Daily Archives: 4 August 2026

Go to Trial

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In the “legal” battle between Larry Ellison’s Paramount on the one hand and California, et al,, on the other over whether Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Brothers amounts to an anticompetitive monopoly, as California AG Rob Bonta claims, Ellison is pushing for a 4 November trial start date while Bonta and his fellow attorneys general in this case are holding out for a 5 April of next year start date.

Consider, though: Paramount, as part of the acquisition deal, agreed to pay Warner Brothers $650 million per quarter for every quarter the deal stays unclosed after 7 September this year, and a final payment of $7 billion, if the deal collapses or remains unclosed by June of next year. That’s what put the quote marks around the legal part just above.

If the defendant is ready to go to trial in early November, then that’s when the trial should start. That the defendant shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury is explicit in our Constitution for criminal cases, but the principle holds just as firmly in civil cases. California, et al., don’t get to delay the trial at government’s convenience.

Aside from that, they were ready to go to trial, tautologically, when they filed their suit. Delaying five months is nothing but an unethical effort to delay, delay, delay for the sole purpose of running up the costs to the defendant—hoping, perhaps to spend the defendant into giving up—for its impertinence in insisting on defending itself.

A Success from which to Learn

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This bit, regarding Ukraine’s battlefield success flowing from Ukraine’s achieving drone dominance in the barbarian’s invasion lays out the success in question:

Ukraine’s rapid adoption of drone technology in warfare, as well as its rapid manufacturing build-out to produce them, is a success that US military officials wish to learn from in order to boost America’s own production and prepare its troops for future conflict.

Some factors of that success obtain in Ukraine that don’t exist in the US. One, that overarches the rest, is Ukraine’s smaller size, relative to us.

Another is that Ukraine’s government has—with that nation’s existence on the line and so clarifying many minds at the top—far less bureaucracy in the way: no acquisition bureaucracy in contrast with our Pentagon’s acquisition satrap whose bureaucrats seem more interested in protecting their bureaucratic turf than they are in getting weapons for our military, no contracting bureaucracy in contrast with our Pentagon’s contracting satrap whose bureaucrats seem more interested in protecting their bureaucratic turf than they are in getting effective weapons contracts signed to produce weapons for our military, a design bureau (for lack of a better term) that produces, authorizes, and encourages input ranging from ideas to developed designs from soldiers at the combat front and the supply and logistics front, in contrast with our Pentagon’s design satrap whose bureaucrats seem more interested in protecting their bureaucratic turf while being, at the same time, entirely too malleable by large defense contractors who constantly evolve their designs in order to plus up their contracts and the income from them, than those bureaucrats are in getting quality designs for our weapons and then freezing those designs for actual production.

Then there’s the political aspect. Ukraine’s size isn’t conducive to balkanizing supply chains and production facilities in response to its politicians’ push to get those projects for their districts. American politicians are infamous for holding up, even killing, useful weapons projects if they can’t get some or all of a project’s production set up in their State or district.

These are obvious lessons, easily learned, but they won’t be easily implemented.