Silverman on Security
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silvermansecurity.bsky.social
Silverman on Security
@silvermansecurity.bsky.social
6K followers 74 following 19K posts
Nat-sec professional, dog and cat lover, martial artist, external processor, Balloon Juice's emergency back up food goddess (I have a tiara and everything!). You can find me here: https://balloon-juice.com/category/silverman-on-security/
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silvermansecurity.bsky.social
This was mine. First pic was two days after I found him at my vets in PA. Skin and bones. Second was three years later with my other two dogs at the time.
A picture of a 2 year old blue tick coonhound. He was very underweight as he'd just been rescued. He's being held by me, but all you can see is my torso in a cream Irish fisherman's sweater. Picture of three dogs. A blue tick coonhound looking to his right, a strawberry blonde greyhound/terrier mix sitting behind him and to his left, and a black lab/Australian shepherd mix lying to his left on a bed with a dark blue comforter.
January 13, 2026 at 3:20 PM
silvermansecurity.bsky.social
January 11, 2026 at 3:43 PM
silvermansecurity.bsky.social
A unit crest for Snack Team 6. It is a four quadrant shield above a scroll. The upper left quadtant has a soft pretzel. The upper right quadrant a cake or pie spatula. The bottom left quadrant has an ice cream scoop. The bottom right quadrant has a chocolate chip cookie with a bite taken out of it. The scroll contains the words Durum Lacteum, which is Latin for Chew Hard. Below the scroll it says Snack Team 6.
January 11, 2026 at 3:02 AM
silvermansecurity.bsky.social
A meme of COL Hogan, COL Klink, and Sergeant Schultz from Hogan's Heroes triple face palming in Klink's office. The caption says" Triple facepalm: For when a double facepalm is just not enough to describe the epic fail..."
January 8, 2026 at 2:45 AM
silvermansecurity.bsky.social
And Jared!
A black and white picture of the Three Stooges. They are wearing hats, seated at a table, and all 3 are face palming themselves so that you cannot see their faces. The caption says: Triple Face Palm Because Even the Three Stooges Can See That You Fail.
January 7, 2026 at 12:10 AM
silvermansecurity.bsky.social
A black and white picture of the Three Stooges. They are wearing hats, seated at a table, and all 3 are face palming themselves so that you cannot see their faces. The caption says: Triple Face Palm Because Even the Three Stooges Can See That You Fail.
January 3, 2026 at 10:39 PM
silvermansecurity.bsky.social
🧵!!!!!
A demotivational poster. In the center is a young asian man with black hair, a blue cap, white collared shirt, and blue overalls sitting at the wheel of a red tractor. Behind him is a field of grain. He is slightly facing to the left. His left hand holds the steering wheel while his right hand holds a red book up above his head. The caption below the pictures reads "I read the Fucking Manual and Now My Life Has Meaning"
January 3, 2026 at 12:29 AM
silvermansecurity.bsky.social
A meme of COL Hogan, COL Klink, and Sergeant Schultz from Hogan's Heroes triple face palming in Klink's office. The caption says" Triple facepalm: For when a double facepalm is just not enough to describe the epic fail..."
January 1, 2026 at 2:33 AM
silvermansecurity.bsky.social
Like this guy.

Full description in the alt text, but this guy is carrying four full size M17 versions of the SIG P320 in a Subway.

Just for comparison sake, I left my M9 locked up in the arms room on the forward operating base I was assigned to when I went to the Subway on base in Iraq.
A white man in a Subway sandwich shop. He is facing away from the camera, wearing a navy blue ball cap, a navy blue tshirt with black stripes, navy blue shorts, navy blue socks. He is wearing a combat belt rig with what appear to be two black colored M17 versions of the SIG P320 in holsters on both his left and right hips. He has four additional magazines in the middle of the small of his back in mag carriers. He is also carrying what appear to be two flat dark earth M17 versions of the SIG P320 in drop leg holsters. One on the outside of each side. He is either exceedingly paranoid or that is the single most dangerous Subway in the world.
December 31, 2025 at 4:28 AM
silvermansecurity.bsky.social
Panel from the comic book Preacher. Where the title character, Preacher, os facing someone to his left and screaming the following at him. In the first speech bubble, Preacher says: "Why is it the greatest champions of the white race always turn out to be the worst of it? YOU! In the second he screams: "Where the FUCK is your chin?" The white supremacist he is yelling at looks at him and stammers "Wh-Wh-Wh--?" Other people are standing behind and around them.
December 30, 2025 at 6:27 PM
silvermansecurity.bsky.social
Who wants some Christmas Eve tiramisu?
Ingredients:
4 8 ounce tubs of mascarpone cheese
8 ounces of sugar
3 cups of strong coffee (cold to room temperature)
4 eggs
2 packages of the dried lady finger cookies
Dash of vanilla (to taste)
Enough cocoa powder to sprinkle over the entire tiramisu
1/
An 8X12 deep dish white baking dish filled with tiramisu. The top of the tiramisu is visible with the contrasting colors of the light coffee colored custard and the dark cocoa powder sprinkled on top of it.
December 25, 2025 at 5:06 AM
silvermansecurity.bsky.social
Here’s a more normal colored one. I took this around 6 AM in February 2024.
An adult eastern coyote caught in my car’s headlights standing in front of Florida scrub.
December 24, 2025 at 1:41 AM
silvermansecurity.bsky.social
And here are my three previous dogs: Genni the greyhound/terrier mix (my first dog as an adult), Kylie the black lab mix (and yes, I got Rosie for Kylie as a little sister as they looked a lot alike), and my wild sad boy Blue the bluetick coonhound.
A pet portrait of a greyhound terrier mix. She is strawberry blonde on top and straw blonde on her belly, much of her face, and muzzle. She is looking straight at the viewer and has brown eyes. Her nose is pin. One ear is back and the other is down. A pet portrait of a black lab/Australian shepherd mix. She is looking straight at the camere and her mouth is open making it look like she's smiling. The front of her muzzle and lower jaw are white, as is a patch on her chest and throat. Her eyes are brown and her ears are down. A profile portrait of a blue tick coonhound. He is looking to the veiwer's left. You can see the rust orange on his muzzle and the blue ticking on his upper muzzle and neck.
December 23, 2025 at 2:31 AM
silvermansecurity.bsky.social
Here's some of @lenoresoleil.bsky.social work so everyone can see just how good their stuff is!These are the pet portraits they did for me. First up the two current dog lanterns: Rosie (black lab mix) and Ruby (chocolate lab mix).
A two head pet portrait of my now 15 year old lab mix Rosie. The upper head is adult Rosie staring right at the viewer with her left front paw visible. Her red light up collar is visible. She has brown eyes and her ears are partially up. The lower head is puppy Rosie. She is looing slightly to the right. Her ears are mostly up but the tips are slightly flopped over. Her mouth is open making her look like she's smiling and she has a slight blep. Two head portrait of my 12 year old chocolate lab mix Ruby. The upper portrait is of 3 month old puppy Ruby. She is running straight at the viewer and you can see her front left paw in mid step. One ear is flapping up and the other is down. The cream patches on her chest and her cream socks are visible. As is the caramel brindle on her front leg, chest, and face/muzzle. Her mouth is slightly open. This is based on a picture of her having zoomies on a hard wood floor that we call the no breaks picture. The bottom head in the lower left is Ruby looking up and to the right. Her mouth is open and she looks like she is smiling broadly. Her left ear is pinned back and you can really see the caramel brindle markings on her face and muzzle. It is from a picture of her after a vet visit where she jumped into the driver seat and looked up at me as if to say "Get in the car! I don't have time to explain!"
December 23, 2025 at 2:25 AM
silvermansecurity.bsky.social
Just took the brownies out of the oven to cool. They’ll cool on the counter for about 90 minutes & then go in the fridge to firm up. I’ll cut & box them this evening.
9x12 pan of baked dark chocolate fudge brownies cooling on the counter.
December 21, 2025 at 8:37 PM
silvermansecurity.bsky.social
Here’s my version of the chocolate fudge brownie. There’s several different versions of the recipe bouncing around the intertubes. Including on the Palmer House’s website. The brownie itself was invented there. Mrs Palmer wanted a signature desert for the World’s Columbia Exposition 1893. 1/
A pan of dark chocolate fudge brownies waiting to go into the oven.
December 21, 2025 at 7:53 PM
silvermansecurity.bsky.social
Double chocolate mousse pie time!
Ingredients:
16 ounces of heavy whipping cream divided.
8 ounces of dark chocolate (I mix the 66% & 74%)
1 box of chocolate teddy grahams
6 ounces unsweetened butter
Vanilla extract to taste (a splash)
1/
A picture of a double chocolate mousse pie. The mousse is a deep chocolate brown and bits of crushed up Oreo cookies can be seen mixed into it. The mousse is on a chocolate graham cracker crust in a white ceramic pie pan.
December 21, 2025 at 6:48 PM
silvermansecurity.bsky.social
Trump is under reflexive control as well, but in Trump's case it's because he's an exceedingly emotionally needy ignoramus. 6 & end/
A black and white cartoon with Popeye the Sailor Man facing forward and to the left. His word bubble says "I Yam Disgustipated"
December 21, 2025 at 1:41 AM
silvermansecurity.bsky.social
A meme of COL Hogan, COL Klink, and Sergeant Schultz from Hogan's Heroes triple face palming in Klink's office. The caption says" Triple facepalm: For when a double facepalm is just not enough to describe the epic fail..."
December 17, 2025 at 2:53 AM
silvermansecurity.bsky.social
One GS14 section head even told me that when she does plans for her section, she just writes SOPs.

The people who wrote this - & it's clear that's Vance, Miller, their staffs, & about one paragraph of Colby - seem to have the same mistaken understanding of strategies versus plans.

Oy vey.

8/
A meme of COL Hogan, COL Klink, and Sergeant Schultz from Hogan's Heroes triple face palming in Klink's office. The caption says" Triple facepalm: For when a double facepalm is just not enough to describe the epic fail..."
December 5, 2025 at 10:34 PM
silvermansecurity.bsky.social
The purpose of a National Security Strategy is to describe how an administration understands the geo-strategic environment, delineate its natsec objectives, & describe the ways & means to achieve those objectives. They misdefine strategy at the start of the document on p. 2. 3/
A black and white picture of the Three Stooges. They are wearing hats, seated at a table, and all 3 are face palming themselves so that you cannot see their faces. The caption says: Triple Face Palm Because Even the Three Stooges Can See That You Fail.
December 5, 2025 at 10:23 PM
silvermansecurity.bsky.social
6/
Most of these villages were, in fact, controlled by the communists and I decided to attempt to document that control. It was actually very simple. To the last breath a government will try to collect taxes. So I used a working hypothesis; I went to the Vietnamese tax collection office in Hanoi to look at the village tax rolls. They immediately indicated that the bulk of the Delta was no longer paying taxes. As a cross-check on my theory I used the village teachers. The school teachers in Vietnam were centrally assigned by the government. Hence, where there were school teachers the government could be assumed to have control. Where there were none, there was no government control. [I produced a map that showed] the difference between military “control” and what the communists controlled administratively, which was 70 percent of the Delta inside the French battle lines! This was one year before the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, in May 1954. In fact, the [official military situation maps—showing only small, isolated areas believed to be less than 30 percent French-controlled—were] complete fiction and had absolutely no bearing on the real situation inside the Delta. Of course, when regular communist divisions became available to attack the Delta in June 1954, the whole illusion collapsed. … The last French battle line before the ceasefire [lay deep in a zone that was, in fact, solidly] communist-infiltrated and, of course, it collapsed overnight. That is revolutionary warfare. You now have seen the difference between the two.
