Category Archives: Military

September 9, 2021 · 05:53

Lemon of the Century

Yes, you have seen it, we have all seen it in some form, but when was the last time you saw a genuine Lemon? Not to mention a Lemon of the century. You would think it is a near impossible task, but Lockheed Martin, an American company pulled it off. In thee cases it is so much sweeter if the accomplishment is American.

I made a case to sell (as a corporate individual) to sell the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia either the British BAE Typhoon, or the somewhat better match the Chinese Chengdu J-20. Now, this is not on principles, but the US making Saudi embargo after embargo, all whilst it is mere puppet play and there was no direct need to stop the sales, especially as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was under direct attack by Houthi forces directly sponsored from Iran and the people were eager to ignore that fact. So there I was taking a stab at a 3.75% sales commission, and in light of a $11,000,000,000 sales ticket could bank me $412,500,000 over a few years. Now, I know, am I greed driven? Nope! But I am not walking away from such a massive mealticket! 

All that happened and was mentioned before, but now there are more reasons as ABC news gives us. The article ‘F-35 program’s future uncertain owing to design flaws, parts shortages and cost blowouts’ (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-08/f35-program-design-flaws-part-shortages-costs-opinions-divided/100431664) there we see “He said the combat jet currently had almost 900 design flaws, with seven considered critical.” This is given to us via Former US Marine Corps Captain Dan Grazier. So this is not out of thin air, this comes to us by decently informed people and at what point is anyone accepting a lemon with 900 design flaws? We get it, a plane with a current whole of life cost estimate of $2.3 trillion we need to consider that there is a massive flaw in the entire process. It becomes worse when you see and consider the Naval failure called Zumwalt class destroyers. That is two out of three, so now we merely need to add an army failure and the US forces will be 3 for 3. So how often do major projects on these scales fail? There is optionally the second stage where both China and Russia are not afraid for a war with the US, because the US is lacking in functional equipment. They have functioning 5th generation planes. I cannot tell if they are better, merely that they are. And I am am the mouse who loves that 412 million dollar cheese wheel, whether I retire or eat myself to death is all equally similar and there is a customer base who would want something that actually works so overall there is more than one seller and there is a definite buyer, so I am game.

Yet the article also gives us “It said that would grow to 40 per cent of jets grounded by 2030, if the repair backlog didn’t improve” this implies that the US airforce needs to grow by 250% to keep the effectiveness numbers of 2017, that is one hell of an investment. I am not denying what the pilots are saying, that it is a game changer that it will be effective, we get that, but it has 900 flaws, and there are a lot of questions in the background when we consider the seven critical problems. So when we consider the claim “Mr Grazier said the cost per flight hour in the United States was around $36,000” and the math man in me consider that at present there are (unverified numbers) “1,763 F-35As for the USAF, 353 F-35Bs and 67 F-35Cs for the USMC, and 273 F-35Cs for the USN” it would require the DoD $88,416,000 an hour to get it all in the air, in light of the Afghanistan clambake, which lasted 2 decades, count your losses today. Is someone doing the math here (apart from me)? This is a plane with 900 design flaws. So if China (or the United Kingdom) can beat these costs they have a real chance in getting a new customer in their arsenal and it is one that has money, so that part will be the smallest of concerns.

We could go all (overly) marketing and say:

Chinese
Hellbringing
Equalising
Negotiating
Goalseeking
Defence
Unit

But that might be slightly over the top, what matters is that the US has a real problem and, oh, that reminds me. Is that why they pulled out of Afghanistan? 40% of their flying capabilities wasn’t up to it? I know, it is grasping and it is speculation, but I am trying to get my hands on that 3.75% and that makes me a little giddy. With the Zumwalt it was the principle that it didn’t meet its need, it was too expensive and it was ugly as hell. I still hope to test my new stealth anti naval weapon on it, merely because it is just too ugly to see and congress never approved the shells needed to fire these guns, and a stealth ship with a Raytheon solution is just not a stealth ship. And as a $22,500,000,000 failure it is too expensive for such a failure be allowed. Consider that ABC ends the article with “To respect that dependency, we remain laser-focused on continuing to enhance the capability, affordability and availability of the F-35. With the help of partners and customers, I have no doubt we will succeed.” Which is all fair enough. Now consider that 12 nations have committed to ordering, now consider that if 3 leave that group (Singapore being the most interesting one) and China gets Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE on board as well, the stage changes on a global scale at that point. Now reconsider the military power play where we accept “There are developmental issues that come up because it is a very high technology advanced aircraft. Over time, these issues are resolved.” Yet 900 flaws imply that this will not be resolved until 2029, with spare parts and shortages of equipment lasting until an expected 2036. That implies that these players will not have a real effective airforce for well over a decade, so how many nations will get nervous on that premise and how many will consider a change (please do not change to Russian option, as they give me nothing). So in that light is there really nothing to worry about? And that is before we see the other 9 nations with billions invested all for… what for? 

So whilst I have nothing against Lockheed Martin (I really do not), being in the stage where they are now with 900 design flaws is just too weird. Yes we accept that it is a developing project, but design flaws imply that it is not developing, it was wrongly developed and as such the F-35 should still be in an earlier stage, that is until well over 600 flaws (and the 7 critical ones) were resolved ahead of where they are now. 

So here I am, just a man, a (really) poor man, hoping for his 3.75% before he retires and retirement is not that far away. And in all this, I remain optimistic, because I have things to smile at, especially if I get to test my creative sinking idea on the USS Zumwalt. Yes, it is a gasser (in more ways than one). So feel free to agree (or disagree) but when you see something that should be the lemon of the century, would you not shout that from the tallest building? Especially if it was your neighbour who bought the Ford Edsel. So Ford can now relax, Lockheed Martin surpassed their failure with an impressive larger one.

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August 30, 2021 · 19:28

You call that an army?

I was in disbelieve yesterday, I saw information and memo after memo and I was lost, I really was. The media to a larger extent reported on it, the Times had impressive graphics, the BBC used something similar (or a cut version of it) and others followed on these starts (as far as I could tell), yet the larger stage was left behind the writing and that is not an accusation. They reported on a lot. I liked Forbes most, the cold numbers appealed to me. The article (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/08/23/staggering-costs–us-military-equipment-left-behind-in-afghanistan) called ‘Staggering Costs – U.S. Military Equipment Left Behind In Afghanistan’ gives us a lot. The stage is that the Afghan army was better equiped that several NATO nations, the total cost as some sources gave me EXCEEDS $84,000,000,000. This path implies that a small group of people received OVER $4,000,000,000 in bonuses and commissions. Afghanistan was big business and several made a bundle. Now consider that the Afghan army was 5 times the size of the Taliban, with all this hardware and the Taliban ran them over in a week. As I personally see it, a core in the Afghan forces and politicians (with optional exclusion of the former and running like a jackrabbit president of that place) wanted the Taliban back. Consider that me, my lonesome self could do well over twice the damage any Afghan pilot did. 

source: Forbes

I would opt for the Huey (with Gatlings), I know the Blackhawk is better but it is less manoeuvrable than a Huey and it has about 200 more options on the instrument panel and with my limited flying skills, less is definitely a lot more. And it gets to be a more questionable setting when you see 

source: Forbes

And you consider how many Taliban would not make it with up to 300,000 rifles and 25,000 grenade launchers as well as 2,000 mortars. And the dent in the Taliban was close to non existent and all these weapons are now in Taliban hands, they can now put a serious dent in their opponents. They are now armed to the teeth and no one is asking the harder questions, where the  Eff You See Kay was the CIA? The Taliban ‘inherited’ over 700,000 pieces of equipment and the Afghan army did close to nothing, even as they outnumbered their ‘enemy’ five to one. 

Forbes also gives us “The U.S. provided an estimated $83 billion worth of training and equipment to Afghan security forces since 2001. This year, alone, the U.S. military aid to Afghan forces was $3 billion” and in all this there is a stage for much harder questions and that falls on the politicians, not the military, they were handed a set of orders that should never have been allowed and the media is not asking those questions, are they? Yet Forbes also gives us “Not helping transparency, the Biden Administration is now hiding key audits on Afghan military equipment. This week, our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com reposted two key reports on the U.S. war chest of military gear in Afghanistan that had disappeared from federal websites”, I am not willing to push the blame on the Biden administration without knowing all the players. A small group made billions, they have access to lobbyists and there is an unnamed DoD link in all this, hiding information in plain sight is what they are good at and hiding a link (at https://www.gao.gov/) can be done by any number of people, evidence is key and there is none, as such (even as I am Republican in mind) blaming an administration with that lack this early in their administration seems pointless. The GAO-17-667R Afghanistan Security report that Forbes also had gives light to a few items, but there is a lot that is missing and I wonder if the CIA will hide behind national security for handing over 700,000 pieces of military hardware to the Taliban. And make sure that you take notice of a small footnote. We are given “All equipment described in encs. I-VI is fully U.S. funded, with the exception of communications equipment in fiscal years 2003 and 2004”, so I reckon that the Taliban will not be merely killing US forces, it will killing them using US funded hardware. Are you awake now?

It is also worth noting that there is a chart in the report that shows that the Afghan police got well over 50% of most hardware that the Afghan army received. A stage we need to be aware of. A stage where the army was not alone in this failure and it is a massive failure when you have all this hardware and well over 500% the personnel that you get taken over by a group of insurrectionists. The media (not placing blame here) is not asking the right questions, they aren’t asking that much. The few that did (BBC, the Guardian, the Times, Forbes) are not asking on who got commissions and that is the $4 billion question, I also reckon that the CIA in that area, who got a huge increase in funds and budget dropped the ball, I am actually wondering if they know what a ball looks like, so I am including it at the bottom.

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August 30, 2021 · 02:20

The Iranian play

There were two stories out there. In this for now I am ignoring the Afghanistani part, as the BBC gave me a nice idea. They actually have a nice uncut gemstone in their possession and I need additional time (as I have only one set of eyes). So we look at the Yemeni setting where the media is happy to report on Houthi attacks, but there is a lull in this. The Yemeni do not have the required weaponry, implying that Iran is still driving this stage of concern. It is Al-Jazeera who gave us (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/29/several-killed-in-houthi-attack-on-yemens-largest-base) ‘Dozens killed in Houthi attack on Yemen’s largest base’ the start is nominal, but it is “At least 30 soldiers killed and 60 wounded in rebel attacks on major military base housing Saudi-led forces” that is the concern, the base is in most SW art of Yemen in Lahij. The issue with me is “armed drones and ballistic missiles”. You see, the missiles are one thing, there are too many players who want to grease their pockets, so until forensic evidence comes through, it is anyones guess where the missiles are from, but the armed drones, they are the problem. Yemen has no infrastructure for this, Iran is the only player willing to supply Houthi forces and that is the problem. You see as Iran pushes and pushes and both the US and UK are hopelessly stuck in their ego’s Saudi Arabia stands alone against Iran. Yes, the US and UK make claims, but they have backed down at economic sanctions, even though they are aware that this step will never work and with China and Russia making deals with Iran, Iranian funds keep on going towards Houthi forces. As far as I can tell, from the western media only Reuters looked at this, the Guardian, BBC, Washington Post, LA Times and many others ignored it, isn’t it nice for the media to largely avoid having to mention Iran in a negative light? What do those take holders have to care about (apart from their wallets)? Yet that is not fair on my side either with all the Afghanistan issues, I get that, but this has happened a few times before and it is bothering me, the transgressions by Houthi forces and by Iran are passed by. In this particular instance the Houthi forces attacked a military target, and it might not be nice, but I need to stay fair. In other instances they knowingly and blatantly attacked CIVILIAN targets and that was ignored as well. 

So when we see another threat in the light of ‘Iran vows to respond in kind if Biden targets nuclear program’, I wonder if I should sell my solution to meltdown their reactor to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, seems fair enough. I reckon that suddenly the western media will be all over the KSA for this, so I need to mull this over and there is the additional issues that it is still a concept, I never felt good about people selling concepts, not in IT and not anywhere else either. I reckon it makes me a service minded person, not a sales minded person. 

Yet it also feeds another sentiment. When the people really on one side, Iran might finally consider that they no longer have option, other than end up being the courtesan to either Russia or China. If they feel happy about that, so be it. As I see it, we need to start giving open support towards the KSA (or openly hostile towards Iran), either will do. But staying on the fence is no longer acceptable. If we do not do this, we need to equally silence the voices of the UN and HRW on Yemeni issues, is that not fair? If we do nothing, we need not look at articles in the news on what happens there either, those articles seem like empty reminders of what sitting on ones hands looks like. 

I get it, some will see this as an overreaction, but so far how many Houthi attacks were there on CIVILIAN targets in the last year alone? How many were reported on? Who reported them? When you tally these elements and you see how one-sided the media has become it might dawn on you that silence was never golden and it is no longer acceptable. And I get it, some will state that they support the Houthis. I get that, but do that loudly to and when Saudi Arabia closes the oil-tap, consider that you enabled that step, and it is fair, if we need not consider our non-allies, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has the same right, but I reckon that the stakeholders in certain areas are really desperate to avoid that step, it would cost them a bundle and they like feeling rich in the wallet and poor in the soul. It is a state of mind some people can live with. 

I never did and yes, I have supported the wrong people in the past, but I was always direct, people always knew where I stood, it is time to set open policies all over the middle east, we have that right, and I believe we are running out of options. 

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August 29, 2021 · 09:08

Thames based tears

To be honest, I needed a few moments. It happens to us all, we all get overwhelmed by anger and frustrations at times and I am no different. This all started a few hours back when the Guardian gave us ‘Revealed: Foreign Office ignored frantic pleas to help Afghans’, now this happens, and I get it, the Afghans are optionally worried about things, it is the second part “Thousands of urgent messages from MPs and charities had not been read by the end of the UK evacuation from Afghanistan” as well as “including cases flagged by government ministers”, in this my first personal response was “Are you out of your fucking mind?” Let’s be clear, the entire Taliban debacle started in 2001, 20 years ago. And instead of eradicating the Taliban, a sit on your hands tactic was deployed. 

Consider the quote “The Taliban are a revolutionary movement, deeply opposed to the Afghan tribal system and focused on the rebuilding of the Islamic Emirate. Their propaganda and intelligence are efficient, and the local autonomy of their commanders in the field allow them both flexibility and cohesion. They have made clever use of ethnic tensions, the rejection of foreign forces by the Afghan people, and the lack of local administration to gain support in the population.” We get this from the Carnegie endowment for international peace, the author is Gilles Dorronsoro and it was published well over a DECADE ago, in 2008 (at https://carnegieendowment.org/files/taliban_winning_strategy.pdf). As such the US and UK had a decade to respond and to alter their tactics. So if people get angry over “Thousands of urgent messages from MPs” it will be mostly acceptable. In addition, can we get a list of those ‘thousands’ of whiners? (Charities are permitted to whine) Afghanistan was a joke from start to finish, a joke that came with a multi billion dollar invoice. Instead of eradicating, the US and others started to pussyfoot there and it merely ended up being the foundation of their casualty list. 

And in all this, Afghanistan is almost three times the size of the United Kingdom and the Taliban took it bak in less than a week, and no one is asking questions? The Afghan army got overrun like nothing you have ever seen, whilst they were 5 times the size of the Taliban and it remains to be seen how many of those Afghan troops changed sides. So whilst we start crying “Oh, what a poor people” there is a much larger concern and it has not been dealt with, not for almost two decades. And whilst the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/28/revealed-foreign-office-ignored-pleas-help-afghans-mps-evacuation) gives us “However, amid accusations of government incompetence over elements of the evacuation effort, the Observer has seen evidence that an official email address used to collate potential Afghan cases from MPs and others regularly contained 5,000 unread emails throughout the week”, we get additional questions on who monitors that email address and can we get a tally of who mailed it, how often and whether they were MP, Charity or other? And more interesting is a fact not shown here, and that is why I want the names of those MP’s. You see this was going to happen, and it was clear that this was going to happen in 2020, early 2020. So whilst we tend to know that MP’s leave a lot until the 11th hour, starting certain steps like evacuating translators would have been prudent almost 26 weeks ago,  so how many were evacuated? And this in on the UK, the US has a much larger mess to deal with. So as we start considering a number of events, consider that the list of Monday morning quarterbacks (another name-tag for some mp’s) needs to be set next to a list of ACTUAL actions they started to get people out of harms way. That is all before we start digging into the reach of ISIS-K and how in that mess they got a person loaded with explosives into Kabul and right towards the airport. In all this when we see the mess on several fronts too many issues are outstanding and not considered, a side the Guardian and the Observer are seemingly void on. I use seemingly because it implies that I read everything these two are bringing and I never did that part. 

So whilst you consider that poor poor tactic, take time and make a list of all actual and factual actions over the last 20 years and how Afghanistan got overrun again in a week by the Taliban, the allied forces never had that option, so why not? For those who oppose me in this (an always valid side), go cry me a river and when it comes to the size of the Thames, let’s compare notes, you might not like the result but if that wakes you up, it is fine by me. 

