Saturday, April 25, 2009
SINGULAR VISION
Here's a short interview with one of the smartest people I ever have had the pleasure to meet, science fiction author Vernor Vinge. If you're not familiar with the idea of "the Singularity" as originally formulated by Vinge, this brief piece provides a good overview.
Vinge is apparently still pretty optimistic that the kind of uniquely dramatic change he envisions will occur within the next twenty years. Ten years ago or so, when I met Vinge, I certainly would have agreed that 2030 was a good guess for a date by which things would take a massive spike upward.
Not any more. I've become distinctly pessimistic that such developments will happen within two decades -- or even whether they might happen at all. The amount of resources that would have to be devoted to the necessary tasks simply aren't going to be available, I'm afraid. The decade of the 2010s will be one of retrenchment, at best. At worst (and the worst seems distinctly possible now), crucial nodes of social and technological integration necessay for the "great leap forward" of the Singularity will be so disrupted that it will be impossible to realistically foresee achieving the kinds of progress required. In other words, things may get much worse before they get better ... if they ever do.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:49 AM
Friday, April 24, 2009
THE WAR ON TWO FRONTS
On the other side of the world, the fuse is burning shorter. In Pakistan, the ultimate nightmare, an Islamist takeover of Pakistan -- and thus their possession of a ready-made nuclear arsenal, continues to become more likely. They are advancing into territory prepared for them by 1400 years of cultivation: at least hundreds of thousands of people who sympathize with their goals lie on the other side of a shaky barrier being hastily thrown across the line of their march. Every effort to stop the savages will be undermined by their partisans among the defenders of Islamabad.
Will this offensive be the one that breaks through to the ultimate prize of nuclear weapons for the jihadis? Maybe, maybe not. But if it's not, there will be another. And another. And another. The chances that they will succeed during the term of Barack Obama's presidency are very real. The day that happens, all of his rhetoric about "reaching out" and "dialogue" will be as nothing, puffs of scented air blown away in the hot wind of the Punjab.
Meanwhile, here in the civilized world, there is a war of words, as rational people try to shore up the front of common decency against threats from the demons of our own primitives. For years, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs has suffered a constant barrage of hate from the left, as he is villified as a "fascist" by the idiots who see Nazis behind every judgment of right and wrong. But what those morons haven't had the moral sense to detect is that he and others like him have been stalwart defenders of liberal values against real fascists who have sought to hijack the anti-jihad movement. Johnson's willingness to be honest about the distinction between his views and those of racist tribalists who want to harvest the fear of the rising threat of Islamism has subjected him to terrible criticism from the far right. The howling is now of equal volume from both sides. Here's a recent piece that offers one of the few notes of support for this man who has been willing to stand against irrationality, from whatever direction it comes.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 6:25 AM
Thursday, April 23, 2009
MEANWHILE ....
Let's pause and do a reality check. If you have the stomach for it, check out this developing story about a video of gross torture carried out by a member of the royal family in the United Arab Emirates. This is particularly interesting because the story is playing out in the civil litigation community here in Houston that is my professional environment.
If we call what the CIA did to Kalid Sheik Muhammed "torture," what is this? "Super-torture?" Yes, I know that one of my heroes, Christopher Hitchens, had himself waterboarded, after which he very vehemently confirmed that this practice was, indeed, torture. And it probably is. But the story at the above link ought to make one pause for at least a moment to consider the difficult question of making distinctions among examples of such darkness ...
At any rate, this story serves as a chilling and pointed reminder of the devil's bargain our civilization has made with the savages who sit on top of the oil lake in the Arabian desert. Oh that our so-called "leaders" had the will to really address this!
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 6:45 AM
Monday, April 20, 2009
RETURN TO THE PAST
My last post was about how the growing power of the Chinese military sets the stage for a tectonic shift in what might be called 'the state system" or the global balance of power. This detailed Rand presentation on a study of how US and Chinese air power might compare in actual combat in a few years is instructive in that regard.
The more I think about this, the more I see a retrun to the kind of dynamics in the world that pertained from about 1880 or so through the Second World War. From the end of the Napoleonic Wars through about 1880, Britain was the undisputed master of the seas, and therefore of the world. But with the coming of coal-fired, steam-powered battleships, "rising powers" such as Germany and Japan (and the US) began to at least have the potential to challenge that straegic pre-eminence.
In our time, air superiority is the equivalent of the kind of sea power that marked Britain's supremacy and the challenges to it a hundred years ago or so. The ability of China (and others) to field "smart" weapons that can undermine the strategic dominance of US military power will retrun the world to the kind of Great Power pushing and shoving that marked the period from 1880 to 1945 or so.
One key difference, though, between our time and that of the great Dreadnoughts is that the US will certainly not have the kind of political will required to maintain an imperial milieu. So -- how does the new age of Dreadnoughts work itself out when there is no analog of Britannia willing to rule the seas of the air?
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:51 AM
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
NEW WORLD ORDER
Here's a good overview of Chinese pursuit and implementation of precision-guided weapons from the strategic to the tactical level. It's been well more than twenty years that US military planners could count on significant advantages in this kind of thing. It seems that the genie is well and truly out of the bottle. And with China, the genie has found a home prosperous enough to support it.
For some reason, this feels like a prelude to a return to an earlier era in strategic relations -- the era of more-nearly equivalent Great Powers; the age of the Dreadnoughts. I feel pretty sure the US won't have the stomach to fill the role that the British did in those days -- the primer inter pares willing to shoulder the burden of staying on top in a world where multiple Great Powers are pushing into the first rank. At a first order of analysis, this seems to lead to the necessity of either defining relatively clear spheres of influence for new Great Powers, or ceding global primacy to another Power that is willing to muscle its way to the top and expend the blood and treasure necessary to stay there. A politically stable China seems to fit that description.
Better get to work on figuring out how to define spheres of influence ...
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 6:21 AM
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