It seems like every year we find links between viruses and disease. I wonder if broader vaccines will lead to accidentally eradicating some diseases like the HPV vaccine is currently eradicating cervical cancer.
I'd argue there is a 3) show other gulf nations that the US can't defend them. They are doing a pretty reasonable job of that right now too considering the infra that is being destroyed daily. The real question is what are their goals and what do they stand to gain? A new list may be:
1) Stay in power. They really were pretty destabilized before this. This war may actually be propping up their government because hitting a bully, despite what the movies say, just gives them more power. Reporting from inside the country is sparse, but it seems like the few stories coming out aren't showing the same level of internal unrest that was there a month ago. This objective seems on track.
2) Increase their influence in the region. This is likely happening by the minute mainly by the fact that the US is losing influence in the region the longer this goes on. The US's loss is Iran's gain. I suspect that actual negotiations are happening in secret between Iran and gulf nations that will have long term consequences. I don't know that this objective is on track, it will take years to see, but if I were betting long term I would bet that Iran in 5-10 years will have much more influence in the region than they had a month ago.
3) Harm the US and Israel. Spain is getting almost hostile and we have a lot of US assets there. Pretty much every country on the planet is turning their back on the US openly. The most 'help' the US has gotten is basing from the UK and, of course, gulf nations supporting strikes. Israel is going to loose military aid for decades and potentially more after this administration leaves. This objective seems on track too.
I honestly don't know how Iran could get a better outcome than what is happening right now. By the end of this they will look rational compared to the US, the rhetoric of the last 50 years will look vindicated giving them increased influence and access in the region and a new generation of extremists will have been created. This has the makings of becoming one of the worst blunders in military history.
How many of the strikes in Iran were 100% organic Navy assets? Sure, f18's took off and landed on carriers, but they tanked a couple times before dropping their bombs. The CSG helps, but was it really the thing enabling strikes? We have a massive air base in Qatar and other capabilities in the region. We are using bases all over the place to support these operations. The CSG helps... but isn't crucial to what is going on here. Now, bring S-3 organic tanking back and maybe the CSG would have a -little- more legitimacy.
The title should change 'won't' to 'shouldn't'. This administration doesn't do things because of deep understanding, it does them because of gut reaction. The US Military could, at an unknown cost, just blast away.
This article points out, rightfully, how scared we are to put our weapons in harms way because of how expensive they are. I made this argument many times to friends years ago. From a military strategic point of view we should be developing drone/cruise missile carriers (and upping our SSGN capabilities) and abandoning the carrier navy. They are only good for show at port visits and turn useful ships like DDGs into escorts instead of front line assets.
That being said, from a diplomatic strategic point of view, I really like a useless navy full of ships that are good for port visits and not real wars. If you build ships good for real wars you tend to get into wars. If you build ships good for visiting other countries you tend not to go to war with those countries.
The position of the article seems to me to be it 'won't' because it can't. And that is an accurate assessment.
It would take much more than the forces in the region, to secure the "strait". To actually secure the strait, you have to secure the entire Persian Gulf. It doesn't matter if tankers can pass through the strait only to be blown up just of Qatar. At it's widest the Gulf is about 360 kilometers, well within the range of most drones, aerial, surface and underwater. So they would have to protect every ship in the gulf, intercept all the drones all the time, or secure the entire coastline. It's simply a task air-power and naval power can't perform. Not without major casualties and without attacks going through.
The US navies ships are good for real wars, but for casualties to be accepted, there has to be a real purpose. Escorting a bunch of privately owned oil tankers to bring down the price of gas does not really cut it.
Nowadays it's about efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Sure, 99% of the time a Shahed-136 might "lose" against a Patriot, but a Patriot missile costs 200x what a Shahed does.
Laser and EWar approaches are going to be more successful long-term as the price per "shot" is dramatically less, but deployments are slow.
The US uses APKWS and similar against Shahed-136. These guided missiles are cheaper than the Shahed-136. Why would you assume the US uses Patriot missiles against a Shahed-136? That isn’t part of their doctrine and the flight profile is a poor fit.
These have been operational in the US military for almost 15 years now and are widely deployed in the Middle East. You may want to update your priors. The US military anticipated all of this.
While these are cheaper than the Shahed-136, lasers have the advantage of unlimited magazine depth, so it is obvious why the US would invest in that.
I can't read either of those because they are paywalled but ghe first paragraph of the first one doesn't seem to support your position.
In any case, almost everything i've read is that the majority of drones are shot down with APKWS, with a patriot sometimes used as a last resort if one gets through.
> In the statement, a Bahraini government spokesperson said the [Patriot] missile successfully intercepted an Iranian drone mid-air, saving lives.
> Wars in the Middle East and Ukraine have put a spotlight on how limited supplies of sophisticated missiles—including multimillion-dollar Patriot interceptors—are sometimes being used to defend against mass-produced drones that cost just a few thousand dollars.
> Gulf states are also spending big on the war. Nations including Saudi Arabia have launched multimillion-dollar Patriot interceptors and fired missiles from aircraft to take out Iranian drones.
The E-3 Sentry that got blown up was reportedly hit by drone. I'd guess they wish a Patriot had stopped that one.
Bahrain is not the usa. There are many reports that gulf states use patriot missiles much more freely than usa does.
> are sometimes being used to defend against mass-produced drones that cost just a few thousand dollars
"Sometimes" being the key word here. I think 1% of the time would technically constitute sometimes and changes the ecconomics considerably.
It should be noted the Shahed-136 drone that was mentioned above cost $100,000, not a couple thousand.
My position is not that it never happens, just that its relatively rare and a bit overblown in the media. Military does need to figure out better solutions, but the status quo is not use a patriot on every drone.
"“Often they [the US and its allies] were firing thoughtlessly,” the officer said. “For example, they used SM-6 missiles — from a ship, a very good anti-missile missile. This missile costs about $6 million, and they used it to shoot down a Shahed costing $70,000.”"
> It should be noted the Shahed-136 drone that was mentioned above cost $100,000, not a couple thousand.
> Sure, 99% of the time a Shahed-136 might "lose" against a Patriot, but a Patriot missile costs 200x what a Shahed does.
From what i understand, i think people use other systems than patriots to shoot down Shaheds except as a last resort. So the cost difference is bad, but its not nearly as bad as it would be if you were using something like a patriot for every drone.
Nonsense. Every military is built to counter certain types of enemies. Nations that win predict correctly, nations that lose predict incorrectly. History is littered with examples.
> Pretty sure anyone who fights the US military finds out pretty fast it’s a good military.
I am not sure about that. Iraq, Afghanistan, to name the new ones and Vietnam to name an old one.
Sure you can take an easy/undisciplined target like Maduro. But many armies in the world can also do that. Another thing that has to be recognized: alternative warfare (ie: terrorism) is a legitimate form of warfare regardless of its morality. You can't, in my opinion, claim military supremacy while not being able to contain these other risks.
Perhaps you're considering only the European theater, but even that would have been significantly more challenging for Russia without the U.S. tying up (and degrading) Axis resources and manpower throughout Europe and elsewhere (e.g. the Pacific). Japan could have very well opened an eastern front for Russia.
And, it was the U.S. that forced a two front war that prevented Germany's fuller focus on Russia's western front (millions fewer troops). Not to mention U.S. logistical and material support to the Soviet Union, which may well have prevented their industrial collapse.
Even with all of this support, the fatality rates for Russia were astronomical. To this day, it boggles my mind that one nation lost ~26 million people in a single war.
Hard to imagine how they would have succeeded without the U.S.
I think that says more about our political leaders than our military.
Politicians choose the war and our military fights the battles. We're very good at winning battles. But some wars can't be won. The problem then lies in their choosing.
I imagine Sisyphus became the best, most effective rock push in the world. Unfortunately despite his talents, the task he was assigned was insoluble.
I generally agree that Americans tend to downplay the impact of Russia in WW2 but there is zero chance Russia would have won the war without the US. Even Lend-Lease going away would have resulted in a loss. Both Stalin and Kruschev agreed there.
The British Commonwealth was the biggest factor in Africa, but it's questionable how quickly they could have won out and taken the Suez without the Americans coming in late in 42, which was critical for both vital supplies like oil and also invading Italy. Japan was already getting bogged down with China and even Burma so they wouldn't have suddenly been free to do much in the European theater but just getting Italy out of the fight and forcing Germany to replace their divisions elsewhere. Italy exiting the war removed 30+ divisions between the Balkans and France, while another 70 Axis divisions were being held down by Allied forces in the Mediterranean during D-Day, with there being 33 Axis divisions in Normandy for D-Day itself. A lack of US involvement also likely means that Germany is able to hold Caucasus for longer (and take more of the oil fields), solving a sizable portion of their oil shortage issues.
With Lend-Lease but no active participation in the war from a military deployment standpoint, the UK and USSR do likely eventually win but at much greater cost and not without risk of losing. Without Lend-Lease it is highly possible that the Axis wins, at least in the European theater. Japan had kind of set themselves up to lose from the start no matter what the US did.
Sure, they will find out it is a good military. No doubt about that. What the US has found out repeatedly but fails to acknowledge is that the opposition proves to be a match. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Somalia have shown just how deep reserves of human resilience and arsenal of guerrilla tactics they have. This doesn't fit the US's mindset about how war is to be waged.
Meanwhile, the American public wants a quick skirmish and a bold "We WON" claim .. it has no appetite for body bags coming home and the price of oil rising.
Which is why if China makes a move on Taiwan, the US can do nothing.
I agree with your statement that human resilience can outlast a better army.
But then you go on to say:
> Which is why if China makes a move on Taiwan, the US can do nothing.
If your opening thesis is true, then it's strange you follow it up with that. Taiwan has just as much a chance of outlasting a stronger competitor as those other countries that resisted US dominance.
And with the US providing them weapons, intelligence, and support, maybe a better chance. See Ukraine.
You are right to some extent. But there are huge differences between all the wars the US has fought and is currently involved in, and a China-Taiwan war.
Taiwan is only a couple of miles from mainland China at its closest point. It is possible to land large numbers of boots on the ground. Next, unlike the US, the Chinese govt is not dependent on the approval of its citizens for waging a war. It exercises complete control of the media, and squelches dissent immediately. AndIt has the largest navy in the world and a relatively modern fleet, and the supply chain is very very short. The US has no leverage over China.
You’re describing all the advantages that Russia in theory had when it invaded Ukraine. That war remains in stalemate.
With US support and the resilience and ingenuity of their people, Ukraine has persisted.
> It is possible to land large numbers of boots on the ground.
I think you need to do more research on how challenging a Taiwan invasion would be. It is nowhere near as simple as “just cross the strait. Put those boots on the ground.”
There is a reason it has not happened. It would be incredibly logistically challenging.
It's not the first time that overwhelming force fails to deliver results for the US when they get bogged down in an asymmetric war. The Korean and Vietnam wars last century still involved air carriers parked off the coast of Korea and Vietnam. But in the end, those wars turned into messy grinds. And even with extensive navy and air support resulted in eventual withdrawal/cease fires on unfavorable terms. Vietnam especially was painful.
Asymmetric war fare against a determined enemy is just hard and it always has been. Cheap drones and missiles are part of wars like that now. You can stash them all over the place and dig in. The Russians learned that the hard way in Afghanistan. As did the British before them. And more recently the US of course. The withdrawal from Afghanistan rivaled that of the one in Vietnam. Complete with chaotic scenes of people desperately trying to get out. That's only a few years ago.
In the Gulf, the Houthis still pose a threat after years of determined efforts to take them out. In the same way, it took the Israeli's very long to neutralize Hamas in Gaza. And that's a few tens of miles away from their capital. Same with Hezbollah on their northern border. In Iraq, IEDs kept grinding away at the US forces long after victory was declared. And that was with massive amounts of boots on the ground and the country fully defeated and occupied.
Iran of course has been supplying weaponry for proxy wars like this for decades. Iran is much bigger than Iraq or Afghanistan and much better prepared for a land/guerilla war on their own territory. The country was built on asymmetric warfare like this and has had decades to prepare and dig in and lots of experience via the various proxy wars I mentioned. The unfortunate reality is that that straight is only going to open when Iran decides that is in their interest.
Sure, but keeping the straight open is not really important, sure gas, fertilizers and a few other commodities are going to get more expensive, but there is no need to put thousands of sailors in harms way.
The US navy ships, in this war have performed admirably, they have performed over 850 tomahawk strikes, and navy airplanes have performed thousands of sorties. And have had no casualties due to enemy action. I can't imagine a way they could have performed better.
If I were on the JTF staff I would point out that those are measures of performance, but not measures of effectiveness. The proof of utility is achieving the mission. That is not to take away from the sailors, or military members in navy or any branch. I wouldn't want to be out there right now. They are doing hard things. But the things they are doing aren't achieving the commander's objectives. I will concede that our objectives in this campaign have been less than clear or well thought out, but there is a truth to the idea that we have built our military for a different war than this. million dollar tlams fed by decade old targeting information and all decisions centralized in a slow, unreactive and ultimately counterproductive joint targeting cycle won't win this.
I mean, you can't blame them. It's not like there was any recent precedent for a large thundering superpower to start a conflict (not a "war", of course)--under the assumption that a quick decapitation strike would end things in a few days--with an underestimated asymmetric adversary (one supported by a larger enemy) that responds with cheap drones and the like, resulting in an increasing quagmire, not to mention one resulting in the loss of valuable and irreplaceable airborne command-and-control aircraft during the conflict
The USA military is subject to civilian control and whim and that's their contract. Gauging approaches to have best effect would involve coordination among the political, intelligence, and military glamorati, and that's something that could never happen in the environment of the past year.
You need to define some kind of objective to be able to say whether or not you've performed well or not. Nobody doubts that USA can destroy a significant chunk of the planet, but to what end?
The objective I am using, is the objective they were given. They were told to bomb a bunch of targets. And they did and without casualties. That means they performed their jobs well.
Clearly the strategy behind the "bomb a bunch of stuff" objective is muddled at best, but that does not reflect badly against the navy. But to the people that set their objectives.
I think the point is it's like the parable of the drunk looking for his keys under the streetlight, because that's where the light is.
The Navy is performing well at the things it's being tasked with because it's only being tasked with things it can do well! But I think the point of this thread is that it still reflects poorly on the Navy if those things aren't actually useful in this war. They say generals are always preparing for the previous war and perhaps that's happening here.
You are conflating execution capability and force protection with achievement.
Meanwhile, lots of innocent lives have been lost, the regime is still where it was before even if some of the faces have changed, there is an E2 that is missing a little piece of its tail, the price of oil has gone up considerably (that may have been an actual objective) and we've been distracted for a while from the Epstein files.
If you think there was an item in the above list that qualifies as an objective then that's fine by me but for me these do not cross that threshold.
> the price of oil has gone up considerably (that may have been an actual objective)
Even Trump isn't that dumb. There's a reason he dialed the tariffs back so much; price hikes lose elections.
If there's one highly visible product of whose price all Americans are keenly aware, it's gasoline. And on top of that, it affects the price of pretty much everything else too.
I thought the tariffs would be his undoing but jacking up the price of gas is even worse for him.
Why would he care? He's not going to be up for re-election anyway and besides he's not paying for his own gas. But the price of oil going up helps russia in a considerable way and that could well have been one of the drivers (and apparently carrying water for Netanyahu).
I would not assume that he won't try to run again, nor would I assume that his party would not support it if he did. Though I do agree with the rest of what you wrote.
(2) he has to overcome an absolutely massive approval deficit
(3) he has to be able to run a credible campaign
(4) he has to get around the term limits
(5) I would expect there to be a fairly large number of people to be very upset if he did
All in all I don't think his chances for re-election are > 0. But I agree with you that he might try, by hook - or by crook - to hold on to that chair.
I might be wrong (am not a geopolitical expert) but my guess is that if the US doesn't get this resolved by itself; most countries in the world are going to rage at it harder (like an order of magnitude harder) than during the tariffs war of last year.
Many countries ranging from advanced allies like Japan to random poor countries like the Philippines will see economic damages that are way worse than tariffs.
Iran was a hornet nest. A hornet nest is annoying and dangerous to have around. But it makes no sense to break it open with no plan on how to properly handle the fallout.
> Sure, but keeping the straight open is not really important, sure gas, fertilizers and a few other commodities are going to get more expensive, but there is no need to put thousands of sailors in harms way.
What is the point of having by far the worlds most expensive military if it can’t be used to at least ostensibly improve the lives of citizens?
> there has to be a real purpose. Escorting a bunch of privately owned oil tankers to bring down the price of gas does not really cut it.
While I agree with you in principle, if I have learned anything about politics it is that under whatever political system you care to invent, the people will definitely demand war and a navy to escort private oil tankers if it means they get to drive for $0.01 less per gallon.
Normally I wouldn't think the American public would be so shallow.
But just tonight, while getting gas just outside St. Louis, a young woman was having an absolute meltdown outside her car about the price of gas being $3.65 a gallon. Wild.
So, yeah, perhaps the price of gas is high enough that the public would tolerate some heavy collateral damage at this point.
The issue though is that this won't get us maritime supremacy. To get civilian tankers through the strait you need that. Iran will still take the occasional shot at these ships and who in their right mind would put their ship into a situation where there is even a 1 in 2000 chance you will be struck? At the end we will have boots on the ground, with real casualties, potentially a ship or two actually damaged and Iran unleashed and attacking everyone's critical oil infrastructure and water infrastructure. They will even probably find a way to hit a ship or two in the red sea just to spread the panic. My original point was that we could 'just blow things up' and get in there, not that we would succeed in achieving a great military objective.
Yes, i think the Trump admin has escalated itself into a situation that either involves ground troops or leaving without opening the strait.
The first is bad due to the losses that will be incurred and the difficulty of holding territory.. for unclear strategic reasons (I thought we destroyed their nuclear program last summer / what was the urgency / is this even our war?). The second is bad because the strait was open before this started, so things are worse than starting conditions.
That is not to say Iran is winning. Remember this is not a sports game, and no one needs to win. It is possible, and likely, for everyone to lose (be in a worse position than prior).
> either involves ground troops or leaving without opening the strait.
These options are not mutually exclusive.
> That is not to say Iran is winning.
They are though, the US administration has already lost it's patience, their strategic objectives (whatever they might have been have clearly not materialized), the talk about talks may very well be the administration preparing to make a bunch of concessions proclaim victory and walk away.
As it's possible for both parties to lose, a party can win all the battles and lose the war.
It is hard to game out the best scenario here. Wait, it really isn't. We should just stop. Make a deal with Iran, accept egg on our face and step back. Why? Because they are destabilized. They are likely to crumble. If we keep attacking then they stay alive. If we go away then they have to deal with their broken infra and deeply unhappy population. They were on the path until we hit them. Then, like nearly every country ever, it gave their government legitimacy. If we walk away and focus, hard, on helping the gulf nations that we just hurt badly it will stabilize the region and allow them to fall. But that will never happen because we went into this due to ego and we will stay due to ego.
What if Iran escalates when US decides to go? I don’t think US can go without leaving a power vacuum, which, given current forces positioning, would benefit Iran most probably. I don’t see a path to helping Gulf nations, which will pragmatically be inclined to work with Iran as neither of them can leave like US can.
>That is not to say Iran is winning. Remember this is not a sports game, and no one needs to win. It is possible, and likely, for everyone to lose (be in a worse position than prior).
As of right now, Iran looks likely to end the war with permanent control of the strait of Hormutz. They'll tax the gulf countries in perpetuity.
Gulf countries can't reasonably afford to go to war with Iran over this either, and it's even less likely that they could prevail in such a conflict. Gulf countries can't even afford to go to war with Iran now, with the US actively fighting there.
Iran can suffer terrible short-term and medium-term economic consequences while still establishing a whole new kind of dominance over the region.
> the people will definitely demand war and a navy to escort private oil tankers if it means they get to drive for $0.01 less per gallon.
This was more true in the 70s: the various fuel economy improvements mean that the impact is reportedly less than half this fine, and the millions of people who bought a hybrid or BEV don’t even notice. I think there’s less of an “war at any cost” bloc now, especially after the humiliating collapse of the last Republican president’s big Middle Eastern learning opportunity, and a lot of people would be willing to abandon Israel to fight Netanyahu’s war alone if it saved them money at the pump.
The issue is that the administration has kicked the bee hive, and is now claiming that securing passers by from angry bees has nothing to do with them.
Its a great way to diminish what lingering shreds of trust the (hopefully) former allies of the US may still have had.
The US has better ways to decrease oil prices internally that commit to losing boats in the strait.
We know the cost. We've conducted that type of warfare before. It's incredibly destructive and barbaric and requires huge amounts of human sacrifice to positively take control of territory after you've finished battering it with high explosives from every available angle. It looks really bad on TV.
> cruise missile carriers
You don't get very large payloads this way. It's fine if you want to pierce the armor of another ship or if you want to launch an "assassination missile" at a single unit but not awesome if you want to replace the capabilities of carriers and battleships and the literal BFGs they carry.
> If you build ships good for real wars you tend to get into wars.
It was meant to be a deterrent against other nation states and one particular form of naval warfare. In the modern world of terrorist cells and asymmetric warfare this may be a moot point.
I think our navy is mostly designed for prestige too, but it seems like you could use the current carriers to transport like a million disposable drones?
> it seems like you could use the current carriers to transport like a million disposable drones?
To what end? You can use them as an extremely expensive cargo ship, sure. But if you're talking about launching drones off of our carriers, you have the problem that whatever you are in drone range of is also in drone range of you.
Drones have limited range. Perhaps a submarine would be better: sneak close to your target, raise a pipe from the sub to the surface, then launch a bunch of drones from it.
Limited range? Shaheds have over 2000 kilometers more than tomahawks.
And btw, if you can get a submarince close to your target, torpedoes and missiles are going to be much more effective than drones.
Space is limited on platforms, a submarine might have space for 60 drones or 30 missiles, given the immense cost of the submarine, going with the missiles is the right call.
The trucks launching shaheds that iran is using can fit like 5 such drones, a similar truck could probably fit 2 to 4 cruise missiles the only reason they are using drones is the rapid production and cost associated with drones instead of the cruise missiles.
Driving your submarines into a narrow area with limited depth is driving right into a bottleneck trap.
It may be hard to locate a submarine out in the deep open sea, not so much if they are limited in escape routes. Some $50 microphones in the water will be able to pick up submarine activity and if the sub is in range of sending out drones it is in range of being detected by drones equipped with simple magnetic sensors. And that is assuming they can't put an active bit of sonar on two or three drones and drop them in the sea and triangulate it to within a few hundred feet to start with.
That still doesn't make them easy to take out, but the cost of potentially losing a submarine is so massive that it doesn't make sense to risk them to start with.
Straights have been impossible to force since Churchill tried to force the Bosphorus in 1915. Placing ships in a narrow target area that can be pre-sighted is a losing proposition, a single artillery gun could mission-kill a destroyer in hormuz - mines/torpedos/drones could sink a ship in a place where rescue may not be possible.
"Cruise missile carriers" are what the Burke class destroyers are.
It's also what Russia built their navy around. How'd that work out?
The US carriers have been involved in every naval action since WWII. They're hardly unused.
But attacking a country of 90 million people and a high level of military sophistication AND who's been expecting the attack and planning for it for many years was always going to be a tall order.
"They are only good for show at port visits..." This perfectly describes Trump's idea of battleships, in fact I think he's said more or less that himself. And he wants to help design them, because he's "aesthetic."
Good thing he's so good at respecting rules that say he can't do things. And good thing that he's had to face the punishment for breaking some of those rules. Imagine reading what you wrote if he were repeatedly allowed to break rules without any consequences.
He doesn't need to legally cancel the election. He simply needs to say it is and take action as if it was already. This allows him to combine interference before the election with the Republican insurrection tactics from 2020. Say he declares, through executive order, that the 2026 election is cancelled due to an emergency, and that the current Congress will stay in power until the emergency is over. This would allow, even if not actually legal, some combination of:
- Republican-led states voluntarily ending their elections.
- In the case where local election authorities refuse, allowing state governments to take action by arresting said local authorities.
- Ending all Federal assistance for states to run and secure elections.
- Posting ICE to all states who insist on having elections, to arbitrarily arrest people going to vote. By the time they can get in front of a judge the election is over. Even if they're released within a few hours they'd likely miss the vote.
- Having ICE seize all "illegally cast" ballots, and the voting machines, preventing counts from completing or being accurate.
- Declaring states who hold an election to be in rebellion, deploying the National Guard or standing military forces.
- Refusing to seat anyone elected from those states who refuse to go along with it. We could see something like Republican states are allowed to "elect" new representatives as long as they allow an ICE presence everywhere, along with the arbitrary arrest. Speaker Johnson then refuses to seat any newly elected officials from any other states.
- Arrest of newly elected officials as illegitimate, and the seating of Republican candidates instead, similar to the fake elector scheme from 2020.
We can insist that all of these things are illegal, or that people won't go along with it. We would likely see the start real, violent resistance, but that doesn't mean they won't try.
Edit: Looks like he's starting already, by trying control all mail in ballots. He's going to issue an executive order ordering the USPS to filter ballot mail according to a master list compiled by the administration. Obviously this why they wanted voter rolls and have been seizing ballots. Even if the court immediately rules it illegal, why would anyone trust mail in voting? He's essentially cancelled the election for those who vote by mail.
I think a lot of people struggle to imagine the kinds of dirty-deeds ("ratf***ing") that are both possible and effective, especially when the perpetrators don't (feel) constrained by an implicit baseline of plausible consistency or morality. Being unable to brainstorm them up is, perhaps, a kind of backhanded compliment.
Imagine trying to warn someone in 2010 that in a few years an outgoing President, stung at an election loss, could foment a violent mob that would break into the Capitol to hunt and chase legislators that were formalizing that loss, issue blanket pardons for everyone involved, and his party would still protect him from being impeached over it.
For that matter, some people are still surprised to learn about the "Brooks Brothers Riot" [0] of 2000, where a crowd of Republican campaign staffers threatened workers into stopping a recount of certain ballots.
Why would they need to arrest 150 million people? They'd let everyone in heavily Republican districts vote just fine, perhaps just a few random arrest at any precincts in Democratic areas. Their main focus would be urban areas, especially in blue states. And it wouldn't have to be everyone to get many, if not most people, to stay home. Early voting in your district? Great way to get ICE's arrests of people in line on the news before the big day, further driving down turnout. Filtering mail in ballots at the USPS not enough? Just happen to have some ICE agents drive by the drop boxes and oops, we saw an "illegal" voting, all these ballots are invalid, we'll be taking those. Local police try to step in (as if)? Insurrection Act, military deployed to all voting locations, ballots seized.
This shouldn't be hard to understand: there are any number of things an unfettered executive can do to turn the election that isn't simply cancelling them.
Right, Trump's ability to cancel the elections depends on whether the people running elections comply. It sounds prudent to compile a survey on who those people are and their propensity to break the law to accommodate the president.
>And what happens if the state level election workers are up against federal level gunpoint?
It's not like ICE can just roll into a state capitol and stop elections.
How many folks would be required for that at each polling place? Ten?
Fifty? There are 3500+ counties in the US, usually with multiple polling places. You'd need tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of troops for that.
And that's a lot of armed thugs. Likely the National Guard would need to be federalized, but I find it hard to believe that commanders would follow such illegal orders.
To swing Pennsylvania, they'd probably just need to send ICE into Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Tell them to ignore anybody with a MAGA hat. Big and blue cities in purple states are the only necessary targets.
I see a higher chance of him dropping a dirty nuke at home and pretending it’s Iran. Then he can nuke Iran and win the elections too by proving his point that the war was necessary if not delayed. I would be very worried if I were in any of the Democrat states, as one of them would be the chosen target in such a scenario.
To the people criticizing the comment above, think of all the other illegal things trump is already doing. It's not a matter of "can't", it's a matter of if he will and who will stop him (nobody, so far)
Regardless, Iran sinking an aircraft carrier does not excuse Trump to nuke Iran and cancel elections. Your point is that he does not care about having a justification.
Yes, I agree. My point is primarily that it is incorrect to say that his actions have an excuse, especially the hypothetical action of launching the first offensive nuke since the two in August 1945. (Secondarily, stating that he has an excuse is the first step to excusing him.) Nuclear powers collectively agree, and have for decades: the only excuse for launching a nuke at your adversary is them doing it first.
(As for elections, history has shown that there is no excuse for outright cancelling them; that is an autocratic ploy to become a despot.)
I hope somebody would stop him. Using nukes in a war is just too bonkers to contemplate. Sure they would be small, but the road to big starts with small.
Dropping the bomb will be a massive loss for the US as it’ll legitimatize nuclear warfare. Right out of the attack, the US ceases being the first firepower and becomes equal to the rest of the nuclear ones.
Next Russia takes Ukraine in a week and rich countries will buy nukes from North Korea and Pakistan.
Ever play Doom (2016)? It's about renewable energy.
Pesky little--very minor--side effect that it's extracted from Hell, and using it causes the denizens of Hell to spill over to our side. One would say they are "unleashed".
By raising the price of oil so much, our dear leader is trying his level best to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels.
This is a terrible idea. Assuming nothing bad happens (other than the mass death, of course), there would be shocked pikachu faces from half of Americans and then some, not to mention those in other nations. If something bad happens (edit: other than the initial mass death, of course), the faces would instead range anywhere from panicked to vaporized.
He has considered it. He's a psychopathic fantasist. No one sane would have started this war.
But the consequences would be catastrophic. Not least that Russia would very likely nuke Ukraine to try to force a surrender. And France would have to decide whether to respond in kind.
Trump would not - of course - nuke Russia. Likely not even if Russia launched a first strike.
And it's unlikely Iran would surrender, because Iran has set itself up as a patchwork of semi-independent forces. The immediate response would be a mass missile strike on desalination plants and oil installations in Israel and the Arab states.
The absolute best outcome would be plumes of smoke all over the Middle East.
The worst outcome would be all of the existing minor nuclear nations - North Korea, India, Pakistan, Israel - deciding the safety was off, and why not?
This is the guy that ignored warnings that Iran would respond by closing the Strait of Hormuz. He was briefed on exactly this scenario and decided he knew better. That is to say he's been proved capable of making incredibly bad decisions, it's just a matter of who speaks to him directly before. One of these days it might be the wrong person.
> This administration doesn't do things because of deep understanding, it does them because of gut reaction.
Do you think that the overwhelming tactical success in Venezuela, or the basically flawless decapitation strikes in the opening weeks of the Iran conflict were gut reactions?
Because of that’s the case I’d be terrified to know what the Pentagon is capable of if they really put their mind to it.
In this instance, a flight of B-52's could wipe the concrete shielded missiles off the face of the Earth. Start off with F18s to secure the skies, then B52s to pound the missiles, then the Navy could stroll back in. It's just that no one has had the gumption to do it until now.
Your analysis of the war seems to hinge on a lack of "gumption", which is coincidentally the exact same thing I've heard conservative old boomers say about Vietnam. So I would say you're about equal in terms of adding to the discussion. It is, unfortunately, divorced from reality.
The critical thing about hidden missiles that you seem to be missing is: you can't bomb them if you don't know where they are.
We've already seen a 4 week bombing campaign that has included everything from a children's school to a chemotherapy company to bunkers under Tehran, so I don't think there's a lack of "bloodlust" or "gumption" from any of the so-called leaders at the DoD. Rather, it seems that they simply - don't know where the missiles and drones are. Which as I pointed out earlier, makes it rather hard to bomb them.
There is a lot of talk about the AI bubble. I think there are comparisons to the late 90's/early 00's here with early stars rising quickly but, ultimately, falling. Since essentially everything touches the internet now it is clear that the 'internet bubble' was more of a shakeup of companies than a real over-hype of the internet. That, I think, is at play right now too with the 'AI bubble'. AI isn't going away but some of the early stars may not make it.
So, the real question here is: Is OpenAI Netscape, or are they Google?
First, great system. Second, I am going to pine for an electronic version and having read the post I get it. Feel free to laugh and read the next comment. That said there are two aspects to this system that come to mind immediately:
- The value of the information: This is the purpose of the dots and, I think the stated reason for the dots.
- The value of the process: If you did this and didn't have the final dot information, would it still be valuable in some way? I suspect there is value here in creating friction that helps you consider your environment more.
- But clearly there is also a cost (so, three things came to mind. sue me!). The cost would be stickers on my junk. I generally don't like that.
So call the cost and the value of the process a wash and you are left with 'can I get the value of the information without the cost or at a substantially lower cost?' That is, I think, an argument for AR. I'd love a version of this where I could tag a lot of things and gather my own usage data without putting stickers on my stuff. How often did I wear x, or use y? Did I actually eat 4k calories in fried chicken two weeks ago? Of course the privacy concerns here are the main stopper for me but when local compute is cheap enough AR tagging, like these dots, is something I definitely would try.
I definitely see the appeal of an electronic version. I think it really depends on what you care about tracking. Food? Maybe use the same barcodes already on the product. Clothes? maybe RFID patches that are unobtrusive.
Things that are subject to a lot of wear and tear and handled a lot will not work well with dots as they will come off, but I don't find that to be a problem for the front of storage boxes so it works for me.
While I don't have an electronic system for tracking parts bins, the one exception is parts I place on PBCs. This is a small subset of my total parts and to track them I have an electronic database that's much more rigorous, tracking part numbers, data sheets, footprints, symbols, and it is much closer to the kind of part database that a site like digikey would use than the dot system.
I don't need dots to track parts I put on PCBs because I can do that all programmatically to scan the files and see what parts I place the most often.
I don't quite know what you mean with your question about whether it would be useful if I didn't have dot totals but still tracked them. I do find the dot totals to be useful, and comparing across years also helps me identify things that were used a lot, but maybe only two years ago. Stuff like glue and magnets seem timeless and are used constantly every year though.
I'll give you an example of how the process could be valuable even without the information. A huge amount of doing something is just getting over the initiating energy to start doing something. A trick to help with that is to start with a really low cost task. The point isn't the task, it is that you started which gets you into 'keep doing things' mode. The dots may act as a low cost task and help to get passed the initiating energy. I think there are other things that this could help too. This is a task, although simple, that can help define the phases of projects which could help planning and execution success. This is all just guessing, I'm not a psychologist, but I think there are potentially ways that this is helpful beyond just the data it presents which is a good thing.
So if one were to buy all their clothes at Decathlon (clothes for sports and other outdoor activities) and Zara (everyday wear as well as fancier clothing), and found a reader that can read the RFID tags they use, one would save the time needed to add RFID tags to one’s clothes ;)
There might be other stores that have RFID tags on all of their products too. I only mention these two in particular because I have purchased products from both of them using their RFID-based self-checkout in their stores and thus seen it first-hand.
However, I am not sure if all of the products have the RFID label embedded in the actual fabric or if some or most have the RFID label attached to paper labels that you’d remove before using the clothes. So that would also need to be determined before deciding to replace one’s whole wardrobe with clothes exclusively from these stores.
A friend of mine used to once a year hang all his shirts with the open end of the cloth hangers' hooks facing forward. After wearing and washing them he'd hang them back with the hanger facing the other way. After a year he'd toss out any shirts that were still facing the original way and had thus not been worn.
I’ve gotten rid of a lot of clothing in the past 18 months. I bring a very limited amount of specific clothing traveling, don’t fuss much around the house, local hikes, the theater now and then etc. I just have no use for a lot of to the office clothing I wore into the office every day.
> Almost all retail RFID tags are on hanging labels, like with the price, or a sticker on the item. Although I did find one inside a pillow once.
I would say that Decathlon stuff has the RFID inside the internal labels (the ones that you should cut off if you don't want them to scratch your skin but sometimes you don't notice them)
Homebox seems to be a good way to make that happen, FWIW. I looked at it for when I was moving house and it had way more than I needed. But it does support the QR code printouts.
The easiest way would be to setup some cameras and start recording everything. Gemini could already sort that into events you could query. If you have privacy concerns, at the current pace of progress, local LLMs should be up to the task soon if they aren't already.
Another nice benefit of this would be location tracking. Once you had established the database of tools and the CV setup to recognize them, you could ask the LLM, “where did I last place my Stanley knife”?
I hope this can now be audited better. I have doubted their feedback promises for a while now. I just got prompted again even though I have everything set to disable, which shouldn't be possible. When I dug into their code a long time ago on this it seemed like they were actually sending back message ids with the survey which directly went against their promise that they wouldn't use your messages. Why include a message id if you aren't somehow linking it back to a message? The code look, not great, but it should now be easier to verify their claims about privacy.
I suspect most packages will keep a mix of people at 7 days and those with no limit. That being said, adding jitter by default would be good to these features.
This became evident, what, perhaps a few years ago? Probably since childhood for some users here but just wondering what the holdup is. Lots of bad press could be avoided, or at least a little.
This may not be popular, but is there a place for required human actions or just timed actions to slow down things like this? For instance, maybe a GH action to deploy requires a final human click and to change that to cli has a 3 day cooling period with mandatory security emails sent out. Similarly, you switch to read only for 6 hrs after an email change. There are holes in these ideas but the basic concept is to treat security more like physical security, your goal isn't always to 100% block but instead to slow an attacker for xxx minutes to give the rest of the team time to figure out what is going on.
Hi, security here. We've tried, but the amount of people you need for this vs the amount of people you have trying to review and click the big button always means that this step will be a bottleneck. Thus this step will be eliminated.
A much better approach would be to pin the versions used and do intentional updates some time after release, say a sprint after.
Why not just release escrow? If I try to push a new release version another developer or developers have to agree to that release. In larger projects you would expect the release to be coordinated or scheduled anyways. Effectively we're just moving "version pinning" or "version delay" one layer up the release chain.
xz has dozens of contributors and two active maintainers. It was the actual example I was thinking of. The code was submitted by a third party and not a result of a developer machine compromise.
left pad wasn't a security incident. It was a capitalism incident.
Pinning, escrowing, and trailing all help, but I'm not sure "this step will be eliminated" is inevitable.
Package manager ecosystems are highly centralized. npm.org could require MFA (or rate limit, or email verification, or whatever) and most packagers would gripe but go along with this. A minority would look for npm competitors that didn't have this requirement, and another minority would hack/automate MFA and remove the added security, but the majority of folks would benefit from a centralized requirement of this sort.
Yup. As someone who's been on both the eng and security side, you cannot improve security by blocking the product bus. You're just going to get run over. Your job is to find ways of managing risk that work with the realities of software development.
And before anyone gets upset about that, every engineering discipline has these kind of risk tradeoffs. You can't build a bridge that'll last 5,000 years and costs half of our GDP, even though that's "safer". You build a bridge that balances usage, the environment, and good stewardship of taxpayer money.
Yeah, I am looking at that on the use end. It sounds like on the python side this type of thing will be more standard (uv now and soon pip supported with version date requirements). I think time is a big missing element in many security in depth decisions. It can be time until you adopt like use no package newer than xx days or time it takes to deploy etc etc. Unfortunately the ecosystem is getting really diverse and that means ever more sophisticated attacks so we may need to do things that are annoying just to survive.
And by doing so escalate more and potentially lead Iran to hit critical infra across the gulf nations and potentially disrupt red sea shipping too. There is too much exposed, expensive and delicate infrastructure to adequately protect. Iran could likely cause far more damage than it already has, and to infrastructure that could lead to years, or even decades, of problems all at a time when oil is starting to wind down. The gulf nations know this. This could transition oil earlier than expected. Hit their oil infra, and their water infra and the region may not recover until oil is no longer in demand. Nations are likely taking notice of how cavalier the US is being with other nations security and prosperity right now. Spain is getting down right hostile and we have a lot of military assets there and along history of joint bases with them. This is potentially a major turning point for supporting the US in any endeavor. Basically, yeah, I am sure we know where those ships are but hopefully we are being as rational as possible somewhere in the government and are holding back in hopes of -something- being salvaged here.
> by doing so escalate more and potentially lead Iran to hit critical infra across the gulf nations and potentially disrupt red sea shipping
Nothing indicates the U.S. is taking Iran's threats of escalation seriously. Like, I think we should. But it doesn't seem to be playing into the calculus. If Iran escalates, the U.S. can too. And I don't think Trump is bluffing about hitting power and water infrastructure.
The reason we aren't hitting the ships is because we want oil to keep flowing into the international markets.
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