207: WMDs: Weather of Mass Destruction
Generals gathered in their masses, Just like witches at black masses
While we pride ourselves on a work ethic that publishes regularly, we break down when the heat and humidity reaches a level that leads to biological breakdown. We also had a near miss tornado as part of a mesoscale convective system. Amidst all this our pig collective grew by three piglets.
Meanwhile the news continues with incoherent narratives, talk of weapons of mass destruction distract from weather that pushes our system and sanity to the brink.
Spending over U$140 million in munitions to bomb Iran on the pretense of preventing WMDs is consistent with the administration’s consolidation of power in the executive branch. While we can take some consolation in their overwhelming incompetence, the clearing out of massive munitions inventory is intended to make room for new ones.
We are witnessing the greatest increase in military spending in our collective lifetimes, notwithstanding the trillions being spent on AI, which is the infrastructure for the coming wars. NATO meets this week in The Hague, at a time when the alliance is both threatened and increasingly relevant. Member governments are pledging increases in spending, but where that money will go remains obtuse.
A larger question is how much of that money will be wasted on technology that can be easily hacked or munitions that will be wasted on symbolic operations? Drones in Ukraine are built as cheaply as possible using open source technology. Iran hacks cameras in Tel Aviv to help calibrate their rocket attacks.
Yet back to AI and the funnel of funds flowing into big tech: four senior tech executives—representing Palantir, Meta, and OpenAI—were quietly sworn in as lieutenant colonels in the U.S. Army Reserve. They will serve as officers in a new elite detachment tasked with steering the military’s adoption of emerging technologies. Dubbed Detachment 201 this new initiative marks a bold and unsettling fusion of military authority and corporate tech power.
This is a structural realignment of power, with executives now literally wearing uniforms and advising directly on how to “modernize” warfare using AI, machine learning, and private-sector innovation. The stated goal is to make the military “leaner, smarter, and more lethal,” but the implications stretch much further. It signals a tightening alliance between empire and enterprise, where influence over military policy is no longer just indirect lobbying or contract acquisition—it’s chain-of-command integration. The future of authority is not merely militarized; it is being programmed, optimized, and piloted by the very firms whose tools are already restructuring society.
The consequences of which were abundantly clear in the wake of the storm that hit the farm this past weekend. It took out power for tens of thousands in the area, but in our case, our iterative solar system helped us significantly. Yet these grid failures provide a powerful glimpse into our shared future where climate volatility significantly stresses the systems we all depend upon.
Target fixation is incredibly powerful, and those who regularly command the greatest amount of attention are focusing our efforts on religious pursuits for a technological god and political ambitions for the profits that come from war.
Which is why our words and ideas will continue to mix a critical sense making of the present and a necessary evocation of alternative futures that might distract us from the technological determinism that plagues our contemporary imagination.
On a surface level, if there is such a thing, Metaviews is performance art. Prototyping meaning and methods that match our present and prepare for our future.
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