The FTC went after Fortnite. Now, the video game industry is on watch

By Vincent Acovino

Published February 15, 2023 


ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

The video game industry brought in more than $200 billion last year according to recent figures, and government regulators like the Federal Trade Commission have recently taken on a more active role in policing the industry. NPR's Vincent Acovino says one lawsuit in particular has put the whole industry on watch.

VINCENT ACOVINO, BYLINE: Epic Games has reached a legal settlement with the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC accused the company of infringing on the privacy rights of children and questioned how they profit off of young players. Epic Games was last valued at $31 billion and makes Fortnite, which is one of the most popular video games in the world.

JEFF CHESTER: For decades, really, the FTC has really ignored the data gathering practices of the big companies.

ACOVINO: Jeff Chester is at the Center for Digital Democracy. He says Epic Games knowingly violated online child privacy laws known as COPPA, laws that Chester helped lobby for in the late '90s. Parents of children under the age of 13 were, for a time, not properly being asked about collecting their kids' data. Josh Golin of the organization Fairplay says that Epic did start doing that a few years ago.

JOSH GOLIN: But they didn't retroactively go back and check the ages of people who had already signed up for accounts, so Epic Games was probably illegally collecting the data of millions of children under the age of 13.

ACOVINO: The way Epic Games makes its money from younger players is also under fire from the FTC. Games like Fortnite are free to download and play, but they charge for things that make the game more expressive. You can buy skins to make your character look like Spider-Man or Naruto, and you can even buy dance moves based on popular songs for your character.

MALLORY SUPPA: I tend to go for the dances 'cause they always do, like, really popular music.

ACOVINO: Mallory Suppa is a 24-year-old teacher in Jacksonville, Fla., and she spent around a hundred dollars on Fortnite over a period of about three years.

SUPPA: "Toosie Slide," "Say So," "Fly N Ghetto" - all, like, the TikTok versions of that. I have all of those dances.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SAY SO")

DOJA CAT: (Singing) Day to night to morning, keep with me in the moment, I'd let you...

ACOVINO: But she doesn't regret the money she spent to hit the griddy with Goku. For her, it's a steal.

SUPPA: I've played a ton, and I also think - like, the group of friends that we play with, we all live in, like, different places. So if I were to try to travel to them and see them, it would be way more expensive than me being able to just hop on a game and play with them.

ACOVINO: It's younger players who may be more susceptible to the social pressures that fuel these purchases.

SUPPA: With kids, it's probably really hard because it's, like, constantly like, oh, look at this new thing, look at this new thing, every single day.

ACOVINO: And the FTC argues making these impulse-fueled buys was too easy. Josh Golin says that Fortnite saved credit card information after just one use and in some cases didn't even require authorization.

GOLIN: Fortnite didn't even have those kind of basic safety measures to prevent accidental purchases by kids that parents might not have wanted.

ACOVINO: Within the video game industry, Fortnite is hardly the biggest offender when it comes to these so-called dark patterns that are meant to trick players into spending money.

LEON XIAO: I've seen games that are obviously marketed at children where they would put, like, a very cute little pet into a cage and make the pet sort of cry to try to get the child to - are you sure you don't want to rescue this pet by paying, say, two bucks?

ACOVINO: Leon Xiao is a PhD fellow at the University of Copenhagen and studies how video games are regulated. He's familiar with the challenges of writing laws for such a large and unwieldy industry. One moneymaking addition to many video games has been the loot box where players pay real money for a random in-game reward. It's essentially a form of gambling. Belgium has made this illegal, and despite that...

XIAO: I found that 82 of the 100 highest grossing iPhone games were still selling some form of loot boxes.

ACOVINO: That points to the kind of enforcement challenges U.S. regulators are up against. Josh Golin says that's why the FTC has gone after Fortnite, one of the biggest fish in the pond.

GOLIN: And I think it's also a big enough fine that it's going to send shock waves across the gaming industry and cause other platforms to clean up their practices.

ACOVINO: Epic Games will pay $520 million in fines and has agreed to rework their practices. Quote, "no developer creates a game with the intention of ending up here," said the company in a detailed statement to consumers.

Vincent Acovino, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

A penitentiary unit will shut down after deaths, exposed by NPR and Marshall Project

By Joseph Shapiro

Published February 15, 2023

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Today, federal officials are taking steps to close one of the most dangerous prison units in the country. The Special Management Unit of the Thomson Penitentiary in northwestern Illinois will shut down, and hundreds of inmates will move somewhere else within the federal prison system. This change came about because of murders and suicides among inmates at Thomson, violence that was exposed by the reporting of NPR and its partner, The Marshall Project. We'll warn you that this report includes some descriptions of that violence. NPR investigative correspondent Joseph Shapiro is here to talk with us about this development. Hi, Joe.

JOSEPH SHAPIRO, BYLINE: Hi, Ari.

A SHAPIRO: The federal officials who are shutting down this prison unit say they are doing so largely because of violent conditions which you documented in your reporting. Tell us what you found.

J SHAPIRO: That's right. This is reporting I did with Christie Thompson of The Marshall Project. And first, we found a string of violent deaths in just two years - five homicides - prisoners killing other prisoners - and two suicides. And there was another violent death - we're not sure what happened - just two weeks ago.

A SHAPIRO: The question is, why? What set this prison apart? Why was it so much more violent? What did your reporting show?

J SHAPIRO: Right. Well, it started with a little-known practice, something called double celling, which is the practice of putting two men into one tiny solitary confinement cell. It's about the size of a parking space. And they're locked down for 23, 24 hours a day. And we reported on men also placed in restraints, often painful, four-point restraints, for hours or days, often in violation of federal prison policies. This happened in a room that the prisoners told us they called the torture chamber. And these tight restraints would leave scars that the men told us they called their Thomson tattoos.

A SHAPIRO: A lot of your reporting relied on prisoners or their family members who courageously spoke up about these conditions, sometimes even though they feared that the prison system might retaliate against them. Can you introduce us to someone?

J SHAPIRO: Yes, one prisoner, Demetrius Hill. He was an eyewitness to a killing. And he got a message to us the day after it happened. A family told their stories of how corrections officers would often put men together as cellmates or in recreation yards, men who they knew were going to fight. Sue Phillips says guards put her son Matthew alone in a recreation cage with two members of a white supremacist gang, who then killed him. Matthew was Jewish. He had a large star of David tattooed on his chest. And the indictment of these men who were charged with killing him says they have their own tattoos for a prison gang called the Valhalla Bound Skinheads. Here's Sue Phillips. She's talking about what the indictment says was found in their cells.

SUE PHILLIPS: They had white supremacy markings on their shoes. They also had cells that contained Nazi memorabilia, mugs with swastikas on them, articles of literature promoting white supremacy, drawings of Hitler.

J SHAPIRO: These men brutally kicked and stomped her son. And Sue Phillips says corrections officers should have known what would happen when they put her son alone in that recreation cage with them.

A SHAPIRO: I understand the Bureau of Prisons won't say where these 500 or so inmates from Thomson will go, but based on your reporting, it does not seem safe to assume that this is necessarily going to solve the problem.

J SHAPIRO: Right. Christie Thompson and I have been writing for seven years now about problems at these special management units. They're supposed to be places that take the most violent, dangerous federal prisoners, gang leaders, ones who commit prison violence - although, by the way, we talked to men who didn't seem to fit any of those descriptions. Our first reporting found similar violence at the previous version of the special management unit at the federal prison at Lewisburg, Pa. And shortly after our reporting, that unit was moved to Thomson. And Thomson became another violence factory, which is why the Federal Bureau of Prisons now is shutting it down after its own investigation, which found the problems at Thomson are so deep and persistent that they figured the place can't be fixed. It's not clear, though, what will replace it. Or, as you said, where these men are going. But we're going to keep watching.

A SHAPIRO: That's NPR investigative correspondent Joseph Shapiro. Thank you.

J SHAPIRO: Thank you, Ari. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NORAD is back in the news. So what does it do, exactly?

For years, North American Aerospace Command — or NORAD — had its headquarters inside Cheyenne Mountain, at the foot of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. In this archival photo, a bus enters a tunnel for a half-mile trip to a command center inside the Cheyenne complex. The headquarters is now in nearby Colorado Springs.
CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES

BY Bill Chappell
FEB 15, 2023 

NPR

It was created as a counter to a rival superpower. So in a way, it's fitting that a tiff with another superpower has once again thrust North American Aerospace Command — or NORAD — into conversations about national security and spying.

For the public, the most frequent mentions of NORAD likely come in Cold War-era stories and its famed Santa Tracker, which makes the news every Christmas. But over its nearly 65-year history, NORAD has had to adjust to new threats, and its leader says it needs to modernize, citing a "domain awareness gap" and equipment that was installed in the 1970s and '80s.


With many people now asking questions about NORAD, here's a rundown of its history, how it works today and how it might change:

Is NORAD a U.S. entity?

It's a joint project by the U.S. and Canada, motivated by concerns that the Soviet Union might send bombers to North America. What began as collaborations on air defense and radar installations evolved into calls for a shared organization. The two countries formalized the first NORAD Agreement on May 12, 1958.

The agreement has been renewed every 10 years — a process that has allowed leaders to repeatedly widen its parameters.

For a sign of how things have changed, look at the name. While the first unified command was called the North American Air Defense Command, its name was later changed to include the word "Aerospace," acknowledging threats from satellites and other space vehicles.

The organization also monitors for maritime threats, and it helps civil authorities track aircraft suspected to be used in drug trafficking.

How is it different from U.S. Northern Command?

It can be confusing — both are led by the same officer, Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck. Their responsibilities can overlap, but the key difference is that the U.S. Northern Command is a U.S. military headquarters.


U.S. Northern Command was formed in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Its activation in October 2002 was "the first time a single military commander has been charged with protecting the U.S. homeland since the days of George Washington," according to an official history.

It's responsible for protecting air, land and sea approaches to North America, from Mexico to the continental U.S., Alaska, and Canada.

U.S. Northern Command's mandate also includes disasters and emergencies, from giving defense support to civil authorities to sharing military resources with federal, state and local authorities.

Where is NORAD located?

For decades, NORAD was headquartered in Colorado's Cheyenne Mountain — a bunker facility whose tunnel entrance will likely be familiar to anyone who has watched the Stargate movie or TV series.

While NORAD still maintains a presence there, its main headquarters are at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs. Officials announced that move in 2006, calling for an integrated command center with U.S. North Command.

What is NORAD's 'domain awareness' problem?

The recent spate of unidentified airborne objects has put a spotlight on how NORAD's radar systems work: when they were adjusted to pick up objects like the Chinese balloon, crews saw much more information.

NORAD's current and former leaders say the radar network and other equipment sorely needs to be updated, and work has been ongoing with Canadian officials to chip away at that job.

"NORAD and USNORTHCOM rely on what we call the North Warning System, which is an array of short- and long-range radars in northern Canada, Alaska and elsewhere," retired Vice Admiral Mike Dumont, a former deputy commander at NORAD, recently told NPR.


"They were put into place in the late 1980s, and that system of radar coverage was concluded in about 1992. It's 1970s technology," Dumont said. "So no, NORAD does not have what it needs to adequately defend North America. They need new sensors, sensors that are able to detect in all domains. And by all domains, I mean space, land, air, cyber and maritime."

A NORAD/USNORTHCOM cyber unit was approved in 2012. But the potential battlefield keeps changing, including the threat of hypersonic cruise missiles.

Last year, VanHerck highlighted three "domain awareness challenges," from the difficulty of keeping up with competitors' advances in submarines to monitoring missiles and cyber operations.

"The good news is we're working to fix this," VanHerck said last summer. Praising the latest appropriations, he added, "There's four over-the-horizon radars in the budget, so I look forward to that."

NORAD made history this month


For the first time in its history, fighter jets from NORAD shot down airborne objects in U.S. airspace, Gen. VanHerck said this week, after NORAD tracked a massive Chinese balloon that the U.S. says is a spy airship, along with three smaller objects.

The balloon and another object were shot down under the U.S. Northern Command's authority — the first off of South Carolina and one in Alaska.

But NORAD was directly involved in two other takedowns: On Feb. 11, a U.S. F-22 shot down an object in Canada's central Yukon, after the object crossed from Alaska over the U.S.-Canada border. And on Feb. 12, a U.S. F-16 took down an object over Lake Huron, along the border.

What about NORAD's Santa-tracking domain?

By now, it's a famous story: back in December of 1955, a red phone at the Continental Air Defense Command, NORAD's predecessor, started ringing.

It wasn't a four-star general on the line — but a young boy, who had seen a misprinted phone number in a Sears newspaper ad urging kids to call Santa personally. The recipient of the call, Col. Harry Shoup, quickly went from being annoyed at a potential prank to realizing he had a new duty to perform: encouraging a youngster's curiosity and belief in Santa.

"So he talked to him, ho-ho-ho'd and asked if he had been a good boy," Shoup's own children later remembered.

It grew from there, as Shoup recruited servicemembers to answer the phone. NORAD's Santa Tracker later became an authority on the jolly gift-giver's trek around the world. [Copyright 2023 NPR]

It’s time to formalize ‘Gen Z’ as the ‘lockdown generation’



Analysis by Philip Bump

National columnist
February 15, 2023

In 2018, students from Gonzaga College High School in Washington hold signs with the names of those killed in the Parkland, Fla., school shooting. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)

I am a member of Generation X, the group of Americans born immediately after the baby boom ended in 1964. The name comes from the novel “Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture” by Douglas Coupland, an exploration of a group of young Americans who demonstrated the insouciance and skepticism of their elders that remains a stereotype for our age cohort.

That name only emerged later. A few other names were tried out first, things like “baby busters” or “posties,” both of which predicate our identity on the generation that preceded us. Eventually “Gen X” stuck. When the millennial generation (those that followed us) emerged, the same process unfolded. For a while, they were called “Gen Y,” as in “the generation after Gen X.” But “millennials” carried the day, a reference to the oldest of them being young adults when the millennium arrived — and of having grown up in the midst of the changes that overlapped with the new millennium, like the internet.


“Gen Y” stuck around long enough to inspire the name “Gen Z,” the generation that came afterward. Gen X, Gen Y, Gen Z. But, unlike the forced anonymity of “X” or the transition implied by “millennial,” “Z” doesn’t mean anything. It’s not the last generation, happily. It’s just still in that period of transition from having a nickname to having a real name.

Some real names have been attempted, like the “Homeland Generation” (a nod to 9/11) or MTV’s “the Founders” (a nod to … no idea). But there is a fitting alternative that has gained traction in recent years: the “lockdown generation.”

It’s time to make it formal. No more “Gen Z.” Now: “lockdown.”

Before I make the case for this particular name, let’s address the question of generational boundaries broadly.

Most discussions of generations use the boundaries established by the Pew Research Center for the simple reason that it established some. I’ve spoken with its team and it has good reasons to draw the lines where it does, but there’s nothing hard and fast about Gen X ending in 1980, for example. It’s just where the team drew the line. (The baby boom is the exception; the surge of births that accompanied the boom is demographically distinct. The boom is the only generation recognized by the Census Bureau.)


We use these groupings mostly because it is convenient and it is fun. It’s useful to be able to refer to people born in the 1980s and 1990s as “millennials” instead of constantly referring to them as “people born in the 1980s and 1990s.” It’s fun to argue about the characteristics of generations the way we argue about horoscopes. But this isn’t particularly rigorous. There’s nothing preventing us from simply agreeing that we should rename “Gen Z” something more evocative.

Each of the other generations identified by Pew has a name that derives from something specific to the generation’s cohort. The “silent” generation is so named as a reflection of its modest size, being drowned out by the more populous boomers, whose generational name has an obvious root. As mentioned above, “X” and “millennial” are evocative of those generations.

So what defines “Z”? If you ask members of the generation, they’ll often mention gun violence and school shootings. In fact, the first time I heard the term “lockdown generation” was in 2021 when I was interviewing Melissa Deckman, then a political science professor at Washington College. (She now runs PRRI.) Her work focused on activism among members of Gen Z.

“What’s interesting about Gen Z, especially Gen Z women — their formative socialization experiences, they’re not just growing up in the Trump era, but it’s growing up as a lockdown generation,” she told me. “They have lived these gun drills. For many of the young women I’ve spoken with, especially the highly active ones, being involved after Parkland, the March for Our Lives, almost all of them participated in and organized that. That introduced them to what political organizing was.”

This wasn’t her term, specifically. It had been adopted as part of the activism around gun control that arose following the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., in 2018. But it also predates that. One of the earlier uses of it in this context came in a 2013 Atlantic article responding to the mass killing at the Navy Yard in D.C.

“Mass shootings are a common enough threat these days that we routinely prepare our most vulnerable citizens — school-aged children — with ‘lockdown drills,’ which are now mandated in many states,” Sarah Goodyear wrote. “If you’re under 25, you may have experienced these yourself.”

That was probably true, particularly in the context of schools. The Washington Post has tallied the school shootings that followed the attack at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999. From 1999 to 2017, the country was averaging about 11 school shootings a year. Since, we’re averaging more than 30. The incidents aren’t widespread, but they are common, triggering states to implement mandatory drills of the sort referred to by Goodyear. Where I live, in New York, the mandate for lockdown drills in schools was implemented in 2016. Other states had them previously.

You’ll notice that the chart above overlaps another defining lockdown: the coronavirus pandemic.

In December 2021, the Associated Press released the results of a poll conducted in partnership with MTV evaluating the effects of the pandemic closures on Americans. The generational group that expressed the most strain on relationships and pursuing a career or education was Gen Z. The year in which there were the fewest school shootings in the past seven years was 2020 — because many schools were closed due to the pandemic.

If we use Pew’s year boundaries for the generation, you see how their lives have overlapped with these traumatic incidents. Columbine occurred before most were born, but the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., in 2012 happened when many members of the generation were themselves in elementary school. The Parkland shooting happened when many of them were in high school. The pandemic hit when most of them were in school or in college.


It is a generation that has consistently been locked down. To the extent that when Michigan State University locked down for an actual shooter this week, multiple students who sought shelter had been present for school shootings previously. One had been at Sandy Hook.

The name fits. It’s evocative of the period in a way that “Homeland” no longer really is. So we turn to a practical consideration: What do we call them?

The answer is simple. We call baby boomers “boomers.” We call members of Gen X “members of Gen X.” We call millennials “millennials.” We can call members of the lockdown generation “lockdowners” or “members of the lockdown generation.” That latter isn’t as punchy as “millennials,” but neither is “members of Gen Z.”

In the wake of the shooting at Michigan State, Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), the first member of this generation to be elected to Congress, suggested a new name for his cohort.



Allow me to propose a more concise alternative.



 Philip Bump is a Post columnist based in New York. He writes the newsletter How To Read This Chart and is the author of The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America. Twitter

Audit denounces French soccer federation president Noël Le Graët for sexual harassment

 Noel le Graet, head of the French soccer Federation (FFF), attends a news conference after the governing body's first Executive Football Summit in Roissy, France, November 23, 2016. 

Photo by Charles Platiau/REUTERS

Feb 15, 2023 

PARIS (AP) — Noël Le Graët no longer has legitimacy to remain as French soccer federation president because his management style and behavior toward women are “incompatible with the exercise of his functions,” a government audit released Wednesday found.

The 81-year-old Le Graët is currently under judicial investigation for alleged sexual and “moral” harassment as part of a probe being carried out by a special police unit dedicated to crimes against individuals.

An audit by the General Inspectorate of Education, Sport and Research concluded that Le Graët’s behavior toward women was inappropriate.

“The mission considers that Mr. Le Graët no longer has the necessary legitimacy to manage and represent French soccer,” the audit report said. “It believes that the drifting behavior of Mr. Le Graët is now detrimental to the image of the (federation) and invites the federal authorities to examine this situation in application of the statutory provisions.”

Le Graët was also criticized for the way he runs the federation, with the report blaming him for his “very centralized exercise of power.”

Le Graët, who was separately criticized last month for perceived disrespect toward France soccer great Zinédine Zidane, had agreed to step away from his role until the audit’s findings have been fully reviewed by the federation’s executive committee.

READ MORE: China’s national soccer head arrested on corruption charges

Federation vice president Philippe Diallo has stepped in to handle Le Graët’s duties on an interim basis. It remains unclear if Le Graët will now agree to step down. The federation did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the audit’s findings.

French sports minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra ordered the audit into the federation in September after the federation said it would file a defamation lawsuit against So Foot magazine, which reported that Le Graët allegedly harassed several female employees.

The French magazine published a six-page investigation quoting anonymous former and current employees, and revealed inappropriate text messages that Le Graët allegedly sent to the women.

“The mission noted not only comments and text messages from Mr. Le Graët, some of which were ambiguous and others of a clearly sexual nature, but also points to the the late hour of the messages, their repetitive nature and the nature of the recipients — women under his authority and/or in a relationship of dependence,” the audit report said.

Le Graët was re-elected to a four-year term last March.

The hearings conducted by the mission highlighted that Le Graët’s inappropriate remarks may have been “accentuated by the excessive consumption of alcohol.”

Sports agent Sonia Souid, who is among those who have accused Le Graët, said in an interview with L’Equipe sports daily that Le Graët repeatedly tried to approach her from 2013-17.

Souid said Le Graët texted her to ask her out or tell her he missed her. Souid said Le Graët never went too far verbally but made clear she should have sex with him to move her ideas forward.

“He never looked at me like an agent but like a piece of candy,” Souid said.

Souid said she was hurt by Le Graët’s attitude and that she thought about ending her career as an agent.

The audit report, based on more than 100 interviews and analysis of various documents, highlighted other dysfunctions at the federation and noted that its policy against gender-based and sexual violence is “neither effective or efficient.

RIP

1A Record Club: Remembering Burt Bacharach

Jorgelina Manna-Rea
FEB 16, 11:00 AM

LISTEN46:08

US songwriter Burt Bacharach performs on the Pyramid Stage on the second day of the Glastonbury Festival of Music and Performing Arts in south west England.
OLI SCARFF/AFP via Getty Images

Going all the way back to the ’60s, Burt Bacharach made his mark on the pop music industry with his lush, melodic tunes.

He passed away on Feb. 8 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 94 years old.

Lyricist Hal David and singer Dionne Warwick were his most famous collaborators, producing hits like “Walk On By” and “I Say A Little Prayer.”

As he grew older, his love for the craft of music-making didn’t let up. He collaborated with Daniel Tashian on the Grammy-nominated record “Blue Umbrella” in 2020

We got the 1A Record Club together in remembrance of Bacharach to discuss his legacy and influence on the pop music industry.
GUESTS

Jordan Lehning
Composer, arranger, and music producer based in Nashville

Daniel Tashian
songwriter, producer, and instrumentalist based in Nashville

Nate Chinen
editorial director at NPR member station WRTI and NPR Music contributor

Jason Lipshutz
senior director of music; Billboard

Coast Guard’s chief data officer: ‘We don’t know how to take care of our data’

Capt. Brian Erickson said his Office of Data and Analytics has formed three divisions — one focused on data analytics, another for data governance and strategy and a data integration division — to help guide the Coast Guard to become a data-driven organization.

 
By JASPREET GILL
on February 15, 2023


A team from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy participated in the National Security Agency’s 20th annual National Cyber Exercise (NCX) April 8-10, 2021. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Hunter Medley)

WEST 2023 — The US Coast Guard needs to start treating its data as a strategic asset much like how it does its ships and aircraft if it wants to become a more data-driven enterprise, according to officials responsible for its network and cloud efforts.

“We know how to take care of our ships and aircraft, we know how to overhaul them, we know how to bring them in on a depot cycle, we know how to do the old level maintenance on the ships and aircraft, you know, at the pier, in the hangar. Well, we don’t know how to take care of our data,” Capt. Brian Erickson, chief data officer, said today at the WEST 2023 conference.

“We don’t have data stewards, we don’t have a structure right now of data ownership,” he continued. “Who owns the data? Who is going to care for it? Who’s going to build it as a product for the rest of the organization to gain those insights at speed? And so that is a lot of what my team is working on.”

Erickson, who also serves as the chief of the Coast Guard’s newly stood-up Office of Data and Analytics, said the office has formed three divisions — one focused on data analytics, another for data governance and strategy and a data integration division — to help the Coast Guard to become a data-driven organization.

The office is building a “federated model of data teams” that are planted within individual business units so they can both pursue their own individual priorities and the organization as a whole, he said.

“Now we need access to that data,” Erickson said. “So we need to get the right analytic to the right person at the right time, whether that’s a visualization or dashboard for a senior leader or a playground for a trade analyst to explore. We have to eliminate that friction from the producer to the consumer. And that’s something we just really haven’t focused on in the past and the organization.”

In an effort to become more data-driven, the Coast Guard is also moving from a predominantly on-premises hosted solution for its data warehouses to leveraging cloud opportunities from industry, Cdr. Jonathan White, C5I Service Center’s cloud and data branch chief, said.

“Right now when we’re making changes to our on-prem environment, it just takes too long,” White said. “I think that leveraging cloud will get us there faster and it’ll provide us with better solutions than we could do on-prem. And we’re really excited about digging into that domain.”

Heading for the cloud, the Coast Guard wants to rapidly modernize its 90 legacy apps and 50 disparate cloud apps. Putting a common compute platform and storage platform on board its legacy assets while bringing new assets online is a key focus. Over the next five years, the Coast Guard plans to focus its investments on its infrastructure to build that foundation “to really drive capability in the field, to drive capability in our regional edges and in our headquarters as well,” White said.

“We have limited and siloed data services,” White said. “We have a ton of databases out there. They don’t share information with each other, or we put information into a singular data warehouse that’s very rigid and hard to work with.”

Krugman Thinks White House Will Use Legal Technicalities As Last Ditch Move To Avoid Default

By Josh Marshall
February 15, 2023 
TPM

We talked to economist and Times columnist Paul Krugman today in a TPM Inside Briefing. The full interview will be available for members tomorrow. But the biggest surprise for me came when we spoke about the debt ceiling. I think most of us assume that minting trillion dollars coins or invoking the 14th amendment amount to a kind of politics nerd fanfic — cool and probably the right thing to do but not at all things that are actually going to happen. Krugman told TPM he assumes that that’s exactly what will happen. They’ll deny it till the last moment. But if it comes down to the wire and the White House has to choose between default and one of several legal stratagems to save the full-faith-and-credit hostage from the House radicals’ firing squad they’ll do just that.

To be clear, he didn’t say he was sure or that it was guaranteed. But the fact that it’s his working assumption came as a pretty big surprise to me. He also points so much less discussed strategies as ones that may be more likely than boffo ideas like the trillion dollar coin.

“I think a lot of us are operating under the working assumption that the Biden people will deny up till the last minute that they’ll do any of the funny strategies. But then if push actually does come to shove they will. And they’ll mint the trillion dollar coin or they’ll invoke the constitution … There’s now a menagerie of different, exotic strategies that all have zero economic significance. They’re all about just exploiting the fine print in the law to avoid this. But if they can’t do that then it could be really bad.”

Krugman discusses a number of options. And it seems to be some of these lesser discussed options he sees as more likely.

Watch the whole exchange here.

Alaska governor eyes a future in carbon storage

The state itself has no overarching climate plan or emissions reduction goals


Becky Bohrer/Associated Press People rally in support of renewable energy policies, such as strengthening a renewable energy fund, across from the Alaska Capitol on Friday, Feb. 3, 2023, in Juneau, Alaska. Some environmentalists are skeptical of legislation proposed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy that aims to capitalize on carbon storage and carbon markets. (AP Photo/Becky Bohrer)

PUBLISHED: February 15, 2023 
By Becky Bohrer | Associated Press

JUNEAU, Alaska — Oil-dependent Alaska has long sought ways to fatten its coffers and move away from the fiscal whiplash of oil’s boom-and-bust cycles.

The newest idea, promoted by Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy, would have the state capitalize on its oil and gas expertise to tap into a developing industry — carbon storage — as a way to generate new revenues without curtailing the extraction industries that underpin Alaska’s economy. It’s also being pitched as a potential way for petroleum and mining companies to head off legal challenges over greenhouse gas impacts.

Hearings with state lawmakers are underway on legislation that would charge companies rent and fees for carbon dioxide storage deep underground in places like the Cook Inlet oil and gas basin. Hearings are coming on another bill that would enable Alaska to set up programs so companies could buy credits to offset their emissions. While details are few, such so-called “carbon offset” proposals sometimes include letting trees stand that otherwise might have been logged with the idea that the carbon stays stored in the trees so a company can pollute elsewhere.

Dunleavy said the state could ultimately earn billions annually without raising taxes on industry or Alaska residents. Alaskans currently receive yearly checks from the state’s oil-wealth fund and pay no statewide sales or personal income taxes.

“The reason we landed on this is it doesn’t gore any ox, and more importantly, it’s in line with what Alaska does, and that’s resources,” Dunleavy said, underscoring the idea that the plan, as laid out, wouldn’t harm existing interests.

But some environmentalists say the state, which has a front-row seat to the ravages of climate change, should be focused more on investing in renewables and green projects. Many of the oil companies operating in Alaska have emissions reductions targets, but the state itself has no overarching climate plan or emissions reduction goals.

The governor “will be the first person to tell you it doesn’t have anything to do with climate change, and it doesn’t have anything to do with solving Alaska’s energy needs,” said Matt Jackson, climate program manager with the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council.

It’s unclear exactly how much money Alaska could reap from the proposals, and there are still many questions around ideas such as the potential for other states or countries to ship in carbon dioxide for underground storage. Alaska officials for now have emphasized they want to prepare a regulatory framework for future carbon storage.

Shipping carbon dioxide is being analyzed in parts of the world. A project in Norway aims to ship carbon dioxide captured at European industrial sites and pump it into the seabed in Norway, according to the International Energy Agency. Japan is working on shipping technology.

Lawmakers in Alaska want to find experts who can help them analyze Dunleavy’s proposals, said state Rep. Ben Carpenter, who chairs the Legislative Budget and Audit Committee. Carpenter said finding people with the experience necessary has been a challenge. It’s not clear if Dunleavy’s proposals will gain traction during the current legislative session.

Alaska is rich in traditional resources — oil, gas, minerals and timber — and is home to a largely intact forest the size of West Virginia that is estimated to hold more carbon than any other U.S. national forest. But Alaska is also feeling the impacts of climate change: coastal erosion threatening Indigenous villages, unusual wildfires, thinning sea ice and permafrost that threatens to release carbon as it melts.

Dunleavy’s plan would give the Department of Natural Resources, which manages state lands for development including oil leasing, authority to implement carbon offset programs and would set up protocols for underground injection and mass storage of carbon dioxide.

Alaska’s concept echoes efforts in other fossil fuel-dependent states to capitalize on carbon offsets and sequestration or other emissions-reducing technologies while continuing to support the traditional industries they’ve long relied on, such as oil, gas or coal.

The proposal for underground storage would also offer a way for companies to mitigate emissions that might otherwise tie a project up in court, said Aaron O’Quinn with the state Division of Oil and Gas.

Cook Inlet, the state’s oldest-producing oil and gas basin near Anchorage, could serve as an underground storage site for carbon dioxide pollution from other states or even countries, according to the state Department of Natural Resources. The agency also said federal tax credits aimed at spurring carbon storage could provide a boost for a long-hoped-for liquefied natural gas project.

As part of its plan, Alaska wants to get authority from federal regulators for oversight of carbon injection wells, something North Dakota and Wyoming have already secured and that other states, like Louisiana, are pursuing or interested in.

An Iowa-based company working with Midwest ethanol plants is pursuing a $4.5 billion carbon dioxide pipeline project that would store the gas underground in North Dakota. The idea has gotten pushback from some landowners. In Wyoming, a state law requires utilities to evaluate getting at least some of their electricity from power plants fitted with carbon capture equipment, but utility reports suggest such retrofitting could cost hundreds of millions of dollars per plant with the expense showing up in higher electricity bills. Wyoming’s governor, Republican Mark Gordon, has vowed to make the coal state carbon negative, in part by trapping the carbon dioxide emitted by the state’s coal-fired power plants and pumping it underground.

ConocoPhillips Alaska, Alaska’s largest oil producer, is among the companies that have expressed interest in Dunleavy’s carbon plan but said it is too early to make any commitments.

The company is pursuing an oil project on Alaska’s far-northern edge that it says could produce up to 180,000 barrels (29 million liters) of oil a day. Environmentalists call the Willow oil project a ” carbon bomb ” that could lead to more development in the region if approved by the federal government. A decision could come by early March.

Alaska officials see perhaps the most immediate carbon opportunities on forest lands. Several Alaska Native corporations have made money through the sale of credits to let trees go unlogged, and the University of Alaska system is proposing a carbon credits program on some lands it manages as a revenue generator.

A report commissioned by the Department of Natural Resources identified three “high potential” carbon offset pilot projects on state forest lands, pegging the revenue potential for all three around $80 million over 10 years. The department said the report was limited in scope.

Associated Press reporter Mead Gruver contributed from Cheyenne, Wyo.

Waters off New England Had 2nd Warmest Year on Record in ’22

The average sea surface temperature was 53.66 degrees, more than 3.7 degrees above the 40-year average, the scientists said.

By The Associated Press

Published on 2/15/2023 at 5:51 PM

Lobster fishermen work at sunrise, Thursday, September 8, 2022, off Kennebunkport, Maine. Photo Credit: AP Photo

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The waters off New England, which are home to rare whales and most of the American lobster fishing industry, logged the second-warmest year on record last year.

The Gulf of Maine, a body of water about the size of Indiana that touches Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Canada, is warming faster than the vast majority of the world's oceans. Last year fell short of setting a new high mark for hottest year by less than half a degree Fahrenheit, said scientists with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, a science center in Portland.

The average sea surface temperature was 53.66 degrees (12 degrees Celsius), more than 3.7 degrees above the 40-year average, the scientists said. The accelerated warming is changing an ecosystem that's host to numerous important commercial fishing industries, especially for lobsters, they said.

One implication is that the warming is driving species more associated with southern waters into the Gulf of Maine and altering its food chain, said Janet Duffy-Anderson, chief scientific officer with the institute. That includes species such as black sea bass, which prey on lobsters.

“Who will be the emergent species and who will be the species that decline is, in large part, a function of those interactions,” said Duffy-Anderson. “At the moment, we’re not in a period of stability.”

The gulf is the nerve center of the lobster fishing business, which has recorded heavy catches over the past 10 years. However, lobster fisheries in more southern waters have collapsed, and scientists have placed the blame on warming temperatures.

The Gulf of Maine is also a key area for marine mammals such as the North Atlantic right whale, which numbers only about 340, and sea birds such as Atlantic puffins. Those species and many others are threatened by disruptions in their food supply due to warming waters

The environmental factors accompanying high temperatures in the Gulf of Maine include persistent, intense heatwaves, according to a report released by Gulf of Maine Research Institute on Wednesday.

The warming is also coming at a time when the world’s oceans are heating up. Last year was the third-warmest year for global sea surface temperature, the report said.

“What is being observed in the Gulf of Maine (and elsewhere around the world), however, is a loss of that balance: larger fractions of recent years are experiencing above average temperatures and cold spells are becoming vanishingly rare,” the report said.

The hottest year in the Gulf of Maine was 2021, according to records that go back to 1982, the institute said. That year, the average annual sea surface temperature was slightly more than 54 degrees (12.2 degrees Celsius). Last year was a fraction of a percent warmer than the third warmest year, which was 2012.

Those three years are the only ones in recorded history in which the gulf's average temperature exceeded 53 degrees (11.7 degrees Celsius).

The report states that other data also paint a picture of the Gulf of Maine as the site of prolonged warming. In nine of the year's 12 months, the average monthly sea surface temperature was within the top three warmest among all years on record, the report said. November and December both set new records for highest monthly average sea surface temperature in the gulf, it said.

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BY PATRICK WHITTLE, The Associated Press