Technology

The Military Bicycle: The Idea That Won’t Die

Michael Cessna June 9, 2023

In the twenty-first century, few people in Western societies give much thought to bicycles. The machines are usually seen as something one gives to a child as a birthday present; or, something one buys to use for exercise in the sunshine. In some cities, and especially in Asia, bicycles are used as a primary mode of transportation, both in day to day living for activities like going to work and shopping, as well as in actual business, such as postal and product deliveries, but also as taxis for passengers, in those areas that still allow ‘rickshaw’ traffic.

*Rickshaw in Japan, 1897. Credit: Rev. R. B. Peery, A.M., Ph.D. Public Domain*

Very few people give any thought to the bicycle as a military tool, but it was – and remains – a vital component of many military operations.

The modern bicycle dates from a design created by the German Baron Karl von Drais, who invented his “Laufmaschine” (German for “running machine“) in 1817 (patented in 1818), that was called “Draisine” (English) or “draisienne” (French) by the press; this term would evolve over time into “velocipede”. Von Drais’ design was the first commercially successful two-wheeled, steerable, human-propelled machine on record.

It should be noted that it also quickly earned the nickname of “bone-shaker”, for obvious reasons.

*An early ‘velocipede’. Photo of a Lithograph from 1819. Public Domain.*

But, the design fascinated people, and progress was made in developing it. Many of these designs, such as the ‘penny-farthing’ of Englishman James Starley and Frenchman Eugène Meyer, are outright silly and fanciful, more suited to the pages of a Jules Verne novel than to any kind of useable machine. All that began to change in 1885, and first line militaries around the world began to take notice.

*An example of a ‘penny-farthing’. Skoda Museum, Czech Republic 2003. CCA/3.0*

In 1885, John Kemp Starley, James Starley’s nephew, invented what became known as the “safety bicycle”. Departing from past designs by making both wheels identical in size, employing a high-necked caster to better anchor the handlebars for steering, and incorporating the first rear-wheel chain drive on a bicycle, all combined to vastly improve the ride, handling and speed of the bicycle.

The younger Starley’s design – which was widely copied, as he had failed to patent the design – was swiftly followed by the last two major developments that would draw serious military attention to the bicycle for military use.

The first innovation was the reinvention of the pneumatic tire by John Dunlop in 1888, greatly smoothing out the ride and simplifying the design, and the patenting of the folding bicycle by African-American inventor Isaac R. Johnson, approved on October 10, 1889. Johnson’s design is also the first recognizable appearance of the “diamond frame” design that is still common over a century later.

*Racing bike, showing the diamond frame. Photo Credit: Julius Kusuma. CCA/3.0*

These two developments created an explosion of interest in cycling throughout the United States and Western Europe in the early 1890’s, actually causing an economic bubble near the turn of the century. It is at this point that the ‘Turmoil of the Century’s Turning’ happened.

The decade from 1895 to 1905 saw multiple – and massive – wars break out all over the world, from the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, to the Second Boer War (1899-1902) in southern Africa, which saw Great Britain deploy nearly 300,000 Imperial troops by steamship – to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. In the midst of these massive conflicts – a sort of “dress rehearsal” for World War 1 – there was the Spanish-American War of 1898, and the “China Relief Expedition” of 1900, with saw an allied force of British, French, Japanese, Russian, German, Austrian, Italian, and American troops marching from the Chinese city of Tientsin to rescue the diplomatic staffs in Peking (now Beijing) at the height of China’s “Boxer Rebellion” (1898-1901).

**“I’ll Try, Sir!”** – American troops in the relief of Peking in China on 14 August 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion. H. Charles McBarron, Jr., for the US Army. Public Domain.

All of these major conflicts – as large and expansive as most of the wars of the twentieth and twenty first centuries – made the various militaries realize that they needed to continue to innovate and upgrade their forces, a process that had already been happening in earnest for over thirty years.

Infantry – the core of all military forces – moves at the speed of a walking soldier, unless there are tools such as railroads, motorized vehicles or airplanes to carry them…and even then, they will still be walking. As well, the infantry have been carrying much of their own equipment for most of that time, to the tune of some 120lbs (c.54kg) on their backs. Something needed to be done to improve their mobility.

*Typical US infantry load. USMC photo. Public Domain.*

Bicycles were obviously useful to horse-drawn armed forces as messengers, as the cyclists did not need to worry about sick or lame animals; bicyclers were relatively easy to fix if something broke down. Other functions were tried out, including using bicycles to lay communication wire, create local maps by fixing clinometers to the frame, and patrol rail lines; there were even experiments to use them as ambulances and to haul machine guns around the battlefield. While not usable in the cavalry role – which should be apparent from the nature of the machine – could the infantry use it?

