It's going to be incredibly difficult to stop Iran being able to kneecap both the global economy and in particular the gulf states, who are going to be motivated to put maximum pressure on the US to sue for peace. Incredible hubris and a lobotomised diplomatic and intelligence infrastructure in the name of ideological purity, quite the combination.
Wars are hard to predict and the economy is hard to predict. There's easy money in the making for those who are sure the oil price is going to continue way up.
The blog you reference has inaccuracies. Drones are generally not shot by THAAD is a glaring one. It's very much not 2-3 million dollars to $50k. Helicopter gunships shoot down drones with bullets these days is very common and there are other economic means of bringing them down.
Most of the heavy lifting in suppressing these attacks is done by other drones patrolling the skies and attacking anything that tries to fire. Those also don't use extremely expensive munitions.
"Iran produces approximately 500 of these drones per day and holds a stockpile estimated at around 80,000 units.". Both these are false today. I'd also question if they were true when Iran was attacked. These figures don't pass the smell test and either way any stockpile is an instant target.
Everyone seems to be an expert today.
It's obviously not great that the Hormuz straits are more or less closed. We've seen in Yemen that a ragtag force can be massively attacked and still manage to fire at ships on a much larger body of water. That said we didn't really see if they can sustain it for months under heavy attack which is a possible premise here.
There are some pipelines bypassing the straits but their capacity is much smaller. It's also about 20% of the world supply so definitely other suppliers can make up for some of the loss at a cost.
I'm not an expert. But the current oil price reflects what the experts think best. And that price is still below what it was for about half of 2022. And fluctuating. What will matter is the price over months.
> The blog you reference has inaccuracies. Drones are generally not shot by THAAD is a glaring one
It's obvious that the author doesn't mean THAAD but Patriot, which are indeed used against drones. You can tell that by the missle cost the author mentions, which is 1/10th of the THAAD missle. As the argument is a cost effectiveness argument the logic holds, just replace THAAD with Patriot.
Even though Ukraine offered their cost effective solution, they have a war to fight so any serious capacity increase will probably take months if not years and these things are not static and are quickly shaped on the battlefield so the Gulf states and Israel and USA will need to develop talent that is on the battlefield, like Russia and Ukraine did.
Absolutely agree there's both some dubious suppositions and hand-waving there. The real question is I suspect how much pressure the GCC can withstand and how much pressure they can apply to Trump directly given business ties etc. If they lose a serious chunk of desalination capacity for example the situation becomes dire extremely quickly. For Dubai simply not having a decent supply of fresh food would alone be an economic catastrophe, every day this drags on is doing reputational damage that'll take years to fully recover from long after the hotel facades are patched up.
Whatever points this author was trying to make were completely obliterated by the LLM it was run through or used to generate it.
A shame because it seems to have interesting points, but was too wordy and LLMified to keep attention. Stop telling me what it's not every other sentence, and just say what you mean. I wish folks would just use their own words.
Japan, an island nation with virtually no natural resources of its own, depends on it for a staggering 75% of its oil. Japan’s Prime Minister has warned plainly that if the Strait closes, the entire Japanese economy will collapse within eight to nine months. Not slow down. Not a contract. Collapse.
I am failing to an article about this, but that is absolutely incredible if true.
1/ When authors use AI for editing, it reduces their credibility.
2/ As much as I don't like the current administration (and Israel leadership), there is absolutely no way the assumptions this article makes about them are false.
There is no way the US/Israel didn't calculate that:
- the straight would be closed
- a new leader may represent similar idiologies of the past leader.
Everything that has happened so far (in regards to Iran attacking neighbors) has been extremely predictable. There is just no way these weren't calculated in.
Maybe the US military commanders, generals and Pentagon knew this but the civilian leadership at the top chose to completely ignore it and can't really articulate a plan or what the plan ever was.
This conflict was a long time coming: Trump claimed Biden or Obama will start a war in Iran and that is why they are weak presidents. Trump sees himself as a peacemaker (flying in to negotiate deals with TH and KH, negotiating Ukraine war, etc).
I think there is more going on to cause Trump drastically change his self-image.
I don't think this is a Trump administration driven decision.
All reports are saying the US generals were against this. And a UD senator (Graham I think) just admitted he lobbied trump for the war, comparing him to Roosevelt, and coached Netanyahou on how to lobby trump. Just look at the article:
>there is just no way these weren't calculated in.
the American government is publishing war footage intercut with Call of Duty scenes. The American secretary of defense is a former television personality with more tattoos than people in a trailer park. He said rules of engagement are stupid because they stop you from "winning" while the US bombed a girl's school.
They literally fired the people who calculate things and wage war based on memes, vibes and chatgpt recommendations
> There is no way the US/Israel didn't calculate that:
I don't really believe the buffoons in US leadership calculate much. It's all vibes.
I firmly believe it will become a case study in how many ways a comically incompetent government can damage a country.
As for Israel... I think their calculation is simple. They don't really care about how much damage they cause to the world economy, as long as they get to kill Muslims in general and Iranians in particular. They want death.
If its all vibes, then how does trump hungry for a world peace prize vibe with the war? Or the many clips of Trump trashing Obama and Biden for potentially starting a war in Iran?
Trump calling something bad but doing the exact same thing he talked against? No, I can't believe it. What a surprise. This definitely never happened before. At least before December 2025.
> There is no way the US/Israel didn't calculate that: ... the straight would be closed
It has always had this potential, as it has happened before: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Will (1987). But based on this history I would assume that many in the admin did not find the threat as credible as it was then. We dont seem to have a good grasp on how things have gone in the black sea. We clearly did not anticipate the level of drone attacks that have been put out by Iran.
Nothing says "we did not have a plan" when easing Russian sanctions while you ask Ukraine for help with defenses.
> a new leader may represent similar idiologies of the past leader.
I could see making a bet that with the current water crisis there the this would tip them into an "Arab spring" moment. For any one aware of the history there, it was a poor one at best.
If the US decided that stopping oil production in Iran was important (restricting global oil supply), what other options does the US have ease the impact on oil prices other than Russian sanction easement?
Yeah, it looks bad, but there just isn't really any other ways for the US to magically pump more oil out of the ground instantaneously to compensate for the war.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is reported to have recommended against further air strikes on Iran[1].
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"Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Dan Caine, has warned that strikes against Iran could be risky, potentially drawing the US into a prolonged conflict, US media report.
Caine has reportedly cautioned that a military action could have repercussions across the region, potentially including retaliatory strikes by Iranian proxies or a larger conflict that would require more US forces.
In a lengthy post on Truth Social, Trump described the reports as "fake news".
I agree that many people inside and outside the US gov didn't want this war for various reasons, but of the people that wanted this war, they must have calculated these very obvious risks.
The article touches on this topic, but my guess is Iran isn't part of the USD/petrol trading. If the US can convince the new leadership in Iran to start trading in USD, then that would be very good for the USA (and bad for CN, RU, and IN).
If the POTUS starts a war against the advice of the The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he should have a plan beyond "wag the dog" to distract from the Epstein files. I'm not convinced Trump actually has a plan unfortunately.
> There is no way the US/Israel didn't calculate that - the straight would be closed, a new leader may represent similar idiologies of the past leader.
A few things to remember here. First, Israel and US have divergent strategic goals. (Well, that presumes the US has strategic goals, which appears to be false given the struggle the administration has had over the past week to explain why the fuck we're at war with Iran.) Israel's apparent goal is the complete destruction of the Iranian state, and Netanyahu certainly seems to believe that Israel will suffer no consequences as a result.
The second is that Trump has never faced any consequences for his actions. If anything goes wrong, he just lies and says that it's all right, changes the topic and since no one talks about anymore, hey, it's been fixed. It also seems as if he believes that nobody else truly has agency, so the idea that the enemy gets a vote in war may truly be foreign to him.
Note also the quality of people that Trump has surrounded himself with in this term. The head of the military is someone who washed out of the military officer corps (and also essentially failed in every managerial career he's had since them). They openly denigrate the importance of things like logistics in military, in favor of big, manly things like the awesome power of their missile salvos. I believe Hegseth legitimately doesn't give a crap about the boring things like naval escort missions because that's not manly, and instead cares more about how much big kaboom has been delivered to Iran, and so far the evidence of how the operation has gone to doubt completely vindicates that belief.
Fourth, even almost two weeks into the strait being closed, the US military has done nothing to reopen it. The strait is not closed because of the existence of mines, or because Iran is targeting ships; it is closed because shippers are absolutely terrified to send their ships through it. Reopening it thus requires giving those people confidence to send their ships through it, and that confidence of course requires clear, public statements. That is not happening. Instead, we get Trump giving off a different explanation of how to reopen it everytime he's asked, followed up by the US Navy denying whatever Trump said (e.g., the US Navy is unwilling to provide any naval escort). There is insufficient materiel in the theater right now to reopen the strait, and nothing is being shipped to the strait that can reopen it. From all apparent evidence, the current plan for reopening the strait is praying that it reopens tomorrow, although I have doubts that there is enough self-awareness or religiosity to actually do any praying here.
The risk of Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz is so obvious, the catastrophe of such an action is so well-known, that you would have to be a colossal idiot to go into a situation where Iran might plausibly close the strait without a plan to reopen it swiftly. And yet all available evidence leans in that direction. So now many, many people are forced to countenance the sobering idea that the US government is led by an idiot who will destroy the economy without realizing that's what he's doing. It's time for us to wake up to the fact that there are no adults in the US government anymore and do something about that.
I think you give too much credit to the US and zionists. They probably convinced Trump that it would be another Venezuela, and because of their hubris they decided to go for it anyway. Remember how at the beginning it was supposed to only last for 2-3 days? Then 1 week, then 2 weeks, then 4 weeks, then until September. They clearly didn't see this far.
I'm very surprised anyone would think Iran would be a Venezuela.
Venezuela's leadership was barely legitimate (with voter fraud / dictactorship 3 years ago) whereas the supreme leader in Iran has had power for 36 years.
This is written a bit like the US dollar depends solely on the price of oil, which isn't true.
It also seems like if we're to game theory this, we'd need to plot out the full escalation capacity of the USA, which the author is failing to do here. I don't like the idea of doing that because the thought is sickening, but it's necessary to consider the entire decision tree to make a remotely rational model.
In retrospect I guess game theory is used kind of rhetorically here. If you consider what's written through that lens, it's very poorly developed and doesn't make sense. Maybe this is a thing, though? Am I misunderstanding what the author means by game theory here?
I do think the asymmetry of war costs are a serious problem for the USA, and the less they're willing to escalate or otherwise mitigate this, the more serious that problem becomes. If I were to make a statement like the author did about the war, I'd frame it more like "this is going to be insanely fucking risky and expensive for the USA", but certainly not that they'll lose.
edit: Listening to the Professor Jiang analysis and I understand why game theory was referenced now. He seems much more thorough and analytical so far.
edit again: he claims Dubai will probably go bankrupt in one scenario. This seems exceedingly unlikely, but he doesn't explain why it could be true
You might expect events like this to fundamentally change the global order or bring some sanity to U.S. policymaking. But nothing is going to change. It will be chaotic few years, but soon enough, everything will be conveniently forgotten. Iranian/Syrian/Afganian threat will reappear, the war-mongers and Israel-lobby will once more push for pre-emptive strikes, assassinations of leaders or generals. Rinse and repeat.
At its core, the problem is a militarized, propaganda-driven state masquareding itself as a necessary guarantor of global order, while its sole objective is nothing more than letting no other nation threaten its supremacy. And much of the world continuing to accept that narrative either because of lack of alternatives or out of necessity.
The core of the problem is that the US stepped back under Obama from being the guarantor of global order. The world needs policing and deterrence is the sad reality otherwise everything goes to hell.
Why did Russia attack Ukraine? Why is China threatening to attack Taiwan? Without the US (and the west more generally) Russia would retake half of Europe and China would have taken Taiwan. If you think there would be world peace you are so very much mistaken (speaking of propaganda). If you goal is to speak Russian and Chinese and live in those sorts of regimes then that's very much aligned with the US and the West just stepping back and not using force ever.
> The core of the problem is that the US stepped back under Obama from being the guarantor of global order.
That is not the core of the problem. We can go a bit further:
- Obama was a reaction to overstepping under Bush. As a 'guarantor of global order' the US created a lot of disorder with Iraq and Afganistan. That is actually more in line with what historically the US understands under 'the global order': the US does what it wants to do and calls it the global order.
- also the relative standing of the US since the end of the 90s is falling, because of the rise of other countries. That was widely expected and forecasted. What was also expected is that empires on their way out don't act rationally, because there is ample historical precendent to that. And so here we are.
Normally what happens in these scenarios is that both sides declare victory and go home to lick their wounds.
The US and Israel can claim that they've caused the IRGC sufficient damage to set them back a decade or more.
Iran will declare that they've fought off a superpower with minimal real losses. They can also claim that -- despite intense foreign interference -- they got to choose and keep their preferred leader, alive. For now.
Normally yes, but without regime change the Iranian leadership will have even more resolve than ever to continue weapons programs (nuclear or not) and prepare retaliation for the inevitable next round of bombing…
I'm not claiming either side is actually winning, I'm merely predicting that they'll both claim to have won.
On the topic of the weapons program: The Israeli approach is to regularly "mow the lawn" to keep their regional opponents perpetually behind. Iran's nuclear weapons and ICBM programmes have almost certainly been damaged, perhaps enough to delay them for half a decade or more. Then it'll be time to mow the lawn again, or hope that by then a more moderate leadership can sign an agreement with a new US president that's a bit more trustworthy than the current one.
That's a lot of words for describing "attempting MAD doctrine with conventional weapons". Hell, we even got to see a "first strike decapitation countered by autonomous cells with pre-written second strike directives" scenario play out.
Israel and the US completely control their airspace and Iran's entire navy got demolished. I think the US prefers not to got too far as they prefer to keep the negotiation talks open. According to reports they asked Israel not to target energy for example.
> Israel and the US completely control their airspace
Maybe the soldiers sending shaheds and missiles hitting other countries every day haven't gotten the memo? Did somebody forget to put a cover sheet on it?
That's not a reasonable option, it's a bear-trap. Once troops are on the ground it will be another decades-long slog, and one that ends like Afghanistan at best. At worst, this looks like America's version of Ukraine.
I can argue both sides but under the assumption (which I think is true) that 80%-90% of Iranians want to remove the regime there's some possibility of success. That said there's also the possibility of screwing things up completely and getting the entire population to fight you as an invader.
One thing for sure, it's not going to look like Russia invading Ukraine. The Iranians don't have the resolve or the support or the capabilities that Ukraine had and has. It will look more like Iraq in terms of the ability of the military to put up any resistance.
The problem with "boots on the ground" isn't that it can't succeed. The problem is it has zero support from the American public. People feel about this a lot more strongly than the other topics dividing the public.
Iranian polls show that 20-25%
Iranians living in Iran support the IRGC, but due to how the questions were formulated, you can't know who would support a regime change.
Polls after the 12 day bombing campaign in 2025 showed that 60% disapproved the bombing. That means you probably have at least a 40% base of support for active overthroing, growing, to change the regime, which is larger than the current supporters. Maybe you could have done something with it. Wait until the previous Komenei died of his cancer instead of martyring him, and wait for the new nomination and the protests that would follow to strike (decapitation of the morality police, species to open the prisons, etc).
The way it was done just feels like the US wanted chaos and death, not meaningful change.
Trump, the neo-cons, and much of the Republican party might as well hang up their hats if they put boots on the ground (beyond special forces which is often ignored for some reason).
The US will be bogged down for years at a minimum if we entered Iran on the ground, or we would lose quickly and tuck tail.
This isn't a fight to be won in a conventional war, the administration put every chip they had on a gamble that regime change was possible with air superiority alone. I don't know of any historical example of that working, but I guess we'll see what happens.
Everyone says there's no historical examples but there is no exact parallel either. I wouldn't argue based on historical precedence here.
The challenge is that regime is large and armed and they can hide and weather the storm. They'll hide in hospitals, and mosques, and schools and amongst civilians.
Getting them and disrupting their organization to a point where a popular revolt can take over seems ... lessay hard.
What needs to happen is that some parts of the military, who are a bit less fanatic, switches sides. The probability of that is very hard to gauge. There are stories of some defecting but hard to know if it's true or not.
The UK population was _very_ weary of Churchill and his decision to involve the UK in WW2. You had the UK nazi party that was lobbying the industrialists, and the moscow-aligned communist party that was putting pressure on the laborers. Churchill would have lasted at most half a year after Dunkerque, and and much more pro-nazi PM could have been named. But the German airstrike campaign radicalised the UK population. Because the fucking Nazis couldn't bear to have decisions like 'who to bomb' taken by non-nazi, they replaced all the capable men with idiots yesmen.
Historical precedent is important with regards to predictability. We have no idea if simply bombing them to hell will be enough for regime change, while we do know that there is some lower bound of military involvement on the ground that would have likely success with that goal.
Personally I don't see how an air campaign alone can lead to any regime change we'd actually want to see. We are all being told the Iranian public is a cohesive unit with a strong majority wanting to go back to 1978, I don't buy it.
The only likely outcomes I see, if the regime is changed at all, is a military coup with even worse people coming in, a very bloody civil war, or a faction in the country we never hear about taking over quickly by promising the world to the public. For the last one, I'd expect that to be a group more akin to the Nazis than some group that actually means well for Iranians.
The ground deployment to the mountains on Iran's side of the strait will have to be absolutely insane to actually eliminate the threat (if it's even possible to) of Iran launching drones or suicide boats at tankers.
Consumer? Apple or Google Photos or 'drive' functionality of either. The only real risk then is losing your account and Apple Photos has an option to keep them all locally on disk.
To be pedantic, the post you responded to asked about "storage medium", not storage services, which leads to the question of what storage medium they use and how long the services will be around.
The thing people miss is isn't not that there aren't downsides (power, memory, disk size, dependency ecosystem size etc etc) it's that they're still completely outweighed by the upsides of write-once-ship-all for authors.
I suspect what'll kill these is the same thing that kill google glass - social ostracisation. It's so, so wildly adversarial to effectively shove a recording device in the face of everyone you're interacting with you might as well wear a emergency orange t-shirt with 'verified asshole' written on it.
They look like any other pair of sunglasses. No piece of glass over one eye reminding everyone you meet that you’re wearing a camera. They’re incredibly stealthy
Have you seen them in the wild? They're notably chunky and have an obvious hole where the lens is. You might not notice it in passing but if someone's talking to you it's hard not to notice. I wonder how many of their owners realise how much they're affecting every interaction they have with another human.
You would have to have been hiding under an extremely large rock not to assume this given the technology involved and Meta's overtly and consistently anti-privacy stances and history.
Blaming oil companies for the extremely well documented history of suppression of research and action into the impact of climate change is not childish.
Yes, and cigarettes, asbestos, lead in gasoline, and a few others, too. Clearly there is a place for education and coordinated action among the common people.
Decades to centuries of phenomenal, thoughtful, unique, creative kids stories that can be curated to introduce whole worlds of ideas. And you want to replace it with cookie-cutter AI slop and give them the world's worst case of Main Character Syndrome, how utterly depressing.
It's going to be incredibly difficult to stop Iran being able to kneecap both the global economy and in particular the gulf states, who are going to be motivated to put maximum pressure on the US to sue for peace. Incredible hubris and a lobotomised diplomatic and intelligence infrastructure in the name of ideological purity, quite the combination.
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