Category Archives: Coffee Break

Coffee Break: Armed Madhouse – The Death of Full Spectrum Dominance

The 2025 National Security Strategy is being read as another Trumpist manifesto, but buried in the text is something far more consequential: Washington’s first formal admission that Full Spectrum Dominance is dead. The NSS concedes that the US can no longer fund the military, industrial, and diplomatic machinery required for unipolar primacy, and quietly writes the obituary for the post–Cold War order it was supposed to sustain.

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Coffee Break: American Science Shattered

American Science, Shattered.  So says is the title of Part 1 of a ten part series in STAT News.  Since STAT articles are usually paywalled, I will summarize them here as they appear.  Unlike most accounts of the current state of science in the United States, the authors of this article have found scientists who […]

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Coffee Break: Armed Madhouse – How DARPA Lost Its Mojo

DARPA once defined the frontier of U.S. technological power, developing the foundations of stealth, networking, and precision-guided warfare. Today its most capable prototypes routinely die in the “valley of death,” casualties of political caution, industrial consolidation, and perverse incentives that punish programs for succeeding. This article examines how DARPA went from the nation’s most creative engine of capability to an agency whose breakthroughs are celebrated but rarely fielded—and what this reveals about America’s broader institutional decline.

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Coffee Break: Science and Belief, Working AI, ADHD Update, and Research Support

Part the First: When Science Becomes a Matter of Belief Things Go Sideways.  The current Secretary of Health and Human Services is getting his way.  This is not a surprise.  The President hired him to “go wild on health” and he is doing just that.  Some have complained that as Secretary of HHS that RFKJr […]

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Coffee Break: Armed Madhouse – RAND Alarms the China Hawks

In late 2025, a major RAND Corporation study on U.S.–China strategy was quietly withdrawn from public view less than two weeks after publication. The unusual disappearance suggests an internal struggle over whether the United States should escalate rivalry with China or first rebuild its own industrial and technological base. The RAND report’s realism posed a challenge to the prevailing hawkish narrative.

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Coffee Break: CDC – Vaccines – Autism, Oh, My!; Wellness; Prioritized Science; Very Ancient Art; and MAGA

Part the First: CDC Finally “Decides” that Vaccines Cause Autism.  In news that will surprise absolute nobody, while pleasing some and causing despair in others, CDC says the mountains of data that show vaccines do NOT cause autism is not evidence-based: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday publicly reversed its stance that […]

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From the Narrative Collapse, a New World Will Emerge: Will It Be Different?

In the information age, it is difficult to make sense of events. Endless amounts of information do not necessarily coalesce into a coherent narrative with explanatory meaning. The breakdown of the international order is precipitating the emergence of different narratives that engender competing truths. The German writer Goethe said: “When eras are on the decline, […]

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