Happy Birthday Army

I’m traveling this week and didn’t have as much time for a longer article. I wanted to give a quick highlight of the news from a defense perspective.

The Army Birthday

14 June 1776, the Second Continental Congress authorized the creation of the Continental Army. Fast forward to yesterday and you get the parade. The parade was dumb. It was a waste of money and time and ensured at least a portion of Army dads would miss Father’s Day with their kids. At least it was brought to us by Coinbase.

Israel and Iran

In actual important news, Israel attacked Iran over their nuclear program. Iran retaliated. Everyone has an opinion about the situation, including the nice older man I met at breakfast this morning. He proceeded to tell me that “most of the people in Iran hate the government, that’s why Israel is able to do all these strikes.”

Well then, easy peasy. Except, just because a group dislikes their current government does not mean they love getting bombed just to destroy them. In fact, if the goal was to weaken the Iranian regime, saying things like, “If Khamenei continues to fire missiles at the Israeli home front, Tehran will burn,” could be counterproductive since it sounds like “if you target our civilians, we will target yours.” There is a solid argument that the Iran-Iraq War, coming on the heels of the Revolution, allowed Ruhollah Khomeini to destroy competing factions and cement the Vali-e-Faqih.

This also offers an interesting look at U.S. foreign policy and messaging. We have seeen the administration claim they knew nothing, they knew everything, and then today Sen. Cotton implied (very heavily) that Israel attacked Iran because Iran allowed President Trump’s “deal deadline” to pass. So, I’m not sure where the U.S. stands, maybe that is the point.

Big tech executives join the national guard

Six executives from Palantir, Meta, and other tech companies are joining the Army National Guard. They will join Detachment 201. This is a continuation of a number of programs the U.S. Army ran between WWI and WWII to confront the rate of technological change. The Army Services Forces and the Affiliated Plan attempted to bring subject matter experts into the services to guide military modernization. Many of these experts were in material sciences, medical fields, and technology.

A distinction between Detachment 201 and the past is one of scale: rather than six prime defense contractors (which Meta is not, though it does subcontract), historic programs saw 104,000 civilians enter the Army in 1942 alone. If the program grows and brings in experts from across industry and academia, it could be the type of catalyst the Army (and DOD) needs in some modernization efforts. As it stands now, there are questions about the motivations of this cadre of advisors, as some are executives of publicly traded companies vying for defense contracts.

Thanks for reading. Once I am settled I will have some more longer form articles out.