What happens next? – Q&A with Bruno Maçães

The coronavirus crisis could be a gift, it seems, for proponents of the surveillance state. Big Brother could soon be watching you through that smartphone virus tracking app. This has triggered serious argument about data protection, privacy, and citizens’ rights in Australia, Israel and France. In Israel the internal security service Shin Bet has been stood down from using its pervasive counter-terrorism powers and capabilities in the Covid-19 campaign.

Bruno Maçães, the polymath former Portuguese minister and diplomat, who works with think tanks and universities across three continents, is a leading commentator on the virus and its civic and political consequences.

On a late night Skype call I asked him about the state we all now seem to be in as Europe and China, and parts of Asia appear to breasting the first wave of this iteration of the SARS-COV-2 pandemic.

RF: Where are we now with the Trace and Test Apps now being considered by UK, France, Germany and America? It looks as if UK, Germany and France would go for the join project by Apple and Google. What does this mean in terms of data protection and privacy?

BM: This is very difficult – a lot of the material is highly confidential. But it looks now that the British and French will go ahead developing their own app, and not with Apple and Google. On the other hand, Germany seems content to go with Apple. The providers like Apple seem more worried than the UK and French governments about privacy and client confidentiality.

It requires a lot of responsibility by the users, being prepared to isolate themselves and to report it. Do you just send information by SMS text? You could encourage participation by offering money, or dropping phone charges. You could, of course, make it mandatory.

RF: But would you get enough people to make the system work?

BM: I think you are going to need quite a lot of people, and I find it extraordinarily disappointing that we need to have to discuss this now. It’s very late. California is talking about 10,000 human trackers for follow ups – and you mentioned that the British are looking for 18,000 for follow-up tracing. The numbers you really need are incredible, much larger than this.

So, you will probably need a hybrid system, where the human tracers are helped by the app.

The systems being discussed in Europe are not going to be sufficient on their own.

RF: How can this work in the anticipation of a second wave of the virus?

BM: We are facing the second phase now – where we turn more to prevention, and getting things under control. Two or three months from now they will try to detect outbreaks just as they happen. The Germans describe it as a “sentinel surveillance system.” You would test randomly, and then feed the information into some form of algorithm to identify possible outbreaks and how they’re developing.

It cannot be done automatically – you need analysts working centrally. You require more than simple apps sending messages around the place. You need highly qualified analysts, working with randomized data, identifying likely new outbreaks, based on their experience. So we are moving into a new phase – and this is where the companies like Palantir (the data mining organisation that worked with the CIA counter terror and chemical warfare exercises in South Korea, amongst other things) come in.

So far we have an app, but there is no algorithm in that app. It’s a very simple digital app – but then you going need to deal with algorithms to process the information. This becomes very troubling for many people, not particularly for me.

RF: How do you get civic support for this, the backing of the people?

BM: It is interesting that in some countries you get support for lockdown without one being imposed – I noticed this in India in February where people would carry sanitizers and keep distance without being imposed by law. It’s disappointing that in the UK the law is needed to back the restriction measures. Sweden has gone a different route. It’s a question of seeing the risks and adapting sensibly accordingly.

Now there is a probability in Europe and the US that people will go back to what they regard as “normal behaviour” if the restrictions are lifted. As if in the US and Europe individual behaviour is not a variable at all.

There’s another variable, too. Someone in Poland yesterday told me that the reason the authorities are so strict – imposing 7000 Euro fines and so on – is that they know the health care system isn’t able to respond. It’s not surprising the Greeks have been doing so well. They know after all the austerity that their hospitals are underfunded and undermanned – so there’s a sense you have to act because you can’t rely on the hospitals as the last line of defence.

On the other hand in Western Europe you have a health system that is high quality and free, then people won’t adapt in their behaviour because they will rely on the hospitals to solve the problems.

RF: Can we turn to China – on which you have written so much – are they expecting a second wave of the virus?

BM: We can’t be entirely sure; the information has been repressed. I hear from friends there that the situation is normalized – which doesn’t mean the economy has recovered. People are refraining from public transport, cinemas and restaurants, where some have opened in very difficult conditions. They are not in free fall as we still are in Europe.

But it is not going to be a so-called V-shaped recovery. People are still very cautious about everything such as travel, going to cinemas and restaurants. And they are completely closed to the outside world.  They’re suffering from the collapse of exports.

This will probably reinforce the Party’s legitimacy – they can point to the United States and how things are going there. They can make the claim that China responds more effectively in this crisis than Western countries. They are in a strong position, but their economy remains a big problem.

RF: Can we turn now to the central figure in your latest book (History Has Begun), Donald Trump?

BM: Well, for the first time, the poll numbers are going in the wrong direction for him. About a week polling numbers among seniors really began to shift – he’s not getting that vote by a long margin. He still has a lot of time – but the big question is whether there will be a second wave, say around September or October. If there isn’t, he still may have a chance – if he’s able to get to the lection and say that he’s solved the issue. But there could be second waves and big problems in other countries like India, and they count.

There are going to be a number of milestones now. One is that when he finally decided on targets, Trump made it clear he would consider it a positive result if around 60,000 people died because the models before he reacted pointed to 140,000 to 200,000. Now it does seem this week that the 60,000 figure is going to be exceeded. It looks unlikely we’ll get to the end of May with less than 80,000 deaths. And he’ll have to defend that.

The economy could recover, that might be feasible. Finally. the most crucial challenge is that as the economy recovers he has to make sure there isn’t a second wave, much closer to the elections at the end of the summer. That really would be deadly.

If the economy is on the up in September and the medical situation is better, he could still win. If in September he is still struggling with isolated outbreaks, and even worse a second wave with numbers exceeding 100,000, I don’t see it as possible.

It’s very unpredictable – either one of the candidates could have health problems of their own, come September.

RF: Could you envisage a virtual election, given the physical difficulties?

BM: Trump has already said he’s not going to support voting by mail in any way. But the constitution is pretty clear that if you postpone the election, Trump doesn’t stay in office. I think it’s Pelosi. It’s not impossible.

RF: Finally, what are you writing – apart from tweets and articles?

BM: Sadly, I am having to postpone a book on India – it would be impossible to do for at least a year. I have a couple offers to write a book about Coronavirus – what the world will look like afterwards. It’s a kind of war for the future with different political groups and movements trying to take advantage; they all want to take society in a completely different direction.

It’s hard to see who will win. You could have a Randian (as in the author and visionary Ayn Rand) individualism, because people would conclude they cannot trust anyone else. Or you could have a return to socialism, because people realise that states have been hollowed out, and so we have to reinforce the ability of the state to respond to crises like this.

It’s a bit like the landscape after World War II when there was intense politicization. Everyone agrees that society isn’t going to be the same, but disagree on how it’s going to be shaped.

RF: And the black clouds and black swans on the horizon?

BM: A good exercise is to try to identify the breaking points as they now start to emerge.

The very obvious one is the relationship between the US and China – nothing is ever going to be the same after this.

The second is the EU and Southern Europe. If you look at the figures, there just doesn’t seem to be a way out of this. In two years public debt will be close to 200% of GDP for Italy, in Portugal 180%, Spain 165%, and in France for the first time you’re going to get numbers previously considered unsustainable of 150% (it’s now about 120%).

Things cannot return to normal; with US-China, and Southern Europe, something dramatic has to happen. Either the EU takes on some of these debts, or China is going to come in. Or these countries are going to default, and go through a very bumpy period of deep economic crisis.

If we talk again in a month, these breaking points rather than being two or three are going to be half a dozen or so. I feel very strongly about that.