icegreentea2

There's other news floating around from Citrini saying similar things - the actual substack post (behind a paywall https://www.citriniresearch.com/p/strait-of-hormuz-a-citrini...), and some news coverage - https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/06/wall-street-firm-sends-analy...

Being able to put up toll booths on the Strait is another knife to the body of international law and the good old rules based order.

Western reflexes towards isolationism comes from two factors:

1. Long-term backlash against unchecked globalization. Every western country has to come to grips with the long-term impacts of the deindustrialization that globalization has enabled - this impacts their domestic societal stability, their long-term economic growth, and their ability to act internationally and independently.

2. One particular western leader (who happened to come to power, at least partly riding the wave of the backlash above) has accelerated this trend by taking the possibility of trans-Atlantic (+plus a few Pacific trends) tradebloc to form "globalization lite" as a middle ground solution (honestly, I have no idea how viable this would have actually been), and took it behind the shed and shot it, and then burned the corpse.

Globalization was bearable in part because America did infact run the game, and tended to run the game reasonably well. US aligned nations could all see China growing in strength, but they all figured that as long as they played their role and played nice, that when the time came, they could join the US in whatever new game it wanted to play, or join the US in helping push back. What they perhaps did not count on was just has careless America could be, or that America would want to stop playing with them at all.

Towards your point on confidence and trust. As others have pointed out, Trump has also violated trust in all sorts of ways. Trump delights in norm and trust breaking, as a form of dominance display - both as meat for the base, but also to satisfy his own impulses. But perhaps worse, I think a lot of people are now also calculating that Trump could easily misuse or violate trust without really knowing it. Iran should have clarified to everyone that the Trump administration is willing the act on deeply flawed (or perhaps absent) second order (or even move-countermove) planning.

The Iranian's regime's minimal goal is regime security. To that end, it aims to apply maximum pressure/cost on Israel/US, and hope that they will relent at some point. Iran has no other means to actually cause the Israel/US to stop (as in, it lacks the ability militarily deter or defeat).

Iran recognizes that it is not just the actual damage, but the credible threat of damage that incurs pressure/cost. For example, there are piles of ships holed up in the Gulf - Iran has the capability to strike at them, but they don't need to. Publicity is part of magnifying the threat.

Iran likely lacks the capability to actually assuredly destroy any single target of its choosing. Iran instead likely has the capability of destroying maybe 1-10% of targets that it actually chooses to engage. However, it can hold hundreds of targets at threat to try to ratchet up the pressure. In addition, by casting an ever wider net of claimed targets, when it does get around to attacking, it's more likely to be able to construct a narrative of "calling their shot".

Seems there are two parallel developments here:

a) Rise of alternate forms of organizing trust. People distrust government or other organizations, and turn to alternative forms of organization and trust.

b) Rise of digital wallet/transfer systems that are fundamentally about charging for throughput/withdrawals. The article mentions that banks are restricting withdraws - presumably because banks need deposits to stay liquid. Whish on the other hand doesn't care - it makes money as a % of each transaction.

The events of the last year certainly have a role to play, but the overall effect is just the result of trendlines that have been in play for quite a while.

Here's a world gold council (i know...) review/survey of central banks gold holdings from mid 2025 (https://www.gold.org/goldhub/research/central-bank-gold-rese...). It notes that gold purchases (by mass) have been elevated going back to ~2023.

Gold prices have also been on an upward trajectory ever since 2023 (https://goldprice.org/gold-price-history.html)

Whatever is happening now is bigger than actions over the last year.

If you scroll down on the page, it'll show that the user fees only offset ~20% of the overall security expenses.

In addition, most fees (including most of the TSA fee) collected by the US Federal government isn't earmarked - it just goes into the general fund.

More breakdown here: https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/23/us/tsa-funding-security-fees-...

As another post mentions, this definitely fits into the wider genre of morality/revenge/malicious compliance porn. Regardless of if this is real or fiction, AI generated or not, it's still porn.

