Yes, and his lectures/other interviews are much better than a discussion with lex Friedman, who I have come to loathe. Watch vids where he discusses his Stalin biography.
Yeah @Huehuecoyotl posted a link to a good New yorker Interview on Feb 17, it’s still pretty relevant.
The AFU generals are playing a dangerous game.
https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1635467148855238656?t=bvMfKuo-ADxTRfq77jSGbw&s=19
Read a similar article today where experts again disagreed with the strategy of holding out in Bakhmut at this time. They are throwing in their reserves there which were trained in the West. To what end? Selensky seems afraid that if Bakhmut falls the Russians might make bigger gains but the experts believe the Russians dont have the troops and material for a follow up offensive on a bigger scale.Then there are people who think if Bakhmut falls the next town will face a similar fate. Not sure how accurate the informations are that everyone has but it doesnt look promising. Peskow also reiterated that there wont be piece without accepting that annexed areas.
lol, they took a dump on a drone, based.
Michael Kofman just returned from Ukraine, including a visit to Bakhmut. He described it as a “punchbowl” and said that capturing it doesn’t make the next city much easier. It would just be another Bakhmut for Russia.
I think Bakmut is useful for Ukraine because it’s easier to deal with 10k Russians where Ukraine forces have some advantage than 10k forces on the advance or protecting essential territory.
It may be coming to an end but has seemingly had desirable effects on Russian forces, internal relations, and morale.
edit: This is a new podcast episode, out today, that I have yet to listen to. How to Think About Bakhmut and a Ukrainian Spring Offensive - War on the Rocks
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The Russian pilots telling their friends about it
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Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that the American drone flying “in the direction of the state border of the Russian Federation” and that fighter jets were sent to intercept it.
“As a result of sharp maneuvering, the U.S. drone went into uncontrolled flight with a loss of altitude and collided with the water surface,” said the Russian statement…
“The Russian fighters did not use airborne weapons, did not come into contact with the unmanned aerial vehicle and returned safely to their base airfield,” it added.
https://twitter.com/patlofswe/status/1635730303791636482?s=20
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Idk why the Russians would bother to lie. It must be just reflex.
“Immediately after the impact, the video footage cut out for several seconds. It is unclear what damage the Su-27 incurred, but it returned to base,” an Air Force official has told The War Zone , adding that they did not know which base the Russian aircraft had come from or returned to. “I’m sure the impact left a mark, though. A few inches further forward, and the Russian jet would have been severely damaged and probably destroyed.”
There are now unconfirmed reports of a Russian Su-27 landing at a base in Crimea with some degree of damage.
At a routine press briefing today, Pentagon Press Secretary U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said that efforts were being made to declassify imagery captured by the MQ-9 during the incident.
Feels like the Russians immediately taking the line that there was no contact and the drone fell out of the air is actually a good thing.
https://twitter.com/AricToler/status/1636064139922624512
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Hersh said he’d write more about Nord Stream this week. His substack submission today is not about this. 
Reading that article, it seems like the same stuff that open source guy linked earlier in this thread was talking about. One of the boats in question was in the exact area that Hersh specifies, but didn’t loiter long enough to satisfy how people seem to imagine how the operation might have gone down.
And of course that assumes that all of the publicly available data is correct. Would the CIA go to the effort of spoofing this data? Honestly based on the public reaction and level of interest in the topic, it seems like it’d be a waste of time for them to have done so.
“Sure the Norwegian minesweeper loitered over the explosion area for three days but how can we be sure it wasn’t five Russians renting a fifty foot sailboat for a long weekend? Guess we’ll never know!”
Not sure why I’m supposed to believe it’s easier for the CIA to spoof a bunch of public data than feeding one anonymous “source” to a guy eager to tell a tale.
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The range of possible narratives is enormous. Like maybe the CIA gave Hersh this story to discredit him and muddy the waters when the real story of how the CIA did it comes out. It’s fun and all but we’re not getting anywhere without more verifiable facts.
I mean that’s possible but Hersh’s story is only discredited in people’s imaginations. As Hersh says: this is so dumb, the boat was there. The people “debunking” Hersh with publicly available boat locations say the boat was there!
And again, Hersh points out that the CIA uses open source data as part of their cover stories. They’re planning for all this. Is this a conspiracy theory? Literally yes, there was a conspiracy to blow up the pipeline!
Hersh’s story can never be affirmatively discredited if the story is simply there was a ship in the vicinity of the area where there was an explosion. It can’t really be affirmed either