NATO faces its gravest military disadvantage since 1949, as the balance of power has shifted decisively toward its adversaries in the Era of Drone Warfare. The speed and scale of NATO's relative military decline represents the most dramatic power shift since World War II—and the alliance appears dangerously unaware of its new vulnerability

NATO doctrine is obsolete. The Pax Americana is coming to its end.

• Failure to defeat Houthi Rebels: The US Navy's struggles against the Houthis' low-cost drone arsenal demonstrate how even non-state actors can challenge NATO air defense.  NATO forces found themselves hard-pressed to counter relatively primitive drone attacks.
• Economic logic of drone warfare: In Ukraine, drones account for over 70% of combat kills—a proportion likely to increase. The economics are devastating: $1,000 FPV drones routinely destroy $7 million Abrams tanks. Modern tanks are dangerously outdated and the entire armored warfare needs to be redesigned from the ground up to face the realities of modern drone warfare.
• Lack of military experience: NATO lacks both experienced drone operators and institutional knowledge of drone warfare. The alliance has no significant combat experience fighting against and integrating drones at scale.
• Lack of NATO anti-drone air defense: NATO's air [...]

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First published:

November 24th, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XN54FwHu2aBQbqcdM/nato-is-dangerously-unaware-of-its-military-vulnerability

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Here I am on the plane on the way home from Inkhaven. Huge thanks to Ben Pace and the other organizers for inviting me. Lighthaven is a delightful venue and there sure are some brilliant writers taking part in this — both contributing writers and participants. With 40 posts published per day by participants (not counting those by organizers and contributing writers) it feels impossible to highlight samples of them. Fortunately that's been done for me: the Inkhaven spotlight. And just to semi-randomly pick a single post to highlight, for making me laugh out loud, I'll link to one by Rob Miles. There are also myriad poignant, insightful, informative, and otherwise delightful posts. And, sure, plenty that don't quite work yet. But that's the point: force yourself to keep publishing, ready or not, and trust that quality will follow.

Confession: I'm not at all happy with this post. Opening with "here I am on the plane"? Painful. I would've fixed that in an editing pass, but I'm going to leave it because it illustrates two Inkhaven lessons for me. First, that sometimes it's ok to hit publish before something is perfect. And second, that I in particular need to [...]

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First published:

November 24th, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9ZX2MMMc4oEYSNnk3/inkhaven-retrospective

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

TL;DR: Figure out what needs doing and do it, don't wait on approval from fellowships or jobs.

If you...

• Have short timelines
• Have been struggling to get into a position in AI safety
• Are able to self-motivate your efforts
• Have a sufficient financial safety net

... I would recommend changing your personal strategy entirely.

I started my full-time AI safety career transitioning process in March 2025. For the first 7 months or so, I heavily prioritized applying for jobs and fellowships. But like for many others trying to "break into the field" and get their "foot in the door", this became quite discouraging.

I'm not gonna get into the numbers here, but if you've been applying and getting rejected multiple times during the past year or so, you've probably noticed the number of applicants increasing at a preposterous rate. What this means in practice is that the "entry-level" positions are practically impossible for "entry-level" people to enter.

If you're like me and have short timelines, applying, getting better at applying, and applying again, becomes meaningless very fast. You're optimizing for signaling competence rather than actually being competent. Because if you a) have short timelines, and b) are [...]

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

November 23rd, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ey2kjkgvnxK3Bhman/stop-applying-and-get-to-work

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Earlier this month, I was pretty desperately feeling the need for a vacation. So after a little googling, I booked a flight to New York city, a hotel, and four nights worth of tickets to a new immersive theater show called Masquerade.

Background: “Standard” Immersive Theater

To convey Masquerade, I find it easiest to compare against standard immersive theater.

It's weird to talk about “standard” immersive theater, because the standard is not that old and has not applied to that many shows at this point. Nonetheless, there is an unambiguous standard format, and the show which made that format standard is Sleep No More. I have not yet seen Sleep No More itself, but here's my understanding of it.

Sleep No More follows the story of Macbeth. Unlike Shakespearre's version, the story is not performed on a central stage, but rather spread out across five floors of a building, all of which is decked out as various locations from the story. Scene changes are not done by moving things on “stage”, but rather by walking to another area. The audience is free to wander the floors as they please, but must remain silent and wear a standard mask throughout [...]

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Outline:

(00:24) Background: Standard Immersive Theater

(03:39) By Comparison, Masquerade

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First published:

November 23rd, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4cS9Ap5H6JGHwFEac/show-review-masquerade

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

My understanding is that even though advocating a pause or massive slowdown in the development of superintelligence think we should get there eventually[1]. Something something this is necessary for humanity to reach its potential.

Perhaps so, but I'll be sad about it. Humanity has a lot of unsolved problems right now. Aging, death, disease, poverty, environmental degradation, abuse and oppression of the less powerful, conflicts, and insufficient resources such as energy and materials.

Even solving all the things that feel "negative", the active suffering, there's all this potential for us and the seemingly barren universe that could be filled with flourishing life. Reaching that potential will require a lot of engineering puzzles to be solved. Fusion reactors would be neat. Nanotechnology would be neat. Better gene editing and reproductive technology would be neat.

Superintelligence, with its superness, could solve these problems faster than humanity is on track to. Plausibly way way faster. With people dying every day, I see the case for it. Yet it also feels like the cheat code to solving all our problems. It's building an adult to take care of us, handing over the keys and steering wheel, and after that point our efforts [...]

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

November 23rd, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6tEXnTp7fcs2KhXMk/i-ll-be-sad-to-lose-the-puzzles

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

{early pause}... (you should have known this:)

YOU (not just them over there)

CAN (tho maybe you shouldn't?)

JUST (its weirdly easy)

DO (not talking/writing/planning/delaying)

THINGS (weird/hard/easy things... really ANYthing)

{late pause} (I'll make eye contract until you START)

-@jenniferRM, riffing on norvid_studies.

You should know this by now, but you can just do things. That you didn't know this is an indictment of your social environment, which taught you how to act.

You Can Just Do Things

Yes, you. All the activities you see other people do? You can do them, too. Whether or not you'll find it hard, you can do them.

The barriers you see to doing so are not iron-hard constraints. They are obstacles you can climb over, costs you've reified into infinitely high cliffs because constraining the action space, and thereby the solution space, can simplify life. But always remember, these are fake cliffs. If you actually want to solve a problem, if you feel but the barest moment of whimsy, you can topple them with but a thought and expand the action space however much you like.

If you are ruling out actions, make sure it is because it is [...]

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Outline:

(00:48) You Can Just Do Things

(01:38) You Can Just Do Things

(02:20) You Can Just Do Things

(03:08) You Can Just Do Things

(04:02) You Can Just Do Things

(05:06) You Can Just Do Things

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First published:

November 23rd, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zwXdepvTr9FqQY6dw/you-can-just-do-things

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

(Cross-posted from my Substack; written as part of the Halfhaven virtual blogging camp)

Oh, you read Emily Post's Etiquette? What version? There's a significant difference between versions, and that difference reflects the declining literacy of the American intellectual.

I looked into this because I noticed books published before the ’70s or ‘80s seemed to be written with an assumption of the reader's competence that is no longer present in many modern texts.

Take Emily Post's Etiquette. The force of her intellect and personality came through in the 1922 original:

When gentlemen are introduced to each other they always shake hands. When a gentleman is introduced to a lady, she sometimes puts out her hand— especially if he is some one she has long heard about from friends in common, but to an entire stranger she generally merely bows her head slightly and says: “How do you do!” Strictly speaking, it is always her place to offer her hand or not as she chooses, but if he puts out his hand, it is rude on her part to ignore it. Nothing could be more ill-bred than to treat curtly any overture made in spontaneous friendliness. No thoroughbred lady would [...]

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

November 23rd, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Nr4Mca2WGhv4jyvfh/literacy-is-decreasing-among-the-intellectual-class

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Insulin resistance is bad. It doesn't just cause heart disease. Peter Attia, author of Outlive, the Science and Art of Longevity, makes a convincing[1] case that insulin resistance increases the risk of cancer and Alzheimer's disease, too. Causally-speaking, the number of deaths downstream of insulin resistance is ginormous and massively underestimated.

This implies one of the following must be true:

• The science is wrong. Insulin isn't ruining our health.
• Insulin resistance is an extremely difficult problem to solve.
• Civilization is FUBAR.

We know that civilization is FUBAR along many dimensions. Soviet agricultural policy was FUBAR. Maoist agricultural policy was FUBAR. American urban planning is FUBAR. Public education is FUBAR. Dualistic consciousness is FUBAR. I have heard that the Windows Operating System contains advertisements. It is entirely believable that the American metabolism is FUBAR too.

Visiting Japan made this fact impossible for me to ignore. By Japanese standards, Americans are fat. But that under-estimates the scope of the problem, because you can have an unhealthy metabolism without being visibly obese. But when everybody is unhealthy, how do you define "unhealthy"? The obvious reference class to use is hunter-gatherers. I'm not talking about our paleolithic ancestors. There's real-live hunter-gatherers living [...]

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Outline:

(03:43) Nationalism

(12:31) Peasant Diets

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

November 23rd, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2o344KFEuuJHBzpDJ/traditional-food

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

What blocks people from being vulnerable with others?

Much ink has been spilled on two classes of answers to this question:

1. Not everyone is in fact safe to be vulnerable around. Not even well-intentioned people are always safe to be vulnerable around; being-safe-to-be-vulnerable-around is a skill which not everyone is automatically good at.
2. Many people have been vulnerable in the past, got burned for it, and so developed emotional blocks against vulnerability. “Trauma”.

There are a lot of people for whom these answers provide the right frame for their problems. This post is not for those people.

I want to focus on a different frame: there are importantly different kinds of things which people are hesitant to expose to others. Some of those things just require finding the right person and being vulnerable with them; these are the “easy cases”, in this frame. But other things pose fundamental difficulties, even when everybody involved has the safe-to-be-vulnerable-around skillset and isn’t particularly traumatized.

Let's start with an easy example: sex stuff. Fetishes, sluttiness, that sort of thing. Revealing one's sexual tastes involves being emotionally vulnerable. Moreso the more taboo one's tastes are, with pedophilia on one end of the spectrum [...]

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First published:

November 23rd, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fKoZmewSEwpfHj5Rg/easy-vs-hard-emotional-vulnerability

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Author: 清风学渣
Link: https://www.zhihu.com/question/10967114707/answer/1904046054904665233
Source: Zhihu
Copyright belongs to the author. For commercial reprints, please contact the author for authorization. For non-commercial reprints, please indicate the source.

I’ve seen a lot of discussions about Liang Wenfeng online. Yesterday, I happened to be on the phone with a close friend from my university year, and we talked about him too. So here, I’ll shamelessly piggyback[1] on the fame of my old university classmate, Liang Wenfeng. Some netizens wanted to know what Liang Wenfeng was like during his undergraduate years before he got into investment and the AI industry, so this answer is to satisfy a little bit of that curiosity. I hope these “revelations”[2] won’t affect Mr. Liang's privacy. If they do, please remind me, and the author[3] will modify or delete the post.

The author and Liang Wenfeng were both in the Electronic & Information Engineering program, Class of ‘02, at Zhejiang University.[4] We weren’t in the same class but participated in the same Electronics Design Contest. Although we had some contact during our four years as classmates, we weren’t in the same dorm or class, so my impressions of him are limited and fragmented.

Impression 1: In our [...]

The original text contained 19 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

November 23rd, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nyuGJDwL83ggGeoYu/what-kind-of-person-is-deepseek-s-founder-liang-wenfeng-an

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.