* 22 entries including: 5th information revolution (series), new trade order (series), nasal vaccines, GMLRS in Ukraine | Roe V Wade overturned | Brexit 6 years on, B61 bomb | new DEW line | JANET secret airline, automotive wire harnesses, Russia faces defeat in Ukraine | Trump in free fall, 1-6 Committee hearings | Ukraine GIS Arta | headphones & game controller, fiber, USB, & CO2 batteries, bird flu & vaccines, Starlink for Ukraine | weak Chinese spycraft | weapons for Ukraine, microbes & Earth chemistry | vulture bees.
* AGILE POD: As reported by an article from THEDRIVE.com ("New Systems For Navigation In GPS Denied Combat Environments Tested In Air Force's Agile Pod" by Brett Tingley, 29 June 2021), the US Air Force's Strategic Development Planning & Experimentation (SDPE) Office, in collaboration with the US Navy, has been working on technologies for "Precision, Navigation and Timing (PNT)" that would allow combat assets to operate in GPS-denied environments -- which is becoming a growing concern as adversaries work on GPS spoofing and denial techniques.
These new PNT systems have now been demonstrated using "AgilePod" open-architecture pods carried by an airborne testbed. The AgilePod is a modular, open architecture system, that supports "plug-and-play" configurations in which multiple sensors, communication, and other payloads are readily integrated. The Air Force has previously experimented with AgilePods aboard the RQ-4 Global Hawk and MQ-9 Reaper drones, the U-2S Dragon Lady spy plane, a World War II-era DC-3, an RC-26 surveillance aircraft, and Textron's Scorpion light jet.
Three different approaches to alternative PNT are in play:
MAGNAV wasn't evaluated in the recent tests, and there's some question of how well it might work. The Air Force has also traditionally used "astro-navigation", or navigating by the stars; the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, among other strategic aircraft, uses an automated celestial navigation system, and work on the scheme continues. Of course, it's only particularly useful for high-altitude aircraft, particularly those that fly so high that stars are visible in the daylight.
* JPALS: As reported by an article from DEFENSENEWS.com ("Raytheon's Precision Landing System Could Be Coming To More Allied Ships, Expeditionary Airfields Soon" by Megan Eckstein, 3 September 2021), landing a flying machine on an aircraft carrier is not a trivial exercise. However, these days, it's much easier, as the process has been automated through the Raytheon "Joint Precision Approach & Landing System (JPALS)" -- in which the approaching aircraft communicates with the carrier to ensure a proper landing.
JPALS has already been installed on the U.S. Navy's aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships, and been integrated with the F-35B/C Joint Strike Fighter jets. The system will also be integrated with the Navy's MQ-25 Stingray drone tanker, now in advanced development, and the Navy CMV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor transport.
Raytheon officials say JPALS is on a roll, with international adoption. Britain's Royal Navy has installed JPALS aboard the new carrier HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH, and on Italy's CAVOUR. Japan, South Korea, and France are also interested. Integrating JPALS will permit greater interoperability, allowing aircraft of one navy to operate more transparently with those of another.
Raytheon and the Marine Corps are also in talks over using JPALS ashore to help F-35B pilots find expeditionary runways -- a notion particularly relevant under the Marines' "Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations" concept that involves dispersing small groups of Marines across islands and shorelines where there may not be much established infrastructure. The service has already practiced establishing expeditionary airfields to refuel and re-arm aircraft, and having a JPALS system on the ground would make it all the easier and safer for these planes to come in for a landing in a new and temporary location. The JPALS base system could be easily hauled in by helicopter or truck, or airdropped.
After two earlier tests in 2019, the Marine Corps invited Raytheon to come to Marine Corps Air Station Yuma in June 2021 for more testing. Marines in F-35Bs did 50 or 60 landings, both traditional and vertical, using the JPALS guidance system. They started using just the primary runway, but in later tests they established a secondary runway 11 miles away and practiced approaches where JPALS diverted them to a different runway at the last minute. In the real world, this could happen if bad weather made the original landing point too dangerous to approach, or if enemy forces had compromised the original landing point on a small island.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* NEW TRADE ORDER (7): In response to Chinese human-rights abuses in Xinjiang, governments around the world are coordinating their messages to businesses, telling them to get out. This last June, G7 leaders stated a common concern over the use of forced labor in supply chains, "including in the agricultural, solar and garment sectors," which are all areas of activity in Xinjiang. In July, US government agencies -- including the State, Treasury and Commerce departments formally advised businesses with supply chains in Xinjiang -- of the risks for those with investments there. Japanese businesses are being given similar warnings by their government.
Working towards the same end, governments are prodding companies to gather more intelligence about their supply chains, so they know what's going on. Following similar French and German efforts, the EU is working on "due diligence" legislation obliging firms to check that their operations and suppliers are not engaging in human-rights abuses. America's Customs and Border Protection (CBP) authorities are beginning to ask importers about their supply chains, while G7 trade ministers are discussing ways to help smaller firms tell which suppliers are operating in problematic places.
Backing up these measures is a growing number of bans, either in place or in the works. Once again, the USA is in the lead; a law change in 2015 allows the CBP to block imports suspected of being made with forced labor, unless the importer can prove innocence. The CBP has issued such "withhold release orders (WROs)" maybe about once a year from the 1950s, but in 2020 alone it issued 15, and possibly as many or more in 2021. Recent WROs have targeted cotton, tomatoes, and silica products from certain Chinese suppliers. That means T-shirts made with the offending cotton, or solar panels or semiconductors made with the offending silica, are affected as well.
The US Congress is even more ambitious, pushing a bill that would block all imports from Xinjiang unless importers show that they were not made with forced labor. Canada and Mexico have committed to bans of their own, while the EU is moving towards that measure, while the Australian Senate has passed a bill to that end.
Implementing such bans can be tricky. It is not so hard to seize raw materials made in Xinjiang, but very hard to block products when abuses take place earlier in the supply chain. Xinjiang produces around 20% of the world's cotton, and in 2020 made 50% of the world's polysilicon, commonly used in the manufacture of solar panels. So far only a few hundred millions of dollars have been seized under WROs -- but if the bans are applied strictly, the scope could be far greater.
In some cases, import bans have worked. In 2020, the US CBP issued WROs against Top Glove in Malaysia, the world's biggest rubber-glove maker; two weeks later the company agreed to refund workers' recruitment fees and improve their accommodations. However, less than a year later, the CBP was issuing WROs against Top Glove once again. One study by a human-rights groups said that bans could have short-term effects, but added "there is still limited evidence on their longer-term impact."
It is certainly not realistic to think the Chinese government will be influenced by the bans; the reaction has been anger and counter-sanctions. As the use of bans increases, policymakers must grapple with the hard realities of monitoring and evidence-gathering while studying what they are actually achieving. Trade restrictions can be seen as a simplistic answer to a complicated problem -- but when carrying on with business as usual is unacceptable, the simplistic answer may have to do. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* NASAL VACCINES: As discussed in an article from SCIENTIFICAMERICAN.com ("Nose Spray Vaccines Could Quash COVID Virus Variants" by Marla Broadfoot, 3 May 2022), the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is, as was seen as likely from the outset, continually evolving, with vaccines trying to keep up. Vaccines are rarely perfectly effective, with current COVID-19 vaccines being good for preventing hospitalization, not so good at blocking infection.
Some researchers believe that it might work better to inhale vaccines, instead of being injected with them. COVID-19, after all, infects through the nose, and inhalation is more convenient and less troublesome than injection. There's almost a dozen nasal vaccines in the works, with a few of them in advanced trials. It hasn't been easy, however, since inhalation vaccines haven't had much development in the past, and coming up with formulations that are safe and effective has proven difficult.
A particularly attractive feature of nasal vaccines is their ability to activate a body defense known as "mucosal immunity", which is largely neglected by traditional vaccine shots. The mucosal system relies on specialized cells and antibodies within the mucus-rich lining of the nose and other parts of our airways, as well as the gut. These elements are "first defenders" of the immune system, and accordingly can offer a strong defense against COVID-19. Iwasaki Akiko, an immunologist at Yale University, "We are dealing with a different threat than we were in 2020. If we want to contain the spread of the virus, the only way to do that is through mucosal immunity."
Iwasaki is leading one of several research teams in the USA and elsewhere that are working on nasal vaccines. Some of the sprays encapsulate the coronavirus' spike proteins -- the prominent molecule that the virus uses to bind to human cells -- into tiny droplets that can be puffed into the sinuses. Others add the gene for the spike to harmless versions of common viruses, such as adenoviruses, and use the modified virus to deliver the gene into nasal tissue. Still others rely on synthetically bioengineered SARS-CoV-2 converted into a weakened form known as a "live attenuated vaccine".
Conventional vaccine shots generate a type of immune response known as systemic immunity, which produces what are called "immunoglobulin G (IgG)" antibodies. They circulate through the bloodstream, hunting the virus. Nasal sprays produce a separate set of antibodies known as "immunoglobulin A (IgA)", which populate the spongy mucosal tissues of the nose, mouth and throat, where the coronavirus first lands. Iwasaki compares mucosal vaccines to putting a guard at the front door, as opposed to waiting until the invader is already inside to attack.
Conventional vaccine shots don't do well at promoting a mucosal response; nasal vaccines, in contrast, do well at promoting both systemic and mucosal responses. Sounds great, what's the hangup? The problem is that the mechanisms of mucosal immunity are poorly understood. The nose's proximity to the brain raises the possibility of neurological. In the early 2000s, a nasal flu vaccine licensed and used in Switzerland was linked to Bell's palsy, a temporary facial paralysis. In addition, although a nasal spray may sound more effective than an injection, that isn't necessarily so, since a nasal spray has to penetrate a barrier of mucus to get to cells that produce immune responses. Weakened or attenuated viruses penetrate the barrier more easily, and they also tend to produce strong immune responses.
A number of nasal vaccine candidates are in or entering trials. Iwasaki's team is working on a nasal vaccine that operates as a booster for an injected vaccine. They have found that their two-stage approach was highly effective in mice, and Iwasaki is optimistic: "There is a big push for a universal coronavirus vaccine. We can get there, and as a bonus we can provide mucosal immunity."
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* THE WEEK THAT WAS: Ukrainian forces had been pushed back by a plodding, wasteful Russian ground offensive for weeks. The Ukrainians were waiting to get GMLRS rocket launchers; it was announced a week that Ukrainian crews had been trained for them, meaning their arrival was imminent.
Late this last week, it was announced that GMLRS launchers had arrived. By nightfall in Ukraine, reports were starting to filter out of hammer blows on Russian positions, and panic among the Russians. Twitter was buzzing:
Chris @MacDhomnuill: As a former artillery officer and HIMARS battery commander I wish them nothing but the smell of rocket exhaust, precision target locations, and victory.
Wily_Coyote (MrG) @gv_goebel: "I just love the smell of rocket exhaust in the morning!"
For now, not much filtering back on GMLRS from the frontlines. I did have to mention on Twitter:
Wily_Coyote (MrG) @gv_goebel: MLRS: Massive Losses of RU Soldiers
I also had to add on Twitter that I felt a little guilty about enjoying videos of Russian soldiers being blown to bits. "But not very much."
* The big news back in the USA this last week was that, as expected, the Supreme Court overturned the ROE V. WADE decision that guaranteed the right of American women to an abortion. It is now to be left up to the states.
