More speculation about what an incipient Biden Administration would bring, this time from Mallory Shelbourne at USNI News:

An administration under former Vice President Joe Biden would likely reassess the nuclear posture review, according to the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said during a virtual event hosted by the Center for a New American Security on Thursday that, should Biden win next week’s presidential election, his administration is expected to take a second look at how the United States approaches nuclear weapons.

“I’m confident that the Biden administration – if it comes – is going to feel this way, that we need to reexamine the nuclear posture review,” Smith said.
“So we’re going to sort of reexamine that issue, and I don’t know where we’re going to come out. But I am quite confident that you’re going to have a new look at the nuclear posture review.”

Smith said he is not convinced either way as to whether the U.S. needs a nuclear triad, but that he is “skeptical” of the position that the triad is required to deter potential adversaries.

I’ve written extensively on deterrence. In summary we are presently missing one of the key components of deterrence. If Americans don’t believe we would ever use nuclear weapons or that their use against an adversary could ever be justified, how can we expect potential adversaries to do so? When such flawed deterrence inevitably fails, we will see nuclear weapons used against us or our interests. Will we retaliate as massively as we must? Or will we try to respond with targeted force, leaving ourselves open for a riposte?

The thrust of Zack Cooper and Aine Tyrell’s piece at RealClearWorld on the subject above is that they don’t think much of reciprocity:

It is tempting to assert that American policymakers should reset the U.S.-China relationship on reciprocal terms. Ironically, when the U.S. ambassador to China suggested this in an op-ed last month, it was rejected by People’s Daily. Meanwhile, China’s ambassador to the United States publishes frequently in top American newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post. Of course, neither newspaper is available in China, nor are Twitter, Facebook, Google, or dozens of other American media and social media companies.

Here’s what they would prefer:

The United States must not attempt to mirror China’s information controls. As Laura Rosenberger and Lindsey Gorman have written, “the paradox for liberal democracies in this environment is that in quashing adversarial information efforts outright, they diminish the values of openness and inclusion for which they stand.” Reciprocity may be tempting, but as the saying goes, “never wrestle with a pig in the mud; you’ll both get dirty, and the pig likes it.” The best strategy for democracies is to adhere to an approach rooted in core democratic principles like openness and transparency.

The reality is that espousing democratic values on the international stage is only effective if the United States leads by example at home. How can we possibly hope to encourage open and truthful communication abroad if we do not practice what we preach? Countries are looking to the United States to model the best practices of liberal democracies, not copy the worst practices of the Communist Party. With the U.S. presidential election fast approaching, U.S. leaders should remember that sticking to key principles is the best competitive strategy. To prevail in the competition with China, the United States must live up to our standards, not Beijing’s.

I think they’re whistling past a graveyard. The problem with reciprocity in our dealings with China, particularly Chinese information warfare, is how grossly we underestimate the scale of the conflict. Ignore the theft of intellectual or military secrets. On any given day an enormous proportion of total Internet traffic consists of Chinese attempts at hacking, direct or indirect, undoubtedly state-sponsored, likely upwards of 30% of all traffic. The cost of that in equipment, electrical power, security software, and human labor is enormous.

Let’s put it this way. Given the scale of China’s cyber-offensive, of what would genuine reciprocity consist? Anything less is not reciprocity at all.

The editors of the Washington Post have begun their own predictions on the contours of a Biden Administration. Here’s what they predict:

1. Competence would be restored to the senior ranks of government.

Some, such as possible Biden White House chief of staff (and occasional Post contributor) Ronald A. Klain, boast Washington résumés almost as long as Mr. Biden’s. Others, such as vice-presidential candidate Kamala D. Harris, are relative newcomers. The common attribute is a record of accomplishment in public service.

I found the single gravest defect of the Trump Administration was Trump’s inability to attract and manage good staff. While I agree that President Biden would mark a return of the “usual suspects” in government I’m not as optimistic as they that it would be a step in the right direction. I wish they had expanded on Sen. Harris’s accomplishments in office. To me her primary accomplishment appears to be getting elected.

2. The U. S. would rejoin international institutions that the Trump Administration had left.

Mr. Biden would rejoin international organizations and agreements that Mr. Trump renounced, such as the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accord, and he would restore executive-branch protections to “dreamers,” the undocumented immigrants brought to this country as children.

I’m not as convinced as they of the benignity of the Paris accord, which seemed to me largely a cover for China’s excessive emissions. That the emissions of non-signatory U. S. should have decreased while those of signatories Canada and China increased make their view pretty confusing to me.

3. Aid for the unmployed, businesses, and state governments.

If it is not passed by a lame-duck Congress, he would push a long-stalled economic rescue package to support the unemployed, underemployed, businesses and public services struggling to cope with the ever-worsening coronavirus pandemic. He would release evidence-based national coronavirus guidance, ramp up testing and funnel money into safe school reopenings.

While I believe that the Congress has been remiss in refusing to compromise to pass another COVID-19 aid package, I’m not nuts about the primary sticking point to an agreement: the provisions to bail out profligate state governments including that of my own state of Illinois.

4. He would expand the Affordable Care Act.

The past several years have proved the public wants the government to ensure that all Americans have decent health-care coverage; Mr. Biden would build on Obamacare, adding a public option to do that.

Since this has been a major promise during both Mr. Biden’s primary and general election campaigns, it would be quite surprising if he didn’t follow through with it. The major question is whether the Pelosi House will allow him to stop there or will insist on Medicare for All or a similar plan.

5. He would repeal the tax cuts of the last four years.

He would make a down payment on addressing wealth inequality by repealing Mr. Trump’s wasteful tax cuts for the wealthy.

This, too, has been a campaign promise. I’m skeptical that changes in tax policy will do much about wealth inequality or even about income inequality with which it is more closely associated. I think that income inequality is more a consequence of the financialization of the economy and immigration policies which the WaPo says that Mr. Biden supports.

6. Racial healing.

The project of racial healing would long outlast Mr. Biden’s term, because it will take culture change as well as policy reform. But, among other things, he would unleash the Justice Department to once again demand change from deficient police departments; focus on crime prevention rather than incarceration by diverting people with substance abuse or mental health problems into treatment; and collect better crime data so states can develop evidence-based alternatives to warehousing generations of human beings.

I will believe these measures produce “racial healing” when I see it.

7. Return to the status quo ante in foreign policy.

On foreign affairs, Mr. Biden would put the United States back on the side of the good guys: traditional allies who cherish freedom and democracy. Mr. Trump has courted and supported dictators and strongmen across the world. Mr. Biden would call a summit of the world’s democracies to regroup and promote basic liberal values, because having more unfree countries in the world is both a moral and a security threat to the United States.

I’m afraid that this remark reflects a grave misconception on the part of the editors. I do not believe that the U. S. has ever been considered “on the side of the good guys” (not even by the French when we were liberating France from the Germans during WWII) and I’m not actually sure which “good guys” he means. The Germans? The Brits and French with whom we collaborated on bringing down the Libyan government, resulting in a decade of chaos and misery including the return of slave markets there?

And a return to the status quo ante concerns me. I don’t relish the notion of invading other countries as much as the editors apparently do.

In a similar vein at The Hill Albert Hunt riffles through a Rolodex of the usual suspects to speculate on the members of the Biden cabinet:

We can expect a Biden administration, as promised, to be the most diverse in history. There’d be roles for Bernie Sanders-Elizabeth Warren people, important political supporters and campaign aides. There is even talk of a few prominent Republicans, which is dicier than before. One mentioned is former Sen. Jeff Flake, a principled Arizona anti-Trump conservative, one of the most admirable people in public life — but other than maybe a major immigration post, he would be out of sync with a Biden government.

What matters most when facing domestic and foreign crises is who the president surrounds himself with in the major posts: State, Defense, Treasury, Attorney General and the very top White House staff.

Despite that build-up the candidates he singles out tend to be very male and very pale with only a few exceptions. One of those, Susan Rice for Secretary of State, fills me with foreboding. She’s an advocate of the “Responsibility to Protect” which I believe is a ticket for unending unjust war.

At RealClearPolitics Neal Simon (no relation to Neil) presents two starkly contrasting scenarios for what might happen if Joe Biden is elected president:

If next week’s election results match recent polling, Joe Biden and his party will have control of the House, the Senate and the presidency in 2021. The Nov. 3 battle in the Great Red vs. Blue War will have been won decisively by the Democrats.

The military analogy feels sadly appropriate in an era when one in six Americans think violence is justified if their candidate loses. Within today’s climate of division, Biden and his victorious generals will be left with a crucial and binary choice: retaliation or reconciliation.

Here’s “retaliation”:

Retaliation for Democrats would entail a full-throttled, comprehensive attempt, using every available executive and legislative power, to advance a liberal agenda. Blue power would be consolidated by forming a Cabinet constructed to unite Biden’s party rather than the country, perhaps by appointing Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to high level positions.

In Congress, with 51 votes in the Senate, Democrats would abolish the filibuster and advance long-dreamed-about legislation without a single Republican vote. In the judiciary, Democrats would pack the Supreme Court by adding two, or even four, new justices. Blood-thirsty activists would level criminal charges against Donald Trump and even some of his aides and family members. It would all feel good for liberals who have endured not only Trump’s lying and abuse of power, but also his outright denial of their legitimacy as political opponents.

while here’s “reconciliation”:

In the executive branch, it starts with President Biden forming a Cabinet designed to increase national unity rather than party loyalty. Imagine a Secretary of State Mitt Romney or Veterans Affairs Secretary Martha McSally. There’s precedent for this type of bipartisanship. In another divided time, first term Republican President Abraham Lincoln named two Democrats among his seven Cabinet members, including Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.

In Congress, a good beginning would be replacing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi as Senate majority leader and speaker of the House. There’s too much bad blood between the Republicans and the two of them to allow any real chance of reconciliation. In their place, Democratic legislators would choose more moderate leaders who haven’t been molded by, and scarred by, decades of partisan fighting. Senate Democrats would maintain the filibuster, one of the last remaining tools that encourages cross-partisan cooperation. And they would commit to not passing legislation without at least a few Republican votes.

President Biden would take additional, purposeful actions to signal to the nation that we’re entering a new, post-partisan era. He would call for expanded national service, especially any program that enables young Democrats and Republicans to work side by side for the good of the country. He would fully endorse non-partisan electoral reforms, including ranked-choice voting, that reduce the subservience of legislators to their party bases. Our new president would minimize the partisan talk. His messaging would focus instead on our shared interests as Americans. Finally, and this will sound heretical to his most devoted followers, Biden would preemptively pardon President Trump of all federal crimes.

Like many Americans I find the prospect of reconciliation a lot better than retaliation but I’m afraid there is no prospect for it whatsoever. Regardless of the hypothetical position, President Biden wouldn’t be running the Democratic Party. Other than, possibly, black voters over the age of 40 he has no constituency of his own and by design power in government is mostly in the hands of the Congress and Congressional leadership is not moving towards Joe Biden but away from him. Throughout his career Mr. Biden has been what used to be referred to as a “Nixonian centrist” meaning that he is always moving to the center of his own party and that center is a lot farther left than it was during his career as Sen. Biden.

Maybe I should have titled this post “Won’t Be Fooled Again”. In 2008 Barack Obama ran on reconciliation but as president for whatever reason that’s not what he delivered. On what reasonable basis could anyone expect that President Biden could deliver on something President Obama could not?

This article in the Chicago Tribune should give you some idea of the mood here in Illinois:

Despite Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s recent order to shut down indoor service at bars and restaurants in northwest Illinois due to the coronavirus, Fozzy’s Bar and Grill near Rockford was among those that stayed open.

Owner Nick Fosberg said he had to leave the doors open to keep his employees working, pay his bills and stay in business. He says the workers wear masks, and customers wear masks on their way in and out, while tables are spaced 6 feet apart, at 25% capacity.

“We’re sticking to what we were doing and being safe about it,” he said. “We’re getting a ton of support. People are happy someone finally stood up and said, ‘I’m not closing.’”

The restaurant rebellion comes as state officials report rising rates of infections and deaths of people with COVID-19, prompting the governor to impose further restrictions in Region 1 in northwest Illinois, which had a positivity rate of 11.9%. Starting Sunday, the governor set a limit there on gatherings to 10 people, and a maximum of six people per restaurant or bar table for outdoor service. Officials on Thursday also announced 4,942 new cases of COVID, and 44 deaths of people who tested positive for the virus.

Pritzker warned that if necessary, he would direct state police to issue fines for violators of the regulations, and would seek to have liquor and gambling licenses pulled.

“If we need to close down restaurants and bars or take away their liquor licenses or gaming licenses, we will do that,” he said. “Because we are heading now into a peak that is beyond potentially where we were in March and April.”

In response to the governor’s orders, the Illinois Restaurant Association warned that banning indoor service could force the permanent closing of at least 20% of restaurants statewide, costing 120,000 jobs, and driving people into private gatherings with few precautions.

That last is what I was talking about in my previous post. The evidence that restaurants are responsible for the uptick in cases is slim; there’s more evidence that they’re contracting the virus in their homes. It’s possible the governor’s mandate could actually increase the number of cases..

I doubt that this is the last defiant act we’ll see from Illinoisans or Illinois businesses.

Since I think it has some bearing on discussions we’ve been having here, I’m going to reproduce this Wall Street Journal op-ed from Joseph A. Ladapo of UCLA’s medical school in its entirety:

A hallmark of Covid-19 pandemic policy has been the failure of political leaders and health officials to anticipate the unintended consequences of their actions. This tendency has haunted many decisions, from lockdowns that triggered enormous unemployment and increased alcohol and drug abuse, to school closures that are widening educational disparities between rich and poor families. Mask mandates may also have unintended consequences that outweigh the benefits.

First, consider how the debate has evolved and the underlying scientific evidence. Several randomized trials of community or household masking have been completed. Most have shown that wearing a mask has little or no effect on respiratory virus transmission, according to a review published earlier this year in Emerging Infectious Diseases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s journal. In March, when Anthony Fauci said, “wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better” but “it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think it is,” his statement reflected scientific consensus, and was consistent with the World Health Organization’s guidance.

Almost overnight, the recommendations flipped. The reason? The risk of asymptomatic transmission. Health officials said mask mandates were now not only reasonable but critical. This is a weak rationale, given that presymptomatic spread of respiratory viruses isn’t a novel phenomenon in public health. Asymptomatic cases of influenza occur in up to a third of patients, according to a 2016 report in Emerging Infectious Diseases, and even more patients had mild cases that are never diagnosed. Asymptomatic or mild cases appear to contribute more to Covid-19 transmission, but this happens in flu cases, too, though no one has called for mask mandates during flu season.

The public assumes that research performed since the beginning of the pandemic supports mask mandates. Policy makers and the media point to low-quality evidence, such as a study of Covid-19 positive hairstylists in Missouri or a Georgia summer camp with an outbreak. These anecdotes, while valuable, tell us nothing about the experience of other hairdressers or other summer camps that adopted similar or different masking practices. Also low-quality evidence: Videos of droplets spreading through air as people talk, a well-intended line of research that has stoked fears about regular human interactions.

Rather, the highest-quality evidence so far is studies like the one published in June in Health Affairs, which found that U.S. states instituting mask mandates had a 2% reduction in growth rates of Covid-19 compared with states without these mandates. Because respiratory virus spread is exponential, modest reductions can translate into large differences over time. But these shifts in trajectory are distinct from the notion that mandating masks will bring the pandemic to an end. Based on evidence around the world, it should be clear that mask mandates won’t extinguish the virus.

The most reasonable conclusion from the available scientific evidence is that community mask mandates have—at most—a small effect on the course of the pandemic. But you wouldn’t know that from watching cable news or sitting next to a mother being forced off an airplane because her small children aren’t able to keep a mask on.

