The beginning of another chapter

My year at home comes to a close. I leave for Wolverine Country. It'll be a worthy endeavor, but likely one fraught with challenge. I wouldn't want it any other way, although I would do well not to repeat my mistakes from first semester of undergrad.

It's always re-assuring knowing that people are counting on you and that you enter knowing that the sum of your experiences have prepared you to treat this endeavor seriously. It's not just school for me; it's a job now.

Preparation and motivation will come together to make for an incredibly productive school year for me. And just like a job, I'll get to all the classes, note any hypos and embrace the ability of just soaking up information left & right. Office hours. Practice exams.

All in the pursuit of excellence, because it pays to be a winner and it sucks to be a loser. One might start out low in the depth chart, or on the totem pole. But that doesn't mean it has to end that way. No no. Plenty of times we've seen those that come in at the top end up dropping out. And those at the bottom, who barely scrape their way in a waitlist, take nothing for granted, and wind up doing just fantastic. Pays to be a winner because the only easy day was yesterday.

Military Taps Social Networking Skills--NY Times

It's always fascinating to see the application of computer technology to enhancing our capabilities.

June 7, 2010

Military Taps Social Networking Skills

By CHRISTOPHER DREW

BEALE AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. — As a teenager, Jamie Christopher would tap instant messages to make plans with friends, and later she became a Facebook regular.

Now a freckle-faced 25, a first lieutenant and an intelligence officer here, she is using her social networking skills to hunt insurgents and save American lives in Afghanistan.

Hunched over monitors streaming live video from a drone, Lieutenant Christopher and a team of analysts recently popped in and out of several military chatrooms, reaching out more than 7,000 miles to warn Marines about roadside bombs and to track Taliban gunfire.

“2 poss children in fov,” the team flashed as Marines on the ground lined up an air strike, chat lingo for possible innocents within the drone’s field of view. The strike was aborted.

Another message, referring to a Taliban compound, warned: “fire coming from cmpnd.” The Marines responded by strafing the fighters, killing nine of them.

Lieutenant Christopher and her crew might be fighting on distant keypads instead of ducking bullets, but they head into battle just the same every day. They and thousands of other young Air Force analysts are showing how the Facebook generation’s skills are being exploited — and paying dividends — in America’s wars.

The Marines say the analysts, who are mostly in their early to mid-20s, paved the way for them to roll into Marja in southern Afghanistan earlier this year with minimal casualties. And as the analysts quickly pass on the latest data from drones and other spy planes, they are creating the fluid connections needed to hunt small groups of fighters and other fleeting targets, military officials say.

But there can be difficulties in operating from so far away.

Late last month, military authorities in Afghanistan released a report chastising a Predator drone crew in an incident involving a helicopter attack that killed 23 civilians in February. Military officials say analysts in Florida who were monitoring the drone’s video feed cautioned two or three times in a chatroom that children were in the group, but the drone’s pilot failed to relay those warnings to the ground commander.

For the most part, though, the networking has been so productive that senior commanders are sidestepping some of the traditional military hierarchy and giving the analysts leeway in deciding how to use some spy planes.

“If you want to act quickly, you’ve got to flatten things out and engage at the lowest possible levels,” said Lt. Col. Jason M. Brown, who runs the Air Force intelligence squadron at this base near Sacramento.

The connections have been made possible by the growing fleet of remote-controlled planes, like the Predators and Reapers, which send a steady flow of battlefield video to intelligence centers across the globe.

The Central Intelligence Agency and the military use drones to wage long-distance war against insurgents, with pilots in the United States pressing the missile-firing buttons. But as commanders in Afghanistan mass drones and U-2 spy planes over the hottest areas, the networking technology is expanding a homefront that is increasingly relevant to day-to-day warfare.

And the mechanics are simple in this age of satellite relays. Besides viewing video feeds, the analysts scan still images and enemy conversations. As they log the information into chatrooms, the analysts carry on a running dialogue with drone crews and commanders and intelligence specialists in the field, who receive the information on computers and then radio the most urgent bits to troops on patrol.

Marine intelligence officers say that during the Marja offensive in February, the analysts managed to stay a step ahead of the advance, sending alerts about 300 or so possible roadside bombs.

“To be that tapped into the tactical fight from 7,000 to 8,000 miles away was pretty much unheard of before,” said Gunnery Sgt. Sean N. Smothers, a Marine who was stationed here as a liaison to the analysts.

Sergeant Smothers saw how easily the distance could melt away when an analyst, peering at images from a U-2, suddenly stuck up his hand and yelled, “Check!” — the signal for a supervisor to verify a spotting.

Sergeant Smothers said he and two Air Force officers rushed over and confirmed the existence of a roadside bomb. Nearby on a big screen map in the windowless room, they could see a Marine convoy approaching the site.

The group started sending frantic chat messages to their Marine contacts in the area.

As they watched the video feed from a drone, they could see that their messages had been heard: the convoy came to a sudden stop, 500 feet from the bomb.

“To me, this whole operation was like a template for what we should be doing in the future,” Sergeant Smothers said.

Military officials said they are planning to repeat the operation around Kandahar.

The effort is a major turnaround for the Air Force, which had been criticized for taking too long to adjust to different types of threats since 9/11. During the cold war, it focused mostly on fixed targets like Soviet bases. But commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq have often complained that it is hard to get help from spy planes before insurgents slipped away.

Marine and Army officers say that that began to change as more planes were sent to Afghanistan in early 2009 and the Air Force got better at blending the various types of intelligence into a fuller picture.

And the new analysts, who were practically weaned on computers and interactive video games, have been crucial.

While Air Force analysts were once backroom technicians, the latest generation works in camouflage uniforms, complete with combat boots, on open floors, with four computer monitors on each desk. Large screens on the walls display the feeds from drones, and coffee and Red Bull help them get through the 12-hour shifts.

The chatrooms are no-frills boxes on a computer screen with lines of rolling text, and crew leaders keep dozens of them open at once. They may look crude compared to Facebook, but Lieutenant Christopher said they were effective in building rapport.

“When it’s not busy, I’ll be like, ‘Hey, how’s your day going?’ ” she said. “It’s not just, ‘What do you need?’ ”

There is also some old-fashioned interaction.

The Air Force, which has 4,000 analysts at bases like this and is hiring 2,100 more, has sent liaisons to Afghanistan to help understand the priorities on the ground. And some analysts pick up the phone to build closer bonds with soldiers they have never seen.

Andres Morales, a senior airman, said he often talked to a 24-year-old Army lieutenant, helping his battalion find arms caches and track enemy fighters.

But after four of his fellow soldiers were killed, “he didn’t really want to talk about intelligence,” Airman Morales, 27, said. “He wanted to talk, more or less, about how life is in California, and how when he comes back, we’re going to go surfing together.”

Quentin Arnold, 22, another enlisted analyst, said he had been working so closely with the Marines that 15 to 20 had asked to be friends on Facebook. He just collected $1,500 from analysts here to send a care package, including a PlayStation 3 game system and an Xbox 360, to some Marines.

Still, three-quarters of the 350 analysts here have never been to the war zones, so a cultural divide can pop up. Several said they were a bit intimidated when Sergeant Smothers, 36, who has had five tours in Iraq, strode onto the floor here in February.

At the time, the analysts were blending data from the U-2s and the drones to watch the roads into Marja and fields where helicopters might land. But as Sergeant Smothers looked over their shoulders, encouraging them to warn the Marines about even the most tentative threats, the analysts warmed up.

“It was like the shy house cat that wouldn’t talk to you at first and now just won’t stay out of your lap,” he said.

As the operation unfolded, the analysts passed on leads that enabled the Marines to kill at least 15 insurgents planting bombs.

Lieutenant Christopher, who loves to chat on Facebook with her family in Ohio, was so exhausted from overnight shifts during that period that she skipped Facebook and went right to sleep. And sometimes, she said, she ended up dreaming about what she had just seen in the war.

Did Arizona declare war on Mexico?

With all the drama going on there about enforcing immigration laws v. claims about racial profiling, my head is spinning. Did Arizona declare war on Mexico?

Immigration to the United States, as always, is a tricky issue.

Supporters of the law recently passed in Arizona claim it's time that something be done to stem the tide of illegal immigration. On the other side, vociferous opponents charge it as tantamount to racial profiling on part of a white-majority state.

Both are probably right.

Meanwhile, the Department of Justice claims it'll file a lawsuit challenging what is perceived as an encroachment on federal power.

It's disappointing to see how much money, energy and time is being poured into a pointless law. The law won't really stem the tide of undocumented, who brave the desert, coyote smugglers and all kinds of other hazards to illegally enter our country. Even supporters of the law can see how it's really just a measure reacting to a reality rather than one that prevents the act of illegally crossing into the United States.

We can't ignore illegal immigration. To just open the floodgates, would, in effect, demonstrate our utter inability to police our borders which is a fundamental tenet to national security.

Rather, we should spend our resources on examining and addressing why illegal immigration from Latin America happens. It's a simple line that goes back to the 1992 Presidential campaign.

Then, as now, I submit that it's the economy.

They come here for jobs. Nativists claim illegals steal jobs and add to the crime rate. That's partially true. Crime's certainly an issue. As far as jobs go, it's more like a lot of Americans won't do jobs for the pay given to the undocumented. So if we are to categorize the act of competitive wages as the act of stealing jobs, so be it. Seems pretty "free market" to me, which is a major tenet of the conservative set in America.

If there are better jobs to be had down South, it's probably reasonable to say that it wouldn't be worth the arduous and risky journey to "el Norte," which is what faces most illegals crossing into the United States.

Maybe it would be more helpful to finish up that Drug War that's tearing apart Sinaloa, and start get to the process of bringing about jobs down there. It's probably easier than "declaring war" on Mexico. Already the legal challenges are piling up.

I welcome rational and civil discussion. Sensationalist polemics from Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck followers will be deleted. Those guys are intellectual jokes, anyways.

All the Crazy Shit I Did Tonight

"All the crazy shit I did tonight

those would be the best memories..."

Kid Cudi and David Guetta are onto something. (They're likely on something as well.) Life's misadventures can lead to the best stories--like one that recently came across my ears:

Four guys--S, B, T and Z--were out in SF for a night of partying. Before going out, the guys all force B, the youngest of the group, to wear a tie. B never wears ties. "Too preppy," he scowls, preferring the fresh and meticulously tousled look of a surfer boy. Deliberate messiness, he proclaims, is the best way to go and to impress women. Nonetheless, for that night, B grudgingly knots his black and blue tie before heading out the door.

Many rounds pass. Location after location; the guys can't remember because the world's spinning; the beer's flowing and the cash is disappearing. Hot girls stroll by in revealing outfits despite the temperature going into the 50s. Closing time rolls around and people filter out into the street. T & Z start macking on these two girls, and successfully retain their interest. In the process, they tell S & B to get lost for a while.

S & B start wandering, and encounter a group of well dressed girls from Mexico. They're living in SF for a few months just because they can (and possibly because of the drug war.) They're rich; they're young and they're looking for some fun. Next thing you know, S finds himself following B into a gleaming Mercedez-Benz driven by one of the girls, Maria. B's decided to chase Maria.

Problem for S though is that he doesn't know where in the city they are. He forgot where the other guys live, as he's visiting from out of town, and he doesn't know how to get anywhere. Never mind that, as S is crammed next to six hot Mexican girls, drunkenly singing loudly as the SUV zooms through the Paris of the Pacific.

Eventually, they stop at an afterparty in some hilly part of SF. (But what part of SF isn't hilly?) It's a ritzy apartment, currently occupied by a Brazilian guy who goes around pouring tequila down everyone's throats. It flows like water; the music blasts out of the speakers and moon shines over the gleaming city.

B moves in on Maria, kissing her like he'll never get to do ever again. As they get swept up in the emotion of things, S realizes he's out of energy. It's 4 am now and he's been up since 5 am the previous day. Time to call it quits. He fishes the keys out of B's pocket and coaxes the address out of him.

Running around the hills, S manages to make it home. The other guys roll in a few hours later, but B's nowhere to be found. Noon the next day, they get a call. B's in a ritzy community, 40 miles north of the bachelor pad. They have to go pick him up. Looks like only B got really lucky last night.

Upon picking B up, they decide to go to the beach, where they realize, somehow, B's jeans were torn up along the inner thigh. Aggressive one, this Maria.

Moral of the story? Ties work and tearing the inside thigh of your jeans is flat out embarrassing.

An Apology

For the most part, the writing quality of these last couple entries has really fallen off. I've been busy the last few months, chasing down my next dream--law school. Apologies as the admissions process, and other projects have taken over. Life's simply not as photographically-anecdotally exciting compared to when I lived in Korea or HK, my most productive periods of blogging.

This is just one of those times when I'm putting in my dues before moving on up in the world. It's just that this particular set of dues involve a 5:30a to 9:00p schedule.

But that doesn't mean I'm not constantly reading, watching and observing the world around me. Swim season just ended (thank god) so it means I can sleep again. No more rolling out of bed for a cold pool deck or repeatedly reminding kids about their streamline positions (only on a swim deck is it appropriate for a man to make himself look like a clown in a speedo) or agonizing of 0.5 seconds.

That said, there's nothing purer than the thrill of competing.

Phelps v. Cavic, Beijing 2008 is the perfect example.

There's that deafening silence before the sharp beep of the start. You dive in, head down, power those legs through the dolphin kick. Explode up, build that turnover and hit the wall hard. Boom, explode off that wall, head down, stay under while building the legs in order to break the surface.

But the training it takes to be able to do that can be quite long. And that's how I view my situation right now. It's a big training period. Am getting tossed into various cases at Legal Aid, doing research and teaching a new generation of Lancer water polo players and swimmers.

Oh, and a shout out to Ms. Wontons.

A Turning Point

Last night, I made the decision to drop a friend of whom I thought highly. It's too bad when you think it's a good idea to make the effort to stay on decent terms with someone because you know she's a good person and going to do good in this world. But what do you expect? Some people simply haven't developed the maturity yet. Or perhaps she lacks the fortitude to communicate clearly that either she doesn't want to or does want to keep a friendship. But what happened yesterday more resembled a slap to my face. A friendship is like a living thing; it must be cultivated and maintained. If not, it either enters hibernation or dies off.

Last night, I also saw the opposite of weakness. I found it in the weakened state of a man with cuts all over his body. Every part hurt and plenty of parts were swollen stiff. When I say "swollen stiff," I mean majorly swollen. The volume and intensity of a voluntarily endured five and a half days of sleep deprivation, cold pounding surf and physical labor left his booming voice a whisper; his movements labored and his walk limped. Here stood a man who had pulled through not because of his many physical talents, but mainly because of his pure force of will. It always comes down to matters of the heart. He refused to quit, and now enters Phase 2 of training. This hero could barely hug without a wince. To think that the foundations of his toughness began in the pool with me as a teammate is mind-boggling. Now he plans to eventually qualify as an operator and go save the world.

It's funny, and even appropriate that we went to go watch an action comedy about superheroes that night. Yet a real BAMF sat next to me. Last night was a turning point in the evolution of my understanding of humanity. Most think strength is physical and that heroes are just the stuff of stories to be recounted. They're wrong. Heroes emerge during Hell Week.*

*There's only one real Hell Week--often imitated, but never duplicated. Hooyah.

Picking It Back Up

Popping back up on the blog space to let out some thoughts into the public sphere. The last few months have been highly introspective into my role as a human in a society such as ours in the US.

I've spent most of my year at home before LS volunteering. It mostly began as a commitment I made to myself during the year in Korea. Simple acts of kindness made such a difference in the lives of people I met, whether it was observed vicariously, or of my own personal experience. There are some things that children do to endear themselves to you that no money or status can overcome. The best thing I ever did was to spend a year in that impoverished community.

Now that I'm back, I see how much suburban kids here take things for granted. And while it might be frustrating to see, I'm buoyed by a deep sense of optimism that things will get better for our us. A great example is all those LS apps and waiting that takes place.

It's so easy to get sucked into a neurotic mindset where a small ranking difference matters and admission into a school is the foremost concern of the day. Every day is an exercise for me to keep perspective, and I have the volunteering to thank for that. At the end of the day, LS is a means to the end of making a positive impact in this world and helping others, as well as yourself, overcome adversity.

In the mean time, I stay optimistic even if no one else takes me. This is just one step along the way.