, with huge mountains,
with long borders," he says. "It is not that easy to conquer this
country and to force it to have a regime change from outside. It's not
that easy.
"So even if the
Americans now deploy troops in whichever measure or size, that doesn't
mean we come closer to an end of that war. And we are already seeing the
impact of that war to the world. I mean, we have increasing prices of
energy, following this, we have increasing prices for everything else.
"So
this is the risk of a recession, a global recession, and therefore, it
should be an obligation, I think, of the US to have that in mind when
going on, or negotiating with Iran."
To
all the surreal things happening in the world just now, add the blunt
talking of a European leader about the contemptuous risks to which the
US administration is exposing the rest of us.
Wondering what to read next? Choose a book from this list of nine new titles our critics loved. (ABC Arts: Nicola Heath)
Welcome to ABC Arts' wrap of the best new releases out in March.
Our
critics' picks this month include a gothic crime novel set in the
Scottish Highlands, a "Campari-spritzed" romance set in a Sicilian villa
and the latest from a Japanese novelist with a cult following.
Also
on the list are a metaphysical thriller by an exciting young Swedish
author and a novel set during the Blitz in London in World War II that
artfully blends historical fiction with fantasy.
Debra
Adelaide, author of The Household Guide to Dying, and Gabrielle Carey
bonded over books as 12-year-olds at Gymea High School. (Supplied: UQP)
When Australian author Gabrielle Carey (Puberty Blues, Just Us) died by suicide in 2023 at the age of 64, her lifelong friend Debra Adelaide was among those left trying to make sense of the writer's life and death.
When
I Am Sixty-Four is being marketed as a novel but can be read as a
memoir, as the narrator (a stand-in for Adelaide) supports and cajoles
her dear friend through the final days of her life.
Carey,
who is never named, is painted as a woman of great intellect and spiky
humour. As Carey and Adelaide take their regular walks, they talk about
books and reading, literary success and failures, love and sex. But
Carey's depression is deep, and she constantly complains about her
financial future — will she be able to stay in her beloved home?
We
learn that Carey's obsession with financial security is a direct echo
of her father's money worries in the years before his own death. The
revelation that Carey's father took his life at the same age — 64 — is
sobering for the reader, and for Adelaide, who asks why she didn't do
more to help her friend, who clearly hadn't come to terms with her
father's death.
This is a book
about regret and grief, and Adelaide is clear-eyed throughout. She
resists the urge to paint Carey — or herself — as a saint. Instead, we
meet two women in all their complexity and imperfection in the darkest
of days.
When I Am Sixty-Four
is a startlingly bare and beautiful work. You can't help feeling that
Carey, who never shied away from revealing herself in her books, would
like it.
— Claire Nichols
Slip by Abbey Lay
Penguin
Slip
is the second novel by Abbey Lay, whose debut novel, Lead Us Not, was
shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Award for an Unpublished
Manuscript. (Supplied: Penguin)
Fussy,
uptight, and, arguably, a little self-absorbed, Grace is a woman who
has found success rigorously organising and regimenting her life. She
has also begun to sense some of the limitations of this approach.
Travelling
to Sicily for her linguistics research, Grace is dismissive of the
locals who try talking to her. She prefers structure and order,
favouring the electronic research databases she can access via Sicily's
(often unreliable) internet.
Grace
is asking questions about herself and her long-term partner, Jack. A
country boy who has successfully carved out a career as a lawyer, Jack
and Grace don't always see eye to eye. Disciplined as ever, Grace
convinces herself they can weather any storm.
Nico,
her Sicilian host, flirts and flatters and cajoles her as she whips up
platters of food, one of her passions. He asks if she has a boyfriend.
She does, she says. She asks if he has a girlfriend. Sometimes, he says.
(The cad!)
Nico is just a housemate, Grace tells herself — but could he be something more?
