Britain, Defence, Government, National Security, Society, Technology, United States

Menacing spies in the sky

NATIONAL SECURITY

ABOVE our heads – some 80,000 feet up – a high-tech tussle is under way, with our most closely guarded secrets and our national security at stake. The shooting down of a number of intelligence balloons in recent days seems closer to a fictional tale rather than the serious threat they pose.

Four mysterious aircraft have been shot down in just nine days over North America, three by the US Air Force and one by the Royal Canadian Air Force.

The fictional perspective was primed when an American general sparked a storm of speculation when he said that he was not excluding extra-terrestrial origin for these intruders. General Glen VanHerck, commander of North American Aerospace Defence Command, when asked about the possibility of aliens, said: “I haven’t ruled out anything at this point.”

For these are – quite literally – unidentified flying objects. The language used to describe them recalls the unexplained sightings that, for decades, have puzzled even seasoned observers. UFO enthusiasts are enthralled. In 2021, the Pentagon set up the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronisation Group to investigate more than 100 incidents.

One of the aircraft, downed last week over Alaska, was described as “cylindrical and silverish gray”, about the “size of a small car” and with “no identifiable propulsion system”. Another, brought to earth on the US-Canadian border, was a “small, cylindrical object”.

Such intruders may also have crossed British territory. Rishi Sunak, newly enthused by military matters, says we can and will shoot them down if necessary.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has ordered a review. For now, the questions are multiplying. Are they Chinese? The West seems to think so. The regime in Beijing has protested about the downing of two of them – just peaceful weather balloons, it insists.

Security officials in the West say that China’s stratospheric surveillance programme has operated for many years, and over five continents. It is the brainchild of the Strategic Support Force, a secretive component of the People’s Liberation Army. So, why now? Why have we not noticed this before?

The short and probable answer is that we weren’t looking. These balloons and drones move incredibly slowly at great heights. Our air-defence radar works at lower altitudes. Our missile defence-systems track fast-moving rockets. US officials are now scouring data collected in previous years for signs of intrusions that they may have missed. So far, the Pentagon says, four previous instances have been identified.

In any case, malevolent intruders can easily be missed amid the thousand of innocent weather balloons launched every day. Gathering meteorological data provides perfect cover for covert missions. China counteracts claiming that the US has repeatedly sent spy balloons into Chinese airspace. The Americans deny this.

THREATENING

THE question looms as to why China would invest so much in these missions when it has more than 260 spy satellites? Being only 15 miles above the earth’s surface – satellites are seven times higher – gives them a clear edge in taking photographs and hoovering up electronic information, such as the ultra-sensitive “friend-or-foe” systems that prevent us shooting down our own warplanes.

These satellites can loiter over sensitive military installations, such as the RAF base at Boscombe Down in Wiltshire, used by American spy planes. Gathering information about the temperature and density of the air at high altitudes could also give a crucial advantage to missile-guidance systems. These spycraft may also be sent to test national defences.

Most worryingly, China published in 2018 a video showing a balloon being used as a platform to launch hypersonic weapons. These can travel vast distances at high speed, evading our defences and delivering either nuclear warheads, or electromagnetic pulse blasts that devastate all electrical and electronic devices.

What keeps these machines aloft and on course, thousands of miles from home, nothing is said.

Some clues, however, may come from here in Britain. We have Stratospheric Platforms, a company that offers internet access from a drone that can stay in the atmosphere for a week at a time, powered by a hydrogen engine. Another British start-up, Avealto, has a solar-powered craft in orbit that targets the same market.

Speculation abounds about even more advanced technologies. Aviation experts are eagerly awaiting news from the wreckage of the recent devices shot down.

Could, for example, the Chinese have cracked the difficulties of “ion propulsion”, which uses blasts of electrically charged air to stay aloft, and requires no combustion or moving parts like propellers or jets?

Prototypes of aircraft using this technology already fly, but they use too much electricity to be viable. Or so we think.

Whatever the case, the wreckage recovered from the recent incidents’ will be eagerly inspected by American military technologists hoping to gain an edge in the battle against spy wars in the sky. The results of their investigations will be classified secret. Why give clues to the enemy?

One thing in this extraordinary story is clear. These balloons are far from innocent and have caught the guardians of our security napping. Vigilance has been poor.

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Arts, Psychology, Society

Why can’t I get a word in edgeways in meetings?

GENDER DIVIDE

Intro: That punch-in-the-gut feeling of being cut off or ignored is something we’ve all experienced – and women suffer it more than men

RESEARCH across cultures shows that men dominate conversations, interrupt more, and have their suggestions taken more seriously by others – even by women. Assertiveness by a woman in a male-dominated workplace is more likely to be viewed as “bossy” and “abrasive”; conversely, men who act identically are more likely to be termed “decisive” and “assertive”.

Many business gurus have said that women’s views are unfairly sidelined because their speech is too “feminine” – punctuated with phrases that are termed “softeners”, such as “sort of”, “just wanted to…”, and “I’m sorry but…”. They say these make the speaker sound hesitant and indecisive to others. Objective research, however, shows that this theory is mostly hot air. Men use this kind of speech just as much as women.

Research does shows just how unbalanced the divide can be. For example, in a mixed-sex discussion group, women tend to get equal airtime only when the group has a ratio of at least four women for every man in the group.

So why are men such verbal bulldozers in the workplace? Male dominance at work has less to do with language and biological authority, and more to do with entrenched, global views of men having authority and taking command, while women are seen as more passive and family-focused. This work divide started around 10,000 years ago, when humans began farming in settlements, and whether we like it or not, these roles have seeped into the world’s psyche: patients feel more assured when their surgeon is a man and air passengers say they are more relaxed when the pilot’s voice they hear has a baritone rather than a soprano pitch.

Despite this, research also shows that the most effective teams are mixed, and that strong female role models (especially in positions of leadership) help to shatter stereotypes. We all have our part to play by being aware of this traditional norm and by striving to find and work with others who see the world differently to us.

Psychology of the Gender Divide

Unconscious prejudices are slow to uproot in societies. Humans are tribal; our unspoken social rules have been key in knitting together fragile communities over tens of thousands of years. Everyone conforms, and everyone is expected to conform. If we humans had not developed social norms then we would have co-operated only haphazardly and not been able to form such stable societies.

Even though the world has been inching towards a more gender-balanced society, primal psychology still remains powerfully at play. Anyone who bucks the trend by acting differently to what has gone before risks a social backlash for defying the expectations of others.

We also suffer “confirmation bias”, valuing those men and women who conform to stereotypes, and dismissing those who don’t as being unusual.

Even when our collective ideals shift, there is still a time lag before it affects how individuals actually live and work. Nevertheless, the choices we make today will have an impact on the accepted rules in our tribe. Each can be one small step in moving towards the world we want to live in tomorrow.

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Arts, Philosophy, Science

Philosophy: The Scientific Revolution

RENAISSANCE

Intro: Although the Renaissance was primarily an artistic and cultural movement, its emphasis on free thinking challenged the authority of religion, and paved the way for an unprecedented age of scientific discovery

Tradition undermined

THE Scientific Revolution began with the publication in 1543 of Nicolaus Copernicus’s De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), which presented evidence contradicting the notion of a geocentric universe. A description of this is given at the end of this article.

That same year, Andreas Vesalius published De humani corporis fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body), which overturned many orthodox ideas in anatomy and medicine. What followed was a profound change in the approach to enquiry into the natural world. Conventional wisdom, including the dogma of the Church, was no longer blindly accepted, but challenged. Even the work of Aristotle, who had initiated the idea of natural philosophy based on methodical observation, was subject to scientific scrutiny.

At the forefront of this scientific revolution were philosophers such as Francis Bacon, whose Novum Organum (New Instrument) proposed a new method for the study of natural philosophy – systematically gathering evidence through observation, from which the laws of nature could be inferred. But there was also a new class of thinkers and scientists, including Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, and Galileo Galilei. Galileo challenged dogma more than most by proving that the Earth orbits the Sun, and fell foul of the Church for his efforts.

The discoveries made by these scientists, and the methods they used, laid the foundations for the work of Isaac Newton in the following century, and also influenced philosophers such as Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, who helped to shape the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment.

One Cause Only

Central to Aristotle’s philosophy was the concept of the “four causes” (see article). The new scientific methods of the 16th and 17th centuries rejected these, especially the concept of a “final cause”, or purpose. Instead it was proposed that there are only “efficient causes” in nature – i.e. physical causal triggers. Although this is closer to the modern idea of cause and effect, the idea had first been proposed by the Atomists some 2,000 years earlier (see article).

Laws of nature

The theories of Copernicus and his contemporaries heralded a new era of scientific discovery. Religious authority was undermined, but so too was the orthodox concept of the laws that governed the universe, which were based on Aristotelean cosmology and physics. In this new atmosphere of scientific enquiry, conventional assumptions were replaced with laws of nature derived from empirical evidence of observation and experiment.  

The New Method

Induction

Bacon described a method of scientific enquiry using the process of induction, inferring a general rule from particular instances. For example, the rule that water boils at 100C can be inferred because this is the case in every instance.

Experimentation

Often, it is not enough simply to observe in order to come to a scientific conclusion. The scientific method pioneered by Islamic philosophers involves conducting controlled experiments to get reproducible results.

Galileo Galilei once said: “In science the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as the reasoning of one individual.”

Sunspots – The detailed study of sunspots made by Galileo and others showed that these are inherent features of the Sun. These observations contradicted the Aristotelean idea of the perfection of objects in the heavenly spheres.

Gravity – Although it may only have been a thought experiment, Galileo dropped two balls of different weights from the Tower of Pisa to show that they fell at the same speed. This refuted Aristotle’s assertion that heavy objects fall faster than lighter ones.

Elliptical orbits – Once it was proven that the Earth orbits the Sun, the orbits of the planets could then be explained. Kepler discovered that the orbit of Mars was not circular, but an ellipse, and concluded that all the planets had elliptical orbits.

THE GEOCENTRIC UNIVERSE

Outside the orbit of the Moon lies the celestial region in which the Sun, the planets, and the stars move in orbits at various distances from the Earth. Unlike the sublunary region, the celestial region is made from an incorruptible substance, which Aristotle calls the “quintessence”, or fifth element. According to Aristotle, the natural movement of the earthly elements is up or down, towards or away from the centre of the Earth. By contrast, the natural movement of things in the celestial region is circular. What’s more, earthly elements tend towards a position of rest, while celestial movement is unceasing. Thus, Aristotle reasoned that the stationary Earth, although imperfect, is at the centre of the cosmos.

Beyond the Moon’s orbit, Aristotle identified 55 concentric spheres to which the celestial objects are attached. As they radiate away from the Earth, the outer spheres draw closer towards perfection, stretching into spiritual realms that have no material existence. The universe, for Aristotle, is a perfect form, and cannot have come into being at any one time: it is eternal, unchanging.

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