Newsletter 80

"$2.5tn Taiwan shock", doomsday scenarios and US fighter jet production

Nov 13, 2022

Hi, I’m Gavin. This is my experimental newsletter that explores thinking - how we might think better and learn together as we do so.

I explore several key topics through the lens of several core themes: systems thinking, scenario planning, trends, and cross-disciplinary innovation. These often relate to key issues: climate change, pandemics, astronomy, physics, health, history, philosophy, culture, rocketry, conflict, the impact of technology on society and more (lol!). With a larger question behind it all: how do we progress and how do we progress better?

I hope you like where we go. (~~1,027!~~ 1,190 - welcome all new arrivals)

Gavin

PS: if you like the newsletter please share it! (And I always appreciate tweets about it too!) 🙏

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Reading list - the best stuff to read

(The best reads I’ve come across, with excerpts, links, authors and how long it will take to read. Climate change, COVID and China are consistently the stories at the top so are semi-permanent)

🌏 Climate change & biodiversity destruction

The World’s Most-Visited Glaciers Could Soon Be Gone

Fifty of UNESCO’s World Heritage sites are home to glaciers, and 18,600 glaciers have been identified at those sites. One third of the glaciers in these sites are “condemned to disappear by 2050,” according to the report.
“These are projections,” said Tales Carvalho Resende, a UNESCO researcher from Brazil and one of the authors of the report. “We hope we are wrong, of course, but these are projections based on hard science.”
The glaciers will disappear regardless of any “climate scenarios,” he said. But the remaining two-thirds of the glaciers in the World Heritage sites could still be saved if global warming is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the report.

How to move a country: Fiji’s radical plan to escape rising sea levels

For many Pacific people, burial sites remain the biggest obstacle to relocation. The hardest people to move are the dead. When relocating, villagers face a choice of either leaving behind the bones of ancestors, or exhuming them and taking them to the new site. Either choice is deeply traumatic.
In a tiny settlement of half a dozen houses named Togoru, about 45 minutes drive from Suva, the local cemetery is already underwater. At high tide, fish swim around the gravestones of Lavenia McGoon’s ancestors, but McGoon, who is 70, wants to stay. According to residents, the settlement has been there since the early 1800s. Togoru is small, with about 20 people living there. Many residents come and go – some have lived and worked elsewhere in Fiji before returning, or work in other parts of the country during the week and return for weekends and holidays.

Carbon emissions hit new high: warning from COP27

Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are projected to increase 1% in 2022, hitting a new record of 37.5 billion tonnes, scientists announced today at the United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. If the trend continues, humanity could pump enough CO2 into the atmosphere to warm Earth to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial temperatures in just nine years. The 2015 Paris climate agreement set this aspirational limit, seeking to avoid the most serious consequences for the planet.
“Nine years is not very long,” says Corinne Le Quéré, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, and a member of the Global Carbon Project, which conducted the analysis. There is clearly no sign of the kind of decrease that is needed to meet international goals, she says, and even with aggressive action, climate models suggest the world is likely to at least temporarily cross the 1.5 °C threshold sometime in the 2030s.

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🇨🇳 🇹🇼 China / Taiwan

This section of the newsletter has been around as a permanent feature for quite a while now. There has been an uptick in the tempo of signals related to a future potential conflict over Taiwan. This week’s links are no different. So I’m marking this as something to pay even more attention to in 2023.

US warns Europe a conflict over Taiwan could cause global economic shock (3 mins)

The state department has shared research with partners and allies that estimates that a Chinese blockade of Taiwan would spark $2.5tn in economic losses, according to six people familiar with the material, which was commissioned from the research firm Rhodium Group.
The stark warning has been shared with European Commission and European government officials, as the US and partners begin to think about how they could use sanctions against China over any military action against Taiwan. Washington is using the report to stress to European countries that a Taiwan conflict would have significant implications for them.
Two officials said the US and EU had begun talks about how to prepare for a possible conflict over Taiwan. The Financial Times earlier this year reported that the US had held contingency planning talks with the UK for the first time.
Two people familiar with the US-EU discussions said some officials believed that preparing contingency plans, and communicating them publicly, could become part of a strategy to deter China.
Some US and European officials believe the spectre of huge global economic damage from a Taiwan conflict is necessary to rally international support for deterring China. The US has also used the example of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to stress the need to consider contingencies.

One senior EU official compared the sharing of the report with the US move last year to distribute intelligence on Russia’s military build-up around Ukraine, when some EU capitals were dismissive of the idea that Vladimir Putin would invade. “We learned a lesson with that,” the official added.

Taiwan Wants China to Think Twice About an Invasion (25 mins)

“What I want to achieve is to make Taiwan more resilient in economic and military terms,” Tsai had told me. It’s possible to look at this kind of gradual marshaling of society with trepidation. Coupled with the lack of a diplomatic opening to China, there’s a momentum that risks pulling in the direction of conflict. But in Tsai’s attitude, I sensed that resilience serves many purposes. A society that embeds digital literacy and emergency preparedness among its citizens is stronger, just as an economy that isn’t overly reliant on the giant market next door will grow on a broader foundation. Even the effort to build a more progressive democracy comes into play, both in terms of investing domestic constituencies in the government and in forging friendships with democracies abroad.
In the end, Tsai’s agenda is born of necessity. “When we’re strong, resilient, trustworthy, and a good partner,” Tsai said, “people will see our values. That makes us worthy of support.”

Australia’s 60 Minutes did a 30 min look at a future war over Taiwan. Worth the watch.

Why Japan Is Gearing Up for Possible War With China (5 mins)

In Tokyo, as in Washington, opinions differ regarding when the risk of war will be greatest, and even whether Xi would hazard everything in a high-stakes military gamble. Some officials told me that Xi’s recent personnel reforms — which included placing a veteran of China’s last foreign conflict, against Vietnam in 1979, and a former commander of Chinese military forces opposite Taiwan in the two top spots on the Central Military Commission — amount to a creation of a “war council.” Others counter that the People’s Liberation Army will lack key capabilities necessary to invade Taiwan, such as sufficient amphibious landing craft, for years to come.
But there is little debate the country must brace for trouble, because China taking Taiwan by force would be disastrous for Japan.
If Taiwan fell, the islands at the far southwestern end of the Japanese archipelago might become indefensible. China could constrict Japan’s vital trade routes, increase the pressure around the disputed Senkaku Islands, and otherwise coerce its historic rival.
This is why the Tokyo government has stated — as strongly as it can, given Japan’s post-1945 aversion to the use of force — that it would not stand by while Taiwan was subjugated. Already a serious regional military power, Japan is moving rapidly to strengthen its capabilities for deterrence and defense.
Japan plans to nearly double defense spending by 2027. It is turning some of the southwestern islands into strongpoints studded with anti-ship missiles and air defenses; it reportedly has plans to use its high-quality submarine fleet to bottle up the Chinese navy. Tokyo is also moving to acquire American Tomahawk cruise missiles and other “counterstrike” capabilities that could target the Chinese mainland.

Taiwan rallies drone makers to prepare military for China threat

“Our military has so far failed to present a clear concept for the use of unmanned aerial vehicles in war fighting and to capitalise on our private sector’s significant capabilities in that field,” said a senior official in Tsai’s administration. “The war in Ukraine has highlighted the urgency of preparing for conflict in the Taiwan Strait and the crucial role drones can play in such a conflict.”
Under the plan, which is backed with public funds of up to NT$50bn (US$1.6bn) over three years, the government aims to organise Taiwanese private drone makers into a “national team” to develop unmanned aerial vehicle systems for several specific missions in a cross-strait war scenario. The government wants the drone makers to start receiving orders by July next year, according to five people familiar with the project.
Several Taiwanese companies make commercial drones, but the military has barely tapped those resources, mainly over concerns the private sector could leak military secrets to China and because the military has yet to present concrete concepts for wartime use of UAVs, government officials and analysts said.
“Our military is still relatively backward in their use of drones,” said Chen Po-hung, a policy analyst at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a think-tank backed by the defence ministry. “Another main problem is that it has not clearly defined the missions for different UAVs.”

🇺🇦 Ukraine / Russia

Norwegian Police detains son of close Putin ally for flying drone at Svalbard. It’s always worth keeping an eye on potential hybrid threats. We looked at this incident in a previous newsletter but the details from this October report are interesting.

A judge at the Western Finnmark District Court on Tuesday ordered the son of one of Vladimir Putin’s closest allies placed in custody for two weeks after request by the police. The police asked for detention based on the risk of evasion, while investigations continue. Andrey Yakunin is the son of Vladimir Yakunin, former president of Russian Railways. “The man has Russian and British citizenship and is charged with violating the Sanction Act §4 for flying a drone in Norwegian territory at Svalbard,” said Police Prosecutor Anja Mikkelsen Indbjør to the Barents Observer.

A good summary (65 mins)

🧠 Trauma

Can early intervention mitigate risks of PTSD? (4 mins)

🌍 Mapping doomsday scenarios

A guide to contemporary doomsday scenarios — from the threats you know about to the ones you never think of.

I’m actually not all that worried about an asteroid impact. Asteroids are way down at No. 8 on my list of Top 10 Existential Worries (a list I just typed up at the urging of an editor, and which I present simply as a discussion tool):

10. Solar storm or gamma-ray burst.
9. Supervolcano eruption.
8. Asteroid impact.
7. Naturally emergent, or maliciously engineered, pandemic plant pathogen affecting staple crops.
6. Naturally emergent, or maliciously engineered, pandemic human pathogen.
5. Orwellian dystopia. Totalitarianism. Endless war paraded as peace. The human spirit crushed. Not a world you’d want to live in.
4. Cascading technological failures due to cyberattack, reckless development of artificial intelligence and/or some other example of complex systems failing in complex ways.
3. Nuclear war (may jump soon to No. 1).
2. Environmental catastrophe from climate change and other desecrations of the natural world.
1. Threat X. The unknown unknown. Something dreadful but not even imagined. The creature that lives under the bed.

🧮 The Most Important Algorithm Of All Time

The Fast Fourier Transform is used everywhere but it has a fascinating origin story that could have ended the nuclear arms race. (26 mins)

✈️ Could today's US produce masses of fighters like it did in WW2?

A good exploration by Binkov. (14 mins).

Philosophy Corner (a journey through thinking about thinking every week)

(A serialised section that started with Greek Tragedy and moved to philosophy. Something to spark ideas. Feel free to go backwards!).

On hiatus!

Documentary

(A good thing to watch - also serialised - so feel free to go back through past editions!)

World-renowned author and professor Bryan Magee and Berkeley philosopher of language John Searle discuss the question: "How does language relate to thought and to reality?" Searle explores the use of language to clarify experience as fundamental to the acquisition of knowledge. He then describes the various uses of language in the philosophies of Plato, Descartes, Frege, Mills, and others. (44 mins)