Knowledge and Decisions by Thomas Sowell This new year, please take the time to read this book, one of the most important books for my thinking in my lifetime. It speaks to my observation on war being a collision of complex adaptive systems informed by “institutional mechanics”, the systems they have in place before collision. And humans are built on incentives. Here’s a great review. Besides resting on a backbone of the Hayekian understanding of the use and role of knowledge in economies and societies more generally and Alchian’s evolutionary framing of economic issues and phenomena; the...

The New Orleans incident is just the beginning. And as always, Boppers, head on a swivel and ready to rock; if you don’t have a rifle in your vehicle, you are overlooking a tool option. My “Storming America” series on my podcast gives you an in depth appraisal of what this mass attack will look like and what you need to do to prepare (episodes 37, 41-43 and 48-50). Buckle up and Happy New Year. Email me at cgpodcast@pm.me

I will be spending the holidays with my children and grandchildren at an undisclosed bunker location in the inland Rocky Mountain west and off the 'net until the new year when I will resume blogging at the Institute... Since I paused Chasing Ghosts and started WarNotes, I have been firing episodes on a weekly cadence debuting every Monday to complete the Fixing Fight Club series assessing how the US and the West can take a knee and change its martial course from the present azimuth to oblivion. You will not see an episode debut on MON 30 December 2024 but the next WarNotes (Episode 007) will...

These floating dumpsters cost the American taxpayer 500-600 million per ship. The US Navy is trying to garage sell these malfunctioning ships to Greece and they are onto the scam. The Greek Defense Minister is smarter than the average bear. Glad to see that even foreign navies with very tight budgets have the discipline not to take on ineffective and ultimately, fatally flawed surface ships. “As far as the agreement with the United States is concerned, I am proud of the two military agreements with the United States that bear my signature, as well as the agreements with France and the UAE....

Brent Eastwood does a splendid job elucidating so many of the problems of the fatally flawed Ford super-carrier. I suspect he had to say "promising" but there is nothing here for the 21st century; this is the chariot and crossbow of the next generation. This is the sunken cost fallacy afloat. The prudent policy is to retire these behemoths immediately and completely rethink US and Western surface naval combat. The era of manned combat aircraft is over, whatever is aloft is a zombie force on borrowed time. The US Navy is quite literally playing chicken with thousands of lives in a gamble that...

The pattern is a revolving door of deliberate insider trading and influence by hiring retiring flag officers with active Rolodexes to be exploited in bent bidding and shadowy acquisition practices in an already sclerotic and gummed-up acquisition system that can't create working weapons systems at scale. The flag officer cadre in America is a very exclusive club where you are a made man for life who can peddle your influence and your cache forever unless you screw up like the gentleman described below or slamming your man-rod in the cash register like GEN Petraeus at the CIA. On November 9,...