The algorithm is manipulating you

 

We've all read warnings and horror stories about how algorithms are analyzing our online behavior and trying to steer us to their products, their channels, their platforms.  Thing is, it's a very real danger, and it's getting worse.  EKO provides this perspective.  I highly recommend reading the whole of the excerpt below, and watching both video clips.

let’s start here with something seemingly innocent, the budweiser ad from the superbowl.

in the primary signalling sphere of “positioning and product” this represents a profound volte face from the recent bud light echo chamber brand self-immolation fiascos, a return to images of growth and aspiration and rippling pride.

it’s a great ad. if you have not encountered it, see for yourself. experience it.

ok. got that?

it’s practically cinema, right? a story of friendship and coming of age and of becoming.

it’s got it all.

it’s moving stuff.

but it also has something you probably did not see, a meta game beneath the game where the real magic trick is taking place at a deeper neurological level, a firmware level cheat code to which the human mind has very little access.

let’s explore:

now watch this video.  [The critical bit comes from about 1m. 40sec. onward;  skip ahead to that point if you wish.]

now watch the budweiser ad again. see how they took this exact fractionation strategy and amplified and optimized it took you up, down, up, down, rain, protect, strive, fail, leap, fly, power chords, free bird, aaaaaaaand beer ad.

they boiled this whole concatenation down to its most bare bones, essential elements and ran a whole suggestability enhancement procession in a one minute experience.

i would wager they knew that.

i will also bet you that it has sold absolute truckloads of beer.

but this is not the scary part.

we, as humans, are used to ads. we know what they are for and embed a certain skepticism. OK, so maybe we buy a few more brewskis, but whatever, this is hardly the stuff of civilizational threat.

but you have to start stepping back to see the rest of the picture.

social media has become a barrage of short form information, increasingly video driven and increasingly exposed to savagely intense evolutionary stressors. the currency of online is attention. it’s time. twitter speaks of "maximizing unregretted user-seconds." this is what that means. it means “how can i get you to watch more of this and to want to watch more of this?”

keep in mind that algorithms are psychopaths. they have no theory of your well being that factors into this sort of optimization. it’s just “keep the typewriter monkey happy and online.” and every outlet is locked in the same arms race so no one gets to opt out. those who do not play this way get left behind and the user seconds go somewhere else.

there’s a worrying parallel to what happened with US food companies. they did not set out to create travesties of sugar and salt and over-amped artificiality, but as they experimented with it, they saw that people bought more. the feedback loop of “people will eat more froot loops than fruit” was obvious on revenue lines and if you do that for too long, pretty soon customers basically cannot even taste wholesome food anymore. it’s not enough of a dopamine hit.

media is the same.

what started as an inevitable game to maximize user time and click through rates has becomes somehting altogether other, a monster in the depths that cannot be seen, only felt as its machinations twist minds and demolish perspective.

There's more at the link.

It's almost diabolically clever, isn't it?  The thing is, it works.  It works so well that every single major player in the news media, social media, advertising and the entertainment industry is using it against us every single day.  So are politicians, from both sides of the aisle and everywhere else in the public sector.  We aren't being respected as individuals.  We're sheep to be shorn, votes to be manipulated, suckers to be fed pablum in exchange for our dollars and unthinking loyalty.

Remember that.  We're all being manipulated daily.  It takes sustained effort and really hard work to break free from that cycle and recognize it for what it is.

Peter

The speed with which AI is evolving is startling

 

I'm obliged to the anonymous reader who sent me the link to Matt Shumer's latest blog article about the current state of artificial intelligence (AI).  It's a remarkable article - so much so that I can't begin to cover all its points in a short post like this.  Here's a small sample to whet your appetite.

For years, AI had been improving steadily. Big jumps here and there, but each big jump was spaced out enough that you could absorb them as they came. Then in 2025, new techniques for building these models unlocked a much faster pace of progress. And then it got even faster. And then faster again. Each new model wasn't just better than the last... it was better by a wider margin, and the time between new model releases was shorter.

. . .

I've always been early to adopt AI tools. But the last few months have shocked me. These new AI models aren't incremental improvements. This is a different thing entirely.

And here's why this matters to you, even if you don't work in tech.

The AI labs made a deliberate choice. They focused on making AI great at writing code first... because building AI requires a lot of code. If AI can write that code, it can help build the next version of itself. A smarter version, which writes better code, which builds an even smarter version. Making AI great at coding was the strategy that unlocks everything else. That's why they did it first. My job started changing before yours not because they were targeting software engineers... it was just a side effect of where they chose to aim first.

They've now done it. And they're moving on to everything else.

The experience that tech workers have had over the past year, of watching AI go from "helpful tool" to "does my job better than I do", is the experience everyone else is about to have. Law, finance, medicine, accounting, consulting, writing, design, analysis, customer service. Not in ten years. The people building these systems say one to five years. Some say less. And given what I've seen in just the last couple of months, I think "less" is more likely.

. . .

The models available today are unrecognizable from what existed even six months ago. The debate about whether AI is "really getting better" or "hitting a wall" — which has been going on for over a year — is over. It's done. Anyone still making that argument either hasn't used the current models, has an incentive to downplay what's happening, or is evaluating based on an experience from 2024 that is no longer relevant. I don't say that to be dismissive. I say it because the gap between public perception and current reality is now enormous, and that gap is dangerous... because it's preventing people from preparing.

. . .

This is different from every previous wave of automation, and I need you to understand why. AI isn't replacing one specific skill. It's a general substitute for cognitive work. It gets better at everything simultaneously. When factories automated, a displaced worker could retrain as an office worker. When the internet disrupted retail, workers moved into logistics or services. But AI doesn't leave a convenient gap to move into. Whatever you retrain for, it's improving at that too.

. . .

We're past the point where this is an interesting dinner conversation about the future. The future is already here. It just hasn't knocked on your door yet.

It's about to.

There's much more at the link.

I can only recommend very strongly that you click over to Mr. Shumer's blog and read the entire article.  He knows whereof he speaks, and does so with far more authority and experience than most so-called "experts" in the field.  If you wish, compare what he says with Elon Musk's views on the short-term evolution of AI.  They're pretty much in step with each other.

This is extraordinarily important.  It's going to affect all of us in ways we can hardly foresee or imagine right now.  Naysayers who dismiss AI as "just another fad" or "only a large language model" or "only as good as its programmers" are missing the point.  AI is becoming a self-perpetuating, self-improving, self-expanding phenomenon that may well have a greater impact on human society - in a vastly shorter time - than the Renaissance.  Its impact is likely to be at least as great.

Go read the whole thing, and talk to your spouses, your children and those of your friends who are in the workforce about these things.  How can we prepare for the "Brave New World" that confronts us?  Mr. Shumer offers several very useful suggestions.  Which of them can we apply to ourselves?

Peter

So much for billable hours!

 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is having some unexpected consequences, and they're still shaking themselves out as the impact spreads.  Jeff Childers reports:

The Financial Times reported that KPMG— one of the world’s Big Four accounting firms— bullied its own auditor into a 14% fee cut. Their argument was elegant in its simplicity: if your AI is doing the work, your people shouldn’t be billing for it. KPMG’s hapless auditor, Grant Thornton, tried to kick but quickly folded like a WalMart lawn chair, dropping its auditing fee from $416,000 to $357,000.

And now every CFO on Earth is reaching for a calculator.

Here’s the dark comedy. Grant Thornton’s UK audit leader bragged in a December blog post that AI was making their work “faster and smarter.” KPMG took note, and immediately asked why it was still paying the slower-and-dumber price. This is why lawyers tell their clients to stop posting on social media. The marketing department just became the billing department’s worst enemy.

As a lawyer who bills by the hour —and I suspect many of you work in professions that do the same— I can assure everyone that this story sent a terrifying chill racing through the spines of every white-collar professional who’s been out there cheerfully babbling about AI adoption at industry conferences.

The billable hour has survived the fax machine, personal computers, email, electronic filing, spreadsheets, and the entire internet. The billable hour has the survival instincts of a post-apocalyptic cockroach and the institutional momentum of a Senate tradition. But AI might finally be the dinosaur killer, and KPMG just showed everyone exactly how the asteroid hits: your client reads your own press release and demands a discount.

. . .

The billable hour won’t die overnight. But it just got a terminal diagnosis. Every professional services firm that’s spent the last two years bragging about AI efficiency is now staring at the same problem: you can’t brag to your clients you’re faster and also charge them for the same number of hours. As they say at KPMG, it doesn’t add up. Somewhere in a law firm right now, a partner is quietly deleting a LinkedIn post about how AI is “transforming their practice.” Smart move.

There's more at the link.

It's not just company-to-company billing, either.  How many professional services do we, as consumers, use, and get charged by the hour?

• Service your car - hourly charge for the mechanic.
• File your taxes - hourly charge by the tax preparer.
• Domestic services such as plumber, electrician, etc. - hourly rate for labor, plus parts, etc.

How many of these services will be affected by AI?  Quite a few, I'm guessing.  A mechanic can use AI to finish his repairs more quickly, as the software guides him through the process on an unfamiliar vehicle.  The tax preparer is almost certainly going to use AI to do his job, so the number of hours they spend on the job should go down - and so should your bill.  Even domestic service calls should be quicker and easier if the technician or professional can look up a reference to what he's doing, possibly on equipment on which he's never been trained, and do the job faster and better.

I think AI can be considered the monkey wrench that just got tossed into the professional billing pool.  This should be interesting . . .

Peter

Tell your children...

 

... that as they prepare to enter adult life, they really, really need to adjust their thinking on what they're going to do for a career, let alone a short-term job.  From a post at X.com:

Mike Rowe: “We’ve been telling kids for 15 years to learn to code.”

“Well, AI is coming for the coders.”

“It’s not coming for the welders, the plumbers, the steamfitters, the pipefitters, the HVAC, or the electricians.”

“In Aspen, I sat and listened to Larry Fink say we need 500,000 electricians in the next couple of years—not hyperbole.”

“The BlueForge Alliance, who oversees our maritime industrial base—that’s 15,000 individual companies who are collectively charged with building and delivering nuclear-powered subs to the Navy … calls and says, we’re having a hell of a time finding tradespeople. Can you help?”

“I said, I don’t know, man … how many do you need? He says, 140,000.”

“These are our submarines. Things go hypersonic, a little sideways with China, Taiwan, our aircraft carriers are no longer the point of the spear. They’re vulnerable.”

“Our submarines matter, and these guys have a pinch point because they can’t find welders and electricians to get them built.”

“The automotive industry needs 80,000 collision repair and technicians.”

“Energy, I don’t even know what the number is, I hear 300,000, I hear 500,000.”

“There is a clear and present freakout going on right now. I’ve heard from six governors in the last six months. I’ve heard from the heads of major companies.”

There's more at the link, specifically an extended video clip addressing these issues.

The business and technical world has changed so much since I entered it more than half a century ago.  First off, I had to go to work right away, because my parents couldn't afford to pay for full-time studies.  No problem:  I did four years in the military, then trained on-the-job as a computer operator (IBM System/370, for those of you who go back that far).  I transitioned into programming and systems analysis (again using on-the-job training).  All that time, I was tackling a B.A. degree by correspondence.  Due to work, military call-ups, etc. I could only average one course a year (ten were required for graduation - much longer, more intensive courses than US universities).  However, in the end I made it.  I moved into more senior jobs while tackling a post-graduate diploma in Management, then went on to a Masters degree in the field.  All were white-collar jobs.

Nowadays, if I tried to follow a similar career path, I wouldn't get past "Go", much less collect $200!  A university degree is a basic prerequisite for white-collar work at most big companies, even though it's essentially unrelated to the work employees actually do every day.  Masters degrees are pretty common, particularly at middle-to-senior-management level.  The competition for white-collar jobs is intense, with vacancies attracting hundreds (sometimes thousands) of applications, but very few succeeding.  The game is no longer worth the candle.

Tech jobs, on the other hand . . . almost every tech-oriented business I know or have used in the past few years complains non-stop that they can't hire enough people to cater for the customers they have, or want to have.  The vehicle dealer whose service department I use for our cars is operating at about half capacity, not because they want to, but they can't hire enough qualified people who are willing to work hard and earn their pay (which is pretty high these days).

I advise every young person with whom I speak (about life, the universe and everything) to look into such jobs.  They'll be earning a lot more money, much faster than most of their white-collar peers.  I know one man who left high school with a 3.9 GPA.  He turned down scholarship offers to university, and instead took a two-year associates degree in welding, which included certification to weld dissimilar metals.  He did the degree part-time while working full-time as an apprentice welder, gaining valuable experience.  The day he finished the degree, he was offered a six-figure salary on the oil fields here in Texas, plus free accommodation, with his own work truck equipped for the job, and generous time off.  He's a happy man these days, while his high school friends mutter under their breath about "I want his luck!"  They fail to realize that he made his own luck out of very hard work and application.  I can only hope others follow his example.

Tell your children, and your friends' children, that they need to reconsider their career options.  The demand out there is huge, if you have the right qualifications and experience.

Peter

Robotic crooks? AI con artists? Computerized criminals?

 

An article at Futurism suggests that we can expect all of the above, and then some.

In a new report, pan-European police agency Europol’s Innovation Lab has imagined a not-so-distant future in which criminals could hijack autonomous vehicles, drones, and humanoid robots to sow chaos — and how law enforcement will have to step up as a result.

By the year 2035, the report warns that law enforcement departments will need to deal with “crimes by robots, such as drones” that are “used as tools in theft,” not to mention “automated vehicles causing pedestrian injuries” — an eventuality we’ve already seen in numerous cases.

Humanoid robots could also complicate matters “as they could be designed to interact with humans in a more sophisticated way, potentially making it more difficult to distinguish between intentional and accidental behavior,” the report notes.

Worse yet, robots designed to assist in healthcare settings could be hacked into, leaving patients vulnerable to attackers.

Rounding out the cyberpunk dystopia vibes, according to the report, is that all the folks who were put out of a job as a result of automation may be motivated to commit “cybercrime, vandalism, and organized theft, often targeted at robotic infrastructure” just to survive.

Law enforcement needs to evolve rapidly to keep up, Europol says. For instance, a police officer may need to determine whether a driverless car that was involved in an accident did so after receiving deliberate instruction as part of a cyberattack, or whether it was a simple malfunction.

. . .

Advanced weapons have already “spilled over into organised crime and terrorism, impacting law enforcement,” the report reads. “There has also been a reported increase in the use of drones around European infrastructure, and there are examples of drone pilots selling their services online, transforming this criminal process from crime-as-a-service to crime-at-a-distance.”

In short, it’s a troubling vision of the future of crime, facilitated by rapidly evolving technologies.

There's more at the link.  The original Europol report may be found here.

This is hardly surprising, of course.  Criminals have always used every technology ever invented, as soon as it's come along (and often before law enforcement has thought about its criminal misuse, or considered countermeasures).  Today, however, the threat is greater than ever before.  There must be enough well-trained and -experienced drone operators in Ukraine and Russia alone that every criminal organization in Europe could hire a troop of them.  As that knowledge and experience proliferates, particularly in South American drug cartels (who are already using drones as offensive weapons against each other and against law enforcement, and using them to fly drugs and other contraband across the US border), we're sure to see police forces and other agencies setting up their own specialist units to tackle the problem.

I remain equally concerned about the use of drones by "ordinary" criminals to survey streets and neighborhoods, looking for targets of opportunity.  Examples:

• There are a number of gangs stealing cars to order.  If you want a specific make and model of car, you let the gang know, and they'll find one to steal for you.  A number of high-end autos have been exported in response to such interest.  A drone-equipped operator can fly over neighborhoods all across a city to find the vehicle(s) he wants, and choose those in the most vulnerable areas or homes for further attention.
• If a given suburb is popular with wealthier people, gangs can fly drones over it to check on security systems and precautions they use.  If they find a more vulnerable home, they can plot ways to approach the house under cover of garden vegetation, or plan rapid egress routes after they've broken in.  They can also monitor the frequency and routes taken by security patrols.
• Left-wing and progressive groups are doxxing the names and addresses of ICE agents and other law enforcement personnel.  If you happen to live near one, you and your family might find yourselves caught up in (potentially violent) demonstrations against that address and those living there.
• Kidnapping and human trafficking are in the news almost every day.  Using drones, the perpetrators can look for likely victims and observe them for long periods, to establish their patterns of life and determine when they will be most vulnerable to attack.

Those are just a few of the ways in which criminals can benefit from technology, or we can suffer because they have access to it.

Peter

Autofocus spectacles?

 

I was intrigued to learn of a new optical technology that allows spectacles to autofocus from near to far vision.

The glasses contain eye-tracking sensors as well as liquid crystals in the lenses, which are used to change the prescription instantaneously. The result, according to the company, is an improvement on current bifocal or varifocal lenses, both of which are meant for people who need assistance seeing both far and close distances, but come with drawbacks.

. . .

By using a dynamic lens, IXI does away with fixed magnification areas: “Modern varifocals have this narrow viewing channel because they’re mixing basically three different lenses,” said Niko Eiden, CEO of IXI. “There is far sight, intermediate and short distance, and you can’t seamlessly blend these lenses. So, there are areas of distortion, the sides of the lenses are quite useless for the user, and then you really have to manage which part of this viewing channel you’re looking at.”

The IXI glasses, Eiden said, will have a much larger “reading” area for close-up vision — although still not as large as the entire lens — and it will also be positioned “in a more optimal place,” based on the user’s standard eye exam. But the biggest plus, Eiden added, is that most of the time, the reading area simply disappears, leaving the main prescription for long distance on the entire lens.

“For seeing far, the difference is really striking, because with varifocals you have to look at the top part of the lens in order to see far. With ours, you have the full lens area to see far — as you were used to when you were slightly younger,” Eden explained, referring to people who had glasses for distance vision from their teens or early adulthood, before starting to also need reading glasses, like most people as they get older.

There's more at the link.

I use reading and computer glasses, with different prescriptions, but don't yet need longer-range lenses.  It would be handy to have a single pair that will autofocus from near (book) to slightly longer (computer) distances on demand.

However, I have questions.

1. How are these glasses powered?  There must be a battery somewhere, and a means to carry the power to the lenses themselves.  What's the life of the battery?  How is it recharged and/or replaced when needed?
2. Can these lenses be incorporated/blended with existing technology that darkens the lens in bright light, and lightens it in darker areas, so that one doesn't need a separate pair of sunglasses?
3. How do the lenses perform in the rain?  Will they be able to compensate for drops of rain on their surface, and still provide clear vision?
4. How secure are they against dust, being dropped, and other hazards?  If scratched, as so many spectacle lenses so often are, can they continue in use, or would they have to be replaced?
5. What will they cost?  I imagine that at first, they'll be a premium product.  I won't be able to buy them online from discount vendors, I'm sure.

All that said, this sounds like a very useful development.

Peter

The biggest security threat to our nation, and others

 

former British Secretary of Defense Liam Fox points out that debt is the single greatest security threat facing the Western world.

Against a background of increasing cooperation between Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, the threat to the free world and its values – the rule of law, democracy and human rights – has never been greater in living memory. Yet a much more subtle and sadly self induced crisis corrodes our ability to confront our enemies.

Debt levels in the West, driven up by consumption and welfare that we cannot afford, means that our ability to raise defence and security spending to meet the level of the threat is seriously, if not yet fatally, compromised.

Last year the UK spent £105 billion on debt interest compared to just £65 billion on defending our country. We are not alone. In 2024 the United States spent around $882 billion on interest payments, overtaking the world’s largest defence budget of $874 billion. Recent policy decisions will likely drive the gap higher. This may explain the selective deafness in parts of Washington to the alarm call of the Russian threat. Given the huge potential cost of carrying on a new Cold War alongside Western allies, who for years have talked a great game with minimal action on defence spending, the US seems to have made a historically wrong call for partially understandable reasons.

. . .

The bigger threat ... is to the long-term stability of our financial system whose largest members are either unwilling to live within their means or incapable of it. In the UK, despite having a huge parliamentary majority, the Starmer Labour government has made it clear to international markets that they neither have the ambition nor the ability to reduce welfare spending and that, despite historically high tax levels, the debt will continue to increase. In France, the merest hint of financial restraint brings large sections of the population onto the streets making effective financial rebalancing almost impossible, while in the US President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” is projected to increase the US federal deficit and national debt by around US$3.4 trillion over the 2025 to 2034 period.

The bottom line is clear. Living on the “never never” and pretending we have a right to an unearned standard of living is creating a level of national debt that not only threatens the next generation with a scorched earth economic legacy but is creating a national security emergency. The silent and deadly defence crisis unfolding because of our addiction to debt leaves us in a historically vulnerable position.

There's more at the link.

He makes a very strong case, IMHO.  In command economies such as Russia, China, Iran, etc. the authorities can - by force if necessary - divert the resources of the economy to war production, and dragoon young men and women into uniform (shooting those who don't want to cooperate, to "encourage the others", as Voltaire put it).  In the free world, we can't.  If the public doesn't support the military, resistance would be largely non-viable.  If we stripped bare health care, pensions, power generation, food distribution, etc. in order to prioritize military expenditure, our populations would revolt, particularly those who've become dependent on government handouts to survive.  Even the prospect, not yet implemented, of military conscription has led to unrest in Germany and other European countries.

We are no longer a disciplined, united society.  We are fragmented, divided, opinionated, each faction demanding that its interests be satisfied but no faction willing to subordinate its interests to the more imperative needs that confront us as a nation.  That's what's caused our national debt in the first place, catering to special interests and voting blocs.  Unless we change our attitudes as citizens and as a nation, nothing's going to change.

There's another question.  Given the behavior and attitudes of so many Americans in "blue" states and cities, why should our armed forces die to defend them?  They don't deserve it.

Peter

Life and death in a social media age

 

Speaking as one who's had to deliver many sermons at funerals, I couldn't help laughing at Stephan Pastis' modernization (?) of the field.  Click the image to be taken to a larger version of the cartoon at the 'Pearls Before Swine' Web page.

Given the number of people I see with their heads buried in their cellphones, despite everything else going on around them (including their kids running amok!), this rings eerily true . . . I wonder if any pastor has looked down from his pulpit and found most of his congregation doing that?  I've heard of some churches putting the lyrics to hymns on their Web sites, so worshippers can follow on their phones and sing along during the service, but I've always felt that merely encouraged further slavish concentration on electronic devices rather than God.  Does that make me a spiritual Luddite?

Peter

A whole new security headache for diplomats and politicians

 

If a country is ruthless enough, it can threaten the leaders of rival nations even far beyond its borders, as Ukrainian President Zelensky found out earlier this week.

Four "unidentified military-style" drones violated a no-fly zone on Monday at Dublin Airport as they flew toward the flight path of Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, according to Irish news outlet The Journal.

The flight carrying Zelensky landed, slightly ahead of schedule, a few moments before the drones flew at about 11 p.m.

The drones had their lights on, prompting security forces to suspect that the aim was to disrupt the arrival of Zelensky's plane into Dublin, the outlet said.

The drones, which reached the location where the Ukrainian president's plane was expected to be at the exact moment it had been due to pass, then orbited above an Irish Navy vessel that had secretly been deployed in the Irish Sea for the Zelensky visit.

The report said that, according to sources, the drones took off from the north-east of Dublin, possibly near Howth, and flew for up to two hours.

A lot is unknown at this point - who launched and controlled the drones, or where the drones are now.

The drones were "large, hugely expensive, of military specification, and ... the incident could be classed as a hybrid attack", Ireland's security services have found, according to the outlet.

There's more at the link.

I don't think there's any real doubt about where those drones came from, or who planned and executed the whole thing.  My only question is whether the miniature aircraft would have tried to actually attack Zelensky's plane, or simply disrupt its flight path.  I wouldn't put money either way at this point.  I think Putin is more than ruthless enough to eliminate his rival if the opportunity arose, but he might hesitate due to the diplomatic repercussions . . . or would he?  Enough of his internal political opponents have "fallen out of windows", or experienced aircraft "accidents", or whatever, that one can't be sure he has any real moral restraints at all - only practical ones.

What this means, of course, is that any politician or diplomat is vulnerable to the same sort of threat.  What if Air Force One were intercepted by drones sent by, say, Venezuela, or Mexican drug cartels (which can easily afford weapons-grade military-style drones, plus the explosives needed to turn them into deadly missiles)?  What if US transport aircraft ferrying supplies to an operation against terrorists or drug smugglers (e.g. in the Caribbean, or off Yemen) were threatened in the same way?

Nor is the distance between a potentially hostile nation and the aircraft concerned an obstacle, because (as in Ireland) drones can be smuggled into and through a country or countries relatively easily, particularly if disassembled.  Once used (whether successfully or not), the drones can simply be crashed into the ground and their explosives detonated, or directed to dive themselves into the sea or a large, deep lake nearby.  The odds of their being found, traced and identified are small.

This has the potential to make air travel in general, and in more dangerous areas in particular, a whole lot less safe.  I would say that ship, train or road travel might become safer, except that drones can intercept vehicles at sea or on the ground even more easily than they can those in the air.  I suspect that diplomatic teleconferencing might take on a whole new lease on life . . .

Peter

A new battlefield problem: Drone fiber pollution

 

Business Insider reports that drone guidance and signal cables are being strewn so thickly over the Ukrainian countryside that they're becoming a major hazard in themselves.  I've included some photographs from social media to illustrate the problem.

Small unjammable drones controlled by fiber-optic cables have become so integral to Russian and Ukrainian combat operations that they are leaving trails of cabling everywhere, turning areas of the battlefield into a tangled web.

As a counter to extensive electronic warfare, fiber-optic drones are becoming increasingly prevalent on both sides. And with sprawling cables stretched across the battlefield, soldiers are moving with greater caution.

"You see the little webs, and you never know — is it from the fiber-optic drone? Or it's a part of a booby trap," Khyzhak, a Ukrainian special operator who for security reasons could only be identified by his call sign ("Predator" in Ukrainian), told Business Insider. Mines and traps have also been prominent threats in this war.

. . .

Other video footage taken from the battlefield shows how fiber-optic cables crisscross like spider webs, sometimes only visible in direct sunlight or when viewed from a certain angle.

Soldiers can't always tell right away if it's a harmless fiber-optic cable or something far more dangerous, like a booby trap. This forces them to think carefully about whether they should call an engineer, destroy the web with explosives, halt, or proceed forward.

There's more at the link.

Those are worrying images, to put it mildly.  Imagine an infantry soldier having to walk through a meadow festooned with such cables.  It'd be almost as bad as barbed or razor wire, not in the sense of being cut, but in the sense of having to cut through almost every cable in order to make progress.  It would slow him down so much that he'd end up being an easy target for a sniper, or another drone looking for an enemy to destroy.  That truck looked like it was pretty much stopped because of fiber-optic cables wound around its wheels and axles.  Speaking from experience, you do not, repeat, NOT want your vehicle to be disabled like that where enemy fire can find you!

This has implications for us as civilians, too.  If such fiber-optic drones become commonplace in civilian use, or by criminals (e.g. the drug cartels) or the police, who's going to police up all the leftover fiber optic cables?  This could become a hazard to animals as well as humans.  There are all sorts of complications one can imagine.

I'm glad I'm not a young soldier these days.  Their chances of living through a war appear to be a lot less than mine did, in my day!  We may, indeed, be getting closer to the day when mortality rates become so high that actual combat is carried out by machines instead (robots, automatons, call them what you will), with human involvement limited to programming and maintaining the machines, and providing person-in-the-loop supervision.

Remember what Azerbaijan did to Armenia just a few years ago?  That war didn't involve one single fiber-optic drone.  Its drone technology already seems primitive compared to what we're seeing in the Ukraine-Russia conflict, and developments are so rapid that even the latest equipment in the drone war will only be effective for six months to a year before it's superseded by something even more capable - and lethal.  Those drone cables strewn all over the Ukrainian landscape did not exist a year ago.  All those tangles were laid down over the past twelve months or so.  What's the betting that by this time next year, something else will have replaced them?  Who can say?  And who's going to clear up the debris already on the ground?  That may take years, and until it's done, crops can't be planted and land can't be fully utilized.

Peter

Drones again - this time, south of the border

 

Following our discussion last week of drones and their utility for defense of life and property, I found this article about how Mexican drug cartels are weaponizing drones against each other, and against the security forces.

Last month, three drones rigged with explosives detonated outside a prosecutor’s office in Tijuana, Mexico, besieging six cars parked outside with a blast of nails, BBs and metal fragments. The attack was orchestrated by a cartel, Mexican government officials confirmed, and targeted an anti-kidnapping unit of the Baja state attorney general’s office. It is the latest high-profile example of first-person view drones being used by cartels to replicate military tactics being used in Ukraine.

Defense News previously reported that members of Latin American drug cartels had joined Ukraine’s foreign fighter volunteer units to gain FPV drone training.

Earlier this year, a cartel ambush using an explosive drone in the border state of Chihuahua sent two Mexican military service members and one police officer to the hospital. Three drones were subsequently seized.

Attacks made by explosive-equipped drones surged to over 260 in 2023. In 2024, a drone ambush was reportedly followed by an infantry-style attack in a remote community in Mexico, according to AP.

“Nonstate actors can now acquire capabilities once reserved for nation-states,” writes Stephen Honan for the Atlantic Council on cartels’ increasing use of FPV drones. “Cartels are no longer merely criminal syndicates; they increasingly resemble hybrid entities blending organized crime, paramilitary force, and terrorist tactics.”

There's more at the link.

If the cartels are getting that sophisticated in Mexico, it's surely only a matter of time before they try using drones against the US Border Patrol and/or law enforcement agencies in an effort to get more drugs into this country, or attack rivals in the drug trade.  I'd also expect to see them as a security device to guard marijuana plantations and drug "factories", detecting police raids or rival cartel operations before they strike.

There's also the question of airport security.  Drone operations have shut down airports in Europe on several occasions recently.  Nobody knows (yet) who's behind them, but suspicion centers around Russia, which is at war with Ukraine and is hostile to European nations helping the latter country.  Asymmetric warfare is nothing new, and drones merely add another string to the bow of that sort of warfare.

This makes me even more certain that it will be a good idea to learn how to use a drone, partly for reasons of local security during times of unrest, wildfire or other danger, and partly to understand how to defend against them in the hands of local gangs or drug dealers.  You can bet the gang-bangers have already realized how useful these things can be to plot crimes or keep an eye out for patrolling police, and I'm sure we'll be seeing more and more of them being used for such purposes.

My "el cheapo" drone arrived yesterday, and over the next couple of weeks I'm going to start figuring out how to use it.  If I crash it, it won't hurt my wallet too much, as drones costing less than $50 - some less than $10 - are freely available and affordable.  If the learning process goes well, I can look at upgrading to something more effective when funds are available.  If I understand the little beasts better, I can defend against them - and their operators - better as well.

Food for thought - and action.

Peter

A new twist on personal security and defense of your property

 

Big Country Expat is experimenting with a couple of low-cost entry-level quadcopter drones.  He suggests it's a good idea for everyone to get to know at least the basics of how to operate them.

The Scout is a good practice drone, and small enough to get in and around the interior of the house (or any house for that matter) for recon pretty well.

The problem is that it’s so lightweight, ANY and ALL breezes affect its flight. One time I was working on going room-to-room in the house, and the Central Air Conditioning kicked on, and the bird ‘lurched’ across the room in the draft of the AC blowing out of the vent.

So I’m not sure of the utility of it outside in real crosswinds.

This is a standard problem for the cheap ‘practice’ drones if you will. No real weight. One of my early $30 Amazon Chinesium drones I actually lost when practicing outside with the Redhead Nukular Gran. If you recall while I was flying it, I had a BIG gust of wind show up unexpectedly, and grab it, and last I saw of it, it was headed due south towards the Publix a quarter mile away…

Never did find out what happened to that ‘un LOL.

It literally faded to a teeny-tiny dot and then >poof<

So tonight, I tried to to fly this new quad inside BUT had a minor issue. Or maybe not minor per se…

The doggos.

Chili AND Stella both seem to think that the quadcopter is something they need to ‘fetch’ out of the air… I tried to get them to leave it alone, but nope. They weren’t listening at all. In fact Stella got too close while lunging at it, and the rotor blade caught her on the nose. She yelped pretty loudly as it must have hurt, but did that stop her?

She’s a ****ing rockheaded Pittie…

What do you think?

Riiiiiiiight.

Now it’s a challenge apparently.

Must. Snatch. The. Flying. Thing.

So this means in the future, I’ll have to either practice in the bedroom for the initial ‘tuning’ of it and getting a feel for the flight characteristics, or take it down to the park at the elementary school we used to take the Grans to after school or on a Saturday and give it a try there.

When I say ‘tuning’ I mean that the controls and servos need to be dialed in for accuracy, otherwise it might have drift already in the settings, and I need to make sure that it does a steady hover, and do some other things, to include getting the 4k Cameras ‘dialed in’ as well.

Seeing that drones are the future and at least trying to learn how to use them is a good and necessary thing. Better to learn on the short $$$ models than to spend a grand on a nice DJI Drone like the Ivans and Krainians use and have that get wrecked?

I’d rather burn through a half a dozen ‘practice drones’ learning how to ‘fly’ a drone rather than buying a $$$$$Mondo-Expensivo$$$$$ one and wasting/crashing/destroying it by accident.

There's more at the link, including pictures.

I think he makes a very good point.  While cheap entry-level quadcopters are still freely available, I think it's an excellent idea to learn to use them.  They may not be Predator- or Reaper-class weaponized drones, but one can use them to fly around one's property, or up and down the street, and see what's going on in the neighborhood.  If there are reports of rioting or unrest nearby, one can keep an eye on the situation, and if one sees "undesirables" heading in one's direction, one can be proactive in responding to them, either by "getting out of Dodge" before they arrive, or getting together with neighbors to greet them, in full readiness to protect one's loved ones and property, when they arrive.

I think I have a new project for the next few weeks . . .  Finding a low-cost drone that can cope with North Texas winds might be a challenge, but I'll do my best.  If anyone sees a drone heading for the wild blue yonder, coming from my general direction, let me know, will you, please?

Peter

Jobs: the irresistible force meets the immovable object

 

The big challenge everyone's talking about today is how to get the millions of unemployed Americans back to work - create enough jobs that they can fill, and ensure that they have the necessary training to do those jobs.

However, that ignores the fact that all over the world, more and more people - particularly younger people - are desperate for jobs, but they aren't there to be found.  The US economy is no more than a microcosm of a much greater conundrum.  That same oversupply of job-seekers is fueling international illegal migration.  When young people face economic ruin at home, they've got nothing to lose by trying to move to a country where more jobs are available, even though the journey may be very dangerous and they may not be welcome at their intended destinations.

First, there's the supply of workers and potential workers.  I'll use Africa as an example, because that's my continent of origin and I'm more familiar with its situation.  Bloomberg recently reported:

Africa’s population has doubled in three decades and it’s now home to about 1.5 billion people, a figure that’s predicted to grow to 4 billion by the turn of the century. This growth has been driven by improved access to medical care, plummeting infant mortality since 1990, and persistently high birth rates. Already about 60% of people south of the Sahara desert are younger than 25, compared with one-third in the US, according to the United Nations.

The expected number of annual births in Congo is more than 800,000 greater than across the US or the European Union’s 27 member states. So while the developed world worries about getting old, Africa is getting younger.

. . .

Success will depend on both shrinking the existing rate of population increase, and also creating the economic opportunities — jobs are a key driver of growth in the early stages of development — for young people entering the labor market. Getting it wrong could fuel poverty, trigger more conflict and potentially spark mass emigration.

. . .

Sub-Saharan Africa will see 1 billion people enter the labor force between now and the end of the century, according to Bloomberg Economics analysis of UN Population Division data. Annual job demand is projected to peak at approximately 18 million in 2048.

Most countries on the continent already struggle to provide sufficient jobs. For every two people that joined Congo’s working-age population between 2005 and 2020, only one job was created on average, a pattern repeated across Nigeria, Ethiopia and other large states, according to Bloomberg Economics analysis of International Labor Organisation data.

. . .

In a worst-case scenario, that scenario could translate into the continent sliding ever deeper into poverty and political and civil strife, and encouraging mass emigration, with the reverberations felt across the world.

“Labor migration is an inevitable consequence of being educated,” says Charlie Robertson, the author of The Time Travelling Economist who has been monitoring developments in Africa for the past 15 years. “This is the most educated the continent’s ever been, but with insufficient savings to utilize that education there will be demographic pressure to emigrate.”

There's more at the link.

That demographic pressure is driving the wave upon wave of African illegal immigrants overwhelming European countries right now.  Along with similar pressures in South America and Asia, it's what was behind the surge in illegal alien migration to the USA under the Biden administration - and that administration's refusal to do anything to stop it has left us with enormous socio-political problems that will take more than one Presidential term to sort out.  It may take decades.  I personally view it as treasonable behavior by the Biden administration, but it's not my job to adjudicate that - perhaps fortunately . . .  President Trump has already shown that swift, vigorous law enforcement action can stop such mass immigration in its tracks, and even reverse it.  One can only hope and pray that his successors in office will continue such policies.

Be that as it may, we have the "irresistible force" of mass immigration from the over-populated, economically under-developed Third World threatening the First World.  However, the climate for such immigrants is likely to become even less welcoming once the reality of modern economics takes hold.

“It’s the most humbling thing I’ve ever seen,” said Ford’s chief executive about his recent trip to China.

After visiting a string of factories, Jim Farley was left astonished by the technical innovations being packed into Chinese cars – from self-driving software to facial recognition.

“Their cost and the quality of their vehicles is far superior to what I see in the West,” Farley warned in July.

. . .

Andrew Forrest, the Australian billionaire behind mining giant Fortescue – which is investing massively in green energy – says his trips to China convinced him to abandon his company’s attempts to manufacture electric vehicle powertrains in-house.

“I can take you to factories [in China] now, where you’ll basically be alongside a big conveyor and the machines come out of the floor and begin to assemble parts,” he says.

“And you’re walking alongside this conveyor, and after about 800, 900 metres, a truck drives out. There are no people – everything is robotic.”

Other executives describe vast, “dark factories” where robots do so much of the work alone that there is no need to even leave the lights on for humans.

“We visited a dark factory producing some astronomical number of mobile phones,” recalls Greg Jackson, the boss of British energy supplier Octopus.

“The process was so heavily automated that there were no workers on the manufacturing side, just a small number who were there to ensure the plant was working.

“You get this sense of a change, where China’s competitiveness has gone from being about government subsidies and low wages to a tremendous number of highly skilled, educated engineers who are innovating like mad.”

. . .

Between 2014 and 2024, the number of industrial robots deployed in [China] rocketed from 189,000 to more than two million.

These can typically include everything from robot arms used for welding, assembly and loading, spider robots used for high-speed “pick and place” movements and overhead gantry robots for precision tasks such as 3D printing.

The overall number of robots added in China last year was 295,000, compared to 27,000 in Germany, 34,000 in the US and just 2,500 in the UK.

And while it would be easy to put this disparity down to population size alone, China also blows its western rivals out of the water when it comes to robot density. It now boasts 567 robots for every 10,000 manufacturing workers, compared to 449 for Germany, 307 for the US and 104 in the UK.

. . .

Rian Whitton, an expert at Bismarck Analysis, says increased automation is also an attempt to mitigate the impact of [China's] ageing population.

“China has quite a notable demographic problem but its manufacturing is, generally, quite labour-intensive,” he says.

“So in a pre-emptive fashion, they want to automate it as much as possible, not because they expect they’ll be able to get higher margins – that is usually the idea in the West – but to compensate for this population decline and to get a competitive advantage.”

Again, more at the link.  (Article may be behind a paywall.)

Admittedly, the article above addresses the manufacturing economy:  but that underpins all other economic sectors, when push comes to shove.  Just as China is striving to maximize automation and minimize actual human workers, so US manufacturers are striving to catch up with that country and re-engineer their local assembly lines.  The same can be said of many service industries.  Did you notice, during the dockworker strikes over the past couple of years, that one of the constant demands from the labor unions was that ports and harbors should not introduce any more automation, or robotics, or labor-saving technology?  The unions are trying desperately to protect their members' jobs . . . and they're doomed to failure.  When it costs far too much to employ human workers compared to an automated solution, eventually the time will come when employers will say "Enough!" and make it stick.

For US workers in several industries, this is already bad news.  Without retraining and a deep-rooted change in their attitudes, they're going to end up in the economic dumpster.  However, it's worse for those heading for this country from places like Africa, in an attempt to find work here that they can't find at home.  Initially, they'll find at least something, through being willing to work for lower wages and/or in more dangerous, less desirable conditions than American workers will tolerate.  However, that won't last for long.  The list of industries already implementing technological solutions to their labor problems is already very long, and growing longer.  Manufacturing, fast food, farming, assembly operations, customer support, corporate administration, banking . . . the list of places where you'll find automated assistants and AI systems instead of a human being is growing by the day.  New jobs are not part of that equation.

It's equally bad news for the US education system.  Right now, a school-leaver is woefully ill-equipped to become part of our economy.  He's got far too much learning still to do - hands-on, productive learning - and too much touchy-feely politically-correct baggage to learn to discard, once he realizes that it's all been a lie.  Commerce and industry function on facts and reality.  If they don't, they go out of business.  Our education system currently does not teach facts and reality, and doesn't prepare its students to deal with them.  That may be an even bigger problem for us that China's current lead in automation.

Furthermore, consider what this immense level of automation means for countries that are struggling to establish their own industries and facilities.  They can't possibly afford to build a factory to assemble vehicles using their own labor force, when China (or, for that matter, similar factories in Europe or the USA) can deliver a finished vehicle, made to a much higher standard of quality, for less than a fifth of the cost of a vehicle manufactured locally (what with economies of scale, etc.).  In so many words, such hyper-automated production will destroy economies that can't compete at that level;  and those living in those economies will see that they have no future there, no way to earn a living, improve their situation in society, or hope for something better.  That being the case, they're going to leave for anywhere that appears to offer them a better opportunity.  The current immigration pressure on the First World is going to turn into an overwhelming flood.

We are literally creating this future as we speak.  All of the factors identified above are now in operation.  There's no way we can possibly turn aside from that future now, because just about the whole of the First World as it currently exists would cease to exist if we did.

What does this mean for us as individuals?  For someone like me, approaching the end of my life, I can only watch events unfold.  For younger people, who must find a way to support themselves and (hopefully) a family in due course, they're going to have to make some very blunt, realistic career decisions.  A degree in underwater basket-weaving or feminist studies may sound like a lot of fun, but it's going to fly like a lead balloon in an economy that will demand specific skills, attributes and attitudes.  Nations will no longer be able to afford those who contribute nothing to the economy and the needs of the country as a whole.  At best, those people will have to live on a minimal public dole, because governments won't be able to afford anything more.  Those willing to seek out jobs that will always be in demand, and are unlikely to be automated (e.g. the trades, technical fields that support automation, etc.) will do rather better.  Not sure how to get into them?  Talk to Mike Rowe.

Sound frightening?  It is.  Yet, that's the dilemma and the conundrum facing our politicians and business leaders today.  Go read the two articles I cited, and do your own search for more material on the subject.  We live in interesting times, no matter how much we may wish we didn't.

Peter

The convoluted world of international arms deals

 

It's been reported that Turkey is to buy 20 Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft from Britain.

It is the largest fighter jet export deal in almost two decades and will support thousands of jobs across the UK for years to come, the government said.

. . .

The Eurofighter jets are jointly produced by Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain, and the deal was subject to approval from the other members of the consortium.

About 37% of each jet's production takes place in the UK, including final assembly at BAE Systems plants in Warton and Samlesbury in Lancashire.

The government said the deal would support 6,000 jobs at the two BAE plants, 1,100 in south-west England, including at the Rolls-Royce plant in Bristol, and 800 in Scotland.

It is the first new order of UK Typhoons since 2017.

Describing the agreement as the "biggest jets export deal in a generation", defence secretary John Healey said it would "pump billions of pounds into our economy and keep British Typhoon production lines turning long into the future".

There's more at the link.

What struck me at once was the minuscule size of the order.  Twenty fighter aircraft is a drop in the bucket compared to the Turkish Air Force's existing combat aircraft fleet, which includes well over 200 F-16's.  Furthermore, if the quoted figures are accurate, an ₤8 billion order averages out to a cost per plane of ₤400 million apiece - a ridiculously high amount, even if it includes future support and training expenditure.  To make matters even more confusing, Turkey is developing its own stealth fighter to replace its F-16's in due course.  The Typhoons are no better technology than the F-16 - so why buy them?  What's going on?

The answer is convoluted.

