The Letter, the Threat and the Ethics

In January of 2015, one hundred and fifty major scientists, academics and entrepreneurs – from top universities around the world and including such notables as Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking – signed a four paragraph open letter effective telling the world that we are not prepared – from the good, bad and really potentially ugly side – for the impact of artificial intelligence. While the obvious possible benefits to society were touted – “the eradication of disease and poverty are not unfathomable” – the letter also warned of the dangers of autonomous weapons, no longer under the control of human beings.

The authors noted that “we could one day lose control of AI systems via the rise of superintelligences that do not act in accordance with human wishes – and that such powerful systems would threaten humanity. Are such dystopic outcomes possible? If so, how might these situations arise? ...What kind of investments in research should be made to better understand and to address the possibility of the rise of a dangerous superintelligence or the occurrence of an ‘intelligence explosion’?”

A Labor Day tweet from Elon Musk amplified his earlier statements: “China, Russia, soon all countries w strong computer science… Competition for AI superiority at national level most likely cause of [World War III in my opinion].” If the Kim/Donald rhetoric doesn’t get us there sooner.

At a lecture at Cambridge University in the fall of 2016, Professor Hawking added: ““The rise of powerful AI will be either the best or the worst thing ever to happen to humanity. We do not know which… It will bring great disruption to our economy, and in the future AI could develop a will of its own that is in conflict with ours.”  Indeed, the recent job displacement of under-educated Americans (or those with now-obsolete skills) has been less a function of global competition than the transfer of too many jobs to ever “smarter” automated machines. Reshoring manufacturing to the United States has often been a benefit to the wealthy owners of those sophisticated machines and not to the workers those machines are intended to replace. An accelerant of income inequality.

But even as he expounds upon the potential of AI to find cures for major diseases and the opportunities this field offers, Microsoft founder and mega-philanthropist, Bill Gates, echoes his concern for machines that can operate without human supervision… and the failure of governments to prepare for the economic impact of obvious job displacements and transitions by reason of AI. “I am in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence… I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don't understand why some people are not concerned,” Gates has said. There are AI optimists, like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who had this to say about AI this past July: “I think that people who are naysayers and kind of try to drum up these doomsday scenarios — I just, I don't understand it… I think it's really negative and in some ways I actually think it is pretty irresponsible.”

What is artificial intelligence (AI) anyway? “In computer science, the field of AI research defines itself as the study of ‘intelligent agents’: any device that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of success at some goal. Colloquially, the term ‘artificial intelligence’ is applied when a machine mimics ‘cognitive’ functions that humans associate with other human minds, such as ‘learning’ and ‘problem solving.’” Wikipedia.

Machines that can think on their own, learn, communicate with other AI machines without human direction, self-correct, self-direct and even self-maintain. They might even design and build other such smart machines. Academic and corporate institutions the world over – including the military side of too many countries – are investing tens of billions of dollars to explore, enhance and implement machines driven by artificial intelligence. Including weapons.

Will AI eventually be able to mimic the abilities of a human brain? Obviously yes. That computing power exists even now, hardly as small and efficient as that lump of fat between your ears, but we do not remotely have the software to create the missing functionality. Just remember that the 1970 Apollo 13 manned mission to the moon had less computing power than a modern smart phone. Give it time. AI might just write its own software and design that much smaller, super-efficient computer.

We currently have cruise missiles that can select and prioritize targets – embedded into their computer-based memories – without any specific human direction. Even government-designed cyber-viruses can be introduced into the guidance and military operational systems of their enemies and can separate from their creators and operate autonomously to destroy what they can. Like the Stuxnet malware that took down over a thousand nuclear processing centrifuges in 2010? These are still only the primitive and nascent developments in a world that is anxious to build so much more. We are definitely seeing an arms race in autonomous, AI-driven weapon systems, and there are absolutely no international accords to contain such efforts, despite the very obvious and terrifying consequences. No one is even trying to negotiate standards.

So where should the basic ethics of AI begin? Oren Etzioni, the chief executive of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, presented three basics in his September 1^st OpEd in the New York Times: “I propose three rules for artificial intelligence systems that are inspired by, yet develop further, the ‘three laws of robotics’ that the writer Isaac Asimov introduced in 1942: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except when such orders would conflict with the previous law; and a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the previous two laws…

“First, an A.I. system must be subject to the full gamut of laws that apply to its human operator. This rule would cover private, corporate and government systems. We don’t want A.I. to engage in cyberbullying, stock manipulation or terrorist threats; we don’t want the F.B.I. to release A.I. systems that entrap people into committing crimes. We don’t want autonomous vehicles that drive through red lights, or worse, A.I. weapons that violate international treaties…

“My second rule is that an A.I. system must clearly disclose that it is not human. As we have seen in the case of bots — computer programs that can engage in increasingly sophisticated dialogue with real people — society needs assurances that A.I. systems are clearly labeled as such…

“My third rule is that an A.I. system cannot retain or disclose confidential information without explicit approval from the source of that information. Because of their exceptional ability to automatically elicit, record and analyze information, A.I. systems are in a prime position to acquire confidential information. Think of all the conversations that Amazon Echo — a “smart speaker” present in an increasing number of homes — is privy to, or the information that your child may inadvertently divulge to a toy such as an A.I. Barbie. Even seemingly innocuous housecleaning robots create maps of your home. That is information you want to make sure you control.” Simply put, this new level of automation is not only disruptive – as such paradigm-shifting technology usually is – it is downright dangerous with strong and enforceable rules.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we have denigrated ethics and morality – often hiding behind false echoes of such values to justify bigotry and greed – while ignoring the true, essential and existential nature of ethics and morality to preserve humanity itself.

Contracting, a Not-So-Rare Federal Disease

There are several assumptions/beliefs that underlie the federal government’s proclivity to engage third party, private and profit-driven, contractors, in lieu of using federal employees, including: cost efficiencies where workers can be hired without the protections and benefits of the Civil Service system, the ability to scale up or down without long-term employee commitments under that Civil Service, the need to access specialized skillsets (so-called “advisory services”), the distrust of government vs the belief in the superiority of a competitive private sector (generally a GOP perspective), the ability to shift “blame and responsibility,” avoiding embarrassing transparency, the political gamesmanship of describing budget proposals as reflecting staffing cuts (when contractors take over those “reduced” direct federal jobs) and the benefits of paying off political supporters/insiders with lucrative government contracts.

Over the years, we have increased our reliance on private contractors to replace government functions, ranging from guarding U.S. embassies (formerly reliant solely on U.S. Marines), providing security in active combat zones (normally performed by Army or Marine soldiers) to owning and operating federal prisons. Whatever the assumptions may have been around when the trend began, the reliance on outside contractors has grown so vast that we have effectively no true standards to determine cost efficiencies; we have no clue what the actual comparisons (private vs federal) would reflect. The Office of Management and Budget has required government agencies (under their Circular A-76) to develop comparison standards and hard numbers, but so far… we have no clue.

Even as the Obama administration moved to eliminate private contractors running federal prisons, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has now reversed that policy. Several of Donald Trump’s closest advisors – discussed below – are suggesting a further expansion of armed contractors assuming increasing military duties as the correct solution to the continued combat in the no-win war in Afghanistan. In fairness to the President, the explosive use of service out-source contractors is hardly something that can be placed on his shoulders. That reliance has increased through many presidencies, including the Obama administration. It accelerated heavily during the Bush (“W”) administration as it faced a rapidly-expanding post-9/11 combat mission.

Here is an interesting analysis, reflecting the status of federal service contracting during the Obama years, by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO, 4/15/13): “In a hearing last year, Chairman Claire McCaskill (D-MO) stated, ‘the cost of service contracts has increased by 44 percent over the last ten years…to $324 billion, while in the same time, spending on federal employees has only increased by 34 percent…to $229 billion.’

“Additionally, service contract spending exceeds the amount of federal contract spending on goods. In fiscal year 2012, the federal government spent over $307 billion on services, nearly 60 percent of the $517 billion awarded for all federal contracts. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that in fiscal year 2011, nearly 80 percent of all civilian agency contract spending was for services—services such as professional management and information technology support.

“The Defense Department (DoD) has stated with regard to service contracts that ‘[t]he savings are here. This is Total Force Manpower, but its growth has been unchallenged and often we don’t even know what is in the base.’ As the following chart shows, from 2001 to 2010, the growth of service contractor personnel has far outpaced that of active duty military and civilian DoD personnel.”

There is absolutely no proof that this use of contractors, now heavily embedded in the federal budgeting process for dozens of federal agencies as well as the military, actually saves taxpayer’s any money, and without any doubt, the ability to hold those who actually perform the services accountable is much more difficult. I have seen professional assessments that range to cost factors that increase costs-per-unit-of-labor of private contractors over government employee equivalents by almost double, a very big hit to taxpayers. But honestly, nobody really knows anymore; private contracting is completely out of hand. Add to that the increased leaks of sensitive classified government information. Remember that leak-meister Edward Snowden worked as an employee of an NSA subcontractor (Booz Allen Hamilton).

And then there is the poster-boy for military outsourcing (effectively federal mercenaries), Erik Prince, whose Blackwater Security Consulting (which was forced to change its name to “Xe Services” due to its notoriety) was involved in an ugly shooting controversy/scandal in Fallujah during the Iraq War. “A federal jury Wednesday [October 22, 2014] convicted four former Blackwater guards of a 2007 shooting that killed 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians and wounded 17 others as a U.S. diplomatic convoy drove through Baghdad.” USA Today (10/22/14).

Well, Prince – who is Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos’ brother – has the ear of the President, even though Mr. Trump has not yet bent to the notion of handing the Afghan War over, in significant part, to Prince and his band of merry mercenaries. Here are some excerpts from Prince’s OpEd piece in the August 29^th New York Times, after analogizing his efforts to those of the WWII Flying Tigers: “This spring, as Afghanistan policy was debated in Washington, the president asked for fresh options to end the war honorably. Faced with two choices — pulling out entirely or staying the course — I argued strongly for a new approach, a third path that would put in place a light footprint of American Special Forces, as well as contractors to work with Afghans to focus on the goal that Americans really care about: denying America’s enemies the sanctuary they used to plan the Sept. 11 attacks... Unfortunately, serving or recently retired Pentagon generals monopolized the conversation, so a conventional outcome was assured.

“The third path I’m talking about is not untested, even if it has been forgotten. When the United States first went into Afghanistan in 2001, it devastated the Taliban and Al Qaeda in a matter of weeks using only a few hundred C.I.A. and Special Operations personnel, backed by American air power. Later, when the United States transitioned to conventional Pentagon stability operations, this success was reversed. Since then, the Pentagon’s biggest innovation has been to vary American and NATO troop levels from 9,000 to 140,000, and to increase civilian contractors to a peak level of 117,000 during President Obama’s ‘surge.’…

“My proposal is for a sustainable footprint of 2,000 American Special Operations and support personnel, as well as a contractor force of less than 6,000 (far less than the 26,000 in country now). This team would provide a support structure for the Afghans, allowing the United States’ conventional forces to return home.

“This plan would use former Special Operations veterans as contractors who would live, train and patrol alongside their Afghan counterparts at the lowest company and battalion levels — where it matters most. American veterans, whose extraordinary knowledge and experience could be vital to Afghan success on the ground, would serve as adjuncts to the Afghan Army and would perform in strict conformity with Afghan rules of engagement, eliminating the stigma of a foreign occupying force. Supplemental Afghan air power, flown with Afghan markings, would include a contractor safety pilot, but only the onboard Afghan officer would make weapons decisions. All contracted personnel would be subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, just as active-duty American troops are now.” Clearly, he has the ear of Trump and his most senior advisors.

The fact that, with that Fallujah incident burned into the psyche of the American public, Erik Prince even thinks the U.S. government should hire mercenaries to fight its wars is alarming enough, but the notion of hiring yet another contractor has become an all-too-easy federal practice. If there ever were a swamp worthy of review with an eye to potential drainage, it has to be this inordinate federal reliance on private contractors. Given the President’s innate disdain for government employees (with only slightly better view of the military), we are unlike to see a movement back to the public sector from those private, for-profit service-providing contractors.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the federal budget structure has become too complex for most Americans – as well as Congress itself – to understand.

Turning Friends into Enemies

Nobody does it better
Makes me feel sad for the rest
Nobody does it half as good as you
Carly Simon - Nobody Does It Better - Lyrics 

A year ago, even just six months ago, in the early stages of her campaign to remain Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel was ripe for defeat. A wave of anti-immigrant populism was sweeping Germany, pushing back at Merkel’s seeming open arms at Middle Eastern refugees fleeing ISIS and Assad. A lot of veteran European poll-watchers would have at best given even money that Merkel could continue her 11 year tenure in Germany’s top spot.

And then he began his presidency, showing the world what a seeming ultra-conservative nationalist/populist presidency could look like. Europe shuddered as they watched Donald Trump implement his rather racist, anti-scientific policies, unraveling in a matter of days treaties and commitments that took decades to evolve and build. They watched as neo-Nazis – the same political believers that almost destroyed Europe in WWII – and their ilk flocked to his side. It was enough to lead France’s Emmanuel Macron to decimate his populist presidential opponent by an almost two-to-one margin.

Lucky Angela Merkel and her Christian Democratic Union party. The European revulsion over the American president made her and her party virtually bullet-proof. It was an intolerable image for Germans with horrible memories of the consequences of extremism. The opposition, voicing Trump-like populist sloganeering, began slip-sliding away. “Mr. Trump’s brand of populism is not popular in Germany. Germans have taken the angry divisions in the United States since his election as a caution, watching warily and condemning demonstrations by emboldened far-right extremist groups, including neo-Nazis.

“Given their history, Germans have shown little tolerance when the [opposing party] Alternative for Germany has overstepped social and historical boundaries, like when one regional leader, Björn Höcke, questioned the tradition of remembrance and atonement for the country’s Nazi crimes.” New York Times, September 1^st. The election for the 19th Bundestag (the German Congress) will take place on September 24^th, and it is the Bundestag that appoints the Chancellor.

But wait, there’s so much more. Donald Trump has alienated Canada like no other president in recent memory, and his pledge to build a wall between the United States and Mexico, making Mexico pay for it, has pretty much added a requirement that any Mexican candidate for national office must declare himself or herself vehemently anti-Trump to have any chance of being elected.

Meanwhile, “Millions of Muslims across the globe — including in countries like India, Indonesia, Turkey, Russia and Pakistan — are celebrating Eid al-Adha, Islam’s most revered observance.

“Known as the Feast of Sacrifice or ‘big Eid,’ it is one of the two major religious festivals of Islam. The other, Eid al-Fitr, occurs at the end of Ramadan, the holy month of fasting.” NY Times. Big Eid is also considered a particularly propitious time for pious Muslims to take their at-least-once-in-a-lifetime sacred journey (hajj) to Mecca, one of the five “pillars” (holy efforts) of Islam. A retracing of the Prophet Muhammad’s footsteps fourteen centuries ago.

Non-Muslims are not permitted inside the sacred al-ka`bah al-musharrafah (The Holy Kaaba) inside the City of Mecca. But at time when U.S. intelligence services need maximum cooperation in the Islamic world to identify and stop terrorists efforts against the West at their earliest stages, doing anything in support of rather clearly anti-Muslim Donald Trump is increasingly deeply unpopular… even among Muslims traveling from the United States and the West. Fortunately for Mr. Trump, most of the local government leaders there are not elected, and the monarchs that rule the region are happy to leverage Trump’s unpopularity to extract pledges of military hardware to keep them in power.

As local coverage by Aljazeera reports (September 2^nd), the talk at the hajj this year is apparently heavily laced with massive anti-Trump rhetoric… spilling into too many individual conversations.  While there are plenty of other topics to focus on – the demise of ISIS, the isolation of Qatar, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Israeli-Palestinian tensions, to name a few, the talk is overwhelmingly about Donald Trump: “Pilgrims say people are irritated, angry, and worried about US president's policies targeting Muslims… American, Canadian and British pilgrims in Mecca this week for the annual Hajj say they are worried about the policies of US President Donald Trump targeting Muslims.

“‘People are irritated, angry, sombre, a little bit worried,’ said Yasir Qadhi, an Islamic scholar who travelled from Tennessee for his fourteenth pilgrimage… No one that I know is happy at the current circumstances or the current administration. No one, not a single person in this entire gathering.’

“As a candidate, Trump proposed barring Muslims from entering the US. In office, he ordered temporary bans on people from several Muslim-majority countries, which have been blocked by courts that ruled they were discriminatory.

“His administration has denied any intention of religious discrimination in the travel ban, saying it is intended purely as a national security measure… But sharp rhetoric about the threat posed by ‘radical Islam,’ which was a central part of his campaign, has also drawn accusations he risks alienating more than three million Americans who practice Islam peacefully.” Not to mention the 1.7 billion Muslims around the world, 23% of the earth’s population, poised to overtake Christianity as the world’s largest religion over the next several decades.

As South Korea and Japan rethink their dependence on mutual defense treaties with the U.S., the Philippines distances itself while cozying up to the new big boy on the block, China, Central and South American political leaders have also announced strong disagreements with America hemispheric policies as well. Sure regional leaders are hedging their bets: “Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Sunday spoke with U.S. President Donald Trump by phone and said that in face of an ‘escalating’ situation with North Korea that close cooperation between their countries and South Korea was needed.” Reuters September 2^nd. “Needed”? Yeah. But local polls in both countries tell you that the vast majority of citizens in both countries do not trust that Donald Trump is remotely reliable, and locals for the most part believe that he is just making the situation that much worse with this fighting words.

And while America retains strong ties with the UK’s conservative government under PM Theresa May, the Tories are themselves slowly losing their popularity in their own homeland… and ties to Trump are definitely perceived as a negative by most UK residents.

Even as Donald Trump is trying to force our “allies” to spend more for global defense, enlisting their help to promote his vision of global stability, public evidence of cooperating with the Trump administration – even as terrorist attacks rage through Europe – is never good news for local politicians desirous of being reelected. The United States, along with North Korea and Israel, is now among the most unpopular nations on earth, isolated and increasingly being required to pick up the entire tab of going it alone. To the majority of those around the world who have voiced their opinions, we have become a rogue, racist, bully-state not to be trusted or admired.

I’m Peter Dekom, and Donald, when it comes to fomenting polarization and divisiveness (domestically and internationally), pushing the United States into its own isolated little corner of the world, nobody does it better!

My Way

“The U.S. has been talking to North Korea, and paying them extortion money, for 25 years.

Talking is not the answer!” Donald Trump Tweet, August 30^th

Is Kim Jong-un playing Donald Trump like a fiddle? Certainly not the most challenging exercise since you get a pretty accurate real-time gauge as to the effectiveness of your efforts: Twitter. Is China angling the United States into a diplomatic solution that serves its own regional purposes? From its expansion of an ever-growing reinforced island (with bunkers and runways) in the Spratly chain to its announced “Asian” sphere of influence, China has worked to undermine America’s mutual defense treaties in the region, particularly with Japan, the Philippines and South Korea.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is more than happy to show regional nations that their future lies with alignment with China, and that Trump-America is a volatile, unreliable and inconsistent “ally.” The last thing the PRC wants is to watch North Korea collapse, perhaps putting a current U.S. ally, South Korea, on its border. South Korea would be economically slammed if it were to take over the North, a nation of 25 million brainwashed, under-trained people raised on hatred of the United States and the South, with some of the most deeply polluted air, water and soil on earth and some of the least developed infrastructure in the modern world.

Departing Trump senior advisor, alt-right’s Stephen Bannon, issued this dire analysis in an interview with The American Prospect on August 16^th: “There’s no military solution (to North Korea’s nuclear threats), forget it… Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here; they got us.” A U.S. nuclear strike would kill millions with lots of fatal radiation drifting over South Korea and Japan, ultimately to be carried to North America by the Gulf Stream.

Even when it comes to conventional power, not only does North Korea have the largest (by sheer numbers) military on earth – and has been building tunnels under the DMZ for a long time – but it has an estimated 8,000 long-range field artillery pieces, deeply embedded on to the opposing slopes in mountains just north of the border, aimed at Seoul (10 million people and 30 miles from that border) and its surrounding environs (15 million people). The above chart, by stratfor.com, shows the kill zone (deepest red = 98 thousand+ kilograms of high explosives per hour, lightest yellow = minimal artillery reach) of that conventional artillery, capable of killing hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people and decimating massive amounts of expensive infrastructure and buildings. So what are the Trump administration’s plans to deal with this reality?

“The world’s attention has understandably focused on Mr. Trump’s saber-rattling threats against Mr. Kim — most dramatically, his promise to rain ‘fire and fury’ on North Korea if Mr. Kim fired ballistic missiles at United States territory.

“But a meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim, these experts said, could open the door to ratifying North Korea’s nuclear status or scaling back America’s joint military exercises with South Korea. That could sunder American alliances with Japan and South Korea and play to the benefit of China, which has long advocated direct dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang.

“‘What the North Koreans are angling for is to bring the danger and tension to a crescendo, and then to pivot to a peace proposal,’ said Daniel R. Russel, who served until March as the assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs. ‘All of this is focused on pressuring the U.S. to enter direct talks with Kim on his terms. That is the big trap.’

“Previous presidents avoided that trap, Mr. Russel said, even if Bill Clinton briefly contemplated meeting Mr. Kim’s father, Kim Jong-il. But Mr. Trump brings a deal-maker’s swagger to the North Korea issue that his predecessors did not. He has in the past expressed a willingness to sit across a table from the willful young scion of North Korea’s ruling family.

“‘I would speak to him,’ Mr. Trump said during the presidential campaign. ‘I would have no problem speaking to him.’ Last April, he said, ‘If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him, I would absolutely; I would be honored to do it.’…

“Hours after Mr. Trump ruled out talks on Twitter, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis contradicted him. ‘We’re never out of diplomatic solutions,’ he told reporters. In Geneva, Robert A. Wood, the American ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament, said the United States remained open to dialogue. ‘We do not seek to be a threat to the Kim Jong-un regime,’ he said.

“Trying to explain Mr. Trump’s tweet [above], Mr. Wood, who was once the State Department’s acting spokesman, said, ‘What the president is saying is that he doesn’t see talking as solving this problem and part of the reason is that the North is not interested in dialogue.’

“Indeed, Mr. Trump’s sudden hostility to talks appeared to be less a reversal of his previous statements than an expression of frustration with Mr. Kim’s continued belligerence. Days after Mr. Trump praised him for his newfound restraint, Mr. Kim lobbed a missile over Japan.” New York Times, August 30^th.

Where’s Donald’s bro, Vladimir Putin on all this? “Russian President Vladimir Putin warned on Friday [9/1] that the tense standoff between North Korea and the United States was on the verge of large-scale conflict and said it was a mistake to try to pressure Pyongyang over its nuclear missile program… Putin, who is due to attend a summit of the BRICS nations in China next week (2^nd week in September), wrote in an article published on the Kremlin's web site ahead of his trip that he favored negotiations with North Korea instead… ‘It is essential to resolve the region's problems through direct dialog involving all sides without advancing any preconditions (for such talks),’ Putin wrote. Thompson-Reuters, September 1^st. So… what can really be done?

Kim Jong-un clearly does not want to be emolliated in a nuclear holocaust of raining U.S. missiles, the inevitable result of his attempt to attack the United States with one of his nuclear-tipped ICBMs.  He may be mad, but he does not appear to be stupid. Apparently, he is smarter than his American counterpart, knows how to push the envelope and lure Donald Trump into a trap where the U.S. President will give Kim what he wants, please the PRC in the process by undermining American diplomatic relationships in the region… and then declare a Trump-like victory touting his own brilliance in a solution that in reality reduces American credibility and influence in the region.

Are there better answers? Clearly Trump’s most senior cabinet officers think so. For more strategies that we could follow, take a walk back to my August 1^st A Man without a Foreign Policy – Korean Nightmares blog and see.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I shudder as I watch madman Kim Jong-un slowly attach his puppet strings to a sitting U.S. president.