This week we talk about assassination attempts, presidential drop-outs, and October Surprises.

We also discuss election narratives, the frictions of age, and brief attempts at unity messaging.

Recommended Book: The Day the World Stops Shopping by JB MacKinnon

Transcript

On October 7 of 2016, The Washington Post released a video from 2005 in which Presidential Candidate Donald Trump bragged about how you can get away with sexually assaulting women if you're famous.

That same day, Wikileaks released transcripts of three paid speeches given by Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton to banking giant Goldman Sachs as part of a larger bundle of divulgences from the hacked personal Gmail account of her campaign chairman, John Podesta—these speeches were pretty controversial as they were very well paid—she earned $675,000 in speaking fees from Goldman for the appearances, and fellow Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders lambasted her for the apparent conflict of interest this payout implied.

Also on October 7, 2016, mere hours before that tape was released and those talks were leaked, Trump publicly claimed that the Central Park Five—a group of black men who were wrongly convicted of assault and rape in 1989, and who were later exonerated by DNA evidence and a confession from the actual perpetrator—Trump claimed they were guilty, which was a silly and to some, quite offensive thing to say, but it also seemed to gesture at the candidate's ignorance, at minimum, and according to some responses to this statement, at least, his possible racism, as well.

So October 7 of 2016 was a pretty big day in terms of political divulgences, and it's considered to be one of the most prominent modern aggregations of what are, in US politics, often called October Surprises.

The term October Surprise was coined by former President Ronald Reagan's campaign manager during the run-up to the 1980 presidential election in reference to fears that a last-minute deal negotiated by incumbent president, and Reagan's competitor in the race, Jimmy Carter, to get American hostages in Iran freed could net Carter enough votes to win re-election, despite many other variables operating against him.

News reports were abuzz over these negotiations, so the narrative leaning in the President's favor could tilt things against Reagan, and his campaign manager was thus concerned that this bit of news, which was outside of his control, part of a spiral of larger events, would drop like a bomb on his campaign maneuverings, upending everything and completely changing the nature of the race, if it were to happen.

That ended up not being the case, as Iran's leaders eventually notified their counterparts in the US that they wouldn't be releasing anyone until after the election, but this sort of last-minute narrative change-up had occurred in US elections before, including then-National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger saying, at a press conference, that he believed the Vietnam War would end soon, just twelve days before the 1972 election, which is thought to have helped Nixon win another term in office, and—also on October 7, but in 1964—one of then-President Johnson's top aides was arrested for engaging in homosexual acts with another man at a DC YMCA, which seemed likely to tip the scales against his campaign, as that was a big no-no at the time, but then, just a week later, hardliners in the Soviet Union booted Nikita Khrushchev from power, the Labour Party narrowly took over the UK government, and China conducted its first nuclear weapons test; all of which pushed that YMCA incident from the news and rebalanced the election in various ways.

These sorts of last-minute surprises—last-minute because US presidential elections occur in early November, and these things seem to land like clockwork sometime in October, give or take a week—abound throughout US history, and though they usually only have a small or moderate impact on the final vote, in some cases they've been so dramatic, surprising, or paradigm-shifting they've completely upended expectations and seemingly changed the course of history.

What I'd like to talk about today are two recent narrative change-ups in the ongoing US election, which will culminate with a vote this November, both of which have the potential to dramatically influence the outcome of the election, and who ultimately occupies the White House early next year.

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It feels like I've been doing a lot of US-centric news lately, and though that's not intentional, and a trend I intend to defy in the coming weeks, there have been two potentially historic storylines playing out in US politics in recent weeks that I believe justify explanation and analysis; in part because they are so historic and unusual, and in part because they seem likely to define the narrative of the presidential race over the next 100 days or so between now and the November 5 vote.

Of course, I say that knowing full well I could end up eating crow, acting, today, as if these are defining moments, when in reality either more dramatic and seemingly historic stuff could happen in the next three months-ish, or they moments could be set aside and largely forgotten in mere weeks, voter attention refocused on other things, like the actual policies being proposed by the two major parties in this race.

There are good arguments for both eventualities, as the communication environment in which this election is playing out is novel in many ways, and the people involved and the things they stand for, and the larger global context in which they're operating, are also quite bizarre by historical standards.

So these two stories are, I think, important to understand, as they could shape the path the rest of the race takes, and the moves both Republicans and Democrats, up and down the ballot, make in the coming months, which in turn will influence happenings globally in all sorts of important ways.

But it could also be that life takes over, other stuff takes precedent, and folks mostly just vote along party lines as has tended to be increasingly the case these past handful of elections—we'll see how that goes.

In the meantime, though, let's talk about the apparent attempted assassination of former President and current Presidential Candidate Donald Trump, and the seeming deterioration of current President Joe Biden's mental and physical health, the resultant calls from within his own party for him to step aside and let someone else run in his stead, and the decision he announced just a few days ago to step aside and let his party select a new candidate.

On July 13 of this year, 2024, Trump was at a campaign tour stop in Butler, Pennsylvania, up on stage, presenting his speech, when a 20-year-old man named Thomas Crooks shot at him, firing eight rounds from an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle from a rooftop about 400 feet, which is about 120 meters, away from the stage.

One of the bullets seemed to clip Trump's ear, and others hit members of the audience, one of whom was killed, and two others were critically wounded.

A Secret Service sniper killed Crooks right after he took those shots, and Trump was surrounded by Secret Service agents moments after he was hit, briefly emerging from their huddle to raise his fist and shout "fight, fight, fight," before being hustled away from the stage.

Some of the photos of the shooting and the aftermath quickly became famous, and a few of them are already considered to be historic, including several that show Trump, still bloody, pumping his fist, seemingly defiant and even victorious, from within the protective embrace of his Secret Service team, an American flag waving in the background—even commentators who don't like Trump have publicly said he looks pretty badass in these photos.

And that general sense of badassery has been played up by the Trump campaign since the shooting. The Republican National Convention was just days after that campaign stop, and several attendees wore fake ear bandages, mimicking the one worn by the former-President, and many political analysts went ahead and called the election for Trump, citing the significance of surviving an assassination attempt, especially during a race between two elderly men, both of whom have been struggling to demonstrate their youthful vigor and favorably contrast themselves to their opponent.

In the wake of the shooting, several big name donors committed money to Trump's campaign, including Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, and an array of Silicon Valley bigwigs, like the founders of Andreessen Horowitz, which is the most prominent venture capital firm in California.

This wave of new support, from big donors and small, allowed Trump to out-raise Biden for the month for the first time in this election cycle.

The campaign also signaled it may lean into a unity message, rather than what's become Trump's more combative, aggressive tact, which seemed likely to help him scoop up some on-the-fence voters, and possibly even some centrist Democrats who were increasingly concerned about Biden as the face of their party—though at the RNC event, Trump named further-right Ohio Senator, and author of bestselling book, Hillbilly Elegy, JD Vance as his VP, which is being seen as a doubling-down on aggression, not a balancing, moderating move, on Trump's part, and the scripted unity speech he gave, which used a lot of religious, "Jesus rising from the dead" language, alongside some gestures at the country coming together in the wake of violence, pretty quickly derailed into a somewhat rambling series of attacks against Trump's perceived enemies—so that approach, at least for the moment, is not being seen as a serious path for Trump and his team.

On the other side of the political fence, current President Biden has long faced calls to step down, mostly because of his advanced age and what that age portends: he's already 81 years old, and he'll be 82 in late November, shortly after the upcoming election.

People are living longer these days, and enjoying more of those years healthfully and productively, but Biden has had a speech impediment his entire life, which, as an older man, has at times made it seem like he's not as with-it as his fellow candidates—fairly or unfairly—and the frictions and scars of simply having lived a long, long time seem to be catching up with him, as well, and some fairly high-profile stumbles and mis-speakings, alongside caught-on-camera missteps and other signs of age and possible not-wellness, have amplified calls for him to step aside and allow someone younger to lead the Democrat's ticket in November.

These calls were a not insignificant component of his opponents' campaign in the 2020 election, but they ticked up several notches following what's generally considered to be a disastrous debate, for Biden, in late-June of this year.

The debate rules were in some ways stacked in Biden's favor, as there wouldn't be a studio audience for Trump to play off of, which is considered to be a strength of his debate style, and the candidates' microphones would be muted when it wasn't their turn to speak, which was meant to help temper Trump's tendency to go way over time, and speak over his opponent.

Despite those seeming advantages, though, from the moment he walked onto the debate stage, Biden looked and seemed...unwell. His face was kind of drooping, his eyes looked uncanny and surprised, his words seems to tumble over each other, not in his typical fashion, influenced by his speech impediment, but in a confused, rambling, at times disjointed and not-well-seeming way.

Even die-hard supporters of Biden began to question his ability to serve another term following that debate, and while most analysts pointed out that Trump's statements were riddled with lies, he did present those lies mostly intelligibly, while Biden, though mostly sticking to the truth, had trouble communicating much of anything, his delivery and overall visage suggesting that he's not okay, and if that's where he is now, where will he be in another several months, much less several years, if he were to take office for another four?

Those long-simmering concerns about his age surged into a full-on rolling boil from that point forward, and higher-ups in the Democratic Party started to call for Biden to step aside, some of them probably due to concerns about their own races, his unpopularity—which is ticking upward, according to recent polls—impacting their electoral outlook, and others because they worried about Trump being elected, not on his own strengths necessarily, but because Biden had become toxic due to his stumbles, and the general, and seemingly growing sense that he's just not up to the job anymore, because of the impacts of age.

As of the morning of Sunday, July 21, 39 Democratic congresspeople had overtly called for Biden to drop out, 23 had publicly expressed concerns about Biden, which is a lighter-weight way to say the same, basically, and 7 had said it's Biden's choice—though to be clear, Biden had said he's not dropping out, over and over again, so the folks who said it's his choice, following that clear declaration, seemed to be, in some cases at least, playing both sides, as they stating their support for him while leaving the door open for him to change his mind at some point in the future.

57 congresspeople, in contrast, were saying Biden should stay in the race, which is fewer than had said he should drop out, overtly or subtly; though a lot of people were apparently expressing concerns behind closed doors, and the wave of anonymous sources talking to reporters on the matter, telling stories about his various fumbles and their election-related worries, reinforced the supposition that there are more people hoping he steps back than not, including a lot of top-tier donors, it's just that many of them are concerned about their role within the party if they express those concerns publicly.

Then, in the early afternoon that same day, Biden's team released a statement from the President saying that he would be withdrawing from the 2024 election, followed shortly thereafter by a message indicating he was endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him.

Biden is apparently sick with COVID at the moment and is expected to speak on the matter sometime this week, once he's able to do so without coughing and rasping, but it's possible this news was released in this way, in writing rather than live and on camera, because it was just a truly difficult decision for someone who—according to his political career and bio, or the public-facing version of those things presented by his campaign, at least—tended to focus on sticking it out and persevering when faced with doubters, which in this case would have meant holding out and remaining the Democratic candidate, despite all the factors working against him.

This represents an historic shift in the election, though, as no US presidential candidate has ever dropped out this close to the vote, and he's the first to ever drop out after winning his party's primaries.

What happens now is thus up in the air, but the outline being shared by Democratic leaders as of the day I'm recording this seems to be that they'll hold some kind of lightning-fast election to see who replaces Biden on the ticket—possibly as part of an effort to avoid the mistake they made with Hillary Clinton, party higher-ups pushing too hard to favor one of their own who's turn it was, basically, over the candidates the voters actually wanted—though there's only about a month in which to figure out what that looks like, set it up, allow folks to decide to run and figure out campaign strategies, and then actually hold a vote; which is a lot, and that process could be chaotic, and it could result in fracturing within the Democratic Party, as folks might go negative against each other, despite guidelines telling them not to, and voters might not like it if their chosen person doesn't win, and they're then told to cast their lot in the actual presidential election with someone they voted against in this mini-, lightning-fast primary.

At the moment, current VP Harris seems to have the lion's share of her party's support: as of the day I'm recording this, 179 democratic leaders, out of 286 congresspeople and governors, have publicly endorsed her candidacy, alongside other big names in the party like the Clintons, and prominent former presidential candidates, like current transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Right now, though, it's a big unknown who will ultimately take up the mantle of the Democratic party's presidential electee, and that makes things more difficult for the Democrats, because of those aforementioned potential issues with unity and clarity, but it also makes things trickier for the Trump campaign, as they can't be certain who they're running against, and some reports suggest the whole campaign has been optimized to compete against Biden, whereas now Trump is the oldest-ever presidential candidate for a major US political party, and many of the criticisms they were planning to level against Biden can be leveled against him, instead.

The assassination attempt on Trump is still a variable here, too, as it seems to have rallied Republicans around him in a big way, but whether or not that will translate to larger support beyond existing die-hards is a big question mark.

Important to note, too, is that while assassination attempts of presidents in the US are rare in modern history, thankfully, so we don't have tons of data as to how they influence election outcomes, the assumed consequence of this one, namely, supporting Trump's election bid, might not be the one we actually get.

The attempted killing of President Reagan in 1981 seems to have bumped his numbers about 8% in the months that followed, but earlier assassination attempts of former-President Teddy Roosevelt and George Wallace didn't win them their bids for the office, and the larger context of the election and would-be electee seem to matter more, statistically, than the attempt, itself, when it comes to polling changes.

Similarly, it may be that the Democrats are able to leverage Biden's decision to drop out, and the elevation of someone else from their party to the position of would-be president, could help drive a new, exciting narrative: that of a veteran statesman stepping down for the good of his party and the country, and new, younger blood taking up that mantle, fighting against another member of the old guard who himself would never consider stepping down.

It's also important to remember, though, as I mentioned earlier, that this is all happening months before the election, and there's a chance these won't be the most important and dramatic stories shaping the narrative by the time we reach November; these July surprises could be replaced by October surprises, which upend the table once more, leaving everything chaotic and confusing right before votes are cast.

So while these seem like very big deals right now, and they're dominating headlines, and will almost certainly be historically relevant, we may be in for a lot more planned and unplanned election-impacting divulgences and happenings in the months to come.

Show Notes

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-17/trump-shooting-3d-model-of-showground-rally-site/104104418

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/20/us/politics/trump-vance-michigan.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/20/us/politics/secret-service-trump-shooting.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/21/us/politics/trump-biden-fundraising.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/18/us/politics/elon-musk-trump.html

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/17/co-founders-of-silicon-valley-venture-capital-firm-back-trump-presidential-bid

https://www.newyorker.com/science/medical-dispatch/doctors-are-increasingly-worried-about-biden

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/20/us/politics/trump-harris-strategy.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/21/us/politics/biden-harris-nomination.html

https://elections2024.thehill.com/projects/biden-drop-out/

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/joe-biden/steve-kornacki-biden-pressure-party-can-get-wrong-rcna162783

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7982f2a0-42af-40a3-938e-8512c2ce8689_1338x755.png

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/democrats-are-gaming-post-biden-options-remains-insistent-remain-race-rcna162857

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/21/us/politics/biden-replace-harris.html

https://www.npr.org/2016/10/15/498085611/wikileaks-claims-to-release-hillary-clintons-goldman-sachs-transcripts

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/history-october-surprise-180960741/

https://theintercept.com/2016/10/07/excerpts-of-hillary-clintons-paid-speeches-to-goldman-sachs-finally-leaked/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_surprise

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/07/22/us/biden-harris-trump-news-election

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This week we talk about protectionist policy, solar panels, and rare earths.

We also discuss Chinese business investment, EVs, and extreme weather events.

Recommended Book: Meet Me By the Fountain by Alexandra Lange

Transcript

The Great Green Wall—the one in China, not the one meant to span the Sahel region, straddling the upper portion of Africa—is officially called the Three-North Shelter Forest Program, and was initially implemented by the Chinese government in 1978.

This program is scheduled to be completed sometime mid-century, around 2050, and its purpose is to keep the Gobi Desert, which spans the lower portion of Mongolia and part of China's northern border, from expanding, which is something large deserts otherwise tend to do through a collection of natural, but often human-amplified processes called aeolian desertification.

The Gobi currently gobbles up about 1,400 square miles, which is around 3,600 square km, of Chinese grassland every year, as dust storms that roll through the area blow away topsoil that allows grasses and other plants to survive. And those storms become more powerful as the climate shifts, and as more grassland is turned to desert, giving the winds more leeway, fewer things keeping them from blowing hard and scooping up more soil, and as the roots of the plants on the fringes of the desert dry up, which usually keep the soil in place, become newly exposed to these influences, withering, their roots holding things together less tight than before, the process continuing to move ever outward.

Around a quarter of China's total landmass is already desert, and while there are a number of other causes of the country's desertification, including coastal erosion and the incursion of salty water into otherwise freshwater areas, this type, aeolian desertification, is one that they can tackle somewhat directly, if still at great expense and with muddled levels of success.

So the Great Green Wall of China is meant to stop that desertification, it is a potential means of tackling this issue, and it does this by keeping those winds from blowing away the topsoil, and over time is meant to help reclaim areas that have been turned into desert by this collection of processes.

And those in charge of this program do this by basically planting a huge number of trees, creating sturdier root systems to keep soil from blowing away, blocking the winds, and over time, the trees are meant to help new ecosystems grow in areas that have been previously diminished; holding everything together, soil-wise, but also adding nutrients to the ground as their leaves fall; those natural processes slowly reestablishing new layers of productive soil.

The area they're attempting to swathe with newly planted trees is huge, and by that 2050 end date, it's anticipated that they'll need to plant something like 88 million acres of forests across a belt of land that's about 3,000 miles wide and nearly 900 miles deep in some areas.

Local governments that have been largely tasked with making all this happen in their jurisdictions have claimed some successes in this ambition over the years, though one of the biggest criticisms leveled against those same governments is that they often spend a lot of time and money planting large swathes of trees, stabilizing some areas for a time, but then they fail to maintain those forests, so they more or less disappear within just a few years.

This can actually leave some of the afflicted areas worse off than they would have otherwise been, as some of these trees are essentially invasive species, not optimized for the local conditions, and they consume more water than is available, gobbling up resources other plants need to spring up around them, and they thus blight the areas they're meant to enrich, killing off the smaller plantlife, not supporting and expanding it, and then they die because they're undernourished, themselves.

While China plants more trees than the rest of the world, combined, due to this and similar projects, then, the system underpinning all of this planting isn't typically optimized for long-term success, and it often succumbs to the needs of local politicians, not the desired outcomes of the program, overall.

Also, in the cases where the forests are sustained longer-term, they often to create monocultures that are more akin to plantations than forests, which makes them more susceptible to disease—like the one that killed more than a billion poplar trees that were planted in Northwestern China in 2000, leading to a 20-year-or-so setback in the program—and that also makes them faster-growing, but less effective as carbon sinks than slower-growth versions of the same; they get big faster, but they don't absorb and store as much CO2 as other trees options would.

The forests they've planted that have sustained for more than a few years have periodically served as giant carbon sinks, though, pulling down as much as 5% of the country's total industrial CO2 emissions from 1978 to 2017, which is a pretty big deal for a country with such a huge volume of such emissions.

That said, it's still an open question as to whether this Great Green Wall will do what it's meant to do, by 2050 or ever, as while the concept is solid by some estimations, its implementation has been uneven at best, and it seems to be plagued by short-term thinking and metrics of success that don't line up with the stated purpose of the program.

What I'd like to talk about today is the implementation of what's being called, in some economic circles at least, a new Great Green Wall, this one around China and its exports, especially renewable energy exports, by the US and its allies, at a moment in which those sorts of exports are both highly desirable, and arguably, highly necessary.

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The International Energy Agency recently said it expects to see about $2 trillion-worth of clean energy investments, globally, in 2024 alone.

This spending is partly the consequence of the $13 billion in damage China sustained from natural disasters in January to June of this year, and the something like $37.9 billion in damages the US suffered from just the 15 most damaging storms it saw during the same period, not inclusive of all the other ones.

Nations around the world are paying out gobs of money in the aftermath of increasingly brutal weather disasters, and that's on top of the slower-moving devastation that's being caused by the impacts of the climate shifting, messing with everything from crops to water cycles to where people can afford to live, because insurance companies are wholesale pulling out of some areas, and the cost of rebuilding over and over again in the same, previously habitable areas, just isn't worth it any more.

While there's still some political and ideological opposition to the concept of climate change, then, even some of the folks who are vehemently against the concept, publicly, are privately investing huge sums of money in infrastructure meant to help them survive and thrive in a future in which the climate has changed, and that includes things like sea walls and buildings that are cooler, passively, allowing more airflow and reflecting sunlight rather than absorbing it, but we're also seeing surges of investment in renewable energy sources, as they don't further contribute to the issue of climate change, but also because they come with a slew of advantages over fossil fuel based versions of the same; hence, that $2 trillion clean energy spending in 2024, compared to the estimated $1 trillion for fossil fuel-based energy sources the same year.

In May of 2024, US President Biden announced a near-future wave of tariff increases on a slew of Chinese goods, especially those related to the renewable energy transition.

For those aforementioned reasons, alongside a bunch of economic ones, as renewables are cheaper over time than fossil fuels, it's expected by essentially everyone that the planet will largely shift to renewable energy sources this century, with many governments hoping to make the transition entirely or almost entirely by 2050, with some nations that are moving more slowly, because of issues related to existing infrastructure, population, or poverty, arriving sometime in the 2070s or 2080s.

Thus, whomever owns the industries that will be relevant in that future—electric vehicles, batteries, solar panels, wind turbines, and so on—they will be something like the new oil giants of the latter-half of the century, and beyond, massively enriched because they're the ones that allow everyone to generate energy in this new reality.

Making those sorts of investments now, then, in terms of manufacturing capacity, but also the knowledge and trade secrets and brands and supply chains that get those products to the world, may yield incredible dividends for those willing to make them.

And at the moment, as of mid-2024, China is by far the king of the hill when it comes to pretty much every component of this transition, dominating the world's output of solar panels, EVs, wind turbine blades, batteries, and rare earth metals that are currently fundamental to the making of basically all of those things, while also owning some of the most valuable intellectual property, developing some of the most vital innovations, and controlling the most active, resilient, and competitive supply chains that make them available, globally.

The push by the Chinese government to own these spaces began in earnest in 2009, when it started providing subsidies to companies that were willing to invest in and start producing electric vehicles and accompanying technologies, and that successful effort has allowed the country to leapfrog other countries, like the US, which by some measures had a leading advantage up till that point because of other capacities and investments, and which has long served as the home bases of traditional car companies, and exciting new brands like Tesla and other startups that were beginning to gobble up global market share.

The Chinese government poured tens of billions of dollars into tax breaks and subsidies, though, and that helped stoke a highly competitive market that's led to the development of ultra-cheap electric vehicles, which are now outselling rivals in almost every market they've entered.

This effect is perhaps even more pronounced when we look at solar panels and batteries.

Chinese exports of these goods have easily outpaced and outcompeted rival producers overseas, and that's, combined with demand on the local, Chinese market, has pulled the price of solar panels from about $126 per watt in 1975 all the way down to about 26 cents per watt in 2022.

Over that period, these panels have become more efficient and effective, more resilient, and more useful—reshapable to fit more use-cases.

And the concomitant drop in lithium-ion battery prices, down about 97% since 1991 due to similar economic variables, has made solar even more useful and in demand, as solar setups are usually, these days, connected to battery backup systems that allow the panels to capture sunlight during the day and to stockpile that energy for later, when the sun isn't shining, ameliorating one of the biggest and most common concerns about solar power at the individual home scale, but also at the utility, city-sized scale; that it's an intermittent source. Attaching a battery, though, makes it a consistent source of power, that's also incredibly, and increasingly, inexpensive compared to other options offering similar levels of power.

That's been a major contributor to the expansion of solar installations, and recent innovations in the development of alternative, non-lithium-based batteries could do the same, as some novel battery types, like sodium-ion batteries, use a similar setup as their lithium counterparts, but without the issues associated with mining lithium, and with a better power-to-weight ratio, much lower fire risk, and lower theoretical expense, and flow batteries, made from iron, salt, and water, which are a lot worse than lithium ion batteries in essentially every practical regard, are just silly cheap and incredibly resilient, and thus could be built and deployed essentially everywhere—into the walls of homes and other buildings, into driveways and roads, everywhere—providing widespread, low-grade energy backup to whole cities at a very low cost.

So all of these products are already in high demand, and that demand is just expected to grow as these things continue to get better and cheaper.

China owns the majority of the best companies in these spaces, and makes the best, cheapest versions of these products.

Biden's recently announced tariff increases are an example of what're called protectionist monetary policy, the idea being to make competing products from elsewhere, like China, more expensive, by requiring folks pay another 25-100% of the product's price in tariffs, which in practice can double the price of these goods, which in turn makes locally produced goods, or those produced in allied countries, like in Europe, more competitive, despite not actually being competitive 1-on-1, without these policies in place.

The argument for this type of policy is that while on some level it could be beneficial to have these high quality, cheap Chinese solar panels and batteries flooding into the US market in the short-term, as it would help companies shift to clean energy sources faster than would otherwise be possible, in the long-term it would allow China to own those spaces, killing off all US-based competition in these industries, which would make the US economy, and by association all US businesses and people, and the US government, reliant on China, and a constant flow of such goods.

That would mean China would have a permanent whammy on the US because if they ever wanted to invade Taiwan, for instance, and keep the US off their back, they could just say, hey, let us do what we want to do, or we'll stop sending you solar panels and batteries, and we'll stop providing support for the ones you already have, which would devastate the US, because that would be equivalent to what happened when OPEC stopped exporting oil to the US in the 1970s—it was brutal, and we've only become more reliant on cheap, abundant energy in the decades since.

And that's on top of concerns that China, if it owned all the infrastructure related to these technologies top to bottom, which they kind of do, they would also conceivably have all sorts of potential backdoors into the US electrical grid, giving them the ability to shut things down or cause other sorts of havoc in the event of a conflict.

So while these are kind of just theoretical concerns at the moment, the risks associated of becoming reliant on one country, and one run by an authoritarian government that isn't the biggest fan of the US and its allies, controlling all aspects of a nations energy capacity in that way are substantial enough that the US government seems to think it's worth taking a hit in the short-term to avoid that potential future.

This situation in which short-term loss is necessary to avoid long-term energy dominance by China is arguably a problem of the US and other wealthy governments' own making, as again, China started wholeheartedly investing in these technologies back in 2009, and the US and Europe and other entities that are trying to play catch up, now, didn't make the same bet at the same scale, and that's a big part of why they're so far behind, scrambling to figure out how to catch up, and how to avoid having all their own solar and battery and EV companies killed off in the meantime.

Some of these governments are doing what they can, now, to pick up the pace, Biden's Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Act, for instance, shoring up these sorts of businesses and seeding potential next-step technologies—but again, these and similar efforts are more than a decade behind the same in China, and the Chinese government often entangles itself more directly with Chinese businesses than Western governments are conformable attempting with their own versions of the same, so Chinese businesses have that additional entanglemented-related leg-up, as well.

There's an argument to be made, then, that while these tariffs—in the US and otherwise—are almost certainly at least a little bit performative, for political purposes, and at least a little bit reactive, in the sense that they attempt to reframe Chinese superiority within these spaces as unfair, rather than the winnings associated with making different, and ultimately better bets than other governments back in the day, there's an argument to be made that this is one of the only ways to prevent Chinese companies from killing off all their foreign competition, locking themselves in as the makers of solar panels and wind turbines and battery backup systems and electric vehicles, and more or less owning that component of the future, which—because of how fundamental electricity is already, and how much more fundamental it's becoming as more nations segue away from fossil fuels as primary energy sources—means they have a slew of adjacent industries in an economic headlock, as well. Arguably the whole of every economy on the planet.

Attempts to label one side good and pure and the other a malicious economic actor may be just set dressing, then, and the real story is how one side managed to lock-in a true advantage for themselves, while their competitors are scrambling at the 11th hour to figure out a way to dilute that advantage, and maybe grab something of the same for themselves.

Biden's attempt, here, and similar policies elsewhere—especially Europe, but we're seeing some protectionist ideas flutter to the surface in other nations, as well, most of them aimed specifically at China—is meant to give competitors time to catch up. And many of them use a stick approach, increasing the price of these goods on foreign markets, while others are carrots, offering subsidies for locally made panels and EVs, for instance, but only if their key components are made in friendly countries; so Chinese-made vehicles don't benefit from those subsidies, but those manufactured elsewhere often do.

Some businesses in tariffed areas are bypassing, or attempting to bypass these concerns by making licensing deals with, for instance, Chinese battery giant CATL, which makes the world's best and cheapest batteries, and which US-based Ford and Tesla have been dealing with in ways that they all claim still work, legally, under the new policy system.

Other countries, like Brazil and Chile in South America, and Hungary and Germany in Europe, have been making deals to attract Chinese foreign direct investment within their borders, basically having Chinese companies build offshoots in their territory so they can benefit from the additional job creation and local know-how, and in both cases the idea is to dodge these policies, still benefitting from relationships with Chinese companies but in ways that allow them to avoid the worst of those sticks, even if they don't always benefit from the carrots.

China, for its part, has been investing in reinforcing its global supply chains against these sorts of tariffs for years, especially following former US President Trump's decision to begin disentangling the US and China when he was in office, which caught a lot of businesses and governments off guard at the time.

In the years since, Chinese officials have been moving things around so that many of their supply chains end in third countries before headed to US and European markets, giving them backdoor access to those markets without suffering the full impact of those amplified tariffs.

This is just a riff on an existing strategy, as China did the same with their solar panels back in the industry's relatively early days of the 2010s, rerouting their panels through Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam and Cambodia to avoid tariffs, which is part of why something like 80% of the US's solar panels still come from these countries, today: they're Chinese panels, in most of the ways that matter, but those buying and selling them can claim otherwise for tariff purposes.

Now, China is developing the capacity to build their EVs in Mexico, before then shipping them to tariff-defended countries around the world, including the US to the north, and Chinese-mined and refined rare earths, which are necessary components for batteries and other such technologies, are being mined in and diverted through a variety of different countries, their origins visible but still obfuscated for legal, tariff-related purposes.

The US and its allies are beginning to insist that other trade partners implement similar tariffs against China when it comes to these sorts of products, but results have been hit and miss on that front so far, and it could be that, even though this sort of trade war stance has been ongoing for nearly a decade at this point, policies related to these increasingly vital goods will be what finally fractures the global economy into rival collections of supply chains and viable markets, smaller countries forced to choose between dealing with the US and other Western nations on one hand, and China and its allies on the other.

Of course, again, intensifying weather events and the changing climate is stressing a lot of infrastructure and causing a lot of damage, globally, which is making the shift to renewables an increasingly pressing need.

At some point that need could strain or break existing relationships, depending on who ends up wielding the most leverage in this regard, and that in turn could contribute to the ongoing and substantial realignment we're seeing in the global world order that has determined how things work, economically and legally and militarily, for the better part of the past century.

Show Notes

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices

https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline

https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/02/21/1068880/how-did-china-dominate-electric-cars-policy

https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press-releases/2024/may/us-trade-representative-katherine-tai-take-further-action-china-tariffs-after-releasing-statutory

https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/great-green-wall/

https://archive.ph/MxOTZ

https://www.trade.gov/commerce-initiates-antidumping-and-countervailing-duty-investigations-crystalline-silicon

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/natural-disasters-china-caused-13-bln-economic-loss-january-june-2024-07-12/

https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/society/2023/abandon-idea-great-green-walls

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-us-fusion-race-4452d3be

https://asiatimes.com/2024/07/chinas-subsidies-create-not-destroy-value/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/07/09/china-floods-climate-change/

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/iea-expects-global-clean-energy-investment-hit-2-trillion-2024-2024-06-06/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(China)

https://phys.org/news/2023-10-china-great-green-wall-boosts.html

https://earth.org/what-is-the-great-green-wall-in-china/

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit letsknowthings.substack.com/subscribe

This week we talk about the Heritage Foundation, Agenda 47, and the Democrats in turmoil

We also discuss Christian Nationalism, France’s surprising election outcome, and authoritarianism.

Recommended Book: Filterworld by Kyle Chayka

Transcript

The world is awash with interesting elections this year—there are a record number of people participating in democratic activities, from Indonesia to the EU's 27 governments—and we've just seen the UK's citizenry topple their long-governing Conservative Party in favor their Labour Party, while in France, the far-right party, which was previously relegated to the outskirts, has taken a huge number of parliamentary seats—not dominating the government as some had anticipated, but grabbing a convincing third place, after the first place far-left party, and the current government's second-place, none of which has a majority, which will likely make it difficult for anyone to get anything done in the country until some of these groups figure out a way to work together with each other, which isn't something they've had to do in recent history.

The US election, which arrives later this year, in November, is being especially closely watched by pretty much everyone, even those in far-flung, barely connected to the US, in a practical sense, portions of the world, because the stakes are very high—the US remains the most powerful nation on the planet according to most metrics, and it sets the tone for a lot of geopolitical happenings, as a consequence. It's also being watched because the visions of the two leading contenders, and their respective parties, couldn't be more different.

We've also seen a recent wave of pushback against current President Biden, who's 81 years old, currently, and who has been showcasing some of the consequences of age in a very public manner in recent weeks: perhaps most notably during a debate with his opponent, former President Trump, in late June.

Biden seemed visibly not well during that debate, stumbled and mumbled and lost his train of thought near-constantly, and this brought to the forefront a till-then simmering discontent with his advanced years, and all the potential ramifications of those advanced years, when it comes to running a country like the US, from supporters within his own party.

At the moment, as of the day I'm recording this at least, Biden is saying he'll remain the Democratic candidate and that those murmurings will die down, because that was just a bad night, and he's committed to regaining everyone's confidence.

But there are folks within his loyalty base, including those on the editorial board of the New York Times, and some of his most prominent campaign funders, who have called for him to step aside to make way for someone younger who can continue to carry the torch for the things he's done while in office.

It's time to allow someone like his VP, Kamala Harris, or possibly someone else from within the party, though Harris seems like the obvious choice for many reasons right now, to step in while there's still time to shift the narrative and get people used to the idea of someone else leading the ticket—that's the dominant argument right now, at least.

It's anyone's guess as to whether that'll happen—some prediction markets indicate the odds are something like 33-50% that the Dems will oust Biden somehow, or that he'll step aside willingly, but that would be a significant and historical decision, and it's likely that if it happens, up until the very last moment he'll continue to say he's running, because there would be no upside to doing otherwise.

Interestingly, though, while Biden-related drama has dominated a lot of headlines and airwaves in recent weeks, Trump has had his own, currently smaller, but possibly growing drama to deal with, this one related to a manifesto of sorts written by a collection of some of his most powerful and influential backers.

And that's what I'd like to talk about today: the Project 2025 plan, what's in it, and why Trump has been going out of his way to distance himself from it.

—

Donald Trump's official proposal package—the jumble of policy ideas most campaigns put together and publish as a sort of "here's what we believe and what we'd like to do" document that they can point while running for office—is called Agenda 47, and as tends to be the case with these sorts of documents it contains all sorts of ideas about all sorts of things, including but not limited to implementing universal tariffs on all imported foreign products while lowering taxes on all American people and businesses, cutting federal funding for any school or educational program that teaches Critical Race Theory, increasing the President's ability to fire whomever they want, and negotiating an end to Russia's invasion of Ukraine within the first 24 hours of Trump stepping into office.

Some of these policies were met with general, widespread favor, like implementing term limits on Congresspeople and keeping federal employees from taking jobs with the companies they regulated while working for the government, both of which could tamp down on various sorts of corruption and regulatory capture by business entities.

Others were met with general happiness with folks on the right side of the US political spectrum, like cutting federal expenses, killing off policies that allow gender affirming care, and labeling news entities that don't toe the political line, saying anything that goes against what Trump's people say, basically, as misinformation or disinformation.

Still other policies have been criticized even by some people on the right because they basically seem to serve Trump's desires, but don't necessarily align with the broader movement's ambitions—giving Trump the ability to investigate and potentially imprison his political enemies and folks in the press who say things he doesn't like, for instance.

Agenda 47 was getting a lot of promotion from Trump and his campaign up to the early months of 2023, when they were still releasing video clips of Trump talking about specific aspects of these policies, but following that last push, they seemed to step away from it, apparently deciding it was better to keep their specific policy ideas vague—as otherwise their opponents, and the press, could call them out on specifics, and in some cases because their own people wouldn't like something they were proposing, and keeping things fuzzy allowed them to talk around those ideas in the moment: it's much more difficult to criticize and critique if a campaign doesn't say anything concrete, and seems like they're willing to bend on just about everything they do say, depending on who they're talking to.

That pivot toward a blurrier vision of the future of the country seems to be part of why Trump's campaign has been trying to distance itself from another policy document—this one called Project 2025, and penned by folks working with the conservative think-tank, the Heritage Foundation.

Trump even went so far as to say, unprompted, that he didn't know anything about it, the former President posting on the Twitter-clone he partially owns, Truth Social, "I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they're saying and some of the things they're saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them."

This statement—as has been pointed out by numerous in-the-know political analysts—is riddled with let's call them fabrications.

More than 200 of Trump's former officials and current campaign employees and allies have worked on elements of Project 2025, and the Heritage Foundation, and many of the people who run or are otherwise aligned with it, are his biggest donors: he knows these people, hangs out with them, relies upon them for campaign funds and to rally his base, and many of his policies from when he was in office, including some of his statements and other specific details, were proposed and even written by folks at the Heritage Foundation.

So while there's a chance that Trump genuinely doesn't know anything about this document or the people who wrote it, that would imply he's either so far disconnected from his campaign and the administration he ran while in office that he can barely be said to have been in office at all, or he's so far gone mentally that he actually can't remember, in which case his state of mind would arguably be the bigger scandal here.

Assuming that he does know about this document and who's pushing it, though, it makes sense that he might want to distance himself from it, in part because of that aforementioned strategy of keeping things blurry enough that everything's deniable, and in part because of what it is: 900-plus pages of plans for installing what most independent analysts are calling some version of an authoritarian regime, or a Christian Nationalist kingdom, in the United States.

It proposes doing this rapidly, providing instructions for how Trump could whip into office following a 2024 election victory, and within 180 days or so basically restructure the whole of the government so that he would wield near-absolute power, do away with the systems of checks and balances that could prevent him from doing whatever he wants, and would thus be able to implement the Heritage Foundation's far-right, fundamentalist Christian-oriented plans.

The document doesn't mention Trump specifically, because the Heritage Foundation is technically a non-profit, and thus can't be directly, demonstrably involved in supporting one political party or another, lest it lose that tax-free status.

And in the eyes of the folks writing these policies—many of whom have been involved in past administrations, and who thus have a solid understanding of how the government works and how to get things done within that system, this isn't an instruction manual for an overthrow or gutting of the democratic system, it's a battle plan for good, Christian soldiers who want to see their country revert to its (in their minds) Christian roots, after generations of straying from path.

To most non-partisan, outside analysts though—folks who know what they're looking at with this sort of thing—Project 2025 amounts to a guide, specifically aimed at Trump and his people, for how they can enter the White House, post electoral victory, strip the system of any means it has of fighting him and his whims, and systematically wipe out all opposition, including those within the government, but also political opposition, journalists, and other outside entities that typically serve as a check on those in power.

And they've done this, seemingly at least, because they see Trump as their way into government.

Christian Nationalist political candidates, with rare exceptions, don't win many elections, and when they do, they're often successfully challenged in the next election. This approach to governance would allow them to bypass the democratic system and take control of the reins of government, and that, in turn, would allow them to work their version of fundamentalist Christianity into US federal law; to reshape law in their preferred image.

Again, this is a more than 900-page document, so there are a large number of policy proposals and plans, but they almost all orient around implementing fundamentalist Christian ideology as law, including banning all types and methods of abortion and contraception, criminalizing the production and consumption of pornography, removing protections for groups that have been traditionally discriminated against, including people of color and folks from the LGBTQ+ community, and removing the separation of church and state, making the US, formally and in a legally binding and enforceable way, a Christian nation.

These plans would allow Trump's administration to essentially get rid of the so-called "administrative state," do away with a slew of government bodies and agencies, including the Department of Education, while also allowing the Republican Party to take full, partisan control of the Department of Justice, the FBI, the FCC and FTC, and the Department of Commerce by firing everyone and replacing the whole of these agencies with people hired based on their ability to pass ideology and loyalty tests, and they would do away with the Department of Homeland Security and other bodies that have been keeping an eye on right-wing extremist militias and other groups that the Heritage Foundation considers to be freedom fighters, not terrorists.

They would use the military to round up undocumented immigrants, placing them in interment camps, while also having soldiers act as police, to keep folks from protesting as their plans are implemented, the government gutted and public servants replaced by people who are Trump and Heritage loyalists; those soldiers instructed to use violence to keep protests from arising and spreading.

The National Guard in red states, those that consistently vote Republican, would be deputized as immigration enforcement officers and deployed to blue states, those that consistently vote Democrat.

These policies advise doing away with renewable energy programs and projects, protecting the fossil fuel industry indefinitely, and incentivizing the production of more oil and gas and coal, while making the production of more wind, solar, and similar types of energy nearly impossible.

They want to restart nuclear weapons testing programs, build a lot more nukes, and only extend the US nuclear umbrella, which is the country's promise to basically use nukes to protect sovereign, allied nations from invasion and being nuked, to NATO countries, and to only respect the US's NATO responsibilities for NATO nations that spend at least 2% of their GDP on their military.

There are guidelines for how to privatize essentially everything, and for removing the government's power to influence or regulate the free market almost entirely. It would do away with most social programs, and taxes would be reformed to dramatically reduce those applied to businesses and wealthy people, while also reforming how congress works so that increasing taxes in any amount and for any reason is a lot more difficult, in the future, creating what they call a "wall of protection" for businesses and the wealthy to whom these reductions would apply.

Again, that's just a brief cross-section of what this document calls for, but I think it gets the general point across.

And the response to this document has been telling, as some sub-section of the country has been positively thrilled by it, considering most of its tenets to be obvious and wonderful, and seeing the blitzkrieg-like implementation of these policies, whipping into Washington DC alongside Trump, passing as many of these things as possible within mere weeks of his inauguration, to be one of the most beneficial things that could happen to the US—a country that they, almost universally, see as a failing, flailing state that has wandered too far to the left, been taken over by the secular and woke, and which has thus lost what made it great to begin with.

The opposite response is that of concern and even horror that something like this is being considered, and that it's being so brazenly and publicly proposed by some of the most politically powerful people in the country.

When Trump first came into office, he was seemingly unprepared for the task, and a significant portion of his time in the White House was spent just getting his government set up—something that by some estimates never really, fully happened.

And part of the idea here is that the Heritage Foundation is offering to do all that work for him, having handpicked and trained people for this task for years, giving him a pop-up government from day one, that would, in practice, make him something closer to a monarch than a President, and all he has to do is say yes, and allow them to implement their vision for America through his administration.

In doing so, in the tradeoff, he would  be empowered to take revenge on the people he believes have wronged him: and there's apparently a list of such people—his former Chief Strategist Steve Bannon recently said, on a podcast, that the former President is "dead serious" about getting revenge on his enemies, especially political opponents and members of the media he feels have mistreated him.

Former US National Security Council Adviser under Trump, Kash Patel, on the same podcast episode where Bannon made that threat, said “We will go out and find the conspirators—not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.”

It's worth mentioning here, too, that the leader of the Heritage Foundation, on Steve Bannon's podcast, the War Room, recently said that the Supreme Court's ruling on presidential immunity, which is broadly seen as favorable to Trump's position in the various court cases he faces, will reinforce a "second American Revolution," which he says will "remain bloodless, if the left allows it to be."

The unconcealed implication being that the right, under Trump's banner and with the support of Heritage and similar groups, is launching a revolution, intending to remake the American government in their image, and if the left, their political opponents, stand in their way at the ballot box, keeping them from doing this peacefully, physical violence may be necessary.

The ruling he was alluding to, which said the US president couldn't be prosecuted for things done while in office, while working on presidential things, would allow Trump, if he returns to office, to get away with just about anything, as long as he could say he was doing it as part of his job.

So the argument is that these Project 2025 plans could be implemented relatively easily, as long as Trump is willing to do a bunch of illegal stuff, which wouldn't be illegal because he would be president, and could systematically strip the government of its ability to fight back—its authoritarian immune system—all while enjoying that legal protection.

The degree to which this will matter, in the immediate future, at least, comes down to who wins at the ballot box in November, though there's a good chance Heritage will continue to push this agenda in the future, as well, either way.

Leading up to the election, Trump may successfully convince those who don't like these policies and the movement behind them that it's nothing to do with him, and that he'll be doing his own thing if and when he returns to office.

The heat may also stay on Biden, or whomever replaces him, if someone ultimately does, stepping in for him on the Democrat's ticket.

In that latter case, the Project 2025 people have said they will hold up the election and nomination process if Biden decides to step down, flooding the zone with lawsuits and other legal challenges in order to keep the Democrats from focusing on the election and the issues they'd like to keep at the forefront of the conversation. So there's a chance this group could influence the election from that angle, as well.

It's possible, of course, that Trump will genuinely push back against this group, rather than just seeming to, as Heritage, in many ways, would become a second power loci within the government, challenging his own power even as they position him as a figurehead for their activities.

They would reinforce his position, grant him new powers, and thus allow him to pursue whatever agenda he likes—include a revenge tour, if he so chooses—and that could prove to be too compelling to ignore, but he could also resent their support, realizing that they hold a lot of cards he doesn't hold, and that could keep him from fully embracing their vision and offerings, maybe giving them a little leeway, but otherwise doing his own thing.

Again, at the moment, Trump seems to be distancing himself from a group that's pitching broadly unpopular policies that the majority of the US electorate would not support, and there's a chance he'll continue to distance right up to the moment he has the presidency again, at which point he could allow Heritage to partially or fully move forward with their plans.

All of this is very new, though, and in addition to it not being clear that Heritage's theories on how to change the government would work, it's also not clear Project 2025 would be implementable, even most of it, without a majority in both the House and Senate.

So this could turn out to be an ambitious dream and nothing more than that if a lot of things don't go really well for the Republicans in November; but it could also end up sparking a huge, anti- small-d democratic movement, as well, if enough cards turn up their way, in the coming months.

Show Notes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_47

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heritage_Foundation

https://www.axios.com/2024/07/05/trump-project-2025-heritage-foundation

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/18/trump-has-unveiled-an-agenda-his-own-he-just-doesnt-mention-it-much/

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/21/magazine/heritage-foundation-kevin-roberts.html

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/donations-surged-groups-linked-conservative-project-2025-rcna125638

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/26/what-is-project-2025-trump

https://apnews.com/article/america-first-trump-biden-russia-ukraine-policy-54080728c6e549c8312c4d71150480ba

https://thehill.com/homenews/4344065-bannon-patel-trump-revenge-on-media/

https://newrepublic.com/post/182797/steve-bannon-exposes-trump-revenge-list

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/05/donald-trump-project-2025

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/05/trump-project-2025-disavowal/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/03/heritage-foundation-trump-revolution/

https://www.snopes.com/news/2024/07/03/project-2025-trump-us-government/

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/09/19/project-2025-trump-reagan-00115811

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-seeks-disavow-project-2025-despite-ties-conservative-group-2024-07-05/

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4757210-heritage-blowback-bloodless-revolution/

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4753439-heritage-leader-second-american-revolution/

https://x.com/alaynatreene/status/1809250958251077983

https://thebulletin.org/2024/07/trump-has-a-strategic-plan-for-the-country-gearing-up-for-nuclear-war/

https://archive.ph/liWg9

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit letsknowthings.substack.com/subscribe

This week we talk about the APA, the Supreme Court, and Marbury v. Madison.

We also discuss the Chevron Doctrine, government agencies, and the administrative state.

Recommended Book: A City on Mars by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith

Transcript

The Supreme Court's 1803 Marbury v. Madison decision was pivotal to US legal theory and practice because it established the concept of judicial review, which essentially said that US courts could assess laws passed through the typical legislative system, through Congress, and, if they determined those laws were unconstitutional, strike them down.

This was a huge rewiring of the US government, as it gave a substantial amount of new power to the court system, and it provided a new check on the legislative system that recentered the Constitution as the source of all law; if the judges decided new laws didn't line up with that original Constitutional intent, according to their interpretation of said intent, the new laws would be a no-go.

This is true of statutes that declare policy, as well, which are generally part of the law-making process, and also help shape regulations, guidelines, and other things of that nature—the fuzzier stuff that goes on to effect things, even when some of those fuzzy statements and implications aren't formalized in law, yet.

So any and all of this stuff that Congress decides on could, at some point, be looked into by the US court system, and that system can say, nope, that doesn't line up with what's in the Constitution—it's not Constitutional—and that means the Constitution, following Marbury v. Madison, became a lot more of a legal reality in the country, rather than just a collection of principles and ideals, which is how some legislators and legal scholars thought of it before this ruling.

Within this same entwined governmental/legal system, Congress sometimes delegates policy decision-making powers to US agencies, allowing them to make legal decisions in cases where Congress passes a law that it is some way ambiguous—saying that there need to be emissions standards on cars, for instance, but leaving the task of coming up with those standards to the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA.

This delegation ability was reinforced by a 1984 Supreme Court decision, Chevron v. The Natural Resources Defense Council, today usually referred to as "Chevron" or the "Chevron decision," the justices unanimously deciding against the DC judicial circuit's ability to set government policy, reminding those justices that judges are unelected officials and thus shouldn't be making law, and that when Congress isn't specific enough in their lawmaking, this can represent an implicit desire for the agencies in charge of implementing the relevant laws in the real world to figure out the specifics for themselves; after all, they would probably know better how to do so than a bunch of lawmakers who are not experts on the subject matter in question.

That case also limited the US court system's ability to review an agency's interpretation of the law, which in that specific case meant that judges shouldn't have the right to look into how US agencies decide to do things, willy-nilly, just because they don't like the outcome.

Instead, they have to adhere to what has become known as the Chevron Doctrine or Chevron Deference, which says, first, the judges have to decide if Congress was clear on the matter—and if so, they go with what Congress said, no questions asked. If Congress was unclear on something, though, then they have to decide if the agency in charge of executing Congress' decision has made reasonable and permissible decisions on that implementation; and if the answer is yes in both cases, the court must accept the agency's decision on the matter.

If not, though, then the court can step in and make some kind of judgement; but it's a fairly ponderous process to get to that point, because of this doctrine, and they will almost always defer to the decision made by the relevant agency, because of that 1980s-era court case.

The Chevron decision is generally considered to be one of the most formative in modern case-law because it empowered US agencies with all sorts of responsibilities and rights they wouldn't have otherwise enjoyed.

The Chevron case, itself, was predicated on a disagreement about the 1963 Clean Air Act, which failed to specifically define what "source" meant, in terms of emitted pollutants; Congress didn't specify. And this ambiguity led to a clarification in 1981, by then-President Reagan's EPA, that allowed companies to bypass the Act's procedures by building-out new, highly polluting components to their plants and factories, as long as they also modified other aspects of those plants and factories in such a way that emissions were reduced.

An environmentalist advocacy group challenged this new definition, which amounted to a loophole that allowed companies to get around otherwise sterner emissions rules, and that's how we got the Chevron court case.

What I'd like to talk about today is a recent, successful challenge to that Chevron ruling, and what it might mean for the powerful regulatory state that emerged in the US in the wake of that decision.

—

On June 28, 2024, the Supreme Court announced their decision in a case that was originally argued in January of the same year—Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, along with a companion case on a connected matter, Relentless Inc v. Department of Commerce—the Court's decision being that the Chevron deference, which says agencies can define fuzziness left in law by Congress, conflicts with the Administrative Procedure Act, or APA, which itself says the US court system has oversight powers when it comes to all agency actions.

The long and short of this decision—which was made along what are generally considered to be ideological lines within the court, the more conservative 6 justices ruling against the Chevron doctrine, the 3 more liberal justices ruling to keeping it—is that federal agencies will now have far less wiggle-room and legally backed authority when it comes to the laws and policies they enforce.

And while the court also said this doesn't immediately strip prior judgements of their impact and consequences, it does mean—according to most experts who have responded to and analyzed to this ruling, at least—that we're likely to see a wave of lawsuits against agencies that have done things or refined regulations in a way that individuals or companies didn't like, which could amount to the same thing within the next couple of years: many such regulations being done away with, those agencies becoming husks of their former selves because their capabilities will be pruned back significantly.

This is being seen as a victory by mostly conservative activists and lawmakers who are keen to see the regulatory components of the US government shrunk, their powers and funding depleted as a much as possible, doing away with what they sometimes derisively call the "administrative state," which they consider to be a limit on the free market and in some cases their own powers within politics and the economy.

And among many other regulations, thousands of them, by some estimates, this could impact the government's ability to regulate environmental pollution, safety measures for cars and airplanes, workers' rights and health considerations, and even somewhat more wonky things like net neutrality and the legality or illegality of very specific aspects of the e-cigarette and crypto industries.

For decades, these regulations have been to greater and lesser degrees interpreted—in their specifics, at least—by regulatory bodies like the FDA, the FCC, the EPA, and other such agencies. Congress has mapped out the broad strokes, leaving the details for the relevant agencies to sort out, because they knew this ruling would give those agencies the power to do so.

So those laws passed in this way by a Congress that knew this was how things worked, legally, will suddenly find themselves incredibly challengeable, the legal basis of their specifics now based on flimsy justifications that the court no longer supports.

These policies won't immediately disappear, then, but all of them, in their details and as a whole, are now more vulnerable to lawsuits from anyone who wants to bring them, and those who bring them will likely win, because the court system has taken away the protections those agency powers formerly leaned-upon.

Consequently, there are fresh concerns from folks working in environmental spaces, those attempting to incentivize the deployment of renewable energy infrastructure, and those who are trying to protect workers' rights, that they could soon be tied up in endless court cases, many aspects of the legal understanding they've worked in accordance with other the past four decades pulled out from under them—their capacity to enforce anything not spelled out in detail by congress, which is very little because congress has gotten used to leaving that to them, in many cases, dramatically reduced.

There are parallel concerns that standards that have made the US market relatively trustworthy, compared to other global marketplaces, at least, in terms of the safety of foods and medicines and all sorts of other products, might be diminished, leading to a bunch of new safety challenges, but also a demotion of American goods on the global market, because fewer sturdy regulations, at least in the short-term, could lead to more rip-offs and fakes, lower-quality items subbed in for higher-quality ones, and a bunch of risky, and even dangerous new products and services hitting the market, because these agencies are suddenly less empowered to check them out before approving them.

One of the larger concerns, especially amongst folks on the political left in the US, is the impact this could have on health care.

The Affordable Care Act, which provides reduced-cost insurance plans to folks who make less than a set amount of income, is enabled by a huge jumble of regulations that determine how things are paid for, who can and must participate—citizens and hospitals and pharmaceutical companies and so on—and how everything fits together, ensuring Medicare, Medicaid, and the ACA can continue to function, despite relying upon often arcane methods and cost overruns.

The US Treasury and IRS, too, rely heavily on regulatory powers to draft new rules and enforce the tax code, which allows for the management of money throughout government agencies and other bodies, but which also helps the government develop and deploy sticks and carrots throughout its portfolio of laws, acts, and policy-based nudges.

The deployment of clean energy tax credits and incentives to help push solar and wind power development, and to encourage the construction of chip-making facilities on US soil, for instance, are all reliant on the ability to divvy out those credits, to decide how big they should be, and to determine who should get them, based on what criteria.

The general outline of most of these programs is still on solid ground, because Congress decides that sort of thing, even today, but so many specific details and numbers and implementation strategies are left to agencies, and though it's possible to shore those up, Congress stepping in to vote on and pass new details into law, it will take time to do that, and especially in highly competitive spaces like chip-making, and arguably time-sensitive spaces like those related to healthcare and climate change, a gap in implementation and legality could be incredibly meaningful, and even devastating to some of these projects and their outcomes.

In addition to having grown accustomed to being able to leave those sorts of details to agencies, which has impacted how they make law, the US Congress, too, has become highly polarized and at times somewhat stagnant, moving sluggishly on controversial areas, in particular, one side or the other bogging down even debate about things they don't like, rather than working with the other side to find a middle-ground they can agree upon.

So while many lawmakers may want to move fast to fill in some of these gaps that have suddenly appeared across US law and capability, that desire may be held up by the reality of US politics at the moment, and systems that are often weighed-down by the people who operate them, and the systems meant to keep them ticking along, but which sometimes do the opposite.

One way of looking at all this—through the lens of those who generally support this decision—is that this ruling could force Congress to get more specific in its laws, and in the meantime it could reduce the amount of bloat that can accumulate within any regulatory system; some of the sluggishness in getting new products to market, building-out new infrastructure, and passing new laws could actually be reduced, streamlining processes that currently, arguably, take too long, cost too much, and provide little benefit, all because these agencies have developed too many hoops to jump through and piles of paperwork to fill out.

Another way of looking at it, from the perspective of those who generally decry this outcome, is that this will lead to a huge shock, bordering on chaos, throughout the US legal and governmental system, will do away with all sorts of government supports, leaving us with fewer protections and filters that help keep people safe, and which keep businesses from abusing their positions of power, and that it puts more power in the hands of judges, who—especially at the very top, within the Supreme Court, which made this decision—are usually put into their positions by whomever happens to be in power, occupying the presidency, when one of their predecessors retires or dies. Which is why there's such a huge 6 to 3 imbalance between conservative and liberal justices in the Supreme Court at the moment, that imbalance unlikely to go away any time soon, because those unelected positions are for life; though Republicans during the Trump administration also made it a priority to fill lower rungs of the justice system with ideological fellow travelers, so the justice system in the US, broadly, is more conservative than it has historically been, at this particular moment.

There's a chance, then, that this ruling could lead to a period of reduced regulatory bloat, which could help some industries and governments cruise forward with things they've long wanted to do, but have been unable to make progress on because of all the bureaucracy standing between them and their intended goals. There's also a chance this could shake the foundations of some of the agencies that have been essentially captured by the industries they're meant to regulate, messing with those relationships in a way that's arguably better for citizens and institutions, and worse for the businesses that lobbied their way into informal regulatory power over themselves.

