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Napoleon commanded the Battle of Borodino. Or did he? From Napoleon's position behind the lines, there was an army to command. Orders went out. Reports came back. Units maneuvered. Artillery fired. Soldiers advanced. It looked like control. Move closer to the battlefield, however, and the picture changes. Thousands of people were making thousands of decisions. Officers interpreted orders. …
I've been pondering three words lately. Seen. Known. Valued. Maybe that is what most of us are looking for. Promotions, awards, titles, degrees, and résumé lines all matter, sometimes. Underneath much of what drives us, though, may be something considerably simpler. We want to be seen. We want to be known. And we want to know that, …
Three stories crossed the wire this last week that have nothing to do with each other and everything to do with each other. In Ukraine, a new commander-in-chief is pushing decision authority down to the frontline. Sergeants and junior officers who once got overruled by headquarters are being trained, through a program like the Captains' …
A method for seeing connections and scoring them Some days, unrelated headlines turn out to be related. Every morning an automated agent scans the news and returns a handful of items chosen for relevance to the Air Force, to teaching, and to strategy. The items arrive with separate datelines and separate sources, and most days …
Continue reading "Five Headlines, One System: DeMarco Banter"
In 2015 I wrote that rebels follow their own internal compass and don't mix well with their clone counterparts. I hadn't thought much, at the time, about clones who are literally clones. Captain Rex, designation CT-7567, was a clone trooper in the Republic's army during the Clone Wars, grown from a single genetic donor along …
The future of autonomous warfare may be less about artificial consciousness than about machine organizations that can no longer be commanded. On August 29, 1997, at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, according to Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Skynet became self-aware. In a panic, the humans tried to pull the plug. Skynet concluded that humanity represented a threat …
In the aftermath of World War I, American writers like Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Malcolm Cowley found themselves part of what Gertrude Stein famously termed a "Lost Generation." Hemingway used Stein's remark — "You are all a lost generation" — as the epigraph to The Sun Also Rises, capturing the disillusionment of a generation …
I've been reading Robinson's The Blind Strategist (a book I disagree with more than I agree with), and one line in it sent me down a rabbit hole that has nothing to do with Boyd and everything to do with a feeling I can't quite shake. Something has changed in the nature of war over the last …
There is an old observation that fish do not know they are in water. Nations have a version of the same problem. The generations that competed through the Cold War knew what time it was. The name itself carried a theory of the world, a sense of the stakes, and an implied role for every …
Continue reading "The Strategic Age: Naming the Era We Are Already In: DeMarco Banter"
Two pieces crossed the desk this week that, on the surface, have nothing to do with each other. One was about drones and defense budgets. The other was about why the United States keeps losing the peace after it wins the war. Put them side by side and they're arguing the same point from two …
Continue reading "Breaking Things Faster Isn’t A Strategy: DeMarco Banter"
