anon_
2d ago
To be fair, a Tomahawk that is mistargeted is a few million we could have spent actually hitting the right target.
anon_
2d ago
Sure. But if he offends you aesthetically and not on the merits, then don't start in on a death toll.
I understand that there was demand for someone to put on a crisp suit and portray an image of careful and meticulous balance. My take that is that aesthetic gloss is, at best, neutral to the actual thing.
anon_
2d ago
Man, how many Japanese kids and teachers were incinerated when we firebombed Tokyo? War is terrible, that's why we shouldn't be overly fond of it.
What's remarkable is less about what happened from 2019 to 2026 and more about what happened in the time prior to that. I'm all for targeted munitions and accurate intelligence and whatnot, but all kinetic action is, frankly, a broadsword. We're lying to ourselves if we imagine otherwise.
I don't even like Hegseth, he's not a particular good SecDefWar. But he's right that the military's job is to be lethal. If you want to avoid all that, that's on State.
anon_
5d ago
Indeed, it makes my point.
A political actor can never make more in demands than the amount of effort it would take to obliterate you
anon_
8d ago
I think there's a boundary between being ignored, and asking for more than your weight.
Defecting and trying to make it costly because you wouldn't bargain to get your interests is liable to make pelicans think that energy is best spent destroying you utterly.
anon_
11d ago
If Lockheed asked for that term, would it have been appropriate?
Any even if one elected government agreed to it, would it be sensible for it to bind the next one?
anon_
11d ago
I’m not sure what the “specific contract” point means here?
The disagreement (as I understand) was about how the terms in the contract would work.
( And the supply chain designation is a red herring, it’s just escalation on DOW side )
anon_
11d ago
Do you think Trump should have asked Lockheed if he can bomb Iran? Or are you saying he had the freedom to contract with a different company to make a competing F35?
anon_
12d ago
Not so much, when you look at intersectional wokeness and the “all the evils are connected”.
Look for example at the pro-Palestinian folks talking about how anti-LGBT activism is connected to climate is connected to colonialism.
anon_
12d ago
Ah yeah, sorry, context was lost there.
I agree tech isn’t pro-republican.
I even agree it’s not anti-woke, but it does represent within woke a fairly distinct faction,
anon_
13d ago
In relative terms, yes.
Unless you think they weren’t sincere, but I see no reason to think that
anon_
13d ago
I have no idea what fantasy you have right now but tech is woke as af. I was there.
I think it's a specific kind of woke. Flattening it is a huge mistake.
Of course you can't have tech without the autistic MtFs and the ACE chicks, and so there's a very predictable LGBT contingent. And the companies are all extremely woke on BLM/DEI side and all that. But they are not "capitalism is systemic plunder of the poor" wokes or "we stand with Iran" wokes.
anon_
13d ago
I think it's not just about being weak, but about accurately assessing your relative position.
anon_
13d ago
Murderous hate seems like a fairly good barometer of being a threat, especially when used in comparison to a different group of people (say, WASPs) who are observed to have a lot less murderous hate.
anon_
13d ago
Indeed, and I think you've touched upon but merits more depth: how one operationalizes compliance with contract restrictions.
Certainly I don't think the DOW can abide a contractor not just having conditions (which may or may not be objectionable depending on their substance) but on the assertion that this contractor itself gets to decide on matter and cut off support on the fly seems like a bridge too far.
Searching in vain for deescalation here, one hopes the parties could come to an understanding where the substantive restrictions are acknowledged without creating a procedural veto for the contractor.
anon_
13d ago
It also proved that they no longer have any deterrent capabilities. The Israelis operated freely over the entire country, there is no Hezbollah or Hamas left to retaliate. Their entire ballistic missile attack on Israel killed, what, one person? Two people?
anon_
13d ago
I'm not sure that this applies to national security critical technologies. Certainly I don't think Lockheed could demand that the DOW agree not to use the F35 to bomb on Sundays. And it gets even dicier if Lockheed gets to make decisions about whether specific actions violate the restrictions.
I agree the designation is overkill in retaliation, but there is a core DOW claim that private companies supplying critical technologies should not overstep into making specific operational decisions.
anon_
13d ago
Realistically, I think the relationship between companies and the government changes considerably when the technology at hand represents a critical and frontier level capability. SpaceX, for example, constitutes a load bearing part of our national security.
Whether or not Anthropic's demands were modest, I think they crossed a line. And the DOW crossed an even larger one with the designation (which is a massive overescalation).
anon_
13d ago
The idea of "all lawful purposes" is extremely suspect given what the federal government has been doing in regards to surveillance for the last few decades.
While this is true, it would also be quite unfortunate if private companies had to make binding policy judgments on government programs.
Damned either way eh.
Miller is barely beating Obama's run rate at deporting immigrants. 500K a year instead of Obama's 400K. At this rate he'll be done in (checks notes) 20 years.
Whether it's his fault or he's just outmatched by the liberal barbed wire, he's certainly not "getting things done".
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