Why start a war with America when you might avoid one?

Monday, October 20th, 2025

In August, experts gathered at Syracuse University to plan China’s invasion of Taiwan:

For two days, academics, policy analysts, and current and former U.S. officials abandoned their typical defensive postures and attempted to inhabit Beijing’s offensive strategic mindset in a wargame. They debated not how America should respond to Chinese aggression, but how China might overcome the obstacles that have so far kept it from attacking the island nation.

This role reversal yielded an uncomfortable insight. The invasion scenarios that dominate U.S. military planning — involving massive amphibious assaults on Taiwan and preemptive strikes on American bases — may fundamentally misread Beijing’s calculus. As the wargame revealed, analysts seeking to understand China’s intentions should pay greater attention to plausible alternative military pathways to reunification that involve far less force and far more political calculation.

[…]

The exercise revealed three scenarios that generated the most debate among participants. First, a limited missile barrage followed by diplomatic ultimatum — essentially, coercion without invasion. Second, a graduated escalation that stops short of attacking U.S. forces. Third, an assault designed to cripple U.S. forces at the outset and present Taipei with a new reality of isolation. Each path reflected different risk tolerances and assumptions about American resolve.

Participants quickly discovered that when confronted with the decision to attack U.S. forces, this seemed to make little strategic sense when they attempted to look at it from Beijing’s perspective. A typical assumption held by many analysts, including most participants prior to the game, and one that features prominently in American wargames, is that China will simply launch a preemptive surprise strike against U.S. forces in a manner somewhat analogous to Pearl Harbor. But why start a war with America when you might avoid one? As the game participants soon found, there is no guarantee of U.S. military involvement, nor Japan’s, nor other countries‘, if China refrains from attacking them in an opening round.

[…]

This logic shaped the exercise’s most plausible hypothetical scenario. China launches precision strikes against Taiwan’s military infrastructure while simultaneously offering generous surrender terms: local autonomy, preservation of democratic institutions, and minimal mainland administrative presence. The message to Taipei is clear: accept reunification on favorable terms or face devastation. The message to Washington and the American public is equally clear: this is a Chinese civil matter, not worth American lives.

The comparison to Hong Kong’s former autonomy arrangements, once seemingly reasonable, now rings hollow given Beijing’s crackdown there. Participants struggled with this credibility gap. Would Taiwan believe any Chinese promises after Hong Kong?

[…]

Despite decades of modernization, the People’s Liberation Army has not fought a major conflict since 1979. It has never conducted an amphibious assault on a major scale. Its logistics remain untested. Its command structure is riddled with political interference. In contrast to most wargames that portray the Chinese military as a competent machine operating at maximum efficiency, the perspective from Beijing is likely more sobering.

These limitations don’t make China weak — they make it cautious.

[…]

If China’s theoretically preferred strategy involves limited strikes and political coercion, Taiwan needs resilience against pressure campaigns, not just beach defenses. This means hardening critical infrastructure, preparing the population psychologically, and maintaining political unity under extreme stress. It also means understanding the dynamics of how China will attempt to lure Taiwan into an early surrender and then taking steps to undermine these.

[…]

If Beijing believes it can achieve reunification through limited force and favorable terms, traditional military deterrence fails. Therefore, arguably more important than Taiwan’s military vulnerabilities are its political vulnerabilities. While Taiwan has so far remained steadfast in maintaining its independence, the combined effects of China finally crossing the military threshold, limited prospects of outside military help, and Beijing offering favorable surrender terms (backed by threats of massive escalation for refusal), might prove sufficient to undermine the will to fight.

Posted in Policy, War | 3 Comments »

The resistance started to fade as more and more Soldiers came to grips, literally, with the enemy

Wednesday, October 8th, 2025

Matt Larsen describes some lessons learned early in the War on Terror:

As the team entered the second house the number one man seemed to be struggling with something as he went through the first door. The number two man, keying off of the direction taken by number one turned left, the opposite direction from number one which is the standard Close Quarters Battle (CQB) method, and the number three, SSG Miranda came in to follow number one who at this point was obviously engaged with someone. So as not to be stuck standing in the doorway, what is known in CQB as the fatal funnel because enemy fire will normally be concentrated there, Rich placed the palm of his non-firing hand on the back of number one and pushed him and the person he was tangled up with further into the room.

The enemy had a grip on the number one man’s weapon and was fighting to get control of it, although this was not clear to Miranda who was looking at the scene through the narrow green tinted view of his night vision goggles.

While struggling to gain control of his weapon, number one pulled on it as if to rip it out of enemy’s hands. This is known as the “Tug of War” technique, when an enemy has hold of your weapon by the barrel if you simply step back and pull, it will normally be pointed straight at him allowing you to shoot. In doing so he stepped slightly back and toward the center of the room.

With nothing now between him and the man number one had been struggling with, Miranda grasped him with his non-firing hand and using an advancing foot sweep tossed him easily into the center of the room.

At the same moment, with his weapon finally clear enough, number one fired a three round bust into the enemy. Unfortunately with Rich Miranda still grasping the enemy’s shirt, one of the rounds passed through his left arm before striking the enemy.

[…]

Miranda himself was one of the more experienced fighters in the entire Special Forces. He had been training, mostly on his own, for years and was an accomplished Judo player and kickboxer.

[…]

The bottom line was simple: their Combatives training and their mission training were separate. The CQB doctrine when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan started was that if a soldiers’ rifle malfunctioned they should either take a knee so teammates could cover their sector of fire, or transition to a sidearm. In practice neither option works inside the typical urban rooms we fought in, eight to ten feet end-to-end. When you go through that door, it isn’t a marksmanship contest. It is a fight! You shove the enemy against a wall or over furniture, wrestle for control, and then bring whatever weapon, rifle, pistol, or knife, you can to finish it.

Combatives is an inherent part of many types of missions, Close Quarters Battle in particular, and it must be treated as such. At the time, however, it was not. Doctrine and training treated Combatives as a separate, optional subject: role-players were occasionally used to simulate noncombatants, but live Combatives as a integral portion of mission training seldom if ever happened. The prevailing mindset came from leaders shaped by twenty years of peacetime habits who didn’t want to confront the realities of fighting in rooms. The doctrine they produced was weak and the soldiers who followed it were less prepared than they needed to be. Combatives and marksmanship address different ranges; without both integrated into mission training, teams were handicapped before they ever crossed the threshold.

The resistance started to fade as more and more Soldiers came to grips, literally, with the enemy.

Posted in Martial Arts, War | 2 Comments »

After the bomb was dropped he became quickly Commodore and then Rear Admiral

Tuesday, October 7th, 2025

Peggy Bowditch was a young girl when she and her family moved to Los Alamos in 1943, where her father, Rear Admiral William Sterling “Deak” Parsons, was chosen by General Groves to become head of ordnance for the Manhattan Project:

I was eight when we moved there, and just short of eleven when we left after the war. My father had worked on the proximity fuse. Although he was a regular Navy officer, he had worked in science, from the beginning of World War II on. And General Groves picked him and he meshed with Oppenheimer, so he became the head of ordnance at Los Alamos.

[…]

He was Captain, Navy Captain William Sterling Parsons, and later, after the bomb was dropped he became quickly Commodore and then Rear Admiral.

[…]

A spy there under our very roof was our babysitter, Klaus Fuchs. He would come and take care of my sister and me, and since we were five and eight, we did not need much looking after. But we had a piano in the house and he loved to play the piano, so that was our babysitter. Then, when I got a little older, I was actually Peter Oppenheimer’s babysitter. I mean, you should not really trust a ten-year-old to babysit, but you know, with a guard walking around outside, what could go wrong?

[…]

After the war, we certainly continued our friendship with the Oppenheimers and went up to Princeton, oh, it is hard to remember how often. But the friendship continued and it was fun to go and visit them. And I remember I was struggling with my geometry homework, and Kitty Oppenheimer was the one who helped me [Laughs].

And then in December of ’53 my father heard at a cocktail party that Oppie had been separated from his Q clearance, and he was so upset that he came home and began a heart attack, which he checked with the Encyclopedia Britannica, which was his idea of where you go. And it did not sound as if he had a heart attack. The next morning, Mother took him to Bethesda Hospital and he died, a week after his 52nd birthday.

And, of course, Oppie did lose his security clearance.

[…]

General Groves would show up now and then, and he was a terrific administrator. I mean, he got the Pentagon built, and he was head of the Manhattan Project, but he was basically, I would describe his personality as bully. And there was an Army colonel, maybe, Whitney Ashbridge, who was, I think he was a graduate of West Point, and a very nice fellow, but Groves was a regular Army officer and Ashbridge was maybe engineering duty only. So Groves looked down on him. And one morning at inspection time, he and Groves were marching along, the soldiers were coming by, and Groves saw a piece of trash blowing and ordered Ashbridge to pick up the trash in front of the troops, which was really demeaning. I remember my father talking about what a nasty thing that was.

After the war, my parents would still see and they would play tennis with Groves and his daughter [Gwen Groves Robinson]. Groves was the kind of tennis player who did cuts and nasty shots. His daughter, Gwen, she was a good player. But, I remember General Groves asking me, he said, “Would you like me to send your father back to Los Alamos?”

Well, since I loved it, “Oh, yes, yes, yes.” Of course, he was just fooling, just, you know, typical bully type, taking advantage of a kid’s enthusiasm.

My father came and went. He went to Washington quite often. And Groves, I do not know whether he was nervous. For some reason, he was nervous about air transport, so you always travelled by train. That was considered safe, and of course, the trains were pretty nice then. I never got to leave Los Alamos, except to go to Albuquerque or Santa Fe.

Posted in War | No Comments »

They are engaged in cargo cult meaning-making, the pursuit of a pseudo-religion

Monday, October 6th, 2025

Freddie DeBoer sees us entering a new period of spectacular acts of public violence:

After decades of unusually low levels of such violence, we may now be returning to conditions similar to those of previous eras where such acts become distressingly common — notably, the turn of the 20th century, with the wave of anarchist assassinations from 1881 to 1914, the Haymarket Affair, and the Galleanist bombings, as well as the “Days of Rage” of the 1970s, including the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and FALN (the Puerto Rican separatist movement).

[…]

Mass shootings and similar events are now so normalized that it can be difficult to sort out whether we’ve slipped into such an era, but my fear is that recent violence will spread and grow, that in fact each act will serve as an accelerant for the next, as the cascading violence will help the people who commit this violence see their work as part of some broader movement that gives them the meaning they seek.

This is, in fact, my overarching argument: that where we are trained to see public violence as the outcome of ideology — those anarchist assassinations, 9/11, Oklahoma City, Anders Breivik, Yukio Mishima — in the 21st century, a certain potent strain of political violence is not the product of ideology but rather an attempt to will ideology into being through violence itself. To create meaning in a culture steeped in digital meaninglessness by the most destructive means available. The 21st century school shooter (for example) does not murder children in an effort to pursue some teleological purpose; the 21st century school shooter exists in a state of deep purposelessness and, at some level and to some degree, seeks to will meaning into being through their actions. This is part of why so many of them engage in acts of abstruse symbolism and wrap their politically-incoherent violence in layers of iconography; they are engaged in cargo cult meaning-making, the pursuit of a pseudo-religion. The tail wags the dog; acts we have grown to see as expressions of meaning are in fact childish attempts to will meaning into being through violence.

Posted in Crime, Policy | 2 Comments »

Ukrainian troops are using Latvian-built electric scooters

Friday, October 3rd, 2025

Ukrainian troops are using Latvian-built electric scooters to move quickly, quietly, and off-road:

The Mosphera military e-scooters used by Ukrainian operators are made by Latvian firm Global Wolf Motors, are about twice the size of a regular scooter, and have motorcycle tires, Klavs Asmanis, the founder and CEO, told Business Insider.

These nimble, off-road e-scooters can hit 62 mph, cover up to 186 miles on a single battery charge, and weigh just 163 pounds, making them easier to handle than heavier bikes.

Asmanis said they can make deliveries to the front lines, do reconnaissance in Russia-held territory, and quickly evacuate lightly wounded troops, among other missions, and Ukraine is putting them to work.

[…]

Asmanis said the scooters offer advantages over other vehicles being used in this war. For instance, they are smaller and lighter than traditional vehicles, they don’t drown out the buzzing sound of drones, they’re easier to quickly bail out of in an emergency, and the scooters don’t require risking a car, truck, or other vehicle that could be packed with gear for other missions on quick, daring dashes.

He said they excel in forested areas. “Its e-scooter-style wheelbase makes it easy to weave between trees” and trails, while its 163-pound weight “means that if it does get stuck, it’s far easier to pull out compared to a motorcycle.”

They’re also far easier to hide when not in use, in bushes or under branches.

[…]

Asmanis said his vehicles are better suited to conflict than typical e-scooters, describing them as “in the middle between scooter and motorcycle” because it has much larger wheels, like motorcycles do, than regular scooters.

Posted in Technology, War | 12 Comments »

Many of the decarceration agenda’s proposals have been tried

Monday, September 29th, 2025

In 2019, more than 1,000 Democratic Socialists of America gathered in Atlanta for their national convention, where they endorsed decarceration:

The background to the resolution clearly outlines the underlying ideology: “DSA will promote a socialist vision of prison abolition that protects people from corporate exploitation as well as dismantling racist incarceration and ending prosecutions of the working class.” The DSA’s official platform further asserts that “incarceration, detention and policing are active instruments of class war which guarantee the domination of the working class and reproduce racial inequalities.”

Following the national organization’s lead, New York City DSA issued its Agenda for Decarceration in January 2020. The program consisted of nine existing legislative proposals and seven new ones aimed at reducing Gotham’s incarcerated population. Among these were the elimination of cash bail; decriminalization of drug possession and prostitution; creation of supervised injection sites; abolishing mandatory minimums; reducing maximum sentences with retroactive effects; and restrictions on the use of solitary confinement. The agenda also included a “no new jails” pledge, which prohibited supporting more jail construction.

[…]

Many of the decarceration agenda’s proposals—bail reforms, restrictions on solitary confinement, decriminalization of drug possession—have been tried, in New York or elsewhere.

In 2019, New York eliminated bail for most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies. Over the next two years, the city’s pretrial prison population fell by over 40 percent. At the same time, major crimes rose 36.6 percent. New York remains the only state that forbids judges from considering a suspect’s potential danger to the community when setting bail.

In 2015, New York City moved to end the use of solitary confinement for prisoners under 21. In 2021, New York State passed the HALT Act, which limits solitary confinement to 15 days for all prisoners and bans it altogether for younger and older inmates. As City Journal’s Charles Fain Lehman argued, these restrictions have contributed to greatly increased prison violence and eliminated one of the main tools corrections officers use to maintain order.

Oregon tried decriminalization of drug possession in 2021. Subsequently, narcotic-related deaths and open-air drug markets proliferated in its largest city, Portland, which was described as a “war zone.”

Other proposals from the Agenda for Decarceration might be implemented soon. Take Intro 798, a city council bill to abolish the NYPD’s Criminal Group Database, which centralizes information on alleged gang members, reported incidents, and gang dynamics. Though this item is off the legislative agenda for now, Mamdani recently expressed support for abolishing the database, echoing Councilwoman Althea Stevens’s reproach that most of the individuals on the list are minorities. NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Legal Matters Michael Gerber responded to Stevens by observing that the perpetrators of violence were also disproportionately minority.

Finally, Mamdani and other elected DSA officials who signed the agenda stand by their intention to close the city’s Rikers Island jail facility by the legally mandated 2027 deadline. The mayoral front-runner has argued that faster timelines for court hearings, as well as additional bail reforms, could help shrink the city’s jail population. Brad Lander, who serves as the city’s comptroller and has backed Mamdani in the race, praised a 2024 move on the part of Chief Administrative Judge Zayas that aimed to do the same.

Expediting cases and attempting to address the underlying factors of crime are desirable moves in their own right. But, as Lehman noted in a report for the Manhattan Institute, “under almost no conceivable scenario can the city expect to safely and sustainably reduce daily jail population to 3,300”—the borough-based jails’ expected capacity by 2027.

Posted in Crime, Policy | No Comments »

Our country would have been much better off in the immediate postwar years if we had had a group of officers who were thoroughly experienced in all the problems of this type of work

Sunday, September 28th, 2025

Now It Can Be Told by Leslie M. GrovesGeneral Groves believed strongly, as he explains in Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project, that in time of war every possible regular officer should be in the combat area:

I was undoubtedly influenced in this belief by my personal knowledge of the disappointment suffered by many regular officers who were kept in this country during World War I, with no chance of combat experience. In my own case, I was already a cadet when the war started, and remained at West Point until a few days before the Armistice. Had my own experience been different, I would quite probably have had a considerable number of regular officers assigned to the project throughout its duration.

As I look back now with a full appreciation of the tremendous import of the development of atomic energy, I think it was a mistake not to have had them. Our country would have been much better off in the immediate postwar years if we had had a group of officers who were thoroughly experienced in all the problems of this type of work—not only in problems of atomic energy but in all the manifold problems involved in technical and scientific developments that have played such an important part in our national defense since 1945.

While I am on the subject of my own mistakes, I perhaps should add that there was another consideration, similar to this, to which I did not give adequate attention. That was the necessity of having replacements available if either Nichols or I died or became disabled. Many serious problems would have arisen if anything had happened to either of us, and it was not proper for me to have placed such great reliance, fortunately not misplaced, upon the physical and mental ability of both of us to stand up under the strain, to say nothing of the possibility of accidental death or injury, particularly since we did so much flying.

This was brought very vividly to my attention in December of 1944, when Mr. Churchill suggested that I should come to London to talk over our problems, and particularly our progress, with him and other members of his government. In discussing his request with Secretary Stimson, I said that while I would like very much to go to England, I was afraid that it might take me away from my work for a considerable period of time, especially if something developed that would make it impossible for Mr. Churchill to receive me immediately on arrival.

Mr. Stimson told me that if I went, I could not go by air, because of the hazards involved. When I said, “Well, I don’t see what difference that would make,” he replied, “You can’t be replaced.” I said, “You do it, and General Marshall does it; why shouldn’t I?” He repeated, “As I said before, you can’t be replaced, and we can.” Harvey Bundy, who was also present, said he had heard that I had previously urged flying when air safety dictated otherwise, and then asked, “Who would take your place if you were killed?” I replied, “That would be your problem, not mine, but I agree that you might have a problem.”

I went on to say that if anything happened to Nichols, I felt that I could continue to operate, though it would mean a very strenuous period for me personally, but that if it were the other way around, while Nichols was thoroughly capable of taking over my position, I thought because he was not so familiar with my responsibilities as I was with his that he could not do both my job and his.

Mr. Stimson said, “I want you to get a Number Two man immediately who can take over your position, and with Nichols’ cooperation, carry on in the event that something happens to you.” He added, “You can have any officer in the Army, no matter who he is, or what duty he is on.”

I drew up a list of about six officers who I thought would be satisfactory, keeping in mind that it would be all-important for the man selected to be completely acceptable to Nichols, since success would depend on the utmost co-operation between them. I particularly wanted someone who would not attempt to overrule Nichols in any of his actions or recommendations until he had had time really to understand what the work was all about, and I doubted whether it would be possible for anyone to accumulate the essential background for this before the project was completed.

Having made up my list, I discussed the matter with Nichols. I asked him to look over the names and to strike from the list anyone whom he would prefer not to have in such a position. He struck several names. I always suspected he struck the first one just to see if I really meant what I had said, because it was the name of a man whom I had known for many years, and who was a very close friend. When he struck that name, I did not bat an eye, but merely said, “Well, he’s out.”

After he had crossed off the names of the men he considered unacceptable, I asked him if he had any preference among the remainder. He replied, “You name him and I’ll tell you.” I said that I felt that the best one on the list was Brigadier General Thomas F. Farrell, and Nichols replied, “He would be my first choice, too.”

Posted in Science, Technology, War | 2 Comments »

The psychological roots of “assassination culture” are a mix of ideological radicalism and feelings of powerlessness

Saturday, September 27th, 2025

The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) describes itself as “a nonpartisan research institute leading the field of cybersocial science.” Back in April, Fox News described NCRI’s then-new piece as a disturbing new report that revealed that violent political rhetoric online, including calls for the murder of public figures like President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, was being increasingly normalized, particularly on the left:

“What was formerly taboo culturally has become acceptable,” Joel Finkelstein, the lead author of the report, told Fox News Digital. “We are seeing a clear shift – glorification, increased attempts and changing norms – all converging into what we define as ‘assassination culture.’”

The NCRI study traces the cultural shift back to the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson by Luigi Mangione in December 2024. What followed, researchers say, was a viral wave of memes that turned Mangione into a folk hero.

According to the study, these memes have sparked copycat behavior targeting other figures associated with wealth and conservative politics.

“It’s not just Luigi anymore,” Finkelstein said. “We’re seeing an expansion: Trump, Musk and others are now being openly discussed as legitimate targets, often cloaked in meme culture and gamified online dialogue.”

A ballot measure in California, darkly named the Luigi Mangione Access to Health Care Act, is just one real-world outgrowth of this online movement.

NCRI conducted a non-probability based nationally representative survey of more than 1,200 U.S. adults, weighted to reflect national census demographics. The findings were stark: Some 38% of respondents said it would be at least “somewhat justified” to murder Donald Trump, and 31% said the same about Elon Musk.

When counting only left-leaning respondents, justification for killing Trump rose to 55% and Musk to 48%.

“These are not isolated opinions,” the report states. “They are part of a tightly connected belief system linked to what we call left-wing authoritarianism.”

“Trump represents the perfect target for assassination culture. He’s powerful, he’s rich and he’s provocative,” said Finkelstein to Fox News Digital. “That puts him on the highest shelf for those who glorify political violence.”

When asked whether destroying a Tesla dealership was justified, nearly four in 10 respondents agreed it was, to some degree. Among self-identified left-of-center participants, support for vandalism and property damage was significantly higher.

“Property destruction wasn’t just an outlier opinion, it clustered tightly with support for political assassinations and other forms of violence,” said Finkelstein. “This points to a coherent belief system, not just isolated grievances.”

[…]

Finkelstein believes the psychological roots of “assassination culture” are a mix of ideological radicalism and feelings of powerlessness, particularly in the aftermath of electoral losses.

“When people feel like they have no say, no future and no leadership offering vision, they become susceptible to radical ideation,” he said. “And that’s when the memes turn into permission structures for real violence.”

Posted in Crime, Policy, War | 4 Comments »

Our first consideration in the selection of names was to find the one least likely to draw attention to our work

Sunday, September 21st, 2025

Now It Can Be Told by Leslie M. GrovesColonel Marshall and General Groves met to discuss the site of the X-10 Graphite Reactor, as Groves explains in Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project:

The site Marshall had selected was near the town of Clinton, about seventeen miles from Knoxville. The highways from Knoxville would be satisfactory in every way for our early operations. Railroad service was adequate, and an adequate source of water existed in the small river which flowed through the area.

[…]

Originally, the entire site went under the name of “The Clinton Engineer Works,” the title deriving obviously from the near-by small town of Clinton. The name “Oak Ridge” did not come into general use until the summer of 1943, when it was chosen for the new community’s permanent housing area, built on a series of ridges overlooking part of the reservation. To avoid confusion, as well as to lessen outsiders’ curiosity, the post office address was Oak Ridge, but not until 1947 and after the establishment of the Atomic Energy Commission was that name officially adopted, in lieu of the Clinton Engineer Works. As in the cases of Hanford and Los Alamos, our first consideration in the selection of names was to find the one least likely to draw attention to our work.

As soon as I had gone over the site, procurement of the land—about 54,000 acres—began. As always happens when the government takes over any sizable area, some owners suffered real hardships by their dislocation. This is inevitable, despite the fact that they are paid the full value of their property, as established by the government appraisers and accepted by the owners or, if not accepted, as fixed by federal judges and juries after condemnation proceedings.

Things got off to an inauspicious start when Marshall sent a lower-ranking officer to inform the Governor:

My experience in this case highlights what everyone who issues general instructions, or what in military terms are called mission orders, must always remember. While normally instructions will be followed much more intelligently if they are general rather than spelled out in great detail, inherently they are subject to misinterpretation, and when this happens, a great deal of effort must be expended in picking up the pieces. Nevertheless, mission orders must be used whenever there are many unknowns. Our project was full of unknowns, which was the principal reason why I habitually employed mission orders.

General Groves found that he was most effective in Washington, D.C., where he could “smooth the way” for his people on the field:

Another major advantage was that distance alone prevented me from becoming involved in too many details, which is so dampening to the initiative of subordinates.