Campy
and Campari-spritzed, Slip is both a romance and an anguished arrow
through the heart of romance tropes. By the end, it takes on the solemn
melancholy of an Italian neo-realist film. Transcribing Nico's anecdotes
for her research, Grace discovers a "strange and shameful
possessiveness" overtaking her: "He didn't sound like himself, and she
couldn't bring herself to transcribe his words without editing them to
make him sound more like the person she knew."
Playing
on the double meaning of what can be "in the end, quite easily fixed",
Slip is a novel about discipline, acceptance and desire; about making
sense of the choices one faces and the possibility of new ones.
Investing in fantasies only to find the fantasy disappoints — and,
worse, that there is no one to share the disappointment with — Grace
senses the contours of a loneliness in her life she was not aware of as a
younger woman. It is only by recording and listening to others (and,
yes, fantasising) that Grace can allow herself to realise what she truly
desires.
Hooked by Asako Yuzuki, translated by Polly Barton
Fourth Estate
Asako Yuzuki, author of Hooked and Butter, has published more than 20 novels in Japanese. (Supplied: HarperCollins Australia)
It's
telling that the two English-translated novels by prolific Japanese
author Asako Yuzuki share a preoccupation with women, female friendship
and the suffocating weight of societal expectations. In both, misogyny,
body image and the female psyche feel at once distinctly Japanese and
entirely universal — ripe for dissecting across cultures.
Like
her 2024 novel Butter, Hooked, also translated by Polly Barton, is
built around a tete-a-tete between two women in their 30s. Shōko is a
popular housewife blogger whose brand is built on a studied laziness —
the antithesis of the perfect wife. Eriko is her apparent opposite:
immaculate, high-achieving, single and a corporate operator whose
current project involves importing the Nile perch into Japan — an
invasive freshwater fish species known for decimating native fish
populations where it is introduced. Eriko, we're told, is "irresistibly
drawn to it". In a novel preoccupied with dangerous obsession and
loneliness, it's a revealing detail. At one point, Eriko thinks she sees
"the shadow of an enormous fish. It took her a moment to realise it was
the silhouette of her own torso". It's an analogy that threads through
the novel.
Fascinated
by Shōko, Eriko engineers a friendship with her by tracking her down
via her blog, and the two quickly grow close. Both are desperate for
female companionship and in genuine admiration of one another. But it's
precisely at this intersection that the novel's tension catches. Their
dynamic curdles fast. Eriko's controlling nature surfaces in ways that
feel alarming, and Shōko retreats — echoing a similar situation from
Eriko's past. Beneath their apparent differences, both women are lonely,
flawed and vulnerable, struggling in a society designed to make women
compete rather than connect.
Written
in 2015, Hooked actually predates Butter. Where Butter interrogates the
external — fatphobia, appetite, ambition — Hooked turns inward, tracing
the interior battles women wage against themselves and each other.
Alternating chapter perspectives keep the pacing taut. The ending
deflates slightly, but there's something honest in its open-endedness — a
refusal to resolve neatly.
Yuzuki
is a novelist of female interiority, drawn to imperfect characters who
push against the status quo. Hooked confirms she's a vital voice in
contemporary fiction.
— Ying-Di Yin
The Minstrels by Eva Hornung
Text Publishing
The Minstrels author Eva Hornung won the 2010 Prime Minister's Literary Award for fiction for her novel Dog Boy. (Supplied: Text Publishing)
My
profound sympathy to whoever had to write the blurb for Australian
writer Eva Hornung's latest novel, The Minstrels. What to focus on? The
conjuring of a past small-town Australia, with hemmed-in parents and
simmering violence? Or a story of landscape, defined by dispossession
and drought? A family drama, of siblings and tragedy, accidents and
love? Or a dystopian future survival story, with new societal forms?
