T

Interp Debate:
They say plan text doesnt specify an end to exploitation of its
backdoors. So? They read you no piece of evidence say the
government doesnt put backdoors in to computers so if we
win a net decrease of government surveillance we win.
The government does it lol
Teri Robinson, SC Magazine, July 2014, OTI report exposes economic costs of NSA
spying, http://www.scmagazine.com/oti-report-exposes-economic-costs-of-nsaspying/article/363660/ DOA: 3-21-15
And, the study noted, by weakening key encryption standards, allegedly inserting
surveillance backdoors into "widely used hardware and software products, " being
slow to report software security vulnerabilities and participating in a "variety of
offensive hacking operations," the NSA has roundly damaged internet security . To
mitigate the economic and foreign policy damage caused by NSA surveillance
activities, OTI made a number of recommendations, including "strengthening
privacy protections for both Americans and non-Americans" and "providing for
increased transparency around government surveillance, both from the government
and companies." The report also noted that the U.S. should take steps to restore
trust in cryptography standards through the National Institute of Standards and
Technology. The U.S. government must not "undermine cybersecurity" by putting
surveillance backdoors into tech products and should commit to eliminating
vulnerabilities rather than stockpiling them.

Now you should feel very uncomfortable voting on this

because there is no extra T argument in the 1NC so if we win
we decrease government surveillance we win.
They say Void for Vagueness
1. No evidence saying this would be an error in the law
2. Fiat says the plan would get passed (no fiat is illusory
arguments in the 2NC thats a new argument which would
have seriously changed our strat voter for strat skew
and fairness)
3. In the context of criminal statutes not surveillance.
The card above answering their its means belonging to
argument and also this next sentence is really important.
If its means belonging to but they dont say what it has to
belong to this justifies reading literally anything as an aff.
There is no USFG definition in the 1NC which is a limits DA to
this interp because they could do literally anything and that
would be topical because the plan text would belong to the
team.
Counter Interp: Its means associated with
Dictionary.com, 9 (based on Collins English Dictionary,
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/its?s=t)
its

(ts) determiner: a. of, belonging to, or

pronoun ): each town claims its is the best

associated in some way with it: its left rear wheel b. ( as

Violation Debate
They say Zetter evidence few issues
1. From an article from WIRED.com called the Hacker
Lexicon. Really gonna take that into consideration?
2. It just says administrator. Never once said that these
administrators are nongovernmental. We read evidence
saying they are governmental which means no violation.
This also answers the B subpoint. The backdoors are
owned by the government and used by the government
3. This shit
Zetter, 14
Zetter, Kim. "Hacker Lexicon: What Is a Backdoor?" WIRED. N.p., 14 Dec. 14. Web. 4 Mar. 2016.
<http://www.wired.com/2014/12/hacker-lexicon-backdoor/>. Kim Zetter is an award-winning, senior staff reporter at
Wired covering cybercrime, privacy, and security. She is writing a book about Stuxnet, a digital weapon that was
designed to sabotage Iran's nuclear program. //PS

A backdoor in software or a computer system is generally an

undocumented portal that allows an administrator to enter the system to
troubleshoot or do upkeep. But it also refers to a secret portal that
hackers and intelligence agencies use to gain illicit access.

Proves they lose via their loose interp/vio.

Standards Debate
They say Vacuum Test no we dont seek to abolish
nongovernmental backdoors. Big mistake reading no evidence
says that backdoors are nongovernmental.
They say Prescriptive vs Descriptive Language there is no
analysis for this. Dont give it any weight. Idek what this
means.

Voters Debate
They say Elmore evidence
1. This evidence doesnt make an argument
2. No reason policy making is good in the 1NC
3. Our proposal is pretty well understood, not our fault that
they dont know what a backdoor is.
They say Fairness and Moving Target
1. There is no vague wording
2. No evidence saying this is vague wording
3. No off case with links dependent on the plan text so this
argument is a nonstarter.
They say Education
1. We arent spiking out of links answered this above
2. You dont give us an opportunity to spike out of links
means no in round abuse and dont vote on what we
justify because 1. We dont justify anything bad. 2. No its
what you justify argument in the 1NC
3. We arent using evasion techniques. Make them prove
that.
4. We are clashing on t and on case disproves their clash
arguments
5. No reason education is good
6. Youre shitting me if you really think you are learning
nothing in this debate. Make them prove that they have
learned nothing.
7. No reason we arent going back and forth on an issue.
8. Actually education isnt a real impact because education
is inevitable in debate and also you concede heg will be
hurt so you are incorrect.

Inherency
This argument is bad and you should feel very uncomfortable
voting for it.
1. All the internal links on the aff prove that the government
has and is abusing backdoors for surveillance purposes.
2. Heres a card if you want also an internal link for both
advantages
Sasso 14 (Brendan, technology correspondent for National Journal, previously
covered technology policy issues for The Hill and was a researcher and contributing
writer for the 2012 edition of the Almanac of American Politics, The NSA Isn't Just
Spying on Us, It's Also Undermining Internet Security, April 29 2014,
http://www.nationaljournal.com/daily/the-nsa-isn-t-just-spying-on-us-it-s-alsoundermining-internet-security-20140429)
Bolstering the nations defenses against hackers has been one of the Obama
administrations top goals. Officials have warned for years that a sophisticated
cyberattack could cripple (destroy) critical infrastructure or allow thieves to make
off with the financial information of millions of Americans. President Obama pushed Congress to
enact cybersecurity legislation, and when it didnt, he issued his own executive order in 2013. The cyber threat to our
nation is one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we
face, Obama wrote in a 2012 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. But critics argue that the National Security
Agency has actually undermined cybersecurity and made the United
States more vulnerable to hackers. At its core, the problem is the NSAs dual
mission. On one hand, the agency is tasked with securing U.S. networks and
information. On the other hand, the agency must gather intelligence on foreign
threats to national security. Collecting intelligence often means hacking encrypted
communications. Thats nothing new for the NSA; the agency traces its roots back to code-breakers deciphering Nazi
messages during World War II. So in many ways, strong Internet security actually makes the
NSAs job harder. This is an administration that is a vigorous defender of surveillance, said Christopher Soghoian, the
head technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union. Surveillance at the scale they want
requires insecurity. The leaks from Edward Snowden have revealed a variety of efforts
by the NSA to weaken cybersecurity and hack into networks . Critics say those programs,
while helping NSA spying, have made U.S. networks less secure. According to the
leaked documents, the NSA inserted a so-called back door into at least one
encryption standard that was developed by the National Institute of
Standards and Technology. The NSA could use that back door to spy on
suspected terrorists, but the vulnerability was also available to any other
hacker who discovered it. NIST, a Commerce Department agency, sets
scientific and technical standards that are widely used by both the
government and the private sector. The agency has said it would never deliberately weaken a
cryptographic standard, but it remains unclear whether the agency was aware of the back door or whether the NSA tricked NIST
into adopting the compromised standard. NIST is required by law to consult with the NSA for its technical expertise on cybersecurity.

The revelation that NSA somehow got NIST to build a back door into an encryption
standard has seriously damaged NISTs reputation with security experts. NIST is
operating with a trust deficit right now, Soghoian said. Anything that NIST has

touched is now tainted. Its a particularly bad time for NIST to have lost the
support of the cybersecurity community. In his executive order, Obama tasked NIST
with drafting the cybersecurity guidelines for critical infrastructure such as
power plants and phone companies. Because its an executive order instead of a law, the cybersecurity
standards are entirely voluntary, and the U.S. government will have to convince the private sector to comply. The Snowden
leaks werent the first to indicate that the NSA is involved in exploiting commercial
security. According to a 2012 New York Times report, the NSA developed a worm,
dubbed Stuxnet, to cripple Iranian nuclear centrifuges. But the worm, which
exploited four previously unknown flaws in Microsoft Windows, escaped the Iranian
nuclear plant and quickly began damaging computers around the world . The NSA and
Israeli officials have also been tied to Flame, a virus that impersonated a Microsoft update to spy on Iranian computers. Vanee
Vines, an NSA spokeswoman, said the U.S. government is as concerned as the public is with the security of these products. The
United States pursues its intelligence mission with care to ensure that innocent users of those same technologies are not affected,

the NSA relies on the same encryption standards it recommends

to the public to protect its own classified networks . We do not make recommendations that we cannot
she said. According to Vines,

stand behind for protecting national security systems and data, she said. The activity of NSA in setting standards has made the
Internet a far safer place to communicate and do business . But due to concern over the NSA damaging Internet security, the
presidents review group on surveillance issues recommended that the U.S. government promise not to in any way subvert,
undermine, weaken, or make vulnerable generally available commercial encryption. Encryption

is an essential
basis for trust on the Internet; without such trust, valuable communications would
not be possible, the group wrote in its report, which was released in December. For the entire system
to work, encryption software itself must be trustworthy. The White Houses
cybersecurity coordinator said that disclosing security flaws "usually makes sense." In response to the report, the administration
adopted a new policy on whether the NSA can exploit zero-daysvulnerabilities that havent been discovered by anyone else yet.
According to the White House, there is a bias toward publicly disclosing flaws in security unless there is a clear national security
or law enforcement need. In a blog post Monday, Michael Daniel, the White Houses cybersecurity
coordinator, said that disclosing security flaws usually makes sense. Building up a huge stockpile of undisclosed vulnerabilities
while leaving the Internet vulnerable and the American people unprotected would not be in our national security interest, he said.
But Daniel added that, in some cases, disclosing a vulnerability means that the U.S. would forego an opportunity to collect crucial
intelligence that could thwart a terrorist attack, stop the theft of our nations intellectual property, or even discover more dangerous
vulnerabilities. He said that the government weighs a variety of factors, such as the risk of leaving the vulnerability un-patched, the

But privacy advocates

and many business groups are still uncomfortable with the U.S. keeping
security flaws secret. And many dont trust that the NSA will only exploit the
vulnerabilities with the most potential for intelligence and least opportunity for
other hackers. The surveillance bureaucracy really doesnt have a lot of selfimposed limits. They want to get everything, said Ed Black, the CEO of the
Computer & Communications Industry Association, which represents companies
including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Sprint . Now I think people dealing with that bureaucracy have to
understand they cant take anything for granted. Most computer networks are run by private
companies, and the government must work closely with the private sector
to improve cybersecurity. But companies have become reluctant to share
security information with the U.S. government, fearing the NSA could use
any information to hack into their systems. When you want to go into
partnership with somebody and work on serious issuessuch as cybersecurityyou
want to know youre being told the truth, Black said. Google and one other cybersecurity firm
discovered Heartbleeda critical flaw in a widely used Internet encryption toolin
March. The companies notified a few other private-sector groups about the problem,
but no one told the U.S. government until April. Information you share with the NSA
might be used to hurt you as a company, warned Ashkan Soltani, a technical consultant who has worked
with tech companies and helped The Washington Post with its coverage of the Snowden documents. He said that company
likelihood that anyone else would discover it, and how important the potential intelligence is.

officials have historically discussed cybersecurity issues with the NSA, but that he
wouldnt be surprised if those relationships are now strained. He pointed to news
that the NSA posed as Facebook to infect computers with malware. That does a lot
of harm to companies brands, Soltani said. The NSAs actions have also made it
difficult for the U.S. to set international norms for cyberconflict. For several
years, the U.S. has tried to pressure China to scale back its cyberspying operations,
which allegedly steal trade secrets from U.S. businesses. Jason Healey, the director
of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council, said the U.S. has
militarized cyber policy. The United States has been saying that the world
needs to operate according to certain norms, he said. It is difficult to get
the norms that we want because it appears to the rest of the world that
we only want to follow the norms that we think are important. Vines, the NSA
spokeswoman, emphasized that the NSA would never hack into foreign networks to give domestic companies a competitive edge
(as China is accused of doing). We do not use foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on
behalf ofor give intelligence we collect toU.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom
line, she said. Jim Lewis, a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, agreed that NSA spying to stop
terrorist attacks is fundamentally different from China stealing business secrets to boost its own economy. He also said there is

there is a trust problem

justified or not. He predicted that rebuilding trust with the tech community will be
one of the top challenges for Mike Rogers, who was sworn in as the new NSA
director earlier this month. All the tech companies are in varying degrees unhappy
and not eager to have a close relationship with NSA, Lewis said.
widespread misunderstanding of how the NSA works, but he acknowledged that

3. They literally say go with the status quo and then on the
K, they say that the status quo uses linear thinking.
Probably means that linear thinking is good.

Solvency
1. Their Ryge evidence is horrid. Its not about backdoors,
its about the Golden Key and a Golden Key is
mathematically impossible
2. Even if vulnerabilities inevitably exist (which is false
because we get rid of backdoors) then we resolve
cybersecurity concerns via private sector cooperation
thats Zezima

Cyber

Internal Link:
Criminals, nation state actors, terrorists, and cyber actors are
leveraging new techniques to exploit backdoors and attack
critical infrastructure specifically the grid- thats Burg
Blaze says backdoors create commonplace data breaches that
can only be resolved by stopping government exploitation of
NSA backdoors
Removing backdoors is key to restore trust with the private
sector- post revelations Silicon Valley is hesitant to work with
the government for fear of privacy violations, the plan resolves
this- thats Zezima
Next is the norms I/L I just read on inherency. Backdoors
makes it impossible for the US to set international norms
because we are viewed as breaking them thats Sasso

Critical Infrastructure:
Devastating cyber attacks on critical infrastructure coming
now- destroys food supply- triggers WW3 as countries fight
over remaining food supply- draws in all major powers and
escalates to nuclear use. Most probably and on brink- Wilhusen
study shows cyber attacks have increased by 650% in the past
5 years and were being attacked every day. thats our
Sebastian evidence
A cyberattack causes grid collapse and collapses the economy
Reuters 15
(Carolyn Cohn, reporter, 7-8-15, Cyber attack on U.S. power grid could cost
economy $1 trillion: report, http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/08/uscyberattack-power-survey-idUSKCN0PI0XS20150708, BC)

A cyber attack which shuts down parts of the United States' power grid could cost as much as
$1 trillion to the U.S. economy, according to a report published on Wednesday. Company executives
are worried about security breaches, but recent surveys suggest they are not convinced about the value or

the University of Cambridge Centre for Risk

Studies and the Lloyd's of London insurance market outlines a scenario of an electricity blackout that leaves 93
million people in New York City and Washington DC without power. The scenario, developed by
Cambridge, is technologically possible and is assessed to be within the once-in-200-year
probability for which insurers should be prepared, the report said. The hypothetical attack causes
a rise in mortality rates as health and safety systems fail , a drop in trade
as ports shut down and disruption to transport and infrastructure. "The total
effectiveness of cyber insurance. The report from

impact to the U.S. economy is estimated at $243 billion, rising to more than $1 trillion in the most extreme version
of the scenario," the report said. The losses come from damage to infrastructure and business supply chains, and
are estimated over a five-year time period. The extreme scenario is built on the greatest loss of power, with 100
generators taken offline, and would lead to insurance industry losses of more than $70 billion, the report added.

There have been 15 suspected cyber attacks on the U.S. electricity grid since 2000 ,
the report said, citing U.S. energy department data. The U.S. Industrial Control System Cyber Emergency Response
Team said that 32 percent of its responses last year to cyber security threats to critical infrastructure occurred in
the energy sector. "The evidence of major attacks during 2014 suggests that attackers were often able to exploit
vulnerabilities faster than defenders could remedy them," Tom Bolt, director of performance management at
Lloyd's, said in the report.

Economic decline causes nuclear war and turns their multilat

scenario
Harris and Burrows 9
(Mathew, PhD European History at Cambridge, counselor in the National Intelligence
Council (NIC) and Jennifer, member of the NICs Long Range Analysis Unit
Revisiting the Future: Geopolitical Effects of the Financial Crisis
http://www.ciaonet.org/journals/twq/v32i2/f_0016178_13952.pdf)
Increased Potential for Global Conflict

Of course, the report encompasses more than economics and indeed believes the future is likely to be the result of a number of
intersecting and interlocking forces. With so many possible permutations of outcomes, each with ample Revisiting the Future

history may be more

instructive than ever. While we continue to believe that the Great Depression is not likely to be repeated, the
lessons to be drawn from that period include the harmful effects on fledgling democracies and
multiethnic societies (think Central Europe in 1920s and 1930s) and on the sustainability of multilateral
institutions (think League of Nations in the same period). There is no reason to think that this would not
be true in the twenty-first as much as in the twentieth century. For that reason, the ways in which
the potential for greater conflict could grow would seem to be even more apt in a constantly volatile
economic environment as they would be if change would be steadier. In surveying those risks, the report stressed the
opportunity for unintended consequences, there is a growing sense of insecurity. Even so,

likelihood that terrorism and nonproliferation will remain priorities even as resource issues move up on the international agenda.

Terrorisms appeal will decline if economic growth continues in the Middle East and youth
unemployment is reduced. For those terrorist groups that remain active in 2025, however, the diffusion of
technologies and scientific knowledge will place some of the worlds most dangerous capabilities within their reach. Terrorist
groups in 2025 will likely be a combination of descendants of long established groups_inheriting organizational structures,
command and control processes, and training procedures necessary to conduct sophisticated attacks_and newly emergent

become self-radicalized, particularly in the absence of

economic outlets that would become narrower in an economic downturn. The most
dangerous casualty of any economically-induced drawdown of U.S. military presence
would almost certainly be the Middle East. Although Irans acquisition of nuclear weapons is not inevitable, worries
about a nuclear-armed Iran could lead states in the region to develop new security arrangements
with external powers, acquire additional weapons, and consider pursuing their own
nuclear ambitions. It is not clear that the type of stable deterrent relationship that existed between the great powers for
most of the Cold War would emerge naturally in the Middle East with a nuclear Iran. Episodes of low intensity conflict and
terrorism taking place under a nuclear umbrella could lead to an unintended escalation and broader
conflict if clear red lines between those states involved are not well established. The close proximity of potential
nuclear rivals combined with underdeveloped surveillance capabilities and mobile dual-capable Iranian missile systems
also will produce inherent difficulties in achieving reliable indications and warning of an impending
nuclear attack. The lack of strategic depth in neighboring states like Israel, short warning and missile flight
times, and uncertainty of Iranian intentions may place more focus on preemption rather than defense,
potentially leading to escalating crises. 36 Types of conflict that the world continues to experience, such as
over resources, could reemerge, particularly if protectionism grows and there is a resort to
neo-mercantilist practices. Perceptions of renewed energy scarcity will drive countries to take actions to assure
their future access to energy supplies. In the worst case, this could result in interstate conflicts if
government leaders deem assured access to energy resources, for example, to be essential for
maintaining domestic stability and the survival of their regime. Even actions short of war, however, will have
collections of the angry and disenfranchised that

important geopolitical implications. Maritime security concerns are providing a rationale for naval buildups and modernization

If the fiscal stimulus focus for these

countries indeed turns inward, one of the most obvious funding targets may be military.
Buildup of regional naval capabilities could lead to increased tensions, rivalries, and
counterbalancing moves, but it also will create opportunities for multinational cooperation in protecting critical sea
lanes. With water also becoming scarcer in Asia and the Middle East, cooperation to manage
changing water resources is likely to be increasingly difficult both within and between
states in a more dog-eat-dog world.
efforts, such as Chinas and Indias development of blue water naval capabilities.

Cyber-terror/Retal:
The Tilford ev says that post grid collapse due to cyber
attacks, command and control centers go dark- causes nuclear
retaliation.
Fritz ev indicates that coming cyber attacks allow for terrorists
to gain control of our command and control centers thus
launching us into either 1. preemptive nuclear war or 2.
terrorist initiated nuclear war thru provoking a nuclear armed
state to attack another armed state.

Space:
Conceded. Donahue says rogue actors will target ground
stations that control satellites because they are lightly
guarded. This will stop data transmission and prevent satellite
control. The Tyson evidence indicates this causes extinction
through miscalculation due to tension escalation as
communication goes down.

LBL:
The Internal Links argument is a non starter. All of our internal
links are indicative of backdoors causing the problem. Just
because it doesnt say the word backdoors verbatim doesnt
mean that the evidence isnt about them. Look through our
evidence. Im not wasting words on this horrid argument.
They say Pagliery1. Its strictly in the context of ISIS which is a subset of one
of the many groups we outline that could attack.
2. Next, Burg evidence says new capabilities allow for a
complete hacking of the grid because they can now
bypass safeguards.
3. Our Blaze evidence says they can take down the grid as
well through hacking c-c centers.
They say Lee and Rid evidence
1. The hyped up argument is strictly in the context of the
Pentagon, DOH, and White House. None of our evidence is
from that.
2. Also, cyberattacks are not hyped up. Our evidence is
indicative of cyber threats being real and that
cyberattackers are capable.
They say Heasley evidence
1. This evidence says that cyberattackers will attack critical
infrastructure in the ununderlined portion.
2. This evidence is a year before Burg. Burg says every claim
in this evidence is obsolete because cyberattackers can
bypass safeguards.
3. Blaze also makes this evidence obsolete. Says risk is
increasing as of late 2015.

Heg
I dont understand how you concede an advantage in a v
debate, but ya know. They did it. No new block answers- makes
the 1AR impossible and guts the 2AC, thats a voter for
fairness and education. Only response is the whole math
internal links argument which Ill answer now.
They say the evidence only says backdoors 6 times. This is not
an argument. Ill copy paste the warrants of our internal links
here for all to view.
Sasso evidence:
the NSA inserted a so-called back door into at least one encryption
standard that was developed by the National Institute of Standards and
Technology.
companies have become reluctant to share security information with the
U.S. government, fearing the NSA could use any information to hack into
their systems. When you want to go into partnership with somebody and work on serious issuessuch as
cybersecurityyou want to know youre being told the truth, Black said. Google

Clark evidence:
Ever since the Edward Snowden leaks started it has become more and more obvious that the NSA and their Five Eyes partners
(the spooks in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) have been making a concerted effort to monitor and control the entire
Internet. They've engaged in vast data stealing exercises designed to sweep up and store the private communications data of
virtually everyone; the NSA have employed a team of some 850,000 NSA staff and private security contractors to trawl this ocean of
stolen data for whatever they can find; they've damaged international relations by snooping on dozens of
heads of state; they've used their snooping powers to spy on companies like the Brazilian oil company Petrobras (surely motivated

undermined
encryption technology - endangering the security of financial transactions; and
they've compelled countless US based technology companies to violate the privacy of
their own customers and to build backdoors
by industrial espionage, rather than their stated justification of "fighting terrorism"); they've

the most damning element of all (from an American perspective) is the extraordinary amount of
damage the NSA have done to the reputation of US technology companies,
millions of customers are turned off the idea of investing in buggy, insecure and
spyware laden products from US companies

Next is the conceded Segal evidence. Just because this

evidence doesnt say backdoors in it doesnt mean it isnt an
internal link to heg. Segal says tech competitiveness is key to
the US being able to be one step ahead of the world as far as
military tech and diplomatic use of tech which allows us to
sustain heg.
Rest of the conceded heg advantage shouldnt require much
analysis because it is conceded. Essentially, heg functions as a
regional stabilizer which solves Indo-Pak war, China War, and
war in general

Linear Action
1. Framework we get the effects of the plan and the neg gets
the status quo or a competitive policy option; best for fairness
because there are an infinite of philosophical ideas we have to
research and education because its key to learning about the
actual topic.
2. Perm - do the plan and the alternative
a. the two arent mutually exclusive the plan text doesnt
necessitate linear predictions their contradicting reps with
this K and T means we should be able to sever our reps too
b. their evidence doesnt say linear predictions cause
extinction, it just says that complex predictions solve
extinction no DAs to the perm.
3. Prioritization of theoretical constructs over problem-driven
approaches causes policy paralysis
Owen 02 (David Owen, Reader of Political Theory at the Univ. of Southampton,

Millennium Vol 31 No 3 2002 p.

655-7)

[a] frenzy for words like

epistemology and ontology often signals this philosophical turn , although he goes on to
Commenting on the philosophical turn in IR, Wver remarks that

comment that these terms are often used loosely.4 However, loosely deployed or not, it is clear that debates
concerning ontology and epistemology play a central role in the contemporary IR theory wars. In one respect,
this is unsurprising since it is a characteristic feature of the social sciences that periods of disciplinary
disorientation involve recourse to reflection on the philosophical commitments of different theoretical
approaches, and there is no doubt that such reflection can play a valuable role in making explicit the
commitments that characterise (and help individuate) diverse theoretical positions.

Yet, such a

philosophical turn is not without its dangers

and I will briefly mention three before turning to consider

a confusion that has, I will suggest, helped to promote the IR theory wars by motivating this philosophical turn.

it has an inbuilt tendency to prioritise issues of

ontology and epistemology over explanatory and/or interpretive power as if the latter two
were merely a simple function of the former. But while the explanatory and/or interpretive
power of a theoretical account is not wholly independent of its ontological and/or epistemological
The first danger with the philosophical turn is that

commitments (otherwise criticism of these features would not be a criticism that had any value), it is by no
means clear that it is, in contrast, wholly dependent on these philosophical commitments. Thus,
for example, one need not be sympathetic to rational choice theory to recognise that it can provide powerful
accounts of certain kinds of problems, such as the tragedy of the commons in which dilemmas of collective

It may, of course, be the case that the advocates of rational choice

theory cannot give a good account of why this type of theory is powerful in accounting for this
action are foregrounded.

