CSS is growing up really fast these days and one great example of that is the is, where, and has pseudo classes that help us select things. And despite it has only landing in browsers in 2022, it's already past 83% with their support only growing in a new year around the corner. Maybe you want to give them a whirl, but you're not sure how to start or really how they work. So that's exactly what we're going to be looking at in this video. So let's dive in. Hi there, my front end friends. Thank you so much for coming to join me for yet another video. And if you're new here, my name is Kevin and here at my channel, I help you fall madly deeply in love with CSS. And let's get right into it by jumping into the is pseudo class right here. And there it is. It looks like that it's nothing too fancy. And we're going to play around a little bit with this code right here to see how it works. And with the HTML that we see. And we have this example one here, which is going to be our focus. And we have these other thing we have an H three and an H four and a link and some other stuff in there. And so one thing that we might do when we have the is pseudo class is we can come in and or traditionally speaking, what we used to do is say we had my example one, and you want to select many things inside there, like we wanted to select the H three, and then I had my example one, and my H four, and let's also do my link example one, and I wanted to select my link and give them all the same color. We want to make those all read. There we go. It works. Now, this is completely fine. We're setting up multiple selectors and then just grouping them all together in one rule. But it's kind of like sometimes a little bit verbose to write everything out. You have to repeat example one a bunch of times. So what is allows us to do is the exact same thing, example one, but then here I knew is, and it's a descendant selector just like I have here where I'm just putting a space, we could also do it in other ways. But let's just do we have a space there. So I have a space here, it works exactly the same. And then in here I can do my comma separated list H three, H four, and a, and let's give those all a color of we'll try blue this time, and we should see them change. So right away, this is kind of cool. I like how it works. It makes things a little bit easier to write and to update because if I need to make another rule, I don't have to duplicate my line again, and then do another one. One example where I actually use this a lot is for my links for when I do hover and focus, because I can do a is hover comma focus, and then come in with my style for it. So then I can say my color is purple. We're coming in with the world's best color scheme here. And I give myself a hover state right there. So for me, I really like that just instead of having to duplicate things, especially if you're doing maybe it's a button or maybe it's something that's nested somewhere else, and you have a bit of nesting going on this can help clean things up a little bit. But it also has other advantages. And let's comment this out to begin with and see what one of the advantages here is where let's come in here and do an example one. And I'm going to put we make a typo along the way or we're doing something or we don't realize that we can't start a class with a number. So we do a one, let's say, and maybe over here, let's even do that. We're going to give this link the class class is equal to one a I should say not a one is that way around. And everything breaks when I save that, even though this I have that class there, why is none of this working? And that's because classes can't start with a number and neither can IDs. So if I try doing that, this is an invalid selector. And because this is an invalid selector, this entire rule is considered invalid. And it's, it doesn't do anything and CSS just skips it over like if you made a typo with something else. And that's super frustrating. This is like one of those really hard things to debug if ever you run into it. So yeah, if I do that hit save, you can see it's fixed it. Now let's keep this here actually will do the invalid one. So we can see it's not working. Let's come and turn these two back on. And then over here in this list, I'm going to put my dot one a hit save. And the blue is still working, because the list of selectors inside of is our forgiving, meaning if one of the selectors in here is invalid, it doesn't matter, it's not going to pay any attention to that. But all the other selectors in here are actually going to be working. Now I'm going to rid of this invalid selector here just for now. And let's turn this into a valid selector, we'll just call it dot link or something like that. So it's a working selector. And one thing that's interesting with this and the way that is works, that's different from here. So let's add my dot example. And we'll put my dot link here as well. And we're gonna have my color red, my color blue. And let's come over here, I'm going to add this to actually be link. And interestingly, you'll notice that in all of these cases, they're blue. But let's take this over here, we're going to move this one down below. So we have this one first, this one second. And here we have like example one h three, so you'd expect the h three to actually be read. But things are staying blue, I'm saving right now, until I come and I do an important important, and now we can overwrite them all and make them read. But if this color isn't important, even though it's coming after this, the blue one is winning. And that's because this blue one here actually has higher specificity than what we have here. With this being with this one being an exception, I was like, why is it not read down there, the link should be read. So these three are not switching colors. But this one is because this one has equal specificity to what we have up here. And this is a really important thing to understand with is if we switch them back around, they all go to blue, we'll put them back this way, this one goes to red, because it's only this one that's winning. And when you do a comma separated list like this, very important with is, or when we're not using is, each one of these selectors has its own specificity. So this has a class plus an element, class plus an element, class plus an element. And this one is a class and a class. If we look at the is selector over here, this is my class selector. And then it evaluates this entire list. And it takes the selector with the highest specificity from all of those. And it applies that specificity to all of these. So even though this is an example one each three, it's getting the same specificity as my example one link right here. So this has higher specificity than my H three, my H four, and my A that are right there. This is very important to remember because that is something that could potentially get in your way down the road. Or if you had like an ID selector in here at one point, then this you know, even though this is an element selector, it could be very hard to overwrite. So you just want to be careful with that. It's a very important thing to take into consideration when you're using it. And we'll look at a more practical example of how we can use is but not with is we're actually going to look at it with where because we're talking with specificity. And the interesting thing with the where is it's doesn't have any specificity whatsoever. It's a bit of a specificity killer. And it works exactly the same way as is. So let's say we came here and we did the same thing. But if we come and look, we have instead of example one, we have the same setup, but we're going to be looking at example two here. And so if I come here and I do example to we'll just move that up a little bit. And inside there we use our where selector and our where pseudo class I should say. And let's say where we'll do the same thing h3 h4a for now. And I do the color is red on those, you can see all of them change over. And for this actually, I'm going to take the example two off just for a second. So we have where h3 h4a and you'll see my a is not even working now, this because I have other styling on links. But let's look at this h3 right there. I'm going to come above that h3. And I'm going to put an h3 here and say the color is blue. And this h3 is changing over to blue. Because even though this is coming after it's inside a where where has no specificity in it. So it works exactly the same way. And interestingly here, if I look at my link, I have an ID on that link. So we could even come in here and switch this link color out here for my ID of link. And it's still not going to work because somewhere up in my style sheet, I have just a regular a selector that styling this. Or even this h3 is not becoming red, you can see the h3 is still blue, even though we have the link in here, whatever you want anything that's inside the where it gets zero specificity. So if you're doing a reset where you have things that you want to make sure are super easy to reset, you can have your where and then body, and then put some classes that are styling on that. And you know that everything on this has zero specificity on it, which can be useful. Is it the best use case for where that is a little bit questionable. For me, I know I like using it in times where I need to put in descendant selectors, like maybe something like this where it's my example, too. And I'm coming in with something that has like multiple different selectors, or maybe probably not an ID, but maybe, you know, several levels deep. And I just want to make sure it doesn't have any specificity on it. This is definitely something where I'll purposely use where to make sure like, okay, I'm setting this up, but I want to make sure it's easy to overwrite later on. And I don't want these extra classes or descendant selectors and all these other things that I'm using in here to be adding to the specificity. So in those situations where you want to prevent the gains in specificity, it doesn't have to be in a whole group, it could just be something like that, where you have example two where link, that's all, and nothing else. So now obviously, these are going to read because this example two is still counting to there. So even as an example, now this I've never done actually before, but we could do a where on here. So we're saying where example two, we're not giving any specificity to that. And then we're doing the descendants, which also have no specificity. Or if you didn't mind those having it, you could do something like this. But now the specificity of these is kicking in even though this part of it doesn't anyway, kind of weird. And so maybe this is not the most practical example, but I just want to give you an idea of how it works. And another thing that could be really useful here, and I don't have anything set up for it, but just really fast, if you had something like a card that you want to change things when you hover, what's cool is you can do your hover, and then you can do is and select the list of children that are inside of it.  And of course, you can format this if you find it's a little bit cumbersome, you can, you know, break things over multiple lines, if you feel like it's going to be a little bit cleaner, set things up, however you need to to make it as readable as possible. And with that, it's going to bring us down to the has selector, which is the newest of all of them and the most powerful one of all. So for this example, I have two columns set up here. And when I want to look at let's go look, these are both in classes called example three. So we have two divs in this case called example three. So we're going to start with that and people called the has the parent selector that was sort of the idea of it, but it opens up more doors than than that really. It's Jay has from on the Google DevRel team is called it the family selector. And just because you can do more than just selecting a parent. So but let's look at how we can treat it like a parent selector, or not example, example three has image. And so if I have an example three that has an image in it, just traditionally you might do example three with a descendant selector, right, and then say with 50% or something. And we can select my image that's inside example three. This is selecting if my example three has an image, we're selecting the example three. And so here I could say that it has a background of we'll just change to blue for now. So we see a change and it's really obvious what's happened. So, you know, it's only selecting this one, this one doesn't have an image. So maybe you want to change that one example three has a and then the background on that one can be green. All right. And then only that one is changing. And the other one isn't because this one doesn't have a link in it. And doing something like this, not the nicest example, or most practical example, but it shows us how it's working. But what we can also do now is to make it something a little bit more powerful than a parent selector is we can combine that with a descendant selector. So I could say then the h3 that's inside there has the background of blue or let's make that red to make a really nice Christmassy color scheme going on. So we get that coming in and maybe the color of black. And let's make this fire brick. So it's a little fire brick. It's a little less hard on the eyes. So we're selecting the h3 that's different because there's an image inside the parent there. And there's ways you could use descendant selectors maybe in a simple example like this, even though we can't really because this h3 is coming before the image. So you can always select things that come after but not before. But now you can actually do that, which is really cool. So another example here is let's just select my paragraphs and we can change those backgrounds to green. You can actually use it to select every element except the one that you're selecting and a whole bunch more has has some really amazing possibilities that it's opened up. This has just been a general overview of our three are is our where and our has if you'd like to deep dive has and see some more practical examples of where you might want to use it. I have a video that is right here for your viewing pleasure. And with that, I would like to thank my neighbors of awesome over on Patreon, Jan, Johnny, Michael, Mr Dave, Patrick, Simon and Tim, as well as all my other patrons for their monthly support. And of course, until next time, don't forget to make your corner the internet just a little bit more awesome.


