I am going to try and get back into the swing of things!

So James Fallows has an interesting take on existential threats, basically boiling down to the idea that any nation with sufficient nuclear capability represents an existential nuclear threat to every other nation on the planet, so the only way to get rid of the threat is the "Countdown to Zero," a.k.a. total nuclear disarmament.

Of course, any futurologist/technologist will tell you, that's sort of silly. The nature of knowledge is that once it's out of the bottle, it can't be stuffed back in, and when combined with the increasing ease of access to manufacturing, existential threats are going to start popping up from every group with sufficient resources and a grudge. Fallows makes the point that Iran is a rational actor, which given the nature of states, is true! Thus Iran, as a rational actor, is not going to provoke a war in which both sides lose massively. Sure, fine.

But, for example, take the recent Israel-Lebanon war; or, as NPR called it today, the "Israel-Hezbollah conflict". Now, Lebanon - as a rational state actor - would be unlikely to use nuclear weapons against Israel if it had them, and Israel would in fact be less likely to violate Lebanon's territorial sovereignty. But what if those weapons were in the hands of Hezbollah? Would Hezbollah, as a non-state actor, hesitate to use nuclear weapons for fear of nuclear reprisal? Or would they assume that they would be protected by the shield of the uninvolved civilian population in Lebanon?

I think that this sort of problem is likely to be the future of anti-proliferation efforts. We need to figure out a way of understanding, and where appropriate, changing the nuclear calculus.

This is a pretty incredible graph:





























I think sometimes that the only way the human mind can comprehend the enormity of sums like these is when it's visualized; reading about it in text is fairly unhelpful.

One of the things I find truly striking about this is the second graph in the lower right; for all that we are spending now in real terms, it's truly incredible what the absolute wealth of this nation is that the cost as a percentage of GDP is so low. That also means that for the purposes of reducing the deficit, it seems clear that cutting the military budget alone will be nowhere near enough, we're going to have to start making some hard choices about how we run our entitlement programs in this country. Often said, it's true, but little realized.

Coming to Terms with China's Energy Use

So rather unsurprisingly, Chinese officials are furiously denying that their country could possibly be the number one energy user on the planet. Why, that would be the same thing as being responsible.

If you subscribe to a realist mindset, it's hard to see why China has much interest in slow-but-sustainable development. China's economy is so large and so much of the rest of the world depends on it, that very little but either internal pressure from its citizens or global economics can have an effect on its decision-making processes, and currently green energy is still relatively more expensive than building a ton of cheapo coal-fired electric plants - leaving out long term environmental costs, of course. Now I don't know much about the state of domestic Chinese environmentalism, but I do know that brownouts due to a rocketing middle-class and industrial sectors would cause a lot more damage to the Chinese government than the ongoing pollution seems to be doing for them. I can't see for the life of me how China changes it's energy policy without further steep drops in the price of renewable energy.

The irony here, of course, is that while China is now the world's dirtiest, largest energy hog, they are also speeding ahead with green power development at the same time. I suppose that's one of the few benefits of the centralized state-capitalism model.

The frustrations of a space enthusiast

I think this article from the Atlantic pretty well encapsulates both a lot of what's wrong with the state of space exploration today and the incredible frustrations associated with being a proponent of the development of space.

The last time this country did something really innovative in regards to its manned space program was in the mid 1970s, with the development of the Shuttle as a "space truck." Since then, we've been content to pop off a couple of hundred million dollars for new science satellites or Mars rovers every few years, while now - in 2010, thirty years after the Space Shuttle was introduced - all we've managed to do is plunk ourselves in Low Earth Orbit on a multinational boondoggle that is scheduled only to last the decade.

I'm in agreement that the problem lies with the way NASA is run and the budgetary constraints of the government; in fact, it's a testament to the way that space captures the imagination that NASA budgets haven't been cut further. So really, we need to start looking at new models for space exploration.

Again, as the article notes, much of the innovation in space technology and access to space is currently being driven by private companies, and I think the Obama administration took a right turn when it promised additional funding to foster competitive action in the industry. Of course, that has been cut back somewhat with the funding authorization bill, but it's a right turn nonetheless.

At this point, the only ways I can imagine NASA getting back in the game of manned spaceflight is either

• An economic need to find cheapish sources of minerals via asteroid mining, or
  
• A new space race with China.

Given that private companies are slowly starting to step up toward the plate, I worry about the agency's capacity to handle the latter.

Outside the Box

A neat case of innovative problem solving in the New York Times. I have a feeling conservatives will read this and think, "Gosh! This is exactly why we need to privatize education and everything else! It really works!" I think the title is a tad misleading, however; the "outsourcing" done by this community is hardly a case of the free market at work. I didn't see any references to healthy competition to drive down prices in say, the "security" market of Maywood. Rather, what you have here is simply a case of a city too corrupt to function bringing in trained specialists from its neighbors at what is likely a discount. It's hard to extrapolate more than that.

Taking on the Intelligence Community

Four days without a post! Blogging is hard.

Probably the biggest news story of the day today is the Washington Post's investigation of our massively expanded intelligence community. I've only had the chance to peek at it, along with its excellently-designed infographics laying out many of the incredible statistics about all the different organizations (three Pentagons' worth of floor space!), but a thought did occur to me.

It's a clear truth that when the intelligence community is doing its job well, nothing happens and noone notices. When it's not, there is fire, death, and calls for the reform - and often the expansion - of the community itself. But under what circumstances do we call for the devolution of the beast we've spawned? It seems to me that whatever party advocates for actually reducing the size of this thing (rather than just an overhaul of command-and-coordination which is helpful but perhaps not as relevant given the community's hugeness) is going to beat savagely by the other party because we do not have the capacity in this country for much in the way of civil political dialogue.

Just sayin'.

"I stab at thee, Waldo, from the fires of hell."