Paris – Climate Change v Islamism. Which problem is biggest?

Imagine you are sitting peacefully at home watching a movie with your family. A few terrorists with guns burst in. They start shooting. What is your reaction?

Option A) you tell your family not to do anything but to continue watching TV, because reacting would be giving in to the terrorists – they want you to be angry and try to attack them, but you are the better person, you have the moral superiority and won’t stoop to their level. Anyway, attacking them might anger them more and they might be even more violent. You tell your family they should all stick together and show the terrorists they can’t win and can’t change your way of life by just carrying on as before. You watch as one by one, each of your kids is murdered, determined to occupy the moral high ground until they shoot you too.

Option B) you understand that what the terrorists want is for you and your family to be dead. So you grab whatever you can that might act as some sort of weapon and rush at the terrorists, trying to the end to disarm them and protect your family.  If you survive, you then do all you can to prevent other terrorists from coming into your home. Then you do all you can to identify where they are coming from and root them out.

The above choice is a little simplistic but it highlights the key points of the two streams of current opinion on the ‘right’ response.

Option B recognizes that you have to remain alive to defend your principles. Once you’ve dealt with the threat, then you are free to build as many ivory towers and moral pedestals as you want. Option A simply lets the terrorists win.

There is no third option for discussing it peacefully over a nice cup of tea, no option for peace and love and mutual respect for all. ISIS are not interested in peace and love. They are barbarians with the utmost contempt for civilization who want to destroy everything that doesn’t fit into their perverted interpretation of an Islamic world. However, ISIS is just one Islamist terror group of course and if we are successful in conquering them, and then Al Qaeda and Boko Haram, and so on, other Islamist groups will emerge. Islamism is the problem, ISIS is just the worst current group. We need to deal with it.

I’ll draw out some key points from my previous blogs. If you want more detail on the future of ISIS look at https://timeguide.wordpress.com/2015/07/13/the-future-of-isis/

The situation in Europe shows a few similarities with the IRA conflict, with the advantage today that we are still in the early stages of Islamist violence. In both cases, the terrorists themselves are mostly no-hoper young men with egos out of alignment with their personal reality. Yes there are a few women too. They desperately want to be respected, but with no education and no skills, a huge chip on their shoulder and a bad attitude, ordinary life offers them few opportunities. With both ISIS and the IRA, the terrorists are drawn from a community that considers itself disadvantaged. Add a hefty amount of indoctrination about how terribly unfair the world is, the promise of being a hero, going down in history as a martyr and the promise of 72 virgins to play with in the afterlife, and the offer to pick up a gun or a knife apparently seems attractive to some. The IRA recruited enough fighters even without the promise of the virgins.

The IRA had only about 300 front-line terrorists at any time, but they came from the nationalist community of which an estimated 30% of people declared some sympathy for them. Compare that with a BBC survey earlier this year that found that in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, only 68% of Muslims agreed with the statement “Acts of violence against those who publish images of the Prophet Mohammed can never be justified”. 68% and 70% are pretty close, so I’ll charitably accept that the 68% were being honest and not simply trying to disassociate themselves from the Paris massacre. The overwhelming majority of British Muslims rejecting violence – two thirds in the BBC survey, is entirely consistent with other surveys on Muslim attitudes around the world, and probably a reasonable figure for Muslims across Europe. Is the glass half full or half empty? Your call.

The good news is the low numbers that become actual front-line terrorists. Only 0.122% of the nationalist community in Northern Ireland at any particular time were front-line IRA terrorists. Now that ISIS are asking potential recruits not to go to Syria but to stay where they are and do their thing there, we should consider how many there might be. If we are lucky and the same 0.122% applies to our three million UK Muslims, then about 3600 are potential Islamist terrorists. That’s about 12 times bigger than the IRA problem if ISIS or other Islamist groups get their acts together. With 20 million Muslims in Europe, that would make for potentially 24,000 Islamist terrorists, or 81 IRAs to put it another way. Most can travel freely between countries.

What of immigration then? People genuinely fleeing violence presumably have lower support for it, but they are only a part of the current influx. Many are economic migrants and they probably conform more closely to the norm. We also know that some terrorists are hiding among other migrants, and indeed at least two of those were involved in the latest Paris massacre. Most of the migrants are young men, so that would tend to skew the problem upwards too. With forces acting in both directions, it’s probably not unreasonable as a first guess to assume the same overall support levels. According to the BBC, 750,000 have entered Europe this year, so that means another 900 potential terrorists were likely in their midst. Europe is currently importing 3 IRAs every year.

Meanwhile, it is rather ironic that many of the current migrants are coming because Angela Merkel felt guilty about the Holocaust. Many Jews are now leaving Europe because they no longer feel safe because of the rapidly rising numbers of attacks by the Islamists she has encouraged to come.

So, the first Paris issue is Islamism, already at 81 potential IRAs and growing at 3 IRAs per year, plus a renewed exodus of Jews due to widespread increasing antisemitism.

So, to the other Paris issue, climate change. I am not the only one annoyed by the hijacking of the environment by leftist pressure groups, because the poor quality of analysis and policies resulting from that pressure ultimately harms both the environment and the poor.

The world has warmed since the last ice age. Life has adjusted throughout to that continuing climate change. Over the last century, sea level has steadily increased, and is still increasing at the same rate now. The North Pole ice has shrunk, to 8.5% to 11% below normal at the moment depending whose figures you look at, but it certainly isn’t disappearing any time soon. However, Antarctic sea ice  has grown to 17% to 25% above normal again depending whose figures you look at, so there is more ice than normal overall. Temperature has also increased over the last century, with a few spurts and a few slowdowns. The last spurt was late 70s to late 90s, with a slowdown since. CO2 levels have rocketed up relentlessly, but satellite-measured temperature hasn’t moved at all since 1998. Only when figures are tampered with is any statistically significant rise visible.

