This is The Prophecy. The Prophecy is much more than seeing into the future. For The Prophecy sees without the limits of time. For The Prophecy sees what is, what was, and what always shall be.
said Randall Jibson, USGS scientist and lead author of this study. “Not every earthquake will trigger landslides, but we can use landslide distributions to estimate characteristics of earthquake energy and how far regional ground shaking could occur.”
“Scientists are confirming with empirical data what more than 50 million people in the eastern U.S. experienced firsthand: this was one powerful earthquake,” said USGS Director Marcia McNutt. “Calibrating the distance over which landslides occur may also help us reach back into the geologic record to look for evidence of past history of major earthquakes from the Virginia seismic zone.”
This study will help inform earthquake hazard and risk assessments as well as emergency preparedness, whether for landslides or other earthquake effects.
“What makes this new study so unique is that it provides direct observational evidence from the largest earthquake to occur in more than 100 years in the eastern U.S,” said Jibson. “Now that we know more about the power of East Coast earthquakes, equations that predict ground shaking might need to be revised.”
It is estimated that approximately one-third of the U.S. population could have felt last year’s earthquake in Virginia, more than any earthquake in U.S. history.
About 148,000 people reported their ground-shaking experiences caused by the earthquake on the USGS “Did You Feel It?” website. Shaking reports came from southeastern Canada to Florida and as far west as Texas.
In addition to the great landslide distances recorded, the landslides from the 2011 Virginia earthquake occurred in an area 20 times larger than expected from studies of worldwide earthquakes. Scientists plotted the landslide locations that were farthest out and then calculated the area enclosed by those landslides. The observed landslides from last year’s Virginia earthquake enclose an area of about 33,400 km2
, while previous studies indicated an expected area of about 1,500 km2
from an earthquake of similar magnitude.
“The landslide distances from last year’s Virginia earthquake are remarkable compared to historical landslides across the world and represent the largest distance limit ever recorded,” said Edwin Harp, USGS scientist and co-author of this study. “There are limitations to our research, but the bottom line is that we now have a better understanding of the power of East Coast earthquakes and potential damage scenarios.”
An alarming dossier compiled by Greenpeace is being sent to Western governments warning international regulators are currently incapable of properly monitoring safety at the Zaporizhzhia plant in Ukraine
Governments have been warned that there is an “unprecedented nuclear crisis” bubbling at the Zaporizhzhia power plant as close to 150 attacks have happened in the last day.
An alarming dossier compiled by Greenpeace is being sent to Western governments today which has warned that the international regulators are currently incapable of properly monitoring safety at the power station. The rights group believe that the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] is not telling the world the true extent of what is happening. Greenpeace nuclear specialists Shaun Burnie and Jan Vande Putte say because of that, “the IAEA risks normalising what remains a dangerous nuclear crisis, unprecedented in the history of nuclear power, while exaggerating its actual influence on events on the ground.”
Ukrainian soldiers fire towards Russian positions on the frontline in Zaporizhzhia region (
Image: AP)
The huge Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has six reactors on site and was captured by Russia in early March 2022. It has continually been a focal point of the war. Russia and Ukraine have repeatedly accused each other of planning to use Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant as a weapon. In the past day alone, Russian troops have shelled Zaporizhzhia the region 148 times, injuring a 23-year-old man. Now there are anxieties about a fresh outbreak of fighting at the plant.
The IAEA has too few inspectors and too many restrictions placed on their access to be able to carry out a proper investigation into the risks linked to the biggest nuclear site in Europe, according to the group. Greenpeace said the IAEA has been unable to confirm compliance because of “Russian obstruction” and even accused the global nuclear inspectorate of “taking its commitment to neutrality too far.”
In May, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi urged Russian and Ukrainian troops to follow five core principles he set out to avoid “the danger of a catastrophic incident”. These included not using the plant as storage or base for weapons or troops that could be used for an attack from the plant and to protect the site “from attacks or acts of sabotage”. Now Greenpeace’s dossier claims that, several months later, there still hasn’t been “significant reporting by the IAEA DG [director general] on the compliance or non-compliance by Russia forces of Ukraine”.
The IAEA has not commented on Greenpeace’s report but highlighted that it had had inspectors on site since September 2022 and that without their presence “the world would have no independent source of information about Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.”
Negotiating hostage releases is always a complex endeavor involving compromises with bad people. Such agreements always introduce risk. What sets this agreement apart is the inclusion of the ransom. Despite assurances from the administration that the billions are earmarked exclusively for humanitarian purposes like food and medicine, the truth lies in the sanctions waiver releasing the funds, which essentially grants Iran carte blanche for its nuclear pursuits, acts of terrorism and support to proxy conflicts.
Nothing prevents the Iranian regime from diverting this substantial sum to entities like the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and military hospitals, or worse, selling it on the black markets of Iraq or Afghanistan for cold, hard cash.
The administration’s approach to negotiations with Tehran is always marked with a sense of desperation. The eagerness to engage diplomatically with the Islamic Republic, exemplified by the hastened revival of the ill-fated nuclear deal, sends a message to Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraq about the White House’s desire to appease Iran. At the very least, Secretary of State Antony Blinken should have demanded a forthright accounting of the case of Robert Levinson, the retired FBI agent who was kidnapped in Iran in 2007. Levinson is widely thought to have died in Iranian custody, but his body remains unrecovered.
The timing here is off as well. Iran is weeks away from producing sufficient fissile material to produce a nuclear bomb, a looming peril that would likely set off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and introduce grave risk to American interests in the region. Further, the release of funds comes two days after the anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini at the hands of authorities for violating the country’s mandatory hijab rules.
The regime is once again cracking down on protests just as it prepares to receive an influx of cash. The deal sends a regrettable message not only to protesters.
Engaging in dialogue with Raisi is a mistake. The man’s past is tainted with blood; he stands accused of overseeing some of the most heinous crimes against humanity in modern history. Last year, a Swedish court found a prison official guilty of war crimes, implicating Raisi in a policy of exterminating prisoners of conscience, resulting in thousands of executions. This verdict mirrors an earlier prosecution in Germany, where Iran’s top leaders were held responsible for the state-sponsored assassination of regime opponents.
Giving Raisi a platform on the international stage sends a dangerous message to the world. It undermines the principles of justice, human rights and the rule of law that should be at the forefront of any diplomatic endeavor. By engaging with Raisi, we inadvertently legitimize a regime that has systematically violated the most basic rights of its citizens.
While the desire to bring American prisoners home is a noble one, how the administration has pursued this goal is deeply flawed. The risk of diverting $6 billion into the wrong hands and the legitimization of a leader with a blood-stained past are too great to ignore. We must stand united against the Iranian regime’s oppressive policies and its support for groups that seek to undermine global security. It is imperative that we re-evaluate this deal and work toward a more just and secure solution. Our commitment to justice and human rights demands nothing less.
Joe Buccino is the author of “Burn the Village to Save It,” about the 1968 Tet Offensive. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.
A new report found that Russian troops were likely “using the plant as a shield” in violation of the safety principles laid out by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The Russian forces occupying Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant have been violating the safety principles established by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the watchdog body has not been able to effectively monitor the situation.
“The IAEA reporting risks normalizing what remains a dangerous nuclear crisis, unprecedented in the history of nuclear power, while exaggerating its actual influence on events on the ground,” wrote report authors Shaun Burnie, a senior nuclear specialist from Greenpeace East Asia, and Jan Vande Putte, a Greenpeace Belgium radiation and nuclear expert.
“Since 2022 we have been deeply concerned by the multiple hazards and risks to the Zaporozhzhia nuclear plant posed by the Russian armed forces and the Russian state nuclear corporation, Rosatom,” Burnie and Putte wrote.
To address these concerns, Greenpeace Germany commissioned former U.K. military specialists at McKenzie Intelligence Services to report on conditions at the plant.
“The Russian armed forces and Rosatom occupation pose a constant nuclear threat to Zaporozhzhia and must be condemned.”
The result, Greenpeace said, “provides detailed evidence that the Zaporizhizhia nuclear plant is being used strategically and tactically by Russian armed forces in its illegal war against Ukraine.”
For example, the report found that Russian troops were firing from positions between one and 18 kilometers (approximately 0.6 to 11 miles) from the plant, had constructed small defensive positions with sandbags on the roofs of some of the reactor halls, and are using a type of truck near the plant that is commonly used to transport weapons and combustible material.
Making sure all important structures are protected; and
No taking actions that go against these principles.
McKenzie found evidence that Russian forces have a firing pattern of settling in one location, attacking from another, and then moving again to avoid counterattacks. In this process, they appear to be “using the plant as a shield.”
“All activity observed over the reporting period does suggest a precarious environment continues to exist at the plant,” Burnie and Putte concluded.
The Greenpeace experts also reviewed the IAEA’s monitoring in the context of McKenzie’s findings, and argued that the agency could be more upfront about its limitations and Russia’s violations.
IAEA only has four monitors for the largest nuclear plant on the continent, and they must conduct their investigation with restrictions placed on their movements and access, as well as the requirement that they make access requests a week in advance.
Despite all this, Burnie said in a statement, “the director general’s reporting is incomplete and misleading, including the assessment of Russian noncompliance with safety and security principles.”
“The Russian armed forces and Rosatom occupation pose a constant nuclear threat to Zaporozhzhia and must be condemned—but currently the IAEA is unable to fully report on the security and safety hazards they pose,” Burnie continued. “That has to change.”
The advocacy group prepared the report ahead of an IAEA discussion of the situation in Ukraine in Vienna Thursday, as well as the IAEA Board of Governors meeting October 2. On Wednesday night, Greenpeace sent copies to the board’s member governments, The Guardian reported.
IAEA did not comment on the report directly. However, it told The Guardian that, without its inspectors stationed there since September 2022, “the world would have no independent source of information about Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.”
However, Greenpeace argued the agency could take steps to improve that information.
“Greenpeace is calling on the IAEA board member governments to review the scale and scope of the IAEA mission, and to work with member states, and in particular the government of Ukraine, to institute whatever measures that will bring maximum pressure to bear on the Russian armed forces and Rosatom at the plant and to bring about an early end to the current military occupation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant,” Burnie and Putte wrote.
These measures could include an improved analysis by the IAEA and sanctions against Rosatom, Greenpeace said.
(JNS) An Israel Defense Forces drone struck Hamas terror outposts in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday evening, September 26 for the third time this week, as riots along the border with the Palestinian enclave continue to escalate.
Tensions with the Gaza Strip have exploded over the past two weeks amid a renewal of violent demonstrations along the border, and as the heads of Palestinian terrorist groups called for a new intifada against the Jewish state.
Hundreds of Palestinians have participated in the riots, hurling bombs and grenades at the security barrier, prompting Israeli forces to respond with riot dispersal methods and in some cases live fire.
The IDF also attacked Hamas posts in Gaza on Friday, Saturday and Monday in response to the riots and the renewed launch of incendiary balloons. On Monday, a terrorist opened fire on troops stationed along the frontier. An IDF soldier returned fire and identified a hit, according to the military. Earlier in the day, troops arrested two suspects attempting to infiltrate into Israeli territory before transferring them for questioning.
Jerusalem has decided to keep the Erez border crossing closed until Hamas ends the violence, thereby preventing tens of thousands of Gazans with work permits from entering Israel.
At the height of the US occupation of Iraq there were few figures American troops loathed more. As a Shiite preacher, Moqtada Al Sadr used Friday sermons to rail against the invaders who deposed Saddam Hussein. “The little serpent has left and the great serpent has come,” he told a western journalist in 2004. It led to him being labelled a firebrand cleric and, eventually, almost three years of self-imposed exile in Iran. It has not been the easiest journey but the shape-shifting 44-year-old, whose political alliance appears to have won the highest number of seats in Iraq’s election, is on the verge of a remarkable transformation. The corruption that plagues Iraq appears to have created his political opening. Cultivating an outsider image, Al Sadr has navigated shifting allegiances, military Embracing an Iraqi nationalist identity, staunchly against foreign influence, made him stand out in a field of post-invasion leaders at one time or another seemingly beholden to foreign states. He is now a potential king-maker. Born in the religious city of Najaf, the young cleric came to prominence after 2003 by raising an insurgent army, leveraging his influence as the son of a revered Grand Ayatollah killed for opposing Saddam. Armed with Kalashnikov rifles and improvised explosives, the Mahdi Army led the Shiite resistance against the American invasion. During Iraq’s brutal sectarian war in 2006-2007, the militia was accused of running death squads, seeking to remove Sunnis from areas of Baghdad. The Pentagon once declared that the group had “replaced Al Qaeda in Iraq as the most dangerous accelerant of potentially self-sustaining sectarian violence.” Al Sadr later fell foul of the Iraqi government following violence between his militiamen and the rival Shiite group, the Badr Organisation. It wasn’t until the Iraqi army cracked down on the Mahdi army in 2007 – years after an arrest warrant had been issued against Al Sadr – that the heat finally got too much. He fled to Iran – studying to become an ayatollah at the preeminent Shiite religious centre in Qom – before returning in early 2011. The Mahdi army remobilised as the Peace Companies in 2014 to fight against ISIS but today Al Sadr’s influence rests more on his ability to rouse his followers. In 2016, he reasserted his political relevance when his supporters stormed Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone in protests demanding better services and an end to corruption. He drew upon that same support base and anger to mobilise voters last weekend.
Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Al Sadr visits his father’s grave after parliamentary election results were announced, in Najaf, Iraq on May 14, 2018. Alaa Al Marjani / Reuters Photo
Campaign slogans such as “corruption is terrorism” resonated across Iraq, but particularly in neglected areas of Baghdad such as the sprawling working class neighbourhood that bears his family name. Sadr City was once Saddam City but was renamed in memory of the protests which were crushed there following Al Sadr‘s father’s murder in 1999. Uncollected rubbish piles and open sewers fuel resentment at the lack of development. Like most Iraqis, his “Sadrist” followers want change, lacking faith in the post-invasion political elite to deliver. But whereas many Iraqis stayed home on Saturday, either as a boycott or from apathy – turnout was only 44.5 per cent – the Sadrists voted in force, believing in his determination to tackle corruption. He had earlier cleaned house within his own ranks, banning current MPs – accused of corruption – from running. Instead, Al Sadr formed an alliance with Iraqi communists and secularists, allowing him to inject new faces and complete his move from sectarian militia leader to Iraqi nationalist.
The move worked, with his Sairoon bloc winning the nationwide popular vote with more than 1.3 million votes, and gaining an estimated 54 of parliament’s 329 seats. “He has undergone a transformation – he is more mature now – but that’s also true of the atmosphere around him,” said Dr Muhanad Seloom, associate lecturer in international relations at the University of Exeter. “I don’t think he’s a different beast as people say, he’s the same person, he still holds the same convictions, political and religious, but he’s a nationalist.” Al Sadr immediately began negotiations to form a coalition government, another role he is familiar with. In 2010, after the Sadrist bloc won 39 seats in parliament, Al Sadr showed his ability to bury the hatchet, playing coalition partner to former enemy Nouri Al Maliki. The pact allowed Al Maliki to retain the premiership. This time Al Sadr will be in a stronger position, though political office is not his aim. As he did not stand as a candidate himself, he cannot be named prime minister. And as in previous elections, when prime ministers have been selected with the consultation of both the US and Iran, Al Sadr‘s bloc will have to contend with rivals. The US will be wondering whether it can maintain influence with a man they once labelled a thug but may take solace in his strong stance against Iran. Iran may be more inclined toward supporting Al Sadr‘s rivals, Shiite militia leader Hadi Al Ameri, and, once again, Al Maliki. Ahead of the election, a senior Iranian official said: “We will not allow liberals and communists to govern Iraq,” a reference to Sadr’s allies in the Sairoon bloc. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, has given indications it would be willing to work with Al Sadr, who visited the kingdom last summer to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Saudi minister of state for Arab Gulf affairs and former ambassador to Iraq, Thamer Al Sabhan congratulated Iraq on its elections, tweeting: “You are truly on marching toward wisdom, patriotism and solidarity. You’ve made the decision for change towards an Iraq that raises the banners of victory with its independence, Arabism and identity.” If Al Sadr were able to form a government, it could be a step in the right direction for Iraq, Dr Seloom believes: “He wants a technocratic government, he wants Iraq to be democratic and he wants to fight corruption.”
Russian nuclear saber-rattling and coercion have loomed large throughout the Russo-Ukrainian War. This dangerous rhetoric has been amplified and radicalized by AI-powered technology — “false-flag” cyber operations, fake news, and deepfakes. Throughout the war, both sides have invoked the specter of nuclear catastrophe, including false Russian claims that Ukraine was building a “dirty bomb” and President Volodymyr Zelensky’s allegation that Russia had planted explosives to cause a nuclear disaster at a Ukrainian power plant. The world is once again forced to grapple with the psychological effects of the most destructive weapons the world has ever known in a new era of nuclear brinkmanship.
Rapid AI technological maturity raises the issue of delegating the launch authority of nuclear weapons to AI (or non–human-in-the-loop nuclear command and control systems), viewed simultaneously as dangerous and potentially stabilizing. This potential delegation is dangerous because weapons could be launched accidentally. It is potentially stabilizing because of the lower likelihood that a nuclear strike would be contemplated if retaliation was known to benefit from autonomy, machine speed, and precision. For now, at least, there is a consensus amongst nuclear-armed powers that the devastating outcome of an accidental nuclear exchange obviates any potential benefits of automating the retaliatory launch of nuclear weapons.
Regardless, it is important to grapple with a question: How might AI-enabled warfare affect human psychology during nuclear crises? Thomas Schelling’s theory of “threat that leaves something to chance” (i.e., the risk that military escalation cannot be entirely controlled) helps analysts understand how and why nuclear-armed states can manipulate risk to achieve competitive advantage in bargaining situations and how this contest of nerves, resolve, and credibility can lead states to stumble inadvertently into war. How might the dynamics of the age of AI affect Schelling’s theory? Schelling’s insights on crisis stability between nuclear-armed rivals in the age of AI-enabling technology, contextualized with the broader information ecosystem, offer fresh perspectives on the “AI-nuclear dilemma” — the intersection of technological change, strategic thinking, and nuclear risk.
