『Let's Know Things』のカバーアート

Let's Know Things

Let's Know Things

著者： Colin Wright
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今ならプレミアムプランが3カ月 月額99円

2026年5月12日まで。4か月目以降は月額1,500円で自動更新します。

概要

 A calm, non-shouty, non-polemical, weekly news analysis podcast for folks of all stripes and leanings who want to know more about what's happening in the world around them. Hosted by analytic journalist Colin Wright since 2016.

letsknowthings.substack.comColin Wright 政治・政府
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  • US Router Ban

    US Router Ban
    2026/04/07
    This week we talk about modems, WiFi, and kinda sorta bribes.We also discuss Huawei, government subsidies, and the FCC.Recommended Book: Replaceable You by Mary RoachTranscriptMany homes, those with WiFi connections to the internet, have two different devices they use to make that connectivity happen.The first is a modem, which is what connects directly to your internet service provider, often via an ethernet jack in the wall that connects to a series of cables webbed throughout your city.The second is a router, which plugs into the modem and then spreads that signal, derived from that network of city-wide cables around your home, either by splitting that single ethernet jack into multiple ethernet jacks, allowing multiple devices to plug into that network, or by creating a wireless signal, WiFi, that multiple devices can connect to wirelessly in the same way. Many routers will have both options, though in most homes and for most modern devices, WiFi tends to be the more common access point because of its convenience, these days.That WiFi signal, and the connection provided via those additional ethernet ports on the router, create what’s called a Local Area Network of devices, or LAN. This local area network allow these devices—your phone and your laptop, for instance—to connect to each other directly, but its primary role for most people is using that connection to the modem to grant these devices access the wider internet.In addition to providing that internet access and creating the Local Area Network, connecting devices on that network to each other, routers also usually provide a layer of security to those devices. This can be done via firewalls and with encryption, which is important as unprotected networks can leave the devices plugged into them vulnerable to outside attack. That means if the router is breached or in some other way exploited, a whole company’s worth of computers, or all your local devices at home, could be made part of a botnet, could be held hostage by ransomware, or could be keylogged until you provide login information for your banks or other seemingly secure accounts to whomever broke into that insufficiently protected LAN.What I’d like to talk about today is a recently announced ban on some types of routers in the US, the reasoning behind this ban, and what might happen next.—On March 23, 2026, the US Federal Communications Commission announced a ban on the import of all new consumer-grade routers not made in the United States.This ban does not impact routers that are already on the market and in homes, so if you have one already, you’re fine. And if you’re buying an existing model, that should be fine, too.It will apply to new routers, though, and the rationale provided by the FCC with the announcement is that imported routers are a “severe cybersecurity risk that could be leveraged to immediately and severely disrupt US critical infrastructure.”They also cited recent, major hacks like Salt Typhoon, saying that routers brought into the US provided a means of entry for some components of those attacks.This stated concern is similar to the one that was at the center of the Trump administration’s 2019 ban of products made by Chinese tech company Huawei in the United States. Huawei made, and still makes, all kinds of products, including consumer-grade smartphones, and high-end 5G equipment sold to telecommunications companies around the world for use in their infrastructure.The concern was that a company like Huawei might leverage its far better prices, which were partly possible because of backing from the Chinese government, to put foreign competitors out of business. From there, they could dominate these industries, while also getting their equipment deep in the telecommunications infrastructure of the US and US allies. Then, it would be relatively easy to insert spy equipment and eavesdrop on phone calls and data transmissions from phones, or to incorporate kill-switches into these grids, so if China ever needed to, for instance, distract the US and its allies while they invaded Taiwan, they could just push a button, kill the US telecommunications grid, and that would buy them some time and fog of war to do what they wanted to do without immediate repercussions; and undoing a successful invasion would be a million times more difficult than stepping in while it’s happening to prevent it.As of 2024, Huawei still controlled about a third of the global 5G market. It controlled about 27.5% back in 2019, the year it was banned in the US and in many US allied nations, so while it’s possible they could have grown even bigger than that had the ban not been implemented, they still grew following its implementation.Chinese companies currently control about 60% of the US router market, and it’s likely the local, US market will shift, reorienting toward US makers over the next decade or so. But it’s possible these Chinese companies will grow their global ...
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    13 分
  • Ukraine and Iran

    Ukraine and Iran
    2026/03/31
    This week we talk about cheap drones, energy resources, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.We also discuss the Strait of Hormuz, the war in Iran, and economic asymmetry.Recommended Book: The Age of Extraction by Tim WuTranscriptRussia’s invasion of Ukraine has been pretty universally bad for everyone involved, very much including Russia, which going into the fifth year of this conflict, which it started by massing troops on its neighbor’s border and invading, unprovoked, following years of funding asymmetric military incursions in Ukraine’s southeast. Following their full invasion though, Russia has reportedly suffered around 1.25 million casualties, with more than 400,000 of those casualties suffered in 2025, alone. It’s estimated that Russia has also suffered at least 325,000 deaths, and Ukrainian officials reported confirmed kills of more than 30,000 Russian soldiers just in January 2026.As of early 2026, Russian controlled about 20% of Ukraine, down from the height of its occupation, back in March of 2022, when it controlled 26% of the country.And due to a combination of military spending, intense and expansive international sanctions, and damage inflicted by Ukraine, it’s estimated that Russia has incurred about $1 trillion in damages, about a fifth of that being direct operational expenses, and around a fourth the result of reduced growth and lost assets stemming from all those sanctions.There’s a good chance that all of these numbers, aside from the land controlled, are undercounts, too, as some estimates rely on official figures, and those figures are generally assumed to be partially fabricated to allow Russia to keep face in what is already a pretty humiliating situation—a war they started and which they thought would be a walk in the park, lasting maybe a week, but which has instead gone on to reshape their entire country and present one of the biggest threats to Putin’s control over the Kremlin since he took office.That in mind, a report from last week, at the tail-end of March, suggests that the Kremlin knows things aren’t looking great for them, and they asked Russian oligarchs to donate money to the cause, to help stabilize Russian finances. This report, which is unconfirmed, but has been reported by multiple Russian media entities, arrives at a moment in which the Russian government is also planning cuts to all sorts of spending, including military spending, but also a reported 10% across the board, to all “non-sensitive” matters in its 2026 budget.Despite these fairly abysmal figures, though, there’s some optimism in Russia-supporting circles right now, in large part because the conflict in Iran, and Iran’s near shutting down of the Strait of Hormuz, which is an important channel for the flow of international energy assets, that’s goosed the price of oil and gas, which in turn has goosed Russian income substantially.What I’d like to talk about today are the interconnections between the conflict in Ukraine and the conflict in Iran, and how Ukraine being invaded seems to have put them in a position of relative influence and authority in this new conflict in the Middle East.—From the moment Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainian military, and its government, industrial base, and pretty much everyone else, scrambled to find an asymmetric means of keeping a far larger, wealthier, and ostensibly more experienced and better backed foe from just steam-rolling over them.They found that by leveraging lower-cost deterrents, like cheap rockets and drones, they could pay something like $10,000 to take out a tank or other weapons platform that cost Russia a million or ten million dollars. That’s a pretty stellar trade-off, and if you can do that over and over again, eventually you make the cost of the conflict just ridiculously unbalanced, each trade of hardware costing you very little and them a whole lot, which with time can making waging war unsustainable for the side paying orders of magnitudes more.Russia is of course making use of inexpensive drones and rockets, as well. That’s become a norm in modern conflicts, especially over the past five years or so, as cheap but capable and easy to produce models have started rolling of manufacturing lines in Iran and Turkey, allowing them to become popular sources of single-use but quite agile and deadly aerial weaponry.Ukraine has gone further than most other entities, though, as they’re immensely incentivized to get this right, and to put their full support behind anything that gives them the upper-hand against what’s still a powerful and otherwise overwhelming invading force. And this patchwork of companies, independent and government supported, large-ish and tiny enough to operate under constant fire and in wartime conditions, has since scaled-up so that they’re expected to manufacture about 7 million drones of many different varieties in 2026.This scaling has attracted a lot of ...
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    12 分
  • Cuban Oil Blockade

