Weekend Reading
Long reads for the holiday weekend
“Earlier this year, officials at US Space Command released a list of priorities and needs, and among the routine recitation of things like cyber defense, communications, and surveillance was a relatively new term: ‘integrated space fires.’ This is a new phrase in the esoteric terminology the military uses to describe its activities. Essentially, ‘fires’ are offensive or defensive actions against an adversary. The Army defines fires as ‘the use of weapon systems to create specific lethal and nonlethal effects on a target.’ The inclusion of this term in a Space Command planning document was another signal that Pentagon leaders, long hesitant to even mention the possibility of putting offensive weapons in space for fear of stirring up a cosmic arms race, see the taboo of talking about space warfare as a thing of the past. ‘While we've held it close to the vest before, some of that was just kind of hand-wringing,’ said Gen. Chance Saltzman, the top general in the Space Force, who also serves on the joint chiefs of staff. ‘It wasn't really something we needed to protect.’ One reason for the change in how the military talks about warfare in space is that the nation's top two strategic adversaries—China and Russia—are already testing capabilities that could destroy or disable a US military satellite. The Space Force was established nearly five years ago, in December 2019, to protect US interests in space. Satellites provide the military with intelligence data, navigation, communications, and support missile defense, and in the next few years, they will become even more crucial for weapons targeting and battle management.” (Stephen Clark/ArsTechnica)
“Politico: Was there a moment between July 21, when Joe Biden drops out, not where you thought you were going to lose, but where you said: ‘Well, this thing is a real ballgame.’ (Chief Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio): I would say, the first couple of weeks after he dropped out, Harris just took off like a rocket. (Co-Trump Chair Chris LaCivita): Our numbers never changed. Fabrizio: She just took off like a rocket. Her image changed 20 points. But what happened is, I used to describe it like a wave coming up on the shore, and the wave hit its high-water mark and then it just receded back. And so, the one thing she was never able to do, was close the sale. Why? Fabrizio: Because they just didn’t really have a coherent message. And they changed. I mean, one of the untold stories of this race — perfect example, last week of the campaign. They ran 162 different unique creatives on digital, TV. How many did you have? Fabrizio: 50. And by the way, we spent about the same amount of money. LaCivita: But if you were looking at it from TV, just broadcast, we had two [commercials]. That’s it. That’s it! … We’re focusing on the group of persuadable voters and a group of low propensity voters. It’s two different tacks. Low propensity: Get them to vote. Persuadable: Try to get them over. The Harris campaign was convinced [persuadables were] around 4 to 6 percent. We knew it was probably closer to 10 to 12 percent. We focused the entire campaign built around the issues that matter to the persuadable voters early. Tony modeled them, and we tracked what the electorate, based on the persuadables, was thinking. And that drove all of our decision making. All of our decision making. We spent millions in mail in the summer, which we were roundly criticized for doing. All of this stuff was something that we started in June.” (Politico)
“The ideal ‘Trump Library’ model is the Biff Tannen Museum in Back to the Future Part II. For those who haven’t watched the movie recently, Biff Tannen is believed to have been modeled on the 1980s Donald Trump, a high school bully who, through a time-traveling glitch, finds a sports betting almanac from the future, gets rich, becomes ‘the luckiest man on earth,’ an oafish ogre of a billionaire so powerful he creates his own museum - where smoking is required, among other things. Location? A tough one. After renaming the New York Airports and Fifth Avenue after Trump, Congressional MAGAs might feel emboldened to federally commandeer a few square miles of Central Park. In the event that’s denied, the Four Seasons Total Landscaping grounds in Philly, site of Rudy Giuliani’s spectacular Big Lie press conference in November 2020, might do, especially given the importance of the voters of Pennsyltucky to the 2024 win. The full range of subjects will depend on what happens in the next four years. But no ‘Trump Library’ would be complete with the following halls and exhibits: The Humble Trumpf Origin Story: Walls lined with black and white images from the immigrant story, Grandpa Friedrich Trumpf leaving Germany to run a brothel in the Yukon, German immigrant Grandma Trump founding the Trump organization, Papa Fred Trump’s arrest at a KKK rally, Scottish immigrant Mama Mary Anne McLeod working as a maid in the Carnegie mansion, and the silver spoon youth of Prince Donald himself, mediocre student to military school to - thanks Dad! - Wharton. A doctored ‘stable genius’ grades record will have to be produced.” (Nina Buirleigh/American Freakshow)
“Now that Trump has in fact won again, the scale and culpability of Biden’s blunder has to be measured. That culpability belongs not just to Biden alone but also to the larger Democratic establishment and the enablers on Biden’s staff, all of whom were essential in the sickening farce of a frail, failing, and flailing man clinging to the most powerful position in the world … In truth, Biden was surrounded by a bodyguard of liars, a pretorian guard of deceivers who fooled both the president and the American public. This was a massive betrayal of democracy. There is a reason the Constitution has provisions for removing an impaired chief executive (the 25th Amendment). This body guard of liars extended to the many journalistic allies of the Biden White House. Franklin Foer and Bob Woodward both wrote books based on access to the White House that celebrated Biden as an able executive. In March of this year, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said, ‘Start your tape right now because I’m about to tell you the truth. And fuck you if you can’t handle the truth. This version of Biden, intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever. Not a close second. And I’ve known him for years.… If it weren’t the truth, I wouldn’t say it.’” (Jeet Heer/The Nation)
“Presidents always have gatekeepers. But in Biden’s case, the walls around him were higher and the controls greater, according to Democratic lawmakers, donors and aides who worked for Biden and other administrations. There were limits over who Biden spoke with, limits on what they said to him and limits around the sources of information he consumed. Throughout his presidency, a small group of aides stuck close to Biden to assist him, especially when traveling or speaking to the public. ‘They body him to such a high degree,’ a person who witnessed it said, adding that the ‘hand holding” is unlike anything other recent presidents have had. The White House operated this way even as the president and his aides pressed forward with his re-election bid—which unraveled spectacularly after his halting performance in a June debate with Donald Trump made his mental acuity an insurmountable issue. Vice President Kamala Harris replaced him on the Democratic ticket and was decisively defeated by Trump in a shortened campaign—leaving Democrats to debate whether their chances were undercut by Biden’s refusal to yield earlier. This account of how the White House functioned with an aging leader at the top of its organizational chart is based on interviews with nearly 50 people, including those who participated in or had direct knowledge of the operations.” (WSJ)
“Looking beyond newsrooms to the wider media world, we live in a wildly more diverse and accessible entertainment landscape than, say, ten or twenty years ago. Think about it: The main problem is that there's too much to watch. ‘The media business continues to showcase resilience and evolution,’ Digital Content Next CEO Jason Kint said. His trade group's latest subscription tracking report shows that ‘over 96% of U.S. households now subscribe to an average of seven media services, underscoring the growing consumer appetite for high-quality content’ … This year has cemented a new conventional wisdom in Hollywood: that ‘streaming success runs through theaters,’ as the NYT's Nicole Sperling put it this week. Execs have concluded that ‘the key to making a movie a streaming success and attracting new subscribers is to first release it in theaters,’ because ‘all the things that make theatrical movies successful — expansive marketing and public relations campaigns, and valuable word of mouth — continue to help movies perform once they land in the home.’” (Brian Stelter/Reliable Sources)
“I remember there was a holiday party at William Morrow, circa 1983. And there was a guy there who ran the mail room, and he was running drugs out of the mail room in addition to packages of books. So at the holiday party, I somehow found myself in the mail room with him doing blow. It was late at night. He ran out. We decided to go up to an SRO hotel in Harlem to buy more coke. I was just some gangly white guy. And when I walked into the room, everybody kind of gave me a look, and some guy was sitting there with a gun on his lap. I was like, ‘What am I doing?’ And then all of a sudden, the mail-room guy left and I was on my own in this room, doing blow with these guys that I’ve never met. I had to go out to a cash machine and get some money to pay for it. I was so fucked up that I didn’t think I could get home. There was an art director who worked at William Morrow at the time, and somehow I wound up at her apartment, and she’s like, ‘You’re completely fucked up. You have to get out of here.’ I tried to get home to Long Island. I was on my way to Penn Station, and it was, I don’t know, two o’clock in the morning. The next train wasn’t until 3:30. I went to a bar. I sat down in a snowbank and I fell asleep in the snowbank. I had so much to drink, and even with the coke, I was just unconscious. The next morning, a William Morrow editor was walking to work and saw me in the snowbank. He said, ‘I won’t tell anyone.’ And then, of course, he broadcast it to the entire company.” (The Cut)
“Two machine learning algorithms can determine whether a whiskey is of American or Scotch origin and identify its strongest aromas, according to research published in Communications Chemistry. The results also suggest that the algorithms can outperform human experts at assessing a whisky's strongest aromas. A whiskey's aroma is determined by a complex mixture of odorous compounds. This makes it highly challenging to assess or predict a whiskey's aroma characteristics, or notes, based solely on its molecular composition. Panels of human experts are often used to identify the strongest notes of a whiskey, but these require a significant investment in time, money, and training, and agreement between participants is often limited. Andreas Grasskamp and colleagues assessed the molecular composition of seven American and nine Scotch whiskies using two algorithms—OWSum, a molecular odor prediction algorithm developed by the authors, and a neural network. The molecular composition data was derived from existing results from gas chromatography and mass spectrometry analysis—two techniques used to separate and identify components within a mixture. The algorithms were used to identify each whisky's country of origin and its five strongest notes. The authors then compared the algorithms' results to those from a panel of 11 experts. OWSum was able to determine whether a whiskey was American or Scotch with a greater than 90% accuracy.” (Phys.org)
“As the violent clashes between the Arakan Army and the Myanmar military intensify, thousands of Rohingya and other ethnic minorities are fleeing their homes in Rakhine State, seeking refuge in neighboring Bangladesh … Their first refuge was Nol Boinna, where they stayed for ‘10 to 15 days.’ However, fear of escalating violence forced them to move again to Maungni Fara. ‘We had to move once more to Hari Fara when weapons and bombs started landing on Maungni Fara,’ Humaira explains. Each village they sought shelter in became another battleground, leaving them with no choice but to keep moving. At Hari Fara, they sought shelter in a school, but ‘the school was also bombed.’ Desperate and with nowhere else to turn, they fled to Kunar Fara. ‘In Kunar Fara, the fighting between Mogh Baghi and the military escalated,’ Humaira says. Eventually, they ended up in Zam Boinna Camp, also known as Hla Poe Kaung Camp, built by the Myanmar military for the pilot repatriation of Rohingya from Bangladesh. ‘We stayed at that camp for almost two and a half months,’ enduring starvation and the constant threat of aerial bombings. Determined to find safety, Humaira and her family decided to flee to Bangladesh. ‘We fled the camp and came to Bangladesh because we were starving, and our husbands could not work. We also have children to care for,’ she explains. They paid brokers exorbitant sums for passage: 550,000 kyats per person. Their journey took them to Mangala, where they boarded ‘a boat without a motor.’ However, upon reaching Jaliardwip, a small island in the Naf River marking the border between Bangladesh and Myanmar, they faced a new nightmare. ‘We were kept at Jaliardwip for one night, as they claimed they could not reach the shores of Bangladesh,’ Humaira recounts. The brokers, instead of facilitating their safe passage, held them hostage, demanding more money. As they prepared to continue their journey, tragedy struck. ‘The Mogh Baghi fired guns and attacked us with bombs using drones from above,’ Humaira says, her voice heavy with grief.” (Shafiur Rahman/The Diplomat)
“A few years ago, I began producing an annual reading list, with the first one being published in 2017 (you can read that list here). The aim of my lists was to provide a ‘starter kit’ for young professionals that contains a few essential books, journals, blogs, podcasts, and Twitter feeds. To this end, I normally kept the annual list to a single, A4 page. It was tough, given the massive amount of high-quality material out there. The list contains reading resources that stretch from the classics of antiquity through to speculation about future conflict. It has selections from military history and contemporary operations. I should emphasise that my reading lists aren’t ‘annual best books’ lists; there are plenty of such lists around. My lists don’t only contain great books. They include a range of other resources that allow the military and national security professionals as well as interested citizens, to immerse themselves in a global professional discourse. Never before have we possessed the range of networking opportunities afforded by the digital age. Finally, my reading list is not restricted to non-fiction. I have included several fictional novels, including science fiction, that feature military themes. I have written previously about why I think military officers should read sci-fi and have collaborated on three sci-fi reading lists. Albert Einstein once noted that ‘I have no special talent; only that I am passionately curious.’ Reading drives us to look beyond the tunnel vision of our day-to-day duties that often absorb much of our time. It also provides the military and national security practitioners, as well as interested citizens, with an excellent opportunity for vicarious learning.” (Mick Ryan/Futura Doctrina)
“Thailand hosted two regional meetings with Asian leaders this week, aimed at ending a bloody civil war in Myanmar that has led to a spiraling political and security crisis. China, Bangladesh, Laos, India, and Thailand — the five nations that share a border with Myanmar — met together with members of the country’s ruling military junta to discuss plans for possible peace negotiations. Members of the ASEAN grouping of Southeast Asian nations also met in Bangkok to discuss plans to resolve the almost five-year conflict and the junta’s plans to hold elections in 2025. Myanmar has been mired in civil war since Feb 2021, after a military coup toppled the democratically elected government, and the junta has since fought to maintain control against armed resistance groups. The conflict has displaced millions of people, including Rohingya refugees who have fled across the border into Bangladesh, which has the world’s largest refugee camp. China and Thailand have also condemned reports of widespread human and drug trafficking that have occurred at their borders with Myanmar." (Paige Bruton/semafor)
“According to (Israeli archaeologist, Bar Kribus), the first testimonies about the existence of an independent Jewish kingdom that are not in dispute date only from the 14th century. An initial account appears in writings from the first half of that century recounting a war waged by the Ethiopian emperor against the ‘crucifying Jews.’ The regions where the two kingdoms – Jewish and Ethiopian – fought are also named. Although the date of birth of the Jewish kingdom is a point of controversy, thanks to a contemporary eyewitness account, there is almost full consensus that it fell in 1626 … The search was based on references in written sources to the existence of a kingdom. For example, a Jesuit missionary from Portugal named Manuel de Almeida, who was active in Ethiopia in the first half of the 17th century, reported on Jews who lived in the region. ‘In the past,’ he noted, ‘they were the rulers of the whole kingdom of Deambiyia, and now, for many years, have ruled only the Simien Mountains… For many years they had a hero leader named Gideon, who launched many attacks on lands of the emperor and enjoyed great success.’ De Almeida went on to note that some of the Jews lived on the summits of mountains and defended themselves with stones. ‘They simply attack boldly anyone who approaches them.’ The Portuguese cleric also provided an account he heard from a fellow missionary about attempts by the Christian army to seize control of the Jewish settlements. The Jews, he writes, ‘fortified themselves in areas in the mountains that could not be reached from below other than with ropes and straps, and could not be reached from above other than by the same means, because the sides of the mountains of stone [on which the Jews dwelled] were almost vertical. Some of the Christian soldiers dared to descend in large baskets that were bound with strong straps and gradually lowered [to the Jewish settlement]. However, when they reached the midway point, Jews who were hiding in caves in the rock cut the straps with their swords, and the soldiers fell to their death.’ The acrobatic battle actually evokes the name ‘Segenet,’ which in the ancient holy language of Ge'ez means ‘observation tower,’ and in Amharic translates as ‘balcony.’ But even so, the description sounds somewhat over the top, as it were. Today's Segenet is a long valley sandwiched between two chains of high mountains and through which a river flows. One of the small communities that are perched on the steep slopes bears the same name as the valley. The village sits on a broad rock shelf and is abutted by arable land that is extensively farmed; in the vicinity are independent sources of natural water. The conditions are ideal for withstanding a long siege without fear of a shortage of food and water. The village's location enables it to act as a military outpost possessing extraordinary natural fortification and offering a clear-cut strategic advantage.” (Mairav Moran/Haaretz)