The company decided to take some old laptops and give them out to new users. To make life easy for the recipients, they put sticky notes – everyone’s favorite credential-sharing tool – on the laptops with the name of each employee and their initial login credentials on it.
Let’s just stop for a moment to remark on how bad it is to put usernames and passwords on a piece of paper where the wrong person could see them. Even the IT department should not know your password, should someone in IT themselves turn rogue. So, even if the laptop stayed on a shelf in a closet that only the support staff had access to, having that sticky note would be bad.
However, our situation is even worse because the laptops in question were stored in a conference room while the facilities team finished readying the office for the move. During that time, anyone who had access to the conference room could go in and get multiple user account credentials.
And that's exactly what happened ...
Angels and Ministers of Grace defend us. And remember - this was the IT Department that did this.
Sigh.
This is why we can't have nice (security) things on the Internet.
A man named Tyler Brown opened fire on Memorial Drive in Cambridge, Mass., this week, turning an ordinary Monday afternoon into a rolling ambush near Harvard and MIT.
Middlesex DA Marian Ryan said Brown, a 46-year-old Boston man (notice no doctor was needed to identify Brown as a man), fired roughly 50 to 60 rounds from a rifle at vehicles on the roadway.
A Mass Statie and Our Hero (legally carrying, natch) shot the dirty perp. So well done! And I hear you ask, what's the tie in to gun control. This:
Brown didn't appear from thin air; his criminal record included a 2020 shootout with Boston police, and he had pleaded guilty to charges tied to armed assault with intent to murder. He was reportedly out on probation when the Cambridge shooting unfolded.
OK, so Massachusetts is run by dumbasses. Dude was out on parole for armed assault with intent to murder, and he shot up a bunch of stuff, including a Massachusetts State Police cruiser.
But here's the punch line:
[The perpetrator] survived with non-life-threatening injuries and faces serious charges, including armed assault with intent to murder. [Emphasis mine - Borepatch]
This time he'll be sorry!
Some Masshole judge will release him in 4 or 5 years. But more gun control is just the thing. Oooooooh kaaaaaay.
It's quite a mystery why all the retarded Massachusetts liberals think they're so much smarter than we are. The evidence is against them.
Nation-state goons and cybercrime rings are experimenting with Gemini to develop a "Thinking Robot" malware module that can rewrite its own code to avoid detection, and build an AI agent that tracks enemies' behavior, according to Google Threat Intelligence Group.
In its most recentAI Threat Tracker, published Wednesday, the Chocolate Factory says it observed a shift in adversarial behavior over the past year.
Attackers are no longer just using Gemini for productivity gains - things like translating and tailoring phishing lures, looking up information about surveillance targets, using AI for tech support, and writing some software scripts. They are also trialing AI-enabled malware in their operations, we're told.
It seems that the Bad Guys are using all the old malware tricks (obfuscation, hidden files, etc) plus some new ones (sending commands via LLM prompts, i.e. the malware queries (prompts) other LLMs to get commands.
The security model for AI/LLM is hopelessly broken, and the design is defective. I mean heck - the designers didn't consider two decade old attack techniques. I don't know if it's correct to label this broken as designed but it's not far off. This is software engineering malpractice.
I can't wait to see what happens with this and one of Elon's humanoid robots ...
GoDaddy has failed to protect its web-hosting platform with even basic infosec tools and practices since 2018, according to the FTC, but the internet giant won’t face any immediate consequences for its many alleged acts of omission.
As one of the world's largest web-hosting companies, and a registry and registrar with about 82 million domain names in its care, one would assume GoDaddy would be adept at applying software updates and monitoring security-related events in its hosting environment to protect its millions of customers and the visitors to their websites from online threats.
But according to a Wednesday statement from the FTC, “GoDaddy has failed to implement reasonable and appropriate security measures to protect and monitor its website-hosting environments for security threats, and misled customers about the extent of its data security protections on its website hosting services.”
So what triple-propellorhead security tech did they miss? Basics like security log analysis tools, multi-factor authentication on login, missing security patches, and not maintaining an inventory of their systems. This is all Security 101. Actually, it may be Security Pre-K.
If you use GoDaddy's hosting you might want to consider an alternative.
If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
I have been at least a luke-warm supporter of Donald Trump for years. Heck, there are over 200 posts there, mostly talking up his virtues. Go, read, if you don't believe me.
But I am no longer comfortable posting about how Donald Trump would make a good President, because I do not any longer think that he would.
The Donald has come out against Ron DeSantis, not that this is surprising - after all, they are opponents for the Republican nomination. I don't have a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is the dishonest way that this opposition has come out:
Donald Trump's people attacked Ron DeSantis for (a) not slavishly following The Donald's massively damaging lockdown recommendations and then for (b) being entirely correct in doing so.
Let me be clear: Ron DeSantis saved Florida's economy by ignoring advice from Donald Trump's administration. I was here. I saw this. I had just moved here from The Democratic People's Socialist Republic of Maryland and know people whose lives were destroyed by the Covid lockdowns imposed by a Republican Governor there. So where are the "Trump War Room" objections to the Covid-19 lockdowns from (Republican) Governor Larry Hogan?
[crickets]
Go ahead. Amaze me.
[I'm waiting]
Yeah, that's what I thought. Someone who was all up The Donald's butt is a-OK, but someone who did something positive for his State (even though it went against your flunky's advice) is the Worst Thing Ever. Quite frankly, I'd have more respect for this if (a) their advice was worth a plug nickel and (b) if your flunkies weren't trying to undermine you at ever step and if (c) you had had a damn clue about (b).
You didn't, and still don't seem to. Quite frankly, this is the biggest knock against you - you brought your enemies into your inner circle, and you won't recognize allies if they don't kiss your butt.
To The Donald (as if he'd pay attention); We thought you were on our side. We trusted you. Like Bluto in Annimal House, wef**ked up. And now we see that someone who actually earned that trust is in your cross-hairs.
And so while I think you accomplished a lot in your first term, I don't think you are earning a second one. Your ego is too big to allow someone actually accomplished to join you in the Oval Office. And so, adieu. Good luck, because you're going to need it.
You are in an election. You are facing adversity. Remember that Adversity does not build character, it reveals it. You are revealing more than you should like. Stop doing that, or keep losing supporters.
Sorry, you've lost a supporter here. Don't come calling after the nomination. You're not Presidential material.
Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?
A new study finds concealed-carry laws lead to a boost in gun crime by between 29% and 32%, mostly by triggering a surge in gun theft.
The study comes on the heels of a Supreme Court ruling that struck down New York’s attempt to limit the ability to carry a gun outside their homes. That ruling was seen as particularly significant as other states have sought to restrict concealed-carry permits.
Oh, it isn’t people being shot. It is guns being stolen.
He recommends clicking through to read the whole thing. I don't. I've seen enough studies about gun control. As the old saying goes, if you torture the data enough it will confess to anything.
Many years ago, Eric Raymond wrote a detailed post about how the gun control study sausage is made. It was brutal, and is a must-read for everyone in our community. He gives example after example of malfeasance in the academic literature, from "Arming America" which made up its data to the AMA "43 times more likely to die from a gun" that refused to release their data. Go RTWT, but this sums up the top dirty tricks that they use:
I described the errors as “systematic” before the jump because there is a pattern of distortions in the anti-gun literature that have been repeated over decades even though they violate known good practice in the social and medical sciences. These include but are not limited to:
Failure to control for socioeconomic differences between star and control groups, even when the differences are known to correlate with large differences in per-capita rates of criminal deviance
Choice of study periods that ignore well-documented trends that run contrary to the study’s conclusions immediately before or after the period.
Selective use of suicide statistics, counting them only in star but not control groups and/or ignoring massive evidence that would-be suicides rapidly substitute other methods when firearms are not available.
Tendentious misapplication of Uniform Crime Report data, for example by ignoring the fact that UCR reports of homicides are entered before trial and therefore fail to account for an unknown but significant percentage of findings of misadventure and lawful self-defense.
And I described this pattern as “fraud” before the jump because the magnitude of these errors would be too great and their direction too consistent for honest error, even if we did not in several prominent cases have direct evidence that the fraud must have been intended.
My guess is that the new study falls into the second of his categories (selective choice of study periods) at the very least, and probably the misapplication of UCR data. Quite frankly, the last 20 years simply do not show any obvious corollary of relaxed CCW laws and crime - or they show a corrolation between relaxed CCW laws and lower crime. A 30% increase is simply not what I've seen at all. My suspicion is that the data were tortured for a long time before they confessed to this.
Texas GOP Senator Cornyn, leader of the Republicans playing Gun Control footsie with the Democrats, gets booed by Republicans at the Texas GOP convention. And not just a couple of Boo birds, but a solid minute and a half before his speech. It seems that the good Senator was surprised by the response.
Smartest kid in class, right there [rolls eyes]. Maybe he should have read Shakespeare.
But cruel are the times, when we are traitors, And do not know ourselves; when we hold rumor From what we fear, yet know not what we fear,
But float upon a wild and violent sea Each way and none
In the past decade, the yearly reduction in forest area was 0.12 percent – down from 0.19 percent in the 1990s and 0.35 percent in the 1980s. In other words, out of 100 hectares of forested area in 2010, 98.85 hectares still green the world today. Emphatically, we are not running out of forests.
Lately we’ve been reporting on what many people are calling one of the greatest environmental felonies in Europe: the deforestation of the 1000-year old Reinhardswald, known as the “fairy tale forest”, in order to make way for largescale industrial wind parks to produce “green” energy. Proponents claim the wind parks will save our environment and climate. Clearing the forests has already commenced.
I guess that "sustainable electricity" comes from cutting down thousand year old forest. Good to know.
Unknown whether the report talks about how deforestation is up in Scandinavia because the forests are being cut down to make wood pellet fuel. What a weird "environmentalism" that burns the forest in order to save it.
Color me skeptical that the Democrats can do much in the current political situation - their margins in Congress are razor thin and rely on a fair number of Democrats from gun friendly states like West Virginia. But we're hearing the usual banging of the gun control drum, so it's time to dust this 4 year old post off. I mean, it's on the right hand side bar for your convenience, but some things need to be said again, and again.
(originally posted March 2, 2018)
I confess. I'm not opposed to gun control.
Confession, they say, is good for the soul, so I confess. Man, I feel better all ready.
I don't object to gun control. What I object to is stupid and useless gun control.
Unfortunately, all we seem to hear are stupid and useless gun control proposals. As a public service, here are two simple rules you can use to figure out whether a gun control proposal is stupid and useless:
Rule #1. Can the person proposing the law state what they think the law will accomplish? Most of the time it seems that they can't. For example, what good would banning bump stocks do? They were (maybe) used in one crime in the Republic's history. Is the goal really to prevent something that has only happened once? Really?
Rule #2. Can the person proposing the law state how likely the law is to accomplish the goal from Rule #1? Considering that you can make a bump stock from a string and a key ring, is it rational to ban bump stocks?
That's it - two simple rules to identify non-stupid and non-useless gun control laws. So let's use these rules to look at some gun control laws and see if they're stupid or not:
1994 Assault Weapons Ban. Stupid. The law was supposed to stop people from buying military style semi-automatic rifles. It didn't. The AR platform is likely the most popular rifle in America, and was so during the "ban". The Department of Justice said that the ban had precisely zero effect on gun crime.
Gun Free School Zones. Stupid. It was supposed to stop people from taking guns into schools. That sure worked great, didn't it?
I could go on with this, but you can add your own. My point, though, is that the gun control proposals (magazine size restrictions, one gun a month purchase limits, etc.) are stupid and useless. I'm willing to leave open the possibility that some gun control proposals could be non-stupid, at least in theory. But I sure haven't seen any yet.
Oh, now this is rich. German greenies calculate that a blog which gets 15,000 hits or more a month (yay! we qualify!) pumps out 8 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.
Hmmm ... rough math time: 15,000 "hits" corresponds to roughly 20,000 page views (in the old SiteMeter days). I've been running about 4 times that for 12 years now so - let's see ... carry the one - this blog has belched 350 pounds of carbon into the atmosphere.
Sigh. Those are rookie numbers. Must up my game.
Or we can all just think it's a bunch of Eco-fascist nonsense by some very unsavory totalitarian would-be overlords who deserve all the mockery we can give them. And so this will go proudly back into the side bar to make a permanent focus of mockery for the oh-so-mockable.
Pretty much everyone is mocking Taylor Lorenz' WaPo article about how EVIL conservatives scuppered the new Ministry of Truth. You remember Taylor, don't you? She's the one who doxxed the woman who ran the Libs of TikTok account and then sobbed about how mean everyone was to her.
Jankowicz’s case is a perfect example of this system at work, said Emerson T. Brooking, a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. “They try to define people by these single, decontextualized moments,” Brooking said. “In Nina’s case it’s a few TikTok videos, or one or two comments out of thousands of public appearances. They fixate on these small instances and they define this villain.”...
The Czar of Muscovy wrote a long, long time ago that you will understand the media perfectly if you just think of them as mean middle school girls. Jealous. not very smart, but mean.
He's making the right enemies. He has cleverly aligned himself with 80% of the voters in his battles against Covid lockdowns, pedophile teachers, and now Disney. He had and has massive support in all of these.
It helps that he comes across as trying to protect children in each of these areas. It also helps that his opponents are just so creepy and weird. Both of those things will help him with the Minivan Mom voter demographic.
The Democratic Party has been intellectually out of gas for a long time now. They've basically defined themselves by what they are not - not George W. Bush, not Donald Trump - rather than what they are. They've had a lot of success doing this over the last 20 years.
But DeSantis is now shining the spotlight on what they are, like being the party that wants to teach weird sex fetishes to kindergartners. This is exposing just how, well, weird the party is. So weird that people don't want to be associated with it.
I guess we'll see how this plays out, but until the Democrats stop coming up with more creepy nonsense aimed at kittle kids, I expect that DeSantis will keep doing what he's been doing.
I'm struggling to understand what the Administration is trying to accomplish (other than a Press Conference). If they ban 80% lowers, people will just 3D print them. Heck, I've been posting about this for almost a decade, and the technology is way more advanced now. What are they going to do, criminalize 3D printers?
It seems that it's all a tale told by and for idiots, full of sound and fury but ultimately signifying nothing.
The Romans were hated by a lot of people in the ancient world. This bothered the Romans not a bit. Their attitude was spelled out in the post title, although the original latin has a certain je ne sais quois: Oderint, dum metuant.
The Powers That Be in these United States seem to have forgotten that this is a dynamic, and that things done to instill fear can lead to hate. Big Country hits this nail on the head looking at all the sanctions that the US PTB are piling on Russia:
Two is that #ourguys are purely fucking up by the numbers. Initially, the Russian Population was starting to protest against the war. Lots of Grannies, regular civvies, and yeah, Vlad had a crackdown on it, as he is wont to be. However, all this 'other stuff'... the cutting off of Paypal, Applepay, Goolagpay, services and well, just about any and all economic 'stuff' in Russia by OUR Oligarchs?
Yeah, that's not helping us... in fact it just goes to prove the point to the Russian People that Putin IS right and that they, the Russian People as a whole have been targeted by the dissolute and decadent west for elimination. Hell, it ain't a hard argument to make, and we're proving it by putting the hurt on the Russian People as a whole. The Russians as history has shown rally around The Rodina when shit like this happens. A nearly singlemindedness and even bloodthirsty willingness to protect The Motherland
No matter what the cost.
So this makes me nervous, 'cos instead of them blaming Putin, they're realizing, from their POV, he might be right and it's time to make US hurt as badly as we're making them hurt. And as far as I can tell, that'd be the Giant Flashbulb Option, as they really don't have a way of fucking up or fucking with the general Untied Staaz population.
So if our beef is with Vlad and the Oligarchs (their Oligarchs, not our Oligarchs) then why do the sanctions seem to be targeted at the Russian People? Oh, and I still don't have a good explanation as to why Ukraine absolutely positively has to be a member of NATO. Still waiting on that one.
Ya know, what comes to mind is the ancient Greek saying that those who the Gods would destroy first are turned mad. About sums up the US PTB, right there.
And an anonymous commenter leaves a really concerning comment over at Big Country's place:
More or less right on the money. Couple that with the administration coming up with shit like sanctions on India because they won't sanction Russia. Now India are looking at what they can trade without using the USD. Good work retards. Lot of Arab countries now talking about investing more in/with China too. Worth watching what the BRICS countries do, once the move away from trade in USD kicks in...
"Good work, retards" looks like it's fixin' the be an excellent epitaph for the US PTB once they destroy the dollar as the world's reserve currency and the US standard of living drops by 70%.
Ah, brings to mind the old days, working at Three Letter Security Agency back in the '80s. We all agreed that if the balloon went up we'd just go out and sunbathe in the parking lot and wait for that last big flash bulb to go off. Been a long time since I thought of that. And so, a musical tribute to the last tanning session (stolen from Western Rifle Shooters):
Damn, I wish we had a smarter and less reckless Ruling Class.
Why on earth are we talking about getting into a war in Russiain the winter?
I mean, you could ask Napoleon how that turned out, or the German 6th Army. Heck, you could ask the Afghani allies we just left behind how good an idea this is. Since our military has such a good track record this century.
Peter's take is that the Powers That Be are getting desperate as the economy is mired in stagflation, the vaxx mandate is increasingly unpopular, and Biden's approval rating drops lower than any President in my lifetime. A foreign adventure is often the prescription for what ails them - politics ends at the water's edge, right?
Except no - firstly, this is nothing but madness. Bill Clinton at least had the good sense to bomb a Somali aspirin factory rather than Sevastapol. Secondly, we've heard from Democrats for 20 years that politics does NOT end at the water's edge.
Quite frankly, it's time for Congress to step up as the Adult Supervision* and pass a resolution saying that we do not have a compelling national interest in NATO expansion into Ukraine, and we sure as heck don't have a compelling interest in Americans getting killed over that. It sure would be something to see the Democrats filibuster that.
It's been a long time since I've tagged a post "Atomic War" ...
* This just goes to illustrate how weird things are.
I would expand on this, with several additional arguments:
The Biden Administration has done terrible damage to our armed forces, which quite frankly may not have the capacity to respond meaningfully in a peer-to-peer shooting war.
There is quite a good chance that if we do engage with Russia that the Chinese will think that this is the best opportunity they will ever see to take Taiwan back. The ability of our armed forces to simultaneously engage with two peer-to-peer conflicts is roughly between slim and none. And Slim just left town. (UPDATE 24 FEBRUARY 2022 12:01: Aesop has some Pertinent thoughts on this topic, and is more pessimistic than I am.)
An actual shooting war involving the US and NATO will show that Donald Trump was right: NATO members have not been living up to their agreements on funding troop levels and readiness. Quite frankly we all think that NATO is a paper tiger but a hot war will prove the point.
A corollary to #3 is that the EU will come under big pressure to do something - anything - about the conflict and any refugees. The EU will be paralyzed (because it's always paralyzed) and will be exposed as not the "United States of Europe" but rather a paper tiger just like NATO.
Germans will begin to freeze in the dark. They shut down a whole bunch of base load power (Energiewende) and now the Russians have them over a barrel. Fuel Poverty is a real thing.
I'd like to digress in particular on #5. We are seeing a fair amount of the usual jingoistic banging of the War Drum, with people not sufficiently enthusiastic about World War III being called "stooges" (or worse). Quite frankly, I'd be more impressed with these attacks if they were also leveled at the greenie Watermelon crowd (Green on the outside, Red on the inside) who are hamstringing our fossil fuel industries (both here and in Europe). Nothing gives Vladimir Putin more leverage over the West than this. No war for European oil, and all that.
This post is tagged "idiots" because, well, you know.
UPDATE 24 FEBRUARY 2022 12:01: Stephen Green at Instapundit muses about why Putin pulled the trigger and invaded. I think it's quite simple: he thinks he will get away with it. Quite frankly, I expect he's right.
One thing that I have not been able to figure out is who would benefit from the US sending 8,500 (or 50,000 - the number keeps changing) US troops to Stalingrad in winter. We've seen this movie before and we all know how it comes out. There are pretty much no good arguments to do this - nothing but huffing and puffing about "deterring aggression" and "stopping Putin's land grab" and "country borders are sacred". Let's quickly dispense with these arguments and move on to who really wins.
Deterring Aggression. It's not 1939, and the US Establishment isn't Neville Chamberland. A quick review of the first two decades of this century will establish the wars we've fought: Afghanistan (2001-2021), Iraq (2003 - present), Libya (2011), Syria (2013). The problem isn't an American meekness; on the contrary. Vladimir Putin knows this, and doesn't have to read between the lines to understand what NATO expansion plans for Ukraine would mean to a Russia that shares a border with it.
Putin's "Land Grab". So Russia has demanded guarantees from NATO that (a) Ukraine will not be admitted to the coalition (as this would compel NATO to defend Ukraine in the future, by treaty), and also guarantees that NATO offensive weapons will not be stationed in Ukraine. The NATO General Secretary has explicitly rejected both demands, as has the US State Department (at least according to the Russian foreign ministry; while this is not proof, it does concur with the NATO General Secretary's public statements from two days ago). So what options does Putin have? More importantly, what options are we giving him?
"National Borders are sacrosanct". Well, except for the US-Mexico border, I guess. This doesn't pass the "red face" test - the fact that people can say this without shame only shows that our elites are, well, shameless.
So who wins in this showdown? We know who is facing the risks - you know, that whole Stalingrad in winter thing, but Russia is facing substantial risks as well from sanctions, a military with some good units but many not so good ones, potential guerrilla war, etc. NATO appears to be splintering before our eyes as Germany, France, and others refuse to do any heavy lifting (Germany's offer a a few thousand mil surplus helmets to Ukraine speaks volumes on how tight this "alliance" is).
Oh yeah - Russia has a bunch of nuclear missiles aimed at us. That would never go sideways, right? So there are lots of potential losers here.
Who wins?
China. This is long, but clearly and plainly laid out. I highly recommend you spend the time to watch it:
Other winners: The Military Industrial Complex (Defense suppliers and retired 4 stars who get cushy and well paid gigs on their boards of directors). The Biden Administration which gets to keep the Hunter Biden Ukrainian payoffs swept under the carpet. The Democratic Party which is desperately looking for something - anything - to change the electorate's focus from the disastrous Afghanistan bug out, or inflation, or the increasingly unpopular Covid lockdowns, or the Teacher's Unions destroying public education, or the weakening economy.
I guess that the Democrats aren't smart enough to figure out what adding that whole "Stalingrad in winter" thing to that list will do in the run up to the elections.
Tucker Carlson quite rightly asks: how does any of this make America stronger? Clearly it doesn't - to the contrary. But if you don't pound the jingoistic War Drum with the idiots in the media you're Putin's Stooge or Neville Chamberlin or unpatriotic. Or something.
I'm so old that I remember Democrats shouting that they were tired of their patriotism being questioned. Times sure have changed.
But remember: these people are all so much smarter (and nicer!) than you are. You stooge, you.
The other things the BBC were moaning about were the winter famine wiping out the children of the Taliban and the poor pitiful Ukrainians who are ill-equipped to fight the Red Army. I see a confluence of benefits here. The Taliban have $89 billion dollars in high tech weaponry they manifestly don't need and the Ukraine produces most of Europes wheat. They could trade weaponry to the breadbasket of Europe for food. Win win!
Helpful. That's me.
Maybe $89 B of food would give them enough weapons to get to Stalingrad, amirite? Who says that Atomic War can't be hilarious?
UPDATE 27 January 2022 19:01: Yeah, yeah, I can stop anytime. Kurt Schlicter (LTC USA, Ret) has an informative post about the difference between the Cold War NATO of his service days and today's NATO. He echos and amplifies what Divemedic highlights, from an Army (vs. a Navy) perspective. He is even more pessimistic (and sarcastically so) than Divemedic is. But he gets deadly serious in his key point:
It seems like we might have trouble achieving our objectives. And one of the biggest reasons is that it’s not clear what our objectives would even be. Since none of the usual hawks can be bothered to articulate a vital American interest involved in defending Ukraine’s borders, that makes it hard to come up with objectives for the military. “Stop Putin” is not really a military objective; it’s sort of an amorphous goal.
So what does victory look like? Putin held off to the outskirts of Kiev? Putin tossed back over the Belarus and Russian borders? What’s our desired end state? Or are we not going to articulate that either? Maybe we can just sort of exist in a tense status quo over some sort of demilitarized zone for seven decades or so. Gee, sound familiar?
Now all these questions deserve answers, but don’t look for any since none of the answers are good. And bad answers would slow the rush to war, so we can’t have them come out. Instead, the establishment is going back to the classics. If you ask what America’s vital interest is, you love Putin. If you ask what our military objectives would be, much less how we can rev up the combat power way over there to attain them, you love Putin. Yeah, it’s always a delight to be a vet of the Cold War being who is told he digs the Russians by a bunch of DC saps whose experience with the Bear is trying a Moscow Mule once, deciding it was icky, and asking for a white wine spritzer instead.
The Ukrainians are getting a raw deal, and I hope they drown their invaders in a river of blood. But it’s not our fight. And, if we did fight, there’s a significant chance we would lose. Then every two-bit tyrant on Earth will be coming for a piece of the helpless giant. We’re weak right now, folks, and the worst thing we can do is get up in front of everyone and prove it.
This. This exactly. The Administration looks like it is trying to draw into an inside straight. With the potential death, destruction, and risk to America's international position, I'd sure like answers - any answers - to the question what do we get out of any of this?
When people are taken out of their depth they lose their heads, no matter how charming a bluff they put up.
"Simple", of course, applies to the authors of the paper. All you have to do it listen to all the hysterical talk about what happened a year ago in Washington, and look at what the current Administration is doing to the economy to get a sense of what governments will do to consolidate power - even at the expense of economic damage.
Oh, and it seems that this article is the one that was downloaded most often from the War College web site in 2021. Oooooh kaaaay.
