(Edit, to reflect that Antony Blinken was not a career state department officer. Lawrence Eagleburger was the only career officer to become Secretary of State.)

(Wapo) Documents reveal U.S. military’s frustration with White House, diplomats over Afghanistan evacuation. Quoting,

Military personnel would have been “much better prepared to conduct a more orderly” evacuation, Navy Rear Adm. Peter Vasely, the top U.S. commander on the ground during the operation, told Army investigators, “if policymakers had paid attention to the indicators of what was happening on the ground.”

The collapse of the Afghan army was foretold by many. In Biden: Leaving Afghanistan, I wrote,

I have grave certainty that they [Taliban] won’t uphold. This will be a slaughter of the good. The   future reeks of the fall of Saigon, when our friends were falling off helicopter skids as they begged for rescue.

(Wapo) Declassified Afghanistan reports back U.S. commanders who said Biden team was indecisive during crisis. Quoting,

…concluding that indecisiveness among Biden administration officials and initial reluctance to shutter the embassy in Kabul sowed chaos and put the overall mission at “increased risk.”

With the military exonerated, this leaves as targets NSC and State. In  (CNN) Don’t you have an obligation, sir?’: Tapper on Biden’s probe dismissal, Jake Tapper criticizes Biden for his blunt rejection of the Army report.

The  ritual  Washington solution is to look at the organizational chart, determine the highest appointee through whom the errors flowed, and fire that person. It relies on the fiction  that the errant logic actually inhabits  the person to be sacrificed. Ritual human sacrifice is a political vice that offers two choices: lop off the head, or multiple eviscerations of subalterns.

The organizational chart does not tell the real story, which has these elements:

• The tendency of rank-and-file foreign service officers to “go native”, to develop strong affinities and personal bonds with Afghans.
• Profound depression at the prospect of abandoning Afghans, with paradoxical dissociation from morbid ground knowledge.
• Group-think among these officers.
•  Absence at State of an active dissent channel, stocked with voices of conviction. A consequence of groupthink, it risks insularity, unless balanced elsewhere in the organizational chart. Who do you believe, and why?
• The background of NS Advisor Jacob Sullivan, while not inherently insular, does not suggest a strong pushback against State insularity.
• The debacle was caused by a broadly decentralized effect, involving dozens, if not hundreds of people, each of whom possess valuable areas of competence.

Biden had two choices, ritual sacrifice, or preserve the team. He chose the latter, with “The buck stops here.” It is a politically costly choice,  a particular form of integrity. The solution is not assignment of blame, which would be fictionalization of a complex error.

Biden might address Tapper’s concern, for free upward flow of information, with a more direct  military channel than “NSC principal” implies.

 

(CNN) Heated exchange between State Dept official, veteran reporter. Quoting,

A heated exchange took place between AP reporter Matt Lee and State Department spokesperson Ned Price regarding Russia’s alleged “crisis actors” propaganda plot.

My sympathies were torn between purpose and privilege.

• Purpose, to deter Russian aggression against a smaller, weaker country of people who simply want to live in their own polity.
• Privilege, the right of a reporter to ask any question that might winkle out the truth.

I am not personally skeptical, though intelligence always has a margin of error. Matt Lee’s job is to be skeptical. Both Price and Lee are responsible for a dialectic that terminates in prejudice instead of logical opposition. Even a disagreement should have clear logic. Since Lee’s line was monotonic, nuanced elaboration fell to  Price, who was either not prepared, or hobbled by the stilted language of “spokes-speak.”

The intelligence could have been obtained in three basic ways:

• SIGINT, signals intelligence, which includes bugging, wiretapping, and interception of radio signals. The Kremlin  is paranoid about this; all important orders go by typewritten letter. It  is impractical to organize hundreds of extras to lie in the snow sprayed with red ink, so phones must be used.
• HUMINT, human intelligence. It’s impossible to keep a movie production secret. Even bit players are excited.
• Brokered information, purchased by  CIA from third parties. CIA  is deliberately not terribly selective; there is always the possible diamond-in-the-rough, along with false intelligence manufactured for profit. Made notorious by the Steele dossier, there have nonetheless been plenty of diamonds.

If I were Price, unhobbled by the conventions of his office,  the dialog might have gone like this:

Price: Matt, do you want to get someone killed?

Lee: I just want to see some evidence.

Price: We’re taking a chance revealing this much. If we say more, it might get someone killed.

This could be mildly deceptive, if it’s SIGINT, but forgivable. The penalty varies between major asset loss, and death.

Lee: Then you don’t have anything.

Price: We do, but I don’t think it will help prevent a war to tell you.

Lee: Why (enumerating intel failures  of the past) should you be trusted?

Price: Like I said, it’s not like we have a piece of plane wreckage. It is, literally, a movie plot. We don’t have the script, only the synopsis. Do you expect used typewriter ribbons?

(Laughter)

Lee: I’ll repeat the question…

Price: I have nothing more on this, except a simple request: Let your readers decide.

Ned Price was unprepared, because he is a member of one of the most intentionally honest post WWII administrations. He simply did not anticipate that Matt Lee would turn his jaded, gimlet eye on him.

Ned, next time, loosen your tie and your wit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve written over 800 articles, so I’ve lost a personal relationship with the older ones. Every so  often, an anonymous reader draws my attention to the relevance of an old article, in this case Trump Putin Meeting Part 1.

The Kremlin’s incipient aggression against Ukraine has two underpinnings:

• To thwart their perceived threat of NATO to strategic balance.
• An expression of illiberal, ethnocentric nationalism, which is actually put to words by Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

The second point is explored in Trump Putin Meeting Part 1, written in 2017. It has new relevance, explaining Putin’s possessive attitude towards Ukraine. Start your read with

In other words, we are afraid that our president may not have understood the lesson of the Yalta Conference, in which an ailing F.D.R. thought he could make Uncle Joe his friend. Vladimir Putin is in no way comparable to Uncle Joe. But Putin has expressed a desire for a new Yalta,…

Thank you, Anony Mouse, for your implied recommendation.

 

Intel9 is by itself incapable of focusing public interest. So from inception  it has often keyed off CNN, who are usually first, and keep their links in good order. As I studied the media world, I became aware that Zucker’s influence on the CNN voice  rivals, in many ways, the media moguls of legend. This is perhaps disguised  by a genial, persuasive style that contrasts with the capricious, dictatorial legends.

Under Jeff Zucker,  in a state of challenged democracy, CNN became the flag-bearer of modern liberalism. It is a cruel irony that his fall resulted from the application of a very high moral standard which has been rigorously enforced only in the past few years.

CNN has not done well lately. Zucker may have felt that saving democracy is more important. In Chris Wallace announces he is leaving Fox News, joining CNN+, a Great Match, I wrote,

Journalism has a history of frequent, though not inevitable political bias. CNN is these days self-consciously liberal. Liberalism is not by itself the foundation of U.S. political discourse, which is a perpetual state of teeter-totter. To best defend democracy, CNN should build  bridges to those moderate Republicans who believe  defense of democracy is of supreme importance. This can be done by providing a cross-party debate platform on a scheduled basis.

If lack of broad appeal  is the only flaw in Zucker’s approach, his is still a life well lived, to be reflected on with contentment.

Readers of old Intel9 articles are aware that I have occasionally been critical of particular CNN articles. Search sloppy journalism. See CNN and Yellow Journalism, “U.S. bomber flies over DMZ”, and CNN, Shame! Raise Your Standards! “Russia unveils ‘Satan 2 Missile”. Though this sloppiness never involved people, it distorted world affairs in important ways. After AT&T acquired CNN in 2018, this became much less common.

CNN remains highly variable in quality. Politics, particularly tactical, is the strong suite; it always betrays intelligence. Even when I disagree, I think, that is a well-thought out opinion. This does not extend universally to other areas, when too often sophistication is lacking, or the tone patronizing. Too often, the word “expert” is invoked, in place of drilling down to reason.

This take may result from the liberal arts backgrounds of media executives. It even extends to foreign affairs, when the adversary shares nothing of cultural background, and to economics, in discerning the dichotomous rift between numbers and social welfare.

One point of view is that this smudged mirror is the necessary result of tuning the news presentation to the average person. But the smudging affects all of us; public discourse is getting dumb and dumber. Could CNN swipe that mirror with some Windex?

 

(CNN) Cops who prey on drivers so their cities can profit.

This is an old problem.

Having been stalked myself by a trooper through Georgia, the following  Alabama documentary is highly recommended:

My Cousin Vinny

Sequel to Russians try to take down Intel9 ?

More curious emanations from a rented OVH SAS server in Roubaix, France at IP 51.75.123.243 .

