Politics & Stuff

[Vesper 28,877]

Israel’s Defenders Are Getting Desperate

 

 

[Vesper 28,877]

The Abundance Agenda: Neoliberalism’s Rebrand

The new centrist push to regain control of the Democratic Party, with corporate money

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-11-26-abundance-agenda-neoliberalisms-rebrand/

The past few years have seen a widespread move away from free-market dogma, as policymakers search for new economic perspectives. The election of Joe Biden in 2020 proved to be a crossroads for economic orthodoxy. For the first time in more than a quarter-century, a Democratic administration did not entrust its economic policy exclusively to adherents of Robert Rubin’s philosophy, for whom the solution to any economic issue was usually “Be less of a Democrat.”

Instead, the Biden-Harris administration trusted progressives as a coalition partner, rather than an electoral faction that had to be dealt with, not worked with. The Biden administration attempted true industrial policy for the first time in over a generation, rekindled enforcement of the Sherman Antitrust Act, and didn’t shy away from stimulating the economy when it was foundering. And while Biden’s term has been a rousing success on most macroeconomic measures—the electoral loss turned in part on global inflation and the rollback of the temporary pandemic safety net—progressives’ increasing power within Democratic politics has caused some moderates to become enraged that they’re now expected to settle for the position of senior partner, and denied near-total control.

Enter the “abundance agenda,” an attempt to generate new messaging for a new political era in which neoliberalism has fallen rapidly out of favor. The term has been floating around for years, but has more recently become a rallying cry for a whole array of deregulatory causes. The abundance agenda has also offered shelter to effective altruists, who have been searching for a flag to rally around that isn’t associated with one of the largest frauds in world history. The Biden administration has started to usher in a post-neoliberalism, with more heterodox ideas competing for acceptance. Abundance is neoliberalism repackaged for a post-neoliberal world.

What exactly abundance adherents believe varies, of course, but there are a number of broad precepts: building more housing, producing more energy, and fostering more technological innovation. None of these are objectionable goals; the differences with progressives arise, largely, in how to get there. Abundance starts from a “growth above all” mindset. The agenda’s advocates hate residential zoning laws—which, contrary to what they frequently imply, is something they have in common with us and most progressives—but also detest the National Environmental Policy Act, support fracking, oppose tenant protections, and are often deferential to the policy preferences of Big Tech.

While there are efforts to create abundance-oriented factions within both parties—in effect recreating the Republican and Democratic establishments that dominated politics throughout the 1990s and 2000s—the near-term focus is the Democratic Party. And, in their move to stake out partisan influence, abundance is explicitly seeking to weaken progressives. With that in mind, it’s worth understanding who exactly makes up the abundance movement.

The coalition includes many prominent centrist organizations, but also corporate interests and conservatives that MAGA pushed out of power within the Republican Party. Many components of this faction have financial ties to crypto, AI, Big Tech, and oil.

In October 2024, a number of organizations held the Abundance 2024 conference. The event was sponsored by Arnold Ventures, Open Philanthropy, Renaissance Philanthropy, and Stand Together.

• While at times heterodox, Arnold Ventures funds a sizable network of neoliberal think tanks, including $3 million to the libertarian Reason Foundation and at least $1 million to the pro–pension privatization Retirement Security Initiative, which has led to founder John Arnold (a former Enron executive) comparing himself to the Kochs. Arnold serves on the board of Meta. The Arnold Foundation has also spent hundreds of millions of dollars pushing for school privatization.

• Open Philanthropy was co-created by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. It has close ties to AI firm Anthropic, which was founded by Daniela Amodei, the wife of Open Philanthropy co-founder Holden Karnofsky. Open Philanthropy is also closely associated with effective altruism, donating millions to Sam Bankman-Fried’s favorite philosopher Will MacAskill.

• Renaissance Philanthropy was founded by Tom Kalil with money from former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. It was started with an explicit focus on AI, and Kalil himself is on the board of Sherpa.ai. Schmidt is also on the board of multiple AI companies and has invested in crypto. He believes that, rather than try to mitigate the damage of climate change, policy should double down on AI in the hopes that it will come up with a solution. Renaissance is extremely close with Schmidt Futures, Eric and Wendy Schmidt’s own foundation. Many Renaissance staff come from Schmidt Futures, including Kalil and their Economic Mobility Fund program director, partnerships manager, chief of staff, operations manager, and head of strategy and partnerships.

• Stand Together is one of the primary institutions within the Koch network, and was created by Charles Koch. Like Arnold Ventures, Stand Together funds the Reason Foundation. It funds a wide range of conservative nonprofits, including the anti-LGBTQ Alliance Defending Freedom, which the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies as a hate group. Its current CEO, Brian Hooks, is concurrently the president of the Charles Koch Foundation and previously was the executive director of the libertarian Mercatus Center.

Arnold, Moskovitz, Schmidt, and Koch have other ties to the broader abundance movement. For instance, the Utah-based Abundance Institute, whose chief economist spoke at the Abundance 2024 conference, is closely related to Utah State University’s Center for Growth and Opportunity (almost their whole staff comes from the Center), which was established by a joint donation from the Charles Koch Foundation and the Huntsman Foundation (i.e., the Utah Republican family). It’s also part of the State Policy Network—a network of facially distinct, but actually deeply connected and coordinated, conservative think tanks bankrolled by billionaires like the DeVos family, the Walton Family, and, of course, Charles Koch. (The crown jewel of the SPN, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, was run for 15 years by Brooke Rollins, Donald Trump’s nominee for agriculture secretary.)

There are too many organizations pushing for the abundance agenda to break down comprehensively, but here are several that have connections to corporate interests:

• The Foundation for American Innovation (FAI), which co-hosted Abundance 2024 and is listed as a key institutional partner by the Inclusive Abundance Initiative, was seeded by Charles Koch and is part of the State Policy Network. It has a track record of attacking unions. Politico reported on its work around a Silicon Valley conference as part of a “Venture Capital-Fueled Ideology.”

• Institute for Progress (IFP), which co-hosted Abundance 2024 and is listed as a key institutional partner by the Inclusive Abundance Initiative, has a bevy of corporate ties. In 2022, IFP received $110,000 from FAI and has FAI’s executive director on its board. One of the founding funders of IFP was Emergent Ventures, which is a project of the Koch-backed Mercatus Institute at George Mason University. Emergent itself was launched by a grant from Peter Thiel. (Thiel is a right-wing billionaire with a vast influence network at the intersection of techno-futurism and anti-democratic thought who has called technology an alternative to democratic politics to “unilaterally change the world.” Vice President-elect JD Vance is a known scion of Thiel.)

• Both co-founders of IFP also formerly worked at Mercatus. Another of IFP’s board members is a program associate at Mercatus. Other funders include Open Philanthropy, Stripe’s Patrick Collison, and Schmidt Futures—and used to include Sam Bankman-Fried. IFP is extremely pro-crypto; one of its founders suggested distributing unemployment benefits via crypto wallets, and the other has peddled Bitcoin as a solution to people being underbanked in the developing world.

• Niskanen co-hosted Abundance 2024 and is listed as a key institutional partner by the Inclusive Abundance Initiative. In 2023, Niskanen received money from Google, Stand Together, and Arnold Ventures. Two Niskanen fellows also published the manifesto urging for the creation of an abundance faction within the Democratic Party.

• Chamber of Progress, which self-identified its work as a part of “a growing ‘abundance’ policy movement,” is a trade group started with Google seed money by Google alum Adam Kovacevich. Kovacevich proudly touts his college activism of leading an effort to cross the United Farm Workers picket line. Chamber of Progress’s partners (read: funders) include a16z, Circle, Coinbase, Google, Kraken, Ripple, and Waymo. (Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z, is a venture capital firm heavily invested in AI and crypto. Co-founder Marc Andreessen believes that technology is the solution to every problem. He is also on Meta’s board.)

The abundance agenda is championed by figures like Ezra Klein (who, with Derek Thompson, will be releasing the book Abundance in the spring of 2025) and Matt Yglesias (a Niskanen senior fellow). It’s the “liberalism that builds” that Klein called for in The New York Times to replace what he derided as “everything bagel liberalism.” As the Prospect’s David Dayen noted at the time, though, growth and building require buy-in from key constituencies to amount to a durable movement. And the abundance faction is eager to sacrifice elements of the Democratic coalition. A key part of the Klein-Dayen argument was about not including pro-union conditions in things like semiconductor build-out.

Klein and Thompson’s forthcoming book will argue that “one generation’s solutions have become the next generation’s problems. Rules and regulations designed to solve the environmental problems of the 1970s often prevent urban density and green energy projects that would help solve the environmental problems of the 2020s.” In other words, the abundance faction argues that overregulation is the biggest issue standing in the way of progress.

That’s certainly true in some instances—again, we’re anti–restrictive zoning. But it’s not true across the board. Moreover, it fails to recognize the role of powerful incumbents who seek to limit abundance for their own purposes.

Skipping regulatory approvals is certain to speed up building timelines, but it will do nothing to ensure we aren’t falling for the same trap Klein focuses on: creating the next generation’s problems. Cities can and should be a lot denser, and that can be done without doing away with, for example, the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). That’s not to say that abundance advocates would oppose the ADA or fire code, although libertarians have long been troubled by the ADA. But it is to say that there are important trade-offs whenever you look to deregulate. And a big part of why neoliberalism needs to be repackaged is because of how deregulation made people’s lives worse and failed to deliver promised gains from its focus on growth. That’s especially true for people lower on the socioeconomic ladder who cannot literally or figuratively self-insure themselves away from the downsides of deregulation.

We’re living in a time where the bipartisan enactment of agencies like the EPA seems unimaginable. So we should take a careful approach to eliminating regulations, since we might never be able to restore them. Democrats may want to be wary before doing neoliberalism redux, especially if this time it includes crypto and AI.

[Fulham Broadway 16,863]

4 hours ago, Vesper said:

t is based on documented malign actions taken against the US by Israel.

Loads of false flag operations by Israel against the US and UK -USS Liberty, the Lavon Affair, King David Hotel to draw the UK and US into wars. 

Netanyahu speaking to congress saying how''Iraq had weapons of mass destruction''  etc. All BS  

[Vesper 28,877]

19 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Loads of false flag operations by Israel against the US and UK -USS Liberty, the Lavon Affair, King David Hotel to draw the UK and US into wars. 

Netanyahu speaking to congress saying how''Iraq had weapons of mass destruction''  etc. All BS  

[Vesper 28,877]

This is the danger of the confluence of outright lying, gaslighting RW tech bro billionaires and massive audience (but with thoroughly incurious and/or ignorant hosts/shills) podcasts spewing RW bollocks, pure disnfo.
You have Rogan's huge audience being exposed daily/weekly to highly inaccurate slantings and/or (like in this case) outright lies.

 

Joe Rogan Sucks Up Rich Guy’s BS Like It’s Dumb Juice

 

Billionaire Scumbag LIES To Rogan’s Face | The Kyle Kulinski Show

 

 

Edited Friday at 12:49 by Vesper

[Fulham Broadway 16,863]

33 minutes ago, Vesper said:

Sorry - would help if I actually read posts 😅

[robsblubot 3,508]

5 hours ago, Vesper said:

It is not at all 'Trumpian'.

It is based on documented malign actions taken against the US by Israel.

Trump doesn't give a rat's red arse about the US or anything else, save for himself.

 

You claim the US gets a lot from Israel's presence in the Levant/Middle East.

What exactly does it get, other than having a regional cat's paw to constantly initiate instability in the region for plunder and profit by the MIC and the bankers?

It is very much a one-way street in favour of Israel.

