Category Archives: foreign policy

Later

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President Donal Trump (R) has correctly rejected Iran’s offer of a 7-day cease fire, during which the IRGC, the true power in the Iranian government, would pretend to negotiate a permanent end to the conflict, to do chit-chat regarding the IRGC’s nuclear weapons program, and to codify the fiction that the Hormuz Strait is an Iranian waterway. Even without the nonsense regarding the Strait, the offer was entirely disingenuous, since the IRGC uses all such cease fires and talks solely as periods within which to rest, refit, rearm, and resume fighting.

Trump’s responding plan, though, maintaining the current state of the conflict, is a serious error. He says he won’t resume bombing, if he does at all (he says he hasn’t decided), until after the November mid-terms. His abhorrence of the killing and destruction that war, or any shooting conflict, causes is laudable; however, he’s letting his abhorrence go too far; it’s seriously clouding his judgment in the present conflict. He’s fallen into a never do today what can be put off to tomorrow counterproductive loop.

As the conflict wears on, the destruction and deaths the IRGC inflicts on our Middle East allies and friends steadily increases. The privation the IRGC inflicts on the Iranian people steadily worsens as the IRGC diverts ever mote resources from the people toward its attacks on shipping and the infrastructure of the other nations of the Middle East. The costs to our military and its ability to respond to crises elsewhere in the world—viz., Russia’s growing threat to eastern Europe and the People’s Republic of China’s increasing threat to the Republic of China and the Philippines—greatly increase and is increasingly eroded, respectively. The costs to our military increases in the near term, especially. The repeated delays in serious bombing, the fits and starts, only requires far too many targets to be struck a second time, a third time, a fourth time,…. That just wastes our ammunition.

Domestically, as the conflict wears on, inflation will remain elevated, even if it is vastly reduced by Trump and Republican action so far from the Biden years, and in particular, the cost of gasoline to individual Americans remains high, the cost of diesel to shippers and farmers remains high and is increasing, and from those, the cost of food and cooling homes (and soon of heating them) remains high and is increasing.

Beyond that, Trump’s constant threats to Iran, ranging from harsh consequences to annihilation, are rapidly losing impact and costing credibility from his constant decisions to not act on those threats.

For all of those reasons, delay is strongly counterproductive.

Trump must resume heavy bombing and add heavy cyber attacks on Iran, and do them now, not tomorrow. The IRGC will never negotiate in any serious fashion. The only way to end the conflict and ease the Iranian people’s suffering with any hope of durability is to destroy the IRGC’s ability to fight at all and to eliminate the IRGC’s members altogether.

Coming Around?

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Many of the Arab nations that as recently as this summer had been pushing for negotiations with Iran to end the fighting between Iran and the US are now trying to persuade President Donald Trump (R) not to negotiate. This comes on the heels of Iranian attacks on Saudi oil tanker shipping in the Arabian Gulf and Iran’s Houthi satrap seizing islands in the Red Sea to cut off Arab shipping there, and attacks by the Houthis and by Iran’s Iraqi supporters on the Saudi oil pipeline to the Red Sea coast and on the Saudi port there.

They’re waffling on that, though. Don’t start shooting again, they’re also pushing. Just maintain the blockade and the economic pressure.

Other Gulf states, mainly Oman and Qatar, argue the region already has suffered significantly and say proposals for a phased reopening of Hormuz and a halt to attacks on Gulf states are the only viable way to end the conflict.

They need to recognize the suffering they’ll continue to experience with Iran still a military and terrorist threat, unless they kowtow to the murderous regime. There’s no need for a “phased reopening” of the Hormuz Strait. There’s only a need for the IRGC to stop shooting at Strait shipping and to acknowledge in writing and in public speaking that the Strait is international waters and Iran has no authority to change that fact.

That change in the IRGC is unlikely. The IRGC, which is the real power in the Iranian government, isn’t interested in ending the fight except on its terms: the Hormuz Strait is Iranian water, and shipping must pay an Iranian toll to pass through it; Iran must be able to resume its nuclear weapons development without interference; and the US must pay reparations to Iran in addition to lifting all sanctions.

The Arab nations may be starting to figure out the real world around their Iran fantasy, but they’ve a ways to go, yet. That path begins with those nations getting their collective heads out of the sand while finding enough backbone to get their hands dirty: taking back those Red Sea islands; getting serious about running the Houthis out of Yemen; joining with actual military force instead of stern words in renewed and expanded attacks on Iran until that nation is completely disarmed and has no means of rebuilding its military, including its missile, rocket, and drone inventory; it has no means of even beginning, much less resuming, its nuclear weapons program; and the IRGC has seized to exist.

“Growing Risks”

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That’s the concern about AI and its use in hacking that was written about in a recent WSJ article.

Two weeks after a swarm of AI agents broke out of containment at OpenAI to hack the company Hugging Face, the ChatGPT maker learned about another AI-powered intrusion—and this time it was the target.
Independent security researchers had used Anthropic‘s Claude software to gain access to an OpenAI employee’s ChatGPT account, giving them a way to read and suggest changes to the company’s private cache of software.

And this:

The team, who participated in an OpenAI bug-hunting program that offers a safe harbor for researchers to attempt to break into corporate systems, quickly reported their findings to the company. …
The new hack joins a long list of recent disclosures by leading technology companies and researchers alike of cyber intrusions aided by fast-evolving artificial-intelligence tools. Despite months of warnings about the capabilities of AI systems, the new intrusion shows how the complexity of today’s computer systems makes them difficult to defend.

Umm, no.

That breakout and hack of Hugging Face wasn’t an example of the risks of AI; it was an example of the risks from human failure to properly airgap the sandbox in which they were building and testing that swarm of agents.

The “difficulty to defend” today’s increasingly complex computer systems isn’t a matter of AI tools’ or swarms of AI tools’ ability to hack into complex (or simple) computer systems. The difficulty is the failure to use frequently, broadly, and deeply those AI tools to do the White Hat hacking those independent security researchers had done to expose some OpenAI bugs and gaps.

That White Hat hacking needs to be done by lots of security researchers all across our economy and our governments at all jurisdictional levels, so enterprises and governments can find their own software and system failures and repair them before outside entities with nefarious intent—whether government, criminal, or just folks poking around because they can—find them, penetrate them, and inflict their damage or steal critical information or demand ransom or…. And then the White Hat hacking needs to be repeated at frequent, irregular intervals so as to keep systems buttoned up and ahead of Black Hat and other adversarial hacking efforts.

The risk, and it is growing, is that that White Hat hacking isn’t being done as widely or frequently as it should be to identify those system gaps and bugs so they can be quickly sealed off. And make those difficult to defend systems more easily defended.

Instead, people who should know better insist on locking up AI with excessive regulation.

Consolidate!?

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Iran’s terrorist satrap Houthis have seized a critical island in the Red Sea allowing them—and so Iran—to control traffic through the Red Sea. Matthew Continentti, who should know better, thinks the appropriate response by the Trump administration includes

bring[ing] the Saudis, Israelis, and Emiratis together to prevent the Houthis from consolidating their position.

Stern finger-wagging and harsh words by this coalition won’t accomplish anything beyond emphasizing the perception of Iran’s opponents as paper kittens.

What really needs to be done is to get Saudi Arabia and Jordan—which has as much interest in a free-sailing Red Sea as the Saudis and Emiratis—to commit their ground troops, under American air cover, to run the Houthis back off that island. That’s the only “prevent them from consolidating” that has any value.

The parallel step—not “next step” as Continetti characterizes it—is to allow[] the US military to finish its target list from Operation Epic Fury, adding if missing from that target list communications networks, transportation hubs, state institutions, and symbols of the regime.

Half measures not only don’t cut it, they run up costs in friendly treasure and blood. And that’s immoral as well as politically stupid.

Cislunar Isn’t Enough

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Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine is advising/warning of the need for the US to be prepared to fight in the region of the moon.

At a conference at the Air and Space Forces Association, Caine said that

American troops need to prepare for combat not only in Earth’s orbit but around the moon….

And that

the US military should adapt now so it “is prepared to fight, endure, and win…from the seabed to cislunar space.

That’s good, but it doesn’t go far enough. We need to be able to fight and win on the surface of the moon, also, and we need to seize the even higher ground of the Martian surface and the volume of space around it, which includes Mars’ moons and their potential for to serve as bases and launchers.

The region around the moon must also include—and we must explicitly seize for our exclusive military use—the Lagrange points of the Earth-moon system. These points are areas well separated spatially from the moon where the gravitational forces of Earth and the moon are balanced so that objects can sit there stably without needing to expend energy to remain in place.

The Earth-moon Lagrange points include two in the moon’s orbit roughly 60 degrees in front of and behind the moon, a third just beyond the moon on the Earth-moon line, a fourth on the same line but between the moon and Earth, and a fifth on the same line but on the far side of Earth from the moon.

Those Lagrange points, as stable as they are, also are important economically since refiners and factories would be stable there.

One more item: communication lags between Earth and the moon, and especially between Earth and Mars, are such that real time, active control from Earth of our defensive systems there would be impractical. That puts a premium on active, military-tailored AI being in place to exercise tactical and immediate control over our systems there within strategic parameters transmitted to them from DoD here on the ground. That puts a premium on putting a low lid on efforts to overregulate AI innovations.