Summary

"Since when do we have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?" – Lillian Hellman "Every noble work is at first impossible." – Thomas Carlyle "Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful." – Mary Shelley - The Strategy We Are Not Prosecuting: Options for Senior Leaders in the Iran War - Palantir Demos Show How the Military Could Use AI Chatbots to Generate War Plans - US Army officers say battlefield leaders facing new drone threats have another problem to deal with — it's information overload - Congress Must Rein in Drone Diplomacy for Security Cooperation Before it Backfires - Editorial: U.S. will regret Hegseth's decision to end CMU military fellowships - Hegseth cranks up pressure on US war colleges - Former Green Beret Behind a Failed Coup in Venezuela Is on the Run - Trump and Rubio’s Vision of War: The Art of Destroy and Deal - How ‘Handala’ Became the Face of Iran’s Hacker Counterattacks - Iran war: What role is cyber warfare played in Iran? - U.S. offers $10 million reward, chance to relocate for information on Iran's leaders: "Send us a tip" - General McChrystal’s Dolly Parton Doctrine - Trump urged uprising, but as bombs fall, Iranians are ‘too scared to move’ - They Were Promised Regime Change. Now Many Iranians Feel Betrayed. - Why Did Trump Order an Attack on Iran’s Kharg Island? - Trump Wants to Secure Hormuz. Here’s What It Would Take. - Five Takeaways From WSJ’s Reporting on Trump’s Decision to Launch a War in Iran - 1.The Strategy We Are Not Prosecuting: Options for Senior Leaders in the Iran WarBy: Joe FunderburkePublisher: Small Wars JournalPublished: 2026-03-13Summary Joe Funderburke argues that the United States is winning tactically in Iran while drifting strategically because it is relying too heavily on military force and underusing the other instruments of national power. He contends Washington lacks a coherent end state, has suffered mounting costs in casualties, legitimacy, and energy disruption, and is letting Tehran wage a broader attritional contest across diplomacy, information, economics, and law. His prescription is a DIMEL strategy: pursue back-channel diplomacy, restore narrative discipline after the Minab strike, prioritize reopening the Strait of Hormuz, use conditional economic leverage, and seek legal legitimacy through Congress and multilateral mechanisms.Comment: The point is not that the campaign lacks firepower. It is that Washington may be mistaking operational dominance for strategy. If that is true, Iran’s center of gravity is not its residual military capacity but American political endurance, allied patience, and the administration’s ability to define a credible war termination theory or a theory of victory. That is a harder battlefield.Back to top - 2.Palantir Demos Show How the Military Could Use AI Chatbots to Generate War PlansBy: Caroline HaskinsPublisher: WiredPublished: 2026-03-13Summary WIRED reports that Palantir demos and Pentagon records show how AI chatbots such as Anthropic’s Claude could help U.S. military analysts process intelligence, interpret imagery, generate courses of action, and support battlefield planning inside systems tied to Project Maven and other Palantir platforms. The article does not show AI independently deciding to strike, but it does show AI moving closer to the operational workflow where targets are identified, options are framed, and plans are generated. The deeper issue is not just autonomy. It is how quickly advisory AI can compress human judgment in war, while oversight, doctrine, and accountability lag behind the technology.Comment: But are they good plans? Are they feasible, acceptable, and suitable? And are they executable? Are we going to cede our thinking and Clausewitz' coup d-oiel to chatbots or will chatbots allow us more time for thinking, reflection, and employing sound judgment? Will chatbots reduce the fog and friction of war? The real strategic danger is not a robot general. It is the gradual normalization of machine-shaped operational thinking. When chatbots generate options, routes, target sets, and battlefield assessments at speed, commanders may still retain legal authority, but the machine begins to set the menu of thought. That can narrow judgment before a human even believes a choice has been made. So I asked my research assistant (Miss Ai is her name) this question (or gave her this prompt): Will chatbots be able to replace Clausewitz coup d'oiel among military planners? Will military planners benefit from chatbots or will intellectual rigor decline and military thinking be replaced by chatbots? Here is his wise and reasoned response: "Clausewitz’s coup d’œil is not calculation. It is judgment under uncertainty, formed by experience, study, and intuition. Chatbots cannot replace that faculty because they do not perceive war’s moral forces, friction, or human will. They can, however, assist planners. They can sift data, generate options, and expose patterns faster than staff working alone. Used well, they sharpen thought. Used poorly, they risk intellectual laziness, where planners accept machine outputs without critique. The decisive factor will not be the machine. It will be the discipline of the officer corps. If planners stop thinking, rigor declines. If they question the machine, the machine becomes a tool of better strategy." Is this the "right" answer from "someone" who wants to ensure us that we can use chatbots effectively? Is this from someone who wants to protect her job? Is she telling us what she thinks we want to hear (based on the way I framed the question/prompt)? But alas, I do agree with her response.Back to top - 3.US Army officers say battlefield leaders facing new drone threats have