The Glass Is Half Empty

I've had a running commentary on the Institute for the Study of War and the conundrum of how they seem to have so many highly credentialed experts to write their Russian campaign assessments who manage to say so little. This is particularly intriguing as we seem to be entering an inflection point in the Russo-Ukraine War, since by all accounts, not only have the highly publicized HIMARS artillery systems reached combat, but all the other Polish Krabs, French Caesars, German Panzerhaublitzen, and US M270 advanced artillery systems as well. If these have begun to be effective, we should be seeing results by now.

The problem is that the ISW has been putting all its money on, first, a Russian offensive pause to regroup, resupply, and rethink, and then second, a renewed resumption of the offensive following this pause. A big problem with this theory, as I've pointed out, has been that reports differ on whether there has actually been such a pause, despite Russian official announcements. (These people all have degrees in Russian studies and speak Russian, yet they seem to believe implicitly in Russian official announcements. I majored neither in German nor Teutonic Studies, and my German won't win me any prizes, but I think I know Germans better than they know Russians.)

As I noted, on July 6, the ISW reported on the initial Russian announcement of an "offensive pause", followed immediately by an objection from the governor of Luhansk that there had been no such thing. They've spent the past ten days basically arguing with the governor of Luhansk, who I've got to assume doesn't need a degree in Russian studies to hear the rumble of artillery. At the same time, the ISW has had almost nothing to say about either the arrival or any observable effect of the new NATO weapons on the battlefield.

This report from July 15 is a recent sample of the ISW line:

Russian forces are likely emerging from their operational pause as of July 15. Russian forces carried out a series of limited ground assaults northwest of Slovyansk, southeast of Siversk, along the T1302 Bakhmut-Lysychansk highway, southeast of Bakhmut, and southwest of Donetsk City. These assaults may indicate that Russian forces are attempting to resume their offensive operations in Donbas. The assaults are still small-scale and were largely unsuccessful. If the operational pause is truly over, the Russians will likely continue and expand such assaults in the coming 72 hours.

Contrast this with an equivalent assessment from the UK Ministry of Defence fom July 16:

Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 16 July 2022

Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/CkouEyTZAD

🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/Z0M9tGmMN7

— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) July 16, 2022

There's no reference to a deliberate "pause", but an observation that "Russian offensive operations remain reduced in scope and scale", whatever the cause. There is also an observation that "Ukrainian defence has been successful in repulsing Russian attacks since Lysychansk was ceded and the Ukrainian defensive line was shortened and straightened." One thing I've noticed in the current phase is that Ukraine has kept much more of a lid on battlefield reports, especially concerning the use and effectiveness of the new NATO weapons, but especially if there has been no deliberate Russian "offensive pause", which I think it's likely there hasn't been, the reduced scope and effectiveness of the Russsian campaign must be attributable to the new weapons.

As of this morning, however, the ISW declares that the "offensive pause" is at an end:

The Russian Defense Ministry announced that the Russian operational pause has concluded on July 16, confirming ISW’s July 15 assessment. Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu ordered Southern Group Commander General of the Army Sergey Surovikin and Central Group Commander Colonel General Alexander Lapin to increase offensive operations on all axes on July 16, but the tempo of the resuming Russian offensive will likely fluctuate or stutter over the coming days.

So what's going to change? The Kremlin says the generals have been ordered to increase operations, but it's likely they won't have much success, at least according to the ISW. How does this differ from the UK MoD assessment, especially if we take out the idea of an "offensive pause"? The situation on the ground continues, but the Kremlin's announcements are irrelevant. This is what the principle of parsimony would suggest, and it's what I would comment on a student paper that took the long way around on this question, but then, that's why I quit grading student papers nearly 50 years ago.

Oddly, it looks like the ISW has finally been dragged kicking and screaming to a similar conclusion. In the next section down, they acknowledge:

Ukrainian HIMARS strikes against Russian ammunition depots, logistics elements, and command and control are likely degrading Russian artillery campaigns.

And indeed, huffing and puffing, they struggle to catch up with recent history:

Ukrainian officials confirmed that American-supplied HIMARS arrived in Ukraine on June 23. Ukrainian operators have been using the HIMARS to strike multiple Russian targets – notably ammunition depots – since June 25. The destruction of these ammunition depots has likely degraded Russian forces’ ability to sustain high volumes of artillery fire along front lines.

