Technology restrictions: a strategic move that's falling short

 

Joseph Assad explains the conundrum.

There is a moment from my time living in Abu Dhabi that I have never forgotten. During a tense negotiation over a defense technology sale, talks had stalled — not over price, not over capability, but over American export control regulations that prevented us from delivering the full system the UAE needed. During a coffee break, a UAE Brigadier General pulled me aside and spoke to me in Arabic. Holding up a phone charging cable, he said quietly: "The U.S. wants to sell us this wire for $100. China will sell it to us for $20. We said we will pay the $100, but now your delegation says we must wait two years. We can have the Chinese wire tomorrow." 

He paused, then added with a resignation that still stings: "And when we say we will buy from China, the U.S. accuses us of betraying our friendship. What are we to do?"

That question deserves an honest answer from Washington. So far, it hasn't gotten one.

American export controls on semiconductors and related technologies were designed with a single adversary in mind: China. The logic was sound — deny Beijing access to advanced chips powering artificial intelligence, and you slow its military modernization and geopolitical ambitions ... [but] Overzealous and inflexible application of these controls has swept up trusted allies and strategic partners — particularly in the Gulf — leaving them locked out of American technology they are willing and able to buy.

. . .

China is responding to U.S. and allied export controls with a whole-of-nation effort to make itself independent of Western semiconductor technology. In 2019, the first Trump administration cut off Huawei's access to U.S. technology, a move that appeared to consign the company to irreversible decline. Instead, Huawei launched an effort to wean itself from reliance on U.S. technology — and by 2024, it had launched new products featuring advanced semiconductors and was developing 5G mobile network infrastructure.

There's more at the link.

It's a very real problem.  Mr. Assad suggests that the USA is moving in the right direction, trying to free up access to its latest technology in return for verified commitment from customer nations.  However, there will always be the problem of supplies filtering through from third parties.

I saw this at first hand in South Africa during the years of the mandatory UN arms embargo.  South Africa couldn't obtain major items, such as warships or fighters, from major powers, but still bought or made almost everything it needed.  Sophisticated nations such as Israel and Taiwan, and political allies such as Chile or Paraguay, could act as third party channels through whom much could be obtained.  Other nations such as West Germany and Portugal simply ordered more of some materials than they needed for their own armed forces and manufacturers, and sold the surplus to South African agents.  Romania, at the time behind Warsaw Pact lines, nevertheless defied its Communist principles (?) to sell carbon-fiber helicopter fuselage components through third parties to South Africa, which was able to obtain elsewhere (or make itself) the engines and avionics needed to build them into fully operational aircraft.  Thus, even though the whole world was technically obliged to restrict South Africa's access to high technology, it really wasn't that hard to bypass most of those restrictions.

(It helped that at the time, South Africa was the single largest producer of gold in the world.  Gold coins and bars make an untraceable and very acceptable medium of exchange when wanting to disguise the origin and/or destination of a shipment of high-tech gear.  Paperwork?  What paperwork?)

America's trade and technology war with China is simply running headlong into the same conundrum.  Despite restrictions, China was able to buy enough advanced US chips to study their design, and are now building their own equivalents - and apparently refusing to buy more from the USA, despite the lifting of the US technology embargo.  As for preventing other nations from buying Chinese technology, it all boils down to economics.  Charge too much, delay delivery enough, impose enough restrictions, and the customer will look somewhere else.  If someone's prepared to pay enough, or wants independence of supply strongly enough, there are always ways to get around restrictions.  Low-balling an opponent's price is another very popular way of gaining access to a market:  and, once gained, it can be maintained in all sorts of ways.

Peter

Third version lucky?

 

As I write these words, SpaceX is planning to launch the 12th Starship mission today.

SpaceX's Starship Version 3 is finally about to make its debut with a suborbital launch from Starbase, Texas.

The mission, dubbed Starship Flight 12, is the 12th test flight of SpaceX's integrated Starship-Super Heavy rocket, but the first flight of this new generation of the launch vehicle.

Because of all the changes and upgrades made to both stages of the two-stage rocket, SpaceX will not attempt to catch either the Starship upper stage (Ship 39) or the Super Heavy booster (Booster 19).

There's so much information to absorb, I couldn't summarize it in a brief blog post.  Therefore, here's a 15-minute video describing how we got to today's launch, and what the company expects from it.

Here's wishing success to SpaceX, and to the entire team involved in this project.

Peter

Tab clearing

 

I've come across several very interesting stories and reports over the past week or two, but haven't had time or space to give each one the attention it deserves.  In this blog post, I'll list them all, and provide a brief synopsis.  I highly recommend clicking over to the ones that interest you and reading them in full.

1.  Tragedy in the Maldives.

DiveMedic offers several blog posts that analyze the deaths of several divers in a deep-sea cave in the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean.  He's a very highly qualified and experienced diver himself, so his words carry a great deal of weight.  Follow each link to his reports, in chronological order:

Dive Accident

Compounding Tragedy

Risks

The Next Chapter

2.  Credit card fraud at the gas pump.

Wall Street Apes warns us that by physically blocking the pump from shutting off after you pump gas, thieves can go to the pump after you drive away and pump gas for themselves on your account.  Their report includes a video clip illustrating how it's done.

3.  Shortage of lube oil?

Tamara at View From The Porch notes that lubrication oils are likely to become a lot less readily available following the Iran war.  She reproduces a warning letter from AutoZone to its managers outlining what they can expect and how the company will try to deal with it.  Very important reading, IMHO.

4.  Our medicine supply is a national security issue.

RealClearWire warns that our top-heavy reliance on China for almost all our critical medications and/or the raw materials that go into them has become a genuine national security issue.  It notes that "More than 131 million people—nearly two-thirds of all U.S. adults—use prescription medications."

I've written about this issue before.  If you rely on prescription medications, I highly recommend that you build up a stockpile of at least six months' worth of each of them - if possible, a full year of each.  If their local doctor and/or pharmacy won't help with that, many Americans buy them from pharmacies outside our borders.  That's technically illegal, of course, and therefore I can't legally advise you to do it:  but what alternatives are there?  Some drive across the Mexican border, where pharmacies will help without turning a hair.  Some who can't do that use mail-order pharmacies in countries like India.  There are several of them.  Whatever you do, don't just sit back and say "Oh, well, there's nothing I can do about it."  That won't help keep you alive if the crunch comes.  All it will take is a Chinese bureaucratic edict blocking all medicine-related exports to the USA, and we'll be in a world of hurt within weeks.

5.  Lessons learned from Argentina's collapse.

The author warns that "many American preppers prepare for the wrong kind of collapse".  He describes how, when Argentina's economy blew up, the result was that "Society did not disappear. It simply became dangerous, unstable, and deeply unpredictable".  He offers practical suggestions to deal with increased crime and violence, and points out that reliance on weapons and ammunition is less important than more mundane factors.

6.  Military snipers are being put out of a job by drones.

An interesting assessment of how military snipers are being displaced in importance by drone warfare.  Snipers are becoming assistants to the drone operators, finding them targets, helping them focus on them, and supporting them as the higher-technology drone delivers far more damage, far more accurately than a bullet could.  Future battlefields may see far fewer snipers than in the past.

7.  But is it art?

To be read with tongue firmly in cheek:

Museum officials at the Louvre announced Friday that a portable latrine recovered from a forward operating base outside Fallujah, Iraq, has been placed on permanent display in the antiquities wing alongside works by da Vinci and Delacroix, with curators citing the interior wall art as some of the most raw and unfiltered human expression documented in the post-9/11 era.

The piece, a standard-issue plastic latrine manufactured in 2002 and last serviced at no documented point in its operational life, contains on its interior walls an estimated 340 individual works including pencil drawings, marker illustrations, carved inscriptions, and what the Louvre’s authentication team described in their formal report as a surprisingly consistent motif repeated across all four walls, the door, and part of the ceiling.

. . .

The Louvre’s acquisition statement, released Thursday, describes the wall art as an anonymous folk tradition rooted in the vernacular of the American enlisted experience, comparing the recurring phallic imagery to fertility symbols found in Paleolithic cave systems and noting that the sheer volume and anatomical commitment of the work suggests multiple contributing artists across a sustained period of time.

“These are not casual marks,” the statement reads. “These are declarations.”

The rest is just as funny.  Enjoy!

That's all for today.  I hope you enjoyed the variety.  If you did, let me know, and I'll probably try to do more such omnibus posts in future.

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 312

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

Sunday morning music

 

Let's have something restful and refreshing.  Here's baroque composer Tomaso Albinoni's Oboe Concerto in D minor, Op.9, No.2.  The soloist is Matthew Jennejohn, performing with Les Boréades de Montréal conducted by Francis Colpron.

Baroque music still has the capacity to move the soul, in its very simplicity.

Peter

Too cute!

 

I laughed out loud when my wife showed me this video clip on X.com.  It's a lady calling her bobcat kitten (named "Murder", of all things!) to come and play with her.  The result is very funny, as well as cute.  Cat lovers will enjoy it immensely.  Click over there to watch it for yourselves.

No, I do not want to raise a bobcat kitten of my own.  My fingers (and other body parts) are shrinking at the thought of those claws!

Peter

The lower the cost, the easier the proliferation

 

I was struck today by the title of an article:

10,000 Low-Cost Cruise Missiles In Three Years

Procurement Plan Laid Out By Pentagon

You can read the details for yourself at the link.  Of particular food for thought to me was this:  if "low-cost cruise missiles" are now a mainstream item, how long can it be before they become cheap enough - and easy enough - to be manufactured almost anywhere?  And, if and when that happens, how long will it take renegade religious or tribal groups (e.g. the Houthis in Yemen), or terrorist organizations (e.g. Hezbollah, ISIS, Al Qaeda, etc.) to start manufacturing their own equivalents?

It's not as hard as it sounds.  Remember Bruce Simpson?  More than two decades ago, he designed and built a low-cost cruise missile (LCCM) in his home garage, using off-the-shelf components bought from Internet retailers.  He wrote an article about how easy it was to do it, including the following excerpt:

... during the past decade, huge strides have been made in commercializing much of the technology on which the cruise missile is based and it is my firm belief that building a low-cost, autonomous, self-guided, air-breathing missile with a significant payload capability is now well within the reach of almost any person or small group of persons with the necessary knowledge and skills.

Targeting/Guidance

As mentioned above, one of the key components of a cruise missile's guidance system is a mil-spec satellite-based GPS system.

Today, compact, high quality, high accuracy GPS receivers are readily available for just a few hundred dollars. The inclusion of an easily used computer interface in many of these units makes them well suited for use in a low-cost cruise missile (LCCM).

While the GPS provides information necessary for tracking waypoints and identifying the final destination, smaller course corrections (for stability) can be provided by the solid-state gyro systems now readily available for use in model helicopters and aircraft.

Instantaneous measurement of altitude and groundspeed can be provided by a semi-forward looking radar and doppler radar units (possibly built around components such as these and these. This allows the LCCM to fly lower than would be possible if relying solely on GPS and offers a degree of contour-hugging even when the exact nature of the terrain is not available.

The gyroscopic and radar-based systems could also provide an inertial backup guidance facility in the event that the GPS system was lost, blocked or simply turned off when an attack by such LCCMs was imminent or underway.

Onboard Computing

As Moore's law continues to produce a rapid rise in the speed and fall in the cost of computer chips, we've already reached the point where obtaining sufficient number crunching capability is no longer difficult or expensive.

Single-board computer systems are another readily available off the shelf component that can be recruited for use in an LCCM. Even the sophisticated realitime operating systems necessary for supporting the type of software needed to interface the guidance/targeting systems to the control servos are just a download away.

. . .

The total component costs for an LCCM (less payload) could be as little as $6,000 for the smallest, simplest version, with a larger, more sophisticated design still requiring little more than $10,000 worth of parts and materials.

There's more at the link.

That technical data, and those prices, date back to May 2002 - twenty-four years ago this month.  In those intervening years, components have become much, much smaller and lighter, much more capable, and much cheaper.  They're still freely available as elements of radio-controlled models (aircraft, boats, vehicles, whatever).  Plastic sheeting, 3D printed components, and ultra-light structural elements are easy to buy and often just as easy to make yourself.  Heck, people have built and flown in ultralight aircraft made out of packaging cardboard!  I'd say it's likely the cost to home-build a LCCM today might well be less than $2,000, and at most $3,000.  Cargo delivery drones can be even cheaper:  for example, a drone capable of delivering 20-odd pounds at a range of 6+ miles costs only a little over $500 in quantity.  Longer range?  Heavier cargo capacity?  No problem.  A warhead would be extra, of course, but with the advent of powerful "home-brewed" explosives, a warhead strong enough to demolish the average house - but still small and light enough to be carried by a LCCM or light delivery drone - could probably be assembled in a domestic bathroom or kitchen.

So, if our armed forces are talking about buying thousands of low-cost cruise missiles, what are the odds that terrorist and/or extremist groups aren't planning on doing exactly the same thing?  How would we defend against such simple, terrifying weapons if a wave of them were launched into the average American city?  It could be done by driving a rented truck or trucks to a suitable launch site, a few miles from the target zone (e.g. a park or golf course, particularly at night, or putting them onto a boat a couple of miles offshore);  erecting a wire or wood frame to hold the missiles at an appropriate angle for launch, and aimed in the right direction;  and setting them off at the chosen time.  Unless the perpetrators were seen during the preparation phase, it's doubtful they'd be detected in time to stop them;  and once the missiles had been fired, they'd simply abandon the trucks and drive away in other inconspicuous vehicles.  For that matter, they may not care about getting away.  They may have a martyrdom mentality that would welcome a final shootout with the cops (on television, of course, for the whole world to see).

That scenario is entirely feasible and practical.  I think we've got a whole new threat to our security to consider.  What we can do about it (if anything) remains to be seen.

Peter

The economic consequences of the Iran war begin to make themselves felt

 

I hasten to note that the United States is likely to experience rather less severe economic consequences from the Iran war than most other parts of the world.  We produce much of our own raw material needs, and export a great deal to other nations.  First World nations and those with large financial reserves will still be able to get much of what they need, but Third World countries that can't afford higher prices are likely to be outbid for the available supply.  They're going to find themselves in a very difficult situation.

The problem is not just fuel, but also the raw materials made from (or using) fuel that are in turn used to manufacture the refined and/or manufactured products that the world wants to buy.  In two recent articles, Jay Martin sums up some of the problems.  First, he looks at fuel and related products.

The International Energy Agency has called [the closure of the Strait of Hormuz] the greatest global energy security threat in history.

The consequences are spreading like cracks in a windshield. Qatar’s Ras Laffan complex - the largest liquefied natural gas plant on Earth, responsible for supplying fuel to dozens of countries - has suffered extensive missile damage, knocking out 17% of Qatar’s LNG export capacity for up to five years.

Taiwan, which relies on LNG for 40% of its electricity, has an eleven-day emergency stockpile.

Australia has lowered its diesel quality standards and watched hundreds of petrol stations run dry.

Slovenia became the first EU state to introduce fuel rationing.

South Korea is enforcing a five-day vehicle rotation system.

Michael Haigh, the Global Head of Commodities Research at Société Générale - one of the largest banks in Europe - said last week that the final vessels carrying jet fuel to the UK were arriving, and that “there is no more after that.”

Let that sink in. No more jet fuel for the United Kingdom.

Dow Chemical - one of the world’s largest chemical companies, whose products end up in everything from food packaging to medical supplies - doubled its polyethylene price overnight.

Why does that matter?

Polyethylene is in your grocery bags, water bottles, food packaging, medical equipment, and much more. If you bought it at a store, there’s a good chance it touched polyethylene before it reached your hands.

Polyethylene is made from petroleum-based feedstocks, and when Hormuz closed, about 50% of the global polyethylene supply was affected.

They say that when the price of energy goes up, the price of everything goes up. You could say the same thing about polyethylene.

This is how a war in the Middle East shows up at your grocery store. Energy doesn’t stay in the energy sector. It flows through everything you buy, everything you eat, everything you build.

There's more at the link.  He goes on to discuss financial aspects of the crisis.

Second, he shows how supply chain problems "cascade" from Hormuz to the rest of the world.

The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow stretch of water between Iran and Oman through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil, a third of its seaborne natural gas, and the refined fuels, fertilizers, and industrial chemicals that power factories and farms on four continents flow every single day.

What [observers] might miss, is the cascade.

How a fuel tanker that can’t leave the Persian Gulf becomes a factory that can’t run in Korea.

How a factory that can’t run in Korea becomes a product that doesn’t land on a shelf in Seattle.

How your iPhone alone pulls materials and components from five different continents.

. . .

The modern economy is not a collection of countries. It is a single machine. Every country is a gear inside it. And the first gears to jam are usually not the ones people are watching.

In this case, everyone is watching oil.

No one is watching sulphur.

Most people have no reason to think about sulphur. It does not show up in presidential speeches. It does not trend on Twitter. Nobody builds an investment thesis around yellow rocks sitting in a port warehouse.

But sulphur is one of those boring industrial inputs that quietly hold the world together.

You do not need sulphur because it is rare. You need it because modern industry runs on it. Sulphur is used to make sulphuric acid, one of the most important industrial chemicals on earth. Think of sulphuric acid as the solvent, cleaner, and processing agent that helps turn raw materials into usable products.

Farmers use it to make fertilizer. Miners use it to separate metals from rock. Manufacturers use it in everything from batteries to chemicals to refined fuels.

Every economy needs sulphur and the industrial chemicals it helps create. And China manufactures roughly 45 percent of the world’s industrial chemical supply.

China imports much of the sulphur it needs from the Persian Gulf, turns it into the industrial chemicals used in mining, agriculture, and manufacturing, and then sells them to the rest of the world.

That means when the Strait of Hormuz is threatened or closed, China’s access to a raw material it needs to produce the chemicals that the rest of the world depends on becomes compromised.

And when a country runs short of a critical industrial input, it does not behave like a polite global supplier. It acts in self-interest.

First, it protects its own farmers, because fertilizer is food security.

Then it protects its own factories, because factories are employment, exports, tax revenue, and national power.

Then it protects its own strategic industries - batteries, electronics, defence, infrastructure, and energy.

Whatever is left can be sold to the rest of the world.

That is where the cascade begins:

The war in Iran disrupts shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

China runs short on sulphur.

Chinese chemical production falls.

Foreign buyers are pushed to the back of the line, as Beijing has less to share with the global economy.

Mining companies in Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia lose access to the chemicals they need to produce metals. And then the price of everything that depends on those metals starts to rise.

. . .

Chile, the world’s largest copper producer...

Indonesia, the world’s largest nickel producer…

Peru, the third-largest copper producer…

Zambia, Africa’s second-largest copper producer…

Every one of them runs on Chinese chemicals - and every one of them is seeing orders slowed, cancelled, or repriced.

That is what “one nation’s shortage is everybody’s problem” looks like in practice.

A war in the Persian Gulf becomes a sulphur shortage in China. A sulphur shortage in China becomes a chemical shortage in the Congo. A chemical shortage in the Congo becomes a copper and cobalt shortage everywhere. And a metals shortage everywhere means higher prices for the battery in your phone, the copper wiring behind the drywall in your house, and the data centers running your favourite AI tool.

That is the cascade.

And we are barely into it.

Again, more at the link.

This is a very real issue.  It will most certainly affect the USA, although, as I said earlier, possibly not so much as other countries.  Some states will fare worse than others.  To name just one example:

The arrival of the last oil tanker carrying crude from the Middle East to California this week has state lawmakers on edge, and an energy expert warning of a gas price “crisis” ... America’s war with Iran has closed off the Strait of Hormuz, and that tanker was the last to depart the region for California before war broke out. The state has no interstate gas pipelines and is heavily reliant on imports.

California will probably have no choice but to suspend its very restrictive fuel refining standards, because refineries in other states aren't set up to support them.  Furthermore, it'll have to buy diesel, gasoline, aviation fuel and any other fuel it needs from anyone who has it, because it has too few refineries to process its own fuel needs.  That fuel will have to be imported on tankers, because there are no interstate fuel pipelines to California:  but with literally hundreds of oil tankers locked up in the Persian Gulf, unable or unwilling to transit the Strait of Hormuz, enough tankers may not be available.  Even if they are, California will have to outbid other states (and foreign nations) who want US refinery output, which will lead to a concertina-like shortage in those states, who will in their turn outbid others, and so on, and so on.  Thus, a California gas problem will rapidly become a US-wide gas problem.  I'm pretty sure prices will go up significantly, and there may be shortages severe enough to require some form of (hopefully temporary) restriction on when, where and how much fuel one can buy.

That's just one example, from one state.  Do your own reading in the financial and industrial media, and you'll find many more.  Yet - we're probably living in the most fortunate nation in the world, in terms of our national ability to cope with an economic crisis of this magnitude.  Spare a thought for those who are less fortunate, particularly the Third World nations that are unlikely to be able to afford enough fuel for their needs, enough fertilizer for their farmers, and even enough food to feed their people.  If they buy food for their people, they won't have the fuel to distribute it.  If they don't buy fertilizer, their crops for the next growing season will be drastically diminished - meaning they'll have to find even more money (that they don't have) to import more food (that they can't grow) . . . and so on, and so on, ad nauseam.

Even if the Iran war is resolved tomorrow, it'll take three to four months at a minimum - more likely six months or even longer - to refill the oil and feedstock supply lines and resume full-scale production.  Don't expect any early relief from the stresses this will place on economies worldwide.

Peter

The early days of drone warfare

 

CDR Salamander noted yesterday that the Iranian Shahed-136 drone was based, at least in part, on a joint US-West German development from the 1980's.  He quotes Wikipedia's description.

In the early 1980s, the United States and West Germany began developing an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) designed to detect and engage enemy radar systems. The aircraft was also intended to mimic larger aircraft, acting as a decoy to divert enemy fire from manned aircraft. On the German side, Dornier, and later its successor company DASA, was working on the project for the German Air Force.

During the project’s development, a workable seeker head could not be developed, limiting its suitability for the intended anti-radar mission. This, along with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, led to the project’s eventual termination. Following the end of the project, details of the system’s design were sold to Israel, which would develop its own IAI Harpy.

There's more at the link.

That's true, of course, but there was an additional drone being developed at the same time that was also sold to Israel.  It was a South African project known as the Kentron ARD-10 Lark.  The following image and report date from the early 1990's.

At the time, South Africa was becoming increasingly sophisticated in its use of the relatively primitive unmanned aerial vehicles of the time.  I had some peripheral involvement in the electronics being developed for them.  An account of the period includes the following:

Various use must have been made during the following years after 1983, however the next open mention was during the 1987-88 raids into Angola (Operations Modular/Hooper/Packer) in which extensive use was made of UAV's for surveillance, reconnaissance, artillery spotting and more interestingly to lure Soviet SAM batteries out of hiding so that our long range G-5/6 guns could hit them. Two Kentron Seeker systems were lost to the last mentioned tactic, although it was apparently more than worth it - many expensive SAM-8/9/13 were fired attempting to shoot the Seeker's down, in doing so not only did they waste valuable ammunition - but also revealed their positions and many of their Soviet SAM sites were then promptly destroyed by G-5/6 artillery fire (apparently one Seeker survived between 16-17 SAM-8 missiles being fired at it before it was finally shot down).

The latter engagements were during 1987/88.  As a direct result of those engagements, the ARD-10 was developed as a more advanced surveillance and reconnaissance platform, with particular emphasis on forcing enemy radars and air defense ordnance to reveal their position.  However, during the same period South Africa embarked on the process that was to lead to democratic elections in 1994, and the ARD-10 was one of many military projects (including the Carver strike fighter) that were canceled due to the peace conference and the end of the Border War.  Its design was sold to Israel for a relative pittance, probably at about the same time that the US-West German project found the same destination.  There seems little doubt that both of those designs were used as input to Israel's Harpy drone, shown below.

It achieved wide international sales and was prominent in a number of smaller wars.  It was later developed into the much more sophisticated Harop drone, shown below, which in modern versions is pretty much state-of-the-art in its field.  It became prominent due to its success in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020. 

Information available about the Kentron ARD-10, Dornier DAR, and Israeli Harpy drones was undoubtedly studied in Iran, and that country's subsequent Shahed 136 bears an unmistakeable resemblance to them all.  All of those aircraft are relatively backward and primitive compared to modern designs;  but then, for a simple strike drone that can be bought cheaply in large numbers and launched in "swarms" to overwhelm enemy defenses, one doesn't need great sophistication.

Russia manufactures the Shahed 136 under license as the Geran-2, and has apparently developed a jet-propelled version of the drone that flies much faster and higher.  This will be harder to intercept, and if its cost can be kept low enough to afford mass production, may make air defense's job much more difficult.  As long as the cost to intercept the drone can be kept higher than the cost to build and operate the drone, the attacker will have an economic advantage.  We'll have to see whether that remains the case as drone technology advances.  If "stealthy" attack drones can be made cheaply enough (something I'm sure many nations are working on), they may pose a grave threat to almost all air defense systems.

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 311

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

On the road again

 

My wife and I are headed to Amarillo, where Alma Boykin has invited me to scare terrify enlighten her class about what Africa is really like, versus what their "woke" textbook portrays.  Needless to say, the latter bears little or no relationship to reality!

I'll be offline until Monday morning.  Amuse yourselves with the bloggers in my sidebar.

Peter

Adventures with medical bureaucracy

 

Last Friday I mentioned that my blog post that day would be abbreviated due to a medical appointment.  I duly attended it, and it accomplished what I wanted.  I asked about alternative neurosurgical practices, since I'm not happy with the one I've been using, and the doctor referred me to another neurosurgeon in Dallas for further investigation.  (It seems the problem is to decide precisely what surgery I need:  to fuse two or three more vertebrae in addition to the existing pair, or to remove the latter and encase my entire lumbar spine in a sort of metal cage to stabilize the whole area.  There appears to be serious disagreement over which approach would work best, so I've asked for a second opinion from a more professional professional, if you know what I mean.)

So far, so good . . . but then I called the new doctor's office to set up the appointment.  The conversation went something like this.

Me:  I've been referred to Dr. X for further investigation of my spine injury.  You should have been sent my medical history, copies of X-rays and myelograms, and all that stuff.

Doctor's nurse:  Let me check . . . Yes, we have those.  You'll have to get another myelogram, though, because the previous one was done more than six months ago.  Dr. X won't see you until the new results are available.

Me:  Er . . . this is a problem.  A myelogram is a very expensive and complex procedure.  I can't just ask for it as a private patient:  I have to be referred for it by a doctor.  However, if Dr. X won't see me, he can't issue the referral;  and my local general practitioner certainly can't do so, because it's a specialist procedure.  I can't ask for a referral from my previous neurosurgeons, because I'm moving on from them.  What now?

Doctor's nurse:  I'm afraid that's Dr. X's protocol.  He won't see you without an updated myelogram.

Me:  Well, his protocol has just run headlong into medical bureaucrats, and I'm pretty sure they're going to win.  You're asking me to do the impossible.

Doctor's nurse:  I'm sorry, but my hands are tied.  You're going to have to find some other way to get that myelogram.

Me:  Hangs up, bites tongue, bangs head against brick wall, etc.

I checked with my general practitioner, and sure enough, they can't refer me for a myelogram because it's a specialist procedure, outside their area of competence.  The neurosurgery practice that ordered the previous myelogram has no good reason to order another one.  After all, I'm going to see one of their competitors for a second opinion,  so they'll expect the new doctor to prescribe whatever tests he thinks are necessary.  They're not going to do it for him.

"Laugh!", they said.  "Things could be worse!"  So I did.  And they were.

Oh, well.  This, too, shall pass . . . I just need the administrative equivalent of an enema for the bureaucrats, to make sure it does!

Peter

Two different perspectives on technology, and both are thought-provoking

 

First, an article in American Intelligence addresses artificial intelligence in the agricultural sector.  (American Intelligence provides very few details about itself or those behind it.  I did a search using Supergrok, which provided these details, if you're interested.)

America cannot lead the AI farming revolution while federal policy keeps imported labor cheaper than machines

Every agricultural economy has a legacy. The question is which part is being preserved. The fertile soil is a legacy. The family farms are a legacy. The harvest is a legacy. So is the labor model that brings it in. And across American agriculture, that model has for forty years depended heavily on foreign labor, illegal hiring, and a political class determined not to disturb either.

When a city brochure pairs “legacy” with AI robotics in the same breath, it is not just describing the future. It is making a quiet promise: the technology will advance, but the labor model will not.

America is preparing for the AI age everywhere except the place that feeds the country.

. . .

Autonomous tractors already plant, till, and spray without a driver. Computer-vision systems can scout crops plant by plant. Machine-learning models can optimize water, fertilizer, pest control, and yield down to the meter. Robotic harvesters can pick faster, cleaner, and longer than hand crews. Precision irrigation can be guided by satellite analytics. AI-assisted breeding can compress decades of plant selection into months.

The question is no longer whether American agriculture can automate. It is whether Washington will stop subsidizing the cheap labor model that makes automation a losing bet.

America should be leading this revolution. It builds the software, funds the research, trains the engineers, and talks constantly about technological dominance. Yet federal policy still props up an agricultural labor model built on cheap imported labor, illegal hiring, and guestworker expansion. That bargain has kept human labor cheaper than machines, delayed mechanization, and now risks leaving the United States on the sidelines of a revolution it should own.

There's more at the link.

To a technologist, that sounds wonderful.  Machine intelligence and labor will take over the agricultural sector, modernizing everything and guaranteeing much greater yields and more efficient utilization of resources.  So far, so good . . . but what happens to the many millions of people who earn their living working on farms and in the food industry?  When they're replaced in the fields and the food processors, where will they find employment?  Almost every other sector of the economy is also paring back on human resources and switching to ever greater automation.  How is our economy, our nation, going to cope with the burden of all those thrown out of work by this sea-change?

Furthermore, what will it do to nations that cannot afford to grow their own food even today, but also cannot afford to automate their agriculture?  Will there be seeds they can grow, or will even that be absorbed into techno-agriculture?  What about the illegal aliens who used to flood across our borders to work on American farms?  Now they'll be stuck in their own countries, without work, and possibly without local food either.

I'm not a Luddite.  I think automation and technology can serve us well, if properly managed, and hold out great hope for the future.  However, we can't embrace them blindly unless we also account for those who will be displaced by them.  How are we going to cope with them in our increasingly digital society?  How are they going to adapt, particularly if there's no work available for them to earn a living while they and their families adapt?

That dilemma was discussed last year at the Nexus Conference 2025, 'Apocalypse Now: The Revelation of our Time'.  It was held under the auspices of the Nexus Institute, which describes its mission like this:

As an independent non-profit foundation, the Nexus Institute brings together the world’s foremost intellectuals, artists, scientists and politicians, and encourages them to discuss the questions that really matter. How are we to live? How can we shape our future? Can we learn from our past? Which values and ideas are important, and why?

From reading its Web site, the Institute seems fairly typically left-wing and progressive, but it does appear to try to provide those with different philosophies with an opportunity to participate in wide-ranging discussions.  Here's an excerpt from a panel from last year's conference titled "The Wild West of digital technology in a capitalist system".  I don't agree with many of the points raised (unsurprising, from my right-of-center perspective), but I think they present aspects of the problem that are important, and worth examining.

The future of our technological society is far from settled, and is in many cases unsettling to think about.  I try to keep informed about all sides of the debate, and the article and video clip above have helped me to do that.  I hope you enjoyed them, too.

Peter

Shocking news - except to Africans

 

I note the following news report.

A South African hotelier is believed to have been eaten by a 15ft crocodile after human remains were found inside the swollen reptile.

The animal was shot from a helicopter and airlifted from the crocodile-infested Komati River in a daring police operation before a post-mortem examination was carried out.

A ring was found inside the belly of the 500kg apex predator and is thought to have belonged to Gabriel Batista, 59.

The businessman was swept away in floodwaters while trying to drive across the Komati River in the north-east of the country a week ago.

Investigators will carry out DNA tests on the bones and flesh found inside the crocodile.

. . .

 As well as the body parts, six different types of shoes were found, according to Capt Potgieter.

There's more at the link, including images.

The comments from friends and acquaintances in the USA have been amusing.  A surprising number are absolutely horrified that a man who'd just escaped drowning had promptly been eaten by a wild animal.  It's almost as if it was unfair, somehow.  They weren't comforted by my assurance that in large parts of Africa, that sort of thing happens on an almost daily basis.  As for the "six different types of shoes" . . . yeah, I'd say Mr. Batista was far from the only human meal that croc had enjoyed.  Local tribespeople were doubtless greatly relieved by the news that it had been caught.

Rural Africa remains a very dark continent, filled with very deadly animals.  Actual examples:

• A man visits a neighboring village, gets drunk, and decides to walk back to his village along a deserted path at night.  Halfway there, a passing leopard finds him and decides that he'll make a satisfactory supper.
• A man goes looking for a lost cow along a river bank.  A hippo, grazing on long grass a short distance away, decides that she doesn't want him (or anyone else) getting between her and the water, which is her security blanket.  She bites him in half.
• A hunter gets too close to an elephant, which promptly tramples him into pink slush in the mud.  He isn't able to shoot her in time to save himself, and in the stress of the moment, only wounds her.  While she's recovering from the bullet wound, she kills several local villagers who get too close to her, on the general principle that if a man did this to her, she's going to presume that any man she sees is going to try to do likewise.
• An armored personnel carrier is driving through thick brush and trees.  The vehicle commander is standing with his head and shoulders outside the turret, trying to see through the thick growth to plot his course.  A boomslang (tree snake) is jarred off its branch by the APC as it brushes against the tree.  It falls onto the vehicle commander, bites him (injecting a full dose of poison, which proves fatal) and then falls through the turret hatch into the interior of the vehicle, biting two other soldiers before it's killed by a rain of rifle butts.  The two survive, but only because it had already injected much of its venom into the vehicle commander.  They're sick for several weeks.

All those incidents were personally known to me.  I was nearby when they all happened.  That's the norm in wild rural Africa.  The cities can be a lot tamer, but not always.  A few decades ago, I remember two leopards who set up house in the concrete basement and utility spaces of the biggest soccer stadium in Soweto, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people.  They lived off local cats and dogs.  When their presence was deduced (due to the rapid decline in other local pets and wildlife, and the presence of their tracks after rain) the local police were asked to hunt them down and shoot them.  Freely translated and interpreted, the local cops' reply was along the lines of, "You want us to go into a concrete labyrinth, with no light at all, to hunt two big cats that can see in the dark?  Oh, hell, no!  Here, take our rifles and show us how it's done.  We'll watch.  In fact, we'll sell tickets on pay-per-view!"

I'm very sorry for Mr. Batista, and for his family, of course . . . but that's Africa:  and in Africa, the good guys don't always win.  It goes with the territory.

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 310

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

Sunday morning music

 

I've found that a lot of people know the more "common" songs by Jethro Tull, but most are unaware that there are literally dozens of less-well-known pieces out there.  Some are outtakes, some are from concept albums that were never released as such, and some appeared in other channels.  Many of them are a lot of fun, and I enjoy listening to them.

Today I'd like to bring you four of Jethro Tull's less-well-known pieces.  The first, originally intended for their album "Broadsword and the Beast" but left off the final set, is called "Motoreyes".  This recording is from the compilation album "20 Years of Jethro Tull".

Next, here's the theme music from the 1984 Channel 4 television series "Blood Of The British".  David Palmer wrote most of the music for the series, but Jethro Tull performed the title song, "Coronach".

From their double CD "Nightcap:  The Unreleased Masters 1973-1991", here's "Rosa On The Factory Floor".

And finally, again from their "20 Years of Jethro Tull" compilation, here's one of my favorites:  "Part Of The Machine".

Please let me know in Comments if these songs were new to you, and if you'd like more of Jethro Tull's less-well-known music.  If so, I'll put up a few more posts like this.

Peter

Another fiddly Friday (medically speaking)

 

I have an early appointment with a pain management specialist today, so I haven't been able to put up my usual longer blog post.  If I have time later, I may do so.

In the meantime, here are two cartoons from the past week or so that caught my eye and made me laugh.  Click either image to be taken to the cartoon's Web page for a larger view.

Wish me luck!

Peter