Porn isn't bad, but thinking that porn adequately reflects reality, or that behavior within porn is blanket appropriate for real life is.. not good.

It feels one sided because the author is an outsider - as the author readily admits - "It has been brought to my attention, however, that my blasé attitude toward sports makes me an outlier".

Turning to some actual numbers - this 2024 survey tells us that only ~15% of respondents said that their children participate in club sports or independent training (note that the categories are not exclusive). The same survey also says that ~10% of respondants think that their child can compete in professional sports, or be a national level team member. Finally, a similar 10% say that the "only the best players should receive time in games" is a fair policy at your child's age and level.

https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Na...

I think the point of the article is to maybe highlight how large the gulf might be between an typical outsider (and looking at the numbers above... and reminding ourselves that only ~50% of American youth are involved in organized sports at all), someone who is somewhat "in the game", and those who are really playing it (that 10% from above).

For anyone wondering, passage and massage entered English at very different times. Passage entered in middle english (around 13th century), while massage entered in the 19th century.

The argument is that the opportunity cost outweighs the marginal gains.

The original argument (it's linked is that):

* The major manufacturers are already restricting asbestos

* That asbestos contamination is detrimental to cosmetic quality, and therefore manufacturers have a self-interested motivation to meet their claimed safety specifications

* In any case, the most likely sources of contamination are those which were not yet determined to be cancer causing

* Oh, and we should regulate medicinal talc first before cosmetics

There are multiple tiers of missile (and ballistic missile defense).

Especially with ballistic missiles, the longer the range, the faster the inbound warhead will be in the terminal phase (roughly). So longer range ~= faster meaning more difficult to intercept.

"Iron Dome" is the name generally used to describe Israel's lowest tier set of defenses. Very roughly Iron Dome is designed to defend against stuff that you could plausibly fire from the back of a truck, and have a max range of around ~50km.

Very roughly, these were intended to take on something like GMLRS (realistically, massed volleys of unguided rockets) - these are rockets that one or two people could conceivably manhandle, and are traveling in the neighborhood of Mach 2-3. One of the key innovations of Iron Dome is its ability to quickly ascertain and design on which rockets were unlikely to strike valuable areas, and only engage the actually threatening ones.

The next tier up is David's Sling, and then Israel's wider set of high performance anti-ballistic missile systems. Returning the the range <-> speed thing, we'd need something like a medium range ballistic missile to get from Iran to Israel. For something like the Shahab-3, that's like ~Mach 7 during re-entry.

If we step up to IRBMs (so something that China might use to strike at Guam), we're probably talking like Mach 10.

Air defenses do not need to be 100% effective to be... effective.

Russia cannot keep Ukraine from targeting their oil infrastructure, yet here Russia is, still fighting on. Ukraine cannot prevent Russia from targeting their energy infrastructure or apartment buildings, yet here they are, still fighting on.

If we're talking about strategic/civil air defense, then you must figure out what's tolerable to your population (and how to increase and maintain that tolerance), and then figure out all the means to reduce the incoming attacks to below that tolerance. That must include the full spectrum of offensive, counter offensive, defensive, and informational options.

It's a provocative title, but I think this section better captures his scope of argument - "Collaboration-as-ideology has made ownership and responsibility feel antisocial, which is a hell of a thing, given that ownership is the only mechanism that gets anything across the finish line.", as well as "But there’s a huge difference between communication and collaboration as infrastructure to support individual, high-agency ownership, and communication and collaboration as the primary activity of an organisation".

I think the author has identified that most organizations both fail at effective collaboration, and also use collaboration to paper over their failures.

I think the author maybe over-corrects by leaning on the idea that "only small teams actually get stuff done", and honestly I don't think anyone should be using SLA Marshall/Men Against Fire as an analogy for like... office work (if nothing else, even if you take his words at face value, then the percentage of US infantry who fired their rifles went up from 15-25% in WW2 to ~50% in Korea due to training improvements), but I can get behind the idea that a lot of organizations are setup to diffuse responsibility.

I also do think it's interesting to think about building the Pyramids. For the vast majority of people involved... I don't think modern audiences would call their work relationship or style "collaborative". Usually we use "collaborative" in opposition (at different times) to "working alone", "working with strict boundaries", and "being highly directed in what to do". Being on a work gang, or even being a team foreman is very much "no working alone", but those were also likely highly directed jobs (you must bring this specific stone to this specific location by this time) with strict boundaries.

Yeah, this is really just a rant, there's nothing substantive here, other than a warning against assuming that the political/voting blowback will be meaningful, or assuming that Trump cannot hold out indefinitely.

Because I love cabbage... the blog post shows "Gai lan" as an Asian example. There are so much more!

You are probably aware of napa cabbage, but there's also Taiwan Cabbage (goes by other names of course...) https://www.westcoastseeds.com/products/taiwan-cabbage

It looks a lot like a flatter "green/european" cabbage. It's leaves and stems are finer and softer than a European cabbage, while still being pretty crunchy (as opposed to napa). Compared to European cabbage, you could actually just stir fry these.

Gai lan is just one variety of "Chinese broccoli" - there are multiple varieties with different stem thicknesses, and "branching ratios". This will let you pick to suit your preferred level of crunch and leaf area to coat with sauce =)

And finally, all of the bok choys are also part of this family.

If you look, you can straight up find the half way points between subfamilies https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/080bca1a659bf2f8b12bca1494c67...

Yeah, this current project uses external sensors (a camera array/grid) for guidance.

He's using potassium nitrate/sugar as his rocket fuel.

Yeah, I remember thinking that about the 5th gen myself. But I think part of that way unclarity around when the 6th gen would appear. 2011ish would be a weird timeframe.

Obama didn't announce the "pivot to Asia" until 2012. A lot of the world was still believing in the whole unipolar moment thing. The F-35 hadn't even started training squadrons in service yet. 6th generation probably felt really far away. 2016 onwards has been a major acceleration in all sorts of ways.

In my eyes, 6th generation was really ignited by the focus on China. The PCA/NGAD/F-47 was first out the gate, and really set the tempo and got everyone else going.

I agree with your estimation of the likely development path. I expect that approach to merge/converge from the other direction - I expect there to also be a parallel path of fully autonomous systems growing to occupy ever greater mission sets. Imagine telling a drone "I need an ELINT mission in the area and timeframe" (and it plans its own launch time, flight route, calculates fuel loads, communicates with ground staff), or "I need you to airdrop this supply pallet".

I agree that European militaries need to be able to generate a lot of mass.

But we would be remiss to pick up on some threads from both Ukraine and Iran.

In Ukraine, the VKS is still able to generate substantial damage (both in tactical support of ground forces, as well as part of the civilian bombing campaign) with glide bombs (carrying 500kg+ class bombs, launched by tactical jets from over Russian controlled airspace).

These tactics are effective, and are able to do things that Shaheds aren't quite capable of doing - for example ensuring destruction of certain targets with a single hit. I imagine Ukraine would love to be able to be able to take glide bombs off the table, but it can't.

It can't because it lacks the air force to conduct an offensive counter-air campaign, and it lacks the long range strike capability to permanently disable relevant airfields, or destroy enough airframes on the ground.

European militaries would like to be able to avoid this situation, and therefore certain relatively exquisite capabilities are needed.

In Iran, while Iran has demonstrated its ability to severely tax the much more exquisite forces of the US+Israel and the Gulf States, the reality is that they have NOT been able to meaningfully degrade the US or Israel's ability to bomb Iranian ground targets at will.

European militaries would also like to be able to prevent the VKS from just... bombing central to eastern Europe at will.

European war aims - which would be to able to defeat Russian forces so soundly and quickly that Russia will forever be deterred, requires exquisite capabilities, that are able to strike the Russian war machine from the front line, all the way back several hundred kilometers in high precision, and high density (in time and in weight of payload), in a way that can actually cause collapse (when combined with ground counter attacks). It cannot rely on a Ukrainian style war or Ukrainian style tactics purely because... well, Russia is infact actually fighting that war right now, and hasn't given up yet.

A Europe that has to fight at all, is a Europe that has already lost. A Europe that has to fight for more than a few weeks or months, is a Europe that has deeply lost.

Roughly everyone expects the 6th generation fighters (the ones currently in development like F-47) to be the last manned generation. Most observers expect many/most 6th gen fighters to become optionally manned within their life span.

The real question is basically - is full autonomy both technically possible and culturally/politically acceptable within 5, 10, or 20 years? Because full autonomy isn't really ready now (or else we wouldn't need hundreds to thousands of drone operators in the Ukraine war). And at least the USAF doesn't think remote control will let them do what they need (which is to fly from Japan to Korea or Taiwan, or Philippines to Taiwan, and contest/control the skies in the face of a basically peer adversary).

Because no one knows that answer, everyone (governments, militaries, manufacturers) is hedging, and CCA is part of that hedge.

I think the USA has ~3ish airframes/systems that are roughly in this category:

* The Kratos Valkyrie with the USMC in a SEAD role

* Anduril (YFQ-44) and General Atomics (YFQ-42) are battling it out for the USAF's CCA Increment 1 contract (we're apparently supposed to get a decision on that this year) - with Increment 2 probably getting spun up pretty soon

* USN has the Boeing MQ-25 as an drone tanker... once that gets up the speed, I'm fairly certain it's going to morph into something strike capable

Elsewhere, Boeing Australia's Ghost Bat seems to be doing well as well.

It's completely different. Shaheds are low cost one way attack drones. They're basically just very cost efficient cruise missiles with fresh marketing (and to be fair, the cost efficiency is a true categorical difference).

These drones are "helpers" for fighter jets. It's a type of role that is still in development (no one has an operational collaborative combat aircraft as far as I understand), both technically and in concept.

But the basic idea is that you'll have drones that can somewhat keep up with your fighter jets and help it do stuff that might be too risky. Maybe fly ahead, or be the one with the active emissions or sensors or whatever. Or maybe it's just a way to increase the amount of ordnance/sensors you can fly per sortie / generate from a given amount of training/flight hours in a year.

There are multiple interesting developments wrapped together here.

First, these are intended to be "loyal wingman". They'll be commanded (but not really remotely controlled) from manned fighters nearbyish. Presumably, the "shoot authorization" will be delegated down to the pilots.

Secondly, the actual unmanned platform (the Kratos Valkyrie) is also part of a program of record for the USMC (US Marine Corps) to act as a partner SEAD (suppression of air defence) vehicle.

Thirdly, the "MARS" system chattered about looks to be Airbus' open architecture /system of systems pitch that they were developing for FCAS (the European 6th generation fighter program). MARS and all pitches like it are about ways to make individual platforms as software defined as possible, and to get different platforms/instances to really data/function share as much as possible.

If this program goes well, it shows that Airbus' MARS has the flexibility and capability required to just... layer into/ontop of some random other vendor's hardware/software and then "just work". I think it would be major demonstration/validation of the work.

The article argues that space and AI dominance meaningfully threatens China's second strike (mobile land based ICBMs) survivability, which would bias China to act more proactively (ie, more hair trigger) in escalation scenarios.

Chinese and Russian developments (HGVs, FOBs, the Russian "superweapons" like Poseidon) are all destabilizing to an extent. But as long as none them challenge/hold at risk the US second strike capability (a robust C2 network and the SSBN fleet), they won't be massively destabilizing.

