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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 …
Elizabeth Economy’s warning in How China Wins the Future is not fundamentally about military inferiority. It is about strategic displacement—the slow erosion of American influence in the arenas where the rules of future power are being written. When she argues that the United States must “rebuild its capabilities and reclaim its reputation as a responsible global leader,” she …
Thanks to West Point for picking up this piece: READ MORE HERE For the better part of a century, the grand strategy of the United States has been predicated on a deeply entrenched, almost subconscious mental model: the belief that political order is the natural, baseline condition of human societies, and that chaos is an …
“Fighting the good fight is mostly a series of humiliations.” — Unknown congresswoman, Fallout, Season 2 I don’t know how many are watching Amazon Prime’s Fallout—call it a guilty pleasure—but one throwaway moment lands harder than most prestige television monologues. As an unnamed congresswoman is physically ejected from a New Vegas casino, stripped of status and relevance in …
In a hardened shelter at a forward operating location in the Indo-Pacific, a B-21 Raider crew runs through final pre-flight checks. The mission is straightforward by contemporary standards: penetrate contested airspace and neutralize a critical node in an adversary’s anti-access network. The aircraft—stealthy, networked, and exquisitely lethal—represents the apex of American airpower. The mission is …
Punk did not begin in 1976 with a sneer, a safety pin, or a Sex Pistols B-side. Those were sparks, not origins. As Chris Sullivan argues in a recent essay—and expands powerfully in his book Punk: The Last Word—punk is not a genre, a haircut, or a moment in British cultural history. It is a mindset. A way of confronting …
For years, I have posted this EVERY NEW YEAR'S--and I started thinking, does it mean anything new now? New Year’s Day has aged remarkably well precisely because it was never about a calendar flip. It was always about the tension between symbolic moments and structural reality—a problem leaders, strategists, and innovators are still wrestling with. Every New …
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One of the quiet killers of strategy—especially in large institutions—is the false comfort of the dichotomy. Militaries are particularly prone to it. We divide the world into clean opposing bins: Strategy vs. Operations, Kinetic vs. Non-Kinetic, Conventional vs. Irregular, Innovation vs. Discipline, Speed vs. Rigor. These binaries feel decisive. They give leaders the sense that clarity has been achieved and choices have been made. But …
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