The Danes Hear the Distant Cyber Drums

I have never been all that aligned with calling cyber another domain of war, but for the sake of discussion I'm willing to entertain it from others who have a good argument to make.

Why? Today's economy is as reliant on the free flow of digital information as it is the free flow of oil and other raw materials.

When it comes to the 5G networks and China - a challenge almost lost before COVID-19 clarified how China is positioning herself for advantage - the Critical Vulnerability is clear.

Though - mostly for monetary reasons - there was some pushback against American warnings about China's Communist Party controlled communications companies getting a back door in to the West's IT infrastructure, with time and I am sure a few briefings at the highest levels, the drive to keep the CCP out is firming up.

A good example is the latest from Denmark. For a nation of only 5-million+ souls, Denmark is a serious player in national security. She doesn't just talk the talk, from AFG to cyber, she is leading. (NB: she only spends 1.35% GDP, but we get a lot of bang for that wee buck)

Denmark wants to be able to exclude 5G technology suppliers from providing critical infrastructure in Denmark if they are not from countries considered security allies, online technology news outlet ITWatch reported on Monday.

“In order to protect Denmark and the Danes, we want to collaborate with someone with whom we already have alliances,” Minister of Defence Trine Bramsen told ITWatch.

Good.

It also will send money to our allies' and friends' economies. Of course, I'd love for them to be American, but every day and Sunday I'll happily send money to Germany, the United Kingdom, Finland, France, etc than to China.

More of this.

“Dunkirk and the Little Ships" with Dr. Phil Weir - on Midrats

Most people think they know about the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940 … or at least they do … but it is an incredibly complicated and enthralling story that was just one part of an almost unimaginable year that was 1940.

Our guest Dr. Phil Weir here to discuss his upcoming book on the topic, “Dunkirk and the Little Ships."

Phil is a naval historian specializing in the Royal Navy in the first half of the twentieth Century. He gained a PhD from the University of Exeter in 2007 looking at the development of naval aviation in the Royal Navy between the two World Wars, and is now an author and sometime broadcaster. 

You can preorder his book, here.

You can listen to the show at this link or below, but remember, if you don't already, subscribe to the podcast at Spreaker or any of the other podcast aggregators.

If you use iTunes, you can add Midrats to your podcast list simply by clicking the iTunes button at the main showpage - or you can just click here.

Fullbore Friday

A life well lived Admiral.

A life well lived.

“One day an airplane landed at the airport and a guy walked into the hangar wearing Navy whites, and a yellow convertible comes screeching around the hangar and a blonde jumps out and gives him a big smooch, and off they went.”

The young men’s flight instructor, seeing how captivated they were, suggested that they check out a Navy air training center in Michigan.

“We went up there and found out what the Navy stuff was all about and they said, ‘Hey, we’ll take you this afternoon,’” Admiral Feightner said. “So we signed up.”

He entered active duty after graduating from Findlay in 1941, received his wings in April 1942 and was assigned to a squadron based in Hawaii and commanded by the fighter pilot Butch O’Hare, a Medal of Honor recipient and one of America’s early war heroes. Lieutenant Commander O’Hare nicknamed him Whitey as a little joke, since he turned deep red instead of tanning in the Hawaiian sun. He was known as Whitey Feightner thereafter.
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Admiral Feightner was credited with his first “kill” when he shot down a Japanese dive bomber off the Santa Cruz Islands in October 1942. He downed three torpedo bombers off Rennell Island on Jan. 30, 1943, and became an ace (a pilot with at least five kills) when he shot down a Zero fighter off the Palau island chain in March 1944.

He shot down another Zero off Truk in April 1944 and downed three Zeros off Formosa (now Taiwan) on Oct. 12, 1944.
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He was promoted to rear admiral in 1970 and retired four years later, becoming a corporate consultant to the Navy.
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“If you can’t stay calm and focused in a crisis, you have no business being a fighter pilot,” Admiral Feightner told Investor’s Business Daily in 2015. “It’s a matter of life and death, not only for you but those you’re defending.”

Admiral Feightner passed away in early April, his passing lost in much of the COVID-19 madness.

FFG(X) - Clear Sailing

Perhaps, at last, it is time to get back to maritime topics.

As this is one of the few bits of good news I can find out there ... more evidence that my FREMM was the correct choice for FFG(X).

No protests have been filed over the Navy’s decision to award Fincantieri a detail design and construction contract for the FFG(X) program, clearing the way for work to begin, the Navy confirmed to USNI News.

Under contracting rules, bidders have a certain amount of time to protest the decision to the Government Accountability Office if they feel the contracting office made the wrong decision in evaluating bids against the stated requirements. That protest window ended Monday, Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) spokesman Alan Baribeau told USNI News, and none of the three losing bidders protested the decision.

“The GAO protest period for the FFG(X) contract award has passed and the Navy has not received notice of protest. The Navy is moving forward with execution of the contract, and has completed the Post-Award Conference. Detail design of the FFG(X) is commencing,” he said.

More hulls in the water, faster, please.

NavyCon-2 - Electric Boogaloo

If your news feed is anything like mine, then I know you are looking for a break from ... well ... all of that. Good news, do we have a treat to brighten up your week!

Tomorrow, Thursday, the US Naval Academy Museum is hosting, virtually in this time of pandemic, its second NavyCon.

This NavyCon's theme is, "Navies, Science Fiction, and Great Power Competition."

There is a great line up of guests and special appearances. You don't have to be a science fiction fan to enjoy what is on offer.

It starts 1900 Eastern via Zoom, so click here to register. Attendance is limited, so don't wait too long.

To get a full flavor of the lineup for guests and special appearances, click here.

You'll recognize a few names, and meet some new personalities.

Even your 'ole blogg'r Sal has a brief appearance.

Don't miss it!

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UPDATE: Here was my brief special appearance at NavyCon2020, answering the question, "Why is it legitimate to study science fiction."

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You can see the whole show here:

Beware the Ides of June

As we watch this vast stress test on democracy - who elected good state and local leaders and who did not - one thing is clear; there will be a reckoning in this nation in mid-June.

One of two thing will happen, and neither will be good for the relationship between the people and the politicians.

First, in response to COVID-19 we intentionally caused the largest economic crisis since the Great Depression, a crisis we still do not know the depth or breadth of. As such, by the police power of the state, we forced people in to isolation, kids out of school, people out of jobs. We prevented businesses from operating. We stopped much of civil society from happening and people getting together. This was all to "flatten the curve" by keeping people from gathering in large groups. In many locations, it became a crime.

In many of those same locations, bad mayors and governors allowed tens of thousands of people to gather this week, protest, riot and loot in tightly packed groups of people - the worst at night, running, yelling, sweating and fighting with each other.

In two weeks we will see one of two things:

1. There will be a spike in COVID-19 cases, halting the opening of the economy and putting another layer in to our economic down spin. The people will look to their political leaders to ask why they let this happen by being permissive to back actors while at the same time bearing down on regular people.

2. There will not be a spike in COVID-19 cases, opening the question as to why our political leaders crashed the economy to begin with.

Either of these will further weaken the center. People will go to the fringes. In an election year, we know how this goes.

Right now, I don't have answers - but I do know this; never before have a people been so rich and yet led so poorly.

On a not unrelated topic, if you did not catch yesterday's opening to the Tucker Carlson show - love him or hate him - give it a listen.

In the End, it Always Comes Down to Leadership

Given we’ve touched on similar issues a bit over the years, I would not be a good blog host if we did not offer at least one opportunity to discuss the protests and riots spreading across the nation after the killing of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer.

PRIME MOVER:

First I want to separate out those who are protesting his killing. These protests are peaceful, needed, justified, and probably the most American of American things. That is not the issue. We have a legitimate problem of long standing with police abuse of power, especially towards African Americans. We’ve covered this topic before, regular readers know my opinion about the warping of police culture, excessive militarization, and its secondary effects.

No, I want to talk about the riots – those who are taking advantage of this situation to promote chaos, enjoy a little violence laden LARPing … or just generally steal and destroy.

LEADERSHIP:

This was mostly avoidable – at least on a national level. Why? As with most things that go wrong, it has to do with bad leadership making bad decisions early on, compounding dangers until they create a critical mass and become self-sustaining.

The cop in Minneapolis was a known bad cop. Look it up yourself, but he had over a dozen complaints against him. His fellow cops, the local police union and the local prosecutors – including my favorite (D) presidential candidate, now-Senator Klobuchar (D-MN) - they all failed to hold him to account and to get him away from the power he so clearly enjoyed abusing.

In all areas where the police power of the state is given to people, you have to be aggressive in weeding out bad players. Politics, union policies, and misguided “loyalty” stops this from happening. If you have good strong leadership, you can burn through those barriers. The law enforcement leadership before, during, and after the killing of Floyd hopefully will be studied in detail as a latent cause of all that followed.

Next the mayor of Minneapolis and governor of Minnesota. From the start, especially the mayor, you had two men exceptionally unsuited for high office.

In democratic systems, you get the government you vote for. Will there be a change? Hard to see. Minneapolis has a single party system. Democrats have run the city for 46 of the last 47 years. (D) or (R), single party systems inevitably become incompetent and corrupt. There are exceptions, but not many. Weak people rise to the top. Q.E.D.

As for the governor, he seems to simply be a man out of his depth. He seemed poorly advised and not self-ashured enough to know when he needed to step in the vacuum created when the mayor in his major city curled up in a fetal position. Yes, both the governor and the mayor were both weakened by a rather rigid reliance on questionable ideology, but that was a secondary factor. The primary factor was simply they were not up to the job.

Because the law enforcement leadership in Minneapolis, the mayor and the governor failed to act appropriately, bad actors were able to throw gasoline on the righteous anger responding to this senseless death. From there it spread, and you’ve see the results for yourself. If they had responded properly early, the contagion of violence could have been largely contained in Minneapolis, but they failed and now we have to deal with the rest.

Some places, Atlanta, Baton Rouge, and Flint are a few examples, you saw better leadership. They stepped in – leaders to the front – early and stopped things from getting out of control. In other places another method best when used with up-front leadership, 6pm-8pm curfews followed by serious enforcement also tamped down on back actors. In some places like Louisville and even in DC and NYC, you had valid protesters, turn on bad actors trying to turn protests in to riots, even turning them over to police.

What we have now is a great laboratory nation wide on who has good leaders working with institutions with high social capital, and which cities will suffer without either or both.

TERRORISTS:

Now to our Black Block; ANTIFA. The fact these are a problem should not be a surprise. They showed up in 2016 and were there for everyone to see after Trump’s inauguration. In summary, they will use any legitimate protest and an opportunity to bring violence for the sake of violence. They want to radicalize the people. They deserve the full weight of the State on their head. I wish all of them ill.

Of course, in the background we still have the COVID-19 outbreak going on. I remember reading a few weeks ago, the author(s) names escape me, a concern that having so many people in isolation while their jobs and lives waste away in front of them, was creating a pile of tinder waiting for a spark. Well, this was it. I don’t think you can discount this in trying to understand why the protests spread so fast.

COVID-19:

In the knowledge that a virus does not care why we do what we do, you have to wonder if there is any thing more handy for COVID-19 than a bunch of people running round in packs at night yelling and spitting on each other? We will find out in 2-weeks what COVID-19 thinks. An interesting accidental experiment we are running here.

CITIES:

We may be past the peek of new urbanism. The last 30-yrs has seen the slow drive to revive big city living from the nadir of the late 60s to late 80s. Remarkable progress has been made in bringing back retail and residential. I’ve seen it. I remember what NYC, DC, Norfolk etc was like in the late-70s to mid-80s. I’ve seen what they became in the last decade. How do they pick up after the 1-2 punch of COVID-19 and the looting and burning? I have no idea, but I don’t think the smart money is going to invest there any time soon.

WHAT’S NEXT:

That leads to the larger economy. COVID-19’s devastation still is not fully understood by the public, but it is there. Economies do not like uncertainty – civil unrest does not help at all – especially compounding on top of a pandemic.

Where to from here? Many more cards need to come out of the deck, but so far 2020 is not giving us a good hand.

Help where you can and be careful who you listen to and who you ignore. Layered on top of this is the fact this is an election year – the absolute worst time to try to keep people together.

All we can do is talk with well meaning people of all stripes, and focus together on the bad actors – those who loot, burn, and vandalize. Listen to each others concerns. Listen to their worries. Hold police, politicians, and self-appointed community leader to account if they don’t do the same.