(CNN) See the treacherous area where rescuers are trying to save survivors comments on the difficulty rescuers have communicating with each other, caused by the destruction of cellular infrastructure.

FEMA relies on First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet), a specialized cellular system, which is hosted by AT&T. So when AT&T cells went down in Asheville, FirstNet went down too.

In a relatively flat region, there would have been a solution. Since Firstnet occupies the low frequency 4G LTE Band 14 (700 MHz), a single portable cell tower can cover a wide area. Not so in Appalachia, where  cell towers have to be carefully  placed to obtain even mediocre coverage.

There is a practical  industry approach to temporary erection of tall antenna structures – the tethered balloon. Even in Appalachia, at a height of 1500 to 3000 feet, a single balloon cell “tower” could offer substantial coverage, perhaps as much as 30% of normal.

The prerequisites:

• Pre-cleared mountain-top helicopter landing pad.
• Pre-constructed anchor point for the tether.
• Cell electronics mounted on a balloon, packaged for helo deployment.
• Diesel generator.
• Provision of backhaul link.
• Firmware integration into FirstNet.

FEMA, get cracking. This is not a very expensive proposition.

If I knew the beans, I wouldn’t spill them. Here are some questions that might be asked of a candidate target:

People: Leadership or military?

Civilian infrastructure, or war making potential?

Essential utility, long lead-time replacement, or status symbol?

More valuable as a hostage to destruction than destroyed?

If the above is the case, can it be nibbled at, to reinforce the threat?

An attritable resource, or a unitary one-off?

Is there a psychological target?  Leadership,  public, or some specific element?

If the psychological target is the leadership, should the physical target be something inconspicuous to the public, thus allowing the leadership to conceal the loss from their base?

Or conversely, embarrass the leadership to their domestic base? Is Iran a candidate for this?

A neat trick:  Retaliation that negates the logic of tit-for-tat.

(CNN) Iranian Mission to the UN: Tehran’s response “has been duly carried out” Quoting,

The Iranian Mission to the United Nations said Tuesday afternoon that Tehran’s response has “been duly carried out,” following a barrage of missiles launched at Israel.

…

There were no injuries following Iran’s attack on Israel on Tuesday, Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari has said.

In Iran’s Options for Retaliation, I wrote:

• Retaliation comes in two basic varieties, attributable to Iran, and deniable.
• The scope of attributable is limited by the cost of inevitable retaliation. As an example of the risks, Israel could easily destroy Kharg Island.

The prediction of limited retaliation, well within the capabilities of Israeli air defense, has been provisionally validated.

There is a respectable, if sarcastically expressed, opinion that Israel created Hezbollah. This is not literally true — Iran did, but Israel’s involvement was essential. Please suspend your outrage while  I explain.

In the 70’s and 80’s, Lebanon was the main base of the PLO. The PLO, like the vast majority of Palestinians, is Sunni. This period of Lebanon’s history resembles the period of Cabinet Wars in Europe. The character of these wars :

• Aristocratic origin, with modern translation to “warlord.”
• Limited scope.
• Fought by mercenaries.
• Little involvement by the actual inhabitants.
• Varied impact on the inhabitants, from scarcely noticeable to massive collateral casualties, as in the 30 Years War.

In Lebanon, then as now, one might have no stake in  a conflict, yet pay with their life. So it was in the early 80’s. Lebanon’s Shiites now compose about half of the Muslim majority, but they were less numerous then. An underclass of predominantly Sunni Palestine, the largest block of contiguous Shiite territory is in the south, adjacent to Israel. At this time, Maronites had disproportionate representation in parliament, while actual power was slipping away to the PLO. Conflict in and around the massive refugee camps was fomented by numerous smaller groups, for whom the disenfranchised were sources of manpower — men with guns.

Maronite Phalangists, the PLO, and the smaller groups comprised the typical warlord mix. The PLO attacked Israel from this region. The Maronites sought to project power that was still institutionally theirs. The Shiites, isolated by religion from Gulf Arab support, remained mostly passive, until 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon.

The goal was to weaken the PLO and prop up the Maronites. The Israeli Army  fought in Shiite territory, where they remained active for some years. Heavy collateral damage resulted. The Shiites were not the target, but they suffered. This was Iran’s opening. What the Gulf Arabs would not give to Shiites, they would give. The training and organization was the best that the IRG , fresh from their own revolution, could provide.

Hezbollah is more than a geopolitical expression of Iran’s ambition. To Iran, home of hyperbolic Persian poetry, it is a candidate for spiritual myth, supporting the overarching  myth of Iran as a revolutionary theocracy, enshrined in Iran’s constitution, celebrated annually  with the great emotion, in heroic retelling of the martyrdom of Imam Ali.

Iran is also a country of institutionalized hypocrisy and extreme corruption. It is a developed nation, with a restive population, vulnerable infrastructure, and an extreme water shortage. The myth demands servicing, but the cost must be reasonable.

• Retaliation comes in two basic varieties, attributable to Iran, and deniable.
• The scope of attributable is limited by the cost of inevitable retaliation. As an example of the risks, Israel could easily destroy Kharg Island.
• Deniable has two forms, covert, where the forensics is hidden, and by proxy, where  the will to act can not be traced to Iran.
• The history of the subject shows that retaliation by proxy, which denies the victim easy justification in the international court of opinion, has the lowest risk.
• A low risk strategy is  to rebuild Hezbollah, supporting the myth of the revolutionary state while achieving deniable retaliation. It would re justify the IRG, a major source of corruption, to themselves, and to the  Iranian state. Never underestimate the need for self-justification.

Since 9/11, we have seen varying success in the reduction of terrorist organizations. Trans-national  Al-Qaeda has not regained its former prominence. ISIS maintains a weed-like vitality. Hamas, concentrated in a small geographic area, is under severe pressure, but may regenerate from indigenous support. Organizations with concentrated resources and low manpower have been successfully degraded. Organizations with a more  indigenous character, with more manpower than resources, have been resistant with the character of insurgency. The resurgence of ISIS in Iraq is an example.

In fractured Lebanon, Hezbollah began as a resistance movement, but in less than a decade assumed the character of a second government. Concentrated resources, with highly centralized command and control are the source of its singular reputation as the most powerful terror organization.  These aspects are most subject to degradation by concerted Israeli action.

Manpower, the indigenous connection of Hezbollah to ethnicity in Lebanon, is not so vulnerable. While Iran cannot, at least in the mid-term, reconstitute Hezbollah with all the power of a second government, it can support a lightweight, manpower based group well prepared for guerrilla action with occasional heavy weapons in the mix.

A prolonged ground action by Israel would come to resemble counter-insurgency. This event forced Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000.

The leaders and  senior politicians of Israel have all lived through  the unsuccessful attempt to influence Lebanon’s trajectory, to deny terror a sanctuary in Lebanon by skilled military intervention. Despite calls to “finish off Hezbollah”, their inner thoughts must span a range, from doubt of the achievable to realistic buying of time, time of relative security. When the enemy has 200,000 missiles, you have to do something.

Perhaps time is all you can buy in the Eternal City._*

*Jerusalem is older than Rome.

I began to write this blog in June of 2014, shortly after budget sequestration shuttered the Forecasting World Events crowdsourcing project. If you’ve ever wondered why I have persevered for ten years and three months, this is why:

Reprint: Looking for a Job in Journalism

Naturally, it is the subject of some disappointment that readers who value the material seem disinclined to get to know the writer.

The insights and detailed analysis are all my own. I’m real, I’m made of flesh and blood, a combination of aspiration and abilities that complement traditional news-gathering.

Edit: It is necessary to add that I am interested only in the Western press allied with democracy and freedom.

Before schemes for deescalation can be mooted, these questions demand examination:

A statement attributed to Israel is that they thought Hezbollah discovered  the pager bombs, implying that the timing of the pager explosions was not planned, but forced.

• Did this force an escalation that was not planned for this particular moment?
• If forced, is the timing slightly off, or badly off?

If the timing was not forced, or not severely off, is Israeli strategy:

• Irrational, driven by rage, combined with a desire for “once-and-for all” permanence.
• Semi-rational, with a not well calculated plan to vitiate an enemy that tends to regenerate.
• Calculated, a precise strategy that could produce a shift with mid-term durability.

If the timing was forced, what is the viability of an unplanned operational goal?

Unlike the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, when the Christian Maronites had only recently lost political dominance, political change is not a realistic goal. What is?

Hezbollah  is believed  to have significant underground infrastructure, and a huge stock of missiles. By stressing Hezbollah,  with new advances in surveillance technology, Israel may hope to map infrastructure and destroy it.

If this is the goal, it will proceed to a culmination that

• lacks political benefit.
• results in a mid-term durable change  in military security.

Military security, paramount in Israeli eyes, is endangered by Hezbollah’s huge rocket hoard, particularly if fired at a high rate in an organized fashion. Relief from this cannot come from diplomacy. As with Ukraine ceasefire, deescalation would offer Hezbollah the opportunity to regroup.

Conclusion. If Israel’s strategy is less than rational, diplomacy has a chance. If it is rational, it will proceed against diplomatic pressure, until the infrastructure is destroyed.

(CNN) Pesto the baby penguin is already taller than his parents. Now he’s a social media star. Quoting,

Penguins are also sexually dimorphic, which means you can’t tell their sex by looking at them. In order to discover the genders of their penguins, keepers take a small drop of blood from the penguin’s toe and send it to a lab in order to get an official answer.

WRONG. The correct meaning is exactly the opposite. Quoting Wikipedia,

Sexual dimorphism is the condition where sexes of the same species exhibit different morphological characteristics, including characteristics not directly involved in reproduction.[1] The condition occurs in most dioecious species, which consist of most animals and some plants. Differences may include secondary sex characteristics, size, weight, color, markings, or behavioral or cognitive traits.

A correct statement:  Penguins are not sexually dimorphic.

Bullwinkle is already enraged. Now he’s joined by

***Donald’s Penguin.***

There are many ways to explode a cat. We describe one method, which may contain elements of the method that was actually used.

The explosive was almost certainly in a compartment layer integral to the lithium polymer battery. See Laptop Bombs on Planes, Conclusion. Quoting,

The sealed laptop, tablet, and phone make reliable inspection impossible with current technology. It is impossible because the battery is a big gob of organic chemicals markedly different from the other materials of the device, but not so different from a bomb.

A  lithium polymer battery in a consumer device has three connections. Two of these are the plus  (red) and  minus (black) terminals,  used to power the device, and to charge the battery.

The third wire connects to a temperature sensor inside the battery. The sensor, known as a thermistor, has resistance that depends strongly on temperature.  The temperature of the battery is monitored to reduce the chance of a battery fire.

The sensor has two terminals, one attached to the third wire, the other connecting to the minus terminal of the battery. The thermistor is monitored by circuitry elsewhere in the pager, by applying a fixed voltage, and measuring the current. Buried in the battery, the thermistor is a barely visible dot in  x-ray view. The wires are even less visible.

All the house-keeping functions of the pager are controlled by an ASIC,  FPGA, or a microcontroller. High volume production, very low cost, the very small battery, simplicity of pager functions, and need for long standby time suggest an ASIC is used. Some ASICS contain an FPGA in the same die. Virtually all contain an EEPROM,  which contains simple code to customize pager functions.

This is important, because it makes the modification of the pager easy. Once programmed at the factory, the FPGA acquires specific functions that include control of inputs and outputs. The EEPROM code offers additional prospects for modification. One of these is the voltage applied to the thermistor inside the battery.

We make one more addition to the battery. In parallel with the thermistor, physically embedded in the thin compartment containing the plastic explosive, we place a  reverse biased zener diode, in series with a very fine wire, too small to be seen on an x-ray scanner. The wire might be coated with a thin layer of mercury fulminate.  The other end of the wire connects to the  negative terminal of the battery.

This is a very low power form of  exploding wire detonator. In normal operation the sense voltage applied to the thermistor is blocked from the wire by the zener diode. Upon receiving a code, the ASIC increases the sense voltage. When the voltage exceeds the zener diode rating, the diode will conduct, sending current to the wire. The wire then vaporizes. Boosted by the mercury fulminate or other primary explosive, this is enough to detonate the plastic explosive.

Such a sabotaged device could be assembled on a normal production line, by the substitution of two  indistinguishable parts, the ASIC and the battery. Normal inspection procedures cannot spot the mods.

A statement attributed to Israel is that they thought Hezbollah discovered this, implying that the timing of the pager explosions was not planned, but forced. This implies that  deniability may have been an original goal. One cutout, a Hungarian shell, has already been identified.

Depending upon the intended level of deniability, additional cutouts may have been employed. Malaysia and Indonesia are candidate locations, due to the long establishment of electronics assembly companies, and a lax security environment with roots in the Non-Aligned Movement, which had Sukarno as one of the founders.

(CNN) The US led on nuclear fusion for decades. Now China is in position to win the race. Quoting,

Private businesses in both countries are optimistic, saying they can get fusion power on the grid by the mid-2030s, despite the enormous technical challenges that remain.

This is an introduction to fusion skepticism. The above is baloney, fusion hype.

The press have trouble with this: the ratio of amount of energy in the magnetic field used to contain the plasma of a tokamak, to the energy released, does not equate to wall-plug efficiency, the net after deducting the power required to run the entire lab. Prediction: Nuclear fusion will NEVER reach wall-plug break-even — a concept with which the nontechnical press have difficulty, leading to misrepresentation and exploitation.

This is not it: Fusion Breakeven Is a Science Breakthrough. If you’re a  reporter, are you going to understand this, or trust the nice scientist talking to you?

Science can be bent to personal need. Scientists are, after all,  human beings who seek self-justification, a positive self image, and at least enough money to stay in their profession. In some cases, like fusion, this can be bent all the way to personal enrichment. The press, looking for a cheery story, is often the unwitting accomplice.

See “fusion skepticism”  on YouTube. The material is uniformly high quality, because fusion skeptics are not in  it for the money. Here  is a brief summation to inform your journey:

The Lawson criteria is for fusion what the rocket equation is for Mars colonization, Unlike starting a fire with matches and tinder, this criteria must be maintained the entire duration of the fusion reaction. What do you do when your fireplace won’t keep burning? Do you throw billions at it?

The fusion reactions that are the easiest to initiate and yield the most energy create a huge neutron flux. In continuous operation, neutrons tear the metal of the fusion device apart. This is swept under the rug with current devices, which operate for seconds at a time. Unlike a nuclear fission reactor,  where the neutron flux is absorbed by inert shielding material, the space outside the containment vessel of a tokamak fusion reactor  is populated by complex equipment.

Inertial confinement fusion is less susceptible to the neutron embrittlement of delicate equipment. It comes with its own advantages and its own set of problems. Without going into details, I stick with my prediction.

Aneutronic  fusion , fusion which does not create neutrons is possible, but either:

• requires an impractically high ignition temperature, exploding the Lawson criteria or
• produces too little energy in the reaction  to ever, conceivably, reach break-even.

Cold fusion has been permeated by fraud, but it has one cynical advantage: experiments are cheap. In a race in which all horses are dark, it is  the darkest. Because it is so cheap, it may be worth low-level funding.

Magnetic confinement alternatives to tokamak. Many such startups are  sucking in money. They tend to combine alternative fusion reactions with novel magnetic geometry. To paraphrase Tolstoy, they are all unhappy in their own ways. See Youtube.

For insurance, in case my prediction is wrong, ITER, the largest tokamak in the world, is under construction in France.  The goal is research data for future designs, not power production. The astute will ask: Why can’t the data be obtained by computer simulation?

Answer. The problem of plasma dynamics is so complex, involving the simultaneous application of gas dynamics, Maxwell’s equations , and nuclear physics, it is beyond the ability of the most powerful computers in the world to simulate. So we build machine after machine, in a guided stumble, not completely blind and not completely informed. The first tokamak was built in 1954,  70 years ago. That’s a lot of time, justified by “progress” that shows up in journals and press releases, not as utility.

This explains why fusion keeps sucking in money. Every new machine inspires hope. If simulation could prove fusion impractical, the money would dry up. If a person keeps doing the same thing for 70 years without success, we usually call him crazy. The impracticality of   a mathematically informed refutation is why ” fusion is  the power source of the future, and always will be.”

Fusion, like Mars colonization, or man-on-the-moon, is an unrecognized ethical dilemma for the press. If you’re writing a story that is pro-fusion, people will talk to you, people who deal in money and hope. If you’re writing a story that is anti-fusion, you talk to people who have no money or hope. The cheery-beery fusion story will get more reads, but at what cost to the nation? Rather than serve as unwitting accomplices of fusion hype, it is time for the media to inform the debate.

Despite the absurdity, this costs the nation less:  Sloppy CNN; Earth’s core has slowed so much it’s moving backward, scientists confirm. Here’s what it could mean  is.

Analogous to the Lawson criteria for fusion, traditional media need their own quality criteria,  with relevance to the social media revolution (see Att David Zaslav; Warner Bros. Discovery signals rapid deterioration of television business, sending stock plummeting.)

The criteria: Is our journalism better than YouTube?

Alex Hollings’ Sandboxx News published The wildest aircraft people THINK America operates in secret.  It’s about unacknowledged aircraft developed under the black budget. It’s a sober summation of previous articles, all well conceived, all informed by his methodical combing of budget documents and credible anecdotes. Alien technology buffs will mostly have to look elsewhere.

In my unsubstantiated opinion, Hollings missed the greatest cryptid of them all. Hints:

• It was actually deployed.
• Built in low single digit numbers.
• No code name has ever been revealed or hinted.
• No “alien technology.”
• Performance not exceeded until recent; this includes the Blackbird.
• One would have to go back to the dawn of the web, before archiving,  for relevant hints.
• Some anecdotes are relevant.
• Hides in plane [sic] sight.

Alex, I dare you  to find the aircraft. The secret is safe; the path is too arduous, the challenge too big, the risks too great. Are you game?