Of course, a huge fuss promptly arose, though so far it hasn't turned violent. For myself, I'm going to wait and see. I have no sympathy with the "no-choice" gang -- if primarily on the basis that enforcing laws against abortion is legally preposterous, being necessarily heavy-handed and intrusive. However, I'm also certain that, though the no-choice gang has won a battle, they will lose the war. They don't have the numbers, and the global drift is against them. It's just a question of how long it will take.
It might not take that long. There will obviously be a push in Congress for a national reproductive-rights act; whether it will get through the Senate is a completely open question. One encouraging sign is that the Senate actually passed a gun-control act this last week, with Republican support. It's a very weak bill, but nonetheless significant, in that a number of GOP senators finally expressed an interest in governing and not pandering to the Rightnut fringe. What is also encouraging is that there can't be a "weak" reproductive rights act: one is either for it or against it, and there's no finessing it. We'll see what happens.
* Across the Pond, after six years Brexit -- Britain's exit from the EU -- hasn't found its footing. As discussed in an essay from ECONOMIST.com ("The Case for a Softer Brexit Is Clear. How to Get One Is Not", 23 June 2022), Brexiters were jubilant in 2016 when they won the referendum, believing they could have their cake and eat it too. Donald Tusk, the Polish president of the European Council at the time, saw clearly that was fantasy, replying in his dry way: "There will be no cakes on the table. For anyone. There will be only salt and vinegar."
Now it's 2022, with Britain and the EU bitterly at loggerheads over a "hard border" between the two Irelands. Studies suggest that Brexit cost the UK over 5% of GDP, and raised food prices by 6%. Remainers are becoming more assertive, while even pro-Brexit newspaper columnists, having been mugged by reality, call for a softer line with Brussels.
Alas, the solutions are not obvious. Brexit is not going to be revoked. Should Labour return to power, which is very possible, it would not be difficult to establish a set of deals to improve cultural relations with the EU and cooperate in EU efforts, but resetting the clock on economic cooperation would not be easy. There's a push to adopt the "Norway Solution" -- to be a member of the EU single market, but not an EU member. Unfortunately, that could be seen as the worst of all worlds: canceling Brexit, but being forced to agree to EU regulations with no say in them.
The other answer, is the "Swiss Solution", to not be a member of the EU single market, but to have a matrix of agreements establishing the order between the UK and the EU. The difficulty there is that the Swiss were building up those agreements in parallel with the emergence of the EU, while the UK would take a long time to even get to the basics. The UK would also find it hard to get substantial concessions from the EU without making substantial ones in return. When Britain was part of the EU, the EU made extraordinary concessions to keep the UK happy, but now getting good deals will be hard.
In sum, Britain doesn't have cake, period. Remainers are justified in believing that Brexit has turned out as bad as they expected it would be. That doesn't make the cold reality any easier to swallow.
PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* 5TH INFORMATION REVOLUTION (34): By the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, the digital revolution had become relatively stable. Desktop computers, laptops and notebooks, tablet and smartphones were widespread, and continued to improve in functionality. Desktop and notebook computers remained in common use, though notebooks were increasing in the form of "hybrid" machines that could be used as notebooks and tablets. As the decade progressed, at least at the low end of the market, solid-state flash drives began to replace hard disk drives.
Although Windows remained the predominant desktop / notebook OS, it got increasing competition from Google's Chrome OS, which was introduced in 2011. It was basically an OS structured around Google's Chrome browser, with an emphasis on cloud-based computing. Eventually, Chrome supported Android apps as well.
The smartphone was really the star personal computing device of the decade. It rendered the MP3 player largely obsolete, and made inroads on pocket cameras. All information flows went heavily, if not completely, digital: news apps, music and video downloads, ebooks, and even the phone system itself. Skype, an Estonian company founded in 2003, became a pathfinder in "voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP)", in which voice communications became just another form of internet data. The result was that, eventually, the cost of national phone calls went to zero, while the price of an international phone call went to a pittance.
Other information technologies of the decade included:
However, the biggest news in computing in the second decade of the 21st century was the growth of "machine learning (ML)" AI technologies. The AI boom of the 1980s fizzled out because rule-based systems were too clumsy, demanding ever-greater additions of rules. With ML, an AI system could be "programmed" by giving it data sets, with inputs matched to outputs. Given a large enough data set, an ML system, once programmed, could then accept inputs and generate outputs from them.
The rise of machine learning was accompanied by the introduction of enhanced GPUs, which proved well-suited to AI number-crunching tasks. They were used in "AI supercomputers", with thousands of them per supercomputer.
AI caught on in a big way, being used in a wide range of applications. It was almost a necessity in an environment where large flows of data had to be managed; the quantity simply overwhelmed any hope of direct human inspection. ML was particularly important in data mining, and also surveillance. It would prove one of the most disruptive technologies to emerge in the decade.
By the end of the decade, the looming big jump in information technology was the emergence of "internet in the sky" satellite constellations, like the "Starlink" network being flown by the US SpaceX company. Data connections via satellite were not new, but schemes like Starlink were much more ambitious, the idea being to make low-cost mobile broadband connections available to the entire world. Back on Earth, however, the global information grid seemed to be suffering from buyer's remorse, as all the many problems with security, privacy, and disinformation seemed to be piling up. [END OF SERIES]
START | PREV | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* WINGS & WEAPONS: As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("US Begins Production Of Its Latest Air-Dropped Nuclear Munition" by David Szondy, 09 December 2021), the latest version of the venerable B61 "Silver Bullet" nuclear bomb is now in production, the first "B61-12 Life Extension Program First Production Unit" having been rolled out, towards a total production of 400 to 500 units.
The B61 has been America's primary air-dropped nuclear bomb since it was deployed in 1968. Unlike the larger strategic B83 bomb, it can not only be carried by heavy bombers like the B-52 and the B-2, but also by strike aircraft flown by the US Air Force and NATO allies.
There are currently four versions of the B61: the 3, 4, 7, and 11. The first three are tactical weapons, the 11 is a strategic weapon, but they share a variable-yield design that gives them a yield from 0.3 to 340 kilotons of TNT as desired. They can carry a variety of fuses and can either drop on a ballistic arc, or retard their forward flight by using air drag to drop almost straight down.
However, these variants are obsolete and becoming decrepit. The Pentagon is now updating them to the "B61-12" variant. It will replace three of the older B61 variants, as well as the 1-megaton-yield B83. Such an overpowered weapon never made much sense; even a yield of a few hundred kilotons is an order of magnitude more than that of the bombs dropped on Japan. In addition, the B61 is a guided munition, with a Boeing Tailkit Assembly, and the ability to precisely target it means that its yield can be limited to the range of 0.3 to 50 kilotons.
The B61-12 will enter service in 2022, with the last delivered in 2026. Each weighs about 320 kilograms (2026), and they can be carried by almost all US bombers and attack aircraft.
* As discussed in an article from ECONOMIST.com ("Eyes In The Ice", 31 July 2021), during the Cold War the US and Canada collaborated to built a radar screen, the "Distant Early Warning (DEW)" network, to protect the northern approaches to North America. As discussed in an article from ECONOMIST.com ("North America's Arctic Radar Shield Is Due For An Upgrade", 31 July 2021),
The DEW line was built in the 1950s at great expense, stretching across 5,000 kilometers (31,000 miles) of northlands, under the direction of the joint Canadian-American "North American Air Defense Command (NORAD)" in Colorado. The DEW line was updated in the late 1980s,
The DEW line was updated in the late 1980s, creating the "New Warning System (NWS)". Now the two countries are considering another update. This is not simple. One problem is the changing nature of threats. The DEW line was primarily intended to spot ICBMs, which fly through the near-space environment and are easily spotted by radar; the NWS was to deal with low-flying cruise missiles as well. Modern Russian air-launched cruise missiles fly faster and farther, which means that the bombers which carry them must be spotted at greater distance.
The collapse of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty in 2019 means that Russia could also deploy ground-based cruise missiles in the Arctic. New hypersonic gliders, with the speed of ballistic missiles and the maneuverability of cruise missiles, could fly around the NWS.
The far north environment is also not easy to work in. Most of the NWS is uninhabited, with automated stations that are occasionally visited for service. They may be frozen up, with service crews having to hammer their way in. Polar bears are not unusual. In addition, the radar stations are built on land populated by the Inuit and other indigenous peoples -- and the policy of the current Canadian government is to consult with the locals before using their lands for military purposes. That was not always the case, but the Inuit are supportive of NWS. The Canadian Rangers, an army unit whose personnel are largely indigenous people, inspect many of the most desolate sites.
Finally, there is the question of money: the update could cost as much as $11 billion USD, with the US and Canada not seeing perfectly eye-to-eye on many issues -- though the disagreements are not as visible now as they were during the Trump Administration. That leads to the question of how much the NWS needs to be updated. Does North America really need a ground-based radar net? Or does the job migrate towards radars on ships, planes, blimps, and notably satellites? Maybe a space-based solution is the real answer, with a fleet of drones as a backup. The matter remains under discussion.
* A photo-essay from STARSINSIDER.com ("America's Secret Airline", 9 January 2022) discussed a government-operated air shuttle service, known informally as "Janet". Formally, nobody knows if it even has a name, being a completely secret operation, the name supposedly standing for "Joint Air Network for Employee Transportation" or "Just Another Non-Existent Thing".
Janet, to stick with the name, operates 11 aircraft -- working down the size scale -- 6 Boeing 737s, 2 Beech 1900s, and three 3 200s -- flying out of a secret terminal at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada. The aircraft are unmarked, being white with a red (or sometimes blue) cheatline across the passenger windows.
They are operated by defense contractor AECOM (standing meaninglessly for "Architecture, Engineering, Construction, Operations, and Management") for the US Air Force. Even flight attendants have top-secret clearances. It appears that Janet's mission is to shuttle personnel to top-secret US military installations, most notably Area 51 in Nevada -- but nobody's talking.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* NEW TRADE ORDER (6): International trade deals have long been pulled between two poles: the drive to have trade deals that are only concerned with trade, or have deals where other considerations are involved, such as human rights. The tilt has now shifted decisively towards incorporating other considerations. Led by the USA, this is manifested in three ways:
Over the past few of decades, reciprocal trade deals have increasingly included labor-related provisions on collective bargaining rights, forced labor, child labor and employment discrimination. There's not much evidence that these provisions have much effect. One study in 2021 into the impact of the EU's non-trade provisions found no consistent effect on respect for workers' rights. In some cases, the offer of a trade deal with the USA seemed effective in encouraging trade partners to implement labor reforms -- but after the deal was signed, not much really happened.
Labor advocates unsurprisingly complain the virtuous commitments embedded in trade deals lack teeth. The USA has the toughest language in its deals -- but when the Americans pressed a dispute with Guatemala over its failure to adhere to labor provisions, the USA lost, on the basis that the Guatemalan government's lack of action had no impact on trade. The EU, which enforces trade deals with dialogue and stern statements, has struggled to get Vietnam to stick to labor commitments.
Arguments against sanctions tend to run towards complaints about old colonial meddling in poor countries; of vulnerable workers losing their jobs from sanctions; and of abuse by protectionist interests. However, is that an argument to give it up, or to do a better job?
The European Commission is reviewing its trade deals to consider sanctions if countries do not live up to their commitments -- or, as the French and Dutch suggested in 2020, to offer tariff cuts as a reward for reforms. America's USMCA featured innovative measures, such as lower legal thresholds that make disputes easier to win, as well as a rapid-response mechanism. It's an experiment in progress, with complaints that its focus on labor rights is mostly to make big American unions like the AFL-CIO happy, while companies worry about disruption to supply chains.
The second way governments are toughening sanctions over human rights is through non-reciprocal trade deals granted by rich countries to poor ones. The EU is strengthening its generalized system of preferences, which makes tariff cuts for developing countries conditional on a set of labor standards and better human rights. The Trump Administration was fond of launching investigations into workers' rights in Azerbaijan, Bolivia, Eritrea, and Zimbabwe. Unfortunately, many of the Trump Administration's initiatives were both self-serving and short-sighted, and it was hard to determine how much good such efforts did. They haven't continued in the Biden Administration, though the US Congress is still discussing the addition of conditions to trade deals, including non-discrimination and women's empowerment.
The bottom line is that trade deals and lofty principles don't necessarily mesh very well. The push for considerations of human rights in trade deals seems more driven by national political dynamics than any serious expression of principles, being included to ensure support for trade deals. Skeptics suggest that there's no good reason to bog down trade deals with issues of principles; those should be addressed through separate negotiations, and there's no reason to think things would work out any worse.
However, in some cases, governments have no choice but to act against gross abuses of human rights, since ignoring them would be politically disastrous. The most obvious case is the Chinese province of Xinjiang, where a good proportion of Uighurs, a mainly Muslim ethnic group, are being detained in camps and forced to work; many are also sent to work in factories and farms outside Xinjiang. The Chinese, to no surprise, push back on all attempts to probe what's going on there. They complain about the scrutiny, but it's unavoidable for all concerned. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* WIRE HARNESSES: While tech news tends to focus on flashy gimmickry, in reality the ecology of modern tech is dominated by mundane items. As discussed in an article from REUTERS.com ("How a Cheap Component Could Help Kill Off Combustion Cars" by Nick Carey & Christina Amann, 30 May 2022), one good example is the humble wiring harness, used to electrically connect the elements of autos and other systems.
The wire harness is a low-cost, low-tech product, being insulated wires with connectors and ties, assembly being dependent on manual labor. Ukraine is a major supplier of harnesses, with the supply being disrupted by the war there. Ukrainian workers did what they could to keep the supplies going, in the face of power cuts, missile attacks, and curfews.
Industry observers believe the supply crunch could accelerate the transition to a new generation of lighter, machine-made harnesses designed for electric vehicles (EV). However, for the time being auto-makers have obtained other sources of supply. Mercedes-Benz, for example, was able to fly in harnesses from Mexico during a brief supply gap. Some Japanese suppliers are adding capacity in Morocco, while others have sought new production lines in countries including Tunisia, Poland, Serbia, and Romania.
Harnesses for fossil-fuel cars bundle together cables stretching a total of to 5 kilometers (3 miles), connecting everything from seat heaters to windows. Not only are they labor-intensive to make, almost every model is unique, so it takes time to get up to speed on a new harness.
Adrian Hallmark, CEO of Bentley, said the British luxury carmaker had first feared losing a third of its car production for 2022 from the harness shortage. "The Ukraine crisis threatened to close our factory fully for several months, much longer than we did for COVID."
Hallmark said finding alternative production sources was complicated by the fact the harnesses themselves had 10 different parts from 10 different suppliers in Ukraine. He added that the supply problem had encouraged Bentley, now a division of Volkswagen, to develop a simple harness for EVs that will be run by a central computer. Bentley plans to have a pure-electric lineup by 2030. He says that EVs have a "completely different concept of wiring ... It's a fundamental change in the way that we design cars."
The new zonal or modular harnesses are split into six to eight parts, short enough for automation in assembly and reducing complexity. They are also lighter, helping improve the range of electric cars. CelLink, a company founded in 2011 to provide flex circuits for the solar, LED, and battery industries, is now building a harness plant in Texas that will have 25 automated production lines. All the designs produced will be described in digital files, with a production line able to switch to a new design in ten minutes.
Many industry officials and experts don't believe that fossil-fuel cars will be around long enough to make improving the harness schemes used in them to be worth the bother. Michigan-based auto consultant Sandy Munro, who estimates EVs will make up half of global new car sales by 2028, says: "I wouldn't put a penny into internal combustion engines now. The future is coming up awful fast."
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* THE WEEK THAT WAS: As discussed in an article from FORTUNE.com ("Russia Is Failing in Ukraine" by Chloe Taylor, 17 June 2022) Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, head of British armed forces, said in an interview that Russia has "strategically lost" the war in Ukraine and is a "more diminished power" as a result of the invasion. Russian President Vladimir Putin had wrecked a quarter of his army, to achieve only "tiny" gains:
BEGIN_QUOTE:
This is a dreadful mistake by Russia. Russia will never take control of Ukraine. Russia has strategically lost already. ... Any notion that this is a success for Russia is nonsense. Russia is failing. It might be getting some tactical successes over the last few weeks, and those might continue for the next few weeks -- but Russia is losing strategically.
END QUOTE
Chris Tuck, a reader in strategic studies at King's College London, said that although Russian forces were having some tactical successes in limited areas, such as the eastern city of Severodonetsk, strategically the invasion of Ukraine has been "a disaster for Putin and Russia." Tuck said that Radakin's comments were intended to put the war into perspective:
BEGIN_QUOTE:
Russia has categorically failed to achieve any of the objectives it set out to achieve in the initial stage of the invasion. It obviously intended to try and regain control of Ukraine, and of course that hasn't happened -- if anything, it's pushed Ukraine further away.
END QUOTE
Jonathan Eyal -- associate director of strategic research partnerships at defense think tank the Royal United Services Institute -- said that ultimately, Putin's strategic objective in Ukraine was to re-create the old Soviet Empire by reimposing control over Ukraine:
BEGIN_QUOTE:
Russia has lost strategically if we assume, as looks likely, that the objective of Putin was to take over Ukraine and transform it into a satellite state under Russian influence. So in that respect, Russia has failed strategically. It is now blatantly obvious that Ukraine may not regain full control of all its territory, but it will remain an independent state, and more importantly it will remain a state that will challenge Russian influence in the region.
... The more important question still remains around what lesson Russian leaders draw out of the conflict. The debate is not really on whether Putin has failed strategically, but on whether it would be obvious to Russian decision-makers in the future that this was a disaster.
... he may be able to snatch victory out of defeat if we [in the West] do not come to a very decisive conclusion what is going to happen to Ukraine after the fighting is over. If Ukraine remains suspended in the air and nobody knows what to do with it, then Russia's still got a chance to come back at it.
END_QUOTE
Putin now makes little secret of his hegemonistic ambitions, comparing himself to Peter the Great. Eyal is very correct that an independent, democratic Ukraine is a challenge to Russian influence, exerting counter-influence on neighboring Belarus and Georgia, with carry-on effects to the "Stans" to the east.
American political scientist Ian Bremmer, writing in ECONOMIST.com, sounded many of the same notes about Putin's failure -- but concluded that it was unrealistic to hope Putin will be overthrown, and that there is not likely to be a "clean victory" in the war.
Bremmer appears to be under two misunderstandings. First, NATO heads are warning that the fight may be protracted, and none of them have expressed a hope that Putin will be overthrown. They would all like it if it happened, but that's not the plan: the plan is to clean the Russian invaders out of Ukraine.
That leads to the second misunderstanding, that Russia may be able to prevent its eviction from Ukraine, which is a failure to understand the asymmetry of the conflict. On the Russian side, the war is entirely at Putin's discretion; Russians have no other commitment to the fight, and the enthusiasm of Russian troops for the fight is low, it seems very low.
The Ukrainians, in contrast, are fighting for national survival, and have no choice but to fight. There are 44 million Ukrainians; Ukraine could raise an army of 2 million men, assuming they can be trained and supplied, and for the time being are being heavily supported. Ukraine could suffer a half-million, even a million casualties, and accept it, however unhappily.
In the worst case, if Russia were to overrun all of Ukraine, there would be too few Russian troops to hold down a big country, in the face of a huge insurgency -- it would be Afghanistan x 10+. It might take a decade, but the Russians would be driven out; any puppet government they left behind would fall immediately. In reality, the Russians can't come close to overrunning Ukraine and are struggling to make gains, apparently scraping the bottom of the barrel to do so. The Ukrainians are getting new weapons, and the chances are good that the Russians will lose the narrow edge that they have now.
The biggest factor at present is the imminent arrival of GPS-guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) launchers and rockets, mentioned last week. A first batch of Ukrainian crews have been trained to use GMLRS launchers, and they are likely to go into action soon. Assuming the Ukrainians can build up mass quickly on GMLRS, the Russians will be in big trouble.
Even better weapons will follow. There's been a lot of fuss in the media about the seeming "reluctance" of some NATO leaders to support Ukraine, but it appears there's an element of disinformation in that, to confuse Putin. The delays in getting weapons to the Ukrainians are likely more due to the limited capacity of the pipeline to the country, forcing considerations of the most appropriate weapons to send. Does Ukraine need more MiG-29s? No, it needs Patriot PAC-3 anti-missile interceptors -- and it takes months to train people to use them. It is not quick or easy to modernize an army, and it is extremely difficult to do it while that army is heavily engaged with an enemy.
Might the war really last a long time? It might, but what if the reality is that the Russians are on the edge of collapse? Once it begins, the collapse will cascade, and the Russians will go down to total defeat.
* The House 1-6 Committee hearings have been continuing, with interesting revelations. The general structure of Trump's clown-car election conspiracy have been clear, but some of the details are fascinating. One of the latest concerns John Eastman, a lawyer who came up with the nutcase plan to have Vice President Mike Pence overturn the election. Of course, Pence knew that was unworkable and refused to do it; the surprising part is that, according to testimony, even Eastman knew his scheme was legally preposterous. It was just a classic Trump exercise: sow chaos and then exploit it. That generally worked for Trump in the past, but now he's in too deep. The only thing that could be said for the plot was that it made investigation very complicated, in part because the scheme seems too crazy to be believed.
In the meantime, MAGA Twitter trolls are attempting to undermine the committee hearings -- one common approach being that America has other things to worry about, so we should forget about Trump's coup. The reply is: "Trump is going to jail, there's nothing you can do about it, so boo hoo hoo for you."
There's still plenty of trolling that the investigation of Trump will go nowhere, but its sincerity is questionable. Trump committed the biggest political crime, created the biggest political conspiracy, in US history, with an investigation of comparable size as a result. Of course it's taking a long time, the case is extremely complicated and involves thousands of players. It cannot be resolved quickly, but it will be resolved. Trump doesn't have a chance to beat the rap, except by checking out.
In much the same way, Kremlin Twitter trolls are working to undermine support for the war in Ukraine -- one common approach being to say that the Ukrainians are merely pawns in a proxy war of the US and NATO against Russia. Do they think that anyone believes them? Probably not; they're just getting paid and don't care; or maybe they like being annoying.
PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* 5TH INFORMATION REVOLUTION (33): Personal computers continued to evolve in that time, with the introduction of the first 64-bit CPUs early in the decade -- and the first dual-CPU or "core" chips introduced in mid-decade. GPUs were increasingly incorporated into CPUs, though multicore stand-alone GPUs were also introduced.
Flat-panel displays finally reached cost-performance parity with CRTs and then continued down the curve, with CRTs then fading away. Portable computers similarly achieved a general price-performance parity with desktops, with some users having no need for a desktop.
In the year 2000, most users still connected to the internet through modems, though the bitrates had increased to 56 kilobits per second, or sometimes more. However, from that time "broadband" connections, with data rates in megabits per second, began to become more common, using technologies such as cable modems -- leveraging off cable-TV connections -- and digital subscriber lines (DSL) -- an extension of the hardwired telephone service. However, fiber-optic connections, offering gigabit speeds, became the evolutionary endpoint of broadband connections. The phone network, from the 1990s had become very dependent on fiber optic trunklines, with intercontinental cables laid down to support global communications; home fiber optic connections were the logical next step. Unfortunately, although governments implemented programs to bring broadband access to the citizens, in somewhat the same way that governments had promoted electrical networks before World War 2, progress towards that end was slow and frustrating.
The boom in the cellphone in the previous decade led to a general need for more bandwidth, with third-generation (3G) cellphone systems introduced during the decade. Unlike 2G networks, which were "circuit switched" -- that is, two people using a connection established it, exclusively used it, then rang off -- 3G networks were "packet switched", breaking communications into packets that found their way across the general network. The two primary standards were "WCDMA", an extension of the 2G CDMA scheme, and the EV-DO standard. Their data rates were from a few hundred thousand bits per second to 1 or sometimes 2 megabits per second, making internet access practical.
Late in the decade, fourth-generation (4G) systems were introduced, with data rates of up to about 10 megabits per second. However, during that time 2G networks remained predominant, having a particular impact in the developing world, particularly Africa. Africans obtained cheap "feature phones", most notably made by Nokia of Finland, that could run simple software, such as games. They couldn't really access the internet, but they could send messages, server applications were developed that used SMS for communications -- for example, to obtain market information, allowing small farmers to know where to sell their product and how much they could expect to get for it. Even on such a limited basis, data communications proved vital.
However, the biggest computing innovation of the time was the Apple iPhone and its iOS operating system, introduced in 2007 and bringing in the era of the "smartphone". Leveraging off the growth in computer power over the previous decades, the smartphone was a capable "pocket computer" that was also a phone, with functionality provided by optimized applications or "apps", which were available from Apple through its online "app store". Apps could be obtained from other sources, but the Apple app store provided greater, if not perfect, security.
On the heels of the iPhone, Google released the "Android" operating system for smartphones -- based on Linux -- available to smartphone vendors on a partial open-source basis, leading to a proliferation of competitors to the iPhone. Google set up their own appstore as well. Personal computing began to be eclipsed by "mobile computing".
Apple's introduction of the "iPad" tablet at the end of the decade, with Android tablets appearing as well, expanded mobile computing to more capable platforms. The mobile computing revolution was enabled by the rise of high-capacity, low-cost flash memory. Since smartphones and tablets also had cameras, they ensured that, increasingly, nothing would happen without a video made of it. Security cameras had been becoming more widespread for decades, but the smartphone camera meant that there were eyes everywhere. In addition, phones provided a location capability, with position fixes obtained from the "Global Positioning System (GPS)" navigation satellite network. GPS had actually been in full operation from the 1990s, but originally GPS receivers were stand-alone units; smartphones with GPS rendered them obsolete.
Along with tablets, in 2007 Amazon introduced the "Kindle" electronic-book reader, which was a specialized tablet used for reading electronic books AKA "ebooks". The notion of an ebook was nothing new, books having been available in digital form from the 1990s, but Amazon's embrace of ebooks brought them into much wider circulation.
The decade had also seen a great expansion of connectivity to the global internet, leading to a secondary race to establish high-speed internet, promoted with varying degrees of success by governments. With the growth of high-speed internet, video downloading came of age. Netflix moved on from its "CD by mail" model to a download model, to become wildly successful, and indeed a major global video production house. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* Space launches for May included:
[02 MAY 22] NZ / ELECTRON / SMALLSATS -- A Rocket Labs Electron light booster was launched from New Zealand's Mahia Peninsula at 2249 UTC (next day local time - 13) to put 34 small satellites into space, the payloads being from commercial operators:
Rocket Lab caught the Electron's first stage with an S-92 helicopter for the first time. Rocket Lab nicknamed the mission "There And Back Again."
[05 MAY 22] CN TY / LONG MARCH 2D / JILIN 1 x 8 -- A Long March 2D booster was launched from Taiyuan at 0238 UTC (local time - 8) to put eight "Jilin 1" remote sensing satellites into orbit.
The Jilin 1 constellation is a fleet of small remote sensing satellites developed by Chang Guang Satellite Technology CO LTD, a commercial remote sensing company based in China's Jilin province. The Jilin 1 fleet is aimed at serving commercial users of Earth imaging data, including urban planners and infrastructure developers and the mining, agriculture, forestry, and maritime industries.
The payloads included the "Jilin 1 Kuanfu 01C" optical wide-area imaging spacecraft, plus seven "Jilin 1 Gaofen 03D" high-resolution optical observation satellites. The mission was managed by China Great Wall Industry Corporation, a subsidiary of government-owned CASC responsible for booking rides on Chinese Long March rockets for commercial payloads. More than 50 Earth-imaging satellites, typically about the size of a microwave oven or a mini-refrigerator, have launched in the Jilin 1 constellation since 2015.
[06 MAY 22] USA-C CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 4-17 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0942 UTC (local time + 4) to put 53 SpaceX "Starlink" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit. The satellites were built by SpaceX, each having a launch mass of about 225 kilograms (500 pounds). The booster first stage landed on the SpaceX drone ship; it was its 12th flight.
[09 MAY 22] CN WC / LONG MARCH 7 / TIANZHOU 4 -- A Long March 7 booster was launched from the Chinese Wenchang launch center on Hainan Island at 1756 UTC (local time - 8) to put the "Tianzhou 4" freighter capsule into orbit, on the first supply mission to the Chinese space station module. It docked with the station 8 hours later. After the launch of the three Shenzhou 14 crew in June, China plans to launch two new lab modules to expand the Chinese space station in July and October.
[13 MAY 21] CN JQ / HYPERBOLA 1 / SMALLSATS (FAILURE) -- A commercial Hyperbola 1 light booster was launched from Jiuquan at 0709 UTC (local time - 8) to put a set of small payloads into orbit. The booster was built by Beijing Interstellar Glory Space Technology LTD, better known as "iSpace". The launch ended in failure.
[13 MAY 22] USA-C VB / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 4-13 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Vandenberg SFB at 2257 UTC (local time + 7) to put 53 SpaceX "Starlink" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit. The satellites were built by SpaceX, each having a launch mass of about 225 kilograms (500 pounds). This brought the number of Starlink launches to above 2500. The booster landed on the SpaceX drone ship. It was its 5th flight.
[14 MAY 22] USA-C CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 4-15 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 2040 UTC (local time + 4) to put 53 SpaceX "Starlink" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit. The satellites were built by SpaceX, each having a launch mass of about 225 kilograms (500 pounds). The booster first stage landed on the SpaceX drone ship; it was its first flight.
[18 MAY 22] USA-C CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 4-18 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 1059 UTC (local time + 4) to put 53 SpaceX "Starlink" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit. The satellites were built by SpaceX, each having a launch mass of about 225 kilograms (500 pounds). The booster first stage landed on the SpaceX drone ship; it was its fifth flight.
[19 MAY 15] RU PL / SOYUZ 2-1A / COSMOS 2556 (BARS-M) -- A Soyuz 2-1a booster was launched from Plesetsk at 0803 UTC (local time - 4) to put what the third "Bars-M" optical spy satellite into orbit for the Russian military. The spacecraft was designated "Cosmos 2556".
[19 MAY 22] USA CC / ATLAS 5 / CST 100 STARLINER TEST 2 -- An Atlas 5 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 2254 UTC (local time + 4) on a second uncrewed test flight to the International Space Station. This mission was added after Boeing's decision to refly the Starliner's Orbital Flight Test before proceeding with the Crew Flight Test. The capsule returned to Earth 6 days later, parachuting onto New Mexico. The booster featured two solid rocket boosters and a dual-engine Centaur upper stage.
[20 MAY 22] CN JQ / LONG MARCH 4C / COMSATS x 3 -- A Long March 2C booster was launched from Jiuquan at 1030 UTC (local time - 8) to put the three communications satellites into low Earth / high inclination orbit. Few details about the satellites were announced. Two of the comsats were manufactured by Chang Guang Satellite Technology CO LTD, a commercial company that has previously specialized in building Earth-imaging satellites. The third satellite was built by the China Academy of Space Technology.
[25 MAY 22] USA-C CC / FALCON 9 / TRANSPORTER 5 -- A SpaceX Falcon booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 1835 UTC (local time + 4), on the "Transporter 5" mission, a rideshare flight to low-Earth orbit, carrying 59 payloads. The dedicated Transporter rideshare missions featured a payload stack of several rings that each contain circular attachment points, or ports, with a defined volume around them that can be filled with one or many satellites depending on customer needs. The payloads included:
One of the CubeSats on the Transporter 5 mission also carried the cremated remains of 47 people, part of a commercial memorial service provided by Celestis.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* NEW TRADE ORDER (5): The second element in promoting trade resilience is to form alliances with like-minded allies, to find a diversity of sources, improve relations with international partners, and "friend-shore" production away from China. There seems to be an element of theatrics in this -- but after four years of Donald Trump bad-mouthing America's allies, a show of amity is hardly unwelcome. However, this effort also focuses on long-standing problems, such as the heavily concentrated business of mining and processing rare earths. Possible collaborations include one between America, Australia and Japan to grow processing capacity outside China, and another between the EU and Canada to hook up investors with potential projects.
Much of this coordination is in an early stage. In the summer of 2021, a long-running and bitter dispute over aircraft subsidies between America, Britain and the EU was settled by creating two new co-operative frameworks -- to jointly analyze "non-market practices [meaning Chinese subsidies] with the goal of establishing the basis for joint or parallel action in the future". Other hookups are intended to shift supply chains, like the agreement in the spring of 2021 between Japan and the USA to collaborate over semiconductors.
The third element in the governmental push drive for greater resilience involves fortifying domestic economies -- which implies sharpening trade tools. The US, Britain, and the EU are all investigating protective measures. Of course, it also means turning inward, with the Biden Administration pushing "Buy American" laws to snub foreign access to the USA's massive public-procurement market. The US Congress has also been pushing a bill to reshore production of personal protective equipment and medicines, in response to the way America was caught short by the pandemic.
China is responding in kind, the government having reportedly issued new procurement guidelines setting local content requirements of up to 100% for 315 items, including medical equipment and seismic instruments. The government's current five-year plan includes a strategy to increase self-reliance by raising spending on research.
This is all part of a tilt towards government industrial policies. The pandemic generated a great and not unjustified fear that foreign suppliers were not likely to play fair with their trade partners. When British and American cash for vaccine-makers came on condition that production would go first to their populations, other countries like Australia, Canada, South Africa, and South Korea saw the writing on the wall, and invested in the final stage of production. The WTO has usefully published a list of vaccine inputs, to help governments assess which trade flows not to impede. Many politicians now believe that in a crisis, foreign suppliers are unreliable.
The semiconductor industry is being vigorously cultivated with government cash, in part because of the perception that existing production sites arose from public subsidy. A Biden Administration review noted that the Taiwanese government covers 50% of land costs and 45% of construction and facility costs for semiconductor fabrication facilities; and that South Korean subsidies cut the cost of owning a semiconductor manufacturing facility by 25% to 30%. The US Congress is pushing a bill to massively subsidize the semiconductor industry, while the Japanese are courting TSMC, a Taiwanese company, to set up a facility. EU members are similarly pursuing a partnership with Intel. Since semiconductor fabrication is capital-intensive and brain-intensive, not labor-intensive, there's no strong motive to offshore it anyway.
So far, the money being pumped into such efforts hasn't amounted to much, demonstrating the expense involved. In addition, there are limits to how far governments can push resilience without shooting themselves in the foot. Nobody wants autarchy -- North Korea being the unfortunate model for what happens with an unrealistic mindset of total self-reliance -- but where's the line that defines "too much"?
Trudi Hartzenberg of the Trade Law Center, a South African think-tank, says the pandemic has promoted the resolve to develop productive capacity in South Africa, which is linked to the government's push to waive intellectual-property provisions in WTO rules. In 2020, as part of its resilience drive, India introduced "production-linked incentives", first for large-scale electronics manufacturing and pharmaceutical ingredients, and from November for ten other industries, including textiles, car parts and solar modules.
One of the keys, it seems, goes back to fostering alliances with friends, trying to determine who should do what instead of engaging in out-of-control competition. Resilience does not mean autarchy; it instead means choosing one's friends carefully. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* NVIDIA HOPPER ARCHITECTURE: As discussed in an article from THEVERGE.com ("Nvidia Reveals H100 GPU For AI And Teases World's Fastest AI Supercomputer" by James Vincent, 22 March 2022), graphics processing unit (GPU) maker Nvidia has announced a set of Nvidia has announced a slew of AI-focused products, including details of its new silicon architecture, Hopper; the first datacenter GPU built using that architecture, the H100; and broad plans to build what the company claims will be the world's fastest AI supercomputer, the "Eos".
The GPU, as its name implies, was originally designed for display graphics processing, but its number-crunching capabilities turned out to be very useful for AI, with Nvidia an ongoing beneficiary of the AI boom. The company wants to keep ahead, with their efforts focused on a popular machine-learning approach known as the "Transformer".
It demands a lot of number-crunching power. When the OpenAI company launched its GPT-2 language system in 2019, for example, it contained 1.5 billion connections / parameters. When Google trained a similar model just two years later, it used 1.6 trillion parameters. Paresh Kharya -- Nvidia senior director of product management -- says:
BEGIN_QUOTE:
Training these giant models still takes months -- so you fire up a job and wait for one and a half months to see what happens. A key challenge to reducing this time to train is that performance gains start to decline as you increase the number of GPUs in a data center.
END_QUOTE
Nvidia says its new "Hopper" architecture will cut the time required. Named after pioneering computer scientist and US Navy Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, the architecture is specialized to accelerate the training of Transformer models on H100 GPUs by six times compared to previous-generation chips. The new fourth-generation Nivida NVlink can connect up to 256 H100 GPUs at nine times higher bandwidth than the previous generation.
The H100 GPU itself contains 80 billion transistors, supporting almost 17,000 32-bit cores, and is the first GPU to support the PCle Gen5 bus as well as HBM3 fast memory, providing a memory bandwidth of 3TB/s. Nvidia says an H100 GPU is three times faster than its previous-generation A100 at floating-point 16, FP32, and FP64 compute, and six times faster at FP8 math. Kharya says: "For the training of giant Transformer models, H100 will offer up to nine times higher performance, training in days what used to take weeks."
Along with the hardware introductions, Nvidia has also announced updates to its various enterprise AI software services, including Maxine -- a software development kit to support audio and video enhancements, intended to power things like interactive avatars -- and Riva -- an SDK used for both speech recognition and text-to-speech.
In addition, Nvidia has dropped hints that it's working on a leading-edge AI supercomputer, named "Eos", based on the Hopper architecture. It will contain some 4,600 H100 GPUs to offer 18.4 exaflops (10E18 flops) of "AI performance." The system will be used for Nvidia's internal research only. It should be operational before the end of the year. AI supercomputers don't perfectly compare with traditional supercomputers, since AI gets by with smaller floating-point numbers -- but Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang did say that Eos, when running traditional supercomputer tasks, would be able to run at 275 petaFLOPS of compute -- 1.4 times faster than "the fastest science computer in the US", the IBM Summit at Oak Ridge National Labs.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The first hearing of the House 1-6 Capitol riot commission was this last week, which was history in the making. Actually, there was a hearing at the outset, focusing on the Capitol Police, but that was just a prologue.
GOP Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming was in the spotlight, saying:
BEGIN QUOTE:
On the morning of January 6, President Donald Trump's intention was to remain President of the United States, despite the lawful outcome of the 2020 election and in violation of his Constitutional obligation to relinquish power. President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack.
END_QUOTE
The committee provided an outline of Trump's "sophisticated seven-part plan":
BEGIN_QUOTE:
1: President Trump engaged in a massive effort to spread false and fraudulent information to the American public, claiming the 2020 election was stolen from him.
2: President Trump corruptly planned to replace the Acting Attorney General, so that the Department of Justice would support his fake election claims.
3: President Trump corruptly pressured Vice President Pence to refuse to count certified electoral votes, in violation of the US Constitution and the law.
4: President Trump corruptly pressured state election officials, and state legislators, to change election results.
5: President Trump's legal team and other Trump associates instructed Republicans in multiple states to create false electoral slates and transmit those slates to Congress and the National Archives.
6: President Trump summoned and assembled a violent mob in Washington and directed them to march on the US Capitol.
7: As the violence was underway, President Trump ignored multiple pleas for assistance and failed to take immediate action to stop the violence and instruct his supporters to leave the Capitol.
END_QUOTE
Testimony from Trump's Attorney General Bill Barr was presented, flatly rejecting Trump's claims of election fraud:
BEGIN_QUOTE:
I made it clear I did not agree with the idea of saying the election was stolen and putting out this stuff, which I told the president was bullshit. And I didn't want to be a part of it, and that's one of the reasons that went into me deciding to leave when I did.
END_QUOTE
Trump's daughter Ivanka was also cited saying that it was obvious Trump had lost the election. The hearings may well be an inflection point, as Trump's fans tire of him and the weight of evidence against him piles up. Much has been said about Cheney's dim prospects in the fall election -- but though she may have reversals, they are likely to be only temporary. At the start of the hearing, Cheney threw down the gauntlet to the MAGA in the GOP:
BEGIN_QUOTE:
In our country, we don't swear an oath to an individual or a political party. We take our oath to defend the United States Constitution, and that oath must mean something. Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: there will come a day when Donald Trump is gone -- but your dishonor will remain.
END_QUOTE
As the saying goes: By being in the rear of the advance, you can be in the forefront of the retreat. Might she be president one of these days?
* For myself, I'm not paying that much attention to the hearings. I know what's coming down; I'm less interested in what will be said than I am in who says it. I can keep up by watching video clips on Youtube.
There was commentary that the committee would encourage the Department of Justice to take action on Trump. That was ridiculous. Trump committed the biggest political crime in US history, and is the target of a proportionally huge DOJ investigation. The House investigation is handy to the DOJ in some ways, notably in sweeping aside Republican political resistance to the investigation of Trump -- but, since the DOJ does not and cannot conduct investigations in public, the 1-6 committee investigation has to be kept at arm's length.
Trump's lawyers are certain to argue in his (inevitable) trial that the House investigation means he can't get an unbiased trial; the DOJ can see that trap and is not going to fall into it. There is no reason to believe the DOJ investigation would go much differently whether there was a House investigation or not. Certainly, Attorney General Merrick Garland is under no public pressure to take action, because he's not an elected official. He's under pressure, but it's independent of what the voters think.
Interestingly, there is little evidence of obstructionism from the GOP in the Senate. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has never made any secret of his dismissive attitude toward Trump. McConnell has no problem with Trump being taken down, as long as his own hands are clean in the matter. I suspect he has a tacit deal with the committee: ~"I'll make sure Senate GOP keep their mouths shut, and you don't need to concern yourself with them." Sounds like a deal.
In any case, the DOJ needs to hit Trump with everything they can throw at him, for two reasons: they want to make sure Trump doesn't get away, and they want to make sure that no other clown tries to pull any of Trump's stunts ever again. One of the things about a crushing case against Trump is that he may be encouraged to cop a plea, which would mean no troublesome trial. In addition, a GUILTY plea from Trump would undercut all the lies generated in his defense. However, we shall see about that.
* The war in Ukraine grinds on brutally, with heavy casualties on both sides in the battle for the Donbas region. Ukraine is waiting on guided multiple-launch rocket system (GMLRS) launchers and missiles, which are precision-guided weapons that hit hard and outrange Russian artillery. They have 90-kilogram (200-pound) warheads with 160,000 tungsten pellets, which would likely clear a target area at least out to 30 meters (100 feet). The delay in getting the GMLRS launchers into service is clearly due to logistics and training. There's a lot of impatience among the Twitter public at the delays, but the weapons pipeline to Ukraine can only handle so much so fast.
I've been following one Thomas C. Theimer on Twitter, the fellow being ex-Italian Army field artillery, now working in video in Austria and Ukraine. He points out that the sophisticated digital control systems normally fitted to Western artillery have been removed from weapons provided to Ukraine, one reason being that they can't fall into Russian hands.
The other reason is that the Ukrainians have their own sophisticated "geospatial information system (GIS)" named "Arta", developed by Ukrainian programmers in cooperation with British GIS firms. Using tablets and smartphones, Ukrainian troops can get real-time information on enemy dispositions, and precisely target them. It has been hooked up to the Starlink satellite constellation for wide-area use. The system integration is likely far from perfect, but it would not help the Ukrainians to have weapons not integrated into their own systems.
* I got to wondering if there was a set of headphones that had a built-in MP3 music player -- so I checked on Amazon, and found WXY headphones for about $25 USD. I got them, and they work fine, though they're kind of bulky, and the sound quality is muddy. They're fine for what I want, and I'll look around to see if I can boost the treble.
In more gimmick news, I had been thinking of buying a Steam handheld game controller -- but it was hundreds of dollars for something I would not have that much use for. A few days ago, I ran across the Razer Kishi V2 game controller, which straps on to an ordinary smartphone. I had a Xiaomi smartphone that didn't get much use out of, so I bought the Kishi V2 for about a hundred bucks.
As it turned out, the Kishi V2 is new and the lead time for delivery was weeks to a month. On seeing that, I figured there had to be a Kishi V1 already available -- and I found I could get one right away for less than fifty bucks, the price having been cut. I canceled the order for the V2, and got the V1 in a few days. In the meantime, I found out that the Steam game system could work on Android, meaning in principle I could access steam games with the smartphone-Kishi system.
