Highlights from this week (details below):
US military reports it lost simulated war with China over Taiwan, on epic scale
Biden administration gives assist to jihadist student visa holders
Meet Ben & Jerry's board chair: Anti-Israel activist has published defenses of Hezbollah, Hamas
A UT-Arlington professor incites hate against Jews’ American ancestors, for not being sufficiently “working class” — and my responses
Republican entrepreneur uses seat on University of Colorado Board of Regents to champion intellectual diversity, free speech
A psychiatrist delivered a lecture at Yale's Child Study Center, entitled: “The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind” (recording and commentary)
Medical schools are now denying biological sex
‘It Failed Miserably’: After Wargaming Loss, Joint Chiefs Are Overhauling How the US Military Will Fight; In a fake battle for Taiwan, U.S. forces lost network access almost immediately; Hyten has issued four directives to help change that, by Tara Copp, Defense One, July 26, 2021. Excerpt:
A brutal loss in a wargaming exercise last October convinced the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. John Hyten to scrap joint warfighting concepts that had guided U.S. military operations for decades.
“Without overstating the issue, it failed miserably. An aggressive red team that had been studying the United States for the last 20 years just ran rings around us. They knew exactly what we're going to do before we did it,” Hyten told an audience Monday at the launch of the Emerging Technologies Institute, an effort by the National Defense Industrial Association industry group to speed military modernization.
The Pentagon would not provide the name of the wargame, which was classified, but a defense official said one of the scenarios revolved around a battle for Taiwan. One key lesson: gathering ships, aircraft, and other forces to concentrate and reinforce each other’s combat power also made them sitting ducks.
“We always aggregate to fight, and aggregate to survive. But in today’s world, with hypersonic missiles, with significant long-range fires coming at us from all domains, if you're aggregated and everybody knows where you are, you're vulnerable,” Hyten said.
Even more critically, the blue team lost access to its networks almost immediately.
2034: A Novel of the Next World War, an Exclusive Excerpt: What if things escalated? What if communications were knocked out? What if cyberwar was just the start? Read every chapter of this special six-part series, by Wired Magazine, January 26, 2021. Excerpt:
WIRED has always been a publication about the future—about the forces shaping it, and the shape we’d like it to take. Sometimes, for us, that means being wild-eyed optimists, envisioning the scenarios that excite us most. And sometimes that means taking pains to envision futures that we really, really want to avoid.
By giving clarity and definition to those nightmare trajectories, the hope is that we can give people the ability to recognize and divert from them. Almost, say, the way a vaccine teaches an immune system what to ward off. And that’s what this issue of WIRED is trying to do.
Over the past several years, relations between the US and China have moldered. And they’re not likely to solidify any time soon. At this point, the two countries are not only strategic and economic competitors; they’ve also begun to split into increasingly separate technological spheres—turning the race for innovations in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and cyberweapons into what could become a zero-sum game. Hypernationalist politics aren’t liable to go away either. It’s something that eats at us.
A few months back, we were on the phone with the writer and novelist Elliot Ackerman, discussing edits on another WIRED story, when he said something that made our ears perk up. He mentioned he was finishing a novel with Admiral James Stavridis that imagines how the political and technological conditions of today might erupt into a war between the US and China.
Biden Administration Gives Assist to Jihadist Student Visa Holders, by by Todd Bensman, Middle East Forum, July 26, 2021. Excerpt:
Jihadist hate for Jews allegedly inspired 24-year-old Egyptian Khaled Awad on July 1 to viciously stab Boston area Rabbi Shlomo Noginski outside a Jewish day school. Suffolk County authorities were planning to charge the Egyptian chemical engineering student with domestic terrorism-related hate crimes, and the father-of-12 rabbi is recovering from his eight stab wounds.
But this latest attack should not yet fade from public view without =note that it squarely underscores a Biden administration move less than a week later that almost surely will condemn more Americans to Rabbi Noginski's fate.
Masih Alinejad's American Enemies, by Jimmy Quinn, National Review, July 15, 2021. Excerpt:
The Department of Justice on Tuesday afternoon issued indictments against a team of Iranian operatives working to kidnap Masih Alinejad, a dissident journalist and citizen of both the U.S. and Iran. (Jim Geraghty has more on this in yesterday’s Jolt.)
One would expect that Alinejad’s detractors would include only Iranian government officials incensed by her journalism, but certain elements in Washington, including Representative Ilhan Omar and a controversial think tank, were also critical of Alinejad’s important work and have tried in recent years to muddy her reputation as a straight-shooting opponent of authoritarianism.
Meet Ben & Jerry's Board Chair: Anti-Israel Activist Has Published Defenses of Hezbollah, Hamas, by Alana Goodman, Washington Free Beacon, July 23, 2021. Excerpt:
Ben & Jerry's board chairwoman isn't your average corporate suit. A social justice warrior who's now under increased scrutiny in the wake of the company's announcement that it will boycott Israel's West Bank and East Jerusalem, she has a lengthy history of left-wing activism that includes publishing columns defending Hezbollah and supporting U.S. funding to Hamas.
Anuradha Mittal, the leading force behind the ice cream company's decision to stop selling its products in parts of Israel, founded the Oakland Institute, which describes itself as an "independent policy think tank," in 2004 and serves as its executive director. The group has published articles defending Hezbollah and Hamas, terrorist groups that seek the destruction of the Jewish state.
IsraellyCool blog exposes Gazans rebelling against Hamas - and proof of the terrorist gang’s long history of admitting it uses them as human shields
Gazans Turn on Hamas et al. for Endangering Their Lives, by David Lange, IsraellyCool, July 25, 2021. Excerpt:
Last week, an explosion in Gaza tore through a house in a popular market in the Gaza Strip, killing one person and wounding 10 (including 6 children). As the AP and others reported, “It was not immediately clear what caused the explosion” – which is usually a sign it was a jihadi premature explodation.
Sure enough, it seems it was self-inflicted – and for the first time I can remember, palestinian Arabs are pissed off at their terror overlords for putting their civilians at risk. […]
We’ve been telling the world for years how Hamas and friends have been operating out of civilian areas, essentially using them as human shields. We even point to videos in which Hamas-holes admit to literally using their people as human shields.
See more videos of Hamas admitting to using human shields at the bottom of the page here.
WJC President Ronald S. Lauder Stands With 50 CUNY Professors, by Harlem World Magazine, July 26, 2021. Excerpt:
The World Jewish Congress publicly shared its full support of the 50 City University of New York (CUNY) professors who resigned en masse from the school’s faculty union after it adopted a resolution condemning Israel.
The union, known as the Professional Staff Congress, had approved a measure that, among other items, “condemns the massacre of Palestinians by the Israeli state.”
“We have your backs,” World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder said. “The World Jewish Congress is in full solidarity with these brave professors and the university leadership that has the courage and integrity to stand with them. These educators are speaking with one voice against the troubling rise of institutionalized antisemitism in American academia, which is being emboldened from the far left and the far right and is accompanied by rising support for formerly fringe movements, such as BDS (the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement).
A UT-Arlington professor incites hate against Jews’ American ancestors, for not being sufficiently “working class” — and my responses
On July 27, 2021 I observed that a friend shared this on Twitter:
Her bio:
“UT-Arlington Professor. Writer. Mom. Methodologist. Part N Leibowitz, Part Y Leibowitz. Progressive Hasidic Jew. Wears Red, Barely Sleeps. Opinions mine.She/her”
My first response to her:
My second response to her:
Republican CU regent works from within the system to promote intellectual diversity, free speech, by Tripp Grebe, The College Fix, July 28, 2021. Excerpt:
Entrepreneur Heidi Ganahl wants young people to have access to the American dream
Heidi Ganahl is a Republican leader in the state of Colorado who some see as perhaps a future U.S. senator or governor for the GOP.
But right now, Ganahl says she is gratified to serve as an elected member of the University of Colorado Board of Regents, where she has steadfastly fought for free speech, tuition cuts and intellectual diversity over the last three years.
Ganahl says she feels very blessed to have lived the American dream and has made it her life’s mission to ensure that future generations can benefit from the same opportunities and freedoms she has been fortunate to experience.
Med Schools Are Now Denying Biological Sex, by Katie Herzog, Common Sense with Bari Weiss, Sustack, July 27, 2021. Excerpt:
Professors are apologizing for saying ‘male’ and ‘female.’ Students are policing teachers. This is what it looks like when activism takes over medicine. […]
During a recent endocrinology course at a top medical school in the University of California system, a professor stopped mid-lecture to apologize for something he’d said at the beginning of class.
“I don’t want you to think that I am in any way trying to imply anything, and if you can summon some generosity to forgive me, I would really appreciate it,” the physician says in a recording provided by a student in the class (whom I’ll call Lauren). “Again, I’m very sorry for that. It was certainly not my intention to offend anyone. The worst thing that I can do as a human being is be offensive.”
His offense: using the term “pregnant women.”
“I said ‘when a woman is pregnant,’ which implies that only women can get pregnant and I most sincerely apologize to all of you.”
It wasn’t the first time Lauren had heard an instructor apologize for using language that, to most Americans, would seem utterly inoffensive. Words like “male” and “female.”
'The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind', by Katie Herzog, Common Sense with Bari Weiss, Sustack, June 4, 2021. Excerpt:
A psychiatrist lecturing at Yale's Child Study Center spoke about 'unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way.' […]
A few weeks ago, someone sent me a recording of a talk called “The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind.” It was delivered at the Yale School of Medicine’s Child Study Center by a New York-based psychiatrist as part of Grand Rounds, an ongoing program in which clinicians and others in the field lecture students and faculty.
When I listened to the talk I considered the fact that it might be some sort of elaborate prank. But looking at the doctor’s social media, it seems completely genuine.
What Happens When Doctors Can't Tell the Truth?, by Katie Herzog, Common Sense with Bari Weiss, Sustack, June 3, 2021. Excerpt:
Whole areas of research are off-limits. Top physicians treat patients based on their race. An ideological 'purge' is underway in American medicine.
‘People Are Afraid to Speak Honestly’
They meet once a month on Zoom: a dozen doctors from around the country with distinguished careers in different specialities. They vary in ethnicity, age and sexual orientation. Some work for the best hospitals in the U.S. or teach at top medical schools. Others are dedicated to serving the most vulnerable populations in their communities.
The meetings are largely a support group. The members share their concerns about what’s going on in their hospitals and universities, and strategize about what to do. What is happening, they say, is the rapid spread of a deeply illiberal ideology in the country’s most important medical institutions.
This dogma goes by many imperfect names — wokeness, social justice, critical race theory, anti-racism — but whatever it’s called, the doctors say this ideology is stifling critical thinking and dissent in the name of progress. They say that it’s turning students against their teachers and patients and racializing even the smallest interpersonal interactions. Most concerning, they insist that it is threatening the foundations of patient care, of research, and of medicine itself.