While mask-wearing has often been invoked in explanations for rising or falling Covid-19 case counts, the reality is that these trends reflect a basic human need to interact with one another. Claims that low mask compliance is responsible for rising case counts are also not supported by Gallup data, which show that the percentage of Americans reporting wearing masks has been high and relatively stable since June. Health officials and political leaders have assigned mask mandates a gravity unsupported by empirical research.

On even shakier scientific ground is the promotion of mask use outdoors. One contact-tracing study identified only a single incident of outdoor transmission among 318 outbreaks. Even the Rose Garden nomination ceremony for Justice Amy Coney Barrett, which the media giddily labeled a “superspreader” event, likely wasn’t; transmission more likely occurred during indoor gatherings associated with the ceremony.

By paying outsize and scientifically unjustified attention to masking, mask mandates have the unintended consequence of delaying public acceptance of the unavoidable truth. In countries with active community transmission and no herd immunity, nothing short of inhumane lockdowns can stop the spread of Covid-19, so the most sensible and sustainable path forward is to learn to live with the virus.

Shifting focus away from mask mandates and toward the reality of respiratory viral spread will free up time and resources to protect the most vulnerable Americans. There is strong evidence that treating patients early in outpatient settings can be effective, as outlined in a recent American Journal of Medicine paper, but these treatments are underused. Identifying effective treatments for hospitalized patients with Covid-19 is essential, but preventing severe illness before hospitalization will save more lives.

Until the reality of viral spread in the U.S.—with or without mask mandates—is accepted, political leaders will continue to feel justified in keeping schools and businesses closed, robbing young people of the opportunity to invest in their futures, and restricting activities that make life worthwhile. Policy makers ought to move forward with more wisdom and sensibility to mitigate avoidable costs to human life and well-being.

In the perfect, Aristotelian theoretical world measures that provide fractional improvements should always be put in place whether they produce 2% improvements or 25% improvements because, well, those are improvements but in the the messy, complex practical world it is different and there are many more factors that must be taken into consideration. Does the downside risk of the moral hazard introduced by the measures outweigh the gains? An example of the moral hazard to which I refer would be, in the case of mask-wearing, when people engage in more risky behaviors when they’re wearing masks in the mistaken belief that they are more protective than they really are but it also includes the risks introduced by the erosion of the rule of law produced by unenforced mandates or even laws. Both qualitative and quantitative results need to be taken into account. My take, for example, on the outbreak of cases of COVID-19 among White House staff is that it was caused by mistaken over-reliance on testing as a strategy for avoiding the disease.

There is also cost-benefit to be taken into account. The only known way to avoid contracting the virus completely is total isolation. If only benefit were considered, we should all lock ourselves into our homes and not venture out until the virus had vanished. But the costs of that are simply too high—not only would the economy collapse but we would all die of starvation.

I don’t think all of this makes me a “naysayer”; I wear a mask when I’m in stores or in the common areas of the office and on many other occasions simply to set a good example. I invariably wear my masks properly and launder them after use. I also maintain a three meter social distance to the greatest degree possible and avoid social contacts other than with my wife with whom I share my residence to the greatest degree possible. But I recognize that many people are not as coldly rational or completely disciplined as I and act and propose courses of action accordingly.

I hadn’t heard about this. This excerpt is from Bellingcat’s report on the subject:

A year-long investigation by Bellingcat and its investigative partners The Insider and Der Spiegel, with contributing investigations from RFE/RL, has discovered evidence that Russia continued its Novichok development program long beyond the officially announced closure date. Data shows that military scientists, who were involved with the original chemical weapons program while it was still run by the Ministry of Defense, were dispersed into several research entities which continued collaborating among one another in a clandestine, distributed R&D program. While some of these institutes were integrated with the Ministry of Defense – but camouflaged their work as research into antidotes to organophosphate poisoning – other researchers moved to civilian research institutes but may have continued working, under cover of civilian research, on the continued program.

