John Ridge 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼

Seems there is a post-election exodus from the other app. I’m haven’t decided on the disposition of my social media. Given U.S. security assistance to Ukraine is likely to be terminated come January 20, I’m debating the future value of my Twitter account.

Its pretty clear that next Dem administration should pass an Act of Congress to expropriate Musk's shares in SpaceX and auction them off to the public. He would have to be compensated, as required by the Takings Clause, so it would cost about $100B minus the proceeds from selling off the shares.

I wish Biden had been a war hawk who shipped thousands of Bradleys to Ukraine. I wish our entire stockpile of 155mm rounds were used on Russian soldiers. There isn’t a single escalatory act NATO members could commit against Russia that I wouldn’t support.

Oh boo hoo. Russia can save you from this nightmare by leaving well enough alone. If they are foolish enough to think otherwise, somehow I think Branko will be safe enough in Groningen.

Sauron supposedly forgot to invest in a horizon search radar. Barad-dûr fell victim to Exocet and ingenuity of French designers!

I guess this is just sort of the logical endpoint of this administration’s commitment to fulfilling their supporters’s desire to vicariously consume violence done to other people.

It's completely unprintable what ought to happen with every single person involved in this.

You fundamentally just cannot fight and win a war like this. There isn’t a military on earth that could effectively operate when your leadership is waffling back and forth on decisions on a daily basis for months on end. It’s not sustainable. None of this is sustainable.

This is the largest Foreign Military Sale to Ukraine under the Trump Administration to date.

A large number of the people counted in this were people who were killed as a result of Al Qaeda in Iraq igniting an Iraqi civil war based on sectarian tensions dating back to Saddam. Yes we invaded the country, and made critically poor decisions, but we were not the only actor involved.

I am fucking deceased

Your regularly scheduled reminder that the Cult of the Gizmo and their financiers, in this case a16z, are lying by omission *at least* to you. Sure an Anthem costs less than a Tomahawk. It’s 40% of the payload, and with what murderous cost to P-arrival?

The kids in the Texas Longhorns student section understand what America is better than Bo French ever will. And a political movement that looks at those beaming faces and sees a threat has told you everything you need to know about what’s actually in its heart. (Link below)

It lives! A huge thank you to the friends and colleagues who helped refine this, and who have been arguing with me about the core premise for years now. Thank you also to the LC editorial staff for giving this a venue and for a smooth and very positive editing process. What a treat to write for.

Great thread and report. DOE/NNSA are wholly enmeshed in the scientific infrastructure of the country and it is a very mutually beneficial relationship for all the different stakeholders and for the American public. Any decision to reduce these relationships would be penny wise but pound foolish.

Very pleased that Zach has finally released his long awaited video on ballistic missile defense. It is an excellent primer on several key concepts. I encourage everyone interested in the subject to give it a watch.

FY2027 NDAA text, originally highlighted by @dexeve.bsky.social on the other site. What else is there to say in this forum except, as the youth say, "sickos_yes.jpg"

Just for sense of scale, current U.S. Navy op tempo would be properly supported by a fleet of somewhere between fifteen and eighteen supercarriers. The fleet has eleven. “Ridden hard and put away wet” doesn’t begin to cover it.

Good thread Langston Hughes, who I am going to say understood this much better than I do or most people on this site do, called it 90 years ago. The idea of America the egalitarian anti-ethnostate, never fully and faithfully executed, is so important that it can never be surrendered.

Ok this is borderline malpractice from WaPo. Yes moving the islands would cost billions and years in delays. IT ALSO MAKES THE SHIP LESS EFFECTIVE. This is literally reducing combat effectiveness for aesthetics. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

It is difficult to overstate how dumb most parts of this order are, let alone the whole thing. “Mature parent designs” in particular is fucking asinine. news.usni.org/2026/08/13/p...

They're really re-running the whole COINTELPRO playbook again, including the parts that were probably just lurid conspiracy theories last time.

repost for visibility in the wider #nukesky and non hashtagged bluesky nuclear community; there is some new FOIA going around about plutonium pit production and as ever in this space, there is much more than meets the eye

Romer is saying this because she knows that her real views about what ought to happen to the innocents of Ukraine are far too extreme and too ugly for a podcast.

And when she *did* claim to consult people who did, she fabricated quotes outright to fit her narrative.

This is a satellite image I commissioned in 2024. It shows more (7) modern destroyers under construction at Bath Iron Works (one of the smaller US military yards) than any single Korean shipyard has ever built.

I dislike the Cheese boy's takes as much the rest of you but this is simply not true. There are more surface ships under construction at Bath and Ingalls today than the South Korean Navy has bought in the last 15 years. We shit on the Cheese because he is a realist who debases himself for Trump.

A murder:

Has there perhaps been some event taking place in the last 12 years which might be important for understanding why Europe is militarizing?

Shockingly, the guy who spent his career siding with abusive authoritarian regimes like Russia and Assadist Syria also leaps to his feet to defend rapists. These things are connected. It's all rape culture all the way down.

The abolitionist signer of the Declaration of Independence Benjamin Rush said in 1787 that the war was over but the Revolution was not. That the war was only the first act of the great drama of perfecting a new government and preparing its citizens' "principles, morals and manners" for self-rule.

When the Federalist Society hits you with that "the age of consent when the Constitution was written was 15" stare

I am also worried about the US becoming a Third World country. That is why it is more important than ever for the USA to reject the Non-Aligned Movement and redouble our commitment to NATO.

This is treason to the ideals and the concept of the Republic

Yeah in case anyone is not clear on it, a significant portion of the modern right actively fantasizes about murdering you. Registered Dem? You. Sociology major? You. Interracial marriage? Definitely you. None of us have the luxury of pretending we are safe. You should have a plan.

*preps block button* If USAID is the vanguard of American imperialism*, that’s objectively the least deadly the imperialism the world has ever seen, and the world should be grateful for American subtlety and restraint.

I NEED QRF TO BE REDCON RIGHT FUCKING NOW THEY’RE SWARMING THE REFLECTING POOL

I would be very hesitant to assign specific blame to either Grok or Maven Smart System, absent specific evidence. There are multiple different points in the targeting process where a mistake could have been made. Remember the school adjoined an IRGCN installation. Bad inputs lead to bad outcomes.

"why are they even bombing us" is truly one of those questions that, in its context, encapsulates the modern russian mindset

LockMart and RTX:

The Indian Ocean is woke y’all

Iran was strategically on the back foot. Loss of Syrian proxies, inability to restore deterrence against Israel or the US, GCC states slowly accepting Israel in the region, sanctions generally working...and then we put them in a position to gamble for resurrection and boy howdy did they.

no one is ready to really talk about how many of their wholesome chungus leftie faves were witting or unwitting KGB operations lmao

This was a bad study for many reasons, not least of which that it rigged the results implicitly in favor of nuclear weapons, but the computers behaved relatively typical of human decision makers. Can we stop talking about it please? I don’t want to retype my screed about how awful it was.

Happy Memorial Day everyone. I’m so thankful for the men and women and their families who have sacrifice so much for our great nation.

Ngl, Mike Black getting banned for telling Dort to off himself on Memorial Day is just about one of the funniest things I've ever seen. And I don't even mean that as a dig at Mike.

I always come back to Lincoln on Memorial Day