Zionism: In the Words of the Leading Zionists and their Allies

by M. Shahid Alam / November 19th, 2024

Nearly all of these quotes are gathered from the chapter epigraphs in the book, M. Shahid Alam, Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism (Springer: 2008). A few of the quotes are from non-Zionists. The sources for most these quotes can be found in this book.

 Chosenness

“Israel is not another example of the species nation; it is the only example of the species Israel.” Martin Buber

“Only Israel lives in, and constitutes, God’s kingdom…” Jacob Neusner

“For me the supreme morality is that the Jewish people has a right to exist. Without that there is no morality in the world.” Golda Meier, 1967

“We do not fit the general pattern of humanity…” David Ben-Gurion

“…only God could have created a people so special as the Jewish people.” Gideon Levy

Zionism

“There are upwards of seven million Jews known to be in existence throughout the world… possessing more wealth, activity, influence and talents, than any body of people their number on earth….they will march in triumphant numbers, and possess themselves once more of Syria, and take their rank among the governments of the earth.” Mordecai Noah, 1818

“The ultimate goal … is, in time, to take over the Land of Israel and to restore to the Jews the political independence they have been deprived of for these two thousand years…. The Jews will yet arise and, arms in hand (if need be), declare that they are the masters of their ancient homeland.” Vladimir Dubnow, 1882

“…the spirit of the age is approaching ever closer to the essential Jewish emphasis on real life.” Moses Hess, 1862

“…Jews are a nation which, having once acted as the leaven of the social world, is destined to be resurrected with the rest of the civilized nations.” Moses Hess, 1862

“Today we may be moribund, but tomorrow we shall surely awaken to life; today we may be in a strange land, but tomorrow we will dwell in the land of our fathers; today we may be speaking alien tongues, but tomorrow we shall speak Hebrew.” Eliezer Ben-Yehudah, 1880

“…we must seek a home with all our hearts, our spirit, our soul.” Peretz Smolenskin, 1881

“Let sovereignty be granted us over a portion of the globe large enough to satisfy the rightful requirements of a nation: the rest we shall manage for ourselves.” Theodore Herzl, 1896

“Palestine is first and foremost not a refuge for East European Jews, but the incarnation of a reawakening sense of national solidarity.” Albert Einstein, 1921

Zionism:Weaponizing Antisemitism

“The anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies.” Theodore Herzl, 1896

“The struggle of Jews for unity and independence…is calculated to attract the sympathy of people to whom we are rightly or wrongly obnoxious.” Leo Pinsker

“The Western form of anti-Semitism—the cosmic, satanic version of Jew hatred—provided solace to wounded [Arab] feelings.” Bernard Lewis, 2006

Zionism: Ethnic Cleansing

“Will those [Palestinians] evicted really hold their peace and calmly accept what was done to them? Will they not in the end rise up to take back what was taken from them by the power of gold…And who knows, if they will not then be both prosecutors and judges…” Yitzhak Epstein, 1907

Zionism: Ambition

“Discussed with Bodenheimer the demands we will make. Area: from the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates. Stipulate a transitional period with our own institutions. A Jewish governor for this period. Afterwards, a relationship like that between Egypt and the Sultan.” Theodore Herzl, 1898

“We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai.” David Ben-Gurion May 1948

Zionism: Destabilizing Logic

“Will those [Palestinians] evicted really hold their peace and calmly accept what was done to them? Will they not in the end rise up to take back what was taken from them by the power of gold…And who knows, if they will not then be both prosecutors and judges…” Yitzhak Epstein, 1907

“God forbid that we should harm any people, much less a great people whose hatred is most dangerous to us.” Yitzhak Epstein, 1907

“As to the war against the Jews in Palestine….it was evident twenty years ago that the day would come when the Arabs would stand up against us.”Ahad Ha’am, 1911

“Two important phenomena, of the same nature, but opposed, are emerging at this moment in Asiatic Turkey. They are the awakening of the Arab nation and the latent effort of the Jews to reconstitute on a very large scale the ancient kingdom of Israel. These movements are destined to fight each other continually until one of them wins.” Najib Azouri, 1905

“It is all bad and I told Balfour so. They are making [the Middle East] a breeding place for future war.” Col. Edward Mandell House, 1917

“The question is, do we want to conquer Palestine now as Joshua did in his day – with fire and sword?” Judah L. Magnes, 1929

“It is our destiny to be in a state of continued war with the Arabs.” Arthur Rupin, 1936

“The day we lick the Arabs, that is the day, I think, when we shall be sowing the seeds of an eternal hatred of such dimensions that Jews will not be able to live in that part of the world for centuries to come.” Judah L. Magnes, 1947

“The state of Israel has had explosives – the grievances of hundreds of thousands of displaced Arabs – built into its very foundations.” Isaac Deutscher, 1954

“Why should the Arabs make peace? If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country.” David Ben-Gurion, 1956

“Historical logic points to the eventual dissolution of the Jewish state. The powers around us are so great. There is such a strong will to annihilate us that the odds look very poor.” Benny Morris, 2008

Zionism: Demographic Threat

“In Jewish cities, villages and kibbutzim … families are having 1.2 children. For theYishuv, that spells extinction.” David Ben-Gurion, March 1943

 Christian Zionism

“…we welcome the friendship of Christian Zionists.” Theodore Herzl, 1897

“The entire Christian church, in its variety of branches… will be compelled… to teach the history and development of the nascent Jewish state. No commonwealth on earth will start with such propaganda for its exploitation in world thought, or with such eager and minute scrutiny, by millions of people, of its slightest detail.” A. A. Berle, 1918

“Christian Zionists favor Jewish Zionism as a step leading not to the perpetuation but to the disappearance of the Jews.” Morris Jastrow, 1919

“…Zionism has but brought to light and given practical form and a recognized position to a principle which had long consciously or unconsciously guided English opinion.” Nahum Sokolow, 1919

“Christian Zionism and Jewish Zionism have combined to create an international alliance superseding anything that NATO or UN has to offer.” Daniel Lazare, 2003

“Put positively: Other than Israel’s Defense Forces, American [Christian] Zionists may be the Jewish state’s ultimate strategic asset.” Daniel Pipes, July 2003

Destabilizing Logic: Alienating Muslims

“…it seems to me and all members of my office acquainted with the Middle East that the policy which we are following [support for partition]…is contrary to the interests of the United States and will eventually involve us in international difficulties….we are forfeiting the friendship of the Arab world…[and] incurring long-term Arab hostility towards us.” Loy Henderson, November 1947

“US prestige in the Muslim world has suffered a severe blow, and US strategic interests in the Mediterranean and Near East have been seriously prejudiced.” George F. Kennan, January 1948

