> We need free speech to be a liberal democracy but information itself is becoming dangerous. How do you square that?

You can't. Either speech is free or it's not. There are reasonable restrictions - literally inciting violence or things done to intentionally cause harm ("Fire!" in a theater, etc).

For information, the only thing you can do is make it classified, which is hard to do when it's a private company doing the innovating.

There is precedence for using restrictions on freedoms to preserve those freedoms, a good example is Germany which very highly values freedom of expression - but has strong laws to defend those freedoms against anti-democratic forces - often referred to as “militant democracy”: it’s a system that’s not paradoxically intolerant of intolerance and so far seems to work well - and it shows that it is possible to draw a line somewhere in the law without needing to resign oneself to having to tolerate virulent evil in the name of freedom of speech.

>> a good example is Germany which very highly values freedom of expression

Can you give references?

In my experience of living in Germany, freedom of expression is welcomed as long as it's the right kind of expression.

Freedom of expression never means that other are not free to voice their dislike of certain opinions. And while some expression is frowned upon other members of the public you are still within your legal rights to express them. The line you can not cross is incitement of violence, denial of the holocaust, breaking NDAs and so on. Contrary to what many Americans think, Germany is not a oppressive country that censors you left and right, but actually has relatively similar free speach rights to the US or other western countries.

>> Germany [..] has relatively similar free speech rights to the US or other western countries.

At least since NetzDG was passed I'm not sure it's quite that simple.

Google[0] says this about the NetzDG:

"The Network Enforcement Law (NetzDG) requires social networks with more than 2 million registered users in Germany to exercise a local take down of “obviously illegal” content [..] To qualify for a removal under NetzDG, content needs to fall under one of the 22 criminal statutes in the German criminal code to which NetzDG refers."

Politico[1] said this "Titanic, a German satirical magazine, was similarly barred after parodying anti-Muslim comments on its own Twitter account"

[0] https://transparencyreport.google.com/netzdg/youtube [1] https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-hate-speech-netzdg-f...

> denial of the holocaust

This is a good example of something that is, without a doubt, unconstitutional to ban in the US.

I have been growing to accept that almost any technology that is sufficiently powerful is dual-use.

The classic sci fi example is spaceships; a rocket travelling at .2c is a devastating weapon and amazing tool for transit.

But so is AI tech, drones, and other technologies. Crypto can stop hackers and the government. 3D printers can print pen guns as well as plastic tools.

i think all tech is under the wings of rule 34, it just takes a while for somones imagination to kick in.

> Thank goodness weapons grade fissile material is hard to make.

The material itself is easy to make. It's the delivery systems that are hard to engineer. Missile technology is literally rocket science.

I agree that delivery systems are no piece of cake, but if I'm worried about nukes I'm more worried about terrorism than I am about nation states. From that lens, fissile material is indeed hard to make. The Iranians were pulling their hair out when seemingly fine centrifuges mistimed due to malware. If it were easy then they could have tried a different approach.

a cessna with a sawed off howitzer barrel is easy to engineer, the big problem, really is moving fissile materials around while satellites are looking for it.

The answer is probably the same as for the internet - encourage development in the west, possibly with some DAPRA type subsidies to counter the Chinese subsidising their own.