Views Expressed Podcast

This post is a little different. First, this week marks my one-year anniversary on Substack. This is, in fact, weekly post number 52! Second, my book came out this week! Humanity by Proxy: Essays at The Intersection of Philosophy and AI is a collection of essays drawn from this very Substack newsletter. The paperback, hard cover, and eBook are all available now. The audiobook should be out in a couple of weeks.This week, I thought I would tell you about the how the book came to be and then make an announcement about the future of Views Expressed... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

At a budget hotel in Lexington, Massachusetts, my team of Air Force reserve officers and government civilians working on AI policy gathered around the bar. We had just finished our annual Department of the Air Force Data and AI Conference and everyone wanted to blow off a little steam. I had prearranged dinner plans with some good friends in Newton and told the team I’d catch up with them later. By the time I got back, they were quite a few drinks ahead of me.Then two things happened. ... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

Network Rail chose to delay several freight and passenger trains in Lancashire, England recently because of damage to a rail bridge. Following minor tremors, someone posted a photo showing severe damage to the bridge. Based on that photo, rail authorities acted from caution and halted the trains—as any reasonable person might do.Here’s the thing, though: There was no damage to the bridge. The image that circulated was AI-generated.Kant had a pretty bold claim about the universe we call home. Kant argued that there are real things—things as they are. These, he called “noumena.” Then there are our perceptions of things. These aren’t things as they really are, but only as we perceive them. These, he called “phenomena.” ... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

A brief note before I begin: as you may have noticed, I took two weeks off from publishing here. I appreciate your patience. When I decided last January to publish these newsletters every Thursday, I didn’t anticipate that Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years would all fall on Thursdays. My two weeks off were enjoyable, but, like Frank Costanza, “I’m back, baby!”There’s a story—probably an apocryphal one—about how Walt Disney decided where to put trash cans at Disney World. He bought a hot dog and then walked while he ate. He counted his steps and stopped when he had finished his hot dog. That’s how far apart the garbage cans should be. The moment you find you have trash in your hand—through the magic of Disney—a trash bin should appear before you.The story probably isn’t true, but it does point to Walt’s obsession with cleanliness. Rubbish, Walt believed, should never be visible to the park’s visitors. But placing a bin here or there isn’t enough to drive cleanliness amidst a culture of litter. Even when it comes to refuse, I suppose, culture eats strategy for breakfast... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

Many years ago, we stood up a new M-1B Predator squadron—the 20th Reconnaissance Squadron. The last time the squadron had been activated was during the Vietnam War, when US Air Force pilots flew O-1s, O-2s, and the mighty OV-10 Bronco in the 20th Tactical Air Support Squadron. For the squadron stand-up event, we tracked down as many veterans of the original Vietnam-era squadron as we could. Thirteen such members descended upon Whiteman Air Force Base to celebrate with us. For us, it was the re-activation of an old squadron. For them, it was a reunion. We affectionately called that baker’s dozen “the old guys.” My commander told us in no uncertain terms that part of our job that weekend was to listen to the old guys’ stories; and so, we did.On Saturday, late into the night at a visiting officers’ quarters room our guests called “the old guy hooch,” we listened to their war stories. Most our guests—and indeed most members of our squadron—had long since gone home. Five of them and two of us remained. Long after the sun had set, as the solo cups were emptied and refilled, and as voices lowered, the tenor of the conversation changed. No doubt, the day’s talk of throttle settings and aerial tactics drew the old guys into a headspace they hadn’t often occupied. Memories turned to their aircraft and their war.As forward air controllers - airborne, they didn’t carry heavy bombs or missiles. Instead, they carried white smoke rockets. Flying aircraft with longer loiter times at slower speeds, the pilots of the 20th identified targets and marked them with smoke and then directed the heavier aircraft—often F-105 Thunderchiefs (or “Thuds”)—onto those targets.To a person, each one of those five who remained that night had a story about a target mark and a weapons employment that still raises questions deep in their memories and in their consciences. One veteran in particular, John, told the story of a man in local attire riding his bicycle toward the friendly forward operating base (FOB). He said he didn’t have any reason to suspect the bicyclist of being a member of the Viet Cong, but the rules of engagement were clear: if a person got within a certain range of the FOB and continued toward the FOB, he was to be identified as hostile. John marked the target and the Thuds did the rest.Moral injury, as a field of study, is relatively young. But as a phenomenon, it is as old as war. ... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

You probably don’t remember 110 film. It doesn’t come in a cylindrical can like 35mm film. It comes preloaded on a roll that looks a little like an old phone receiver—two small, black cylinders connected by a long piece of hollow plastic.Back in the era of film cameras—110 or otherwise—every shot had to count. I had, I think, 24 photos on my roll of 110 film, a long, skinny container of film placed into the back of a long, skinny camera. Our family took a trip to Washington, DC. It’s the first time I can remember thinking, “I want to capture this moment on film.” We saw the sights. I’m sure I took pictures of my brother and sisters, the Washington Monument, and statues of dead presidents. But on the long road trip home, I had only one picture left. I needed to use it up so I could get the roll developed, but I also needed to make it count... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

I got bit by the publishing bug in 2013. I was applying to graduate schools and I didn’t have a writing sample from my undergraduate days that I was happy with. So, I decided to write a new paper. With the help of a philosopher from the US Air Force Academy (Dr. Leonard Kahan, in whose debt I remain), I wrote an academic paper on the ethics of remotely piloted aircraft. As a matter of procedure, I had to share the paper with my commander before sharing it more widely. Not only did he like the paper, but he also thought I should try to publish it. He happened to know the editor of the Spanish language edition of our professional journal, The Air and Space Power Journal, so, that’s where I sent it. It was published in 2013.That was a profound moment for me. I realized for the first time that I, a fairly junior officer (a young captain at that time) might be able to shape the way people—maybe even senior people in my own organization—think about the world. I was hooked.Views Expressed is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.That article-as-writing-sample (among other things) was enough to earn my matriculation into Boston College’s MA program in philosophy. There, my interests ranged widely. But one point of consistency was that every time a class required me to write a long (6-10k word) final paper, I decided I’d try to get that paper published. I was successful only a few times; but those few successes resulted in a published paper on Soren Kierkegaard, one on C. S. Lewis, and one on virtue ethics called, “The Martial Virtues: A Role Morality for Soldiers?”I published the Martial Virtues paper in a journal called Social Theory and Practice. At that time, it was the most competitive outlet in which I had published and I was, frankly, very proud to have written something worthy of that journal. As a philosophical writer, I’ve come a long way since then and that 2018 article leaves me a little embarrassed now. At the time, though, it was easily the best thing I had ever written and I remain convinced that that publication had an impact my admission to Oxford’s PhD program.I don’t expect you to care about any of these details except for this one: Social Theory and Practice, for better or worse, keeps a running tally of how many times each article has been downloaded. Today, in 2025, seven years since publication, my article, “The Martial Virtues: A Role Morality for Soldiers,” has been downloaded (wait for it)Eighteen times.Think about that for a moment. The best thing I had ever written, published in a high-end philosophy journal, has been enough to motivate 18 people to download and (maye even to) read it.Earlier this year, I created Views Expressed. It’s reach is limited and its growth glacial. But every week, 100-150 people open up an email from me to read what I have to say about philosophy and AI. As a friend put it to me recently, 120 people is just about Dunbar’s number. That’s a person’s entire social circle. Each week I reach nearly ten times the number of people who have downloaded that scholarly paper. I might even get to impact the way some of those people think about philosophy and AI; and what a great privilege that is. In addition to the weekly reports of people reading my work, there are, of course, also the “in real life” conversations in which many of you have reach out to tell me that something that I said informed you of something, or resonated with you, or meant something to you. For those interactions, I am especially grateful.This Thanksgiving, my family will gather around a turkey (cooked on the grill as is the Chapa way) and share what we’re thankful for. I hope you’ll have a similar opportunity. In the meantime, I mean this will all sincerity: I am thankful that you’re a Views Expressed reader.From my family to yours: Happy Thanksgiving.Views Expressed is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

