Quotations

'Like the wheel, bronze, iron, the stirrup, gunpowder, guns, rifling, navigational instruments, airplanes, and submarines, the hypersonic missile is about to change warfighting dramatically, perhaps causing the demise of the Navy’s carrier fleet and its air wing—which is what America has used to project power since WWII. There’s no question that a surface fleet, especially carriers and planes, will still have vital functions to perform, but if it comes to war among major powers with thousands of hypersonic missiles ready to launch, then a pilot lifting off a carrier deck would look anachronistic, like something belonging in the 20th, not the 21st, century.

'We may long for the romantic and heroic days when acts of military derring-do were performed by Medal of Honor recipients, but it looks like the future belongs to the ugly, impersonal, and utilitarian high-tech hypersonic missile.'

Roger D. McGrath. This is from a very interesting short article about how military technology changes history by the military historian. The use of the stirrup, which the Saxons didn't have, enabled the Normans to conquer England.

‘If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you, but answer: “He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone”.’

Epictetus, quoted by Julie Burchill in the Spectator.

Boris Ryvkin

@BRyvkin

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Jun 5

If Putin didn’t exist to bring the residents of Kharkiv and Lviv as close together as they have become since last February, he’d have to be invented. Russia has “lost” Ukraine for generations — probably forever.

Hans Kundnani

@hanskundnani

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21h

The extraordinary thing about the recent rise of the AfD is that it is becoming more successful not while becoming more moderate like some other far-right parties in Europe, but more extreme.