Sunday Cutdown X (2/4/2024)

Clearing my inbox of stories I want to document

1) We are headed to the Drone Singularity in warfare

FOREIGN AFFAIRS: Ukraine Is Losing the Drone War: How Kyiv Can Close the Innovation Gap With Russia

Fascinating piece by Eric Schmidt, the former Google boss now moonlighting as a tech adviser to the USG.

First off, he notes just how drones have altered the usual stop-and-go rhythm of warfare in East Europe:

It’s winter in Ukraine again. The snow is piling up, the temperature is dropping, and the days are short. During the long nights, nearly two years into the full-scale war, the skies above the entire 600-mile frontline are filled with Ukrainian and Russian drones. In past centuries, the machinery of war would grind to a halt when harsh conditions pushed human endurance to its limits. The two most famous military campaigns in this part of the world—Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 and Hitler’s in 1941—succumbed to devastating casualties as the season changed. Today, the hapless infantry who still fill trenches and strongpoints across Ukraine are contending with the same unforgiving winter. But the drones that have come to dominate this war are limited only by their battery lives—shortened by the cold—and the availability of night-vision cameras.

His larger argument: this conflict has settled into a drone war, with Russia doing its usual win-by-sheer-numbers drill and Ukraine scrambling to keep pace:

In order to undercut Russia’s advantage in this phase of the war, Ukraine and its allies will need to not just ramp up defense production but also invest in developing and scaling technologies that can counter Russia’s formidable new drones.

A glimpse of just how much drones have altered the traditional force-on-force calculus:

When asked to identify the best tank-killing weapon in their arsenals, Ukrainian commanders of all ranks give the same answer: first-person-view drones, which pilots on the ground maneuver while watching a live feed from an onboard camera. These drones have made tank-on-tank engagement a thing of the past.

You can — and should — extrapolate that data point to include virtually any platform you can name. The old X-on-X warfare, to include even sub-on-sub, will fall away as drones intervene and come to dominate.

This is where we get into the weird pointlessness of emerging/future conventional combat: it’s all inevitably heading toward drone-on-drone.

I mean, check it out:

A Ukrainian battle commander also told me that FPV drones are more versatile than an artillery barrage at the opening of an attack. In a traditional attack, shelling must end as friendly troops approach the enemy trench line. But FPVs are so accurate that Ukrainian pilots can continue to strike Russian targets until their fellow soldiers are mere yards away from the enemy.

So here’s what determines this conflict: sheer production of drones.

Ukrainian officials estimate that Russia can now produce or procure around 100,000 drones per month, whereas Ukraine can only churn out half that amount.

And here is where we get to the pointlessness of it all:

In this phase of the war, as the frontlines stabilize, the sky above will fill with ever-greater numbers of drones. Ukraine aims to acquire more than two million drones in 2024—half of which it plans to produce domestically—and Russia is on track to at least match that procurement. With so many aircraft deployed, any troops or equipment moving on the ground will become easy targets. Both armies will therefore focus more on eliminating each other’s weapons and engaging in drone-to-drone dogfights. As technological advances increase the range of drones, their operators and other support systems will be able to stay hundreds of miles from the battle.

Pretty soon we’ll see warfare reduced to generating no-man’s-lands where only drones go to fight other drones, meaning it will become a strict area-denial strategy that neither side can win but both can wage ad infinitum. I see no purpose in this warfare. It’s almost like military tech is making war obsolete.

Bizarre, I know, but it is coming: a Michael Bay film produced by Jim Cameron. Robots on robots!

2) Indians being used as part of Israel’s “great replacement” strategy?

WAPO: Israel turns to Indian workers as Gaza war worsens labor shortage

India is a natural source of overseas labor for any country nowadays and going years/decades into the future. That is natural and benign.

But then you read this:

Israel is looking to address a major labor shortage, abruptly worsened by the conflict with Hamas, by recruiting tens of thousands of Indians at a time when Palestinians who have long played a crucial role in Israeli construction and other sectors are being barred from the country.

And you have to wonder, because as replacement theories go, this one seems a bit starkly real.

Okay, before we go all tin-foil hat here:

Israel had already been in discussions with India about recruitment before the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas against Israelis and Israel’s withering reprisal in Gaza.

Still …

Israeli authorities say they are hoping to see 10,000 to 20,000 Indian migrant workers in the coming months. That would be equal to the total number of foreign workers that entered the country through bilateral agreements in 2021, according to Israel’s Center for International Migration and Integration (CIMI).

However, this feels more like a divorce, as in, Israel is disconnecting itself from its Palestinian workforce, not so much as a punishment but as a move toward deepening and hardening the economic divide between Israelis and Palestinians.

Granted, any such mass importation of South Asians to the Middle East is hardly new. Gulf monarchies have done it up big-time for decades. It has the appeal of insulating the regime in question from certain domestic dynamics that can be destabilizing.

There is little doubt that Israel’s need is acute:

In December, Raul Srugo, president of the Israel Builders Association told Israeli lawmakers that industry output is at 30 percent. “As far as we’re concerned, you can bring workers from the moon,” he said.

Of course …

Israeli government officials deny that the move is explicitly designed to replace Palestinian workers but acknowledge there is new pressure.

And, naturally, Indian Hindus are a better fit, for Israel’s purposes, than any imported Muslim workers.

Oct. 7 was a classic vertical scenario, the stone landing in the still pool of water. This is a key horizontal scenario that results — a permanent change to the landscape.

I am pretty sure Hamas wasn’t expecting this sort of payback, but it may well end up being highly effective, as in, damaging to their long-term cause in ways they never imagined (or perhaps simply never cared about).

3) The future of meaning in America

WAPO: More Americans are nonreligious. Who are they and what do they believe?

A fascinating trend (profound social and demographic force) that is surely driving an equally profound friction (White Christian Nationalism).

Over the past half-century, as the number of Americans with no religious affiliation has gone from 5 percent to nearly 30 percent, the emphasis has often been on what they were leaving. A report released Wednesday on the “nones” finds that they are diverse, young, left-leaning and may offer clues to the future of making meaning in a secularizing country.

The interpretation here is pretty clear: people remain spiritual; it’s just that organized religions are dramatically failing their audiences. The churched can blame it on wayward souls, but religion is a business like any other: if you ain’t offering what your customer base wants, then you lose market share.

The Pew findings seem to debunk, or at least complicate, the idea that people who leave religion are hostile toward it. The overwhelming majority of nones say religion causes division and intolerance and encourages superstition and illogical thinking, but 58 percent also say religion helps society by giving people meaning and purpose.

Organized religions compete in a landscape that grows more competitive by the day. They are losing because they are underperforming. We live in an era of accelerated evolutions, and organized religions are not immune to these pressures.

4) The main artery to the world’s lungs is being blocked by climate change

NYT: Climate Change Drove Drought in the Amazon

The gist:

Climate change fueled the remarkable 2023 drought that drained major rivers, fueled huge wildfires and threatened the livelihoods of millions of people in the Amazon rainforest, scientists said on Wednesday.

Deforestation of the Amazon, the world’s largest and most biodiverse rainforest, has decreased rainfall and weakened the ability of trees and soil to retain moisture, researchers found. That made drought more acute and caused the forest to be less resilient to environmental destruction and events like wildfires.

The Amazon River — the world’s largest by volume — and several of its tributaries reached their lowest levels in 120 years of record-keeping last year. One fifth of the world’s freshwater flows through the rainforest.

A scientist leader working this issue basically said, we’re out of classifications for labeling this effect: “We’re now in the highest classification, so we don’t have any more to assign.”

That’s basically Spinal Tapping the Amazon: we’re at 11 already.

5) China now has the capacity to rock the world with a financial crisis

SCMP: How China’s stock rout was 8 years in the making

Think about that statement for just a second.

Imagine I, futurist type, telling you, skeptical type, in the go-go 1990s that someday China’s financial sector would be so big and so important and so connected to the outside world as to be able to foster significant shocks to the system.

It would have been a laughable concept, and yet, here we are today:

Investors around the globe have many questions about China’s chaotic stock sell-off. Most relate to what is happening, how President Xi Jinping’s team might halt the plunge and where to hide?

But it’s the when that may matter most. The reference is to 2015, the last time cratering Shanghai shares made global headlines for an extended period.

The comparison matters because so many of the cracks Beijing pledged to fix eight-plus years ago remain below the surface. And they spook investors in ways that will keep shares under downward pressure in the months ahead.

These cracks include: extreme opacity, the continued dominance of state-owned enterprises, weak corporate governance, regulatory uncertainty, a feeble credit rating system and a Communist Party more focused on the symptoms of China’s troubles than the underlying ailments.

In short, Beijing and the CCP were warned back in 2015 that these were their problems and that eventually they would cost them.

But, remember, this is a Xi who, by then, was already working to rejigger the leadership practices of the country to make himself president-for-life, meaning THAT was the primary political response: not to deal with the issues but to harden the political system.

Fear-based and unimaginative in the extreme.

That decision bought time but only postponed the pain that logically would have been dealt with by an incoming Sixth Generation of leadership eager to make their mark but now permanently sidelined.

This is China bumping into the reality that America has now long been uncomfortable with: the more you integrate into the global economy and seek market-making opportunities, the more it dawns on you that you are simultaneously subjecting yourself to more and more external rulesets that implicitly force a certain market discipline on your system.

There is no dominating the global system anymore. America had that moment decades ago and wisely socialized that power progressively over time, yielding the multipolar system we have today.

Now, it is impossible to conquer globalization, there is only the option of merging with it and accepting the reality that, over time, it influences you more than the other way around.

China is hitting that wall now. It will be fascinating and bit gruesome to watch.

6) Renewable energy reaches its Chinatown moment in LA

LAT: The lithium revolution has arrived at California’s Salton Sea

What do I see?

The future, Mr. Barnett, the future!

Local column on this big, seminal RE moment:

After a dozen years of engineering, permitting and financing, the Australian firm Controlled Thermal Resources is ready to start building a lithium extraction and geothermal power plant at the southern end of the Salton Sea, more than 150 miles southeast of Los Angeles. A groundbreaking ceremony is planned for Friday near the shore of the shrinking desert lake.

A very complex and complicated pathway to get to this point. After all, we’re talking California.

Time marches on!

7) Wardogs drool and warcats rule!

AAA: War cats: Ukraine enlists feline friends in fight against Russia

What you looking at, you short-whiskered m&*#@#-f@%$er!

Game on!

Wars are fought by soldiers using bullets, shells and missiles, but also with ideas and propaganda — which explains why cats have become the latest battlefront in Ukraine.

Ukraine’s social media are full of felines, showing how they help soldiers as emotional support animals, attract donations to the military with their fluffy cuteness, and also fight invaders — in this case mice.

Russia is fighting back by humanizing its invading soldiers — often used in “meat wave” attacks against Ukrainian positions and accused of atrocities against civilians — by showing them with their own cats.

In my house, we have two Siberian cats that we’ve been keeping an eye on since the invasion. Fortunately, we have a French dog and a German dog to keep them in their place. It is a house divided, to be sure, but we maintain a delicate balance of power.

8) The climate beat goes on

WAPO: The world is already experiencing record heat — in January

We are already setting records on global temps and it’s only January:

Where it’s winter, the unusually warm temperatures are making it feel more like June than January. Where it’s summer, historic heat has surged well past 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Putting it all together, the global average temperature is at its highest level on record for late January.

The exceptional warmth — 20 to 30 degrees above normal in some places — stretches as far south as Australia and South Africa, and as far north as northern Asia. It’s being driven by a combination of weather and climate factors, including El Niño.

In calling this game, the color commentator uses the words ““exceptional,” “relentless,” “insane,” and “never ending.”

9) The renewable energy state

USA TODAY: This state is quickly becoming America's clean energy paradise. Here's how it's happening.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the state that pays the most to import energy because of its remoteness is also the one leading the way on renewable energy:

Americans don’t have to imagine what it’s like to live someplace that’s aggressively switching to 100% clean energy, where one in three people has rooftop solar, 15% of new cars are electric and giant batteries store power for use when the sun goes down.

They just have to go to Hawaii.

That’s the article’s opening.

The incentive structure is mentioned a few grafs lower:

Hawaii is blessed with an abundance of wind, sun and geothermal power but doesn’t have a drop of fossil fuel. Instead, every 10 days or so an oil supertanker arrives at a refinery near the Honolulu port, producing almost 80% of the state’s energy, Mikulina said.

Almost all that oil comes from as much as 6,000 miles away, primarily from Libya and Argentina, which makes energy in Hawaii expensive and prone to weather and geopolitical disruption.

“We’re one supertanker away from becoming Amish,” he said. “We have a 25-day oil supply in storage.”

High cost is the mother of adaptation.

I do love that Amish line!

10) Russia’s post-Ukraine Asia “pivot” not going as fast as planned

FT: Russia’s planned gas mega-pipeline to China hit by construction delay

Once the pro-Ukraine West decided to forego as much Russian energy exports as possible, Putin had no choice but to sell whatever he could to China — naturally, at prices favoring Beijing (evidence exists that Central Asian states selling natural gas to China get significantly better prices).

Such a change in that power relationship naturally complicates economic dealing, like the long-planned cross-Mongolian pipeline:

Construction on the Kremlin’s long-planned mega-pipeline connecting Russia’s western gasfields with China is expected to be delayed, the prime minister of Mongolia has warned, in a blow to Moscow’s plans to secure a new market for the gas it previously sold to Europe.

The so-called Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, which will cross Mongolian territory, has been a priority for Moscow for more than a decade but gained even greater importance since Europe curbed its imports of Russian gas in response to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Russians pushing hard, China not so much as of late, almost as if they have somebody over a barrel.

The pipeline, even when completed, would only redirect about one-third of what Russia used to sell to Europe.

There’s no question that China can use the extra gas flow from Russia. One just gets the feeling they’re squeezing the Russians on price by slowing down/delaying this rather permanent commitment.

11) This is the browser you’re looking for

NYT: Can This A.I.-Powered Search Engine Replace Google? It Has for Me.

It’s called Perplexity and is found here: https://www.perplexity.ai.

Simply put, it does a far better job than word-search Google in predicting the real answer that you’re looking for. You can write a plain-English question and you will get a plain-English answer.

I use it all the time now.

12) For the record: press release on my dairy industry presentation

DAIRY BOARD ASSOCIATION (WISCONSIN): Geopolitical strategist outlines how U.S. can lead through global upheaval

Press Releases » DBA: Geopolitical strategist outlines how U.S. can lead through global upheaval

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Feb. 2, 2024

Contact: Laura Hensley
Director of communications
(517) 652-4524 | lhensley@dairyforward.com

GREEN BAY, Wis. — The world is changing at a fast pace and the United States needs to adapt or else it may lose its influence over the world’s growing middle class, according to a leading geopolitical strategist and bestselling author.

“The world’s middle class is growing fast and you want their brand loyalty so they’ll purchase your products,” said Thomas P.M. Barnett, a principal business strategist at Throughline, Inc. and author of “America’s New Map.” “The U.S. has what it takes to be a global leader in an era of climate change and demographic change.”

The world is going through three major transitions — climate change, demographic transition and a growing global middle class, said Barnett, who has worked in U.S. national security sources since the end of the Cold War and is well known for his work at the United States Naval War College and the Office of Force Transformation at the Department of Defense.

Climate change has the potential to make one billion people move during the next century as some areas near the equator become impossible to live in, Barnett said. The key question is how the world responds to the migration. Right now, Barnett said, countries to the north, including the United States, are fighting the influx of migrants.

“Instead of building a wall, we need to look for ways to grow. America, right now, has the world’s No. 1 brand. If we are not welcoming, people may fall under the ‘brand’ of another nation, such as China,” he said. “There’s nothing that says we have to stay at 50 states. Are there places in our hemisphere that could become a part of the United States?”

The demographic shift — 1 in every 4 people in the world will live on the African continent by 2050 — is another challenge the United States needs to be ready for, Barnett said.

“In the United States, the number of non-whites will soon be a greater percentage of the population than whites and that’s causing a lot of angst in some parts of the population and I think that will continue for at least the next 10 years,” he said. “It’s not something that is going to change. It is something we need to accept and move forward with.”

The aging U.S. population is another demographic trend the country needs to be prepared for as more Baby Boomers turn 65, which is known as the silver tsunami. Japan and China are already dealing with aging populations and struggling to find enough workers, but Barnett said the United States has one advantage — immigration.

There’s also the so-called silver tsunami, where there are more people over age 65 than any other age segment. Japan and China are already dealing with an aging population and not having enough younger people in the workforce. The United States is in a unique position since a part of its population growth comes through immigration, Barnett said.

“By welcoming people here to live and work, we can ensure having enough workers,” he said.

Barnett explained if you divide the world into three sections — the Western Hemisphere; Africa and the European Union; and Russia and Asia — that the Western Hemisphere led by the United States has what’s needed to be a global leader. He said the hemisphere is relatively peaceful compared to other parts of the world and has the resources to not only feed itself but also export food to other parts of the world.

“We are ripe here to have a near-shoring value chain and integrate our trade more, which will benefit everyone,” he said. 

David Liethen, attending Dairy Strong for the first time, called Barnett’s presentation insightful.

“He brought up a lot of issues that I had not thought about before, like how climate change may make people relocate but overall, he is very bullish on America remaining a global leader,” he said.

This year’s Dairy Strong conference brought more than 400 attendees, representing over 280,000 cows, and industry professionals to the KI Convention Center.

I like the notion of representing over a quarter-million cows.

I am moooving on up!