Wednesday, September 17, 2025

Polaris of Enlightenment

The Swedish government launches AI inquiry

Published 26 September 2024
– By Editorial Staff
1 minute read

The Swedish government has decided to review legislation on the use of AI in Sweden to ensure that Swedish rules are in line with the new EU AI Regulation.

The new EU AI Regulation, which came into effect on 1 August this year, will create a common set of rules for the development and use of AI systems in the EU. It aims to ensure a high level of safety, health and protection of fundamental rights for all EU citizens.

The government has now decided to set up an inquiry to examine “the need for national adjustments” in Swedish laws to bring them into line with the regulation.

– We are in the midst of a technological change where AI has great potential to change the way we work in many sectors and in many parts of society. With this inquiry, we are taking an important step to ensure that AI is used in a way that is safe, reliable and in line with our fundamental values, said Minister for Civil Affairs Erik Slottner in a press release.

The inquiry will propose any necessary legislative changes, as well as measures for transparency and control. Helena Rosén Andersson has been appointed as the investigator and will report no later than 30 September 2025.

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Only 1 in 80 Swedish special shelters meets modern standards

The new cold war

Published today 9:36
– By Editorial Staff
The Igeldamm Garage in Stockholm, Sweden is the only major shelter in Sweden that meets modern standards.
2 minute read

Swedish authorities have intensified their messages in recent years about citizens needing to prepare for crises and war. Meanwhile, an investigation of the country’s own shelters reveals major shortcomings in the maintenance of critical infrastructure.

Of Sweden’s eighty special shelters – intended for nearly 100,000 people – only a single facility has been upgraded to modern standards after decades of neglected maintenance.

The Igeldamms garage in Stockholm, Sweden stands today as the sole example of a completed special shelter, while the remaining 79 facilities still await necessary upgrades, reports Swedish public television SVT.

The Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) has begun modernization work in approximately thirty of the eighty special shelters. The work has cost €7.7 million in the past year alone, but the pace is said to be far from sufficient to meet political ambitions for improved crisis preparedness.

Henrik Larsson, head of population protection at MSB, cannot provide information on when all facilities will be remediated:

— It depends. We need to get into all facilities and see what condition they’re in. In some facilities, quite extensive renovations may be required, and then it becomes very costly.

— If all facilities are in the same condition as here (Igeldamms garage), then it shouldn’t be any problem to do it before 2030, but I suspect we’ll have some facilities that we’ll need to spend time and significantly more money on, he continues.

64,000 shelters to be inventoried

During the Cold War, thousands of shelters were built around the country, but many have been used for completely different purposes for decades without proper maintenance. Now MSB has been tasked with inventorying the country’s total stock of 64,000 shelters between 2025 and 2030.

For the current year, approximately 10,000 minor inspections and around 2,000 major inspections are planned – a pace that MSB itself considers insufficient:

— We need to increase by 500 more per year to go through the entire stock by 2030. We need to be between 12,000 and 13,000 annually, estimates Larsson.

Inadequate protection

In addition to the already approved Igeldamms garage, with space for 1,200 people, two additional facilities are planned to be completed next year – one in Stockholm and one in Gothenburg, Sweden. This means that only three of eighty special shelters will have modern standards before 2027.

MSB’s assessment shows extensive shortcomings in the existing stock: only half of all shelters offer satisfactory protection against shrapnel and bombs, while only about ten percent have reasonable protection against chemical warfare agents.

Since the responsibility for addressing deficiencies lies with individual property owners, MSB cannot provide any timeframe for when the shelters will actually be in functional condition.

About Swedish shelters

Sweden has over 64,000 shelters with space for approximately seven million people. The shelters may be used for other purposes during peacetime but must be ready for use within two days during heightened alert or war. When a shelter is activated, it must have water, heating, ventilation and toilet facilities – however, there is neither food nor hygiene products.

The shelters are built to protect against shock waves and shrapnel from explosions, fire, chemical weapons and radiation from radioactive substances. People should be able to stay in the shelter without interruption for at least three days. It has never been the ambition to build shelters for the entire population, and their placement has been determined based on threat assessments.

During air raid alerts, people should immediately go to the nearest shelter or other protective space such as basements or subway stations. People do not belong to any specific shelter but use the one that is closest.

Source: MSB (Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency)

Swedish PM: “Don’t bring Middle Eastern conflicts to Swedish streets”

The genocide in Gaza

Published today 8:27
– By Editorial Staff
The loud pro-Palestinian protests have become a very troublesome disruptive element for the Kristersson government.
2 minute read

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson of the Moderate Party presents new measures against demonstrations and says he now wants to remove “Middle Eastern conflicts” from Swedish streets.

Critics note, however, that the Moderate Party has for many years pushed for mass immigration specifically from the Middle East – and continues to do so.

In a post on X, the prime minister writes about how politicians have been confronted outside the Riksdag (Swedish Parliament), ministers have been followed home from work, and Jewish families have been subjected to threats, and now the government promises tougher action.

“Don’t bring Middle Eastern conflicts to Swedish streets and squares. We must take care of the Sweden we love”, the prime minister appeals.

The statement comes from the same party that during Fredrik Reinfeldt’s government from 2006 significantly increased mass immigration to Sweden from the Middle East – a policy that continues today despite all problems and warnings, even though the rhetoric has changed.

In just these two decades, Sweden has received hundreds of thousands of people from various conflict areas in the Middle East, and a large portion of them have today been granted Swedish citizenship.

After Israel’s invasion of Gaza, however, Swedish politicians from the Moderate Party and other liberal parties have shown growing frustration and anger over the vocal protests from many of the immigrants they themselves allowed into the country.

These demonstrators protest almost daily against Israel’s genocide against Palestinians and demand, among other things, that Sweden cease its support for the Israeli state – demands that have become increasingly troublesome for those in power.

“Intrusive” demonstrators may face harsher punishment

Therefore, Kristersson now announces the following measures, among others:

• Review of criminal liability for demonstrators who act “intrusively or aggressively”
• Police given greater opportunity to decide on alternative times and places for demonstrations
• Clearer opportunity for police to intervene if decisions are not followed
• Police must report on how they work against disturbances at gatherings

The government is also reviewing possibilities to deport pro-Palestinian demonstrators who are considered particularly troublesome or who are accused of “glorifying terror” by, for example, expressing sympathies for Hamas or other groups designated as terrorist organizations.

“Whipping up hateful sentiments”

Kristersson writes in his post that “a heavy responsibility also rests on those who, by spreading lies, terror romanticism and antisemitism, polarize and whip up hateful sentiments in Sweden”.

For many, however, it appears ironic that the prime minister now claims to want to stop Middle Eastern conflicts from Swedish streets – conflicts that have largely come to Sweden through policies that his own party has implemented.

Others point out that it is telling that those in power react so strongly and condemningly only when they themselves are affected by disturbances and discomfort, while ordinary Swedes have been affected daily for many years by significantly worse immigration-related incidents without this receiving any attention whatsoever.

Swedish teachers’ union warns: Threats and violence becoming normalized in schools

Published 14 September 2025
– By Editorial Staff
2 minute read

An increasing number of teachers are being subjected to threats and violence in their professional roles, according to a report from Sveriges Lärare (Swedish Teachers’ Union). Staff working in after-school programs are the worst affected.

One in three teachers has been subjected to threats or violence in the past year. Meanwhile, four out of ten have witnessed a colleague being subjected to the same.

The report also shows that violence is becoming increasingly normalized – many teachers have stopped reporting incidents due to lack of support from school management and unclear procedures.

Threats and violence in schools are no longer isolated incidents – this is a systemic failure. That we teachers cannot feel safe at work is unacceptable and must never be normalized. The limit of what we teachers can endure has been exceeded, says Anna Olskog, chairperson of Sveriges Lärare in a press release.

Problem worst in after-school programs

Teachers in after-school programs are the worst affected – six out of ten have been subjected to harassment, threats or violence. Half of all teachers experience high stress, one in three suffers from depression and one in five is considering leaving the profession. The report also shows a clear connection between increased exposure and staff shortages.

Sveriges Lärare demands zero tolerance for threats and violence from school management and that authorities address the problem.

Threats and violence in schools are not just a school issue, it’s a societal issue. When teachers hesitate to report incidents and when colleagues leave the profession, we lose both quality and safety in schools. We have long demanded a national effort – from the state, from school management and from society as a whole – to reverse this development, says Olskog.

A Bell Labs for privacy

What Bell Labs taught us about orchestrating breakthroughs, and how we can use those lessons to push back against surveillance today.

Published 13 September 2025
– By Naomi Brockwell
9 minute read

I’ve been reading The Idea Factory by Jon Gertner, and it’s fascinating. It tells the story of Bell Labs, the research arm of AT&T, and a singular moment in history when a small community of scientists and engineers played a huge role in inventing much of the modern world. From the transistor to information theory, from lasers to satellites, a staggering number of breakthroughs can trace their origins from this one place.

The book asks: what made this possible?

It wasn’t luck. It was a deliberate design. Bell Labs proved that invention could be engineered: You can create the right environment to deliberately make breakthroughs more likely. With the right structure, culture, and incentives, it’s possible to give technological progress its best possible chance.

And this got me thinking: what’s the most effective way to move privacy and decentralized tech forward? Perhaps the internet itself taken on the role Bell Labs once played, and become the shared space where ideas collide, disciplines mix, and breakthroughs emerge? If so, how do we best harness this potential?

A factory for ideas

After World War II, Mervin Kelly, Bell Labs’ president, asked a radical question: could invention itself be systematized? Instead of waiting for breakthroughs, could he design an environment that produced them more reliably?

He thought the answer was yes, and reorganized Bell Labs accordingly. Metallurgists worked alongside chemists, physicists with mathematicians, engineers with theorists. Kelly believed the greatest advances happened at the intersections of fields.

There were practical reasons for cross-disciplinary teams too. When you put a theorist beside an experimentalist or engineer, hidden constraints surface early, vague ideas become testable designs, bad ideas die faster, and good ones escape notebooks and turn into working devices.

Bell Labs organized its work into a three-stage pipeline for innovation:

  1. Basic research: scientists exploring fundamental questions in physics, chemistry, and mathematics. This was the source of radical, sometimes “impractical” ideas that might not have an immediate use but expanded the frontier of knowledge.
  2. Applied research: engineers and theorists who asked which discoveries could actually be applied to communication technology. Their role was to translate abstract science into potential uses for AT&T’s vast network.
  3. Development and systems engineering: practical engineering teams who built the devices, refined the systems, and integrated them into the company’s infrastructure so they could work at scale in the real world.

This pipeline meant that raw science didn’t just stay theoretical. It became transistors in radios, satellites in orbit, and digital switching systems that powered the modern telephone network.

Bell Labs’ building architecture was designed to spark invention as well. At the Murray Hill campus, famously long corridors linked departments to trigger chance encounters. A physicist might eat lunch with a metallurgist. A chemist might bump into an engineer puzzling over a problem. And there was a cultural rule: if a colleague came to your door for help, you didn’t turn them away.

Causation is hard to prove, but the lab’s track record in the years that followed was remarkable:

  • The transistor (1947): John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley replaced bulky vacuum tubes and launched the electronics age.
  • Information theory (1948): Claude Shannon created the mathematics of communication, the foundation of everything from the internet to data encryption.
  • And much more: semiconductor and silicon device advances; laser theory and early lasers (including a 1960 continuous-wave gas laser); the first practical silicon solar cell (1954); major contributions to digital signal processing and digital switching; Telstar satellite communications (1962). The list goes on.

The Secret Sauce… it’s not what you think

Some people may argue that Bell Labs succeeded for other reasons. They point to government protection, a regulated market, defense contracts, and deep pockets. Those things were real, but they are not a sufficient explanation. Plenty of money is poured into research that goes nowhere. And protected monopolies often stagnate, because protection reduces the incentive to improve.

What Bell Labs’ resources did buy was proximity. Kelly’s goal was to gather great talent under one roof, and strategically try to increase the chances they would interact and work together. He built a serendipity machine.

The real lesson to take away from Bell Labs isn’t about money. It’s about collaboration and chance encounters.

By seating different disciplines side by side, they could connect, collaborate, and share insights directly. Building on one another’s ideas and sparking new ones led to a staggering array of advances at Bell Labs in the post-war decade.

Now in Kelly’s day, the best ways to give cross-pollination a real chance was to get people together in person, and that took a large amount of money from a behemoth corporation like AT&T.

If we wanted to manufacture the same kind of world-changing collaboration to push the privacy movement forward today, would we need AT&T-level resources?

Not necessarily. The internet can’t replicate everything Bell Labs offered, but it does mimic a lot of the value. Above all, it gives us the most powerful tools for connection the world has ever seen. And if we use those tools with intent, it’s possible to drive the same kind of serendipity and collaboration that once made Bell Labs extraordinary.

A decentralized Bell Labs

Kelly emphasized that casual, in-person encounters were irreplaceable.

A phone call didn’t suffice because it was usually scheduled, purposeful, and limited.

What he engineered was serendipity, like bumping into someone, overhearing a problem, and having an impromptu brainstorm.

Today, the internet in many ways mimics similar chance encounters. What once required hundreds of millions of dollars and government contracts can now be achieved with a laptop and an internet connection.

  1. Open work in public: GitHub issues, pull requests, and discussions can now be visible to anyone. A stranger can drop a comment, file a bug, or propose a fix. This is the digital version of overhearing a whiteboard session and joining in.
  2. Frictionless publishing: Research papers, blog posts, repos, and demos can go live in minutes and reach millions. People across disciplines can react the same day with critiques, code, or data.
  3. Shared problem hubs: Kaggle competitions, open benchmarks, and Gitcoin-style bounties concentrate diverse talent on the same challenge. Remote hackathons add the social, time-bound pressure that sparks rapid collaboration, like at Bell Labs where clusters of scientists would swarm the same puzzle, debate approaches in real time, and push each other toward breakthroughs. At Bell Labs, Kelly deliberately grouped many of the smartest people around the same hard problem to force progress.
  4. Topic subscriptions, not just people: Following tags, keywords, or RSS feeds brings in ‘weak-tie’ expertise from outside your circle. ‘Weak ties’ comes from social network theory: ‘strong ties’ are your close friends and colleagues, and you often share the same knowledge. ‘Weak ties’ are acquaintances, distant colleagues, or people in other fields, and they’re more likely to introduce new information or perspectives you don’t already have. So when you follow topics (like ‘post-quantum cryptography’ or ‘homomorphic encryption’) instead of just following individual people, you start seeing insights from strangers in different circles. That’s where fresh breakthroughs often come from — not the people closest to you, but the weak ties on the edges of your network.
  5. Remixes and forks: On places like GitHub, instead of just commenting on someone’s work, you can copy it, modify it, and publish your own version. That architecture encourages people to extend ideas. It’s like in a Bell Labs meeting where instead of only talking, someone picks up the chalk and adds to the equation on the board.
  6. Chance discovery: Digital town halls expose you to reposts, recommendations, and trending threads you might never have gone looking for. Maybe someone tags you in a post they think you’d find useful, or you have cultivated a “list”, where you follow a group of accounts that consistently have interesting thoughts. These small nudges can create a digital form of the ‘hallway collision’ Kelly tried to design into Bell Labs.
  7. Cross-linking and citation trails: Hyperlinks, related-paper tools, and citation networks help you move from one idea to another, revealing useful work you did not know to look for. It’s like walking past ten doors you didn’t know you needed to knock on.
  8. Lightweight face time: AMAs, livestream chats, and open office hours give people a simple way to drop in, ask questions, and get unstuck, and are the digital equivalent of popping by someone’s desk.

Now, anyone can tap into a global brain trust. A metallurgist in Berlin, a cryptographer in San Francisco, and a coder in Bangalore can share code, publish findings, and collaborate on the same project in real time. Open-source repositories let anyone contribute improvements. Mailing lists and forums connect obscure specialists instantly. Digital town squares recreate the collisions Kelly once designed into Murray Hill.

What once depended on geography and monopoly rents has been democratized. And we already have proof this model works. For example, Linux powers much of the internet today, and it is the product of a largely decentralized, voluntary collaboration across borders. It is a commons built by thousands of contributors.

The internet is nothing short of a miracle. It is the infrastructure that makes planetary-scale cross-pollination possible.

The question now is: what are the great challenges of our time, and how can we deliberately accelerate progress on them by applying the lessons Bell Labs taught us?

The privacy problem

Of all the challenges we face, privacy is among the most urgent. Surveillance is no longer the exception, it is the norm.

The stakes for advancing privacy in our everyday lives are high: surveillance is growing day by day, with governments buying massive databases from brokers, and corporations tracking our every move. The result is a chilling effect on human potential. Under constant observation people self-censor, conform, and avoid risk; creativity fades and dissent weakens.

Privacy reverses that. It creates the conditions for free thought and experimentation. In private, people can test controversial ideas, take risks, and fail without fear of judgment. That freedom is the soil in which innovation grows.

Privacy also safeguards autonomy. Without control over what we reveal and to whom, our decisions are subtly manipulated by those who hold more information about us than we hold about them. Privacy rebalances that asymmetry, letting us act on our own terms.

At a societal level, privacy prevents conformity from hardening into tyranny. If every action and association is observed, the boundaries of what is acceptable shrink to the lowest common denominator. Innovation, whether in science, art, or politics, requires the breathing room of privacy to flourish.

In short, privacy is not just a shield. It is a precondition for human flourishing, and for the breakthroughs that push civilization forward.

If we want freedom to survive in the digital age, we must apply the Bell Labs model to accelerate privacy innovation with the same deliberate force that once created the transistor and the laser.

Just as Bell Labs once directed its collective genius toward building the information age, we must now harness the internet’s collaborative power to advance the lived privacy of billions across the globe.

The call to build

Kelly’s insight was that breakthroughs do not have to be random. They can be nurtured, given structure, and accelerated. That is exactly what we need in the privacy space today.

The internet already gives us the structure for invention at a global scale. But privacy has lagged, because surveillance has stronger incentives: data is profitable, governments demand back doors, and convenience keeps people locked in. The internet is not a cure-all either: it produces noise, and unlike Bell Labs, there is no Kelly steering the ship. It’s up to us to curate what matters, chart our own course, and use these tools deliberately if we want them to move privacy forward.

The best future is not one of mass surveillance. It is one where people are free to think, create, and dissent without fear. Surveillance thrives because it is organized. Privacy must be too.

The future will not hand us freedom. We have to build it.

 

Yours in Privacy,
Naomi

Naomi Brockwell is a privacy advocacy and professional speaker, MC, interviewer, producer, podcaster, specialising in blockchain, cryptocurrency and economics. She runs the NBTV channel on Rumble.

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