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… read about the Development Industrial Complex.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is an entity fundamentally at odds with its own existence. Created with the twin goals of fostering self-sufficiency in countries abroad, while ensuring US contractors were the ones to foster self-sufficiency, USAID delivers some tangible good and relief in the world, but mainly as a second-order effect of ensuring the contractors to which it has outsourced work remain well-fed. “Many of these private-sector companies that profit from development have also contributed to the problems that they are now paid to remedy,” writes Zoe H. Robbin for New Lines Magazine [[link removed]], before describing how American Rice, an agricultural company, and Chemonics, a development aid company, were both owned by the same corporation. This meant American Rice first flooded Haiti with subsidized rice, and then saw Chemonics win the contract to monitor food security in the country after such efforts had devastated local agriculture. Instead of USAID focusing on long-term development goals, with cash transfers primarily to local contractors that could deliver results over time, Robbin points out that Chemonics and other development contractors have formed a lobby spending thousands of dollars against this model. In our warming world, other, better possibilities [[link removed]] must exist.

Saudi Accountability

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is set to release new population statistics, a semi-regular portrait of the nation through its people. The top-line numbers are straightforward, showcasing a nation of over 32 million, with the majority Saudi-born and an even greater portion of the population under 30 born in the country. But, writes Andrew Leber [[link removed]], the data alone isn’t the story, as the latest census contains revised estimates for errors in past censuses.

“Comparing the new census data to the last available mid-year population estimate shows how under-counting non-citizens and over-counting citizens continued to throw off population estimates through 2021,” writes Leber.

Getting the exact numbers correct is important for any government. What stands out about Saudi Arabia is the consistent revisions to past estimates, all made in the wake of the country offering a more precise focus on the ages and origins of school children now.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] Dope Beats

In April 2022, Taliban leader Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada imposed a ban on drugs in Afghanistan. The move, an echo of prohibition under the previous era of Taliban rule, has now created changes observable from space. A bazaar town once used as a clearing house for methamphetamine and its ephedra, its constituent part, sits empty, according to an analysis of satellite imagery by David Mansfield of Alcis [[link removed]].

“High resolution satellite imagery shows just how impactful this effort was with zero ephedrine labs visible in a 400 square kilometre area around Abdul Wadood in September 2022, compared to 174 in February 2020, 126 in March 2021 and 114 in January 2022,” writes Mansfield

Similar changes in the production of opium crops, taken after the harvest of the first crop and early in the planting of the second and third crops, are visible both in the price change of opium, and the increased prevalence of wheat on satellite images, replacing what was once poppies.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE Fallout Shelter: Part I

Nuclear war is an atmospheric science. The tremendous amount of energy released from splitting an atom, either fission alone or fission plus fusion [[link removed]], sucks the ground into the sky and scatters windborne fallout across a vast area.

In “ Radioactive Fallout and Potential Fatalities from Nuclear Attacks on China’s New Missile Silo Fields [[link removed]],” authors Sébastien Philippe and Ivan Stepanov examine the specific likelihood of airborne harm in a potential nuclear attack against China’s new intercontinental ballistic missile silo fields.

“While silos are typically located in areas with low population density, previous studies have shown that the fallout resulting from a nuclear attack on these sites can travel hundreds of kilometers putting nearby population centers at risk of receiving lethal doses of radiation,” the authors pointed out.

Specifically, they walk through a scenario where each of the 370 silos in China is targeted by two warheads, about 300 kilotons of TNT in explosive force. A 300 KT weapon would match the B-61 bombs in the US inventory, the lowest-yield US nukes available. Each of those explosions would also be 20 times more powerful than Little Boy, the 15 KT bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima [[link removed]] on Aug. 6, 1945. They would also be 15 times more powerful than Fat Man, the 20 KT bomb the US dropped on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945.

“We find that counterforce attacks on the Yumen, Hami, and Ordos silo fields will put millions of Chinese at risk of lethal doses of radiation,” the authors write. “Our results show that an attack on the Ordos missile silo field located ∼700 km west of Beijing could deliver a lethal dose of radiation to the inhabitants of the Chinese capital should high altitude winds blow toward the east as they typically do in wintertime.”

The term for people caught in fallout far from the blast is “downwinders,” and they’ve existed since the aftermath of the first atomic detonation at the Trinity Site in New Mexico on Jul. 16, 1945.

“About 80 percent of the initial activity is located within the cloud top (from 8 to 15-km altitude) at an altitude where winds are dominated by fast-flowing air currents (jet streams) blowing toward the east,” the authors explained. Those winds are frequent, “and can carry radionuclides over hundreds of kilometers toward densely populated areas in less than two days.”

Given the opportunity to shelter, and assuming only a nuclear attack against the silo locations, some residents would be able to avoid the worst of the effects. With this, the authors produced an estimate of 4.6 million deaths, give or take 2.1 million, just from the targeting of the silos. Remove the option for protection from the equation, and the attacks kill 18 million, with a range of 9.1 million in either direction.

As the authors concluded, “Our findings confirm the grave risks associated with siting and attacking large silo fields upwind from densely populated areas and should prompt policymakers to re-evaluate the prudence of such decisions.”

LEARN MORE [[link removed]]

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] SHOW US THE RECEIPTS

Kristen Gelineau delved [[link removed]] into a tragically sunk boat, carrying Rohingya refugees fleeing Myanmar to a hoped-for better fate in Indonesia. On Dec. 7, 2022, a boat carrying about 180 people sank. Evidence of the disaster, pulled from phone records and other sources, reveals desperation, where people are terrified of staying and are stuck traveling an ocean where aid is often refused. “It’s impossible to know whether any of those lives could have been saved, because almost no one was looking to save them in the first place. Instead, the Rohingya are often abandoned and left to die on the water, just as on land,” wrote Gelineau.

Anmol Irfan reported [[link removed]] on the flawed design of Pakistan’s National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), which automatically assumes a male head of household for families. Applying to the authority for services, like getting an ID card, means alerting the head of household to the request. “If a woman has an abusive husband and he’s her head of family, and she’s hiding and taking a khula (divorce) — if she tries following legal procedure at NADRA her husband will be notified, and that will put her life in danger,” Muhammad Abubakr, cybersecurity provider, told Irfan.

Orla Barry explored [[link removed]] the new spotlight shown on Romanian webcam companies. The industry, which exists comfortably but not explicitly within Romania’s tax code, reportedly consists of 5,000 companies employing at least 400,000 women (and some men). It’s a kind of adult entertainment service premised on pay for private shows over time, though it gained international scrutiny following the arrest of influencer Andrew Tate and his brother, who ran such a company in Romania. Monica Boseff’s organization, Open Door Foundation [[link removed]] in Bucharest, told Barry that efforts exist in the country to crack down on trafficking, but less so for punishing operators that encourage their clients to engage in illegal activity.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] WELL PLAYED

For Kissinger’s centennial [[link removed]], how about a little nudge [[link removed]] into the fairest judgment [[link removed]] anyone has ever made of the man?

As national identity memes go, these are barely hyperbole [[link removed]].

Eventually, this will be the only piece of art in British Museums [[link removed]].

This is fine, floodplain as can be [[link removed]].

Wartime austerity is usually something that happens to you, not a thing countries choose for themselves [[link removed]].

A surefire way to get kids to not read books about troublemakers is to make those books look metal as hell [[link removed]].

Petition to rename “tactical nukes” to “ impractical nukes [[link removed]].”

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] Follow The World: DONATE TO THE WORLD [[link removed]] Follow Inkstick: DONATE TO INKSTICK [[link removed]]

Critical State is written by Kelsey D. Atherton with Inkstick Media.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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