Fragmentos (23/11/24)

Reagan, Imperio Ruso, coches voladores, extender la vida

Hoy empiezo un experimento: en vez de los posts que escribía compartiendo 20 artículos recomendados junto con una breve descripción, a partir de ahora voy a compartir 10 artículos junto con fragmentos destacados de cada uno de ellos. Creo que puede ser más útil para saber si a uno realmente le interesa leer el artículo entero. ¡Poned like o comentad si os gusta la idea!

“Reagan Didn’t Win the Cold War” (Max Boot - Foreign Affairs)

Reagan’s approach toward the Soviet Union was neither consistently tough nor consistently conciliatory. Instead, his foreign policy was an often-baffling combination of hawkish and dovish approaches based on his own conflicting instincts and the clashing advice he received from hard-line aides such as Clark, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, and CIA Director William Casey and more pragmatic advisers such as Shultz and national security advisers Robert McFarlane, Frank Carlucci, and Colin Powell. In dealing with the Soviets, Reagan was constantly torn between two opposing images. On the one hand, there was the human suffering behind the Iron Curtain: after an emotional Oval Office meeting on May 28, 1981, with Yosef Mendelevich, a recently released political prisoner, and Avital Sharansky, the wife of the imprisoned Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, Reagan wrote in his diary: “D—n those inhuman monsters. [Sharansky] is said to be down to 100 lbs. & very ill. I promised I’d do everything I could to obtain his release & I will.” On the other hand, there was the specter of nuclear destruction if the U.S.-Soviet confrontation spun out of control. This danger was brought home to Reagan by a nuclear war game, code-named Ivy League, on March 1, 1982. While Reagan watched from the White House Situation Room, the entire map of the United States turned red to simulate the impact of Soviet nuclear strikes. “He looked on in stunned disbelief,” the National Security Council staffer Tom Reed noted. “In less than an hour President Reagan had seen the United States of America disappear. . . . It was a sobering experience.” Reagan’s policy toward the Soviet Union was thus far less consistent than most of his admirers would admit. Although his meetings with Soviet dissidents pushed him toward confrontation, his knowledge of what a nuclear war would entail tempered him toward cooperation.

“Elfriede Jelinek, la Nobel que escribe a navajazos” (Marina Pintor - El País)

En un mundo en que predomina la tendencia a leer buscando la identificación personal, el abrigo de la empatía o la llamarada de la indignación, tal vez sea difícil que su prosa árida y a navajazos encuentre su lugar. Sin embargo, ese no es el único obs­tácu­lo que le ha impedido llegar a un público más amplio. La literatura de Jelinek empieza por el oído: “Trabajo con la fonética de la lengua, con asociaciones, aliteraciones, homonimias (¡me encanta!) y otras formas similares. Golpeo la lengua hasta que, a menudo en contra de su voluntad, escupe su (falso) carácter ideológico y se ve obligada a decir la verdad”, me explica la autora por correo electrónico, y que ha traducido del alemán Paula Kuffer. Cuando le pregunto por qué cree que sus libros se leen tan poco fuera del mundo germánico, ella lo atribuye principalmente a este nudo lingüístico: “El problema reside en mi lengua y en la tradición en la que se inscribe mi literatura. Yo provengo de los experimentos lingüísticos del grupo de Viena, que recuperó y siguió desarrollando los modelos experimentales, sobre todo los dadaístas, después del régimen nazi. Es difícil de traducir, en particular los poemas en dialecto del grupo. Mi punto de partida es la sonoridad de las palabras. Y verterla a otro idioma es muy complicado, seguramente imposible”. (…)

Jelinek describe un proceso creativo en que el elemento inconsciente tiene un peso determinante: “A veces, hay cosas que no sé cómo he llegado a escribirlas. Una vez que la lengua encuentra el ritmo, ya no se la puede detener, solo puedo salir corriendo tras ella mientras grito y tiro de la correa, para que al menos se calme un poco y se siente para que yo pueda escribirlo”. (…)

Habla de la amenaza al arte y de la situación en su propio país. “Siempre se señala a la gente del mundo del arte, se la describe como parásitos insignificantes en el saludable cuerpo del pueblo, sabandijas, alimañas sin patriotismo, jornaleros sin patria, como ya en el siglo XIX se referían a los socialistas y a los socialdemócratas antes de que la expresión se generalizara y, sobre todo, se empezara a usar contra las y los artistas. Estos términos todavía no se utilizan, pero llegará el momento en que sí, y ya se entienden como ‘normalidad’. La gente normal no nos quiere. Los artistas, los marginados en general, tienen motivos para estar asustados. El FPÖ quiere echarnos el guante, quiere tomar el control del Gobierno, el territorio y el pueblo, lo dice abiertamente. Lo quieren todo, porque solo a ellos les corresponde”.

“The Brazilian Special-Forces Unit Fighting to Save the Amazon” (Jon Lee Anderson - The New Yorker)

The men—fighters with combat gear and assault rifles—belonged to a tiny special-forces unit known as the Specialized Inspection Group, or G.E.F. Most of them wore face coverings; mining in the rain forest is increasingly infiltrated by violent criminals, making it dangerous for them to reveal their identity. The G.E.F.’s leader and co-founder was Felipe Finger, a wiry man in his forties with a salt-and-pepper beard. Finger trained in forestry engineering, and his unit works under the Brazilian ministry for the environment. But he has spent much of his adult life in armed operations to protect the wilderness, and he talks like a soldier, with frequent references to operations and objectives and neutralizing threats. The current mission was known to national authorities as Operation Freedom. Finger and his men called it Operation Xapirí, from a Yanomami word for nature spirits. (…)

Valente said that the armed forces’ view of the Amazon hadn’t changed: “The military fundamentally doesn’t believe in conservation. They think the development of the wilderness is necessary and see it as inevitable.” He showed me a book titled “The Yanomami Farce,” released in 1995 by the Army’s publishing house. The cover depicts a blond, fair-skinned man holding up a mask with the face of a Yanomami man in a feather headdress. The book, written by an Army colonel, argued that the Yanomami were not a real Indigenous community but the invention of an international cabal that intended to take over the Amazon. Bolsonaro promoted the same idea, accusing Greenpeace and environmentalist celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio of being part of this nefarious master plan. (…)

The members of the G.E.F. are biology nerds who found themselves carrying guns—a gang of jungle Ghostbusters. They undergo intensive training, developed by a specialized police unit that fights organized crime. “There are courses on weaponry and shooting, survival in operational environments, vertical activities, and aerial operations,” Finger said. “We had a tactical-entry course, but adapted to our reality—they focus mostly on urban operations, while we focus on rural areas, forest environments.” IBAMA has twenty-eight hundred employees, but very few apply for the training, and fewer still qualify. Out of the twenty or so who tried out most recently, Finger said, only four were accepted.

“China’s Iconoclast” (Ian Johnson - The New York Review of Books)

His reception sobered him. A year earlier he had been an intellectual superstar. Now he had been overtaken by the student leaders, who were younger and offered simpler narratives: the students were good and the government, especially its hated premier, Li Peng, was bad. Just a few years earlier Liu might have agreed. But his views were now more nuanced. In one impromptu speech he told the students on the square to go back to their campuses and build democratic structures. Their methods, he argued, simply mirrored the government’s view of the world: This isn’t democracy, it’s hatred…. Hatred can lead only to violence and dictatorship, hatred only sees straw men…. What Chinese democracy needs most is to rid itself of hatred and of the enemy mentality; what we need most is calm, reasoned dialogue—consultation—what we need above all is tolerance! Some of the students ridiculed him, shouting him down as a “fake scholar” and jeering that the dark horse had turned into a sheep. But he stayed on the square. He was touched by the students’ idealism and moved by the support of ordinary Beijingers, who contributed money, clothes, and warm food. “For the first time,” he later wrote, “I doubted my pessimism about Chinese national character, for the first time could shed my disdain for ‘the mediocre crowd,’ and for the first time felt the power that could flow if people woke up.” (…)

During this period his relationship with his wife started to collapse. Already in the 1980s he had begun liaisons with other women, even bringing them into his home. When Tao confronted him, he spoke of “modernity,” which insulted her. His behavior on Tiananmen Square made things worse. He later berated himself for his marital infidelities, which took place even in the hunger strike tent. His fellow hunger striker Hou Dejian was so incensed that he said he wanted to kick Liu for his crass behavior. After Liu’s imprisonment in 1989, Tao’s health deteriorated. In 1990, while he was still in prison, she filed for divorce. He never reconciled with his wife and son, who moved to the United States and now live there anonymously. Years later he expressed remorse, describing himself as having been “truly a ghoul.” Link and Wu see this “problem of self-control” as following a pattern: Liu would know he was wrong, try to stop, fail, confess, blame himself, and try to stop again. (…)

This was the heyday of one of the most significant citizen efforts to contain the party’s unchecked power, the Rights Defense Movement. Its campaigns often followed a pattern: advocates would find an injustice, publicize it, and wait for popular opinion to push the government toward reform. These ideas were influenced by the Beijing writer Cui Weiping’s translations of works by Václav Havel and Adam Michnik. State publishing houses would not issue them, but they spread on the Internet. Many Chinese were inspired by the idea that change could happen by focusing on daily life, common sense, decentered efforts, and gradual progress. Liu’s own writings echoed these concepts. He urged Chinese “to live an honest life in dignity” (an idea from Havel) and to “start at the margins and permeate toward the center” (an idea from Michnik). Ironically, Liu was imprisoned for involvement in what by then had become an atypical cause for him.

“How Chinese Students Experience America” (Peter Hessler - The New Yorker)

The first time I saw Vincent in Pittsburgh, in October, 2021, he had lived in America for only eighty-two days, but already he had acquired a used Lexus sedan, a twelve-gauge Winchester shotgun, a Savage Axis XP 6.5 Creedmoor bolt-action rifle, and a Glock 19 handgun. “It’s the Toyota Camry of guns,” he said, explaining that the Glock was simple and reliable. (…)

A couple of times, he had attended Sunday services at the Pittsburgh Chinese Church Oakland, an evangelical congregation that offered meals and various forms of support for students. In China, Vincent had never gone to church, but now he was exploring different denominations. He had his own way of classifying faiths. “For example, a church with all white Americans,” he said, referring to his options. “One of my classmates joined that. I think he likes it. He goes every week. He can earn so many profits. Even the Chinese church, they can pick you up from the airport, free. They can help you deliver furniture from some store, no charge. They do all kinds of things!” (…)

By my second visit to Pittsburgh, in November, 2022, Vincent had decided to stay permanently in the U.S., been baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and added an AK-47 and two Sig Sauer handguns to his arsenal. (…)

American racial attitudes sometimes mystified them. One engineer had taken a Pitt psychology class that frequently touched on race, and he said that it reminded him of the political-indoctrination classes at Sichuan University. In both situations, he felt that students weren’t supposed to ask questions. “They’re just telling you how to play with words,” he said. “Like in China when they say socialism is good. In America you will say, ‘Black lives matter.’ They are actually the same thing. When you are saying socialism is good, you are saying that capitalism is bad. You are hiding something behind your words. When you say, ‘Black lives matter,’ what are you saying? You are basically saying that Asian lives don’t matter, white lives don’t matter.” It wasn’t uncommon for Chinese students to have been harassed on the streets. They often said, with some discomfort, that those who targeted them tended to be Black. (…)

He had decorated the truck with two “thin blue line” American-flag decals and another pro-police insignia around the license plate. “That’s so it looks like I’m a hongbozi,” Bruce said, using the Mandarin translation of “redneck.” “People won’t honk at me or mess with me.” He opened the door and pointed out a tiny Chinese flag on the back of the driver’s seat. “You can’t see it from the outside,” he said, grinning.

Simon Sebag Montefiore sobre la vida de Iván el Terrible, Pedro el Grande y Catalina la Grande (Empire Podcast)

“Is Xi Jinping an AI doomer?” (The Economist)

Western accelerationists often argue that competition with Chinese developers, who are uninhibited by strong safeguards, is so fierce that the West cannot afford to slow down. The implication is that the debate in China is one-sided, with accelerationists having the most say over the regulatory environment. In fact, China has its own AI doomers—and they are increasingly influential. (…)

The debate over how to approach the technology has led to a turf war between China’s regulators. The industry ministry has called attention to safety concerns, telling researchers to test models for threats to humans. But it seems that most of China’s securocrats see falling behind America as a bigger risk. The science ministry and state economic planners also favour faster development. A national AI law slated for this year fell off the government’s work agenda in recent months because of these disagreements. The impasse was made plain on July 11th, when the official responsible for writing the AI law cautioned against prioritising either safety or expediency.

The decision will ultimately come down to what Mr Xi thinks. In June he sent a letter to Mr Yao, praising his work on AI. In July, at a meeting of the party’s Central Committee called the “third plenum”, Mr Xi sent his clearest signal yet that he takes the doomers’ concerns seriously. The official report from the plenum listed AI risks alongside other big concerns, such as biohazards and natural disasters. For the first time it called for monitoring AI safety, a reference to the technology’s potential to endanger humans.

“How to Die in Good Health” (The New Yorker)

The quest for physical optimization can easily become a substitute for deeper fulfillment. A decade ago, Attia exercised twenty-eight hours a week and observed a strict ketogenic diet. His “biomarkers were out of this world,” he has said, but he refused cookies that his children baked for him and pasta during trips to Italy. “I was doing everything to live longer, despite being completely miserable emotionally,” he writes in “Outlive.” In a recent interview with the Times, Attia said that, before attending an event at his son’s kindergarten, he thought for a moment of the downsides: it would eat into his time for squats and deadlifts. (…)

The patient’s tests had identified hearing and vision issues; a full-body MRI showed ambiguous cysts in an internal organ. Genetic screenings suggested early-dementia risks, and the patient had recently asked the team, “Should I just quit my job right now and focus on living my life?” But a neurologist observed that the patient’s relatives had developed dementia only later in life. “This is probably going to be the most hopeful piece of news we give them,” Attia said. “We can say, clearly, no. . . . We have a lot of runway.” I was envious that the doctors could pay so much attention to one patient. Attia had time to ask how well this person flossed—something I don’t ask my wife, let alone the patients I see in fifteen-minute increments. But the primary-care doctor made me ponder whether there was such a thing as too much attention. The patient struggled with anxiety, she said, and seemed to be looking for validation of their fitness routine. “Instead, we show them all these medical problems,” she joked. “And then we’re, like, ‘Why are they so anxious?’ ” (…)

"Leon Kass, who served as the chair of the President’s Council on Bioethics under George W. Bush, has written that losing our capacities might be a kind of prerequisite to accepting our mortality: maybe the slowing of body and mind is what makes death tolerable. He quotes Michel de Montaigne, the sixteenth-century essayist. “Inasmuch as I no longer cling so hard to the good things of life when I begin to lose the use and pleasure of them, I come to view death with much less frightened eyes,” Montaigne wrote. “When we are led by Nature’s hand down a gentle and virtually imperceptible slope, bit by bit, one step at a time, she rolls us into this wretched state and makes us familiar with it.” (…)

As we walked on, I thought about a curious body of psychological research, which suggests that as we age and lose our capacities we tend to grow more content, not less. This finding clashes with popular conceptions of getting older, but seems to hold across continents, cultures, and eras. “I can’t do everything I used to,” a family friend, who is in his eighties and has been married for sixty years, recently told me. “But I wouldn’t say I’m any less happy than I was before.” Lost pleasures, he said, could sometimes be replaced: rounds of golf gave way to brisk walks, and when walking became difficult he spent more time talking to his children and grandchildren. As we grasp that our days are limited, we seem to abdicate our need for control; we may try to close the gap between what we want and what we have.

“Are Flying Cars Finally Here?” (The New Yorker)

While one segment of Silicon Valley lamented the perpetual absence of flying cars, another, it turns out, was quietly building them—or, at least, something flying-car adjacent. (…)

Today, there are more than four hundred startups in what is called the “advanced air mobility” industry. The term covers everything from actual flying-car-ish contraptions to more traditional-looking airplanes, but it generally refers to eVTOLs. For the most part, these crafts bear a greater resemblance to helicopter-plane hybrids than to automobiles, and they can’t be driven on the road; they might better be described as electric aerial vehicles with the ability to hover and the no-fuss point-to-point flexibility of a car. Some are single-seat playthings: Jetson One, a Swedish company, has developed a craft that looks like a little aerodynamic cage and handles like Luke Skywalker’s X-wing. Others fly themselves: EHang, a Chinese company, has been testing an autonomous passenger drone with a quadcopter design. (Its Chinese name translates to Ghost Intelligent Aerial Robot.) The first widespread use will be for air taxis—initially with pilots, then without—that will move passengers between neighborhood “vertiports.” Matthew Clarke, a postdoctoral fellow in aeronautical engineering at M.I.T., said, “In a best-case scenario, we’re seeing certification in two years and flying two or three years after that.” The 2028 Summer Olympics, in Los Angeles, may feature the ferrying of athletes through the air from the village to their stadiums. Regular civilians, or at least the courageous among them, could have access to such services by the end of the decade. One company promises a seven-minute trip from Manhattan to an airport, with an aspiration to land inside security; seat prices would eventually be competitive with rideshares. Proponents imagine a system of cheap, sustainable aerial transit—ribbons of humming vehicles interlaced overhead.

“China’s Economic Paradox” (Yuen Yuen Ang - Project Syndicate)

Western observers often view China as either a rising superpower on the cusp of global dominance or a fragile country on the brink of collapse. These contradictory takes amplify only one side of China’s economic trajectory: a tech boom alongside a growth slump. (…)

Xi has made it clear to Chinese officials that he intends his legacy to be a new economy focused on “high-quality development” and “new quality productive forces” (that is, high-tech innovation). The old economy of polluting industries, infrastructure investment, and real-estate speculation helped lift China from poverty to middle-income status, but Xi has distanced himself from it. He even seems to disdain the country’s previous growth model, associating it with the political rivals and corrupt underlings he has sidelined or imprisoned. Chinese officials thus have little incentive to take bold steps to revive the old economy: success would do little to improve their standing, and failure could end their careers. This helps to explain the central government’s lackluster response to the ongoing real-estate slump. (…)

Meanwhile, the government’s singular focus on producing advanced-technology products has driven local authorities to over-invest in sectors favored by Xi, such as electric vehicles (EVs) and solar panels. (…)

So, is China in decline? The answer is both yes and no. While GDP growth is slowing, China is moving toward a green, high-tech economy, and it remains the world’s second-largest consumer market. But as the country faces strong economic headwinds and consumers tighten their belts, investors must adapt to a new reality, and trade partners must diversify risks. Still, predictions of the Chinese economy’s imminent collapse are overblown. If history is any guide, the only development that could truly destabilize the regime is a power vacuum at the top.