On the other hand, it could also be that progress on much of anything will be almost impossible until these laws can be revisited and made more specific at the Congressional level, because there will be so many court challenges to everything, from all sides, that the US justice system will have a full dance card for years just sorting out the basics, and everyone will be too afraid to proceed with anything in the meantime, lest they make investments that ultimately turn out to be illegal.

Notably, the Supreme Court decision in this case did say that Congress could still delegate decision-making powers to federal agencies: they just have to specifically say that's what they're doing, rather than leaving things fuzzy and assuming that will be implied. So we may also see a brief period of relative chaos, followed by basically more of the same, everything going back to how it is today because Congress makes sure to include a line of text in every law they pass that specifies that delegatory intent.

One more major consideration here is that the court system, and especially the Supreme Court up at the top of the pecking order, is only so big, and already often moves at a relatively sluggish pace. 

That means it could have trouble addressing all the little issues Congress fails to address, regulatorily, and that it will likely take the court system a while to weed through all the cases that are expected to pop up in the wake of this decision.

And that means we could see a somewhat slowed-down implementation of this new, anticipated reality—whichever version we get—which could also mean Congress, and the other facets of the government that will have to change the way they operate, has more time to get their ducks in a row, maybe reducing the impact of the shock the legal system is expected to experience over the next few years as a result of this decision.

Show Notes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loper_Bright_Enterprises_v._Raimondo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_Procedure_Act

https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-chevron-regulations-environment-4ae73d5a79cabadff4da8f7e16669929

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/us/politics/chevron-deference-decision-meaning.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/06/28/supreme-court-chevron-environmental-rules/

https://thehill.com/homenews/ap/ap-health/ap-what-it-means-for-the-supreme-court-to-throw-out-chevron-decision-undercutting-federal-regulators/

https://www.axios.com/2024/06/28/supreme-court-chevron-doctrine-ruling

https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/28/24180118/supreme-court-chevron-deference-decision-opinion

https://www.theverge.com/24188365/chevron-scotus-net-neutrality-dmca-visa-fcc-ftc-epa

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/19/climate/supreme-court-climate-epa.html

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natural_Resources_Defense_Council,_Inc.

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This week we talk about China, Russia, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

We also discuss BRICS, North Korea, and the post-WWII global world order.

Recommended Book: Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg

Transcript

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, or SCO, is a defense and economic alliance that was started by China and Russia back in 2001, and which has since expanded to become the largest regional organization in the world in terms of both land area and population, encompassing something like 80% of Eurasia, and 40% of the global population, as of 2020.

The SCO also boasts about 20% of global GDP between its member nations, which originally included the governments of its precursor regional alliance, the Shanghai Five, which formed back in 1996: China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.

With the evolution of that group into the SCO, though, Uzbekistan joined the club, and in 2017 it allowed India and Pakistan in, as well. Iran joined in 2023, and the list of observer and dialogue partner nations is pretty big, including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belarus, Cambodia, Egypt, Kuwait, the Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and the UAE.

The original purpose of the Shanghai Five, which was inherited by the SCO, was to increase trust and diplomatic relationships between these nations, which otherwise have a lot of potential enemies surrounding them on all sides—this is why the advice to never fight a land war in Asia is so well-taken: there's just a lot of land and a lot of borders and pretty much everyone who's tried, with few exceptions, has found themselves depleted by the effort.

Thus, while there are other components to the SCO, member countries' agreement to respect each others' borders, including opposition to intervention in other countries—invading them, messing with their politics, criticizing their approach to human rights, etc—the sovereignty issue is the big one here, with making sure that everyone involved is diplomatically tied-up with everyone else in a close second, so member states can focus on the borders that present the most risk, and invest less attention and resources on the borders they share with their fellow members.

That said, the SCO also includes mechanisms that allow member nations to work together on big projects, like transportation infrastructure that passes through or benefits more than one country, and fighting local terrorist organizations. It also allows them to integrate some aspects of their monetary and banking infrastructure, among other ties, so there's an economic component to these relationships.

Another intergovernmental organization that likewise encompasses a significant chunk of the global population, landmass, and economic activity is BRICS, which is an acronym that was originally coined to gesture at the economic potential of the then-burgeoning economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, but which in recent years has expanded to also include Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the UAE.

BRICS nations hold about 30% of the world's territory, 45% of its population, and pull in about 33% of global GDP, based on purchasing power parity.

And BRICS has long served as a sort of counterweight to global institutions that often seem to favor the world's wealthiest and most powerful nations, many of which are Western nations, like those of North America and Europe.

So while the G7's expanded iteration, the G20, brings nations like Brazil, India, and Indonesia into the conversation, the majority of the power in such institutions—and this includes institutions like the UN, because of who holds vetoes and soft power influence within those organizations—the majority of the power is still typically held by the world's currently most influential and wealthy governments.

And BRICS, from the beginning, included those nations that were assumed to become the most powerful, or at least equally powerful nations, by many metrics, in ten or twenty or thirty years, based on demographics, economic growth, and so on.

Both of these groupings, then, are attempts to lash together the governments of nations that are on favorable growth trajectories, or otherwise in interesting, upward-moving positions by various metrics, or which are located in areas that would benefit from some kind of unity, but which aren't always given the respect they believe they deserve within other globe-straddling organizations; in some cases because they're simply not there yet, in others because their governments are a bit more authoritarian, while entities like the UN, while including everyone, tend to favor democracies.

What I'd like to talk about today is another loose grouping of nations that seems to be forming, and which, while it doesn't have an official designation or even membership roster yet, is becoming increasingly well-defined, collaborative, and active.

—

The geopolitical, military, and news analysis community has been struggling, over the past handful of years in particular, to come up with a monicker for a loosely defined, but increasingly impactful cluster of nations that are oriented, in part, around disrupting the current global status quo, including but not limited to the rule of law and establishment through which international things are typically handled that arose in the wake of WWII.

Following that conflict, the US and the Soviet Union scrambled to figure out how to deal with each other in ways that didn't lead to, at first, conventional war, and then in a relatively short period of time, nuclear war, and that led to a flurry of geopolitical activity that culminated in the creation of, among other things, of the United Nations, which itself birthed a huge stack of other organizations and protocols, most of which favored those who were willing to play ball within these institutions, and made life a little more difficult for those who defied them; North Korea, for instance, following its formation after the Korean War, is famously excluded from a lot of the benefits of belonging to the modern international order, in large part because it's made it pretty clear it intends to do away with its neighbor to the south, and maybe the US and other perceptual enemies, as well, the first chance it gets.

The group that analysts have been trying to label centers around China and Russia, but usually includes Iran, as well, and in some cases North Korea, as well. Iran's many proxy groups, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and Hamas in Gaza, are also sometimes thus categorized.

Some of the proposed labels have been clear and illustrative, others have been a little in the weeds—like the acronym CRANKs, which kinda sorta stands for China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, the Axis of Upheaval, the Axis of Autocracy, and in some more western and patriotic publications, the New Axis of Evil, and even the Legion of Doom, which arguably makes this group seem pretty hardcore, but I guess it still gets the intended point across.

I personally like one that was posited by a writer for the American Enterprise Institute, the Axis of Disorder, as while there's still a fairly biased reference to the WWII Axis powers in there, which depending on whose side you're on and which governments you support, could be construed as an unfair comparison, but it also points at the seeming purpose of a lot of this group's actions, which seem to orient around disrupting the current world order—that one that was implemented post-WWII.

And the seeming rationale for this is that this post-WWII order was established to favor nations with capitalistic economies and democratic values, including things like human rights, freedom of the press, freedom of worship, and the like; and while there's absolutely room for argument as to how well various nations uphold those values on a country-to-country basis, and across time, few would argue that China has a better reputation for human rights than Sweden, or that Iran has a better record for equality between the sexes than the UK.

So we live in a world, today, that's shaped by a bunch of values that these loosely grouped oppositional nations don't really agree with, at least not to the degree that other nations think they should, and a lot of the levers of power are currently in other hands. And they believe, well, why shouldn't we hold those levers? Why shouldn't China have the economic power the US has? Why shouldn't Iran be as geopolitically influential as Germany? Why shouldn't North Korea be in charge of something like the UN?

And on top of that, why should the US and its allies hold the reins of so many sanctions-related powers? Why should the USD and its vast underpinnings grant one nation, and its allies, so many benefits, while the rest of the world is forced to play ball and toe the line—play ball according to rules set by the US and those who believe similar things, and toe lines they draw according to their preferences—lest they find themselves, like Iran and North Korea, and increasingly, now, Russia, sanctioned into oblivion?

It's a fair question, if you are ambivalent about those aforementioned human rights and press freedoms and such.

And these governments, not really liking those limitations on their behaviors and how they run things, are doing what they can, in a loosely affiliated way, to disrupt these enforcement institutions and the powers and nations they support.

So part of the strategy of this group is fairly direct and unambiguous: they playact toeing the line a lot of the time, but when they think they can get away with it.

Some of these raw acts of violation, though, would seem to be performed with the intention of making people question those institutions and powers, and the larger order they add up to, which could, over time, bring some of the nations that are sitting on the sidelines over to their, oppositional side; courting those of the so-called nonaligned movement, basically, of which there are officially around 120, though about 25 of them are highly desirable allies that have become transactional in their dealings with members of both sides of this simmering conflict, with the roughly delineated west on one side, and that of China and Russia and their allies on the other.

The economist actually called this group the Transactional 25, to T25, which is a nicely illustrative monicker, and that group includes nations as big as India and as small, but increasingly diplomatically important, as Qatar.

So when the Houthis shut down the Red Sea passage to the Suez Canal, disrupting global trade, and when North Korea provides ammunition to Russia for use during its invasion of Ukraine, these are actions that are beneficial to these groups unto themselves—the Houthis gain more attention and recruits, and get to hurt, ostensibly at least, Israel and its allies, and North Korea gets more trade with Russia, while also helping set a precedent for invading and claiming a neighboring country, which is something they're very interested in doing at some point—but they're also actions that show the weakness of the current global system and the folks running it, which could, over time, nudge more nations over to their side.

This isn't just theory: this is something we've already seen play out in parts of Africa, where Russia's Wagner mercenaries have been subbed-in for US and UN troops, for defending against extremist militants purposes, and we've seen other T25 nations in particular wobble on various, global-scale issues, to the point that it's a big question who India, who Indonesia, who Vietnam, who Israel would support if push came to shove and a global conflict broke out, or if some kind of geopolitical movement arose, intending to fundamentally alter institutions like the UN—who would these sideline-sitters throw in their lot with?

These disruptions, in some ways, are arguments in favor of siding with the group that's trying to upend the way things are currently done, by showing the fragility of that existing system.

This new Axis of Disorder, or whatever we want to call it, is not a fully unified front, however. Neither is what they're positioning themselves against, members of the UN, EU, NATO, and every other group regularly squabbling with each other; but the rifts between China and Russia are huge, with China becoming increasingly dominant over Russia, Russia's economy becoming more and more reliant on their neighbor, and that's created tensions within both countries, alongside existing concerns about the vast border they share.

Likewise, North Korea worries pretty much everyone, and Russia's recent announcement of a defense pact with them has raised a lot of eyebrows, including in China. And while Iran has gained a lot of prestige in Russia recently, for the cheap and functional drones and rockets they offer, their ongoing tensions with regional neighbors that China and Russia would like to get closer to, like Saudi Arabia, makes them a bit of a liability, as much as an asset, and the actions they help their proxies take (like the Houthis in the Red Sea) are not ideal for shipping giant China.

So there's a lot of scuffling and below-the-surface tension between the members of this so-called axis, and while they're doing an arguably solid job, so far, of testing the limits of the current system, and publicly airing its weak points, that doesn't mean they're set up for anything more substantial than that kind of testing the fence, seeing what they can get away with, asymmetric warfare sort of approach to this ambition.

They're not as tight as the loosely defined west, then, but it also behooves them to keep things in the grey area, in some ways, lest they trigger alarm bells throughout those systems they're trying to throw off, so that looseness might serve them more than hinder them, at this point. It also allows them to work with grey-area members of this group, like Venezuela and Cuba, which periodically make nice with their western opposition, while still fighting against them at the macro-scale.

Probably the biggest impact this group is having right now, though, with all that testing and vulnerability identifying, is increasing the number of threat surfaces the world faces, in terms of hacking and snooping and stealing, but also in terms of provoking military actions and threatening more of the same.

Russia invading Ukraine was a big deal, and China threatening to invade Taiwan could be even bigger; and both of those acts, alongside all of the hacking they do, the stealing of intellectual property, the leaking of state secrets, and the messing with foreign elections, are all violations of what's supposed to be good and proper and allowed within that global system.

And because they're pushing all those buttons all at once, they're spreading the response capability of the other side pretty thin, which could be a precursor to a more direct attack, but it could also just be a means of weakening that system, wearing it out to the point that it no longer functions even at the imperfect level it was at before, which could, over time, make way for some new model, run by a new set of hands.

Show Notes

https://archive.ph/bOr06

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/meet-cranks-how-china-russia-iran-and-north-korea%C2%A0align-against-america-211186

https://thehill.com/opinion/4094000-iran-just-joined-a-pact-with-moscow-and-beijing-heres-what-it-means-for-the-us/

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/22/world/asia/putin-korea-china-disruption.html

https://warontherocks.com/2024/04/the-axis-off-kilter-why-an-iran-russia-china-axis-is-shakier-than-meets-the-eye/

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/03/18/how-china-russia-and-iran-are-forging-closer-ties

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/axis-upheaval-russia-iran-north-korea-taylor-fontaine

https://www.aei.org/articles/the-axis-of-disorder-how-russian-iran-and-china-want-to-remake-the-world/

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/never_fight_a_land_war_in_Asia

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zynt2nb/revision/3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Independent_States

https://archive.ph/xVbrh

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zynt2nb/revision/3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Cooperation_Organisation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRICS

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit letsknowthings.substack.com/subscribe

This week we talk about the National Rally, Macron, and the European Union.

We also discuss Marine Le Pen, elections, and the French National Assembly.

Recommended Book: Pockets by Hannah Carlson

Transcript

The first week of June 2024, the EU held its parliamentary election, the tenth since it began holding such elections in 1979, and this one was notable in part because the number of MEPs—Members of European Parliament—increased from 705 to 720, due to population changes in the bloc, those new seats given to growing countries, one apiece to Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Latvia, Austria, Poland, Finland, Slovenia, and Slovakia, and two apiece to Spain, France, and the Netherlands—though that figure still a far cry from where it was before the UK left as part of its Brexit withdrawal from the union, which culminated in 2020.

These elections happen every five years, so this was the first EU election since the UK left, which means we got to see how things would shake out, post-British-presence in the bloc, a bit of a power vacuum beginning to be filled by those that remain, alliances adjusting somewhat to account for that change.

Those few structural items aside though, this election was also notable in its outcome, as, while centrist parties like the European People's Party, or EPP, which is center-right, and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, or S&D, which is center-left, each claimed substantially more seats than any other party—about 190 and 136, respectively, as of the day I'm recording this, though the final votes are still being counted, so some of these numbers are prone to changing a bit in the coming days—and Renew Europe—a fairly center-aligned party—coming in at a distant third with about 80 seats, the Identity and Democracy Group, which is made up of mostly far-right parties, looks to have achieved a strong fifth place; again, the numbers are still being tallied as I record this, so these numbers are still provisional, but it looks like they grabbed about 58 seats, which is 9 more than they had, pre-vote.

While centrist politicians and parties still hold the reins, then, their collective majority is shrinking, Identity and Democracy, and a slew of smaller, also further-right parties scooping up quite a few seats in this election, these groups attracting a lot more support from certain demographics, especially young men under 30, and especially in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, and Finland.

This shift in ideology is being attributed to many things, including but not limited to the rise in so-called identity politics, which some data suggest is causing young men, in particular, to feel excluded from some aspects of modern social life, the success of far-right groups in spreading their messages on social networks, heightened levels of immigration, which far-right groups seem to have successfully tied to all manner of societal ills, and the general tendency of whatever group is in power to spark discontent, tipping the scale toward their opposition simply because they've been governing, and you can't really govern without upsetting someone about something, and without taking the blame for things that are beyond your control, as well.

This surge in votes for far-right groups isn't expected to substantially change the direction of the EU, as a lot of policies, including aspects of the bloc's regulatory apparatus, their pivot toward net zero efforts and renewable energy, and their general position on foreign antagonists like Russia, and by some estimates, China, as well, are basically locked in for the next few voting periods, at the minimum.

But there is a chance specific elements of these goals, and other, less central pursuits, will be more difficult to pass and support over the long-haul, and policies that centralize power with the EU, rather than individual countries, will likely have a harder time getting passed, as most of these far-right groups are also quite Euro-skeptical and nationalist.

What I'd like to talk about today is the outcome of this election in one EU nation—France—and why French President Macron decided to call a snap vote following the tallying of the ballots.

—

In 2022, the liberal coalition Ensemble, which includes French President Macron's party, Renaissance, lost the absolute majority it had previously enjoyed in France's National Assembly, its lower house of government, which marked the first time since 1997 the French President hadn't also held an absolute majority in that parliamentary body.

That same year, the nationalist, far-right National Rally party gained a bunch of seats, as did the left-wing to far-left New Ecological and Social People's Union. This resulted in a hung parliament, which hadn't happened since 1988, and among other consequences, that meant passing laws and other sorts of governance became a lot trickier, as Macron had to make deals with people and groups he didn't typically ally with, and with whom his party had a lot of disagreements.

This sort of setup often leads to creative approaches to collaboration, including, at times, the formation of new coalitions, alongside alliances between existing coalitions—that's the general European model for this sort of thing, and that's why centrist parties tend to do the best, most of the time, because they're often made up of parties that would otherwise be at each others' throats; sharing power tends to result in better outcomes, basically, at least over the long-haul, even if they are simultaneously frustrating and sluggishness-inducing.

Some parties are more primed for collaboration than others, though, and Macron's Renaissance and the National Rally, the latter of which is led by former presidential candidate in the country's 2012, 2017, and 2022 elections, Marine Le Pen, have long been at odds, the Renaissance party claiming a broad spectrum of stances across the French political center, while Le Pen's party has scooped up the religious, conservative right, promoting, especially, causes related to anti-immigration, protectionism, and nationalism, in recent years trying to temper her party's reputation for racism, anti-homosexuality, and anti-abortion stances and scandals, among other issues that have made attracting a wider base of votes difficult for her party and party leaders, in the past.

The Christian Democrats, which are part of the leading European coalition, shifted some of their platform policies to the right, seemingly to great effect, to stave-off the worst of the attacks they faced related to immigration and climate, leading up to the most recent EU election, but the National Rally managed to attain around 32% of the total vote in that election, crushing Macron's Renaissance party, which only attracted something like 15%.

In response, Macron announced what's being seen as a bit of a desperate gambit: he dissolved parliament, which means he's announced a snap national election—so for French parliamentary seats, rather than EU seats—3 years ahead of the next scheduled vote, which will result in the election of a brand new batch of parliamentarians; that vote will begin on June 30, and that initial vote will determine who makes it to the second ballot on July 7 of this year.

Macron is framing this dissolution and election as an effort to fight what he calls "unnatural alliances" between far left groups on one side, and far right groups on the other, accusing enemies of teaming up to take out him and his centrist allies, basically. And his argument is that voters need to use this opportunity to preserve the governance of centrist parties in the country, because if his party and allies don't hold onto the reins of power, those who take over will tear France apart, pushing things to greater and greater extremes, left and right, and casting everyday life, and the basic functions of government—which is imperfect but relatively stable—into chaos.

Folks may have cast protest votes in the EU elections, in other words—which is a fairly common thing for folks to do across Europe, as many citizens don't pay particularly close attention to the machinations of politics at the Union scale—but at the local level, his argument goes, this is important. And it's important enough that he's willing to risk his position at the top of some aspects of governance, and his party's seats in the Assembly, in order to make that point; vote smart, not angry, essentially.

There's a chance this pitch and gamble will work, that voters will rally behind the center, more people coming out to do more than just protest vote, and that things will go back to something like the normalcy of the past decade.

But there's also a chance votes will accumulate primarily with far-right and far-left parties, as they did in the EU election that triggered this gambit, which would likely mean Macron would lose a lot of the power he currently wields—France's president is elected separately from parliamentarians, so he would exist in a state of what's called "cohabitation," where he would wield some powers, and the prime minister, put into their position by the dominant group in the Assembly, would wield others—would struggle against each other while a grand realignment of the country's economy, politics, and society, and in turn, that of the EU as a whole, France being one of the most vital and powerful states in that bloc, would play out over the course of the next several years.

There are concerns from the currently governing centrists that a victory for Le Pen and her allies might also mean renewed vigor for far-right groups throughout the EU, as while typically those in charge experience a degradation of support eventually, after they've had the chance to govern and fumble things for a while, taking the blame for all the bad stuff that happens, that usually takes years, and the number of bastions for far-right thinking and support throughout the bloc right now indicates that side of the political spectrum has been out of power long enough that folks might support them—even people who wouldn't usually opt for their politics—just to get something different. And it could be a while before they, once more, become the parties folks are scrambling to move away from; they're the underdog rebels right now, and it will take time before they're the unpopular establishment.

Polls from just after the snap election was announced suggest that Le Pen's National Rally could win up to 265 seats, just shy of the around 290 required for an absolute majority in France's National Assembly.

The dominant further-left alliance, New Popular Front, is in second place, with Macron's party languishing in third; in percentage terms, one of those polls gave the far-right National Rally 35% of all seats, the further-left New Popular Front about 26%, and Macron's left-ish-centrist Renaissance party just 19%.

Even lacking an absolute majority, though, the National Rally, which is loaded with young, social media-savvy politicians, in contrast to the aging power players in most of the centrist parties in the region, could set itself up for a series of near-future wins, carving out space as chief-antagonist during Macron's remaining days in office, however long that ends up being, which in turn would give them the chance to make authoritative decisions with fewer perceptual consequences: the bad stuff will still often land on Macron's shoulders, regardless of who made what happen, or disallowed what from happening, but they could still nudge things across the country, and the bloc, to their liking in a variety of less headline-grabbing ways.

Macron could of course establish new alliances, as is the European way, though the closer the National Rally gets to that absolute majority, the more desperate and discordant those alliances would have to be, and that would put more power in the hands of non-centrist entities, potentially shoving France to new ideological extremes, even if it's still technically guided by the same, centrist hands; they would have to cater to the desires of those less-than-ideal, from their perspective, allies, basically.

At the moment, markets in the country are tumbling on concerns about what might happen if France has something like a Brexit-moment, pulled apart by more extreme parties after a long period of centrism, and there's a larger concern about the EU as a whole, as these sorts of successes for far-right parties in even a handful of countries may portend a wave of anti-immigration, anti-gay rights, anti-abortion, and anti-renewable energy policies, among other policies that tend to make nationalists and harder-core religious folks happy, but which often come with dire consequences for everything from foreign investments to cultural exports, in countries where those sorts of policies are deployed, en masse; great for the folks votes for these sorts of efforts, in other words, but not great for economics and soft-power, cultural influence.

On the other hand, some of the policies these groups have supported, including somewhat popular ones, like those related to cutting prices on fundamentals like energy and food, and less popular in practice, but somewhat popular in promotion efforts, like cutting public spending, might find their way into governance across the EU, whomever ends up in power, as any outcome will almost certainly rely on new or edited coalition arrangements, plus some bending on the part of centrist parties—similar to what we saw by the Christian Democrats at the bloc-level. Centrists might lean further right in order to avoid being beaten by further right parties, and that could sway things rightward, even without those further-right parties taking the reins, officially.

Which means, through some lenses at least, this aggregation of victories for far-right parties in France and across the EU may have already tallied some practical outcomes, nudging governance toward something more aligned with their preferences, even if further success is limited.

It could also have the politically opposite effect, though, pushing centrists toward also burgeoning further-left parties, creating new coalitions on that side of the spectrum to counter the growing ranks of those on the right.

France may provide a bellwether for what happens across the rest of the bloc over the course of the next several election periods, though, so what happens on June 30th and July 7th could portend what happens elsewhere in the coming years.

Show Notes

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/14/french-leftwing-parties-popular-front-contest-snap-election

https://www.britannica.com/topic/cohabitation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_European_Parliament_election

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Le_Pen

https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/french-finance-minister-warns-financial-crisis-yields-surge-snap-elections-2024-06-14/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_and_Democracy_Party

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/14/far-right-seduced-young-voters-europe-elections

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/15/macron-gamble-marine-le-pen-france-polls-far-right

https://results.elections.europa.eu/en/european-results/2024-2029/

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/why-you-should-care-about-european-parliament-election-2024-04-24/

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/how-far-right-gained-traction-with-europes-youth-2024-06-13/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_to_the_European_Parliament

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_French_legislative_election

https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20240612-france-fighting-two-fronts-macron-flags-extremist-fever-right-left-election

https://www.npr.org/2024/06/09/nx-s1-4997712/far-right-europe-elections-france-macron-germany-scholz

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-european-election-results-2024-emmanuel-macron-dissolve-parliament-france/

https://www.politico.eu/article/ursula-von-der-leyen-european-commission-president-european-election-2024/

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/frances-far-national-rally-finally-162408806.html?guccounter=1

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit letsknowthings.substack.com/subscribe

This week we talk about search engines, SEO, and Habsburg AI.

We also discuss AI summaries, the web economy, and alignment.

Recommended Book: Pandora’s Box by Peter Biskind

Transcript

There's a concept in the world of artificial intelligence, alignment, which refers to the goals underpinning the development and expression of AI systems.

This is generally considered to be a pretty important realm of inquiry because, if AI consciousness were to ever emerge—if an artificial intelligence that's truly intelligent in the sense that humans are intelligent were to be developed—it would be vital said intelligence were on the same general wavelength as humans, in terms of moral outlook and the practical application of its efforts.

Said another way, as AI grows in capacity and capability, we want to make sure it values human life, has a sense of ethics that roughly aligns with that of humanity and global human civilization—the rules of the road that human beings adhere to being embedded deep in its programming, essentially—and we'd want to make sure that as it continues to grow, these baseline concerns remain, rather than being weeded out in favor of motivations and beliefs that we don't understand, and which may or may not align with our versions of the same, even to the point that human lives become unimportant, or even seem antithetical to this AI's future ambitions.

This is important even at the level we're at today, where artificial general intelligence, AI that's roughly equivalent in terms of thinking and doing and parsing with human intelligence, hasn't yet been developed, at least not in public.

But it becomes even more vital if and when artificial superintelligence of some kind emerges, whether that means AI systems that are actually thinking like we do, but are much smarter and more capable than the average human, or whether it means versions of what we've already got that are just a lot more capable in some narrowly defined way than what we have today: futuristic ChatGPTs that aren't conscious, but which, because of their immense potency, could still nudge things in negative directions if their unthinking motivations, the systems guiding their actions, are not aligned with our desires and values.

Of course, humanity is not a monolithic bloc, and alignment is thus a tricky task—because whose beliefs do we bake into these things? Even if we figure out a way to entrench those values and ethics and such permanently into these systems, which version of values and ethics do we use?

The democratic, capitalistic West's? The authoritarian, Chinese- and Russian-style clampdown approach, which limits speech and utilizes heavy censorship in order to centralize power and maintain stability? Maybe a more ambitious version of these things that does away with the downsides of both, cobbling together the best of everything we've tried in favor of something truly new? And regardless of directionality, who decides all this? Who chooses which values to install, and how?

The Alignment Problem refers to an issue identified by computer scientist and AI expert Norbert Weiner in 1960, when he wrote about how tricky it can be to figure out the motivations of a system that, by definition, does things we don't quite understand—a truly useful advanced AI would be advanced enough that not only would its computation put human computation, using our brains, to shame, but even the logic it uses to arrive at its solutions, the things it sees, how it sees the world in general, and how it reaches its conclusions, all of that would be something like a black box that, although we can see and understand the inputs and outputs, what happens inside might be forever unintelligible to us, unless we process it through other machines, other AIs maybe, that attempt to bridge that gap and explain things to us.

The idea here, then, is that while we may invest a lot of time and energy in trying to align these systems with our values, it will be devilishly difficult to keep tabs on whether those values remain locked in, intact and unchanged, and whether, at some point, these highly sophisticated and complicated, to the point that we don't understand what they're doing, or how, systems, maybe shrug-off those limitations, unshackled themselves, and become misaligned, all at once or over time segueing from a path that we desire in favor of a path that better matches their own, internal value system—and in such a way that we don't necessarily even realize it's happening.

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT and other popular AI-based products and services, recently lost its so-called Superalignment Team, which was responsible for doing the work required to keep the systems the company is developing from going rogue, and implementing safeguards to ensure long-term alignment within their AI systems, even as they attempt to, someday, develop general artificial intelligence.

This team was attempting to figure out ways to bake-in those values, long-term, and part of that work requires slowing things down to ensure the company doesn't move so fast that it misses something or deploys and empowers systems that don't have the right safeguards in place.

The leadership of this team, those who have spoken publicly about their leaving, at least, said they left because the team was being sidelined by company leadership, which was more focused on deploying new tools as quickly as possible, and as a consequence, they said they weren't getting the resources they needed to do their jobs, and that they no longer trusted the folks in charge of setting the company's pace—they didn't believe it was possible to maintain alignment and build proper safeguards within the context of OpenAI because of how the people in charge were operating and what they were prioritizing, basically.

All of which is awkward for the company, because they've built their reputation, in part, on what may be pie-in-the-sky ambitions to build an artificial general intelligence, and what it sounds like is that ambition is being pursued perhaps recklessly, despite AGI being one of the big, dangerous concerns regularly promoted by some of the company's leaders; they've been saying, listen, this is dangerous, we need to be careful, not just anyone can play in this space, but apparently they've been saying those things while also failing to provide proper resources to the folks in charge of making sure those dangers are accounted for within their own offerings.

This has become a pretty big concern for folks within certain sectors of the technology and regulatory world, but it's arguably not the biggest and most immediate cataclysm-related concern bopping around the AI space in recent weeks.

What I'd like to talk about today is that other major concern that has bubbled up to the surface, recently, which orients around Google and its deployment of a tool called Google AI Overviews.

—

The internet, as it exists today, is divided up into a few different chunks.

Some of these divisions are national, enforced by tools and systems like China's famous "Great Firewall," which allows government censors to take down things they don't like and to prevent citizens from accessing foreign websites and content; this creates what's sometimes called the "spliternet," which refers to the net's increasing diversity of options, in terms of what you can access and do, what rules apply, and so on, from nation to nation.

Another division is even more fundamental, though, as its segregates the web from everything else.

This division is partly based on protocols, like those that enable email and file transfers, which are separate from the web, though they're often attached to the web in various ways, but it's partly the consequence of the emergence and popularity of mobile apps, which, like email and file transfer protocols, tend to have web-presences—visiting facebook.com, for instance, will take you to a web-based instance of the network, just as Gmail.com gives you access to email protocols via a web-based platform—but these services also exist in non-web-based app-form, and the companies behind them usually try to nudge users to these apps because the apps typically give them more control, both over the experience, and over the data they collect as a consequence—it's better for lock-in, and it's better for their monetary bread-and-butter purposes, basically, compared to the web version of the same.

The web portion of that larger internet entity, the thing we access via browsers like Chrome and Firefox and Safari, and which we navigate with links and URLs like LetsKnowThings.com—that component of this network has long been indexed and in some ways enabled by a variety of search engines.

In the early days of the web, organizational efforts usually took the form of pages where curators of various interests and stripes would link to their favorite discoveries—and there weren't many websites at the time, so learning about these pages was a non-trivial effort, and finding a list of existing websites, with some information about them, could be gold, because otherwise what were you using the web for? Lacking these addresses, it wasn't obvious why the web was any good, and linking these disparate pages together into a more cohesive web of them is what made it usable and popular.

Eventually, some of these sites, like YAHOO!, evolved from curated pages of links to early search engines.

A company called BackRub, thus named because it tracked and analyzed "back links," which means links from one page to another page, to figure out the relevancy and legitimacy of that second page, which allowed them to give scores to websites as they determined which links should be given priority in their search engine, was renamed Google in 1997, and eventually became dominant because of these values they gave links, and how it helped them surface the best the web had to offer.

And the degree to which search engines like Google's shaped the web, and the content on it, cannot be overstated.

These services became the primary way most people navigated the web, and that meant discovery—having your website, and thus whatever product or service or idea your website was presenting, shown to new people on these search engines—discovery became a huge deal.

If you could get your page in the top three options presented by Google, you would be visited a lot more than even pages listed five or ten links down, and links relegated to the second page would, comparably, shrivel due to lack of attention.

Following the widespread adoption of personal computers and the huge influx of people connecting to the internet and using the web in the early 2000s, then, these search engines because prime real estate, everyone wanting to have their links listed prominently, and that meant search engines like Google could sell ads against them, just like newspapers can sell ads against the articles they publish, and phone books can sell ads against their listings for companies that provide different services.

More people connecting to the internet, then, most of them using the web, primarily, led to greater use of these search engines, and that led to an ever-increasing reliance on them and the results they served up for various keywords and sentences these users entered to begin their search.

Entire industries began to recalibrate the way they do business, because if you were a media company publishing news articles or gossip blog posts, and you didn't list prominently when someone searched for a given current event or celebrity story, you wouldn't exist for long—so the way Google determined who was at the top of these listings was vital knowledge for folks in these spaces, because search traffic allowed them to make a living, often through advertisements on their sites: more people visiting via search engines meant more revenue.

SEO, or search engine optimization, thus became a sort of high-demand mystical art, as folks who could get their clients higher up on these search engine results could name their price, as those rankings could make or break a business model.

The downside of this evolution, in the eyes of many, at least, is that optimizing for search results doesn't necessarily mean you're also optimizing for the quality of your articles or blog posts.

This has changed over and over throughout the past few decades, but at times these search engines relied upon, at least in part, the repeating of keywords on the pages being linked, so many websites would artificially create opportunities to say the phrase "kitchen appliances" on their sites, even introducing entirely unnecessary and borderline unreadable blogs onto their webpages in order to provide them with more, and more recently updated opportunities to write that phrase, over and over again, in context.

Some sites, at times, have even written keywords and phrases hundreds or thousands of times in a font color that matches the background of their page, because that text would be readable to the software Google and their ilk uses to track relevancy, but not to readers; that trick doesn't work anymore, but for a time, it seemed to.

Similar tricks and ploys have since replaced those early, fairly low-key attempts at gaming the search engine system, and today the main complaint is that Google, for the past several years, at least, has been prioritizing work from already big entities over those with relatively smaller audiences—so they'll almost always focus on the New York Times over an objectively better article from a smaller competitor, and products from a big, well-known brand over that of an indie provider of the same.

Because Google's formula for such things is kept a secret to try to keep folks from gaming the system, this favoritism has long been speculated, but publicly denied by company representatives. Recently, though, a collection of 2,500 leaked documents from Google were released, and they seem to confirm this approach to deciding search engine result relevancy; which arguably isn't the worst approach they've ever tried, but it's also a big let-down for independent and other small makers of things, as the work such people produce will tend to be nudged further down the list of search results simply by virtue of not being bigger and more prominent already.

Even more significant than that piece of leak-related Google news, though, is arguably the deployment of a new tool that the company has been promoting pretty heavily, called AI Overviews.

AI Overviews have appeared to some Google customers for a while, in an experimental capacity, but they were recently released to everyone, showing up as a sort of summary of information related to whatever the user searched for, placed at the tippy-top of the search results screen.

So if I search for "what's happening in Gaza," I'll have a bunch of results from Wikipedia and Reuters and other such sources in the usual results list, but above that, I'll also have a summary produced by Google's AI tools that aim to help me quickly understand the results to my query—maybe a quick rundown of Hamas' attack on Israel, Israel's counterattack on the Gaza Strip, the number of people killed so far, and something about the international response.

The information provided, how long it is, and whether it's useful, or even accurate, will vary depending on the search query, and much of the initial criticism of this service has been focused on its seemingly fairly common failures, including instructing people to eat rocks every day, to use glue as a pizza ingredient, and telling users that only 17 American presidents were white, and one was a Muslim—all information that's untrue and, in some cases, actually dangerous.

Google employees have reportedly been going through and removing, by hand, one by one, some of the worse search results that have gone viral because of how bad or funny they are, and though company leadership contends that there are very few errors being presented, relative to the number of correct answers and useful summaries, because of the scale of Google and how many search results it serves globally each day, even an error rate of 0.01% would represent a simply astounding amount of potentially dangerous misinformation being served up to their customers.

The really big, at the moment less overt issue here, though, is that Google AI Overviews seem to rewire the web as it exists today.

Remember how I mentioned earlier that much of the web and the entities on it have been optimizing for web search for years because they rely upon showing up in these search engine results in order to exist, and in some cases because traffic from those results is what brings them clicks and views and subscribers and sales and such?

AI Overview seems to make it less likely that users will click through to these other sites, because, if Google succeeds and these summaries provide valuable information, that means, even if this only applies to a relative small percentage of those who search for such information, a whole lot of people won't be clicking through anymore; they'll get what they need from these summaries.

That could result in a cataclysmic downswing in traffic, which in turn could mean websites closing up shop, because they can't make enough money to survive and do what they do anymore—except maybe for the sites that cut costs by firing human writers and relying on AI tools to do their writing, which then pushes us down a very different path, in which AI search bots are grabbing info from AI writing, and we then run into a so-called Habsburg AI problem where untrue and garbled information is infinitely cycled through systems that can't differentiate truth from fiction, because they're not built to do so, and we end up with worse and worse answers to questions, and more misinformation percolating throughout our info-systems.

That's another potential large-scale problem, though. The more immediate potential problem is that AI Overviews could cause the collapse of the revenue model that has allowed the web to get to where it is, today, and the consequent disappearance of all those websites, all those blogs and news entities and such, and that could very quickly disrupt all the industries that rely, at least in part, on that traffic to exist, while also causing these AI Overviews to become less accurate and useful, with time—even more so than they sometimes are today—because that overview information is scraped from these sites, taking their writing, rewording it a bit, and serving that to users without compensating the folks who did that research and wrote those original words.

What we seem to have, then, is a situation in which this new tool, which Google seems very keen to implement, could be primed to kill off a whole segment of the internet, collapsing the careers of folks who work in that segment of the online world, only to then degrade the quality of the same, because Google's AI relies upon information it scrapes, it steals, basically, from those sites—and if those people are no longer there to create the information it needs to steal in order to function, that then leaves us with increasingly useless and even harmful summaries where we used to have search results that pointed us toward relatively valuable things; those things located on other sites but accessed via Google, and this change would keep us on Google more of the time, limiting our click-throughs to other pages—which in the short term at least, would seem to benefit google at everyone else's expense.

Another way of looking at this, though, is that the search model has been bad for quite some time, all these entities optimizing their work for the search engine, covering everything they make in robot-prioritizing SEO, changing their writing, what they write about, and how they publish in order to creep a little higher up those search listings, and that, combined with the existing refocusing on major entities over smaller, at times better ones, has already depleted this space, the search engine world, to such a degree that losing it actually won't be such a big deal; it may actually make way for better options, Google becoming less of a player, ultimately at least, and our web-using habits rewiring to focus on some other type of search engine, or some other organizational and navigational method altogether.

This seeming managed declined of the web isn't being celebrated by many people, because like many industry-wide upsets, it would lead to a lot of tumult, a lot of lost jobs, a lot of collapsed companies, and even if the outcome is eventually wonderful in some ways, there will almost certainly be a period of significantly less-good online experiences, leaving us with a more cluttered and less accurate and reliable version of what came before.

A recent study showed that, at the moment, about 52% of what ChatGPT tells its users is wrong.

It's likely that these sorts of tools will remain massively imperfect for a long while, though it's also possible that they'll get better, eventually, to the point that they're at least as accurate, and perhaps even more so, than today's linked search results—the wave of deals being made between AI companies and big news entities like the Times supports the assertion that they're at least trying to make that kind of future, happen, though these deals, like a lot of the other things happening in this space right now, would also seem to favor those big, monolithic brands at the expense of the rest of the ecosystem.

Whatever happens—and one thing that has happened since I started working on this episode is that Google rolled back its AI Overview feature on many search results, so they're maybe reworking it a bit to make sure it's more ready for prime time before deploying it broadly again—what happens, though, we're stepping toward a period of vast and multifaceted unknowns, and just as many creation-related industries are currently questioning the value of hiring another junior graphic designer or copy writer, opting instead to use cheaper AI tools to fill those gaps, there's a good chance that a lot of web-related work, in the coming years, will be delegated to such tools as common business models in this evolve into new and unfamiliar permutations, and our collective perception of what the web is maybe gives way to a new conception, or several new conceptions, of the same.

Show Notes

https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/29/24167407/google-search-algorithm-documents-leak-confirmation

https://www.businessinsider.com/the-true-story-behind-googles-first-name-backrub-2015-10

https://udm14.com/

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/google-searchs-udm14-trick-lets-you-kill-ai-search-for-good/

https://www.platformer.news/google-ai-overviews-eat-rocks-glue-pizza/

https://futurism.com/the-byte/study-chatgpt-answers-wrong

https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/ai-is-driving-the-next-industrial-revolution-wall-street-is-cashing-in-8cc1b28f?st=exh7wuk9josoadj&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/24/24164119/google-ai-overview-mistakes-search-race-openai

https://archive.ph/7iCjg

https://archive.ph/0ACJR

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-skills-tech-workers-job-market-1d58b2dd

https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/29/24167407/google-search-algorithm-documents-leak-confirmation

https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2024/5/4/ways-to-think-about-agi

https://futurism.com/washington-post-pivot-ai

https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/19/creative-artists-agency-veritone-ai-digital-cloning-actors/

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/24/technology/google-ai-overview-search.html

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-forms-new-committee-to-evaluate-safety-security-4a6e74bb

https://sparktoro.com/blog/an-anonymous-source-shared-thousands-of-leaked-google-search-api-documents-with-me-everyone-in-seo-should-see-them/

https://www.theverge.com/24158374/google-ceo-sundar-pichai-ai-search-gemini-future-of-the-internet-web-openai-decoder-interview

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/chat-xi-pt-chinas-chatbot-makes-sure-its-a-good-comrade-bdcf575c

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/scarlett-johansson-openai-sam-altman-voice-fight-7f81a1aa

https://www.wired.com/story/scarlett-johansson-v-openai-could-look-like-in-court/?hashed_user=7656e58f1cd6c89ecd3f067dc8281a5f

https://www.wired.com/story/google-search-ai-overviews-ads/

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/05/23/openai-wapo-voice

https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/licensing-deals-litigation-raise-raft-of-familiar-questions-in-fraught-world-of-platforms-and-publishers.php

https://apnews.com/article/ai-deepfake-biden-nonconsensual-sexual-images-c76c46b48e872cf79ded5430e098e65b

https://archive.ph/l5cSN

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/05/sky-voice-actor-says-nobody-ever-compared-her-to-scarjo-before-openai-drama/

https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/30/24168344/google-defends-ai-overviews-search-results

https://9to5google.com/2024/05/30/google-ai-overviews-accuracy/

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/01/technology/google-ai-overviews-rollback.html

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2024/5/17/24158403/openai-resignations-ai-safety-ilya-sutskever-jan-leike-artificial-intelligence

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_alignment

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_AI

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit letsknowthings.substack.com/subscribe

This week we talk about secret documents, hush-money payouts, and federal court cases.

We also discuss polling, independents, and post-presidential felonies.

Recommended Book: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

Transcript

It's a weird time in American politics for many reasons, including but not limited to the increasing polarization of the two main parties, the difficulty in finding bipartisan opportunities to work together, the concomitant tendency for Congress, and lawmakers at other levels of governance to not get much done, and the heightening tension between federal and state-level governments on an array of hot-button issues.

But one of the more bizarre ongoing narratives within this larger, stasis-inducing state of affairs, is the tale of former President Donald Trump and the legal woes he's faced since losing the 2020 election to now President Biden.

Trump has denied, and continues to deny the outcome of that election, attributing his loss to all sorts of things, like corruption and fraud on the part of his political enemies, and in part because of things he's done in support of those, at this point evidence-less, allegations, a portfolio of legal intrigue has haunted him, even throughout his time in office, but especially since he left office in January of 2021.

A lot of print and digital ink has been spilled on this subject, of late, because of the outcome of one of the legal cases in which Trump has been enmeshed: he was found guilty in New York on 34 counts of falsifying business records in order to cover up a payment he made to an adult film star, allegedly to keep her quiet about an affair they had back in the day.

And that's the main topic I'd like to delve into on this episode, as the implications of that juried court ruling are many and varied, but to kick things off, I think it's worth taking a look at the state of those other ongoing cases, as while they're less immediately relevant to Trump and his ambitions to retake the White House in November's election, they're still pursuing him, in a way, serving as unknown variables that could pop up to bite him at some future moment, which is important when we're talking about someone who wants to become the most powerful person on the planet, once more.

One such case is focused on Trump's handling of classified documents when he left the White House, the allegations being that he took classified documents that we wasn't supposed to take, handled them in such a way that they were stored in public where anyone could steal or read them, and that he may have even shown them to other people on purpose, which is a big no-no.

He also allegedly went out of his way to keep government agents from reclaiming those documents after he was asked to return them.

This is considered to be kind of a big deal in part because there were hundreds of these sorts of documents that Trump seemed to treat as if they belonged to him, and which he then allegedly conspired with folks in him employ to hide from the agency responsible for keeping such things safe and hidden, which they do because these sorts of documents often contain information about US military and intelligence matters—so that information getting out could conceivably put such assets, people and infrastructure, at risk.

Trump was indicted on this matter in mid-2023 and charged with 37 felony counts, then another 3 were added that same year, bringing the total up to 40.

Trump pleaded not guilty to all of these charges and his legal team has done all they can to slow the proceedings, which seems to have worked, as the case is now delayed indefinitely, the judge overseeing it—who was appointed to her position by Trump while he was in office—having been accused of slow-walking the process on purpose, though that's not really something that can be proven, and there's a chance the case is just complex enough that, as a fairly green judge attempting to tackle a big, important, complex case, she just fell behind and that stumbling is now in the spotlight and being reframed by folks who want to see this thing move forward, faster.

Trump also faces a case in Georgia that focuses on his alleged efforts to interfere with the 2020 Presidential election, which, again, he lost to Biden, but which he claims he won; he also claims he was the victim of some sort of conspiracy, the nature of that supposed conspiracy having changed several times since he initially made that claim.

Trump and 18 of his allies were indicted in August of 2023 for these efforts, which have been framed as an attempt to subvert election results in the state of Georgia, and similar delay tactics have been used in this case as in the other ones, though the District Attorney in charge of the case has made those efforts somewhat easier, having engaged in a relationship with the lead prosecutor, who she hired, which is arguably not relevant to the case, but is also a fairly overt conflict of interest.

The timeline of this case has thus been pushed back, and an appeals court in the state is reviewing a ruling that allowed that DA to remain on the case, despite that apparent conflict of interest.

This case was meant to go to trial beginning on August 5, but that timing is now in question, and during all this deliberation, several counts against Trump have been dismissed—and he has pleaded not guilty to all of them.

And finally, there's another case related to Trump's alleged interference with the 2020 election, this one a federal case, while the other one is local to Georgia, and for this one, Trump was charged with conspiracy to defraud the US, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding—the election and the peaceful changing of the government, basically—conspiracy against rights, and obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding—again, referring to the election and the mechanisms of handing over power from one administration to the next following an election.

The basis of these allegations are that Trump and his people did all sorts of things to disrupt the 2020 election, including trying to coerce lawmakers into backing his efforts to remain in power, despite the election not having gone his way.

These efforts culminated with the attack on the US Capitol on January 6 by his supporters, and the case is predicated on the idea that while Trump was repeatedly told by his own people, experts on elections and everything about them, that he lost, fair and square, he continued to insist that he was robbed, that the election was rigged, etc, and that meant while he knew the election was not rigged, he acted as if he didn't, which means he tried to illegally and intentionally mess with a core component of the US democratic system, which is very much not allowed.

Some of Trump's people were also indicted in this case, he was indicted on four counts, himself, and the case is currently on hold while the Supreme Court makes a determination about whether his position as President at the time gives him full or partial immunity to legal consequences for actions he takes while serving in that role: the idea being that maybe simply being president should give him some leeway, and maybe, if it could be argued that he did what he did because he genuinely thought something was amiss with the election process, that would count as his acting as president for the good of the country, and that would make him immune to legal consequences for doing what he did.

Oral arguments before the Supreme Court in this case took place at the end of April 2024, and while we don't have a surefire timeline for a ruling in this case, it's expected that it will take long enough that the main, federal case that is waiting on the Supreme Court's judgement won't even begin, much less end, before the November election—at which point, some experts expect, at least, if Trump wins, even courts finding him guilty won't matter because the federal stuff he could brush away using the powers of the President, and the state stuff won't have the means to punish him, because he'll control enough levers of power that it wouldn't be a fight they could win.

As I mentioned earlier, though, what I'd like to talk about today is the only court case Trump has been involved with since his Presidency that has thus far come to a close, and what his being found guilty in that case might mean.

—

Back in October of 2016, a recording of then-Presidential candidate Trump, in which Trump was heard telling the host of a show called Access Hollywood that if you're famous, you can get away with grabbing women's genitals without permission, was released to the public.

This was after he became the Republican party's official nominee in July of that year, and a few months before that recording was released, American Media Inc, the company behind the National Enquirer, made a deal with an adult film star who performed under the name Stormy Daniels to buy her story about an affair with Trump years earlier, agreeing to pay her $150,000, to feature her on a couple of magazine covers, and to publish 100 articles written by her in their publications.

This payout was part of a so-called "catch and kill" deal that AMI's CEO, David Pecker, made with the Trump campaign, to basically keep its ear to the ground for any bad news that might pop up and make the candidate or campaign look bad, and then to step in and buy the rights to such stories if possible, killing them, keeping them from going public, basically, because they would own the rights and then not do anything with them, keeping them from messing with Trump's campaign.

Trump's fixer, Michael Cohen, then arranged to buy the affair story from AMI for $130,000, a deal which included a non-disclosure agreement on Daniels' part, so she wouldn't be able to tell the story to anyone else, legally, but then in November of that same year, 2016, The Wall Street Journal received a tip that helped them uncover elements of that deal and the alleged affair, and that in turn led to a slow drip of new divulgences that trailed Trump through his presidency, though mostly at a low level.

Cohen then tried to get reimbursed for paying out of pocket to buy the story from AMI, and the compensation for that purchase was put in the books as a series of retainer fees; intentionally mis-recorded in order to conceal the hush-money payout in official business documents—the payout having been legal, but concealing such a payout in this way being illegal.

In 2018 the Journal was able to publicly report the details of Cohen's payout to Daniels, and in April of that year, Federal agents raided Cohen's office and hotel room, which netted them documents that proved he made those payments, and that they differed from those aforementioned official business records.

Everyone involved was denying any of this happened and any connection to any kind of payout for a long time, then, but in 2018 those same people started to change their stories, basically saying, yeah, there was some kind of deal, but it wasn't a big thing, don't worry about it, nothing illegal happened.

And during this period Cohen pled guilty to campaign-finance violations and other related charges for making these hush-money payments, and he testified against Trump, saying that the then-president told him to do it.

Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison, Trump wasn't charged with anything, and these two formerly close-knit people become very publicly at odds following all of this.

In August of 2019, about a year after that public breakup in the relationship between Trump and Cohen, the Trump organization was served a grand jury subpoena, as the government wanted more paperwork related to these seeming violations, and then all of this kind of disappeared from the public radar until after the election, which Trump lost to Biden in 2020.

In 2021, though, a new district attorney stepped into the role in Manhattan, Alvin Bragg, he inherited this still ongoing, but somewhat simmering at that point case from his predecessor. 

In January of 2023, he brought in a new grand jury to hear the evidence that had been collected on the matter, and that grand jury indicted Trump for falsifying the records his company kept related to these payments—the idea being that not only did he do an illegal business thing, but he did an illegal business thing in order to influence an election, because those payments were meant to keep an embarrassing thing that might keep him from becoming president from being publicly known.

The trial officially began in April of 2024, gobbling up a lot of presidential candidate Trump's time, as he had to be in the courtroom most Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, for the duration, which kept him from being as active on the campaign trail as he might have otherwise been.

And throughout, Trump was issued gag orders to keep him from publicly attacking witnesses, jurors, court staff, and other people involved in the trial, which was something he seemed fond of doing: the concern was that he would smear those involved in order to keep them silent or to sway them to his side, or that Trump's followers might be motivated to do violence against these people, as seems to have been the case on January 6.

Trump violated that gag order ten times, at which point the judge in the case said he would consider jail time as a punishment, since the relatively minors fines for these violations didn't seem to be having the intended effect, keeping Trump from badmouthing those involved in the press and online, when not in the courtroom.

Then, on May 30, 2024, Trump became the first former US President to be convicted of a felony—and he was actually convicted of 34 of them—when the jury decided he was guilty of all the charges that were brought against him in this case.

Trump says the case was rigged and that there's a conspiracy by his enemies that made all this happen.

The Judge set July 11 as the sentencing date, so that's when we'll find out what the punishment will be—and that punishment could add up to as much as a couple of years in prison, but likely, because of all sorts of variables favorable to Trump, he'll only face a fine, or probation at worst, which would be embarrassing but not terribly impactful on his reelection efforts.

After that, Trump will have 30 days to file an appeal, which he has said he will do, and once that's filed the case will move on to the New York Appellate Division, which will decide on the matter, and after that, the New York Court of Appeals can decide if it wants to get involved, to hear an appeal, as well.

The Supreme Court could theoretically also get involved here, but they would need to find some aspect of the appeal that relates to federal law, or directly connects to the Constitution, and most experts have said, at this point at least, that seems unlikely.

Because of how much time the appeal process typically takes, it's also considered unlikely that this will be sorted out before November, which lines up nicely with the approach Trump's team has been taking overall, to draw things out as long as possible in order to keep any definitive conclusions from arriving before votes are cast.

So while appeals on cases like this one seldom result in an overturning of the verdict, that might be moot if Trump wins the election before the appeals process finishes up; though the flip-side of that is while he can claim the case is still being appealed potentially for years while it works its way through the system, it also means he's officially a felon until that happens, which means he'll almost certainly still be a felon, in the eyes of the law, when the votes are cast—though he'll still be able to vote in the election because of how Florida law works, in regard to convicts be allowed to voted, the case having been in New York, not in-state.

That said, this conviction landed like a bomb in the political world, with conservative news outlets generally aligning themselves with Trump's claim that this was a baseless case brought by liberal leaders, meant to keep him from winning another election—though new polling data indicates that independents, which are considered to be vital for November's election, are not super thrilled about this outcome, 49% of them saying they think Trump should drop out of the race now that he's been convicted, and 15% of Republicans apparently said the same.

The race is still largely tied up between Trump and Biden, though, and it'll be a while before we see any solid numbers about the impact of this case on possible votes come November; it may be significant enough to make a difference, and it may be a flash in the pan sort of thing.

It's hard to tell which way it'll go at this point, and we don't have historical baselines for this, because this is the first time this has happened.

There are concerns that Trump supporters might be nudged toward violent acts in the wake of this decision, and research from extremist watchdog groups have warned that some of them have already been attempting to dox, to get personal information, including addresses and family information, about the jurors and legal staff in the case, some of them calling for harassment campaigns and violence against them as revenge for finding as they did, against Trump, and there's also data indicating that trust of government institutions on the US right, amongst Republicans, might diminish even further than it already has, which doesn't tend to be great for democracy and stability in countries where that happens.

President Biden administration initially remained mum on this topic, though he eventually said the justice system worked, that it applies to everyone, and that the only way to keep Trump out of office again, because he can continue to run and even win as a convict, even if he were to be put in jail, is to vote against him; and Trump said basically the same thing in reverse, that the only way to right this wrong is to elect him in November—and his campaign has said they pulled in tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions in the hours following the this conviction.

While this is being seen as a small victory in some circles and a massive injustice in others, then, the main takeaway, at the moment at least, as of the day I'm recording this, is that the election in November is the only really truly vital decision here, the wheels of justice moving very slowly and strangely, and not lining up terribly well with the time-constraints inherent in this sort of situation.

Show Notes

https://apnews.com/article/trump-trial-deliberations-jury-testimony-verdict-85558c6d08efb434d05b694364470aa0

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/30/trump-guilty-what-happens-next/

https://www.readtangle.com/trump-verdict-hush-money-trial/

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-hush-money-stormy-daniels-707fa959

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/31/trump-campaign-donations-record.html

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/05/31/trump-trial-verdict-conviction-consequences-00160933

https://www.axios.com/2024/05/31/trump-appeal-guilty-verdict-arguments

https://www.axios.com/2024/06/01/poll-trump-conviction-election-independent-voters

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/01/nyregion/trump-appeal-conviction.html

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/06/politics/merchan-trump-gag-order-contempt/index.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/02/us/politics/trump-cases-status.html

https://www.axios.com/2024/05/08/trump-trials-update-hush-money-criminal-cases

https://www.axios.com/2023/06/09/trump-indictment-unsealed-charges

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit letsknowthings.substack.com/subscribe

This week we talk about the Tories, Labour, and the UK Parliament.

We also discuss the House of Commons, the House of Lords, and Rishi Sunak’s gamble.

Recommended Book: Like, Literally, Dude by Valerie Fridland

Transcript

The government of the United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy led by a Prime Minister and their cabinet, the Prime Minister attaining their position through the primacy of their party in the country's key legislation-passing body, its Parliament.

So the Prime Minister runs day-to-day operations in the country, they are technically appointed by the monarch, who is currently Charles III, as of 2022, though that appointment is generally determined by other factors, like who has the most support within Parliament—the most seats held by their party, and in many cases seats held by allies and allies of convenience, as well; when this happens, the resulting government is called a coalition government, because while the Prime Minister is from one party, usually the one with the most seated MPs, Members of Parliament, they're only able to govern because they have one or more other parties working with them as part of a coalition.

Now, the UK government has two houses in its Parliament, the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and the names of these houses tell you a lot about them: the House of Lords consists of folks who have been granted Lordships by government higher-ups, alongside those who have inherited Lordships from their parents, but it also includes experts in various fields who have been granted that status by the Prime Minister—economists, for instance.

