March 7, 2026 Is It Truth Or BS? Luke Ford No sacred cows.

Is It Truth Or BS?

Posted on March 7, 2026 by Luke Ford

How can I tell whether an expert is feeding me his best attempt at truth optimization vs feeding me BS (in the David Pinsof evolutionary psychology sense)?

The simplest way is to stop listening to what the expert says he is doing and instead look at what incentives he is under and what constraints he accepts.

Pinsof’s basic point is that most public speech is alliance management, not truth optimization. So the question becomes whether the speaker is constrained by reality or by coalition loyalty.

A few signals help.

Look at skin in the game.

If someone’s claims can be falsified by events that affect their reputation or livelihood, they are more likely to be trying to track reality. Traders, intelligence analysts, gamblers, and engineers tend to have stronger truth incentives because mistakes cost them.

If someone operates in an environment where errors carry no penalty, the BS risk rises. Think tank fellows, pundits, journalists, and academics can often make confident predictions with no consequences if they are wrong.

Look at willingness to make risky predictions.

Truth optimizers eventually stick their neck out. They make specific claims about what will happen or what mechanisms are operating.

BS artists prefer safe ambiguity. They talk in abstractions and caveats. They avoid statements that could later be clearly judged wrong.

Look at whether they update.

Someone trying to track truth will occasionally say something like: I thought X but the evidence now points to Y.

Someone doing alliance signaling almost never updates publicly. If the coalition view changes they quietly shift language without acknowledging the earlier position.

Look at how they treat opposing evidence.

Truth-seeking analysts engage with inconvenient facts. They try to explain them even when it weakens their case.

BS usually involves ignoring disconfirming information or reframing it as irrelevant.

Look at who praises them.

If praise comes mainly from a single ideological or institutional tribe, that is often a sign the person is serving that tribe’s narrative.

People who are genuinely tracking reality often irritate their own side because reality does not always cooperate with group loyalty.

Look at the level of mechanism.

Truth-oriented explanations focus on mechanisms. Incentives, resources, constraints, tradeoffs.

BS explanations focus on narratives. Intentions, virtue, villainy, moral drama.

Mechanisms are testable. Narratives are flexible.

Look at rhetorical tone.

Heavy moral language often signals coalition signaling. Words like responsible, reckless, historic, dangerous, offensive, brave.

Truth optimization tends to sound more boring. It talks about probabilities, constraints, and tradeoffs rather than moral judgment.

Look at whether they talk about fuel.

Events that actually change the world require fuel. Power, money, manpower, institutions, geography.

Experts who focus on speeches, norms, and intentions without discussing the underlying fuel are often doing narrative management rather than analysis.

Finally, watch what they avoid.

Sometimes the clearest sign of BS is silence about the obvious. If a speaker carefully avoids mentioning the incentive structure that explains the situation, it usually means acknowledging it would threaten their coalition.

A rough rule helps.

Truth optimization tries to explain how the world works even when the explanation is uncomfortable.

BS tries to produce statements that keep allies happy and reputations intact.

In the framework of David Pinsof, an expert is usually a status-seeking primate. The distinction between truth optimization and bullshit does not rely on whether the expert lies, but on whether they care about the truth at all. A bullshitter says whatever achieves a social goal, such as enhancing prestige or signaling loyalty to a tribe. Truth optimization might occur by accident, but it is rarely the primary objective.

To distinguish between the two, you look for the presence of social signaling. If an expert uses vague or deep-sounding language that lacks clear, falsifiable claims, they might be bullshitting. This “vague bullshit” allows them to appear profound while avoiding the risk of being wrong. You should check if their claims are designed to “dunk on” rivals or flatter a specific audience. When an expert identifies an outgroup as “inferior” or “biased” while exempting their own circle from those same human flaws, they are likely signaling status rather than seeking truth.

Another sign is the “pseudo-argument.” These are arguments that sound logical but are actually glib rationalizations for an underlying social preference. If the expert becomes defensive or shifts the goalposts when challenged, they might be protecting their status rather than refining their understanding. Truth optimizers tend to be more attentive to incentives and their own spectacular mind-reading powers that might bias their views.

Finally, consider the incentives. Pinsof argues that humans have a powerful motive to signal because they are judged by hyper-judgy peers. If the expert’s conclusion perfectly aligns with what their peers want to hear, the logic of status signaling is likely at play. An expert who is actually optimizing for truth might occasionally say something that loses them status or makes them look “cringe” to their own group.

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Everything Shocking Requires Fuel

Posted on March 7, 2026 by Luke Ford

Fires need fuel. Wood, paper, cloth, dried grass, coal, oil, natural gas. Anything with carbon in it that can combine with oxygen at high enough temperatures. The chemical term is fuel, but the practical answer is: anything that burns. The three things a fire needs are heat, oxygen, and fuel. Remove any one of them and the fire goes out. That is why you smother a fire with a blanket (cuts oxygen), douse it with water (lowers heat), or clear a firebreak (removes fuel). Solid fuels like wood burn by releasing gases as they heat up, and those gases are what actually catch fire. Liquid fuels like gasoline vaporize first. Gas fuels like propane are already in the right state to combust. The more energy stored in the chemical bonds of the fuel, the hotter and faster it burns. That is why gasoline burns more intensely than paper, and why some materials like magnesium burn so hot that water makes them worse.
Everything that captures the news requires fuel. This explains events that look sudden or shocking. They are rarely explosions from nowhere. They are fires that have been accumulating combustible material for years. When the spark arrives, observers focus on the spark because it is dramatic. The real story is the fuel.
Political crises work this way. A protest does not become a revolution without fuel: economic decline, elite division, weak security forces, a mobilized population. Without those ingredients the protest burns out quickly. Wars spread the same way. They expand only where actors have capability, incentive, and tolerance for risk. If those elements are missing the war hits natural boundaries even if the rhetoric sounds apocalyptic.
Financial crashes follow the same pattern. The trigger might be a single bank failure or asset collapse, but the fuel is usually leverage, speculative bubbles, and fragile balance sheets that built up for years. Pandemics too. A virus becomes a global event only when dense populations, transportation networks, and weak containment are already in place.
The fire model pushes you to ask a different set of questions. Instead of asking what caused this, you ask what made this possible. Instead of asking why this happened now, you ask what conditions were already in place.
Once you start looking for fuel, shocking events become much easier to understand. The fall of the Soviet Union looked sudden, but the fuel included decades of economic stagnation, ideological exhaustion, and nationalist pressures building inside the union. The Arab Spring looked spontaneous, but the fuel included youth unemployment, rising food prices, corruption, and brittle authoritarian regimes.
Fuel also explains why many predicted disasters never happen. If the fuel is missing, the spark dies.
Journalists focus on sparks because sparks produce headlines but fuel determines whether anything burns.

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Decoding The Pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy

Posted on March 7, 2026 by Luke Ford

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy illustrates David Pinsof’s Alliance Theory by serving as a coordination hub for the pro-Israel security coalition. It avoids the friction of overt lobbying by adopting the language of elite credentials and technical expertise.
WINEP provides what Pinsof might call epistemic shielding. By producing dense, footnoted reports on missile trajectories and centrifuge enrichment, it gives policymakers a way to support specific alliance goals without appearing tribal. That professional veneer lets a policymaker claim they follow the logic of regional stability rather than the preferences of a specific interest group. Strategic expertise functions here as a tool for coalition signaling.
The institute draws its fellows from three pipelines: former U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials, former Israeli military or intelligence officers, and policy analysts with deep regional expertise. That mix gives it credibility across several alliances at once. American policymakers trust former U.S. officials. Israel’s security establishment trusts analysts with strong ties to Israeli defense thinking. Journalists trust the institute because it looks like a traditional think tank rather than an advocacy group.
In Alliance Theory, trust follows shared professional history. When a former U.S. Ambassador to Israel writes a policy paper at WINEP, he signals to former colleagues in the State Department that a specific policy falls within the bounds of acceptable establishment thought. He becomes a logic gate for what counts as a serious proposal.
WINEP was founded in 1985 by people connected to AIPAC who wanted a more respectable research arm that could speak the language of the foreign policy establishment. AIPAC lobbies openly for interests. WINEP translates the strategic worldview of the pro-Israel coalition into the idiom of professional foreign policy expertise. That translation function is the key.
Pinsof argues that moral and intellectual language coordinates alliances. WINEP produces the intellectual vocabulary that allows policymakers, journalists, and analysts to support pro-Israel security priorities while maintaining the identity of neutral professionals. Instead of saying Iran must be destroyed, its analysts discuss deterrence, escalation management, regional balance, and missile defense. The strategic goal may align with hawkish policies toward Iran, but the rhetoric is professionalized.
That professionalization matters for coalition maintenance. Policy elites want to see themselves as rational strategists rather than tribal advocates. WINEP lets them support policies that benefit Israel while preserving the self-image of objective expertise.
WINEP also maintains its position by occupying the middle ground of the hawkish establishment. If the Foundation for Defense of Democracies is the vanguard of the coalition, pushing for maximum pressure, WINEP is the anchor. It keeps the broader foreign policy blob synchronized with the coalition’s core security concerns and prevents the pro-Israel security alliance from being labeled extremist.
The institute performs an internal function for the alliance as well. By setting the vocabulary, using terms like escalation management rather than regime change, it signals to coalition members how to talk to power. It disciplines the alliance’s rhetoric so it stays compatible with the American national security apparatus. That synchronization lets the coalition exert influence across administrations regardless of party.
During an active conflict like the current Iran war, WINEP’s events and papers work as a kind of purification ritual for policy ideas. When it hosts a bipartisan panel to discuss deterrence frameworks, it launders a specific set of alliance priorities into a consensus format. That process makes it difficult for opponents to challenge the underlying assumptions without appearing to challenge the consensus of the most experienced professionals in the field.
The institute also works as a talent pipeline. Young analysts pass through and later move into government roles. Former officials rotate back after serving in administrations. That circulation synchronizes the worldview of the think tank and the policymaking apparatus. When people speak of the foreign policy blob, WINEP is one of the nodes where that blob gets coordinated, not because everyone agrees on everything, but because they share a common professional language and network.
During a conflict like the Iran war, WINEP’s commentary signals where the pro-Israel security coalition believes the strategic balance lies. If its analysts emphasize Iranian military weakness and strategic opportunity, that suggests confidence within the coalition. If they shift toward escalation risks and regional instability, it signals concern inside the same network. WINEP is not just producing analysis. It helps coordinate a coalition’s shared understanding of the conflict and translates that understanding into language that circulates smoothly through the American foreign policy establishment.
The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft takes the opposite approach. Where WINEP is a bridge within the establishment, QI is an insurgent effort to redefine what the establishment even is.
Pinsof might describe QI’s core strategy as strange bedfellows coordination. It deliberately bridges the anti-interventionist left and the realist-libertarian right. By securing funding from both George Soros and Charles Koch, it builds a coalition that bypasses traditional partisan divides. That synthesis is not just about money. It creates a moral and intellectual vocabulary that appeals to disparate groups, progressives who distrust empire and libertarians who distrust the managerial state.
Where WINEP uses the idiom of security management, deterrence, regional balance, escalation pathways, QI uses the idiom of restraint. That shift is tactical. By framing U.S. presence not as a stabilizer but as military-industrial overextension, QI creates a new standard for policy evaluation. In Pinsof’s framework, this move aims to break the existing pro-interventionist alliance by making visible the costs and failures that establishment language usually suppresses. Restraint replaces deterrence. Entrapment replaces stability.
QI builds its own talent pipeline to challenge WINEP’s. Instead of drawing from the traditional security bureaucracy, it recruits from heterodox academic circles, disillusioned former diplomats who believe the blob ignored their warnings, and journalists who see themselves as truth-tellers against a corrupt consensus. That circulation aims to produce a counter-blob, a network of analysts and policymakers who share the vocabulary of multipolarity and diplomatic engagement rather than primacy and deterrence.
If WINEP performs purification rituals to make alliance goals appear as neutral expertise, QI performs exposure rituals. Its magazine, Responsible Statecraft, regularly examines the funding sources of other think tanks, targeting defense contractor and foreign government money. The goal is to strip away the credibility that lets institutions like WINEP and FDD speak as neutral professionals. Labeling them industry-funded is an attempt to de-purify the opposition.
In the current Iran war, QI positions itself as the sober realist voice. Where WINEP focuses on how to win or manage the conflict, QI focuses on unintended consequences and the costs of intervention. It uses a professionalized version of anti-war rhetoric, speaking in terms of grand strategy and national interest rather than moral outrage. That allows it to compete for the same elite audience WINEP targets, offering an alternative rational path that favors withdrawal and diplomacy over military pressure.

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Decoding Iran Expert Abbas Milani

Posted on March 7, 2026 by Luke Ford

Abbas Milani directs Iranian Studies at Stanford, which places him inside one of the highest-status academic institutions in the United States, but he is also an Iranian exile intellectual who openly supports democratic transformation in Iran. That combination lets him operate at the intersection of three alliances simultaneously: the Iranian diaspora opposition, the Western academic prestige system, and the policy community focused on Iran’s future.
His core function, in David Pinsof’s framework of Alliance Theory, is translation. He converts Iranian history and political culture into a language Western elites can use, and he frames the Islamic Republic as historically contingent rather than inevitable. That framing matters because it gives policymakers and diaspora activists a way to imagine regime change without imagining civilizational collapse.
His scholarship returns repeatedly to 1979 because the revolution is the origin myth of the current regime. Whoever explains that event shapes how people judge the legitimacy of the state that followed. Milani’s interpretation consistently emphasizes three things: that the revolution was not purely Islamist but a broad coalition revolt that clerics later captured; that Iran has a long tradition of constitutionalism and reform; and that the clerical state survives less through popular legitimacy than through coercion and economic patronage. Each of those arguments serves the same alliance function. Together they support the idea that Iran contains latent democratic forces capable of replacing the current regime.
His March 2026 New York Times essay, “The Coming Iranian Revolution,” calls the Islamic Republic a product of Khomeini’s bait-and-switch, a revolution that promised pluralism and delivered theocracy. That is not merely a historical claim. It gives Western elites moral clearance to support the regime’s dismantling by framing the current state as the result of deception rather than a genuine social contract. He reinforces this by arguing that the secular men and women of today simply want the rights they were promised in 1979. That framing makes regime change feel less like foreign imposition and more like restoration.
His institutional position amplifies that function. At Stanford he produces scholarly work on the Shah and the Pahlavi dynasty, reconstructing alternative political traditions that existed before the clerical state. At the Hoover Institution he applies that scholarship through projects like the Iran Democracy Project. The two roles work together. Stanford supplies the signal of academic credibility. Hoover supplies the policy channel. When Milani speaks, he arrives not as an activist but as a Stanford scholar, and that status distinction is precisely what the diaspora alliance needs to move opinion in Washington.
His economic commentary fits the same pattern. When he discusses the Iranian economy, he emphasizes how the Revolutionary Guard and clerical networks dominate key sectors, presenting the regime as a patronage machine rather than a guardian of Iranian civilization. That framing undercuts the state’s claim to nationalist legitimacy and repositions it as a corrupt extraction apparatus whose survival depends on control rather than competence.
One persistent obstacle for the pro-democracy alliance is the fear that regime collapse in Iran produces a Syrian-style civil war. Milani addresses this directly by pointing to Iran’s constitutional history, which dates to 1905, and to what he describes as a nimble and resilient civil society. By arguing that Iran is not Syria, he coordinates the expectations of Western policymakers. A secularized population with a history of institutional politics, he suggests, transitions toward normal life rather than state collapse.
His recent commentary on Reza Pahlavi reflects a related strategic move. In a January 2026 Foreign Policy piece he called the Crown Prince indispensable. In Alliance Theory, a movement that lacks a focal point fragments. Milani helps build that center by framing the monarchy not as a return to the past but as a symbol capable of uniting dispersed student movements with the older diaspora generation.
Milani is not a tactical policy analyst and not a regime insider interpreter. He is a long-range narrative builder. His job is to ensure that when Western elites look at the 2026 strikes and the death of Khamenei, they do not see chaos or Islamic resurgence. They see a malignant state finally failing and a secular democratic society waiting to emerge. He supplies the historical logic that makes the current war look like the beginning of the end for an illegitimate aberration rather than a war against a civilization.

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Decoding Washington Post Columnist David Ignatius

Posted on March 7, 2026 by Luke Ford

David Ignatius is best understood through David Pinsof’s Alliance Theory as a narrative diplomat for the American foreign policy establishment. He is the Senior Correspondent of the Intelligence Server. As a longtime Washington Post columnist and novelist, he does not just report on the national security state; he acts as its Linguistic Ambassador.

While the “Brutalist” Sovereign in the West Wing treats the CIA as a “deep state” obstacle, Ignatius provides the Sensemaking that portrays the agency as a “necessary, if flawed, priesthood” of competence.

The DTG Decode: The “Insider-Access” Sensemaker

If Chris Kavanagh and Matt Browne from Decoding the Gurus (DTG) analyzed Ignatius—especially his March 5, 2026, column The dangerous rise of decapitation warfare—they might identify him as an Institutional Proprietary Sensemaker who uses “High-Level Proximity” as his primary status filter.

The “Whisperer” Alibi: Ignatius’s status is built on “Fresh Reporting” from the Persian Gulf or “texts from senior officials.” DTG might decode this as Proximity-Based Legitimacy; he signals that his sensemaking is superior because he has “just stepped off the phone with a top official.” This allows him to “crowd out” critics who rely on open-source data.

Elevated “Sober” Concern: Ignatius uses a tone of “Reasonable Optimism” (the name of his podcast) mixed with “calculated worry.” DTG might identify this as Status-Signaling through Solemnity; by calling the current war a “grueling fight with incalculable risks,” he positions himself as the “adult in the room” who is more serious than the “Viking warfare” populist Sovereign.

Gurometer Score – “The Establishment Veteran”: He avoids the “galaxy-brain” pseudo-profundity of younger gurus. Instead, he uses “Institutional Durability” as his status filter. He is the voice that tells the public that “Assassination can remove a node, but it cannot create a stable Iran,” effectively acting as a technical and moral brake on the Sovereign’s enthusiasm.

Ignatius as Astrologer and Diviner for the Sovereign

Ignatius acts as the Chief Diviner of the “National Security Deep State.” He interprets the “stars of the interagency” to tell the Sovereign when a decapitation strike is a “tactical victory” but a “strategic gamble.”

