Finding MH370 – Details, episodes & analysis

If you spend any time engaged in the discussion about what happened to MH370, you’ll encounter the idea that the United States, and in particular the shadowy US intelligence community, certainly must know what happened to the plane since they have such a vast and all-encompassing network of assets for gathering information. In effect, the work of the French journalist Florence de Changy, whose work was featured in episode 3 of the Netflix documentary “MH370: The Plane that Disappeared,” is built upon this idea and little else.

An important component of this idea, I think, is that the intelligence apparatus remain a shadowy Other, an unknown and unknowable entity to whom no attributes can be ascribed with any certainty. Because if one were to familiarize oneself with the actual human beings who engage with this work one would quickly realize that these are human beings, with their own foibles and limitations. Which is not to say that they don’t know a great deal; indeed I think they know a lot, and it would be very interesting to know exactly what they know, but in the clear light of day one has to shed the sense that their knowledge is unlimited and that they are capable of doing anything unbounded by comprehensible motives.

Today I’m delighted to be joined by Steven Horrell, a non-resident Senior Fellow with the Transatlantic Defense and Security Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). Steve graduated from the US Naval Academy, got a Masters in Strategic Studies frmo the US Army War College and went on to serve in Naval Intelligence for 30 years, including three from 2012 to 2015 at U.S. European Command, where Russia was a major focus. So Steve is in a great position to give us the inside scoop on what the world looks like from the perspective of US military intelligence.

Also in the show I discuss the flaperon project that I’ve been working on with Keelie and, after the interview, I critique the latest MH370 theory that’s been making the rounds in the media.

Finally, a reminder that I’ve added a new feature for paid subscribers of the podcast show page: in addition to the weekly newsletter, you get exclusive access to additional weekly content. Right now I’m remastering all of the shows from the first season, with improved quality and updated information. In addition if you do a paid subscription you earn my undying gratitude, as the financial support goes a long way toward making this work possible. Thanks!

Understanding MH370 requires understanding how strategic planners think. One of the most important concepts in strategic thinking today is the decision loop, which is a way of describing how people gather information, use it to understand their situation, then decide what to do and act upon that decision. This process is sometime referred to as the OODA loop (for “observe, orient, decided, act”) after the formulation by the influential American strategist John Boyd.

To discuss the decision loop, and its role in maneuver warfare, we’re joined by Thomas Withington of the Royal United Services Institute, who recently published a fascinating article entitled “Manoeuvre Warfare and the Electromagnetic Spectrum.” Later in the show, we’ll discuss audience reaction to the UFO episode and talk about an exciting new idea for gathering Lepas barnacle data.

Whoever took MH370 did so in a lightning coup de main that showed decisiveness and a sophisticated knowledge of airspace, air traffic control procedure, and avionics. Formulating the plan would have required substantial planning. In today's episode, we explore how the plane's captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, might have laid the groundwork for such an operation. (In a future episode we'll look at how hijackers outside the cockpit might have laid their plans.) I'm extremely fortunate to be joined by the experienced 777 captain and prolific YouTuber Ron Rogers, who makes videos about a wide range of aviation topics, including classic aircraft and his own contemporary flying adventure.

This is the audio version of the episode 4 of the Finding MH370 podcast

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An interview with foreign affairs journalist Melik Kaylan

Who was Nikolai Brodsky, and why was he on MH370?

Welcome to the new season of the world’s only in-depth podcast about the disappearance of MH370. For the full show notes, click here.

In recent months one of the most viral pieces of MH370-related content has been a video that purports to show the airplane being surrounded by a trio of UFOs, which then escort it through some kind of wormhole or interdimensional portal. The video has been tirelessly promoted by a man named Ashton Forbes who has developed a whole elaborate patter to explain how the video came to be.

On its face, the whole thing is ridiculous. For one thing, UFOs aren’t real — or, if they are, they’ve never so casually revealed themselves as they do in this video. And interdimensional portals aren’t real, either, except in Marvel movies. Yet for a great many people, the videos seem seem utterly real. They think that Ashton Forbes has solved the mystery of MH370.

The videos have gotten so much traction that various debunkers have taken it upon themselves to demonstrate their fraudulence, for instance by tracking down the original snippet of video game that the wormhole effect was cadged from. But these debunking efforts never seem to work; Ashton Forbes simply responds by claiming that the debunkers have themselves been debunked. He says so with unreserved confidence. For those who want to believe, he seems very convincing.

From my perspective, it’s futile to try to push back against someone like Ashton Forbes by trying to show that the video is fake. People will continue to believe him because they want to believe the things that he’s telling them.

Are we helpless, though? I don’t think we are, entirely. For one thing, we can try to understand the dynamic of the misinformation peddler so that we can navigate today’s complicated information space more effectively. To help me in that effort I’m joined in today’s episode by David Dunbar, co-author of the book “Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts.” In years of dealing with believers in delusional ideas about the destruction of the World Trade Center, David has learned a lot about the emotional forces that drive true believers. Among other things, we discuss how to distinguish conspiracy theories from actual conspiracies and delusional beliefs from well-informed ideas that can lead us toward knowledge.

It’s been years since anyone’s reported finding a new piece of MH370 debris, and even longer since anyone has come up with any other evidence of what happened to the plane.

But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t possible to collect new evidence.

In today’s podcast, I’m joined by Andy Sybrandy, the founder and president of Pacific Gyre Inc., a company that makes sensors and telemetry for ocean data collection. He helped develop the SVP drifters that are the mainstay of NOAA’s Global Drifter Program, which has dispatched thousands of buoys to constantly circulate throughout the world’s oceans so scientists can develop models of global currents.

Andy and I discuss a plan that I’ve been developing to shed light on some key mysteries surrounding crucial pieces of evidence in the case — namely, why the pieces of debris collected in the western Indian Ocean floated the way they did and why the marine life growing on them was so unexpected.

By outfitting a 777 flaperon with the kind of sensors that Andy makes, we could determine whether the debris evidence is truly paradoxical, or there is a perfectly good reason for why it looks the way it does.

In today’s episode we also revive a feature we haven’t don in a while, Community Radar. Today we’re discussing a comment from reader collinsm999 suggesting that an accident I mentioned in last week’s episode, TWA 800, was not due to an accidental electrical fault but to a shootdown by a missile.

Black box data is the ne plus ultra of aircraft accident investigation. But it is not the only kind of physical evidence. Pieces of debris—in particular, their dents and fractures — can tell a vivid story in themselves.

When a plane crashes, it’s common for all different parts to exhibit different kinds of failure. Imagine a plane whose wingtip hits a tree. The impact would crush the leading edge of the wingtip—compression failure—and then wrench the wing backwards from the body of the plane, causing a tension failure at the forward wing root and compression failure at the aft end.

By collecting many pieces of debris after a crash, investigators can place the mechanical failures in a chronological order to tell a story that makes sense, much as you might arrange magnetic words on a refrigerator.