War

Phil Schrodt has an typically acerbic take on the new DoD efforts at human-machine teaming.

It was with a mix of deja vu, amusement and resignation that I saw the latest Dept. of Defense (DoD) pronouncements — try here and here — about their…

Strategy as Performance Art

I have seen this excerpt from Ralph Peters’ old Bill O’Reilly interview posted throughout the Internet today…

In the years since I first got to know him, Kelsey D. Atherton has become not only an excellent defense and technology reporter but also an astute observer of some of the contradictions and paradoxes of our wars. Today, he said something quite…

Niall Ferguson, in a (paywalled) piece, argues we need to relearn the lost arts of war and strategy. Readers may find this line of reasoning similar to that of my own here. I will dissent, however. There is a recent piece in Jacobin that I (for the first time) will…

I got this book as a book on tape to listen to for the long commutes to GMU and back. I later heard of the controversy surrounding it only after beginning to listen to it. It has been very interesting, mostly for its no-frills presentation of the bureaucratic problems of…

At Marginal Revolution, there is an intriguing retrospective on the failure of “Broken Windows” crime policies:

Why did the experiment fail? Longer sentences didn’t reduce crime as much as expected because criminals aren’t good at thinking about the future…

I don’t really agree with Bruce Hoffman that ISIS/ISIL is “winning” but there is a lot here that makes profound sense.

It must start with the recognition that ISIL’s appeal will not diminish nor its allure end until this movement is militarily defeated and…