*Italian Bersaglieri infantry with folding bicycles, c.1917. Public Domain.*

This led to the creation of “bicycle infantry”: infantry units began to test out bicycles during long-distance rides, more or less to see what happened. This is where James Moss enters out story.

Then First Lieutenant James A. Moss, of the 25^th United States Army Infantry Regiment (Colored), the storied “Buffalo Soldiers” (the United States military was still heavily segregated then) obtained permission in 1896 to take fifteen volunteers from the regiment on an experimental series of rides that culminated in a 1,900 mile ride from Missoula, Montana, to St. Louis, Missouri. Moss’ unit completed the trek – which avoided roads and paths where possible, sticking strictly to overland travel – made the trip in some 40 days, at an average of 6 miles per hour (pdf link). While the US Army was ultimately satisfied with conventional infantry units, armies outside the United States took notice of Moss’ experiments. (James Moss would go on to lead a bicycle-equipped unit in Cuba, and would later write a set of basic instruction manuals for troops and officer that form the basic framework of basic military instruction manuals today.)

*25th US Infantry Bicycle Corps at Fort Missoula in 1897. Lt. James at right. Public Domain.*

When World War One broke out, the bicycle served in all theaters. However, it was rarely deployed into direct combat, primarily due to the confines of trench warfare in Western Europe, and a simple lack of resources on the Eastern Front, in Russia. This unspectacular performance, overall, signaled the death knell of the military bicycle to the military pundits of the time.

However, other officers came out of World War One with a better understanding of bicycles and their military uses.

In the Second World War, bicycles were deployed extensively in Malaya, where Japanese intelligence officers, familiar with the Japanese Army’s use of c.50,000 bicycle infantry in the 1937 invasion of China, made sure in their pre-war scouting to note the presence of bicycle shops throughout the British-controlled colony. Likewise, Germany and Italy deployed units of bicycle infantry in rugged terrain, where horses would struggle. Many guerilla and partisan units – and the intelligence teams from the Allies who supported them – used bicycles for scouting, messages and to run electric generators to power radio systems that reported on Axis forces until the end of the war.

*A German unit using a tandem bicycle power generator to power a radio station, September 1917. Public Domain.*

Post-1946, the bicycle again faded into obscurity in most of the military world, although bicycle infantry units would continue to serve for decades in Swedish and Swiss military units. In one place, however, the military bicycle would reach its peak – in a place called Vietnam.

France, although it had been soundly beaten by Hitler’s Germany in 1940, was desperate to retain its colonial empire. When French forces returned to Indochina in September of 1945, the Vietnamese were less than impressed. Where French troops had capitulated to Japanese troops more or less without firing a shot, the resistance in Indochina had been led by native Vietnamese, and mostly by the Communist Party led by Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap (who were supported (pdf link) by the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during the war). After French forces seized control of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) by force in September of 1945, the Communists retreated into the mountains and countryside, vowing to continue their war, now framed as a war of independence from France. This brought about the “cargo bike”.

The Communist forces, known as the ‘Viet Minh’, waged a brutal guerilla campaign in the rural areas of the country, causing steady and damaging casualties to French forces. However, the Viet Minh faced all the same challenges as a pre-WW2 non-motorized army, but with the added problem that suitable pack animals were few in number, and human porters could only carry a tiny amount of the supplies needed.

Viet Minh mechanics took the commonly-available bicycle, and began modifying it, resulting in a vehicle that could reliably carry up to 400lbs (c.181kg) at the pace of a walking adult human. While not the equal of a cargo truck or a boat, this was a far better solution. And it very shortly made its effects known.

*Vietnamese army bike – Vietnam War Museum in Hanoi. Photo credit: Przemek P, 2010. CCA/3.0*

In 1954, Viet Minh forces surrounded and destroyed the cream of the French Army in Indochina, at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. France deployed its best units, numbering over 12,000 troops, in a badly thought out plan to bring the Viet Minh to battle in order to destroy them. At the extreme range of supply and support aircraft, the French troops found themselves over-extended and cut off, as French ground forces could not break through to reach them. The Viet Minh surrounded the town the French had fortified, and fought a nightmarish siege for nearly two months. Eventually, some 11,000 French troops would surrender; nearly 8,000 would die in a march to prison camps that rivaled the Bataan Death March in its brutality. The result was France agreeing to Vietnamese independence, surrendering their Indochina colonies in whole, which would lead to yet another war…but that is another story.

*Viet Minh troops plant their flag over the captured French headquarters at Dien Bien Phu, May 7, 1954. Photo credit: Roman Karmen. Public Domain.*

One of the primary reasons the Viet Minh were able to crush the French was their ability to move supplies, and the ‘cargo bicycle’ was at the heart of the Vietnamese logistical triumph. But again, the military use of the bicycle receded into seeming obscurity, despite its next successful showing against American forces in Vietnam…

…And yet – the bicycle remains in use as a military tool by guerilla and insurgent forces around the world. Why?

