chriselles

I was extremely grateful to have USAF A10’s in presence patrols orbiting overhead to deter activity against my partner and I in Afghanistan back in 2013 in a remote area.

In conflict environments such as Iran and Afghanistan or against conventional forces with limited modern air defence systems, the A10 is a very useful platform.

But against peer adversaries with modern air defence infrastructure, A10 is vulnerable.

The future will probably include over the horizon perishable drone swarm launches and persistent UCAVs for close air support and networked fires(possibly hundreds of miles away) in contested environments

The recent conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is a good indicator of near future conflict.

I can confirm the Afghans I worked with between 2012-2014 maintaining regular contact with using Facebook and FB Messenger have all shifted coms to WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram.

This all occurred rapidly in the last week due to fears stemming from rumours circulating about Pakistani ISI backed Taliban gaining technical intercept capability.

True or not, the rumours had a significant effect on many Afghans.

Gangs use of surveillance would ride on the back of their increasing awareness of counter-surveillance.

They are increasingly using flight tracker tools to check and see if privately contracted aerial SIGINT services to local/state/federal government are orbiting overhead.

I spent time there between 2012-2014.

At the time, Afghan gov’t spending was approx $16 billion with only approx $2 billion actual national revenue.

Which was a well known, but largely ignored, problem to anyone paying attention.

It’s unlikely China’s Belt and Road Initiative will generate similar frictional toll/rent cashflow opportunities in the short-term.

Debt-trap diplomacy tactics are unlikely to work as I reckon the Taliban would strongly prefer to continue collecting tolls/rents on commerce movement rather than borrow foreign money for domestic owned infrastructure.

Why fix what isn’t broke(n)?

I suspect China would need to be willing to lose circa $5-10 billion annually in frictional losses as rent to the Taliban to maximise odds of influence and stability.

Pakistan doesn’t have the financial capacity to guarantee Afghanistan’s success, only it’s continued failure.

India would struggle to rent influence due to a lack of excess financial capacity and geopolitical incongruence.

Iran has its hands full elsewhere and is probably focused more on ensuring Iran’s Shia diplomats aren’t slaughtered again.

In terms of natural resources, I recall the stories of Afghanistan’s half trillion under the dirt.

But it reminds me of the trillion dollar asteroids.

It’s irrelevant is the cost of extraction and bringing it to market exceeds the value of the resource.

Very interesting.

Here in New Zealand we saw the very quickly crowd-sourced mashup called Student Volunteer Army(SVA) in the wake of the Christchurch earthquakes.

THW appears to be an organisation more thoughtfully designed and more generously funded.

I had the chance to meet with SVA founders.

This type of org is low cost, medium reward.

Very cool with lots of scope for building more resilient communities.

Stanford Professor Ilya Strebulaev put together a stock option valuation tool that’s really useful:

https://valuation.vc/

Yes.

We have a small holiday place in Lake Wanaka right down the road from Peter Thiel’s block of bare land and his substantial but not ludicrous holiday home.

I suspect a fair few who planned on NZ as their international bolt hole are now a bit confused.

They likely planned on a terrible catastrophe with enough warning to get here.

Instead they received a minor catastrophe with air travel lock downs where even a private G650 is not permitted entry.

I’m of the opinion that all this doomsday prepping by the wealthy is simply an unconventional insurance policy for extreme/unlikely events.

Basic and moderate preparations for reasonable likelihood events makes great sense.

Extreme preparations don’t make financial sense, but I suspect are done for the same reasons some people of lesser means seem to dangerously over invest in disaster preparation, it’s the perception of control and order amidst a macro environment they feel they cannot influence, control, or predict.

Harley-Davidson LiveWire.

The best motorcycle I have ever ridden, and I’ve ridden most.

It’s that good. But it’s still too expensive and short-legged.

Not entirely correct.

The Soviet Union supported government of Afghanistan fell very quickly, and only after, Soviet aid was cut in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

We’re in New Zealand and we have been down for 40 minutes.

If only the article included the shift from religious to environmental extremism.

ANOM seems like a shorter/sharper law enforcement version of the CIA's Cold War era intelligence operation when they purchased Swiss encrypted communication company Crypto AG.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG

Well, to be fair.....the professional career field that has the most overlap with intelligence collection/analysis is journalism.

Any combat arms officer/NCO that doesn’t know what happened in the Armenia/Azerbaijan disco dance off last year needs to find a new job.

Moore’s Law price/performance has brought us to the point that individual soldiers can be individually targeted and destroyed by autonomous kinetic drones that are accessible to, and manufactured by, a fast growing number of nations.

John Deere and their tractor dealer network have been fighting and delaying farmer owner tractor right of repair efforts for years.

John Deere seems to be using the tactic that the tractor owner has the right to repair, but stalling on providing the ability/accessibility to repair.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7m8mx/john-deere-promised-f...

It’s worth watching much higher value products sold/serviced by dealer networks(tractors/auto/trucks/powersports) very heavily reliant on service/repair revenue compared to electronic device manufacturers that are far less reliant.

Printer manufacturers that use the razor blade loss leader business model to profit from consumables is another similar fight over genuine printer cartridge “lock in” versus aftermarket/refills.

Can leadership be automated?

Persoanlly, I don’t see automated CEOs as a viable option for the foreseeable future.

Automation usually works best with consistent and repeatable functions right?

And automation usually works worst with diverse, infrequent, and unusually functions right?

Could a CEO’s roles and responsibilities be somewhat split(with some grey area delineation) between hard and soft skills?

Automation support for senior leadership hard skills seems like a logical extension of recent automation capabilities.

In fact, I could imagine a well branded AI/human teaming decision support service becoming the new high-end executive health service status symbol.

If companies are willing to expand and experiment with very high end health care support to senior leadership as a means to ensure high cognitive functioning then it would be a natural extension to include bespoke AI/ML decision support for senior leadership.

Where else would bespoke AI/ML decision support for individuals originate and gain traction?

It seems inevitable that it would originate where the opportunity cost is greatest.

So CEO/AI teaming seems ripe for exploitation today, but a fully automated CEO still seems completely unreachable.

However, if it emerges I would imagine it will do so first in business units with extremely high simplicity, repeatability, and predictability.

I would posit that in the past we had a bias to over-classified things and today we bias towards under-classifying things.

In the Cold War, when the Soviets got their hands on a few of the latest semiconductors there was a limit to what they could exploit from them, as the massive supporting infrastructure and sunk cost capital required was simply unavailable.

Today, decisive military advantage(albeit perishable) can be gained by recombining/reformulating existing commercial off the shelf technologies(albeit mixed with some dedicated .MIL R&D).

Back then, a few of our best CPUs in the hands of our adversaries would cause limited damage.

Today, a few of our best conversations in the hands of our adversaries could cause significant damage.

I’m not one for suggesting we classify everything, that would be silly.

But I do think an easy argument can be made for the growing challenges around counter-intelligence.

The only solution I see is building, measuring learning faster and out-competing adversaries.

Preferably at the cost of the fewest lives lost and least national treasure consumed.

Thank you for that!

Conceptually, I really like the idea of being able to monetise one’s own attention beyond just one’s own time employed.

Ultimately, jt would be super cool to gain a better understanding of one’s own time value beyond just employed work but also leisure and how it might help us to better conceptualise the limited time we have.

Perhaps a less intuitive/instinctive and more quantifiable approach to how we might optimise our time.

Even if the world doesn’t turn into a micropayment dystopia, I would think there’s great scope to utilise strictly voluntary smart contract personal incentives.

Perhaps Jenny Craig turns into a smart contract blockchain platform that unlocks food pellets when the customers performs X. I’m mostly joking.

My first thought is how it might be of value with my kids when it comes to school performance, fitness goals, as well as leisure/fun.

We already do it, but maybe we could do it better.

What I would find useful is a tool that accurately overlays what my attention & time costs & earns me.

That would effectively convert every device/internet interaction into an individualised financial transaction which is not necessarily a good thing.

But many people budget poorly when it comes to finances, and many people budget worse when it comes to attention and time.

I fear a THX1138-like future, but in many respects we are already living it, but we aren’t able to easily enough take advantage of it.

A similar story occurred from the pursuing end in the 1980’s South West African Border War.

A special vehicle based South African unit called Koevoet(crowbar) was unable to capture an infiltrator who was on foot over hundreds of kilometres and a number of days.

The infiltrator discarded hypodermics, used for injecting meth, along the way.

It is an amazing chemical compound, but one with horrific negative consequences, even when carefully prescribed.

I don’t disagree, but....

Peloton has freakishly high Net Promoter Score(NPS) from most high paying customers.

The power of belonging, community, and shared effort/mission is incredibly powerful.

Especially in a time of such COVID disconnection.

Peloton as a business against Apple seems insurmountable.

Peloton as a cult/tribe against Apple seems achievable.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Peloton tattoos mirroring Harley-Davidson.

I’ve had experience with both Lambda and Amazon.

Everyone working as an Associate in an Amazon distribution/fulfilment Center from 20 or more years ago would have accrued well over $5m in stock options and units today.

That’s for unskilled entry level work, at a much lower than current hourly wage, and assuming the stock wasn’t sold early(which it almost always was from my perspective).

Everyone attending Lambda has an opportunity to learn and up skill, but it is extremely rough and messy, much like Amazon’s early days.

Turnover/attrition for both Amazon and Lambda would be quite high.

So the dream is real, but the reality is considerable challenge.

Amazon’s full-time headcount growth is still extremely high(1.3m compared to 575k just 2 years ago).

Lambda has had a few students get hired by Amazon, so it’s in their best interest to link their brand to big tech brands.

People like sausages, but watching how sausages get made can be distasteful for some or many.

Superficially, it appears to be a very significant achievement for South Korea on top of the existing FA/TA-50.

However there is a long way to go, especially in terms of big unknown capabilities of network/sensor fusion and integration of US systems.

Kinematics and stealth are often the areas of focus when network/sensor fusion may be where the greatest value may lie.

Sweden have had a lot of success with the JAS-39 Gripen integrating US systems as well as enjoying a good level of export success.

The Israeli Lavi cancelled in the 80’s ran into a number of problems that may have included confliction/cannibalisation risk with the then string F16 export market.

Perhaps the KF-21 could represent a low(er) option for the high(er) F35.

Something akin to the low(F16)/high(F15) mix of the 1970’s.

I recall this making headlines in the 90’s in proximity to airbases in Pennsylvania.

Specifically issues around drinking water for residential housing with wells in proximity to the airbases.

The concerns I have with a Digital Yuan are linked to China’s One Belt, One Road initiative with the adding of a digital layer to that effort.

IF China is able to successfully export its Super-platforms into the developing world it will provide the means thru which it could supplant the US Dollar with the Digital Yuan as the primary means of exchange with low friction switching costs.

At the moment, Zipf’s Law still applies with the US Dollar still the dominant currency used with the Euro a distant 2nd.

China’s Yuan is still low single digit %.

But this could change rapidly if China is able to successfully push their domestic super-platforms onto the developing world thru a strategy of One Belt, One Road debt trap diplomacy combined with offering their fellow authoritarians ‘moderator’ within the Chinese ‘administrator’ surveillance framework, and offering users purchasing power stability.

While the decision isn’t binary, if the CCP had to choose between investing in a counter to the US military’s trillion dollar super-carrier battle group sunk cost or adding a billion developing world users for Chinese super-platforms I think the choice is simple.

The latter is cheaper, and ultimately pays for the former.

My thinking is the threat today is low, but the vulnerability looking out a decade+ is extremely high.

This is a tough one close to my heart.

Working in semicon back in the 80’s, my dad travelled once to the Soviet Union for a semicon show.

Once returned, he had a debrief with someone from an intelligence agency.

But the fact is that during the Cold War stealing some semiconductors was of limited utility without the directly associated and massive sunk cost of the semicon fab supply chain.

So in some respects, we may have over-classified and been too aggressive with export controls, however the Toshiba-Kongsberg scandal did help the Soviets to substantially reduce submarine propeller noise.

Today, when you mix several off the shelf capabilities they can be recombined into a new capability with significant military applications.

Even describing some of these examples in sufficient detail could be enough to lose perishable advantage over an adversary.

I don’t know what the answer is or agree with mass export controls, but I also see the problem of dual use technology transfer to adversaries as much harder today than the Cold War of yesterday.

On the one hand believing such things can be viewed as funny.

On the other hand it is a quiet serious issue.

While deployed to the Solomon Islands 15 years ago in a very remote location, the indigenous folks thought our helicopters were stealing all their gold and diamonds with giant vacuum cleaners in our helicopters.

Comically ridiculous, but they were serious as a heart attack.

And there were a few very aggressively and violently leveraged those mistaken beliefs.

So we had to respond with great care for their concerns rather than just disparaging them.

Doesn’t the same apply here?

Confirmation bias of internet searches and conformity bias of online fringe communities can lead to quite persistent and amplified opposition.

I wonder if we’re going to look back and refer to this as the Mona Lisa Meme?

I’m only half joking.

I wonder which one would win in terms of reach between this meme and the Mona Lisa?

Very interesting story.

I wonder how it compares with more contemporary mostly open source intelligence collection efforts such as the Russians seeking value from US academic archives during the Cold War and China’s CCP doing the same even more aggressively in recent decades?

Zipf’s Law still applies to the US Dollar, with 60% of the global currency distribution by value.

But will Metcalfe’s Law kick in with the Digital Yuan over time?

The Yuan has a long way to go from its current 2.5% share.

But if Chinese digital superplatforms ever gain traction in the developing world, it would be relatively easy to swap the means of exchange on the platforms, especially if it offers superior purchasing power retention.

Pushing Digital Yuan as part of both physical and digital One Belt, One Road efforts make sense.

Perhaps the future is a battle between relative value propositions but with far lower switching costs than the Cold War.

Apple versus Android, Dollar versus Yuan.

Ultimately, it is the US’s game to lose far more than it is China’s game to win.

But complacency kills.

Especially when it falls beneath the velocity threshold of general population detection.