In the digital age, the confluence of increased speed, truncated decision-making, dual-use technology, reduced levels of human agency, critical network vulnerabilities, and dis/misinformation injects more randomness, uncertainty, and chance into crises. This creates new pathways for unintentional (accidental, inadvertent, and catalytic) escalation to a nuclear level of conflict. New vulnerabilities and threats (perceived or otherwise) to states’ nuclear deterrence architecture in the digital era will become novel generators of accidental risk — mechanical failure, human error, false alarms, and unauthorized launches.
These vulnerabilities will make current and future crises (Russia-Ukraine, India-Pakistan, the Taiwan Straits, the Korean Peninsula, the South China Seas, etc.) resemble a multiplayer game of chicken, where the confluence of Schelling’s “something to chance” coalesces with contingency, uncertainty, luck, and the fallacy of control, under the nuclear shadow. In this dangerous game, either side can increase the risk that a crisis unintentionally blunders into nuclear war. Put simply, the risks of nuclear-armed states leveraging Schelling’s “something to chance” in AI-enabled warfare preclude any likely bargaining benefits in brinkmanship.
Doomsday Machine: Schelling’s “Little Black Box”
How might different nuclear command, control, and communication structures affect the tradeoff between chance and control? Research suggests that chance is affected by the failure of both the positive control (features and procedures that enable nuclear forces to be released when the proper authority commands it) and negative control (features that inhibit their use otherwise) of nuclear weapons. For instance, some scholars have debated the impact on crisis stability and deterrence of further automation of the nuclear command, control, and communication systems, akin to a modern-day Doomsday Machine such as Russia’s Perimetr (known in the West as “the Dead Hand”) — a Soviet-era automated nuclear retaliatory launch system, which some media reports claim now uses AI technology.
On the one hand, from a rationalist perspective, because the response of an autonomous launch device (Schelling’s “little black box”) would be contingent on an adversary’s actions —and presumably clearly communicated to the other side — strategic ambiguity would be reduced and thus its deterrence utility enhanced. In other words, the “more automatic it is, the less incentive the enemy has to test my intentions in a war of nerves, prolonging the period of risk.” In the context of mutually assured destruction, only the threat of an unrecallable weapon — activating on provocation no matter what — would be credible and thus effective. Besides, this autonomous machine would obviate the need for a human decision-maker to remain resolute in fulfilling a morally and rationally recommended threat, and by removing any doubt of the morally maximizing instincts of a free human agent in the loop, ensuring the deterrent threat is credible.
On the other hand, from a psychological perspective, by removing human agency entirely (i.e., once the device is activated there is nothing a person can do to stop it), the choice to escalate (or deescalate) a crisis falls to machines’ preprogrammed and unalterable goals. Such a goal, in turn, “automatically engulfs us both in war if the right (or wrong) combination comes up on any given day” until the demands of an actor have been complied with. The terrifying uncertainty, chance, and contingency that would transpire from this abdication of choice and control of nuclear detonation to a nonhuman agent — even if the device’s launch parameters and protocols were clearly advertised to deter aggression — would increase, as would the risk of both positive (e.g., left-of-launch cyber attack, drone swarm counterforce attack, data poisoning) and negative failure (e.g., false flag operations, AI-augmented advanced persistent threat or spoofing) of nuclear command, control, and communication systems.
Moreover, fully automating the nuclear launch process (i.e., acting without human intervention in the target acquisition, tracking, and launch) would not only circumvent the moral requirement of Just War theory — for example, the lack of legal fail-safes to prevent conflict and protect the innocent — but also violate the jus ad bellum requirement of proper authority and thus, in principle, be illegitimate.
In sum, introducing uncertainty and chance into a situation (i.e., keeping the enemy guessing) about how an actor might respond to various contingencies — and assuming clarity exists about an adversary’s intentions — may have some deterrent utility. If, unlike “madman” tactics, the outcome is in part or entirely determined by exogenous mechanisms and processes — ostensibly beyond the control and comprehension of leaders — genuine and prolonged risk is generated. As a counterpoint, a threat that derives from factors external to the participants might become less of a test of wills and resolve between adversaries, thus making it less costly — in terms of reputation and status — for one side to step back from the brink.
Human Psychology and “Threat that Leaves Something to Chance” in Algorithmic War
In The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy, Robert Jervis writes that “the workings of machines and the reaction of humans in time of stress cannot be predicted with high confidence.” Critics note that while “threats that leave something to chance” introduce the role of human behavioral decision-making into thinking about the threat credibility of coercion, the problem of commitment, and the manipulation of risk, Schelling’s research disproportionately relies on economic models of rational choice. Some scholars criticize Schelling’s core assumptions in other ways.
Two cognitive biases demonstrate that leaders are predisposed to underestimate accidental risk during crisis decision-making. First, as already described, is the “illusion of control,” which can make leaders overconfident in their ability to control events in ways that risk (especially inadvertently or accidentally) escalating a crisis or conflict. Second, leaders tend to view adversaries as more centralized, disciplined, and coordinated, and thus more in control than they are.
Furthermore, “threats that leave something to chance” neglect the emotional and evolutionary value of retaliation and violence, which are vital to understanding the processes that underpin Schelling’s theory. According to Schelling, to cause suffering, nothing is gained or protected directly; instead, “it can only make people behave to avoid it.” McDermott et al. argued in the Texas National Security Review that “the human psychology of revenge explains why and when policymakers readily commit to otherwise apparently ‘irrational’ retaliation” — central to the notion of second-strike nuclear capacity. Because a second-strike retaliation cannot prevent atomic catastrophe according to economic-rational models, it therefore has no logical basis.
An implicit assumption undergirds the notion of deterrence — in the military and other domains — that strong enough motives exist for retaliation, when even if no strategic upside accrues from launching a counterattack, an adversary should expect one nonetheless. Another paradox of deterrence is threatening to attack an enemy if they misbehave; if you can convince the other of the threat, the damage inflicted on the challenger is of little consequence. In short, deterrence is intrinsically a psychological phenomenon. It uses threats to manipulate an adversary’s risk perceptions to persuade against the utility responding with force.
Human emotion — psychological processes involving subjective change, appraisals, and intersubjective judgments that strengthen beliefs — and evolution can help explain how uncertainty, randomness, and chance are inserted into a crisis despite “rational” actors retaining a degree of control over their choices. Recent studies on evolutionary models — that go beyond traditional cognitive reflections — offer fresh insights into how specific emotions can affect credibility and deterrence. In addition to revenge, other emotions such as status-seeking, anger, fear, and even a predominantly male evolutionary predisposition for the taste of blood once a sense of victory is established accompany the diplomacy of violence. Thus, the psychological value attached to retaliation can also affect leaders’ perceptions, beliefs, and lessons from experience, which inform choices and behavior during crises. Schelling uses the term “reciprocal fear of surprise attack” — the notion that the probability of a surprise attack arises because both sides fear the same thing — to illuminate this psychological phenomenon.
A recent study on public trust in AI, for instance, demonstrates that age, gender, and specialist knowledge can affect peoples’ risk tolerance in AI-enabled applications, including AI-enabled autonomous weapons and crime prediction. These facets of human psychology may also help explain the seemingly paradoxical coexistence of advanced weapon technology that promises speed, distance, and precision (i.e., safer forms of coercion) with a continued penchant for intrinsically human contests of nerves at the brink of nuclear war. Emotional-cognitive models do not, however, necessarily directly contradict the classical rational-based ones. Instead, these models can inform and build on rational models by providing critical insights into human preferences, motives, and perceptions from an evolutionary and cognitive perspective.
Leaders operating in different political systems and temporal contexts will, of course, exhibit diverse ranges of emotional awareness and thus varying degrees of ability to regulate and control their emotions. Moreover, because disparate emotional states can elicit different perceptions of risk, leaders can become predisposed to overstate their ability to control events and understate the role of luck and chance, and thus the possibility that they misperceive others’ intentions and overestimate their ability to shape events. For instance, scared individuals are generally more risk-averse in their decisions and behavior compared to people who display rage or revenge and who are prone to misdiagnose the nature of the risks they encounter.
A fear-induced deterrent effect in the nuclear deterrence literature posits that the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons is premised on nonrational fear (or “existential bias”) as opposed to rational risk calculation, thus initiating an iterative learning process that enables existentialism deterrence to operate. Whatever the cognitive origins of these outlooks — an area about which we still know very little — they will nonetheless have fundamental effects on leaders’ threat perceptions and cognitive dispositions.
Actors are influenced by both motivated (“affect-driven”) and unmotivated (“cognitive”) biases when they judge whether the other sides pose a threat. Moreover, the impact of these psychological influences is ratcheted up during times of stress and crisis in ways that can distort an objective appreciation of threats and thus limit the potential for empathy. Individuals’ perceptions are heavily influenced by their beliefs about how the world functions, and the patterns, mental constructs, and predispositions that emerge from these are likely to present us. Jervis writes: “The decision-maker who thinks that the other side is probably hostile will see ambiguous information as confirming this image, whereas the same information about a country thought to be friendly would be taken more benignly.”
At the group level, an isolated attack by a member of the out-group is often used as a scapegoat to ascribe an “enemy image” (monolithic, evil, opportunistic, cohesive, etc.) to the group as a unitary actor to incite commitment, resolve, and strength to enable retribution — referred to by anthropologists as “third-party revenge” or “vicarious retribution.” In international relations, these intergroup dynamics that can mischaracterize an adversary and the “enemy” — whose beliefs, images, and preferences invariably shift — risk rhetorical and arm-racing escalatory retaliatory behavior associated with the security dilemma.
While possessing the ability to influence intergroup dynamics (frame events, mobilize political resources, influence the public discourse, etc.), political leaders tend to be particularly susceptible to out-group threats and thus more likely to sanction retribution for an out-group attack. A growing body of social psychology literature demonstrates that the emergence, endorsement, and, ultimately, the influence of political leaders depend on how they embody, represent, and affirm their group’s (i.e., the in-group) ideals, values, and norms — and on contrasting (or “metacontrasting”) how different these are from those of out-groups.
The digital era, characterized by mis/disinformation, social media–fueled “filter bubbles” and “echo chambers” — and rapidly diffused by automated social bots and hybrid cyborgs — is compounding the effects of inflammatory polarizing falsehoods to support anti-establishment candidates in highly popularist and partisan environments such as the 2016 and 2020 U.S. elections and 2016 Brexit referendum. According to social identity scholars Alexander Haslam and Michael Platow, there is strong evidence to suggest that people’s attraction to particular groups and their subsequent identity-affirming behavior are driven “not by personal attraction and interest, but rather by their group-level ties.” These group dynamics can expose decision-makers to increased “rhetorical entrapment” pressures, whereby alternative policy options (viable or otherwise) may be overlooked or rejected.
Most studies suggest a curvilinear trajectory in the efficiency of making decisions during times of stress. Several features of human psychology affect our ability to reason under stress. First, the large amount of information available to decision-makers is generally complex and ambiguous during crises. Machine-learning algorithms are on hand in the digital age to collate, statistically correlate, parse, and analyze vast big-data sets in real time. Second, and related, time pressures during crises place a heavy cognitive burden on individuals. Third, people working long hours with inadequate rest, and leaders enduring the immense strain of making decisions that have potentially existential implications (in the case of nuclear weapons), add further cognitive impediments to sound judgment under pressure. Taken together, these psychological impediments can hinder the ability of actors to send and receive nuanced, subtle, and complex signals to appreciate an adversary’s beliefs, images, and perception of risk — critical for effective deterrence.
Although AI-enabled tools can improve battlefield awareness and, prima facie, afford commanders more time to deliberate, they come at strategic costs, not least accelerating the pace of warfare and compressing the decision-making timeframe available to decision-makers. AI tools can also offer a potential means to reduce (or offload) people’s cognitive load and thus ease crisis-induced stress, as well as people’s susceptibility to things like cognitive bias, heuristics, and groupthink. However, a reduction in the solicitation of wide-ranging opinions to consider alternatives is unlikely to be improved by introducing new whiz-bang technology. Thus, further narrowing the window of reflection and discussion compounds existing psychological processes that can impair effective crisis (and noncrisis) decision-making, namely, avoiding difficult tradeoffs, limited empathy to view adversaries, and misperceiving the signals that others are conveying.
People’s judgments rely on capacities such as reasoning, imagination, examination, reflection, social and historical context, experience, and, importantly for crises, empathy. According to philosopher John Dewey, the goal of judgment is “to carry an incomplete [and uncertain] situation to its fulfillment.” Human judgments, and the decisions that flow from them, have an intrinsic moral and emotional dimension. Machine-learning algorithms, by contrast, generate decisions after gestating datasets through an accumulation of calculus, computation, and rule-driven rationality. As AI advances, substituting human judgment for fuzzy machine logic, humans will likely cling to the illusory veneer of their ability to retain human control and agency over AI as it develops. Thus, error-prone and flawed AI systems will continue to produce unintended consequences in fundamentally nonhuman ways.
In AI-enabled warfare, the confluence of speed, information overload, complex and tightly coupled systems, and multipolarity will likely amplify the existing propensity for people to eschew nuance and balance during crisis to keep complex and dynamic situations heuristically manageable. Therefore, mistaken beliefs about and images of an adversary — derived from pre-existing beliefs—may be compounded rather than corrected during a crisis. Moreover, crisis management conducted at indefatigable machine speed — compressing decision-making timeframes — and nonhuman agents enmeshed in the decision-making process will mean that even if unambiguous information emerges about an adversary’s intentions, time pressures will likely filter out (or restrict entirely) subtle signaling and careful deliberation of diplomacy. Thus, the difficulty actors face in simultaneously signaling resolve on an issue coupled with a willingness for restraint — that is, signaling that they will hold fire for now — will be complicated exponentially by the cognitive and technical impediments of introducing nonhuman agents to engage in (or supplant) fundamentally human endeavors.
Furthermore, cognitive studies suggest that the allure of precision, autonomy, speed, scale, and lethality, combined with people’s predisposition to anthropomorphize, cognitive offload, and automation bias, may view AI as a panacea for the cognitive fallibilities of human analysis and decision-making described above. People’s deference to machines (which preceded AI) can result from the presumption that (a) decisions result from hard empirically based science, (b) AI algorithms function at speeds and complexities beyond human capacity, or (c) because people fear being overruled or outsmarted by machines. Therefore, it is easy to see why people would be inclined to view an algorithm’s judgment (both to inform and make decisions) as authoritative, particularly as human decision-making and judgment and machine autonomy interface — at various points across the continuum — at each stage of the kill chain.
Managing Algorithmic Brinkmanship
Because of the limited empirical evidence available on nuclear escalation, threats, bluffs, and war termination, the arguments presented (much like Schelling’s own) are mostly deductive. In other words, conclusions are inferred by reference to various plausible (and contested) theoretical laws and statistical reasoning rather than empirically deduced by reason. Robust falsifiable counterfactuals that offer imaginative scenarios to challenge conventional wisdom, assumptions, and human bias (hindsight bias, heuristics, availability bias, etc.) can help fill this empirical gap. Counterfactual thinking can also avoid the trap of historical and diplomatic telos that retrospectively constructs a path-dependent causal chain that often neglects or rejects the role of uncertainty, chance, luck, overconfidence, the “illusion of control,” and cognitive bias.
Furthermore, AI machine-learning techniques (modeling, simulation, and analysis) can complement counterfactuals and low-tech table-top wargaming simulations to identify contingencies under which “perfect storms” might form — not to predict them, but rather to challenge conventional wisdom, and highlight bias and inertia, to highlight and, ideally, mitigate these conditions. American philosopher William James wrote: “Concepts, first employed to make things intelligible, are clung to often when they make them unintelligible.”
Tony Williams surveys damage at his Mineral, Va. home after an earthquake struck Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2011. Items in his home were knocked over and displaced, and the home suffered some structural damage after the most powerful earthquake to strike the East Coast in 67 years shook buildings and rattled nerves from South Carolina to New England. The quake was centered near Mineral, a small town northwest of Richmond. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
Unbeknownst to many, there are numerous fault lines in the city, but a few stand out for their size and prominence: the 125th Street Fault, the Dyckman Street Fault, the Mosholu Parkway Fault, and the East River Fault.
The 125th Street Fault is the largest, running along the street, extending from New Jersey to the East River. Part of it runs to the northern tip of Central Park, while a portion extends into Roosevelt Island.
The East River Fault looks a bit like an obtuse angle, with its top portion running parallel, to the west of Central Park, before taking a horizontal turn near 32nd St. and extending into the East River and stopping short of Brooklyn.
Just outside of the city is the Dobbs Ferry Fault, located in suburban Westchester; and the Ramapo Fault, running from eastern Pennsylvania to the mid-Hudson Valley, passing within a few miles northwest of the Indian Point Nuclear Plant, less than 40 miles north of the city and astride the intersection of two active seismic zones.
The locations of faults and the prevalence of earthquakes is generally not a concern for most New Yorkers. One reason might be that perceptions of weaker earthquakes vary widely.
On Nov. 30, a magnitude 4.1 earthquake, centered near Dover, Delaware, could be felt in nearby states. Less than 200 miles away in New York City, some people reported on social media that they felt their houses and apartments shaking. At the same time, some New Yorkers, again, did not feel anything:
KevBarNYC@KevBarNYC
Just felt my whole building shake in the East Village, NYC #earthquake#nyc
What I referred to as “a giant ghost in the apartment shaking the christmas tree” in my texts to everyone this p.m. turned out to be my very first #earthquake in #nyc!
I felt the earthquake too! I wanna be part of this! I watched the water in a water bottle go back forth for a long time after the 3 seconds of shaking. Thought about the T-rex scene from Jurassic Park and went back to work. #earthquake#nyc
We didn’t but The US Geological Survey reports that a 4.4 magnitude #earthquake has occurred in Dover, Delaware & was reportedly felt by some in the #NYC area. There are no reports of injuries or damage in #NYC at this time.#UpperEastSide#UES
Won-Young Kim is a senior research scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, which monitors and records data on earthquakes that occur in the northeast. Kim says it’s not clear who feels smaller earthquakes, as evident by a magnitude 0.8 quake in the city in December of 2004.
“Hundreds of people called local police, and police called us. Our system was unable to detect that tiny earthquake automatically,” Kim said. “We looked at it, and, indeed, there was a small signal.”
Kim says some parts of the city will feel magnitude 1 or 2 earthquakes even if the seismic activity does not result in any damage.
You have to go back to before the 20th Century, however, to find the last significant earthquake that hit the city. According to Lamont-Doherty researchers, magnitude 5.2 earthquakes occurred in 1737 and 1884. In newspaper accounts, New Yorkers described chimneys falling down and feeling the ground shake underneath them.
“1737 — that was located close to Manhattan,” Kim said. “It was very close to New York City.”
According to Kim, the 1884 quake was felt in areas in or close to the city, such as the Rockaways and Sandy Hook, New Jersey. But it was felt even as far away as Virginia and Maine.
From 1677 to 2007, there were 383 known earthquakes in a 15,000-square-mile area around New York City, researchers at Lamont-Doherty said in a 2008 study.
A 4.9 located in North Central New Jersey was felt in the city in 1783; a 4 hit Ardsley in 1985; and in 2001, magnitude 2.4 and 2.6 quakes were detected in Manhattan itself for the first time.
But the 1737 and 1884 quakes remain the only known ones of at least magnitude 5 to hit the city.
Smaller earthquakes are not to be ignored. Lamont-Doherty researchers say frequent small quakes occur in predictable ratios to larger ones and thus can be used — along with the fault lengths, detected tremors and calculations of how stress builds in the crust — to create a rough time scale.
Researchers say New York City is susceptible to at least a magnitude 5 earthquake once every 100 years, a 6 about every 670 years, and 7 about every 3,400 years.
It’s been 134 years since New York was last hit by at least a magnitude 5. When it happens next, researchers say it won’t be much like 1884.
The city’s earthquake hazard is moderate, according to the New York City Area Consortium for Earthquake Loss Mitigation (NYCEM), but experts agree that, due to its higher population and infrastructure, the damage would be significant.
Before 1995, earthquake risks were not taken into consideration for the city’s building code. Thus, Lamont-Doherty says many older buildings, such as unenforced three- to six-story buildings, could suffer major damage or crumble.
The damage an earthquake causes is also dependent on what’s in the ground. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, bedrock is more resistant to earthquakes than sediment.
The upper third of Manhattan has harder soil that is more resistant to shaking. Parts of Midtown are more susceptible, while Downtown Manhattan’s soil is even softer, according to the NYCEM.
Exceptions to Upper Manhattan’s strength? Portions of Harlem and Inwood — both areas consist of a large amount of soft soil. Central Park has the strongest soil in Manhattan, outside of a small segment of Inwood..
Not all boroughs are created equal. While the Bronx is also made of solid bedrock, the ground in Queens and Brooklyn is softer.
“If you go to Queens and Brooklyn, you have sediment, so there would be more shaking relative to Manhattan,” Kim said. “So, it’s not easy to say the damage would be the same.”
New York City is not a hotbed for seismic activity; it is not close to a tectonic plate, and it is not clear if one of the faults would be the source of a strong quake. But the predicted damage to the city has concerned many experts.
Until that day, earthquakes are isolated events for New Yorkers. Some have felt the ground move, while others have only felt shaking when subway cars travel underground.
But researchers agree: One day, the ground will wake up in the city that never sleeps, and all New Yorkers will understand what Mineral, Virginia felt when their homes rattled with the earth.
International regulators unable to properly monitor Russian-held site, says dossier sent to western leaders
Dan Sabbagh Defence and security editorThu 28 Sep 2023 00.00 EDT
International regulators are incapable of properly monitoring safety at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, according to a critical dossier compiled by Greenpeace that is being sent to western governments on Thursday.
The environmental campaign group concludes the International Atomic Energy Agency has too few inspectors at Europe’s biggest nuclear plant – four – and that there are too many restrictions placed on their access.
It argues that the IAEA is “unable to meet its mandate requirements” but it is not prepared to admit as much in public, and as a result what it describes as Russian violations of safety principles are not being called out.
Shaun Burnie and Jan Vande Putte, nuclear specialists at Greenpeace, conclude: “The IAEA risks normalising what remains a dangerous nuclear crisis, unprecedented in the history of nuclear power, while exaggerating its actual influence on events on the ground.”
The vast Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, with six reactors on site, was captured by Russia in early March 2022 and has been on the frontline of the war ever since. It is sited on the Dnipro River in central Ukraine and Ukrainian forces occupy the riverbank opposite, leaving the plant in the sights of both sides’ militaries.
Russian forces have based themselves inside the plant, potentially numbering 500-600 based on reports from early in the war. Imagery from 2022 revealed some armoured vehicles present. At times it has come under attack, including in August 2022 when shelling blew holes in the roof of a storage unit.
The IAEA declined to comment directly on the Greenpeace report but highlighted that it had had inspectors on site since September 2022, and that without their presence “the world would have no independent source of information about Europe’s largest nuclear power plant”.
All six of its reactors are in shutdown, and concerns about whether there was enough water available for cooling after the dam at Nova Kakhovka downstream was breached in June have been eased by the drilling of new wells, according to the IAEA.
But anxieties remain about the potential for a fresh outbreak of fighting at the plant, as Ukraine seeks to regain territory in its counteroffensive.
Greenpeace’s conclusions are supplemented by an open-source military assessment, written by McKenzie Intelligence. Most of the Russian troops and defences on the site are likely to be concealed, and inspectors report evidence that some areas of the plant have been mined, though it is unclear how heavily.
But relying on satellite imagery, the analysts said there was evidence that the occupiers had built sangar firing points on the roof of four of the reactor halls. Track marks, also revealed from above, demonstrate that Russia routinely fires Grad or Smerch rocket launchers at Ukrainian targets from various sites between 1km and 18km away from the plant.
The Russian military is also likely “to be using the proximity of the nuclear power plant as a shield” to deter counter-battery fire, Burnie and Vande Putte write, a breach, they argue, of the IAEA’s five safety principles first announced by its director general, Rafael Grossi, at the UN security council in May.skip past newsletter promotion
Grossi told members of the UN body that he had identified five core safety principles relating to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, including that “there should be no attack of any kind from or against the plant” and that it “should not be used as storage or a base for heavy weapons”.
The Greenpeace authors argue that, five months later, there has been “no significant reporting by the IAEA DG [director general] on the compliance or non-compliance by Russia forces or Ukraine” – and raise concerns about the level of access the on-site inspectors have around the plant.
An IAEA report in September noted that while inspectors were able to conduct independent verifications at the nuclear site, “some areas of the plant, such as reactor building rooftops or turbine halls, remained inaccessible … for long periods”. Russian managers requested inspectors give one week’s notice of all access requests, it added.
Such statements, Greenpeace said, demonstrated that the IAEA could not confirm compliance because of “Russian obstruction” – and accused the global nuclear inspectorate, which has 177 member countries including Russia and Ukraine, of “taking its commitment to neutrality too far”.
Copies of the Greenpeace dossier were submitted on Wednesday night, before publication, to a number of the IAEA’s international board of governors. They include representatives of the US, UK, France and Germany. It is understood Greenpeace has also held discussions with Ukraine about the situation at the plant.
The hostage deal is alarming because it rewards Tehran for seizing American citizens and encourages it and other outlaw regimes to take more hostages. By inciting hostage-taking, a form of state-supported human trafficking, the administration risks expanding the threats faced by American citizens abroad and boosts the asking price for hostages.
The Biden administration has reached a dangerous deal with Iran to release five American hostages in exchange for five Iranians held in U.S. jails and at least $6 billion of Iranian assets frozen in South Korea.
The hostage deal is alarming because it rewards Tehran for seizing American citizens and encourages it and other outlaw regimes to take more hostages. By inciting hostage-taking, a form of state-supported human trafficking, the administration risks expanding the threats faced by American citizens abroad and boosts the asking price for hostages.
When the Obama administration paid approximately $1.5 million to Iran to gain the release of three Americans kidnapped along the Iran-Iraq border in 2009, the price amounted to about $500,000 per hostage. In 2016, the administration paid $1.7 billion and exchanged seven jailed Iranians for five American hostages, about $340 million per hostage.
Predictably, Iran then seized more hostages. The Trump administration secured the release of some of those hostages without ransom payments, relying instead on swapping prisoners.
But the ransom payment for the latest batch of hostages has soared to about $1.2 billion per hostage. This is a disturbing trend that is likely to get worse.
The Biden administration asserts that the $6 billion ransom can only be used for humanitarian purposes, but that payment will free up funds that the regime can use for any purpose it chooses, and diversions are unlikely to be detectable. The money will bolster Iran’s embattled dictatorship, provide it with additional resources to violently repress its own people, and boost the threat posed by its missiles, drones, proxy groups, and advance its threshold nuclear weapons program.
Worse, the $6 billion ransom paid for the hostages also serves as a down payment for the emerging “informal, unwritten agreement” that President Joe Biden naively hopes will defuse growing tensions over Iran’s nuclear advances, at least until after the 2024 presidential election. His administration already has relaxed the enforcement of sanctions against Iran in a bid to revive nuclear negotiations that Tehran withdrew from last year.
Rather than the “longer and stronger” nuclear deal promised by the Biden administration when it came into office, the resulting agreement would be nonbinding, weaker than even the flawed 2015 nuclear deal, and easily discarded at Tehran’s convenience.
Moreover, Biden’s “unwritten agreement” amounts to an illegal end-run around Congress by granting Tehran sanctions relief without allowing the lawmakers to review an agreement, as stipulated by the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, the 2015 law that requires the president to submit such an arrangement to Congress.
Such a backroom deal would do nothing to address the long-term dangers of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, ballistic missile advances, and state-sponsored terrorism, not to mention the regime’s threats to assassinate former U.S. officials, threats to “wipe Israel off the map,” increasing malign activities in the Western Hemisphere and Iran’s growing strategic ties to China and to Russia, which Tehran has supported in Ukraine by providing armed drones.
It’s Deja Vu all over again.
Iran’s radical Islamist regime is not likely to be appeased by the billions of dollars offered by Biden, any more than it was by the ransoms offered by the Obama administration when Biden was vice president.
Such appeasement will undermine long-term U.S. national security interests, not advance them. It will reward the aggressive regime in Tehran with billions of dollars of sanctions relief that will embolden it, enable future aggression, encourage more hostage-taking, and expose American citizens to greater risks.
Biden also is repeating President Jimmy Carter’s mistakes during the 1979-1981 Iranian hostage crisis. President Carter undermined the U.S. negotiating position: “He repeatedly made concessions in advance to the Iranians without concrete guarantees that he would extract concessions from them in return. As a result, the White House made one retreat after another, sacrificing its own bargaining leverage and the President’s already depleted credibility in the process.”
Unfortunately, President Biden appears to be traveling down the same path. His administration turns a blind eye to Iran’s mounting threats to Israel while working harder to integrate Iran into the region than integrating Israel into the region by expanding the Abraham Accords to include Saudi Arabia and other Arab states.
Congress must exercise its oversight responsibilities to examine the implications of Biden’s hostage deal, as well as his administration’s broader negotiations with Iran, which amount to little more than kicking a can of nuclear worms down the road.
@baumwoll
The Prophecy Blog 