The US Army, Fox Business reports, plans to build nuclear “microreactors” at five of its bases — Fort Bragg, Fort Campbell, Fort Hood, Fort Benning, and Fort Drum — over the next two years, with at least 15 more to follow later.

Why? To, the report says, “strengthen the military’s energy security and reduce its reliance on potentially vulnerable power grids.”

The idea certainly makes sense for a military base, but it makes sense for everyone, everywhere else, too.

The biggest security  and reliability worry with electricity isn’t that an enemy missile or bomb will take out a power plant. It’s that an attack or accident somewhere along the 650,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines and 6.3 million miles of distribution lines criss-crossing the US will stop that power from getting delivered.

A drunk driver hits a pole. A defective or damaged transformer explodes. A computer suddenly stops juggling chainsaws to correctly operate some part the increasingly complex and interconnected “grid” system. And the lights go out, somewhere. Maybe just on your block, maybe in a million households.

Most of the proposed to solutions to these problems seem to be about making the “grid” more “robust,” more interconnected, more complex, and more centralized. That’s a move in the wrong direction.

The “grid” is a sprawling Rube Goldberg machine that evolved over the course of the 20th century based on the now false notion that large numbers of consumers must get their electricity from large, central power plants.

The problem with that is that when something breaks in one place, people in other places suffer. In 2003, a “cascading grid failure,” caused by sagging power lines short-circuiting on tree branches in Ohio, blacked out eight US states and the Canadian province of Ontario.

Technology advances, and it doesn’t have to be “grid” technology. These days, many consumers who lost power in 2003 could, reasonably affordably, get their electricity from their own rooftop solar panels or backyard wind turbines. And for those who don’t, smaller community-level systems make more sense than a central computer pushing watts down many miles of vulnerable line, through multiple switching  steps from far-flung plants.

The 20-megawatt nuclear reactors the army’s buying could each, in civilian context, power as many as 20,000 homes — about twice as many as found in the median US county. Combined with wind and solar — at both household and utility scale — there’s no reason why populations can’t become far more self-reliant and secure so a power problem in Akron doesn’t black out Ann Arbor.

If that sounds obvious, it is. So obvious that even the US Army has figured it out (as an old Marine, I naturally believe they’re not terribly bright). The rest of us should get with the decentralization/localization program.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On August 22, a new set of US tariffs went into effect. Those tariffs charge American buyers of Canadian goods — 569 categories of stuff including dairy, alcohol, electronics, furniture, building materials, and other items, amounting to a usual annual value of nearly $25 billion — an extra 50%.

Let me re-state and clarify that:

In order to supposedly punish Canada for supposedly discriminatory trade measures, US president Donald Trump wants to charge Americans a potential $12.5 billion in new taxes. I say “potential” because that 50% Trump tax hike will price many Americans out of the goods in question; the previous year’s $25 billion in imports will go down.

By way of “retaliation,” the Canadian government has announced it will tax Canadian buyers of US goods, according to finance minister François-Philippe Champagne , “dollar for dollar, rate for rate.”

To which Trump replied with a prospective doubling of auto and steel tariffs and the renaming of Lake Ontario to “Lake America.”

Trade wars are odd in that the dueling governments’ weapon of choice is confiscatory taxation imposed on their own citizens.

“I’m mad at you — I’m going to break my son’s arm.”

“Oh yeah? Well fine, I’ll break my wife’s leg — how ya like them apples?”

“You’ve done it now — I’m dousing my whole family in gasoline and lighting a match!”

When I point out how idiotic all that is, a few doofs come back at me with: “Buy American — problem solved.”

But no, buying American doesn’t solve your problem as a consumer. You’re going to pay more, whether you pay it directly  to Uncle Sam or not.

Suppose you  … well, no, let’s talk about me.

I had plans for a small construction project this fall. I was going to buy lumber for it next month and work on it at a leisurely pace through September and October. One of the ingredients: Plywood.

Lots of lumber comes from Canada, and these new tariffs will affect building materials, so I moved up my timetable and had the plywood delivered yesterday. It happens to be southern yellow pine plywood, grown and cut in the good ol’ USA. But you can bet the price will be going up anyway, due to the tariffs.

If Canadian lumber gets 50% more expensive, American producers can raise their own prices to any amount lower than that new, higher price and remain competitive. The increased demand for their  domestic supply versus Canadian goods will also tend to make it a seller’s market unless they’re built out to produce a lot more than normal, very quickly.

Which, I’ve often opined, usually seems to be the whole point. Politically connected industries make bank not by competing, but by getting their friends in government to make sure they don’t HAVE to compete.

These days, I’m less sure. Trump’s tariff antics don’t come off as following that corrupt logic. In fact, they don’t seem to be rooted in any logic at all. They look a lot more like a toddler’s unpredictable, unappeasable tantrums.

But either way, you pay and America loses.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

In late 1861, Union soldiers in Bloomfield, Missouri, found the local newspaper’s office empty and decided to put it to good use. Stars and Stripes covered the activities of the three Illinois regiments. Their commander in chief, of course, was US president Abraham Lincoln.

Over time, the paper gained direct funding from the military, but with supposed “editorial independence,” and a mission “to provide first-hand reporting from bases around the world and unbiased, credible news to America’s military.” Those who worked in uniform abroad through two world wars and after, often not in a position to visit a newspaper stand or receive news via TV or radio, could read Stars and Stripes (I read it in Saudi Arabia during Desert Storm).

On August 21, US defense secretary Pete Hegseth fired the paper’s publisher, editor-in-chief, and a top reporter after they publicly commented on Department of Defense “interference” with the newspaper’s “independence.”

Once again, Abraham Lincoln — or at least the aircraft carrier named for him — played a central role as Hegseth whined over the paper’s coverage of complaints from deployed sailors’ families concerning the material and mental health situation aboard that vessel.

The firings aren’t really as sudden as they might seem to those not following closely over time.

The first Trump administration floated a plan to shutter Stars and Stripes, but backed down after a “bipartisan” backlash. With Hegseth at the helm in Trump’s second time around, DoD rages frequently against “woke distractions” in its reportage, firing its ombudsman in May for noticing that attempts to change it into a “morale booster” instead of a news outlet are “contrary to the news organization’s mission.”

So, here’s the thing: Who pays the piper, calls the tune.

Stars and Stripes is largely funded by, and its operations and distribution are almost completely enabled by, the US government. “Editorial independence” may sound like a wonderful idea, but there’s always been a leash. We’re just watching the leash get shorter.

Thankfully, the collar at the end of that leash only strangles Stars and Stripes.

These days, even troops aboard ships at sea and at remote firebases in hostile territory have far greater contact with the outside world, most of the time, than even civilians at home enjoyed 50, let alone 150, years ago.

Cell phones. Email. Web access. Zoom. It’s not 100% there, 100% of the time, but neither was Stars and Stripes.

Pete Hegseth can cry if he wants to. He can throw himself on the floor and threaten to hold his breath until he turns blue. The troops will get still their news, whether he likes it or not. They’ll get the kind of coverage they want to get, not just the kind he wants them to get.

And because all that technology runs two-way, they can also REPORT the news they want covered without consulting him first as he obviously expects Stars and Stripes to.

The military news coverage, and consumption, of the future will look a lot more like WikiLeaks than like Stars and Stripes.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY