Thanks for winning me a bet everyone. You did great.

Aw, he called me Budget Tom Brady™️

The thing about this is that it makes a real nice place to live.

Dude, you're the incumbents, the only message that works for you is prices actually going down

Government of posters facing a crisis: what if the solution was more posting

Show me one society that has allowed widespread drug use and is better for it. Or where incarceration helps solve the issue.

So this is fun - I’ve given an objective accounting of something that happens, quite a bit.

Everyone I know that makes something in a critical industry. Also most people I know that work on economic security issues. Argue against the implementation, the power grab by the executive, the active and apparently intentional harm to alliances, sure.

We’re talking a lot about Korean and Japanese shipbuilding, which are excellent but I am still not clear how much capacity they have. Why isn’t shipbuilding coming up more in the public discourse around the India trade talks?

Weirdly I hear it in personal conversations with lots of people but few people are saying out loud that they think Trump’s trade policy is directionally correct, if poorly and boorishly executed.

You could call it a violation of humanitarian law or any one of several other things. But this is not an armed conflict, unless internal legal justification is using that as an excuse (we don’t know, which is also wrong.). War crimes have a definition and words mean things.

War crime: "The conduct took place in the context of and was associated with an international armed conflict" Explain how that fits, dingdong.

Well, this sucks.

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...

Spencer Cox: "I want you look at how Utahns reacted the last two nights. There was no rioting. There was no looting. There were no cars set on fire. There was no violence. There were vigils and prayers and people coming together to share their humanity. And that I believe is the answer to this."

The difference between 12 year old Blake visiting a warship and 42 year old Blake visiting a warship is 30 years. Same excitement. HMAS Sydney, I'll see you tomorrow.

Fresh picks for your summer reading list — recommended by our writers, contributing editors, and staff. warontherocks.com/20...

Taiwan’s defence minister says this year’s Han Kuang military drills will involve largest reservist call-up – AFP

People have yelled at me for reasons I can't entirely fathom when I've pointed this out before, but both Canada (North Warning System) and Denmark (SSPARS) have incredible leverage; cutting off the feeds from either system would be a six alarm fire in Omaha, Colorado Springs, and elsewhere

First, they came for Mark Zaid's security clearance, and I did not speak out, because I was not Mark Zaid Second, and then, uh, third they continued to keep taking Mark Zaid's security clearance and I was like "WTF man?"

Projecting

Firing this many Department of Defense workers at once, who will now desperately need new sources of income, is a huge gift to enterprising foreign intelligence agencies looking for info on the US military and defense sector

Art of War was a manual for 5th century BC noble failsons to prevent them from losing the entire army to diarrhea. This is why it appeals so much to oligarch failsons of the 21st century AD.

If you see this, post a gif from one of your comfort shows

Unlike many O-4s, I had a strong Resting Skeptical Face before my hinge lobotomy.

NARRATOR: His power was unchecked.

Jeez one week on the job and David Sacks already lost the AI race to Beijing.

So much of the MAGA philosophy can be boiled down to taking semi-decent or reasonable policy proposals and executing them like a complete assh*le. Making friends and influencing people, it is not.

Offered with no commentary.

His majesty’s government would like a word, methinks

On the value of Twitter, btw - We had similar traffic from Bluesky, where the FT has 300 thousand followers, to what came from Twitter, where we supposedly have 6 million.

Always a good sign when the policy experts are like "who are these people" and the poasters are like "oh yeah I know that guy."

This is a tough one, despite my priors being fairly sympathetic to Milley’s predicament on a moral level. Civil-military dynamics in US political life have been trending in a dangerous direction, and I agree that the upshot here is largely a net negative. This is an area where things will get worse.

Sure is a bad time to be a person who cares about things.

In a just universe they’d have done both.

Lmao not TikTok openly posting pro Trump messages when he was the one who started the TikTok ban in the first place.

That’s it. All of Silicon Valley goes into a holding facility where they’re taught 8th grade civics and a basic undergrad curriculum of logic and philosophy. They can go free when they’re no longer insane. This has to stop. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/m...

World Economic Outlook (IMF) 2024 2025 2026 🌍 3.2 3.3 3.3 🇮🇳 6.5 6.5 6.5 🇨🇳 4.8 4.6 4.5 🇷🇺 3.8 1.4 1.2 🇺🇸 2.8 2.7 2.1 🇪🇺 0.8 1.0 1.4 www.imf.org/-/media/File...

A headline for the times we live in www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

What an incredible story. Still shocked by how inspiring it was. But as impressive as the story is, I was filled with a terrible foreboding that the rest of the system is still largely hidebound and flailing, as we head into what may be a decisive decade.

So Trump launched a meme coin on Friday night, just days before becoming President, and entities he controls retain 80% of the coin. And the coin passed a $9 billion market cap in just hours. I just can't...

Human Altitude xkcd.com/3039

I got my APEC business travel card this year and I have to say it might be the best investment <$200 that I've ever made

I have no idea who Sam Harris is, but notwithstanding rumors of his other sins this article is accurate

The “Resister” accounts might be as bad as the “MAGA retired cop no DMs” accounts tbh.

Huh. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Fortunately the only problem facing your United States Navy was a deficit in names for pending vessels! Now that we have those in hand, everything's good to go -- Another Century of Guaranteed American Naval Supremacy