I'm very interested in the nature of violence and culture. And is it inevitable that culture must be founded on violence? If that's inevitable, I don't know what it means. Does the practice of the word, which is the practice of civilizing function of the dynamism of opposites? That's how the Chinese defined the word, the logos, the Tai-Gi principle, the dynamism of opposites. Heraclitus called it the strife and harmony of opposites. The writer of the John Gospel called it the word. And so the practice of the word is the practice of dynamism of opposites, which is the founding principle of all manifest reality, physical and psychological. The question is, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the myth goes, Cain kills Abel and builds the first human city. In the Latin tradition, Romulus kills Vimus and builds the first Roman city, implying that all first cities are built by murderers. Is that necessity? That all culture is maintained by murder, pillage, colonization, you name it. But I don't know, or is it that when we lose touch with the word, the logos, that's what happens? I can't decide which is the truth. In this poem, I'm trying to understand that. And I was born in 1957. And it turned out in 1957, there was the largest Congress of Third World countries in my birthplace, Jakarta, Indonesia. And I always romanticized that and didn't realize, in fact, what a kind of violent, what kind of violence that Congress emerged out of. This is a poem about that sense and the feeling of being bereft of the word, OK, changing places in the fire. What's the word? She cries from her purchase on the iron finial of the front gate to my heart. The radio in the kitchen is stuck in the year I was born. The capitals of the world are burning. And this sparrow with a woman's face roars in the burdened air, air crowded with voices, but no word. Mobbed with talking, but no word. Teaming with speech, but no word. This woman with the body of a bird is shrieking fierce, buzzed, vaults in a swarming babble. What's the word? This evening is the year of my birth. The country has just gained its independence. Social unrest grows rampant as the economy declines. Under a corrupt government of the army and the rich come years of mass poverty, decades of starving children, and racially fueled mayhem. Word is armed squads raping women by the hundreds. Word is beheadings, public lynchings, and riots.  And word is more deadly days lie ahead. Today, tomorrow, and yesterday. The forecast calls for more misery, more poverty, more starvation, more families fleeing their homes, more refugees streaming toward every border. More horror is to come. That's the word. More scapegoating is to come. That's the word. More violence is to come on the roads, in the streets, in the homes, violence in the churches, in the temples, where they preach who to love and who to hate, how to get to heaven and who to leave behind, how to dawn the fleece of the blameless and prosecute your neighbor. All against all is to come. That's the word. Who hasn't heard that? She spits. You call yourself a poet. You tame high finisher of paltry blots. You publish doubt and call it knowledge. You destroy the wisdom of ages to gratify your envy. You murder benevolence and virtue with condescension.  Your words mystify, mislead, and misdirect. You ape the word made flesh with words made words to multiply more words and words about your words. And you ritualize these sterile pleasures. Miming joy, delight, and generation. You celebrate cheap distractions. Your theories bloom in suicide of the mind. Starvation of the heart and mass maladies of the soul. You mock and mimic sincerity. You read and divine by irony. You snare the little ones.  You dig pits for the blind. You sell desolation. Your science is despair. What's the word? I can tell she's up to no good. This feathered interval, monument to the nano, this deciding gram, my Geronimo. She's out to overturn an empire to usurp principalities and powers just by swooping into the right assembly, perplexing a Senate, baffling a parliament, or bewildering somebody's crosshairs, not worth a farthing and without a cent. She would own the realm her shrill cries measure, trading, dying for being. It's not there, thank you.


Apple recently upped the number of job postings it has related to generative models. Apple plans to spend a billion dollars a year on developing generative models for things like coding, creating music playlists for you, completing text in pages and things like that. I do believe that they are the sleeping giant in this field. I don't think that anybody could have the impact on the AI space, at least as we understand now with primarily LLMs. That would make Siri a million times better tomorrow. I think that it could radically change and reshape how we understand and interact with our phones and Apple owning all of that hardware technology and the relationship with the customer I think would matter a lot. It seems like they are going to go in-house with it. I think it's a smart move. Will they be able to do it? That's a larger question.


Oh, here's a little bit of a quick cooked tour through nuclear magnetic resonance and it's a little bit tricky. So let's just see if we can accept a few things and move on to the analytical stage. The important thing is that what we've looked at in spectra up to this point is the movement of electrons. So electrons moving from a grand state to an excited state and they do that by taking in a certain amount of electromagnetic radiation. This time when we're looking at nuclear magnetic resonance and really the name is the clue to exactly what's going on here, we're not looking at the electrons now, we're looking at the nucleons that is the protons and the neutrons in the nucleus and how they respond to an external magnetic field. The underlying physics associated with this is really quite complex and involves really more quantum level understandings which I do believe are beyond the scope of the chemistry course. Nevertheless, if we can accept a few things a little bit on faith and by all means have a look at these in a bit more detail to go into a bit more depth, particularly if you're also doing physics because I think the two things will dovetail together very very nicely. But what we want to understand is that the nucleus of an atom will display this concept or this property of spin if it has an odd mass number and this is one of the reasons why we look at proton NMR and we also look at carbon 13 NMR. We do know or hopefully we do know that the most common isotope of carbon is carbon 12 but carbon 12 would be an even numbered mass for the nucleus of carbon so we can't use it. It doesn't show the effects that we want so we need to use carbon 13. The concept is that atomic nuclei act like small bar magnets and this is a physics property where we look at the interaction between electricity and magnetism and that is if we have moving charges they can generate a magnetic field and induce a magnetic field and of course if we change magnetic fields we can induce a current so these two things, Earthstead and Faraday's discoveries are applicable right at this tiny level as well. There are some limitations and some generalized assumptions that we're making here but if you just think about the fact that little charged particles can create by their movements small magnetic fields and we've kind of explained this in terms of things like domains when we've talked about the magnetic properties of certain types of elements for example iron. So the principle is if these little moving charges can create little tiny magnetic fields then they can act like little tiny bar magnets that is they can line up in terms of the north and the south pole and therefore if we place an external magnetic field around these nuclei then the magnetic fields will align they'll either be directly aligned to the magnetic field so in the same orientation and that's the lower energy one or they'll oppose the magnetic field so they'll be exactly back to front if you like so in terms of them aligning with the north south pole if they're aligned to the external magnetic field then they are at low energy and if they're opposed then they'll be at a higher energy and so the higher energy because they'll want to rotate in order to return to that sort of more ground more stable state so electromagnetic radiation can be absorbed obviously it's more likely to be absorbed by those at a lower energy state that can then flip into that higher energy state in the same way that we've said the electrons can absorb energy to go from a ground state to an excited state in terms of their orbital shell movement now if this was the only thing that happened then that would mean that every hydrogen one nucleus and every carbon-13 nucleus would all give off exactly the same pattern because they would set in a similar thing or at least they'd be close enough that there'd be very little difference between them the problem is that with electrons on the outside electrons are charged particles these are charged particles that are moving they will also have magnetic fields associated with them they're much smaller mass so there will be a difference in the strength but nevertheless this disrupts the patterns that we are likely to see and that disruption gets magnified depending on how those electrons are distributed i.e. what they're bonding to so are they bonded to double bonds are they in a high region of electron density are they bonded to oxygens is there a difference in electronegativity that's creating levels of polarity there's lots of different options that we can have and those are reflected in the different functional groups that we have particularly around those carbon atoms and so that's what produces these different patterns of NMR outputs that we see it's a little bit over simplified I am aware of that but and it's definitely worth having a little bit of a look I can recommend a resource called spectroscopy in a suitcase I think that's a really nice pictorial representation of a lot of these different types of spectra that are really useful to get a little bit more detail and obviously there's a huge amount of stuff on the internet about this type of chemistry or physics and so you can go into it heaps and heaps of detail but the main thing that we want to do is we want to know how to apply the technique of NMR


All right, I think I'm ready to start. I get the amazing spot of talking just before lunch. And I know how everybody's getting hungry, so I'm going to make this quick. I got 10 minutes. So first of all, my name is Mark Minier. I work for ARM in ecosystem development. So I sit on top of the actual team that builds the IP and work with software companies like those that are in this room here today to advance new concepts and projects into the market. So I'm happy to be here to talk to you all. So when we think about the Kubernetes deployments and everything that we've talked about earlier today, one of the goals that we're aiming to achieve here is the ability to create portable code. Like everything that we're talking about here relies on this principle for multiple reasons. One, the ability to accelerate your development, right? Creating your applications in the cloud and then being able to move that to your edge devices. But also in the cases where you need to consider migrating your applications from one device to another. We've heard a lot of talks this morning about different verticals that are picking up Kubernetes. You can imagine that a lot of those applications are similar and they're moving across the different verticals. And of course, the hardware that you're going to be presented with will look very different in these different verticals. So it's important to create portable code. It's also important to secure your code. Make sure that everything that you develop is secure. And that poses its own challenge. Of course, when you move Kubernetes applications to the edge, the surface of attack is much greater. So you do need to consider maybe putting a little bit more diligence on the security design of your system. And of course, you want to protect your IP. A lot of the discussions this morning talked about AI and ML. And when you think about the models that are created to draw that value from the data that's collected, you want to protect that, those models. So again, security plays a key role in these deployments. But of course, there are challenges when you think about these two goals that we're trying to achieve. Diversity of hardware is a big one. And that's seen on many fronts. The diversity of CPUs, the fact that the firmware could be different, the OSs can be different, and that can slow down development. And of course, when you're thinking about a Kubernetes deployment, these constructs sit below your deployment, but they're quite important. So I'm gonna talk a little bit about what ARM is doing to help bridge those gaps and the tools that we're putting into the market that help the developers overcome these challenges at the edge. The project is called Project Cassini. That's our umbrella project that centers on bringing tools to the market that solve problems around cloud native development at the edge. And this Cassini umbrella project has numerous programs below it. Here we're highlighting a few. ARM System Ready is the first one I'll talk about. It deals with, you know, in a nutshell, making sure that you can run an OS, a standard OS on any hardware. So the goal here is we work with our silicon manufacturers. We work with ODMs and OEMs. We give them recipes and guides to develop their devices, and then we test them in a certification lab to make sure that standard operating systems can just boot. And there's different bands of this program for different types of devices. You may have devices that use a device tree to identify the peripherals that are in the device, or it may rely on UCP, UEFI. These create different bands in this System Ready program. And it allows for flexibility, but it also ensures that the set OSs that you'll be expected to see in these devices are just gonna boot. Moving to the other side around security. PSA certified is the foundation. When you see a device that's PSA certified, you can be assured that it's following the best practices around security, that there's a hardware root of trust being used in the system. And that helps accelerate industry-specific certification work. If you're dealing with NIST or any other certification body, chances are they're familiar with the PSA certification program, and that can help accelerate your steps into those certification bodies.  