Lorenzo Warby on Somewheres/Anywheres; Matt Yglesias questions "deaths of despair." Noah Smith on military reality; Helen Dale on contemporary Nazi sympathizers
This is a great (although very long) interview with Erik Prince reflecting on his time as a government contractor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwK_XLFOm_I& -- if you raise the military budget, you are likely to get many Bagram Air Force Bases replicated over and over. You do not necessarily get something that is good at fighting. You will get something that is excellent at consuming cost-plus merchandise at spectacular scale. You will not necessarily get a fighting force that is calibrated to real defense (and offense) needs. Probably the biggest problem he identifies in this interview is just unacceptably poor management of highly trained personnel.
It's worth pointing out that the British empire was not established by a government program, but by an adventurer named Robert Clive leading a privately owned corporation.
Western GDP is something like 20+ times Russia, and yet we can't make anywhere close to as many 155mm shells. Some of this is a lack of mobilization, but a lot of it is that the purpose of the Ukraine war is profit margins for shell makers and a few hashtags a year or two ago and not winning the war.
I suspect the biggest problem with "just" going to the WW2 production method is that the strategy used would be impossible today. During WW2, they relied on a large body of expert industrial management companies to operate the plants. They also relied on a large number of already built and up-to-date industrial facilities that could be repurposed for ammunition production. In the US, most of those small companies just exist in Asia, which is also where a large portion of industrial materials are refined. The report mentions that just one Iowa production plant produced over 13 million artillery shells and bombs over the course of the war (A-5) -- and that's with antiquated methods.
The demise of the tank is a pretty popular claim, and has been for some 50 years it seems. I think a lot of commentators like Smith don't understand how proper modern tanks respond to challenges, for example automatic anti-missile systems. The difference between tanks with 90's era tech and modern systems is pretty dramatic. The competitive race between anti-tank kit and counter measures is pretty serious, so sending in older tanks against cutting edge equipment is just asking for trouble.
Over on YouTube, The Chieftan (old tanker) has a really good video describing the ways modern tanks avoid obsolescence.
"Just make Gaza rich. Israel kept them poor they just should have made them rich."
-Noah
Isn't this the entire Hamas viewpoint? That the Israeli's are keeping the Palestinians down and its only radical actions like this that can change the status quo of apartheid and impoverishment?
Maybe Hamas wants to kill all Jews and Noah doesn't, but who wouldn't want to kill all Jews if you thought the extreme poverty of your life was those peoples fault. And if they had done such terrible things to you for 70 years wouldn't you not trust to be their neighbors.
Noah rejects genetics, so to him making Gaza rich is some easy thing to do. Rather than something impossible to do with low IQ Arabs. Noah says he doesn't know what Israel should do now, but he hasn't even started going down the rabbit hole.
Per Capita GDP:
Gaza: $876
West Bank: $1,924 (don't think this is Arabs only)
Egypt: $3,700
Jordan: $4,100
There are a lot of reasons Gaza might not reach even Egyptian levels, but bottom line is the ceiling is still fucking poor. The second Egyptians got a hold of the vote they picked the Muslim Brotherhood.
I added something to the comment. Surrounding Arab states aren't that much richer, and there are some structural advantages they have over what people in Gaza would be facing. Nor have the slightly higher GDPs caused them to have fundamentally different attitudes about Israel.
Gaza obvious lacks any natural resources and doesn't have enough land for farming, so I would expect it to be poorer then equivalent IQ countries that have those things.
No doubt there is less terrorism from a country that doesn't share a meaningful border with Israel where the Sinai acts as a gigantic barrier and Egyptians are not refugees from the formation of Israel.
It's telling that the Egyptians don't want these people. They could have them if they choose. I think they recognize they have no human capital and would just be more mouths to feed.
Above I have it listed as $876 for Gaza and $1924 for the West Bank vs $3,700 for Egypt. Or 4.2 Gazas per Egypt and 1.9 West Banks. Combine the two and it's probably around 2.6. So I don't think changing the story to PPP changes much.
Anyway, I have no doubt Gaza's history has done much damage to it, but it already happened and even in the best of circumstances they would still be inbred low IQs. The bottom line is I simply don't believe Gaza can every become a rich country, and I mostly think this is inherent to its genetics and not Israel's fault.
As to whether the Gazan's would do better with more land, well that's what the conflict is about. "From the River to the Sea!" I have no doubt that would improve the lot of the Palestinians, but they would need to kill millions of Jews and what we would be left with is another pretty poor and dysfunctional Middle East shithole.
As long as the republicans are isolationists, and their only interest are Asian markets, Zionists and Europe supporters have no alternative to the Democratic Party.
The great thing about multi-purpose weapons is that they are less likely to become completely obsolete -- they allow the owner to experiment, adapt, and re-equip. Very specific weapon systems go obsolete much more quickly. For example, carrier-launched fighters are probably obsolete as soon as someone publicly fields AI-driven drone fighters. But the carrier itself can be the floating base, control center, and repair facility for them.
"As Noah would agree, given today’s technology, the most useful weapons are small, smart and narrow-purposed. Hand-held missiles. Smart bombs. Drones. The weapons that are least cost-effective, and possibly even liabilities, are large, not so smart, and multi-purposed. Armored vehicles, aircraft carriers, fighter-bombers."
- This is akin to comparing bullets to guns.
- Vehicles, carriers, and planes are only liabilities when used for the wrong purpose.
- Where the returns are mostly nonfinancial, cost-effectiveness is mostly a matter of how many you need versus how many you have. I think it would be difficult to argue we need zero vehicles, carriers, or planes.
I don't think I come close to fully understanding the details of somewheres/anywheres but it is an interesting framing. I think it is great to not only try to look from the the other side but to look in totally different ways. like this is.
Those large, not so smart, and multi-purpose weapons might well have had their day. But it does raise the question why items like armoured vehicles are being asked for if so many of them are so easily destroyed?
Perhaps their destruction is instead an indicator of their usefulness - just as the growth of threats against them is maybe an indicator of the same.
Weapons and organisational interaction can be hard to decipher, especially when paradoxes abound in warfare (the more effective a weapon is, the less likely it is to be effective).
We've also been down this road before, multiple times. 50 years ago shaped charge rounds (HEAT) were going to be unstoppable tank killers. After that it was HEAT attached to guided rockets. Countermeasures have been developed for both of those (composite armour and reactive armor)
Holding or gaining a position still requires boots on the ground. Getting or keeping boots on the ground still requires mobility plus firepower. A tank or other armored vehicle is still a reasonable way to accomplish those tasks. The biggest thing to keep in mind is that no one weapon operates alone. The whole concept of 'combined arms' is to use the strengths of each weapon system to cover the deficiencies of others in such a way that the whole force can accomplish a given mission.
"Combined Arms" was the doctrine, independently developed by Germany and the Allies, that broke the WWI trench stalemate so it is entirely applicable to peer to peer conflicts. That was its application in WWII, and why the Gulf ground war in 1990 only lasted 100 hours against a third-tier opponent.
The problem Ukraine, and Russia, and more than a few Cold War NATO militaries, have/has is its application requires a highly trained force to pull off.
Necroposting here, as the comment section of a later post linking Warby on this point is subscriber-only:
As I remarked several times before in comments on AK's old blog, the appellation of "Anywheres" and their characterization as rootless is extremely misleading. "Anywheres" belong to a very specific culture, they function well only within the confines of this culture, and they are rooted in it as strongly as any Somewhere in his own culture. It is true that Anywheres' settlements, unlike Somewheres', are geographically very discontiguous, but this is hardly a new feature. Continental Europe has had discontiguous settlements of many distinct cultures for a couple thousand years. Old towns often had alongside their majority population an Armenian quarter, a Greek quarter, a Jewish quarter, a Muslim quarter (e.g. in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania), and so on, each having its own magistrates and courts administering its peculiar laws, except capital cases the jurisdiction of which was usually the prerogative of the local sovereign who chartered the settlements.
My idea of economic independence is to help somewheres revitalize their somewheres through greater independence from the labor market (which is relentless hostile to most somewheres).
But he seems to be far too a partisan Dem to be believed without checking, tho I often agree with his critiques. Would read a transcript, but won’t listen.
The optimal size of the military is hugely dependent on the missions. If the USA accepts Russian victory, as it has already accepted Azerbaijani victory and ethnic cleansing of Arminians, the budget can be smaller. Similarly with Chinese or Iranian / Gaza’s aggression.
Mission first, then size. It’s certain that current US levels of mil spending support too much corrupt bloat.
It can be difficult for me to imagine a rah-rah, celebratory attitude to killing as described in Helen Dale's piece on the Einsatzgruppen (or Hamas) that is genuinely felt - that is to say, not a determined effort to whip oneself and others into a frenzy in order to quiet the conscience.* A parallel might be with North American Indians - the young warriors would, not infrequently with the aid of alcohol, "work themselves into a state" over which their elders had no control, which caused a great many reprisals and tragedies: unhinged like (often worse) behavior from the worst of the cavalrymen, and a preemptive determination from people like Sherman that the populations couldn't coexist.
I think about meth in connection with the Nazis, though I don't suppose they handed out meth to their e.g. Ukrainian collaborators.
*I am perfectly aware I could be 100% wrong about this. Maybe I just come from people that are generally phlegmatic except when drunk.
On the other hand, I've read books about the history of Paris, and learning about the women of Paris should make one prepared to hear about any kind of savagery.
Mayor of Pittsburgh isn't "Somewheres"- member of the dominant party in D.C., MW doesn't count. Pretty much any Democrat anywhere in the U.S. won't be an example that you are claiming here- they pretty much monolithically support immigration.
re: Military Budget
This is a great (although very long) interview with Erik Prince reflecting on his time as a government contractor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwK_XLFOm_I& -- if you raise the military budget, you are likely to get many Bagram Air Force Bases replicated over and over. You do not necessarily get something that is good at fighting. You will get something that is excellent at consuming cost-plus merchandise at spectacular scale. You will not necessarily get a fighting force that is calibrated to real defense (and offense) needs. Probably the biggest problem he identifies in this interview is just unacceptably poor management of highly trained personnel.
It's worth pointing out that the British empire was not established by a government program, but by an adventurer named Robert Clive leading a privately owned corporation.
Western GDP is something like 20+ times Russia, and yet we can't make anywhere close to as many 155mm shells. Some of this is a lack of mobilization, but a lot of it is that the purpose of the Ukraine war is profit margins for shell makers and a few hashtags a year or two ago and not winning the war.
This report from 2009 provides a short history of modern US ammunition production methods: https://aec.army.mil/application/files/1614/9505/0982/ammo-storage02.pdf
I suspect the biggest problem with "just" going to the WW2 production method is that the strategy used would be impossible today. During WW2, they relied on a large body of expert industrial management companies to operate the plants. They also relied on a large number of already built and up-to-date industrial facilities that could be repurposed for ammunition production. In the US, most of those small companies just exist in Asia, which is also where a large portion of industrial materials are refined. The report mentions that just one Iowa production plant produced over 13 million artillery shells and bombs over the course of the war (A-5) -- and that's with antiquated methods.
I liked the Eric Prince interview a great deal, too.
Thank-you for this wonderful highlighting of two of our pieces. I'm sure Lorenzo will be along shortly.
Yes, indeed, thanks very much. Nice to be appreciated.
Those were very good essays. Thanks again for writing them!
The demise of the tank is a pretty popular claim, and has been for some 50 years it seems. I think a lot of commentators like Smith don't understand how proper modern tanks respond to challenges, for example automatic anti-missile systems. The difference between tanks with 90's era tech and modern systems is pretty dramatic. The competitive race between anti-tank kit and counter measures is pretty serious, so sending in older tanks against cutting edge equipment is just asking for trouble.
Over on YouTube, The Chieftan (old tanker) has a really good video describing the ways modern tanks avoid obsolescence.
"Just make Gaza rich. Israel kept them poor they just should have made them rich."
-Noah
Isn't this the entire Hamas viewpoint? That the Israeli's are keeping the Palestinians down and its only radical actions like this that can change the status quo of apartheid and impoverishment?
Maybe Hamas wants to kill all Jews and Noah doesn't, but who wouldn't want to kill all Jews if you thought the extreme poverty of your life was those peoples fault. And if they had done such terrible things to you for 70 years wouldn't you not trust to be their neighbors.
