Diplomacy & Crisis News

Michaela Dodge

Security, Americas

A movie tells us what we can do about it.

Key point: The threat of nuclear annihilation is ever-present.

The Heritage Foundation’s documentary “33 Minutes” may not be the most cheerful holiday season film, but its warning to the American public about the risk of nuclear attack could not be more timely.

In recent years, North Korea’s missiles have grown in range and capability. The most recent missile it tested, the Hwasong-15, can reach anywhere in the continental United States. This is a deeply alarming development.

When the documentary was first released in 2007, and then updated in 2016, the idea of a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile being able to reach the entire United States remained a fearful yet still unrealized possibility.

Now that North Korea has signaled its intention to continue developing long-range ballistic missiles capable of threatening the U.S. with nuclear warheads, it is all the more important for the Trump administration’s Ballistic Missile Defense Review to fund comprehensive missile defense.

The documentary’s title, “33 Minutes,” refers to the maximum amount of time the U.S. government would have to respond to an incoming intercontinental ballistic missile from anywhere in the world. Beyond showing this short response time, the film vividly depicts the threat of a nuclear attack and its destructive consequences.

The first and most well-known form of attack is the use of a nuclear weapon to physically destroy a major city like New York. The second is the use of such a weapon to generate an electromagnetic pulse.

The bomb that leveled much of central Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945 had an explosive yield of 15 kilotons. North Korea’s nuclear test in October was the equivalent of 250 kilotons of TNT.

As the film’s narration observes, the 9/11 terror attacks, which used commercial airliners as weapons, resulted in 3,000 deaths and $80 billion in damage. A nuclear bomb dropped on Manhattan would cause hundreds of thousands of casualties and trillions in damage.

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Military and Aerospace Electronics

Technology, Americas

The race is on.

WASHINGTON – As the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) scrambles to keep ahead of China, it’s relying more and more on public-private partnerships called consortia to connect it to innovative high-tech firms. Breaking Defense reports. Continue reading original article

The Military & Aerospace Electronics take:

5 Dec. 2019 -- The latest example comes in an announcement Monday that only members of the National Spectrum Consortium can bid on pilot projects to install prototype 5G networks to manage radar and radio spectrum, “smart warehouse” logistics, and other functions on four military bases.

Writ large, over the last three years, as the Pentagon has nearly tripled spending on streamlined Other Transaction Authority (OTA) prototyping contracts, more than half that money has gone to consortium members.

Some 49 percent went to consortia administered by a single management contractor, South Carolina-based Advanced Technology International (ATI). And future prospects look good. One group, the Space Enterprise Consortium – run by ATI – may even see its Air Force funding increase 24-fold.

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Matt Weidinger, Angela Rachidi

Society,

These rules are consistent with longstanding federal policy of expecting work-capable adults to work instead of depending solely on government assistance.

Recently the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) released final rules that strengthen work requirements for non-disabled people without dependents who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, formerly known as food stamps.  These rules are consistent with longstanding federal policy — in both SNAP and the cash welfare Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program — of expecting work-capable adults to work instead of depending solely on government assistance. Currently, unemployment is low and wages are rising fastest for people in entry-level jobs, providing an opportune time to help more adults in low-income households improve their financial well-being by strengthening work requirements in SNAP.  

The new rules center on who can be exempt from an existing SNAP requirement that certain recipients work in order to receive benefits for an extended period of time. The rule applies to a group called “able-bodied adults without dependents” or ABAWDs. As that title suggests, people in this group are able to work, are working age (18-50), don’t have disabilities, and don’t have dependents — people who are considered to be the most work-ready. Overall, only 3 million of the 18 million households that currently collect SNAP benefits include one or more ABAWDs.  The remaining households, including children, seniors (in fact, anyone over age 50), people with disabilities, or people caring for dependents are unaffected by the ABAWD work requirement and the new rules.

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Charlie Gao

Technology, Americas

Cheap and effective.

Key point: It is one of Boeing's most successful exports.

The F-5E “Tiger” is one of U.S. aerospace industry’s largest export successes. Designed as a budget lightweight fighter, the F-5E is still operated by many nations around the world despite the availability of more modern fighters.

Its continued service is enabled by miniaturization of electronics, which allows for more powerful radars and more systems to be integrated into the same spaces as the original system. This approach is exemplified by the F-5EM operated by Brazil, one of the most advanced variants of the F-5E flying today.

Brazil first acquired F-5Es in 1974 after comparing it to rival NATO light fighters like the Harrier, Jaguar, Fiat G.91 and A-4 Skyhawk. Forty-two units were purchased originally, followed by twenty-six more in the 1980s.

These aircraft served in without much modification until CRUZEX I aerial exercise in 2002. The exercise simulated conflict between the Brazilian Air Force (FAB) and a French Armee de l’Air force equipped with Mirage 2000s with E-3 Sentry AWACS support. The results were abysmal, with France expected to take air superiority in a real conflict despite some good simulated kills by FAB Mirage IIIs.

This sparked a significant push to modernize the FAB’s capability to defend Brazil’s airspace. Modernization of the Mirage III was explored but deemed to be cost ineffective. The F-5E showed much more promise.

In the 1990s, Chile, facing a similar need to modernize, created their own variant, the Tiger III Plus with assistance from Israel Aircraft Industries. A similar program with newer technology could be done with the FAB’s F-5Es.

The program began in the 2000s when a contract was awarded to the Brazilian firm Embraer to modernize forty-six F-5Es with European and Israeli technology. The key aspect of the modernization was to “extend” the legs of the F-5E from being a short-range “point defense” fighter to something that could cover more ground over Brazil’s rather large borders.

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Robert Farley

Security, Asia

But it didn't happen. Why?

Key point: For Imperial Japan, size mattered.

In January 1936 Japan announced its intention to withdraw from the London Naval Treaty, accusing both the United States and the United Kingdom of negotiating in bad faith. The Japanese sought formal equality in naval construction limits, something that the Western powers would not give. In the wake of this withdrawal, Japanese battleship architects threw themselves into the design of new vessels. The first class to emerge were the 18.1-inch-gun-carrying Yamatos, the largest battleships ever constructed. However, the Yamatos were by no means the end of Japanese ambitions. The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) planned to build another, larger class of super battleships, and had vague plans for even larger ships to succeed that class. War interceded, but had Japan carried out its plans it might have deployed monster battleships nearly as large as supercarriers into the Pacific.

“Super” Yamatos

The A-150 class would have superseded the Yamatos, building on experience with that class to produce a more formidable, flexible fighting unit. Along with the Yamatos, these ships were expected to provide the IJN with an unbeatable battle line to protect its Pacific possessions, along with newly acquired territories in Southeast Asia and China.

The A-150s would theoretically have carried six 510-millimeter (twenty-inch) guns in three twin turrets, although if problems had developed in the construction of that gun they could have carried the same main armament as the Yamatos. The 510-millimeter guns would have wreaked havoc on any existing (or planned) American or British battleships, but would also have caused substantial blast issues for the more delicate parts of the ship. The A-150s would have carried heavier armor than their smaller cousins, more than sufficient to protect from the heaviest weapons in the American or British arsenals. The secondary armament would have included a substantial number of 3.9-inch dual-purpose guns, a relatively small caliber suggesting that the A-150s may have relied on support vessels to protect them from enemy cruisers and destroyers.

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Dan Goure

Security, Eurasia

Put will Putin pull the trigger?

For almost two decades, Russia has been interfering in the domestic politics of other nations. According to one report, Russia has interfered in the political processes of at least 27 North American and European countries since 2004.  The Kremlin has several goals for this assault:  first, to undermine the legitimacy of Western governments and principles such as the rule of law and human rights; second, to weaken major institutions such as the European Union and NATO; and third, encourage the formation of pro-Russian governments.

A wide variety of techniques and tactics are being employed, including generating false news stories about pro-democracy movements, hacking the communications of government institutions and political parties, funding pro-Moscow political movements, and using international organizations such Interpol to harass political opponents. The effects of this undeclared war are particularly pernicious in so-called semi-consolidated democracies, such as Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Moldova.

One of the Putin regime’s favorite tricks is to support pro-Russian political parties while simultaneously doing everything possible to undermine the credibility of pro-Western parties and politicians. In some instances, Russian money has gone simultaneously to both pro-Russian and extreme nationalist parties. This would seem to be a self-contradicting strategy. However, the Kremlin’s primary objective is to undermine the power of centrist parties that have dominated European politics for decades and to encourage those countries to pursue anti-Western and anti-EU policies.

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Kyle Mizokami

Security, Asia

And it nearly happened. 

Key point: A Taiwanese-Chinese nuclear standoff would have destabilized the entire region.

It would have been one of the greatest crises of postwar Asia: the revelation of a Taiwanese atomic bomb. For Taiwan, the bomb would have evened the odds against a numerically superior foe. For China, a bomb would have been casus belli, justification for an attack on the island country it considered a rogue province. Active from the 1960s to the 1980s, Taipei’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons were finally abandoned due to diplomatic pressure by its most important ally, the United States.

Taiwan’s nuclear program goes back to 1964, when the People’s Republic of China tested its first nuclear device. The test was not exactly a surprise to outside observers, but it was still Taiwan’s nightmare come true. Chinese and Taiwanese air and naval forces occasionally skirmished, and it threatened to turn into all-out war. Suddenly Taipei was confronted with the possibility that such a war could turn nuclear. Even just one nuclear device detonated on an island the size of Maryland would have devastating consequences for the civilian population.

From Taiwan’s perspective, a nuclear arsenal would be the ultimate guarantor of national sovereignty. Even if the United States split with the country, as it eventually did, Taiwanese nukes would keep the Chinese People’s Liberation Army at bay, a deterrent not only against Chinese nuclear power, but against conventional forces as well. In hindsight, this would have had a good chance of success, as North Korea’s own procurement of nuclear weapons has made the United States and South Korea reluctant to retaliate over the country’s various military provocations.

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Kyle Mizokami

Security, Asia

It could happen.

Key Point: China only has so much patience, and won't let the entire peninsula fall into American hands.

North Korea is both a blessing and a curse for China. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is an independent state that is openly hostile to the United States and other regional powers. Pyongyang’s military is a deterrent to attack without posing a direct threat to China. As a result, nearly a thousand miles of China’s borders are occupied by a regime that finances its own defense and will never fall willingly within the U.S. sphere of influence.

The situation is far from perfect. While North Korea has traditionally been a Chinese client state, ties between the two countries have deteriorated in recent years. Pyongyang’s fiery anti-American rhetoric and nuclear weapons program have provoked the United States, making North Korea a major point of contention between Washington and Beijing. The country’s flagrant violation of international norms have tested Beijing’s patience.

There are persistent rumors that Beijing has long prepared to intervene in North Korea, whether in the aftermath of a government collapse or should the country’s leadership make credible threats against China. No one outside of Beijing knows what those preparations might be, but we can outline some scenarios. One thing seems reasonably certain, however: if China goes into North Korea, the presiding regime, whether of Kim Jong-un or someone else, will not survive.

One possible scenario is a military incursion into North Korea in response to regime collapse. An imploding economy, military coup, or Syria-like rebellion could all cause the regime to fold, and it will likely fold quickly. When it does, the national food distribution system will likely fail, causing refugees to flee the country. Given that the border with South Korea is notoriously fortified and the Russian border is relatively far and remote, the least difficult border to cross is into China.

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Subhash Kak

Security, Americas

A quantum computing future is unlikely, due to random hardware errors.

Google announced this fall to much fanfare that it had demonstrated “quantum supremacy” – that is, it performed a specific quantum computation far faster than the best classical computers could achieve. IBM promptly critiqued the claim, saying that its own classical supercomputer could perform the computation at nearly the same speed with far greater fidelity and, therefore, the Google announcement should be taken “with a large dose of skepticism.”

This wasn’t the first time someone cast doubt on quantum computing. Last year, Michel Dyakonov, a theoretical physicist at the University of Montpellier in France, offered a slew of technical reasons why practical quantum supercomputers will never be built in an article in IEEE Spectrum, the flagship journal of electrical and computer engineering.

So how can you make sense of what is going on?

As someone who has worked on quantum computing for many years, I believe that due to the inevitability of random errors in the hardware, useful quantum computers are unlikely to ever be built.

What’s a quantum computer?

To understand why, you need to understand how quantum computers work since they’re fundamentally different from classical computers.

A classical computer uses 0s and 1s to store data. These numbers could be voltages on different points in a circuit. But a quantum computer works on quantum bits, also known as qubits. You can picture them as waves that are associated with amplitude and phase.

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Patricia Illingworth

History, Americas

Jeffrey Epstein faced sex trafficking and conspiracy charges when he died in July 2019. 

I teach a course on ethics and philanthropy and have written about how to donate to charities ethically.

Recent news about people who make big charitable gifts acting badly is making me wonder whether philanthropy really does make the world better.

Think about it: Members of the Sackler family, who have given millions to arts institutions, also own Purdue Pharma. That’s the company that patented and aggressively marketed Oxycontin, an approach that helped bring about the opioid crisis. Between 1999 and 2017, close to 218,000 people died from overdoses connected to prescription opioids.

Then there’s Warren Kanders, a major donor to New York City’s Whitney Museum. He stepped down as vice chair of its board in July 2019 over his role as the chief executive of Safariland – a manufacturer of bulletproof vests, bomb-defusing robots and other security products. Artists and activists demanded his ouster after learning that Safariland made the tear gas launched at migrants at the border between Mexico and California.

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Walter Olson

Politics,

Ohio offers an example of a bad outcome.

This is just absurd: to comply with federal regulations barring owners of daily newspapers from also owning local broadcast stations, the owner of the venerable Dayton Daily News in Ohio may knock it down to three-times-a-week publication so that it won't count as a daily anymore. Keith J. Kelly of the New York Post spotted the story, Cox Media Group outlined the plan in a press release a few weeks ago, and Joshua Benton at Nieman Lab has more:

To increase the quality of local journalism in Ohio, the Federal Communications Commission is requiring three newspapers to stop printing daily....

Did you get that? To strengthen the local news ecosystem in Dayton, the government is making its biggest newspaper publish less.

The rules date back to 1975 when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted regulations barring cross-ownership of local broadcast and newspaper properties while grandfathering in existing arrangements. It was never a good rule, but progressive social critics then as now traced countless social ills to media concentration and for-profit ownership of the press (what's new these days is that populist conservatives crusade against the corporate media too).

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Diane Winston

History, Americas

Salvation Army Captain Joseph McFee’s legacy lives on – providing inspiration to millions of Americans, whether they care about religion or not. Tinseled trees and snowy landscapes are not the only signs of the upcoming holiday season. Red kettles, staffed by men and women in street clothes, Santa suits and Salvation Army uniforms, also telegraph Christmastime.

The Salvation Army is among America’s top-grossing charities. In 2018, its 25,000 bell-ringers helped raise US$142.7 million. That was part of the charity’s $3.8 billion year-end revenue from bequests, grants, sales, in-kind donations and investments as well as direct contributions.

William Booth, an English evangelist, founded the Salvation Army in 1878 as a religious outreach to London’s poor. How a British evangelical church became an American icon is an ongoing interest of mine.

Entry into the United States

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Kyle Mizokami

Security,

You decide.

Key point: For those that want a slightly unconventional handgun, revolvers such as the Smith & Wesson Governor are an equally conventional, though entirely practical, solution.

One of the most interesting trends in the world of handguns is the revolver than first not only handgun ammunition but also shotgun shells. The ability to shoot both high-powered handgun ammo above .40 caliber and small caliber shotgun shells makes these revolvers far more versatile than most. Although seemingly a new phenomenon, the development of handheld shotguns actually goes back to before the U.S. Civil War.

The unusual nature of the revolver shotgun requires a bit of history and explanation. The first revolver/shotgun combination was the LeMat revolver. Developed by Jean LeMat, a French emigre to the United States, LeMat’s creation was a cap and ball revolver, state of the art at the time, but it featured two barrels and a nine-round cylinder. This gave the LeMat a highly unusual appearance, both then and today. The cylinder held both .40 and .42 ammunition and a larger .60 caliber/20 gauge shotgun ammunition. The latter gave the revolver the nickname “The Grape Shot Revolver.” Up to 2,400 LeMats were smuggled into the Confederacy to arm cavalry units.

The modern “grapeshot revolver” movement was sparked in the 1990s by the MIL Thunder 5 revolver. Although only briefly in production, the Tennessee-made firearm was able to shoot both .45 Long Colt handgun rounds and .410 shotshells. This unusual combination sparked industry-wide interest. The Thunder 5 was followed up by Brazilian gunmaker Taurus and their Judge revolver, which is similar in appearance and shoots the same combination of cartridges.

Why a revolver shotgun?

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Warfare History Network

History, Asia

Never leave a man behind.

Key point: Success came at a high price.

In the predawn darkness of Dobodura, New Guinea, 2nd Lt. William J. Smith of the U.S. Army Air Corps was roughly awakened by a noncom announcing that it was time to get dressed and get to the mess tent for breakfast.

Smith had not slept well, having spent most of the night fighting mosquitoes that had managed to get inside his cot’s netting. The nervous anticipation of flying another combat mission in the morning did not exactly make for peaceful slumber either. Five days earlier, eight North American B-25D Mitchell medium bombers of the 71st Bomb Squadron, 38th Bomb Group, Fifth Army Air Force had flown north over the Owen Stanley Mountains from their permanent base near Port Moresby to Dobodura, their temporary base of operations. The 38th Bomb Group, known as the “Sun Setters,” was composed of the 71st, 405th, 822nd, and 823rd Squadrons, and 16 other Mitchells from the 38th would join today’s mission. Their target on February, 15, 1944, was Kavieng Township on the northern tip of New Ireland, deep in Japanese-held territory. A long flight lay ahead of the Army aviators, even from this forward airstrip.

At the mess tent Lieutenant Smith sawed into his pancakes and hit a pocket of unmixed batter. As he watched the powder spill down into the syrup, he daydreamed of biscuits with red eye gravy, eggs, bacon, sweet cream, homemade preserves, and all the other delights of his mother’s breakfasts back in Kentucky. As he came back to harsh reality, Smith put sugar in his coffee and then with experienced precision skimmed off the floating ants. Soldiers in South Pacific territories learned that you could not keep ants out of the sugar, and it was just easier to strain them out of your coffee. It was not a great breakfast by stateside standards, but about the best the Army Air Corps personnel could expect in primitive New Guinea.

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Caleb Larson

Security, Americas

A game-changer or just some really cool marketing?

U.S. forces reportedly killed a senior jihadist leader in Syria. While such strikes are typically carried out by drones and not so unusual, this particular strike used a new type of "ninja" missile. These missiles have been reportedly been used only a few times. Designed to minimize civilian casualties, the ninja missile is a specially modified Hellfire—without a warhead. In place of explosives, razor-sharp folding blades are used to literally chop the target to bits.

Hell in a Handbasket

The Hellfire family was originally developed in the 1980s as a tank-busting, surface-to-air missile designed specifically to counter armor. Several variants are used today, including fragmentation, incendiary, and high explosive anti-tank, or HEAT. The Hellfire missiles weigh in the 100 to 110 pound range, including a 20-pound warhead and are guided through a millimeter wave radar seeker, or by laser.

