U.S. Navy "Rusting Out," Falling Behind China, Russian Hackers Disable Electric Vehicles? The State of "Greater Idaho," The Farming Controversy Hits (Very) Close to Home (The Five for 05/25/21)
Hey,
Welcome to The Five.
It’s amazing that almost none of these stories have hit the front page…and all have huge potential consequences.
So let’s dive in.
[one]
The U.S. Navy is publicly admitting…it’s rusted out (literally and figuratively) and falling behind China.
The Associated Press reports:
The Navy fleet currently falls shy of 300 ships, despite a stated goal of 355 ships. The Chinese fleet now outnumbers the U.S. Navy.
“The Chinese are closer to our goal than we are,” said Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who sits on the Appropriation Committee and wants to boost Navy spending.
Democratic Sen. Jack Reed and Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe, chairman and ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, have criticized delays and cost overruns on lead ships, and urged the Navy to ensure technology is ready before putting it aboard.
Members of Congress, who control the purse strings, say the Navy must also spend billions of dollars more in its public shipyards that maintain the ships.
The AP spoke to Lauren Thompson, a defense analyst who says a major issue is launching new classes of ships before the technology is “fully baked.”
“It tried too hard to leap ahead technologically at the beginning of the last decade,” Thompson said. “As a result, every vessel that it started had severe problems.”
For example, the electric-drive Zumwalt, commissioned in 2016, was designed to get close to shore to bombard land targets. But its 155mm advanced gun system is being scrapped because each rocket-propelled, GPS-guided shell costs nearly as much as a cruise missile.
Meanwhile, two versions of the speedy littoral combat ship were envisioned as chasing down pirate ships off Somalia. One version had class-wide propulsion problems, and both were criticized as too lightly armored for open ocean combat. The Navy is already scrapping the first four of them.
The most expensive ship in Navy history, meanwhile, is the newest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford. It has had problems with the system that launches jets and the elevators that move weapons, among other things. It was supposed to cost $10.5 billion but the price tag has risen to $13.3 billion and "four weapons elevators are still not finished and the reliability of key systems is low," said Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma.
This is one of those stories that could be absolutely cataclysmic for the country, and yet nobody is paying attention to it.
The purpose of The Five is to highlight the important stuff that’s bumped from the front page by celebrity gossip and political clapback culture that crowds out the “real news” and I can think of no better example.
The Navy issue isn’t urgent, but it is vital.
Either this gets fixed, or we risk grave consequences.
[two]
When Americans were experiencing gas prices as high as $7/gallon due to the Colonial pipeline cyberattack by Russian hacker group DARKSIDE, U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm famously quipped ““If you drive an electric car, this would not be affecting you.”
Granholm was criticized for the comment, as not everyone can afford a $70K Tesla, or $110K for the soon-to-be-relaunched GMC Hummer electric. But electric vehicles don’t strengthen the U.S. against cyber attacks on our energy supplies. In fact, more widespread electric vehicle (EV) adoption may increase America’s vulnerability to hackers.
Yahoo reports:
But the nation’s electric grid is far from secure itself. The ice storm in Texas left some parts of the states in the dark for over a week. California utilities have been forced to disrupt power on several occasions due to storms or to prevent equipment from setting wildfires. The state also faced rolling blackouts a few years back due to energy supply shortages.
Much of the electric grid has been in place since the 1950s and 1960s, according to industry data, with some sections actually dating back to the late 19th century.
The massive SolarWinds cyberattack saw a number of utilities hacked, though none were shut down — whether through luck or careful planning. There hasn’t been a successful cyberattack against bulk power in the last 15 to 20 years, according to American Public Power Association President and CEO Joy Ditto, but that “doesn’t mean it can’t happen.”
While electric utilities are the only infrastructure sector required to meet strict cybersecurity standards, "we don't think they're the end of the story," Ditto said. "We have to be in a kind of a posture of continuous improvement in our sector, given how critical it is."
UPDATE: One of the biggest problems with EV’s is the high cost vs. gas powered counterparts. That trend started to reverse when Ford announced the F-150 Lightning, an electric version of the popular pickup starting at $39,000. The cheaper price tag doesn’t address the underlying power grid issues, but it does make the EV market much more interesting.
[three]
Who is the true owner of an iPhone?
Who is the true owner of an $800,000 tractor?
If you answered “the person who bought it,” the correct answer in 2021 is…kinda.
The Federal Trade Commission released a report this month about the “Right to Repair,” controversy, in which companies are intentionally trying to make product un-repairable, unless you come back to the company who sold it to you for service.
Companies restrict repair rights in eight ways: They may physically restrict access to the product by using special fasteners or screws, withhold both repair tools and diagnostic software, deliberately design a product in a way that makes it less safe to fix, or restrict access to telematics (when applicable). Companies also sometimes use trademarks and patents to make third-party repair more difficult, install software locks, or wield EULAs against customers.
The FTC clearly did its homework. The report covers everything from the recent laptop trend towards soldered SSDs and RAM to farm and military equipment. The document notes many of the arguments manufacturers make for why citizens shouldn’t be allowed to repair products they legally purchased are based on problems the manufacturers themselves create.
For example, manufacturers have argued that battery replacements should only be performed by licensed techs in authorized shops because battery pouches are fragile and difficult to remove when glued into a chassis. Additionally, a customer who attempts to swap the lithium 18650 battery cell inside a device may replace it with a battery that meets the physical form factor requirement but utilizes a different battery chemistry than the original cell.
The FTC report notes, however, that manufacturers “can choose to make products safer to repair when considering a product’s design.” Swapping one type of 18650 cell for another could legitimately cause thermal runaway, the FTC acknowledges, but “[t]his risk could be significantly reduced if the chemistry of an 18650 appeared on its label and manufacturers identified the particular 18650 chemistries used in their devices… such disclosure would impose an arguably minimal burden on manufacturers and would likely serve a valuable purpose.” It may well be dangerous to remove a glued-in battery, the FTC affirms, but why is the battery in such a fragile pouch and secured with glue as opposed to sturdy and user-serviceable?
This issue heated up earlier this year after John Deere went back on a promise to farmers to make their tractors more repairable by 2021, which the company famous for it’s green and gold equipment has not kept.
Personally, I switched from Mac to PC (and Android phones) after the former made it’s products as irreparable as possible sometime after the death of visionary CEO Steve Jobs. Prior to that, I would upgrade my own computer with faster components when they came out.
When you purchase a product, make sure you understand when and how it can be repaired. Otherwise, you may get home and find out you never really “owned” it in the first place.
[four]
Part of Oregon has voted to leave the state and join Idaho.
The Idaho Statesman reports:
Idaho could be getting a lot bigger if some voters in Oregon get their way.
Thousands of people in eastern Oregon voted Tuesday for their elected officials to consider ditching their state and becoming part of Idaho.
Voters in Sherman, Lake, Grant, Baker and Malheur counties all voted for ballot measures that would lead to them becoming Idahoans. People in Union and Jefferson counties had already voted in favor during the November election.
Proponents say the “swaths of conservative, pro-Trump, anti-tax voters” in rural parts of Oregon have more in common with Idaho, which they want to claim as their own state. Oregon, which currently has two Democratic senators in the U.S. Senate, has voted blue in presidential elections since 1988, while Idaho, with two Republican U.S. senators, has voted red in presidential contests since 1968.
“This election proves that rural Oregon wants out of Oregon,” Mike McCarter, president of Citizens for Greater Idaho, said in a news release. “If we’re allowed to vote for which government officials we want, we should be allowed to vote for which government we want as well.”
Growing up in west-central, IL, I constantly felt the heavy boot of Chicago on the necks of the rest of the state, ranging from agriculture policy to hunting laws (in IL, you can’t shoot a turkey past noon, based on…I’m not kidding, a quote from George Washington that they’re easier to hunt after lunch).
On one hand, things are going to get really complicated if we’re constantly re-drawing state lines.
On the other, yeah, I feel that.
[five]
A national story about a Biden administration loan forgiveness program is playing out very close to my hometown of Fishhook, IL (see marks on the map above).
I don’t know Shade Lewis, but wouldn’t be surprised if we’d crossed paths at one time.
Yahoo reports:
Shade Lewis had just come in from feeding his cows one sunny spring afternoon when he opened a letter that could change his life: The government was offering to pay off his $200,000 farm loan, part of a new debt relief program created by Democrats to help farmers who have endured generations of racial discrimination.
It was a windfall for a 29-year-old who has spent the past decade scratching out a living as the only Black farmer in his corner of northeastern Missouri, where signposts quoting Genesis line the soybean fields and traffic signals warn drivers to go slow because it is planting season.
But the $4 billion fund has angered conservative white farmers who say they are being unfairly excluded because of their race. And it has plunged Lewis and other farmers of color into a new culture war over race, money and power in U.S. farming.
“You can feel the tension,” Lewis said. “We’ve caught a lot of heat from the conservative Caucasian farmers.”
The debt relief is redress set aside for what the government calls “socially disadvantaged farmers” — Black, Hispanic, Indigenous and other nonwhite workers who have endured a long history of discrimination, from violence and land theft in the Jim Crow South to banks and federal farm offices that refused them loans or government benefits that went to white farmers.
The program is part of a broader effort by the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress to confront how racial injustice has shaped U.S. farming, which is overwhelmingly white. Black farm advocacy groups say that nearly all the land, profit and subsidies go to the biggest, most powerful farm operations, leaving Black farmers with little. But in large portions of rural America, the payments threaten to further anger white conservative farmers.
At the time of this writing, I have no idea if my half-Asian cousins could receive any payoff options (they may not have land debt to qualify). Raised on the same road as me (quite literally) I can tell you they didn’t experience historical disadvantages, as the first generation of kids born to half Laotian/half white households after part of their line fled Communism and entered the U.S. in the 1970’s.
I can understand both the white and minority farmers strong opinions here.
Not sure who wins here, but at the rate the government is printing money…the coming inflation and high interest rates will make losers of us all.
I hope Shade Lewis saves as much as he can, now that the Biden program paid off his farm. With the way things are going, he’s going to need every dollar he can scrape together in the coming years.
We all will.
[epilogue]
Actor Tim Rose who portrays Admiral Akbar in the Star Wars universe (Return of the Jedi—1983, The Force Awakens—2015, The Last Jedi—2017) was born in 1956 in Pittsfield, IL according to his IMDB page.
I watched Return of the Jedi for the first time in 2nd grade in Pittsfield, and had no idea that one of the characters was born just blocks from my childhood home.
Until the next one,
-sth