Sunday Cutdown XLI (8 September 2024)
Clearing my inbox of stories I want to document
I know I should probably say something about Russia getting caught working SM influencers in the US, but it just seems so obvious and anti-climactic (or is it anti-climatic?), right along with Putin’s intense efforts to get Trump re-elected. In short, old news that I don’t need to file under Tell Me Something I Don’t Already Know.
1) China, all grown dumb
NYT: An Incomplete List of Everything Threatening China’s National Security
Kind of sad/kind of funny story about how Xi is being reduced to issuing warnings about all sorts of crazy/made-up threats to China’s national security.
Watch out for Good Samaritans with ulterior motives, packages in your mail and college students looking to make a quick buck, China tells its people.
Definitely not a good sign because it indicates that, in the regime’s institutional/existential fears, this is the best old trick they can come up with. Xi is just out of ideas.
The drumbeat is part of a broader push by China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, to make national security the country’s top priority, above other longstanding goals, such as economic development.
In Beijing’s view, that requires far more than strengthening spy agencies or investing in the military. It requires activating every Chinese citizen to be on the lookout, in what China has called a “whole of society” mobilization.
One only issues a “‘whole of society’ mobilization” call when one is feeling not nearly in enough control of the whole of society. Autocratic governments always telegraph their fears in such obvious ways — no subtlety required.
So, the goal is to get people afraid of everything they come across — EVERYTHING!
Pens can contain hidden cameras. Lighters can be bugged with listening devices. That dragonfly? Actually a tiny aerial drone. And beware the tissue box, which a guest may bring to a dinner party where major infrastructure projects are being discussed. A recorder may be hidden inside. “Some unassuming daily objects may contain mysteries,” the post said, above a hotline for reporting spies.
We should only expect this sort of social conditioning to get more extreme the more the average Chinese blows it off, refuses to spend, and keeps stuffing money in mattresses. It’s just so over the top that the masses eventually grow entirely cynical and self-aware about what is truly going on: this is all about the CCP’s rising fears of losing its firm grip on society. It becomes a very negative spiral that, at its core, is all about avoiding the reforms that would otherwise empower what is becoming China’s rather large middle class.
What will they demand next?
These middle-class types are accomplished, and educated, and informed, and they can’t be dumbed back down with this stupid stuff. They will just opt out all the more while pretending to go along.
That’s what happened to your average Russian under Brezhnev, and it got so bad that, by the time Gorby tried to reform things, the die was already cast. Nobody was interested in saving that system.
Xi and the CCP risk the same path.
Fascinating, is it not? Russia (Putin), China (Xi) and the US (Trump) are all suffering these bouts of going-back-ism: Putin to imperial glory, Xi to the Cultural Revolution (the man knows what he knows from his youth), and Trump to America’s Mad Men era (when women and minorities knew their place and celebrities could just grab … you know the rest).
How did the world get so scary for the planet’s superpowers?
It is all so pathetic and yet all so dangerous. Strategic escapism of the highest order. A surrender to fear of the future.
Stop the world, I wanna get off!
2) Wait for it! Wait for it!
NYT: Climate Change Is Making ‘Last Chance Tourism’ More Popular, and Riskier
Heads up!
An American tourist was visiting an ice cave in one of Europe’s largest national parks last month when a frozen arch collapsed, killing him and injuring his girlfriend.
While the accident in Iceland cannot be directly linked to climate change, experts say that, as temperatures increase, the recession and disappearance of glaciers has popularized a new form of adventure travel called “last chance tourism.”
As more people rush to see glaciers before they melt, places like Iceland have benefited from a booming tourism economy.
Vonne and I were seriously talking about taking a vacation in Iceland in the near future, using the same logic we applied to that Alaskan cruise in May.
The temptation for places like Iceland is clear enough: make hay while the sun shines.
But, if it shines too much, lawsuits will eventually follow.
One major Icelandic tourist company exec says that this is a 30-to-50-year window — max.
Sounds about right and fitting with my Zone of Turbulence estimate:
3) There, Taiwan said it!
REUTERS: If China wants Taiwan it should also take back land from Russia, president says
New Taiwanese president Lai Ching-te giving the big boys the business:
"China's intention to attack and annex Taiwan is not because of what any one person or political party in Taiwan says or does. It is not for the sake of territorial integrity that China wants to annex Taiwan," Lai said.
"If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn't it take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the Treaty of Aigun? Russia is now at its weakest right?" he added.
"The Treaty of Aigun signed during the Qing - you can ask Russia (for the land back) but you don't. So it's obvious they don't want to invade Taiwan for territorial reasons."
Moscow laughed it off alright, but shouldn’t.
Eventually, the dragon will come for the bear. Count on it.
There’s just no hurry about it when the victim is willingly giving itself over to you.
4) London bridge is falling down
NYT: Climate Change Can Cause Bridges to ‘Fall Apart Like Tinkertoys,’ Experts Say
First off, that title screams Boomer!
Tinkertoys?
Yeah, baby, yeah!
The real story: bridges get old fast enough, but they get weathered even faster.
America’s bridges, a quarter of which were built before 1960, were already in need of repair. But now, extreme heat and increased flooding linked to climate change are accelerating the disintegration of the nation’s bridges, engineers say, essentially causing them to age prematurely.
The result is a quiet but growing threat to the safe movement of people and goods around the country, and another example of how climate change is reshaping daily life in ways Americans may not realize.
“We have a bridge crisis that is specifically tied to extreme weather events,” said Paul Chinowsky, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder who researches the effects of climate change on infrastructure. “These are not things that would happen under normal climate circumstances. These are not things that we’ve ever seen at this rate.”
Got your attention?
How about the estimate that 1-in-4 US steel bridges may go down because of climate change between now and 2050?
So, it’s not just the infrastructure along the coastlines; it’s also basically any infrastructure crossing water.
Bread basket, bread truck … size matters when framing the problem.
Biden’s infrastructure bill threw some serious money at the issue, but this party is just getting started. Replacing old-style bridges with ones built for climate resilience … that’s a 30-40 percent markup.
5) Talking Turkey
NEWSWEEK: First NATO Ally Seeks to Join Putin-Xi's BRICS Union
First off, nobody seriously in the know calls it “Putin’s BRICS Union.”
It’s Xi’s BRICS Union, on sheer relative economic size alone. Depending on how one counts, China’s economy is 10-to-20 times bigger than Russia’s.
So, no, Putin doesn’t decide diddly-squat about the BRICS. It is entirely a come-to-Xi forum, which Turkey’s Erdogan, not doing so well himself these days, now wants to join.
Hard to blame him. Turkey’s been waiting on its EU candidacy for … 24 YEARS!
In this century, superpowers grow or stagnate.
If Europe can’t grow with what’s up next for them on integration — namely, the Arab/Muslim world, then the EU will stagnate on its version of White Christian Nationalism.
Tough, I know, because you don’t get to pick your neighbors.
But remember my unspoken mantra (originated by colleague Eric Boger upon seeing my brief) from America’s New Map — namely, the least racist superpower wins.
Da-da-da-DUHHHH!
6) First signs of the zombie apocalypse
NYT: Even Summer Nights Can’t Escape Egypt’s Economic Crisis
H/T Jeffrey Itell.
Un-air-conditioned Cairo (everybody not rich) has historically gotten through summer by hiding inside all day and then going out and shopping and socializing most of the night. But as climate change makes life even harder on that score, Egypt is deep into a decade-long economic downturn that forces the government to mandate powering-down periods overnight, so that now, even that release valve is denied as the power gets shut off:
“Egypt is a graveyard,” said Saied Mahmoud, 41, who works from noon until closing time in his father’s small, wedge-shaped clothing shop near the mosque. “Everybody is dead on the inside. They’ve surrendered; they’re down. What you see in front of you is dead people walking.”
Bit harsh, but you get the idea: beat down by the economy, beat down by the climate.
Eventually, those zombies will head north, where brains are still fresh.
7) When it rains, it pours
NYT: Record Rainfall Spoils Crops in China, Rattling Its Leaders
The gist:
While climate change is upending food supply chains everywhere, it is a particularly sensitive issue in China, where famines have historically led to unrest, and leaders have long made food security a policy priority. The latest flooding is a reminder of how even the ruling Communist Party struggles to tame the unpredictable weather gods.
The stakes are high: China is already the world’s largest food importer and needs to feed almost one-sixth of the world’s population with less than one-tenth of the world’s arable land, which has shrunk and degraded with heavy fertilizer use and pollution. The ranks of farmers have thinned out, with generations of people moving into towns and cities in pursuit of better wages.
Add extreme weather to the list of challenges. More rivers flooded this year than any other since records in China began in 1998, the Ministry of Water Resources said in August. The country this year also recorded its hottest July since at least 1961.
Across China’s long history, natural disasters have served as political game-changers — a sort of thumb’s down by the gods concerning the emperor, so the CCP takes climate change more seriously than food-superabundant America. I’m not saying we’re immune, because we’re not, and climate is driving up our food prices systematically over time — a price we will all pay.
But, for China, the political problem balloons into something more threatening regarding its risen-ness: if climate drives up food prices, then households spend less on other consumer items, stagnating the country’s economy all the more and suggesting a trajectory stuck in the middle-income trap (this high and no higher).
Nature has dealt China a bad hand:
The distribution of water is historically uneven in the country, leaving the south prone to floods and the north vulnerable to drought in the heat of summer. The government invested heavily in nearly 8,000 water conservancy projects across the country, including diverting excess water from large rivers in the south to the northern part of the country.
You want to know why China is so grabby along its borders? Well, some of it has to do with controlling rivers and their headwaters.
The thing is, with Xi tightening everything all over the dial, he really only makes China more scared and rigid and brittle and grabby all at the same time, and that’s not good.
I stopped worry about what China could do to America a long time ago.
Now, I far more fear what climate change can do to China and what China — in turn and under great pressure — can do to the world.
8) Batting .400 … unfortunately, not in baseball
SCMP: China’s PLA found ‘shooting at drone swarms challenging’ in recent air defence drills
The negative headline:
First round of anti-aircraft artillery launched against drone swarm during PLA exercise achieved only 40 per cent damage, CCTV report says
In a war of attrition, letting 60% of your opponent’s strike force through your defenses is … defeat.
Yes, we’ll be told that defense will eventually catch up with offense.
And, when it does, that’s going to make conventional warfare all the more pointless.
9) Abbott’s Benghazi/Abbey Gate?
TPR: 17 Guardsmen have died on Gov. Greg Abbott's controversial border mission, soldiers speak out
Remember when Benghazi was the big derail-Hillary-Clinton story?
And now we have the GOP House working furiously to do the same with the Abbey Gate bombing in Kabul WRT Biden (tagging Harris by extension).
We’re talking about a dozen casualties in both instances, now matched, it would seem, by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s pseudo-border war.
Take note of the proportions and the symmetry. They’re telling us something.
10) There ain’t no mountain high enough, ain’t no valley wide enough, ain’t no river wide enough to keep me from getting to you, babe
AXIOS: Insect illnesses spike around the world
Depressing, I know.
Longer, hotter, summers, milder winters, and changes in land use and travel are giving insects more time and space to spread diseases or compound the misery in places where they already exist.
Global warming is "changing where mosquitoes and ticks live, and thus what diseases are moving around in different regions," CDC director Mandy Cohen said Wednesday.
Climate velocity: where once was tropical is now moved substantially north, introducing diseases and their carriers into places where they have not been before.
What always makes me laugh in this coverage is when they caveat the climate change impact by saying globalization itself is a big contributor — like that somehow distances the causality.
Ah, yes, globalization itself! Hmm … yes! [pull chin for effect]
Understand this: US-style globalization vastly accelerated climate change, which, in turn, is forcing — this century — unprecedented North-South integration, whether we like it or not.
Yeah, you can put the egg over here and the chicken over there and pretend like they don’t go together but … they go together … like one big delicious chicken-egg sandwich of planetary indigestion!
I am done torturing this metaphor … and Motown.
11) China’s jobs crisis
HINRICH FOUNDATION: What China’s unemployment crisis means for global trade
A precise precis up front:
China’s unemployment crisis underscores the broader challenges facing the country’s economic model. The combination of a deteriorating economy at home, falling consumption, overcapacity, excessive domestic competition in the labor market, and inadequate policy intervention now threaten China's long-term macroeconomic stability. These factors are stoking trade tensions for China abroad.
Xi Jinping should have a big wooden box on his desk where all the papers on this get placed, and it should have that entire precis as the label.
Great little piece summarizing a bigger report (cited above).
This is Xi’s Kobayashi Maru scenario: the more he pushes the export-driven growth model to fix what’s wrong at home, the worse things will get on trade as the West pushes back, in turn worsening the home front, and so on and so forth.
The answer remains the same: comprehensive reform that lightens the CCP’s grip on the economy and society. But Xi is signaling the exact opposite, and so your average Chinese is still stuffing their mattress with folding money. They know where this scenario will take them.
Calling Xi Kirking to the bridge!
12) Phoenix establishes the 100/100 club
WAPO: In a first, Phoenix hits 100 straight days of 100-degree heat
Talk about a dubious achievement.
In other words, this year has seen an uninterrupted stretch of 100-degrees days at least 3½ weeks longer than in any other year since records began in 1896.
Take that 1993!
But this is Phoenix, right on the lip of my Middle Earth band stretching 30 degrees north and south of the equator.
We are having our future doled out to us in daily installments.
We are told:
The relentless heat is testing the will of Phoenix residents.
Oh, buddy! The real tests haven’t even begun.
Geez, Tom. If Russia is paying $10 million dollars to get social media influencers parroting pro-Russian propaganda, I see a real opportunity for you to step in and pick up an envelope for maybe "forgetting" to remind us so often that Putin is Xi's punk...