The Dish

Rory Johnston explains why the US can’t use liquified natural gas exports to undercut Russia in Europe:

Most of the natural gas that could potentially head for Europe is already committed in long-term supply contracts. … Furthermore, most of those contracts are in Asia, where natural gas prices are higher than in Europe. The United States does not sell natural gas, nor does Europe buy it; commercial entities do, and these companies are not going to voluntarily lose money in order to advance American interests. As Michael Levi explains, the U.S. government “can create a framework in which commercial entities can sell gas, but after that, it’s up to those businesses to decide where the gas goes.”

Meghan O’Sullivan suggests US oil production could hit Russia harder and faster:

Russia’s real vulnerability lies in the price of oil, not in the realm of gas.

Revenue from gas sales abroad make up 8 percent to 9 percent of the Russian budget, while oil revenue accounts for a much heftier 37 percent to 38 percent. It was not that long ago that a prolonged collapse in the price of oil undermined the foundations of the Soviet Union, according to former Deputy Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar. The U.S., by adding 2.5 million barrels of oil to global markets in the last three years, has prevented the price of oil from edging higher in the face of disruptions in Libya, Iran and elsewhere. Should the U.S. continue to increase its oil production, as is widely assumed, it could create pressure to further lower the price.

It would not take a huge price collapse to harm Putin’s regime; already, the Russian economy is struggling, and the government has made across-the-board cuts. Plus, Putin’s power comes in large measure from extensive patronage networks made possible by high oil prices. To balance its budget, Russia needs oil prices of about $110 (the current price is about $108). A further dip in oil prices is the largest challenge on the horizon to Putin.

Matt Steinglass calls a time-out:

The idea that America can defeat Russian irredentism in Eastern Europe by deregulating its own energy industries is frankly ridiculous. Deregulation can make airline tickets cheaper. It cannot stop the Russian army. Energy-industry deregulation has become part of the standard Republican line on Crimea largely because of the relentless self-congratulatory process by which political actors cement their followers’ ideological convictions. Leaders apply such flattery like a soothing unguent, assuring their backers that the things they already believe in would have solved every imaginable problem in advance, if only the foolish opposition had gone along. This helps fuse ideological blocs into coherent, hard-to-dent juggernauts.

#BREAKING US officials tell @abc 2 communication systems on #MH370 were shut down separately. Expert says indicates possible deliberate act

— Alex Stone (@astoneabcnews) March 13, 2014

Jeff Wise finds it very odd that we still have no idea what happened to the plane:

Past air crashes have always turned up some definitive evidence by this stage of the proceedings. This incident (frankly, we’re not even 100 percent sure it is a crash) is different. So far, no debris field has been found, the Pentagon reports that it detected no midair explosions in the area, and Malaysian authorities have issued contradictory statements about what primary-radar tracks they may or may not have observed. Based on the vast search area, it appears that authorities believe that the plane may have been deliberately flown far from its original heading. If that’s the case, then whoever redirected the plane might well have timed its abduction to coincide with the period when it would have slipped out of sight of the air traffic control system anyway—presumed to be operating normally, but actually veiled in the fog of unknowability.

Ben Branstetter discusses how better technology could prevent such fiascos:

There are forces trying to implement the full benefits of satellite technology into the consumer aircraft market. One system, dubbed Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) by Boeing itself, would create a worldwide network between Air Traffic Controllers and planes in the air, allowing any ATC to see where any ADS-B-equipped plane is at any moment thanks to second-by-second reporting to GPS satellites. Such a system, if adopted globally, could have solved the mystery of Flight 370 and the a dozen other aerial disappearances since the 1970s. Many delays stand in the way of ADS-B, otherwise known as NextGen, including a plethora of delays and an estimated $11 billion price tag.

But with 1 billion people expected to be flying annually by 2024—many of them on transcontinental flights—it is not only astonishing but pathetically negligent that such a crucial system relies on such archaic systems. The bewildering tragedy of Flight 370 highlights the anachronism of radar systems in a world where Google can identify my position within a single room. GPS technology went commercial more than 30 years ago and has only grown more widespread and accurate since then, yet the airline industry prefers the system used by Iceman and Maverick.

