A new sort of supply-chain resilience

RETAIL DEMOCRACY: "Weaving a New Kind of Company: By encouraging its suppliers to become shareholders, an Indian retailer may become a model for the developing world," by Manjeet Kripalani, BusinessWeek, 23 &30 March 2009.

Three paras tell all:

Fabindia was founded in 1960 by John Bissell, an American working for the Ford Foundation in New Delhi, and is now run by his 42-year-old son, William. It has 97 stores in India's big cities and small towns. In 2008, it had revenues of $65 million, an increase of 30% over the previous year. And as Fabindia has grown, it has come to depend entirely on some 22,000 weavers, block printers, woodworkers, and organic farmers to provide the handmade goods it sells. "We're somewhere between the 17th century, with our artisan suppliers, and the 21st century, with our consumers," says Bissell.

Bissell and his staff have worked with the artisans to integrate them into Fabindia and, by extension, the modern economy. At first that meant helping artisans refine their traditional homespun designs to appeal to more chic urban tastes as well as improving the consistency of their wares.

Two years ago, Bissell went even further. He set up 17 centers throughout India, each organized around a particular region's artisanal tradition. These centers, in turn, were incorporated as companies in which artisans collectively own 26%. Fabindia encourages each artisan to buy shares, which cost $2 apiece--a reasonable sum for a weaver who might make a monthly profit of $100 from selling his woven cotton to Fabindia.A wholly owned Fabindia company controls 49% of each subsidiary; the rest is held by other Fabindia employees and private investors. So far, 15,000 artisans have become shareholders. The ownership structure is mutually beneficial for Fabindia and the artisans; the retailer ensures it has the supplies it needs, while the weavers, dyers, and so forth lock in steady income. "We pool our effort and funds, the artisans pool theirs, and we share the risk," says Bissell.

I love the temporal bridging concept: linking the 17th and 21st centuries.

A SOA world rewards service-oriented companies

INFO TECH: "Tech Spending: The Great Divide; Hardware and software vendors are hurting, but services-oriented companies are going great guns," by Steve Hamm, BusinessWeek, 23 & 30 March 2009.

Enterra doesn't sell hardware or software; we sell services as solutions.

That's why we're doing so well despite the current market. You can cut back on the stuff you buy, but what you have has to be maximally and efficiently employed.

Anyone else having trouble with the weblog?

My friend, NYkrinDC, writes to say that the weblog layout is really screwed up for him and sends this link to prove it.

It looks fine for me (but it would, I designed it). Here's what it's supposed to look like:

So, can you tell me what the weblog (http://thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog, not the home page (http://thomaspmbarnett.com)) looks like for you and what kind of monitor you've got (laptop. widescreen, regular CRT, etc.)?

Thanks!

What would it be like if terrorists launched random shooting sprees all over America in chaotic, intermittent pattern?

Wait a tick, we've already got that.

They come in bunches, with the initial one in any group triggering copycats. Some linger long in our memory, like Columbine, but most do not.

They happen anywhere, anytime. These "sleepers" awaken on their own timetable, but more stress in life brings more--go figure.

Naturally, our society is completely incapacitated by these developments. Work stops. Culture grinds to a halt. Politics ends. We are reduced to living in small, self-sufficient communities that squabble over remaining resources.

On the brighter side, I should soon be hearing about which teams I get to see at Lambeau this year.

If I can brave the badlands between here and Green Bay, I might risk the venture.

Good news at last

COLUMN: A Rare Triumph of Substance at the Summit, By Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post, April 3, 2009; Page A12

ARTICLE: Nations Craft Hard-Fought Pledge To Repair World Financial System, By Michael D. Shear and Anthony Faiola, Washington Post, April 3, 2009; Page A01

ARTICLE: A Lifeline for Nations Both Rich and Poor, By Anthony Faiola and Mary Jordan, Washington Post, April 3, 2009; Page A10

EDITORIAL: 'We Did Okay', Washington Post, April 3, 2009; Page A18

From Pearlstein, never a BSer:

While President Obama may have overstated things a bit when he declared it a "turning point" for the now-shrinking global economy, the meeting did manage to boost the confidence of financial markets, inject another trillion dollars into the financial system and provide needed political cover for world leaders to take unpopular actions back home.

Better yet:

The push for broader, tighter cross-border financial regulation, in fact, came largely in response to the light-touch approach of the Bush administration. But whatever transatlantic tension once existed over that issue pretty much melted away last week when Tim Geithner outlined the new administration's regulatory reform proposal, which could just as easily have been written at the French Finance Ministry as at the U.S. Treasury.

In the end, yesterday's communique, with its promise of a global regulatory crackdown, was an easy win for all concerned. Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel could declare victory over unfettered Anglo-American capitalism, while Obama now has added political ammunition for taking on the banks, hedge funds, rating agencies and private-equity firms that will try to water down his proposals. While that may constitute a turning point for Anglo-American capitalism, it is hardly the death knell.

Without a doubt, that's why I voted for Obama versus McCain: the ability to adjust to legitimate competing pressures from familiar and rising great powers.

Brown declaring the death of the Washington Consensus is truly meaningless. China's rise made that clear years ago.

But what I like: the clear supremacy of the G-20 in this process--that alone being a big change.

The best Pearlstein:

It may suit the politics of Europe to portray all this as a blow to Washington's power and prestige, but the reality may be quite different. In fact, the shift is perfectly in keeping with the new emphasis on the developing world that Obama brings to international economic policy. And if any countries are likely to lose out in the restructuring, they are those of "old Europe" that, by dint of history, now wield power far in excess of their importance in the global economy.

From the second piece, we get a sense of Obama-as-Wilson-done-right, meaning a guy who gives when appropriate but stands firm when appropriate. As Shear and Faiola note, "The consensus was remarkable given the discord that preceded Thursday's meeting." The key moment? Obama button-holes Sarkozy and Hu and gets the final pieces in place.

From the third piece, clear direction regarding the IMF as the depository of new rules for financial functioning of the global economy:

The IMF, established at the end of World War II to help restore health to the global economy and currency system, will be transformed into an agency that not only targets nations in crisis but also takes a stronger role in the surveillance of financial systems around the world. It will regularly monitor and report on stresses and faults in countries, theoretically exercising more influence over their actions.

Yes, some IMF money will be made available to richer countries, but bigger development to me is that this time China is giver and not recipient, hence the effective downshifting of the IMF's purview--as it should be.

As for the use of SDRs, I personally don't see the rise of global currency in that whatsoever. It is, as one analyst put it recently, truly the Esperanto of currencies.

I think what the move represents is merely a buying of time for the system as a whole to engineer serious alternatives to the dollar, such as the further rise of the euro and something coming out of Asia. I just don't see a great leap forward to any global currency before those developments mature, and once they do, and we have a trilateral balance, I won't see the need for it.

Finally, a good word was put in for free trade, which needs all the good words it can get right now.

Overall, I think we did better than Geithner's "okay." I think Obama passed a big test in terms of global leadership.

Where the Brief began

REPORT: Underkill: Scalable Capabilities for Military Operations amid Populations (pdf), By David C. Gompert et al., Rand, 2009

I did the original global futures scenario planning for the directorate (when it was still just the Marines' shop) approximately 12 years ago. The purpose of the drill was to test the sensitivity of nonlethal weapons across a variety of global futures.

What it found? They were valuable in basically all future paths.

The docs that resulted:

"The U.S. Marine Corps and Non-Lethal Weapons in the 21st Century: Summary Report," by Henry J. Kenny, John J. Nelson, Thomas P.M. Barnett and Butch Foley, Center for Naval Analyses, Quick Response Report CQR-98-8, Sept. 1998.

"The U.S. Marine Corps and Non-Lethal Weapons in the 21st Century: Alternative Global and Regional Futures," by Thomas P.M. Barnett and John J. Nelson, Center for Naval Analyses, Quick Response Report CQR-98-9, Sept. 1998.

"The U.S. Marine Corps and Non-Lethal Weapons in the 21st Century: Annex B--Briefing Slides," by Thomas P.M. Barnett, Center for Naval Analyses, Quick Response Report CQR-98-10, Sept. 1998.

Why I mention?

The briefing slides were the original version of "The brief" ever to see publication. I had originally made the brief (as I noted in PNM) for a EUCOM study. It was rejected by the project leader. I made the brief happen anyway with support from Hank Gaffney. It was later used (and greatly expanded and revamped) here.

The Marines directorate eventually became the Joint one. These reports were made to the USMC Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans, Policy and Operations.

That brief ran 124 slides. I delivered it once, down at Quantico. I don't use any of those slides now and haven't in years, but it's what started the whole ball rolling. It also became the basis for the one class (elective) I taught at the Naval War College on scenario planning. The students gave me such high feedback marks that I received a $500 teaching bonus.

Stavridis, COIN and Colombia

POST: Colombia and Counter-Insurgency, By Admiral Jim Stavridis, SOUTHCOM Blog, Mar 31 2009

Stavridis, by all accounts, has done a smashing job at SOUTHCOM. Now, recent rumint says he goes to EUCOM (although previously some had him going to PACOM).

This is a quick description of his definition of COIN success in Colombia.

Stimulating Asia the right way

GLOBAL CRISIS: "Prying Open Asian Wallets: With exports plunging, governments are prodding consumers to save less and spend more," by Frederik Balfour, BusinessWeek, 23 & 30 March 2009.

Some send cash (Thailand and Japan), while others focus on vouchers (Taiwan) and coupons (China).

Experts say the Taiwanese approach makes the most sense: you want spending, not mattress stuffing.

When markets work, and when they don't

BOOKS: "Irrational Exuberance Writ Large: Two superstar economists on how psychological factors led to the bust and may impede a turnaround (Animal Spirits by George Akerlof and Robert Shiller), by Michael Mandel, BusinessWeek, 29-30 March 2009.

The concept of "animal spirits" isn't new. Keynes coined the term. Akerlof and Shiller see animal spirits as the main cause of the current financial crisis.

Any discussion of globalization is eschewed. As Mandel points out, the term doesn't even appear in the index:

The omission is disturbing: It is difficult to believe that a world economy with near-instantaneous communications, and including a mix of Western and Asian cultures, is driven by the same psychological factors as those that held sway during the last great U.S. boom and bust, in the 1920s and '30s--a period the authors look to often. Indeed, one alternative to the Akerlof-Shiller theory is that, prior to the recent meltdown, investors, consumers, and businesses simply made a mistake when faced with the complexities of globalization and technological change.

Frankly, I find the reviewer's logic more compelling, even as I see the ultimate root cause of this crisis being the structural imbalance in world trade: Asia exports and saves, while America buys and gets deeper in debt. (Go figure! It couldn't go on forever!).

Also, I simply don't see the need to choose between impulse and rational actor models. When the markets work well, the rational model holds, and when they don't, it's often because rational behavior is bypassed by greed or ignorance. So the former phenom gives us some sense of the ceiling and the latter gives us some sense of the floor. Why must I therefore choose between them?

Turkey's new accountability re: missing Kurds

WORLD NEWS: "Turkey Begins Dig for Missing Kurds In Push for New State Accountability," by Nicholas Birch, Wall Street Journal, 10 March 2009.

Interesting to watch.

Obviously, plenty of internal political dynamics pushing for this, as the Islamist ruling party under Erdogan wants to gain more control over the military and this sort of investigation certainly puts the military on the defensive.

But you likewise have to expect that Turkey's growing investment in the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq plays a part in this reasoning.

China's own know they're not pros yet

ARTICLE: China grapples with new world role, By Eric Baculinao, NBC News, March 31, 2009

Unhappy China? Join the club.

Don't need to, because Beijing academic answers the mail brilliantly at bottom of article:

China 'not ready to lead'

But one critic of the book, Hu Xingdou, an economics professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology, called its publication a sign of the "ideological chaos" in China.

"Extreme nationalism is not the answer, and China is not ready to lead," declared Hu, while acknowledging the authors' right to express their opinion.

"As for Chimerica, China cannot possibly exercise leadership shoulder to shoulder with the United States simply because China is not qualified," he said, arguing that China's "soft power" is far from adequate.

"China's value systems - its ideological, political and cultural systems - are not yet part of the global mainstream," he explained.

Hu dismissed China's prosperity as deceptive. "Essentially, we remain as the peasant laborer of the world, relying on cheap labor and cheap products."

He likened the current situation to the 1930's Great Depression when Stalin's Soviet Union seemed to have the upper hand over the ailing Western economies. "I hope China will learn the lesson and not take the road taken by Stalin," he said.

"Only by undertaking political reform and democracy can China qualify to lead the world, and also avert domestic crisis and insure long-term prosperity," he said.

(Thanks: Jeff Jennings)

Tom in the New Atlanticist

POST: Ricks' The Gamble: Much Better Than Fiasco, By
Magnus Nordenman, New Atlanticist, March 31, 2009

Reference to Tom and Admiral Fallon:

From Ricks' perspective it is clear that Admiral "Fox" Fallon was not asked to resign as combatant commander because of his frank remarks on Iran to grand strategist turned journalist Thomas Barnett, but because he actively resisted the surge strategy in Iraq.

Tom hasn't read book but said, "If Gamble is that much better, then it must be spectacular because Fiasco was brilliant."

So much for China's web censors!

FRONT PAGE: "Mythical Beast (a Dirty Pun) Tweaks China's Web Censors," by Michael Wines, New York Times, 12 March 2009.

This one is too funny.

Smart-asses in China start this online phenom about a mythical beast whose name slips past Chinese government censors screens, despite the formulation's obvious verbal mimicking of an "especially vile obscenity."

It becomes a YouTube sensation, a nature documentary, an extraordinary consumer fad, and the subject of scholarly treatises.

Why?

Apparently, everybody involved loves making government censors look ridiculous, in addition to making a yuan while they can.

Good glimpse of the future.

IBM moving into broader SysAdmin work

TECHNOLOGY: "IBM Dives Into Water Venture: Touting "Smarter Planet," Big Blue Pushes Technology to Manage Resources," by William M. Bulkeley, Wall Street Journal, 13 March 2009.

I do like the commercials.

IBM seeing a future in water management, alt energies and carbon management makes a lot of sense to me.

The rise of the global middle class will invariably re-price every resource on the planet, with the biggest changes occurring in the realms not previously well-priced--like water.

I admire IBM for the vision.

The fast and the getting-closer-to-furious in the Kingdom

FRONT PAGE: "Saudi Racers Roar All Night, Fueled by Boredom," by Robert F. Worth, New York Times, 8 March 2009.

Fascinating article on Saudi Arabia's "vast and underemployed generation of young people" turning to "these reckless night battles" that serve as a "collective scream of frustration."

Very well written.

Simplification

As a new opportunity that I can't turn down suddenly appears to me, one that dovetails nicely with everything Enterra does and represents, I find that I need to simplify the career track right now.

As everybody is presently clearing decks and reordering priorities, it's a great time for me as well, now that the book effort is fundamentally consummated.

So one decision's now be made: by mutual agreement, Oak Ridge National Lab and I are going to part ways. It was a very nice run, in which I learned a lot, but the monthly time commitment had lost a lot of its appeal for me a while ago (there is only so much traveling one can do in a year), and so when my main sponsor there went into semi-retirement, the timing seemed right and we decided to pull the plug this morning.

Naturally, my ties--by extension--to U Tennessee's Howard Baker Center disappear, but frankly, that relationship had also pretty much gone away once the director who signed me up had left to run George W. Bush's presidential library, so the timing's good there too.

I did enjoy getting to know east Tennessee, but the grind of four commuter flights every month to get there and back . . . that won't be missed. Instead, this new opportunity will be DC-focused--much easier to access and good overlap with Enterra travel.

I'd like to publicly thank everybody at Oak Ridge who helped me over the years--going back to late 2005. Again, it was a wonderful experience to interact with such world-class talent.

There is some question as to whether or not I'll keep the column going, which began years ago as part of my eastern Tennessee portfolio. I knew I wanted to keep it through Great Powers, but I didn't have any plans beyond that. It is a certain mental effort to crank a new one each week, and I need to think hard about whether or not I can fit that in over the coming months, given Enterra's intimidating upward trajectory.

Knoxville News-Sentinel's boss Jack McElroy has indicated that he'd really like me to keep doing it. He just decided to move my column to Saturday in the rotation--a very nice sign of faith in an era where downsizing is the norm for print papers (indeed, times are extraordinarily grim). So I took it as a real compliment that KNS wanted to keep the column despite a reorganization of the Sunday issue.

I've contacted Scripps Howard to gauge their desire. The service has been very good to me, and I'd like to see if we can maintain the link.

Thinking about it, I realize that I did a biweekly column for about a year with KNS before gearing up for a weekly one. I've been weekly since KNS started uploading to Scripps back in October 2006.

Sunday will be my 148th column overall, and perhaps my last in the series. Sad to consider, but I like to be realistic about schedules and this may be the thing that needs to go versus the blog or continuing to write for Esquire. The emerging opportunity will simply demand a certain amount of time.

Sad but exciting at the same time. I honestly like big shifts in my career. As soon as I start feeling too comfortable about my constellation, my instinct is remap it dramatically. I guess I fear staleness most of all--haunted by that "bouncing the rubble" metaphor.

My wife always says I'm happiest when I'm doing things like traveling heavily with Steve and collaborating with him, or when I get new opportunities like this one coming up, so it seems like a good, safe choice in these times to go with things that bring me a lot of joy, keep me creative, and build upon things about which I care deeply.

You know, I think it's finally starting to hit me that I'm going to be a father again.

Hopefully Iraq:SysAdmin::AFPAK:DoEE

ARTICLE: Flournoy: Create a U.S. Civilian Response Corps,
By JOHN T. BENNETT, Defense News, 27 Mar 2009

I've said for a long time that any serious effort to start building a Department of Everything Else would start with creating some bureaucratic center of gravity for the personnel who are being generated across the system but, as of yet, don't really have anywhere to report with their developing skill sets. The civilian corps idea has been bounced around for years now. In Q and A, I've always said that I thought it would take another big effort/mistake to trigger a serious leap forward, anticipating that either a revived effort on Afghanistan or some new triggered event would reveal far too painfully the gap and thus trigger a far more serious response. Is it better to see this happening up front, as we mount the revived effort on Afghanistan? You bet. Very encouraging.

So, good stuff that a lot of us have been waiting on for a while. Flournoy is a very smart player, so no surprise that, coming into the Wolfowitz-then-Feith job, she realizes past mistakes or limp efforts and wants to make her mark strongly from the start.

From the institutional perspective, Iraq accomplished a lot for the SysAdmin force and function. Hopefully, Afghanistan, in its years of efforts, will do the same for the Department of Everything Else.

Calling a spade a spade

ARTICLE: Clinton Calls Years of Afghan Aid 'Heartbreaking' in Their Futility, By Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, March 31, 2009; Page A07

Here's Hillary once again speaking the harsh truth on past failure, this time U.S. developmental aid to Afghanistan.

An important sign amidst word of the civilian corps' creation (finally!).

Cuba: the possibilities

ARTICLE: Momentum Grows for Relaxing Cuba Policy, By Shailagh Murray and Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, March 30, 2009; Page A01

Good to see Obama moving in this direction. Menendez's arguments about other state's lasting connectivity to Cuba misses the point. We are the King Kong in this equation, especially in terms of the expat money we can trigger. Cuba is still there for a relative song. I say, turn our Cubans loose and let's see what we can engineer in terms of communism's collapse there and Cuba's return to the American fold, with all the possibilities that entails.

Imagine that! A weapon designed to "kill"!

ARTICLE: Report: Chinese Develop Special "Kill Weapon" to Destroy U.S. Aircraft Carriers, U. S. Naval Institute, March 31, 2009

This has all the hallmarks of an analytic "duh!" (although if you click through the piece to the Information Dissemination piece, the analysis there is worth perusing). The Chinese military has actually created a weapon designed to kill! Thank God our carriers exist only to "project power" and "provide presence" instead of parking a death-wielding, mega-destructive air capability right off your coast!

Understand this: carriers represent our primary military threat to China's ability to threaten Taiwan's ability to stand up to the PLA. On that basis, is there any big surprise China works to diminish that U.S. capacity?

The big point to be remembered in this piece is that we've been expecting this capacity from the Chinese for years. There is no surprise here; there is only revelation in a public sense. The Chinese have not "snuck up" on us, we've been talking about this threat for most of my career.

Quite frankly, carrier "vulnerability" is overblown anyway in the sense that we have let ourselves get overly reliant on these giant single-nodes in our fleet that--in the end--cannot be kept invulnerable in the way we want. Everything in security affairs has trended toward the many and the cheap, and a sea-skimming, fast ballistic missile fits that bill nicely against a many-billion-dollar carrier. Eventually, we've going to have to ask ourselves if having a navy built around carriers is as much the strategic answer going forward that we've let it become up to now.

Having said that, the larger strategic reality still remains: you sink a US carrier and you've just bought yourself the full weight and strategic fury of the U.S. government--and people. If you dare to cross that line, expect to get seriously torched. That is simply a tripwire too damn big for us to ignore.

Holding the entire navy force structure hostage to some high-end requirement to keep carriers somehow "invulnerable" is--by plenty of objective standards--a waste of resources. What makes them invulnerable to state actors is what would result from sinking one of them--not their ability to avoid taking hits. As for non-state actors, that's a different ball of wax (force protection in the more prosaic sense).

Let's be clear: this is an impressive capability and a dangerous one, but it cannot be viewed in isolation (that glorious tendency in our national security community to view war-solely-win-the-context-of-war), as though sinking U.S. carriers is no big deal--just another chess piece knocked off the board. That's just not how it works in great-power war overladen with nuclear possibilities. In some ways, despite the high-tech nature of this Chinese capability, we have a tendency to view it in terms more akin to World War II thinking ("The Chinese will sink one of our carriers and then where will we be!"), when what we really need to be asking ourselves is whether or not it's particularly smart for the U.S. Navy to let its force structure be so heavily determined by the Taiwan scenario.

Viewed solely within the combat logic of that scenario, then this is a huge deal. We can't be sure we can dominate China's military vis-a-vis the Taiwan scenario. But honestly, at some point, we need to back off from these threat porn images and ask ourselves: is the military we want going forward going to have to account for domination over every rising great power's military in those scenarios in which the opposition is overwhelmingly advantaged--like Taiwan. I mean, that's an impossibly high standard that I really don't think my navy should be organized around, especially since every service traditionally pulls the same scenarioizing tricks to generate force structure requirements that are--in aggregate--simply unsustainable.

I admit: if I have this conversation with somebody like Galrahn, then it remains professional, but contextualizing rationality goes out the frickin' window when budgets are on the line. Then it's all, "So you're saying America should just put 5,000 of our sons and daughters in harm's way simply because we're unwilling to spend the money to defend our carriers!!!!"

[And yeah, the logical counter about staying deeper at sea with carriers and simply flooding the battlespace with more UAVs and cruise missiles, etc. {see Louis' comment} gets lost in the shuffle, because that's not how an admiral traditionally defends his fleet in budget battles.]

Would I like to have a military that can dominate any threat from any force at any time anywhere in the world? One that can instantly reverse any strategic gains sought or obtained by any opposition force?

Yeah, sure. Sounds great.

Do I expect America will live in that world going forward? No, I don't.

Again, we have to ask ourselves to place these amazing warfighting scenarios in the context of the actual world we find ourselves inhabiting today. Anybody out there who thinks we will slowly advance through some big-war scenario that sees the Chinese repeatedly sink our carriers is simply nuts. We would elevate rapidly, signaling that intent all the way. On the far side there wouldn't be a Taiwan you could inhabit, and China would end up getting crushed in a pointless manner. America would still be around, but deeply wounded by events.

In short, there is no faster way to turn both the US and China into secondary powers that to engage in some pointless war over Taiwan.

And yet, in a tough budgetary environment, expect to see oodles of carrier porn and fighter jet porn and all manner of force structure porn teased out endlessly. This isn't about defending Taiwan; this is about defending contracts and jobs and budget shares.

In short, it's a glorious sort of Orwellian phrasing: others' weapons kill, ours are for security; other nations' weapons are offensive, while ours are strictly defensive.

One telling bit from this article: it doesn't seem to indicate whether or not America already possesses the capability ascribed to this new-but-long-in-the-coming Chinese capability.

Question: Do we have this capability ourselves or not? Assuming we do (or are you telling me we spent the last decade waiting on the Chinese to develop this capability first?), did we expect to retain it solely forever?

So again, how much surprise in this discovery I've been hearing about for years and years?

If I'm the unsuspecting public who gets this "disturbing" report of China's "latest aggression" on Lou Dobbs tonight, I am simply stunned: "What is up with that? Why would the Chinese plan to sink our carriers!" And so on.

But nobody lays out the surrounding scenarios with any fidelity to a real-world I would recognize--as in, please, play out for me the 25k losses we take in the first week of major war with China over Taiwan. Tell me how that plays out with the American public, with T bills, with the global economy, with our allies. Tell me how that one ends in a manner I can live with, because if you can't, stop spinning me yarns of crazy-ass wars I simply will not end up fighting.

Imagine the history book you read decades from now that describes how the United States decided to torch global order by fighting China in a major war over something somebody in Taipei said or did one afternoon. Imagine how stupid that's gonna read.

So yeah, the navy community will run with this. Carriers will be declared all that more important. Billions will be set aside for this and that capacity. And the Navy will plan vigorously for the all-important major war with China.

By all means, be afraid. See the "inescapable logic" and call your Congressman, demanding action. Fence off another chunk of the big-war defense budget, like we're flush with cash.

But you know what? Porn desensitizes. In other words, it makes you stupid over time.

None of the larger strategic realities--both military and non-military--between China and the U.S. can be altered by technologies such as these.

But what the hell? In this depressive phase we're in, everybody's piling on the pessimism porn, the threat porn, the chaos porn.

Run with it, baby.

(Thanks: Michael S. Smith II)