Daily Archives: May 28, 2017

Th Bad: Post #2 on the NNSA’s FY2018 Budget Request – All Things Nuclear

Posted: May 28, 2017 at 7:39 am

On Tuesday, May 23, the Trump administration released its Fiscal Year 2018 (FY2018) budget request. I am doing a three-part analysis of the National Nuclear Security Administrations budget. That agency, a part of the Department of Energy, is responsible for developing and maintaining US nuclear weapons. Yesterday we focused on The Good, today we have The Bad, and The Ugly is still to come.

The NNSAs most important task is to ensure that the weapons in the US nuclear arsenal are safe, secure and effective. As part of that work, the NNSA is simultaneously undertaking four different programs to extend the lives of four different warheads in the US stockpile: the W76 warhead deployed on submarines, the B61 bomb deployed on aircraft, the W88 warhead deployed on submarines and the W80 warhead for the proposed new air-launched cruise missile. The NNSA has not had such a confluence of work in decades.

That leads many observers to worry about how well the NNSA will manage such a heavy workload, especially when it is also trying to build one major new facility for uranium metal work and ramp up the new approach to dispose of excess plutonium.

Those concerns are only increased when a new president comes in talking about the need to greatly strengthenand expand the US nuclear capability. As described in The Good, this budget does not hint at any such effort.

Trumps budget does, however, reveal rising costs for the existing warhead life extension programs initiated under the Obama administration. For the B61 and the W88, the Trump budget requests significantly more than what the Obama administration projected would be required for FY2018. For the B61, the Obama administration projected in the FY2017 budget that $728 million would be required in FY2018, an already large 15 percent increase above the FY2017 request. But the Trump administrations request is $789 million, a 22 percent increase above FY2017. For the W88, a planned decrease of $30 million to $255 million (a 9 percent cut) became a $50 millionor 15 percentincrease, to $332 million.

The FY18 budget request offers relatively mundane explanations for these rising costs, including unexplained increases. They are particularly troubling, however, when considered in tandem with a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on the life extension programs.

That report cites internal NNSA cost estimates showing the B61 will cost $10 billion, or $2.6 billion more than the NNSA currently predicts, and take an extra two years to produce the first new B61-12. Another internal NNSA estimate found that the W88 update could cost $1 billion more than previously expected. The GAO report also cites yet another internal NNSA estimate that the W80-4 warhead, being developed for the proposed new nuclear-armed cruise missile, may be underfunded by $1 billion, while a proposal to update the warheads secondary could add another $250-300 million to the total cost. That could bring the W88 program to over $10 billion as well.

Cost increases like that will mean increasing trouble for the NNSA. The Weapons Activities budget line, which funds all work on nuclear warheads, has already benefited from eight straight years of rising budgets averaging over 5% annually. The Trump budget seeks a 10% increase above the final level of funding Congress approved in the FY17 omnibus appropriations bill. If the numbers the GAO cites are correct, even larger increases will be needed in the future.

Another complicating factor is very tight timelines. The GAO notes the W80-4 is operating on an accelerated, compressed schedule, while officials have said the B61 may no longer meet certification requirements if there are any further delays producing new bombs. It looks more and more like the intersection of multiple warhead life extension programs, rising costs, and rushed production schedules could lead to a train wreck for NNSA.

And that is before the NNSA even starts work on its most far-reaching plan to develop a suite of new warheads to replace the existing ballistic missile warheads (but more on that in The Ugly).

In its final budget, the Obama administration proposed a modest increase in fundingfrom $52 million in FY2016 to $69 million in FY2017for dismantling warheads that have been retired from the US nuclear stockpile. The result would be that the long line of weapons already in the queue for dismantlement would be taken apart more quickly, thus allowing the warheads retired under the New START agreement with Russia to be dismantled sooner as well.

