When the U.S. military trains fighter pilots, it uses a concept called the OODA loop. It stands for observe, orient, decide, act. The idea is that, if your ability to observe, orient, decide and act in a dogfight at 30,000 feet is faster than the other pilot’s, you’ll shoot his plane out of the sky. […]
I’ve visited Kiev and Hanoi recently, and it’s been extremely revealing. Ukraine is struggling with how to deal with a declining Russia that is looking for dignity in all the wrong places—like in Crimea—and Vietnam is struggling with how to deal with a rising China that is looking for oil in all the wrong places—like in Vietnam’s territorial waters.
My favorite story in Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee’s fascinating new book, “The Second Machine Age,” is when the Dutch chess grandmaster Jan Hein Donner was asked how he’d prepare for a chess match against a computer, like IBM’s Deep Blue. Donner replied: “I would bring a hammer.”
Countries that don’t plan for the future tend not to do well there. When you watch the reckless behavior of the Tea Party-driven Republicans in Congress today, you can’t help but fear that we’ll be one of those.
I’ve been a regular visitor to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and, when I was describing what troubled me most about the place to a wise foreign policy friend, he urged me to read the play “Three Sisters” by Chekhov.
I just arrived in Shanghai, but I’m thinking about Estonia and wondering about something Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have been saying.
Market values are crowding out civic practices.
Nations thrive when they develop “inclusive” political and economic institutions.
What is American capitalism today, and what will enable it to thrive in the 21st century?
No one should want domestic electoral politics mixed up with the Iran decision.
The knee-jerk debate we’re again having over who is responsible for higher oil prices fundamentally misses huge changes.
Now every other Arab democracy movement is trying to replicate it—without a U.S. midwife.
Naturally, the EPA-haters hate the deal.
Emanuel is trying to cut and invest everywhere.
Recasting any of these alone would be huge. Doing all four at once—when the world has never been more interconnected—is mind-boggling.
Indeed, if there is one sentiment that unites the crises in Europe and America it is a powerful sense of “baby boomers behaving badly …
The world is caught in a dangerous feedback loop—higher oil prices and climate disruptions lead to higher food prices, higher food prices lead to more instability, more instability leads to higher oil prices.
Because the Obama team never found the voice to fully endorse the Tahrir Square revolution until it was over, the people in that square now know one very powerful thing: They did this all by themselves.
Given where we are, the tax-cut deal with the Republicans was the best President Barack Obama could do since raising taxes in a recession would not have been a good idea and the Republicans had the votes to prevent it.
We need an all-society effort—from the White House to the classroom to the living room—to nurture a culture of achievement and excellence.
