Our culture is accidentally creating PTSD by expecting it

March 28th, 2022

Perhaps our culture is accidentally creating PTSD by expecting it, Lenore Skenazy suggests, by assuming that no one could possibly emerge from a trauma psychologically intact:

The idea that trauma changes everything is so common now that it is taken as gospel. A recent New Yorker article by Parul Sehgal traces how trauma became the all-purpose backstory for a huge swath of today’s TV shows, movies, and books. Peek into the past of characters from Claire Underwood to Ted Lasso, and you will find that they were deeply hurt by something or someone, which somehow explains everything from their utter ruthlessness (hers) to their irrepressible cheer (his). Viewers easily accept the idea that trauma, above all else, made these people who they are.

Psychiatrist Sally Satel, co-author of 2005′s One Nation Under Therapy, sums up that view this way: “You’ve done something to me, and now I’m tormented with the memories and will never lead a normal life!” While “I’m not saying that can’t happen,” Satel says, it is far less common than people tend to think.

Most people who suffer trauma end up psychologically fine, says Samantha Boardman, a psychiatrist who teaches at Weill Cornell Medicine and the author of the recent book Everyday Vitality (Penguin Life). Boardman points to Londoners during the Blitz. Even back then, the authorities were so concerned that the population would go mad with fear and grief that they set up three hospitals exclusively for psychiatric patients. The basket cases never materialized. Those British upper lips stayed so stiff that the mental hospitals were turned over to the army to care for wounded soldiers.

Fast forward to 9/11, another traumatic event. Surveys of New Yorkers six months afterward found us almost back to our normal stress levels. “We have lost sight of the fact that people are rather more resilient and resourceful than we have tended to think about them,” psychiatrist Simon Wessely observed in a 2006 lecture.

In fact, Wessely said, the one thing that seems to stymie the normal recovery process is professional intervention, a.k.a. “psychological debriefing.” He noted that “there have been over 15 trials in which we randomly allocate people to receive debriefing or not, and we know now, for certainty, that this does not work.” Worse, “the three best studies, with the longest follow-up, have shown that those who randomly received the debriefing were more likely to develop PTSD”—post-traumatic stress disorder.

Posted in Science | 2 Comments »

The battlefield would now be everywhere

March 27th, 2022

Kill Chain by Christian BroseRussia’s exploits from a few years ago, Christian Brose explains (in The Kill Chain), demonstrated a type of modern political warfare that became known as the “Gerasimov doctrine”:

“The very ‘rules of war’ have changed,” Gerasimov wrote. “The role of non-military means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness.”

Put another way, the reconnaissance-strike complex now included the ability to surveil the political and social fault lines in countries and strike directly at the heart of them through “military means of a concealed character.” This included misinformation campaigns, political subversion, assassination, cyberattacks, and “active measures” using social media to tear at the fabric of diverse and democratic societies. The battlefield would now be everywhere.

Posted in Policy, War | 3 Comments »

Facts are useful, but not enough to actually fix the issue

March 26th, 2022

David Epstein talks to Lisa Fazio, a Vanderbilt psychologist who studies misinformation , about the illusory truth effect:

This is a term we use for the finding that when you hear something multiple times, you’re more likely to believe that it’s true. So, for example, in studies, say that you know that the short, pleated skirt that men wear in Scotland is called a “kilt,” but then you see something that says it’s a “sari.” You’re likely to think that’s definitely false. If you see it twice, most people still think it’s false, but they give it a slightly higher likelihood of being true. The illusory truth effect is simply that repetition of these statements leads to familiarity and also to this feeling of truth.

[…]

We’ve done studies where we get people to pause and tell us how they know that the statement is true or false. And when people do that, they seem to be less likely to rely on repetition.

[…]

We’ve seen the illusory truth effect from five-year-olds to Vanderbilt undergrads, and other adults. I think that’s one of the big takeaways from all of the research we’ve done on misinformation is that we all like to believe that this is something that only happens to other people. But, in reality, just given the way our brains work, we’re all vulnerable to these effects.

[…]

Facts are useful, but not enough to actually fix the issue. You have to address the false information directly. So in a truth sandwich, you start with true information, then discuss the false information and why it’s wrong — and who might have motivation for spreading it — and come back to the true information. It’s especially useful when people are deliberately misinforming the public.

[…]

People have already created this causal story in their mind of how something happened. So in a lot of the experiments, there’s a story about how a warehouse fire happens. And initially people are provided with some evidence that it was arson — there were gas cans found on the scene of the crime. And then in one case you just tell people, “Oh, oops, sorry, that was wrong. There were no gas cans found there.” Versus in another you give them an alternative story to replace it — that there weren’t any gas cans at all; instead, it turns out that there was a faulty electrical switch that caused the fire. If you only tell people the gas cans weren’t there, they still think it’s arson. They just are like, “Oh, yeah. The gas cans weren’t there, but it was still arson, of course.” Whereas in the second story, they’ll actually revise the story they had in mind and now remember it was actually accidental.

[…]

Yeah, and with false information you can make it really engaging, really catchy, really easy to believe. And the truth is often complicated and nuanced and much more complex. So it can be really hard to come up with easy ways of describing complicated information in a way that makes it as easy to believe as the false information.

Posted in Policy, Science | 5 Comments »

All of this military modernization had one explicit purpose

March 25th, 2022

Kill Chain by Christian BroseWhat each president was slow to learn, Christian Brose suggests (in The Kill Chain), was that Russia was more interested in restoring the great-power status it lost in 1991 than in becoming the partner the United States hoped it would be:

This was especially true once Vladimir Putin became president on New Year’s Eve 1999.

[...]

A ruler who referred to the demise of the Soviet Union as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century” set about restoring what he believed was Russia’s rightful place in the global balance of military power.

[...]

So, as the Obama administration was going out of its way to “reset” US relations with Russia, Putin was pouring money into the construction of an arsenal of technologically sophisticated weapons: long-range missiles and rockets, highly capable special operations forces, advanced air defenses, electronic warfare, cyber weapons, lasers to blind satellites, missiles to shoot them down, and tactical nuclear weapons.

[...]

All of this military modernization had one explicit purpose: to render the United States incapable of projecting military power into Europe and defending its NATO allies, especially the many parts of Europe that Putin still believed should be part of a greater Russia.

Posted in Policy, War | 3 Comments »

We’re applying the secret genius sauce solely to the kids who aren’t going to be geniuses

March 24th, 2022

Erik Hoel suggests that the most depressing fact about humanity is that during the 2000s most of the world was handed essentially free access to the entirety of knowledge and that didn’t trigger a golden age:

Think about the advent of the internet long enough and it seems impossible to not start throwing away preconceptions about how genius is produced. If genius were just a matter of genetic ability, then in the past century, as the world’s population increased dramatically, and as mass education skyrocketed, and as racial and gender barriers came thundering down across the globe, and particularly in the last few decades as free information saturated our society, we should have seen a genius boom — an efflorescence of the best mathematicians, the greatest scientists, the most awe-inspiring artists.

If a renaissance be too grand for you, will you at least admit we should have expected some sort of a bump?

And yet, this great real-world experiment has seen, not just no effect, but perhaps the exact opposite effect of a decline of genius.

[…]

So, where are all the Einsteins?

The answer must lie in education somewhere. And if we look into research on different education strategies and their effectiveness, we do indeed see all sorts of debates about best practices, learning styles, class size, monetary policy, and equality. But mostly we see, actually, that none of it matters much.

[…]

For paradoxically there exists an agreed-upon and specific answer to the single best way to educate children, a way that has clear, obvious, and strong effects. The problem is that this answer is unacceptable. The superior method of education is deeply unfair and privileges those at the very top of the socioeconomic ladder. It’s an answer that was well-known historically, and is also observed by education researchers today: tutoring.

Tutoring, one-on-one instruction, dramatically improves student’s abilities and scores.

[….]

However, despite its well-known effectiveness, tutoring’s modern incarnation almost universally concerns specific tests: in America the Advanced Placements (AP) tests, the SATs, and the GREs form the holy trinity of private tutoring. Meaning that contemporary tutoring, the most effective method of education, is overwhelmingly targeted at a small set of measurables that look good on a college resume.

This is only a narrow version of the tutoring that was done historically. If we go back in time tutoring had a much broader scope, acting as the main method of early education, at least for the elite.

Let us call this past form aristocratic tutoring, to distinguish it from a tutor you meet in a coffeeshop to go over SAT math problems while the clock ticks down. It’s also different than “tiger parenting,” which is specifically focused around the resume padding that’s needed for kids to meet the impossible requirements for high-tier colleges. Aristocratic tutoring was not focused on measurables. Historically, it usually involved a paid adult tutor, who was an expert in the field, spending significant time with a young child or teenager, instructing them but also engaging them in discussions, often in a live-in capacity, fostering both knowledge but also engagement with intellectual subjects and fields. As the name suggests it was something reserved mostly for aristocrats, which means, no way around it, it was deeply inequitable.

[…]

Spanning kingdoms and continents aristocratic tutoring had a several-millennia long run. If we fast forward almost 2,000 years we can find Bertrand Russell, one of the undeniable geniuses of the 20th century, who was a classic case of aristocratic tutoring — raised by his rich grandparents, he didn’t even attend school until he was 16, and had a revolving door of tutors to equal Marcus’s. Many of whom were impressive scientists and intellectuals in their own right, e.g., J. Stuart, one of Russell’s tutors, had himself been a student of Lord Kelvin (that “Kelvin”).

[…]

The same sort of idyllic learning situation was true for Russell’s famous compatriot, Ludwig Wittgenstein, who was privately tutored at home until he was 14. Name a genius and find a tutor: the governesses of John von Neumann taught him languages, and he had other later tutors as well. Even in the cases where the children weren’t entirely homeschooled, up until the latter half of the 20th century aristocratic tutors were a casual and constant supplement to traditional education.

[…]

When you go back further, into the 1600s and 1700s, aristocratic tutors are the norm, often members of the aristocracy themselves. Voltaire’s tutor when he was young was the educated and worldly abbe de Chateauneuf, who was also his godfather. In turn, Voltaire was tutor to Émilie du Châtelet, an early female scientist and mathematician (notorious for her harsh demands of her tutors). Ada Lovelace, inventor of the first algorithm, was tutored as a youth by Mary Somerville, another early female scientist (indeed, the term “scientist” was coined specifically to refer to Somerville in a gender-neutral way, rather than the previously-used “man of science”).

[…]

Perhaps the clearest example in history of a genius constructed by tutoring comes from the case of John Stuart Mill: philosopher, economist, politician, early feminist, and all-around Renaissance man. His father, already a famous intellectual, raised John explicitly to be a genius capable of carrying on the cause of philosophical utilitarianism, purposefully keeping the young John away from children his own age.

[…]

Karl Marx’s father (who was rich enough to own vineyards) privately tutored him up to the age of 12, his official schooling starting only after. Or consider the later case of Hannah Arendt, a titan of 20th century philosophy; raised upper-middle class and Jewish in Germany during the rise of Hitler, she was no aristocrat, but she received independent tutoring from rabbis and professors at various points in her young life, and, perhaps far more relevantly, her own mother acted in the role of a classic aristocratic tutor.

[…]

Well, it turns out most of the school stuff is exaggerated or apocryphal, and Einstein had multiple tutors growing up in subjects like mathematics and philosophy, such as his uncle, Jakob Einstein, who taught him algebra. In fact, there was a family tutor of the Einsteins who went by the name Max Talmud (possibly the best name of a tutor ever), and it was indeed Max Talmud who introduced the young 12-year-old Albert to geometry, prefacing young Albert’s eventual transformation of our understanding of space and time into something geometric. Maybe we don’t make Einsteins anymore because we don’t make Max Talmuds anymore.

[…]

Today, tutoring is seen mostly as a corrective to failures within the bureaucratic structures of eduction, like an intervention to help out a course, grade, or test. In general, those doing well in school don’t get tutoring — it’s like we’re applying the secret genius sauce solely to the kids who aren’t going to be geniuses.

Posted in Education | 34 Comments »

The Little Green Men could jam Ukrainian drones

March 23rd, 2022

Kill Chain by Christian BroseThe Russian military of 2014, which Christian Brose describes in The Kill Chain, seemed disturbingly competent:

This was not a Russian military that most in Washington recognized. It had highly capable weapons, such as electronic warfare systems, communications jammers, air defenses, and long-range precision rocket artillery, much of which was better than anything the US military had.

[…]

The Little Green Men could jam Ukrainian drones, causing them to fall out of the sky. They could also jam the fuses on Ukrainian warheads so they never exploded when they hit their targets, but instead landed on the ground with an inert thud. The Ukrainians talked about how the Little Green Men could detect any signal they emitted and use it to target them. Minutes after talking on the radio, their positions were wiped out by barrages of rocket artillery. Their armored vehicles were identified by unmanned spotter drones and immediately hit with special munitions that came down right on top of them, where the armor was weakest, killing everyone inside.

[…]

The Ukrainians tried to dig themselves into bunkers and trenches, but the Little Green Men hit them with thermobaric warheads that sucked all of the oxygen out of those closed spaces, turning it into fuel that ignited everything and everyone inside. Entire columns of Ukrainian troops were annihilated by cluster munitions.

[…]

One day during the conflict, the man’s mother received a call from someone claiming to be the Ukrainian authorities, who informed her that her son had been badly wounded in action in eastern Ukraine. She immediately did what any mother would do: she called her son’s mobile phone. Little did she know that the call she had received was from Russian operatives who had gotten a hold of her son’s cell phone number but knew that he rarely used the phone for operational security reasons. This Ukrainian commander, being a good son, quickly called his mother back, which enabled the Little Green Men to geolocate his position. Seconds later, while still on the phone, he was killed in a barrage of precision rocket artillery.

[…]

What emerged in Ukraine in 2014 was more than just Little Green Men; it was a battle network of sensors and shooters that closed the kill chain with remarkable speed and lethality. It was a Russian reconnaissance-strike complex.

Posted in Technology, War, Weapons | 1 Comment »

This insurance was supposed to pay off in case those bonds lost value

March 22nd, 2022

Many money managers who had bought Russian bonds in the past had purchased credit insurance from other companies:

This insurance was supposed to pay off in case those bonds lost value, which they clearly have as a result of sanctions.

Under terms of some of these contracts, some money managers have been able to collect insurance claims. But other insurance contracts stated that in order to be paid, the money manager had to transfer the bonds to the insurer. But the sanctions will not allow the bonds to be transferred! Once again, innovative financial instruments proved to be fragile in ways that were not anticipated.

Posted in Arnold Kling, Economics, Policy | 2 Comments »

Between them, they control the commanding heights of politics and culture

March 22nd, 2022

Linking to a Sesame Street celebration of “Latinx culture,” Antonio García Martínez quipped:

One of the great mysteries is how every elite institution, from universities to corporations to media to even Sesame Street, all spontaneously coalesced on the same narrow set of values all of a sudden.

In the scope and rapidity of institutional embrace, Martin Gurri notes, nothing like it has transpired since the conversion of Constantine:

The cult of identity, properly understood, consists of a series of platitudes and stereotypes invariably leading to gestures of repudiation and calls for the ritual purification of society. By definition, there can be no missionaries of identity. True believers have shown little interest in persuasion: their faith has spread not because of clever arguments but by relegating rival creeds beyond the pale of moral consideration. Hence the obsession with nomenclature — with the magical force of words.

Conversion has entailed drastically different experiences, depending on where you stand in the social pyramid. From below, at the level of the young professional and the college student, the cult provides a vision of truth and a source of meaning in a romantic struggle against the systemic evil represented by the rest of us. From above, at the level of high government and corporate officials, ostentatious adherence to the cult is a tool of control.

The dance between the generations has been awkward. Young activists are eternally on the hunt to identify and attack injustice, typically revealed by the utterance of certain taboo words. They dwell in a world of weakened religious and family ties, and their idea of community is a website. The cult of identity fills an existential void and raises up the young to be the vanguard of avenging virtue in a sinful world. This cohort is driven by the urge to purify — that is, by negation to the edge of nihilism.

Older institutional types, on the other hand, have seen their influence and authority plummet over the past decade. Of this vertiginous fall from grace, Trump was merely a symptom, not the cause. The digital age will not tolerate the steep hierarchies of the twentieth century: these will either be reconfigured or smashed. Stripped of the splendor of their titles, panicky elites have cast about for some principle that will allow them to maintain their distance from the public.

The puritanical slogans pouring out of anti-Trump protesters must have sounded, to this group, like an opportunity. They could reorganize society on woke values, with themselves in charge as high commissioners of purity. They could trade institutional authority for social control. With uneven measures of sincerity and cynicism, the cult of identity could be appropriated by power.

The young, as might be expected, despise these graying warriors, whom they consider hypocrites tainted by the very sins of racism and privilege they pretend to oppose. Periodically, woke institutions like Google and the New York Times are shaken by revolts from below, and liberal governors and CEOs get consumed in inquisitional fires. As a matter of unromantic reality, however, protesters need elite politicians and executives to be the applauding audience in the theater of grievance: they have no choice but to rely on the institutions to expand their reach and adjudicate the cult’s contradictions into some sort of bureaucratic order.

The elites, just as naturally, fear and detest the youthful zealots, whose proximity has an effect similar to that of a ticking bomb. Yet every political system needs fear-inducing enforcers. The elite class learned long ago that it inspires mostly scorn, so it has conscripted true believers to be the attack dogs of virtue and the digital SWAT teams that will keep the rabble quiet on behalf of a purified establishment.

This is the uneasy bargain that, in García Martínez’s phrase, “spontaneously coalesced” during the Trump years and today rules over every prestigious corner of America. For all the differences in age and status, the two groups come from the same stock: upwardly mobile, hyper-educated, and largely white. It’s really a family arrangement among parents and children in the upper echelons of the great American middle class.

Together, they constitute a small minority of the electorate. Between them, they control the commanding heights of politics and culture, and they may possess the means to intimidate a surly public into silence.

[…]

Christianity advanced on the strength of a double-edged strategy. From above, the government redirected its subsidies from pagan to Christian institutions, creating a potent incentive for the upper classes to see the light. From below, mobs of exalted souls ransacked pagan temples while the police stood by, intimidating ordinary people into abandoning the old gods.

But the process took generations.

Posted in Policy | 6 Comments »

They were simply new versions of old things

March 21st, 2022

Kill Chain by Christian BroseMany of the high-tech weapons systems that Rumsfeld and others billed as “transformational” were not actually transformational, Christian Brose explains (in The Kill Chain) — at least not in the way that Andrew Marshall and like-minded thinkers intended, when they proposed a “revolution in military affairs” years earlier:

These systems did not represent better, faster ways to close the kill chain. They were simply new versions of old things.

[…]

The bigger issue is that most of these allegedly information age military systems struggle to share information and communicate directly with one another to a degree that would shock most Americans. For example, the F-22 and F-35A fighter jets cannot directly share basic airborne positioning and targeting data despite the fact that they are both Air Force programs and built by the same company.

[…]

If one aircraft identifies a target, the only way it can transmit that data to the other is how it was done in the last century: by a person speaking on a radio.

[…]

The ability of these things to share information is often an afterthought. In fact, the incentives usually cut the other way: Defense companies have profited more by building closed systems of proprietary technologies that make the military more dependent on a given company to maintain and upgrade those platforms for the decades they are in service, which is where companies make their real money. This behavior stems not from malice but a rational pursuit of self-interest in a platform-centered defense market.

[…]

The connections between our military systems tend to be highly rigid, excessively manual, rather brittle, and thus slow. We have largely focused on connecting specific military systems together to generate understanding, facilitate decisions, and take actions against specific kinds of targets. But those kill chains do not easily adapt to threats that are different from those they were specifically built to address. They may be highly effective against preplanned objectives that do not change much, such as striking stationary targets in the opening days of a conflict. But our kill chains struggle to confront dynamic threats, such as moving targets, or multiple dilemmas at once.

Posted in Policy, Technology, War | No Comments »

It will be a life-and-death battle between those for and against Western democracy

March 20th, 2022

The U.S.-China Perception Monitor published an essay in both English and Chinese by Hu Wei, a prominent think-tanker in Shanghai, T. Greer explains:

It argues that the war in Ukraine is bound to go poorly for Russia and thus China must moderate its support for Putin’s failing regime lest the post-Putin world turn against the PRC.

This essay has gotten a lot of play in China hand circles. People are eager for any news that might hasten Russian defeat. A decision by Beijing to retreat from a growing partnership with Moscow would certainly slow Putin’s cause. But there is no evidence this essay will have any such effect: this week the Chinese have agreed to ship supplies and weapons Russia, Hu Wei’s essay was scrubbed from the Chinese internet shortly after it went up, and as of today, the U.S.-China Perception Monitor is now censored in China. The highest circle of decision making in Beijing clearly does not fear events will unfold as Hu predicts.

In my mind, this essay is less interesting for what it says about Chinese intentions towards Russia and Ukraine than what it says about Chinese perceptions of the United States. If Hu has any moral objections to Putin’s war in Ukraine, he does not state them. His argument is stated purely in terms of China’s national interests. Here is the disaster Hu believes will unfold if the Chinese don’t pressure Putin to the negotiating table before his political position collapses:

[If Putin falls or is dragged into a multiyear insurgency] the United States would regain leadership in the Western world… the US and Europe would form a closer community of shared future, and American leadership in the Western world will rebound.

The “Iron Curtain” would fall again not only from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, but also to the final confrontation between the Western-dominated camp and its competitors. The West will draw the line between democracies and authoritarian states, defining the divide with Russia as a struggle between democracy and dictatorship… It will be a life-and-death battle between those for and against Western democracy. The unity of the Western world under the Iron Curtain will have a siphon effect on other countries: the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy will be consolidated, and other countries like Japan will stick even closer to the U.S., which will form an unprecedentedly broad democratic united front.

The power of the West will grow significantly, NATO will continue to expand, and U.S. influence in the non-Western world will increase. After the Russo-Ukrainian War, no matter how Russia achieves its political transformation, it will greatly weaken the anti-Western forces in the world. The scene after the 1991 Soviet and Eastern upheavals may repeat itself: theories on “the end of ideology” may reappear, the resurgence of the third wave of democratization will gain momentum, and more third world countries will embrace the West. The West will possess more “hegemony” both in terms of military power and in terms of values and institutions, its hard power and soft power will reach new heights.

China will become more isolated under the established framework. For the above reasons, if China does not take proactive measures to respond, it will encounter further containment from the US and the West. Once Putin falls, the U.S. will no longer face two strategic competitors but only have to lock China in strategic containment. Europe will further cut itself off from China; Japan will become the anti-China vanguard; South Korea will further fall to the U.S.; Taiwan will join the anti-China chorus, and the rest of the world will have to choose sides under herd mentality. China will not only be militarily encircled by the U.S., NATO, the QUAD, and AUKUS, but also be challenged by Western values and systems.

Posted in Policy | 6 Comments »

Record-breaking hydrogen electrolyzer claims 95% efficiency

March 20th, 2022

A kilogram of hydrogen holds 39.4 kWh of energy — the highest chemical energy density you’ll find, at least by mass — but typically costs around 52.5 kWh of energy to create via current commercial electrolyzers:

Australian company Hysata says its new capillary-fed electrolyzer cell slashes that energy cost to 41.5 kWh, smashing efficiency records while also being cheaper to install and run. The company promises green hydrogen at around US$1.50 per kilogram within just a few years.

[...]

A reservoir at the bottom of the cell keeps the electrolyte out of contact with both the anode and the cathode until it’s drawn up through a porous, hydrophilic, inter-electrode separator using capillary action. The electrolyte thus has direct contact with the electrodes, but only on one side, and both the hydrogen and oxygen gases are produced directly, without any bubbling to get in the way.

Posted in Technology | 5 Comments »

At least some of the fierce resistance by Ukrainian forces has its roots in a now shuttered covert CIA training program

March 19th, 2022

As the battle lines hardened in Donbas, back in 2014, CIA paramilitaries made their first secret trips to the frontlines:

Ukrainian snipers had a problem: Russian forces in eastern Ukraine were trying to blind them.

As the Ukrainians were looking through their scopes in order to find their targets, the Russians had begun pinpointing their location using the glare of the glass, and were shooting high-energy lasers into them, damaging the snipers’ eyesight.

[…]

CIA paramilitaries soon concluded that, in Russia and its proxies, the agency was facing an adversary whose capabilities far outmatched the Islamist groups that CIA had been battling in the post-9/11 wars. “We learned a lot real quick,” says a former senior intelligence official — including about the Russians’ laser-blinding techniques. “That s*** wouldn’t happen with the Taliban.”

[…]

At least some of the fierce resistance by Ukrainian forces has its roots in a now shuttered covert CIA training program run from Ukraine’s eastern frontlines, former intelligence officials tell Yahoo News. The initiative was described to Yahoo News by over half a dozen former officials, all of whom requested anonymity to speak freely about sensitive intelligence matters.

The program was run under previously existing authorities for the CIA and did not require a new legal determination for the agency, known as a covert action finding, according to a former national security official.

As part of the Ukraine-based training program, CIA paramilitaries taught their Ukrainian counterparts sniper techniques; how to operate U.S.-supplied Javelin anti-tank missiles and other equipment; how to evade digital tracking the Russians used to pinpoint the location of Ukrainian troops, which had left them vulnerable to attacks by artillery; how to use covert communications tools; and how to remain undetected in the war zone while also drawing out Russian and insurgent forces from their positions, among other skills, according to former officials.

After Russia’s 2014 incursion, the U.S. military also helped run a long-standing, publicly acknowledged training program for Ukrainian troops in the country’s western region, far from the frontlines. That program also included instruction in how to use Javelin anti-tank missiles and sniper training.

Yahoo News reported in January on the CIA’s secret U.S.-based training initiative for Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel. That program, which began in 2015, also included instruction in firearms, camouflage techniques and covert communications. Yahoo News’ prior report also revealed that CIA paramilitaries had traveled to eastern Ukraine to assist forces loyal to Kyiv in their fight against Russia and its separatist allies.

Posted in Policy, War | 3 Comments »

They would come under immediate attack once they began their multiweek mobilization across the planet

March 19th, 2022

Kill Chain by Christian BroseChristian Brose opens The Kill Chain with the alarming fact that the US has consistently lost against China in war games:

Many of the US ships, submarines, fighter jets, bomber aircraft, additional munitions, and other systems that are needed to fight would not be near the war when it started but would be thousands of miles away in the United States. They would come under immediate attack once they began their multiweek mobilization across the planet.

Cyberattacks would grind down the logistical movement of US forces into combat. The defenseless cargo ships and aircraft that would ferry much of that force across the Pacific would be attacked every step of the way. Satellites on which US forces depend for intelligence, communications, and global positioning would be blinded by lasers, shut down by high-energy jammers, or shot out of orbit altogether by antisatellite missiles. The command and control networks that manage the flow of critical information to US forces in combat would be broken apart and shattered by electronic attacks, cyberattacks, and missiles. Many US forces would be rendered deaf, dumb, and blind.

While these attacks were under way, America’s forward bases in places like Japan and Guam would be inundated with waves of precise ballistic and cruise missiles. The few defenses those bases have would quickly be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of weapons coming at them, with many leaking through.

[…]

Those bases would have no defense against China’s hypersonic weapons, which can maneuver unpredictably, fly at five times the speed of sound, and strike their targets within minutes of being launched. As all of these missiles slammed into US bases, they would destroy fighter jets and other aircraft on the ground before US pilots could even get them airborne.

[…]

Older, non-stealthy fighter jets, such as F-15s and F-16s, would not play an offensive role, because they could not survive against China’s advanced fighters and surface-to-air missile systems.

[…]

The limited numbers of stealthy, fifth-generation fighter jets that could be brought to bear, such as F-22s and F-35s, can fly only several hundred miles on a single tank of fuel, so they would depend heavily on aerial refueling tankers to be able to reach their targets. But because those tankers are neither stealthy nor equipped with any self-defense capabilities, they would be shot down in large numbers.

[…]

Once the war started, US aircraft carriers in the region would immediately turn east and sail away from China, intent on getting more than a thousand miles away from the opponent’s long-range anti-ship missiles. But from that far away, none of the aircraft on the flight deck would be capable of reaching their targets without aerial refueling, so the Navy would find itself on the horns of the same dilemma the Air Force faced.

[…]

All the while, Chinese satellites and radars would be hunting for those aircraft carriers as well as additional carriers meant to provide reinforcement that would begin their long journey across the Pacific Ocean from wherever they were in the continental United States.

[…]

The Marine Corps would struggle even more than the Navy but for the same reasons. Billions of dollars’ worth of amphibious assault capability, built to deliver US troops onto enemy beaches as they had done for the D-Day landings in 1944 or the forced entry at Inchon at the start of the Korean War, would play no such role.

Posted in War | 12 Comments »

Loitering munitions are odd weapons that can be considered either explosive drones or flying artillery shells

March 18th, 2022

The U.S. has announced that it will supply Ukraine with 100 Switchblade kamikaze drones:

Loitering munitions are odd weapons that can be considered either explosive drones or flying artillery shells, depending on how you define them. The AeroVironment Switchblade 300 is small enough to be carried in the backpack of a soldier or guerrilla. Once Switchblade is fired from its launch tube, wings pop out and a propeller spins to carry the drone aloft. It almost sounds like a hobbyist’s flying machine or a child’s toy, but Switchblade is quite lethal.

Switchblade orbits a target area, looking down with its day and night cameras and relaying the imagery back to the operator, who controls the drone with a handheld controller. Once a suitable target is spotted, the operator commands the drone to dive on the target and explode (hence the “kamikaze” nickname).

To be clear, the range of the Switchblade 300 model isn’t great: 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) and an endurance of 15 minutes, and a cruise speed of 63 miles per hour. The warhead isn’t much more powerful than a grenade.

But so what? Just 2 feet long and weighing just 5.5 pounds, it can be carried as a disposable munition just like the M72 Light Antitank Weapon (which also weighs 5.5 pounds).

[…]

For urban warfare, Switchblade could be particularly useful: a weapon that could be flown into a window, or that can fly over intervening buildings and hit a Russian patrol on the other side of the street. For hit-and-run insurgent warfare, the Switchblade 300 is light enough that dismounted troops — and civilian fighters — could get within a few miles of a road that a Russian supply convoy is traveling down. A Switchblade is small enough that the convoy probably wouldn’t see it coming, further demoralizing an already demoralized Russian army.

Posted in War, Weapons | 3 Comments »

The Marines as currently organized and equipped are about as relevant as the Army’s horse cavalry in the 1930s

March 18th, 2022

The Marines as currently organized and equipped are about as relevant as the Army’s horse cavalry in the 1930s, Douglas A. Macgregor says — speaking in 2012 — and the Marines are not alone:

They have company in the Army’s XVIII Airborne Corps.

[…]

Today, enemy forces will mine approaches from the sea, and rely on stand-off attack to drive surface fleets away from coastlines. They’ll employ their ground forces, particularly mobile armored forces, inland, away from the coast. These mobile reserves will attack within the range of the defending forces’ own artillery and airpower to destroy elements that attempt to come ashore whether over the beach or through ports.

Most of today’s Marine force consists of airmobile light infantry. This Marine force is designed for use in the developing world against incapable opponents from Haiti to Fiji, but not much else.

The use of Marines to assault Iraq’s southern coast during Desert Storm was dismissed out of hand as too dangerous, particularly when Navy surface combatants struck sea mines in the Persian Gulf. Subsequently, in 1991 Marines were used ashore to augment the Army where Marines followed an Army armor brigade from Fort Hood, Texas, all the way to Kuwait City.

The point is simple.

The capability to come ashore where the enemy is not present, then, move quickly with sustainable combat power great distances over land to operational objectives in the interior, is essential. The Marines cannot do it in any strategic setting where the opponent is capable (neither can the XVIII Airborne Corps!).

The Marines cannot confront or defeat armored forces or heavy weapons in the hands of capable opponents. Nor can the Marines hold any contested battle space for more than a very short amount of time, after which the Marine raid or short stay ashore is completed.

Adding vertical-and/or-short-takeoff-landing (V/STOL) aircraft like the F-35B, to compensate for the lack of staying power and mobility on the ground is not an answer, particularly given the severe limitations of VSTOL aircraft, and the proliferation of tactical and operational air defense technology in places that count.

The real question is how much Marine Corps do Americans need? The answer is not the 200,000 Marines we have today.

Many of the same observations apply to the Army’s vaunted XVIII Airborne Corps. The Army’s airmobile infantry in the 101st have been used sparingly for similar reasons. Airmobile forces were used in 1991, but most of its value resided in its attack-helicopter force, not in its air-mobile infantry.

Proposals to use Army airborne forces to seize Tallil air field in An Nassiryah during Desert Storm were dismissed out of hand given the threat of Iraqi air defenses. A similar assault planned for Haiti was cancelled in 1994, and the large-scale use of airborne forces in Iraq and Afghanistan was also ruled out in 2001 and, again, in 2003.

There are several reasons for this:

  • First, like the Marines ashore, Army airmobile and airborne forces are “soft targets,” extremely vulnerable to long-range air and missile attack, as well as heavy weapons in the form of self-propelled artillery, mortars and auto-cannon.
  • Second, the Army’s airmobile division, the 101st, is extremely slow to deploy. Moving it requires as much cubic space as an entire armored/mechanized division. Its performance in Iraq in March-April 2003 was poor. Its alleged combat potential was never put to the test for the reasons already cited.
  • Third, the rotary-wing aircraft in the Army are very maintenance-intensive with often-poor readiness rates. The airmobile force in the 101st is also a major consumer of fuel and requires enormous support, as well as expensive contractor help. Their rotary-wing aircraft are also susceptible to detection and vulnerable to widely-dispersed small arms and MANPADS, potentially resulting in substantial casualties and equipment losses even before the airmobile force is ready to engage the enemy on the ground.

None of these attributes make the force attractive for employment against any enemy with a modicum of capability in its armed forces.

Posted in War | 6 Comments »

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