November 28, 2025 at 2:08 AM
silvermansecurity.bsky.social
5/
When I first arrived in Indochina in 1953, the French were mainly fighting in the Red River Delta. This was the key French area in North Vietnam … [with a] fortified French battle line. The French headquarters city was Hanoi. When I arrived I checked in with the French briefing officer and asked what the situation was in the Delta. He said: Well, we hold pretty much of it; there is the French fortified line around the Delta which we call the “Marshal de Lattre Line”—about 2,200 bunkers forming nine hundred forts. We are going to deny the communists access to the eight million people in this Delta and the three million tons of rice it produces. We will eventually starve them out and deny them access to the population. In other words, this was the strategic hamlet complex seen five thousand times bigger. There were about eight thousand villages inside that line. This fortified line also protected the rice fields then, whereas now the individual strategic hamlets do not protect the same fields. “Well,” I said, “do the communists hold anything inside the Delta?” The answer was, “Yes, they hold those five black blotches” [on a map]. But at the University of Hanoi, which was under national Vietnamese control, my fellow Vietnamese students just laughed. They said that their home villages inside the Delta were communist-controlled and had communist village chiefs, and just about everybody else said the same thing: that both the French and the Vietnamese army simply did not know what was going on.
November 28, 2025 at 2:07 AM
silvermansecurity.bsky.social
4/
Such reports point to a phenomenon which seems to conform to a pattern. Allow me to cite a report on the subject: There was little or no realism in the sense of appreciating facts and conditions as they really were or were going to be, instead of what was imagined or wanted to be. The cause was fundamental, consisting of an academic bureaucratic outlook, based on little realistic practice and formed in an environment utterly different to what we experienced in the war. In the case of the staff this environment was in the cool of an office or the comfort of the road, scarcely ever the rubber jungle with its storms and claustrophobic oppressiveness. All seemed good in a good world. There was no inducement to look below the surface or to change our appreciations. The document is declassified now. It is a report of a British colonel whose regiment was destroyed in Malaya by the Japanese in 1941. This document is twenty-three years old. Yet it sounds like a U.S. adviser from yesterday. Then as now everybody likes to fight the war that he knows best; this is very obvious. But in Vietnam we fight a war that we don’t “know best.” The sooner this is realized the better it is going to be.
November 28, 2025 at 2:07 AM
silvermansecurity.bsky.social
3/
What this seems to mean is that if American advisers get killed in Vietnam we are doing fine. The Air Force and Space Digest of June 1962 stated: There are a few things about the insurgent warfare that favor the use of air power and one of them is that the jungle rebels are not equipped with antiaircraft, so that air superiority is practically assured. That would be good news to the helicopter pilots, who represent the bulk of our casualties. In another Air Force and Space Digest article of August 1964 the following statement is made: The figures of 1963 in the Vietnamese theater indicate that the cost/effectiveness of the air effort is high. It is estimated that the Vietnam Air Force uses less than 3 percent of the total military personnel. … These planes account for more than a third of the total Viet Cong killed in action; that is 7,400 out of 20,600. The joke, of course, if you can see the point, is that if 3 percent of the Vietnamese personnel effects 33 percent of the casualties, a simple tripling of that 3 percent of Air Force personnel would effect 100 percent of the casualties. Therefore, we need not send anybody else. But no one has considered that in all likelihood, of the 23,500 killed, a large part are noncombatant civilians. It is pretty hard to tell a Viet Cong [when you are] flying at two hundred fifty knots and from five hundred feet up, or more. This leads to the completely incongruous reasoning that if there are one hundred thousand Viet Cong in South Vietnam and the ARVN [Army of the Republic of Vietnam] kills 23,500 a year and maims perhaps another 25,000, and if we divide 100,000 Viet Cong by 50,000 a year, the war should be over in two years. This meaningless equation probably accounted for 1963 estimates of victory by 1965. This is precisely where “cost/effectiveness” has its limitations.
November 28, 2025 at 2:06 AM