Friday: (CNN) BA.2, the newly detected version of Omicron, is not a cause for alarm, scientists say. Quoting,

There’s no indication that BA.2 causes more severe disease or spreads more easily than the original strain of Omicron. A report released Thursday by the UK’s Health Security Agency offers additional reassurance, suggesting that current vaccines protect about as well…

Monday: (medRXiv)Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron VOC subvariants BA.1 and BA.2: Evidence from Danish Households. Quoting,

We conclude that Omicron BA.2 is inherently substantially more transmissible than BA.1, and that it also possesses immune-evasive properties that further reduce the protective effect of vaccination against infection, but do not increase its transmissibility from vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections.

What a difference three days make! BA.2  is now dominant in Denmark.  Now look at (JHU) Timeline Comparisons; Data Sources: Cases and deaths data. Scroll down to the interactive timeline charts, Jan. 1, 2020 to present. Nota bene. Napkin calculations are not to be trusted. They can still inform.

• Napkin Calculation #8 begins with the most primitive form of prediction, extrapolation of the smoothed chart.
• Time between the first two  peaks: 9 months.
• Smooth the 9/21 peak and the 1/22 peak into one, 11 months. Smoothing is necessary to avoid overfitting the data.
• Prediction via extrapolation: A peak 9-10 months past 1/22.

Three points on a noisy graph do not make a valid extrapolation. We add factors  that could push/pull/confirm the extrapolation,  acting as substitutes for the missing graph points, a crude form of data fusion:

• The current daily death rate is about the same as the 4/20 peak, likely the result of the countervailing effects of better interventions and less fear.
• Assumption. Effective immunity, which wanes with time, as opposed to official vaccination status, is approaching a plateau.
• Argument. Community presence will stabilize around levels  influenced by fear, caution, and irrational exuberance. From (CNN) CDC’s big announcement: Take Off Your Mask,

As of today, China, with 5X the population, and a poorly protective vaccine, records 4,636 deaths to our 596,646. China citizens are compliant with public health regulations; U.S. citizens are not. By this metric, COVID-19 could be defined as a social problem, not medical.

• In the U.S., BA.1 has a big head start over BA.2, delaying the next wave until  immunity induced by BA.1  wanes.

The above factors converge broadly on fall 2022. Most infectious respiratory disease is influenced by season.

• October is favored for the next wave as a traditional seasonal factor.

Intuitively, the added factors are worth one or two more graph points.

What of severity? The speculation of Omicron, a Good Thing? is wrong. Omicron infection provides some cross immunity, at terrible cost. Whether faded immunity from Omicron, 9 months hence, reduces severity is an open question, which only a variant can answer.  Mortality will probably decline, due to increased human immune  system experience, but remain at uncomfortable levels.

Since napkin calculations are not to be trusted, what’s the takeaway? If vaccine uptake/effective immunity is plateauing,

• Mortality statistics are likely to revert to the characteristics of earlier decades, perhaps the 1950’s.

For the foreseeable future,

• Work-from-home is a good idea.
• Keep immunization status current.
• Avoid activities favored by crowds of risk-taking extroverted strangers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

(CNN) Ukrainian soldier kills 5 in shooting rampage at military factory.

Two perspectives compete for our attention, legal and intelligence. Legal is deliberate and fair, where speculation is frowned on. Intelligence is time-urgent, a product of unilateral judgement that usually presents as probabilities. This is the current perspective. It is speculation,  of possible use to investigators.

Dnipro is about 100 miles from Donetsk. The Line of Contact is just west of Donetsk. The cities are connected by European route E 50, and parallel secondary roads.

Hypothesis. There was a getaway driver, intended to lead Ukrainian forces in high speed pursuit down E50, with carefully orchestrated cell tower pings, always behind the actual location. The Russian intent, to give the illusion of a high speed Ukrainian strike force, intercepted while in pursuit of the shooter, near or in the Line of Contact. The appearance, a Ukrainian “provocation.”

The crime is of small importance. But if the hypothesis is substantiated, it implies that war has been decided.

 

 

 

 

 

Curious emanations from a rented OVH SAS server in Roubaix, France  at IP 51.255.65.124.

Whoever it is, they want Intel9 down real bad.

(CNN) Blinken warns any Russian ‘invasion’ of Ukraine would be met with a ‘severe and a united response’ following Lavrov meeting. Quoting,

“You claim that we are going to attack Ukraine, although we have repeatedly explained that this is not the case,” Lavrov said when asked about a potential invasion by CNN Senior International Correspondent Frederik Pleitgen.

You’re in great form, Sergey Lavrov. I’ve never heard better.

Edit. It appears to require clarification. A reader with native tongue sophistication would understand. Sergey Lavrov was not speaking with candor.