International business machines

Late last year, a strike force of elite Thai police officers descended on the Baan Suan estates, a palm-treed housing complex next to a golf course on the tourist island of Phuket . The officers’ mission was to capture the American expatriate in Villa 34: Joseph Hunter, a retired soldier wanted by his government for having taken up what law enforcement officials called a new career — as a hired killer. Within three days, Mr. Hunter, a former Army sniper with Special Forces training, was in shackles on an airplane bound for New York, where he was formally accused of managing a team of contract hit men overseas. Law enforcement officials said the group had conspired to murder a federal drug agent and a drug-world informant in exchange for an $800,000 bounty from men they believed were members of a Colombian cartel. The case against Mr. Hunter, nicknamed Rambo, seemed to have been lifted from the latest action thriller. The hit was set for Liberia and, the Drug Enforcement … [Read more...] about In Real Life, ‘Rambo’ Ends Up as a Soldier of Misfortune, Behind Bars

World Donald Trump North Korea Kim Jong Un Nuclear In the long view of history, North Korea getting a nuclear-tipped intercontinental missile in 2017 is the rough equivalent of an army showing up for World War II riding horses and shooting muskets. Nukes are so last century. War is changing, driven by cyberweapons, artificial intelligence (AI) and robots. Weapons of mass destruction are dumb, soon to be whipped by smart weapons of pinpoint disruption—which nations can use without risking annihilation of the human race. If the U.S. is innovative and forward-thinking, it can develop technology that ensures no ill-behaving government could ever get a nuke off the ground. Then we might be able to relax and return to laughing at Kim Jong Un for looking like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man topped by a small furry mammal. This is the argument in a new book , Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules of War , by international law … [Read more...] about Trump Can Destroy N. Korea’s Nukes Without a Land War

In 1980 an ecologist and an economist chose a refreshingly unacademic way to resolve their differences. They bet $1,000. Specifically, the bet was over the future price of five metals, but at stake was much more -- a view of the planet's ultimate limits, a vision of humanity's destiny. It was a bet between the Cassandra and the Dr. Pangloss of our era. They lead two intellectual schools -- sometimes called the Malthusians and the Cornucopians, sometimes simply the doomsters and the boomsters -- that use the latest in computer-generated graphs and foundation-generated funds to debate whether the world is getting better or going to the dogs. The argument has generally been as fruitless as it is old, since the two sides never seem to be looking at the same part of the world at the same time. Dr. Pangloss sees farm silos brimming with record harvests; Cassandra sees topsoil eroding and pesticide seeping into ground water. Dr. Pangloss sees people living longer; Cassandra sees rain … [Read more...] about Betting on the Planet