December 2016

The Purpose is Stasis

2016-12-28T21:37:54+00:00December 27th, 2016|Defense, Tech|

Well over a month since the 2016 election and more than two months since a public ODNI assessment of the matter (an organization which represents the combined views of 17 U.S. intelligence agencies), many people seem to be screwing up the Russia hacking story. For obvious reasons, Clinton proxies have hit the airwaves declaring that it was the linchpin upon which the election turned. For equally obvious reasons, the president-elect and his distressing parade of appointees have dismissed it as the work of conspiracy theorists. Adding to the chaos, disenchanted leftists and paid Russian shills have further stirred the pot of unreality, asking (in a baldly false equivalence) why Democrats should trust the same intelligence agencies that once led the United States to invade Iraq. As a consequence, the issue has become muddied. Only 55 percent of Americans are “bothered” by the hacking story, split almost wholly along party lines.

I want to lay down a few points that are, in my mind, abjectly true. Even before the election, I assumed these things were common knowledge. I realize too late they were not. Interspersed here will be my conclusions, based on the facts as I understand them.

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November 2014

The Price

2016-12-28T21:37:55+00:00November 11th, 2014|Gold|

Excerpted from The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq, by George Packer

On the evening of November 8, 2003, at around 7:40 p.m., a two-Humvee convoy pulled out through the front gate of the American base at the Rashid military camp in south Baghdad. The mission was to pick up a sergeant attending a meeting at the combat support hospital inside the Green Zone. In the rear left seat of the lead vehicle sat a twenty-two-year-old private named Kurt Frosheiser.

There was nothing obvious to set Private Frosheiser apart from the tens of thousands of other young enlisted men who served in Iraq. He was from Des Moines, Iowa. He had a twin brother, a married older sister, and divorced parents. He had been an indifferent student and a bit of a rebel through high school, and by age twenty-one he was a community college dropout, living with his sister’s family, delivering, pizza, and partying heavily. He had a brash, boyish smile, with his father’s full mouth and lidded eyes; he liked Lynyrd Skynrd and the Chicago Cubs; and one day in January 2003, he flew through the door with the news that he had just enlisted in the Army.

His father, Chris, wasn’t thrilled to hear it. There was a war on terror going on, and the strong possibility of a land war in Iraq. But he didn’t try to argue with his son. In February, Kurt dropped by his father’s apartment around two in the morning after a night out drinking and said, “I want to be part of something bigger than myself.”

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January 2014

Interesting Times

2016-12-28T21:37:56+00:00January 9th, 2014|Life, Tech|

“May you live in interesting times,” goes the ancient, subtly backhanded, vaguely oriental curse. The phrase is, in fact, likely a fabrication of a 20th century British imperialist, but it’s still a great saying so let’s just roll with it.

The word “interesting,” before it became a de facto placeholder to deploy in event of any awkward pause, actually had some nuance. It means “engaging the attention or regard” but in a uniquely subdued way. It’s a word that invites thoughtful pause in lieu of immediate action. Something “interesting” is almost never wholly good and can frequently be bad, hence the curse part.

While every generation generally believes that they have it the hardest yet and that their challenges are unprecedented, I think Millennials/Gen Y have something new to alternately brag and complain about: the years into which we’ve come of age really are the most complex, mind-boggling, abstract, and interesting in human history. Successfully navigating this flurry of social and technological change will be the task of our lifetimes and entirely determine the fate of those generations who come after us.

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When computers can do it all, what comes next?

2016-12-28T21:37:57+00:00January 5th, 2014|Tech|

As I helped my dad shop for a new mid-grade laptop over the Christmas holiday. I was absolutely floored by the low-cost options on hand: roughly $400 got you a dual-core 2.2Ghz processor, 4GB of RAM, and ~500GB of storage. If you wanted to go lower, you could nab one of those wildly popular <$250 Chromebooks, sans OS entirely.

Every model available, no matter how cheap, had more than enough power to handle basic consumer applications both reliably and virtually lag-free. For the purposes of the vast majority of users, computers really aren’t “slow” anymore. It’s an incredible change over just five years ago, and the pace keeps on accelerating.

Keeping Moore’s Law alive and well, Intel will be debuting an 8-core processor in the 2014 cycle.  HDD (non-flash) storage costs declined a further 20% in 2013, standing at .00000015% what they did in 1970. A friend recently posted a bandwidth speed test in which he clocked a non-theoretical download speed of 630.85 MB/s, making all regular bandwidth use virtually instantaneous. He could download the world’s first (160GB) 4K video in roughly four minutes.

The world of computing tech seems, very quickly, to be outpacing its practical applications. I don’t believe (unlike a certain apocryphal patent office employee) that everything that can be invented has been invented, but I remain very stumped as to what future inventions might possibly look like.

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March 2013

Iraq

2016-12-28T21:37:57+00:00March 20th, 2013|Defense|

Originally published March 20, 2013

I was in the 8th grade, riding back from an oboe lesson, when President Bush crackled on the radio and declared the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. I wasn’t sure why we were going to war. I didn’t know the first thing about Iraq and I certainly couldn’t find it on a map.

Over the next few days, I caught daily glimpses of the CNN feed over Baghdad, after lunch and before Algebra. American airpower made for beautiful pyrotechnics; I remember hoping those buildings were deserted. The campaign from the air was followed by a brilliant campaign of maneuver – Saddam Hussein’s army crumpled in five weeks.

Iraqi Freedom wasn’t really over, of course. By late high school – 05-07 – American servicemen were dying at a rate far exceeding those initial few weeks of invasion. In that period, I discovered politics and became a leftie, using Iraq as a catalyst. I wrote my first op ed about the horrors of the war, citing white phosphorus, American imperialism, and Bush the war criminal. It all seemed very straightforward: black and white, right and wrong.

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