You would get that in other countries. Do you get it here?

I understand that you’re trying to build a community of trust. How, in a democracy, do you prevent that from being divided by political partisanship? Is it never going to be tempting to one political opposition or another to say, “This whole system is against us, and we’re opposed to ...

I’ve seen that. Of course, what’s amazing about it is that it works outside the country for people who are displaced.

I went to that ministry when I was there in July.

What do you think of it?

You studied in detail?

Yes. Did you talk to them about that?

Yes.

That’s another thing. That doesn’t work in most countries. The Ukrainians are trying to institute something.

The root of trust is these real-life documents and connections to healthcare and so on?

I know in some places there’s a conversation about using blockchain, for example, to help identify people and make sure that they’re real online. Is that something you’ve started doing?

There’s no ID card of any kind.

There’s some weird, long-standing national objection to photo IDs …

The British don’t have photo IDs.

They may be bots. They appear to have not taken that problem into …

Are they even human?

One of the things they’ve discovered is something like 10 percent of the people who say they’re members of the Tory Party don’t even have email addresses. The question is, “Are they even British?”

… you don’t have to produce anything. The British are right now having a problem. You know how the British choose their party leaders now depends on the votes of ordinary party members. This is affecting the Tory Party contest right now.

No, it’s very easy to get a U.S. telephone number and …

That’s another thing that most other countries don’t have.

It’s not a government process?

The root of trust comes through the telecoms company?

Chinese influence campaigns work on many levels in business, information, and so on. How do you prevent them from infiltrating this process? How do you know who you’re talking to?

… can change the conversation as they do already on Twitter and on Facebook. How do you guard for that?

What percentage of people participate?

How does that work? That gives citizens or vote say in the budgetary …?

That’s interesting. You don’t use it for areas that are very sensitive to the government, for example, like budgets. You don’t have a national debate on budgets using pol.is?

Where else have you used pol.is? I know the taxi driver example you told us …

I was going to ask you that.

Can you give some examples of how you’re exporting it, what institutions you’re using?

How do you think about building an international coalition? Should there be one? There isn’t right now.

This is what the Russians are trying to achieve through their war. It has a certain echo internationally, or at least there are parts of the world where people don’t push back against it, especially in Africa, in the Middle East, and other places where there’s Russian influence. Do you ...

What about internationally? These narratives: The UN is useless, international law is useless; We don’t believe anymore in conventions on genocide; We don’t believe anymore in human rights.

The idea is to recognize that this kind of competition always exists and try and channel it in a way that’s useful.

The antivax movement almost all over the world is supported by Russians.

You don’t have …

Masks and vaccines, and so you had a …

That too, but the effort to do COVID information failed completely, and it became completely partisan.

As you know, this failed completely in the United States.

You mean because the economy’s not doing well?

… or excluded or want some political option that’s different. How do you think about that? How do you think about reaching them? How do you think about bringing them into the main narrative?

First of all, let me ask about Taiwan internally. You say you have a kind of viral vaccine against it from history and so on. What the Chinese are very good at and what the Russians are good at, were good at in Ukraine, is picking out those parts of ...

For example?

Yes.

How do you think about pushing back against a similar kind of attack in Taiwan? This is question both about Taiwan internally, and about Taiwan’s foreign policy.

He wants to get everybody used to the idea that these things are OK.

The reasoning behind the Russian attack on Ukraine involves more than Putin’s ego. It’s also a Russian attack on the rule of law, on borders, on a certain idea of international community. He wants to undermine those things, to make mass murder, war and genocide acceptable. In other words, he’s ...

Bye.

OK, thank you. Thank you, bye.

Thank you, thanks. Peter, will you stay on?