Silicon Investor - Observations and Collectables

[skinowski] Mr. Van Jones defending the Left from the crazies. Who would have thunk? [X] ...

skinowski — 7/22/2026 7:07:32 AM

Mr. Van Jones defending the Left from the crazies. Who would have thunk?

[X]

This weekend I shared a post voicing my concerns about the far left. The response has been overwhelming. Leaders in both parties called to tell me the same thing: this stuff has gone too far.

To be clear: I'm a progressive Democrat. My whole life, I've wanted to see a youth… pic.twitter.com/RZXKQw5DSB
— Van Jones (@VanJones68) July 21, 2026

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[X]

🚨 CNN’s Van Jones BLASTS socialist Democrats: “I am tired, tired, tired of a set of people on the very far left in the Democratic party… ideas that are literally insane. Nutty. Moronic. Dangerous. Bigoted. They are not progressive, they are regressive and they should not be in… pic.twitter.com/mpsMDXjnpv
— TV News Now (@TVNewsNow) July 20, 2026

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[skinowski] A 27 minute trip into the future. Remarkable.

skinowski — 7/22/2026 6:49:33 AM

[Stan] AI confirms this is true about what’s going on in China with regard to energy co...

Stan — 7/21/2026 8:56:17 PM

AI confirms this is true about what’s going on in China with regard to energy consumption.

[skinowski] Good video. Communism is oppression and slavery. It may be murderous and brutal...

skinowski — 7/21/2026 6:34:14 PM

Good video. Communism is oppression and slavery. It may be murderous and brutal - or, it may be milder. But, it’s just a matter of degree.

[X]

Excellent video. Well done. They’ll always tell you that ‘Communism’ wasn’t done the ‘right way’. https://t.co/jnAh9e4Ece
— Liz Churchill (@liz_churchill10) July 21, 2026

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[alanrs] Redacted Live now, good guest. Flock and related.

alanrs — 7/21/2026 4:55:59 PM

[skinowski] A 10 minute report about the Wagner organization resurrecting itself in the Cent...

skinowski — 7/21/2026 4:46:37 PM

A 10 minute report about the Wagner organization resurrecting itself in the Central African Republic, under the leadership of the son of its original leader, Pavel Prigozhin. They have strong connections with the government - and seem to be in the business of gold mining plus some Tramadol trafficking. They’re seriously involved with the army, as well.

[X]

🇷🇺🇨🇫 Wagner is Back. This Time as a Cartel in Africa.

Full analysis: https://t.co/TLyh3GVOiQ pic.twitter.com/TM5HaCnz0g
— HistoryLegends (@HistoryLegends_) July 21, 2026

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[John Carragher] if in philly we have a few best deli's.https://philly.eater.com/maps/best-jewish...

John Carragher — 7/21/2026 10:29:51 AM

if in philly we have a few best deli's.https://philly.eater.com/maps/best-jewish-delis-philadelphia

[skinowski] Looks good…. The “Complete 3 course dinner for 4” at $155 actually sounds like a...

skinowski — 7/21/2026 9:30:48 AM

Looks good…. The “Complete 3 course dinner for 4” at $155 actually sounds like a bargain.

[skinowski] Every export led model requires someone else to absorb the shortfall in demand. ...

skinowski — 7/21/2026 8:45:36 AM

Every export led model requires someone else to absorb the shortfall in demand. Once that truth is recognized, Jamieson Greer’s warning becomes obvious: if America refuses to make policy, it will not inhabit some neutral free market equilibrium. It will become a policy taker, absorbing imbalances and industrial distortions engineered abroad.

There is something in there that I’m not grasping. In this line of thinking, competitiveness - ability to make good products at a good (best?) price doesn’t seem to play a part. Trade balance is determined by government policies - if you don’t want to suffer negative balances, simply introduce tariffs.

But, is that true? Imagine, for a moment, that ALL governments agree to stay away from free trade among both individual entities and nations. In this case, trade balance would be decided exclusively based on quality and price. The system would still work. Those falling behind would immediately know what’s causing the problem - and make efforts to become more competitive.

Now, imagine that all trade balances are determined mostly by tariffs and other protectionist policies. You would have “Iron Curtains” all over the world. In the end, the sum total of impacts would be negative.

[X]

Canada Proves the Point of America First

America First is not nostalgia. It is a return to an older American tradition, running from Alexander Hamilton to Henry Clay, that starts from a simple premise: the United States should shape its own development, not let rival powers… https://t.co/oFTdcaVCcl
— James E. Thorne (@DrJStrategy) July 21, 2026

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[Stan] re. Shipping their sandwiches Had no idea! But you're right. It'll be a few bu...

Stan — 7/21/2026 8:25:30 AM

re. Shipping their sandwiches

Had no idea! But you're right. It'll be a few bucks though.

Katz's Deli Shipping Menu - NYC's oldest deli

[alanrs] I have a hard time telling extending the benefit of the doubt and the Stockholm ...

alanrs — 7/21/2026 7:55:56 AM

I have a hard time telling extending the benefit of the doubt and the Stockholm syndrome apart.

There's a line in there somewhere.

[skinowski] What you’re describing must be unusual. They must have received some warning of ...

skinowski — 7/21/2026 7:42:59 AM

What you’re describing must be unusual. They must have received some warning of a potential threat or something like that.

[alanrs] Yeah, I get that and have flown many times, Hawaii, Australia, other places. It...

alanrs — 7/21/2026 7:28:27 AM

Yeah, I get that and have flown many times, Hawaii, Australia, other places.

It has something to do with the "Render unto Caesar" complex I have going on personally.

I will 'render' when I come in contact with Caesar but go out of my way to avoid contact with Caesar.

I know it's trivial but it is what I can do to not feed the beast.

And there was no "misbehaving" involved in the extra search routine I mentioned, just a bunch of tired people sitting around waiting. A puzzling experience.

[skinowski] The famous Katz’s Deli…. I don’t recall ever going there. Too far out of my wa...

skinowski — 7/21/2026 7:25:31 AM

The famous Katz’s Deli…. I don’t recall ever going there. Too far out of my way. But, I’ve been to similar places - and understand why people are excited about it. I really should make it my business to visit there. If not - maybe I’ll order a couple of their great Pastrami sandwiches to be shipped to me. They do it. Of course, it’s probably not the same.

Correction: having seen the video, I think it would be more fun to visit :)

[skinowski] Airports are impersonal and machine-like, and so, for the most part, are airplai...

skinowski — 7/21/2026 7:06:03 AM

Airports are impersonal and machine-like, and so, for the most part, are airplains. The key to surviving the experience is to… cooperate. People working in the system are all different - some are relatively cheerful, others are always “strict” and won’t smile ever. Even with the cheerful ones, you simply know that they’ll turn uber-strict the moment someone doesn’t “cooperate”.

But… I don’t like living in NY - and I do like to spend time with family, ski, travel… - so, sometimes, I buy the tickets and accept, for the pre-agreed upon number of hours, to be ordered around and play nice.

[Stan] If I knew you were in NYC, I would have suggested this sooner. Who knows, if you...

Stan — 7/20/2026 10:20:50 PM

If I knew you were in NYC, I would have suggested this sooner. Who knows, if you're close enough already try them out if you've never been there before.

How Katz's Deli Serves 70,000 Pounds Of Meat A Week | Full Service

[kckip] I got the special treatment last trip (May) because I (so far) have refused the ...

kckip — 7/20/2026 7:50:01 PM

I got the special treatment last trip (May) because I (so far) have refused the Real ID.....but it was just a trip through the X-Ray machine.....now you don't even have to take off your shoes (take that Shoe Bomber! - foiled again). We did the red-eye back and the plane was less than a third full....guessing Ski's reschedule was either related to profit or lack of a flight crew.

I ran across this and couldn't resist posting this in response to both your post and Ski's post.....if you weigh in at less than 100 KG, I see a trip to orbit in your future.....provided you get your RI <g>.

ricochet.com

Quote of the Day – Spaceflight
Seawriter

Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever – Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

Today fits into the 57th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, which sent men to the Moon. It launched July 16, landed on the Moon July 20, and returned to Earth July 24. It was the first time human beings set foot on another orbital body.

At the time it looked as if Tsiolkovsky’s prediction that we would become a spacefaring race was about to become reality. Instead it proved a false start. We retreated back to Low Earth Orbit for the next 54 years after the last Apollo Moon mission, returning only this year.

Yet today we are at the cusp of redeeming Tsiolkovsky’s prediction. SpaceX’s Starship offers cheap access to space once it becomes operational.

How cheap? Initially it will drop launch costs to under $100 per kilogram. One skeptic ran the numbers, trying to prove this value unrealistic. Instead, her prediction was $63 per kilogram. Musk predicts launch costs will drop to $10 per kilogram once development costs are capitalized.

How much of a drop is that? The Saturn V moon rocket had a cost to LEO of $11,400 to $46,000 per kilogram. The Delta II and Atlas V were around $22,000 per kilogram. The Falcon 9 dropped that to $1500 per kilogram.

Falcon 9 is one reason there has been so much more space activity in the last 20 years. If you cut launch costs by 96%, a lot that was previously uneconomical becomes possible. An earth-based example would be containerization. The shipping container dropped shipping costs 97%, which created the global economy.

It is now economical to harvest fish from the North Sea, freeze the catch, ship it to China for processing and then ship it back to Britain for fish and chips. That costs less than processing the fish in Britain due to differences in labor costs. (You don’t have to like what it does to British employment, but everyone loves the cost savings.)

Falcon 9 has made a lot of space activities profitable that were previously unprofitable using expendables developed in the 1960s. Starship offers the same cost savings as Falcon 9. Economics rules human activity, and Elon Musk has changed the game in space — even assuming worst-case launch numbers for Starship. Chip factories in space? Doable. Data centers in space? Doable. And likely really, really profitable.

At $100/kilogram, putting a 200-pound human in orbit costs $9100, which is on par with the cost of a trip on the Concorde SST. At $10/kilogram? It becomes $910. Even adding the weight of life support, it becomes 1930s transoceanic air travel expensive. Where people can afford to travel, they travel. Just look at how many people climb Everest and K2. In two or three decades —possibly less — the number of humans traveling in space will number in the thousands annually.

Unless the socialists take over and wreck everything, we are about to leave humanity’s cradle.

[alanrs] I haven't flown since I was specially frisked, along with everybody else waiting...

alanrs — 7/20/2026 7:36:21 PM

I haven't flown since I was specially frisked, along with everybody else waiting to board the flight.

Four uniformed folks charged in, ordered everyone to stand in line, arms out, extra frisk. Stern faces, no explanation, and off they went.

Looked like a training exercise. I don't remember if that contingency was spelled out when I bought the ticket.

Maybe it was, some small print that says if you are in an airport they can do whatever they want to you. I decided not to enter any more airports, I'm funny that way.

[skinowski] TGH, I found Tucker bitter and annoying - besides the fact that I really don’t c...

skinowski — 7/20/2026 7:23:38 PM

TGH, I found Tucker bitter and annoying - besides the fact that I really don’t care about his opinions. So, every time he was on, I just moved the player a little forward, skipping most of his stuff :)

The discussion was very interesting. Jermy is worth following. I’ll want to find his recent article they also mentioned in the interview with Diesen.

In the meantime… Jet Blue just cancelled our flight from NYC to Florida for Wednesday. No explanation offered. Gave us another flight, for the following day, inconveniently early. It’s a pain in the neck. Traveling used to be easy - and even fun.

[Alan Smithee] This could be a game changer. Fact check in real time. [X] A college stude...

Alan Smithee — 7/20/2026 6:56:55 PM

This could be a game changer.

Fact check in real time.

[X]

A college student just killed the biggest advantage politicians have ever had. The gap between the lie and the fact-check.

He built a Chrome extension called InTruth. It listens to any live speech, debate, or interview.

Transcribes every word. And checks every claim against… pic.twitter.com/0WeIj6p1sW
— Vaibhav Sisinty (@VaibhavSisinty) July 20, 2026

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[kckip] Good discussions by Steve Jermy......generally a fair analysis. I had to stop o...

kckip — 7/20/2026 6:49:38 PM

Good discussions by Steve Jermy......generally a fair analysis.

I had to stop on the previous one when TC started going off the rails at around the 30 minute mark.

I quit on this one at the 6:15 mark when he (SJ) stated we (US) were "suffering a defeat in Iran".....Yet to be determined, but our negotiating team to date seems to be falling into the same old failed pattern with Iran (and it's proxy negotiators)....it appears that more pragmatic minds are now prevailing (yet to be determined).....this video may have been made before the current post-MOU interactions.

[skinowski] More of Commodore Steve Jermy - this time with Glenn Diesen, recently. Same sub...

skinowski — 7/20/2026 5:27:14 PM

More of Commodore Steve Jermy - this time with Glenn Diesen, recently.

Same subject - Europe is sleepwalking into a direct war with Russia - a war they cannot win - while showing remarkably little thought about what it may imply and where it may lead.
[X]

Steve Jermy: Warning! NATO Can't Win a War with Russiahttps://t.co/olsJKnmnkr pic.twitter.com/0qr4Z4pa7o
— Glenn Diesen (@Glenn_Diesen) July 6, 2026

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[skinowski] “NATO exists in order to confront a threat which was created by its own existenc...

skinowski — 7/20/2026 4:36:33 PM

“NATO exists in order to confront a threat which was created by its own existence - and it doesn’t have the strength to confront that threat”

Personally, I’ve been more or less ignoring Carlson. But, Commodore Steve Jermy is very, very interesting.

[X]

Nihilistic western leaders have been pushing for decades to have a major war with Russia. Former Royal Navy commander Steve Jermy says they’re about to get that war, and lose badly.

0:00 What Is Happening Between Russia and Ukraine?
9:21 Why Would the US and NATO Want a War With… pic.twitter.com/gFwhIjOJMy
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) July 20, 2026

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[skinowski] In 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis, Jack Matlock was a young US diplomate,...

skinowski — 7/20/2026 9:38:24 AM

In 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis, Jack Matlock was a young US diplomate, working at the US Embassy in Moscow (later, he became the Ambassador). There is probably no other way to get this story from any other person who was an eyewitness and a participant. Later in the talk, he connects it with the current situation.

Mr. Matlock is elderly (born in 1929). He speaks quite clearly, but slowly. You can easily play it at 1.5

[X]

Jack Matlock: The Cuban Missile Crisis & NATO's War in Ukrainehttps://t.co/iDRYNeHeU7 pic.twitter.com/yu0qEB4mAG
— Glenn Diesen (@Glenn_Diesen) July 19, 2026

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[SteveinTX] Agree with everything in your comment. Most of us here are old men approaching ...

SteveinTX — 7/20/2026 8:34:13 AM

Agree with everything in your comment. Most of us here are old men approaching our view into eternity. It does not bode well for SI.

[skinowski] [X] truth https://t.co/eQzYsIAj64— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) July 19, 2026 [/X] [X]...

skinowski — 7/20/2026 7:49:33 AM

[X]

truth https://t.co/eQzYsIAj64
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) July 19, 2026

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[X]

Imagine running an economy of 150 million people from a Moscow office with no prices, no profit signals, and a dictator who shoots you for missing quotas. That was Gosplan's job when Stalin launched the first Five Year Plan in 1928. You already know how it ended. What matters is… pic.twitter.com/Y5yd3NQtDh
— Handre (@Handre) July 19, 2026

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[alanrs] Seth Flock cameras and related surveillance issues. Long.

alanrs — 7/20/2026 6:55:58 AM

[DinoNavarre] [X] To understand Russia, you have to think like a Russian. Analysing it throug...

DinoNavarre — 7/19/2026 4:36:56 PM

[X]

To understand Russia, you have to think like a Russian. Analysing it through a Western lens will only take you so far.

1) Russia no longer wants this war, but it cannot simply stop it. Because…Pride.

A self-declared “great power” cannot admit defeat - especially not against a…
— Бианка (@BiankaB12) July 14, 2026

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[alanrs] Viva Frei/John Beaudoin 45 minutes. Covid deaths and legal stuff.

alanrs — 7/19/2026 2:21:32 PM

[John Carragher] Bill contributed to a lot of research into each of his threads. His heat attack...

John Carragher — 7/19/2026 12:01:05 PM

Bill contributed to a lot of research into each of his threads. His heat attack etc thread was a major contribution to many readers of his thread. What a wonderful person still miss him

[Roads End] I joined in 1996 as well. Rarely post any more but follow my favorite threads d...

Roads End — 7/19/2026 11:14:06 AM

I joined in 1996 as well. Rarely post any more but follow my favorite threads daily including this high quality thread. Just bookmarked and followed the new thread New York City to see where it goes. Thomas and you are currently the only subscribers so it should have some promise.

[Alan Smithee] I’ve been on SI since 1996. In thirty years, I’ve seen a lot of forums (I call...

Alan Smithee — 7/19/2026 10:28:59 AM

I’ve been on SI since 1996.

In thirty years, I’ve seen a lot of forums (I call them threads) come and go.

My theory is that the threads of SI, and likely other discussion forums, have a lifespan like living things do.

They’re started, grow, mature, and ultimately, wither away and die.

Politics for Pros is a good example. Lindy Bill created and nurtured an amazing place to share information and ideas. Then he died. Four years after Lindy died, PfP is hanging on, but just barely. Eventually it will be gone.

Bill Millan died four years ago tomorrow, July 20, 2022. On that day, Politics for Pros had a total of 765,512 posts. Quite an accomplishment.

I’m sometimes amazed that SI is still here, after all these years.

[skinowski] I may just read her book. The fact that some bankers tried to think through the...

skinowski — 7/19/2026 9:39:58 AM

I may just read her book.

The fact that some bankers tried to think through the future world architecture following the disaster of WWII is not, in itself, proof that it had to be something anti-democratic and menacing. I’m sure, whatever they thought up evolved since then into something which may be different and unintended by the original designers.

Yeah, I just may read it.

[John Carragher] yes, and so many of the old timers have passed on. We were blessed to have th...

John Carragher — 7/19/2026 9:15:24 AM

yes, and so many of the old timers have passed on. We were blessed to have them and they left us with great memories.

[alanrs] [youtube video] Greg Hunter/Jerome Corsi Hunter's a little weird but he often ...

alanrs — 7/19/2026 9:12:14 AM

Greg Hunter/Jerome Corsi

Hunter's a little weird but he often has good guests. Another half hour, election fraud.

[skinowski] LOL! You told me once that no one gets out alive. I suppose, the same goes for...

skinowski — 7/19/2026 9:06:07 AM

LOL! You told me once that no one gets out alive.

I suppose, the same goes for possessions - be it paper books, or internet posts.

Unless there is a dimension where everything is forever. We’ll find out.

[alanrs] The Duran/Mel K Half an hour. Control structure, she wrote a book.

alanrs — 7/19/2026 8:45:00 AM

[alanrs] I know, I remember. The threads I followed seem to have committed suicide one w...

alanrs — 7/19/2026 8:26:09 AM

I know, I remember.

The threads I followed seem to have committed suicide one way or another.

[skinowski] 19 recs I think. I did not recognize a single name on that list of 19, nor the o...

skinowski — 7/19/2026 8:03:20 AM

19 recs I think. I did not recognize a single name on that list of 19, nor the original poster

This sounds like good news for SI. It means that new people must be joining.

I look for news and inputs from a broader universe, which is mostly X. Sometimes, I post here things I find interesting. This is why I started this thread - as a personal depository of sorts. I posted mostly to myself, easily, for a couple of decades - and only offered to make it available because D.L. disallowed any mention of the Ukraine war.

Which…I still see as a global issue, no less important than Iran (but, fortunately, taking place without our direct participation).

[skinowski] A Perspective [X] Trump’s Pipeline Wars: How Iran’s Gambit Exposed China War ...

skinowski — 7/19/2026 7:32:01 AM

A Perspective

[X]

Trump’s Pipeline Wars: How Iran’s Gambit Exposed China

War is the continuation of politics by other means and Trump has moved that logic from the battlefield to the barrel.

The pipeline wars are his answer to Iran’s closure of Hormuz: a counter‑offensive that punishes Tehran,… https://t.co/WswX5DIBOy pic.twitter.com/X4Zp2QnXRv
— James E. Thorne (@DrJStrategy) July 17, 2026

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Trump’s Pipeline Wars: How Iran’s Gambit Exposed China

War is the continuation of politics by other means and Trump has moved that logic from the battlefield to the barrel.

The pipeline wars are his answer to Iran’s closure of Hormuz: a counter-offensive that punishes Tehran, exposes China, and pulls Iraq, Syria, and Venezuela toward the American orbit as emerging allies.
Iran’s gambit was revolutionary bravado: slam shut the strait, choke off a third of seaborne oil, and dare America to blink. Iraq’s exports, long 90-plus percent dependent on Hormuz—collapsed, and Baghdad discovered it was less an energy state than a client of a narrow waterway patrolled by a hostile regime and an American carrier group.

The Strait has been war-gamed for decades. Trump tried diplomacy first. Now the world is watching what hard power looks like when the simulations go live.

His answer is to treat Hormuz as a flaw, not fate. Epic Fury broke Iran’s ability to escalate; the strategic move is what follows—build around Iran. Push Iraqi barrels toward Turkey’s Ceyhan.

Revive Mediterranean outlets. Bring back the Kirkuk–Baniyas concept: an old 1950s line from Kirkuk to Syria’s port of Baniyas, shuttered by war and neglect, now reborn as a 300,000–700,000 barrel-per-day artery with U.S. backing, American firms doing the studies, and sanctions eased just enough to lay steel. Iraq gets cheaper exports and diversification away from both Hormuz and Ceyhan. A post-Assad Syria stops being a crater and starts being a corridor, earning hundreds of millions in transit fees, plus jobs and infrastructure. In practice, Syria and Iraq are being bound into an American-centric energy system, precisely how fragile states become durable allies.

The deeper casualty is China. Beijing built its industrial machine on discounted barrels from Iran and Venezuela, moved by shadow fleets through long, vulnerable sea lanes. That is not diversification; it is dependency. Churchill warned that “safety and certainty in oil lie in variety of supply.” China concentrated risk in sanctioned regimes and contested waters, then called it strategy.

Venezuela shows the Trump doctrine at work. For years, Caracas was a major producer, enabler of state-sponsored terrorism, and a willing ally of China.

The takedown of Nicolás Maduro was a seismic event largely ignored in polite foreign-policy circles: a hostile petro-regime toppled without occupation, then flipped into a grudging supplier to U.S. refiners. Oil long routed to China now flows to America, strengthening U.S. energy security and starving Beijing of friendly heavy crude.

This is Hegel’s dialectic in hard assets. Iran’s closure of Hormuz is the thesis. Trump’s strikes, pipelines, and Venezuela turn are the antithesis. The pipeline wars are the synthesis: chokepoints contested, transit states turned into allies, hostile producers pulled into an American system.

In 2026, the map matters again and Trump is redrawing it so America sits on the pipes while Iran and China sit on exposure.

[alanrs] SI seems to be pretty dead overall, might just be it's summer. Could be it's th...

alanrs — 7/19/2026 7:29:20 AM

SI seems to be pretty dead overall, might just be it's summer. Could be it's the threads I follow.

I'm spending a lot less time on the computer.

I did run into a highly recommended post on a completely random thread, from the highly recommended list of the day, 19 recs I think. I did not recognize a single name on that list of 19, nor the original poster, so there's that.

[skinowski] In case anyone is interested, this is the latest video about the Ukraine war by ...

skinowski — 7/18/2026 7:48:07 PM

In case anyone is interested, this is the latest video about the Ukraine war by History Legends

[X]

🇺🇦🇷🇺 Russia KNOCKED OUT Ukraine From Kostiantynivka

The Russian 3rd and 8th Combined Arms Armies finalized the capture of the fortress city of Kostiantynivka. How did they do it and what does this mean?

Full analysis: https://t.co/6WJTHyE5hu pic.twitter.com/H6Uwwl9lX7
— HistoryLegends (@HistoryLegends_) July 16, 2026

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[skinowski] Watched the England - France game. It was quite insane. Ended 6:4 for England. ...

skinowski — 7/18/2026 7:19:41 PM

Watched the England - France game. It was quite insane. Ended 6:4 for England.

Google informs me that there were higher scoring matches during World Cup in the past - but todays game was pretty unusual.

1954 quarter-final between Austria and Switzerland (12 goals) and the 1938 round of 16 match between Brazil and Poland (11 goals)

[skinowski] Ukrainian drone attack severely damaged an on-line retailers fulfillment warehou...

skinowski — 7/18/2026 6:15:06 PM

Ukrainian drone attack severely damaged an on-line retailers fulfillment warehouse, killing 9 and injuring over 30.

Overall, Russia is running - and, it appears, effectively - an attrition war in Ukraine. In the meantime, the fact that the war is conducted relatively conservatively, convinced Western leaders that Russia’s war fighting capability is garbage. Diesen seems convinced that we’re about to find out.

[X]

NATO's objective of bringing the war to Russia is advancing, as evidenced by today's attack on Wildberries in Moscow. This can only go on for so long before Russia brings the war to NATO territory. Lunacy. pic.twitter.com/wNOHJ5BckX
— Glenn Diesen (@Glenn_Diesen) July 18, 2026

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[skinowski] Weaponizing drinking water [X] POTUS Trump has threatened Iran's power grid at...

skinowski — 7/18/2026 9:23:55 AM

Weaponizing drinking water

[X]

POTUS Trump has threatened Iran's power grid at least four times since March 2026. Iran's / IRGC’s answer is aimed at a different liquid. On Friday Iranian missiles hit the station that makes Kuwait's electricity and its drinking water. Kuwait distils about 90% of what it drinks… pic.twitter.com/qFw2VnIc43
— Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ (@shanaka86) July 17, 2026

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[skinowski] Posting this not for the Rubio excerpt (which we saw) - but for the Jordan Peter...

skinowski — 7/18/2026 8:28:07 AM

Posting this not for the Rubio excerpt (which we saw) - but for the Jordan Peterson comment. He gives this a different perspective.

[X]

We think of this evil as Marxism. In reality, Marxism is nothing more or less than the current instantiation of a much more ancient evil: possession by the envious and hateful spirit that drove Cain to murder his brother Abel.

The great book of Genesis thus portrays mankind as…
— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) July 17, 2026

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[skinowski] Thank you for posting this, Libby. One of the smartest marxists of all time was...

skinowski — 7/18/2026 8:11:38 AM

Thank you for posting this, Libby.

One of the smartest marxists of all time was Saul Alinsky. His “Rules for Radicals” are simple - 1) identify a problem or a source of tension in a community. 2) Choose a side - and become an activist, and 3) you become influential, and a prominent leader.

If you think about it, Marxism is but a specific example of this simple approach - during the earlier parts of the Industrial Revolution workers worked hard - and got paid little. A perfect setup for a potentially revolutionary movement.

