Ned Ludd was right. The revenge of the machines is now upon us, or soon will be according to the creators of AI. I will admit to being somewhat skeptical, hearing in Silicon Valley's warnings echoes of Y2K. As Y2K approached, I was often asked what I thought would happen. My answer was, "Nothing." That proved to be the case.

“If you are white or Asian, if you are a man or a traditional woman, if you are straight, if you work for a living, if you believe in God, if you are any of these things, a vote for a Democrat is a vote against yourself.”

September has arrived and it is time to pluck a fresh quill from the goose, top up the inkwell and write again. Dr. Johnson said, “Only a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” Perhaps that is why my hats no longer fit.

While America has focused on the war with Iran, which we have lost, the war that really matters has largely vanished from our scope. Which war is that? The war in Ukraine.

Throughout his Presidential campaigns, President Trump promised he would keep us out of avoidable wars on the far side of the world. He repeated that promise in his National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy, both official documents. Reportedly, he is now saying privately he wished he had never attacked Iran. So why did he do it?

A friend recently smuggled one of Satan’s turds, otherwise known as a computer, into my house for a good purpose (something the Devil hates): to show me a most interesting and important short film, “How Did the World Get So Ugly?” by Sheehan Quirke. Quirke takes the viewer on a walking tour of London in which he compares what the Victorians built with what is being built today. The Victorians, whom we are told were much poorer than we are, built beautiful things while what we create in public spaces today is as ugly as, well, Theodor Adorno. Who, as it happens, bears much of the blame for modernity’s ugliness.

Anything written by John Bolton normally goes directly to the bottom of my pet vulture's cage. He was one of the loudest howlers for the Iraq war and later, as President Trump's National Security Advisor, he sabotaged the President's promising attempt to normalize relations with North Korea. But Mr. Bolton actually wrote something useful in an op-ed, “Negotiation Won't End Iran's Nuclear Threat,” in the April 28 Wall Street Journal. He said something I did not know, namely that Iran has, besides its stock of enriched uranium, enough plutonium to make about 200 nuclear weapons. He also wrote something he may not have intended to say. He writes, speaking of Iran's uranium, “which he (President Trump) insists on calling ‘nuclear dust.’”

As of this writing (April 12), President Trump is well hoist on his own petard. Iran has won the first round in the war Mr. Trump started, a war of choice waged in the interests of a foreign power. Iran has survived all we and Israel could throw at it, it can still rain V-weapons on both Israel and its Persian Gulf neighbors, and the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. We are again seeing what has become the American pattern: tactical victories coupled with strategic defeat.

In World War II, the Western allies one attempt to employ operational art was a failure. Operation Market-Garden dropped British paratroopers on a key bridge in the Netherlands, which they were to hold only briefly until an American armored force coming from the south arrived to take over. But the armor attack was unsuccessful, leaving the Brits hanging out to dry.

As the closure of the Strait of Hormuz continues, President Trump has said that U.S. warships will escort tankers through. What warships? Warships have to be able to take hits and keep on fighting. The U.S. Navy’s surface warships, cruisers and destroyers, can’t.

In a stark betrayal of those of us who voted for him, President Donald Trump last Saturday took us into a war of choice with Iran. We have no significant interests at stake. The notion that Iran was on the verge of deploying ICBMs with nuclear warheads that could reach the United States makes George W. Bush’s claim of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction sound credible. Is this another case of the Israeli tail wagging the American dog? Of course it is.

As usual, on January 27 I telephoned my reporting senior, Kaiser Wilhelm II, to offer my best wishes on his birthday. Unusually, he was at home, working in his office in the Neues Palais in Potsdam. After offering my felicitations and telling him how much Germany misses him, I asked, “What is Your Majesty doing that keeps you desk-bound? And are you sitting in your famous saddle chair?”

The 19th century Italian statesman Cavour said, “You can do anything with bayonets except sit on them.” We currently have a large force, including an aircraft carrier and amphibious ships with Marines on board, sitting on their bayonets off the coast of Venezuela. They will soon have to make their move or come home. President Trump seems to desire the former. From a Fourth Generation war perspective, that involves a gamble the White House may not understand.

President Trump recently offered a critique of U.S. warship design, saying that our surface combatants — cruisers, destroyers and frigates — are too small. These ship types make up the bulk of most navies, so the problem is not limited to the U.S. Navy’s surface combatants.

With his order to the U.S. Armed Forces to sink the drug cartels’ boats bringing cocaine to the United States, President Trump has acknowledged the reality of Fourth Generation war, war waged by entities other than states. This is a significant development, because the Pentagon remains focused on war against other states, who do not constitute direct threats to our country. The drug cartels do, because they are poisoning tens of thousands of Americans every year.