Link drop June 2020

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February's "Disruptive technologies" text did not mention one potential tech: Hydrogen (fusion) warheads without a fission stage. "H-bombs" require the energy of a fission device (Uranium or Plutonium fission) for an intensive x-ray radiation burst that triggers the second (fusion) stage.
Nuclear warheads could be much simpler to produce and have less fallout without that first stage. One of the ideas for alternatives to this fission stage is to use incredibly highly energetic materials. And one idea for what materials could qualify is metallic hydrogen.

It passed way under my radar, but physicists actually have made progress and created metallic hydrogen a while ago.

https://www.sciencealert.com/hydrogen-has-been-turned-into-a-metal-for-the-first-time-ever

https://www.sciencealert.com/french-scientists-believe-they-have-created-metallic-hydrogen

I am not enough of a physics nerd to understand whether this is really a potentially practical alternative or what the (physical) effects of such a no-fission nuclear warhead would be. Still, there might actually be disruptive technologies in the nuclear warhead corner.

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bgr.com/2020/05/30/minnesota-protest-contact-tracing-used-to-track-demonstrators/

Hence the discussion about the privacy design of the German tracking app. There's absolutely zero reason to trust ANY government with surveillance capabilities or surveillance authority.

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It's striking that there's this time around almost no talk of much public investment as a counter-'cyclical' economic stimulus. Economists do actually not know for sure whether the recovery from the corona-induced crisis will be a sharp V-shaped one or a more drawn-out one. We might not even have any full recovery (=no return to the old trend line of GDP growth), just as many Western countries had after the 2008 crisis.

Medical experts don't know whether the pandemic will force us to have at least mildly economy-depressing countermeasures for a few more weeks, months or up to two years.

This seems like excuses for not investing much in the future, but consider this; there's no substantial harm in setting up investment efforts, but then being unable to execute them because of continued troubles. There is considerable harm in the opposite scenario of needing such stimulus, but not having it.

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some personal notes:

The news are almost all-round horrible in 2020. Meanwhile, I have a very pleasant private life in 2020. There's a little feeling of guilt over this.

On another note, I expect to completely lose faith in median human intelligence by about 2030 and will then turn into a very, very cynical person. I should limit my exposure to morons to slow this process down. (This is not about commenters at D&F; it's a much more general issue.)

I have tried to come up with some real breakthrough military theory thinking or a concept for some 'magnum opus' on land or air warfare comparable to the 80 book pages equivalent series that I did on modern surface warships. It appears that you cannot force such a thing. Yet, I have recently toyed around with the idea of a military theory/military history commentary on Sun Tzu's "Art of War". This classic is very small and still interesting.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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