Andrew Zammit

Little blast from the last there, I think I can remember you proposing that WOTR should have footnotes way back when it was first established.

Good luck!!

Just Security? Lawfare? Both more law-focused though. I would have said The Strategy Bridge if still around.

They were a brilliant publication for many years, but this year (and probably building up earlier) it has felt like they exist in a different reality.

Yeah, and this paragraph was just a rant of “realist warriors being sidelined by bean-counting managerialists”, which is such a widespread cliche that I saw almost the exact same claim being made a day a two earlier in an article by MLR Smith and someone else in Military Strategy Magazine.

That was what I initially hoped the article would be!

Oh that’s a good article, much more grounded.

I tend to resist “they’ve sold out” as explanations for intellectual changes. But their identity has noticeably changed in a way that, say, Lawfare’s hasn’t. And their articles often indeed tend to feel like they have a far weaker relationship with reality than before.

“‘Post-liberal‘ is not a synonym for authoritarianism“, as if it’s a purely a thought experiment and it’s forbidden to mention anything Trump’s actually doing.

The American Military Officer After Liberalism Across academia, government, and Silicon Valley, on social media, and in leading journals, intellectuals and political leaders are openly debating what

I can’t recognise War on the Rocks anymore: warontherocks.com/2025/10/the-...

Australia’s social media minimum age laws - Leanne O’Donnell, 2025 This Brief provides an overview of Australia’s social media minimum age laws including: what harms are intended to be addressed, what services are captured, the...

My @altlj.bsky.social article providing an overview of Australia’s social media minimum age laws is now online:

#auslaw

@jrovner.bsky.social, @rorycormac.bsky.social, and @lmaschmeyer.bsky.social's new article is a super read on an important but neglected area of covert action:

www.cambridge.org/core/service...

🚨It’s out! Our new article (co-authored with soon-to-be Dr. Christina Schmid) examines how shifts in gender relations advanced the PYD’s broader politico-military strategy during three phases of insurgent control (2011–2018). It’s open access below!👇🏼

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Also, unless I’m missing something (downloaded the the brief but not the dataset), the T2V data doesn’t code for ideological leanings. Which undermines the “use T2V rather than CSIS data” argument. It’s less “our data shows CSIS data is wrong” than “our data shows CSIS data could be wrong”.

The criticism I’m most sympathetic to is that the CSIS report had too few cases to make any forecasts, which is a point @jessmarindavis.bsky.social made at the very beginning.

I would want to look at both datasets because they both clearly use different definitions of “terrorist plot”.

So I remain extremely sceptical about claims that CSIS went hunting for left-wing incidents, given the large number of potential left-wing incidents they left out. However, I am more persuaded by the argument that they left out a number of right-wing incidents that should have been included.

… An argument can be made that these instances should be treated as far-left terrorism, though a closer assessment of each assailant’s motivation is needed to make that determination.”

T2V also include many anti-ICE attacks that CSIS exclude: “For example, there were at least 20 plots or attacks that targeted federal immigration enforcement officers or facilities in the first six months of the year.….

T2V also include antisemitic attacks that CSIS exclude, like the murder of two diplomats: “Some of these were perpetrated by individuals who were upset over Israel’s actions in Gaza, which Byman and McCabe refer to as ethnonationalist terrorism but other commentators attribute to the far-left.”

One thing this means is that T2V data, somewhat paradoxically, contains many more potentially left-wing incidents than CSIS data. For example, the CSIS report appendix notes that they exclude all the Tesla arson attacks. But T2V include “a plethora of property crimes targeting Tesla owners”.

It would be good to compare the competing datasets in detail. The T2V one clearly uses MUCH broader inclusion criteria than CSIS. T2V finds “154 terrorist plots and attacks that occurred in the first six months of 2025” while the CSIS data suggests less than 10.

Plea deal for US man linked to Wieambilla shootings An American conspiracy theorist linked to the Wieambilla shootings that left six people dead has pleaded guilty to a watered-down charge under a plea deal.

Sydney Morning Herald - Plea deal for US man linked to Wieambilla shootings: www.smh.com.au/national/que...

@csis.org Disagree, it’s a good critique (much better than the earlier ones) but far from a demolition.

Correctly Assessing U.S. Left-Wing Terrorism and Political Violence A recent published report suffers from fatal analytic flaws and risks feeding false narratives about political violence and polarization.

Not convinced by every argument in here, but this is definitely the best critique of the CSIS report on left-wing terrorism that I have yet read: www.justsecurity.org/122278/corre...

Next we have @lguelcher.bsky.social's review of Avner Barnea's 'We Never Expected That'. Leslie brings her own background and experience to her assessment of Barnea's study of business and intelligence failures ➡️ doi.org/10.1080/1833...

We are very pleased to be able to share some of our recently published book reviews with you all! First up, Niha Pandey reviews Amanda Chisholm's "powerful and nuanced" book 'The Gendered and Colonial Lives of Gurkhas in Private Security' from @edinburghup.bsky.social ➡️ doi.org/10.1080/1833...

New Jihadology Guest Post: Who Are Nigeria’s “Newest” Jihadist Militants? by @james-barnett.bsky.social and @vincentfoucher.bsky.social jihadology.net/2025/10/15/g...

I swear I’ve written almost identical threads to this one before, because we keep seeing the same ineffectual arguments recycled over and over.

And that lack of an independent warrant-like requirement is where criticism is better directed IMO.