It is great to see someone is trying to drill into Russia’s technical hiring practices as some sort of example for study or exception, rather than the other way around (why does America suck at allowing women equal treatment).

She believes there are several reasons for that: girls are expected to take up computer science from an early age and perform well, and there’s no stigma associated with studying technology.

But there’s something more: “Culturally, women in Eastern Europe are characterized as having a forthright nature and this means they’re more inclined to speak up for themselves, and be hardy to rejection, which is typically needed in a male-dominated environment,” Frankland says.

“Characterized” is the operative word here. Let’s take a step back into the history of the region and from where the caricatures emanate.

Many hoped the Bolshevik Revolution one hundred years ago would usher in a new era of gender and class equality. Following the revolution, Soviet Russia declared “International Women’s Day” an official holiday, and “Marxist feminists” romanticize communism to this day. Women of the Gulag, both a remarkable book and a documentary film, highlights the disparity between the Soviet Union’s alleged gender equality and the reality of life for women under communism.

It is now popular to claim — in the New York Times no less — that Soviet women “enjoyed many rights and privileges unknown in liberal democracies at the time,” so it is worth noting some of the ways that communism tyrannized women in particular. Those who claim the Soviet Union liberated women would do well to learn the stories of the women of the Gulag.

Now, to be fair, the above opinion piece is from the Cato institute, an unabashedly extreme right-wing propaganda outlet. Cato is hoping to bash Communism for attempting gender equality and failing miserably. So let’s take a moment to acknowledge that under Communism women were characterized as equals, alleged to be equal.

That’s notable because under the Cato manifesto women aren’t even alleged to be equals and aren’t allowed to try, which objectively seems worse than trying and failing. Exceptions are made for women who use “masculinity” (I believe that’s how Marx referred to it) to adapt themselves to the capitalist machines.

After the fall of Communism we actually have seen a reversion of women’s rights and abject oppression. While we see characterization of women as equally skilled for technical roles has lasted, keep in mind Russia has been busy decriminalizing physical abuse of women.

Why Russia is about to decriminalise wife-beating. It fits with traditional values, lawmakers say

Communism had a method of setting a characterization apart from these nonsensical “traditional values”, if you will. There was a time of messaging women as equals. Propaganda or not, such messaging under Communism had a lasting impact.

Anyway, without reading two much into either the Communist or the Libertarian messaging about the role of women in society, I always try to remind people that 60% of code-breakers in Bletchley Park during WWII were women, and we see a similar percentage today in countries like Israel where merit is measured instead of masculinity for technology jobs.

Personally I wish someone had pushed for the phrase “future update ghillie suits” (FUGS) when they were thinking about “future warfare”. Instead the US Army is talking about Improved Ghillie Suits (IGS) to address the shortcomings of past designs.

Notable issues:

• If you dress like a tree, you may be as flammable as one (several snipers have burned to death)
• If you dress like a woolly mammoth, you may be as heavy and hot as one (ok, that’s really two issues)
• If your suit is singular instead of modular, the above two properties are greater

Innovation is happening in the field, by snipers working to stay alive, blend better and also function more efficiently/safely, so the textile department of the Army decided to incorporate some of these ideas.

Maj. WaiWah Ellison, assistant product manager, Durable Goods, Soldier Clothing and Individual Equipment with Program Executive Office Soldier, explained the need for the update: “The current kit is thick and heavy and comes with a lot of pieces that aren’t used.

“Soldiers are creating ghillie suits with their own materials to match their personal preference. We want to make the IGS simpler and modular so the snipers will use what is issued to them instead of relying on outside resources,” Ellison said.

While this all makes sense from a product manager view in terms of updating the suits, relying on outside resources does kinda sound more like what camouflage is all about. And you have to marvel at the fact that nobody thought forward enough to realize that a Scottish concept of a heavy and fluffy suit originating in a rainy cold climate would be hot and flammable elsewhere.

Yes, I said Scottish. Just in case you’re wondering what a Ghillie is…Scotland Magazine breaks the meaning down over the centuries:

Since the Victorians discovered their passion for stalking, the life of the ghillie has had less to do with carrying Highland chiefs across raging torrents and more to do with the management of the landscape and looking after stalkers on the hill.

Fast forward to today:

It’s nice if you don’t have to take time to gather local capabilities to blend in, but that does presume accurate and fast feedback loops reaching the top of a very large organization.

A recent IDF investigation into a failed operation gives insight into how local knowledge — required for blending into the most dangerous environments — can be very dangerous to underestimate or get wrong.

…based on interviews with Hamas officials, a picture is emerging of a carefully planned Israeli intelligence operation in which agents posing as Palestinian aid workers may have gone undetected for up to two weeks before it went awry.

Here’s a pithy comment by Peter Salama, head of the new Health Emergencies Program at the World Health Organization, about factors leading to Ebola crisis unfolding this year in DRC:

These viruses manage to exploit social vulnerabilities and fault lines. That’s what we’re seeing in this Ebola outbreak starkly.

And even more to the point:

In the last two years since I have been here, 80 percent of our major outbreaks have been in conflict-affected areas. This is the issue of the future.

The issue of urban outbreaks of high-threat pathogens is really an issue of our generation. I don’t think we’ve fully grappled with that. Now with yellow fever, plague, with Ebola, we are starting to see these patterns. All bets are off [in terms of] thinking we know about the transmission of diseases because of what happened in rural outbreaks in the past. It’s completely different now.

Ok, so you have this data showing conflict-affected areas are where the major outbreaks occur, and that is “the issue of the future”. Consider this in terms of infected drones easily deployed over/under/around barriers into urban areas, and then rapid lateral transmission.

I’m not trying to think out of the box here. This is an ancient security worry, for those familiar with the history of siege weaponry.

Who (pun not intended) can guess the current US regime’s response to the outbreak of a high-threat pathogen in the place most expected? Perhaps the title of this post gave away the answer.

Vox reporter Julia Belluz asks Salama the following:

The US pulled its Centers of Disease Control and Prevention workers out of Beni, the outbreak epicenter. They decided it was too dangerous for America’s best Ebola experts to be there — and it sounds like they are not coming back anytime soon. […] But I understand Canada, the UK, even nonprofits with US personnel, are sending people, and you have hundreds of WHO officials deployed. Is the US government an outlier?

This makes the American leadership appear weak and feckless; and Salama replies very diplomatically:

The US government is the main country that has had constraints.