    Cuban Oil Blockade
    2026/03/24
    This week we talk about the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and decapitation attacks.We also discuss Venezuela, Iran, and the Platt Amendment.Recommended Book: The Will of the Many by James IslingtonTranscriptCuba is a large island nation, about the same size as the US state of Tennessee, which formally gained its independence from Spain in late 1898, following three wars of independence, the last of which brought the US, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines into play against the Spanish when the Spanish military sunk the USS Maine in Havana Harbor, triggering the Spanish-American War.That conflict, which Spain lost, led to the US’s acquisition of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, and it led to a piece of US legislation called the Platt Amendment, which redefined the relationship between the US and Cuba, following the war, making Cuba a protectorate of the United States, the US promising to leave, withdrawing its troops from Cuban soil, only if seven conditions were met, and an additional provision that Cuba sign a treaty indicating they would continue to adhere to these conditions moving forward—making them permanent.Most of these conditions relate to Cuba’s ability to enter into relationships with other nations, but provision three also says the US can intervene if doing so will preserve Cuban independence, and that Cuba will sell or lease to the US the land it needs to base its naval vessels in the area, so that it can intervene, militarily if necessary, to keep Cuba independent.The other provisions are largely related to ensuring Cuba stays financially solvent and clean, the former meant to help maintain that independence, so Cuba doesn’t make deals with other nations, perhaps US enemies, in order to bail itself out when financially in trouble, and the latter meant to help prevent the bubbling up of diseases in a not well-maintained Cuba, that might then spread to the US.These concerns were concerns for the US government because Cuba is very, very close to the US. It’s just over 90 miles away from Key West, Florida, and that means in the mind of those tasked with defending the US against foreign incursion, Cuba has long represented an uncontrolled variable where enemies could conceivably base all sorts of military assets, including but not limited to nuclear weapons.That makes Cuba, again, in the minds of defense strategists looking to help the US secure its borders, long-term, something like an aircraft carrier slash nuclear submarine the size of Tennessee, located so close to the US that it could take out all sorts of major assets in a flash, long before the US could respond, getting the same sorts of strike craft and missiles to the Soviet Union.This framing of the situation, and this collection of concerns, is what led to the Cuban Missile Crisis back in 1962, when the US deployed nuclear weapons in the UK, Italy, and Turkey, all of which were closer to major Soviet hubs than the US, and that led to a tit-for-tat move by the Soviets to deploy nuclear missiles to Cuba, both to get their own weapons closer to the US, just as the US did to them with those new deployments, but also to deter a potential US invasion of Cuba, which was a staunch ally of the Soviet Union.The crisis lasted 13 days, and though then US President Kennedy was advised to launch an air strike against Soviet missile supplies, and to then invade the Cuban mainland to prevent the basing of Soviet nuclear weapons there, he instead opted for a naval blockade of Cuba, hoping to keep more missile supplies from arriving, and to thus avoid a strike on a Soviet ally that could accidentally spark a shooting war.After this nearly two-week standoff, the US and Soviet leaders agreed that the Soviets would dismantle the offensive weapons they were building in Cuba in exchange for a public declaration by the US to not invade Cuba. The US also secretly pledged to dismantle its own offensive weapons that it had recently deployed to Italy and Turkey, and the weapons they deployed to the UK were also disbanded the following year.This sequence of events is generally seen as a minor victory for the US during an especially fraught portion of the Cold War, as that secret agreement between Kennedy and Soviet leader Khrushchev meant that the Soviet people and leadership perceived this agreement as an embarrassing loss, and an example of Soviet weakness on the international stage—they blinked and the US got what they wanted without giving much of anything, though of course, again, the US gave a fair bit too, just in secret.What I’d like to talk about today is a recent escalation in the US’s posture toward Cuba, and what might happen next, as a result of that change.—In early January 2026, the US military, ostensibly as part of a larger effort aimed at disrupting a network of watercraft that carry drugs from mostly South and Central American drugmakers across the border, into US markets, called Operation Southern Spear, the ...
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    15 分
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