It appears the certificate has not yet been deployed. This should happen early next week.

EDIT 6/8:  The hosting company has not installed the certificate in a timely manner and has not responded to query.

EDIT: It appears the certificate has not yet been deployed. This should happen early next week.

Intel9.us now has an SSL Certificate. This means that individuals who directly access the website will no longer see the alarming browser message, “This website may damage your computer…” highlighted in red.

When I began Intel9.us eleven years ago, lack of an SSL certificate was not an issue. In my opinion, it should not be an issue for a website that  conducts no e-commerce, and does not request information from users. In some locales,  the user could be vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks, by substitution of  web pages generated by a third party. But in this case, you have other problems.

Nevertheless, the dire warning message generated by modern browsers, without any knowledge of what the website actually is or who runs it, required this remedy. Ironically, the SSL certificate doesn’t provide any additional security to Intel9; it just disposes of the message.

SSL encrypts the link between a user’s computer and the website, with “https” appearing in the browser address bar, sometimes after an extra click. This does not make the website itself inherently more secure.  Readers with government, media, or corporate  affiliations should continue to access Intel9 by means appropriate to their security requirements.

For the individual unaffiliated internet user, the risks are minimal.  Welcome aboard!

(CNN) Trump considers new sanctions on Russia as he grows more furious with Putin.

This has been addressed in (CNN) Trump threatens new sanctions on Russia after weeks of conciliatory statements toward Moscow. Quoting,

True to form, the Kremlin has interpreted Trump’s conciliation as a sign of weakness. Notably, they have already discounted Trump’s blustery, threatening exterior as a put-on.

Dear President Trump, all that NSC analysis might miss what’s really going on. Putin has stolen your mojo. A technical description follows:

***Theft of Mojo***

For various reasons having to do with national pride, military hubris, or the desire of belligerents to emit propaganda, there has been a tendency in the press to deprecate China’s rapidly developing military prowess. The  downing of as many as two Indian Rafale planes by Chinese PL-15 missiles carried by Chengdu J-10C  is depicted as a shocking upset, demanding re-evaluation of the quality of Chinese weaponry.

What happened was completely predictable. India’s air attack was initiated by 4th generation aircraft, without first acquiring air superiority and unaccompanied by standoff radar jammers. Every U.S. simulation scenario has demonstrated that 4th generation aircraft sustain losses. Against competent air defenses, these are unsustainable.

The U.S. has long regarded the  PL-15  as a major threat, prompting the crash program to develop the AIM-260 and several other long range missiles. It should be no surprise that at least some Chinese weapons, such as the PL-15, may have superior capabilities not yet bounded on the upside by intelligence.  Better known efforts, such as China’s stealth fighters, are at least credible efforts, likely superior in overall capability to  advanced 4th generation fighters.

India and Pakistan these days have highly manipulated media. It is entirely possible that decision makers in these countries are consuming their own propaganda. Even after loss of two or more planes, India could not stop gloating. Quoting from (Eurasia Times) Tech Bonanza For India! Recovers ‘Near Intact’ China’s PL-15 BVR Missile Likely Fired At IAF Jets:

Squadron Leader Vijainder K. Thakur, an Indian Air Force veteran and a regular contributor to the EurAsian Times, said the missile was found intact, suggesting its self-destruct mechanism did not work…“It is a tech bonanza for India and its allies. The missile has tech issues because the self-destruct didn’t work. It could have other issues. It’s not a mature weapon.”

The missile downed two + or – jets and it’s not mature? See (National Defense Research Wing) Pakistan’s J-10CE Jamming Claims Mocked as Rafale’s Spectra Outshines KG600, The problem with this claim is that it was the responsibility of Spectra to deflect the PL-15 missile! Pakistan may be equally guilty of PR bloviation, but is too terse to pin down.

The outcome was within the bounds of the expected. That the Thales Spectra self-defense jammer failed against the PL-15 may be a minor surprise, but this kind of failure  can be anticipated with electronic warfare. Combined with pilot response, it is responsible for survival of the 4th generation Rafale.

Initially, the launching plane provides the radar beam and guidance for the PL-15. If the PL-15 gets close to the target, the reflection will be strong enough to transfer entirely to the onboard seeker, a complete miniature radar system.

Jamming is a dark art. The jammer tries to fool the seeker by replacing the reflected pulse of the missile radar with its own pulse, which contains false information. To do this, the jammer must have intimate knowledge of the technology of the missile radar, or be so powerful as to overwhelm the electronic circuitry. For success, the jammer must have an up-to-date threat library, a “threat dictionary”, which is hard to get from an enemy — but there is more.

There is a kind of “IQ” competition between the missile and the jammer. Until recent, the anti-jamming capability of a missile like the PL-15 was limited by the need for promptness to two strategies:

• Home-on-jam, where the missile guides itself to the source of the jamming.
• A bunch of techniques based  on the linear “matched filter”, a practical method that uses minimal computing power, fitting easily inside a tiny radar weighing just a few pounds.  Pulse compression is an example.

With modern semis, the lid comes off complexity and clock speed. This opens the door to nonlinear signal processing, even neural nets. A technique such as CDMA, if it were adapted to radar, could make jamming almost impossible. Which of these, if any, is true? Thales Spectra is 15 years old.

One word to Thales, India, Pakistan, and anyone else afflicted with weapon hubris:

Surprise!

CNN live coverage of Kashmir 2025 massacre.

Since the latest terror attack is a strategic replay of many prior incidents, you may wish to read India Pakistan crisis first. While facts of culpability are hard to come by, general principles apply.

Pakistan is a failed state, captive to the unattainable desire to regain Kashmir, with divided authorities, a weak economy, and severe environmental challenges. The level of civilian corruption is  typified by wholesale theft of land deeds by the elite, going back many years, in Balochistan, backstory of current unrest.

The civilian government, in spite of massive corruption and vigilante sharia law, has some democratic trappings. It also functions to shield the upper 1% in their private Western-style indulgences, which would not sit well with the masses. Blasphemy is punishable by death, often at the hands of the mob.

It is simplistic to state that civil government is subordinate to  the nominal intelligence apparatus, the ISI. The conflict resolution mechanism is of a type unknown in the West, The ISI acts as a hidden hand, usually prevailing, but subject to unpredictable reversals by the civilian realm. Political conflict is sustained by circular processes, bouncing endlessly between court and legislature.

When the military have seized power, results have been variable. In 1999, Pervez Musharraf contrived the Kargil War with India, This led to his removal from power, more for reasons of strategy than objective. Perhaps unwittingly, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq imported Islamic extremism. The rest are at least not so memorable.

Since the founding of Pakistan,  no prime minister save Imran Khan has been removed by legal means. Imprisonment, assassination, or execution are typical. There is a strong analogy in the past history of the Turkish military, whose influence on government was seen either positively, as the ghost of Ataturk, or negatively, as a hidden power structure. Since Zia-ul-Haq, the latter is more relevant.

Pakistan was not originally a very religious country. Quoting the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah,

 “… in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed — that has nothing to do with the business of the state … “,

This was subject to profound change under Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization, which established state funded religious schools — madrassas– similar in effect to the Wahhabi madrassas funded by Saudi Arabia, with frequent associations with  past acts of terrorism. Zia’s plane was blown up, but his influence remains. Imran Khan  sought to return to Jinnah’s secular conception, but failed.

Until  the 2014 Peshawar school massacre, the ISI was the unquestioned master of the situation,  capable of hiding Osama Bin-Laden for years, 3/4 miles from the Pakistan Military Academy  in Abbottabad. The result has been a crackdown on terrorism. Whether it was selective to domestic threats, allowing Kashmir objectives, is hinted by open source.

We note a general principle. The history of conflict between religion and government, of which we have thoroughly modern knowledge, begins with the subversive Christianization of Rome in the first three hundred years A.D.  Subversion slept for more than a thousand years,  resurfacing in the modern era. Cryptic Islamism, as an underground challenge to secular government, is currently the most problematic form. Even the most progressive Muslim countries deal harshly with the Muslim Brotherhood, because of its ability to  hollow out the secular state.

Zia’s madrassas set the stage. Initially, their waves of youth were useful proxies for the schemes of the ISI. Then extremism, which had been  carefully fostered for controlled objectives, took on a life of its own, the Islamic “infra-state”. The major groups splintered, competing in  goals, dedication, fanaticism. These factors engage:

• The madrassas are still operating. (The Diplomat) Pakistan Debates Madrassa Reform Rollback asserts that the generational injection of radical Islam continues.
• The National Action Plan is a major effort with widespread support to eliminate the domestic basis of terrorism. Can it block subversion?
• Pakistan claims that terror training camps no longer exist on their territory.
• Could terrorists transit Pakistan from somewhere else?
• India claims that Pakistan culpability is established by intelligence.

The 2019 Balakot airstrike offers clues.The Indian Air Force claimed to strike a terror training camp. Quoting Wikipedia,

…Western diplomats in Islamabad stated that they did not believe the Indian Air Force had hit any militant camp, with one stating that it was “common knowledge amongst our intelligence” that the militant training camp in Balakot had been moved some years back.^[75] Western security officials have cast doubt over Indian claims and asserted that there are no longer any such large scale militant camps in Pakistan.

The  article also hints at concealment:

Reporters from Reuters were repeatedly denied access to the madrassa by the military citing security issues but they noted the structure (and its vicinity) to be intact from the back.^[69][71] The press wing of the Pakistan military had twice postponed scheduled visits to the site.

…

The local people varied as to the purpose of the facility.^[66] In the immediate aftermath of the strikes, whilst some claimed of it being an active Jaish training camp, others asserted it to have been a mere school for the local children and that such militant camps used to exist far earlier.^[

from which may be deduced, with moderate confidence:

• There was no training camp of any size.
• There was a small camp.
• Proximity to a madrassa was not a coincidence, but a logistical convenience.
• Indian intelligence and execution were abysmal.
• Pakistan has with some success curbed terrorism, but is limited by the presence of extremism in legitimate political guise.

Terrorism tends not to disappear, but to transform. Since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2016, there is no real need for large terror bases in Pakistan. Still necessary is transit from Afghanistan through  Pakistan, with small scale logistical support in the general form of safe houses,  unobtrusively blending into urban landscapes. Targeting these structures has high likelihood of civilian casualties, unless specialized weapons, possessed only by the U.S., are used, in conjunction with equally precise intelligence gathering. Although India employed precision strike weapons, the totality of effect is beyond the execution ability of the IAF.

The Indian response was mandated by the horror of the deed, and Narendra Modi’s bristly Hindu nationalism. The Pakistan response will be mandated by civilian casualties, as well as the sense of violation that comes with the targeting of populated areas.

Will this come to an end with the satisfaction of honor, as  in some kind of duel? Not this time. It will happen when both sides have lost enough airplanes.  Military hardware is precious to a small military with pretension to greatness. Uniform epaulets, regardless of design, cannot take wing. It really hurts to lose your toys.

The widespread bellicosity of current foreign relations suggests that many leaders are vulnerable to unconscious influence, a kind of style.

(Al Jazeera) Iran’s President Pezeshkian visits injured, site of deadly port explosion.

The cellphone video shows an initial deflagration (fire or low-order explosion) followed by a detonation (blast)  estimated in the range of 100 tons to multiple thereof. The size of the blast cannot be attributed to an air-dropped weapon in daylight. Denials by Iran that military explosives, or rocket fuel, were present are not credible; a detonation of that size requires large quantities of those substances, or a fuel-air munition for which there is no evidence.

The initial deflagration may have concealed the preceding detonation of a small explosive device. Quoting AP,

Private security firm Ambrey says the port received missile fuel chemical in March. It is part of a shipment of ammonium perchlorate from China by two vessels to Iran, first reported in January by the Financial Times.

Several media have misidentified the chemical as sodium perchlorate, a common industrial chemical that can oxidize combustible substances, but has no explosive properties in isolation. Ammonium perchlorate contains both oxidizer and fuel, supporting both deflagration and detonation. It requires only additives for a practical rocket fuel. Yet  the NY Times references sodium perchlorate:

The security firm Ambrey told The Associated Press that there were indications that the blast resulted from improper storage of sodium perchlorate at the port…

as does CNN:

The New York Times reported Sunday that a person “with ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said that what exploded was sodium perchlorate, a major ingredient in solid fuel for missiles. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss security matters.”

Storage of ammonium perchlorate at the  port implies Houthi recipients.

There is no evidence of an air-dropped weapon, which lacks guaranteed deniability.

There is no evidence of cooking-off, when finished munitions are lofted by thermally induced explosion.

Explosion of ammonium perchlorate can be easily induced by a small pyrotechnic device.

There is bias here towards sabotage versus accidental ignition.

If a source did, in fact, identify the chemical as sodium perchlorate, distraction would be the motive.

There is nothing to suggest an industrial accident, which would require the substitution, in name only, of sodium perchlorate, intimately mixed with an unspecified combustible substance. Nevertheless, this will likely be Iran’s choice of explanation, avoiding disclosure of supplies destined for the Houthis.

Donald Trump has reveled all his life in his ability to make deals. In the international sphere, some terms are translated. Lawyers specializing in negotiation use shock as a main tactic, veering between demand and accommodation in order to recalibrate the adversary’s expectations and break down emotional resistance.

It  seems likely that Brent Neiman’s  tariff formula was subject to Trump’s direct modification, for the purposes of:

• Negotiation shock.
• Brinkmanship.
• Political exigency, to establish a new normal before political or popular resistance develops.

Quoting from (Axios) Trump up, Dems down in new polls; Politics Part 7,

The deficit, that killer of nations, is mentioned less and less as the menace steadily grows. The choices offered so far: let the ill and elderly die in the street, or go broke as a nation….

Something has to be done.  But he difficulty of doing is illuminated by a napkin calc.

The 2023 World Bank  figure for  U.S. foreign trade, as a percentage of GDP, the latest published, is 25%.

Quoting from (IMF) Recession: When Bad Times Prevail,

They typically last about a year and often result in a significant output cost. In particular, a recession is usually associated with a decline of 2 percent in GDP. In the case of severe recessions, the typical output cost is close to 5 percent.

The imposition of tariffs at the levels of April 2nd  would have an effect that does not appear to have been anticipated, since it has not been studied with any significance. It would not result in a proportionate decline of imports. It would result in a supply chain collapse, as exporters cut their inventories, smashing the embedded chains of every country, including ours. You don’t buy what you may not be able to sell. A liquidity crisis would follow, a polite term for mass bankruptcy. The falling bond market, as large players seek liquidity, anticipates this. The supply chain  pile-up could result in a loss of GDP as high as 25%, five times that of a severe recession, a contraction not seen since  1929.

The napkin calc is just 25 divided by 5, a genuine black swan. You can get a little intuition from Largest Traffic Accident Pile-Ups In History.

Shock or brinkmanship may seem expedient tactics to circumvent the tedium of trade negotiations. But besides the Great Depression of 2025, another risk accrues, the loss of the goodwill of the United States, symbolized by Fort Knox, “the almighty dollar”, and the premium for the companies that trade on U.S. stock exchanges. For another context, see Dear President Trump, The Ghost of Henry Kissinger Redux.

Some on the  extreme right are promulgating the equivalent of an industrial Walden, with a broad return to smokestack industry. Let’s not overdo it.  Increased  representation of heavy industry is vital. But profit margins are lower, and the opportunities to multiply margins with productivity technology are limited. There is nothing inherently virtuous about it. Yet some people want the physicality of making things, and wouldn’t trade for white collar.

Peter Navarro  wants to make bicycles, an excellent starter industry for the world’s poorest countries. It leverages little more than basket weaving. Make reality of dreams instead. That’s what we’re good at. Let’s avoid ideology.  Make the jobs people want.

This is the time when the political opposition should devise practical, compatible alternatives or modifications of Trump’s program.

We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.

Benjamin Franklin

The deployment of a large portion of the B-2 bomber fleet to Diego Garcia elevates this question.

Brinkmanship  originated with Eisenhower’s Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who defined it in the statement, “The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art.” The fundamental requirement of successful application is a lack by the adversary of a detailed knowledge of the player’s limits. During the period of ideological conflict, when unalloyed mutual assured destruction was the bedrock of defense, this condition was available to each player.

The last effective player was the team of Nixon/Kissinger (with Nixon largely absent) against Brezhnev during the Yom Kippur War, after which MAD faded into new moral imperatives. The cautious Soviet leadership ushered in with Brezhnev chose to prioritize survival over ideology, abandoning the kind of challenge to the West that would have required  the brinkmanship of elevated DEFCON.

No president has successfully practiced it since. The last noteworthy attempt was Trump vs. Kim Jong Un. No inference should be made that I think Trump could have succeeded. The ultimate judgment of whether Iran is a different case from North Korea is best left to the intelligence community. Open source offers some insight.

In comparison to North Korea, several problems have been solved or do not exist:

• Unlike production of plutonium by North Korea, Iran’s production of enriched uranium does not rely  on nuclear reactors, reducing the hazard of a radiological disaster.
• Intelligence is much more abundant; Iran has been successfully penetrated on multiple occasions.
• See (Axios) Pro-Iranian account leaks alleged U.S. intel on Israel’s attack plans; Iran’s Superstrength Concrete. The problem of penetrating Iran’s deeply buried installations may have been solved by a breakthrough demonstrated against the Houthis.

A bunker buster consists of a very heavy case containing a relatively small amount of high explosive. Prior to the Houthi strikes, the mission for this type  of ordinance was to destroy a target in one drop. But should the bomb make the penetration, it is disadvantaged by the small amount of explosive. The Houthi strikes  demonstrate a remarkably reduced CEP, with the ability to drop a chain of munitions down one hole dug by multiple penetrators. This includes JDAMs with much larger explosive charges. The hammer becomes a drill, with much greater reach.

The classic goal of brinkmanship, for Iran to abandon their nuclear program, is not a likely outcome, since a strike cannot cost them more than a treaty. An outcome in Iran’s favor, a strike failure, remains possible. While Houthi rocket bases contain explosive accelerants that finish the job, centrifuge halls contain toxic but nonexplosive uranium hexafluoride.

The likelihood of a strike is enhanced by the perception of brinkmanship failure with North Korea. A similar time urgency applies.

It’s still a dice game.

( CNN) Annotating the Trump administration’s Yemen war plans from their Signal group chat.

This link is provided to ensure wide distribution of SignalGate: Is Mike Waltz a Mole?

Signal is a secure messaging app. Nevertheless, security comes in different degrees. The below list consists of facilities that can be used to make a secure messaging app:

• basic public-key cryptography for key exchange
• basic TLS connection
• government standard 256 bit AES
• in lieu of AES, your favorite encryption protocol — unless this for government
• Post-quantum cryptography

An app that  is made of these protocols is only as secure as the metal it runs on. The metal can be compromised with a side channel attack. All of these thought-to-be secure protocols are also  vulnerable to  we-didn’t-think-of-that attacks. This is why the most secure computer networks, such as those  of the intel community, are air-gapped, with no electrical connection to the outside world.

Signal is only as secure as the guarantee by the phone of no side-channel vulnerability, which isn’t much of a guarantee at all. Phones are uniquely vulnerable to the Evil Maid Attack. and the update difficulty resulting from monolithic compilation of the drivers with the linux based Android kernel. Secure messaging has a heritage of promises made and promises broken.

None of the above is strange to me, and it should not be strange to you. The modern  penalty for naivete is severe. This is strange to me:

Why was Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic a liberal magazine, a contact on Mike Waltz’s phone? The world of leakers is known to be byzantine, but what favor could Waltz  possibly curry from Goldberg?

The things you really want to know tend to be the things you’ll never know.