In June 2020 the RethinkX think tank published an intriguing report by James Arbib and Tony Seba, Rethinking Humanity (which you can download here for free). The report is 89 pages long and heavily documented, but I think that most who have taken any interest in the issues it raises up to now could cope with it fairly easily, and the essential reasoning underlying it is quite simply explained. Arbib and Seba hold that civilization has five foundational sectors--information, energy, transport, food and materials--and that when the unit cost of all five of these things falls by an order of magnitude, civilization is pushed toward a crisis that can drive it to collapse or, should it develop a new "Organizing System" for itself, ascend to a new peak of "capability." They hold that this has happened in the past, but only once, when humanity's invention of agricultural set the stage for its movement from the pre-historic Age of Survival into the Age of Extraction with which we identify with all of recorded history.
The reason all this is of more than purely intellectual interest is that they hold that the five foundational sectors will, in the course of the next decade, see that order of magnitude drop, forcing such a crisis on modern civilization. Simply put, they believe that in the 2020s the price of information, energy, transport, food and metarials will all drop by 90 percent, while more efficient use of them enables a 90 percent drop in unit resource requirements--resulting in the reduction of the waste produced by as much as 99 percent.
The simultaneous cheapening of life's necessities and lightening of the per unit burden of those necessities on the planetary ecosystem imply enormous positive potentials. That society will seize on this potential is not a given, of course--civilizations can and do fail, with the Age of Extraction, of course, tending toward societies of a particularly problematic type. As the name hints--and as anyone familiar with history or sociology can appreciate--they tend to be predatory, centralized, hierarchical, unequal, unfree, exploitative and brutal (to say nothing of lacking in resilience), with an elite regarding these things as features and not bugs of the system committed precisely to keeping things as they are. However, the age of abundance, and the more complex structures it both enables and requires, would mean a world which is less of all those things, with hierarchy giving way to networks, and enough for all, in what they call an Age of Freedom.
Reading all of this, of course, much of this recalled quite familiar ideas, from Karl Marx (with those of his sociological ideas commonly summed up as "substructure, structure, superstructure"), to Carroll Quigley (with his instruments of expansion and vested interests), to Alvin Toffler (who also wrote of a "third wave" of human organization that would see hierarchy give way to networks). Still, I found the provision of a clear quantitative basis for their variant on this body of theory interesting, not least because of the manner in which it enabled them to offer up very explicit and detailed forecasts. In considering their model it also seems to me a significant strength that they did not overlook such basics as energy and food and materials, in contrast with the Kurzweil crowd's single-minded concentration on the performance metrics of computing, and casualness with all else. (Seba is especially noteworthy as having been attentive to renewable energy back when others were dismissing it--the more so as this, rather than anything in computing, is the true technological success story of the past decade.)
However, it also seems necessary to say that the report heavily references prior RethinkX work, about which I have some reservations, in particular two earlier reports, one on transportation, the other on food and agriculture (both also available freely at the site). The transport report anticipates a shift over the 2020s from the current model of private ownership of internal combustion-powered, human-driven, vehicles, to the ride-sharing of electrically-powered self-driving cars they term "Transportation as a Service" (or "Taas"). The food and agriculture report details the consequences of animal protein production shifting to the lab.
Both of those reports were, in their extrapolations of the consequences of their breakthroughs, rigorous and plausible. The problem, more pronounced in the transportation report, which dates back to 2017, is the starting point of that extrapolation--the treatment of Level 5 autonomy ("a key pre-condition for Taas") as imminent at that point in time. To put it mildly, it has not proven to be so. As a result everything that might have followed from their arrival has, at the very least, been delayed by several years amid more muted expectations regarding the technology (even if Elon Musk, no more humble after repeatedly getting it wrong, continues to insist on Level 5 Teslas this year, to increasing sneering from a press that has fallen out of love with him, and the idea).
The more recent report about food and agriculture is less obviously flawed that way, forecasting that "modern food" produced through techniques like "precision fermentation" will reach "cost parity with most animal-derived protein" in 2023-2025, see its price drop 80 percent by 2030, and then halve yet again by 2035, with the result the collapse of the livestock industry, and potentially the extraordinary cheapening of food, as well as the extraordinary relief of the natural environment from the burden of livestock-raising. Given that the point of disruption is still some way off only time will tell if that report is any better-grounded than the one on transport, but I have noted that, as with self-driving cars, there has already been some deferral of the date at which we would be seeing the stuff hit the market. (Not so long ago they said we could expect to see it at the supermarket in 2018. Now they say 2023. "I've heard that one before," I can't help thinking to myself.)
In short, where the cost drops in at least some of the key sectors they detail may be concerned I suspect the authors are overly bullish--though I also admit that the combination of pandemic and economic downturn has seriously confused the situation. (Will economic stress translate to slower R & D and less investment? Or will the problems raised by the pandemic in particular, not least with regard to supply chains, actually accelerate a shift to what the writers call "modern food?") I admit, too, that while I have been less impressed by their recommendations with regard to how society can best adapt to the changes than other aspects of their arguments, their report does offer some grounds for hope that the most dire problems facing us may be remediable with tools substantially in hand or soon to be, and the world of ten, fifteen, twenty years hence a better place than the one we live in now.
Tuesday, September 1, 2020
Friday, August 21, 2020
From Bubble to Bust--and Perhaps Boom Again? Notes on Technological Hype
At this point I am old enough to have lived through a number of cycles of boom and bust for
technological hype. And I think I have noticed a possible pattern in recent busts, certainly with regard to the "bust" end of the broader cycle. In particular it seems that this tends to combine three features:
Yet as a review of Ray Kurzweil's predictions for 2009 makes clear, much that was widely expected never came to pass. Artificial intelligence, virtual reality, nanotechnology. To put it mildly, progress in those areas, which would have had far more radical consequences, proved . . . slower, so slow that expectation fizzled out in disappointment.
Meanwhile, the New Economy boom of the late '90s turned to bust, a bust which never quite turned into boom again, so that not the crash but the years of growth turned out to be the historical anomaly, and even the most credulous consumers of the conventional wisdom reminded that the idiot fantasy that the economic equivalent of the law of gravity had been suspended was just that, an idiot fantasy. This was all the more painful because, in contrast with the New Economy promises that science was liberating us from our reliance on a finite and frail base of natural resources, we confronted spiking natural resource prices, above all fossil fuel prices, that brought on a global fuel and food crisis (2006-2008). And then the comparatively crummy performance of the early twenty-first
century, which was really just another, much less impressive bubble--and that not in any fancy new tech, but old-fashioned real estate and commodity prices--led straightaway to the worst economic disaster since the 1930s, from which we have been reeling ever since.
Science fiction, a useful bellwether for these things, showed the reaction. Where in the wake of the '90s boom and hype the genre showered readers in shiny, ultra-high-tech Singularitarian futures, and through sheer momentum this substantially continued through the early '00s (it can take years to finish a book, years after that to get it into print), it was all post-apocalypse and dystopia--like World War Z and The Hunger Games and Paolo Bacigalupi's stuff. And even when science fiction bothered with the future it was the future as it looked from the standpoint of the past--as with steampunk, which was very popular post-2008 as well.
Of course, the popular mood did not stay permanently down in the dumps. The economy made a recovery of sorts--a very anemic one, but a recovery all the same.
And there was renewed excitement about many of the very technologies that had disappointed, with the companies and the press assuring us that they were finally getting the hang of carbon nanotubes and neural nets and virtual reality and the rest. Soon our cars would drive themselves, while drones filled our skies, bringing us, if we wanted them--and we would--our virtual reality kits, our supermarket orders of clean meat.
Alas, just about none of that came to pass either--and where in the '90s we at least got the PCs and Internet and cell phones, I cannot think of a single real consolation prize for the consumer this time around. Meanwhile a new crisis hit--in the form of a pandemic which underlined just how un-automated the world still was, how reliant on people actually physically doing stuff in person. And underlined, too, that for all the talk of our living in an age of biotechnomedical miracle that has filled the air for as long as I can remember, the war on viruses is very, very, very far from being won. All of this contributed to an even worse economic disaster than the one seen in 2008 (not that things ever normalized after that).
It seems to me not just possible, but probable, that the combination of technological disappointment, crisis and economic downturn will spell another period of lowered expectations with regard to technological progress. Indeed, I have already been struck by how the chatter about the prospect of mass technological unemployment in the near term vanished amid economic crash generating plenty of the old-fashioned, regular kind.
Of course, in considering that one should acknowledge that some are pointing to the current crisis, precisely because of the way in which it has demonstrated certain societal vulnerabilities and needs as spurring further efforts to automate economic operations, or at least permit them to be performed remotely--with implications extending to, among much else, those drones and self-driving cars. A similar logic, some hold, may work in favor of clean meat.
It is not wholly implausible, of course. Crises can and do spur innovation, when the backing is there--when the prevailing institutions elect to treat a crisis as a crisis. However, I have yet to get the impression of any such sensibility among those flattered by the feeble-minded everyday usage of terms like "world leader."
1. The failure of much-hyped technologies to actually materialize.Back in the late '90s there was enormous hype over computers. Of course, this period did produce some genuine, significant technologies of everyday life--personal computing, Internet access and cellular telephony--beginning to become genuinely widespread, and becoming refined considerably in the process, culminating in the extraordinary combination of power, versatility and portability of our smart phones and tablets with their 5G-grade broadband two decades on.
2. Economic downturn.
3. A crisis which gives the lie to self-satisfaction over some particularly significant claim for our technology as a revolutionary problem-solver.
Yet as a review of Ray Kurzweil's predictions for 2009 makes clear, much that was widely expected never came to pass. Artificial intelligence, virtual reality, nanotechnology. To put it mildly, progress in those areas, which would have had far more radical consequences, proved . . . slower, so slow that expectation fizzled out in disappointment.
Of course, the popular mood did not stay permanently down in the dumps. The economy made a recovery of sorts--a very anemic one, but a recovery all the same.
And there was renewed excitement about many of the very technologies that had disappointed, with the companies and the press assuring us that they were finally getting the hang of carbon nanotubes and neural nets and virtual reality and the rest. Soon our cars would drive themselves, while drones filled our skies, bringing us, if we wanted them--and we would--our virtual reality kits, our supermarket orders of clean meat.
Alas, just about none of that came to pass either--and where in the '90s we at least got the PCs and Internet and cell phones, I cannot think of a single real consolation prize for the consumer this time around. Meanwhile a new crisis hit--in the form of a pandemic which underlined just how un-automated the world still was, how reliant on people actually physically doing stuff in person. And underlined, too, that for all the talk of our living in an age of biotechnomedical miracle that has filled the air for as long as I can remember, the war on viruses is very, very, very far from being won. All of this contributed to an even worse economic disaster than the one seen in 2008 (not that things ever normalized after that).
It seems to me not just possible, but probable, that the combination of technological disappointment, crisis and economic downturn will spell another period of lowered expectations with regard to technological progress. Indeed, I have already been struck by how the chatter about the prospect of mass technological unemployment in the near term vanished amid economic crash generating plenty of the old-fashioned, regular kind.
Of course, in considering that one should acknowledge that some are pointing to the current crisis, precisely because of the way in which it has demonstrated certain societal vulnerabilities and needs as spurring further efforts to automate economic operations, or at least permit them to be performed remotely--with implications extending to, among much else, those drones and self-driving cars. A similar logic, some hold, may work in favor of clean meat.
It is not wholly implausible, of course. Crises can and do spur innovation, when the backing is there--when the prevailing institutions elect to treat a crisis as a crisis. However, I have yet to get the impression of any such sensibility among those flattered by the feeble-minded everyday usage of terms like "world leader."
Because No One Else Seems to be Keeping Tabs--A Glance Back at the Past Decade's Techno-Hype
The vast majority of people, I find, are very "well-trained" consumers. By that I mean that they have been trained in the way marketing hucksters want them to be. They completely swallow the hype about how soon a thing will be here and how much difference it will make in their lives--and then after the product's arriving later, or maybe not making so much difference, or maybe never even arriving at all and therefore making no difference whatsoever, thinking in terms of the hype rather than their own lived experience. They dutifully remember nothing and learn nothing, so that they are just as ready to believe the promises of the next huckster who comes along. And they pour scorn down on the head of anyone who questions what might most politely be called their credulousness--when they are not absorbed in the smart phone they believe is the telos of all human history--adding meanness to their extreme stupidity.
Still, as the words "vast majority" make clear, not everyone falls into this category. Some are a little more alert, a little more critical, than others. And sometimes those with the capacity to get a little more skeptical do so.
I think we are approaching such a period, because so many of the expectations raised in the 2010-2015 period are, at this moment, being deeply disappointed--and not simply because the ill-informed hacks of the press have oversold things far beyond their slight comprehension, but because in many a field those generally presumed to be in a position to know best (like CEOs of companies actually making the stuff in question) have publicly, often with great fanfare, announced specific dates for the unveiling of their promised grand creations, and those dates have come and again, sometimes again and again, as a world in need of the innovations in question goes on waiting.
Consider the Carbon NanoTube (CNT) computer chips that were supposed to keep computing power-per-dollar rising exponentially for a generation as the old silicon-based chips hit their limits.
Back in 2014 IBM announced it would have a commercial CNT chip by 2020--winning what has with only a little melodrama been called a "race against time."
Well, it's 2020. That commercial chip, however, is not here. Instead we are hearing only of breakthroughs that may, if followed up by other breakthroughs, eventually lead to the production of those chips, perhaps sometime this coming decade.
Indeed, the latest report regarding the Gartner Hype Cycle holds that carbon-based transistors are sliding down from the "Peak of Inflated Expectations" into the "Trough of Disillusionment."
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the progress of artificial intelligence, on which so many were so bullish a short while ago, is also slowing down--in part, for lack of computer capacity. It seems, in fact, that even carbon nanotube chips wouldn't get things on track if they were here. Instead the field's spokespersons are talking quantum computers, which, to put it mildly, are a still more remote possibility.
Also unsurprisingly, particularly high-profile applications for that artificial intelligence are proving areas of disappointment as well.
To cite an obvious instance, in 2013 Jeff Bezos said that within five years (by 2018) drone deliveries would be "commonplace."
In considering the absence of such deliveries years after those five years have run their course the press tends to focus on regulatory approval as the essential stumbling block, but, of course, the requisite technology is apparently still "under development."
Perhaps more germane to most people's lives, back in 2015 Elon Musk predicted that fully autonomous cars (Level 5) would hit the market in 2017.
That prediction has fared even more badly, with the result that the self-driving car (certainly to go by the number of articles whose writers smugly use smug phrases like "reality check" in their titles) is starting to look like the flying car. (Or the flying delivery drone?)
The Oculus Rift created quite a sensation back in 2013.
Alas, today the excitement that had surrounded it is even more completely recognized as past.
Clean meat was supposed to be on the market in 2019, if not before the end of 2018.
Now in 2020 the Guardian is talking about clean meat's hitting the market happening "in a few years." (For its part, IDTechEx says, think 2023.)
In area after area, what was supposed to have been here this year or the year before that or even before that is not only not here, but, we are told, still a few more years away--the Innovations talked up by the Silicon Valley Babbitts and their sycophants in the press receding further and further into the future.
Will it necessarily always be so? Of course not. Maybe the dream deferred will be a dream denied only temporarily, and briefly, with the semiconductor factories soon to be mass-producing CNT chips, which maybe along with quicker-than-expected progress in quantum computing will keep the AI spring of the twenty-first century from giving way to a long, cold AI winter, while perhaps even without them the delivery drones and the self-driving cars arrive ahead of schedule. Maybe, if still rough around the edges, next year will be VR's year, while this time it really is true that clean meat will be in our supermarkets "in a few years."
However, as one old enough to remember the extraordinary expectations of the '90s in many of these precise areas--nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, virtual reality--the disappointment is already very familiar, and worse for that familiarity, as well as how little in the way of tangible result we have been left with this time around. (The disappointments of the '90s were colossal--but we did get that explosion of access to personal computing, cellular telephony, the Internet, and those things did improve quite rapidly afterward. What from among the products of this round of techno-hype can compare with any of that, let alone all of it?) And if anything, where the development is less familiar but perhaps potentially more significant, the disappointment is even more galling. (Clean meat could be a very big piece of the puzzle for coping with the demand of a growing population for food, and the environmental crisis, at the same time.) In fact I cannot help wondering if we will not still be waiting for the promised results in twenty years--only to be disappointed yet again, while the hucksters go on with their hucksterism, and a credulous public continues to worship them as gods.
Still, as the words "vast majority" make clear, not everyone falls into this category. Some are a little more alert, a little more critical, than others. And sometimes those with the capacity to get a little more skeptical do so.
I think we are approaching such a period, because so many of the expectations raised in the 2010-2015 period are, at this moment, being deeply disappointed--and not simply because the ill-informed hacks of the press have oversold things far beyond their slight comprehension, but because in many a field those generally presumed to be in a position to know best (like CEOs of companies actually making the stuff in question) have publicly, often with great fanfare, announced specific dates for the unveiling of their promised grand creations, and those dates have come and again, sometimes again and again, as a world in need of the innovations in question goes on waiting.
Consider the Carbon NanoTube (CNT) computer chips that were supposed to keep computing power-per-dollar rising exponentially for a generation as the old silicon-based chips hit their limits.
Back in 2014 IBM announced it would have a commercial CNT chip by 2020--winning what has with only a little melodrama been called a "race against time."
Well, it's 2020. That commercial chip, however, is not here. Instead we are hearing only of breakthroughs that may, if followed up by other breakthroughs, eventually lead to the production of those chips, perhaps sometime this coming decade.
Indeed, the latest report regarding the Gartner Hype Cycle holds that carbon-based transistors are sliding down from the "Peak of Inflated Expectations" into the "Trough of Disillusionment."
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the progress of artificial intelligence, on which so many were so bullish a short while ago, is also slowing down--in part, for lack of computer capacity. It seems, in fact, that even carbon nanotube chips wouldn't get things on track if they were here. Instead the field's spokespersons are talking quantum computers, which, to put it mildly, are a still more remote possibility.
Also unsurprisingly, particularly high-profile applications for that artificial intelligence are proving areas of disappointment as well.
To cite an obvious instance, in 2013 Jeff Bezos said that within five years (by 2018) drone deliveries would be "commonplace."
In considering the absence of such deliveries years after those five years have run their course the press tends to focus on regulatory approval as the essential stumbling block, but, of course, the requisite technology is apparently still "under development."
Perhaps more germane to most people's lives, back in 2015 Elon Musk predicted that fully autonomous cars (Level 5) would hit the market in 2017.
