The Sinews of War

Are gold, gold, and more gold.  And our current war is, not surprisingly, bleeding us dry.   Since the US is more of an economy than a true culture, I now find that bastard bin Laden to be even more of an evil man in that he has hit us exactly where it would hurt the most.  Imagine how much different things would be in the US financially if all of the havoc he wrought never came into being.  I think this article says it all.

Despite this high cost, our elected leaders refuse to raise taxes to pay for the war.  Probably because everyone knows that in the US, if you do raise those taxes then war weariness sets in much faster and if that happened the long fight needed to take out our enemy might end before we can win.  But is it right that most of the US populace is decoupled from the war since they don’t have to really sacrifice much of anything as others go and fight?   Maybe if they really did understand more what was at stake and what the cost was they might be more demanding of congress to really make the right decisions on what to fund and what to not fund.  Or then again…maybe not.

I think in hindsight Bin Laden did way more damage to us than we originally saw, and we’ll be paying for that damage for decades to come.

Is there a doctor in the house?

Doctoral eduction isn’t what it used to be, but all things change and evolve, and perhaps it is time for another major shift in what it means to be a doctor of philosophy.  We have here an editorial on the state of doctoral eduction which has been focused on producing nothing but academics, and for the most part I agree, but there is more to it than what is listed in this editorial.  It’s more than just job training at issue here, it’s what does a doctorate really mean?

Some disciplines focus education directly on being able to practice that trade/profession right from the start.  We have some obvious examples of this with the classic trades of plumbing, electrician, welding, and being a mechanic (and several more far to many to mention), but surprisingly, a bachelor’s degree in Engineering is all you need to ply your trade as an Engineer.  Not so with Chemistry.  A B.S. degree in chemistry makes you a technician.  Not until you get the master’s degree can you really apply chemistry as a trade all on your own, and you need the doctorate (or used to) to start designing experiments from scratch and direct new research directions.  With the liberal arts I think you can ply your trade right from the start, but a BA in History isn’t job training – it’s an education.  Same with a BA in Art, or English, although maybe a BA in econ allows you to go into business, but given the sorry state of affairs that is macro-scale business I would say that this isn’t really the case either.  You either have a good nose for business and administration or you don’t.  It can be learned, but rarely taught.  And this goes back to the doctorate, often considered the pinnacle of education and training, but what is it really?   For me, it was the awakening of my mind to learn how to learn – to synthesize many different scientific disciplines into new directions for problem solving and discovery of new things.  But how I was trained was, in hindsight, lacking for getting a job.  I was trained to be another academic.  To write papers, do narrowly focused research, and learn how to profess and teach this to others.  I had to learn other lessons and suddenly see that other basics of knowledge (Psychology 101, public speaking, science basics) were necessary to hold onto a job and thrive.  So is the doctorate just for creating other professors, or is it something so much more?   I would propose it can be so much more, but it requires not just reform on the part of the schools creating doctorate, but also a reform on the covenant between doctoral student and adviser.

For the longest time, having a doctorate had some significant gravitas to it.  It was hard to earn and with good reason.  You really had to be good to go through the rigorous examinations and to really unlock your mind to be able to teach this complicated art to others, as well as have the massive brain power to solve complicated problems that society had difficulty with.  So when one introduced themselves as a doctor it had weight with the general public and with other doctors.  Now…well let’s just say I’ve met many a doctor that have no business holding that title, and I’ve met many that I’m humbled to be in the presence of.  So it’s not what it used to be.  A doctor now is indeed much like the article I linked to – it’s more of a system to enable research and justify indentured servitude for Universities to crank out research results at the hands of a few gifted directors in either very broad, or very narrow disciplines.  And those who go through the system are trained and educated to perpetuate the system.  They are not trained to get a job unless their adviser teaches them what they need to do to solve problems in industry or outside academia.  And sometimes worse…they are not trained at all to teach or profess what they have learned.  They’re non-functional in this area and while they have a brain crammed full of useful information in a narrowly focused discipline, they cannot pull from other areas and truly advance knowledge in a multi-disciplinary way.  Indeed, I think there are way too many doctorates being produced for the problems that need to be solved because they are not being solved at any faster a pace than they were before.  But this observation does not mean eliminating the doctorate programs is the solution to get back to where we need to be.  Instead, we need to be more selective about who we bring into these programs and, we (I’m speaking to all current doctoral degree holders) need to teach our students how to think, how to truly research new things, and if they are not cut out for this, redirect them to where they need to be.  Promising a doctoral degree for 4-7 years hard labor when it does not allow them to be a functional member of society is not a fair bargain for their hard work.  We do need doctorates to solve the hard problems, but not everyone needs to be a doctorate to solve those problems.  Some people are good at narrow fields of mastery….and guess what – that’s what a MASTERS degree is for. You’ve mastered an important and narrow field and good for you – go forth and let all marvel at your skill!   But a doctorate must be a doctorate and not a prize for sticking it out.  It must mean more and it must be both a path to training future good professors who perpetuate knowledge, but also a source of true learners and synthesists who can solve the hard problems by drawing from multiple disciplines.  The world does not need more doctorates in narrow disciplines, it needs the doctors of old which were generalists – Jack of all trades and masters of all.

So – any real doctors in the house?   Speak up as I’d love to hear your views on education reform here.  We’re doing a major disservice to students under the current system and it’s time for something to change.

The Unintended Evil of Censorship

Happy new year – and I’ve made a resolution after reading about imposed and self-inflicted censorship on the history of slavery in America.  Specifically, I will not cover it up and I will teach my children about its evil.  Sugar coating it is the path to the evil returning someday and sometimes it really is best to bring up the nasty past and remind people of the evil that mankind can do.

Recently “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” was released again, but now censored due to the use of historical words that are not acceptable in speech today.  I can see a potential reason for it – why even expose the child reading the book to such hateful words?   This is the “ignorance begets good behavior” idea which infers that if you never have the idea planted in your head that it is possible to dislike someone because of how they look, you’ll never head down that path yourself.  If you don’t know the dangerous idea exists you won’t ever use it or think it should be used.  And sometimes I have seen the value in this, but, if someone made that wrong connection a long time ago that slavery was a good idea, or someone is inferior based upon their genetic makeup, it’s likely someone could do it again.  Then I read this well-written editorial in the paper this morning and I can now see that such an argument for covering up such hateful words and history is very very wrong.  If you’re not careful, the sins of the past can be “re-remembered” such that you forget why those sins of the past were sins at all.  I think it is important for children to see such hateful words and then have someone (their parents at least) explain to them WHY the word was used in hatred and WHY it’s wrong so that it is not done again to any group.  The Jewish people have wisely pursued this in regards to their refrain on the Holocaust; “Never Again”.   So I think it’s time again for some of this censorship to end and let children be taught why these words are wrong.

Now I realize that sometimes the objection is that the children whose skin color would fit those words may be hurt by it.  They never did anything wrong – why would anyone hate them for no reason other than the color of their skin?   And I agree that this is a danger, but maybe by having them see it they also become vigilant against racism and keep it in mind as they go through life.  Who better than to preach about the sins of slavery and racism than those who experienced it, or whose ancestors experienced it?   Let them preach it loudly and with conviction – daring those who still believe such lies to keep spouting them.  That which does not kill us makes us stronger and we need to inoculate ourselves against such evil by teaching it to our children that such words are wrong and why they are wrong and why this sort of thing must never happen again.

Why we study history

We study it to create analysis like this.  REALLY impressive.  For those of you who ever played the Civilization games this feels a bit like watching the history of your game on fast replay.

Our Crappy Future

I admit up front to being a combination of a cynic, skeptic, and pessimist.  But the cynicism is dampened in that what I’m reading I believe to be honest and not for personal gain, and the skepticism is dampened in that what I’m reading here looks to be very very correct and if questioned and tested, will still come out true.  Specifically, our US higher education system is quite useless, the rich here in the US are almost their own ecosystem which doesn’t need the rest of us, our US government system is forever broken (I don’t even have to link to this – we have two parties locked in combat to destroy the other at all costs and it’s dead obvious), and I can foresee a rise in crime and decline in status for the US over the next 10 years, if not much sooner. The crime prediction is my own – every time we have prolonged recessions and unemployment – people turn to crime because they have nothing else to lose and everything to gain.  I’ve seen statistics supporting this, but I cannot remember where exactly.  The decline….well, with China likely to be the #1 economy in the next 10-20 years and money talks, well, you figure it out.  They already make everything we need so it’s very easy for them to tell us to go pound sand and tell us what we have to do in the end.  Well, within reason.  Sure, we can beat them hands down militarily, but if they wanted they’ll just buy off our allies and leave us isolated.

Or not on this last point.  It does seem one interesting little bit of history is that whenever someone is on top, everyone else wants to bring them down.  So if China goes up – I feel confident we may actually gain more allies annoyed with China and their demands despite their economic clout.  I think on this one I have a glimmer of hope that even with a loss of #1 position in the world that we won’t stand alone.  Maybe despite our relative period of peace over the past 60 years (and I do say relative – some places have been very bloody) we are in for a period of prolonged turmoil and a return to the old American way of life – Nasty, Brutish, and Short.  But at least we won’t be alone in our misery.  Time for a drink.

National Debt

I’m going to make a wandering connection here, so bear with me.

So in a turn-based-strategy game I’m playing right now (Empire:  Total War) you have a technology discovery system, and in that discovery system is the discovery of “National Debt” which increases income to your faction and makes naval and infantry units cheaper to maintain.  Certainly the discovery of the ability to finance your country’s treasury by getting others to finance your war effort enabled major changes in the way warfare was conducted/funded, but it seems to me that the discovery of “National Debt” in an interesting historical discovery that is very current to what is going on today across the world.  What started me thinking on this was getting stuck in an airport several week ago and to pass the 5 hour layover I picked up a copy of The Economist, and on the back page is an update on major countries and their current debt load as a function of their GDP.  Out of all the countries listed only two were positive in the debt to GDP category (i.e. – they did not owe anyone anything).  These two governments were Hong Kong (at +0.6% surplus as a function of GDP) and Norway (at 3% surplus as a function of GDP).  Hong Kong I figure is in the black because they’re small and can pay close attention to their finances as well as continue to skim off incomes from all of their financial industry, and Norway is in the black due to oil revenue.  Everyone else in the world is running deficits and is in debt – including THE world manufacturing powerhouse, China.  Even China in in the red right now.  So what does this mean other than the economy world wide is in bad shape?

Maybe a lot and maybe nothing.  Seems to me that the “invention” of national debt is both a blessing and a curse.  A blessing in that it does allow one to stretch beyond their immediate means and achieve more.  In the case of my computer game – financing armies for world conquest.  In the case of the modern world – keeping the internal peace through domestic programs and financing armies for national defense/offense.  I strongly suspect that without the ability to run one’s country into debt, you can’t really stretch yourself and become more.  I would further suspect that most of the rapid technological growth of the 19th and 20th century (as well as all of the strife caused by governments in the 19th and 20th centuries) is due to the invention of national debt.  With that borrowed money you can invest in new capabilities, grow empires financial and territorial, or keep the country content.  It’s almost obvious that in hindsight that nations will grow slowly (or not at all) if they cannot go into debt.  Or at least – they cannot expand without the ability to reach beyond the capacity of their coffers to fill up with internal taxes at a rate which doesn’t spur the populace to rebellion.  Sure you could fund a huge army through internal taxation, but you can only do it so long before the populace rebels.  Of course National Debt as a concept has obvious limits, especially when everyone is borrowing and there is no one left to borrow from…which is where I think the world is at today.  Perhaps National Debt as an idea has run its course and cannot be leveraged as much as it has been.  Or maybe not and we’re just undergoing a correction and the practice will continue, but in a different form with different rules.  Either way I find it very interesting that something which was created in the 18th century still has major repercussions for everything today.

Oh sure, I know my explanation is simplistic, but still – seeing current debt levels and playing a 18th century warfare simulator have me thinking about what National Debt really is, and it is a tool for growth and national defense no matter what one may say about it as wise (or unwise) fiscal policy.  Funny how a computer game and a delay in an airport can make one think.

The European Model

A conversation I had with a friend who is a good student of history was rattling around in my head this week and made me come up with the following thoughts about history and coming future changes to life as we know it.

