Paul Johstono

Pentagon weighs in on Eternal Subordination of the Son and Federal Vision?

I agree that the medium, especially there, is conducive to LLM vomit

Thinking about that obviously 90% AI screed on X in response to the somehow-PME-and-Sparta debates, and people said it was good and very well written... because they've no taste? because they're bots? ... and it makes me wonder whether LLM content on pith platforms can reshape appraisal of "good."

Right?!

*pen. Ugh.

Fair enough, although (and Bret probably mentioned this in his post) healthy skepticism is warranted over the krypteia.

Caveat: these are words from the pin of an Athenian imagining decades later what a prudent Spartan general-king would have said. Narratively, his wise counsel is immediately rejected by the war mongering assembly.

Dammit Star Wars, "I'll take your whole deck" is the plot line for a comic book maybe, but it's not how you tell a story for a movie.

Their education method was strict, abusive, and dangerous. But it was also organized around things military-adjacent, so that its products would be fit to serve as soldiers when needed.

Hyperstratified, yes, and you did not even really mention the Helot bondage. But there were no child soldiers, running or being produced. Sparta ran a centralized academy to train ascetic aristocracy. The Spartan children probably did not learn military drill in any real sense until adulthood.

Possible Skipray blastboat sighting in Mando & Grogu trailer?

I was running out of characters, and scout's honor, thought to myself "C3 may get me for this" but did the ol' "I'm gonna send it" anyway

7th century: Chalkis has the best warriors, Argos a different contender for best, Sparta the prettiest women...

2nd century: Macedon had the best soldiers, Rome the best system (and nearly the best soldiers too)...

But I'll take a flight of F-22s please, with a side of MEU and a PRSM battery.

Lest any say there's nothing worthwhile to get from the Spartans.

"Consider the vast influence of accident in war before you are engaged in it. War eventually becomes an affair of chances, which applies to both sides: who gets lucky is invisible to us until we risk it. Men going to war act first, and only disaster makes them nail down the warrant for it."

Hilarious call for dissent to civilian leadership. The lack of self awareness to raise that point, the historical illiteracy to think no dissent was offered, and the gall to think studying operational art will imbue moral courage and prudence in the civ-mil relationship.

Footage of a Ukrainian Patriot SAM system shooting down a Russian 3M22 Zircon hypersonic cruise missile near Kyiv last night.

This appears to be the first ever footage of a combat shootdown involving a HACM.

That's about the Peloponnesian War, right?

How Athens actually lost the Peloponnesian War (left a few more out, but you get the idea)

Note: Spartan Oliganthropia is the problem of depopulation among the Spartiates, a malady at the start of the Peloponnesian War that grew into a critical illness in the 4th century.

Their line is your fighting can't be done by marble. But Sparta was losing an attritional war to its own system.

Left out sunk cost fallacy over Potidaia and a few others.

And by PME I'm really speaking staff and war colleges, not the whole ecosystem.

No, not at all. But I enjoy that their attack on PME naturally led to an allusion to one of the great works studied in PME. Not saying PME grads couldn't repeat their mistake, since most schools blaze through the book too fast, but it would be much less likely.

The plague, arrogance, infighting, Alcibiades' Decelea tip, several Persian fleets, the watchwords on the Epipolai, overreacting to a lunar eclipse, and chance.

And then Spartan Oliganthropia enters the chat

A moat and a motte!

Heaven help, I looked and a branch has broken off into a "we need Spartans not Athenians" thing. The dumbest timeline.

Many of these should be *discouraged*. Many are an interesting blog post or HBR article or single slide with 250 pages of filler.

Exclusive: Pentagon threatens to cut off Anthropic in AI safeguards dispute Anthropic has not agreed to the Pentagon's terms and defense officials are getting fed up after months of difficult negotiations.

EXCLUSIVE: The Pentagon is considering severing its relationship with Anthropic over the AI firm's insistence on maintaining some limitations on how the military uses its models.

When multiple deadlines are approaching and every piece is not quite complete but also 30-50% too long...