That prediction has fared even more badly, with the result that the self-driving car (certainly to go by the number of articles whose writers smugly use smug phrases like "reality check" in their titles) is starting to look like the flying car. (Or the flying delivery drone?)
The Oculus Rift created quite a sensation back in 2013.
Alas, today the excitement that had surrounded it is even more completely recognized as past.
Clean meat was supposed to be on the market in 2019, if not before the end of 2018.
Now in 2020 the Guardian is talking about clean meat's hitting the market happening "in a few years." (For its part, IDTechEx says, think 2023.)
In area after area, what was supposed to have been here this year or the year before that or even before that is not only not here, but, we are told, still a few more years away--the Innovations talked up by the Silicon Valley Babbitts and their sycophants in the press receding further and further into the future.
Will it necessarily always be so? Of course not. Maybe the dream deferred will be a dream denied only temporarily, and briefly, with the semiconductor factories soon to be mass-producing CNT chips, which maybe along with quicker-than-expected progress in quantum computing will keep the AI spring of the twenty-first century from giving way to a long, cold AI winter, while perhaps even without them the delivery drones and the self-driving cars arrive ahead of schedule. Maybe, if still rough around the edges, next year will be VR's year, while this time it really is true that clean meat will be in our supermarkets "in a few years."
However, as one old enough to remember the extraordinary expectations of the '90s in many of these precise areas--nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, virtual reality--the disappointment is already very familiar, and worse for that familiarity, as well as how little in the way of tangible result we have been left with this time around. (The disappointments of the '90s were colossal--but we did get that explosion of access to personal computing, cellular telephony, the Internet, and those things did improve quite rapidly afterward. What from among the products of this round of techno-hype can compare with any of that, let alone all of it?) And if anything, where the development is less familiar but perhaps potentially more significant, the disappointment is even more galling. (Clean meat could be a very big piece of the puzzle for coping with the demand of a growing population for food, and the environmental crisis, at the same time.) In fact I cannot help wondering if we will not still be waiting for the promised results in twenty years--only to be disappointed yet again, while the hucksters go on with their hucksterism, and a credulous public continues to worship them as gods.
Wednesday, August 19, 2020
Contextualizing the French War in the Sahel
When we hear about the French operations in Mali and surrounding countries, I suppose few have much sense of how extraordinary the action is. I suspect that those who follow the news casually take it for granted that France has long been involved militarily in sub-Saharan Africa, without much sense of history or the details. This is all the more significant because, certainly where an American news audience is concerned, the commitment of 3,000, or even 5,000, troops to the region does not sound like very much, used as it is to thinking in terms of tens or hundreds of thousands of troops in overseas action. And Americans who have seen their forces almost continuously engaged against or in Iraq since 1990--for thirty years--might not be too struck by a commitment that began only in 2013. And so what France is doing in the Sahel does not seem like anything out of the ordinary.
Still, it is worth remembering that if France remained militarily active in Africa after decolonization, with its bases numerous and its interventions frequent, it has during that last half century been very sensitive to the scale and length of operations, especially where they have involved "boots on the ground." (By the end of the '60s France's sub-Saharan presence was down to 7,000 troops, total, and trended downward afterward.) The French government preferred brief actions emphasizing air power rather than ground troops (its '70s-era interventions sometimes referred to as "Jaguar diplomacy" for that reason), while its '80s-era confrontation with Libya over Chad, was exceptionally taxing--scarcely feasible without considerable American support.
Indeed, for the whole generation afterward no operation was comparable to the '80s action in Chad in its combination of scale and duration. Given the difference in population and the size of its armed forces (one-fifth and one-seventh of the U.S. figures, respectively), France's deployment has been comparable to a commitment of 15-35,000 American troops, equal to what the U.S. deployed in Afghanistan for much of that war--and likewise fulfilling an evolving mission over a far vaster area. What had originally been an action to recover specific ground from a specific enemy (recovery of northern Mali from the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad) turned into a broader regional alliance/counter-terrorism operation (the Joint Force of the Group of Five Sahel/Operation Barkhane) against a multiplicity of groups extending across the Sahel, from Mauritania to Chad (an area the size of Western Europe)--overlapping with but separate from the ongoing peacekeeping mission in north Mali that picked up after the original French operation, the "United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali" that quickly acquired the dubious distinction of being the world's most dangerous peacekeeping operation. Moreover, in contrast with the direct clash-avoiding, selective, minimalist use of force seen against Libya three decades ago, combat, if comparatively low in intensity, has been a continuous feature of the operation, which increasingly looks like an indefinite commitment to the general policing of this vast and still unstable region.
Consequently it is not for nothing that a recent New York Times article called it "France's Forever War." One might add, moreover, that the Sahel military operation(s) are just one way in which French policy has become more militarized, with France pursuing new overseas bases, and talking about sixth generation fighter jets, and French Presidents even fantasizing about (and perhaps even taking small steps toward) reviving conscription. And that, in turn, bespeaks how the conduct of every last major power has become increasingly militarized this past decade, supposedly pacific "Old Europe" included.
Indeed, for the whole generation afterward no operation was comparable to the '80s action in Chad in its combination of scale and duration. Given the difference in population and the size of its armed forces (one-fifth and one-seventh of the U.S. figures, respectively), France's deployment has been comparable to a commitment of 15-35,000 American troops, equal to what the U.S. deployed in Afghanistan for much of that war--and likewise fulfilling an evolving mission over a far vaster area. What had originally been an action to recover specific ground from a specific enemy (recovery of northern Mali from the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad) turned into a broader regional alliance/counter-terrorism operation (the Joint Force of the Group of Five Sahel/Operation Barkhane) against a multiplicity of groups extending across the Sahel, from Mauritania to Chad (an area the size of Western Europe)--overlapping with but separate from the ongoing peacekeeping mission in north Mali that picked up after the original French operation, the "United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali" that quickly acquired the dubious distinction of being the world's most dangerous peacekeeping operation. Moreover, in contrast with the direct clash-avoiding, selective, minimalist use of force seen against Libya three decades ago, combat, if comparatively low in intensity, has been a continuous feature of the operation, which increasingly looks like an indefinite commitment to the general policing of this vast and still unstable region.
Consequently it is not for nothing that a recent New York Times article called it "France's Forever War." One might add, moreover, that the Sahel military operation(s) are just one way in which French policy has become more militarized, with France pursuing new overseas bases, and talking about sixth generation fighter jets, and French Presidents even fantasizing about (and perhaps even taking small steps toward) reviving conscription. And that, in turn, bespeaks how the conduct of every last major power has become increasingly militarized this past decade, supposedly pacific "Old Europe" included.