Those in Congress who supported the Obama administration proposal pointed out that increasing dismantlement in the near term actually benefits life extension programs in the mid-term. Bringing on new employees and training them to dismantle warheads will help prepare them for the coming work on the B61 and the W88, which will entail dismantling the warheads, replacing aged components and reassembling them.

Led by the House Armed Services Committee, however, Congress ended up rejecting most of the increase, allowing only an additional $4 million in FY2017. For the House, anything proposed by the Obama administration that smacked of disarmament was too much, even if it was only taking apart weapons that have already been retired.

And now the Trump administration has dumped any thought of dismantling weapons sooner, noting in the FY18 budget that it is eliminating the planned acceleration stated in the FY 2017 budget request.

Posted in: Nuclear Weapons Tags: arms control, budget, dismantlement, missiles, nuclear disarmament, nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons budget, obama administration

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Th Bad: Post #2 on the NNSA's FY2018 Budget Request - All Things Nuclear

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Iran Swiftly Moving Towards a Knowledge-Based Economy Part 2 – TechRasa (press release) (blog)

Posted: at 7:36 am

In the first part of our article on the UNCTAD report on Iran, we mentionedthat on the path towards a knowledge-based economy Iran has developed a strong educated human resource base. In this part we will illustrate other aspects of the progress which Iran has made towards achieving this goal.

Upon the realization of the need to shift from a natural-resource-based economy to a knowledge-based economy, policymakers in Iran, through different policy measures and initiatives, have tried to facilitate the transition. Laws that aim to support knowledge-based firms (KBFs) have been devised and as of October, 2016 2732 KBFs have been benefiting from the facilities, both financial and non-financial. Today these firms account for almost 70,000 employees and $6.6 billion in annual turnover.

Thriving KBFs rely upon solid infrastructure, which has improved significantly in recent years. Mobile phone penetration rate has increased from 12% in 2005, to 93% in 2015 and 44% of the population used the internet in 2015, compared to the 8% in 2005. Despite these facts, ICT infrastructure requires higher investment to facilitate e-commerce and e-government, and to improve ICT services and make them more efficient for businesses.

Other types of infrastructure are also critical to develop a diverse economy. Transportation infrastructure in Iran needs huge investments for modernizing and increasing capacity in road, aviation and maritime transportation. High production capacity and distribution, good coverage and quality, the need to improve efficiency of electricity production, distribution and energy intensity, and a recent and gradual shift towards renewable energies are the main features of Irans power infrastructure.

The government has added to its efforts to build schools, universities, laboratories, S&T parks and incubators. S&T parks were introduced by the government in 2002 to facilitate the development of a knowledge-based economy. There are currently 39 active S&T parks in Iran. These parks provide space, facilities and other incentives for KBFs to develop new technologies/products/services and to commercialize research results. As of today, Pardis Technology Park, for example, accommodates more than 150 KBFs. Innovation accelerators and innovation centers have also been on the rise in recent years.

Investments have also been made to establish incubators and laboratories to develop and produce marketable technology-based products and processes. Reportedly, 170 incubators, 12,594 research and technology development laboratories, 233 private research institutes, 356 research institutes affiliated with universities, and 71 research institutes affiliated with the government, were active in 2016.

To increase funding for R&D, from the current 0.47% of the GDP, a figure way below target, to 1% of the GDP, the government has implemented a rule that requires public organizations and agencies to spend at least 1% of their budget on R&D. Another interesting fact about R&D funding in Iran is that unlike in many developed countries where the private business sector accounts for most of the R&D, in Iran the business sector only accounted for 20% of the total R&D spending in 2010. In the same year, the government and the higher education system financed 41% and 37% of R&D spending, respectively.

While it can be confidently stated that Iran has made significant progress towards a knowledge-based economy, especially in terms of human resources and infrastructure, the overall impact of STI on the economy remains inadequate. To utilize the full potential of these resources emphasis should be placed on creating new patents and producing export-oriented innovative products/services.

