Blackhat (2015) Review

NASA Isn't Hiring Someone to Stop an Alien Invasion, You Jabronis. These days, reading anything (e.

Just when I thought we had hit the apex of bad reporting and general dystopia, today, severaloutletsran stories about NASA hiring someone “to defend Earth from aliens.” It quickly skyrocketed to become the top story on Facebook news, despite being the media equivalent of horse droppings, wrapped in manure, sprinkled with trash shrapnel. Clearly, NASA is not hiring anyone to defend the planet from the sorts of alien invaders depicted in stories like these, and this person will not be calling the shots (Independence Day- style) against extraterrestrial belligerents. What this job posting is actually about is very simple and not at all newsworthy: NASA is hiring a planetary protection officer to make sure that spacecraft from Earth don’t contaminate other worlds, and that we don’t bring back potentially dangerous alien microbes from anywhere else. Currently, NASA’s “office” of planetary protection includes just one member, Dr. Cassie Conley. Of course, you wouldn’t know this from a headline like this: Or this: Or, the spiciest meatball of all: A rep from NASA clarified what the division’s actual responsibilities entail.“The Office of Planetary Protection is involved in many facets of mission development to prevent microbial contamination of other planets and our own,” Laurie Cantillo, lead communications specialist in the planetary science division, told Gizmodo.

Blackhat, starring Chris Hemsworth as a buff computer hacker, is a preposterous thriller made genuinely thrilling by director Michael Mann. Directed by Michael Mann. With Chris Hemsworth, Viola Davis, Wei Tang, Leehom Wang. A furloughed convict and his American and Chinese partners hunt a high-level. The Lifecycle of a Revolution. In the early days of the public internet, we believed that we were helping build something totally new, a world that would leave behind.

Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in California—which literally searches for advanced extraterrestrial life—was pretty amused by the press coverage surrounding NASA’s new job opening.“If you have a sample return mission to Mars, you want to be careful in both directions,” he told Gizmodo. Sending pond scum to Mars would complicate the search for life there.”All NASA spacecraft are sterilized to prevent this hypothetical situation, which is known as forward contamination. Free Download Person To Person (2017) Movie on this page.

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But the planetary protection officer would also help to ensure that any kind of microbes are not brought back to Earth from other planets. Unsurprisingly, this is called backward contamination.“As far as protecting us from the kind of aliens you see every night on the TV, NASA’s never considered that,” Shostak added. To be clear, Shostak does not know anything about . So please stop calling him. If you’re interested in astrobiology and fit the qualifications for planetary protections officer, by all means apply to the position.

You’d be getting paid $1. But don’t believe the misinformed hype that NASA has an officer in charge of fighting aliens, Will Smith- with- a- Carbonizer- style.

Think about it: There is nothing here worth invading for, except for this video of a seal befriending a dog or very fluffy cats. Hypothetically, any and all of these things could exist elsewhere in the universe, so there is really no need to get them from our trash- infested planet.

In doing so, he has imparted a greater sense of urgency to the ongoing crisis. But, like the launch of a ballistic missile over Japan and threats of an EMP attack on the United States, this latest move is straight out of Pyongyang’s standard playbook and entirely consistent with the now familiar cycle of provocation, crisis, and temporary resolution that has played out repeatedly for over 2. While each successive crisis has brought us closer to the brink of armed conflict, neither side has sought to cross the line into war.

The costs and risks have been considered too high. Such a reckless move would go beyond brinkmanship. It would probably force the Trump administration to shoot down the incoming missiles, leading to further escalation.

If the North then responded with an armed strike against the U. S. While there are no good military options, war could result from North Korea’s miscalculation.

It happened before, with Kim’s grandfather. North Korea would once again declare victory while continuing to expand its nuclear arsenal and developing ever more capable ballistic missiles. Just days ago, General Joseph Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, provided what some consider a reassuring assessment of North Korea’s missile capabilities, stating that the North “has yet to demonstrate it has the requisite technology and capability to target and strike the United States with a nuclear weapon.” Yet Pyongyang may well be on the verge of achieving exactly that capability, perhaps with high- yield warheads on relatively inaccurate missiles. That same month, the Defense Intelligence Agency reportedly assessed that the North has successfully miniaturized a nuclear warhead that can fit in the front end of a ballistic missile.

The latest nuclear test moves North Korea ever closer to what it has long sought — the ability to hold American cities hostage to Pyongyang’s blackmail demands. When the North does possess nuclear- armed ICBMs able to hold even a small number of American cities at risk, the rules of the game will change. The next crisis will be different. Today, the stated policy of the Kim regime is the unification of the Peninsula, by force if necessary. But the North appears to understand that, under present circumstances, it would lose an all- out war with the U.

S. North Korea’s conventional forces are outmatched by the American and South Korean forces arrayed against them, which include massive forces that would flow into the theater during a conflict. Even if Pyongyang employed large- scale chemical and biological warfare, which it is almost certainly prepared to do, the overwhelming response by the U. S., perhaps not limited to conventional retaliation, could well mean the elimination of the Kim regime. The means to do this, according to Pyongyang’s propaganda machine, is to threaten American and Japanese cities with nuclear destruction. This is the reason the North devotes enormous resources to its nuclear and missile programs — not to deter an attack by the U. S. Common wisdom holds that, if North Korea launches even one nuclear weapon against the U. S., the result will be the complete destruction of the entire country.

But from the North’s perspective, which is the one that matters most, believing that it can deter the U. S. Whether rational or not, if he thinks he can deter the U.

S., the likelihood that the next crisis will escalate to armed conflict increases substantially. Many wars have resulted from misunderstandings and miscommunication, and the next Korean crisis may lead to that outcome. One way would be for the U.

S. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama both said they would not permit North Korea to have nuclear- armed ICBMs. President Trump stated explicitly that “it won’t happen,” with the “it” referring to North Korea’s achieving an ICBM capability. His repeated references to all options being on the table are meant to suggest that he will use force if necessary to prevent Kim from gaining the capability to destroy American cities. First, while the U. S. Would our allies, particularly South Korea, be willing to go along?

Would the U. S. The internal arguments will most certainly favor delay based on the assessment that the North is not yet at the point of deploying an ICBM. There will always be some related technology that the U.

S. Intelligence assessments are understandably conservative and often take months or longer to develop. But if the delay is too long, it will be too late to prevent “it” from happening. After all, the argument will go, the U. S. Never mind that the leadership attributes of North Korea are much different from those of the Soviet Union or that the object and dynamics of deterrence in the Cold War were much different from that with Korea. To improve the circumstances and possibly reduce the need to use force, the U.

S. Reciting talking points from the State Department’s Asia Bureau that the U. S. This may include the redeployment of theater weapons to South Korea. Back the talk of massive funding for missile defenses with both short- term and long- term efforts, including the development and deployment of a layered homeland missile defense with land- , sea- , and space- based interceptors and sensors. The Obama administration reduced the number of ground- based interceptors that were considered necessary to meet the North Korean threat and eliminated programs designed to keep U. S. We are now paying the price for that negligence. Hi-Def Hot Tub Time Machine Two (2015) Movie.

Retain denuclearization of the Peninsula as our first- order objective, but stop indulging in the fantasy that more sanctions and more pressure on China will alone produce this desired outcome. The Kim regime will not give up its missiles or nuclear weapons. Under three previous administrations, the U. S. For 2. 5 years, North Korea has moved forward with its missile and nuclear programs. This is particularly the case for those who wrongly equate diplomacy with negotiations and for those who wrongly argue that the only choice is between negotiation and war.

In fact, continuing the failed approach of the past will lead not to denuclearization but to conflict, either because the president feels compelled to preempt or because Kim Jung- un believes he can win a war of unification. To succeed, U. S. New avenues need to be pursued through diplomatic channels to sever North Korea’s sales of missiles and nuclear materials and to gain international support for actions the U. S. And yes, diplomacy is essential to push for regime change from within, perhaps by encouraging Chinese intervention to replace the Kim dynasty in Pyongyang or by providing hope and resources to the repressed population of the North. READ MORE: How Do You Solve a Problem Like North Korea? The Nuclear Taboo Is Weaker than You Think. Into the Abyss: A Scenario for the Next Korean War— Robert Joseph is a former undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.