Yawn 🥱

Is the penetration potential of the GBU-57 MOP adequate for Fordow?

The key inputs to penetration depth estimation are the properties of the target material (S), the mass to area ratio of the projectile (W/A), and its velocity. Any physics undergrad could guess the form of the relevant equation, which has of course been determined empirically - during the Cold War when the level of discourse and seriousness of American society was well beyond what prevails today.

The C. Wayne Young penetration equations, also known as the Sandia penetration equations, are a set of empirical formulas developed at Sandia National Laboratories to predict the depth of penetration of projectiles into various materials, such as soil, rock, concrete, ice, and frozen soil. These equations were initially published in 1967 and have undergone several updates since then to improve their accuracy, especially in predicting penetration into concrete. The latest version of the equations was published in 1997.

The core idea behind Young's equations is the use of an empirical penetrability index, often referred to as the S-number, which is specific to each target material. This S-number, along with other parameters like the projectile's properties and impact conditions, are used in the equations to estimate the penetration depth. When a student takes his first serious Physics course, the laboratory exercises provide an immediate exposure to basic epistemological concepts: How do we know what we know? What is our level of conviction in a particular inference? What are quantitative estimates of uncertainty? etc.

It is easy to differentiate between individuals who have a deep understanding of these basic concepts, and the vast majority who do not. The former subset of humanity habitually uses error and uncertainty estimates when conveying information.

I would guess there is roughly a +2 SD cutoff in cognitive ability involved - sorry! ☹️

Sadly, no amount of education (outside of a few subjects like Physics) will guarantee that an individual obtains this deep understanding. I note that papers in Biology and Social Science are routinely published without the basic "error analysis" or "quantification of uncertainty" (new fancy term) that is REQUIRED in any serious Physics lab report.

osti.gov/servlets/purl/…

I would say this thesis is rapidly becoming conventional wisdom among many Chinese technologists and even some US technologists.

It would be interesting to hear a serious debate between an advocate for this view and a typical neoliberal economist who defends financialization of the US economy. high-capacity.com/p/chinese-indu…

Intercept rate vs this group of missiles is very low 🤔

See my earlier analysis 👇

Iran is likely mixing old inaccurate missiles with newer types, to exhaust Israeli anti-missile supplies.

Israel's strict censorship prevents us from learning what targets are hit.

https://x.com/hsu_steve/status/1933693958405738555?t=W8115wag9v0F84wdx1RPCw&s=19

From my article in The Spectator on US-China military competition:

Why are the DeepSeek moments coming now? There are two reasons. The first is that China is beginning to fully utilize its human capital. In the early 21st century, just 5 percent of Chinese students could attend college – but now that percentage is ten times larger, comparable to the richest western countries. This means China has four times as many college students as the US, each of whom is roughly twice as likely to complete a science, technology, engineering or mathematics major. The rate of production of young scientists and engineers is almost ten times as large as in the US and the total pool of Chinese college graduates with AI training is comparable to the number produced by the whole of the rest of the world.

Second, spending on research and development (R&D) in public and in private in the US and China is now similar, at $1 trillion PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) in each country. It’s important to talk about PPP dollars because the cost of research is dominated by the cost of salaries and equipment that are determined locally in each country. The cost to hire an engineer in China is less than in the US, but recently even the cost of laboratory equipment and infrastructure is lower, since it can be sourced domestically rather than imported. Because R&D spending is growing more quickly in China, we can project that it could be 50 percent larger than in the US by 2030. This trend is reflected in China’s rapidly accelerating output of highly cited research papers, patents and new products.

These observations are general – they apply to research areas as diverse as solar panels, batteries, semiconductors, drug discovery, satellites, rocketry, AI, robotics and many more. So brace yourself for numerous DeepSeek moments in the future – until at some point they no longer surprise us.

...

We are witnessing a tectonic shift in global power dynamics. DeepSeek moments – from AI to air combat – are not anomalies but symptoms of a broader realignment. If America wants to compete, it must urgently reimagine its national strategy. Being militarily “ready” is not enough. The US must revitalize public R&D, embrace AI-driven defense systems and forge alliances.

But the greatest challenge America faces may be psychological. We must all abandon the idea that China is just a copycat nation. The PRC no longer imitates but innovates, and as its military-industrial complex matures, the Western Pacific’s future hinges not on past hegemony, but on who adapts fastest to this new era.

These graphs tell the whole story.

Markets in Catastrophe Risk

Catastrophe bonds serve a real purpose - similar to Reinsurance. They allow insurers to pay willing counterparties to bear risk from natural catastrophes.

Look for the cat bond market to grow as traditional Reinsurance firms struggle.

Michael Lewis:

"It amazes me that there is this kind of momentum in the in the elites in this country to take as much as you can for yourself and that if you don't you're stupid you're a fool ...

We live in a society in which the elites have maybe more power than they've ever had, a greater share of the wealth than they had in a very long time. But it's not clear they feel much in the way of obligation to society."

Mere existence in Manhattan is so expensive that it's almost impossible not to become focused on money.

NYTimes: DOJ is investigating Harvard over compliance with the Supreme Court ruling in Students for Fair Admissions vs Harvard. There is strong evidence that Harvard and other elite universities still engage in race-based discrimination in admissions and hiring.

Presidential Executive Order Jan 21, 2025:

ENDING ILLEGAL DISCRIMINATION AND
RESTORING MERIT-BASED OPPORTUNITY

(iv)   The head of each agency shall include in every contract or grant award:

(A)  A term requiring the contractual counterparty or grant recipient to agree that its compliance in all respects with all applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws is material to the government’s payment decisions for purposes of section 3729(b)(4) of title 31, United States Code; and

(B)  A term requiring such counterparty or recipient to certify that it does not operate any programs promoting DEI that violate any applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws.

Under 31 U.S.C. § 3729 - False Claims Act

Any person who--

(A) knowingly presents, or causes to be presented, a false or fraudulent claim for payment or approval;

(B) knowingly makes, uses, or causes to be made or used, a false record or statement material to a false or fraudulent claim;

... is liable to the United States Government for a civil penalty of not less than $5,000 and not more than $10,000, as adjusted by the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act of 1990 (28 U.S.C. 2461 note; Public Law 104-410 1), plus 3 times the amount of damages which the Government sustains because of the act of that person.

A unique aspect of the FCA is the qui tam provision[3] allowing private citizens (“relators”) to file lawsuits on behalf of the government against alleged offenders. Suits filed by relators may be prosecuted by the government through intervention...

https://x.com/hsu_steve/status/1887323436306874576

One good thing about crazy propaganda on Indian media and govt control of news is that avg Indian thinks this was a big success. Modi can call it a big win and quit if he wants to... 🤔

If you don't believe me, just look at headlines on "serious" Indian news channels and look to see whether ANY of their big claims are endorsed by Western media sources. The PAK account of the air battle is at least partially corroborated by Western sources.

I don't take anything on face value, but I was impressed by the PAK air force briefing I linked before.

In miltech circles you'll see a lot of follow up analysis of events (as the Vice Air Marshall said, this is a historical event - first large scale all-BVR air combat) and real analysts will either be convinced or not convinced about the PAK account.

MOST IMPORTANT aspect of this conflict so far is the DeepSeek moment re: PRC miltech. Specifically, highly networked AWACs, fighters, missiles, including AESA radars in all three that can communicate target information. Range and effectiveness of PL-15 also very important. This was WIDELY discussed BEFORE the conflict by miltech nerds and the PAK briefing is consistent with what serious people anticipated to be the case already for the past few years. See my analysis from 2021 below. infoproc.blogspot.com/2021/09/chines…

Dan Collins: Tariffs and the Future of US Manufacturing — Manifold #85

Dan Collins is Founder of Tyrell Chemical. He studied at Tsinghua University and spent 20 years working for companies like General Motors in China, helping to localize automotive manufacturing. Dan and Steve discuss tariffs, deindustrialization in America, the Go-Go days of rapid economic growth in PRC, and the future of the US-China relationship.

@DanCollins2011

00:00 - Introduction
01:25 - Dan's Early Life and Education in Michigan
02:30 - Experiences in China, Tsinghua University
05:42 - China's Educational and Economic Transformation
14:39 - US-China Trade Relations and Joint Ventures
41:48 - China's Auto Market
42:38 - Weaponization of Customs and Nationalism
43:20 - Impact of Tariffs on US Manufacturing
44:28 - Chaos in Global Trade and Supply Chains
49:34 - The Golden Screw Theory and Manufacturing Dependence
51:50 - Strategies for Reindustrializing the US Audio-only version and transcript:
manifold1.com/episodes/dan-c…

youtube.com/watch?v=7ngccq…

Good interview with @RushDoshi on ChinaTalk, covering topics related to this recent article in Foreign Affairs - link below bc Elon.

I agree with Rush on his Net Assessment of US vs China competition. But I think his alliance scaling strategy will be hard to implement, unless Beijing makes big mistakes.

I don't think even our Western allies, let alone SK + JP, view the US and PRC in the same way that US policy elites do. The competition isn't GOOD vs EVIL, it's simply two competing systems, current hegemon vs new rival rooted in old civilization state.

(Ask your AI - how many countries has the US bombed since WWII? Did the US really drop 2 million TONS of bombs on Laos?)

I sometimes note that PRC is closer to a gigantic Singapore than to North Korea. (Just ask the top South Korean scientists moving to PRC!) US policy elites and anti-China hawks would like our allies to believe the latter, but I think that is increasingly hard to justify.

BTW, congrats to @jordanschnyc for putting together some good shows recently!

Here are the show notes:

Rush Doshi (CFR, Biden NSC, author of the excellent The Long Game) and I run through the US-China tale of the tape. The future of America's relationship with its allies may be the key hinge variable for whether this century turns out to be China's to define. Do give this one a listen. Especially if you're JD Vance!

See Rush's Foreign Affairs article with Kurt Campbell here: archive.is/ZSTKP PS Rush emphasizes the SCALE of China and that the US has never faced a competitor that surpasses it in this way. SCALE here = economy, mfg, technology, human capital, etc.

I commented on this in 2019 after a visit to Beijing (on the eve of COVID!). During that trip most of the technologists, professors, govt officials, VCs, etc. had concluded that PRC had plausibly passed the tipping point and that the US could no longer contain its rise.

Read my 2019 posts for more on this. US strategists are only coming to realize the things I wrote about then.

infoproc.blogspot.com/2019/07/beijin…

infoproc.blogspot.com/2019/07/beijin…

This is typical PRC development at work.

1. Directionality from central govt ("AI is good! We should invest in AI!")

2. Decentralized leadership at city or province level controls implementation (eg, Shenyang plan below).

3. Insane competition between companies, cities, provinces. Recruitment of top talents, investment in infrastructure, patient capital, R&D.

4. A few companies and locations become winners and dominate each specific vertical - eg drone autonomy, AI models for healthcare, IoT for factories, etc.

This can be very wasteful initially, but the competition is fierce and real. Market success determines the winners, and the pace of innovation is unmatched in the RoW.

The closest analog is SV VC investment, but Chinese capital is more patient and the scale is incredible, incorporating universities, govt research institutes, as well as big and small companies. It's obvious from recent history that this model has worked across many different industries and tech verticals: cf China 2025 national plan from 2015 - many of its goals were achieved, altho it was highly aspirational.

It's an open question as to whether another method of organizing tech / economic development works better. Some would argue for purely market driven mechanisms, but I think it's naive to dismiss industrial policy as ineffective. I suggest looking at the history of EUV lithography, which led to ASML and was crucial to the continuation of semiconductor scaling (what used to be called Moore's Law). EUV development was supported by US and EU govts, as well as industrial consortia.

It's sad that "experts" can be miscalibrated for years at a time on important topics. But it's positive that at least some can update on new facts and information...

Why America Shouldn’t Underestimate Chinese Power
A Conversation With Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi

Foreign Policy magazine podcast

... a few years ago, the conversation took a sharp turn. Rather than fixating on China’s rise, most analysis began to focus on the country’s stagnation and even decline. There were good reasons for this: disappointing post-COVID economic growth, dire demographics, and a foreign policy alienating much of the world. And so a new consensus took hold—that a weakened China might not overtake the United States after all.

In a new essay for Foreign Affairs, Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi argue that this new consensus dangerously underestimates Chinese power and the challenge it represents for U.S. foreign policy. Washington, they warn, is missing Beijing’s key strategic advantage—an advantage that only a new approach to alliances will offset. As they write, if America goes it alone, “the contest for the next century will be China’s to lose.”

@RushDoshi Podcast:
foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/why-a…

Transcript available here:
youtube.com/watch?v=JqyMVZ…

FP article:
foreignaffairs.com/china/underest…

Note to confused EU elites and other retards who can't understand geostrategy and great power competition.

Trump to Tucker (October 2024):

"The one thing you never want to happen is Russia and China uniting.

Biden united them. It's a shame.

The stupidity of what they've done. Well, I'm going to have to un-unite them."

You can't make friends with Russia while supporting a proxy war against them. The proxy war has to stop... Physics undergraduates have to master a mathematical technique called perturbation theory. It depends on characterizing different effects as BIG, small, smaller, etc.

What wordcel retards can't understand (or bc they are myopic Eurotards) is that the US-RUS-PRC nexus is BIG and the whole UKR thing is small.

You can give up the small thing in favor of the BIG thing.

Although I just said the UKR thing is *relatively* small (eg compared to a nuclear war between the US and Russia or China), still 1-2 thousand UKR soldiers are being killed EVERY DAY that we let this pointless conflict continue. The pain this causes to the family of the soldier is incomprehensible to someone who has not experienced similar loss. Stop posturing and END this TRAGIC conflict.

YAWN 🥱

Will we ever figure out who blew up that pipeline? It's a mystery!!!

After the US-RUS peace treaty and the lifting of sanctions, will Germany get cheap energy again? 🤔

Will retards look back and ask what the pipeline eco-disaster was all about? Nah, they'll just move along in their memory-less state. "We have always been at war with Eastasia"

“He who controls the past controls the present, and he who controls the present controls the future"

Yawn 🥱

20th century opponents of Japanese and Chinese immigration argued that they would out-compete US workers and drive down wages. They also predicted that East Asians would eventually threaten "white domination" of the world. The same sentiments are just below the surface in the minds of many China hawks today.

Excerpts below from Lothrop Stoddard's The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy. Yes, this is a real book, influential in 20th century America and beyond. Stoddard met with Hitler and Himmler in Germany in 1939.

The book was positively reviewed by the NYTimes in 1920. NYT: ""Lothrop Stoddard evokes a new peril, that of an eventual submersion beneath vast waves of yellow men..."

"Does any one doubt, that the day is at hand when China will have cheap fuel from her coal-mines, cheap transport by railways and steamers, and will have founded technical schools to develop her industries? Whenever that day comes, she may wrest the control of the world's markets, especially throughout Asia, from England and Germany."

"Experience proves that the Chinese as all-round laborers can easily outdistance all competitors. They are industrious, intelligent, and orderly. They can work under conditions that would kill a man of less hardy race; in heat that would kill a salamander, or in cold that would please a polar bear, sustaining their energies, through long hours of unremitting toil with only a few bowls of rice."

"Flexible as Jews, they can thrive on the mountain plateaux of Thibet and under the sun of Singapore; more versatile even than Jews, they are excellent laborers, and not without merit as soldiers and sailors; while they have a capacity for trade which no other nation of the East possesses. They do not need even the accident of a man of genius to develop their magnificent future."

"This economic superiority of the Chinaman shows not only with other races, but with his yellow kindred as well. As regards the Japanese, John Chinaman has proved it to the hilt. Wherever the two have met in economic competition, John has won hands down. Even in Japanese colonies like Korea and Formosa, the Japanese, with all the backing of their government behind them, have been worsted."

Edward Ross (1866 - 1951) was a professor of economics at Stanford and later Wisconsin.

Ross traveled to China and wrote The Changing Chinese, a 1911 work of sociology and economics. Here is an excerpt:

"For all his native capacity, the coolie will need a long course of schooling, industrial training, and factory atmosphere before he inches up abreast of the German or American working man. In the technical and directing staffs there is the same absence of the modern industrial spirit, resulting in chronic mismanagement, ... These failings are not peculiar to China; they hamper the industrial development of other Asiatic countries, notably India. Still, the way in which Japanese industry, with all its faults, is perfecting both its technic and its methods shows that these failings will be gradually overcome ..."

Ross predicted that Asian economic development will take considerable time - that his grandchildren's generation would be the one that loses control of the world.

Links below. infoproc.blogspot.com/2010/10/yellow…

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Risin…

gutenberg.org/files/37408/37…

AI Rising wargame held in London.

Amazing production - shot the documentary and played the game all in one day. Quite an effort - big, high quality production.

6 teams: US, PRC, EU, EU, Global Voices, Technologists

The Controller team that ran the game was superb. Loved the Dr. Strangelove vibe!

Game had 3 turns, covering AI progress until ~2035.

The Controllers evaluated the actions of each team and determined the resulting evolution of the world btw and during turns.

CONSPIRACY THEORY IN AMERICA, Prof. L. deHaven-Smith, Univ of Texas Press

Tracks use of term "Conspiracy Theory" in US Media. Growth begins just after JFK assassination.

Contains 1967 CIA dispatch 1035-960 (FOIA): "deploy propaganda assets" vs critics of Warren Commission 1/n Heading of CIA dispatch 1035-960 is "PSYCH" and "destroy when no longer needed" 🤔

Income returns to cognitive ability in Finland.

Income @ 99th pctile ~ 1.6x higher than avg

N~300k Finns, avg incomes age 35-45, age 18 test scores from mandatory military service. Non-cognitive test covers “self-confidence” and “leadership motivation”

aalto-econ.fi/tervio/Notes_o…
Measured abilities are at least partially heritable - expect kids from wealthier families to have higher avg ability.

Leftist claim: Family wealth causes the higher SAT scores, not abilities inherited from parents.

But both genetics & family environment contribute.

UKR was an unnecessary war. Hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved if the US allowed these March 2022 negotiations to succeed.

https://twitter.com/EdwardMDruce/status/1728342410948759600

Maybe should have written hundreds of thousands of *casualties* instead of lives, not entirely sure.

And maybe negotiations would have failed anyway, but the point is: US didn't want them.

New poll + figure from paper below.

Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, Gilens&Page

"When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites / organised interests, they generally lose."



USA! USA! infoproc.blogspot.com/2016/01/americ…


1,779 policy issues:

Multivariate analysis indicates that ... average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.



infoproc.blogspot.com/2016/01/americ…

NIH-funded Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study is in the news recently. Large representative-sample study includes brain imaging as well as NIH-toolbox cognitive measurements.

Many twin pairs: allows simple heritability estimates.

1/n

https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/1663983545239388162

Cognitive battery administered to ~10yo kids. NOT a standardized test like SAT:

"... seven different tasks that cover episodic memory, executive function, attention, working memory, processing speed, and language abilities"

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…