• Turkey has long been interested in using the Typhoon's power plant, the Eurojet EJ200 engine, in its Kaan fighters.  Based on a Rolls-Royce design, the latter company offered to help Turkey develop its own derivative of the EJ200 for the new fighter.  That agreement was derailed through political squabbles.  Initial prototypes of the Kaan will use US-sourced engines, and a locally-manufactured engine will power production models.  By buying Typhoons now, Turkey will gain access to European-standard engines and technology that can be used to train its pilots, engineers and technicians ahead of widespread introduction of the Kaan in due course;  and it can reverse-engineer Typhoon technology to improve its domestic equivalent products.  It will thus have access to both American and NATO-standard hardware and software.
• Turkey is trying to improve relations with other European nations, particularly given the geopolitical pressures caused by its involvement in Syria and other Middle Eastern nations.  By effectively "bribing" the British government with a massive arms order, it probably expects British diplomatic and economic pressure over Middle Eastern issues to decrease.
• The Typhoon is an aircraft type that has never seen combat in the Middle East.  Israel knows the capabilities of American combat aircraft very well, since it flies them in its own air force.  It may be that Turkey figures a different style of aircraft, with different electronics and systems, might give it an edge if it comes to a shooting conflict over Syria or elsewhere.

I get the feeling that Turkey is following Qatar's example.  Qatar is a tiny island nation in the Persian Gulf, but operates one of the most sophisticated air forces anywhere.  It flies Eurofighter Typhoons, US F-15's and French Rafale aircraft.  It's ridiculous to operate so many types of diverse aircraft in relatively small numbers, but that's not the point.  By spending tens of billions of dollars on such technology, Qatar is effectively buying influence in the nations that sell them.  They'll be less likely (Qatar hopes) to put pressure on that nation to support Middle Eastern initiatives it doesn't like, and less likely to approve Israeli action against Qatar for its ongoing support of Middle Eastern terrorist movements like Hamas and Hezbollah.  Instead of asking "What's the right thing to do?", diplomats from supplier countries will be forced to ask "What will it cost us in terms of sales and support of defense technology if we allow this or don't allow that?"  It's yet another example of "follow the money".

Effectively, Turkey is trying to lock the UK into the same kind of deal.  "We'll pay you well above the odds for a few fighters, provided you shut up about sensitive issues in the Middle East that affect us."  Furthermore, the current British government has made such a flaming mess of running the country that it's desperate for funds from anywhere, so it'll be more than willing to be "bribed" like this.

There's a distinctly distasteful odor about this arms deal . . .

Peter

Life delivers another warning about financial preparedness

 

We've discussed many aspects of "prepping" over the years in these pages.  Some topics come up repeatedly.  One of them is financial preparedness:  establishing an emergency fund, getting out of debt, paying cash rather than going into more debt, and so on.  Part of that advice has always been to have a certain amount of money available in cash, without needing to go to a bank to get it.  If communications systems go down, you won't be able to verify balances, pay by credit card, etc.  Better have some cash on hand to take care of essentials for a few days.

Monday's Internet outage provided graphic evidence confirming how essential such a cash-on-hand reserve really is.

It’s not just that people couldn’t place mobile orders for coffee at Starbucks or ask Alexa for the weather. Hospitals said crucial communications services weren’t working, and teachers couldn’t access their planned lessons for the day. Chime, a mobile banking service, was down, too, leaving people without access to their money. Ring and Blink cameras, along with most smart home devices, stopped working.

. . .

One expert already estimated the total impact of the disruption will be in the billions of dollars.

“It creates a very large single point of failure that then impacts operations at warehouses, deliveries, people being able to sell their goods and services on websites,” Jacob Bourne, an analyst at eMarketer, told CNN.

. . .

The Doughertys ... stopped for lunch at Cattleman’s Roadhouse, where the manager offered to pay for their meal because the restaurant was unable to process cards.

“He said, ‘This is no fault of yours, and you’re already eating. I don’t guess you all have cash?’” Debi Dougherty said. “And we both looked at each other, and I’m like, ‘Not enough to cover this meal.’”

. . .

Dia Giordano was spending her Monday trying to untangle the mess that the outage made for her three businesses: an Italian restaurant, eight mental health clinics and a couple of rental properties.

DoorDash was “blowing up” her phone starting at 2 a.m., warning that the online ordering system, which is run through Toast, was down.

“What that means is one-third of my business is gone for the day,” she told CNN. “At least with the publicity (of the outage), people might be understanding, but I’m still getting messages asking if we’re open, because the website is just gone. It’s just not there.”

Toast, when reached Monday, declined comment.

At Giordano’s mental health clinics, her practitioners and administrative staff members were unable to validate clients’ insurance information because the online clearinghouse for that information wasn’t working.

And on top of that, Venmo was down, meaning she couldn’t receive the rental payments she normally would.

There's more at the link.

I've spoken to several friends and acquaintances who found they were unable to buy their normal purchases because credit card services were down.  Others had a little cash available, but not enough for everything they needed, and so had to make rapid decisions over what to buy, and what to do without.  In one case where little children were involved, disposable diapers and baby food took priority, meaning the car didn't get filled with gas and the family had to make do with less for supper.

I always carry at least $100 in my wallet, and sometimes more, and I've asked my wife to do the same.  If we'd been out and about when the Internet outage hit on Monday, we'd have had enough to get home again, including gasoline, food, etc.  However, I think a lot of people would not have been so fortunate.  (Remember, too, to carry smaller bills.  Offering a $100 note to a small business might bring the answer that they don't have enough change to break it, so it's either give them the extra, or do without whatever you wanted to buy there.  My wallet usually contains a mix of $20 and $50 bills for that reason.)

It's also worth remembering that Monday's outage was resolved within a day.  If it had gone on for a week, there are businesses that would literally have gone bankrupt through being unable to process payments from customers or to suppliers.  If it had lasted a month, the permanent damage to the US economy would undoubtedly have run into at least hundreds of billions of dollars, if not the low trillions.  It might have put many people out on the street, for that matter.  For example, how many companies could keep their staff on the payroll when they have no money coming in to pay them?  How many rental agreements contain clauses allowing the landlord to evict tenants for non-payment of rent, particularly if they're already a few weeks, or a month or two, behind in their payments?  Landlords (particularly the corporate variety) aren't renowned for their loving-kindness and humanitarian instincts.

I've always tried to keep at least one months' routine expenditure in cash on hand (i.e. available immediately, not in the bank), so that I could pay our essential bills if the banking system went down.  After Monday, and looking at the potential for greater disruption from terrorism, economic sabotage, etc., I'm seriously thinking it might be a good idea to increase that to two months' worth.  I can't afford that at the moment, but it's a worthwhile target, I think.

(Also, from a personal perspective, I'm currently undergoing rehab after my surgery last month, and preparing for a bigger operation next year.  What if I couldn't pay for those sessions, or for the medications I need?  I definitely need a medical cash reserve, over and above a general-purpose one!)

Monday's Internet outage should be a useful reminder to all of us.  Emergencies arrive on their own schedule, not ours, and they usually don't provide much (if any) warning.  If we're not ready when they happen, we're not ready.  Period.  It helps to be as prepared as practically possible, to survive the interruption(s) to routine that they bring with them, and come out the other side as intact as possible.

Peter

The Ukraine war is increasingly equipping and empowering drug cartels

 

South American drug cartels are deliberately sending some of their best fighting men and women to Ukraine, to learn how to use drones against an enemy, and how to convert ordinary civilian models into killing machines.  Because this is a growing danger within the USA as well, I'll provide an extended quote from the article.

Mexican intelligence officials tipped off their Ukrainian counterparts in July.

They warned Kyiv that cartel members were infiltrating Ukraine’s foreign ­fighter cadres to learn how to fly first-person view (FPV) kamikaze drones, which give pilots a bird’s-eye view of the target as they close in with an explosive payload.

Mexico’s warring drug cartels, who are engaged in their own drone arms race, now appear to be adopting the technology.

Last week, footage emerged for the first time of Sinaloa cartel sicarios, or hitmen, brandishing a new “fibre-optic” FPV drone, a model pioneered in Ukraine that is controlled by cable rather than radio signal to evade jamming devices.

“Ukraine has become a platform for the global dissemination of FPV tactics,” a security official in Kyiv told Intelligence Online, a French security website that first broke news of the investigation into Eagle 7.

“Some come to learn how to kill with a $400 drone, then sell that knowledge to whoever pays the highest price.”

Quite how many cartel hitmen have gone to Ukraine for drone “training” ­remains a mystery. The investigation in the summer is understood to have discovered at least three former members of Colombia’s disbanded Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) guerrilla movement, heavily involved in cocaine trafficking.

It would not be hard for a cartel member to blend in these days in Ukraine, as the International Legion is ­increasingly relying on Latin American recruits.

Most are from Colombia, where large numbers of former security personnel have found themselves jobless in the wake of the landmark 2016 peace deal with the Farc.

. . .

It is thought that several thousand have served in the International Legion over the past three years, with up to 300 killed.

Cartel members are understood to be taking advantage of the fact that Kyiv has limited means to vet overseas recruits properly.

“We’re seeing reports in recent months that both Mexican cartels and Colombian criminal groups are trying to infiltrate the Ukrainian military to learn techniques that they can take back to Latin America,” Alexander Marciniak, a Latin American intelligence analyst for Sibylline, a private intelligence firm, told The Telegraph.

“The cartels can use drones for all sorts of purposes, attacks and surveillance on each other and on the security forces, and for smuggling contraband.”

Mexico has seen a huge surge in the use of attack drones in recent years, from just a handful of incidents in 2020 up to more than 40 per month by 2023. It reflects a growing militarisation of the drug gangs, with cartels hiring professional ex-soldiers, many of them from Colombia, to give them an edge.

. . .

As well as getting access to vast ­arrays of weaponry, foreign volunteers can also learn a range of techniques for building home-made attack drones, many of them circulated on DIY-style instruction videos.

Meanwhile, both Colombia and Mexico face growing US pressure to crack down on cartels, following Donald Trump’s announcement that designated Mexican cartels would now be treated as “narco-terrorist” groups rather than street gangs because of their growing firepower.

Four suspected drug boats have been destroyed by US drone strikes in the Caribbean, and Mr Trump has also hinted he could send US troops into Mexico. Colombia is considering a bill to outlaw its soldiers from enlisting as mercenaries.

Critics, however, say that banning them from legitimate work could simply drive more into the ranks of the cartels.

There's more at the link.

This would also help to explain why the USA is ramping up its operations against drug cartels in several South American countries, including (that we know of) Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela.  If US forces and law enforcement agencies can "get ahead" of such technological advances, they can keep the danger at arms' length, so to speak.  However, if cartels are already carrying out tens of operations every month (again, those are just the ones we know about), it may be too late for such delaying tactics to succeed - and drones may make such operations a lot more dangerous for those tasked with them.

This points to a growing internal security problem inside our borders.  What if the current Antifa/BLM/far-left/progressive demonstrations are suddenly augmented by attack drones aimed at law enforcement trying to control the unrest?  Our police aren't equipped or trained to deal with such weapons, and it's hard to see how civilian law enforcement could be so equipped without transgressing a number of constitutional rights and issues.  Nevertheless, I'd say it's increasingly likely that they will face such dangers.  It's in the cartels' best interests to disrupt law enforcement, for different reasons, but towards the same end - making parts of the country ungovernable, so they can take advantage of that for criminal rather than political advantage.

Those of us who regard personal preparedness and willingness to resist crime and violence have some hard thinking to do here.  We don't (generally) have access to such technology;  but without it, we'll be several plays behind the game, and much more vulnerable.  That applies particularly to larger cities within which the users of such drones will find it easier to conceal themselves and operate untraceably.

Matt Bracken has written extensively on the growing danger of drone warfare within the USA.  I highly recommend that you read his article on the subject, complete with many photographs.  I think all of us will do well to consider how this danger may affect us, in our own regions and circumstances, and plan accordingly.

Peter

The fascinating history of string and rope

 

A very interesting article in Hakai magazine tells the story.

In his 1956 book The Marlinspike Sailor, marine illustrator Hervey Garrett Smith wrote that rope is “probably the most remarkable product known to mankind.” On its own, a stray thread cannot accomplish much. But when several fibers are twisted into yarn, and yarn into strands, and strands into string or rope, a once feeble thing becomes both strong and flexible—a hybrid material of limitless possibility. A string can cut, choke, and trip; it can also link, bandage, and reel. String makes it possible to sew, to shoot an arrow, to strum a chord. It’s difficult to think of an aspect of human culture that is not laced through with some form of string or rope; it has helped us develop shelter, clothing, agriculture, weaponry, art, mathematics, and oral hygiene. Without string, our ancestors could not have domesticated horses and cattle or efficiently plowed the earth to grow crops. If not for rope, the great stone monuments of the world—Stonehenge, the Pyramids at Giza, the moai of Easter Island—would still be recumbent. In a fiberless world, the age of naval exploration would never have happened; early light bulbs would have lacked suitable filaments; the pendulum would never have inspired advances in physics and timekeeping; and there would be no Golden Gate Bridge, no tennis shoes, no Beethoven’s fifth symphony.

“Everybody knows about fire and the wheel, but string is one of the most powerful tools and really the most overlooked,” says Saskia Wolsak, an ethnobotanist at the University of British Columbia who recently began a PhD on the cultural history of string. “It’s relatively invisible until you start looking for it. Then you see it everywhere.”

Precisely when people began to twine, loop, and knot is unknowable, but we can say with reasonable confidence that string and rope are some of the most ancient materials used by humankind. At first, our ancestors likely harvested nature’s ready-made threads and cordage, such as vines, reeds, grass, and roots. If traditional medicine and existing Indigenous cultures are any clue, early humans may have even used spider silk to catch fish and bandage wounds. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of years ago, people realized they could extract fibers from the hair and tissues of animals, as well as from the husks, leaves, and innards of certain sinewy, pulpy, or pliant plants, such as agave, cannabis, coconut, cotton, and jute. By twisting these natural fibers around one another again and again, they formed a material of superb resilience and versatility.

. . .

Although string and rope began to take shape on land, it was the ocean that unleashed the full potential of cordage. The earliest watercraft were probably rafts lashed together from branches or bamboo, and dugout canoes carved from logs, such as the 10,000-year-old Pesse canoe discovered in 1955 during motorway construction in the Netherlands. At first, the only means of propulsion were oars, poles, and the whim of the currents. Sailing required a critical insight: that the wind, like a wild animal, could be caught, tamed, and harnessed. A mast and sail, which is really just a tightly knit sheet of string, could trap the wind; long coils of sturdy rope could hoist and pivot the sail. String transformed seagoing vessels from floating lumber to elegant marionettes, animated by the wind and maneuvered by human will.

There's much more at the link.

Most of us are never exposed to the intricacies of complex string and rope work, but sailors - particularly those on ships still powered by sail, rather than engines - deal with it every day.  I recall when I first went aboard a racing yacht in South Africa, and saw the skipper - a salty seaman indeed, the living definition of the term - splicing two lines together, not just as a simple joint, but one so carefully crafted that it could fit through a block without jamming it.  I didn't even know that was possible.

I've also read many books about how string and rope were vital in historic vessels.  Tim Severin's voyages of exploration, Thor Heyerdahl's adventures with Kon-Tiki and the Ra expeditions, and many others caught and have kept my imagination for decades.  After reading this article, they'll be even more interesting to me.

Peter