Keeping up with the FITs, 4/14

Michael Lind on mineral resources; Amy Zegart on Cyberwar; Richard Hanania on the military-industrial complex; Robert Wright on Ukraine; Noah Smith on Ukraine; Wesley Yang and Shep Melnick on Title 9

Michael Lind writes,

There is not enough cobalt, neodymium, or lithium being mined and refined in the entire world today for Britain to meet its green transition goals in the next generation. And Britain has only 67 million people. The United States has 330 million. The world has nearly 8 billion. Do the math.

“Clean” energy is not clean. No less than natural gas and oil extraction, extracting the minerals required for solar, wind, and hydro power equipment requires massive mines and destruction of local landscapes and ecosystems.

Market prices and profits provide the best incentives to conserve scarce resources. The market will not be perfect at providing for sustainability, but it will do a much better job than “green” advocates.

Peter Robinson talks with Amy Zegart. Around minute 27, she describes the difference between Washington DC culture and Silicon Valley tech culture as the “suit-hoodie divide.” Reminds me of a phrase I coined during the financial crisis of 2008. Anyone remember?

Around minute 40, Zegart points out that Congress is not institutionally equipped to oversee intelligence agencies. Again, I favor a designated Chief Auditor. And I think this is especially important relative to surveillance technology, which is very dangerous if left unchecked, but which we will never succeed in outlawing. David Brin was very persuasive on this more than twenty years ago.

Richard Hanania appears on a Russell Brand podcast. Listen for 11 minutes and find out how our foreign policy establishment is vetted by defense contractors.

Robert Wright writes,

If you ask what it is that most often turns a “good boy” into a war criminal—how standard features of human nature like the retributive impulse and overgeneralization and the instinct for self-preservation come together to create atrocity—I suspect this is the answer: a level of fear that isn’t felt in the course of everyday life, a persistent and not unwarranted fear that you could die any day now.

And frustration with seeing your comrades killed is probably also a big factor. I’m with Wright in saying that if you don’t like war crimes, then do all you can to prevent war. War is no football game. There are no referees and no penalties enforced while the contest is going on.

In a subsequent post questioning the democracy/autocracy framing of the war, he writes,

we see some common characteristics of blobsters: An obliviousness to or indifference to American hypocrisy; a lack of interest in the actual consistent adherence to international law by America and its allies (notwithstanding, in the case of many blobsters, a professed devotion to international law); a failure to see how the world looks to our adversaries (e.g., a world in which America is hypocritical and doesn’t consistently adhere to international law); a tendency to be not just moralistic but moralistic in a Manichaean way.

I left a comment pointing out that the blob might not have been so strongly pro-war, but for three contingent factors, including the need of the Democrats for an issue that they are not on the defensive. Noah Smith says that quiet part out loud.

So if opposition to Putin and his invasion is bipartisan, how can Dems run on it?

Two ways. First, Joe Biden is President right now, and Dems control Congress. Thus, the actions that the U.S. has taken to support Ukraine — weapons shipments, sanctions, and so forth — can be claimed as Democratic initiatives. This is a purely positive message — it doesn’t depend on bashing the GOP, it just requires Dems to point in the direction of Ukraine’s military successes, and the uniting of Europe against Putin, and to note that Democratic leaders played some part in that.

So he is explicitly advocating “wag the dog.” By the way, I don’t think it will work. My guess is that once you leave the confines of Twitter and the MSM, you won’t find Americans all that invested in the war. I picture people saying, “Yes, on this one, the Dems are taking the right side. But that doesn’t change my vote.”

Wesley Yang talks with political scientist Shep Melnick about Title 9. Melnick wrote a book that delves into how the sausage gets made. It is a very undemocratic process, in which bureaucrats and judges impose what amount to sweeping mandates without any input from the affected parties, the general public, or Congress. Here is an essay by Melnick.