“You can trace the resurgence of what we call Islamic extremism to the Six Day War.” Michael Oren, 2007

Destabilizing Logic: Rise Of Israel/Six-Day War of June 1967

“Israel was now [after 1967] seen by the West, and primarily Washington, as a regional superpower and a desirable ally among a bevy of fickle, weak Arab states.” Benny Morris, 2001

“The glory of past ages no longer is to be seen at a distance but is, from now on, part of the new state…” Editorial in Haaretz, June 8, 1967

“We have returned to our holiest places, we have returned in order not to part from them ever again.” Moshe Dayan, June 9, 1967

“A messianic, expansionist wind swept over the country. Religious folk spoke of a “miracle” and of “salvation”; the ancient lands of Israel had been restored to God’s people.” Benny Morris, 2001

Zionism: Support of Western Imperialist Powers

“If His Majesty the Sultan were to give us Palestine…[w]e should there form a portion of a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism.” Theodore Herzl, 1896

“Don’t worry, Dr. Wise, Palestine is yours.” Woodrow Wilson, March 1919

“The United States has a special relationship with Israel in the Middle East comparable only to that which it has with Britain over a wide range of world affairs…I think it is quite clear that in case of an invasion the United States would come to the support of Israel.” John F. Kennedy, December 1962

Zionism: Incremental Strategy

“Erect a Jewish state at once, even if it is not on the whole land. The rest will come in the course of time. It must come.” David Ben-Gurion, 1937

“Egypt is the only state among the Arab countries that constitutes a real state and is forging a people inside it. It is a big state. If we could arrive at the conclusion of peace with it, it would be a tremendous conquest for us.” David Ben-Gurion, 1949

Settler-Colonialism/Ethnic Cleansing

“As soon as we have a big settlement here we’ll seize the land, we’ll become strong, and then we’ll take care of the Left Bank [of the Jordan River]. We’ll expel them from there, too. Let them go back to the Arab countries.” A Jewish settler, 1891

“[We] must be prepared either to drive out by the sword the [Arab] tribes in possession as our forefathers did or grapple with the problem of a large alien population, mostly Mohammedan and accustomed for centuries to hate us.” Israel Zangwill, 1905

“… Palestine shall be as Jewish as England is English, or America is American.” Chaim Weizmann, 1919

“I support compulsory transfer. I do not see in it anything immoral.” David Ben-Gurion, 1938

“We are a generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and the gun barrel, we shall not be able to plant a tree or build a house.” Moshe Dayan, April 1956

“Zionism comprises a belief that Jews are a nation, and as such are entitled to self-determination as all other nations are.” Emanuele Ottolenghi, 2003

“Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here.” Benny Morris, 2004

Jewish Power

“There are upwards of seven million Jews known to be in existence throughout the world… possessing more wealth, activity, influence and talents, than any body of people their number on earth….they will march in triumphant numbers, and possess themselves once more of Syria, and take their rank among the governments of the earth.” Mordecai Noah, 1818

“When we sink, we become a revolutionary proletariat…when we rise, there rises also our terrible power of the purse.” Theodore Herzl, 1896

““If His Majesty the Sultan were to give us Palestine, we could in return undertake to regulate the whole finances of Turkey.” Theodore Herzl, 1896

“…Jews are a great power in journalism throughout the world.” Israel Zangwill, 1914

“In large parts of Eastern Europe [during the early decades of the twentieth century], virtually the whole “middle class” was Jewish.” Yuri Slezkin, 2004

“The expansion and consolidation of United States Jewry in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries was as important in Jewish history as the creation of Israel itself; in some ways more important. For, if the fulfillment of Zionism gave the harassed diaspora an ever-open refuge with sovereign rights to determine and defend its destiny, the growth of US Jewry was an accession of power of an altogether different order, which gave Jews an important, legitimate and permanent part in shaping the policies of the greatest state on earth.” Paul Johnson

“…the Jews from every tribe have descended in force, and they are determined to break in with a jimmy if they are not let in.” Edward House, October 1917

 Jewish Power: Jewish Lobby

“I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism: I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.” President Harry Truman, November 1945

“I know I was elected because of the votes of American Jews. I owe them my election. Tell me, is there something I can do for the Jewish people?” President John F. Kennedy, December 1961

“Without this lobby Israel would have gone down the drain.” Isaiah (Si) Kenen

“During every congressional campaign, each candidate for every seat is asked to describe his or her views on the Middle East. Most office-seekers happily comply in writing. AIPAC then shares the results with its members, helping them to decide who is the most pro-Israel.” J. J. Goldberg, 1996

“AIPAC has one enormous advantage. It really doesn’t have any opposition.” Douglas Bloomfield, 2003

“In the last two decades between 1980 and 2000, American Jews gained power and influence beyond anything that they had ever experienced.” Stephen Schwartz, 2006

“A lobby is like a night flower: it thrives in the dark and dies in the sun.” Steven Rosen, 2005

“If Israel nuked Chicago, Congress would approve.” Steve Reed, 2009

“1000 Jewish lobbyists are on Capitol Hill against little old me.” President George H. Bush, September 1991

“… before I was elected to office I vowed to be an unshakable supporter of Israel. I have kept that commitment.” President Bill Clinton May 1995

“…I will bring to the White House an unshakable commitment to Israel’s security.” Barack Obama, June 2008

Zionism versus Saving Jewish Lives

“If I knew that it was possible to save all the [Jewish] children in Germany by transporting them to England, but only half by transporting them to Palestine, I would choose the second.” David Ben-Gurion, 1938

“If I am asked could you give money from UJA [United Jewish Appeal] moneys to rescue Jews? I say ‘No; and I say again, No.” Itzhak Greenbaum, 1943RedditEmail

M. Shahid Alam is Emeritus Professor, Department of Economics, Northeastern University. He is the author of Israeli Exceptionalism (Springer, 2008) and Yardstick of Life (KDP, 2024), a book of poetry. Read other articles by M. Shahid.

Trump’s Election Is Also a Win for Tech’s Right-Wing “Warrior Class”

Silicon Valley has successfully rebranded military contracting as a proud national duty for the industry.

By Sam Biddle

November 17, 2024

Source: The Intercept




Donald Trump pitched himself to voters as a supposed anti-interventionist candidate of peace. But when he reenters the White House in January, at his side will be a phalanx of pro-military Silicon Valley investors, inventors, and executives eager to build the most sophisticated weapons the world has ever known.

During his last term, the U.S. tech sector tiptoed skittishly around Trump; longtime right-winger Peter Thiel stood as an outlier in his full-throated support of MAGA politics as other investors and executives largely winced and smiled politely. Back then, Silicon Valley still offered the public peaceful mission statements of improving the human condition, connecting people, and organizing information. Technology was supposed to help, never harm. No more: People like Thiel, Palmer Luckey, Trae Stephens, and Marc Andreessen make up a new vanguard of powerful tech figures who have unapologetically merged right-wing politics with a determination to furnish a MAGA-dominated United States with a constant flow of newer, better arms and surveillance tools.


Trump’s election marks an epochal victory not just for the right, but also for a growing conservative counterrevolution in American tech.

These men (as they tend to be) hold much in common beyond their support of Republican candidates: They share the belief that China represents an existential threat to the United States (an increasingly bipartisan belief, to be sure) and must be dominated technologically and militarily at all costs. They are united in their aversion, if not open hostility, to arguments that the pace of invention must be balanced against any moral consideration beyond winning. And they all stand to profit greatly from this new tech-driven arms race.

Trump’s election marks an epochal victory not just for the right, but also for a growing conservative counterrevolution in American tech that has successfully rebranded military contracting as the proud national duty of the American engineer, not a taboo to be dodged and hidden. Meta’s recent announcement that its Llama large language model can now be used by defense customers means that Apple is the last of the “Big Five” American tech firms — Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Meta — not engaged in military or intelligence contracting.

Elon Musk has drawn the lion’s share of media scrutiny (and Trump world credit) for throwing his fortune and digital influence behind the campaign. Over the years, the world’s richest man has become an enormously successful defense contractor via SpaceX, which has reaped billions selling access to rockets that the Pentagon hopes will someday rapidly ferry troops into battle. SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet has also become an indispensable American military tool, and the company is working on a constellation of bespoke spy satellites for U.S. intelligence agency use.

But Musk is just one part of a broader wave of militarists who will have Trump’s ear on policy matters.

After election day, Musk replied to a celebratory tweet from Palmer Luckey, a founder of Anduril, a $14 billion startup that got its start selling migrant-detecting surveillance towers for the southern border and now manufactures a growing line of lethal drones and missiles. “Very important to open DoD/Intel to entrepreneurial companies like yours,” Musk wrote. Anduril’s rise is inseparable from Trumpism: Luckey founded the firm in 2017 after he was fired by Meta for contributing to a pro-Trump organization. He has been outspoken in his support for Trump as both candidate and president, fundraising for him in both 2020 and 2024.

Big Tech historically worked hard to be viewed by the public as inhabiting the center-left, if not being apolitical altogether. But even that is changing. While Luckey was fired for merely supporting Trump’s first campaign, his former boss (and former liberal) Mark Zuckerberg publicly characterized Trump surviving the June assassination attempt as “bad ass” and quickly congratulated the president-elect on a “decisive victory.” Zuckerberg added that he is “looking forward to working with you and your administration.”

To some extent, none of this is new: Silicon Valley’s origin is one of militarism. The American computer and software economy was nurtured from birth by the explosive growth and endless money of the Cold War arms race and its insatiable appetite for private sector R&D. And despite the popular trope of liberal Google executives, the tech industry has always harbored a strong anti-labor, pro-business instinct that dovetails neatly with conservative politics. It would also be a mistake to think that Silicon Valley was ever truly in lockstep with progressive values. A 2014 political ad by Americans for a Conservative Direction, a defunct effort by Facebook to court the Republican Party, warned that “it’s wrong to have millions of people living in America illegally” and urged lawmakers to “secure our borders so this never happens again.” The notion of the Democrat-friendly wing of Big Tech as dovish is equally wrong: Former Google chair and longtime liberal donor Eric Schmidt is a leading China hawk and defense tech investor. Similarly, the Democratic Party itself hasn’t meaningfully distanced itself from militarism in recent history. The current wave of startups designing smaller, cheaper military drones follows the Obama administration’s eager mass adoption of the technology, and firms like Anduril and Palantir have thrived under Joe Biden.

What has changed is which views the tech industry is now comfortable expressing out loud.

A year after Luckey’s ouster from the virtual reality subsidiary he founded, Google became embroiled in what grew into an industry-wide upheaval over military contracting. After it was reported that the company sought to win Project Maven, a lucrative drone-targeting contract, employees who had come to the internet titan to work on consumer products like Search, Maps, and Gmail found themselves disturbed by the thought of contributing to a system that could kill people. Waves of protests pushed Google to abandon the Pentagon with its tail between its legs. Even Fei-Fei Li, then Google Cloud’s chief artificial intelligence and machine learning scientist, described the contract as a source of shame in internal emails obtained by the New York Times. “Weaponized AI is probably one of the most sensitized topics of AI — if not THE most. This is red meat to the media to find all ways to damage Google,” she wrote. “I don’t know what would happen if the media starts picking up a theme that Google is secretly building AI weapons or AI technologies to enable weapons for the Defense industry.”

It’s an exchange that reads deeply quaint today. The notion that the country’s talented engineers should build weapons is becoming fully mainstreamed. “Societies have always needed a warrior class that is enthused and excited about enacting violence on others in pursuit of good aims,” Luckey explained in an on-campus talk about his company’s contributions to the Ukrainian war effort with Pepperdine University President Jim Gash. “You need people like me who are sick in that way and who don’t lose any sleep making tools of violence in order to preserve freedom.”

This “warrior class” mentality traces its genealogy to Peter Thiel, whose disciples, like Luckey, spread the gospel of a conservative-led arms race against China. “Everything that we’re doing, what the [Department of Defense] is doing, is preparing for a conflict with a great power like China in the Pacific,” Luckey told Bloomberg TV in a 2023 interview. At the Reagan National Defense Forum in 2019, Thiel, a lifelong techno-libertarian and Trump’s first major backer in tech, rejected the “ethical framing” of the question of whether to build weapons.” When it’s a choice between the U.S. and China, it is always the ethical decision to work with the U.S. government,” he said. Though Sinophobia is increasingly standard across party affiliations, it’s particularly frothing in the venture-backed warrior class. In 2019, Thiel claimed that Google had been “infiltrated by Chinese intelligence” and two years later suggested that bitcoin is “a Chinese financial weapon against the U.S.”

Thiel often embodies the self-contradiction of Trumpist foreign policy, decrying the use of taxpayer money on “faraway wars” while boosting companies that design weapons for exactly that. Like Trump, Thiel is a vocal opponent of Bush- and Obama-era adventurism in the Middle East as a source of nothing but regional chaos — though Thiel has remained silent on Trump’s large expansion of the Obama administration’s drone program and his assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani. In July, asked about the Israeli use of AI in the ongoing slaughter in Gaza, Thiel responded, “I defer to Israel.”

Thiel’s gravitational pull is felt across the whole of tech’s realignment toward militarism. Vice President-elect JD Vance worked at Mithril, another of Thiel’s investment firms, and used $15 million from his former boss to fund the 2022 Senate win that secured his national political bona fides. Vance would later go on to invest in Anduril. Founders Fund, Thiel’s main venture capital firm, has seeded the tech sector with influential figures friendly to both Trumpism and the Pentagon. Before, an investor or CEO who publicly embraced right-wing ideology and products designed to kill risked becoming an industry pariah. Today, he can be a CNBC guest.

An earlier adopter of MAGA, Thiel was also investing in and creating military- and intelligence-oriented companies before it was cool. He co-founded Palantir, which got its start helping facilitate spy agency and deportation raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Now part of the S&P 500, the company helps target military strikes for Ukraine and in January sealed a “strategic partnership for battle tech” with the Israeli Ministry of Defense, according to a press release.


Before, a tech investor or CEO who publicly embraced right-wing ideology and products designed to kill risked becoming an industry pariah. Today, he can be a CNBC guest.

The ripple effect of Palantir’s success has helped popularize defense tech and solidify its union with the American right. Thiel’s Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, also an Anduril investor, is reportedly helping Trump staff his new administration. Former Palantir employee and Anduril executive chair Trae Stephens joined the Trump transition team in 2016 and has suggested he would serve a second administration. As a member of the U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission, Thiel ally Jacob Helberg has been instrumental in whipping up anti-China fervor on Capitol Hill, helping push legislation to ban TikTok, and arguing for military adoption of AI technologies like those sold by his employer, Palantir, which markets itself as a bulwark against Chinese aggression. Although Palantir CEO Alex Karp is a self-described Democrat who said he planned to vote against Trump, he has derided progressivism as a “thin pagan religion” of wokeness, suggested pro-Palestine college protesters leave for North Korea, and continually advocating for an American arms buildup.

“Trump has surrounded himself with ‘techno-optimists’ — people who believe technology is the answer to every problem,” Brianna Rosen, a strategy and policy fellow at the University of Oxford and alumnus of the Obama National Security Council, told The Intercept. “Key members of his inner circle — leading tech executives — describe themselves in this way. The risk of techno-optimism in the military domain is that it focuses on how technology saves lives, rather than the real risks associated with military AI, such as the accelerated pace of targeting.”

The worldview of this corner of the tech industry is loud, if not always consistent. Foreign entanglements are bad, but the United States must be on perpetual war-footing against China. China itself is dangerous in part because it’s rapidly weaponizing AI, a current that threatens global stability, so the United States should do the very same, even harder, absent regulatory meddling.

Stephens’s 2022 admonition that “the business of war is the business of deterrence” argues that “peaceful outcomes are only achievable if we maintain our technological advantage in weapons systems” — an argument that overlooks the fact that the U.S. military’s overwhelming technological superiority failed to keep it out of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan. In a recent interview with Wired, Stephens both criticized the revolving door between the federal government and Anduril competitors like Boeing while also stating that “it’s important that people come out of private industry to work on civil service projects, and I hope at some point I’ll have the opportunity to go back in and serve the government and American people.”

William Fitzgerald, the founder of Worker Agency, a communications and advocacy firm that has helped tech workers organize against military contracts, said this square is easily circled by right-wing tech hawks, whose pitch is centered on the glacial incompetence of the Department of Defense and blue-chip contractors like Lockheed and Raytheon. “Peter Thiel’s whole thing is to privatize the state,” Fitzgerald explained. Despite all of the rhetoric about avoiding foreign entanglements, a high-tech arms race is conducive to different kinds of wars, not fewer of them. “This alignment fits this narrative that we can do cheaper wars,” he said. “We won’t lose the men over there because we’ll have these drones.”

In this view, the opposition of Thiel and his ilk isn’t so much to forever wars, then, but rather whose hardware is being purchased forever.

The new conservative tech establishment seems in full agreement about the need for an era of techno-militarism. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, the namesakes of one of Silicon Valley’s most storied and successful venture capital firms, poured millions into Trump’s reelection and have pushed hard to reorient the American tech sector toward fighting wars. In a “Techno-Optimist Manifesto” published last October, Andreessen wrote of defense contracting as a moral imperative. “We believe America and her allies should be strong and not weak. We believe national strength of liberal democracies flows from economic strength (financial power), cultural strength (soft power), and military strength (hard power). Economic, cultural, and military strength flow from technological strength.” The firm knows full well what it’s evoking through a naked embrace of strength as society’s greatest virtue: Listed among the “Patron Saints of Techno-Optimism” is Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, co-author of the 1919 Fascist Manifesto.

The venture capitalists’ document offers a clear rebuttal of employees’ moral qualms that pushed Google to ditch Project Maven. The manifesto dismisses basic notions of “ethics,” “safety,” and “social responsibility” as a “demoralization campaign” of “zombie ideas, many derived from Communism” pushed by “the enemy.” This is rhetoric that matches a brand Trump has worked to cultivate: aspirationally hypermasculine, unapologetically jingoistic, and horrified by an America whose potential to dominate the planet is imperiled by meddling foreigners and scolding woke co-workers.

“There’s a lot more volatility in the world, [and] there is more of a revolt against what some would deem ‘woke culture,’” said Michael Dempsey, managing partner at the New York-based venture capital firm Compound. “It’s just more in the zeitgeist now that companies shouldn’t be so heavily influenced by personal politics. Obviously that is the tech industry talking out of both sides of their mouth because we saw in this past election a bunch of people get very political and make donations from their firms.”


“It’s just more in the zeitgeist now that companies shouldn’t be so heavily influenced by personal politics. Obviously that is the tech industry talking out of both sides of their mouth.”

Despite skewing young (by national security standards), many in this rightward, pro-military orbit are cultural and religious traditionalists infused with the libertarian preferences of the Zynternet, a wildly popular online content scene that’s melded apolitical internet bro culture and a general aversion to anything considered vaguely “woke.” A recent Vanity Fair profile of the El Segundo tech scene, a hotbed of the burgeoning “military Zyndustrial complex” commonly known as “the Gundo,” described the city as “California’s freedom-loving, Bible-thumping hub of hard tech.” It paints a vivid scene of young engineers who eschewed the progressive dystopia of San Francisco they read about on Twitter and instead flocked to build “nuclear reactors and military weaponry designed to fight China” beneath “an American flag the size of a dumpster” and “a life-size poster of Jesus Christ smiling benevolently onto a bench press below.”

The American right’s hold over online culture in the form of podcasts, streamers, and other youth-friendly media has been central to both retaking Washington and bulldozing post-Maven sentiment, according to William Fitzgerald of Worker Agency. “I gotta hand it to the VCs, they’re really good at comms,” said Fitzgerald, who himself is former Google employee who helped leak critical information about the company’s involvement in Project Maven. “They’re really making sure that these Gundo bros are wrapping the American flag around them. It’s been fascinating to see them from 2019 to 2024 completely changing the culture among young tech workers.”

A wave of layoffs and firings of employees engaged in anti-military protests have been a boon for defense evangelists, Fitzgerald added. “The workers have been told to shut up, or they get fired.”

This rhetoric has been matched by a massive push by Andreessen Horowitz (already an Anduril investor) behind the fund’s “American Dynamism” portfolio, a collection of companies that leans heavily into new startups hoping to be the next Raytheon. These investments include ABL Space Systems, already contracting with the Air Force,; Epirus, which makes microwave directed-energy weapons; and Shield AI, which works on autonomous military drones. Following the election, David Ulevitch, who leads the fund’s American Dynamism team, retweeted a celebratory video montage interspersed with men firing flamethrowers, machine guns, jets, Hulk Hogan, and a fist-pumping post-assassination attempt Trump.

Even the appearance of more money and interest in defense tech could have a knock-on effect for startup founders hoping to chase what’s trendy. Dempsey said he expects investors and founder to “pattern-match to companies like Anduril and to a lesser extent SpaceX, believing that their outcomes will be the same.” The increased political and cultural friendliness toward weapons startups also coincides with high interest rates and growing interest in hardware companies, Dempsey explained, as software companies have lost their luster following years of growth driven by little more than cheap venture capital.

There’s every reason to believe a Trump-controlled Washington will give the tech industry, increasingly invested in militarized AI, what it wants. In July, the Washington Post reported the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute was working on a proposal to “Make America First in AI” by undoing regulatory burdens and encouraging military applications. Trump has already indicated he’ll reverse the Biden administration’s executive order on AI safety, which mandated safety testing and risk-based self-reporting by companies. Michael Kratsios, chief technology officer during the first Trump administration and managing director of Air Force contractor Scale AI, is reportedly advising Trump’s transition team on policy matters.

“‘Make America First in AI’ means the United States will move quickly, regardless of the costs, to maintain its competitive edge over China,” Brianna Rosen, the Oxford fellow, explained. “That translates into greater investment and fewer restrictions on military AI. Industry already leads AI development and deployment in the defense and intelligence sectors; that role has now been cemented.”

The mutual embrace of MAGA conservatism and weapons tech seems to already be paying off. After dumping $200 million into the Trump campaign’s terminal phase, Musk was quick to cash his chips in: On Thursday, the New York Times reported that he petitioned Trump SpaceX executives into positions at the Department of Defense before the election had even begun. Musk will also co-lead a nebulous new office dedicated to slashing federal spending. Rep. Matt Gaetz, brother-in-law to Luckey, now stands to be the country’s next attorney general. In a post-election interview with Bloomberg, Luckey shared that he is already advising the Trump transition team and endorses the current candidates for defense secretary. “We did well under Trump, and we did better under Biden,” he said of Anduril. “I think we will do even better now.”

Sunken WWII destroyer USS Edsall discovered 82 years after Japanese battle


The USS Edsall, which was sunk during World War II with more than 200 servicemen on board, has been located at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, according to the U.S. Navy. The 314-foot destroyer was called the "dancing mouse" for erratic movements during its final battle with Japanese battleships

Nov. 12 (UPI) -- The wreckage of a U.S. warship, sunk by Japanese forces more than 80 years ago during World War II, has been found at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, according to the U.S. Navy.

The destroyer USS Edsall was located about 200 miles east of Christmas Island by the Royal Australian Navy. The warship was sunk off the coast of Australia on March 1, 1942, three months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. More than 200 servicemen were killed.
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The U.S. Embassy in Australia announced the USS Edsall's discovery Monday in a post on X, as the United States celebrated Veterans Day and Australia honored Remembrance Day.

On Remembrance Day in Australia and Veterans Day in the U.S., we honor those we have lost and those who have served.

Alongside @CN_Australia, Ambassador Kennedy thanks the @Australian_Navy for discovering USS Edsall, sunk off the coast of Australia during WWII. Lest We Forget. pic.twitter.com/haklYuHwQo— U.S. Embassy Australia (@USEmbAustralia) November 11, 2024

"Captain Joshua Nix and his crew fought valiantly, evading 1,400 shells from Japanese battleships and cruisers before being attacked by 26 carrier dive bombers, taking one fatal hit. There were no survivors," U.S. Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy said in a statement Monday as she commemorated the servicemen.

Nix's evasive actions to try to save the ship also were commended by the Japanese who said the Edsall performed like a "Japanese dancing mouse," an animal known for its erratic movements.

The Edsall, which was commissioned in 1919, was traveling alone south of Java in 1942, when it encountered the Japanese battleships. The Edsall had been escorting convoys between Australia and Indonesia.

While most of the ship's crew were lost in the sinking, it was revealed during war crimes trials that several survivors were picked up by the Japanese fleet and later executed.

"On behalf of the U.S. Navy, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the Royal Australian Navy for locating the final resting place of the destroyer USS Edsall, lost in a valiant battle against the Imperial Japanese Navy in the early days of World War II," Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti wrote in a statement.

"The commanding officer of Edsall lived up to the U.S. Navy tenet, 'Don't give up the ship,' even when faced with overwhelming odds," Franchetti added.

"The wreck of this ship is a hallowed site, serving as a marker for the 185 U.S. Navy personnel and 31 U.S. Army Air Force pilots aboard at the time, almost all of whom were lost when Edsall succumbed to her battle damage."

While the Australian Navy discovered the wreckage in 2023, there had been no confirmation that it was the USS Edsall. Its staff used "advanced robotic and autonomous systems normally used for hydrographic survey capabilities to locate the USS Edsall on the seabed," according to Chief of Navy, Vice Adm. Mark Hammond.

"This Remembrance Day I am honored to acknowledge the role of the Royal Australian Navy in the discovery of the wreck of USS Edsall, a warship that holds a special place in our naval history," Hammond said.

"As we reflect on the legacy of the USS Edsall, we honor the sailors who faced tremendous challenges with bravery and determination. Their stories are an integral part of our shared maritime history and commitment to service," Hammond added.

"We honor their families and hope this discovery will be a reminder of the enduring respect and appreciation we have for their loved ones."

Garrison Payne, the U.S. Navy's First Black Commissioned Officer

USS SC 83 underway. Lt. j.g. Payne was awarded the Navy Cross for his service as commanding officer. (Photo: National WWI Museum via subchaser.org.)

Published Nov 10, 2024 7:40 PM by CIMSEC

 

 

[By Reuben Keith Green]

The hidden story of the U.S. Navy’s first Black commissioned officer spans five decades, three continents, two world wars, two wives from different countries, and one hell of a journey for an Indiana farm boy. For mutual convenience, both he and the United States Navy pretended that he wasn’t Black. This story had almost been erased from history until the determined efforts of one of his extended relatives, Jeff Giltz of Hobart, Indiana, brought it to light.1

From before World War I until after World War II, leaders in the U. S. government and Navy would make decisions affecting the composition of enlisted ranks for more than a century and that still echo in officer demographics today. Memories of maelstroms past reverberate in today’s discussions regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), affirmative action in the military academies, meritocracy over so-called “DEI Hires,” who is and is not Black, and in renaming – or not – bases and ships that honor relics of America’s discriminatory and exclusionary past.

Before Doris “Dorie” Miller received the Navy Cross for his actions on December 7th, 1941, and long before the Navy commissioned the Golden Thirteen in 1945, Lieutenant (junior grade) William Lloyd Garrison Payne was awarded the Navy Cross for the hazardous duty of commanding the submarine chaser USS SC-83 in 1918. While his Navy Cross citation is sparse, the hazards of hunting submarines from a 110-foot wooden ship were considerable. His personal and professional history, still emerging though it may be, reveals much about the nation and Navy he served and deserves to be revealed in full. Understanding the racial and political climate during which he received his commission is crucial to understanding the importance of his place in Navy history.Quietly Breaking Barriers

William Lloyd Garrison Payne was born on Christmas day in 1881 to a White Indiana woman and a Black man, and completed forty years of military service by 1940 – before volunteering for more service in World War II. Garrison Payne’s virtual anonymity, despite his groundbreaking status as the first Black naval officer and a Navy Cross recipient, stemmed from pervasive racial discrimination, manifested in political and public opposition (notably by white supremacist politicians like James K. Varner and John C. Stennis), and internal resistance within the Navy. His long anonymity exemplifies a failure to learn from the past.2

Fig. 02. Ensign Payne (seated), in command of USS SC-83. (Photo credit: subchasers.org.)

Garrison Payne, or W.G. Payne, served in or commanded several vessels and had multiple shore assignments during his five-decade career. His officer assignments include commanding the aforementioned USS SC-83 and serving aboard the minesweeper USS Teal (AD-23), the collier USS Neptune (AC-8), submarine chasers Eagle 19 and Eagle 31, which he may have also commanded, and troop ship USS Zeppelin. He had a lengthy record as a Chief Boatswain’s Mate (Chief Bos’n).

Fig. 03: 1917 North Carolina Service Card, thirty-three year-old Chief Boatswain’s Mate Garrison Payne was discharged from the Navy and immediately “Appointed Officer” (Commissioned) on 15 December 1917 while assigned to the USS Neptune (AC-8) at Naval Base, Plymouth, England. (Credit: Public record in the public domain.)

After his commissioning in Plymouth, he presumably stayed in England and later took command of the USS SC-83 after she transited from New London, Connecticut to Plymouth, England in May 1918.

Garrison Payne took Rosa Manning, a widow with a young daughter, as his first wife in 1916. The 1910 North Carolina Census records indicate that she was the daughter of Sami and Annie Hall, both listed as Black in the census records. Later census records list Rosa Payne as White, and using her mother’s maiden name (Manning), as she did on their 1916 marriage license. His race was also indicated as White on the license, and his parents listed as Jackson Payne and Ruth Myers (Payne), his maternal grandparents.

Fig. 04: Garrison Payne and an unidentified woman, possibly his second wife Mary Margaret Payne, presumably taken in the later 1920s, location unknown. Courtesy of Jeff Giltz.

In the photo above, Payne, wearing the rank of lieutenant, stands beside an unidentified Black woman, who may be his wife. He brought back Mary Margaret Duffy from duty in Plymouth, England on the USS Zeppelin, a troop transport, in 1919, listing her on ship documents as his wife. He used various first names and initials to apparently help obscure his identity.

Jeff Giltz of Hobart, Indiana is the great grandson of Gertrude “Gertie” Giltz, Garrison’s half-sister by the same mother, Mary Alice Payne. She was unmarried at the time of his birth in 1881. Her father, Jack Payne was the son of a Robert Henley Payne, who traveled first from Virginia to Kentucky, and then settled in Indiana, may have been mixed race. During the U.S. Census, census takers wrote down the race of household occupants as described by the head of the household. Many light-skinned Blacks thereby entered into White society by “turning White” during a census year. It is unknown when Garrison made his “transition” from Black or “Mulatto” to White.

None of Garrison’s half-siblings, who were born to his mother after she married Lemuel Ball, share his dark complexion. When she married, Garrison was sent to live nearby with his uncle, William C. Payne, whose wife was of mixed race. In the 1900 Census, Garrison is listed as a servant in his uncle’s household, not his nephew.

Taken together – Garrison Payne’s dark skin, the fact that the identity of his father was never publicly revealed and that he was born out of wedlock with no birth certificate issued, that he was named for a famous White Boston abolitionist and newspaper publisher,3 that his White mother gave him her last name instead of his father’s, that he was sent away after his mother married, and the oral history of his family – all point to the likelihood that Garrison Payne was Black.

In the turn of the century Navy, individuals were sometimes identified as “dark” or “dark complexion” with no racial category assigned. Payne self-identified as White on both of his known marriage licenses. According to Jeff Giltz, there are many references to Garrison Payne in online genealogy, military records and newspaper sites, but none appear on the Navy Historical and Heritage Command (NHHC) website. His military service likely began in 1900.

Rolling Back Racial Progress during Modernization

In his 1978 book Manning the Navy: The Development of a Modern Naval Enlisted Force, 1898-1940, former U.S. Naval Academy Associate Professor Frederick S. Harrod discusses several of the policies enacted during that period that helped shaped today’s Navy.4 He describes how the famously progressive Secretary of the Navy (1913-1919) Josephus Daniels, otherwise notorious for banning alcohol from ships, brought Jim Crow policies to a previously partially integrated Navy (enlisted ranks only) and banned the first term enlistment of Negro personnel in 1919, a ban that would last until 1933. No official announcement of the unofficial ban was made, but Prof. Harrod asserts that it was instituted by an internal Navy Memorandum from Commander Randall Jacobs, who later issued the Guide to Command of Negro Personnel, NAVPERS-15092, in 1945. President Woodrow Wilson and Daniels were both staunch segregationists and White supremacists. The Navy became more rather than less racially restrictive during the Progressive Era because of the lasting effects of both Secretary Daniels and President Wilson.

The number of Negro personnel dropped from a high of 5,668 in June of 1919 – 2.26% of the total enlisted force – to 411 in June of 1933, a total of 0.55% of the total force of 81,120 enlisted men. Most of the Black sailors were in the Stewards Branch, and most were low ranking with no authority over White sailors, despite their many years of service and experience. Those very few “old salts” outside that branch, like Payne, were difficult to assign, as the Navy did not want them supervising White sailors, despite their expertise and seniority.