His Washington HQ was modest:

As I consider Washington today, it seems incredible that these accommodations were as limited as they were. My secretary, Mrs. O’Leary, who was soon to become my chief administrative assistant, and I occupied one room. The only furniture added was one, and later another, heavy safe. Alterations were limited to those essential for security and consisted of sealing the ventilating louvers on an outside door, which was kept locked and bolted. One other door, leading to an adjoining conference room, was also locked permanently, so that the only access to the room which I occupied was through my outer office. This room, at first used by visitors, eventually accommodated three assistant secretaries and file clerks.

After several months we took over another small room. By a year later, we had grown to a total of seven rooms, of which two were occupied by district personnel working under the direction of the District Engineer on procurement matters. This arrangement lasted until shortly before the bombing operations, when we took over a few more rooms for our public information section, which had to be ready to start functioning with the news release on Hiroshima.

It was undoubtedly one of the smallest headquarters seen in modern Washington. Nevertheless, I fell far short of my goal of emulating General Sherman, who, in his march from Atlanta to the sea, had limited his headquarters baggage to less than what could be placed in a single escort wagon.

Our internal organization was simple and direct, and enabled me to make fast, positive decisions. I am, and always have been, strongly opposed to large staffs, for they are conducive to inaction and delay. Too often they bury the leaders’ capacity to make prompt and intelligent decisions under a mass of indecisive, long-winded staff studies.

[…]

I soon realized that as long as we were under such pressure I would always find it necessary to assign to the field anyone whom I might consider acceptable as an executive officer in my headquarters. Consequently, I abandoned all further attempts and relied instead upon my chief secretary, who became my administrative assistant. With her exceptional talents, and her capacity for and willingness to work, Mrs. O’Leary more than fulfilled my highest expectations.

Posted in War | No Comments »

The U.S. has a typical number of prisoners and an exceptionally low number of police

Saturday, September 20th, 2025

Inquisitive Bird reminds us that our prisons aren’t filled with harmless pot smokers:

With 541 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants, the American prisoner rate ranks 5th in the world, only beaten by a handful of less developed countries. Owing to its large population size and high prisoner rate, the U.S. has more prisoners than any other country.

[…]

A clear majority of prisoners have committed violent crime (62.5%). Nearly five times as many prisoners are in for murder compared to drug possession (15.0% vs 3.2%).

Even non-violent offenses tend to be serious. Burglary comprises over half of the property offenses. Drug possession only accounts for a small fraction of drug crimes and just 3.2% of all inmates—and even this figure should be interpreted in the light of possible plea bargains.

[…]

The median number of prior arrests was nine. More than three quarters have at least 5 prior arrests. Having 30+ prior arrests was more common than having no arrest other than the arrest that led to the prison sentence (i.e., 1 prior arrest).

[…]

One study of 411 males found that the self-reported number of offenses was over 30 times greater than convictions (Farrington et al., 2014). For sexual offending, studies have estimated the dark figure to be anywhere from 6.5 to 20 times the official figure (Drury et al., 2020). In a recent study of American delinquent youths, the self-reported number of delinquent offenses was 25 for every police contact (Minkler et al., 2022).

[…]

Compared with other highly developed nations, the United States has a much higher rate of serious crime (e.g., homicide). The high prisoner rate is a direct result of that. If we benchmark the prisoner numbers on a per-homicide basis, rather than a usual per-capita basis, the U.S. has a typical number of prisoners and an exceptionally low number of police.

Posted in Crime, Policy | 1 Comment »

Most of the focus in the national security ecosystem was on an assumed future of counterterrorism and counterinsurgency

Friday, September 19th, 2025

Ghost Fleet by P. W. Singer and August ColeP.W. Singer and August Cole explain which of the technologies or strategic predictions in Ghost Fleet have proven most prescient, and which haven’t developed as anticipated in their 2015 novel:

When we started working on Ghost Fleet in 2012, most of the focus in the national security ecosystem was on an assumed future of counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. In turn, there was a belief that the United States would be able to induce or even cajole China into becoming a partner with a shared stake in the rules-based international order created by the United States. Based on a mix of research on history, Chinese military doctrine, Chinese Communist Party messaging, as well as our gut instincts, we just didn’t see the next 20 years that way. Rather than non-fiction, we chose to use a new model we called “useful fiction” to blend research with narrative and explore how the future could very soon become one of great power competition and even outright globe-spanning conflict.

But it wasn’t just about the strategic environment. Many of the real technologies and trends we explored in the book, such as cyber weapons, a vulnerable American defense industrial supply chain, and ever-more autonomous drones, among others, were being regularly ignored or glossed over in plans and visions of future war. This also meant any war between China and the United States in the 21st century would play out differently than Cold War visions of World War III. What was then a novel take on great powers and new technologies all seem to have hit the mainstream, so to speak, today.

There are all sorts of other disquieting points that we’ve tracked over the years as what we call “Ghost Fleet moments” coming true. Just a few examples are deepening military ties between China and Russia, the U.S. Navy’s railgun program being retired too early, and the idea of an eccentric space-obsessed billionaire inserting himself into U.S. national security.

An aspect that we didn’t have room for in the novel was the wartime impact of information warfare and political division inside America. We provided a few scenes, including one during the opening of the conflict, where a young security guard at a civilian port films on his cell phone the very start of the conflict. All his followers knew the United States was at war at the same time that cyber attacks hammered the national command and control systems, effectively putting America’s military and civilian leadership in Washington in the dark. We also referred to a domestic movement of foreign-influenced isolationist politicians, who were very willing to accept defeat and China’s global hegemony, seeing the fight against it as not worth the toll. We even worked with a graphic designer to create a fictitious propaganda poster for this movement to drive the point home.

But if we were to refresh the novel today, we’d have way more in there. China and Russia have since made massive investments and doctrinal priorities in cognitive warfare, while the U.S. public and government have become more vulnerable to misinformation and disinformation.

In the novel, the Americans face a classic problem:

How do you police an empire when you’ve got a shrinking economy relative to the world’s and a population no longer so excited to meet those old commitments?

The Battlestar Galactica remake seems oddly prescient in its emphasis on cyber-warfare vulnerabilities. Early in Ghost Fleet, the DIA — “it was something like the CIA, but for the U.S. military” — gets compromised:

The idea of using covert radio signals to ride malware into a network unconnected to the wider Internet had actually been pioneered by the NSA, one of the DIA’s sister agencies. But like all virtual weapons, once it was deployed in the open cyberworld, it offered inspiration for anyone, including one’s enemies.

The Chinese take out American satellites with space-based lasers, rather than ground-based missiles:

The first target was WGS-4,16 a U.S. Air Force wideband gapfiller satellite. Shaped like a box with two solar wings, the 3,400-kilogram satellite had entered space in 2012 on top of a Delta 4 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral.

Costing over three hundred million dollars, the satellite offered the U.S. military and its allies 4.875 GHz of instantaneous switchable bandwidth, allowing it to move massive amounts of data. Through it ran the communications for everything from U.S. Air Force satellites to U.S. Navy submarines. It was also a primary node for the U.S. Space Command. The Pentagon had planned to put up a whole constellation of these satellites to make the network less vulnerable to attack, but contractor cost overruns had kept the number down to just six.

The Japanese are prepared for an attack from China, but not from the east:

This was a crucial component of the plan. He took a deep breath and waited, telling himself that the missiles were threats only if someone pushed the launch button. Japan’s Air Self-Defense Forces, however, were not authorized to fire on targets without permission from that country’s civilian leadership. The gamble was that permission wouldn’t come in time. Two decades of near-daily airspace incursions by Chinese aircraft would have desensitized the Japanese, plus their communications networks were supposed to have been knocked offline by cyber-attacks. At least, that was the plan.

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All of these factors are strong predictors of change in military technology

Thursday, September 18th, 2025

Peter Turchin and his colleagues ask, What have been the causes and consequences of technological evolution in world history?

Many have argued that the evolution of military technologies is just one aspect of a much broader pattern of technological evolution driven by increasing size and interconnectedness among human societies. Several cultural evolutionary theories, conversely, highlight military technologies as a special case, arguing that steep improvements in both offensive and defensive capabilities of technologies along with accompanying tactical and organizational innovations resulted in “Military Revolutions” (note the plural), which in turn had major ramifications on the rise and, of particular concern here, the spread of state formations globally and the evolution of religion and other cultural phenomena.

[…]

We empirically test previously speculative theories that proposed world population size, connectivity between geographical areas of innovation and adoption, and critical enabling technological advances, such as iron metallurgy and horse riding, as central drivers of military technological evolution. We find that all of these factors are strong predictors of change in military technology, whereas state-level factors such as polity population, territorial size, or governance sophistication play no major role.

Posted in Technology, War | 3 Comments »

The Barrett SSRS is a recoil-operated, magazine-fed, semi-automatic rifle chambered in 30×42 mm

Wednesday, September 17th, 2025

During DSEI UK 2025 in London, Barrett Firearms introduced its 30mm Squad Support Rifle System (SSRS). developed in cooperation with Mars Inc., to the public outside the US:

The weapon recently won the U.S. Army’s xTech Soldier Lethality Competition and secured USD 2 million in funding, confirming its relevance in the ongoing Precision Grenadier System (PGS) program.

[…]

The Barrett SSRS is a recoil-operated, magazine-fed, semi-automatic rifle chambered in 30×42 mm. The system is compact and ergonomic, with an overall length of 861 mm and a 305 mm barrel, while its weight remains approximately 6.3 kg with the integrated fire control system. Feeding from five-round detachable magazines, the SSRS provides dismounted units with the ability to engage targets up to 500 meters in less than three seconds, offering a much flatter trajectory than traditional 40×46 mm low-velocity grenades. With an effective range greater than most current squad-level grenade launchers, it enhances both precision and lethality in medium-range engagements.

A distinctive feature of the system is its advanced Direct Fire Control – Precision Targeting (DFC-PT) unit, developed by Precision Targeting LLC. This electro-optical fire control system integrates a laser rangefinder, ballistic solver, environmental sensors, and a disturbed reticle, significantly improving first-round hit probability. The SSRS is also designed for compatibility with remote weapon stations, expanding its application beyond individual infantry use to vehicle-mounted platforms.

Development has been rapid. Within eleven months, Barrett and Mars Inc. designed, built, and tested the SSRS, demonstrating its effectiveness under the U.S. Army’s Precision Grenadier System requirement. This achievement led to its recognition as the winner of the Army’s Soldier Lethality Competition in May 2025. Ammunition developed by Amtec Corp. further broadens its operational spectrum, with multiple natures including High Explosive Dual Purpose (HEDP), Close Quarters Battle (CQB), anti-drone rounds, and training practice slugs. This variety makes the weapon adaptable to both urban combat and counter-drone operations, two of the most pressing challenges on today’s battlefields.

We’ve discussed the SSRS before.

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What can be seen can be destroyed, so don’t be seen

Tuesday, September 16th, 2025

Littoral Commander BalticAs NATO prepares for a potential Russian invasion of the Baltic region, planners wonder how drones, hypersonic missiles, and modern kill chains might play out there. A new tabletop game, Littoral Commander: The Baltic, offers answers:

The game depicts a Russian invasion of the Baltic region around 2030. In addition to the Baltic states, the 11 scenarios in the game include a Russian landing to seize the Swedish island of Gotland, an offensive launched from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad and missile-equipped U.S. Marines attempting to stop Russian warships from breaking out of the Baltic to hunt convoys in the Atlantic. There is even a humanitarian scenario where the U.S. has to evacuate civilians while Russia tries to disrupt the operation.

[…]

Platoons — represented by cardboard pieces on the map — are rated for firepower, range and speed. The American forces include a plethora of types: Marine infantry, amphibious combat vehicles, Army HIMARS rockets, M1 Abrams tanks, Stryker armored reconnaissance vehicles, Typhon long-range missiles, air defense and logistics units, as well as U.S. Navy destroyers and amphibious assault ships. Russian forces include naval infantry, T-90 tanks, self-propelled howitzers, mortars and multiple rocket launchers, paratroopers and airborne artillery, air defense and logistics, plus cruisers, destroyers, frigates and amphibious ships.

However, the heart of the game are the 277 “Joint Capability” cards, an abstract representation of the myriad force multipliers available to modern armies. By spending a limited pool of “Command Points” to buy cards from either a U.S. or Russian card deck, each side assembles a customized array of support forces. Players can choose from a wide variety of capabilities, including B-52 and Tu-22 bomber strikes, naval gunfire, special forces raids, drone strikes, laser air defenses, cyber warfare, psyops and electronic warfare (there’s even a “Public Affairs Officer” card).

“The cards feature a wide range of future, near-future and present-day capabilities to allow players to experiment and explore what capabilities can contribute to different scenarios,” Sebastian Bae, designer of “Littoral Commander,” told Defense News.

[…]

The key to winning “Littoral Commander” can be summed as: “What can be seen can be destroyed, so don’t be seen.” The fog of war always hovers over the game, with combat units on the map flipped upside down, so the enemy doesn’t know whether they are an infantry unit, an artillery battery, a frigate — or just a decoy.

“Littoral Commander” resembles a game of hide-and-seek. Both sides use ground troops and reconnaissance assets to detect and identify enemy forces, while trying to screen friendly forces from enemy detection. Once an enemy unit is located, it can be targeted by long-range fires such as artillery, missiles, aircraft and drones. Meanwhile, the target attempts to break contact and become concealed again.

[…]

Compounding the problem is that the U.S. and Russian forces have limited stockpiles of guided munitions, such as artillery shells, cruise missiles and — perhaps most importantly — air and missile defense interceptors. This puts a premium on judicious target selection.
And if battlefield problems aren’t enough, “Littoral Commander” players must also deal with public opinion. The game includes an “Influence Meter” that awards players additional resources for destroying enemy units and capturing key terrain — or rewards the enemy if you bombard urban areas (this is where the PAO card comes in handy).

“Littoral Commander: The Baltic” is actually the second game in the series, following “Littoral Commander: Indo Pacific,” which covered a U.S.-China conflict over Taiwan and the Philippines. The games have been used by U.S. military staff colleges, U.S. Marine tactical units, the British and Australian armies, the Bundeswehr, the Philippines Marine Corps and others.

Posted in Games, War | 7 Comments »

The world’s largest illegal sports streaming platform was raided in the Giza Governorate of Egypt

Sunday, September 14th, 2025

Streameast, the world’s largest illegal sports streaming platform, with 1.6 billion views over the last year, has been shut down after a global collaboration between Europol, the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, and National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Centre:

Last weekend’s raid in the Giza Governorate of Egypt led to two arrests and the seizure of laptops, smartphones, cash, credit cards, crypto, real estate properties, and evidence of a money-laundering network.

Posted in Crime | 1 Comment »

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