The astounding thing about prominent IR voices is how often they are consistently wrong, and never pay the price for their very public failures, instead doubling down each time.

Neat new Generative AI paper by Jensen and his team, looks great "All models exhibit some degree of country-specific biases, often recommending less escalatory and interventionist actions for China and Russia compared to the United States and the United Kingdom." arxiv.org/pdf/2503.06263

DoD Minerva grant on space/cyberspace nexus canceled. What is worse is how they did it, for a minute there we thought it might survive but instead they were just going down the list slowly...

Incredible headline but the hubris to say this when EW jamming has forced a shift to fiber which now leads to new shifts (cutting drones, new optical sights, universal fiber platforms) www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

We officially have a know-nothing team working cyber. There is no offense/defense in cyber and you don't let your guard down while trying to poke the enemy - even Jake Paul knows that...

Guess I should react but this is obviously grossly horrific. The thing that gets me is the idea we cut off offensive operations, offense/defense language is inadequate in cyber and most troubling is stopping basic monitoring of malware and ransomware. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/02/u...

As academics have been saying for nearly a decade, cyber is a poor tool for coercion (Borghard and Lonergan 2017, Valeriano et al 2018) and useless to hold territory. Bigger question is why policymakers were convinced by hype beats and snake oil salesmen.

Impressive to lose Canada, France (probably gone before this), and Germany in one month.

Sure looks like my battle buddy and coauthor Ben Jensen

I think we need to go back to calling people imposters because the entire Executive branch thinks they can solve the country's problems by treating it like a startup.

Been stuck in #Civ7 and its nice to be reminded that I once wrote a very personal piece about wargaming and Civilization 6. thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2....

This is a horrific, for one it provides no solutions offering instead do things faster. It adds, we can go lighter w drones buying into the hype of revolutionary technologies when on the battlefield they have gone wired within a period of about 3 months. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/o...

The world is burning and I need to post more Kpop memes. Two meetings, a class to prep, and a Champions League game to watch www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nGX...

I reject the acronym DEI because it removes context and agency from the platform, eliminating the meaning of the program in favor of some anspectic term.

Academics need to stop applying fancy words to what is outright chaos and destruction. This is not normal, its an outlier, and its malicious. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/pres...

Good news, the NCD lives! I thought it might be slowly eliminated along with other cuts. Bad news, our new national cyber director appears to have zero cyber security background so its open season for the sham/scams in cyber security policy - per usual. www.politico.com/news/2025/02...

This is damning, but common. Orgs often downplay cyber security because it has little impact on their bottom line, but the reality is the cascading consequences for failure end up far downstream which is why the strategy of regulations, secure by design, and strong investment in the D is critical.

I really like this paper and its something critically important, novel tech is often not destabilizing but stabilizing. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Institutional?

Really cool position in Sports Diplomacy, don't think I have ever seen this before jobs.chronicle.com/job/37787608...

Oh ffs, if you had a plot to destroy America from within, I don't think you can top having the guy who bungled Twitter take over FAA Information Networks... www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/u...

Our Hybrid book "Experts careen from event to event, applying no analytical rigor to the core challenge of modern warfare. The lessons of decades of research on war should highlight how dangerous..failed predictions with no analytical rigor are to the community of analysts, but more so, humanity."

This what happens when you have a failed Vanderbilt Political Science PhD in charge of the DOJ...

The things lost early on: 50k for buying a new house Long term elder care support Diversity and ethics protections All grants from the NIH, NSF, and DoD(?) WFH (RTO) Changes to USG disrupting entire USG Cyber Bureau at State, all review boards Likely coordination with Denmark College loan support

I was writing about deterrence today and remembered my favourite way of explaining it

Wrote a retrospective piece with my students on Drones in the Homefront and over Jersey nationalinterest.org/blog/techlan...

Cyber security is a great field, people just straight up lie on their resumes, LinkedIn and in bios. More people claim to be "plankholders" for USCYBERCOM or the NCD than there were chairs in the building when the orgs opened.

Call for applications: The H.F. Guggenheim #EmergingScholarAwards recognize and support promising Ph.D. candidates in completing dissertations that examine a salient aspect of physical violence. Apply by Feb. 1, 2025. Apply here: hfg.org/emerging-sch...

You have heard of Stuxnet? Now put AI in front of that and tremble at the might of the cyber weapon. (*notice how all these warnings come with a sales pitch) www.axios.com/2025/01/07/g...

I have had students leverage AI professionally, and others just cut and paste outputs spending less time on the assingment than it took me to write the prompt. This is how disastrous mistakes are made.

I don't know how many times I have to reiterate that offense/defense framework in cyber is absurd but this add for the Director of Cyber for Habit for Humanity asking for an offensive expert to run the defense pretty much says it all. www.habitat.org/about/career...

A lot "get off my lawn, I was there for Carter" commentary today which is hilarious given that our current students were not even alive for 9/11.

Just in time for worst article of the year. This is not how you use AI or ML, need to establish conditions and theories first, otherwise it spits out junk. breakingdefense.com/2024/12/we-f...

This is only interesting in it should make the persistent engagement people's heads explode. The US is the most aggressive nation-state in cyberspace, hands down, its also the most effective (see Cyber Strategy, 2018, OUP).

Getting zesty with that Ozempic money...

Denmark has done incredible work in supporting Ukraine and we thank them with this, now they have to invest money in Greenlandic defense when they need to spend on other things, like troop retention and training.

Iranian drone mothership you say...

Its not like Yahoo hasn't had a serious cyber disasters, nope, nothing to see here...🤪

When you think drones and NJ, think of me and how annoyed and skeptical I am of the whole thing. Iranian drone mothership my a... www.nj.com/news/2024/12...

The one good set of regulations we have are for FINCYBER and we are about to ruin them...

Interesting report on IO wars going on inside Russia. ooni.org/post/2024-ru...

Interesting question about if Tallinn loses in all this. And why Mons, can't we go somewhere nice, Antwerp is nice. Finland and Sweden just joined. breakingdefense.com/2024/12/nato...

Kinda funny that some say that leaders don't escalate in cyber because they are aware of the dangers of escalation. They are not aware, they state so often, and its remarkable how stable the domain is

Inside baseball - kinda amazing here that a European guy tried to mansplain the US DOD 2023 Cyber strategy to the American woman who helped write it. networks.h-net.org/group/discus...

Can these new regulations pass in a GOP-controlled Washington? "We believe that defending against China's program requires these mandated cybersecurity practices, and hence, we want to engage the Hill for that bipartisan support," the senior administration official said.

Odd not mention the huge ransomware attack and predatory tactics United is accused of

Before the election, @abenewman.bsky.social and I talked about how if Trump won, our arguments would become more relevant in the grimmest fucking ways possible. Here, Jonas explains why it's likely to be worse than we expected.

New WoR from one of my former coders Claris Diaz. Huge congrats and a great example for students of developing expertise in emergent tech. warontherocks.com/2024/11/beyo...

Has anyone made a cyber academics/research list on BS?