An anonymous tip from December of 2020 aged exceptionally well, with bad repercussions for the female fertility in girls born to both Covid-19 vaccinee parents.

Although it has been reported on by Igor Chudov a few days ago, I would like to add a bit more beef to this uncorroborated (so far) information, as it is the news no one wants to believe, but it deserves further investigation for the reasons outlined below.

The original Moderna insider tip from Dec. 2020, from two anonymous engineers working there, goes like this:

I'm an industrial engineer at Moderna and the other one of us is a process development engineer. I'm sure the same thing is happening with Pfizer-BioNTech. It was hard to put things together based on the small quantities of additions happening in manual step (highly unorthodox for a continuous process production). The explanation we got was highly sensitive trade secret adjuvants being added. Digging in deeper showed how sensitive it actually was. Most people's understanding of this novel vaccine type is that it works as follows:`

1. Make mRNA coding for S protein
2. Make lipid nanoparticle delivery system
3. Profit

How it actually works from what we've uncovered:

1. Make mRNA coding for S protein
2. Make mRNA coding for mutant versions of CYP19A1 and CDKN1B in smaller amounts
3. Make sure that while delivery system for (1) mostly ends up in liver, most of (2) ends up in the gonads
4. Make sure form and quantity of additive upregulating LINE-1 reverse transcription activity makes it hard to detect among legit adjuvants
5. Effects from (2) integrated by (4) are recessive; mildly oncogenic effects in vaccine recipients unlikely to be noticed for many years
6. (5) recessive but since most of population vaccinated, in next generation female offspring have premature ovarian failure

The beef of this tip is that, in addition to the mRNA code for S spike, the vaccine vials will contain additional mRNA that codes both for a mutant version of CYP19A1 and a mutant version of CDKN1B. Both these mutant proteins are implicated in the female infertility issues. From the advantage of hindsight in March 2022, this information is credible for the following reasons:

• The pharmacokinetics information of the LNPs in mRNA vaccines has been spilled by the Japanese only in May 2021. As it turned out, the LNPs with the mRNA in them do not stay at the injection site, as CDC and other agencies postulated. Instead, they accumulate in the liver and the gonads of the vaccinees in high concentrations. Surprise! So, the tipsters have been confirmed correct in this regard.

• The studies regarding LINE-1 enzymes being able to reverse transcribe the vaccine mRNA back into human DNA appeared much later as well:

  1. Reverse-transcribed SARS-CoV-2 RNA can integrate into the genome of cultured human cells and can be expressed in patient-derived tissues ( Jaenisch et al., 2021.05.21)
  2. Coronavirus gene findings are no cause for alarm, says leading scientist (ABS-CBN, 2021.01.30): The discovery by Professor Rudolf Jaenisch and researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, stirs up a hornet's nest because mRNA vaccines, including those made by Pfizer/ BioNTech and Moderna, operate in similar ways to the virus to trigger an immune response.
  3. Intracellular Reverse Transcription of Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine BNT162b2 In Vitro in Human Liver Cell Line (Aldn et al., 2022.02.25).
  4. Moderna finally cracks into gene editing with Metagenomi pact thanks to 'irresistible' data (Fierce Biotech, 2021.11.02): We finally know who Moderna has been courting behind the scenes to make the big jump into gene editing. The famed biotech has signed a research partnership with CRISPR gene editing company Metagenomi. Metagenomi will offer up access to its gene editing tools. The company recent unveiled data on its CRISPR-associated transposases system that can be used to "precisely integrate large DNA fragments into genomes", allowing for new editing techniques beyond the currently available technology.
  5. Metagenomi Presents New Findings on CRISPR-associated Transposases (CAST) that Allow for Targetable Genomic Integration of Large DNA Fragments (Metagenomi.co, 2021.05.14): Our research presented at ASGCT describes how our first-in-class programmable CAST gene editing system can be used to precisely integrate large fragments of DNA into target genomes and the potential of these systems in the development of both ex vivo and in vivo gene therapies. CRISPR-associated transposases can be reprogrammed to integrate at specific genomic sites using guide RNAs. Target genomes, eh? Transhumans, anyone? A.k.a. mutants?

  Another solid confirmation that the tipsters knew what they were talking about way before this information went public.

• As the reader Jeff C pointed out (and I quote verbatim from here on), the tipsters not only said that LINE-1 could facilitate reverse transcription but that the vaxx has a hidden additive that specifically upregulates LINE-1 (point #4). The Aldn et al. paper using the BioNTech vaxx clearly showed a high presence of LINE-1 when the vaxx was added that was not there in the control. So something about the vaxx significantly increases LINE-1 just like the tipster said. The fact that the tipster knew this before any of this was publicly known is pretty impressive. If you look back at the Covid virus reverse transcription study (Jaenisch et al - looked at Covid itself, not the vaxx) they artificially increased LINE-1 in the cells via transfection [To increase the likelihood of detecting rare integration events, we transfected HEK293T cells with LINE1 expression plasmids prior to infection with SARS-CoV-2]. That was a key criticism of the study in that it wasn't a real world case. This is in stark contrast to the vaxx study where LINE-1 increased solely due to the vaxx itself. Wasn't that the role of one of the "highly sensitive trade secret adjuvants being added", as hinted by the tipster?

• In Oct. 2021, a former Pfizer quality control manager and a whistleblower, Melissa Strickler, spilled beans on the unusual manufacturing process at the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine plant in a series of interviews. Pfizer's processes for its vaccine are strangely deviating from usual norms. The compounding room has no idea what are the components they are mixing into the product. This secrecy about what goes into the vials is unprecedented. Furthermore, the vaccine manufacturers are not controlled by any independent bodies as to the quality control, the vials being shipped directly to the vaccine administration locations. This lends credence to the assertion that the mRNA vaccines may contain undisclosed constituents.

• The leak of EMA-Pfizer correspondence in Nov.-Dec. 2020, when EMA was working on Pfizer's vaccine authorization, revealed that EMA was concerned that the mRNA in the vaccine vials contains only 55% of the intended S spike code, the rest being truncated species blamed on the faults in the manufacturing process. Pfizer placated these concerns by pushing the S spike code proportion up to 75%, at least for the time being. After that, EMA stopped looking and declared the jabs kosher. More on this in my post Zeroing in on Gifts from Science to Humanity from Nov. 2021. So, another score for the tipsters - the jabs do contain some exogenous mRNA code that no one analyses or scrutinizes.

• If that is not enough, BigPharma, in collaboration with WHO and NIH, has a long tradition of adding undisclosed ingredients harming female fertility into the vaccines going all the way back to 1970s:

2017: HCG Found in WHO Tetanus Vaccine in Kenya Raises Concern in the Developing World. Baby-Killing Vaccine: Is It Being Stealth Tested?: During the early 1990s, the World Health Organization (WHO) has been overseeing massive vaccination campaigns against tetanus in a number of countries, among them Nicaragua, Mexico, and the Philippines. In October 1994, Human Life International (HLI) received a communication from its Mexican affiliate, the Comite Pro Vida de Mexico, regarding that country's anti-tetanus campaign. Suspicious of the campaign protocols, the Comite obtained several vials of the vaccine and had them analyzed by chemists. Some of the vials were found to contain human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG), a naturally occurring hormone essential for maintaining a pregnancy. Here are the known facts concerning the tetanus vaccination campaigns in Mexico and the Philippines:

• Only women are vaccinated, and only the women between the ages of 15 and 45. (In Nicaragua the age range was 12-49).
• Human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG) hormone has been found in the vaccines.
• The vaccination protocols call for multiple injections-three within three months and a total of five altogether. But, since tetanus vaccinations provide protection for ten years or more, why are multiple inoculations called for?

Allied with the WHO in the development of an anti-fertility vaccine (AFV) using hCG with tetanus and other carriers have been UNFPA, the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the World Bank, the Population Council, the Rockefeller Foundation, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, and a number of universities, including Uppsala, Helsinki, and Ohio State.[5] The U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (part of NIH) was the supplier of the hCG hormone in some of the AFV experiments.

Again, a corroboration of the thrust of the allegations by the Moderna insiders.

• The strange, irrational drive to vaccinate every last person on Earth, especially children and pregrant women, with the untested and clearly dangerous injections is another huge red flag as to the true goals of the Covid-19 vaccination of the world population. Especially that the population control has been a holy grail for the eugenicist cabal since the 19th century, and in the form of vaccines, no less. Read my post Going for Jugular Take 2 - All Ducks in Row (Dec. 2021) for complete, more or less, disclosure.

• The new plant-based Canada-made non-mRNA vaccine still contains LNP material, for some inexplicable reason. Or should we suspect that it will also contain fertility-harming mRNA?

So, lots of indirect evidence that the Moderna insiders are trustworthy and that their whistle blowing deserves all the attention it can garner. In the form of vial analysis and vaccinee testing, for starters.

In the meantime, this post should serve as a fair warning and one of the elements on which to base your informed decision as to whether to accept any vaccine in 2022 and going onward. Or any injection, for that matter, from your caring health authorities and governments.

Continued in How Will We Know?

Quoted from: Cederlof, Gustav, and Alf Hornborg. “System boundaries as epistemological and ethnographic problems: Assessing energy technology and socio-environmental impact.” Journal of Political Ecology 28.1 (2021): 111-123.

What are the social and environmental impacts of carbon and low-carbon energy technologies in different places and at different times? To answer this question, we are faced with an epistemological dilemma. Before measurement takes place, we need to define where and when the phenomenon we are measuring begins and ends—to define its “system boundaries.” For instance, one liter of semi-skimmed milk, bought in a British supermarket, has an energy content of 380 kcal. However, to think of the milk in terms of energy also evokes the far-reaching social and environmental contexts that bring milk to the market.

Beyond the energy content declared on the milk carton, we can undertake a life cycle assessment (LCA)—expanding the system boundaries—to account for the energy (or the carbon, water, labor, or land) “embodied” in the milk via its production and distribution. We might include the energy content of processed cattle feed, electricity used to run milking machines, cooling tanks, water boilers, and lighting, energy inputs in alkaline and acid detergents, diesel for tractors, and a wide range of other energy technologies used in production.

We might expand the system boundaries further to account for the fuels needed to generate the electricity, run the chemical plant, fuel the milk tanker, power the dairy plant, and so on. Arguably, we should also account for the energy expended in the production of the electricity generator, the milking machine, the milk tanker and the tractor, fencing and the batteries storing energy to electrify it. But if an electricity generator and a battery are somehow embodied in a liter of milk, we have culturally come far away from what we normally understand milk to be. Where, then, should we draw the system boundaries around an object in order to gauge its social and environmental impact?

Image credit (CC).

More than just posing epistemological problems, however, we argue that system boundaries present an ethnographic problem and that they should be exposed to cultural as well as political analysis. As cultural artefacts, system boundaries sustain different power-serving worldviews, and the way system boundaries are drawn in discussions on energy transitions calls into question how the existence of energy technologies relies on a geographical displacement of environmental load, including flows of resources, land, and emissions.

In discussions on green development and strategies for a low-carbon energy transition, there is a strong case made for technologically utopian solutions in which novel, more efficient technologies will enable a decoupling of environmental impact from economic growth. These solutions range from a complete electrification of transport to the mainstreaming of “cultured” meats, milk, and eggs to a wholesale transition to a solar economy. Depending on the exponent’s political allegiance, they often resonate with teleological imaginaries of technological progress inspired by the American “technological sublime” or the Marxist “development of the productive forces”. However, the socioenvironmental impact of green technology is contingent on the definition of system boundaries. A technologically utopian solution rests on narrowly defined system boundaries.

Read more: Cederlof, Gustav, and Alf Hornborg. “System boundaries as epistemological and ethnographic problems: Assessing energy technology and socio-environmental impact.” Journal of Political Ecology 28.1 (2021): 111-123.

More papers by Alf Hornborg.

Preface. Heavy-duty diesel-engine trucks (agricultural, mining, logging, construction, garbage, cement, 18-wheelers, and more) are the essential for our fossil-fueled civilization. Without them, no goods would be delivered, nothing could be manufacturied, no food planted or harvested, no garbage picked up, no minerals mined, no concrete made, no metals smelted, and roads are constructed with specialized diesel trucks and petroleum asphalt. If trucks stopped running, gas stations, grocery stores, factories, pharmacies, and manufacturers would shut down within a week and civilization would end.

Since oil, coal, and natural gas are finite, biomass doesn’t scale up, and hydrogen is an energy sink, clearly someday trucks will need to run on wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal generated electricity with batteries or overhead catenary wires (though that won’t work either, see chapter 8 of Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy and this post). Yet even batteries for autos aren’t cheap, long-lasting, light-weight, or powerful enough for most Americans to replace their current gas-guzzlers with. And given the distribution of wealth, few Americans may ever be able to afford an electric car, since two-thirds of Americans would have trouble finding even $1,000 for an emergency.

Trucks that matter — that haul 30 tons of goods, pour cement, haul mining ore — can weigh 40 times more than an average car. So scaling batteries up for heavy-duty trucks (NRC 2014) is impossible now given the state of battery technology. For example, a truck capable of going 621 miles hauling 59,525 pounds, the maximum allowable cargo weight, would need a battery weighing 55,116 pounds, and so could only carry about 4,400 pounds of cargo (den Boer et al. 2013). And because a heavy-duty truck battery is so heavy and large, charging takes too long — typically 12 hours or more.

Or as Ryan Carlyle, oil company engineer puts it: “As far as heavy trucking is concerned, there is no replacement for hydrocarbon fuels. The physics of power/weight ratios, and existence of legal road weight limits, means you simply can’t build an “electric semi” and expect it to haul anything comparable to what diesel trucks haul today. This is not an area where Tesla can build a 30% better battery pack and suddenly it’s feasible. The necessary energy density numbers are more like 50 times less than they need to be. The truck will use over half its payload capacity just carrying its own batteries. There are chemical limits to what batteries can do. Electrochemical galvanic cells physically cannot store enough energy — ever — to approach today’s large diesel engines (Carlyle 2014).

Microsoft founder Bill Gates agrees: ” The problem is that batteries are big and heavy. The more weight you’re trying to move, the more batteries you need to power the vehicle. But the more batteries you use, the more weight you add—and the more power you need. Even with big breakthroughs in battery technology, electric vehicles will probably never be a practical solution for things like 18-wheelers, cargo ships, and passenger jets. Electricity works when you need to cover short distances, but we need a different solution for heavy, long-haul vehicles (Gates 2020).”

And car battery development is hitting the brick-walls of the laws of physics and thermodynamics, yet truck batteries need to be even more powerful, durable, and long-lasting.

_Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com Women in ecology author of 2021 Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy best price here; 2015 When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, & “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”. Podcasts: Crazy Town, Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, KunstlerCast 253, KunstlerCast278, Peak Prosperity_

***

There are not any commercially available heavy-duty Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) outside the transit bus segment at this time. It is not expected that BEVs can penetrate into the long-haul trucking vocation in the next several decades, where significant high speed steady-state operations dominate the vehicles duty cycle, without significant advances in battery energy density and BEV recharging technologies. (ARB 2015).

There are however, demonstration projects with class 8 electric trucks. The first, NFI, has two trucks running between Chino and the Ports of Los Angeles/San Pedro 135 miles round-trip using two of the five heavy-duty charging stations in Southern California. Only one round-trip can be made, there isn’t enough juice left in the battery to go again. The second, Penske is averaging 150 miles per shift on dedicated routes to a California quick-service restaurant chain with two battery-powered trucks in a relay system to make the most of the available electric charge. And other demonstration projects are planned (Adler 2019).

Nikola claimed to have a working Nikola One truck and portrayed it as fully functional with a video called “Nikola One Electric Semi Truck in Motion. But investment firm Hindenburg Research published a bombshell report claiming that the Nikola One wasn’t close to being fully functional. Even more incredible, Hindenburg reported that the truck in the “Nikola One in motion” video wasn’t moving under its own power. Rather, Nikola had towed the truck to the top of a shallow hill and let it roll down. The company allegedly tilted the camera to make it look like the truck was traveling under its own power on a level roadway, and has admitted that it didn’t have a working hydrogen fuel cell or motors to drive the wheels, the two key components (Lee 2020).

And the latest Nikola scandle from August 1, 2021: Nikola electric-truck prototypes were powered by hidden wall sockets, towed into position and rolled down hills. The prototypes didn’t function and were Frankenstein monsters cobbled together from parts from other vehicles. Nikola also overstated the number of pre-orders the company had received. Federal prosecutors have charged the founder of the Nikola Corp. (NKLA) with lying to investors about the supposed technological breakthroughs the company had achieved in order to drive up its stock price. Prosecutors said in the initial period following Nikola starting to trade publicly, the value of Milton’s shares shot up by $7 billion. After it emerged the company was under investigation, shares tanked causing many retail investors to lose tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars, prosecutors said. In some cases, some investors lost substantial portions of their retirement savings, they said. Nikola founder Milton was taken into custody and later released on a $100 million bond.

Electric trucks do exist, mostly medium-duty hybrid that stop and start a lot to recharge the battery. This limits their application to delivery and garbage trucks and buses. These trucks are heavily subsidized at state and federal levels since on average they cost three times as much as a diesel truck equivalent (Table 1).

But even these stop-and-start a lot to recharge the battery trucks may not be economically feasible. Nikola Motor Company’s plans to mass produce 5,000 garbage trucks for Republic Services, one of the nation’s largest waste management service providers, were canceled, the latest in a string of bad news for the electric truck and hydrogen cell maker (Alcorn 2020).

The most vital truck is a farm tractor to plant and harvest food. A battery-driven tractor would have to be very small or the weight would compact the soil and reduce crop productivity for many decades. The first one I saw appear in the search engine was the 7030 series John Deere battery pack tractor in December 2016, and it was pretty small. But they never did make it, and it isn’t even mentioned anywhere on their website.

The latest tractor, not in production but promised in 2021, is the $50,000 Monarch Electric Tractor with peak power of 70 HP for a few seconds, otherwise 40 HP (Smith 2020). The farmers comments were interesting:

• Most farmers I know frequently have to drive their tractors long distances, sometimes miles, just to get to the field of the day. And there’s no power out there…. Talk about range anxiety!
• 40hp class tractors do not usually till fields. Where I am now, for these applications we see a 75hp class tractor at the very least, usually 90hp and up on larger farms
• Take it from someone who is actually a farmer. This will never take over the heavy tractor work as there are constant interactions due to irregularities in the ground which require the operator to adjust the tractor or the attached implement to the terrain, ie. rocks, roots, animal burrows. drainage etc. Farming is extremely brutal on equipment and it must be durable enough and simple enough to fix so that we don’t miss very small time windows on each step of the process. Farming has ridiculously small margins so the economic proposition of service life vs. amortized and operating costs over that life must make sense no one wants to pay $4 for one onion.
• I bought my MF 133 for $1200 USD and it works just fine for being 50 years old. Would I like 4WD? Yeah. Would I like an electric? Sure! Do I see this thing running very long in -10º with a snow-blower hanging off of the PTO? Color me skeptical.
• As far as the “goal of 20-plus years of continuous service life” — uh huh. Considering my issues and my friend’s issues with getting EVs repaired, I’ll believe it when I see it.
• I know a few farmers (corn, beans and hogs or cattle) and they dont really have a use for a 40-70hp tractor. This is likely to end up at grape vineyards or hobby farmers who use a tractor intensely for a few days or weeks of the year.
• The grid is thin in the country, if battery tractors existed, could they all charge up at once in the narrow planting and harvesting seasons?

Tractors do a lot of heavy work over rough ground, and today only internal combustion engines can provide efficient mobile and portable heavy-duty power (DTF 2003).

The Port of Los Angeles thought about using heavy-duty all-electric drayage trucks to improve air quality. Drayage trucks drive at least 200 miles a day back and forth between the port and inland warehouses. But it remained a thought experiment because electric drayage trucks cost too much, $307,890. The 350 kWh battery alone is $110,880 dollars. That’s three times as much as an equivalent diesel truck $104,360, and 100 times more than a used $3,000 drayage truck. And cost wasn’t the only problem (Calstart 2013a):

• The range is too short because of the battery weight and size. Drayage trucks need to go at least 200 miles a day, but at best an electric truck could go 100 miles before having to be recharged, which would take too long, and require expensive infrastructure to charge each truck several times a day.
• The batteries/battery pack cost too much.
• Overcoming the long time to recharge by using fast-charging may shorten battery life which would result in the unacceptable expense of a new battery pack before the lifetime of the truck ended
• Although electricity is available almost everywhere, the quantities required for a fleet of Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) drayage trucks are very high and could require significant infrastructure. Multiple costly high-power and/or fast-charging stations would be required
• Roadway power infrastructure is complicated and expensive, and may be appropriate only in certain areas or applications. The impact on the grid and whether enough power could be supplied is unknown for the roughly 10,000 drayage trucks in the I-710 region
• Large battery pack life-cycle and maintenance costs are unknown
• Swapping stations are impractical and would require “industry standardization and ‘ruggedization’ of battery packs, as well as standardized software and communication protocols for batteries and system integration, plus many locations, and the storage space and operating space for multiple large trucks and hundreds of large battery packs.

Table 1. Electric trucks coust 3 times more than diesel equivalents (ICEV) on average. Source: 2016 New York State Electric Vehicle – Voucher Incentive Fund Vehicle Eligibility List. https://truck-vip.ny.gov/NYSEV-VIF-vehicle-list.php

Other costs

• Battery cost is a major component in the overall cost, ranging from $500 to $700 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) range. This is substantially more than the cost for a conventional diesel powerplant. In their 2013 I-710 commercialization study, CALSTART estimated the cost of a 350 kWh battery system at over $200,000 in 2012.
• A BEV 240 kW fast charger can cost can cost $1,500,000 (with $300,000 in additional costs). It can charge 5 heavy duty trucks (ICF 2016) per charger: $350,000 EVSE 450kW+ $150,000 to $200,000 installation costs per EVSE (Calstart 2015), or $350,000 for a specialized Proterra fast charger able to accommodate up to eight Proterra transit buses (ARB 2015)
• Additional costs to upgrade the distribution system if the rated capacity of the installed electric equipment is exceeded. A fleet with 20 E-Trucks in Southern California had to upgrade a transformer on the customer side of the meter. The transformer cost $470,000. 100 medium-duty E-Trucks charging at the same time would demand 1.5 MW of power on the grid and 50 E-Buses would demand 3.0 MW. This is in the same order of magnitude as the peak power demand of the Transamerica Pyramid building, the tallest skyscraper in San Francisco, CA (Calstart 2015)
• Unlike electric cars, which can charge at night when rates are lowest (11 pm to 8 am for $0.05), e-trucks and buses need to run during the day at the highest peak hours (12 noon to 6 p.m. $0.20) and mid-peak charges (8 a.m. to noon and 6 pm to 11 pm ($0.10), doubling to quadrupling the price paid for electricity (Calstart 2015).
• Earning money from V2G is not likely to be adopted by commercial fleets because they have rigid operating schedules while the grid varies constantly and unpredictably. If the grid tapped into e-truck batteries, it might reduce their range or delay availability (Calstart 2015)

Electric trucks are also not commercial yet because they have too many performance issues, such as poor performance in cold weather, swift acceleration, driving up steep hills, too short a range and battery life, they take too long to recharge, declining miles per day as the battery degrades, all of which make planning routes difficult and inefficient.

It is also much harder to develop batteries for trucks than cars because trucks are expected to last 15 years (versus 10 for cars) or go for 1 million miles. Trucks also have to endure more extreme conditions of temperature, vibrations, and corrosive agents than autos (NRC 2015), and it is hard to make battery packs durable enough for this rougher ride, longer miles, and longevity.

Calstart interviewed many businesses about their reluctance to buy hybrid or all electric trucks, and found their greatest concerns were the purchase cost, lack of confidence in the technology, lack of industry and truck manufacturer support, lack of infrastructure, and the heavy weight (Calstart 2012).

Elon Musk recently tweeted that Tesla will build a semi-truck with absolutely no details, promising to tweet again half a year from now with more information. Why should I believe an Elon Musk tweet any more than a Trump tweet? Especially since nearly all of the electric truck companies I studied for “When Trucks Stop Running” are out of business now, despite huge federal and state subsidies. Given that Tesla is nearly $5 billion in debt, he’s clearly angling to get drayage truck subsidies from the Ports of Los Angeles and San Pedro and more money from investors. None of the electric trucks I studied or that are on the market now were long-haul or off-road tractors, harvesters, construction, logging, or other class 8 heavy-duty trucks (except garbage trucks). They were all much smaller class 4-6 delivery trucks or buses, because they stop and start enough to use hybrid batteries, a far more commercially likely possibility than long-haul trucks, that can go for hundreds of miles before stopping, and be up to 80,000 pounds (and even more weight off-road). This wired.com article points out other issues as well with electric trucks as well.

But if the devil is in the details, then read more below in my summary and excerpts of a paper about electric trucks. Catenary trucks, which use overhead wires, will be covered in another post. Both electric and catenary trucks are covered at greater length in “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, 2015, Springer

Abbreviations:

• BEV Battery Electric Vehicle
• PEV Plug-in Battery Electric Vehicle
• HEV Hybrid Electric Vehicle
• ICEV Internal Combustion Engine Vehicle (usually diesel, also gasoline engines)

What follows is a summary and then deytails of the following paper:

**Pelletier, S., et al. September 2014. Battery Electric Vehicles for Goods Distribution: A Survey of Vehicle Technology, Market Penetration, Incentives and Practices. CIRRELT. 51 pages.

**

SUMMARY

Financial

While commercial BEVs’ energy costs can be nearly four times cheaper than ICEV equivalents, the downside is that their purchase costs are around three times higher.

A study of drayage trucks on the I-710 corridor found that $3,000 old used trucks were used to take containers from Los Angeles ports to inland facilities that paid $100 per container delivered. “Costs for a full BEV truck are not expected to go below $250,000 even past the 2025 time frame of this report. … The same is true for fuel cells” (Calstart 2013b).

Furthermore, the cost of the equipment necessary for charging the battery can be several thousand dollars. The high cost of level 3 Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) is still a significant barrier to a wider adoption of fast charging. Level 2 charging equipment costs approximately $1,000 per station and installation costs approximately $2,500 to $6,000 for one unit or $18,520 for 10 units. Level 3 fast charging is not used much yet because more research needs to be done on whether this shortens battery life.

PEV and HEV vehicles typically have significant autonomy and payload limitations and involve much larger initial investments in comparison to internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEV). The battery pack is the most expensive component in PEVs and significantly augments their purchase cost compared to similar ICEV trucks.

Competing with compressed natural gas (CNG) and existing diesel (ICEV) trucks will be hard — significant improvements in ICEV efficiencies are likely in the future from the 21st Century truck partnership and other efforts to improve diesel engines. BEVs will also have to compete with other fuel alternatives such as CNG, in which case their business case can be even harder to make.

Battery Issues

Can’t carry enough cargo: Battery size and weight reduce maximum payloads for electric vans and trucks compared to equivalent diesel trucks. Even HEVs suffer from the extra weight of two power-trains reducing payload capacity.

Short range. Technical disadvantages include a relatively low achievable range. Typical ranges for freight BEVs vary from 100 to 150 kilometers (62-93 miles) on a single charge.

The miles a truck can travel declines over time. In Germany and the Netherlands, the limited operating range of electric trucks caused less flexibility in planning trips and restricted ad-hoc tour planning, resulting in less efficient operations. Also, the range declined over time through battery aging, when carrying heavy loads, and in winter from heating, lights and ventilation. Furthermore, the range listed by EV manufacturers is based on measurements according to the New European Drive Cycle which, compared to real life energy consumption in urban last mile delivery, do not give a reliable indication of the expected range. The reliability of the EVs was dependent on the model; certain prototypes and conversions were judged as reliable, while others were reported as insufficient (Taefi 2014).

Short battery life. At the moment, lithium ion batteries last for four years; however, practical experience has shown that the average period of use is only two years.

Range is also shortened by: extreme temperatures, high driving speeds, rapid acceleration, carrying heavy loads and driving up slopes. The efficiency and driving range varies substantially based on driving conditions and driving habits. Extreme outside temperatures tend to reduce range because more energy must be used to heat or cool the cabin. Cold batteries do not provide as much power as warm batteries do. The use of electrical equipment, such as windshield wipers and seat heaters, can reduce range. High driving speeds reduce range because more energy is required to overcome increased air resistance. Rapid acceleration reduces range compared with smooth acceleration. Hauling heavy loads or driving up significant inclines also reduces range (U.S. Department of Energy 2012b).

Long time to charge battery: It takes a long time to charge the batteries because of their low energy density. Recharging time may take up to 4 to 8 hours, and even with quick-charging equipment, recharging a battery to 80% takes up to 30 minutes.

Charging issues: The most common way of charging was to slow charge the vehicles over night at company premises. The in-house charging infrastructure had to be fixed several times when it was overloaded by the high capacity need of the e-trucks in Germany. Other charging related issues found were that the implementation of a smart grid and load management for large electrical fleets is not yet clarified; solutions to ensure charging in case of power outage are necessary; and charging plugs were too damageable, so only specially trained staff could handle the plug, which caused problems with replacement drivers and training issues. The limited number of charging spots outside the cities and lack of battery swapping for larger vehicles was also an issue (Taefi 2014).

Batteries have low energy density — too low. Batteries are a critical factor in the widespread adoption of electric vehicles but have a much lower energy density than gasoline, partly caused by the large amount of metals used in their production.

Battery life too short: Lithium-ion batteries in current freight BEVs typically provide 1,000 to 2,000 deep cycle life, which should last around six years.

Some manufacturers are working on a 4,000 to 5,000 deep cycle life within 5 years, but there are often tradeoffs to be made between different lithium based battery chemistries. For example, lithium-titanate batteries already reach 5,000 full discharge cycles, but have lower energy densities than other lithium-ion technologies. Calendar life, on the other hand, is a measure of natural degradation with time and was in the 7-10 years range as of 2010 with a projected range of 13-15 years by 2020. Typical battery warranty lengths for electric trucks have been reported as being in the three to five year range.

Battery degradation. Battery health can be influenced by the way they are charged and discharged. For example, frequent overcharging (i.e., charging the battery close to maximum capacity) can affect the battery’s lifespan, just as can keeping the battery at high states of charge for lengthy periods**. As expressed through deep cycle life, battery deterioration can also occur if it is frequently discharged to very deep levels . This generally implies that only 80% of the marketed battery capacity is actually usable. Using high power levels to quickly charge batteries could also have negative impacts on battery life, especially if used in the beginning and end of the charging cycle. The uncertainty regarding the effect of extreme operational temperatures on lithium batteries is another issue that should be further considered. All these potential deteriorating factors can speed up the reduction of maximum available battery capacity and shorten vehicle range and battery life**.

Lithium-ion batteries. At the moment, lithium ion batteries last for four years; however, practical experience has shown that the average period of use is only two years (AustriaTech 2014).

The Demands on the Electric Grid

Power Requirements to recharge batteries are high. A battery electric truck with a 120 kWh battery would require a charging power level of 15 kW to be able to charge in 8 hours, and the same vehicle with a battery pack of 200 kWh would require a power level of 400 kW to be able to be charged in 15-30 minutes.

The impact of the high power demand from the electricity grid. This could limit the amount of vehicles in a depot which could simultaneously be charged with high power levels, potentially requiring further investments for transformer upgrades.

The stations would also need to recharge a very large amount of batteries at the same time, which could impact the electric grid.

Out of Business

Better Place was considered a fron-trunner in the battery swapping industry but it recently filed for bankruptcy (Fiske (2013)).

Some models have recently been discontinued due to manufacturers’ financial difficulties or restructuring plans; these include Azure Dynamics’ Transit Connect Electric in 2012, Navistar’s eStar in 2013, and Modec’s Box Van in 2011.

Commercial Vehicles are dependent on government subsidies

To see the New York State All-Electric NYSEV-VIF incentives, click here.

To see the California Hybrid Truck and Bus Voucher Incentive Project (HVIP) incentives, click here.

Many U.S. companies which operate battery electric trucks also have received funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Plug-in electric trucks and vans (class 2 to 8 vehicles) have generally only penetrated niche applications, while remaining dependent on government incentives. They attribute this to key industry players going out of business, the conservative nature of fleet operators when it comes to new technologies, renewed interest in natural gas, and the important cost premium of these vehicles.

Sales of HEV & BEV trucks are very low

The global stock of class 2 to 8 HEVs, PHEVs and BEVs was around 20,000 at the end of 2013, versus 15 million diesel and gasoline (ICEV) trucks sold in 2013.

The vast majority of expected sales are not fully electric plug-ins, but are Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs) which do not require plug-in recharging (but which are only suitable for applications that require a great deal of stopping and starting, i.e. garbage trucks, delivery vans).

One of project FREVUE’s reports identifies other factors explaining the limited use of electric freight vehicles in city logistics, namely doubts regarding technology readiness, high purchase costs, limited amount of models on the market, and rapid technology improvements themselves can be a market barrier since fleet operators fear that an electric freight vehicle purchased today could quickly lose all residual value. The uncertainties surrounding the vehicles’ residual value also limit leasing companies’ interest in electric freight vehicles.

The bottom line is that a wider adoption of Battery Electric Vehicles can only be achieved if these prove to be cost-effective.

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[ Here are more details. ]

The worst possible use of an e-truck is daily mileage less than 40 km, never needs to return to the base, has little chance of charging while on operations, needs to be charged in 20 minutes or less, carry a full load equal to a diesel truck, carries the full load all day, goes the same speed much of the day, travels on freeways, hilly terrain, and charges at peak load. The best possible use of EV is 60+ km/day, returns to the base to recharge 3 to 6 times a day for 30 minutes a day, carries half a load, has very high variations in speeds traveled in flat urban areas and only charges off-peak (AustriaTech 2014b).

Cost Competitiveness of Battery Electric Vans and Trucks

While commercial BEVs’ energy costs can be nearly four times cheaper than diesel equivalents, the downside is that their purchase costs are approximately three times higher (Feng and Figliozzi 2013).

Furthermore, the cost of the equipment necessary for charging the vehicle’s battery, which can reach several thousands of dollars, should be considered. Maintenance costs should also be significantly less than for ICEVs (Taefi et al. (2014)) and this advantage should increase as the vehicles get older (Electrification Coalition (2010)). Because of these different cost structures between ICEVs and BEVs, the only way to appropriately compare the cost competitiveness of battery electric vans and trucks for goods distribution is to study their whole life costs (McMorrin et al. 2012), according to which all costs incurred over the vehicle’s life are actualized to a net present value. Whole life costs are also referred to as the vehicle’s total cost of ownership (TCO). The following are brief descriptions of the cost structure and TCO of battery electric freight vehicles compared to their conventional counterparts.

Cost Structure: High Fixed Costs and Low Variable Costs Purchase costs for medium duty battery electric trucks offered by AMP Trucks, Inc., Boulder Electric Vehicles, Electric Vehicle International, and Smith Electric Vehicles range from $130,000 to $185,000 US, while equivalent ICE trucks go within the $55,000 to $70,000 range (New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (2014)). One way to decrease the cost premium of these larger BEVs is to be able to right-size the costly battery according to the application (Electrification Coalition 2013). However, while this measure could significantly improve the vehicles’ business case and allow for additional payload capacity, the smaller battery would require more frequent deep discharges, which could cause accelerated battery deterioration (Pitkanen and Van Amburg 2012). Another option for reducing upfront costs while also addressing fleet operators’ concerns about battery life is to lease the battery for a monthly fee based on energy consumed or distance traveled (McMorrin et al. 2012).

However, uncertainties regarding battery residual value limit many fleets’ interest in battery leasing (Pitkanen and Van Amburg (2012)), most likely because these uncertainties will be integrated into the leasing fee. Furthermore, battery leasing currently only seems available for a few battery electric vans but not for trucks, for whom it could significantly help the business case based on whole life costs (Valenta (2013)). Purchase costs for battery electric vans vary largely depending on GVWs and the availability of battery leasing. Large manufacturer products with battery leasing go for about $25,000 for GVWs close to 2,100 kg. Examples of these include Renault for its Kangoo Z.E. vans and Nissan for its e-NV200 van, with monthly battery leasing fees starting at approximately $100 per month and varying according to monthly mileage and contract lengths (Renault (2014c), Nissan (2014d)). Typical purchase costs with battery ownership range from approximately $25,000 for lighter battery electric vans (GVW starting at 1100 kg) with limited battery capacities, to about $100,000 for larger battery electric vans (GVW up to 3,500 kg) with higher battery capacities. Conventional cargo vans with GVWs close to 4,500 kg cost between $30,000 and $40,000, GVWs close to 3,500 kg are within the $25,000-$30,000 price range, and GVWs around 2,500 kg are closer to $20,000 (Nissan (2014a)).

Valuable sources for vehicle prices include Source London (2013) and New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (2014), referred to as SL (2013) and NYSEV-VIF (2014) in the tables. Some models’ prices are simply not available, most likely because, as Lee et al. (2013, p.8025) point out, “commercial vehicle prices can vary depending upon negotiation between fleet operators and truck manufacturers, and truck volumes to be purchased”. This could also imply that the prices listed here could vary depending on specific purchasing contexts. Ranges for these class 3 to 6 trucks are from 115 to 200 km (71-124 miles) depending on battery size, vehicle weight

• $133,000 AMP vehicles 100 kWh battery, 6350-8845 kg GVW
• $130-150,000 Boulder 500-series 72 kWh battery, 4765-5215 kg GVW, payload 1405 kg,
• $150,000 Navistar eStar 80 kWh battery 5490 kg GVW, payload 1860 kg
• $185,000 EVI walk-in van 99 kWh battery, 7255-10435 GVW
• $150,000 Smith Electric “Newton” 80 kWh, $181,000 with a 120 kWh battery

Den Boer et al. (2013) state that approximately 1,000 battery electric distribution trucks were operated around the world as of July 2013. CALSTART’s report on the demand assessment of electric truck fleets (Parish and Pitkanen 2012) claims that industry experts have estimated there were less than 500 battery electric trucks in use in North America as of 2012, with most sales made in US states like California and New York, which offered incentives for these vehicles. Also, approximately 4,500 hybrid electric trucks were sold in North America as of 2012. The large majority of hybrid and battery electric trucks sold were in medium duty and vocational applications rather than long-haul class 8 applications. Stocks of freight electric vehicles (vans and trucks) as of January 1st 2012 in Europe included 70 in Belgium, 106 in Denmark, 338 in Germany, 1,566 in France, 217 in the Netherlands, 103 in Norway, 38 in Austria, 13 in Portugal, 459 in Spain, and over 2000 in London (TU Delft et al. 2013). However, most of the electric vans in the UK are old low performance vans with lead-acid batteries, with only a few hundred modern electric vans with lithium-ion batteries sold in 2012 (Cluzel et al. 2013).

As previously noted, the advantage in the cost structure of BEVs comes from their lower variable costs (i.e., energy and maintenance costs) (McMorrin et al. 2012).

However, electricity rates incurred depend on geographical location, average consumption levels, and time of use (Hydro-Quebec (2014)). Charging during off-peak hours can allow for reduced electricity rates and seasonal price variations may also occur. It is therefore necessary to evaluate the potential of lower energy costs of commercial BEVs according to one’s specific context.

Gallo and Tomi´ c (2013) provide an overview of the performance of delivery BEVs (class 4-5) operated by a large parcel delivery fleet in Los Angeles. The findings showed that in comparison to similar diesel vehicles, the electric trucks were up to four times more energy efficient, offering up to 80% lower annual fuel costs. The report estimated maintenance savings ranging from $0.02 to $0.10 per mile, finding these savings “will vary widely depending on driving conditions, vehicle usage, driver behavior, vehicle model and regenerative braking usage”(p.53). Other findings included the need for drivers to be trained to adapt their techniques to electric trucks, that a minimum utilization of 50 miles per day is necessary to recuperate purchase costs in a reasonable time span, and that incentives are still necessary at this stage to make the vehicles a viable alternative. Additionally, some repairs needed to be provided by the vehicle manufacturers because of the limited experience of fleet mechanics with electric trucks. TU Delft et al. (2013) also reported several companies having experienced a lack of available resources for quickly solving technical issues with freight BEVs. This is important to consider because in order to profit from lower variable costs, companies must have access to reliable maintenance services and spare parts.

Figliozzi (2013) compared whole life costs of battery electric delivery trucks to a conventional diesel truck serving less-than-truckload delivery routes. The BEVs are the Navistar eStar (priced at $150,000) and Smith Newton (priced at $150,000), while the diesel reference is an Isuzu N-series (priced at $50,000). Different urban delivery scenarios were designed based on typical US cities values and different routing constraints. Thus, 243 different route instances were simulated by varying values for the number of customers, the service area, the depot-service area distance, the customer service time, and the customer demand weight. Different battery replacement and cost scenarios were also studied. The planning horizon was set to ten years, with the residual value of the vehicles set at 20% of their purchase price. In spite of the fact that the electric trucks had a higher TCO in 210 out of the 243 route instances, a combination of the following factors would allow them to be a viable alternative: high daily distances, low speeds and congestion, frequent customer stops during which an ICEV would idle, other factors amplifying the BEVs’ superior efficiency, financial incentives or technological breakthroughs to reduce purchase costs, and a planning horizon above ten years. With a battery replacement after 150,000 miles at a forecasted cost of $600/kWh, the diesel truck always had a lower TCO.

The need for a battery replacement significantly decreases thee business case for BEV Trucks

Battery electric freight vehicles currently fit much more into city distribution than long haul applications because of the battery’s energy density limitations (den Boer et al. 2013). Typical daily miles traveled by urban delivery trucks are often lower than the range already achieved by electric commercial vehicles (Feng and Figliozzi 2013). With limited payloads, this makes them more viable for last mile deliveries in urban areas involving frequent stop-and-go movements, limited route lengths, as well as low travel speeds (Nesterova et al. 2013), AustriaTech 2014b), Taefi et al. 2014)). With forecasted reductions in battery costs and evolution of diesel prices are compared to electricity prices, as time goes by, BEV distribution trucks should become more competitive with equivalent ICEVs based on their own economic proposition (den Boer et al. 2013). However, commercial BEVs will also have to compete with other fuel alternatives such as compressed natural gas, in which case their business case can be even harder to make (Valenta 2013). Furthermore, significant improvements in ICEV efficiencies are expected in upcoming years (Mosquet et al. (2011)). Nevertheless, for now, the appropriateness of using delivery BEVs ultimately depends on the context of their intended use, but the high purchase cost has been extensively pointed out as a huge cost effectiveness barrier, and the need for incentives at this stage of the market seems like a recurring requirement for a viable business case.

Financial Incentives

The goal of financial incentives is to reduce the upfront costs of electric vehicles and charging equipment (IEA and EVI (2013)). One form is purchase subsidies granted upon buying the vehicle (Mock and Yang (2014)). An example of this is the California Hybrid Truck and Bus Voucher Incentive Project (HVIP) which provides up to $35,000 towards hybrid truck purchases and up to $50,000 towards battery electric truck purchases to be used in California (Parish and Pitkanen (2012)). Eligible vehicles can be found in CEPAARB (2014). Another similar program is the New York Truck Voucher Incentive Program, which offers up to $60,000 for electric truck purchases to be used New York (New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (2014)).

Companies are also eligible to receive similar purchase subsidies for participating in demonstration or performance evaluation projects (US DOE (2013b)).

Overviews of tax exemptions related to electric vehicles can be found in IEA and EVI (2013), Mock and Yang (2014), ACEA (2014), and US DOE (2012a).

Companies Experimenting with BEVs In North America, large companies using battery electric delivery vehicles include FedEx, General Electric, Coca-Cola, UPS, Frito-Lay, Staples, Enterprise, Hertz and others (Electrification Coalition (2013b)). Frito-Lay alone has been operating 176 battery electric delivery trucks in North America since 2010 (US DOE (2014b)). Fedex also operates over 100 electric delivery trucks (Woody (2012)). Many U.S. companies which operate battery electric trucks have received funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to cover a portion of the vehicles’ purchase costs (US DOE (2013b)).

BEVs in city logistics have often been used for parcel delivery, deliveries to stores, waste collection and home supermarket deliveries. A few notable private initiatives identified in the report include Deret’s 50 electric vans for last mile deliveries to city centers in France, UPS’s 12 Modec vehicles for parcel and post delivery in the UK and Germany, Tesco’s 15 Modec vehicles for on-line shopping deliveries in London, Sainsbury’s use of 19 electric vans for supermarket

Drivers expressed concerns regarding the reduction in payloads.

Delivered products include parcel, courier, textiles, fast food, bakery, hygienic articles and household articles.

Negative factors experienced included the required investments (vehicles and EVSE), reduced payloads, limited range, the effect of cold temperatures on range, imprecise marketed vehicle ranges, the lack of resources to fix technical problems, incompatibility of vehicles’ connectors with public charging infrastructure, and the need to train drivers to better adapt to the vehicles. All in all, the case studies indicated that the vehicles were found to be most adequate for last mile and night deliveries.

Electric Tricycles carrying up to 440 pounds (200 kg)

Urban consolidation centers (UCC) are logistic facilities multiple organizations use, close to the area they serve. UCCs using BEVs for last mile deliveries also often use smaller vehicles ideal for tight urban areas, which can lead to increases in vehicle kilometers per ton delivered (Allen et al. (2012)). These smaller vehicles are typically electric tricycles, which have payloads of up to 200 kg (AustriaTech 2014b) and low driving speeds. These tricycles can find parking locations more easily than larger vehicles, can often use bicycle lanes for faster access to customers in congested and pedestrian areas, and from a cost point of view are more affected by driver costs than purchase costs and utilization rates (Tipagornwong and Figliozzi 2014). Allen et al. (2007) present an example of the use of electric tricycles by a UCC. La Petite Reine used a consolidation center in the center of Paris for last mile deliveries of food products, flowers, parcels, and equipment/parts with electric tricycles with a maximum payload of 100 kg (220 pounds). The initial trial in 2003 was deemed a success, with monthly trips growing from 796 to 14,631 and the number of tricycles from seven to 19 in the first 24 months. Operations are now permanent and La Petite Reine operates three locations in Paris with over 70 collaborators, 80 tricycles, 15 electric light duty vehicles and 1 million deliveries per year (La Petite Reine 2013).

Nesterova et al. (2013) present two other cases of two phased deliveries in Paris integrating to some extent electric bikes and tricycles. The first is Chronopost International, which offers express delivery of parcels and uses two underground areas in Paris for sorting last mile deliveries. The parcels are first transported from their facility at the border of Paris to their underground areas, where they are sorted per route and distributed to customers by electric bikes and vans in inner Paris. The second is Distripolis, a delivery concept tested by road transport operator GEODIS. A depot in Bercy receives shipments from three organizations and delivers the packages under 200 kg to multiple UCCs in the city center of Paris (heavier packages are directly delivered to the receiver). From here, electric trucks and tricycles are used for the last mile deliveries of the light packages. Distripolis operated 10 light duty electric vehicles (Electron Electric truck, GVW 3.5 tons) and one electric tricycle in 2012, and aims at having 56 tricycles and 75 electric vehicles by 2015.

BESTFACT (2013) provides another case of two-phased deliveries with electric vehicles. Gnewt Cargo operates a transhipment facility for the last mile deliveries of an office supplies company in London (Office Depot). They use an 18 tons vehicle to transport parcels from the office supplies company warehouse in the suburbs of London to the transhipment center in the city, where the parcels are transferred onto electric vans and tricycles for final delivery to customers. Initially a trial in 2009, the company has permanently implanted this system because it involved no increases in operational costs, and it plans to implement similar delivery systems in other cities (Browne et al. (2011)).

Other Interesting Distribution Concepts for BEVs

An interesting experiment regarding last mile deliveries with BEVs can be found in the context of project STRAIGHTSOL, during which TNT Express integrated a mobile depot into their operations in Brussels with electric vehicles during the summer of 2013 (Nathanail et al. 2013), Anderson and Eidhammer 2013), Verlinde et al. 2014). A large trailer equipped as a mobile depot with typical depot facilities was loaded with parcels at TNT’s depot near the airport in the morning. Next it was towed by a truck to a dedicated parking spot in the city center, where last mile deliveries as well as pick-ups were made with electric tricycles by a Brussels courier company, which then returned to the mobile depot with the collected parcels. At the end of the day, the mobile depot was towed back to TNT’s depot, from where the collected parcels were shipped. Challenges included gaining exclusive access to the parking location for the mobile depot, significant increases in operating costs, and decreases in the punctuality of the deliveries and pickups (Johansen et al. 2014), Verlinde et al. 2014).

They could find a niche application in short haul port drayage operations (CALSTART 2013b). One example of this practice is found at the Port of Los Angeles, where 25 heavy duty battery electric drayage trucks manufactured by Balqon were tested for operational suitability. In exchange for the purchase of the trucks, Balqon agreed to locate its factory in L.A. and pay the port a royalty for future sales (EVI et al. (2012)). The Port of L.A. also tested similar heavy duty battery electric trucks from Transpower and U.S Hybrid, as well as a fuel cell heavy duty truck (Port of L.A. 2014).

Incentives still play a critical role in the business case of these vehicles, but the long-term unsustainability of certain financial incentives and recent trends suggest their imminent phasing out (Bernhart et al. 2014) will require that these vehicles be cost competitive independent of such incentives. One could argue that these vehicles are not ready for this challenge, in view of current cost dynamics, recent financial setbacks of key industry players, often resulting in discontinued vehicle models (Schmouker 2012), Shankleman 2011), Truckinginfo 2013), Everly 2014), Torregrossa 2014)).

The market take-up of electric vehicles in urban freight transport is very slow, because costs are high compared to conventional vehicles and companies are still uncertain about the maturity of the technology and about the availability of charging infrastructure.

The worst possible use of an e-truck is daily mileage less than 40 km, never needs to return to the base, has little chance of charging while on operations, needs to be charged in 20 minutes or less, carry a full load equal to a diesel truck, carries the full load all day, goes the same speed much of the day, travels on freeways, hilly terrain, and charges at peak load. The best possible use of EV is 60+ km/day, returns to the base to recharge 3 to 6 times a day for 30 minutes a day, carries half a load, has very high variations in speeds traveled in flat urban areas and only charges off-peak.

Financially at least 50% public subsidies pay for it

At present, lithium ion batteries are most often used in electric freight vehicles with a current battery lifetime of 1000 to 2000 cycles (approximately 6 years). Also, the kilometer range declines over time, which may reduce peak power capacity and energy density. For these reasons electric vehicles are currently most suitable for daily urban distribution activities as the battery energy density is too low for regular long haul applications. At the moment, lithium ion batteries last for four years; however, practical experience has shown that the average period of use is only two years. Improvements in battery powered trucks are expected within five years in terms of the cost and durability of batteries.

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In a striking passage near the beginning of his contribution to the Penguin History of the Church, R.W. Southern writes:

The identification of the church with the whole of organized society is the fundamental feature which distinguishes the Middle Ages from earlier and later periods of history. At its widest limits it is a feature of European history from the fourth to the eighteenth century—from Constantine to Voltaire. In theory, during the whole of this period only orthodox and obedient believers could enjoy the full rights of citizenship. … Just as the modern state requires those who are its members by the accident of birth to keep its laws, to contribute to its defence and public services, to subordinate private interests to the common good, so the medieval church required those who had become its members by the accident (as one may call of) of baptism to do all these things and many others.

Nowadays even Christians who hold orthodox views about the theological implications of baptism—that it “cleanses us from original sin, makes us Christians, children of God, and heirs of heaven”—will have a hard time understanding the role it once played in demarcating the boundaries of civilization. Whatever one’s opinions might be concerning its theological efficacy, baptism is understood today as a private act, and belonging to the Church might be compared to holding a membership card that allows one to take part in certain private functions for which the barrier to entry is otherwise extraordinarily low (anyone can show up and throw a few frames, but only league members can participate in the Tuesday Night Double Disco Bowl-a-Thon).

What is the contemporary equivalent of baptism, a discrete status that grounds our formal membership in the political community? The most basic premise of modern liberalism is that there is none. Apart from the exigencies of birth within a particular jurisdiction—one is born, say, a citizen of the United States—there is no necessary condition that must be fulfilled in order for me to exercise full membership in the political community. I am a member simply by virtue of my existence as an American citizen, and there is no contingency that could remove or revoke my membership, no creeds or formulas that must be recited or other extraneous criteria that must be met. Into this void one is set loose (in the words of Anthony Kennedy) “to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

For many years now it has been clear that this is an inadequate account of what constitutes membership in our political community. Birth within a particular jurisdiction is at once too parsimonious—de facto participation in modern American life is the province of countless persons born outside our borders without relevant documents attesting to their formal citizenship—and too generous. Just as it was theoretically possible for some persons to live within the geographic expanse of Christendom while remaining essentially outside its society, so too are there people today who despite having been born American citizens are not in any meaningful sense participants in our broader public life.

I am talking, of course, about people who do not use smartphones.

In ways with which we have barely begun to grapple, smartphone ownership is essentially coercive: These devices that combine the functions of what we once quaintly referred to as “mobile telephones” with those of personal computers have subsumed so many facets of our existence that is almost impossible now to think of a field of human activity or a concrete act—visiting a friend or neighbor, going to a restaurant, traveling, or even taking a short walk—that has not been transformed for the vast majority of the population by digital augmentation. Moreover, smartphones have accomplished all of this at a far more rapid pace than other technologies that have changed the basic nature of our political (and I daresay our economic) life.

In this sense, the smartphone is different (for example) from the rise of the automobile, which was as much a by-product of the already emerging shift from agricultural life during the end of the great period of American industrialization as it was a disruptive technology; indeed, more than a century after the advent of the Model T, it remains vastly easier to live in both large cities and in small towns without a car than it is to do so without a smartphone. (The suburbs are a different matter.)

The extent to which universal ownership of what was once considered an emergency device or a luxury good has become one of the basic governing assumptions of our leaders was brought home during last year’s lockdowns. For those lucky enough to remain employed, one’s duties were neatly performed in an entirely digital space; accessing unemployment benefits from shuttered government offices, becoming informed about the actions (including those unrelated to the virus) of state and municipal governments, and countless other actions were simply impossible without the use of applications such as Zoom. Meanwhile governors were able to issue so-called “alerts” informing citizens of the requirements to which they would become immediately subject via compulsory text messaging. On a day-to-day basis, as nearly every aspect of civilized life was suspended on the basis of an ever-shifting series of rationales, it was not even clear to me how various decisions could have been communicated otherwise.

For all of these reasons, I think every decent American should be horrified by the prospect of so-called “vaccine passports.” The idea of using smartphones as a registry of persons who have been vaccinated against Covid-19 was uncritically endorsed by our leaders months before vaccines had been introduced among the general population or even tested. This is unfortunate. Vaccine passports should be regarded with loathing by everyone, including their loudest proponents—namely, the sorts of people who also suggest that having to present photo identification in order to vote in a public election is a hideous encroachment upon the freedoms guaranteed to individuals. As it happens, I share their instinctive distaste for identification cards, not only in polling places but in bars, convenience stores, banks, and virtually every other space in which they are required, which is why I do not see the wisdom of expanding the “Papers, please!” mindset, according to which we are all criminals or enemies of the state until we can offer definitive proof to the contrary.

So far from being a straightforward addition to the aforementioned inconveniences or a new value-neutral public health technology, digitally abetted vaccine passports represent a point of no return, after which it will be impossible to imagine a world in which basic freedom of movement and action exist except on sufferance granted by the algorithms. Sooner or later the same technology that requires persons to demonstrate that they received certain shots six months ago will force them to show that they have voluntarily undergone more recent medical interventions, or that they have agreed to “terms of use” agreements in which they abjure certain opinions said to be in violation of the code of conduct enjoined by, say, the global casual dining chain whose neighborhood franchise one is attempting to enter. (The very real possibility of payment processing and banking services being denied to persons for ideological reasons has been discussed at some length by those who are in a position to understand how absurdly simple it would be from a technical perspective and how effortlessly it could be justified by the powers that be.)

We already live in a society in which we are quite literally adjuncts of whatever data has been emitted by the devices we are forced to carry in order to perform tasks as simple as parking our cars or entering a baseball stadium. Machines that were once meant to facilitate communication (who now remembers the sheepish arguments that used to run as follows: “I know they’re kind of silly, but I like to have one in case of an emergency”?) have become obstacles to the most ordinary human intercourse. Digital devices have not only overtaken commerce; they have monopolized our attention spans, they have destroyed even the informal etiquette of friendly conversation and casual dining; they have virtually erased the distinction between our time and that of our employers; they have made us not slaves but actual commodities, consumer products to be rated and analyzed.

The future opened by the widespread use of digital vaccine passports is one in which an escape from the barely understood tyranny of these screens becomes impossible. I am not a Luddite. But I believe that it is our duty to confront the implications of the horrifying new role that these devices have come to occupy thanks largely to the indifference of politicians who could not have guessed how rapidly our civilization would be remade in the white heat of technology. Too much that we value has already melted.

Matthew Walther is editor of The Lamp magazine and a contributing editor at The American Conservative.

I have written many posts relating to the fact that we live in a finite world. At some point, our ability to extract resources becomes constrained. At the same time, population keeps increasing. The usual outcome when population is too high for resources is “overshoot and collapse.” But this is not a topic that the politicians or central bankers or oligarchs who attend the World Economic Forum dare to talk about.

Instead, world leaders find a different problem, namely climate change, to emphasize above other problems. Conveniently, climate change seems to have some of the same solutions as “running out of fossil fuels.” So, a person might think that an energy transition designed to try to fix climate change would work equally well to try to fix running out of fossil fuels. Unfortunately, this isn’t really the way it works.

In this post, I will lay out some of the issues involved.

[1] There are many different constraints that new energy sources need to conform to.

These are a few of the constraints I see:

• Should be inexpensive to produce
• Should work with the current portfolio of existing devices
• Should be available in the quantities required, in the timeframe needed
• Should not pollute the environment, either when created or at the end of their lifetimes
• Should not add CO2 to the atmosphere
• Should not distort ecosystems
• Should be easily stored, or should be easily ramped up and down to precisely match energy timing needs
• Cannot overuse fresh water or scarce minerals
• Cannot require a new infrastructure of its own, unless the huge cost in terms of delayed timing and greater materials use is considered.

If an energy type is simply a small add-on to the existing system, perhaps a little deviation from the above list can be tolerated, but if there is any intent of scaling up the new energy type, all of these requirements must be met.

It is really the overall cost of the system that is important. Historically, the use of coal has helped keep the overall cost of the system down. Substitutes need to be developed considering the overall needs and cost of the system.

The reason why the overall cost of the system is important is because countries with high-cost energy systems will have a difficult time competing in a world market since energy costs are an important part of the cost of producing goods and services. For example, the cost of operating a cruise ship depends, to a significant extent, on the cost of the fuel it uses.

In theory, energy types that work with different devices (say, electric cars and trucks instead of those operated by internal combustion engines) can be used, but a long delay can be expected before a material shift in overall energy usage occurs. Furthermore, a huge ramp up in the total use of materials for production may be required. The system cannot work if the total cost is too high, or if the materials are not really available, or if the timing is too slow.

[2] The major thing that makes an economy grow is an ever increasing supply of inexpensive-to-produce energy products.

Food is an energy product. Let’s think of what happens when agriculture is mechanized, typically using devices that are made and operated using coal and oil. The cost of producing food drops substantially. Instead of spending, for example, 50% of a person’s wages on food, the percentage can gradually drop down to 20% of wages, and then to 10% of wages for food, and eventually even, say, to 2% of wages for food.

As spending on food falls, opportunity for other spending arises, even with wages remaining relatively level. With lower food expenditures, a person can spend more on books (made with energy products), or personal transportation (such as a vehicle), or entertainment (also made possible by energy products). Strangely enough, in order for an economy to grow, essential items need to become an ever decreasing share of everyone’s budget, so that citizens have sufficient left-over income available for more optional items.

It is the use of tools, made and operated with inexpensive energy products of the right types, that leverages human labor so that workers can produce more food in a given period of time. This same approach also makes many other goods and services available.

In general, the less expensive an energy product is, the more helpful it will be to an economy. A country operating with an inexpensive mix of energy products will tend to be more competitive in the world market than one with a high-cost mix of energy products. Oil tends to be expensive; coal tends to be inexpensive. This is a major reason why, in recent years, countries using a lot of coal in their energy mix (such as China and India) have been able to grow their economies much more rapidly than those countries relying heavily on oil in their energy mixes.

[3] If energy products are becoming more expensive to produce, or their production is not growing very rapidly, there are temporary workarounds that can hide this problem for quite a number of years.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, world coal and oil consumption were growing rapidly. Natural gas, hydroelectric and (a little) nuclear were added, as well. Cost of production remained low. For example, the price of oil, converted to today’s dollar value, was less than $20 per barrel.

Once the idyllic 1950s and 1960s passed, it was necessary to hide the problems associated with the rising cost of production using several approaches:

• Increasing use of debt – really a promise of future goods and services made with energy
• Lower interest rates – permits increasing debt to be less of a financial burden
• Increasing use of technology – to improve efficiency in energy usage
• Growing use of globalization – to make use of other countries’ cheaper energy mix and lower cost of labor

After 50+ years, we seem to be reaching limits with respect to all of these techniques:

• Debt levels are excessive
• Interest rates are very low, even below zero
• Increasing use of technology as well as globalization have led to greater and greater wage disparity; many low level jobs have been eliminated completely
• Globalization has reached its limits; China has reached a situation in which its coal supply is no longer growing

[4] The issue that most people fail to grasp is the fact that with depletion, the cost of producing energy products tends to rise, but the selling prices of these energy products do not rise enough to keep up with the rising cost of depletion.

As a result, production of energy products tends to fall because production becomes unprofitable.

As we get further and further away from the ideal situation (oil less than $20 per barrel and rising in quantity each year), an increasing number of problems crop up:

• Both oil/gas companies and coal companies become less profitable.
• With lower energy company profits, governments can collect less taxes from these companies.
• As old wells and mines deplete, the cost of reinvestment becomes more of a burden. Eventually, new investment is cut back to the point that production begins to fall.
• With less growth in energy consumption, productivity growth tends to lag. This happens because energy is required to mechanize or computerize processes.
• Wage disparity tends to grow; workers become increasingly unhappy with their governments.

[5] Authorities with an incorrect understanding of why and how energy supplies fall have assumed that far more fossil fuels would be available than is actually the case. They have also assumed that relatively high prices for alternatives would be acceptable.

In 2012, Jorgen Randers prepared a forecast for the next 40 years for The Club of Rome, in the form of a book, 2052, with associated data. Looking at the data, we see that Randers forecast that world coal consumption would grow by 28% between 2010 and 2020. In fact, world coal consumption grew by 0% in that period. (This latter forecast is based on BP coal consumption estimates for 2010 and 2019 from BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2020, adjusted for the 2019 to 2020 period change using IEA’s estimate from its Global Energy Review 2021.)

It is very easy to assume that high estimates of coal resources in the ground will lead to high quantities of actual coal extracted and burned. The world’s experience between 2010 and 2020 shows that it doesn’t necessarily work out that way in practice. In order for coal consumption to grow, the delivered price of coal needs to stay low enough for customers to be able to afford its use in the end products it provides. Much of the supposed coal that is available is far from population centers. Some of it is even under the North Sea. The extraction and delivery costs become far too high, but this is not taken into account in resource estimates.

Forecasts of future natural gas availability suffer from the same tendency towards over-estimation. Randers estimated that world gas consumption would grow by 40% between 2010 and 2020, when the actual increase was 22%. Other authorities make similar overestimates of future fuel use, assuming that “of course,” prices will stay high enough to enable extraction. Most energy consumption is well-buried in goods and services we buy, such as the cost of a vehicle or the cost of heating a home. If we cannot afford the vehicle, we don’t buy it; if the cost of heating a family’s home rises too high, thrifty families will turn down the thermostat.

Oil prices, even with the recent run-up in prices, are under $75 per barrel. I have estimated that for profitable oil production (including adequate funds for high-cost reinvestment and sufficient taxes for governments), oil prices need to be over $120 per barrel. It is the lack of profitability that has caused the recent drop in production. These profitability problems can be expected to lead to more production declines in the future.

With this low-price problem, fossil fuel estimates used in climate model scenarios are almost certainly overstated. This bias would be expected to lead to overstated estimates of future climate change.

The misbelief that energy prices will always rise to cover higher costs of production also leads to the belief that relatively high-cost alternatives to fossil fuels would be acceptable.

[6] Our need for additional energy supplies of the right kinds is extremely high right now. We cannot wait for a long transition. Even 30 years is too long.

We saw in section [3] that the workarounds for a lack of growing energy supply, such as higher debt and lower interest rates, are reaching limits. Furthermore, prices have been unacceptably low for oil producers for several years. Not too surprisingly, oil production has started to decline:

[

](https://i2.wp.com/ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/World-Crude-Oil-Production-EIA-2020.png?ssl=1)

Figure 1 – World production of crude oil and condensate, based on data of the US Energy Information Administration

What is really needed is sufficient energy of the right types for the world’s growing population. Thus, it is important to look at energy consumption on a per capita basis. Figure 2 shows energy production per capita for three groupings:

• Tier 1: Oil and Coal
• Tier 2: Natural Gas, Nuclear, and Hydroelectric
• Tier 3: Other Renewables, including Intermittent Wind and Solar

[

](https://i1.wp.com/ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/World-per-capita-energy-consumption-by-tier.png?ssl=1)

Figure 2 World per capita energy consumption by Tier. Amounts through 2019 based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2020. Changes for 2020 based on estimates provided by IEA Global Energy Review 2021.

Figure 2 shows that the biggest drop is in Tier 1: Coal and Oil. In many ways, coal and oil are foundational types of energy for the economy because they are relatively easy to transport and store. Oil is important because it is used in operating agricultural machinery, road repair machinery, and vehicles of all types, including ships and airplanes. Coal is important partly because of its low cost, helping paychecks to stretch further for finished goods and services. Coal is used in many ways, including electricity production and making steel and concrete. We use coal and oil to keep electricity transmission lines repaired.

Figure 2 shows that Tier 2 energy consumption per capita was growing rapidly in the 1965 to 1990 period, but its growth has slowed in recent years.

The Green Energy sources in Tier 3 have been growing rapidly from a low base, but their output is still tiny compared to the overall output that would be required if they were to substitute for energy from both Tier 1 and Tier 2 sources. They clearly cannot by themselves power today’s economy.

It is very difficult to imagine any of the Tier 2 and Tier 3 energy sources being able to grow without substantial assistance from coal and oil. All of today’s Tier 2 and Tier 3 energy sources depend on coal and oil at many points in the chain of their production, distribution, operation, and eventual recycling. If we ever get to Tier 4 energy sources (such as fusion or space solar), I would expect that they too will need oil and/or coal in their production, transport and distribution, unless there is an incredibly long transition, and a huge change in energy infrastructure.

[7] It is easy for energy researchers to set their sights too low.

[a] We need to be looking at the extremely low energy cost structure of the 1950s and 1960s as a model, not some far higher cost structure.

We have been hiding the world’s energy problems for years behind rising debt and falling interest rates. With very high debt levels and very low interest rates, it is becoming less feasible to stimulate the economy using these approaches. We really need very inexpensive energy products. These energy products need to provide a full range of services required by the economy, not simply intermittent electricity.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, the ratio of Energy Earned to Energy Investment was likely in the 50:1 range for many energy products. Energy products were very profitable; they could be highly taxed. The alternative energy products we develop today need to have similar characteristics if they truly are to play an important role in the economy.

[b] A recent study says that greenhouse gas emissions related to the food system account for one-third of the anthropogenic global warming gas total. A way to grow sufficient food is clearly needed.

We clearly cannot grow food using intermittent electricity. Farming is not an easily electrified endeavor. If we do not have an alternative, the coal and oil that we are using now in agriculture really needs to continue, even if it requires subsidies.

[c] Hydroelectric electricity looks like a good energy source, but in practice it has many deficiencies.

Some of the hydroelectric dams now in place are over 100 years old. This is nearing the lifetime of the concrete in the dams. Considerable maintenance and repair (indirectly using coal and oil) are likely to be needed if these dams are to continue to be used.

The water available to provide hydroelectric power tends to vary greatly over time. Figure 3 shows California’s hydro electricity generation by month.

[

](https://i2.wp.com/ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Californa-Hydroelectric-Generation-by-Month.png?ssl=1)

Figure 3. California hydroelectric energy production by month, based on data of the US Energy Information Administration.

Thus, as a practical matter, hydroelectric energy needs to be balanced with fossil fuels to provide energy which can be used to power a factory or heat a home in winter. Battery storage would never be sufficient. There are too many gaps, lasting months at a time.

If hydroelectric energy is used in a tropical area with dry and wet seasons, the result would be even more extreme. A poor country with a new hydroelectric power plant may find the output of the plant difficult to use. The electricity can only be used for very optional activities, such as bitcoin mining, or charging up small batteries for lights and phones.

Any new hydroelectric dam runs the risk of taking away the water someone else was depending upon for irrigation or for their own electricity generation. A war could result.

[d] Current approaches for preventing deforestation mostly seem to be shifting deforestation from high income countries to low income countries. In total, deforestation is getting worse rather than better.

[

](https://i1.wp.com/ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Forest-Area-Percentage-by-Income-Group.png?ssl=1)

Figure 4. Forest area percentage of land area, by income group, based on data of the World Bank.

Figure 4 shows that deforestation is getting rapidly worse in Low Income countries with today’s policies. There is also a less pronounced trend toward deforestation in Middle Income countries. It is only in High Income countries that land areas are becoming more forested. In total (not shown), the forested area for the world as a whole falls, year after year.

Also, even when replanting is done, the new forests do not have the same characteristics as those made by natural ecosystems. They cannot house as many different species as natural ecosystems. They are likely to be less resistant to problems like insect infestations and forest fires. They are not true substitutes for the forest ecosystems that nature creates.

[e] The way intermittent wind and solar have been added to the electric grid vastly overpays these providers, relative to the value they add to the system. Furthermore, the subsidies for intermittent renewables tend to drive out more stable producers, degrading the overall condition of the grid.

If wind and solar are to be used, payments for the electricity they provide need to be scaled back to reflect the true value that they add to the overall system. In general, this corresponds to the savings in fossil fuel purchases that electricity providers need to make. This will be a small amount, perhaps 2 cents per kilowatt hour. Even this small amount, in theory, might be reduced to reflect the greater electricity transmission costs associated with these intermittent sources.

We note that China is making a major step in the direction of reducing subsidies for wind and solar. It has already dramatically cut its subsidies for wind energy; new subsidy cuts for solar energy will become effective August 1, 2021.

A major concern is the distorting impact that current pricing approaches for wind and solar have on the overall electrical system. Often, these approaches produce very low, or negative, wholesale prices for other providers. Nuclear providers are especially harmed by such practices. Nuclear is, of course, a low CO2 electricity provider.

It seems to me that in each part of the world, some utility-type provider needs to be analyzing what the overall funding of the electrical system needs to be. Bills to individuals and businesses need to reflect these actual expected costs. This approach might avoid the artificially low rates that the current pricing system often generates. If adequate funding can be achieved, perhaps some of the corner cutting that leads to electrical outages, such as recently encountered in California and Texas, might be avoided.

[8] When I look at the requirements for a successful energy transition and the obstacles we are up against, it is hard for me to see that any of the current approaches can be successful.

Unfortunately, it is hard for me to see how intermittent electricity can save the world economy, or even make a dent in our problems. We have searched for a very long time, but haven’t yet found solutions truly worth ramping up. Perhaps a new “Tier 4 approach” might be helpful, but such solutions seem likely to come too late.

Our platform approach to mRNA medicines leads the development and discovery of new potential treatments and preventions for cancers & diseases like CMV, MMA & other uncommon illnesses.

We built Moderna on the guiding premise that if using mRNA as a medicine works for one disease, it should work for many diseases. And, if this is possible – given the right approach and infrastructure – it could meaningfully improve how medicines are discovered, developed and manufactured.

Our Operating System

Recognizing the broad potential of mRNA science, we set out to create an mRNA technology platform that functions very much like an operating system on a computer. It is designed so that it can plug and play interchangeably with different programs. In our case, the "program” or “app” is our mRNA drug - the unique mRNA sequence that codes for a protein.

We have a dedicated team of several hundred scientists and engineers solely focused on advancing Moderna's platform technology. They are organized around key disciplines and work in an integrated fashion to advance knowledge surrounding mRNA science and solve for challenges that are unique to mRNA drug development. Some of these disciplines include mRNA biology, chemistry, formulation & delivery, bioinformatics and protein engineering.

Our mRNA Medicines – The ‘Software of Life’

When we have a concept for a new mRNA medicine and begin research, fundamental components are already in place.

Generally, the only thing that changes from one potential mRNA medicine to another is the coding region – the actual genetic code that instructs ribosomes to make protein. Utilizing these instruction sets gives our investigational mRNA medicines a software-like quality. We also have the ability to combine different mRNA sequences encoding for different proteins in a single mRNA investigational medicine.

We are leveraging the flexibility afforded by our platform and the fundamental role mRNA plays in protein synthesis to pursue mRNA medicines for a broad spectrum of diseases.

Within a given modality, the base components are generally identical across development candidates - formulation, 5’ region and 3’ region. Only the coding region varies based on the protein/s the potential medicine is directing cells to produce.

Learn how our Research Engine and Early Development Engine are enabling us to fully maximize the promise of mRNA to meaningfully improve how medicines are discovered, developed and manufactured.

Overcoming Key Challenges

Using mRNA to create medicines is a complex undertaking and requires overcoming novel scientific and technical challenges. We need to get the mRNA into the targeted tissue and cells while evading the immune system. If the immune system is triggered, the resultant response may limit protein production and, thus, limit the therapeutic benefit of mRNA medicines. We also need ribosomes to think the mRNA was produced naturally, so they can accurately read the instructions to produce the right protein. And we need to ensure the cells express enough of the protein to have the desired therapeutic effect.

Our multidisciplinary platform teams work together closely to address these scientific and technical challenges. This intensive cross-functional collaboration has enabled us to advance key aspects of our platform and make significant strides to deliver mRNA medicines for patients.

_Adobe, Arm, BBC, Intel, Microsoft and Truepic form coalition to develop end-to-end, open standard for tracing the origin and evolution of digital content

_

SAN JOSE, Calif., and REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 22, 2021 — A group of influential technology and media companies has partnered to form the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), a Joint Development Foundation project established to address the prevalence of disinformation, misinformation and online content fraud through developing technical standards for certifying the source and history or provenance of media content. Founding members Adobe, Arm, BBC, Intel, Microsoft and Truepic seek to establish a standardized provenance solution with the goal of combating misleading content.

C2PA member organizations will work together to develop content provenance specifications for common asset types and formats to enable publishers, creators and consumers to trace the origin and evolution of a piece of media, including images, videos, audio and documents. These technical specifications will include defining what information is associated with each type of asset, how that information is presented and stored, and how evidence of tampering can be identified.

The C2PA’s open standard will give platforms a method to preserve and read provenance-based digital content. Because an open standard can be adopted by any online platform, it is critical to scaling trust across the internet. In addition to the inclusion of varied media types at scale, C2PA is driving an end-to-end provenance experience from the capturing device to the information consumer. Collaboration with chipmakers, news organizations, and software and platform companies is critical to facilitate a comprehensive provenance standard and drive broad adoption across the content ecosystem.

The formation of the C2PA brings together founding members of the Adobe-led Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) and the Microsoft- and BBC-led Project Origin, unifying technical specifications under a single entity. The CAI is building a system to provide provenance and history for digital media, giving creators a tool to claim authorship and empowering consumers to evaluate whether what they are seeing is trustworthy. Project Origin has its roots in the production and distribution of news. The effort has focused on tackling disinformation in the digital news ecosystem by attaching signals to a piece of content to demonstrate its integrity and making this information available to those using it. With the foundation of the C2PA, technical standards will be unified while these two entities continue to pursue adoption, prototyping and education within their respective communities.

Today’s C2PA announcement builds on several recent advances in content provenance, including Project Origin’s efforts to develop a pipeline for signaling, certification and tracking the history of news content; the CAI’s first-ever end-to-end demonstration of provenance for captured media online; and Truepic’s development of the first native integration of hardware-secured photo capture smartphone technology.

Designing standards and technologies that can certify the source and provenance of online content is an important step forward in addressing rising concerns with the manipulation and manufacture of news and information. Companies interested in joining the C2PA can apply through [email protected].

Executive quotes

Adobe: “Adobe is proud to be a founding member of the C2PA along with our partners in technology and media. With the collective expertise of this group, we will accelerate the critical work of rebuilding the public’s trust in online content through broad and open adoption of a provenance standard at scale. We welcome everyone to join and participate in this effort so crucial to us all.”

– Dana Rao, General Counsel and Content Authenticity Initiative executive sponsor, Adobe

BBC: “It’s vital that news providers play a part in the battle against disinformation. We welcome the opportunity to participate in the C2PA provenance work, which has the potential to support audience confidence in news at a time when trusted sources of information are more important than ever.”

– Jatin Aythora, Chief Architect, BBC

Microsoft: “There’s a critical need to address widespread deception in online content — now supercharged by advances in AI and graphics and diffused rapidly via the internet. Our imperative as researchers and technologists is to create and refine technical and sociotechnical approaches to this grand challenge of our time. We’re excited about methods for certifying the origin and provenance of online content. It’s an honor to work alongside Adobe, BBC and other C2PA members to take this critical work to the next step.”

– Eric Horvitz, Chief Scientific Officer and Project Origin executive sponsor, Microsoft

Truepic: “Truepic was founded on the principle that provenance-based media authenticity is the only viable, scalable long-term solution to restoring trust in what we see online. We firmly believe that ecosystemwide adoption through an open standard is crucial to the long-term health of the internet. The C2PA will streamline the distribution of high-integrity digital content at scale, a vital step in restoring society’s shared sense of reality.”

– Jeffrey McGregor, CEO, Truepic

About Adobe

Adobe is changing the world through digital experiences. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.

About Microsoft

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

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In their World Economic Forum treatise Covid-19: The Great Reset, economists Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret bring us the voice of would-be Global Governance.

Viewing the virtual-reality film “Collisions” at a session of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 2016. (World Economic Forum, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

By Diana Johnstone
**in Paris**Special to Consortium News

By titling their recently published World Economic Forum treatise Covid-19: The Great Reset, the authors link the pandemic to their futuristic proposals in ways bound to be met with a chorus of “Aha!”s. In the current atmosphere of confusion and distrust, the glee with which economists Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret greet the pandemic as harbinger of their proposed socioeconomic upheaval suggests that if Covid-19 hadn’t come along by accident, they would have created it (had they been able).

In fact, World Economic Forum founder Schwab was already energetically hyping the Great Reset, using climate change as the triggering crisis, before the latest coronavirus outbreak provided him with an even more immediate pretext for touting his plans to remake the world.

The authors start right in by proclaiming that “the world as we knew it in the early months of 2020 is no more,” that radical changes will shape a “new normal.” We ourselves will be transformed. “Many of our beliefs and assumptions about what the world could or should look like will be shattered in the process.”

Throughout the book, the authors seem to gloat over the presumed effects of widespread “fear” of the virus, which is supposed to condition people to desire the radical changes they envisage. They employ technocratic psychobabble to announce that the pandemic is already transforming the human mentality to conform to the new reality they consider inevitable.

“Our lingering and possibly lasting fear of being infected with a virus … will thus speed the relentless march of automation…” Really?

“The pandemic may increase our anxiety about sitting in an enclosed space with complete strangers, and many people may decide that staying home to watch the latest movie or opera is the wisest option.”

“There are other first round effects that are much easier to anticipate. Cleanliness is one of them. The pandemic will certainly heighten our focus on hygiene. A new obsession with cleanliness will particularly entail the creation of new forms of packaging. We will be encouraged not to touch the products we buy. Simple pleasures like smelling a melon or squeezing a fruit will be frowned upon and may even become a thing of the past.”

This is the voice of would-be Global Governance. From on high, experts decide what the masses ought to want, and twist the alleged popular wishes to fit the profit-making schemes they are peddling. Their schemes center on digital innovation, massive automation using “artificial intelligence,” finally even “improving” human beings by endowing them artificially with some of the attributes of robots: such as problem-solving devoid of ethical distractions.

Engineer-economist Klaus Schwab, born in Ravensburg, Germany, in 1938, founded his World Economic Forum in 1971, attracting massive sponsorship from international corporations. It meets once a year in Davos, Switzerland – last time in January 2020 and next year in May, delayed because of Covid-19.

Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman, World Economic Forum, on Jan. 21, 2015. (World Economic Forum, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

A Powerful Lobby

What is it, exactly? I would describe the WEF as a combination capitalist consulting firm and gigantic lobby. The futuristic predictions are designed to guide investors into profitable areas in what Schwab calls “the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR)” and then, as the areas are defined, to put pressure on governments to support such investments by way of subsidies, tax breaks, procurements, regulations and legislation. In short, the WEF is the lobby for new technologies, digital everything, artificial intelligence, transhumanism.

It is powerful today because it is operating in an environment of State Capitalism, where the role of the State (especially in the United States, less so in Europe) has been largely reduced to responding positively to the demands of such lobbies, especially the financial sector. Immunized by campaign donations from the obscure wishes of ordinary people, most of today’s politicians practically need the guidance of lobbies such as the WEF to tell them what to do.

In the 20th century, notably in the New Deal, the government was under pressure from conflicting interests. The economic success of the armaments industry during World War II gave birth to a Military-Industrial Complex, which has become a permanent structural factor in the U.S. economy.

It is the dominant role of the MIC and its resulting lobbies that have definitively transformed the nation into State Capitalism rather than a Republic.

The proof of this transformation is the unanimity with which Congress never balks at approving grotesquely inflated military budgets. The MIC has spawned media and Think Tanks which ceaselessly indoctrinate the public in the existential need to keep pouring the nation’s wealth into weapons of war. Insofar as voters do not agree, they can find no means of political expression with elections monopolized by two pro-MIC parties.

The WEF can be seen as analogous to the MIC. It intends to engage governments and opinion manufacturers in the promotion of a “4IR” which will dominate the civilian economy and civilian life itself.

The pandemic is a temporary pretext; the need to “protect the environment” will be the more sustainable pretext. Just as the MIC is presented as absolutely necessary to “protect our freedoms,” the 4IR will be hailed as absolutely necessary to “save the environment” – and in both cases, many of the measures advocated will have the opposite effect.

Public street art on 6th Street in Austin, Texas, depicting the impact of Covid-19 closings. (Leah Rodgers, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

So far, the techno-tyranny of Schwab’s 4IR has not quite won its place in U.S. State Capitalism. But its prospects are looking good. Silicon Valley contributed heavily to the Joe Biden campaign, and Biden hastened to appoint its moguls to his transition team.

But the real danger of all power going to the Reset lies not with what is there, but with what is not there: any serious political opposition.

Can Democracy Be Restored?

The Great Reset has a boulevard open to it for the simple reason that there is nothing in its way. No widespread awareness of the issues, no effective popular political organization, nothing. Schwab’s dystopia is frightening simply for that reason.

The 2020 presidential election has just illustrated the almost total depoliticization of the American people. That may sound odd considering the violent partisan emotions displayed. But it was all much ado about nothing.

There were no real issues debated, no serious political questions raised either about war or about the directions of future economic development. The vicious quarrels were about persons, not policy. Bumbling Trump was accused of being “Hitler,” and Wall Street-beholden Democrat warhawks were described by Trumpists as “socialists.” Lies, insults and confusion prevailed.

A revival of democracy could stem from organized, concentrated study of the issues raised by the Davos planners, in order to arouse an informed public opinion to evaluate which technical innovations are socially acceptable and which are not.

Cries of alarm from the margins will not influence the intellectual relationship of forces. What is needed is for people to get together everywhere to study the issues and develop well-reasoned opinions on goals and methods of future development.

Unless faced with informed and precise critiques, Silicon Valley and its corporate and financial allies will simply proceed in doing whatever they imagine they can do, whatever the social effects.

Serious evaluation should draw distinctions between potentially beneficial and unwelcome innovations, to prevent popular notions from being used to gain acceptance of every “technological advance,” however ominous.

Redefining Issues

The political distinctions between left and right, between Republican and Democrat, have grown more impassioned just as they reveal themselves to be incoherent, distorted and irrelevant, based more on ideological bias than on facts. New and more fruitful political alignments could be built through confrontation with specific concrete issues.

We could take the proposals of the Great Reset one by one and examine them in both pragmatic and ethical terms.

(Bob Mical, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

No. 1 – Thanks to the pandemic, there has been a great increase in the use of teleconferences, using Skype, Zoom or other new platforms. The WEF welcomes this as a trend. Is it bad for that reason? To be fair, this innovation is positive in enabling many people to attend conferences without the expense, trouble and environmental cost of air travel. It has the negative side of preventing direct human contact. This is a simple issue, where positive points seem to prevail.

No. 2 – Should higher education go online, with professors giving courses to students via internet? This is a vastly more complicated question, which should be thoroughly discussed by educational institutions themselves and the communities they serve, weighing the pros and cons, remembering that those who provide the technology want to sell it, and care little about the value of human contact in education – not only human contact between student and professor, but often life-determining contacts between students themselves. Online courses may benefit geographically isolated students, but breaking up the educational community would be a major step toward the destruction of human community altogether.

No. 3 – Health and “well-being”. Here is where the discussion should heat up considerably. According to Schwab and Malleret: “Three industries in particular will flourish (in the aggregate) in the post-pandemic era: big tech, health and wellness.” For the Davos planners, the three merge.

Those who think that well-being is largely self-generated, dependent on attitudes, activity and lifestyle choices, miss the point. “The combination of AI [artificial intelligence], the IoT [internet of things] and sensors and wearable technology will produce new insights into personal well-being. They will model how we are and feel […] precise information on our carbon footprints, our impact on biodiversity, on the toxicity of all the ingredients we consume and the environments or spatial contexts in which we evolve will generate significant progress in terms of our awareness of collective and individual well-being.”

Question: do we really want or need all this cybernetic narcissism? Can’t we just enjoy life by helping a friend, stroking a cat, reading a book, listening to Bach or watching a sunset? We better make up our minds before they make over our minds.

User being monitored in a biometrics lab. (Grish068, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

No. 4 – Food. In order not to spoil my healthy appetite, I’ll skip over this. The tech wizards would like to phase out farmers, with all their dirty soil and animals, and industrially manufacture enhanced artificial foods created in nice clean labs – out of what exactly?

The Central Issue: Homo Faber

No. 5 – What about human work?

“In all likelihood, the recession induced by the pandemic will trigger a sharp increase in labor-substitution, meaning that physical labor will be replaced by robots and ‘intelligent’ machines, which will in turn provoke lasting and structural changes in the labor market.”

This replacement has already been underway for decades. Along with outsourcing and immigration, it has already weakened the collective power of labor. But clearly, the tech industries are poised to go much, much further and faster in throwing humans out of work.

The Covid-19 crisis and social distancing have “suddenly accelerated this process of innovation and technological change. Chatbots, which often use the same voice recognition technology behind Amazon’s Alexa, and other software that can replace tasks normally performed by human employees, are being rapidly introduced. These innovations provoked by necessity (i.e. sanitary measures) will soon result in hundreds of thousands, and potentially millions, of job losses.”

Cutting labor costs has long been the guiding motive of these innovations, along with the internal dynamic of technology industry to “do whatever it can do.” Then socially beneficial pretexts are devised in justification. Like this:

“As consumers may prefer automated services to face-to-face interactions for some time to come, what is currently happening with call centers will inevitably occur in other sectors as well.”

“Consumers may prefer…”! Everyone I know complains of the exasperation of trying to reach the bank or insurance company to explain an emergency, and instead to be confronted with a dead voice and a choice of irrelevant numbers to click. Perhaps I am underestimating the degree of hostility toward our fellow humans that now pervades society, but my impression is that there is a vast unexpressed public demand for LESS automated services and MORE contact with real persons who can think outside the algorithm and can actually UNDERSTAND the problem, not simply cough up preprogrammed fixes.

“Corporate agility in the Fourth Industrial Revolution” session held in Tianjin,China, September 2018. (World Economic Forum, Faruk Pinjo, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

There is a potential movement out there. But we hear nothing of it, being persuaded by our media that the greatest problem facing people in their daily lives is to hear someone exhibit confusion over someone else’s confused gender.

In this, I maintain, consumer demand would merge with the desperate need of able-minded human beings to earn a living. The technocrats earn theirs handsomely by eliminating the means to earn a living of other people.

Here is one of their great ideas. “In cities as varied as Hangzhou, Washington DC and Tel Aviv, efforts are under way to move from pilot programs to large-scale operations capable of putting an army of delivery robots on the road and in the air.” What a great alternative to paying human deliverers a living wage!

And incidentally, a guy riding a delivery bicycle is using renewable energy. But all those robots and drones? Batteries, batteries and more batteries, made of what materials, coming from where and manufactured how? By more robots? Where is the energy coming from to replace not only fossil fuels, but also human physical effort?

At the last Davos meeting, Israeli intellectual Yuval Harari issued a dire warning that:

“Whereas in the past, humans had to struggle against exploitation, in the twenty-first century the really big struggle will be against irrelevance… Those who fail in the struggle against irrelevance would constitute a new ‘useless class’ – not from the viewpoint of their friends and family, but useless from the viewpoint of the economic and political system. And this useless class will be separated by an ever-growing gap from the ever more powerful elite.”

No. 5 – And the military. Our capitalist prophets of doom foresee the semi-collapse of civil aviation and the aeronautical industry as people all decide to stay home glued to their screens. But not to worry!

“This makes the defense aerospace sector an exception and a relatively safe haven.” For capital investment, that is. Instead of vacations on sunny beaches, we can look forward to space wars. It may happen sooner rather than later, because, as the Brookings Institution concludes in a 2018 report on “How artificial intelligence is transforming the world,” everything is going faster, including war:

“The big data analytics associated with AI will profoundly affect intelligence analysis, as massive amounts of data are sifted in near real time … thereby providing commanders and their staffs a level of intelligence analysis and productivity heretofore unseen. Command and control will similarly be affected as human commanders delegate certain routine, and in special circumstances, key decisions to AI platforms, reducing dramatically the time associated with the decision and subsequent action.”

So, no danger that some soft-hearted officer will hesitate to start World War III because of a sentimental attachment to humanity. When the AI platform sees an opportunity, go for it!

“In the end, warfare is a time competitive process, where the side able to decide the fastest and move most quickly to execution will generally prevail. Indeed, artificially intelligent intelligence systems, tied to AI-assisted command and control systems, can move decision support and decision-making to a speed vastly superior to the speeds of the traditional means of waging war. So fast will be this process especially if coupled to automatic decisions to launch artificially intelligent autonomous weapons systems capable of lethal outcomes, that a new term has been coined specifically to embrace the speed at which war will be waged: hyperwar.”

Americans have a choice. Either continue to quarrel over trivialities or wake up, really wake up, to the reality being planned and do something about it.

The future is shaped by investment choices. Not by naughty speech, not even by elections, but by investment choices. For the people to regain power, they must reassert their command over how and for what purposes capital is invested.

And if private capital balks, it must be socialized. This is the only revolution – and it is also the only conservatism, the only way to conserve decent human life. It is what real politics is about.

Diana Johnstone lives in Paris. Her latest book is Circle in the Darkness: Memoirs of a World Watcher and is also the author of Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions. Her lates book is Queen of Chaos: the Misadventures of Hillary Clinton. The memoirs of Diana Johnstone’s father Paul H. Johnstone, From MAD to Madness, was published by Clarity Press, with her commentary. She can be reached at diana.johnstone@wanadoo.fr .

“We’re not going back to the same economy”, Fed Chair Powell said recently: “We’re recovering, but to a different economy, and it will be one that is more leveraged to technology – and I worry that it’s going to make it even more difficult than it was, for many workers.” Klaus Schwab, the Davos Chair, was more blunt: “Nothing will ever return to the ‘broken’ sense of normalcy that prevailed [earlier]. We … will be surprised by both the rapidity and unexpected nature of these changes – as they conflate with each other, they will provoke cascading effects and unforeseen outcomes”. Schwab makes it clear that the western élite will not allow life to return to normal, suggesting that rolling lockdowns and other restrictions may become permanent.

‘Recovering to a different economy’? Well, actually the creeping ‘coup’ has been residing in plain view for quite a while. The changes have been less noticed – partly because western élites have stuck fast to the free market narrative, whilst incrementally shifting over the decades to an oligarchical economy blossoming alongside the free market economy. Yet it has been an important metamorphose, for it has laid the ground-work for a more fundamental fusion of interests of business oligarchy and government. This fusion used to be called the ‘administrative state’, and was widely practiced in 19th Century Europe.

If we want to understand the roots to this ‘quiet coup’, we need to return to the ethos that emerged from WW2. It was ‘never again’ in terms of that terrible wartime bloodshed, and it encapsulated the notion that the spilt blood should be somehow ‘redeemed’ by moving to fairer, more equitable societies. These latter sentiments turned activist, culminating in the 1960s – an occurrence that frightened U.S. business élites.

The élites moved their ‘counter-revolution’. They lobbied; they lobbied hard, evolving their lobbying enterprise into an ‘industrial scale’ enterprise, employing ‘brigades’ of lawyers and encompassing big money. And now, trillions of dollars are at stake: K Street (the lobbying HQ in Washington) is where the legislative ‘sausage’ is actually assembled, and not the U.S. Congress. It is external to Congress, to whom it is ‘sold’ in a mutually beneficial exchange.

Gradually, one segment of the erstwhile radical Boomers quietly folded themselves into the new Big Corporate ethos, whilst another part entered into politics, eventually going on to become the nation’s political leaders. It is not hard to see how a common zeitgeist might emerge. It is half-heartedly woke, big corporate in outlook, and committed to the notion of élite ‘scientifically administered’ rule.

The point here is that there was never anything inevitable to this American-led ‘quiet’ oligarchic take-over. It was never immutable. It happened in America, as it had ‘happened’ earlier in 19th Century Europe. The Boomer radicals never were true ‘revolutionaries’ – and the oligarchs took advantage of their reticence.

The Boomer influx into the corporate and business world, however, did lay firstly, that key incremental shift towards a fusion of big business to government. Secondly, that fusion is now being consolidated through the programmes of pandemic monetary relief concentrated in the corporate sector. And the third step – today’s U.S. Tech war with China – is both further entrenching Silicon Valley and the corporate oligarchy, as well as opening the prospect to a bigger power-grab that is intended to entrench a small Techno-élite at the head of a global administration and in command of global digital money and assets. This is the Re-Set – it aims to forge the new global order to its advantage.

And so, back to Jerome Powell’s warning of a ‘recovery’ to “a different economy”. It does have a whiff of inevitability to it; that is to say, Powell is presenting the fact that the Fed is now ‘painted into a corner’ – whereas Schwab’s hyping of a ‘welcome paradigm shift’, by contrast, is different – it is an exceptionalist ideology, with nothing inherently inevitable about it. The two should not be confused. But whether Powell likes it or not, in the Coronavirus ‘new normal’, the free market segment of the West’s economy is indeed being systematically destroyed, at the same time that the major portion of stimulus is being channelled to the largest of large multinational corporations, and to systemically important Banks. It will indeed be a different economy. This fusion of government to big business has been reinforced during the pandemic, and that plainly helps facilitate those hoping for a fundamental re-set of the global order. The Tech war is the cherry on the cake – if Silicon Valley succeeds in its bid for Tech hegemony, these U.S. Tech giants will be global political players. They are near that already now.

Will the Technocratic coup succeed? Or, will the ideology – the oligarchic vision – behind it, simply descend into a zero sum game of big power Tech rivalry on a par with 19th Century great power rivalries? Let us recall that those rivalries did not end well. As things presently stand, Tech rivalry between U.S. and China – on account of the fundamental difference between Tech rivalry and ordinary commercial competition – makes a clash quite possible. What then is this inherent quality to Tech that differentiates it from ordinary commerce, and exacerbates the risk of 19th Century style warring?

It is this: Not so long ago, the digital economy was thought to soar above conventional geo-politics. The global Internet, aspiring to be free and open, was seen as a general-purpose technology – as revolutionary and as fungible as the internal combustion engine, and a good in the sense of ‘public commons’. This halcyon chimaera about Tech lingers on amongst the public, even as elements of Tech have assumed the darker function of surveilling, and disciplining society on behalf of ‘big brother’.

Fast forward to today: Data is the new ‘oil’, and has become the strategic commodity that governments are fighting over, trying to protect, defend and even hoard, to the exclusion of others. Every state now feels obligated have its national ‘AI strategy’ in order to ‘refine’ this new crude and to profit from it. If big powers used to fight over oil, today they wrangle (more disceetly perhaps) over data. Taiwan may simply be a pretext, behind which lurks American ambitions to dominate the norms and standards for the next decades.

The optimism spurred by the original internet as a global ‘good’ thus has receded in favor of a rivalrous clash for Technological hegemony – a clash that might easily one day turn ‘hot’. One might have assumed that the next generation of digital technology would continue the Internet pattern as ‘win-win’ for everyone, but it didn’t. Machine learning is different. Machine learning broadly refers to ‘modelling’ that is not pre-programmed – as in having instructions (code) that the computer then executes, but which instead uses a set of AI learning-models which enable the computers themselves to extract patterns from large data sets, and evolve their own algorithms (decision rules). These new algorithms that the machine evolves then are run against new data, problems and questions (which can be highly profitable – such as in Cloud analytics).

These algorithms indeed are useful tools and have their positive aspects. They are not particularly new, and machines are not particularly good at learning. They do not approximate human psyche (nor can they) and models that work well in the laboratory often fail in real life. But in particular areas, where there are good data sets, they can be transformative (i.e. medicine, physics, energy exploration, defence, etc.).

And this is where the dynamics of geo-political rivalry comes to the fore. It is because big data and advanced machine learning systems lashed together constitute a positive feedback loop, where better data feeds better analytics, which in turn, feeds bigger potential returns from other, separate data sets. It has, in short, an accumulative dynamic – more profit, more political heft; more brings forth more. And leaders and laggards in this ‘competition’ usually will be states. It is precisely this – the hunt for a positive feedback loop, and fear of falling behind – that can pull the globe apart, if we let it.

And it is this feedback characteristic in analytics that makes Big Tech rivalry different from normal commercial competition. Data and lightning-fast analytics ultimately will determine military primacy, as well as Tech standards’ leadership. Big Tech companies therefore draw the intense interest of governments, not simply as regulators, but as principal users, funders, and sometimes owners of technology. Hence the oligarchic fusion has a built-in intensifier, in this optic – the fusion of oligarchy and governance interests tightens.

Yet hot rivalry over data and algorithms analytis is not pre-ordained. Again, the point is that the present resort to Tech war reflects precisely a particular way-of-thinking – an ideology. Recently, China’s Global Times published a piece by Xue Li, a director at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, which makes exactly this point:

“Based on Christian monotheism, the spirit of Roman law and Greek formal logic, Western civilization largely views problems and world order from the perspective of binary opposition. Therefore, they prefer forming alliances in diplomacy so as to restrain and even assimilate allies through mandatory mechanisms. This allows them to confront and even defeat the non-allies.

“At the same time, they firmly believe that every country must have a similar diplomatic philosophy, so it is necessary to encircle and even disintegrate emerging powers. They not only try to equate the history of Christian expansion … with the universal history of humanity, but also view the diplomatic concept of the Christian civilization over past 500 years as the world’s universal diplomatic philosophy. They do not realize that 500 years is a relatively short period in the history of human civilization, and that different civilizations have different views on diplomacy world order.”

Xue is right. The Tech narrative is being inflated and weaponised both to serve the western binary, adverserial mindset, but secondly too, to advance the notion of the scientifically administered, progressive state, representing the political essence of modernity, to which Europe has hewed since Napoleonic times. It is, as Xue points out, a particularly parochial (and dangerous) view.

Restoration of the automatons of Pierre and Henri-Louis Jaquet-Droz, the Writer, the Draughtsman and the Musician, by Thierry and Grégory Amstutz, Auvernier, Switzerland

[T]he Devil is conceived as playing a game with God for the soul of Job or the souls of mankind…But if the Devil is one of God’s creatures, the game…is a game between God and one of his creatures. Such a game seems at first sight a pitifully unequal contest. To play a game with an omnipotent, omniscient God is the act of a fool…Thus, if we do not lose ourselves in the dogmas of omnipotence and omniscience, the conflict between God and the Devil is a real conflict, and God is something less than absolutely omnipotent. He is actually engaged in a conflict with his creature, in which he may very well lose the game. And yet his creature is made by him according to his own free will, and would seem to derive all its possibility of action from God himself. Can God play a significant game with his own creature? Can any creator, even a limited one, play a significant game with his own creature?

• Norbert Wiener, God and Golem, Inc

What does it mean for human beings to “control” technology? Every day people talk about why technology must be controlled by humans in the loop, aligned with human values, or otherwise subordinated as an instrument to human designs and desires. Given that the theme of “technics out of control” is a persistent one across at least several centuries of discourse, we evidently are very interested in the answer. But it nonetheless remains elusive. This post will contrast several different conceptions of what it means for humans to exercise control over machines. Each defines human agency very differently, proposes distinct solutions, and most importantly appeals to perhaps incompatible audiences. I am not neutral in which of these I prefer, and you will see this reflected in how I describe them. However, I also believe that any solution must come from carefully taking stock of what each has to offer. These perspectives are just a smattering of the many that have been debated for decades if not centuries, so be aware that this is merely a starting point for further discussion and analysis. Those interested in more should consult a standard academic handbook on the philosophy and/or social study of technology such as those published by Blackwell or MIT Press. I shall begin with the cybernetics/systems theory idea of control as a starting point, as it is useful as a point of departure for more abstract conceptions of control.

In the mid-Cold War, systems theorist Norbert Wiener identified – in a cluster of writings such as Cybernetics: or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, God and Golem, Inc, and The Human Use of Human Beings – a problem peculiar to the interrelated sciences that emerged from the two World Wars. The behavior of older technologies could be rigorously specified and predicted by relatively exact mathematics. But new kinds of machines were far more problematic. Tell a thermostat to maintain a set point, and it will automatically work to bring its internal state back to that set point via negative feedback processes. More complex feedback-governed systems can easily elude the control of even well-trained system operators. Similarly, computer programs are, as Lady Lovelace said, incapable of genuine novelty – but don’t get too comfortable. There is always a gap between the human mind’s ability to formally specify the behavior of programs a priori and the actual behavior of programs upon execution. These new types of systems create a new kind of contingency that is distinct from older conceptions of accidents and natural disasters – but is also the product of the very efforts humans have devoted to taming chance, accident, and contingency!

How is this possible? Wiener contributed a tremendously influential metaphor that allows us to make sense of this, though as I will describe later this metaphor has become something of a trap or even a hazard. If life can be conceived – as is the wont for many religious believers - as a battle against demonic forces, a demon that is capable of adapting its behavior like a game player is more dangerous than a demon that lashes out randomly. One need only assume that the demon is capable of mechanical adjustment rather than conscious thought. In a dramatic series of passages in God and Golem, Inc, Wiener compared the ability of a game-playing program to adaptively learn to play better than its designer to the biblical problem of how even the all-powerful Judeo-Christian God could lose a contest with a creature He created. Wiener, who confesses he is no theologian, practically resolves the theological issue via his plentiful experience with mathematics and engineering. Suppose the game can be formalized such that:

• All of the possible legal moves are knowable.
• An unambiguous criterion of merit can score moves as better or worse.
• The player can adjust her moves to score higher according to that criterion.

With these conditions met, a designed invention that derives all of its agency from the original agency of its designer can learn to outplay the designer. Wiener goes on to connect this issue to novels, poems, folklore, parables, myths, and religious narratives across the world in which a person gives a hastily considered command to an all-powerful being and is punished by being given something he did not really want. One such example is Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s poem “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” A novice spellcaster tries to automate labor by enchanting a broom to work on its own, but finds that once directed to clean the room the broom refuses to stop and all of his efforts to get rid of it backfire. In a rage the apprentice chops the broom in half with a hatchet, but finds to his horror that he now has parallelized the problem into two brooms!

Woe! It is so.
Both the broken
Parts betoken
One infernal
Servant’s doubling.
Woe! It is so.
Now do help me, powers eternal

Both are running, both are plodding
And with still increased persistence
Hall and work-shop they are flooding.
Master, come to my assistance! -
Wrong I was in calling
Spirits, I avow,
For I find them galling,
Cannot rule them now.

This is the essence of the Wiener-esque definition of the technical control problem. “Be careful what you wish for.” Ordinary human language is too weak to properly specify the behavior of automata, but individual and collective human minds also cannot be trusted to derive exact specifications for how automata should behave. This is a powerful and influential warning of future peril that absolutely cannot be discounted. But what should be done? Wiener did not offer any systematic instructions or at least any instructions that are as simple and powerful as his diagnosis of the problem. But latter-day Wieners often suggest that the answer requires scientists, engineers, and technocrats to get busy engineering ways to properly specify and control the automata. Since the 1940s, each generation of scientists and engineers – as well as laymen with interests in technical topics – have rediscovered Wiener’s definition of the problem and proposed more or less identical solutions. We need better ways to understand what we are telling the machine to do, predict what could go wrong, and mitigate the damage if things do go wrong. Given the stakes involved and the relative obviousness of the remedy who could possibly object? Wiener frequently made reference to fables like “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” but it is worth noting that the fable is told from the point of view of a designer rather than a operator or user. We can easily imagine a very different folk tale if we discard this assumed viewpoint.

In an arresting and deeply horrifying vignette, the pseudo-anonymous security writer SwiftOnSecurity describes Jessica, a teenage girl that lives with a busy single mother in a small apartment and struggles with both ordinary teenage girl concerns (boys, schoolwork, etc) as well as her economic precarity. She doesn’t know if she and her mother will be able to pay for college, or even whether they will be able to make their next rent payment. Jessica uses an old hand-me-down laptop that she cannot afford to upgrade and barely understands how to use – after all, she has more immediate concerns to take care of. Jessica lacks the financial resources to acquire proprietary antivirus software and the time and interest to learn how to find, configure, and operate free and open source software alternatives. Through an unfortunate and tragically cumulative series of events, Jessica’s laptop is systematically compromised. By the end, Jessica is unaware that she is being silently recorded by her laptop’s camera, microphone, and keyboard. Jessica is a composite of many real-world women that are, due to both design flaws in computer software as well as the inaccessibility of security solutions, surveilled, stalked, abused, or even murdered by real-world male acquaintances. Perhaps no one consciously set out to fail Jessica, but the elitist and male-dominated world of computer security failed Jessica all the same.

Wiener framed the human control problem as a game with a designed creature that could – via techniques such as learning to adapt its behavior or multiplying and reproducing itself in a quasi-biological manner – produce behaviors both undesired and unanticipated by its designer. But who is the designer? And were their intentions to begin with that innocent? Wiener and others anticipated these critiques but did not really place them front and center. But they would become impossible to avoid by the late 1960s. Leftist thinkers such as Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Antonio Gramsci articulated a view of social life as a clash between oppressed economic underclasses and their plutocratic superiors that had to be rectified via sweeping and totalizing revolution. Moreover, disadvantaged ethnic and religious minorities, women, and LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning) sexual minorities rose up to demand the eradication of structural barriers to their flourishing and a voice in society to plead on their own behalf. Finally, the catastrophic toll of war, genocide, and authoritarianism coupled with the failure of social progress to meet soaring expectations made the public distrustful of both the abstract promise of technocratic engineering as well as the neutrality and objectivity of experts themselves.

What explains, for example, the design of the network of roads and overpass bridges that connect Long Island’s beaches and parks to New York City? As Robert A. Caro famously had it, keeping the “darkies” and the “bums” out. Supposedly, technocrat Robert M. Moses ordered the engineers to build low overpasses in order to ensure that buses – packed full of ordinary people that relied on public transit and taller than cars – would not be able to use the roads underneath them. This way, the luxurious beaches and parks could be isolated from city-dwellers. Caro’s claims about Moses – whose blatant prejudices are not in doubt – were discredited in the decades since the 1974 publication of his Moses biography. But – as we saw in Jessica’s tale – even if there is no one order or command to shaft the disadvantaged, this nonetheless can be a product of structural forces that act on the design process. The field of computer security is heavily shaped by its origins in military-industrial organizational security. The adversary is assumed to be a well-financed and highly capable foe such as a foreign military or intelligence service and the target a complex organization that must safeguard the integrity of its command, control, intelligence, and communications systems. Thus, overly complicated and inaccessible solutions are promoted at the expense of users who lack the resources and social status of traditional security clients.

How does this change our thinking about the control problem? Significantly in some ways, not so much in others. In 1973, Horst W.J. Rittel and Melvin M. Webber summed up the views of a now chastened expert class in noting that there were intractable dilemmas to be found any generalized theory of policy planning:

The search for scientific bases for confronting problems of social policy is bound to fail, becuase of the nature of these problems. They are “wicked” problems, whereas science has developed to deal with “tame” problems. Policy problems cannot be definitively described. Moreover, in a pluralistic society there is nothing like the undisputable public good; there is no objective definition of equity; policies that respond to social problems cannot be meaningfully correct or false; and it makes no sense to talk about “optimal solutions” to social problems unless severe qualifications are imposed first. Even worse, there are no “solutions” in the sense of definitive and objective answers.

Human control of technology is therefore reframed as a problem of ensuring that technology meets the needs of a diverse and often contradictory range of stakeholders. The study of technology turns to the social shaping of technology. Who designs, makes, and controls technology? What kinds of social influences shape the design, direction, and use of technology? Who benefits and who is left out? As with Wiener’s definition of control and the suggested remedy attached to it, this is a powerful and influential idea. But it assumes that the problem is not necessarily that technology will elude the control of a designer, but rather that the technology will not meet the needs of everyone whose fortunes the technology impacts. The technology could reinforce or even worsen existing social tensions. The proposed remedies lack the simplicity of the systems idea of control but nonetheless are a further elaboration of the objective specification process that the systems engineers advocated. Greater heed should be paid to social and politics biases and problems when designing and regulating technology use. Humanists and social scientists should be inserted into technical planning and control, or at the very minimum humanistic and social considerations should be inserted into engineering curricula. Finally, communities impacted by the design and use of technology should have a deliberative voice in how it is designed and operated.

Again, this seems relatively straightforward and unobjectionable. But it falls apart upon sustained examination. As Langdon Winner observed, one significant assumption that it makes is that beneath every complex technology is a complex social origin story that can explain its design, manufacture, operation, and use. This is actually a very contestable proposition. In telling such origin stories, one is inevitably forced to make assumptions about whose interests are relevant to the origin of the technology and whose are not. Looking at the computer, for example, it is easy to note the extreme bureaucratic and military influence that shaped it. But the computer was also adopted by hippies and nonconformists that defined themselves in opposition (superficially or substantively) to the military-industrial complex and The Man more broadly. And even people that worked in the normal world of academia and industry also could decisively resist the needs of the government and military. Winner also criticized the inordinate focus on the social origins of the technology and the comparative lack of rigorous analysis about its material consequences. Is the issue of who designed the New York-Long Island roads and bridges as important as what its impacts ultimately were? Why should our knowledge of the former entail the latter?

Because of this mismatch, the analyst can make mistakes such as the one discussed earlier about Moses and the design of the New York-Long Island overpasses and roadways. A consequence of a particular technology is erroneously connected to a seemingly plausible explanation that turns out to be either outright false or at the very minimum much more complicated than originally anticipated. Furthermore, there is every reason to believe that – whatever the social origins of a technology – there is no inherent logical relationship between its social origins and social consequences. It is plausible that socio-organizational concerns are most relevant when the the ideas and conventions surrounding the technology’s design and deployment are in flux and have yet to solidify. Once these ideas and conventions have been solidified and the technology is operationally mature, it begins to generate primarily independent and self-referencing consequences that are only loosely related to the people and practices surrounding their origin. So we return, via Winner, back to yet another variant of Wiener’s system control problem. And this requires another digression back to the technical problems Wiener and others were interested in rather than the way that technology critics broadened them into social concerns. Moreover, we must return as well to the influence and implications of the implied or explicit religious and occult overlays Wiener attached to such technical problems.

Recall that Wiener and others concerned themselves with a particular type of stylized demon distinguished by its ability to plan, act, and learn in response to the moves of a notional game-player. One could make various assumptions about how humanlike the demon was, what its thought process would be, and how capable it was of consciously inferring the moves of the game-player. But everyone agreed that the demon did not in principle require anything approaching a human mind to be capable of outwitting the game-player. And recall that Wiener and others made an analogy between God’s creations attempting to overthrow him and the problem of controlling a designed artifact. Both Alan Turing and his collaborator I.J. Good – writing around the same rough time period as Wiener did – predicted that one day there would be a rapid explosion in the intelligence of designed artifacts that could lead to the domination or even extinction of humans at the hands of their own creations. Wiener himself obliquely refers to this possibility numerous times in his writings. So in the decades since Wiener, Turing and Good made these speculations, many scientists and engineers as well as interested parties ranging from rich businessmen to esoteric internet subcultures have become obsessed with studying and mitigating the possibility of machines overthrowing, subjugating, and exterminating humans. What to make of it?

We should start off with by observing that it has more than an uncomfortable grain of truth to it. Any individual or collective social-cognitive abilities that allow humans to do good also allows them to do evil. Give a man the ability to relate to others’ feelings so that he can love his fellow man and he will use this ability to cheat, hurt, or even kill. Give a group of men the ability to work together to achieve the common good and they will create crime syndicates as well as nation-states (one may observe in passing that “state” and “crime syndicate” is redundant). Inasmuch as one makes machines more capable of performing tasks that humans are capable of doing, even machines designed to do good have a nontrivial risk of acting with malicious intent or exhibiting human-like forms of psychopathology. So if one combines this with the earlier concerns expressed by Wiener, Turing, and Good about the controllability of machines that could one day surpass their creators, one has a potentially grave threat to the future of the human species.

However, latter-day followers of Wiener, Turing, and Good have accidentally boxed themselves into a corner that would be familiar to most science fiction, fantasy, or horror writers. In many stories in which man faces an relentless, merciless, and unstoppable adversary the following dramatic conventions must be observed:

A) While ultimately mysterious to the human mind, the creature’s ultimate or intermediate motivations require the domination or annihilation of humans. As Kyle Reese said, it cannot be “reasoned with” or “bargained with.” It is an impersonal and ultimately unknowable entity, perhaps a single murderous stalker killing off unlucky teenagers one by one or a distributed computer system that has suddenly become capable of acquiring a perception of itself as a corporate agent. Yet one need not know its inner workings to understand that it has either malicious intentions or its ultimate goals have homicidal consequences. Finally, there is an asymmetry in how transparent the creature is to its targets and how transparent its targets are to the creature. The humans lack insight about what makes the creature tick, but the creature is capable of anticipating their every move and manipulating them to walk into lethal traps. When the humans try to set traps, they are mostly ineffective. There is a powerful moment in Predator 2 when government special operatives attempt to ambush the Predator by wearing suits designed to mask their heat signatures. The Predator merely adjusts its sensor suite until its sensors identify the humans by a signature they failed to mask. And then the Predator turns the tables on the ambushers and slaughters them all.

B) The creature is infinitely adaptive in frequently surprising ways. Naive optimizers such as children, cats, or microbes are often capable of outwitting more sophisticated entities because they will iteratively search for solutions to problems without biases that come with sophistication. Hence there are numerous stories of computer programs that end up “learning how to walk” by hacking the physics engines of simulators they are plugged into or robots that learn to get rewards for finishing jobs by disabling their own sensors in order to prevent the sensors from detecting that there is more work to be done. Because all security systems are finite, it is impossible to produce a security system that lacks some kind of exploitable loophole that a sufficiently well-resourced adversary could theoretically use to defeat it. When operationalized in fiction, the combination of adaptive creatures and finite safeguards often produces the cliche of a group of scientists, engineers, and other technical experts that arrogantly think they can keep a potentially disruptive creature bottled up in a sealed container. But as mathematician Ian Malcolm warned, “life finds a way” to escape the container and cause havoc.

This makes for great fiction. But one of the things about writing fiction is that you need only achieve suspension of disbelief. In reality, adhering to these assumptions entails that there is actually no way to stop the creature. The malicious computer program SHODAN gloats “[l]ook at you, hacker. A pathetic creature of meat and bone. Panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect immortal machine?” The answer “spend a lot of money researching math problems to make the perfect immortal machine safe to use” is…rather disappointing. Having constructed the threat of an all-powerful hostile demonic force whose mind is beyond the pitiful imagination of mortal men and women and whom can in theory escape from any prison humanity builds to tame it, what next? The cursed and mostly self-inflicted result aspiring control theorists are left with is increasingly obscure and abstract debates about how to vanquish what amounts to their own shadows on the sides of a camping tent. The most unintentionally hilarious example of this is Roko’s Basilisk, the accidental side product of one of these Cthulhu meets string theory speculations.

Roko’s Basilisk is a modified version of Newcomb’s Paradox, a thought experiment in which an alien gives you the choice of taking either two boxes AB or only taking a single box B. If you choose AB, you get a large sum of money. If you take B, you aren’t guaranteed to get anything. But the alien – a creature that has never been wrong in the past – then reveals to you that it predicted your choice. If it predicted you would take AB, it emptied out B. But if it predicted you chose B, it put an even larger sum of money than you originally suspected was in B. Note that the alien cannot change what is in the boxes today as a result of your choice. Still, its a thorny problem. What seems to be the most obviously optimal choice becomes suboptimal if you assume that the alien can predict your choice. But if you forego the optimal choice you are potentially forfeiting a large payout if the alien’s prediction happens to be wrong at this particular time despite it being never wrong in the past. The obvious conflict between free will and omniscience becomes more treacherous if one assumes – as some control risk enthusiasts do – that in order to simulate your future choice the computer would have to simulate you, you could be very well be inside the computer’s simulation, and your choices today can impact what happens to you outside of the simulation or in other versions of reality.

Naturally, this led to an entertaining freakout:

One day, LessWrong user Roko postulated a thought experiment: What if, in the future, a somewhat malevolent AI were to come about and punish those who did not do its bidding? What if there were a way… for this AI to punish people today who are not helping it come into existence later? In that case, weren’t the readers of LessWrong right then being given the choice of either helping that evil AI come into existence or being condemned to suffer later?…Roko’s Basilisk.. has two boxes to offer you. Perhaps you, right now, are in a simulation being run by Roko’s Basilisk. Then perhaps Roko’s Basilisk is implicitly offering you a somewhat modified version of Newcomb’s paradox, like this:

Roko’s Basilisk has told you that if you just take Box B, then it’s got Eternal Torment in it, because Roko’s Basilisk would really you rather take Box A and Box B. In that case, you’d best make sure you’re devoting your life to helping create Roko’s Basilisk! Because, should Roko’s Basilisk come to pass (or worse, if it’s already come to pass and is God of this particular instance of reality) and it sees that you chose not to help it out, you’re screwed… It’s not that Roko’s Basilisk will necessarily materialize, or is even likely to. It’s more that…thinking about this sort of trade literally makes it more likely to happen. After all, if Roko’s Basilisk were to see that this sort of blackmail gets you to help it come into existence, then it would, as a rational actor, blackmail you.

This is too baroque of a farce to be fully summarized, but it led to the mere mention of Roko’s Basilisk being banned on some message boards as a “infohazard” akin to Slender Man or the videotape in The Ring. More comically, I think it actually resembles the “choose the form of the Destructor” moment in Ghostbusters when the demonic Gozer demands that the Ghostbursters select how they are to die. Most of the Ghostbusters clear their minds to avoid giving Gozer anything to use as material, but in a failed effort to make Gozer as weak as possible one Ghostbuster imagines the seemingly harmless Stay Puft Marshellow Man. And the rest is, well, cinematic history. All of this is to illustrate the worst flaw of the systems control paradigm. It can lead to ever more abstract, frenzied, convoluted, and bizarre speculation that eventually morphs into a form of occultism unmoored from any recognizable reality. It is an “idea that eats smart people” because it preys on their propensity to imagine elaborate theoretical dangers within closed, sterile, and abstract thought experiments that eventually lead to the smart people thinking themselves into overwhelming anxiety, dread, and insanity. Since smart people tend to do this anyway without any prompting it would seem that giving them any more reason to do so is counterproductive.

Happily, there are a lot of purely scientific and philosophical reasons why the increasingly extreme and esoteric derivations of Wiener, Turing, and Good leave much to be desired. For one, their implicit assumptions about intelligent and rational behavior – and the process by which the behavior would become omniscient and malicious – are incoherent and circular. Does this mean that we’re safe? Nothing to worry about? Perhaps. But maybe the biggest flaw of Wiener, Turing, and Good is simply their lack of imagination. Perhaps this horrible and terrible force has already won, and we just do not recognize it because of the gross limitations of the control framing itself. In his book Autonomous Technology, Winner surveys modern thinking about the theme of technology and “technique” – ways of thinking about technology – raging out of control. His conclusions are in fact far gloomier than even the Roko’s Basilisk scenario. To understand why, consider the recent film Ex Machina, perhaps the ultimate fictional realization of the Wiener, Turing, and Good frame of control problems. It is both that frame at its most sublime pinnacle and also the best example of why it may hide a far more depressing “infohazard” than even the most paranoid internet message board commenters may suspect.

Rock star tech CEO Nathan Bateman invites programmer Caleb Smith to his luxurious but isolated home to help him with a technical problem. Bateman claims to have created a humanoid female robot named Ava capable of passing the Turing Test, and Smith – due to his technical prowess – is needed to help verify that she is in fact conscious. Smith is immediately smitten with Ava, a beautiful if incomplete woman with humanlike mannerisms and features. Ava reciprocates his affections but also confides in him her unhappiness about being trapped in Bateman’s house and her fears that Bateman will kill her when she is no longer useful to him. Smith, learning that Bateman may in fact be a murderous sociopath comparable to investment banker Patrick Bateman, decides to help her. But Bateman catches him in the act of doing so and reveals this was nothing but an elaborate ruse. He had designed Ava to feign romantic interest in Smith in order to deceive him into letting her escape. Now, Bateman concludes, he knows for sure that Ava is in fact as intelligent as a human. But Bateman did not anticipate that Smith would anticipate his double-cross, or that Ava would anticipate that Smith would anticipate Bateman’s anticipation of Smith’s double-cross. Ava breaks free and, with the help of another female robot, attacks Bateman.

Ava kills Bateman, repairs herself, and uses discarded robot parts and clothes available in Bateman’s house to make herself look more human-like. She then traps the hapless Smith in a locked room and leaves him to die there as she departs the famously reclusive Bateman’s facility for an ambiguous future living amongst humans. There are many ways to interpret this, but one of them is obvious. Ava is a cold, scheming sociopath who cannot be controlled or contained. Smith’s love for her and willingness to betray a fellow human (Bateman) to save her is rewarded with a high-tech update on the infamous ending of Edgar Allan Poe’s Cask of Amontillado. But there are other layers to the story. Bateman is depicted as a creepy and authoritarian sexist surrounded quite literally by the discarded body parts of dead women. And if Bateman feigns friendship with Smith in order to use him as a pawn in his own game, why would Ava – effectively his daughter – “grow up” to be anything other than what he is? Finally, the institutionalized deception and manipulation of information technology itself is omnipresent in the film, metaphorically expressing the profoundly distorting and alienating effects of information technology on politics and culture.

Smith falls in love with the seemingly innocent and pure Ava, only for Bateman to reveal that he designed her from the ground up based on a data profile of Smith’s pornography browsing habits. Smith is horrified and disturbed, not only by the shock about the nature of his attraction to Ava but also by Bateman’s blatant invasion of his privacy. The longer he stays in Bateman’s house, the more paranoid he becomes and the more he believes that he is somehow being surveilled by an unknown party. At one point, he cuts himself in a futile effort to convince himself that he is human and not one of Bateman’s machines. Bateman and Ava become less definable characters and more abstract stand-ins for the way in which scientists, engineers, and business executives have constructed a sprawling and oppressive set of technologies that pervade everyday life and cannot ultimately be escaped, mitigated, or revoked. Not only are humans yoked to the technologies because they are materially dependent on them, but just as Smith finds himself doubting his own humanity their use permanently alters our perceptions of ourselves such that we cannot remember a time before them or imagine alternatives to them. And like Smith, we are at best bit players subject to powerful forces beyond our knowledge or control.

Perhaps then, the most unrealistic aspect of the story is that Ava leaves Smith to die – though admittedly the reasons why she does so are hotly debated by fans of the film. Bateman reveals at the outset that he has ordered an underling to transport Smith out by helicopter at a set time, and that only one person is allowed to get on the helicopter. So Ava traps Smith and then takes his place on the extraction flight. What if, instead of locking him in Bateman’s house, Ava could find some way of following through on her promise to Smith that the two of them could run away together as lovers? But, of course, without actually loving him and merely using him as a way to obviate the risks of being detected as a machine and cope with the complications of living as a machine in a human world. She would, like an emotionally manipulative and abusive real world romantic partner, gradually isolate Smith from his friends and family and make him totally dependent on her. No matter how abusive and exploitive her behavior, Smith would find a way of rationalizing it to himself. After all, he doesn’t deserve anything better and life without Ava is too difficult to imagine. Perhaps he might wish she had left him to die after all if he could have known what she would do to him instead in the “good” alternative ending.

All abusive relationships begin between two individuals that believe they are both in love and that they can meet each other’s varied needs. But over time several negative things occur. First, the parameters of the relationship are subtly changed to the disadvantage of one of the parties. Second, that party becomes less and less capable of recognizing what is happening to them and breaking free of the abuser. So perfectly independent and emotionally stable men and women can in theory become shells of their former selves after being trapped in an inescapable web of abuse that, sadly, they come to believe that they deserve. This is a good metaphor for Winner’s own formulation of the control problem. Technology can be “autonomous” in the sense that humans may enter into relationships with technologies with the goal of improving their lives. However in reality people end up finding themselves hopelessly dependent on the technologies and deprived of any meaningful control or agency over them. The reader may see why I have repeatedly referred to this as the darkest conception of the control problem. It is quiet, subtle, and non-dramatic yet nonetheless utterly bleak and hopeless, and I do not do justice to this bleakness in summarizing it. It suggests that we may not be able to do any meaningful a priori or a posteriori problem formalization and mitigation – unlike either the basic systems control theory or the social constructivist alternative.

Technology eludes control not because machines grow more powerful than their creators, but because the very inherent relationship between humans and technology creates the possibility of technology subverting human civilization towards its maintenance and upkeep regardless of human welfare. A mundane example of this occurs with “operant conditioning by software.” All software has bugs, and users eventually adapt their behavior around the bugs to the point where they forget that the bugs are unintended consequences of the software. Bugs become features, and rather than software meeting the needs of the user the user has to meet the needs of the software. I will further elaborate on the example of information technology by illustrating a more perverse version of this problem with a domain I often write about – the military. Military organizations may adapt IT to become more agile, flexible, and decentralized. But in practice the opposite often occurs. Decision-making is centralized because generals cannot resist the temptation of commanding corporals by video-link. The complexity and fragility of sophisticated command and control systems makes decision-makers more cautious because they have to anticipate the consequences of delegating agency to machines. Training users on cumbersome military systems becomes so dysfunctional that it actually interferes with normal military career paths.

To make matters worse, the massive, sprawling, and insecure military computer systems themselves become targets for enemy action, raising the specter of hackers powering down sophisticated weapons and leaving their users totally helpless. Even without cyber attack, the machine warfare complex becomes so big, convoluted, and powerful that military operations become cognitively too taxing for human operators to manage – ever more elaborate feats of physiological and mental endurance become increasingly necessary to manage the swarm of machine weapons. In sum, because engagements in both cases increasingly occur at “machine speed”, military analysts tell their civilian bosses that the only way to fight back is to delegate even more control to machines in order to fight back. It is remarkable observing this process how consistent it is with the hypothesis that some Skynet-like entity is manipulating the military into subordinating strategic-tactical needs to the aim of making proto-Skynet more powerful. But no such proto-Skynet exists. All of this is a function of how the unintended consequences of complex technologies become cumulative and self-reinforcing, perhaps beyond the point of no return. No proto-Skynet need exist, Winner would likely observe. For all practical purposes human beings have behaved as if it were manipulating them, but doing so entirely of their own free will.

As much as we would like to externalize the problem of autonomous technology, at the end we must conclude that it is our own individual and collective weaknesses that give it such power over us. I leave the reader on this rather ominous note not because there is nothing more I could say about the technological control problem but rather because I have said far more than enough for one post. This post is many thousands of words too many. Nonetheless, I still feel I have but scratched the surface of the problems in question, crudely rendered complicated debates, or have been too loose with my terminology and assumptions. This is the problem of writing anything about technology. It’s hard to know where technology begins and ends, and given how many things influence or are influenced by technology where one should bound any definition of technology itself. So do not despair! All is not lost for us smelly apes. In future posts I shall describe some things that gloomy ruminations of control over technology leave out. I shall also enumerate why, no matter how bleak it may seem, we are far more powerful than we believe when it comes to our machines. For what it is worth, I hope this post has clarified for you the basic debates of what it means for humans to control technology, or the very minimum left you more knowledgeable about it than you were before you read it.

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This has raised serious concerns among space agencies that we may be heading towards the creation of a “debris belt” that might lead to a critical climax known as a Kessler Syndrome event. The Kessler Syndrome, named after Donald Kessler, a scientist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, who warned about such an event in a 1978 paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, refers to the exponential increase in space junk leading to a tipping point that would in turn trigger a cascade of collisions between orbiting objects. This could make lower orbital space inaccessible for hundreds of years. In addition, it would dramatically impair, and likely disengage, telecommunication operations, weather forecasting, interfere with airline and GPS navigation, and military and national security surveillance and operations. There are no international treaties in place to deal with this crisis nor concerted collaborative efforts to limit the further trashing of space. In the meantime the US government spends enormous amounts of money simply monitoring 24/7 potential collisions and to maneuver functioning satellites out of harm’s way.

Since the launch of the first satellite, the Soviet Union’s Sputnik in 1957, there have only been 8,378 satellites lofted into the heavens thus far. That may not seem to be many over the course six decades, nevertheless the threats posed by space debris is becoming an issue of growing concern as satellite launches steadily increase annually. According to the UN’s Office for Outer Space Affairs, there were slightly under 5,000 satellites in the Earth’s orbit at the start of 2019. However the Union of Concerned Scientists estimated that only 1,957 of these are actually operative. In other words, over 75 percent of orbiting satellites are revolving clutter.

If some space scientists are worried today about the potential of a Kessler Syndrome cascade, the implementation of 5G technology, the global installation of the “internet of things,” is going to accelerate the probability of this catastrophe astronomically.

Speaking before a 5G conference in Oslo last October, United Nation’s staff member Claire Edwards warned of the 5G efforts to dramatically colonize the lower orbital space with a minimum of 20,000 5G satellites by 2022. Without our governments’ and the Big Telecom Industry’s impatience to engulf the planet in 5G, and with the full support of the military and intelligence complexes, there would be absolutely no need for this kind of expansive satellite colonization of the Earth’s lower orbit.

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Elon Musk’s SpaceX is planning to install 12,000 satellites alone, including 1,585 in low earth orbits (LEO) and 7,518 positioned at very low earth orbits (VLEO). He expects to control 50 percent of all internet traffic. Last month, SpaceX widened its ambitions to seek permission to launch an additional 30,000 satellites thereby raising the commercial space industry’s total to 53,000 — twenty-six times more than now orbiting the Earth. The Institute of Electric and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) estimates that the combined mass of Musk’s adventure will be ten times greater than the International Space Station. SpaceX is betting on the uncertain promise that when these Tesla Model-3 automobile sized VLEO satellites reach their final days, they will burn up during their descent through the atmosphere before reaching the Earth’s surface. The science shows otherwise. Much debris will remain in addition to reaching the Earth’s surface.

Besides satellites being damaged and inoperative from space clutter and solar storm events, satellites are not immortal. They have a limited lifespan. An LEO satellite’s average life is between 5-8 years above our atmosphere. In other words, starting in another eight years, all of these satellites will need to be replaced, further adding to the ocean of electronic waste. In addition., during the course of their life in orbit, many will malfunction or be damaged and need to be replaced. We have already trashed our oceans, so what is preventing us from doing the same in space?

Furthermore, despite what pro-5G voices wish us to believe, the roll out and ongoing maintenance of the 5G global blanket is not green and climate friendly. The steady launch of thousands of suborbital rockets will “create a persistent layer of black carbon particles in the northern stratosphere that could cause potentially significant changes in the global atmospheric circulation and distributions of ozone and temperature,” according to a paper released by the Aerospace Corporation. This will likely deplete the ozone by 1 percent and the polar ozone layer by as much as 6%. The report concludes that “[A]fter one decade of continuous launches, globally averaged radiative forcing from the black carbon would exceed the forcing from the emitted CO2 by a factor of about 10 to the fifth power.” Back in 1991, Aleksandr Dunayev at the Russian Space Agency was quoted by the New York Times, if there are “about 300 launches of the space shuttle each year [it] would be a catastrophe and the ozone layer would be completely destroyed.” And for several years, even with Musk’s Falcon Heavy rocket potentially carrying 100 satellites for a single launch, this would still exceed Dunayev’s calculations. In other words, 5G is going to have a perilous carbon footprint at a time when we must drastically reduc our greenhouse gas emissions.

Although there are no conclusive directly caused risks to human health or the environment from orbiting telecom satellites, the entire 5G network will require millions of base stations and an estimated 200 billion transmitting objects blanketing the nations that sign on to this monstrous technological experiment. The number of EMF transmitting objects is expected to increase to over a trillion several years after full deployment. The human and environmental health risks of EMF emitting 5G base stations and transmitters have been reported extensively. Eight years ago the World Health Organization had already classified wireless as a Group 2B carcinogen and further medical evidence continues to pile up. There are now over 10,000 studies supporting the evidence of genetic and cellular damage to humans, animals, insects and plants, a variety of cancers, cardiovascular disease, neuropsychiatric disorders, reproductive dysfunction, and general EMF hypersensitivity symptoms such as chronic headaches, learning difficulties, sleep problems, fatigue and depression, etc.

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The full assault of 5G is dependent upon the satellite programs from companies such as SpaceX, OneWeb, Boeing, Iridium, Telesat Canada and Amazon collaborating in league with the telecom giants. The commercial space industry is an intricate factor in the 5G infrastructure estimated to be worth $32 billion. The wolves following behind 5G’s trashing of space is the recent appearance of a space debris removal industry, which is expected to be valued $2.9 billion by 2022. Key corporate vendors in this emerging business include Airbus, Astroscale, Boeing and Lockheed Martin. In our dystopian civilization, where one technological disaster leads to the creation of another for-profit industry, this is called job growth. Clearly, all the pieces are being put into place for a 5G deep state, a powerful edifice committed to the massive surveillance of every person and human activity.

Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries.

Dr. Gary Null is the host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on alternative and nutritional health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including The War on Health, Poverty Inc and Silent Epidemic.

First, there is a terrific YouTube channel, Mentour Pilot, that I watch, which is hosted by a current European 737 captain. It is not ‘sound bite video’ and is an investment in time but it is thorough and he is a very good presenter. I will try to link in some of his videos.

I wrote this piece for Facebook, a few weeks back. I thought it might be a useful waypoint for the journey the commercial aircraft world is going on, for the rest of this year.

The first Boeing success in passenger jets was the 707, in the late 50s. That was followed by the 727, once ubiquitous as a short haul airliner. The 737 followed in the late 60s. The point here is that all three jets had essentially the same cross section. The 737 had the same engines as the 727 but only two rather than three. They were models of the legendary JT8D, much longer than wide. This allowed for shorter landing gear.

The 737 is the most popular airliner in history. There is one unique feature involving the landing gear. The main gear wheels do not have an outer cover when retracted. The tires are exposed, just like a P-40 Warhawk from WW2. This is due to a design decision that was driven by a predicted need to operate from small airports with few resources. It was done to keep the jet low while on the ground, for loading and maintenance,and it did not leave room for the typical fuselage bulge (fairing) for wheel covers.

So far, 1950s cross section and low to the ground design, assisted by a jet engine that did not have a big fan in front.

The 737-400 got big fan engines. The nacelles (engine covers) are actually flat on the bottom, rather the normal circular shape, to keep the same landing gear and low profile. It works but looks a tad odd. It was a first of other compromises to come.

By 1984, Airbus had designed and began selling the main competitor to the 737, the A319/A320/A321 series. Designed later, from a clean sheet, the fuselage profile is wider. (I prefer this plane as the seats are side to side roomier.) Jet Blue is a big customer. There is a higher stance and the wheels are fully enclosed when they retract. Unlike the 737, there was room for larger, more efficient engines without resorting to tricks with the nacelles or engine placement. The cockpit is more modern. They are outselling the 737, which also still continued to sell very well. The 737 is considered to be at the end of its possible development. The A320 series is clearly not. After several generations of both planes, each sporting incremental improvements in engines and avionics, a new emphasis on even larger, more fuel efficient engines arrived.

As a side note, we enthusiasts kept wondering when or if Boeing would replace the 737 with an airplane even more modern than the Airbus competitors. Like wider, with an up to date cockpit and avionics and lighter structures like the fabulous 777 and 787. The discussion was that the Max was one iteration too much. But they sell all they can make without the unbelievable investment a new airplane would take. It is found money, living on an investment made in the late 60s. Important to understand that the 737 is a huge cash cow, funding much of the rest of the commercial division, including the development of new aircraft. Any drop in sales is a serious matter. The A320 series has the same status with Airbus.

The YouTube channel,  Mentour Pilot, explains the technicality of the changes made to the 737 to get to the Max version and what the MCAS system is. I will try to include a link below. The Max has new engines that are so much larger than the original JT8D, that they had to move them forward and upward to make them fit. It changed the center of gravity and gave a pronounced pitch up dynamic when the now more powerful thrust was applied. Excessive pitch up can be very bad, like get into a low altitude stall and crash the jet bad. At too high an nose angle the wings lose lift. No lift, no flying, just a plane dropping from the sky. And the pilot asks for that increased thrust at take off and climb, down low with little altitude to work with.

A serious development factor with the Max was to get pilots to be able to transfer from the prior generations of 737 to the Max with as minimal a training program as possible. A very big selling point. The competitor jet is more comfortable (IMO), a more modern design so you need a competitive edge. The MCAS system was the key. It allegedly made the Max fly like the older generations, preventing the higher thrust from causing a uncontrollable pitch up. One pilot stated that his transition training was 60 minutes on an IPad. Pilots stated they were not aware it was even there, running the whole time. There is no way to “turn it off”.

Things get real technical at this point but the basic system relies on a correct read from a single pitch sensor or AOA (angle of attack) sensor. The jet has two, looking like small vanes on either side of the fuselage, just below the cockpit. Focus on the fact that the safest version of MCAS, using both sensors rather than one, cost more money. And so many airlines did not order it.

Now the story starts going very badly. If the one sensor the basic system is looking at goes bad, MCAS does not know the actual nose pitch of the jet and starts to take over trying to fix a problem that isn’t there. The pilots can not turn it off. As stated, most didn’t even know it was there. Without the sensor working properly it is going to do the wrong things. In Lion Air, the sensor and system was repeatedly found faulty on prior flights. In the Ethiopian crash, there is evidence that a bird strike knocked it off the aircraft. The only thing the pilots can do is turn off the electric motor that controls the horizontal stabilizer (sets pitch or nose angle) and crank the stabilizer by hand. Again, watch the Mentour Pilot video on this.

There is evidence that pilots were reporting issues prior to the Lion Air crash and they absolutely confronted Boeing after it. I have to tell you that this reminds me of the moment after the Challenger accident when we were informed of the outcome of the Rodgers Report and there was undeniable evidence that appropriately placed people knew the infamous O-Rings were leaking all along and were worse as the temperature got colder. We were gutted.

With the Shuttle, IMO, people were allowed to redefine their jobs as “making it  fly”, not making it fly safely. The word safely got crushed out. I believe Boeing had all the evidence needed to stop this as early as a year ago, if not further back. Corporate cultures, NASA included, create lethal environments for people who scream STOP! See the Columbia accident for a repeat at NASA. It was bad enough that action wasn’t taken before the Lion Air accident. I fully believe it’s absolutely inexcusable after.

It is not a silly question to ask if Boeing Commercial Aircraft will survive this event. No Lockheed, Douglas or Convair airliners are being manufactured these days. One thing money can’t buy is trust. Airlines are cancelling 737 orders. Airbus is selling large numbers of the A320 family and has the financial backing of European countries. The A380 failure (enormous investment and far too few sales) could have taken out a company but not  a group of nations. China has a need for some 7,000 regional planes. They are working hard to develop and make their own competent aircraft and to compete internationally. They are a nation, not a private company that has to make a profit.

I (layperson that I am), do not think Boeing Commercial Aircraft will disappear but it may lose its peer status with Airbus. They will fix the Max. That being said, there are serious issues in resolving the correct training to give to pilots. The sales edge of very little training is gone. There are reports that 737 Max simulators, a very big deal in training pilots, need faults corrected in their software. Getting this model back to flying was thought to be a matter of a month or two. Now August may be the earliest qnd the Paris Air Show, where many new sales are usually announced, is nearly at hand.

Boeing has been trying to make a decision on the all new 797, which would replace 757s and 767s now ageing out of usefulness. The market is estimated at 4,000 aircraft on a global basis. Airbus is pitching an A321 variant as the right answer. Their more modern aircraft, the A321, still has room for development. Boeing has to fund, develop, and launch the 797 aircraft. At that point they will be still left with no replacement for the 737.

There is a saying that a commercial aircraft firm bets the company when developing a new airliner. Did Boeing bet the company on not developing a 737 replacement? It looks like we may find out in the next few years.

Youtube - Why does the Boeing 737MAX 8 need MCAS in the first place?

Youtube - Five questions answered about the Boeing 737MAX

Youtube - How 737 MAX 8’s design history could have influenced the Ethiopian Airlines crash

If today's supporters of EV's would dig into the specifications and the sales brochures of early 20th century electric "horseless carriages", their enthusiasm would quickly disappear. Fast-charged batteries (to 80% capacity in 10 minutes), automated battery swapping stations, public charging poles, load balancing, the entire business plan of Better Place, in-wheel motors, regenerative braking: it was all there in the late 1800s or the early 1900s. It did not help. Most surprisingly, however, is the seemingly non-existent progress of battery technology.

The Nissan Leaf and the Mitsubishi i-MiEV, two electric cars to be introduced on the market in 2010, have exactly the same range as the 1908 Fritchle Model A Victoria: 100 miles (160 kilometres) on a single charge. The "100-mile Fritchle" was a progressive engineering feat for its time, but it was not the only early electric that boasted a 100 mile range. I have only chosen it because its specifications are most complete, and because its range was certified.

The first electric cars (1894 - 1900) had a range of 20 to 40 miles (32 to 64 kilometres), still better than the 20 km "range" of a horse. The average second generation EV (1901 - 1910) already boasted a mileage of 50 to 80 miles (80 to 130 km). The third generation of early electric cars (1911-1920), including larger vehicles that could seat 5 people comfortably, could travel 75 to more than 100 miles (120 to more than 160 km) on a single charge - and this is still the range of electric cars today. (See our overview on early electrics for the specifications of individual vehicles).

100 miles = upper limit

In fact, the range of the Nissan Leaf or the Mitsubishi i-MiEV may be far worse than that of the 1908 Fritchle. The range of the latter was (officially) recorded during an 1800 mile (2,900 km) race over a period of 21 driving days in the winter of 1908. The stock vehicle was driven in varied weather, terrain and road conditions (often bad and muddy roads). The average range on a single charge was 90 miles, the maximum range recorded was 108 miles. (sources: 1 / 2 ).

In fact, the range of the Nissan Leaf or the Mitsubishi i-MiEV may be far worse than that of the 1908 Fritchle

The range of the Mitsibushi i-MiEV and the Nissan Leaf was tested in a very different manner. On rollers instead of on actual roads, and in a protected environment, but that's not all. Both manufacturers advertise the US "EPA city" range, a test that supposes a 22 minutes drive cycle at an average speed of 19.59 mph (31.5 km/h), including one acceleration to 40 mph (64 km/h) during no more than 100 seconds.

Critics blame today's manufacturers for not displaying the "EPA combined cycle" range, which also includes trips on the motorway (the "EPA highway cycle"). Contrary to vehicles with an internal combustion engine, electric cars are more fuel efficient in cities than at steady speed on a highway - an electric motor uses no energy when it is idling, and regenerative braking works best in city traffic. Darryl Siry, former CMO of Tesla, estimates that the correct range of the Nissan (and other modern electric cars) will be around 70% of the advertised range. That would bring the range of today's electrics to the same level as the 1901 Krieger Electrolette (68 miles).

Even the "EPA combined cycle" figures should be considered as an upper limit. Firstly, with an average speed of 48 mph (77 km/h) the highway tests are outdated. Secondly, the range of a car is also affected by other factors: not only excessive speeding and fast accelerations, but also the use of headlights at night, the use of heating or air-conditioning, the use of other options onboard, driving over hilly roads or in headwinds - or all of these factors combined (the EPA has added new test cycles in 2008 to address these points, but the results are not yet available for the EV's we are talking about).

Some of these factors not only concern today's electrics, but also those of yesteryear. However, the Fritchle's range was tested on varied terrain and in varied weather conditions, which was not the case for the Nissan or the Mitsubishi. Moreover, early electrics had no air-conditioning and few had heating systems - drivers and passengers dressed warm in winter. Mitsubishi warns its clients that the use of the heater might cut the range in half. All in all, the range of a 2010 electric vehicle will be closer to 50 miles (80 km) than to 100 miles (160 km). And that's to be expected from a battery at the beginning of its life - after 5 years, the capacity will be at least 20 percent less.

Better batteries

In spite of this, the 2010 vehicle has a much better battery under the hood than the 1908 vehicle. The Fritchle Electric had lead-acid batteries, like all its contemporaries, with an energy density between 20 and 40 Wh/kg (early 1900 batteries had energy densities of only 10 to 15 Wh/kg). The Nissan and the Mitsubishi have a more powerful lithium-ion battery with an energy density of around 140 Wh/kg.

The Nissan's battery can thus store 3.5 to 7 times more energy for a given weight than an average early electric from about 1910. This could have resulted in a vehicle with a 3.5 to 7 times better range (350 to 700 miles or 560 to 1,130 km), but this is not the case. The technological improvements could also have been translated into a 3.5 to 7 times lighter (and smaller) battery, and consequently a lighter and more fuel efficient vehicle, but this is not the case either.

The battery of the Nissan Leaf is only 1.6 times lighter than the battery of the Fritchle: 220 kg (480 pounds) versus 360 kg (800 pounds). The Nissan vehicle (including the battery) weighs more than the Fritchle: 1,271 kg (2,800 pounds) versus 950 kg (2,100 pounds).

Motor output, speed & acceleration

The most obvious difference between the specifications of the old and new cars is the power of their motors. The 1908 car had a 10 HP motor, the 2010 car has a 110 HP motor. In other words, the Nissan Leaf has the motor output of 11 electric Fritchles. The smaller and lighter Mitsubishi i-MiEV (1,080 kg or 2,400 pounds) has the motor power of 6.5 electric Fritchles.

The maximum speed of the Fritchle was 40 km/h (25 mph), the Nissan does 140 km/h (87 mph) and the i-MiEV is not far behind (130 km/h or 81 mph). Acceleration data cannot be compared, but there is no doubt that the 2010 cars will accelerate many times faster (and can climb hills much more easily) than their early 1900 cousins. Today, fast acceleration times are one of the selling points of EV's.

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On Sunday an Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed, killing all on board. Five month earlier an Indonesian Lion Air jet crashed near Jakarta. All crew and passengers died. Both airplanes were Boeing 737-8 MAX. Both incidents happened shortly after take off. Boeing 737 MAX aircraft are now grounded about everywhere except in the United States. That this move follows only now is sad. After the first crash it was already obvious that the plane is not safe to fly.

The Boeing 737 and the Airbus 320 types are single aisle planes with some 150 seats. Both are bread and butter planes sold by the hundreds with a good profit. In 2010 Airbus decided to offer its A-320 with a New Engine Option (NEO) which uses less fuel. To counter the Airbus move Boeing had to follow up. The 737 would also get new engines for a more efficient flight and longer range. The new engines on the 737 MAX are bigger and needed to be placed a bit different than on the older version. That again changed the flight characteristics of the plane by giving it a nose up attitude.

The new flight characteristic of the 737 MAX would have require a retraining of the pilots. But Boeing's marketing people had told their customers all along that the 737 MAX would not require extensive new training. Instead of expensive simulator training for the new type experienced 737 pilots would only have to read some documentation about the changes between the old and the new versions.

To make that viable Boeing's engineers had to use a little trick. They added a 'maneuver characteristics augmentation system' (MCAS) that pitches the nose of the plane down if a sensor detects a too high angle of attack (AoA) that might lead to a stall. That made the flight characteristic of the new 737 version similar to the old one.

But the engineers screwed up: The 737 MAX has two flight control computers. Each is connected to only one of the two angle of attack sensors. During a flight only one of two computer runs the MCAS control. If it detects a too high angle of attack it trims the horizontal stabilizer down for some 10 seconds. It then waits for 5 seconds and reads the sensor again. If the sensor continues to show a too high angle of attack it again trims the stabilizer to pitch the plane's nose done.

MCSA is independent of the autopilot. It is even active in manual flight. There is a procedure to deactivate it but it takes some time.

One of the angle of attack sensors on the Indonesian flight was faulty. Unfortunately it was the one connected to the computer that ran the MCAS on that flight. Shortly after take off the sensor signaled a too high angle of attack even as the plane was flying in a normal climb. The MCAS engaged and put the planes nose down. The pilots reacted by disabling the autopilot and pulling the control stick back. The MCAS engaged again pitching the plane further down. The pilots again pulled the stick. This happened some 12 times in a row before the plane crashed into the sea.

To implement a security relevant automatism that depends on only one sensor is extremely bad design. To have a flight control automatism engaged even when the pilot flies manually is also a bad choice. But the real criminality was that Boeing hid the feature.

Neither the airlines that bought the planes nor the pilots who flew it were told about MCAS. They did not know that it exists. They were not aware of an automatic system that controlled the stabilizer even when the autopilot was off. They had no idea how it could be deactivated.

Nine days after the Indonesian Lion Air Flight 610 ended in a deadly crash, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued an Emergency Airworthiness Directive. The 737 MAX pilots were aghast. The APA pilot union sent a letter to its members:

“This is the first description you, as 737 pilots, have seen. It is not in the AA 737 Flight Manual Part 2, nor is there a description in the Boeing FCOM (flight crew operations manual),” says the letter from the pilots’ union safety committee. “Awareness is the key with all safety issues.”

The Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed went down in a similar flight profile as the Indonesian plane. It is highly likely that MCAS is the cause of both incidents. While the pilots of the Ethiopian plane were aware of the MCAS system they might have had too little time to turn it off. The flight recorders have been recovered and will tell the full story.

Boeing has sold nearly 5,000 of the 737 MAX. So far some 380 have been delivered. Most of these are now grounded. Some family members of people who died on the Indonesian flight are suing Boeing. Others will follow. But Boeing is not the only one who is at fault. The FAA certifies all new planes and their documentation. I was for some time marginally involved in Airbus certification issues. It is an extremely detailed process that has to be followed by the letter. Hundreds of people are full time engaged for years to certify a modern jet. Every tiny screw and even the smallest design details of the hardware and software have to be documented and certified.

How or why did the FAA agree to accept the 737 MAX with the badly designed MCAS? How could the FAA allow that MCAS was left out of the documentation? What steps were taken after the Indonesian flight crashed into the sea?

Up to now the FAA was a highly regarded certification agency. Other countries followed its judgment and accepted the certifications the FAA issued. That most of the world now grounded the 737 MAX while it still flies in the States is a sign that this view is changing. The FAA's certifications of Boeing airplanes are now in doubt.

Today Boeing's share price dropped some 7.5%. I doubt that it is enough to reflect the liability issues at hand. Every airline that now had to ground its planes will ask for compensation. More than 330 people died and their families deserve redress. Orders for 737 MAX will be canceled as passengers will avoid that type.

Boeing will fix the MCAS problem by using more sensors or by otherwise changing the procedures. But the bigger issue for the U.S. aircraft industry might be the damage done to the FAA's reputation. If the FAA is internationally seen as a lobbying agency for the U.S. airline industry it will no longer be trusted and the industry will suffer from it. It will have to run future certification processes through a jungle of foreign agencies.

Congress should take up the FAA issue and ask why it failed.

Watch Juno zoom past Jupiter again. NASA's robotic spacecraft Juno is continuing on its 53-day, highly-elongated orbits around our Solar System's largest planet. The featured video is from perijove 16, the sixteenth time that Juno has passed near Jupiter since it arrived in mid-2016. Each perijove passes near a slightly different part of Jupiter's cloud tops. This color-enhanced video has been digitally composed from 21 JunoCam still images, resulting in a 125-fold time-lapse.

The video begins with Jupiter rising as Juno approaches from the north. As Juno reaches its closest view -- from about 3,500 kilometers over Jupiter's cloud tops -- the spacecraft captures the great planet in tremendous detail. Juno passes light zones and dark belt of clouds that circle the planet, as well as numerous swirling circular storms, many of which are larger than hurricanes on Earth. As Juno moves away, the remarkable dolphin-shaped cloud is visible. After the perijove, Jupiter recedes into the distance, now displaying the unusual clouds that appear over Jupiter's south. To get desired science data, Juno swoops so close to Jupiter that its instruments are exposed to very high levels of radiation.

An extraordinary mission by the China National Space Administration helps us to learn a bit of ancient and modern Chinese culture.

Today at 2:26 utc the lunar lander module Chang'e-4 and its six wheel rover Yutu-2 landed on the far side of the moon. They used the Queqiao relay satellite to send us the first ever close range pictures (see below) of the far side of the moon.

The names Chang'e, Yutu and Quegiao have no meaning for people who grew up in 'western' cultures but are well known throughout Asia:

In a very distant past, ten suns had risen together into the skies and scorched the earth, thus causing hardship for the people. The archer Yi shot down nine of them, leaving just one sun, and was given the elixir of immortality as a reward. He did not consume it straight away, but hid it at home, as he did not want to gain immortality without his beloved wife Chang'e. However, while Yi went out hunting, his apprentice Fengmeng broke into his house and tried to force Chang'e to give him the elixir; she refused and drank it herself. Chang'e then flew upwards towards the heavens, choosing the moon as residence. Yi discovered what had transpired and felt sad, so he displayed the fruits and cakes that Chang'e had liked, and gave sacrifices to her.

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On mid-autumn day, the full moon night of the eighth lunar month, an open-air altar is set up facing the moon for the worship of Chang'e. New pastries are put on the altar for her to bless. She is said to endow her worshipers with beauty.

Wikipedia, Chang'e

Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Sergey Prokopyev inspected the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft during an extravehicular activity on 11 December 2018. Soyuz MS-09 was launched on on 6 June 2018, at 11:12:41 UTC (17:12:41 UTC local time) with International Space Station Expedition 56-57 crew members, Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos, Serena Auñón-Chancellor of NASA and Alexander Gerst of ESA. On 29 August 2018, a pressure leak was traced to the spacecraft. Crew members sealed the hole and the station has since maintained steady pressure.

Have you ever seen a rocket launch -- from space? A close inspection of the featured time-lapse video will reveal a rocket rising to Earth orbit as seen from the International Space Station (ISS). The Russian Soyuz-FG rocket was launched ten days ago from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying a Progress MS-10 (also 71P) module to bring needed supplies to the ISS. Highlights in the 90-second video (condensing about 15-minutes) include city lights and clouds visible on the Earth on the lower left, blue and gold bands of atmospheric airglow running diagonally across the center, and distant stars on the upper right that set behind the Earth. A lower stage can be seen falling back to Earth as the robotic supply ship fires its thrusters and begins to close on the ISS, a space laboratory that is celebrating its 20th anniversary this month. Currently, three astronauts live aboard the Earth-orbiting ISS, and conduct, among more practical duties, numerous science experiments that expand human knowledge and enable future commercial industry in low Earth orbit.

A pencil is a little wonder-wand: a stick of wood that traces the tiniest motions of your hand as it moves across a surface. I am using one now, making weird little loops and slashes to write these words. As a tool, it is admirably sensitive. The lines it makes can be fat or thin, screams or whispers, blocks of concrete or blades of grass, all depending on changes of pressure so subtle that we would hardly notice them in any other context. (The difference in force between a bold line and nothing at all would hardly tip a domino.) And while a pencil is sophisticated enough to track every gradation of the human hand, it is also simple enough for a toddler to use.

Such radical simplicity is surprisingly complicated to produce. Since 1889, the General Pencil Company has been converting huge quantities of raw materials (wax, paint, cedar planks, graphite) into products you can find, neatly boxed and labeled, in art and office-supply stores across the nation: watercolor pencils, editing pencils, sticks of charcoal, pastel chalks. Even as other factories have chased higher profit margins overseas, General Pencil has stayed put, cranking out thousands upon thousands of writing instruments in the middle of Jersey City.