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Japanese defense forces can now deploy to the Philippines. “The new defense agreement allows Japan to deploy its forces for humanitarian missions and disaster response in the Philippines, an arrangement Japan hopes to eventually upgrade to include joint military training, cooperation and mutual visits, Japanese officials said.”

Japan, Philippines agree to sharply boost defense ties

The leaders of Japan and the Philippines have agreed to sharply boost their defense ties, allowing Japanese troops greater access to Philippine territory, as tensions rise in Asia amid China’s growing influence

Looks like the US is sending advisory teams to the Philippine Army.

My article at Pipeline. If man is a machine, as some think, then nothing changes. Things just go faster and machines take sides against machines.

Who is to Rule: Man or Machine? | The Pipeline

Could an AI planned economy work? Depends on the input.

New at the Belmont Club. All along the entire First Island Chain in the Pacific, only Taiwan can fight like Ukraine. What does this mean for limited war?

Cold War 2 in Paradise

Can the US and China fight by proxy?

US positions in Isabela and Cagayan imply a planned denial of the Luzon Strait to China in the event of an invasion of Taiwan. The position in Palawan suggests a defense of the Sulu Sea and the Central Visayas Inland Sea against the PLAN. Strongly implied: the Philippine Sea ports will be main supply route once the South China Sea is shut down by conflict.

U.S. to Boost Military Role in the Philippines in Push to Counter China

Washington and Manila announced a plan to give the American military access to four new locations in the Southeast Asian country, a growing strategic partner in the region.

The Road of Bones

The horrors of the USSR’s ‘Road of Bones’ (PHOTOS)

This is one of the most terrifying pages in Soviet history, devoted to the forced industrialization and remote lands’ development at the expense of…

You are hereby reassigned to the Department of Deadwood. Some think AI can be used to abolish government. China thinks AI can abolish both democracy and capitalism.

Artificial Intelligence And The End Of Government

Building on deep learning tools, AI could mean significantly improving service delivery for citizens and elevating the work of public service professionals while also inspiring a new generation of technocrats to enter government. Alternatively, AI could also mean remaking government altogether.

College graduates are AI replaceable, Woke activists are irreplaceable.

The spring offensives in Ukraine are about to begin, with Putin thought to go for broke to take Kyiv.

Gerard Vanderleun: December 26, 1945 – January 27, 2023

Gerard Vanderleun: December 26, 1945 – January 27, 2023

Gerard died peacefully in the small hours of the morning. He left instructions to me for two last posts of his that he wanted me to publish here. I will probably do that tomorrow. I also will be posting a few more essays of my own about Gerard, but I will keep his two last

New at the Belmont Club. Are we facing a destructive period of renewal? Or can we finesse our way forward in history?

The Real Great Reset

Zero Hour

You would have thought the bureaucrats would be among those most easily replaced by automation, but since it is the law of nature that govt never shrinks, it turns out that you can displace radiologists with AI but never a clerk.

The lawyers may eventually lose this one. Automata charges by the microsecond, not by the hour. AI can learn all the routine stuff. What both man and machine will value most in the future is new knowledge, aka information, aka surprise. There will be no end of potential material as the known unknowns grow faster with each new known known.

A robot was scheduled to argue in court, then came the jail threats

The man behind a startup called DoNotPay planned to use AI to help fight a traffic ticket. But professional lawyers shut it down.

After the McGonigal story broke, the first question that came to mind was whether he was misdirecting everything. To use a Le Carre analogy: is there a Hans-Dieter Mundt? Some background.

Exclusive: Former top FBI official involved in Trump-Russia investigation under scrutiny by federal prosecutors for his own ties to Russia

A federal grand jury subpoenaed records of any “payments or gifts” that Charles McGonigal, the FBI’s former head of counterintelligence in New York, received from foreign governments.

The silent victims of the British serial rapist cop have a lot in common with the impoverished victims of 3rd world extrajudicial executions. It is paralyzing fear of police and state power, not misogyny per se that terrifies them. Expanding the Woke state will not solve the problem.

Met monster David Carrick ‘threw out sex toys after Wayne Couzens was arrested’

One of the victims of Met Police rapist David Carrick has told how the disgraced officer binned his sex toy collection after fellow cop Wayne Couzens was arrested for murdering Sarah Everard

It’s time for the important things. They will mostly be done for you. God will be with you; your loved ones attend you; your friends pray for you. There are a few preparations you must make alone, but I will follow when the time comes. Your friend Richard.

On Gerard

This is the news no one wants to hear. It is my sad task to tell you that Gerard has cancer that has metastasized, and that treatment offers very little or nothing at this point. He has entered hospice care, his younger brother is with him, and other loved ones have gathered or are gathering

When you have billions in common, you have a lot in common. My latest on the Pipeline.

Go Sell It On A Mountain | The Pipeline

Davos might be described as the Woodstock of power.

It’s safe to say the Pantsir air defense going up on Moscow rooftops is not meant to defend against US ICBMs but something else.

Pantsir Air Defense Systems Appear On Moscow Rooftops

New air defenses on top of Russia’s Ministry of Defense headquarters and another building likely point to concerns about Ukrainian strikes.

Mistrust over the Davos project to reset the world and increasing doubts over whether health authorities fully anticipated the consequences of the anti-Covid MRNA vaccines have dismayed the proponents of governance. Are we facing an era of disorder or just learning to cope with uncertainty?

The era of a unified narrative is probably over, felled not so much by the emergence of conspiracies so much as the explosion of information. There are likely to be multiple narratives going forward, some of which may predominate but rarely as absolutely as before.

New at the Belmont Club. Maybe the Big Guys would care more about protecting data if they didn’t have all those extra ways of protecting it.

Some Information is More Equal Than Others

The race to control the most important 21st century resource

De-globalization must be stopped, environmentalists argue, because only a Global World has the institutional power to stop Climate Change. Without world government the planet is doomed.

Conventional wisdom since Brave New World held that technology would make it easier for hierarchies to control things. What was less appreciated was technology would also increase complexity and surprise hierarchies with emergent phenomena. What is the net effect?

The recent results of the global world vs Covid are significant because they are a reasonable proxy and predictor for the outcome of World Govt vs Climate Change project, except that Climate is a far more complex system than Covid.