The Casual Traitor... How Common Is Admiral Robert Burke's Treason?
We talk a lot about the Pearl Harbor moment. But what about a Russo-Japanese War moment?
When I was sixteen I attended an exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts that left a stirring impression. The exhibit — “A Much Recorded War” — commemorated the centenary of the Japanese victory over the Russian Empire.
The first major military conflict of the modern age, the fierce campaigns of the Russo-Japanese War were closely observed by Japan and the West alike. This exhibition of Japanese prints, photographs, and postcards from the era commemorates the centennial of the 1905 signing of the Portsmouth Treaty that ended the war.
The images were striking and not altogether unfamiliar to anime fans today.
And I had learned terribly little about that war in high school.
Over the ensuing years I came to study the Russo-Japanese War much more carefully, especially as it augured in a Japanese militarism that ultimately culminated in the Second War II. That later conflict was the life’s work of both of my grandparents and arguably changed the course of American history. We know that the Japanese lost World War II, of course.
Still the Japanese caught up very quickly — in roughly fifty years — from when Commodore Matthew Perry opened them up to the world. Perry had seized the initiative — he had the superior steam-powered gunboat — but he would not hold it for long.
The Japanese had learned that whoever masters the technology ultimately wins the war.
And so they set out, building a thriving espionage operation to steal all that they needed.
The decisive weapon against the Russians proved to be the naval range finders. Here are the key details.
.. The Japanese put a great deal of effort into developing their optics industry in order to eliminate their reliance on foreign sources. They had done a lot of business with Barr and Stroud in Great Britain. This business centered on rangefinders and other gunnery-related optics but also expanded to lookout/search related optics. By 1930, IIRC they were totally independent of foreign industry with regards to optics, becoming quite good…. Japan relied exclusively on Barr & Stroud for Naval Rangefinders with links back to the mid-1890s. Ninety-six Japanese visitors to Anniesland (West Glasgow) were recorded before 1906. Admiral Count Togo visited the factory in 1911. Pairs of Japanese workmen stayed for long periods to learn to adjust and repair rangefinders. Through the 1920s, Japanese orders accounted for nearly one-third of production. A Japanese inspector, Mr Yamada, was given his own office in the factory. Later visitors included Isoroku Yamamoto. Mr Yamada returned to Japan in the late 1920s and set up his own optical manufacturing business. The last orders for Japan were completed in the early 1930s, when Britain's relations with Japan deteriorated following aggression in Manchuria. This information is taken from "Range and Vision, the first 100 years of Barr & Stroud" Alan.
I find these details to be altogether fascinating. The Japanese essentially bought the technology from the Scots and before long outfitted their entire fleet.
Corrupt the technology makers and you can make people think that they are more powerful than they really are. You can get your better-resourced opponent to waste time and resources building things that don’t work.
When venture capitalist Marc Andreessen says “It’s Time To Build,” we might ask more basic questions of who is building, what are we building, and who shall pay for it.
This is why it is essential to validate all the claims that government contractors make.
Getting these questions wrong is fatal. I was recently gunning through a book by Owen Matthews, Glorious Misadventures: Nikolai Rezanov and the Dream of Russian America. Matthews essentially concludes that the reason the Western half of North America didn’t stay controlled by the Russian Empire was because the Russians lacked shipbuilding capabilities. Rather humorously, they’d buy American ships — with checks from the Russian treasury. Had Rezanov secured appropriate patronage who knows how history might have unfolded.
Deception is a key part of harming your opponents, especially when you are looking to supplant them. An earlier book written by Wang Huning — China’s Kissinger — marvels at American confidence in their technological progress—and subtly suggests that undermining American technology ultimately will result in undermining American power.
We should see the Chinese efforts to compromise the American drone industry in such a context.
Don’t we know that Shield AI is a front for the Chinese?
*****
Reading the indictment against Admiral Robert Burke I have to wonder how common these sorts of things are: admiral, facing retirement, gets promised stock or options so long as he procures a federal contract while admiral.
The company, Next Jump, isn’t mentioned in the indictment. It’s an obviously fake company, as anyone can see with even a modicum of research.
Why are there so few objective standards by which companies are evaluated before awarding contracts?
It’s not as if there aren’t federal departments like the National Institute of Standards and Technology or the Commerce Department who can validate what’s being claimed. (Indeed several of my portfolio companies have been vetted by such an august body — so I know that they work.)
And yet, no one seems to vet both the contractors and the process by which decisions are made. This is curious stuff, really.
However one feels about the scale and scope of the U.S. military — I confess to thinking it way too big — it’s telling that no one seems to ask the more basic questions of whether or not the products actually work. Worse yet, one gets the sense that much government contracting is honest services fraud or taxpayer grifting.
Our allies rely on the products and weapons we supply them being able to do as the manufacturers of the products claim. Our false confidence about what our products can and can’t do is a real problem and many of the products we sell our allies are produced by at least one of our peer adversaries.
I read The Wall Street Journal’s Heather Somerville’s otherwise excellent report about the failures of American drones in the Ukraine conflict. I was left wondering how many “American” drones are, in fact, supplied with Chinese essential parts?
How might the supply chain contamination affect our posture vis à vis the war in Ukraine? In Taiwan?
These are the sorts of questions Congressman Robert Wittman ought to be pursuing as he vets the drone industry.
How many of the companies which have received the Blue List designation have critical parts from China?
Why are contracting officers not forced to prove that the tech actually works?
Arleigh is rolling in his grave...