UK created Israel with Balfour declaration out of mandatory Palestine. British Zionism has been a leading creator in this debacle for years. UK military / intelligence has been aiding Israel in its wars for a long time. This is fundamentally an Israeli war, with its military liability offloaded to USA and worn by the global economy.
The modern geopolitical Middle East is a creation/construct of UK & France (Sykes-Picot Agreement) post WW1.
I see the Middle East and Israel as a European project, with the enforcement component (liability) sitting on the US balance sheet. There seems to be growing recognition of this, hence the shifting strategy where US is exiting Europe/NATIO. US position in the Middle East becoming financially and geopolitically untenable - the Iranian damage-to/destruction-of M/E bases will be too costly to rebuilt.
Israel (as per recent Bibi 60minutes interview) is looking to financially detach from the US for support.
Europe has a major energy crisis evolving and limited options for diversity. LNG imports from USA are not financially or geopolitically viable. They cut themselves off from Russian gas, and the Russian state is publicly signalling they're unwilling to supply them and the M/E is on fire.
Even if the war were to end today, the structural damage to the artificial western-made Middle Eastern royal fiefdoms is over.
Europe will shoulder much of the burden created by this conflict.
America hasn’t faced a peer-level, modern military since the Korean War. For seventy years, it has specialized in "wars of choice" against overmatched opponents, mistaking uncontested airspace for actual invincibility.
U.S. weapons supremacy is increasingly exposed as a marketing facade. Despite a $1T annual budget, the industrial base is so brittle that strategic missile stocks were nearly depleted within a month of engagement with Iran. To keep the gears turning, Washington is now cannibalizing the stockpiles of its own allies.
You could make the case that the F-35 isn't a weapon; it’s a sophisticated wealth-extraction tool designed to fleece the American taxpayer. While it excels at deleting defenseless targets in lopsided conflicts, its primary mission is maintaining the flow of capital into a bloated military-industrial complex that prioritizes contractor profits over combat endurance.
Yes, the U.S. possesses the most lethal tactical hardware in history, but its industrial backbone is currently ill-equipped for a prolonged, peer-to-peer war of attrition.
- Korean War (North Korea/China)
- Rating: Competent
- Note: North Korea began with a well-equipped, Soviet-backed armor force; China followed with massive, highly disciplined infantry waves that effectively fought the UN coalition to a stalemate.
- Vietnam War (North Vietnam/Viet Cong)
- Rating: Technologically Incompetent
- Note: While technologically outmatched, they demonstrated elite level unconventional warfare, logistical persistence (Ho Chi Minh Trail), and sophisticated anti-aircraft defenses.
- Invasion of Grenada (Grenadian Military)
- Rating: Poor
- Note: A very small force with limited heavy weaponry and minimal organizational depth.
- Invasion of Panama (Panamanian Defense Forces)
- Rating: Poor
- Note: Though professionalized to an extent, they lacked the hardware and air defense to resist a modern concentrated assault.
- Gulf War (Iraq)
- Rating: Competent (on paper) / Incompetent (in execution)
- Note: Iraq held the world's fourth-largest army at the time with modern Soviet equipment, but failed significantly in command, control, and air superiority.
- Intervention in Somalia (Local Militias/Warlords)
- Rating: Poor
- Note: Characterized by decentralized "technical" vehicles and light arms; effective only in urban ambush scenarios rather than conventional warfare.
- War in Afghanistan (Taliban/Al-Qaeda)
- Rating: Incompetent (conventionally) / Competent (insurgency)
- Note: Zero conventional capability (no air force/armor), but highly capable at sustained, low-tech asymmetric warfare.
- Iraq War (Ba'athist Iraq)
- Rating: Poor
- Note: By 2003, the military was severely degraded by a decade of sanctions and previous losses; it collapsed within weeks of the conventional invasion.
- Military Intervention in Libya (Gaddafi Loyalists)
- Rating: Poor
- Note: Largely reliant on aging Soviet hardware and mercenary units; unable to project power against NATO-backed air cover.
- War against ISIS (Insurgent State)
- Rating: Poor (conventionally) / Competent (tactically)
- Note: They lacked a traditional air force or navy but utilized captured heavy equipment and "shock" tactics with high psychological impact.
> - Invasion of Grenada (Grenadian Military)
> - Rating: Poor
> - Note: A very small force with limited heavy weaponry and minimal organizational depth.
> - Gulf War (Iraq)
> - Rating: Competent (on paper) / Incompetent (in execution)
> - Note: Iraq held the world's fourth-largest army at the time with modern Soviet equipment, but failed significantly in command, control, and air superiority.
> - Iraq War (Ba'athist Iraq)
> - Rating: Poor
> - Note: By 2003, the military was severely degraded by a decade of sanctions and previous losses; it collapsed within weeks of the conventional invasion.
the lesson of those wars to the US is, like sports teams, we need to deploy our forces in kinetic actions regularly or we lose our edge, lose touch with the battlefield and capabilities of opponents.
peace is better than war, of course, but you need to look at the progress of history as a stochastic process, and if you skip all the little wars because you have a choice, you will be ill-prepared for the big wars when they are thrust upon you. maybe call the little conflicts "friendlies", we need to compete in the friendlies to be ready for the unfriendlies.
>America hasn’t faced a peer-level, modern military since the Korean War. For seventy years, it has specialized in "wars of choice" against overmatched opponents
America has not faced any wars in its own "theater", it's own backyard; rather, it has "chosen" to fight wars that seemed important enough to travel halfway round the world, bringing lots of stuff. One of the American military's strengths is logistics, both getting there and on the battlefield.
>mistaking uncontested airspace for actual invincibility.
America pioneered and still leads in combined arms fighting doctrine and capabilities, and that basically requires air superiority as the first step. There's no mistake, it is creating uncontesed airspace (which starts with creating the capabilites) that enables victory at low casualty rates. It's not so much invincibility as "convincing vincibility" of opponents.
>China followed with massive, highly disciplined infantry waves that effectively fought the UN coalition to a stalemate.
just to clarify what "effectively fought" means, the Chinese entered the war when the ROK+US+UN forces had reached as far as the Yalu River, and yes their "infantry waves" response, i.e. lightly armed human waves, pushed the anti-communists back but at very, very high cost:
"North Korean casualties are estimated at around 1.5 million, including both military and civilian losses, while Chinese military casualties are estimated to be around 400,000 to 600,000."
"South Korean military losses during the Korean War were approximately 137,899 dead, with additional casualties including 24,495 missing and 8,343 captured. The United Nations forces, primarily composed of U.S. troops, suffered around 36,574 deaths, with total UN losses estimated at about 210,000 dead and missing."
Saying Apple Software is 'terrible' is a blatant hyperbole. Has it degraded meaningfully over the last decade in terms of stability? Yes. Has it's capability increased though? Yes. Has it become more secure by design? Yes. Is the UX better than anything else in market? By a country mile.
The UX used to be better by a country mile. The liquid glass update was a genuinely serious regression. Is Windows or Android now better? At least those operating systems don't have constant contrast issues and flickering. At this point they probably have more consistency.
MacOS reliability has slowly gotten worse and worse, but the UX drop with liquid glass was profound.
No, it's objectively bad in terms of usability. There is also the matter of taste, but I'm not even talking about that. I'm talking about UX, not style. UX is about functionality and usability.
Contrast is an objective measure. There are well studied and known levels where you can have trouble reading, or an easy time reading. Similarly, things like drag regions not even aligning with visual elements are literally indefensible. This stuff is so basic you'd fail a UX 101 course with it.
Things like spotlight defaulting to the newest item so that when you hit enter and it changes your selected item the millisecond before you hit enter. I'm not even sure how you'd try to defend UI elements literally flickering as either style or not affecting usability.
It's objectively bad by a great many widely agreed upon and studied standards.
No, I don’t generally use betas. In fact the Liquid Glass release was the first time I DID sign up for betas, but only after the actual release because I wanted to get the fixes faster.
While they’ve improved some of the contrast issues, all the other issues I mentioned are there to this day.
I don't think AI is benefiting humanity when you consider:
- It's heavy use in military and surveillance engagements
- The billions+ spent, yet no economic gains were noted
- The pressure on white-collar jobs
The threat to AI far exceeds any benefits I can see.
Did something change? HN has always been very pro-AI until recently, and now it seems to have swung dramatically the other way. Not one comment even agreeing with me.
We focus these critiques far too much on the face rather than the underlying mechanics. Just like in politics, we critique the personality/politician yet the underlying system architecture evades it.
Sam Altman clearly has a long history of nefarious activity. But the underlying threat posted by AI to society, the economy and human freedom persists with or without his presence.
> underlying threat posted by AI to society, the economy and human freedom persists
I would deny that AI poses any such threat. There are actors who would use the tool in ways that threaten as you described, but that is a threat from said actor, not AI - unless you're claiming that an AGI would be capable of such independent actions.
AI is similar in transformative power to how the internet was a transformative power - might even be greater, if it is more commonly available for use through out the world. Whether that transformative power is doing good or bad really depends on the people doing it, not on the tech. I would bet that the future is going to be better because of AI, than to imagine a worse future and act to stunt the tech.
> I would deny that AI poses any such threat. There are actors who would use the tool in ways that threaten as you described, but that is a threat from said actor, not AI
Of course, it is popular to deny it. People constantly tell themselves "it is people, not tech". They make valid, yet banal and inconsequential statement. This distinction has no bearing on reality.
> So you're saying that if people hadn't invented weapons, there would be no violence?
If anything, if people hadn't invented weapons, they would not use weapons to enact violence, and this in turn will impact the practical nature of violence.
> The claim that AI is itself dangerous has no merit.
My claim is that considering any technology by itself is pointless. There is no such thing as thing by itself. Technology always exists in structural setting, and in turn shapes this structure.
Or perhaps, the underlying threat is personified by Altman, in that our country has repeated and widespread institutional failures to hold the wealthy accountable for wrongdoing.
The threat of AI is, after all, driven by the people who use it.
>But the underlying threat posted by AI to society, the economy and human freedom persists with or without his presence.
Without Sam Altman the compute and improvements for LLMs to be a threat wouldn't have readily existed at all. He was the one who got the ball rolling because of his desperation (SVB collapsed right before the hype bubble started), ego, and quasi-religious desires.
Worth mentioning that Canadian PM Mark Carney is the ex-head of the Bank of England and has a long list of pro-uk/globalist affiliations. Given the globalist aligned states and territories are the most on-board in progressing mass surveillance currently, it's sadly not a surprise.
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