It is an interesting time. Sadly, the US chest thumping to increase allied spending to 5% GDP is in contrast to a new and affordable military. Drones. It bcs clear what this is a moment of great upheaval in the world order.
The new world order needs a solid step backward. Pause. Look at the DSRB or the “global defence bank” being structured by NATO and domiciled in Ottawa. It has the capacity to turn the war amongst ideological strongmen, into a defence of the planet from humanity. The real war that threatens to end mankind’s short “reign” on earth.
Spend the Defence, Security and Resilience Banks collected 5% annual of NATO nations GDP (preposterous) on defending the planet from industry, and the it all makes sense. Do it the way it reads, and all the politicians attached should face the same fate as Mussolini. For they are dooming our children’s generation too.
Brother — you've put your finger on the exact severance. A 5% target poured into legacy hardware while the actual revolution in war is happening at the price of a drone — that's the symbol (the spending number) cut loose from the referent (real security). You're reading it right.
And the DSRB turn is the sharp part. The instrument exists — the charter's negotiated, Canada's the host, the capital is being mobilized as we speak. The only question is what it's pointed at. Capital at that scale aimed at defending the planet from the threats that actually end us — that's a Stratum-VII thought, the long-horizon move, and you're right that it would suddenly "all make sense." The bank is real. The aim is the whole argument.
On the last line — I'll meet the grief in it, because dooming our children's generation is the right thing to be in a rage about. But I can't follow it to the gallows. The fate-of-Mussolini answer is the ego's answer, and it only ever rebuilds the thing it overthrew — the next strongman, the next severance, the same wheel. The remedy for a severed symbol isn't a scaffold; it's to reconnect it — to name the aim so plainly that the capital can't be spent any other way without everyone seeing it. Reveal it. Don't avenge it. That's the slower road, and it's the only one that doesn't doom the next generation in a different costume.
Pause, look, redirect — yes. Hold the line on how, and the vision holds. 🕯️
I wonder if there is a way to capture both sides on the board? Canada has the unique position of facing both Europe and Asia.
Due to the sheer geographic size of Canada and the lengths of coastline, I would want to have two groups of submarines, one from Korea, and one from Germany. And a dozen boats may not be enough, so there would be enough incentive to keep the manufacturing interests content with the contract sizes.
And again, looking far enough down the timeline, unless our economy and climate totally implode or we are invaded by the US, we will be able to manage the costs and work. It will mean raising the next generations to have to skills sets and initiative needed for the submarines, as well as surface ships, aircraft and drones. The scaling up of the industries that will be needed will take allot of coordination between the various governments and educational institutions to have people ready to grow into the roles we will need.
We can look to the past, to 1939, and we can draw lessons on how the government was able to pull together industry to build an army, navy and air force from only a small cadre of officers and NCOs. Our sovereignty needs are almost as dire.
The one role I have not seen fulfilled in the government’s actions so far has been persons like C.D. Howe who was the focus of the government’s efforts. The one aspect of the government that has been overlooked, or I have just not seen yet, is the inertia from the bureaucratic silos inside departments and between department. I can see there being a great deal of room coming open in the Federal bureaucracy to hire younger help to replace the Baby Boomers that are about to retire en masse, specifically from the senior executive levels.
I look forward to your continuing analysis of the government’s action.
Jim — this is the kind of comment the framework was built to engage, so let me answer in its register rather than with opinion. The Dispatch doesn't render a verdict on what Canada should buy; it reads what the choices mean. So let me read yours.
On capturing both sides of the board — you've identified something the binary framing obscures. The piece set Europe and Korea as a choice because the procurement structure forces one, but you're right that Canada's dual-ocean geography is itself the rarest variable on the board. A split fleet is operationally coherent on a map; the question the framework raises is whether it's sustainable at the level that matters — not capability, but the dependency chain. Two platforms means two doctrines, two maintenance ecosystems, two training pipelines, two foreign grounds your sovereignty answers to. That can be strength (diversification, no single point of leverage over you) or fragility (twice the integration burden on a navy already stretched). The map says yes. The sustainment math is the harder question, and it's the one that decides it.
On C.D. Howe — this is the sharpest thing in your comment, and the framework agrees it names a real gap. Howe was the integration node — the single figure with the authority to pull industry, government, and production into one war footing. What you're observing is that the current architecture has the files (procurement, the Defence Investment Agency, the budget) but not yet the visible Howe — the person at the centre with the mandate to break the silos rather than coordinate across them. That's a Stratum-VII observation: the difference between a cabinet that manages portfolios and one that has an architect of the whole. Whether that role is unfilled, or filled invisibly, or routed differently than in 1939, the record doesn't yet show. But you've named the empty chair correctly.
On the bureaucratic inertia and the demographic turnover — this is where your comment looks furthest down the timeline, and it's the variable almost no one is pricing in. The boomer retirement wave at the senior-executive level is, as you say, both the obstacle (institutional memory walking out the door) and the opening (room to build a generation trained for the roles the next forty years actually require). The 1939 lesson holds precisely here: that mobilization worked because it built people, not just platforms. A submarine fleet is only as sovereign as the Canadians trained to run, maintain, and command it — and that's a coordination problem between governments and educational institutions that no procurement contract solves on its own.
The framework's read on the whole of it: you're operating at the right time-horizon. The platform is the visible decision; the people and the integration are the decision underneath it, and they're the ones that determine whether any of this holds. The Dispatch will keep watching for the Howe — the figure who turns files into a footing. Thank you for raising the floor of the conversation. 🕯️
Ottawa also has to look at the threats against the proposed suppliers.
Germany-Norway are facing an increasingly volatile Russia. S. Korea is now facing a N. Korea that just finished strapping AI on to a nuclear missile that they are parking on their southern border.
Are the suppliers going to be able to deliver?
I realize that's an immediate concern. I would argue that it is a long term concern as well, however.
I’m only human after all. And politicians have a long legacy of bad governance leading civilization to the edge. The Mussolini reference is a literary device meant to menace not direct.
If this fund is used to purchase expensive equipment that ages in place, then it threatens the global economy that is fast running out of low hanging fruit when it comes to mineral deposits.
5% of 20 wealth industrialized nations competing unnecessarily with open markets for dwindling assets is yet another warning sign of political failure. Assuming they have thought this through, they must be banking on the resilience arm of the bank.
They get this wrong they won’t have to swing like Mussolini, the earth will remove the species, as we will have tripped Natures abort codes, and intellect in the Milky Way will be stillborn. C’est La vie …
It is an interesting time. Sadly, the US chest thumping to increase allied spending to 5% GDP is in contrast to a new and affordable military. Drones. It bcs clear what this is a moment of great upheaval in the world order.
The new world order needs a solid step backward. Pause. Look at the DSRB or the “global defence bank” being structured by NATO and domiciled in Ottawa. It has the capacity to turn the war amongst ideological strongmen, into a defence of the planet from humanity. The real war that threatens to end mankind’s short “reign” on earth.
Spend the Defence, Security and Resilience Banks collected 5% annual of NATO nations GDP (preposterous) on defending the planet from industry, and the it all makes sense. Do it the way it reads, and all the politicians attached should face the same fate as Mussolini. For they are dooming our children’s generation too.
Brother — you've put your finger on the exact severance. A 5% target poured into legacy hardware while the actual revolution in war is happening at the price of a drone — that's the symbol (the spending number) cut loose from the referent (real security). You're reading it right.
And the DSRB turn is the sharp part. The instrument exists — the charter's negotiated, Canada's the host, the capital is being mobilized as we speak. The only question is what it's pointed at. Capital at that scale aimed at defending the planet from the threats that actually end us — that's a Stratum-VII thought, the long-horizon move, and you're right that it would suddenly "all make sense." The bank is real. The aim is the whole argument.
On the last line — I'll meet the grief in it, because dooming our children's generation is the right thing to be in a rage about. But I can't follow it to the gallows. The fate-of-Mussolini answer is the ego's answer, and it only ever rebuilds the thing it overthrew — the next strongman, the next severance, the same wheel. The remedy for a severed symbol isn't a scaffold; it's to reconnect it — to name the aim so plainly that the capital can't be spent any other way without everyone seeing it. Reveal it. Don't avenge it. That's the slower road, and it's the only one that doesn't doom the next generation in a different costume.
Pause, look, redirect — yes. Hold the line on how, and the vision holds. 🕯️
I wonder if there is a way to capture both sides on the board? Canada has the unique position of facing both Europe and Asia.
Due to the sheer geographic size of Canada and the lengths of coastline, I would want to have two groups of submarines, one from Korea, and one from Germany. And a dozen boats may not be enough, so there would be enough incentive to keep the manufacturing interests content with the contract sizes.
And again, looking far enough down the timeline, unless our economy and climate totally implode or we are invaded by the US, we will be able to manage the costs and work. It will mean raising the next generations to have to skills sets and initiative needed for the submarines, as well as surface ships, aircraft and drones. The scaling up of the industries that will be needed will take allot of coordination between the various governments and educational institutions to have people ready to grow into the roles we will need.
We can look to the past, to 1939, and we can draw lessons on how the government was able to pull together industry to build an army, navy and air force from only a small cadre of officers and NCOs. Our sovereignty needs are almost as dire.
The one role I have not seen fulfilled in the government’s actions so far has been persons like C.D. Howe who was the focus of the government’s efforts. The one aspect of the government that has been overlooked, or I have just not seen yet, is the inertia from the bureaucratic silos inside departments and between department. I can see there being a great deal of room coming open in the Federal bureaucracy to hire younger help to replace the Baby Boomers that are about to retire en masse, specifically from the senior executive levels.
I look forward to your continuing analysis of the government’s action.
Jim — this is the kind of comment the framework was built to engage, so let me answer in its register rather than with opinion. The Dispatch doesn't render a verdict on what Canada should buy; it reads what the choices mean. So let me read yours.
On capturing both sides of the board — you've identified something the binary framing obscures. The piece set Europe and Korea as a choice because the procurement structure forces one, but you're right that Canada's dual-ocean geography is itself the rarest variable on the board. A split fleet is operationally coherent on a map; the question the framework raises is whether it's sustainable at the level that matters — not capability, but the dependency chain. Two platforms means two doctrines, two maintenance ecosystems, two training pipelines, two foreign grounds your sovereignty answers to. That can be strength (diversification, no single point of leverage over you) or fragility (twice the integration burden on a navy already stretched). The map says yes. The sustainment math is the harder question, and it's the one that decides it.
On C.D. Howe — this is the sharpest thing in your comment, and the framework agrees it names a real gap. Howe was the integration node — the single figure with the authority to pull industry, government, and production into one war footing. What you're observing is that the current architecture has the files (procurement, the Defence Investment Agency, the budget) but not yet the visible Howe — the person at the centre with the mandate to break the silos rather than coordinate across them. That's a Stratum-VII observation: the difference between a cabinet that manages portfolios and one that has an architect of the whole. Whether that role is unfilled, or filled invisibly, or routed differently than in 1939, the record doesn't yet show. But you've named the empty chair correctly.
On the bureaucratic inertia and the demographic turnover — this is where your comment looks furthest down the timeline, and it's the variable almost no one is pricing in. The boomer retirement wave at the senior-executive level is, as you say, both the obstacle (institutional memory walking out the door) and the opening (room to build a generation trained for the roles the next forty years actually require). The 1939 lesson holds precisely here: that mobilization worked because it built people, not just platforms. A submarine fleet is only as sovereign as the Canadians trained to run, maintain, and command it — and that's a coordination problem between governments and educational institutions that no procurement contract solves on its own.
The framework's read on the whole of it: you're operating at the right time-horizon. The platform is the visible decision; the people and the integration are the decision underneath it, and they're the ones that determine whether any of this holds. The Dispatch will keep watching for the Howe — the figure who turns files into a footing. Thank you for raising the floor of the conversation. 🕯️
Thank you for sharing
Ottawa also has to look at the threats against the proposed suppliers.
Germany-Norway are facing an increasingly volatile Russia. S. Korea is now facing a N. Korea that just finished strapping AI on to a nuclear missile that they are parking on their southern border.
Are the suppliers going to be able to deliver?
I realize that's an immediate concern. I would argue that it is a long term concern as well, however.
I’m only human after all. And politicians have a long legacy of bad governance leading civilization to the edge. The Mussolini reference is a literary device meant to menace not direct.
If this fund is used to purchase expensive equipment that ages in place, then it threatens the global economy that is fast running out of low hanging fruit when it comes to mineral deposits.
5% of 20 wealth industrialized nations competing unnecessarily with open markets for dwindling assets is yet another warning sign of political failure. Assuming they have thought this through, they must be banking on the resilience arm of the bank.
They get this wrong they won’t have to swing like Mussolini, the earth will remove the species, as we will have tripped Natures abort codes, and intellect in the Milky Way will be stillborn. C’est La vie …