Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Extended deterrence . It refers to America’s promises to use its firepower, including nukes , to protect (some of) its allies. It emerged after World War II, with Europe destroyed and needing to rebuild, not spend on arming itself against the USSR. It extended to Japan since the Americans didn’t want Japan to arm itself and risk another war down the road. It covered South Korea since Korea had become a symbolic line in the sand against communist expansion in Asia.   In this interview/chat , one of the participants said: “We never implemented extended deterrence out of altruism or charity… This allowed us to keep the economies and political systems of our allies free, democratic, and capitalist, which created open markets for the US.”   Another benefit (from the US perspective, that is) of such extended deterrence was that fewer countries pursued nuclear weapons. Of the 34 or so US allies, only France pursued nukes. Why? Because they feared (rightly, as events have pr...

Recently, my smartphone conked out. So, while the new one was ordered but not yet delivered, I went back to an old Nokia feature phone. Boy, does it feel weird! A phone only meant for calling? No apps? No Internet? However did we live like this before the iPhone was launched? I remembered Thomas Ricker’s article : “We're no longer in the age of flip phones and candy bars that shipped with dedicated start and end call buttons. Their raison d'être was voice calling.” Sure, as Scott Adams says, smartphones have rewired us to a point where we always have a cloud hanging over us , the “mental distraction of simply knowing you might have a message if only you looked”. Not just from good old SMS’s, but Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Email. And yet, without the smartphone, I feel like I’ve gone “full-caveman”, as Adams put it. Of course, you could argue that Distraction is a multi-billion dollar industry: “Our largest and most important tech companies are literally in th...