First quarter Grad School write-up.

Coming from San Francisco State to the University of Chicago was definitely an eye-opening experience. Just the transition from place to place was pretty hard, Chicago is quite different from San Francisco. The weather is a huge change. There are actual seasons here! And by that, I mean for 6 months out of the year, the weather is awful. Way too hot and humid in the summer, sub-zero temperatures in the winter. I moved in with plenty of time to settle before school began though, and living close to/in the city rather than in the suburbs is a significant upgrade. I’m only a short bus ride away from apparently the world’s biggest Macy’s and other amazing shopping possibilities on the Miracle Mile. Good food abounds, much of it open late. Everything delivers. You can get a real italian beef sandwich, or a thick crust pizza (and not have to go to Zachary’s to do it). At least where I live, all the architecture is really nice. It’s probably the ability to use all the brick. Not having the deal with earthquakes lets one build all sorts of very nice buildings that would absolutely not work California. But that’s all unimportant, I’m sure what you’re all here for is my initial grad school experience.

The program itself seems to really care about us and upon arriving we receive tons of resources, free meals, and individualized attention. I really felt they rolled out the red carpet for the incoming graduate students, party after party was thrown in our honor. My fellow students are universally interesting people, and friendly, more so than previous years from what I gather. Friends were made. Interesting classes were chosen… and then dropped for other interesting classes. 

Of course, the classes themselves turned out to be something else entirely. I definitely tried some challenging things here, taking the core required course that I knew would be difficult for me (it’s the high level version of the one class I didn’t get an A in during my undergrad), as well as a business school course that was way outside my academic wheel house. I definitely learned a lot in both classes, but they were tough. The level of reading is intense and they don’t pull punches in grading. My third class (US Foreign Policy) was easier, but that could be because I came in with some knowledge of the topic and the teaching style was right up my alley.

I actually built a very good relationship (or at least I’d like to think so!) with the professor of that Foreign Policy class, asking her to be my thesis advisor. I’ll get in to the thesis itself in a minute, but first about the advisor picking process. The general rule is find the most famous professor you can that knows your topic and you get along with. As it turns out, there was no one on the campus who worked on what I was interested in specifically. Or even not specifically. I was basically on my own in terms of people I could talk to who really knew anything about it. Luckily, Professor Vabulas fell into my lap. Her teaching and advising style is exactly how I prefer to learn, and when I pitched my idea, she seemed really excited about the project. She’s not the most well known professor on campus, but that doesn’t really matter when you find an advisor who will really help with the project itself. After all, I’d like it to be MY name that is remembered for my work. Maybe that’s just vanity, but it’s the truth. If Mearsheimer was my advisor, my thesis would just be “something John Q. Random wrote with Mearsheimer”.

The thesis process is a long one. You spend basically the entire first quarter generating an idea, the second quarter turning that idea into an official proposal, and the third quarter writing the paper itself. I came in to Chicago with elements of an idea, and about 2/3s of the way through the quarter, after getting quite a bit of feedback from faculty and fellow students, I settled on a research question: ”Is prestige the major motivator behind a state’s decision to develop an orbital program?” Orbital program in this case means the self sufficient ability to send something, satellites or people, into orbit. This question is not totally final, but this is basically what I am going to try to answer. Both Prestige and Outer Space are relatively under-theorized in contemporary IR, which makes my research harder, but also gives a good project a lot of extra value. As fas as I can find, no one has tried to write a paper like this before, or at least no one has gotten it published, so any exciting findings will actually ADD something to the literature. 

It is definitely not all sunshine and rainbows though. Towards the end of the semester I started having something of an existential crisis. Lots of grad students have weird mental issues, usually relating to Impostor Syndrome. That wasn’t my problem, but I have been battling despondency and malaise for the past…probably month? Since before thanksgiving certainly. I seem to have shaken it for now, but it was killing my productivity in the weeks leading up to finals. It was probably the finals themselves that helped get me out of my depression. No time for all those feelings when papers are due! I must be only student EVER to be happy about finals. Anyway, I seem to be over it, temporarily at least.

That brings us to today. Finals are over, I achieved high marks despite my issues. Though I have been lazy about it until now, I hope to get some serious thesis research done before the quarter begins. Next quarter looks pretty exciting, I signed up for two classes that will be both incredibly interesting and hopefully helpful to my research: Foundations of Realism (with Mearsheimer!) and Nuclear Policy. Classical Realism is the theoretical backing of my thesis, taking an entire class on it should really help me nail down what I want to say. 

That just about covers the first quarter. I’ll try to post more content before my second quarter writeup, but we’ll just see what happens.

A discussion of power, part 3

Though it also gives some strange outputs, the CNP methodology definitely sheds light on what else should be put into power considerations. I'm not sure I like the complexity of the model, however. Kenneth Waltz, in Theory of International Politics, talks about the usefulness of a model for a theory. To summarize, the more complex (and thus usually accurate) the model, the more it is descriptive and the less explanatory. This might not make sense at first, so let me explain. Say we wanted to explain everything that happens in the world. We construct a perfect model, that takes into account every possible variable. In effect, we have created another world. It doesn't help us EXPLAIN anything, only describe it. We can say what causes what and how, but not why. In contrast, the most basic Neo-realist theory about world politics is the anarchic international system. From that, you can explain things. The most basic Marxist theory is that money is the driver of politics. These are elegant theories. They are not perfectly accurate, of course. In fact, they really are barely "accurate" at all, in that they describe almost nothing by themselves, but they let you EXPLAIN what you can observe.

