Michael Allen

Congress setting a floor of 76,000 troops in Europe, the NDS pivoting away from US forces on the Korean peninsula, and new military adventurism in Latin America and the Middle East ensure the relevancy of overseas deployments. There is a tension here that was absent in the first administration.

Super MAR10 to those that celebrate it. Happy Luigi Day to those 2Ps out there that do not.

Newspaper Interviewer (phone interview): How long do you think this war will last for?
Me:

My best card yet from: wikigacha.com

We have been playing Feed the Kraken as the starter for our board game night for the last few months (having exactly 11 people show up is perfect). A friend offered to paint my minis, and I am in love with the job he did. #boardgames #socialdeduction

I read this to my daughter.

The best joke I read and shared this past week:

Where do bad rainbows go?
To Prism.
They get a light sentence.
It gives them time to reflect.

My daughter was brought to violence by the end. May require some suspension of knowledge over reflection versus refraction.

Updated .gif of US troop deployments from 1950-2025. Feel free to use it for lectures, conference slides (I use it for almost every talk), or whatever. The Troopdata package includes the latest quarterly report for December 2025!
#internationalrelations #polisky #politicalscience #poliscisky #irsky

I think I am in need of an academic friend who lives near the US Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, PA. I think there are 2-3 books in their archives that may help resolve a missing data issue in the overseas troop data for 1951 and possibly 1952, but you can only access them in person.

Link with interactive visuals: ma-allen.com/troops_dashb...

Publish or Perish: A Text Adventure of Academic Survival A few weeks ago, I listened to Matt Grossman's interview with Andy Hall, in which he discussed how he and Graham Strauss used Claude Code to extend a previous study. While Claude did make mistakes, they were correctable for an informed user. They may be a stepping stone towards greater research productivity by reducing time spent on mechanical coding decisions and increasing researchers' freedom to focus on other important parts of the research process.

Publish or Perish: A Text Adventure of Academic Survival

A few weeks ago, I listened to Matt Grossman's interview with Andy Hall, in which he discussed how he and Graham Strauss used Claude Code to extend a previous study. While Claude did make mistakes, they were correctable for an informed user.…

I have been testing out Claude Code this past week and made a silly International Relations/social science publishing text adventure game. It's silly, but was a use-case for me to better understanding Claude a bit more.

#int-rel #int-rel #polisky

Me: I need to write as soon as I get in the office.

Also Me: This person asked a decision theory problem in the game theory subreddit, how dare they. Also, I am going to do the math to answer their question.

Strange threadfellows: How the U.S. military shaped what we all wear : Planet Money From nuclear fission to GPS to the internet, it’s common knowledge that many of the most resource intensive technologies of the last century got their start as military R&D projects in government-fund...

The hidden influence of the military on fashion.

1097 words so far this month. I have a modest goal due to admin stuff, but it is progress!

docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

AcWriMo 2025 Creating commitments for productivity

Trying to commit to productivity in #AcWriMo 2025.

zubrin.substack.com/p/acwrimo-2025

It was worse than I imagined. Time to close that account.

What the hell?

Improving Tournament Pairings in Lorcana How to add more draw/play equity in how we pair.

Why we should prefer switch-side Swiss pairings over dice rolls in TCG pairings:

zubrin.substack.com/p/improving-...

At the edge of war: Frontline ally support for the United States military1 How does public messaging affect public support for, or opposition to, a U.S. military presence abroad? This study focuses on Poland as a frontline ally with an exceptionally high external security...

Given the recent Russian drone incursions into Polish airspace, sharing this recent article with @michaelallen.bsky.social , @flynnpolsci.bsky.social and Grzegorz Smułek where we explore NIMBYism wrt US troops in Poland in the context of Russian threats
www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Happy to be in Vancouver for #APSA2025. This was our "troops as DV" paper that @michaelallen.bsky.social , @flynnpolsci.bsky.social , and I are finally getting back to. Thanks to @marinahenke.bsky.social and @mcfuhrmann.bsky.social for super useful feedback!

@xkcd.com Can we get an updated map of the internet? I moved offices, put up my 2007 one, and need a replacement I think.

In a German City Long Home to American Troops, Trump Era Tests Ties

I've had several friends send me this NYT piece. If you're interested in reading more about the complex relationships between U.S. bases and neighboring foreign communities, check out our book, Beyond the Wire, written during the 1st Trump admin (link in reply)
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/14/w...

Why Kissinger would have been a Fortnite champ − and other foreign policy lessons from the gaming world A political scientist – with a penchant for gaming – explains how Minecraft, League of Legends and Civilization VII can help teach key international relations concepts.

Why Kissinger would have been a Fortnite champ − and other foreign policy lessons from the gaming world theconversation.com/why-kissinge...
@bloomsburypol.bsky.social
@michaelallen.bsky.social

Is Chomsky a fascist in the Lore universe?! @ryannorth.ca

I know there is some constructivist work that approaches this in terms of how states learn/use legalistic language in speeches/international treaties over time. Regardless, I think I can push it further until it hits upon a true gem, but that will be for later. It did produce a neat table.

The ecology cross-application is that resource shocks cause system changes. There may be some novel theoretical arguments, but they are not new. The neuroscience argument posits that information loss occurs over time, and cognitive simplification processes exist in IR, serving as a driver for IR.

Each of these come with a testable hypothesis, an explanation, and the datasets I could use for further testing. I won't repost the full writeups (they are too long), but right now two of them seem too similar to existing research. Epidemiology is that conflict spreads through hidden networks.

I asked it to specifically avoid statistically likely outcomes, but instead use cross-domain theories to create novel insights into IR using available IR data sets. With some massaging, it gave me three cross-applications, one from neuroscience, one from epidemiology, and a third from ecology.

Listening to today's Econtalk podcast and the idea that if humans had an LLM's knowledge set, we would see more cross-domain insights instead of the statistically likely output (perhaps the difference between creative output versus statistically average output). So, I want to push chatgpt. #polisky