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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   1139 thread views

Transnational Thursday for October 31, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Somebody asked last time I posted a list like this what the background was. I'm coming from an EA/forecasting background, but then realized that although there might be something to being worried about catastrophic risks, reponses to this were top-down, trying to conceptualize risks long beforehand. I grew very unsatisfied with this, particularly for AI, and ended up raising some money to run a foresight/fast response team. We produce weekly minutes here, and the below feeds into that.

Some general topics:

  • Will NK detonate a nuclear weapon? When?
  • To what extent is ww3 a good level of analysis for global conflicts?
  • I used to not worry that much about climate change, but 100-1k people killed in my own backyard (Spain) makes me a bit more worried
  • On the one had, a terrorist cooking ricin is a bit alarming. On the other hand, it shows that Al Qaeda doesn't have the chops to do anthrax or bottox. Thoughts?
  • Is the WHO's global emergency corps bullshit? Seems like it's a "reserve of experts"
  • I didn't know that France depended on Rosatom for nuclear fuel. Lol.
  • We've been seeing mpox coming to developed nations for a while, but it's still striking to see the 1st london case.

South Korea’s military intelligence agency told lawmakers Wednesday that North Korea has likely completed preparations for its seventh nuclear test and is close to test-firing a long-range missile capable of reaching the United States.

An article looks at the growing alliance between China, Russia and other powers

Jamie Dimon, the head of the financial giant JP Morgan, makes the argument that we are already in a WW3.

Animal testing of H5N1 gives some data about how well it's adapting

Russia launches exercises simulating retaliatory strikes

Pakistan vows to emphasize military ties to Russia, and collaborates on anti-terrorism exercises.

At least 100 people have died so far (and about 1000 are "disappeared") in flash flooding of Spain’s Valencia. Bridges collapsing, and overall very striking videos on social media. The city got what would have been a freak tornado, but such events might become more common as climate change continues changing up weather patterns.

A teen who went into a murderous rampage was also cooking ricin.

Israel ordered a whole Lebanese city evacuated

Geneva convention rules are being weakened, and civilians aren't being shielded from the worst harms in Ukraine or Gaza.

Finland seized Russian assets over compensation linked to invasion of Crimea

A Boeing satellite exploded into 500 pieces. The worst case scenario in events like this is Kessler syndrome but so far reporting doesn't point to something like this, though early simulations don't look great

The US and China are fighting over dominance in the depths of the South China sea

The WHO activated the global emergency corps to deal with monkeypox. Implications unclear, as it seems more like a "reserve of experts that advise" and less like a "reserve of nurses and doctors"

A cyberattack from Iran hit an Israeli bank, and maybe credit card users generally, blocking users off.

Cyberattack against French Internet Service Provider

New agreement between Germany and the UK will tighten cooperation

Ballot box arson attacks in Oregon.

More cyberattacks in Australia

Fire in UK shipyard which builds nuclear submarines

The 2025 geomagnetic storm season might be pretty big

France depends on Russia for nuclear fuel

Some Russia military bases are empty. Some experts suggest this is for sabotage operations in the Baltics

First case of mpox Ib clade in London

Floods also caused havoc in Africa

Putin launches drills of Russia's nuclear forces simulating retaliatory strikes

India is expanding nuclear capabilities with fast breeder reactor

The US CDC issued an alert for "walking pneumonia"

A man with 120 guns and 250,000 rounds of ammunition in his home was arrested for shooting at a Democratic Party office

in Tempe

AI "Will Enhance" Nuclear Command and Control, Says nuclear command general

North Korea likely to ask for nuclear technology from Russia in exchange for troops, South Korea says. This would mirror an agreement between Iran and Russia.

The US army is preparing for a possible confrontation with China

Hezbollah new leader might agree on a ceasefire

More coral bleaching

Israel is using AI tools with little oversight to determine whether an individual is a Hamas operative.

North Korea conducted an ICBM test.

H5N1 detected in pig. Previously only in cows

I think a nuclear war between the United States/NATO and Russia is still the most likely existential crisis facing this planet. It doesn’t get nearly as much as attention as it should, here or elsewhere, because it’s now old fashioned and unstylish. And because younger people haven’t read about the likely scenarios for how it would happen, so the don’t realize the immense time pressure involved. The leadership on both sides would have about a ten minute window to make the decision whether to torch the planet. I find it worrying how cavalier everyone is about this, all the way from Reddit to the high political leadership.

Why you expect it to be a high risk? Even if Russia would nuke Berlin and Warsaw - then USA, France and UK would not nuke Moscow back.

And reaction would be likely strong enough (China would join) ensuring that Russia will not nuke NATO countries or even Ukraine, as benefits is not there.

And if Putin/Biden/Kamala/Trump would be insane enough to launch full scale attack... There is not much we can do with that.

It doesn’t get nearly as much as attention as it should, here or elsewhere

Maybe because when I seen it, it was in "Russia has nukes, we must satisfy all their demands" form which does not encourage treating it seriously.

existential crisis

Even full scale use of all nuclear devices would not cause end of civilisation: it would cripple it and set us 50-100-200, maybe 300 years back and kill billions - but would not end existence of humanity.

Yes, people claiming that we have enough nukes to kill all humanity were stupid and/or lying.

But if we were set back to the technological level of the 1700s, how possible would it be for us to recover to our modern-day level? Most of the easily-accessible coal and oil have been depleted. Modern farming and transportation would be destroyed, very possibly leading to Malthusian living conditions and a lack of leisure time necessary to rebuild the machines and infrastructure that we know are possible. Within a few generations, most of the practical knowledge necessary to build complex machinery, etc., would be lost completely. It also seems likely to me that in the aftermath of a large-scale nuclear war, many of the most intelligent people would be dead, which might further complicate efforts to build society back to its present level of affluence and technological advancement.

But if we were set back to the technological level of the 1700s, how possible would it be for us to recover to our modern-day level?

Very. Null risk.

I've cited Ord previously on this topic, but I'm feeling lazy today so I'll just quote:

Even if civilization did collapse, it is likely that it could be reestablished. As we have seen, civilization has already been independently established at least seven times by isolated peoples.12 While one might think resource depletion could make this harder, it is more likely that it has become substantially easier. Most disasters short of human extinction would leave our domesticated animals and plants, as well as copious material resources in the ruins of our cities—it is much easier to re-forge iron from old railings than to smelt it from ore. Even expendable resources such as coal would be much easier to access, via abandoned reserves and mines, than they ever were in the eighteenth century. 13 Moreover, evidence that civilization is possible, and the tools and knowledge to help rebuild, would be scattered across the world.

13 Overall the trend is toward resources becoming harder to access, since we access the easy ones first. This is true for untouched resources in the ground. But this leads people to neglect the vast amount of resources that are already in the process of being extracted, that are being stored, and that are in the ruins of civilization. For example, there is a single open-cut coal mine in Wyoming that produces 100 million tons of coal each year and has 1.7 billion tons left (Peabody Energy, 2018). At the time of writing, coal power plants in the US hold 100 million tons of ready-to-use coal in reserve (EIA, 2019). There are about 2 billion barrels of oil in strategic reserves (IEA, 2018, p. 19), and our global civilization contains about 2,000 kg of iron in use per person (Sverdrup & Olafsdottir, 2019).

This is, of course, leaving aside the issue that substantial chunks of the world would be directly untouched by nuclear war (Africa/South America, also probably New Zealand and Ireland), so it's not exactly like literacy will be lost forever in 20 years or something even if rebuilding fails in all the places that are involved.

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