I examine the strategic deficit disorder that absolutely dominates the US and western military establishments

I speak to the tools and critical thinking modalities that could spark and encourage competent martial imagination. Moral courage is necessary to tell the flag officer dullards and their Senior Executive Service (SES) necromancers that the emperor has no clothes.

If not, the unblemished record of defeat and stalemate will continue.

I describe some of the reasons I do it and the techniques I employ to get the single most accurate picture of what happened then to determine what’s going on now.

Recommended Listening:

On Strategic Empathy

Recommended Reading:

Christian Madsbjerg Sensemaking: The Power of the Humanities in the Age of the Algorithm

Johnson and Abbe Developing Strategic Empathy and Perspective Taking in Military

Zachary Shore A Sense of the Enemy: The High Stakes History of Reading Your Rival's Mind

Dave Snowden Cynefin - Weaving Sense-Making into the Fabric of Our World

Mortimer Adler How To Read a Book

Robert Strassler The Landmark Xenophon's Hellenika (Landmark Series)

Mike Snook How Can Man Die Better: The Secrets of Isandlwana Revealed

Mike Snook Like Wolves on the Fold: The Defence of Rorke’s Drift

David Stahel Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East

David Hackett Fischer Historians' Fallacies : Toward a Logic of Historical Thought

Keith Windschuttle The Killing of History

John Burrow A History of Histories: Epics, Chronicles, and Inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century

Harry Elmer Barnes A History of Historical Writing

US Army Center of Military History

My Substack

Email at cgpodcast@pm.me

Episode 100!

Well, when I combine the 20 episodes of WarNotes with the CG podcasts but a chance to pop the bubbly anyway.

Today we discuss the critical lack of critical thinking that has led the US into the unenviable position of being an extraordinarily 20th century fighting force nor fit for purpose for 21st century peer combat.

It will get worse.

I'll offer some more recommendations and a path forward.

References:

Richard Feynman Cargo Cult speech at CalTech 1974

RAND wish-casting on drones in 2015.

Slaughterbots (2017)

Slaughterbots: if human: kill() (2021)

How are Drones Changing Modern Warfare?

Sun Tzu The Art of War

Carl von Clausewitz On War

Miyamoto Musashi A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy

H. John Poole The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to Warfare

Christian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare

Qiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America

My Substack

Email at cgpodcast@pm.me

I'll discuss Iran and the grunt math of salvo competition.

Buppert’s Law of Military Topography:

“Mountainous terrain held by riflemen who know what they are about cannot be militarily defeated.”

For other insight on Iran, I recommend CG episodes 061 , 067 and 078.

References:

The Boogeyman of 21st-Century Warfare: Drones

Why the US is facing strategic defeat

Points of Resistance and Departure: An interview with James C. Scott

Lester Grau and Charles J. Bartles Mountain Warfare and Other Lofty Problems: Foreign mountain combat veterans discuss movement and maneuver, training and resupply (Helion Studies in Military History)

Lester Grau The Bear Went Over The Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics In Afghanistan [Illustrated Edition]

Lester Grau The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War

Mark Thompson The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919

James C. Scott The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia

Sun Tzu The Art of War

Carl von Clausewitz On War

Miyamoto Musashi A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy

H. John Poole The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to Warfare

Christian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare

Qiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America

My Substack:

https://t.co/7a8jn2Mmnx

Email at cgpodcast@pm.me.