WELL, YES: Drones ‘change everything’ about combined arms combat, US Army aviation chief says.

While Army aviators are no strangers to unmanned systems, drones being fielded today are immensely different from those developed over the last two decades, many of which tended to be larger and required more manpower to operate, Gill said.

“In the last five to 10 years I would say we have seen a complete shift in what drone technology is and how it can be used,” Gill said. The net result, he added, is that drones are “no longer just the purview of Army aviation.”

“I would argue now with the proliferation of small drones and how cheap and effective they can be that Army aviation is just one minor user now. … Everybody is going to have drones in the airspace to some degree.

“It’s going to change everything. The nature of war is the same. It’s always an endeavor of human conflict. But the character of war is just fundamentally different.”

Whoever figures out first how to use drones to enhance maneuver warfare instead of shutting it down (as in the Russo-Ukraine War), probably wins the next major war.

TITANIA MCGRATH: The warmth of the collective.

Now that we’ve reached 2026, surely it’s time to try this system again. Our new era has already begun, with Zohran Mamdani taking over as Mayor of New York. For those who don’t know, Mamdani is a devout Muslim who has promised to make New York a “sanctuary city” for the LGBT+ community. It’s what the Prophet Mohammed would have wanted.

Some bigots have argued that homosexuality is incompatible with the Islamic faith. But in fact, homophobia is extremely rare in Muslim-majority countries. This is why there isn’t a single LGBT+ community centre in the whole of Afghanistan. Everyone is so tolerant that there is simply no need for them.

Since taking power, Mamdani has declared that “we will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism”. No sane person could possibly argue with this logic. If it’s a choice between being warm or frigid, I know which I’d prefer. Indeed, during Stalin’s time he built a range of holiday camps called “gulags”, where residents often slept shoulder-to-shoulder in crammed rooms. Just imagine how warm and non-frigid that was.

Heh, indeed. Though given how much global warming New York received today, perhaps hizzoner should dial back on that whole “warmth of collectivism” thing. No need to speed up the heating up of the planet and/or Fun City:

CHRISTIAN TOTO: BAFTA Meltdown Captures Woke Mind Virus to Perfection.

It should have been a magical night for John Davidson.

His life, specifically a long battle with Tourette syndrome, inspired the BAFTA-nominated film, “I Swear.” The British awards gala invited Davidson to Sunday’s soiree to see if the film might go home a winner.

It did – actor Robert Aramayo won Best Actor honors over Timothée Chalamet and Leonardo DiCaprio – and the film itself won two other awards.

Yet Davidson’s chronic swearing – the signature issue facing those with his condition – swamped the event in more ways than one. Davidson’s profanity could be heard during early segments of the show, even though he wasn’t on-stage at the time.

Host Alan Cumming gracefully explained the situation to the audience, apologizing for the profanity and asking for compassion. Those with this condition utter inappropriate phrases without control or filter.

“You may have noticed some strong language in the background. This can be part of how Tourette’s syndrome shows up for some people as the film explores that experience…Thanks for your understanding and helping create a respectful space for everyone.”

The matter might have ended there.

Except Davidson uttered the N-word when black actors Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo of “Sinners” fame graced the BAFTA stage to present an award.

Read the whole thing.

WANT A JOB AT FIRE? NOW’S YOUR CHANCE! When I started at FIRE, I figured I’d have to leave and make a “real” career in biglaw after a couple of years. That was 23 years ago! You never know where your career will take you.

MIDDLE EAST TENSIONS SPIKE AS U.S. PULLS ‘NON-EMERGENCY’ STAFF FROM BEIRUT: “While the State Department offered no official explanation for ordering the evacuation, there are reasons they’d want as few Americans in the area as possible if a strike on Iran is in the works. Namely, the terror group Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, has recently been shoring up its presence in Lebanon.”

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: The end of work? Not yet—maybe not ever. “Calm down. Artificial intelligence can already do plenty, but work is bundled, economies have bottlenecks, and rising prosperity tends to create new kinds of labor rather than eliminate it.”

I certainly agree that these are reasons why predictions that jobs and work will be largely gone by 2030 or 2035 are at the very least premature. I wonder, though, if the combination of AI and robotics won’t have a much bigger impact than the introduction of other technologies in the past, making prior technological revolutions an inadequate model.

LA COUNTY MENTAL HEALTH DEPT: Filed claims totaling in excess of $8 billion with Medicaid between 2018 and 2024, according to an unprecedented deep-dive data analysis by Open the Books.

PHIL HAMBURGER: When Is a Tax Not a Tax? When it’s a taking, like California’s proposed wealth levy.

California’s proposed billionaire tax is unconstitutional. The ballot initiative calling for one-time retroactive 5% tax on the net worth of the state’s billionaires has prompted much unease, but the legal arguments against it have remained elusive. It’s therefore important to recognize that this tax is an uncompensated taking or at least a deprivation of property without due process, contrary to the Fifth and 14th amendments.

Disgruntled taxpayers often grouse that taxation is state-sanctioned theft, and libertarians frequently complain about regulatory takings. But the billionaire tax is a problem for more basic reasons—reasons that are crucial for all of us, not only the hyperwealthy.

Although taxes are generally lawful, that isn’t true of everything called a tax. Consider a hypothetical Bill Gates Tax (imagined by legal scholars Calvin Massey and Eric Kades) that imposes an income tax of 100% on Mr. Gates and no one else. In form, it’s a tax; in reality, it’s a confiscation.

The example of the Bill Gates Tax is extreme in demanding 100% of income from one person. It’s less extreme, however, than the California tax in taking only income, not wealth, and in being prospective.

Three considerations coincide to make it especially clear that the California proposal is confiscatory.

It’s also an admission that the California machine has stifled growth and now has to confiscate available wealth in order to maintain desired levels of fraud and defalcation.

(Archived version here.)

THE POLITICO IS NOT HAPPY: RFK Jr.’s billionaire running mate is making a comedy about the pandemic.

Covid contrarians tight with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are pitching Hollywood on an unlikely leading man: National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya.

Nicole Shanahan, Kennedy’s running mate in the 2024 presidential campaign, is searching for investors to fund a movie that pokes fun at the pandemic response with a star based on Bhattacharya, who rose to prominence with his anti-lockdown manifesto and relentless tweets opposing social distancing.

The script for the satirical comedy, “The Rash,” is by renowned author Walter Kirn, who wrote the novel “Up in the Air” that became an Oscar-nominated movie starring George Clooney. The new Kirn screenplay stars a “no-nonsense” public health professor at a Stanford-like California university — mirroring Bhattacharya — who speaks out against mass hysteria amid a mysterious outbreak of a contagious skin condition.

I’m not at all sure that this is the team to be making it or if the results will be watchable, but given how elites acted and continually reversed their decisions in 2020, there’s a huge opportunity for a black humor comedy along the lines of Dr. Strangelove, Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H or The Death of Stalin.

Fauci and Birx as James Bond supervillains, lockdown obsessives having trysts, cocktail partiesand sex partiescelebrities singing “Imagine” from their mansions, newspapers siccing social media mobs on those celebrities who refused to go along with lockdowns and vaccine mandates, healthcare officials who pivoted on a dime from lockdowns to championing riots in the street – there’s so much material here to mine.

WHY IS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY SUCH A CESSPIT OF RACISM? Newsom Tells Black Audience ‘I’m Like You…960 SAT…I Cannot Read a Speech.’

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Racist) basically told a group of black voters in Georgia, Vote for me. I’m stupid just like you!
While out promoting his autobiography and his likely 2028 presidential campaign, Newsom started out with the usual-usual pandering Democrats employ with black voters. Then it quickly devolved into the kind of racist condescension we’ve seen from modern-day Democrats, reaching back to when they created the Jim Crow South.

This is really something…