John Robb's Weblog

Iran: coming to a head on July 5th

This reply was expected (Reuters): The United States rejected on Friday Iranian calls for more time to study an offer of incentives to curb its nuclear activities, insisting Tehran must respond by a G8 deadline next week. The Group of Eight industrialised nations told Iran on Thursday they wanted a "clear and substantive response" on July 5 to an offer of incentives to stop enriching uranium, but two Iranian officials immediately declared more time was needed.Given this statement....

Taking sides in ethnic cleansing

Classic SNAFU detailed in the NY Times by Ed Wong that is going to replay itself out over and over:

1) Shiite militia men ride into a Sunni area looking for revenge for a suicide bombing.
2) The locals defend themselves.
3) Shiite policemen aide the militiamen caught in the firefight.
4) The US comes to the aide of the policemen with helicopters and airstrikes.

If this doesn't set off warning bells that things are beyond redemption, I don't know what will. The time to leave has already passed.

Wow Thanks!

Reihan Salam writing for SLATE: "Not all would-be futurists are quite so pie-in-the-sky. For my money, John Robb, a former Air Force officer and tech guru, is the futurists' futurist."

When will Microsoft pull an IBM and crush R&D spending?

Big changes at Microsoft ahead? I am wondering when Microsoft will follow IBM and slash its R&D budget to boost profitability. Both companies made big bets on R&D to reverse the inevitable slide from being top dog -- which was futile due to a platform shift. Gerstner realized this and killed it at IBM (the stock zoomed afterwards). Will Ozzie? They would have been much better off spending $5 billion a year on funding start-ups rather than on relatively useless internal R&D.

Lots of Great Presentations on the Future

The Coming Anarchy pointed me to this great site on "rethinking the future." I started with Peter Schwartz and I am working my way through them. Will make notes as I go forward.

Surprisingly, I am not as impressed as I thought I would be with Peter Schwartz (still have 30 minutes to go in the presentation). He is a "big" company/country strategist. His fatal bias: that they are the primary movers of the future. It's kind of funny, given that his presentation is about predicting surprises by eliminating biases.

Iran's Stance Hardens

"Negotiations with the United States are of no use for us. We have no use for such negotiations. We will not negotiate with anyone over the undeniable right of nuclear technology and using it," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said (BBC). Hard to back down from this. This is on a fast track to the EBO collapse scenario.

Classic Russian Response

BBC: Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered special services to "find and destroy" the killers of four Russian diplomats taken hostage in Iraq.

The One Percent Doctrine and IRAN

Ron Suskind discusses his book (interview) on the Bush doctrine (which he revises to call Cheney's "One Percent Doctrine": Interdicting with all possible malice, low probability high impact events). This is the philosophy I used when I wrote the "Collapsing Iran" article. The experience in Iraq hasn't changed this policy at all.

Ron also completely backs up my premise that there are diminishing returns from terrorism. In effect, al Qaeda won't attack until it can conduct an attack that is bigger than 9/11. Very cool.

Going after the NYTimes

By all accounts, the NYTimes story on the use of SWIFT banking data by US national security agencies wasn't a blow to national security -- terrorist groups are unlikely to either care about this nor do they actually use the system for financial transfers. It was in actuality more of an embarrassment in that it pushes our allies away (they don't like the US snooping on global systems that they rely upon) and harms the image of the US as a safe financial system for global investors (for anyone that is worried that the US can and will target them in the future, and this list is getting longer). Domestically, it is shaping up to be an us vs. them political issue that will help to accelerate the path of US fragmentation. So let's continue to pile on. A global guerrilla future awaits!

Expanding Manufactured Primary Loyalties

WSJ: Dubbed the "Big Guy" by Mexican cops who once charged him with murdering a judge, Alejandro López Villanueva heads a militant squatters' organization of 34,000 families who owe him their homes -- and often their jobs -- and who have become his political soldiers. The 40-year-old Mr. López Villanueva, who wears his dark curly hair at shoulder length, can dispatch 10,000 protesters within two hours to block intersections and snarl traffic, which he does to settle scores and seek benefits for his followers... Street bosses like Mr. López Villanueva have long been a staple of Mexican politics, but their influence was supposed to fade as the country's democracy matured. Instead, their power has expanded because they can provide jobs and housing to thousands of families made desperate by a sluggish economy. Mr. López Villanueva also added a 10,000-vehicle fleet of gypsy cabs, which operate unmolested by the city. His brother and brother-in-law have held city council seats. "This city is a monster," he said. "It's so big that you go out and do a blockade and there's barely a reaction. Deliveries get through, people get to work."