Archive - Dave's Substack

The First Sounding

Something goes wrong.

Sep 3 • Dave Cooper

July 2026

The Card You Play Once

Reading an adversary’s peace plan with the tools of complexity science

Jul 21 • Dave Cooper

June 2026

The Edge You Didn’t Draw

A complex system never ends where your map does. Why the people viewing the most-watched negotiation of the year may be misreading it — and what their…

Jun 22 • Dave Cooper

May 2026

A grid built for one world meets a different one

May 15 • Dave Cooper

The Transformer

The AI transition five years out, read from the signals available now.

May 4 • Dave Cooper

April 2026

The Map That Sees Itself

Apr 29 • Dave Cooper

March 2026

The Leader Is Not the Engine

What adaptive leadership gets right, what it misses, and what four hundred million years of evolution can teach us about the rest

Mar 25 • Dave Cooper

The Map That Wasn’t

How Mechanistic Doctrine Entered an Adaptive War—and What It Could Not See

Mar 16 • Dave Cooper

This is Dave's Substack.

Mar 16 • Dave Cooper

#nojs-banner { position: fixed; bottom: 0; left: 0; padding: 16px 16px 16px 32px; width: 100%; box-sizing: border-box; background: red; color: white; font-family: -apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 13px; line-height: 13px; } #nojs-banner a { color: inherit; text-decoration: underline; } This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please turn on JavaScript or unblock scripts