Is there a drone bubble? It’s not clear whether this is more like the .com bubble, when a lot of useful stuff was built but a couple of years too early, or more like the housing bubble, when a lot of stuff was built in the wrong places to the wrong standards at the wrong…
Read More RQ-170 upshot, part 2: the bubbleThe fact that a majority of this year’s graduates from USAF basic pilot training are assigned to drone squadrons has got quite a bit of play in the blogosphere. Here, via Jamie Kenny, John Robb (who may still be burying money for fear of Obama or may not) argues that the reason they still do…
Read More The RQ-170 hack and the drone bubbleWhat’s wrong with PROFIT?! Death to all Marxists! Hey, I usually try to remain calm, but this is getting unnerving. Everyone with any sense knew there would be an epic wingnut freakout after the US elections – the structural forces made it inevitable, after all the time spent denying plate tectonics – but who imagined…
Read More …from the seaBruce Schneier and Jason Sigger, usually sensible sources, both mock a study by some thinktank or other which raises the supposed possibility of hackers “using the Internet to start a nuclear war”. As they both point out, the possibility of anyone getting access to the actual command and control firing chain with metasploit is so…
Read More police and thievesTwo things. Marty Lederman of popular legal blog Balkinisation has just become the first blogger in good standing to join the Obama Administration. He’s going to be Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Council. That’s repellent schreibtischtäter John Yoo’s old job. I repeat, old Organ Failure Yoo has been replaced by Liberal…
Read More US flattened by self administered denial of service attackThis BBC Radio 4 documentary about the British nuclear deterrent and the people who operate it is absolutely cracking. Not surprisingly, the man behind it is none other than Professor Peter Hennessy (can we call him Henn-dawg yet?). One of the things that stands out is the amount of desperate psychological coping going on. The…
Read More mentalities, bunker, and otherwiseMore China convergence blogging. Declan McCullagh reports on efforts by the US and China to sneak something nasty into the ITU standardisation process, through a committee that doesn’t publish its documentation or let anyone else in the room. But the Chinese appear to be the ones leaning forward; The Chinese author of the document, Huirong…
Read More They have wakened the timeless Things; they have killed their father TimeVia Calculated Risk, galleries of repossessed houses in Los Angeles. This one can stand for a common theme. It’s hardly got any windows on the street side at all! Just two huge garage doors. Those doors are a common feature throughout the show – houses whose outward appearance is totally dominated by monster garages, like…
Read More The Opposite of ArchitectureDouglas Farah reckons the Russians are trying to press the US State Department to press for Viktor Bout’s release, or rather his extradition to Russia, which would amount to the same thing. It’s an interesting suggestion, although usual caveats apply to a story sourced to Bill “WMD to Syria!!” Gertz. I can imagine them pitching…
Read More Even More Viktor Bout Arrest BloggingThis New York Observer interview with Ann Coulter is being heavily blogged (sample), but I think there is an important point that’s being missed here. If you follow the link, you’ll see that the reporter adopts the old trick of shutting up and letting the subject natter; this is a classic of journalistic craft, as…
Read More The Dynamic of Extreme Conservative Rhetoric