General Offensive - General Uprising

Regular viewers and listeners know that I don’t generally spend time editing: I do a piece to camera, and press ‘send’. Because I wanted to bring some maps into this one, I also did some editing. I did a lot of editing. I did it on Goole Vids, which can edit out those pregnant pauses I’m given to while my brain is working, but it replaces them with jump cuts which isn’t ideal. This week I also did...

This isn’t a fiendish AI story. It's a story about masses of compute available to anyone with a standard LLM account. The Houthis make spurious claims that they have operational hypersonic missiles. They would like us all to think they hit Riyadh with one. This Anthropic story from last month only appears to support this. What the Houthis might actually be doing with consumer grade LLM is creating...

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The British Consulate-General (BCG) in Jerusalem is one of the few vestiges remaining of the Palestinian Authority’s intent to make Jerusalem its capital. Taking consular services away from British citizens in the Jerusalem area is non-trivial; taking British diplomatic representation to Palestine, along with British security assistance to the PA, is more significant. The main British victory in a...

Editing and adding production values slows my workflow down, but I’ve been thinking for a few weeks about the eerie parallels between the first episode of BBC’s Yes Prime Minister from 1986. It’s not just that the Russians are conducting low-level attacks on NATO countries; it’s the comments on the socials. People really believe that deterrence is a linear system: that nobody would ever tempt a nu...

I’ve tried to stay calm about this paper , and mostly failed. Definitely read it, and tell me what you think about its arguments and conclusions.https://understandingwar.org/research/defense-of-europe/the-russian-military-campaign-against-europe-defining-the-threat/ The paper’s introduction: The Kremlin is conducting a coordinated series of kinetic campaigns targeting Europe, and NATO states must...

The whole reason to delay recognition of Palestinian statehood, was to build it into the Two State Solution. Arguably, Western recognition of the State of Palestine, creating a failed state ab initio , was a recognition that the future state of peaceful coexistence however cold between Israel and Palestine was no longer a near-term goal. Recognising Palestine could be used as a brickbat with which...

Maybe it’s a little bit passive-aggressive for me to go on the Socials and note that I’ve been warning about the Houthi threat to global supply chains since April. Maybe it’s just that your Cassandra is weary of watching people walk into unconcealed pitfalls. The constant reassurances from the White House ring in the ear: Iran has been rendered incapable of action. Chiming with this has been the W...

I recorded this podcast today for the MAZL podcast , which Elissa Wald runs. I know that at least one subscriber wanted me to offer a message of hope, but this sure as shootin’ ain’t it. Binyamin Netanyahu, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar ben-Gvir stood every chance of being voted into irrelevance by Israelis next month; perhaps they will be nonetheless. These sanctions, though, are pure right-wing el...

I’ve used an open source map from the Institute for the Study of War Map Room with attribution on screen. I’ve also asked Gemini to gin up a WW3.0 briefing graphic. I keep talking about that framing, and without a graphic it really is difficult to understand why that Heartland Alliance / Triangular Alliance is so cohesive even though it’s easy to imagine Iran, Russia and North Korea as so distant...

This is being called Javier Milei’s sabre-rattling, and it’s an appropriate descriptor. A sabre is an effective weapon in skilled hands, but it’s absolutely useless at a range of 300 nautical miles. It’s not remarkable that Milei is going for the old Argentine wheeze of attacking the British because the economy is going desperately wrong. Inflation is coming down in Argentina because Milei is redu...

I didn’t mention Russian nuclear attack this week because I think it’s likely. I was talking about other means of Russian attack against countries supporting Ukraine, and the UK as singled out by Russia for splitting away from Ukraine’s supporters. There was, however, a robust response to that aspect of the pod. We assume nuclear deterrence is an absolute shield, that 'Mutual Assured Destruction'...

A meeting with video and in-person attendees was a ’hybrid’ meeting until we got used to it, and now it’s just a meeting. Thing is, combining high-intensity operations with lower-intensity operations and working across domains with covert operations and information operations … that’s just war. Calling it ‘hybrid war’ suggests that it’s a special case, and it isn’t. If we’re not operating across a...

There is a newly opened tender for constructing three neighbourhoods connecting part of Jerusalem Municipality which is over the Green Line to Maale Adumim, which is a Jerusalem suburb over the Green Line. For a town planning artefact this is attracting a mass of condemnation. Why? Maybe it’s because it’s politically convenient for everybody to pretend that this is going to cut the northern West B...

Britannia ruled the waves by taking pains to control choke points: The Pas-de-Calais, the Strait of Gibraltar, the Suez Canal, the Bab-al-Mandeb (‘Grief’s Gate’ in Arabic), the Strait of Hormuz and the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. Recession of Empire abandoned Calais to France, Suez to Egypt, Aden to Yemen, and the Asian straits to Singapore and Indonesia. Gibraltar is all that remains. Some...

The United States has tried to fight in only one theatre of World War 3.0, focusing on achieving a quick, decisive defeat of Iran without engaging Russia and North Korea as adversaries. This is particularly difficult, given that Iran’s targeting intelligence is coming from Russia. Iran’s threats to attack American targets in Europe could be made good. This would not be difficult for the Iranians,...

The salami slicing metaphor for Russian attack against the West … remember that idea? *Buckshee from the Hindi बख्शी, bakhshi, the Indian Army term for the pay officer. It generally refers to something extra or unearned, and it’s related to the Turkish word بخشیش, bakhsheesh, a gratuity. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes,...

ERRATA: In this podcast I confused Tulsi Gabbard, lately US Director of National Intelligence, and Kristi Noem, lately US Homeland Security Secretary. It was Tulsi Gabbard rather than Kristi Noem who maintained back-channel relations with the IRGC. In the video I imply that the negotiations between the US and Hamas are being conducted in Cairo; they’re being conducted in el-Alamein. Alamein is a r...

Binyamin Netanyahu has started to describe a set of Israel’s more or less bilateral alliances as a ‘hexagon’. This must be because I’ve been describing Russia, Iran and North Korea as a Triangular Alliance, and I suppose he wants something with six points. I didn’t ask Harold what Great Game 2.0 was, but I assume it was the Cold War, and Cold War bush wars in particular. I make a distinction in th...

The US projected an SEP field around the Houthis: they’re Someone Else’s Problem. Whose problem? The Israelis and the Saudis. Thing is, neither the Israelis nor the Saudis are getting in the way of Chinese supplies (and Russian and Iranian supplies) to the Houthis, so the Yemeni tribal militia appear to have all the missiles and drones (and firearms) they need. Need for what? Need in order to act...

Donald Trump doesn’t need an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza for the US midterm elections in November. Binyamin Netanyahu, however, definitely needs not to withdraw from Gaza before the Israeli general election in October. Maybe they stitched up Netanyahu’s steadfast refusal between them. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, v...

I had a question about this from a listener, and I’ve responded briefly, partly as a way to determine whether I can record live to Substack using my new webcam. I think the answer is that recording in 1080p HD is more than the Substack studio can handle. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nusbacher.substack.com/subs...

The US defence budget going up to $1.5 trillion next year means you can give Lockheed Martin a load of cash to build manufacturing capacity for PrSM, but you can't magick inventory into existence. If the US buys all the new missiles, other countries might need to buy elsewhere. What happens to the massive spare capacity once the US Army is no longer hungry for these missiles? Also, didn't the Secr...

The US Coast Guard has had a bit of a windfall: lavish border security budgets in the Department of Homeland Security are going to pay for a stack of chunky new Finnish icebreakers. Because you were there for my polar security video you know why, and you know why China’s five icebreakers are a number to beat. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get acc...

The agreement calls itself ‘this Roadmap’, and it has a lot to say about Palestinian weapons remaining in Palestinian hands. The Roadmap was a 2002-3 plan to achieve Israel-Palestine peace, so the term is a little nostalgic. For a Roadmap, this document is awfully uncertain how the parties are going to get from here to there in two weeks. This Road Map references Phase 2, which reminds us that thi...