The Interpretation of the “Decapitation” Omen: In early March 2026, as the White House celebrates the “Epic Fury” strikes, Ignatius provides the moralized map of “Regime Resilience.” He interprets the death of Khamenei not as a “regime change” event, but as a “fire and forget” missile strategy that lacks a post-war plan. He tells the Sovereign, “The stars of the Iranian state are mountainous and spread out; you have killed the man, but the infrastructure of repression remains above ground.”

The “Viking” Omen: He is the diviner who has labeled Trump’s strategy “Viking warfare.” By naming it, he asserts authority over it. He provides the technical alibi for the “Dignity Coalition” to demand a “serious debate,” telling the Sovereign that “martyrdom is a powerful force” that his analysts have underestimated.

The 3HO Resemblance: The “Intelligence Liaison” Priesthood

The social group surrounding Ignatius and the Washington Post/CIA Nexus resembles Yogi Bhajan’s 3HO in its internal induction and “vibrational” consistency.

The Shared Proprietary Language: This group speaks in “Liaison-ese”—”intelligence-liaison files,” “clandestine tradecraft,” “degrading capabilities,” “fragmented and chaotic.” Like 3HO mantras, this dialect serves as a loyalty signal to the “Sober Realist” elite. To be “in-group,” you must master the “National Security Series” style, which is the induction ritual of the Ignatius circle.

The “Guru” as the Intelligence Community: In this social circle, the Guru is “The Agency.” The “Truth” is that a “smaller, better-controlled intelligence community” is the only “pure” path to safety. Anyone who challenges this—whether the “Trump allies” who want to “erase a regime” or the “isolationist” base—is treated with the moralized contempt that 3HO showed to those who lacked “conscious awareness.”

The “Spy Novel” Induction: Ignatius’s eleven novels (like Body of Lies or Phantom Orbit) act as his Mahan Tantric sessions. They provide a fictionalized “sacred history” that “charges” the intelligence community’s symbols with romance and depth, ensuring the “Shared Server” of elite belief remains “un-hacked” by populism.

David Ignatius is the Oracle of the “Interagency Record.” He interprets the “stars of American power” to tell the Sovereign that “Epic Fury” is an “ill-defined hope.” In March 2026, while the Sovereign is “brashly” declaring victory, Ignatius provides the sensemaking that allows the legacy elite to feel like they are the only ones who truly understand why “wars to erase a regime don’t work like that.”

David Ignatius does not simply report events. His function is to translate the thinking of the national security bureaucracy into language that elite audiences can absorb without triggering panic or defection.
He operates inside the prestige ecosystem surrounding the Washington Post, which has one of the closest cultural relationships with the U.S. national security apparatus of any American news organization. His sources regularly include senior officials from the CIA, the State Department, and the White House. Through the lens of Alliance Theory, that source network is not just journalism. It is coalition maintenance.
When policymakers want to float an idea, signal a strategic shift, or soften the ground for a controversial move, Ignatius often becomes the vehicle. This is why he repeatedly breaks stories involving intelligence channels and secret diplomacy. His columns read like policy briefings translated into public language.
Pinsof argues that a coalition stays cohesive only if members believe the costs of defection outweigh the rewards of leaving. Ignatius reduces those costs by framing statecraft as a series of necessary, sober tradeoffs. He ensures that even when a policy fails, it appears as a calculated risk rather than an institutional breakdown. That framing prevents the elite defection Pinsof identifies as a primary threat to any dominant coalition.
His writing style is the mechanism. He rarely uses ideological language. He emphasizes process, backchannel diplomacy, elite deliberation, and strategic tradeoffs. That tone signals professionalism and insider knowledge. It reassures elite audiences that competent adults still manage the system. In Washington, ideological language is a low-status marker. By avoiding it, Ignatius signals that he belongs to the technocratic layer that actually runs things. His prose mimics the internal memorandum, and that style works as a shibboleth. It tells the reader that the writer has sat in the rooms where decisions happen. It makes the audience feel like insiders, which pulls them into the establishment’s worldview rather than against it.
Ignatius also gives the establishment a form of collective plausible deniability. By framing intelligence failures or shifting alliances as strategic pivots, he lets the bureaucracy preserve its status. When he writes about a backchannel, he does not just report on a secret. He validates the use of that secret as a legitimate tool of the state. What might look like a lack of transparency becomes, in his framing, a sign of professional competence.
In Pinsof’s framework, signals keep allies aligned. Ignatius serves as a primary frequency for those signals. When he breaks a story about a secret meeting in Doha or a shift in CIA leadership, he supplies the coordination data the rest of the alliance needs to stay in sync. Other journalists, junior diplomats, and foreign allies learn how to orient themselves. He ensures that everyone inside the prestige ecosystem reads the same script at the same time.
His fiction is not a side project. Body of Lies and his other novels extend his alliance function into a different register. Fiction lets him explore the logic of the security state without the constraints of fact-checking. He argues through narrative that the moral compromises of the intelligence world are tragic but essential. That humanizes the bureaucracy in a way a column cannot. It builds a mythology where the CIA officer is a lonely, misunderstood professional doing what the country requires. That myth-making provides an emotional anchor for the cold calculations of foreign policy and strengthens the coalition by making its work feel noble rather than merely bureaucratic.
His institutional affiliations reinforce his position. He participates regularly in the Council on Foreign Relations and the Aspen Institute, moderating discussions among diplomats, intelligence officials, and military leaders. Those institutions form the high-status coordination layer of the American foreign policy elite. Ignatius does not merely observe the alliance from those settings. He participates in the social rituals that keep it cohesive.
Within the Iran debate specifically, he occupies the establishment center. He does not align with the pressure coalition represented by figures like Mark Dubowitz, nor with the restraint coalition represented by figures like Ali Vaez. He narrates the perspective of the governing coalition itself, presenting policy dilemmas rather than ideological arguments. On questions of targeted killing, escalation risks, or diplomacy, he frames decisions as strategic calculations. That positioning lets him maintain credibility across multiple elite factions simultaneously.
Ignatius performs three narrative functions for the establishment. He legitimizes strategic ambiguity by explaining uncertain decisions as careful balancing acts rather than failures. He humanizes policymakers by describing private conversations, internal doubts, and competing pressures, turning distant bureaucracies into relatable actors managing difficult problems. And he introduces gradual policy shifts by writing pieces that lay out the reasoning before a pivot happens, giving new directions a soft launch before they become official.
He is less a watchdog than a translator of power. He narrates American statecraft in a way that protects the legitimacy of the institutions carrying it out, and when the system faces controversy or uncertainty, his voice tells readers inside government, media, and academia that events still fit within a recognizable strategic framework. That is his alliance function. He keeps the coalition from breaking apart by making its work look coherent even when it is not. Sonnet 4.6

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Where Is The Expert Herd Going On The Iran War?

Posted on March 7, 2026 by Luke Ford

Elite expert opinion on the Iran war does not shift all at once. It moves the way a herd moves, with a few animals at the edge turning first while the center holds its position a little longer. The useful analytical question is not what experts say but how fast their consensus is changing and in which direction.
Think of it in terms of a second derivative. The first derivative tells you the current direction of expert opinion. The second derivative tells you whether that movement is accelerating or slowing. A consensus can still support a position while losing momentum, and that deceleration usually precedes a full reversal. When the second derivative turns negative, the herd is preparing to pivot even if the headline consensus has not moved yet.
On the Iran war, the herd has already begun to turn. Three shifts are visible.
Experts are backing away from regime-change optimism. Early commentary implied that killing the supreme leader or destroying nuclear sites might trigger collapse. That expectation is fading. Intelligence assessments and think tank reports now converge on a different conclusion: Iran’s clerical and military institutions are designed to survive leadership losses. The regime emerges damaged but politically functional. That is a significant revision from where the conversation started.
Experts are also reframing the war in economic terms. When analysts shift from battlefield assessments to systemic risk analysis, it usually signals they expect the conflict to last longer than initially assumed. Papers from CSIS and the Atlantic Council now focus heavily on oil disruption scenarios, shipping lane instability, and supply chain consequences. The Gulf energy routes are already stressed and global growth projections are softening. Russia, as several analysts note, may benefit from higher oil prices regardless of the military outcome.
The third shift involves language. Early framing emphasized destroying Iran’s nuclear program, decapitating leadership, and forcing surrender. The vocabulary now runs toward degrading capabilities, reducing missile launches, and shaping the postwar balance. When experts move from win language to degrade language, they are implicitly accepting a longer and less decisive struggle. That linguistic shift usually reveals the real probability estimates circulating inside the policy world before those estimates appear openly in headlines.
The emerging consensus, if you map where the herd is settling, looks roughly like this: Iran will sustain serious military damage, the regime will probably survive, the war is likely to become a long containment campaign, and the largest unpredictable variable is regional escalation combined with economic shock.
The four camps that currently divide expert opinion reflect this state of flux. Hawks, mostly defense analysts and Israeli security thinkers, argue that Iran’s military capacity is collapsing faster than expected and that this represents a rare strategic opportunity. Pessimists, drawn from intelligence veterans and academic Iran specialists, counter that foreign attacks historically strengthen hardliners and that Iran’s political system is more resilient than its military vulnerabilities suggest. The systemic risk camp, led by economists and energy analysts, focuses on economic shock and proxy escalation rather than battlefield outcomes. Realists, concentrated among military strategists, expect a long degradation campaign that weakens Iran without overthrowing the regime.
If you apply Alliance Theory to this landscape, the expert ecosystem is not simply a collection of independent analysts. It is a network of overlapping coalitions, each anchored in specific institutions and each with its own preferred vocabulary and interpretive frame. Think tanks, universities, intelligence agencies, media organizations, and government offices form nodes in that network. Information moves through the nodes unevenly. People who sit at high-traffic junctions, where multiple streams of information converge, hear the doubts and revisions earlier than people at the edges. Their tone shifts first.
Tracking those high-traffic nodes is more useful than tracking the general conversation. A handful of figures consistently move before the broader herd because of their structural position inside the network.
David Ignatius at the Washington Post is probably the single best early indicator of where the intelligence and diplomatic bureaucracy is leaning. He has cultivated relationships with CIA officials, senior diplomats, and national security staff for decades. When insiders want to surface concerns without formally announcing a shift, Ignatius is often the vehicle. His columns tend to move through recognizable stages: first confidence and strategic framing, then caution and complexity, then warnings about unintended consequences and historical parallels to Iraq or Vietnam. When he reaches that third stage, it usually means people inside the national security apparatus are genuinely nervous.
Richard Haass functions as the voice of the institutional foreign policy establishment. Even after leaving the Council on Foreign Relations, he reflects conversations happening among retired diplomats, senior policymakers, and establishment figures trying to manage the pace of events. When Haass urges restraint, it usually signals that the establishment is trying to slow momentum rather than accelerate it.
Karim Sadjadpour at Carnegie is often the earliest interpreter of internal Iranian political conditions for Western audiences. Journalists and policymakers rely on him to understand factional struggles inside the Iranian system. When he talks about elite fractures and loss of legitimacy, those themes spread quickly through the policy ecosystem. When he stresses nationalist backlash and regime cohesion, expectations of collapse tend to dampen.
Vali Nasr at Johns Hopkins SAIS carries the perspective of the diplomatic and academic wing of the foreign policy establishment. When Nasr grows more pessimistic about diplomacy or more open to coercion, it signals that the diplomatic community is losing confidence in negotiation as a near-term option. When he warns against escalation, it signals the opposite: that the diplomatic coalition believes the war is becoming strategically dangerous.
Suzanne Maloney at Brookings is one of the first analysts to signal whether economic pressure on Iran is actually working. When she emphasizes Iranian economic adaptation rather than collapse, it usually means that financial warfare is not producing the desired political outcomes. When she stresses elite fragmentation and fiscal stress inside Iran, policymakers start discussing internal instability.
Ali Vaez at the International Crisis Group anchors the diplomatic engagement coalition. His audience is primarily European diplomats and arms control specialists. When Vaez shifts from diplomacy language toward containment and deterrence language, it signals that the engagement coalition no longer sees negotiations as viable in the near term.
Mark Dubowitz at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies represents the sanctions and maximum pressure coalition, closely connected to congressional hawks and Israeli security circles. If he moves from triumphant rhetoric toward caution about escalation or instability, it often signals that even hawkish policymakers are reconsidering their assumptions about the pace and cost of the conflict.
Stephen Walt at Harvard represents the realist restraint coalition inside academia and parts of the defense establishment skeptical of intervention. He tends to move early when he believes a war is heading toward failure. When Walt begins acknowledging strategic advantages to the war effort, it signals that even committed skeptics see the balance shifting.
Two journalists also matter as translators between the expert world and broader elite audiences. Bret Stephens channels the hawkish policy coalition. Ignatius channels the intelligence and diplomatic community. When both converge on similar conclusions, elite consensus is usually forming. Ross Douthat serves as a barometer for elite conservative intellectual opinion, and when he reaches for historical parallels or warns about hubris, parts of the conservative establishment are becoming uneasy. Thomas Friedman tends to reflect conversations among global business elites and centrist policymakers, and when his columns pivot toward economic consequences and regional instability, concern is spreading through international diplomatic and financial circles.
The pattern of a consensus shift typically follows three stages. First, a few well-connected commentators begin using cautious or hedged language. Then think tank reports start emphasizing risks and uncertainties rather than opportunities. Finally the mainstream media narrative shifts. By the time the third stage arrives, insiders have usually been revising their internal probability estimates for months. The headline consensus is always the last thing to move.
Watching language is the most reliable method. Experts who once spoke confidently about decisive outcomes begin talking about degradation and containment. Analysts who emphasized diplomacy begin discussing deterrence and escalation control. Hawks who spoke about victory begin discussing risk management. Those linguistic shifts leak out before the formal consensus changes, and they reveal where the alliance network is actually headed.