When I refer to the European model, I’m talking about the whole ball of wax going back to it’s earlier history, say 1500 on, when the Europeans mastered warfare, technology, trade and pretty much dominated the world up till WWII.  Of course, that “Europe” is composed of lots of separate cultures and ways of doing things, but as a whole, what one country did in Europe, the others tried to follow suit.  They all built Empires near and far, drove technological growth due to warfare & trade, and set the seeds in place for just about all of the major conflicts and grief in the world toady.  They went through all the different types of governments faster, or induced the events that led to new governmental models, and have gone through all sorts of things first before anyone else came up with it.  For right or for wrong, they invented the constitution and new forms of representational govt. (although the US mastered it), as well as socialism and communism.  And they went through religious wars internal and external, civil wars, and all other sorts of economic models good and bad.  They dominated the world through their military model and went through a lot of change; more so than any other nations out there in my opinion.

So where am I going with this?   First of all, I think we can all agree that building an empire today with military alone is impossible.  There are just too many people you would have to subjugate, and further, building an army that big to hold an entire empire is a very expensive proposition today.  Secondly, many nations capable of such a good military have outgrown the nationalist fervor that enables tolerance of war to build empire.  The only nation on the planet which really have a good unified nationalist culture that would tolerate war to build empire would probably be China.  Maybe North Korea, but they have no ability to really wage war and dominate.  So if the European model of domination is dead, is Europe also kaput as well?

Here’s where I think it gets interesting.  Certainly some of the militaristic drive has been bred/bled out of Europe, but perhaps all that experience at the top isn’t a liability.  Perhaps because they’ve gotten all their civil wars out of their system and have focused on so much social programs they are better suited to move into the future because they’ve gotten all the growing pains out of the way.   On the other hand, so many experiences good and bad may make the EU, and it’s myriad cultures, too hidebound and scarred to change because they’ve done it all already.  So is it better to be first and then decline because you have done it all already, or is it worse because now you cannot move fast enough to adapt to new technology and changes because you have all that historical baggage in place?   Yes the EU is having some really bad problems monetarily due to some of their governmental choices, and its even further more interesting to see how some countries in Europe still dominate the others and dictate their will (Germany onto Greece for example).

All of this is percolating in my mind because Europe had centuries on top.  Not a generation, not an era, but centuries – multiple eras, generations, and eras.  I think the only reason the US dominated from WWII to present on the world stage was because Europe burned itself out.  Had war come to US shores and caused actual damage to our cities and population, I doubt we would have dominated the way we did.  I think we were lucky to rise to power in that there was a power vacuum and our home base was intact, not necessarily because it was our time to be out in front.  So this leads me to wonder about China and the US.  Is the US time of dominance a lousy 60 something years and then the Chinese era starts?   Maybe the Chinese era only lasts a few decades before they’re taken over by someone else.  Or is Europe poised to make a great technological and sociological jump that the rest of us cannot even imagine because of all that history?

Indeed, we live in interesting times.

The War of Assassins

Or as I will get to – The Drone Wars.  A conversation I had with someone in regards to continuing education in the US military (learning from the new wars being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan) led me down a train of thought in light of the recent security embarrassments at TSA for the bomber who tried to blow up the Detroit flight and the double agent who blew up part of the CIA compound in Afghanistan.  I have odd trains of thought that tend to jump tracks and or merge trains before diverting again, so I’ll explain where this is all going.

One learns from their mistakes, or at least we hope they do.  8+ years after the 9/11 attacks I wonder what aspects of unconventional warfare and counter-terrorism our nation has learned.  It took awhile for the US military to adapt to the new mission, and they have done so in spades.  They’re fast, they’re experienced, and they VALUE intellect and thinking of new ways to bring down the enemy.  But the war on terror was never a true war like we knew it to be.  A good friend (far smarter than I) predicted it best that the war against Al Qaeda would need to be a War of Assassins – it was not a conventional war fight.  So while we have unleashed our military on the nations that harbored those terrorists and have disrupted their support networks, they can still hit us, just maybe slower than before.  One could argue that maybe they haven’t been slowed down at all because unless you kill everyone, literally everyone, there will always be someone who fools you and when you’re not looking, slips the knife between your ribs and takes you out.  Or blows up a whole building when he’s in plain view.  This is the way of assassins – they fight in completely non-conventional ways and are very hard to defeat.  I know our politicians have not learned this lesson and I can only hope that our intelligence organizations have learned this and just had some temporary setbacks, but I’m not sure.  However, where our intelligence community fails to protect us, it could be that new tools from the fighters of conventional warfare, now adapted to fight the war of assassins in their own way, will come forth with the potential solution to the problem.

The solution – Drones.

What’s a drone today?   A remotely piloted plane which can attack and has no on-board pilot.  It has no fear of getting killed, cannot be terrorized, and can be relentless and remorseless in its pursuit of the enemy.  How can an Assassin win against you when you can be as patient as he can by just flooding the area with drones?  Sure he’ll blow many of them up, but by sheer odds he can’t defeat them all.  Sure it’s expensive to fight a war this way, but how can you use terror and fear for your goals against a foe which has no feelings?   You can’t.  I suspect that as the war on terror progresses you’ll see more and more drones get used, and someday they’ll even replace ground vehicles and troops.  I further suspect that as future hideouts are found you won’t even bother to try and clear it out with troops – just a bunch of expendable explosive drones will go in and clear the place out.  You shoot one and it gets replaced with 5 more.  You shoot those five and now have to deal with 25 that just swarmed in when they got the signals from the first five.  However you still have to identify that assassin and that’s still a human game.  So hopefully we start to get better and smarter about identifying those assassins to send the drones in against.  If the intelligence agencies are learning and adapting like the US military is doing, then our enemies are in for a very rude surprise soon.

I suspect that drones will become a real tool to defeat terrorism, if used wisely, and it can’t just be remote missle attacks, it has to be surgical and it has to be intellegently guided, and so the war of assassins will continue until one side gives up or is wiped out.  But with this new tool I think things will change more and more in the future and even this unconventional war will greatly change how it is conducted, and those who have the drones will eventually win.

Hacking for political hire?

An interesting event occurred this week - hackers broke into a UK climate study institute and posted a random sampling (61MB) of emails and reports out on the web under the reasoning that such information is too important to be just left to scientists.

So this event begs the question – why was this done?   Should one be paranoid and assume that the hackers were paid by those against the aims of the institute to reveal choice data bolstering their cause, or is it possible that someone just wanted the information to be free and let everyone make up their own mind?

Which comes back to my comments previously on doubt and climate change.  If you can supposedly get the goods on scientists candidly talking amongst themselves and you show a potential bias, you can cast doubt on their ability to be objective.  So if you’re paranoid one wonders if this is a politically motivated hacking job since we know that there are plenty of hackers for hire.  Or maybe it really is an idealist behind this who truly wants the information to be free.

Which is it?   I have no idea, but I can say that if this case goes further and enough doubt is sown then this tactic will be used again to deliberately stymie any and all research in an area that someone objects to.  Stem Cell research, nuclear/fusion power, alternative energy, vaccine research, new chemicals, animal research, and just about any topic one can think of that has some potential of controversy behind it.  It will be interesting to see if this event occurs again and with what regularity it occurs.

The New Russian-Chinese Interdependency

I read this article yesterday and the following one today with a lot of interest.  It’s an AP article and Reuters article so low on facts, but for me bigger on potential speculation even if I can’t find it being discussed on GlobalSecurity.org or other places I trust for foreign policy information/facts.

Russia has had some leverage (albeit limited) in the past over Europe and the Ukraine by shutting off gas and oil lines at various points in the winter, and I wonder if Russia would dare pull the same threat with China.  The article seems to suggest that Russia needs China’s money as much as China needs Russia’s resources to keep growing.  So as much as the article comments on that China and Russia are getting together to counter US influence, I think the two need each other and at the same time greatly fear each other which is commented on in the 2nd article.  China needs as much raw material as it can get to keep growing (reminds me of Japan at the start of WWII in resource needs) while Russia is rich is natural resources but needs money to keep its oligarchy going.  Russia would love to really have control over a neighbor to its southeast that has a big military just as China would love to have all those resources that it’s nuke-toting neighbor to the northwest has.

So I wonder if the trip by Putin is as much about cementing his potential power and control over the Chinese combined with appeasement and the desperate need for cash in the short term.  If Russia gets China addicted to its gas and oil reserves (for while they last anyway) then it gives him leverage over the world’s fasting growing power.

Or not – and this is all strictly about money in the short term and nothing more than that.  Again, I admit that this is all speculation, but it caught my attention and got me thinking.