I posted on this (Israel as a cat's paw) before:

 

The term 'cat's paw' comes from Le Singe et le Chat (The Monkey and the Cat) by Jean de La Fontaine, ca 1679.

http://www.la-fontaine-ch-thierry.net/singchat.htm

Bertrand with Raton, one a Monkey, and the other a Cat,
Commensals (1) of a house, had a common Master.
Of mischievous animals it was a very good dish (2);
They both feared none (3), whoever it might be.
Was anything found spoiled in the house?
No one attacked the people of the neighborhood.
Bertrand stole everything; Raton for his part
Was less attentive to mice than to cheese.
One day by the fireside our two rogue masters
          Watched chestnuts roasting;
Swindling them was a very good deal
Our gallants (4) saw double profit to be made,
Their good first, and then the harm of others.
Bertrand said to Raton: Brother, today 
          you must make a masterstroke.
Pull out these chestnuts; If God had made me born 
          Suitable for pulling chestnuts out of the fire,
          Certainly chestnuts would see fair play.
No sooner said than done: Raton with his paw,
          In a delicate manner,
Moves the ashes a little aside, and withdraws his fingers, 
          Then brings them back several times;
Pulls a chestnut, then two, and then three by swindling. 
          And yet (5) Bertrand crunches them.
A servant comes: farewell my people. Raton
         Was not happy, they say,
Nor (6) are most of these Princes 
          Who, flattered by such a job,
          Go to scald themselves (7) in the Provinces,
          For the profit of some King.

 

 

Sources: It seems difficult to choose between Les jours caniculaires by S. Maioli, translated into French by F. de Rosset in 1609, where the scene is in Rome at the home of Pope Julius II, and J. Régnier Apologi Phaedrii , 1643. In these authors, the monkey uses the strength of the cat's paw to remove the chestnuts from the fire. In La Fontaine, the monkey uses persuasion: the moralist knows well that by appealing to vanity one makes people act as well as by constraint (G. Couton, Garnier classics, fables, p.507). 
The deception is all the more successful since the intervention of the servant (who here plays the role of the ironic Fortune ) prevents the cat from even realizing that he has been duped: the duper and the duped communicate in the same discontent. This piquant undertow of the story is again the invention of La Fontaine ( M. Fumaroli, Fables, La Pochothèque, p. 932)

(1) officers of the king who were fed at court
(2) at the time it was said of 2 or 3 people of the same "genius", who were not worth much: that's a good dish.
(3) in the idea of doing wrong, they feared no one
(4) to be taken in the sense: skillful, adroit, who succeeds well in his affairs
(5) during this time
(6) similarly
(7) reference to Raton who burned his paw

You can do your own research as to what the USA gets back from Israel presence in the region. It’s not my place to convince you of the merits of it.

I also disagree with the “initiate” bit; that’s not historically how it played out. If its mere existence in that region causes that, then perhaps thats also part of it.

[cosmicway 1,326]

14 hours ago, Vesper said:

Oh really?

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/solecism

It is solicism.
If the Anglosaxon litterati made a mistake it's not my fault.
Also you have earned the title of the biggest bedsheeet maker after IKEA.
What is contained in the bedsheets is not writen by you.

Edited Friday at 13:35 by cosmicway

[Vesper 28,877]

10 minutes ago, robsblubot said:

You can do your own research as to what the USA gets back from Israel presence in the region. It’s not my place to convince you of the merits of it.

You made the claim...

back it up.

I am not your internet  go-fer.

I can damn well assure you that in terms of net financial aid (military and economic) flows, Israel has taken FAR more from ther US than the US has taken from Israel.

You also have to take into account the internal military expenditure that the US incurs when it has to shift its own troops, ships, planes, subs, supplies, etc when it has to project force to prop up and backstop Israel.

Also, in terms of regular trade, in 2022 the US ran a trade deficit with Israel of over 10 billion USD.

https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/europe-middle-east/middle-eastnorth-africa/israel

 

In debate/discussion it literally is your place to convince other people of the claims or stances you make or take.

