Category: Defense, National Security
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The Defense Production Act as a Political Tool to Boost Solar Farms
by James C. Sherlock We have had multiple discussions, good ones, on the issues surrounding solar farms in Virginia. Jim Bacon wrote an excellent column about it in February of 2021 titled “The Political Economy of Solar Farms.” It was good then and prescient as of yesterday. He wrote another one two days earlier. From that…
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Virginia Snags Another Fortune 500 H.Q.
by James A. Bacon Waltham, Mass.-based Raytheon Technologies has announced that it will establish its global headquarters in Arlington. Following the recent decision of The Boeing Company to relocate its headquarters from Chicago to Arlington, the move cements Northern Virginia’s standing as the leading defense/aerospace cluster in the United States. “The location increases agility in…
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The Boeing Announcement Is a Vote of Confidence in Virginia
by James A. Bacon The Boeing Company’s decision to transfer its official headquarters location from Chicago, Ill., to Arlington gives Virginia significant bragging rights. The move will have little detectable short-term economic impact. The more consequential news is a promise to “develop a research & technology hub” in the area “to harness and attract engineering…
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National Security, West Virginia Natural Gas and Hampton Roads – A Proposed Federal Law
by James C. Sherlock This is the fourth in a series of columns recommending bringing West Virginia natural gas to Virginia and from there to our allies. The only way to do get that done with any assurance and speed under the energy emergency in which we find ourselves and the world is for…
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Virginia’s Greens Need an Epiphany
by James C. Sherlock Headlines from the war in Ukraine have raised exponentially the interest in natural gas and the extreme price volatility caused by supply constraints. It is perhaps useful to understand the uses of natural gas, the prices Virginians pay relative to West Virginians, the decline of production in Virginia, and the costs…
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A Time for Conservatives to Speak Out
by James C. Sherlock Sometimes in life we come to a major fork in deciding who we are and who we are going to be going forward. Donald Trump was quoted in the New York Times as having on Tuesday “praised Mr. Putin’s aggression as “genius” and called the Russian leader “very savvy” for describing…
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The Real and Present Threat of Flooding in Virginia Requires Coordinated Action
by James C. Sherlock An editorial in The Virginian-Pilot this morning is titled, “A worrisome, watery future,” and is built around an update on flooding from NOAA. It is a grave situation. NOAA projects one foot of combined sea level rise and subsidence here in Hampton Roads by 2050. The adjacent map has not been…
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The President Had Somewhere Important to Be
by James C. Sherlock The caption of the photo: “US President Joe Biden looks down alongside First Lady Jill Biden as they attend the dignified transfer of the remains of a fallen service member at Dover Air Force Base in Dover, Delaware, August, 29, 2021, one of the 13 members of the US military killed…
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Warner Promises Tough Questions on Afghanistan Collapse
Fiasco. The hasty and chaotic withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan has shocked politicians from both sides of the aisle. Virginia’s own Senator Mark Warner, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman, will work with other committees to investigate how the US was caught off guard by the Taliban’s quick victory. The Hill quotes Warner as saying, “As…
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Virginia Beach and Afghanistan
by James C. Sherlock It was never a Navy war. But in this Navy town, it was brought literally home to us again and again. We are home to nearly half of the Navy SEALs, including SEAL Team 6. Something like 4,000 to 5,000 total plus their families. SEALs are America’s special operations forces specially…
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WaPo Nabs Polk Award, Is Pulitzer Next?
By Peter Galuszka How ironical. Our esteemed Jim Bacon has been on a tear in recent months writing about media coverage of the problem of systemic racism at the Virginia Military Institute. Of special interest to Jim is the reporting of Ian Shapira, a Washington Post reporter who has been digging into the VMI. After…
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The Mythology of Robert E. Lee
By Peter Galuszka With excellent timing, the former head of the history department at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point has come out with a book about the mythology of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and much of the White “Southern” culture. Retired U.S. Army Gen. Ty Seidule, a former paratrooper, has deep Virginia…
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Mark Zuckerberg, Call Your Lawyer
by James C. Sherlock “You don’t need a Weatherman To know which way the wind blows.” — Bob Dylan, Subterranean Homesick Blues. Consider this: “Facebook was hit with twin lawsuits by the Federal Trade Commission and attorneys general from dozens of states on Wednesday, in one of the most serious challenges ever to the Silicon Valley…
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Hard Power Matters – America’s Universities Must Protect It
by James C. Sherlock This is a continuation of the discussion raised by my column on the folly of educating Chinese and Iranian visa holders in Virginia universities and colleges. Some in that discussion thought soft power would overcome what America loses in hard power. Soft power is both crucially important and utterly insufficient to…
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Why Are We Educating Citizens of Hostile Nations in Advanced Math, Science and Engineering?
by James C. Sherlock Updated Dec 16 at 1:55 PM The title poses a reasonable question. China and Iran are two of America’s greatest national security threats. Yet we continue to educate their citizens in the most security-sensitive programs of instruction at the highest levels of American higher education. Chinese and Iranian students are nearly exclusively…