Within its obvious limits, the military facts of the bicycle of today remain unchanged from those same facts discovered by James Moss and his unit of Buffalo Soldiers in 1896: the bicycle requires no fuel, beyond the food required for its operator; it moves essentially silently, at a constant speed of up to twelve miles per hour; it raises no dust in its passing; it can operate in most weather and terrain conditions; and it can be used to power various systems, from air circulation fans to electric generators, and does so with no heat output, again, aside from the signature produced by the operator.

*Three Swedish bicycle infanterists armed with m/45 SMGs and Bantam anti-tank missiles, Sweden, 1965. Public Domain*

Given the ludicrous progress of the US Army’s new Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV), it might be time for regular militaries to think about “going old school”.

*The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To*

TikTok Lied to Congress, Senators Assert

Paul Collier June 9, 2023

A letter from a Republican and Democrat Senator accuses TikTok representatives of lying under oath to congress about the way the CCP-owned company treats its U.S. User Data. The Senators, Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) claim NY Times and Forbes reports call into question the testimony from TikTok’s representatives during congressional testimony back in March.

The claims are that the CCP-owned company is not handing over U.S. user data to Xi Jinping’s Communist Party. Forbes claims the CCP-owned company is tracking user Social Security numbers and Tax ID numbers on servers in China, while the NY Times report alleges U.S. user data is being shared on a Chinese collaboration tool called Lark.

The letter said, in part, “We are deeply troubled by TikTok’s recurring pattern of providing misleading, inaccurate or false information to Congress and its users in the United States, including in response to us during oversight hearings and letters.”

The Next Carrier War…The Ghost of the Atlantic Conveyor

Michael Cessna June 2, 2023

We would like to express our thanks to naval OSINT analyst H I Sutton, of Covert Shores, for his kind assistance with this article.

Illness is an odd thing. One rarely pays close attention to outside events unless those events have a direct and immediate impact on the ill person. In the case of your humble author, 2022 was a rough year. As a result, I completely missed this article when it came out, and didn’t think clearly about the implications of using larger vessels in a DIY Navy when that article was written.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa…Consider this to be Part 2.

For small national navies, as well as “guerrilla” navies, Part 1 is still absolutely true: limited funds and resources limit options when building a naval force of any kind. However, for the nation-state that is in the “middle sea” [sic], so to speak, those have more options.

As described in a previous article, a nation desiring to construct a navy needs to first decide on exactly what kind of navy they need – not want, but need. To briefly recap, there are three basic choices: Blue, Green & Brown:

A “blue” navy is basically the kind of navy used by the United States, Great Britain, and France, the kind of navy that Communist China aspires to: a naval force to maintain the “Sea Lanes of Communications” (the SLOC). This is the hardest kind of fleet to build, and far and away the most expensive.
A “green” navy is mostly a coastal force, whose main job is to facilitate amphibious operations, i.e., landing troops ashore. Still expensive, but the better choice for nations like the Republic of the Philippines.
A “brown” navy operates almost solely along rivers and close in to coastlines. These naval forces are comparatively cheap, but are very limited in range and capabilities, compared to the other two types of fleet.

Obviously, there is a good deal of overlap between the various types: brown and green navies complement each other well, where their environments meet. Likewise, green and blue navies can have a very great deal of overlap when projecting state power at a long distance. While there is little overlap between blue and brown fleets, blue water units can benefit from the lightweight/high-speed boats of the brown squadrons.

Iran, however, has taken the path of outside-the-box thinking to a different level.

Beginning in 2021, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commissioned the building of at least two “drone carriers,” former “Panamax” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panamax] box-carriers [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ship] refitted to operate combat and surveillance drone aircraft, “Shahid Mahdavi” and “Shahid Bagheri”. In form, the two ships initially looked like their recent sister ship, the “forward base ship” “Makran”.

*IRGC ship ‘Madahvi’ at dockside. Photo credit: H. I. Sutton, Covert Shores*

IRGC ship “Bagheri” in shipyard near Bandar Abbas, 2022. Photo credit: **H. I. Sutton, Covert Shores**

Unlike Makran, however, Mahdavi and Bagheri are apparently focused solely on drone craft operations. The Bagheri is being fitted with an overhanging deck extension on their port (left) side. While visually similar to US Navy carriers of the last c.65 years, this seems to have been designed in order to launch and recover heavier drone craft on an angle, from port to starboard, due to the container ships’ superstructure at the aft (rear) end, which cannot be easily modified. This seems to be confirmed, as Iranian state news is showing pictures of a “ski jump” being installed on the Bagheri. The “ski jump” flight deck has been used to aid in flight operations since at least the 1970’s, when the UK’s Royal Navy used them for their “Harrier carriers”, HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible, during the Falkland Islands War of 1982.

IRGC ship “Bagheri” under construction in shipyard near Bandar Abbas, 2022, showing angled flight deck. Diagonal arrows show the non-standard flight deck. Photo credit: **H. I. Sutton, Covert Shores**

IRGC ship “Bagheri” under construction in shipyard near Bandar Abbas, c.early-2023, showing the ‘ski jump’ nearing completion on the flight deck. Photo credit: **H. I. Sutton, Covert Shores**

*Harrier Jump Jet, Farnborough Air Show 2014 by Christine Matthews. CCA/2.0*

This modification opens the possibility of launching much heavier drone craft, capable of carrying much heavier ordnance than other drones. While certainly incapable of handling heavier, manned craft, this bodes ill for anyone Iran chooses to focus on.

*Bayraktar TB2 on the runway. Credit: Bayhaluk, 2014. CCA/4.0/Int’l.*

There has not been a direct, “force on force”, aircraft carrier battle since WW2; the aforementioned Falklands campaign nearly resulted in one, but that turned out to be a false start. While there have been thousands – if not tens of thousands – of carrier-launched fighters and bombers attacking land targets and land-based aircraft, these were not “carrier” battles, in the naval sense. The concern, here, the nightmare of rational naval planners since the 1970’s, has been the “improvised aircraft carrier.” The naval dimension of the Falklands War, once again, informs on the problem.

When Argentina invaded the Falklands, Great Britain immediately assembled an amphibious task force for “Operation Corporate”. Like most post-WW2 navies, Great Britain had comparatively few naval supply and support ships in its fleet, and had to resort to “STUFT” (Ships Taken Up From Trade), civilian vessels requisitioned into military service as auxiliary vessels to carry supplies, and occasionally troops.

One of these vessels was the SS Atlantic Conveyor.

*SS Atlantic Conveyor, approaching the Falklands. About 19 May 1982. Photo: DM Gerard. CCA/2.5*

A combination roll-on/roll-off container ship, Atlantic Conveyor was used primarily to ferry aircraft for the British invasion force. When the vessel arrived in the combat area, the Harrier ‘jump jets’ she carried were launched from her, and flown off to the aircraft carries. On May 25^th 1983, during the ferocious air attacks by Argentine air forces during the Battle of San Carlos, Atlantic Conveyor was struck by two Exocet anti-ship missiles, killing twelve of her crew, including her captain; gutted by fires, the ship sank three days later, while under tow, joining several other vessels in becoming the first Royal Navy vessels lost in action since World War 2. The loss of all of the remaining aircraft aboard (all of them helicopters) would severely hamper British operations ashore for the remainder of the campaign.

But note the first part of that story: Atlantic Conveyor was able to at least launch manned fighter jets while underway. What the Royal Navy – long starved for funding for ships and manpower (HMS Hermes was scheduled for decommissioning – without a replacement – when the invasion happened) had built a “jack carrier”, effectively equivalent to a WW2 “escort carrier”, at very short notice, with the potential – had she not been destroyed – of being able to conduct combat operations at some level.

This capability had been recognized with helicopters for many years, but this was the first time it had been proven valid for manned combat jet aircraft. Although conjectural, this is likely the real reason why the US and UK defense establishments buried the Harrier’s proposed follow-on aircraft, the supersonic version of the Hawker Siddeley P.1154, cancelled in 1965. No serious attempt was made to perfect a supersonic-capable VTOL until the introduction of the F-35B by the United States in 2015. As there are few carriers in the world capable of operating conventional jet aircraft, this ensured the naval dominance of those states that possessed these massive and expensive weapons.

*F-35B Lightning taking off from a ski-jump, from HMS Queen Elizabeth, 2020. Photo: LPhot Luke/MOD. UK/OGL v1.0*

Now, however, we find ourselves in the 21^st Century, and technology has significantly progressed, across the board. Long-range drone craft, capable of carrying heavy ordnance, and armed – presumably – with anti-ship missiles and capable air- and anti-ship missile defenses, have now changed the structure of naval “battle calculus.” This is because the world’s second- and third-line military forces have relearned the fundamental truth of national military strength: it doesn’t matter how strong a nation’s military is overall, but how much of that force can be brought to bear against a particular target.

Iran’s naval deployment of ersatz carriers may seem laughable to many in first-line forces, but no one in second- or third-line navies are laughing. Iran has demonstrated that they are perfectly capable of worldwide naval cruises and deployments, and while their carriers and other vessels almost certainly stand no chance against a US or UK task force, they are more than a match for most of the other navies in the world. This is especially true for their “forward base ship” concepts, which are capable of deploying commando units via helicopter and speedboat, in a manner similar to first-line navies.