I've got a slide specifically on that one, but to wrap up this slide here, when we think about these programs that are created, we drive these into the market through proof of concepts, through blueprints that we do with the community. So these projects are there to serve the community, and we work with you guys to try to solve specific problems leveraging these tools. Now, as I mentioned, PowerSec is one that I skipped on the security side. What PowerSec does, I think, is a little bit more applicable to the folks here. It exposes a standard set of APIs in various languages that connect down to the root of trust in your system. So the idea here is we're creating an extraction layer that allows you to connect into various hardware roots of trust that use different APIs to accomplish security functions that you need as a cloud native developer. Now, we're not aiming to expose every feature in these different roots of trust. What we do with this program is we focus on the security functions that you need as a cloud developer, and we only expose that set of functions in a way that is easily consumable. So when you look at the front-end client for PowerSec in Java, it's going to expose the security function in a way that Java developers would wanna see them, how they would use them. And that greatly simplifies the complexity around dealing with hardware roots of trust. Now, another advantage of PowerSec is if your application, your security functions, need to be ported from one device to another, you can change the back-end and never have a change, no impact to your software above PowerSec. So PowerSec truly abstracts the interface to the hardware root of trust in your system. This program's been in development for two and a half years, it's ready. There's a lot of these back-end primitives that are supported today that are up and running, and there's a number of languages above PowerSec that community members have created and validated. Now, how do you take advantage of these programs? Well, for one, when you think about system-ready and PSA, you'll wanna look for those programs. You'll wanna work with your suppliers and make sure that they're following those best practices and that the systems that you're looking to deploy on have these badges. That will just simplify your process to stand your applications on top of. You should accelerate your development, should make sure that your systems are secure. When you think about PowerSec, look for those interfaces. It comes pre-loaded in a few distros. We're working with distro companies today to integrate further. In the meantime, there's an easy script you can run to install PowerSec, and then it's just a matter of configuring it to the root of trust in the system and then exposing the client interface that you want. This is something that I think you will likely be experiencing in your deployments at the edge. And then the final point is, come and see us. We're on Slack and CNCF. We've got the code for PowerSec and GitHub, and of course, these projects are part of the CNCF, so they're all open, they're multi-architecture. They're available for you to use. We'd love to hear some of your use cases and see some of these deployments out in the field. And that concludes my talk, so very quick. I promised I would deliver in 10 minutes, and here we are at 1209. Thank you. Great questions before launch.


How often does it happen that someone's dream gets spiked with GHB? How can we make bike paths safer? Does climate change affect bird migration? Research helps us find answers to our questions and acquire new knowledge to better understand the world around us. But how do you conduct good research? That's where research skills come in. You may already have had some experience with this for a school project. Research skills will also come in handy during your studies, as you use it for various assignments and in all likelihood for your graduation pieces. That thesis may seem far off, but it's never too early to start practicing your research skills. Research always follows six steps. Wondering, exploring, setup, conducting, concluding and presenting. While wondering, you look at the world with a curious eye and ask questions about a topic you want to know more about. While exploring, you delve into existing research and ask what if any research has already been done on your topic. And more importantly, which areas are still unstudied? Based on this information, you formulate a research question and set up a plan so that your research is reliable and valid once completed. Then, and only then, do you carry out your research, collect the results and analyze them. Want to research research skills? Click here.


So if you remember back to when we did Galilean relativity, one of the reasons why it didn't matter which reference frame you picked was because it could always move from one frame to another using some sort of transformation. And in this section we're going to be deriving how you transform between inertial reference frames in special relativity. So one of the things in Galilean relativity was that the distance between two objects was the same in all reference frames. But because of things like length contraction, this is no longer the case in special relativity. What we will find towards the end though that there is something called the invariant interval that is the same in all reference frames and this plays the notion of our distance in special relativity.


Before we begin, we have our question of the day, or the question for this panel, regarding a peace deal with Syria and what would be required for effective peacekeeping. You can read the question yourself. Please grab your little garage door clicker looking thing and respond to the question. Yes, there's no. All right. While you're doing that, we'll go ahead and begin. We assembled this panel because I've been working on this concept for a while now, and the concept of hybrid war is ... All right, not much question there. The concept of hybrid war is something that we're trying to figure out, as my colleague Rosa was saying earlier today, we're used to a war box and a peace box, and we have trouble at things that blur the margins. But trying to define what's in these blurry margins is very, very difficult. But I don't think it's any exaggeration to say that any word you use for this hybrid war, political war, ambiguous war, the gray zone, are deeply contested concepts that no one can really agree about. I thought a way to try to look at this from a different direction is to focus less on the where and the what, and more on the who. We're here today to talk about not so much the environment itself, but the people who act inside it. We've asked First Nadia to give an overview, and then we have some experts on some of these actors here to talk about it. With this, we'll go to Nadia. Thanks, Doug. I was given strict instructions today not to get into definitional debates, so I won't do that. I'm starting from the point that hybrid war does have value. The phrase has value. Why? Because the United States, centrally, is not very good at it. We haven't been good at it or appear not to be good at it. The U.S. confronts a specific form of statecraft, not new in all of its characteristics, but real and relevant. That's what Mike Mazar has recently written, and I agree with it. Because we seriously lag in this form of competition, it reminds us that we need to think better and do better at competing today. Where are our operational concepts to pursue no-contact war, a term used by Russia? Where are our concepts that seek to counter an adversary's effort to cripple a state before it realizes that conflict has even begun? And phrases such as interagency coordination and better interagency processes are not adequate answers to those kinds of questions. Where is the equivalent at the strategic level of a concept of operations and a fore-sizing approach that captures what has dominated for decades in most of our national security documents, the two regional conflict scenarios or more recent variations of that? What is the hybrid equivalent today? We've not developed a fore-sizing construct or a set of ideas to operationalize conflict in this domain. How would we deter a country whose power projection doctrine is based on hybrid warfare? And I think some of my fellow panelists are going to be talking about entities that have those kinds of ideas. Talking about investments to counter hybrid threats in predominantly technological terms is not sufficient, and that's essentially my read of how the last national military strategy approached the problem. Certainly the United States has sophisticated tactical skill sets in technology, in really smart and skilled operators, many of them in this room, but I think the problems start actually over that level of competition right above it. Political skills and key domains are not linked to a broader campaign plan that is driven by clearly defined political objectives. Thus, we have tactical successes, but they're not linked into a broader concept of operations linked to a political outcome, a desired political outcome. Yet, this is really the essence of our adversary's approach to hybrid war, made more complicated by the fact that for many of them, consolidation of gains and stability is really maintaining ongoing uncertainty, thus the frozen conflict problem that we have. So discussions about hybrid war, like this panel, should get us to identify ongoing gaps in our concepts of operations. And I'll present sort of five gaps, and there are probably more in this we can open up to discussion. First the integration of tools, many of which do not reside squarely in the military domain. We've talked about this all day today. Second, similarly, the simultaneity of instruments and the ability to move fluidly among required tools. We continue to have problems in that domain. Third, the problem of time. Hybrid warfare is ongoing. It generally requires a concept of thinking about persistent and continuous competition. What Hugh Strahan has written about strategy seems relevant. It begins as one sort of war can turn into another operation. Fourth, there's a problem of territory. Traditionally we think about interactions at the front. In the hybrid domain, we operate in depth and across boundaries, and I think the discussion earlier about the war in Syria where some of the journalists talked about, they talked about exactly this. And fifth, the problem of intelligence. What kinds of organizations and approaches do we need to compete along this continuum of competition? And finally, undergirding this all, I guess this is a sixth point, is that you need a political commitment about what we're competing for. And I think most of the panelists, when they talk about our adversaries in this area, that will come out clearly for all of them. Victory in hybrid is essentially winning the political competition. And that's where I was originally going to end, and I am going to end, but I just wanted to throw out an idea based on actually the discussions today. What if we thought about the term, although we're not talking about terms, but more as a competition? Take the war out of it and think about it as a hybrid competition? Why? Because it covers a spectrum of sort of what we've been talking about today. This morning, General Milley talked about achieving political ends through violence. That's at one high end. But the lower level ends that we've also talked about all day today are more of an ongoing competition. So thinking about it as a hybrid competition also then gets the agencies involved, the non-military, non-DOD agencies, non-intelligence agencies. It sort of forces them to think as well in more competitive terms. Thank you. So I'm going to talk about ISIS. I'm going to keep my remarks very tactical. We can go up to a more strategic operational level later. When we talk about ISIS and how ISIS fights and how they organize to fight, we're really talking about ISIS 5.0. The organization began as a guerrilla group that had members from the Saddam Fidein and from Saddam's military and from a variety of jihadist groups. It then went into a sort of terrorist asymmetric approach in 0607. After 2011, it was guerrilla again for a while, but then in the 2013-2014 time period, we saw what amounted to conventional maneuver and a sort of war of movement from ISIS. After the beginning of the air campaign in August, September of 2014, it's dropped back into something that I would describe as hybrid maneuver. When I use the term hybrid, what I mean is a mixture of conventional and non-conventional approaches. And in particular, in the case of ISIS, what we're looking at is conventional maneuver with non-conventional means. And I'll come back to that in a little more detail in a minute. As they move around, it's a pseudo-conventional light cavalry swarm, a main column that's led or flanked by technicals. It applies what we call recon pull tactics in the business. So it'll find a weak spot using recon groups and then pull the main column onto that target. It tends to move on multiple axes. And when it fights defensively, it always maintains an agile mobile network defense. It doesn't stand in one place and die. So it's an extremely maneuverist kind of approach. They have obviously had their capabilities transformed by the capture of hundreds of armored vehicles, heavy artillery pieces, and so on. And that really transformed the way that they fought for a period. But when they realized that that was making them vulnerable to Western air power, they dropped back to a much more hybrid approach. And the basic combat unit, as of about the middle of last year until now, is what I would call the independent platoon combat group. So we're looking at groups of 20 to 40 fighters. They move dispersed, but they tend to fight concentrated. They move in vehicles, generally technicals, so a vehicle that can provide fire support but can also carry troops. It may be armored or it may be lightly skinned. They have specialist IED layers and triggermen and observers. They often field specialist RPG teams designed to kill enemy headquarters or to operate on the flanks and deal with enemy tanks. They often work in a column of sort of three to five vehicles, which might have one or two heavy vehicles and another three to four lightly skinned vehicles. They're very operationally independent. So they might move several miles apart in advance. When one of these groups finds a target, they will concentrate to fight on that spot. So sort of collaborative swarming approach that we see in the way they fight. Let me give you two illustrations of what I mean by conventional maneuver with unconventional means. And then I'll stop and we can get through everybody else's discussion before we come back to have a conversation about this. So first one is ASCII Mosul, which is an area between Erbil and Mosul. In January last year, their Kurds made a significant breakthrough towards Mosul. ISIS launched 17 tanker trucks, heavily armored with spaced armor, each of them carrying up to four tons of Ampho ammonium nitrate fuel oil explosive, massive IEDs. And if you look at that, you say that's non-conventional. It's a suicide vehicle-borne IED. What they did with them was to blunt the armored thrust and stop it in a key area while they were moving their counter-attack force into position. So from a Western armored maneuver standpoint, it is an utterly conventional maneuver, which we call counter penetration. In the second example, in May of 2015, when ISIS took the government center in Ramadi, they began by moving a swarm of snipers forward to cover the T-wall, the fence around the compound. They then brought up under cover of snipers an armored bulldozer, which spent several hours pulling down the T-wall and creating a bridge about 70 meters wide. Then under cover of a big sandstorm, they put seven Humvees, each of which had about a ton of explosives in it. Each of the guys driving the Humvees was wearing a headset communicating with each other on a radio net. They moved to specific points around the edge of the bridge and detonated. Some of the explosions were big enough to knock down an entire city block within Ramadi. And once they'd created that bridge, they pushed another 21 IEDs through the bridge to target another series of buildings and then followed up with these mobile platoon combat groups. Again, you look at that and it freaks you out and you think this is completely unconventional. US, in fact, NATO doctrine for a deliberate obstacle bridge is suppress, obscure, secure, reduce assault. They followed exactly the doctrine that we follow. They did an exactly tactical maneuver, exactly as you would read about it in a Western field manual, but they did it using non-conventional means. So there is a high degree of hybridity to the way that ISIS operates, but I would argue that what we're seeing here is an entity that thinks like a state, fights like a state, is trying to be a state, but is doing so with non-state means. Much more to say about them, but I think that'll set the scene. All right, thanks. Yeah, talking about Ukraine, definitely not going to be as coherent as my fellow panelists. Basically, my experience is colored off of, again, it's at the tactical level, off two trips to the front of the Spetsnaz unit and a mechanized unit, both with the Ukrainian military fighting the Russian-backed separatists. Basically, you look in 2014, when the conflict popped off, it was a war maneuver. You had the separatists pushing Ukrainian forces back, backed by traditional Russian military units that had come over the border to kind of support some of the bigger battles, whether that's Ilovaisk, the Baltic steve. After the Ukrainians kind of pushed the separatists back, supported by aircraft and some volunteer battalions that had succeeded in some of the southern battles around Mariupol, the war quickly became static, trenches were dug by both sides, and that's kind of what we're looking at now across Donetsk and Lugansk. So when I got there, it was very much at this point of trench warfare. And what I saw as far as the Ukrainians fighting the separatists was a, it was very much, each side was dug in, there were trench raids, but what the separatists brought to the fight was kind of the threat of force that the Ukrainians always knew that if they pushed too hard or they got in too much trouble that the Russians could at any point mass and push through the lines. On top of that, the separatists were equipped with much better communication equipment, drones that could be, that were flown pretty much constantly at night. It was kind of a constant presence on the line is, you know, you would, you would hear them all night. And if you heard one and saw one, sometimes they could be identified by searchlights on the ground. That usually meant you had about five minutes until you had incoming artillery. Another thing that they had to deal with, you know, as far as hybrid, you know, this mixture of electronic warfare, using high powered radios on the Ukrainian side, could also basically allow the separatists to find and fix, fix the position. So happy to talk about it more, but I'm going to keep saying short. Right. Nier? I should add that this is my experience in Syria. You saw similar waves of like 15 armored suicide cars taken over Syrian army bases in places like Raqqa and Tabqa. Yeah. Anyway, as for Hezbollah, the Lebanese scholar Amal Saad has done some of the essential work on the, sort of the new Hezbollah. He's pioneered the work on Hezbollah as what she calls a resistance army, which defends its territory. And his last speech, which was like a week ago, Hezbollah leader, Said Hassan Asrallah, explained, actually, no, this is from a few years ago. Sorry. He explained that Hezbollah has evolved from armed resistance to popular resistance to a new school of warfare, which combines regular army and guerrilla fighters. And he attributed their new school to the slain Hezbollah leader, Ahmad Murnia, who modernized Hezbollah. Hezbollah is now in a sort of post-resistance situation. In his last speech, Nasrallah admitted that they're deploying men to fight ISIS in Iraq. He was commemorating the death of one of their martyrs called Hajj Alal Bosna, who had actually fought in Bosnia. And their new national security theory of preemptive warfare, they had applied it to Israel in the past, then now applying it against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. It's kind of that George Bush doctrine of fight them over there, so we don't have to fight them over here, implemented by some of the local actors in the region. And in this theory, the new U.S. is Saudi Arabia, and the new Israel is ISIS, al-Qaeda, Takfiris, terrorists, they use all kinds of terms to describe them. And we can trace Hezbollah's evolution. In 2000, when it expelled Israeli forces from most of Lebanese territory, it was an insurgent and a resistance on occupation. In 2006, it was defending Lebanese territory from a foreign invader. In 2008, there were some internal skirmishes. It was defending the resistance infrastructure from internal foes. And finally, in 2013, thanks to the civil war in Syria, Hezbollah became almost an army in parts of Syria, especially in Kusair, the town on the Lebanese border. And now Hezbollah's implementing counterinsurgency, at the same time as it's an insurgent, is doing homeland security for Lebanon, protecting the Lebanese homeland from suicide bombers being sent in from Western Syria, doing intelligence on alleged Takfiris cells inside Syria and Lebanon. It's reconciling with insurgents in Syria and negotiating with them so that they actually join Hezbollah to fight Jabhat al-Nusrah. It's doing train or mentor to advisor stuff, just like American special forces, embedding its key guys throughout indigenous forces to train them and augment them. It's doing this in Syria with Syrian army and then local Shia forces as well in Yemen, in Iraq. And it's doing like pinpoint sort of special operations missions to augment the local security forces throughout Syria as well. It's using artillery, some of it's designed by itself, armored personnel carriers. It's even used some killer drones here and there. It's intercepting communications to help pinpoint enemy threats and both small unit warfare and large unit warfare, especially in Western Syria, the areas that are key to securing the Lebanese homeland. It's recruiting sources the way an intelligence agency would in Lebanon and Syria. And it has think tanks to think about conflict and the war of the future. And it's, of course, thoroughly embedded in the Lebanese state and ministries and universities, et cetera. Hezbollah sort of went through what the US military went through in 0607 when there was a shortage of manpower and we had to massively expand the US military and sometimes even reduce standards and accept guys who maybe had imperfect records. So Hezbollah had to massively expand as well to confront this huge threat both internally and throughout the Middle East. And that's also led to kind of shift in their standards. Maybe the guys who fought in 2006 were more ideologically pure and went through more rigorous training than the current batch. I should add just for a second, it's too bad nobody's talking about the Kurds in Syria because we see a very similar phenomenon. They're an army, but they're also an insurgency. It's funny, actually, that the US's main partner in the war in Syria is an insurgent against one of our key NATO allies at the same time. And the Kurds are doing counterinsurgency, they're doing clearhold and build, reconciling with Arab Sunni tribes, providing state services to them, and getting air support from the US and the Russians. We can talk about that maybe later. Hezbollah, I should add, is also doing press tours for foreign journalists. And they've identified intellectually that their new enemy is, they call it a variety of things, Saudi as the main threat, but Sunni extremism, Wahhabis, Takfiris, and they prioritize that over Israel. Because this new enemy is actually genocidal. So with Israel, they don't like them, of course, and they view them as an enemy. But Israel didn't have the aspiration to just wipe out, physically exterminate everybody that was a Shia or was it a post-state Sunni or whatever. But the Takfiris and Hezbollah's mind do have that. And yet Hezbollah hasn't radicalized along Shia lines to confront this new radical Sunni threat. In fact, they've become a little bit better at cooperating with other forces, more secular, the Syrian army, some local Sunni forces. They're Sunnis fighting alongside Hezbollah, just like they're Sunnis fighting alongside some of the Shia militias in Iraq. But in the speech of March 1st, Hezbollah's leader actually identified Saudi Arabia as the main enemy and identified the suffering of the Yemeni people as worse than the suffering of the Palestinian people. This was a very significant moment that didn't really get much attention in terms of who is their real threat today. But at the same time, they view some of these Takfiris, Wahhabis, whatever, as working in a way on behalf of Israel. So they're weakening Hezbollah and distracting it towards the East. So they've had to compensate by adopting new technology to fortify their border in the south with Israel, lest Israel take advantage of their distraction in the East and try to move up into Lebanon. So they're still very much focused, of course, on Israel. Just to conclude, the most fascinating thing that's happening is being tested in Syria today. Something that was only virtual in the past. There's sort of Shia access, if you will. It's the first time where we see Hezbollah, Iraqi Shia militiamen, Iranians, occasional Afghan volunteer, the Syrian army, working together, sort of hand in hand, side by side, with Russian air support as well integrated into the picture. And we have a limitless supply of poor Shia men coming from south Iraq, unlike Hezbollah and south Lebanon. So this new increasingly integrated force is going to potentially have tremendous ramifications for the future of the Middle East, for the confronting the threat which they see as emanating from Saudi Arabia and what could very well be, as I described earlier, a much longer war. So it's interesting to hear the commonalities between not only these three groups, I hadn't thought of the YPG until you just mentioned it, that's a great other example. We all seem to be talking about the same thing. You near talked about how they're both conventional and unconventional, or conventional and insurgents. You talked about conventional tactics with unconventional means. And in the piece on War on the Rocks, on my Palmer's plug, this week I wrote that they're insurgents who've retained their base but have adopted significant capabilities of a post-modern army. So what are these commonalities that we see and what does this mean for the future of the regular armies that have to confront this, those of us who are a little closer to the mainstream foreign policy establishment don't really find all this funny. So how does the West react to this? You want to start, Nadia? Well, I actually wanted to ask sort of a leading question, which I think ties some of this in, in the sense that if in fact they've developed these capabilities, Dave's, the conventional maneuver warfare skills, Doug's point about the modern post-modern army, why are we having trouble? I mean, in the sense that we, those are skill sets that we are pretty good at, at the tactical level in some ways. So what, what creates, what's created some of the problems we've had? And I would venture to say part of that answer goes back to the political parts that I emphasize, because at the tactical level, we should be expert. So to draw that out a little. I mean, I would just say that the only one of these groups that we're talking about that has ever fought US forces on the ground was ISIS, and it got its ass massively kicked, right? Part of the reason why these guys are succeeding is they're fighting other non-state actors or they're fighting a, you know, a less developed military. If we were to actually take them on the ground without, you know, limiting ourselves to air power, I think we'd have a different outcome. But I think the other point is, why are they similar, right? Because we could talk about Taliban, we could talk about YPG, you're going to see a very similar operational style at the tactical level. And I know we wanted to stay away from theory, but my theory here is that this is an adaptive response by different groups to common features in the modern operating environment, right? And that if that's actually the case, then there's a lot to be learned here by applying a bit of evolutionary theory and thinking about how emergent structures come out of these kinds of adaptive traits that different groups adopt. And I think, you know, Nira and I have similar experience in Iraq and also Afghanistan of seeing guys start from very different positions and end up with very similar tactics after being exposed to the same battlefield conditions for a period of time. I mean, I don't know if you saw that in Ukraine, but you know, certainly you would have seen it in Afghanistan too. So it's a theory, right? This is not that they're colluding, that they're actually evolving independently towards an operational style which, by definition, is really well adapted for taking us on. Right. Nira? I'm going to advance to Nadia's question. By we, you mean the U.S., we're not really confronting these forces. This is the way that we may have done in the past. And I agree with Dave. I mean, if the U.S. military is sort of in the Olympics and the combatants in the places that I'm visiting these days are more like the Special Olympics. I mean, nobody is that elite, actually. And Doug, I'll answer to your question. I'm not sure that this is actually going to be much of an issue for the U.S. unless we send ground forces into Iraq. These forces are going to increasingly confront similar forces. Because of this vision of state collapse that I have for the Middle East, it's going to be a lot of hybrid warriors fighting each other rather than a lot of conventional militaries. The only conventional military that they may confront are the Turkish military, the Israeli military. But they may never actually have to worry about a Western military. Right. I would also say Western militaries and full hybrid or guerrilla militaries are reasonably solid when taking on these kinds of organizations. The people that are in the most danger and the weakest are the groups that try to fight like a Western military, but don't have the gear or don't have the training or don't have the command structure. Sort of like the Iraqis before the fall of Mosul, right? In fact, the Syrian army as well, when it was first confronting the insurgent threat, took them a few years to be able to adapt to fighting a guerrilla force. In fact, it took them almost the same amount of time it took for the U.S. to enter Iraq, and Hezbollah played a key role in helping them transition from a conventional kind of Soviet style military to being better able to operate in smaller units with more independence and flexibility. In a bucket, I mean, that's exactly what we're doing in Ukraine with the Ukrainian military, with beefing them up, trying to give them the proper C2 because it made the separatists such a formidable opponent to a kind of aging Ukrainian military was having the ability to communicate rapidly, you know, and mass fires, mass troops, and push the Ukrainians back. The other thing I'd just point out is if you have a smartphone and you have a homemade mortar with no side on it, because through your smartphone you've got access to Google Earth and to a variety of other tools, and you can download a set of firing tables for your mortar off the internet, you can achieve first-round precision fire out to the maximum range of your system in a way that a regular military that's been trained on the like two or three generations old mortar that's like surplus to Western requirements cannot do. And it's the ability to repurpose consumer electronics and the massive connectivity that's, you know, expanded on the battlefield in the last 15 years that enables like the way that, you know, I think I'm right in thinking that Hezbollah actually has a fiber optic cable system, right, that it runs from. Yeah. To avoid Israeli penetration. Right. So, you know, this is like a whole level of communications technology sophistication that we haven't really seen before from any of the groups we've fought recently. Before we go to the audience, just quick prediction. Do you think we'll see this somewhere else? You know, Burma, Thailand, are these places where we could see this same type of adaptation? Do you think this is a significant, you know, kind of generational adaptation? Will we see it there? I don't think we're going to see it somewhere else. I think we're going to see it everywhere else. I think it's an application of basic adaption to the broader conditions of the environment.  It's, you know, Mexico with the cartels, yeah. It's Farke going in that direction. Nadia. I agree. I mean, I think it gives groups that desire new political outcomes, maybe nation insurgencies, the means, they essentially see these concepts that are working, it's relatively easily, as Dave and the others on the panel have said, to acquire the technologies you need. And, you know, they're not held back by the lack of the acquisition of major programs. At the last point, you've, as you've all pointed out, they've never really faced a First World Army, you know, the Turks, the Ukrainians, the Iranians, the Iraqis, the Israelis, the Syrians. What happens when they bump up against the United States, the Brits, the Russians? And in the Syrian war, without too many ground forces, there's Russian Special Forces guys running around here and there, but it's largely from the air. And trainers here and there were the Syrian Army, but they quickly changed the picture.  However, sorry, but if the U.S. would have tried to do that, it ends up being an occupier over again.  Great, we'll turn to the audience. Once again, wait for the microphone and identify yourself. Young lady here on the aisle. Thank you. Anette Eidler from the Changing Act of War Program in the University of Oxford. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on the risk of conflating the hybridity of the actors themselves, with how the different groups cooperate with each other, which is what I work on, so how different valenance groups cooperate with each other. I mean, I've done a lot of fieldwork in Colombia where the FARC, they just mentioned, actually subcontract criminal groups or where a parameter is to enforce with the Mexican drug cartels, although from the outside it might look like hybridity, but in fact, it's really just different actors that work together. Or you mentioned also Hezbollah that cooperates with actors in Syria. So have we maybe neglected to try to interrupt these links by focusing too much on hybridity? Thanks. I think you make it very point, right? Because hybrid means something different to everyone that uses the term. And I've applied it to mean non-state actors that fight like states, right? But take the FARC, right? The FARC have this idea of the combination of all forms of struggle, combination of all forms of lucha, which basically means that that's hybrid in its strategic concept, that when you lose militarily, you switch to political, when you lose political, you switch to criminal, and it's that kind of whole model, which that's nothing to do with technicals and fire support is to do with an entirely different concept of war, which comes from the Vietnamese in the 1950s, right? So like without critiquing the concept of the panel, in our academic writing, I think most people have started to move away from hybridity as a concept to be thinking a little bit more specifically about what kind of hybridity am I talking about, right? Which isn't to undermine the validity of the concept, but we just have to be more detailed on it. All right. Right here in front. Rob Johnson, the changing current war program at the University of Oxford. So it's double-act. First of all, it's very striking for all of us to hear common features from the past, synchronization, adaptation, and I was very struck, Dave, by your description. I thought if you substitute the word vehicle, it doesn't put the word light cavalry in there, as you sort of did. It's light government. We're talking about the Saracens in the 12th century, so it's really fascinating. Now, to that end, if there is something that we may learn from history slightly deeper than the recent past, if you were challenged to find one point of dislocation for each of the groups that you have identified, what would that be, and have the Russians beat us to it? One point of dislocation. One point of dislocation. How would you break up this structure? Well, for the region I study this new phenomenon, looking at it from an American point of view, these are basically all undeclared allies. So there's not much of a threat to American interest, especially post-nuclear deal and the potentially improved relationship we're gonna see between the U.S. and Iran and the fact that in some ways the U.S. is providing air cover for some of these Shia forces. I mean, we're all fighting the same enemy here. So there's not much of a motive for the U.S. to disrupt this particular new kind of Shia anti-Takfiri alliance. Yeah, if I understood the question correctly, I mean, I think the hinging point between the separatists and their ability to fight comes with Russia's alignment and their political aims and the separatist political aims, which converge in a lot of areas, but also diverge. So I think if there's gonna be a place where you can kind of drive a wedge, that would be it. I would say, if I understand again the question correctly, the biggest weaknesses are they're really bad at holding ground. They typically don't do a good job of protecting populations while also holding ground and they can man control and logistics are very weak. What you see is a collection of combat units, not a military institution, and you can dislocate it in that way. But in some ways that's also a strength because I think the strongest element of the way certainly that ISIS operates, I would say the Taliban and to some extent YPG and others is they have modular structures down to a very low level that can be racked and stacked in completely different ways depending on the environment and can just flow through the environment without having to get new orders. And they have multi-role platforms, right? So platforms that can be fire support, they can be troop carriage, they can be heavy, and you don't have to issue special orders, people can just interpret. So what that means is that, sure, they have weak command and control, but it doesn't really matter because they just have general principles and they march to the sound of the guns. In a general way, I'd say that their strength has been predicting, I think, for good reason, our constraints and our range of activities and what we will or won't do because we tend to announce that in advance in many cases. So the flip side of it is maybe that they've become comfortable in those predictions and if we could think about how to disrupt that, that might be an avenue of strength. I think they remain tied to, at the end of the day, still insurgents. They're tied to the population that's both their strength and their weakness. When ISIS runs out of ungoverned Sunni Arab spaces, they have problems. Hezbollah doesn't seem to do well outside of Shia Arab spaces. When they bump up against a different ethnic group, that's when they have problems. And we have time for, we'll go to Harlan. I have a declaratory statement I wanna try to rest into a parliamentary question. As the term war on terror was, I think, unfortunate use of the phrase hybrid and asymmetric, likewise it seems to me ignores history because all war is hybrid or asymmetric to some degree. 200 years ago, Wellington's campaign in the peninsula. World War I, believe it or not, with cyber propaganda, the regular warfare in the form of Lawrence was certainly what we would call hybrid and Vietnam was indeed hybrid. So my question is, are we making a mistake in ignoring history in trying to use terms like hybrid and asymmetric when indeed these have been parallels throughout all of history and by ignoring history, we're not gonna be able to use it to take on these adversaries which are using in many ways traditional tools used differently? I'd say no, actually. I don't think we're ignoring history. I think essentially we've gotten a little bit lax and I don't think in this community we're denying that this is an historical anomaly but essentially we've just gotten lax in certain areas and I think that that's what this is about, essentially pointing out areas that we need to refocus and improve. That's how I interpret it. That's why I think the phrase actually has value because it's reminding us of some key things that we need to think better about. I don't know if HR is here but the statement's broken, I've said it maybe still is but I don't tend to think about this in historical terms at all. The conceptual underpinnings for the way I think about these adversaries are evolutionary biology, the constructal law, issues like complexity theory and I think that that actually gets you much further into thinking about how to fight these guys as distinct from how to understand them in their historical place in the universe which is interesting. But I think that we won't don't want to ignore history. We don't want to be like the guys who wrote the fourth generation warfare theory which is an awesome description of current warfare but a terrible caricature of the history of how we got here, right? So I don't want to discount it but I would say to me that tools that allow you to unlock this problem are mainly from the world of hard sciences actually. What's new to the extent that I know history is that groups like the Kurds in northern Syria has ballad other actors who are small nine state actors very guerrilla like are now able more and more to act like a state whether militarily or even politically in terms of services that provide security services or state services and the technology that they're using. So to me that does seem like a new phenomenon. All right, any closing statements? We've covered it. All right, with that we'll turn over our remaining 50 seconds back to the panel. Thank you very much. Thanks.


PVP showcase. If you don't talk with Turtle Rocks lead game designer on Back for Blood, Brandon Yanez, to help piece it all together. Before we get there though, let's start off with the reveal of a brand new PVP trailer and see what it's like in action. P-Mode swarm. To hear more about it and to take a deep dive into the gameplay and then the Rocks lead game designer on Back for Blood, Brandon Yanez. Brandon, can you tell us a little bit about the inspiration of this new PVP mode and what makes it fun and unique? Of course. So just like our previous titles, we really enjoy bringing new ideas to the table while retaining the spirit of the genre that we're working in. So Back for Blood's PVP is heavily inspired by our previous titles that makes survival, fast action, massive monsters, and a touch of horror. So our goal is to make a balanced and fun PVP mode with just as much replayability as the main campaign. So what's the structure of the PVP like? Do you play in rounds? Can you play as both cleaners and ridden in one match or are we swapping between the two? Yeah, so it's played as a best of three match. Teams of four take turns swapping between the ridden and cleaner players. The job of the cleaners is to scavenge supplies, find a good place on the map to fortify the position and try to last as long as they can. The ridden's main objective is to kill the cleaners as fast as they can. So this is achieved by choosing the right ridden to counter the other team strategy, using mutation upgrades, and by coordinating attacks with other AIs and players. As the round progresses, the swarm moves in. So this increases the size of the ridden of attacks and shrinks the playable space, sometimes forcing the cleaners out of their favorite positions, right? So when a cleaner team is wiped from the field, the points are scored for how long they survive. Then both teams swap and then they go at it from the other side. The team that runs the clock the longest as the cleaners is the winner. Now I understand you can play as all the different cleaners in both co-op and PVP. Do you have a favorite character that you play as? So I have a couple. I play mom a lot. She's a badass with sawed-off shotgun. She adds a lot of survivability to the team. She can also instantly help teammates that have fallen during battle. All of our cleaners have special perks, so that one is hers. Let's jump into another trailer that goes a little more in-depth on the ridden's progression through PVP. Check it out. We just saw that each different ridden is on each variant. So can you expand a little more on these special abilities and how they work? Sure. So at the start of each round, players can choose between nine playable ridden, each with their own unique abilities. So for example, the stalker can pounce a player and pull them away from their team or an exploder can time their detonation in the middle of a group of cleaners and fling them all in separate directions. Now knowing that each ridden has these different abilities, how do they change and improve throughout a match and improve the ridden's chance of winning? So as the ridden battle against the cleaners, they gain points. They can spend these points on team-wide upgrades called mutations. Mutations upgrade and improve a lot of different things on the ridden's side, formatting effects to their abilities. They might buff the common AI waves and size and strength. So the really cool thing is so they affect the whole team and they persist between rounds. So as a ridden team starts to coordinate their upgrades, things can get pretty wild. What are some strategies that the ridden team can take on in order to get a leg up on the competition? If the cleaners are really sticking together, you can swap to the wretch and vomit on their location. That's going to cause them to spread out, right? This is going to open up a whole bunch of opportunities for your other ridden players to attack, right? So if you get them to spread out and they're stalking nearby, stalker use the chaos to grab one of the cleaners and drag them off into the swarm. The wretch's vomit also slows their victims. So if a tall boy who's naturally pretty slow can attack one of those slow characters, they're going to really be able to pump them. Another good one is if a exploder waits for a cleaner to go revive their friend, they can use that as an opportunity to charge in and detonate on them, sending them flying and doing a massive amount of damage. Sounds pretty brutal. So with that being said, which is your favorite ridden to play out? That has to be the tall boy. It's pretty easy to pick up and play and have a lot of fun hitting cleaners across the map. Speaking of fun, let's talk about weapons. Now, throughout the trailers, you can see a number of different weapons. Can you go a little deeper into what those weapons are and how they work? So we really wanted to expand on the amount of choices the player had in Back for Blood with their weapon. So of course, there's handguns, shotguns, LMGs, SMGs, sniper rifles, and a whole bunch of other types of weapons, each with sort of like a unique character feel to them. Now, how deep does this weapon customization go? I really want to know what are some of the different attachments and options and how do they change the gameplay overall? Absolutely. So there's a lot of different customization options for your weapons. So throughout the world, you can find scopes, silencers, stocks, sights, all that good stuff. You can mix and match them. So there's a ton of options. Last question. Do you have a favorite type of weapon? Absolutely. So as I said earlier, I really enjoy playing mom. So her shotgun is definitely at the top of my list. That's a solid choice. All right, we've learned a little bit about how it all works, the cleaners, the ridden, the mutations, as well as how the customization works for the weapons. Thank you so much for joining me, Brandon, and for giving us a little bit more detail on Back for Blood's new PvP mode swarm. Thanks for having me. I can't wait for everyone to get their hands on this game. We're all really excited. I can't wait either. The good news is that you guys won't have to wait too long. There's an open beta coming up on August 12th with an early access portion on August 5th available to those who preorder. That's all for today. But Back for Blood still has a lot more to reveal in the coming months. So stay tuned.


Words at war. Citizens of Athens, attention! You will receive into your homes such of our officers as may be billeted upon you. You will put yourself in your possessions at their disposal. You will obey their commands without question and treat them in all respects as your honored guests. Any attempt at insubordination may be met with imprisonment or death. I order of the fear of... The National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with the Council on Books and War Time presents another of the most significant programs on the air today. Words at war. Dramatizing the most representative books to come out of this world conflict. Tonight, Glenway Wesket's absorbing novel of the German character, Apartment in Athens. What do you mean to actually invite a German officer to come and live with us? It is a good policy, dear. Is it possible for a Helianus to suggest such a thing? But that's all the more reason, Zoe. The name Helianus is suspect already. But Patrice and old Georgus will believe you've gone over to the enemy. Perhaps they're sternest stuff than I am. Or perhaps they don't love their wives and children as much as I do. Nicholas, our own little Alex, has the spirit to win his only 12.  They needn't know. This proclamation today forces any Greek family to take in German officers. If we're forced to it, yes. But if you make a friendly gesture toward the enemy, everyone will know it and will be in disgrace with our own people. Nicholas, I'd be so ashamed inviting one of these Nazi brutes into our home. My dear, I know how you hate the Germans. I'm not exactly fond of them myself. But they're human, too. They need food and lodging. Why, Zoe, we could get 40 marks for the front room. 40 marks of inflation money, perhaps enough for a loaf of bread. But, dear, don't you realize that our problem is one of sheer survival for the duration? No. We've used up all our resources. I have a wife and two children. What kind of a husband and father would I be if I didn't try by every possible means to see that you do survive? But not at the cost of aiding the enemy, Nicholas. Ah, nonsense. We'll serve Greece best by keeping alive until she's freed. Nicholas. How many take the quartermaster corn on the next street? Those officers are in entirely different types, Zoe. They're businessmen. Work long hours. Much better to choose one of them while we can and have one of the other type inflicted on us. You heard the proclamation. You know what's going to happen? You always make things sound so reasonable, dear.  You think with your emotions. A man has to keep a clear head. Well, Alex, exciting reader again with those blood-curdling torture stories. Don't you worry. You're like fairy tales to the leader. Well, come and quiet, then, Nicholas. Alex's going to be rather a problem, I'm afraid. Children. Children. Why, they're watching. We're playing a game. Here, put that cushion on the chair, lady. You swing? The soft, scratchy one. I'll get Father's walking stick. And why do you want my walking stick, Alex? It's a bayonet, and the cushion is a German stomach. What talk is this from our son? Poor child. He's playing at war. Well, then, already, he knows so much. I'm practicing, mother. He's practicing. Alex is practicing. Alex, Leda, war isn't for children. You must think of it as a flood or an earthquake. I am a Greek, mother. You'll be proud when I kill my first German. Nicholas, make Alex understand how dangerous this is. He's always dreaming and planning. Soon he'll try to make it come true, and the Germans will catch him. And then, oh, heaven, haven't we suffered enough? Children, you may look at my big travel book on the top bookcase shelf. Daddy! Be careful of it, though. Oh, thank you, Father. Let me get it. Oh, it's my turn to sell it. I want to get it first. Poor little thing, so thin and white. Malnutrition, of course, and the famine's getting worse. The quartermaster corps controls all the food in Athens, Zoe. They're sure to have special privileges. Perhaps if one of their officers lives here, if we treat him well, he might even give us... ...only get food for Alex and Lida. Well, I'm going to see what can be done. Nicholas Salianos, 45, former publisher of school books and scholarly treatises. Once prosperous and understated, Cihoko, wife Zoe, 43, two children, Alex, 12, Lida, 7. Lianos himself was never taken part in active resistance, but... His cousins, Petros and George Salianos, are rebels fighting in the mountains. Anyone named Salianos is suspect. The rest is confidential. Not a good record. If I may suggest, there is nothing against me personally. That may be only because you have not been found out. We know that you Greeks stick together. However, there may be a certain advantage to the new order, if I were a member of your household. I would have you under my eye. We are quiet, retiring people, sir. Struggling to survive under the present difficulties. We take part in no subversive activities. That remains to be seen. I will inspect your apartment this afternoon. Oh, no, this single bed won't do. I need my rest. My wife and I sleep on our only double bed, sir. No argument. A good German knows how to sleep on the ground. Won't her degree to sleep on the floor move the double bed in here. Come here, get this brat out of the bathroom. And hereafter, this will be for my exclusive use. I shall dine here alone. No one else in this house is to eat until I have eaten. Here are two dozen shirts, Mrs. Salianos. Wash and iron them perfectly. Or you will do them over again. Nicholas, how outrageous. Oh, dear, don't take it seriously. It's just the German love of order. How can we sleep in the kitchen? Why must this captain have the sitting room as well as the bedroom? He studies at night. And you know his eating alone is quite an advantage to us. He'll never notice how much we get of his food allotment.  I can't stand it if he orders me about the kitchen. Let's not anticipate the worst. If we're tactful and do our best for him, he'll appreciate it. How can you be so soft?  Zoe, you're too overwrought. Please trust me. I shall wear him down with courtesy. Zoe, darling! Right beside you. Shall I turn on the light? No. Let's lie here in the blessed darkness. I'm worried about these nightmares of yours. They're no worse than the nightmare we live by day. Darling, I'll talk you to sleep again. We've had such delightful times in our lives. These memories should sustain us now that things are difficult. I remember once when you and I were walking in the royal gardens just before we were married. How beautiful you were. The Greek statue will come to life. Nicholas, why did you even consider sharing our privacy with this Nazi officer? And then there was another time when we wandered among the ruins of the Parthenon. I remarked, and I thought it rather good, too, that even the fragments of the classic age of Greece have a character and a quality we admire but cannot equal today. All of these Nazis are beasts, all of them. Greece is a volume of history, and every stone is a page for the sensitive to read. Our very name has a poetico significance to other nations. Nicholas, it's no use. Don't try. So the old charm doesn't work anymore. I will now inspect your icebox, Mrs. Inna. Moving but three onions, half a cup of olive oil, a cup of curd. Hey, did you try to hide this piece of cheese in the corner? No, sir. Put it on a plate in my room. Where's the bread? There is no bread, Captain Golder. When any food enters this house for myself or for you, I want it reported to me. For the next two hours, I want absolute silence. There's your quartermaster, Nicholas. Well, dear quartermasters or bookkeepers, too. They like to check up on things. It's their habit of mine. We were going to live on the leftovers. There aren't any. He knows exactly what goes into every dish, and I must account for every ounce. He's turned the table on us. I even have to account for our own food. Careful there, dusting his desk and disarranging the papers. I've knocked over these photographs. So, are they damaged, the glass broken? No, thank heavens. Was that his wife? Must be. And these boys in uniform, his sons. At least I know his human. I've seen him studying them. It isn't German. It isn't Greek. It's a man looking at someone he loves. Giannis, come here. On your knees. No, no, no, no. I'm not going to kick you. Pull up my boots. Oh, yes. That's better. See that you get a high polish on them. I want them standing outside my door in the morning. Is that understood? He didn't leave a lick of soup. Has he started on the chops yet, father? There were three big ones. Surely he won't eat them all? Taking in this glass of wine, Alex. But just look. Don't say anything. Yes, father. No, leader. There's just enough for Captain Coulter. You see, Nicholas, the child's ravenous and that brute in there, gorging and plush. The child might repeat what you see. He's too frightened even to speak. He's just eaten the inside of the chops. There's a lot left around the bones. He's lighting a cigar. I'll go and bring back his plate. Well? Here's an ice tracer. Let me remove your plate. Don't bother. I'll use the plate for an ice tray. The way it is dangerous to cross a German officer. Don't go in, I will. I'm going. Captain Coulter. All of that proud of you is to get up on this. You want me to kick his brains out? Alex, Alex, here. He knows the weight of my fists.  Yes, yes, sir. What has he done to displease you, Captain? Last night I sent this little rat over to my friend with the two meat bones left over for my dinner.  Only one bone arrived. The boy stole the other. I didn't. I swear I didn't. I wanted to, but I was afraid to. He lies again. Carry your room, Alex. Please accept my apologies, Captain. My son is a growing boy and suffers from his appetite. If he's trusted with food, he'll steal it. He just can't help it. After this, please let me carry it to your friend's dog, myself. You're great for all thieves by nature.  I'll have this bread and cheese and take it to my friend with my compliments. Yes, sir, immediately. Alex is a nervous, cowardly boy. Corporal punishment's the only thing for him. I expect to see a marked improvement as a result of my living with you. You'll thank me for the trouble I take with him. Yes, sir. If you'll excuse me now, sir. How much longer? How can you stand as you may live? Be patient, dear. Be patient. It's better to be alive. No decent man should stand it. I will stand anything for you and the children. This was hard on Alex tonight, but it's no worse than the beatings punnier boys have endured from their school masters. Look at that boy's ribs sticking out. Look at his thins to our face and remember it when you're bowing and scraping to that devil in there. We're better off than people in prisons and concentration camps. How? The captain is our protector from the greater cruelties. As long as we serve him. We're safe. Right to it now. Oh, Nicholas, just think two wonderful weeks. Yes, my dears. The captain's off. Now watch the car turn the corner. You'll be on the plane for Germany in 20 minutes.  Well, we better not get on that. If he comes back, if he does, I'll get him out on a balcony and I'll trip him and he'll fall over the ballastrade and hit the street squad. Slide!  Yeah, freedom takes a little time to get used to, dear. We'll eat all the captain's food. We won't have his allotment while he's away, dear. Now, never you mind. A clever family like the Hellianus knows how to have a good time somehow. Oh, Nicholas, will we ever be happy again? It's never too late for a little happiness. You have a comfortable trip, Captain Colter? Yes, yes. By the way, I'm Major Colter now. Why? I beg your pardon, Major. No matter. Will one of our Greeks, too, suit you for dinner, Major? I haven't any appetite. You belated yourself. What? Don't go to any trouble for me. But you are... Yes, I was always particular about food and such, but perhaps I'm different now. I put up fresh curtains in your bedroom, sir. Very kind of you, Mrs. Hellianus. We'd like to please you, sir. There's anything we can do. Nothing matters now. You poor devils, I'm sorry for you, too. I'll be back late, but I try not to disturb you. The trap, that's what it is, a trap. Oh, come on, dear. When he was back in Germany, he remembered all we'd done for him and decided to be pleasant. Fortunately for us, he's a changed man. Changed? He's a German. Remove your boots, sir? No. No, no, no, no. Sit down instead. What? Some little talk. Two men living under the same roof discuss things occasionally. Take that chair, Hellianus. If you wish, sir. Thank you.  A publisher, weren't you? Yes, sir. I was a publisher in a small way. I've noticed your books. They have unusual quality. We Germans admire cuts in any country. May I pour you a little brandy? Very kind of you, Major Governor. More easily with brandy. Thank you, sir. Health, Major Governor. And yours, Hellianus.  Tonight, I'm making my will. Oh? That is remaking it. I have property and in time of order, it's hard to handle such things. Yes, there must be many new laws.  In the publishing business, we pick up a good many odds and ends of information, sir. You see, I have no family. I didn't know. No family. I may interest you to know how I am disposing of my modest fortune. You foreigners think of us Germans only as soldiers and world leaders. You forget what we have done for civilization, philosophy, science, music. Yes, indeed, sir. Germany has made a great contribution to the arts and sciences. Music is what I love best. If things were to go badly the next year, the next few years, the musicians suffered hardship and would be the end of music all over the world. Dead silence everywhere. Am I not right? Certainly, the world would be poor without German music. It was the only music. Therefore, my estate goes to a music school and likes the scholarships and the pension fund. Now, if you'll excuse me. Certainly, sir. And thank you for the brandy. Nicholas, you were gone so long. Is anything wrong? There's something I don't understand. What? He's just made a new will. What's peculiar about that? Why, the pictures in his room. His family. All Germans are vindictive. He's changed his mind and offended him. Zoe, he's not a cruel man now. He's a sad man. You think so? Here's a glass of our hot spiced wine, major. I thought you might enjoy it. Very much. Taste of pitch. Nevertheless, thank you. Sit down. Well, thank you. I've just been reading an article by one of our great writers who explains with a wonderful German frankness that German defeat would be really German victory. Well, how is that possible, sir? It would intensify the spirit of the nation and increase the national aptitude for war. A very interesting argument. Absolutely conclusive. Like all of our German thinking. You see, we are so intelligent, we consider the most remote possibility, such as losing this present war. That surprises you, doesn't it? I confess it does. We are the only nation to think in great times. That is why we were governed the word. Who else is equal to the task? If I may suggest, sir, the Americans are able and wonderfully inventive, sir. We have taken all their inventions and we have made something of them. Ah, what fools the Americans are. They are so generous and free and easy between wars. America has been most generous to us Greeks. Fools and their money. Why, in peace time, they help Germany. It's not sentiment. They think it is to their interest to do so.  The Americans help us to prepare for the next war against them. What's there be another war, Major? War is the only way of life. Peace is a weak thing. Germany wants victory in you time, of course, but if this is not the time, we will have the future. There will always be another war, if we honor us forever and forever. History will give the Germans another chance. I hope you've learned something of our ideals from this talk. I found it most stimulating, Major. I'm a very lonely man these days. We Germans have great hearts and a capacity for suffering. There's only thing we can do to make you more comfortable, sir. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Don't put yourself out, it isn't necessary. Good night. Good night, Major Colin. Nicholas, you know I'm always nervous when you let the Major draw you into conversation. My dear, I'm becoming his friend. It's a great step ahead. While he hasn't inspected the kitchen or checked on the food for two weeks, we're eating better, Zoe. These Germans are very clever, Nicholas. They invite your confidences by pretending to give theirs. It's only pretending, darling. This was real, I'm sure. Something's troubling him. There were tears in his eyes tonight. He's a very lonely man, Zoe. Nicholas, you're more of a child than Alex and Lida. Alex plays at war, and I play at being a philosopher superior to war, is that it? You're always ready to believe the best of everyone, dear. Never trust a German. Not a sweet stubborn wife. You don't think I always agree with the Major, do you? No, I don't think that, but... Well... It's only that you're so absent-minded, dear. Sometime you won't think and you'll say the wrong thing. Oh, I'm very careful, very discreet, and kindness always pays.  Just your counts, anyway. I think I'll take him in this cup of coffee for a nightcap. He seems so melancholy. Nicholas, please don't talk anymore. Oh, I promise. I'll just hand him the cup.  I'm alone. I need to be alone. Oh, forgive me, Major. It's too late now.  Yes, sir. I feel very bad. I've talked too much already. Why did I take you to my confidence? What possessed me? I'd better go back to the kitchen, sir. Or if you're ill, may I call a physician? If I can do something for you, sir... No, it makes no difference.  Perhaps you're not, I don't know. I can't judge. The German officer loses confidence in his judgment about the men. It's the end of everything, isn't it? Sit down, I'll be honest. Thank you. But if I can... That's good to tell, my trouble. Passes the time. The deadly time. You Greeks and the other horror nations. That's your blasted conceit. You think all the suffering of war is on your side? It's not so. I told you I had to make a new will. This is what happened. Just before I returned home to Germany, my eldest son was a fighter pilot, crashed. Oh, what a tragedy, sir. Almost every family has to give a son for the fatherland. But... While I was on my way home, my house in Königsberg was destroyed in an air raid. My wife was burned horribly. And you suffered all this in Salishan? And after I got home, my younger son was killed in Russia. A young boy, a green soldier. Your entire family? For three days. My wife and her frightful bandages comforted me for the death of our sons. She restored my faith in the future. In Germany. Then she died. Sir, words... Words cannot express. I cannot say... I do. I do. I'm so weary of this war. I can't fight anymore.   Oh, how intolerable it is. You think that two men with too much power should have brought all this tragedy upon us other men? Two men, what do you mean? What two men? I mean the Fuhrer and the Duchy. Why, you vile freak, how dare you?  I wouldn't offend you, sir, believe me. Oh, sir, forgive me. It was only I felt so grieved over your sorrow. How can I help this swine like you? No, my sorrow. I already stepped, sir. You poor, rascally freak. I thought you were more intelligent than the others. You know what comes next, I presume. I now telephone the military police to come here and take your custody.  Your husband's under arrest. Go away. Nicholas Hillianus, since you are to die in the morning. You are permitted two minutes private talk with your family. I will wait at 30 p.m. My darlings. Nicholas. Zoe, we have only a moment. It belongs to Alex, Alex, my son. Yes, father? Your mother's been right all along. And I've been wrong, terribly wrong. I'm paying for my cowardice.  Your father leaves you a name to be proud of, Alex. It's no matter. Alex, tonight I want you to steal out of the house and make your way to the mountains. You know where our cousins, Patriots, and the Argus are. Father, I would any way tomorrow. No, tonight. They'll think you wouldn't leave me. Never trust a German son. Remember it every moment. Never trust a German, a German who seems to have gone soft. It's a hard lesson. Learn it. There you go. Quickly. What is the lesson, Alex? Never trust a German. Tonight on Words at War, we brought you a dramatization of Glenway Wesket's novel, Apartment in Athens. The radio dramatization was written by Phyllis Parker. In the cast, Wendell Holmes played Elianus Peter Cappell.