Points of Fundamental Economics

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President Donald Trump (R) has ordered a conversion of the Navy’s carriers from electronic catapults to steam catapults for launching its aircraft. There are a couple of points about that.

Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Daryl Caudle:

If we were to go back to steam and hydraulics with the elevators, we need to really understand the total cost of that. That will be a significant design change.

Absolutely. Any design change, especially one done after production has begun, has costs, beginning with the cost of removing the hardware or the complete system that’s being changed, designing the replacement hardware or system to fit into the space—or more expensively, also altering that space to accommodate the replacement—and building and installing the replacement. In the present case, an added cost results from the fact that no one makes steam catapult systems anymore. These have to be gutsed up from scratch, including (re)building the factories that make them.

On the other hand, it’s critical to not be married to sunk costs in considering a change. Those costs are sunk for a reason: they’ve already been incurred and won’t be recouped. They’re expensive to walk away from, but it can be even more expensive to continue sinking money into a suboptimal system just because money has already been spent on it.

Better is the enemy of good enough is certainly true, but there’s an equally valid flip side of that: good enough can’t be allowed to be the end game; better really is an improvement. Existing sunk costs can’t be allowed to be in the way of better. What matters is long term performance of the two systems, the good enough vs the better. Cost is only one component of that assessment, and cost is more than just dollars. In the present case, cost includes which system gets more aircraft—manned or unmanned—into the air at the faster rate with the longest time between breakdown and the shortest time to repair.

And a bonus point, about which Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao had this in his memo to the Navy:

To be clear, the debate on whether we do this has ended. Our task now is to provide the plan on how to implement.

Slow-walking the implementation or other forms of passive resistance can only run up the costs of the implementation, and it should get those resisters dismissed from the Navy or fired from their civilian DoD jobs.

Choices

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The august editors of The Wall Street Journal oppose SecDef Pete Hegseth’s decision to live stream the execution of Nidal Hassan, the terrorist who shot up Fort Hood ‘way back in 2009.

It’s about time for the terrorist to die at the hands of the government whose soldiers he butchered, and while the editors agree, sort of, that his execution should be public, they insist that the execution be done

quietly with few witnesses beyond officials and the families of the victims who wish to attend. This consigns him to history with ignominy but no fanfare. Mr Hasan has said “I would still be a martyr” if executed, and that he killed those soldiers because they were “going against the Islamic Empire.” A livestreamed death, complete with some incendiary last words, is what he wants.

Those learned editors add

Mr Hasan and his ilk understand they are likely to die. That is part of their fevered calculation. They imagine that by their violence they will contribute to the bloody caliphate they hope to build on earth.
A public death by firing squad would give Mr Hasan that publicity in perpetuity. It would assist the cult of death promoted by the perversion of Islam….

Those editors, though, ignore the enormous white elephant in the execution chamber: the publicity for which Hasan yearns, the public execution assistance to the terrorists’ death cult, exists only because the press of which these wondrous editors are card-carrying members chooses to hype the execution, it means of carrying out, and the live streaming of it solely for their own ripped bodice wallowing and the clicks it will “earn” them.

The US doesn’t need to execute Mr Hasan on live TV to send a deterrent message. It needs to win the war against jihadists around the world….

That second sentence is true as far as it goes. But it’s much harder for the US to win any war or conflict when a mendacious press chooses hype and exaggeration over cold, nonpartisan reporting and then blames the outcome of its mendacity on the government.

An honest press, one given to objectivity and—as the WSJ editors pretend so righteously to demand—denial of the spectacle that Hasan demands for his so-called martyrdom, would simply note the fact of Hasan’s execution by firing squad with the execution attended by government officials and victims’ families, and then move on.

Unfortunately, these editors and their brothers and sisters of the press wear their blinders not along the sides of their eyes to limit their peripheral vision, but flat across the front of their eyes to limit their vision.

Cowardice of Euphemisms

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Last Saturday, Houthi terrorists fired missiles at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing 12 and injuring more than 300. The terrorists then repeated their claim that humanitarian flights to and from Riyadh would be permitted only with their prior authorization.

Almost as perfidious, though, are the reactions of Canada and Ireland.

Canada said military activity there had disrupted flights. Ireland’s embassy called it a serious incident.

Terrorist actions are not “military activity,” nor are they “serious incidents.” They’re terrorist actions, and nothing else.

As long as these two governments cannot bring themselves to name a terrorist activity for what it is—or worse, if they cannot recognize a terrorist activity when it occurs—these two governments cannot be trusted with anything.

Full stop.

Securing Cameras

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The Wall Street Journal ran a good article concerning home surveillance cameras and how to secure them from hackers, or at least harden them against hacking (here, too, security is an arms race, and no particular security technique is either proof or permanent).

There are other cameras besides home surveillance cameras that are vulnerable, though; the camera built into laptops, for instance.

In addition to the strong password for the AP or Ethernet router through which the laptop connects to the Internet, it’s necessary to use a strong password for login access to the laptop (and encrypting the hard drive). On top of that, I put tape over the camera lens except for those rare occasions when I actually use it. My laptop also has a light on its microphone key that tells me when the microphone is muted; I monitor that.

And: in addition to keeping the AP/Ethernet router software and firmware current, it’s necessary to do the same with the laptop.

The only password manager I use is pen and paper, kept secure. That way, there’s no cloud hack that can get to them, and if my laptop were hacked or stolen, there’d still be no access to my passwords.

New York’s Education Problem

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In addition to eliminating concrete examinations to assess whether a high school pupil (in New York, I hesitate to term them students), the State is instituted a carefully vague and unmeasurable in objective terms set of descriptions of a high schooler who’s suitable for graduating.

New York now wants its high-school graduates to be “academically prepared.” The rest of the qualities that make up the portrait are nicely nebulous: “critical thinker,” “creative innovator,” “effective communicator,” “reflective and future focused” and a “global citizen.”

The rest of them? “Academically prepared” also is carefully indeterminate. Prepared for what? According to what criteria? Measured by whom?

But the deliberately indistinct criteria still aren’t the most serious failure. That accolade goes to the “global citizen” pseudo-criterion.

Why not require the graduate wannabe to be an effective American citizen? Oh, wait—that would run counter to the Left’s holding that America is evilly racist, too full of itself on the world’s stage, and needs to be hammered down several pegs. Nothing exceptional about us except the depth of our depravity.

That New York isn’t alone in this abject failure—[a]bout half the states and hundreds of school districts have developed their own portraits—but that in no way excuses New York.