ChinaTalk

An F-15E is down in southern Iran. Justin, Tony, Eric and I talk through what combat search and rescue actually looks like, how a captured pilot changes the politics of ending this war, and why a hostage makes the "pack up and go home" play functionally impossible. Then: the AWACS that "only" lost a third of itself on a Saudi tarmac, why CENTCOM is still parking high-value aircraft like it's 2003, and what Operation Spiderweb and three years of Ukrainian drone warfare should have taught us but didn't. Plus Pete Hegseth's ongoing purge of the officer corps, the Enron theory of Pentagon innovation, and why the War of 1812 is the best analogy for where this is all heading. Tony's article on CENTCOM sucking: https://www.breakingbeijing.com/p/what-did-we-learn-centcom Justin on just war: https://justinmc.substack.com/p/just-war-theory song: https://suno.com/s/vroapDDimBnmCxdO Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The history of the American federal civil service — what can we learn from its past glories and failures, and where should we take this next? We have ⁠Kevin Hawickhorst⁠ of the Foundation for American Innovation to discuss: The Pendleton Act myth — Why civil service reform didn’t begin or end with Pendleton, and why starting the story there misses what actually made the system work. The rise of the subject-matter state — How early 20th-century agencies staffed with real experts — entomologists, engineers, agronomists — made the U.S. bureaucracy arguably the most capable in the world. From expertise to org charts — How mid-century functional reorganization hollowed out mission-driven agencies and replaced subject knowledge with process management. What competence delivered — From agricultural breakthroughs to infrastructure build-out, what a serious, technically grounded civil service was able to accomplish. Whether we can rebuild — DOGE, the abundance movement, state capacity, and why this might be the best time in decades to make the government work again. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jen Pahlka is an American Hero, in a past life the US Deputy Chief Technology Officer and member of the Defense Innovation Board. She wrote Recoding America and the wonderful Eating Policy substack (https://www.eatingpolicy.com/?utm_campaign=profile_chips). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices