The Next Arms Race: Straight Out of Sci-Fi

http://www.financialexpress.com/news/india-working-on-supersonic-missile-aircraft/1298527

India is developing a hypersonic aircraft. The goal of the future craft is to reach twenty-five times the speed of sound. Although mach 25 is a mere three and a half thousandths of one percent of light speed, it is almost ten times faster than the fastest manned, unassisted flight; and almost ten thousand KPH faster than the fastest powered aerial vehicle ever tested. The speed, of the projected craft is not, in itself, particularly groundbreaking. What sets the Indian project apart is its proposed propulsion system. The Indian equivalent of DARPA (DRDO) is planning to build the world's first nuclear fusion powered aircraft.

Building a fusion driven aircraft is ambitious because the scientific community has yet to harness fusion energy in a way sufficient to turn a simple steam turbine, let alone power an aircraft. As if the construction of the world's first fusion drive wasn't enough, the planned acquisition process of the fusion fuel takes another page out of science fiction. The proposed fuel source is helium three. He₃ is only available in practical quantities on the moon. This means that Humanity will have to initiate its first sustained, extraterrestrial mining operation.

This is the part of the process where scientific speculation meets geopolitical intrigue. It is highly doubtful that any one actor, private or governmental, will have the resources to initiate a He₃ supply line. The amount of standard chemical rocket fuel needed to get some sort of space tanker out of earth's atmosphere would be unprecedented; this fact alone rules out unilateral action. I am envisioning the formation of a multinational He₃ mining and refining consortium, similar to OPEC. The immense resources required to manufacture He₃ fusion fuel would give this organization, and its member nations, a massive amount of global political influence. Imagine all of the Faustian bargains various nations have made for oil increased in scale and deviousness by a couple orders of magnitude. The country at the forefront of fusion technology, say India, may be willing to trade some of this technology with whoever controls the supply line, say Russia, and the U.S., in exchange for a better deal on He₃.

Once applied fusion technology becomes available, an arms race may begin that will make the arms/space race of the Cold War era look like an elementary school science fair. Our only current application of nuclear fusion is the thermo-nuclear bomb. As destructive as an H bomb is, it is the strong force equivalent of banging rocks together to make fire. Once a weapons designer can use a fusion engine to accelerate a projectile to mach 25, the entire concept of a warhead, thermo-nuclear or otherwise, will become superfluous. The kinetic damage alone will cause the desired result. The complete shift in warfare technology may alter the balance of power similar to tanks in WWI and planes in WWII.

Mystery Kim

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/07/world/asia/north-korea-where-is-kim-jong-un/index.html

Speculation abounds as to the whereabouts of your favorite child dictator, and mine, North Korea's Kim Jong Un. Kim has not been seen in public for over a month. On October 8th CNN published an article detailing the various hypotheses regarding Kim's absence. First, I must congratulate CNN for not falling for the temptation of wild speculation that comes with this story. The author clearly laid out each theory and carefully indicated to the reader the line between fact and supposition. The theories range from the mundane, like gout, to the intriguing, like a potential coup. I was expecting CNNs print (web) coverage to be as hollow and sensationalistic as their television reports; I was pleasantly surprised to discover otherwise. The author gave the mundane theories about the same amount of words as the more intriguing theories.  I am also impressed with the author's presentation of the background information.  The piece took time to explain that Kim was always more of a symbolic leader and that many political decisions are made by a council of men loyal to the late Kim Jong Il. The author then went on to cite a source that explained how the toppling of Kim Jong Un in a coup would not necessarily be better for the world than his temporary absence due to injury. The CNN television news tends to avoid reporting on North Korea through any lens other than the traditional, two dimensional narrative: Kim Jong Un is bad, so therefore the removal of Kim in a coup is good.

I am divided as to my favorite hypothesis for Kim's disappearance. The part of me inclined to wishful thinking really wants to believe that there was a coup, but my willingness to believe a given hypothesis automatically makes me suspicious of said hypothesis. The one piece of evidence that even circumstantially supports the possibility of a coup is the last minute visit to South Korea paid by the two top men in Kim's government. The fact that these men discussed the adoption of a "one country two systems" unification plan with South Korean diplomats leads many to believe that Kim is losing de facto control of his government. The more pedestrian explanation for Kim's absence is his health. He has a family history of diabetes. This predisposition is no doubt exacerbated by Kim's excessive consumption of Coca Kola, one of his favorite beverages. The high fat content of Kim's diet supports the hypothesis that gout is behind Kim's limp and subsequent isolation.

Mr. Putin, Mugging Foreign Journalists is Bad PR

http://online.wsj.com/articles/bbc-journalists-attacked-investigating-servicemen-deaths-in-russia-1411038737

Vladimir Putin often seems to make decisions as though he is playing the role of a stereotypical Russian villain in a B-list Cold War spy film. Whether it is casually threatening nuclear annihilation or jovially bantering about his ability to have any political opponents killed, he seems to derive personal enjoyment from inflating his cloak and dagger, ex KGB image.  This image may be ideal for domestic consumption, but it seems to work against Russia's interest on the world stage. Earlier this month, a crew of BBC journalists who were investigating the deaths of Russian servicemen alleged to be fighting in Ukraine were accosted in the street and beaten. The crew's cameras and tapes were also destroyed.

While there is no concrete proof that the "mugging" was sanctioned by the Kremlin, it is hard to see this event as a coincidence.  A Russian journalist and opposition leader named Lev

Shlosberg was attacked in a similar manner following the same story. The fact that a second attack occurred rules out coincidence.

Attacking journalists seems counterproductive from the point of view of the Kremlin. If one wants a journalist to stop pursuing a certain line of evidence, the last thing to do is attack him/her. A beaten reporter is the journalistic equivalent of a neon sign telling prying eyes exactly where to look. Having ones tapes destroyed represents a logistical setback, but nothing more; one can always buy new tapes. If the attackers' goal was simply to scare the journalists off the story, attacking them may have the opposite effect. Many young Western journalists want to be seen as the next Edward R. Murrow, bravely risking life and limb to get the tough story. Getting a solid beating in pursuit of a controversial story is seen by this type of journalist as more of a merit badge than a deterrent. If an older, more risk averse journalist in the group chooses to abandon the story, there will doubtless be a younger journalist with a bigger Murrow complex eager to take his/her place.

The most vexing aspect of this story is that the Russians are aware of the Murrow complex. There are people employed by the Russian government whose job it is to analyze Western media. These analysts would certainly inform their superiors of the Western journalistic tendency to perceive injury in the line of duty as a badge of honor. Given the above suppositions, there are two potential explanations for the beating of the BBC team. The less likely, but more amusing, possibility is that Putin simply enjoys playing the role of a cartoon villain. The more likely, but less amusing, possibility is that the decision to attack the journalists was made by a lower level, local official who was either unaware of or unconcerned with the downstream geopolitical consequences.

ISIS... Even Al Qaeda Thinks They're Crazy

Al Qaeda Appealed to ISIS to Release British Aid Worker

Over the past few months, the Sunni Muslim extremist group known as ISIS, ISIL, or simply The Islamic State has embarked on a campaign of carnage across Iraq and Syria. The brutality of ISIS is unprecedented even in a region known for terrorist violence. On paper, ISIS is merely the better trained, better armed, and better funded offshoot of Al Qaida. The two organizations also share the same long term goal of establishing a unified Sunni caliphate. The gulf between the two organizations lies in their methods and perspectives. Al Qaida thinks strategically, whereas ISIS thinks tactically. Al Qaida follows the formula of a typical terrorist organization, Terrorists work indirectly. The goal of a terrorist attack is not to destroy an enemy or take land, but rather to scare the masses into forcing their leaders to give the terrorist organization what it wants. On the other hand, ISIS follows the typical formula of a revolutionary organization. Revolutionaries work directly. The goal of a revolutionary is to wipe out every trace of the previous regime, leaving a blank sociopolitical slate on which the revolutionary's ideology can be grafted.

Al Qaida and ISIS thus find themselves at cross-purposes. ISIS, along with all similar revolutionary groups, is narrowly focused and short sighted. ISIS is not concerned with the downstream effects of its actions, only with preserving the revolution and keeping it ideologically pure. When ISIS stopped Mr. Henning's convoy, they did not see a humanitarian who missed Christmas with his family to help people in need regardless of religious affiliation, all they saw was a threat to the revolution.

Al Qaida is a global organization that operates through manipulation of public sentiment. This means that public support is key to its success. The emir of Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of Al Qaida, claims he is against ISIS because it violates Islamic law by targeting innocents and attempting to supersede the muftis. It is true that ISIS is in violation of Islamic law, but Al Qaida has no problem violating Islamic law when it has to.

The real reason Al Qaida denounced ISIS is because ISIS makes Al Qaida look bad. The willingness of ISIS fighters to kill anyone, even fellow Sunnis, in the name of revolution robs Al Qaida of its ideological base. If Al Qaida loses the support of the radicalized Sunni population, then it cannot operate.

All this time, I thought my profession was safe from the impending robot takeover.

Playing Nostradamus 

(In Firefox or Chrome, right click link and select open link in Private or Incognito window to bypass subscriber log-in)

On August 30th, a contributor to Foreign Policy Magazine wrote about an algorithm which could be used to help policymakers predict the future geopolitical landscape. My first thought was that such a predictive program would put me out off a future career. The skill of an international relations specialist comes from combining knowledge of a group's interests with knowledge of culture and history.  The goal is to predict that group's reaction to a given stimulus. The task of synthesizing a response based on the integrated, and almost sub-conscious, calculation of many variables is completed by utilizing the amazing parallel processing power of the human brain. The output of this subconscious, parallel processing is perceived by individual humans as intuition. As the power of man-made computers increases, parallel distributed architectures can be developed that are capable of making "leaps" previously reserved for the human brain.

The Global Database of Events Language and Tone (GDELT) is a program that uses the exponential increase of computing power to turn a jumble of hundreds of variables into a concrete trend line.

The GDELT works by analyzing all sorts of global media, coding the media with different values for each variable, and using these values to create a trend line of general unrest (link to the math in article for those who know stats). The predictive power of GDELT is derived by comparing the trend line of an ongoing event with the trend line of a similar previous event. GDELT is designed to provide a concrete measure of the degree to which history repeats itself.

Luckily for me, the GDELT will not be replacing political analysts any time soon. The system has two major flaws. The first flaw is endemic to any model with a bunch of variables. If a variable is missed when constructing the model, it is hard for the researcher to find his mistake because one can't see what one doesn't know to look for. The second big flaw with GDELT is the input data. Since GDELT relies on media coverage of an event for data, the data is tainted by media bias before it even enters the system. Even if the model were technically perfected, the reliance on media coverage would always contaminate the data. The designers of GDELT say that even if the system cannot be used to predict events, it can be used to predict the way the media responds to events.

Here is a link to a cool animated map of global unrest the GDELT team created using their program. They are definitely on to something.

http://gdeltproject.org/globaldashboard/

NATO: can you fight crazy?

Source
Nato to create high-readiness force to counter Russian threat

Ever since Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine this past March, experts and laypersons alike have imbibed in a potent cocktail of alarmism and nostalgia. The outbreak of fighting in southeastern Ukraine was thus seen by many as the opening salvo of Cold War II. Any hope of sobering the collective consciousness of the Western World was dashed by Putin's embracing of the thuggish, James Bond villain-esque image the world media created for him.

On September 1st 2014 NATO announced that it would dedicate time in its upcoming summit to the creation of a 4,000 strong rapid reaction force. The stated objective of this force is to combat potential Russian incursions into the territories of any Eastern European NATO Country. The creation of this "spearhead" force represents the squirming of an organization stuck between a rock and a hard place. NATO can't be seen to do nothing about Russian expansion because the organization was created for the sole purpose of preventing such expansion. On the other hand, increasing NATO troop concentrations in Poland and the Baltic states goes against the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE) signed between NATO and the Russian Federation.

The problem with violating the CFE is that Putin may use it as an excuse to ramp up military action in neighboring countries not under the protection of NATO. The bottom line is that Putin needs this war. In his mind he has been tasked by a higher authority with bringing Russia back to superpower status. He has parlayed this personal belief into the backbone of his entire domestic political strategy. Putin has used his de facto control of Russian media to show his people a world in which "The West" controls everything and seeks to crush the once mighty Russia into a helpless vassal state to be exploited by the global corporate elite. Of course, Putin fits himself into this narrative as the heroic figure who will defend The Motherland against her many enemies and help her reclaim her rightful place in the pantheon of great nations. Put simply, NATO's actions play into this narrative. There is no doubt that those in command at NATO are fully aware of this, but they have little choice.

The Eastern European NATO states are right to worry for their security. Ironically however, Putin does not have the capability to win the war he so desperately craves. The Russian army has a relatively small quantity of very well armed and trained special forces soldiers. Aside from these units, the Russian army consists almost entirely of unpaid, under-trained, and barely equipped conscripts. The Chechen rebel fighters proved the Russian regular army as good for little more than high capacity lead absorption.

The profound inefficacy of the Russian regular army explains the almost complete reliance on local proxy forces in Ukraine. If Putin does continue to move west, there won't be any local proxies to rely on. If Putin succeeds in sparking his pet world war, it is a near certainty that Russia will lose. However, the sheer size of both prospective forces ensures massive casualty levels. Even if Putin succeeds in "uniting all Russian speaking people across the globe," his country will be worse off than it was before the conflict.

There is an axiom that states, "you can't fight crazy."  By creating this spearhead, NATO is attempting to fight crazy. They know they won't succeed, but also know there is nothing else they can do.