Posted on July 2, 2023
Big Trouble in Little Moscow: Wagner, Prigozhin, and Putin
In one of the more mindboggling turns of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I get to write the following sentence: a former caterer-turned-mercenary-warlord led an armed insurrection against the Russian government. His Wagner forces got within a few hundred kilometers of Moscow—with no indication that anything could stop them—before abruptly deciding he was done and accepting exile in Belarus. This was, as they say, big news.
Countless pundits and internet warriors have examined those wild hours ad nauseum to see what they might mean, and the general consensus is that it’s a bad look for Putin, but it’s too early to tell what will come of it. I agree with that sentiment, but I’m more interested in the deal that resulted in Wagner’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, calling it quits. Theoretically, Belarus’s dictator, Aleksandr Lukashenko, brokered the deal, but he’s Putin’s purse pooch, so let’s not give him too much credit. This was a deal between Putin and Prigozhin, and I would give a not-insubstantial amount of money to have a recording of that conversation. And fluency in Russian.
Prigozhin’s goal was to win his feud with Russian military leadership, primarily the Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu. Both men were part of Putin’s inner circle, but Prigozhin overestimated Putin’s commitment to him and Wagner as Putin chose to back Shoigu instead. Once that happened, Prigozhin had to find an out— preferably one that doesn’t involve him committing suicide by being thrown out of a window.
Obviously, part of that deal was driven by Prigozhin realizing he was in over his head. Sure, given the lack of any real defenses between where his forces were and Moscow, there was a solid chance he could take the Kremlin (assuming the Russian Air Force didn’t carpet bomb them). But what then? The odds of the oligarchs, Russian military, and Russian security services pledging loyalty to Prigozhin was nil, and he had to have recognized that. His goal from the deal is easy—survival. His card to play? 2,500 armed veteran mercenaries a few hours from the Kremlin.
Putin shared the same goal out of this deal. When you’re at the top of a vicious pile of knife-wielding autocrats, the goal of every day is survival. What changed here was Prigozhin bringing the contest out of the shadows into the open. That’s bad juju for any leader whose entire power base relies on fear. Putin, then, had three options. He could throw in with Prigozhin, crush the mercenary without mercy, or find a middle ground. The first option was out because it would make Putin look weaker than the insurrection already had. The second was out because he didn’t have the forces to do so in a timely manner, and he’s already losing credibility with the oligarchs, the military, and average Russians over the boondoggle of his Ukraine invasion.
Compromise remained the only viable option. Prigozhin agreed to not play his trump card of sacking the Kremlin, and Putin agreed to not kill Prigozhin. Granted, we’ll see how long that promise holds—Putin’s enemies tend to have prematurely shortened lifespans.
The interesting part of this deal is that it seems Prigozhin gets to keep his card. Belarus has announced that they’ll be playing host to Wagner going forward, and the mercenary outfit has not ceased its recruitment efforts across Russia. So unless Prigozhin mysteriously disappears or shoots himself in the back several times, he has the potential to flip the table again on Putin. I don’t know who in the writing room is putting together these outlandish storylines, but we’re only halfway through season 2023 of Humanity and it’s already gone off the rails. I don’t know if I’m dreading or excited for the season finale.
Posted on June 18, 2023
Father’s Day Round Two
Today is my second Father’s Day as an actual father. This one sinks in deeper than the first given that during the first, my son was basically a semi-sentient potato capable only of pooping and crying. Now, however, he has grown and entered toddlerhood, and wow is there a difference.
For one, he communicates now. He’s got a few words, even if they don’t sound quite like what they eventually will (he leaves the L’s off of ball, which is adorable). He also know how to indicate when he wants certain things, which is a huge improvement off the old method of everyone crying as his mother and I pushed various items into his hands until we guessed the right one.
He’s also started developing his own tastes and preferences. When we first started feeding him solid foods, he inhaled everything like the vacuum cleaner he has recently become obsessed with. Now he’s getting a touch more picky, with some items (fruits, cheesy eggs) reaching a level of transendence and others (veggies) being used primarily as ammunition for throwing practice.
But what I enjoy the most are the moments where he expresses his love for his mother and I. The burrowing of his face into my shoulder as I pick him up when he wakes from a nap. The grin that somehow appears wider than his giant head he gives when he looks up from his toys and sees me. How he cuddles into me after he hands me the book he wants me to read two pages from before scurrying off to grab another. Each one just a fleeting moment, but each one precious beyond time’s ability to measure.
There is an entire world of wonder and joy I want to show my son, and these first steps I’ve taken with him are already more amazing than I could have dreamed of. It will be an adventure of a lifetime to see where else those steps will take us.
And lest I forget, a humble thank you to my father for giving me the example of what a dad should be. You set the standard, and it’s one I strive to reach every day.
Posted on June 4, 2023
So It Begins
One of the worst parts about military service is that you can be seperated from your family for mission requirements. In this case, my lovely wife has to endure nine long, grueling, humid weeks in Alabama. This is not ideal, as one might imagine. On top of how I miss the love of my life for her joy, her kindness, and her beauty, I have come to depend quite a bit on her for ensuring I don’t backslide into the morass of bachelor aesthetics and grooming. Truly, these are dark days.
Most pressing, however, is the care of our son. If you are not a parent, I can assure you that an 11 month old child is not exactly “free range” capable. In the past week alone, he has decided a new favorite activity is to attempt to run off the stairs at full speed, trusting he will be caught. He also has decided he must eat literally everything–his cravings know no mortal bounds.
I write this not to complain, but to explain how this next part came to be. You see, my wife and I share responsibilities in our home, but there are some that lean in one direction or the other. I do the dishes and mow the lawns, she tolerates my puns and keeps the house in order. One clear area of dilineation: dressing our son. I have the fashion sense of a naked mole rat, and no one appreciates my vision for how to make colors clash just right. My wife, horrified at the first attempts of me dressing our child, firmly took that role away so he would not be traumatized. I trust you begin to see the issue now with her absence.
Luckily, I have found the perfect solution to this conundrum. Just days after she left, a casual conversation gave me an epiphany that hit with the force of thunder thunder lightning, very very frightening. Clothes are awful in general, but there is one type that transcends all others. One that is easy to use, great to see, and all around amazing.
Kilts.
Now my son is rocking his very own kilt, just like his dad before him. And due to my wife being roughly 4,367 miles away at present, there’s nothing she can do to stop this bold step into the future of toddler fashion. Let the good times roll!
Posted on May 8, 2023
If You’re Happy and You Know It…
My wife attended an out-of-state wedding this weekend, and I—being the valiant, noble soul that I am—offered to stay home with our little one so she didn’t have to worry about the logistics of bringing an infant cross-country. Away she went, and home we stayed. I thought, how hard can it be? What difference is there between doing this as a partnership versus doing it solo? A few more diapers, a couple more bottles to wash, no biggie.
What a fool I was.
At first, all was well. Ez and I had a good time playing with his stacking cups, crawling over pillows, and reading his Happy and You Know It book. Then we ate some dinner and read his Happy and You Know It book. We finished that first night off with reading his Happy and You Know It book.
It was at that point that I realized I was no longer happy reading this book, and I knew it. I turned to hand the book to my wife to get a break, but alas, the Pacific Ocean proved a gap too wide. I turned back to my child, whose eyes sparkled with fey light as he once again grabbed the book and raised it above his head as if to say with actions what his lips cannot yet form into words: Read the book, Father. Read it and despair.
And so I read. And I read. And I read. While he was Happy and Knew It enough to wag his tail and hop around, my soul cried out for relief. From time to time, I would offer another one of his books, but always to the same result. His face contorted into a grimace of pure disdain, then he would once again place his Happy and You Know It book in my lap. And then, the song would play.
You see, this book has a darker element to it. Graced upon its back cover is a button that, when pressed by the hand of a young child, plays the music of when one is Happy and Knows It. And it played. And played. And Played.
Kaylee was only gone for two days, but time lost all meaning in that short span. Gone were silly constructs like seconds, minutes, or hours. My life became a binary equation—either Ez was Happy and He Knew It, or he was not, and would insist I remedy that situation immediately.
My wife is back now, but even with her help, the book still haunts me. Ethereal creatures wag tails and hop around just out of sight. I hear its tones down the hall, beckoning me back to flip the page once more to see just what one must do when they are Happy and They Know It. Am I happy? Do I know it? I may never know.
Posted on April 24, 2023
It’s All Connected: Scams, Conspiracies, and Belief
In an interview shortly after publishing The Da Vinci Code, author Dan Brown stated unequivocally that the various secret holy orders contained within were real, that the French monarchy blood line claimed to have been wiped out in the 1000s AD had survived, and that he had the documents to prove it. While those documents did exist, they had been put in France’s Bibliotheque Nationale only a few decades prior by a scam artist hoping to scrape a few bucks off gullible tourists wanting to buy a knighthood. He, in turn, had gotten his inspiration from another grifter looking to drum up business for his combined hotel/restaurant. And even he had pulled from a local urban myth that had grown out of proportion because the truth was far too boring. It’s scams all the way down.
I got this info from an excellent podcast (The Rest Is History) that I highly recommend. While they don’t generally focus on debunking conspiracy theories, I loved this particular episode and how it showed how Dan Brown could be so confident in his assessment of the historical accuracy of his novel. He saw a tidbit of information he thought was neat, did a touch of research to validate his own notions, then pressed forward as though it were all gospel truth. This is not to fault Mr Brown, per se, but to comment on the tendency we all have to get caught up in a good story at the expense of reality.
The problem is that we like connections and patterns. Point A must lead to point Z. Unfortunately, life doesn’t always line up nicely, but instead of shrugging our shoulders and accepting that this world is often a mad place full of inconsistencies, we look to find those tantalizing letters in between—even if they’re not there. These can span from the relatively harmless like thinking Tupac is still alive to the incredibly dangerous like thinking vaccines cause autism (they don’t).
I have no answers or grand point to make here, just a curiosity as to where I’ve made leaps based on incorrect information or faulty assumptions. Even though I avoid social media like the plague, evidence like the trail of scammers that led to the Da Vinci Code’s plot devices prove conspiracies and misinformation don’t require an algorithm to propagate. What closely held beliefs do I have that are rooted in a lie some hotelier made up a hundred years ago because his business needed a boost?
More importantly, how do I tell a story on this blog that will resonate so deeply with someone that hundreds of years from now, an author can look with complete sincerity into a reporter’s eyes and say, yes, I have done the research and I can unequivocally say the descendants of the lost colony of Roanoke have controlled the world’s travel industry for centuries.
And thus, legends are born.
Posted on April 9, 2023
Easter Message ’23
Happy Easter! What a special day this is. For many, it involves egg painting, Easter baskets, and large quantities of sugar. The best part of that is how much of it revolves around doing it with family, a wonderful thing to remember during this season. I fondly look back on memories of doing our annual egg roll at my grandpa’s ranch, where us kids would dig intricate tracks for eggs to roll down complete with ramps and hairpin turns. We’d go until the eggs were shattered wrecks, then go inside for an Easter dinner together.
All wonderful memories, but as I’ve grown older my perspective on the holiday has shifted. As a Christian, Christmas and Easter are the two most significant days of the year, but one of them always seems to overshadow the other. While I recognize and appreciate celebrating the birth of Christ, I’ve come to recognize how His atoning for our sins and resurrection needs to be placed at the forefront of our thoughts.
So this Holy Week, my wife and I spent our time studying and pondering Christ’s final week of His ministry on this earth, from Palm Sunday through Easter itself and His resurrection. We meditated on His teachings, despaired over the cruelty of those who stood against Him, and marveled at His love for us all, even those who sought to take His life. The actions He took that week have eternal ramifications, and I stand amazed at the depths of His caring that He would do so for us.
If you are not a Christian, I hope that you can still find value in His teachings. The world today would be a better place if we favored humility over pride, if we strove to be peacemakers in our lives, and if we loved our neighbors as we love ourselves.
For those of you that are Christian, I hope Easter holds as special a place in your heart as it now does in mine. My thoughts today turn to John 11:25-26:
“Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?”
I believe in Christ. He lives, and those words give me a peace that I cherish and hope for all of you to experience as well. Happy Easter!
Posted on March 26, 2023
Terms and Conditions Apply
I took a big step this week and bought a new TV for the first time in ten years. I could talk to how wonderful it is to have in-depth technical reviews of almost any product imaginable available online, or to how the picture quality is so good that it borders on unrealistic. Instead, I want to talk about how I had to agree to terms and conditions. Watching stuff (stuff I own like DVDs) on this TV (which I also own) somehow comes with terms and conditions. These are the end times.
It’s both depressing and appropriate that the word ‘terms’ is often used in line with surrender. That’s what modern terms and conditions imply, after all—you are usually surrendering the rights to your information. The amalgamated advertisement behemoth we’ve created must be fed, and your sweet, sweet data is its life blood. One of the TV reviews I read had as a con that there’s no way to turn off the advertisements on that model of TV, but then went on to say it doesn’t matter since you can’t do that with most of them anyways. It’s funny that the other word in the phrase is conditions, since it appears we’ve surrendered unconditionally.
I know it’s passe to talk about this, but it’s a little odd how collectively we’ve decided on this course of action. Data scientists, journalists, crackpots, and others have shown again and again how algorithms increasingly nudge or direct our lives. The response? Largely shrugs. What do I care if my TV is feeding back everything I do on it to some server if the picture is pretty? Who cares if Amazon can predict my most intimate desires with an 87% accuracy rating if my possum in a peanut shows up with two-day shipping?
We should care, because algorithms are only getting better at predicting human behavior. Right now, it’s just recommending TV shows and marsupial-themed children’s toys. But we should still be concerned over the Cambridge Analytica canary gasping its final breaths years ago. What will the next event be?
In more uplifting news, I have completed the top level editing process for Artificial Threats and will now move into scene identification! I came up with 89 unique issues ranging from critical to minor that need fixing, and figured out how to at least attempt fixing most of them. Breaking out the scenes into identifiable chunks is the next step so I can figure out where to best slot my potential fixes. After that, the real work begins.
Posted on March 13, 2023
I Left My Heart in SpaceX – Starbase
One of the unique parts of life in the military is you never really know what your job will be. Sure, you have your specialty code, but ultimately you are a widget they can and will slot into whatever position they need filled. Case in point, my current day job is as a speechwriter for a four star general even though my background is cyber. As part of my duties, I was fortunate enough to tag along on my boss’s trip to SpaceX’s Texas compound, Starbase. It. Was. Awesome.
Let me back-up. I applied to join the Space Force from the Air Force for three reasons: 1) a greater likelihood to stay on the operational cyber side instead of communication support, 2) better odds with good assignment locations, and 3) because space is freakin’ cool. The weight put towards each reason varies day by day, but when I got to visit Starbase, reason #3 rocketed up to 100%.
While a lot of the conversations were either classified or proprietary, the tour we took of their facilities blew my mind. It’s one thing to read about how SpaceX does business, but it’s another to walk into a half-constructed Starship and have the lead structural engineer explain just how massive the scale of their ambition is. I fanboyed hard, to the point where the engineer giving us the tour started talking to me more than the general because he had me hooked like a fat kid scarfing a tray of cupcakes.
While the Starship factory was fantastic (seriously, so cool), equally awesome was the attitude of the folks walking around with us. You could see how much they cared about the project and why they stick around, even with the 24/7, 365 work life. Not only that, but they way they approach the design and production process is so divergent to how things usually get done at that scale. When they need to fix a problem or figure out a design, they don’t sit around tossing ideas back and forth in meetings and committees for months on end. They get the sheet metal out, fire up the cutting torches, and build something. Once they see what works and what doesn’t, they build something new that iterates on the last version. And then they do it again. And again. And again.
That’s what I loved most about it, the willingness to push something out just to see what happens and the humility to learn from the failures. There’s no boardroom of middle management fighting over failed proposals because they staked their personal reputation on some pipedream. Instead, there’s an engineer telling his people that the last thing he wants to see is an idea in AutoCAD instead of in real life.
SpaceX inspires me, and not for the reason you might think. It’s not the fact they’ve basically rebuilt America’s industrial space power singlehandedly (which is awesome). It’s not that they’ve figured out things most people thought was impossible like reusing rockets (which is also awesome). And it’s not even that they’re continuing to break barriers and take space travel to the next level with the Starship (which is also also awesome). It’s that they are so committed to their dream that they are willing to forsake any sort of pride in order to see it through.
I told my boss that if he didn’t see me on the plane later that afternoon he shouldn’t worry—I’d just be back at Starbase, looking up at the stars with the people working hardest to get us there.
Posted on February 26, 2023
The Bomber Mafia: Morals vs Expediency
Commutes suck. We are blessed with 24 hours in a day, and spending one of them driving back and forth from a place we likely don’t want to be in the first place is a drag. Luckily, there are ways to fill that time. Podcasts have served that role for me, and that has led to dabbling in audiobooks. For those that know me and my reading habits, this is almost blasphemous. But the pull to amuse myself during the soul-crushing slouching from domicile to work and back requires sacrifice. That leads me to The Bomber Mafia, an audiobook by Malcolm Gladwell.
The Bomber Mafia is two things: designed to be listened to rather than read, and a tale about morals vs expediency in war. It’s also fantastic, so apparently it’s three things. Even if you have no interest in World War Two, the story Gladwell weaves is relatable to anyone who admires larger than life characters. Much of the book centers around two generals in the Army Air Corps, Haywood Hansell and Curtis LeMay. Hansell was the dreaming high-priest of precision bombing, while LeMay was the grounded realist of 1940s capabilities. Both had their chance to prove their way of thinking, and both left tremendous impacts on the United States Air Force.
While better historians than me have argued over the efficacy of LeMay’s tactics, it’s obvious that Hansell’s were a failure. High-altitutude precision bombing just couldn’t work with 1940s technology. The moral philosophy behind it, however, is timeless. If you can drop a single bomb on a single target and destroy a capability without wiping out the city block around it, that should always be your choice. LeMay saw the city block as a bonus.
I left the book with two thoughts (ok, maybe three). First, that it’s amazing how we as human beings can rationalize away our morality. The Americans started WW2 aghast at British carpet bombing campaigns, then went on to do far worse to Japan and later in the Korean War. It wasn’t an overnight shift, but a gradual one until firebombing civilian targets became the norm. Little choices result in seismic consequences in all our lives, even if death isn’t on the line.
Second, LeMay is one of the most fascinating historical figures I’ve studied. My opinion on him has shifted several times. He is my class exemplar from the Air Force Academy, and I voted for him proudly based on his leadership. Later, I turned to thinking he was a monster as I learned more about the firebombing campaigns against Japan. This has vacilated back and forth over the years as I try to balance the leader with the monster.
The Bomber Mafia doesn’t definitively answer the question, but I don’t think any of us can. The firebombing campaigns were objectively horrendous, but his leadership and brilliant tactical developments of bomber utilization saved thousands of Airmen and likely brought the war to a close sooner than it otherwise would have. How does one measure lives taken against potential lives saved? It’s an impossible task, and one best left to the Lord.
The third thing I took away was a story about LeMay told in the book. LeMay had a tremendous amount of accomplishments throughout his life, enough for a dozen men. Yet the mural he chose to have in his foyer was of the botched Schweinfurt-Regensburg Raid in WW2. Planned by Hansell, LeMay was the lead for the diversionary portion designed to draw off German defenders. It didn’t work, and hundreds of Airmen died for no gain. When asked about why he had that displayed, his response was that he had lost a lot of good boys that day.
Those are the words of a leader, not a monster. But just because you’re a leader doesn’t mean you aren’t capable of doing monstrous things.
Updated on February 19, 2023
The Bottle Gymnastics
Just when I think we’ve hit our parenting stride, Ezran winks and says “hold my milk.” His latest passion? Winning gold at bottle gymnastics.
I sent my wife off on a romantic sunset boat tour yesterday afternoon—romantic both for the scenery and the lack of her husband vomiting profusely off the side of the boat—so it was Ez and me hanging out once again. We approached bedtime much like a marathon runner at the 26-mile mark: tired, chafed, and covered in bodily fluids. But the end was in sight, just a bottle standing between our precious little tornado and blissful sleep.
If you need to know one thing about Ezran, it should be his obsession with food. The boy acts like he’s never eaten before every. single. time. he sees something vaguely approaching edible. This has been a boon for most of his life as it means he’s never had an issue taking a bottle, so feedings have been relatively simple. Ezran has since reconsidered this. Not the food obsession, no, just the serenity a simple bottle feed experience produces in his sleep-deprived parents.
We settled into the usual position and things started easily enough. His mouth gaped open like a carp, I plugged the bottle in, and away we went. I took a deep breath and let it out, easing into what I knew would be five to ten minutes of peace, when the boy in my arms decided he wasn’t done being a carp and tried to fling his body in seven directions at once. I managed to hold on, but in the midst of the chaos the bottle slipped from his lips.
Ezran was displeased.
After silencing the rage-induced shriek with the reinsertion of the bottle into his maw of unending hunger, I tried once more to find that oft sought but seldom grasped tranquility all participants of parenthood crave. This, Ezran decided, was the perfect time to practice his vault. He thrust both heels into me and launched himself like the breaching whale my wife happened to see at roughly the same time. Our son, not recognizing the poetry of the moment, released another screech of frustration that I could not rotate my arm 180 degrees to both keep the bottle in his mouth and maintain a grip on him as he flipped through the air.
This continued for the rest of the feeding, a battle of wills between parent and child that I pray does not foretell too much of what the future holds. Though if he brings back Olympic gold one day, I’ll happily pat myself on the back for training him so well in his youth.
Writing continues apace! I’ve finished my initial triage of major, substantial, and minor issues, coming out to a whopping 95. I’m sure many of those will branch into further issues as I address them, making it a Herculean task as I slay the hydra’s multiplying heads. But address them I shall as that’s the next step in my editing process. It’s good to go from identifying to fixing—easier to feel the forward progress that way.
