Favorites: Classified Chaos, CEQA Exemptions, and China’s Cable Cutters
March 24th 2025 Speed cameras in SF, CIA on Oswald, and fresh CEQA exemptions
As always, the first joke must be that the folks who voted for Trump in 2016 because they felt handling classified information was very improtant must be so mad (cached) right now. There's a Succession meme (cached), there's the fact that this admin is more Veep than Succession (cached). Details from the screenshots include a lot about how much they hate Europe (cached). Tulsi Gabbard posted earlier this month that they're going to treat leaks quite harshly (cached), which is funny, because as Sam Stein pieces together (cached) she made that statement right after the Atlantic senior editor was added to that group chat, which she was also in! The NSC confirmed the screenshots were real, and tried to imply that the Atlantic might have been the one putting people in danger, even though they treated this classified info with far more care (cached) than anyone in the administration. Dean Ball points out that Signal really is quite secure and has some real-world advantages (cached) over other options the military could be using, but as Yglesias points out, it's also expressly illegal (cached) for them to be using it for this purpose. And also, the US government has spent many millions of dollars to put up satalite constellations (cached) for secure comms, it's ridiculous to use something else. Oh, and one more thing: it's not actually clear Trump ever actually authorized the use of force (cached)
In case you were wondering how the non-military parts of the Trump admin are doing, we’ve got here just the dumbest possible justification for a generally good policy suggestion.
As he notes in the next post, the privacy implications of this are significant, a modern LLM can figure out what city a photo of a random street is from, and sometimes can even find the exact spot, all in seconds. It's a really impressive feat when a human does it, here's an example if you're interested.
Longer Reads
• A short thread on the military situation in Ukraine from Michael Kofman. They've continued to improve their drone capabilities, to the point where they've been able to stabalize the front and take fewer casualties. But they still depend on the West and the US in particular for long range capabilities, which are what stop Russia from using their own long range capabilities. (src)(cached)
Flotsam and Jetsam
– @JayinKyiv summarizes Trump admin actions: "Trump admin didn't only stop the program that was helping to locate kidnapped Ukrainian kids, but deleted the years of research." (src)(cached)
– Apparently researchers knew that the CIA was surveiling Oswald before he assassinated JFK, but the new documents released more clearly confirm this. News to me though! (src)(cached)
– Short summary of Brian Beutler's perspective on DOGE is that they're focusing on cutting things that won't be noticed in the very short term. But the government does a lot of stuff that is important over the long term, and cutting it all will have far-reaching impacts. (src)(cached)
– Senate math is really tough for democrats going forward, if we want to ever control the government, we need to run people who can win in red states, and that's going to mean accepting candidates with significant policy disagreements. (src)(cached)
– Exciting California bill, AB527, will give categorical CEQA exemptions for geothermal energy projects. (src)(cached)
– Proposal to allow BYD cars in the US, but only if they do the same sort of joint venture with a US company that Chinese companies have forced on American companies working in China. (src)(cached)
– I know a live action Lilo and Stitch is probably unnecessary, bit the posters are really cute. (src)
– More on that David Shor interview with Vox, here's discussion about whether TikTok was responsible for Trump's win. (src)
– It shouldn't be a surprise that when the executive branch suddenly gets a bunch of power without oversight, they're not going to be careful about how they wield that power. (src)(cached)
– I understand Claude is only used by tech folks in the Bay Area, but if you happen to be one of the few, is worth noting that they've added web search capabilities. Although I don't think it would be my first choice for a web search, it's good that it can at least integrate external info on request. (src)(cached)
– SF is implementing speed cameras finally, but if they catch you going 100mph on a surface street, it's still just a fine. That should be a license suspension. (src)(cached)
– There's an article arguing that the Chinese military and Xi are battling for power, but Noah Smith is suspicious about the accuracy of the claim. (src)(cached)
– It's those with the most on the line personally who are most willing to be pragmatic about strategy. The trans House Democrat is calling for Dems to accept politicians who oppose expanded trans rights. (src)(cached)
– Previously Chinese engineers filed patents for undersea fiber optic cable cutters, but now they're showing off the entire system in the press, with the promise that it will 'reset the global world order'. Seems bad! (src)(cached)