Shakes
9d ago
TSA has a very good idea of which passengers are most likely to be terrorists, but because of this proto-woke "Everyone is a security risk" dogma we make everyone take off their shoes. (Or used to, before we invented more invasive scanners.)
It's the same for the police and law enforcement: profiling works because risk is not uniformly distributed through human populations.
And there are always exceptions and sometimes the risk isn't what a naive stereotype would assume. But between a Catholic and a pink-haired SJW I think we all know which description is likelier to press the defect button out of adherence to an all-encompassing creed.
Shakes
9d ago
We don't even have the terms of the deal and you're already declaring it a loss. I also don't think you actually know how many munitions were actually expended because the true size of America's arsenal is going to be classified. It seems like you're getting all your information from a social media fog of war that isn't all that accurate -- it's not true that Iran controls the strait when the American navy can blockade it and run ships through it against Iranian interference. It sounds like you just want to declare it an American loss and have decided that the only reliable information is the Iranian propaganda that declares it is one.
Shakes
10d ago
Why do you believe that the US can’t blow up bridges and power plants? Do you think we lack the munitions?
Shakes
10d ago
A lot of the SpaceX fortune is hype for the cult of Elon or his other companies but I think SpaceX creates immense economic value:
- Space underwrites American military dominance ie underpins the entire economic global order and SpaceX leads in space
- SpaceX has a monopoly on re-usable rockets which will lower the economic cost of doing all business in space and make new industries possible
- SpaceX has immense data-processing and data-storage capabilities at the exact moment that compute is bottlenecked by the growth of AI
- SpaceX is partnered with Tesla and xAI on applications that will be at the forefront of other monumental technical bottlenecks
It’s like Elon discovered a new continent and has a monopoly on trade with it. At a minimum huge portions of American security run through satellites that Elon has the most efficient and best ways of servicing. An even more bullish case is that huge sectors of information and data-processing will move to space as we hit economies of scale. (What does the airline industry look like if everyone has an in-flight internet connection? How many useful private applications of live satellite feed are waiting to be invented?) And the more advanced SpaceX becomes the larger the moat for other countries — if Europe can’t join space they become a branch plant economy of America.
It’s possible that SpaceX will privatize a generation of American hegemony. In which case they are undervalued.
Shakes
10d ago
Ok fair enough I just didn’t want to reply to your broader points if I was being skimmed as a caricature.
I just don’t think it’s true that “ The goal of the war was regime change”. I think that is one of the scenarios under which America would have won. I know Trump said he would like to see regime change, and that a broader media ecosystem declared the lack of regime change as losing. But I don’t think it’s true.
It’s also true that we don’t know what the real terms are, and I suspect this will really be several deals spaced over time with lots of face-saving formulations. But we’re very far away from where we were a few months ago when war critics said that Iran was invincible and America was on the cusp of momentous failure. Iran scored 13 American casualties and they couldn’t even keep the oil bottled up.
Ultimately America will achieve its aims, which are to cripple the worst of Iran’s ability to project force. They won’t have nukes. They won’t have missiles or drones. Not enough to matter. They won’t have militias and terror cells.
Once Iran accepts this, we have nothing essential worth fighting for. They can’t destroy Israel and they can’t bully the Saud. They’re stuck there, they have to live between the crescent and the sea. Forever.
So then it becomes possible to return to diplomacy and even become friends. Or frenemies. We can give them hundreds of billions of dollars to do that, or we can keep bombing their ships. They can’t have nukes. They can have prosperity. This is better.
This is the Trump Doctrine, it’s playing out in Venezuela and in North Korea and now the Middle East. It’s the same logic as any good Shonen anime (I’ve tongue-in-cheek called this “Trump is Naruto Theory”.) It’s the same logic as Lyin’ Ted and Lion Ted. One day you’re enemies and the next day you’re friends. Because you fight and someone wins and the loser has to get over it and when you’re pure of heart they’ll let you grab them by the pussy.
What I mean is, if you believe in Capitalism, if you believe in diplomacy and trade, there are benefits when everyone cooperates. There are also bad and evil men and communists and terrorists and we can’t always make friends. And maybe Iran is run by evil men and they won’t make peace.
But Iran can’t really win what they want with war. Nobody can. America is the greatest power in the world and will remain so. We have the nuclear submarines and satellites and the engineers and factories. We have a country of beautiful warm-hearted people who want to share our excellence with the world. You can’t beat us. The global system runs through America, while you are droning oil ships we are moving the entire world’s economy to rockets in space. We can crush you. We don’t want to. So it’s actually all cheaper if we all get along.
Iran will recover some and they’ll build some rockets, but it will leave a sour taste knowing we can destroy those whenever we want and they can’t do anything about it. They’ll slowly stop calling for death to Israel. Their militias will dry up. They’ll never have nukes and they can have hundreds of billions of dollars instead to enjoy saffron rice and air conditioning and families who don’t know war. We’ll sign treaties and deals. In 20 years they’ll elect a liberal. In 40 years it will be like none of this ever happened.
It’ll be like when Rome conquered the Mediterranean and all that was left was the pirates, or like when Naruto and Sasuke stopped fighting and had kids.
Shakes
10d ago
Bombing Iran back to the stone ages would stop their nuclear and missile programs because they’d be dead. We would kill them. It’s also a lot of work cleaning up the body and the mess would annoy our allies so we’d rather just all shake hands.
Shakes
10d ago
I’m willing to agree that statistically, syntactically, this is an important distinction because it’s the difference between Iran having some capacities or none.
But to me it’s semantically the same: we bombed so much that the Iranians have to become a mole race living im the mountains if they want to continue the war.
Shakes
10d ago
Secondly, nobody even seems to know what's in this deal that's been agreed, so it's hard to see how it can be claimed as a success.
Yes, I actually made a very similar point to that in the first and last sentences of this comment here:
https://www.themotte.org/post/3805/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/452932?context=8#context
Shakes
10d ago
See here:
https://www.themotte.org/post/3671/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/429651?context=8#context
General Caine: America has destroyed
80% of Iran’s Air Defense Systems
90% of Iran’s regular fleet
Half of the IRGC’s small attack boats
95% of Iran’s naval mines
90% of Iran’s weapons factories
100% of Shaheed attack drone factories
80% of Iran’s missile facilities
80% of Iran’s nuclear industrial base
We can agree that this is the kind of thing we could imagine the CIA might say. I guess that counts for something
Shakes
10d ago
Yes, you can't bomb a facility hundreds of meters below a mountain without nukes.
If this were true, then isn't the entire war a facade? America pretended to destroy Fordow and Isfahan and Natanz a year ago, but couldn't because it's impossible to destroy facilities hundreds of meters below a mountain. Therefore Iran can acquire nukes whenever they want and nobody can stop them. So what's even the point? What's the secret reason America went to war if they know it's actually impossible to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons?
If you believe this I think you should elaborate.
Shakes
10d ago
US intelligence by way of NYT, WaPo
What does that actually mean? What is it worth? US Intelligence Community produces a lot of intel. There's no guarantee that this is a majority opinion, a generally accepted conclusion. How many hundreds of reports are floating out there right now trying to assess what capabilities the Iranians have left? And the New York Times got to see one of them?
Shakes
10d ago
Oh, well if Maggie Haberman says so...
Why not just admit that we in the general public probably have no idea what the numbers look like? Because this is just he-said-she-said.
Shakes
10d ago
Never before has a winner of a war had to claim 39 times that the nightmare is about to end.
Nightmare? Aren't you editorializing a little bit? It's usually bad epistemology to cite your own spin as evidence.
The US would have tried to escort ships through the strait except they couldn't.
it didn't militarily defeat Iran
What else do you call it when we blow up hundreds of targets and they fail to meaningfully retaliate? Their navy is at the bottom of the gulf.
it didn't get rid of the nuclear program.
The debate now has moved from what to do with Iran's nuclear facilities, to what to do with Iran's nuclear dust. Do you believe Iran still has working nuclear facilities? Do you have an explanation for why we would not have bombed them?
Several THAAD launchers gone, 1200+ patriot missiles and several thousand cruise missiles spent trying to blow up bunkers that are deep under mountains. It didn't achieve much and Shahed drones are way easier to replace than the extremely expensive radars they blew up.
This is a non-sequitur. You are claiming that America used up 40% of its missile stockpile over Iran. Why do you think that's true? It doesn't matter how many missiles we used in raw terms. You are claiming to have knowledge about total American military reserves. Are you posting from a SCIF?
In this universe it's not clear at all why Iran even asked for a ceasefire. Seems like they should have kept blowing up American targets since it comes at such high cost to us and such little cost to them. America is almost totally militarily depleted, Iran is impervious to bullets, they could have just kept going. I guess they decided to be nice?
Shakes
10d ago
Iran’s missile capacity has not been meaningfully damaged (only by 30% of pre-war levels and we should assume the remaining 70% is harder to target as tactics developed).
Says who?
Iran benefits by getting a new tollbooth for their new strait in 60 days,
Oh, ok, we're just discussing vibes and rumors.
Shakes
10d ago
Is that why you kept your ships at a decent distance?
What are you implying, that the American ships were chicken?
And the reason you chose not to, is because it would have done nothing to help you achieve your strategic objectives, and would have caused unpredictable consequences that you'd have to deal with. AKA: you couldn't.
Are you saying that America lacked the technical capacity to bomb Iran, or that America lacked the political will to deal with the fallout.
Shakes
10d ago
the US started to promise regularly that they were working on a surrender
This did not happen.
gave up on the idea of breaking the Iranian blockade.
This did not happen.
they didn't achieve a single stated objective
This did not happen.
the US abandoned its allies
This did not happen.
Iran got invaded
This did not happen.
hit back hard
This did not happen.
This is a spectacular win
This, flatly, did not happen.
This is what I think the problem is:
The US spent 40% of its missiles
Why do you think you know how many missiles America has? Because it was in a news report somewhere?
In a fog of war environment it becomes impossible to speak with certainty about what is going on. If anything, because the terms of the deal are still not yet public, we still don't know what is going on, and everything discussed here is premature.
However, in a fog of war, there are always lots of boosters and propagandists and partisans who will speak with perfect confidence about what is going on. There has been a consistent drumbeat for three months proclaiming that America has lost, Iran is in total control, and America will surrender at any moment.
This false confidence has gotten so outlandish that it has had to explain away many things we know to be true outside the fog of war. America destroys Iranian military targets? Not important. Iran cannot destroy American planes? Not important. America sinks Iranian ships? Not important. Iran claims anyways that they have total control over the Straits? Must be real.
Take also your remark about Iran's nuclear programs being destroyed last June. This point has been aggressively misinterpreted to suggest that America can't do anything right. This is not what happened at all: Last June, America targeted specific Iranian facilities and dropped the "bunker buster" to destroy an Iranian facility buried deep underground specifically to withstand American assault. That facility was destroyed. Now, in February, America started bombing other Iranian facilities that are also part of their nuclear system. These attacks are almost completely unrelated. But through the prism of war hype, we conflate two events into one and conclude that America can't even drop bombs properly anymore. Somehow.
Shakes
10d ago
US armed forces were unstoppable have been basically invincible: we destroyed the bulk of Iran's military industrial complex, we can intercept most of their missiles and rockets at any time, we destroyed their drone facilities, we sank most of their navy, and we killed their leaders; America has suffered 13 casualties; one plane was hit by Iranian fire and famously landed safely; another plane was destroyed and the pilot ejected, which lead to a now-famous mission where American forces intercepted him in hostile territory and built a runway to get him out without anyone being detected or killed. That is as invincible as invincible gets.
Godzilla destroys Tokyo and scratches his paw.
The only reason we didn't throw Iran back into the stone age is that we chose not to: Trump did not initiate Bridge and Power Plant Day. The only reason Iran didn't sink American ships and destroy American planes is that they can't.
Shakes
10d ago
Trump is also, I think, uniquely willing to withstand electoral pressure. He has not caved just because the war is unpopular and the midterms are looming. He even says the midterms don't matter. Surely that's a negotiating signal (to convince Iran that they can't just wait him out). But I think any other president, at this point, would have picked a vastly different strategy out of political concern.
I'm kind of betting against it now that I've seen just how entrenched the Iranian leadership structure is, and committed to their ideological aims. And how Culturally they apparently can't ever, ever, ever present as having lost face.
I'm currently thinking that the Abraham Accords will be expanded, but a broader regional peace will happen in steps and not one big all-encompassing deal. It might look like North Korea, where we have never really reached a true accord with them after Trump's handshake with Kim Jong Un, but we have a working relationship now and are slowly understanding each other.
As for nuclear dust, I'm not sure if Iran will give it up and consent to lose face. But given that we destroyed the bulk of their nuclear facilities it might be fine if this lingers for years, as Iran doesn't have the capacity to do anything with it anyways.
Shakes
10d ago
Ok, so why is Iran not getting better terms out of the deal?
Once we put aside mass media speculation, what do we actually know about Iran's capabilities in the gulf? They claimed to be able to shut down the gulf, they threatened a few ships, and this spooked the insurance companies enough to bring traffic to a stop. But America claimed that Iran did not meaningfully control the Straits at all.
Iran can threaten gulf oil traffic, but America can blockade Iran, bomb them, and intercept all their counterattacks. It also appears that Iran cannot meaningfully threaten gulf oil that has been rerouted around the Straits, and they cannot threaten global oil traffic at all. This has lead to some global disruptions for sure, but not the worst-case scenarios that were predicted confidently a few months ago. So what can Iran do?
If Iran has as much control over the Straits as you suggest, and we can't counter them effectively as you suggest, why are they agreeing to a peace deal?
Shakes
10d ago
I don't think it's good that the US government, directly through the president and cabinet secretaries and not through a sacrificial undersecretary of yadayadayada, regularly lies to us about what's going on.
This did not start with Donald Trump. You are speaking as if Donald Trump destroyed America's credibility. It's the opposite: Trump is only possible because those who came before him destroyed America's credibility.
Shakes
10d ago
Iran will have to spend years rebuilding assets America destroyed in a few weeks. Therefore, Iran is stronger than ever.
Shakes
10d ago
Details of the deal are not publicly available right now.
So it seems we were lucky to return to the pre-war status quo, even Trump had to tepidly admit that he bit off more than he can chew and Iran's regional dominance is not going anywhere.
So nobody knows what really happened, but at least we're having fun.
Does anybody else remember our discussions from a few months ago? Because what's been reported so far looks nothing like what many confidently predicted back then. Iran closing the strait would lead to massive energy spikes that would cripple the global economy and America would rush to surrender. And Iran would win on all points. Iran's nuclear program would continue uninterrupted. Iran's neighbors would be cowed into submission. Many people speculated that Iran would soon sink American ships, or innocent oil tankers, and that nobody would be able to stop them.
In fact, Iran's power was so strong that they would be able to toll the straits of Hormuz. Iran would be stronger than ever.
That seems to not have happened.
Likewise, the global energy crisis has not materialized. Where I live gas is about a buck-and-a-quarter more expensive than it was before the war. Plane tickets are more expensive and fertilizer costs have gone up. But, otherwise, nothing continues to happen. And America did not rush to surrender.
In fact, curiously, Iran is apparently giving up their greatest leverage by opening the straits. Why would they do that? We have heard that nobody can take the straits back from them, so why are they ceding it?
The terms now called losing terms were winning terms a few months ago: America bombed Iran, decapitated its leadership, destroyed the bulk of its capacity to manufacture missiles and drones, and will suffer no lasting consequences. The Straits, apparently, will be opened and a ceasefire will be maintained.
The questions now are whether this can be turned into a longer-lasting and more regional peace, and what will become of Iran's nuclear dust. (Not that they can do much with it, because we destroyed the nuclear facilities they would need to use it.) Trump, at least, is pushing to expand the Abraham Accords and lock the entire region into a broader framework for peace. Which doesn't sound like a loss of American prestige to me.
Of course it's possible that fighting will break out again or that the deal will not be as reported.
But wasn't America supposed to have lost?
Shakes
15d ago
That's not what happened here. Sikhs have a religious exemption that allows them to carry a knife as a religious article.
Ok I see how you read what I wrote to connote something different than what you just wrote, but I mean that he "used a religious exemption to acquire a weapon" which was used "to murder somebody". Which I think is the same thing.
British society was changed in a small way to accommodate an immigrant. (A normal British man would not have needed a Sikh religious weapons exemption, even if a normal British man could have theoretically converted to Sikhism.) What did British society get for this? In this case, a murderer and his family. Maybe there is some other greater benefit that renders this a price worth paying? I'm not seeing it.
I'm quoting you. You are claiming that Sikhs are building a parallel society in Britain.
Yeah, and I'm not sure whether to read your quotation back to me of my own words as using scare quotes or not. I do not think it is controversial to say, however, that many immigrants to Britain are building a parallel society. This is why I am repeating my claim. I think it is evidenced, at a minimum, by the fact that a Sikh immigrant murdered someone and his Sikh family sheltered him and advised him on how to get out of it. They don't act like integrated citizens putting Britain's interests above their prior clannish loyalties. We could start looking at other examples if you like. But to me it's a claim so obviously in evidence that when you quote my words back to me in that form, and I can't read your tone of voice, it becomes unclear to me what is actually under dispute. If you are disputing the point that I find totally uncontroversial, then we have a really different disagreement than if you just want me to elaborate on a related or unrelated point.
However, the Irish were and are religiously deviant from the US' predominantly Protestant culture, have a long history of "overperforming" the nation as a whole in crime, and to this day many of them live in ethnic enclaves with distinctive social norms.
Right, mass migration changed America permanent ways, many of them negative. Some American cities are still governed by the descendants of the political machines the Irish (and other immigrant groups) begot. Nobody today would claim (I would not claim) that the Irish aren't American. It basically worked out. But it was not an easy or painless process! In some sense we're still paying the cost today.
So if you want to tease out what it means to be integrated, that's one thing, but if you want to dispute the costs and benefits of mass migration, that's another. I think the case of the Irish proves my point in fact. Unless you're just trying to tease out what it means to be integrated. Which is why it matters whether I read your quotation of my own words back to me as a case of square quotes or not.
Yeah this is extremely standard export-control, the novelty is in applying it to an AI model.
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