48 Comments

Another excellent post. Thank you. This is exactly the kind of understanding I _don't_ get from the New York Times or The Washington Post.

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Gratifying to see sanctions work so quickly

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Meanwhile on the battlefield some Russian tankers found a unique for their vehicle: they ran down and killed their colonel. Others are selling their tanks to the Ukrainians for $10,000 and a hot meal. In fact, Ukraine now has more tanks in inventory than it did at the start of the war.

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Mar 26, 2022·edited Mar 26, 2022

I was in an armored rifle battalion at Fort Knox in 1961. Thomas Merton in one of his journals said he could hear the tank cannons from there at the Trappist monastery at Gethsemani. More Russian tanks now will be as silent as the Trappists. Fascinating and welcome column. Thanks again.

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Highly illuminating post. My fear is that Putin, in desperation, will think his only option is chemical, biological or nuclear for which the chip shortage might not be as debilitating. How do we prevent this? MAD may not work to deter a megalomaniac. Because the Russian people are being blocked from the news, there is very little resistance to Putin’s war. what think our military (Combat) minds. My army time was in the medical corps so lm not useful at this time

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For want of a shoe...

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Fascinating. I hope that this spreads to other industries.

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Great article again:

Evidence that Russia might have decided to seize as much as the Donbass region and Mariupol to link with Crimea and then hit Kyiv with enough rockets to make reconstruction a long and expensive project. Putin can claim victory and extort the west to release civilians taken to Russia. The west will have to rebuild Ukraine and fortify the place. Microchips are not needed for mercenaries throwing dynamite or other explosives at buildings in the night. The real lesson here is Russia getting lost in twisted fantasy about Eurasia Civilization or simple want to be the next hegemon. The west must have the courage to sustain sanctions until Putin is gone.

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founding

And Vladimir Putin is as clueless about this as Donald Trump.

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What a great column, and yet another one that nobody else could write.

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Running over a colonel with an armoured vehicle,boy that's a telling story.

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Really encouraging! So wonderfully told that I stayed engaged through the whole thing. Normally, I would drift into mentally “cleaning my wallet” at the mention of computer chips! The breadth and depth of your knowledge is remarkable. Thank you ever so for giving me some hope that Putin might, just might, have reached his zenith. Finger’s crossed!

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founding

This drip drip drip of deterioration is dripping faster now. And the guys on Russia TV yesterday had an existential meltdown of balled up rage with video of Mariupol with fire and black smoke hell boiling into the sky and some of them saying it's now out of hand and it will take 30 to 40 years to win. Looks like that dream came out of a pipe too. Wonder how Putin controls his message now. Instant, irrefutable news from the war is harder to spin now.

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Mar 26, 2022·edited Mar 26, 2022

Good stuff! This raises several questions in my mind (as a reader of military history) --

1) Is there a lesson in this that any country planning to undertake a major war better have a completely self-sustaining armaments industry first? Being dependent on critical resupply from a source that can be easily cut off seems to be a significant strategic mistake.

2) Would less "state of the art" tanks and weapons systems have been MORE useful in a war like this for the Russians? (or anyone else) Seems like these modern tanks just have more things that can go wrong and take the tank out of commission once the shooting starts. One needs to ask, if only as devil's advocate, "Are simpler, cheaper weapons more effective in the long run and in battle situations than ultra-deluxe hi-tech weapons? Weighing all the modifiers?"

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founding

Very soon, all that ice is going to start to melt, and what hasn’t been damaged, or seized by the Ukrainians is gonna start to sink in the mud. Fubar…..truly Fubar.

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What about their air force? Are not the extremely sophisticated jets they are using to rain terror on Ukrainians are also run largely by computer chips? How much longer can they go without chip replacements?

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