Tag Archives: war

August 2026 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story: There are some dire projections of severe global famine in the next year. This would be due to the Super El Nino affecting important food-growing regions, closure of important grain-exporting ports in Ukraine, and the sudden loss/price spikes for fossil fuels and fertilizers that have already disrupted planting and growing seasons over the past six months, and will continue to do so. It will be similar to an 1877 El Nino that killed over 50 million people. I am a bit skeptical of the most extreme impact projections though because they do not seem to be a majority view, and the collective view of people participating in financial markets does not seem to be anticipating anything this bad. Still, it seems likely that regional famines and high food prices could affect a lot of people, and the worst projections would represent an existential threat that should not be ignored.

Most hopeful story: There is an effective malaria vaccine in use in Africa. It requires four doses, which hampers widespread implementation, but hopefully the numbers of doses will be reduced, eventually to one. In the United States, amid an embarrassing political dust-up over the measles vaccine (happening to involve my state’s governor, who does NOT at this point make the “top 5” list mentioned in the next paragraph), the FDA has quietly approved an mRNA-based flu vaccine.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Election Betting Odds provides aggregated stats across the various prediction market platforms for a few categories including U.S. Congressional and Presidential elections. As I write (September 1, 2026), it is telling me there is a 51% chance the Democrats will take majority control of the U.S. Senate this fall (along with 84% chance of House control). The top 5 2028 Presidential contenders are Vance (21%), Occasio-Cortez (12%), Ossoff (11%), Rubio (10%), and Newsom (9%). I suspect at this point the latter is similar to a poll of “which of these names have you heard of?”. It might be a fairly good prediction of who will actually run, however.

food shortages and system thinking

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Some are still predicting dramatic food shortages on the horizon due to the U.S. war of aggression on Iran. I don’t doubt that this is possible. When headlines were suggesting this was imminent shortly after the war started in the spring (of 2026, in case you are reading this in the far future), I was asking myself if it made sense that fertilizer and pesticides coming out of the Middle East at that point would be used for planting this year. (Environmental advisability of a population and food system that depend on fossil fuels would be topics for another day.) And from further analysis, it sounds like I was right and there are significant lags built in. Then again, I should remember that the entire world does not experience the same four seasons that I do here in temperate eastern North America, and growing seasons in the tropics and Southern Hemisphere will be on a different schedule than here, where the next big planting cycle will be spring 2027.

I am a huge proponent of system thinking. However, I am always a little skeptical of authors who talk about system thinking as if only they out of all people in the world have heard of it. I get a whiff of narcissism when I hear that. I tend to think there are plenty of intelligent people and organizations out there who are capable of system thinking, and the cynical/amoral among them would be exploiting their knowledge in financial markets if nothing else. I think the same thing when people claim that only they can spot a financial bubble. There absolutely is something going on in our world where our top political decision makers are relying on short-term linear extrapolation of facts and logic at best, and irrational disregard for facts and logic at worst. I see a severe lack of moral thinking among our political leadership, although that may be nothing new in human history. It would be great to see some form of politics able to select the intelligent, moral system thinkers to lead us. Somehow the opposite seems to be happening, where political systems are not selecting leaders of even above average rationality or moral fiber. This is a severe issue and I at least have the sense that it is getting worse. Nonetheless, I don’t see financial markets going crazy in response to the obviously crazy geopolitical events going on, and this gives me some small comfort.

Invading a sovereign country is still illegal

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I’ve been listening to some contrarian voices like John Mearsheimer, Michael Hudson, and Max Blumenthal on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I acknowledge the idea that aggressive NATO expansion and possible/probable CIA meddling in the 2014 Ukraine election were probably seen by Russian leadership as threatening. I respect Mearsheimer in particular, but I still strongly disagree with the idea that any of this could possibly justify the invasion of a sovereign country. Dirty spy games and attempts to influence elections with propaganda and funding of one group or another are things that all powerful nations have been doing for a long time. Russia and the US are some of the worst. It would be best for all nations of the world if everyone agreed to stop doing these things. But they are not acts of war. Invading a sovereign nation is still the unforgivable sin under the UN Charter. Ukraine’s borders were not in dispute by anybody except their one powerful neighbor, and that is not how it works. All UN members are supposed to band together against the perpetrator, and the Security Council is supposed to be the enforcer. It was just as wrong when the US invaded Iraq, Libya, Venezuela, Syria, and Iran. It is wrong when Israel invades its soverign neighbors. It was wrong when China…wait, I can’t think of a case where they unambiguously invaded a sovereign neighbor.

It’s pretty clear to me that the Ukraine war is going to end with Russia occupying the three mostly ethnic-Russian provinces and Crimea for the long term. Let’s just get that done, fix the lines, and ideally get everybody to calm down and recommit to the core principles of the UN Charter. This seems almost impossible at the moment, but leadership transitions will happen around the world and maybe that will provide some openings to a change of course.

May 2026 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story: The people running Palantir and other companies focused on military/security/surveillance applications of information technology seem to have, at best, a faith-based belief that the United States can do no wrong. At worst, their beliefs are based on eugenics and white Christian nationalist attitudes which simply have no basis in fact or logic. I don’t believe the technology itself is good or evil, but pair in with these irrational beliefs and there are many frightening, depressing, dystopian paths I can imagine our country going down.

Most hopeful story: It’s a struggle to find a silver lining to the illegal, unprovoked U.S. war of aggression in Iran, but I mused that the artificial restriction on oil supply might create some long-term gain by accelerating the economic and geopolitical incentives to transition to other forms of energy. Such rational policy almost certainly could not have been achieved through international diplomacy in the current environment. This is not to minimize the very real and very avoidable near-term suffering and death the immoral choices of the Trump administration have caused. Even the cynical economic and financial elites who arguably control most policy have not been served by this irrational violence. In the future, I hope the world has some talented and courageous leaders who can find ways to bring about rational long-term solutions to problems without short-term mass murder.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: On the AI front, I looked at an argument that today’s AIs are pushing people toward the political center relative to social media, which is pushing people toward extreme views. This is true even for AIs like Grok that are demonstrably being trained on data that is intentionally biased toward extreme views. I am not confident this will always be the case, as we are already hearing about a trend toward more customization of AI to whatever the tastes of the paying customer are. And…I looked at David Chalmers’s concept of a “philosophical zombie” which displays all the traits of a human being externally but has no consciousness internally. This would seem to describe today’s large language models pretty well, or at least so the majority of us think at the moment. However, I recall Ray Kurzweil’s argument that there is not and never will be a scientific test for consciousness whether animal/vegetable/mineral (some argue plants are conscious on some level), which is simply a secular counterpart to the idea of a soul, and that over time if AIs act conscious in every respect we will gradually accept them as conscious and stop thinking much about it.

yes, the CIA is still meddling in other countries’ affairs (and also, because we appear to need it, a reminder that the word “peace” means NON-violence)

If we need some confirmation that the CIA played a role in the January 2026 Iran street protests, here is Fox News journalist Trey Yingst seemingly quoting an interview with Donald Trump. The quote is ‘ “We sent guns to the protesters, a lot of them,” President Trump told me. “And I think the Kurds took the guns.” ‘

Now, this is an X video of a Fox News segment where an informal conversation with Trump is quoted. It’s Fox News, which of course is known to spin. But (1) it is a major news outlet that doesn’t usually lie outright, even if it spins and (2) this seems to be a respected professional journalist, not an opinion piece. So I give it some weight as having a significant probability of truth.

The CIA messing in other countries’ elections and opposition movements is not a new thing, of course, and it is not only the US that does this. European countries, Russia, and China certainly do it. In fact, the US did it in Iran in the 1950s, and that event is seen as a significant reason Iran and the Iran-US relationship are where they are today.

Maybe the invasion was intended to back up the protests, as Trump blustered at the time that the U.S. military was “locked and loaded”. So it makes me wonder if the protests broke out earlier than they were supposed to, when the US military was not ready, or if they broke out when they were supposed to but the US military was just not ready, or Trump just failed to pull the trigger at the planned moment. Nothing I am saying here justifies the illegal, unprovoked war of aggression on the sovereign nation of Iran. I am just saying it appears to be an illegal, unprovoked war of aggression that was also 100% incompetently handled. We are ruled by evil fools, not evil geniuses.

This also causes me to give more weight to the Russian claim that the CIA meddled in Ukraine’s affairs in 2014, stirring up an opposition movement that deposed a possibly fairly elected pro-Russian government. The back story on this is that first, a pro-Russian government was forced out by the street protests. But then there was an election, which brought a pro-Europe/US/NATO government to power, and was certified as free and fair by impartial international bodies. So far so good, but the pro-Russian parts of Ukraine largely did not participate because they were either under Russian occupation – Crimea – or occupied by pro-Russian local militia types – Donbas. So there was meddling on all sides, and much more direct and openly violent meddling by the Russian side. Then later, these events were used to justify the Russian invasion of the sovereign nation of Ukraine, which can have no legal or moral justification.

So if cooler heads ever prevail, we need to re-establish the idea of respect for soveignty. And the US could even go so far as to say it is not going to meddle in the affairs of other countries any more, other than through open diplomatic means and through international bodies. Doing this unilaterally might seem naive, since other countries would almost certainly continue their meddling – the classic prisoner’s dilemma, which also derails so many attempts at rational arms control. But when you consider that the meddling seems to lead to undesirable outcomes more often than not, maybe it would not be naive after all. We can cite any number of conflicts from the overthrow of the elected Iranian government in the 1950s, the mostly forgotten Indonesian genocide also in the 1950s which killed half a million people, support for the Taliban in the 1980s which led to 9/11, and name pretty much any country in Latin America. So my modest proposal is we just stop. Recommit to peace (but now thanks to the fool in the White House we have to actually state that this means NON-violence) and support for democracy and human rights through diplomacy and participation in legitimate international bodies.

Well, that turned into a rant I didn’t necessarily see coming. If you got this far, whether you agree or disagree, thanks for hearing me out!

medieval castles and scalders

Here’s a fun video on the defenses of medieval castles. Basically, they were designed to be very difficult to take militarily.

Sadly, “medieval scalder” is a job that has been made obsolete by modern life, replaced by something like “ballistic missile launch technician”, which itself is soon to be replaced by Terminators. Chris Farley and Macauley Culkin, 1991. RIP Chris Farley. Macauley Culkin is 45.

March 2026 in Review

In fast-moving current events as I write on April 4, 2026…I have nothing left to say about the stoopid war in Iran and our stooopid war criminal “leaders” who chose this path. I tell my children “stupid” is a bad word that nice people don’t use, and I don’t use it lightly here. I just hope when I am reviewing April 2026 a month from now at least the part where human beings are dying daily from shooting and blowing up is over.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: The idea of the lone psychopath developing a bioweapon in their garage with AI assistance is very scary. I outlined some proposals out there for how to deal with this issue, but none are really completely satisfying. Of course, nuclear proliferation is always a close runner-up.

Most hopeful story: I took my first Waymo rides in the Phoenix area in March, and I observed Waymo being tested in Philadelphia. I would like to live in a society where transportation is oriented around walking, cycling and other very light personal vehicles, and public transportation. But given that the U.S. is unequivocally not headed in that direction, I think autonomous vehicles are going to be a win for safety, mobility, and the environment in most U.S. cities.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: I finally got around to reading The Singularity is Nearer. Kurzweil is very big on cultured meat, vertical farming, 3D printing, and generally using computer simulation to super-charge scientific and technical progress in many areas. Then there are his weird ideas about nanobots in our brains allowing us to upload our brains to the internet sometime in the 2030s – sounds crazy at first, but I could sit down and name a few things that sounded crazy a decade ago and are now commonplace. I mused about when the robots are coming now that we seemingly have their AI brains ready for transplant. I mused about the seeming paradox that AI is increasing demand for dirty fossil fuel energy and its attendant impacts while also representing some possibility of a longer-term solution to those problems. It seems like slowing down the deployment of AI is not on the table, so the important question becomes how long is “longer-term” – if measured in single digit years, we just may pull through, but if measured in multiple decades, we may be sunk. Anyway, I brainstormed a list of specific areas of research AI may be able to boost: incremental improvement and deployment of today’s solar, wind, battery, electrification, and electric grid technology; fusion power; safer, more cost-effective and scalable fission power; space-based solar technology; cutting edge materials science and energy storage technology; and fundamental research into the mysteries of the universe, which also comes with attendant risks.

February 2026 in Review

In fast-moving current events as I write on March 1, 2026, the United States (executive branch, which is unconstrained in this moment by the other supposedly co-equal branches or public opinion) has launched an unprovoked military attack on Iran, in crystal clear violation of the UN Charter and domestic law. Theoretically, there are mechanisms both international (International Criminal Court) and domestic (impeachment – which can apply to cabinet members, agency heads, and federal judges in addition to the President and Vice President; and court martial which applies to military officers who follow illegal orders) that could eventually hold the criminals involved accountable for their crimes. Lots of people have lots to say and we will see how this unfolds. I am just documenting that I am present at this particularly sad moment in history.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: I hadn’t heard of mirror life, technology we apparently have right now which can destroy all life on Earth. This new, shocking, theoretically existential threat narrowly edged out the usual stream of depressing climate disaster news, the existential threat known to be currently unfolding, but which I suppose I am somewhat desensitized to.

Most hopeful story: Falling consumer prices in China might represent a new industrial revolution analogous to the age of railroads and electricity in the west in the late 1800s, rather than a textbook financial recession which seems to be the (propaganda-tainted?) conventional wisdom. I put this in the win column because if it is true, I am hopeful we will see it spread peacefully to the rest of the world rather than representing a threat.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Ray Kurzweil predicts broad consensus that Artificial General Intelligence has arrived by 2029 (defined as AI equal to the leading experts in all fields), “longevity escape velocity” in 2032 (which would reverse the US slipping in recent decades), universal basic income in the U.S. sometime in the 2030s, and the Singularity in 2045 (defined as 1000X human intelligence – always pronounced TIMES according to me), but most importantly and the only thing that truly matters, robots doing my dishes in a couple years.

German Rearmament

We seem to live in a world where Germany and Japan are rearming, and most people are cheering. I generally would consider this okay myself – these are large, rich, powerful democratic countries that should be able to defend themselves and we would hope, support their democratic neighbors. This Foreign Affairs article paints a darker picture of a Germany that rearms in the face of a (perceived?) Russian threat, and then is taken over by a right-wing government.

A militarily dominant Germany could prove particularly dangerous if its centrist domestic leadership starts to lose power—as it just well might. The country is not due to hold national elections for three more years, but the extremist AfD now polls in first place at the national level. It subscribes to a far-right, illiberal, and Euroskeptic ideology. It is Russia-friendly, opposed to supporting Ukraine, and wants to reverse Germany’s post-1945 economic and military integration into the EU and NATO, at least in their current form. It sees military power as a tool of national aggrandizement that should be used exclusively to benefit Berlin. It hopes to develop a German defense industry that’s entirely autonomous from those of Berlin’s traditional allies. If it wins federal power, the AfD will use the German military exactly as Thatcher feared: to project power against Germany’s neighbors. In the same way that Washington has made once inconceivable claims on Canada and Greenland, an AfD-led Germany might eventually make claims on French or Polish territory.

It still seems far-fetched to me, but I could easily go back five years and name a bunch of things I thought were far-fetched, which have come to pass.

I have been thinking that terms like “right wing” and “fascist” are not very precise or helpful. What we see all over the world are political movements focused on ethnic nationalism. Ethnic nationalism pairs well with cultural conservatism and is more or less independent of economic ideology. Advancing the ethnic nationalist project is helped by being anti-democratic, anti-immigrant, and focused on external threats. This is the trend we are seeing in the U.S. and Europe, fueled by immigration pressure brought on by climate change, which is only going to intensify.

January 2026 in Review

Well, I seemed to be in a political mood in January. I try to stay on the policy side of the line, but that is hard when bad politics makes good policy impossible. Inspired by a Nate Silver post, I took a look back at what I see as key moments in the last 25 years of U.S. history, and there were just so many that were on a knife edge and ended up going the wrong way, in my view. Maybe there are other universes where things went better, but remember my scientific theory that once they make a Spiderman movie about a scientific theory, it is almost certainly wrong. I find it depressing how we got here, but there is no sense crying over it. We need to learn from the past yes, but then face up to the present moment and start picking up the pieces from where we are.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: Evidence is crystal clear that sabotaging R&D spending is a very effective way to sabotage economic growth and progress. Attaboy to the fools, assholes and traitors currently in nominal charge of the U.S. government. Meanwhile, if a more rational administration ever takes hold, research on learning curves might provide some clues on where to concentrate our efforts for the greatest gains.

Most hopeful story: New York City congestion pricing was a hard-won U.S. transportation policy win in 2025. This is just good, economically sound urban policy that would be apolitical in a more rational world.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: I reviewed book reviews from 2025, one of which was Ezra Klein’s Abundance (not the 2012 book Abundance by Peter Diamandis, which while I am not a huge fan I continue to be puzzled how Ezra Klein could either not be aware of that book or intentionally choose to name his book the same thing.) I still find it hard to summarize that book in a sound bite, which would need to be done if it were ever going to serve as the basis for a political campaign. But here is an attempt: (1) Continuously review and streamline federal regulations, (2) increase public and private investments in critical technology and infrastructure, including recommitting to clean energy, and (3) address market failures in housing, health care, and education. #3 is a doozy of course, but the un-sexy answer just has to be understand and implement the latest evidence-backed policies. I would think ramp up housing supply, Medicare for All, and free (tax-funded) college or trade school for all. And um, if we want a chance for any domestic agenda to succeed, we also need serious plans to manage international risks including war, ecosystem collapse, famine, and massive refugee flows that may be coming. Now, I just want to acknowledge that there is a rosy future scenario where AI magically solves all these problems. The way that could work is that technological progress and economic growth suddenly pick up so drastically that we are awash in cash and resources to the point that even the wildly suboptimal operations of our dysfunctional political system are adequate to solve the problems. I don’t think it is safe to put all our eggs in that basket! We better assume that we will need to continue doing the hard work of allocating scarce resources to manage difficult problems for the foreseeable future.