timelets

timelets @ 2026-03-18T13:35:00

2026-03-18T20:47:39Z

Before the war with Iran, strategically minded people even within MAGA movement complained that the US is stretched too thin to confront China. In particular, they cited US commitments in Europe as a major drain on our military assets.

Now, after the Iran war, unless there's a dovish regime change, the US would have to extend its military umbrella over the Persian Gulf countries: SA, UAE, Qatar, etc. In short, the US will be stretched thinner than before. That would be the price we would end up paying for Netanyahu winning the next elections in Israel.

comments

TIL: Personal animosity matters

2026-01-26T01:53:36Z

In the early 2000s, Huawei survived Cisco's IP lawsuit because it partnered with 3Com, whose CEO Bruce Chaflin hated John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco.

“An alliance between 3Com and Huawei was attractive to both sides. Huawei would get the immediate legal protection of 3Com’s deep patent portfolio; 3Com would get Huawei’s lower production costs and its connections to the vast China market. Soon after the two announced their joint venture, called H3C, 3Com’s lawyers filed a motion to intervene in the Cisco case, calling 3Com an interested party.”

--- Eva Dou. “House of Huawei.”

Ultimately, both the 3Com alliance with Huawei and Cisco itself failed, while Huawei survived and prospered by copying technologies from the West and selling them to the rest of the world. But in the beginning, the Cisco lawsuit looked quite scary because it threatened Huawei's very existence.

“Ren told his trusted deputy, Guo Ping, who was now Huawei’s executive vice president, to get to the US as quickly as he could. Ren invoked the fable of ancient Chinese military general Han Xin*, who had accepted the humiliation of crawling between another man’s legs to prevent a deadly fight.”

* The fable of General Han Xin’s humiliation, known as "crawling between the legs" (胯下之辱), tells of a young, poor Han Xin being challenged by a bully in his hometown of Huaiyin to either kill him or crawl through his legs. Choosing to endure this shame rather than waste his life on a petty killing, Han Xin crawled through, later becoming a renowned military strategist and rewarding the man for testing his resolve.

comments

TIL: Coup d'œil

2022-04-05T06:30:21Z

It is mostly used (in English) in the military, where the coup d'œil refers to the ability to discern at one glance the tactical advantages and disadvantages of the terrain.

...

The phrase popularly[clarification needed] comes from Clausewitz in his tome On War:

When all is said and done, it really is the commander's coup d'œil, his ability to see things simply, to identify the whole business of war completely with himself, that is the essence of good generalship. Only if the mind works in this comprehensive fashion can it achieve the freedom it needs to dominate events and not be dominated by them.

Napoleon remarked upon it:

There is a gift of being able to see at a glance the possibilities offered by the terrain...One can call it the coup d'œil militaire and it is inborn in great generals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C5%93il

comments

timelets @ 2022-03-15T21:45:00

2022-03-16T04:51:52Z

( Read more... )
Is there a formal way to distinguish between checklists vs commandments? Checklists are more like probability distributions, while commandments are like laws, i.e. defined state transitions. Hard to say.

comments