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Iran Swiftly Moving Towards a Knowledge-Based Economy Part 2 - TechRasa (press release) (blog)

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Zuckerberg-Backed Andela Training Company Expands Into Uganda – Forbes

Posted: at 7:36 am


Forbes
Zuckerberg-Backed Andela Training Company Expands Into Uganda
Forbes
Things are moving from a resource-based economy and its shifting to entrepreneurial, knowledge-based economy. It's not only shaping the country but the whole continent." Zuckerberg also visited Kenya, which he praised as the "world leader" in mobile ...

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Zuckerberg-Backed Andela Training Company Expands Into Uganda - Forbes

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The BIG misunderstanding about the cost of Universal Basic Income – Basic Income News

Posted: at 7:36 am

The cost of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) is often greatly exaggerated, because people are tempted to think the cost of UBI is the size of the grant multiplied by the size of the population. You can call that the gross cost of UBI, but its a gross overestimate of the real cost of UBI. It fact, its not a cost in any meaningful sense, because UBI is a tax rebate or a refundable tax credit. That is, UBI is a negative tax. People seldom call UBI a negative tax because that would invite confusion with a similar policy formally named The Negative Income Tax.

But in the more important generic sense, UBI isand must be understood asa negative tax. When you pay the government, thats a tax. When the government pays you (without you having sold something to the government), thats a negative tax. It doesnt cost you anything for the government to give and take a dollar from you at the same time. If you want to know someones total tax burden, you need to subtract the negative taxes they receive from the positive taxes they pay.

Far more than any other policy, UBI involves the government take money from in taxes and gives it back to the very same people as a UBI.

A calculation of real redistributive cost of UBI requires subtracting all of that taking-and-giving-back to focus on the net increase in taxes on contributors (or net cuts in other spending) that will be necessary to support the net benefit to net recipients. The redistributive burden is the only real budgetary cost of UBI.

UBIs net cost issue requires a careful explanation because the issue is almost unique to UBI, extremely important, and sometimes difficult to grasp. The issue occurs because UBI is both universal and in cash. Because it is universal, everyone receives it, even net taxpayers. Because it is in cash, people receive the same thing that they pay. Because it is both universal and in cash, people receive the same thing at the same time that they pay for it.

Most transfer payments go to people who are not at the time also paying taxes to support it. For example, almost no one both pays for and receives Unemployment Insurance, the Earned Income Tax Credit, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, disability insurance, Medicaid, and so at the same time. The vast majority of people pay for Social Security at one time and receive it at another time. The net issue so important to UBI is negligible or nonexistent for all these policies.

About half of U.S. transfer payments are healthcare related and many of these do involve the same people both paying for and receiving benefits at the same time, but they pay in cash and receive back in something very different: health care. We need to know the cost of converting the cash into that healthcare. So the gross cost of healthcare spending is relevant, although we might be interested in its net redistributive effect as well.

UBI is fundamentally different from all of these policies because for the vast majority of people it works like a tax rebate. You pay taxes in cash and receive back cash at the same time. Suppose you buy something for $100, but you instantaneously receive back a rebate of $50. You do not have to budget for that $100. You have to budget for $50. That $50 is the only real cost to you of this policy. If we want to know the budgetary cost of UBI, we have to net out the enormous extent to which it functions as a rebate. Unlike healthcare spending, the gross cost has no budgetary effects at all. There is a limit to how much healthcare the government can provide you even if you are paying all the taxes for it. You only have so much purchasing power. Only so much of it can be converted into healthcare. But there is no limit to how much cash the government can give you as long as it taxes it right back. The government could give every single American $10 billion in cash without increasing pricesas long as it taxes back that $10 billion as soon as it pays it out. We need to get rid of any attention to this meaningless gross cost and focus on the one cost of UBI that matters: its net cost.

Here are some of the many examples of people mistreating the gross cost of UBI as if it were a real cost:

A google search will produce more articles making this error than I can count.

I recently made some simple estimates of the real cost of UBI in an paper entitled, the Cost of Basic Income: Back-of-the-Envelope Calculations. Its currently under peer-review at an academic journal and available in un-reviewed form on my website. I found that a UBI large enough to eliminate poverty costs on $539 billion per yearless than 16% of its often-mentioned but not-very-meaningful gross cost ($3.415 trillion), less than 25% of the cost of current U.S. entitlement spending, less than 15% of overall federal spending, and about 2.95% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

-Cru Coffee House, Beaufort, North Carolina, May 23, 2017

Karl Widerquist has written 878 articles.

Karl Widerquist is an Associate Professor of political philosophy at SFS-Qatar, Georgetown University, specializing in distributive justicethe ethics of who has what. Much of his work involves Universal Basic Income (UBI). He is a co-founder of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network (USBIG). He served as co-chair of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) for 7 years, and now serves as vice-chair. He was the Editor of the USBIG NewsFlash for 15 years and of the BIEN NewsFlash for 4 years. He is a cofounder of BIENs news website, Basic Income News, the main source of just-the-facts reporting on UBI worldwide. He is a cofounder and editor of the journal Basic Income Studies, the only academic journal devoted to research on UBI. Widerquist has published several books and many articles on UBI both in academic journals and in the popular media. He has appeared on or been quoted by many major media outlets, such asNPRs On Point, NPRs Marketplace,PRIs the World,CNBC,Al-Jazeera,538,Vice,Dissent,the New York Times,Forbes,the Financial Times, andthe Atlantic Monthly, which called him a leader of the worldwide basic income movement. Widerquist holds two doctoratesone in Political Theory form Oxford University (2006) and one in Economics from the City University of New York (1996). He has published seven books, including Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy (Edinburgh University Press 2017, coauthored by Grant S. McCall) and Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income: A Theory of Freedom as the Power to Say No (Palgrave Macmillan 2013). He has published more than a twenty scholarly articles and book chapters. Most Karl Widerquists writing is available on his Selected Works website (works.bepress.com/widerquist/). More information about him is available on his BIEN profile and on Wikipedia. He writes the blog "the Indepentarian" for Basic Income News.

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‘IT to remain net recruiter, automation to watch out for’ – Economic Times

Posted: at 7:35 am

NEW DELHI: Recent layoffs in Indian IT companies are not different from the past and the sector will remain a net recruiter, but the numbers will be "calibrated" and automation impact will be crucial, says a report.

"We believe that these adjustments in staff strength are not materially different from earlier years. The IT industry will continue to be a net recruiter with numbers prudently and continuously calibrated by industry revenue growth," Kotak Institutional Equities said in a research note.

Indian IT companies generally let go of 1-3 per cent employees after annual performance measurement and this year, there could be a slightly higher proportion of layoffs -- around 2-4 per cent -- it added.

Some of the key factors slamming brakes on IT hiring include slowdown in company growth, decline in attrition rates, acceleration in localisation programme, employee reskilling and changes in the market place.

"Industry headcount addition in 2017-18 would be similar to 2016-17 figures or marginally higher, assuming 8 per cent revenue growth," the report said, adding that this positive will be partly offset by higher local hiring in the US.

The engineering and R&D services are expected to see 7-9 per cent headcount addition while domestic IT and BPO would log a 5-7 per cent rise. In IT services, there is likely to be 6-8 per cent growth and headcount increase will be 2-3 per cent lower than revenue growth.

However, BPO is where the real challenge is, as nearly 38 per cent of BPO export revenues are from customer interaction services, something that will be automated and taken over by chatbots over time.

"The industry will continue to be a net recruiter. However, it will continue to witness supply of talent and this might have negative implications for the engineering," the report said, adding "we expect automation to have significant bearing on headcount addition in the medium term".

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Zuckerberg’s Harvard Speech Shows He Doesn’t Quite Get The Economics Of Jobs And Automation – Forbes

Posted: at 7:35 am


News18
Zuckerberg's Harvard Speech Shows He Doesn't Quite Get The Economics Of Jobs And Automation
Forbes
Mark Zuckerberg has returned to Harvard and gained an honorary degree instead of the earned one he dropped out not to get. He also gave the commencement speech which was not a bad effort at all. However, there's one piece of it which shows that his ...
Automation Will Take Away Your Job, But There is Way Out, Says Facebook's ZuckerbergNews18
Mark Zuckerberg Warns on Effects of Automation in Harvard commencement SpeechFinancialbuzz.com
The new economy is comingBaltimore Sun
Facebook -USA TODAY
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Zuckerberg's Harvard Speech Shows He Doesn't Quite Get The Economics Of Jobs And Automation - Forbes

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Mark Zuckerberg tells Harvard grads that automation will take jobs, and it’s up to millennials to create more – Chicago Tribune

Posted: at 7:35 am

Mark Zuckerberg finally has his Harvard degree. The Facebook CEO and famous college dropout left the Ivy League university 12 years ago to found the social network, but he returned Thursday to pick up a honorary doctor of laws degree and drop some wisdom on the class of 2017.

In prepared remarks provided to The Washington Post ahead of the speech, Zuckerberg called on his alma mater's newest graduates to tackle major, ambitious "public works" projects that bring together masses of people for the general benefit of society. He noted that many technologies - including some being developed at Facebook - are changing the world and also presenting new challenges.

"You're graduating at a time when this is especially important," Zuckerberg said in the prepared remarks. "When our parents graduated, purpose reliably came from your job, your church, your community. But today, technology and automation are eliminating many jobs. Membership in communities is declining. Many people feel disconnected and depressed, and are trying to fill a void."

Zuckerberg, 33, is the youngest person to deliver a Harvard commencement speech, according to Facebook - a fact that he wanted to highlight to the crowd. "We walked this yard less than a decade apart, studied the same ideas and slept through the same lectures," his speech said. "We may have taken different paths to get here, but today I want to share what I've learned about our generation and the world we're building together."

Some of Zuckerberg's remarks echo the manifesto he published earlier this year, outlining how he saw Facebook's mission as establishing a "social infrastructure" for the world. But the central theme of Zuckerberg's address was to call on young people to create a world where "everyone has a sense of purpose" by looking beyond their own needs.

"I'm not here to give you the standard commencement about finding your purpose," the speech said "We're millennials. We'll try to do that instinctively. Instead, I'm here to tell you finding your purpose isn't enough."

Noting that society will likely see "tens of millions of jobs replaced by automation like self-driving cars and trucks" in the coming years, Zuckerberg called for young people to work on large public works projects to make new jobs. Though he didn't specify what sorts of projects those should be, or what hand companies such as Facebook could play in them, he did cite some past examples.

Zuckerberg noted that previous generations have their own "defining works" - the Hoover Dam, the space program, the fight against polio - that pulled them together and imbued America with civic pride. Citing global problems including climate change and pandemics, Zuckerberg said that millennials, himself included, understand themselves as global citizens rather than belonging to any nation-state.

"To keep our society moving forward, we have a generational challenge - to not only create new jobs, but create a renewed sense of purpose," he said. "So what are we waiting for? It's time for our generation-defining public works. Let's do big things, not only to create progress, but to create purpose."

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Mark Zuckerberg tells Harvard grads that automation will take jobs, and it's up to millennials to create more - Chicago Tribune

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This Week’s Retail False Flag: Automation-Threatened Job Losses – Forbes

Posted: at 7:35 am


Forbes
This Week's Retail False Flag: Automation-Threatened Job Losses
Forbes
Many articles have been written this past week on automation eliminating more than seven million retail jobs. The source study is misleading and incorrect.

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10 Ways Automation Is Shaping The Future Of Marketing – Forbes

Posted: at 7:35 am


Forbes
10 Ways Automation Is Shaping The Future Of Marketing
Forbes
Automation and artificial intelligence are becoming increasingly important for the world of marketing, as they can significantly change how communicators and marketers work, both in terms of customer engagement and productivity. Although still in an ...

