Paul Warburg’s Case for Urgency Is Right—but Incomplete Without the Alpha Event and the Gambler’s Ruin
- john raymond
- Jul 25
- 4 min read
Paul Warburg’s latest video lays out a passionate case for why the war in Ukraine must be ended quickly—and decisively in Ukraine’s favor. He warns that the longer the conflict is allowed to fester, the greater the human cost, the more dangerous the technological escalations (particularly with AI-powered drones), and the more likely that Russia’s collapse, if unmanaged, will destabilize the world. His argument is well-structured, emotionally resonant, and ethically grounded.
But it is strategically incomplete.
What Warburg’s framework lacks—and what must be central to any serious geopolitical analysis of this conflict—is what I call the Alpha Event. That is, the risk of direct and coordinated support from major autocratic states such as China, India, Iran, or others that could decisively shift the war’s balance and raise the global stakes beyond anything we’ve yet seen.
We already see trial balloons in motion: North Korea has now sent two tranches of troops to support Russia, with the second larger than the first. This may be just the beginning. The ladder of autocratic escalation is real, and Warburg does not account for it.
Moreover, he frames the war in dichotomous terms: either Ukraine outlasts Russia in a war of attrition, or Russia collapses under the weight of its own decisions. But those are only two possible outcomes in a vastly more complex set of branches. The correct frame is not linear attrition—it is probabilistic escalation.
E[x]: Calculating the Expected Future of a Multi-Outcome War
In statistical terms, expected value is computed as:
E[X] = p₁ x₁ + p₂ x₂ + ... + pₙ xₙ
To understand what Ukraine—and the world—is truly facing, we must do the hard work of mapping the x₁ through xₙ: the possible outcomes. Warburg implies only a few: Ukrainian victory, Russian collapse, or a slow status quo grind. But reality holds far more possibilities, many of them catastrophic:
x₁: NATO fractures under political strain.
x₂: Putin uses tactical nuclear weapons in a last-ditch maneuver.
x₃: China enters the war materially under the guise of peacekeeping.
x₄: AI-powered drone swarms escape human control and spark autonomous retaliations.
x₅: A blunder or false flag triggers a fully declared global war.
x₆: Russian internal collapse spills into Belarus, Kazakhstan, or the Baltics.
x₇: Western publics fatigue entirely and pull funding mid-war.
x₈: An asymmetric terror attack is staged in Europe to reduce support for Ukraine.
x₉: A Rumsfeldian unknown unknown...
...
xₙ: Ukrainian victory and controlled Russian retreat.
Each of these has a probability greater than zero. Some have probabilities that grow with each passing week of delay. Warburg’s binary thinking—win vs. collapse—fails to capture this expanding tree of peril.
The Sharp Position and the Gambler’s Ruin
This is not just a probabilistic failure. It is a failure to account for the game-theoretic reality of war.
We must think of this conflict as a progressive sharpening of the geopolitical chessboard. Each move taken—by Ukraine, Russia, NATO, or China—creates a more precarious position. The pieces align in tension. Threats emerge. Material is committed. Options shrink. This is what chess players call a "sharp position": one in which a single misstep by either side can mean catastrophe.
Overlay this with the Gambler’s Ruin paradox: the idea that in a finite resource environment (money, troops, political will), even a player with a probabilistic edge will eventually lose if the game continues long enough.
In other words, even if Ukraine is favored in the long war—as Warburg believes—continued play risks total ruin.
Every time Ukraine is asked to "hang on a little longer," it is being forced into another round of the game. And one blunder—by Ukraine, by NATO, by Russia—can collapse the position entirely. This is why the war cannot simply “grind on.” It must be won—and quickly.
The Real Stakes: Not Territory, but Catastrophic System Collapse
Perhaps the greatest analytical failing in Warburg’s framework is his underestimation of the stakes. He rightly rejects the notion that we can just "give Russia what it wants" to end the war, but he still treats the main danger as Ukraine becoming a rump state or Russia falling into chaos.
He misses the deeper truth: we are already in a cascade environment. The war in Ukraine is not just a war for Ukrainian sovereignty. It is a node in a global web of unstable autocracies, insecure democracies, and rapid weapons innovation. The collapse of one actor—or the bold overreach of another—could unwind that web entirely.
Just as World War I began with a bullet in Sarajevo, a new, fully declared Third World War may begin with a miscalculated drone swarm, a rogue AI loitering munition, or a desperate autocrat with a decaying grip on power.
To put it simply: the stakes are closing in on a global systemic failure. The world order itself is balancing on a sharpened edge.
A Good Start, but the Wrong Shape
Paul Warburg is absolutely correct in calling for urgency. He is right that the war must end in Ukrainian victory, not in appeasement. And his analysis of AI escalation is ahead of the curve. But his framework is still too bounded, too deterministic, too linear.
To meet this moment, we must adopt a new model—one that understands:
The nature of interlocking asymmetric threats,
The danger of low-probability, high-consequence events,
The escalation ladder not just in military terms, but technological, informational, and political terms, and
The gambler's ruin paradox of attritional war, where delay itself increases the odds of a black swan collapse.
Ukraine’s victory is not inevitable. But neither is Russian collapse. What is inevitable, however, is that delay increases risk. And each new risk is not a continuation of the last game—it is a new game, with new stakes and fewer exits.
In asymmetric warfare, the only true victory is the one you force, not the one you hope for.
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