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David Axe

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David Axe
Axe in 2011
Born (1978-04-11) April 11, 1978 (age 46)
Arlington, Texas, U.S.
EducationFurman University (BA)
University of South Carolina (MA)
Occupations
  • Military correspondent
  • blogger
  • graphic novelist

David Axe (born April 11, 1978) is an American military correspondent, blogger, and graphic novelist. Axe founded the website War Is Boring in 2007 as a webcomic, and later developed it into a news blog.

Early life and education

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David Axe was born on April 11, 1978, in Arlington, Texas.[1][2] He attended Eisenhower High School from 1992 to 1996.[1] After graduation, he enrolled at Furman University and earned a bachelor's degree in history in 2000.[3][1] Then he went to the University of Virginia to study medieval history before transferring to and graduating from the University of South Carolina with a master's degree in fiction in 2004.[3][1]

Journalism

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Axe was engaged in freelance writing before joining the Columbia, South Carolina-based weekly newspaper Free Times to cover county politics.[2][4] In late 2004, he persuaded his editor to let him cover South Carolina guardsmen's deployment to the Iraq War and moved to Iraq in January 2005.[4][2] Leaving the Free Times soon after, Axe continued to work in Iraq as a war correspondent for The Village Voice, The Washington Times, C-SPAN, BBC Radio, Popular Science, Fast Company, and Cosmopolitan.[2]

In 2012, Axe reported in The Diplomat that U.S. special operations on the Korean Peninsula may have been infiltrating North Korea to gather intelligence based on quotes he attributed to U.S. Army Brigadier General Neil Tolley. U.S. officials condemned the report, accusing Axe of making up quotes and attributing them to Tolley.[5] Retired Navy SEAL Brandon Webb circulated a suicide note ostensibly written and signed by Axe, which depicted him killing himself in shame for making up the story. The note circulated on Twitter and Facebook and caused rumors of its authenticity. Webb later took Axe's name off it and said that it was meant to be satirical.[6][7] Several other reporters who were in the same room publicly came to Axe's defense, saying they heard the same things and that Axe's story accurately quoted Tolley's remarks. Tolley stated that Axe had misquoted him as he was speaking hypothetically.[8]

Axe has been a member of the staff of Forbes since 2020 as a war correspondent.[9]

War Is Boring

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Beginning in 2007, Axe began writing a webcomic called War Is Boring and illustrated by cartoonist Matt Bors.[10]

The publication gained particular attention for its coverage of the defense industry, especially the Lockheed Martin's controversial F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program.[11]

In May 2015, Medium made significant changes to its company structure. This included massive funding cuts in the editorial department. Medium shut down several publications and forced many others to cut longtime editors and writers. War Is Boring's budget was heavily slashed, most of the staff was laid off and story output greatly decreased. Before long, Axe publicly announced that War Is Boring was searching for a new publisher.[12]

In July 2015, War Is Boring and Reuters launched the War College podcast, a joint venture hosted by Reuters opinion editor Jason Fields and War Is Boring contributing editor Matthew Gault.[13]

David Axe left War Is Boring in 2019.[14]

Notable stories

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F-35 "dogfight leak"

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In 2015, Axe obtained a leaked testing report written by a pilot that recounted how the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter the tester was flying was unable to outmaneuver an F-16 fighter it was facing off against in a simulated dogfight, the report circulated widely in defense publications and mainstream media outlets. While the Pentagon admitted that the fighter was only designed to be “comparable to current tactical fighters in terms of maneuverability,” the spokesperson insisted that Axe "did not tell the entire story” and thus was misrepresentating the facts.[15][16][17]

Then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump cited War Is Boring's coverage during an interview with Hugh Hewitt in which he argued the F-35 program should be cancelled.[18] This possibly helped spur a showdown between Trump and Lockheed Martin execs that Trump claimed reduced the cost of the program, though several analysts have questioned the savings.[19]

Civilian casualties in Syria and Iraq

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War Is Boring reporter Joseph Trevithick obtained U.S. military documents that revealed possible mistakes by Canadian pilots in the war against the Islamic State that could have resulted in greater civilian casualties than initially reported.[20][21]

After breaking the story, War Is Boring worked with the Airwars project to share the documents with The Guardian, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the Dutch-language RTL Nieuws.[22][23][24][25] CBC's The Fifth Estate would go on to incorporate the data into a larger investigative feature.[26]

"Narin Afrin photo" controversy

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During the siege of Kobanî, a photo taken by British freelance photographer Matt Cetti-Roberts (at the time working with War Is Boring) of YPJ snipers in the town of Rabia became widely shared by activists on social media claiming it depicted female Kurdish guerilla leader Narin Afrin, who was apparently in charge of Kobanî's defense. The photo soon became a meme. War Is Boring's Iraq coverage editor Kevin Knodell wrote a post clarifying the photo's origin, and asserted that the woman in the photo was highly unlikely to be Afrin. The photo, as well as comments by Knodell and Cetti-Roberts on Twitter became a subject of debate in both French and Kurdish media.[27]

"People have very sudden, very emotional responses to things they see on the internet, and they share them with friends and families [...] But sometimes they do that without checking on facts, or seeing if there's any truth to what they are seeing or reading. Social media is a great thing, but it has its downsides too", War Is Boring's Iraq coverage editor Kevin Knodell told Kurdish media outlet Rudaw.[28]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d "David Axe". FilmFreeway. Retrieved December 20, 2022.
  2. ^ a b c d Lomando White, Patricia (March 26, 2007). "Pitt to Feature Editorial Cartoonists Who Take Aim at Iraq War" (PDF). Pitt Chronicle. Vol. VIII, no. 11. p. 7. Retrieved December 20, 2022.
  3. ^ a b "David". MySpace. Archived from the original on July 7, 2008. Retrieved December 20, 2022.
  4. ^ a b Grant, Will (August 4, 2012). "David Axe: A Face of Modern War Correspondence". DPx Gear. Retrieved December 20, 2022.
  5. ^ Harlan, Chico (May 29, 2012). "U.S. denies North Korea commando operation". The Washington Post. Retrieved June 15, 2019.
  6. ^ Webb, Brandon (June 4, 2012). "Bullshit Journalism Has Consequences". NEWSREP. Retrieved December 20, 2022.
  7. ^ Axe, David [@daxe] (May 31, 2012). "A former Navy SEAL named Brandon T Webb (@sofrep) wrote online that I killed myself. sofrep.com/7608/reporter-kil…" (Tweet). Retrieved December 20, 2022 – via Twitter.
  8. ^ Ryall, Julian (May 31, 2012). "US special forces head admits North Korea comments 'could have been clearer'". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved December 20, 2022.
  9. ^ "David Axe". Forbes. Retrieved May 11, 2024.
  10. ^ War Is Boring. C-SPAN. November 21, 2010. Retrieved December 20, 2022.
  11. ^ Haberman, Clyde (January 24, 2016). "Despite Decades of Stealth, Sticking Points Bedevil F-35 Jet". The New York Times. Retrieved December 20, 2022.
  12. ^ Weissman, Cale Guthrie (June 2, 2015). "Medium, the publishing platform started by one of Twitter's cofounders, is gutting some of its most popular sites". Business Insider. Retrieved December 20, 2022.
  13. ^ "War College". Reuters. Archived from the original on August 1, 2015. Retrieved December 20, 2022.
  14. ^ Axe, David [@daxe] (May 6, 2020). "In early 2019 I was coming off a bad few years running War Is Boring for a chain of shitty owners. [...]" (Tweet). Retrieved December 20, 2022 – via Twitter.
  15. ^ "Test Pilot: The F-35 Can't Dogfight Worth a Damn". Popular Mechanics. June 30, 2015. Retrieved December 20, 2022.
  16. ^ Davenport, Christian (July 1, 2015). "Pentagon says damning report of F-35 troubles 'doesn't tell the entire story'". The Washington Post. Retrieved June 15, 2019.
  17. ^ Ferran, Lee (July 1, 2015). "Military: Don't Worry If F-35, Most Expensive Fighter Jet Ever, Can't Dogfight Well". ABC News. Retrieved December 20, 2022.
  18. ^ Swarts, Phillip (October 29, 2015). "Trump wants to 'fire' F-35". Air Force Times. Retrieved December 20, 2022.
  19. ^ Cohen, Zachary (April 25, 2017). "Trump: I've saved US billions on F-35 fighters". CNN. Retrieved December 20, 2022.
  20. ^ Campion-Smith, Bruce (September 3, 2015). "Canadian airstrike in Iraq may have killed up to 27 civilians: Kurdish militia soldier". Toronto Star. Retrieved March 1, 2021.
  21. ^ Trevithick, Joseph (August 26, 2015). "The Pentagon Doesn't Know How Many Civilians It Has Killed in Iraq and Syria". War Is Boring. Retrieved December 20, 2022.
  22. ^ Sawa, Timothy; Fortune, Lynette; Bdiwe, Ghalia (September 3, 2015). "Up to 27 Iraqi civilians may have been killed in Canadian airstrike, Pentagon document reveals". CBC News. Archived from the original on May 16, 2017. Retrieved July 20, 2017.
  23. ^ Ross, Alice (September 3, 2015). "Civilian deaths claimed in 71 US-led airstrikes on Isis". The Guardian. Retrieved December 20, 2022.
  24. ^ Edwards, Michael (September 4, 2015). "Islamic State: Australian air strike may have caused civilian casualties in Iraq, US report says". ABC News. Retrieved December 20, 2022.
  25. ^ "Coalitie tegen IS: nauwelijks burgers gedood bij luchtaanvallen". RTL Nieuws (in Dutch). September 3, 2015. Retrieved December 20, 2022.
  26. ^ "Canada in Iraq : The Hidden War". CBC News. October 30, 2015. Archived from the original on March 9, 2017. Retrieved July 20, 2017.
  27. ^ "Nalin Afrin, l'icône kurde, a plusieurs visages". France 24 (in French). October 13, 2014. Retrieved December 20, 2022.
  28. ^ Devi, Sharmila (October 18, 2014). "Kurds confused in fog of war". Rudaw. Rudaw Media Network. Retrieved December 20, 2022.
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