Monday, August 18, 2025

Part I

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Well, What Happened in Alaska on Friday? President Trump and President Putin Talk Peace Agreement in Ukraine

Well, the two presidents met. U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met last Friday in Alaska at Joint Base Elmendorf, very interesting place to meet, very interesting meeting. It only lasted about three hours, in what were described as productive conversations between the U.S. president and the Russian president. The big issue is, of course, Ukraine. The background to that is the brutal attack on Ukraine and now the war against Ukraine that has been undertaken by Russia after its invasion on February the 24th of 2022.

Now remember, you really have to talk about Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine, going back to the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2016. So, we’re talking about years, but in between those two particular invasions, what was called the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Ukraine, there were years in which I guess we can now say Vladimir Putin was simply biding his time, waiting for the opportunity. He seized the opportunity. He thought that his troops are going to march directly to Kiev, take control, topple the Zelenskyy regime, and probably put a puppet regime friendly to Moscow in its place with Moscow controlling the territory, if not annexing all of Ukraine for that matter as a part of Mother Russia itself.

Now, one of the things behind that, we just have to underline again, is the civilizational reality, and that is the fact that Russia, and you could simply say Moscow in this case, meaning the monarchy and the Soviet leadership, and now the Russian leadership, it has always looked at Ukraine as necessary territory for Mother Russia, territory at the very least control, territory that at least optimally would be absorbed within a larger Russia. But, that’s not what happened. Instead, the Ukrainians started fighting back. President Zelenskyy rallied his people, and even though Ukraine itself has all kinds of problems, including endemic political corruption, the fact is that Ukraine has responded with incredible bravery to the Russian invasion, and quite honestly has rewritten some of the laws and principles of warfare in the modern age, in particular, asymmetrical warfare.

The Ukrainians vastly outmatched in terms of most weaponry. Remember, Ukraine was, as a part of the Soviet Union, well armed with nuclear weapons. It gave those up given the pledge from the United States and other nations in the West that it would support Ukraine and its national independence. Of course, that’s been put to the test. Ukraine’s been put to the test. Ukraine has fought back bravely. We are told that Putin and his military leaders had told the invading soldiers to have their dress uniforms for a victory parade in Kiev shortly after the invasion began. That hasn’t happened. Tribute to the Ukrainian people, also to Western nations that have given massive billions of dollars of military support and from the United States, most importantly, intelligence support.

The Ukrainians have fought back, but the Ukrainians are still no match for Russia. That’s simply a matter of math, and you can say at least in terms of some parable that maybe a small nation can fight back an aggressor and win. Well, in this case, if that’s possible, Ukraine would be the winning side here, but the fact is that the armaments, the size of military personnel, the size of the army, the size of the economy, just the ability of Russia to turn itself into a war state is wearing Ukraine down. Now, Russia also has its problems, and chief among those problems right now is an economic problem for the country. It’s devoting so much to the war cause. It has turned itself into a war state. It’s paying a big price just in terms of economic sanctions and, well, even the inability to do banking in much of the West, including the United States.

All of this is wearing Russia down, but Russia, just ask Napoleon, just ask Hitler, Russia takes a very, very long time to wear down, longer than virtually any of its enemies, including nations that it invades, and that’s the military reality. So, what happened on Friday? Well, what happened is that President Trump and President Putin had a conversation. We don’t know exactly what was said. President Trump came out and made brief remarks to the press. If it had been a smashing success, both the presidents would’ve come out. They would’ve held a press conference. They would’ve laid out the agreement. They would’ve declared peace in our time. That didn’t happen. Instead, it appears that it was an exchange of ideas.

Now, who changed position in this? Well, when it comes to Vladimir Putin, his aims are pretty clear regardless of the circumstance, regardless of the setting, and frankly, regardless of what he says. When it comes to the American president, the change was that he had said going into the conversation that he was open to negotiating some form of ceasefire. He came out saying that he had been persuaded by President Putin that a ceasefire was untenable, and instead to try for some final peace agreement. Now, there’s some people who turned around and said, “Well, Vladimir Putin just played Donald Trump in this.” I don’t think that’s necessarily the case at all. I think in looking at this, the reality is that even those who were in favor of the ceasefire understand how fragile ceasefires often turn out to be.

As a matter of fact, the big danger in a ceasefire is that Ukraine could stand down so to speak, and Russia would appear to stand down when Russia’s just catching its breath to have a reinvigorated aggressive action against Ukraine. No, we do need some kind of stability, some agreement coming out of this. President Zelenskyy has said, along with other Ukrainian officials, they’re not going to concede territory to Russia. Now, I want us to note the language here, because they have never conceded the Crimean Peninsula either, but the fact is the Crimean Peninsula is functioning as a part of Russia, and the likelihood is that those regions in eastern Ukraine, the Donbas, that’s about a fifth of Ukraine’s historic territory since the breakup of the Soviet Union. The fact is that, I’ll just be honest, looking forward, Russia is likely to control a lot of that territory, but at least legally, Ukraine is not open to conceding that territory.

The game changer over the weekend came with news that President Trump has agreed to offer Ukraine something like Article V assurances if Ukraine is able to reach a workable peace agreement, a stable agreement with Russia for a period of time. Now, you listen to that, and you say, “What in the world are Article Five assurances?” Well, Article Five refers to NATO, the NATO Treaty, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and that is of course the post-World War II alliance of the Democratic nations in Europe, mostly in Europe and in North America. The bottom line is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has a charter, a treaty actually. Article Five says that if one NATO member is invaded, other NATO members must come to its defense militarily. That’s Article Five.

By the way, how many times since NATO’s inception has Article Five been invoked? One time. One time on behalf of the United States of America on September the 11th, 2001, very interesting point, but Article Five is one of the most crucial parts of how NATO operates. You attack one NATO nation. You attack them all. You declare war against one NATO nation. You declare war against them all. Now, even as recently as on the plane going to Alaska, President Trump did not seem warm to giving those kinds of Article Five assurances to Ukraine. So, it looks like maybe something President Putin said led President Trump to decide, “No, something like that is going to be necessary.” It’s a pretty huge development, but all of this is preliminary. On the plane after the meeting with President Putin, President Trump made a phone call to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, and also spoke to European leaders. I don’t think the White House is exactly going alone on this, nor do I think President Trump wants to do that. 

President Trump claims a unique relationship with Vladimir Putin. Is that true or false? I don’t know. I think it’s true. The president thinks he has that relationship. What it means, I don’t know, but I think it’s clear that President Trump was not played by Vladimir Putin, not when President Trump, just a matter of something like 48 hours later through his own personal negotiator saying he is open to giving Ukraine Title Five-like assurances. That’s just massive. Now, what Ukraine wants in that is a set of assurances so ironclad, and so threatening, that Russia would not dare to invade again, because that’s clearly what Ukraine’s worried about. 

Here’s the key. You’ve got to understand it’s not just Ukraine. All the nations there, at least especially the nations bordering Russia have the same worry now. Who’s next? So, this really underlines again why NATO is so important. Now, at the same time, Ukraine, which wants to be a part of NATO, is never going to be a part of NATO under the current circumstances. Vladimir Putin said that one of his principles, demands in terms of a peace agreement is that Ukraine would not enter NATO. So, it is very significant that President Trump’s personal negotiator has come out and said, “Something like Article Five assurances would likely be given to Ukraine if indeed the negotiations are successful.” Every once in a while in that kind of comment, you hear a game changer. I think we heard that over the weekend. Of course, the big question is, “Now, what do we hear next?” Because it is today that the Ukrainian president is going to be meeting with the American president in Washington along with European leaders.

So, the conversations continuing, but this does appear to be momentum behind some agreement, momentum that has been non-existent until now. So, we need to hope and pray that something good and noble and righteous and stable can come out of this situation. We’ll know more after we find out about the conversations today.

Part II

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The Making of 'Super Babies': Some of the Eugenic Horrors of the 20th Century are Coming to Life in Silicon Valley

There are so many big issues of worldview significance swirling around this, but how about the issue of super babies? I’m not kidding. Headlined last week in the Wall Street Journal, “Inside Silicon Valley’s Growing Obsession with Having Smarter Babies.” Now, at least I guess we should be encouraged they’re having babies, but nonetheless, when you say having smarter babies, what’s going on here? It is an effort through eugenics, that old horrifying ideology of the 20th century coming back in which you try to have better breeding for human beings. That’s exactly what’s going on here.

It is selective genetic testing and embryo selection for IQ advantage. That’s exactly what this is. You can’t sugarcoat it. That’s what it is. The Wall Street Journal recognizes that. The article begins, “Tsvi Benson-Tilsen, a mathematician, spent seven years researching how to keep an advanced form of artificial intelligence from destroying humanity before he concluded that stopping it wasn’t possible, at least, anytime soon.” How’s that for a lead by the way? Humanity is coming to an end. In the meantime, we’ll breed more intelligent babies. The next sentence, “Now, he’s turned his considerable brain power to promoting cutting-edge technology to create smarter humans who will be up to the task of saving us all.” Benson-Tilsen, co-founder of the Berkeley Genomics Project, a nonprofit said, “My intuition is it’s one of our best hopes.”  Breed smarter babies in a hurry so that they can save us from artificial intelligence.

Now, if this were just say popping around the internet, you could dismiss it as just the kind of thing that pops around the internet. This is the Wall Street Journal as establishment as you can get, and the Wall Street Journal is telling us that this is an ongoing project. As the journal says, “This isn’t science fiction. It’s Silicon Valley where interest in breeding smarter babies is peaking.” Now, what does that look like? I mean, what kind of interest is this? Where’s the movement? Well, the movement is that parents we are told are paying up to $50,000 for a newly-developed genetic testing services, and this means screening embryos for IQ. Now, let’s just telescope out for a moment. Let’s remember what we’re talking about here. I mean, if you just hear the words “breeding better humans,” “breeding smarter babies,” you hear the echoes of the 20th century and some of the darkest moments of the 20th century.

The idea that human beings are to be bred and bred for quality control, that is a horrifying idea. Yet, here, it’s showing up even with a price tag, $50,000 for these genetic testing services. Then you’ll notice it says immediately that the purpose is to screen embryos for IQ. Screening embryos means the human embryos are created, and then they are quality measured. They’re marked for quality and in this case potential for high IQ. That means that those that are marked for having the greatest potential for high IQ may well be transferred into a mother’s womb. The rest of them are just biological waste. These are fertilized human embryos. These are human persons according to our biblical theology. God has said, “Let there be life.” The embryo was formed, and now they’re going to be screened for quality.

Now, in essence, we’ve been warning for a long time as others have even going back to the mid-20th century, this kind of technology is going to be used in just this way. This kind of embryo genetic testing, this kind of embryonic research, this kind of embryo sorting, this is the stuff of breeding a master race. It’s no longer science fiction, because the technology’s increasingly here, and if you’re going to find that technology, you’re going to find it amongst the most technological, which means Silicon Valley is almost assuredly going to be ground zero for this. 

Jennifer Donnelly identified as “a high-end matchmaker who charges up to $500,000” said, “Right now, I have one, two, three tech CEOs, and all of them prefer Ivy League.” Okay, so prefer for what? That means as a breeding partner, and that’s pretty much crassly just the way it’s put. The previous paragraph says, “Tech futurists such as Elon Musk are urging the intellectually gifted to multiply, while professional matchmakers are setting up tech execs with brilliant partners partly to get brilliant offspring.” This is just a nightmare come to life, and it is something that’s not just way out there in the future. It’s not something even on the brink of the future. It’s something happening right now, right down to the price tag, and available genetic screening. These things are already in operation, and they have a term for it. “Genetic optimization.” Just hear that again, genetic optimization, superior human beings bred through a superior technology. As the Wall Street Journal says, “this reflects deeper Silicon Valley beliefs about merit and success.”

One of the persons cited in the article, Sasha Gusev, a statistical geneticist at the Harvard Medical School says, “I think they have a perception that they are smart and they are accomplished, and they deserve to be where they are because they have good genes. Now, they have a tool where they think they can do the same thing in their kids as well, right?” Well, I think this is exactly what’s going on, and it’s referred to in the article as an IQ fetish, and some bioethicists are “raising alarms about the new genetic screening services.” Now, here’s what’s really interesting. What kinds of alarms would they raise? I want to say the most important alarm is that the process would be used at all. The human embryos would be sorted by quality according to whatever criterion when it comes down to this.

