SPECIAL RECOGNITION

Real judgment is measured by those who lived the consequences of bad analysis

10 JAN 2026

Hey readers of National Security Desk (NSD),

I occasionally receive praise, but never share it. Today I’m making a rare exception. It goes against the special operations culture I admire, but I’m grateful enough that I feel obliged to share it — and I hope it validates the trust readers have placed in this work.

My analysis is often hard to accept because it isn’t linear. People tend not to trust it until they watch the assessment unfold in real time. To me, that’s already too late.

Why a Single Comment From a Quiet Professional Matters More Than a Thousand Likes

Every so often, this work sends a signal back — not from the pundit class, not from the think‑tank circuit, not from the Twitterati, but from the people who actually carried the weight of America’s wars.

Today, one of those signals arrived.

A new paid subscriber, “Middle Aged Mike,” left this message:

As a retired SOCOM/USASOC SNCO I appreciate your analysis and POV. I miss not being able to read the daily intel summaries and briefings. You’re the next best thing.”

For readers outside the special operations community, some context is useful.

SOCOM and USASOC senior NCOs aren’t just seasoned operators — they are technical experts. They spend years mastering languages, cultures, and environments most Americans will never encounter. They develop specialized skills, operate in nationally sensitive mission sets, and are trusted to act with a level of autonomy and precision that only a small handful of people in government ever experience.

And all of that expertise is carried alongside the human cost of the job: decades of deployments, multiple wars, responsibility for younger men and women whose lives depended on their judgment, missed birthdays and anniversaries, friends lost, injuries visible and invisible, and the moral weight of decisions made far from home.

So when someone like that — a senior enlisted leader from the most demanding corner of the U.S. military — says your work is useful, that is not casual praise. It is a signal that the analysis aligns with the lived reality of people who had to act on imperfect information in the hardest places on earth.

I wrote back to him:

“Dear Mike, you have no kidding made my day. Let me tell you why. Sitting in my comfy office having a coffee, I can interpret the feeds and paint a picture. I can suggest some COAs. Always in the back of my mind I wondered if the warriors who did the real work thought, ‘oh great, the idea fairy has been at it again’ — emphasis on fairy. 🤣

Given your self‑description, I expect you’ve seen a few things you’d rather have not and felt genuine frustration and disappointment at pogues who don’t get it. So your comment here is frankly the highest honor I can receive because I know silent warriors like you, who were at the very tip/edge, know bullshit when they see it.

Thank you — for all you, your family, and your mates have done for America.”

For someone like me — a rear‑echelon analyst who never got shot at, who spent his career interpreting the feeds rather than kicking in the doors — this kind of validation hits differently. It’s not about ego. It’s about alignment. It’s about knowing that the people who lived the consequences of bad analysis can read your work and say, “Yes. This tracks with reality.”

And when a retired SOCOM/USASOC senior NCO — someone who likely spent two decades deploying, leading, missing family milestones, and carrying responsibilities most Americans never see — takes the time to say the work is useful, that lands with a certain gravity.

Not as praise.

As a standard to live up to.

This moto drives me onward.

Thank you Mike

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Freedom Isn’t Free

Almost no one in media, academia, or the think-tank world can write with the freedom I have.

Many know what’s coming but silence themselves out of fear — fear of losing a job, fear of being labeled extreme, fear of calling the moment for what it is. But time is running out.

Every Substack I write is free. I do this because I believe in the Constitution, I see the path to war, If you choose to support the work with a paid subscription, thank you. And if a subscription is too much, a one-off tip is always welcome — caffeine and amber nectar help keep the lights on.

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