Sublime

Le premier risque des démocraties reste toutefois, comme l’avait prédit Tocqueville, leur décomposition intérieure sous la pression de l’individualisme, de la corruption de l’information, de la démagogie, de la fascination devant les hommes forts et la violence.

Les terroristes sont maîtres dans l’art de manipuler les esprits. Ils tuent très peu, mais n’en réussissent pas moins à terrifier des milliards de gens et font trembler d’immenses appareils politiques tels que l’Union européenne ou les États-Unis.

I address the decision of the United States to label the Eastern Turkestan Islamic Movement a terrorist organization in August zooz, and Beijing's politically adroit use of this identification to argue that Uyghur separatist organizations were part of a global terrorist network.

Another superb study of a special operation gone wrong is Mark G. Davis’s “Operation Anaconda: Command and Confusion in Joint Warfare” (Davis 2004).

Stark Draper, who runs the big missile lab at M.I.T. and who invented inertial guidance and so on, says publicly, and he’s told me privately, that he doesn’t see any purpose in security classifications—because he says the only effect is to prevent American scientists from communicating adequately.

Ending or eliminating terrorism is often articulated by governments as an objective but is impossible to do. It is not only that identifying and arresting or killing known terrorists can be difficult but also that preventing the emergence of new terrorists is impossible. There will always be individuals who are dissatisfied with the status quo and

‘Security’ takes many forms. There is the security of knowing one has a statistically smaller chance of getting shot with an arrow. And then there’s the security of knowing that there are people in the world who will care deeply if one is.