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Case Packing Cobots – Automation World

Posted: at 7:35 am

Axium Foods, a mid-sized manufacturer of salty snacks, had to evolve quickly when it found out that its high-speed packaging equipment wasnt flexible enough to meet new customer demands.

The company offers co-packing, contract manufacturing and private label services in addition to producing its own tortilla chip brands. And, while theyve diversified their offerings over the years, the challenge came from finding new ways to deliver uniquely packaged products to consumers.

The retail business changes fast. And, while its hard to predict what consumers will want in the future by walking through a grocery store, Axiums private label customers could anticipate the need for mixed products and a variety of carton types for use on shelves and displays in the store.

That variety meant flexibility on the packaging line, something Axium didnt have at the time.

High speed packaging is set up to do one spot with one product in one case. It is difficult to deal with retail that has multiple products in a package, said Jerry Stokely, former president and current board member at Axium Foods. We needed to adapt to pack two or three different products in one carton, but that didnt exist.

Stokely, who was speaking to attendees at PMMI Media Groups Automation Conference & Expo this week in Chicago, said that he couldnt find any case packer that could meet these needs. Not only did they not have what I needed, but they werent interested in listening to what I wanted. So, Stokely made a decision that was based on the companys successful manufacturing history that spans almost 60 years. I decided we needed to make our own.

The company employs about 150 people at its South Beloit, IL facility in which there is a lot of existing automation that was built in-house to run the plant 24 hours a day between three shifts.

We had a history of manufacturing our own custom equipment. We also had the financial resources, a supportive management [team] and highly skilled controls engineers, Stokely said. And, they had adequate in-house fabrication and access to outsourced fabricators for doing off-site development.

The need for a high degree of flexibility underlined everything they did as the team moved forward designing a case packing line. It had to accommodate a lot of changeovers and specialized short runs. In addition, it had to fit in the existing footprint, be operator friendly, mechanical friendly, intuitive and reliable, and include a six-axis robot.

A six-axis robot would provide scalable payloads, a definable reach envelope, multitasking and subtle and complex motion. But the traditional robots have proprietary programming languages, a long learning curve, large footprint and a large investment, Stokely said. A collaborative robot (cobot), on the other hand, has an intuitive programming language, a short learning curve, is cage-free and is a modest investment.

So a cobot it was. Stokely chose theUniversal RobotsUR5 with 5 kgs payload and an 850mm reach as snack food is light, so payload was not as important as reach. While designing the cobot into the workflow the company spent a lot of time figuring out how to build a system capable of running itself, even during a changeover.

A key learning during the trial and error phase was that to run at medium-to-high speed, the robot had to function as a component of the system. And, every movement had to be broken into a sub-function with every step perfected along the way to create a total system. And, it wasnt easy. We built a catalog of what didnt work, Stokely said.

The other key learnings: Control systems outside of the robot are critical. And as the Internet of Things moves forward, interoperability could be an issue as, right now, a lot of control systems and plant floor equipment cant talk to each other. The other key learning came from end effectors. Whatever you are picking up or grabbing, theres an end effector for it, and its easy to lose time searching for the right one, Stokely explained. You have to educate the fabricator on your business needs and clear their mind of preconceptions.

Lastly, focus on the humans in the process. It may seem that the guy who programmed the system would be the best person to train others, but thats not always the case. Frankly, that was a major failure for us, Stokely said. Find a person who is a natural teacher and give them permission to ask stupid questions.

The result of all this work is that Axium is now a fully-functional and reliable multi-tasking case packer. And the use of cobots was what enabled them to change the status quo.

We are a relatively small snack food company that built our own robotic case packer because there wasnt anything else out there, Stokely said. In the process, we had a lifetime of learning and can see the potential to go beyond the basics.

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Case Packing Cobots - Automation World

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