Month: May 2019

via P. W. Singer is Strategist at New America

Robots, artificial intelligence, cyberwar, 3D printing, bio-enhancements, and a new geopolitical competition; the 21st century is being shaped by a range of momentous, and scary, new trends and technologies. We should also expect them to shape the worlds of insurgency and terrorism. 

With so much change, it is too early to know all that will shake out from these new technologies in the years leading toward 2030 and beyond. But we can identify a few key trends of what will matter for war and beyond, and resulting questions that future counter-insurgents will likely have to wrestle with. Below are three, pulled from a recent New America report on what the tech and wars of 2030 might portend.

The End of Non-Proliferation

A common theme in the diverse technology areas expected to change warfare most significantly (the hardware of robotics to the software of AI, to the “wetware” of human performance modification) is that they are neither inherently military nor civilian. Both the people and organizations that research and develop these technologies and those that buy and use them will be both government and civilian. They will be applied to conflict, but also areas that range from business to family life. A related attribute is that they are less likely to require massive logistics systems to deploy, while the trend of greater machine intelligence means that they will also be easier to learn and use—not requiring large training or acquisitions programs. These factors mean that insurgent groups will be able to make far more rapid gains in technology and capability than previously possible.

In short, the game-changing technologies of tomorrow are most likely to have incredibly low barriers to entry, which means they will be proliferated. In addition, some of the technologies, such as 3D printing, will make it difficult to prevent the spread of capability via traditional non-proliferation approaches such as arms embargos and blockades. Interdicting weapons routes is less workable in a world where manufacturing can be done on site.

This issue is not one merely of the hardware, but also the spread of ideas. As vexing as the extent of terrorist ideology and “how to’s” have been in a world of social media, these platforms are still centrally controlled. The Twitters and Facebooks of the world can take down content when they are persuaded of the legal or public relations need. However, the move toward decentralized applications reduces this power, as there is no one place to appeal for censorship. This phenomenon is well beyond just the problem of a YouTube clip showing how to build an IED, or a cleric inspiring a watcher of a linked video to become a suicide bomber. 

Decentralization crossed with crowd-sourcing and open sourcing empowers anyone on the network to new scales. Indeed, there are already open-source projects like Tensorflow, that allow anyone to tap into AI resources that were science fiction just a decade ago.

All this suggests a few key questions: How will U.S. and allied forces prepare for insurgent adversaries that have access to many of the very same technologies and capabilities that they previously relied upon for an edge? Will lower barriers to entry make it easier for insurgencies to gain the capability needed to rise? Will it make it more difficult to defeat them if they can rapidly recreate capability?

Multi-Domain Insurgencies

Whether it was the Marines battling the rebel forces in Haiti with the earliest of close air support missions a century ago or the Marines battling the Taliban today, counterinsurgents of the last 100 years have enjoyed a crucial advantage. When it came to the various domains of war, the state actor alone had the ability to bring true power to bear across domains. In enjoying unfettered access to the air and sea, they could operate more effectively on the land, not just by conducting surveillance and strikes that prevented insurgents from effectively massing forces, but by crucially moving their own forces to almost anywhere they wanted to go.

This monopolization of power may not be the case in the future. Indeed, ISIS has already used the air domain (via a self-made air force of drones) to do reconnaissance on U.S. and allied forces, and to launch several hundred air strikes. This all may have been ad hoc, but it still achieved their goals at a minimal cost. More importantly, ISIS’ drone use points to a change in the overall story of air power and insurgency. As proved everywhere from Yemen to Ukraine, the insurgents can now fly and fight back.

This ability to cross domains is, of course, not just limited to air power, but also other new domains that technology is opening up to battle. Insurgencies will be able to tap into the global network of satellites that have given U.S. forces such advantage in ISR and communications, or perhaps even to launch and operate cheap micro satellites, either via proxy aid or on their own. (If college students can do it already, why not insurgents?)

More importantly, the “cyber war” side of insurgency will likely move well past what has been experienced so far. The proliferation of capability through both dark markets and increasing automation, combined with the change in the internet’s form to more and more “things” operating online, points to insurgents being able to target comman-and-control networks and even use Stuxnet-style digital weapons causing physical damage.

The ability to operate across domains also means that insurgents will be able to overcome the tyranny of distance. Once-secure bases and even a force’s distant homeland will become observable, targetable, and reachable, whether by malware or unmanned aerial systems delivering packages of a different sort. To think of it a different way, a future insurgency may not see a Tet-style offensive attack in Hue, but rather Houston.

Here are some key questions: Is the U.S. prepared for multi-domain warfare, not just against peer states but also insurgents? What capabilities used in counterinsurgency today might not be available in 2030? Just as U.S. forces used capability in one domain to win battles in another, how might insurgents do so?

UnderMatch

In the final battles of World War II’s European theater, U.S. forces had to contend with an adversary that brought better technology to the fight. Fortunately for the Allies, the German “wonder weapons” of everything from rockets and jets to assault rifles entered the war too little and too late.

For the last 75 years, U.S. defense planning has focused on making sure that never happened again. Having a qualitative technology edge to “overmatch” our adversaries became baked into everything from our overall defense strategy to small-unit tactics. It is how the U.S. military deterred the Red Army in the Cold War despite having a much smaller military, and how it was able to invade Iraq with a force one-third the size of Saddam Hussein’s (inverting the historic mantra that the attacker’s force should be three times the size of the defender’s).

Even in painful insurgencies from Vietnam to the post-9/11 wars, this approach didn’t always deliver easy victories, but it did become part of a changed worldview. A Marine officer once told me that if his unit of 30 men was attacked by 100 Taliban, he would have no fear that his unit might lose; indeed, he described how it would almost be a relief to face the foe in a stand-up fight, as opposed to the fruitless hunts, hidden ambushes and roadside bombs of insurgency. The reason wasn’t just his force’s training, but that in any battle, his side alone could call down systems of technology that the insurgency couldn’t dream of having, from pinpoint targeting of unmanned aerial systems controlled via satellite from thousands of miles away to hundreds of GPS-guided bombs dropped by high speed jet aircraft able to operate with impunity.

Yet U.S. forces can’t count on that overmatch in the future. This is not just the issue of mass proliferation discussed above, driven by the lower barriers to entry and availability of key tech on the marketplace. Our future counterinsurgency thinking must also recognize that the geopolitical position has changed. As challenging as the Taliban and ISIS have been, they were not supported by a comparable peer state power, developing its own game-changing technology, and potentially supplying it to the world.

Mass campaigns of state-linked intellectual property theft have meant we are paying much of the research and development costs of China’s weapons development, while at the same time, it is investing in becoming a world leader in each of the above revolutionary technology clusters. For instance, in the field of AI, China has a dedicated national strategy to become the world leader in AI by the year 2030, with a massive array of planning and activity to achieve that goal. Meanwhile, it has displayed novel weapons programs in areas that range from space to armed robotics. 

The result is that in a future insurgency, whether from purchases off the global market or proxy warfare supplies, American soldiers could face the same kind of shock that the Soviet helicopter pilots had in their 1980s war in Afghanistan, when the Stinger missile showed up in the hands of the mujahideen. The United States could one day find itself fighting a guerrilla force that brings better technology to the fight.

Questions: What changes in tactics are needed for counterinsurgents when they do not enjoy technology “over-match?” How does the growing geopolitical environment shift counterinsurgency? Are U.S. tactics and doctrine ready for great power supported insurgents?

Conclusions

The most powerful evidence that we are in a time of historic change is that the trends that are in play in technology, and their resulting effects on the world, are so diverse that they can be a bit overwhelming. Their challenge is not merely that they ripple out in so many different directions, but that we are simply not in a position yet to answer many of the questions that they raise, especially for a realm so prone to uncertainty as war. But that is okay to admit. As Werner Herzog sagely put it, “Sometimes a deep question is better than a straight answer.”

Yet, in all this uncertainty, there is one key takeaway lesson that a survey of the technology that looms and its potential effect on counterinsurgency and counterterrorism does seem to provide: In such a time of massive change, those that choose to stand still, ignore the trends, and not adjust appropriately, are still making a choice with their inaction. They are choosing to lose the wars of tomorrow.

***

P. W. Singer is Strategist at New America and the author of multiple books including “Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know” and “LikeWar.” He is the co-authors of the new report “The Need for C3: A Proposal for a United States Cybersecurity Civilian Corps.” FULL BIO

 

 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2J5kV2Z Tyler Durden

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) published a new report Monday that shows worldwide sales of semiconductors totaled $96.8 billion during 1Q19, a 15.5% plunge over 4Q18 and a 13% drop YoY.

Global sales for March 2019 were $32.3 billion, a 2% decline from February and 13% drop YoY. 

“Global semiconductor sales slowed during the first quarter of 2019, falling short of the previous quarter and Q1 of last year by double-digit percentages,” said John Neuffer, SIA president and CEO. 

“Sales in March decreased on a year-to-year basis across all major regional markets and semiconductor product categories, consistent with the cyclical trend the global market has experienced recently.”

Regionally, sales increased in March on an MoM basis in China (1.3%) and Europe (0.60%), but declined in the Asia Pacific (-1.9%), Japan (-4.5%), and the Americas (-6.7%). On a YoY basis in March, sales plunged in Europe (-6.8%), Asia Pacific (-9.3%), China (-9.4%), Japan (-11.1%), and the Americas (-26.6%). 

In a separate report by ‘Things That Make You Go Hmmm‘ – the YoY percentage growth of global semiconductor revenues has dramatically slowed from 41% in 1994 to less than 4% estimated for 2019. This is a dramatic projected slowdown from last year’s 15.9% print, which tells us that the semiconductor ‘supercycle’ has stalled. 

Meritocracy Capital shows that global semiconductor sales have just crashed to a recessionary level. 

David Rosenberg, Gluskin Sheff’s Chief Economist & Strategist, recently tweeted that “SOX index has soared 36% this year, doubling the performance of the overall market even with a massive decline in sales, both domestically (-23% YoY) to the lowest level in two years and globally as well (-11%). Whoever said logic had to prevail?” 

 

Fred Hickey, the editor of the monthly publication ‘The High-Tech Strategist’, tweeted that the global semiconductor industry is deteriorating, the probability of a 2H19 rebound in sales is questionable.  

Grant Williams from ‘Things That Make You Go Hmmm’ — overlayed the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) with the Global Manufacturing PMI, the US PMI, Global Export Volume and Taiwanese exports. Showing just how disconnected SOX is from reality.

TD Securities shows Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore electronics exports continue to dive. 

Last but not least, Citigroup US Economic Surprise Index against the SOX shows the jaws have opened… 

 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2GTgG7V Tyler Durden

Via AlMasdarNews.com

The death toll from the ongoing war in Yemen will reach a staggering 233,000 if it continues until the end of 2019, a new report from the United Nations said.

According to the UN report, of the 233,000 estimated deaths in Yemen, 102,000 will be combat-related and the remaining 131,000 due to malnutrition, cholera, and other diseases.

In another shocking statistic, the U.N. report said that 140,000 children will have been killed since the start of the conflict in March of 2015 (due to direct and indirect war-related causes).

The report said that by the end of the year, one child will death will be reported every 11 minutes and 54 seconds.

Our new research sheds light onto the impact of conflict in Yemen.

The conflict has set back development in Yemen by 21 years.

One child dies because of the conflict every 12 minutes.

This thread introduces the report findings:

1/ pic.twitter.com/vdzyXXYa4z

— Jonathan D. Moyer (@moyerjonathan) April 23, 2019

These totals are only expected to increase substantially in the next three years, as the U.N. estimates the death toll will reach nearly 500,000 by 2022.

One of the UN researchers, Jonathan D. Moyer, summarized the team’s methodology for calculating direct vs. indirect deaths related to the war:

We estimate that, between 2015 and the end of 2019, that 100,000 people will die directly (this is one of our model assumptions). But indirect deaths exceed direct, with 130,000 people dying due to lack of access to food and infrastructure. 60% of deaths are indirect.

And he continued, outlining the immense toll on Yemeni children, especially due to malnutrition and disease:

And the majority of these deaths are children. Since 2015, the conflict has killed 140,000 children from violence, malnutrition, disease, and reduced family income. In 2019, a child dies every 12 minutes from conflict (both direct and indirect).

Unlike the war in Syria, the conflict in Yemen is rarely discussed in the international media.

Despite the fact that the Yemeni War is now the most violent conflict in the Middle East region, it still receives less coverage than other conflicts.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2GYJZHy Tyler Durden

Rich people are picking up sticks and getting out of dodge, according to Johannesburg-based research firm New World Wealth, which notes that around 108,000 millionaires migrated across borders in 2018 – a 14% increase over 2017 and more than double the level in 2013. 

The top destinations? Australia, the United States and Canada, reports Bloomberg. Around 3,000 of the millionaires left the UK last year – with Brexit and taxes cited as possible motivations. 

Present conditions such as crime, lack of business opportunities or religious tensions are key factors, according to the report – which can also serve as key future indicators according to Andrew Amoils, New World Wealth’s head of research. 

“It can be a sign of bad things to come as high-net-worth individuals are often the first people to leave — they have the means to leave unlike middle-class citizens,” says Amoils. 

Top destinations

According to New World’s report, Australia tops most “wish lists” for immigrants due to its perceived safety (deadly bugs and animals aside, we assume). There is also no inheritance tax down under, and the country has strong business ties to Japan, China and South Korea. Moreover, Australia “also stands out for its sustained growth, having escaped the financial crisis largely unscathed and avoided recessions for the past 27 years,” according to Bloomberg. 

The second most popular country was the United States – and in particular the cities of Los Angeles, New York, Miami and the San Francisco Bay as preferred options. 

Fleeing China and India

Due to China’s strict regulations on capital outflows in recent years, many of the country’s wealthy are subject to hefty taxes. In response, assets are shifting as rich Asians move to more developed countries.

The outflow of high-net worth individuals from China and India isn’t particularly concerning from an economic standpoint as far more new millionaires are being created there than are leaving, New World Wealth said.

“Once the standard of living in these countries improves, we expect several wealthy people to move back,” Amoils said. –Bloomberg

Turkey, meanwhile, lost 4,000 millionaires last year – the third straight year of losses, while around 7,000 Russian millionaires have left the country amid crippling sanctions related to the annexation of Crimea. 

Meanwhile, the desire for privacy has prompted many rich families to reconsider where they call home. 

Under the Common Reporting Standard, launched by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development in 2017, banks and other financial institutions are disclosing data on foreign account holders to their local tax authority. Authorities automatically exchange relevant information with their counterparts overseas annually, allowing governments to zero in on tax evaders. More than 100 jurisdictions have joined CRS, setting a new precedent for the global exchange of data on offshore assets.

This trend is reflected in the growth in demand for second passports and residencies. –Bloomberg

“Many wealthy people are looking for opportunities to reduce risks associated with spreading information about their accounts,” said Polina Kuleshova of Henley & Partners, which counsels people on citizenship options and publishes rankings such as the Quality of Nationality Index. 

There’s no place like home – unless you can make, or save more money elsewhere. 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2IU8Caa Tyler Durden

Authored by Phillip Magness via The American Institute for Economic Research,

College professors have long positioned themselves to the political left of the American public. The progressive skew in higher education used to be a stable plurality though. Beginning with the earliest survey data in the 1960s, self-identified left-liberals consistently comprised, on average, about 43 percent of all college professors in the United States. Self-described “moderate” and “conservative” faculty members split the remainder for the next three decades.

Then something changed around the year 2001. The percentage of faculty who identify with the political left began to skyrocket. In the course of under 15 years, left-leaning faculty rose to an outright majority of 60 percent of the professoriate.

The leftward tilt of the university is depicted in the chart below, which includes the recently released results of the 2016-17 faculty survey from the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at UCLA. The latest results confirm and extend earlier observations about the same ideological skew.

The three lines are unfortunately limited by the category choices, but include “liberal” and “Far Left” (blue), “moderate” (red), and “conservative” and “Far Right” (grey). They nonetheless provide a clear illustration that the progressive turn is now the new normal in higher education.

Source: Carnegie Foundation surveys of higher education (1969-84), HERI Faculty Survey (1989-present)

Political skews in higher education are nothing new, and taken alone may not even be a problem if they reflected a stable long-term pattern. But the recent sharp leftward turn of the professoriate after 2001 is a clear break from historical norms.

It also carries implications for faculty who fall outside of the university system’s progressive majority. Faculty who identify to the right of center have taken the greatest hit, dropping from 28 percent in the late 1960s and 22 percent as recent as 1995 to only 12 percent today.

A closer look at the data reveals that the shift does not reflect subtle changes in the U.S. political mainstream. Rather, it appears to be driven by a sharp rise in the subset of “liberal” faculty who identify as “Far Left.” As the chart below illustrates, this number more than doubled between 2001 and 2010 and now sits at near parity with the total number of conservatives in the academy.

Source: Carnegie Foundation surveys of higher education (1969-84), HERI Faculty Survey (1989-present)

The leftward shift is also unique to faculty. Comparable surveys of both university students and the American public show that left and right political identification remained completely stable during the same period that faculty opinion moved in a radical direction.

The Rise of the Hyper-politicized Faculty

In illustrating these recent trends, I have no intention of stating what the proper balance should be between faculty on the left and right (to say nothing of omitted categories such as classical liberal/libertarian). Rather, the data speak to an alarming pattern in which our university faculty have become hyper-politicized around a single ideological pole.

As recently as 20 years ago the academy exhibited a relatively stable diversity of political perspectives. Now it is skewed heavily toward a single “consensus” ideology that constitutes a clear majority of the professoriate. At the same time, non-leftist voices have been squeezed out of the academy due to a combination of retirements and an emerging bias in faculty hiring that appears to privilege progressive political beliefs.

The observed political skews have also played out unevenly across academic disciplines, concentrating heavily in subjects that lend themselves to political content. Professors in the humanities and social sciences skew much further to the left than the physical sciences. Over 80 percent of English professors, for example, identify on the political left. Subjects such as history, political science, sociology, and fine arts typically approach or exceed 70 percent. In short, the humanities and social sciences have become ideological monoliths.

The only fields with a semblance of ideological balance tend to be pre-professional programs such as business and the so-called STEM majors in science and engineering — all areas where political opinion is less likely to appear in instructional content or research. Contrary to popular mythology, humanities-faculty hiring growth has also outpaced the STEM fields in the last two decades, which further helps to explain the source of the ideological skew.

The Echo Chamber Effect

The hyper-politicization of academia shows few signs of dissipating anytime soon, although it appears to be taking a toll on the most severely afflicted disciplines. Monolithic ideological echo chambers make for poor incubators of research as they insulate their participants from outside challenges. The recently observed crisis of rigor in scholarly research, exemplified by the recent wave of hoax articles being accepted for publication in ostensibly scholarly outlets, is directly symptomatic of an associated collapse in the safeguards and standards of peer review.

But also note another trend at play. The most ideologically skewed academic disciplines also correlate closely with recent woes in attracting students to their classrooms.

A 2018 report by the American Historical Association tracked trends in undergraduate majors by subject area over the previous six years using Department of Education data. The most severe declines in the number of degree seekers occurred in fields such as history, religion, English, foreign languages, political science, fine arts, and the humanities in general.

Perhaps not coincidentally, these same subjects have all become hyper-politicized in the last 15 years. The HERI survey indicates that 65, 70, or even 80 percent of the faculty in these disciplines identify on the political left. Similar measures using political-party data from faculty voter registrations show an even more pronounced skew, concentrated in the exact same subjects.

Are the hyper-politicized faculty ranks of these same fields driving away students? Multiplesurveys suggest that students outside of the progressive left self-censor their beliefs on campus, fearing both viewpoint discrimination and bias from faculty in grading. Recent empirical studies of faculty in psychology and law also reveal evidence of actual discrimination against viewpoints that fall outside of the progressive umbrella, particularly in academic hiring. It is not difficult to surmise how an extremely skewed professoriate in certain disciplines would make students with dissenting views feel unwelcome in their classrooms.

Students are currently abandoning the humanities and certain social sciences in droves. While faculty in these fields are apt to blame this problem on poltergeists such as the “devaluation” of their teaching (as Jason Brennan and I document in our new book, Cracks in the Ivory Tower) and exaggerated budgetary woes, the actual source seems to be that fewer and fewer students actually want what these subjects have to offer in the classroom.

With no small irony, the leftward hyper-politicization of the faculty in these subjects may also be a primary reason for their recent inability to attract majors outside of a small cadre of like-minded political activists.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2UOfffS Tyler Durden

Even at a time of low interest rates and rising wages, Americans simply can’t afford a home in more than 70% of the country, according to CBS. Out of 473 US counties that were analyzed in a recent report, 335 listed median home prices were more than what average wage earners could afford. According to the report from ATTOM Data Solutions, these counties included Los Angeles and San Diego in California, as well as places like Maricopa County in Arizona.

New York City claimed the largest share of a person’s income to purchase a home. While on average, earners nationwide needed to spend only about 33% of their income on a home, residents in Brooklyn and Manhattan need to shell out more than 115% of their income. In San Francisco this number is about 103%. Homes were found to be affordable in places like Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia.

This news is stunning because homes are considerably more affordable today than they were a year ago. Although prices are rising in many areas, they are also falling in places like Manhattan. Unaffordability in the market has been the result of slower home building and owners staying in their homes longer. Both have reduced the supply of homes in the market.

And the market may continue to create better conditions for buyers. Affordability could improve because of the fact that homes are out of reach for so many seekers, according to Todd Teta, chief product officer at ATTOM Data Solutions. Today’s market is also more affordable than it was a decade ago, before the crisis. Home prices were about the same prior to the crisis, even though income adjusted for inflation was lower.

“What kept the market going was looser lending standards, so that was compensating for affordability issues,” Teta said. Since then, standards have toughened (for now, at least).

We recently wrote about residents of New York City who simply claimed they couldn’t afford to live there.

More than a third of New York residents complained that they “can’t afford to live there” anymore (and yet they do). On top of that, many believe that economic hardships are going to force them to leave the city in five years or less, according to a Quinnipiac poll published a couple weeks ago. The poll surveyed 1,216 voters between March 13 and 18.

In total, 41% of New York residents said they couldn’t cope with the city’s high cost of living. They believe they will be forced to go somewhere where the “economic climate is more welcoming”, according to the report.

Ari Buitron, a 49-year-old paralegal from Queens said: “They are making this city a city for the wealthy, and they are really choking out the middle class. A lot of my friends have had to move to Florida, Texas, Oregon. You go to your local shop, and it’s $5 for a gallon of milk and $13 for shampoo. Do you know how much a one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment is? $1700! What’s wrong with this picture?”

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Y08N7n Tyler Durden

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,

Robots at Amazon decide who gets a job. Based on performance algorithms, the robots also decide who gets fired.

Software and algorithms are used to screen, hire, assign and now terminate workers at Amazon. For lower-paid employees, the Robot Overlords Have Arrived.

Millions of low-paid workers’ lives are increasingly governed by software and algorithms. This was starkly illustrated by a report last week that Amazon.com tracks the productivity of its employees and regularly fires those who underperform, with little human intervention.

“Amazon’s system tracks the rates of each individual associate’s productivity and automatically generates any warnings or terminations regarding quality or productivity without input from supervisors,” a law firm representing Amazon said in a letter to the National Labor Relations Board, as first reported by technology news site The Verge. Amazon was responding to a complaint that it had fired an employee from a Baltimore fulfillment center for federally protected activity, which could include union organizing. Amazon said the employee was fired for failing to meet productivity targets.

Perhaps it was only a matter of time before software was used to fire people. After all, it already screens resumes, recommends job applicants, schedules shifts and assigns projects. In the workplace, “sophisticated technology to track worker productivity on a minute-by-minute or even second-by-second basis is incredibly pervasive,” says Ian Larkin, a business professor at the University of California at Los Angeles specializing in human resources.

Industrial laundry services track how many seconds it takes to press a laundered shirt; on-board computers track truckers’ speed, gear changes and engine revolutions per minute; and checkout terminals at major discount retailers report if the cashier is scanning items quickly enough to meet a preset goal. In all these cases, results are shared in real time with the employee, and used to determine who is terminated, says Mr. Larkin.

Amazon employees have complained of being monitored continuously—even having bathroom breaks measured—and being held to ever-rising productivity benchmarks. There is no public data to determine if such complaints are more or less common at Amazon than its peers. The company says about 300 employees—roughly 10% of the Baltimore center’s employment level—were terminated for productivity reasons in the year before the law firm’s letter was sent to the NLRB.

Big Brother is Watching

In addition to the government wanting to know everything you do, so do employers and their robots.

Those robots do not care about someone’s race. They only care about performance.

If you are supposed to handle x packages per minute, and you underperform, goodbye.

One huge advantage for employers having robots fire people is the process will stop discrimination lawsuits. As a side benefit companies can get rid of higher paid employees who used to make these decisions.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2WkaHPN Tyler Durden

It’s been a rocky road for American farmers under the Trump administration rule. Personal incomes have plummeted the most in three years last quarter, as the entire industry is on the verge of collapse from the ongoing Sino-American trade war.

The Commerce Department on Monday provided new details of the intensifying pressure on farmers hit by the trade war. The report cited a huge decline in farm proprietors’ income in March.

Trade wars, depressed commodity prices, natural disasters, and a synchronized global slowdown have brought many farmers onto the edge of bankruptcies.

Several months ago, we reported that federal data showed the number of farmers filing for bankruptcy has climbed to its highest level in a decade.

“Bankruptcies in three regions covering major farm states last year rose to the highest level in at least 10 years. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, had double the bankruptcies in 2018 compared with 2008. In the Eighth Circuit, which includes states from North Dakota to Arkansas, bankruptcies swelled 96%. The 10th Circuit, which covers Kansas and other states, last year had 59% more bankruptcies than a decade earlier.”

As of Feburary, the Trump administration paid out a total of $7.7 billion in farm aid to offset the effects of retaliatory tariffs.

The aid “certainly was appreciated,” Blake Hurst, the president of the Missouri Farm Bureau, recently told Yahoo Finance. The bailout propped up farm income in 1Q19, but earnings fell by an annualized $11.8 billion in the same period, according to seasonally adjusted data.

Hurst warned that the bailout “is not enough in the sense that it no way makes us whole for what we suffered from these trade disputes.”

Trump’s spending plan for 2020, which was submitted to Congress, would reduce federal subsidies for crop insurance to small farmers. It calls for crop insurance premiums to 48% from 62% and limits current subsidies for growers who make less than $500,000 per annum. A move that could paralyze small farmers.

Well before the trade war started, farmers have been battling deflation for 96 months, with Thomson Reuters/CoreCommodity CRB Index dropping around 30% since the April 2011 high. This drop in price has crushed rural America for years, which means fixed capital investments by farmers have suffered.

A surge in December income was “likely a function of gyrations in federal subsidy payments” because of the farm bailout, Stephen Stanley, chief economist for Amherst Pierpont Securities, wrote in a note to clients.

Trump has promised to “Make Farmers Great Again” – but as Zerohedge readers already know by now, when government intervenes in markets – they tend to create more harm than good.

“We’re doing trade deals that are going to get you so much business, you’re not even going to believe it,” Trump told an energized crowd at American Farm Bureau Federation’s annual meeting in New Orleans earlier this year

While Trump whispers sweet nothings into the ears of Americans farmers, telling them what they want to hear so he can get re-elected in 2020, the entire farm complex is teetering on the edge of disaster: a perfect storm that has been in the making for many years, could unleash a monsterous bankruptcy wave in rural America.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2XTqfuq Tyler Durden

Authored by Donald Trump Jr. via Human Events

Donald Trump Jr: Don’t Risk The 2nd Amendment by Voting Democrat

The right to bear arms is sacred, and endowed by God to every citizen from birth.

Most Americans recognize that it’s not dependent on some old-fashioned notion about arming citizen militias. It’s a fundamental right that enables the people to maintain a check against the near-limitless power of government, which is granted by the people in the first place.

Democrats, particularly the field of 2020 presidential candidates, disregard our 2nd Amendment rights for political gain, demagoguing about violence and the illegal use of arms. If, Heaven forbid, one of these 2nd Amendment deniers were to win the White House in 2020, he or she would strip this sacred right from us without hesitation.

I had the pleasure of spending my weekend with some of the Americans most fervently committed to defending our 2nd Amendment rights at the NRA’s Annual Meeting in Indianapolis.

In my conversations with these activists, I was struck by one unshakable impression: no matter what rage the Democrats unleash on defenders of the Constitution, and no matter how strenuously they advocate the same failed gun control policies they have for half a century, they will not win.

The essential determination that, as Thomas Jefferson put it, “No Freeman Shall Ever Be Debarred the Use of Arms” runs in a straight, unbroken line from the ancient English traditions of liberty, through the Founding Fathers, to the men and women of the MAGA Movement today.

The strength of that spirit, however, must not blind us to the dark storm of gun-grabbing demagoguery gathering among our opponents.

The pro-gun rights victories we’ve secured through painstaking effort over the decade since the Supreme Court’s landmark DC v. Heller decision do not mean that our work is done. The left is more determined than ever to roll back this fundamental freedom.

***

Read the rest at Human Events – including analysis of inflammatory comments and sobering threats by top Democrats, including Rep. Eric Swalwell, Sen. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. Don Jr. also discusses the Poway, California Synagogue attack which was stopped by a “good guy with a gun,” as well as his father’s decision to pull out of the UN “Arms Trade Treaty” inked under Obama. 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2GUND4R Tyler Durden

Congressional Republicans are “working to finalize” a criminal referral of Russiagate lynchpin Nellie Ohr, the wife of the Justice Department’s former #4 official Bruce Ohr. 

Nellie was hired by opposition research firm Fusion GPS, where she conducted extensive opposition research on Trump family members and campaign aides, which she passed along to Bruce on a memory stick. 

Of note, the Hillary Clinton campaign paid Fusion GPS to produce the salacious and unverified “Steele Dossier,” which was created by former UK spy Christopher Steele and used Kremlin sources. 

Meanwhile, today we learn from The Hill‘s John Solomon that Nellie Ohr exchanged 339 pages of emails with DOJ officials, including her husband Bruce, and met with DOJ prosecutors while working for Fusion GPS. 

Now, a series of “Hi Honey” emails from Nellie Ohr to her high-ranking federal prosecutor-husband and his colleagues raise the prospect that Hillary Clinton-funded opposition research was being funneled into the Justice Department during the 2016 election through a back-door marital channel. It’s a tale that raises questions of both conflict of interest and possible false testimony.

Ohr has admitted to Congress that, during the 2016 presidential election, she worked for Fusion GPS — the firm hired by Clinton and the Democratic National Committee to perform political opposition research — on a project specifically trying to connect Donald Trump and his campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, to Russian organized crime.

Now, 339 pages of emails, from her private account to Department of Justice (DOJ) email accounts, have been released under a Freedom of Information Act request by the conservative legal group Judicial Watch. –The Hill

And according to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Rep. Mark Meadows “is working to finalize” a criminal referral of Nellie. 

2/ @Jim_Jordan tells me today that based on this information he believes @MarkMeadows “is working to finalize” a criminal referral of Nellie Ohr. “We’ll see if that happens.” https://t.co/XRFfLX8AH1 pic.twitter.com/gDKCnh0bkw

— Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) May 1, 2019

“Hi Honey, if you ever get a moment you might find the penultimate article interesting — especially the summary in the final paragraph,” Nellie emailed Bruce on July 6, 2016 according to the release. The article in question suggested that Trump was a Putin stooge. “If Putin wanted to concoct the ideal candidate to service his purposes, his laboratory creation would look like Donald Trump,” Nellie bolded for emphasis. 

As Solomon writes, “Such overt political content flowing into the email accounts of a DOJ charged with the nonpartisan mission of prosecuting crimes is jarring enough. It raises additional questions about potential conflicts of interest when it is being injected by a spouse working as a Democratic contractor trying to defeat Trump, and she is forwarding her own research to his department and co-workers.”

House GOP investigators who reviewed Nellie Ohr’s emails believe that their timing may be essential to understanding how the false Russian narrative — special counsel Robert Mueller recently concluded there was no evidence of Trump-Putin collusion — may have gotten such credence inside DOJ and intelligence circles despite its overtly political origins.

For instance, just 24 days after the anti-Trump screed was emailed, both Ohrs met in Washington with British intelligence operative Christopher Steele. Nellie Ohr testified that she had known Steele from past encounters and learned at that July 31, 2016, meeting at the Mayflower Hotel that Steele, like herself, was working for Fusion GPS on Trump-Russia research. She said she learned that Steele had concerns that he hoped the DOJ or FBI would investigate, with help from her husband. –The Hill

Nellie, who speaks fluent Russian, worked with Fusion GPS between October 2015 and September 2016. She also admitted during her October 19, 2018 congressional testimony that she favored Hillary Clinton as a candidate, and would have been less comfortable researching Clinton’s Russia ties (P. 105). 

In 2010, she represented the CIA’s “Open Source Works” group in a 2010 “expert working group report on international organized crime” along with Bruce Ohr and Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson.

Nellie Ohr, the wife of demoted DOJ official, Bruce Ohr, not only worked for Fusion GPS, but has also represented the CIA’s “Open Source Works” group. https://t.co/u5HPgJwvWd pic.twitter.com/ZPhAIzR6wv

— Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) December 12, 2017

Ohr confirmed her work for the CIA during her October testimony.  

***

As we reported in March, 

some have wondered if Nellie’s late-life attraction to Ham radios was in fact a method of covertly communicating with others about the Trump-Russia investigation, in a way which wouldn’t be surveilled by the NSA or other agencies. 

was Nellie Ohr’s late-in-life foray into ham radio an effort to evade the Rogers-led NSA detecting her participation in compiling the Russian-sourced Steele dossier? Just as her husband’s omissions on his DOJ ethics forms raise an inference of improper motive, any competent prosecutor could use the circumstantial evidence of her taking up ham radio while digging for dirt on Trump to prove her consciousness of guilt and intention to conceal illegal activities. –The Federalist

Bruce Ohr was demoted twice after the DOJ’s Inspector General discovered that he lied about his involvement with Simpson – who employed dossier author and former British spy, Christopher Steele.

Last month, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) announced that his panel would do a “deep dive” into the “other side” of the Trump-Russia investigation. He also called for the appointment of a new special counsel to look into abuse between the DOJ and Obama administration while investigating Donald Trump and his campaign. 

Are heads actually going to roll?

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2J7Exn6 Tyler Durden