Our investigative team believes the St. Petersburg State Institute for Experimental Military Medicine of the Ministry of Defense (“GNII VM”), likely with the assistance of researchers from the Scientific Center Signal (“SC Signal”), has since 2010 taken the lead role in the continued R&D and weaponization of the Soviet-era Novichok program.

Crucially for our conclusions, we have identified evidence showing close coordination between these two institutes and a secretive sub-unit of Military Unit 29155 of Russia’s military intelligence, the GRU. This unit has previously been linked to the poisoning attempts on Emilian Gebrev in Bulgaria in 2015 as well as Sergey and Yula Skripal in the United Kingdom in 2018. Telecoms data we obtained shows that the St. Petersurg-based institute communicated intensively with members of the assassination team during the planning stage of the Skripal mission, while also communicating – at highly correlated moments – with scientists from SC Signal.

and here are the editors’ of the Washington Post’s remarks on it:

While the Chemical Weapons Convention has allowances for developing antidotes and defenses against chemical weapons, actually producing and using Novichok to poison the Skripals and Mr. Navalny are treaty violations. Recently, the European Union and Britain acted, but the Trump administration remains strangely silent about sanctions in response to the Navalny attack. Bipartisan groups of lawmakers in the House and Senate are urging a tougher response. Both the E.U. and the United States should investigate the newly identified research organizations. When the states parties to the treaty meet Nov. 30 to Dec. 4, they should consider a strong response.

I agree. These are serious violations but it’s unclear to me what steps might be taken that haven’t already been taken. The only thing I can think of is to restart chemical weapons development of our own which is no solution to the problem. I wish that the editors had expanded a bit more on what they have in mind. Will their concern continue if Biden is elected president?

I was originally driven to the article from the WaPo editorial. My first reaction to the editorial were that it was guilt by association and that Russia is not the Soviet Union but the various reports provide what appears to me to be undeniable evidence.

I have been complaining about distributed military research for years, decades I guess. It’s not just a problem within Russia. I find what I suspect to be distributed research among North Korea, Iran, and maybe other parties (Burma?) even more disturbing. Russia, at least, is still a rational actor but I’m not so sure about the outlaw regimes of the world.

Can someone explain to me why dining in a completely enclosed, heated tent without exterior ventilation other than what leaks in from under the tent flaps is materially safer and less likely to promote the spread of SARS-CoV-2 then dining indoors? All over Chicagoland, particularly in the suburbs where it’s roomier, bars and restaurants are sprouting such tents. I don’t believe they’re less likely to spread the virus at all. I simply think they’re dodges around the governor’s mandates. Which remain abuses of power since the neverending continuation of his emergency powers still hasn’t been renewed by the legislature.

If the Europeans actually follow through on what Mark Scott describes at Politico:

LONDON — Europe is taking aim at the lifeblood of firms like Google and Facebook — online ads that track people around the internet.

In the latest salvo, a group of EU lawmakers backed proposals this week to phase out so-called targeted advertising when Brussels unveils an overhaul of its digital rulebook in early December.

Such a move — if supported by the European Commission — would effectively stop a firm like Google from showing web users ads based on personal profiles as they roam around the internet. In short, cutting off a key source of revenue at the heart of Big Tech’s business model.

Silicon Valley can rest easy for now. The amendment in question was not binding, and a ban on targeted ads remains fairly remote. But the vote was a shot across the bow for tech companies and publishers who also rely on such ads at a time when regulators are turning up the heat on the online ad business.

It also raises a tricky question — not just for tech companies but for everyone who relies on free internet services provided to them (think, Google Search and Instagram posts) in exchange for personal data: If we put a stop to online ads, who will pay for the internet as we know it?

it will definitely be a step in the right direction. You may notice similarities between what they are doing and what I have proposed in the past. It has been my experience that the Europeans take privacy more seriously than Americans do.

My answer to the question is who needs “the internet as we know it”? The answer is middlemen like Google and Facebook. But that’s decreasingly necessary for individuals or companies who actually produce and sell things.

Breaking up the tech monopolies won’t have the effect that rendering them unprofitable will.