June 6 2024
Semiconductors; Sleepy Joe; Rich Boomers; cartels; future of war; D-Day
1 US dominates semiconductor design, Asia dominates manufacturing
2 ELECTION 2024 WSJ: Behind scenes, Biden shows signs of slipping
3 Baby-boomers rich, unexpectanly stingy
4 Cartel violence increasing in Mexico
5 In Ukraine, the next generation of land, sea, and air war unfolds
6/6/1944 D-Day: Allies storm Normandy’s coast
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1 US dominates semiconductor design, while Asia dominates manufacturing
Governments have stepped up efforts to bolster their domestic productions of the chips that power everything from cars to electronics to artificial intelligence, and companies worldwide are competing to be part of the frenzy. Global semiconductor revenue is expected to top $1 trillion by the end of the decade, according to forecasts by the chip-industry consulting firm International Business Strategies.
Article Source: WSJ
2 ELECTION 2024 WSJ: Behind scenes, Biden shows signs of slipping
When President Biden met with congressional leaders in the West Wing in January to negotiate a Ukraine funding deal, he spoke so softly at times that some participants struggled to hear him, according to five people familiar with the meeting. He read from notes to make obvious points, paused for extended periods and sometimes closed his eyes for so long that some in the room wondered whether he had tuned out. In a February one-on-one chat in the Oval Office with House Speaker Mike Johnson, the president said a recent policy change by his administration that jeopardizes some big energy projects was just a study, according to six people told at the time about what Johnson said had happened. Johnson worried the president’s memory had slipped about the details of his own policy.Last year, when Biden was negotiating with House Republicans to lift the debt ceiling, his demeanor and command of the details seemed to shift from one day to the next, according to then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and two others familiar with the talks. On some days, he had loose and spontaneous exchanges with Republicans, and on others he mumbled and appeared to rely on notes. “I used to meet with him when he was vice president. I’d go to his house,” McCarthy said in an interview. “He’s not the same person.” The 81-year-old Biden is the oldest person to hold the presidency. His age and cognitive fitness have become major issues in his campaign for a second term, both in the minds of voters and in attacks on him by Republicans. The White House and top aides said he remains a sharp and vigorous leader. Some who have worked with him, however, including Democrats and some who have known him back to his time as vice president, described a president who appears slower now, someone who has both good moments and bad ones.
Article Source: WSJ
3 Baby-boomers rich, unexpectanly stingy
Baby-boomers were born between 1946 and 1964—and are the luckiest generation in history. Most of the cohort, which numbers 270m across the rich world, have not fought wars. Some got to see the Beatles live. They grew up with strong economic growth. Not all are rich, but in aggregate they have amassed great wealth, owing to a combination of falling interest rates, declining housebuilding and strong earnings. American baby-boomers, who make up 20% of the country’s population, own 52% of its net wealth, worth $76trn. Now that the generation is moving into retirement, what are they going to do with their money? The question matters for more than just suppliers of cruises and golf clubs. Boomers have deep pockets, so their spending choices will exert a huge influence on global economic growth, inflation and interest rates. And it turns out boomers are remarkably stingy—not just in America but across the rich world. They are not spending their wealth, but trying to preserve or even increase it. The big question for the economy in the 2020s and 2030s will not be why boomers are spending so much, as many had anticipated. It will be why they are spending so little. Economists have a simple model of how people spend as they age. In youth, people’s outgoings exceed their incomes, as they borrow to invest in education or to buy their first house. In middle age people accumulate money for retirement. And in old age they spend more than they earn, funding their lifestyles by selling assets (such as houses) and eating into savings.
Article Source: Economist
4 Cartel violence increasing in Mexico
The six years of the López Obrador presidency have been the most violent of Mexico’s modern history. We cannot know the exact number of those killed, because López Obrador destroyed the independence of the national statistical agency. But a credible estimate suggests that more than 30,000 homicides have occurred in each year of López Obrador’s rule: nearly 200,000 altogether. Tens of thousands of people have disappeared without a trace. Most of Mexico’s killings are not the result of personal disputes or casual street violence. Mexico is under attack from what has aptly been called a “criminal insurgency.” U.S. officials have long privately warned that the Mexican state is losing control of its national territory, something that Secretary of State Antony Blinken publicly stated in 2023. What this means for Mexican democracy is very stark: Politicians and journalists, in particular, live or die according to whether the criminal syndicates believe they are protected by the state.
Article Source: Atlantic
5 In Ukraine, the next generation of land, sea, and air war unfolds
the Washington policy establishment needs to think harder about the largest, ugliest and most dangerous land war in Europe since World War II. From a tactical and geopolitical perspective, Vladimir Putin’s war is changing the global balance of power in ways that the U.S. can’t afford to neglect.
American and Taiwanese military planners can take heart from Ukraine’s success in bottling up Russia’s Black Sea fleet. It turns out that the new era of naval warfare favors the defensive party. Russia hasn’t been able to use its superior fleet to deliver land forces on Ukraine’s coast or even to block Ukraine’s commerce. Strategists in Beijing will note that it’s significantly harder to move invading armies across open water than before the Ukrainians humbled Russia’s fleet.
Increasingly one hears soldiers speak of “dead zones” between the opposing forces. Drones, which can now pursue individual soldiers through trenches, make it difficult for either side to conduct operations within 2 or 3 miles of the opposing battle line. For now, this may make new offensive operations on the scale of last summer’s ill-fated Ukrainian counteroffensive impossible. As soon as next year, “drone swarms” could create more formidable killing zones between armies, making offensive operations even more challenging. Land and air warfare are rapidly changing, with both Ukrainians and Russians constantly updating technology. Along the battlefront, soldiers and engineers are introducing innovations large and small that can make old weapons systems obsolete overnight. As the Russians deploy new forms of jamming techniques or equip their drones and missiles with new stealth capabilities, the Ukrainians must match them and, where possible, out-compete. With increasingly sophisticated weapons routing more-detailed performance information back to manufacturers, the tempo of weapons redesign and production is accelerating beyond anything seen in past wars. Ukraine is building a new kind of military-industrial complex, in which decentralized teams of hackers and tinkerers in small to medium-size firms continuously reimagine and re-engineer the tools of war. I visited camouflaged workshops where, among other things, I saw Ukrainian engineers converting children’s toys into land drones that could place mines before oncoming tanks. Something as simple as a swivel-mounted platform for a gun turret may receive dozens of software and hardware upgrades based on real-time information from the battlefield. Past wars have seen cycles of tech competition, but this is the first peer-to-peer war fought in the age of artificial intelligence. Just as the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s saw the development of the tactics and techniques that shaped World War II, Ukraine today is witnessing the birth of a new kind of conflict. The combination of real-time feedback from continuously monitored weapons with the data-handling and design capabilities of flexible, highly trained and motivated battle engineers is introducing a new dynamic of military tech competition. Weapons that were irresistible a few weeks ago can be easily neutralized today. New threats appear overnight. The Pentagon and the American defense industry need to keep up. The old ways of doing business will soon be obsolete.
Walter Russell Mead
Article Source: WSJ
6/6/1944 D-Day: Allies storm Normandy’s coast
On June 6, 1944, Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower gives the go-ahead for the largest amphibious military operation in history: Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of northern France, commonly known as D-Day. By daybreak, 18,000 British and American parachutists were already on the ground. An additional 13,000 aircraft were mobilized to provide air cover and support for the invasion. At 6:30 a.m., American troops came ashore at Utah and Omaha beaches.
But by day’s end, 155,000 Allied troops–Americans, British and Canadians–had successfully stormed Normandy’s beaches and were then able to push inland. Within three months, the northern part of France would be freed and the invasion force would be preparing to enter Germany, where they would meet up with Soviet forces moving in from the east. Before the Allied assault, Hitler’s armies had been in control of most of mainland Europe and the Allies knew that a successful invasion of the continent was central to winning the war. Hitler knew this too, and was expecting an assault on northwestern Europe in the spring of 1944. He hoped to repel the Allies from the coast with a strong counterattack that would delay future invasion attempts, giving him time to throw the majority of his forces into defeating the Soviet Union in the east. Once that was accomplished, he believed an all-out victory would soon be his. For their part, the Germans suffered from confusion in the ranks and the absence of celebrated commander Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who was away on leave. At first, Hitler, believing that the invasion was a feint designed to distract the Germans from a coming attack north of the Seine River, refused to release nearby divisions to join the counterattack and reinforcements had to be called from further afield, causing delays.
Sources
1. https://www.wsj.com/tech/the-global-chip-battle-in-charts-c7c690bf?mod=series_chipseries
2. https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/joe-biden-age-election-2024-8ee15246?mod=hp_lead_pos7
3. https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/05/26/baby-boomers-are-loaded-why-are-they-so-stingy
4. print
5. https://www.wsj.com/articles/ai-and-the-art-of-war-in-ukraine-18995d3c
Thanks for reading!
