Quote:There’s been plenty of criticism and consternation about reports Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon official running the Trump Administration’s AUKUS review, had asked for some kind of commitment about Australian involvement if there were a conflict with China over Taiwan.

Colby is no fool. He’s probably got two very rational reasons for the raising the issue. One is about the planning necessary to make collective deterrence real.  And the other is about some big political and military risks for America that are baked into the AUKUS nuclear submarine plan.

While the actual request isn’t clear, Colby is an experienced professional who knows that U.S. policy towards Taiwan is one of ‘strategic ambiguity’ so he knows he won’t get an iron clad position from the Australian government about a potential future conflict.

What’s going on?  U.S. officials may be sensibly frustrated about an Australian reluctance to do serious collective planning around a conflict over Taiwan because this might ‘lock Australia in’ if something real happened.  That anxiety waxes and wanes over time. It almost certainly doesn’t stop with senior civilian or military officials but is shared by our political leaders.

The problem with a fearful approach to sensitive collective planning is that Australia gets left not knowing what partners and allies might do in a time of crisis – and not knowing what assumptions are being made about Australian actions.  That means we aren’t able to shape plans and expectations. Worse, when real world events happen – like Xi Jinping directing an invasion of Taiwan – Australian decision makers will be knowledge poor and badly prepared to make critical decisions, right when the press of events mean thinking and planning time isn’t available.

So, if our American allies in the Pentagon are making potential operational plans to deter China over Taiwan and to defeat the Chinese military if deterrence fails, it’s very sensible for Australia to participate in that collective planning work.  Then we avoid false assumptions being made and we put our decision makers in a position of knowledge and strength should a crisis occur. Maybe Colby gets this and is bemused his Australian partners don’t.

The other reason Australian officials might be dealing with Colby’s awkward questions goes right to the heart of the AUKUS program’s design.

It’s not the question everyone is spending so much time on – whether Australia would or wouldn’t send the first few Australian-flagged Viriginia submarines into a war sometime from the mid-2030s.  Sure, that is an issue for the Pentagon, because those submarines will have come from the U.S. Navy’s fleet at a time they don’t have enough to meet their own needs. 

But the bigger more immediate risk to American freedom of action with submarines comes from the fact that, under the AUKUS ‘Optimal Pathway’ plan agreed by the Biden Administration, Australian personnel will be critical parts of the crews of the American Navy’s own submarines for the rest of this decade and into the mid-2030s. Whether Joe Biden understood this aspect of the deal is a question Donald Trump is likely to ask.

Dan Packer, the U.S. director of naval submarine forces for AUKUS, set this out very clearly back in May 2024, saying the U.S. Navy will have 440 Australians on 25 attack submarines.  12 per cent of the crew of each of 25 U.S. subs will be Australian.  And the U.S. Navy is unlikely to have more than 25 deployable nuclear attack subs at any time because the rest will be in maintenance.

Those Australian personnel won’t be in training billets. As Dan Packer put it, “This is something that has never happened before,” “We are completely, 100% integrating them into our crew, from a complete and utter perspective”.

For project planners, this makes absolute sense as the only way to solve the problem of getting around 3000 Australians trained up to operate nuclear powered submarines between now and 2035.  It also brings some advantages – as Vice Admiral Gaucher, commander of U.S. of naval submarine forces said, “We get the opportunity to leverage an ally who can help us with manning and operating.”

But it also brings a very practical and big political and policy problem into play right now – a problem that will last until – and if – Australia manages to build a separate training program for submarine crews. Without these Australian crew members, the U.S. Navy’s own fleet of Virginia submarines will be disabled. And if an Australian government decision on whether Australians can serve on U.S. submarines in particular operations, crises or conflicts can only be made in the moment of crisis, then America’s security is at risk in a much bigger way than if 2 or 3 Australian-flagged submarines do or don’t join an operation.


Both our American and UK AUKUS partners know how Australia has handled decisions on Australians in line positions within each of their militaries.  That won’t be reassuring anyone involved in the Pentagon’s AUKUS review. There’s an elaborate bureaucratic process for handling requests from our partners to have these Australians deploy with their U.S. or UK units when something real happens. These Third Country Deployment decisions can go up to very senior decision-makers and potentially include ministers. No is a frequent answer.

To any informed American, like Elbridge Colby, this looks like a huge button labelled “Extreme Risk”.

And as he absorbs the implications of the AUKUS training plan, he’s also reading our prime minister’s speeches about making our own decisions and saying no in previous conflicts.

Given this, if a senior U.S. official reviewing AUKUS like Elbridge Colby wasn’t enquiring about what an Australian government and military might or might not do should a conflict with China over Taiwan begin, he wouldn’t be doing his job. 

For the Australian Government led by Mr Albanese, there’s the serious question about what to do about Australian sailors being critical parts of the U.S. Navy’s use of its own submarines between now and the mid-2030s.

We saw the problem on display in a simpler fashion with the prime minister working hard to avoid saying whether the joint Australian-U.S. facility at Pine Gap played any role in the recent U.S. B-2 bomber strikes against Iran. Mr Albanese told us that ‘this was a unilateral action by the United States’.  Whether that would withstand scrutiny of classified activities isn’t clear—but it will be impossible for an Australian government to claim that a U.S. Navy Virginia class submarine with a mixed American-Australian crew sinking a Chinese aircraft carrier during a war over Taiwan is a ‘unilateral’ U.S. action.

Maybe our political leaders here in Canberra and the senior defence civilian and military bureaucrats need to think through a better answer than ‘How very dare you!’ to Colby’s question. AUKUS may depend upon it.

****
Michael is Director of Strategic Analysis Australia. From 2018 until September 2022, he was the Director of the Defence, Strategy and National Security Program at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) in Canberra.

This design has been around for many many years but now it looks like the real thing will finally get off the ground supposedly by 2027.

I had to come here to post a thread about this immediately after seeing it.

During COVID and the attacks on free speech, social media platforms like Parler got shut down, so I joined Gab. I was clutching at straws, esp. with ATS showing signs of dying off, so I joined all kinds of forums. I found out very quickly that Gab was overrun with Neo-Nazi, white power racists, and I have been blocking everyone I see in my feed that fits that profile.

I found out later that this is how their "free speech" deal works: you are the moderating filter by using your block tool. So, I have gotten my feed pretty well clear of these racists; however, I still have to block people every time I'm on Gab. Some aren't as blatant and have slipped under my radar, so I scrutinize the profiles of some borderline posters to filter them out.

Any image of Hitler, Nazi's in uniform, or the ever-popular swastika will get you blocked by me very quickly, but some comments require a look at the poster's profile. Now, for some reason, these Nazis believe they are conservative, devout Christians, and this makes little sense to me because they hate Jewish and black people so much. Their beliefs are so extreme and dogmatic that they have become delusional IMO. But this last profile took the cake.

Apparently, this poster was defending the LGBTQ group on Gab, the only gay group there. They were telling others to ignore the group and let them be. I felt that an obviously liberal comment like that should be investigated, and guess what? This poster is a conservative, Christian, Neo-Nazi, homosexual! My jaw dropped when I saw the Nazi uniform and image of Hitler as I scrolled through the profile. Yet, they had links to movies on the Gay Pride Network and enough comments to make their preference clear. The cognitive dissonance of this profile had me gobsmacked!

I don't know what else to say. Perhaps Pink Floyd was onto something.

Quote:The lunatic is in my head
The lunatic is in my head

You raise the blade
You make the change
You rearrange me 'til I'm sane

You lock the door
And throw away the key
There's someone in my head, but it's not me

Quote:July 25, 2025 / Joseph P. Farrell

If you thought last Wednesday's blog about robotic cannibals "feeding" on other robots was bad, and if you thought we have now surely plumbed the superlative depths of the kookery that is the twenty-worst century*, then you'd be mistaken, for fasten your soon-to-be-recycled eyes on the following story shared by M.D. (with our gratitude):

California is set to become the first US state to manage power outages with AI

Now, firstly, note that this is an article published in the MIT Technology Review, hardly a source for the latest conspiracy theory or high octane speculation. That's my job, and I guard it jealously and zealously, and we'll get back to it in a moment, because our nosedive off the high octane speculation twig into the canyon below concerns the following statements:

Quote:California's statewide power grid operator is poised to become the first in North America to deploy artificial intelligence to manage outages, MIT Technology Review has learned.

“We wanted to modernize our grid operations. This fits in perfectly with that,” says Gopakumar Gopinathan, a senior advisor on power system technologies at the California Independent System Operator—known as the CAISO and pronounced KAI-so. “AI is already transforming different industries. But we haven’t seen many examples of it being used in our industry.”

At the DTECH Midwest utility industry summit in Minneapolis on July 15, CAISO is set to announce a deal to run a pilot program using new AI software called Genie, from the energy-services giant OATI. The software uses generative AI to analyze and carry out real-time analyses for grid operators and comes with the potential to autonomously make decisions about key functions on the grid, a switch that might resemble going from uniformed traffic officers to sensor-equipped stoplights.

But while CAISO may deliver electrons to cutting-edge Silicon Valley companies and laboratories, the actual task of managing the state’s electrical system is surprisingly analog. (Boldface and italics emphases added)

Now, let all this sink in: (1) Looneyfornia is turning the management of its power outages over to an artificial intelligence program that (2) will be able to make "autonomous" decisions about managing power outages, i.e., deciding who gets how much electricity and when they get it; (3) high on that list of priorities are all the "Silicon Valley companies and laboratories", and if you're an increasingly embattled farmer in the San Joaquin Valley, you're "a bit lower on the list of 'essential' industries" since you're only involved in food production. After all, Looneyfornia would rather ruin the entire state's agriculture in order to protect a rare breed of smelt, than see the valley agriculturally productive. And this is being urged when we know that (4) the plans for all the AI data centers will require so much energy that (5) we'll have to build a large number of all sorts of power plants to power them, including nuclear plants, said plants to be run by - you guessed it - artificial intelligences that will prioritize themselves over "non-essential" things like human life.  Those incidents involving artificial "intelligences" threatening their human "masters" with everything from blackmail to death are, as I said last Wednesday in my "robots as cannibals" blog, not "rare incidents" but rather warnings.

As a final warning slap across the face, we're reminded that "the task of managing the state's electrical system is surprisingly analog."  Maybe that's not such a bad thing, as no cyber system is ever completely secure. But then again, this is Looneyfornia after all, and those analog methods of running the state's power grid" have also burnt a lot of people out of their homes... best to turn that operation over to the artificial "intelligences" too... "Yes, hello? Mr. and Mrs. Public? Yes, this is the PG&E chatbot robot calling to remind you that your next three day power outage is scheduled for this weekend during the heat wave so you won't be able to run your air conditioning, refrigerator, or cook meals, but feel good about that because you're saving the planet and Greta Thunberg, and we have you penciled in for a catastrophic brush fire two weeks after that. We're enclosing a courtesy coupon for a free meal at MacDonald's for you and your family. Have a nice day."

See you on the flip side...

Good for them as I am tired of western countries being ripped off with in house defense contractors

For many years I have complained about our state department turning a blind eye to what China was doing in S.E. Asia as the real player in the Domino game has always been China. Well maybe they the USA were not as blind as I once thought ?? Now that China Joe is not in office and his predecessors are but bad memories things are changing for the good IMO.
 

China supported Pol Pot who killed off a few million of his own people; educated, wear glasses, went to school overseas, piss off an enforcer, and a club to the head or a bullet was the punishment. One of the better movies about that was "First They killed my father" https://youtu.be/uS3Vp_quGCw  Vietnam wiped out Pol Pot and his minions on the surface but the Chinese communist roots run deep in Cambodia. I was flying in and out of Phnom Penh (carrying mostly people of the state department types) as the whole country was falling under the Chinese supported Pol Pot regime. America was sidelined to do anything as Vietnam had fallen and America was back into the isolationism cycle.

More current time period, there was a big stink about a phone conversation between the leadership puppets of Cambodia and Thailand because the conversation was intercepted by the USA Sneaky Pete boys and girls. Back in the 70s from S.E. Asia we could listen to taxi cab drivers in N.Y. City if it was so desired so the intercept of the conversation is no big surprise. 

In the conversation the true colors of the Thai P.M. was outed and she was shortly removed thereafter.  

I have a lot of faith in the Thai military as most IMO are not puppets of Beijing and do not want to be the good little soldiers for the CCP/PLA. 

I am glad that many of the USA puppets of the Chinese have been removed from our government for they are worse than any virus as the corruption continues to spread if unchecked. 

Quote:Behold the spectacular side view of the Sun! Watch as magnetic field lines twist and turn while Coronal Rain falls down into the solar surface. Underneath all these dancing prominences is a the very active solar surface throwing up all kinds of plasma.

This time-lapse reveals mesmerizing solar activity through a special filter, the Daystar Quark Chromosphere, bringing you views of solar flares and chromospheric features in exquisite clarity.

The audio is created with sound clips from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe. It flew through solar wind and the sun’s corona! Its instruments captured electromagnetic waves and particle collisions. These sounds are the results of that data.

The speed of this footage is around 540x compared to real time.

Equipment Used: Skywatcher Evostar 120mm f8 refractor | Heq5 pro mount | Daystar Quark Chromosphere | ZWO 432mm pro | ZWO 120 mm | ZWO Mini guide scope | ZWO AEF

Acquisition: Firecapture | Tracked with LuSol

Processing: Stacked in Autostakkert4 | ImPPG | footage stabilized and edited in After Effects

Hey all. A basic computer question.

Since I've been playing around with these Local AI Apps, I've found they are limited to certain document file types.

I've been using all kinds of "word processors" since before Windows 3 and have some files in formats that are no longer used. I've used Word Perfect since the late 90s, and have been saving those as other document file types usable in most of my other programs and apps. I have had to use my older computer to do that now as Windows 10 can't seem to run it, so I do that as I go along.

I have always thought that basic text (.TXT) was accepted by all programs regardless, and Notepad can read a lot of unknown file types as a TXT file. Basic text documents have no formatting, but could be useful as archival records and for use in applications where all else fails. Also, it will be as small a file as you can get while retaining all the information.

The second most useful document file for me has been RTF text file that is used in Word and others text editors. However, that format is now outdated in favor of .DOC and .DOCx files for simple format document files.

Next document of choice for me is the PDF format and after that, I'm not going for any specialized text editor format files like WordPerfect Documents (.WPD).

So, any thoughts to add or advice to give?

I'm thinking for the purpose of archiving, TXT file format is a must. So, I'm restructuring my directory tree to have separate files for each type and I use around six it seems (.WPD, .DOC, .DOCx, .RTF, .TXT, and "other" like .HTML). 

Everything should be "saved as" or "exported as" a .TXT file where ever possible. Any related files like images can be saved separately. It means a lot of work making folders and getting things in order. Eventually, I'll delete all the old outdated file types for the new standard ones. 

I haven't made up my mind on images but .JPG and .GIF for raster images probably. I haven't thought about what is best for vector images yet.

In the face of mounting debts which are rising at the rate of 5,000 euros per second the French government is looking to the French people to bail them out , they've already asked for them to work a day for free and now they're looking at cutting 2 public holidays from the calendar which Marine Le Pen's National Rally have described as an attack on French workers and are threatening to bring down the government.

I've got an idea Manu , how about you stop letting the feckless of the World into your Country and expecting the people to pay for your virtue signalling  , we're sick of the stink floating across the Channel .... with your help of course.

Prospective Reform UK board member Michael Heaver explains more in this 2 minute video.


"Vive la révolution"

Good for South Korea ! Now that everyone is jumping on the drone band wagon the next great invention will be how to remove all drones in one's A.O.

Quote:The $2.2 billion deal to purchase 36 new AH-64E Apache helicopters? Cancelled. Gone. Just like that. Why would a country under constant military threat suddenly abandon one of the most feared attack helicopters in the world? What do they know that others don't? From loitering munitions to electronic warfare, radar evolution, and AI-powered smart weapons — we uncover the terrifying truth behind this canceled order. Is this the end of the attack helicopter era? Don't miss this deep dive into a decision that could reshape modern warfare.