Glen Powell hosted SNL last weekend. It was one of the best episodes I’ve seen in awhile. (Beware, spoilers).In Powell’s opening monologue, he tells the story of the first time he was supposed to host the venerated sketch comedy show. When he received the phone call inviting him to host back then, there happened to be a UPS delivery guy named mitch delivering a package just as the family was on the porch receiving the call. Mitch got wrapped up in the celebration and, no doubt, told his friends and family members that he met Glen Powell and that Powell would be hosting on such-and-such a date.Well, that wasn’t to be. COVID delayed the opening of Top Gun: Maverick and SNL gave Powell’s slot to someone else.When Powell got the word that he would finally be hosting the show for real, the Powell family did what any normal people would have done: They tracked down Mitch the UPS driver and invited him to be in the studio audience.It was a very well done bit.The quality of SNL waxes and wanes with time and I’m sure each fan has his or her favorite cast or favorite era of the show’s fifty year history. But we can probably all agree that SNL can act as a kind of barometer of cultural import. A pop culture reference has to rise above a certain threshold of common knowledge before we can expect to see it on SNL. Why does SNL prioritize impressions of Presidents, Vice Presidents, Presidential Candidates, and Speakers of the House? It’s because so many Americans know who those people are and know the circumstances under which those people appeared in the news that week.So, here’s my thesis: If SNL highlights a topic, that topic is probably already pretty pervasive in our society.In the very first sketch after Powell’s monologue, several cast members create a scene in which four young people introduce their aging grandmother to AI-enabled technology that brings old photos to life. ... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

It’s easy to be vindictive, to be to be selfish. It’s easier to burn bridges than it is to mend them.The quotation that keeps coming to mind is from Julius Campbell in Boaz Yakin’s 2000 classic, Remember The Titans. In response to injustice, and prejudice, and racism, and hate, Campbell insists, “I’m suppose to wear myself out for the team? What team!? No, no. What I’m gonna do is, I’m gonna look out for myself, and I’m gonna get mine.”The film is remarkable, but the line isn’t. The line is normal. It’s ordinary. It’s how each of us is tempted to respond in the face of injustice, or persecution, or unfairness. In fact, it’s how I often want to respond in the face of much lesser adversities: unpleasantness, uncomfortability, or inconvenience.But there are remarkable ways to respond to that familiar feeling of being wronged.I spent the last few weeks watching Brad Ingelsby’s Task on HBO Max... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

I was writing something this week that caused me to look up what movie contains the line, “I’m gonna look out for myself, and I’m gonna get mine.” (Do you know the movie?). I consulted Google search and the Gemini answer helpfully came back with text explaining that the quotation comes from Remember The Titans. Then it gave me the context, the name of the character who said it, and the name of the character he said it to.Then Gemini unhelpfully offered me a link to the relevant clip. I followed the link to find the scene from Seinfeld—I don’t even remember the context—in which Elaine ends up in a feud with George’s father, Frank Costanza. In the clip Gemini fed me, Frank says to Elaine,“You sayin’ you want a piece of me?” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

Note:This excerpt is part of a longer, unpublished project on language and artificial intelligence.“Fine,” my dad said. “Take the medicine if you want. If you don’t want to take it, that’s fine, too!”We three were in the kitchen of our little house in Palo Alto, California. My mom poured the thick amoxicillin suspension into the plastic thimble of a medicine cup. I was not yet two years old and it was my ear infection we gathered in the kitchen to treat. This was not the first dose, so we all knew what we were in for. My dad, a six-foot three Air Force officer and weightlifter held me with one arm and picked up the cup with the other. My mom, she was also in her mid-20s, is a diminutive woman, especially next to my dad. She prepared for what she knew would be a struggle to hold my arms down.I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to hold a child of not-yet-two who doesn’t want to be held. I once held my own son while a doctor and nurse tried—tried—to draw blood from his arm. Kids that age have a spastic, writhing technique that cannot be taught and a core strength that borders on super-human.In one corner were two grown adults. And in the other, a toddler on a mission. As the sun set over the Stanford campus, we were ready to rumble... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

I was at Google’s headquarters (The “Googleplex”) in Mountain View, California last month for the Imagination in Action conference. There is plenty I could write about—a Distinguished Researcher at DeepMind who talked about how we’ll learn to use agents over time; a leader from the non-profit sector saying that she’s done hearing pitches from companies that wrapped a piece of software around an LLM to make it “non-profit-friendly” asking for $10 million; or the tech CEO who, when asked about mentoring said, “if you want to get promoted, do real work.”But I want to focus on a very brief comment—almost a throwaway line—I heard from a leader in Google’s Gemini program. He talked about how he’s using Gemini as an “ambient companion” while doing things like playing video games. Gemini shadows him as he plays. When he gets to a place in the game where he has to perform repetitive tasks, he can say, “Gemini, would you take over here and level-grind for a bit?”Gemini is just sort of there, alongside him, prepared to takeover when he gets bored, or disinterested, or a higher priority task comes up.This line is the kicker. He said, “I can’t tell yet if it’s important or creepy, but I’m playing around with it.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

When I was young, I used to build those plastic model airplanes you can find at hobby stores. When they were finished, instead of putting them on a shelf, my dad helped me to hang them from the ceiling; so, it looked like a dogfight between an A-10 and a P-47 in the corner of my room.One morning, I woke up to the sound of my dad’s voice saying, “Joey, Joey! Get up! There’s an earthquake!”Los Angeles and its San Andreas fault are famous for earthquakes. We lived through several that were 5-plus on the Richter scale.I sat up, rubbing sleep from my eyes and, with all the wisdom of a six-year-old, asked my dad, “how do you know there’s an earthquake?”“Look at your models,” my dad said. I glanced at the ceiling in the corner of the room. Sure enough, what had been a static snapshot of a dogfight had become bouncing and swaying model aircraft—both submitting to the motion of the quake and defying all the principles of flight.I decided that evidence was sufficient and crawled down the ladder from the top bunk to join my dad and my sister under the door frame.From that moment—the moment I, at six years old, asked my dad, “how do you know there’s an earthquake”—I’m sure he knew I was doomed to a life studying philosophy.I attended a philosophy conference—a real philosophy conference—last week... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

I couldn’t sign a PDF. I don’t know why I couldn’t sign it. I could sign other PDFs, just not this one. I finally joined a Teams call with an IT technician. He took control of my computer and checked and rechecked settings. Everything looked like it was set up properly. He couldn’t figure it out either. Ultimately, he told me to have the author of the document rebuild the PDF to see if a new version would work.After we hung up, I received two emails. The first was the auto-generated email to say the tech had closed the trouble ticket.The second email was from the technician. In it, he offered some amplifying information about the Adobe error. The text began with a quotation of the error messages I had received. Beneath that, in a bulleted and sub-bulleted list, were five steps I might consider taking to resolve the issue. I tried them. They didn’t work.I had a hunch about what was happening, but I wasn’t sure yet. I have an officemate who uses generative AI tools more often (and more creatively) than I do. I called him over. “Would you take a look at this text? What do you think?”He looked for about 30 seconds; first studying the substance to try to understand the error. But then he managed to look past the function to see the form and it hit him. “Oh. This is ChatGPT,” he said. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

When I was about 8 years old, my family and a bunch of other families from my church participated in a jog-a-thon. We asked friends and neighbors to support us by pledging a certain number of dollars per lap that would ultimately go to the designated charity. Then, on the big day, we kids would run as many laps as our little legs would carry us. Then, our friends and neighbors were on the hook to donate what they had pledged.The track we ran on was probably a standard quarter-mile, oval track. Like most seven year olds, I hadn’t taken geometry yet. As I started another lap on the large arc that was the end of oval the track, I thought to myself, “why should I bother running around this curved part? It would be much easier just to run straight across the field. That would get me to the end of this curve faster. It would save me some time, it would probably enable me to run more laps, and that would raise more money for the charity.” It was a pretty brilliant plan... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

My Grandpa used to do a magic trick with his dog, Halley. He’d tell gullible audiences (usually us kids) that Halley knew how to count. Then he’d hold out a milkbone and tell Halley, “count to eight.” Halley barked at the milkbone exactly eight times—then my Grandpa would gave the dog the bone. She stopped counting at eight… magic.I enjoyed this trick several (ok, many) times before I realized that the dog would have kept on barking to infinity. It was my Grandpa’s act of giving Halley the bone that got her to stop barking at the right time. In other words, the dog wasn’t counting to eight. My Grandpa was.Large language models are a little like Halley, the dog. ... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

The global AI phenomenon we are all living through began in 2022 when OpenAI launched ChatGPT, a chatbot based on a large language model called GPT-3. Within months, ChatGPT had gained 100 million users, making it the fastest-adopted technology in human history.But why did ChatGPT see such wide adoption so fast? What is it about ChatGPT that resonated so strongly with us human users? ChatGPT wasn’t the first AI tool. It wasn’t the first large language model. It wasn’t even the first chatbot. So, what made ChatGPT so special? … This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

When I was 22 years old, I fell in young love with a girl named Megan. I had packed all of my worldly possessions into the back of my used Toyota Rav4 and stopped in Pennsylvania both to pick Megan up for the epic road trip to my first assignment in Las Vegas and to meet her family.I slept in her little brother’s room. My first morning in that new and unfamiliar place, I woke up to the sound of someone—someone very like Megan—bursting into the room where I slept and jumping into bed with me... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

There’s a line in C. S. Lewis’s space trilogy that sticks with me. In Out of The Silent Planet, the first book in the series, the protagonist, Dr. Ransom, is speaking to the villain, Professor Weston. Weston is a world-renowned physicist who has solved human interplanetary travel. Weston as brought Ransom on the journey against his will. When Ransom awakes in the spaceship, he realize what has happened and asks Weston, “how have you done it?”Weston responds condescendingly,As to how we do it—I suppose you mean how the space-ship works—there’s no good your asking that. Unless you were one of the four or five real physicists now living you couldn’t understand: and if there were any chance of your understanding you certainly wouldn’t be told. If it makes you happy to repeat words that don’t mean anything—which is, in fact, what unscientific people want when they ask for an explanation—you may say we work by exploiting the less observed properties of solar radiation.The line is brilliant in part because it helps to establish Weston’s megalomania, which plays an important role in the story later on. But it also raises a question about how much “unscientific” people can understand scientific things.In my own profession, we tend to impose a distinction between “technical” people and “non-technical” people. I first arrived at the Pentagon just after finishing a PhD in philosophy. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

I pushed the throttles up slightly, increasing power and I banked ever so slightly to the left and then back to the right. This put a little extra lateral space between me and the lead aircraft. As I passed him—another T-38 student pilot named Drew—I gave an exaggerated head nod, throwing my chin all the way down to my chest to make sure Drew could see it from his jet. With that head nod, I had taken the lead. I pulled the throttles back slightly to return to the original power setting and airspeed. I led the other aircraft to the high pattern above the Oklahoma farmland. Then I tapped the palm of my gloved hand—open, so he could see my fingers outspread—up against the canopy glass a few times. The hand motion looked almost as if I was pushing him away. And that’s what I did. As soon as Drew saw my hand tapping the glass, he banked slightly right and fell back, repositioning from the tight fingertip formation we used for the formation takeoff to the more flexible route formation.You see, I had over-sped my aircraft’s flaps on takeoff and there were several procedural steps I needed to take in response to that mistake. And so far, Drew and I had done all of them without saying a word to one another. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

We sat in the orchestra section, row W. My 10-year-old had the seat next to the aisle. I saw The Lion King in Las Vegas decades ago. I don’t remember everything, but I remember the animal costumes being my favorite part. Sitting there up against the aisle, he got to be up close and personal when the dove ladies came by. We could see the kites being twirled from long poles above us in the mezzanine. And he even had a little jump scare when he was eye-to-eye with a life-size rhinoceros—well, two people in a brilliantly designed rhinoceros costume—almost robotic in the way the panels moved.There’s something about a Broadway show that’s just special. I’m no connoisseur, but I have seen The Music Man, half of The Seussical, Rent, and now The Lion King on Broadway. I’ve seen several other musicals in several other places, but Broadway is special. Before the show started, the host asked for a round of applause to celebrate all those in the audience who were experiencing their first Broadway show. My son was among them. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

“Hi Mrs. Banning, I’m from the office,” Ron the assistant shouts over the crowd of cheering parents. “Which one’s your son?” Ron raises the 1990s-era camcorder to his eye and zooms in on Jack Banning in the batter’s box just in time to catch the look of devastation on his face. Jack’s dad, Peter Banning, a workaholic lawyer, couldn’t make it to the game, so he sent an assistant.The scene from Spielberg’s 1991 Hook (Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman) sticks with me. Hook is probably not the best movie any of these exceptional talents have made, but I was a ‘90s kid, and it holds a special place for me (not least because for years after that movie came out, my little brother would replicate Bob Hoskins’ fake pirate accent saying, “Nevaaaaahhhhh”). You see, how we interact with the people we love matters. It’s important. The little league scene in Hook is so poignant–even if a little over-the-top–because it’s so obvious that a dad can’t cheer for his son’s baseball team by proxy.The days of camcorders and videotape may have come and gone, but technology’s promise to enable relationship by proxy has only grown in intensity..." This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

Greetings, Views Expressed readers. We’re having company!I’m doing something a little different this week and I’m very excited about it. Today, Views Expressed is featuring its first guest author! Last year, when I was teaching at the Marine Command and Staff College, I brought in a couple of friends to provide lectures. One of my colleagues said to me afterword, “you’ve got some pretty interesting friends, Joe.” And it’s true! So, I thought, why not feature some of those interesting friends in Views Expressed?Today, I’m thrilled to introduce you to you Dr. Jasmine Mote. Jasmine is a licensed clinical psychologist and Research Assistant Professor at Boston University (my alma mater). In addition to her scholarly work, she also writes a Substack newsletter called Mental Healthy. In addition to visiting her newsletter to catch up on the great pieces she’s published there, if you visit this week, you’ll find a sneak peek at my latest which I’ll publish here next week.Alright, on to Dr. Mote’s brilliant essay. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

Sweaty and young, we sang “What Would You Say” along with Dave Matthews at the top of our lungs in the cheap seats at Boston’s FleetCenter. CJ and I spent probably more than we should have on those tickets. They weren’t great seats, but it didn’t matter. We wanted to experience the band live.About half-way through the show, a very large security guard walked down the long staircase to our row. We didn’t know he was there until he grabbed CJ’s shoulder. “That’s it,” he said. “You guys are outta here.” ... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

I don’t want to write about the Coldplay concert. Everyone involved is, no doubt, now entering a very difficult time relationally, emotionally, and professionally.So, I’m going to write about something else.When I was somewhere between the ages of eight and eleven, my sister, some friends, and I rode our bikes to the Wegmans in Henrietta, New York. This was a big deal because we had to cross a highway to get there... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

First things first: this newsletter is a labor of love and sometimes, producing the text, the audio, and the sketch is a lot to accomplish each week. This week, I almost didn’t get it done. So I did what any normal person would do in 2025, I turned to ChatGPT. I fed the model about a dozen of my sketches and then asked it to produce an image of an aircraft clock in the style of my own charcoal sketches. It did a good job. It did a great job, actually. Well, fortunately for you (and for my integrity as an artist), my flight was delayed, so I did have time to finish my own charcoal sketch of the aircraft clock.But listen, the ChatGPT clock was really good. I’m almost embarassed to share with you my rubbish aircraft clock now that I’ve seen what ChatGPT can do. BUT I made a commitment. One post per week with a sketch to match. So here you have it, my post and my sketch (which is far worse than the ChatGPT sketch).There is a saying among pilots: “Slow down to speed up.” The idea is that when things go bad in an airplane—an emergency light flashes on the illuminator panel, you hit a bird, you lose an engine—there is a real risk that adrenaline will overpower reason and cause the pilot to do utterly stupid things. Instead, the pilot should “slow down to speed up.” Or, as other instructor pilots put it, “slow is smooth and smooth is fast.” Or some instructors tell students to “wind the clock.” (This one is pretty anachronistic because modern airplanes don’t have clocks that require winding anymore. But in the old days, when something went wrong, sometimes, the best way to prevent reacting in a stupid way was to take a moment to wind the clock).Researchers at Model Evaluation and Threat Research (METR) published a paper recently to suggest that, when it comes to using AI in coding, maybe developers should “slow down to speed up." ... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

Pete Holmes has a great bit about how having Google on our phones is ruining our lives. “Having Google on your phone is like having a drunk know-it-all in your pocket.” You can watch the clip here (start at about a minute into the clip).I’ve literally been in bed in the morning alone, just like, “where’s Tom Petty from?”Then he mimes asking Google that question on his phone. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

I watched Blade Runner for the first time last weekend. (The movie came out before I was born, so I feel like I should get a little bit of a pass on not having seen it).The film plays with some of the themes we’ve seen in more recent sci fi, AI, and robot movies. I’m thinking specifically of Ex Machina. If forced to bin both films in the same category, I’d say these are two movies that take seriously the question, what if robots did have emotions?One of the things I appreciated about Blade Runner is that there are scenes in which the bad robots—the “Nexus-6 Replicants”—seem literally overwhelmed by their emotions. (Though, I’ll admit, my interpretation might be heavily influenced of the phase of parenting I’m in).The creator of this robotic world, Dr. Eldon Tyrell, had enough foresight to recognize that the replicants would behave even more like humans if they were given memories. So he gave them all memories.What he (on my interpretation) failed to realize is that, in addition to a lifetime’s worth of memories, adult humans also have a lifetime’s worth of experience learning to manage their emotions—learning to feel without becoming crushed by those feelings.That is, perhaps, the most relatable thing about the Nexus 6 Replicants. Their murder spree is, you know, less relatable.It is worth noting that this imagined dystopia that Ridley Scott gave us back in 1982 was set in—wait for it—two thousand and nineteen. Needless to say, robotics technology has not developed at the rate that sci fi writers, directors, and even serious technology prognosticators of the early 1980s anticipated. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

In the Venn diagram of TV shows that appeal to me and my wife and to our two kids, the middle overlapping part is pretty sparse. But The Amazing Race is one of those shows. American teams of two compete for $1,000,000 in a race around the world. Each episode consists of frantic travel, challenges to accomplish, communication in a language not one’s own, and lots of stress-induced relationship drama.This show is in its 37th season—thirty seven seasons—and yet, there are still contestants on this show who show up unprepared. I don’t mean they packed the wrong outerwear or they don’t know how to read a map (though, let’s be honest, there is some of that, too).What I mean is that if they have watched any of the show’s 37 previous seasons, they know that at some point during the race, they’re going to be asked to drive a rental car outside of North America. And you know what that means? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

Plato, one of the world’s earliest (and still one of the world’s greatest) philosophers struggled with the question, “who is the philosopher.” He wrote a trio of dialogues (The Theaetetus, The Sophist, and The Statesman) that sought to distinguish the philosopher from the sophist and both from the statesman. It’s harder than you think!This is because, perhaps among other reasons, the subject matter that philosophy takes on cannot be conveniently categorized into other disciplines.Here are some examples... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

“Magic doesn’t fool you because you’re stupid,” Penn Jillette said on the Jonathan Ross show in 2019.Magic fools you because it’s stupid. … The human brain wants to have beautiful, wonderful experiences. So, if you want to fool somebody, you come up with something really, really stupid.Jillette then brough comedian Rebel Wilson onto the stage and through misdirection and sleight of hand, managed to perform an illusion that was transparent to everyone in the room and even to everyone at home, but not to Rebel Wilson. As Jillette put it, Wilson got to see the magic. We got to see the stupid.Jillette wasn’t offering commentary on the state of large language models (or large reasoning models) in 2025, but he might as well have been. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

