A silver lining!

At Zocalo Public Square, Joe Mathews writes:

It is the military-industry complex where the opportunity for a Putin-inspired California comeback is greatest. The aerospace industry made the state a success—and brought millions into the middle class (including my grandmother, a line worker at North American Aviation), produced innovations from propeller-driven airplanes to satellites, and remade the state’s culture (historian Peter Westwick has shown how modern surfing owes a debt to aerospace engineers). Today, the industry is smaller but still cutting-edge, producing drones, satellites for commercial purposes, and space start-ups like Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

He goes on to compare Putin's provocations to the launch of Sputnik in 1957 — an event that is widely credited with heating up the Cold War and spurring a space race between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. that culminated in an American being the first human to walk on the Moon.

To fund a rapid revival of the space business in California, he goes on to suggest a "Putin Tax" on "hard liquor, cigarettes, oil, and big houses."

So will this be Cold War 2 or World War 3?