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Not sure if it would be helpful, but I'd love to do a charity someday which focused on providing infrastructure services (power, communications, medical support

by rdl 11y ago

Not sure if it would be helpful, but I'd love to do a charity someday which focused on providing infrastructure services (power, communications, medical support (testing and other things to make local doctors more effective), logistics, data, maybe utility restoration) in disaster and especially conflict zones. Essentially what the US Military can accomplish on its own bases, as a service for other NGOs (easier) and for local population (harder). Being able to secure part of an airfield, run logistics and communications which are head ends for domestic infrastructure, would be a huge improvement in quality of life for the civilians stuck in these places. There's a void in the NGO and commercial space between people who do good stuff, and people who can provide security and operate in denied areas. Some orgs like MSF can operate in semi-permissive environments, but not as well as states can. There are a lot of downsides to state involvement in this kind of thing -- unless you're neutral, it's really hard to get involved in a lot of conflicts, and states are pretty horrible at providing IT services in general, and have all kinds of incentives to scale too big/inefficiently.

thenipper 11y ago
I don't have too much to say but you're on to something. I was at the Humtech conference in May and the Navy came in and said basically they're the only ones who can do what they do. It'd be nice to have a non military option for that kind of operational support. The place where I work now can do some of that, but it's hard to convince donors to invest in those sort of "someday we'll need this" resource.
- rdl 11y ago
  The nice thing is this gets easier all the time with tech, in that it requires a smaller footprint and thus physical security on the ground. I could run UAV communication relays, satcom, etc. over Syria right now, from bases in Kurdistan, with no personnel physically at risk, for <$10mm/yr.
  - thenipper 11y ago
    Definitely! There is a startup non-profit called Uplift Aeronautics[1] that was talking about doing something like that. It was going to be a UAV 'train' that dropped supplies into Syria using randomized paths so to make it hard to shoot down. [1] http://uplift.aero/ http://uplift.aero/
    - vijayr 11y ago
      Their wiki page seems broken http://uplift.aero/wiki http://uplift.aero/wiki
roymurdock 11y ago
I worked for a company called Roshan in Afghanistan last summer. They're the largest telecom company in the country, as they were the first to risk buying the necessary gov contracts in 2003 after the US ousted in the Taliban. Roshan's founder, Karim Khoja, was basically sent to build a telecom network in Afghanistan by his religious leader, the Aga Khan. The Aga Khan heads the Ismaili religion, which is a small (~25m) sect of Shia Muslims. He oversees the Aga Khan Development Network [1] which has both a non-profit and a for-profit arm that work together to build up developing economies. I know they're also pretty heavily involved in humanitarian efforts in Syria at the moment. Roshan was well-managed and very successful. It employed a large number of awesome Afghans, and contributed a lot to an economy that had nothing else going for it besides war, opium, and rugs. Just one example of an organization that is doing good things out there, especially in the war-torn middle east. Things might change for the worse now that the US/Europe is pulling out of Afghanistan and the Taliban/ISIS are coming back to power. At the end of the day it was the stability brought by the armed forces that allowed expats and investments to flow into the country. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aga_Khan_Fund_for_Economic_Development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aga_Khan_Fund_for_Economic_Dev...
deleted 11y ago
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by rdl 11y ago

thenipper 11y ago

I don't have too much to say but you're on to something. I was at the Humtech conference in May and the Navy came in and said basically they're the only ones who can do what they do. It'd be nice to have a non military option for that kind of operational support. The place where I work now can do some of that, but it's hard to convince donors to invest in those sort of "someday we'll need this" resource.

rdl 11y ago
The nice thing is this gets easier all the time with tech, in that it requires a smaller footprint and thus physical security on the ground. I could run UAV communication relays, satcom, etc. over Syria right now, from bases in Kurdistan, with no personnel physically at risk, for <$10mm/yr.
- thenipper 11y ago
  Definitely! There is a startup non-profit called Uplift Aeronautics[1] that was talking about doing something like that. It was going to be a UAV 'train' that dropped supplies into Syria using randomized paths so to make it hard to shoot down. [1] http://uplift.aero/ http://uplift.aero/
  - vijayr 11y ago
    Their wiki page seems broken http://uplift.aero/wiki http://uplift.aero/wiki

roymurdock 11y ago

I worked for a company called Roshan in Afghanistan last summer. They're the largest telecom company in the country, as they were the first to risk buying the necessary gov contracts in 2003 after the US ousted in the Taliban. Roshan's founder, Karim Khoja, was basically sent to build a telecom network in Afghanistan by his religious leader, the Aga Khan. The Aga Khan heads the Ismaili religion, which is a small (~25m) sect of Shia Muslims. He oversees the Aga Khan Development Network [1] which has both a non-profit and a for-profit arm that work together to build up developing economies. I know they're also pretty heavily involved in humanitarian efforts in Syria at the moment. Roshan was well-managed and very successful. It employed a large number of awesome Afghans, and contributed a lot to an economy that had nothing else going for it besides war, opium, and rugs. Just one example of an organization that is doing good things out there, especially in the war-torn middle east. Things might change for the worse now that the US/Europe is pulling out of Afghanistan and the Taliban/ISIS are coming back to power. At the end of the day it was the stability brought by the armed forces that allowed expats and investments to flow into the country. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aga_Khan_Fund_for_Economic_Development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aga_Khan_Fund_for_Economic_Dev...

deleted 11y ago

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