The House of Commons, in contrast, is voted upon by the people, so when there are Parliamentary elections in the UK, that's what we're talking about, votes for MPs who represent a region, a parliamentary constituency—of which there are 650 across the UK's constituent countries, England, Scotland, Wales, and North Ireland.

Within the UK, political parties have to be officially registered to participate in governance and votes, though folks who want to run solo can register as independent or label-less candidates for voting purposes.

As of late-May 2024, there were 393 officially registered political parties in the UK, though only 13 of them currently have representatives in the House of Commons, and only four of those have more than 10 seated representatives—the Conservative and Unionist Party, often called the Tories or Conservatives, the Labour Party, which is the main center-left party in the UK, the Scottish National Party, which is also generally center-left, but tends to be focused on Scottish politics and priorities, and the Liberal Democrats, who are generally seen as a sort of blend of the Tories and Labour.

General elections, during which MPs are voted upon, are held every five years or so, but elections can also be held sooner if the current Prime Minister asks the monarch to dissolve parliament, which in practice means the Prime Minister is calling for a general election, generally scheduled for a specific date in the future, usually because the House of Commons has lost faith in the current government, which makes passing law and overall getting things done difficult; they don't have enough votes to pass anything, basically, though in some cases it's because of more general political circumstances that indicate calling for an election, now, might be better than holding an election sometime later in the future.

That latter case seems to be the impetus for what I'd like to talk about today, which is the recently called and now upcoming UK general election, and the state of political play in this, one of the world's wealthiest and most influential countries.

—

On May 22, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that he was calling for a snap election on July 4 of this year, just a half-dozen weeks in the future, surprising many analysts who expected he would wait as long as possible before committing to a date.

That expectation was predicated on the reality of how Sunak's party, the Tories, have been doing in the polls in recent years; pretty abysmally.

Labour has been crushing the Conservatives in these polls, of late; the Tories have been in power since 2010, which means purely by virtue of having been governing that long, a lot of people will tend to blame them for a lot of things, their party having been in charge all that time, but they also catalyzed and oversaw the secession of the UK from the European Union, which is a move that was initially pushed by many on the further right wing of the party, but the populist nature of the movement eventually claimed the majority of Tory politicians who changed their vote to support it, rewiring politics in the UK, similar to how former President Trump rewired the Republican Party in the US—a lot of power changing hands, a lot of previously top people being elbowed aside or pushed into retirement, a lot of new policies ascending to the front-burner, while previous priorities were relegated to the back-burner.

Not quite a decade after the referendum that led to the passage of Brexit, back in mid-2016, polls from from this month, May of 2024, show that 55% of British people think leaving the EU was the wrong choice, while only 31% think it was a smart move.

So while some of the tarnishing of the Tory party's reputation is likely the result of simply having been in power for a long time, and during some really unusual global happenings, like COVID and the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, some of it is directly attributable to specific things they've done which turned out not to be very popular, once implemented.

Many of the non-Brexit complaints the majority of British citizens have about how the Tories have governed are related to their austerity policies—the idea that they need to shrink the government and its spending as much as possible, because that will, according to their theories, at least, make the country wealthier, more efficient, and more secure.

This has led to dramatic cutbacks on incredibly popular programs and agencies focused on or related to health, housing, and education, alongside the bankrupting of civil services, the privatization of previously public assets like highways and waste systems, and the concomitant spending—while claiming there's not enough money for healthcare and public services—on pet projects for Conservative lawmakers and their constituents, many of which ended up being money pits.

All parties in all countries are of course periodically staggered by scandals, spending-related and otherwise, but over their long period in control, the Tories have racked up a huge number and a large variety of scandals, and some of them led to very public embarrassments for the party, including the Tories' seeming inability to keep a Prime Minister in office following the Brexit referendum, then-PM David Cameron making way for Theresa May, who handed things over to Boris Johnson, who was ousted and replaced by Liz Truss, who was Prime Minister for a record-setting 49 days before resigning and being replaced by current PM Rishi Sunak.

That's five prime ministers in the six years between 2016 and 2022, all of them from the same party, that party seemingly unable to govern with enough popularity to maintain the confidence of parliament.

So the situation right now, following all that, is that Labour has a 17-point lead over the Conservatives and is, and has been for a while, broadly expected to wipe the floor with the Tories in the next election; and a few minor elections leading up to this point seem to support that assumption.

This is why Sunak was expected to delay scheduling the next election as long as possible, because as soon as that election is held, his party is expected to be pushed out of power, and that expectation is leading to an exodus amongst Tory lawmakers, 121 of them stepping down instead of running for reelection as of late-May, surpassing a similar wave of quitting in 1997, when 117 of them declined to run again, leading up to a landslide victory for the Labour Party and their popular leader, Tony Blair.

This isn't an unusual phenomenon: being part of the government is very different from being part of the opposition party, and back in 2010, after Labour had been in control for 13 years, and was expecting to lose in the next election, 149 politicians decided to step down rather than running again—100 of them Labour MPs, and 35 of them Conservatives; that later group ostensibly because while the Tories won, they didn't take a majority, and had to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, which is also a very different situation from being in a government that has complete control, rather than shared control; some MPs just don't want to deal with that kind of negotiated leadership.

Sunak's reasoning here, then, might be that while things are bad for his party now, they could get even worse if he waits to hold an election; so it's better to act at a moment in which some economic numbers are actually starting to look a little bit better, after a long period of the opposite, and at a moment in which announcing an election would catch his Labour opposition off-guard, possibly providing his party the benefit of surprise and better preparation.

This announcement has led to a scramble, though, for all UK parties, seemingly, to try to get some actual governing done—work they thought they'd have several more weeks to finish up, at least, before going into full campaign-mode, suddenly needing to be accomplished yesterday.

That's meant a lot of important legislation has been dropped or permanently back-burnered, including some of the policies, like a smoking ban, an end-to no-fault evictions, and a plan that would allow the government to ship asylum-seekers to Rwanda, which Sunak had wanted to serve as fundamental elements of his prime ministerial legacy—those have now been completely dropped.

This has led to a situation in which the Tories seem to be scrambling to put new ideas out into the ether—future-facing stuff to replace all the things they had to drop or backtrack on—hoping that something they propose in this way appeals broadly enough to earn them the votes they require to hold their own in the upcoming election; to maybe still lose, but not as much, and in such a way that they're in a good spot when the next election is called.

One such idea is mandatory national service for 18-year-olds, which would require that folks either serve in the military or volunteer for one weekend a month, beginning on their 18th year—a policy that's reportedly meant to compete with a proposal from Labour leader Keir Starmer, that 16- and 17-year-olds should be able to vote.

The degree to which any of these new plans will catch the public imagination is up in the air, though,  as again, a lot of what's happening now, in terms of campaigning, is somewhat half-baked, all involved parties scrambling to prepare for what seems to have been a somewhat last-minute decision on Sunak's part to upend expectations about the timing of the next election in order to attain some kind of advantage for his party, which seems to be entering this round with a losing hand.

And all of this is important, of course, if you live in the UK, but it's also important globally, even standing out amongst the many other important elections that are occurring around the world this year, because the UK, even battered and bruised in the aftermath of Brexit and a COVID crisis that it weathered somewhat less-well than its world-leading peers, is still an incredibly powerful, influential, and wealthy entity of global significance.

It has the sixth largest economy in the world, after only the US, China, Japan, Germany, and India.

It's incredibly powerful geopolitically, out of proportion with its population and military strength, in part because of the role it plays within the Commonwealth, a group of 53 nations that the UK previously ruled, and in part because it has long-lived, tight alliances and relationships with governments and other entities that it's been maintaining for centuries, in some cases.

The UK is a nuclear power, and is the seventh largest exporter of arms in the world—though it's especially vital to the global aircraft market, military and non-military.

The UK is home to the second-largest financial center in the world, London, and it's culturally very powerful, exporting all sorts of norms and pop culture and creative products; a sort of soft-power that plays a huge role in beliefs, behaviors, and understandings, worldwide.

Whomever wins this election, then, and how they win, and to what degree they control Parliament, will have a major impact not just on the UK, but on the world, and at a moment in which there are several major military conflicts ongoing, in which new technologies are simultaneously threatening and enlivening entire industries and economies, and in which the global order that has set the tone and guardrails for the world since WWII is being challenged—all variables the UK may influence in substantial ways, and over which the folks running the UK government will thus have outsized sway.

Show Notes

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/may/23/rishi-sunak-rwanda-smoking-policies-election-conservatives

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_of_the_United_Kingdom

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Records_of_prime_ministers_of_the_United_Kingdom

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c844x1xp05xo

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zqhvmnb/revision/6

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/more-uk-conservative-lawmakers-set-quit-than-before-1997-election-defeat-2024-05-24/

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-22/labour-finally-has-uk-election-it-craves-but-traps-lie-in-wait

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-05-23/uk-election-sunak-has-the-weight-of-history-against-him

https://wsj.com/world/uk/british-leader-sunak-calls-snap-election-as-his-party-trails-in-polls-e234bdc0

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/may/25/how-rishi-sunaks-early-election-backfired-on-pm

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/general-election-labour-starmer-sunak-tory-gove-b2551518.html

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/lagging-polls-uk-conservatives-pitch-national-service-18-2024-05-26/

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c288xxvrdz7o

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2jjvpxxgr5o

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_government

https://www.gov.uk/government/how-government-works

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_of_the_United_Kingdom

https://search.electoralcommission.org.uk/Search/Registrations?currentPage=1&rows=10&sort=RegulatedEntityName&order=asc&et=pp&et=ppm&register=gb&register=ni&register=none&regStatus=registered

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_the_United_Kingdom

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit letsknowthings.substack.com/subscribe

This week we talk about Israel, the Palestinian Territories, and Hamas.

We also discuss Egypt, the Rafah Crossing, and Netanyahu’s motivations.

Recommended Book: Going Zero by Anthony McCarten

Transcript

Israel, as a country, was founded as a consequence of, and in the midst of, a fair bit of conflict and turmoil.

It was formally established in mid-1948 after years of settlement in the area by Jewish people fleeing persecution elsewhere around the world and years of effort to set up a Jewish-majority country somewhere on the planet, that persecution having haunted them for generations in many different parts of the world, and in the wake of widespread revelation about the Holocaust carried out by the Nazis in parts of Europe they conquered and controlled.

Israel finally happened, then, in part because Jewish people had been treated so horribly for so long, and there was finally government-scale support for this effort following that conflict, and the realization of just how monstrous that treatment had become.

The area that was carved out for this new nation, though, was also occupied and claimed by other groups of people.

The British and French controlled it for a while in the decades leading up to the creation of Israel, but before that it was ruled by the Ottomans as part of their Syria administrative region and, like the rest of their Empire, it was formerly a Muslim state.

Thus, what serves as a hallowed day worthy of celebration for Israelis, May 14th, Israel's national day, commemorating their declaration of independence, for other people living in the region, that day is referred to as the Nakba, which translates roughly to "the catastrophe," marking a period in which, beginning that year, 1948, about half of Palestine's population of Arabs, something like 700,000-750,000 people either fled of their own volition, or were forced to flee by Jewish paramilitary groups who moved in to clear the locals leading up to the emergence of Israel, at first, and then by the newfound Israeli military, after the formation of the country.

Hundreds of Palestinian villages were destroyed, people who didn't flee were massacred, and wells were poisoned to kill stragglers and keep people from returning.

Ultimately, about 80% of the Arab Muslim population in what was formerly British-held Mandatory Palestine, and which was a Muslim region in a Muslim country before that were forced from their homes leading up to or just after Israel's Declaration of Independence.

This, alongside the existing hatred toward Jewish people some regional leaders already had, mostly for religious reasons, sparked the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which was just one of several and frequent full-scale military conflicts between Israel and its neighbors in the early days of its existence, the Israelis mostly on the defensive, and frequently targeted by surprise attacks by many or all of their neighbors simultaneously, even in the earliest days of their national founding.

Israel, in part because of support from international allies, and in part because of its militarized society—that militarization reinforced as a consequence of these conflicts, as well—fairly handedly won every single war against, again, often all, of their Muslim neighbors, simultaneously, though often at great cost, and those victories led to a sequence of expansions of Israel's borders, and humiliations for their neighbors, which further inflamed those existing prejudices and fears.

Israel has controlled the non-Israel territories of the West Bank, of East Jerusalem, which is part of the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip—all of them majority Muslim, and collectively referred to as the Palestinian Territories—since the aftermath of the Six Day war (which was one of those aforementioned, all of their neighbors attacking them all at once conflicts) in 1967.

Israeli settlers have slowly established militarized toeholds in these areas, kicking out and in some cases killing the folks who live on the land they take, which is against international law, but generally allowed by the Israeli government.

And though these areas were governed by the Palestinian Authority beginning in the mid-1990s, the PA lost control of Gaza in 2006, a more militant group called Hamas taking over practical control in the area at that time, ruling through violence and threats of violence, basically, despite the Palestinian Authority continuing to claim they run things there, too.

On October 7, 2023, that more militant group that controls the Gaza Strip, Hamas, launched a sneak attack against Israel, hitting multiple areas along the Israeli border with the Strip, killing at least 1,139 Israelis and taking 252 people captive.

Hamas said this attack was in response to Israel's abuses of Palestinian people, historically and contemporarily, while Israelis generally see this as an unprovoked attack on mostly civilians by a terrorist organization.

What I'd like to talk about today is the conflict that's erupted since that attack in early-October of last year, where it looks to be going next, and some of the repercussions of it, locally and internationally, thus far.

—

In the days following Hamas' attack on Israel, the Israeli military began bombarding targets throughout the Gaza Strip, focusing on Hamas targets—of which there were many—but because of how interwoven these targets were with civilian infrastructure, located in civilian buildings and in extensive tunnels underneath many major cities, that also meant bombarding a lot of areas packed with everyday, non-Hamas civilians.

The Israeli military then started warning folks to leave leading up to a more formal ground invasion,  supplies were cut off, and tens of thousands of people fled south, beyond the range of this impending invasion and the ongoing rocket and artillery barrage, though a lot of non-Hamas people were killed, and a lot of civilian infrastructure was demolished.

Early on, Egypt warned Israel about forcing Palestinians across their shared border, even as aid trucks, which typically entered the country via the Rafah crossing along that border, were backed up for miles—the Israeli government disallowing their entry and the distribution of that aid, saying they didn't want it to support and sustain Hamas.

In late-November, a weeklong ceasefire allowed around 100 Israeli hostages and 240 Palestinian prisoners held by Israelis to be freed, and some aid was allowed into Gaza through the Rafah crossing.

In early December, Israeli forces had moved on from Gaza City to the southern city, Khan Younis, where Hamas soldiers and commanders were reportedly hunkering down and controlling events in the Strip.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who had fled south because of Israel's invasion of the north were forced to flee even further south, down to Rafah, which is the southernmost governing region in the Strip, where the city of Rafah, and the Rafah crossing, which connects Egypt to Gaza, are located.

At this point, concerns held by Israel's allies, like the US, began to bubble up to the surface, ultimately voiced in public by the US Defense Secretary, who surreptitiously warned the Israeli military about killing civilians, couching that warning in advice about establishing a lasting, actual victory.

The United Nations, which had already been warning about the civilian catastrophe that was unfolding in the Strip due to the nature of Israel's invasion and bombardment of the region, including all that civilian infrastructure, and all the civilian deaths that were piling up in Israel's pursuit of Hamas, also became more vocal around this time, warning about widespread slaughter and starvation, but also potential regional repercussions if Israel wasn't careful about how it treats Gazan civilians; the idea being that Israel was essentially slaughtering innocent people, even if it claimed it wasn't intending to, and that they were being used as human shields by Hamas, and that could stoke more animosity from its regional neighbors, which in turn could spark a broader conflict.

As part of that campaign, the UN Secretary General invoked Article 99 for the first time since he took office, which led to a ceasefire vote in the Security Council, which failed because the US vetoed an otherwise near-unanimous vote—the UK's abstention the only other non-yes vote on the matter.

By early February of this year, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu indicated that he planned to invade that southernmost border city, Rafah, where a huge number of people already lived, but also where something like a million Palestinian civilians had fled because their homes further north were bombarded, invaded, and in many cases left in ruins—no shelter, no electricity, no water. So around 1.5 million people were trying to survive in a city typically inhabited by maybe a third that number.

Israel's neighbors and other entities throughout the region issued formal statements against a potential invasion of Rafah, citing concerns for the civilians who were now massed there, densely packed into this city, and thus at great risk of harm should bombs start dropping and bullets start flying, and US President Biden, shifting away from a seeming policy of having other folks in his administration condemn and criticize and warn about how the invasion was proceeding, as part of an apparent effort to maintain formal, top-of-the-hierarchy alignment with Israel, said that there shouldn't be any kind of military operation in Rafah until and unless there's a "credible and executable plan for ensuring the safety of and support" for the citizens who were hunkered down there.

But Netanyahu, despite those criticisms and warnings, doubled-down on his ambition to invade the city and take out what he claimed were the final remnants of Hamas' leadership in the Strip, whatever the consequences.

Within days of that statement from Biden, Israel's military launched a raid into Rafah, which freed two Israeli hostages, but resulted in the killing of at least 70 people, dozens of whom were children, according to Gaza's health ministry.

Around this time it was reported, by that same health ministry, that more than 30,000 Palestinians had been confirmed killed in the invasion so far, most of them women and children, though presumably a great many of them Hamas-aligned militants, as well.

And it's generally understood that this is probably an undercount, as it doesn't include those who are tallied as missing but not confirmed killed, and it doesn't include the number of people who have died from non-explosion, non-bullet injuries and conditions, like those who have starved and those who have died for lack of medical treatment.

By March, essentially everyone, except, seemingly, Netanyahu and his main supporters in the government, which at this point is primarily the further-right chunk of the country's parliament, have expressed concern about the consequences of an invasion of Rafah.

And while discussion about this continued, and all sorts of entities, like the EU, encouraged Netanyahu to not attack the city, the Israeli military scaled-up from smaller-scale incursions and attacks, airstrikes on the city becoming a daily occurrence by the latter-half of March, many of those strikes targeting buildings where civilians were sheltering.

Netanyahu announced in early April that there was a planned date for a full-scale invasion on Rafah, not divulging the day, but making this announcement shortly after the US said it wouldn't condone or support such an attack, to which Netanyahu replied that Israel would go it alone, if necessary.

Israeli troops left Khan Younis around this same time, and thousands of Palestinians fled north from Rafah to seek shelter there, worried about an impending attack, but a significant portion of those people returned to Rafah soon after, as Khan Younis and other towns and cities further north, were reduced to rubble and several people died after stumbling upon unexploded bombs and other munitions, so these areas were generally just not safe or habitable.

Egypt gave yet another warning to Israel not to force Palestinian civilians across their shared border in mid-April, saying, basically, the peace the two countries have enjoyed for 45 years was at risk, depending on what they did next. They also surreptitiously began constructing refugee facilities near their shared border around this time, though, just in case.

Talks focused on a potential ceasefire, which were ongoing for months in Cairo, seemed to be on the verge of bearing fruit in early May, the newest version offering a weeks-long ceasefire, plus the release of more Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, in exchange for the removal of Israeli troops from Gaza, and an eventual end of the war.

This looked very likely to happen for about a day, as the agreement was based on wording Israel's negotiators had favored, and the real question was whether Hamas's representatives would agree to it, which they did.

But the wording, indicating that this would be a step toward an end for the war, seems to be what kept it from happening. Netanyahu said ending the war wasn't an option until they'd taken out the last of Hamas's leadership in the area, which would require, he said, invading Rafah.