Yes, Tony Blair Was a Neoliberal
That said, even considering the ways in which offended and disappointed many on the left, can seem halcyon in comparison with what has been seen since. The economic disasters and brutal austerity seen since his departure from office, which really does seem to spell the final doom of the post-war welfare state--the shift to an American-style regime with regard to higher education, a slower but still advancing shift in the same direction with the country's health care system, the raising of the regressive Value Added Tax yet again to 20 percent, the renewed assault on the social safety net of yet another Welfare Reform Act (2012) that delivered Universal Credit and bedroom tax, the hundreds of thousands of "excess deaths" in recent years traceable to cuts in care facilities, the plans to raise the retirement age (perhaps all the way to age 75, effectively abolishing retirement for most)--and all that, before the current public health/economic crisis.
I admit that next to that Blair's tenure does not look quite so bad--until one remembers the extent to which his policies did so much to pave the way for all of it, in carrying forward what apologists for New Labour tend to think of as Conservative projects, and his general lowering of the bar for what constitutes tolerable government. That led to this. And so lends the question "Was Tony Blair's Prime Ministership neoliberal?" an additional, very contemporary, significance, the more so with the Labour Party, for the time being, still walking the Blairite road.
Tuesday, August 18, 2020
Was Tony Blair a Neoliberal?
In recent years figures like Jonathan Chait have made it fashionable to deny the existence or salience of neoliberalism as a concept--and this has especially been the case in regard to the term's use as a descriptor for the (nominally) left of center parties of the United States and Britain.
My personal experience of discussion with those who espouse this view showed differences among those making the case in these respective countries. Those I encountered on social media who denied that Bill Clinton was a neoliberal were never equipped with any facts, only bullying and abusiveness that gave the impression they were professional trolls intent on silencing anyone who publicly espoused such an opinion. That only underlined how they had nothing to say on behalf of a position that even slight familiarity with Clinton's actual policy record makes appear risible--a line of thought which had me soon finding that there was a scarcity of comprehensive, systematic and thoroughly grounded assessments of that record to make this clear.
The thought of, if only in a small way, redressing that deficiency led to my paper, "Was the Clinton Administration Neoliberal?" and after that a book examining the U.S. policy record from the 1970s on in more comprehensive fashion (The Neoliberal Age in America: From Carter to Trump), both of which endeavor to offer an explicit, testable definition of neoliberalism, and then systematically consider the record of the administrations in question against it.
Those who contested Blair's labeling as neoliberal, however, assumed a different tone--in part, I suppose, because they did have something to say for themselves. They would point in particular to his establishment of a minimum wage and other rights for British workers that, certainly by American standards, appear very generous; and his funding of social services, which, again by American standards, also appeared very generous at the time. It did, at least, compel me to think about what they said, the more in as I was less familiar with the finer points of Blair's policy record than I was with Clinton's, or for that matter, Margaret Thatcher's, or Harold Wilson's, or Clement Attlee's.
In that I do not think I was alone. My impression is that Blair's domestic record has been overshadowed to a considerable degree by his foreign policy record--above all his supporting the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and bringing Britain's forces into the invasion along with it even as longtime NATO allies France and Germany (to say nothing of other powers like Russia and China) forcefully and publicly opposed the move. Moreover, critical examination of Blair's ministership would seem to have been inhibited by, on top of the generally lousy job with these things done by public intellectuals these days, the extreme resistance of the neoliberals in the Labour Party, whose hostility to any change of course was made all too plain in the pathetic lows to which they descended in their campaign against Jeremy Corbyn.
Still, examine Blair's record I did. And in doing so I saw that the pretense of Blair not being a neoliberal is just as risible as Clinton's not being a neoliberal, given his not only acquiescing in the profound changes wrought in English economic and social life by his predecessors (privatization, union-breaking, financialization, etc.), but his particular brand of budgetary austerity with its tax breaks for corporations and stringency for the poor, his backdoor privatization of basic services, his hostility to government regulation of business, his embrace of flaky New Economy thinking, and the rest. (Indeed, examining his record, and reexamining that of his predecessors, I was staggered by how much of it I had seen before reviewing the comparable history in the United States.)
You can check out my examination of Blair's record--which also includes an equally detailed examination of Margaret Thatcher's record--here at the web site of the Social Sciences Research Network.
In that I do not think I was alone. My impression is that Blair's domestic record has been overshadowed to a considerable degree by his foreign policy record--above all his supporting the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and bringing Britain's forces into the invasion along with it even as longtime NATO allies France and Germany (to say nothing of other powers like Russia and China) forcefully and publicly opposed the move. Moreover, critical examination of Blair's ministership would seem to have been inhibited by, on top of the generally lousy job with these things done by public intellectuals these days, the extreme resistance of the neoliberals in the Labour Party, whose hostility to any change of course was made all too plain in the pathetic lows to which they descended in their campaign against Jeremy Corbyn.
Still, examine Blair's record I did. And in doing so I saw that the pretense of Blair not being a neoliberal is just as risible as Clinton's not being a neoliberal, given his not only acquiescing in the profound changes wrought in English economic and social life by his predecessors (privatization, union-breaking, financialization, etc.), but his particular brand of budgetary austerity with its tax breaks for corporations and stringency for the poor, his backdoor privatization of basic services, his hostility to government regulation of business, his embrace of flaky New Economy thinking, and the rest. (Indeed, examining his record, and reexamining that of his predecessors, I was staggered by how much of it I had seen before reviewing the comparable history in the United States.)
You can check out my examination of Blair's record--which also includes an equally detailed examination of Margaret Thatcher's record--here at the web site of the Social Sciences Research Network.
Thursday, July 30, 2020
Gripen vs. Viggen and the Rising Cost of Fighter Aircraft
Recently writing about the Gripen I found myself thinking again about the lengthy, rapid rise in the cost of fighter aircraft, and from the start how it constrained the country's ambitions in this area from the start.
As I observed in the prior post, the Swedish program for a fourth-generation fighter aimed only for a light fighter, and was content to produce an aircraft delivered only fairly late in that cycle (the Swedish air force taking its Gripens in the '90s, when the U.S. was already flight-testing the Raptor, and the Eurofighter Typhoon was similarly being tested).
The country had been more ambitious when procuring the earlier, third-generation Viggens. They went for a medium fighter, not a light fighter, one reflection of which is that the later jet actually had a lighter maximum payload than the earlier plane (5300 kg to the Viggen's 7000 kg). It might be acknowledged that with its first deliveries made only in 1971 the jet can look like a relative latecomer compared with the F-4 Phantom (1960), but still came into service just behind the MiG-23 (1970) and a little ahead of the better-known Mirage F-1 (1973). Moreover, if there were earlier third generation type jets the Viggen was still in many ways a cutting-edge fighter, incorporating many relatively novel features, including the terrain-following radar and integrated circuit-based airborne computer just starting to appear in tactical aircraft at the time, a then ground-breaking canard design and thrust reverser, and in its afterburning turbofan engine, look down/shoot down capability and multi-function displays, technologies we associate with fourth-generation jets. (In fact, it does not seem unreasonable to think of the Viggen as a generation 3+ or 3.5 plane rather than just a gen-3.)
None of that, of course, detracts from the quality of the Gripen aircraft, which was a well-regarded aircraft at the time of its introduction, and has notably been upgraded in a number of respects, with the latest "E" version having a supercruise-capable engine and an AESA (active electronically scanned array) radar, turning generation 4 into generation 4+, while some impressive claims have also been made for its electronic warfare systems (with the most bullish arguing for them as an acceptable substitute for full-blown stealth capability). Still, the shift in strategy does reflect the way even affluent, highly industrialized nations with good access to the world market in the required inputs have been pinched by the mounting cost of this kind of program--which has already seen the biggest air powers in the world, with fifth-gen jets in service, buying up upgraded fourth-generation to fill out the ranks--while raising additional question marks about just how really "sixth generation" the next sixth generation of jets will actually be.
As I observed in the prior post, the Swedish program for a fourth-generation fighter aimed only for a light fighter, and was content to produce an aircraft delivered only fairly late in that cycle (the Swedish air force taking its Gripens in the '90s, when the U.S. was already flight-testing the Raptor, and the Eurofighter Typhoon was similarly being tested).
The country had been more ambitious when procuring the earlier, third-generation Viggens. They went for a medium fighter, not a light fighter, one reflection of which is that the later jet actually had a lighter maximum payload than the earlier plane (5300 kg to the Viggen's 7000 kg). It might be acknowledged that with its first deliveries made only in 1971 the jet can look like a relative latecomer compared with the F-4 Phantom (1960), but still came into service just behind the MiG-23 (1970) and a little ahead of the better-known Mirage F-1 (1973). Moreover, if there were earlier third generation type jets the Viggen was still in many ways a cutting-edge fighter, incorporating many relatively novel features, including the terrain-following radar and integrated circuit-based airborne computer just starting to appear in tactical aircraft at the time, a then ground-breaking canard design and thrust reverser, and in its afterburning turbofan engine, look down/shoot down capability and multi-function displays, technologies we associate with fourth-generation jets. (In fact, it does not seem unreasonable to think of the Viggen as a generation 3+ or 3.5 plane rather than just a gen-3.)
None of that, of course, detracts from the quality of the Gripen aircraft, which was a well-regarded aircraft at the time of its introduction, and has notably been upgraded in a number of respects, with the latest "E" version having a supercruise-capable engine and an AESA (active electronically scanned array) radar, turning generation 4 into generation 4+, while some impressive claims have also been made for its electronic warfare systems (with the most bullish arguing for them as an acceptable substitute for full-blown stealth capability). Still, the shift in strategy does reflect the way even affluent, highly industrialized nations with good access to the world market in the required inputs have been pinched by the mounting cost of this kind of program--which has already seen the biggest air powers in the world, with fifth-gen jets in service, buying up upgraded fourth-generation to fill out the ranks--while raising additional question marks about just how really "sixth generation" the next sixth generation of jets will actually be.
Thursday, July 23, 2020
How Could Sweden Afford the Saab-39 Gripen Fighter Program? A Postscript
In the end the answer to the question, "How Could Sweden Afford the Saab-39 Gripen Fighter Program?"--how a small (if rich and industrially advanced) country could afford its own fourth-generation fighter--is that there is a significant extent to which it did not afford it. The country's government ultimately counted on others to develop most of the requisite technology, which it accessed via licensing and outsourcing; and then where the final product was concerned, on others to share the cost by buying their own copies. Additionally, even that required a willingness to settle for an aircraft that, while very good, did not represent the outer limit of its generation's capability or the cutting edge of fighter design when it appeared (generation 5 was just beginning to come online when the first deliveries were made), while the country committed a disproportionate share of its defense resources to the program, as it could only do because of its specific geopolitical situation. (Had Sweden been obliged to fund a bigger navy, the competition for resources might have been too much.)
That there was a considerable gamble ought not to be overlooked, with the planes a very long-term investment that could easily have suffered were technological change more aggressive (even now the plan is to have them flying into the 2040s), or if the export market were less open. (It is worth remembering that the Cold War was heating up during the program's early days--that the preceding Saab-37 Viggen completely failed to line up foreign orders--and that by the '90s the export market was very uncertain.) Still, in the end it seems to have been a success.
That there was a considerable gamble ought not to be overlooked, with the planes a very long-term investment that could easily have suffered were technological change more aggressive (even now the plan is to have them flying into the 2040s), or if the export market were less open. (It is worth remembering that the Cold War was heating up during the program's early days--that the preceding Saab-37 Viggen completely failed to line up foreign orders--and that by the '90s the export market was very uncertain.) Still, in the end it seems to have been a success.
Saturday, July 18, 2020
How Could Sweden Afford the Saab-39 Gripen Fighter Program?
The exploding cost of fighter aircraft has made programs to build domestically an up-to-date fighter decreasingly affordable for even the largest and richest countries, with even G-7 states increasingly forgoing that course. They find that given the resources at their disposal, the diseconomies of scale of producing an aircraft they alone might end up using, it just does not pay to go it alone.
Naturally I have found myself wondering how Sweden--a nation which, however affluent and technologically advanced, was still of a mere 10 million people, and did not commit a drastic proportion of its national income to defense spending during the relevant time period--managed to successfully produce a well-regarded fourth-generation fighter, the Saab-39 "Gripen," and to do that in apparently quite cost effective fashion (with Gripen Cs recently marketed for as little as $30 million).
Four factors seem to have made the difference.
1. Sweden Spent Less Than Other States, but Also Differently--Giving it Room for One Fighter Program if it Prioritzed it (and it Did)
For comparison purposes, let us use Britain. That country had a GDP six times Sweden's, and a defense budget eight times as big in 1979.1 Yet Britain had already given up on building its own current-generation fighters all by itself, relying on partnerships with other European countries to build its next generation of such planes--notably Germany and Italy in the Panavia Tornado program.
However, it has to be remembered that Britain also had numerous expenditures Sweden did not--on a nuclear arsenal and large navy it constructed domestically, and on a global network of bases and overseas garrisons (not least the big one in West Germany), all bound up with a complex array of international commitments.
Sweden did not have these expenses, instead being oriented to a fully conventional defense of its limited national territory, while it might be added that Sweden placed a very high priority on its air force. While, as noted before, Sweden was a much smaller country than Britain in the relevant ways, it operated almost as big a fleet of combat aircraft (still 400+ jets in the late Cold War, compared with the 500 or so Britain was generally operating at the time, as the RAND Facing the Future study on the Swedish air force remarked at the time).
It might also be added that even where procurement was concerned Britain insisted on an array of different combat aircraft, pursuing besides the Tornado, which was coming in fighter and strike versions, the Anglo-French Jaguar and the idiosyncratic VTOL Harrier (while operating a sizable fleet of F-4 Phantoms incorporating British engines and other components, and already thinking about what was to become the Eurofighter Typhoon). Had Britain not pursued so many types it would have had an easier time affording its own design. And that was what Sweden did, going with just the Gripen.
2. Sweden Was Content to Let Others Go First, and Settle for Less Than the Maximum Possible Capability
It is worth noting that besides going for just one fighter program instead of many such projects at once, Sweden did not strive for the ultimate. The Gripen is, as the exclusive focus on it required for justification's sake, a multirole aircraft. However, unlike the twin-engined, swing-wing Tornado with its low-level deep penetration capability and high payload, the Gripen was a single-engined, multi-role fighter of shorter range and lighter armament. To put it into U.S. Air Force terms it was more F-16 than F-15, with all that implied with regard to price.
Of course, even if the jet is more F-16 than F-15, the Gripen is still a fourth-generation jet, and again, a well-regarded one. Yet, consider the timing of its appearance. The U.S. Air Force received the delivery of its first true fourth-generation jet, the F-15, in 1974. As indicated above the Gripen program did not even begin until five years later, and the Swedish Air Force did not receive its first production copy of the aircraft until 1993, fourteen years after that--by which time the U.S. Air Force was already flight-testing the fifth-generation F-22. In a less dramatic way it is the same story with the British and their partners, who had their Tornado going into production just as the Gripen was emerging as a concept, while the Typhoon was to make its first flight as the Swedish Air Force formed its first Gripen squadrons.
In short, the Swedish government was ready to wait fifteen to twenty years longer than others to get even a light fourth-generation jet, and in the meantime make do with third-generation Saab-37 Viggens. Saving money, after all, was a necessity for even the Swedes at this stage in the history of fighter development, and walking a beaten path does that--not least because of one thing that did much to bring down costs, namely that
3. Sweden Outsourced and Licensed the Necessary Technology Where Feasible Rather Than Making Everything From Scratch
While the Gripen is Swedish-made, it is not all-Swedish, with crucial components developed jointly, or derived from other, established products, for the sake of cost (as much as a third of the aircraft sourced from the U.S. alone). The Gripen's first engine is an obvious example. While constructed by Volvo, it is a licensed derivative of the engine that General Electric made for the F-18. (It may also be worth noting that Saab had prior experience developing fighters in such a fashion, key systems on the prior Viggen being similarly sourced--and that the stress on minimizing cost can be contrasted with Japan's emphasis on developing technical know-how in the F-2 program, which produced a very advanced but also very costly F-16 derivative.)
4. Sweden Banked Big on Exports
Finally, in addition to its readiness to focus its resources on this one program, its moderation in its demands, and its willingness to use technology developed by others, Sweden counted heavily on the prospect of foreign sales did help make the Gripen project more plausible financially. Of course, in contrast with members of the globally active, NATO-affiliated, military aid-providing powers like Britain, or France, let alone the U.S.. And the Gripen's successes there are, at least thus far, a far cry from those of other fourth-gen single-engine jets like the French Mirage 2000 (almost 270 sold to eight different foreign customers) or the generation's most popular fighter, the F-16 (with nearly two thousand jets serving in some twenty-five air forces alongside the vast American fleet). Still, the fighter has already found a number of customers (Hungary, Czechia, South Africa, Thailand, Brazil, the last by itself looking to buy 108 aircraft), with as many as two dozen reportedly ongoing bids holding out the hope of still more (two of them to Canada and India, which could by themselves take another 200 aircraft, and make the Gripen a bestseller yet).
The gamble, in short, looks as if it is paying off. Still, it is worth noting that Sweden, like most countries, sat out the pursuit of a fifth generation of fighters, making do with upgraded Gripens--while in apparently taking an interest in the sixth generation it is not going it alone, joining the British-led "Tempest" program. I admit to not being bullish on that program, just as I have not been bullish on the sixth generation fighter given the technological claims made for it (initially, at least). However, it does seem safe to say that by this point the strategy that let Sweden build a fourth-generation fighter has long since run up against its limits.
1. As measured by the UN in 2015 U.S. dollars in its current National Accounts data set, Britain had a GDP of $1.33 trillion to Sweden's $232 billion, while spending a higher proportion of its GDP on defense--4.2 percent versus 3.1 percent--giving it a budget of $55 billion to Sweden's $7 billion.
Naturally I have found myself wondering how Sweden--a nation which, however affluent and technologically advanced, was still of a mere 10 million people, and did not commit a drastic proportion of its national income to defense spending during the relevant time period--managed to successfully produce a well-regarded fourth-generation fighter, the Saab-39 "Gripen," and to do that in apparently quite cost effective fashion (with Gripen Cs recently marketed for as little as $30 million).
Four factors seem to have made the difference.