Update from a reader:

Many have brought up the possibility that the plane has been hijacked, but I’m surprised that no one is honing in on the potential motivations for such a hijacking.  Specifically, wouldn’t it make sense to consider that separatist Muslim Uyghur’s from the northwest region of China might be responsible.  The Chinese government blamed them for the deadly knife attack that occurred just two weeks ago.  A hijacked plane diverted to Xinjiang province would appear to cover a distance comparable to the distance between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing. It has already been reported that the plane dramatically changed its route to the northwest and reached the Andaman Islands. From there, it appears the plane could simply travel due north to reach Xinjiang.

Lastly, it is being reported that the plane flew for more than 5 hours after the transponders were turned off.  It would not take 5 hours for that plane to get to the Andaman Islands, so the question is, where did it go after that? My crazy, wild, and almost certainly incorrect guess is Xinjiang, home of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement.  Remember, most of the passengers on the flight were Chinese, so successfully hijacking and landing the plane in Xinjiang would be, in the eyes of the Uyghurs, and incredible source of leverage.

Previous Dish on the disappeared plane here and here.

Jason Koebler flags a study showing that whole-genome sequencing is still prohibitively expensive and not very useful:

A new study on the present-day feasibility of whole-genome sequencing for clinical use by researchers at Stanford University found that it will cost at least $17,000 per person to sequence a genome and interpret the results, and it’ll take roughly 100 man-hours to perform any sort of meaningful analysis.

“The gist of it is we found that the results are generally not clinically acceptable,” said Frederick Dewey, lead author of the analysis, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. “It’s a relatively sobering thought, and there are tough hurdles to get over before this is common.”

Dewey and his team completely sequenced the genomes of 12 people and analyzed them to predict their propensity for genetic diseases and other health concerns. The study was designed to test out some of the leading genome sequencing techniques and analysis methods. The expensive part, Dewey says, isn’t necessarily the sequencing of the genome (a cost that is constantly coming down), but the analysis after the fact.

But these findings don’t discourage Ricki Lewis:

I’m not surprised that looking at the genomes of a dozen healthy people didn’t provide a crystal ball to predict their medical futures for a simple reason. The human genome is so complex, with instructions buried in layers of molecular language, that the very idea of going from sequence to diagnosis may be flawed, at least until we can work out all possible gene-gene interactions, against the backdrop of the environment. But this limitation is itself limited. It will go away with time, as more and more human genomes are subjected to the sequencers and the annotators, who then whisper to the clinicians what, exactly, to impart to a patient. …

But even when we have complete genome sequences for millions of us, something I predict will be true within five years, genotype will not always predict phenotype. For DNA is not destiny.

In the latest Snowden revelation, Ryan Gallagher and Glenn Greenwald report that the NSA is planning to infect millions of computers with malware:

In some cases the NSA has masqueraded as a fake Facebook server, using the social media site as a launching pad to infect a target’s computer and exfiltrate files from a hard drive. In others, it has sent out spam emails laced with the malware, which can be tailored to covertly record audio from a computer’s microphone and take snapshots with its webcam. The hacking systems have also enabled the NSA to launch cyberattacks by corrupting and disrupting file downloads or denying access to websites.

The implants being deployed were once reserved for a few hundred hard-to-reach targets, whose communications could not be monitored through traditional wiretaps. But the documents analyzed by The Intercept show how the NSA has aggressively accelerated its hacking initiatives in the past decade by computerizing some processes previously handled by humans. The automated system – codenamed TURBINE – is designed to “allow the current implant network to scale to large size (millions of implants) by creating a system that does automated control implants by groups instead of individually.”

Joshua Kopstein explains why this matters:

This revelation suggests that the NSA’s tailored-access platform is becoming a bit more like the un-targeted dragnets everyone has been so upset about: stuff like the mass-collection of phone metadata, and the tapping of undersea Internet cables, which allows the agency to filter through raw communications for keywords.

Of course, the question is whether having the capability to “target” people en-masse means that the NSA and GCHQ will necessarily do so. But based on what we know so far from the Snowden files, it’s hard to imagine what would stop them.

Sean Gallagher points out the dangers of such broad surveillance:

All of these capabilities give the NSA and GCHQ considerable reach. But they also run the risk of allowing others to stand on the agencies’ shoulders and take advantage of the exploits the NSA has already seeded into parts of the Internet’s infrastructure. Regardless of the scope of the NSA’s ongoing surveillance, the chance that someone else could hijack or repackage a capability like Hammerstein or SecondDate for criminal or other malicious means poses a risk to the entire Internet.

Meanwhile, Henry Farrell makes the case that Snowden’s leaks are actually helping the US by advertizing our cybersecurity capabilities:

Snowden’s revelations may provide a much more credible signal about the strength of the U.S. cybersecurity apparatus than anything that the government itself could say. Clearly, Snowden did not leak his information in order to puff up the reputation of the U.S. cybersecurity apparatus. His leaks have provoked fury among senior government officials. Equally, the material published to date has not been nearly as harmful to the U.S. government as it could have been. It has suggested that the U.S. and its close allies have strong and sophisticated capabilities, while providing only limited information on how those capacities are used against states like China and Russia. And these suggestions are taken seriously by other states. Snowden’s disagreements with the U.S. government makes him a much more credible messenger about the extent of U.S. cyber capabilities than any U.S. official. He doesn’t have the same incentives to bluff, exaggerate or misrepresent. Paradoxically, Snowden’s public conflict with the burgeoning U.S. cybersecurity state makes him a far better spokesman for the deterrent capabilities of that state than any US official could be.

In this video from the Veronica Mars creator, he appreciates the arrival of Netflix and Amazon to the television business:

Rob’s show Party Down was cancelled after two seasons, and Veronica Mars was cancelled after three, despite unique efforts by fans, such as a campaign to send the head of Warner Brothers 10,000 Mars candy bars as a sign of their support. In a profile of Thomas, Jason Cohen puts the show’s popularity and demise in context:

The show premiered in September 2004, and a certain segment of TV viewers absolutely loved it. “Best. Show. Ever,” wrote Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy. “I’ve never gotten more wrapped up in a show I wasn’t making. . . . These guys know what they’re doing on a level that intimidates me. It’s the Harry Potter of shows.” Critics also liked the show. Joy Press, of the Village Voice, called it “a fusion of Chinatown and Heathers,” while blogger Alan Sepinwall eventually named it one of the best dramas of the 2000’s, right up there with The Wire, The Sopranos, and Friday Night Lights. … [But d]uring the three seasons it aired, the show generally drew between 2.5 and 3 million people. This put it among the ten least-seen prime-time network shows, and before the fourth season, it was canceled, much to the despair of its fans (they’re known as Marshmallows, a pun based on a famous line in the first episode).

Measured against recent cable hits like AMC’s Breaking Bad, which didn’t top 2.5 million viewers until its fourth season, or Mad Men, which drew just 2.7 million for its most recent season finale, Veronica Mars was practically a smash. But the TV business was a different place seven years ago. In the time since, streaming video, DVDs, and downloads (both legal and illegal) have given high-quality cult shows numerous ways to reach a larger audience and encouraged execs to put a greater premium on patience.

In this next video, Rob weighs in on the plight of shows with small but devoted fanbases:

One year ago this week, Rob launched one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns of all time in support of a Veronica Mars movie. (Our discussion thread of the innovative, Dish-like project is here.) The movie is coming out in theatrical release and video-on-demand tomorrow. One reader’s looking forward to it:

Thanks for much for “Ask Rob Thomas Anything” (though I lamely declined to submit a question). My love of Veronica is rivaled only by my love of Buffy, and the successful Kickstarter campaign to finance/green-light the movie has been fascinating. Excited to see the movie I helped fund tomorrow. Also, woof.

(Ask Anything Archive)