I wish it was mine, some long lost tweet
Attorney & advisor on industry, investment, and war. DC and NYC based. Formerly OSC, JSOC, NCTC, and 101st Airborne. Hoya, Eli, Orange. Life long New Yorker. “A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world”
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I wish it was mine, some long lost tweet
“Hey remember Obama Girl?”
I have it on good authority that someone tried to DOGE this contractor and they weren’t interested
The DoD CTO at the time might have been a good engineer but she couldn’t run a lemonade stand and this is the result Entirely unequipped to know when someone was lying to her or just impossibly stupid
OSC had a semi-official prayer group that a contractor ran for the team and the original Director’s last act before leaving USG service was paying the contractor/prayer guy $1.6mm.
The Economic Defense Unit:
There’s a difference between: “I am on vacation/sick, I’ll catch up when I can” and “My job is walking and talking. If someone needs to find me, they will call me. If it’s important, we will hold a meeting. Email is for girls.”
I also want to be explicit: these were the people the Biden team picked, no one at the S/D, DS/D, or OUSD(R&E) level were capable of recruiting, selecting, assessing, or training a team to interact with capital markets. I am sympathetic to Feinberg coming in and saying “this is a dumpster fire”
I'm on YouTube, again, watching a how-to-play for Compass Games' "Silent War: The United States Submarine Campaign Against Japan 1941-1945", it breaks into a commercial: which is AI brainrot Oprah trying to sell Himalayan sea salt Ozempic. Google is arguably worse than Meta at crushing reality.
Spoken like a true SAMS grad
a pizza wouldn’t save us
I think people at Amazon read
My favorite “didn’t read :: didn’t even listen” encounter was a senior Army acquisitions leader who ended our brief with: “I gotta hard stop, how do I keep the Navy from gettin’ yer money?”
*officer
Our Chief Investment Office would often respond to questions in 6-7 weeks, major stuff too. He just did not care. Now that I’m actually doing transactional work again, it’s responses in 6-7 minutes. It shouldn’t be like this, but it happens to be like this
When I briefed Nick Rasmussen or Matt Olsen at NCTC, literally never - not once - at OSD.
OSC was like a group of Greek grandpas chatting all day long over cigarettes and ouzo, describing it as “business” to anyone who asked how they spent their time.
Every struggle in my last 2 years at the Pentagon was a version of: “Did you read the documents I sent? No? Ok. Do you have the documents at least? Ok, you don’t check your email. Well, can I put time on the calendar to compel you to read critical materials about our $200B hedge fund? Nope? Hmm.”
we elected the wrong governor minisoldr 👑
Remember, the constitution is whatever a scared Fox News grandpa says it is
Because they’re steeped in Confederate nostalgia and they think they’re winning
Discretionary spending indicator (of course, 99% vibe, 1% science)
Joe Biden put the ants in my kitchen and the exterminator is late. The exterminator happens to be Kamala Harris.
Mortgage rates are dropping a bit, but still like 6.5% Hyper-concentration in the S&P seems bad, too. My index? I'm watching the number of empty parking spaces at the Texas Roadhouse near my daughter's daycare around 5pm on weekdays. Still pretty full every day, but if it starts pulling back...
"Unsubscribe" is key
MAGA considers truck ownership a core component of performative masculinity, but 7% loans on a new/new-ish $70k vehicle? Labor market wobbling is going to put serious pressure on these dynamics. Add a layer of 5-figure CC debt and...well... how long can you blame immigrants and Biden?
Unemployment is 4.3%, what's his approval on the economy / overall when unemployment ticks up to 5% or so?
boomer tailgate clubs exist all over, most don't ask for money, either
Duty *Eat* Honor *Shit* Country - everyone who is part of this alumni group
AOG delenda est
Diet Coke bad, me big no like
Leah was a better citizen when she was an atheist junior at Yale
*Sean, sorry
Yes, it’s a cool alt history design
95% of contemporary defense commentary:
HELP
“Have you ever been to American Wedding? Where is the vodka? Where is marinated herring?”
My parents were extremely religious and mostly banned all pop culture but let me listen to Billy Joel so I wore out his first ten records. Like Proust dipping a Madeline in tea, when I hear certain chord progressions, I makes me 7 years old again, stuck for hours on the Thruway, but I had music.
“The Entertainer” “You Wanted a Hit” by LCD Soundsystem “These Words” by Natasha Bedingfield “Love Song” by Sara Barielles All basically the same song
Oh Nas is here talking about infinite mirrors behind “Piano Man”? There’s some juice, don’t let it spill.
Ok that’s worse
He tried to be a classical composer and it didn’t go anywhere.
I kind of want to scream because MAGA people claim “Miami 2017”, a song that I knew was good and frightening 20 years before they did. I’ve seen BJ live 3 times and I probably won’t see him again and life is a series of closing doors.
The Billy Joel documentary on HBO is great because he might be the best American storyteller since Mark Twain. Yeah, I’m from upstate NY and I still claim him. I know he’s a jerk but so were Porter and Gershwin and probably Paul Simon and Shawn Carter. They grace us.
GPS jamming
The defense-interested baseline in industry / policy / think tank land right now is that it’s always going to be 2022.
Nope, gizmos
Lloyd Austin - almost like he was never there
“No ROTC commissions, Civil Service hires, or federal R&D grants from a university or college that hosts social fraternities or sororities.” Salt that earth.
I think there’s a 1/4 shot that Ds will take the WH again w/o an intervening calamity, but you need someone at DoD who knows the building & war, and is a relentless hater who will *obsess* over personnel. “No commissions from Citadel, VMI, or a 2-year college, and that’s just my first sentence.”
If you’re on LinkedIn celebrating “War Department”, you’re signaling you are unfit for whatever professional responsibility you might have and a future Democratic administration should pull clearances accordingly. Like a COVID refusenik, you’re incapable. Same goes for Greenland/Canada invasion.
Harry Truman? Woke. (They actually think this because of desegregation and not nuking Mao)
If they try this again, they’re going to be splashed.
The Long Walk, August 17, 2008
"Now why don't you take a seat"
This is incorrect: (1) Department of War was just the Army, not the Navy and Marine Corps; and (2) the President does not have the authority, only Congress can make that change in the law. Be better, @npr.org.
The helmets and uniform color were intentional.
“Violent effect, not politically correct” is what you hear from a lawyer telling you to pay a bunch of cash so she signs an NDA and goes away.
He and a crack team of investigators have uncovered the gems that power NYC. They were at Zero Bond all along.
“What if we took the most psychotic parts of Nextdoor and combined it with the US air campaign in Pakistan in 2009-11?”
If you told a bishop in the medieval Holy Roman Empire that peasants would have pocket bibles in whatever language they wanted, and these bibles would make the peasants out to be gods, and the peasants believed it, they'd petition the pope for a Crusade.
"Defending The Free Press online" is going to be like zero day exploit bounties, paid out of CBS News' reptile fund.
It’s the only way to get legit in the state
Arrived at 5:24am Finished at 12:17pm Actual session took 5 minutes. Deliberate sabotage of the public trust.
It’ll be 7 hrs at a minimum when I’m done.
Just did one of the fastest blocks I’ve ever employed on social media. If you’re a SocDem decrying the value of an entire American state - especially one with a D Governor, a D AG, and millions of people who backed Kamala Harris - you’re not a SocDem, you’re MAGA auxiliary.
He just wanted 1,500,000 miles on Turkish Airlines, but a real job? Punishment.
Insight into DPRK senior leadership is vastly more important than AQAP collection
This is especially good: www.etsy.com/listing/4320...
It’s a fine state, with American citizens who deserve better, that’s burdened with a planter class GOP determined to punish
There technically is one, but I’ve literally never seen a vacancy. It also books for 90 days out. It’s a drivers license, not cancer treatment.
No appointment system, serious understaffing
I’m at 4 hours 15 minutes, will likely be 6 hours when complete.
Online appointments are totally broken, just have to wait for a walk in
They’re doing their best, once you’re in the door the system is pretty good…but they seem horribly understaffed.
Need to account for the Coriolis effect
Everything is downstream
Clown shoes country, I hope Jeremy Clarkson is happy.
Keep saying “murder” until it makes you feel better, but it won’t help you understand the world any better
Trespassing? Not going through passport control? Should we have sent the Goodyear blimp? Heavens forbid the US not collect intelligence on adversaries.
Brexit really is like Agincourt, but the longbowmen were aiming at themselves.
That’s a strawman that doesn’t reflect the scenario in question
This wasn’t mutilation for sport or trophy, it’s setting conditions for extraction. It’s not elegant and the guys - in hindsight - didn’t deserve it, but the SEALs couldn’t achieve proper ID and engaging a boat obviously looking for something in the water is a lawful use of force. Ugly.
Not a war crime, it’s an ugly business
Well, we were too Woke to Win and Stuart Scheller, John Spencer, and Gin are now in charge. They’ll fix it.
North Korea? Yeah, slave state.
Operators were such whiny bitches about having to speak with Afghans, honestly embarrassing
Because you still chase Pulitzers
Couldn’t be me having to clean this one up: www.rferl.org/amp/Afghan_C...
Just charge it to the Mujahidin e-Khalq account.
No, they let Jamie Sands go into a wood chipper. It’s over.
SI on a principal is the brass ring. Putting SEALs over the beach in a garrison state is tested proposition (as the article notes); they rehearse for these exact scenarios. I only know what’s in the article but it strikes me as a form of measured risk management. Current DoD lineup could never.
The wise man lowered his head, and whispered to the reverent audience: “What if gender was Mario Kart instead?”
The actual strategic purpose behind the operation is entirely legitimate and no, Maritime Branch is not designed for this. Assaulters went on the beach for a reason.
I was out of government at the time and I have had limited interactions with SOCPAC and SOCKOR and it’s often hard to separate truth from fiction about what’s actually been done in Asia to set conditions for major war.
Going to need a welfare check on @mikeblack114.bsky.social , this one’ll cause a stroke.
It’s a hard job that doesn’t pay much
To give these Americans credit, it’s like the most respectful tailgate I’ve ever encountered. If someone showed up with a breakfast taco truck they’d print cash. It must be said.
2nd Tier Evocation Specialist at the College of Mages says the realm is stable.
Don’t trust Americans to do that