Tracing Military Command Chains Through Time and Location

Choosing Clojure6 and Datalog7 was a calculated risk–but one which paid off. The Datalog model offered the simplest and most ergonomic queries, had strengths in graphs and relationships, and the entity model could easily transform to more standard formats. In–memory Datomic was chosen on the server, allowing complicated relational rule–based queries to map over tens of thousands of claims, linking sources to the attributes of entities. Using Clojure allowed for rapid prototyping and fast feedback cycles. Together, this allowed constructing arbitrary graph traversal queries, without having to round–trip from the database to execute recursive code, allowing the nature of traversing the domain model to be separated from the specifics of the relationship. How entities relate, and how relations work through time, could be developed as separate concepts. Using Datalog queries, it was possible to get every subordinate, as well as the time ranges they held true for, with a simple query like (subordinate-of ?a ?b ?start-date ?end-date)

We all know that G.W. Bush and Tony Blair were at the top of their countries' chains of command during the illegal invasion of Iraq and yet, here we are, they're free of any International Penal Court meddling. Which is to say that maybe these guys and ladies here should focus their "desire for war-justice" a little bit closer to home.

Of course, an organization (the Security Force Monitor mentioned in the article) that literally receives money from George Soros through his Open Society Foundations [1] would never go after its own Western leaders, but it's good to at least have that written down on the internet, like in this comment.

[1] https://securityforcemonitor.org/about/

A standard open organization specification that shows people, authorities, budget flows and beneficial parties, and then only funding anything expressed in that spec would go a long way to improving institutions.

I found the writing style … interesting. The author assumed we the reader would have a specific understanding how to model this data. And that they cracked the code. Well that military posts, commands and in some cases government loyalty can change is known. Maybe I read too much into it this morning :). I dislike being treated as ignorant that’s all.

That is some weapons grade marketing speak.

The rest of the article is relatively interesting once they get to their use of Datomic/Datalog but it was really hard to get past that BS.