Sunday Cutdown XLII (15 September 2024)
Clearing my inbox of stories I want to document
1) The evidence continues to pile up for the Military Singularity
WSJ: The Once-Dominant Tank Is Getting Humbled on the Battlefield
FORBES: Bunker-Busting Drones Are Rewriting The Rules Of Warfare
ECONOMIST: The battle between drones and helicopters in Ukraine
The tide continues to swell:
Tanks were once the king of the battlefield. But the proliferation of drones in Ukraine means the large, noisy vehicles can be spotted and targeted within minutes.
One platform, with a number of humans inside v. a swarm of drones.
This is what I’m talking about.
Or this:
On July 31st pictures of a Russian Mi-8 transport helicopter, crashed and burning, began circulating on social media. That in itself was not unusual: Ukrainian forces have shot down scores of helicopters since the Russian invasion began. Much more surprising was the claim in the Ukrainian press that this helicopter had been downed by a small drone. A video released by the country’s armed forces a few days later seemed to lend credence to that claim: the footage (see below) shows a drone hitting another Russian aircraft, this time an Mi-28 attack helicopter, reportedly forcing it to make an emergency landing. Were these lucky hits—or signs of a breakthrough in aerial warfare?
Now, even the trenches are unsafe because the drones can get so up and close that dropping mere grenades does the trick:
Trench systems typically have underground bunkers or dugouts with reinforced roofing which are robust enough to withstand artillery fire.
Drones have made many of these defensive measures obsolete and in some cases dangerous. Drop drones, consumer quadcopters fitted with a mechanism to drop one or more grenades, can drop bombs with extreme accuracy from an altitude of a few hundred feet. Any soldier in a foxhole may have dug their own grave.
I know, I know, defensive tactics will emerge … but they’re falling further and further behind.
Check this out:
A video shared by OSINT analyst Andrew Perpetua in August shows Russian retreating into an underground complex with four entrances. An FPV flies into the main entrance and explodes. The blast blows smoke out of the other entrances, indicating that the entire underground space is affected. This is followed by a series of FPV attacks targeting each of the entrances in turn until all of them have collapsed. Any survivors will be trapped inside.
That is impressive: taking that much fight to the enemy, killing personnel, and nobody on your side even has to show up?
Any volunteers?
Why bother when your FPV can fly right into the trench door and deliver?
Like the slide says: supreme asymmetry.
And yeah, that demands radical acceptance, which is just starting. Expect an entirely new and different sort of Military Industrial Complex within a generation.
2) The horses have left that barn
FOREIGN AFFAIRS: America Is Fighting the Wrong Trade War
Solid piece that does something rare for FA piece by actually making a clear point and not on-the-other-hand-ing it to death.
It is true that import competition, specifically from China, cost the United States manufacturing jobs. But politicians are wrong to suggest that protectionism will help generate employment. A new study we conducted using recent trade and employment data shows that Chinese import competition is no longer a factor driving U.S. manufacturing employment. The United States stopped shedding manufacturing jobs after the first decade of the twenty-first century—long before Washington began slapping levies on Chinese products. The share of American jobs in manufacturing remained steady even as Chinese imports to the United States continued to grow between 2011 and 2018. It has remained constant since, even as Trump applied tariffs and Chinese exports to America fell.
The United States, in other words, is fighting the last trade war. Its current policies are designed for a period that has long since passed, and they are not expanding the labor market. In fact, they may be suppressing employment.
China’s demographic dividend has been cashed, so tariffs need not be applied.
If you really want to help the US economy: gear it up on training and education:
To build a resilient economy, Washington should instead pass more workforce and skills development measures like those found in the CHIPS and Science act. Doing so is the best way to upskill the U.S. workforce, promote the country’s economic interdependence, and position the United States for long-term success.
What we think we’re protecting in “national security” (capabilities) is actually minor in comparison to what we lose in terms of intent when policies worsen bad economic times that only push our politicians to eschew foreign commitments and interventions. I get why that warning doesn’t register with the MAGA types, but for those of us interested in the gainful application of US power around the world, it’s a fate to be avoided. There is no point in maintaining our military’s edge if the way we do so makes it impossible for us to deploy it.
3) Examples of the Quantum Grand Strategy
ALJAZEERA: ‘Guerrilla projects’: Russia revels in US allegations of media warfare
WAPO: Iran turns to Hells Angels and other criminal gangs to target critics
The juxtaposition for Putin is stark: Look at all he loses and does not accomplish with traditional military force and compare that to all he gains and does accomplish just messing around in the US info-sphere. The former is hugely costly while the latter is pennies on those dollars. Hell, he doesn’t even have to work all cyber-ninja-y anymore; he can just buy whichever influencers he needs.
So, sure, Putin and his media cronies can laugh out loud, wondering openly when we’ll finally get around to hassling Tucker Carlson on the subject, but they’ve earned this smugness by so successfully capturing Trump’s MAGA base.
As for what the Iranians are up to: this takes things up a notch from the ideological to just plain old subcontracting:
Iran’s alleged reliance on criminals rather than covert operatives underscored an alarming evolution in tactics by a nation that U.S. and Western security officials consider one of the world’s most determined and dangerous practitioners of “transnational repression,” a term for governments’ use of violence and intimidation in others’ sovereign territory to silence dissidents, journalists and others deemed disloyal.
Iran acts like the mafia a lot, so why not similarly network the work?
Senior security officials said that the use of criminal proxies by governments has compounded the difficulty of protecting those who have sought refuge in the United States, Europe and elsewhere. Security services formerly focused on tracking operatives from Russia’s GRU spy agency or Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) now confront plots handed off — often through encrypted channels — to criminal networks deeply embedded in Western society.
I mean, hell, there’s no transmuting of allegiances required if money alone does the trick.
But the point remains the same: enlisting other nations’ citizens to do your dirty work for you against your expats and regime critics. It is still warfare brought down to the level of the individual.
One expert put it well:
“What we’ve got is a hostile state actor that sees the battlefield as being without border and individuals in London every bit as legitimate as targets as if [they were] in Iran.”
That’s the key underlying logic of the quantum grand strategy: this ain’t about borders or conquering territory anymore. It’s about fracturing and capturing parts of your society as their means to whatever ends they see fit.
It’s the same existentialism: I get yours before you get mine. (And, if you turn mine, they’re fair game for killing.)
4) The shrinking White evangelical Christian base
AXIOS: Millennials, Gen Xers lead jump in "religiously unaffiliated"
White Christian Nationalism is backward looking because it has no future it can embrace:
The number of white Christian Americans continues to shrink while the ranks of the unaffiliated swell in a historic shift in attitudes toward religion.
Remember, this isn’t just about atheism growing. This is also about plenty of believers and faithful who no longer see any utility in church affiliation because of how politicized and backwardly radicalized those institutions have become.
The term "religiously unaffiliated" refers to individuals who do not identify with any specific religious group. It encompasses a diverse range of beliefs and identities, including atheists, agnostics, and those who check the box "nothing in particular." That last one is where the growth is radical.
Overall, the “religiously unaffiliated” have risen to just over a quarter of the population — the threshold often identified by political scientists as being just enough to tilt things if that group is just intransigent enough.
For now, that sort of impetus exists far more so on the Right:
The percentage of Americans identifying as white Christians has declined from 57% to 41% since 2006, but they remain dominant in setting public policy and are overrepresented in Congress, especially among Republicans.
This is why we’re dealing with White Christian Nationalism right now: they recently drifted into majority-minority status.
It will only get much worse before it gets better, but the better is guaranteed demographically, which is why the fight will be so fierce, producing the sort of mania and mass delusion of the type that already anoints Trump as the messiah saved by God from the assassin’s bullet.
That … is desperation incarnate.
But when you know you’re going to lose, there’s little to stop you from reaching for the millenarian, Deus ex machina, Hail Mary options.
The Ghost Dances are just starting up.
Because that inner hardcore is just going to have to work out all that fear and anger, targeting the usual suspects (non-Whites) as required for the “liberating” race wars that always seem to be their go-to answer throughout history.
Trust me, the Haitians of Springfield OH are feeling that heat right now.
5) The one-way street that is the demographic dividend
AP: China is raising its retirement age, now among the youngest in the world’s major economies
The Silver Tsunami has reached China’s shore, forcing the same sort of adjustment long ago accepted in the West:
The policy change will be carried out over 15 years, with the retirement age for men raised to 63 years, and for women to 55 or 58 years depending on their jobs. The current retirement age is 60 for men and 50 for women in blue-collar jobs and 55 for women doing white-collar work.
Understand, those promises were made by the Chinese government back in the 1950s, when average life expectancy there still hadn’t broken into the 50s yet!
Seriously.
That’s how far China has come this fast.
From America’s New Map:
It took America eight decades (1844–1926) to lower fertility from six children per woman to three. China did it in a decade (1967–1978).
And that was before the CCP’s one-child policy was implemented.
By 2035, China will have more elders than America has citizens.
That tipping point was, just a couple of decades ago, supposed to arrive around 2050. That’s how much faster things are moving than expected.
Uncharted waters, undiscovered country.
6) Gray-t powers
REUTERS: Russia's birth rate slides to lowest in quarter century in 2024
Like even in the case of rising India, whose fertility is dropping plenty hard (6.2 in 1950, just under 2 in 2021, falling to 1.29 by 2050), the other four superpowers of this century all face either slow population growth (US) or serious decline (Russia, China).
Not portrayed here is the EU, now at 450m and expected to slowly degrade to 420m by 2100).
Even in these rather depressed projections (I must remind we are on the eve of a technological singularity driven in no small part by the biotech revolution — so significant life extension over this century must be expected — and so we must expect revisions upon revisions as the years go by), the US grows ever so slightly.
And, if I may also remind: we have managed such growth overwhelmingly from immigration these past few decades, pulling in working-age labor that keeps us artificially in a rough demographic dividend, diamond-evoking shape (thicker in middle, thinner top and bottom).
Yes, we’re barely keeping it together, but the proportions remain decent — thanks almost exclusively now to immigration.
So, of course, let the mass deportations begin!
Because that’ll fix the absolute decline of America’s White population, implies our would-be dictator.
7) This is your neighborhood on climate change
WAPO: How will climate hazards reshape your neighborhood by 2050
Interesting website that can give you a variety of heads-up regarding your current location extending into the climate future.
A national lab (Argonne), FEMA and AT&T put it together.
Interesting factoid: for every dollar spent on disaster mitigation, six are ultimately saved.
This is essentially a big data-fueled hyper-local prediction machine (the true state of AI today).
It’s the kind of thing that rich countries will use to make themselves more resilient.
It should also be a focus of our foreign aid going forward — i.e., giving it away to lower-latitude nations of my Middle Earth.
You can’t appropriately mitigate what you can’t accurately forecast.
You can’t accurately forecast what you can’t precisely measure.
You can’t precisely measure what you can’t actually see/sensor.
Omniveillance has its positive uses.
8) Batten down the hatches!
DAILY MAIL: Scientists warn that 70% of the world's population will see 'strong and rapid' increases in wild weather events in the next 20 years
Title says it all.
Extreme heat and extreme rainfall.
Climate change essentially dehumidifies earth’s surface and humidifies its atmosphere. That’s mostly the case, and atmospheric rivers are the means of moving water from drying places to “wetting” places.
That begs the question: Can we “dam” or reroute those rivers?
Companies are working this angle.
Worth tracking.
9) Europe is asking the right questions
NYT: Europe’s ‘Reason for Being’ Is at Risk as Competitiveness Wanes, Report Warns
WAPO: Europe just gave Silicon Valley fresh ammo in its deregulation push
The Draghi Report is finally out:
Europe must increase public investment by nearly $900 billion a year in sectors like technology and defense, according to a long-awaited report published Monday in response to growing anxieties about the continental economy’s lagging behind that of the United States and China.
That part is not surprising. There is only so far you can go while a union of still overwhelmingly sovereign states.
The EU has, for example, a common currency (monetary union) but does not constitute a fiscal union (as represented by our dominant federal budget). You want that level of pooled spending on defense and tech … you gotta up your political integration game big-time.
The EU has a fiscal “framework” but remains many ways short of a fiscal union. Experts argue that without something far more integrated, the euro area remains vulnerable to economic shocks. The current structure lacks the automatic risk-sharing mechanisms typical of an established fiscal union, which can help stabilize economies during downturns. Proposals for a fiscal union often include elements like a centralized fiscal capacity that could provide support during economic crises while avoiding permanent transfers of funds between countries.
The hold-up is what you’d expect: fear of loss of control over national budgets. EU members would have to become more like US states in that regard, and that’s a further level of integration beyond their imaginings for now.
This is the great limitation of the EU this century. Eventually, lack of progress on this front will cost too much and force the integration.
I know, hard to imagine from today’s perspective, given the recent BREXIT, but you can count on the growing combination of pain and fear to eventually force it.
Draghi’s report is a harbinger: defined the problem, didn’t really propose or explore the solution. Just put a price tag on it.
For now, meh!
10) The drying of the Amazon
REUTERS: South America's rivers hit record lows as Brazil drought impact spreads
Paraguay is — believe it or not — the world’s third biggest soybean exporter, and a lot of it (80%) floats down the Paraguay River that is now dangerously low and thus reducing traffic by forcing barges to carry lighter loads.
The rain has just not been there.
Very reminiscent of the Mississippi getting way too low over the years: 1980, 1988, 2012, and then —for the first time — consecutively across 2022-2023.
Last similar situation for Paraguay was just three years ago in 2021.
I imagine this problem will become more frequent across the world (Rhine and Yangtze being other recent prominent examples).
Climate change will increase the frequency and severity of low flow events in the coming decades, forcing adaptations in infrastructure and shipping practices.
11) The demographic center of gravity in 2050
NEWSWEEK: Africa's 2050 Population Boom
As noted in the past, these stories about Africa and youth and 2050 will just keep coming and coming and coming.
Right now 40% of Africa is under the age of 15. Africa can’t delay that youth-bulge-segueing-into-a-demographic-dividend any more than a woman in labor can stop a baby from coming.
This is why it is essential that India rise in the meantime and then step up, alongside China (and some Gulf Cooperation Council heavyweights), to work this unprecedented integration challenge.
The alternative would be a foreign aid flow the advanced West will never agree to send as it ages.
12) Say its name
NYT: The Killer Climate Disaster That Has No Name
Interesting idea: name heat waves just like we do hurricanes. Give it an identity so we can talk about them better, remember them better, and prepare for them better.
I like.
