Sublime

During the twenty years from 2001 to 2021, the US government spent between $6 and $8 trillion on invasions, surveillance, and efforts to shadowbox with elusive enemies. Brown University’s Costs of War project estimates that over three hundred thousand civilians may have died from war-related violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, and neighboring Pakistan,

Bin Laden was, in other words, an infrastructure guy. He was essentially running a mujahidin base in Pakistan. In 1988 he formed a small organization to direct the jihad. It was called, fittingly, al-Qaeda al-Askariya (“the…

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Douglas Waller’s account of U.S. SOF after the Cold War, The Commandos (Waller 1994),

Experts believe there are about 20,000 nuclear warheads in the world today60—down from a peak of 65,000 in the 1980s. A threat could theoretically come from any of the nine countries that possess nuclear weapons today—even the United States has lost track of eleven of its nuclear weapons throughout its history61—and other countries may be trying to

Another thing that was becoming important was the use of cyber and electronic devices for things like close target reconnaissance. Traditional special reconnaissance (SR) was becoming absurd. SR didn’t make sense anymore in an age of drones and advanced ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance]. But it could become close target reconnais

John K. Singlaub’s Hazardous Duty (Singlaub 1991).

Unconventional warfare – The use of proxy forces to foment rebellion against an enemy state. In the U.S. military, this is a primary mission of Special Forces

Special Warfare,