1. Sweden Spent Less Than Other States, but Also Differently--Giving it Room for One Fighter Program if it Prioritzed it (and it Did)
For comparison purposes, let us use Britain. That country had a GDP six times Sweden's, and a defense budget eight times as big in 1979.1 Yet Britain had already given up on building its own current-generation fighters all by itself, relying on partnerships with other European countries to build its next generation of such planes--notably Germany and Italy in the Panavia Tornado program.
However, it has to be remembered that Britain also had numerous expenditures Sweden did not--on a nuclear arsenal and large navy it constructed domestically, and on a global network of bases and overseas garrisons (not least the big one in West Germany), all bound up with a complex array of international commitments.
Sweden did not have these expenses, instead being oriented to a fully conventional defense of its limited national territory, while it might be added that Sweden placed a very high priority on its air force. While, as noted before, Sweden was a much smaller country than Britain in the relevant ways, it operated almost as big a fleet of combat aircraft (still 400+ jets in the late Cold War, compared with the 500 or so Britain was generally operating at the time, as the RAND Facing the Future study on the Swedish air force remarked at the time).
It might also be added that even where procurement was concerned Britain insisted on an array of different combat aircraft, pursuing besides the Tornado, which was coming in fighter and strike versions, the Anglo-French Jaguar and the idiosyncratic VTOL Harrier (while operating a sizable fleet of F-4 Phantoms incorporating British engines and other components, and already thinking about what was to become the Eurofighter Typhoon). Had Britain not pursued so many types it would have had an easier time affording its own design. And that was what Sweden did, going with just the Gripen.
2. Sweden Was Content to Let Others Go First, and Settle for Less Than the Maximum Possible Capability
It is worth noting that besides going for just one fighter program instead of many such projects at once, Sweden did not strive for the ultimate. The Gripen is, as the exclusive focus on it required for justification's sake, a multirole aircraft. However, unlike the twin-engined, swing-wing Tornado with its low-level deep penetration capability and high payload, the Gripen was a single-engined, multi-role fighter of shorter range and lighter armament. To put it into U.S. Air Force terms it was more F-16 than F-15, with all that implied with regard to price.
Of course, even if the jet is more F-16 than F-15, the Gripen is still a fourth-generation jet, and again, a well-regarded one. Yet, consider the timing of its appearance. The U.S. Air Force received the delivery of its first true fourth-generation jet, the F-15, in 1974. As indicated above the Gripen program did not even begin until five years later, and the Swedish Air Force did not receive its first production copy of the aircraft until 1993, fourteen years after that--by which time the U.S. Air Force was already flight-testing the fifth-generation F-22. In a less dramatic way it is the same story with the British and their partners, who had their Tornado going into production just as the Gripen was emerging as a concept, while the Typhoon was to make its first flight as the Swedish Air Force formed its first Gripen squadrons.
In short, the Swedish government was ready to wait fifteen to twenty years longer than others to get even a light fourth-generation jet, and in the meantime make do with third-generation Saab-37 Viggens. Saving money, after all, was a necessity for even the Swedes at this stage in the history of fighter development, and walking a beaten path does that--not least because of one thing that did much to bring down costs, namely that
3. Sweden Outsourced and Licensed the Necessary Technology Where Feasible Rather Than Making Everything From Scratch
While the Gripen is Swedish-made, it is not all-Swedish, with crucial components developed jointly, or derived from other, established products, for the sake of cost (as much as a third of the aircraft sourced from the U.S. alone). The Gripen's first engine is an obvious example. While constructed by Volvo, it is a licensed derivative of the engine that General Electric made for the F-18. (It may also be worth noting that Saab had prior experience developing fighters in such a fashion, key systems on the prior Viggen being similarly sourced--and that the stress on minimizing cost can be contrasted with Japan's emphasis on developing technical know-how in the F-2 program, which produced a very advanced but also very costly F-16 derivative.)
4. Sweden Banked Big on Exports
Finally, in addition to its readiness to focus its resources on this one program, its moderation in its demands, and its willingness to use technology developed by others, Sweden counted heavily on the prospect of foreign sales did help make the Gripen project more plausible financially. Of course, in contrast with members of the globally active, NATO-affiliated, military aid-providing powers like Britain, or France, let alone the U.S.. And the Gripen's successes there are, at least thus far, a far cry from those of other fourth-gen single-engine jets like the French Mirage 2000 (almost 270 sold to eight different foreign customers) or the generation's most popular fighter, the F-16 (with nearly two thousand jets serving in some twenty-five air forces alongside the vast American fleet). Still, the fighter has already found a number of customers (Hungary, Czechia, South Africa, Thailand, Brazil, the last by itself looking to buy 108 aircraft), with as many as two dozen reportedly ongoing bids holding out the hope of still more (two of them to Canada and India, which could by themselves take another 200 aircraft, and make the Gripen a bestseller yet).
The gamble, in short, looks as if it is paying off. Still, it is worth noting that Sweden, like most countries, sat out the pursuit of a fifth generation of fighters, making do with upgraded Gripens--while in apparently taking an interest in the sixth generation it is not going it alone, joining the British-led "Tempest" program. I admit to not being bullish on that program, just as I have not been bullish on the sixth generation fighter given the technological claims made for it (initially, at least). However, it does seem safe to say that by this point the strategy that let Sweden build a fourth-generation fighter has long since run up against its limits.
1. As measured by the UN in 2015 U.S. dollars in its current National Accounts data set, Britain had a GDP of $1.33 trillion to Sweden's $232 billion, while spending a higher proportion of its GDP on defense--4.2 percent versus 3.1 percent--giving it a budget of $55 billion to Sweden's $7 billion.
Friday, May 1, 2020
THE MILITARY TECHNO-THRILLER: A HISTORY
"[A] multi-century tour de force . . . comprehensive . . . easily readable, making it the best of both worlds . . . a lot of fascinating insights . . . an excellent book that examines an overlooked genre through a variety of interesting perspectives in a highly readable way. I cannot recommend The Military Techno-Thriller: A History enough for fans of the genre." -Fuldapocalypse Fiction
THE MILITARY TECHNO-THRILLER: A HISTORY takes a close look at this widely read but still little studied genre, tracing its origins from the Victorian-era invasion story, to its 1980s heyday as king of the bestseller list in the hands of authors like Tom Clancy, down to today, considering its interaction with other genres and other media throughout. In the process, this book also tells the larger story of how the ways in which we think about, imagine and portray war evolved during the last century to bring us to where we are now.
Now available in print and e-book formats from Amazon and other retailers.
Get your copy today.
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