A cool example of how you might use these models that dovetails nice with IR/conflict studies topics—pairwise comparison models were used to help determine weights for various soldier attributes used to prioritize discharges from the Army after WWII.

Finally finished up a blog post on estimating Bradley–Terry models using brms. www.m-flynn.com/posts/2025-1...

Bradley–Terry Models and Pairwise Comparisons in brms Whew—it's been a minute since I've written a blog post. But I recently published a paper that seemed like it would lend itself nicely to a new post, so here we are! Before I move on I'll note that this is an abbreviated version of a longer post…

Finally finished up a blog post on estimating Bradley–Terry models using brms. www.m-flynn.com/posts/2025-1...

It will be interesting to see how the media treats this. Inflation came down a lot by the 2024 elections, but reporting made it sound like it was still up to 9%. But this is a huge jump in gas prices coming right before end of school year travels for lots of people in the US. bbc.com/news/article...

I really enjoyed this episode. I think it had some really useful information on the technical issues associated with military military operations in and around the strait. I also appreciated the perspective that it provided on military leaders evaluations of what constitutes “success”. 1/

Watching the full press conference and it's amazing that nobody is asking why, if Iranian capabilities have truly been degraded to the extent described, the US would concede control and taxation authority over the Straits? www.bbc.com/news/live/c5...

Having Iran tax the strait of Hormuz would be an enormous strategic defeat for the USA and extra perilous for Iran’s neighbors. But it is also a staggering blow to Israel.

My terrific RA, Caleb Dixon, and I tracked the military firings and replacements so you can judge whether the military leadership is being politicized: www.aei.org/military-ous...

Lots of focus on energy supplies/prices but the degree to which the agricultural production capacity of many countries is also tied up with the free flow of shipping through the Straits gives Iran a significant amount of leverage over food supplies.

This is along the lines of what I feared he might be going for with the dramatic escalation, but it only works if you have a pliant media outlet that will print anything even if it doesn’t pass a basic smell test. They didn’t just churn out this plan suddenly after he started in with mass killings.

This would translate to something like ≈$110 million per day and ≈$40 billion annually for Iran based on pre-war traffic?

It seems possible there’s some sort of agreement between the US and Iran (even if only short term) pending. If so it makes the president’s insistence on using genocidal rhetoric all the more reprehensible because he, of all people, would be aware of such developments.

I would have preferred to have the "draw the rest of the owl" meme on the cover, but this will do. Seems like it is on schedule, and we'll leave some typos so you know we didn't write it with AI.

AEI is making a fired flags tracker so you can assess the replacements are more political. Coles out Monday.

Well this is probably going to be bad.

The present war with Iran is a hell of a thing to hang NATO's value on. There seems to be an utter failure of imagination when it comes to considering the problems they *don't* have to deal with because NATO exists and the US is a part of the alliance.

Via @ma-allen.com www.twz.com/news-feature...

I am happy that this paper with @flynnpolsci.bsky.social is finally in print. If you need to turn text into a number for rigorous analysis, this is likely the solution you are looking for. Short story: pairwise comparisons (A vs. B) are better than naive LLM scaling (0-10 placement).

Truly flabbergasting to hear this as they still seem to be struggling to grasp that Pete’s “just bomb them harder” doctrine isn’t working.

Treating war as a video game not only degrades trustworthiness of information from the government, it’s morally wrong because it trivializes the risks our forces are experiencing.

@mdigiuseppe.bsky.social and I have a new piece out in @poqjournal.bsky.social where we use LLMs and Bayes/brms to estimate pairwise comparisons and latent scores.

Not that current institutional arrangements are great, but I still contend that so much of what we’re seeing is attributable to Johnson in particular, and the Republican caucus more broadly, ceding all of his/their institutional prerogatives to Trump.

@mdigiuseppe.bsky.social and I have a new piece out in @poqjournal.bsky.social where we use LLMs and Bayes/brms to estimate pairwise comparisons and latent scores.

Not an exhaustive search, but looking through a few major media outlets reporting on this and I've seen zero mention of DOGE and the impact that it had last year on the FAA and air traffic controllers more specifically.

The mad scientists at Cadbury have invented a Cadbury Creme Egg cluster munition

<insert bold-strategy-cotton.gif> Assuming it plays out like other cases we've seen over the last year, this approach is injecting extremely unpopular behaviors directly into the lives of lots of people who might otherwise not be exposed.

Also, I wonder if we can look at the real world around us and see any practical use for Latin American Studies or Middle Eastern Studies or even Russian

AP follows the @notus.com report on how the Trump administration had already gutted the State Dept’s staff of Middle East policy experts — and “eliminated the dedicated Iran office ..” @apnews.com apnews.com/article/iran...

We're in the process of (trying at least) to rebuild QP and do some more regular blogging. @michaelallen.bsky.social set up a bsky account for the blog, which you can find below.

Venezuela seemed to "work" because there appeared to be months of behind the scenes talks paving the way and a somewhat cooperative successor. I suspect they, somehow, thought Iran would go as smoothly for reasons unknown. But truly stunning to see this talk as the Iran conflict spirals.

Overseas military bases don't just prepare for war. They shape international politics before conflicts begin.

Right. Starting with the 2008 recession, the 2011 cuts to earmarks, the Brownback tax cuts, and the pandemic, TA/RA support has been cut way back in Kansas, at K-State more narrowly, and very unevenly across programs. Training TAs/RAs would be the priority if we had them but we don’t. 1/

This is worth a read. Lots of thoughtful commentary. One point that stands out after working at a research institution that has slashed RA support for over a decade now, and having two small children, is the savings in terms of labor. These data still need to be policed, but the collection time 1/

We often approach the subject of multilateralism with an eye on the constraints that it imposes, but *not* embracing multilateralism sure can impose a lot of constraints, too.

There was a time when this one paragraph would have triggered a relentless onslaught of congressional investigations and swift impeachment proceedings. www.cnn.com/2026/03/13/p...

I was just disinvited from the Air War College where I’d been asked to lecture on my book, which is a history of U.S. civil-military relations.

Good thread on PME. I think a basic point underscored here is that good PME requires variability in content, and that’s something that very much seems to bother the current administration.

Really rubbing my temples on this one.

It should not be a surprise that the decision to immediately target senior regime leadership would precipitate an extreme response. Just a flabbergasting lack of planning and imagination. www.cnn.com/2026/03/12/p...

Good lord.

So are federal refunds just slower across the board this year or what? Not seeing a lot of reporting either way except for some pre-canned stuff I suspect predates this last year’s changes.

🧵Feels like shouting into the void, but it is essential to note that the Trump/Rubio gutting of the State Department and blowtorching of US diplomatic capacity and credibility is an accelerant to this spiraling war and will seriously undercut US/allied efforts to pick up the pieces after. 1/

It seems like it’s only a matter of time until some of the many expats that have been left exposed by the exceptionally poor planning and coordination are killed or injured. I suspect this will in turn be cited as justification for further escalation.

Not my wheelhouse personally but can attest that in our little corner of the world some of our students were writing about this sort of thing several years ago.

When was the last time a cabinet secretary was subpoenaed by a chamber controlled by the president’s party?

Wait — IRGC control of the country was the plan?!?

It’s a real problem that many policymakers cannot fathom how restraint and beneficence are maybe compatible with strategic behavior and self interest.

It’s shocking to see the secretary of defense talk like this. Saying “lethality” and “precision” repeatedly while trashing US allies doesn’t somehow erase the fact that these operations are still in pursuit of inherently political goals, only, it seems, without an actual plan to accomplish them.

Even in the best of times lots of people are seriously injured or killed serving in the military. War, especially in a region dotted with lots of different heavily armed states, is going to exponentially increase the room for accidents.