They are equipped with “pacifist” torpedoes. They simply knock gently on the hull and politely ask the ship to leave Japanese waters.

Well, that is what happens when Grok is your history teacher...

Even before reading that this statement comes from Palantir, I knew it comes from Palantir...

'Tis But A Scratch!

Nächsten Montag halte ich einen Vortrag zu den "Ambivalenzen der Abschreckung" an der Volkshochschule in Bonn.

www.vhs-bonn.de/programm/pol...

This is what a Spitfire looks like when she's all grown up.

Interesting article.

And - no lie - the best use of Chat GPT that I have ever seen.

A reminder that the Vietnam peace talks lasted from 1968 to 1973; the "marathon" Iran talks took place in less than a day.

I think the short attention span of Trump and everyone around him is a part of our trouble.

Auswärtssieg! Geht doch!

Excellent article by @frankkuhn.bsky.social on "The Logic of French Forward Deterrence".

This is a good line www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/w...

Impossible to disagree with a single word that Ben Rhodes (Obama era NSC official) is saying here:

This

Personally, I think the pickled cucumbers are missing.

It was the US that decided to limit the North Atlantic treaty to *defensive* obligations in *Europe and North America* because we didn't want to be drawn into imperial wars! The reasoning below could just as well be Anthony Eden shouting at Eisenhower in 1956.

“I can't believe that a fourth-rate power like North Vietnam doesn't have a breaking point."

I don’t know why this quote from Kissinger keeps popping into my mind lately...

Attrition, to maneuver. ;-)

"Should deterrence fail, though, the mystique of precision attack will fade quickly, because precision-attack capabilities have not resolved the challenges of coercing an adversary in wartime."

digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/v...

Das "Non-Nuclear Deterrence"-Projekt, in dessen Rahmen die Studie erarbeitet wurde, wurde von der Carnegie Corporation of New York und der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung finanziert, wofür wir uns an dieser Stelle gerne noch einmal bedanken.

Die Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung hat eine Übersetzung des Artikels von Sam Vincent und mir über Europäische Verteidigung und Manöverkriegsführung herausgebracht:

www.fes.de/themen/fried...

The U.S. Military Risks Letting Contractors Define How It Sees the Battlefield In the 1964 black comedy Dr. Strangelove, an emergency war plan called “Plan R” allows an unhinged U.S. Air Force commander, Jack Ripper, to launch a

"The definitional layer of these platforms, which, for example, defines threat levels or escalation thresholds, is the proprietary intellectual property of contractors, ungoverned by an institutional process, and subject to change without notice."
warontherocks.com/2026/03/the-...

Man muss nur ein paar Tage mit einer betroffenen Person verbringen, dann ist es urplötzlich sehr leicht greifbar und ziemlich spezifisch.

Jeremy Bowen: Trump is waging war based on instinct and it isn't working One month into the conflict in Iran, Trump's gut-instinct approach is not proving effective, writes the BBC's international editor.

Jeremy Bowen: Trump is waging war based on instinct and it isn't working

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Fellow nerds! It is Saturday evening. People are having fun and so should you! And for you, fun is... reading difficult stuff that takes you seriously.

Beyond Manoeuvre Theory for European Defence This article contributes to the debate about European defence in the light of the Russo-Ukraine war and growing doubts about US commitment to Europe. It argues that Europeans need to fundamentally re...

Thanks to this 'breathless' discussion, as you rightfully called it, we often forget to discuss strategy and doctrine. As it happens, I’ve just published something on this together with a colleague – if I may be so bold as to promote my own publication.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

The Drone and AI Delusion What Defense VC Firms Get Wrong about Military Evolutions and War

This is a good start: secretaryrofdefenserock.substack.com/p/the-drone-...

Dem stimme ich zu.

Opinion | NATO Has Seen the Future and Is Unprepared | Ed Arnold | 12 comments There are lots of analysts referencing this Wall Street Journal piece about Exercise Hedgehog 2025 in Estonia without enough due diligence. When I first read it, I was suspicious as it referenced a ‘U...

Regarding the problems with the much cited article by the Wallstreet Journal see this post on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/posts/ed-arn...

It is not easy to trace destruction of specific targets back to one system. Assume a tank is destroyed by a drone, but it was immobilized or channelled in a direction where it was more vulnerable by mines and artillery before, then all of these systems combined and not just the drone destroyed it.