Intel
Writing
Field notes on AI, federal technology and building products.
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108 articles · page 5 of 5
Reasoning Models Change the Unit of Cost
A reasoning model bills you for thinking and hands back a summary. That changes how you budget, evaluate, and audit an AI workflow.
NPE Identity: Your Agent's Credential Needs a Sponsor
Giving an AI agent its own identity is the easy half. The half that survives an audit is the named human who owns the credential and can revoke it.
The Assassins: What the Record Actually Shows
The Nizari Ismailis held mountain fortresses for 166 years. Nearly everything written about them came from the people who feared them.
DeepSeek's Real Number Was Never $6 Million
The training run was cheap and the weights are open. What changed is the price of a credible second option, not the price of intelligence.
Rev 3 Is Not the CMMC Baseline. Plan for Both.
CMMC Level 2 is assessed against the 110 requirements in NIST SP 800-171 Rev 2. Rev 3 is where the standard is heading, not what your assessor scores.
Zero Trust Without Data Labels Is a Network Diagram
Federal zero trust guidance puts data at the center. If the classification does not travel with the file, the rest is a network diagram.
Accountability Is a Procedure, Not a Verdict
The October 2024 filing in the federal election case is an argument about which acts were official. The institutional stakes sit in that distinction.
What Urban Training Actually Tests in a MEU
A city strips a MEU's advantages: air cover, logistics, clean comms. Realistic urban training is a test of judgment under that friction.
Aristotle's Oligarchy Is a Diagnosis, Not a Warning
Aristotle filed democracy as a corrupt regime too. His test was never who holds the wealth, but whose claim to justice a constitution recognises.
Naval Dominance Is Decided in the Dry Dock
Ship-repair capacity and contracting mechanics set the fleet's pace. Another industry day does not. The industrial base is the modernization program.
Thought Leadership Is a Record, Not a Calendar
The internet has enough opinions. What it lacks is the decision, the evidence, and the cost behind a claim someone can check.
Transforming in Contact Is a Procurement Story
The Army's field-testing push is usually described as a training change. Read the schedule and it is an admission about the requirement document.
End of the archive. 108 essays.