class of problems (i.e., how it is that the relevant actors come to exhibit features in these circumstances that

if this is the case, it is a philosophical

weaknessbut this does not undermine the point that, for a certain class of problems,
rational choice theory may provide the best account available to us. In other words, while
the critical judgement of theoretical accounts in terms of their ontological and/or
epistemological sophistication is one kind of critical judgement, it is not the only or even
necessarily the most important kind. The second danger run by the philosophical turn is that
because prioritisation of ontology and epistemology promotes theory-construction from
philosophical first principles, it cultivates a theory-driven rather than problem-driven
approximate the assumptions of rational choice theory) and,

approach to IR. Paraphrasing Ian Shapiro, the point can be put like this: since it is the case that there
is always a plurality of possible true descriptions of a given action, event or phenomenon,
the challenge is to decide which is the most apt in terms of getting a perspicuous grip on
the action, event or phenomenon in question given the purposes of the inquiry; yet, from
this standpoint, theory-driven work is part of a reductionist program in that it dictates
always opting for the description that calls for the explanation that flows from the
preferred model or theory.5 The justification offered for this strategy rests on the mistaken
belief that it is necessary for social science because general explanations are required to
characterise the classes of phenomena studied in similar terms. However, as Shapiro points out,
this is to misunderstand the enterprise of science since whether there are general
explanations for classes of phenomena is a question for social-scientific inquiry, not to be
prejudged before conducting that inquiry.6 Moreover, this strategy easily slips into the
promotion of the pursuit of generality over that of empirical validity. The third danger is
that the preceding two combine to encourage the formation of a particular image of
disciplinary debate in IRwhat might be called (only slightly tongue in cheek) the
Highlander viewnamely, an image of warring theoretical approaches with each, despite
occasional temporary tactical alliances, dedicated to the strategic achievement of sovereignty over the

the turn to, and prioritisation of, ontology and

epistemology stimulates the idea that there can only be one theoretical approach which
gets things right, namely, the theoretical approach that gets its ontology and
epistemology right. This image feeds back into IR exacerbating the first and second
dangers, and so a potentially vicious circle arises.
disciplinary field. It encourages this view because

4. K links to itself their impact card predicts the threats in

the future that complexity can solve. They also even concede
in cross-ex that the impact would result from passing the aff.
This is a linear mode of thought that you should reject the
argument because of.
5. Turnrejecting strategic predictions of threats makes them
inevitabledecision makers will rely on preconceived
conceptions of threat rather than the more qualified
predictions of analysts
Fitzsimmons 07 [Michael, Washington DC defense analyst, The Problem of Uncertainty in Strategic
Planning, Survival, Winter 06-07, online]

If not sufficiently bounded, a

high degree of variability in planning factors can exact a significant price on
But handling even this weaker form of uncertainty is still quite challeng- ing.

The complexity presented by great

variability strains the cognitive abilities of even
the most sophisticated decision- makers.15 And even a robust
planning.

decision-making process sensitive to cognitive limitations necessarily sacrifices depth of analysis for breadth as

in planning under conditions of risk,

variability in strategic calculation should be carefully tailored to available analytic
and decision processes. Why is this important? What harm can an imbalance between complexity and
cognitive or analytic capacity in strategic planning bring? Stated simply, where analysis is silent or
inadequate, the personal beliefs of decision-makers fill the void . As political scientist
Richard Betts found in a study of strategic sur- prise, in an environment that lacks clarity, abounds
variability and complexity grows. It should follow, then, that

with conflicting data, and allows no time for rigorous assessment of sources and
validity, ambiguity allows intuition or wishfulness to drive interpretation... The
greater the ambiguity, the greater the impact of preconceptions .16 The decision-making
environment that Betts describes here is one of political-military crisis, not long-term strategic planning. But a
strategist who sees uncertainty as the central fact of his environ- ment brings upon himself
some of the pathologies of crisis decision-making . He invites ambiguity, takes
conflicting data for granted and substitutes a priori scepticism about the validity of
prediction for time pressure as a rationale for discounting the importance of analytic
rigour. It is important not to exaggerate the extent to which data and rigorous assessment can illuminate
strategic choices. Ambiguity is a fact of life, and scepticism of analysis is necessary. Accordingly, the intuition and
judgement of decision-makers will always be vital to strategy, and attempting to subordinate those factors to some
formulaic, deterministic decision-making model would be both undesirable and unrealistic. All the same, there is
danger in the opposite extreme as well.

Without careful analysis of what is relatively likely and

what is relatively unlikely, what will be the possible bases for strategic choices? A

decision-maker with no faith in prediction is left

with little more than a set of worst-case scenarios and his existing beliefs
about the world to confront the choices before him. Those beliefs may be more or
less well founded, but if they are not made explicit and subject to analysis and
debate regarding their application to particular strategic contexts, they remain only
beliefs and premises, rather than rational judgements . Even at their best, such
decisions are likely to be poorly understood by the organisations charged with their
implementation. At their worst, such decisions may be poorly understood by the decision-makers themselves.

