'Maybe You're Autistic, Too?'
The Doha Agreement Still Sucks
There are moments in life where a simple conversation changes everything.
A few weeks ago, my wife and I were talking about our beautiful daughter. As long-time readers know, our little girl was diagnosed with autism a year or so ago. Over the past six months, I’ve really connected with her because I’m more present. During that time, I’ve learned that she has a bazooka for a brain. It’s powerful but complicated. It helps her see around corners, but it also comes with supercharged anxiety. I can relate to all these things.
Charity and I’s conversation centered around the similarities between me and my daughter: her anger when she can’t communicate properly, her ability to read vast amounts of information and regurgitate it at the drop of a hat, and her tendency to sit back and observe before engaging.
As we walked around our house, the lovely Charity stopped halfway up our staircase, turned, and said, “Maybe you’re autistic, too?”’
That one casual comment changed my life forever.
It’s funny. I like to bill myself as a studious analyst who can combine disparate pieces of information into something coherent. However, never before—not once—had I even considered that question.
And holy shit, did it scare the shit out of me.
The lovely Charity spent years in this field and knows these things far better than me. But until that moment in my life, nobody had ever asked me that question.
First, I was angry at the lovely Charity for broaching it! It knocked me down that hard. I must admit I walked around in a complete and total haze for at least a day or so.
What the hell does it mean if I’m autistic? I panicked.
Then, finally, after a few days, I started to accept it. I don’t know if I’m autistic. Could be. I’m probably on the spectrum. It would certainly explain a lot of my idiosyncrasies.
Whatever I am, if my daughter is the same way, then that’s fine with me. It’s funny; I’m a big, tough (not really) veteran, and I was scared to have the same label as my own flesh and blood. Luckily, I finally stopped being so selfish and realized that by having such connections with my daughter, I could help her even more.
I have a lot of labels: Father, Husband, Combat Veteran, Son, Afghan ally, Writer, and, of course, Aggie. However, I’m proud to share such a label along with my daughter, whether it’s neurodivergent or autistic. I’ll proudly share it with my beautiful little girl.
Daddy is with her through her journey. Hell, she’ll probably be the one who leads me through it.
The Doha Agreement Still Sucks
On tomorrow’s episode of Tales of the Afghan Security Forces, Naqib Mirzada will discuss General Surab Azimi and what the Doha agreement did to the Afghan Security Forces.
The Future of War
This is a really interesting article in the Washington Post by Alexander Karp and Nicholas Zamiska from Palantir Technologies. I used Palantir technology in the field, and it was rather idiot-proof because I was able to use it rather quickly. They argue that AI might surpass atomic weapons in the not-too-distant future.
The atomic age and the Cold War essentially cemented for decades a calculus among the great powers that made true escalation, not skirmishes and tests of strength at the margins of regional conflicts, exceedingly unattractive and potentially costly. Steven Pinker has argued a broader “decline of violence may be the most significant and least appreciated development in the history of our species.”
It would be unreasonable to assign all or even most of the credit for this to a single weapon. Any number of other developments since the end of World War II, including the proliferation of democratic forms of government across the planet and a level of interconnected economic activity that once was unthinkable, are part of the story.
The great-powers calculus that has helped prevent another world war might also change quickly. But the supremacy of U.S. military power has undoubtedly helped guard the peace, fragile as it might be. A commitment to maintaining such supremacy, however, has become increasingly unfashionable in the West. And deterrence, as a doctrine, is at risk of losing its moral appeal.
Artificial intelligence is changing the way we fight wars. Unfortunately, some of our sharpest companies do not want to work with the US military. Womp. Womp.
In 2018, about 4,000 employees at Google wrote a letter to Sundar Pichai, the chief executive, asking him to abandon a software effort, known as Project Maven, for the U.S. Special Forces that was being used for surveillance and mission planning in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The employees demanded that Google never “build warfare technology,” arguing that assisting soldiers in planning targeting operations and “potentially lethal outcomes” was “not acceptable.”
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We do not advocate a thin and shallow patriotism — a substitute for thought and genuine reflection about the merits of our nation as well as its flaws. We only want America’s technology industry to keep in mind an important question — which is not whether a new generation of autonomous weapons incorporating AI will be built. It is who will build them and for what purpose.
If we fall behind in the AI arms race, I guarantee you that Russia and China will exploit our weaknesses, further harming a wobbly liberal international order.
Every time I read something of yours, I learn something new. Sometimes I don’t like it- but sometimes I am so very impressed. I’m really glad I subscribed. You hang in there- you’re doing good things, and reaching people who need your kind of educational skills.
One thing is for sure--you are indeed a great Dad. We are all a little on the spectrum and have something to heal. All of us. Yours is more related to combat traumas and moral injuries..Not that labels are even important or matter... better to think in terms of needs ...and those are for closing the gaps and more useful to chart a plan.