Counterinsurgency was one of several books that seemed interesting and that I bought during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 which I am slowly working my way through.
David Kilcullen
David Kilcullen is a former Australian military officer, who is an academic working at University of New South Wales, Canberra. Back in 2005 he advised the US government for a year while it dealt with insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has since been advising various companies about aspects of international studies.
Counterinsurgency
Counterinsurgency is a collection of his writings for military and academic journals. It covers everything from a tactical guide to officers dealing with local communities to the history of Indonesia post-independence and its efforts to combat East Timorese looking to become independent.
Kilcullen’s Counterinsurgency interesting to read for several reasons:
Accessible writing: he writes really well making his subject areas very accessible to enquiring minds. For an academic, it was refreshingly jargon-free and articulated complex situations simply.
His how-to guides for US military officers serving in Afghanistan gave me an insight that I previously didn’t have from the media coverage.
As someone who had worked on Indonesian market campaigns for Indofoods and Qualcomm, knowing more about this complex country was rewarding. Kilcullen provides an accessible window into two points in the post-independence history of Indonesia.
One of the key things that I took away from Counterinsurgency was the fragility of knowledge in organisations. Much of the work that Kilcullen is doing in the first part of the book was instilling hard-won knowledge that the world’s militaries had learned from TE Lawrence tormenting the Great Arab Revolt onwards including Vietnam, various American cold war campaigns, the British in Malaya and Northern Ireland.
Militaries put a lot of effort into capturing the history of conflicts and spend a lot of time on lessons learned. This is far more effort than organisations generally put into place to learn from the likes of marketing campaigns, yet Kilcullen’s writing was valuable because that knowledge seemed to be slipping through the cracks of militaries.
If you have an enquiring mind about world affairs and history, I can recommend Counterinsurgency as a good read. Other book reviews can be found here.
December 2025 introduction – (29) rise and shine edition
I am now at issue 29, in Chinese numerology the number 29 is viewed positively, as it symbolises a long-lasting harmonious relationship. In bingo slang 29 is referred to as ‘rise-and-shine’ – ironic given that we’re currently enjoying the least daylight in any part of the year.
If this is the first newsletter, welcome! You can find my regular writings here and more about me here.
Things I’ve written.
A quick look at the implications of the US government’s new National Security Strategy.
Rob Belk featured me in the Rambull newsletter. If you haven’t subscribed to his newsletter yet, I recommend doing so. It’s akin to a modern-day version of The Whole Earth Catalog, filled with carefully curated tools and useful resources, but without the tie-dye elephant pants. You can check it out here.
Books that I have read.
Counterinsurgency by David Kilcullen. I bought several books on the recommendation of friends during the COVD lockdown and am slowly whittling my way through the pile, Counterinsurgency was one of them. It’s a collection of writings by Australian academic David Kilcullen, who advised the US government from 2005 – 2006 about Iraq and Afghanistan. This book is a collection of his writings from articles in military journals repeating many of the lessons learned in the past about fighting against guerrillas to Indonesian history. I had done some campaigns in Indonesia in the past for Qualcomm and Indofoods, so was interested in the post-independence history within it at the time. More about the book here.
Things I have been inspired by.
Due to the timing on writing the last newsletter, I missed writing about how I got to spend an evening with senior in-house marketers thanks to The Ortus Club. The evening was held at a restaurant in Mayfair sharing experience of AI in terms of its benefits, future opportunities and challenges.
Discussion themes that resonated:
There isn’t a lack of enthusiasm for generative AI in the corporate world.
Generative AI work often isn’t checked, to the detriment of it. It’s a powerful assist but you need to trust but verify.
IP concerns are holding back adoption and impacting tool choice by enterprises. Legal / regulatory departments are important AI gatekeepers.
Picking the right AI tool for the right job, too many organisations are trying to use one AI tool for everything.
Toyota officially unveiled their GR GT and it’s gorgeous looking. It is also a strikingly different direction to the likes of Mercedes Benz and the Volkswagen Group of companies with only useful technology allowed. its rather different to the usual automotive approach of a computer that happens to have four wheels.
Ipsos have been doing research in conjunction with Joe.co.uk looking at all things masculinity. One of the charts that stood out for me asked about the use of dating apps.
There was a clear gender gap between app usage numbers which represented an interesting challenge for product managers. It would merit further investigation as to the why. I have a couple of hypotheses:
Your product didn’t engage with women as much as men.
Your product is a poor medium to build up a rapport.
Some sort of difference in on-app behaviour usage that divides genders.
Your product carries social baggage that means women are less likely to admit that they have used your service.
You can see how dating app brands have tried to address this through in real life events and women move first in-app mechanisms.
Things I have watched.
I managed to get hold of Bullet In The Head on Blu Ray. While John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow. The Killer and Hard Boiled are respected by western directors, Bullet In The Head doesn’t get enough appreciation. The story of the film is almost as good as the film itself. Woo split with production partner Tsui Hark to direct his own script. Woo even self-financed the film. The film is Woo’s singular vision with influences including the Tiananmen Square student protests, Vietnam news reel footage and The Deer Hunter. Over time it had become hard to find and is under-appreciated. It’s not a perfect film because it was so ambitious in terms of its scale and there is a softness to the cinematography that you also see The Killer. Despite all that, it’s a fantastic film that I would thoroughly recommend. As a bonus, here’s a list of John Woo’s favourite films, as you can see he has impeccable taste.
Prison on Fire is part of my on-again, off-again tour through Ringo Lam’s filmography. Made in 1987, it has ‘Big Tony’ Leung Ka-fai who plays a graphic designer working in an ad agency who is sent to prison for manslaughter. He and his prison friend played by Chow Yun-fat navigate sadistic guards and violent triad convicts.
Prison on Fire 2 was Ringo Lam’s sequel to the first successful instalment of Prison on Fire. Chow Yun-fat returned to play his central role in the sequel, this time dealing with mainland prisoners, in addition to the usual triads and sadistic guards. In addition to the action, the film focuses much more on the relationship between Chow and his on-screen son. Given the various hot button issues in the film from a modern-day Hong Kong context:
Triad – prison guard collusion
Conflict between Hong Kong and mainland Chinese
Blackening the name of the disciplined services* of the Hong Kong government (coastguard, police, corrections department, anti-corruption agency etc.)
You are unlikely to see the like of the Prison on Fire films again, they would be in contravention of NatSec aka Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
Thief was Michael Mann’s film debut. A hard-bitten heist film with film noir vibes. James Caan plays the protagonist Frank, a professional safe cracker adept at drilling locks out or cutting the door open with a thermic lance. He partners with James Belushi who plays an alarm expert. Mann contrasts the professionalism of Frank executing heists with his awkwardness claiming the heart of his girlfriend. A lot of the tension and craft he later brought to Heat and Collateral are already on display in this first firm, for instance the way Mann shoots nighttime scenes and paces the film’s plot. Tangerine Dream give Thief an amazing soundtrack.
Useful tools.
I have been working on a number of video projects and we’ve been using Trint to allow a perfect transcript to be made from digital video rushes that would aid in the editing and post-production process.
Whether you prospecting for adtech or job-hunting; Mediasense’s agency family tree makes life easier.
If you are moving into a leadership position, Zoe Arden‘s Story-Centred Leadership: Crafting Cultures of Change is probably worth a look. The book looks at how leaders can use stories to drive change through an iterative process of ‘listening, building, shaping, sharing and living’ their stories, rather than treating the story as a one-and-done activation. That might sound a bit new-age and your mileage may vary in terms of how it works as a tool for your leadership style. But Zoe might be on to something. Nick Chater‘s The Mind is Flat looked at neuroscience and what we know about thinking arrived at the conclusion that stories are software for the brain and Story-Centred Leadership seems to come from a similar direction. (Disclosure: Zoe worked at my first agency, back then I worked at on B2B & consumer technology and telecoms clients.)
The sales pitch.
I have been working on a brand and creative strategy engagement at Google’s internal creative agency. I am now taking bookings for strategic engagements from the start of 2026 – keep me in mind; or get in touch for discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.
Ok this is the end of my December 2025 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and have a great Christmas and new year. Keep an eye out for my retrospective rundown of 2025.
Don’t forget to share if you found it useful, interesting or insightful.
Get in touch if you have any recommendations, and if you find it of use, this is now appearing on Substack as well as LinkedIn.
The Aesthete is found in the weekend edition of The Financial Times. It features in How To Spend It magazine supplement (recently rebranded HTSI). The Aesthete interview usually features some sort of taste maker or artist rather than the usual celebrity one would expect.
Likely questions to be in the aesthete interview
Personal style signifier
Last thing you bought and owned
No party is complete without…
The best souvenir you’ve brought home
Your drink of choice
The best book that you’ve read in the past year?
The last music I downloaded
In my fridge you’ll always find
The thing I couldn’t do without
An indulgence I would never forgo?
Style icon?
Recent discovery?
Object I would never part with?
Favourite building?
Beauty toiletry staples I’m never without?
Favourite apps?
Work of art that changed everything for me?
Best advice I ever received?
Source of inspiration?
Party playlist?
What would my answers look like for The Aesthete?
My personal style signifier?
Function versus form has always been a big thing of mine. I like the G1 pilot jacket design and have worn one for over a decade. I love Carhartt workwear and technical clothing from Nike ACG, Arc’teryx and The North Face – particularly vintage TNF. I love alpine approach boots and have sets by Zamberlan and Dolomite.
USWings.com
The last thing I bought and loved?
Prometheus Design Were Ti-Ring Strap – its a NATO style watch strap with titanium fittings. I had a watch which I loved but the strap was driving me mad and this cured my constant annoyance with it. They just work and their really well made
Prometheus Design Werx
No party is complete without?
The right mix of people. The kind of people you can chat about the most drivel or profound thing ever (not mutually exclusive categories) until way past sunrise.
The best souvenir I’ve brought home?
Beyond the memories and experiences? Probably not a lot in recent years. I guess I would have to go back to my childhood. As a child I used to go into Salmons a shop in the local market town near the family farm where I spent a good deal of my childhood. It was staffed by Tony Salmon who had opened it in 1968. At the time it was predominantly sold knick-knacks, souvenirs and stationery products for school children. I bought some absolute dross in there and brought it back to England with me. One thing caught my imagination though. A book published by the Irish Government Department of Foreign Affairs called Facts About Ireland. It had the Tara brooch on the front cover and reading it gave me a better sense of myself and culture. It served as a primer for me then to go on and read Robert Kee’s Ireland A History.
It’s a current affairs oriented book called The Dragons and The Snakes by David Kilcullen. You can read moe of my thoughts on it here. The damage that the Russian war in Ukraine has called to Russian armed forces mean that in the medium term, things are likely to slightly less dystopian than Kilcullen would have thought.
Very little to be honest with you, but my freezer is stuffed.
The thing I couldn’t do without
I find myself increasingly reliant on my Mac. It helps me create things like this blog. It’s what I work from and it even keeps me in touch with friends around the world.
An indulgence I would never forgo?
Style icon?
Probably Shawn Stüssy, Nigo, Minoru Onozato and his book My Rugged 211, James Lavelle or Hiroshi Fujiwara.
Recent discovery?
Perun who is providing some thoughtful analysis on the current war in Ukraine.
Object I would never part with?
At the moment it would likely be my work glasses that cut down a lot of glare from using a computer on constant video calls.
Colonia by Acqua di Parma in the summer, Eau Sauvage by Dior Perfums the rest of the year.
Favourite apps?
Newsblur
FT
Yahoo Finance
Apple’s Podcasts app
Apple’s Mail app
Apple Books
Work of art that changed everything for me?
Probably JM Silk’s Music Is The Key – which was the first house music record that I owned.
Best advice I ever received?
It would be two pieces of advice I got at the oil refinery I worked in briefly before college:
Life occasionally kicks you in the balls to let you know you’re still alive
From a lab tech called Tony when redundancies came down the pipe. A short but excellent summary of stoicism
Work the problem. If you can’t deal with it as is, chunk it down until you have things you can deal with
From the head engineer at the refinery Les, who was a no nonsense kind of guy.
Source of inspiration?
Reading. Blogs and books play a big part in this. I am also inspired by everyday life and consumer behaviour in East Asia; Hong Kong and Japan. Numerous people have inspired me though my career and still do. Finally my parents who have been long tolerant of the different directions I have taken over the years.
Party playlist?
It depends on the party, but I would trusty standbys would be my record collection from the late lamented Chicago label Guidance Records, New York’s Shelter Records, Irma Records, Yoruba Records, modern labels Razor n’ Tape, Sound signature, Sacred Rhythm Music, pretty much most things remixed by The Reflex, Dimitri from Paris, Danny Krivit or Joe Claussell.
David Kilcullen wrote a number of books on the strategic challenges faced by the west in the war on terror. His book The Dragon and The Snakes looks at the challenges that the west faces from China (the dragon), Russia and Iran (the snakes). I was finishing reading this book as the Ukraine | Russia crisis broke this month, dominating the news headlines.
Out of the cold war
The Dragon and The Snakes starts with what shaped the modern world. The modern world was shaped out of the cold war. Western doctrine was defined by meeting a numerically superior force with superior technology. At the time, China and Russia were in dispute over a number of issues. At the chime of Chairman Mao, the death of Stalin and changing posture of the Soviet Union led to a fissure that widened over time. In the cold war was not only a war for influence between capitalism and communism; but also evolved into a war between Soviet communism and Maoist communism. China and Russia both supplied North Vietnam, but China invaded Vietnam partly due to it being more in the Soviet camp than the Chinese camp (this is is somewhat simplifying a multi-causal conflict, but has a truth in it).
China and US had limited cooperation with regards Russia which was brought in by Nixon’s famous visit to China and the machinations of Henry Kissinger who believed in systems and the ends justifying the means.
The flat topography of Kuwait and Iraq, together the latest 1980s weapons systems from the cold war made the first gulf war quick and provided an eye-raising demonstration of modern warfare. The campaign was just 42 days long.
Pivotal moments of change
Kilcullen goes on to discuss pivotal moments of change for both Russia and China in The Dragon and The Snakes.
The first gulf war. China noted that integrated satellite and aerial reconnaissance with associated command and control information systems; full spectrum jamming to ensure battlefield communications superiority; better coordination of naval and ground offensive forces than ever achieved before; highly accurate missile systems; integrated command, control, communications and intelligence for directing the battle. Mechanised units with air support then won the battle. But they also noticed the economics of war were not in favour of technology. Bombers and missiles were dubbed flying mountains of gold and used to attack targets worth less than the weapons system. Secondly more technology meant a shorter weapons system life. Weapons systems average service life went from 30 years to 10 years during the cold war due to technological obsolescence.
Kosovo – NATO’s intervention emphasised the nature of modern warfare to Russia. But it also emphasised the threat that the west posed. The Russians have a cultural connection to the Serbians. One incident in particular stuck out: the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. The Chinese embassy attack showed a number of things. The bombing of the embassy was a demonstration of precision bombing. Unfortunately it was the right target, wrong building and was the sole CIA designated attack of the war. The CIA gave the military the wrong coordinates for a Yugoslav storage facility, instead they were the coordinates for the embassy
It fuelled Chinese perceptions that the US and west were willing to attack them, this stoked nationalism at home and basically broke the Kissinger-era detente and trust with the US. Thus there was a common view from both Russia and China
China realised that it needed to adapt from being an Asian land army to having an expeditionary component and defending against a likely American led expeditionary force
It reinforced Chinese views about the technological nature of war
Russian invasion of Georgia. While the two Chechen wars had been a meat grinder that exhibited many of the Soviet era armies weaknesses and corruption, it was the invasion of Georgia that proved to be the emphasis to professionalise and improve. Russians learned and built doctrine from the experience. Air power had proved vulnerable to relatively cheap MANPADs (man portable air defence systems). Armour disrupted by anti-tank missiles. Neither of which would have been a surprise to students of the Arab Israeli conflicts of the 1960s and 1970s, but were relearned again. Out of this experience sprang a lot of the ideas around hybrid warfare and applying technology to area denial systems in an asymmetric way, from an economic perspective.
Afghanistan, Iraq. Both of these wars showed the limits of the western way of war-fighting. Weapons systems became expensive, the west didn’t have the stomach for deaths and insurgents were finding ever new ways of using consumer technology. Google Maps and Google Earth were used for planning, command and control of both terrorists and private military contractors. Consumer drones conducted surveillance and even delivered bombs. All of the western weaknesses were noted, most of all the perceived lack of western will. Afghanistan reinforced views in Russia and China that the west was in an accelerating slope of decline.
Ukraine and Syria. Ukraine and Syria have allowed Russia to refine its war fighting techniques from a communications and technological perspective, as well as testing asymmetric techniques and also defending against them.
Wider parameters of war
Kilcullen highlights the way hacking, espionage, propaganda, weaponised diaspora, elite capture online crime, organised crime, misinformation, bribery, soft power, sharp power and private military operators mean that we are in a war that western leaders currently refuse to acknowledge. This then further emboldens Russia, China and the likes of Iran and North Korea. It felt strangely prescient that I was reading the book when MI5 issued a security warning about Christine Lee and Russia threatened to invade Ukraine.
Byzantine outlook
Disturbingly in The Dragon and The Snakes, Kilcullen thinks that the best way that the west can handle China and Russia is learning from the Byzantine empire’s ability to forestall collapse. This implies a few things:
He doesn’t believe that the west can find its way to effectively combatting China or Russia
He doesn’t believe that western systems of governance will survive
He believes that dragon and the snakes have more durable and effective systems of governance and war
All of which indicates an increasingly dark dystopian future.
In The Dragons and The Snakes Kilcullen provides a cogent well-researched and written picture of our current situation. If his work scares the crap out of enough people, we may even get answers to the multitude of problems that he outlines. More on the book here.
I was sent a copy of Freedom as a gift, so I tried to come at the book with an open mind. I wrestled with a number of things reading book, which will come out a bit later on.
Is Freedom any good?
Early on this was a question that I was asking myself. Freedom clearly wasn’t a book with someone like me in mind. I have read a number of the China and Hong Kong books out there, kept up with the latest thinking and for a time lived in the city.
I could see that the book might be written for others as a primer. It is a swift tour through Mr Law’s own story, the resurgent nature of China across as an authoritarian state. China’s power projection beyond its borders and the nature of authoritarianism in general. He also tells the story from his perspective of the Hong Kong protests.
The reality is that in this ambition for Freedom, Law and Fowler have squeezed the territory of at least half a dozen books into one slim paperback.
Mr Law’s own story
Mr Law’s own story mirrors that of previous generations of Hong Kongers. His father escaped from the mainland and brought his wife and son across. The honesty of Mr Law’s story comes through his own admission of how few memories he had of life before Hong Kong. His concern about China at this time is more from the life of his parents. He only really remembers the sun on his back and hugging his Mum on her bicycle. He relies on the struggle of his parents in China, during and after the cultural revolution to tell the story of an authoritarian state.
Hong Kong like Shenzhen is a city of immigrants. Chinese people from Guangdong, Fujian and Shanghai have moved to the city over the decades in waves. As an immigrant child Mr Law is an everyman Hong Konger.
Two other aspects of Law’s story struck me. The first was the honesty with which he talked about not wanting to engage with the 2019 protests at first as he was going to Yale on a full scholarship.
The second was the way he talked about the horror of a custodial sentence. I have no desire to go to jail, but about a third of the UK population has a criminal record. It isn’t quite the ‘mark of Cain’ that it seems to be in Hong Kong. That says a lot about the kind of society that Hong Kong is.
The nature of China
I think other people have done a better job of talking about the nature of the Chinese government, in particular its approach to governance and foreign policy. Mr Law just can’t cover the ground needed in Freedom, he doesn’t have the space. I will include a list of recommended material on China at the end of this post.
The Hong Kong protests
The main thing that struck me about Mr Law’s account of the Hong Kong protests is a sense of restraint in the telling. He pulls his punches and allows the reader to draw their own conclusions, or do their own research. This is especially apparent with Mr Law’s description of the Yuen Long incident.
If you want the general gist of the Yuen Long incident, there was a good documentary that the Hong Kong government clamped down on called 7.21 Who Owns the Truth? produced by Yuk-Ling ‘Bao’ Choy
Tone of voice
I was trying to put my finger on the tone of voice in Freedom. What did it remind me of? Eventually I realised that it reminded me of the kind of content I had read previously by the likes of think tanks like Demos during the New Labour era. So far the Hong Kong protestors have managed to engage and activate right of centre politicians across Europe, the US and the UK. But more progressive voices aren’t engaging with the situation in Hong Kong. I took this book as an attempt to reach out to the wonks in this camp. Activists like Mr Law would need to create receptivity in the the people who work for progressive politicians before they can engage with the politicians themselves.
Hence the primer approach, so that these people would delve further into China. You can find out more about Freedom by Nathan Law with Evan Fowler here.
