No, just aesthetic trivia that can be paraded around to make them look good.
Given how China behaves it should be evident that the only reason they don't apply military force is because they are not in position to. Not abusing military strength is not exactly being the paragon of virtue when your opposition could probably glass the world thrice before the day is over.
The real threat isn't the drones, it's the ability to generate a target bank. Historically militaries that are not just carpet bombing have been bottlenecked by target selection, humans can only review and authorize so many strikes. Now the AI will select the targets and the bottleneck moves to how many bombs you can build.
That video makes a lot of claims that sound reasonable, but doesn't provide data to back it up.
For example, in the first 30 seconds, he says that at the beginning of the Iran War, AI was used to strike 900 targets in 12 hours. Which he calls "unprecedented" but then never backs up.
For context, in the 1991 Gulf War "Operation Desert Storm" the U.S. struck about 1500 targets[1][2][3] in 12 hours.
Dario blinked when he was asked to do it and Sam Altman was in Hegseth's DMs promising all the AI child killing the US government can order up within minutes. No one meaningful will quit over this, that's why all of the biggest US tech companies can march in pride parades and provide compute to the perpetrators of the genocide in Gaza at the same time.
Because other countries are starting to use AI for military purposes, other countries are also looking into it to asses and learn. Here in Europe there is the EU AI Act to limit harm everyday harm to citizens caused by AI systems. However, it currently excludes military. The new legislation is just started to be enforced to high risk uses (employment filtering, biometrics, etc.) in august 2026, and full rollout in august 2027. In April 2025 there is a report from EU this legislation may help pave the road for military AI usage conventions [1]
This is a poor way of framing the question, a better one would be can you find me another world power that is misallocating trillions of capital in vaporware with very little to show for it?
China unironically saved humanity. I'm no fan of the CCP but if they hadn't organized an effort to compete with the US no one else would have done it and we'd be begging our AI overlords for tokens and praying we don't get caught conducting wrongthink.
Go ask Claude to criticize Anthropic and see how long your account stays active.
If there was a way to guarantee that every human would have equal access to external intelligence then it would be hard to argue against it but everyone knows that the US oligopoly will do everything they can to ensure that no one else has the keys to the kingdom.
Just listen to what the SV ownership class says out loud. They openly discuss how China cannot "win the AI arms race" and how China's development is existential. Existential to who? It's impossible to fully subjugate people with agency.
Oman doesn't seem to care, Qatar capitulated quickly, the UAE is a walking corpse, Kuwait is as well until they kick the 5th fleet out, Iraq is already majority Shia, Saudi Arabia doesn't seem to care much.
The rumor is that this hornet's nest got kicked because Netanyahu called Trump to complain about a classified cabinet meeting that the Israelis had not been briefed on.
Israel has never published their official borders. Even Somaliland has declared their borders but the "only democracy in the middle east" has never done so in it's entire history.
Israel has clearly defined borders. If youre are talking about the West Bank there’s area a, b and c which are controlled by Israel, both, and PA respectively. I’d call that borders.
Israel has never defined its own borders. This is easily googleable. There are borders that are well understood by the international community but it is a fact that the state of Israel itself has never defined it's own borders.
Sure and they exercise sovereignty far beyond those borders in a blatantly illegal manner. They do not acknowledge their de facto borders because it would be admitting to acts the world would be required to condemn to maintain the pretense of law and order.
American destroyers and aircraft carriers have been chased away from the Strait multiple times now.
Hilariously the USS George HW Bush had to go the long way around Africa rather than risk transiting the Bab El Mandeb after the Houthis defeated the US Navy last year.
In what way were they chased away? Iran tried to sink them and didn't hit any shots, and many on Iran's side died trying. Many IRGC soldiers dying and not even scratching the paint on US vessels doesn't show US to be weak.
> Hilariously the USS George HW Bush had to go the long way around Africa rather than risk transiting the Bab El Mandeb after the Houthis defeated the US Navy last year.
Valuing the lives of your crewmen and avoid terrorists is bad how? USA not wanting their soldiers to die is weak? Would you want more deaths on US side to show strength?
