Category Archives: defense policy

How Do We Know?

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SecDef Lloyd Austin’s DoD section, the Department of Defense Education Activity, appears to be disbanding DoDEA’s own section focused on pushing diversity, equity, and inclusion claptrap onto our military members’ children in DoD schools. That subordinate organization, the DEI unit, was founded on explicitly racist tenets. These are from the originally selected head of that organization:

So exhausted at the White folks in these PD sessions. This lady actually had the caudacity to say Black people can be racist, too. I had to stop the session and give the Karen the business. We are not the majority. We don’t have power.

And

I am exhausted by 99% of the white men in education and 95% of the white women. Where can I get a break from white nonsense for a while?

And

If another Karen tells me about her feelings… I might lose it….

And so on. The woman, Kelisa Wing, has since been removed from that position, but there’s no reason to believe that bigotry wasn’t still imbued within that DoDEA DEI unit.

But how do know that…stuff…won’t still be inflicted on the children attending DoD schools following the DEI unit’s formal disappearance? All we’re seeing here is the disbandment of the official front organization for the ideological “teaching.”

DoDEA’s director, Tom Brady, said he will be dispersing the DEI specialists into existing units as part of a “reconfiguration of talent.”

The same person who set up the organization remains in place. The same persons he charged with executing on that organization’s ideology remain; they’re just getting new titles. There’s also this from a “Pentagon statement:”

The Department of Defense Education Activity’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts for our employees and in support of high achievement for our 67,000 military-connected students remains unchanged.

And

Within the next month, we will integrate our DEI specialists into four key divisions at headquarters: Research, Accountability, and Evaluation; Strategic and Organizational Excellent; Professional Learning; and Human Resources.

This is that “reconfiguration of talent.”

In short, we don’t know. But we have no reason to believe it won’t still be.

Idiotic

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Some otherwise reputable folks want a six-month moratorium on the continued development and improvement of artificial intelligence software.

Several tech executives and top artificial-intelligence researchers, including Tesla Inc Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk and AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio, are calling for a pause in the breakneck development of powerful new AI tools.
A moratorium of six months or more would give the industry time to set safety standards for AI design and head off potential harms of the riskiest AI technologies, the proponents of a pause said.

Cynically, the six months would give the Biden administration, with its empirical preference for DEI over actual defense capability, time to manufacture a permanent “moratorium.”

Aside from that, though, our nation is in a break-neck race for supremacy—even parity—in artificial intelligence and its ability to generate ever improving software, especially in weapons and counterweapons, ever improving production capabilities, and on and on. Even a six-month delay could put us fatally behind in what is, at bottom, an exponential growth curve.

At the very least, we need to continue our own development apace, if only because our enemies are developing AI capabilities as fast as they can, and we need to understand AI capabilities in general and our enemies’ AI capabilities in particular, and we need to know what we need to defend against our enemies’ use of AI against us and to develop those tools.

An End to the Ukrainian War

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The lede in a Wall Street Journal article goes like this:

Western leaders are beginning to have a clearer vision of how they hope the war in Ukraine will end.
What is missing is any plan to make it happen.

On the contrary. The principal, the nation that has been invaded by the barbarian, has a very clear vision of how the war will end. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has articulated that vision since the day the barbarian hordes swarmed over the borders: all Russian forces out of all Ukrainian territory. Full stop.

What’s missing is Western resolve to assist Ukraine in achieving that.

Far more likely, though, is a war of attrition that lasts until one side is so defeated or exhausted that it calls a halt without realizing its ultimate aims.
Such an outcome, many diplomats acknowledge, would be measured in years not months.

Such an outcome, though, is not at all predicated on an essential balance of Ukrainian-barbarian forces and a resulting grinding fight. Any attritional aspects to the war would be obviated if the West were to supply Ukraine with the weapons, ammunition, and logistical support that Ukraine’s defense leaders say they need and in the amounts and rate of supply they say they need them.

Instead, the Know Betters in the American, French, and German governments are slow-walking all of that, insisting that Ukraine doesn’t need to tools to win—only the tools to prevent a barbarian win. French President Emmanuel Macron provides the canonical example of this arrogant shortsightedness, doubting Ukraine’s ability to achieve a complete victory on the battlefield. A victory which, of course, Ukraine cannot achieve as long as the tools they need are slow-walked or outright withheld.

That’s what is the stuff of attrition, of unnecessary blood spilled by Ukrainian soldiers and civilians—women and children—and of continued barbarian atrocities of rape, child murder, wanton destruction.

Balancing Act

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That’s what conventional “wisdom” says confronts the government of Australia as it contemplates buying nuclear-powered submarines from the US. The buy is part of AUKUS’ combined effort to counter the People’s Republic of China’s military buildup and its continued strengthening of the PLA in the PRC’s occupation of the South China Sea.

Australia is trying to strike a balance between its close relationship with the US and its ties to China, which buys much of its valuable iron ore and is its largest trading partner.

There’s nothing to balance here. There are lots of nations, all over the world, with an interest in buying Australian iron ore, Australia’s iron processed from that ore, such steel as Australia chooses to produce. There is a wide world of existing and potential trading partners for Australia’s other goods and services. Shipping need not be that expensive, either: the nations metaphorically next door that rim the South China Sea, the Republic of China, the Republic of Korea, and Japan all have need of iron ore and iron and are interested in the plethora of additional goods and services that Australia might sell.

Australia has no need of the PRC’s market, and the sooner it divests itself, the sooner it will shake its dependency on and pressure from the PRC.

Some Needed Firings

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They haven’t happened, yet, but they need to.

The US Air Force this month launched an effort to hire a handful of senior-level diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) managers and is hoping to place these officials in posts across the country, from Washington, DC, to Alaska.

And

The Air Force is looking for a “supervisory diversity equity inclusion and accessibility officer for Air Force headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, which will pay anywhere from $155,700 to $183,500 per year.” The person who fills this position will serve as a “first-level supervisor” who will direct employees assigned to the Air Force’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

And

The goal of the managerial slot is to ensure that “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility education and training….

This is nothing but the combat dumbing down of our Air Force: USAF management is putting the divisiveness and bigotry of DEI ahead of training for actual combat against our nation’s enemies.

The staff officers who thought this was a good idea and wasted government time and money developing it and selling to up the chain need to be reassigned to operational billets, not staff billets, in the Combatant Commands, in theater and not safely home in the US. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendell needs to be fired, and Air Force Chief of Staff General Charles Brown needs to be dismissed, for allowing this destructive move to occur.

The firings must extend to the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, and JCS Chairman General Mark Milley, also; these wonders are responsible for fostering this destructive culture throughout our defense establishment.