Those that are acceptable will be potentially transferred into a mother’s womb, maybe a surrogate’s womb, and the rest of them just frozen or destroyed, maybe sold on the market “as almost high IQ.” We’re told there are startups such as Nucleus Genomics and Heresite, and they have begun now publicly offering IQ predictions, and they base those on genetic testing “to help people select which embryos to use.” In-vitro fertilization Bay Area demand is high for the services costing around $6,000 at Nucleus and up to $50,000 at Heresite. One of the couple cited here is when we’ve mentioned on the briefing before, because they’ve received media attention, Simone and Malcolm Collins were told have used the Heresite setup to analyze some of their own embryos. “Simone Collins said they chose the embryo she’s now pregnant with, because it had a low reported risk for cancer, but they were also happy because he was in the 99th percentile per his polygenic score and likelihood of having really exceptionally high intelligence.” This mom said, “We just thought that was the coolest thing.” 

Well, one of the things about that couple is they’ve been pretty honest about the fact that they’re all about the selective breeding, and they present themselves in a neo-traditionalist persona, and there’s nothing neo-traditionalist about this. This is brave new world stuff. It’s brave new world stuff uncut, undiluted. The other switch that’s going on here is that the article is honest telling us that some in the tech world are now using IVF as the primary form of human reproduction, which is to say they’re not doing it the old Adam and Eve way. They’re using IVF because the old Adam and Eve way means you can’t do embryo sorting. So, that, again, tells you something.

Now, there’s a Christian biblical principle here about alienating the goods, and we refer to it. So in other words, God gave us a good thing. He gave us marriage. He made us in his image, male and female, and He gave us marriage. He gave us in the context of marriage the command be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. He gave us the means whereby that is to happen. In the covenant of marriage, in the sanctity of marriage, there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s everything right with that, but we don’t control the quality of our children. We don’t control the quality of the embryo. There’s nothing in Genesis 1 in taking dominion that tells us we get to sort our offspring by genetic traits. 

But we also need to note something, and that is that if you do not have a biblical worldview, if you’re not bound by and committed to a biblical worldview, then why not? Then why not? If you get to define what it means to be human on your own, then why not? If we’re left with no creator who determines who we are and grounds human dignity in his image, then why not just breed a master race? It was one of the most horrifying developments of the 20th century. By the way, some of this genetic interest really came out in the 19th century. They just didn’t have any way to deal with it. The scientists of the Third Reich tried to apply this rigorously. By the way, the ideology here didn’t really begin, this corruption of medical ethics, really didn’t begin with the Nazis, it began with the doctors of the Weimar Republic in Germany between the two world wars. The Nazis just took it up and did it with gusto, and by the way, did it also with the goal of creating a master race, and eliminating inferior races. By the way, that was at least dressed up in genetic language.

This article tells us that now this is in the United States. It’s happening. The genetic sorting is happening, but at least the Wall Street Journal is importantly very honest about the fact that there’s no assurance that this is how human intelligence actually works. Now, obviously, it’s tied to genetic inheritance. It’s tied to a certain pattern of traits, but we don’t necessarily understand exactly what that is. As a matter of fact, some of the people in the field of genetic studies say that it might give you a margin of 3 or 4%, but it is not at this point sophisticated enough to create your master race inside your house. What is the other issue that could be here? Well, for instance, what else might you be selecting here that you don’t know you’re selecting? One of the things is that some of these patterns might also relate to something like, well, autism or Alzheimer’s. I mean, how do you know what you’re doing in terms of all these traits? You can try to sort positively or sort negatively, but the fact is we don’t know enough yet to have any absolute assurance here. 

But, some of the observers here said that this is increasingly typical for people in this environment. By the way, one of the persons in the article, and that is Simone Collins, said that she’d actually like to find a genetic test that could screen for ambition. She said, “If grit and ambition and curiosity, if we had polygenic scores for these things, we’d be much more interested.” It tells you something about the self-consciousness of what this couple’s doing that they plan to name the child she’s carrying now Tex Demeisen. That’s what it looks like here, and we’re told that is out of a science fiction novel entitled Surface Detail. The name comes on the avatar of a warship known as falling outside the normal moral constraints.

