Obsidian Wings

The Good Earth

by wj 

"Rare earths" (lanthanide elements) are not particularly rare.  What they are is quite difficult to separate and refine, because they are so similar.  But there are differences, and those differences are critical is determining which one will work well (or at all) in any particular technical application. 

Once upon a time, perhaps half a century ago, the US was the main producer of refined rare earths.  Then China started producing them, and far less expensively that the US.  American producers couldn't compete.  And, frankly, didn't try very hard.  At this point, China is the world's main supplier of rare earths.  And the sole supplier of several of the heaviest ones. 

Why do we care?  Because some of those high tech applications are critical to our economy.  For example, for minor bits of manufacturing like semiconductor chips, which we are working to produce more of domestically.  But perhaps more to the point, especially for the bellicose right, they are used in various bits of military hardware.  For example, a nuclear submarine uses about four tons for each sub.  Which, currently, have to be imported from China.  (No idea whether those are exempt from the current flurry of tariffs -- although I rather doubt it.  It's just too technical for the current administration to wrap their heads around.)

As noted, rare earths are not particularly rare.  The US could take up producing them again.  The problem is, we couldn't do so quickly.  Even making the safe assumption that environmental regulations would be ignored (rare earth factories tend to be rather polluting), there is the problem that smelters to refine them are nothing like off-the-shelf items.  We're talking years to get one up and running -- even if a competent administration was expediting that. 

Of course, there are lots of other places where a trade war with China will hurt.  China does have its own economic challenges, but it is far better placed to weather them than the US is.  Both because the Trump administration is a long ways from achieving its ambition to create a totalitarian state, and because what the US supplies to China is available from alternative sources.  Perhaps not as cheaply, but definitely available.  The question is, how quickly will Trump cave? 

Open Thread

Elon Musk is Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible!

by liberal japonicus

If you haven't noticed, this is not the place for breaking news. But this does seem to be something we might want to talk about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWpqJ8pD2Ng

AMNA NAWAZ: Since President Trump reentered the Oval Office, billionaire Elon Musk and his DOGE team have been sweeping through federal agencies, accessing sensitive data as part of the effort to scale back the size of government. We're getting new information about the scope of that access at one independent federal agency. That's the National Labor Relations Board, which protects workers' rights to organize and investigates unfair labor practices. A whistle-blower complaint filed by an I.T. staffer at the NLRB claims that DOGE gained access to closely guarded data, including case files, and that could have led directly to a — quote — "significant cybersecurity breach." That whistle-blower, Daniel Berulis, joins me now, along with his lawyer, Andrew Bakaj. Welcome to you both. [...] So, Daniel, let's just start with you. You had been at the agency for about under a year or so. It was about early March when the DOGE team arrived at the headquarters. When and how did you notice that something wasn't right, something was going on?

DANIEL BERULIS: Sure. I was doing metrics review, kind of looking around, trying to do optimization of our own, because we're always trying to save money. And we were identifying different things, and we noticed something that was off. Me and a couple of different people noticed different points, but it kind of added up to a bigger picture. They're called indicators of compromise in the private sector. And so, when I noticed these indicators, red flags went off in my head, and I said, something's up here. So I investigated farther at that point. [...] At first, I didn't have a good picture, so I started to try to rule out possibilities of what benign could have caused these large exfiltration of data, could cause these large spikes of internal transfers. [...] There's a 200 or 300 percent increase in that time period as to what normal baseline is. So that's definitely unusual and warranted more investigation.

AMNA NAWAZ: And in the affidavit, you say that you detected the removal of 10 gigabytes worth of data. Do you have any idea what kind of data we're talking about, why this would cause concern?

DANIEL BERULIS: Sure. So what that data spike correlated with was data that was transferred off of an internal record-keeping device that was only used for internal case data. So this system only has the private information about union organizers. The privileged business proprietary, technologies, competitors, those kind of things are in that system only. There's no other data. There's nothing else except that. So that correlated data spike lined up in the exact time window and the same amount. And so that's what we can determine was taken, was data out of that system particularly.

From his lawyer

ANDREW BAKAJ: If the administration is taking the position that having data exfiltrated out of the United States government and potentially into other nation-states, if that's about efficiency and effectiveness for the nation, it doesn't make any sense. Within 15 minutes of DOGE engineers creating accounts, years, names and passwords within internal systems within DOGE, within 15 minutes of the creation of those accounts, somebody or something from Russia tried to log in with all of our credentials, meaning they had the right usernames and right passwords. And the question is, how do they get that and why? The second question that I have is that why is it that from what Dan has seen, as well as others — because we have spoken to other individuals who are able to corroborate this — which is that some of the data is also using Starlink as a backdoor. And that's another way to get data out of internal databases within agencies. And Starlink has now direct access where information is likely, we believe, is funneled directly into Russia.

Cherry on the top

ANDREW BAKAJ: [...] prior to our filing the whistle-blower disclosure this week, last week, somebody went to Dan's home and taped a threatening note, a menacing note on his door with personal information.

DANIEL BERULIS: While I was at work, yes.

ANDREW BAKAJ: While he was at work, and it also contained photographs of him walking his dog taken by a drone. So...

AMNA NAWAZ: This was on your front door to your home?

DANIEL BERULIS: Taped straight on, not inconspicuous, just right there in a white envelope.

ANDREW BAKAJ: You can't get any more direct — a direct threat than that.

 

The sparkle of your China

by liberal japonicus

Can you show me the shine in your Japan
The sparkle of your China, can you show me
Bodhisattva, 

This Klein interview with Thomas Friedman is quite interesting. (the link to the transcript is here, put a gift link in the comments and I'll change it) I've never been a fan of the Moustache of Understanding, (see here and here, I'm not going to link to Taibibi's review of his book) but in this, he hits a lot of notes I agree with but the conversation is all over the place. As an attempt to entice you to listen, from 32:00 for about 3 minutes is where Friedman, as they say in the UK, he loses his rag, check it out.

It starts off with Klein questioning the consensus around China, and, though I appreciate his commentary, this tendency to be driven not by an examination of the problem but of setting oneself opposed to whatever one feels is the 'consensus' is a lot of what got us into this societal dumpster fire (cf vax-questioning, climate change skepticism as examples that come to mind). But I do think the opening observation is right on

What if you get into a trade war with China and you lose. i don't think people are thinking enough about how possible that really is And one of the reasons it's possible isn't just because Donald Trump's trade war is ill thought through and ill defined and not well planned for. [...] I fear that America is trying to fight the China of the '90s or the 2000s with a very very very poor understanding of what China's become today.

Of course, the Moustache of Understanding opens with a grand sweeping statement and an metaphor so bad, it has to be noted

All the American business executives in China left China during Covid, virtually all of them, and then after covid, we began this process of decoupling. So you basically had six years with very very little American presence there. When I was in China last year, I felt like I was the only American in China. You just didn't see any other Americans, not tourists, not business people, not nobody. I wrote then that it was like America and China were two elephants looking at each other through a straw. Having just been there two weeks ago I would say now they're like two elephants looking at each other through a needle, the aperture has just gotten tiny.

I got physically sick thinking about that last attempt at a metaphor. I assume that it is because Chinese taxis are self driving and he can't get inspiration from the drivers.

 

But move past Friedman's tired rhetorical moves, there are some interesting points, though you have to work hard to get to them. Friedman says that Huawei engaged in a lot of industrial espionage, which helped it overcome US attempts to kill the company, which then culminates in a suggestion that I have to quote because you won't believe how blindingly stupid it is

I would say to Huawei here's the deal, we're going to let you wire Wyoming Montana and Idaho. You can sell your technology in those three states. We're going to watch you for three years We're going to see how you handle that. We're going to see how you handle the data If you do well we're going to give you two other states

I lost 10 IQ points just pulling that out of the transcript. If Friedman might pause to think how that would, in any reality, actually work, he might realize that the internet and networked economy was a large reason why Huawei was able to do what they did. Now, I know that IP is a touchy subject here, but Friedman might consider how the whole IP enterprise is actually an upgrading of colonialism, making sure that countries like China are constantly paying tribute to the West. (see here and here as two examples at random). Because of the whole patent system, you get comments like the Josh Hawley line, noted by Klein at the beginning, "China can't really innovate. They can just steal."

 

Friedman also talks about how Chinese smartphone makers went to car manufacturing. He's not wrong about this, but I think this is a more insightful take, from Asianometry.

There is more, but I'll leave it for all of you to take up in the comments. As a little amuse-bouche, check out this article about Chinese memes about the US, which has this quote from Press Secretary Leavitt ""I have seen the videos. We're not sure who made the videos or if we can verify the authenticity." Someone should clue her in to the fact that sarcasm is not based on authenticity.

 

been on my mind watching the Trump administration light the confidence the rest of the world has had in America on fire and call it greatness

Understanding the affect: a tale of two speeches

by liberal japonicus

I finally listened to Carole Cadwalladr's 2nd TED talk. I started it I think when GftNC recommended it, but had to turn it off and, having returned to it and finished it, I thought about why that was the case. It is instructive to compare the talk to Cadwalladr's first TED talk, which she references in the second one. For me, the emotion of her second TED talk is overpowering and I wasn't sure she would get through the talk. She acknowledges that in the opening when she says

I've been feeling a lot of panic and fear about this talk. And not just for the normal reasons of public speaking, although that's there, too. But it's also because I want to say something meaningful, and I've been overwhelmed by the enormity of what is happening right now. And there's a particular set of circumstances which have also been feeding into my confusion and denial. And that is because the last time that I stood on this stage, it led to a three-year legal battle, culminated in London's High Court, in which it felt like I was on trial for my life, because I was. My career, my reputation, my finances, even my home was on the line. All because I came here to warn you that I didn't think democracy was going to survive the technology that you're building,

On the verge of tears, voice cracking, for me, it is a question of affect. I'm not sure if it is an aspect of living here in Japan, I've always had a tendency to look away when people were in situations where they would prefer that no one saw, but after 30+ years here, it has grown to an almost compulsive degree.

This calls to mind a couple of things. One was Hillary Clinton's nomination acceptance speech. For me, the affect she had gave me a sinking feeling that she was going to lose. To say that now makes me sound like one of those idiotic pundits who diagnose the problems of candidates and campaigns with the 'if he/she just did x, everything would be different'.

Another example from the opposite way is anytime Kemi Badenoch opens her gob (Here, here and here, I won't put longer ones up, but just listen to her in any PMQ or the most recent BBC morning interview where she demands to be allowed to finish, and talks over people.) The affect is, I think, propping Labour up, which I'm happy-ish about, but seems to be drawing attention away from more important issues that need to be addressed

It's easy to focus in on these things, and one can see how them become victim blaming. (It's probably no coincidence that my three examples are women, how does the affect work with men? Lots of examples of men saying cringy things, but nothing from men that strikes me like these three examples)

What is a woman to do? For me, a speech like Julia Gillard gave to the Australian Parliament and Tony Abbot is what I want to hear. However, that speech has been later framed contextually as less anchored by an understandable rage and more of a case of fighting fire with fire, claiming the speech was in response to  a hypocritical motion to remove the Speaker (a former Opposition politician who had become independent and was appointed by Gilliard as speaker) by the opposition. The author of the piece above is an Australian female academic, but there are a number of takes from this direction. Speaking as a person outside of Australia, some these takes feel a bit like a backlash to a woman expressing anger, and this 10 year later look doesn't express that so much. I'm not sure if this is a Liberty Valance "when the legend becomes fact, print the legend."  Still, I'm wondering about that tightrope of affect that women have to negotiate.

Anyway, another open thread for that. The previous one, maybe put your examples of Maga/Musk DOGE examples of idiocy, here maybe talk about what the other side of the ledger needs to do.

It couldn't have happened to a nicer person open thread

by liberal japonicus

This one is outsourced to Shakezula at Lawyers, Guns and Money

=====

If Nemo Klus gets cyberbullied for nearly two hours does anyone care?

Elon Musk rage quit a livestream of the video game Path of Exile 2 on Saturday night after repeatedly dying while also being ruthlessly cyberbullied in the chat.

Path of Exile 2 is one of Musk’s favorite games—so much so that he once claimed to be one of the world’s top players in an attempt to boost his gamer cred, before later backtracking and admitting that he had been secretly paying people to level up his account to make him appear more talented at it than he was.

By the way, his excuse for being an incredible dweeb that he had to pay other people to play video games for him? It’s the only way to beat players in Asia.

Nevertheless, while attempting to show off Starlink’s in-flight WiFi capabilities while onboard his private jet over the weekend, Musk streamed himself playing some PoE2 on the hardest difficulty, which was broadcast live on X.

The DOGE chief was, predictably, terrible at the game, but that was the least of his problems—Less than five minutes into the stream, a player logged on and asked Musk if he could “please jerk off mr trump so he dies of a heart attack.” It only got worse from there.

For the next hour and a half, Musk sat in stony-faced silence and blasted techno music while dozens of users with names such as ELON_IS_A_PEEDOPHILE and ELON_MUSK_IS_PATHETIC repeatedly spammed the chat to tell him “YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND YOU WILL DIE ALONE” and “YOU WILL ALWAYS FEEL INSECURE AND IT WILL NEVER GO AWAY.”

Is it funny to see a bullying billionaire shithead who actively nurtures the worst sort of bullies get bullied? Let’s hear from another anti-fan.

Elon. It’s me, Ashley St. Claire. I have no other means of contacting you so I bought PoE2 early access. Please pay your child support. Thank you Elon.

Absolutely. It isn’t as good as Richard Spencer catching a fist, but this lasted longer.

There’s video. The mayhem begins at 4:44

======

Deus adiuva nos omnes

by liberal japonicus

This interview with Thomas Sipp is worth your time. It has special resonance for me because he has a Japanese mother and American father, which informed his decision to resign to Skadden because of Trump's demands. If someone has a gift link to the transcript, which is here, I'd appreciate it if you posted it in the comments.

Vignettes

by liberal japonicus

I assume that people here read like me, so the stuff that I'm reading, y'all are also probably going to see it, if not in the same story, possibly in a different write-up. However, I wonder if any of you read this Guardian piece titled ‘I was a British tourist trying to leave the US. Then I was detained, shackled and sent to an immigration detention centre’

To be honest, I hesitate a bit to click on stories with first person titles, and they seem to be a Guardian staple. Not precisely sure what the reasons are, but it's probably a combination of not wanting to see the suffering up close, not wanting to lose sight of a bigger picture and, again to be totally honest, a dollop of skepticism/cynicism. But I clicked on this one, and beyond the wanton cruelty, it struck me how this is an economic enterprise. Some excerpts with my emphasis:

An hour later, Becky was handed a transcript of her interview to sign. She was alone, with no legal advice. “It was really long, loads of pages.” As she flicked through it, she saw the officer had summarised everything she told him about what she had been doing in the US as just “work in exchange for accommodation”. “I remember thinking, I should ask him to edit that.” But the official was impatient and irritable, she says, and she was exhausted and dizzy – she hadn’t eaten all day. “I just thought, if I sign this, I’ll be free. And I didn’t want to stay there any longer.” So she signed.

Then she was told she had violated her tourist visa by working in the US. They took her fingerprints, seized her phone and bags, cut the laces off her trainers, frisked her, and put her in a cell. “I heard the door lock, and I instantly threw up.”

At 11pm, Becky was allowed to call her family. Her father asked what was going to happen next. “I looked at the officer and he said, ‘We’re going to take you to a facility where you’ll wait for your flight. You’ll be there one or two days – just while we get you on the next flight home.’”

Becky was shackled and put into the back of a van. “I had no idea where we were going. It was just bumping around in darkness with handcuffs on.” At 2.30am, she arrived at the Ice facility in Tacoma, Washington. She was made to change into standard-issue underwear, a yellow top and trousers. Officers took away all her personal belongings, measured her height and weight, made her pose for a mugshot, and assigned her an “A” number (short for “alien”). Whenever she asked the people processing her arrival how long she would be detained for, they told her they couldn’t help: they worked for GEO, the private company contracted to run the facility, and not Ice, the government body that would decide her fate.

[...]

All Becky wanted to do was sleep, but instead she headed to the payphones to make the one free call she had been told she was entitled to, to tell her family how to put money into her inmate account. “In my head, this was a thing I had to do immediately, otherwise I’d be stuck without a way to communicate with the outside world.” She gave her parents her A number, and they tried to reassure her. It’s just one or two days, they repeated to her. A horrible experience. But over soon.

As soon as the call ended, Becky went on one of the detention centre iPads, which had apps allowing inmates to send messages to Ice and check the balance on their inmate account. “I sent a message to Ice straight away saying: ‘I am a tourist. I was just backpacking. I have not outstayed my visa. I’ve only been in America one month and two weeks. I don’t know why I’m here. I want to go home. Please can you help?’” She frantically refreshed the app to see if her account had been credited. (It took longer than expected, because funds can only be transferred into accounts for “illegal aliens” from within the US. Becky’s father, Paul, discovered he could only do it through an American friend.) “I was seeing no money arrive, and I was getting really upset thinking I told them the wrong A number.”

As she sobbed holding the iPad, Becky found herself surrounded by other inmates who wanted to comfort her. A woman called Lucy offered to let Becky use her phone credit if money hadn’t appeared in the account within a few hours. Rosa, a Mexican woman who spoke barely any English and had already been detained for 11 months, offered Becky a Pot Noodle she had been able to buy from the commissary, the shop where they could purchase luxuries. At 8am, Becky finally curled up in her bed to sleep, with Rosa praying in Spanish in the bunk below.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the whole edifice is a way to extract money from a particular population.

I shot the tariff

by liberal japonicus

Trump: China's mining too many ores
Musk: What are you going to do?
Trump: Order more tariffs to make them mine less.
Musk: Mine fewer.
Trump: Thanks, but I'm talking about ores.

After that, I've got nothing. Have at it.

Bucky Badger sez

by liberal japonicus

Well, some good news.

Susan Crawford won the race for a seat on the Wisconsin supreme court on Tuesday, a major win for Democrats who had framed the race as a referendum on Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s popularity.

[...]

In remarks on Tuesday night, Schimel said he and his team “didn’t leave anything on the field” and announced that he had conceded the race in a call to his opponent before taking the stage. When his supporters began to boo, Schimel stopped them. “No, you gotta accept the results,” he said, adding: “The numbers aren’t gonna turn around. They’re too bad, and we’re not gonna pull this off.”

Gotta admit, I'm surprised they aren't trying to stolen election routine.

Unfortunately, Florida man is alive and well. Have at it.