Thoughts for March 20, 2022
Good evening. Sorry I’m a little late today. Topics include energy security, hybrid war, autonomous weapons, and wildlife corridors.
Energy Security
I’ve discussed energy security a fair amount over the last few weeks, but there are a couple items this week worth mentioning.
The first is a report from the International Energy Agency, outlining a 10 point plan for cutting oil demand over the next four months. All of the items revolve around reducing oil demand in transportation, specifically for driving and aviation.
It looks like an impressive set of recommendations, but look at the y-axis. This is only a 6% cut in oil demand. Unlike natural gas, which the IEA look at a few weeks ago, there are not many economically viable alternatives to oil, and cutting demand significantly in the short run without major hardship is not possible.
All these suggestions seem like good ideas, at least for the short term, and some, particularly accelerating EV adoption, will be solutions for the long term. Ultimately, where we want to get is a scenario where many end uses, particularly automobiles, are powered by electricity from low-carbon instead of petroleum products, and those end uses that cannot be electrified directly, such as long-haul aviation, are powered by synfuels, mostly generated from electricity from low-carbon sources. However, even in the best of circumstances, getting there will take decades.
The second item is a report from the Breakthrough Institute. They take a longer view of energy security and recommend policies to enhance natural gas production and trade among free nations, to keep existing nuclear power online and to work toward new nuclear power, to keep up clean energy R&D, and to address some of the barriers to clean energy development.
Finally, while there is recognition of the need to degrade the Russian state’s capacity to make war by going after their oil and gas revenue, not every alternative to Russian energy dependence is necessarily a good idea. Moves to lift sanctions on Iran and Venezuela comes to mind. These regimes also pose threats to American security and human rights, and the sanctions exist for good reason.
Hybrid War
In trying to understand the strategic picture, as seen by the Russian high command, and I found this report, by Mason Clark of the Institute for the Study of War, on hybrid warfare helpful.
The report discusses hybrid warfare, as seen by the Russian military, because the concept means different things in different settings. Hybrid warfare is defined as “a war in which all efforts, including military operations, are subordinate to an information campaign”. In other words, it is a whole-of-government effort with the ultimate goal of bringing a target state’s policy to some desired point. More classic, kinetic warfare is one of the tools to achieve this goal.
The Russian government perceives the West as engaged in a hybrid war against them. They see events such as the Color Revolutions and the Euromaiden demonstrations in Ukraine as conspiracies from the West, especially the United States, to undermine the Russian government, whereas most observers would recognize these events as home-grown uprisings. It is the perception in the Russian command that they are at war with West, and in this regard Russian hybrid warfare would be a defensive measure.
The report speculates as to whether this belief is propaganda or if the Russian command genuinely believes it. I suspect that it is more a matter that the narrative that the West is at war with Russia is useful, and so the country’s leadership latches on to it. We’ve seen many other instances were countries or political movements find it useful to grab on to these kinds of victimhood narratives.
Hybrid warfare characterizes Russian actions outside Europe in Syria, Venezuela, and Libya, and in Europe, in Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltics. Their actions consist of kinetic wars, such as we are now seeing in Ukraine, together with an extended period of attempted influence through propaganda and building proxies. A common tactic is the use of quasi-states such as Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine, Abkhazia and South Ossetia in George, and Transnistria in Moldova. Russia can act through these proxies and maintain a degree of plausible deniability.
The report emphasizes that it is necessary but not sufficient for the West to dominate Russia in its nuclear posture and conventional forces. It is also necessary to better understand and counter hybrid war techniques as well. As I understand it, that means upping the information/propaganda game, and showing less tolerance toward actions done through proxies.
The report was published in September 2020. If the analysis is sound, then the unrest in Kazakhstan in January 2022 probably helped feed the narrative within Russia of a Western conspiracy against them and further poisoned the well for diplomacy. As for the ongoing war, I think the author would argue that the legalistic approach that NATO has taken—some weapon supplies to Ukraine are good but not MiGs, or that a no-fly zone is off the table from the start—is not an appropriate response (though Putin is not the only audience; it is also necessary to convey a “steady hand at the wheel” to third party countries and domestic audiences).
The report was informative, but a little abstract. I would have liked more detail on the mechanisms by which hybrid warfare, and information warfare in particular, is conducted.
Autonomous Weapons
Autonomous weapons are weapons that are capable of selecting targets and carrying out lethal operations without immediate human oversight. They comprise a more narrow category than weapons that incorporating artificial intelligence in some way. Regulation of autonomous weapons is a major flashpoint of controversy.
As a fairly even-handed introduction to the subject, I would recommend this article. It goes through some of the strategic rationale behind autonomous weapons, as well as many of the ethical arguments for and against their use.
Most NGOs that have commented on autonomous weapons are against them (see this, this, and this for example), but the leading militaries in developing the technology, namely the U. S., the UK, and Russia, are not persuaded by these arguments. Given their strategic value, I think it’s safe to assume that without a strong, verifiable arms control agreement, efforts to limit the development of autonomous weapons are a non-starter. See this document from the Congressional Research Service for an overview of the American position. See also this white paper from the Pentagon in favor of autonomous weapons. While the United States does not have legislation around autonomous weapons, the technology is regulated by Department of Defense Directive 3000.09, which requires a degree of human oversight over any weapons system, but is much more flexible and permissive than a ban.
The hope for an arms control agreement rests on similar agreements that have restricted anti-personnel land mines, chemical weapons, and biological weapons. These three classes of weapons have three features that make them amenable to arms control: they are morally revolting, they have little strategic value for powerful nations, and agreements are fairly easy to verify. Opponents of autonomous weapons are trying to stir up moral revulsion with phrases like “killer robots” and “slaughterbots”, but verification will be difficult, and the strategic value of autonomous weapons will be a major problem for any restriction. See also this editorial from Brookings about some of the challenges behind arms control.
As far as the strategic and ethical implications of autonomous weapons, I find much of the fear to be speculative. For example, this article asserts that autonomous weapons pose a proliferation risk and makes conflict more likely. Really? We have routinely seen that implementing machine learning systems in other contexts requires deep technical expertise and access to computing infrastructure, which would put small countries and terrorist groups at a disadvantage, not an advantage.
The strategic picture would, I would think, be very favorable to the United States and allies. Autonomous weapons require a great deal of technical sophistication to develop and operate, providing a major advantage to countries with free economies over the planned economy of China and the kleptocracy of Russia. They could also be catalysts for developing AI technology more broadly, with enormous value to society. I have a hard time seeing a good reason to restrict their development.
Wildlife Corridors
The expansion of road networks causes fragmentation of wild land, which can cause severe ecological damage. This paper looks at some responses, and the most effective seems to be the use of wildlife corridors. These are overpasses or underpasses around highways to let wildlife safely cross, generally together with fencing to prevent wildlife from going on the road.
As of 2008, there were 1-2 million collisions annually in the United States between cars and wildlife, resulting in 26,000 human injuries, 200 fatalities, and $8 billion of damage, all over 4 million miles of road. The use of corridors can cut these numbers by 97%. The aforementioned paper, mainly using European data, finds that incorporating wildlife corridors into highway construction adds 7-8% to the cost. Meanwhile, in 2019, the federal, state, and local governments combined spent about $200 billion on roads (mostly for maintenance, not new construction). These numbers make me think that a case can be made for corridors on some roads as an investment that will pay for itself, even without invoking ecological arguments.
I haven’t yet come across a reliable, more direct estimate of how much a corridor would cost to build. That would be helpful.
Postscript
In the Soviet Union, a judge walked out of his chambers one day, unable to contain his laughter. He meets another judge in the hallway.
“What’s so funny?” the second judge asks.
“Oh, I just heard the funniest joke,” says the first.
“Well, what was the joke?”
“Ah, I can’t say.”
“Why not?”
“Because I just sentenced a man to 10 years for telling it,” says the judge.