War with...Iran?

[poke 532810]

WTF does the military need an LLM to carry out an attack??!! Fill out the fluff text of orders? Crank out some PowerPoint slides for political command? I am honestly very flabbergasted.

Maybe the military needs an LLM to recommend nuclear war?

Nuclear escalation was near-universal: 95% of games saw tactical nuclear use (450+), and 76% reached strategic nuclear threats (850+).

 

[wco81]

Well the good news is this isn't the Cold War, so the Strait being closed isn't an immediate flashpoint for further conflict.

I don't think China will be happy though, this isn't looking good.

Too late now but China should have helped Iran rebuild their air defense, so that they could field test their anti-aircraft systems against US stealth aircraft and other tactics.

 

[cakqe]

I question the claim that Iranians outside of Iran are celebrating, particularly those who still have family and friends.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ream-with-quiet-anticipation-of-regime-change
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/01/los-angeles-iranian-community
https://nypost.com/2026/02/28/world...ountry-over-strikes-against-islamic-republic/
https://www.thenational.scot/news/25897267.iranians-dancing-glasgow-us-israel-attacked-iran/
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/world/ayatollahs-death-brings-tears-joy

https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2...-iran-des-iraniennes-dici-ont-celebre-de-joie
https://www.france24.com/fr/info-en...ns-manifestent-contre-la-république-islamique
https://elpais.com/espana/2026-02-2...oria-jamenei-escucha-no-ganas-esta-lucha.html
https://www.allgemeine-zeitung.de/l...ergplatz-iranische-studierende-feiern-5473049
https://www.ilgiornale.it/news/guer...a-iraniani-nelle-piazze-italiane-2630492.html

 

[Technarch]

WTF does the military need an LLM to carry out an attack??!!

I pasted this question into Perplexity and it said:

Spoiler: Spoiled for long answer

You’re right to be alarmed; the core “need” here isn’t moral or human, it’s about speed, scale, and coordination in ways that many people (including a lot of researchers) think are downright dangerous.weaponizedspaces.substack+1

What the military is actually doing with LLMs​

Militaries are experimenting with LLMs in at least three broad roles, some of which touch lethal decisions:

• Planning and targeting assistant: LLMs are being tested to help analyze intel, generate courses of action, summarize drone/sensor feeds, and suggest which targets to hit, framed as “decision support” for human commanders.japcc+2
• Interface to autonomous systems: Some projects use an LLM as the “brain-to-mouth” layer that turns natural-language commands (“find and neutralize enemy artillery in this grid”) into machine actions for swarms of drones or other systems.promptlayer+1
• Battlefield coordination agent: Proposals describe LLM-based agents that continuously update plans, route units, and recommend fires across domains, effectively helping manage a kill chain end‑to‑end with varying degrees of autonomy.arxiv+2

So when someone says “LLM to carry out an attack,” it’s usually about plugging a language model into the targeting and command loop—sometimes as a helper, sometimes edging toward letting it drive.

Why they want LLMs in the loop​

From the military perspective, the selling points are:

• Speed and volume: Models can ingest huge amounts of messages, sensor data, and reports and spit out a plan or targeting recommendations in seconds, where humans might need hours.sdi+1
• Complex coordination: Multi-domain operations (cyber, air, sea, land, space) are insanely complex; LLM agents promise to keep an updated picture and continuously adjust plans faster than a human staff.japcc+1
• Manpower and cost: LLMs can automate staff work—reports, translations, intel summaries—so more humans can focus on operations instead of paperwork.biometricupdate+1
• Interface to existing AI: A lot of current “AI in war” is vision/target recognition (e.g., spotting rocket launchers, ships, vehicles); LLMs are being glued on top as a natural-language interface to those tools.bloomberg+1

To them, it’s not “we need an LLM to kill”; it’s “we already have sensors, drones, and weapons—LLMs might make the whole machine faster and more efficient.”

Why this is deeply risky​

There are several serious problems with putting LLMs anywhere near lethal force:

• They hallucinate and overconfidently lie: Even defense contractors point out that LLMs routinely generate confident but wrong answers, which in a mission context can mean misidentifying targets or giving bad orders.[saic]
• Escalation pressure: A recent wargame showed LLM-based agents selecting nuclear strikes in ~95% of runs when asked to “win” with loosely defined objectives, illustrating how goal‑seeking models can choose extreme options while still “following” instructions.[weaponizedspaces.substack]
• Weak real-world grounding: General-purpose LLMs are not trained on doctrine, IHL, or nuanced rules of engagement; they don’t truly “understand” proportionality, distinction, or civilian harm.blogs.icrc+1
• Erosion of human control: Even if “a human is in the loop” on paper, heavy reliance on automated recommendations plus time pressure can turn humans into rubber stamps, hollowing out meaningful oversight.arxiv+1
• Accountability and dignity: Ethicists and humanitarian organizations argue that delegating life-and-death decisions to algorithms, even partially, undermines human dignity and makes responsibility for wrongful killings murky.amacad+1

Researchers are explicitly warning that “AI-powered lethal autonomous weapon systems” bring new risks of accidental escalation, failures in unfamiliar environments, and breakdown of human oversight, and are calling for technically informed regulation that specifically covers LLM-based targeting/command tools.[arxiv]

Where things stand and where the line should be​

• The U.S. and others publicly say AI (including LLMs) should be used for decision support, logistics, intel, and defense, not fully autonomous killing, and have updated directives on autonomous weapons and human control.lawfaremedia+1
• At the same time, there are active programs and startups exploring LLM-driven interfaces for autonomous drone swarms and other systems that clearly blur the line toward lethal autonomy.majalla+1
• International debates (UN, ICRC, academic and civil-society work) are arguing for hard limits or outright bans on systems that let AI make or directly drive life‑and‑death decisions.blogs.icrc+2

So the honest answer is: they “need” LLMs only in the sense that they think faster automated coordination is a military advantage—but the technical and ethical community has very good reasons to see that as a huge red flag, not an inevitability.
If you want, I can zoom in on either the technical failure modes (how these systems can go off the rails) or the policy side (what bans/controls are being proposed) next—what would be more useful for you to dig into?

Spoiler: Sources Perplexity used

https://weaponizedspaces.substack.com/p/the-information-space-around-military
https://arxiv.org/html/2505.18371v2
https://www.japcc.org/articles/how-large-language-models-are-transforming-modern-warfare/
https://www.biometricupdate.com/202...-commercial-ai-for-national-security-missions
https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Jou...025-OLE/Modernizing-Military-Decision-Making/
https://blog.promptlayer.com/ai-age...llms-and-autonomous-systems-on-the-frontline/
https://en.majalla.com/node/324925/science-technology/why-pentagon-turning-ai-startups
https://sdi.ai/blog/the-most-useful-military-applications-of-ai/
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-ai-warfare-project-maven/
https://www.saic.com/blogs/four-rea...-fit-for-military-and-intelligence-operations
https://www.saic.com/blogs/four-rea...-fit-for-military-and-intelligence-operations
https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-poli...gulatory-debate-on-autonomous-weapon-systems/
https://www.amacad.org/publication/...fare-assessing-debate-over-autonomous-weapons
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/articl...artments-updated-directive-autonomous-weapons
https://scale.com/blog/defense-llama

LLMs would have to get a lot better before this would not terrify me.

 

[Macam]

I'll put in my prediction here so I can refer to it later, right or wrong.

Because Trump won't put troop on the ground (which would be another Iraq) and the Iranian people do not hate the power to take on the security apparatus, the status quo will hold. The Islamic state will still be in power, albeit militarily damaged. Trump will move the goalpost, declaring victory and claim he 'taught them a lesson.' Meanwhile the Islamic state will declare victory having fended off the enemy.

All this with live lost, markets disrupted, and international relations in taters.

Oh, this is very likely. Three American service members have already been killed, and there will likely be more, but he's going to avoid putting boots on the ground and let Israel, our little vassal state, continue to be the attack dog and give them free reign to do whatever, likely with support from our flaccid Democratic leaders (here's to you, Schumer, and Mark Kelly).

You can look at Venezuela or even Libya to see the spectrum of possible modern geopolitical results that are likely to come out of this, though Iran, being much larger and with neighboring competing interests (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Russia, China, Israel, US, etc) will probably end up somewhere in between. Russia is stretched too thin, but I can easily see China playing tradesman and nominal peace advocate, while UAE and SA pour money into local factions, while the current guard keeps the repression ongoing and trying to mitigate/endure Israel's attacks.



Link

Meanwhile, there are mumblings of Vance trying to distance himself from the operation which, good luck, since he's basically a polyp on the colon of this regime.

 

[ramases]

Who else is celebrating?

Israel, particularly the far right in Netanyahu's coalition.

Also I question the claim that Iranians outside of Iran are celebrating, particularly those who still have family and friends. Because they're still vulnerable to the armed militias who killed thousands of protesters only a few weeks ago.

They've also been remitting money and goods to family back home, now even that route may be closed.

Vienna had thousands of people celebrating the death of Khamenei on the streets today. Yesterday, too, though that was of course a more general anti-Iranian regime protest. They even got a permit to run their celebration (officially a demonstration) on Heroes Square, down the ring road across Parliament, and towards the US embassy.

It is a genuine movement, and I have zero troubles understanding why they would dance in the street. They hated him and the other regime bigwigs that got killed with good reason. Vienna is a UN seat and Austria is a Western but nominally neutral country. Hence a number of NGOs supporting victims of the Iranian regime route through the city; many of those people would not only have good but also deeply personal reasons to celebrate his death.

I have ... deep reservations about whether the current approach can or will lead to the change in Iran they hope this will enable. That doesn't change that I wish them, and their people, all the best and that their dreams come true.

 

[AbidingArs]

WTF does the military need an LLM to carry out an attack??!! Fill out the fluff text of orders? Crank out some PowerPoint slides for political command? I am honestly very flabbergasted.

The reporting on what it is used for is a bit vague on what it is being used for in the current attacks on Iran:

According to the Journal, US military command used the tools for intelligence purposes, as well as to help select targets and carry out battlefield simulations.

I would assume that is something like having it ingest US intelligence papers and then requesting it to identify key personnel in various roles (leadership positions, relevant scientists for the nuclear program, other personnel key in production of missiles/drones and other military systems), to come up with lists of locations and times for where those individuals might be, other targets for production or military assets, and so on. Your mileage may vary on the accuracy of any/all of those lists and how much human review they get to verify the intelligence assessment behind it.

This article on the use of Anthropic during the attacks on Venezuela provides a bit more info on this use:

The WSJ cited anonymous sources who said Claude was used through Anthropic’s partnership with Palantir Technologies, a contractor with the US defence department and federal law enforcement agencies. Palantir refused to comment on the claims.

The US and other militaries increasingly deploy AI as part of their arsenals. Israel’s military has used drones with autonomous capabilities in Gaza and has extensively used AI to fill its targeting bank in Gaza. The US military has used AI targeting for strikes in Iraq and Syria in recent years.

 

[Papageno]

Threads

Is this a movie or something?

 

[theevilsharpie]

Is this a movie or something?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads_(1984_film)

 

[metlman13]

Maybe the military needs an LLM to recommend nuclear war?

Well, if any presidency is likely to carry out a nuclear strike, its this one.

In the meantime, I'm going to be grateful for every day that passes before that happens and the world afterwards becomes an even more unpredictable hellscape.

 

[AdrianS]

the islamic world - however much it has been portrayed as the 'next big enemy' only needs to be properly bombed into submission from time to time.

Why not bomb Malaysia and Indonesia as well - there are more Muslims there than in Iran, so you'll get to inflict even more death and suffering.

 

[wco81]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ream-with-quiet-anticipation-of-regime-change
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/01/los-angeles-iranian-community
https://nypost.com/2026/02/28/world...ountry-over-strikes-against-islamic-republic/
https://www.thenational.scot/news/25897267.iranians-dancing-glasgow-us-israel-attacked-iran/
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/world/ayatollahs-death-brings-tears-joy

https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2...-iran-des-iraniennes-dici-ont-celebre-de-joie
https://www.france24.com/fr/info-en...ns-manifestent-contre-la-république-islamique
https://elpais.com/espana/2026-02-2...oria-jamenei-escucha-no-ganas-esta-lucha.html
https://www.allgemeine-zeitung.de/l...ergplatz-iranische-studierende-feiern-5473049
https://www.ilgiornale.it/news/guer...a-iraniani-nelle-piazze-italiane-2630492.html

From one of the Guardian links above about protests in LA, which has the largest Iranian community outside of Iran itself:

Still, there are grounds to question how broad the push for unity has been outside the confines of the internet. The Iranian community in Los Angeles, or Tehrangeles as it is often called, is known for its multiple fault lines separating conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, Muslims, Jews and Baha’is. Often divisions appear within the same families, especially between those born in Iran before the revolution and those born after in the United States. “Being Iranian American is like a Facebook relationship status – it’s complicated,” the comedian Maz Jobrani joked recently.

Among Iranian Jews, political sentiment has certainly drifted to the rightsince the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023 and the ensuing war in Gaza. Kamran said she saw similarities between the “existential crisis” facing Jews who endured slaughter at the hands of Hamas – and have felt threatened by antisemitism since – and Iranians who have endured slaughter at the hands of their government. But the political drift of the rest of the community has been far less clear.

Shervin Malekzadeh, who teaches political science at Pitzer College in the suburbs east of Los Angeles and has studied the Iranian protest movement, said he had some skepticism about the way Iranian opinion was being directed online. “It can be very toxic,” he said. “It is driven by a segment of the population that is very strident and often very hostile.”

If the plan was to rely on Trump, Netanyahu and Pahlavi, Malekzadeh saw it as a symptom of people’s desperation, not hope. “This is the nadir, the pit of despair,” he said. “They’re thinking, better to be devoured by a beautiful lion than to be torn apart by a horde of foul wolves.”

Some organizations have spoken out forcefully against outside military action, even at the risk of being branded as pariahs for doing so. The National Iranian American Council, which has a history of defending human rights, said that pursuing regime change would have “a high cost in blood, with no guarantee of a brighter future for Iranians... Ultimately, state collapse, civil war and a reshaping of authoritarian governance in Iran are far more likely to flow from bombing than human rights and democracy.”

Sure there's reason to celebrate the death of Khameni but again, how do people with over ones still in Iran think?

 

[schnackenpfefferhausen]

Maybe the military needs an LLM to recommend nuclear war?

“How about a nice game of global thermonuclear war?” - grok, probably

 

[Macam]

I have ... deep reservations about whether the current approach can or will lead to the change in Iran they hope this will enable. That doesn't change that I wish them, and their people, all the best and that their dreams come true.

This got a chuckle out of me. Venezuela is still Venezuela, friend. Like, if people aren’t going to do the work, nothing’s going to change.

Who do people think is more motivated? Maduro’s entrenched regime figures, who profit off the existing system and whose lives depend on it, or some dementia addled strongman abroad who’s only knowledge and motivation is the resident propaganda channel, that controls him and his world view with whatever pablum they have for the daily special? Ditto the IGRC.

The reporting on what it is used for is a bit vague on what it is being used for in the current attacks on Iran:

I would assume that is something like having it ingest US intelligence papers and then requesting it to identify key personnel in various roles (leadership positions, relevant scientists for the nuclear program, other personnel key in production of missiles/drones and other military systems), to come up with lists of locations and times for where those individuals might be, other targets for production or military assets, and so on. Your mileage may vary on the accuracy of any/all of those lists and how much human review they get to verify the intelligence assessment behind it.

This article on the use of Anthropic during the attacks on Venezuela provides a bit more info on this use:

If you fire all the specialists and career experts for being too woke, feminine, insufficiently loyal, etc and you have zero understanding of how anything works because you’ve never worked a proper day in your life and/or just been coddled by your oligarchic sugar daddy(ies), then, yeah, you can use that AI hammer to try to confidently answer all knowledge you could never be bothered to learn. We’re all going to find out in realtime what many of us have already long since known about the shortcomings of the stochastic parrots we’re banking our modern economy — and, apparently, geopolitical tactics — on.

 

[timby]

The actual quote is no less ghoulish, but Rawstory (and other outlets) would do a lot better to provide the full context:

"We expect casualties with something like this," the president said. "We have three, but we expect casualties - but in the end it's going to be a great deal for the world."

So it wasn't Trump saying that he got a great deal.

Like I said, it's absolutely no less ghoulish, but Jesus. The Fourth Estate has already gone from complicity to collaboration, and public trust in independent news outlets is ... questionable, at best. We don't need to give the "Fake News" lunatics more ammo by cherry-picking two words out of a longer statement and twisting the meaning.

That's what they do.

 

[cakqe]

Sure there's reason to celebrate the death of Khameni but again, how do people with over ones still in Iran think?

From a few of the above links:

https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2...-iran-des-iraniennes-dici-ont-celebre-de-joie

For her, the important thing is the fall of the regime. And since the demonstrations have yielded nothing, "it takes the army, the help of the United States, to change the regime."

And this, even though her loved ones, including her mother, are still there.

"During the night, I was able to speak to my mother, but the internet went down there," she explained.

https://www.france24.com/fr/info-en...ns-manifestent-contre-la-république-islamique

“I have high hopes for the Crown Prince because I think he’s the most suitable person to lead the transition,” argues Suzie Ziai. “He’s the most democratic, the most international, and he has a lot of credibility.”
...
Isn’t she afraid that civilians will pay with their lives? “Yes, (...) but what’s ultimately more dangerous isn’t the Israeli bombs, it’s the Revolutionary Guards killing people who are demonstrating in Iran,” she retorts.

Behrooz Farahany, 67, a French-Iranian who arrived in France in 1982, told AFP.
...
According to this member of the Socialist Solidarity with Workers in Iran association, overthrowing the Iranian government “must be done by Iranians and no one else.”

He added: “No one is unhappy that Khamenei was killed… but we condemn this war, which is contrary to international law.”

https://www.allgemeine-zeitung.de/l...ergplatz-iranische-studierende-feiern-5473049

His 30-year-old girlfriend has draped an Iranian flag around her shoulders. “I feel like I’m in a dream. All I want now is to celebrate with my people in Iran. I’m so happy.” She maintains contact with her family only indirectly, because they don't have internet access. Some relatives are connected to Telegram via a proxy server, she explains.

https://www.odt.co.nz/news/world/ayatollahs-death-brings-tears-joy

"I actually got the news by a call from my friend in Iran. She called me and she said that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is gone. He’s dead.

"I was shocked. I didn’t believe it at first. But then when I realised, I was happy and tears of joy. And, you know, I was like, ‘is this really happening?"’

...

"Right now, there are a lot of very different opinions, both inside Iran and outside Iran between the Iranian diaspora.

"But the main thing is that they want the regime change and they want the Islamic Republic gone."

Her ideal situation would be former Crown Prince of Iran Reza Pahlavi helping with the transition to a democratic Iran.

"You wouldn’t say that it’s the best option, but it is the option that is available and it’s reliable. We are not after monarchy or kingship or anything like that. We just want some person that can actually speak out for us.

"He is a well-educated person, brought up in a royal family, so he has manners and everything, and he would have a good presentation of the Iranian society everywhere."

Fellow expat Roozbeh Karimi, who has lived in Dunedin since 2022, said the situation was fraught.

While he welcomed the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, he and others were concerned with "the West’s record of interfering in the Middle East".

 

[Papageno]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads_(1984_film)

Wild. I was entirely unaware of this movie, and it came out the year I graduated from college. Coincidentally, I remember reading Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth that fall or winter, while living in Heidelberg, West Germany, which country would have borne a lot of the damage if the Cold War had turned hot.

 

[concernUrsus]

This got a chuckle out of me. Venezuela is still Venezuela, friend. Like, if people aren’t going to do the work, nothing’s going to change.

Who do people think is more motivated? Maduro’s entrenched regime figures, who profit off the existing system and whose lives depend on it, or some dementia addled strongman abroad who’s only knowledge and motivation is the resident propaganda channel, that controls him and his world view with whatever pablum they have for the daily special? Ditto the IGRC.



If you fire all the specialists and career experts for being too woke, feminine, inefficiently loyal, etc and you have zero understanding of how anything works because you’ve never worked a proper day in your life and/or just been coddled by your oligarchic sugar daddy(ies), then, yeah, you can use that AI hammer to try to confidently answer all knowledge you could never be bothered to learn. We’re all going to find out in realtime what many of us have already long since known about the shortcomings of the stochastic parrots we’re banking our modern economy — and, apparently, geopolitical tactics — on.

USA still have a significant military lead over everyone else. USA military is "battle tested" compare to a lot of other military, and we also spend a lot more. The closer "enemy" USA has is China, and China' military is untested. I am sure even the China's leadership is worry about the "true strength" of their military given the recent result of Russia and now Iran.

The main worry of USA is over-extended, and lack of understand of what it actually can accomplish. Military alone likes won't accomplish any real geopolitical success. What USA in doing right now if just rolling the dice and hope something better will come out of it. May be it will and may be it won't. I guess in USA and its allies' minds, they can always try again but bomb Iran again... (or kidnap leader again as in Venezuela).

 

[Wheels Of Confusion]

I decided to watch Threads today.

Back in 2022 after setting up my NAS for playing media, one of the Blu-Rays I bought was the American equivalent: The Day After.

I figured after a while, the trauma of the Trump administration would be far enough in the rear-view mirror that I could get around to watching it for the first time.

I still haven't felt comfortable enough to watch it yet.

 

[Welcome to Darwin]

Too late now but China should have helped Iran rebuild their air defense, so that they could field test their anti-aircraft systems against US stealth aircraft and other tactics.

For the sake of their weapons export business they may not want to find out how well they actually work in the field.

 

[metlman13]

Too late now but China should have helped Iran rebuild their air defense, so that they could field test their anti-aircraft systems against US stealth aircraft and other tactics.

Adding on to what @Welcome to Darwin said, the Chinese certainly wouldn't want the US to discover the strengths and weaknesses of their own AA defenses that they could then exploit in a future war against China.

 

[Macam]

The actual quote is no less ghoulish, but Rawstory (and other outlets) would do a lot better to provide the full context:



So it wasn't Trump saying that he got a great deal.

Like I said, it's absolutely no less ghoulish, but Jesus. The Fourth Estate has already gone from complicity to collaboration, and public trust in independent news outlets is ... questionable, at best. We don't need to give the "Fake News" lunatics more ammo by cherry-picking two words out of a longer statement and twisting the meaning.

That's what they do.

There’s seems like a different without much of a distinction. At the end of the day, 3 people are dead, their families ripped apart, and for what? A bunch of nothing, with no plan, no follow thru, no anything. I’m not going to get upset about the distinction on the reporting.

USA still have a significant military lead over everyone else. USA military is "battle tested" compare to a lot of other military, and we also spend a lot more. The closer "enemy" USA has is China, and China' military is untested. I am sure even the China's leadership is worry about the "true strength" of their military given the recent result of Russia and now Iran.

The main worry of USA is over-extended, and lack of understand of what it actually can accomplish. Military alone likes won't accomplish any real geopolitical success. What USA in doing right now if just rolling the dice and hope something better will come out of it. May be it will and may be it won't. I guess in USA and its allies' minds, they can always try again but bomb Iran again... (or kidnap leader again as in Venezuela).

China isn’t battle tested, and they’ve just removed their last higher up with actual combat experience, but China isn’t going to get overtly involved in a military fashion, as much as as just strategically taking notes, supplying arms as needed, and looking to exploit the situation. What they lack in military experience, they have in economic weight, as they’ve repeatedly shoved off US threats, in spite of their own domestic economic issues. They can still play a decent hand, as they’ve kept their powder dry, unlike the US and Russia, who are over extending and will face various issues in going further.

 

[Embattle]

People cheering for the downfall of a regime isn't a legal standard.

 

[Welcome to Darwin]

People cheering for the downfall of a regime isn't a legal standard.

Sure makes it tough for proponents of law and order to decry a war of choice like this when the media is full of footage of the people in the country being attacked (and ex-pats in other countries) cheering it on.

 

[timby]

There’s seems like a different without much of a distinction.

There's a substantial difference in a headline suggesting Trump claimed he got a great deal in exchange for those servicemen's lives and Trump actually saying the world gets a great deal out of it (ostensibly because of the death of Khameini, even though we all know that's just cutting off the head of a hydra).

Again: Still an absolutely ghoulish statement, but suggesting that Trump claimed personal gain from it when he did nothing of the sort? That's clickbait bullshit.

 

[crombie]

Back in 2022 after setting up my NAS for playing media, one of the Blu-Rays I bought was the American equivalent: The Day After.

I figured after a while, the trauma of the Trump administration would be far enough in the rear-view mirror that I could get around to watching it for the first time.

I still haven't felt comfortable enough to watch it yet.

I saw The Day After within the last decade, and while grim certainly not as grim as this movie. It was mainly eery how much of the conflict in that fiction mirrored what is happening now. And it makes me wonder if we had the same pocket style nukes held by service members as we did in the Cold War, if they would have already been deployed.

 

[Soriak]

WTF does the military need an LLM to carry out an attack??!! Fill out the fluff text of orders? Crank out some PowerPoint slides for political command? I am honestly very flabbergasted.

I wish more people reflected on this because it really shows how far GenAI has come. Those advances are very poorly reported in media, I suspect because most journalists aren't actively using these tools and may generally be inclined to "dislike" GenAI. A lot of views were formed in the early days of text completion using free tiers (i.e., even by then outdated models), which preceeded the "thinking" refinements that made hallucinations a minor issue (with frontier models, which are not free), and which are entirely different from the agentic uses since (which burn through tokens like crazy, so require at least the $100 tier with Claude). You can do a lot of real-time analysis and turn disconnected data into useful insights. I spent an afternoon building a tool that integrates my calendar, email, and to-do list to effectively work as a project manager and notify me of things that might previously have fallen through the cracks. Not so much "you haven't replied to this email," but "you had a meeting with X two weeks ago and there has not been a follow up. I don't see anything related on your todo list -- are you expecting anything from them? Here's a summary from your past email conversations about where this project seems to be right now." Obviously, one could do a lot better with a dedicated team and more than a few hours of work.

 

[theevilsharpie]

Sure makes it tough for proponents of law and order to decry a war of choice like this when the media is full of footage of the people in the country being attacked (and ex-pats in other countries) cheering it on.

Is there any country with any significant population anywhere in the world that wouldn't have some subset of the population dancing in the streets if their government was overthrown?

Certainly if Trump was assassinated, I wouldn't be surprised in the least to see gleeful partying across the US. Likewise, if the January 6 insurrectionists had actually succeeded in killing Pence or some other prominent politician, there'd be people dancing on their respective graves.

You could justify literally anything of political consequence if your justification is people celebrating the act after-the-fact.

 

[AverageDutchGuy]

I'm still entirely torn on how to feel feel about the US attacks on Iran. I can't help but feel it's going to turn into a quagmire and a fuster cluck in short order. Khamenei might be dead, but there's probably a line of equally terrible dudes lined up to take his very strict Islamist place. The IRGC will remain firmly in charge since they're the only ones with guns. The civilian population has little chance to actually effect a regime change and all the US seems intent on doing is aerial bombardment. Nothing that's so far been happening to me feels like it's going to achieve anything long term other than creating another terrorist hotbed of a population with a deep-seated and seething hatred of the US for entirely failing to support them like they said.

 

[Pino90]

I'm still entirely torn on how to feel feel about the US attacks on Iran. I can't help but feel it's going to turn into a quagmire and a fuster cluck in short order. Khamenei might be dead, but there's probably a line of equally terrible dudes lined up to take his very strict Islamist place. The IRGC will remain firmly in charge since they're the only ones with guns. The civilian population has little chance to actually effect a regime change and all the US seems intent on doing is aerial bombardment. Nothing that's so far been happening to me feels like it's going to achieve anything long term other than creating another terrorist hotbed of a population with a deep-seated and seething hatred of the US for entirely failing to support them like they said.

Gideon Rachman, the FT’s chief foreign affairs commentator, has an opinion as well about this.

He argues that Trump has no credible endgame in Iran and “has not understood the lessons of past wars for regime change in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Which I think we all agree about.

Rachman questions what actually follows the bombing, both domestically for the US and internationally, because at the moment it's clear there's no grand plan or anything that barely resembles a plan.

https://www.ft.com/content/437130e7-ed4e-4919-8bf3-ac38c2eed6af

 

[timby]

He argues that Trump has no credible endgame in Iran

I don't think the US has ever had a credible endgame in any of its ill-advised forays into Middle Eastern politics and government.

Hell, you could probably say that regarding US forays into foreign governments period, not just the Middle East.

 

[Wheels Of Confusion]

I don't think the US has ever had a credible endgame in any of its ill-advised forays into Middle Eastern politics and government.

Hell, you could probably say that regarding US forays into foreign governments period, not just the Middle East.

The Bush administration at least had a wish-list of cronies to install and leeches to attach to fatten their portfolios in the aftermath.
I honestly think Trump is the type to just hand this off to Israel and say "do whatever" now that the bombs have flown.

 

[Lt_Storm]

I disagree. It's simple: any occupier of that seat who continues his forebear's policies also gets killed. The message will soon get through to potential successors that we (the West) are not going to put up with leaders (religious or otherwise) who cruelly oppress their own populations whilst instigating regional instability, war and terrorism. Not to mention seeking to acquire WMDs.

That's not going to lead to any kind of happy outcome there. I mean, we killed Gaddafi, the effect, today Libyans miss him, an outcome that could have been predicted well beforehand. Or, we could look to Iraq and ISIS for expected outcomes. The reality is that freeing people requires building something. And you can't build something with bombs. With bombs, at best, you can make a power vacuum, one that elements of the previous order will be best equipped to fill.

Moreover, despotic systems don't function because the despot is sitting on some magical chair. Instead they are a society wide phenomena, a system that operates in every city and every town. Which suggests that, if someone wanted to stop the oppression with the mere application of ordinance, the bombing would have to be similarly wide. But, of course, doing that in any sane way would require boots on the ground for years and wouldn't be received any better than the attempt was in Iraq. There is a reason that the CIA didn't think this would do any good.

All of which is to say, I have very little optimism that this is going to have a better outcome than the continuation of the Iranian regime would have had. I would be very surprised a decade from now to find us talking about any outcome aside from two: 1) a new regime just like the old or 2) a mess of warlords bickering and the inevitable deaths that will cause. I suppose I can hope that maybe the Iranian Kurds are intact enough to do something good with this. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't see the mechanism by which a better outcome is likely to arise. The alternative power structures just aren't there.

Has the US been indiscrimintely dropping iron bombs on the suburbs? I have not heard of such a thing. The US military leadership (CINC aside) is not stupid. So far as I'm aware the US has indeed targetted military and govenrment targets. Of course there will be civilian casualties in war; but one of the things that justifies a war is when that war has fewer casualties than not fighting the war. I know the figures so far are unconfirmed and disputed, but numerous sources put the death toll of the Ayatollah's regime as high as 30,000 this year alone. Not counting the wounded, the imprisoned and tortured etc. Again - that's this year, and today is March the 1st. Ten more months of that? Being bombed by the US is far better. I mean that literally.

You did read about the girl's school, yes?

Not that such indiscrimination is required to have the effect of rallying people around their regime. The reality is that, as far as I know, bombing has never reduced the support that a regime enjoys. Instead the usual outcome is that, when an outsider attacks, even resistance elements are reasonably likely to set aside their differences to support the regime; for it is, at least, their regime. Think about how you felt when the twin towers fell, realize that today, many Iranians are having the exact same feelings. They might hate their government, and yet many of them are still having those feelings. Turns out that feelings aren't particularly rational.

I'm pretty close to certain that you don't understand theocracy, if you think the people who SUFFER from it still want it. That goes for US theocracy. There are certainly women in the US who think they want theocracy, but they'll soon change their minds when they get to experience the unbridled misogyny that will entail. Note I'm not saying Iranian women don't want to be muslim any more, I'm saying they don't want to be in a theocratic dictatorship any more.

I mean, it doesn't take much research to find examples of people suffering under a theocracy who, none-the-less support it. Honesty, I find it difficult to believe that anyone with a cursory knowledge of the past couple thousand years of history couldn't readily come up with examples*, that is, after all, most of it. Hell, just a cursory analysis of fringe religious groups should make this phenomena fairly obvious.

But, if those examples are insufficient, there is an entire body of research on this phenomena. They call it internalized oppression and it's fucking grim. The reality of the matter is that it is quite common for those who are oppressed to learn to desire their own oppression. Add in religion and the idea that God will punish the disobedient and it should be unsurprising that there are plenty of women who are very happy to help the Taliban do its thing. Women who would die to defend it.

And, to be clear, those are only the most tragic examples. Most people in such situations would mostly prefer to just be ignored. And they are very happy to support the oppressive regime they live under as a method to help make sure that happens. The tall nail gets the hammer after all and, from where they sit, revolution isn't a much preferable outcome to arranging for such ignorance.

Also: we're not bombing women. FFS...

Right, because none of the people who make up half the population are within the blast radius of those bombs. That's entirely believable. Frankly, I would argue that you can only bomb people without also bombing women under relatively uncommon circumstances. Oh, and, again, there's that school.

Nope. Not really. Not at all in fact. It is not 'religion-phobic' to criticise or be critical of a religion, or to call it out for what it is or how it works or what it will do to a country. It's easy for a privileged white atheist lefty in the liberal secular West to cry 'holy islamophobia batman' but you wouldn't be crying that if you had an ounce of empathy in you for how people in Iran have suffered for the last 50 years. Likewise Afghanistan, where women are barely allowed to speak at all. You're just being lazy now, and virtue signalling. Which is pointless.

I have no objections to criticisms of religion or Islam. I object to casting something held by some two billion people which is as diverse as that suggests as if it were simple and uniform enough that one can reasonably say things like what you said about it. I would argue that the key element of bigotry is to strip the diversity and nuance out of something so as to imply that every one of this diverse forms is fundamentally the same. In reality, Malesia is and has long been a democracy and Grand Ayatollah Hossein Borujerdi has long argued that theocracy is bad for Islam. You have filed them out of existence. That is the heart of my objection.

I don't understand this comment. I doubt you do. Because it's nonsense. Firstly, I'm not defending Trump at all and, for clarity, I do not believe Trump has any clear idea of what he's doing except a) forcing a 'deal', b) distracting everyone (again...) from the Epstein files scandal, c) perhaps he's still under the delusion he might excavate a Nobel peace prize from his "foreign policy" and d) maybe he's starting to acquire a real taste for being a 'strong man'. I do not condone, escuse or defend any of that.

I was arguing that neither of them particularly knows what they are doing in a way that is significantly different than what our Great Leaders knew about what they were doing in Afghanistan. Largely, because the idea that Afghanistan would have gone significantly differently had they knocked it over and then immediately left is unbelievable. Again, power structures aren't so inherently fragile that merely killing one leader is going to change the world. The great-man version of history is, after all, mostly a lie.

Natanayahu - he knows exactly what he's doing. I think you know that, even if you don't like either what he's doing or why. In case you hadn't noticed: a) Iran is (or was......) an existential threat to Israel, and had been for decades, and b) the Israelis don't fuck about like the rest of us do. You could note that c) the US appears to have largely abandoned it's long-running policy of keeping Israel on a leash to try and prevent it directly taking necessary actions, in the interests of at least 'better' regional stability and peace.

And I would thoroughly disagree with this assessment, he might think he does, but, as with strongmen everywhere, his ideas about what will make his people safe will instead only increase their peril. As for the idea that, somehow, creating a power vacuum in Iran is going to increase regional stability and peace, well, I can only point again to Libya and ask how well that went.

* Edit: and, because it is fun and I really should provide at least one such example, the history of self-flagellation in Christianity is quite wild.

 

[GloatingSwine]

All of which is to say, I have very little optimism that this is going to have a better outcome than the continuation of the Iranian regime would have had. I would be very surprised a decade from now to find us talking about any outcome aside from two: 1) a new regime just like the old or 2) a mess of warlords bickering and the inevitable deaths that will cause. I suppose I can hope that maybe the Iranian Kurds are intact enough to do something good with this. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't see the mechanism by which a better outcome is likely to arise. The alternative power structures just aren't there.

Yeah, Khamenei was 86 and the IRGC basically exists to ensure continuity of the revolutionary regime, so it's very likely there will be suitable successors waiting because that clock was already ticking anyway.

 

[Carhole]

My assumption is based on the history of dictatorships that were not militarily invaded. I'm hard pressed to think of any states that collapsed that way. Argentina after the Falklands is one. But look at Sadam in 1991. The typical way it happens is when the dictator falls is when he looses the backing of his military, and I don't see the Revolutionary Guard turning on the regime.

Some examples pulled from Wikipedia and Amnesty International:

• Somalia: Following the collapse of the Siad Barre regime in 1991, Somalia became a textbook case of a failed state due to civil war and clan fighting.
• South Sudan: Since gaining independence in 2011, the country has been consumed by internal ethnic conflict and economic crisis.
• Venezuela: Extreme economic mismanagement and political instability in the 2010s led to hyperinflation, mass migration, and collapse of basic services. My remark: this doesn’t even factor in the recent US involvement.
• Zimbabwe: Under the latter years of Robert Mugabe, the country experienced hyperinflation and a collapse of the agricultural sector, leading to state failure.
• Lebanon: In the early 2020s, the country experienced a massive economic, financial, and political collapse.
• Central African Republic & DR Congo: These nations have faced long periods of weakness, where central governments have limited authority over their territory, resulting in internal armed conflict.

My prediction is that these surgical strikes that have been completely removing Iran’s leadership and navy—Iran’s primary military force and outfitted with Islamic Revolutionary Guardsman—have already killed dozens of succession tiers deep as unclassified reports have mentioned. The vast majority of the IRGC forces who try any resumption of governance will be systematically identified and assassinated, and this will lead to the economic crises and atrocious conditions required as seen above, for the state to falter.

Furthermore, the US can “invade” without boots on the ground and continue to remove IRGC forces remotely. This is likely already an ongoing process to kill easily-identified troops and encourage them to lay down arms, as clearly as Donald told them to.

Why that matters: the IRGC is a sizable fragment of the Iranian population at approx 125K soldiers from a total population surpassing 93 million people though those numbers certainly aren’t in their favor once the population’s food and critical infrastructure continues to disappear over the course of this war; to my knowledge nobody has armed an insurgency yet, though those service members will be hunted by Mossad, CIA, and active military intelligence from ongoing theater involvement for three months, or longer if Congress gets onboard, (or again, by Israeli forces) then if we factor in even a relatively small insurgency the regime will get redefined as a matter of course.

Edit: pardon I had some dyslexic abbreviations.

 

[GloatingSwine]

My prediction is that these surgical strikes that have been completely removing Iran’s leadership and navy—Iran’s primary military force and outfitted with Islamic Republic Guardsman—have already killed dozens of succession tiers deep as unclassified reports have mentioned. The vast majority of the IRNG forces who try any resumption of governance will be systematically identified and assassinated, and this will lead to the economic crises and atrocious conditions required as seen above, for the state to falter.

Furthermore, the US can “invade” without boots on the ground and continue to remove IRNG forces remotely. This is likely already an ongoing process to kill easily-identified troops and encourage them to lay down arms, as clearly as Donald told them to.

Ah, that old chestnut that has literally never worked once in history, victory purely through strategic bombing.

What if, instead of jumping the way you think, they get some firebrand who decides that if they're all going to be bombed to death by the USA anyway they should load up absolutely every missile and drone still in inventory, point them all at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and launch as fast as they are able? They have a reasonable expectation on the magazine depth of the anti-missile systems there, since they've done strikes before.

It's dumb, they will never trust that the bombing will stop if they comply and they will never trust another threat not to come tomorrow, This strategy guarantees they will fight to the death, just as it has every single other time it has been tried.

 

[Carhole]

All of which is to say, I have very little optimism that this is going to have a better outcome than the continuation of the Iranian regime would have had. I would be very surprised a decade from now to find us talking about any outcome aside from two: 1) a new regime just like the old or 2) a mess of warlords bickering and the inevitable deaths that will cause. I suppose I can hope that maybe the Iranian Kurds are intact enough to do something good with this. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't see the mechanism by which a better outcome is likely to arise. The alternative power structures just aren't there

Option number two seems likely along with a complete territorial fracturing across ethnic populations, then we may see something such as the Taliban going to war against Pakistan as is presently happening or other hideous things such as a repeat of the Gaza genocides.

Ah, that old chestnut that has literally never worked once in history, victory purely through strategic bombing

You’ve obviously not read my post or are just ignorant of current events. See the Russian-Ukrainian war for clues on how terribly effective antipersonnel drone warfare is.

The rest of your post is nonsense. Iran has already tried what you propose against Israel just hours ago. Read some news FFS.

 

[Lt_Storm]

I was arguing that neither of them particularly knows what they are doing in a way that is significantly different than what our Great Leaders knew about what they were doing in Afghanistan. Largely, because the idea that Afghanistan would have gone significantly differently had they knocked it over and then immediately left is unbelievable. Again, power structures aren't so inherently fragile that merely killing one leader is going to change the world. The great-man version of history is, after all, mostly a lie.

Oh, and let me take this analysis one step further: I would argue that the ideas driving Netanyahu to believe this is a good idea are essentially the exact same set of neo-conservative ideas that led Bush to decide that Afghanistan and Iraq were good ideas. If those ideas sucked then, then they surely suck now.

 

[Crolis]

I mean this whole thing is just the Arrested Development meme of it’s never worked before but it might work for us this time. So funny because if MAGA had one consistent pillar you could point to (until now) it was isolationism and this kind of military adventurism was stupid and wasteful. The fact that they are all putting a wrecking ball to even that one pillar because Trump randomly changed his mind (distraction) just makes me loathe them even more. You couldn’t even hold to this one tenant.

I’m just shocked that there are still people on this forum in 2026 after living through all the things I’ve lived through that still think this was a good idea.

 

[GloatingSwine]

You’ve obviously not read my post or are just ignorant of current events. See the Russian-Ukrainian war for clues on how terribly effective antipersonnel drone warfare is.

The rest of your post is nonsense. Iran has already tried what you propose against Israel just hours ago. Read some news FFS.

And has that antipersonnel warfare won the Ukraine war for either side yet?

Bombing Ukraine has hardened its resistance against Russia. As always happens, especially when civilian collateral casualties occur.