The Israelis have reached a ceasefire agreement with Hamas. Andrew Mills, Nidal Al-Mughrabi and Maayan Lubell report at Reuters:

DOHA/CAIRO/JERUSALEM, Jan 15 (Reuters) – Negotiators reached a phased deal on Wednesday to end the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, an official briefed on the negotiations said, after 15 months of bloodshed that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and inflamed the Middle East.
The complex accord, which has not yet been formally announced, outlines a six-week initial ceasefire phase and includes the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip and release of hostages taken by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, the official told Reuters.

U.S. President Joe Biden later confirmed a deal had been struck, and the prime minister of Qatar, one of the key mediators, said the ceasefire would take effect on Jan. 19.

Palestinians celebrated in streets across Israeli-besieged Gaza – where they have faced an acute humanitarian crisis with severe shortages of food, water and fuel – as explosions from new Israeli air strikes continued.

I have little opinion on this. It’s Israel’s war and Israel’s problem.

I doubt that “ceasefire” will mean much. Not only is Hamas not the only terrorist organization at work in Gaza and the West Bank, whatever authority Hamas had over the other terrorists must surely be gone by now. And changing from a Hamas fighter to an Islamic Jihad fighter is simpler than changing your knickers.

I will be interested to learn how many hostages actually remain alive. Based on the description we may not know after the conclusion of “Phase 1”.

I also think we have been somewhat passive in this whole matter. Apparently, holding dual Israeli-U. S. citizenship doesn’t mean a great deal.

As of today the Southern California fires have destroyed 17,000 structures and driven more than 100,000 people from their homes. In the Great Chicago Fire 17,500 structures were destroyed and 150,000 people were made homeless.

I wanted to bring an interesting interactive map to your attention. I’m not embedding it because I expect it to change rapidly. Here’s the description from KTLA:

LOS ANGELES (KTLA) – The Los Angeles County Fire Department has provided the following maps of the thousands of structures, primarily homes, that were damaged or destroyed in the Palisades and Eaton wildfires.

The map icons reflect the current known status of each structure. Red indicates a structure was destroyed. Orange indicates “major” damage. Yellow indicates “minor” damage. Green indicates a low level of impact. Black indicates a structure not damaged. Grey indicates “inaccessible.”

Incident commanders say field damage inspections are ongoing and may change as new information is gathered and verified.

This post originally began as a reaction or riff on a post I saw at Substack but which I’ve lost track of. I wanted to make several points about the artificial intelligence craze that is presently under way.

My first is that, yes, we are in an artificial intelligence mania, rather similar to the Tulip Mania of the 17th century. Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon spent hundreds of billions of dollars on generative AI (GAI) in 2024. That certainly qualifies as a “mania”.

And it’s just getting started. You can reckon the beginning of the bubble from the launch of ChatGPT in 2022. Based on previous experience with bubbles, they typically last around five years. Like previous bubbles this one is propelled more by “fear of missing out” (FOMO) than it is by actual benefits.

It’s interesting to consider the changes wrought by the last major technological shift, the shift to mobile devices. When it began with the introduction of the iPhone, the largest companies in the S&P 500 were (in descending order) ExxonMobil, General Electric, Microsoft, Citigroup, and AT&T. By the launch of ChatGPT they were Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Berkshire Hathaway. At five times the market capitalization of their predecessors. Don’t be surprised if the leaders have changed just as much by 2030. Hence, FOMO.

Just as the infrastructure investments of the iPhone revolution were borne by telecommunications companies but other companies realized most of the benefits, again don’t be surprised if the same thing happens with the implementation of GAI.

One of the ways in which GAI will provide different improvements in automation from those of the 20th century is that rather than reducing the number of unskilled workers required for tasks it will provide the opportunity to increase the productivity of skilled activities that rely heavily on memory and adhering to certain guidelines.

The big question will be who captures the economic surplus realized from such efficiencies? Capital? Skilled workers? Consumers? Considering the entrenched interests and their power, I anticipate an enormous political battle over who benefits.

A final intriguing aspect of this shift is that it will go on primarily in the United States for political, social, and economic reasons. The U. S. is already very different from our European cousins in important ways (there are no trillion dollar European companies) and I suspect this shift will make the differences even more pronounced.

When I read Douglas Mackinnon’s post at The Hill proposing additional countries beyond Greenland and Panama to add to President Trump’s “shopping list”, my immediate reaction was to wonder why he hated the United States so much as to propose adding Haiti to the list of countries that President Trump should want to add to United States possessions.

My second reaction was to hope that his post was something on the order of Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, something so outrageous it was obviously satire. Can you think of an act more likely to start World War III (assuming, that is, that it hasn’t already started) than claiming Taiwan?

I was very disappointed by Andrew Korybko’s post at Asia Times, “How Trump can break China’s tightening grip on Central Asia”. In the piece, Mr. Korybko successfully made a case for why the U. S. should want to “break China’s tightening grip, etc.” but IMO fell short of explaining how that could be accomplished. Here’s the tactics he proposes:

Rescinding certain sanctions, extending waivers to European companies or declining to threaten secondary sanctions in response to violations – any or all of which could be part of a package deal with Russia on Ukraine – could bring greater economic clarity about Central Asia’s actual present trade.

That’s imperative to better understand the EU’s competitive advantages there vis-a-vis China, which could then be more effectively leveraged.

The second tough choice concerns the continued granting of sanctions waivers to India for its trade with Afghanistan (and presumably also Central Asia) via Iran’s Chabahar port.

That’s it.

I’m afraid Mr. Korybko needs to connect the dots for me. I don’t see a straightline connection between the means and the ends.

I do, however, see why the U. S. would not be particularly interested in taking the actions he proposes. Contrary to Mr. Korybko I think what is emerging is a multipolar, “spheres of influence” global order and not only is there not a great deal we can to to forestall it much of what we’ve done over the last decade or so has encouraged it. And Central Asia, as Mr. Korbyko documents sufficiently and as should be obvious from a glance at the map, is not in the U. S. sphere of influence.

As you may or may not be aware the U. S. economy has recovered faster than the Eurozone’s, China’s, Japan’s, Canada’s, or just about anyone else’s after COVID. This graph, sampled from the Federal Reserve, illustrates the difference:

See the Fed post for more examples.

A number of explanations have been proffered for that including things we’ve done right and things we haven’t done wrong, e.g. Bidenomics, reductions in power-intensive manufacturing, etc., depending on the writer’s point-of-view.

I’d like to suggest one additional alternative: foreign direct investment. Consider this chart, sampled from IMF Blog:

The original is a fun GIF which you can view by clicking on over to the link.

That in turn raises all sorts of follow up questions. Why are we receiving so much FDI? Who is it coming from? Much of it is from Japan, Canada, and the United Kingdom. I suspect that some of it is our ongoing historic bull market. Another explanation is that investment opportunities are better here than at home.

One test of that might be to check how the Netherlands’s economic is doing. Maybe I’ll try tracking that down if I have the energy.

1. Is Russia expansionary?

The remaining questions assume that the answer to the first question is “Yes”.

2. In 2024 Denmark spent 2.37% ($9 billion) of its GDP on defense. Its military resources devoted to Greenland consist of a handful of patrol vessels. What percentage of its GDP would Denmark need to spend to defend Greenland against a Russian invasion?
3. In 2024 Canada spent 1.37% ($30 billion) of its GDP on defense. Its military resources devoted to Nunavut, its northernmost territory, consists of an alert station, a training facility, an airport, and a naval facility. What percentage of its GDP would Canada need to spend to defend Nunavut against a Russian invasion?
4. Germany spends 2.12% ($98 billion) of its GDP on defense. Given the present state of its military, how much would Germany need to spend to defend itself against a Russian invasion?
5. Is it just or equitable for our NATO allies to freeride on the United States?
6. Assuming that our NATO allies continue to freeride on the U. S. and depend on U. S. military deterrence, how much would the U. S. need to spend on defense to provide an adequate deterrence?

I don’t believe in colonialism whether we’re talking about Denmark’s colonies or U. S. colonies. I think that all colonies including Greenland and Puerto Rico should be given their freedom.

I think there are several possible reasons for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. One is that it is expansionary. Another is it considers an anti-Russia Ukraine that is a member of NATO an unacceptable risk to Russia itself and ethnic Russians in Ukraine. Yet another is economic which I think is farfetched.

Omar Abdel-Baqui reports at the Wall Street Journal:

KHIRBET AL-MA’ZAH, Syria—When Sunni Islamist rebels toppled Bashar al-Assad’s regime, many residents of this rural village were elated by the end of a half-century of oppression even though they belonged to the same Muslim sect as Syria’s deposed dictator.

The residents, members of the Alawite minority, now say their excitement has been replaced by fear. Masked men have terrorized the village, beating people, looting homes and using anti-Alawite slurs. Some community members have been missing for days after the attacks and are feared dead.

Khodr Ibrahim, a 22-year-old resident of the village, said he was playing videogames in a shop when he and his 24-year-old brother were pulled outside by armed men. They pointed their rifles at the Ibrahims, cursing their Alawite backgrounds, staging mock executions and striking the elder brother until several older women in the village persuaded the militants to stop, the family and other townspeople said.

“I thought for certain they would kill us,” Ibrahim said.

You may recall that is very much what I expected. Although Syria’s Alawites were not to blame for the Assads’ tyranny, they are being held to account. I will be greatly surprised if Syria stays together in the form it has been.

The wildfires in Southern California are in their sixth day. NBC News reports:

Fueled by powerful winds and dry conditions, a series of ferocious wildfires erupted Tuesday and roared across the Los Angeles area, destroying hundreds of homes and killing at least 16 people, including some who died trying to prevent the fires from engulfing their homes.

A Los Angeles County fire official said an untold number of significant injuries were linked to two of the fires, and a city official in Los Angeles described Tuesday night as “one of the most devastating and terrifying” that she had seen in her corner of the city.

I found this post by Keely Covello, “Why Los Angeles Is Burning”, interesting.