Monthly Archives: August 2024

Who is Ready for War with China in 2027: Venture Capitalists

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Anduril Industries—named after a magical sword from J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” novels—is central to Silicon Valley’s quest to take on weapons makers like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Since its founding in 2017, Anduril has raised $3.7 billion in venture funding, incl The newcomers’ hope is that the Pentagon will eventually kill off what Luckey, the CEO of Anduril, calls “old legacy zombie programs,” like expensive jet fighters and attack helicopters, and instead buy autonomous weapons, like drones and uncrewed submarines. The U.S. military, Luckey and others say, needs large numbers of cheaper and more intelligent systems that can be effective over long stretches of ocean and against a manufacturing and technological power like China. 

Many teams inside Anduril are building only weapons that can be completed by 2027—the year Chinese President Xi Jinping has said his country should be prepared to invade Taiwan. The fictional sword for which Anduril is named is also called the “Flame of the West.” For decades, the U.S. government funded defense companies, like Lockheed Martin, to develop new weapons, ranging from stealth aircraft to spy satellites. But as the private-sector money available for research and development has outstripped federal-government spending, particularly in areas like AI, a new cohort of defense startups is using private capital to develop technology for the Pentagon. The amount of private capital flowing into the venture-backed defense-tech industry has ballooned, with investors spending at least 70% more on the sector each of the past three years than any prior year. From 2021 through mid-June 2024, venture capitalists invested a total of $130 billion in defense-tech startups, according to data firm PitchBook. The Pentagon spends about $90 billion on R&D annually.

The Pentagon is credited with helping to create Silicon Valley by plowing money into tech companies in the 1950s and ’60s, investing in electronics and buying microchips used in nuclear-missile guidance systems, satellites, and computers. That investment, says Paul Bracken, an emeritus professor of management and political science at Yale University, led the Defense Department to become, in effect, the “mother of all venture-capital firms.”

Excerpt from Sharon Weinberger, Tech Bros Are Betting They Can Help Win a War With China, WSJ, Aug. 9, 2024

Worldcoins for Your Eyes: How Sam Altman is Saving us from the Robots

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Sam Altman wants to save us from the AI-dominated world he is building. The trouble is, governments aren’t buying his plan, which involves an attempt to scan the eyeballs of every person on Earth and pay them with his own cryptocurrency-the Worldcoin. But Worldcoin has come under assault by authorities over its mission. It has been raided in Hong Kong, blocked in Spain, fined in Argentina and criminally investigated in Kenya. A ruling looms on whether it can keep operating in the European Union….Among the concerns: How does the Cayman Islands-registered Worldcoin Foundation handle user data, train its algorithms and avoid scanning children? 

Worldcoin verifies “humanness” by scanning irises using a basketball-sized chrome device called the Orb. Worldcoin says irises, which are complex and relatively unchanging in adults, can better distinguish humans than fingerprints or faces. Users receive immutable codes held in an online “World ID” passport, to use on other platforms to prove they are human, plus payouts in Worldcoin’s WLD cryptocurrency. Worldcoin launched in 2023 and says it has verified more than six million people across almost 40 countries. Based on recent trading prices, the total pool of WLD is theoretically worth some $15 billion.

Altman says his technology is completely private: Orbs delete all images after verification, and iris codes contain no personal information—unless users permit Worldcoin to train its algorithms with their scans. Encrypted servers hold the anonymized codes and images. However, several authorities have accused Worldcoin of telling Orb operators, typically independent contractors, to encourage users to hand over iris images. Privacy advocates say these could be used to build a global biometric database with little oversight.

Excerpt from Angus Berwick, Sam Altman’s Worldcoin Is Battling With Governments Over Your Eyes, WSJ, Aug. 18, 2024

Back from the Dead but Wobbling: Nuclear Deterrence

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The Pentagon has revised the projected cost of refurbishing hundreds of nuclear missile silos to $141 billion, a $30 billion increase from an estimate provided in January. The U.S. Air Force project, known as Sentinel, includes replacing the Cold War-era intercontinental ballistic missiles inside the silos with newer models…Sentinel is part of a long-delayed nuclear-arms refresh that the Congressional Budget Office estimates will cost at least $1.5 trillion over the next 30 years…The missiles sitting inside some 450 silos are decades past their projected lifespan of 10 years. The underground silos require thousands of miles of new fiber-optic cabling. Underground command centers that control the missiles need to be rebuilt. Maintenance jobs that used to take two or three hours now take twice as long, and parts are more difficult to obtain, Air Force officials said.

“Its scale, scope and complexity are something we haven’t attempted as a nation for over 60 years,” Bill LaPlante, the Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer, told reporters in July 2024 as he cleared Sentinel to continue as a must-do program despite the surging costs. The Pentagon hired Northrop Grumman in 2020 to oversee the Sentinel program and do the initial engineering and design work. Northrop, aided by construction giant Bechtel, was the only bidder for the initial $13.3 billion contract after Boeing dropped out

“Most of the people who did it the last time aren’t even around anymore. So re-creating all of this has turned out to be a huge problem,” said Madelyn Creedon, a former senior Energy Department and Pentagon official who chaired a congressionally mandated panel on future U.S. nuclear and conventional forces…

Excerpt from Doug Cameron U.S. Nuclear Missile Silos Need Modernizing, but Fixes Aren’t Coming Soon, WSJ, Aug. 26, 2024

Can a Wind Turbine Accident Be Worse than a Oil Spill?

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The operations of offshore wind farm, Vineyard Wind 1, were halted in July 2024 after part of a blade on one of the offshore turbines broke off and fell into the ocean. The offshore wind farm is about 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, and debris from the blade has washed up on Nantucket’s southern-facing beaches, as well as Tuckernuck and Muskeget islands. The turbine the blade was attached to, designated AW 38, was in its commissioning phase and was still undergoing testing. No employees, contractors or fishing vessels were in the vicinity of the turbine at the time. The beaches on Nantucket were closed to swimming on Tuesday as large quantities of insulation foam and non-toxic pieces of fiberglass washed ashore.

Excerpt from, Heather McCarron, Wind turbine blade 15 miles off Martha’s Vineyard breaks, pieces fall into ocean, Cape Cod Times, July 18, 2024

How to Celebrate a Kid’s Birthday: the ISIS approach

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In Syria, in 2024, American commandos are scrambling to contain a resurgence of Islamic State where the militant group once imposed its violent religious fervor on vast territories and millions of people. Islamic State is mustering forces in Syria’s Badiya desert, training young recruits to become suicide bombers, directing attacks on allied troops and preparing to resurrect its dream of ruling an Islamist caliphate, according to officers from the U.S. and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Kurdish-led troops whom the U.S. helped to defeat the militant group five years ago.

Militant fighters have doubled their pace of attacks in Syria and Iraq in 2024. They have targeted security checkpoints, detonated car bombs and plotted to free thousands of comrades jailed since the SDF and a U.S.-headed Western coalition recaptured the last Islamic State-held town. In a little-publicized campaign, American aircraft conduct airstrikes and provide live aerial surveillance to SDF ground forces who conduct raids on suspected Islamic State cells. While they usually stay a safe distance from the fighting, elite U.S. troops sometimes conduct missions on their own to kill or capture senior Islamic State leaders…

During the first six months of 2024, Islamic State claimed responsibility for 153 attacks in Syria and Iraq. It is building its ranks by surreptitiously indoctrinating youngsters in camps that hold thousands of wives and children of detained Islamic State fighters…

Some 9,000 Islamic State fighters remain in jails across northeastern Syria, however, and the group has made no secret of its intention to free its comrades so they can return to the battlefield…There are also some 43,000 Syrian, Iraqi and other displaced people living in camps in northeastern Syria, including many wives and children of jailed Islamic State fighters whom the SDF and U.S. see as potential recruits for the next generation of militants.

At the al-Hol camp, children draw in coloring books with images of hand grenades, AK-47 rifles and explosive suicide vests. U.S. soldiers have obtained photos of Islamic State-themed children’s birthday parties, the militants’ black-and-white flag hung on the wall amid the balloons. 

Excerpt from Michael M. Phillips, In Syria’s Hinterlands, the U.S. Wages a Hidden Campaign Against a Resurgent Islamic State, WSJ, Aug. 13, 2024

The Billionaires Who Conquer the World One Country at a Time

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Elon Musk is so popular in this farming region of Brazil that his face is plastered in stores alongside herds of cows, and local magazines depict him as a superhero. The billionaire’s appeal is simple: His satellite company Starlink has connected Brazil’s vast rural and jungle expanses to the internet.  “We were all rooting for Starlink to come to Brazil…we knew what a big change it would make,” said Arthur Cursino, a ginger farmer here who once had to climb a tree to get a cellphone signal and now, thanks to Starlink, runs one of Brazil’s most popular YouTube channels on farming.

But Starlink’s rapid expansion has come as officials in the administration of leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva have raised concerns about Musk’s growing influence over the country. After getting regulatory approval two years ago, Starlink eclipsed competitors in May 2024 to become the country’s biggest satellite internet provider.  Musk, a billionaire whose companies include social-media platform X and electric-car maker Tesla, has courted right-wing leaders around the world, including da Silva’s predecessor and rival, Jair Bolsonaro. Musk threw his support behind the candidacy of former President Donald Trump.

The regions where Starlink has become popular—Brazil’s agricultural heartland and the Amazon rainforest—are Bolsonaro strongholds where da Silva faces deep political opposition. Now, Brazil’s federal audit court is investigating Starlink’s use by public authorities in the country, threatening to place restrictions on the service. Anatel, the telecoms regulator, has opened a separate inquiry into Starlink, saying that its rapid growth in subscribers of more than 20% a month could crowd out new players.

Excerpt from Samantha Pearson, Brazil Sees Elon Musk’s Starlink as a Political Threat, July 26, 2024

Why Americans Love Chinese Drones

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China’s DJI drones  have been labeled a national-security risk by Republicans and Democrats, military officials and federal regulators. The U.S. government has placed tariffs on the drones and largely prohibited federal agencies from using DJIs. 

Yet DJI accounts for around 70% to 90% of the American commercial, local government and hobbyist drone market. Real-estate agents, movie producers, firefighters, roof inspectors, utilities and law enforcement have all come to depend on the brand. The Secret Service bought more than 20 of them in 2022 just before restrictions were put in place, according to federal purchasing records…Small drones have become essential tools in U.S. commerce and emerged as critical weapons in modern combat, handing the world’s largest supplier—DJI—enormous power. National-security experts say reliance on Chinese drones creates a dangerous dependency that China could exploit in a conflict.  Ukrainians have relied on DJI, while American models have often failed on the front lines—although soldiers have had to contend with security vulnerabilities…

American drones are in short supply with long wait times. Drone buyers say they sometimes have to wait close to five months for a U.S. drone, while DJIs are available immediately. “Are American drone companies ready to fill the void?” said Trevor Perrott, chief executive of Florida drone maker Censys Technologies. “No, we’re not ready. But DJI may very well be a Band-Aid we need to rip off for long-term gain.” 

Excerpts from Heather Somerville, Why First Responders Don’t Want the U.S. to Ban Chinese Drones, WSJ, Aug. 8, 2024

How to Categorize Individuals: Surveillance Pricing

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The United States Federal Trade Commission issued orders to eight companies offering surveillance pricing products and services that incorporate data about consumers’ characteristics and behavior. The orders seek information about the potential impact these practices have on privacy, competition, and consumer protection.

The orders are aimed at helping the FTC better understand the opaque market for products by third-party intermediaries that claim to use advanced algorithms, artificial intelligence and other technologies, along with personal information about consumers—such as their location, demographics, credit history, and browsing or shopping history—to categorize individuals and set a targeted price for a product or service. The study is aimed at helping the FTC better understand how surveillance pricing is affecting consumers, especially when the pricing is based on surveillance of an individual’s personal characteristics and behavior.

“Firms that harvest Americans’ personal data can put people’s privacy at risk. Now firms could be exploiting this vast trove of personal information to charge people higher prices,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. “Americans deserve to know whether businesses are using detailed consumer data to deploy surveillance pricing, and the FTC’s inquiry will shed light on this shadowy ecosystem of pricing middlemen.”

The FTC is using its 6(b) authority, which authorizes the Commission to conduct wide-ranging studies that do not have a specific law enforcement purpose, to obtain information from eight firms that advertise their use of AI and other technologies along with historical and real-time customer information to target prices for individual consumers. The orders were sent to: Mastercard, Revionics, Bloomreach, JPMorgan Chase, Task Software, PROS, Accenture, and McKinsey & Co.

FTC Issues Orders to Eight Companies Seeking Information on Surveillance Pricing, Press Release, July 23, 2024

The US-China Supercomputer Rivalry

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For decades, American and Chinese scientists collaborated on supercomputers, tennis-court-size machines essential to improving artificial intelligence, developing vaccines and predicting hurricanes. But Chinese scientists have become more secretive as the U.S. has tried to hinder China’s technological progress, and they have stopped participating altogether in a prominent international supercomputing forum.

The new secrecy also makes it harder for the U.S. government to answer a question it deems essential to national security: Does the U.S. or China have faster supercomputers? Some academics have taken it upon themselves to hunt for clues about China’s supercomputing progress, scrutinizing research papers and cornering Chinese peers at conferences.

Supercomputers have become central to the U.S.-China technological Cold War because the country with the faster supercomputers can also hold an advantage in developing nuclear weapons and other military technology. “If the other guy can use a supercomputer to simulate and develop a fighter jet or weapon 20% or even 1% better than yours in terms of range, speed and accuracy, it’s going to target you first, and then it’s checkmate,” said Jimmy Goodrich, a senior adviser for technology analysis to Rand Corp., a think tank.

The forum that China recently stopped participating in is called the Top500, which ranks the world’s 500 fastest supercomputers. While the latest ranking, released in June 2024, says the world’s three fastest computers are in the U.S., the reality is probably different. Officially, the fastest computer on the Top500 sits at the Energy Department-sponsored Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in Tennessee. Called Frontier, it is about the size of two tennis courts, cost $600 million to construct and has an electricity bill of about $20 million a year, said Dongarra, who also works at Oak Ridge. It uses tens of thousands of computer chips.

Dongarra doesn’t think Frontier is actually the world’s fastest supercomputer. Scientific papers suggest that certain Chinese machines are better. One has been referred to in state media as a prototype Tianhe-3, after a Chinese term for the Milky Way galaxy, while the other is a model in the Sunway series of supercomputers.

Excerpts from Stu Woo ,US China Rift Hits Supercomputer Ties, WSJ, July 24, 2024

China-Is-The-Virus: the Secret Propaganda Campaign of the United States

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At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. military launched a secret campaign to counter what it perceived as China’s growing influence in the Philippines, a nation hit especially hard by the deadly virus. The clandestine operation has not been previously reported. It aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China, a Reuters investigation found. Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military’s propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vax campaign. Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines – China’s Sinovac inoculation. Reuters identified at least 300 accounts on X, formerly Twitter, that matched descriptions shared by former U.S. military officials familiar with the Philippines operation. Almost all were created in the summer of 2020 and centered on the slogan #Chinaangvirus – Tagalog for China is the virus.

The U.S. military’s anti-vax effort began in the spring of 2020 and expanded beyond Southeast Asia before it was terminated in mid-2021, Reuters determined. Tailoring the propaganda campaign to local audiences across Central Asia and the Middle East, the Pentagon used a combination of fake social media accounts on multiple platforms to spread fear of China’s vaccines among Muslims at a time when the virus was killing tens of thousands of people each day. A key part of the strategy: amplify the disputed contention that, because vaccines sometimes contain pork gelatin, China’s shots could be considered forbidden under Islamic law.

The military program started under former President Donald Trump and continued months into Joe Biden’s presidency, Reuters found – even after alarmed social media executives warned the new administration that the Pentagon had been trafficking in COVID misinformation. The Biden White House issued an edict in spring 2021 banning the anti-vax effort, which also disparaged vaccines produced by other rivals, and the Pentagon initiated an internal review, Reuters found….

Excerpts from CHRIS BING and JOEL SCHECTMAN, Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic, Reuters, June 14, 2024

 

The Unintentional Making of a Global Power: Iran

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In 2024, Iran, under Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s leadership, thwarted decades of U.S. pressure and emerged from years of isolation largely by aligning itself with Russia and China…Iran’s economy remains battered by U.S. sanctions, but oil sales to China and weapons deals with Russia have offered financial and diplomatic lifelines…Today, Tehran poses a greater threat to American allies and interests in the Middle East than at any point since the Islamic Republic was founded in 1979. 

Iran’s military footprint reaches wider and deeper than ever. Iranian-backed armed groups have hit Saudi oil facilities with missiles and paralyzed global shipping in the Red Sea. They have dominated politics in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and Syria, and launched the most devastating strike on Israel in decades, when Hamas attacked in October. Iran launched its first direct military attack from its soil on Israel in April 2024. It has also orchestrated attacks on opponents in Europe and beyond, Western officials say. 

“In many respects, Iran is stronger, more influential, more dangerous, more threatening than it was 45 years ago,” said Suzanne Maloney, director of the foreign-policy program at the Brookings Institution, who advised Democratic and Republican administrations on Iran policy. 

U.S. policy has at times unintentionally contributed to Iran’s strength. The 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein removed a sworn enemy from Iran’s borders. Washington’s failure to stabilize postwar Iraq bolstered Tehran’s influence…

Excerpts from Sune Engel Rasmussen and Laurence Norman, How Iran Defied the U.S. to Become an International Power, WSJ, July 2, 2024

What is the Difference between Recycling and Fake Recycling?

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Chemical companies, oil-and-gas incumbents and startups around the world are touting plans for new recycling facilities, promising to turn old bottles and bags into usable material. But policymakers are questioning whether some of these methods, broadly termed chemical or advanced recycling, should be considered recycling at all.

In 2024, Eastman Chemical began processing plastic at a new plant in Kingsport, Tenn., that it calls the largest material-to-material molecular recycling facility in the world. The company uses a chemical procedure called methanolysis to break down hard-to-recycle plastics and turn them into “virgin quality” polyesters. When operating at capacity, the facility will process 110,000 tons of plastic waste a year, the equivalent of 11 billion water bottles a year, said Mark Costa, Eastman’s chief executive. 
In July 2024, Australian company Samsara Eco announced a $65 million funding round that attracted investment from Singapore’s state-investment company Temasek and apparel company Lululemon, among others. Using a process it calls enzymatic recycling, it aims to recycle 1.5 million tons of plastic a year by 2030. 

Yet in June 2024, during last-minute negotiations on a New York state packaging bill that would have forced companies to meet ambitious recycling standards and reduce their packaging waste by 30%, state legislators agreed that technologies like Eastman’s or Samsara Eco’s would not initially be considered “recycling.”   “We had a serious concern about the pseudo solution pushed by the industry called chemical recycling,” said Judith Enck, a former Environmental Protection Agency official and founder of Beyond Plastics, an advocacy group that supported the bill. In a report published last October, Beyond Plastics raised doubts about advanced recycling plants’ yield, emissions, byproducts and energy use. The group has argued that advanced recycling amounts to little more than a marketing tactic deployed to distract decision makers from proven waste-reduction methods, like using less packaging… 

A recent ProPublica investigation found that the dominant advanced recycling technique, pyrolysis, yields 15% to 20% usable plastic materials. The rest turns into fuel and other chemicals. Traditional mechanical recycling yields 55% to 85% new plastic…

Excerpts from Claire Brown, A Fight Over the Future of Recycling Brews as Plastics Legislation Gains Traction, WSJ, July 2, 2024

Corporate Greed and the Grid: How AI Fell For Nuclear Power

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The owners of roughly a third of U.S. nuclear-power plants are in talks with tech companies to provide electricity to new data centers needed to meet the demands of an artificial-intelligence boom.  Among them, Amazon Web Services is nearing a deal for electricity supplied directly from a nuclear plant on the East Coast with Constellation Energy, the largest owner of U.S. nuclear-power plants, according to people familiar with the matter. In a separate deal in March, the Amazon.com subsidiary purchased a nuclear-powered data center in Pennsylvania for $650 million…

Instead of adding new green energy to meet their soaring power needs, tech companies would be effectively diverting existing electricity resources. That could raise prices for other customers and hold back emission-cutting goals…The nuclear-tech marriage is fueling tensions over economic development, grid reliability, cost and climate goals in states including Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Amazon’s deal in Pennsylvania set off alarm bells for Patrick Cicero, the state’s consumer advocate. Cicero said he is concerned about cost and reliability if “massive consumers of energy kind of get first dibs.” It is unclear if the state currently has the regulatory authority to intervene in such deals, he said. “Never before could anyone say to a nuclear-power plant, we’ll take all the energy you can give us,” said Cicero.

Excerpts from Jennifer Hiller, Tech Industry Wants to Lock Up Nuclear Power for AI, WSJ, July 1, 2024