I don't remember seeing anything like that the last time my wife and I took a cruise, but then again we weren't on a luxury ship off the coast of Somalia.The Seabourn Spirit, owned by the cruise giant Carnival, was on its way from Alexandria in Egypt to the Kenyan port of Mombasa. It offers the height of luxury, with huge suites, marble bathrooms and more than one crew member to each passenger. Cruises aboard the liner cost from £6,100 for a 16-day sail to £18,270 for an epic 46-day voyage.
The liner used a sonic blaster to foil the pirates. Developed by American forces to deter small boats from attacking warships, the non-lethal weapon sends out high-powered air vibrations that blow assailants off their feet. The equipment, about the size of a satellite dish, is rigged to the side of the ship.
09 November, 2005
Cruise ships and sonic weapons
A little-commented-upon aspect of the failed attack on a cruise ship off the coast of Somalia was that the pirates were driven away, at least in part, by an advanced, nonlethal, sonic weapon similar to the ones now being deployed in Iraq. The whole story is in The Sunday Times of Britain. The key paragraphs:
The secret is finally out
I got a good chuckle out of this. Even if you can't trust the courts, you can count on someone to screw up. From the New York Times:
Another thought: maybe it wasn't a mistake? If the DNI thinks the CIA's old policy is wrong, the best way to circumvent it would be to "accidently" announce the number. Let's see if it happens again next year.
It should be interesting to see the CIA and DNI twist themselves into knots trying to reclassify a number in the public domain.WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 - In an apparent slip, a top American intelligence official has revealed at a public conference what has long been secret: the amount of money the United States spends on its spy agencies.
At an intelligence conference in San Antonio last week, Mary Margaret Graham, a 27-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency and now the deputy director of national intelligence for collection, said the annual intelligence budget was $44 billion.
The number was reported Monday in U.S. News and World Report, whose national security reporter, Kevin Whitelaw, was among the hundreds of people in attendance during Ms. Graham's talk.
"I thought, 'I can't believe she said that,' " Mr. Whitelaw said on Monday. "The government has spent so much time and energy arguing that it needs to remain classified."
The figure itself comes as no great shock; most news reports in the last couple of years have estimated the budget at $40 billion. But the fact that Ms. Graham would say it in public is a surprise, because the government has repeatedly gone to court to keep the current intelligence budget and even past budgets as far back as the 1940's from being disclosed.
Carl Kropf, a spokesman for the office of the director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, said Ms. Graham would not comment. Mr. Kropf declined to say whether the figure, which Ms. Graham gave last Monday at an annual conference on intelligence gathered from satellite and other photographs, was accurate, or whether her revelation was accidental.
Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, expressed amused satisfaction that the budget figure had slipped out.
"It is ironic," Mr. Aftergood said. "We sued the C.I.A. four times for this kind of information and lost. You can't get it through legal channels."
Another thought: maybe it wasn't a mistake? If the DNI thinks the CIA's old policy is wrong, the best way to circumvent it would be to "accidently" announce the number. Let's see if it happens again next year.
07 November, 2005
06 November, 2005
Government as insurance
The more I think about it, he more I'm inclined to see the central role of government as an insurance policy. Thus, the criticism that one doesn't get one's taxes worth of government misses the point. You don't pay insurance premiums hoping to receive a payout. You pay the premium in order to have the peace of mind that comes from knowing that help will be there if you need it.
But what about the other consequences of this approach? Police and fire services fit within the model, for the most part. It's very rare that a cop actually stops a crime. He comes into action in order to mitigate harm and restore the status quo. Likewise, one can make a case for a national catastrophic health care system. But unlimited welfare? No. Food stamps? No. Institutionalized government-managed charity would, in this model, be limited to short-term assistance.
Government has the added problem that it is, at least for some, a coerced insurance system. Keeping everyone "enrolled" has the effect of spreading the risk, but at the cost of the freedom to opt out. Then again, in a modern interdependent society the idea of opting out is more than a little problematic on the best of days, so that doesn't bother me all that much. What really bothers me is that it is a monopolistic coerced insurance system.
Insurance companies can raise their premiums for risky behavors. As a rule, governments don't: they simply prohibit the behaviors. For most othe risky behaviors--fire code violations, riding a motorcycle without a helmet, unprotected sex--there is little expectation of arrest, let alone a serious expectation of punishment. But whether or not one breaks the law, the payoff in a disaster is the same. Thus, it is "criminals," broadly defined, who get both freedom and support, and if they are engaged in risky activities they are also the people most likely to get a payoff. This is not a system conducive to either minimal regulation (as governments try to cut costs) or compliance with the law (as it doesn't effect payoffs). It also crowds out all non-governmental mechanisms for community and mutual support in daily life.
Sound familiar?
What would happen if taxes (premiums) could be better linked to risk? Probably they'd end up being so politicized that the current tax code would look simple in comparison. But what if there was real competition for some of the functions of government, based on competing insurers? I suspect that some people (especially the indigent and or retarded) would fall through the cracks. So maybe a competititve model could be coupled with a "mandatory minimum insurance" provision, similar to what we do now for drivers?
That sounds like it has possibilities. Not perfect, by any means. It still needs work. But it might be an improvement over what we have now.
But what about the other consequences of this approach? Police and fire services fit within the model, for the most part. It's very rare that a cop actually stops a crime. He comes into action in order to mitigate harm and restore the status quo. Likewise, one can make a case for a national catastrophic health care system. But unlimited welfare? No. Food stamps? No. Institutionalized government-managed charity would, in this model, be limited to short-term assistance.
Government has the added problem that it is, at least for some, a coerced insurance system. Keeping everyone "enrolled" has the effect of spreading the risk, but at the cost of the freedom to opt out. Then again, in a modern interdependent society the idea of opting out is more than a little problematic on the best of days, so that doesn't bother me all that much. What really bothers me is that it is a monopolistic coerced insurance system.
Insurance companies can raise their premiums for risky behavors. As a rule, governments don't: they simply prohibit the behaviors. For most othe risky behaviors--fire code violations, riding a motorcycle without a helmet, unprotected sex--there is little expectation of arrest, let alone a serious expectation of punishment. But whether or not one breaks the law, the payoff in a disaster is the same. Thus, it is "criminals," broadly defined, who get both freedom and support, and if they are engaged in risky activities they are also the people most likely to get a payoff. This is not a system conducive to either minimal regulation (as governments try to cut costs) or compliance with the law (as it doesn't effect payoffs). It also crowds out all non-governmental mechanisms for community and mutual support in daily life.
Sound familiar?
What would happen if taxes (premiums) could be better linked to risk? Probably they'd end up being so politicized that the current tax code would look simple in comparison. But what if there was real competition for some of the functions of government, based on competing insurers? I suspect that some people (especially the indigent and or retarded) would fall through the cracks. So maybe a competititve model could be coupled with a "mandatory minimum insurance" provision, similar to what we do now for drivers?
That sounds like it has possibilities. Not perfect, by any means. It still needs work. But it might be an improvement over what we have now.
30 October, 2005
Feeling good
Tech Central Station published a little essay of mine last week. It's a good feeling every time I see my work in print. And every time something like this happens I ask myself--why don't I do it more often?
24 October, 2005
ICANN and the UN
Proposals to place the internet under some kind of international control, an "authority" for the good of all, continue to emerge from a slew of people who see open systems as a threat, and who want to turn this "global resource" into a source of wealth and power for themselves.
It's all for the "common good," of course. Of course it is.
There are two good things about this mess: (1) the people who want to take charge of the internet are the same opportunists who have mismanaged so many other programs, and (2) there are too many people--in too many positions of power--who profit from the present arrangement. Any deal to transfer the administration of the internet to the control of one of more IGOs would have to promise at least the same rewards to those influentials as they have now, if the proposal is to have sufficient support to be enacted.
Like so many other situations, the best hope for the little people is the way in which the various powerful actors watch and block the actions of one another.
It's all for the "common good," of course. Of course it is.
There are two good things about this mess: (1) the people who want to take charge of the internet are the same opportunists who have mismanaged so many other programs, and (2) there are too many people--in too many positions of power--who profit from the present arrangement. Any deal to transfer the administration of the internet to the control of one of more IGOs would have to promise at least the same rewards to those influentials as they have now, if the proposal is to have sufficient support to be enacted.
Like so many other situations, the best hope for the little people is the way in which the various powerful actors watch and block the actions of one another.
22 October, 2005
The Precautionary Principle
From a recent Stratfor policy analysis of the reactions to biotechnology and nanotechnology:
The precautionary principle desribed above is actually the intersection of two fundamental (and all too common) logical fallacies: (1) to measure the costs without regard for the gains, and (2) to demand nothing less than certainty in a fundamentally uncertain world.
But all that, after all, may be irrelevant, if the proponents of the principle are only interested in a prohibition based on a 'moral' (ideological, religious) absolute, while looking to cloak it in the vocabulary of a cost-benefit "rationality" that they in fact reject.
This is both the strength and the weakness of fanaticism. It's not possible to argue with a fanatic. On the other hand, once most people recognize the fanatic for what she is, the fanatic loses.
The most ambitious attempt to make fundamental changes in the structure that regulates new technologies is being offered by ETC Group, which is calling for an international convention on the public's right to accept or decline new technology -- the International Convention on the Evaluation of New Technologies. This step, which essentially calls for the politicization of scientific and technological progress, has long been an objective of anti-chemicals and anti-biotechnology advocates. Some of these advocates have relied on a radical interpretation of the precautionary principle, which argues simply that a new product should be "proven safe" before it is allowed on the market. Taken to its logical extreme, of course, this would stifle all new technology by demanding that creators prove a negative (that it is not possible for their products to be harmful). This clearly being the case, the only way to certify that the negative "no harm" has been achieved would be to turn to political judgments, rather than scientific ones.
The precautionary principle desribed above is actually the intersection of two fundamental (and all too common) logical fallacies: (1) to measure the costs without regard for the gains, and (2) to demand nothing less than certainty in a fundamentally uncertain world.
But all that, after all, may be irrelevant, if the proponents of the principle are only interested in a prohibition based on a 'moral' (ideological, religious) absolute, while looking to cloak it in the vocabulary of a cost-benefit "rationality" that they in fact reject.
This is both the strength and the weakness of fanaticism. It's not possible to argue with a fanatic. On the other hand, once most people recognize the fanatic for what she is, the fanatic loses.
Thomas Schelling
I was moved by a post from Steven D. Levitt on his class with Thomas Schelling. How I wish I'd had that class--Schelling's books were on the short list that got me interested in political economy and strategy. It seems that whenever there's an interesting idea to explore, Schelling got there first. He was long overdue for the nobel prize he received this year. Now I learn he was (is) a great teacher, too. How does he do it?
19 October, 2005
Human Security Report
The Human Security Report is out, and surprise! The world is getting better. I wonder if it could have something to do with the spread of capitalist globalization?
Biodefense
Here's an interesting item from the NTI's Global Security Newswire. Apparently clinical (nonhuman) testing has proven positive for "antisense technology" that reduces the lethality of Anthrax, Marburg, or Ricin. It appears to be gene-specific, not a universal "magic bullet," but this could have some interesting defense applications.
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