Not much of a surprise here: it has to be devastatingly scary to be constantly scanning the horizon and listening for that buzzing sound, knowing that, if it sees you, you might soon be dead:
A US veteran who fought in Ukraine said that the scale of drones in the war is terrible for troops' morale, and that soldiers sometimes won't see a drone coming in clear blue skies before it kills them.
The Military Singularity: a battlefield just plain too dangerous for troops.
Soldiers often can't leave their bunkers, and have limited ability to go on operations.
Remember the too many men and not enough women problem that was going to force massive conventional wars throughout Asia just to burn off all those excess males?
History! I tell you! History points the way!
Except now it’s resolved:
The sex ratio at birth, once wildly skewed across Asia, has become more even. In China it fell from a peak of 117.8 boys per 100 girls in 2006 to 109.8 last year, and in India from 109.6 in 2010 to 106.8. In South Korea it is now completely back to normal, having been a shocking 115.7 in 1990.
Boys make sense when you’re still on the farm, less so once you’re in the city and looking at aging in place. Then, having a daughter is a whole lot better, because they’re the ones who actually look after you.
We’ve seen this shift in culture after culture, with no culture being immune.
Another this-means-certain-war scenario suffers an epic fail.
In recent years, scientists have devised powerful genetic tools that may be able to eradicate mosquitoes and other pests once and for all.
Now, some doctors and scientists say it is time to take the extraordinary step ofunleashing gene editing to suppress mosquitoes and avoid human suffering from malaria, dengue, West Nile virus and other serious diseases.
The tech is basically a form of birth control: spreading through males the genetic fix that denies females ovaries. Give it some time and … no more mosquitoes.
Some scientists fear the messing with Mother Nature thing. But, to me, living in the Sixth Great Mass Extinction period in planetary history … all we’re doing here is making sure the right ones go. Mosquitoes are universally recognized as the single most lethal animal species out there — not even close.
Humans and every species that support us are all going to come under great stress with climate change.
Evening the odds in certain instances makes a lot of sense.
Inconceivable stuff, I know, but inconceivable times await.
The off-camera plot device of the HBO film Mountainhead is that these Tech Bros are all laughing off (save one) the profound instability their social networking technologies are unleashing across the world. They’re staying at some mega-ski-lodge-mansion, discussing how they’re going to conquer the world as they blithely scroll through all sorts of news on their smartphones that say their technologies are to blame for social unrest and violence. Bunkers are frequently mentioned, as are small Latin American states that can be captured as safe havens for their kind.
I remember when all the new social networks were viewed in highly positive terms — like when they fueled the Arab Spring in 2010-11.
But now, with the ability to fake content so realistically, those same networks become enablers for the worst sort of violence-inducing disinformation and bodysnatching mind-capture by evil forces.
This is indeed a tricky time for the Tech Bros: they are, in many ways, the way ahead and the solution set for countering China’s digital colonization.
But they are also the sorcerer’s apprentice, frighteningly unable to control that which they unleash upon the world.
Tech Bros, with their move fast and break things hubris, are prone to diving into complex systems (AI, social media, crypto, biotech, etc.) without fully understanding the long-term consequences of their technological interventions. Like apprentice Mickey, they wield powerful tools that can transform society, but their grasp of ethics, social impact, or unintended consequences is often stunningly incomplete and thus immature.
This is the important sort of work our SECDEF busies himself with.
Such a profound embarrassment.
The directive could be expanded to include other military vessels named for prominent American civil rights figures, said people familiar with internal discussions.
By all means, this must surely improve the lethality of the force!
Russia captured something like 19 percent of Ukraine by the start of 2024. It has conquered another whole percent (!) since then, bringing the total up to 20 percent. Meanwhile, it’s suffered one million dead or wounded.
Per Perplexity.ai, I generate this comparison chart:
Russia is “winning” the war of attrition as it pertains to total population size, but not by much. Russia is up to almost five Vietnams as compared to US losses in that conflict (58K) and is already well over 15-fold compared to its total losses in Afghanistan (15k) back in the Soviet day.
Another point of comparison: the US lost about 7K troops across the entirety of the Global War on Terror (20 years) — or 1/35th of Russia’s losses in just over three years of combat.
Researchers in Japan have developed a plastic that dissolves in seawater within hours, offering up a potential solution for a modern-day scourge polluting oceans and harming wildlife.
While scientists have long experimented with biodegradable plastics, researchers from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science and the University of Tokyo say their new material breaks down much more quickly and leaves no residual trace.
Much of the salt we put on roads during winter months seeps into watersheds, stressing our rivers.
That increasing salinity has not only been linked to mass deaths of aquatic life and damaged infrastructure, but some people can even taste it in drinking water. And removing it is no small task — leaving salt to add up in waterways.
The fix for most of the country is simple: cutting down on the salt we use on roads during winter. Truth is, we tend to overuse out of an abundance of caution. This is a problem to which innovation must be directed.
But rising sea levels are having similar impacts in terms of “intruding” rivers where they meet up with oceans, sometimes extending dozens of miles upstream and infiltrating drinking water sources.
No easy fixes there. More a matter of adaptation, which will be very costly for local water utilities.
Gotta keep all those commies out of our colleges. I mean, those poor Chinese students, recalling their own nation’s past, certainly aren’t game for four years of Trump’s Cultural Revolution on campuses.
The thing is, that profound lever of soft power, such as it is, has already peaked when it comes to Chinese students studying here. Now, befitting its rise, India is the big source.
But, the thing is, if it’s no longer safe and welcoming for Chinese students to study here, a whole lot of Indian students are going to pick up on that vibe and head elsewhere — again, disabling one of our strongest soft-power levers.
No great surprise: China’s a bigger trade partner and the most active investor across Latin America. Meanwhile, the US is demonizing Latino migrants … it’s not a hard call.
Calls for closer economic ties with China are growing louder in the region, particularly in Mexico, the US’s No. 1 trade partner, according to LatAm Pulse, a monthly survey conducted by AtlasIntel for Bloomberg News and published on Friday.
Nearly two-thirds of Mexicans surveyed in May said their country should do more business with the Asian giant, far more than those calling for tighter economic relations with the US, as Donald Trump rattles the global economy with on-and-off tariffs.
Just over half of respondents in Brazil support closer business relations with China - statistically tied with the number of Brazilians who prefer more trade with the US. Majorities in Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru also back more commerce with Beijing.
Same holds for investment:
In every Latin American nation polled except Argentina, which under President Javier Milei is seeking a free trade agreement with the Trump administration, more respondents also said China rather than the US offered the best investment and financing opportunities.
But yeah, by all means, kick out the Chinese grad students and that’ll show ’em who’s boss in the Western Hemisphere.
I mean, everybody wants to talk with us, kiss Trump’s ass, and knuckle under to some lopsided trade deal with Washington … am I right?
Great word, iatrogenic. It basically means the cure is worse than the disease, which is pretty much the judgment of … dare I say it … experts who “fear it will do more harm than good for American research” for the Trump Administration to continue going after Chinese students.
Like so much of Trump 2.0, the punishment we mete out to our targets is dwarfed by the self-harm inflicted upon ourselves.
“The overall number of People’s Republic of China students that actually pose some type of national security risk is relatively low compared to the number of students that will continue to support and further U.S. research,” said Greg Milonovich, a former F.B.I. agent who managed the counterintelligence division’s academic alliance program as well as the national security higher education advisory board.
Here’s the reality: By tapping all that talent, the majority of which stays here, America remains in the lead on technology. Does that mean we can stop that tech from ultimately flowing to China? No, it does not. But that’s true for the entire world.
What we will inevitably suffer by cutting off all that talent is to reduce and/or lose our lead in technology. It still spreads to the rest of the world; it just stops emanating from here and instead is sourced elsewhere.
That is a serious loss, because those who first have the tech, set the rules and standards, and that’s what we’re cutting off — nose-like — to spite our face.
There’s not going to be any generational war with China unless we decide that the Taiwan scenario is worth blowing up the entirety of globalization.
May we be that stupid? Never bet against stupidity, especially when it’s being peddled by top officials.
But, most of all, don’t question the logic. The entire US national defense community is on-board for major conventional and even strategic war with China come the magical year of 2027 (centennial of People’s Liberation Army’s formation).
This is the state of strategic logic in the US: we must go to war with China over Taiwan because of an anniversary.
Well, at least it’s not a trivial reason, so, I say, let’s embrace the inevitability!
Why?
Because, once we beat China over Taiwan, then America wins the entire century! Count on it!
