Advances in communications tech have placed the telecom industry at an ethical tipping point
5G is rapidly becoming the lingua franca of the world’s armed forces
Palantir's death-based AI business model makes it the most loathsome company in the world, surpassing even Nestlé
Shannon’s limit, named for the father of communications theory, Claude Shannon, defines the maximum error-free data capacity of a network connection, taking into account bandwidth and noise level. Like Moore’s Law, it is a foundational principle of our industry. And now, like Moore’s Law, we are hitting its limits.
I learned this and many other amazing things at the Nokia Bell Labs’ Centennial celebration last week in New Jersey, which was packed with Bell Labs employees, Nobel laureates, and Turing Award winners.
Nishant Batra, Nokia’s Chief Technology and Strategy Officer, spoke movingly about how Bell Labs employees are guided by a love of science and working with like-minded people “to make the world a better place.”
In the 20th century, that was the shared ethos of the communications industry, but today, I worry that the mission is changing and that we are heading into darker territories dominated by a toxic combination of corporate greed, political dogma, and cultural decay.
The communications industry used to borrow military-developed technologies — the Internet, VOIP, radar, GPS, and so on — and convert them for civilian use. In the 21st century, that flow has been reversed. 5G, for example, is fast becoming the lingua franca of the world’s military.
At MWC25 in Barcelona, all four of the world’s 5G incumbents (Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia, and ZTE) made announcements focused on the application of 5G technology in warfighting — the first time this has happened.
Weaponized 5G is troubling, but it pales in comparison to AI, the risks of which are personified by Palantir Technologies, whose business model relies on its ability to monetize human misery, with a stock price that moves proportionately to the death toll in the conflicts it is involved with (note: exporting war casualty data from the UN OHCHR and plotting it against Palantir’s stock price on Yahoo Finance for the period since the beginning of the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza generates a grim infographic).
Now, Palantir spies a new and lucrative market: selling AI-enabled surveillance technology to ICE to assist the Trump Administration in deporting millions of immigrants (no charge for simultaneously creating a surveillance state like the one that America criticizes China for).
I think Claude Shannon would find all of this deeply disturbing. He actually had two (2) limits: a sciencey one and an ethical one. The latter caused him to eschew commercial and military opportunities that would have enriched him while emphasizing the importance of using technology for peace and progress rather than conflict.
As it turns 100, Nokia Bell Labs will this year move its headquarters from Murray Hill to New Brunswick. It appears the telecom industry is moving, too. And I’m worried about it.
Steve Saunders is a British-born communications analyst, investor and digital media entrepreneur with a career spanning decades.
Op-eds from industry experts, analysts or our editorial staff are opinion pieces that do not represent the opinions of Fierce Network.