Matt Hancock, a Conservative MP and the UK’s Health Secretary during most of the Covid lockdowns, has failed upwards.
Failing Upwards and Global Elitism
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What makes international order, liberal?
Over the weekend IR Twitter was abuzz with both the Red Sox winning the world series and a multi-threaded discussion on liberal international order. Regarding the former I have very little to say...
Writing Wednesday: embracing criticism for book revisions
Many a postdoc are likely in my position this year, dissertation defense safely in the review mirror and settling into the groove of their research. Those who, like me, are fortunately enough to...
Writing Wednesdays: write to a deadline by any means necessary
Scholarly work is often written to deadline—the contribution to an edited volume, the essay for a journal’s special issue, and the book review are all going to be fit into someone else’s bigger...
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Thursday Linkage
I saw this image on Twitter tonight and it kind of summarized how I feel about the news this summer which has been awful. I've been reading posts from thoughtful commentators like Steve Walt, Micah Zenko, and Jay Ulfelder who remind us that it's not all bad or at least it's not as bad as has been in the past (anybody remember World War II? [anyone] or perhaps even the early post-Cold War was as bad as it right now). Still, from Ukraine to Ferguson to ISIS in Iraq/Syria to Gaza to Ebola, this has been one shitty summer for news and also nerve-wracking and anxiety-inducing. I think the current...
Ferguson and American Foreign Policy
I see a connection between what is happening in Ferguson, the now roiling suburb of St. Louis, and American security policy. An odd connection to make at first glance, but stay with me. In the context of the important questions of institutionalized violence and race relations, it can be easy to overlook the ways in which how the US thinks about security policy are shaping the events on the ground. Let us start first with the most concrete or optical of influences, the equipment the police are using. As dozens of news outlets have reported, it is no coincidence that the police in Ferguson...
Thursday Linkage
Potpourri this week with Micah Zenko on the tendency for mission creep in humanitarian interventions and other U.S. military missions, Marc Lynch pushing back on whether arming the Syria rebels would have worked, story on ISIS’ capture of the Mosul Dam and an interesting twist on water and security challenges, bad air in China (I’m shocked) and the challenges the country is finding tapping its shale gas reserves, and, finally, why the lead Sierra Leone doctor fighting Ebola didn’t get the experiment treatment.
Thinking About Governments and Violence
I got into an extended twitter discussion about the 1992 LA riots. Why? Because that event helped to inform much of my thinking about ethnic conflict and because I see in Ferguson some key similarities despite the on-going events being about police aout of control rather than riots. How so? The event that triggered the riots of 1992 was not the televised beating of Rodney King but the acquittal of the cops who beat him. This demonstrated to many that the cops essentially had immunity/impunity, that the police were a combatant rather than a relatively impartial adjudicator of disputes. ...
Monstermind or the Doomsday Machine? Autonomous Cyberwarfare
Today in Wired magazine, James Bamford published a seven-page story and interview with Edward Snowden. The interview is another unique look into the life and motivations of one of America’s most (in)famous whistleblowers; it is also another step in revealing the depth and technological capacity of the National Security Agency (NSA) to wage cyberwar. What is most disturbing about today’s revelations is not merely what it entails from a privacy perspective, which is certainly important, but from an international legal and moral perspective. Snowden tells us that the NSA is utilizing a...
Friday Nerd Blogging: Stata and Death
Fun post that sorts the patterns of life and death in Westeros and beyond. I am sure that some multivariate analysis is likely, but was not presented in the post.
The Politics of Artificial Intelligence and Automation
The Pew Research Internet Project released a report yesterday, “AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs” where it describes a bit of a contradictory vision: the future is bright and the future is bleak. The survey, issued to a nonrandomized group of “experts” in the technology industry and academia, asked particular questions about the future impacts of robotic and artificial intelligence advances. What gained the most attention from the report is the contradictory findings on the future of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation on jobs. According to Pew, 48% of respondents feel that by...
Thursday Morning Linkage: Ebola Edition
The death total of the Ebola viral outbreak in West Africa now exceeds 900, leading the World Health Organization to declare it a "global health emergency." Urbanization and weak states in the region, coupled with rural practices of bush meat consumption, appear to be some of the problematic drivers of the epidemic. Local populations skepticism of health workers and attachment to traditional practices of care and burial are making the situation worse. The army is being deployed in Liberia to contain the spread and be able to enforce quarantine policies. The potential spread to Nigeria by a...