Filling it in with some resemblance of an economic theory and a form of philosophy wasn’t such a great challenge for the smart, educated (and power hungry) people at the center of their movement.

This led to many decades of violence, death, poverty for all - except for the politically connected - and massive abuses of human rights, on a global scale. In the best case, socialism means having a non-productive economy and a dreary life of relative poverty for all - except for the elites (meaning, the comrades who are more equal than others).

In recent years, we are seeing a new recurrence of this disease - people’s lives are disrupted by massive migrations, by discovering that the culture in which they grew up is becoming just one of many, by seeing that their governments and the police often seem to be standing on the side of those “migrants” - and so on.

Political violence seems to be used more openly - whenever “they” think it could be effective.

I could go on… but, enough for now. Thank you again for posting the full version of Rubio’s presentation.

[Libbyt] IMO it is worth listening to the entire speech…about 19 minutes, not just the hi...

Libbyt — 7/17/2026 11:29:22 PM

IMO it is worth listening to the entire speech…about 19 minutes, not just the highlights.

x.com

[skinowski] Decided to post David Goldman’s 2024 article in its entirety. There were times ...

skinowski — 7/17/2026 4:43:43 PM

Decided to post David Goldman’s 2024 article in its entirety. There were times I looked for it and couldn’t find it.
lawliberty.org

The Innovation Imperative – David P. Goldman
David P. Goldman

Man walks among supersonic cruise missiles at the 13th C... more
May 29, 2024

The Innovation Imperative

Our $35 trillion national debt costs us 2.3 percent of our GDP to service, and that will rise to 7.2 percent of GDP by 2053, according to the Peterson Institute, levels we associate with Third World nations skirting national bankruptcy. The implications for national security are dire. We know that America’s military power is declining. But nothing on the political horizon will persuade Americans to pay higher taxes to support higher defense outlays, especially after a quarter-century of frustrating forever wars. The dominant meme of our national strategic discourse is lifeboat economics: Do we throw Ukraine under the bus or Taiwan?

The question has become moot during the past several months, as the combined West ran out of artillery ammunition, air defense missiles, and other ordinance to support Ukraine against Russia. NATO is scrounging through its inventories, cajoling Greece and Spain to send its limited stocks of Patriot missiles to Kyiv. 155mm shells, the workhorse of the Ukraine war, can’t be had in large numbers anywhere. The West can write checks, but it can’t produce enough weapons.

In the meantime, it is now widely acknowledged that China’s massive investment in anti-ship missiles, modern aircraft, and submarines can overwhelm any naval assets that the United States might place within 1,000 miles of China’s coast. This has been true for some time, but the continuing buildup of China’s strategic assets makes it harder to ignore.

We are well past the point where it makes sense to quibble about whether we should prioritize Europe or Asia. There is only one way to avoid strategic decline. That is to prioritize innovation. That is what we did when the United States fell behind the Soviet Union during the 1970s. We succeeded brilliantly then. We should try to do it again.

That also opens a path out of budget constraints. Federal investment in high-tech research and development (R&D) has paid for itself many times over in the form of civilian spinoffs. In fact, the only kind of industrial policy that the United States has ever executed successfully proceeded from national security concerns.

China’s Advantage

Let us review the grim facts about the military balance in Asia. Two years ago I wrote that “China has invested massively in technologies that well may determine the outcome of any future war in the Western Pacific,” including long-range missiles, lasers that target communication satellites, and “AI-driven methods of submarine detection.”

In the interim, according to outgoing head of the Pacific Fleet Admiral John Aquilino, “China has built more than 400 aircraft, 20 major warships, and doubled its missile inventory” during his three-year tour. The Pentagon last year estimated that China has 1,000 “carrier killer” DF-21 intermediate-range missiles, enough to swamp the defenses of any US carrier group. China has tested the satellite-guided weapons system successfully for use against moving targets more than 1,000 miles from its coast.

In addition to its inventory of ballistic missiles, China is mass-producing anti-ship cruise missiles, according to the country’s media. One automated factory allegedly can build 1,000 cruise missile motors per day. China can make as many cruise missiles as it wants to.

Cruise missiles like the American Tomahawk or Popeye are an older technology. An American destroyer carries interceptors that can destroy them reliably, but a destroyer can only carry 100 interceptors in its hold, while China can fire as many cruise missiles from land as it wants, confirming the US military’s long-held belief that their surface vessels are particularly vulnerable to Chinese missiles.

China’s 66 diesel-electric submarines are also an effective threat to the US presence in the Western Pacific. The boats are very quiet. During Pacific exercises in 2023, similar German and Israeli diesel-electric submarines traversed the entire diameter of a US carrier strike group undetected.

China also has over 200 J-20 stealth interceptors and over 1,000 fourth-generation fighters. We do not know how good the Chinese planes are—and do not wish to find out. They are armed with the PL-17 air-to-air missile (range of 400 kilometers, twice that of the US AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile). China has never fought an air war, and US analysts can only guess at the efficacy of Chinese aircraft, but the little we know suggests that China has a strong air force.

With a home-court advantage in logistics, China has a massive preponderance of firepower in its own theater. The last thing the US military wants is a kinetic situation with the PLA Navy. Defense analysts will continue to spin scenarios to ward off a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, imagining that the Chinese would traverse the 90 miles of the Taiwan Strait in landing craft after the fashion of “Saving Private Ryan.” That is a bait-and-switch: Taiwan has storage capacity for about 11 days of natural gas, and a single Chinese missile aimed at an LNG carrier would shut down the island’s economy (43 percent of its electricity comes from natural gas). The only country likely to attack Taiwan directly is the United States, which might elect to destroy the country’s state-of-the-art semiconductor fabrication plants to prevent them from falling into PRC hands.

China, as well as Russia, have deployable hypersonic missiles (maneuverable cruise missiles that travel at Mach 5 or faster). Conventional missile defense is ineffective for the most part against these systems. Former Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (USD[R&E]) Michael Griffin has testified to Congress that the United States does not “have systems which can hold [China and Russia] at risk in a corresponding manner, and we don’t have defenses against [their] systems.”

In summary, there is nothing to prioritize in Asia, that is, no tactical or strategic objective that could be achieved by shifting existing resources at the margin from Europe to Asia or vice versa. The United States and its allies have allowed the defense industrial base to decay to the point that catching up with China’s production capacity would take a long time, if it is indeed possible.

China’s advantage in industrial automation is formidable. Its large automakers can manufacture electric vehicles at a fraction of American prices (the BYD Seagull sells in China for less than $10,000) and remain profitable. Its flagship telecommunications equipment maker Huawei produces 5G base stations at low cost. In July 2023, I visited a Huawei facility in Shenzhen that turns out 2,400 5G base stations per day, or nearly a quarter of the world’s installed capacity annually. Huawei claims to have 10,000 industrial automation projects underway using dedicated 5G networks. I am aware of fewer than ten in the United States.

The economics and logistics of missile war make it virtually impossible for the United States Navy to overtake China’s combination of industrial capacity and home court logistics within the existing framework of military technology.

The Alternative: Innovate

The United States needs to prioritize defense R&D that pushes the envelope of physics: chips that use the quantum properties of matter to multiply computing power, quantum computers that can solve complex problems many times faster, directed-energy weapons that defeat projectiles traveling at Mach 8—and things that have not yet appeared on our thought horizon.

We have done this before. Russian surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft artillery downed nearly 100 US planes flown by Israeli pilots during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, in a devastating display of Russian superiority in conventional air war. Only nine years later, at the so-called Beqaa Valley Turkey Shoot, the Israeli Air Force destroyed nearly 100 Soviet planes flown by the Syrian Air Force, using a combination of new technologies: AWAC surveillance, look-down radar, suicide drones, and other innovations. A combination of new computing, communications, and sensing technologies gave America and its allies a decisive advantage in aerial combat. None of these inventions could have been anticipated in 1973. The determination of the United States to innovate its way out of a losing position enabled a set of key discoveries.

We need the courage to pursue the unknown unknowns.

We do not know a priori which inventions might obviate China’s advantage in missiles. But we surely know where to begin work.

Directed-energy weapons may be the most promising field of research. The original “Star Wars” concept envisioned x-ray lasers based in space powerful enough to destroy ICBMs. The Defense Department currently spends $1 billion a year on directed-energy R&D. According to media reports, the Pentagon in April deployed the first laser weapon capable of destroying drones. This appears similar to Israel’s “Iron Beam” laser system and related developments among America’s allies. Drones are easy to destroy, but using million-dollar interceptors to destroy drones that might cost $10,000 to manufacture isn’t viable. The cost per shot of a laser anti-drone weapon is less than $10.

Destroying fast-moving targets with lasers is more difficult by orders of magnitude. The laser must stay on target for long enough to inflict damage. That requires extremely fast computing, improved sensing, and enormous power output. There are other forms of directed energy—microwaves, for example—which are now subject to weapons research. In theory, weapons that project force at the speed of light should be able to defeat missiles that travel at several times the speed of sound, but directed-energy defense is only practical against relatively primitive, slow-moving projectiles. Because of the potential of these technologies, the Defense Department should take a Manhattan Project approach to directed-energy defense, that is, with no budget constraints.

Drone swarms represent a possible breakthrough in many aspects of warfighting. Manipulating drone swarms requires fast downloading of massive amounts of information, fast computation of alternatives, and fast response to new instructions, all on secure communications with secure geo-positioning. None of these tasks is trivial and their combination is dauntingly complex. Quantum satellite communications may hold the key to practical drone swarms, and China is the leader in this field. New kinds of computer chips might build vastly increased computing power into drones, just as the advent of CMOS chip manufacturing in the 1970s enabled look-down radar in military aircraft. Increases in chip speed and efficiency now depend on etching smaller circuits onto hunks of silicon; the next generation of chips might employ the interaction of molecules at the quantum level.

The Only Viable Industrial Policy

Industrial policy is now popular on the New Right. The free-enterprise wing of the Republican Party remonstrates that industrial policy produces rent-seeking, cronyism, and corruption—and the critique is correct, with one critical exception. Pouring public resources into existing industries begs the question of why the private sector won’t invest in those industries. Is it because tax or regulatory policy inhibits investment? Then change the tax code and leash the regulators instead of handing out government checks. Is it because American labor can’t compete against cheaper labor overseas? Then subsidize labor. The moment the federal government proposes to spend a dollar, demons awake and go abroad seeking rent.

The only occasions on which we have pursued an industrial policy of sorts conscientiously and in the national interest arose from crises in national security. We became Freedom’s Forge in 1940, as Arthur Herman entitled his book on the World War arms industry. We beat Russia to the moon under JFK. We responded to the loss of Vietnam and other strategic setbacks of the 1970s by reinventing warfare with smart weapons and modern avionics.

NASA R&D generated a historical rate of return of 43 percent, according to a 1976 study commissioned by the agency. No one has tallied up the benefits of R&D funding by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) during the late 1970s and early 1980s, but every invention of the Digital Age—the Internet, optical networks, plasma, and LED displays, the GUI interface, the computer mouse, CMOS chip manufacturing, and look-down radar—began with a DARPA grant.

Can we afford to do this? The federal development budget (mainly building and testing prototypes) at the peak of the Cold War in the early 1980s was about 0.8 percent of GDP versus about 0.3 percent today. To restore Reagan-era fund levels would cost about 0.5 percent times $29 trillion, or $145 billion a year. We couldn’t spend that much even if we passed a magic wand over Congress and got funded: The great corporate laboratories of forty years ago no longer exist, and we can’t train engineers fast enough. Suffice it to say that the objective seems out of the range of imagination.

J. P. Morgan’s observation about the price of his yacht applies: If you have to ask how much it costs, you can’t afford to be a superpower. High-tech R&D falls under the broad definition of public improvements in Alexander Hamilton’s sense. It is an investment whose outcome cannot be predicted in advance, but whose long-run benefits have exceeded all possible expectations.

One of the architects of the revolution in military technology during the late 1970s and early 1980s was the late Andrew W. Marshall, director of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment from 1973 to 2015. When I brought a group of newly hired National Security Council staffers to meet Marshall at his apartment in Alexandria in 2017, he told the group: “Never ask the service heads what they want. They will always ask for more of what they have now. For [a technological transformation] to work, it has to be run out of the office of the Secretary of Defense—not the ‘office’ as defined on the organizational table, but out of the SecDef’s actual office. He has to tell everyone at the Pentagon, ‘This is what I want,’ and make sure they do it.’” He died in 2019, at the age of 98.

China’s accomplishments are impressive, but the Chinese aren’t ten feet tall. Give them a specific task, for example, to work around American technology restrictions, and they will get it done. A senior Huawei manager told me, “If we have a problem to solve, we’ll put a thousand engineers on it. And if they can’t do it, we’ll put ten thousand engineers on it, until we get it done.” But in R&D, the creative 1 percent can accomplish more than the merely competent 99 percent.

We owe most of the decisive technological breakthroughs of the Digital Age to stubborn mavericks who hijacked a DARPA-funded research product and did something with it that no one anticipated. Without exception, every major invention of the Digital Age began with DARPA funding, but none of these inventions conformed to the original purpose of the research product. Optical networks, the technology that made the Internet possible, is a case in point. DARPA-funded research to illuminate battlefields at night. An RCA Labs engineer used the funds to perfect the semiconductor laser, which transmits the signals through glass fiber that now carries the world’s data.

We need the courage to pursue the unknown unknowns. We can’t know in advance which of the countless competing technologies will transform computation, communications, propulsion, sensing, and industrial automation. The only thing we know with 100 percent certainty is that doing the same things we have been doing for the past thirty years will get us nowhere.

David P. Goldman is Deputy Editor of Asia Times and a Washington Fellow of the Claremont Institute. He serves on the Advisory Board of the Hungarian Research Network, which promotes scientific and technical excellence in Hungary.
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[skinowski] NY Post editorial is critical of the way JD Vance seems to have gone into conspi...

skinowski — 7/17/2026 4:36:55 PM

NY Post editorial is critical of the way JD Vance seems to have gone into conspiracies over the failure of the MOU he helped develop.

nypost.com

JD Vance is wrong to blame Israel for his Iran peace deal’s failure thus far

By Post Editorial Board

Published July 16, 2026, 6:40 p.m. ET

JD Vance appears on "The Joe Rogan Experience" in a video posted to YouTube on July 15, 2026. YouTube/PowerfulJREVice President JD Vance needs to get his head out of the conspiratorial “rabbit holes” he says he loves to explore and drop the bizarro line he just pitched to Joe Rogan that the Israelis blew up the Iran peace deal because they want “to keep the war going on indefinitely.”

It was Iran that broke the 60-day “comprehensive cease-fire” established by the Memorandum of Understanding by attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz, period: No Jews involved.

Before the ink was dry on the MOU, which guaranteed open passage through the Strait of Hormuz, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard asserted Tehran’s control and ownership of the waterway and warned that merchant ships must obtain its OK to transit; then it started firing on vessels that didn’t comply.

Blocking sea lanes reopened the war, and Israel had nothing to do with it.

It’s also preposterous to charge that Jerusalem wants the war to drag on “indefinitely”; it’s always been clear about its objectives on Iran: destroy its nuclear capability, eviscerate its conventional-war machine; if possible, foster the end of the regime that makes Tehran an enemy of civilization.

Yes, Israel hated the MOU, which was drawn up completely without its involvement — and so left it no way to undermine it, except insofar as Iran claimed that Israeli self-defense against Hezbollah’s attacks from Lebanon somehow broke the truce.

Even then, Jerusalem yielded to President Donald Trump’s demands that it back off in Lebanon.

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Vance went to other ugly places in his chat with Rogan: pretending that an open Israel-funded PR effort to counter antisemitism among younger conservatives somehow is actually a secret drive to undo peace with Iran and smear him; suggesting that the craziest Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy theories are true and Israel is part of the plot.

Maybe he wanted to deflect responsibility for the failure of an MOU he helped negotiate; maybe he resents how Trump opted for a war he likely opposed and then stuck him with trying to negotiate an exit.

Whatever: Pitching conspiracy theories, especially ones that flirt with rank antisemitism, is the wrong way out of your dilemma, JD.

As big as the Republican tent can be, it has absolutely no room for this.