Joohn Choe
@joohnchoe.bsky.social
Consultant, researcher & "one man intelligence agency funded on Patreon, seriously?!" - John N. Tye. Cited in NYT, Washington Post, The Guardian, USAToday, Business Insider, NATO Hybrid COE. #NAFO Assistant (to the) Sanctions Manager
Oh thank goodness. I never quite bothered to research it up and put my finger on it but Thanedar gave me bad vibes from Day 1, supporting Modi confirmed it. A basic look, now, suggests that Thanedar had issues touching on interesting (and some, by design, legal) forms of foreign influence. 🧵
Let's get the breaking news out of the way first: BREAKING - Reuters reports the United States has expended "virtually all" of its ATACMS and Precision Strike Missiles against Iran. This is superficially a defense-nerd fun fact; it is, in reality, important. www.patreon.com/joohn/posts/... 1/6
There is, but it isn't what you'd think. I expected 1) run-ups in 10-year T-bond yield prior to ceasefire announcements and 2) securities market increases when ceasefires happen and drops when hostilities resume Neither are clearly true. 1/6
so I asked myself a stupid question, which is, "huh I wonder if the people who pay Russian air defense teams are covered by geographic or sectoral sanctions and if there's an SDN designation there" It turns out yes, they are very, very sanctioned and no, probably not :)
ChrisO_wiki@chriso-wiki.bsky.social · 6d ago1/ Russia's mobile fire teams (MOGs), which are the backbone of its defences against Ukrainian drones, are poorly paid and lack the benefits given to soldiers. Despite the dangers – MOGs have been attacked – their members do not get the benefits or pay that soldiers receive. ⬇️
Bottom line up front, lack of incentives for de-escalation and the ceiling on U.S. strategy of a bifurcated munitions shortage (interceptors and 'high-tier' PGMs) mean the modal probability outcome for the next 30 days is "calibrated attrition" by both the U.S. and Iran. In detail (🧵)
Calibrated attrition: where the Iran war is headed | Joohn Choe
The likeliest near-term outcome is the grinding middle state of calibrated attrition, above cessation and below March levels. Strikes have
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This is another instance where I called it on my Patreon, in this case, 2 months ago. The American military has burned through so many long-range precision munitions during the Iran war that it limits escalation against Iran and constrains deterrence globally. 🧵
Hot take: "Type shit" as a way to say "exactly", "yes", or "I agree" is really just a confusing Zoomer form of "amen".
"And this is why my ahistorical interpretation of a book I've never read is TOTALLY RIGHT, TAKE THAT LIBERALS"
I am not going to hand you a single grand unified theory of the case here - I don't know with enough confidence to say definitively. The temptation here is to reach for one explanation covering both reversals. That evidence isn't there. But I CAN say that some theories aren't there yet. 1/5
I'm oversimplifying here but really not by very much, and that farm bailout is only happening because of higher fuel & fertilizer costs because of - you guessed it - the Iran war. This is almost certainly the start of a lengthy back-and-forth between Republican House and Senate leadership - (1/3)
like a lot of you (especially in NAFO) I have seen way too many videos of the last moments of Russian soldiers' lives and I cannot recall any of them where higher testosterone would have saved them as opposed to better strategy, gear, fieldcraft and tactics or just not being there to begin with
The thing that a lot of people aren't getting about the presence of *Russian* election interference efforts in the documents that Trump released is that this is not about an effort to rebut the "Russian collusion!" narrative of 2018. It actually paradoxically *helps* support a new narrative. 1/6
Look, here's what's going on with with ̶E̶l̶b̶i̶d̶g̶e̶ ̶C̶o̶r̶b̶y̶ Elbridge Colby's somewhat baffling "middle powers strategy is dumb!" crashout today. The context you need here is F-35s, the Paris anti-ballistic-missile conference, but also, above all, Ukraine. 🧵
maybe the world expert on "middle powers" isn't the guy whom NAFO sent crying to the Commander in Chief of NATO in 2024 because he kept claiming that NAFO is funded by the U.S. government www.patreon.com/joohn/posts/...
The man who wrote the book on denial tried to kill the only denial strategy that ever worked | Joohn Choe
You really don’t have to reach very far to come up with a coherent and negative opinion of U.S. foreign policy - the only two words you need
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When video was released on late January of Alex Pretti kicking a car's taillight, everyone wanted to believe it was AI. There was reasonable argument on this, but there was also a lot of acrimony and vehemence that got leveled at people calling it 'real' or for that matter fake. 🧵
We were just here in mid-February when video of Alex Pretti kicking a headlight was released
It's great news, but Patriot licensing for Ukraine doesn't solve a lot of immediate problems. 1/4
As funny as it is to say something like: "well none of you wanted fact-checks before so why should we fact-check what's happening to you now," there is still the state of national discourse as a public commons which it is incumbent upon us all not to abuse, so here we go: 🧵
