MP3 One Segment
This program explores material from past Archive Programs (updated with current information) and prognostications about the future (echoed by contemporary analysts.)
Beginning with an excerpt from Miscellaneous Archive Show M-11, the broadcast sets forth the insidious role of the Munich Reinsurance Company in providing intelligence to German U-boats during World War II. Because of the enormous cost of underwriting international maritime commerce, American insurance companies reinsured with the Zurich group.
The Zurich group, in turn, reinsured with the Munich group.
This arrangement placed detailed information about the sailing of U.S. merchant ships in the hands of the German navy, permitting U-boats to torpedo and sink American vessels within sight of shore. The loss of life among merchant sailors traversing the North Atlantic during the war was roughly one in three.
After reviewing the material from M-11 (Recorded on 5/23/80), the program highlights a current legal dispute between the California Insurance Commissioner and the Munich Reinsurance Company. This dispute centers on the liability of the Munich firm for claims left over from the Holocaust. Counsel for Munich Reinsurance maintains that the fact that the firm left the state of California three years ago negates its liability.
Next the program touches on the role of a subsidiary of Munich Reinsurance in the Bormann flight capital program.
After reviewing the past, the program explores possibilities for the future. Excerpting a lecture given in January of 1995 entitled “The Future: Technology, Theocracy and the Thousand-Year Reich”, the program sets forth Mr. Emory’s fears about technological innovations in the areas of computers, artificial intelligence and robotics. These developments may very well lead to the creation of intelligent, self-aware technological entities that might make a conscious decision to eliminate human beings. These fears have been echoed by Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems, writing in a recent article in Wired magazine.
Program Highlights Include: the head of the former Munich Reinsurance company’s position as a Deputy Finance Minister of the Third Reich; the Nazi insurance-intelligence connection’s communication of detailed plans for U.S. munitions plants to the Third Reich; Munich Reinsurance’s tenure of business in California for over 40 years (rendering absurd its counsel’s claims that it has no liability because it no longer does business in California); the recent acquisitions of American insurance companies by German insurers; details about Bill Joy’s fears about imminent computer programs and the possibility that these software programs may deliberately “delete” the human race. (Recorded on 4/9/2000.)