Arms and the man
Recently: Has politics really killed the humanities in America? Chad Wellmon on a red herring in public debate about the universities—and what you see when you start following the money. … & South Korea is giving every citizen a free artificial-intelligence app, built on its own models rather than American ones. But whose AI is a state-controlled AI?
Today: After berating Ukraine’s president on camera last year, the American president hosts him for a friendly hour this week. … Soldiers from Uganda and Morocco will guard the first rebuilding in Gaza, for residents who pass a screening test for Hamas ties. … &c.
For members: Why can’t the Pentagon make what Ukraine makes? Matthew Ford on the oldest rule in war. … & El Niño keeps the Atlantic quiet and the Pacific busy, with Fausto closing on Hawaii and more storms gathering off the Philippines.
+ New music from Teenage Fanclub …
Second thoughts
Volodymyr Zelenskyy was back at the White House on Tuesday, for the second time in a month. Ukraine’s president spent an hour with U.S. President Donald Trump—“a good meeting,” he said—before going on to Washington National Cathedral for the funeral of Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator who’d spent his final months working on a bill sanctioning buyers of Russian oil. The Senate is taking the bill up now, with Trump’s support—less than a year and a half after he berated Zelenskyy on camera in the Oval Office, sent him home early, and pushed cutting military aid to Ukraine. Just this month, Trump agreed to let the Ukrainians build interceptors for American Patriot air-defense systems. Why would he want to realign with Ukraine?
There’s usually not one answer to a question like this—but in this case, there is money to follow: This month the Pentagon took delivery of 2,000 F-10 attack drones from Ukraine—the first finished combat drones Kyiv has ever cleared for export—under a US$1.1 billion program called Drone Dominance. Last week the two governments signed an agreement for the U.S. military to test Ukrainian drones, and eventually to build them in American factories. Four years of war have made the Ukrainians the world’s leading makers of cheap drones that work: They put some 400 over the Moscow region on Monday night—by Moscow’s own count—and their long-range models have done what the sanctions couldn’t, leaving Russia short of fuel. No American company makes anything like them. Zelenskyy came to Washington asking for anti-ballistic defenses—systems that can stop Russian missiles—but at the same time, weapons have been moving the other way: out of Ukraine, to America.
Meanwhile
- Over on Pickaxe Mountain. After two weeks of renewed bombing, the U.S. stopped striking Iran—two nights running now—to “give diplomacy another chance.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived at the White House on Tuesday, his first visit since the war began, warning that Iran still enriches uranium at a site called Pickaxe Mountain. Trump waved him off: “I don’t need Bibi to tell me that.” Iran—which Trump says U.S. military force brought to the table—denies asking for talks. … See “Peace and war.”
- Terms of return. Israel’s security cabinet approved, “in principle,” a first project of Gaza’s reconstruction: a pilot in the Rafah area, in Gaza’s south—temporary housing, restored utilities, shelter for the displaced—with a technocratic administration to run it and a multinational force to guard it, about 200 soldiers from Uganda and Morocco expected first. Gazans could move in after they pass “stringent security screening” for Hamas ties. The Israeli army, the cabinet specified, stays until Gaza is “completely demilitarized.”
- The city under the city. Haiti sets its first presidential vote in a decade for December—security permitting, its electoral council says. … U.S. diplomats walk out of the UN Security Council after France condemns the U.S. for voting with Russia and North Korea against a new term for the UN human-rights chief. … The UN counts 499 Afghan civilians killed in nine months of cross-border war with Pakistan. … China begins mass-producing the chipmaking machines the West has banned it from buying. … & Archaeologists map the Aztec capital’s buried temple district by reading where the streets of modern Mexico City tilt and crack above its walls.
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From the files
The cheap and the many
Why can’t the Pentagon make what Ukraine makes? Matthew Ford on the oldest rule in war.
The strongest military in the world is buying cheap drones from a country fighting for its life. Ukraine makes them by the million, in workshops and basements, faster and cheaper than any American firm—and the Pentagon, which spends more than the next nine countries combined, wants them badly enough to build Ukrainian designs in American factories.
Why exactly is the U.S. buying its drones from Ukraine?
Matthew Ford gets at the question here in The Signal, and, he says, the answer is older than the war: Cheap, mass-produced weapons tend to beat sophisticated ones—that’s the pattern, and militaries enamored of their own advanced technologies keep forgetting it. In the Second World War, the machine that solved the most battlefield problems wasn’t the tank; it was the horse, hauling the guns everyone still needed moved. Iran has been making the same point in reverse, closing on billion-dollar American interceptors with drones that cost almost nothing—the kind of cost gap that can drain a superpower. The most advanced militaries can win a display of hardware while losing a war of attrition, Matthew says, because every time a million-dollar interceptor stops a cheap drone, the cheap side comes out ahead—and in a long war, whoever can keep paying stands to win.
From April, Matthew Ford on the rule the most advanced militaries keep forgetting …
Weather report
One ocean at a time
19.705520° N, -155.085918° W
El Niño—the periodic warming of the tropical Pacific that reorders weather patterns worldwide—is building, fast. It works on tropical storms in two directions at once: The warm water pooling in the central and eastern Pacific gives cyclones there more to work with, while the same pattern drives wind shear over the Atlantic that tears storms apart before they can organize. That puts nearly all the tropical action over the next two weeks on the Pacific side …
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New music
‘Day in the Sun’
Over to Scotland—in this case, to the island of Great Bernera, in the Outer Hebrides—where the gentlemen of Teenage Fanclub went to record their 13th album, Do Not Dare to Dream. It comes out on October 9. This is the first track they’re releasing from it—and as harmonically rich and melodic as ever.
