“They weave trick plays into their playbooks. They start running when it looks like they’re going to pass, and pass when it looks like they’re going to run. They force their opponent to play honestly by catching them off-guard early in the game. I think that analogue holds very well for us.” Avatar fighters, drone swarms, and the Pentagon’s challenge of staying a few steps ahead of the enemy in the age of tech-powered war.

+ “It was the deadliest attack on the Shabab in the more than decade-long American campaign against the group, an affiliate of Al Qaeda, and a sharp deviation from previous American strikes, which have concentrated on the group’s leaders, not on its foot soldiers.” If you blinked yesterday, you might have missed the news that U.S. drone strikes killed “about 150 fighters who were assembled for what American officials believe was a graduation ceremony and prelude to an imminent attack against American troops and their allies in East Africa.”