Sunday Cutdown XXVI (26 May 2024)
Clearing my inbox of stories I want to document
NOTE: I am on vacation right now so I can’t respond to any comms until 3 June.
1) A lonely voice, crying out in the wilderness of strategic fear
FOREIGN AFFAIRS: America, China, and the Trap of Fatalism
Frankly, the best thing I have read on China in a very long time.
No surprise that it was written by someone Chinese — namely, Zhou Bo, Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University and a retired Senior Colonel in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. If I were better at names, I’d suspect we’ve interacted in the past.
From the piece:
Beltway analysts have greatly exaggerated China’s supposed threat to Western democratic systems and international order. In recent years, U.S. leaders have cast China as a revisionist power and invoked the specter of a global clash between democracy and autocracy. But democracy’s troubles in the twenty-first century have little to do with China.
Again: The USSR didn’t fall apart because of what America did; it fell apart because it just didn’t work.
Same thing holds with the US and the world order we created: neither falls because of China. They can only fall because of what we ourselves do to our nation or how we behave in the wider world.
Indeed, far from being a revisionist power seeking to upend the world, China upholds the status quo. It has joined almost all the international regimes and institutions established by the U.S.-led West after World War II. As the world’s top trader and the largest beneficiary of globalization, China is deeply embedded in the existing international order and wishes to safeguard that system. Despite disagreements, tensions, and even disputes, China maintains robust ties with the West; neither side could countenance the kind of severing of relations that has occurred between the West and Russia since the invasion of Ukraine.
Also smart and pragmatic.
It always kills me:
Inside the US, our member states fight like crazy over every possible rule, and yet, despite all that competition, the American Order holds firm and this is considered normal.
And yet, whenever we Americans turn our gaze outward and spot even the tiniest hint of another power seeking to revise one aspect of the American World Order, we simply freak out: How dare they!
In other words, given the competitive landscape inside the US ruleset, why are we so constantly disturbed by similar competitions across our global US ruleset?
A refrain one hears often today suggests that the world has entered a new cold war. It is still too early to judge whether the rivalry between China and the United States really resembles the one between the Soviet Union and the United States—and, indeed, if it will continue to remain cold. But the analogy fails to capture a critical distinction: unlike the Cold War, this rivalry is between two individual titans rather than two confrontational camps. Washington cannot rally an implacably anti-Chinese alliance, just as Beijing cannot lead a bloc that is uniformly hostile to the United States. Most U.S. allies have China as their largest trading partner. Like all other countries in an increasingly multipolar world, they will pick and choose positions on specific issues, not blindly take the United States’ side. Washington has enjoyed modest success in rallying allies and partners in arrangements meant to contain China, such as the Indo-Pacific security partnership known as the Quad and the military partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States known as AUKUS. But these groupings do not amount to much: they look like a few tiny islands in a vast ocean. In many parts of the world, especially in Africa, the United States has already lost to China, which helps local economies without delivering moralizing bromides about governance and values.
I make many of the same arguments throughout America’s New Map: we obsess over the player while China — far more effectively — plays the board.
Obviously, the overall military strength of the PLA lags behind that of the U.S. military. But in China’s vicinity, the gap between the PLA and the U.S. military is closing, as Chinese military capacities have grown by leaps and bounds in recent decades. The United States fears that China wants to drive it out of the western Pacific. As a result, Washington is investing more militarily in the region and calling on its allies and partners to gang up on China. This in turn irks Beijing and makes the situation more volatile.
Imagine if the situation were reversed and China was arming nations and islands in our neighborhood, and was constantly testing the waters — so to speak — by encouraging close calls among aircraft and ships right off our coast. How would we take that?
Seriously, ponder that for a minute.
The only issue that could drag China and the United States into a full-blown conflict is the dispute over Taiwan. Currently, a dangerous cycle is unfolding. The United States fears a potential attack from the mainland and is speeding up arms sales and expanding training and personnel exchanges to boost Taiwan’s defense and turn the island into a “porcupine.” An angry but increasingly confident China has responded by sending more warplanes to routinely fly over the median line in the Taiwan Strait, which previously acted as a buffer between the sides.
I am always tempted to pose the counterfactual here: What if Taiwan decided on its own to peacefully join China? Would that change the strategic balance between us whatsoever?
I don’t advocate anything less than our current “porcupine” approach. I do want us to keep some perspective on this, though.
The rest of the piece is a laundry list of issues (a speciality of Foreign Affairs) we should logically cooperate on — fine and dandy.
The end is solid enough:
As great powers, China and the United States may never become great friends. But they can resist becoming enemies. Level heads and cautious optimism will help maintain the stability of the world’s most important relationship. Fatalism and recklessness will only drive the countries toward a conflict that neither wants.
The momentum in DC right now for a war with China is profound.
It is also wrongheaded and very dangerous.
Taiwan is NOT worth blowing up the world order over.
That doesn’t mean we don’t keep doing what we’re doing to maintain just enough strategic ambiguity to maintain the status quo.
But ANYONE who sees us “fixing” or “defeating” China over Taiwan has a screw loose.
There will be no winners in this scenario.
2) The special lessons learned in Ukraine
FOX NEWS: US special ops teams must cut 5,000 troops over next 5 years amid push to recruit technical experts
The need for a drone officer?
Forced to do more with less and learning from the war in Ukraine, U.S. special operations commanders are juggling how to add more high-tech experts to their teams while still cutting their overall forces by about 5,000 troops over the next five years.
The conflicting pressures are forcing a broader restructuring of the commando teams, which are often deployed for high-risk counterterrorism missions and other sensitive operations around the world. The changes under consideration are being influenced by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
U.S. Army Special Operations Command, which bears the brunt of the personnel cuts, is eyeing plans to increase the size of its Green Beret teams — usually about 12 members — to bring in people with more specialized and technical abilities. One possibility would be the addition of computer software experts who could reprogram drones or other technical equipment on the fly.
As the officer quoted in the piece argues: budget cuts force you to rethink what’s of preeminent value.
So, despite serious budget pressure that will cost slots previously dedicated to standard operators, USASOC will be folding in drone-related experts.
That is a serious sign of change.
3) Our War on Drugs: a real Frankenstein’s Monster
WAPO: The elections next door: Mexico’s cartels pick candidates, kill rivals
This is the reality that we’ve inflicted upon our neighbor.
This time, Willy Ochoa brought reinforcements.
This time, unlike the last time, he’d be ready for cartel attacks. He was accompanied by three truckloads of national guard troops. Two state police cars with flashing red lights. He rode in his own bulletproof SUV, and had a complement of muscular bodyguards. One sat in the bed of a pickup truck, his eyes fixed on the sky.
“He’s making sure they don’t fire a bomb from a drone,” Ochoa explained.
This is what it’s like to run for the Senate today in Mexico. “You’re at risk every minute,” the candidate said.
Organized crime groups are turning Mexico’s elections into a literal battleground, making the campaign this year one of the deadliest in the country’s modern history. More than two dozen candidates have been killed leading up to the June 2 vote; hundreds have dropped out of the race. More than 400 have asked the federal government for security details. The campaign of intimidation and assassination is putting democracy itself at risk.
The cartels, wanting to own certain cities for their operations smuggling drugs and people, are seriously focused on mayoral races.
The nature of it all recalls the influence and reach of organized crime in the US during the Prohibition Era.
There are other models out there for handling drugs (e.g., Portugal, Switzerland, Netherlands, Germany).
In contrast, the decades-long U.S. War on Drugs has failed to curb drug use and addiction while fueling mass incarceration, human rights abuses, and destabilization in drug-producing countries. Experts widely agree that treating drug use as a health issue rather than a criminal justice matter is more effective and ethical.
Mexico and LATAM in general deserves better from us.
4) Who’s your daddy, Silicon Valley?
WAPO: How the authoritarian Middle East became the capital of Silicon Valley
The gist:
The cutthroat and costly ambition of the AI arms race is driving a seismic shift in the region’s prominence, changing how one of the world’s most advanced technologies gets built and the players who stand to benefit …
Some tech entrepreneurs and venture firms once shunned Middle Eastern funding, driven by concern for human rights abuses, the region’s ties to China and industry disdain for what were onceconsidered lucrative, but unsophisticated, investments, deemed “dumb money,” from oil states. The 2018 killing of Saudi journalist and Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi caused some firms to explicitly step away from the country’s cash.
But Middle Eastern money has become the most powerful geopolitical force in the tech industry virtually overnight. “The Khashoggi era is over,” said a prominent venture capitalist.
Interesting how quickly AI went from a tech race to an “arms race.”
As the WAPO story indicates, a lot of this Silicon Valley push into the Persian Gulf is encouraged by Washington, which realizes just how ambitious these cash-rich monarchies are about their post-hydrocarbon future, the calculation being that either our firms take that money or it’ll go to Chinese competitors.
In general, despite the frequent requirement of holding one’s nose over this or that transgression by these regimes, I have to agree.
China is looking to place as much of the world inside its “walled garden” universe of 5G/IoT/AIoT.
The race to colonize the cyber realm is well underway and quite fierce, and America needs to be championing its flagship companies anywhere and everywhere they roam.
5) The scary threat of blight
BBC: How crops are being disaster-proofed
Blight, caused by a fungus-like pathogen, brought my people (on my mother’s side) to North America — namely, the Potato Famine of 1845.
Per my oft-cited bit about all species moving up in elevation and/or latitude, we get this:
More recently, late blight has been creeping into higher parts of the Peruvian Andes, as warmer, wetter weather helps the pathogen spread.
So scientists at the International Potato Center (CIP), a research institute in Peru, were very motivated to develop potato varieties that could resist late blight.
They searched for this trait among so-called crop wild relatives – undomesticated plants that are distantly related to the ones now grown for food.
After finding the disease resistance in potato wild relatives, they crossed the wild plants with cultivated ones. Local farmers then tested the newly developed varieties, voting for the ones they preferred to grow, sell and eat.
The result is CIP-Matilde, a potato variety released in 2021 that doesn’t require fungicides to stand up to late blight.
Heterogeneity as the answer. Good lesson for us all.
Mix it up!
6) People power
FOREIGN AFFAIRS: East Asia’s Coming Population Collapse
Great Nicholas Eberstadt piece. He’s a big thinker in the world of demographics and has been for as long as I can remember, so I always check out anything he writes.
People—human numbers and the potential they embody—are essential to state power. All else being equal, countries with more people have more workers, bigger economies, and a larger pool of potential soldiers. As a result, growing countries find it much easier to augment power and extend influence abroad. Shrinking ones, by contrast, struggle to maintain their sway.
East Asian countries will be no exception: the realm of the possible for its states will be radically constricted by the coming population drop. They will find it harder to generate economic growth, accumulate investments, and build wealth; to fund their social safety nets; and to mobilize their armed forces. They will face mounting pressure to cope with domestic or internal challenges. Accordingly, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan will be prone to look inward. China, meanwhile, will face a growing—and likely unbridgeable—gap between its ambitions and capabilities.
That is a very cool summation: a gap between ambitions and capabilities.
As somebody who’s worked in a lot of companies, there is nothing worse than having to deal with people who suffer this gap. The same holds true on a national scale.
I’m not sure that I agree on the bit about soldiers, given how rapidly we’re all headed toward a Military Singularity in which troops are increasingly marginalized in a post-human battlespace, but I agree with the basic concept that size matters — particularly in terms of the demand signal it sends and the power that signal has over producers in our world.
I really liked this chart as well:
I like it because it so ably demonstrates the sheer power of modernity. For so long we were told that Asian societies would remain so different from Western ones — despite industrialization, urbanization, globalization … and yet, look how similarly they all are on this core human dynamic of procreation. Turns out every society’s valuation of the “family” gets radically rejiggered by economic development, no matter its specific, often-touted as “superior,” values.
One more great chart:
Which proves — yet again — that America’s “secret sauce” is immigration.
7) Strong man on campus
WAPO: To please Putin, universities purge liberals and embrace patriots
I glanced at the headline and my first thought was that it was yet another piece on Ron DeSantis and Florida.
Funny how that works.
8) You break the climate, you pay
NBC NEWS: Vermont passes bill to charge fossil fuel companies for damages from climate change
Vermont’s incidences of flooding have radically increased as of late, due to climate change.
Now, the legislature has decided somebody’s gotta pay:
Vermont lawmakers passed a bill this week that is designed to make big fossil fuel companies pay for damage from weather disasters fueled by climate change.
The legislation is modeled after the Environmental Protection Agency’s superfund program, which requires the companies responsible for environmental contamination to either clean sites up themselves or reimburse the government for the costs of work to do so.
Vermont’s bill, referred to as its Climate Superfund Act, would similarly mandate that big oil companies and others with high emissions pay for damage caused by global warming.
Fascinating that they take the Superfund model. Several states are toyed with this idea, but apparently Vermont is the first to actually pass such legislation in one of its houses. Now, the Vermont Senate must address it.
I have no idea about the likelihood or even the utility of taking this approach, but it’s clear that such public bills are going to pile up over time, so expect states and counties and municipalities to seek whatever funding they can access — or force through legal means.
Big Oil is going to be increasingly treated like Big Tobacco.
9) If you can’t stand the heat
BROOKINGS: Americans should worry more about extreme heat
Of the four horsemen of the Anthropocene (heat, fire, drought, flood), the average American’s greatest exposure is to heat — go figure.
But when you think about it, it all makes sense:
Unlike floods and wildfires, heat poses greater threats to people than to buildings
Thus, heat is the neutron bomb of climate change — a pure outcome.
10) Drone, drone, drone your boat
REUTERS: Sea drone warfare has arrived. The U.S. is floundering.
Reuters says the USN is not ready for drone warfare, which is a different subject than USVs (unmanned surface vehicles) per se.
For example, this USV above (a prototype known as Sea Hunter) is not a single-use munitions delivery vehicle. And it cost about $20M.
If a single cheap drone can take it out, or, if a swarm of cheap drones can take it out, then we’re talking about a maritime battlespace too dangerous for our unmanned ships.
I know, it’s weird to write something like that, but maintain the distinction in your head.
From the story:
The U.S. Navy's efforts to build a fleet of unmanned vessels are faltering because the Pentagon remains wedded to big shipbuilding projects, according to some officials and company executives, exposing a weakness as sea drones reshape naval warfare.
The lethal effectiveness of sea drones has been demonstrated in the Black Sea where Ukraine has deployed remote-controlled speed boats packed with explosives to sink Russian frigates and minesweepers since late 2022.
Now, on one level, this story pits big manned platform construction against small unmanned platform construction.
That’s one problem
But then it immediately references single-use “remote-controlled speed boats packed with explosives.”
That’s another problem, as those speed boats presumably can swarm-kill a USV just as easily as a manned ship, yes?
The article then cites a third problem:
But when the Navy has deployed sea drones on reconnaissance missions in recent years, it hasn't always had the fleet expertise to use them, the two Navy sources said, asking not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.
There aren't enough Navy sailors trained to pilot drones or to analyze vast swathes of data sent back from the craft's cameras and sensors, the sources said.
But wait, there’s more!
Swarms of small sea drones could also act as a shield for valuable crewed assets like aircraft carriers and submarines, and tangle up troop-carrying ships in the event China tries to invade Taiwan, said Bryan Clark, an advisor to the Navy on autonomous craft and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute - a think tank headquartered in Washington.
Drones protecting manned ships against other drones!
Expect this whole force structure transformation to be wild and wooly for at least a decade or two. There will be tons of mixing and matching and lessons learned at high speed.
11) The perfect storms
WAPO: The new face of flooding
Another fabulous online article from WAPO with all sorts of cool visuals semi-animated to make changes more easily visualized.
The core of the piece:
What the residents and rescuers of the Fowl River region faced on that day was part of a dangerous phenomenon reshaping the Southern United States: Rapidly rising seas are combining with storms to generate epic floods, threatening lives, property and livelihoods.
In the Fowl River’s case, unusually high tides slowed floodwaters as they went downstream to drain. This increased the water’s depth and floodeda wide expanse — even several miles upstream. The result was deluged roads, washed out cars and damaged houses from a flood that was larger, deeper and longer-lasting due to rising seas.
These supercharged floods are one of the most pernicious impacts of an unexpected surge in sea levels across the U.S. Gulf and Southeast coasts — with the ocean rising an average of 6 inches since 2010, one of the fastest such changes in the world, according to a Washington Post examination of how sea level rise is affecting the region.
The Post’s analysis found that sea levels at a tide gauge near the Fowl River rose four times faster in 2010 to 2023 than over the previous four decades.
In short, it’s not just about ocean-front property.
And this whole dynamic is picking up speed:
As a strategic thinker, I love canaries in the coal mine:
“Our canary in the coal mine for sea level rise is storm-water flooding,” said Renee Collini, director of the Community Resilience Center at the Water Institute. “Each inch up of sea level rise reduces the effectiveness of our storm water to drain and the only place left for it to go is into our roads, yards, homes and businesses.”
Makes sense to me.
The detail of this reporting and analysis is very impressive.
12) When an early summer becomes a scary thing
CBS NEWS: Summer heat hits Asia early, killing dozens as one expert calls it the "most extreme event" in climate history
India is baking at a much earlier point in the calendar this year.
Naturally, the story points out that the poor will suffer most. Farmers are incredibly vulnerable too:
The heat is likely to continue inflicting widespread crop damage, further impacting the lives of farmers who've already faced increasing challenges in recent years — to the extent that hundreds of thousands staged massive protests in India to demand government help.
As great powers go, India is THE climate change “canary in the coal mine.”