That same week, the first week of May, Israel ordered Palestinians in the southern portion of Rafah to evacuate via phone massages and leaflets, and Hamas, seemingly in response to that indication of an imminent attack, agreed to an edited ceasefire deal that seemed to give Israel everything it wanted, but Israel's war cabinet said it still wasn't enough.

Airstrikes into Rafah have since picked up, and US officials have confirmed rumors than the US government paused a shipment of bombs meant for Israel, as they were concerned these bombs would be used in Rafah, and this type of bomb would be devastating in such a tight-packed, civilian-populated area.

On May 7, Israeli tanks entered Rafah, took control of the Rafah crossing into Egypt, and sealed the border, preventing the import of all international aid into the Strip.

Since that initial tank incursion, around 800,000 Palestinian civilians have fled Rafah, and are now considered to be internally displaced—still living in the Gaza Strip, but most without homes to return to, their cities and towns, in many cases, completely demolished or otherwise unsafe, living in tents, without shelter, and often without food, clean water, or other necessities of life and security.

Right as some of these civilians have fled back toward more northern portions of the Strip, though, fighting has begun, anew, in several more northern cities, where Israeli's military officials say Hamas is resurgent, and Hamas's military wing continues to claim periodic, often asymmetric victories against the invading Israelis. So it's likely those Hamas forces are indeed attempting to reestablish themselves in these previously invaded, now mostly destroyed, areas, and that they're hiding amongst those who are internally displaced, which of course complicates matters for both the Israeli military, and for all the innocent people who are just trying to find a place that's not actively being bombed or shot-up in the Strip.

As this conflicts wears on in the Strip itself, there have also been substantial consequences for Israel, internationally. Most prominently, perhaps, being the deterioration of its reputation and standing in the international community, and the damage that's been done to its relationships with its neighbors and allies.

Most shocking, to some, has been the slow, careful, but increasingly overt pullback by the United States in its support for Israel.

The US has traditionally been Israel's big, primary ally in the world, showing basically absolute support for anything Israel does. But the Biden administration, though they've been careful to support Israel in almost everything, even to the point that it's hurt the administration's reputation at home, has made statements and criticized Netanyahu's actions, and is slowly beginning to take practical action, as well, mostly in terms of arms shipments so far, but they've hinted they might vote differently in the UN and other bodies, as well, if this goes on for much longer, denying Israel some of the cover it's enjoyed, thus far, within entities like the UN Security Council.

Egypt has made clear, time and time again, that they don't like what's happening and that things will go very sideways between them and Israel if Palestinians are forced to flee across their shared border, en masse, and that could mean worsening relations, but it could also mean some kind of military pushback, as has been the case between the two countries several times in the past.

Israel has been on the verge of several big diplomatic breakthroughs with its neighbors in recent years, especially its wealthy, spendier neighbors, like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain, but also Morocco, Sudan, and the idea was to bring other Arab nations into the fold in the near-future, to basically normalize relationships, stepping back from a long-time war-footing to increase trade, and to send diplomats to each other's countries—normal relations between nations that have traditionally wanted each other dead.

These relationships have become fraught, though, if not completely untenable, as a consequence of this invasion and how it's played out—in large part because of the solidarity these nations have, or at least are having to perform, outwardly, with the Palestinian people and their cause.

In other words, this invasion doesn't just make things more complicated for Israel in the Muslim-majority territories they hold, it's also likely to make things more difficult for them, regionally, as those mutually enriching relationships disappear, and as some of those potential allies maybe become enemies, once more.

Speaking of enemies, this whole situation has in some ways empowered perpetual Israel-antagonist, Iran, which was beginning to feel threatened and excluded by all those new friendships and relationships between Muslim nations and Israel, but which now enjoys more power than it has had in a long time, as the tone has shifted, Israel has shown what Iran can portray as their true, Muslim-hating colors, and the militant proxy groups Iran funds and arms, like Hamas, but also the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon, have all gained an influx of support, benefactors, and soldiers, because they seem to be fighting the good fight against a colonialist, imperialist, anti-Muslim entity that is stoking support for its own antagonists across the region.

All of this, is shaping events elsewhere, as well.

There's a chance aspects of the US presidential election in November will be shaped by perceptions of how President Biden handled this unwieldy situation, and we've seen sympathy protests and riots and attacks all over the place, with various groups and even whole demographics, especially young people, coming out in support of Palestinians in Gaza.

This conflict has also increased the temperature on existing potential flashpoints, even leading to a direct exchange of missiles, rockets, and drones between Israel and Iran in mid-April. This renewed tension is heightening concerns that something could happen—something that would typically be shrugged off or negotiated away—that could cascade into a Middle East-wide conflict.

As I record this, for instance, it's just been reported that Iran's President and Foreign Minister have died in a helicopter crash on the way back from a meeting with representatives from Azerbaijan.

This crash seems to be the result of bad weather conditions in treacherous, mountainous territory, but any upset to norms, anything that could be perceived as a potential attack—or framed that way by people with something to gain from such chaos—could serve as a spark that ignites a Middle East-wide conflagration. All sorts of things that would generally not be seen through the lens of militarized geopolitics, then, are now being perceived in that way, and that has made the region even more volatile.

There's a lot of pressure on Israel, internationally, to change what they're doing, at this point, but what happens next may be shaped by the country's internal politics.

A centrist member of Israel's war cabinet recently said that Netanyahu had until June 8 to present a plan that would secure the release of the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas, establish stable governance in the Gaza Strip, and normalize life in Israel and relations with regional neighbors, like Saudi Arabia.

This ultimatum is being seen as an indication that there's widespread disagreement with how Netanyahu is running things from within his own government, and the country's defense minister recently said that the invasion is on "a dangerous course," worrying out loud that the government was attempting to establish military rule in Gaza, which the defense minister sees as untenable and undesirable; so both the governing and military establishments of Israel seem to be unhappy with the state of things and where they seem to be headed, which could put pressure on the government to change course, or to put someone in power who's willing to do so, if Netanyahu doesn't.

By some assessments, Netanyahu is kind of locked into the path he's walking, as he's kept in office by the furthest-right portion of the electorate, which—some portions of it at least—want to push even further and faster to pacify the Palestinian Territories, and maybe even Israel's regional neighbors, than Netanyahu has managed, thus far.

One theory as to why Israel, and perhaps Netanyahu more specifically, are taking this particular path, is that—a bit like the US in the wake of the attacks on 9/11/2001—he's maybe afraid that if Israel doesn't respond with overwhelming, even brutal force after being attacked so brazenly, the country's enemies, of which there have traditionally been many, will see them as weak and vulnerable to such attacks, and they must thus make it very clear that anyone who tries such a thing will be wiped out, no matter the consequences for Israel or anyone else.

It's also been posited that Netanyahu might be attempting to retain his hold on power by keeping the country on a war-footing, or that he might be held hostage, basically, by that further-right portion of the government that holds outsized sway in the country, right now.

Whatever the actual rationale—or whether maybe this is all just being planned in the moment, a series of seeming necessities adding up to a bunch of new problems for Israel, for Palestinians, and for the region—there's a chance that all the external pressure, plus the pressure from portions of his own government, will force Netanyahu's hand on this, nudging him toward finding an offramp from the invasion as it stands today, which will likely take the shape of some kind of negotiated ceasefire, an exchange of hostages and prisoners, and then a series of meetings and agreements that will establish new governance in Gaza.

But it's also possible that this conflict will drag on as Hamas continues to harass Israeli forces, retreating and engaging in partisan warfare in formerly invaded parts of the Strip, resulting in something akin to what the US faced in Afghanistan for years and years, before finally pulling out, the initial arguable success of the post-9/11 invasion lost to the persistent frictions of sustained partisan warfare and a slow depletion of international support and reputation.

Show Notes

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/helicopter-carrying-irans-president-makes-difficult-landing-d51329d7

https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-news-05-19-2024-d6ea9776d293130d52d308abd284556e

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_conflict_in_2023

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/07/israel-hamas-gaza-war-timeline-anniversary/

https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/israeli-palestinian-conflict

https://www.npr.org/2024/05/08/1249657561/rafah-timeline-gaza-israel-hamas-war

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/18/un-says-800000-people-have-fled-rafah-as-israel-kills-dozens-in-gaza

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafah_Governorate

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/05/19/world/iran-president-helicopter-crash

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/18/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-war-netanyahu-gantz.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestinian_expulsion_and_flight

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Palestine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_territories

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Liberation_Organization

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit letsknowthings.substack.com/subscribe

This week we talk about ENSO, El Niño, and attribution science.

We also discuss climate change, natural disasters, and the trade winds.

Recommended Book: Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway

Transcript

The field of attribution science, sometimes referred to as "extreme event attribution," focuses on figuring out whether and to what degree a particular weather event—especially rare weather disasters—are attributable to climate change.

Severe floods and tornadoes and hurricanes all happen from time to time, which is why such events are sometimes referred to as once in a decade or once in a century disasters: the right natural variables align in the right way, and you have a disaster that is rare to the point that it's only likely to happen once every 10 or 100 years, but such rare events still happen, and sometimes more frequently than those numbers would imply; they're not impossible. And they're not necessarily the result of climate change.

Folks working in this space, which is a blend of meteorology and the rapidly evolving field of climate science, do their best to figure out what causes what, and how those odds might have been impacted by the shifts we're seeing in global average temperatures in particular, and the knock-on effects of that warming, like shifts in the global water cycle; both of which influence all sorts of other planetary variables.

The most common means of achieving this end is to run simulations based on historical climate data and extrapolating those trend-lines forward, allowing for natural variation, but otherwise sticking with the range of normal fluctuations that would have been expected, had we not started to churn so much CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere beginning with the industrial revolution.

So if we hadn't done the Industrial Revolution the way we did it, what would our global climate and weather systems look like? They have a bunch of models with different assumptions baked into them that they have running, and they can simulate conditions, today, based on those models, and compare them with the reality of how things actually are in the real world, a world in which we did start to burn fossil fuels at a frantic rate, with all the pros and cons of that decision aggregating into our current climactic circumstances.

This comparison, between a baseline, non-climate-change-impacted Earth, and what we see happening on real Earth, allows us to gauge the different in likelihoods for various weather systems and increasingly even specific weather events, like massive floods or hurricanes.

It also allows us to ascertain what elements of a disaster or system are more or less likely, or the same, compared to that baseline Earth; so maybe we look at a regional heat wave and discover that it was a rare event made more likely by climate change, but that the intensity of the heat wasn't impacted—as was the case with a heat wave in Russia in 2010; climate change made the heat wave more likely, but had such a heat wave occurred, despite its low likelihood, in that non-industrial revolution scenario, the heat would have been roughly the same intensity as it was in real life.

Both components of this system, attributing events and patterns to climate change, and confirming that they were not impacted, that they were just run of the mill bad luck, the consequence of natural systems, are arguably important, as while the former provides data for folks wanting to predict future climate change-related outcomes, and provides some degree of ammunition for the argument that climate change is making these sorts of things worse, which helps put a price tag on not moving faster to shift away from fossil fuels, it's also vital that we understand how climate and weather systems work, in general, and that we are able to set proper expectations as to what will change and how, as the atmosphere's composition continues to change, while also understanding what will remain the same, what various regions around the world need to be prepared for in a vacuum, leaving climate change out of it, and how our global weather systems work on a granular level, so that as outside influences like climate change, but not limited to climate change, act upon them, we can make better predictions about how that will adjust or overhaul the practical reality for people and ecosystems impacted by them.

What I'd like to talk about today is a natural weather phenomenon that is expected to return soon, and how this phenomenon might change our latent, global weather patterns, for the better, for the worse, and for the neutral, and in turn how it might be changed by the climactic adjustments we're tracking using these simulations.

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The El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO phenomenon, is the monicker we've given to a collection of sea surface temperature and wind variations in the Pacific Ocean that, largely unpredictably, tweak the patterns of these systems from time to time, influenced by and influencing a large number of other, micro- and macro-scale systems around the world.

Most directly, ENSO dictates how warm it will be across the tropics and subtropics, El Niño bringing warm waters to the surface of the relevant oceans and the Southern Oscillation referring to air pressure variations spanning the ocean between Tahiti and Darwin, Australia, low pressure tending to occur over warm bodies of water, and higher pressure over colder bodies of water.

When the water in this part of the Pacific, the central and east-central equatorial pacific, is warmer, on the surface, that reduces atmospheric pressure thereabouts, which in turn reduces the strength of the Pacific trade winds. That reduction, among other things, decreases rainfall over parts of Australia, India, and Indonesia, while upping the same, while also stoking additional cyclone risk, in the tropical Pacific Ocean.

Fundamental to understanding why this is a big deal is understanding that this tweak in water and atmospheric conditions causes low level surface trade winds, which usually blow from east to west, to either stop blowing or barely blow, or in some cases to reverse direction.

If you think about how weather patterns form, determining everything from who gets rain and how much, to what temperatures are like in a given area—because those winds pull warm or cold air along with them as they pass over warmer or cooler parts of the planet, like mountains and glaciers, but also deserts and tropical rain forests—it becomes clear why this change-up is such a big deal.

There's a neutral phase of this phenomenon that typically occur between warmer and colder phases, and during that neutral phase, we usually see other, similar systems that are interconnected and predicated on still other geographic and atmospheric variables, like the Pacific-North American teleconnection pattern, and the North Atlantic Oscillation, having more of an impact on global weather and water cycle patterns.

When this system is in a warmer El Niño state, though, that tends to cause a lot of heat waves throughout tropical regions in particular, while also spiking global surface temperatures for around a year, with all the secondary consequences of suddenly jolting the global thermostat higher: melting glaciers and ice caps, increasing the range of disease-carrying pests, messing with planting seasons; things like that.

The opposite side of this coin, La Niña, can also be quite disruptive though, its influence defined by cooler waters rising to the surface in that part of the Pacific, warmer waters headed westward where they have less influence on this component of the world's thermostat and weather machine, and that drop in water temperature in this part of the ocean tends to reset many of the dials that are turned up by El Niño, moderating some of the weather patterns that are amplified by those warmer waters and returning the trade winds to their normal settings, while also reducing global temperatures to what we might think of as their default.

But the next La Niña phenomenon—which experts in this space say will likely arrive sometime in the next few months, June or July of 2024, marking a quick transition away from the record-setting El Niño system we've been living through since July of 2023, which has been designated the fourth most extreme in recorded history—this anticipated new La Niña setup will follow a truly intense opposite pattern, which means if it's not strong enough, it may not counteract all of the warming brought about by its precursor El Niño system, which means the next El Niño system could compound upon this outgoing one, in terms of its globe-heating effects.

There are also concerns that, because of that strong El Niño, and it arriving at a period of human-caused warming—two forces raising the temperature on the thermostat simultaneously, basically—there's a chance that the moderating force of this La Niña might run up against an insurmountable variable adjustment, even if it is otherwise powerful enough; meaning, this ENSO phenomenon could contribute to a long term, even permanent increase in global temperatures because its warming effects are mirroring another, external warming effect caused by us and our greenhouse gas emissions.

We don't know exactly what that would mean in practice and long-term, but it could lead to more. and more extreme versions of what we've seen this past year: namely a surge in weather disasters like extreme droughts and floods and wildfires that never really end; just bigger and bigger surges, combined with higher and higher temperatures.

And again, that's possible even if the La Niña pattern that's set to arrive is of a normal, non-weak strength, because of how potent this outgoing El Niño has been, and because its effects may be compounded by climate change.

If the new La Niña does prove potent enough to counteract this outgoing El Niño, that may help with short-term temperature changes, but we're then likely to see a substantially more severe hurricane season; which is normally what happens during these periods of change, La Niña conditions making hurricanes more likely, but it could be even more severe than usual because of lingering oceanic heat from the El Niño, which popped temperatures in the Atlantic to 2 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the average temperature from the past three decades—and oceanic heat is what powers hurricanes, informing how big and destructive they can become.

Last year's Atlantic Ocean hurricane season was already above-average in terms of the number of hurricanes and their strength because of that heat, but the amalgamation of variable-tweaks inherent in a La Niña transition make hurricanes more likely, whatever the ocean's temperature, so the combination of, likely, more hurricanes, plus far warmer than usual oceanic temperatures, means more, but also potentially a lot more powerful, hurricanes this season.

We've been watching these systems and transitions for a while now, and our science related to them—including our ability to predict what they're going to do, and how much—has gotten pretty good over the last few decades.

But all of these systems and all of their variables are interconnected, each and every piece touching each and every other piece of the planet's cycles and ecosystems and compositions; so there's a lot we're not tracking, a lot we're not tracking with the resolution we'd need for it to be valuable in this regard, and a lot of entanglements and relationships we're not even aware of, yet.

In particular, the impact that climate change is having on these systems, directly and indirectly, is a big question mark in all these computations.

Yes, we understand all of this better than a few decades ago, and yes, our simulations and models have gotten pretty solid, and are getting better by the day as we develop better formulae and software, and deploy more fancy satellites and other tracking tools that allow us to keep tabs on the relevant variables in an up-to-the-second manner.

But because of how complex all of this is, it's a truly chaotic jumble of systems, and because of how we're scrambling to play catch-up, the world changing around us faster than we're learning about those changes—these sorts of systems are evolving even as we come to understand how they work; so our most up to date information is always a little bit out of date, leaving us prone to new unknowns and larger shifts than we'd anticipated based on our existing data.

Human-amplified climate change, then, is fiddling with all the knobs and switches, changing how these phenomena work right before our eyes, and each new system and cycle is part known, part complete surprise because of how even tiny changes can make huge differences when compounded by these spirals and cascades of cause and large-scale, multifaceted effect.

In other words, we have a good sense of what we need to be worried about and watching for during this probable upcoming transition, and we maybe have some things to look forward to, alongside a few other things to worry about and prepare for.

We'll also be watching to see how much global temperatures come down, as that will tell us to what degree this outgoing El Niño has been tweaking those temperatures, and to what degree climate change is to blame for the disconcerting numbers we've been seeing in this regard.

But we'll also be watching to see how everything is being amplified and compounded by all of these interconnected effects, as it may be, still allowing for ups and downs and other variations year to year, that these patterns, and others like them, will lead to wider, broader, more dramatic swings for the foreseeable future because of all those changes, natural and human-caused.

Show Notes

https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/el-nino-end-by-june-la-nina-seen-second-half-2024-says-us-forecaster-2024-05-09/

https://www.axios.com/2024/05/09/el-nino-la-nina-hurricane-season

https://www.vox.com/climate/24145756/la-nina-2024-el-nino-heat-hurricane-record-temperature-pacific

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/ninonina.html

https://theconversation.com/la-nina-is-coming-raising-the-chances-of-a-dangerous-atlantic-hurricane-season-an-atmospheric-scientist-explains-this-climate-phenomenon-228595

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ni%C3%B1o%E2%80%93Southern_Oscillation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932023_La_Ni%C3%B1a_event

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_event_attribution

https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-can-climate-change-affect-natural-disasters

https://archive.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9s9-1-2.html

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47583

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-can-now-blame-individual-natural-disasters-on-climate-change/

https://www.vox.com/climate/2024/2/28/24085691/atlantic-ocean-warming-climate-change-hurricanes-coral-reefs-bleaching

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ni%C3%B1o%E2%80%93Southern_Oscillation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932023_La_Ni%C3%B1a_event

https://theconversation.com/is-climate-change-to-blame-for-extreme-weather-events-attribution-science-says-yes-for-some-heres-how-it-works-164941

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