domain:badcyber.com
functor
1d ago
Invading their neighbours three times, attacking Iran, backing all sorts of terrorist groups in Iran and then bombing for over a week seems to be the best way to convince them to get nukes. The best way to convince a country not to get nukes is to not be hyper aggressive towards them.
AnonymousActuary
1d ago
I would be shocked if this results in boots in the ground. Like with Soleimani, seems like gamble that stops with the air strikes (plus whatever Israel is up to).
People exclaiming loudly about how dangerous this is while also campaigning for increasing escalation in Ukraine against an actual nuclear adversary are not serious people.
I'm highly against more foreign intervention but this seems fine to me. A nuclear Iran seems to be very bad in very obvious ways.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1d ago
Trump has bombed Iran's nuclear sites, using B2 bombers dropping 30,000-pound massive ordinance penetrators. All aircraft have successfully cleared Iranian airspace, and Trump is claiming that all three nuclear sites were wiped out. No word that I've seen of a counter-attack from Iran, as yet.
AOC has concluded that a president ordering an airstrike without congressional approval is grounds for impeachment. Fetterman thinks it was the right move. Both are, I suppose, on brand.
My feelings are mixed. I absolutely do not want us signing up for another two decades of invading and inviting the middle east, and of all the places I'd pick with a gun to my head, Iran would be dead last. I do not think our military is prepared for a serious conflict at the moment, because I think there's a pretty good likelihood that a lot of our equipment became suddenly obsolete two or three years ago, and also because I'm beginning to strongly suspect that World War 3 has already started and we've all just just been a bit slow catching on. That said, I am really not a fan of Iran, and while I could be persuaded to gamble on Iran actually acquiring nukes, it's still a hell of a gamble, and the Israelis wiping Iran's air defense grid made this about the cheapest alternative imaginable. I have zero confidence that diplomacy was ever going to work; it's pretty clear to me that Iran wanted nukes, and that in the best case this would result in considerable proliferation and upheaval. Now, assuming the strikes worked, that issue appears to be off the table for the short and medium terms. That... seems like a good thing? Maybe?
I'm hoping what appears to me to be fairly intense pressure to avoid an actual invasion keeps American boots of Iranian soil. As with zorching an Iranian general in Iraq during Trump's first term, this seems like a fairly reasonable gamble, but if we get another forever war out of this, that would be unmitigated disaster.
Tree
1d ago
Same thing. They soothe parents who panic and hold the hand of leucemics.
It’s the hansonian argument about doctors being more about showing people care than producing a substantial increase in qaly. And the background modern increase in qaly caused by clean water, vaccines, antibiotics, which you don’t need all those doctors for.
09milk
1d ago
...which one? Do you figure there is some priority list of countries he wants to invade? What does it look like?
A quick list from wiki of actual wars he/Russia involved in since 1991:
- 3 Georgian related wars (1 civil war, 2 war of independence)
- Moldova's Transnistria war (war of independence)
- Tajikistani Civil War (this time Russia seems to be on the "good" side, with UN support)
- 2 Chechen wars (1st is war of independence from Russia, for the 2nd one I am not familiar with the subject to form a justifiable opinion, but I think this is a full scale invasion)
- war with Georgia, again
- 2014 Crimean war, then 2022 full scale invasion
I think this is quite an impressive list of wars within 21 years
I think Putim start these war due to internal political struggles, like, start and win a war is one of easiest war to remain in power for political leaders, democracy or dictatorship. Remember the prelude of 2022 Ukrainian war was Ukraine will fall within a few months, this is the public consensus of the world at the time
If a nuclear-armed Ukraine becomes a pariah in your scenario
I don't believe Ukraine will becomes a pariah at all, Pakistan did not become a pariah with their much worst actions.
On the gas stealing part, I think Ukraine will either not have the chance of stealing due to new pipelines bypassing them which lead to a less prosper Ukraine, or no new pipelines bypassing them while Ukraine in a much better stand to negotiate trading agreements with Russia without the fear of being invaded.
All in all, I think Russia instead will attempt to culturally and economically influence Ukraine so that Ukraine stay within their sphere of influence which justify the cheap selling of gas to Ukraine.
this looks like another instance of a general pattern of producing simple good/evil narratives by cutting off history at a convenient point
As expected, part of this is war time propaganda from every country for justification of supporting the "good" guy
GBRK
1d ago
It's worth remembering one critical fact:
Owning nukes changes the strategic calculus away from conventional... But dramatically tilts it towards nuclear war. Because if you have nukes, suddenly it becomes reasonable for any hostile country to perform a counterforce first-strike to destroy your nukes before you could use them. The existing members of the nuclear club have conventional militaries and/or alliance networks of such size as to makke that unappealling... But an isolated, belligerent ghaddafhi might have actually lead to the destruction of libya in nuclear fire.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
1d ago
This is true. But it's better to lose hair late than early. I'm safe so far and hope I can keep all my hair for a long time without any side effects.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
1d ago
Highly recommend you watch it for the lols. The entire podcast is Sam going mask off and Mayhem who he picked up for the podcast 5 minutes ago being the walking MAGA stereotype. Mayhem didn't know Sam 10 minutes before the podcast.
Obviously no one wants to be an e celeb. I despise the entire thing too.
It's not what he said. He said "that argument wouldn't hold against any other group".
We literally just came off a decade-long purge of "ironic" offensive humor precisely on the grounds that the irony may be used to cover up a true sentiment, so what's so outlandish about the claim that "end whiteness" actually means "end whiteness", and the general condemnation of "all forms of religious, ethnic and racial bigotry" not carrying much weight when people notice they only seem to come out when it's the author's own ethnic group that's under attack, and also that he comes from a school of thought holding it's impossible to be racist against whites?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
They're projecting force into Tel Aviv right now. You can see videos of missiles coming down and discourse about who gets let into the bomb shelters.
This is just like the campaign with the Houthis. The US drops bombs, blows things up. Who can say if they're hitting real targets or dummy targets or whatever. Yet the Houthis retain the ability to strike shipping, it's a stalemate. The US doesn't achieve the goal of 'stopping attacks on shipping' and the Houthis don't achieve the goal of 'stopping the Israeli campaign in Gaza'.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
Highly doubt that Ukraine could inflict significant civilian casualties in Russia with drones. It takes thousands of tonnes of incendiaries to ignite a big city-killing firestorm. Plus modern buildings are harder to burn down.
They were basically dropping nuclear weapon's worth of conventional explosives on Hamburg, Tokyo, Dresden in 1943 and 1945, especially when you account for how much nuke energy is lost going up into the sky, many smaller bombs are more efficient in energy terms.
But obviously Russia has the upper hand here, as you say.
faceh
1d ago
They add increasingly absurd, uncomfortable and intense scenarios to make them crack, too.
And the audience is able to interact with the contestants directly.
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
1d ago
Except "winning" the war with Iran in this case means simply preventing them from projecting force into the rest of the Middle East. If Iran can't stop Israel from blowing up their military assets or nuclear developments or their leaders they aren't much of a threat anymore.
For example half the world drives on the right and half the world drives on the left, but the moral fundamentals beneath which side of the road you personally decide to drive on are universal regardless. You choose depending on whether you want to safely reach your destination or create chaos and accidents around you.
There are baseline universal evolved principles of morality, but there's variation in the relative importance people place on any given moral precept and the specifics are far less universal than you seem to think (lying and deception in isolation is universally considered bad, but pretty much everybody considers this forgivable under certain circumstances and their ideas for when it is justified differ). Oftentimes there are tradeoffs between different moral principles (e.g. prioritising the individual's freedom vs. ensuring that a society is stable and ordered) and different people have different ideas of which moral precept should be prioritised.
To offer up a particularly extreme example that relates to driving I visited Vietnam in April and honestly that entire culture's take on how to drive was very close to "create chaos and accidents around you". The road was absolute anarchy, and the amount of aggressiveness Vietnamese drivers (particularly car drivers) exhibited was beyond anything else I'd ever seen. It is just normal and accepted that drivers will not stop around pedestrian crossings even when pedestrians are crossing. I am not exaggerating when I say there were times I thought I was going to die crossing the road. Vietnamese are just built different, IMO.
BTW are you the one who wrote summaries of your travels to different countries in the CW thread a while back? Really enjoyed that post. I remember you got a lot of shit for your less-than-positive review of Japan - the internet seems to have a penchant for hyping it up and treating it as this unassailable paragon of human development but actually after having heard the anecdotes of a family member who traveled to Japan last year and looking at their photos I'm inclined to agree with you (it's a cliche that Japan has been in the 90s ever since the 70s, but it's also true). I think I share your opinion of France as kind of depressing too in many places - even Paris was shockingly polluted and chaotic, and lacked much of the charm it's so famous for.
Because that has never worked, not even once, in the history of humanity?
Wars simply cannot be won by assassinations. This has been tried again and again. It doesn't work. It didn't work on Al-Qaeda. US blows up their leaders all the time (Ayman al-Zawahiri in 2022, who nobody has heard of) and they're still around, doing their thing, building camps in Afghanistan... It didn't work on ISIS. US blew up Al Baghdadi to no effect. What defeated ISIS was losing their territory and army, even then they're still lurking underground.
Israel tried this on Hamas. They blow up Hamas leaders all the time. It has no effect, Hamas is still fighting.
To win a war, there are no sneaky tricks, you have to actually achieve your military goals on the battlefield, in service of a broad political goal. Assassination is a tactic to achieve some kind of short-term, minor advantage - like sniper fire. It's not a strategy and cannot substitute for victory. Until recent counter-insurgency wars nobody was even silly enough to try this and for good reason.
If Iran blew up Donald Trump and Hegseth plus some generals what effect would this have on America? Would the country collapse? Would there even be any significant impairment to capabilities? No, it wouldn't do anything beyond sparking lots of discourse and cause some stock market shenanigans.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
'the far right nazis'
No such person, there are variations. There's lots of anger about muslim rape gangs and demographic replacement.
In an alternate history of nuclear-armed Ukraine, I believe Putin will choose a different country to invade instead
...which one? Do you figure there is some priority list of countries he wants to invade? What does it look like?
In our history, Ukraine is always a somewhat Russian friendly country before Russia fucked them hard by all the means after 2000, would Russia fuck with the government of a nuclear-armed, Russian friendly Ukraine?
The Russian view there is quite different - as they contend, at some point after the early 2000s, Ukraine started responding to its economic malaise by stealing gas meant for transit to EU customers to help itself meet its own demand, with some complicity from EU states who refused to hold Ukraine responsible for this diplomatically while also working to sabotage any projects for new pipelines that would bypass Ukraine completely (in EU propaganda, this was framed as the bypass pipelines "enabling Russia to blackmail Ukraine" - as in, blackmail it with the threat of taking away the free gas). If a nuclear-armed Ukraine becomes a pariah in your scenario, is the dominant consequence that its economy is in even more shambles (so it needs to steal more gas) or that the EU objections to bypass pipelines disappear (so it never gets the opportunity to steal as much gas)?
A scenario in which Russia still depends on them for transit but now they are even more desperate to extract unnegotiated concessions for it may not be one in which Russia sees it as friendly. Certainly, my memory is that even in reality, the gas siphoning resulted in a lot of grassroots resentment towards Ukraine among Russians at the time, to the point that they could have easily been persuaded to endorse some punitive aggression against it by a thus inclined statesman.
(I find it interesting that the gas transit story is never mentioned in mainstream reporting on the war, not even with a framing that puts all the blame on Russia. Through my conspiracy goggles, this looks like another instance of a general pattern of producing simple good/evil narratives by cutting off history at a convenient point - in the media, the Israel/Palestine war started on 23-10-07, Russia/Ukraine started in 2014 with a little exemption for the Budapest Memorandum in murky prehistory, and everyone/Iran started with the Islamic Revolution. No hard questions about who shot first. Not that this is new - America/Japan, they claim, started with Pearl Harbor, too.)
I would say that the lawyer is prestigious but the consultant is not, as mentioned above. Nobody is making songs about how they want to fuck a McKinsey consultant (not in that sense, anyway)!
Plus there are gradations. There's a certain type of 'dodgy real-estate developer phenotype' lawyer that would raise alarm bells.
LiberalRetvrn
1d ago
Well I do believe that enlightened liberal societies tend to outcompete backwards, repressive, superstitious ones. But that's not some supernatural force bending history, it's just a result of natural selection. There's a reason why countries like Israel and Ukraine can fight off much more populated but less enlightened aggressors. Liberal values lead to a competitive edge in everything, including warfare.
cjet79
1d ago
I love being at the pool in the summer. I live in Virginia which is hot and muggy in the summer but still snows a few times in the winter. I hate cold weather. Anything freezing and below is too cold for me.
Hot weather and sweat is something I can sort of adapt to and deal with for a few hours. I've been to India in August/September. It's not pleasant if there isn't a pool I can jump into, but I'd much rather deal with that than a cold winter.
Without a pool, perfect weather is just whatever allows me to live outside as if it was inside. Post rainstorm in the summer is pretty awesome, cuz it also tends to tamp down on the bugs for a little bit.
Clementine
1d ago
I actually think the driving example is a perfect example of how the underlying principles are not universal, since the levels of morally acceptable aggressiveness on the part of the driver and the extent to which is it pedestrians' and other drivers' job to get out of your way rather than your job to drive "nicely" varies a lot by culture.
...or on the other hand you could say that whether it's India, Italy, the Netherlands, England, the US, or Zimbabwe, there's at least a general consensus you shouldn't be killing people with your car. Except, perhaps, if you are very very wealthy. the moral Schelling point towards not killing other people who are ambiguously maybe from your tribe or a neutral tribe or an enemy tribe not currently actively engaged in hostilities against you, on a random Tuesday, does seem reasonably strong-ish
Mantergeistmann
1d ago
It's similar to cluster munitions: a number of American allies are very willing to sign global treaties banning their use, knowing that in a shooting war, the USA will happily bust out its own stock.
Mantergeistmann
1d ago
My understanding is that from a realpolitik standpoint, the issue is that it becomes a fertile ground for terrorists and extremist groups. In the case of Iran, given hiw much support they already provide to Hezbollah/Hamas/Houthis... how much more could a disintegrated nation export?
I'm not that plugged in to the American commentary, so I might have missed something, but are there people doing that? I agree it sounds rather schizophrenic.
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