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.
PaperclipPerfector
6mo ago
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Transnational Thursday for October 31, 2024
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Notes -
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:
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.
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.
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.
offset by known locations of some remaining, some in progress mining operations being left and technology being invented already
not all of it, enough to bounce back
seems dubious, but it is unverifiable and there is no known way to verify it
seems extremely dubious, I would buy utterly losing CPU production... But outright losing most machinery production? It is not SO hard to bootstrap when you are motivated, knowledge exists and world heavily fragmented. At least somewhere you will have people going to rebuild. And that is even if someone went omnicidal stupid and nuked say Peru and Keyna instead of finishing their main rival. Just to spite survivors.
many of [insert group] would be dead, for nearly all descriptions
but even with selective death of top 40% of most intelligent/hard working/insert descriptor here survivors would rebuild. I think that you underestimate resilience of humanity (or maybe I overestimate)
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