@convergingriskslab
Director, Converging Risks Lab, within the Council on Strategic Risks. Former DASD(FE&T) and RAND policy wonk. Come for the foresight, stay for the fun. Yes, I took that photo. It was even cooler than you think. https://councilonstrategicrisks.org/crl/
This started as us asking the question, "Does AI make us dumb?" So we dug around and found out that there is specific scientific evidence that, yes, regular LLM use have an effect on human cognition. So THEN we asked, does this matter? We think it does, especially now.
I hope you'll join us.
People like me who came up in defense in the early aughts listened to graybeards describing how China “went to school” on the US in the 90s. Guarantee you the exact same is happening now as the US moves air and naval forces, employs AI, and has stress-tests its alliances. Great power MasterClass.
They’re calling it the best-planned war of all time
Water straight out of my nose.
Because it represents about half of the French frigate fleet and its only carrier. Deploying that proportion of one's naval asset represents a gamble that you won't need those things anywhere else on the globe for a while. Of course, they have to get them to the Gulf first.
“France will deploy eight frigates – more than the entire British fleet – along with two amphibious helicopter carriers and the country’s flagship Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier” in an attempt to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. That’s a hell of a play (and gap).
www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2...
This was a very fun conversation. Thanks to U. Cambridge for having me on!
Anyway. This is what you get when a Type A NATSEC brain overloaded by the horrors of the world watches her kid learn how to ride a bike. She wants to make that moment last forever and for everyone.
I could (won’t) go on. In sum: a moment like this doesn’t happen in a vacuum and not all of it is luck. If we want kids to grow up healthy in a safe community, then government needs to be funded and staffed to those disparate inputs and forge them into as common an output as possible. /4
Boy’s helmet and bike were tested by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The EPA manages the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) to make sure the air Boy breathes into his young lungs is clean and one afternoon bike ride doesn’t cause harm. /3
My neighborhood has low speed limits and stop signs thanks to local engagement w/ the city. Kids are out in our streets all the time, which brings the parents out & forges friendships. The neighborhood is very close-knit. Boy knows every neighbor by name and they him. He is safe on his own. /2
Boy learned how to ride his bike today after being afraid for months; just up and did it. Whole neighborhood cheered as he rode by. Neighbor dropped off celebratory cake. All because a boy with a smile to rival the sun was brave. Amid millions of variables behind that moment, government was one. 🧵
Life advice that never fails: make friends with people smarter than you. Any day I get to hear what @atabatabai.bsky.social has to say is a good day.
Whether or not it’s true, it matters that Korean news is speculating about it.
m-en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN2026...
Ladies and gentlemen, a Mezcal flip. Slainte.
"The strikes mark what is believed to be the world’s first military attack against the US “hyperscalers” that dominate the global cloud computing market."
www.ft.com/content/09fa...
SCOOP: The Army in recent days canceled a training exercise for the headquarters element of the 82nd Airborne Division, fueling speculation among soldiers that they may be called upon for a still undefined mission as the war with Iran widens.
wapo.st/4uiXxTO
"The biggest danger isn’t that they will make mistakes in identifying and striking targets. It’s that...AI might change the nature of war itself," e.g. "swarms of low-cost drones with facial recognition that could seek out and kill large numbers of people"
www.ft.com/content/c496...
So Palantir is expected to unpeel Anthropic from within its Maven Smart System being actively used in a widening war? Tech that has generated breathlessly positive commentary? That is the apex of tech available to the warfighter? That's what happens now? Seriously?
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/t...
Our tendency to be distracted by the shiny object of combat and consistently fail to notice the giant gaping hole where political objectives should be is a character flaw on a mass scale. The last sentence of this worthless article says it all.
www.economist.com/middle-east-...
The “goodness” of this rests on a fundamental assumption that the targeting cycle generates (a) the right targets & (b) more positive military effects than collateral damage
In my forthcoming book on the history of CT in AFG, I discuss in detail why those assumptions failed & how it cost us the war
(1) After each engagement, Parties to the conflict shall, without delay, take all possible measures to search for and collect the shipwrecked, wounded and sick, to protect them against pillage and ill-treatment, to ensure their adequate care, and to search for the dead and prevent their being despoiled. (2) Whenever circumstances permit, the Parties to the conflict shall conclude local arrangements for the removal of the wounded and sick by sea from a besieged or encircled area and for the passage of medical and religious personnel and equipment on their way to that area.
As I've addressed this issue in a few interviews today, here's Article 18 of the Second Geneva Convention which bears on the duties to search for and collect the shipwrecked following engagements at sea—such as the sinking of the Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean.
Whereas the focus for such the AI-military fusion paradigm shift has been keeping humans in the loop to ensure accuracy of targeting (among other things), an additional consideration may be not going Winchester on ammunition faster than planned or desired.
www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
This is such a bonkers time to be in IR/defense. I’m imagining career panels in 20 years and being asked by grad students “so how did your education prepare you to navigate the Iran-Israel-NATO war of the mid 2020s” and I can see myself looking blankly at them to 5, 6 seconds before responding.
Yesterday would have been a really spectacular time to have defined objectives, off-ramps, and a direct line to whoever meaningfully controls Iran.
www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
“The key paradigm shift is that AI enables the U.S. military to develop targeting packages at machine speed rather than human speed.”
www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
Is this foreign policy by loyalty punch card? Is our fifth military intervention free?
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/u...
For years on my old blog I published the names of servicemembers who died in Iraq & Afghanistan. No other outlets were.
These are the first 4 Americans to die in the Iran War.
Capt. Cody A. Khork, 35
Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens, 42
Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor, 39
Sgt. Declan J. Coady, 20
On the left, current tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. Dots closest to the Strait are at anchor; no movement. Image on the right is a typical February. For oil-dependent nations slow-rolling the pivot to renewable energy b/c of its challenges, nothing like a crisis to spark creative thinking.
