Vietnam War

That kind of thing you've been able to do for a while.

What that's an example of is AI in some ways either supplementing or replacing what has been a, actually a pretty large modeling and simulation enterprise that militaries have used kind of since like around the Vietnam War era, if not before.

Again, with varying degrees of accuracy, given how much things change on the battlefield.

I think that's worth sitting on for a moment here.

There are a number of design choices that go into building these systems where some data is available and other sorts of data are obscured, either by design or because of the speed of the operations.

So to say that, well, data will fix this, this is a very techno-solutionist sort of approach to this, that we can datify everything.

And I wrote about this recently about the McNamara fallacy in the Vietnam War, is that General McNamara thought that the only thing that mattered... for his operational success was what could be quantified on a battlefield, what could be turned into data.

But as we know, in the fog of war, eliciting Clausewitz as well, you can't quantify everything.

And what most casual people, if they understand anything about Vietnam, what they know about the Tet Offensive is that in some way it was a turning point, the turning point of the war.

And what they also know in a general sense about Vietnam is that the Vietnam War ended in defeat for the United States and for South Vietnam.

So the general casual perception among many people for years has been that, well, then the Tet Offensive must have been itself a great defeat, the great defeat, if it's the turning point of the Vietnam War.

And while Vietnam is just full of Really weird contradictions and ambiguities.

The Tet Offensive and the general knowledge about it just makes me laugh or makes me think the most.

You stab them in the back.

You kill their wife and kids to destroy their fighting spirit.

That was the communist approach in the Vietnam War.

And even the very people who went on strikes during World War II when they were polled said, of course I support the no-strike pledge.

And so that sort of gets at some of this sort of good war and consensus war story because World War II was more officially supported by a near consensus of the population than the later Vietnam War.

But there was all these class struggle issues tensions that didn't fit into neat ideological packages.

So one remarkable story is that of a coal miner strike all across Appalachia.

In his first term, the new president did some predictable stuff.

like backing the US in the Vietnam War and some controversial stuff like sending 2,000 Filipino troops to help.

He also did some populist stuff like cracking down on corruption and some useful stuff like repairing roads and sewage systems.

For anyone alive at the time, it would have felt less like the beginning of a dictatorship and more like business as usual.

Known today as the First Quarter Storm, that political cyclone basically did for the Philippines what the Galveston Hurricane did for Texas.

As Marcos began his second term, insane social currents were swirling, creating a highly volatile cocktail.

There was brewing resentment at Filipino involvement in the Vietnam War, a growing pushback against US imperialism, upheaval on campuses.

Cripplingly low wages for the poor were causing problems, as were upcoming price hikes.

because it's the only military psychiatric ward that the U.S. Army has.

This was made around about 1980, and so virtually everybody there, all of the patients, are traumatized by the Vietnam War.

And because they're sort of kept away to one side, they're actually in Europe, and they're in a rickety old castle.

So if I told you that that's the setup to that movie...

What are you thinking you're about to watch? The guy who wrote The Exorcist, this is psychiatric, you know, traumatized veterans of Vietnam War in a psychiatric hospital in a cold, old, Germanic castle.

And if you're thinking about some taut psychological horror, so was I.

And therefore, I was confused is probably the best word for it.

Nixon wanted to trade it away in negotiations, but he couldn't trade it away if he wasn't authorized to build it.

And also it became sort of a flashpoint for hawks and doves on the Vietnam War.

So finally, we have a closed session of the Senate.

No press, nobody there.

Yeah.

McNamara is talking about, he shares an anecdote at one point about years after the end of the Vietnam War and years after his service as the Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.

He talks about this meeting that took place after the fact with people from the Defense Department who had been underneath of him and then counterparts from the Vietnamese government and how they were coming together and sharing their perspective.

on why they were in the war and what they were hoping to achieve.

But yes, there is.

But to bomb – look at the Vietnam War, the war that I grew up with.

It was in our living room every night, the first war ever to be televised, which was a great contributing factor to eventually America turning its back on the military in Vietnam.

Those people, in no way did it help their freedom to have their village napalmed.

You know, this is, you know, first really major event.

cultural shift, generational shift, you know, cultural shift when it comes to millennials, you know what I mean? So other generations have had their, you know, had their major, events or whatever, you know what I mean? Like, you know, for, uh, I guess for baby boomers, you had, you know, um, you know, of course, you know, you had, um, of course, you know, of course the, the death, that's the, um, you know, JFK, um, Malcolm X, MLK, you know what I mean? You had, um, you know, things like, you know, several of those other ones, you know, mainly, of course, you know, as far as, you know, as far as the Vietnam War as well, you know, those type of events, you know, for Gen X, say, you know, the Cold War, you know, you know, You know, of course, the first Gulf War, you know, things like that.

And, you know, among several other events, Vietnam, of course, you know, like, you know, like pretty much as far as far as like, you know, as far as like, you know, Gen X, you know, you know, like, of course, when it comes to millennials.

You know, we've had the likes of, you know, Y2K, that whole scare, but the one that really just stopped much made time stand still just about because 9 11. like i said you know when it comes to y2k 9 11 you had um you know of course not one not two but three uh recessions you know economic collapses uh covid you know i mean uh you know Of course, Tangerine Palpatine, as a president, not once but twice.