Strategic Trends

🗣🗣🗣Third interview confirmed🗣🗣🗣 Now in person

You already know. We need to meet up for a brew and a bite to plot the downfall of the PRC soon

Absolutely rocked my 2nd interview today for a dream starting job. So at least I had a great day all things considered

Im that much closer to helping the military more efficiently kill Russian and Chinese servicemembers

On the one hand - yes. Other hand, any Iranian efforts to assemble a weapon and test it are likely going to be as vulnerable, if not more vulnerable, as the hardened underground facilities that Israel just struck. Israel would certainly make every effort to interdict a rushed assembly. A #nukesky 🧵/

Okay

China is well on its way to realize a snap invasion capability of Taiwan by the later half of the 2030s and that should scare the fuck out of you

Today we are going learn about Light Exo-Atmospheric Projectile's first flight test. So what is LEAP? LEAP was a program aimed at developing extremely lightweight and small KKVs. The program first spawned from an SDI effort develop a light kill vehicle for ground or space based hyper-velocity guns.

Remembered that the nuclear disarmament community still exists.

Day ruined.

"Still, legal analysts have raised questions about the legality of sending US citizens to prisons abroad."

what are we doing here. it is illegal. there is literally zero question that it is illegal. what is this 'raised questions' stuff.

Energy Department reduces funding for grants to colleges and universities The change by the Trump administration limits to 15 percent funds for indirect costs, which cover facilities and staff many scientists say are crucial to their work.

This will destroy physical sciences and engineering programs the same way NIH overhead caps would destroy biomedical programs. My alma mater is likely to effectively die if this goes through, as does most university run materials science and metallurgy research in the country.

Please don't I want a job and don't want to have to compete with people a decade into their careers

Everything is awful

things you see before an economic crash

This is a question I am *extremely* interested in us developing an answer to. Off the cuff (and a couple beers deep...it's a Friday) here are 6 precepts plus 3 wishlist items. Call it "Rules for Liberal Realists". (Title WIP). These are ideas about what we want, and how to get it, broadly defined.

If I ever say I'm pondering this is the type of shit I'm pondering about

Its cool I wasn't reading or anything

The 21st century is a maritime century gosh darnit

Honestly what the fuck is the point of the hedge stockpile if we aren't going to utilize it for the exact type of scenario it was created for in the first place.

"Another enemy is building a peer nuclear arsenal"

"Okay. Don't react at all. It might make them upset"

Deranged

My new years resolution is to be more confrontational with bullshit

also destroy China

We've spent too long considering Russia's red lines. It's time we started making them consider ours.

I have been busy

I see @nytopinion.nytimes.com is continuing its long tradition of platforming unsubtle Russian disinformation narratives and malign actors.

eople hound on "We don't understand China", but bluntly it's "China doesn't understand us, and has no desire to". They made up their minds, and they don't pick up the phone.

We're fucked.

Truly. Fucked

Not only because China rejects historical concepts of deterrence, but because they will take every wrong lesson imaginable from such a crisis. It will only serve as confirmation bias, not an inflection point for reaproachment.

The crisis management mechanisms we had with the USSR are virtually nonexistent with the PRC. I have absolutely no confidence that a Chinese Cuban Missile Crisis will bring any introspection or reconciliation between us, assuming that it defuses and doesn't lead to an outright conflict.

implemented every policy, force restructuring, and military posture necessary to optimally deter China from weighing their calculus to never initiating hostilities, it would take one genuine crisis to have us sleepwalk, misinterpret, or miscommunicate into a confrontation.

confidence building measures like memorandums of understanding, or even as simple as picking up the fucking phone, they view it as nothing more than leverage. When I say that they don't have a real desire to talk to us it's because they've made their minds up and don't want to listen. Even if we

their national security interests is in itself foreign to us. All of this confusion, ignorance, or (what is probably) an unshakable conviction in the distrust of the West and zealotry in their perceived cultural supremacy has led them to not even talking to us. How the United States perceives

they don't have the same values as us,and they dont view conflict in a Western context virtually at all. We are literally not playing the same game as they are, I want to go on a spiel about how they go about protecting and realizing their core national security interests, but even how they define