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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

The article builds on the work of many analysts and scholars. This includes the excellent books on ASML by René Raaijmakers and Marc Hijink - whose book contains a chapter on this very subject

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

Evidence coming up. Some of these systems however were in hangars. I assume we will know more soon.

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

I am happy to share that I have joined the Hertie School (@hertieschool.bsky.social) in Berlin as a Professor of Military Strategy and Technology.

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

Very interesting article in last week's The Economist. www.economist.com/interactive/...

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

Fascinating article by Austin Long that questions widely shared interpretations about Abel Archer. Money quote for those who need any convincing:

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

Very interesting article about data centers and energy demand www.ft.com/content/2789...

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

Wut www.ft.com/content/d26c...

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

From Blas and Farchy’s The World For Sale

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

This passage is really critical. And something that modern academia will, sooner rather than later, have to deal with.

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 17/05/2025

Let me stress that someone from the social sciences with interest in science and technology might have still fallen for the paper. But some weird aspects would definitively have come up (from the link above).

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 17/05/2025

Our age and the next couple of decades are going to be defined by climate change and technological change. Do prominent professors in the social sciences (economics, sociology, political science, etc.) want to keep approaching technology as a "black box"'?

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

And the paradox is that some simple measures to support those communities that lost out from globalization would have been orders of magnitude cheaper and simpler than what solving the current mess will require.

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

This is really the key point. As I tell my students: we do not live in the Hechscher-Ohlin or in the Cobb-Douglas Douglas world where resources can be easily re-allocated to different industries with no or little “friction”.

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

Yesterday I had the pleasure to give a presentation at the European Central Bank about European defense. The discussion was very interesting and enriching. Here are a couple of points that I made during & after the presentation:

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

For those who wonder, this relatively unknown books helps understand what the US is trying to achieve with its tariffs. Of course, things are much more complicated, but the US, in virtue of the size and dynamism of its economy, has the "go-it-alone" power, as the author calls it.

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

And one by Andrea and I tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

One by Costantino and his coauthors journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

Importantly, our findings also question a strand of research that has received significant attention, namely that the mechanization of armies (i.e., reliance on armored vehicles) causes counterinsurgency defeats. cambridge.org/core/journal...

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

So what do we find, you will need to read the methodological section to make sense of the statistical results. Bottom line, insurgent firepower is statistically associated with the defeat of counterinsurgency forces, also when controlling for multiple variables.

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

This is why, at some point, the Afghan government banned the import of ammonium nitrate fertilizers in Afghanistan. Image

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

Things changed because of innovations in inorganic chemistry, most prominently with the Haber-Bosch method for the synthesis of ammonia.

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

Second, we look at the availability of explosives, which was very limited until the early twentieth century. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

In this regard, the introduction of automatic rifles is a turning point, as it gave individual fighters “the firepower of a… nineteenth-century infantry company."

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

As historian Daniel Headrick put it, "In terms of effective firepower the disparity between the rifle of World War One and the Napoleonic musket was greater than between the musket and the bow and arrow."

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

This is to say, technological change in manufacturing and in metallurgy in the second half of the XIX century sow the seeds for advances in weapons technology that would dramatically increase insurgents firepower in the XX century.

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

Which is why insurgents and rebels fight asymmetrically. In asymmetrical wars, what matters is their capacity to inflict damage, death, destruction and despair. Which is, in turn, a product of the state of technology and of the weapons available to insurgents.

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

In this regard, we emphasize an important aspect, namely that technological change has drastically increased the absolute firepower of small arms, and hence the absolute firepower potentially available to insurgents.

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

Accordingly, we focus on small arms and explosives, the weapons of choice for rebel and insurgent groups.

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

"... fights the war of the flea. The flea bites, hops & bites again, nimbly avoiding the foot that would crush him. He does not seek to kill his enemy at a blow but to bleed him & feed on him, to plague & bedevil him, to keep him from resting & to destroy his nerve & morale."

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

As Mao put it, with their hit-and-run tactics, guerrillas act like “innumerable gnats, which, by biting a giant both in front and in rear, ultimately exhaust him.”

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

Very happy to see that the article "Weapons of the Weak: Technological Change, Guerrilla Firepower, and Counterinsurgency Outcomes" that Costantino Pischedda, @aagilli.bsky.social and I have written is finally out in The Journal of Conflict Resolution. journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 28/12/2024

Interesting thread on the new Chinese stealth combat aircraft and what we can learn from its external shape.

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

Very very happy that our report Before Vegetius is out (with @aagilli.bsky.social and Niccolò Petrelli). In this, we identify and try to elaborate the most important questions for a stronger European defense. iep.unibocconi.eu/policy-brief...

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

Also illustrated by this map (economist.com/briefing/202...).

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

This article by the economist summarized the point very effectively (economist.com/briefing/202...)

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

Third, I see the point in this assessment, but AIP submarines would have much shorter autonomy than nuclear-powered ones. And given the long distance from Australia to the South China Sea, this is a critical aspect to keep in mind (also because South Korea & Japan have AIP subs).

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

And in fact, later on the article recognizes this problem for the US.

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Mauro Gilli @maurogilli.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

If submarines cruise freely in the ocean, the chance of detecting them, identifying them and tracking them remains very low. If they have to cross choke points, you can detect them (e.g., through sensors that take advantage of the reliable acoustic path), but then the challenge

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