📈 first Derivative [106]
📈 first Derivative [106]
📚 book review—✈️ up in the air—🇹🇼 Taiwan's next president—🇬🇹 Guatemalan elections—🇫🇷 French next gen—🪦 notable deaths
📰 I decided to start the year keeping a 2024 News Journal. Not sure what I aim to get out of it but I think it might be interesting to look back at the end of the year to look for patterns and see what was important without hindsight bias. If you have any suggestions feel free to email me or comment directly on the doc.
📕🇲🇽 I just finished reading Conquistador which is an incredible history of Hernán Cortés’ conquest of the Aztec Empire in the early 16th century. I didn’t really know much about this stuff other than that it happened and there are so many fascinating episodes and people involved, from Cortés’ first meeting with Montezuma to the tragic fall of Tenochtitlán.
a moment unprecedented in human history: a meeting between two civilizations, two completely autonomous worlds with no prior encounters or understanding of each other. The native Americans whom Cortés saw for the first time were a race of people who had evolved, isolated from the rest of the outside world, for more than fifty thousand years, and the complex, advanced civilization he was encountering had until only recently been thought not to exist.
One of the many passages that stood out to me is when Cortés suffers a huge defeat and barely escapes from Tenochtitlán back to his indigenous allies, the Tlaxcalans:
Eventually the elders reminded the young and impetuous warrior Xicotenga of the Tlaxcalans’ long-standing animosity toward the Aztecs. Though they had to physically subdue him and remove him from the room, he finally accepted their counsel. Cuitláhuac’s entreaties were ignored, and his emissaries sent away. Maxixcatzin, deeply mourning the loss of his daughter and fueled by a desire for revenge, through Malinche made verbal assurances to Cortés. “We have made common cause together,” he offered ceremonially, “and we have common injuries to avenge; and… be assured we will prove true and loyal friends, and stand by you to the death.”
I think I had a vague notion of the help Cortés had but the book does a great job laying out the complex dynamics between the different groups of people involved and their own, often bitter, histories with the Mexica Aztecs.
The book made me think a lot about not only military technology but also tactics. And it also made me appreciate just how contingent history can be. A significant factor in the Aztec’s initial cautious and curious attitude towards Cortés was because they thought he might be the god Quetzalcoatl, which made a lot more sense when I learned that Cortés landed on the exact date on the Aztec calendar that Quetzalcoatl was prophesied to return to conquer Tenochtitlán.
Ultimately, the book convinced me that Cortés should be listed among names like Napoleon and Alexander the Great, as one of the greatest military leaders and tacticians and someone who had a commensurate impact on history, for better or for worse. Thanks to Arthur for the recommendation. Such a shame COVID killed the planned adaptation starring Javier Bardem.
🎧 Check out Gabriel Frieberg’s podcast, SchmearCast, which I went on to discuss this season of True Detective. These eerie photographs by Alexander Gronsky of mining towns in Arctic Russia inspired some of the cinematography.
Sorry for the January delay, I had some work things pile up but I have a backlog of topics I’m excited to cover in the upcoming issues.
Good reading,
—Teddy
✈️💥 Thank you to everyone who’s texted me about every plane incident that’s happened this year and asked me to retract my curse. I’m also getting spooked every time I fly. While I won’t count the collision in Japan towards my prediction (not domestic), it’s been pretty alarming to see Boeing planes on cue start falling apart and lighting on fire. I repeat, I hope my prediction doesn’t come true.
The proximate reason for my original prediction was because of the air traffic control system becoming increasingly stressed. But I think you can expand that to a larger diagnosis: the failure to invest in and maintain very complex systems, like air traffic control or project management for airliner development and production. I don’t think this kind of capacity decay happens overnight and the WSJ had a good piece about the long history of Boeing’s manufacturing problems that led to not only the recent fiascos but the two 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people:
Many of the problems with Boeing jets since the deadly crashes can be traced back to a production system adopted by Boeing and its aerospace rivals before Hart-Smith’s paper. Dozens of factories build key pieces of 737 and 787 jets before they are assembled by Boeing. One of them is a sprawling fuselage plant in Wichita, Kan., that Boeing owned until 2005.
At the time, then-Boeing executive Alan Mulally said selling the factory to a private-equity firm would let Boeing focus on final assembly, where it could add the most value to its airplanes.
A noteworthy quote from the aftermath of the 2018/19 crashes:
The ensuing congressional hearings featured testimony from a former production manager at the 737 factory in Renton. U.S. House investigators revealed a memo the manager wrote complaining of production pressures leading to dangerous factory flaws.
“Frankly right now all my internal warning bells are going off,” Ed Pierson wrote to a Boeing executive July 19, 2018. “And for the first time in my life, I’m sorry to say that I’m hesitant about putting my family on a Boeing airplane.”
Many other aerospace manufacturers rely on a similar outsourcing model, including Boeing’s chief competitor, Airbus, which has had problems of its own. So why the uniquely bad run at Boeing? I’ve seen Matt Stoller and others point to Boeing’s 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas which supplanted Boeing’s longstanding engineering management culture centered around its Seattle HQ with a finance management culture that moved the company at first to Chicago and then to Arlington, presumably reflecting the emphasis on government relations.
The internal note from 2003 that Stoller links reads as a searing and prescient indictment and if you have time, check out the whole thing here.
Engineering layoffs have cut so deeply into Boeing's talent pool that knowledge has been irretrievably lost. And the layoffs continue.
Soon Boeing may reach (if it hasn't already) a "point of no return" where irreversible damage has been done to the company's ability to design and build safe airplanes, even with its so-called "risk-sharing partners".
Boeing's senior management has often stated that they are not willing to "bet the company" on another new airplane program as they famously did with the 747. They are pursuing a strategy of accumulating a network of "risk-sharing partners" so Boeing can concentrate on its core competency of "large scale systems integration."
We are willing to state that Boeing's management is "betting the company" on a misguided and ridiculous outsourcing plan that is gutting the company of its hard-won knowledge base and human assets. The safety and quality of Boeing airplanes is at jeopardy because of the foolhardy actions of Boeing's senior management, and even the hint of safety and quality issues with Boeing's airplanes can have disastrous results for its Commercial Airplane business.
The former executives of McDonnell-Douglas (which arguably as a company was, in the end, a complete failure in the design and manufacture of commercial aircraft) have taken control of Boeing and seem determined to gut the commercial airplane business - all in the name of "increasing shareholder value". Harry Stonecipher, John McDonnell and Mike Sears, along with Phil Condit and Alan Mulally1 are destroying what was very recently a vital, dominant American company. These men will probably enjoy massive short-term gains in the value of their stock options, but there is a price; the loss of the long-term viability of Boeing in the commercial aircraft business. We have to look back less than a decade to see where these men are leading Boeing - to the once glorious McDonnell-Douglas Commercial Aircraft division which has since faded into oblivion.
Mr. Lai, currently Taiwan’s vice president, secured 40 percent of the votes in the election, giving his Democratic Progressive Party, or D.P.P., a third term in a row in the presidential office. No party has achieved more than two successive terms since Taiwan began holding direct, democratic elections for its president in 1996…
Mr. Lai is not the reckless firebrand that Beijing has depicted, say Taiwanese politicians who know him; nor is war over Taiwan imminent or inevitable, say many officials and experts. Mr. Lai campaigned on a theme of continuity with the policies of Ms. Tsai, who has sought to build up Taiwan’s military defenses and deepen relations with the United States and other democracies, while avoiding a total rupture with China.
But even if Mr. Lai sticks faithfully to that course, he may face a searing test of his political and diplomatic skills to keep Taiwan secure and united against deepening pressure from China. Mr. Lai will be Taiwan’s president during a time when, some U.S. officials have warned, China will be increasingly ready to try to seize or subdue Taiwan, which it sees as its lost territory, by armed force.
Re: the tough needle the style and substance of Lai’s leadership will have to thread:
“I don’t think that Lai is actually going to pursue de jure independence,” said David Sacks, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who studies Taiwan. “But what I do worry about is that Lai doesn’t have that much experience in foreign policy and cross-strait relations — which is incredibly complex — and he is prone to a slip of the tongue, that Beijing pounces on.”
Still, Mr. Lai will be under great pressure to avoid such remarks as president. China has grown stronger militarily and, under Xi Jinping, increasingly willing to use that force to pressure Taiwan. In his election night victory speech, Mr. Lai emphasized his hope of opening dialogue with Beijing.
In response to Lai’s election, the tiny but important island nation of Nauru has already severed diplomatic relations with Taiwan and ended recognition
Such moves from Beijing have been widely expected in Taiwan in the wake of the victory for Mr. Lai, whose Democratic Progressive Party has campaigned on policies to distance the self-governing island democracy from China. Beijing claims Taiwan is its territory, and Chinese officials harbor a particular dislike for Mr. Lai, whom they call a pro-independence threat. Mr. Lai has said he wants to protect Taiwan’s current status as a de facto independent democracy.
Nauru is the latest small nations to abruptly break relations with Taiwan, joining such countries as Honduras and Nicaragua in switching diplomatic allegiance to China. And it is one of a growing number of Pacific island nations that China has aggressively courted in its bid to dominate the region…
The move leaves Taiwan, a de facto independent democracy, with just 12 diplomatic relationships, mostly with smaller nations such as Eswatini, Guatemala, the Marshall Islands, Palau and Paraguay. At the start of 2017, it had ties with 21 states
On Nauru’s value to China:
As a nation with around 13,000 citizens and a gross domestic product of just $133.2 million a year, Nauru is nonetheless valuable to Beijing for its location, its support of deep sea mining and its vote at the United Nations.
Arévalo has been locked in a monthslong tussle for power with prosecutors, legislators and political adversaries since emerging as a surprise front-runner in last year’s election campaign. His landslide win in August has been marked by allegations of fraud against him and his party leveled by Guatemalan Attorney General Consuelo Porras and several prosecutors.
🇫🇷 French president Emmanuel Macron appointed the country’s youngest and first openly gay prime minister, Gabriel Attal, 34.
Mr. Attal, who was previously education minister and has occupied several government positions since Mr. Macron was elected in 2017, becomes France’s youngest and first openly gay prime minister. A recent Ipsos-Le Point opinion poll suggested he is France’s most popular politician, albeit with an approval rating of just 40 percent…
Mr. Macron was 39 when he sundered the French political system that year to become the youngest president in French history. Mr. Attal, a loyal ally of the president since he joined Mr. Macron’s campaign in 2016, will be 38 by the time of the next presidential election in April, 2027, and would likely become a presidential candidate if his tenure in office is successful…
Mr. Macron, whose own approval rating has sunk to 27 percent, wanted a change of governmental image.
On the other side, Jordan Bardella, 28, president of the Rassemblement National and Marine Le Pen protégé, is leading Macron’s opposition from the right.
Le Pen and Bardella now rank third and fourth respectively in rankings of the most popular French political figures. For the first time in a decade of polling by Le Monde, more people now see the RN as a potential party of government than as an opposition group.
Interesting to see politicians so young rising up as the next generation of their parties’ leadership, especially compared to the gerontocratic Biden (81) vs. Trump (77) Round 2 we’re heading to. Even Macron and Le Pen themselves are a generation younger than their American analogues. Maybe we’ll see a Bardella vs. Attal presidential election in France one day.
🪦 Notable Deaths
Jan 4 - Maj. Mike Sadler (Guardian, NYT) was born in 1920 in Kensington, London, and died at the age of 103. Sadler was the last living founding member of the Special Air Service, the British special forces commando founded in 1941 that started out conducting raids behind enemy lines in North Africa.
During another raid on a German airfield at Sidi Haneish, 235 miles west of Cairo, in July 1942, Sadler, now officially transferred to the SAS, navigated 18 jeeps across the desert without headlights or maps. Storming across the airfield firing tracer bullets from their machine-guns, the men destroyed an estimated 37 aircraft (Guardian)
After being captured once by the Germans…
In one of the epic stories of the North Africa campaign, Mr. Sadler and two sergeants escaped from the Germans and, with only a goatskin carrying brackish water, crossed 110 miles of desert on foot in five days. Hostile Bedouins stoned them, bloodying their heads, and stole their warm clothing, leaving them to shiver through freezing nights.
Starving except for a few dates, they were exposed to windblown sands that scraped them like sandpaper, a relentless sun that burned and blistered their faces, and swarms of flies that enveloped and tormented them. On the hot sands, their feet were masses of blisters after a few days. When they finally reached Free French lines, they looked like half-dead castaways in rags. (NYT)
The obituaries caught my eye because last year I watched the very pulpy but entertaining TV adaptation of Rogue Heroes, a history of the SAS, and Sadler was one of the characters in the show.
Familiar name…