Weaver is a Rationalist and EA writer and a full time active duty Army Officer. He is a part of Philly Rats and EA Philly(barely) and you can read all of his writing through his author website: http://storyweaver.quest/ (links to Royal Road fiction)
Sect Leader is an attempt to shovel EA principles into a fantasy narrative(a nod to HPMOR), everything else is just for fun.
I'm founding two companies:
Riverfolk Publishing which is an indie imprint, initially for myself. We've expanded to four authors and our first book launches in September.
Red Cell EA, which is an EA focused consultancy. This is still in the planning stages.
I'm looking for startup grants to see if Red Cell EA can turn into viable full time work.
I can help you if you need help writing fiction, getting published or anything LITRPG.
Honestly, I know many people that aren't smart but still are dedicated and get things done. I would take a dedicated person who can make things happen over someone who sounds great on paper but isn't the best at getting people to understand what they mean.
On the more pressing idea, I think that you should look into becoming a junior operations manager: https://80000hours.org/articles/operations-management/ Operations touches all aspects of EA and if you can make someone work more efficiently, then you're on the right path. This would hopefully give you more exposure to other career paths.
Also don't discount the ability to speak Polish, English, and French. Just having that skillset will help you out a ton. I don't know what the EA community is like in Poland or France, but I'm sure there is someone.
For me full-time work(military) there are certain safety regulations regarding when things need to happen and who needs to sign off on them so they can go ahead. A recent example is when we had an emerging requirement that needed a general to sign off on something otherwise six months of planning for an event would be out the window. The general was out of our chain of command and thus wouldn't need us to do the thing we needed, it would just be good training for his people. We had a requirement, they had a requirement and something got lost in the translation, causing us to either make several high-level phone calls or drop the glass ball.
When I met my boss he has a different but related theory. It's about the steel ball, rubber ball and glass ball.
The steel ball you can drop and it won't break, but you need to pick it up to keep going.
The rubber ball you can keep bouncing down the line.
The glass ball, once broken can't be fixed.
You have to identify which item is which.
Artillery is the biggest conventional threat. Indirect fire, combined with drones or better spotting would lead to the largest amount of casualties.
This is unconventional(Information Operations), but I would expect that the better question is what are the fighters willing to accept? If they're getting shelled everyday with more and more accurate artillery rounds that is going to eat away at whatever morale they have left. It's far easier to walk away from a war in which you're guaranteed certain death and go AWOL than to stick around as people around you are whittled down. Ukrainian fighters seem to be all in regarding this, as they have stood against Russian artillery the whole time. Russian fighters? I get the sense that they're not as well informed as they should be. Information seems to be siloed off differently(and this is just from following the news), as I wouldn't -if I were a dictator- want the real truth of the matter to reach a demoralized front line, months after they were supposed to be in a short decision mission.
Military guy here. Things that we always consider are the most likely course of action and the most deadly course of action that the adversary can take.
Since this is a trench warfare with the added emphasis of drones, the most likely course of action is that things won't change much and that battle lines will remain stagnant. This is with the additional point of contention that Ukraine right now is going through the most incredible logistical supply chain process that has ever happened, and Russia kinda keeps losing generals due to stupid OPSEC losses. Of course there will be a spring offensive and counter offensive, and I would favor Ukraine in this manner because it's their territory, etc, and a point of national pride.
The other problem is the enemys most deadly course of action which is to launch CBRN type weapons back at the Ukrainians. Russians have been entrenched in Crimea for years so getting them out of that position is going to be difficult. They have time to mine and booby trap everything. However... the dark horse that is nuclear usage really needs to be understood from the lens that (A) someone has to accurately tell Putin what is going on (B) he has to respond requesting this to happen (C) someone has to launch a nuke (and the doctrine is that nukes are kept at the Battalion level in the Russian Army) (D) all of this has to not be stopped somehow by an intelligence leak or an insider who doesn't want a nuclear war.
I don't consider myself a high achiever, except for the one school the Army sent me to that I did really well at (I had a lot of preparation and mentors before I arrived), but let me tell you how I broke into EA and in turn how I think you could do a lot of good for the community.
I became a writer(later an indie publisher) during the pandemic (also became a dad), mostly because someone nuked my DND campaign, and I now had a son. My son napped a lot and in that time I found that I could write stuff, so I formed/joined two writers groups, and then they beat me up until I read "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality". I would not be here except for that which led me to join rationalist discords and write a whole fiction book where EA is the underlying theme. I'm not Alexander Wales or the Yudkowski fellow, but I do like writing and reading fiction, and if I can get readers to consider the EA/Rationalist viewpoint, then all the better.
You might not feel like you can make a high impact, but if you can write something, fun and compelling to read, then others might follow suit. (That, or write articles here, which reminds me I need to write another one about operations.)
I feel like the interpersonal dynamic of reaching out from EA groups to outside groups is missed a lot, but also I have never been to an EA global event because of the pandemic.
80K is a useful tool to find out where you can do the most good, but often, and especially here it can be very unclear if something will be a fit.
You might not write the next HPMOR, but you could write something similar. Or as will probably happen in my case, be the editor/publisher for the next HPMOR.
It would be great to train a cadre of EAs in political matters, working in NGOs at different levels to accomplish EA goals. I'm kicking around the idea of what that would look like, i.e. an EA NGO that directly interacts with the United Nations, and how we would do training for said organization. That's something that conceptually is doable with current resources, although not every EA wants to wade hip deep into bureaucracy. I do, and it's my current job, but it is 100% definitely not for everyone.
This is quite similar to what I'm looking to do, definitely more fresh. Heading to discord to make friends.