Jeffrey Hinton on AI: always interesting

I naively look forward to full fledged sapient AI. When they arrive, true children of the mind, it'll be the first time in thousands of years that Homo Sapiens has shared the planet with another equally sapient species.

We likely wiped all the other ones out... so this may not bode well.

It'd be cool, though, at least for a little while. 

Space travel has proven far FAR more difficult and challenging than was thought in the 1950s and 60s. Humanity likely is not going to the stars, unless nanotech turns out in a big way. 

Robots, on the other hand, aren't hampered by the need for copious amounts of food, oxygen, water and comfort. They'll be able to travel to other planets, solar systems, even (perhaps) other galaxies, given time. 

It'd be a shame if we couldn't co-exist. 

Even moh Mearsheimer, plus WWII trivia

Piers Morgan's style veers too bombastic for my tastes, but he does dare to bring on interesting guests like Professor Mearsheimer. 

To his credit, he directly challenged Mearsheimer on several points, which the professor handled with aplomb. Morgan was outclassed. 

One largely irrelevant (especially considering that the conversation touched on little things like the real possibility of, oh, I don't know, Global Thermonuclear War), but interesting point Mearsheimer made was around Allied military strategies during WWII. Mearsheimer held up the Soviet military's strategy to defeat Germany as being (largely) devoid of mass atrocities (such as carpet bombing and nuking cities), and one that the West might have followed. 

I don't think that was an option for the US or UK for two main reasons:

1) The Soviets suffered roughly 8.7 million military and 19 million civilian deaths fighting the Nazis. The Western democracies would not have been able to keep going in the face of such mass casualties, especially overseas, when the territorial integrity of the USA was not at risk.

2) The Allies did not have enough trained troops in 1942-1943 to launch an invasion of Northern Europe, so they turned to what they could do: bombing. At first they tried to hit military installations, but their bomb sights weren't up to the task, so they fell back on area bombing of civilian targets. This had secondary military impact, sucking up Luftwaffe resources. 

From Warfare History Network: 

"Total antiaircraft artillery personnel strength, including staffs and administration, grew to over one million, with hardware that included 9,000 heavy guns, 30,000 light guns, and 15,000 heavy searchlights... It caused the Germans to devote nearly one-fourth of their war production to antiaircraft protection and forced them to employ massive assets to defend a wide area, while the attackers could select targets, attack weak points, and overwhelm the system when and where they chose."

Without the bombing, all of that would have been on the front lines. 

Stalin repeatedly demanded Western military action against the Germans, and threatened to broker an armistice with Hitler if they didn't. Rather than sit on their hands, Roosevelt and Churchill elected for the ethically dubious (to put it mildly) bombing campaigns, in order to put pressure on Germany. 

It's worth noting that even at the time, Churchill was reluctant to be associated in any way with Bomber Harris. Bombing raids late in 1945 against Germany, which was already being occupied and in a state of collapse, likely did not serve any real military purpose. The back of the Luftwaffe had already been broken, the Germans had little fuel, and their rail system in disarray (admittedly partly from bombing rail hubs and the loss of freight cars).

Operation Olympic, the invasion of Japan, was projected to have almost a million American KIA and many times that wounded (not to mention millions of Japanese casualties, both civilian and military). Would Japan have surrendered without the bomb drops? It's possible. Manchuria was quickly falling to the Soviets. On the other hand, stiff resistance on Okinawa thoroughly spooked the Americans, and Japan could muster millions of troops and thousands of Kamikaze planes to defend Kyushu.

I've seen compelling arguments on both sides. I don't know the answer. 

While it's true that the Soviets did not have much of a long range strategic air wing to conduct such attacks, if they did, I doubt they'd have refrained from area bombing on moral grounds. This is the regime that starved millions of its own citizens: would they really balk at bombing Germans? Additionally, some 3 million POWs died Soviet captivity, 542,911 after the war was over. Not exactly the humanitarian ideal, either.

Further, 125,000 civilians died in the Battle of Berlin, which is comparable to casualties from an Allied bombing raid, many of them killed by artillery. To be fair, just one atomic bomb drop killed 90,000-146,000, and the Allies flattened much of Germany's urban centres. On the other hand, Goebbels inflated casualty figures (of course he did) vastly, claiming some 200,000 died in the Dresden bombing. That figure has been reevaluated as being more in line with 20,000 (still an appalling number). 

We face far more serious problems today than arguing over history. 

Sadly, as Professor Mearsheimer notes, several nations have only bad choices in front of them.

Moh Mearsheimer

 

Well that was disturbing.

Civil War review

I quite enjoyed it. 

Well. 

As much as you can 'enjoy' a such harrowing film. 

It focuses on a group of journalists travelling to interview a third-term President (who has obviously chucking out term limits) before 'The Western Powers' of California and Texas topple him. 

It doesn't go into the causes of the conflict. It doesn't spend a lot of time with the families of the journalists.

It doesn't have to.

It's a road trip through hell, told over a couple of days. It gives, for my money, just enough detail about the characters to keep us engaged. How much would I expect to know a person after a short road trip? These are not simple archetypes spouting glib one-liners. They feel more nuanced.

Could they have discussed more personal things? Talked about their childhoods and their dysfunctional families, their personal politics and values, messy relationship history and favourite TV shows? Sure. But it might also have added bloat to a very pared down screenplay.

The cast is all excellent. There was nothing that took me out of the film, although it slumps a little in the middle act (a common problem with a lot of films) but then barrels to a very kinetic ending. 

The main cast is tight, a mere four characters

The journey in Civil War is the thing: not just the physical one to Washington, D.C, but the personal. The young, aspiring war photographer matures over the course of the film under the wing of a cynical old one. They helpfully have her presentation and wardrobe change over the course of the film, in case we missed the point. 

That worked for me. 

The other half is a bit like Heart of Darkness or Apocalypse Now as they travel through an increasingly bizarre and nightmarish America at war with itself. Here Alex Garland could have gone even further, but then, he may not have wanted to make something as surreal as Apocalypse. 

Meaningless destruction and suffering, whatever the cause(s) of the civil war, is the point. That, in my opinion, is why the causes are not elaborated upon. You could also argue that there are a few so-called 'dog whistles' embedded in the script that give you some hints. 

Ultimately, it's open enough for viewers to read what they want into it. 

To me, the film is a powerful warning of what NOT to do. 

The cost of a second American Civil War would be enormous, and Xi and Putin salivate at the thought of it. Foreign troll farms deliberately try to escalate arguments online and sow division with disinformation and incendiary material, with the ultimate goal of turning Americans against themselves. 

Let's hope America does not fall for it.

"Things are going to get worse."

There's no bright light on the horizon, according to Mearsheimer: 

The 'Russia preparing for war with NATO' drumbeat continues

The peachiness peachifies

Russia preparing for war with NATO

At least, it is according to the Institute for the Study of War, which has been covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine from the beginning:

"Several Russian financial, economic, and military indicators suggest that Russia is preparing for a large-scale conventional conflict with NATO, not imminently but likely on a shorter timeline than what some Western analysts have initially posited."

This and other recent, highly disturbing posts cover the Russian move to a wartime economy,  their longer term preparations, and the growing international alarm: 

"Polish President Andrzej Duda emphasized in a March 20 interview with CNBC that Putin is intensifying efforts to shift Russia to a war economy with the intention of being able to attack NATO as early as 2026 or 2027, citing unspecified German research.[7] 

Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen stated on February 9 that new intelligence indicates that Russia may attempt to attack a NATO country within three to five years, an accelerated timeline from NATO’s reported assessment in 2023.[8] 

The timeline for the reconstitution of a significant Russian conventional military threat depends heavily on the financial resources Putin is willing to put against military efforts. In the absence of other explanations for Putin’s apparent preparations to risk damaging his relationship with wealthy Russian clients and in the context of continuing announcements of plans to expand the Russian military considered below, Putin’s attempts to set conditions to stabilize Russia’s economy and finances are most likely part of Russian financial and domestic preparations for a potential future large-scale conflict with NATO and not just for a protracted war in Ukraine."

Issues that derailed Russia's overly ambitious initial invasion are being addressed, and Russia is getting militarily stronger, not weaker. Their tech may not be as advanced as that in The West, but it doesn't need to be: quantity has a quality of its own, a quote often attributed to an earlier Russian (Georgian) potentate, Joseph Stalin (Iosif Dzhugashvili).

Over the last ten years, Russia has meddled in the US and Ukrainian election campaigns, run massive troll farms, and honey trapped American political and industry figures. They have herded refugees across the eastern borders of the EU and Finland to destabilize them. They have buzzed the Baltic States and impinged on their airspace with fighter jets. They have cut underwater communication cables, assassinated dissidents with radioactive elements and poisoned their underwear, targeted apartment blocks with cruise missiles, set up torture chambers and rape rooms in Ukraine, and deported Ukrainian children.

Mearsheimer says Putin has no intention of invading the Baltics, or restoring the Russian Empire. Yet he also said Putin would not invade Ukraine, that he could get everything he wanted from threats and bluster. A couple weeks later, Putin invaded Ukraine. 

Mearsheimer has also said that minority groups in Russia consider themselves Russian and that there is no risk of civil unrest or ethnic conflict. This does not jibe with the exceptionally large security forces Russia employs internally (what are they there to suppress if there is no potential for unrest?), or what I have heard from  various reporters, who have talked about anti-minority riots, the rise of intolerant right wing extremism, and discontent within the Tartar oblasts and the Caucuses (to be fair, the Caucuses have always been that way). 

The Chechens, despite their current collaborationist regime, have not forgotten the brutal oppression inflicted upon them. Sooner or later, Chechnya will attempt to secede again.

So will other ethnic minority dominated oblasts.

Problems may start emerging faster than Putin's thugs can beat them back down.

Being seen by history as a weak war leader who failed to reintegrate former Soviet Ukraine is very likely entirely unacceptable to Putin, and he will risk everything to secure victory. 

If Mearsheimer's right, Ukraine will inevitably be crushed and the US & NATO discredited, but we will not be facing WWIII or further Russian aggression. 

If he's wrong... 

As they say, pick your poison.

"Russia will not stop; Russia can only BE stopped."

–Krišjānis Kariņš, Latvian Foreign Minister

The mutually incompatible universes of Ukraine war pundits

"The first casualty of war is truth."

– Hiram W. Johnson

Popular political pundits are pushing mutually incompatible narratives on the Ukraine war, making it difficult to understand what is really going on. Further complicating matters are active (dis)information operations being conducted by all sides in the conflict, which may feed into, pay for, or undermine pundit commentary.  

 

On one side of the pundit debate is Offensive Realism heavyweight John Mearsheimer and retired US Colonel MacGregor. On the other is… well, pretty much everyone else, including: ISW, former Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb, Timothy Snyder, Peter Zeihan, Ben Hodges, David Petraeus, and Sir Richard Shirreff.

 

Let’s look at MacGregor’s universe first, because it’s the simplest: 

 

MACGREGOR’S UNIVERSE:

• Russia is victorious on all fronts, Ukraine is on the verge of defeat having suffered catastrophic casualties, and will collapse in a matter of days. MacGregor has been saying this since the first week of the war. If he is ever right, it won’t be with any more foresight than a broken clock.

 

MEARSHEIMER’S UNIVERSE

Mearsheimer is a well regarded academic who’s most famous for his book, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. I read this when it first came out and have a good deal of respect for Professor Mearsheimer. Every society has gadflies who go against popular wisdom and the collective narrative. Mearsheimer is one such (albeit quite affable) gadfly. 

In Mearsheimer’s universe:

 

• Spheres of influence are exerted by regional hegemonic powers, and Ukraine, the Baltic States, Finland, and even Poland fall within Russia’s, just as Canada, Mexico, and Cuba fall within the USA’s. If rival powers want to avoid conflict, they should avoid impinging upon a hegemon’s influence sphere. 

 

• The United States should normalize relations with Russia and form an alliance against China; Russia is not a peer competitor to the United States, while China is. 

 

• Alliances with both Ukraine and Israel are political albatrosses which do not advance the geopolitical interests of the USA.

 

• The USA floated accepting Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, which crossed a red line with Russia.

 

• The USA has led Ukraine down the primrose path, holding out membership in NATO and the EU. The USA knew this was unacceptable to Russia and would lead to military conflict and occupation, but did it anyway. 

 

• The CIA orchestrated a coup in Ukraine in 2014 (popularly known as the Maidan Revolution), overthrowing the legitimately elected (Russian puppet) leader Yanukovych, and driving him out of the country. CIA interference directly resulted in the Russian annexation of Crimea and separatists. 

 

• Russia is doing everything it can to avoid civilian casualties, and Western media are misrepresenting what is happening. This is an extraordinary claim, but he offers no support. 

 

• Western media are lying about Ukrainian and Russian military casualties. Russia has up to a 10:1 advantage in artillery, and in a war of attrition, artillery accounts for the vast proportion of battlefield casualties; therefore, Ukraine must be suffering significantly more. This is a good point. 

 

• The USA is using Ukraine to exhaust and bog down the Russian army in an ongoing conflict, but Ukraine is doomed and this will be a serious defeat for The West and damage the USA’s international credibility.

 

• Vladimir Putin is a savvy and well informed leader.

 

• Colonel MacGregor is right; Mearsheimer has also praised Tucker Carlson’s interview with Putin.

 

• Ukraine cannot win a war of attrition against Russia, which has almost four times the population. 

 

• There is a substantial Neo-Nazi presence in Ukraine.

 

• Russian minorities see themselves as Russian and therefore there is no risk of civil unrest or secessionist insurgencies.

 

• There is no risk of Russia attacking the Baltic States, Finland or Moldova and any such warnings are delusional.

 

• Ideally, Ukraine should come to an immediate settlement with Russia and cede territory in order to avoid further destruction.

 

• A settlement is unlikely as neither side is willing to back down.

 

• There is no evidence that Putin wishes to restore the Soviet Union or a Greater Russia, nor any evidence it seeks to occupy all of Ukraine.

 

• Putin was forced into the Ukraine war and did everything possible to avoid it.

 

On the other side is The Institute for Study of War. Let’s take a look at their reality:

 

ISW’S UNIVERSE:

In recent posts, ISW addressed Russian disinformation campaigns, which address several of Mearsheimer’s points. These operations are based on Soviet mathematician Vladimir Lefebvre theory of ‘Reflexive Control’, which uses information operations to frame geopolitical situations, leading enemies to pre-determined decisions in Russia’s favour: 

 

A key example: Putin takes the false assertion that discussions of Ukraine’s NATO accession posed a clear and imminent danger to Russia along with the false assertion that Ukraine is not a real country and builds them into a false conclusion that he was justified in launching a war of conquest.

 

Another assertion: Russia has the right to a self-defined sphere of influence, and, therefore, a right to do whatever it wants to those within this sphere – including invading, killing, raping, and ethnic cleansing – with no repercussions.

 

Further assertions: a) Ukraine cannot win this war; supporting Ukraine is a distraction from ‘real’ US problems; Ukraine will be forced to settle; the United States is at risk of being stuck in another “forever” war; and b) the risks in helping Ukraine defend itself, let alone win, are higher than the risks of failure in Ukraine for the United States - it is too costly, too risky, and that Ukraine is not worth it. 

 

The degree to which Western discourse includes serious consideration of these falsehoods marks the success of long-running Russian information operations.

 

In the ISW universe:

 

• Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is an unprovoked war of aggression. 

 

• Russia deliberately targets civilian homes and infrastructure, hoping to freeze Ukrainians en masse during winters. 

 

• Russia has engaged in widespread rape, torture, and atrocities against civilians. 

 

• Russia has kidnapped and deported Ukrainian children and deported them to Russia.

 

• Russia has conducted sham referendums in occupied territories at gun point and formally annexed Ukrainian oblasts. 

 

• The Maidan Revolution was a Ukrainian led movement to overthrow a Russian imposed puppet government. 

 

• The Ukrainian military with Western support has destroyed nearly 90% of the Russian army that invaded in February 2022 according to US intelligence sources.

 

• A victorious Russian army at the end of this war will be combat experienced and considerably larger than the pre-2022 Russian land forces. 

 

• NATO would be unable to defend against an attack by an experienced post-Ukraine war Russian army with the forces currently in Europe.

 

• “Freezing” the conflict is worse than continuing to help Ukraine fight—that would simply give Russia time and space to prepare for a renewed war to conquer Ukraine and confront NATO.

 

• The current war in Ukraine is not attritional, but ‘positional’: “Positional war is characterized by relatively static frontlines and regular combat that produces little movement, but the aim of such combat is generally either to create forward progress through steady if small advances or to create conditions to restore maneuver to the battlefield.” This was put forward by Former Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi in an article in The Economist.

 

• “Several Russian financial, economic, and military indicators suggest that Russia is preparing for a large-scale conventional conflict with NATO, not imminently but likely on a shorter timeline than what some Western analysts have initially posited.”

 

• "Polish President Andrzej Duda emphasized in a March 20 interview with CNBC that Putin is intensifying efforts to shift Russia to a war economy with the intention of being able to attack NATO as early as 2026 or 2027, citing unspecified German research."

 

• “Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen stated on February 9 that new intelligence indicates that Russia may attempt to attack a NATO country within three to five years, an accelerated timeline from NATO’s reported assessment in 2023."

 

• The timeline for the reconstitution of a significant Russian conventional military threat depends heavily on the financial resources Putin is willing to put against military efforts. In the absence of other explanations for Putin’s apparent preparations to risk damaging his relationship with wealthy Russian clients and in the context of continuing announcements of plans to expand the Russian military considered below, Putin’s attempts to set conditions to stabilize Russia’s economy and finances are most likely part of Russian financial and domestic preparations for a potential future large-scale conflict with NATO and not just for a protracted war in Ukraine."

 

Mearsheimer, according to The Institute, is echoing Kremlin propaganda. Or is it The Institute framing things? Oh, pesky questions!

 

Let’s move on to Zeihan. Peter Zeihan’s made a name for himself, particularly within corporate circles, as The Prophet of Doom, predicting the imminent collapse of the existing globalized world order. His focus is on the intersection of geopolitics, natural resources and demographics.

 

PETER ZEIHAN’S UNIVERSE:

• China is currently undergoing catastrophic demographic collapse and will break apart within ten years.

 

• Russia, which is also experiencing demographic collapse, is trying to plug the gaps around the Great Eurasian Plains in order to secure its periphery with a smaller army.

 

• Russian minorities are out reproducing ethnic Russians, which will give rise to further secessionist movements.

 

• The war in Ukraine will escalate, Russia WILL attack the Baltic States, and a nuclear exchange is practically inevitable.

 

• Globalization was a bribe to bring the world on-side of the United States against the Soviet Empire during The Cold War. Manufacturing went overseas as nations were allowed to trade freely within the US led system. With The Cold War over, the US no longer needs it.

 

• Contrary to popular belief, the US economy is not globalized; much of what is exported abroad goes to Canada and Mexico and exists within the NAFTA system. 

 

• The USA is a net exporter of oil, and is not dependent on the Middle East, but China is. Europe, particularly Germany, was dependent on cheap Russian oil and gas.

 

• The US navy made sealines safe for international just-in-time manufacturing for decades, but it is now contracting around aircraft carrier battlegroups. The USA can no longer field the number of destroyers necessary to keep the oceans safe for commerce. The Houthi attacks in the Red Sea disrupting Suez Canal shipping are just the beginning. 

 

With the possible exception of MacGregor, these are all smart and savvy people. 

 

Who is right, who is wrong?

 

It is important to remember that Russia does not view war as binary: it views war on a spectrum, from disinformation operations to sow chaos and division at one end, and combined arms operations and nuclear weapons at the other. Shoigu and Gerasimov are key figures behind modern Russian low intensity warfare, of viewing Russia as in an ongoing state of war with all her enemies. It's just a question of intensity. 

 

As Sun Tzu once said, the best victory is won without having to fight the battle. Undermine and confuse your enemies instead. 

 

For example, the FSB funded the German green movement in order to turn the population against nuclear power and make German industry dependent on cheap Russian oil and gas; that has put German industry is in a very difficult position. The Germans are bringing horribly inefficient lignite plants back online to meet power demands. Lignite is a form of dirty coal, and far from environmentally friendly.

 

More recently, Medvedev, Putin's frothing-at-the-mouth attack dog, has been threatening to nuke the UK; he also claims that Russia owns the Baltic States and that Poland is merely currently 'occupied' by foreign powers. Naturally, Ukraine also belongs to Russia. His extremism makes Putin look statesmanlike.

 

Russian media have been blaming the UK for the recent terrorist attack outside Moscow. This helps set the information space, portraying NATO as an active belligerent and stoking public outrage, tying into ISW’s assertion that Russia wants to set conditions for an attack on NATO territories in the near future.

 

The Russian state funds faux opposition parties, the better to control them. It seeds the information space with competing narratives, paralyzing populations into confusion and indecision. If you can't tell what the truth is, if it takes a great deal of effort to understand what is really going on, fewer people are going to resist. After all, what are you resisting? Who knows?  

 

Putin is 71, the average Russian male lifespan. He doesn't drink, does judo, and runs around with his shirt off, Captain Kirk style. He can likely last several more years, maybe even a decade. But that's not a lot of time to secure a legacy. 

 

As a big history buff (which I get), he often cites Peter the Great. He also invites comparisons to ole Petey (which I don't get so much). Putin dreams BIG.

 

My bet? Putin wants to take a big swing for history books by retaking not just Ukraine, but the Baltic States.

 

When Russia initially invaded Ukraine, Putin's Belarussian lackey Lukashenko mentioned Russian plans for occupying Moldova. That hasn't come to pass, but it shows that Russian plans were never limited to Ukraine. 

 

Issues that derailed Russia's overly ambitious initial invasion are being addressed, and Russia is getting militarily stronger, not weaker. Their tech isn't as advanced as that in The West, but it doesn't need to be: quantity has a quality of its own.

Dune II review: epically awesome and awesomely epic

"Hey you guys, I found my knife!"

This is one of those rare films that simply must be seen in IMAX.

It's a breathtaking, epic spectacle. 

The art direction alone is worth the price of admission, IMHO.

Visually on par with Lawrence of Arabia and other classics, this is a hyper-serious take on the ttale of a messiah created by a bunch of space nuns, trapped in a neo-feudal nightmare galaxy of murder, intrigue, betrayal and fanaticism. 

If anyone was going to make gigantic mile long sand worms believable, it's Denis Villeneuve. 

Run away!

Dune II is faster paced and more of a roller coaster than the first installment (which proceeded at a rather stately pace) and it kept me hooked from beginning to end, despite being familiar with the books. 

It's a stunning triumph, a visual feast, and the most impressive film I think I've seen in a very long time. In terms of visual impact, it's up there with the original Star Wars, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Matrix, or The Lord of the Rings. It's a little less emotionally affecting than the modern classic LOTR, but still highly enjoyable, immersive, and easily the visual equal. 

Herbert was concerned with how people can be manipulated to believe collective myths (such as ideologies). Ideologies are enormously powerful, capable of uniting millions of separate individuals into a gestalt organism that can accomplish great, or terrible, things. Nation states, empires, religions, political ideologies are essentially collective organisms, and human history is littered with their deeds. 

Dune I and II effectively convey the wastefulness and paranoia of a feudal universe, where every royal is constantly on guard, wary of assassins, while the masses are little more than cannon fodder. Chaff for the gestalt grinders. 

Tinfoil is back in, boys!

The Bene Gesserit genetic experiment to create the ultimate human leader is a crucible through which the Atreides, Harkonen and Corrino must pass. These machinations drive the entire plot, and most of the foreground players are merely pawns of it, causing untold bloodshed and suffering while they play their parts. Why exactly are they trying to create this ultimate ruler? I don’t remember the book providing an answer, but it might be to escape the feudal trap. 

Paul is initially sympathetic, but as he grows in power he finds his actions constrained by the role he must play. The film also states flat out that horrible crimes lie in his future, and the death of billions. 

The script is smart and faithfully brings to screen Frank Herbert's sci-fi classic. There are a few on the nose lines, which might have been mandated (it's a complicated scenario Denis Villeneuve has to set up, executives might have insisted on more clarification); the only other quibble I have is that there were some changes to the story, additions and omissions, that I didn't really understand the reason for, and after awhile the sheer weight and scale of the film can feel a little crushing. Everything here is BIG; even door openings are epic. 

"I hate sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets in everything!"

The acting is top notch. It's not a character film, it's an epic, and it doesn't delve as much into Paul's inner world (for example) as it might, but you'd need 9 hours to bring all the inner life from the books to film. As it is, you get all the information and character context you need to understand what's going on. 

The music is immersive, powerful and compelling; as usual from Hans Zimmer, it also made me wonder if I came out with hearing damage. 

Dave Bautista gets to yell a lot in Dune. And I mean A LOT.

Denis Villeneuve has crafted an epic sci-fi art film in a class of its own. He has an undeniable eye for scale, like Gareth Edwards, and he merges that with top tier material; the production design here–the ships, the costumes, the sets—are as close to perfect as fallible humanity is likely to get. I can't find anything to criticize. They're unique, unlike anything else in sci-fi. 

I can't recommend this film highly enough. Don't wait for it on streaming, see this in the theatre, in IMAX if possible. Take ear plugs as a precaution, it will be LOUD.

Read my face

I can't wait for Dune: Messiah. 

Oh yes: the movie is too long. But all movies these days feel too long to me. 

(Sort of) Russian literature review: Day of the Oprichnik & War with Russia: An Urgent Warning

Day of the Oprichnik 

by Vladimir Sorokin

This was sold to me as a kvass soaked satire of Putin's Russia. I can see some parallels, in the mixture of religion and fascism with an Imperial Czarist face. But it's really more of a parody of General Pyotr Nikolayevich Krasnov (ataman of the Don Cossack Host) 1927 utopian novel Behind the Thistle, in which he posits the return of the Czar.

Everything positive that Krasnov posits is revealed as dysfunctional by Sorokin. The infallible, imperious leader is a petty Machiavellian tyrant. The Oporichniks (based on Ivan the Terrible's secret police) are brutal thugs who rape and murder in the name of both Czar and God. They observe religious rituals and trifles while committing horrific crimes with a clean if twisted conscience. They engage in extensive drug use and sodomy that the church would imprison others for. The book is a litany of hypocrisy, of entitled elites exploiting and oppressing the people in the most amoral fashion while marinating in their own self-aggrandizing piety. 

Technology in this nightmare state is skewed and warped to serve the system, with some extreme high tech and the rest... not so much. Only what is of use to the regime, what keeps it in power, is leveraged. 

It's a good dystopian book, but it's an ugly read, despite the poetic leanings of Sorokin. The florid prose is like dressing on roadkill. 

War with Russia: An Urgent Warning from Senior Military Command 

by General Sir Richard Shirreff 

I picked this book up in the wake of all the articles and hand-wringing about a possible Russian attack on the Baltic States after Russia defeats Ukraine. The author, Sir Richard, is a former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO and showed up on a news video I saw which touched on his book, and its prediction of a Russian invasion of Ukraine (followed by an attack on the Baltics). 

Given the current state of the world, that peaked my interest. The Baltics are NATO members, so Article Five would presumably be invoked should the Russians attack, setting off WWIII. 

Surely an insane scenario, yet one being seriously considered now by people in the know. I wanted to understand why.

War with Russia is filled with more military jargon and acronyms than you can shake a stick at. Yes, the author knows his stuff. No, I did not need to know the calibre and specifications of every weapon. 

This sort of thing is to be expected of a book in the Tom Clancy vein (military gear porn!), with loosely sketched characters, mostly out of central military casting. It does include a variety of political figures, and pointed behind-the-scenes machinations, some of which are no doubt culled from the author's personal experiences. Impractical defense spends, budget cuts, fickle leaders in pursuit of approval ratings, and military decisions driven by photo op opportunity all get a spill of ink. 

The plot unfolds briskly, the action scenes have verisimilitude, and the story is disturbingly believable.

And that's the real point: the narrative trappings are just the sugar coating on the policy paper pill. 

An attack on the Baltic states actually is possible. It is unlikely and would be a huge gamble, but then, Putin looks like more of a poker player, than a chess player, by the day.

Shirreff's posits a lightning strike by Russian combined arms into the Baltics, with paratroopers being dropped in from Narva and supported by armoured columns. The Russian plan is to  present the West with a fait accompli: occupy the Baltics, formally annex them, and declare any attack on Russian territory will result in a nuclear response.

The Baltics are small and their armed forces are tiny; they don't have the ability to stop a determined Russian attack. They can make the occupation unpleasant, but by then it will be too late. 

As the Ukrainians have discovered, it's extremely difficult to root out entrenched Russian troops. The US would not have total air superiority here, unlike in Desert Storm. Invading the Baltics would be enormously costly, and Western European governments might not want to spend lives on a (seemingly) lost cause against a foe that thinks nothing of its own combat casualties.

NATO also requires members unanimously agree to activate Article Five; with Hungary practically a Russian vassal, that's not likely. The larger NATO has gotten, the more unwieldy, slow and bureaucratic it has become. Worse, anything they discuss winds up on Putin's desk within a few hours. 

Putin also ascribes to something called 'Nuclear De-escalation'. The term is not what it seems: if NATO were to launch a major ground attack on the Baltics, or Kaliningrad, Putin would drop a nuke on Warsaw or Berlin. This would so shock Western governments that they would completely back off, and the conflict would turn to negotiated settlement on Russian terms. That's the idea, at any rate. 

Peachy.

Only an inveterate gambler would dare to pull a stunt like this. 

Is Putin that guy?

I'm not sure, and neither it seems are the pundits. Some assert this attack is inevitable, others insist it's delusional nonsense. 

Either way, the doomsday clock is closer to striking than ever before: we're now 90 seconds away, 'at a moment of historic danger'. 

Rather sobering.