Gee, d'ya think? But if they've been blowing up supply depots with HIMARS since June 25, why do you think Russia announced its "operational pause" on July 6? I'm with the UK MoD that sees this as kabuki for the domestic audience. On the other hand, Frederick W Kagan earned a B.A. in Soviet and East European studies and a Ph.D. in Russian and Soviet military history, both from Yale University. You can read more at the Wikipedia entry, including the part about his close involvement with the US occupation strategy in Iraq, his close relationship with the squirrely David Petraeus, and the unanswered questions about what he owes defense contractors or what they owe him.

With the Yale degrees and all, is he really as dumb as the ISW assessments he writes make him look, or does he just have an interest in being selectively dumb? By the same token, Kagan himself has Yale advanced degrees, but the other names on the assessments are bright young things with only non-Ivy BAs who look a great deal like the pampered and docile domestic pets who staff the tech firms. I give them credit, they're writing what they're expected to write so they'll have careers inside the Beltway and homes in Bethesda.

But why have the ISW's assessments been so consistently defeatist since the start of the war? Something's going on here.

Musk , Trump, And The Truthteller

I note that Donald Trump is beginning to reinsert himself into public discourse, and as he does, espeically in his recent social media exchanges with Elon Musk, he's reminding me of his appeal. That appeal, of course, took him from long-shot vanity candidate for president in 2015 to his asymmetric defeat of Hillary the following year. The 2024 election is a long way away, but it's worth noting that the right people are already starting to get nervous. Here's wishful thinking from David Brooks:

[T]he 2024 presidential primaries could be wild. Sure, conventional candidates like the Republican Ron DeSantis or the Democrat Gavin Newsom may run for the nominations. But if the hunger for change is as strong as it is now, the climate will favor unconventional outsiders, the further outside the better. These sorts of oddball or unexpected candidates could set off a series of swings and disequilibriums that will make the existing party systems unstable.

Furthermore, if ever there was a moment ripe for a Ross Perot-like third candidate in the 2024 general election, this is that moment. There are efforts underway to prepare the way for a third candidate, and in this environment an outsider, with no ties to the status quo, who runs against the establishment and on the idea that we need to fundamentally fix the system — well, that person could wind up winning the presidency.

The one name he doesn't mention, of course, is the Unmentionable Orange, who strikes me as the once and future oddball or unexpected candidate who has already set off a series of swings and disequilibriums that have made the existing party systems unstable. What about Latins moving Republican, for instance? Isn't that Trump's doing? Brooks is hoping for a Ross Perot who'll look good but will wilt in the heat as Perot in fact did and who'll prove innocuous enough to stand aside for an inevitable Newsom or Romney.

Trump's appeal in 2016 was that he wasn't that guy. One thing that intrigues me about Trump as a public figure is that conventionally minded pundits accuse him of being a "narcissist", but under what we might call received narcissistic theory, Trump is a "truthteller", which in many ways is the opposite of a narcissist. From a typical discussion board:

Narc[issist]s don't like truthtellers, even when the truth teller remains silent and doesn't speak their truth.

The narc knows that you know, you have rumbled them, you have seen behind the facade and you know them for what they are.

Thus we have Trump truthtelling on Elon Musk:

When Elon Musk came to the White House asking me for help on all of his many subsidized projects, whether it’s electric cars that don’t drive long enough, driverless cars that crash, or rocketships to nowhere, without which subsidies he’d be worthless, and telling me how he was a big Trump fan and Republican.

. . . Now Elon should focus on getting himself out of the Twitter mess because he could owe $44 billion for something that’s perhaps worthless.

All I can say is it's hard to argue with the guy. Elon is getting to the end of his 15 minutes of fame, and he's turning into something of a weirdo. Trump, on the other hand, is what he's pretty consistently been as a public figure, a guy who doesn't beat around the bush, which is what many people find endearing while many others are uncomfortable. As an American archetype, he's a bit of Ishmael in Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye, or the noir detectives Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe.

So far, it seems like both the Democrats and the Never Trumpers are desperate for someone, anyone they can put up as some sort of simulacrum of an honest outsider who of course will prove to be no such thing. Their problem is that no matter on whom they fixate on the outsider du jour, Trump's still outperforming everyone in the polls.

All the right people are nervous.

Asymmetry And The Conventional Wisdom

As sometimes happens, I sat up in bed early this morning suddenly recognizing that nobody has pointed out that the Russian abandonment of Snake Island on June 30 was an unacknowledged victory for the asymmetric strategy in the Russo-Ukraine War. After four months of trying to defend the island, losing major naval assets in the process, including the flagship of the Black Sea fleet, the Russians left -- but Ukraine chose not to reoccupy the island. It would have been just as expensive for them to defend as it was for the Russians. and as long as the Russians deem it prudent to stay away, they don't need to. According to the Guardian,

Maritime tracking services showed a logjam of ships waiting to pass into the Danube since a second route through the Bystre estuary was opened after the recent Russian retreat from the nearby Snake Island.

. . . Although large carriers cannot pass through the Bystre estuary, limiting the amount of grain that can be exported, Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday that already 16 ships had transited the Bystre route in the four days since it reopened.

. . . Until recently, the Bystre estuary route had been closed, but that has changed with the removal of Russian forces from Snake Island.

It seems to me that conventional thinking would have been that Ukraine needed to reoccupy Snake Island for this to take place, while all that was really needed was for Russia to stay away. Ukraine got the desired result, a partial end to the Russian blockade of its Black Sea ports, without the need to reoccupy and defend Snake Island. We're seeing similar thinking in analysis of the war's current phase, for instance in the Financial Times:

“Russia could still wear down Ukrainian ammunition stockpiles, its reserve of skilled troops and the patience of the international community to slowly claw back a path towards meeting its aims,” wrote two researchers, Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds, in a report for the London-based Royal United Services Institute last week.

As well as a chronic shortage of artillery ammunition, they highlighted multiple other Ukrainian weaknesses, including a lack of skilled infantry and armoured vehicles to conduct offensive operations, a shortage of secure radio equipment and an inability to detect and take out Russian electronic warfare capabilities.

The implicit assumption is that Ukraine needs a large conventional force of "skilled infantry and armoured vehicles to conduct offensive operations" in order to push the Russians back in the Donbas. But the same implied logic would have required just as large a force for the Ukrainians to push the Russians away from Kyiv, or presumably a navy just as large as the Russians' to drive them away from Snake Island. That wan't needed in either case. Ukraine drove the Russians off Snake Island with no navy.

The UK Ministry of Defence suggests the idea of a large-scale Ukrainian conventional counteroffensive in the Donbas may also miss the point:

Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 14 July 2022

Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/ooeYS0oJa7

🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/3TkIw6XCNU

— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) July 14, 2022

We can stipulate that, as the Institute for the Study of War continues to report, as of yesterday,

Russia’s operational pause largely continued, with limited Russian ground assaults along the Slovyansk-Siversk-Bakhmut salient.

But especially in the context of the UK Ministry of Defence's estimate above, the ISW's conclusion simply doesn't follow:

The Russians will likely launch a larger-scale and more determined offensive along the Slovyansk-Siversk-Bakhmut line soon, but there are no indications yet of how soon that attack will begin or exactly where it will focus.

The UK MoD instead suggests the Russians are in danger of losing momentum due to their "operational pause", which due to their aging vehicles, weapons, and Soviet-era tactics they're unlikely to regain. In other words, we're back to the 40-mile convoy that one day may start moving, and when they do, watch out!

However, a problem with the "operational pause" theory is that it attempts to explain only the circumstance that the Russians must refit and redeploy after taking Severodonetsk and Lysychansk. It doesn't factor in the effect of longer-range NATO weapons in forcing the Russian supply and command centers farther to the rear:

Since Ukraine received the first far-reaching weapons such as HIMARS and M270, there was no safe place for russian supplies. The invaders’ stocks of ammunition and fuel began to disappear one after another creating problems for the frontline logistics.

So they try to hide warehouses away, relocating them deeper in the rear, as stated by a Ukrainian General Staff official Oleksii Hromov during a briefing at Media Center Ukraine.

. . . "Currently, the possibility of locating the enemy’s brigade-level warehouses at a distance of 100 kilometers from the front line is being considered, and corps-level warehouses – at 150 kilometers from the front line."

This forces the Russians to put increasing strain on their weak logistical operations. In fact, I'm of the view that this is the factor behind the "operational pause", not some desire to resupply or reorganize -- the Russians have fewer and fewer resources to do that with in any case.

Here's What I Don't Understand About HIMARS

A big problem I had throughout the 40-mile convoy phase of the Russo-Ukraine War was the daily YouTube posts of Russian armored columns being defeated in detail by small Ukrainian units with anti-tank missiles. These were just everyday occurrences, and I kept wondering why the conventional wisdom kept asserting that these somehow didn't happen or weren't important. And they weren't important until the Russians simply abandoned their whole northern offensive.

The YouTube indicator has been changing lately. Throughout May and June, while the attritional battle in the Donbas was under way, there were far fewer YouTube posts from the front of any sort. But since early July, we've been seeing several things. The first is that there have been almost no retired US general talking heads prognosticating on the course of the war. Isn't that strange? You couldn't keep them away from the camera during the halcyon days of the 40-mile convoy. Now, zilch.

The second thing is we're seeing new YouTube posts daily showing Russian ammunition depots exploding spectacularly as a result of HIMARS attacks, credibly backed up by Ukrainian announcements:

On July 13, the Armed Forces of Ukraine destroyed 5 Russian ammunition depots in the following towns:
▪️ Luhansk
▪️ Chernobaivka
▪️ Makiivka, Donetsk region
▪️ Chaplinka (district), Kherson region
▪️ Horlivka, Donetsk region pic.twitter.com/PfEEIwWBb7

— UkraineWorld (@ukraine_world) July 13, 2022

This brings me back to the question I had during the 40-mile convoy phase: how come all those tanks and trucks are being blown up every day, but the retired generals are saying this doesn't matter? There are only so many tanks. Even if the Russians have a gazillion tanks, you can only deploy a fraction of that, a gazillion over n, in Ukraine. And a gazillion over n is a finite number, let's call it t. Every day, we're seeing t reduced by x tanks portrayed as blown up on YouTube, as well as on the Oryx site. Why doesn't this have an effect?

And of course, it did have an effect, just the retired generals never quite recognized it. To everyone's surprise, the Russians abandoned the northern offensive.

So now not only do the Russians have eight gazillion howitzers, but they have 42 bajillion artillery shells. It's the Somme, it's Verdun, it's hopeless. All we see is YouTubes of let's say five depots each night going up in explosions that detonate for hours. We're hearing very little directly about how this may or may not be succeeding, except:

The U.S. Defense Department and other U.S. agencies fed HIMARs into Ukraine slowly, officials said, waiting to test Kyiv’s aptitude on the system, reflected by Germany and Britain, which handed off multiple launch rockets mounted on Bradley tank frames four at a time. But U.S. and European officials have been impressed, they said, by Ukraine’s systematic selection of targets, interdicting Russian supplies and attacking command posts in a bid to grind the Kremlin’s war effort to a near-complete halt.

So all of a sudden, for no reason at all, Biden says we'll send Ukraine four more HIMARS launchers over the original eight. And not just Biden:

Mariusz Błaszczak, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence of Poland, has made a statement about the transfer of another batch of Polish-made Krab self-propelled artillery systems to Ukraine during his visit to Kyiv on Tuesday, 12 July.

. . . Zelenskyy did not specify how many howitzers Ukraine had received.

The Russian response is unclear -- the current conventional wisdom is that Iranian drones will cancel out the HIMARS and other NATO weapons.

[T]here remain growing fears that Russia will begin to find countermeasures from the HIMARs rockets. And the potential arrival of up to 100 Iranian combat drones, which U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Tehran had agreed to sell to Russia, is creating fears in the Ukrainian ranks that the HIMARs batteries will be left helpless to an aerial onslaught[.]

Except that as of this morning:

Iran has no plans to send military aid neither to Russia nor to Ukraine, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said.

Earlier U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Tehran was planning to supply military drones to Russia. However, the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian denied Sullivans’ claim, La Repubblica reported on July 13.

Iran avoids any actions that could lead to further escalation in Ukraine, including the supply of military equipment, Amir-Abdollahian said.

Who knows what's up here? Nevertheless, this does nothing to make me change my usual contrarian viewpoint. The current conventional wisdom is that while Ukraine may be able to stall the Russians with HIMARS and other NATO weapons, they won't be able to push the Russians back in a counteroffensive. But earlier this year, they didn't even need a counteroffensive to make the Russians abandon their whole northern campaign. The US strategy being implemented in Ukraine is explicitly asymmetrical -- the weaker side wins with defeat in detail; it doesn't employ a symmetrical counteroffensive.

After all, that's how Ho Chi Minh won in Viet Nam; it's how the Taliban won in Afghanistan. I don't understand how credentialed professional military analysts are missing this, except that I was in the Ivy League with these guys. Heck, two of my closest friends were in Russian Studies. Maybe that's kind of the point, huh? I should one day tell a story.

Somehow I trust what I see on YouTube.

Jordan Peterson Scolds The Christian Churches

Right now, as far as I can tell, there are two people running for king of the world, Elon Musk and Jordan Peterson. As I noted yesterday, Musk recently visited Pope Francis to talk about his ideas on improving the world and humanity. Jordan Peterson has occasionally done the same with Bp Barron, but yesterday he scolded NATO, the EU, and the whole Western alliance for wanting to start World War III if they don't appease Putin in Ukraine.

Today he turns to the Christian churches. His heavy-lidded pose at the start of his video above verges on self-satire. Indeed, I wonder if he isn't just running for king of the world; he must be running instead for philosopher-king of the world.

What intrigues me about Peterson and Christians -- whether he is a Chrstian of any identifiable type has been, and continues to be, open to debate -- is that his arguments for Christianity, or for that matter any religion, track mainly with Jonathan Swift's An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity (1708):

[I]t may perhaps be neither safe nor prudent to argue against the abolishing of Christianity, at a juncture when all parties seem so unanimously determined upon the point, as we cannot but allow from their actions, their discourses, and their writings. However, I know not how, whether from the affectation of singularity, or the perverseness of human nature, but so it unhappily falls out, that I cannot be entirely of this opinion.

. . . I readily own there hath been an old custom, time out of mind, for people to assemble in the churches every Sunday, and that shops are still frequently shut, in order, as it is conceived, to preserve the memory of that ancient practice; but how this can prove a hindrance to business or pleasure is hard to imagine. What if the men of pleasure are forced, one day in the week, to game at home instead of the chocolate-house? Are not the taverns and coffee-houses open? Can there be a more convenient season for taking a dose of physic? Is not that the chief day for traders to sum up the accounts of the week, and for lawyers to prepare their briefs? But I would fain know how it can be pretended that the churches are misapplied? Where are more appointments and rendezvouses of gallantry? Where more care to appear in the foremost box, with greater advantage of dress? Where more meetings for business? Where more bargains driven of all sorts? And where so many conveniences or incitements to sleep?

. . . For the rest, it may perhaps admit a controversy, whether the banishing all notions of religion whatsoever would be inconvenient for the vulgar. Not that I am in the least of opinion with those who hold religion to have been the invention of politicians, to keep the lower part of the world in awe by the fear of invisible powers; unless man kind were then very different from what it is now; for I look upon the mass or body of our people here in England to be as Freethinkers, that is to say, as staunch unbelievers, as any of the highest rank. But I conceive some scattered notions about a superior power to be of singular use for the common people, as furnishing excellent materials to keep children quiet when they grow peevish, and providing topics of amusement in a tedious winter night.

Peterson's argument in brief is that elite opinion, which denigrates the male role or male archetypes, is demoralizing to boys and men and bodes ill for the future of an ordered society. The role of the Church -- which, given Peterson's scolding tone, it has long neglected -- should be to welcome these boys and men, encourage them to play a positive role, get married, have children, earn a living, and live responsible lives. The idea of a superior power that encourages them to do so will be of singular use in this project.

By the same token, we may extrapolate that setting aside a particular day of the week to encourage these boys and men to clean up, dress well, network with their peers, catch up with their obligations, and court potential wives will be of great use to society at large.

Over the past couple of years, Bp Barron has had a dialogue with Peterson where they explore areas where they agree, and it doesn't really suit Bp Barron's purpose to focus on potential disagreement. But I would at least start by pointing out that the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, where the bishop recently served, has a strong program of fostering vocations to the priesthood, with a full time staff of priests, all male, who counsel and encourage local boys and men to seek out that purpose in life, which is reserved exclusively for males. The prayers of the faithful are directed weekly toward increasing such vocations.

Indeed, a powerful male role model leads their worship and provides words of encouragement and advice, based on Jungian scriptural archetypes that Peterson himself finds salubrious, in each service.

It's intriguing that Peterson doesn't differentiate among Christian denominations, or indeed among the Christian denominations that claim to be non-denominational. What about the problem of evanglicals who claim to be born again but see no need to attend church? What about those who've accepted the Lord as Savior but remain unbaptized? Would Peterson ever attend a Christian service of any sort and recite either the Apostles' or Nicene Creed with any degree of mindful assent?

Whom does he claim to be addressing? All the main line denominations ordain women as pastors or priests. Most accept transsexuals to the priesthood. Should they stop doing this? On the other hand, if Peterson is in some way encouraging the unaffiliated to consider becoming Christian, does he think they should review and consider each denomination's teachings on sexuality? And what of the role of women at all? Are they now to be subordinate to men? He has nothing to say, just that the Christian churches should be more positive to men and boys in some unspecified way.

It sounds very much as though he doesn't think any of the serious ingredients of Christian belief, such as doctrine or sacraments, are of any importance, but the purpose of Christianity should be as some sort of assertive YMCA type of NGO for the purpose of rehabilitating males.

I was thinking about posting on his messsage yesterday on the Ukraine war, especially stressing his stated reliance on John Mearshimer and Frederick Kagan, two highly credentialed yet highly irrelevant thinkers on military strategy. Peterson's problem in addressing both Christianity and the Ukraine war is that he seems incapable of serious thought. I briefly considered that maybe he could spend more time talking with Bp Barron, but really, the bishop is busier and busier these days, and as far as Christianity is concerned, maybe Peterson could more profitably spend his effort on a diocesan RCIA program -- which I'm convinced he will never deign to do.

“He Told Me He Voted For Me, So He’s Another Bullshit Artist.”

Trump's recent remarks about Elon Musk reminded me how refreshing his perceptions of other public figures used to be: Nancy Pelosi is “highly overrated and highly incompetent”. Jeb Bush is "an embarrassment to his family. . . . Frankly, he’s a stiff." Hillary Clinton "may be the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency of the United States.” Drs Fauci and Birx were "two self-promoters trying to reinvent history to cover for their bad instincts and faulty recommendations, which I fortunately almost always overturned,”

I hope that, regardless of the outcome, we get this sort of thing back, even for a little while. In the case of Elon Musk, I'd been having doubts already that even if he was the richest man in the world, he maybe wasn't the smartest, but Trump's assessment pushed these questions to the front of my mind. In the meme above, which it appears Musk put together himself and posted on Twitter, he seems to be laughing just a little too hard. The whole Twitter distraction left investors unimpressed:

Tesla shareholders have publicly expressed concern about Musk’s ability to effectively run Tesla while owning Twitter — along with his handful of other companies that include SpaceX, Neuralink and The Boring Company. Their cries became progressively louder as Tesla’s shares continued their downward trajectory.

In early April, when Musk took a 9.2% stake in Twitter, becoming the social media company’s biggest shareholder, Tesla shares were priced at $1,145.45. The share price has since fallen more than 34%.

So Musk can go haw haw over the twists and turns of his public battle with Twitter, but the question of whether this basically frivolous issue will take his attention away from actually making money for his investors is still there. What's his strategy? Is he playing 3-D chess to drive the Twitter stock down and force them to renegotiate the deal?

Let's grant that's what he's doing. He buys a failing company whose business model is probably not viable to start with for only $20 billion instead of $44 billion, but now he basically has to fire everybody and start again from scratch, apparently with some vague idea of turning it into a subscription-based business.

Isn't this whole idea, er, BS? I think I'd be shorting Tesla myself no matter what.

But this leaves out the question I raised a few days ago, that the guy just had twins with a senior executive who worked for him. This is the sort of thing that would even have gotten Bill Gates fired from Microsoft had their board found out about it. That he would do this suggests he just isn't a serious guy in the 21st century. But let's look at the bigger context:

The tech icon has 10 children with three women — including twins born last year.

Musk, 51, and a top executive at one of his companies, Shivon Zilis, welcomed the two new members of his brood in November in Austin, Texas. . . . That brings the tally of confirmed children for the South African-born business magnate to 10 — six with his first wife Justine Wilson, two with Claire Boucher, also known by her stage name Grimes, and the twins with Zilis.

Musk and Wilson’s first child, born in 2002, died of sudden infant death syndrome at the age of 10 weeks, according to Marie Claire.

Grimes’ second child with Musk, a daughter born through surrogacy, arrived weeks after Zilis delivered her twins.

Zilis has worked for Musk’s companies for years. She is the director of operations and special projects at Neuralink, according to her LinkedIn profile.

. . . Grimes, 34, and Musk were first romantically linked in May 2018 when they appeared together at the Met Gala.

They welcomed a son in May 2020 named X Æ A-Xii, who they call X, and a daughter, Exa Dark Sideræl, who goes by Y, via surrogate in December 2021.

Although Musk did not have any confirmed children with Amber Heard, they began dating in mid-2016 before calling it quits for good in February 2018.

. . . Heard, 36, gave birth to a daughter, Oonagh Paige Heard, via surrogate in April 2021 but never revealed the identity of the father or sperm donor.

However, his relationship with Heard was apparently more complicated:

Amber Heard and her former billionaire boyfriend Elon Musk were involved in a legal battle over frozen embryos following their split, a former friend of the actress’ sister said under oath.

Radar has obtained a bombshell declaration submitted in court by Jennifer Howell — which included claims that the actress accused the tech mogul of "bugging" her Tesla.

All this business about surrogates and frozen embryos sounds pretty hinky to me. But it gets worse. Not mentioned in the story is his son by his first wife, Xavier Alexander Musk, who

has filed a request for a name change over gender identity in an effort to cut ties with their father.

"Gender identity and the fact that I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form," Musk's child gave as reasoning for the petition.

Notwithstanding, Musk took his other sons with Justine Wilson, three of whom are triplets, to have an audience with Pope Francis, who we must assume is not normally with the frozen embryo-IVF program.

On July 1, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX tweeted a pic of himself with sons Griffin, 18, and 16-year-old triplets Kai, Damian and Saxon posing with Pope Francis during a recent trip to Italy.

Elon wrote, "Honored to meet @Pontifex yesterday."

According to Italian newspaper La Repubblica, the businessman and the pontiff had a 40-minute meeting at Casa Santa Marta in Vatican City. Elon talked about his ideas on improving the world and humanity, the outlet said.

So he gave the Holy Father his thoughts on improving the world. I can imagine. I'm thinking Donald Trump has a point.

New Phase Of Ukraine War (Or Not)

If you go to YouTube and do a search on words like "HIMARS ammo explosion", you'll get well over a dozen hits, most representing recent attacks from Ukraine's new NATO high-precision rockets and artillery into Russian rear areas. The resulting detonations of ammunition depots can continue for hours, and in recent weeks, multiple strikes of this sort occur daily. It's difficult to think this isn't having an impact on the Russian campaign: if the assertion is that they've been firing tens of thousands of artillery rounds per day, how can they sustain this rate if some tens of thousands a day are going up in storage instead?

This question has other ramifications, but I'm less interested in how the war is progressing than I am in how this question is being handled by some of our most prestigious analysts, viz, those employed by the Institute for the Study of War. Yesterday I posted on cogent commentary from the UK that suggests that whole cadres of prestigious corporate "knowledge workers" are so pampered and coddled that they serve as little more than domestic pets in the economic scheme of things -- and as I reflected, I began to conclude that the US university system is actually set up to produce a steady supply of such people. But they don't just go to Linkedin or Twitter, they also go to think tanks like the ISW.

I've said here many times that rather than the ISW, the two consistently best sources I've found on the Russo-Ukraine war are Markos Moulitsas's columns in the leftist Daily Kos and the ongoing reddit /r Ukraine Conflict thread. Yet US media almost universally rely on the ISW. Let's look at the contrast. Here's a report from over the weekend at the Daily Kos:

The first phase of the Putin’s War ended when Russia was unable to maintain supply lines to forces besieging Kyiv. The second phase shifted predominantly to the eastern Donbas front, where logistics were suddenly less important.

Russia was able to take Kreminna, Rubizhne, Severodonetsk, and Lysychansk all within a few dozen kilometers of their main supply nodes—railheads. Note how the Izyum salient, with its longer supply lines, barely budged in three months. But to the east, not only could Russia avoid long, difficult lines of communication (supply), but they could literally send their tanks and artillery guns to nearby railheads to directly load up on ammo:

Russia is so incompetent with logistics, that they literally sent their heavy equipment to get their own supplies and ammo, rather than do what every other army in the world does—use far more efficient trucks. I can’t even imagine how many of these tanks and artillery guns broke down trying to get their own supplies. These vehicles aren’t [built] for long road trips.

But as stupid as that might’ve been pre-HIMARS (and other western long-range artillery), it’s now literally impossible. With Ukraine’s ability to reach out and touch anything within 85 kilometers of the front lines, Russia is in serious need of 1) new supply depots, well to their rear, and 2) more trucks to ferry supplies. And they better hurry, because their existing depots are going “boom!” every single night.

The report goes into considerable detail on the actual logistical challenges, and it concludes,

Thus, the war is entering a third phase. The Battle for the Donbas might be ongoing, but this is a new kind of war. Russia’s need to reach deeper into Ukrainian territory to contest the twin strongholds of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk will rekindle the same logistical challenges we saw early in the war. In fact, they’ll be much worse, because Russia will no longer be able to stockpile ammunition next to railheads for easy dispersion to the front.

Now let's look at this thread in the reddit Ukraine topic. It cites a paragraph in an unclassified US Army manual that covers strategy for defeating the Russians in a potential war, apparently dated some years before this war but after 2014:

The last major weakness of the Russian supply system is safety. Russian forward ammunition dumps are quite possibly the most unsafe places in any warzone. By doctrine, there are very little storage requirements, no minimum safe areas, little munitions segregation, and many of the munitions are still from the Soviet period or early 1990s and about to expire. Fuel depots are no better. Poorly trained conscript logistics soldiers, combined with these poor storage procedures make these supply depots a tinderbox ready to explode. Russia has suffered several catastrophic supply depot fires and explosions in the past 2 years of combat in Ukraine and Syria. Priority targeting of these areas will cause a serious logistics strain on the Russian system and impact their ability to use maneuver and fires.

Among other things, this adds credence to informal reports throughout the course of the war that the Americans have been running the show, based on both doctrine and intelligence. Every indication so far as been that this strategy has brought about the putative Russian "strategic pause", which is less a "pause" than a result of the US-originated Ukrainian strategy of blowing up their ammunition depots.

So what does the Institute for the Study of War have to say? This morning's report continues to argue with Ukrainian authorities:

Russian forces are in the midst of a theater-wide operational pause in Ukraine. This operational pause has been largely characterized by Russian troops regrouping to rest, refit, and reconstitute; heavy artillery fire in critical areas to set conditions for future ground advances; and limited probing attacks to identify Ukrainian weakness and structure appropriate tactical responses. As ISW has previously noted, an operational pause does not mean a complete cessation of hostilities, rather that ongoing hostilities are more preparative in nature.

They're continuing to respond, days later, to Luhansk regional head Serhiy Haidai's criticism that he hasn't seen any such "pause". I posted on this Saturday, and apparently the ISW still feels the sting. What puzzles me is that both published US military doctrine and serious reporting from a credible source suggests the "pause" is the effect of HIMARS and other NATO weapons on Russian rear areas, but the ISW won't hear of it.

I did a search on HIMARS on that page, and I found only three mentions at the bottom in the comtext of Russian milbloggers, of all things:

Russian milbloggers are increasingly criticizing Russian strategy and military leadership by seizing upon recent successful Ukrainian strikes against Russian rear areas. Russian milblogger Voennyi Osvedomitel’ underlined the threat posed by Western-provided high mobility artillery rocket system (HIMARS) and stated that HIMARS will complicate Russian logistics in a Telegram post on July 9.

Well, heck, do the milbloggers maybe have a point? The ISW won't say. As far as anyone who's seriously following the war thinks right now, it's probably entering a new phase that will look a lot more like the eventual withdrawal from around Kyiv, and the Russians' main task will be to overcome HIMARS and the other NATO weapons. The coming big Russian offensive will go the way of the 40-mile convoy.

I guess the main task of the ISW is to make sure they get the latest merch or something. Maybe they'll be having meetings on whether they need new coffee mugs.

The US is suffering from very serious intellectual deficiency -- not only is the ISW not up to the task, but the media whose job is to report on the war is also falling short by using them as an authoritative source. Remember, these people either have advanced Ivy degrees, or they're the proteges of people who have them. I would guess they're all basically just corporate domestic pets who've come from an expensive pet store.