Afghanistan has fallen to the Taliban. With shocking speed and ease, the central government in Kabul collapsed, and Islamist fighters took the city over, along with all the other significant cities in the countries. America’s nearly 20-year-old nation building project has ended in a stinging defeat. The optics of the U.S. evacuation were also terrible.
https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-islamic-state-group-e10e038baea732dae879c11234507f81
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq7gP0KiL1E
Here’s a timeline of important milestones over the last six months in Afghanistan:
- February 8: For the first time since the 2001 invasion, U.S. military forces in Afghanistan go one year without suffering a single death. The security situation appears stable.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/02/08/us-goes-one-year-without-combat-death-afghanistan-taliban-warns-against-reneging-peace-deal.html - April 13: Joe Biden announces all remaining U.S. troops will leave Afghanistan by the symbolic date of September 11, 2021.
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/biden-afghanistan-announcement/index.html - June 23: As the Taliban make surprisingly fast territorial gains, U.S. intelligence agencies warn they could take over the country as little as six months after the U.S. departure (March 11, 2022). That’s presented as a worst-case scenario.
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/559894-intel-analysis-afghan-government-could-collapse-six-months-after-us-troops - August 15: The Taliban seize control of Kabul.
https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-taliban-kabul-bagram-e1ed33fe0c665ee67ba132c51b8e32a5 - August 30: The last U.S. troops leave Afghanistan.
Most of Afghanistan’s air force defected to Uzbekistan.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/42040/dozens-of-u-s-bought-afghan-air-force-aircraft-are-now-orphaned-at-an-uzbek-airfield
Is Afghanistan really a “Graveyard of Empires”?
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/08/28/afghanistan-graveyard-britain-us-russia-506990
“China in ten years will not exist as a functional nation-state.” [I’m deeply skeptical, but I admire the boldness of the prediction.]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIFly9M8K80
India now has two aircraft carriers, but it’s questionable whether they need them. In a war with Pakistan, India’s existing land bases will be sufficient for launching airstrikes, and in a war with China, India would cause the same damage at lower cost if it invested in attack subs and destroyers.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/41834/indias-indigenous-aircraft-carrier-has-gone-to-sea-for-the-first-time
‘The unmanned helicopters could be used to surveil areas around the numerous small islands of the highly contested Pacific, for example, using their LIDAR systems to scout for undersea sensors, small unmanned underwater vehicles, or naval mines. In a special operations application, they could provide very up-to-date intelligence on the littorals around target areas prior to swimmer insertions. The same could be said for preparing and scouting for larger amphibious operations.’
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/41902/small-unmanned-helicopters-used-lasers-to-map-littorals-in-recent-u-s-navy-tests
This clip shows how ergonomics affect a tank’s performance. The Soviet T-62’s cramped interior and poor arrangement of its ammunition slows the human from loading the main gun. Western tanks are larger and more spacious inside, allowing crewmen to load the main guns quickly and safely. Simple metrics like the size of the main gun, armor thickness, and speed don’t even tell half the story of how good a tank is. Lame-sounding things like crew ergonomics, aiming devices, and communications technology are very important.
https://youtu.be/a__ks1GgJRU?t=1504
The first handheld Gauss rifle has been unveiled, and it looks horrible. For $3,775, you get an extremely heavy, long weapon that is only as powerful as a .22 plinker rifle.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/41872/preorders-for-this-electromagnetic-rifle-are-being-taken-for-3775
This guy built the bow and arrow version of the Smartgun from “Aliens.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MkrNVic7pw
Algeria has finally stopped using leaded gasoline, meaning the substance is now banned worldwide. Leaded gas lowers human IQ and makes people more violent.
https://www.npr.org/2021/08/30/1031429212/the-world-has-finally-stopped-using-leaded-gasoline-algeria-used-the-last-stockp
The concept of using supercomputer models to predict the future is sound, though this particular attempt to pull it off is likely to fail (like at least one previous Pentagon attempt). There will come a day when mass surveillance and personality modeling of every human give rise to a real-time, 1:1 computer simulation of the planet. At that point, it will be possible to extrapolate into the future some unknown amount of time to predict events. The 1:1 model would also let its owners understand how their own actions would affect the population, the economy, and other human systems. Large government agencies (including militaries) and big corporations will start using the simulation results to take surreptitious actions carefully designed to further their own goals. To the rest of us, the events would look disconnected and even unimportant, but they would actually be part of an intricate plan to sway the public’s (or some segment of it) thinking.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/41771/the-pentagon-is-experimenting-with-using-artificial-intelligence-to-see-days-in-advance
Elon Musk announced Tesla would unveil a prototype humanoid robot sometime in 2022. Keep in mind that it’s one thing to build a single, million-dollar prototype that can only be shown at demo events, and another to be mass-producing useful robots that people other than the super-rich can afford. I predict robots will be common in the households of upper-income Americans by the end of the 2030s, and they will be able to do hours of useful work per day.
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-bot-robot-price-specs-2022/
‘Despite their name, materials known as supersolids are not super rigid. Instead, they combine the ordered structure of a solid with the properties of a superfluid — a substance that flows without friction. To picture a supersolid, consider an ice cube immersed in liquid water, with frictionless flow of the water through the cube.’
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02191-5
As Earth’s days have grown longer, so has the oxygen content of its atmosphere. The link could be explained by photosynthetic bacteria, which can produce more oxygen when the days are longer.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/08/totally-new-idea-suggests-longer-days-early-earth-set-stage-complex-life
Progress is being made in the field of achiral DNA synthesis. In labs, we can painstakingly manufacture nucleic acids and proteins that are “mirror images” of naturally occurring versions of those same molecules. Since other organisms lack the enzymes to digest them, achiral biomolecules are extremely stable, meaning they might be optimal for DNA data storage.
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/08/02/the-mirror-world
India has approved the world’s first “DNA vaccine,” which is meant to fight COVID-19.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-57774294
A man’s age has less of an effect on the genetic quality of his sperm than previously thought. Additionally, it’s somewhat common for genetically healthy males to produce sperm with genetic defects, meaning it’s more important to sequence the DNA of a sperm donor’s sperm than it is to sequence the DNA from any other part of his body.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-08-human-sperm-mutations-disease-children.html
These LED face masks are the predecessors of much more advanced personal cloaking outfits we will have in 30 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2yTo6r92zw
Thanks to a stubborn minority of Americans refusing to get vaccinated, the U.S. COVID-19 death toll is now predicted to reach 700,000 by mid-October. Had the vaccination rate not dropped a few months ago, that milestone wouldn’t have been reached until well into 2022.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-deaths-100k-more-predicted-united-states/