Ask The Strategic Genius: Iran Edition

Right now, we are being treated to a fascinating mix of genius and antigenius, whipsawed between incredible stupidity and last-minute cancellations of the same – which is a form of genius. As Sun Tzu said, deception is the root of strategy – in which case just confusing the living fuck out of everybody has to be one of the fruit of the deception branch. There are so many things wrong, even with the mistakes being made, that the whole thing would make a great Monty Python skit, except the Pythons were trying to be funny.

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Happy Facial Recognition Day!

I first wrote about facial recognition back in 2017, shortly after starting this blogue. (stderr) Then, (stderr) I discovered to my complete lack of surprise, that there is a lack of proper paranoia about the topic, and – I suppose that’s justified because climate change is likely to wipe us out, while having no more personal privacy, won’t. I guess we’re arguing about “insult to injury” which is a great way of spicing up your injuries. Add it to heirarchical storage and, whups, things look bad. (stderr) It seems like just the other day I was laughing at people who were implementing poorly-planned “data lakes” but it seems that, miracle, AI actually has stepped in to help with the problem.

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A Fascinating New Element to Warfare

There are a few things I find fascinating about the current war. First and foremost, it’s a war of attrition and apparently that never occurred to the pentagon command structure. One of the things that Europe learned pretty thoroughly before the Franco-Prussian War, is that an experienced command structure that knows how to communicate and plan is essential. Or so we would think.

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The Dead Hand

Its official name is “Perimetr” but many Soviet-era nuclear control officers called it “The Dead Hand.” David Hoffman’s book with that title won him a Pulitzer prize. Now you can imagine President Trump tweeting away over how Harper Lee should give him hers. And, now, you should stop – it’s horrifying. [openlibrary] [Read more…]

Tactical Cosplay

I’m going to shovel out some opinions, here, and I will not be bothering (entirely) to support them with references and argumentation. Let me put that out front, since I am going to make some very negative assumptions about some people, and may even vent my spleen. Or, air it out, anyway.

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