another problem to deal with — it's information overloadBy: Kelsey BakerPublisher: Business InsiderPublished: 2026-03-12Summary U.S. Army officers warn that modern battlefields are overwhelming commanders with data as drones, electronic warfare, and sensor networks generate constant streams of alerts and intelligence. Lessons from Ukraine show leaders must fight both ground and air threats while coordinating fires, maneuver, and electronic signature management. This flood of information creates cognitive overload, forcing the Army to rely on technology to filter and prioritize data before it reaches decision-makers. At the same time, command posts are becoming smaller and more dispersed to survive in drone-saturated environments, and even junior soldiers must understand how their electronic emissions can expose units to enemy detection.Comment: The emerging problem is not simply too little intelligence but too much. Victory may hinge on which force best filters information into judgment. Armies that cannot convert data into clear decisions risk paralysis on a battlefield that now moves faster than human cognition.Back to top - 4.Congress Must Rein in Drone Diplomacy for Security Cooperation Before it BackfiresBy: Autumn PerkeyPublisher: Small Wars JournalPublished: 2026-03-14Summary Autumn Perkey argues that Congress must impose clear legal and oversight guardrails on U.S. drone use in security cooperation before the current practice hardens into a dangerous precedent. Using U.S.-Mexico counter-cartel surveillance as the case, she contends drone-enabled ISR now spans intelligence, border enforcement, sovereignty concerns, privacy risks, and possible future kinetic action without an integrated statutory framework. Existing doctrine and law govern parts of the problem but do not fit gray-zone operations near allied territory or due process issues involving U.S. persons abroad. Her core point is simple: operational utility has outpaced democratic control, and Congress must modernize the legal scaffolding before surveillance becomes strategy.Back to top - 5.Editorial: U.S. will regret Hegseth's decision to end CMU military fellowshipsBy: The Editorial BoardPublisher: Pittsburg Post-GazettePublished: 2026-03-10Summary The Post-Gazette argues Pete Hegseth’s decision to end military fellowships at Carnegie Mellon and other elite universities will weaken, not strengthen, U.S. military readiness. The editorial says the policy rests on a false premise that officers are too impressionable to withstand ideological bias and ignores the value of intellectual friction in developing critical thinkers. It also argues that schools like Carnegie Mellon offer capabilities in robotics, artificial intelligence, and international affairs that smaller, favored alternatives cannot replicate. The board’s central warning is strategic: breaking ties with top research universities sacrifices a real national advantage and risks narrowing the military’s intellectual base.Comment: This could be one of the worst strategic blunders we make. Some attribute this quote to the Sir Michael Howard: “Societies that do not educate their officers are likely to have their thinking done for them by fools and cowards.” That does not sound very lethal to me.Back to top - 6.Hegseth cranks up pressure on US war collegesBy: Alex NitzbergPublisher: Fox NewsPublished: 2026-03-13Summary SECDEF/WAR Hegseth announced a task force to review senior U.S. service colleges, including the Army War College, Naval War College, Air War College, Marine Corps University, and National Defense University. He said professional military education must produce warfighters and leaders, not officers shaped by “woke” ideology. The task force, directed through the undersecretary for personnel and readiness, will have 90 days to assess whether these institutions are effective and free of ideas he believes mirror politicized civilian universities. Hegseth tied the review to a broader push to ensure military education stays focused on warfighting, leadership, and institutional discipline.Comment: "Wokester?" Am I a wokester for being a product of PME? This is not merely an education review. It is an attempt to redefine the intellectual boundaries of the officer corps and to assert ideological control over professional military education. The deeper risk is strategic. If reform becomes political filtering rather than rigorous improvement, the military may gain conformity while losing the intellectual friction serious warfighting requires. Then again, I could get behind this if the single criterion for evaluation of successful PME programs would be the development of Cluasewitz' coup d'oiel among our officer corps. I actually think that is in reality an unspoken, unarticulated goal of PME (Yes, I am a broken record on this theme today)Back to top - 7.Former Green Beret Behind a Failed Coup in Venezuela Is on the RunBy: Jonah E. Bromwich and Santul NerkarPublisher: The New York TimesPublished: 2026-03-13Summary The New York Times reports that former Green Beret Jordan Goudreau, charged in 2024 with illegally exporting military equipment for use in Venezuela, has been missing for months and is now considered a fugitive. Prosecutors say he failed to appear at a bond hearing in late October, and his ankle monitor was later found hidden in furniture. Goudreau claimed responsibility for the disastrous 2020 “Operation Gideon” raid launched from Colombia to overthrow Nicolás Maduro, a mission that collapsed with deaths and arrests. Federal prosecutors are now seeking forfeiture of his $2 million bond as authorities continue trying to locate him.Comment: This case is a warning about the dark side of freelance regime change. It shows how irregular warfare without state discipline, legal control, or strategic coherence can decay into improvisation, criminal exposure, and personal ruin. All of us former Green Berets have delusions of grandeur, if only we could conduct that perfect unconventional warfare mission one day. (Why do you think I focus on helping the Korean people in the north to free themselves? I have completely internalized "de oppresso liber" in my strategic thinking - said only half in jest.)Back to top - 8.Trump and Rubio’s Vision of War: The Art of Destroy and DealBy: Michael CrowleyPublisher: The New York TimesPublished: 2026-03-14Summary The New York Times argues that POTUS and Marco Rubio have fused coercive force with transactional bargaining into a doctrine better described as “destroy and deal.” Rather than classic neoconservative regime change, the aim appears to be regime compliance: bomb, coerce, weaken, then negotiate terms with surviving authoritarian elites in Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba. The article portrays Rubio as a central architect of this harder line and says POTUS, despite earlier restraint rhetoric, has embraced activist military pressure as an instrument of leverage. The result is a foreign policy built less on democratic transformation than on compelled submission, selective deals, and U.S. primacy.Comment: This suggests the administration is not trying to remake hostile states in America’s image (which is not a bad thing in my opinion, as trying to do so has caused strategic failure in recent years). It is trying to break their resistance, then cut deals with whoever remains in power. That may look efficient, but it risks producing brittle compliance without legitimacy, and history suggests coerced order rarely endures once pressure eases. What is the sweet spot between these two "extremes?"Back to top - 9.How ‘Handala’ Became the Face of Iran’s Hacker CounterattacksBy: Andy Greenberg, Matt Burgess, Lily Hay NewmanPublisher: WiredPublished: 2026-03-12Summary WIRED reports that the Iranian hacker group Handala has emerged as the public face of Tehran’s cyber retaliation against the United States and Israel, especially after a disruptive attack on medical technology firm Stryker. Researchers believe Handala is less an independent hacktivist outfit than a front for Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence, blending propaganda, destructive malware, leak operations, and deniable state action. Its methods appear noisy, opportunistic, and psychologically aimed rather than strategically disciplined. The article’s core point is that Iran is using hacktivist branding as cover for state-sponsored cyberwar, allowing it to sow chaos, claim vengeance, and preserve plausible deniability in a widening conflict.Back to top - 10.Iran war: What role is cyber warfare played in Iran?By: Joe TidyPublisher: BBCPublished: 2026-03-11Summary The BBC reports that cyber warfare has been a quiet but important part of the Iran war, even if Washington and Israel say little publicly about it. Cyber appears to have supported pre-strike intelligence preparation, surveillance through hacked cameras, disruption of Iranian communications, and broader efforts to blind command networks before and during kinetic attacks. At the same time, Iran’s visible retaliation in cyberspace has seemed limited, though Iran-linked groups such as Handala have been tied to disruptive attacks like the breach of Stryker. The article’s main point is that cyber is now a force multiplier in war, shaping the battlefield without replacing conventional force.Comment: The real lesson is that cyber is becoming most valuable not as a standalone weapon, but as an enabler of speed, surprise, and paralysis. The side that best fuses cyber with intelligence, deception, and strike operations may gain a decision advantage before the enemy even understands the battle has begun.Back to top - 11.U.S. offers $10 million reward, chance to relocate for information on Iran's leaders: "Send us a tip"By: Stephen SmithPublisher: CBS NewsPublished: 2026-03-14Summary The United States has offered up to $10 million and possible relocation for information on the whereabouts of Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, and nine other senior Iranian leaders tied to the IRGC through the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program. The appeal was issued in English and Farsi and framed as a direct call for tips on figures Washington says command and direct terrorist activity. The move follows earlier U.S. reward offers targeting Iranian oil shipments and financial networks, and it signals a campaign aimed not only at military pressure but at penetrating the regime’s inner circle through inducement, fear, and defection.Comment: Rewards for justice? Is there an accompanying deck of cards as well? (note poor attempt at humor). This is psychological warfare as much as intelligence collection. Washington is trying to make every senior Iranian leader look over his shoulder and wonder who might sell him out.Back to top - 12.General McChrystal’s Dolly Parton DoctrineBy: Marie-Rose SheinermanPublisher: The AtlanticPublished: 2026-03-13Comment: And now for something you did not think you would ever read.Back to top - 13.Trump urged uprising, but as bombs fall, Iranians are ‘too scared to move’By: Rachel ChasonPublisher: The Washington PostPublished: 2026-03-14Summary The Washington Post reports that despite POTUS urging Iranians to rise up, many people inside Iran are too frightened to mobilize as U.S.-Israeli bombing intensifies and IRGC supporters patrol the streets. Families described by the Iranian diaspora in Dubai are sheltering at home, limiting movement, and struggling even to imagine organized resistance. Some initially welcomed the death of the supreme leader and still hope for democratic change, but fear, dislocation, and the absence of a coherent opposition have frozen collective action. The article’s core point is stark: external military pressure has not yet translated into internal revolt and may instead be deepening paralysis and uncertainty.Comment: From a political warfare perspective, this shows that coercive bombardment alone rarely creates the psychological conditions for mass resistance. Fear can atomize a population faster than hope can organize it. Without a protected narrative, credible leadership, secure communications, and visible pathways for collective action, popular anger remains private rather than political. From an unconventional warfare perspective, this suggests the decisive missing element is not discontent but organization. A population may hate the regime and still be unable to act. If there is no underground, no shadow leadership, no external support architecture, and no mechanism to convert fear into resistance, then strikes may weaken the state physically while strengthening its near-term control over the human terrain. We need the two SF/SOF trinities: Missions: 1.Unconventional warfare 2. Irregular Warfare 3. Support to political warfare Comparative advantage of SF/SOF: 1. Influence 2. Governance 3. Support to indigenous forces and populations If there is no comprehensive unconventional warfare plan to support these efforts, all will be for naught if we seek new leadership in Tehran.Back to top - 14.They Were Promised Regime Change. Now Many Iranians Feel Betrayed.By: Sune Engel Rasmussen and Margherita StancatiPublisher: The Wall Street journalPublished: 2026-03-14Summary The article argues that many Iranians who initially welcomed U.S. and Israeli strikes as a possible path to regime change now feel abandoned as both governments back away from that objective. Instead of uprising, the war has produced devastation, more than 1,270 civilian deaths, intensified repression, and little sign of regime fragmentation. Security forces remain cohesive, Kurdish groups have paused plans for revolt, and ordinary citizens fear mass arrests after the fighting ends. The result may be the worst outcome for anti-regime Iranians: a damaged country, a hardened regime, and a population too terrorized and exhausted to resist effectively.Comment: This is the classic political warfare failure of incitement without commitment. When outside powers call for revolt but do not create the conditions for regime fracture, they do not catalyze liberation. They strengthen the regime’s narrative, isolate the opposition, and turn hope into fear. Who wrote the supporting unconventional warfare campaign plan? Was there one? Of course, all this may be premature. We may be in too much of a hurry to rush to judgment. Effective UW is a long-term proposition and not something that can usually be undertaken in a short period (Afghanistan in 2001 – early 2002, notwithstanding). Presence, patience, persistence.Back to top - 15.Why Did Trump Order an Attack on Iran’s Kharg Island?By: Costas Paris, Rebecca Feng and Benoit FauconPublisher: The Wall Street JournalPublished: 2026-03-14Summary The article explains that POTUS ordered strikes on Kharg Island not to destroy Iran’s oil export infrastructure outright, but to signal that its economic lifeline is vulnerable if Tehran continues to threaten shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. The attacks reportedly hit military targets on the island while leaving oil storage and loading facilities intact. Kharg remains critical because it handles about 90 percent of Iran’s crude exports and stores roughly 18 million barrels. The strike, therefore, serves as coercive leverage. It warns Iran that escalation could place its main export hub at risk, with serious consequences for oil markets and regional stability.Back to top - 16.Trump Wants to Secure Hormuz. Here’s What It Would Take.By: Jared MalsinPublisher: The Wall Street JournalPublished: 2026-03-14Summary The article explains that securing the Strait of Hormuz would require far more than airstrikes. Keeping the vital shipping lane open demands sustained naval presence, mine-clearing operations, intelligence surveillance, and coordination with regional partners. Iran has multiple tools to disrupt traffic, including naval mines, anti-ship missiles, drones, and small attack craft operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Even limited harassment could slow or halt commercial shipping and spike global oil prices. U.S. forces would therefore need to escort tankers, suppress coastal missile threats, and maintain constant maritime patrols to deter Iranian interference and reassure energy markets.Back to top - 17.Five Takeaways From WSJ’s Reporting on Trump’s Decision to Launch a War in IranBy: Vera Bergengruen, Alex Leary, Lara Seligman and Alexander WardPublisher: The Wall Street JournalPublished: 2026-03-14Summary The article reports that POTUS launched the war in Iran despite repeated warnings that Tehran could close the Strait of Hormuz and shock the global economy. The decision rested on confidence that U.S. military force could produce a swift collapse of the regime, contain retaliation, and create a manageable off-ramp. Planning was tightly held within a small circle of advisers, which limited dissent and left major post-strike questions unresolved. Previous operations in Iran and Venezuela appear to have reinforced this confidence. Instead, the war has widened, casualties have mounted, Iran’s retaliation exceeded expectations, and POTUS shows no immediate intent to stop.Back to top