Noah rejects genetics, so to him making Gaza rich is some easy thing to do. Rather than something impossible to do with low IQ Arabs. Noah says he doesn't know what Israel should do now, but he hasn't even started going down the rabbit hole.
Per Capita GDP:
Gaza: $876
West Bank: $1,924 (don't think this is Arabs only)
Egypt: $3,700
Jordan: $4,100
There are a lot of reasons Gaza might not reach even Egyptian levels, but bottom line is the ceiling is still fucking poor. The second Egyptians got a hold of the vote they picked the Muslim Brotherhood.
I added something to the comment. Surrounding Arab states aren't that much richer, and there are some structural advantages they have over what people in Gaza would be facing. Nor have the slightly higher GDPs caused them to have fundamentally different attitudes about Israel.
Google says Egypts GDP per capita is $3,700.
If we switch to PPP both Gaza and Egypt increase and it doesn't change the ratio all that much.
https://tradingeconomics.com/west-bank-and-gaza/gdp-per-capita-ppp#:~:text=GDP%20per%20Capita%20PPP%20in,of%205402.54%20USD%20in%202020.
https://tradingeconomics.com/egypt/gdp-per-capita-ppp
Gaza obvious lacks any natural resources and doesn't have enough land for farming, so I would expect it to be poorer then equivalent IQ countries that have those things.
No doubt there is less terrorism from a country that doesn't share a meaningful border with Israel where the Sinai acts as a gigantic barrier and Egyptians are not refugees from the formation of Israel.
It's telling that the Egyptians don't want these people. They could have them if they choose. I think they recognize they have no human capital and would just be more mouths to feed.
You link lists Gaza and the West Bank at $6,640.
So Egypt = 2.6 Gaza/West Bank.
Above I have it listed as $876 for Gaza and $1924 for the West Bank vs $3,700 for Egypt. Or 4.2 Gazas per Egypt and 1.9 West Banks. Combine the two and it's probably around 2.6. So I don't think changing the story to PPP changes much.
Anyway, I have no doubt Gaza's history has done much damage to it, but it already happened and even in the best of circumstances they would still be inbred low IQs. The bottom line is I simply don't believe Gaza can every become a rich country, and I mostly think this is inherent to its genetics and not Israel's fault.
As to whether the Gazan's would do better with more land, well that's what the conflict is about. "From the River to the Sea!" I have no doubt that would improve the lot of the Palestinians, but they would need to kill millions of Jews and what we would be left with is another pretty poor and dysfunctional Middle East shithole.
As long as the republicans are isolationists, and their only interest are Asian markets, Zionists and Europe supporters have no alternative to the Democratic Party.
The great thing about multi-purpose weapons is that they are less likely to become completely obsolete -- they allow the owner to experiment, adapt, and re-equip. Very specific weapon systems go obsolete much more quickly. For example, carrier-launched fighters are probably obsolete as soon as someone publicly fields AI-driven drone fighters. But the carrier itself can be the floating base, control center, and repair facility for them.
"As Noah would agree, given today’s technology, the most useful weapons are small, smart and narrow-purposed. Hand-held missiles. Smart bombs. Drones. The weapons that are least cost-effective, and possibly even liabilities, are large, not so smart, and multi-purposed. Armored vehicles, aircraft carriers, fighter-bombers."
- This is akin to comparing bullets to guns.
- Vehicles, carriers, and planes are only liabilities when used for the wrong purpose.
- Where the returns are mostly nonfinancial, cost-effectiveness is mostly a matter of how many you need versus how many you have. I think it would be difficult to argue we need zero vehicles, carriers, or planes.
I don't think I come close to fully understanding the details of somewheres/anywheres but it is an interesting framing. I think it is great to not only try to look from the the other side but to look in totally different ways. like this is.
Those large, not so smart, and multi-purpose weapons might well have had their day. But it does raise the question why items like armoured vehicles are being asked for if so many of them are so easily destroyed?
Perhaps their destruction is instead an indicator of their usefulness - just as the growth of threats against them is maybe an indicator of the same.
Weapons and organisational interaction can be hard to decipher, especially when paradoxes abound in warfare (the more effective a weapon is, the less likely it is to be effective).
We've also been down this road before, multiple times. 50 years ago shaped charge rounds (HEAT) were going to be unstoppable tank killers. After that it was HEAT attached to guided rockets. Countermeasures have been developed for both of those (composite armour and reactive armor)
Holding or gaining a position still requires boots on the ground. Getting or keeping boots on the ground still requires mobility plus firepower. A tank or other armored vehicle is still a reasonable way to accomplish those tasks. The biggest thing to keep in mind is that no one weapon operates alone. The whole concept of 'combined arms' is to use the strengths of each weapon system to cover the deficiencies of others in such a way that the whole force can accomplish a given mission.
Combined arms mostly seems to mean "we aren't fighting peer competitors and we can easily bomb them into submission with impunity before going in."
When Ukraine tries to do combined arms against a peer competitor they don't have air superiority and their tanks just get slaughtered.
"Combined Arms" was the doctrine, independently developed by Germany and the Allies, that broke the WWI trench stalemate so it is entirely applicable to peer to peer conflicts. That was its application in WWII, and why the Gulf ground war in 1990 only lasted 100 hours against a third-tier opponent.
The problem Ukraine, and Russia, and more than a few Cold War NATO militaries, have/has is its application requires a highly trained force to pull off.
Necroposting here, as the comment section of a later post linking Warby on this point is subscriber-only:
As I remarked several times before in comments on AK's old blog, the appellation of "Anywheres" and their characterization as rootless is extremely misleading. "Anywheres" belong to a very specific culture, they function well only within the confines of this culture, and they are rooted in it as strongly as any Somewhere in his own culture. It is true that Anywheres' settlements, unlike Somewheres', are geographically very discontiguous, but this is hardly a new feature. Continental Europe has had discontiguous settlements of many distinct cultures for a couple thousand years. Old towns often had alongside their majority population an Armenian quarter, a Greek quarter, a Jewish quarter, a Muslim quarter (e.g. in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania), and so on, each having its own magistrates and courts administering its peculiar laws, except capital cases the jurisdiction of which was usually the prerogative of the local sovereign who chartered the settlements.
My idea of economic independence is to help somewheres revitalize their somewheres through greater independence from the labor market (which is relentless hostile to most somewheres).
Noah is very right in another of his posts where he supports a 3 state solution for Gaza, Israel, and the West Bank. https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/a-three-state-solution-is-the-only
But he seems to be far too a partisan Dem to be believed without checking, tho I often agree with his critiques. Would read a transcript, but won’t listen.
The optimal size of the military is hugely dependent on the missions. If the USA accepts Russian victory, as it has already accepted Azerbaijani victory and ethnic cleansing of Arminians, the budget can be smaller. Similarly with Chinese or Iranian / Gaza’s aggression.
Mission first, then size. It’s certain that current US levels of mil spending support too much corrupt bloat.
You and your minion followers are on Santa's
naughty list.
*peace to us all rather than forever wars*
It can be difficult for me to imagine a rah-rah, celebratory attitude to killing as described in Helen Dale's piece on the Einsatzgruppen (or Hamas) that is genuinely felt - that is to say, not a determined effort to whip oneself and others into a frenzy in order to quiet the conscience.* A parallel might be with North American Indians - the young warriors would, not infrequently with the aid of alcohol, "work themselves into a state" over which their elders had no control, which caused a great many reprisals and tragedies: unhinged like (often worse) behavior from the worst of the cavalrymen, and a preemptive determination from people like Sherman that the populations couldn't coexist.
I think about meth in connection with the Nazis, though I don't suppose they handed out meth to their e.g. Ukrainian collaborators.
*I am perfectly aware I could be 100% wrong about this. Maybe I just come from people that are generally phlegmatic except when drunk.
On the other hand, I've read books about the history of Paris, and learning about the women of Paris should make one prepared to hear about any kind of savagery.
Name these local "Somewheres" pols, MW.
Mayor of Pittsburgh isn't "Somewheres"- member of the dominant party in D.C., MW doesn't count. Pretty much any Democrat anywhere in the U.S. won't be an example that you are claiming here- they pretty much monolithically support immigration.