This
book is all of those things, but what holds it together is gorgeous
poetic writing and a fiercely sympathetic protagonist named Gem. As a
child, she was snotty and grotty and wild, hissing like a feral cat,
stealing lollies for her brother Will and earning his adoration by
holding funerals for birds. Together the siblings — clever Gem and
"feckless" Will — created their own world, forming a lifelong bond.
However, as time passes and the world intervenes, it's a bond that
proves dangerous.
These
characters move away and then back to the small town that shaped them,
lured by the place itself. Near the town is an ancient ravine known as
The Minstrels, a beautiful slash in the landscape that held deep meaning
for the original owners of the land. Generations of local teenagers
have created their own mythologies about the place, attached with a set
of rituals so reckless and thrilling you can only read about them with
anticipatory dread.
From its
beginnings in Gem's childhood and her attachment to The Minstrels, the
story continues for years longer than you might expect, and in
directions that confront narrative expectations. Is this a portrait of
our local history, an observation of the 1970s and 1980s, or a piece of
speculative fiction that arrows into the future? It's all of these
things. What ties it together are truly astonishing sentences.
— Kate Evans
The Cursed Road by Laura McCluskey
HarperCollins
McCluskey is also a screenwriter and theatre maker, and a co-founder of Three Fates Theatre Company. (Supplied: HarperCollins Australia)
As
The Cursed Road opens, a panicked young woman is running through a
forest. It's cold and she's ill-prepared for the chill, wearing a stolen
jacket and boots but no socks. We know little about her, except that
she has been held against her will. She's now being hunted, and, like a
deer, is felled by a bullet as she flees.
The
case of the unidentified dead woman, dubbed Bambi by the press, lands
on the desk of Detective Inspector Georgina Lennox. George has been in
therapy since her last case — the investigation into a young man's death
on the island of Eadar, the subject of Laura McCluskey's debut novel, The Wolf Tree
— went awry. Relations between George and her former partner, Detective
Inspector Richie Stewart, have been strained since Eadar, when George's
addiction to prescription drugs came to painful light. As they reunite
on the new case, Richie's uncharacteristic prickly behaviour shifts
their dynamic; now — thanks to George's sessions with her psychologist
Dr Kassab — she's the peacemaker of the pair.
Like
The Wolf Tree, The Cursed Road is set in a spectacular landscape: the
Scottish Highlands, both awe-inspiring and foreboding in equal measure.
The investigation takes George and Richie to the remote village of
Kirkcree and a nearby luxury hunting lodge, where wealthy clients come
to stalk deer. Across the way, they stumble upon a crumbling castle,
complete with a gothic crypt, inhabited by a reclusive family hoping to
restore the mansion to its former glory.
George
and Richie uncover rivalries and resentments old and new — including a
centuries-old blood feud between two local clans — as they try to solve
the mystery behind Bambi's death and how it relates to the disappearance
of another young woman 10 years earlier. McCluskey throws in several
satisfying twists as the novel tears towards a suitably action-packed
and atmospheric finale.
— Nicola Heath
The Department of the Vanishing by Johanna Bell
Transit Lounge
Johanna
Bell also publishes children's books and produced the award-winning
podcast Birds Eye View, made by women in the Darwin Correctional Centre. (Supplied: Transit Lounge)
Did
you know that some birds can pick locks while others make lures to
entice fish into shallows? Or that ornithologists use the term "sexy
syllable" to describe "when a canary sings in two voices at the same
time"?
These are some of the
quirky facts scattered through The Department of the Vanishing, in among
stretches of verse, collages of newspaper headlines, quotes on scraps
of paper, lists and webcam screen captures. Author Johanna Bell's magpie
approach is a bold formal gambit to meet an unprecedented environmental
calamity, the fractured pieces coalescing into a powerful portrait of
the all-consuming power of loss.
Set
in the near future, the narrative begins with police questioning Ava
Wilde about an alleged breach of federal law at her workplace, the
titular department. This fictional (but highly recognisable) government
body creates labyrinthine catalogues of species as they become extinct.
For Ava, the work becomes soul-destroying, with the department's
bloodless, bureaucratic approach clashing with her impotent rage as she
watches vast and beautiful natural worlds disappear.
Haunted
by her father's unresolved disappearance when she was a child, Ava
remains self-contained: "I shrink at parties / when people ask / what is it you do / exactly".
Ava's mother, now living in a hospice with dementia, seems to have
something important to say about her father's fate, though the
painkillers she takes have rendered her communications cryptic.
Meanwhile,
Ava trawls dating apps for hook-ups, using old photos and keeping her
partners at arm's length. Then she meets Luke, a barman passionate about
creating electronic music who takes an interest in her work. Their
relationship is volatile and obsessive, reinvigorating Ava even as it
threatens to disrupt her carefully compartmentalised life.
While
very much experimental fiction, there is nothing inaccessible or
chin-stroking about The Department of the Vanishing. It's a hot-blooded
howl of a tale that rages and rumbles towards a shocking denouement.
— Daniel Herborn
Strange Girls by Sarvat Hasin
Dialogue Books
Cover image of Strange Girls (2026) by Sarvat Hasin. (Supplied: Hachette Australia)
Strange
Girls is the love story of two friends. Told from both their
viewpoints, we see the rich and intoxicating joy of young love and the
contrasting emptiness when it is no longer there.
Unfolding
in dual timelines, Aliya recounts the heights of the friends' obsession
with each other in university while Ava narrates a humid and
claustrophobic weekend in their adulthood when their relationship has
soured.
When Ava and Aliya meet
they quickly become each other's world, Aliya reflecting how "their
days twined up like trees growing around each other". When they are
together, it's at the exclusion of everyone else. When they are apart,
it's unbearable. One summer, as Ava and Aliya spend hours FaceTiming
between Scotland and Pakistan, they compare each other to Wuthering
Heights' lovers Cathy and Heathcliff, Ava laughing that "the pining will
make us stronger".
Their
dialogue is sharp, bright and self-deprecating, filled to the brim with
references to art and artists they admire. They share a longing for the
Paris of Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West and Edith Wharton. They
know they are cliches and they embrace it, willingly playing the
"strange girl" — one who doesn't care for such silly things as boys or
normality.
While as young women
it was always the sheltered Aliya following Ava, seemingly the more
talented and worldly of the two, in the present day Ava is still at sea
while Aliya has all the markers of success: a husband, a house and — the
greatest source of jealousy — a book deal. No longer on the same path,
the women are forced to reckon with the question of whether a friendship
like theirs can exist past adolescence or if the shadow of adulthood
and the scars of the past are too much to ignore.
Sarvat
Hasin has beautifully captured the romance and intimacy of female
friendship. I wanted to stay longer in the smoky beer gardens and musty
share house parties of Strange Girls and, like Ava and Aliya, hold on a
little longer to their friendship before it burned itself out.
— Rosie Ofori Ward
Body Double by Hanna Johansson, translated by Kira Josefsson
Scribe
Body
Double is Hanna Johansson's second novel. Her first, Antiquity, won the
Katapultpriset Prize in 2021 for the best Swedish fiction debut of the
year. (Supplied: Scribe Publications)
One
day, Naomi discovers she has mistakenly taken someone else's coat from a
department store cafe. Returning to retrieve the correct one, she sees
another woman wearing it. The woman, Laura, troubles her — and Laura, in
turn, seems suspicious of Naomi.
Naomi
later finds herself unexpectedly bumping into Laura, not once but
repeatedly. The things she says to friends begin to sound like Laura.
Her friends sometimes mistake the two of them. When Laura moves into
Naomi's home, a strange, consuming relationship develops.
Intertwined
with this narrative is the story of a woman transcribing tapes for a
ghostwriter. The ghostwriter records people's life stories, crafting
them into customised biographies. His clients are exclusively women. He
does not judge them, no matter how confronting their stories are.
The transcriber
cannot help growing attached to the stories of the women she listens to.
She is completely removed from them and the women have no knowledge of
her existence, yet she identifies with them.
When
she hears a woman in a recording say: "I have seen you. Have you seen
me?", it is the first time anything has happened to upset the
equilibrium she feels between herself and her subjects. Someone seems to
be trying to pierce her one-way mirror.
Entrancing
and eerie, Body Double pulses with atmosphere. Fans of filmmakers like
Krzysztof Kieślowski (the Three Colours trilogy) may recognise something
like his films here. The gorgeously noirish narrative even makes
reference to a lipstick, Veronique — a possible reference to
Kieślowski's 1991 film The Double Life of Veronique.
Johansson's
metaphysical thriller makes you question the limits of personhood and
individuality. As she ratchets up the creepiness, you can't look away.
— Declan Fry
Nonesuch by Francis Spufford
Faber
Francis Spufford began his career writing non-fiction, publishing his first novel in 2016, when he was 52. (Supplied: Allen & Unwin)
English
novelist and non-fiction author Francis Spufford is fascinated by
cities and what they offer the imagination: 18th-century Manhattan, when
its name, identity and currency were still unstable, in Golden Hill;
London in 1944, when a set of possible futures arise from a bombed
Woolworths, in Light Perpetual; an invented 1920s American city with a
radical politic and shades of noir in Cahokia Jazz. And now, in
Nonesuch, he has returned to London in World War ll — or a version of
it. While all these cities appear different, each changes shape in some
way.
As Nonesuch begins, London
is in a moment of instability. It's 1939 and the city is on the brink
of war. Iris, our hero, is clever, ambitious and defiantly
non-conformist. She works in the City in finance, however, her future is
hampered by her class and gender and an event from her past. We follow
her as she meets some posh strangers, including a proto-fascist woman,
and has a fling with a nice young man.
As
the Blitz takes hold, Nonesuch offers a recognisable depiction of a
city under siege: the blackouts, air raids, political debates, social
change as women step into new roles and careers; rivalries and love;
hints of espionage and dastardly organisations. But there are also
unexpected elements: creatures made of shadows and discarded newspapers,
angels and demons exploited for political purposes, statues that come
to life and rooftop chases.
Spufford
has transformed a city once again, using fantasy to lean into (rather
than away from) the drudgery and fear of living in a city without light,
the shock of buildings disappearing in the night, the threat of
fascism, the divisive clash of morality and politics. He does it all
with characters who are well-realised and nuanced, particularly Iris,
whose spiky interest in career and money, having been denied both, makes
her a wonderfully strong hero.
Millions of people are beginning to protest against the unfettered use and development of artificial intelligence. (Reuters: Manuel Orbegozo)
Artificial intelligence (AI) companies are stuck in a "perfect storm", experts say.
The
sector is trying to control the use of and output from their platforms
while maintaining profits and contending with a campaign to boycott the
technology.
A "QuitGPT" protest
movement has been launched against OpenAI's ChatGPT amid industry
concerns that the Trump administration could use AI for autonomous
warfare and mass surveillance.
Technology company OpenAI says its ChatGPT artificial intelligence platform is used worldwide by 900 million people weekly. (Reuters: Dado Ruvic)
Sean
Parnell, the Pentagon's top spokesman, has posted on social media that
the military "has no interest in using AI to conduct mass surveillance
of Americans [which is illegal] nor do we want to use AI to develop
autonomous weapons that operate without human involvement".
Rival
AI company Anthropic and the US government are also embroiled in a
legal stoush over the Pentagon placing it on a national security
blacklist after the start-up refused to remove guardrails on the use of
its technology.
The Trump
administration has struck a deal with OpenAI to deploy its technology
into classified networks, with the company setting out three "main red
lines": no use of the technology for mass domestic surveillance, to
direct autonomous weapons systems, and to make "high-stakes automated
decisions".
That agreement
intensified the QuitGPT movement, which was launched by people who
called themselves "democracy activists" concerned "about AI companies
contributing to the rise of authoritarianism in the US".
What is the QuitGPT movement?
QuitGPT
is a grassroots campaign urging people to stop using and cancel
subscriptions for OpenAI's cornerstone platform, ChatGPT, the movement's
website says.
It claims to
have attracted more than 4 million participants. OpenAI says it services
more than 900 million users weekly, including 50 million subscribers.
The crackdown ignited protests in several cities, including in Minneapolis, where federal agents shot and killed civilians Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
More
than 4 million people have joined an online protest movement aimed at
boycotting the use of OpenAI's ChaptGPT artificial intelligence
platform. (Reuters: Manuel Orbegozo)
The QuitGPT movement pointed to OpenAI president Greg Brockman's $US25 million
($38.5 million) donation in December last year to the pro-Trump MAGA
Inc and Leading the Future super PAC set up to drive "American
leadership in AI innovation".
"If
we make an example of ChatGPT, we can send a clear signal to ICE
enablers that their actions will not go unpunished," the QuitGPT website
says.
US
law and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers clashed with
protesters in several cities amid Donald Trump's mass deportation
crackdown. (Reuters: Ryan Murphy)
The
campaign also claims users' emotional dependence on AI platforms, the
risk of people developing "AI psychosis" after "extended chatbot
interactions", AI data centres' environmental impacts, and an influx of
advertising are reasons to boycott the technology.
A spokesperson for OpenAI told the ABC Mr Brockman's political donations were made "in a personal capacity and not as OpenAI".
The
company has "worked with more than 170 mental health experts" to
address emotional dependence concerns, the spokesperson said.
"It's
right that people should care about how AI is developed and the
companies building it, but this campaign makes misleading claims about
OpenAI," the spokesperson said in a statement.
"We're focused on building AI that is safe, useful, and benefits as many people as possible.
"We
do that by making AI widely accessible, investing heavily in safety,
and working with governments around the world to ensure people can get
the most out of AI safely and responsibly."
Jeannie
Paterson from the University of Melbourne's Centre for Artificial
Intelligence and Digital Ethics said QuitGPT gained momentum in recent
months.
"The QuitGPT movement has been vocal, particularly in the US, where it's mixed in with concerns about the war in Iran, the invasion of Venezuela [and] the behaviour of ICE," Professor Paterson said.
The Pentagon said it should be able to use Claude as needed, as long as it complied with US law.
Anthropic
said it largely agreed, except on two points it considered
non-negotiable: it would not allow Claude to be used for lethal
autonomous warfare without human oversight or for mass surveillance of
Americans.
The Pentagon then designated Anthropic as a supply-chain risk and barred government contractors from using Claude in US military work.
It has been touted as the first time the US government has used the designation against a US company.
Defense
Secretary Pete Hegseth insisted Anthropic and its chief executive Dario
Amodei must accept "all lawful" uses of Claude and threatened further
punishment.
The Pentagon wanted
to use Claude to support US military actions, including in Iran, by
analysing intelligence and assisting with operational planning, Reuters
reported.
On March 10, Anthropic sued the White House over the designation — which it labelled as an "unlawful campaign of retaliation".
How the Pentagon went to war with Anthropic over military AI.
"The
Constitution does not allow the government to wield its enormous power
to punish a company for its protected speech," court documents filed as
part of the lawsuit said.
"No federal statute authorizes the actions taken here."
A
day later, Anthropic's rival OpenAI announced it had struck its own
deal with the Pentagon to deploy its technology into the Department of
Defense's classified network.
Pete Hegseth has threatened further potential punishment for Anthropic. (Reuters: Evan Vucci)
OpenAI
said the deal included a stipulation that the technology could not be
used for mass domestic surveillance, to direct autonomous weapons
systems or for high-stakes automated decisions.
Professor Paterson said Anthropic was "trying to stay on the good side of generative AI use".
"It
famously put out a constitution which expressed its commitment to
beneficiaries for ensuring the tool itself works to the benefit of
humans … but I guess the flip side of that is Anthropic is a corporation
that has to make a profit," she said.
"All
of the providers of large language models are putting what are called
guardrails on their models, so that they won't do certain things — they
won't produce child sex abuse material, they won't tell you how to make a
bomb or biological weapon.
"Do
the guardrails stop that happening? Yes, to some extent, but guardrails
can be broken [and] the tools are very expensive to produce … How on
earth do companies continue to pay for that?
"Well, government contracts are lucrative."
Who is responsible for the misuse of AI platforms?
Kimberlee
Weatherall, the co-director of the University of Sydney's Centre for
AI, Trust and Governance, said OpenAI has been "relatively successful"
in safeguarding ChatGPT for general use.
But she believes governments using the technology have blurred the lines of responsibility for when AI is misused.
"The
Anthropics and OpenAIs of the world are in a little bit of a bind in
the sense that they are promoting the massive capacity of their
technology and how it's going to completely change the world," she said.
"That
puts them in a difficult position of saying, 'Look, we're super
powerful,' which makes governments around the world more inclined to
say, 'OK, if you're super powerful, you need to take responsibility.'
"But
then you also have governments saying, 'You say this stuff is super
powerful, we'd like to use it, and we're the government, so you just
have to trust us to use it lawfully or appropriately, and we're the ones
that get to decide what that means.'"
ChatGPT's
share of overall AI platform users fell from 69.1 per cent to 45.3 per
cent, while Google's Gemini almost doubled, the data showed.
Professor Paterson believes there is a tension.
Increasing safety guardrails can reduce functionality, making the platforms less attractive to users.
"The problem with these technologies is there is no right use,"
she said.
"They're
kind of general-purpose AI, which means absolutely they're being
designed to be used for all sorts of things. Unfortunately, that means
they can be used to hurt people as well as benefit them.
"There's
a double-edged sword there because you want the tool to be safe enough
that people will use it and that it's used widely. We don't want it too
safe, because if it's too safe it ceases to be fun or adaptive to use."
Nicolas
Suzor from the QUT School of Law said regulators have not kept up with
the growth of AI, including rules on who should be responsible when use
causes harm.
"We're not used to regulating AI infrastructure when it can be used for unknown purposes," Professor Suzor said.
Will the boycott make an impact?
The experts' opinions are split.
Professor Suzor believes the movement represents a wider consumer revolt against AI.
"I don't think this is the end of it," he said.
"People are clearly expressing some sort of discomfort about who gets to make these types of decisions.
"Normally,
we would hope that our governments have sane policies and our best
interests at heart, and I think there's a lot of distrust of the US
government on those fronts."
Professor Weatherall agreed, saying she expects protests to grow.
"There's
pushback on the environmental issues, there's pushback on where they
are planning to put data centres, there's pushback on the information
environment," she said.
"You
have an increasing number of people concerned about one risk or another …
a large number of governments both wanting to protect their populations
but also use the technology, a remaining question about regulation and
legitimate fear and concern brought to a head by bombs falling from the
sky.
"Technology can sometimes, in a turbulent environment, be something of a flashpoint for large companies."
Some experts say they expect anti-AI protests to grow in magnitude. (Reuters: Manuel Orbegozo)
Professor Paterson disagreed.
She
said QuitGPT appeared "somewhat performative" because it only targeted
OpenAI and believed completely abandoning the technology was not simple.
"It's very hard to quit GPT because if you're using Microsoft's Copilot, it's on the same language model," she said.
"Claude
is used by the government … and has been criticised for being embedded
in various military and security operations. Gemini is Google's AI, but
it's equally embedded in military training [and] surveillance
operations.
