Category Archives: foreign policy

Security and Hacking

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The USAF and software company Merlin Cryption have developed a “cybersecurity technology”—and encryption technique—that has yet to be hacked, having been tried by the likes of Louisiana-based Cyber Innovation Center and the University of Louisiana in extensive testing.

The problem I have, based on published reporting and my status as a non-expert in the security field, is this from Brandon Brown, Merlin Cyrption’s CEO.

It uses a random data generator that never repeats a pattern. This puts it in a good position to overcome AI and Quantum computing….

Once you have a computer doing “random,” you’ve generated a pattern. Randomness requires access to infinitely large numbers with infinitely numbers of digits in them. Computers are bit-limited in how big a number they can represent—if nothing else, by the number of bits their storage media can hold and the number of bits their memory media can hold, much less the number of bits their CPU chips can process.  There is only so many unique draws from the population that a computer can do, even if that number approaches ginormosity.

Experts are optimistic.

One industry cybersecurity expert called the new technology “what the government has been looking for…a single solution to protect digital assets….”

No, this is just the convenience—and enormous risk—of putting all the eggs in one basket.  That’s not cool.

Understand: this is a valuable advance in security; it’s just not hack-proof.  Advances in computing power and in the horsiness of CPUs and storage will allow the hackers to catch up—and get back in the lead.  This is why even Merlin Cyrption won’t make any claim of hack-proof.

Surprised

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Writing on the topic of our applying economic pressure on Turkey as a means of getting an American hostage (among others) freed, Greg Ip expressed surprise and worry about the weaponization of trade in his Wednesday Wall Street Journal article.

Trade wars may be morphing into something more dangerous: financial wars.

This, though, merely exposes his misunderstanding of international trade.  Such trade is far more about national policy applied internationally than it is about economics, and international finance is just a tool of that trade venue.  Trade has always been “weaponized;” it has always been about achieving national political goals, of which economics is merely one.

Ip’s discourse also misuses the term “war;” although, he is not alone in this error.  Trade “wars,” even with finance tools being used extensively, are not shooting conflicts, and even with the global financial dislocations of events like the Great Depression or the Panic of 2008, nations’ existences were never at risk.  While trade, freely wielded as a tool of policy, can be effective at pushing the targeted nation to alter its behavior, it never threatens that nation’s independence.  It’s never war.

Turkey and Natural Gas Pipelines

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War on the Rocks has an interesting piece on Turkey’s desire to become a natural gas transshipment hub feeding Europe and perhaps Russia.  I think, though, that WOTR underplays the purpose of Turkey’s transshipment goal.

Recall the existing conflict between Turkey and Europe over immigration, economics, rule of law EU-style rather than as Recep Erdoğan does it, and a host of other excuses for Turkey to claim to be put upon.

Next, keep in mind that Turkey went to school on Russia’s use of its dominance in supplying natural gas to Ukraine and to central Europe and the fact that that dominating supply flowed almost exclusively through a pipeline running through Ukraine to Europe.  Turkey also is observing with care the increase in Russian control of Europe’s natural gas supply that construction of Nord Stream 2 would produce and which would allow Russia to take Ukraine out of the equation altogether, thereby to directly…influence…Europe.

Awash in natural gas deliveries from highly diversified pool of suppliers, Turkey hopes to dominate the market by becoming a natural gas hub for Europe, particularly Southeast Europe, which is less connected to EU natural gas infrastructure and remains heavily dependent on Russia[.]

Now here is Turkey deliberately building an oversupply of natural gas transport so as to feed southern Europe.  And…influence…it?  WOTR put it too mildly, I think.

If Turkey becomes a hub through which a diverse set of suppliers sends its natural gas to Southeast and Southern Europe, the country stands not only to amass economic benefits…. It can also use the status of an energy hub to heighten its geopolitical weight in the region, vis-à-vis Russia and the European Union.

I submit that Russia is less a target than is the EU.  After all, after the Turkish shootdown of a Russian fighter aircraft, there has been an enthusiastic rapprochement between those two nations.