Years after their development, Hellfire missiles have become the armament of choice in the war on terror, and are often used on Reaper and Predator drones in strikes against militants in crowded, urban environments. The relatively small 20-pound warhead is crucial in these environments, where unnecessary civilian casualties or infrastructure damage could be detrimental to long-term mission success. Still, an explosion, regardless of size, runs the risk of civilian casualties. So how could a missile be improved for greater precision and pose less risk to civilian bystanders?

Chop-Chop

The R9X was developed to answer just this question. The R9X Hellfire variant is outwardly quite similar to the other Hellfire variants—except that it paradoxically isn’t equipped with an explosive warhead. In the missile body, where explosives would normally be located, are six razor-sharp blades.

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Claude Barfield

Technology, Asia

The app is posing a serious national security challenge.

The developing TikTok chronicle actually consists of two linked developments: First, the aggressive plans of TikTok (and parent company ByteDance) to expand its current business, while also pushing rapidly into other social media business opportunities; and second, the implications, both businesswise and politically, of the current national security investigation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).

Globally, ByteDance and TikTok are targeting their growth in East and South Asia, particularly large countries such as India and Indonesia. India is a rapidly developing success story, as TikTok downloads over the past two years have exceeded 400 million users in the country (four times as many as in the US). Unemployed teenagers form a major cohort of users, as they have few outlets for entertainment and tend to avoid English language outlets such as Facebook and Instagram. Since they enjoy little privacy in their lives, they do not worry about security. There has been some backlash from governments in Asia, but largely stemming from issues of lax security against child predators and violations of Hindu norms.

ByteDance has pledged to invest $1 billion in India over the next few years “through expansion and the construction of a data center.” As a number of outside observers have recently noted, TikTok’s success in emerging markets such as India and Indonesia will determine its future even if it encounters major obstacles in the US.

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Mark Jamison

Technology, Americas

How is that affecting consumers?

“Theory and practice should not contradict one another.” George J. Stigler

Sometimes researchers make claims that can grab headlines, but upon further investigation, their theories don’t line up with reality.

A recent paper and accompanying blog follow this pattern. They conclude that merger policy in tech should block more mergers, including mergers that would make consumers better off, because doing so increases innovation. That’s pretty surprising! Even if each approved merger makes consumers better off, the overall effect is consumer harm? How could that be?

The paper develops a theory in which blocking even good mergers makes more consumers drop their old services in favor of those offered by new entrants, leading to more successful startups. More startups mean more innovation because incumbents never innovate, according to this paper’s theory.

To show that the theory works in practice, the paper looks at nine tech acquisitions and concludes that, true to the theory, investment in startups declined once an acquisition occurred. Less investment means fewer startups, which means less innovation, according to the paper.

But does the theory really align with the cases as the paper and blog claim? No.

The theory makes a few key assumptions that drive its results. These include:

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Richard Javad Heydarian

Security, Asia

China’s new paramount leader, Xi Jinping, has completely discarded the low-key diplomacy of his predecessors in favor of an all-out bid for global primacy.

Reflecting on the future of the global order, the late Singaporean prime minister Lee Kuan Yew warned that the rise of China is so consequential that it won’t only require tactical adjustment by its neighbors, but instead an overhaul in the global security architecture. As the former Asian leader bluntly put it, though “[t]he Chinese will [initially] want to share this century as co-equals with the U.S.” they ultimately have the “intention to be the greatest power in the world” eventually.

Not long after the demise of the Singaporean leader, his prophetic insights are congealing into an indubitable geopolitical reality. Today, China is the world’s largest exporting nation, the largest consumer of basic goods, and increasingly also the leading source of investments, particularly in strategic infrastructure, especially in Asia and across the developing world. Meanwhile, economic vigor has translated into strategic assertiveness and military muscle, as China opens up overseas bases, beginning in Djibouti but more stealthily across the Indian Ocean, expands its blue water navy, and coercively transforms adjacent waters into its “blue national soil.”

Above all, China’s new paramount leader, Xi Jinping, has completely discarded the low-key diplomacy of his predecessors in favor of an all-out bid for global primacy, going so far as promoting a “uniquely Chinese model” of development overseas and gradually establishing an ‘Asia for Asians’ order across the Eurasian landmass to the exclusion of Western powers and Japan. Though packaged as ostensibly a trillion-dollar connectivity initiative, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is, above all, about laying the foundation of a ‘Chinese world order.’

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Mary Clare Amselem

Education,

Some degrees are not worth their price.

Americans have long suspected that, for many, a college degree simply isn’t worth the price.

American taxpayers—two-thirds of whom do not have a college degree—are likewise increasingly skeptical of the notion that they should pay off loans that someone else made the decision to take out.

With recently published College Scorecard data, American students and taxpayers have more reason than ever to reject the left’s “college for all” agenda.

The College Scorecard recently released program-level data on individual schools. Students can now go online and see how much debt the average student graduates with in a certain degree program, along with expected starting salaries.

The results indicate that choosing a major matters immensely, especially when relying on federal student loans to finance one’s education.

According to The Wall Street Journal, 15% of programs graduate students who carry more federal student loan debt than their annual income.

Interestingly, graduate programs—which are generally perceived to be good investments—are some of the worst offenders.

Students who graduate from the University of Miami Law School, for example, hold a median total debt of $150,896, but earn a starting salary of just $52,100. Even more problematic, students who obtain a master’s degree from New York University in film/video and photographic arts graduate with a median total debt of a whopping $168,568, but earn a median starting salary of $29,600.

Those findings are particularly concerning, considering that there is virtually no cap on how much students can borrow for graduate school under the PLUS loan program.

There is simply no reason that American taxpayers should be footing the entire cost of the bill upfront for degrees with such a low return on investment.

The new College Scorecard data provides not only valuable insights into the debt burden of college students, but also underscores the deep-rooted inefficiencies in our federal student loan programs.

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Charlie Gao

Security,

We have the details.

Key Point: The tendency for Sig Sauer to promote a new rifle every few years is probably disconcerting to potential users.

When the HK released the HK416 in the early 2000s, it rapidly became a hit with elite military and police forces worldwide. Driven by a slick marketing campaign and favorable (albeit disputed) test results from the U.S. military, the HK416 represented a “better mousetrap” version of the AR-family of rifles for many users. Though the advantages of the HK416 have become debatable in modern years, with upgrades to traditional AR rifles enhancing their reliability, Sig Sauer, Inc looked to create their answer to the HK416 in the late 2000s. The result, released in 2010, was the SIG 516.

While Sig doesn’t like to emphasize the connection, the SIG 516 was conceived in many ways as a direct counterpart to the HK416. According to the late Jim Schatz, a former H&K employee and H&K expert, one of the key people involved in the HK416 was the lead on the SIG 516 development team. The name “SIG 516” is likely just a riff on HK416.

In the basic layout, the SIG 516 also heavily resembles the HK416. Both rifles use a short-stroke tappet system placed above the barrel, which drives back a modified bolt carrier in the upper receiver. This allows the rifles to be easily compatible with most AR lowers without much modification.

However, Sig Sauer’s design was found to be relatively close to an existing piston AR, the LWRC IC-A5. This resulted in both LWRC and Sig Sauer, Inc. being brought to court in 2016 on patent claims on the original design of the SIG 516’s piston system.

The 516’s piston design does have some advantages versus the 416. The 516 has a 4-position gas regulator, allowing for reduced recoil and wear. The 416’s piston is self-regulating in theory, but in the default position tends to give increased recoil over an adjustable gas system. The HK416 would receive an adjustable regulator in the HK416A5 variant.

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