War Game
On the challenges to the United States administrative state.
A. I recently watched War Game a 2024 documentary that considered in crisis mode the possibility of a January 6th-style protest during the 2025 Presidential election. The specific scenario is that the Order of Columbus seeks to recruit disgruntled US armed forces and to prevent the election results certification. Although there are some Red Team focused scenes (namely on SOCINT messaging and HUMINT recruitment of potential fellow travellers), the film is very much focused on Blue Team coordination; the interagency process; the Posse Comitatus Act; and justification of neoliberal norms about the administrative state. In retrospect this is an interesting film also about how Weberian government bureaucracies can work, and the mindset of the people in them.
B. The second Trump administration has released its new US National Security Strategy. The cohesive document advances a more isolationist, reactionary and mercantilist worldview that breaks decisively with its neoliberal “priors”. It can thus be read as both a philosophical justification and a policy orientation towards the emerging post-liberal worldview - with nods in particular to European Union nationalist, far right and Traditionalist groups, and disavowal of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion initiatives, which the administration has countered via lawfare and other means.
C. Uncut Gems (2019). Josh and Benny Safdie’s crime thriller focuses on Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler), a hedonistic diamond gem dealer who is spiralling into addiction, gambling debts, abusive relationships, and ultimately, self-destruction rather than any ethical awakening. In particular, the film depicts the dangers of the lottery or the windfall mindset that many gamblers and sports bettors have - and how behaviourally this can lead to very poor decisions about venue selection, table stakes, instrument choice, position size, and liquidity management. The former poker player Annie Duke gives some useful advice on more effective decision-making in this video.
D. AI research has become AI slop.
E. Today’s MIT OCW free course is on Foundation Models of Generative AI by Professor Richard Bruel Gabrielsson.
F. Goldman Sachs on why the United States dollar could drop.
G. A case study from the United Kingdom of how radicalisation can work in small, cultic groups, and what it can lead to.
H. The Hoover Institution on teaching USSR leader Mikhail Gorbachev capitalism: