DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
Tell me about it.
User ID: 745
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
7d ago
I write in English because this is a forum with the norm of speaking English, you speak no other languages, and I'm willing to talk to you. It's a bit ridiculous to inflate your sense of importance on these grounds. Believe it or not I continue to exist when I don't speak with you or engage with any other American.
America created this, that, all very fair, most of it very valuable. That's about what could be expected from a European society that gets a whole new continent for a frontier and faces no credible threats, but I guess the institutional achievement of Founding Fathers shouldn't be dismissed either. A century or two of unchallenged exponential growth can go a long way. As it stands though, what difference does all this boasting make for the present moment? Does it slow down your decline in share of new drugs developed, for instance? No, the "global economy" doesn't really depend on you, this isn't 1950s when everyone else who matters was bombed to hell or in a semi-colonial shithole condition. No you're not protecting the sea lanes, this just isn't a thing that is happening, you're contesting them. No, you're not making the rest of humanity a favor by printing debt and sucking out capital; it's just something you can afford to do. You're a big and important player, with lots of soft and hard power, that has developed solipsism and near-religious delusions about its potency, primacy and destiny, and about how much silliness it can actually afford in mistreating other nations.
America is parasitic? You wouldn't even be here without America. This is like the pyramid complaining that the ground is beneath it.
This is disturbingly grandiose and sounds like a Marvel villain's monologue. Your culture has processed the abstract opinion about hegemony into tacky merchandise, into propaganda. This might have sounded authentic in the last century and, objectively speaking, sounds over the top today, in this largely Made-In-China physical world. But identity can be a lagging indicator.
Seriously speaking I don't really think either China or the US are "parasitic"; you started this. China used your IP and capital, which it could not create ex nihilo or procure elsewhere (or at least not that fast). You used cheap Chinese labor, for decades, to allow your own abundance and rent-seeking on your legacy. They had a choice (poverty, slower technological progress, worse security), so did you (higher inflation, perhaps even recession, political turmoil). Nobody chose otherwise out of charity; and neither situation would have been catastrophic. You grossly overestimate the baseline of Chinese capability and the volume of the exchange (look up historical FDI for instance). They speedran to rockets, satellites and thermonuclear weapons without American input and with very little Soviet one; they could have built modern China without you too.
Archetypal specific case: General Motors sold Magnequench to Deng Xiaoping's family, because GM, and by extension America, chose cutting costs and maximizing profit over controlling the rare earths/magnets supply chain in the long term. The Chinese could not "steal" it or "parasitize" on it; they paid the fair price, on the terms of the game you have designed, the game you are clearly so proud of. Now here we are, where REEs and magnets are something China has a chokehold on, developing on the open ambition preceding that acquisition by years. It's simply entitled to act as if they've gotten the better deal, or as if they had less right to what they got out of it.
Well, what happened next? What's the next part of the story? Did it work out for Japan? Does Japan rule the world now? Did America ever have a political reckoning over the economic policies that lead to outsourcing?
Tragically, no, Americans are still riding that high.
What I'm trying to explain, in very simple words, that for the first time in your not so long history of independence you have a peer competitor, and on most meaningful metrics it's bigger than you. This has never happened before, you were only ever dunking on underdogs, you don't have a concept of "a bigger power than the US". Obnoxiously celebrating how you've never had a reckoning after Japan, rather than reflecting on how close it was with merely post-war Japan and what this fact says about absolute American capability, just goes to show you don't really grasp this very simple and important quantitative detail.
America + Europe + Japan + whatever is larger than China. America + India is larger than China
No. If you want a consistent standard, how about this: still fewer intelligent people and less industry. For example, Meituan alone outperforms India, Japan and most if not all of EU in AI. In electricity production, this entire list combined is maybe 20% above China, and good luck making any use of India. You don't have a sense of scale for what's going on.
P.S.
I think the likeliest outcome is a kind of China 1970s, or maybe like Japan in the 90s. Population turnover and changing economic fundamentals produce a decade of stagnation. Stagnation produces social malaise (if not unrest). And then China’s progress keeping apace with America stalls. This is already happening — American growth has started outpacing China these last few years. It doesn’t take much for China to stall.
I have actually looked it up. In nominal USD, the US is up 46% between 2020 and 2025. China did 38% and if we account for the exchange rate, just 30%. So that's something. One can tell a story about GDP divergence here. The issue is that they've had <5% inflation and you had 25-29%. So in terms of "real growth" (anchored to 2017 dollars), the US can report 13% and China ≈32%. Your "real GDP" is $24.2T, not ≈$32T.
I don't put much stock in these numbers, anyway. The point is, you can tell any story with numbers if you know how to spin them (this is still very basic, one could counter with analyzing debt structure or "true purchasing power" or whatever), and I think your, Shakes, information environment provides you with a diet of exclusively self-congratulatory spins.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
8d ago
Quantity is its own quality, as is known. The reason this ability is qualitatively different is that the USN still can't stop it despite a lot of effort, whereas destroying their manned air force over the course of a few weeks would have been possible for US forces in 1986 and turned out trivial today. They could not, in fact, sustainably threaten the Strait with remote attacks before, and this matters in that only prolonged crisis of this kind can achieve their strategic goals (having the US compromise on the operation's objectives and instead walk away with cope).
it would not surprise me if the Pentagon got the capability assessment of Iran more or less right but fumbled or failed to consider as outside of their area of competency the question of what degree of risk would be acceptable to the civilian market
I guess that's possible.
although I suspect they have fancier tech now
I am not sure the US has even retained its peak capabilities in mine-sweeping, but we'll see.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
8d ago
Not to mention that, fundamentally, China’s rise has been parasitic on America’s wealth.
At worst it's been symbiotic. Your whole economy is parasitic, which you market as "center of global security", "reserve currency" and what not. Do you honestly believe you could afford these investments without decades of China exporting deflation via cheap manufacturing? You'd run into a couple more financial crises without their "parasitism". Well, they even helped you exit the real one in 2008, at some cost.
But they are not producing bombers as advanced as anything made in America. They don’t yet have the rockets to colonize space. They can’t actually replace America’s role at the center of global security.
Stealth bombers and heavy lift rocket vehicles as a means to provide "the center of global security" is a funny phrasing. We're in 2026, the DoD is renamed to the "Department of War", could we drop the euphemisms? After Greenland, too. You also make systems like THAAD, but we've seen how it goes. It's maybe the center of global security for one specific Middle Eastern nation. Just having a heavily militarized industry is not much of a flex.
America protects the sea lanes that Chinese vessels rely on.
Are we still doing this Zeihanite nonsense? You demonstrably can't unilaterally unblock the "sea lanes" when they're threatened by Houthis and Iranians. Moreover you're now the primary cause of those sea lanes getting blocked in the first place. It's a pure protection racket. And as you say, they make vastly more ships than you do. They could escort their own ships if need be, which Trump admitted.
China’s industrial rise doesn’t happen without America handing over the blueprint.
Well, it certainly helped, especially while they were a nation of uneducated peasants with like $900 per capita GDP (1999). As time goes, this argument loses its luster.
No, their R&D is quite efficient now. I routinely see smaller teams on lower budgets getting more done than in the US.
I think the likeliest outcome is a kind of China 1970s, or maybe like Japan in the 90s. Population turnover and changing economic fundamentals produce a decade of stagnation. Stagnation produces social malaise (if not unrest). And then China’s progress keeping apace with America stalls. This is already happening — American growth has started outpacing China these last few years. It doesn’t take much for China to stall.
This is cope, sorry.
First, Japan didn't just fall into "stagnation" and "malaise". It was a functionally non-sovereign country which you deliberately fucked over with these "trade deals", incapable of providing its own security, dependent on imports of food and energy (not in a cute "would have to ration" way, in a "shutdown in 6 months" way), and it had a contagious real estate bubble collapse. None of these features are shared with China. Actually I often say that Americans drawing this analogy are telling on themselves. They helplessly lost several industries to a tiny island nation they had previously conquered, and instead of an existential crisis, their takeaway is… "we're invincible, China will be the same"?! Are you serious? Japan with nukes and 12 times larger population would have rendered you irrelevant by 2000s.
Second, no. This "has started outpacing" is largely a function of exchange rates, which China is alleged to suppress for RMB. In national currency terms the cumulative growth has been about equal since 2020. That's really good performance for the US stage of development, admittedly. But at some point they fully deflate their real estate bubble, and you notice that their industry and R&D have been growing quite a bit faster.
More to the point, you seem to not engage with the core fundamentals that matter: your clown government and your simply insufficient talent pool.
When has sheer numbers made the biggest difference?
Pretty much every time. This is the story of America and Japan, too. Americans do have this strange conception of themselves as a plucky underdog who miraculously wins by Just Being That Good. But even the Soviets barely had an edge in population, probably had none if you exclude assorted Central Asian dependents, and were burdened by a suicidal economic doctrine. This isn't the case with China.
Besides, America has access to the smartest talent from Japan, Europe, Latin America, etc.
I'm telling you, this isn't enough. This entire list of rabble is just too small, they barely produce talent. Add India, add whatever, it's all just not enough smart people. The only real argument is brain draining China itself, which seems to be going worse lately.
Yes, Trump is more charismatic. Your Swedes and Germans care about Trump. But why should anyone care what Swedes and Germans care about? Trump spits on them. He cares about Xi's opinion.
America makes the world, China copies America, not the other way around.
America sure would like to try to copy some of China, it's just actually hard.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
8d ago
Iran's ability to use aircraft to attack ships in 2026 is not qualitatively different from their ability to use aircraft to attack ships in 1986.
Are you for real. Their aircraft from 1986 is destroyed. The question is of what they can do and plan for in 2026. It turns out that their new "aircraft" works very well for this purpose. I think they didn't know it will, just like Americans didn't know it'd be so hard to shut down.
Or do you think there was an expectation that as soon as the US fails to topple Iran by killing some dudes, we'll enter this morass with strait blockade?
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
8d ago
Iran has been aware that they could threaten to close the strait since the 1980s (at least), because you don't need drones to do that when you have mines.
Noah is sloppy but this is irrelevant. Mines are, well, mines. Their control right now is qualitatively different, they can flexibly threaten ships, do it on and off, and importantly even while the USN is around and the country is getting bombed.
From your own link
Iran’s threat will not work. Here is why:
blah blah it's evil illegal
If Iran were to try, there would be a list of militaries willing and able to intervene. The U.S. has long taken on the task of ensuring freedom of the seas. And if the U.S. chose not to intervene, it could do so with the knowledge that other countries are more than capable. The navies of China, Japan or South Korea could intervene, but most likely they would not have to since Iran needs to maintain the east Asian countries as trading partners. They would likely convince Iran to change course by simply requesting it. India has already sent naval escorts to protect its vessels in the area. Otherwise, the Gulf countries whose oil trade would be impacted could intervene. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, in particular, have formidable air forces with billions of dollars of aircraft and weapons purchased from the U.S. Moreover, the U.N. and other international organizations would turn on Iran as soon as it tried to invoke control over an international waterway.
How has that worked?
And I agree with Smith that they didn't know it would, and indeed thought it wouldn't.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
9d ago
thanks btw, I'll be returning to this post. One note for now:
We revolutionized energy, we export energy now.
Fracking is genuinely technically sophisticated, but I just can't get excited about a new fossil extraction trick.
Chinese "New three" (solar panels, EVs, batteries) exports now produce like >$200B annual revenue., en route to 300. This is uncomfortably close to American fossil exports. I find one of these strategies of revolutionizing energy more compelling, technically and business-wise, and a good hint about the rest of the trajectory.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
9d ago
So when we start factoring out these unfalsifiable rumors, it seems pretty obvious to me who won. America can threaten Iran at will and they have no meaningful way to retaliate.
That's not how wars work, though. You lost in Korea, in Vietnam, in Afghanistan, and in every occasion you enjoyed vast military superiority by the end. "We can kill them, they can't kill us" is simplistic and part of the problem, which is a bronze age savage's theory of victory coupled with an actually cost-sensitive political and economic system.
As for interceptors, I find the alleged exhaustion rates plausible despite "classified" noise from your India-tier corrupt officials, for the following reasons: corrupt people are generally untrustworthy; we know 21st century America is generally subpar at physical production; we know that some arms sales were frozen and THAADs were harvested from Korea; we know that interception rates have declined over the war, esp. in Israel; we know the bases are wrecked.
This gap will grow as America is the only power capable of building into Space and the AI frontier.
I won't even argue the facts again (China is about 5 years behind in space and 8 months in AI). On priors, why do you believe this is even plausible? You must know that you have fewer people than China, fewer highly intelligent people, lesser talent allocation to STEM, less industrial capacity, less energy, less cutthroat markets, less… pretty much everything, except some legacy IP. Is this just blind patriotism?
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
9d ago
And omitting it is a cheap way to overstate your case
This is a fair outsider perspective but I stand by my arguments for why it's valid to omit.
Wouldn't you say that Iran also intended (and quite plausibly still hopes) to establish a strait toll regime as a war goal?
There has, to my knowledge, never been a serious Iranian discussion of the toll regime (as opposed to just closing the Strait) before this war which they did not choose. They rolled out tolls as a financial cope and negotiating tactic well under attack, after they learned that Hormuz denial is indeed very effective even though their fleet is gone. I tend to agree with Noah Smith of all people that "Before the war, Iran didn’t control the strait, simply because it didn’t realize it could. Drone technology had advanced to the point where Iran was able to shut down Hormuz, but Iran didn’t know that until the U.S. attack forced it to try the risky and desperate move of actually shutting down the strait.". Of course, war aims can change, so now they pursue legitimization of the toll booth through MOU negotiations, because come on, it's an awesome new revenue source and influence lever. But it was not part of their core objectives and strategic thinking (and neither was sinking their Navy for the US). To be clear I think they might win this, too, but I wouldn't weigh it heavily either way.
from my point of view, the MOU is a temporary ceasefire instrument to be replaced by something more permanent
Guess I have to agree to disagree. The MOU is extremely close to the original Iranian counter-proposal they published in response to Kushner&Witkoff's "deal" (terms of capitulation). That the US saw it fit to sign on to this shows that the US is really weary of the war and willing to end it on net unfavorable terms. Of course, Trump being Trump, he might just ignore the reputational damage and risks of Iranian gains solidifying for a few weeks of open Strait and US forces regrouping, and secretly intends to defect on most terms. But on the sum of evidence so far (eg Israel and Lebanon related noises), I do believe he strongly prefers to not continue in the short-medium term, so it is an end to, at least, the First US-Iran war, and the actual terms of it having been concluded.
so that you don't have to concede that the United States dealt a severe blow to Iran's ability to project naval power, an objective that was reiterated by Hegseth on March 2 in case you just thought it was a one-off.
I don't dodge it, I just deem it to be a cope. What "project naval power"? How was Iran ever a credible naval force? For years of reading about the Iranian Question, I don't remember ever seeing a serious concern about their growing naval capabilities specifically. IRIN was always doomed to sink at the first contact with the USN, at least I believe so, the USN has crushing advantages in every aspect; and Iran wasn't preparing to go on some aggressive expedition, so there was no great incentive to do it now. Russia, itself mediocre in naval projection, also wiped out Ukrainian naval capabilities early on in the war (which it's arguably losing now); this changed very little. The success here had been overdetermined, but that's also why it couldn't have been the goal – it couldn't endow Iran with a credible coercion/deterrence tool in the way that threatening Hormuz or Israeli desalination plants or South Pars field does. (Moreover the MOU doesn't say they can't rebuild their Navy if they so choose, and with the reconstruction funds and lifted sanctions they'll be able to afford it. Though it'd still be of little irrelevance.)
I see a pattern where Americans overstate their investment in impressive but strategically irrelevant feats just because these are things they can actually do. It's a cheap way to pad the metrics by announcing a thing you're confident about as the goal. Murdering Khamenei and other guys, destroying the Navy, "infiltrate Iranian land space and build an airstrip". So? What does this gain for you as a nation, relative to a scenario where you didn't do it? Not having to do it a bit later? It's a good flex on its own technical terms, but why should I believe these flexes were strategic objectives rather than instrumental moves in service of some cogent strategic objective? For all other goals, from "regime change" to "stopping missile and drone production" and even "steal oil", I see the answers. For nukes, I also see the answer but again, Iran was willing to compromise on the nukes from the start, the war at best changed something on the margins of the JCPOA 2.0 (and seemingly not in favor of the US). For the navy and assassinations… eh.
Before you accuse me of motivated reasoning, consider how the defenders of the war – and you – also apply Straussian lens to Trump's communications, correctly assuming that he's untrustworthy (just in a different direction) and his Actual Intentions (like reasons to sign such an MOU) must be deduced from first principles.
…All that said, ultimately my thinking is simpler. The US is a vastly superior power, and chipping away at the margins is beneath it. The real «objective of the war», universally and sometimes openly understood and lobbied for over decades, spelled out by Netanyahu, evident in the bulk of Trump's and Hegseth's communication too, was a generic Neocon/Zionist intention to «finally solve Iran». Remove it from the regional calculus, deny its resources to proxies, and make it unable to threaten Israel in the long term, by whatever means work: aiding an organic power transition, installing a pro-American/Zionist puppet regime, collapsing the nation into civil war, imposing treaty terms that defang it relative to the status quo, or "bombing it into stone age". Iraq, Syria, Venezuela… And Iranian objectives, on the contrary, were to survive, preserve the status quo, and hopefully improve on it by getting sanctions relief. In this sense, the present situation indicates Iran overachieving on its objectives, whereas the US has not just failed but made its position worse.
Agreed that this is very premature given previous fake-out "deals". But I do think that the MOU is qualitatively different, and American eagerness to sign it, allows me to say that Iran won. If, say, negotiations break down and the US resumes high-intensity strikes, that'll be a separate arc. I'm not saying Iran won forever.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
10d ago
Wikipedia gives the following incomplete list of objectives:
The Trump administration gave various explanations for starting the war, including forestalling Iranian retaliation after an expected Israeli attack,[84] destroying Iran's missile capabilities, preventing Iran from building a nuclear weapon,[85] seizing Iran's oil and gas resources,[86][87][88] or regime change.
Oil and gas shitposting has obviously failed. Regime change, well, you see. Unconditional surrender, not mentioned, certainly failed. "Destroying missile capabilities" – significant attrition but that's a cope, Witkoff wanted them to give up on production, something absent from the MOU which even proscribes interfering in such matters. "Forestalling Iranian retaliation", worse than failed, it was caused by the aggression. Proxies – Iran had forced the ceasefire in Lebanon (thus, preservation of Hezbollah) to be the #1 issue in the MOU, if you go through the timeline you can see that this isn't really what the US wanted and not a win for the US+Israel either.
The nuclear stuff is the biggest sticking point, I agree. But the thing is, did Iran even move far from their pre-war position? It seems to me that they did not, in which case the US didn't even need the war to "win" here, therefore this is not an achievement of a military objective.
Iran has to take some responsibility. It has never published its seven-page written offer for a new deal, including the annexe, which was shown to Witkoff during the final round of talks in Geneva, despite calls from inside Iran to do so. Araghchi has said he hoped the truth of what happened on the final day of talks, 26 February, would soon become known. He could do this himself by publishing Iran’s offer – one that Jonathan Powell, the UK national security adviser who was present at the talks, thought worth pursuing. Kushner admitted a deal could have been presented that was better than the Obama nuclear deal secured in 2015.
It may also have been a mistake not to allow Witkoff to keep a copy of the offer, since he could at least have shown it to technically more competent officials in Washington. Witkoff would later describe their reticence to hand over the document as a “tell” that they were not interested in a deal, and were just playing for time.
However, Kelsey Davenport, the director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association (ACA), said it was understandable the Iranians did not want to hand over their negotiating position given Trump’s record of publishing confidential material on his Truth Social web platform.
Also, Iran was talking about lifting 80% of the sanctions as their carrot. Now they get 100%, for much the same terms. So no, I think this is still American defeat, and the only way to spin it otherwise is to claim that Iranian terms were untrustworthy when originally proposed but are more trustworthy now that they know just how brutal and perfidious the US can be. I find that to be a pretty flimsy argument.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
10d ago
America won.
Ah. Very well, carry on winning then. This is what the Chinese call spiritual victory. Seriously though…
America killed a generation of Iran's leadership
Literally what does it matter? Why do you even mention this? "Kill some dudes" is not a meaningful military objective.
War critics have simply continued onto the next set of predictions. Because the Iranian regime didn't completely collapse, and sanctions will be lifted as part of a peace deal, America is supposed to have lost. Whatever you guys say. I don't think any of you want to be convinced. I think you just want to hate America.
that would hit so hard if war proponents didn't move through different war objectives.
Some did get fulfilled. I'm personally partial to this specific Truth:
There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER! After that, and the selection of a GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader(s), we, and many of our wonderful and very brave allies and partners, will work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction, making it economically bigger, better, and stronger than ever before. IRAN WILL HAVE A GREAT FUTURE. “MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN (MIGA!).” Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP
This, as far as I can tell, has come to pass in its entirety. Iran has chosen new great and acceptable leaders (Mojtaba Khamenei and his team); Trump even wants to meet with him. The US and allies will aid Iran in reconstruction, granting Iran (and Oman) authority over the Strait, making it economically bigger, better, and stronger than ever before. Iranian military-industrial complex is fine (estimates for missiles and drones suggest they're not halfway done, whereas you are out of interceptors) and will be upgraded, given that there are no terms prohibiting that (which there were in Witkoff&Kushner's draft). The nuclear question didn't move much from their "surprising proposal" you responded to with assassination of Khamenei's family, and they had a decades-old fatwa on nukes to begin with. Americans acknowledging Iranian regime's legitimacy and committing to "not deploy any additional forces in the region" is as close to UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER for a superpower as one could imagine.
But I think the case is going to become more and more obvious as time goes by.
Yes, I imagine so.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
10d ago
Thanks for the clarity, I'll put it simply too.
People extend different amounts of charity to friends, to family members, to neutral strangers and to the hostile outgroup. This does not map cleanly onto political allegiance. For example I still nominally have friends of the Zigger persuasion, and either do not discuss the war and the broad issue of the… diminished credibility of the Russian national project, or try to make my points from the remaining common ground. Some friends who have Powerful takes on the need to eradicate Russian nation. There are also some people in this community whom I respect and disagree with, people with rich, coherent and defensible belief systems leading to different conclusions from mine, and I'd rather not shit on them over claiming something that I'd say disqualifies a stranger from having political rights.
But at the end of the day I'm a Sinophilic Russian who wants broader power decentralization. You're the kind of guy who can seriously posit that it might be "treasonous" for Americans to undermine an undeclared American war of aggression via criticism (which also makes you immune to the substance of much of the criticism, since the US has in fact lost the war for military reasons many critics had been bringing up, but your school of thought allows the causality to be inverted). Your epistemics and morality also appear shot:
The way you are writing is worrying, it makes me worry about how you are doing, where this dehumanization is coming from, and so on
In truth, we call it all off now, Iran will probably finish arming themselves and nuke a civilian population, likely Israel.
But at that point you have overt politicking putting American, Israeli, Middle Eastern lives (and maybe everyone else?) at risk because you want to slightly increase the chance you can spend two years repeatedly impeaching Trump.
Make the PR bad enough and we stop with the job half done and everyone loses.
No, not everyone loses. Just your team, which might not even represent the aggregate interests of the American nation. Your team's interests are not humanity's interests, they're maybe forgivable (though I don't think they are) but particular. "We need to win… for everyone!" is a self-serving argument.
In other words, you're a two-bit hegemonist, and hostile outgroup for me. When we talk about matters pertaining to your project and to mine, much of the meat you can find is poison, and vice versa; and just like you don't sugarcoat your assertions, I won't do mine. Did you ever say anything interesting? I don't remember, but do you think your cited posts, premised entirely on these self-serving axioms and warped morality, appear to be meaty to me, or just petulant, entitled chutzpah?
But I won't concern troll about your mental health. That'd be too self-serving.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
10d ago
Compare it to the Iranians who have sworn to fight "until complete victory" while insisting that no negotiations have even been happening.
Yes, let's compare. Indeed, to our knowledge, no direct negotiations with the US have been happening at virtually every moment where the US was claiming negotiations, and the MOU is both extremely similar to initial Iranian terms, dissimilar to Witkoff-Kushner terms which Iran had dismissed, and an admission of Iranian victory. They've performed so much better than you that you can't look at this. Wiki:
On 25 March, Pakistani officials delivered a "15-point proposal" from the US to Iran, detailing a ceasefire plan.[15][16][17] The US proposal included an end to Iran's nuclear program, limits on its missiles, reopening the Strait of Hormuz, restrictions on Iran's support for armed groups, and sanctions relief for Iran. The Iranians rejected the US proposal, with an anonymous official telling Press TV that "Iran will end the war when it decides to do so and when its own conditions are met". The Iranians issued a "5-point counter-proposal", including an end to US-Israeli attacks on Iran and pro-Iranian forces in Lebanon and Iraq, security guarantees to prevent future Israeli and US aggression, war reparations, and international recognition of Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz.[18]
On 31 March, Pakistan and China delivered a "5 point initiative" for peace, calling for an immediate end to all hostilities and allowance of humanitarian aid into the region.[19][20][21] Trump claimed on 1 April 2026 that Iran had just asked the US for a ceasefire and that the US would consider it once the Strait of Hormuz was "open, free, and clear. Until then, we are blasting Iran into oblivion ... back to the Stone Ages!".[11] Iran's foreign ministry called the claim "false and baseless". The IRGC said the strait "will not be opened to the enemies of this nation through the ridiculous spectacle by the president of the US".[11]
Pretty clear who's been full of bluster here and who achieved victory.
I think I don't know, you don't know, Daes definitely doesn't know (or can't say if he did, isn't he posting from China these days?)
Uh-huh. From the inner spiritual China. The politruk does keep a tight watch over what I get to post on themotte. @aquota see, I really wouldn't have needed xitter to lose interest in dancing around the fact that some Patriots are going off their rockers and it's pretty funny.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
11d ago
See, this is what I mean.
See what? You're basically hiding in the fog of war and proposing a deeply nihilistic epistemology that Trump's tendency to brazenly bullshit everyone makes every circumstance completely open to interpretation. I don't believe this is how this works. Operation Epic Fury had been declared Over in early May already, by the Secretary of State, who doesn't have remotely Trump's reputation. The US and Iran have signed - not announced, not "leaked" – an MOU which is clearly an admission of defeat relative to any claimed early-war objective of the US, and a bunch of obvious Ws for Iran. Could Trump ignore it all, restart the war, and actually beat Iran this time? Quite possibly. Such things happen in history. But that'd be another, separate war. The terms accepted now suggest the US was pretty desperate for an off-ramp.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
11d ago
Thanks
The ritual with public chiding and howling of Les Miserables is insufferable.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
11d ago
Like if somehow the war had ended unambiguously on good terms for the US was this supposed to be evidence in my favor?
Yes, because it'd suggest that my opponents were largely correct to treat it as another culture war side show, and demand charitable discussion of American efforts and speaking of their leaders Trump and Hegseth as imperfect, maybe not highly moral, but rational actors with non-insane motivations, who have a plausible, debatable opinion on what's best for America (specifically, another war in the Middle East). And that insisting that the war is a wholly unjustified crime perpetrated by basically murder clowns is "TDS", "twitter fried his brain", or some such.
To be clear, I expected the war to end in Iranian defeat, but not really "good terms for the US". As in – probably ground operation, some more atrocities, more losses, high reputational damage, high economic damage, attrition of stockpiles, unmanageable conflagration in the region, dangerously inflated belief in capabilities vs China, and other assorted wages of insanity and malice that make it all not worth it. American defeat was well outside my model, so this is "winning too much", as it were.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
11d ago
As long as it's the Iranians I can agree
Call me a Western supremacist and racist but on Feb 27th I did not expect Iranians to come out looking more decent.
none of this is new for Western, or any other sort of leadership
Many old things are vile and, worse, not even effective. There's a point to having standards.
It's all there is to it, and all there ever was.
That's because it's not such a small thing as you try to make it out to be. It's not like Hegseth has bad facial features or that I get the ick. It's that his entire shtick is shit. His… ah, I've already covered that, didn't I. Aesthetics is correlated with holistic value. This is how a commander presents himself when he's likely to wage a nonsensical war in a reprehensible manner. This is how a secondary antagonist in a Disney adaptation of a children's fable looks like. Apparently, this is also how a guy looks when he's about to blow it. We're not on SlateStarCodex, but Scott would surely say that nothing is ever a coincidence, or something to that effect.
But anyway, there is something new to it. Again: the US has lost the war. So:
The perfect two-line summary of the entirety of pro-Trump vs. anti-Trump discourse, isn't it?
I concede I should have added the third line, for example: "and then Trumpists fucking lose, having debased and betrayed themselves for nothing".
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
11d ago
I was shown the door, after repeatedly petitioning for fair and non-preferential treatment* and with the clear and not unreasonable suggestion that I'm expected to self-immolate upon coming back. The 90 day ban had expired like 2-3 days ago. I might write another update on the AI competition (like my long-running series on Ascend hardware, given that they're rolling out SuperPODs in July-August, and DeepSeek given that they're finally raised $7.4B…) when there's some alpha. Oh, Cheng Li-Wun's visit to Beijing (and next to Washington) also should have gotten some coverage. And https://europe2031.ai/ in light of the Fable pullback. I think @Stefferi and other resident Europeans might care. Advanced drone warfare reaching Moscow and starting to make inroads in Lebanon… Lots of stuff to talk about. Maybe one day.
Thanks for remembering me, I guess.
Sorry for hijacking, @self_made_human.
If you're interested in what I'm going to write (assuming I won't get banned again right now), maybe you'll see reason to check in from time to time.
*If @Amadan wants to knock me right out again, he's within his rights to do so. I legit was fed up with the mods for this year-long public game of "Oh no Dase, you're such an asshole of course, what a shame, but you're too precious to get banned… or at least you were, long ago… what do, hm? Hmm?!" which invited resentment from the Oppressed User Underclass conjured into existence by the very act of this public distinction. My requests weren't an attempt to suicide-by-cop, I just wanted them to stop it.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
11d ago
So in the post which earned me the ban, one specific line that invited complaints, glib pontification about my being brain-fried by Twitter, and even concern for my wellbeing (eg from @Throwaway05) was:
Your democratically elected representatives are worse than their authoritarians. I'm quite serious, we can just take a glance at "them" and see that Iranian leaders you're murdering look and talk like normal white Europeans from a developed nation, while yours, authorizing those strikes – Hegseth, Trump – are barely human but instead some degenerated swine from a Fromsoft game (and unsurprisingly detest Europe and revel in harming and humiliating it directly and indirectly).
I stand by this line, and I believe it had aged very well indeed, complete with the claim of superiority of Iranian leadership material. In particular Ali Larijani, the butcher, the Kantian, had been vindicated, and killing him proved to be utterly futile. This is a triumph of the human over the bestial, reason over dogma, intellect and will over emotion and matter. Pretty clear-cut actually. I think Americans should reflect on this phenomenon, it's like their movies and cartoons, except they weren't the underdog protagonists.
The bolded part was labeled «Nazi talk», and: «Systematic dehumanization of someone you dislike and leadership figures of them is a classic sign of disordered thought processes that often lead to things like the rise of authoritarian states, ethnic cleansing, justification of deaths of people in that group (ex: Charlie Kirk).» Throwaway, being Mentally Well and Socially Adjusted, felt it prudent to only say that «the current admin has plenty worth complaining about».
I am obviously tempted to snark, but let's be civil. Throwaway, upon everything we've seen while I was out – do you think calling Trump and Hegseth, these two powerful men in particular, swine and worse – was undeserved? Do you think that after a perfidious attack during negotiations, Minab girls' school targeted by Palantir using SoTA AI and maps 10 years out of date and triple-tapped by supposedly Iranian Tomahawks, stealthily sinking a defenseless ship, «a whole civilization will die», «bridge and power plant day», «Death and destruction from the sky. All day long», moving goalposts and retroactively changing objectives of the operation, making up «regime change» with the regime getting unprecedentedly legitimized, lashing out at allies, withdrawing defensive arms from allies and freezing supplies to allies, insider trading, 30+ fraudulent declarations of victory and/or Deal to mislead the markets, bringing the global economy to the brink where SPRs would run dry and serious demand destruction would begin, and eventual concession of military defeat in Versailles, complete with thanks to Xi and Putin for not making it more pathetic – after this entire immense, destructive, disgraceful, fractally embarrassing, entirely unnecessary, wholly CHOSEN, heavily DEFENDED and RATIONALIZED here, shitshow that has defiled American reputation and deflated American mythos (not the LLM from Dario, which sort of saved the day) –
…
…
do you think it was reasonable of you to give me a lecture on how I'm losing it, just because I expressed anger and disgust with what was happening and what it meant?
@aqouta do you still think it was my brain that got fried, and not of everyone here who treated this war as business as usual and a cause for armchair chuckling about… all manners of tedious war nerd minutiae?
@WandererintheWilderness do you still think Iranians have underperformed your standards for "human beings with moral agency and rational minds", and that Americans were more up to it?
And what have the warmongers got to say for themselves? @Shakes? @Iconochasm? I'm not even mad anymore, after all you lost, contra my expectations. I'm just kind of curious: can you process that this was a terrible idea and many supposedly cuckoo people who pointed out that the US will lose the war (like Scott Ritter) were, actually, straight up correct, at least?
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3mo ago
Well yes, that's prudent to smooth out the shock, but in the longer term the US is entrenching its position as a fossil fuel producer and exporter.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3mo ago
Well you could just not try shorting oil futures in the first place, that's a pretty zany strategy. In fact, American oil/LNG companies stand to gain BIGLY from all this. Russia is banned, Iran is being destroyed, Qatar is already 20% down for the next 3-5 years, the Strait is closed. Your commodity exports are going to the moon.
I mean. They could voluntarily reform themselves into a peace-loving liberal democracy
These are human beings with moral agency and rational minds. In principle there should be nothing stopping them from just ceasing to be an oppressive warmongering theocracy, and then, miraculously, the rest of the world would stop trying to blow them up.
Haha. Holy shit man, get off your high horse. Could you, in principle, reform yourself into a sensible person? This is just laughably tone-deaf in 2026. It's not "the rest of the world" – you don't represent the world, this won't even work as a polite fiction, "the world" is overwhelmingly against this lunacy, and not because the world likes Ayatollahs. You're on the side of a clearly fascist nation committing genocide in the name of a crude ethnosupremacist theological doctrine, you endorse the second tier version of that doctrine due to being too low IQ to understand Christianity without sectarian perversions, you're ruled by millenarian fanatics worse than Shia Muslims. You openly and proudly commit perfidy, you bullshit all the time, and you're boasting of how these interventions are not even designed to create peace-loving liberal democracies but to, like, appropriate muh oil. Your democratically elected representatives are worse than their authoritarians. I'm quite serious, we can just take a glance at "them" and see that Iranian leaders you're murdering look and talk like normal white Europeans from a developed nation, while yours, authorizing those strikes – Hegseth, Trump – are barely human but instead some degenerated swine from a Fromsoft game (and unsurprisingly detest Europe and revel in harming and humiliating it directly and indirectly). There's a limit to how much you can avert your eyes from the nature of your society and people. Or is there?
Then again, I realize that talking to Americans is as pointless as talking to demons from Frieren, you're only responsive to kinetic and financial arguments at this stage.
P.S. (given the length of the ban, btw thanks for FINALLY dropping this blat and treating me like a normal user as I've been requesting, I feel the need to say this in an edit:) I would very much prefer it if @self_made_human did not disseminate my contacts on any external platforms, for many simple reasons, not least being fed up with condescension here, and also not having any valuable thoughts to share with mottizens. I'd rather you treated me as braindead.
But speaking of the patronizing discussion about being "fried", social media incentives, speculative real life struggles, clout etc.: far as I know, other people's feelings and approval have always had negligible effect on my posting, or generally actions. There are very few internet strangers who matter enough (mostly instrumentally) to deserve any amount of charity or patience, and a tiny number of real life friends whose opinion and goodwill I value above that of any amount of internet strangers. To be frank, I actually struggle with remembering or paying attention to people at all, it often takes me months to read DMs or mail or respond to calls, even with money, glory or other rewards on the line; it's a major problem that has cost me multiple communities, friendships and relationships.
There is very little change in my modus operandi anyway; the only difference is who/whom, my ire no longer being trained on people you're entertained to see savaged, fairly or not. I've gladly taken a permaban on the original subreddit for much the same behavior many years ago now, and would have accepted a permaban on TheMotte at any later point of time if that were the cost of speaking honestly. Not all communities are for everyone, certainly not this one.
My views on the US in general and this community in particular have soured in response to new evidence, such as Resistance Libs (which we've collectively hounded off here) having been, in my opinion, strongly vindicated (unlike my own sympathy for American conservatives), and not in response to having gained some number of "followers" somewhere else. What an immature idea.
There's just nothing to be said. If there's anything to apologize for, I apologize for my recent top level posts that attempted to force an unwelcome discussion.
Entitled misinterpretations of minutiae of my rant (eg "genocidal dehumanization" of Trump&Hegseth who don't constitute a genus) do not merit a comment.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3mo ago
I'm curious as to what is driving this
The impossibility of negotiations with the US and Israel. It doesn't really matter if Iranians have coherent command or not, even a midwitted officer can independently realize the payoff matrix here. Israelis will keep killing their leadership because the official Israeli objective is regime collapse or at least degrading Iran to the condition where it can be gradually collapsed with "mowing the lawn" tactics. American negotiators (Kushner, Witkoff) are now known to be a) incompetent and b) represent Israel first, so any possible ceasefire agreements will be immediately exploited to kill Iranians with more freedom of action, like the US has done to Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq after a recent ceasefire agreement.
They don't have moves that improve their situation left, sans imposing costs on the global and regional economy and hoping to provoke a strategically unsound concession via international pressure on the US&Israel, to genuinely win time and reestablish deterrence. It's a pretty absurd bet, especially seeing as neither Israel nor the US are directly harmed by the closure of Hormuz Strait and consider giving Iranians room to develop nukes (or even maintain a ballistic missile program) unacceptable. It's also arguably backfiring with GCC countries (though this is largely irrelevant as they have little offensive capability beyond hosting American forces and allowing the use of their airspace, which they've been doing anyway).
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
3mo ago
I notice that Americans have an extremely delusional and entitled ideas about what happened over Greenland and how "The Western Civilization" (though they sometimes deny this label to Europe, with arguments far more ridiculous than mine) has seen it. It has seen it as a completely credible hostility. You are a hostile alien civilization, understood? Probably not.
P.S.
Sounds like Agamemnon
Agamemnon is literally a Bronze Age brute that precedes even the height of Greek civilization, to say nothing of the West proper. Kind of says it all. There are millenia, tens of generations of divergent selection, schisms and continents between you and what white people have been building towards.
Well I disagree with your point because people who matter do. Russian elite is supposedly hiring Mandarin-speaking nannies for their children. American elite – Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Trumps – do the same. Some random Africans do. TraceWoodgrains did, like a quarter of this forum did. Hell, you did to an extent. High agency people learn Chinese. An average American isn't doing international business and needn't even be verbal or numerate (or independently physically mobile) to live a good fat life, so of course there's little demand for Mandarin in those circles. But Germans thought similarly, and where are they now? China is kicking them out of their main industrial markets, for all their racist hubris about "German quality" and, I bet, smug sense of superiority when they heard a Chinese engineer humbly speaking German just to accommodate them. A lesson in there.
More boringly, we live in an age where technology seems certain to make multilingualism a rather worthless skill. Real-time AI translation is getting really good.
And what beyond AI and Falcon? That's your last frontier now. They're roughly where you were in 1980 in GDP per capita, and yet the technological gap has shrunk to about 5 years. The best current Chinese AI model is 6-8 months behind. They have a Raptor 2 class engine in testing, will probably land a rocket this month, and also show a Blackwell-level AI training cluster. They're even building fighter jets faster than you now, and people with a clue say that copes about J-20 or J-35 being junk or "not really 5th gen" will get people killed. It just, I dunno, it doesn't look intimidating. Pull out some other rabbit out of this future hat. The entire US is becoming an overleveraged bet on transformative AGI, and I'm not sure <12 months of lead will be enough for… whatever it is the plan is.
That is true but in practice American countermeasures mostly amount to tariffs, more tariffs on third parties, subsidies, export controls, and hare-brained attempts to rally or strongarm the "allies". Which is rather amateurish and primitive compared to their model of governance. Americans acting != Americans acting effiiciently.
Have you considered that one reason China copies good stuff from the West/US but the opposite doesn't happen is simply that you can't, even if you honestly try, which you often don't because of hubris and brainwashing that prevent you from the recognition of a shortcoming? You're not a very adaptive society. You can't copy meritocracy, because it's at odds with democracy. You can talk about "wake-up calls" for decades but can't develop industrial policy that isn't just picking winners or corruption with extra steps, so you cope that this is what they do too. You can't have a decent drone manufacturer even after years of handwringing about the natsec threat of DJI. You can't form a non-primitive theory of how subsidies work, and you are still coping about "cheap peasant labor" after their wages grew 17x and the competitiveness didn't budge. Your solution to your fentanyl epidemic was begging China to help out on their end. You can't copy the "don't start pointless wars with no theory of victory" trick, and you've even lost the basic Western technology of recognizing failure instead of saving face. You famously can't build the high speed rail system or the secure quantum communication network, though I agree that's unnecessary. Over roughly 8 years of the trade war and "decoupling", more of "friend-shoring", you've become more dependent on their supply chains for your core, singular Hail Mary bet against them, but not the other way around, and your elites are still confused as to what is happening and believe the solution is more Being Tough On China. It's hard for you to reform the FDA the way they did their reforms – though you are trying, yes you are reacting to copy Chinese policy, yes there is a "we much copy the Chinese" mindset in some strata already. I think there'll be more of that; Trump clearly envies Xi in many ways, and one of his few great personal qualities is that he's not invested in saving face for the nation of the United States or for the American people, his ego is too big to care about you, so maybe he'll succeed somewhat just to make simself look good on merit of fixing the mess. But again, hard without meritocracy, surrounded by mediocre sniveling viziers. Trumpism is a very Oriental phenomenon.
I wouldn't worry about their science. It's well-funded, it has a path to commercialization and it's flush with talent. That's everything that made American science great, except more so.
I wanted to call out an inconsistency but actually if you think they're far behind in AI, I guess this makes sense. America will have AGI and a new century of greatnessl the Chinese, being incapable of Real Progress, will have a "demographic crisis". Nevermind that they're running circles around the entire world in robotics.
Well that's plausible, if pointless except for getting to China. then they'll raise their own export controls (as they already do sometimes) and keep exporting to the entire rest of the world, watching as "the West" collapses like a house of cards, I guess. We've seen a small scale test with Nexperia. I repeat, this is insane hubris. The reason China is relevant today is their own productivity owing to human capital and adequate governance, not some charity from the West and certainly not minor market access tricks.
Just the point that their talent is not particularly valuable. They don't produce a lot of talent. Just how it is.
This is more tryhard grandiosity and frankly close to "But I did have breakfast this morning" reasoning. You lost Detroit auto industry not because you casually permitted it to happen out of some leonine generosity towards an ally. The Japanese just were better and took it away. They were getting likewise better in chips. That you have imperial means of compelling Japan is irrelevant for purposes of the argument because you don't have such means in China, nor soldiers in Shanghai. So the real comparison you should make is to "how would we fare if we could NOT compel Japan AT ALL".
This is, hilariously enough, a very traditional Chinese posture, almost word for word. They tried this thing with tributary states, it was net negative. The job of the champion is to be able to bear all the costs of hegemony alone, only then do the vassals feel emboldened to contribute; if the champion retreats, he risks provoking a rout. You've already retreated a few times in the last 2 years. You're the center of a world-system where a treaty-bound ally can deny his airspace to your air force. This isn't a system you own or control, it's just something you earn rent on.
China has replaced the US as the physical center of the industrial civilization over the last generation. That is strength, that is what is hard, and that, not sentimental bullshit in the European manner about attractive culture, is what made the US the 20th century superpower. Factories, cities, jets, ships, rockets, Silicon Valley, exponentially growing material abundance. You also mentioned "cities" above, do you really think they still envy your cities? Does anyone outside, like, Latin America? One by one, these check boxes are getting filled. You need to keep making new ones.
I'm really unsure about this, any statistics? Which people? I only recall that time Stanford students stole an AI model built by Tsinghua students, shallowly obfuscated and rebranded as their own for clout. That, too, is a perk of being the center of the World. Indeed, no such people would think of trying to enroll in Tsinghua. I bet they love America.
On balance they have, conservatively, 2x your industrial capacity, 3x intellectual and (very conservatively) no less capable governance or markets. Unless you show some unprecedented overperformance, it's wholly their game to lose.
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