Nuclear war is getting more likely by the week
In today's edition:
Post Opinions is embarking on a new series in which experts from the Federation of American Scientists examine the threat of nuclear conflict. I would love to tell you that these experts argue that 'today's global nuclear landscape is far [less] complicated and, in many ways, [less] precarious than during the Cold War' — but, unfortunately, those brackets are about as good a shield against reality as the top of a mid-century classroom desk was against an incoming ballistic missile.
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Boston Globe
6 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Conrad ‘Gus' Shinn, first pilot to land at the South Pole, dies at 102
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Looking back on the flight, Commander Shinn said that getting to the pole was the easy part. Getting back proved far more challenging, requiring the use of more than a dozen small rockets to dislodge the plane from the ice and provide enough thrust for takeoff. Advertisement Friends said that long after he retired, when he was introduced to strangers as 'the first man to land at the South Pole,' he would gently note: 'Well, that's true. But more importantly, I'm the first man to take off from the South Pole.' By flying to the pole and back, Commander Shinn — who died May 15 at 102 ― helped open up a new era of Antarctic research, demonstrating that it was possible for personnel and supplies to be flown to one of the world's most desolate places. By his count, he made about 17 South Pole flights, providing assistance to Navy construction workers who began creating a permanent research base, a precursor to today's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, a few weeks after his first trip. Advertisement Scientists continue to conduct experiments at the pole, including on air quality, seismic waves, and elementary particles known as neutrinos. Tractors make the weeks-long trek to bring supplies overland from McMurdo Station. And supply planes continue to fly in and out, although the aircraft — ski-equipped LC-130s, carrying as much as 42,000 pounds of cargo — are more powerful and better equipped than the planes flown by Commander Shinn and his colleagues. 'Everything was critical in that day: attitude and altitude and air speed, weight and balance. We hardly stayed in the air,' he said in a 1999 interview for the Antarctic Deep Freeze Oral History Project. A North Carolina native who joined the Navy during World War II, Commander Shinn started out as a multiengine pilot in the South Pacific, transporting medical supplies and wounded men. He later flew military brass and other VIPs, ferrying flag officers, Cabinet secretaries, and friends of President Harry S. Truman, before volunteering for Operation Highjump, a Navy program that brought him to Antarctica for the first time in 1947. By then, the Navy had been involved in Antarctic exploration for years, supporting scientific research while also — amid a Cold War standoff with the Soviet Union — seeking 'to establish a foothold in a region of the world that could be strategically important,' said Hill Goodspeed, a historian at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Fla. Advertisement To prepare for the mission, Commander Shinn took a transport plane equipped with skis and tested it on the ice in Edmonton, Alberta. He went on to fly a ski-clad R4D, the military version of a Douglas DC-3 airliner, off an aircraft carrier, taking it hundreds of miles over the ice to reach Little America, the Navy's makeshift exploration base on the Ross Ice Shelf. Commander Shinn lived on the ice for about a month, sleeping in a tent — designed more for the tropics than the Antarctic — and flying photographic missions that were intended to help map the continent. At the end of his tour, he was picked up by an icebreaker and joined the command ship of Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd, who had made history in 1929 as the first person to fly over the South Pole. Commander Shinn accompanied the admiral on a triumphant voyage to the Washington Navy Yard, where Byrd shook hands with the secretary of the Navy and presented the National Zoo with a gift of two-dozen penguins. (When a crate burst open during unloading, three of the birds disappeared into the Anacostia River.) By 1956, Commander Shinn had returned to Antarctica as part of Operation Deep Freeze, a Navy mission that was launched in support of the International Geophysical Year, a collaborative effort promoting scientific research at the poles and elsewhere around the world. This time he lived in comparative luxury at McMurdo Sound, in a heated Quonset hut instead of a tent. Still, he noted that the solitude of the Antarctic could take a toll — 'people get angry with one another; there were a few mental cases' — and that even with his experience navigating high winds and whiteout conditions, the risks of polar aviation remained high. Advertisement During an exploratory flight near the Beardmore Glacier, his airplane was caught in a wind shear and 'fell out of the sky,' hurtling toward the ground before Commander Shinn turned to a rocket system known as JATO, for jet-assisted take-off, in which rockets are fired to provide additional thrust. 'The wing rolled and the wingtip touched the ice. I'm sure it added to the deafening blast of the JATO firing,' he said in the oral history. 'We were close enough to the surface to send up a huge balloon of ice crystals. The passengers must have been terrified. But we flew out.' Commander Shinn turned to the JATO system once again during his historic flight to the South Pole, aboard a propeller-driven R4D-5L named Que Sera Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be), after the newly released Doris Day pop song. The plane carried seven passengers and crew members, including Rear Admiral George J. Dufek, who stepped outside and planted an American flag into the ice. (Technically, they had landed about four miles from the geographical South Pole. Observers deemed it close enough.) The group set up a metal radar reflector, intended to help future pilots make their way to the site, and spent about 45 minutes outside before readying for takeoff. Commander Shinn was already prepared for a difficult departure by virtue of the pole's altitude, at more than 9,000 feet. But he was surprised to discover that while the plane's engines were running, the snow under its skis had melted and refrozen. Advertisement They were stuck. 'We just sat on the ice like an old mud hen,' he told the Associated Press in 1999. Overheard was an Air Force cargo plane, assigned to hang close and drop supplies in case of disaster. It wasn't needed: Commander Shinn was able to free the plane by firing JATO bottles, four at a time, enabling the Que Sera Sera to break loose and, at full throttle, take off — just barely. Commander Shinn and his crew flew through 'a cloud of ice,' using their instruments to navigate while unable to see out of the cockpit, before making their way back to base at McMurdo, some 800 miles away. After landing, his colleague John P. Strider downplayed their difficulties at the pole, joking to a reporter that he dealt with only one problem on the flight: 'My coffee wouldn't percolate at 12,000 feet.' As a result of the mission, Commander Shinn was awarded the Legion of Merit. Antarctica's third-highest peak, Mount Shinn, was named in his honor. 'I had been lucky,' he said in the oral history, looking back on his flying days in the Antarctic. 'Lucky — that's what I would call it.' The second of six children, Conrad Selwyn Shinn was born in Leaksville, N.C. — a mill town that is now part of the city of Eden — on Sept. 12, 1922. His father served in the infantry during World War I and worked as a YMCA secretary; his mother managed the home. As a boy, he idolized Charles Lindbergh and Wiley Post, pilot heroes of the golden age of aviation. His high school yearbook, which he edited, seemed almost prophetic in its title: The Pilot. Advertisement Commander Shinn graduated at age 16, first in his class, and studied aeronautical engineering at North Carolina State College, now a university. He enrolled in a civilian pilot training program, left school to join the Navy in 1942, and received his commission the next year. After World War II, he married Gloria Carter, with whom he had three children: David, Connie, and Diane Shinn. They divorced in 1954. Commander Shinn retired from the Navy in 1963 and settled in Pensacola, where he had been stationed. For years, he made regular visits to the National Naval Aviation Museum, where he was able to visit his restored former plane, the Que Sera Sera, and tell visitors about his flying days. Long after he retired, he continued to dress in military-style flight suits, preferring to avoid fussing over questions of personal appearance and style, according to his family. He remained especially concerned with safety issues, a theme dating back to his Navy days: If he couldn't sit in the pilot's seat as a civilian, he refused to fly at all, preferring to maintain control over maintenance and safety procedures. 'He always had the military demeanor,' his son David said, 'with one dramatic exception. While living in Florida, he developed the moniker Cat Man of La Rua,' after the street where he lived. 'He always had a dozen or two-dozen cats in residence. They'd come to his door, having heard about town that there was this man who would take care of them if he needed help.' Commander Shinn lived in the city until shortly before his death, at a nursing facility in Charlotte. His son confirmed the death but did not cite a specific cause. Survivors include his three children; a sister; a grandson; a great-grandson; and several of his cats, which he re-homed late in life. Asked in the oral history what he was proudest of from his time in the Antarctic, Commander Shinn replied: 'I would guess if I were going to have a tombstone I would put on it, 'He tells it like it is.' There's just no substitute for honesty and integrity.'
Boston Globe
a day ago
- Boston Globe
The 2025 Tech Power Players in the foundational AI sector
The team behind the company, now chasing better known rivals such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, included three MIT students and their adviser, computer scientist Rus has been a fixture on the AI scene since she came to MIT in 2003, fresh off a MacArthur 'genius' grant for her work developing robots. Nine years later, the university named Rus to lead the school's famed Born in Communist Romania during the Cold War, Rus and her family immigrated to the United States in 1982. She studied at the University of Iowa before earning a doctorate at Cornell University in 1992. She taught at Dartmouth College before moving to MIT. Advertisement Inspired by the simple brain structure of a roundworm, Rus and her cofounders, Ramin Hasani, Mathias Lechner, and Alexander Amini, developed an AI technique with fewer software 'neurons' than the large language models of OpenAI and others. That means Liquid AI requires less computing power (and electricity). The company, valued at more than $2 billion, has about 55 employees at its Kendall Square headquarters. More tech power players to watch in the foundational AI sector: Explore more sectors Aaron Pressman can be reached at
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Pentagon planted UFO myths to hide secret weapons programs, report finds
The Brief A 2024 Pentagon review found the U.S. military spread fake UFO stories to conceal Cold War weapons testing An Air Force colonel admitted planting false flying saucer photos near Area 51 to hide stealth jet development AARO investigators uncovered decades of military disinformation that fueled popular alien conspiracy theories LOS ANGELES - In the shadow of the Cold War, while America raced to outpace the Soviet Union in military innovation, the Pentagon turned to an unexpected tactic: alien conspiracy theories. A newly revealed Department of Defense review shows that the U.S. military deliberately spread UFO rumors—including staged photos and false briefings—to protect classified weapons programs. The practice wasn't just passive denial or silence. In some cases, it was policy. One such incident, first uncovered by the Wall Street Journal, involves an Air Force colonel who, in the 1980s, handed fake photos of flying saucers to a bar owner near the top-secret Area 51 base in Nevada. The colonel, now retired, later admitted to investigators that he was acting under official orders to deflect attention away from the then-classified F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter. The backstory The findings stem from a 2024 report by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), a unit created in 2022 to sift through decades of military records and claims of unidentified aerial phenomena. While the office was originally intended to investigate possible extraterrestrial sightings, much of what it uncovered pointed back at the government itself. According to the report, several UFO legends were intentionally stoked to mislead the public and foreign adversaries about advanced weapons programs. One example is the use of fabricated photos and stories placed in local communities near sensitive testing sites like Area 51. What we know The Air Force colonel's fake UFO photos helped launch decades of speculation around Area 51 The military saw the spread of alien rumors as a form of "camouflage," a Pentagon official said The disinformation helped obscure the testing of advanced technologies like stealth jets AARO found multiple examples of fabricated narratives designed to deflect attention from classified work What we don't know The full scope of disinformation programs remains classified Some events, including specific pranks and altered documents, were redacted from the report The Pentagon has not released names of individuals involved, beyond the now-retired colonel By the numbers At least a dozen personnel were reportedly introduced to a fictional alien-investigation program called "Yankee Blue" as part of a hazing ritual The practice began in the 1980s and reportedly continued until 2023 The Pentagon formally banned the practice after AARO flagged it during its review What they're saying "These episodes reveal how secrecy and misinformation, even when well-intentioned, can spiral into myth," said Sean Kirkpatrick, AARO's first director. He told the Wall Street Journal that many popular conspiracy theories can be traced to actual efforts by the U.S. military to conceal vulnerabilities or capabilities during tense periods of geopolitical rivalry. Kirkpatrick added that not all findings from the review have been made public, but promised more details in a forthcoming report. Big picture view The revelations come as public trust in government transparency around UFOs continues to grow. While recent years have seen serious Congressional inquiries into unidentified aerial phenomena, this new report adds a surprising twist: that many UFO legends were never about aliens at all—they were cover stories engineered by the military itself. What's next The Pentagon says it will publish a follow-up to the Historical Record Report later in 2025, which will include more details on the disinformation programs, hazing rituals, and instances of "inauthentic materials" being used as deception tools. The Source This report is based on information first published by The Wall Street Journal, which reviewed findings from a 2024 Department of Defense analysis led by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). Additional details were obtained through official Pentagon statements and interviews conducted by WSJ with AARO staff and other defense officials involved in the review.
