News bits: A military pulse check; Deadly fake history influences the USSC; Underwater computer farm

Military.com writes:

An annual Pentagon report on extremism within the ranks reveals that 78 service members were suspected of advocating for the overthrow of the U.S. government and another 44 were suspected of engaging or supporting terrorism.

The report released Thursday by the Defense Department inspector general revealed that in fiscal 2023 there were 183 allegations of extremism across all the branches of military, broken down not only into efforts to overthrow the government and terrorism but also advocating for widespread discrimination or violence to achieve political goals.

The statistics indicate the military continues to grapple with extremism following its public denunciations and a stand-down across the services ordered by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in 2021. Furthermore, the numbers do not make it clear whether the military's approach is working. In 2021, the year the data was first released to Congress, there were 270 allegations of extremist activities. In 2022, that figure dropped to 146 before rebounding over the past year.

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Politico writes about the lies the morally bankrupt authoritarian radical right is employing at the USSC to give it cover for its radical authoritarian decisions:

‘Plain historical falsehoods’: How amicus briefs 

bolstered Supreme Court conservatives

A POLITICO review indicates most conservative briefs in high-profile cases have links to a small cadre of activists aligned with Leonard Leo

Princeton Professor Robert P. George, a leader of the conservative legal movement and confidant of the judicial activist and Donald Trump ally Leonard Leo, made the case for overturning Roe v. Wade in an amicus brief a year before the Supreme Court issued its watershed ruling.

Roe, George claimed, had been decided based on “plain historical falsehoods.” For instance, for centuries dating to English common law, he asserted, abortion has been considered a crime or “a kind of inchoate felony for felony-murder purposes.”

In his majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito used the same quote from Henry de Bracton, the medieval English jurist, that George cited in his amicus brief to help demonstrate that “English cases dating all the way back to the 13th century corroborate the treatises’ statements that abortion was a crime.”

George, however, is not a historian. Major organizations representing historians strongly disagree with him.

That this questionable assertion is now enshrined in the court’s ruling is “a flawed and troubling precedent,” the Organization of American Historians, which represents 6,000 history scholars and experts, and the American Historical Association, the largest membership association of professional historians in the world, said in a statement. It is also a prime example of how a tight circle of conservative legal activists have built a highly effective thought chamber around the court’s conservative flank over the past decade.

A POLITICO review of tax filings, financial statements and other public documents found that Leo and his network of nonprofit groups are either directly or indirectly connected to a majority of amicus briefs filed on behalf of conservative parties in seven of the highest-profile rulings the court has issued over the past two years.

The picture that emerges is of an exceedingly small universe of mostly Christian conservative activists developing and disseminating theories to change the nation’s legal and cultural landscape. .... Adam Kennedy, Leo’s spokesperson, said Leo has “no comment at this time.”

“There’s no real vetting process for who can file these amicus briefs,” said Allison Orr Larsen, a constitutional law expert at William and Mary Law School, and the justices often “accept these historical narratives at face value.” While it’s impossible to gauge the precise impact, “what I can prove is they’re being used by the court,” she says.  

Since Leo’s handpicked justices solidified the court’s conservative supermajority in 2020, they are agreeing to hear cases advanced by his allies and ruling in favor of many of his Christian conservative priorities.  

While POLITICO’s analysis relies heavily on annual forms filed to the IRS, its approximations may underrepresent Leo’s influence over opinions presented to the court. That’s because the IRS does not require nonprofit groups to list members of advisory boards, and groups filing as churches don’t have to disclose their leadership. Leo’s organizations also route tens of millions of dollars through anonymous donor-advised funds like DonorsTrust, making it unclear where it is going.

So there we have it. The six authoritarian, Christian Republican radicals don't bother to vet the information they are fed in amicus briefs. And now, the authoritarian radical right has sunk to the level of lying about history to get court decisions that they and their God or corporate sponsors want. This is beyond an outrageous insult. It is an evil, direct attack on American democracy, civil liberties and the secular rule of law.

Leo and Gorsuch (top)

Leo and Kavanaugh (bottom)

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China is building a 732,000 sq ft data processing center about 155 ft underwater on the seabed off the coast of Hainan island south of China. The point is to save energy and water to power and cool the data processing. Techradar reports:

'A mini data center village under the sea' — China sinks tens of thousands of powerful servers in seawater as it grapples with demand for more power

The data center, which comprises 100 units spanning 68,000 square meters in size, will be constructed over five years at the bottom of the sea off the coast of Sanya, a coastal city on the island of Hainan in southern China, according to China Central Television (CCTV).

Each data storage weighs 1,300 tons and processes more than four million HD images in 30 seconds, with the performance equivalent to stitching together the processing power of 60,000 of the best conventional desktop PCs together.

The data center will save roughly 122 million kWh of electricity as well as roughly 105,000 tons of freshwater each year. This is because the freezing seawater acts as a natural cooling element, which can reduce the cost of using water as a coolant on a land-based facility.

Once completed, the data center will be between 40 and 60% more energy efficient than land-based data centers, according to general manager of the UDC Hainan pilot development project.

Hm, 100 units at 1,300 tons per unit is 130,000 tons of computer stuff.