"Why has the world’s mightiest military achieved so little even while absorbing very considerable losses and inflicting even greater damage on the subjects of America’s supposed beneficence?" This is the question asked by Professor Andrew Bacevich, a retired US Army...
For the third time in seven months, the US has sent a warship to challenge China in territorial waters it claims in the South China Sea. The US claims its purpose is to keep shipping lanes open, while China arguably benefits as much as anyone from trade going in and...
Twitter claims it does not want intelligence agencies using a Tweet-mining service for surveillance purposes. The company recently restated its “longstanding” policy of preventing a company called Dataminr from selling information to intelligence agencies...
The recently-released Pentagon report on the US bombing of a Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan last October was heavily redacted, but it still revealed a great deal about the ongoing disaster of the longest war in US history. US troops complain...
If at where you work you spent $759 million on something, and then told your boss you have no idea if anything was accomplished, and that the little data you do have is probably fraudulent, how might that work out for you?If you are the U.S. government in Afghanistan,...
Thomas Jefferson said that an informed citizenry is critical to a democracy, and with that as a cornerstone the Founders wrote freedom of the press into the First Amendment to the Constitution.The most basic of ideas at play is that the government should in no way be...
I have seen Steven Spielberg’s 2002 film Minority Reportmentioned in the writings of a few different people, so when the opportunity presented itself to me recently, I decided to find out why it is still being talked about 14 years after its release. Not being much...
Rep Duncan Hunter (R-CA) recently proposed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that – somewhat surprisingly – passed the House Armed Services Committee. If approved, the amendment would require women to register for the Selective...
It is terrifying even in the quiet moments; it is most terrifying in the quietest moments.National Bird, a new documentary by filmmaker Sonia Kennebeck, co-produced with Errol Morris and Wim Wenders, is a deep, multilayered, look into America’s drone wars, a...
As President Obama prepares to hand over the White House to a successor that will almost certainly be even worse on most issues, it is important that this doesn't cloud our judgment of his presidency. Compared to the likely replacements, he could seem like a...