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August 21, 2021 · 17:08

Agrestally Ignorant

It took a day, I had to ponder several things here. I was drawn to an article by the associated press. The article (at https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-algorithm-technology-police-crime-7e3345485aa668c97606d4b54f9b6220) gives us ‘How AI-powered tech landed man in jail with scant evidence’. Here we have two issues, the first is that AI does not (yet) exist, the second is that AI evidence should not be valid, the rules of evidence are quite clear, so when I see “it came from a clip of noiseless security video showing a car driving through an intersection, and a loud bang picked up by a network of surveillance microphones. Prosecutors said technology powered by a secret algorithm that analysed noises detected by the sensors indicated Williams shot and killed the man.” So for all intent, we might think that the prosecutor was really clever, but as I personally see it, the man needs to be taken behind a bicycle shed and shot in the head, but that is merely my personal view. We might give value to “a secret algorithm”, yet that is merely an approach to not scrutinise the evidence. I have no idea how his defence faltered, but it did. 

In Intelligence analyses there are two parts. The first is that every source is unique and as long as they are NOT connected, they can NEVER support one another. Why is that? It comes from a much older setting which is found in “Trust, but verify!” We can accept all kinds of facts handed to us, but verification is where it is at. Verification gives us the larger setting that this source makes a claim and we verified that claim via other sources and we get the same results and conclusions. This is also why actual news needs collaboration from multiple sources, and it is why credibility of these sources matter. It is why witnesses are tested, cleared and processed to give the other party no option to diminish their testimony. It is so for a person and it needs to be more for any device. And whomever relies on “a secret algorithm”, is soon regarded as non-essential weight to any office. You see, the algorithm was programmed. I am not stating that the person was wrong, or did a bad job, but who knows what the brief for the algorithm was? That brief also gives the programmer more (or less) freedom of programming. Then we get the installation and testing of the microphones, it they are out by half an inch, there is every chance that they picked up another shot, perhaps even a muffler bang, who tested that part? Who looked at the map (a GIS speciality) and considered the noise and the event? Now consider for a moment the byline “ShotSpotter equipment overlooks the intersection of South Stony Island Avenue and East 63rd Street in Chicago on Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2021.”, this is all installed on a light-pole, so if any car ever hit it, the pole will be off by several degrees, did the software see that, was that ever considered? 

There is a lot more, it is seen in the part “The company’s methods for identifying gunshots aren’t always guided solely by the technology. ShotSpotter employees can, and often do, change the source of sounds picked up by its sensors after listening to audio recordings, introducing the possibility of human bias into the gunshot detection algorithm. Employees can and do modify the location or number of shots fired at the request of police, according to court records. And in the past, city dispatchers or police themselves could also make some of these changes”, so what were the raw collections, what was the distance to the event and what are the specifics of the so called “noiseless security video”, there are a truckload of issues and that is why verification is essential. This is all before we get to “an Associated Press investigation, based on a review of thousands of internal documents, emails, presentations and confidential contracts, along with interviews with dozens of public defenders in communities where ShotSpotter has been deployed, has identified a number of serious flaws in using ShotSpotter as evidentiary support for prosecutors”, it is merely the top of the iceberg, when we consider “classify 14 million sounds in its proprietary database as gunshots or something else”, you think this is trivial, but it is not. You see, this is in part the evidence, 14,000,000 sounds seems impressive, but it is not. You see there are an estimated 72 million handguns in existence, I have no included rifles and other two handed weapons, and if the database of sounds includes mufflers and tire blowouts, that lit is rather slim compared to what is out there. I can see close to half a dozen issues straight of the hockey-stick and whilst people are considering where the puck is (in Pittsburg they call it a biscuit). 

So why the hockey reference? The puck moves fast, really fast and plenty of people watching the game lose sight of it in a match, this is no different. Two sources, not connected and well over 50% unverified, how could this man be found guilty? I also have some serious questions for the judge there, but I wonder if it was on his plate, it was on the plate of the prosecutor and as I personally see it, that evidence had no case in court, except perhaps a court officiated by the Marx brothers. 

SZo when we get to the end and we see “ShotSpotter CEO Ralph Clark declined to discuss specifics about their use of artificial intelligence, saying it’s “not really relevant.”” Someone needs to take that horse and coach it to the side of the road, what some call AI, is merely machine learning, optionally deeper learning and it makes all the difference. With the amount of human interference (interaction) on the track from the microphone to the court room, those relying on AI are hoping to avoid the setting of bias and programming error, even source comparison errors. I reckon this Ralph Clark is on a slippery slope and with Michael Williams now on the stage where he can claim damages, a decent 8 or 9 figure damage, the 200 cases might represent a massive payout from the Government making the rules of evidence a clear debating point for whomever takes this to the next level and when the government loses a second or third trial it will be up to the Ralph Clark’s of the world to set up a defence perimeter, but I reckon it needs to be a lot more than “a secret algorithm” because at that stage such a defence will not hold water, not by a long shot. It would also help by not hiding behind AI when it cannot be AI, but that is merely a personal observation.

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August 18, 2021 · 23:02

As the pie shrinks

Yes, we all see it, we all notice it to some extent, but that is not a given that what we see is complete. As I personally see it, the stage is one one hand seen in ‘UK defence giant Ultra agrees to £2.6bn Cobham takeover’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58228657)

where we see it is not the first caper, Both Ultra Electronics and Meggitt are now US owned. So whilst we are sussed to sleep with ““safeguarding and supporting the UK’s national security” including national security clearance arrangements”, supported by “It has also pledged to protect existing and create new UK manufacturing and engineering jobs, and to increase investment in research and development (R&D) in the UK” some people will hope you ignore the larger picture, and a lot of you will. You see there is more to this and if someone did not notice the total invoice of £8.9B the American were happy to pay, consider that they need to get that money back and then some. They will keep to the letter of the agreement, which is anyones guess as it involves National security and no one (except for a really small few) will get to see it. 

What we see ignored is not what is done, but what it enables the US firms to do. You see products are phased out all the time, but now the Americans can phase out the low margin articles at their own speed, in more than a few cases 3-5 years sooner, giving the UK all kinds of headaches and the logistics of it as well as existing inventory will not be the shortest list there. There is an upside to the American setting, they get to call the needs and the make of a lot of articles to the largest degree. 

So, let’s create a fictive example. Consider that the UK Navy has all its operational and tactical stations record on a betamax tape, it gives the admiralty a good show of who and what is performing and what is not, it is standard operational practice. The Americans have a VHS alternative, but in the end it does the same thing. The UK took Betamax as it has the highest quality and they had no local alternative, the US took VHS because it is American. This is not new or unique, most nations have this. To give an example, the Dutch maker Tulip computers would not exist in the 90’s if that rule was not in place. So now consider that 3M buys the UK firm and now it can over 2-3 years phase out Betamax. Now we see a new stage, the UK admiralty will have to upgrade ALL the recorders and players in the ENTIRE Navy. 

The UK will over time face this. I personally see it as a given setting. Now consider these are not recorders and players, but Goalkeepers, Gatlings, and other parts. 

Now also (from the Ultra Group website) the optional stage of “Many nuclear facilities across the world are facing the rising challenge of replacing or refurbishing outdated and obsolete sensors and transmitters. Ultra’s advanced ageing and obsolescence technology transforms nuclear power plants and ensures economical long-term operation.” And consider the outdated (or soon to be) sensors in Nuclear submarines and other vessels, that is just the start, so over the next 10-15 years the UK will get an overhauled Navy, but on the time schedule and overspending of the USA. So in what universe was this allowed? I get it, there is a larger playing field, but now that field is decided on US needs and as their logistical stage changes, so much the UK or find another solution. Now, the UK budget cannot simply cut defence, it is adjusted for the American format and it will see large amounts of funds go to America. Or in another setting, we will see that a bullet normally costs 0.10, the making is 0.07, so the stage is 0.03 per bullets taxed. In the new setting we see 0.01 per bullet on paper, 70% of 0.09 goes to the USA as contribution (0.063) and the income per bullet is taxed at 0.027, which is now at a loss, so no taxation there. Moreover there would be a massive tax deduction, so that is one place to go I reckon and this is not a fictive setting, this has happened before and it gets to be better when the list is not ‘bullet’, but an amalgamation of all kinds of ‘perishable hardware’ a totalised invoice, which is much harder to tinker with. Yes as I see it for the Americans it is a very nice investment that will pay back well over 200% before year three is out. And as they are interacting with other players, the massive profits that usually serves the internal good of the UK will now go to America, so who approved all this?

Time for you to find out, have a great day!

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August 17, 2021 · 02:31

The stupidity of catering

Catering is a double sided coin, there is a plus side and there is a negative side. In this there are to problems with that equation, in the first these are not sides of the same coin, they are two coins, one is larger than the other and as such we see the reflective setting change. Consider two coins, like a dime and a dollar, or a pence and a pound. Now consider that they both have heads and tails, you can choice one or the other and you think that the biggest one is your gain, but that would be wrong, it is the smaller one and the other side of the larger coin is the headway and losses you make and they tend to be larger. It is the price of catering. Like the stupid manager with dollar shaped pupils, they see revenue, but they do not recognise cost, it is part of another branch of their company, so they sell and dump all the support to the services side, in some cases (what I personally witnessed) selling things that will not work. It was their revenue and their bonus. After which they will suddenly become helpful and let their services department solve it all, making sure that delays are set in motion so that the 90 day threshold is passed and then whatever is paid back will not affect their bonus. The stupidity of catering is always one sided. Even me, I cater to me, I admit that and I have no issues with catering to me, but I will remain fair. I will not sell what will not work, I will not cater to the impossible. And that is the setting we see today, catering to the impossible.

The news (at https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/8/16/the-us-the-taliban-and-the-stunning-defeat-in) gives us “The Taliban victory is a major humiliation for the US”, it is not a weird consideration and there have been like mind voices in the past. I myself voiced issues with inactivity as early as 2013 and 2014, yet the Americans made noise that they knew better and now we see another stage. A stage that the media is ignoring. Yes they give their ‘click bitch’ emotional setting, but the larger stage that Al Jazeera hints at with “It was expected, yes, but not so rapidly, so victoriously, so humiliatingly”. The issues is troops and material, as I voiced the Comanche approach (an American approach no less) well over half a decade ago, the Americans catered to stakeholders and set on a perch. They should have taken a page out of the book of Quanah Parker who gave them hell in the late 1800’s (around 1870), that would have been a way to deal with the Taliban, but they decided to sit on a perch and halt any action and now we see the other side of that coin, the Taliban overran nearly all of Afghanistan in less than a week, they had the troops, they had the hardware and no one had a clue.

Now as we see Kabul being overrun, we suddenly get ‘Afghan President Ashraf Ghani flees Kabul to ‘prevent bloodshed’’ (I personally think he ran for his life caring only for self, but that might be merely my thought). There is also ‘Afghans Need a Humanitarian Intervention Right Now’, yet if you believe that this will happen you are quite crazy. I find the call by Micheál Martin calling ‘calls on Taliban to respect humanitarian law’ and this is politics? The loser in a war does not get to make demands, that has been a set result long before the Americans held that clambake from 19 Apr 1775 to 3 Sept 1783. The Dutch had a picnic opposing the Spanish in the years from 1566 to 1609, as such, I have no idea what will happen in Afghanistan, but it will not be pretty, that much I feel certain about. You see ABC news gave the people 8 hours ago ‘Who are the Taliban and what do they want?’, the did not go into any part of the folly that allowed Afghanistan to be overrun so fast. And the people in the media are not asking that question, not the Democrats, not the Republicans, and as I personally see it both sides catered to stakeholders and the maximisation of war revenue which to the largest degree gave the victory to the Taliban. When you consider the projects that USAID finished in Afghanistan, when you consider the costs and who got paid? How were they paid? A group that can overthrow a nation in a week and we need to consider “USAID completed the construction of three generation plants in 2009, 2016, and 2019 and is constructing three solar power plants and a wind farm that will add 110 megawatts of power to the national power grid” and those are merely the highlights. 

So what will happen next?
That is actually the question that is harder to answer, because it depends on the Taliban and not on the politicians that make claims that there are options and that they are working on this. Because that will be something that is so far from the truth it will become laughable. And it gets to be worse than this, you see the ‘allied’ forces abandoned their translators, the world is seeing that so any encounter where translators are needed it will be on the US forces to find them and secure them beforehand, a much larger tactical advantage then they are considering. 

A stage that might seem to be evolving, but that would be wrong, the larger stage is not that they merely lost, it is that the intelligence services in that region had seemingly no clear insight into their opponents and their resolve, their size and the materials available to them. Afghanistan is 270% of the UK and it got overrun in a week, is anyone waking up to these numbers? The afghan military was useless and their weapons pointless, the same might be said for the departing allies the Afghan army had, as such we see defeat in three ways and the media is not picking up on that, how weird?

The Guardian gives us “The Taliban have 80,000 troops in comparison with a nominal 300,699 serving the Afghan government”, this now implies that the Taliban went up against an army almost 400% their size and still overtook Afghanistan in a week, a cause for alarm and a cause for concern, so when we see ‘The world must not look away as the Taliban sexually enslaves women and girls’ we see that they too forget that to the victor go the spoils, all the spoils. England learned that lesson the hard way, The Dutch taught the Spanish and the Indonesians taught the Dutch, it was an easy lesson and history is filled with examples and the biggest lesson? These winners did not sit on a perch, it never ever works. 

As such the largest station of lessons is about to unleash and it will be worse, because now the Taliban will cry for their right to vaccines, so which nation will ingratiate themselves by providing vaccines? I reckon we will know a lot more when we get to the next weekend when we can sit on our own perches again, preparing for that Monday morning game as a quarterback.

And the Afghan people? It seems to me that the stakeholders will not care, it is not part of their spreadsheet.

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August 9, 2021 · 22:24

Operation Hazen Ames

It is night, Michael Weatherly is being casual, he is making small talk with another person. He explains that there is no need for the one exit to be watched. He closes the reinforced door that had the room with the information he needed. He then trips the alarm, turns around to the mirrored wall and pulls away the table, there is one screw. He unscrews it and pulls out the screw connected to an umbrella plug, the wall comes down. He clicks the other side open and points to the partner to get through. They go through and as he closes the initial mirror wall, the magnets in the table and wall push the table back in place. The umbrella plug is glued to the screw, it now operates as a screwdriver, Michael attaches something to the screw, he then click pushes the second wall back into place, the magnets hold it firm. They moved through an unmonitored small corridor and enter a supply room at the end is a rack with goods, he clicks on a button and the rack moves up a few millimetres, the wheels are now down, he moves the rack and signs the partner to quickly goes through. The moves through and there is a small food elevator there. He closes the wall and pulls two wires to set the rack back where it was, he had 10 seconds left, he can hear people running towards the place they had just left. They enter the food elevator and quietly opens the back panel, he goes through, the partner follows, he closes the elevator door and the back panel, then presses a button. The food elevator moves quietly down. 

For me it is easy to explain why the person is Michael Weatherly. I have been re-watching 12 seasons of NCIS during the lockdown the last two weeks. The issue is that this is part of a spy story, but not one you would expect. You see, this situation happened, it was a CIA operation, one of many and the story is not the common parts of the TV series, this series is not NCIS or Bull (I never saw Bull). The setting is that the TV series and episodes are a tell tale to the foreign governments to show them how they were transgressed upon and the TV episodes have fake names (as any series does) with a reference to an anagram to the operation. Someone decided to turncoat the CIA and uses the methods to make money on the side, from the studios as well as the extra checks from the governments he is supplying the evidence to, a nice little operation.

Yet the setting on TV series, as we see the use of ‘clever’ terrorists, there is a second fear, not that the opposition is more clever than the terrorists. It is that greed driven elements see their option clear AFTER the operation, not merely endangering what comes next, but giving away the past endangering more as well. It was the setting for an episode of any crime and spy driven series, yet I have no idea why the idea sparked into my mind. Whether it is about double agents, self turned greed driven agents or another kind, we are (through the Art of War) confronted with 5 types of spies. 

Local spies
Inward spies
Converted spies
Doomed spies
Surviving spies


The Art of war teaches us that if all five types are used it is impossible to discover the secret system, but as said the old days did not consider the greed driven logistics that we see today. You can read the Art of War to see and learn about the 5 types, yet the setting is altered in todays espionage. We have minders, archivists and now as one turns the colour of his shield, there is a larger danger that it turns Local spies into Doomed spies, a game changer many are not able to deal with. In any operation the local spy is the anchor, a barge without an anchor can move from the shadows into the floodlights of the other player. Am I right? Am I imagining (or fantasising) this? It is but a dream, yet in this we also find the larger stage of what matters. Even though von Clausewitz gives us that mot intelligence is false, there is a consideration that he considered himself a gentleman and as such espionage was beneath him and it was never considered a valid form of warfare. Sun Tsu is much more relevant, he saw espionage as a valid tool and his approach to any tool n hist setting to war is how to use tools the most efficiently. The concern he had for spies is like all other tools, if it protects the homeland, that is how we use it and in that era the general and his administrator were dedicated to the land they protect. In todays situation the logistics of war is on a sliding scope of what comes next and as such the undervalued and the discarded are drawn to whatever pays for a little better lifestyle than they are set to have, and they will use what is at their disposal, as such it is the archivist and the administrator that become the weakest link in a spy system. A situation that no movie or TV series has looked at. With all the thousands of episodes and hundreds of movies, I casually found a vulnerable unexplored link, yay me!

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July 30, 2021 · 01:53

In retrospect

I (for the most) react to facts, as I do now, but the results are not anticipated new facts, what comes next is pure speculation, no matter how correct I think I am, it is speculation and that needs to be said up front. Even as I start now, my mind is racing through speculative ideas and options in other realms (science realms no less), but I digress. The thoughts started with a Reuter article called ‘Analysis: Biden’s COVID-19 strategy thwarted by anti-vaxxers, Delta variant’, the article (at https://www.reuters.com/world/us/bidens-covid-19-strategy-thwarted-by-anti-vaxxers-delta-variant-2021-07-29/) gives us “Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccinologist and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, said the Biden administration’s acknowledgement of the “terrible impact” of the anti-vaccine movement was important, but he said the government could do more. “Anti-science is arguably one of the leading killers of the American people, and yet we don’t … treat it as such. We don’t give it the same stature as global terrorism and nuclear proliferation and cyber attacks,” he said”, it might be a mere quote, it might be the paraphrasing from the article writer, which is not a negative view, but it got me thinking. When we see the anti-vaxxer movements in the US and EU, they are uncannily effective, they are almost too effective. For the most and proven since the 90’s, the anti-vaxxers are either religiously inclined like the Dutch people in Giethorn (their ‘sort of’ version of Amish) or loons (often people who are one shade away from being absolutely bug-nuts). In the first, these people are driven and they are also self isolationists, it is merely about them and their community, it makes them a danger to themselves, not to others. The second group is a danger to all, but often so stupid they merely hit other stupid people. These anti-vaxxers are driven, not merely by intelligent people, no, they are driven like they are terrorist tools, like biological DOS agents and they are growing. These people are not accepting any scientific evidence, they forward non-scientific papers as ‘their’ evidence and they are not merely more effective, they are almost centrally driven by a similar source. 

In the UK the Guardian is giving visibility to Kate Shemirani, in the USA we see Alabama Curt Carpenter and the list grows. Someone is somehow fuelling this, yes this is speculative and this is not merely the power of social media, someone had months to prepare the weaker minded and target them in a direction, limelight seeking nobodies all wanting their limelight with as large as an audience as possible. The evidence is not clear and as such this is speculation, yet consider the timelines of each of these Anti-vaxxers, what their audience was a year ago and each month after that. This goes beyond buying likes on places like Facebook. Some people are fuelling these ‘bright’ illumination spots and they are not done, even as they are retracting their ‘assistance’ there is still a digital footprint and it is now diminishing. Yes, I admit upfront that my view is speculative, but my speculation fits the profile, are the US and the EU under attack from bio-terrorists? You might think that they are not the same, but there you would be wrong. In this I grasp back to a writing from 2012 called ‘A Proposed Universal Medical and Public Health Definition of Terrorism’. Here we see “We propose the following universal medical and public definition of terrorism: The intentional use of violence — real or threatened — against one or more non-combatants and/or those services essential for or protective of their health, resulting in adverse health effects in those immediately affected and their community, ranging from a loss of well-being or security to injury, illness, or death”, in this, if even one of my speculations are proven, these anti-vaxxers become complicit in acts of terrorism. Did you even consider that? Now, there is a dangerous fence. I am not debating THEIR right to be anti vaccinated. If they die, they only have themselves to thank, just like Curt Carpenter. Yet by attacking science by non-science and debunked non-facts, the setting changes and that is where we are now. What should have been a straight path to recovery is now a much larger issue. The delay is not on President Biden, and now that we can optionally see that the US is yet again under terrorist attack his priorities need to change, attacking big-tech is futile and counter productive, the laws needs adjusting free speech, it needs to be validated by accountability. 

And for the love of god, can some well trained data analyst please take a look at the timeline of these anti-vaxxers? I think it is time to look at timelines here and that is when my brain went into some sort of overdrive. It goes back when I designed an intrusion system that stayed one hop away from a router table between two points and to infect one of the routers to duplicate packages from that router on that path, one infection tended to not be enough, 2-3 infections needed to be made so that the traffic on that route between two points could be intercepted, I called it the Hop+1 solution, I came up with it whilst considering the non-Korean Sony hack. That  thought drove me to think of an approach to find the links. In the first we most likely need to find on where and when they accessed the dark web, then we see another part, because if we can find their access, we can optionally see others too, when we have that list and we can correlate it to other anti-vaxxers we have an optional pattern for action. No matter how this is seen it will be staged towards my speculation, something that needs proof, proof is required to give validity to actions that follow. I believe that I am correct, but I admit that it is a speculative push in a path towards thinking something is what I personally think it is, not a path towards evidence, evidence needs to be found and the evidence that is made to fit the solution, is no evidence, it is like stating that there is a linear relationship when you only have two plot points. A pattern of evidence is required, it is always about the patterns. 

So when I look at the ‘in retrospect’ part, I am wondering when the connections were there in the early stages and I also wonder why the others are not on that path yet (or seemingly yet). The media is only partly to blame, yes they give limelight, but that was their job from the early days, like the people exploiting Google cookies, the media can be exploited too, seeking the limelight is not a crime, but in conjunction with a terrorist agenda we are on new shaky grounds, and that is the problem, any law eagerly over-quick created is pointless whilst inaction is useless, caught between two rocks whilst the floor is not lava it is the ever exploiting media, exploiting for clicks, for visibility and circulation, whilst calling it ‘the people have a right to know’. This has the option of heading into a really bad direction soon enough. Will it? I have absolutely no idea.

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July 28, 2021 · 01:42

Retry or retrial?

It is time to revisit a few issues, actually one issue and a whole lot connected to it. To start, I decided to go with The Verge, it has its ducks decently in a row, the article ‘NSO’s Pegasus spyware: here’s what we know’ is the best of them all, they also make reference to a lot of articles, and they have a decent line. The article (at https://www.theverge.com/22589942/nso-group-pegasus-project-amnesty-investigation-journalists-activists-targeted) is best if you read it yourself. Mitchell Clark did a good job, and as you have read the article, I can make a few jumps. The important jump gets us to the Washington Post (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2021/nso-spyware-pegasus-cellphones/). This came from the link in “However, much of the reporting centers around a list containing 50,000 phone numbers” and when we seek the Washington Post article, we get “reporters were able to identify more than 1,000 people spanning more than 50 countries through research and interviews on four continents: several Arab royal family members, at least 65 business executives, 85 human rights activists, 189 journalists, and more than 600 politicians and government officials — including cabinet ministers, diplomats, and military and security officers. The numbers of several heads of state and prime ministers also appeared on the list”, no evidence mind you, merely statement and boasting. I call it boast, because we see there that the Amnesty’s Security Lab examined 67 smartphones all whilst close to 50% had an inconclusive test. If this is 67, what about the other 49,933? So when we get to “NSO chief executive Shalev Hulio expressed concern in a phone interview with The Post about some of the details he had read in Pegasus Project stories Sunday, while continuing to dispute that the list of more than 50,000 phone numbers had anything to do with NSO or Pegasus”, my support goes to Shalev Hulio. The Washington Post has a declining amount of credibility and this does not help. From my point of view, I would have made a dashboard based on the 50,000 numbers with a clear separation, In the top layer the continents, then the countries, where we see number of mobiles, versus number of landlines. This basic setting was never done, how stupid is that? A second dashboard could be the identifying class (journalist, government, lawyer, NGO) just to coin a phrase, the Washington Post was all about emotion, not about fact. I see this as a prime time hack job, with the alleged journo’s being the hacks, we also do not get any level of trustworthy setting on how the leak got to the Washington Post. Question upon question and in the mean time we get to see “In Hungary, numbers associated with at least two media magnates were among hundreds on the list, and the phones of two working journalists were targeted and infected, forensic analysis showed” 4 people and 50,000 numbers, could the article be any less relevant? And the stupidity of the Washington Post does not end, no it goes further with “Amnesty’s forensics found evidence that Pegasus was targeted at the two women closest to Saudi columnist Khashoggi, who wrote for The Post’s Opinions section. The phone of his fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, was successfully infected during the days after his murder in Turkey on Oct. 2, 2018, according to a forensic analysis by Amnesty’s Security Lab”, we see ‘two women closest to Saudi columnist Khashoggi’, so how did they get there? Because the numbers were on the list? And when we see ‘The phone of his fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, was successfully infected’, so how was that evidence obtained? From my point of view the text “according to a forensic analysis by Amnesty’s Security Lab” just does not cover it. It even gets worse with “Also on the list were the numbers of two Turkish officials involved in investigating his dismemberment by a Saudi hit team”, I see it as a weak approach to mention “investigating his dismemberment” which was NEVER proven, the proof requires a body, they never got that, at best the man is theoretically still merely missing. And from there we get to “Khashoggi also had a wife, Hanan Elatr, whose phone was targeted by someone using Pegasus in the months before his killing. Amnesty was unable to determine whether the hack was successful”, consider the text “Amnesty was unable to determine whether the hack was successful”, if that is true, how come we get “targeted by someone using Pegasus in the months before his killing”, how was that timeline proven? It is a simple question, the article is a bad approach to give more visibility to a journalist no one gives a fuck about. I like the quote ““This is nasty software — like eloquently nasty,” said Timothy Summers, a former cybersecurity engineer at a U.S. intelligence agency and now director of IT at Arizona State University”, is it eloquent because the NSA never made it, or because an Israeli company has the lead on this? I wonder what Timothy would have said if this was an NSA application? 

And the Verge is on my side, they give us “WAIT, WHO MADE THIS LIST?”, as well as “At this point, that’s clear as mud. NSO says the list has nothing to do with its business, and claims it’s from a simple database of cellular numbers that’s a feature of the global cellular network”, which is supported by “A statement from an Amnesty International spokesperson, posted to Twitter by cybersecurity journalist Kim Zetter, says that the list indicates numbers that were marked as “of interest” to NSO’s various clients. The Washington Post says that the list is from 2016” and when we consider these quotes and we read the Washington Post article for the shite it seems to be, I wonder who is waking up to the fact that the media, all the other media is merely re-quoting what the Washington Post stated and it is absent of all kinds of facts, or they merely didn’t bother putting the facts there. 

The entire Pegasus setting seems like a Wag the Dog approach to whatever these papers want to create and it is optionally a setting (a speculative one) that this is the push from stakeholders who have an issue with the NSO group, all whilst no credible evidence is given to us that there is an actual issue. And in all this the money trail was ignored, I ignored it too, mainly because I was unaware, yet the Verge was aware and they give us “At the time, the costs were reportedly $650,000 to hack 10 iPhone or Android users, or $500,000 to infiltrate five BlackBerry users. Clients could then pay more to target additional users, saving as they spy with bulk discounts: $800,000 for an additional 100 phones, $500,000 for an extra 50 phones” this implies that the cheapest option would be 500 times $800,000, which gives us $400,000,000 that is a whole lot of cash for a lot of people no one cares about. Yes, there are a few alleged targets that makes the pricing worth it, but with the setting I have, there is no way that the 50,000 numbers make sense, oh and before I forget, if this is a list for multiple sources, how many of the numbers doubled up? Too many questions and the media stupidly reprinting what the Washington Post is giving us makes no sense at all, unless you are a stakeholder with anti-Israel sentiments. 

In this Shalev Hulio is right that he is “continuing to dispute that the list of more than 50,000 phone numbers had anything to do with NSO or Pegasus”, I would too and I found a lot of the disputable issues within an hour, I wonder how shortsighted the media was when they decided to reprint what the Washington Post gave them. So whilst the Guardian gives us ‘the global impact of the Pegasus project’, I merely see a storm in a teacup, because the issues in the Washington Post were never decently vetted on a few levels and that is likely the biggest failing of the media at present. It is merely my point of view and I am happy to state that I could be wrong, but the lack of credible evidence, all whilst the media has a declining level of credibility makes my view the most likely correct one, most likely, because I have not seen the evidence, but as you read the articles, that are all about details, lacking generic evidence, how would you see it?

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