Staff writer, @TheAtlantic. Lecturer, @Yale political science. Formerly: @newrepublic, @DeutschePostDHL
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Mar 19 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Is Russia using US commercial satellite imagery to aim its cruise missiles? Ukraine thinks so. My latest in @TheAtlantic: theatlantic.com/international/…
Cruise missiles are expensive, and Russia is poor. It has spy satellites—but not many. (Even the US turns to private companies to fill out its imaging needs.) The ability to buy a fresh image of a Ukrainian target would make those missiles much more effective
Oct 27, 2023 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
ICYMI: I've been in Israel since just after the October 7 Hamas attack. Here's a dispatch from an IDF screening room where the feature presentation was a 43-minute compilation of terrorist bodycam footage: theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
I wrote this piece in the half hour immediately after the screening, because most of the footage would not be screened again, and in any case I could not bear to watch it even if it were. I wanted my impressions to be fresh. I took notes, but it was challenging—
Aug 12, 2022 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
This letter fills me with shame and embarrassment for those who signed and wrote it.
Try reading it in the key of the Rushdie affair. It transposes effortlessly, taking the side of the offended against those who are murdered and hunted
To the world's already marginalized, embattled, and victimized Muslim population, shaped by the legacy of colonialism, The Satanic Verses must be seen as being intended to cause further humiliation and suffering....
May 16, 2022 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Should you publish, circulate, or link to the Buffalo killer's manifesto? For god's sake, of course not. But you should know what you're missing. I read it, so you don't have to. In @TheAtlantic: theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
The Buffalo manifesto (which I abbreviate for multiple reasons as BM) contains lots of semipractical advice on mass shooting. “Semi,” because it’s all available elsewhere, and (I’m relieved to say) the death count did not reach the levels I’d expect from a real trained killer.
Mar 7, 2022 • 13 tweets • 6 min read
I am delighted to respond to this preposterous thread, and the even sillier WaPo column by the same author. Her column is here: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/…
The charge of "whitewashing" is ludicrous, as the piece itself demonstrates. theatlantic.com/magazine/archi… It opens thusly:
Feb 9, 2022 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
Don’t sign letters you didn’t write: theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
This advice is always good, but especially worth remembering after a long list of Harvard professors and distinguished Africanists rose up to defend John Comaroff from persecution by Harvard’s administration: nytimes.com/2022/02/08/us/…
Oct 13, 2021 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
'Eldik and Cosgrove hinted repeatedly that the student might face consequences if he didn’t apologize—including trouble with the bar exam’s "character and fitness" investigations, which Cosgrove could weigh in on as associate dean.'
Yale says that it would not seek to report this incident as a character demerit when the student seeks bar admission. (If Yale did so, that would be the most alarming development from this episode—which is still very embarrassing.)
Some terror movements are dominated by political theorists and literary types. Jihadist terror tends in the opposite direction, toward engineers, programmers, and other science/quant types.
May 22, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Notes Towards a Definition of "Cancel Culture": Nikole Hannah-Jones and the strange uses of a troublesome term theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… (my latest in @TheAtlantic)
The key misunderstanding of “cancel culture” is the belief that its victims are simply being criticized. This is exactly wrong.
*Cancellation is not criticism. It is the absence of criticism.*
