Issue 38
January 29, 2024
1 Biden vows response to attack that left 3 Americans dead
2 Deepfakes of Taylor Swift, Biden, dead kids proliferate
3 AI boom fuels construction of data centers
4 Meanwhile in China
5 OPINION Today’s conflicts resemble pre-WW2 world
1/29/1861 – Kansas becomes the 34th state
see ad astra on x @greg_loving
1 Biden vows response to drone attack that left 3 American soldiers dead
President Biden blamed Iranian-backed militant groups for a drone attack in Jordan that killed three U.S. service members and injured more than 30, and he promised to respond. It was the first deadly strike against American personnel since the Gaza conflict sparked a spate of regional violence. “We had a tough day last night in the Middle East,” Biden said. “And we shall respond.”
WaPo
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/01/29/israel-hamas-war-news-gaza-palestine/
Three U.S. service members were killed in Jordan on Sunday and at least 34 others were injured in what the Biden administration said was a drone attack from an Iran-backed militia, the first American military fatalities from hostile fire in the turmoil spilling over from Israel’s war with Hamas. The attack happened at a remote logistics outpost in northeast Jordan called Tower 22 along the country’s shared borders with Syria and Iraq. The one-way attack drone hit near the outpost’s living quarters, causing injuries that ranged from minor cuts to brain trauma, a U.S. military official said.
NYT
2 AI deepfakes of Taylor Swift, Biden, dead kids proliferate
Deepfakes generated by artificial intelligence have proliferated on social media this month, claiming a string of high-profile victims and elevating the risks of manipulated media into the public conversation ahead of a looming US election cycle. Pornographic images of singer Taylor Swift, robocalls of US President Joe Biden’s voice, and videos of dead children and teenagers detailing their own deaths all have gone viral — but not one of them was real.
Bloomberg
3 AI boom fuels construction of massive, power-hungry data centers
Off a highway in Phoenix, cranes tower over a stretch of land larger than 60 football fields. The first of five hulking bunkers are under construction. Thirty miles away, engineers are plotting another complex on 400 acres, some three times the footprint of the Mall of America, all but erasing the land’s farming roots. If all goes as planned, both sites will be home to thousands of computers churning mountains of data, powered by the energy needed for hundreds of thousands of homes.
Power is already strained in key parts of the country. QTS estimates that its projects, once complete, will tap into some 6 gigawatts of electricity, equal to the needs of roughly 5 million homes. Some campuses will need new power lines, threatening higher costs to others on the grid. And the economic impact of the centers isn’t distributed equally, pitting neighbor against neighbor over who benefits from vast industrial parks filled with computers, rather than properties such as hotels and shopping centers that draw a steady flow of visitors and jobs.
Bloomberg
4 Meanwhile in China…
China's $6 Trillion Stock Wipeout Exposes Deeper Problems for Xi
China Boosts Stimulus by Allowing Banks to Keep Smaller Reserves
China Signals More Targeted Stimulus to Come
Chinese regulators curb short selling as market downturn deepens
China tightens access to offshore investment funds as domestic market founders
China Evergrande Ordered to Liquidate
What It Took Young People in China to Get Their Jobs
China denies providing weapons to Hamas in Israel-Gaza war
China lab simulates attack on US warships using space weapons, hypersonic missiles
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3249028/china-lab-simulates-attack-us-warships-using-space-weapons-hypersonic-missiles
US urges China to use influence over Iran to end its proxy’s Red Sea attacks
5 OPINION Today’s regional conflicts resemble the pre-WW2 world
The post-Cold War era began, in the early 1990s, with soaring visions of global peace. It is ending, three decades later, with surging risks of global war. Today, Europe is experiencing its most devastating military conflict in generations. A brutal fight between Israel and Hamas is sowing violence and instability across the Middle East. East Asia, fortunately, is not at war. But it isn’t exactly peaceful, either, as China coerces its neighbors and amasses military power at a historic rate. If many Americans don’t realize how close the world is to being ravaged by fierce, interlocking conflicts, perhaps that’s because they’ve forgotten how the last global war came about. When Americans think of global war, they typically think of World War II—or the part of the war that began with Japan’s strike on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. After that attack, and Adolf Hitler’s subsequent declaration of war against the United States, the conflict was a single, all-encompassing struggle between rival alliances on a global battlefield. But World War II began as a trio of loosely connected contests for primacy in key regions stretching from Europe to the Asia-Pacific—contests that eventually climaxed and coalesced in globally consuming ways. The history of this period reveals the darker aspects of strategic interdependence in a war-torn world. It also illustrates uncomfortable parallels to the situation Washington currently confronts. The United States isn’t facing a formalized alliance of adversaries, as it once did during World War II. It probably won’t see a replay of a scenario in which autocratic powers conquer giant swaths of Eurasia and its littoral regions. Yet with wars in eastern Europe and the Middle East already raging, and ties between revisionist states becoming more pronounced, all it would take is a clash in the contested western Pacific to bring about another awful scenario—one in which intense, interrelated regional struggles overwhelm the international system and create a crisis of global security unlike anything since 1945. A world at risk could become a world at war. And the United States isn’t remotely ready for the challenge.
Foreign Affairs, Hal Brands
https://reader.foreignaffairs.com/2024/01/26/the-next-global-war/content.html
1/29/1861 – Kansas becomes the 34th state after three unsuccessful constitutional conventions. Topeka is chosen as the state capital.
Thanks for reading!
Sports
Super Bowl set
Chiefs v 49ers
Back to back Super Bowl appearances for Chiefs
49ers erase 17-pt halftime deficit in victory
