A Promising Technology

An alternative to GPS-positioning and navigation—which is increasingly vulnerable to jamming and spoofing—is nearing operational capability, having already begun real world testing. Instead of receiving signals from satellites, this system is as self-contained as inertial navigation systems, but without the dependency on gyroscopes, which drift over relatively short periods of time. Instead, the system uses the varying degrees of magnetization ubiquitous in the earth’s crust. And it doesn’t even send out signals to measure that magnetization—I did say it was self-contained.

Inside SandboxAQ’s device, essentially a small black box, a laser fires a photon at an electron, forcing it to absorb that photon. When the laser turns off, that electron goes back to its ground state, and releases the photon. As the photon is released, it gives off a unique signature based on the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field at that particular location.
Every square meter of the world has a unique magnetic signature based on the specific way charged iron particles in the Earth’s molten core magnetize the minerals in its crust. SandboxAQ’s device tracks that signature, feeds it into an AI algorithm that runs on a single GPU, compares the signature to existing magnetic signature maps, and returns an exact location.

Exact location: the system currently is capable of matching, every time, the FAA’s commercial navigation requirement of specifying location to within 2 nautical miles. The system can get within a quarter of a nautical mile about two-thirds of the time.

The system already seems capable, in the defense arena, of sensing submarines and tunnels. For targeting over enemy territory, though, greater precision will be required. The question here, in my peabrain, isn’t whether such pinpoint accuracy can be achieved (there’s no doubt that it can), but how we will get magnetic crust mapping inside, say, Russia or the People’s Republic of China.

I suspect satellites can get those maps.

Shocked

I’m shocked, shocked, to find that diplomacy is going on in here. The lede and a subsequent paragraph expose the matter.

President Trump’s threat for a 50% tariff on Brazilian imports expanded his use of punitive duties over matters that have nothing to do with trade, breaking with more than a half-century of global economic precedent.

It is one of the latest…example of Trump using tariffs as a cudgel for political priorities outside of trade.

And

The president is betting the threat of reducing access to the American consumer will force nations to capitulate on his political priorities.

Other examples:

  • tariffs on Colombia over repatriation flights for migrants back to that country
  • steep duties on Canada, Mexico, and China over their role in the fentanyl trade
  • tariffs on countries that buy oil from Venezuela
  • threat of tariffs to attempt to secure more military spending from Asian nations such as Japan and South Korea.

The news writers at the link noted this bit of history:

Although often controversial and sometimes volatile, such as when the Smoot-Hawley Act hiked U.S. tariffs in 1930, tariffs have generally been motivated by economic or domestic political goals.

There is no more important domestic goal than national security, which necessarily is centered on the global stage.

Ricardo was right as far as he went, in that nations should specialize in those goods and services they do best and import other goods and services from other nations that the importer does poorly. But that’s pure economics. It ignores the diplomacy aspects of international trade—using exports of those specialized goods and services and imports of other goods and services as tools with which to influence other nations’ behavior across a range of milieus.

That foreign policy influence centers on matters of national security, of which domestic economics is a critical, but not sole factor. Other, equally critical, factors include providing opportunities for domestic producers to do better in those weak areas. Specialization, after all, is not the same as producing only those items with no thought to expanding into other areas for specialization.

International trade as diplomacy also includes limiting enemy nations’ access to those goods and services that a nation Ricardo-specializes in that are important to enemy nations’ own foreign adventurism, as well as limiting domestic market access by enemy nations as a means of weakening their economies and so their ability to mount those foreign adventures.

The WSJ‘s editors tacitly understand this, though they don’t seem to have made their understanding overt, even to themselves.

The US will need to mount a united front with allies to confront Beijing’s predatory practices and ensure the world isn’t dependent on China. One idea is a critical minerals alliance.

This is explicitly the use of international trade in its foreign policy/national security role and as a way to counter the People’s Republic of China’s own use of international trade to further its own foreign policy aspirations.

The news writers appear surprised find that an American President understands that international trade, and all of its tools, have very little to do with economics and very much to do with foreign policy. Sadly, they’re not alone. It would behoove all guild members to review their high school economics class notes.

Mistake

In their piece in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, the editors wrote about President Donald Trump’s decision to continue sending weapons to Ukraine because [t]hey have to be able to defend themselves. They’re getting hit very hard.

Unfortunately, the editors wrote this near the end of their bit:

What matters is giving Ukraine enough firepower to change Mr Putin’s cost-benefit calculation about continuing the war.

This isn’t just wrong; it’s deeply immoral. Arming Ukraine enough to change the barbarian’s cost-benefit calculation is just a means to keep Ukrainian soldiers in the field fighting, being maimed, and dying and to keep Ukrainian women and children available as targets for the barbarian.

Putin has already made his cost-benefit calculation: he doesn’t care about the cost, even having decided that his soldiers are nothing more than consumables on a par with fuel and ammunition. No amount of continued Ukrainian resistance, no matter how effective and costly (in the editors’ eyes) the war continues to be for Putin, he sees the benefit—conquering and occupying Ukraine, erasing it from the list of sovereign nations—as well worth the expenditure, whatever its size.

It isn’t enough to arm Ukraine enough that it can continue the war. Ukraine must win the war outright. That requires sending it the offensive and defensive weapons systems the UA needs in the numbers and in the timing that the UA needs them. Naysayers in government and Timid Tesses like these editors and their brethren elsewhere in the news media gallery need to get out of the way of that.

A Start

President Donald Trump (R), after the latest telecon with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which came after the his latest telecon with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who followed that telecon with a large drone and missile attack on Ukraine’s civilian housing and infrastructure, has said defensive weapons shipments to Ukraine will resume.

It’s a start, but it’s insufficient. The best defense is a good offense, and that’s even more true in combat than it is in football. With the barbarian forced to defend, to react to Ukrainian moves—at the least to divert resources away from offense to reaction and defense—the barbarian’s attacks will at the least lessen.

From that, we—the US and Europe’s nominally West-aligned nations—need to send Ukraine offensive weapons, also, in the numbers and at the rates the UA says they need them. If Ukraine can reach inside Russia at depth and strike railroad nodes and naval ports, ammunition and fuel supplies, troop massings, bomber and fighter bases, the barbarian will have a much harder time moving those troops, aircraft, and consumables (keeping in mind the redundancy, in Putin’s mind, of troops and consumables) into positions from which to attack.

That increases Ukraine’s ability to win the barbarian’s war rather than endlessly bleed from defending. UA’s successful attack on a number of bases hosting the barbarian’s strategic bomber fleet does seem to have lessened, at least relatively, the ratio of air-to-surface missiles to drones in subsequent attacks.

Trump and Ukraine

President Donald Trump (R) says he’s “not happy” with Russian President Vladimir Putin following the latest telecon between the two. Even, I don’t think he’s looking to stop his war. NSS.

Mr Putin added an exclamation point by hitting Kyiv with one of the biggest drone and missile attacks of the war the same night as his conversation with Mr Trump.

Putin has followed prior telecons with Trump with heavy drone and missile attacks against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and residences.

Even so, Trump continues to dither regarding serious responses to Putin’s barbarism.

One possibility is that Trump is giving Putin every diplomatic opportunity to call off his barbaric invasion and war against Ukraine before Trump takes concrete action in Ukraine’s favor: serious sanctions against Russia and those persons, businesses, and nations that do business of any sort with Russia, coupled with unfettered arms deliveries to Ukraine in the amounts and times the UA says they need them.

That time is long past, though; Putin has responded militarily overtly negatively to those opportunities. It’s time to act.

The WSJ editors closed their piece with this:

Mr Putin thinks he can make President Trump look plaintive and weak, and then get away with it as Russia swallows Ukraine. If the Russian is right, much of the US deterrence benefit of the Iran strike will vanish.

That misstates the case. If Putin succeeds, all of our deterrence will disappear. And more: we’ll be actively inviting further moves by our enemies.