USA can win this war with barely any casualties, why would you not do that? And USA being able to do this with barely any losses shows tremendous strength to me, Iran was more powerful than Ukraine but USA could establish aerial superiority immediately with no losses, this is so much stronger than what Russia displayed.
What do you mean by "win"? What strategic goals can the US achieve in this war? We're at a point where merely achieving status quo ante bellum--i.e., Iran doesn't charge for passage through the Strait of Hormuz--seems to require giving concessions elsewhere.
In many ways, this looks like the American version of Pearl Harbor--a stunning tactical victory that is simultaneously a crushing strategic loss.
The primary US strategic war goal was to slow down Iran's nuclear weapons program. That was not a smart reason to launch an attack, but the attack was at least somewhat successful in achieving the goal. Much of Iran's critical equipment is now destroyed or buried, so from the US perspective that's at least a minor, temporary strategic gain. I'm not claiming that any of this was a good idea or that it will work out well in the long run but let's be clear about the real goals.
The US administration has given several contradictory claims as to what the strategic goals of the war are supposed to be.
The problem with the claim of nuclear weapons program is that the dominant assessment of the intelligence communities is that Iran didn't have a nuclear weapons program at all. Khamenei the elder was known to be against having a nuclear weapons program, and the US's achievement is to replace him with his son... who is known to be in the pro-nuclear weapons program. Considering that the nuclear enrichment centers were targeted in last year's strikes, it's not even clear that the strikes this year have had a meaningful effect in even a temporary delay in enrichment progress.
At this point, I suspect that Trump never had any strategic war aims in the first place, but was instead motivated by an operational aim (regime change in Iran, à la the Venezuela operation), and has been flailing about since then because the administration simply doesn't have anyone with the capacity to actually understand the strategic reality of the situation and is substituting operational and tactical goals for strategic ones.
> The primary US strategic war goal was to slow down Iran's nuclear weapons program.
Let’s be realistic, this was probably about Israeli domestic politics first and US domestic politics second, and maybe thirdly as a favor to the Saudis. It’s crooks running all three countries for their own purposes and issuing BS PR cover stories.
You should watch “Wag the Dog”, a 1997 movie about a president who starts a war to distract from a sex scandal. The real goals here have nothing to do with anything Iran has ever done.
Here's a video of Trump in 2015 talking about how he would make sure Iran never got a bomb [1]. Crazy that the Israelis we're already planning it then.
To me it seems like just "the current thing" that the media is accusing trump of. In his first term it was russaigate. If Trump was in the Epstein files in any meaningful way you think the Biden administration wouldn't have leaked it?
It depends how many others are implicated that they want to protect. I think the Biden administration were operating under the assumption that Trump was gone and on his way to irrelevance, a reasonable assumption at the time. Vindictively going after him when they had already “defeated” him was probably deemed unwise.
This proves my point, Trump didn’t simply decide to do this because of Epstein.
Israel have wanted to do this for over 4 decades. Netanyahu has been spreading this “we can’t let them get a bomb” rhetoric much earlier than 2015.
The point is that this recent attack, Israel approached Trump with the idea and said they are going to do it with or without him. This isn’t speculation, this is what we know.
> We're at a point where merely achieving status quo ante bellum--i.e., Iran doesn't charge for passage through the Strait of Hormuz--seems to require giving concessions elsewhere.
No, there is no reality where the world will let Iran take tolls here, no matter what happens that part wont happen. The world depends too much on straits being open and toll free, if you let that slide once it will be done by others and that will break down the entire world order.
What you're skipping over here is how that happens. If Iran wants to charge tolls on the strait, someone has to do something to keep Iran from doing that. And when you start gaming out the possible identities of that someone, the possible things of that something... well, the most likely route of this is via negotiating some concessions to Iran (i.e., at minimum sanctions relief and maybe even concrete progress to a nuclear bomb). That assumes that Trump even considers freedom of navigation as something worth concessions in the first place, which I don't take as a given.
So now you pivoted from the US to the world. Yeah Trump tried that, first to engage 'the Europe', then eastern Asia (Japan, South Korea), now China. He has to own his failure, nobody will solve it for him. Meanwhile the SPR is draining, reserves all over the world are dwindling, thw world is hungry for oil - they will pay the tolls happily.
But this stalemate benefits US corporations by raising the price for oil, so its not really hurting the attacker. In order to hurt a plutocracy like USA you need to hurt the American stock market but American stocks are doing great.
It benefits a few corporations in the short term but not America in general. And if the oil prices rise and stay high, there will be demand destruction. US sits on top of the capital food chain and will be hurt.
Trump is at -20% net approval and it's steadily getting worse even now. Seems like most Americans don't decide whether things are going great by looking at S&P 500.
neither he nor people that will decide 2026 election give a hoot about his net approval rating. they should not even poll this. the only thing worth polling is few states that could swing the election one way or another (and this is even smaller number than normal for upcoming midterms). what americans think on the whole has stopped mattering awhile ago…
They are not, they updated their tactics to account for that so they destroyed a lot of Iranian small boats with bombs trying to attack the vessels. If they were incapable of countering that we would have seen American casualties in these skirmishes but only Iranians died.
Blowing shit up and killing people isn't winning. Winning is getting what you want strategically and operationally. Unless you are 12, most outcomes aren't just big explosions.
I guess, you know nowadays it seems like if an enemy scratches one of our ships it is called a total loss for the U.S. meanwhile other nations have their entire air force taken out along with all of their targeting systems and most of their missile supplies and even their heads of state are taken out by F35s or arrested by special forces and somehow that is called "losing" by armchair internet dwellers.
> Hilariously the USS George HW Bush had to go the long way around Africa rather than risk transiting the Bab El Mandeb after the Houthis defeated the US Navy last year.
The ship went the long way around because why risk being attacked by missiles? It's less that the US Navy "was defeated", which itself is a plainly asinine comment which only serves a purpose of trying to incite others, and more so a practical safety concern.
But if you really want to argue that the US Navy was defeated, I would submit our next step should be to utilize nuclear weapons on Yemen and destroy the Houthis. That way you can't make these claims and we'll see who really is defeating who :)
Ironically the US has never ratified UNCLOS. The American professed interest in maintaining right of passage does not appear to require them to be held to the same standards.
Also the Strait of Hormuz is an international strait not international waters. The entire strait lies within Iranian and Omani waters. Frankly it's a bit absurd to complain that your ships can't transit a country's waters while you bomb them.
They shot at neutral ships when they closed the strait, where do you get your info from?
If it was just USA and Israel and Nato even then you'd see a ton of ships go through and the world wouldn't be very affected, since almost all ships that go through the strait are not Nato aligned.
Because neutral ships also need permission to cross the strait, even if they have not been explicitly banned. Because the status of the blockade has changed and continues to change according to tensions in the region. Several countries have obtained permission to cross: China, Russia, India, Iraq, Pakistan, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. Even so, it is understandable that ships are hesitant to pass through there and are seeking less uncertain routes, because of the tensions, risk of war and because in addition to Iran, the United States also claims to have imposed a blockade and has attacked ships.
They shot at Indian vessels, so you are wrong they are blocking neutral nations. India is not allied to USA or Israel. That they let some vessels through doesn't mean they don't shoot at neutral ships, they shoot at most neutral ships.
That is illegal, that is equivalent to blocking it. No other country accepts existence of such a toll, and any company paying it will get sanctioned by the entire world since it would set such a bad precedent if countries started to toll their straits.
You don't pay money to terrorists to make them not bomb your stuff, you eliminate the terrorists, otherwise you get more terrorists.
It's only illegal if you recognize the law. Why is charging for passage in Ormuz illegal and not in the Panama or Suez canals? Iran can (legitimately) say they require compensation for reconstruction and keeping the security of the strait after the attacks from the terrorist states of Israel and US.
A very inconvenient truth for the China hawks.