Daily-Dose

Contents

• From New Yorker
• From Vox
• From The Hindu: Sports
• From The Hindu: National News
• From BBC: Europe
• From Ars Technica
• From Jokes Subreddit

From New Yorker

• The Rural Ski Slope Caught Up in an International Scam - A federal program promised to bring foreign investment to remote parts of the country. It soon became rife with fraud. - link

• Inside the Music Industry’s High-Stakes A.I. Experiments - Lucian Grainge, the chairman of UMG, has helped record labels rake in billions of dollars from streaming. Can he do the same with generative artificial intelligence? - link

• The Perverse Policies That Fuel Wildfires - We thought we could master nature, but we were playing with fire. - link

• Ukraine’s Democracy in Darkness - With elections postponed and no end to the war with Russia in sight, Volodymyr Zelensky and his political allies are becoming like the officials they once promised to root out: entrenched. - link

• The Future of Academic Freedom - As the Israel-Hamas war provokes claims about unacceptable speech, the ability to debate difficult subjects is in renewed peril. - link

From Vox

• Bats have a unique superpower. Climate change is turning it into a liability. -

  

  It’s good news for bat-haters and bad news for everyone else.

  Not all bats are unbelievably, overwhelmingly adorable, like the one below. Many of them have wrinkly faces and large ears that help them “see” in the dark, using echolocation.

  But all bats are, without a doubt, exceptional creatures. Not only do bats pollinate our crops, prey on pests like mosquitos, and spread seeds that help damaged ecosystems recover, but they also possess a superpower that’s unique among mammals: flight.

  Indeed, bats are the only mammals on the planet that can fly. Yes, some squirrels and frogs can glide through the forest. That’s neat, but it’s not flight.

  Annick Vanderschelden/Getty Images

  The power of flight demands an enormous amount of energy and a highly specialized physiology. While airborne, a bat’s heart rate skyrockets to as high as 1,000 beats per minute — several times above its resting heart rate — and its body temperature surges, often pushing past 105 degrees Fahrenheit. To maintain that high metabolism, bats need to eat an enormous quantity of food and plenty of water.

  A body built for flight comes with some serious benefits. It likely helps these creatures avoid getting sick, for example, even when they’re infected with a number of viruses, such as coronavirus, as Vox explains in the video below.

But as scientists are starting to learn, it also comes with some serious drawbacks. Especially as climate change continues warming the planet. Bats’ flight-adapted physiologies make them highly susceptible to severe droughts and heat waves. Plus, the proliferation of wind turbines — a climate solution that provides energy without harmful greenhouse gas emissions, and one we’ll need more of to combat warming — is killing them in droves.

While bats remain highly understudied relative to birds and other mammals, scientists are sounding the alarm. In North America, more than half of all bat species are at risk of severe population declines, due to other problems like fungal pathogens and the plight of insects. Climate change, they say, threatens to only speed up their demise.

Danita Delimont/Getty Images

Bats “break all the rules”

Scientists are typically reluctant to generalize about bats because they comprise such a large and diverse group of winged animals. With nearly 1,500 species, bats make up about one-fifth of all mammal species on Earth.

But one thing that can be said about them as a group is that they are, in not-so-scientific terms, very odd. “They break all the rules,” said Cori Lausen, a bat expert at the environmental group Wildlife Conservation Society Canada.

Flight is just one of their oddities. Bats not only push their heart rate to extreme highs but to extreme lows — as slow as one beat per minute. Many species can go into a period of deep sleep, known as torpor, for a few hours a day or even for weeks to conserve energy when it’s cold or food is unavailable. And while most small mammals have short lives and lots of babies, bats can live for two decades or more and typically have just one pup per year, Lausen said, making them more like grizzly bears than, say, rodents.

For how much energy they need, it’s also surprising that many bat species, including most of those in the US, rely on insects alone for food (elsewhere, bats consume fruit, nectar, or even blood). They have to eat ridiculous quantities of them. A mom with a pup — which, by the way, she has to carry with her at all times — can catch more than 4,000 insects in one night. It’s basically like trying to eat your entire weight in bugs, night after night.

This is where echolocation comes in. Bats make high-pitched noises with their mouths or noses and listen for the return signals to home in on their prey. Most of them will then capture the bugs with their feet, or the skin between them, before swinging the prey into their mouths, said Winifred Frick, chief scientist at Bat Conservation International. That’s why bats often look kind of chaotic in the air, she said.

You can see these acro-bat-ics (sorry) in the GIF below.

Oddly, although bats can fly, they can’t easily take off from a stationary position, like most birds and insects do. That’s one reason why they hang upside down. Bats gain the momentum they need for lift by falling. “For them, it’s not upside down,” Frick said. “It’s flight-side ready!” (Adorably, a handful of bat species cling to leaves, instead of hanging upside down, using suction-cup-like appendages on their arms.)

Bats are so weird, Lausen said, it’s almost like these animals shouldn’t exist. “They’ve got these fascinating physiologies so that they can survive, though it doesn’t seem like they should,” Lausen said. Nonetheless, bats have existed for millions of years, so these traits are obviously working for them — or at least they have been.

Courtesy of MGambaRios/Bat Conservation International

Why bats and climate change don’t mix

Most bats are small with big wings, some weighing as little as 2 grams — less than a penny! — like the bumblebee bat shown below. This is obviously useful for flight, but it can become a problem during heat waves. Compared to other mammals, bats have a lot of surface area, and that means they tend to lose water more easily through evaporation across their skin, said Liam McGuire, an associate professor at the University of Waterloo who studies bat physiology. Essentially, bats are at risk of drying out and dying from dehydration.

Courtesy of Yushi & Keiko Osawa/Bat Conservation International

“They will likely face dehydration in scenarios of increasing temperatures,” a team of researchers wrote in a recent study, which cross-referenced the number of bats admitted to wildlife rehab centers in Italy with weather data. The study, an analysis of roughly 20 years of data, found that more bats were brought in for treatment—typically because they fell from their roosts, or showed signs of injury or dehydration — in weeks when it was in the high 80s or hotter.

An earlier study in the Mediterranean linked drought to a drop in reproductive success, meaning bats were having fewer pups. And yet another paper, published in 2010 using data from bats in the southern Rocky Mountains, similarly indicated that bats had fewer offspring when water was scarce. “These data portend significant consequences for regional insectivorous bat populations in response to climate change in western North America,” Rick Adams, the author of the 2010 paper, wrote.

Dehydration can be devastating, but heat alone also poses a potential existential threat. Temperatures above roughly 105°F can cause heat stress or even death among many species, especially if the animals nest in trees outside, where they’re exposed to the ambient temperatures. Heat waves in Australia, for example, have caused dozens of mass die-offs of flying foxes, big fruit-eating bats that use large eyes instead of echolocation to find food. “They’re out, exposed, just sitting on a tree branch during the hottest part of the day,” McGuire said.

Over two days in 2019, temperatures reaching 107°F wiped out roughly 23,000 spectacled flying foxes, about a third of Australia’s population of the species. The number of heat waves in Australia, and around the world, are projected to increase in the coming decades due to climate change.

Reinhard Dirscherl/ullstein bild via Getty Images

What’s more is that one of the main technologies meant to combat warming is also harming bats. In North America alone, wind turbines kill hundreds of thousands of bats each year, across more than 30 bat species. Typically, the bats — most of which are migratory species — die from colliding with turbine blades, though it’s not clear why these animals are drawn to them.

Making these threats more troubling is the simple fact that bat populations don’t recover quickly after die-offs, whether or not they’re climate-related. It goes back to their flight-enabled physiologies: Unlike birds, which drop their eggs off at a nest, bats have to fly while pregnant, which isn’t easy. That’s why most bats only have one pup per year, Frick said. “Their reproductive rates are really low, which makes it harder for them to recover from big catastrophic events [e.g., heat waves, big storms that wipe out habitat] that lower populations,” she said.

The uncertain future of bats

This would all matter a lot less if bats were doing fine otherwise. Yet they face a wide range of threats beyond climate change, including a disease known as white-nose syndrome, which has killed millions of bats in North America. The disease, caused by a fungus, can damage their skin and wake them up while they’re hibernating, causing them to burn off vital energy stores and either freeze or starve to death. The syndrome continues to spread and kill bats in North America. And while it’s also found in Europe and Asia, it doesn’t seem to cause mass mortality there.

Together, these problems are pushing many bat species closer to extinction. In North America, more than half of all species “are at risk of populations declining severely in the next 15 years,” according to a 2023 report by the North American Bat Conservation Alliance, a coalition of groups including government agencies and Bat Conservation International. This trend is mirrored globally. Importantly, the 2023 report found that climate change — namely, drought and extreme heat — could impact more than 80 percent of all North American species.

Some bat species may yet prove resilient in the face of warming. While flight can be a liability, it also gives bats the ability to move freely. Scientists suspect that warming is pushing populations of some species, like the Mexican free-tailed bats, further north, where it’s cooler. These bats — among the fastest animals in the world, capable of reaching speeds close to 100 miles per hour — were once confined to the Gulf Coast, McGuire said, but now they’re regularly found up in Tennessee. “Their range is expanding quite rapidly,” he said.

Bats that roost in caves, which amount to nearly half of all species, globally, may also be better off than those that rest out in the open or in trees. Rock crevices may shield these mammals from warming and drought, scientists say. It also helps that many species are able to go into torpor. “If you’re caught in a situation where the climate is changing, the environment is degrading, then the bats may be able to use torpor to reduce some of their energetic costs and help to buffer them a little bit against that,” McGuire said.

Yet scientists don’t know how effective these strategies will be over the long term. In fact, they still don’t know much about bats in general.

This lack of data is rooted, in part, in bats’ bad reputation, said Mark Brigham, a biologist at Canada’s University of Regina. “Until 30 years ago or so, studying bats was not viewed as a particularly good thing,” he said. “Most people viewed them as yucky, ugly, Dracula-type creatures that you didn’t want to go anywhere near. It’s only in the last five years, maybe, that anyone has shown any interest in heat effects on bats to be very honest.”

Bats clearly don’t deserve this bad reputation. Exhibit A: Baby bats wrapped up in blankets like a burrito. They don’t exactly look sinister.

By eating agricultural pests, such as moths and beetles, bats also provide up to $53 billion in economic value each year in the US alone. They eat pests that bother us, too, including mosquitos. And of course, bats pollinate agave plants as they slurp up their nectar, which give us, among other things, tequila. “But at the end of the day,” Frick said, “I come back to the fact that bats are just badass.”

• Would the US intervene to defend Taiwan? Ask Japan. -

  

  If China were to invade Taiwan, the American response could depend on its key ally.

  TOKYO, Japan — If we’ve got to pick a year, it’s 2027. Imagine China is harassing Taiwan with near-constant flyovers of fighter jets and drones. Beijing has increased the frequency and scale of its amphibious exercises, so much so that it is getting hard to know what is a run-of-the-mill military drill, and what might be the start of the real thing: a full-scale invasion of Taiwan.

  Because in this hypothetical future, the real thing is looking increasingly possible.

  In it, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has spoken with urgency about the country’s “national rejuvenation” — that is, when Taiwan, which China views as a separatist province, is “reunified” with the mainland. The United States and its allies are promising an unwavering response to any Chinese military escalation, without saying exactly what that entails. Taiwan says it seeks peace, but will defend itself from attack if necessary. US and Chinese diplomats are shuttling through Singapore, and Bali, seeking an offramp, even as US intelligence suggests Xi wants to act, and act now.

  Then, Xi does. A massive cyber assault overwhelms Taiwan’s networks, immobilizing critical infrastructure. Chinese ships sever Taiwan’s undersea cables, and with it communication among its islands. Missiles strike Taiwanese government and military sites, the opening salvo to the large-scale amphibious assault that China was practicing in full view of the world.

  The United States will now have to decide if the promised unwavering response means defending Taiwan. If the president and Congress decide yes, America’s national security interests demand a US military intervention, then he (because it’s probably still going to be a he) has another call to make. This one is to Japan, the US’s key ally, to ask some version of the question: Will you let us use our military bases?

  On the other end of the line is the Japanese prime minister, who knows that the US has tens of thousands of troops stationed at 85 military facilities on Japanese territory, a foundation of the security alliance between the two countries. Who also knows China has a likely arsenal of some 1,000 medium-range ballistic missiles that could target those US bases, and by extension, the cities of Japan and its 127 million citizens. Who knows that Japan’s westernmost island is only about 70 miles from Taiwan. Who knows that whatever decision he or she makes, it could very well decide the outcome of any war before it’s barely begun.

  What does Japan do?

  Like it’d tell you now.

  Why Japan may be the key to any real war over Taiwan

  It is not 2027. Even if it were, it is not a foregone conclusion that China would be ready and willing to mount a costly full-on invasion of Taiwan by then. If you ask plenty of sober-minded experts today, it’s not even highly probable. Xi reportedly told President Joe Biden in November that China did not have a plan for military action in Taiwan in 2027 or 2035.

  So maybe it won’t happen in the 2030s, or even the 2040s or by 2050 — some of the other estimates floating out there as to when China could attack Taiwan. Ideally, China would never. China has said that it seeks a “peaceful reunification,” though they have not ruled out achieving one by force.

  Even then, a full-scale invasion may be the most extreme of all courses — there are plenty of ways China can use force or coercion against Taiwan that fall short of a storming-the-beaches-style assault. But Xi has made clear his vision of China is incomplete without Taiwan. “The reunification of the motherland is a historical inevitability,” he said in his recent New Year’s address.

  Taiwan increasingly opposes unification with China, and the majority of people in Taiwan want to preserve a version of the status quo. Lai Ching-te won Taiwan’s January presidential election on a platform of preserving Taiwan’s democracy and sovereignty, and that is likely to keep Taipei moving closer to Washington than Beijing. US and China relations may have thawed a bit since their spy balloon nadir last year, but both US parties see China’s rapid-paced military buildup and geopolitical ambitions as a threat to America. The Biden administration has cultivated and deepened its partnership and security ties in the Indo-Pacific, and though it may not say so explicitly, it certainly looks like a coalition to deter China.

  Which is why, even if an invasion is unlikely, or even decades away, the question — What might Japan do if China invades Taiwan, unprovoked? — has become more urgent. Japan’s answer could shape how the US prepares for any armed confrontation over Taiwan, its outcome, and whatever world emerges after.

  Whether it wanted to or not, Japan itself cannot intervene to defend Taiwan. Japan’s post-World War II constitution renounces war, and so its Self-Defense Forces (SDF) are just that, a military that exists to defend its territory. (Japan has, especially in recent years, pushed against those constitutional parameters.)

  What Japan does have is a security alliance with the United States. This treaty commits the US to defend Japan in the event of an attack on its soil, in exchange for America’s use of Japanese territory for “the purpose of contributing to the security of Japan and the maintenance of international peace and security in the Far East.” That is, military bases. About 55,000 US forces are based in Japan, and US military facilities span 77,000 acres, the majority in Okinawa prefecture. In any war with Taiwan, the US would need to deploy naval vessels and fighter jets from these locations.

  But the use of these military bases requires prior consultation: Japan must grant the US permission to use these facilities in combat beyond the defense of Japan. If Taiwan invades, and the US wants to intervene, Japan has its own dilemma: to say yes potentially signs Japan up for war, leaving itself vulnerable to attack from China. To say no could unravel the US-Japan alliance, leaving itself vulnerable by cutting off its only security guarantor.

  If Japan does say no, seeing the risks to itself and its population as too great, in any fight with China, the US is probably toast. The American military would likely be crushed if it intervened without being able to deploy its assets from Japan, but potentially strategically defeated if it did not intervene at all.

  “China succeeding in taking over Taiwan should mean the US is out, which means Chinese hegemony, at least in this region, is expanding,” said Yoshihide Soeya, professor emeritus of international relations at Keio University. “That would mean that Japan would have to think of the national strategy to live under such Chinese influence, and I don’t know if under that scenario, if the US-Japan Alliance is still there. Maybe not — and then it’s a totally different world.”

  Encyclopaedia Britannica/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

  Even if Japan says yes and lets the US use its bases, it is no guarantee of an unchanged world. Some of that may depend on exactly what type of affirmative answer Japan gives. It could just grant access to the bases and attempt to remain out of the battle — though that may be as much China’s decision as Japan’s. In addition to granting that access, Japan could choose to provide logistical or operational support to the US from the start. That’s an outcome that some wargames, including one published last year by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), suggest would considerably improve the US and its allies’ fortunes, giving them a chance to fend off China. But it would come at costs and heavy losses, for the United States and for Japan.

  “The question is: Would we be willing to sacrifice ourselves to defend Taiwan?” said Narushige Michishita, executive vice president and professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) in Japan.

  “That’s partly why — although I think Japan is severely becoming more committed to the defense of Taiwan — Japan has never said, or the government has never, ever said: ‘We will defend Taiwan,’” Michishita added.

  “The Japanese government is walking a tightrope.”

  How Japan got here

  “I myself have a strong sense of urgency that Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow,” Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said in spring 2022.

  Japan saw the war in Ukraine as both a wake-up call and an opportunity. Russia’s full-scale invasion rocked the rules-based international order, an order that Japan sees as integral to its own political and economic security interests. Japan also saw its own vulnerability reflected back in Russia’s assault, and it started thinking more seriously about what it might need as a middle power if similarly threatened. “Japan would need resiliency and sustainability. This is the lesson learned from Ukraine,” said Koichi Isobe, a retired lieutenant general with Japan’s Self-Defense Forces.

  In December 2022, Japan articulated this vision when it updated its national security and defense strategies and made commitments to significantly expand its defense budget over the next five years. Japan also made plans to invest in counter-strike capabilities as a deterrent to outside attacks.

  “Post-war Japan has long refrained from playing or even seeking a role in geopolitics, let alone the military domain,” Soeya said. But these documents focus on that agenda, and put Japan’s defense capabilities as a central component of coping with an unpredictable and chaotic world.

  “In terms of emphasis on key elements, it’s a paradigm shift,” Soeya added.

  This shift was dramatic, but the foundations were already in place. Japan, especially under former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, had invested more in its military and expanded its defense capabilities and partnerships. The Ukraine war reinforced the reality Japan already recognized: China’s rise, North Korea’s threats, and the US’s rising America First posture meant Japan needed to be proactive about strengthening and protecting its security and interests amid such global instability.

  America is Japan’s essential ally. The election of Donald Trump did not undo it, so much as convince Japan that it needed to prepare for a world where America was more isolationist, more unpredictable, and a weaker power, especially against an ascendant China. Japan would need to get better at defending itself. And it probably needed to hedge and foster bonds with other like-minded countries in the region and beyond — like deepening ties with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). All of this wasn’t — couldn’t be — a strategy to replace the US. In preparing to fight for itself, Japan was equalizing the partnership a bit more, showing the US how much more of a capable, and essential, partner it could be.

  “I say this more dramatically than literally,” US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel told Vox in November about both the US and Japan national security strategies, “but we could have written theirs, and they could have written ours. That’s how closely aligned they are on North Korea, China, the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait. [They’re] just incredibly complementary documents.”

  “I think we’re at the first iteration of a new chapter called alliance projection, and closing the chapter on alliance protection,” Emanuel added.

  Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images

  These 2022 security documents (in total, three major ones), were an official coming out for this long-building policy. And in them, many saw that Japan was more obviously preparing for the potential it might be drawn into a war. “To me, it’s vividly clear that Japan is changing its course and getting committed to the defense of Taiwan,” Michishita said.

  Japan getting more committed to the defense of Taiwan is not quite the same as an actual commitment. Japan has an interest in “strategic ambiguity,” as does the United States, which also tries (and sometimes fails) to pursue a similar course on Taiwan. But Japan’s defense investments and new national security strategy are a sign it knows it needs to prepare for a possible Taiwan emergency.

  The United States is central to all of it. Many current and former government and military officials told me Japan recognizes that this current security order is tenuous — but it still sees it as the best one it’s got. Which is also the strongest case for Japan granting permission to the US to use its bases. Otherwise, it all goes away.

  “If the US requests for support from Japan, and if Japan turns it down, then the Japan-US alliance will collapse,” said Kyoji Yanagisawa, director of the International Geopolitics Institute Japan and former defense official who served decades in the Japanese government.

  This is also why many see the idea that Japan could somehow sit out a Taiwan conflict implausible. “[A] Taiwan war is our war,” said Nobukatsu Kanehara, of Doshisha University, and former top adviser to Shinzo Abe.

  Japan’s territory would be too close to the conflict, leaving it vulnerable, both to potentially being caught in the crosshairs — or as a future target. China might want to expand, Isobe said, and it “might not stop at Taiwan.”

  Hirotaka Yamashita, a retired lieutenant general with the Ground Self-Defense Forces, pointed out that thousands of Taiwanese civilians will likely still seek to evacuate to safety, including to the islands that lay between Taiwan and Japan, on fishing boats, commercial vessels, or motor boats. A Chinese takeover of Taiwan, said Isamu Ueda, a Komeito representative and member of the committee on foreign affairs and defense in the Japanese legislature, will affect Japan, physically and economically — Japan, like so much of the rest of the world, is reliant on semiconductors and other supply chain inputs from both Taiwan and China. “It will destroy the international order in East Asia and in the Pacific region,” he said.

  All scenarios Japan wants to avoid. But it may still not avoid them, even if it grants US access to its bases. “Is Japan going to accept the missiles coming over to Japan in order to maintain the alliance — or to have the alliance collapse by turning down the request from the US?” Yanagisawa said.

  Japan’s domestic politics are the big unknown

  If this all happens — if China launches an assault on Taiwan, if the US wants to intervene, if the missiles start flying — Japan will have to decide about the US bases. The US and Japan, as allies, will probably have talked about this scenario a lot, so Japan’s response probably won’t be a total surprise. But planning and preparations are one thing, the imminent threat of missiles landing on your territory is another. And any Japanese leader will ultimately have to decide whether to sell the public on the potential for inviting war against Japan.

  The military wargames may seem complex, but the political ones are even more so. The Japanese public has broadly negative views of China, but getting into war with Beijing is another issue. A recent survey conducted by a Stanford researcher showed that support for Japanese involvement in a Taiwan emergency declined if China promised not to attack Japan. Plenty of officials and military experts pointed out to me it would be foolish to trust China. And support for any Japanese military involvement increases if China threatens Japan, or any of its outlying islands. But the tradeoff that a Japanese leader has to make is a possible future threat of war versus an imminent one.

  China is likely to be aware of this and may even be starting to try to sow these fears. A Chinese propaganda video last year appeared to threaten Japan with nukes if it sought to defend Taiwan, a particularly potent threat given Japan’s history.

  Philip Fong/AFP via Getty Images

  Many experts and officials I talked to thought this was a huge reason why Japan was walking this tightrope on the Taiwan emergency question: There is likely a huge gap between what the political elites believe, and what the public sees. “Japanese politicians, when talking about defense policies to the public, they always say that we are buying missiles to protect people’s lives,” Yanagisawa said. “But that’s wrong because national defense is essentially the people costing their lives to defend their country.”

  “That narrative lacks reality,” he added, “so I’m really worried what is going to happen when Japan is in an emergency.”

  The Japanese public most aware of the trade-offs are likely those already familiar with the US presence. The majority of US military facilities are in the islands of the southern Okinawa prefecture, where public disapproval of military bases is as high as 70 percent. US officials have tried to take steps to change that. But it remains true that people in these areas, which are most at-risk in Japan given their proximity to US facilities, are also those who already have a skeptical view of the US presence — and it’s unclear how that may sway over Japan’s larger national security decisions.

  Are we asking the right questions about Taiwan — and Japan?

  Asking what Japan might do if China invades Taiwan is a bit of a black-and-white question in a situation that has few of them. There is a whole range of options between the current status quo and a full-scale invasion. China could potentially seize an outlying Taiwanese island — think Russia in Crimea in 2014. Beijing might keep at its gray-zone tactics or attempt a blockade. Tensions could escalate, and maybe there’s a miscalculation or unintentional confrontation between the US and China that leads to a larger standoff. Even in an invasion, the politics, the leaders, the timing, what is happening in the rest of the world — all of it will shape the answer to that question.

  Still, many experts and current and former officials I spoke to, both in Japan and the US, believe Japan’s stance on Taiwan is still a question worth asking. You plan and prepare for war so you don’t have to go to it — and knowing what kind of war it might be enhances both. “If your goal is to deter, you need the capability plus the credibility,” said retired US Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery. “The belief that Japan will be an active participant in combat operations is a really big element in this in a positive way.”

  If Japan is going to at least grant access — which is, on the whole, experts’ most common response — then many thought both the US and Japan should take greater steps to prepare for it. In some ways, Japan is: In December, Tokyo approved an increase in its military budget and loosened a ban on lethal weapons exports, which will allow Japan to better coordinate on a couple of key weapons systems with the US and may also help boost the country’s defense industry. Japan is also developing a fighter jet with Italy and the United Kingdom.

  At the same time, many experts pointed out that as ambitious as Japan’s moves may be, it’s still very much unclear whether the defense spending is enough if Japan’s military is drawn into a conflict over Taiwan. Spending alone also isn’t enough: It would also require thinking about what you might need to fight a war alongside the US, such as improving interoperability or communication between forces, and hardening infrastructure on military bases and civilian infrastructure to protect against Chinese missiles. Quiet initiatives are happening, for example, to get Japanese civilian shipyards to repair US naval ships, which saves money now, but would be very handy in the event of a conflict.

  Yet deterrence is itself a tricky and unpredictable calculation. The more committed, the better the credibility. But it can also be an accelerant, entrapping countries on a path to miscalculation, and war. “My frustration has to do with the fact that if you’re worried about those worst-case scenarios, then that should motivate you to move in the other direction — trying to talk about and think about efforts to prevent this collision course from nearing realization,” Soeya said.

  And if the collision course is realized, if China and the US do go to war over Taiwan, no choice Japan makes will single-handedly solve it. But all parties do have an interest in preventing it.

  “There is no winner or loser in a war,” said Yamashita. “What is left is only the destroyed land and damage to people like what we see today in Ukraine and Israel. A Taiwan emergency needs to be averted.”

  This reporting was made possible by a grant from the Foreign Press Center of Japan.

• America no longer has a monopoly on deadly drones -

  

  The deaths of three US service members in Jordan show how a symbol of American omnipotence has become a major vulnerability.

  The US military has gotten used to owning the skies. American air superiority in recent conflicts has been so complete that no US ground troops have been killed by an enemy aircraft since the Korean War, which ended more than 70 years ago.

  Depending on your definition of “aircraft,” however, that may have changed on Sunday, when three US troops were killed in a drone strike on a US base in Jordan near the Syrian border. More than 40 service members were injured in the strike, according to the Pentagon. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of militias backed by the government of Iran that oppose both the US’s presence in the region and its support for Israel, took responsibility for the attack. Tehran has denied involvement, but Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters on Monday that “we know that Iran is behind it.” President Joe Biden vowed to “hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner of our choosing,” and a number of GOP lawmakers have called for direct strikes against Iran in retaliation.

  Singh did not specify the exact weapon used but described it as a “one-way-attack unmanned aerial system,” meaning it was designed to crash into its target and explode. This indicates it may be similar to the so-called “kamikaze drones” that Iran has supplied in large numbers to the Russian military for use in Ukraine. The drone reportedly struck near the troops’ sleeping quarters, accounting for the high number of casualties. A report in the Wall Street Journal suggests that the militia drone may have evaded air defense systems because it was mistaken for a US drone that was due to return to base at the same time.

  The attack is far from the first of its kind — since Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel, Iran-backed groups have targeted US troops more than 150 times with drones, rockets, and missiles, causing dozens of injuries, most of them traumatic brain injuries.

  But Sunday’s attack marked the first fatalities among US troops in the burgeoning regional conflict. And at least according to publicly available information, the three troops who died also appear to be the first US service members ever killed by an enemy drone. (Two US troops were killed by friendly fire in a Predator drone strike in Afghanistan in 2011; a US contractor in Syria was killed in a drone strike in March 2023.)

  Yet Paul Lushenko, a US Army lieutenant colonel and expert on drone warfare who teaches at the US Army War College, told Vox that a fatal enemy drone strike on US troops “wasn’t a matter of if, it was a matter of when. All militaries, the United States included, are vulnerable to these capabilities.”

  The Jordan attack is one of the most dramatic signs yet of a shift in the role drones are playing on battlefields around the world, and a sign of their impact on the global balance of power.

  The second drone age

  In the decade or so following its first combat drone strike of the war on terror in Afghanistan in 2001, the US enjoyed a near monopoly on this technology. The US military, the CIA, and a few select allies used drones to hunt or monitor terrorists and insurgents outside officially declared battlefields, and to provide air support to ground troops in the war on terror.

  As drone expert and director of the tech policy institute at Cornell University James Rogers has written, “UAS [unmanned aerial systems] like the Predator, Reaper and unarmed Global Hawk became symbolic of a post-9/11 period where military robotics surged forward to become the spearhead of American and allied force deployment.”

  In this period, the debate around drones focused mainly on the ethics and legality of a tool the US could use to strike virtually anywhere with minimal risk to its own soldiers. By the time of the Obama administration, the main worry was that the US had become overreliant on a tool that, in the words of former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, rendered warfare “bloodless, painless, and odorless” to the American public. The idea that such a weapon could be turned against US forces was not on the agenda.

  But the world of drone warfare has since democratized. In 2010, around 60 countries had some sort of military drone in their arsenals. By 2020, it was up to 102, according to a report from Bard College’s Center for the Study of the Drone. Forty of those countries had or were in the process of acquiring drones that could launch deadly attacks, as opposed to surveillance drones. The numbers have almost certainly grown since then.

  The US is no longer the world’s top exporter of military drones — China, whose drones have been used in Yemen, Myanmar and Ethiopia, has supplanted it. Russia, Israel, Iran, and Turkey are major exporters as well. Turkey’s flagship Bayraktar TB2 drone was so popular in the early days of the Ukraine war that it inspired a viral folk song.

  Often the drones that are most effective in today’s wars are not the most advanced systems like the Predator and Reaper but cheap, replaceable models. These include the Iranian-supplied Shahed “kamikaze” drones that Russia has used in massive quantities to target Ukrainian cities as well as off-the-shelf consumer quadcopters that have been adapted for military use.

  The perception of drones’ role has also shifted. Until recently, they were thought of as a weapon states used against terrorists outside traditional war zones. Now, in conflicts like the recent civil wars in Libya and Ethiopia and the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, they’ve been used by conventional armies on the battlefield. In Ukraine, the use of surveillance drones to spot enemy troop movements and guide artillery fire has been so effective that Ukraine’s top military commander says they’ve made ground maneuvers basically impossible for both sides and contributed to the war’s current stalemate.

  Beyond the battlefields, cheap but lethal drones are turning up everywhere from Mexican drug cartel hits to presidential assassination attempts in Venezuela. Rebels in Myanmar have started producing them with 3D printers.

  The shift has been so pronounced that Chris Woods, an investigative journalist and co-founder of the drone strike monitoring site Airwars, has said that “we are now clearly within the second drone age, that is, the age of proliferation.”

  Weapon of the weak

  According to one US Air Force study, the first recorded successful use of a combat drone by a “violent non-state actor” came in 2013, when Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group, carried out a strike on rebels in Syria.

  Since then, the use of drones by these groups has become a defining feature of warfare in the region. ISIS used swarms of cheap drones to great effect, including an incident in 2016 that became known as the “day of the drones,” when it targeted Iraqi forces with more than 70 of them during the Battle of Mosul. The drones were $2,000 off-the-shelf quadcopters that ISIS had adapted to fire explosives.

  Iran, meanwhile, has been steadily increasing drone exports to its proxy groups throughout the region. And perhaps no group has used drones to greater effect than Yemen’s Houthis, who carried out an audacious drone attack on Saudi Aramco facilities in 2019 that temporarily knocked about 6 percent of the world’s oil supply offline. Since the war in Gaza began, the Houthis have used drones in many of their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. Hamas has also built up a sizable drone arsenal, which it used to disable Israeli surveillance systems during the October 7 attacks.

  In a 2022 interview with the Financial Times, Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of US forces in the Middle East, said that because of the proliferation of cheap “Costco drones” in the hands of militant groups, “air superiority is something that we no longer have all the time.” He predicted that drone warfare would lead to a new “IED moment” for the US, referring to the improvised explosive devices that killed more than 2,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  Unfriendly skies

  Drones are a tough problem for the US to innovate its way out of, given the fact that, for nonstate militias, their advantage is in how low-tech they are. In 2017, a US general told reporters about a US ally, likely Israel, that had fired a $3 million Patriot missile against a quadcopter “that cost 200 bucks from Amazon.com.” That’s not really an effective use of resources, and militant groups have become adept at using swarms of cheap drones to overwhelm air defenses. More recently, the Pentagon has taken something of an “if you can’t beat them, join them” attitude, announcing a program known as “Replicator” last year that aims to develop swarms of small “attritable” drones for use in a potential conflict with China.

  Lushenko argues that rather than focusing on shooting down drones on their way to their targets, US policy should focusing on dismantling and disrupting the networks and supply chains that allow these drones, and the components used to make them, to proliferate. (It’s akin to disrupting drug kingpins rather than trying to bust dealers on the street.) But he acknowledges that this is a “tough proposition that will take a lot of coordination and a lot of in-the-trenches, bureaucratic work.”

  Most of all, Lushenko says, “we have to recognize that this is the new normal.” Unfortunately, that means the deadly attack in Jordan is unlikely to be the last of its kind.

From The Hindu: Sports

• HPSL to sponsor Indian Derby on Feb. 4 -

• Art Of Romance, Elfin Knight and Stellantis impress -

• Enabler, New Dimension and Exceed catch the eye -

• It’s a historical tie, we will benefit from India team’s visit: Pakistan tennis fraternity - The last time an Indian Davis Cup team travelled to Pakistan was way back in 1964.

• Zeeshan Ali is both captain and coach for Davis Cup tie against Pakistan -

From The Hindu: National News

• IMA Andhra Pradesh chapter recalls services of doctors who died during pandemic on COVID Martyrs’ Day -

• Samajwadi Party announces 16 candidates for Lok Sabha polls, Dimple Yadav to contest from Mainpuri -

• Andhra Pradesh State Legal Services Authority organises training programme on road accident claims -

• Opposition UDF blames government for fiscal crisis, walks out of Assembly - Congress MLA Roji M. John moving an adjournment motion holds the 2016-2021 LDF government primarily responsible for the present crisis. Finance Minister K.N. Balagopal accuses the Centre of pushing State into crisis asks Opposition to join February 8 Jantar Mantar protest

• Man hacked to death in Hanamkonda, previous enmity suspected -

From BBC: Europe

• Ukraine war: Nothing but rubble in shattered ghost town Avdiivka - After months of fighting in Avdiivka, residents are reporting that Russian troops have entered the town.

• Eurovision: Liverpool to hand over key to Malmo - Liverpool will officially hand over the keys to Eurovision in a ceremony in Malmo, Sweden later.

• Vladimir Kara-Murza: Fears for Russian activist after secretive jail move - The UK is “deeply concerned” after contact is lost with jailed Ukraine war critic Vladimir Kara-Murza.

• US sells $238bn of weapons abroad in record year - Sales negotiated by the US government spiked 56%, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine stoked demand.

• Bi-2: Russia anti-war band arrested in Thailand faces deportation - The rock band was touring Phuket and could be deported back to Russia, activists warn.

From Ars Technica

• ChatGPT is leaking passwords from private conversations of its users, Ars reader says - Names of unpublished research papers, presentations, and PHP scripts also leaked. - link

• OpenAI and Common Sense Media partner to protect teens from AI harms and misuse - Site gave ChatGPT 3 stars and 48% privacy score: “Best used for creativity, not facts.” - link

• Beware of scammers sending live couriers to liquidate victims’ life savings - The scams sound easy to detect, but they steal billions of dollars, often from the elderly. - link

• Apple warns proposed UK law will affect software updates around the world - Apple may leave the UK if required to provide advance notice of product updates. - link

• After 32 years, one of the ’Net’s oldest software archives is shutting down - Hobbes OS/2 Archive: “As of April 15th, 2024, this site will no longer exist.” - link

From Jokes Subreddit

• The Smiths had no children and decided to use a proxy father to start their family. On the day the proxy father was to arrive, Mr.Smith kissed his wife and said, “I’m off. The man should be here soon.” -

  Half an hour later, just by chance, a door-to-door baby photographer rang the doorbell, hoping to make a sale. “Good morning madam. You don’t know me but I’ve come to….” “Oh, no need to explain. I’ve been expecting you,” Mrs. Smith cut in.

  “Really..?” the photographer asked. “Well, good..! I’ve made a specialty of babies.”

  “That’s what my husband and I had hoped. Please come in and have a seat. Just where do we start..?” asked Mrs. Smith, blushing.

  “Leave everything to me. I usually try two in the bathtub, one on the couch and perhaps a couple on the bed. Sometimes the living room floor is fun too; you can really spread out.”

  “Bathtub, living room floor..? No wonder it didn’t work for Harry and me.”

  “Well, madam, none of us can guarantee a good one every time. But if we try several different positions and I shoot from six or seven angles, I’m sure you’ll be pleased with the results.”

  “I hope we can get this over with quickly,” gasped Mrs. Smith.

  “Madam, in my line of work, a man must take his time. I’d love to be in and out in five minutes, but you’d be disappointed with that, I’m sure.”

  “Don’t I know!!” Mrs. Smith exclaimed.

  The photographer opened his briefcase and pulled out a portfolio of his baby pictures. “This was done on the top of a bus in downtown London.”

  “Oh my God..!!” Mrs. Smith exclaimed, tugging at her handkerchief.

  “And these twins turned out exceptionally well when you consider their mother was so difficult to work with.” The photographer handed Mrs. Smith the picture.

  “She was difficult ..?” asked Mrs. Smith.

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. I finally had to take her to Hyde Park to get the job done right. People were crowding around four and five deep, pushing to get a good look.”

  “Four and five deep..?” asked Mrs. Smith, eyes widened in amazement.

  “Yes”, the photographer said. “And for more than three hours too. The mother was constantly squealing and yelling. I could hardly concentrate. Then darkness approached and I began to rush my shots. Finally, when the squirrels began nibbling on my equipment, I just packed it all in.”

  Mrs. Smith leaned forward. “You mean they actually chewed on your, eh……equipment?”

  “That’s right. Well madam, if you’re ready, I’ll set up my tripod so that we can get to work.”

  “Tripod..??”, Mrs. Smith looked extremely worried now.

  "Oh Good God Yes..! I have to use a tripod to rest my Canon on.

  It’s much too big for me to hold while I’m getting ready for action.

  Madam..? Madam..?….. Good Lord, she’s fucking fainted..!

  submitted by /u/YZXFILE
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• A well-dressed drunk man walks into a bar -

  He approaches the bar and shouts: “Bartender! A drink for everyone, a drink for me, and a drink for yourself!”

  The bartender pours all the drinks. The whole bar cheers and they all drink.

  Afterwards, the bartender hands the bill to the man, who just shrugs and says “Oh, I didn’t bring my wallet with me tonight. Sorry!” The bartender proceeds to beat the living daylights out of the man and throws him out.

  The next night, the same man stumbles into the bar. “Bartender!” the man happily shouts as he approaches, “A drink for everyone, a drink for me, and a drink for yourself!”

  The bartender thinks, ‘This guy can’t be that stupid. I hope for his sake that he came to pay for last night’s drinks too. Also I feel pretty bad about beating him up yesterday, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.’ So he pours all the drinks, the whole bar cheers, and they all drink. The bartender hands the bill to the man, and he again shrugs and says, “Oh, I forgot my wallet again. Sorry!” The bartender proceeds to beat the man even harder than before and kicks him out.

  On the third night in a row, the bartender can’t believe his eyes when he sees the man return. “Bartender! A drink for everyone, and a drink for me!”

  The bartender is fuming and grins sardonically. “What? No drink for me tonight?”

  The drunk looks at him and says “Nah man, you get too violent when you drink.”

  submitted by /u/Hipp013
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• At the height of the French Revolution, two aristocrats and a blacksmith were in line to be guillotined. The Executioner gave them option to lay face-up, and if the guillotine malfunctioned, they would be pardoned. -

  The 1st aristocrat said, “I will not be humiliated” and faced upwards. The blade was released, but miraculously stopped inches away from him neck. The Executioner let him go. The 2nd aristocrat said, “I’m just a brave as he is,” and got on his back. Again, the blade stopped just inches from his neck, and he was pardoned. The blacksmith told the Executioner, “I’m equal to them” and laid on his back. Just before the Executioner pulled the release, the blacksmith said, “Wait! I think I see the problem with the blade!”

  submitted by /u/Major_Independence82
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• I caught the flu in Madrid on a recent business trip. -

  Whilst sniffling and coughing and rolling around in the hotel bed, I realised I needed medical attention, so I called the concierge to get help.

  “Oh, so you’re sick!” came the reply. “Not a problem, we’ll send our very own hotel doctor up to your room right away!”

  The doctor strolled into the room within seconds, and whilst I stuttered and tried to comprehend the situation, he gave me some medicine to ease the symptoms. When I finally stammered out “h…how does the hotel have their own doctor on call? I’m amazed you got here so quickly…”,he simply shook his head and cracked a smile, and replied:

  “Nobody expects the Spanish inn physician.”

  submitted by /u/iamdecal
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• Two Christians were lost in an Arabian desert… -

  The first day is hot, and they’re miserable after running out of food and water. The night is surprisingly cold and even worse than the day. The second day and night are even worse.

  On the third morning, hotter than the past 2 days, they see a mosque. “We’re saved!” exclaims one. The other is wary and says he doesn’t think they’ll help Christians. The first says he doesn’t care, he’s so hungry he’d rather be killed than starve. The second one decides to tell them he’s Muslim.

  They arrive and the first man says he’s Christian and asks for help. The Muslims are very friendly and tell him they have plenty of food and water for him.

  The second one tells them he’s Muslim. The reply: “Salaam, brother! Happy Ramadan!”

  submitted by /u/Ixz72
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