kimbosbread

Fortunately there are a lot of young people who do care, and are driving your whole drone industry, but the point stands, sadly. Why do we need to offer the globe a better choice (the West, as opposed to China)? Can’t they figure it out for themselves? And if they can’t, and we can’t absorb them, what should we do? Should we annex them as territories and extend our rule of law there? Absolutely. However, I think we need to consider what open borders means: If we let everybody come here that wanted to, well, I think we’d have a higher population than China or India. You can best that most of India and Nigeria would be here in a heartbeat. And we could feed them easily, maybe turn Central America and various other polities into national parks or something. But it would cost a lot of money. I think the Democrats need to be honest about this, and say we want more people, and yes, the strain on the social system is worth it as we get new workers (what they’ll work on tbd); or just say it’s charity and it makes us feel good and you the people gotta pay for it. The Republicans also need to be honest about the fact that illegal immigration props up a lot of agriculture and the entire meatpacking industry, for starters.

There are confounding factors to demographic decline: USA, having the most lucrative jobs and real mobility (you can actually be rich), will take your best people (hard working, or smart, or lucky). These are the people you’d like to keep. Your economy sucks, so your native inhabitants won’t have kids, and the new immigrants won’t either past the next generation. Europe has fantastic social benefits, in principle, especially wrt to having children. Why does this not work? The new immigrants have minimal education and skills needed to power an advanced economy. If they have work ethic that’s great, but if there aren’t any jobs… Basically, the USA is the best country of all time, and we will take all your best people because they want to come to our country. That is our real superpower.

American immigration is very different than the rest of the world and people would be wise to acknowledge the differences. Because we have the best jobs, and ironically the least racism towards immigrants, and a society that fetishizes working a lot, plus a rather maleable and heterogenous national culture, it’s not that hard to fit in here. Witness the people bussed up to New York from the border, who immediately started taking delivery jobs and whatever they could find. We don’t have a huge Muslim terrorist problem, because all these young guys can find work, and it’s completely cool to have Mosque, or an Afghan man-skirt, or whatever you want (the conservatives almost certainly prefer it to a fursuit or latex, at least in public). Immigrants who come here generally want to work as much as possible and are often quite patriotic about their new country, illegal or otherwise. It’s not that easy to get here, so you have to be smart, risk-taking, hard-working, lucky or some combination thereof. Europe is much easier to get to, much harder to integrate into, and has a much worse economic situation. Even if as a young MENA dude you are there to just make a better life for yourself, it’s gonna be harder. EDIT: Another anecdote: A friend of a friend is CFO for a major regional bank in the South and wishes he could lend to illegal immigrants, as he says they always repay their debt and are the best workers.

To be fair to stock buybacks, that’s basically because they are more efficient taxwise. If our society didn’t encourage financialization of everything (ie financing a toaster, or pretty much anything else), we would be in a different spot. Also, to be fair to our industry, we produce tons of stuff, but the defense industry is a giant jobs program first and foremost.

I think the Baltics and Poland and Finns and Czechs absolutely would care. But yeah, the rest of the EU is pretty pusilanimous. Alternatively, Grand Suisse! People like to forget that perhaps the most warlike people in Europe in the last millenia have only recently occupied themselves with making cuckoo clocks and crappy chocolate, but that merely masks their terrible martial nature. Sure, they disguise it with male earrings and lisps and women with mommy haircuts, but don’t be fooled! EDIT: For the record, as an isolationist leaning conservative, I think it’s critical that the EU stops outsourcing defense to the US and sacks up. Japan, SK and Taiwan certainly have a more realistic outlook.

Oh there’s definitely quite a bit of that, talking to relatives and friends in a few Western European countries. Yeah, I’m definitely in the same camp. Putin has thrown almost all his cards on the table, and is betting on Russian will. It’s a pity Ukraine doesn’t take a page out of Russia’s bio-warfare during war of survival playbook and let something loose in LDPR. Alternatively, taking out Russia’s refineries within 1000km of the border plus as much power grid infra as possible seems like a good move. Ironically, the anitvax movement pre-Wuflu was the unholy confluence of Oprah and ethnic slavs in Southern Washington State. Mmm I dunno, maybe among emasculated 3rd plus generation Americans. Recent immigrants seem to be made of different stuff. My ultranationalist Chinese acquaintances don’t understand how people don’t appreciate how good they have it, and how they can’t see through obvious bull****. Same with the African uber drivers.

I guess so, more or less. My disagreement is that happens more on the conservative side (though the present form of US conservatism is remarkably stupid). In education alone Prof Calkins has done more damage than pretty much anybody until the last few years where liberal cities effectively shut down public schools and are now wondering why there are “problems”*. Intelligent design “advocates” eat your hearts out! Obviously we all can agree cueing theory is a load of unadulterated bullsh**, but on school closures there wasn’t much evidence initially of course, and it came down to a complete lack of understanding of the tradeoffs, and willful ingorance and outright silencing of people who said maybe this is not a good idea, and maybe the lives saved from children not being in school will be outweighed by suicides and lives of crime that will result from a few years of the public school net not working. And now we are in the situation where people might need to agree with Ron DeSantis on at least one thing, which depresses me terribly. *https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/opinion/pandemic-school-learning-loss.html

You say this, but I think it’s more age skew (conservatives lean older) and in the US that the population reads at a 6th grade level or below. Lots of very smart people on all sides go with feelings unfortunately (see my rant on Lucy Calkins and our public schools) much to the detriment of the country. As much as I’d like people to use logic and reason to make decisions, I don’t think 95% of the population has the ability or capacity for this. And the 5% that do, well, they still can’t figure it out most of the time. I submit that our country is big enough and complicated enough that it’s very hard for the voter to understand what’s going on, what the consequences of a choice are, and that is no less harder for the people who produce the campaigns of elected officials, and all the decision makers. Seriously. You get people from opposite sides for beers, and they can usually relate to each other, regardless of background. But when you get to big abstract problems, and the future, it’s much harder. I really think our best answer is to go full big-C Culture on this, as the system is not getting any less complex.

From what I had heard some of the problems with JDAMs were not initializing the INS on the tarmac. With GLMRS I could imagine something similar happening. Ultimately any weapon can be countered given the requisite money and time. That’s why el-cheapo autonomous drones are so scary: How do you counter them at scale, without making a system that is so expensive you could buy a million of your own drones instead?

How precision tools sent to Russia aren’t sabotaged properly, I don’t understand. I realize the French and Austrian industry totally loves Russia, but still…

I think there’s a complementary argument one could make: Since the 90s, in the US at least we’ve seen the erosion of the middle class, between offshoring, automation and massive asset inflation. Meanwhile the US has become significantly more economically powerful, leading the charge for each major new industry (software, internet, newspace, electric cars, AI, etc.) There are a lot of people who are extremely upset (across the political spectrum) about the fact that they get to enjoy an ever smaller piece of the pie, and this exacerbates the US’ natural isolationist tendencies. Add to that the fact that the government is unable to address illegal immigration or homelessness or crime (in liberal cities, ironically), which affect the middle class and down mostly, and you have a recipe for real social problems. As for purpose, Bush + Obama destroyed “Team America” for a generation or two with Afghanistan. So that’s out, despite Ukraine and Taiwan being very worthy causes. I posit that a different purpose could be “Build the Future” and that Elon Musk, despite saying stupid things relatively frequently, needs to praised more in media, and maybe we focus attention of these efforts and how things are getting better. We have roughnecks building giant mars rockets in Texas, and meanwhile we have practical, rather nice electric cars being commonplace (at least in places where people can afford them). If someone could just drunk mail him and get him to build the 10km x 10km solar plant he’s talked about… Unfortunately, the future can take a while to arrive, and Elon cannot solve our social problems with technology. We need to build a healthier society first and promote civic engagement at the lowest level somehow (I say this as someone who is not engaged much, due to my city being a one party city like many across the country). EDIT: Social media and the news show only the best or worst things, so these obviously amplify problems. Moreover the internet in some ways functions as a “Total Perspective Vortex” where people feel insignificant and powerless in relation to the world. If people felt like they contributed more, they might be more involved.

Pity I don’t have the money to start a toy company that sells an autonomous drone swarm as a toy or something with a poverty version of the nano hornet or something similar. Maybe DJI will do that in a few years.

Or videos demoing a swarm of drones flying through the forest autonomously. Or a US ship being taken out by a drone swarm. EDIT: On second thought, that will justification for even more expensive lasers.

Speaking as someone who stopped reading the economist two decades ago as it became lame, that cover is fine. Putin benefits from freezing the conflict and “peace”, as we’ve all discussed ad nauseum.