Getting back to quantifying power, the Chinese method seems to describe states very well, it has tons of factors. But in having so many factors, they lose explanatory power. Why did they weight factor X more than Factor Y? How does one compare life expectancy and military spending? Does having a long lifespan really make you more powerful at all? Old people are a net burden on the state, I would imagine a state where everyone lives to 100 (because of great medical technology or healthcare spending) is actually less powerful than one where everyone dies at 65 after being productive their entire life. How much does R&D spending contribute? I've played enough strategy games to know focusing on improving your technology can get you killed when someone with lower tech but more troops attacks and destroys you. Even if they don't do that, they can focus on just stealing your innovations, which is certainly much cheaper. Does being good at spying make you more powerful than being good at research?

There are no good answers to the above questions, which is why modeling state power is so difficult. We can far more easily explain which state has the most powerful military OR economy OR culture/society, but unifying these is a huge challenge, especially in a way that actually explains anything (rather than just describing facts). This is something I want to continue to work on as I move into grad school.

A discussion of power, part 2

The CINC (discussed last time) has some flaws stemming from its methodology. However, it does only measure the hardest of hard power: resources, energy, population, military. It completely ignores economic power, to say nothing of "softer" political and cultural power. In an effort to include this, Chinese scholars developed a new method of power quantification. Called "Comprehensive National Power (CNP), this includes not only hard power considerations like military and industrial power, but also economic and social factors, such as quality of life. The model is actually extremely complex (and the current weight of the various elements is unavailable on the internet as far as I can tell) but I'll list the various bits that go into the calculation (this is quoted from a Federation of American Scientists article):

 - Natural Resources

Man Power Resources: total population; life expectancy; the proportion of the economically active population in the total population; the number of university students per 10,000 people

Land Resources: the area of national territory; the area of cultivatable territory; the area in forest

Mineral Resources (reserves): iron; copper; bauxite

Energy Resources (reserves): coal; crude oil; natural gases; water energy

 - Economic Activities Capability

Actual Economic Strength (total): gross domestic product (GDP); industry production capability (electric energy production, steel output, cement output, logs output); food supply capability (total grain output, degree of self-sufficiency in grain); energy supply capability ( volume of energy production, volume of energy consumption, crude oil processing capability); total cotton output

Actual Economic Strength (per person): GDP per person; industry production capability (electric energy production, steel output, cement output, logs output); food supply capability (total grain output, average calories per person); energy supply capability (volume of energy consumption)

Production Efficiency: social labor production rate; industry labor production rate, agriculture labor production rate

Material Consumption Level: volume of energy consumption based on GDP calculations

Structure: the proportion of the tertiary industry in the GDP

 - Foreign Economic Activities Capability

Total import and export trade; total import trade, total export trade

Total international reserves; international reserves (not including gold); gold reserves

Science and Technology Capability

Proportion of research and development in the GDP; number of scientists and engineers; the number of scientists and engineers per 1,000 people; proportion of machinery and transportation equipment exports in total exports; proportion of high-technology intensive exports in total exports

 - Social Development Level

Education Level: education expenditures per person; proportion of people studying in higher education; proportion of people studying in secondary school education

Cultural Level: adult literacy rate; number of people per one thousand who get a daily newspaper

Health Care Level: health care expenditures per person; number of people doctors are responsible for; number of people nurses are responsible for

Communications: number of people who have a telephone per 100 people

Urbanization: Proportion of the urban population in the total population

 - Military Capability

Number of military personnel; military expenditures; weapons exports; nuclear weapons (the number of nuclear launchers; the number of nuclear warheads)

Government Regulation and Control Capability

Proportion of final government consumption expenditures in the GDP; proportion of central government expenditures in the GDP; investigation through interviews asking nine questions

 - Foreign Affairs Capability

Uses ten factors in a "nerve network model" to carry out a broad assessment.

 This gives a more well rounded national comparison. This being a Chinese methodology, the rankings are published in chinese journals (if even there) so the numbers aren't easy to get, but Wikipedia has the top 10 power from their 2006 rankings, which is useful to compare to the 2007 CINC numbers we saw earlier:

1. US: 90.62

2. UK: 65.04

3. Russia: 63.03

4. France: 62.00

5. Germany: 61.93

6. China 59.10

Though some names are familiar, the list is pretty different. Right away, we can see a huge difference with the lack of the big developing nations (China and India) which the CINC ranks high because of population, but CNP lowers because, I would assume, the lack of human development across the board. A billion poor people seem to bring down your CNP scores. France's presence is also interesting, especially that it is higher than Germany, something I don't think many people would say is correct. Is it the presence of nuclear weapons that makes France (and the UK) seem so powerful? England is a powerful nation, but in the modern world, I don't see them as more powerful, really, than Germany or Japan (number 7 on this list.)

A discussion of power, part 1.

Power is one of the most important concepts in International Relations. It is, unfortunately, also likely the least clearly defined and nebulous concept. Most definitions for power are qualitative, which is probably the best starting point for it. In IR, power is seen as some combination of A: being able to obtain things you want, and B: the ability to make others do your will. I am going to put these together, power, to me, is the ability to achieve goals. However, this definition tells us nothing, really. We have a concept, and outcomes, but not how one achieves the other. There is a black box, a collection of things that make up "power" that we can then use to achieve goals. 

X + Y + Z = level of power = goals that can be achieved.

Without knowing how much power you have, you can never know what sort of goals you are actually capable of striving for. This is known as absolute power. Do we have the power to send a man to the moon, to feed our hungry and heal our sick?

Power is not just absolute, however. Though it does matter how much power you have, it also matters how much power everyone else has. (Realists and Liberals disagree on which does or should matter more. As a Realist, I am going to act as though, for a state, relative power is more important.) Many goals a state wants to achieve are dependent not on how much power it has, but how much power it has *relative to another state*. Can State A defend itself from an attack by State B? Can State X compel State Y to do its will? To a state, answering these questions may well be more important than its absolute power level. I imagine that, at the height of the Roman Empire, Caesar would have been perfectly happy to never increase the empire's level of power again, if he could guarantee that no other state would be able to do so either. (I could be wrong, of course, a Liberal would disagree with me on this point, and legitimately so. I would like to think that a state would improve its level of power even without an outside need to do so if that would improve the lives of its citizens, but…perhaps not. There are counterexamples.)

In either case, it is imperative to know how much power the state, and other states, have, otherwise there can be huge errors. World War II is an excellent example of this. Germany, Japan, and Italy dramatically overestimated their relative power, and it cost them. Japan was perhaps the clearest example of all, obviously overestimating their power relative to the United States.

So how do we measure state power? A fairly well accepted method was created by the Correlates of War project, called the Composite Index of National Capability (CINC). This index averages ratios, state divided by world, in six measures: total population of country, urban population, iron and steel production, energy consumption, military expenditures and military personnel. It's a little confusing, let me try and explain this.

State A has 1% of the total world population, 2% of it's urban population, 3% of its iron and steel production, 4% of its energy consumption, 5%of its military expenditures and 6% of its military personnel. You just add these together and divide by six, so this fictional state's CINC score would be 21% / 6 = .035. You can then compare these scores and make a claim that one state is more powerful than another. In 2007, the top five most powerful states by CINC were: 

1. China (.199) 

2. United States (.142) 

3. India (.073) 

4. Japan (.427)

5. Russia (.392)

Right off the bat, I can identify some major problems with this methodology. Does population matter to power as much as military expenditures? How about expenditures and troops? Does spending the most in the world matter if you have no troops to use it? How about the reverse, where a state has a huge army but no money (the North Korea situation)? How can all these very different measures be weighted the same? The CINC score does give some rather strange results. Syria more powerful than Israel. North Korea more powerful than Australia?

China more powerful than the US?

Space Policy, part 1.

Star Trek got it right when they said space was the final frontier. Very little that applies on earth matters once you enter orbit, even the omnipresent and fundamental political realities that people assume exist everywhere. And for the most part, they're right: concepts like sovereign control of territory (or territory at all for that matter) that are just part of life on earth, don't, or even can't, matter in space. This blog post will outline the realities of outer space (politically speaking), current policy towards space by the space powers, and where things could go from here. I will also discuss some of the unique dangers and threats posed by space technology.

As it stands, outer space is considered the Common Heritage of Mankind, which means everyone owns it…which of course means no one owns it (and no one CAN own it), as we would conceive of ownership. Everyone can freely use Outer Space, which begins at about 62 miles above sea level. Traditional notions of Sovereignty end at this point. A state can decide who can enter its airspace, but an orbiting satellite can go overhead six times a day and no one can complain, they do not control the space over a state. This is partly functional, most orbits are not stationary and will cross many boundaries, usually more than once, over the course of the day. Of course, since no one can control where a satellite goes once it is up there, it is also perfectly legal to park a geo-synchronous satellite (which orbits at the same rate the earth rotates, thus remaining stationary from our perspective) over any country. The US has done exactly that with many satellites: some of the best positions for communications satellites are around the equator, and as one of the first states to achieve space flight, we have taken those spots. Several countries in Africa and South America were not happy about this development, they actually tried to declare that the orbits over their territory were under their sovereign control and we had to move (and first-world policymakers all had a good laugh about that.)

Because Outer Space is not under the control of anyone, there isn't much law out there. A few treaties have been signed, mostly to make life easier for spacefaring states. Astronauts must be protected and returned to their home countries if they land in another state's territory. Whatever you put in outer space is still yours. If a state or its nationals do damage to someone else's property (by accident or on purpose), the state is liable. You can't bring nuclear weapons into outer space (when these were written the Cold War was a big deal, and no one wanted space weapons platforms.) The weaponization of space is for the most part banned (article IV of the outer space treaty: "The Moon and other celestial bodies shall be used by all States Parties to the Treaty exclusively for peaceful purposes. The establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications, the testing of any type of weapons and the conduct of military maneuvers on celestial bodies shall be forbidden." Keep in mind that this does not rule out military equipment, etc. that is not on a celestial body but instead is self propelled, or maybe in orbit. Even with that caveat, it is frowned upon.) Though space is obviously used for military purposes, it is always indirect: communications, GPS and the like, not orbiting bombs or space lasers, etc. 

Until recently, most discussions of Outer Space were academic. Almost no one could go there, and it was incredibly expensive even for those who could. Actually USING Outer Space for a purpose other than exploration for its own sake, and some specific science, was not a consideration. In recent years however, the idea of making space profitable has emerged. Everything from mining to tourism to exploration is being mooted. Different groups are considering actual colonization missions to Mars. Capturing and mining asteroids is a possibility. How do we analyze these new possibilities within the current space paradigm?

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As an aside, and one that will eventually be relevant to this blog post, I have been thinking about the "common heritage of mankind" idea and how it is used. The idea was put forth originally by 3rd world nations, first about high seas. It gives all people (really all states) a right to something by birth. One could maybe make this claim about the seas: we all should have access to it and no one can take exclusive rights over the high seas, they are for everyone to benefit from equally. Just because some states are richer and more powerful than others right now does not give them the right to take all the oceans resources for themselves.

However, we know that the profit motive is powerful, and when it is taken away, less development happens. Very little has been BUILT for the benefit of all mankind. By making an area the property of everyone, it makes it difficult to economically exploit that area. This might be a slight exaggeration, but when a territory is owned by everyone, the profitability might drop to zero. So, from a poor nation's perspective, whether an area is developed or not seems to make no difference, they make no money either way. The common heritage claim is more about "fairness" than material benefits, then. Poor states don't want rich states to gain a further advantage by using some new resource, even if they are not taking anything away from poor states by doing so (because poor states can't use it anyway). This makes common heritage a relative gains argument, realist thinking using a fundamentally liberal concept of universal ownership.

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Common heritage might be able to apply to the oceans, but does it apply to space? By what right can humanity as a group claim ALL OF SPACE as ours?!? It's absurd thinking, for most of our existence we did not know "space" existed, and for most of the remainder actually traveling there was the height of fantasy. And yet we somehow can claim it as our common heritage, that use of space, all of space, every planet, every solar system, is the birthright of every human. The arrogance, if you'll excuse me, is of truly stellar proportions. Far more easy to conceptualize is that space and celestial bodies are the property of no one until they are claimed.

On Intellectual Property Rights

Intellectual property rights issues are far more complicated than they appear at first glance. Though I think everyone can agree that "content creators" deserve to be compensated for the work they did, the discourse splits in a few places that complicate the issue. The first of these is between entertainment intellectual property and economic or health related intellectual property. Let's look at these in reverse order.

In International Affairs circles, the main intellectual property discussion is that of medicine and patents. Some background is needed. A (usually Western) firm spends a ton of money on R&D to develop a new drug. They then need to sell it to make back the costs incurred in its development. However, once the formula is discovered, basically any manufacturer can produce it (let's say pills, for easy conceptualization), and since they don't have a huge debt from developing the drug in the first place, they can sell at a much lower price. To protect the original firm, we created patent laws. The formula is protected by law so that the firm that created it has a monopoly on its use, for some period (I believe it's currently 20 years?). After that time, anyone can use it. Thus the rise of "generic" drugs. But there is always a period of time that the company that invented the thing can sell it for maximum profit, so they can afford to go on their next huge research project.

In theory, that's how it is supposed to go everywhere. In reality however, it is very different.

Say a drug exists that helps to fight some dangerous illness. It was invented a few years ago, so it is still under patent protection. If a generic manufacturer in the US tries to produce the drug for cheap, they can get sued, so no one does. However, in another country, one where this illness is a huge problem, a generic manufacturer produces it, and the government supports this intellectual property theft. Basically, national interest trumps international law in this case. This situation is not academic, it is actually very common in India and Brazil, among other places. New-ish cholesterol drugs, anti-virals, etc. are produced illegally there for public consumption, and the company that invented this drug can't really do much about it.

Why can't people in Brazil and India just suck it up and pay full price like the rest of us? The short answer is: They can't. The price for these drugs is simply too high for people in many poor countries to afford. So their governments are left with an ethical question: do we steal someone's idea to save our people? Clearly, the answer to date has been yes, and I think that morally, it is the right decision for them to make, they need to save their people. However, in the long term, it creates another problem. Say I, an American citizen, need long term medical care, with really expensive drugs. Do I pay for it here, or do I fly to Brazil and buy insanely cheap, just as good drugs there? Depending on how much I need, it could easily be worth the cost of a plane-flight. Now medical research companies are not making the money they expect to make from western nations, because of "legal" theft in the third world. Without the ability to recoup their investment, they cannot afford to develop the drugs in the first place, and then everybody loses in the long run.

There really is no good answer here, besides "make poor people less poor". In theory, if the situations weren't so desperate, they wouldn't turn to theft to solve their problems and would happily pay full price for needed drugs. But, of course, that isn't a real solution at all. Government subsidies could work, but many governments can't afford those prices either. What about getting rid of private research companies? I suppose all basic medical research could be done by publicly funded institutions that don't need to turn a profit, but at some point, someone is paying for this. A huge expansion of government all over the world to replace private companies in this industry does not sound feasible, and I would question whether it would work at all. The private sector tends to be far better than government at these sorts of tasks, and it takes them many years and many hundreds of millions of dollars to invent something new.

Now, on to the other half of intellectual property, of which the entertainment industry is perhaps the most well known. No one talks about "medical piracy" even if stealing a formula and a movie are basically the same thing.

IP Piracy is far more straightforward, with none of the ethical questions that plague the medical arena. Something is produced, (a movie, game, book, etc.) and people want it, but don't want to pay for it. The question is then, WHY do people not want to pay for it? I personally don't think it's because people are just thieves and don't want to pay for things. I think there is something else going on, and the industry response is only making it worse.

A blockbuster movie costs quite a bit of money to make, and if it's good, they deserve to make a profit on their endeavor. In theory, piracy takes away from that possible profit. But let's get more detail.

Though people can pirate a movie, they cannot pirate seeing a movie IN A THEATER. I actually think this is why 3d has gotten so big so fast, because seeing a 3d film in a theater is an experience that cannot easily be pirated. Of course, I think this also makes most movies bad, so the merits are debatable. Even without 3d, I don't own a 400 inch tv, with 32 speakers, so if I want to see The Avengers the way it was meant to be seen, I better go and pay money for the theater experience.

Where piracy starts to impact profits is in home sales. There are two sides to this as well. The first is bootleggers selling illegal DVDs, and the other is internet sharing. Both are symptoms of the same basically economic problem: supply is not meeting what people are demanding.

Imagine, if you will, a system like this. 4 months after a movie is released, it goes up for streaming from a website. It streams in HD, instantly. The price: 1 Dollar. You want to see a movie at home, the price is a single dollar, and a mouse click. I'd pay that, and I'm cheap as hell. I honestly feel that 99% of piracy would evaporate instantly. The issue is that with current distribution channels, this system is impossible. We are locked into a DVD model that people do not want anymore. The price of a disc is too high, and we do not have enough bandwidth to support everyone streaming all their movies all the time. Because people do not like the options they have to pay for their content, they end up stealing it. Of course, always online requirements for all movies has its own problems. If your internet goes down, well, I guess you're not watching any movies.

This leads into another other part of internet piracy, games. Gamers are endlessly frustrated with harsher and harsher DRM requirements (that pirates seem to get around anyway!) The new fad in DRM is an always online requirement for games: to play, you have to login to an account you made online. This means the game can't really be stolen, because each purchase creates one account, stored on the game companies server. Downloading the game from The Pirate Bay does not create an account, so you can't login, so you can't play. 

This sounds great in theory, but the practice of it is fraught with problems. First off, players seem to REALLY hate always-online requirements. At least some of these reasons are easy to understand. If I want to play a game whenever I do not have internet, I can't. On my laptop on a plane, no good. At home if the internet goes out, impossible. If I live in an area where the internet is no good, like the middle of nowhere Kansas or something, well, I guess I just don't get to play at all? I DON'T GET TO GIVE THE COMPANY MONEY EVEN IF I WANT TO.

This practice creates a lot of ill will from the players, and one has to ask what that is worth. Imagine a game is released with no DRM, for $50. It gets 100 paying payers, and 100 people who pirate it, for total sales of $5000. Now, imagine the game comes out with DRM instead. The corporate mindset seems to be that all the pirates will instantly become paying customers, so you will (in my example) double your sales. This of course is not true. In all likelihood, many of the pirates simply won't play it. Maybe a few will, let's say 10%. So, in the above example, now there are 110 paying customers, for total sales of $5500, and because of your annoying DRM, your customer base now hates you. Is 500 dollars worth that hatred? Oddly, this comes on movies as well. If I BUY a blu-ray disk, it comes with an unskip-able anti-piracy warning. Why am I, a paying customer, subjected to a commercial about piracy? I have to wait a full minute watching this thing that does not apply to me because I actually BOUGHT THE DISC. If I download it off the net, no anti-piracy warning. Isn't that perverse?

Again, the problem here is a fundamental mismatch between supply and demand. People will pay for what they want if they feel it is worth it. If they don't feel it is worth it, reduce the price until they do. Indie game companies have found that drastic reductions in price result in far larger than expected sales increases. Cut the price of a game to 1/10th of what it used to be, and sales go up not by 10, but by 100, resulting in overall INCREASED profits. Why does this happen? In my experience, when the price of something gets low enough, you'll buy it just in case you MIGHT want it in the future. I have bought games that I have yet to play, because they were part of a bundle of games that I paid 6 dollars for. That is money they would not have made otherwise. These games are DRM free. I could download them, for free from the internet right now. But I didn't, because I wanted to buy them, as long as the price was right. And given that the cost of an additional copy of a game (to the producer) is ZERO (downloading a game costs them basically nothing) It makes no sense to keep the prices really high. There is no cost of production for each additional unit, and if the price is higher than I want to pay, piracy is an option.

This is a worldwide problem, in that piracy is happening everywhere and rather than adjust their sales models to meet the new demand, they are protecting the old order with DRM and lawsuits. Should people steal their goods? Absolutely not, but they are GOING TO until content creators (really content distributors) accept reality and shake up how they deliver content in the 21st century. There is a global market for good entertainment, and we all really want to pay for it. We just want it delivered in certain ways and at certain price points. If suppliers refuse to meet that demand, rampant (and growing despite all the industry action) piracy will continue.

Issues in Cybersecurity, Part 2.

As we have seen, the challenges facing those who want to increase security in the cyber-realm are steep. How can we apply theory to give us some direction on solving these problems?

If we treat a cyber attack as a variant of military, state, or covert attack (instead of as a crime) we can examine it through the offense/defense lens. By determining who has the advantage when it comes to "battle", we can apply the best sort of strategy.

When it comes to protecting yourself from attack, you have two options: defense, or deterrence. Often times, a "defense" can also be used as an offense. This is why the US Department of "Defense" runs all offensive military operations. But in terms of actually defending, what it requires is the ability to prevent an enemy from hurting you when he attempts to do so. So, a high wall counts as defense, so does a trench, or an army to repel invaders. All of these are defensive measures. By having a strong defense, it is likely the enemy will not attack, because he can see that you have the ability to repel him. But, if he does not think your defense will stop his attack, he might attack anyway.

Some attacks are particularly hard to defend against. In the real world, we have determined that ballistic missiles are difficult to defend against. They will almost always hit and do damage. At a certain level of power (nuclear) there is basically no defending against them. No wall is thick enough, and if they launch enough (or advanced enough) missiles, we can't stop them mid-flight. They invalidate all concepts of "defense". Even non-nuclear missiles will do hideous damage to non-hardened targets, like cities, the average military base, or nearly any other installation. How then do we prevent an enemy from using an attack we cannot defend against?

Enter deterrence. Deterrence theory states, in effect, if we can threaten the enemy with enough violence in reprisal that he won't risk attacking us, even though the attack would work. In the real world, this played out with nuclear ballistic missiles: no one nuked America, even though we were helpless to stop them, because we would nuke them back, and they were just as helpless to stop us. No one wanted to risk being nuked, so no one fired their missiles first. As long as everyone understands what is going on, the situation holds, no war is started, and life goes on.

How does all this apply to cyber? Well, let's determine which analogy holds better? Can we use defense to stop cyber-attacks? So far, it seems like no, we cannot. There is no real defense to a cyber attack, we either have enough security to stop it, or we do not, but the hacker risks nearly nothing in the attempt. It is like an army attacking a medieval city that ONLY has a stone wall defending it. It costs nearly nothing to see if the wall is breakable, and if there is nothing threatening behind it, why not try and break it down?

Of course, it's even worse than that. By using viruses, bot-nets, and other tools, the attackers have much more powerful tools than the defenders. As discussed last time, there are also many, many points of vulnerability. Imagine the same stone wall, but now it has thousands of gates. And the enemy has modern artillery and aircraft. And if any hole is made in the defense, the city is pillaged. Clearly, defense is not a viable strategy unless something changes drastically in the cybersecurity field. There are sci-fi novels that introduce ideas of active defense, things that will attack a hackers system if he tries to break in…but in the real world, bot-nets invalidate that anyway. Destroying a hacker's computer is not a defense if it is not his computer doing the attacking, but a thousand random computers that were infected with a virus. So, again, unless technology radically changes, defense is just not a really good option, offense is dramatically more powerful.

That leaves deterrence. If offense is so powerful, than just like nuclear weapons, shouldn't we be able to threaten reprisals? If you hack our systems, we will hack yours back, erase your hard drive, infect you with viruses, and overheat your processor. This certainly SOUNDS effective, if the threat could be clearly communicated and feel credible. In theory, a credible threat, understood by all parties, should keep attacks at bay. Why then are we still being attacked?

Answer: Attribution. Unlike with a ballistic missile, which we can track back to its launch point, cyber attacks, as stated before, often come from unknown sources with unknown agencies behind them. Even if we absolutely know that a cyber attack came from China, we can't know for sure WHO in China is responsible. Is it the government? A private company? A random criminal? A terrorist organization? Who do we attack back? This is the major problem, if we solved this, the rest could be solved with it. A credible threat could be made, and the US has the ability to use far more than cyber to threaten with. Imagine if the attribution problem could be solved, and the US made a clear declaration: Any cyber attack of a certain magnitude would put you on a list of known terrorists and trigger a military response, a drone strike or sniper's bullet. What hacker is willing to risk this?

Of course, that is only if the attribution problem is solved. That MUST be the number one goal of US policy makers and private interests alike. But apparently the conventional wisdom is "deterrence doesn't work, cyber is an offense dominated paradigm". Well, that isn't good enough! If you don't want to hurt the enemy, what good does offense do you? We think China (or Chinese firms) are stealing our technology. What can we do with our offensive abilities? They have nothing for us to steal! Randomly destroying things in reprisal doesn't help either, blowing up a factory that makes goods that US consumers buy only hurts those very consumers. No, an offense-only world is not a world we want to live in, and that should not be a theoretical stopping point that anyone accepts. The problem is not that the world is offense-dominated and deterrence does not work, it's just that we ARE NOT DETERRING. We haven't solved the attribution problem, and we have not communicated any threats or policies to the world about the consequences of hacking American firms. The result: today's world.

I will admit, the nature of cyber is extremely different from anything we have faced before. It is a weapon with global reach, extreme destructive possibilities, but unlike nuclear weapons, can be used by almost anyone who puts their mind to it. The proliferation of cyber-weapons is like the proliferation of small arms, except each of those guns can shoot all the way to America. And because of the speed and connectivity of the internet, these weapons are being upgraded and modified all the time. It is a scary thought, but at the end of the day, these weapons are controlled by people not machines. This isn't terminator. Deterrence would work, IF we can make a credible threat. Working on how to make those threats must be a top priority, because it is unlikely that the nature of cyber space is going to change in such a way as to make a defensive strategy viable. 

Issues in Cybersecurity, Part 1.

Some of this is adapted from my notes of a few panels I closely watched at ISA, as well as other papers and sources I have read. I don't claim to be an expert on the subject, but from a high concept, logical standpoint, all of the following items make sense to me, and I have added my own thoughts and analysis when appropriate.

As we all know, cyberspace has seen huge growth in the last, say, 15 years. But until recently, cybersecurity was not seen as an important issue. In 2000, no one really talked about it, but now it's the top of every government's agenda. A few things changed to make this the case, but mainly, there just became a critical mass of people and tools to suddenly make it possible. More and more people have gotten access to the internet, and with those people have come criminals to take advantage of them. With the advances in communications technology, these hackers have increased in skill, shared techniques and software.

None of this would really be a problem, except for the fact that nearly all aspects of the internet were designed with "access", not "security", in mind. Consider most modern software advances. The goal is to let you connect from anywhere, at any time. Google stores your data, but gives you nearly instant access to your e-mail, files stored on their drives, and countless other things, from basically any device with an internet connection. Of course, it's not just Google. The money-making power of the web is to connect huge numbers of people together. But the easier they make it for people to connect, and the more people connected, the less secure everything is. There are huge vulnerabilities, and once the tools to exploit them were figured out, we see the problems we have today.

This is NOT an easy problem to solve, for multiple reasons. For one, the pace of internet access and innovation has only increased, and continues to do so at a far faster rate than people can keep secure. Think about the size of the internet 10 years ago compared to today, and the levels of growth. Cyber is exploding as more and more technology is connected together, but each new connection is a new vulnerability. Let me give you an example. People are waiting for "smart appliances" and "smart grids", in effect internet connected everything. We already have computers, phones, TVs, video game systems, etc. But soon enough, we will have, as a standard practice, internet connected lights, heating and AC, and other basic things around the home. Each of these things is a potential vulnerability for hacking. It might not sound like much, but imagine if someone discovered a vulnerability in a common internet-connected light fixture, and put out a virus that broke them all. How many thousands, millions of dollars in damage could be done? Heating and AC are even worse. Server farms take huge amounts of cooling or else they will overheat. Internet connected AC units could be attacked, which would then shut down the server farms inside those buildings. Thus, the servers are shut down even if the servers themselves are protected against hacking.

Why else is security so difficult? Consider the beginning of the internet, back when it was just ARPAnet. The idea was to create a highly decentralized network that could not be destroyed by enemy nukes, so communications could reroute around any destroyed node. That original idea continues in the basic infrastructure of cyberspace today. There isn't a central location that all information routes through, it goes through servers and hubs all over the world. Though this is very resilient to physical destruction and makes it very easy to add and connect to (thus the growth of the net as we know it today) this lack of central control also prevents any centralized security measures. There are huge amounts of overlapping ISPs, telecoms companies, utilities, to say nothing of individual networks, that could each be attacked individually. An ISP in san francisco could take many measures to secure their data, but the company that actually runs the cables (say Cisco) could be hacked, or a company that uses that ISP could be taken down. Or another ISP nearby could be attacked. The idea is that rather than one central point that could be hardened against any hacking attempt, every individual point of access needs security.

Let's use Microsoft as an example. Microsoft's servers are a point of vulnerability. The ISP Microsoft uses for their traffic is a vulnerability. Any user terminal that can connect to that server is a vulnerability. Any mobile device (phone, tablet, whatever) that can connect to a terminal, or server, is yet another vulnerability. To prevent a hacking attack, virus, etc. from stealing their data, how many things does Microsoft need to secure?

So, we have determined that defense is extremely difficult due to the basic nature of cyberspace today. What about going after the people who actually commit these attacks, be they for economic (cybercrime) intelligence (cyberespionage) or military (cyberwar) reasons? This, as it stands, has its own set of problems. One is proximity. Unlike most ACTUAL thefts, cyber theft can be done from nearly anywhere. Hackers in China can attack servers in the US. There is far more to it than that, though. As far as we can tell, the attacks originated from China. But connections can be routed through all sorts of places. What appears to come from China could actually just be the beginning of a trail of bouncing connections all over the world, making it nearly impossible to track the end user.

Even if one does manage to track down this hacker, how can one bring him to justice? If a company in the US is attacked, and the attack appears to come from, say, North Korea, what can the US do about it? We don't have any authority to investigate who the perpetrator might be. All we have is an IP address. It could have been nearly anyone on the other side of the screen, and the likelihood of the local North Korean authorities to come to our aid is low, to say the least.

Part Two will discuss the theoretical implications of this as well as my personal ideas on cybersecurity theory.

ISA San Francisco 2013 Report, Part 3

ISA report for Saturday and final thoughts:

I'll admit to getting a little burned out on ISA by this time. Getting out of bed this morning was a struggle. Getting up, dressed and all the way out to San Francisco…on an early Saturday morning? Harsh. Though it was a struggle, I had important things to see today.

First up was a panel on the connections between Realism and Rationalism. There were two interesting looks at Morgenthau, one on Kuhn (someone I had never really heard about but is clearly important, I should look into him) and finally Kant as realist, which is a take I definitely had not heard before. Kant, the writer of perpetual peace, as a realist? Definitely unusual. The panel had Mearsheimer as a discussant, and it turns out he is much more moderate in his views in real life than comes off in discussions about him. He is also an awesome speaker, witty but with informed and clear views on many things. He does remind me of Prof. Hanami though, very clear about his views and is willing to say that other peoples ideas are nonsense if that's what he believes, and both do it while making the audience laugh. I should have a good time in his classes. I was able to introduce myself as an incoming student as well, so hopefully he will remember me in the fall.

Panel two for the day was a combination of thinking about Outer Space and Cyber Space. This was a little different from my last panels about these topics, which both had a military focus. These were a little more general, theoretical, discussing ways of thinking about the fast moving events in these areas, how they intersect with issues of security, sovereignty, but also freedom and connectivity. It was fairly interesting, I didn't learn as much about Outer Space this time, but there was a good survey of the current treaty status, which is useful to have as a starting point for any of my own research.

That was it for today, the convention was pretty much over by this point. In general, I felt that my taking part was enormously helpful to my development as a scholar. I definitely turned some "unknown unknowns" into "known unknowns", and got a sense for what would be expected of me at a similar presentation. As for what I actually LEARNED at the conference…well, that's harder to say. I walked away with many more questions than answers, but it's in answering those questions for myself that I grow as a scholar, and hopefully I can contribute some knowledge next year. I definitely plan on submitting a few paper proposals. Certainly my 550 paper, but I have some ideas about outer space and cybersecurity that I thought up while listening to the panels this year. Whether or not I'll be able to write them all is unknown, but I'm going to try my best to make a name for myself as soon as possible. Apparently, the field is being compressed downward. You used to not have to be published until after you were in a PhD program, even after you had finished. Now, you have to be published well before that, during your MA or even as an undergrad. The conference process seems to be equally important, and I've lost enough time not knowing what was available and what my goals should be.

ISA San Francisco 2013 Report, Part 2

This covers Friday of the Conference.

Today I had the full experience, from 8:15 am all the way to closing at 5:45. I decided this morning that I would just go the the panels that sounded the most interesting, rather than those that I might get the most out of in an academic-political sense (looking specifically for panels that had U. Chicago scholars, for example). Obviously then, the first panel I went to was fairly uninteresting, with the exception of the panelist who discussed an examination of The Prince that I had not heard before. I should have gone to the ISA Innovative Panel on mapping IR theory, which is a general topic that I am very interested in. Alas, I did not. Oh well.

In the break between the first and second timeslots, I considered my options. There was a panel with Ikenberry that…well, it had Ikenberry, an important scholar whose work is well known and received around the IR literature world, read in intro to IR classes, etc. But fuck that. I had a plan, and the plan was "go listen to interesting, fun things that *I* like, not that I 'should' see. In that vein, I went to a roundtable discussion on Cybersecurity, and I HAVE NO REGRETS. It was fascinating, talking about many aspects of the issue, and I have a few pages of notes and questions that I'd like to talk about further at a later date. It actually sparked an idea for a paper that I'd like to write sometime. Anyway, that was extremely awesome, though somewhat scary and depressing. I realize that the defense department has a point of view that is more doom-laden than the average scholar, but from just the facts, the situation does seem rather unstable.

Third on the list was an event called "Critical Security Studies Methods Cafe" which was an informal, inclusive discussion session between a bunch of different scholars and a few methods specialists. I spent most of my time at the Practice-Based Approaches table, listening to people talk and ask questions about the method, how it fits in to their research, and so on. Most of the scholars seemed to be PhDs, working on their dissertations, or junior scholars working on their books. I won't lie, it was a little intimidating. I listened, mostly out of my depth, (the SFSU IR program is great at a lot of things, but none of those things are methods training) but after an hour of listening I had gotten a small sort of handle on it and was able to make a few meaningful contributions. The positive response I got was really encouraging, I wish there were more opportunities like this.

Last for the day was a discussion of a new book which is actually an old book: a translation of Morgenthau's 1933 The Concept of the Political. As you might know (if you were in 550 with me) I used Morgenthau extensively for my research, and would like to read more of his work. I really think a lot of what Morgenthau had to say is still relevant to the field of IR today, especially given contemporary Realism. It is moving in this stark, "material factors, pure power politics, no items, fox only, final destination" direction, and I really feel that reopening realism to the blurry normative considerations it once thought important is theoretically useful. This is a really awkward paragraph, but I think the meaning is clear. And I even included a Smash reference, but one that is just perfectly apt for the situation.

That was Friday. Tomorrow is another outer space/cyber space panel (should be awesome), as well as another discussion of Realism as a theory, where I should be able to introduce myself to Mearsheimer. There are also about 50 papers I'm interested in reading. I HAVE SO MUCH READING TO DO. Looking at the field from the perspective of an undergrad is frightening, I won't lie. There is SO MUCH you have to catch up on just to be considered appropriately read in the field. Not even well read. Just as read as the average scholar. There is so much important scholarship being done every day, I don't know how anyone really stays on top of it all. If all the papers written for this conference are worth being read, hell if even HALF are worth being read, there are something like 2000 serious academic papers from this ISA alone. To read them before the next Annual Conference, you would need to go through about 5.5 per day, EVERY DAY. Let's say that only one in four papers are about something that you are interested in…that STILL means over one paper per day every day of the year, and you have to keep up that pace every year to stay current. And of course this does not include the important books that are published, or anything written from last year, or any of the classic pieces that every scholar should read. This is why I'm shocked anyone knows anything about what anyone is doing. How do you keep track of all this? I guess people heavily invested in the scholarly lifestyle really don't have a lot of outside hobbies. I doubt there are many PhD candidates that also play professional Starcraft. But that's the life I'm working for. Wish me luck.

ISA San Francisco 2013 Report, Part 1

This covers the Wednesday and Thursday of the conference. 

In general, the ISA experience has been incredible. There are a huge number of things to see and people to meet if you really put your mind to it, and I know that I have already lost some opportunities. But there are still two days left, and I plan on making the most of them.
As to the specifics, I saw an amazing roundtable discussion on Realist Institutionalism, a somewhat controversial theoretical approach (for modern realists) that pulls a lot from classical realism as well as constructivism. This is very exciting for me personally, as a lot of the issues the panelists discussed were from up in my 550 paper. Those of you who were in 550 with me might remember (if I did a good job in my presentations anyway) some of the concepts I brought up about contests over prestige, and using the Antarctica Treaty to defend their own power and interests. Anyway, those sorts of things and more were talked about, and it made me really want to go back and tune up my paper, there was so much deeper I could go both in the case as well as the theoretical framework. I might even submit it for next years ISA to discuss in a panel myself.

However, that panel was offset by one of some extremely mediocre paper presentations. If you are coming all the way to San Francisco from as far afield as Argentina, Finland, or China, you should bring your A game to present your paper. After all, you have no idea who will be in the audience and you only get one chance. Coming with a lower quality presentation than one I would expect from the average 550 student is really not serving you, the audience, or ISA itself.

It seems paper presentations are on a range though. I watched, from a packed room, paper presentations on Outer Space policy, and they were polished, clean, and informative. Definitely learned a lot, especially regarding what people are researching at the moment, what angles they were looking at. Most of the panelists were examining the civilian and military aspects of space policy (why space has been so slow to be weaponized, examining the experience of the European Space Agency, etc.) but none of the presenters really discussed the commercial aspects of space, though all mentioned that it will be very important in the coming years. I definitely wrote down some ideas for future papers that, thus far, people seemed to be ignoring.

The last thing I saw on Thursday was an exceptional roundtable discussion on Nuclear Deterrence. Waltz was supposed to be there, but he appears to be MIA for this conference. I was really hoping to meet him, one of the first things that got me into IR as a field was reading Waltz's books. As reading those books launched me on a path that put me where I am today, I wanted to shake his hand tell him that personally. Even without Waltz though, the roundtable was excellent, with all the panelists bringing unique insights and direction to the discussion. I brought home a list of topics and ideas to explore in my own research, and hope to one day be one of the people they mention as "besides Scholar X, Y, and Michael Lopate, people haven't been doing much research about this topic."

Yep, that's how vain I am.

The purpose of this blog.

For a while now, I've been considering putting together a blog for myself, some space where I can put to paper (or at least to screen) my ideas, opinions, and considerations of life and events. I won't lie though, there are other purposes to this as well. As a (hopefully) up and coming scholar, I hope that eventually, this blog will attract the notice of the right people, and eventually become a source of opinion that academics and non-academics alike will appreciate. I know it's not the goal of all scholars to become policy-makers, but I feel torn between both worlds. I absolutely want to be a professor, to work on grand theory that attempts to explain the world. But I also see foreign policy decisions being made at the highest levels and think, "if only I were in the white house, at the state department, DoD, somewhere, we would not be making these mistakes." I realize this is absolutely the height of hubris, especially given where I am right now, not even a college graduate from San Francisco State, which for all its merits is not an elite institution. But that is not going to prevent me from speaking out, and hoping that one day my work can make the world a better, safer, more prosperous place. Or, if not that, than at least a better educated one as to WHY we have the problems we have. According to me. Anyone who reads this is absolutely free to discount any and all of my opinions, theories, or policy prescriptions as being cruel, asinine, theoretically bogus, or all of the above. This is just one man's opinion, and even though *I* feel they have something to them, it is your right as a reader to disagree. I welcome all comments though, so if you think I'm wrong about something, please tell me why.


I should be posting about once a week, mostly related to the work I am doing in or out of school, but I will at times post my opinions on events, politics, policies, or whatever else I feel belongs here. I will eventually add functionality that will allow the reader to ask questions (e.g. What do you think the US should do about North Korea?) and I will attempt to answer them in future blog posts. In the mean time, I hope you enjoy whatever comes after this, and I promise to attempt to always be as fair, open, and intellectually honest as possible.