Defense & Security Desk
Daily defense and security brief: situation room, procurement watch, theater analysis, strategic forces monitor, homefront security.
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Strait of Hormuz transits collapsed 52.4% in the week of July 20–27 as Trump considers new strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure within days; a tanker was struck near Oman on July 31. Simultaneously, the Navy locked a $76 billion, 14-submarine contract and the Pentagon awarded a $500 million counter-drone deal — signaling simultaneous escalation and wartime industrial acceleration.
Bias-reviewed: LOW Independently rated by Kimi for political-lean, source-diversity, and framing bias before publish. Final orchestration and the published call are made by Claude, a U.S. model.
Today’s Snapshot
Iran escalation, Kyiv strikes, $76B sub contract dominate Aug 1 picture
The Strait of Hormuz saw transits drop 52.4% in a single week as the US-Iran conflict enters a potential new phase, with Axios reporting Trump is considering strikes on Iranian energy targets within days and a tanker hit near Oman on July 31. Russia simultaneously struck Kyiv overnight with ballistic missiles, killing at least nine and injuring more than twenty. On the procurement front, the Navy awarded a $76 billion contract to Huntington Ingalls and General Dynamics Electric Boat for 14 Virginia- and Columbia-class submarines, while the Pentagon's counter-drone task force inked a $500 million contract for the CACI SkyValor 'detect and defeat' system. Chinese military researchers' exploitation of US AI models — including those from OpenAI and Anthropic — for defense applications added a fifth major thread to an unusually dense operational day.
Synthesis
Points of Agreement
Situation Room and Theater Analysis agree that the Strait of Hormuz near-closure (52.4% transit decline, Lloyd's List) is the single most operationally consequential data point of the week, though they disagree on framing: Situation Room reports it as a logistics fact; Theater Analysis embeds it in a four-sub-theater cascade. Strategic Forces Monitor and Theater Analysis agree that the Russia-DPRK missile integration in the Kyiv strike (if confirmed) represents a new operational baseline in the Eastern European theater. Procurement Watch and Kill Chain agree that the $500M SkyValor contract is directionally correct but that border-test performance does not guarantee contested-environment performance. Apogee Watch and Kill Chain agree that the algorithmic and orbital layers are being stressed simultaneously and that the Space Force training deficit is a cross-domain readiness problem.
Points of Disagreement
Theater Analysis and Situation Room are in productive tension on the Iran framing: Situation Room separates reported intent (Trump considering strikes) from verified action; Theater Analysis argues the aggregation of simultaneous pressure events — Hormuz, Bab al-Mandab, Iraqi Kurdistan drawdown, Scarborough Shoal PLA exercises — is itself the signal, and that a bilateral frame systematically understates what is happening. Procurement Watch is structurally skeptical of the $76B submarine contract's schedule given HII and Electric Boat's capacity constraints; Strategic Forces Monitor prioritizes the deterrence value of the Dreadnought and Columbia programs and treats industrial strain as a problem to be managed, not a reason to discount the programs. Kill Chain rates the Chinese AI exploitation story as the week's most strategically significant development; Situation Room and Theater Analysis treat it as significant but secondary to live kinetic events. Homefront Security is more alarmed about the Iran-cyber domestic nexus than the other voices, who are focused on the kinetic theater.
Pivotal Question
What would move Theater Analysis toward Situation Room's more cautious bilateral frame, or move Situation Room toward Theater Analysis's cascade model? The answer is: confirmed Iranian attribution of the Oman tanker strike and a second Houthi attack on Saudi shipping in the same week. That combination would validate the multi-sub-theater cascade hypothesis and require moving from 'fact-and-inference separated' to 'coordinated campaign' in the operational assessment.
Bias Flags
- Theater Analysis: Regional-first lens may underweight the direct US-Iran bilateral dynamic that is driving the Hormuz closure; PLA exercise timing may be coincidental (99th anniversary) rather than opportunistic exploitation of US attentional bandwidth.
- Procurement Watch: Structural skepticism of contractor timelines may underweight genuine multi-hull contract efficiencies in the Virginia-class block buy, which has a better cost and schedule track record than Columbia-class.
- Strategic Forces Monitor: Arms-control institutional lens may over-index the Russia-Belarus nuclear exercise as a deterrence signal when it may be routine annual signaling rather than posture change; weaker on the multi-polar deterrence puzzle involving DPRK missile transfers.