Toyota produces enough Hiluxes and LC70s (and enough of them exist already) that someone would just have to open their checkbook. However, Europe and US are not going to subsidize Toyota. That’s why pages ago I suggested we literally send all of the luxury pickups in the US that aren’t selling to Ukraine: Subsidize US industry? Check Subsidize US workers (or NAFTA ones)? Check American trucks towing weapons and looking badass? Check I don’t think you realize how many pickup trucks exists in the US (or Latin America, or SE Asia). I bet even a medium size US city could spare a thousand plus between all the dealerships.

I’m with LLF on China, though my sources are extremely competent and nationalistic Chinese software engineers working in the US, with whom I often had lunch or dinner and argued about international politics. Interestingly enough they all held three opinions: Xi is a bad leader and the West is lucky they got him, instead of another Deng or Hu or Zemin The Belt and Road initiative is a giant waste of time and waste of money and attention that is net loss for China both economically and diplomatically The vaunted Chinese HSR infra is great in a few places, but its half of it is an economic boondoggle that will never have the usage needed to justify building and maintaining it. That said, obviously there is some pretty serious butthurt about Xi stifling the Chinese software industry, as it is a threat to his power.

One interesting thing you could do with anti drone nets in the near term is make what I can only describe as “Diamond Age, but Wish.com” (or something similar described in Seveneves): A swarm of very small drones flying orbit around you at various distances, trailing an aramid fiber with some loops in it. These drones would be battery powered with a 10 min endurance, and then would land to swap batteries (or recharge) while others take their place. You might be able to get enough density to have a chance of catching slower drones, or if it’s a shaped charge directing it in a less damaging direction. This wouldn’t work in the rain or wind though.

If Ukraine has sufficient large kamikaze drones (ie cheap cruise missiles), that means Ukraine can destroy infrastructure and other fancy targets faster than Moscow can build or repair them.

Freezing the conflict has an interesting benefit for Ukraine that we’ve touched on in the past- a bunch of traumatized demobilized soldiers trying to re-integrate with the rest of Russian society. Putin can’t just have them all killed so they don’t cause trouble because he does need young men for the next fight, and whoever succeeds him in the next 10 years will have to deal with a nasty demographic decline.

What about taking out as much Russian infrastructure as possible on the down low with drones? Power plants, trains (not the tracks, but the locomotives), water treatment plants, factories, communications infrastructure, airports etc.? Don’t invade them, but corrode them as a country? And obviously help support a Dagestani separatist movement.

“See you in November” vibes, but with a lot of extra people.

The coin size turbines I mentioned a while back have existed for 25+ years, but it’s not clear how “production ready” there are. However, RC engines weighing 400-700g that can propel a 5-10kg aircraft and consume 5-10ml of fuel per minute. Even smallish battery powered drones can do 3+ hours, if you go with a more sail-plane-ish configuration with a 3m wing. Basic thermal modules are shockingly cheap and small: https://www.flir.com/products/lepton/?vertical=microcam&segment=oem.

Drones can already do that, on gasoline engines (100kmh for 12-24h). The only limitation on range is the LOS control link. If you use satellite or go autonomous, that limitation goes away. I keep on thinking about these videos of fortification clearing, one tree line at a time. How do you break through these in a less-small-unit-action-intensive way? I assume bringing up a tanker truck and just pumping gasoline or sewage into a trenchline is not possible, and drone mounted flamethrowers or thermobaric grenades aren’t available in the quantity needed. What about tear gas?

Yeah, you’d need to basically triangulate the control signal, and then figure out roughly where it is (with 100m radius) , and then use optical/thermal to look for operators, or call in an artillery strike. EDIT: The nice thing is, once you know where they are approximately, if you have a few hours of loiter time, you can just circle and wait for them to show their heads if you don’t see them.

What is preventing the breakthrough? ISR, small drones, artillery, minefields and infantry manning fortifications. If it was possible to step 3 of these things, in order of hardest to easiest, I think a breakthrough would have a chance: FPV drone operators Artillery Trucks Locomotives (and trains in general) I submit that a single autonomous loitering munition platform is the near-term solution for all of these, and that it could be designed, tested and built at scale in a year’s time: Gas-powered, so that it can loiter for 12+ hours Thermal + optical plus some zoom Substantial onboard processing power (equivalent to a modern smartphone) Autonomous, so it goes to a designated area and hunts in that space, or along a route Similar or smaller size to Lancet Similar or lower cost wrt to Lancet Except for the “Autonomous” bullet point, one of these capabilities are anything special. Everything exists. And for the “autonomous” part, I think most of it is pretty simple image recognition tasks that could be run on an Nvidia Jetson or similar. Now that my big work project is done, I’ll see if I can toss together a poc and put it on github as demonstration for train hunting over the next few weekends.