Alas, once I got the Kishi and set it up with my Xiaomi smartphone -- it was simple, though I had to pop off the smartphone hard case -- I found out Steam had an infuriatingly unfriendly authentification system that made it effectively unusable. In search of an alternative, I downloaded the Kishi app from the Google store and ran it; it simply listed Android games for download, but that was good enough. Android games don't necessarily work with a controller, but the app pointed me to those that did, providing a fair selection. Indeed, I think I'm going to start building up a reference for Android games with controller support, the number of which is continually growing.
So now I have my handheld game machine on the cheap, at a price consistent with my use for it. Incidentally, the Kishi connects to the phone via a USB-C connector, so configuration isn't an issue; the Kishi also has a USB-C connector to allow the phone to be recharged.
Oh, and another thing: along with wondering if there were headphones with a built-in music player, I got to wondering if there were binoculars with built-in cameras -- which would be very handy for airshows. It turns out that such things exist, but they're all junk right now, with weak cameras. It would actually be easy to implement: put the camera in the right side of the binoculars, with a viewfinder display in the right eyepiece. The left side would be left with conventional optics. With smartphone cameras continually improving, the tech should be there soon to install a better camera.
PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* 5TH INFORMATION REVOLUTION (32): By the first years of the 21st century, the mainframe computers that had been a fixture of businesses and other organizations to that time began to give way to "server farms" of computers, with banks of computer in their own structure. Amazon.com, living in the online world, had a particular need for server farms; in 2006, the company decided to offer capacity on server farms to other business, under "Amazon Web Services (AWS)". Although the idea wasn't completely original to Amazon, AWS became a leader in "cloud computing".
In the mainframe era, businesses maintained their own computer facilities, with the problems not only of having to maintain the system, but also of having too much or too little capacity. With AWS, clients could obtain the capacity they needed, with AWS also providing services to help them make use of it. Cloud computing became a boom market, with competitors ramping up their server farms as fast as they could. To be sure, large organizations still often wanted to support their own systems, but in effect, they maintained their own clouds.
Music downloading became formalized with the introduction of Apple iTunes Store in 2003, with users able to purchase downloads from major record labels, to be played on the Mac iTunes app. Music downloading wasn't a new idea as such, music download sites having arisen in the 1990s, often offering "live streaming", establishing internet "radio channels". The early efforts tended towards the informal, and sometimes the illegal. Downloading began to encroach on music distributed on CDs.
The iTunes Store service not only complemented the iTunes app, it also meshed with the Apple "iPod" digital portable music player -- the 21st-century heir of the Sony Walkman tape player. Music was downloaded and stored in nonvolatile solid-state "flash" memory; tape would soon disappear. Flash memory was also supporting a boom in new digital cameras, with images stored in flash chips; film was on its way out, too. In addition, flash became the standard for portable mass storage, in the form of the handy, if easily mislaid, "flash stick" or "thumb drive". Early on, capacities of flash chips and sticks were hundreds of megabytes; by the end of the decade, capacities were in gigabytes, with capacities persistently growing and costs falling. The CD-ROM drive was on the way out by that time.
The iPod introduced the concept of "podcasting", or lectures and such recorded on digital media for downloading. Along with music and speech downloading, video downloading began to catch on, with the introduction of the "Youtube" service in 2005. It was organized to provide short videos -- stereotypically, videos people took of their cats -- with it proving a particularly useful outlet for disinformation.
As something of an evolution of USENET, "social media" companies began to take off. "Facebook" was established in 2004, as something of an online meeting place for Harvard students; it would spread to other universities, then to the general public in 2006. It would ultimately evolve to have a membership comparable to a good fraction of the population of the Earth, though it would have troubles with dummy accounts. Similarly, "Twitter" emerged in 2006, establishing an online community based on short messages of 140 characters each -- later expanded to 280.
Online services such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Twitter were free for use. Amazon, of course, made its money through retail sales, while the others were directly or indirectly supported by advertising. All were dependent on collecting data on their users -- Amazon, for example, used user data to tailor product recommendations to individual users. The big online firms weren't the only ones collecting data on users; supermarkets and other retailers devised "loyalty card" programs, in which user sales were tracked to allow, for example, mailing packets of personalized sales coupons to every user.
User data was tracked by "data mining" software that collected the data and assessed it. Data mining had emerged in the 1990s, in the wake of earlier statistical-analysis software. It had a wide range of applications, one of the most important being to check charge-card transactions for fraud. It reflected the fact that the fifth information revolution involved collection and assessment of huge flows of data that couldn't have been handled in the days when paper was the most significant data-storage medium. "Big data" was becoming more important for almost every function, from law enforcement to science. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* GIMMICKS & GADGETS: As discussed in a press release by David L. Chandler of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on SCITECHDAILY.com on 21 December 2021, MIT researchers have developed a rechargeable lithium-ion battery in the form of a fiber that could be woven into fabrics. The idea seems a bit startling at first, but it makes obvious sense: the wire core is one electrode, surrounded by an electrolyte, which is in turn surrounded by cladding making up the other electrode.
The MIT researchers put together a lithium fiber battery 140 meters (460 feet) long as a demonstration. It was fabricated using a fiber-drawing system that accepts a large-diameter precursor to the fiber battery -- with the electrodes and electrolytes derived from gels -- and then draws it down into its proper size. There's no constraint on length, and cutting the fiber doesn't short it out.
It is also possible to fabricate some electronic devices like LEDs in a fiber format, and so the fiber battery offers a possible integrated electronic solution for portable devices that could be woven into clothing. The fiber could of course also be wrapped into a 3D structure, being used to create 3D batteries of any configuration.
* THEVERGE.com reported on a definitely cute gimmick, the Nitecore UFZ100 camera battery, a replacement for the Sony NP-FZ100 battery -- differing from the Sony battery by having a built-in USB port to allow it to be charged directly. It does have a slight penalty, a bit over 1%, in battery capacity, and charges only about half as fast. It remains to be seen if this idea will disappear and never be seen again, or if it will become the norm.
* As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com "Energy Dome Uses Carbon Dioxide As A Grid-Scale Battery" by Loz Blain, 29 July 2021), one of the problems with renewable energy is the need to store the energy produced by wind or solar when the wind is blowing or the Sun is up, so it can be distributed when they're not. An Italian company named "Energy Dome" is proposing a storage scheme based on compressed carbon dioxide.
The idea is that a giant bladder of CO2 gas is stowed in a big dome, with turbines compressing the gas. This heats up the gas, which drives a thermal energy storage system, while the gas is compressed into a liquid, making it easier to store. To discharge the system, the stored heat is used to vaporize the gas, which then drives a second set of turbines to produce power.
Energy Dome envisions a range of dome sizes, but believes a target full-scale plant could store about 100 to 200 megawatt-hours of energy, and generate about 25 megawatts. The system can store and release energy very quickly, with an input-to-output efficiency of about 75%. Company officials believe that in maturity, the "levelized cost of storage (LCOS)" will be from half to a quarter that of lithium batteries. Iron-air batteries could be potentially cheaper, but a bank of such wouldn't be able to release power as quickly to handle short-term fluctuations. Energy Dome is currently working on a pilot plant with a capacity of 4 MWh on the island of Sardinia, which should go into operation soon.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* NEW TRADE ORDER (4): The rise of the COVID-19 pandemic led to a rush for face masks, which led accordingly to shortages. Production of protective gear in the USA was hobbled by dependence on foreign supply chains. The virus came with a panic of export restrictions on medical products and a plunge in Chinese exports that raised doubts over whether its production clusters had exposed the world to excessive risk. The private sector is rethinking things -- moving from the "just in time" policy of lean inventories to the "just in case" policy of stockpiling -- but the current supply-chain snarl has made change problematic, while demonstrating its necessity.
There's a recognition, even in industry, that some government intervention in the international supply system is necessary. The Biden Administration has a goal of greater resilience in its trade policy. Luz Maria de la Mora, Mexico's undersecretary for foreign trade, says: "There's a reassessment of how far we can go in this globalization."
That means trying to find at strengthening domestic industry according to criteria beyond merely the market. In Japan, officials are considering how to maintain industrial bases in sensitive technologies and industries. The European Commission has adopted resilience as a "new compass for EU policymaking", persuading even champions of open trade to worry about "strategic dependence".
There's more talk than action right now. Over the longer run, much of the talk of "resilience" will go nowhere, or just give a tint to policies that would have happened anyway. The pandemic has made poor countries painfully aware of their vulnerabilities, in particular the dependence on tourism. The richer countries see their vulnerabilities in more ambiguous terms, with the policy responses involving a focus on three things: facts, friends, and fortifications.
Governments want more facts, more data, with an emphasis on supply-chain reviews. The Biden Administration is doing one, as is the British government, which has a secretive "Project Defend" to identify supply-chain vulnerabilities. The objective of the reviews is to survey industries to identify sources of supply so concentrated that they justify intervention.
These reviews are not trivial. The level of dependence will vary according to domestic production, the concentration of foreign sourcing, and the availability of close substitutes. The American review found that the Food & Drug Administration did not know how many pharmaceutical ingredients were sourced from abroad, only the number of registered facilities. Just as important as knowing what is made and imported, is knowing what could be made or procured in an emergency -- and that's even harder to figure out.
Nonetheless, some progress is being made. A review by the European Commission identified 137 of 5,000 imported products with a domineering foreign supplier. Of those, only around 34 were hard to substitute by using other suppliers -- which rendered down to just 0.6% of EU imports by value. It has been suggested the resilience problem doesn't seem, on close examination, such a problem. However, even small-value components can have a big economic impact, if they create "chokepoints" in the supply, production, or distribution chains. The G7 has suggested the idea of supply-chain stress tests, something like those that are now carried out for banks.
The thirst for facts means pressure on private companies to share data. Policymakers appear to be increasingly focused on a set of products of particular concern. In a recent review of critical supply chains, the Biden administration homed in on electric vehicles, active pharmaceutical ingredients, semiconductors, and rare earths. One relevant fact in that investigation was that in 2019, Taiwan accounted for 92% of high-end semiconductor production. The European Commission has similarly focused on lithium batteries for electric vehicles, active pharmaceutical ingredients, semiconductors, and raw materials, including rare earths, as well as cloud computing. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* BIRD FLU: As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Wrestling With Bird Flu, Europe Considers Once-Taboo Vaccines", Erik Stokstad, 11 May 2022), in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world has now been hit with a flu pandemic that is taking down birds.
In March 2022 Christian Drouin, a French chicken farmer, discovered that his fowls were dying of avian influenza. He had to cull the flock to keep the virus from spreading. Normally, veterinarians would come out and gas the birds with carbon dioxide, but they were all busy handling outbreaks elsewhere. For lack of anything better to do, he simply turned off the ventilation fans in the poultry buildings; the temperatures rose, and the 18,000 birds died of heatstroke. His neighbors helped him bury the carcasses the next day. After that, he says, "I lay down in the dark, stunned by what I had done."
For three decades, strains of avian influenza have been emerging in Asia. The current highly pathenogenic H5N1 strain arrived in Europe in 2021. It was first detected in the United States in January 2022. France and other countries have been working hard to suppress the H5N1 virus, with more than 16 million birds culled since December 2021 in France alone. The situation has become so desperate that countries are performing research on a solution long considered taboo: vaccinating flocks. Ministers in France and other EU countries are discussing the idea, while researchers are conducting trials with vaccines.
Vaccination would seem like the obvious answer, but vaccines are never completely leakproof, and may have only a limited ability to control outbreaks. Some researchers are concerned that vaccinating, if not done carefully, will allow H5N1 to persist and continue to mix with strains in wild birds, with the risk that it might evolve to spread among people, with a frightening prospect of another global pandemic, right on top of the COVID-19 pandemic. Avian pathologist Jean-Luc Guerin -- of the National Veterinary School of Toulouse -- says that vaccination is a last resort: "We use this tool only if we admit that we cannot control the infection by classical ways."
The USA is relying on culling for the moment. However, Europe has been so hard-hit that culling has become too drastic and expensive a response, pushing the use of vaccines. Richard Webby -- a virologist at Saint Jude Children's Research Hospital in the USA, who studies influenza in birds and other animals -- says that vaccination "really has the capacity to make a huge difference." Over the longer term, Europeans may have to rethink their dense poultry operations.
The Chinese have enjoyed some success with bird vaccines. In 2017 the country began mandatory vaccination of poultry against an H7N9 strain that could infect humans. Vaccination slashed the prevalence of the virus in poultry, and the number of human infections dropped to zero. Chinese farmers were able to continue production, with the USA continuing to accept Chinese poultry products. Virologist Chen Hualan of the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute, who developed the vaccines, says that accomplishment "could be replicated everywhere."
That may be over-optimistic, since H7N9 generally only infects chickens, while the H5N1 strain can infect birds in general. Besides, for localized outbreaks, culling is likely the most cost-effective solution. Vaccine trials are nonetheless in progress, with two vaccines being tested in France on ducks raised for foie gras. Ducks carrying bird flu are the "ultimate reservoir," Guerin says, because they can spread the virus for up to 15 days before showing symptoms. One of the vaccines, Volvac Best, is made by Boehringer Ingelheim and is already in use in countries outside Europe, including Mexico and Egypt. Ceva created the other vaccine, the first RNA vaccine to be tested in poultry, specifically for ducks. Should trials go well, the vaccines could be introduced by the end of 2023.
The US Department of Agriculture is modifying existing vaccines and testing new ones against the current H5N1 strain. After farmers vaccinate flocks, they'll need to conduct testing to make sure the virus isn't circulating silently in any birds that were missed or didn't respond fully to a vaccine. In the longer term, China needs to come up with new methods to slow down the emergence of new avian flu strains, while European countries need to restructure to avoid having many farms with dense flocks close together. Controlling bird flu is a long-term effort, being neither easy nor cheap, but it's something that has to be done.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* THE WEEK THAT WAS: Billionaire Elon Musk has been working hard at attracting attention as of late, notably working to take over Twitter and restore "freedom of speech" -- a concept that he doesn't quite seem to understand.
Less noticed has been the usefulness of the SpaceX Starlink "internet in the sky" satellite constellation. Musk has made no secret of SpaceX sending large numbers of Starlink terminals to Ukraine, with company officials downplaying US government support of the Starlink network. Actually, inspection of government contracts show the Feds are deeply involved in the effort; SpaceX may be simply trying to keep government support under the radar. In March 2022 Mykhailo Fedorov, the Ukrainian minister of digital transformation, said over a Starlink connection: "We are using thousands, in the area of thousands, of terminals with new shipments arriving every other day."
It is estimated that Ukraine has over 10,000 Starlink terminals. It is not entirely clear just how far Ukrainian exploitation of Starlink goes. Are they using it to support tactical networks? They could use it to provide datalinks to long-range drones for pinprick attacks deep inside Russia. It is known that Russia has tried to jam Starlink, but so far SpaceX engineers have kept ahead of them. The Kremlin has complained -- as always -- and said that Musk would be "held accountable".
The Chinese have taken notice of the utility of Starlink, with a paper released by a research group under by Ren Yuanzhen -- a researcher with the Beijing Institute of Tracking and Telecommunications funded by the Chinese state -- suggesting that China develop a capability to defeat Starlink: "A combination of soft and hard kill methods should be adopted to make some Starlink satellites lose their functionality and destroy the constellation's operating system."
The paper noted that the US military has a strong interest in Starlink: "In May 2020, the US Army signed an agreement with SpaceX on the use of Starlink's broadband to transmit data across military networks; in October 2020, SpaceX won a USD 150-million contract to develop military-use satellites; in March 2021, it announced its plan to work with the US Air Force to further test the Starlink Internet."
* Yeah, good luck with that: the Chinese are launching similar constellations, and any actions taken against Starlink could readily be taken against Chinese satellites. China is now starting to be seen as something of a paper dragon: a decade ago, Chinese ambitions and capabilities seemed open-ended, but now the capabilities seem less impressive.
As a major case in point, an article from ECONOMIST.com ("Not So Spooky", 1 June 2022), points out that while Chinese intelligence is good at hacking and harassing dissidents, it leaves much to be desired in other areas. After Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Beijing on a cordial visit on 4 February 2022, the Chinese didn't seem to be aware that the invasion of Ukraine was imminent. When it came off three weeks later, there were no plans in place to rescue Chinese citizens in Ukraine.
China's embassy first advised them to stay at home or fix a Chinese flag "on an obvious place on your car". It quickly became apparent that was not a good idea, since China's support for the invasion unsurprisingly caused resentment of Chinese among Ukrainians. A few days later, the embassy announced: "Don't show your identity or display identifying symbols." More profoundly, Chinese diplomats struggled to create a coherent position, having been particularly surprised at Ukrainian resistance to Russia and at Western support for Ukraine. It was clear nobody had thought anything out. Before the war, a foreign diplomat in Beijing recalls Chinese contacts naively telling him they had limited understanding of Central and Eastern Europe, but were fortunate to have the Russians to explain it for them.
True, China has certainly expanded its espionage activities and capabilities in recent years. Much of that has focused on stealing technology in industries it seeks to dominate, such as robotics, aerospace and biopharma. Chris Wray, the director of the US FBI, said early in 2022 that his agents open a China-related counter-intelligence case roughly every 12 hours -- adding that China's cyber-espionage activities are especially brazen, outstripping those of all other countries combined.
China has got better at human intelligence as well. Some American officials blame a Chinese mole -- as well as a compromised communication system -- for the jailing or execution of many CIA sources in China between 2010 and 2012. China's spies have moved beyond the ethnic-Chinese sources they used to rely on, often using stolen data to identify those with vulnerabilities, and making approaches via LinkedIn and other social media. China has also escalated efforts to secure political influence in democracies, often by offering funding or perks to politicians -- although that's usually done through a Communist Party branch called the United Front Work Department, not its spy agencies.
Still, China's global interests have been expanding so rapidly that its intelligence service has been struggling to keep up with an overwhelming torrent of data that is very difficult to sift through. Peter Mattis, a former CIA analyst who is now at the Special Competitive Studies Project, an NGO in Virginia, says: "If you're searching through massive data, your results are only as good as your queries."
The Chinese have not been much good at analysis of the data they have -- partly because they work for an authoritarian bureaucracy, where they may not feel free to tell their superiors what they don't want to hear. They are also not good at recruiting significant foreign sources, and their operational "tradecraft" is weak, with operatives hardly concealing their activities. In 2021, China suffered an embarrassment when Afghanistan expelled about a dozen suspected Chinese spies. The Chinese have particular problems with spying on Russia. The two countries are not natural allies, having clashed in the past, and China is not tightly economically integrated with Russia.
In any case, Chinese President Xi Jinping appears to be making significant decisions on the basis of dodgy intelligence. It is not clear if the root cause is the information itself, the analysis applied, or how it is communicated to China's leaders -- but the results might be calamitous for China. In particular, suppose China decides to take military action against Taiwan. The Chinese do have intelligence sources there, but they are generally pro-unification people with little access to the Taipei government. In such a crisis, Chinese intelligence might not have any good idea of what the USA would do. Worse, even if they did, would they tell Xi things that he didn't want to hear?
* Along with Starlink, even as Russia is pressing Ukraine to the limits in the Donbas region, the US and NATO are providing more formidable weapons:
These weapons need to be in service yesterday, but it takes time to get them to Ukraine, train crews to operate and maintain them, and so on. It will be interesting to see what happens when they get up to speed.
US President Joe Biden is doing all he can to support Ukraine, even as he is erroneously criticized for dragging his feet, and talk circulates in the background of Ukraine accepting a cease-fire agreement. Ridiculous; Vladimir Putin simply wants to erase the Ukrainian state and national identity, with a cease-fire doing nothing more than giving him time to refit and re-arm, to continue the war later. A cease-fire would absolutely not be in Ukrainian interests, and Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskiy has made it clear that, as far as he's concerned, Russians will be driven from Ukraine, end of story.
The US Right, particularly Donald Trump, only gives lip service to supporting the war in Ukraine, with Trump flatly saying that the US shouldn't help, and early on even congratulating Putin on the invasion. The Right has tried to use the war against Joe Biden, accusing him of doing a bad job. In a recent interview, a reporter from Rightist propaganda channel Newsmax asked Zelenskiy if, in so many words, Putin would not have attacked Ukraine had Trump been re-elected.
Of course, that is a completely unanswerable question -- and given Trump's gaslight messaging on Ukraine, his outspoken contempt for NATO, and his clear fondness for Vladimir Putin, Zelenskiy had no reason to take the question seriously. He also had no reason to get involved in American political squabbling; he neatly sidelined the question, first praising Joe Biden for his support, but saying it was the American people who were supporting Ukraine, and that any American government would need to carry out the will of the people:
BEGIN_QUOTE:
I believe what's the most important is the assistance from the people of the United States. They are paying the taxes, and the money being allocated to support Ukraine comes from the taxes, and it's all of that humanitarian, financial, military support to Ukraine. So I am grateful to the current President of the United States as well as to those in the political parties that support us.
I am sorry if I'll be saying something that you don't like, but for us as the country in war, it doesn't matter whether it's Democrats or Republicans. It's the people of the United States that support us.
... I don't know what would happen if ... Donald Trump would be the President of the United States for this situation, so I cannot predict what would happen.
END_QUOTE
Zelenskiy, of course, knows Trump cannot be trusted. Anyone caring to read an oblique slam on Trump in Zelenskiy's comments can feel free to do so.
PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* 5TH INFORMATION REVOLUTION (31): One of the significant innovations of the 1990s was the "Linux" operating system, created by a Finnish student named Linus Torvalds and released in 1991. It was based on an educational derivative of UNIX known as MINIX. It was one of the early landmarks of the "open source" movement, in which computer code was released for use by anyone who wanted it, without licensing fees. Linux would find a niche in network servers and other computers that weren't for general use; more significantly, it would prove influential to later operating systems.
Along with the establishment of the internet in the 1990s came its dark side, with a great expansion of indiscriminate mass emailings, or "spam", and the rise of malicious software AKA "malware", most prominently computer viruses. These were not new things, having arisen during the 1980s, but they had been effectively nuisances then -- indeed, viruses were originally devised more or less as pranks. Now it increasingly became a business, with a criminal "dark web" gradually emerging.
The rise of malware was accompanied by the development of "antivirus" applications that searched through files to spot known patterns of viruses. They were only of limited use, since they could only find viruses that had already been identified -- and the use of antivirus apps of course encouraged the Black Hats to come up with more devious viruses that could slip under the radar of the antivirus apps. The Black Hats also kept a campaign of computer break-ins, raiding corporate systems to obtain lists of, say, credit-card numbers.
Of course, in this environment data security became more important, with the emergence of widely-used encryption systems based on asymmetric ciphers. Asymmetric ciphers have the problem of being computing-intensive and not all that secure. As a result, "hybrid" encryption arose, in which an asymmetric cipher was used to encrypt a key for a session that would be conducted using a symmetric cipher. Messages become easier to decrypt as the size and number of messages encrypted with a key increases; asymmetric encryption was secure enough to protect a single cipher key for a symmetric transaction session; since that key wasn't reused, the transaction was protected as well.
Video game consoles also advanced in the 1990s, with the introduction of the CD-ROM for game storage and the rise of solid-model graphics capabilities, with games gradually shifting from the 2D scrolling model of the 1980s to 3D virtual world environments. Early in the decade, the Sega Genesis console fought it out with the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), to both be shunted aside in mid-decade by the Sony Playstation.
In parallel, the 1990s also saw the first coming of virtual reality (VR) systems, for which there was great hype for a time. It didn't pan out: the VR systems of the era were expensive and left much to be desired technically. Worse, there was also the problem of "VR sickness" that would persistently dog the technology, with a considerable portion of the population unable to use VR headsets without getting nauseous.
In business and organizational environments, the mainframe remained established, but increasingly ever more powerful PCs were making inroads. However, supercomputers became ever more powerful, by the direct measure of adding more processors -- thousands of them, interlinked with each other, allowing them to communicate with each other in the course of simulations. The peak of the decade was a supercomputer developed by Intel for the US government's "Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI), with the "ASCI Red" computer going online at Sandia National Laboratory in 1997. It had almost 9,300 individual processors, all commercially available,
* The cellphone came of age in the 1980s, but the first-generation (1G) phones were analog, and their usage was nothing resembling universal. In the 1990s, the first digital cellphone networks were set up, with Europe adopting the "GSM" system and the USA adopting the "CDMA" system. Mobile phones were enhanced in the 1990s by the "Short Messaging Service (SMS)" -- which, as its name implied, allowed users to send short text messages to each other. It only slowly caught on during the decade, but the cellphone was ceasing to be simply a tool for voice communications, and also becoming a tool for data communications, leading to the era of "texting".
The floppy disk gradually died out in the 1990s, being effectively replaced by the CD-ROM, which had much greater storage capacity, being primarily used for software distribution. By the mid-1990s, a CD-ROM drive was standard kit on a PC, with user-rewriteable CD-ROMs then taking hold as well. Towards the end of the decade, the "Digital Video Disk (DVD)" -- later, somewhat feebly, redubbed the "Digital Versatile Disk" -- became commonplace, mostly for the distribution of movies, with movie titles on video appearing from 1997.
Video outlets like Blockbuster began to shift from VCR tapes to DVDs. The Netflix company, founded in 1997, came up with a mail-rental scheme for DVDs that became popular. DVD-ROM drives, including rewriteable DVD-ROMs, soon began to replace CD-ROM drives. Typical capacity was 4.7GB. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* SCIENCE NOTES: As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Microbes Are Siphoning Massive Amounts Of Carbon From Earth's Tectonic Plates" by Raleigh McElvery, 22 April 2021) it is well-known that microorganisms live deep into the Earth, but not much is known about them. Research now suggests the "deep life" is accumulating carbon from the upper world to support its existence, with the prospect that it could release it back again into the upper world.
Along with the atmospheric carbon cycle, there is also a "deep" carbon cycle, that operates on a much longer time period, of hundreds of millions of years. Slabs of ocean crust flow into the Earth's mantle at subduction zones, hauling carbon down with them for long-term storage in the mantle. Some of this carbon, dissolved in rising blobs of magma and gasses, is then re-emitted from volcanoes. However, much of the carbon isn't emitted by volcanoes, and researchers aren't sure why.
They found some of the missing carbon in 2017, when they inspected gases and fluids bubbling up from more than 20 hot springs in Costa Rica. The springs were 40 to 120 kilometers (25 to 75 miles) above the subduction zone where the Cocos Plate dives beneath Central America. It turns out that some of the CO2 pulled down with the descending plate is transformed into rock, and never reaches the deep mantle or the atmosphere -- but there were also hints that more CO2 was being siphoned off the plate than rock formation alone could explain.
The ratio of carbon isotopes in the samples suggested microbes are trapping the CO2 from the descending plate and turning it into organic carbon to "feed" and grow their own community. In fact, the researchers found many bacteria in their hot spring samples that had the genes necessary for such a chemical reaction. If that's how things really work, microbes under this small swath of Costa Rica could be sequestering enough carbon each year to total the mass of from 650 to 6500 blue whales.
According to the researchers, these microbes could be sequestering 2% to 22% of the carbon previously thought to reach the deep mantle. By keeping carbon close to the surface, where it is likely to eventually percolate up and re-enter the atmosphere, the microbes could be helping warm the planet over the long term -- not much at the 2% end, substantially at the 22% end. The researchers also found evidence for a second group of microbes that live off the organic leftovers of the carbon-sequestering bacteria. The researchers suspect similar activity is taking place in other subduction zones all over the world.
* As discussed in an article from NEWSCIENTIST.com ("Burst Of Animal Evolution Altered Chemical Make-up of Earth's Mantle" by Michael Marshall, 4 March 2022), the Cambrian era, a half-billion years ago, saw the widespread emergence of relatively large multicellular animals. Research has now shown that this emergence led to geological consequences deep into the Earth.
Andrea Giuliani and his team at ETH Zurich in Switzerland inspected rocks known as "kimberlites", which are carried to the surface from deep inside the planet. Giuliani says: "If we look at kimberlites, we can potentially get a more pristine signal of the deep Earth than using other magmas."
They analysed 144 kimberlites and related rocks from 60 locations worldwide. In each kimberlite, the team assessed the ratios of different isotopes, of carbon. The two most common forms are carbon-12 and carbon-13, with living organisms most often absorbing carbon-12. Giuilani's team found that carbon-12 levels rose in kimberlites younger than 250 million years, probably due to huge amounts of organic matter being buried in sea-floor sediments during the Cambrian explosion.
Some of this material was later carried into the deep Earth via tectonic plate movement. It then takes a long time for this material to travel to the surface in rocks like kimberlite, Giuliani saying the minimum time is about 250 million years or so. Very little organic matter is believed to have been deposited 1 billion to 550 million years ago, making the Cambrian explosion the only plausible source of the organic carbon.
* As discussed in an article from SCIENCENEWS.com ("Gut Bacteria Let Vulture Bees Eat Rotting Flesh Without Getting Sick" by Sharon Oosthoek, 8 December 2021), we think of bees as obsessed with flowers -- but the stingless "vulture bees" of Central and South America prefer to feed on carrion.
Obviously, this peculiar adaptation has peculiar mechanisms to support it. Jessica Maccaro -- an insect biologist at the University of California in Riverside -- and her colleagues decided to investigate. They went to a Costa Rican jungle and strung up chunks of store-bought chicken on branches of trees, with the strings coated with petroleum jelly to deter ants. The meat rotted quickly in the hot, humid jungle, and vulture bees quickly found it.
The researchers obtained a few dozen samples of the bees, as well as samples of local purely nectarian bees, and local bees that were nectarian but also ate meat. DNA analysis was performed on the bee samples, with their gut bacteria included in the analysis.
As it turned out, purely meat-eating bees had between 30% and 35% more acid-producing gut bacteria than strictly vegetarian bees and the ones that opportunistic meat-eaters; some of these types of microbes were only found in the pure meat-eaters.
Similar acid-producing bacteria in the guts of vultures and hyenas keep toxin-producing microbes in rotting meat from making the animals sick, and no doubt do so for the bees as well. The opportunistic meat-eaters suggest the evolutionary path for the pure meat-eaters -- who went from occasionally eating meat to acquire a micro-ecology of gut bacteria that made them more efficient at it, giving them an edge, with the gut bacteria continuing to shift as they went to a full meat diet.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* NEW TRADE ORDER (3): The Biden Administration is much friendlier to America's allies than the Trump Administration was. However, thanks to suspicion of China, as well the way Donald Trump gained power in part by savaging free trade, the White House shows little enthusiasm for the WTO. There is also little interest in multilateral arrangements with friendly countries. It is possible that frosty mindset may warm in time, as the administration makes it clear that it's no softy on trade -- the USA never has been, but appearances are important. For now, things remain chilly.
Nobody is about to predict the future course of trade relations between the US and China. At present, American tariffs are in place on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese imports -- slapped on by the Trump Administration, the rationale being protests against Chinese government subsidies. The two countries are talking, but neither seem to be in much mood for concessions.
As economic relations go south, the distinction between economic and national security concerns grows fuzzier. The US perception of risk from China has broadened from narrow concerns of military rivalry and intelligence gathering to include American technological leadership. The broader scope makes things more complicated. Stephanie Segal -- of the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think-tank -- points out that in areas where China has at least technological parity, or can get the technology from other countries besides the USA, disengagement simply penalizes America.
American firms wanting to sell in China are painfully aware of the obstacles. Export controls appear to have become somewhat more predictable under the Biden Administration, but Craig Allen -- of the US-China Business Council (USCBC) -- says that "it's becoming very, very difficult for American companies to figure out who they can do business with in China." Scott Kennedy, also from the CSIS, sees the conflict for the Chinese arising from their own techno-nationalist policies.
Of course, the Chinese government vocally rejects the idea that it is not a responsible stakeholder in the multilateral global trading system, and has been energetically pursuing multilateral deals. However, there tends to be less to the deals than meets the eye, and China is not reluctant to take the unilateral road -- passing new laws to punish those people and companies that comply with foreign sanctions.
Many countries do not want to get caught up in the brawl between the US and China over trade. America's vice president, Kamala Harris, met with Pham Minh Chinh, the Vietnamese prime minister, in August 2021; Chinh had preceded the meeting by reassuring the Chinese ambassador that his country would not pick sides. Moon Chung-in, a senior adviser to South Korea's president, says American pressure on South Korean companies to move away from China would be an "outright violation of WTO norms and principles".
However, some countries are nonetheless taking up sides. In 2020 Japan opened an economic office in its national security secretariat, where officials consider how to counter the economic statecraft of "countries with different values" -- read as "China". Since the start of 2020 the United Nations counted at least 25 countries and the EU reinforcing screening regimes for foreign investment, or adopting new ones.
The USA is unapologetic about its tough-nosed attitude. The Biden administration has paused but not rescinded planned retaliation to European digital services taxes. Elsewhere, China's harsh treatment of Australia has not gone unnoticed, nor its threats to EU members for their negative attitude to communications vendor Huawei. In July 2020 Britain tweaked its legislation to avoid the need for authorization under international law to raise tariffs during a trade dispute.
Many countries have pleaded with the US to help restore the WTO's dispute-settlement system, but with no effect. That of course means a prospect of trade disputes going out of control. The WTO is not perfect, but as a mutually agreed set of rules it has more legitimacy than a system based on battling giants carving up trade as they see fit. Alas, as the trade order is being pummeled by nationalism, it is also under strain from the pandemic. [TO BE CONTINUED]
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