Secrets
Secrets are a valuable currency of power. You can use them to assert, shift, usurp, or keep it. There’s something intoxicating about learning secrets, and even more so about holding them. When I joined the government after college, I thought I would stay for two years. I wanted to serve my country but was not enough of a rule-follower for the military. In undergrad I got a voicemail from a blocked number. “Mary at the recruitment center” wanted to talk to me about a “job I had applied to onli...
Secrets
Secrets are a valuable currency of power. You can use them to assert, shift, usurp, or keep it. There’s something intoxicating about learning secrets, and even more so about holding them. When I joined the government after college, I thought I would stay for two years. I wanted to serve my country but was not enough of a rule-follower for the military. In undergrad I got a voicemail from a blocked number. “Mary at the recruitment center” wanted to talk to me about a “job I had applied to onli...
Self-sufficiency
Self-sufficiency is on the rise. The preceding decades of globalization made self-sufficiency a bad word, saved for things like North Korean political philosophy (juche) or Iran’s weapons development (Research and Self-Sufficiency Jihad Organization). However, self-sufficiency is surging in the democratic world. In the last two years alone, there’s been self-sufficiency for semiconductors, vaccines, energy, currency, and even champagne. Self-sufficiency is the capture and alignment of people,...
Self-sufficiency
Self-sufficiency is on the rise. The preceding decades of globalization made self-sufficiency a bad word, saved for things like North Korean political philosophy (juche) or Iran’s weapons development (Research and Self-Sufficiency Jihad Organization). However, self-sufficiency is surging in the democratic world. In the last two years alone, there’s been self-sufficiency for semiconductors, vaccines, energy, currency, and even champagne. Self-sufficiency is the capture and alignment of people,...
Service
If you’re watching news of the possible impending Russian invasion of Ukraine, and wondering “what can I do,” listen carefully to that thought. Don’t push it away. Pull on that string. We live in, historically speaking, peaceful times. We haven’t had an all-out war in a while. 9/11, Afghanistan, and Iraq were present in your life, but these were specific wars, with specific places and specific people. A specific war is the worst type of war when it comes to questioning one’s thoughts on servi...
Service
If you’re watching news of the possible impending Russian invasion of Ukraine, and wondering “what can I do,” listen carefully to that thought. Don’t push it away. Pull on that string. We live in, historically speaking, peaceful times. We haven’t had an all-out war in a while. 9/11, Afghanistan, and Iraq were present in your life, but these were specific wars, with specific places and specific people. A specific war is the worst type of war when it comes to questioning one’s thoughts on servi...
