Power Grids Falling Behind
NYT –
The report predicts that demand will increase by about 19 percent over the next 10 years in the United States, and slightly less in Canada, and that the construction of power plants and transmission lines to carry that load will fall far short of what is needed. In this country, utilities have contracts with new power plants for only about a third of the capacity that will be needed; in Canada, the number is about two-thirds.
They go on to blame the organization of the industry-
Planning for adequate capacity has become more difficult with the restructuring of the electric industry. Where a handful of top-to-bottom companies once generated power, transmitted it and delivered it, hundreds of companies are now involved in only one or two phases of the process. At the same time, getting permits to build new power lines has become more difficult.
The solution revolves around scaling down the entire effort. Localize electricity production and use and you won’t have to worry about providing for “Texas, New England, the Mid-Atlantic area and the Midwest.” Hopefully the lack of production will spark some more innovation along the lines of microgrids.
Outbound
I’ve added Purpleslog, the new combined Purple/Curtis/Arherring 5GW blog to the links on the right. Also, I want to thank Mark, Dan for responding to my 5GW post. All those years of science fiction seem to be paying off.
Struggling FBI
NYT- Scott Shane has another article nailing the inability for the government to react to the threat before us, in this case the FBI –
“If you look at, for example, the four key ingredients for counterterrorism success — agents, analysts, managers and computers — the F.B.I. is struggling to get the basics right on all of them,” Ms. Zegart said. “New agents still get more time for vacation than they do for counterterrorism training. Analysts are still treated as glorified secretaries.”
“You need leadership. You don’t need subject-matter expertise,” said Gary M. Bald, whom Mr. Mueller named last year as the first head of the National Security Branch, admitting in a 2005 deposition that he knew little about Islam.
But the good news is there is a group of agents who have broken out of the hierarchy –
“The F.B.I. needs to follow the lead of the small group of agents who’ve made themselves experts,” said Evan F. Kohlmann, a consultant to the bureau and Scotland Yard and author of a book and Web site devoted to Al Qaeda.
But the bad news is-
Mr. Kohlmann said the dozen agents who knew international terror networks best were rarely brought in on local cases.
Bottom line: 5 years later and no real improvement.
5GW And Beyond
Robb calls the super empowered individual the end game.
Here is my blue sky thinking as to why –
Technological Singularity Track –
Because 5GW is the point where the human body becomes the limitation (our technology is designed to interact with our nervous system through the combined affects of the rest of the body’s system- but it could do a lot more if we ignored the those limitations).
To get into 6GW we’re talking about technology replacing everything in the human body except for the core (the brain). 6GW looks like brain leveraging technology directly, without the rest of the human systems in play. And then we progressively get to a point where machines are “better” than the brain. (7GW is when brains are made obsolete by machines.)
OODA Loop Track –
Using Dan’s OODA Loop analysis – When we run out of links to analyze as representative of generations of terrorism the OODA loop becomes irrelevant. Restated: The human decision cycle becomes irrelevant.
5GW
An interesting discussion is taking place as to what 5GW means, made more interesting by the fact it’s silhouetted against the largely ignored (in these blogs) newly nuclear N. Korea.
Zenpundit has the the roundup: one and two. While Curtis of PC has a new blog dedicated to 5GW.