Rapid Fire Pencil

Deadly. Fast. Erasable.

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So what happens next? The pattern throughout the rest of Europe is clear: when the electorate throws up deadlocked legislatures, the centre-left opts to take political damage in order to avoid systemic political damage. That’s part of why so much of the social democratic left is in such a bad position electorally. But Corbyn isn’t of the social democratic centre-left and his political incentives are different. Anyone relying on him to blink to avert the deadlock is likely to be disappointed.

Stephen Bush, “Who’ll blink first in the stand-off between Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May?” New Statesman

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Customizing weapons systems to tactics which are still being explored and studied is like preparing food for a great banquet without knowing who is coming... On the battlefields of the future, the digitized forces may very possibly be like a great cook who is good at cooking lobsters sprinkled with butter, when faced with guerillas who resolutely gnaw corncobs, they can only sigh in despair.

Qiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui, Unrestricted Warfare (1999)

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Sometimes - and more and more, I mean all the time - you question how and why you got where you are. Was it a desire to do good? Change the world? Moderate, in your own way, the worst instincts coming out of national security? To contribute in a small way to the defense of the nation, so as to better devote resources to reconstruction at home? Obviously the external threats were never really the issue, but your love for the exotic and the different and the new meant that international affairs was always of interest, and as long as you acknowledged that no nation posed as great a threat to the United States as the United States itself, you could tell yourself you weren’t being a hypocrite and that you were accomplishing something and that, anyways, at least you were interested by your day job.

But then you realize whatever your intentions, however noble, however bigger-than-yourself...they don’t matter. None of it matter. With a reality-show oligarch appointing a new frothing-at-the-mouth agitator-in-chief to run national security, there’s really no hope of stopping things. There’s quietly standing by, avoiding overt complicity, until finally all hope of avoiding outright war for no good reason has been extinguished and there’s nothing left to do but sit back and wait to find out just how low the KN22′s circular error probability is.

Now there’s an accelerationism we can all believe in.

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The Sharks That Live to 400

How scientists used nuclear explosions to date the longest-lived vertebrates in existence.

Much like the history that resonates within all-too-rare low-background steel, these sharks are a living example of a world before modern history - only in this case, no just pre-atomic testing, but pre-New World. However, much like the pre-atomic alloys, these sharks still require a nuclear utility to properly age and date them.

I’m not sure what to make of that, except to say that nuclear technology is inescapable, be it the past to support the present, or present technology to analyze the past.

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ICBM, from Republic, is a delightfully realistic simulator of pulling missile duty, set at the height of the Able Archer ‘83 exercises. Can you defend the United States from Communist aggression? Are your targeting systems properly aligned with key Soviet population centers and critical military nodes?

Play through and find out for yourself - the climax is well worth your time (and free). Protect the free world and don’t let them sap your precious bodily fluids!

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The Future Japanese Militarism of the Past

Continuing my long, strange journey through techno-thrillers of bygone decades, one of the more fascinating phenomena I’ve come across is that 80s-ish Japan obsession. In Debt of Honor or Rising Sun or even The War in 2020, which I’m reading now in 2015, the resurgent Japanese military is always impressively technologically superior to the United States. While less of a rivalry than the Soviet-US competition, there is a very similar inferiority complex at play with US technological capabilities vis-a-vis their more advanced adversaries. We win, in these books, based on our cunning and derring-do, not on some mystical application of the latest hypermodern technologies (perhaps there’s a cautionary tale for the United States in there, but I’m not sure this genre possesses that sort of self-awareness).

The Japan of these novels is aggressive, militaristic, realpolitik, and very weirdly divorced from practical or institutional concerns. To wit: rarely, if ever, has one of these novels addressed the idea that Japan might need to, at the very least, “reinterpret” its constitution, if not amend it entirely, in order to conduct overseas military operations. It’s remarkable that the pessimism/awe with which the west watched Japan’s rise in the 1980s managed to avoid serious discussion of the institutional and cultural barriers to a more muscular Japanese militarism, not even hand-waving away such concerns so much as avoiding them entirely. The Japanese rise was the natural order of things and so, whatever needed to happen, it was inevitable.

But of course, as we’ve seen with Shinzo Abe’s government, even a relatively “minor” change like the recent constitutional reinterpretation - and perhaps, at some point, amendment - has met with widespread protest and a raging debate. And it to some degree begs the question: were we ignorant of such considerations back then, or are techno-thriller authors the same sorts who might choose to avoid addressing them? It is somewhat refreshing to see proof positive that institutions do in fact matter and that normative policymaking can be a huge barrier to change, positive or otherwise.

But in all these future worlds that never came to pass, Japan never seemed to debate its own use of force. It applied it, and won, and eventually lost.

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Small Steps and Great Leaps

James Hasik is asking the right questions about DoD's procurement and technology programs and the incredible lead times required for each new platform:

Has the Defense Department given up before starting? Has all this recent talk about faster innovation been just that, because no one wants to admit to some inexorable barrier standing in the way? Administrative problems are frequently discussed, but fundamental technological challenges may prove more ominous.

He goes on to cite Tyler Cowen's "Great Stagnation" as a potential explanation for the decline in the pace of innovation. Perhaps DoD really has exhausted its supply of low-hanging fruit and from now on every advance and innovation will require exponentially more time and effort.

But then Hasik dismisses his claim with a curious supposed counterexample:

But looking around at the explosion of new products and services, I call perceptions of slowing economic growth a measurement problem: the awesomeness of each “insanely great” new product from Apple, for example, never gets meaningfully captured in GDP figures.

This is, indeed, not the most apt example - nor one that we should want to follow - as it in fact reinforces the earlier point. The great revolutionary leaps of technology - the iPhone, the iPad, etc. - only happen once, and despite the breathless media adulation of anything that Apple produces (thankfully, somewhat diminished since Steve Jobs's death) subsequent iPhones have instead been evolutionary. Iterative upgrades of existing technology. Changing dimensions, literally tinkering around the edges.

Which isn't to say there aren't advances. But it is really hard to come up with brand new concepts, much less to do so quickly. What low-hanging fruit might remain is, as Hasik suggests, to "end...the pursuit of increasingly grands projets with investments in ‘big science’ that lead to great leaps forward," and rather to combine existing capabilities in ways that create new, composite capability. The Sum of All Parts, if you will.

But I do hope that we won't end our investments in big science - instead, that we'll stop tying weapons system procurement to breakthroughs. We can build a really good, modernized variant of the F/A-18 and work on next-generation technologies. But the fighting force of today should not be sacrificed on the altar of possible innovation tomorrow.

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Neo-Nazis march in the southeastern German town of Wunsiedel.

Obviously, Neo-Nazis can all burn in hell (and this was a great counter-protest). But I found it interesting that in order to bypass Germany's ban on Nazi symbols and regalia, they opted for something almost as iconic: the Wehrmacht's Stalhelm design. Without requiring anything in the way of logo or seal (or even color), the distinctive shape of the helmet alone is enough to draw associations between itself and the Nazi regime.

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Density as Nuclear Destiny

Potential Chinese nuclear strikes on Los Angeles

An article about China's growing nuclear arsenal concludes with a look at targeting patterns:

Noting that there was not a “dense population” in the Midwest region, the best way to increase the destructive effect was to target the main cities on the West Coast, such as Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego.

So there you have it. The best cities for transit and walkability are the worst ones for surviving a nuclear attack. (Then again, at least there are subway tunnels to take refuge in.)

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Not Just One of the Worst Movies Ever Made...

