Looking for Silver Bullets

By Dee Smith

Recently, I hosted a not-for-attribution presentation on the causes and effects of climate change with a colleague who has expert scientific knowledge in the field. Discussion focused on causes (both human and natural), and particularly on the very dire consequences that we have already missed the opportunity to prevent or even mitigate. For example, it now seems inevitable that some parts of the world that are currently occupied will become uninhabitable by humans.

The question on quite a few people’s minds was “Okay, what should we do? Give us some action steps.” As one said: “What’s the silver bullet?”

If only it were that simple.

Instead, it is almost insuperably complex. Elements affecting climate change range from human factors, including not only increased CO2 emissions, but also increased methane emissions—and methane is between 24 and 80 times more powerful in the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas than carbon. Methane also comes from the melting of permafrost, itself a consequence of warming arctic climates.

Natural elements affecting the climate include solar radiation cycles, the El Niño/La Niña oscillation, the strength of the Gulf Stream, the temperatures and amount of ice in the Arctic and Antarctic, the stability of the jet stream and global ocean temperatures.

We were already in a part of the natural climate cycle in which temperatures were increasing. Human activity since about 1980 tipped the cycle into a real crisis. The consequences are almost too catastrophic to think about: mass migration (something like the equivalent of the entire population of the US in forced relocation around the globe), heat in which humans cannot live, potentially extreme food shortages, increased military confrontation over resources, and so forth. As much of this is now unavoidable, preparation and attempted mitigation are our only choices.

So, of course we are looking for silver bullets.

The truth is that silver-bullet solutions are much more complex than mainstream media proclaim. For example, the latest silver bullet in the climate change arena is Stratospheric Aerosol Injection: putting large quantities of substances such as sulphur dioxide (SO2) into the upper atmosphere to block the amount of sunlight reaching the earth and thereby slow warming.

This is said to be supported by an analysis of the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in June 1991. The eruption injected 15 million tons of SO2 into the atmosphere. But a comprehensive analysis indicates that it did not lower global temperatures by 0.5 degrees Celsius for 18 months, as claimed. Global temperatures did not decline for the rest of 1991 after the eruption. They did decline by 0.2 °C from March to December 1992, but that timeframe coincided with a sharp drop in solar radiation and a shift from a weak El Niño effect to a neutral one. It was the combination of factors that accounted for the drop in temperature. The 1815 eruption of Mt. Tambora was about 18 times the size of the Mt. Pinatubo eruption and did have an impact for 2-3 years in lowering temperature. However, the effects were wildly uneven and often calamitous: no monsoons, disastrous floods, crop failures, and droughts.

The amount of SO2 injection needed to make an impact is a magnitude higher than generally believed and its effects are beyond our ability to predict. Unintended consequences are a real danger with planetary engineering projects like SAI. The system is too complex, and we simply do not know what the outcomes of SAI would be. For example, it might cool some areas and dramatically heat others.

We have created the most complex civilization that has ever existed, but more and more — or perhaps because of its very complexity — people want simple solutions. And climate change is arguably the most complex global problem we have ever faced.

“Just tell me what to do . . .” The well-intentioned will then generally try to do it for a while, until they forget, or it becomes too inconvenient, or the exceptions to doing it start to surmount complying with it. Or until it is imposed in a Draconian manner.

A few years ago, when the mantra of the day was reducing travel to reduce carbon emissions, someone closely involved with a very influential environmental organization said to me: “Well, I’m certainly not going to stop flying around . . .” And that is the attitude most of us have in the end. Most humans only make changes that we don’t want to make when there is literally no alternative.

But sometimes surviving requires very significant changes, whether in one's personal life or far beyond. Your leg is diseased and has to come off, if you want to live. The more you ignore the warning signs, the longer you put it off, the harder it will be to deal with.

We simply don’t want to hear any of this. And so, denial wins out. Or at least, things go along, business-as-usual, until it is too late.

But if we can accept that there are no silver bullets, and deny our denial, we may be able to find some partial — yet real, cumulative and productive — ways to proceed.

The New Geography of Semiconductors

The US CHIPS and Science Act just passed its two-year anniversary, and most coverage focused on the part President Biden emphasized: “America is now on track to produce nearly 30% of the global supply of leading-edge chips by 2032, up from zero only two years ago. … [M]y CHIPS and Science Act is bringing chips manufacturing back to America, strengthening global supply chains.” But strengthening global supply chains and increasing American production are two very different activities. SIG’s view is that the US is playing several distinct games at once: improving US production, isolating the Chinese technology industry, and strengthening certain alliances. The last game is the most interesting one, because it involves US industrial policy as an aspect of US foreign policy.

The US has been somewhat coy so far at naming the countries that will be part of the CHIPS Act-related International Technology and Security Innovation (ITSI) Fund, but the leading candidates are Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Costa Rica, Panama, Mexico and possibly Kenya. ITSI is administered by the State Department, and Jose Fernandez, undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment, has said there will be seven core partners without committing to a specific list. He has been promoting the effort as connected to the US wish to secure semiconductor supply chains that avoid China, a window of opportunity he said “may not be here forever.” 

One reason for the vagueness is probably that the Commerce Department has its own priorities, including the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) Agreement Relating to Supply Chain Resilience. IPEF includes three of the possible seven: Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. Then again, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, before the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity, stressed the Western Hemisphere Semiconductor Initiative, which also encompasses three ITSI countries (Mexico, Panama and Costa Rica). 

Some overseas coverage has even mentioned Puerto Rico as being on the CHIPS list, probably confusing the US territory with Costa Rica — although Puerto Rico would also be happy to get involved.

But if inter-departmental rivalry and confused ambitions have made the details a bit murky, the fundamental policy thrust is clear. The US is using the CHIPS and Science Act to both strengthen US semiconductor production and turn a difficult fact — that US domestic wages are high and US engineering talent has better options — into a strategic win. 

The seven countries that have apparently been selected are wildly different. In many ways, the most interesting is Vietnam. It has been making a very strong push to educate engineers, who then become available at a much lower wage than engineers elsewhere: Vietnamese engineers earn half the pay of their Malaysian peers and a sixth of the going rate in Taiwan. This industrial planning is occurring under a Communist government undergoing a leadership transition after 13 years of tight-fisted rule by party general secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, who recently died at age 80. His successor, To Lam, was the tough public-security chief under Trong. His first official trip in his new position will be to China, Vietnam’s largest (and growing) trading partner. Vietnam has a very long history of conflict with China, but of course it also has a shorter but intense history of conflict with the US.

From a distance, it does look odd that the US, hoping to secure its supply chain for vital semiconductor technology, would be relying in part on one Communist state to help weaken another Communist state. 

However, US relations with all seven of the countries on the CHIPS list have had their fraught moments, with the exception of Costa Rica. The technology struggle with China is forcing the US alliance structure into strange new forms. The cold reality is that traditional allies like Japan, South Korea, Australia, Taiwan and others are at demographic plateaus and are priced out of the lower reaches of semiconductor production. A new tier of alliances is being created to deal with this problem. 

The choices being made are often more economic than political — Vietnam’s economy is simply excelling at taking advantage of US-China conflict, as is Mexico’s under left-wing governments that cannot be described as pro-US. However, China was once itself a favored partner despite its ideological coloring — and then, as Xi Jinping’s power and political direction became clear, it was no longer. 

Trade and the US Presidential Campaign

One of the less heralded political-economic transformations of the past decade has been the shift from a bipartisan consensus for free trade to a bipartisan consensus against it. This was not due to any change in economic thinking; professors continue to teach the logic of comparative advantage. Rather, it was mainly due to a political reaction against income inequality and deindustrialization in wealthy democracies combined with fears of Chinese weaponization of international dependence on Chinese production. The current presidential campaign is being portrayed in apocalyptic terms by both sides. Yet on the critical question of how the United States interacts with the global economy there is an identifiable bipartisan center that is likely to grow.

Donald Trump’s aggressive use of tariffs as president was criticized by Democrats and most economists, but many of those tariffs were kept under President Biden. Biden’s use of industrial policy to direct federal resources at helping certain US industries do better in international competition was itself a variant of the “economic nationalism” that Trump had advocated, but one that involved spending tax dollars rather than imposing costs on imports and thereby on consumers. The Biden administration’s recent imposition of 100% tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, while symbolic — Chinese electric-vehicle sales in the US are negligible — continues the theme of imposing costs on imports.

In his campaign, Trump has doubled down on promising to implement tariffs, even saying that he would use them to replace some types of tax as government revenue. Such proposals have alarmed Republican officials as well as Democrats. 

Kamala Harris’s position is difficult to locate. In public statements before becoming vice-president, she vigorously attacked what she called “Trump’s trade tax” which resulted in “American families spending as much as $1.4 billion more on everything from shampoo to washing machines” and “farmers in Iowa with soybeans rotting in bins, looking at bankruptcy.” At the same time, she stressed that she wanted trade deals to “protect American workers” and to address climate change. Her opposition on these grounds to NAFTA, USMCA (NAFTA’s replacement, negotiated under Trump) and the Obama-negotiated Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was, taken as a whole, unusual for a Democrat of generally mainstream views aspiring to national office.

Harris did not work directly on trade issues as vice-president. The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) is the only Biden-era international agreement that has embodied the types of environmental initiatives that Harris has praised. She supported it in Thailand in 2022. While it is unclear how much priority would be given to it under Harris, the reality is that multilateral trade talks are popular among American allies but not Americans. The leading examples are the Asian Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP, led by China); the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP); and the IPEF.

The CPTPP is a particularly egregious example, given that it was a US initiative until President Trump withdrew. (Hillary Clinton, in her campaign against Trump, distanced herself from the pact.) Democrats had perceived the political power of Trump’s economic nationalism and tacked in his direction. Ever since, there has been little domestic political support for re-engaging with the TPP. Yet the US-brokered past has lived on, its membership including such key US allies and trading partners as Japan (which picked up leadership when the US left), Australia, Canada and, in 2023, Britain.

Harris will at least be less likely than Biden to ignore or downplay such multilateral talks as those that are ongoing for the IPEF. But Harris needs working-class and union voters, who tend to distrust international trade, and she and Tim Walz have green commitments that are not easy to honor in trade deals. Harris is unlikely to declare new tariffs although she might continue existing ones, such as on EVs and their components. Her environmental and jobs priorities will find positive expression in continuing Biden’s industrial policies, with their strong green and strategic anti-China aspects.

Trump’s prioritization of tariffs is likely to be tempered in office. In addition, he does not have Harris’s environmentalist commitments and he was, after all, the last president to bring in a major trade deal, the USMCA.

Whoever is in the White House, that agreement will be due for a review in July 2026. Measured by the growth in US trade deficits with Mexico and Canada, the USMCA cannot be reckoned a great success. Yet the bipartisan consensus on trade and industrial policy suggests it will be celebrated anyway.

Are We Already in World War III?

By Dee Smith

The question in the title has been asked in policy forums, and often dismissed. But there are recent developments that make it important to take the possibility more seriously.

First in importance is what is being called an “Axis of Disruption”: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea. These states are arguably more coordinated today than the old Axis powers were at the beginning of World War II. They have mutually reinforcing interests. Primary among these is an interest in weakening the United States, Western allies and the so-called rules-based international order.

It is not so much that Axis of Disruption goals are shared as it is that the interests of the players are self-reinforcing. China would welcome a situation in which the military and diplomatic attention of the US is drawn into simultaneous conflicts in the Middle East, centered on an Israel-Iran confrontation, and in the North China Sea, focused on sharpened tensions between North and South Korea. The focus of the US on these two theaters of action would draw its capabilities away from other areas, particularly Taiwan. Russia likewise would prefer to have the attention of the US pulled away from Ukraine. In this analysis, China would be the sub rosa moving force behind seemingly disparate actions — all of which satisfy the interests of it and its allies.

Simultaneous major military action by members of the Axis of Disruption in the Korean Peninsula, Taiwan/South China Sea, the Middle East and Ukraine could be considered to constitute world war.

Is this realistic?

It depends to a significant extent on whether China really wants to pursue a forceful reunification with Taiwan, and if so, when. China considers Taiwan a breakaway province, and in some ways sees it as the last pillar standing of the “century of humiliation” Chinese schoolchildren are taught: “100 years of national disgrace” of China at the hands of Western powers and Japan. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has clearly stated that he sees his legacy as the reunification of Taiwan with the mainland, by force or otherwise. For several reasons, including changing demographics (an older population and the results of the one-child policy in the 20th century), his own advancing age, and the changes resulting from ever closer ties between tech sectors and defense, Xi may see his window of opportunity closing.

On the other side, the outlines of a broad counter-alliance are emerging. NATO has significantly expanded its territory along the border of Russia. A number of cooperative groups of nations who share strategic interests in various ways — the European Union, the “Five Eyes” (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the  US, with varying collaboration with France, Israel, Singapore, South Korea and Japan), AUKUS (Australia, UK, US), the Quad (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue: Australia, India, Japan, and the US), the Abraham Accords (Bahrain, Israel, the UAE and, indirectly, Morocco and the US) — seem also to be consolidating into something like an informal alliance.

The US has just entered into an expanded defense agreement with Japan. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before the US Congress on 24 July could almost be read as a statement of intent to go to war with Iran.

The situation is unlike the Cold War, in which there were more clearly delineated sides. There are many countries sitting on the fence with regard to their alliances. The new non-aligned movement is expanding, with significant “middle powers” like Turkey exploring options outside its long-standing associations with the West. It is no longer outlandish to ask if Turkey might leave NATO. The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) group of nations is expanding, with countries like Egypt joining, and is seeking to introduce its own currency.

India is both a member of the US-oriented Quad and of the BRICS group, and the UAE of BRICS and the Abraham Accords. Which way would they fall if the proverbial push comes to shove?

Adding further instability, the US dollar — the world’s reserve currency — is under mounting pressure due to continuing US government budget deficits and the US debt load of over $35 trillion. A number of nations, China among them, have been dumping dollars and buying gold (this includes Chinese households). The US may eventually find it difficult to finance its debt.

When a world war begins is often a matter of hindsight. It still seems unimaginable to many, and it is to be fervently hoped it never happens. “Recency bias” is the belief that the near future will be like the recent past. Most people cannot believe things outside their experience can happen. But they can . . . and do.

Private Fusion Takes Off

US-led Western policies aimed at the technological and, in effect, commercial isolation of China — exacerbated by China’s ongoing cooperation with Russia despite sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine — have created a situation in which leading-edge innovation is becoming fragmented in both the private and the governmental spheres. This is inherently inefficient. Yet it is also spurring state investment at new levels, such that the overall effect, over the medium term, could well net out as positive. Nuclear fusion is a particularly interesting example that merits a closer look.

Fusion has always seemed five years away, rather as Brazil has proverbially been called “the country of the future … and it always will be.” (The unkind line is attributed to De Gaulle.) But as the US-China dynamic has become an enduring feature of geopolitics investment in fusion has increased dramatically, particularly in terms of public-private partnerships.

The main global fusion project since the 1980s has been the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, known as ITER. Born from a meeting between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev and based in southern France, ITER has the US, China and Russia among its permanent members. Each member state contributes some particular part of the central project, a reactor based on the tokamak method. There is no practical way to excise one or another ITER participant. Sanctions against Russia for invading Ukraine have so far not dislodged Russia from ITER, although its participation has been controversial since the invasion.

ITER illustrates a type of international cooperation typical of the Reagan-Gorbachev era and now apparently a thing of the past. However, the swift decline of globalist cooperation has been matched in the fusion sector by a growth in government financing, private investment and public-private partnerships. Public funding, according to a new report from the Fusion Industry Association, went from $271 million in 2023 to $426 million in 2024 so far, or roughly half the private share of $900 million. (Funding to date is on the order of $7 billion.) The US, EU, British and Japanese governments have all shown significantly increased interest in working with private fusion companies. ITER itself is turning more toward private partnerships. Meanwhile the Chinese government continues to prioritize fusion work in government labs, universities like Tsinghua, and the (Chinese-style) private sector.

The growth of the fusion industry is a demonstration of how private-sector approaches differ from governmental ones. Tokamak is just one of several leading technologies for fusion, and companies are placing a wide variety of bets on various technologies, any one of which could prove to be the winner. The number of private fusion companies has doubled in the past six years. Some major companies, like Shine (US, $800 million in funding to date), are working to develop viable revenue streams, such as producing Lutetium for cancer treatment, while keeping an eye on the moonshot of clean, cheap energy. Others, like tiny Terra Fusion, also in the US, are startups pursuing one particular technology that they hope will be the breakthrough. Roughly half of fusion companies are in the US. Globally, most fusion companies have university and defense partners — in the US case, the national labs (managed by the Department of Energy, as their earliest priority was nuclear power) and the Department of Defense.

There is also significant US participation from ARPA, one of many echoes of the Internet  development process of the 1970s. (The earliest Internet was the ARPAnet.) Unlike in that era, geopolitical fears are now combined with climate change.  Fusion promises an end to carbon-based energy systems. However inefficient it might be to have politically structured private sectors, it could also prove to bring a technological solution to climate change sooner than would otherwise have been the case.