Thread by @PatrickJBlum

Admiral: "We need to replace our fleet with three more carrier strike groups and fifteen guided missile destroyers."

Palmer: "No, we need to replace it in the aggregate."

Admiral: "The what?"

Palmer: "One carrier is a target. A thousand autonomous vessels are a nightmare."

Admiral: "They're untested. The maintenance alone..."

Palmer: "Analyst, why do you like them?"

Analyst: "Because they survive first contact, sir."

Palmer: "Exactly. Instead of building another $13B target, we could build presence and lethality across thousands of platforms."

Admiral: "We still need carriers to—"

Palmer: "To what? To tell the Chinese exactly where our forces are? The aggregate forces them to solve an impossible math problem. Every rock in the First Island Chain could be hiding a kamikaze boat. Every wave could hide an unmanned sub."

Admiral: "You want to replace the most powerful vessels ever built with a swarm of expendable toys?"

Palmer: "I want to stop thinking like it's 1986. Look, the phones in our pockets have more computing power than the entire U.S. fleet had during Desert Storm. But we're still building ships like computing never happened. We're not in an arms race anymore - we're in a complexity race. And you don't win that with bigger ships. You win it in the aggregate."

@RobMcNealy (i'm joking)