Caroline Baxter

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.

My feet are having a Proust Madeline moment through my eyes

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

A shorter list of approved schools just creates bottlenecks for students who need to go through the PME wickets at a certain pace. It does nothing to address the legitimate issues with PME /end

It’s found in aligning PME - the curriculum, teaching pedagogy, in person vs asynchronous - with what DoD requires of its officers over the long term. Breadth and depth of knowledge and cognitive skills are the ticket. /2

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

Meta Plans to Add Facial Recognition Technology to Its Smart Glasses

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…” 😵‍💫

Exclusive: OpenAI disbanded its mission alignment team Joshua Achiam will become the company's chief futurist

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...

Does young refer to when we were assaulted, meaning the “metoo” dates back to our age at the time, or is it the age we were when the “metoo” movement took off, or is it just our age now? Does being middle age put me out of contention for “metoo bitch”-hood? I hope not!

Anthropic Researcher Quits in Cryptic Public Letter An Anthropic safety researcher just announced his resignation from the company in a latter warning of a world "in peril."

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, in sum: eliminating this Clean Air Act finding is dumb and self-destructive.

Milton Evacuation Ends at MacDill After Moderate Damage Airmen are to start returning to MacDill Air Force Base, Fla. this weekend after Hurricane Milton inflicted moderate damage.

3) Getting a handle on climate change will make it easier to protect our bases. Hurricane Milton in 2024 grew from a Cat 1 to a Cat 5 in 24 hours - barely enough time for CENTCOM and SOCOM commanders to decide how to respond.

www.airandspaceforces.com/macdill-milt...

2) Pollution drives lunch cancer and asthma. Do we want soldiers who can run for two miles without asthma attacks? Yes. Do we want a population healthy enough to serve? Yes. Do our regulations currently allow those with asthma to serve? No.

www.goarmy.com/how-to-join/...

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.

If the Trump Administration cares about America being “first” and all that connotes, then forcing the military to source its electricity from dying coal plants isn’t the way to go. The last time coal made up more than 40% of annual electricity generation was 2011. It can’t keep up with demand.

Americans have tended to believe the US spends way more money on foreign aid than it does because of our effective soft power (surely we must be spending more than 1% of our budget to get this result). It was the cheapest form of influence there was. Everything else is more expensive & less durable.

It may be small, but it's one of the consequences of I wrote about last year. "It is as impossible to perform only important experiments as it is impossible to only play winning lottery numbers. Trial and error isn't waste - it's the work."

councilonstrategicrisks.org/2025/02/26/t...

My professional one!

AI’s Hidden National Security Cost The same AI tools marketed as efficiency boosters could undermine the United States' ability to think critically and respond rapidly.

Bluesky! Hello! I direct the Converging Risks Lab, part of the @councilonstrategicrisks.org. I work at the intersection of emerging tech, climate change, grand strategy, and national security/defense policy. You can read my latest below. Let's talk convergence.

www.justsecurity.org/121289/ai-hi...

Trump set off a surge of AI in the federal government. See what happened. The Trump administration is accelerating AI adoption across government, embedding the technology in policing, health care, defense and science.

A whole lot of people who don't understand AI telling a whole lot of other people to use AI - all the time, without guardrails - is a recipe for disaster. DoD's approach of "any lawful use” without any constraints is particularly worrying.

www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...