Former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander of Nato in Europe, General Sir Richard Shirreff (& author of the novel ‚War with Russia’) in an op-ed in the 🇬🇧Mail yesterday: “My message to European leaders is this: America is no longer our ally but a predator and a bully. Stick together and prepare for war.“

I'm free from the need to have opinions on latest developments, so I'd just note that the US op to seize Maduro and declare our sole interest is oil reinforces exactly how Beijing views to US. A reckless declining power breaking laws and norms to maintain primacy.

A day after part of a missile fired by the United States hit their village, landing just meters from its only medical facility, the villagers of Jabo in northwest Nigeria are in a state of shock and confusion.

Sen. Warner drove this in a couple of days later. Good thing Trump is pre-surrendering to China on tech, Taiwan, human rights. Because in a war, we could be truly screwed. bsky.app/profile/ship...

David Sanger's NYT analysis of Trump's NSS, there's this nugget... "...and there is barely a mention of the remarkably sophisticated, extensive cyber attacks that have burrowed deeply into American telecommunications and utility systems and stayed there, despite years of efforts to oust them."

Beyond the sheer idiocy, I sincerely hope these frauds get the deflationary spiral they want.

Dear Subway, Which of your sandwiches has the highest ballistic coefficient? No reason...

Senators displeased with spoiled Colby cheese... Just deservedly brutal. www.defenseone.com/policy/2025/...

Of course the WaPo editors think this is dandy. What utter shit the paper has become.

Trump confirms decades of insider reports that he shits his pants, explodes his diaper, and literally smells like shit. And considers himself King Shit.

Leaks about a covert ops finding on Venezuela put this into context. Ellis is the guy back in 2020 they tried to shove into NSA as general counsel before Jan6. Nakasone blocked him. If you name Ellis your top lawyer, you are intending to break a lot of laws, and not just wrt Venezuela.

What if Trump calls on the PRC to renounce use of force in exchange for a halt to US arms sales and Trump announces US support for reunification? Still nominating him?

Fascinating look at China's resilience to extreme weather events -- investments in physical adaptation capacity unparalleled and innovative, yet information control that limits local officials' ability to build trust/tell truth limits effectiveness. (1/2)

@radiofreetom.bsky.social curious what you think of George Packer's latest... www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

@mikeblack114.bsky.social www.wsj.com/politics/nat...

Yeah, we know. Someone should tell Chuck, Hakeem, and Nancy. They seem to think the polls indicate Dems will do great in the midterms. They don't know they're going to Gitmo for being ANTIFA.

Think about this: Will Trump/MAGA peacefully relinquish power?

last night as i was trying to wind down for bed i had a unified theory of what the fuck just happened, and i wrote it down, and filed it under "well, i can't talk about this on main without sounding insane until and unless the perp gets caught and is provably a groyper" anyways, great news! (1/X)

After 14 years, I think the time has come to acknowledge that the "Rebalance to Asia" has failed. I've spent the last decade writing and thinking about how to make the rebalance successful, so this is a painful realization. A thread on my new piece for RSIS...

BTW, I first posted this on the other site five years ago.

What Trump wants from the military besides personal loyalty to him is for them to be killers. He has no idea, and would dismiss if explained, the role of laws governing armed conflict or domestic use of armed forces. He likely thinks Russian war crimes in Ukraine are great.

Great history by Dave Finkelstein on the significant US WW2 role in defending China. open.substack.com/pub/sinocism...

Trump+henchmen are conditioning the country for their next insurrection if they lose an election. The DOD+IC and DOJ+FBI purges, combined with troops and goon squad in Democratic cities create the tools to invoke the Insurrection Act.

Fun to work with Jon Czin on this for Foreign Affairs: "The moves demonstrate his continued dissatisfaction with the PLA’s high command and can be seen as part of an ongoing process of achieving his larger goals of bending the military to his will." x.com/BrookingsFP/...

Read Bonny Lin, @johnculver689.bsky.social, and @brianthart.bsky.social on the growing risk that China will make a deadly miscalculation in the Taiwan Strait—and what the United States can do to “deter a conflict or, failing that, to deny and defeat Chinese military adventurism.”

"It's a genocide!"

Hardcoded credentials in the Signal archiving tool used by the White House is a five-alarm security dumpster fire.

Least surprising news in forever: Fetterman is spiraling, needs to resign. Gee, what were the signs?

Welcome to the "Omnishambles!" There's no strategy. Trump sees trade as losing. He loves tariffs. But he's in 30s% approval territory and GOP sees its blood in the water. He gets pumped up by Navarro, then gets shit scared. On top of *all this other horrible shit*.

Mmmmmmmm if DoD is truly now unilaterally operating deportation flights without any DHS involvement (and this isn't just more attempts by DoJ to get sanctioned for lying) then that is a) extremely newsworthy and b) something several USAF GOs should get hauled up to the Hill to be yelled at about

Important to look at Hegseth in context of the overall cabinet, especially NatSec members. Their lack of qualifications is why they were chosen. Their jobs are to destroy the administrative state, not competently run agencies. Hegseth remains only at the whim of Trump... 1/2

This is an interesting account of how Volt Typhoon came up in a bilateral cyber dialog. I would be wary of assuming that Wang's comments here reflected a high level decision in Beijing to signal Washington. I'm a bit skeptical because Beijing probably did not view www.wsj.com/politics/nat...

American citizens who travel abroad should only bring burner phones, not their real phones. www.freep.com/story/news/l...

Congrats, Stable Genius has wiped out a year of stock gains in just two days. One again, Trump's superpower is destroying anything he touches.

when people say this they imagine, like, artisanal carpentry or baking, not eight hours on the manufacturing line adjusting a thousand widgets because you're marginally cheaper than a machine

These firings are probably for stupid reasons--loomer, "dei"--but if a tyrant wanted to abuse massive intercept & cyber capabilities to attack domestic opponents, a pliable NSA/CYBERCOM leadership would be key. This is a senate-confirmed position, so the tell will be the nominee.

Major foreign adversaries can compromise Signal, not by brute forcing end-to-end encryption but by gaining control of devices and the networks on which they operate. 1/6

On the left: Hegseth's message. On the right: the applicable CENTCOM classification guide provisions. This is all very plainly classified at the SECRET level. They all lied. They should all lose their jobs.

So many violations of law that it's a challenge to list, from natsec to official records act. Just a team of morons flashing emojis while they discuss TS//OMG with a journalist from Atlantic--which they despise--in the chat. And absolutely noting will happen.

Although I doubt it will come about, if the US invades Canada, I sure about two things: 1. In the end, Canada will be free and independent. 2. The US will be devastated by the insurgency within its own borders, and hundreds of thousands of Americans fighting for Canada.

I've long been a fan of post-apocalyptic fiction, but I don't recall a book based on a scenario where a substantial portion of the citizenry decided to lose their freaking minds.

All the annual DOD China military reports have been removed from DOD websites. The 2024 one included many verbotene wörter: diverse/diversity fair trans-, equal/equality, include/including

"Thursday’s mass firings come days before a potential severe weather outbreak early next week in the southeastern United States — and just months ahead of the next Atlantic hurricane season." Reporting by Scott Dance... www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

"On Wall Street, stocks for Palantir, Lockheed Martin, and several other major defense contractors tumbled after The Post published news about Hegseth’s directive." www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

If Bill "Tail Gunner" Gertz is going after Bridge Colby, I'm suddenly a huge Colby fan.

1/In the US, Elon Musk says he champions free speech. In China, his car company, Tesla, is silencing criticism - with the backing of the state. Tesla China sued car owners, outlets and bloggers pointing out safety issues - and has won almost every case. apnews.com/article/tesl...

Once again I am leaving the Munich Security Conference in a low mood. Amongst all the noise, the US signalled their plans for Europe, so things are becoming clearer. But things are clearly not good. This is what we now know, and what we have to do about it:🧵1/17

Snow bread featuring extra oven spring.

The PLA will complete much of capacity to conduct major combat operations over the next 2-3 years. Combined with our domestic situation, it has the ingredients for supreme danger and stupidity. www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpre...