In which I repeatedly type single quotation marks backtick-text-quote instead of quote-text-quote, thanks to a LaTeX project.

Defense

• Wingman drone sounds like a real bro
• On the Truman‘s early retirement – I think you could make an argument for e.g. fewer carriers and more cruise missile submarines, but that isn’t what’s happening here.
• On the Indian MiG-21 downing an F-16 – Gee. Almost like short-range air-to-air kills are still going to happen. Most fascinating to me was that the Pakistani AMRAAM was a -120C-5, which is a pretty recent missile to be selling to Pakistan.
• The Marine Corps’ Amphibious Combat Vehicle is an example of sane procurement – “They’re practically the Navy anyway,” said Fishbreath, reinforcing his point from last week’s roundup while angering any Marines and Navy men reading.
• Russia’s latest diesel-electric boat is ready to enter testing – Lada is not an inspiring name for a submarine class, given its history in Russia.
• Feeders at the Congressional trough prepared to protest F-15X
• Another argument in favor of dropping the F-15X – Parvusimperator and I cautiously disagree with an F-35-only solution, for two reasons. One, the F-35 is a cool recipe, but still in the oven. Two, the F-15X project will keep Boeing’s fighter plants operating, which is important from a national defense sustainability reason. I wouldn’t be happy having just one company running all of my country’s major fighter projects, if only for scaling reasons come the next war.
• The F-35 ballistic missile defense plan sounds more and more cockamamie the more I read about it – “All we have to do is station F-35s on a continual basis directly adjacent to North Korean missile sites!”
• Weekly conspiracy mongering: are North Korea’s ‘weather satellites’ EMP bombs? – Makes sense based on their shape and lack of any visible sensors, at least.
• Draft RFP for FFG(X) – Worth special mention is the expected equipment list.
• If other countries are going to flout treaties and develop IRBMs, then so should we – It’s a law if everyone adheres to it. It’s a handicap if only you do.
• Germany bears some responsibility for NATO’s decline
• SpaceX/ULA spat, part one million and three – This time, it’s over national security launches.
• USN to buy more Poseidons – Can’t go wrong with more maritime patrol aircraft.
• Apparently some people argue that Clausewitz is irrelevant? – Here’s the correct reaction.

Photos of the Week: Bombers

• Entry #1: Lancer
• Entry #2: Vulcan

Science and Technology

• Chinese surveillance data found in a no-password, web-public database – Oops.
• SpaceX’s successful Crew Dragon launch represents an American return to manned spaceflight – The big problem for SpaceX going forward is going to be finding new sources for revenue (like their Starlink Internet plan) if they want to keep on funding the BFR. As it stands, they’ve pretty much cornered the worldwide market on non-natsec launches. There’s only so much profit to squeeze out of that. Blue Origin has an edge on large rocket development in my book, because it’s a billionaire’s passion project.
• University of California system cancels all its Elsevier journal subscriptions – Elsevier is a watchword in academia for ‘money-grubbing useless middlemen’, known for paywalling a bunch of journals so that universities have little choice but to maintain subscriptions for their own academics. Not that academia is without its flaws, but the least I can do is praise them for doing something so obviously right.
• Another Intel speculative execution bug – This one lets you figure out memory mappings efficiently, which lets you do the Rowhammer attack from 2015 in Javascript in a browser.
• The attention economy is saturated – That is, there’s too much entertainment for humans to consume all of it, so we’re into an age of prioritization. You’ve probably noticed this yourself. It also plays into the difficulty in getting off the ground as an independent creator of content—there’s more entertainment than ever before, but it’s still delivered through a small number of outlets. There are only so many screens at the local cinema, and only so many production houses which can afford to bribe their ways into your local theater. See also Amazon and books.

Money Matters

• China’s super-rich worried about the country’s future – Any country could turn into the next Venezuela, but China doesn’t seem likely to in the near term. Then again, five years ago, neither did Venezuela.
• Eyeglasses: a field just begging for some trustbusting
• A list of all US retail locations closing this year – I’m part of the problem. I have two separate Amazon packages arriving this week.
• QuadrigaCX update: most of the $150 million allegedly in cold wallets isn’t there – We reported on this a few weeks ago, but now more official sources are picking it up.
• …including the Beeb – Who have the story from start to finish, if you’re lost.

Special Report: Blacklisting and Politics in Publishing

• Indie pulp sci-fi authors wind up the SFWA – Publishing, and particularly the ivory tower comprising the major trade organizations and awards, has lately been a very, very progressive field.
• Journalist Jesse Singal has been writing about ‘YA [young adult literature] Twitter’ for some time now… – … documenting how dysfunctional it is.
• It’s pretty terrible. – Not only is it a war zone for people with none of the victimhoods of progressive orthodoxy…
• It’s also full of white editors telling non-white authors to stay in their lanes – “You can only reliably write about your own personal experiences, but also you should have a diverse cast.”

Singal’s doing good work on that subject generally, although it’s amusing to note that he himself is an identitarian progressive, just a milder breed who hasn’t yet fully internalized that all revolutions eventually devour their children.