experimental subjects

I made a little extra money participating in psychological experiments when I was a student. But I was puzzled how the researchers could deduce so much about human nature from their select samples of undergraduate students. I know I messed up someone's research project when I was asked to identify sounds by calling one "a Polish L" [written thusly Ł and pronounced something like a W].

Anyway, I now see in the Economist that scientists are finding nonconfirming results when they run classic experiments with non-western, non-rich and well-educated people.  One way of finding such populations for their experiments, however, is a crowdsourcing site on the Internet. I guess they can get people with some important differences from US undergraduates, but it's far from a random population sample.

what's the law among friends?

A piece in RollCall explains how candidates' campaigns can coordinate their activities despite federal law that was intended to build a Great Wall between them.  I had long doubted the effectiveness of the existing law -- after all, each campaign can lay out its talking points and key objectives for all to see. This piece details additional ways that so-called "Independent Expenditures" can mesh with regular campaigns.

bipartisan secretary of state - another stupid idea

I don't know Aaron David Miller of Foreign Policy magazine, but I really doubt his wisdom and expertise when it comes to the Secretary of State. A few weeks ago he said that only a few of the officeholders were great, and that Hillary Clinton could never be great in the job because of her"anatomy." I criticized his reasoning then, and feel compelled to do the same in response to his latest piece calling for the next president to name a Secretary of State from the opposite party. While Miller notes that bipartisanship is not always good or achievable in US foreign policy, he thinks it would be nice to have a president and secretary from different parties to show the rest of the world how united we are on foreign policy. That's nice mood music, but it doesn't address the realities of policymaking. What counts is not the background of the nominee but the process the president follows to get advice, make decisions, and oversee compliance. In recent decades, most presidents have relied on their national security adviser -- and Miller has no proposal to deal with that situation. Some Democratic president have named Republicans to top posts at Defense and Treasury, and they have performed well. They may also have helped politically, especially on Capitol Hill. But these nominees succeeded because of their personal chemistry with the president and his White House staff. That's all that really counts.

cyber war and world peace

At first, I nodded in agreement with Robert Wright's complaint that the Obama Administration was guilty of hypocrisy in practicing cyber attacks on Iran at the same time it was declaring cyber war immoral. On reflection, I think we need to make several distinctions that minimize the hypocrisy.

Cyber attacks belong somewhere in the middle of the escalation ladder between nasty word and nuclear weapons. They are more morally acceptable than explosives that injure or kill innocent civilians, but they can have harmful consequences to people and their livelihoods. Even within the cyber realm, espionage is more tolerable and widely practiced than attacks that destroy infrastructure.  In the case of Iran's nuclear activities, I think most people would agree that messing with their machines is less objectionable than murdering scientists.

I think there's a useful comparison here to anti-satellite weapons. U.S. military capabilities have long been  highly dependent on satellites for communications and intelligence, just as they are now dependent on secure computer connections. The United States has toyed with various anti-satellite approaches, many of which would only add to space debris and thus potential collateral damage to our own systems. The U.S., Russia, and China have each had symbolic tests of ASAT systems, but seem to have stopped short of full-scale development. Meanwhile, there are discussions under way for arms control measures.

Treaties won't prevent hostile actions, but they may set international norms and constrain their use. Even if the US has more to lose than others at the moment, all space-faring nations have an interest in avoiding the development and use of ASAT weapons.

I think that's where we are on cyber warfare, too. Some hostile actions are inevitable and better than the kinetic alternatives. But there might be international agreement on some red lines and distinctions that would make us all better off.

trade-offs

One of the most profound concepts I encountered in college was "trade-offs."  More of one thing usually means less of something else. I tried, with mixed success, to teach my own kids the value of applying that concept to their own daily choices.

It's obvious that America faces major economic problems and that the solutions require trade-offs. A new CBO report analyzes the choices. We can have reductions in the level of debt by increasing taxes or by draconian cuts in government spending and services, or by some combination of the two. If we insist on immediate action on debt, the economy will surely spiral into another recession. If we delay action, we may lack the political will to act in the future. To me, that argues for a comprehensive bargain that necessarily involves compromises, especially added revenues by Republicans and entitlement reforms by Democrats. I hope both sides are tough enough to bring it off.

bureaucratic imperialists

Like most Americans, I have enormous admiration for our special operations forces, for their bravery and effectiveness. They deserve to grow in size (provided they don't suffer a loss of quality through expansion) and to receive strong budgets. But they need to be part of a balanced military and civilian national security capacity. The New York Times reports that the State Department and some in Congress are blocking a SOCOM proposal to create special foreign programs outside the normal foreign assistance laws, including a special contingency fund approved only last year. Good. We need more whole of government planning and coordination for national security, not less.

partisan divides

Years ago, I asked my great uncle why he and the rest of the family were Republicans. "When I was old enough to vote," he said, "I asked my father [a doctor from New Jersey] what the difference was between the parties. He said, 'The Republicans are for the gold standard and the protection of American industry.' And that was good enough for me."

A new Pew study says that, in the past quarter century, the biggest predictor of differences in value questions has been partisan identification -- and the gaps are growing wider.

And Stuart Rothenberg, in RollCall, notes that today's conservatives are quite different from those of the 1980s. A key difference, he notes, is the refusal to compromise, to get half a loaf now and work to get the rest later.

Both of these items augur bitter fights ahead, with even less chance of agreements.