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Drafted 4 May 2025 Shadow Strategy: The Enduring Challenge of Gray War: Implications for Air and Space Power Thankful for National Defense University's Prism Journal for publishing this article. Here is the original piece prior to edits The contemporary global security environment is increasingly characterized by competition and conflict that falls short of traditional armed …
The Strategic Paradigm of Modern Systemic Warfare (Piece written on 5 April, prior to the 7 April "cease fire" will be interesting to see how this shapes up.) The initiation of Operation Epic Fury at 1:15 a.m. ET on February 28, 2026, marked a definitive shift in the application of Western airpower and economic statecraft …
There are moments when a technology does not simply add capability—it rewrites the logic of competition. The airplane did that. Radar did that. Precision guidance did that. Autonomy is doing it now. The character of conflict is being reshaped by three converging forces: mass, miniaturization, and minds. Mass in the form of affordable, attritable, and disposable systems. Miniaturization …
There is a tendency, particularly within military and strategic communities, to locate failure externally. We point to adversaries, to resource constraints, to political incoherence, or to the friction inherent in complex systems. These are all real. But they are not sufficient. The more dangerous failure—the one that precedes operational collapse—is internal. It is cognitive, psychological, …
A distorted mirror, an Axios article, and the battle for orientation I read an Axios article the other morning that stuck with me longer than I expected. Not because it was particularly dramatic, but because it triggered a simple question: if what the article suggests is true, do people actually realize what they are looking at? …
Continue reading "What Cognitive Warfare Actually Looks Like: DeMarco Banter"
Modern strategy is increasingly about thresholds rather than targets. In Chinese video-game culture, the kill line refers to a simple mechanic: the point at which a character’s remaining health is so low that any additional hit—no matter how small—results in elimination. Above the line, mistakes are survivable. Below it, they are terminal. Recovery is no longer possible. …
Continue reading "The Kill Line: Strategy in an Age of Thresholds: DeMarco Banter"
Great powers do not run one war at a time. They run a portfolio of risk. The binding constraints are not courage or rhetoric; they are magazine depth, industrial replenishment speed, alliance cohesion, and senior-leader attention. A U.S. campaign against Iran therefore cannot be evaluated in isolation. It must be assessed against the broader risk …
Leadership requires confidence. It does not require believing we are magnificent. In fact, I’d be worried about any leader who genuinely thought they were. There’s a line in the song Holocene by Bon Iver that captures a truth most leaders eventually confront: “I was not magnificent.” That line isn’t self-criticism. It’s scale awareness. There are moments in leadership when …
Continue reading "When You Are Not Magnificent, Do Not Perform Magnificence: DeMarco Banter"
On Dec. 29, 2025, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense reported one of the most intense single-day episodes of Chinese military activity in recent years. Over 100 Chinese aircraft were detected operating around the island, not merely signaling but actively compressing Taiwan’s defensive space. Of these, 90 aircraft crossed the median line, effectively erasing a boundary that had …
I listen to a lot of Bob Dylan--I totally understand, it's old, but it's enduring. There is a through-line that runs through several songs from All Along the Watchtower through No Time to Think, Political World, and Everything Is Broken, and arrives—quietly, defensively, and almost against its own will—at Most of the Time. Or maybe it's the whiskey.... It is really …
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