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The alerts arrive before anyone 
understands what they mean. 

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A radar return that does not 
match any known flight path. 

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A report from a forward 
position. 

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Fragmentary cut off mid 
sentence. 

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A social media post from a city 
that may or may not be under 

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attack shared 40,000 times 
before a single analyst has had 

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the chance to verify it. 
A communication from an allied 

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command that contradicts 
information received 12 minutes 

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earlier from the same source. 
A satellite image that could be 

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a missile launcher or could be a
civilian vehicle depending on 

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who is interpreting it and what 
they already believe. 

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This is Epic fury, the US Iran 
war podcast. 

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In those early hours, certainty 
is the first casualty before any

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soldier is killed, before any 
building falls. 

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The clean picture of events the 
commanders need and governments 

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demand is already fractured into
competing versions of what is 

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happening, each one partial, 
each one urgent, each one 

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insisting on its own authority. 
This is the fog of war, not a 

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metaphor, a condition. 
The phrase was given its 

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definitive articulation by the 
Prussian military theorist Carl 

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von Clausewitz in the 19th 
century. 

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He wrote that war is the realm 
of uncertainty, that 3/4 of the 

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factors on which action in war 
is based or wrapped in a fog of 

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greater or lesser uncertainty. 
What Clausewitz was describing 

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was not a failure of 
intelligence or a failure of 

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technology. 
He was describing something 

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structural, something that 
belongs to the nature of 

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conflict itself. 
The moment 2 opposing forces are

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in contact, information becomes 
unreliable, orders are 

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misunderstood, positions shift, 
the map stops matching the 

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ground. 
Two centuries later, with 

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satellites in orbit, drones 
feeding live video to command 

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centers, and AI systems 
processing thousands of data 

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points per second, the fog is 
not lifted. 

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It has changed shape, and in 
some ways it has thickened. 

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Consider what happens in the 
opening hours of a major 

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military operation. 
The volume of incoming 

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information is not a trickle. 
It is a flood. 

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Radar operators tracking 
contacts that maybe aircraft, 

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maybe electronic spoofing, maybe
debris. 

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Analysts in dim rooms trying to 
cross reference reports that 

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arrive faster than they can be 
processed. 

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Commanders who must make 
decisions now, not later, on the

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basis of information they know 
is incomplete. 

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Knowing that waiting for 
certainty is itself a decision 

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with consequences. 
The cognitive pressure inside 

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those rooms is unlike anything 
most people will encounter in a 

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lifetime. 
The friendly fire incident 

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stands as one of the most 
painful expressions of this fog.

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It recurs throughout military 
history with a regularity that 

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should by now be more shocking 
than it is. 

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In the Gulf War, 28 American 
soldiers were killed by a 

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Patriot missile battery that 
misidentified a friendly 

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aircraft. 
In Afghanistan, American 

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aircraft repeatedly struck 
positions held by allied forces 

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due to communication failures 
and targeting errors. 

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The opening days of Operation 
Epic Fury produced their own 

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friendly fire. 
Tragedy. 3 American fighter jets

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down over Kuwait. 
Not from enemy action, from the 

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fog. 
Friendly fire does not happen 

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because soldiers are careless or
commanders are incompetent. 

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It happens because war moves 
faster than the information 

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systems designed to manage it, 
because identification protocols

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breakdown under pressure, 
because exhausted operators make

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split second judgments on 
ambiguous data, and the 

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consequences are irreversible. 
The Cold War left behind a 

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series of incidents that examine
now carry the weight of near 

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catastrophe. 
In September 1983, a Soviet 

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early warning satellite detected
what its systems interpreted as 

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five incoming American 
intercontinental ballistic 

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missiles. 
Stanislav Petrov, the duty 

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officer who received the alert, 
had minutes to decide whether to

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report it up the chain of 
command, a report that, given 

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the doctrine of the time, would 
almost certainly have triggered 

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A retaliatory launch. 
He judged it a false alarm. 

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He was right. 
The satellite had mistaken 

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sunlight reflecting off clouds 
for missile launches. 

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One man's decision, made in 
minutes under maximum pressure 

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on the basis of contradictory 
information, may have prevented 

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a nuclear exchange. 
The fog had reached to the edge 

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of civilization. 
Intelligence failures do not 

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only emerge from equipment 
malfunctions or sensor errors. 

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They emerge from the human 
architecture that surrounds the 

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data. 
The Iraq war and the weapons of 

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mass destruction assessment 
represent perhaps the most 

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consequential intelligence 
failure of the modern era, not 

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because the analysts were 
incompetent, but because the 

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process of intelligence analysis
have been corrupted by the 

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pressures of what people in 
positions of power needed to be 

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true. 
Information that confirmed the 

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desired conclusion was elevated.
Information that contradicted it

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was marginalized. 
The result was a picture of 

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Iraqi capabilities that had the 
appearance of certainty and the 

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substance of assumption. 
This phenomenon has a name in 

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psychology, confirmation bias, 
the tendency under conditions of

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uncertainty and stress to weight
information that confirms 

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existing beliefs more heavily 
than information that challenges

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them. 
In ordinary life, this is a 

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manageable cognitive quirk. 
In a command center during a 

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crisis, it can determine whether
missiles are launched. 

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The pressure on decision makers 
during active conflict is 

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difficult to overstate. 
A commander who hesitates and is

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wrong will be judged for the 
casualties that hesitation cost.

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A commander who acts and is 
wrong will be judged for the 

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consequences of that action. 
There is no option that 

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eliminates accountability, and 
the clock does not stop. 

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In Modern Warfare, the window 
between a thread appearing and 

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the window for responding to it 
can be measured in minutes, 

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sometimes seconds. 
The human nervous system, under 

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that pressure, does not default 
to deliberation. 

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It defaults to pattern 
recognition, reaching for the 

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most familiar framework, the 
most recent precedent, the 

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interpretation that resolves 
uncertainty fastest. 

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This is how accidental 
escalation happens. 

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Not through malice, not through 
recklessness, through the 

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collision of incomplete 
information, cognitive 

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shortcuts, and the irreversible 
physics of military hardware 

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already in motion. 
Vietnam demonstrated what 

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happens when the fog is 
transmitted live into living 

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rooms. 
Journalists reported what they 

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could see, which was always a 
fragment. 

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Editors back home assemble those
fragments into narratives that 

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often bore little relationship 
to the operational reality. 

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The official account and the 
televised account diverged so 

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completely over so many years 
that the credibility of both 

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eventually collapsed. 
The public learned to distrust 

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the briefing. 
The military learned to manage 

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access. 
Neither solution addressed the 

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underlying problem, which was 
that the fog does not clear 

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simply because someone is 
watching. 

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In the current information 
environment, the speed of false 

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information during conflict is 
unprecedented. 

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In the opening hours of a major 
escalation, social media 

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platforms carry thousands of 
posts claiming with apparent 

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certainty to know what is 
happening. 

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Images circulate that are real, 
fabricated or taken from 

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entirely different conflicts. 
Numbers, casualty figures, 

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strike counts, aircraft losses 
are invented, exaggerated and 

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repeated until they acquire the 
authority of established fact. 

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By the time official corrections
arrive, the false numbers have 

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already been embedded in a 
public understanding of events. 

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This is not simply a media 
problem. 

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It is an intelligence problem. 
Analysts monitoring open source 

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information during a crisis must
now sort through an ocean of 

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deliberately planted 
disinformation, accidental 

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misreporting, genuine eyewitness
accounts and coordinated 

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amplification campaigns, all 
arriving simultaneously, all 

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presenting themselves as 
authoritative. 

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The fog has acquired a social 
media layer. 

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Drone warfare was expected to 
cut through this fog. 

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Persistent surveillance. 
Real time video feeds the 

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ability to observe a target for 
hours before any decision to 

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strike. 
And drones have changed the 

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intelligence picture in 
significant ways, but they have 

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not eliminated uncertainty. 
Video interpretation remains a 

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human process, subject to all 
the cognitive pressures of human

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judgement. 
Targets are misidentified. 

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Context is missing. 
A gathering of people that looks

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from altitude like a military 
meeting may be a family 

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occasion. 
The consequences of errors at 

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drone altitude are measured in 
the same way they have always 

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been measured in the bodies on 
the ground. 

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Cyber operations have added 
another dimension to the fog. 

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The ability to spoof radar 
returns, to inject false data 

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into an adversary's command 
systems to make a pilot believe 

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an aircraft is friendly when it 
is not. 

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These capabilities mean that 
even the raw sensor data feeding

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into a decision cannot be 
assumed to be real. 

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The fog now extends into the 
instruments designed to dispel 

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it. 
There is a particular kind of 

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exhaustion that builds inside a 
command center during an 

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extended operation. 
The analysts have been awake for

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20 hours. 
The maps are covered in markers 

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that have been updated and 
contradicted and updated again. 

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The communications are carrying 
too many conversations 

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simultaneously. 
The pressure from above for a 

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clear picture has not 
diminished, but the picture has 

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not clarified. 
In that state, the temptation to

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impose certainty on ambiguity, 
to decide that the unclear 

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contact is hostile, that the 
fragmentary report is accurate, 

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that the decision cannot wait, 
is not a failure of character. 

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It is the predictable output of 
a human nervous system at its 

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limits. 
Klausowitz understood this. 

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He wrote not only about the fog 
but about friction. 

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The accumulated weight of small 
errors, delays, 

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miscommunications and unexpected
events that caused even well 

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designed plans to diverge from 
reality. 

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Friction and fog together are 
not aberrations of war, they are

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its nature. 
Every satellite in orbit, every 

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drone in the sky, every AI 
system processing battlefield 

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data in real time represents A 
genuine reduction in some 

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specific category of 
uncertainty. 

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Certain things that were once 
invisible can now be seen. 

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Certain decisions that once 
required hours can now be made 

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in minutes. 
The technology is real, and its 

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effects are real. 
And yet, in the command centers 

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00:11:02,600 --> 00:11:05,960
of every military on Earth, in 
the early hours of every 

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00:11:05,960 --> 00:11:09,480
escalation, in the mind of every
analyst staring at data that 

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00:11:09,480 --> 00:11:13,040
refuses to resolve cleanly into 
a single conclusion, the fog 

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persists. 
It is older than any weapon 

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system. 
It will outlast any technology 

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designed to eliminate it because
war is not only a contest of 

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hardware, it is a contest of 
perception, judgement, and 

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decision making under conditions
that are specifically designed 

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by an adversary to make all 
three as difficult as possible. 

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The fog is not a malfunction, it
is the battlefield itself. 

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This has been epic. 
Fury, the US Iran war podcast.