Aggressively Pedantic

The other thing that gets me about the OPSEC posts is the idea that the only acceptable courses of action have zero probability of attrition (physical or otherwise). When you conduct civil disobedience, the lower bound on that probability is already >0! So you have to discern what is acceptable risk

One needs to have an Operation defined in order to develop a prudent OPSEC plan. If you don't know what you're trying to accomplish, you by definition cannot know what elements necessitate additional protection!

I said in the last of my "five things" emails (where they sought ideas to make the Department "more efficient") that our democratic bureaucracy isn't optimized for speed or performance but rather for *accountability.*

Look, I *told* you that you had a nice house and that it'd be a shame if anything happened to it!

Elbridge Colby strikes me as a guy who tried to make the same deal as Faust but instead of verifying that it was actually Mephistopheles he took the guy's word for it because he was also offering to throw in the deed to a bridge in New York.

I think this perspective is especially common if most of your GS contacts are prior military, too. Most of the GS I work with are exactly that - so a LIA isn't catastrophic because they've got a pension rolling in anyway! Different world if you're a career civil servant...

The irony is that we will know we've entered a facist regime on Tom's own definition when he is rendered unable to assert as such on this platform by the edit of the state.

I still don't get the appeal of Palantir's systems. From my experience, they're...fine, I guess? But as with any tool, you have to know what you want to do with it (and be able to connect the dots - who has the data, how is it likely generated, etc.) for it to be useful.

Like, even framing it as "Man killed by ICE in MN; State and Federal officials disagree over justification" or something similar keeps the event at the forefront and subordinates the political intrigue.

I'm not a journalist, but it strikes me as being doubly interesting to craft the revised headline in a way that makes the *disagreement over interpretation* the story rather than...the actual event that is the object of the disagreement.

"He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands."

"This [NDS] still has marks where the jockey was beatin' it!"

I don't get the phrase "she brings the chaotic energy...of a startup." This seems like a fundamentally *undesirable* quality of a business leader - you want someone so totally in command of the product and the market that they exude confidence and competence...right?

This is an excellent point, especially in that virtually all dystopian novels begin in media res. The question of "how we arrived here" is rendered irrelevant since the plot is driven by "what are we to do about it now."

Losing at...what, one wonders? I guess if you assume every career civil servant is part of George Soros' Deep State Monolith doing his bidding the theory makes sense.

But, like, I'm just out here trying to do a job dispassionately.

For sure - the only real plausible read is that they thought this would be a lot more popular (or at least not-unpopular) than it actually has been.

I'm not making the argument that there aren't tactics other than overt civil disobedience available to the resistance, nor that those tactics cannot or ought not be employed! I'm making the argument that there isn't a way to organize an ersatz force that will win a campaign of pitched battles

I know that's not satisfying but there's just no mechanism to (say) create a grassroots militia sufficiently organized and resourced to achieve sustainable operational success against an unequivocally better armed force.

I'm not sure there *can* be a plan for "if things escalate" because resistance to an occupation is inherently disorganized. Unflinching civil disobedience may actually be the only option until there is an opportunity for an election.

It's also logically consistent to hold the positions "this is an outrageous assault on individual liberty, our Constitutional order, and the fundamental rights of human beings" and also "protesting actually seems to be pretty effective and maybe that's the best way to handle things right now."

I wouldn't assume for a moment that the rest of the nation would - or even ought! - care about the specific experience of myself and my family at least inasmuch as determining whether the extant course of action merits change.

As a general rule, the people you *want* driving policy are the ones who least desire that spotlight.

IMHO a legitimate obstacle (perhaps immovable) to developing policy leaders is the cultural expectation of telling everyone how smart you are. Like, I'm just a dude with ideas. Some might be good, others probably not so much. I'm humble enough to know that I don't know everything. Thus, disqualified

I wonder how long it'll take to see the effect of these kinds of employments on recruiting and retention. Recruiting numbers have been higher in a world where employment on home soil for the AC has been at most theoretical...

My handle is "Aggressively Pedantic"

"To thine own self be true"

Oh, I disagree very strongly. Rationality and competence are two different things. Rationality is about logic and theory; competence is about action. History is full of rational but incompetent people!

I don't doubt any of that. Again, it's horrible.

But to return to the top - the remedy for a siege (which is designed to choke off supplies!) is different to that of an occupation (which is designed to suppress resistance). Different tactics merit different responses...

I don't disagree! It'd be terrible and I pray they don't try it. But it's also something that is hard to do spontaneously - so we'd see it forming.

Again - my point is *not* "all is well." It very much isn't!

I disagree - it seems that the administration is *entirely* rational; they just operate on a different set of moral assumptions than perhaps we do. Everything they're doing is logical given the end they seek.

What makes you think I'm a bot?