Monthly Archives: November 2024

Who Knew that UFOs are Real? Many

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Unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are called today unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP).  

It seems that have have been thousands of UAP and efforts to intimidate whistleblowers that report UAP in what seems to be a  government disinformation campaign.  Here is an excerpt of the testimony of Dr. Tim Gallaudet,  Rear Admiral, US Navy, before the Committee on Oversight & Accountability, US Congress 

According to Dr. Gallaudet: “We know from [the 2023 UAP Hearing before Congress] and recent statements and publications by credible whistleblowers that UAP…and their technology of unknown origin (TUO) represent a new realization that we are not the only advanced intelligence in the universe. Unelected officials in the U.S. government do not have an exclusive right to this knowledge about the nature of reality. The American people have a right to that knowledge. There is a public safety requirement for more government UAP transparency. 

There is a national security need for more UAP transparency as well.  In 2025, the U.S. will spend over $900 billion on national defense, yet we still have an incomplete understanding of what is in our airspace and water space. I add the term “water space” because UAP have been observed in the ocean and are known to exhibit transmedium travel through the air-sea interface. These are often referred to as unidentified submerged objects (USOs). Whether aerial or undersea, UAP are operating unhindered in our seas and skies and American taxpayers have a right to know why our military’s massive budget is inadequately addressing this national defense deficiency.”

What is the Purpose of Graveyards in Space

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Launched in 1969, just a few months after humans first set foot on the Moon, Skynet-1A was put high above Africa’s east coast to relay communications for British forces. When the spacecraft ceased working a few years later, gravity might have been expected to pull it even further to the east, out over the Indian Ocean. But today, curiously, Skynet-1A is actually half a planet away, in a position 22,369 miles (36,000km) above the Americas. Orbital mechanics mean it’s unlikely the half-tonne military spacecraft simply drifted to its current location. Almost certainly, it was commanded to fire its thrusters in the mid-1970s to take it westwards. The question is who that was and with what authority and purpose?…

You might also reasonably ask why it still matters. After all, we’re talking about some discarded space junk from 50 years ago…No matter how Skynet-1A  got shifted to its present position, it was ultimately allowed to die in an awkward place when really it should have been put in an “orbital graveyard“. This refers to a region even higher in the sky where old space junk runs zero risk of running into active telecommunications satellites. Graveyarding is now standard practice, but back in the 1970s no-one gave much thought to space sustainability.

Attitudes have since changed because the space domain is getting congested and  collisions between defunct satellites  generate large amounts of space debris or space junk…”We need to avoid…super-spreader events. When these things explode or something collides with them, it generates thousands of pieces of debris that then become a hazard to something else that we care about.”

Excerpt from Jonathan Amos, Somebody moved UK’s oldest satellite, and no-one knows who or why, Science, Nov. 8, 2024

The Disempowering Effects of Experimentation on Humans

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Whenever we go online, we might find ourselves part of an experiment — without knowing it. Digital platforms track what users do and how they respond to features. Increasingly, these tests are having real-world consequences for its participants.

In a paper published in the Journal Academy of Management, it was reported that platforms that offer paid tasks and jobs to freelancers (H. A. Rahman et al. Acad. Mgmt. J. 66, 1803–1830; 2023) are experimenting  with using different methods for scoring people’s work, as well as changing how their skills would be listed on their profile page and how they could interact with their contractors. These changes affected people’s ratings and the amount of work they received. Twenty years ago, such experimentation was transparent. Gig workers could opt in or out of tests. But today, these experiments are done covertly. Gig workers waive their rights when they create an account.

Being experimented on can be disconcerting and disempowering. Imagine that, every time you enter your office, it has been redesigned. So has how you are evaluated, and how you can speak with your superiors, but without your knowledge or consent. Such continual changes affect how you do and feel about your job.

Gig workers expressed that, after noticing frequent changes on the listing platforms that were made without their consent, they started to see themselves as laboratory rats rather than valued users. Because their messages were blocked by chatbots, they were unable to speak to the platform to complain or opt out of the changes. Frustration flared and apathy set in. Their income and well-being declined.

This is concerning, not only because of how it affects gig workers, but also because academics are increasingly becoming involved in designing digital experiments. Social scientists follow strict Institutional Review Board (IRB) procedures that govern the ethics of experiments involving people — such as informing them and requiring consent — but these rules don’t apply to technology companies. And that’s leading to questionable practices and potentially unreliable results.

Excerpt from Tim Weiss, Why we are all lab rats in the digital world, Nature, Nov. 12, 2024

Crossing the Pacific: the Logistics of War

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Every two weeks since 2023, US officers convene a classified intelligence briefing about fighting in the Red Sea. The attendees aren’t politicians, policymakers or spies. They are private shipping executives. The meetings are part of a push by the Pentagon’s Transportation Command, or Transcom, to integrate shipping lines as crisis supply lines. The policy stems from a dire need in an unloved but vital corner of America’s military behemoth. A House select committee in February 2024 called Transcom’s sea-cargo capacity “woefully inadequate.” The U.S. is investing heavily in new weapons systems, but missiles, warships and jet fighters are only a fraction of what the military worries about. Troops sent to battle also need food and water. Their equipment devours fuel and spare parts. Guns without ammunition are dead weight. Wounded fighters require evacuation.

Moving all of that—and keeping supplies flowing for months or years—demands vast and complex support infrastructure, broadly termed logistics. If it doesn’t function, even a battle-proven force will grind to a halt…China’s rise has exposed America’s shipping weakness. Beijing isn’t just Washington’s biggest military rival. It is also by far the world’s biggest logistics operation. Within China’s centrally directed economy, the government controls commercial shippers, foreign port facilities and a globe-spanning cargo-data network that in a conflict could be repurposed for military aims or to undermine the U.S., including on home soil. Transcom’s fleet of planes and cargo ships, meanwhile, is aging and insufficient.

In conflict with China, the Pentagon would send roughly 90% of its provisions by sea. Among 44 government-owned ships for moving vehicles that Transcom can tap, 28 will retire within eight years. Replacements have faced repeated delays. But military logistics isn’t “just logistics” because in wartime, supply lines are prime targets. During Russia’s assault on Kyiv in 2022, Ukrainians crippled Moscow’s forces by destroying their provisions.

Robust logistics, in contrast, can deter attacks. If adversaries believe the U.S. can quickly mobilize a massive response, they are less likely to initiate hostilities. During the Cold War, North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies routinely made a show of flooding Europe with American troops and gear before exercises.

The U.S. has decades of experience working with NATO allies to send military supplies to Europe for a potential conflict with Russia. Cargo ships generally need about two weeks to cross the Atlantic. For a conflict with China, logistics would be more complicated because distances are far greater. Crossing the Pacific takes much longer than the Atlantic, and shipping routes could face greater danger of attack.

In 1990, at the Cold War’s end, the U.S. had roughly 600 available merchant ships. In 1960, it had more than 3,000. China today has more than 7,000 commercial ships. Chinese entities own every sixth commercial vessel on the seas—including ships flying other countries’ flags—a share comparable only to Greece.

Excerpts from Daniel Michaels and Nancy A. Youssef, Pentagon’s limited capacity to support a potential China conflict forces planners to tap private cargo companies, WSJ, Nov. 1, 2024

When Phones Become Useless: the Attack on US Telecommunications Infrastructure

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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau  has issued a directive to employees to reduce the use of their phones for work matters because of China’s recent hack of U.S. telecommunications infrastructure. In an email to staff sent November 7, 2024, the chief information officer at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau warned that internal and external work-related meetings and conversations that involve nonpublic data should only be held on platforms such as Microsoft Teams and Cisco WebEx and not on work-issued or personal phones.

“Do NOT conduct CFPB work using mobile voice calls or text messages,” the email said, while referencing a recent government statement acknowledging the telecommunications infrastructure attack. “While there is no evidence that CFPB has been targeted by this unauthorized access, I ask for your compliance with these directives so we reduce the risk that we will be compromised,” said the email, which was sent to all CFPB employees and contractors.

The alert is the latest demonstration of concerns within the federal government about the scale and scope of the hack, which investigators are still endeavoring to fully understand and have attributed to a group dubbed Salt Typhoon.  The hackers are said to have compromised data about calls and in some cases recorded phone audio from certain high-value targets, including individuals affiliated with both the Trump and Harris presidential campaigns… A directive to avoid cellphone use in response to a specific threat is rare for a government agency and reflects the level of concern among investigators about the severity of the breaches of telecommunications companies, including Verizon and AT&T…U.S. investigators believe hackers tied to a Chinese intelligence agency are responsible for the breaches and that they have targeted an array of senior national security and policy officials across the U.S. government in addition to politicians.

Excerpts from Anna Maria Andriotis and Dustin Vole, US Agency Warns About Chinese Phone Hacks, WSJ, Nov. 8, 2024

Under the Radar: How the U.A.E. is Colonizing Africa

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The petrostate, United Arab Emirates, has invested billions of dollars on the other side of the Arabian peninsula, in Africa, where it is now emerging as a significant player, at times muscling out China and annoying the U.S. and others. It has taken sides in local wars and spent heavily on buying farmland, ports and other projects that could help reduce its own dependence on oil in the decades to come.

The U.A.E. government says investments in Africa amounted to about $110 billion over the past decade….Its portfolio includes renewable-energy projects in Egypt, leased rice and wheat farmlands in the muddy plains of northern Angola and a majority stake in one of Zambia’s largest copper mines. U.A.E.-backed port projects are dotted around the coasts of the Atlantic, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. The Gulf state is also trying to become a key supplier of the minerals used in a new generation of batteries.  

The Wall Street Journal has reported that the U.A.E. shipped weapons including antiaircraft missiles and drones, to Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces, which is waging a civil war against the Iran-backed Sudanese military and has perpetrated a series of well-documented atrocities against civilian populations, especially in Darfur. It also sold armed drones to Ethiopia’s government, while the U.S. was pushing for a peace deal with Ethiopian rebel groups. Before that, U.N. investigators say it transferred arms to Libyan militia leader Khalifa Haftar in violation of a United Nations Security Council arms embargo…

There are signs of pushback in parts of Africa, too. In Chad, local Zaghawa communities have repeatedly staged protests against the U.A.E.’s use of Amdjarass airport in the east of the country to ship supplies to the RSF, according to activists and videos shared online. .

Excerpts from Nicholas Bariyo, The New Investment Superpower Outflanking China and the U.S. in Africa, WSJ, Nov. 6, 2024

The Never-Ending Nuclear Arms Race

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The United States Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) announced in October 2024 it had manufactured its first plutonium “pit”—used in the core of a thermonuclear warhead to initiate an nuclear explosion—since the United States largely halted such production in 1989. Under a nuclear arsenal modernization plan launched in 2008, the lab will scale up production to 30 pits per year, with an additional 50 to be produced annually starting in the mid-2030s at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. But the work faces opposition from critics who say it could help fuel a new international nuclear arms race and also risks the health of workers and the environment. In September 30 2024, opponents won a ruling in federal district court in South Carolina when a judge ruled the U.S. Department of Energy failed to adequately consider other options for locating the production facilities. The judge is considering a request to pause production at LANL. The United States halted pit manufacturing in 1989 at the Rocky Flats Plant, near Denver, after an inspection revealed hazardous waste contamination.

Excerpt from U.S. resumes making nuke triggers, Science, Oct. 11, 2024