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Intel Stomps Into Flash Memory
jcatcw writes "Intel's first NAND flash memory product, the Z-U130 Value Solid-State Drive, is a challenge to other hardware vendors. Intel claims read rates of 28 MB/sec, write speeds of 20 MB/sec., and capacity of 1GB to 8GB, which is much smaller than products from SanDisk. 'But Intel also touts extreme reliability numbers, saying the Z-U130 has an average mean time between failure of 5 million hours compared with SanDisk, which touts an MTBF of 2 million hours.'"
Conventional warfare --fought by tanks, airplanes, ships, etc. -- runs on oil. The US "won" the first and second world wars due to overwhelmingly superior native oil reserves and related infrastructure.
Permanent bases in Iraq, positioned to guard enormous oil supplies, will permit military planners to conduct regional aggression without worrying about long supply lines for fuel (the undoing of Japan and Germany in WWII -- see "The Prize" by Daniel Yergin). Taking the province of Khuzestan away from Iran, for example, is a local conventional combat objective with immense geopolitical benefits to the aggressor.
The real unanswered questions have to do with the beneficiaries of this program. The US sees little gain and ruinous loss. In many ways the US military forces in Iraq are now operating against the national interest, as misguided mercenaries.
Israeli foreign policy has infiltrated every level of American foreign policy -- look at the affiliations of the PNAC signatories and key "advisers" in the administration (Michael Chertoff -- Israeli citizen in charge of US Homeland Security, for example). It could be that Israel has found a way to use the immense resources of the US to fight a proxy war for Israeli benefit. Israel may envision a day when they will take over effective operation of the bases built by the US, fulfilling their stated objective of becoming the Middle East's sole superpower.
Other beneficiaries of the stealing of Iraqi oil include multinational corporations and perhaps the Hashemites (rather than the Saudis). Iraq's value is being stolen, certainly. Tragically, history will show that America's worth has also transferred to invisible thieves. We supply the cannon fodder and revenue to build their bases in Iraq.
Oil will remain important, but conventional warfare will soon decline. The next generation of planetary stealing will be done with bioweapons, nanoweapons, orbiting ray generators, etc. The bases in Iraq will be abandoned within a generation, but by then much of consequence will have been stolen.