There’s Help, and There’s Help

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Recall that Alphabet Inc, through its Google arm, has refused to help the US defend itself by refusing to work with DoD on the application of artificial intelligence to military projects.  After the resignations described at the link, Alphabet pulled its Google arm out of the project altogether, with effect in 2019 when its current contract expires.

On the other hand, Alphabet is enthusiastic about its Google working within the People’s Republic of China.  Mobvoi Inc, headquartered outside Beijing, makes smart watches and smart speakers for sale within—and outside—the surveillance state.

Its engineers build apps using TensorFlow, Google’s free set of development tools for artificial intelligence.

And

Now those allies [like Mobvoi] will likely be crucial as Google embarks on a broader China expansion strategy.

Indeed,

In his three years as Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai has been a frequent visitor to the region, meeting with top Chinese officials and encouraging businesses to use Google’s free open-source tools like TensorFlow….

Alphabet won’t work on AI projects with DoD, but they’re perfectly happy to make much of their AI capability freely available to the PRC.

Hmm….

Some Thoughts on NATO

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Stephen Walt, writing in Foreign Policy, had some, and as a result, so do I.

Walt’s first thought concerns the actual content of NATO’s Article V: it’s not a tripwire for war.  On this, he quoted the salient part of that Article [emphasis his]:

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence … will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area….

Then he emphasized his highlighted part:

Article 5 does not commit any of the parties to use military force, although the use of force is clearly an option. Rather, it calls upon all the parties to “assist” the members that were attacked, but it does not specify the precise form such assistance would take.

Fair enough.  But his piece is downhill from here.

His second thought is that NATO is not a club and that there are no dues for membership.

Rather, each state decides how much it is willing and able to spend on defense, and the alliance as a whole tries (with varying degrees of success) to coordinate these defense preparations in order to produce a more capable force.

It’s true that there are no dues; however, each state, in deciding what it is willing and able to spend on defense, agreed with all of the other states—and they agreed this several years ago—to commit at least 2% of their GDP to NATO defense spending.  Further, they also committed to spending the bulk of those 2% on upgrading and acquiring new equipment along with increasing the number of personnel (and training them) in their NATO-committed/earmarked forces.

Then Walt asserts that expanding NATO was a mistake.

NATO expansion poisoned relations with Russia and played a central role in creating conflicts between Russia and Georgia and Russia and Ukraine.

Not a bit of it.  What poisoned relations with Russia was the rise of Vladimir Putin to power.  Putin, recall, grew up in the old KGB, has said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a geopolitical tragedy of historical proportion, and he’s been bent on restoring Russia to that empire preeminence from the start.  Nothing NATO might have done would have nothing to do with Putin’s drive for Russian empire restoring building.

Nor is Putin’s acquisitiveness unsurprising in light of Bush the Elder’s alleged promise not to expand NATO “one inch eastward” following German reunification as Walt suggested.  This suggestion is simply irrelevant since Bush made no such commitment.  What he did commit to was to not move to expand reunified German economic power eastward.

Finally, Walt’s assertion that NATO is an anachronism.  Quoting NATO’s first General Secretary General Hastings Lionel Ismay’s remark that the purpose of NATO was to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down, Walt claims that this is anachronistic with that collapse of the Soviet Union.  Russia’s invasion, partition, and occupation of Georgia and Ukraine, its cyber attacks on each of the Baltic States, and its redeployment of nuclear weapons near Russia’s western border and into Kaliningrad demonstrate the error of the assertion.  The error is compounded by Germany’s empirically demonstrated reluctance even to arm itself sufficiently to support NATO—there’s no nation here to keep down.  The error is proven by America’s loud insistence that the member nations honor their 2% commitment, thereby showing our own interest in staying in.

Walt also tried to claim the irrelevancy of Russia in any event by insisting that

Russia is in fact a declining power that poses no threat to dominate Europe. Its population will decline over time, its median age is rising rapidly, and its economy remains mired in corruption and overly dependent on energy exports whose long-term value will probably go down as well. Remember, we are talking about a country whose entire economy—the ultimate foundation of national power—is smaller than Canada, South Korea, and Italy.

All of that is true, but those factors only emphasize the danger from Russia at the least in the near- and mid-term.  That danger is illustrated by those invasions, cyber attacks, and nuclear weapons redeployments.