That’s not deliberate, outside the normal moral Constraints. They know it is. They’re advertising it with the kid’s name. One other person cited in the article, Paula Amato, identified as a fertility doctor at Oregon Health and Science University, said that there are older ways of doing this as the Wall Street Journal says such as educating the child or reproducing with another smart person. This scientist said, “That’s probably more fun, but then again, you might not get what you are hoping for that way.” Again, there’s an artificiality to this that’s baked into the cake, because you’re looking at human beings as a product to be refined and engineered. You’re not looking at human beings being given to us by the creator’s gifts.

The man who was cited in the beginning of these articles is Tsvi Benson-Tilsen, a mathematician. We are told later in the articles, the son of a rabbi in a leader in this movement, and he tries to make the argument. Remember, he is the son of a rabbi, that there’s a critical difference according to the Wall Street Journal “between the rationalist’s push for smarter babies and the dark history of government eugenics programs such as Nazi Germany’s elimination of undesirable people.” Oh yeah, that is a fiction. You have just invented a rationalization that isn’t going to work. Positive eugenics and negative eugenics are basically the flip sides of one technology, and somebody’s going to use them both, and you can count on that. It is sheer illusion and intellectual dishonesty to believe otherwise.

Frankly, for Christians, we understand it’s wrong in both directions, and it’s all part of a package of rebellion against creation order.

Part III

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The Culture War Heats Up Over Air Conditioning in France: The French Debate the Right Way Forward as Temperatures Rise

Well, you can only deny reality so long, and I guess that’s a big problem in France right now because the headlines tell us that a new culture war has broken out in France over, hold for it, air conditioning. That is because Europe is heating up, and climate change is blamed for the fact that you now have many more very hot days in much of Europe, even in cities such as Paris. My wife and I were just weeks ago there, and we can tell you, yeah, it’s true. We can also tell you that the culture war is not appearing to be trending towards air conditioning, not from my experience. 

But, it’s very interesting. The New York Times tells us the culture wars have come for air conditioning, at least in France. Marine Le Pen, the leader of what’s identified, and I’m just going to use the press designation here, a far-right party there in France has indicated she wants a program to give more French access to air conditioning, but there are others who are arguing. The left wing is saying, “No, that’s wrong. It’s the wrong response to higher temperatures. Instead, you ought to lean into long-term structural changes in terms of trying to combat climate change,” but the problem is just in terms of the math, the temperature is going up right now, and it is creating a health crisis right now. They’ve had to cancel days of public school in France. What’s also interesting is how they dismiss the Americans. They don’t like American air conditioning.

As a matter of fact, the Wall Street Journal tells us that there are some in France who refer to it as a danger. They refer to it as a big problem. They call it thermal shock. As the journal tells us, “Media outlets often warn that cooling a room more than 15 degrees Fahrenheit below the outside temperature can cause something called thermal shock, resulting in nausea, loss of consciousness, and even respiratory arrest.” Well, if that was true, I’d be showing all those symptoms right this minute. Now, I realize there’d been some big ethical issues involved in here, but I’ve never been more American than when I see Americans criticized in this sense. Honestly, the Wall Street Journal came out with a major editorial just pointing out, “You can fight this for only so long.”

It is a reality in terms of a health problem, and the health problem is not the presence of air conditioning. It’s the absence of it, particularly with people who have respiratory problems. In particular, they’re very young and they’re very old, and they don’t have time to wait for France to negotiate a different set of climate realities. The New York Times article says, “Look beyond the sniping on social media, and there is broad agreement in France that air conditioning is necessary in spaces like retirement homes, hospitals, and schools. More than 1,800 schools had to close during the worst of last month’s heat wave. Few people are clamoring for a cooling unit in every home.” One person simply ask out loud, “Is air conditioning a far right thing?” Well, I’ll just let the French answer that question. 

Now, in terms of a moral perspective, there are moral dimensions to all of this, but my guess is that most academic discussions about all of this in the United States are in very climate-controlled conference rooms, in very comfortable spaces where they debate all of these things. Probably with equal fervor as what you see here among the French. Oh, and by the way, the French notoriously also when you ask for ice, give you ice, one cube. That’s it.