Revisiting TRIAD (Part 1)

American strategic nuclear forces were designed in the 1960s. The specific weapons platforms and warheads have been modernized over time, but the doctrine of MAD, Mutual Assured Destruction remains the cornerstone of our strategic military posture towards Russia/USSR. By the late 1970s both sides were armed with tens of thousands of thermonuclear warheads aimed at the other. Both sides awakened to the understanding that unleashing a first strike could not destroy enough opposing megatonnage to prevent horrific retribution in kind. In short, no one could win such a war, so the overrideing goal of strategic weapons policy was to build a regime of treaties, weapons reductions and inspections making their use least likely. Today the Russian and American warhead stockpiles stand at about 1650. There are arcane counting rules depending whether the delivery vehicle is a bomber or an ICBM, but the strategic bomb piles are roughly equal. Russia and America have hedged their bets by deploying their warheads accross ICBMs, submarines SLBMs and bombers. This is the TRIAD and it is hoped that the opposition could not find a technological solution to quickly and undetectibly neutralize all three legs and break free of MAD by jeopardizing the certainty of a devastating retaliatory response. Well, American strategic forces are approaching the end of their useful lives. Bombers can only fly a finite number of hours before their engines and wings fail. B52s have been flying for 50 years. Todays bomber pilots can fly the same plane their fathers did. And the Ohio class submarine hulls can only survive so many roundtrips to depth and back. Finally, the Minuteman III ICBMs burried in silos accross our northern tier were also built over 40 years ago. There is more computing power on your IPhone than in a Minuteman command silo. New platforms are required over the next two decades and they will not be cheap. Should we just recapitalize the existing Triad? Do we still need the three weapons platform strategy? What level of weapons is required in todays environment, and how much are we willing to pay? And the costs are daunting, as we will also be in full bore production of the F35, the Ford Class carriers and many other exotic (I.e., expensive) new weapons including hypersonics, directed energy, autonomous systems and the 6th generation fighter. The solution will call for great leadership, great sacrifice or both.

Presidents who Jumped the Shark

It is a poorly kept secret that politicians have egos, often in proportion to their rank. So it should come as no surprise to us commoners that Presidents, Supreme Leaders or other variously titled Head Honchos are endowed with egos which even Kryptonote cannot defeat. Yet some stand above the mere eggregious puffery and flackery of your run of the mill world potentate.  Some just make you swallow your breakfast down the wrong pipe as you gasp in denial. Here are my nominees for Presidential Shark Jumpers.
Number 3
Vladmir Putin, President For Life,  The Russian Federation. Vlad is man's man. Rides bareback and shirtless on unbridled wild stallions. Wrestles full grown Siberian tigers. Seduces Olympic gymnastic nubiles. Flies fighter jets. Brings the world to the brink of thermonuclear holocaust. All before lunch. Yet, sometimes he goes a little over the top. As part of the festivities celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Red Army defeating the Nazis, a hockey exhibition game was played in Sochi. Most of the players were former NHL from countries of the old Soviet Union. Also suiting up were Vlad and the Russian Defense Minister, Sergey Shoygu. The team lead by Vlad and Sergey won the contest 18 to 6. Vlad lead all scorers with eight goals. Known more for his prowess with nubiles and tigers, still a respectable outing for the 62 year old. Vlad has only taken up the sport in recent years, so I assume bigger scores will be forthcoming. Truley inspirational.
Number 2
Kim Jung un, Dear Leader, Democratic Peoples Repubic of Korea (deceased).  As befitting the Beloved Leader of the secrertive and isolated DPRK, little is known about Kim. We do know he was 5'2", with four inch heels. He his only known human weakness was for the Sweedish Olympic vollyball team. He had raised his physical perfection to such a level that he had no need to defecate. But it was on the links where he truley towered above us mere mortals. Dear Leader, the very first time he visted DPRK's only golf course, and the first time he had ever handled a golf club, shot a 34. Thirty-eight under par. Eleven holes-in-one. He never played again as he found the game just too easy. Well done Kim!
Number 1
Barrack Hussein Obama, President, United States of America. Barrack swept into the Presidency litterally, some claimed, from nowhere. Many were taken by surprise by his ascendency, including Hillary Clinton. He was inaugurated January 20, 2009. Yet in the 11 days between his swearing-in as President and the February 1st closing date, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Committee unanimously awarded him the prize, citing hs inspirational oratory. In his acceptance speech, Barrack dd note that it was slightly awkward for the Comander-in-Chief of a nation currently engaged in two wars of choice to accept the Peace Prize. Citing no achievements for world peace, he gave an inspring speech and scarfed the prize. He has subsequently interspersed his bold oratory for peace with a policy of messy drone assassinations.  Man of Peace. Hope and change. Ignore the haters.

Artificial Intelligence - How Scared Should We Be?

Intelligence has been ascribed to machines since Touring's device demonstrated the ability to crack the Nazi Enigma codes in WWII. His early computer was a narrowly focussed AI, or artificial intelligence, and required programming by the best mathamaticians in the UK. Hardly the boogie man hiding under our childhood beds. Well, as the founder of IBM, Gordon Moore observed in 1965, raw computing power has doubled about every two years, continuing to the present. Even with this vast increase in number crunching power, computers have not expanded to "artificial general intelligence" (AGI), meaning a broad command of the skills and knowledge which humans posses. However be assured that vast intelectual and financial resources are dedicated to enhancing AI, for all manner of applications, from financial modelling to weaponization. Actors such as Apple, Baidu, Google, PLA and DARPA are all-in to create the smartest machine for their own competitive advantages, be they Wall Street billions or global hegemony. Unless they all are truely "mad" scientists, they must all believe they can create an AI significantly "smarter" than humans at its assigned tasks, or else why bother. If it cannot exceed the intellectual capacity of a team of the best engineers and scientists to achieve a certain goal, then it is a waste of vast resources to build it. So, the holy grail of those pursuing AI is not AGI, but the next level, "artificial super intelligence" (ASI) where the machine has surpassed the creator. The Oracle. God in a Box. Whatever, we really cannot know what shape ASI will take; we are not smart enough to understand the outcome of its creation. As Moore's law has demonstrated, computing power increases by 1000 times every 18 years (2 to the ninth power) thus one million times in 36 years, one billion times in 54 years, etc. And the enabling disciplines, neural networks, quantum computing, recursive algorithims, Big Data, etc. all charge ahead at full warp. Just a matter of time, which many expert technologists peg as the second half of this century. A hypothetical. Starting with that secret super computer hidden in DARPA's basement, and increasing its intelligence by Moores' s Law one million times, by 2051, lets speculate its general cognitive capabilities have increased fom mosquitto level to chimp. But along the way, the enabling technologies, particularly recursive learning and its application to self improving software and hardware design, have bent Moore's law to an exponential curve. The improvement rate is accerating exponentially, so intelligence improves from chimp level to the smartest human alive in the next eight years. But he does not stay there long, and he is 1000 times smarter the next day.  With his intellect and the tools at his disposal he knows he soon will be one trillion times more intelligent than humans, whom appear rapidly and increasingly irrelevant to his existence. Pull the plug? Command him to revert to less intelligence? No way to predict how a silicon based self programming super intelligence would respond to existential threats from an inferior being. But I would not bet on a happy ending. Elon Musk thinks our drive for ASI is "summoning the Devil". Steven Hawking believes this may be humanity's greatest existential threat. Humans dominate the planet not because we are the strongest or the swiftest, but because we are the most intellegent species. When we fall to a distant second will we be treated with benign neglect, as we would treat an earthworm, or as a nusiance competing for scarce resources, like rats? So, how scared should you be?

Harry Reid, Bless His Heart

Harry Reid, former Senate Majority Leader and the current senior Senator from Nevada, has announced he will not run for reelection in 2016. And won't we all miss him dearly? Statesmanship, fairplay and integrity characterize his years as Senate Majority Leader, his suporters claim. Lets look back at a few career "highlights" shall we?
Throughout his years as Senate Leader, he consistently refused to present a budget for the Federal Government. That this was directly contrary to his legally mandated duties under the Budget Control Act of 1974 was apparently unimportant to him and the press. Afterall, presenting a budget would force him to disclose his spending priorities and focus the public on the massive amount of debt added each year. Inconvenient, messy and really nobody's business outside the Beltway, is it? Where will we be without your couragous leadership?
Energy and climate policy demonstrated his statesmanship. His signature contributions to American energy independence have been his absolute stonewalling of the Yucca Mountain Nevada nuclear waste repositor and the Keystone Pipeline. Currently, nuclear waste is stored on site at over 100 nuclear powered electric generating stations across the country. Since 1987 statues, billions have been spent preparing the site as our long term solution to the serious problem of nuclear waste. The failure to remove waste from nuclear generating facilities creates opportunities for terrorism and forcloses opportunites to expeditiously bring new carbon free energy online.  NIMBY to the extreme detriment of America. His refusal to bring the Keystone project to the Senate floor, where it would have received bipartisan support was shameful, but typical. He decries wars in the Middle East, yet stonewalls a significant step to deliver secure Canadian oil to the doorstep of our refineries and make America less dependent on Middle Eastern oil. Harry, your statesmanship will be irreplaceable.
His last hurrah as Majority Leader saw him receive the nomination of Loretta Lynch to become Attorney General. A Presidential nomination from a fellow Democrat. He had the majority for one more month before the Republicans would swear in the newly elected Senators January 2nd 2015 and take control. He had the unquestioned power to confirm Loretta Lynch in December 2014. But Harry had other priorities. He had a backlog of Federal Court nomimations. He burned his remaining weeks pushing the judges through the confirmation procesa and let Loretta Lynch twist in the wind. Of course, once the Republicans seated their majority selected by the folks in 2014 midterm election, Harry decried their delay in holding the confirmation vote as racism and sexism. Harry, what will we do without your sense of fairplay?
And finally, there was Harry during the 2012 Presidential campaign. On the Senate floor, Harry stated that Mitt Romney had npt paid taxes for the last ten years. Asked to back up this slander, he said "the word is out". Later, he had it on "extremely credible sources". The Washington Post gave him four Pinnochoes and even Huffpost cried enough. And as Harry enters his mellow pre-retirement period, you know, the curmudginly period, he was asked if he would like to recant his slander of Romney. No way, says Harry "he lost, didn't he?" Ah Harry, we will miss your overriding integrity. Just don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Where are the Real Democrats?

Why are no "real"  Democats opposing Hillary? Unless we count Bernie Sanders, the esteemed US Senator from Vermont. Bernie was elected as a member of the Vermont Progressive Socialist Party, and has never run for any office as a Democrat, until two weeks ago when he declared for the Democrat nomination for President. Now if you believe Catholics are going to elect the Arch Bishop of Canterburry their next Pontiff, then you may believe Sanders is a credible candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination. Bernie has built his political career on three pillars: progressive socialism focussed on uplifting the working class, clarity and consistency in policy and position and unimpeachable integrity. Unfortunately for Bernie, while these qualities would assumedly endear him to Democratic voters, his polling is but a pimple on the Clinton juggernaught. In fact, one could make the contrarian case that Hillary is the anti-Sanders as regards her affinity for the the wealthy Foundation donors, opacity on policy and her myriad ethical missteps.
Yet, of the scores of Senators and Governors elected as Democrats, nary a one has entered the nomination contest. Queer? Afterall, 2016 promises an open seat in the White House, generally regarded as a once in a lifetime opportunity among our cadre of career politicians. And the Republicans have not been shy about jumping into the fray. The announced and all-but-announced run over a dozen on the GOP team. So, the would-be Demcratic contendors face a catch-22. The Ready For Hillary team has succeeded in swatting away all adverse press and positioned Hillary as the Inevitable One. The only hope to derail the coronation is for a real and credible mainstream Democratic politician to step into the arena and both make their case for the nomination, and to proceed hammer and tongs at the chinks in Hillary's armor. And for those paying attention, the opportunities abound. What is lacking is the Democrat willing take the risk of finding out if Hillary is really beatable. If only Bernie Sanders has the courage to find out, then the outcome is certainly... inevitable.