Author: Art Diamond

Fred Siegel Went from Liberal to Conservative During the New York Blackout of 1977 When Looters Burned Stores, Restaurants, and Civility

(p. B10) Fred Siegel, a passionate urban historian whose rejection of the liberal establishment’s response to crime, poverty and public civility transformed him from a spokesman for the Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern in 1972 to a voter for Donald J. Trump in 2020, died on Sunday at his home in Brooklyn.

. . .

His ideological evolution was evidenced in the titles of his books: “The Future Once Happened Here: New York, D.C., L.A., and the Fate of America’s Big Cities” (1997); “The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York, and the Genius of American Life” (2005), which he wrote with Harry Siegel; and “The Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class” (2014).

. . .

And, perhaps more in sorrow than in anger, he quoted former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York as saying that his fellow Democrats had “rewarded the articulation of moral purpose more than the achievement of practical good.”

. . .

. . . in 1991, Mr. Siegel argued: “Middle-class citizens, rightly or wrongly, have become convinced that modern liberal urban government is mostly about letting the poor misbehave at the expense of the middle class, and paying public employees very well to deliver services very poorly.”

. . .

Mr. Siegel’s metamorphosis — from a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, a fellow of the Progressive Policy Institute and a voter for the independent John Anderson in 1980 and the Democrat Walter F. Mondale in 1984 (each time voting against the Republican Ronald Reagan) — reached its apogee (depending on one’s political point of view) in 2020.

After a lifetime of sitting out presidential elections or mostly voting for losers, he cast his ballot for Mr. Trump.

He listed his reasons for doing so in 2020 in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, lauding Mr. Trump for “crushing ISIS, pulling us out of the Iran nuclear deal, moving our embassy to Jerusalem and making fools of those people who insist that the Palestinian issue is at the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict.” He also favored Mr. Trump, he said, for displaying an “ability to withstand a prolonged coup attempt by the Democrats and the media” and for championing “bourgeois values.”

In an online tribute this week, Brian C. Anderson, the editor of City Journal, wrote that Mr. Siegel had identified what he called a “riot ideology” that took hold of public officials in major cities, “making them reluctant to confront public disorder and crime for fear of violent opposition.”

. . .

The essayist Irving Kristol famously defined a neoconservative, a breed Mr. Kristol epitomized and popularized, as “a liberal who has been mugged by reality.” But Mr. Siegel’s conversion wasn’t the result of a single personal experience, his son said — even though a thief once grabbed a bag of $100 worth of kosher meat from him on the subway and several of the family’s cars were stolen.

If Mr. Siegel approached a philosophical epiphany, though, it was during the blackout of 1977, when looters raged through parts of Brooklyn, stripping stores of merchandise and setting them ablaze in a night of rioting.

Mr. Siegel, whose favorite restaurant, Jack’s Pastrami King, was among the places destroyed, reflected in 2017: “The city itself had been mugged, I realized. I’m still haunted by that moment from 40 years ago, when my political re-education began.”

For the full obituary, see:

Sam Roberts. “Fred Siegel, 78, Urban Historian And a Former Liberal, Is Dead.” The New York Times (Saturday, May 13, 2023): B10.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the obituary was updated May 15, 2023, and has the title “Fred Siegel, Urban Historian and a Former Liberal, Is Dead at 78.”)

The most recent of Siegel’s books mentioned above is:

Siegel, Fred. The Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class. New York: Encounter Books, 2014.

Feds Impose Tariffs on Imports of Paper-Thin Steel Needed to Make EV Engines

(p. A3) Large U.S. steelmakers are ramping up production of a hard-to-make, paper-thin steel to capture a fast-growing market for a material critical to powering electric vehicles.

. . .

Such electrical steel, which accounts for about 1% of all the steel produced annually in the world, already is in short supply for electric vehicles, executives said. Companies expect demand to accelerate faster than production as EV volumes expand in the coming years.

“It’s in limited supply and with very long lead times. Sometimes 50 or 52 weeks,” said Hale Foote, owner of Scandic Springs Inc., a San Leandro, Calif., company that uses high-grade electrical steel to make parts for scientific measurement devices.

. . .

More than 80% of the electrical steel produced comes from China, Japan and South Korea, all countries that are subject to U.S. tariffs or quotas on steel imports, industry analysts said.

. . .

(p. B2) “It takes intense focus. You have to have absolute consistency or you scrap the material,” said David Stickler, who led the investment group that built Big River Steel in Osceola, Ark., and then sold the mill to U.S. Steel in 2021. Mr. Stickler said he envisioned electrical steel being a core product at Big River when he started planning the mill nearly a decade ago.

. . .

Steel-industry executives said that creating more domestic capacity to make electrical steel for vehicles will likely take years, as steel companies acquire equipment and become proficient at the exacting production process.

“You can’t just buy the equipment and start making electrical steel. Those who’ve made the investment will have an advantage for the next five to 10 years,” Mr. Stickler said.

For the full story, see:

Tita, Bob. “Paper-Thin Steel Used to Power EVs Is in Short Supply.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, March 28, 2023): B1-B2.

(Note: ellipses added. The online version is longer, but the passages quoted above appear in both versions.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 27, 2023, and has the title “The Paper-Thin Steel Needed to Power Electric Cars Is in Short Supply.”)

Innovative Farmers Can Adapt to Scarcer Water

(p. D4) The Colorado River, Arizona’s largest water source, is so low that last month, for the first time in history, the federal government proposed cutting water allotments to three states that rely on the river, including Arizona. Climate change is parching soil and depleting aquifers already taxed by corporate agriculture. Large swaths of Arizona farmland are devoted to water-hungry crops like lettuce and hay, grown to feed livestock as far away as Saudi Arabia.

. . .

Drawing on lessons she learned at the Urban Farm, a Phoenix-based business that teaches home gardeners how to grow food in a dry climate, Ms. Norton turned her backyard “from bare-bones, dead-ground scratch” into a lush mix of garden and orchard. She’d be open to raising chickens as well, if not for the presence of predators like coyotes, roadrunners and rattlesnakes.

What appears wild is the result of careful planning. A mulberry tree provides shade for the dragon fruit growing around its trunk. The drip tape that waters apricot, plum and apple trees also irrigates Mexican primrose flowers and sweet potato vines below.

“These grapes are strategically placed to keep the afternoon sun off these young trees,” Ms. Norton said. “I take the leaves and give them to a lady four doors down. She uses them to make dolmas.”

Ms. Norton is an ardent member of the Phoenix area’s sprawling gardening community. She is now general manager of the Urban Farm, and owns a seed business with its founder, Greg Peterson.

. . .

A primary goal of gardeners like Ms. Norton is to naturally rejuvenate soil degraded by synthetic fertilizers and neglect. Zach Brooks started the Arizona Worm Farm to help.

Nearly halfway into a 10-year plan to establish a fully sustainable, off-the-grid farm, Mr. Brooks sees his project as proof of how quickly damaged land can be restored using natural methods. It includes gardens and a food forest, a dense collection of plants that support one another, comprising mostly fruits and vegetables. Together, they provide produce for a small farm store and meals for his 20 employees.

. . .

As challenging as it is to farm and garden around Phoenix, Sterling Johnson said it’s (p. D5) even more so in Ajo, about 100 miles south, which is even hotter and dryer.

“If we can do it out here,” he said, “we think you can do it anywhere.”

For the full story, see:

Brett Anderson and Adam Riding. “Feeding a Region As Water Runs Out.” The New York Times (Wednesday, May 10, 2023): D4-D5.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 8, 2023, and has the title “In Parched Arizona, the Produce Gardens Bloom.”)

Mice on Taurine Lived 10% Longer and Looked Healthier

(p. A3) Scientists are exploring a new biological link to longer life.

Boosting levels of an amino acid called taurine made mice and worms live longer, according to research published Thursday [June 7, 2023] in the journal Science. Middle-aged monkeys given taurine supplements became healthier, researchers said. In humans, lower levels of taurine were associated with age-related problems.

“This is a very promising molecule,” said Vijay Yadav, an assistant professor of genetics and development at Columbia University, who co-wrote the paper.

People have been searching for life-extending substances for millennia. Other recent studies have explored antiaging properties of compounds including resveratrol, found in red wine, and the immunosuppressive drug rapamycin. Yadav said he first suspected taurine’s connection with aging over a decade ago when his lab compared the contents of blood drawn from people of different ages.

. . .

Researchers gave daily doses of taurine to hundreds of 14-month-old mice, considered middle-aged, and compared their average lifespans to mice that didn’t get extra taurine. The female mice given taurine lived 12% longer on average and male mice that got taurine lived 10% longer, researchers said.

Mice that received taurine also appeared to be healthier.

For the full story, see:

Dominique Mosbergen. “Amino Acid Found To Slow Down Aging.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, June 9, 2023): A3.

(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added. The online version is longer, but the passages quoted above appear in both versions.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated June 9, 2023, and has the title “Is Taurine the Key to Longer Life? It Made Monkeys Healthier.”)

The Science paper on taurine mentioned above is:

Singh, Parminder, Kishore Gollapalli, Stefano Mangiola, Daniela Schranner, Mohd Aslam Yusuf, Manish Chamoli, Sting L. Shi, Bruno Lopes Bastos, Tripti Nair, Annett Riermeier, Elena M. Vayndorf, Judy Z. Wu, Aishwarya Nilakhe, Christina Q. Nguyen, Michael Muir, Michael G. Kiflezghi, Anna Foulger, Alex Junker, Jack Devine, Kunal Sharan, Shankar J. Chinta, Swati Rajput, Anand Rane, Philipp Baumert, Martin Schönfelder, Francescopaolo Iavarone, Giorgia di Lorenzo, Swati Kumari, Alka Gupta, Rajesh Sarkar, Costerwell Khyriem, Amanpreet S. Chawla, Ankur Sharma, Nazan Sarper, Naibedya Chattopadhyay, Bichitra K. Biswal, Carmine Settembre, Perumal Nagarajan, Kimara L. Targoff, Martin Picard, Sarika Gupta, Vidya Velagapudi, Anthony T. Papenfuss, Alaattin Kaya, Miguel Godinho Ferreira, Brian K. Kennedy, Julie K. Andersen, Gordon J. Lithgow, Abdullah Mahmood Ali, Arnab Mukhopadhyay, Aarno Palotie, Gabi Kastenmüller, Matt Kaeberlein, Henning Wackerhage, Bhupinder Pal, and Vijay K. Yadav. “Taurine Deficiency as a Driver of Aging.” Science 380, no. 6649 (June 9, 2023): eabn9257.

“By Far the Biggest Risk to Global Climate Comes From Volcanoes”

(p. C9) What’s the connection between sugar and Xi Jinping? Why does the political turbulence in today’s Middle East trace back to the Cretaceous period? How did the humble potato revolutionize the world? Why did the great Mayan cities of the ninth century run out of potable water? What does the contemporary West African practice of polygyny—one man, many wives—have to do with the trans-Atlantic slave trade?

Peter Frankopan raises these beguiling questions—and many others, bless him—in “The Earth Transformed,” a book that examines the entire sweep of the relationship between humans and nature.

. . .

Whereas Mr. Frankopan never disguises the fact that he is on the greenish side of the climate-change conversation, he steers clear of enviro-preaching and finger-wagging.  . . .  In words that will startle many of us, he says that “by far the biggest risk to global climate comes from volcanoes.” He contrasts the “considerable thought and attention” that have gone into planning for a warming world with the almost complete absence of planning or funding on the likely implications of major volcanic eruptions. Estimates put the chances of a mega-eruption—one that could cost “hundreds of millions of lives”—at one in six before the year 2100.

. . .

The history of the Earth is a history of large-scale transformations that have wreaked havoc in some cases and blessed us with benign climatic eras in others (such as the Roman Warm Period from 300 B.C. to A.D. 500). The most famous instance of the former was the asteroid strike in the Yucatán Peninsula 66 million years ago in which our beloved dinosaurs were wiped out. The rise of humankind, Mr. Frankopan writes, was the result of an “extraordinary series of flukes, coincidences, long shots and serendipities” that made the planet hospitable to our existence. It was “geological chance” that gave the Middle East its oil reserves, the result of warming in Cretaceous times.

. . .

Mr. Frankopan’s thesis is that civilizations thrive best when they are resilient to shocks. Yet “hyperfragility,” he believes, is the name of the game in the 21st century—whether in response to warming, a rudderless U.S., Mr. Xi and Taiwan, Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, or a nuclear Saudi Arabia and Iran. The march of history has left such places as Uruk, Nineveh, Harappa, Angkor and Tikal in ruins, not because of climate change but because of a lack of resilience to shocks, made worse by obtuse planning and even worse decision-making. That’s the lesson Mr. Frankopan is trying to teach us.

For the full review, see:

Tunku Varadarajan. “Doom May Have to Be Delayed.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, April 22, 2023): C9.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date April 20, 2023, and has the title “‘The Earth Transformed’ Review: Doom May Be Delayed.”)

The book under review is:

Frankopan, Peter. The Earth Transformed: An Untold History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2023.

So-Called “Inflation Reduction Act” Mandates Pharma Firms Dishonestly Say They Voluntarily Negotiated Prices

(p. A15) The pharmaceutical company Merck claims in a lawsuit filed this week that the “Drug Price Negotiation Program for Medicare,” part of last summer’s Inflation Reduction Act, is an unconstitutional taking of company’s property and a violation of the company’s freedom of speech. If successful, this lawsuit will prevent the unconstitutional practice of forcing drug companies to sell drugs to the U.S. government at a government-determined price.

To make the provision of the 2022 law constitutional, Congress could have imposed price controls, or it could have bargained with pharmaceutical companies using the massive marketing power of Medicare, which accounts for some half of all American drug spending. Instead, Congress tried to prevent pharmaceutical companies from walking away from any potential deal. Under the act, secret negotiations force pharmaceutical companies to agree to government-determined prices amounting to massive discounts off market-based prices, under the threat of crippling taxes and penalties.

Americans tend to support pharmaceutical “price negotiations,” but oppose “price controls.” Knowing this, Congress set up a ruse.

. . .

. . ., the law essentially requires a company to communicate that it agreed to the set price—compelled speech that is prohibited by the First Amendment. Time and again, the Supreme Court has declared forced speech beyond the power of the government. The government’s only seeming interest is to pretend that a system of unilateral price controls and mandated sales is actually a system of voluntary negotiations.

For the full commentary, see:

Daniel E. Troy. “An Unconstitutional Offer Drug Companies Can’t Refuse.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, June 9, 2023): A15.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date June 8, 2023, and has the same title as the print version.)

An Hawaiian Wants Land She Can Own and Control, Even if Not in Hawaii

(p. 1) When Pauline Kauinani Souza was a child in Hawaii, she spent early mornings watering her grandfather’s watermelons and papaya trees.

Her family lived frugally, eating homemade bread and heating water over a fire for bathing. But the no-frills life came with the ultimate perk: living near the beach and drifting off to sleep at night to the sound of waves gently crashing on the shore.

Now, at 80, Ms. Souza lives in Las Vegas, a desert city of neon reinvention far from the ocean and her ancestral home. It is not paradise, but it is full of Native Hawaiians like her who have flocked there in recent years for the endless entertainment, reasonable cost of living and something few people can find in Hawaii: a house they can afford.

“I own it outright,” she said proudly of her two-bedroom, ranch-style home in Las Vegas. “In Hawaii, there aren’t many people who can say that.”

Increasingly, Las Vegas is drawing Hawaiians who came to visit and decided to stay, convinced that an affordable faux version of the islands is better than an endless struggle to make ends meet in the real thing.

Between 2011 and 2021, the population of Native Hawaiians and (p. 19) other Pacific Islanders in Clark County, Nev., which includes Las Vegas, grew by about 40 percent, for a total of nearly 22,000 people. That was the greatest number of newcomers in that demographic in any county outside Hawaii, according to population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. In that same period, the total population of Clark County grew by about 17 percent.

For many, the draw is real estate: Houses in the Las Vegas area have a median listing price of about $460,000, compared with about $800,000 in Honolulu, according to Federal Reserve Economic Data.

Americans migrating for cheaper housing is not unusual, as seen most dramatically in the decades-long shift from the Northeast to the Sunbelt. But this migration from the impossibly lush natural landscape of the islands to the brash desert of Las Vegas is a particularly vivid glimpse of how the search for housing remakes the country in sometimes surprising ways.

. . .

In 2022, Hawaii had the highest cost of living out of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to data from the Council for Community and Economic Research. The state imports the vast majority of its food, making everyday groceries especially expensive. And strict regulations on building have contributed to housing shortages and prices out of reach for many.

For the full story, see:

Eliza Fawcett and Hana Asano. “Priced Out of Paradise’ But Hawaiians Thrive in Desert.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, May 21, 2023): 1 & 19.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 20, 2023, and has the title “There’s No Ocean in Sight. But Many Hawaiians Make Las Vegas Their Home.” The online version says that the print version has the title “Desert Provides A New Paradise For Hawaiians” but my national print version has the title “They’re ‘Priced Out of Paradise’ But Hawaiians Thrive in Desert.”)

As Millennials Age They Shift to Republicans

(p. B4) Fifteen years ago, a new generation of young voters propelled Barack Obama to a decisive victory that augured a new era of Democratic dominance.

Fifteen years later, those once young voters aren’t so young — and aren’t quite so Democratic.

. . .

This shift toward the right among the young voters who propelled Mr. Obama to victory 15 years ago is part of a larger pattern: Over the last decade, almost every cohort of voters under 50 has shifted toward the right, based on an analysis of thousands of survey interviews archived at the Roper Center.

It’s not necessarily a stunning finding. Political folklore has long held that voters become more conservative as they get older. But it is nonetheless at odds with a wave of recent reports or studies suggesting otherwise. The Financial Times, for instance, wrote that “millennials are shattering the oldest rule in politics” by not moving to the right as they age.

For the full commentary, see:

Nate Cohn. “Millennials Aren’t an Exception. They Have Moved to the Right.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, June 4, 2023): A16.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary was updated June 2, 2023, and has the title “Millennials Are Not an Exception. They’ve Moved to the Right.”)

Man Died When Pharmacist Refused to Give Him EpiPen Without the Mandated Prescription

(p. A15) Rates of hospital admissions for asthma, nut allergies in children, and prescriptions for EpiPens (used to treat extreme reactions) have all tripled in recent decades. Not only are food allergies now more common in children, but they are less likely to be outgrown with age than in years past.

The causes and consequences of this epidemic are the subject of “Allergic,” an important and deeply researched book by Theresa MacPhail, a medical anthropologist who memorably portrays the human face of disease.   . . .   Ms. MacPhail . . . has a personal connection to this subject: Her father died after being stung by a bee on the main street of the New Hampshire town where she grew up. (His girlfriend drove him to a drugstore instead of a hospital; even though he was in extremis, the pharmacist refused to dispense an EpiPen without a prescription.)

For the full review, see:

John J. Ross. “BOOKSHELF; Runny Noses, Itchy Eyes.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, May 24, 2023): A15.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date May 23, 2023, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; ‘Allergic’ Review: Runny Noses, Itchy Eyes.”)

The book under review is:

MacPhail, Theresa. Allergic: Our Irritated Bodies in a Changing World. New York: Random House, 2023.

Even Environmentalists Face Trade-Offs: Plans to Refill the Salton Sea May Hasten an Overdue Large Earthquake

(p. A1) It has been about three centuries since the last great earthquake on the southern San Andreas Fault, the most treacherous seismic hazard in California. For decades researchers have puzzled over why it has been so long. The average interval of large earthquakes along that portion of the fault has been 180 years over the past 1,000 years.

While seismologists agree that Southern California is due for the Big One, a group of researchers published a paper on Wednesday [June 7, 2023] in the journal Nature that offers a reason for the period of seismic silence along the southern San Andreas, the tension-wracked meeting point of the North American and Pacific tectonic plates.

. . .

Mr. Hill and his co-authors found that major earthquakes along the southern San Andreas fault tended to happen when a large body of water, Lake Cahuilla, was filling or was full with water from the Colorado River in what are now the Coachella and Imperial valleys.

The lake has drained over the last three centuries and all that remains is the vestigial Salton Sea.

. . .

The research published in Nature, which builds on a paper on which Dr. Philibosian was a writer in 2011, raises questions about plans to rehabilitate parts of the Salton Sea, . . . .  . . .  As the sea dries out, toxic dust is left behind and blown into the air, posing a hazard for nearby residents.

. . .

Impounding more water in the Salton Sea could tamp down the dust.Impounding more water in the Salton Sea could tamp down the dust.  . . .  But a major change in the water level could also trigger seismic activity, according to Dr. Philibosian.

For the full story, see:

Thomas Fuller. “Scientists Offer Reason for a Sleepy San Andreas Fault.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, June 11, 2023): A20.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 7, 2023, and has the title “The San Andreas Fault Is Sleepy Near Los Angeles. Researchers Have an Idea Why.”)

The Nature article published online on June 7 and mentioned above is:

Hill, Ryley G., Matthew Weingarten, Thomas K. Rockwell, and Yuri Fialko. “Major Southern San Andreas Earthquakes Modulated by Lake-Filling Events.” Nature (2023) DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06058-9.

“They Just Invest in How to Navigate This Bureaucracy”

(p. A1) Capella Space, a San Francisco-based start-up, is building a fleet of small, inexpensive satellites that can track enemy troops as they move at night, or under cloud cover that traditional optical satellites cannot see through.

Fortem Technologies, a small aerospace company in Utah, wants to supply the Pentagon with a new type of unmanned aircraft that can disable enemy drones.

HawkEye 360, a Virginia-based firm, has used private equity funds to launch its own satellites that use radio waves emitted by communications equipment and other electronic devices to detect the presence of enemy troop concentrations.

Each of these systems is getting real-world testing in the war in Ukraine, earning praise from top government officials there and validating investors who have been pouring money into the field.

But they are facing a stiff challenge on another field of battle: the Pentagon’s slow-moving, risk-averse military procurement bureaucracy.

When it comes to drones, satellites, artificial intelligence and other fields, start-up companies frequently offer the Pentagon cheaper, faster and more flexible options than the weapons systems produced by the handful of giant contractors the Pentagon normally relies on.

But while the military has provided small grants and short-term contracts to many start-ups, those agreements often expire too quickly and are not large enough for young companies to meet their payrolls — or grow as rapidly as their venture capital investors expect. Several have been forced to lay people off, delaying progress on new technologies and war-fighting tools.

. . .

(p. A8) From the early months of the war, SpaceX’s Starlink, the Elon Musk-founded satellite internet service, had played a critical role for frontline Ukrainian troops. But small drones and a denser collection of satellites are also helping to provide the capacity for pervasive surveillance, allowing Ukraine to identify and track threats and targets constantly.

A new generation of cheaper and more precise attack drones carrying bombs can loiter in the air autonomously until they find their targets. Artificial intelligence-backed computer systems can fuse this collected data and other feeds to make targeting decisions, faster than any human.

The Ukrainians have also innovated a great deal themselves, impressing Pentagon officials as they have converted commercial drones, for example, into mini bombers.

Taken together, said Thomas X. Hammes, who studies war-fighting history at the Pentagon-backed National Defense University, the developments represent a “genuine military revolution,” and one that is happening much more quickly than the shift from infantry that traveled by foot in World War I to the motorized and mechanized armies of World War II.

. . .

(p. A9) Perhaps the most revolutionary use of American technology in Ukraine has been the application of software that uses artificial intelligence, made by Palantir, to help with targeting efforts. The company’s chief executive, Alex Karp, traveled to Ukraine last year to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“If you go into battle with old school technology,” Mr. Karp said this year at an event to discuss artificial intelligence tools in warfare, “and you have an adversary that knows how to install and implement digitalized targeting in A.I., you obviously are at a massive disadvantage.”

Some experts say that artificial intelligence, which has been used in Ukraine to help sift through the massive loads of data being accumulated from surveillance, will ultimately prove as disruptive to the nature of war-fighting as nuclear weapons.

. . .

For Primer, the small artificial-intelligence firm based in downtown San Francisco, it was a breakthrough moment.

Not long after the war in Ukraine started, its engineers, working with Western allies, tapped into a tidal wave of intercepted Russian radio communications. It used advanced software to clean up the crackly sound, automatically translated the conversations, and most importantly, isolated moments when Russian soldiers in Ukraine were discussing weapons systems, locations and other tactically important information.

This same work would have taken hundreds of intelligence analysts to identify the few relevant clues in the mass of radio traffic. Now it was happening in a matter of minutes.

The findings were quickly matched up with other so-called open source intelligence streams, like geolocation data pulled from social media accounts, giving updates on the location of troops or equipment, that could be matched with surveillance video from drones or images from satellites.

“It’s getting situational awareness,” said Sean Gourley, the founder of Primer.

Yet at the same time, the Pentagon was still deciding when to move ahead with major purchases of its technology. The company was burning through its cash reserves too quickly, so Mr. Gourley laid off engineers and other staff members.

“These engineers are great at creating solutions to solve these problems, which is what matters,” Mr. Gourley said. “But there is the uncertainty: When is this contract going to close? It’s very, very hard to justify that spend.”

Mr. Gourley said he decided instead to invest more money in a government relations push, hiring a former top aide to the Senate Armed Services Committee to help the company promote its business in Washington.

“The big defense companies, they don’t really kind of invest in the tech,” he said. “They just invest in how to navigate this bureaucracy. That kind of sucks, but that’s how you’ve got to play this game.”

In interviews, nearly a dozen top executives of technology-oriented companies shared stories of stalled efforts or frustration.

For the full story, see:

Eric Lipton. “Pentagon Is Slow At Signing Deals With Innovators.” The New York Times (Monday, May 22, 2023): A1 & A8-A9.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 21, 2023, and has the title “Start-Ups Bring Silicon Valley Ethos to a Lumbering Military-Industrial Complex.”)