“Modernizes our armed forces to address the evolving threats of the 21st Century, ensuring the Defense Department is able to compete with China and other adversaries across the globe.”

If this continues, a group chat foul will be the least of our concerns, and all the fist and flag emojis in the world won’t save us.

Signal might be a good app for you and me and our local drug dealer, but it’s not for the Pentagon to plan wars on.

I had very strong doubts that this text group was real, because I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans. I also could not believe that the national security adviser to the president would be so reckless as to include the editor in chief of The Atlantic in such discussions with senior U.S. officials, up to and including the vice president.

The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour.

It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.

History is filled with brilliant people who wanted to fix things and just made them worse.

People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.

Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them.