Rome, 11 Apr – We have learned the “comforts” of smart working. They are almost convincing us that distance learning is better than real one. They are warning us that it will be impossible to return to the former life, that it will be necessary to maintain the so-called social distancing, but that even if far we can stay close, thanks to the network. All this to get to the Conte-Azzolina-Gualtieri press conference in which more than coronaviruses, industrial and economic plans, responses to the crisis that went beyond super-brushes and almsgiving, we mainly talked about one thing: the importance of digitalization, to have a cutting-edge network that allows us to live in the post-covid world – which is not an atomic bomb that has spread radiation on the globe nor the virus de The Army of the 12 Monkeysso you don’t understand this 9/11-like rhetoric of “the world will no longer be the same” except for a limited period of time – and that streamlines the procedures that can clog the systems, as happened with INPS, pretending that this did not happen because the servers of the institution are probably going to valves and that the slowness of the procedures actually depends on the pachydermic bureaucracy that for decades has sank us and gangrated up to metastasis. In short, it seems that the excuse of the pandemic is being used a little, the massive use of the internet that can undermine the network and the new lifestyle for pass the global interconnection through 5G, the new generation superfast network, as a sort of salvation for humanity.
What is 5G?
But what exactly is this 5G? Unfortunately, in the information age, we are so bombarded with data and information of all kinds that instead of being informed, we remain, as Bradbury would say, “still like boulders”. So we go from 5G passed as a sort of digital messiah to theories instead of seeing 5G as Satan’s Beast.
Technically, 5G is the fifth generation standard for internet and mobile phone connections which allows a connection far superior to the current ones – we talk about 2 Gigabits per second that could potentially become 20 against the 100 Megabits of the current 4G – with a response speed of at least five times faster and a ten times higher capacity, which therefore allows to keep connected at the same time a number of devices ten times greater than now.
The internet of things
Above all, this last aspect will allow the evolution of the so-called Internet of Things (IoT), or a constant interconnection not only of computers and telephones but of any type of object that can be transformed into a “smart object”. To give practical examples, in addition to one complete home automation of homes and offices – with televisions, air conditioners, appliances that can be fully managed from a single terminal such as a tablet or your mobile phone even from miles away – we may have packages that warn when the product is about to expire, refrigerators that warn when a certain food is missing, Thermomix connected to the refrigerator that can recommend possible recipes with what is in the pantry or in the fridge, alarms that dynamically change the notification time depending on the traffic on the way or the delay of the means that would take us to work, gym machines connected to the monitoring sensors that can be configured dynamically. Which, in addition to obvious advantages, also leads to non-trivial but complex analysis problems which, however, few seem to want to tackle. Then there is the long-standing discussion on electromagnetic pollution hazard and any health risks. The problem is that many theologians and, at the limit of the flat earth theory on this issue, have polluted the debate so much that now anyone who tries even to raise a not necessarily health alarm on the 5G issue is automatically equated to those who say that 5G is the cause of the coronavirus.
Is there a correlation between 5G and coronavirus?
There correlation between 5G and the new pandemic is a rather widespread theory on the net and is clearly one of those that has made the most “proselytes” among researchers of easily sellable plots, but which unfortunately divert attention from much more risky power games, but with somewhat more complex schemes for the average user of social media. But as we will see, it is a correlation that is based on very little solid basis, to put it mildly. This new conspiracy theory is based on three arguments.
- The first concerns an overlap between the maps with the highest concentration of 5G antennas and those with the greatest spread of the virus.
- The second concerns some studies that would have speculated that bacteria communicate with each other with electromagnetic signals, hence the belief that an excessive exposure to electromagnetic waves favors the proliferation of diseases.
- The third is a finding he would see the birth of the great pandemics of the last 100 years coinciding with the beginning of exposure to new types of electromagnetic waves worldwide. But as we will see each of these three topics is fragile to say the least.
As for the greater spread of the coronavirus where 5G is most common it is together a false data and a false correlation. A false fact because this coincidence is valid only in some places. Not for example in Italy, where 5G is not yet active and where there are only a few experimental antennas which, however, have a rather short range of action. A false correlation because where this happens, for example in the US whose map is popular for spreading this theory, this happens simply because the greater 5G diffusion coincides with a greater population density. And the virus is more common where the population density is greater. It is exactly like the false correlation of pollution that according to many neo-environmentalists would facilitate contagion because the greatest spread is where there is more pollution. Simply, the greatest pollution occurs in the most densely populated places where, precisely for this reason, the virus can spread faster from person to person. If we superimposed the Netflix subscription map on that of the contagions we would probably see that where there are more positives there are more subscribers, but not for this Netflix is a vehicle of the virus.
The issue of the use by bacteria – and remember that the covid is viral, not bacterial – of electromagnetic fields to communicate with each other, it is low frequency and short distance pulses that have nothing to do with exposure to external fields. And it’s the same type of communication that neurons use. If the theory were true, we would also have seen greater brain activity by the human population, but a quick empirical analysis does not seem to confirm this.
The story of the coincidence between pandemics and exposure to new waves is actually invented. The Spanish was not there when we were exposed globally to radio waves: the epidemic spread between 1918 and 1919, while the massive use of radio waves for transmissions began in 1920. Ditto for the 1950s Asian occurred according to conspiracy theorists when they started using radars. In reality, the massive use of radar also took place a few years later. And anyway if this were true there would be a big hole around 2000 when we were really exposed massively to the waves of mobile phones, or around 2010 when the very first smartphones spread, without considering the use of WiFi in the same decade. But there was no pandemic.
5G and health risks
In reality the debate over the effects of 5G on health is much more complex, as well as every question concerning the scientific aspect which unfortunately in the Internet era of allology and semi-crops sees increasingly illustrious unknowns talking about topics that cannot be studied via google and wikipedia.
The main studies on the negative health effects of exposure to high frequency electromagnetic waves have been conducted by National Toxicology Program of the United States and our Ramazzini Institute, who found a greater incidence of cardiac dysfunction and rare tumors in exposed subjects.
But theICNIRP (International Commission for the Protection from Non-Ionizing Radiation), the international commission that dictates the safety guidelines for radiation exposures, would have published a note and concluded that they do not provide a reliable basis for reviewing existing guidelines on radio frequency exposure due to inconsistencies and limitations that affect the validity of their results. Who to give reason? Obviously the mainstream media consider the ICNIRP more reliable and more authoritative, but we have already seen on our skin how sometimes it is too easy and above all dangerous trust tout court to the opinions of the so-called “experts”. The feeling is that everyone finds the one who gives the most voice to their personal beliefs more reliable, but without adequate and thorough scientific preparation it is very difficult to understand which data are actually more reliable.
However, what appears clear following the debate is that the long-term effects, especially at very high frequency microwaves such as those of 5G, are rather unknown and in short the so massive use of 5G can be a kind of “leap in the dark”. The alarms that in the last few days have clogged the video channels because there are electric field measurements slightly higher than 6V / m, which in Italy is the limit established by the legislative norm, leave the time they find. The rest of Europe has taken as limit value that established by ICNIRP or 60V / m, therefore ten times higher than the Italian one, a value however 50 times lower than the value considered limit for health. And this did not indicate a lower incidence of diseases in Italy or a greater incidence in the rest of Europe.
5G is a polluted debate
As we said the presence of non-scientific and non-scientific theories and free alarmism has polluted the debate around 5G, making sure that anyone who instead wants to bring the discussion on more serious issues, is automatically approached to those who have spread more grotesque than false news and therefore is indicated regardless of how the speaker of fake news. In addition, the panic instilled by some theories – in England there are even those who burned 5G antennas with the belief that they spread the coronavirus – gave the go to authorize a preventive complaint against anyone who says “false news” about 5G, starting from youtube who began to erase “conspiracy” videos with suspicious diligence. A serious complaint, especially an anticipation of what could be the future anti fake news policies obviously managed by those who have control of the information, which obviously gave the excuse to many to validate their 5G-covid theses. In reality this only shows that certain conspiracies are only useful to those who instead try to divert the discourse from much more dangerous debates than easily dismantled ones. And here we come to the concrete risks of 5G.
A world always connected. But is that what we want?
imagine a world always connected, imagine each person connected to all the objects around him through a global network that simultaneously interconnects to all people and all the smart-objects in the world. The average user would say that it is “a burst” and perhaps it would be even if this did not lead to huge social, political and anthropological contraindications. Beyond the prediction of what man would be perpetually connected, a dangerous possible anthropological involution with respect to the current one that already does not shine with heroic impetus, beyond the fact that the worst cyberpunk dystopias would suddenly become much more current than they have ever been, many narrative fantasies that could be seen in many thrillers or spy films would also become real, with a centralized remote control that allowed access to satellites, cameras, telephones and any smart-object spread around.
Do you know the AI of Person of Interest? It would become reality, just as it would become reality the Big Brother nightmare of continuous control. And it is not a bitter conspiracy. If there was a scandal for profiling made by facebook – and not only – that based personalized advertisements thanks to the analysis on google searches made by the single user or the analysis of the words that each user used on Messenger or Whatsapp in private messages , imagine how easy profiling would be based on the daily use of the immense amount of smart objects that will soon flood the market. Our every action would be recorded on the net, not to mention the continuous tracking of movements and position. Among which, among other things, it has already started to talk thanks to Covid-19, when we talked about the tracking by drones and apps of the population to identify the positives or identify the gatherings. As if they wanted us to pass the tracking as something that is for our good, as it always happens when it comes to progressive limitations of freedom.
The big political and strategic problem of 5G
But all this adds up to another serious problem which is entirely political. Who would control all this? Who would have the keys to the connection? In short, who would be able to profile, control, track and access network data? And here too, cyberpunk comes in very dangerously. It will certainly not be the States or governments but the private individuals, or the operators to which the States will rely for the management, configuration and construction of the 5G network. The very nature of 5G is also very dangerous for data security. The great speed that the network will reach will be achieved thanks to an algorithmic approach called network slicing, or a data unpacking that gives priority to the data deemed most important for each individual operation or command or request. While once every data was “treated” in the same way, now instead each operator will have to somehow know the content of the information that his customers make travel in order to apply the hierarchization that optimizes the transmission time.
Which if it is not a problem when requests pass to give commands to the robot that cleans the house, it becomes a very serious problem when industrial, military or strategic data transit. Furthermore the network slicing it actually makes the network much more vulnerable. Being much more branched and having many knots that are needed for unpacking, it actually presents multiple access windows for a possible cyber attack for access to data. Or the possibility of having many more access backdoors by those who configured the network “guaranteeing” the State not to enter. Which obviously gives the keys of all their data to third parties that cannot be controlled.
If already a Zaia had planned to entrust the tracking of the population to the Israelis – which unfortunately has not raised the due disdain on the part of the whole political world – imagine what could happen if Italy, as it seems, really entrusted its 5G network to the Chinese Huawei, which had already been accused by the German services of having had relations with the Chinese espionage agencies. A problem that cannot be easily solved since Italy has long since sold out or weakened the most important technological sectors and therefore it does not have the strength to face a challenge like that of the 5G network alone. And given that Europe has highlighted yet another hole in a strategic and political context, or in any case it is not the one concerning the servant’s accounts on finance and balance sheets in order.
Carlomanno Adinolfi
