Two days into the war: - three F-15s shot down - U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia in flames - six U.S. service members confirmed dead; more wounded - State Department tells Americans to flee the entire Middle East

Keep hearing commentators/Hegseth saying a version of "this is not Iraq, we are not doing nation-building, it's a decapitation, the people will handle it." That's what Iraq 2003 was supposed to be! Nation-building, de-Baathification, disbanding of Iraqi army, it all came *after* things went wrong.

Maj. Gen. Randy Manner (Ret.): "It's a little bit disheartening to hear that the UK govt is arranging transport for the British citizens, whereas here as Americans we feel abandoned. The State Dept is in survival mode because as we know the administration reduced their budget by almost half."

Understanding everything is fluid right now, nonetheless moving THAAD and Patriot systems from South Korea to the Middle East is mental. Three reasons why. 🧵 www.chosun.com/english/nati...

With this finally revealed to be the Pentagon’s stated goal, any AI company promising that its tool can be used safely is missing the broader point. The question is whether it can be used legally and ethically. The answer lies firmly in Congress’ lane. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/01/t...

The United Kingdom’s Akrotiri air force base in Cyprus has been hit by a drone, the Cyprus Mail learned in the early hours of Monday morning. cyprus-mail.com/2026/03/02/s...

When the US government began DOGE’ing itself into irrelevance last year, I wrote a piece on the attendant national security risks. I focused on the impact to the sciences but the broader point still stands: without skilled workforces, governments fail. councilonstrategicrisks.org/2025/02/26/t...

BREAKING The United Arab Emirates is closing its embassy in Iran and withdrawing its ambassador and diplomatic staff. The Emiratis say that the Islamic Republic’s missile attacks on Emirati territory and the “hostile attacks” on civilian sites are the reason for this decision.

“Three U.S. service members were killed and five were seriously wounded as part of Operation Epic Fury, U.S. Central Command said today.” www.nbcnews.com/world/iran/l...

If we survive as a Republic the need for a comprehensive effort to reform the office of the Presidency is stark. If we are to be a Constitutional Republic, governed by laws and not people we must plan now and take action if/when Trump leaves office.

Would that we had speeches like this in Congress. Would that we had the opportunity to hear speeches of any kind before going to war.

Hegseth illegally uses Anthropic software in Iran War.

Want a hot take on what this bombing campaign means? It means we’ve become inured to never knowing when we’ll wake up at be at war. It means wars no longer reflect the will of the American people or their representatives. It means our children can be sent to war on little more than vibes.

Terrorist recruitment fodder for the next 20 years, the by-product of a military campaign waged without even the input let alone support of Congress, for no communicated rationale, clear or present danger, or strategic purpose. A 360-degree catastrophe.

As the man said: we are prioritizing ill-advised military campaigns in volatile regions without clear victory conditions or off-ramps.

The “exhausted Rasputin” look is one whose time has come

How this isn’t being covered as a national security crisis boggles my mind. The toxic convergence of mis/disinformation, fads masquerading as science, and a criminal undervaluing of public health will bring more than measles back. A sick and vulnerable populace yields a weak state.

If the Pentagon's rebuttal rests on its belief that it should be allowed to use any technology for "all lawful purposes," then that phrase needs some additional scaffolding in the form of regulation and legislation in an age of AI. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/o...

Pakistan warplanes bomb Kabul; Islamabad declares ‘open war’ on Afghanistan https://aje.news/aozifo

“We cannot in good conscience accede to their request." www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

NEW: A hobbyist has created Nearby Glasses, an app that warns you if someone close by is wearing smart glasses. 404 Media spoke to the creator who said he was inspired by our coverage that uncovers how men are wearing Meta's Ray-Bans to covertly film massage parlor workers.

Firmly believe there's applicable guidance from the bio/synthetic bio community here -- air-gapping meets Biological Safety Cabinets. www.transformernews.ai/p/moltbook-i...

China's decision to "[treat] energy and electrification as central components of national strength, rather than a standalone industry or a narrow climate issue" enabled energy resilience and dominance; the US and its myopic focus on fossil fuel lags behind. www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...

Take a pause from work posting and doom scrolling and join me in my absolute delight that The Boy, not yet six, requested The Police for our dinnertime vinyl record pick. America, you are welcome in advance for raising such a solid and upright citizen.

I feel you, Zoom.

Assuredly the Director of National Intelligence is no longer allocating attention to voting boxes in Fulton County but instead actively managing the IC's full court press to track and neutralize the counterstrikes of Iranian proxies in the US and Europe. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

One would have hoped the Times would have centered, let alone mentioned, the role of Congress in decisions of war in this piece. The absence reflects the post 9/11 American psyche. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/u...

Ramadan Mubarak and a reflective Lent. I don’t think I’ll make it if I give up caffeine, whisky, or chocolate, but I think it’ll be both harder and more productive to give up another luxury item - despair. And so we begin Lent with my favorite Palestrina piece to sing. youtu.be/dU7k-hiiVjw?...

H/t to @jjschroden.bsky.social -- this is absolutely mental. "Blackmail is a known theoretical issue with AI agents. ...I don’t know of a prior incident where this category of misaligned behavior was observed in the wild, but this is now a real and present threat." theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-...

I can’t help but feel the Times buried the lede here. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/w...

This is spot on. I'll pile on w/ two points. (1) Those who want PME to "teach war" see education as a synonym of training. It's not. PME gives the context and cognitive architecture w/in which you use training. (2) It's hard enough to get a job as a vet; de-accrediting PME would make that 10x worse.

This is happening because OpenAI - a company that does not have anything even approaching a viable business model and is setting money on fire - used borrowed money to advance buy all of the raw materials for RAM production so competitors couldn’t get it

At last - an email sign-off that conveys the full spectrum of my personality.

“The senior administration official argued there is considerable gray area […] and that it's unworkable for the Pentagon to have to negotiate individual use-cases.” www.axios.com/2026/02/15/c...

One of my research obsessions is state capacity and the concept of capacity tipping points. I was mulling over a framework idea tonight and this tweet I saw - and screencapped - three years ago popped back into my head. And framework aside, this is a pretty solid foundation.

When I said on a big plenary panel stage a few years ago “Let’s not out-China China,” this is partly what I had in mind.

Roses are red Harvard is woke The Pentagon buys What the Pentagon broke

Roses are red Violets are less so I once saw an Osprey Fly over a Costco

The current commander of the 31st MEU went through the program at JHU I oversaw—and Mattis created—when I was DASD. DoD gets asked all the time to prove they’re educating steely-eyed killers—I testified on the Hill about this!—but the proof isn’t found in a smaller list of approved schools. /1

Beyond the vomitous amoralism (“We will launch during a dynamic political environment where civil society groups [are] focused on other concerns") lies a helluva intel collection tool. If randos can pull up invisible dossiers, who cares if you remove your work badge. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...

Have we forgotten how COVID torched military readiness, cost $12 billion in lost labor in 2022 alone, and made a generation of American children backslide in education? That the flu costs the economy about $7 billion/year in lost labor? That pandemics crash the stock market? What a stupid own goal.

If you believe that faulty intelligence lies in bad assumptions more than bad data, then pushing AI into intel tradecraft holds risk. A good analyst knows the limits of their conclusions - but a flip-flopping LLM is just trying to deliver what the user wants. www.randalolson.com/2026/02/07/t...

Nick “I’ve never had so much fun losing in my life” Baumgartner is the kind of American we need more of. #Olympics

Tag yourself - I'm the fourth one

Nothing starts the day on a better note than having to explain a TEL to your five year old because he saw one of your challenge coins. “Well, kiddo, when two nations don’t like each other very much…” 😵‍💫

NEW: OpenAI has disbanded its Mission Alignment team and transferred employees to other teams. Joshua Achiam, a leading voice on safety issues at the company, will become its chief futurist www.platformer.news/openai-missi...

Not to be a scold, but if you had a hand in building the 20th century's most consequential technology and are now really worried about humanity, demand to be impaneled at a live televised Senate hearing about AI. Don't just give us a poem and wish us all good luck. futurism.com/artificial-i...

So, not great. But it's super not great for national security. Why? Three reasons. 1) Our military training ranges are in the hottest areas of the US, and our force generation frameworks depend on 24/7/365 outdoor access. Too hot to be outside? Spend $ to train indoors or reduce end strength.