6. The alt fails theres no way to take into account every

single factor that goes into things like our advantages our
authors are qualified and get their data from a variety of
sources - good should be good enough.
7. The bystander effect creates complacency in face of danger;
individuals stare frozen, without their autonomy to act against
atrocities. This makes extinction inevitable as individuals
refuse to take action.
Yudkowsky 08 - Research Fellow at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (Eliezer, Cognitive
biases potentially affecting judgment of global risks, peer edited by the Singularity Institute,
http://singularity.org/files/CognitiveBiases.pdf)
My last bias comes, not from the field of heuristics and biases, but from the field of social psychology. A now-famous

the bystander effect, also known as

bystander apathy, in which larger numbers of people are less likely to act in emergencies
not only individually, but collectively. 75% of subjects alone in a room, noticing smoke entering from
series of experiments by Latane and Darley (1969) uncovered

under a door, left to report it. When three naive subjects were present, the smoke was reported only 38% of the
time. A naive subject in the presence of two confederates who purposely ignored the smoke, even when the room
became hazy, left to report the smoke only 10% of the time. A college student apparently having an epileptic

The
bystander effect is usually explained as resulting from diffusion of responsibility and
pluralistic ignorance. Being part of a group reduces individual responsibility .
Everyone hopes that someone else will handle the problem instead, and this
reduces the individual pressure to the point that no one does anything . Support for
seizure was helped 85% of the time by a single bystander and 31% of the time by five bystanders.

is adduced from manipulations in which subjects believe that the victim is

especially dependent on them; this reduces the bystander effect or negates it
entirely. Cialdini (2001) recommends that if you are ever in an emergency, you single out one
single bystander, and askthat person to hel pthereby overcoming the diffusion.
Pluralistic ignorance is a more subtle effect . Cialdini (2001) writes: Very often an emergency is not
this hypothesis

obviously an emergency. Is the man lying in the alley a heart-attack victim or a drunk sleeping one off? . . . In times

natural tendency is to look around at the actions of others for

clues. We can learn from the way the other witnesses are reacting whether the
event is or is not an emergency. What is easy to forget, though, is that everybody
else observing the event is likely to be looking for social evidence, too.Because we
all prefer to appear poised and unflustered among others, we are likely to search for
that evidence placidly, with brief, camouflaged glances at those around us.
Therefore everyone is likely to see everyone else looking unruffled and failing to act.
of such uncertainty, the

The bystander effect is not about individual selfishness, or insensitivity to the suffering of others. Alone subjects do

Pluralistic ignorance can explain, and individual selfishness cannot explain, subjects
failing to react to a room filling up with smoke. In experiments involving apparent dangers to either others or
the self, subjects placed with nonreactive confederates frequently glance at the
nonreactive confederates. I am sometimes asked: If existential risk X is real, why arent more people
doing something about it? There are many possible answers, a few of which I have touched on here. People
may be overconfident and over-optimistic. They may focus on overly specific
scenarios for the future, to the exclusion of all others . They may not recall any past extinction
events in memory. They may overestimate the predictability of the past, and hence
underestimate the surprise of the future. They may not realize the difficulty of
preparing for emergencies without benefit of hindsight . They may prefer philanthropic gambles
with higher payoff probabilities, neglecting the value of the stakes. They may conflate positive
information about the benefits of a technology as negative information about its
risks. They may be contaminated by movies where the world ends up being saved. They may purchase moral
satisfaction more easily by giving to other charities. Or the extremely unpleasant prospect of
human extinction may spur them to seek arguments that humanity will not go
extinct, without an equally frantic search for reasons why we would. But if the question is,
specifically, Why arent more people doing something about it?, one possible component is that people are
asking that very questiondarting their eyes around to see if anyone else is
reacting to the emergency, meanwhile trying to appear poised and unflustered . If
you want to know why others arent responding to an emergency, before you
respond yourself, you may have just answered your own question.
usually act.

8. Even if our predictions arent 100% accurate, they are still

better than inaction and policy paralysis our authors take
into account multiple factors and come to a conclusion based
on facts and statistics.
9. Expert predictions and analysis is key- good for political
action and epistemological achievements
Turner 01 Professor of Philosophy at U of South Florida (Stephen, What is the problem with Experts?
accessed from JSTOR on 7/1/12)
The answer to Fish is to treat the liberal principle of neutrality not as an absolute assertion about the nature of
beliefs, but as a core rule, whose application varies historically, whose main point is to establish a means of
organizing the discussion of political matters, that is to say the discussion of political decisions. We can apply this to

the problem of expertise as follows: it is no surprise that, in order for there to be genuine discussion in Schmitts

some things would be

left to the experts tosettle. Politicizing everything, making
everything into the subject of political decisionmaking (or treating it
as an analogue to political decision-making), would lose the advantages of the
intellectual division of labour and make reasoned persuasion
impossible. Some facts need to be taken for granted in order
for there to be genuine political discussion, and some of the
work of establishing the facts is, properly, delegated to experts.
sense, some things would be temporarily taken for fact, or, alternatively,

Indeed, to imagine a world in which such delegation did not occur would be to imagine a simpler society, at best a
society of Jeffersonian yeomen, in which everyone knew pretty much what everyone else knew that was relevant to

To preserve the possibility of political discussion

that such societies established, it is essential to delegate to
experts and grant them cognitive authority. But granting them
cognitive authority is not the same as granting them some sort
of absolute and unquestionable power over us. The fact that expertise goes
public decisionmaking.

through a process of legitimation also means that legitimacy may be withdrawn and the cognitive authority of
experts may collapse, and this suggests something quite different than the idea that liberalism is a kind of self-

We, the non-experts, decide

whether claims to cognitive authority, which in political terms
are requests to have their conclusions treated as neutral fact,
are to be honoured. And we have, historically, changed our minds about who is expert, and what is
contradiction, and also something much more interesting.

to be treated as neutral fact. This is, so to speak, a liberal argument about expertise. It grants that cognitive
authority and the acceptance of expertise, in modern conditions, is a condition of genuine public discourse.
Liberalism, in the form of the principle of neutrality, is a means to the end of the creation of the conditions for public
discourse. It is a means, however, that is not given by God, or the courts, or reason, but lives in the political
decisions we make to regard assertions as open to public discussion or not. Historically, liberalism established the
space for public discussion by expelling religious sectarian expertise. The challenge of the present is, in part, to
deal with the claims of non-religious experts to cognitive authority. There is no formula for meeting this challenge.

there is a process of legitimation and delegitimation. And it should

be no surprise that this process has come to occupy more of public discourse than ever before. But the very
vigour of discussion, and the ability of the public to make
decisions about what claims are legitimate, belies the image of
the liberal public as victim.
But

10. Perm- do the plan and the alt in all other instances- either
doing the alt will be strong enough to overcome the residual
links to one instance of the plan or the alt will be too weak to
overcome the status squo. Our interpretation is that we get
one intrinsic perm- the purpose of a K alt is to resolve ALL the
links since Ks are nonunique. Key to check Ks that can never
be resolved and makes for better debates of method on
solvable problems
11. You read T. That is literally as linear as it gets. You link
back into this argument.
12. Perm do the alt and then the aff there is no sequencing
disad to doing the aff after the alt
13. extinction first
Wapner 3 (Paul, Associate Professor and Director of the Global Environmental
Policy Program American University, Leftist Criticism of, Dissent, Winter,
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=539)

THE THIRD response to eco-criticism would require critics to acknowledge the ways in which they
themselves silence nature and then to respect the sheer otherness of the nonhuman world.
Postmodernism prides itself on criticizing the urge toward mastery that characterizes modernity. But
isn't mastery exactly what postmodernism is exerting as it captures the nonhuman world within its own
conceptual domain? Doesn't postmodern cultural criticism deepen the modernist urge toward mastery
by eliminating the ontological weight of the nonhuman world? What else could it mean to assert that
there is no such thing as nature? I have already suggested the postmodernist response: yes,
recognizing the social construction of "nature" does deny the self-expression of the nonhuman world,
but how would we know what such self-expression means? Indeed, nature doesn't speak; rather, some
person always speaks on nature's behalf, and whatever that person says is, as we all know, a social
construction. All attempts to listen to nature are social constructions-except one. Even the most radical
postmodernist must acknowledge the distinction between physical existence and non-existence. As I

have said, postmodernists accept that there is a physical substratum to the phenomenal world even if
they argue about the different meanings we ascribe to it. This acknowledgment of
physical existence is crucial. We can't ascribe meaning to that which doesn't appear . What doesn't
exist can manifest no character. Put differently, yes, the postmodernist should
rightly worry about interpreting nature's expressions. And all of us should be wary of
those who claim to speak on nature's behalf (including environmentalists who do
that). But we need not doubt the simple idea that a prerequisite of expression is existence. This in
turn suggests that preserving the nonhuman world-in all its diverse embodiments-must be
seen by eco-critics as a fundamental good. Eco-critics must be supporters, in some fashion, of
environmental preservation. Postmodernists reject the idea of a universal good. They rightly
acknowledge the difficulty of identifying a common value given the multiple contexts of our valueproducing activity. In fact, if there is one thing they vehemently scorn, it is the idea that there can be a
value that stands above the individual contexts of human experience. Such a value would present
itself as a metanarrative and, as Jean-Franois Lyotard has explained, postmodernism is characterized
fundamentally by its "incredulity toward meta-narratives." Nonetheless, I can't see how postmodern
critics can do otherwise than accept the value of preserving the nonhuman world. The nonhuman is
the extreme "other"; it stands in contradistinction to humans as a species. In understanding the

constructed quality of human experience and the dangers of reification, postmodernism inherently
advances an ethic of respecting the "other." At the very least, respect must involve ensuring that the
"other" actually continues to exist. In our day and age, this requires us to take responsibility for
protecting the actuality of the nonhuman. Instead, however, we are running roughshod over the
earth's diversity of plants, animals, and ecosystems. Postmodern critics should find this particularly
disturbing. If they don't, they deny their own intellectual insights and compromise their fundamental
moral commitment. NOW, WHAT does this mean for politics and policy, and the future of the
environmental movement? Society is constantly being asked to address questions of environmental
quality for which there are no easy answers. As we wrestle with challenges of global climate change,
ozone depletion, loss of biological diversity, and so forth, we need to consider the economic, political,
cultural, and aesthetic values at stake. These considerations have traditionally marked the politics of
environmental protection. A sensitivity to eco-criticism requires that we go further and include an ethic
of otherness in our deliberations. That is, we need to be moved by our concern to make room for the
"other" and hence fold a commitment to the nonhuman world into our policy discussions. I don't

mean that this argument should drive all our actions or that respect for the "other"
should always carry the day. But it must be a central part of our reflections and calculations. For
example, as we estimate the number of people that a certain area can sustain,
consider what to do about climate change, debate restrictions on ocean fishing, or
otherwise assess the effects of a particular course of action, we must think about the lives of other
creatures on the earth-and also the continued existence of the nonliving physical world. We
must do so not because we wish to maintain what is "natural" but because we wish to act in
a morally respectable manner.

14. Case is a DA to the alt xtn would result from both

advantages and conceded Lieber evidence on Heg scenario
means that if we dont do the aff multiple escalatory conflicts
result like arms races and economic crises.