The deployment of these three vessels, the Makrun, Mahdavi and Bagheri, marks the first time since 1976 (in the days of the Imperial Navy of Iran) that Iran has had a truly capable naval arm for its military forces. Given the country’s friendly relations with Russia and Communist China, the possibility of joint fleet operations with at least China, if not Russia, along with their recent truce – brokered by the PRC – with Saudi Arabia, means than Iran can easily conduct far more complicated and wide-ranging power projection operations than they were able to in the past.

Much more worryingly, these ship commissioning’s are being done in public, and there are plenty of nations in the world at Iran’s tier who can take inspiration to boost their own naval capabilities.

The foundations of the world economy are set on the concept of the “freedom of the seas”, a concept enforced since World War 2 by the United States, Great Britain and France…but all three states are in financial trouble, and their navies are down to razor-thin numbers, in both ships and sailors. It will take careful, resolute and competent leadership to navigate through this.

The question is: is that leadership in place? Or even on the horizon?

The Future of Intelligence

Michael Cessna April 17, 2023

With the recent arrest of an Airman of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, the United States’ defence and intelligence establishments are once again under fire for apparently lax information security. In fact, this is the second time in less than a year that this has happened.

At first glance, this seems like a very bizarre thing…until you realize, sadly, that it is not.

In both cases, the leakers involved were not leaking classified intelligence – including casualty reports, battle plans, friendly agent identities, strategic concerns from and about allies, and technical intelligence, to name but a few – because they had been “honey trapped”. Likewise, the leakers were not employed by foreign state intelligence agencies, nor were they crusaders trying to expose crimes committed by the US defense and intelligence apparatus.

Instead, incredibly – or, sadly, not so incredibly – the leaks were the result of rabid video game players trying to prove how cool and ‘edgy’ they were.

While some of the leakers may be older, this is the result of the programming of the so-called “Generation Z”. This is the first generation to grow up with social media as a main facet of their lives. When “social media” as we would now recognize it, first arose in 1997, no one had any real idea of what its impact would be. Whatever the imagined intent, what it has evolved into, is a sort of electronic version of an elementary school playground at recess, with no adults present to regulate it.

Where older generations who entered the various defense and intelligence services would never, in their wildest nightmares, have taken classified materials to their local watering hole and deliberately passed them around to score social points, this is becoming increasingly common for a deliberately infantalized generation of youth. While there certainly were, and are, spies and informants stealing and passing on information for money, ideology or “love”, those reasons were at least tangible and understandable. Scoring social media points is, to be blunt, pointless in the extreme.

Coupled to the insanity of the RESTRICT Act (deliberately misconstrued as the “TikTok Ban” bill), this works to sweep away all the foundations of legality of the Rule of Law, in the fleeting hope of gaining some sort of security.

And, like the hysterical attacks from the music industry against services such as Napster and Grokster, idiocies like the RESTRICT Act are guaranteed to have exactly the opposite effect, as outraged online activists will find ways to send out increasingly large amounts of classified material – not for the older reasons, nor even the newer reasons, but simply out of anger at such tight restrictions. The fact of facing heavy penalties for doing so, are irrelevant once the information is “out in the wild,” as the saying goes: the damage will have already been done.

But the above does not address the real question: Why are these kinds of leaks so dangerous?

For those not familiar with intelligence gathering, as a discipline, the short answer is that, in the “old days,” obtaining intelligence – meaningful intelligence – on a hostile target was hard…very hard. An intelligence agency – from East or West – had to insert “non-official” (or “illegal”) agents into the target country; those illegal agents would then have to either infiltrate a facility, or suborn an intelligence worker (assuming that they could identify them). Conversely, they could hang out in bars, nightclubs or restaurants (good for staging a honey trap) outside the gates of military facilities, or take menial jobs at establishments outside the gates such as working as a barber or as a waitress, in an attempt to glean nuggets of information from random conversations…Not very flashy, and not very James Bond, but such methods did work.

*An example of a one-time pad. Credit: Mysid, 2007. Public Domain.*

(My favorite intelligence warning in the mid-1980’s, was an order that came down, telling service personnel to stop…”liberating”…large bottles of Tabasco® sauce from restaurants outside base main gates in preparation for going to the field or “rapidly redeploy strategically”, to make the early Meals-Ready-to-Eat (MRE’s) at least somewhat palatable. The problem had gotten so bad, those base-local restaurants developed their own internal intelligence networks, and were suddenly “out of Tabasco” when they learned of a local unit deployment…thus giving hostile agents a dead giveaway that large unit movements were afoot.)

With the rise of online gaming and their associated forums and chat servers in the early 2000’s, however, intelligence agencies quickly grasped that their agents could sit behind Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), in the comfort and security of their home nations. They could then “lurk,” monitoring boards silently, while not communicating very often, waiting to pounce on discussions where people who should know better would often drop bits – or entire files – of classified data…and those agents wouldn’t even have to hound the leaker, because the rest of the forum or chat group would do that for them, unwittingly.

This kind of thing came naturally to intelligence agencies, as it was a form of OSINT [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_intelligence]. OSINT, or “Open-Source Intelligence,” is a method, or discipline [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intelligence_gathering_disciplines] of intelligence collection where a person meticulously (some might say, “obsessively”) scours every publicly available source of information on a subject they can find, and attempt to collate and boil-down the resulting information into a general picture.

OSINT differs from more expensive, technological or hazardous methods of information collection – like finding human sources of information, satellite reconnaissance, radio signal interception, etc. – in that it simply requires an illegal agent to buy multiple piles of newspapers and magazines, and inhabit libraries relentlessly. While also not very flashy, OSINT analysis often leads to very clear pictures of a nation’s defense strategies. As well, it lends itself very well to crowdsourcing [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing].

So…Where does this leave us, in mid-April of 2023?

Unfortunately, there are serious problems within the information security apparatus in the West, as a whole. With the need to bring in a new generation of intelligence workers, the West – as opposed to Russia and Communist China – is finding that the “Woke” agenda that has been allowed free rein over the last decade has badly polluted the potential recruiting pool, as people who have been raised in a culture where ephemeral “electronic cred” is as important, if not more important, than being a “quiet professional”.

And, as those who promoted that social context are discovering, there is no putting the toothpaste back in the tube.

RESTRICT ACT Designed to Restrict Americans, Not TikTok

Paul Collier April 17, 2023

RESTRICT ACT THREATENS TO BAN INTERNET FREEDOM, NOT JUST TIKTOK– Rather than creating a bill that would simply ban TikTok due to its overt connections to the Chinese Communist Party (which aims to destroy the American republic and turn us into a vassal of Xi Jinping), the bipartisan cabal in Washington has created a bill called the “Restrict Act” that would enable the state to censor and criminally prosecute individuals and companies for merely threatening American security.

The purpose of the bill is vague. In its own words, it states it is a bill “to authorize the Secretary of Commerce to review and prohibit certain transactions between persons in the United States and foreign adversaries, and for other purposes.” The bill gives near-God-like powers to the secretary of commerce and other Biden officials to destroy free speech on the internet under the guise of protecting American security. It states:

In general

The Secretary, in consultation with the relevant executive department and agency heads, is authorized to and shall take action to identify, deter, disrupt, prevent, prohibit, investigate, or otherwise mitigate, including by negotiating, entering into, or imposing, and enforcing any mitigation measure to address any risk arising from any covered transaction by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States that the Secretary determines—

(1)poses an undue or unacceptable risk of—

(A)sabotage or subversion of the design, integrity, manufacturing, production, distribution, installation, operation, or maintenance of information and communications technology products and services in the United States;

(B)catastrophic effects on the security or resilience of the critical infrastructure or digital economy of the United States;

(C)interfering in, or altering the result or reported result of a Federal election, as determined in coordination with the Attorney General, the Director of National Intelligence, the Secretary of Treasury, and the Federal Election Commission; or

(D)coercive or criminal activities by a foreign adversary that are designed to undermine democratic processes and institutions or steer policy and regulatory decisions in favor of the strategic objectives of a foreign adversary to the detriment of the national security of the United States, as determined in coordination with the Attorney General, the Director of National Intelligence, the Secretary of Treasury, and the Federal Election Commission; or

(2)otherwise poses an undue or unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States or the safety of United States persons.

That last sentence, “otherwise poses an undue or unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States….” is where the real tyrannical, fascistic power of the bill comes to bear. The bill itself doesn’t address TikTok at all, and one doubts that the signing of this anti-American, pro-Chinese bill will actually result in TikTok being banned at all. It is more likely that platforms like Rumble will face Biden’s anti-American DOJ agents in criminal proceedings than will the DNC-CCP run platform TikTok ever will.

Facial Recongition Company Used Billions of Social Media Profiles without Permission

Freedomist Editor April 5, 2023

CLEARVIEW AI FACES POTENTIAL LAWSUITS FOR USING SOCIAL MEDIA PROFILES TO BUILD FACIAL RECOGNITION SOFTWARE – Clearview AI has scraped the internet for faces to build an AI facial recognition software program. The company scraped over 30 billion photos of individuals without their permission, facing potential lawsuits from those same users. Meanwhile, the company “assures” us that it will “restrict” access to its ill-gotten profile library. Hoan Ton That is the CEO of the company. He is an Australian citizen born and raised in Vietnam.

Steampunk 2.0 – The Pneumatic Assault Rifle

Michael Cessna March 20, 2023

Last week, we discussed the nearly forgotten history of steam-driven, pneumatic artillery from the 1880’s, a set of inventions that resulted in the construction of two US Navy warships, one of which saw action in the Spanish American War.

However, there were other, smaller pneumatic artillery pieces used during the Spanish American War, primarily the 4-inch Sims-Dudley “Dynamite Gun”. The weapon received decidedly mixed reviews: while Frederick Funston, then an American officer advising Cuban guerillas, reported glowingly on it the weapon, Rough Rider commander Colonel (later US President) Theodore Roosevelt was decidedly not a fan.

*Sims-Dudley 4 Inch Dynamite Gun on Field Mount, 1898. Public Domain.*

But – these were not the first pneumatic weapons carried by US Forces.

Many Americans, confused by hysterical anti-gun propaganda, do not realize that the United States was on the cutting edge of military technology from its inception as an independent nation. From the first nation to issue breech loading, flintlock muskets (YouTube link) to flintlock machine guns (YouTube link), the United States armed forces rarely hesitated to embrace new technology, the American Civil War being the singular exception to the rule.

In 1803, French Consul (and soon-to-be Emperor) Napoleon Bonaparte sold the entirety of France’s “Louisiana” holding to the United States, a land deal that became known as the “Louisiana Purchase”, for $15 million (a paltry $337 million in today’s money), a price that amounted to about $0.03 per acre. Napoleon’s offer stunned the US diplomats sent to negotiate the deal, as they had expected to only buy the port and city of New Orleans. Napoleon offered the deal, as France’s hold over its North American territory was shaky, given that Napoleon was locked in an all-out war with great Britain, and trying to defend such a large territory, that France had never really capitalized on, was a headache he did not want.

It is important to understand the magnitude of this land deal: this massive purchase now comprises all or significant part of the states of Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Minnesota, Louisiana, New Mexico, Texas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, as well as parts of the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. This is quite literally the central third of the “Lower 48” states.

*A map of the acquired lands of the United States. US Government map. Public Domain.*

The problem? No one in the United States really knew what was “out there”: there were only the scattered – and edited – reports of fur trappers and “Mountain Men”, most of whom had good reasons to “creatively edit” their reports. Thus, after the deal was done, President Thomas Jefferson ordered the commissioning of the “Corps of Discovery,” now better known as the “Lewis and Clark Expedition”. The “Corps of Discovery” set out in mid-1804, and returned a little over two years later, in 1806, returning with a wealth of detailed maps and information, that sparked the Western Expansion…

…But that was all in the future.

One of the items carried along with the Corps was a unique and little-known object: an Austrian-made Girandoni Air Rifle.

*Various Austrian rifles; Girandoni Air Rifle at center. From the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum firearms collection, 2018. CCA/4.0.*

The Girandoni (or “Girardoni,” in some spellings) Air Rifle took its name from its eponymous designer, on Bartolomeo Girardoni, who hailed from the Tyrol region. Very little is known for certain about Girandoni, nor about the development cycle for the rifle named for him; in fact, the date of the invention is not absolutely known, as it was apparently sometime in either 1779 or 1780.

Approximately 1,300 rifles are known to have been made, most of them used by the Austrian Empire. A small number, however, were sold commercially, which is apparently how the Lewis and Clark Expedition acquired their example.

The Girandoni, for the late-18^th Century, is a stunningly impressive achievement in “firearms” design. It was a breech loading, lever-operated air gun, feeding from a twenty-round tubular magazine. While not silent, it was quieter than a musket, had no muzzle flash, and produced no smoke from firing, and all in a package that weighed in at just under ten pounds (4.5kg), and less than four feet long.

The air reservoirs were pressurized to between 750 and 1,000 psi (pounds per square inch), giving performances “downrange,” – out to ranges of c.100-125 yards – where the Girandoni’s projectiles would do about the same damage as a modern .38 Special cartridge, and possibly as much as a .45 ACP round, assuming that it was fired from a mostly-full air reservoir. The teardrop-shaped air bottle was screwed into place where the buttstock would normally be. As the rifle delivered almost no recoil to the shooter, the extra weight and mass of a normal stock was not necessary. The Girandoni’s rate of fire was around 20 to 30 shots per minute, depending on air pressure in the reservoir. The three air reservoirs provided with each rifle in Austrian service were refilled, initially, via a hand-pump, not unlike a modern bicycle pump; eventually, an automated pump was mounted in the bed of a small wagon, allowing air bottles to be refilled on the march.

*Recreation of an Austrian Girandoni System Accouterments Bag, including spare air flasks, air pump, wrenches, bullet mold and ladle. Army Heritage Museum, U.S. Army. Public Domain.*

The “firing mechanism” was almost the exact opposite of a conventional flintlock musket. After tipping the rifle up slightly (to drop a lead ball into position), the shooter would push a block protruding from the left side of the rifle to pull a ball from the tubular magazine into line with the bore. When the trigger was pulled, instead of the ‘cock’ (what we now call the ‘hammer’) falling and striking its flint against the frizzen (the latch over the powder pan) to strike a spark and ignite the powder charge, the Girandoni’s cock tripped an internal hammer that struck a pin; this pin pushed backwards, towards the shooter, and struck the head of a vale – not dissimilar to a trumpet valve – which depressed the valve just enough to release a blast of pressurized air. This burst of pressure struck the back of the ball in the chamber, and propelled it down the barrel. Because of the high pressure in the air bottle, the valve would snap shut almost instantly. The shooter would simply repeat the process, until either the ammunition tube was empty, or the air pressure in the reservoir had dropped too low to continue firing.

Needless to say, this seemed to be a definite revolution in military firearms. The Lewis & Clark Expedition made numerous comments in its reports about how impressed and intimidated the Native American tribes were when the Corps demonstrated the Girandoni to them.

The question, then, is: Why didn’t the Girandoni become the new dominant military rifle?

The Girandoni, for all its very impressive performance, was both an expensive and comparatively delicate weapon. Militaries of the time knew very well that when things “went sideways,” as they often do, troops needed a longarm that could withstand combat with bayonets, or be used as a very heavy club – actions that would shatter a Girandoni.

The Girandoni was very useful in the hands of well-trained, independent-minded skirmisher troops, but was not “soldier-proof” (to use the more polite modern phrase), and, even in the hands of well-trained troops, it did not provide enough of an advantage to justify its expense in even limited service.

As with many things, “newer” does not necessarily mean “better”. This is as true today, as it was c.120 years ago…

…Would that people in positions of responsibility would understand that idea more.

Meta to Drop 10,000 Employees

Freedomist Editor March 15, 2023

FACEBOOK TO FIRE 10,000 MORE WORKERS -Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta announces plans to cut up to 10,000 more jobs in an effort to stem the losing revenue resulting from continuing to carry the water of the DNC-CCP, allowing its platform to become a Woketarian safe haven and enemy of American liberty.

Meet the 4D Printer That Prints Soft Robots

Paul Collier March 15, 2023

4D PRINTING BREAKTHROUGH COULD LEAD TO PRINTING SOFT ROBOTS – A breakthrough in 4D Printing was announced by researchers at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M). The researchers claim to have created software and hardware for a 4D Printer that will allow the complete printing of complex electronic devices in biomorphic forms. From Science Daily:

“This research line focuses on the development of soft multifunctional structures, which consist of materials with mechanical properties that mimic biological tissues such as the brain or skin. In addition, they are capable of changing their shape or properties when actuated via external stimuli, such as magnetic fields or electric currents.”

Researchers Claim They Have Perfected Perfectly Secured Communications

Paul Collier March 8, 2023

Researchers from the University of Oxford and Carnegie Melon University claim to have created a completely secure method of digital transmission. The technique hides the intended content within other content in a way, they claim, cannot be detected. They use a technique called steganography, which involves sharing sensitive content within innocuous content. Up to now, the insertion of the sensitive data into the innocuous data creates enough of a change in the innocuous data that the cloaking can be detected.

From Scitech daily

The algorithm applies to a setting called steganography: the practice of hiding sensitive information inside of innocuous content. Steganography differs from cryptography because the sensitive information is concealed in such a way that this obscures the fact that something has been hidden. An example could be hiding a Shakespeare poem inside an AI-generated image of a cat.

Despite having been studied for more than 25 years, existing steganography approaches generally have imperfect security, meaning that individuals who use these methods risk being detected. This is because previous steganography algorithms would subtly change the distribution of the innocuous content.

To overcome this, the research team used recent breakthroughs in information theory, specifically minimum entropy coupling, which allows one to join two distributions of data together such that their mutual information is maximized, but the individual distributions are preserved.

ED.NOTE: Whenever one sees reports of perfect encryption, a healthy dose of skepticism is in order. It remains to be seen whether these researchers can further demonstrate the efficacy of their claims, but I have little doubt the advances tilt the balance of power towards anonymous, secure communication, though perhaps that goal is ultimately beyond our capacity.

If, indeed, they have stumbled upon the holy grail of secure encryption, the race to secure the technology and prevent it from reaching the general public is on. Hopefully, there are open source advocates working to duplicate this type of work, preventing it from being cut off from regular Americans behind Intellectual Property walls.