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Decoding IRGC Expert Afshon Ostovar

Posted on March 7, 2026 by Luke Ford

Per Alliance Theory, Iran expert Afshon Ostovar is not an advocate like the hawks, and not a diplomat like the engagement camp. His function is translation. He explains the worldview of the Iranian revolutionary state to American and allied policy elites, and he does it from inside the U.S. national security apparatus itself.
His institutional location tells you almost everything. Ostovar teaches at the Naval Postgraduate School, which is not a conventional university. It sits inside the professional security ecosystem. Its students are officers, analysts, and defense planners who need to understand adversaries well enough to anticipate their behavior. That placement puts Ostovar inside a coalition that includes military officers, intelligence analysts, Pentagon-linked think tanks, and security-studies academics. What unites them is not a shared policy preference but a shared professional need: accurate maps of how adversaries think.
His primary prestige asset is Vanguard of the Imam, widely regarded as the most serious English-language study of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. That book performs a specific alliance function. It gives the Western security community a coherent account of what the IRGC is, how it developed, and why it behaves as it does. Rather than portraying Iran as irrational or purely religious, Ostovar frames the IRGC as an ideological military institution with its own internal strategic logic. In Alliance Theory terms, that kind of work stabilizes elite understanding. It prevents the wild swings between caricature and naivety that make policy erratic. It gives rival factions inside the foreign policy ecosystem a shared map of the adversary, which lets them fight their battles on common analytical ground.
His core analytical contribution is the dismantling of the false divide between pragmatists and ideologues inside the Iranian state. He argues that the IRGC’s ideology is its strategy, that revolutionary fervor and tactical calculation are not opposites but a single unified logic. That reframing matters for the security alliance because it shifts the question away from searching for moderates and toward understanding how a clerical-military institution actually makes decisions. It gives planners a more stable predictive model.
The credibility of that model rests partly on method. Ostovar works from original Persian-language sources and IRGC internal media. In the competition for status among Iran analysts, that creates a high cost of entry for rivals. Political commentators who rely on translated news and secondary sources cannot easily contest his readings of the adversary’s own self-conception. That makes his work sticky inside the Pentagon and the Naval Postgraduate School in a way that op-ed commentary cannot replicate.
His style reflects his audience. Ostovar speaks in a calm, analytic tone. He avoids moral language and rhetorical escalation. That restraint is not accidental. His audience rewards professional credibility over political urgency. Compare him to Mark Dubowitz at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, whose sharper and more urgent rhetoric serves a different function: mobilizing political will among congressional hawks and conservative media. Ostovar’s job is different. He is the background explainer that other coalitions quietly rely on.
That explains why his work can support contradictory policy positions simultaneously. Hawks cite Vanguard of the Imam to argue the regime is ideological and expansionist and therefore must be pressured. Diplomats cite the same book to argue that Iranian behavior follows an internal logic that can be anticipated and therefore negotiated with. The scholarship supports both readings because its primary function is mapping the terrain rather than prescribing a route across it.
His position at the Naval Postgraduate School also insulates him from pressures that distort think-tank analysis in Washington. He has no donor relationships to manage and no election cycles to track. That buffered identity lets him maintain a reputation for objectivity that more politically exposed analysts struggle to preserve. He produces the raw material, the internal logic of the Iranian state, which more political alliances then shape into policy recommendations.
On Jan. 26, 2026, Ostobar published in Foreign Affairs:

How the Iranian Regime Breaks
Elite Fracture Will Come Gradually and Then Suddenly
…To date, none of the regime’s elites objected to the killings of thousands of innocent civilians by security forces. In fact, figures from across the political spectrum have all outwardly (and falsely) blamed the violence on foreign infiltrators.
If Iran’s elites do move on Khamenei, they will likely act quickly. There will be no sign to outsiders that a coup is coming. And if they succeed, a range of outcomes are possible. The Iranian apparatus has a stark divide between its older and younger generation, and so the character of the next government would depend on which cohort ends up leading it. If the old guard is behind a successful coup, Iran’s next regime will probably remain theocratic at home but become less ambitious abroad. If younger officials take over, Iran will likely grow less religious at home but remain assertive internationally.

Regimes like Iran rarely fall because populations rise up. They fall when elites fracture. The public protests weaken the system, but the decisive moment comes when insiders conclude the leader has become a liability. That mechanism fits the historical pattern of most authoritarian collapses, from Romania to Indonesia under Suharto.
The essay’s most important analytical claim is also its most operational one: the fracture comes gradually and then suddenly. Authoritarian elites hide their doubts until they know others are ready to move. From outside, the system looks unified until the moment it is not. That is why Ostovar stresses that outsiders will likely see no warning. The relevant signals would be subtle: elite families quietly moving abroad, changes in security command structures, IRGC commanders disappearing from public view, unusual troop movements around Tehran. Those are the cues the professional security alliance now watches.
The essay identifies the generational divide inside the IRGC as the most significant fault line. The old guard, veterans of the revolution and the Iran-Iraq war, are invested in preserving the system that enriched them. The younger cohort, veterans of regional campaigns in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, are more nationalist and pragmatic, and more blocked by the existing hierarchy. Those generational tensions are historically among the most reliable drivers of elite coups.
Ostovar’s prediction about what a coup actually produces is the part of his analysis most relevant to current policy debates. A coup does not equal a pro-Western democracy. If younger IRGC officers take power, Iran might become less religious domestically but more nationalist and militarily assertive internationally. The analogy he implies is something like post-Mao China: less ideological extremism at home, but still highly ambitious geopolitically. That is a crucial warning for anyone who assumes that regime change in Tehran leads automatically to a liberal outcome.
The hawks in Washington use his collapse logic as analytical cover for the current military campaign, arguing that the February 28 strikes and the death of Khamenei represent the external shock needed to trigger the internal fracture Ostovar described. The restraint faction uses his warnings about prolonged conflict and the absence of a stable successor to argue for limited objectives. The professional military and intelligence community uses his account of the IRGC’s decentralized command structure, with its 32 provincial units designed to survive decapitation strikes, to push back against the assumption that a few well-placed strikes produce a clean outcome.
Ostovar does not argue for any of those positions. He maps the terrain. He explains the internal logic of the Iranian state so that the Western security community can navigate what he calls the logic of collapse. The category he developed, the generational IRGC coup as an institutional survival mechanism rather than a liberal awakening, has become the primary lens through which analysts now interpret the 2026 transition. He did not choose that outcome. He simply drew the map accurately enough that everyone now uses it.

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Why Do Elites Love Dubai?

Posted on March 7, 2026 by Luke Ford

I never hear my mates talk about how much they love Dubai, but I read elites extolling Dubai all the time. They love it almost as much as they love assisted suicide and gay marriage. Why?

Those three things cluster in the same elite discourse because they all fit a similar underlying value system.

The core value is individual autonomy combined with social neutrality.

Dubai appeals to elites for the same structural reason that assisted suicide and gay marriage appeal to them. Each removes friction around personal choice.

Gay marriage says adults should be free to structure their relationships without traditional religious limits.

Assisted suicide says individuals should be able to determine the timing and conditions of their own death.

Dubai says individuals with money or talent should be able to live, work, and consume without the burdens of national identity, taxation, or thick cultural obligations.

In each case the ideal is the same kind of person. A self-directed individual who navigates life according to personal preference rather than inherited norms.

That worldview became dominant in elite institutions during the late twentieth century. Universities, media, global corporations, and professional classes increasingly defined legitimacy in terms of personal autonomy and lifestyle choice.

Once that value framework is in place, these positions become mutually reinforcing signals.

Supporting gay marriage signals you are modern and tolerant.

Supporting assisted suicide signals you prioritize autonomy over traditional moral constraints.

Admiring Dubai signals you value global mobility and frictionless capitalism.

They are different issues but they speak the same moral language.

Another layer is elite distance from traditional communities.

Most elites live in large cities, work in abstract professions, and move through international networks. They experience life less through family, church, or local community and more through institutions and markets.

Policies and places that emphasize personal freedom over communal structure naturally appeal to people living that kind of life.

Dubai in particular embodies a certain elite fantasy. It is global, wealthy, safe, and politically quiet. It lets people enjoy cosmopolitan consumption without having to engage deeply with local society.

Critics often describe it as sterile for exactly that reason.

But for a globally mobile professional class, sterility can be attractive. It means fewer obligations and fewer constraints. The city becomes a platform for work, leisure, and networking rather than a demanding social environment.

So the connection you are noticing is less about the specific policies themselves and more about the broader moral orientation of the modern elite world. Autonomy, choice, mobility, and the thinning out of traditional social limits.

Elites love Dubai because it solves several problems that modern elites have.

It is a coordination zone for a global class that no longer fits comfortably inside any single nation.

Several features make it unusually attractive.

First, neutrality.

Dubai sits in a geopolitical middle. It is close to Europe, South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. It is not a great power and it does not impose ideological tests. That means Russians under sanctions, Indian billionaires, British bankers, Israeli tech people, African traders, and Gulf royals can all operate in the same space.

Places with stronger political identities cannot do this as easily. London, New York, Paris, and Singapore all come with heavier political alignment and regulatory scrutiny.

Dubai is closer to Switzerland in spirit, but for the twenty-first century.

Second, low friction.

Dubai minimizes the things that slow elites down.

Taxes are low.
Regulation is relatively light.
Residency is easy to obtain for wealth or talent.
The state does not interfere much in lifestyle choices for foreigners.

That combination is rare. Most places offer maybe two of those features, not all four.

Third, elite anonymity.

In cities with deep cultures like London, Paris, or Tokyo, newcomers have to navigate established social hierarchies and norms. Dubai is socially thin. That is exactly what Ganesh is getting at when he talks about “shallowness.”

In Dubai almost everyone is an outsider. Ninety percent of the population is foreign-born. That means status is based less on local pedigree and more on money, connections, and mobility.

For globally mobile elites that is liberating.

Fourth, the node function.

As global power disperses, elites need meeting grounds that are not controlled by a single dominant civilization. Dubai functions as a crossroads where different elite networks intersect.

You see it in the kinds of people who gather there.

Sanctions-evading Russians
Indian entrepreneurs
European consultants
African commodity traders
crypto investors
Gulf sovereign wealth managers

Few cities can host all of them simultaneously without political friction.

Fifth, lifestyle without politics.

Dubai offers luxury consumption while suppressing political conflict. The government provides safety, infrastructure, and permissive consumption. In exchange it expects political quiet.

For elites who view politics as messy or dangerous, this trade is appealing. They can focus on business, leisure, and networking.

That is why Ganesh calls it a “blank slate.” The thinness of culture removes social obligations.

Finally, geography.

Dubai sits roughly at the midpoint of the Old World. Within about eight hours of flight you reach Europe, India, China, and much of Africa. That makes it ideal for business people operating across multiple regions.

In a world where wealth and power are fragmenting, a neutral hub becomes valuable.

So elites do not love Dubai because it is culturally rich or historically deep. They love it because it is frictionless.

It is an airport lounge scaled up into a city. That sounds shallow, but for a global class that spends half its life moving between jurisdictions, that is exactly the appeal.

Elites love Dubai almost as much as they love censoring social media.

There is a similar underlying logic behind those preferences, though the connection is not obvious at first glance.

Modern elites tend to favor systems that maximize freedom of movement and lifestyle for people like themselves while maintaining strong control over environments that can produce instability.

Dubai and social media censorship fit that pattern in different ways.

Dubai is attractive because it offers extraordinary freedom for capital, consumption, and global mobility. Wealthy foreigners can live there with few taxes, little political friction, and minimal cultural demands. For a global professional class that moves between countries, that kind of frictionless environment is valuable.

But Dubai is not actually libertarian. It is tightly controlled politically. Speech is restricted, opposition is suppressed, and the state maintains strict authority over public life.

That combination is not accidental. It reflects a model that many elites find comfortable. Economic and personal freedom in private life combined with strong management of public discourse.

Social media regulation reflects a similar instinct.

Elites often view large-scale public speech environments as chaotic and potentially destabilizing. They worry about misinformation, populist mobilization, reputational attacks, and political movements that challenge institutional authority.

So they support systems that filter or moderate those spaces.

From their perspective the goal is stability. From critics’ perspective the result is gatekeeping.

The pattern shows up repeatedly in modern governance models. Markets are encouraged to be open and global. Lifestyle choices are broadly tolerated. But information systems and political narratives are managed more tightly.

In other words, the preferred environment is one where mobility, wealth creation, and consumption operate freely while the arenas that generate mass political conflict are constrained.

Dubai embodies that structure physically. It offers luxury and openness in everyday life while maintaining strict control over politics and speech.

Debates over social media regulation reflect the same tension between openness and control.

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Where Will It Stop?

Posted on March 7, 2026 by Luke Ford

Here’s another journo cliche — where will it stop? The FT: “Trump’s war on Iran is spreading. Where does it stop? US allies in the Arab world have been plunged into a conflict they neither wanted nor consented to. Historian Eugene Rogan on what it means for the Middle East”
Since when does reality care whether people consent? Power acts and others adjust.
The question worth asking is not whether stakeholders approved but what conditions cause wars to expand or stop. The fire analogy is closer to how wars work. Fire needs fuel. So does war. Remove the fuel and the conflict stays contained regardless of how alarmed the headlines sound. That is why this war will not spread to Africa. There is no fuel there for it.
Wars expand when specific actors decide expansion benefits them, and that decision rests on a combination of factors. Military capacity matters: actors need forces capable of entering the fight without destroying themselves in the process. Strategic incentive matters: joining must improve their position or prevent a worse outcome. Leaders need enough internal support or coercive control to sustain participation. Alliance obligations sometimes pull states in even when they would rather stay out. And geography sets hard limits on what is physically reachable and logistically sustainable. Remove enough of those conditions and expansion stops on its own.
History supports this. The Iran-Iraq war stayed largely bilateral for eight years. The Gulf War in 1991 did not spread across the Arab world despite enormous regional tension. The Syrian civil war drew in multiple external players but never triggered direct great-power conflict. Most regional wars remain limited not because participants are restrained by moral consensus but because the fuel runs out before the fire reaches new territory.
The real question analysts ask is not where does it stop but where are the constraints. For the current conflict those constraints are fairly visible. Most Gulf monarchies want stability and will avoid direct entry into a war that threatens their own survival. Iran’s proxy networks have limited capacity to escalate without risking the destruction of whatever remains of the Iranian state. China and Russia prefer disruption but not uncontrolled regional collapse that would damage their own economic interests. Energy infrastructure and shipping lanes create economic ceilings on escalation that even hawkish actors recognize.
The boundary conditions of this war are capability, incentive, and risk tolerance. Where those three align, the fire spreads. Where they do not, it runs out of fuel and stops. Consent has nothing to do with it.

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Can Iran Kill Americans At Scale?

Posted on March 7, 2026 by Luke Ford

Six American service members have died in the war so far, all killed in an Iranian strike on a base in Kuwait around March 1. Since then, despite a week of continued exchanges of hundreds of Iranian missiles and drones, attacks on U.S. bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar, naval combat including the sinking of an Iranian frigate, and heavy bombing inside Iran, there have been no additional confirmed American fatalities. In a war of this scale and intensity, that absence is worth examining.
Several factors explain it. The war runs largely at stand-off distance. The U.S. relies on aircraft, submarines, cruise missiles, and long-range strikes rather than ground forces, which keeps American personnel out of the most exposed positions. Gulf bases carry heavy missile defense coverage, and Patriot and THAAD systems have intercepted much of what Iran has launched. Iran’s retaliatory capacity also appears degraded: early U.S. and Israeli strikes targeted missile launchers, command nodes, and air defense networks before Iran could use them at full strength. After the Kuwait strike, American forces dispersed into shelters, ships, and hardened positions, reducing the target density that makes mass casualty attacks possible.
There is a strategic logic behind this as well. Modern U.S. war planning treats force protection as a priority because casualties create political pressure at home and erode public support fast. Iraq and Afghanistan shaped that mindset deeply. Commanders now design operations to minimize troop exposure, which produces a kind of war that looks nothing like 20th century conflicts: one side conducts industrial-scale precision strikes while the other struggles to land meaningful blows on the attacking force.
That situation can change with a single event. Wars often begin with low casualties for the stronger side and then spike after one successful strike on a base, a ship, or a high-value aircraft. The low American death toll so far reflects capability and positioning, not Iranian restraint.
The question analysts watch is straightforward. Can Iran actually kill Americans at scale? If the answer stays no, the strategic balance of the war becomes severely lopsided and Iran has no real leverage to impose costs on the United States. If Iran lands one large hit, the political and military calculation shifts immediately. Everything depends on which of those two answers the next few weeks produce.

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