Predictions by climate models have almost all been far higher than the empirical data. In any other branch of science, that would mean throwing theories away and formulating better ones. In climate science, numerous adjustments by alleged ‘climate scientists’ show terrible changes ahead; past figures have invariably been adjusted downwards and recent ones upwards to make the rises seem larger. Climate scientists have severely damaged the reputation of science in every field. The public now distrusts all scientists less and disregard for scientific advice in lifestyle, nutrition, exercise and medication will inevitably lead to an increase in deaths.

Everyone agrees that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and increases will have a forcing effect on temperature, but there is strong disagreement about the magnitude of that effect, the mechanisms and magnitudes of the feedback processes throughout the environmental system, and both the mechanisms and magnitudes of a wide range of natural effects. It is increasingly obvious that climate scientists only cover a subset of the processes affecting climate, but they seem contemptuous of science in other disciplines such as astrophysics that cover important factors such as solar cycles. There is a strong correlation between climate and solar cycles historically but the mechanisms are complex and not yet fully understood. It is also increasingly obvious that many climate scientists are less concerned about the scientific integrity of their ‘research’ than maintaining a closed shop, excluding those who disagree with them, getting the next grant or pushing a political agenda.

Empirical data suggests that the forcing factor of CO2 itself is not as high as assumed in most models, and the very many feedbacks are far more complex than assumed in most models.

CO2 is removed from the environment by natural processes of adaptation faster than modeled – e.g. plants and algae grow faster, and other natural processes such as solar or ocean cycles have far greater effects than assumed in the models. Recent research suggests that it has a ‘half-life’ in the atmosphere only of around 40 years, not the 1000 years claimed by ‘climate scientists’. That means that the problem will go away far faster when we fix it than has been stated.

CO2 is certainly a greenhouse gas, and we should not be complacent about generating it, but on current science (before tampering) it seems there is absolutely no cause for urgent action. It is right to look to future energy sources and move away from fossil fuels, which also cause other large environmental problems, not least of which the particulates that kill millions of people every year. Meanwhile, we should expedite movement from coal and oil to low carbon fossil fuels such as shale gas.

As is often observed, sunny regions such as the Sahara could easily produce enough solar energy for all of Europe, but there is no great hurry so we can wait for the technology to become sufficiently cheap and for the political stability in appropriate areas to be addressed so that large solar farms can be safely developed and supply maintained. Meanwhile, southern Europe is reasonably sunny, politically stable and needs cash. Other regions also have sunny deserts to support them. We will also have abundant fusion energy in the 2nd half of the century. So we have no long term energy problem. Solar/fusion energy will eventually be cheap and abundant, and at an equivalent of less than $30 per barrel of oil, we won’t bother using fossil fuels because they will be too expensive compared to alternatives. The problems we do have in energy supply are short term and mostly caused by idiotic green policies that worsen supply, costs and environmental impact. It is hard to think of a ‘green’ policy that actually works.

The CO2 problem will go away in the long term due to nothing but simple economics and market effects. In the short term, we don’t see a measurable problem due to a happy coincidence of solar cycles and ocean cycles counteracting the presumed warming forcing of the CO2. There is absolutely no need to rush into massively problematic taxes and subsidies for immature technology. The social problems caused by short term panic are far worse than the problem they are meant to fix. Increased food prices have been caused by regulation to enforce use of biofuels. Ludicrously stupid carbon offset programs have led to chopping down of rain forests, draining of peat bogs and forced relocation of local peoples, and after all tat have actually increased CO2 emissions. Lately, carbon taxes in the UK, far higher than elsewhere, have led to collapse of the aluminium and steel industries, while the products have still been produced elsewhere at higher CO2 cost. Those made redundant are made even poorer because they have to pay higher prices for energy thanks to enormous subsidies to rich people who own wind or solar farms. Finally, closing down fossil fuel plants before we have proper substitutes in place and then asking wind farm owners to accept even bigger subsidies to put in diesel generators for use on calm  and dull days is the politics of the asylum. Green policies perform best at transferring money from poor to rich, with environmental damage seemingly a small price to pay for a feel-good factor..

Call me a skeptic or a denier or whatever you want if you like. I am technically ‘luke warm’. There is a problem with CO2, but not a big one, and it will go away all by itself. There is no need for political interference and that which we have seen so far has made far worse problems for both people and the environment than climate change would ever have done. Our politicians would do a far better job if they did nothing at all.

So, Paris then. On one hand we have a minor problem from CO2 emissions that will go away fastest with the fewest problems if our politicians do nothing at all. On the other hand, their previous mistakes have already allowed the Islamist terrorist equivalent of 81 IRAs to enter Europe and the current migrant flux is increasing that by 3 IRAs per year. That does need to be addressed, quickly and effectively.

Perhaps they should all stay in Paris but change the subject.

 

The future of beetles

Onto B then.

One of the first ‘facts’ I ever learned about nature was that there were a million species of beetle. In the Google age, we know that ‘scientists estimate there are between 4 and 8 million’. Well, still lots then.

Technology lets us control them. Beetles provide a nice platform to glue electronics onto so they tend to fall victim to cybernetics experiments. The important factor is that beetles come with a lot of built-in capability that is difficult or expensive to build using current technology. If they can be guided remotely by over-riding their own impulses or even misleading their sensors, then they can be used to take sensors into places that are otherwise hard to penetrate. This could be for finding trapped people after an earthquake, or getting a dab of nerve gas onto a president. The former certainly tends to be the favored official purpose, but on the other hand, the fashionable word in technology circles this year is ‘nefarious’. I’ve read it more in the last year than the previous 50 years, albeit I hadn’t learned to read for some of those. It’s a good word. Perhaps I just have a mad scientist brain, but almost all of the uses I can think of for remote-controlled beetles are nefarious.

The first properly publicized experiment was 2009, though I suspect there were many unofficial experiments before then:

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/411814/the-armys-remote-controlled-beetle/

There are assorted YouTube videos such as

A more recent experiment:

http://www.wired.com/2015/03/watch-flying-remote-controlled-cyborg-bug/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11485231/Flying-beetle-remotely-controlled-by-scientists.html

Big beetles make it easier to do experiments since they can carry up to 20% of body weight as payload, and it is obviously easier to find and connect to things on a bigger insect, but obviously once the techniques are well-developed and miniaturization has integrated things down to single chip with low power consumption, we should expect great things.

For example, a cloud of redundant smart dust would make it easier to connect to various parts of a beetle just by getting it to take flight in the cloud. Bits of dust would stick to it and self-organisation principles and local positioning can then be used to arrange and identify it all nicely to enable control. This would allow large numbers of beetles to be processed and hijacked, ideal for mad scientists to be more time efficient. Some dust could be designed to burrow into the beetle to connect to inner parts, or into the brain, which obviously would please the mad scientists even more. Again, local positioning systems would be advantageous.

Then it gets more fun. A beetle has its own sensors, but signals from those could be enhanced or tweaked via cloud-based AI so that it can become a super-beetle. Beetles traditionally don’t have very large brains, so they can be added to remotely too. That doesn’t have to be using AI either. As we can also connect to other animals now, and some of those animals might have very useful instincts or skills, then why not connect a rat brain into the beetle? It would make a good team for exploring. The beetle can do the aerial maneuvers and the rat can control it once it lands, and we all know how good rats are at learning mazes. Our mad scientist friend might then swap over the management system to another creature with a more vindictive streak for the final assault and nerve gas delivery.

So, Coleoptera Nefarius then. That’s the cool new beetle on the block. And its nicer but underemployed twin Coleoptera Benignus I suppose.

 

Estimating potential UK Islamist terrorism: IRA x 13

I wrote last June about the potential level for Islamist terrorism in the UK, where I used a comparison with the Northern Ireland troubles. It is a useful comparison because thanks to various polls and surveys, we know the ratio of actual active terrorist numbers there to the size of the supporter community.

The majority of people there didn’t support the violence, but quite a lot did, about 30% of the community. From the nationalist 245,000, the 30% (75,000) who supported violence resulted in only around 300 front line IRA ‘terrorists’ and another 450 in ‘support roles’ at any one time. The terrorist population churned, with people leaving and joining the IRA throughout, but around 1% of 30% of that 245,000 were IRA members at any one time.

We’ve recently had another survey on UK Muslims conducted for the BBC that included attitudes to violence. You can read the figures from the survey here:

Click to access BBC-Today-Programme_British-Muslims-Poll_FINAL-Tables_Feb2015.pdf

The figures they found are a little worse than the estimates I used last year, and we have slightly higher population estimates too, so it is time to do an update. The 30% support for violence attributed to the Northern Ireland nationalist community is very similar to the 32% found for the UK Muslim community. Perhaps 30% violence support is human nature rather than peculiar to a particular community. Perhaps all that is needed is a common grievance.

In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, 68% of UK Muslims claimed that they didn’t think violence was justified if someone ‘publishes images of the Prophet Mohammed’. The survey didn’t specify what kind of images of the Prophet were to be hypothetically published, or even that they were insulting, it just said ‘images’. That 68% gives us a first actual figure for what is often referred to as ‘the overwhelming peaceful majority of Muslims in Britain’. 32% either said they supported violence or wouldn’t say.

(The survey also did not ask the non-Muslim population whether they would support violence in particular circumstances, and I haven’t personally found the people I know in Great Britain to be more civilized than those I knew in Northern Ireland. If the same 30% applies when a common grievance exists, then at least we can take some comfort that we are all the same when we are angry over something.)

Some other surveys around the world in the last few years have confirmed that only around 30% of Muslims support violence against those who offend Islam. Just like in Northern Ireland, almost all of those supporters would not get directly involved in violence themselves, but would simply approve of it when it happens.

Let’s translate that into an estimate of potential Islamist terrorism. There are no accurate figures for the UK Muslim population, but it is likely now to be around 3 million. Around 32% of that is around a million; there is no point aiming for higher precision than that since the data just doesn’t exist. So around a million UK Muslims would state some support for violence. From that million, only a tiny number would be potential terrorists. The IRA drew its 750 members from a violence supporter base of 75,000, so about one percent of supporters of violence were prepared to be IRA members and only 40% of those joined the equivalent of ‘active service units’, i.e. the ones that plant bombs or shoot people.

Another similarity to Northern Ireland is that the survey found that 45% of UK Muslims felt that prejudice against them made it difficult to live here, and in Northern Ireland, 45% of nationalists supported the political motives of the IRA even if only 30% condoned its violence, so the level of grievance against the rest of the population seems similar. Given that similarity and that the 32% violence support level is also similar, it is only a small leap of logic to apply the same 1% to terrorist group recruitment might also apply. Taking 1% of 1 million suggests that if Islamist violence were to achieve critical mass, a steady 10,000 UK Muslims might eventually belong to Islamist terrorist groups and 0.4% or 4000 of those in front line roles. By comparison, the IRA at its peak had 750, with 300 on the front line.

So based on this latest BBC survey, if Islamists are allowed to get a grip, the number of Islamist terrorists in the UK could be about 13 times as numerous as the IRA at the height of ‘The Troubles’. There is a further comparison to be had of an ISIS-style terrorist v an IRA-style terrorist but that is too subjective to quantify, except to note that the IRA at least used to give warnings of most of their bombs.

That is only one side of the potential conflict of course, and the figures for far right opposition groups suggest an anti-Islamist terrorist response that might not be much smaller. Around 1.25 million support far right groups, and I would guess that more than 30% of those would support violence and more would be willing to get directly involved, so with a little hand-waving the problem looks symmetrical, just as it was in Northern Ireland.

If the potential level of violence is 13 times worse than the height of the Troubles, it is clearly very important that Islamists are not allowed to get sufficient traction or we will have a large problem. We should also be conscious that violence in one region might spread to others and this could extend to a European problem. On a positive note, if our leaders and security forces do their jobs well, we may see no significant problem at all.

The future of drones – predators. No, not that one.

It is a sad fact of life that companies keep using the most useful terminology for things that don’t deserve it. The Apple retina display, which makes it more difficult to find a suitable name for direct retinal displays that use the retina directly. Why can’t they be the ones called retina displays? Or the LED TV, where the LEDs are typically just LED back-lighting for an LCD display. That makes it hard to name TVs where each pixel is actually an LED. Or the Predator drone, as definitely  not the topic of this blog, where I will talk about predator drones that attack other ones.

I have written several times now on the dangers of drones. My most recent scare was realizing the potential for small drones carrying high-powered lasers and using cloud based face recognition to identify valuable targets in a crowd and blind them, using something like a Raspberry Pi as the main controller. All of that could be done tomorrow with components easily purchased on the net. A while ago I blogged that the Predators and Reapers are not the ones you need to worry about, so much as the little ones which can attack you in swarms.

This morning I was again considering terrorist uses for the micro-drones we’re now seeing. A 5cm drone with a networked camera and control could carry a needle infected with Ebola or aids or carrying a drop of nerve toxin. A small swarm of tiny drones, each with a gram of explosive that detonates when it collides with a forehead, could kill as many people as a bomb.

We will soon have to defend against terrorist drones and the tiniest drones give the most effective terror per dollar so they are the most likely to be the threat. The solution is quite simple. and nature solved it a long time ago. Mosquitos and flies in my back garden get eaten by a range of predators. Frogs might get them if they come too close to the surface, but in the air, dragonflies are expert at catching them. Bats are good too. So to deal with threats from tiny drones, we could use predator drones to seek and destroy them. For bigger drones, we’d need bigger predators and for very big ones, conventional anti-aircraft weapons become useful. In most cases, catching them in nets would work well. Nets are very effective against rotors. The use of nets doesn’t need such sophisticated control systems and if the net can be held a reasonable distance from the predator, it won’t destroy it if the micro-drone explodes. With a little more precise control, spraying solidifying foam onto the target drone could also immobilize it and some foams could help disperse small explosions or contain their lethal payloads. Spiders also provide inspiration here, as many species wrap their victims in silk to immobilize them. A single predator could catch and immobilize many victims. Such a defense system ought to be feasible.

The main problem remains. What do we call predator drones now that the most useful name has been trademarked for a particular model?

 

Drones – it isn’t the Reapers and Predators you should worry about

We’re well used now to drones being used to attack terrorist targets in the Middle East. Call of Duty players will also be familiar with using drones to take out enemies. But drones so far are basically unmanned planes with missiles attached.

Elsewhere, quadcopter drones are also becoming very familiar for a variety of tasks, but so far at least, we’re not seeing them being used on the battlefield, or if they are being used, it is being kept out of the news. It can only be a matter of time though. They can already be made in a wide range of sizes from tiny insect-sized reconnaissance drones that carry cameras, microphones or other small sensors, right up to helicopter-sized drones for missile and gun mounting.

At each size, there are advantages and disadvantages. Collectively, drones will change warfare and terrorism dramatically over the next decades.

Although the big Predator drones with Hellfire missiles look very impressive and pack a mean punch, and are well proven in warfare, they soon won’t be as important as tiny drones. Imagine you have a big gun and a choice of being attacked by two enemies – a hungry grizzly bear, or a swarm of killer bees, and suppose these bees can penetrate your clothing. The bear is huge and has big sharp claws and teeth, but there is only one, and you’re a good shot and it will go down easily with your gun if you stay cool. The bees are small and you may swat a few but many will sting you. In practice, the sting could be a high voltage electric shock, a drop of nerve gas, a laser into your eye, or lethal germs, all of which are banned, but terrorists don’t care. Sharp carbon needles can penetrate a lot of armor. It is even possible to make tiny shaped-charge explosive stings.

Soon, they won’t even need to be as big as bees. Against many backgrounds, it can be almost impossible to see a midge, let alone kill it and a midge sized device can get through even a small gap. Soldiers don’t like having to fight in Noddy suits (NBC).

Further in the future, various types of nanotech devices might be added to attack your nervous system, take over your brain, paralyze you, switch your consciousness off.

Nature loves self-organisation, and biomimetics has adopted the idea well already. It is easy to use simple flocking algorithms to keep a swarm loosely together and pretty immune to high attrition. The algorithms only need simple sensors and processors, so can be very cheap. A few seekers can find and identify targets and the right areas of a target to attack. The rest can carry assorted payloads and coordinate their attacks, adding electric charges to make lethal shocks or arranging to ‘sting’ simultaneously or in timed sequences at certain points.

We heard this week about 3D printers allowing planes to make offshoots during flight. Well, insect-sized drones could too. Some could carry material, some could have the print heads and some provide the relative positioning systems for others to assemble whatever you want. Weapons could just seemingly appear from nowhere, assembled very close to the target.

So much for the short-term and mid-term future. What then?

Mass Effect combat drone, picture credit: masseffect.wikia.com

In futuristic computer games such as Halo and Mass Effect, combat orbs float around doing various military and assistant tasks. We will soon be able to make those too. We don’t have to use quadcopters or dragonfly drones. I had to design one for my sci-fi novel but I kept as close as possible to real feasible technology. Mine just floats around using electromagnetic/plasma effects. I discussed this in:

http://carbonweapons.com/2013/06/27/free-floating-combat-drones/ (the context there was for my sci-fi book, but the idea is still feasible)

I explained how such drones could self-organize, could be ultra-smart, and could reassemble if hit, becoming extremely resilient. They could carry significant weaponry too. A squadron of combat drones like these would be one hell of an enemy. You could shoot one for ages with laser or bullets and it would keep coming. Disruption of its fields by electrical weapons would make it collapse temporarily, but it would just get up and reassemble as soon as you stop firing. With its intelligence potentially local cloud based, you could make a small battalion of these that could only be properly killed by totally frazzling them all. They would be potentially lethal individually but almost irresistible as a team. Super-capacitors could be recharged frequently using companion drones to relay power from the rear line. A mist of spare components could make ready replacements for any that are destroyed. Self-orientation and use of free-space optics for comms make wiring and circuit boards redundant, and sub-millimetre chips 100m away would be quite hard to hit.

My generation grew up with the nuclear arms race. Millennials will grow up with the drone arms race. And that if anything is a lot scarier. The battle drones in computer games are fairly easy to kill. Real ones soon won’t be.

 

Well I’m scared. If you’re not, I didn’t explain it properly.

Limits of ISIS terrorism in the UK

This is the 3rd article in my short series trying to figure out the level of terrorist danger ISIS poses in the UK, again comparing them with the IRA in the Northern Ireland ‘troubles’. (ISIS = Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham. IRA = Irish Republican Army). I don’t predict the level it will actually get to, which depends on too many factors, only the limits if everything goes their way.

https://timeguide.wordpress.com/2014/06/22/isis-comparison-with-the-ira-conflict/ discussed the key difference, that ISIS is a religious group and the IRA was a nationalist one.

https://timeguide.wordpress.com/2014/06/25/a-pc-roost-for-terrorist-chickens/ then discusses the increased vulnerability in the UK now thanks to ongoing political correctness.

IRA

Wikipedia says: The Provisional IRA’s armed campaign, primarily in Northern Ireland but also in England and mainland Europe, caused the deaths of approximately 1,800 people. The dead included around 1,100 members of the British security forces, and about 640 civilians.

It also gives a plausible estimate of the number of its members :

By the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was estimated that in the late 1980s the IRA had roughly 300 members in Active Service Units and about another 450 serving in supporting roles [such as “policing” nationalist areas, intelligence gathering, and hiding weapons.]

Sinn Fein, (which was often called the IRA’s ‘political wing’) managed to get 43% support from the nationalist community at its peak in 1981 after the hunger strikes. Provisional IRA approval ratings sat at around 30%. Supporting violence is not the same as supporting use of political means – some want to fight for a cause but won’t do so using violence. That 30% yields an IRA supporter population of around 75,000 from 245,000 nationalist voters. So, from a supporter population of 75,000, only 300 were in IRA active service units and 450 in supporting roles at any particular time, although thousands were involved over the whole troubles. That is a total of only 1% of the relevant population from which they were drawn – those who supported violent campaigns. Only 0.4% were in active service units, i.e actual terrorists. That is an encouragingly small percentage.

ISIS

Government estimate of the number of young men from the UK that went overseas to fight with ISIS is around 500. According to a former head of MI6, 300 have returned already. Some of those will be a problem and some will have lost sympathy with the cause, just as some men joined the IRA and later left, all the way through the troubles. Some will not have gone overseas and therefore can’t be identified and tracked the same way. Over time, ISIS will attempt to recruit more to the cause, and some will drop out. I can’t find official estimates of numbers but there are ways of making such estimates.

Building on Paddy Ashdown’s analogy with the IRA, the same kinds of young men will join ISIS as those who joined the IRA – those with no hope of status or fame or glory from their normal lives who want to be respected and be seen as heroic rebel fighters by holding a weapon, who are easy prey for charismatic leaders with exciting recruitment campaigns. The UK Muslim young men community faces high unemployment.

ISIS draws its support from the non-peace-loving minority of the Muslim community. Citing Wikipedia again, a Pew Research Centre poll showed 72% of Muslims worldwide said violence against civilians is never justified, surprisingly similar to the equivalent 70% found in the Nationalist community in Northern Ireland. They also found in the US and UK that over 1 in 4 Muslims think suicide bombing is sometimes justified, not very different from the world-wide level. (A 2006 survey by NOP found that only 9% of UK Muslims supported violence. Whether attitudes have changed or it is just the way questions are asked is anyone’s guess; for now, I’ll run with both, the calculations are easy.

The 25-30% figures are similar to the situation in Northern Ireland in spite of quite different causes. I lived a third of my life in Belfast and I don’t think the people there generally are any less civilized than people here in England. Maybe it’s just human nature that when faced with a common grievance, 25-30% of us will consider that violence is somewhat acceptable against civilians and support a sub-population of 0.4% terrorists fighting on our behalf.

On the other hand, the vast majority of 70%+ of us are peace-loving. A glass half full or half empty, take your pick.

The UK Muslim community is around 3 million, similar to the USA in fact. 28% of that yields a potential supporter population of  840,000. The potential terrorist 1% of that is 8,400 and 0.4% is 3,360.  If we’re optimistic and take NOP’s 2006 figure of 9% supporting violence, then 270,000 people would be supporting 1080 terrorists if the right terrorist group were to appear in the right circumstances with the right cause and the right leaders and good marketing and were to succeed in its campaigning. That puts an upper limit for extreme Islamist terrorism in the UK at between 3 and 11 times as big as the IRA was at its peak if everything goes its way.

However, neither is the actual number of UK ISIS terrorists, only the potential number of terrorists available if the cause/motivation is right, if the community buys into it, if the ISIS leaders are charismatic, and if they do their marketing well in their catchment communities. So far, 500 have emerged and actually gone off to fight with ISIS, 300 have returned. We don’t know how many stayed here or are only thinking of joining up, or aren’t even thinking of it but might, and we don’t know what will happen that might aggravate the situation and increase recruitment. We don’t know how many will try to come here that aren’t from the UK. There are plenty of ‘known unknowns’.

Some of the known unknowns  are good ones though – it isn’t all scary. In the Middle East, ISIS has clear objectives and controls cities, arms and finance. They say they want to cause problems here too, but they’re a bit busy right now, they don’t have a clear battle to fight here, and most of all our Muslim community doesn’t want to be the source of large scale terrorism so isn’t likely to be cooperative with such an extremist and barbaric group as ISIS. Their particular style of barbarism and particularly extremist views are likely to put off many who might consider supporting another extremist Islamist group. There also isn’t an easy supply of weapons here. All these work in our favor and will dampen ISIS efforts.

So the magnitude of the problem will come down to the relative efforts of our security forces, the efforts of the peace-loving Muslim majority to prevent young men being drawn towards extremism, and the success of ISIS marketing and recruitment. We do know that we do not want 3,360 home-grown ISIS terrorists wandering around the UK, or a similar number in the USA.

Finally, there are two sides to every conflict. ISIS terrorism would likely lead to opposing paramilitary groups. As far as their potential support base goes, ‘Far right’ parties add up to about 2%, about 1.25 million, but I would guess that a much higher proportion of an extremist group supports violence than the general population, so some hand-waving suggests that a similarly sized opposition supporter population terrorist group is not unlikely. We know from elsewhere in Ireland and other EU countries that that 2% could grow to the 25-30% we saw earlier if our government really loses control. In the USA, the catchment group on the ISIS side is still only the same size as the UK, but the potential armed resistance to them is far greater.

In summary, ISIS is potentially a big problem, with 300 home grown potential ISIS terrorists already here in the UK and trained, hundreds being trained overseas and an unknown quantity not yet on the radar. If all goes badly, that could grow to between 1000 and over 3000 active terrorists, compared to the IRA which typically only had 300 active terrorists at a time. Some recent trends have made us much more vulnerable, but there are also many other that lean against ISIS success.

I have a lot of confidence in our intelligence and security forces, who have already prevented a great many potential terrorist acts. The potential magnitude of the problem will keep them well-motivated for quite a while. There is a lot at stake, and ISIS must not get UK terrorism off the ground.

 

A PC roost for terrorist chickens

Political correctness as a secular religion substitute

Being politically correct makes people feel they are good people. It provides a secular substitute for the psychological rewards people used to get from being devoutly religious, a self-built pedestal from which to sneer down on others who are not compliant with all the latest politically correct decrees. It started out long ago with a benign goal to protect abused and vulnerable minorities, but it has since evolved and mutated into a form of oppression in its own right. Surely we all want to protect the vulnerable and all want to stamp out racism, but political correctness long left those goals in the dust. Minorities are often protected without their consent or approval from things they didn’t even know existed, but still have to face any consequent backlash when they are blamed. Perceived oppressors are often victimized based on assumptions, misrepresentations and straw man analyses rather than actual facts or what they actually said. For PC devotees, one set of prejudices and bigotry is simply replaced by another. Instead of erasing barriers within society, political correctness often creates or reinforces them.

Unlike conventional religion, which is largely separated from the state and allows advocates to indulge with little effect on others, political correctness has no such state separation, but is instead deeply integrated into politics, hence its name. It often influences lawmakers, regulators, the media, police and even the judiciary and thereby incurs a cost of impact on the whole society. The PC elite standing on their pedestals get their meta-religious rewards at everyone’s expense, usually funded by the very taxpayers they oppress.

Dangers

Political correctness wouldn’t exist if many didn’t want it that way, but even if the rest of us object to it, it is something we have learned to live with. Sometimes however, denial of reality, spinning reasoning upside down or diverting attention away from unpleasant facts ceases to be just irritating and becomes dangerous. Several military and political leaders have recently expressed grave concerns about our vulnerability to a new wave of terrorism originating from the current Middle East problems. Even as the threat grows, the PC elite try to divert attention to blaming the West, equating moralities and cultural values and making it easier for such potential terrorism to gestate. There are a number of trends resulting from PC and together they add to the terrorist threats we’re currently facing while reducing our defenses, creating something of a perfect storm. Let’s look at some dangers that arise from just three PC themes – the worship of diversity, the redefining of racism, and moral equivalence and see some of the problems and weaknesses they cause. I know too little about the USA to make sensible comment on the exact situation there, but of course they are also targets of the same terrorist groups. I will talk about the UK situation, since that is where I live.

Worship of diversity

In the UK, the Labour Party admitted that they encouraged unchecked immigration throughout their time in power. It is now overloading public services and infrastructure across the UK, and it was apparently done ‘to rub the Conservatives’ noses in diversity’ (as well as to increase Labour supporter population). With EC policy equally PC, other EU countries have had to implement similar policies. Unfortunately, in their eagerness to be PC, neither the EC nor Labour saw any need to impose any limits or even a points system to ensure countries get the best candidates for their needs.

In spite of the PC straw man argument that is often used, the need for immigration is not in dispute, only its magnitude and sources. We certainly need immigration and most immigrants are just normal people just looking for a better life in the UK or refugees looking for safety from overseas conflicts. No reasonable person has any problem with immigration per se, nor the color of the immigrants, but any debate about immigration only last seconds before someone PC throws in accusations of racism, which I’ll discuss shortly. I think I am typical of most British people in being very happy to have people of all shades all around me, and would defend genuine efforts to win equality, but I still think we should not allow unlimited immigration. In reality, after happily welcoming generations of immigrants from diverse backgrounds, what most people see as the problem now is the number of people immigrating and the difficulties it makes for local communities to accommodate and provide services and resources for them, or sometimes even to communicate with them. Stresses have thus resulted from actions born of political correctness that was based on a fallacy, seeking to magnify a racism problem that had almost evaporated. Now that PC policy has created a situation of system overload and non-integration, tensions between communities are increasing and racism is likely to resurface. In this case, PC has already backfired, badly. Across the whole of Europe, the consequences of political correctness have led directly to increased polarization and the rise of extremist parties. It has achieved the exact opposite of the diversity utopia it originally set out to achieve. Like most British, I would like to keep racism consigned to history, but political correctness is resurrecting it.

There are security problems too. A few immigrants are not the nice ordinary people we’d be glad to have next door, but are criminals looking to vanish or religious extremists hoping to brainwash people, or terrorists looking for bases to plan future operations and recruit members. We may even have let in a few war criminals masquerading as refugees after their involvement in genocides. Nobody knows how many less-than-innocent ones are here but with possibly incompetent and certainly severely overworked border agencies, at least some of the holes in the net are still there.

Now that Edward Snowden has released many of the secrets of how our security forces stay on top of terrorism and the PC media have gleefully published some of them, terrorists can minimize their risk of being caught and maximize the numbers of people harmed by their activities. They can also immigrate and communicate more easily.

Redefining Racism

Racism as originally defined is a mainly historic problem in the UK, at least from the host community (i.e. prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior). On that definition I have not heard a racist comment or witnessed a racist act against someone from an ethnic minority in the UK for well over a decade (though I accept some people may have a different experience; racism hasn’t vanished completely yet).

However, almost as if the main purpose were to keep the problem alive and protect their claim to holiness, the politically correct elite has attempted, with some legal success, to redefine racism from this ‘treating people of different race as inferior’, to “saying anything unfavorable, whether factual or not, to or about anyone who has a different race, religion, nationality, culture or even accent, or mimicking any of their attributes, unless you are from a protected minority. Some minorities however are to be considered unacceptable and not protected”. Maybe that isn’t how they might write it, but that is clearly what they mean.

I can’t buy into such a definition. It hides true racism and makes it harder to tackle. A healthy society needs genuine equality of race, color, gender, sexuality and age, not privileges for some and oppression for others.

I don’t believe in cultural or ideological equality. Culture and ideology should not be entitled to the same protection as race or color or gender. People can’t choose what color or nationality they were born, but they can choose what they believe and how they behave, unless oppression genuinely prevents them from choosing. We need to clearly distinguish between someone’s race and their behavior and culture, not blur the two. Cultures are not equal. They differ in how they treat people, how they treat animals, their views on democracy, torture, how they fight, their attitudes to freedom of speech and religion. If someone’s religion or culture doesn’t respect equality and freedom and democracy, or if it accepts torture of people or animals, or if its fighters don’t respect the Geneva Convention, then I don’t respect it; I don’t care what color or race or nationality they are.

Opinions are not all equally valid either. You might have an opinion that my art is every bit as good as Monet’s and Dali’s. If so, you’re an idiot, whatever your race or gender.

I can criticize culture or opinion or religion without any mention of race or skin color, distinguishing easily between what is inherited and what is chosen, between body and mind. No big achievement; so can most people. We must protect that distinction. If we lose that distinction between body and mind, there can be no right and wrong, and no justice. If you have freedom of choice, then you also have a responsibility for your choice and you should accept the consequences of that choice. If we can accept a wrong just because it comes from someone in a minority group or is approved of by some religion, how long will it be before criminals are considered just another minority? A recent UK pedophile scandal involved senior PC politicians supporting a group arguing for reduction of the age of consent to 10 and decriminalization of sex with young children. They didn’t want to offend the minority group seeking it, that wouldn’t have been politically correct enough. Although it was a long time ago, it still shows that it may only be a matter of time before being a pedophile is considered just another lifestyle choice, as good as any other. If it has happened once, it may happen again, and the PC climate next time might let it through.

Political correctness prevents civilized discussion across a broad field of academic performance, crime, culture and behavior and therefore prevents many social problems from being dealt with. The PC design of ‘hate crime’ with deliberately fuzzy boundaries generates excess censorship by officialdom and especially self-censorship across society due to fear of false accusation or accidentally falling foul of it. That undermines communication between groups and accelerates tribal divisions and conflict. Views that cannot be voiced can still exist and may grow more extreme and when finally given an outlet, may cause far greater problems.

PC often throws up a self-inflicted problem when a member of a minority group does or says something bad or clearly holds views that are also politically incorrect. PC media tries to avoid reporting any such occurrences, usually trying to divert attention onto another topic and accusing any other media that does deal with it of being racist or use their other weapon, the ad-hom attack. If they can’t avoid reporting it, they strenuously avoid any mention of the culprit’s minority group and if they can’t do that, will search for some way to excuse it, blame it on someone else or pretend it doesn’t matter. Although intended to avoid feeding racism, this makes it more difficult to get the debate necessary and can even increase suspicion of cover-ups and preferential treatment.

Indeed accusations of racism have become a powerful barrier to be thrown up whenever an investigation threatens to uncover any undesirable activity by a member of any ethnic or national minority and even more-so if a group is involved. For example, the authorities were widely accused of racism for investigating the ‘Trojan Horse’ stories, in a city that has already produced many of the recent UK additions to ISIS. Police need to be able to investigate and root out activities that could lead to more extremism and especially those that might be brainwashing kids for terrorism. A police force now terrified of being accused of being institutionally racist is greatly impeded when the race card is played. With an ever-expanding definition, it is played more and more frequently.

Moral relativism

It is common on TV to see atrocities by one side in overseas conflicts being equated to lesser crimes by the other. In fact, rather than even declaring equivalence, PC moral equivalence seemingly insists that all moral judgments are valued in inverse proportion to their commonality with traditional Western values. At best it often equates things from either side that really should not be equated. This creates a highly asymmetric playing field that benefits propaganda from terrorist groups and rogue regimes and undermines military efforts to prevent terrorist acts. It also decreases resistance to views and behaviors that undermine existing values while magnifying any grievance against the West.

PC media often gives a platform to extremists hoping to win new recruits, presumably so they can pretend to be impartial. While our security forces were doing their best to remove recruitment propaganda from the web, some TV news programs gleefully gave them regular free air time. Hate preachers have often been given lengthy interviews to put their arguments across.

The West’s willingness to defend itself is already greatly undermined after decades of moral equivalence eating away at any notion that we have something valuable or special to defend. Fewer and fewer people are prepared to defend our countries or our values against those who wish to replace liberal democracy with medieval tyranny. Our armies fight with threats of severe legal action and media spotlights highlighting every misjudgment on our side, while fighting against those who respect no such notions of civilized warfare.

Summary

Individually, these are things we have learned to live with, but added together, they put the West at a huge disadvantage when faced with media-savvy enemies such as ISIS. We can be certain that ISIS will make full use of each and every one of these PC weaknesses in our cultural defense. The PC chickens may come home to roost.

 

 

Drone Delivery: Technical feasibility does not guarantee market success

One of my first ever futurology articles explained why Digital Compact Cassette wouldn’t succeed in the marketplace and I was proved right. It should have been obvious from the outset that it wouldn’t fly well, but it was still designed, manufactured and shipped to a few customers.

Decades on, I had a good laugh yesterday reading about the Amazon drone delivery service. Yes, you can buy drones; yes, they can carry packages, and yes, you can make them gently place a package on someone’s doorstep. No, it won’t work in the marketplace. I was asked by the BBC Radio 4 to explain on air, but the BBC is far more worried about audio quality than content quality and I could only do the interview from home, so they decided not to use me after all (not entirely fair – I didn’t check who they actually used and it might have been someone far better).

Anyway, here’s what I would have said:

The benefits are obvious. Many of the dangers are also obvious, and Amazon isn’t a company I normally associate with stupidity, so they can’t really be planning to go all the way. Therefore, this must be a simple PR stunt, and the media shouldn’t be such easy prey for free advertising.

Very many packages are delivered to homes and offices every day. If even a small percentage were drone-delivered, the skies will be full of drones. Amazon would only control some of them. There would be mid-air collisions between drones, between drones and kites and balloons, with new wind turbines, model aeroplanes and helicopters, even with real emergency helicopters. Drones with spinning blades would be dropping out of the sky frequently, injuring people, damaging houses and gardens, onto roads, causing accidents. People would die.

Drones are not silent. A lot of drones would make a lot of extra ambient noise in an environment where noise pollution is already too high. They are also visible, creating another nuisance visual disturbance.

Kids are mischievous. Some adults are mischievous, some criminal, some nosey, some terrorists. I can’t help wonder what the life expectancy of a drone would be if it is delivering to a housing estate full of kids like the one I was. If I was still a kid, I’d be donning a mask (don’t want Amazon giving my photo to the police) and catching them, making nets to bring them down and stringing wires between buildings on their normal routes, throwing stones at them, shooting them with bows and arrows, Nerf guns, water pistols, flying other toy drones into their paths. I’d be tying all sorts of other things onto them for their ongoing journey. I’d be having a lot of fun on the black market with all the intercepted goods too.

If I were a terrorist, and if drones were becoming common delivery tools, I’d buy some and put Amazon labels on them, or if I’m short of cash, I’d hijack a few, pay kids pocket money to capture them, and after suitable mods, start using them to deliver very nasty packages precisely onto doorsteps or spray lethal concoctions into the air above specific locations.

If I were just criminal, I’d make use of the abundance of drones to make my own less conspicuous, so that I could case homes for burglaries, spy on businesses with cameras and intercept their wireless signals, check that an area is free of police, or get interesting videos for my voyeur websites. Maybe I’d add a blinding laser into them to attack any police coming into the scene of my crime, giving valuable extra time without giving my location away.

There are also social implications: jobs in Amazon, delivery and logistics companies would trade against drone manufacturing and management. Neighbours might fall out if a house frequently gets noisy deliveries from a drone while people are entering and leaving an adjacent door or relaxing in the garden, or their kids are playing innocently in the front garden as a drone lands very close by. Drone delivery would be especially problematic when doorways are close together, as they often are in cities.

Drones are good fun as toys and for hobbies, in low numbers. They are also useful for some utility and emergency service tasks, under supervision. They are really not a good solution for home delivery, even if technically it can be done. Amazon knows that as well as I do, and this whole thing can only be a publicity stunt. And if it is, well, I don’t mind, I had a lot of fun with it anyway.

Bubblewrap terrorism

I can happily spend ages bursting bubblewrap. It has a certain surprise value that never stops giving, you never quite know when the bubble will burst.

I saw some nice photos Rachel Armstrong (@livingarchitect and Senior Ted Fellow) has made playing with chemistry, using bubblewrap cells as mini-reaction chambers to great effect. She is a proper scientist, not a mad one, and does some interesting stuff and is worth following. She isn’t the problem.

My first thought was, I need a chemistry lab, then I thought about Dexter and Stewie with their labs and realised that I have way too much in common with them, including mental age band, and remembered some of my childhood ‘events’ with my chemistry set, and basically I haven’t moved on so it wouldn’t be a good idea.

My second thought, a couple of seconds later, was that bubblewrap would make an excellent way to keep nasty chemicals separate and then to suddenly mix them, and that it could be easily wrapped around the body or in a briefcase lining, or as obviously innocent packing material for a fragile object being carried on a plane, with the top few rows of cells kept largely chemical-free to erase suspicion. Now I know I can’t be the first person to think of that, but I remember seeing warnings about all sorts of things I’m not allowed to take on planes or that must be put in the little plastic bag and I don’t recall seeing any mention of bubblewrap.

And if chemistry, why not biotech, mixing some sort of dispersal activator with a few cells of nasty viruses. Or in fact, why bother with the dispersion chemicals, bubblewrap makes a nice burst of compressed air when you pop it anyway so would be good for dispersing stuff just by popping cells.

Just a thought, but is bubblewrap already a known terrorist threat, or is it just about to become one?