Terror From Above!

Look, up in the sky! It's a... plane?

Dec 16, 2024

So let’s talk about the drones.

First, let’s be clear that drones are a big problem. There are massive examples of drones violating the airspace of military installations, airports, and stadiums that are dangerous and pose security risks. A Chinese citizen was arrested just last week for flying a drone over Vandenberg Space Force base in California. Two Massachusetts men were just arrested for flying a drone that was dangerously close to Logan Airport. And in the NFL, nearly 3,000 drone incidents were reported last year — something they have little power to address at the moment, especially when the tailgaters are flying UAS with increasingly higher tech.

For whatever reason, this whole trendline has largely been ignored in the national press until it started flying over our loud Italian-American friends in the state of New Jersey. The ubiquitous presence of drones there has prompted demands from Congress and others for explanation from federal authorities and the White House — they held a phone call for background on Friday, the transcript of which you can read here.

Their overall message, as expressed by John Kirby last week, is basically: most of these videos are of planes; we don’t know about the ones that aren’t planes; but these drones are following FAA rules, bearing proper lighting, not violating restricted airspace, and there is no sign of foreign interests or danger to Americans from them. Here’s Kirby on Friday:

The drone issue has been met with dismissal — as by former Congressman Adam Kinzinger who claimed on CNN that “they’re literally all airplanes” (which doesn’t pass muster considering at least one of them crashed). And it’s been catastrophized — as by the ever-responsible Alejandro Mayorkas, who suggested giving states the power to shoot the drones out of the sky (which couldn’t possibly result in any negative consequences). It’s been dealt with more seriously as well, as here by Madeleine Kearns in The Free Press, who quotes an unnamed official who strongly advocates that the drones are a Chinese project:

The Free Press

Is a Foreign Adversary Flying Drones over New Jersey?

For the past four weeks, car-sized objects have been reported flying over critical infrastructure and military assets in New Jersey. They come from the ocean, appearing around sunset, and sometimes turn off their lights. Residents demand answers, but despite scrambling for information, state and local authorities say they remain largely in the dark…

5 days ago · 259 likes · 370 comments · Madeleine Kearns

Charles Lipson writes on the issue here:

The public is frightened, and bland reassurances from Washington aren’t helping. Neither is a wagging finger from the government’s PR flaks, who don’t give citizens any real information but tell them to calm down, that they are overreacting.
Maybe they are, but the TV reports and web pages are filled with home videos of sightings. Print reports come with photographs. It’s not just one or two pictures or videos. It’s dozens and dozens of them from different sources. They are often accompanied by interviews with people who have seen the objects, then reported their sightings to local, state, and federal authorities and heard back nothing except “we don’t know anything” (from local officials) or vacuous words of comfort (from Washington).
When you unpack the obfuscation, White House officials are making two basic points. The first is that we don’t know what the objects are or where they came from. The second is you shouldn’t worry about it. The two statements are inconsistent, and the public knows it.
White House spokesman John Kirby qualified the “we don’t know what’s up there” point in one interview, saying that many of the sightings were merely airplanes. Another way to put that is, “You dumb yokels. Don’t you know an airplane when you see it?”
Again, Kirby may be right but the people who have seen these objects — dozens and dozens of people and sightings — say Kirby is not right about all of them. There may be some airplanes, they acknowledge, but lots of objects look different and move in ways airplanes do not. They aren’t buying what the White House is selling.
The government’s main response is to shrug their shoulders and say “we really don’t know.” They concede they cannot explain all the sightings. That answer and the implication that it is mass hysteria has infuriated the governor of New Jersey and officials on Capitol Hill, who can hear the roar of their constituents and don’t appreciate standing in front of them without answers.
Those officials and their voters are none too happy with the administration’s second point, either. That point is, “Don’t worry. These flying objects don’t present any threat at all.”
That might be right, but here’s the problem. Points one and two collide. If you say you don’t know what the flying objects are or where they came from, how can you possibly tell us that there is nothing to worry about? You might be right, but you haven’t given us any evidence to support that conclusion or believe your comforting words.

More here from the Wall Street Journal on the drone storyline in the context of lost trust in government.

What I would strongly encourage in the case of the New Jersey scenario is that we remember a couple of things: when government officials start talking about things, sometimes they are purposefully obfuscating about something they don’t want you to know about, and sometimes they’re dangerously speculating, acting out of rank ignorance. I’d also suggest that the behavior of most of these drones in the New Jersey context can be explained by things that are very much in the public record. For instance, here’s a press release from June 2023, announcing: “Agreement opens test corridor stretching from Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst to Dover AFB, linking to New Jersey’s Aviation Innovation Hub in Atlantic County.”

Under the terms of the Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), the parties will cooperatively develop a prototype dual-use U.S. East Coast test and evaluation corridor for the demonstration, development, and evaluation of military, commercial, academic, and Federal Government UAS and AAM technologies with future application to strategic airlift capabilities of the U.S. Air Force.
UASs are often referred to as drones, while AAM involves the use of electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft to move people and cargo between places not easily served by other modes of transportation. Both UAS and AAM technologies are being developed rapidly by government and military agencies and private industry and the testing corridor will help to safely integrate them into the national airspace.
The availability of the UAS/AAM evaluation corridor between Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst (JBMDL) in New Jersey and Dover AFB in Delaware allows AMC and USTRANSCOM to rapidly assess technical and operational concepts for UAS and AAM, and to develop measures of value in operational scenarios. What makes the designated airspace a “dual use” corridor is that the CRADA facilitates the launching and landing of civilian craft from non-DOD sites within the corridor, including the NARTP. Many of the tests and experiments envisioned would only be possible with a dedicated corridor.

Again, we have a number of dynamics at work here: hobbyists screwing around, a real security threat primarily from China, and intentional testing from military contractors paired with government officials of varying temperament and widely varying levels of ignorance. The whole package comes together in a dysfunctional mess which does nothing to increase the confidence of citizens. That’s unlikely to change any time soon, and no, this is not a problem Trump’s election solves.

So let’s all calm down and watch the X-P4 Transwing sizzle reel.

Lessons From the Stephanopoulos Settlement

Byron York.

As you can see from discussion of the Trump-Stephanopoulos defamation settlement, Judge Lewis Kaplan's post-verdict effort to redefine the result of the E. Jean Carroll case has proven extremely valuable to Trump adversaries who claim that Trump is a "rapist." The jury specifically found that Carroll did *not* prove that Trump raped her, even by the low standards in effect at the trial. You can look at the verdict form -- the jurors checked "No" on the rape question. Instead, the jury found that Trump "sexually abused" Carroll.
You'd think that would be enough for Resistance types; they can accurately say that Trump was found liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll. But no -- they want to call it rape. That's where Judge Kaplan came in.
When Trump's lawyers asked for a new trial, Kaplan denied the motion and used the occasion to express his opinion that the jury had, in fact, found Trump liable for rape. To make his case, Kaplan had to cast far and wide for definitions of rape that fit his purposes. He argued that the jury had "implicitly" found that Trump raped Carroll if one judges the question by: 1) the definition of rape in Dictionary.com; 2) the definition of rape in the Uniform Code of Military Justice; 3) the definition of rape accepted by the American Psychological Association; and 4) the definition of rape used in federal crime reporting statistics.
Unfortunately for Kaplan, none of those standards was in effect in New York law, under which the case was brought and tried. Nevertheless, Kaplan concluded that, "The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was 'raped' within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump 'raped' her as many people commonly understand the word 'rape.' Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump did exactly that."
For Resistance warriors, and their allies in the media, that was the money quote. See? Trump raped E. Jean Carroll! Judge Kaplan says Dictionary.com says so! It was a stunning declaration. When the verdict form asked "Did Ms. Carroll prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Mr. Trump raped Ms. Carroll?" the jury answered "No." How can one be clearer than that? And the jury reached its conclusion by following Judge Kaplan's own instructions. And then, after the verdict, the judge tried to upend the whole thing.
By the way, Kaplan's statement did not receive a huge amount of media attention. But a short time later, a quasi-opinion writer at the Washington Post published an "analysis" with the headline "Judge clarifies: Yes, Trump was found to have raped E. Jean Carroll." And that was enough for the anti-Trump world. Look around today, and almost all of them cite the Post article as proof that Trump raped Carroll.
One of the believers, apparently, was ABC's George Stephanopoulos. And now that ABC and Stephanopoulos have settled a defamation suit by agreeing to give $15 million to a future Trump Presidential Library, plus pay $1 million of Trump's legal costs, you're seeing a lot of anti-Trump types claim that Stephanopoulos was right when he repeatedly said on ABC that Trump had been found liable for raping Carroll. Just look at what Judge Kaplan said and read the Washington Post article, they argue.
But the facts remain the facts. The jury, acting on Judge Kaplan's instructions, specifically found that Carroll had not proven Trump raped her. The jury decided the case. Whatever Kaplan said in a motion afterward does not change the jury's verdict. Still, the judge did a great favor to Resistance world by lending his name and authority to one of the anti-Trump left's favorite talking points.

RFK Heads to Capitol Hill

Plans to lobby Democrats, too.

Kennedy will likely tell concerned senators that, as a member of Trump’s administration, he would back the president-elect’s position that abortion is an issue best left to the states after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a person familiar with the matter said.
Kennedy doesn’t see abortion policy as a high priority and knows that focusing on it would impede his bid to make America healthier, people familiar with his thinking added.
Antiabortion activists are seeking public concessions from Kennedy and the Trump team in exchange for not opposing his confirmation, according to people familiar with groups that oppose abortion rights.
Advisers to Kennedy said he plans to stick closely to the main themes of his “Make America Healthy Again” campaign, including the importance of researching chronic disease and cracking down on ultraprocessed foods.
“He’s very passionate about the reality that we have to turn around the trend that America’s becoming so progressively unhealthy,” said Dr. Robert Redfield, a former Trump administration official who has been talking to Kennedy. “That’s what he’s going to focus on.”
Kennedy’s team hopes the health agenda can win over some Democrats, providing some cushion should he lose any GOP support. Their target list includes Sens. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and Cory Booker (D., N.J.), according to a person familiar with the matter.
A spokesman for Sanders said last week he hadn’t yet been contacted by anyone from Kennedy’s team. Sanders said it would be “premature” to announce his decision on the nomination. Booker said he has concerns but isn’t an “automatic” no on Kennedy. He had said he doesn’t have a meeting scheduled with Kennedy.
“The food industry makes billions of dollars by getting our children addicted to unhealthy food, which causes diabetes and a bunch of other illnesses. I think Kennedy understands that,” Sanders said earlier this month.
Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) indicated willingness to hear Kennedy out. “I’m not immediately, like, 100% hell no,” he said. “If that’s going to be the guy, you have to discover where you can work together.”
On the other hand, the MAHA agenda might turn off some senators. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) said he would meet with Kennedy in January and planned to talk to him about his previous statements opposing genetically modified foods, many of which are grown by the Iowa farmers he represents.
“The most important thing is whether or not he’s for genetically modified corn and soybeans because it’s increased production so much,” Grassley said. Kennedy has called for food labeling on genetically modified food and has said genetically modified organisms are “dangerous.”
Kennedy is likely to focus on common ground—such as dislike of lab-grown meat—with senators close to farmers and ranchers, a person familiar with the issue said.