WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Air Force secretary gets taste of future of aviation combat in AI-piloted craft.
Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds
May 5, 2024
WE USED TO MAKE THEM, BUT DECIDED IT WAS SMARTER TO OUTSOURCE THAT TO OUR LIKELY GEOPOLITICAL ENEMIES: America’s War Machine Runs on Rare-Earth Magnets. China Owns That Market.
The American war machine depends on tiny bits of metal, some as small as dimes. Rare-earth magnets are needed for F-35 jet fighters, missile-guidance systems, Predator drones and nuclear submarines.
The problem: China makes most of the world’s rare-earth magnets, with 92% of the global market share.
Now, Washington is doling out hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and tax credits to revive magnet-making in America. Defense manufacturers are on a clock.
A U.S. law in 2018 restricted the use of made-in-China magnets in American military equipment, shriveling the list of potential suppliers to a small number in Japan and the West. By 2027, the curbs will extend to magnets made anywhere that contain materials mined or processed in China, covering nearly all of the current global supply.
After three decades of post-Cold War deindustrialization, rebuilding the industry—against China’s market heft—is an uphill battle, even with government help. Only one company in the U.S. is in production of the dominant type of rare-earth magnet.
“We’re not going to be able to simply flip a switch and get to where we want to be,” said Anthony Di Stasio, a senior U.S. defense official. “The only thing that you can really judge success on right now is how many positive ripples have you made from throwing the rock into the lake.”
The office Di Stasio runs in the Defense Department is diving into supply chains to invest in the pieces and parts that make the military work. Much of what they invest in is processing minerals and making metals, betting that regardless of how, for example, submarine technology evolves, the same building blocks will be needed.
Plus: “In the West, mines and processing facilities face more regulations. There are only a small number of experts left in the field, requiring pricey workarounds such as importing foreign talent, sending Americans abroad for training and automating.”
THE LEFT NEVER FACED THIS KIND OF CAMPUS OPPOSITION BEFORE: Dueling pro-Palestinian, pro-Israel demonstrations hit Clemson.
SCREAMING CAMPUS GARBAGE BABIES LIVING UP TO THEIR NAME: TRASH: Humboldt campus occupiers left 8,000 LBS of debris, university says. I remember when Tea Party protesters left sites cleaner than they found them, and the press and our national deep thinkers called them barbarians.
A CINCO DE MAYO FLASHBACK TO A SIMPLER, MORE INNOCENT TIME:
Happy Cinco de Mayo! pic.twitter.com/QWCFHnsAKt
— Media Research Center (@theMRC) May 5, 2024
ROGER KIMBALL: From Idealism to Irresponsibility: Comparing College Protests Then and Now. “Like every major college protest since the 1960s, the pro-Palestinian—which is to say, the anti-Israel—protests sweeping college campuses today have early and often been compared with the protests of that annus horribilis, 1968. There are plenty of similarities but also plenty of differences. History repeats itself as student and faculty protestors align themselves with the totalitarians. Then it was the Viet Cong, Mao, and the Khmer Rouge. Today it is the Sunni Muslim terrorist group Hamas, the main puppet master of the “pro-Palestinian” agitators. One apparently striking difference is the strong current of anti-Semitism. It is ubiquitous now; it was not a factor in the protests of the 1960s and 1970s.”
CONSEQUENCES: Hagerty joins chorus of GOP senators stoking efforts to cut funding from universities hosting protests. “Hagerty appeared Saturday on Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street to react to reports that 2,000 college students were arrested on campuses in their pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Some were charged with misdemeanors such as trespassing, while others stand accused of assaulting police officers. Videos have come out from some of these protesters revealing antisemitic themes in their chants and signage.”
The problem isn’t these protests in particular, it’s the higher education sector in general, as an incubator of toxic ideas and hatred.
THEY HAVE TO SCOTCH THIS STUFF, IT’S HURTING DEMOCRATS: Wash U Law Faculty, Students, And Alumni Condemn Protest Crackdown.
IT’S WHO THEY ARE, IT’S WHAT THEY DO: The CDC is already mismanaging H5N1: The implications for the virus and the potential government response are vast and concerning.
After the way they blew it on Covid, it’s likely no one will listen to them anyway, so there’s that.
COULDN’T HAPPEN TO A NICER BUNCH: ‘Ozempic Face’ Destroying the Hollywood Beautiful People?
For the last decade, donations to NSJP have been received and administered by the Wespac Foundation, according to Howard Horowitz, Wespac’s board chairman. The donations are passed on to NSJP “for projects in the United States,” he said, declining to provide further details.
Wespac, a nonprofit based in Westchester County near New York City, is decades old, according to its website. It has supported humanitarian causes, as well as organizations that propagate antisemitism, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Wespac has posted support of pro-Palestinian protests on social media and posted videos in which protesters held signs that refer to President Biden as “Genocide Joe.” . . .
“There is nothing wrong with being a member of Hamas, being a leader of Hamas, being a fighter in Hamas,” Kates said. “These are the people that are on the front lines defending Palestine.”
Samidoun didn’t respond to emailed requests for comment. The German government banned the group last November after saying it supported terrorism and antisemitism, and incited the use of violence to enforce political interests.
This is just the surface.
May 4, 2024
OPEN THREAD: Light this candle.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA awards studies for commercial Mars missions.
IT’S HOW THE MACHINE WORKS: Thoughts on Selective Law Enforcement. “You have a right to free speech, but that doesn’t give you a First Amendment right to camp out on my lawn with protest signs. That’s trespassing. But government officials sometimes allow trespassing when they sympathize with the trespasser’s viewpoint. Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC have refused to remove progressive anti-Israel protesters camping out at private universities — Johns Hopkins University, the University of Pennsylvania, and George Washington University.”
This should give rise to civil rights lawsuits. Plus:
As a University of Pennsylvania alumnus notes, these illegal protests are only being allowed by progressive officials because of the viewpoint they are expressing. If the protesters were “white nationalists waving nazi flags and telling black people they should go back to Africa I’m sure [police] would be out there pretty quickly” to remove them. . . . This favoritism by progressive cities violates the First Amendment. According to the Supreme Court, the government cannot favor certain kinds of protests over others.
But that’s how the left rolls: “For my friends, everything. For my enemies: The law.”
Plus: “From what I can gather, the problem in cities is usually not that the police department itself is unwilling to assist, but that they are under orders from the mayor, afraid of upsetting far left constituents, to stand down. This is going a bit beyond my expertise, but from what I understand the Justice Department could and should, but won’t under the Biden administration, investigate whether these police departments are violating the terms of their federal funding, and also denying equal protection of the law, by refusing to enforce the law for ideological and political reasons. An added factor is that this lack of enforcement is to the specific detriment of Jewish students who have disproportionately faced threats, intimidation, and violence from people at the encampments.”
SO IN PROSECUTING TRUMP FOR MISHANDLING CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS, THE PROSECUTORS MISHANDLED THE CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS: Prosecutors: Docs in boxes seized from Mar-a-Lago were inadvertently jumbled. “Special counsel Jack Smith’s team acknowledged Friday that some evidence in the prosecution of former President Donald Trump for hoarding classified documents at his Florida home may not be in the same sequence FBI agents found it when they swept into the Mar-a-Lago compound with a search warrant in August 2022. The concession from prosecutors in a court filing Friday afternoon came after attorneys for one of Trump’s co-defendants asked for a delay in the case because the defense lawyers were having trouble determining precisely where particular documents had come from in the 33 boxes the FBI seized almost two years ago. In their filing, prosecutors acknowledged the government had previously — and incorrectly — told U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that the boxes remained ‘in their original, intact form as seized,’ other than a decision to replace classified documents with placeholder sheets.”
YOU DON’T WANT TO BE STUCK WITH AN OBSOLETE PLATFORM: Experts Discuss The Dark Likelihood of ‘Abandoned’ Brain Implant Technology.
THIS SHOULD MAKE TERRAFORMING EASIER: NASA’s Curiosity Rover Uncovers Signs of an Earth-Like Environment on Ancient Mars.
IT’S LIKE JURASSIC PARK FOR BIRDS: What happened when scientists taught parrots to video chat?
THE ATF PERFORMING TO ITS USUAL STANDARDS: South Carolinian Faced 115 Years in Prison Until ATF Admitted They Got the Wrong Man.
HE COULD DO A LOT WORSE, AND PROBABLY WILL: Is Winsome Sears on Trump’s Short List for a Running Mate? “She’s a rising star in Republican politics. Like Trump, she is known for delivering unfiltered opinions on controversial topics. At a time when college campuses are being disrupted by pro-Hamas demonstrations, the Trump campaign may be thinking about a strong show of support for law and order to contrast with Biden’s cowardice in addressing the problem. And, she is a black woman. Sears would provide a sharp contrast to Kamala Harris on a debate stage.” Well, yes, she can speak in coherent sentences and everything. Plus she has actual experience and substantive knowledge.
The born in Jamaica thing is an issue, though. You can’t be VP if you’re ineligible to be President. But the story just says her father is Jamaican. I don’t know if her mother is a U.S. citizen but if so she’s good no matter where she was born.