Some time ago, I listened to Lulu Garcia Navarro interview Megyn Kelly on the New York Times “The Interview” podcast. If you’re not familiar with Megyn Kelly, she was a long-time Fox News host until she had a dust-up both with then-candidate Trump and ultimately with the Fox organization. Now she is an ardent supporter of the President—she even endorsed him on stage at a rally prior to the election—as she hosts her YouTube show.I don’t know Kelly’s work well and this is not really a post about Kelly, or the New York Times, or the President, or Lulu Garcia Navarro.Views Expressed is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.This is a post about a word I don’t think I heard throughout the entire interview. The most informative element of the interview—at least for me—was Kelly’s description of the new media ecosystem that has grown up outside of traditional media venues, channels, and outlets. As Kelly has moved away from sources of news that are often referred to as “main stream,” (specifically, networks such as Fox News and NBC), she has moved toward a heterogenous group of people who in one way cover news, but in another way make news.In this “new media” world, Kelly sees herself as a co-participant with people who we might easily recognize as political pundits in the old fashioned sense (for instance, she specifically mentions Ben Shapiro). But she also sees herself as a co-participant with voices that we might not, at least not until recently, have recognized as pundits (she specifically mentions Joe Rogan and Theo Von).Kelly suggests that with this new media frontier, there is also a new set of rules and norms. The old rules no longer apply. In old media, she argues, journalists had biases, but they attempted to hide those biases from their viewers, listeners, and readers. They attempted to put on a facade of objectivity that belied a more genuine subjectivity beneath the surface. On Kelly’s view, they pretended to be objective.In new media, she contends, the viewers (and listeners and readers) value authenticity above all else. She claims that the viewers of her YouTube channel—even those that did not support a second Trump term—supported her public endorsement of him because that endorsement was an act of authenticity and in new media, authenticity is the highest good.Usage of this word, “authenticity,” has grown rapidly over the last couple of decades. According to Google NGram data, the term was almost nonexistent one hundred years ago, and its usage has ballooned in the first quarter of this century. (For a brief overview of how Google Ngram works, you can look at an earlier Views Expressed newsletter called “A Visual History of AI”). What I’m about to say is not a criticism of Megyn Kelly. I don’t watch her show and I don’t know her work. What I know is what I heard in the interview. And in the interview, one thing she never said was that new media values the truth.This is, to me, a striking omission because—whatever its flaws, whatever its failures to live up to its own ideals, whatever its unstated biases and unclaimed subjectivities—it seems to me that one of the most dominant principles in old media was that those who report the news should tell the truth.I can already feel the responses welling up inside of many readers. “But old media was dishonest.” Yes, of course. There were times that old media failed to live up to its own standards. “But old media did lie.” Yes, there were times that those who reported the news cooked up stories and lied to those who consumed their products.The most egregious case that has managed to lodge itself in my memory was when CBS News’s Dan Rather published, and then defended as authentic, memos that besmirched President George W. Bush’s Air National Guard record even though he couldn’t validate their authenticity (and they proved ultimately to have been fabricated).That was a pretty big failure. Rather prioritized something—though I don’t know if it was authenticity—over truth. But he never committed that mistake again, because CBS fired him. And, presumably, they fired him precisely because he failed to live up to the stated principles of the profession of journalism. This is my fundamental point: There is a difference between, on the one hand, asserting a standard and then failing, at times, to meet it and, on the other hand, abandoning the standard altogether.This is the problem with binary approaches to morality. If the only categories available to us are “good” and “bad” and we can never avail ourselves of categories such as “better” and “worse,” then we put ourselves in the position philosophers cannot abide: we become unable to recognize distinctions.To assert a journalistic principle such as “journalists should tell the truth” and then to fail to live up to that principle is bad. But it’s worse (at least, I think it’s worse) to abandon the principle altogether.I worry that participants in the new media don’t see it that way. I worry that they can see only that failing to live up to the “tell the truth” principle was bad, and since bad things are bad, we should abandon the principle altogether.Truth is sacrificed upon the altar of “authenticity.”It reminds me of a scene in C. S. Lewis’s 1943 novel, Perelandra, the second book in what is often called his “space trilogy.” The hero, the philologist Professor Ransom, is engaged in a discussion with a man who has hitherto been the world-renowned physicist Professor Weston. Weston has just explained that he believes that a kind of life force drives the whole universe forward and that all things, even all principles, must be sacrificed in the name of this life force.Ransom asks the crucial question about the limiting principle.“How far does it go? Would you still obey the Life-Force if you found it prompting you to murder me?”“Yes.”“Or to sell England to the Germans?”“Yes.”“Or to print lies as serious research in a scientific periodical?”“Yes.”“God help you!” said Ransom.There is an academic joke buried here. The joke, of course, is that, for academics, there is no sin greater than fabricating research results and then publishing those results in an academic journal.But beneath the joke, there is a more basic question. One must be very careful what one adopts as the highest good. If the highest good is scientific progress or, as Weston puts it, this “Life-Force,” then all other principles must be subjected to the Life-Force. That’s what a highest good is.If the highest good in new media is authenticity, then all other principles must be subjected to authenticity.The idea that authenticity and truth could be distinct from one another may sound implausible. How could it be, you must be asking, that abandoning the truth can be authentic? But that’s just it. That word “authenticity” that has gained so much traction in the last decade or so has to mean something other than truthfulness, otherwise, we would just say “truthfulness.” Being true to oneself is not the same thing as telling the truth. That’s just not a sacrifice I’m willing to make. I think truth—and the search for truth, and institutions that are aimed at truth, and dialogue formed around the assumption that there is such a thing as truth—these things are just too valuable to give them up in the name of authenticity, even if those institutions and dialogues often fail to deliver truth.In one of the earliest internecine fights within the discipline of philosophy, Aristotle (Plato’s star pupil) rejected what is often called Plato’s “theory of the forms.” And when he did so, he said that it’s “only right to destroy … what is close to us … to preserve truth. We must especially do this as philosophers; for though we love both truth & our friends, reverence is due to truth first.”Aristotle prioritized truth over friends, however inauthentic that might have been.Credit where it’s dueViews Expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any part of the US Government.Views Expressed is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

A friend recommended that I watch the Netflix documentary series, Live to 100: The Secrets of Blue Zones. Throughout the series, the host brings viewers to communities around the world that have a disproportionately high number of centenarians—people who have lived to be 100. Then he seeks to discover what it is about those people and their lifestyles that have enabled their longevity.In most places in the world, women outlive men. Even in most of the communities with more than their share of centenarians, the women bring up the average lifespan and the men bring it down. But there is one exception. The goat-herding men of Sardinia, Italy live just as long as their women counterparts.Views Expressed is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.What can explain the longevity of the Sardinian goatherds? Here’s one potential cause neuro-ophthalmologist, Dr. Mithu Storoni, points out in the documentary.[Stress] is a benefit as long as it’s short term. The problem is, as soon as you keep the button pressed for very long, these effects become negative. … Today, in our urban world, through social media, news media, we are brought all the problems of the whole world. These are problems you cannot physically control. But you can control how you treat your goat to make sure your flock is healthy. And this sense of active coping where you can resolve the problems you are given is a very important part of mental health, cognitive longevity, and stress resilience.This seems reasonable to me. I had my own brush with this thought several years go. I’m going to venture into territory here that can be uncomfortable and divisive. If you’ve reached your daily quota of doom-scrolling-induced blood pressure spikes, please feel free to skip the next several paragraphs.I was—and I continue to be—personally offended by the January 6th 2021 attack on the US Capitol. I’m sure there are reasons for this buried beneath the surface that I haven’t yet discovered. But there is also the obvious reason. The attack wasn’t just an attack on a US building, or just an attack on elected US officials or just an attack on law enforcement (though it was all of those things, to be sure). The attack was designed to prevent the President of the US Senate (the Vice President of the US) from counting the votes—a task the Constitution requires the President of the Senate to Perform.Article II, Section I says,The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be President.I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. In fact, I’ve taken that oath several times. It offends me on a personal level that some of my fellow Americans would attack—with violence and intent—the Constitution of the United States in the way they did on January Sixth, 2021. I’ve written more about this elsewhere if you’re interested and don’t think I need to go into greater detail here.At various times, friends (who were, I believe, arguing in good faith) have asked me why I took January 6th so personally but I didn’t have the same emotional reaction to the unlawful possession of “CHAZ” in Seattle.You may recall that, at the height of the George Floyd protests in 2020, protestors in Seattle that called themselves the “Capitol Hill Organized Protest” took possession of the city’s Capitol Hill and declared it an “Autonomous Zone” intentionally refusing access to local law enforcement. They dubbed this area the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” or “CHAZ.”I can see why friends wanted to put these two events into the same category. They both involved lawlessness. They both represented an affront to our system of government. They both raised a proverbial middle finger in the general direction of law and order. So, aren’t they the same?I can understand the partisan reasons people have for taking one more seriously than the other. One is coded as right and the other as left. But I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. Though I’m open to correction on this point, I have a pretty strong record of seeing through the partisanship to the broader (and more important) principles at stake.There is one very important difference that I need to share with you for context. The CHAZ story unfolded in June of 2020. I was nearing the end of my time in the UK and it’s very possible that the 3,000 plus miles between me and the US also gave me some emotional distance. The Jan 6th attack on the Capitol was, of course, in January of 2021, several months after I had returned to the US. So that might have something to do with my emotional responses.But still, I think there’s more to the distinction than that. As I heard reports of the CHAZ event, amidst a global pandemic, the killing of George Floyd and the protests that erupted in response, misinformation about how effective masks are and about the origins of the COVID virus, and a flaunting of social distancing rules by the head of my host government (then Boris Johnson), it felt like there was just too much news to be outraged at all the time.In several cases, but specifically in the case of CHAZ in Seattle, I found myself asking: “I know that’s a problem, but is it a Joe Chapa problem?”You know as well as I do that the internet news ecosystem thrives on outrage—a trend cable news networks started decades before. So, if everything out there in the world is being presented to me in such a way as to drive outrage, and thereby drive clicks and eyeballs, how can I determine which stories should outrage me and which I can set to one side? One way to answer that question is to ask, which problems are Joe Chapa problems?The way I read and listen to news now makes me a little—even if just a very little—like the goatherds in the Blue Zones documentary. I can choose either to live in a constant state of anxiety about the problems in the world that I cannot control and that only peripherally impact me, or, like Gandolf fighting the Balrog, I can say to some devastating, or terrifying, or mystifying news stories, thus far and no farther. “You shall not pass.” I will not allow my level of anxiety to be affected by this story. This is a problem. But it’s not a Joe Chapa problem.I have nothing positive to say about the CHAZ protestors. They did behave lawlessly. Their actions were an affront to law enforcement. And if I lived in Seattle, that would be a Joe Chapa problem. But I don’t. And I’m willing to allow local issues to be local.January 6th was qualitatively different. It wasn’t an attack on a local or state government of which I am not a part. It was an attack on my Constitution. As I watched the January 6th story unfold—first on live video on that day and then in the many stories and court cases that followed—there was nothing I could do to shape the story. But I was willing to allow it to affect me emotionally. I was willing to let that one in because it was a Joe Chapa problem.Ok, rapid fire. Here are some headlining stories in the 2024 and 2025. I’ll mention the story and then tell you whether it’s a Joe Chapa problem or not.* Trump assassination attempt: Joe Chapa problem* Hurricane Milton: Not a Joe Chapa problem* Diddy: Not a Joe Chapa problem* Baltimore Key Bridge: Not a Joe Chapa problem* Luigi Mangione: Not a Joe Chapa problem* Plane/helicopter crash at DCA: Joe Chapa problem* California wildfires: Not a Joe Chapa problem* China’s DeepSeek AI: Joe Chapa problem* The Defense Department’s response to DEI in the US military: Joe Chapa problemI know how this looks. You could easily walk away from this list and think I’m some kind of monster who has no compassion for sexual assault victims (Diddy) or for people who lost their homes (CA wildfires). Of course I care about the people who were hurt in these and many other cases. But the question here is not about which stories elicit an emotional response. The question is about which stories I allow to become burdens that I carry with me. I’ve only got so much room in the ruck sack and I have to be judicious about what to carry.At this point in my life, I’m carrying only Joe Chapa problems. Which problems are you allowing yourself to carry?Credit Where It’s DueThe subtitle of this post is, of course, a lyric from Doechii’s “Anxiety.”As I close out this week’s post, I have a humble plea. I’m getting ready to build ads for other social media platforms to try to grow the Views Expressed readership (and listenership) and I’d like to use your words to do it.If you like what you’ve been hearing, would you consider writing a brief testimonial and sharing it with me through whatever means your comfortable with (that could be a comment, an email, a note, DM, carrier pigeon, whatever). I’m not looking for anything lengthy or detailed—just a simple statement about what you like about Views Expressed.If you don’t like what you’re reading, hey, I get it. Sometimes I don’t love what I’m writing. There is no pressure here of any kind. Just an opportunity to share you thoughts if you got ‘em.Thank you. I’ll talk to you again next Thursday.The Views Expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any part of the US Government.Views Expressed is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

I want to share something I read at work this week. There had been an email exchange about the degree to which AI will enable us to automate our work. I work at a professional military education institution, so our work includes both graduate level academic instruction and military professional education. Here’s what my colleague had to say in response to someone else.You are missing the human element - AI may be able to do a lot of things I do, but I would argue it can’t counsel a student who lost a child to cancer or who is going through a divorce. Being a good teacher is about making a personal connection. It is about inspiring and encouraging people. AI does not do that well. Being a military officer is more than writing staff products. War and leadership are fundamentally a human endeavor, it's all about how to compromise, inspire, and motivate. If we get to the point where that doesn’t matter, AI can have my job. … This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

In order to understand new things, sometimes we need to study old things.I never really understood what my Army and Marine Corps friends meant by “strategic terrain.” As an Air Force officer, I have studied battles that took place at thirty thousand feet and bombing campaigns that, several miles into the atmosphere, overflew hundreds or thousands of miles of terrain, strategic or otherwise. We talked about strategic effects, but we didn’t talk about strategic terrain.But then I visited Dover Castle on the south coast of England... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

Can large language models lie to us? This is a harder question to answer than it seems. So, let’s start in the most obvious place: Disney’s 2013 film, Frozen.Thirteen mid-career military officers, half of them US Marines, met in a classroom inside the National Museum of The Marine Corps in Quantico, VA. About an hour into the two hour class, we took a ten minute break. I said, “when we come back, we’re going to watch some Frozen.”I queued up the scene from the movie and when the students returned from the break, one Marine major said, “Oh! You were serious about that?” ... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

I know this isn’t the kind of content you originally signed up for, but I thought this story was strong enough to share anyway. As always, I’d love to hear what you think. Please consider leaving a note in the comments.The folk singer, Ellis Paul, took off his flat cap and, with a flick of his wrist, hung it from the boom of his mic stand. He told listeners in the intimate, Northern Virginia venue about the first time he played the famous Blue Bird Café in Nashville.“It was 1992 and I had a mullet,” he said. “Do you remember when mullets were cool?” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

I’ve been trying to introduce my kids to classic movies that I don’t think they’ll get exposed to anywhere else. (And yes, at this point, I consider the movies of my own childhood to be “classic”). This week, we watched WarGames.It holds up!Views Expressed is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.If you’re not familiar with the film, a young Matthew Broderick plays David Lightman, a high school student with an affinity for computers. After hacking into his school’s computer to change his grades, he tries to hack into a computer company to get a sneak peak of a new game. The harmless hacking he intends is overcome when, at the height of the Cold War, he inadvertently breaks into the computer that controls the North American Aerospace Defense Command’s (NORAD’s) nuclear missile operations.The film has all the 80s nostalgia you could want: five-inch floppy discs, dial-up modems, and monochrome monitors. I should mention for non-military readers that much of the film’s portrayal of the military has far more Hollywood in it than reality. The fictional General Beringer—a clear caricature of the historical General Curtis LeMay—is clownishly aggressive in his response to perceived Soviet escalation. But we can look past these shortcomings and focus on the tech. Setting aside my quibbles with the military accuracy, the movie’s appeals to artificial intelligence, especially given the period in AI history in which it falls, hold up surprisingly well.As the movie opens, the Air Force runs an exercise to determine whether the officers responsible for releasing the world-ending barrage of nuclear missiles from silos across the western United States will really be willing to turn turn their keys. In the movie, several crew members in their bunkers deep underground—unaware that the task is only an exercise and thinking instead that they are inaugurating the end of the world—refuse to follow the orders. In the immediate aftermath, the film shows us one meeting in which some government officials advocate—using words that hit our modern ears in a very familiar way—for “taking the human out of the loop.”This brief scene at the top of the movie asks viewers to consider two questions. First, if what matters from a command and control perspective is the President’s order to fire nuclear weapons, then why interpose an additional layer of human conscience between the President and the nuclear weapons? If that fateful day were to come, the Air Force lieutenants and captains buried deep in the ground would know only that the President had ordered them to turn their keys and launch their missiles. They would have no awareness of world events and they would have no special insights. They certainly would not have access to all the intelligence to which the President of the United States has access. So, why put a human in that command chain at all?But then the brief scene asks viewers to consider a second question even more disturbing than the first: What is it that informs the President’s decision to release nuclear weapons if not merely computer outputs. If it is radars, not people, that sense the Soviet missile launches and if it is computers, not people, that calculate the missile trajectories and determine that the US is under a nuclear attack, then isn’t the President merely implementing a decision made by a computer, rather than implementing his own decision?As the government and military officials contemplate this future of computer command and control, there seems to be a shared consensus that the system is trustworthy and reliable and, perhaps most importantly, that its behavior is predictable.The high school student, David Lightman (Broderick), is one of those 1980s movie kids whose poor grades in school belie a hidden genius. It is Broderick’s character, rather than the military generals or the computer technicians at NORAD, who realizes that the computer (affectionately called “Joshua”) is not a deterministic software system, but a learning system.As the film reaches its dramatic climax, Lightman has Joshua play tic tac toe against itself thousands of times. As the pace of these tic tac toe games increases, the lights and screens in the command center flicker. Someone offscreen says, “it must be caught in a loop. It’s drawing more and more power from the rest of the system.”Joshua learns. This is clearly the point director John Badham and writers, Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes, want their viewers to notice, and it is especially interesting given where WarGames falls in the history of AI. In 1983, Badham wants his viewers to believe—or at least to imagine—that machine learning is possible and that, if it ever works, it could become very capable.Ok, here come the spoilers. If you’ve been waiting to watch WarGames for yourself and you just haven’t had a chance yet in the 42 years since its release, skip down a couple of paragraphs.After exposing Joshua to many games of tic tac toe, Joshua somehow realizes (or knows, or intuits) that it should also expose itself to many games of global thermonuclear war. Again, the screens begin to show iterations of the simulation—faster and faster. We don’t know how many iterations it experiences in this modeling and simulation environment—maybe thousands; maybe millions.Then the screens in the command center go black and in a scene that has resonated through decades of popular culture, the computer, Joshua, says of global thermonuclear war, “A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”There is something profound in this 1983 Cold War techno-thriller. I don’t mean the conclusion that there is no winner in a nuclear exchange between the US and the Soviet Union. That’s interesting, too, but Badham didn’t need to invoke AI to make that point. I’m after something different:The film makes a clear statement about machine learning at a time when machine learning was, not just out of fashion, but outside of public consciousness.In 1983, the widely (though not universally) shared view among AI researchers was that using artificial neural networks to create machines that could learn had been a clever idea in the 1950s, but it had been tried and it had failed. Frank Rosenblatt’s contribution to the field in 1958 was a neural network called the “Perceptron” capable of learning—without being specifically programmed—to recognize simple patterns in computer punch cards. 60 years ago, Rosenblatt proved that machines could learn.The development of neural networks for machine learning stalled after that, though. By the end of the next decade, Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert published a book that sought to show that neural networks would never be able to achieve successes beyond the kinds of science projects of relatively limited utility that Rosenblatt had produced. The perceptron was all but dead.The AI boom that did arise in the 1980s and continued into the 1990s—a period I wrote about last week—had almost nothing to do with perceptrons, machine learning, or neural networks. That period of AI development was focused on deterministic systems, sometimes called “expert systems.”This distinction brings us back to the film. Right at the top, the readiness exercise in which so many nuclear missile officers fail to turn the keys in their silos led some fictional government officials around the conference table to say, perhaps we should take the human “out of the loop.” The assumption, it seems to me, is that, since the computer is going to make an assessment as to whether the US is under nuclear attack, perhaps the computer should be responsible for initiating the response. And if all that is relevant to this kind of decision-making is if/then logic trees, then a computer will probably perform better at this kind of thing than a human can perform.(I should note that even in our own time of rapid AI advancement, there is only one reference anywhere in US military regulations, doctrine, or policy that says it will always keep a “human in the loop” and that is in the 2022 Nuclear Posture Review which says that The United States will maintain a human ‘in the loop’ for all actions critical to informing and executing decisions by the President to initiate and terminate nuclear weapon employment.One of the themes in the film is that these professionals sitting (and smoking) in dark, windowless rooms at NORAD don’t realize what the computer is capable of. Only David Lightman, high schooler extraordinaire, has the insight to realize that, unlike ordinary computer systems of the time, Joshua is not merely executing if/then logic scripts, but it is instead learning.In modern terms, Joshua was trained using reinforcement learning in a modeling and simulation ("mod & sim”) environment.It is this nuance—alongside the 1980s nostalgia and high school-level hijinkx—that made the movie such a joy to watch in 2025. What John Badham was asking his audience to consider back in 1983 was a distinction that didn’t really enter the public consciousness until more than 30 years later. It is commonplace now for ordinary people to think about how machines that can learn might be relevant to their businesses or to their academic work or to the devices their children use. But the fictional David Lightman saw it back in 1983.Wittingly or not, Badham even included dramatic details that can serve as harbingers for our own time. When Joshua is iterating on games of global thermonuclear war, it drains power from the rest of the building—that’s why the lights flicker. Electrical power has proven to be one of the most important enablers of modern AI. According to some predictions, by 2027, the electricity required to train the largest machine learning models could rival the power required to power a small country for a year.With the benefit of hindsight, we can also see some of the hype around AI foreshadowed in the film. The whole crux of the plot at the end is that, by learning from thousands of iterations of the game, the computer can reach a profound conclusion about our world that may elude even the world’s leading experts: that nuclear war is unwinnable.I don’t want to start a debate about nuclear war (which raises a whole basket of questions about ethics, psychology, and the limitations of human rationality). All I want to point out is the those who are bullish on the 21st century version of machine learning believe that, by exposing complex neural networks to massive datasets that pertain to our world, perhaps the AI will reveal something profound to us about our world that we could not have discovered otherwise.I’m skeptical on this point. Large models trained on massive training datasets using hitherto unfathomable computing power seem to me, at best, only to approach human wisdom asymptotically, rather than to exceed it. But perhaps the machines will prove me wrong in time.In any event, Badham, Lawrence, and Parkes wanted us to wrestle with these questions in 1983, decades before the technology was mature enough that we felt compelled to take them seriously.It’s easy to see why it took us more than 30 years to see what WarGames was trying to show us. That’s because it took more than 30 years for neural networks to become capable of the kind of learning Joshua could accomplish. Rosenblatt showed that machine learning was possible, but Rosenblatt was able to create only a single layer of neurons. It would take decades for AI researchers to learn the mathematical techniques that would allow them to train multiple layers of a neural network at the same time. Those techniques would ultimately unlock new possibilities for neural networks—possibilities that have now given us capabilities with which we interact every day.Other films seem to have cemented themselves in popular conceptions of AI. I’m thinking especially of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) and James Cameron’s Terminator (1984). But the humanoid uprising depicted in those films hasn’t happened yet and if that future does await us, it doesn’t seem to be arriving any time soon. But sandwiched between these two films in 1983, WarGames offers both tech predictions that turn out to have been right and social commentary about AI in the military decision-making context that is every bit as relevant today as it was then.Credit where it’s dueThe Views Expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any other part of the US Government.Views Expressed is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

Somehow, back in 2017, I found myself at a small workshop on the ethics autonomous robotic systems at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. (If you are interested, that series of workshops culminated in this report on how to evaluate the risk of robots in the security context). At that early workshop, though, I was an AI novice. I had been invited because I had an operational background in remotely piloted aircraft, not because I knew anything about AI.So, there I was, sitting across the table from Ron Arkin. He talked about programming an “ethical governor” into lethal autonomous weapons systems. “But Ron,” I asked in the impetuousness of youth, “how could you possibly program an ethical governor given that AI is a “black box,” the inner workings of which are opaque to its designers?” (Ok, I probably didn’t phrase it exactly like that, but that was the gist).In machine learning—the kind of AI that has become popular since about 2012—the neural network can be so complex that even the developers who design and train it are unable to trace how the system moves from input to output.The Georgia Tech professor looked at me and blinked for what felt like several minutes, but what was probably a much more socially acceptable period of time. “You know, Joe,” he said, “not all AI is a black box.”Back then, I just had no idea.You see, there is a history of AI that comes before the machine learning revolution that began in 2012 and certainly before large language models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

This newsletter is a little different. I’m going to engage in some art criticism (the positive kind) even though I am not an artist. But I know there are some artists who read the newsletter. So, by all means, comment and let me know what I’ve gotten wrong or if there are better ways for us to think about this issue. I’d love to hear from you! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

Alex Risner reported in The Atlantic last week that Meta (and possibly OpenAI) have attempted to address this problem by going to the source of good writing: books.There are lots of reasons that the quality of writing in books might be higher than the quality of writing available on the internet (including, perhaps, this very newsletter). Here are just a few... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

My sister is opening a gym. She did what anyone might do in our age of generative AI, she asked Midjourney to generate marketing materials.The task was specific. She’s not trying to create a gym for professional athletes or for gym rats; her target market is made up of ordinary people, many of whom will never have been into a gym before.But getting generative AI to create images of normal people is harder than it sounds.I mean, I’ll just come out and say it: These people are all just too dang sexy! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

A reader recently asked me to recommend an intro to ethics book that covered the major ethical theories. That’s harder to do than it sounds. There are several books that engage the three major philosophical approaches to ethics, but few that do it in a way that’s approachable and accessible to those without an extensive philosophy background.Similarly, I recently had to find a chapter that introduces the major ethical theories for the Marine Command and Staff College. The best single chapter I’ve found so far is the first chapter of Robert Audi’s book, Human Value and Human Diversity. It’s approachable, it covers the major views, and it doesn’t get bogged down in philosophical minutiae.Since this question has come up twice in as many weeks, I thought I’d take a stab at introducing the theories here in short form. So, here it is. Your introduction to moral philosophy in one short newsletter. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

Greetings from Oxford, where the spires are still just as dreamy as when I last left them. This really is a special place. (And a special shoutout to the buck of the famed Magdalen College deer herd who tried to eat my wife’s wedding ring).The Views Expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any part of the US Government. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

I sat with my small AI team along the wall of the windowless conference room in the basement of the Pentagon. We looked on while a technical expert from the intelligence community brief a new classified capability to my boss and my boss’s boss and a hand full of other Air Force generals around the long conference table.When the briefing was done, the senior general in the room described what he thought the implications of this new technological capability might be in the operational environment.The general said if he were the Combined Air Component Commander (the commander of all US and allied airpower in a given geographic region), he would want to have his hand on the “acceptable level of risk” dial, to decide based on strategic and operational conditions whether to accept additional risk a new technology might pose or not.Then—to my shock—he swiveled his chair in my direction and pointed his general officer finger right at me. “And don’t worry,” he said. “Joe’s going to make sure we do it ethically.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

What can Aristotle teach us about whether large language models can understand our world? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

"Most people don’t understand computers to even the slightest degree. Thus, they usually explain the computer’s intellectual feats to themselves with the single analogy available to them, the model of their own capacity to think. Consequently, they overrate those machines tremendously."The same MIT professor was asked whether machines can perform at least some tasks better than humans can. Surely, the answer is yes, but he took the opportunity to distinguish between calculating tasks and judgment tasks.As always, the Views Expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any part of the US Government. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

Before we start, think about AI that is smart—I mean, really smart. Ok, hold that thought. Here we go…When I was at Air Force field training (our version of boot camp for officers), I made a mistake...As always, the Views Expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any part of the US Government. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

I don’t know whether the wave of artificial superintelligence is cresting, about to break. But even if it is, I don’t think the lesson from the western canon is that it portends our doom. The recurring story throughout western literature is not really that the things we create sow the seeds of our destruction, but that they sow the seeds of our temporary despair. Despite the calamities we bring upon ourselves, humanity is–in the stories at least–remarkably (surprisingly, even) resilient to them. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe

As a person who has some expertise in some areas, I owe it to you to signal when I’m changing lanes. I owe it to you to make it clear when I’m speaking from my specific areas of expertise and when I’m engaging as a citizen, a father, a dog-owner, or a book-lover.In other words, you don’t have to stay in your lane. You just have to use your blinker.As always, the Views Expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any part of the US Government.Views Expressed is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe