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Not going to happen for many reasons. In fact the opposite is more likely. It was a bit of on odd analysis since it is based on passed recessions which occurred for very different reasons that our current situation so there is no reason to believe any of this is relevant to what we are going through now. Another thing is that we may be entering some harsher times with China and Russia which may mean military may ramp up in terms of spending. As for the NNSA well that is most certainly going to be ramping up so the labs are going to be in very good shape for the some time. I assume it is the later point that the poster is trying to make. Apparently the poster is utterly "out of the loop" so to speak. I would guess some ex LANL guy with an agenda against the lab. Look pal the lab will be fine all the people that work at the lab will be fine just like all our the people you worked with before. They will live well which I know drives you crazy but that is just the way live goes with you.
I posted the article. I never worked at LANL. No agenda, just sharing an analysis. You must be fun at parties 3:10 with your didactic, condescending tone. Look up “mind reading” which is one of the cognitive distortions listed in cognitive behavioral therapy.
If posting the article make me “out of the loop”, does the same hold for the authors of the article and the publisher. Also, does the mere act of pointing out the article render someone “out of the loop”.
The article was published by analysts from the RAND corporation. That’s what is called a “think tank”. RAND stand for “research and development”. They are hardly “out of the loop” having worked for the Defense Department since 1948. And yes, they did base some of their analysis on past events. They also used facts, numbers, and reasoning. Not “applicable to the current situation”?
The article was published by analysts from the RAND corporation. That’s what is called a “think tank”. RAND stand for “research and development”. They are hardly “out of the loop” having worked for the Defense Department since 1948. And yes, they did base some of their analysis on past events. They also used facts, numbers, and reasoning. Not “applicable to the current situation”?
4/07/2020 8:01 PM
RAND corporation has gotten many things completly wrong in the past. Sure they get some right but plenty wrong as well. To be fair I said the poster is "out of the loop" not the article nor the authors since the article said nothing about NNSA. I still think the analysis makes little sense precisely because of the numbers and comparing past recessions to the current one is rather problematic. Sure you can do the study and run the numbers but the fundamentals to how this epidemic induced economic downturn and its long term impact are likely to be very different from those of traditional recessions for a number of rather obvious reasons. Since it is an economic analysis it is not exactly as rigorous as a scientific study so how serious can you take these things anyway.
In any case as for as the NNSA is concerned that money is pretty much set in stone for some time now not to mention that in many cases NNSA can be rather different from the standard defense funding.
If posting the article make me “out of the loop”, does the same hold for the authors of the article and the publisher. Also, does the mere act of pointing out the article render someone “out of the loop”.
4/07/2020 7:36 PM
You are "out of the loop" but from that it does not follow that the authors or article is out of the loop. Now I had to make some assumptions (1) that you think this article is directly relevant to LANL, LLNL or Sandia and that is why you posted it. If you think that you are out of the loop. Is it reasonable for me to think you made this assumption, yes because why else wold you post on this blog. By the way "in the loop" is nothing special it is just a realization that the NNSA budget depends on different factors than the defense budget.
The article is about defense spending not NNSA work, and the two are actually weakly coupled. Could the authors be out of the loop on defense spending and future directions? They may or may not be, that is irrelevant to their study. They are simply looking at past data and drawing conclusions for the future. Nothing wrong with that but you have to ask is the past data actually relevant to the current situation. That is the big question, I suspect that it is not. They do not know either but they can still do the analysis. You need to understand in most quantitive endeavors or models you need to make some assumptions and see where it takes you. Now how accurate those assumptions are strongly varies. How serious can you take this study, who knows but there is a very low probability that this is study is relevant to the NNSA labs in any case.
Military spending is about 60% of all discretionary spending. With the economic downturn and the need to redirect priorities, it’s a target for cuts. As for military spending increasing in an economic downturn, look at the early 90’s as an example. There was a recession with major defense cuts prompted by the end of the Cold War. A google search on “military spending” will give you numerous articles and editorials where people are comparing the costs of military equipment to ventilators and hospital beds. People are questioning our national priorities, which in a democracy are not written in stone.
That is not actually what article said, it says that the drop in defense spending follows some time after. Again this the case for standard recessions that occur due to some internal economic reason. No now an epidemic can cause long time damage if you kill large number of young people, it will not happen if you kill a small percentage of older people. Heck I would guess even the cruise industry will come back.
“Another thing is that we may be entering some harsher times with China and Russia which may mean military may ramp up in terms of spending. As for the NNSA well that is most certainly going to be ramping up so the labs are going to be in very good shape for the some time.”
But isn’t the NNSA decoupled from the DOE?
“The article is about defense spending not NNSA work, and the two are actually weakly coupled.”
"As for military spending increasing in an economic downturn, look at the early 90’s as an example. There was a recession with major defense cuts prompted by the end of the Cold War. A google search on “military spending” will "
That would mean military spending was cut by the ending of the cold war not by an economic downturn. Now the end of the cold war could have also created an economic downturn but was not the cause of the defense spending cut.
People are questioning our national priorities, which in a democracy are not written in stone.
4/08/2020 8:26 AM
That is a good point but it could easily go the other way where people could decide that China is a real threat to the world which would mean increased military spending in particular NNSA spending could go way up. No one knows how this will play out but one possibility is that the US will no longer be so dependent on global trade and become more nationalistic leading to more friction with China and Russia. We could even enter a new cold war. Also the rest of the world may side with us on this and want the US to increase its military. The US is already essentially the military for Europe.
There is actually a question about how if this is really going to be any kind of long term economic downturn since the economy could simply come back after this, opportunities could arise as well. It could even strengthen certain aspects of the economy.
This idea of using the “China Threat” as a way to increase spending is weak. It’s Cold War era thinking that is not relevant to today. The old tricks just don’t work. An example is the Huawei 5G threat that was fabricated by the US intelligence community(IC).For years the IC told everyone, including our allies, that Huawei was putting backdoors in their equipment to allow spying by the Chinese military. That was shown to be false by independent studies and other intelligence agencies. Britain finally had to agree to use Huawei 5G equipment as have other allies of the US. Now the IC surrogates that try to cry wolf about Huawei are laughed at when they suggest their backdoor nonsense. Intelligence assessments are not necessarily fact-based, nor do they have to be.
“The article is about defense spending not NNSA work, and the two are actually weakly coupled.”
Completely contradictory statements.
How are on earth does that work? Think about this real hard, troops on the ground, destroyers, planes, guns, tanks...hmm something is missing. Look I assume some level of thinking on the blog before I spend the 2 seconds which I throw a post on it, do I need to spell out everything before I post? If that is the case than this blog is hopeless as I thought it was read by people from the NNSA labs.
In any case Scooby will shut this this thread since too many people seem interested in it and defense spending has no relation to the labs and violates the blog rules.
Who cares what RAND thinks? The stockpile will always need more pits!
4/08/2020 4:18 PM
The Rand article said nothing about the stockpile. It said defense funding but NNSA work and general defense money are not the same. In any case the Rand article could be wrong about defense funding as well. It is just a possible scenario which is not that well motivated by their own assumptions. Rand gets lots of things wrong. To be fair they are just running one possibility.
"This idea of using the “China Threat” as a way to increase spending is weak. It’s Cold War era thinking that is not relevant to today.
Why not? Seems like pretty good especially when you look at Chinas defense budget which just keeps going up and up. One has to ask why would that be? Cold war era thinking maybe very relevant today.
"An example is the Huawei 5G threat that was fabricated by the US intelligence community(IC).For years the IC told everyone, including our allies, that Huawei was putting backdoors in their equipment to allow spying by the Chinese military. That was shown to be false by independent studies and other intelligence agencies. Britain finally had to agree to use Huawei 5G equipment as have other allies of the US. Now the IC surrogates that try to cry wolf about Huawei are laughed at when they suggest their backdoor nonsense."
I am not sure why this relevant but this is still a concern. Is it really fabricated? Who knows but the fact that it could be credible kind tells you how much the Chinese can be trusted. You may not like it but China as world wide threat is a very real possibility and that threat is going to grow which is one of the reasons defense budgets are going to grow. As for NNSA it will grow no matter what.
Scooby can you please shut down this thread as people are posting to it.
If a the economic downturn last for some time than large cuts could be coming to many programs. The people at LLNL and LANL could be in for a real shock when it is realized that these institutions add little value in terms of current situation of the world. The issues we face are in order of importance #1 Global Warming, #2 Pandemics, #3 Social unrest under increasing inequality. #4 Domestic terrorism as certain states like Texas and Montana start to become more liberal. #5 International Terrorism. #6 which is related to #1 is the great migrations of people due climate change.
Not a single of these issue require anything from an NNSA lab. If economics is the order of the day, expect that the sooner rather than latter that huge cuts will becoming, a lab or two will close, and there will be gnashing of teeth. Also the people that dismiss the RAND report do not realize what RAND is. They have PH.Ds from top schools and university professors as consultants. The percent of people with a PH.D at RAND may be 60%, what is the percent of PH.Ds at LANL or LLNL, maybe 17%. RAND is place that one needs outstanding qualifications to work at as they have to compete in the open market place of ideas and be at the cutting edge.
I think I will stick with the opinion of people at RAND who have the academic bonafides as opposed to some NNSA larpers who have visited at most 3 states.
The PLA trolls are out in full force in this thread. Here's hoping the Chinese coronavirus is just the wakeup call the world needs to finally shut China down and send them back to doing fireworks and chicken farming.
6:27 is clearly “out of the loop” and bitter from some past treatment he received at LANL. Get over it. The NNSA budget is completely decoupled from the concerns you bring up such as pandemics, income inequality, global warming, etc. As an autonomous agency within the DOE it is completely unaffected by outside events. Also, with the China threat expect the NNSA budget to grow. As for the qualifications of RAND analysts relative to LANL/LLNL people, your information is out of date. There is major cutting edge science going on at the labs that you are unaware of because of your outdated knowledge. I don’t know how many times I have to explain this. Scooby, stop this thread as it is irrelevant to the NNSA labs and is flouting the rules of the blog.
Look 6:27, I don’t know how many times I have to explain this, but the NNSA is not part of the defense department or any other government department that RAND or you feel will be impacted by the economic effects of the Coronavirus. As an semi-independent entity within the DOE, the NNSA and the national abs are immune from budget cuts. If you were in the loop I’d suspect you’d understand this. Again, people confuse to post to this thread which should be closed as it is not relevant to the NNSA.
The PLA trolls are out in full force in this thread. Here's hoping the Chinese coronavirus is just the wakeup call the world needs to finally shut China down and send them back to doing fireworks and chicken farming.
4/09/2020 10:38 PM
Even if China is a threat we will not beat them with NNSA labs. We beat them with Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus, in other words we infect them with our culture. Once they start going down the route of ego, selfishness and antiintellectualism they will be doomed. In America we have over the last 120 years have leaned to liv in a world of contradictions, it will be too much of a shock for China. We have cultural weapons of mass destruction. Imagine if Katy Perry went back in time and started singing and dancing with little cloths in the middle of Leipzig in 1740, what would happen is that Bach would vanish from history. That is just how powerful we are. So LAN and LLNL are not going to save us from China. As this blog has shown stupidity is a weapon and we have plenty of it which we can harness and use.
A lot of people believed your theory until January 2020, when the brutal, bloodthirsty Chinese dictatorship began killing doctors warning about the coronavirus and dragging isolation resisters out of their homes, and lying to the rest of the world, thus causing a worldwide pandemic and hundreds of thousands of lives. The "rehabilitation" of communist China is now officially dead, failed, gone.
31 comments:
Not going to happen for many reasons. In fact the opposite is more likely. It was a bit of on odd analysis since it is based on passed recessions which occurred for very different reasons that our current situation so there is no reason to believe any of this is relevant to what we are going through now. Another thing is that we may be entering some harsher times with China and Russia which may mean military may ramp up in terms of spending. As for the NNSA well that is most certainly going to be ramping up so the labs are going to be in very good shape for the some time. I assume it is the later point that the poster is trying to make. Apparently the poster is utterly "out of the loop" so to speak. I would guess some ex LANL guy with an agenda against the lab. Look pal the lab will be fine all the people that work at the lab will be fine just like all our the people you worked with before. They will live well which I know drives you crazy but that is just the way live goes with you.
"Defense Budget Cuts" ? Don't hold your breath!
There will be no cuts.
Dumb article and a failure to understand some basics of economics.
I posted the article. I never worked at LANL. No agenda, just sharing an analysis. You must be fun at parties 3:10 with your didactic, condescending tone. Look up “mind reading” which is one of the cognitive distortions listed in cognitive behavioral therapy.
If posting the article make me “out of the loop”, does the same hold for the authors of the article and the publisher. Also, does the mere act of pointing out the article render someone “out of the loop”.
The article was published by analysts from the RAND corporation. That’s what is called a “think tank”. RAND stand for “research and development”. They are hardly “out of the loop” having worked for the Defense Department since 1948. And yes, they did base some of their analysis on past events. They also used facts, numbers, and reasoning. Not “applicable to the current situation”?
"You must be fun at parties 3:10 with your didactic, condescending tone."
I like to listen to NPR and Rachel Maddow.
The article was published by analysts from the RAND corporation. That’s what is called a “think tank”. RAND stand for “research and development”. They are hardly “out of the loop” having worked for the Defense Department since 1948. And yes, they did base some of their analysis on past events. They also used facts, numbers, and reasoning. Not “applicable to the current situation”?
4/07/2020 8:01 PM
RAND corporation has gotten many things completly wrong in the past. Sure they get some right but plenty wrong as well. To be fair I said the poster is "out of the loop" not the article nor the authors since the article said nothing about NNSA. I still think the analysis makes little sense precisely because of the numbers and comparing past recessions to the current one is rather problematic. Sure you can do the study and run the numbers but the fundamentals to how this epidemic induced economic downturn and its long term impact are likely to be very different from those of traditional recessions for a number of rather obvious reasons. Since it is an economic analysis it is not exactly as rigorous as a scientific study so how serious can you take these things anyway.
In any case as for as the NNSA is concerned that money is pretty much set in stone for some time now not to mention that in many cases NNSA can be rather different from the standard defense funding.
If posting the article make me “out of the loop”, does the same hold for the authors of the article and the publisher. Also, does the mere act of pointing out the article render someone “out of the loop”.
4/07/2020 7:36 PM
You are "out of the loop" but from that it does not follow that the authors or article is out of the loop. Now I had to make some assumptions (1) that you think this article is directly relevant to LANL, LLNL or Sandia and that is why you posted it. If you think that you are out of the loop. Is it reasonable for me to think you made this assumption, yes because why else wold you post on this blog. By the way "in the loop" is nothing special it is just a realization that the NNSA budget depends on different factors than the defense budget.
The article is about defense spending not NNSA work, and the two are actually weakly coupled. Could the authors be out of the loop on defense spending and future directions? They may or may not be, that is irrelevant to their study. They are simply looking at past data and drawing conclusions for the future. Nothing wrong with that but you have to ask is the past data actually relevant to the current situation. That is the big question, I suspect that it is not. They do not know either but they can still do the analysis.
You need to understand in most quantitive endeavors or models you need to make some assumptions and see where it takes you. Now how accurate those assumptions are strongly varies. How serious can you take this study, who knows but there is a very low probability that this is study is relevant to the NNSA labs in any case.
When the economy is down, federal spending is up. That is a verified pattern for a century.
Military spending is about 60% of all discretionary spending. With the economic downturn and the need to redirect priorities, it’s a target for cuts. As for military spending increasing in an economic downturn, look at the early 90’s as an example. There was a recession with major defense cuts prompted by the end of the Cold War. A google search on “military spending” will give you numerous articles and editorials where people are comparing the costs of military equipment to ventilators and hospital beds. People are questioning our national priorities, which in a democracy are not written in stone.
When the economy is down, federal spending is up
That is not actually what article said, it says that the drop in defense spending follows some time after. Again this the case for standard recessions that occur due to some internal economic reason. No now an epidemic can cause long time damage if you kill large number of young people, it will not happen if you kill a small percentage of older people. Heck I would guess even the cruise industry will come back.
“Another thing is that we may be entering some harsher times with China and Russia which may mean military may ramp up in terms of spending. As for the NNSA well that is most certainly going to be ramping up so the labs are going to be in very good shape for the some time.”
But isn’t the NNSA decoupled from the DOE?
“The article is about defense spending not NNSA work, and the two are actually weakly coupled.”
Completely contradictory statements.
"As for military spending increasing in an economic downturn, look at the early 90’s as an example. There was a recession with major defense cuts prompted by the end of the Cold War. A google search on “military spending” will "
That would mean military spending was cut by the ending of the cold war not by an economic downturn. Now the end of the cold war could have also created an economic downturn but was not the cause of the defense spending cut.
People are questioning our national priorities, which in a democracy are not written in stone.
4/08/2020 8:26 AM
That is a good point but it could easily go the other way where people could decide that China is a real threat to the world which would mean increased military spending in particular NNSA spending could go way up. No one knows how this will play out but one possibility is that the US will no longer be so dependent on global trade and become more nationalistic leading to more friction with China and Russia. We could even enter a new cold war. Also the rest of the world may side with us on this and want the US to increase its military. The US is already essentially the military for Europe.
There is actually a question about how if this is really going to be any kind of long term economic downturn since the economy could simply come back after this, opportunities could arise as well. It could even strengthen certain aspects of the economy.
This idea of using the “China Threat” as a way to increase spending is weak. It’s Cold War era thinking that is not relevant to today. The old tricks just don’t work. An example is the Huawei 5G threat that was fabricated by the US intelligence community(IC).For years the IC told everyone, including our allies, that Huawei was putting backdoors in their equipment to allow spying by the Chinese military. That was shown to be false by independent studies and other intelligence agencies. Britain finally had to agree to use Huawei 5G equipment as have other allies of the US. Now the IC surrogates that try to cry wolf about Huawei are laughed at when they suggest their backdoor nonsense. Intelligence assessments are not necessarily fact-based, nor do they have to be.
Who cares what RAND thinks? The stockpile will always need more pits!
But isn’t the NNSA decoupled from the DOE?
4/08/2020 10:54 AM
No it is not. For example, any nuclear weapon information the NNSA classifies is based solely on DOE classification rules.
“The article is about defense spending not NNSA work, and the two are actually weakly coupled.”
Completely contradictory statements.
How are on earth does that work? Think about this real hard, troops on the ground, destroyers, planes, guns, tanks...hmm something is missing. Look I assume some level of thinking on the blog before I spend the 2 seconds which I throw a post on it, do I need to spell out everything before I post? If that is the case than this blog is hopeless as I thought it was read by people from the NNSA labs.
In any case Scooby will shut this this thread since too many people seem interested in it and defense spending has no relation to the labs and violates the blog rules.
Who cares what RAND thinks? The stockpile will always need more pits!
4/08/2020 4:18 PM
The Rand article said nothing about the stockpile. It said defense funding but NNSA work and general defense money are not the same. In any case the Rand article could be wrong about defense funding as well. It is just a possible scenario which is not that well motivated by their own assumptions. Rand gets lots of things wrong. To be fair they are just running one possibility.
"This idea of using the “China Threat” as a way to increase spending is weak. It’s Cold War era thinking that is not relevant to today.
Why not? Seems like pretty good especially when you look at Chinas defense budget which just keeps going up and up. One has to ask why would that be? Cold war era thinking maybe very relevant today.
"An example is the Huawei 5G threat that was fabricated by the US intelligence community(IC).For years the IC told everyone, including our allies, that Huawei was putting backdoors in their equipment to allow spying by the Chinese military. That was shown to be false by independent studies and other intelligence agencies. Britain finally had to agree to use Huawei 5G equipment as have other allies of the US. Now the IC surrogates that try to cry wolf about Huawei are laughed at when they suggest their backdoor nonsense."
I am not sure why this relevant but this is still a concern. Is it really fabricated? Who knows but the fact that it could be credible kind tells you how much the Chinese can be trusted. You may not like it but China as world wide threat is a very real possibility and that threat is going to grow which is one of the reasons defense budgets are going to grow. As for NNSA it will grow no matter what.
Scooby can you please shut down this thread as people are posting to it.
If a the economic downturn last for some time than large cuts could be coming to many programs. The people at LLNL and LANL could be in for a real shock when it is realized that these institutions add little value in terms of current situation of the world. The issues we face are in order of importance #1 Global Warming, #2 Pandemics, #3 Social unrest under increasing inequality. #4 Domestic terrorism as certain states like Texas and Montana start to become more liberal. #5 International Terrorism. #6 which is related to #1 is the great migrations of people due climate change.
Not a single of these issue require anything from an NNSA lab. If economics is the order of the day, expect that the sooner rather than latter that huge cuts will becoming, a lab or two will close, and there will be gnashing of teeth. Also the people that dismiss the RAND report do not realize what RAND is. They have PH.Ds from top schools and university professors as consultants. The percent of people with a PH.D at RAND may be 60%, what is the percent of PH.Ds at LANL or LLNL, maybe 17%. RAND is place that one needs outstanding qualifications to work at as they have to compete in the open market place of ideas and be at the cutting edge.
I think I will stick with the opinion of people at RAND who have the academic bonafides as opposed to some NNSA larpers who have visited at most 3 states.
The PLA trolls are out in full force in this thread. Here's hoping the Chinese coronavirus is just the wakeup call the world needs to finally shut China down and send them back to doing fireworks and chicken farming.
6:27 is clearly “out of the loop” and bitter from some past treatment he received at LANL. Get over it. The NNSA budget is completely decoupled from the concerns you bring up such as pandemics, income inequality, global warming, etc. As an autonomous agency within the DOE it is completely unaffected by outside events. Also, with the China threat expect the NNSA budget to grow. As for the qualifications of RAND analysts relative to LANL/LLNL people, your information is out of date. There is major cutting edge science going on at the labs that you are unaware of because of your outdated knowledge. I don’t know how many times I have to explain this. Scooby, stop this thread as it is irrelevant to the NNSA labs and is flouting the rules of the blog.
Look 6:27, I don’t know how many times I have to explain this, but the NNSA is not part of the defense department or any other government department that RAND or you feel will be impacted by the economic effects of the Coronavirus. As an semi-independent entity within the DOE, the NNSA and the national abs are immune from budget cuts. If you were in the loop I’d suspect you’d understand this. Again, people confuse to post to this thread which should be closed as it is not relevant to the NNSA.
Having lived through leans times, I wouldn’t say the labs are immune from budget cuts. Yet they are indeed enjoying good times these days.
History is not a linear extrapolation, so we’ll see what comes next.
Scooby, stop this thread as it is irrelevant to the NNSA labs and is flouting the rules of the blog.
4/10/2020 7:06 A
Agreed Scooby shut this thread down, no one is posting to it anyway.
The PLA trolls are out in full force in this thread. Here's hoping the Chinese coronavirus is just the wakeup call the world needs to finally shut China down and send them back to doing fireworks and chicken farming.
4/09/2020 10:38 PM
Even if China is a threat we will not beat them with NNSA labs. We beat them with Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus, in other words we infect them with our culture. Once they start going down the route of ego, selfishness and antiintellectualism they will be doomed. In America we have over the last 120 years have leaned to liv in a world of contradictions, it will be too much of a shock for China. We have cultural weapons of mass destruction. Imagine if Katy Perry went back in time and started singing and dancing with little cloths in the middle of Leipzig in 1740, what would happen is that Bach would vanish from history. That is just how powerful we are. So LAN and LLNL are not going to save us from China. As this blog has shown stupidity is a weapon and we have plenty of it which we can harness and use.
the NNSA and the national abs are immune from budget cuts.
4/10/2020 9:57 AM
You missed all the RIFs in the 90's, huh?
4/10/2020 1:19 PM
A lot of people believed your theory until January 2020, when the brutal, bloodthirsty Chinese dictatorship began killing doctors warning about the coronavirus and dragging isolation resisters out of their homes, and lying to the rest of the world, thus causing a worldwide pandemic and hundreds of thousands of lives. The "rehabilitation" of communist China is now officially dead, failed, gone.
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