[robsblubot 3,508]

Just now, Vesper said:

You made the claim...

back it up.

I am not your internet  go-fer.

I can damn well assure you that in terms of net financial aid (military and economic) flows, Israel has taken FAR more from ther US than the US has taken from Israel.

You also have to take into account the internal military expenditure that the US incurs when it has to shift its own troops, ships, planes, subs, supplies, etc when it has to project force to prop up and backstop Israel.

Also, in terms of regular trade, in 2022 the US ran a trade deficit with Israel of over 10 billion USD.

https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/europe-middle-east/middle-eastnorth-africa/israel

 

In debate/discussion it literally is your place to convince other people of the claims or stances you make or take.

That’s not the way it see it: you made the absurd claim that the USA dumps a lot of money into Israel and gets nothing back.

I merely suggested your cost spreadsheet there wasn’t showing the full picture.

[Vesper 28,877]

3 minutes ago, cosmicway said:

It is solicism.
If the Anglosaxon litterati made a mistake it's not my fault.
Also you have earned the title of the biggest bedsheeet maker after IKEA.
What is contained in the bedsheets is not writen by you.

It is not 'solicism', you are simply making up a falsehood.

You are literally claiming that you are right and all the major English language dictionaries are wrong.

Pure trolling.

[cosmicway 1,326]

7 minutes ago, Vesper said:

It is not 'solicism', you are simply making up a falsehood.

You are literally claiming that you are right and all the major English language dictionaries are wrong.

Pure trolling.

But they are since it is a Grk word.

[Vesper 28,877]

Just now, robsblubot said:

That’s not the way it see it: you made the absurd claim that the USA dumps a lot of money into Israel and gets nothing back.

I merely suggested your cost spreadsheet there wasn’t showing the full picture.

I never said 'gets nothing back'.

I said it is very much a one-way street (meaning to a high degree of one-way traffic, which it is).

I did not say a completely one-way street.

On balance, the US has spent hundreds of billions more on Israel than Israel has spent on the US.

Israel is a taker state, and the US a giver state, on multiple levels and types of quantifiable measurement.

[Vesper 28,877]

4 minutes ago, cosmicway said:

But they are since it is a Grk word.

Anglophones do NOT use the Greek alphabet when writing in English only.

The transliteration (transliterated from the Greek alphabet into the standard English alphabet) of the word into standard English is solecism.

You do not get to claim a faulty spelling of the English form is (in violation of all major English dictionaries' spelling) the correct form just because you are Greek.

Pro-tip:

Transliteration is the process of representing or intending to represent a word, phrase, or text in a different script or writing system.

[Vesper 28,877]

How MAGA Went Mainstream | Joshua Citarella meets Richard Hames

In 2016, the alt-right seemed to come from the internet and infest politics. In 2024, the internet and politics have become identical. Are we swimming in the world the alt-right built for us?

Perhaps no one knows the world of online politics better than Joshua Citarella an artist and political theorist whose 2018 book Politigram and the Post-Left kickstarted a flurry of investigations into new political cultures. His Doomscroll (‪https://www.youtube.com/@doomscrollpodcast‬ ) looks at the development of online politics now.

As the results of the US election were still coming in, he spoke to Richard Hames about the disasters of vibes-based liberal politics, how the Trump campaign spoke to a bloodlust in the American people, and where the American left goes from here.

[KEVINAA 101]

BREAKING: BRITISH LAWMAKERS APPROVE ASSISTED DYING BILL IN HISTORIC VOTE

 

In a landmark decision, British MPs voted 330 to 275 in favor of an assisted dying bill, allowing terminally ill adults in England and Wales to seek help ending their lives.

 

 

[Vesper 28,877]

Climate Change Is the Real National Security Threat

In the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, it’s clear we’re defending against the wrong perils.

https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/helene-milton-and-national-security/

At the beginning of each year, the director of National Intelligence provides Congress with a report on “worldwide threats to the national security of the United States.” And over a dozen years or so, the DNI’s report has consistently identified the same four nations as constituting the “most direct, serious threats” to US security: China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. The ranking of these antagonists has varied over time, with China receiving top billing in the 2024 edition, but all four are routinely singled out for extensive discussion in the DNI’s annual report. Only after many pages of such analysis, in a section on “transnational issues,” are we told that climate change also poses a risk to US security, by triggering mass migrations and unrest overseas. Missing from the DNI’s warning, however, is the threat that climate change poses to our country—to our lives, communities, and vital infrastructure. Now, in the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, this oversight should be recognized as one of the nation’s greatest intelligence failures ever.

Climate change is not, of course, a nation-state with a powerful military and weapons stockpiles. Yet it constitutes an aggressive force no less powerful than China and the other potential adversaries mentioned in the DNI assessment—one that has shown itself capable of flooding our cities, inundating our coastlines, burning our forests, and decimating our farmlands. And while we’ve spent trillions of dollars on the ostensible effort to defend our country and our allies from hostile nations, we’ve done pitifully little to protect ourselves or others from the destructive forces of climate change.

Hurricanes Helene and Milton will long be remembered for the human misery they inflicted on the residents of Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas. At least 234 people died from the effects of Helene, another two dozen from Milton, and as of October 15, 100 people were still missing. Many thousands more lost their homes or livelihoods—or both. While it is still too early to calculate the monetary value of property and infrastructure losses from the two megastorms, estimates of $200 billion or more do not appear to be exaggerated. It will be a long time before some affected areas fully recover, if ever.

The destructive powers of Helene and Milton were vastly amplified by the effects of climate change. As we dump our carbon and methane waste into the atmosphere, feeding the greenhouse effect that is responsible for rising global temperatures, an estimated 90 percent of the excess heat produced in this manner has been absorbed by the world’s oceans—raising water temperatures and thereby generating the energy that transforms ordinary hurricanes into superstorms like Helene and Milton. Waters in the mid-Atlantic and the Caribbean—the birthplace of most hurricanes that make landfall in the US—were hotter this spring than in any previous spring on record, “with over 90% of the area’s sea surface engulfed in record or near-record warmth,” Yale Climate Connections reported in May. The fact that the two massive storms occurred within two weeks of each other, multiplying the damage in some coastal areas of Florida that were exposed to both, is another consequence of a warming and increasingly chaotic climate system.

Domestic disaster: US Army personnel lead a search-and-rescue operation flying over a flooded New Orleans.(David Howells / Corbis via Getty Images)

The harsh impacts of Helene and Milton have been well covered by the media and so are familiar to most Americans. But the national security implications of the two storms have received far less attention, even though the long-term consequences for our national security are no less severe. These include:

Mobilization of military support.

As storms become more severe on a warming planet, local authorities (including police, medical facilities, and emergency services) will become increasingly overburdened and in some cases overwhelmed and unable to perform their essential functions. This, in turn, will require the mobilization of the National Guard and active-duty military forces to assist with search and rescue (SAR), food and water distribution, recovery operations, and the basic tasks of government. The Pentagon calls operations that involve active-duty troops “defense support of civilian authorities” (DSCA, pronounced “disca”).

As of October 13, more than 11,000 National Guard soldiers and airmen from some 19 states were deployed in relief missions in the southeastern US in the wake of Helene and Milton. “Using helicopters, boats and high-water vehicles, they rescued people stranded by flooding and high and swift water,” the Army reported. But even this vast mobilization of Guard forces was not deemed sufficient to address the hurricanes’ impacts. On October 2, President Joe Biden ordered the immediate deployment of 1,000 active-duty troops to hard-hit areas of Tennessee and North Carolina to assist in SAR, food delivery, and road clearance. Four days later, after touring areas affected by Helene, Biden ordered another 500 troops to assist in the efforts.

“These active-duty troops,” the White House said in an official statement, “are focusing their efforts on moving valuable commodities—like food and water—to distribution sites, getting those commodities to survivors in areas that are hard to reach.”

The Army and Navy personnel that were mobilized for this purpose represented only a small fraction of the nation’s active-duty force, so other troops were available to address any conventional threats that might arise, such as a war in the Middle East or a conflict with China over Taiwan. But as climate-change-fueled superstorms become more frequent and damaging, the Defense Department will be forced to provide an ever-increasing number of troops, ships, planes, and helicopters for DSCA operations. At some point, top officials fear, these missions could overtake conventional combat preparedness as the Pentagon’s top operational obligation. 

The immobilization of military forces and assets.

Hurricanes Helene and Milton forced the evacuation not only of civilians from their communities but also of military personnel and equipment from key bases in the Southeast, further diminishing US military preparedness.

On September 26, as Helene bore down on the Florida Panhandle, the Air Force issued evacuation orders to nonessential personnel at the MacDill and Tyndall Air Force bases in the state and at Moody AFB in Georgia and redeployed aircraft from other facilities further inland. Tyndall, which had suffered catastrophic destruction from Hurricane Michael in 2018, largely escaped serious damage this time around, but MacDill and Moody were flooded and lost electrical power. Fort Eisenhower, a major Army installation near Augusta, Georgia, was also placed under evacuation orders as floodwaters surged onto the base, knocking out power. Some buildings at all three installations were destroyed or damaged, including housing for military personnel and their families.

The approach of Hurricane Milton just over a week later prompted similar evacuations in the Southeast. MacDill, which sits just above sea level on a peninsula in Tampa Bay, ordered nonessential personnel to evacuate once again. Essential personnel at the headquarters of the US Central Command and the US Special Forces Command—both located at MacDill—remained on duty, but some facilities were damaged by the storm.

Other bases in the Southeast also were evacuated, including Homestead Air Reserve Base near Miami and Naval Station Mayport in Jacksonville. In anticipation of the storm, the 482nd Fighter Wing at Homestead redeployed some of its F-16s to a base near San Antonio, Texas, and officials at Mayport sent three of the destroyers stationed there out to sea to escape damage in port.

These evacuations and dispersals of equipment caused only a minimal reduction in overall US military preparedness, as was true of the DSCA operations in North Carolina. But taken together, the two undertakings represent a significant disruption to US military capabilities in the nation’s Southeast, the home to a vast network of bases and facilities. If the United States were at war, this would be considered a major strategic setback. Disruptions like these, moreover, are sure to become more frequent and severe as global temperatures rise, a prospect that is forcing the Pentagon to rethink its plans for future troop deployments—including by retaining more forces at home to cope with domestic climate disasters.

Leadership distraction.

On October 8, with Hurricane Milton about to make landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast, Biden postponed critical trips to Germany and Angola so that he could oversee the federal response to the storm damage. “I just don’t think I can be out of the country at this time,” he declared. But while the White House considered it politically necessary to demonstrate concern for US citizens during the run-up to a presidential election, the cancellations represented a major geopolitical setback.

In Germany, Biden was scheduled to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and representatives of 50 other nations to expedite the delivery of arms and other vital equipment to Ukrainian forces. The New York Times described the cancellation as a “blow” to Zelensky, who was trying to rally Western leaders to support his nation’s overstretched forces before the US election, which many European officials feared would result in the return of Donald Trump to the White House and a cutoff of US aid to Ukraine. In the meantime, Biden’s ability to rally international support for Ukraine is evaporating.

Similarly, Biden’s visit to Angola, which would have been his first to any African nation as president, was intended to energize US efforts to compete with China and Russia in the pursuit of Africa-wide geopolitical advantage. Again, the administration says Biden will reschedule the meeting, but doubts have arisen over the feasibility of the trip in the few months remaining of his tenure.

As climate change accelerates, major strategic quandaries like these will occur ever more frequently, as leaders are forced to concentrate on recovery efforts at home. This means that future presidents will have to be far less ambitious in the sphere of geopolitical competition, including the pursuit of foreign alliances. Such a retreat from international ambitions will, of course, be welcomed by many in the United States—but it will also constitute a major shift in the country’s approach to national and international security, and must be viewed as such.

Empty coffers: Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warns that FEMA doesn’t have enough funding.(Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Infrastructure damage and overstretched resources.

Finally, it is essential to consider the effects of climate change on the nation’s water, power, and transportation infrastructure, and our capacity to overcome the consequent damage and disruptions.

Hurricanes Helene and Milton did not inflict as much damage to critical infrastructure as did Katrina in 2005 and Sandy in 2012, but they did exhibit, once again, the capacity of severe storms to disrupt vital systems. Helene is reported to have knocked out power for 5.5 million customers in Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Virginia, and Milton disrupted service for at least 3 million customers in Florida (of which some 450,000 still lacked power as late as October 14).

Water facilities were also affected by the monster storms. In Asheville, North Carolina, a thriving municipality of 94,000 people, the flooding caused by Helene destroyed much of the city’s water supply system. “The system was catastrophically damaged, and we do have a long road ahead,” said Ben Woody, Asheville’s assistant city manager. Damage to transportation infrastructure in the area was also severe: Parts of two major highways, Interstates 26 and 40, were washed away by the floods, and repairs are expected to take many months and cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Biden administration has promised vast dispersals of federal aid to repair critical infrastructure and help displaced families return to their homes (or find new ones). As of October 12, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had approved $441 million in assistance for individuals affected by Helene and over $349 million in public assistance funds to help rebuild communities. That’s more than three-quarters of a billion dollars, before factoring in the assistance for victims of Hurricane Milton.

These are impressive figures and demonstrate the nation’s capacity to respond to major disasters. But the number of such calamities will grow as climate change accelerates, and FEMA’s budget and resources are not limitless. On October 2, between Helene and Milton, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that FEMA lacked sufficient funding to provide emergency relief if more superstorms hit the country. “We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have,” Mayorkas told reporters as he traveled to storm-ravaged areas to meet with local officials. “We do not have the funds, FEMA does not have the funds, to make it through the season.”

Congress is expected to pass a supplemental appropriation to refill FEMA’s coffers when it reconvenes after the November election, but the 2024 funding crisis provides a preview of a time in the not-too-distant future when the federal government will be hard-pressed to finance recovery efforts in every storm- or fire-ravaged region. The result will be mass migrations of US “climate refugees” (think of the “Okies” from the 1930s Dust Bowl phenomenon) and possible internal unrest.

Rain and ruin: Community members try to clear debris in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in Marshall, North Carolina.(Go Nakamura / Getty Images)

For more than a century, we have been taught that national security—widely considered the most sacred duty of our top officials—entails the defense of our allies and overseas interests against hostile powers. This outlook has proved fabulously beneficial to US arms manufacturers, who have received trillions of dollars in Pentagon contracts for weapons designed to overpower those so-called hostile regimes. It has also smoothed the rise of many opportunistic politicians, who have chided their opponents for failing to adequately promote national security. As this assessment of Helene and Milton’s impacts has demonstrated, however, this conventional notion of national security is woefully obsolete: It fails to account for the most immediate and potent threats to the country.

From now on, any assessment of the threats to US national security that professes to be based on observable fact must portray climate change as posing as great a peril as do conventional military threats—and the threat from climate change is growing faster than any of those other dangers. A failure to acknowledge this will leave the nation unprepared for the deaths, disasters, and dislocations to come. At the same time, recognition of global warming as a major threat to US security will require major changes in policy, including a substantial shift in funding and resource allocation from war fighting to climate-change mitigation and adaptation.

Once the exclusive preserve of Republicans and defense hawks, the vocabulary of national security should now be appropriated by those of us who can foresee the impending consequences of climate change and seek an all-out national drive to halt its advance. If there is one thing that we can be certain of, it is that the climate crisis will invade our borders again and again, with ever-increasing fury—and we are not prepared for its onslaught.

[KEVINAA 101]