Security Dilemmas

It is 2025. The transcript of every Congressional hearing ever held in U.S. history should be available online for free. How is this not the case?

Hegseth: The military is for killing people and breaking things. No more rules of engagement.

Trump: I’ll be sending the military into U.S. cities.

In light of today’s absolutely fucking deranged “I’m in a war movie” speeches by Trump and Hegseth, I give you the plaque at West Point.

One of the last original Tuskegee Airmen dies at 100 George Hardy flew 21 combat missions in World War II, then went on to fight in the Korean and Vietnam wars.

George Hardy flew 21 combat missions in World War II, then went on to fight in the Korean and Vietnam wars. trib.al/pimPxQu

Trump said he wants to bring back battleships, even though no nation has built one since the 1940s. It's only a matter of time before he says he wants the F-47 to be a biplane.

NYT: "Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who summoned the generals and admirals, is expected to speak about grooming and fitness requirements, and other aspects of what he calls a shift toward a 'warrior ethos' at the Pentagon."

cc All U.S. flag officers. Don’t forget your duty and oath.

An official photograph of Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov posing in his uniform around the time of this incident.

A screenshot of the linked February 10, 1999, Washington Post article on page A19 headlined, “‘I Had A Funny Feeling In My Gut; Soviet Officer Faced Nuclear Armageddon.” The article also includes a large graphic title "A Crumbling Warning System," showing problems with Russia's early-warning satellites and ground-based radars. The continuation of a front page article headlined, "Dearth of Satellites Fogs Russian System," appears next to the article about Petrov.

Today in 1983 in Moscow, just past midnight, 44 year-old Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov’s calm decision that a satellite warning of the launch of 5 US Minuteman ICBMs was a false alarm—based on “a funny feeling in my gut”—may have averted a catastrophic nuclear war. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl...

Hegseth orders rare, urgent meeting of hundreds of generals, admirals The Pentagon has summoned military officials from around the world for a gathering in Virginia. Top generals and their staffs don’t know the reason for the meeting.

WP: "None of the people who spoke with The Post could recall a defense secretary ever ordering so many of the military’s generals and admirals to assemble like this."

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”

― Theodore Roosevelt

Strong men, also cry. Strong men. Also cry.

— Jeffrey Lebowski

The A-10 was built to take a lot of punishment, though. It was not a fragile aircraft. Still, if my memory serves, the Pentagon expected that in a war in Europe, the entire A-10 fleet would only last a week or so. But NATO only had sufficient munitions to fight for a couple of weeks in general.

Dear American citizens, whatever you wish more German citizens would have done in 1933, do that now.

Trump says Afghanistan must give "Bagram Airbase back to those that built it." Interesting, considering who built it.

I’m nostalgic for the days when Americans lectured other countries about violations of civil liberties.

It can be disorienting how little people know or care about nukes now, even military personnel outside specific communities.

Oliver North weds Fawn Hall, his secretary during Iran-contra scandal Oliver North and Fawn Hall, two figures in the 1980s controversy, tied the knot last month, according to a Virginia marriage license.

Good Lord. Iran-Contra was forty years ago.

It's so easy to forget this now, but the developments of 1989-1991 were some of the most wonderful in human history. (See the Jesus Jones song, "Right Here, Right Now").

You're more understanding than I would be. I have a strong memory of the wall coming down when I was in the 10th grade. I had watched The Day After on TV six years earlier, so I was very aware that the changes in 1989 were tectonic.

Everyone knows that ChatGPT and other AI tools sometimes produce hallucinations, but what do you do when they're flatly disobedient? ChatGPT keeps citing Wikipedia as an information source even though I have specifically told it not to. What the hell?

Very important point in an excellent thread. If we are operating in the zone of competitive authoritarianism, winning the midterms is both important and incredibly dangerous. It could resemble a set of cases that I have written about here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Question: Why did US put big tariffs on India despite major national interest in cultivating a strategic counterweight to China and trying to isolate Russia?

Answer: Because the US president lied that he fixed India-Pakistan and India wouldn’t go along with the lie.

(Seriously, that’s the answer)

People are often surprised to learn that Lee was an officer who never made it past colonel. The purported promotion to general was awarded by a treasonous cabal calling itself the "confederate states of america" which was put down by force by the Union army, which also had superior generals.

Sorry, I wasn't trying to point out you were wrong but that Trump was. Perhaps I should have added that the War Department *did* encompass the entire U.S. military from 1789 to 1798, when Congress established the Navy as its own department.

The War Dept. was NOT renamed the Dept. of Defense. It was just the Army. The Dept. of the Navy was its own separate and equal branch. The National Security Act of 1947 subordinated both to the new Defense Department (and created a new branch, the Air Force, out of the Army's Air Forces).

Let's not forget Robert E. Lee's brilliant negotiations with General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox.