OUR PICKSDealing with Disasters | The New ‘Kremlinology’ | Keeping Highly Enriched Uranium Safe, and more
· Juliette Kayyem on Dealing with Disasters
· Insights for Marine (and Beyond) Force Design from the Russo-Ukraine War
· The Office for Bombing Prevention Needs to Improve Its Management and Assessment of Capabilities to Counter Improvised Explosive Devices
· Midwestern Lawmakers Are Trying to Replace Russian Oil with Ethanol
· Food Delivery Leak Unmasks Russian Security Agents
· Project Sapphire: How to Keep 600 Tons of Kazakh Highly Enriched Uranium Safe
· Ransomware Attacks Straining Local US Governments and Public Services
· Cyber Actors Target US Election Officials with Invoice-Themed Phishing Campaign to Harvest Credentials
War in Ukraine
· What the New ‘Kremlinology’ Reveals about Putin’s Motives and Power
· The Ukrainian Military Has Defied Expectations. Here Is How U.S. Security Aid Contributed
· Why Democracies Win More Wars Than Autocracies
· How Democracies Can Respond to the Invasion of Ukraine
· Complicity in a War of Aggression: Private Individuals’ Criminal Responsibility
· How the West Got Russia’s Military So, So Wrong
Juliette Kayyem on Dealing with Disasters (Jen Patja Howell, Lawfare)
We live in a time of seemingly constant catastrophes, and we always seem a step behind and still fumble when they occur. It’s no longer about preventing disasters from occurring, but learning how to use the tools at our disposal to minimize the consequences when they inevitably do.
Juliette Kayyem has just written a book about it all called, “The Devil Never Sleeps: Learning to Live in an Age of Disasters.” Juliette is a lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a CNN national security analyst, and David Priess sat down with her to talk about it all. They talked about the traditional focus of the disaster framework; consequences minimalization; the paradox of preparedness; and a variety of disasters and what we can learn from them, ranging from the Y2K incident, to Super Bowl XLVII, to the shipping incident in the Suez Canal back in 2021. They talk a lot about how to recover from disasters, and how to deal with them in a way that stops the bleeding and keeps them from getting worse, even as they’re occurring.
Insights for Marine (and Beyond) Force Design from the Russo-Ukraine War (Noel Williams, War on the Rocks)
In attacking Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has provided concrete examples, at scale, of how technology is changing the character of war, and why legacy militaries will either evolve to meet these new challenges or face defeat. As the West reorients its defense policies and begins to increase investment in military forces, it is essential that we not simply default to buying still more of our legacy military systems. Real-world experiences, historians have noted, can offer important lessons for those willing to learn from the harsh realities of war. They are the waypoints that Michael Howard stressed when navigating an uncertain world. While it is too soon to reach any definitive lessons learned from the ongoing war in Ukraine, some immediate insights can inform ongoing U.S. and NATO military force design and defense investment priorities.
