This week: the national debt explodes, nuclear rivalry with China, slave markets selling North Korean women, what’s in the sky, AI and more AI, what coffee actually does for you, warlike Germans, the death of platforms, Musk’s engagement, medieval thought on cosmetics as deception, Sao Paolo, the moral universe of Louis L’Amour, the big freeze of late-1970s America, and more. Let’s go —
1) “The United States is on track to add nearly $19 trillion to its national debt over the next decade, $3 trillion more than previously forecast, the result of rising costs for interest payments, veterans’ health care, retiree benefits and the military, the Congressional Budget Office said on Wednesday.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/15/business/national-debt-biden.html
2) “Look, this is going to sound crazy. But know this: I would not be talking about Bing Chat for the fourth day in a row if I didn’t really, really, think it was worth it. This sounds hyperbolic, but I feel like I had the most surprising and mind-blowing computer experience of my life today.”
https://stratechery.com/2023/from-bing-to-sydney-search-as-distraction-sentient-ai/
3) “From a febrile debate about the U.S. military and UFOs that started five years ago, we now find ourselves shooting unidentified objects out of the sky over the U.S. and Canada. From a U.S. Air Force general kibitzing about a war with China maybe as soon as 2025, in early 2023 we’re using a Sidewinder missile to blast a Chinese military spy probe out of the stratosphere off the coast of South Carolina. The intervening variable? Apparently a decade-long campaign by intelligence officials to keep reality bottled up. They didn’t think we could handle the truth about Chinese balloons and drones over America.”
4) “Hackers linked to Russia got very close to being able to take a dozen U.S. electric and gas facilities offline in the first weeks of the war in Ukraine, the head of a top cybersecurity company warned Tuesday.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/14/russia-malware-electric-gas-facilities-00082675
5) “It wasn’t like this in the previous Congress. Partisans couldn’t come to terms, even when it came to confronting a geopolitical rival. But emerging consensus on the China threat has changed things.”
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/02/14/mike_gallagher_a_new_cold_warrior__148856.html
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Armas to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.