1 TikTok demonstrates its own danger
2 America’s power grid struggles with AI boom
3 Renewed focus on IVF brings ethical debate
4 X to launch smart TV app
5 Cold math of industrial warfare grim for Ukraine
3/11/2020 Trump addresses the nation on COVID-19
Update
Oscars
see ad astra on x @greg_loving
1 TikTok inadvertently demonstrates its own danger
TikTok launched a popup to US users telling them that Congress wanted to ban the app, asking them for the zip code, and then asking them to call their Congressperson. TikTok’s efforts backfired, the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 50-0 to move the bill [to force a TikTok divestiture from its Chinese parent company] forward, and House Majority leader Steve Scalise said he will bring the bill to the floor next week for a vote. The failure of TikTok’s massive DC lobbying and comms operation this week has been fascinating. They seem to have been totally blindsided, and they get paid a lot of money to never be blindsided. The mood on Capitol Hill towards TikTok really does feel like it has shifted, but there is still a long way between today’s committee vote and the President signing something into law. Bytedance HQ and the TikTok CEO should be in crisis mode, and their old strategies to keep Congress from actually doing anything are no longer working.
Sinocism
2 America’s power grid struggles with AI boom
Vast swaths of the United States are at risk of running short of power as electricity-hungry data centers and clean-technology factories proliferate around the country, leaving utilities and regulators grasping for credible plans to expand the nation’s creaking power grid. In Georgia, demand for industrial power is surging to record highs, with the projection of new electricity use for the next decade now 17 times what it was only recently. Arizona Public Service, the largest utility in that state, is also struggling to keep up, projecting it will be out of transmission capacity before the end of the decade absent major upgrades. Northern Virginia needs the equivalent of several large nuclear power plants to serve all the new data centers planned and under construction. Texas, where electricity shortages are already routine on hot summer days, faces the same dilemma. The soaring demand is touching off a scramble to try to squeeze more juice out of an aging power grid while pushing commercial customers to go to extraordinary lengths to lock down energy sources, such as building their own power plants.
WaPo
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/03/07/ai-data-centers-power/
3 Renewed focus on IVF brings ethical debate
Vitaly Kushnir’s fertility clinic offers to screen an embryo to predict a baby’s sex, but the service can lead to ethically murky territory, like when a couple wanted it so their first child could be a boy. It struck him as a sexist motive, he said, and initially he declined. But the couple pushed back, saying that they would simply abort the baby if it was a girl. “I’m not in the business of bringing in unwanted children,” said Kushnir, who owns West Coast Fertility Centers and teaches at the University of California at Irvine. Kushnir, who ultimately agreed to the couple’s wishes, said he thinks there should be some restrictions on selecting a baby’s sex, but in the United States, there aren’t any. The Alabama Supreme Court’s surprise ruling in February that frozen embryos are legally children has sparked new scrutiny of in vitro fertilization, a common procedure responsible for about 2 percent of births a year in the United States. Alabama lawmakers swiftly responded with legislation aimed at protecting IVF providers and patients from criminal or civil liability, which the governor signed this week. But the firestorm has reopened ethical questions surrounding the procedure, particularly at a time when would-be parents can choose everything from sex to eye color.
WaPo
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/03/07/alabama-ivf-sex-selection-ethics/
4 Musk’s X to launch smart TV app
In a bid to compete with YouTube and recast itself as a video platform, Elon Musk’s X is launching a television app for Amazon and Samsung smart TVs, a source at the company told Fortune. The company plans to launch the app next week, and a source says it looks “identical” to YouTube’s TV app. Musk’s goal is to encourage users to watch “long videos on a bigger screen,” part of a plan first teased in July designed to make X more attractive to online influencers and advertisers. The launch of X’s TV app comes as the platform, formerly known as Twitter and mostly popular as a service for posting short text-based messages, seeks to play a larger role in the crowded streaming video market. In January, X declared that it was “now a video-first platform,” touting a new video feature reminiscent of TikTok’s immersive full-screen infinite scroll experience.
Fortune
https://fortune.com/2024/03/08/elon-musk-x-smart-tv-app-youtube-clone-amazon-samsung-pivot-video/
5 Cold math of industrial warfare grim for Ukraine
The Russo-Ukrainian War is one of industrial attrition. Despite a variety of theories about this or that game changing weapon, clever maneuver scheme, or superior western training, the reality of this war for the last 18 months has been one of grinding and laborious industrial war, battering through fixed defenses in a maelstrom of concrete, steel, and high explosives. The central problem for Ukraine is fairly simple: Russian force generation is reaching the liftoff point, which will interminably shift combat power in Russia’s favor.
Ukraine managed to build a large inventory of shells in preparation for its 2023 summer offensive, partially through careful husbanding of resources and partially through the United States tapping a few remaining reservoirs, like South Korea. After expending much of that stockpile in high intensity operations through the summer, the artillery advantage has once again swung heavily in favor of Russia, and “shell hunger” has become a ubiquitous complaint for Kiev. In particular, Zelensky has recently begun to complain of what he calls an “artificial shortage”, blaming the Republican opposition in the US Congress for Ukraine’s supply difficulties. Zelensky is wrong. The shortage is real, and not easily fixed.
After burning through excess stocks, Ukraine’s long-term supply has increasingly come to hinge on attempts to expand production in Europe and the United States. However, this plan is foundering on three separate rocks: 1) industry has been much slower to ramp up than expected; 2) even the expanded production targets are too low to win the war for Ukraine; and 3) even if adequate ammunition could be procured, Ukraine would quickly run into problems with barrel availability.
Thus far, the United States has been much more successful ramping up production than has Europe. While American targets have been revised several times, it now looks like the United States will produce something like 500,000 shells in 2024, which is a good number given the state of the American industrial plant and issues with labor shortages. The European Union initially hoped to deliver 1 million shells on an annualized basis, but they appear to be far short of this number. Europe faces a variety of problems, like labor shortages, exorbitant energy costs, and a consensus driven decision making culture that is slow to allocate significant resources
Let’s say that the USA and Europe both fulfill their current targeted deliveries to Ukraine in their entirety. What would that amount to? A recent study from two German analysts at the European Council on Foreign Relations estimated that, in the optimist scenario, the USA and Europe can supply Ukraine with approximately 1.3 million rounds of ammunition on an annualized basis. That would give Ukraine a budget of about 3,600 shells per day - enough to sustain moderate intensity, but far below what they need.
Last year, Ukrainian Minister of Defense Reznikov said that Ukraine would require nearly 12,000 shells per day to “successfully execute battlefield tasks”, particularly offensive actions.
This runs into an additional, follow on problem, which is that simply pumping shells into Ukraine is not enough. Solving the shell shortage will exacerbate the barrel shortage. Artillery barrels, needless to say, wear out from extended use. Using a rule of thumb number which says that a howitzer barrel has a lifespan of about 2,500 shots, this means that Ukraine would be wearing out somewhere between 125-150 guns per month, assuming they could actually shoot as much as Reznikov wants. This would create yet another sustainment bottleneck, complicated by the fact that Ukraine has at least 17 different platforms in use. Meanwhile, what of the Russians? It’s clear that Russia’s pool of shells has been vastly underestimated. First we have the news that North Korean deliveries have been far larger than initially expected; instead of 1 million, it’s something more like 3 million with deliveries ongoing. This number is dampened by the fact that some of the North Korean shells are defective (from long stays in depots and cannibalization), but the sheer size of the delivery can’t be ignored. Meanwhile, indigenous Russian production has skyrocketed, with the Estonians estimating some 3.5 million shells produced in 2023 for the Russians, with a figure of 4.5 million expected in 2024. Including North Korean shells, it seems highly likely that Russian can easily sustain a firing rate of up to 12,000 shells per day, with surge capacity in reserve. The upshot of all this is essentially that, even if the European production surge occurs on schedule, there’s at least a 3-1 advantage (potentially 5-1) in Russian artillery fire that’s baked into the calculus of this war, occurring alongside a substantial western acknowledged ramp up in Russian production of strike systems like cruise missiles, Geran drones, Lancets, and glide bombs of both greater power and greater range.
Big Serge
3/11/2020 President Trump addresses the nation on COVID-19; announces travel ban
Update
In the Feb 27 issue, I published a clip from a Jerusalem Post article that attributed severed data cables in the Red Sea to Houthi sabotage. Newly released information concludes that a boats anchor- abandoned after Houthi attack - caused the data cable damage.
https://adastraperaspera.substack.com/p/february-27-2024
Red Sea data cables likely cut by Rubymar’s anchor
Three vital telecommunications cables spanning the Red Sea were probably severed by the anchor of the Rubymar, a Belize-flagged commercial ship sunk by a Houthi missile attack in mid-February. The merchant ship, loaded with 41,000 tons of fertilizer, finally sank March 2. “Those cables were cut, most likely by an anchor dragging from the Rubymar as she sank,” US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on CBS News Wednesday.
Cipher Brief
Oscars: Oppenheimer dominates
Best Picture: “Oppenheimer”
Best Actress: Emma Stone, “Poor Things”
Best Director: Christopher Nolan, “Oppenheimer”
Best Actor: Cillian Murphy, “Oppenheimer”
Music (Original Song): “What Was I Made For?” by Billie Eilish and Finneas, from “Barbie”
Music (Original Score): Ludwig Göransson, “Oppenheimer”
Sound: “The Zone of Interest”
Live-Action Short Film: “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar”
Cinematography: “Oppenheimer”
Documentary Feature Film: “20 Days in Mariupol”
Documentary Short Film: “The Last Repair Shop”
Film Editing: “Oppenheimer,” Jennifer Lame
Visual Effects: Godzilla Minus One
Best Supporting Actor: Robert Downey Jr., “Oppenheimer”
International Feature Film: “The Zone of Interest”
Costume Design: “Poor Things”
Production Design: “Poor Things”
Makeup and Hairstyling: “Poor Things”
Writing (Adapted Screenplay): “American Fiction”
Writing (Original Screenplay): “Anatomy of a Fall”
Animated Feature Film: “The Boy and the Heron”
Animated Short Film: “War is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko”
Best Supporting Actress: Da’Vine Joy Randolph, “The Holdovers”
Thanks for reading!