Neil Broers

[Mitchell Hashimoto @mitchellh]

The problem with the "if it works who cares what the code looks like" mindset for agentic work is that it assumes the agent has a perfect understanding of "works." Realistically, things are underspecified, agents make bad assumptions, etc.

To be fair, agents are pretty good at unit test coverage. They're pretty bad at designing human experiences (API, CLI flags, etc.), especially cohesive ones for future roadmap plans they may not have visibility into (unless your backlog is perfect and vision fully laid out, which I doubt). They're bad at knowing where performance matters and what type (CPU vs memory tradeoffs). They're bad at where compatibility matters and where it doesn't (and tend to err on the side of preserving it without further guidance). Etc.

Unless you have this ALL specified, you can't possibly claim "it works" without taking a look and thinking about it.

[Neil Broers @nbroers]

@prieurdp When you reverse in, you have good visibility all around for oncoming vehicles. When you reverse out, your visibility is low. Safer all round.

[Blake Scholl 🛫 @bscholl]

It is a huge failure of operation Epic Fury, planners should have anticipated the need to leave a single Iranian F-14 intact so that the downed crew could have exfiltrated themselves.

[OSINTdefender @sentdefender]

U.S. intelligence assets have begun to see indications Iran is taking steps to deploy some of its 2,000 to 6,000 naval mines of Iranian, Chinese and Russian-origin into shipping lanes across the Strait of Hormuz, utilizing smaller crafts that can carry 2 to 3 mines each, officials tell CBS News.

[Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 @IAPonomarenko]

And I’d like to remind everyone that not so long ago, by helping Ukraine with weapons, America was:

- securing valuable contracts for its own defense industry and spending a large part of U.S.-Congress-allocated funds in America
- gaining massive global advertising for American weapons, which in Ukrainian hands performed superbly in a war against a vastly superior enemy (just look at the impact systems like the Bradley, HIMARS, and Patriot had)
- gaining an extremely loyal ally in Ukraine, ready to share its cutting-edge experience from a new era of warfare, especially in drones and highly intensive missile defense
- reinforcing its image as the arsenal of democracy and the powerful leader of the free world, sending a clear signal to dictatorships worldwide: don’t even think about wars of conquest, we will support our democratic allies
- sending Ukraine, to a significant extent, older weapons from its stockpiles that would have had to be written off anyway in the future, while simultaneously modernizing its own arsenals
- achieving the radical military weakening of an aggressive militaristic Russia, a dictatorship fundamentally built on revenge for the Cold War, hatred of America and the West, and a desire to dismantle the American-led world order

And all of this -- without a single American servicemember having to get deployed and fire a single shot.

Ukraine pleaded, humbly asking for nothing more than a simple win-win partnership: with your weapons we save ourselves from extermination -- you get a defeated fascist Russia.

I genuinely cannot understand how anyone could trade all of that for absurd lies about “$350 billion,” then smear and humiliate Ukraine, insult America’s key NATO allies, side with that KGB cyborg in the Kremlin -- and then to squander billions of dollars, cost American lives, and derail the global economy in a poorly thought-out war in the Middle East.

And then eventually end up asking Ukraine to help defend American bases in Jordan from Iranian-Russian drones.

[Neil Broers @nbroers]

@prieurdp @Mondlivuyo @RediTlhabi With the amount of evidence in favour of this being caused by the US/Israel, anyone who claims otherwise would need a lot more than "it wasn't a Tomahawk". They have pivoted from "Iranian accident" to "false flag" and will keep pivoting every time their claims are disproven.

[Neil Broers @nbroers]

@Mondlivuyo @prieurdp @RediTlhabi https://t.co/ayxJND1fvP

[OSINTdefender @sentdefender]

Newly released video shows the moment that a BGM-109 Tomahawk Land Cruise Attack Missile (TLAM) fired by the U.S. Navy struck a facility operated by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the Southern Iranian city of Minab on February 28, 2026. In the video, smoke can be seen rising on the right side of the screen from several other buildings that had previously been struck, one of those being the Shajareh Tayyebeh Girls’ Primary School, where upwards of 175 children were killed in what appears to have been a U.S. missile strike on the first day of Operation Epic Fury.

[Neil Broers @nbroers]

@Mondlivuyo @prieurdp @RediTlhabi And more here

https://t.co/sQa0yQJ2Ih

[Neil Broers @nbroers]

@prieurdp @RediTlhabi Sources?

[Neil Broers @nbroers]

@prieurdp @RediTlhabi How is this fake news?

https://t.co/WkUZzaAciG

https://t.co/x92PPFLJnu

[Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump]

Now that Obama’s poll numbers are in tailspin – watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate.

[Branko Milanovic @BrankoMilan]

So here is the logic.
In 2003, Iraq was falsely accused of working on a nuclear weapon, despite repeated assurances by the UN commission that it was not true. It turned out indeed not to have been true, but it still led to a civil war and 500,000 dead.
In 2026, Iran is accused of fabricating a nuclear weapon despite the fact that it denies it & there are ongoing negotiations whose objective is to hamper it for ever building such a weapon. In addition, its key nuclear scientists had been killed by Israel.
But in the meantime, Israel has accumulated a stock of some 300 nuclear weapons which is (by size) the fourth largest in the world.

[Neil Broers @nbroers]

@prieurdp Very underrated skill for a fighter pilot: having a flexible neck!

[Neil Broers @nbroers]

@prieurdp Wow that must complicate the lives of the ATC!

[Neil Broers @nbroers]

"Democracy does not arrive on cruise missiles"

[Rev Dr Kenneth Mtata @kennethmtata]

Between local dictatorships and imperial bullies

The abduction of Maduro by the USA has triggered legitimate and genuine moral tension facing many people living under oppressive systems. It is a challenge of choosing between condemning electoral theft and rejecting imperial intervention. It seems some are approving of Maduro's ouster. This "realist position" — that an illegitimate ruler like Maduro who violently usurps power forfeits all claims to sovereignty, and that his removal by any means cannot be mourned more than his continued rule, has many problems.
This framing overlooks a foundational principle of international order and of long-term democratic struggle. Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. This principle is not a technicality; it is a hard-won safeguard against a world where powerful states decide, by force, which governments may exist. Once we normalise external military regime change—however morally tempting in a given case—we reopen the door to imperial domination disguised as moral correction.
History is unambiguous: externally orchestrated regime change has overwhelmingly failed to deliver democracy. From Iraq to Libya, Afghanistan to Haiti, the violent removal of dictators by foreign powers has produced state collapse, prolonged instability, proxy rule, or new forms of authoritarianism. Democracy does not arrive on cruise missiles.
Yes, Maduro undermined the will of the Venezuelan people. Electoral theft is violence. Militarised repression is violence. These must be condemned without hesitation. But it does not follow that imperial violence becomes legitimate by contrast. Two wrongs do not produce a democratic right.
The deeper danger for Africa is this: if we accept that dictators may be removed by foreign powers whenever they lose legitimacy, we also accept that our own democratic struggles are disposable, to be settled by external actors whose primary interests are extraction, influence, and domination—not popular sovereignty.
Democracy is slow, painful, and must be locally owned. It requires strategic internal resistance struggle. Yes, it needs regional and international pressure, but for it to be genuine, it needs civic organisation, and sustained struggle by citizens themselves, sometimes under impossible conditions. Outsourcing democratic renewal to imperial powers is not realism—it is surrender.
There is no self-determination where the will of the people is crushed by armed force. But there is also no self-determination where liberation is delivered by foreign guns.
The violent assumption of power by dictators must be confronted—but the violent removal of governments by external imperial forces must be rejected first and firmly, because it destroys the very conditions under which genuine democracy can ever take root.
The task before us is harder than choosing between two evils. It is possible to refuse both.
@gift_mugano @ProfJNMoyo @adv_fulcrum @baba_nyenyedzi

[OSINTtechnical @Osinttechnical]

Remarkable footage of a Ukrainian Air Force F-16 chasing down a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile yesterday.

[Neil Broers @nbroers]

@prieurdp That's insane

[Cᴀʟɪʙʀᴇ Oʙsᴄᴜʀᴀ @CalibreObscura]

I am trying to avoid looking at Sudan for one's mental health, but the RSF is so literally bloodthirsty it's literally visible from orbit. This was extensively predicted to happen for months, and now they're carrying out some of the worst war crimes I've personally ever seen.

[Geoffrey York @geoffreyyork]

@QaanitahHunter Also worth asking: why has SA government and SA media largely ignored Sudan, even after evidence of genocide and war crimes over past 2 years? A decade ago, Thabo Mbeki was actively involved in Sudan as an AU peace negotiator. Why so little SA involvement now?