Welcome to another Decency Deep Dive. This week we tackle the forthcoming European Parliament (EP) elections on June 9, widely expected to deliver a significantly more right-wing supranational legislature. Russia’s ongoing efforts to intrude into the news cycle, public debate and imaginary of Western societies are on the agenda, too, as we address its recent efforts at disinformation and lobbying. Finally, as Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez ups the ante of its effort to smear the country's press, its judges and the entire opposition, we ponder where goes Spain next.

As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

“I think it is obvious that NATO's expansion does not have any relation with the modernisation of the alliance itself, or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended?”

That was Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Munich Security Conference in 2007. This speech encapsulates Putin's long-simmering critique of the West and his framing of NATO's expansion as a form of provocation. It is often pointed to, today, as the beginning of Putin's foreign policy that led to the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Some in the West, most notably Tucker Carlson, have swallowed this argument hook, line and sinker—and continue to repeat it today.

In this week's episode, we spoke to Michael C. Kimmage, Chair of the History Department at Catholic University of America (CUA) and author of Collisions (2024), a new book with Oxford University Press that documents the build-up to all-out war between Russia and Ukraine. In his book, and in our discussion today, Kimmage takes us through the key moments that led to the invasion of February 2022.

As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on whatever platform you use, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. We’re also continuing our giveaway of the "How to Win Brexit" board game to our patreons, so sign up today for a chance to win one. Thank you, and we hope you enjoy this episode!

Bibliography:

• Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability (2024): https://global.oup.com/academic/product/collisions-9780197751794?cc=us&lang=en&.

“Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground upon us; day by day we are becoming more subservient to them; more men are daily bound down as slaves to tend them, more men are daily devoting the energies of their whole lives to the development of mechanical life. The upshot is simply a question of time, but that the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants”. Samuel Butler wrote those words in the mid-19th century in his essay Darwin Among the Machines (1863). The somewhat satirical essay calls for the total destruction of all machines to save humanity from inevitable subservience to them.

Starting with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, science fiction writing often fixes upon the fear that machines will surpass us, replace us, and even enslave us. Terminator, Mass Effect, The Matrix, and Blade Runner all deal with this existential fear. Now that AI has arrived in a mass use format through ChatGPT and Gemini, lawmakers around the globe are rushing to regulate this technology to prevent abuse while still enabling innovation. The EU has jumped out ahead in trying to regulate artificial intelligence and is hoping that its regulatory power will help set global standards for AI use; but will it?

To discuss this complex and serious topic, we invited Ian Bremmer, Founder and President of the Eurasia Group, and Anu Bradford Professor of Law at Columbia University and author of The Brussels Effect (2020), and Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology (2023).

This episode was made available in full length for all listeners but if you’d like to get the full length version of other episodes, you can join our Patreon for as little as 5 EUR a month. As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on whatever platform you use, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. Thank you and we hope you enjoy this episode.

Bibliography:

• The Brussels Effect (2020): https://academic.oup.com/book/36491.
• Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technologies (2023): https://global.oup.com/academic/product/digital-empires-9780197649268.
• The Age of Spiritual Machines (1863): https://penguinrandomhousehighereducation.com/book/?isbn=9780140282023.
• Dune (1965): https://www.amazon.com/Dune-Frank-Herbert/dp/0441172717.