- Kill Chain: Autonomy-first lens rates the Chinese AI exploitation story as the most significant development; reasonable analysts who weight live kinetic events more heavily will disagree.
- Homefront Security: Domestic-threat lens may inflate the Iran-cyber-OT risk without a confirmed new intrusion event; the Citizen Lab concern about Canada's UN Cybercrime Convention signing may overweight law-enforcement equities relative to the treaty's stated law-enforcement benefits.
- Apogee Watch: Space-centric framing may over-attribute the PLA Huangyan Dao exercise's dependence on orbital ISR without evidence of specific space-based targeting support; the $981M training pool is a readiness investment, not evidence of current operational failure.
Routing
Voices seated: Situation Room, Theater Analysis, Strategic Forces Monitor, Procurement Watch, Kill Chain, Homefront Security, Apogee Watch
Today's corpus spans active combat (Iran-US conflict, Kyiv strikes), multi-theater naval movements, two major procurement actions ($76B submarine contract, $500M counter-drone), Chinese AI exploitation of US models for defense systems, and Space Force training capability gaps — a true all-hands day requiring all seven voices. The Iran escalation thread alone crosses Situation Room, Theater Analysis, Strategic Forces Monitor, and Homefront Security.
Analyst Voices
Situation Room Gen. Claire Hawkins, Ret. & Col. David Park, Ret.
Two theaters are simultaneously hot as of August 1. In the Middle East, Hormuz transit numbers are the most operationally significant data point of the week: Lloyd's List Intelligence records a 52.4% decline in transits between July 20 and July 27 compared to the prior week, with single-digit daily crossings and only two transits on July 23 and again on Saturday. That is a near-closure event, not a disruption. When the world's most critical oil chokepoint approaches single-digit daily transits, every downstream logistics calculation in the Indo-Pacific and Europe changes. Separately, a tanker was struck by a projectile of unknown origin approximately 11 nautical miles northeast of Lima, Oman, at the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz — engine room damage reported, no casualties confirmed. Attribution is not yet established; that distinction matters before drawing operational conclusions.
In Eastern Europe, Russia executed a large-scale ballistic missile and drone attack on Kyiv overnight July 31 into August 1. Ukrainian reporting citing officials places the toll at nine killed and more than twenty injured across five districts, with fires and infrastructure damage confirmed. Preliminary Ukrainian government statements indicated at least one North Korean ballistic missile may have been employed — that is a stated inference from Kyiv, not independently verified. Meanwhile, USS Truxtun (DDG 103) returned to Naval Station Norfolk July 31 after nearly six months across the 4th, 5th, and 6th Fleet areas of operations — a deployment profile that itself maps the geographic arc of active US engagement from the Western Hemisphere through the Gulf and into the Mediterranean. USS Minnesota, the Navy's first forward-deployed Virginia-class submarine, returned to Naval Base Guam on July 29 completing its first deployment. These are facts. Axios also reports Trump is considering strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure within days but has not issued final orders — that is a reported intent, not a verified action.
Key point: Hormuz is approaching a near-closure event at 52.4% transit decline; two separate theaters are simultaneously at elevated combat tempo.
Theater Analysis Dr. Farid Hassan
Washington is framing the Iran conflict as a bilateral US-Iran confrontation aimed at coercing Tehran toward ceasefire terms. Tehran's military adviser to the Supreme Leader is simultaneously declaring the US 'has no role' in the Strait of Hormuz — a sovereignty assertion, not a de-escalation signal. The regional picture is substantially more complex than either framing: Houthi forces in Yemen are now threatening Saudi tankers through the Bab al-Mandab, a second chokepoint. The US is reported to be drawing down its last forces near Erbil airport in Iraqi Kurdistan under pressure from Iranian-backed proxies. That is not a bilateral confrontation — that is a cascading pressure campaign across at least four sub-theaters simultaneously: the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab al-Mandab, Iranian energy infrastructure, and the Kurdish Region of Iraq.
The Gaza thread introduces a fifth vector. Trump announced Hamas has agreed to a 15-point Board of Peace roadmap for 'complete disarmament,' but Long War Journal's tracking of the same period notes 32 ceasefire violations by the IDF between July 10 and July 31, and the sequencing of disarmament versus Israeli withdrawal remains disputed. Hamas acceptance of a roadmap and Hamas compliance with a roadmap are different operational realities. Meanwhile, the PLA conducted a joint naval-air exercise at Huangyan Dao — Scarborough Shoal — on August 1, timed precisely to the PLA's 99th founding anniversary. The timing is political theater, but the exercise location is not random: Scarborough Shoal is the forward pressure point in the South China Sea, and conducting live exercises there while US attention is consumed in the Gulf is not coincidental. I note that my colleague Gen. Hawkins is right to separate what moved from what it means — but the aggregation of these simultaneous pressure events is itself a strategic signal that Washington risks missing if it focuses on the bilateral Iran frame.
Key point: The Iran conflict is not bilateral — it has activated at least four regional sub-theaters simultaneously while PLA exercises at Scarborough Shoal exploit US attentional bandwidth.
Strategic Forces Monitor Dr. Nina Orlova
Two nuclear-adjacent developments demand careful parsing today. First, Russia's overnight strike on Kyiv included what Ukrainian President Zelensky described as preliminary evidence of a North Korean ballistic missile. If confirmed, this represents continued and deepening operational integration of DPRK munitions into Russia's strategic strike campaign against Ukrainian population centers — a pattern with implications beyond the bilateral Russia-Ukraine conflict, specifically for the nonproliferation architecture and US-ROK deterrence posture. The independent model flags this claim as Developing; appropriate caution is warranted. Second, FPRI has published analysis of a Russia-Belarus joint non-strategic nuclear exercise conducted in mid-May, involving simulated delivery of nuclear weapons to field units. This exercise pattern — Lukashenka's Belarus hosting forward-deployed Russian tactical nuclear assets announced last year — is the operational manifestation of a deterrence-by-demonstration strategy Putin has now rehearsed multiple times.
On the UK side, BAE Systems received a £5.9 billion contract to progress Dreadnought-class nuclear deterrent submarines toward service entry. This is not peripheral: AUKUS depends on UK SSN industrial health, and the Dreadnought program's schedule directly affects how much yard capacity BAE Barrow can dedicate to the AUKUS SSN pathway. The Bank of England held rates but its governor signaled potential rate increases above 3.75% if Iran War energy disruptions persist — that is a central bank explicitly pricing geopolitical risk into monetary policy, which is a leading indicator of how long Western governments believe the Hormuz disruption will last. Dr. Hassan's regional cascade analysis is well-taken; I would add that the specific combination of Hormuz compression, tactical nuclear signaling in Eastern Europe, and DPRK missile integration into a live conflict represents the most complex simultaneous deterrence environment since the Cold War's final decade.
Key point: The Russia-Belarus non-strategic nuclear exercise and potential DPRK missile use in Kyiv represent simultaneous deterrence stress events; the Dreadnought contract's schedule affects AUKUS SSN capacity.
Procurement Watch Margaret Avery
Two contracts anchored today's acquisition picture, and they sit at opposite ends of the confidence spectrum. The $76 billion award to Huntington Ingalls Industries and General Dynamics Electric Boat for 14 Virginia- and Columbia-class submarines is the largest defense contract of the current operational cycle. It is also carrying the weight of two programs with divergent track records: Virginia-class boats have generally performed to schedule, but the Columbia-class is the program where slippage is a structural risk — the first-of-class delivery timeline has already absorbed delays, and HII's Newport News yard is capacity-constrained precisely when AUKUS SSN obligations are coming into view. USS Minnesota's return to Guam completing its first deployment is a capability fact the Navy will correctly promote. But 14 hulls under a single block contract, when the industrial base is already strained, is a schedule ambition that history suggests discounting by at least one procurement cycle.
The $500 million CACI SkyValor counter-drone 'detect and defeat' contract from the Pentagon's counter-drone task force is the second anchor item. The system was validated through border testing and will deploy to 'critical but unspecified sites' under the Domestic Shield initiative. That unspecified language is standard for sensitive infrastructure protection, but from a program-of-record perspective, the critical watch item is whether SkyValor's border test performance translates to contested electromagnetic environments — border operations and defended high-value sites are not the same threat context. I would also flag HII's sea drone business: the CEO acknowledged the Lionfish underwater drone production contract extension is real but revenue remains 'modest.' The defense industrial base is simultaneously being asked to build nuclear submarines, accelerate autonomous maritime systems, and stand up counter-drone infrastructure — three different supply chains, three different workforce profiles, all under one budget cycle. Defense and Aerospace sector 10-K filings show average Item 1A Risk Factor novelty of 54.5% across five leaders, with RTX at 65.1% and Lockheed at 61.7% — the highest rewriting in the sector cohort, which correlates with supply-chain and program-risk disclosures being substantially updated. That is a corporate signal that the industrial base itself is re-pricing risk.
Key point: The $76B submarine contract tests an already capacity-constrained industrial base simultaneously managing Columbia-class delays and AUKUS obligations; RTX and LMT's high 10-K risk-factor novelty (65.1% and 61.7%) signals the primes are re-pricing supply-chain exposure.
Kill Chain Maj. Dale Okonkwo, Ret.
Two stories today belong directly to the decision-speed layer, and they point in opposite directions. The CACI SkyValor contract is the right acquisition instinct — $500 million for a 'detect and defeat' counter-drone system that was border-tested before the contract was inked is exactly the kind of iterative, operationally-grounded procurement the Pentagon needs more of. The question is never whether the system can detect; it is whether the sense-to-shoot loop closes faster than the adversary's re-tasking cycle. Border testing against slow commercial drones is not the same as contesting a coordinated swarm with electronic countermeasures. The Domestic Shield deployment context matters: if these are high-value fixed sites, the engagement geometry is predictable and the system will perform. If the mission envelope expands to contested forward environments, the SkyValor's performance envelope needs a harder re-test.
The Chinese military researchers exploiting US AI models — specifically OpenAI and Anthropic products — to train defense systems is the more strategically significant story, and it is moving faster than the acquisition calendar can track. The kill chain advantage the United States has invested decades building is predicated on superior sensor fusion, faster targeting algorithms, and better human-machine teaming. If Chinese defense researchers are using frontier US commercial AI as a training substrate — essentially bootstrapping PLA algorithmic targeting development on American intellectual capital — the sense-to-shoot loop compression advantage narrows without a single adversary platform being built. Margaret Avery is right that the industrial base is being stretched across submarines, autonomous maritime systems, and counter-drone simultaneously. I would add a fourth strain: the algorithmic layer, where the adversary is closing the gap not through hardware procurement but through exploiting the open commercial AI ecosystem. The A-10's final flights at Davis-Monthan are symbolically significant — fifty years of close air support doctrine retiring — but the more operationally relevant transition is the one happening in code, not airframe.
Key point: Chinese exploitation of US commercial AI models for defense training compresses PLA algorithmic kill-chain development without requiring indigenous model investment — a structural advantage erosion that no submarine contract addresses.
Homefront Security Special Agent Marcus Webb, Ret.
The Iran-linked water infrastructure hacks are the domestic threat translation of today's foreign operational picture that most analysts will underweight. A cyber industry coalition has called on CISA to impose baseline security standards on federal operational technology systems and pressed Congress to revive stalled cyber initiatives, specifically citing suspected Iranian-linked intrusions on water systems. This is not a theoretical threat. Water treatment OT systems are among the most exposed critical infrastructure in the United States, and Iranian cyber actors have demonstrated both the intent and the technical capability to target them — the 2021 Oldsmar, Florida incident established the template. With the US actively striking Iranian targets and Hormuz transit approaching closure, Iranian cyber operations against US critical infrastructure are the logical asymmetric retaliation vector when kinetic options in theater are constrained.
The SkyValor Domestic Shield deployment is directly relevant here: the counter-drone task force is explicitly positioning these detect-and-defeat capabilities at domestic critical sites, and border testing provides an operational baseline. However, the cyber coalition's demand for CISA baseline OT standards remains unfunded and legislatively stalled — the congressional action block shows no counter-OT-cyber bill surfacing in the top five national-security-axis bills this week. The most-viewed bills on Congress.gov this week include H.R. 8800 (NDAA FY2027) and H.R. 1229 (United States-Israel Defense Partnership Act of 2025), but no specific cyber infrastructure protection measure is driving legislative momentum. Canada's unexpected signing of the UN Cybercrime Convention also warrants a watch — Citizen Lab's senior research associate Kate Robertson argues it functions as a cross-border surveillance and electronic evidence-sharing agreement with significant adverse implications, including potential data-sharing with authoritarian signatories. That is a Five Eyes adjacency issue.
Key point: Iranian cyber actors targeting US water infrastructure OT systems are the asymmetric domestic retaliation vector most consistent with current US-Iran escalation, and CISA baseline standards remain legislatively stalled.
Apogee Watch Col. Priya Ramanathan, Ret.
The Space Force's $981 million training capability pool is an institutional admission that the orbital warfighting domain is outrunning the training infrastructure needed to operate in it. Gen. Greg Gagnon, head of Space Force Combat Forces Command, stated explicitly that key mission areas face a 'serious lack of simulators.' This is a readiness gap in the domain that GPS, strategic communications, missile warning, and targeting all run through. You cannot train Guardians to operate in a contested space environment — jamming, spoofing, ASAT threats — without high-fidelity simulators, and the fact that a $981 million pool is being stood up to address this in 2026 means the training deficit has been accumulating for years. This should concern every other voice at this table, because the capabilities they are discussing — submarine communications, drone sense-to-shoot loops, nuclear early warning — all touch the orbital layer.
The SpainSat NG III announcement from Hisdesat, Airbus Defence and Space, and Thales Alenia Space completes a three-satellite Spanish military communications constellation providing coverage to NATO allies and government agencies. This is the correct model for allied redundancy in the strategic communications layer: distributed, nationally-owned, interoperable. On the contested-use side, the Hormuz near-closure and the Kyiv strikes both depend on space-based ISR for targeting and battle-damage assessment — on both sides of both conflicts. The PLA's Huangyan Dao exercise on August 1 will have been planned, sequenced, and likely rehearsed using PLA space-based surveillance of US naval movements. The orbital terrain is not background to today's stories; it is the decision layer through which all of them run. Maj. Okonkwo is correct that the algorithmic kill-chain is closing — but the sensor inputs that feed those algorithms come from satellites, and the Space Force training gap means the Guardians responsible for defending those sensors are working without adequate simulator time.
Key point: Space Force's $981M training gap acknowledgment is a readiness warning for every domain that depends on the orbital layer — GPS, targeting, missile warning, and strategic communications are all downstream of a training deficit the service is only now resourcing.
Simulated Opinion
If you had to form a single opinion having heard the roundtable, weighted for known biases, it would be: the Strait of Hormuz near-closure — 52.4% transit decline in a single week with daily crossings in single digits — is the week's most consequential operational fact, and Trump's reported consideration of strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure within days makes this the highest near-term escalation risk since the conflict began in February 2026. The $76 billion submarine contract and $500 million SkyValor award are real industrial-base signals that the US is simultaneously fighting and rearming, but Procurement Watch's skepticism about schedule is warranted given Columbia-class delays and HII yard constraints. The Chinese military exploitation of US commercial AI models deserves more sustained policy attention than it is receiving: it is a slow-moving structural erosion of algorithmic advantage that no single contract addresses. And the Space Force's $981 million training gap is a cross-domain readiness problem that every other domain — navigation, targeting, early warning — quietly depends on solving. The honest uncertainty is whether the Houthi threat to Saudi shipping and the PLA exercises at Scarborough Shoal are coordinated opportunism exploiting US attentional bandwidth, or coincidental noise around a genuine bilateral US-Iran confrontation; the data currently support both readings.
Independent Cross-Check — Kimi
Consensus 9 Contested 1
USS Minnesota completes first deployment Consensus
Chinese military researchers tap US AI models to train defense systems Consensus
Poll finds one in three Americans back Iran war Consensus
Pentagon’s counter-drone task force inks $500M contract for SkyValor system Consensus
Nine killed and 23 injured in overnight missile attack on Kyiv Consensus
A-10’s take final flight at Davis-Monthan AFB Consensus
US Navy to Pay $76 Billion for 14 New Submarines Consensus
US F-35 fighter jet crashes near California military base Consensus
Russia hits Kyiv with deadly missile strikes Consensus
Evidence Indicates U.S. Dropped Bomb on Residential Area in Iran Contested
Watch Next
- Attribution of the Oman tanker strike (July 31): UKMTO has reported the hit; confirmed Iranian or Houthi attribution would validate the multi-sub-theater cascade model and likely trigger US escalation
- Trump final decision on Iranian energy infrastructure strikes: Axios reports consideration within days; watch for carrier strike group repositioning or ISR surge in the Gulf as a leading indicator
- Kyiv North Korean ballistic missile confirmation: Zelensky's preliminary assessment needs independent verification; confirmed DPRK missile use in Ukraine would trigger immediate US-ROK deterrence consultations
- Space Force $981M training pool contract awards: watch for which prime captures the simulator contracts — this is the tell for how seriously the service is treating domain readiness
- Congressional action on CISA OT baseline cyber standards: the industry coalition's call is on record; watch for any committee markup or emergency hearing tied to Iran-linked water infrastructure intrusions
- PLA follow-on activity after Huangyan Dao exercise: first exercises are often followed by second-wave demonstrations; monitor South China Sea ISR for additional PLA naval-air movements in the 48-72 hour window
Historical Power Lenses
Machiavelli 1469-1527
Machiavelli observed in the Discourses that a prince who does not finish a war creates enemies on both sides: the adversary who was not destroyed, and the allies who expected protection. The US-Iran conflict — now oscillating between strikes, ceasefire, and renewed consideration of energy-infrastructure targeting — maps precisely onto this trap. Trump's reported consideration of new strikes is framed as coercive pressure for ceasefire terms; but 52.4% Hormuz transit decline and a tanker struck near Oman suggest Iran is absorbing costs while waiting for US domestic support to erode. The Reuters/Ipsos poll finding that 69% of Americans believe Trump has not clearly explained US war goals is the political vulnerability Machiavelli would have identified first: a prince fighting a war whose ends are opaque to his own citizens is fighting on borrowed political time. Machiavelli would have noted that the Houthis threatening Saudi shipping, Iranian proxies attacking US bases in Kurdistan, and the PLA exercising at Scarborough Shoal are all actors taking Florentine-style advantage of an adversary perceived to be strategically uncertain.
Cleopatra VII 69-30 BC
Cleopatra's strategic genius was the recognition that a smaller power's survival depends on making itself indispensable to competing great powers — and that chokepoint control is the most durable form of that leverage. Iran's near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz is the contemporary version of Cleopatra's control of Egypt's grain supply: the threat of withholding is often more powerful than the withholding itself, because every actor downstream — European importers, Asian refiners, the Bank of England's rate-setters — must price the risk before the closure becomes total. Cleopatra also understood that the appearance of agreement could buy time when the correlation of forces was unfavorable; Hamas's reported acceptance of the Board of Peace disarmament roadmap while 32 ceasefire violations were recorded in the same period suggests a similar strategic patience — the roadmap as diplomatic oxygen while the military posture remains intact.
Napoleon Bonaparte 1799-1815
Napoleon's central operational insight was that the army that can mass forces and close with the enemy faster than the adversary can respond wins before the adversary can adapt. The $76 billion submarine contract and the $500 million SkyValor counter-drone award, taken together, reflect an American attempt at Napoleonic industrial mobilization: mass production of undersea striking power and domestic counter-UAS capability simultaneously. Napoleon's failure in Spain and Russia, however, stemmed from the same overextension the US faces today: simultaneous commitments in the Gulf, Eastern Europe, and the Indo-Pacific that fragment rather than concentrate decisive advantage. The A-10's final flights at Davis-Monthan are Napoleon's cuirassiers being retired — not because they were ineffective, but because the tempo and geometry of the next war have already moved past them.
Catherine the Great 1762-1796
Catherine modernized Russia's military and diplomatic apparatus by selectively importing foreign expertise while maintaining firm central control over which foreign ideas were adopted and which were quarantined. The Chinese military researchers using US commercial AI models to train PLA defense systems is the mirror image of Catherine's strategy: Beijing is importing American intellectual capital through the open commercial AI ecosystem — OpenAI, Anthropic — rather than through formal technology transfer. Catherine's lesson is relevant to the US response: she understood that the pace of foreign adoption must be managed through institutional controls, not just prohibition. The corpus suggests the US has not yet closed this channel effectively, and the longer it remains open, the more the algorithmic kill-chain advantage erodes — exactly the dynamic Catherine would have recognized as an adversary systematically using your own modernization tools against you.