Month: November 2024

Authored by Tim Ryan via RealClearEnergy,

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is more than the latest buzzword. It’s rising rapidly, permeating across industries, and is already present in our daily lives. Netflix uses AI to personalize recommendations to users, 50% of global organizations reported adopting AI in at least one business area in 2022, and more than half of Americans use voice assistants to receive information.

Behind this tech revolution are electricity-thirsty data centers dotting America’s landscape, processing AI, crypto, e-commerce, and cloud computing. The collective rise in demand to our power grid is something not seen in decades.

An AI Google search, for example, needs 10 times the amount of energy as a normal Google search, and all of the current data centers worldwide combined consume more power than all but 16 countries.

AI alone is expected to add 20% more to US electricity demand by 2030 and Goldman Sachs projects natural gas will cover 60% of demand. Our grid is bound to hit a limit in its current state, according to Microsoft leadership. To provide the steady, reliable, and affordable power these facilities need, natural gas-powered electricity is increasingly the obvious choice.

As the second-largest natural gas production state, Pennsylvania is uniquely positioned to capitalize on this opportunity quickly, benefit from new job creation and investment, and power our high-tech future if we collectively embrace natural gas as part of that solution. Doing so would be welcome news for trade unions and high-tech professionals alike, alongside local communities who benefit from new tax revenues.

It’s clear Vice President Kamala Harris’ thinking has evolved on energy, along with other Democrats across the country.

Harris had a front row seat as American natural gas rapidly secured our allies abroad against the fallout of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And she understands how critical natural gas is in achieving her Administration’s goals of reshoring critical manufacturing jobs, alongside renewables, that benefit America’s heartland in states like Pennsylvania. Notably natural gas, more than renewables, is the primary source of America’s world-leading carbon reductions over the last two decades and will continue to be a low-carbon solution deployed abroad to replace coal and fight climate change.

It is this debate on natural gas: balancing economic strength, technology, global competitiveness, staying ahead of China, and fighting climate change, where Harris can cement her political position as a sensible Democrat who uniquely understands Pennsylvania.

The Keystone State is already home to 71 data centers, with hubs in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and has potential to attract even more given its proximity to the Marcellus Shale gas formations that have led Pennsylvania’s energy revolution in recent years. Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro has taken notice of this potential, speaking at an AI forum at Carnegie Mellon this month.

Data centers that power AI are so energy-intensive and desperate to meet these power demands that a mothballed nuclear plant once set for decommissioning, Three Mile Island Unit 1 near Harrisburg, will be restarted as part of a 20-year power purchase agreement with Microsoft. This is a positive development, but its potential to be replicated is limited. Natural gas is abundant, flexible, and affordable.

Some will say to build renewables only instead, but that is simplistic thinking.

We’re already far behind the massive and costly 60% expansion of America’s power grid that Princeton University says is needed just to transition our existing grid to a net-zero future. While solar and wind are vital to a clean energy future, their weather dependence cannot fulfill 24/7 power needs.

Harris has a track record on aligning natural gas with opportunity. Under her Administration, the U.S. became the global leader of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, and was the largest LNG supplier to Europe in 2022 and 2023, stabilizing the economies of our Allies after Russia’s Ukraine invasion.

Pennsylvania workers were part of that victory.

Other statewide Democrats get it. Senators Bob Casey (D-PA) and John Fetterman (D-PA) have stood up to their Party and supported the natural gas industry, and Governor Shapiro has laid out plans for a diverse, resilient electricity grid. Pennsylvanians agree: 74% support building more natural gas infrastructure and 79% said natural gas drilling is important to the state’s economy.

Pennsylvania has the natural resources, the infrastructure, and the know-how to power the AI boom and benefit so many across the Commonwealth. Natural gas remains the obvious choice to scale up fast to meet new demands, protect our environment, and support Pennsylvania jobs. Balance is key. AI is the future, and the United States can only lead on it with practical energy policy that starts in key states like Pennsylvania.

Presidential candidate Harris would be smart to embrace it.

Tim Ryan served ten terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2003 to 2023. He serves as the co-chair of the Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future Leadership Council.

Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati has issued a surprisingly optimistic assessment of the possibility of peace in Lebanon. On Wednesday he said that a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah might be achieved in the coming days.

He cited a ‘hopeful’ conversation with US special envoy Amos Hochstein, related to a new Washington-backed ceasefire proposal. “We are doing our best… to have a ceasefire within the coming hours or days,” PM Mikati told Lebanese broadcaster Al-Jadeed. He said he remains “cautiously optimistic.”

Mikati explained he has reason to believe that a full ceasefire is possible and even realistic prior to the US election on November 5. On the other side, an Israeli official has told ABC News of “significant progress” toward a ceasefire in Lebanon.

Two senior White House advisers have meanwhile arrived in Israel Thursday as part of an effort to finalize and close the deal. Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk are said to be going into it with the belief that Hezbollah has so many blows, especially the death of its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah, that it is looking to disassociate itself from Hamas and the Gaza war.

According to Axios: “A deal that would end the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah could be achieved within a few weeks, Israeli and U.S. officials said.” The same report has listed out the following simultaneous diplomatic engagements of the US in the region:

• Israeli officials said Biden adviser Amos Hochstein was waiting for Israeli leaders to decide about whether to move forward with the deal before he traveled to Israel.
• The fact that he and Biden adviser Brett McGurk are coming suggest Netanyahu is in favor of pursuing the deal, they said.
• CIA director Bill Burns will be in Cairo on Thursday “to engage with Egyptian counterparts on bilateral matters as well as the process to secure the release of hostages,” the official said.
• “CENTCOM Commander Gen. Erik Kurilla is traveling to the region to discuss regional defense and will visit Israel to engage with counterparts and U.S. personnel.”

Israeli media has said that contents of the US-proposed deal have leaked online, citing Kan public broadcaster.

“The ceasefire proposal begins with a 60-day implementation period, during which time the Lebanese army will deploy along the border and confiscate Hezbollah arms in southern Lebanon,” Times of Israel says of the documents.

“The IDF will be required to pull all troops from Lebanon within seven days of the end of hostilities, and will be replaced by the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF),” it adds. UN peacekeeping troops will reportedly facilitate the transition, and some 10,000 Lebanese national army troops. According to more:

At the end of the 60-day implementation period, Israel and Lebanon will hold indirect negotiations via the US on fully implementing Resolution 1701 and resolving border disputes.

A new International Monitoring and Enforcement Mechanism (IMEM) will be created, with the US serving as chair and with the participation of Italy, France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, UNIFIL and regional countries.

⚡️Israeli enemy warplanes strike Al-Hawsh area in Tyre city pic.twitter.com/BcAuJBIhT6

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) October 31, 2024

But in the meantime Israel’s airstrikes on positions in the south, Beirut, and even in the northeast have continued. They’ve even expanded, with the Bekaa Valley getting pounded, and Tyre getting hit again on Thursday.

But the same day Israeli is reporting that at least six civilians have been killed by Hezbollah rocket attacks on the north, including some foreign workers in the city of Metula. An Israeli woman has also been killed in Haifa Bay.

Authored by Susan Crabtree via RealClearPolitics,

Secret Service leaders meddled in an independent government investigation of the July 13 assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump and are still not following many basic agency security protocols for presidential candidates, presidents, and vice presidents in the final days before the election, according to emails reviewed by RealClearPolitics and several sources in the Secret Service community.

As Secret Service failures came to light in the weeks after the July assassination attempt, USSS managers sent emails to employees asking them to alert them to any “direct requests for information or interview” from the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General, or DHS OIG. The internal government watchdog is conducting its probe of the failures that led to the near assassination of Trump, the killing of fireman Corey Comperatore, and the wounding of two other rally-goers at the western Pennsylvania campaign event.

The emails, which RealClearPolitics reviewed, contained the subject line “DHS OIG Inquiries” and directed employees to tell their supervisors if an OIG official reaches out to them so Secret Service managers could coordinate “an organized response.” Supervisors sent the email five days after the same inspector general issued a negative report on the Secret Service’s actions before and on Jan. 6, criticizing the agency for failing to detect a pipe bomb near Vice President Kamala Harris and not flagging signs of potential violence to other agencies.

Normally, responding to DHS OIG investigators without talking to superiors would not warrant coordination with supervisors, the email stated. But after the first assassination attempt against Trump, USSS leadership needed to provide the proper context and a coordinated response.

“Generally, not an issue; however, this is NOT the normal course of action, and the Service needs awareness and to ensure an organized response with information in the correct context,” Secret Service supervisors wrote in the emails, noting that “only we know what we do.”

The email is now under Senate scrutiny. Sen. Chuck Grassley, a longtime champion of government whistleblowers, on Wednesday sent a letter to Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe expressing concern that the email and any other communications like it could have “a chilling effect” on employee disclosures to the inspector general’s office, as well as on congressional investigations.

“If this email is an accurate representation of the actions taken by Secret Service management, it could have a chilling effect on its employees from fully cooperating and providing information to the DHS OIG as well as congressional investigations out of fear of retaliation since supervisors will apparently be keeping tabs on their communications,” Grassley wrote in the letter, a copy of which his office provided to RCP.

Instead of trying to control the flow and context of information, Secret Service leaders should be “encouraging” employees to “come forward to provide truthful information to the DHS OIG and Congress so that lessons can be learned to prevent future assassination attempts,” Grassley added.

The Iowa Republican set a deadline of Nov. 13 for Rowe to hand over all records “between and among Secret Service personnel” related to providing information to the DHS OIG and congressional investigations into the July 13 attempted assassination.

Tristan Leavitt, an attorney and president of Empower Oversight, which represents Secret Service, IRS, and other government whistleblowers, said the email demanding that potential whistleblowers coordinate communications with their bosses stifles the free flow of information, which could help improve the agency’s performance and which federal law protects.

“Secret Service employees have every right to anonymously contact the DHS OIG without informing their supervisor,” Leavitt said. “While this email is purportedly aimed at employees contacted directly by the OIG, it will undoubtedly discourage employees who may have information about wrongdoing from contacting the OIG or Congress.”

The Secret Service acknowledged receipt of Grassley’s letter but declined to respond to RCP’s questions about how many supervisors sent the email and whether there were other attempts to pressure employees from independently discussing problems they’ve experienced in the Secret Service with DHS OIG or congressional investigators.

“The U.S. Secret Service is in receipt of the letter sent by Senator Grassley,” an agency spokesman said in a statement. “The Secret Service has been and will continue to examine the events of the July 13 assassination attempt and will fully cooperate with Congress and other relevant investigations. We respect the Senator’s role of oversight within the Senate Judiciary Committee and will respond through official channels.”

In the hectic waning hours before Election Day, Secret Service agents are also complaining about security shortcuts that agency leaders are allowing, sometimes requiring, to handle last-minute venue changes and adjustments to Trump’s and Vice President Kamala Harris’s break-neck campaign schedule.

The Secret Service still has not provided Trump’s campaign with a military aircraft three weeks after it was requested, even though President Biden said earlier this month that he had authorized the Department of Homeland Security to “give him every single thing he needs.”

Sources in the Secret Service community tell RCP that Trump’s campaign staff have made significant changes to his schedule less than 12 hours before arrivals, hamstringing the advance team’s ability to plan, coordinate, and obtain manpower and resources properly. The last-minute changes, which are typical in the final weeks of a presidential campaign, have posed significant challenges to providing security for Trump, who is still facing known threats from foreign and domestic actors.

After a second attempt on Trump’s life, the Secret Service started using ballistic glass to provide extra security for the Republican presidential nominee at outdoor and other venues. But at times, late schedule changes have prevented the glass from being in place when it should have been and has led to a shortage of security manpower, these sources assert.

Secret Service agents also complain that the agency’s managers devoted to Harris’ security have instructed advance personnel to submit manpower and resource requests without knowing any of the sites in Harris’ schedule. They also complain that Harris’ staff are “disorganized” in determining sites and are dictating what resources the vice president should have against the Secret Service advance team’s strong recommendations without any pushback from agency leaders.

“This is not new, just a continuation of poor USSS leadership,” a source tells RCP. “It puts the entire Secret Service into a cross-your-fingers-and-hope-nothing-happens situation. Sound familiar?”

The Secret Service also has come up short in securing Harris’ communications with her advance team, so they don’t share vital movements and logistics with the public or unwanted parties, according to several sources. The White House Communications Agency provides secure communications services for only the president and vice president but does not extend those to Trump because of a lack of resources.

However, even Harris’ campaign staff and her Secret Service advance teams have been using unauthorized communications because of a dearth of WHCA manpower and resources coupled with last-minute changes to the vice president’s campaign schedule, the sources contend.

Secret Service sources argue that the security procedures have not only failed to improve since July 13 but have further deteriorated.

The USSS workforce is “aggressively communicating” to their supervisors that they are providing inadequate security that fails to meet agency standards, while the agency’s leaders, ensconced in their Washington offices, are assuring everyone that “they’ll be fine and to keep up the good work,” one source argues.

“It’s those on the front lines, who do the long hours and impossible tasks, who get thrown under the bus when everything does go wrong while leaders simply retire and move on,” the source told RCP. “No accountability.”

The agency did not respond to questions about these alleged deviations from agency security protocols.

America’s largest drone company and supplier of unmanned aircraft to the Ukrainian Armed Forces has been thrown into a supply chain crisis after Beijing imposed sanctions, barring it from sourcing drone parts from Chinese suppliers, according to a new Financial Times report. This is another wake-up call for American companies heavily reliant on China, highlighting the urgent need to ‘friend-shore’ or ‘reshore’ critical supply chains away from the world’s second-largest economy.

Sources familiar with the situation told FT that Beijing imposed sanctions on Skydio to prevent it from sourcing battery components from Chinese firms. 

On Wednseday, Skydio said the sanctions by China were “for selling drones to Taiwan, where our only customer today is the National Fire Agency.”

Skydio CEO Adam Bry met with US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and senior White House officials last week to discuss the dire situation as the Chinese paralyzed part of the drone company’s supply chain.

“This is a clarifying moment for the drone industry,” Bry told customers in a letter obtained by FT. He said, “If there was ever any doubt, this action makes clear that the Chinese government will use supply chains as a weapon to advance their interests over ours.”

Bry continued, “This is an attempt to eliminate the leading American drone company and deepen the world’s dependence on Chinese drone suppliers.” 

China initially unveiled the sanctions on October 11 as retaliation for Washington’s move to sell attack drones to Taiwan. The FT noted that the company recently secured a contract with Taiwan’s fire agency. 

FT sources did not mention which of Skydio’s Chinese suppliers were affected by the sanctions.

Using public trade data compiled by counterparty and supply chain risk intelligence firm Sayari, about 94.44% of Skydio’s drone component shipments came from Vietnam, 4.9% from Hong Kong, and .65% from China. 

A list of Skydio’s suppliers – mainly in Asia. 

Here is the latest drone part shipment data for Skydio. 

One official told FT, “We suspect Skydio was targeted by Beijing because it is likely seen as a competitor to DJI,” adding, “If there is a silver lining, we can use this episode to accelerate our work to diversify drone supply chains away from . . . China.”

It seems like a tit-for-tat-sanction war between America and the Chinese to weaken each other drone-manufacturing capabilities.

US CBP Agents Halt Some DJI Drone Imports Over ‘Forced Labor’ Concerns https://t.co/Ub8sdyP3xd

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 18, 2024

These Chinese sanctions undermine US defense and drone manufacturers … it’s time for ‘America First’ policies to avoid this kind of shitshow.