Following his temporary promotion to the commissioned officer ranks – rising as far as lieutenant on 01 July 1919 – Garrison Payne was eventually reverted to Chief Bos’n, until he was given an honorific, or “tombstone”, promotion to the permanent grade of lieutenant in June of 1940, just before his retirement. Payne died on 14 October 1952 in a Naval Hospital in San Diego California, and was interred in nearby Fort Rosacrans National Cemetery on 20 October 1952, in Section P, Plot P 0 2765 – not in the Officer’s Sections A or B, despite being identified as a lieutenant on his headstone. Garrison Payne’s hometown newspaper’s death notice indicates that he was the grandson of Jack Payne, with no mention of his parents. A handwritten notation on his Internment Control Form indicates that he enlisted on 31 March 1943, making him a veteran of both world wars, as also reflected on his headstone. His service in World War II – as a volunteer 62-year-old retiree – deserves further investigation.

Fig. 05: Garrison Payne’s final resting place, in Section P, Plot P 0 2765 of Fort Rosacrans National Cemetery. Courtesy of U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs, Veteran’s Legacy Memorial.

The Navy reluctantly commissioned the Golden Thirteen in 1945 only because of political pressure from the White House and from civil rights organizations like the NAACP, led by Walter F. White, the light-skinned, blond-haired, blue-eyed Atlanta Georgia native who embraced his Black heritage. Unlike Walter White, though, Garrison Payne likely hid his mixed-race heritage to protect his life, his family, and his career. When he married Mary Margaret Duffy in 1937, at the age of 54, he travelled more than 170 miles from San Diego, California to Yuma, Arizona to do so. Why? His new wife, Mary Margaret Duffy, was 37, and an immigrant from Ireland. He had previously listed her as his wife when he transported her to America in 1919. Are there records of this marriage overseas? Would that interracial marriage have been recognized, given that interracial marriage would remain illegal in both states for years to come? On their marriage certificate, as with Payne’s first marriage certificate, both spouses are listed as White.

The Navy’s Circular Letter 48-46, dated 27 February 1946, officially lifted “all restrictions governing the types of assignments for which Negro naval personnel are eligible.” Despite that edict, and President Truman’s Executive Order desegregating the armed forces in 1948, it would be decades before the Navy’s officer ranks would include more than fifty Blacks.

The stories of several early Black chief petty officers are missing from the Navy’s Historical and Heritage Command’s website, though it does include the story of a contemporary of Payne’s, Chief Boatswain’s Mate John Henry “Dick” Turpin, a Black man. That Payne, a commissioned officer, is absent and unrecognized can be attributed to at least five possible reasons.

The first is that the Navy didn’t know of his existence, significance, or accomplishments. Table 5 in Professor Harrods’s book is titled “The Color of the Enlisted Forces, 1906 – 1940,” and is compiled from the Annual Reports of the Chief of Navigation for those years, with eleven different racial categories, including “other.” Where Garrison Payne fell in those figures during his enlisted service is uncertain, but he was present in the Navy for each of those year’s reports.

The second is that Payne had no direct survivors to tell his story, and no one may have asked him to tell it. He and his first wife Rosa likely divorced sometime after the death of their only child. It is unknown if his Irish-born wife Mary Margaret produced any children by Garrison.

The third reason could be that the Navy may have kept his story quiet for his own protection, and that of the Woodrow Wilson administration and the Indiana political leadership. Garrison Payne was commissioned by the same President Woodrow Wilson who screened the movie Birth of a Nation at the White House in 1915, re-segregated the federal government offices in Washington DC, refused to publicly condemn the racial violence and lynching during the “Red Summer” of 1919, and whose Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, was one of the masterminds behind the 1898 Wilmington Insurrection, which violently overthrew an elected integrated government in Wilmington, North Carolina. Acknowledging Payne as a decorated and successful Black naval officer would have been an embarrassment to Wilson, Daniels, and undercut their political and racist agendas.

Black veterans were specifically targeted after both world wars, by both civilians and military personnel, to reassert White supremacy. Payne was from Indiana, where the Ku Klux Klan was revived in 1915 and became a very powerful organization in the 1920s. Such organizations may have sought out and harassed Payne and his family, had they known that this Black Indiana farm boy, born to a White mother, had not only received a commission in the U.S. Navy but had commanded White men in combat.

The fourth reason is that the Navy may have wanted to hide his racial identity. His record of accomplishment as a Navy Cross recipient and ship’s C.O. would have undermined the widespread belief that Black men could not perform successfully as leaders, much less decorated military officers. He was not commissioned as part of some social experiment or social engineering, but because the Navy needed experienced, reliable men to man a rapidly-expanding fleet and train inexperienced crews. Garrison Payne did just that, during years of dangerous duty at sea.

The fifth reason may be that Payne recognized the benefits of passing for White to his life and career, which may have compelled him to do so. He was raised in a largely white society, by white-appearing relatives. Had he not successfully “passed,” he likely would not have been commissioned.

Regardless of the reasons in the past, it is now time to herald the brave naval service of Garrison Payne. The Navy Historical and Heritage Command, the Smithsonian Institution, the Indiana Historical Society, the Hampton Roads Navy Museum, and others should work together to bring his amazing story out of the shadows.

Why Garrison Payne’s Story Matters

For years, many Black naval officers have searched in vain for stories of their heroic forebearers. Actions taken by politicians regarding nominations to military academies for much of the 20th century helped ensure that Black military officers remained a rarity, particularly those hailing from Southern states.5 The life story of Lieutenant Garrison Payne needs to be thoroughly documented and publicized because representation matters.

On a personal note, knowing of his story while I was serving as one of the few Black officers in the Navy would have inspired me immensely. Garrison Payne served as likely the only Black officer in the Navy for his entire career. He showed what was possible. Heralding his trailblazing career can only positively impact the discussions about the future composition of the U.S. Navy’s officer corps as it inspires generations of sailors. Historians and researchers should continue the work of archival research to gain a fuller understanding of his story and significance. My hope is that veteran’s organizations and national institutions such as the Smithsonian Institution begin the effort to flesh out the story of Lieutenant Garrison Payne.

This article appears courtesy of CIMSEC and may be found in its original form here. 

Reuben Keith Green, Lieutenant Commander, USN (ret) served 22 years in the Atlantic Fleet (1975-1997). After nine years in the enlisted ranks as a Mineman, Yeoman, and Equal Opportunity Program Specialist, he graduated from Officer Candidate School in 1984 and then served four consecutive sea tours. Both a steam and gas turbine qualified engineer officer of the watch (EOOW), he served as a Tactical Action Officer (TAO) in the Persian Gulf, and as executive officer in a Navy hydrofoil, USS Gemini (PHM-6). He holds a Master’s degree from Webster University in Human Resources Development, and is the author of Black Officer, White Navy – A Memoir, recently published by University Press of Kentucky.

Endnotes

1. Except as otherwise cited, research in this article is based on documents in the author’s possession and oral history interviews with Mr. Jeff Giltz.

2. War and Race: The Black Officer in the American Military. 1915-1941, 1981, Gerald W. Patton, Greenwood Press

3. All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery, 2008, Henry Mayer, W. W. Norton and Company

4. Manning the New Navy: The Development of a Modern Naval Enlisted Force, 1899-1940, 1978, Frederick S. Harrod, Greenwood Press.

5. The Tragedy of the Lost Generation, Proceedings, August 2024, VOL 150/8/1458, John P. Cordle, Reuben Keith Green, U.S. Naval Institute.

The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.

 

AMS Science Preview: Turbulence & thunderstorms, heat stress, future derechos

Early online research from journals of the American Meteorological Society

American Meteorological Society

The American Meteorological Society continuously publishes research on climate, weather, and water in its 12 journals. Many of these articles are available for early online access–they are peer-reviewed, but not yet in their final published form.

Below is a selection of articles published early online recently. Some articles are open-access; to view others, members of the media can contact kpflaumer@ametsoc.org for press login credentials.

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JOURNAL ARTICLES

A New Heat Stress Index For Climate Change Assessment
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

Heat Index may dramatically underestimate heat stress in extreme temperatures. This work compares the Heat Index (HI), developed to measure heat stress on the human body, to a recently developed Extended Heat Index (EHI) that aims to function better for the kind of extreme humid heat that is becoming more common with climate change. The study finds that during extreme heat waves, “the original [Heat Index] can underestimate heat stress by a considerable amount” (5-10°C) compared to the EHI.

Lengthening Atlantic Hurricane Seasons with Earlier Storm Formation Dates Including Implications from 2020
Journal of Climate

Atlantic hurricane season is lengthening. A statistical analysis of Atlantic hurricane seasons indicates a statistically significant lengthening trend since the 1970s. This is primarily due to more storms forming earlier in the year. “Since the early 1970s, dates for the earliest storms have trended earlier, the last storm’s dissipation dates later, and seasons correspondingly longer,” the authors write.

Spatial Patterns of Turbulence near Thunderstorms
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

Thunderstorms cause flight turbulence up to 100 km away. A new study examining radar data and airline reports finds that turbulence risk is up to five times higher than normal within 32 km of a radar-identified storm at flight altitude, and twice as high 70 km away. Elevated risk was found up to 100 km away from a storm. In addition, when flying over a storm, turbulence risk was up to 20 times higher than normal, and never completely dissipated at any height.

Future Derecho Potential in the United States
Journal of Climate

Derechos to increase, intensify in central, eastern U.S. under future climate. Derechos, and other windstorms driven by thunderstorm systems, are due to increase according to the authors’ high-resolution climate simulations. With both intermediate and pessimistic future greenhouse gas concentrations, models suggest increased frequency, intensity, and geographic spread of MCS-driven windstorms across the central and eastern contiguous United States.

Changes in Extreme Daily Precipitation over the Contiguous United States from Convection-Permitting Simulations
Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology

Precipitation extremes to shift across continental U.S. cities, model suggests. A model shown to “admirably” model historical precipitation extremes (the highest 1% of daily rainfall events) found statistically significant increases in these events during winter and spring across the Midwest and Ohio Valley, and decreases in such events during the winter for the southern Great Plains by the end of the century. The authors also found increasing variability in extremes across several U.S. cities, including Seattle, Phoenix, and Minneapolis.

Delayed Impact of Biomass Burning in the Indochinese Peninsula on the Bay of Bengal Monsoon
Journal of Climate

Biomass burning on the Indochinese Peninsula may delay monsoon onset in the Bay of Bengal. A modeling study suggests that aerosols from fires on the Indochinese Peninsula can reduce the amount of solar radiation reaching the ocean’s surface, creating a cooler area that suppresses convection and certain atmospheric flows. According to the model, this could lead to a delayed monsoon onset in the Bay of Bengal.

The Efficacy of Red Flag Warnings in Mitigating Human-Caused Wildfires across the Western United States
Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology

Red flag warnings have limited usefulness for reducing human-caused wildfire ignitions. National Weather Service red flag warnings (RFWs) denote weather conditions conducive to extreme wildfires. Examining data from the Western United States, the authors found some evidence to support the idea that fewer people engaged in activities like debris burning on red flag days, while the warnings had no impact on habitual behaviors like smoking, or the incidence of fires caused by infrastructure issues (e.g., power lines).

Burn Period: A use-inspired metric to track wildfire risk across Arizona and New Mexico in the southwest U.S.
Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology

“Burn period” tracks time windows for wildfire-inducing conditions. A new tool, the Burn Period Tracker, formalizes a term used by wildland fire managers. Burn period (the number of hours each day with atmospheric humidity below 20%) tracks well with fire weather conditions in the U.S. Southwest and allows for improved short-term planning around fire risk.

Projected effects of climate change on meteorological droughts over China: A study based on high-resolution NEX-GDDP data
Journal of Hydrometeorology

Droughts to increase in China under future climate scenarios. The authors’ analysis suggests that moderate and extreme droughts are projected to increase across China under moderate (RCP4.5) and worst-case (RCP8.5) atmospheric greenhouse gas scenarios, respectively.

You can view all research published in AMS Journals at journals.ametsoc.org.

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AMS BLOG

Tornado damage risk is increasing across the U.S. (even where tornadoes aren’t); peer pressure presents campus tornado safety issues; and bilingual weather warnings are a lifeline for Spanish-speakers. The 31st Conference on Severe Local Storms took place October 20-25, 2024, and the first session dealt with societal risks and perceptions of severe storms. Read about some of the takeaways on the AMS Front Page Blog, including how weather warnings are evolving.

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About the American Meteorological Society

The American Meteorological Society advances the atmospheric and related sciences, technologies, applications, and services for the benefit of society. Founded in 1919, AMS has a membership of around 12,000 professionals, students, and weather enthusiasts. AMS publishes 12 atmospheric and related oceanic and hydrologic science journals; hosts more than 12 conferences annually; and offers numerous programs and services. Visit us at www.ametsoc.org/.

About AMS Journals

The American Meteorological Society continuously publishes research on climate, weather, and water in its 12 journals. Some AMS journals are open access. Media login credentials are available for subscription journals. Journals include the Bulletin of the American Meteorolocial Society, Weather, Climate, and Society, the Journal of Climate, and Monthly Weather Review.

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Journal

Journal of Climate