...But also one of the deadliest. From Wikipedia:

The Conqueror (1956)

Howard Hughes funded this epic film featuring actor John Wayne as Mongolian chieftain Genghis Khan and the redheaded Susan Hayward as a Tatar princess. The movie was filmed near St. George, Utah, downwind from a nuclear testing range in Nevada, and is often blamed for the cancer deaths of many of the cast and crew, including Hayward, Wayne, Agnes Moorehead, Pedro Armendáriz, and director Dick Powell. In addition to filming near the testing range, truckloads of the red sands were transported back to the studios for interior scenes. The film made the 10-worst list in The Book of Lists, appears in Michael Sauter's book The Worst Movies of All Time, and was one of the films listed in Michael Medved's book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time...

After seeing The Conqueror himself, Hughes bought every existing print for $12 million and refused to let the film be seen on television until 1974. Reportedly, he felt very guilty over the decision to shoot at such a hazardous site. By 1980, 91 of the 220 cast and crew members had been diagnosed with cancer.

Here is a map of St. George on the right and the Nevada Test Site on the right (A). 

That's not especially close to Ground Zero (about 150 miles away, to be precise). 1955 was the year of Operation Teapot and more importantly, Project 56.

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The Generation Gap

It exists across all areas, from a distinct preference for mass transit to estrangement from institutions and organized religion. The "millennial" generation is, in general, notably more liberal than any cohort that has preceded it.

And if ever we needed proof that the main obstacle to sweeping reform, progress, and big changes is a generational one, last night's Scotland referendum offers up further proof. The referendum was defeated 55% to 45%, and yet... every age bracket under 55 years old (with the weird exception of the 18-24 year-olds; come on, guys) was in favor of Scottish independence.

In other words, a forward-looking, big change was defeated by those 55 and older. The ones who will suffer an outcome for the shortest amount of time are instead the ones who defeated it.

Further investigation bears out that the referendum was essentially defeated by older people afraid of change. The top issue for those voting "No," by a wide margin, was maintaining the pound sterling in the face of threats from the Bank of England. Pensions were the second-most cited issue. Meanwhile, for "Yes" voters, "dissatisfaction with Westminster politics" and "the NHS" were the top two issues.

It's clear that there is a generation gap, and that the motivation comes down in large part to fear of change versus an unacceptable status quo. The barrier to policy changes and electoral victory is that too many people - predominantly older citizens with an existing stake - find the status quo acceptable, and any imaginable future to be worse.

The rest of us have nothing to lose. And we won't have to wait forever.

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When Salman Rushdie wrote, in The Moor's Last Sigh in 1995, that "those who hated India, those who sought to ruin it, would need to ruin Bombay," he was alluding to the Hindu chauvinists who had tried to exert their own monopoly in the city and who had forcibly renamed it—after a Hindu goddess—Mumbai. We all now collude with this, in the same way that most newspapers and TV stations do the Burmese junta's work for it by using the fake name Myanmar. (Bombay's hospital and stock exchange, both targets of terrorists, are still called by their right name by most people, just as Bollywood retains its "B.")

Christopher Hitchens always felt that renaming "Bombay" to "Mumbai" was a sop to the Hindu fundamentalists who were trying to make any non-Hindu feel unwelcome in one of the world's great metropolises.

With Shiv Sena, the extremist Hindu political party, a solid ally of the BJP and poised for a ministerial position in the Indian cabinet, one wonders what Hitchens would make of Narendra Modi.

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My great, great, great grandfather fought in the civil war. Erasmus Parsons. He was a war criminal hanged at Andersonville for burning down an entire village near Charleston. They rode their horses over the enemy and bayoneted the wounded. I don't support what he did, obviously, but Erasmus believed any man that would betray the Union was a subhuman deserving of the most miserable death. To him, southerners lived in benighted sewers and they might as well have been devils. Not that I actually believe that now. I understand southerners are people and not devils. I am just celebrating my heritage here. "Only a snake would put another man in chains and force him to toil," wrote Erasmus on the eve of his hanging. "I would rather be hanged by such a snake than shake his hand." That is my people's heritage of preserving the Union and successfully crushing the insurrection of traitors. Destroying their armies through superior martial skill and manufacturing. Littering the battlefield with the corpses of traitors. Massacring them rather than taking prisoners. Chopping their heads off using cavalry sabers. These are just historical facts and I think it is important every year that we celebrate and remind ourselves of these facts. Nobody wants to actually go down to Atlanta, again, and set fire to the houses of all the white people. Nobody is saying that white southerners are idiots and traitors and slaving scum deserving of death. Those are antiquated beliefs. I do not subscribe to them.

"My Flag Stands for Heritage, Not Hate"

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[INSERT JOKE HERE]

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Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and other leaders here have made plain for weeks that they will go along with tougher sanctions, while cautioning behind closed doors that a serious rupture in business and other ties could take years to heal. Germany depends on Russia for up to 40 percent of its natural gas.

James Canter, "Citing Russian Moves, NATO Plans New Deployments," New York Times, 16 April 2014.

To be fair, 40% of German natural gas is 40% of 30% of the German energy sector (e.g., 12% of the total). But there's not a lot of margin for error or demand spikes there.

And you know, maybe natural gas wouldn't be such an issue if Germany hadn't made the extraordinarily short-sighted decision to phase out all nuclear power in the country. Because not only does that increase German reliance on Russian gas supplies, but in the interim, they're having to turn back to coal.

Germany has given itself the "Sophie's choice" of Russian gas or coal power for the foreseeable future. And with the former then strongly constraining foreign policy options, it's hard to conclude anything other than that Germany has backed itself into a corner.

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Meaningless Figures

I know, I know, don't read comments. But this one, appended to an Economist chart on how bad US airports are, is emblematic of a whole line of security thinking that has plagued us for nigh-on 13 years now. In part, "Connect the Dots" explains that our air travel infrastructure is so lousy because the primary concern is security, at the expense of virtually everything else. He continues (all of the following sic):

-Being the #1 Target by Al Qaeda for a decade has its costs. There is a Fortress or Prison Mentality. There is a War on Terror. It is called 'War-Time Deprivations'.

But ultimately the greatest luxury is not a Cinnabon and Star Buck's latte, but traveling safely and arriving at your destination without incident. Dirty restrooms and dated waiting rooms are forgiveable.

And the ultimate prize is there has never been a single domestic death from plane hijacking for over a decade beginning on 9/12/01.

I don't know if "Connect the Dots" is referring to Americans killed or people killed on domestic flights or even people killed on flights with an origin or destination in the United States, but his statistic is utterly meaningless. From 9/12/01 to today (roughly 12.5 years), we've had zero hijacking American fatalities. From March of 1989 to 9/10/01, we also had zero fatalities (and for that matter, all of one hijacking).

From September of 1976 to March 1989 there were a number of hijackings! (Roughly eight, by my count.) In that time, four Americans were killed. Three were shot indiscriminately on Pan Am Flight 73 on the ground in Karachi (on a Bombay-to-Frankfurt flight), and one, a US Navy diver, was singled out and murdered by Hezbollah hijackers on the Athens-to-Rome leg of TWA Flight 847 (this flight had legs to Boston and Los Angeles).

Looking even further back there are few other casualties. The truth of the matter is that September 11, 2001 was a unmitigated catastrophe and a singular event, and hardly justifies the untold billions upon billions of dollars that have been thrown at a barely perceptible problem.

"The ultimate prize?" We've maintained the same track record as the 1990s, at far greater cost. Let's not exaggerate the threat, here.

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Indian Bureaucracy, In a Nutshell

The recommendations of a committee set up in 2009 to review the delegated powers were accepted by the Defence Minister in December 2010 but soon thereafter these were held in abeyance because of the perceived fear that there was a large scale misuse of the delegated powers and that implementation of committee’s recommendations would result in excessive delegation of powers.

I mean, boy, that really says it all, huh?