For what it's worth, HGVs that could strike the US from China still need to be launched off what are effectively ICBM class rockets. The launch signatures would almost certainly be detected.

And finally, let's not even get started with what Golden Dome would do to strategic stability.

There's simply no need to go pointing fingers right now. The reality is that all sides are taking various self-interested actions that in the absence of communication or coordination will lead towards less stable environments. No side has the ability to compel the others to not take these actions, and so the best we can do is try to anticipate the new operating environments and be ready for them as best we can.

I believe it's exactly that thinking that CSIS was trying to check when they chose to translate and publish this specific article. They are trying to get analysts and policy makers to think through, and make an active decision on if they believe that China will treat military/militarized mega constellations as destabilizing in a nuclear/strategic sense.

It's fair to decide that that is not major factor, but it should be an informed decision. It requires looking at the nuclear risk issues that the piece raises, and finding reasons to dismiss them.

CSIS is republishing work from PLA affiliated writers from PLA affiliated think tanks, published an a PLA affiliated journal because it does in fact capture aspects of internal PLA thinking. This article is from 2023, it's not written in the context of the current administrations policies and rhteroic. While we can always be certain that there are aspects of external facing PR/propaganda, we also should consider "how does China view the militarization of Starlink and Space".

And to that end, we can clearly see that the PLA sees Space Dominance as being strategically destabilizing. They see threats to their ability to disperse and hide their nuclear launch systems.

In fact, from a 2026 lens, the best way to read this paper would be "the PLA has mapped out its vulnerabilities, and all of its risk control and escalation options (basically its suggestions in the conclusions) are basically off the table. Therefore, it's very obvious that the PLA will attempt to compensate through simultaneously achieving its own space based capability similar to Starlink, develop additional ways to hold US strategic assets (read nuclear strike platforms) at risk, and find asymmetric means of deterrence".

EDIT: Just made a connection in my head - there's been a lot of news about Chinese nuclear arsenal increases in recent years, with a uptick starting around 2023, and the DoD estimating a rough tripling from 2025-2035. I suspect these developments might be connected.

EDIT2: I think to summarize what I think would be important take away from reading this paper is that while the most immediate examples of militarized Starlink use are all very tactical level (thinking about drones in Ukraine), this piece clearly signals that the PLA also believes that Starlink militarization poses treats at the strategic (read nuclear) level. And therefore, if we think purely in terms of tactical/operational capabilities, we may be caught off guard by certain reactions by the PLA/China.

Ya, I guess one other thing to China's advantage is that they don't need true global reach. They can prioritize coverage over their relevant latitudes (roughly the same as contiguous USA). From what I understand from Starlink distributions, roughly ~60% of the overall Starlink constellation is required for that latitude range.

I'd broadly agree that EU is pretty behind the curve. But I think China is probably only ~5 years max behind the curve in terms of Starlink.

But in terms of defense needs, I don't think you actually need the thousands and thousands for reasonable returns. DoD/NRO has bought maybe ~500 Starshields (https://www.fool.com/investing/2024/03/26/spacex-starshield-...) from SpaceX.

I think China is well within reach of being able to put up those numbers within a few years, even if they don't get re-use figured out (which I think they will within a 2-3 years - basically what SpaceX did from the first landing attempts to success).

I imagine UH-60 and variants will continue to serve (who knows, maybe with new airframes) along side the MV-75 for quite a while, in a similar way to how UH-1s continued to be in use well after UH-60s were deployed in large numbers. This Congressional Research Service summary of the FLRAA/MV-75 program states that the Army has plans to continue ordering UH-60s (on the order of 255 between 2027 and 2031) - https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12771

The key requirements that drive MV-75's downsides (size, complexity, cost) is the Army wants to play game in the Pacific. The UH-60 is deeply limited there.

For example, the MV-75's range should let it go (one-way) from Guam to the Philippines, straight from Okinawa to Taiwan (no need to island hop) - potentially as a two way mission. Same as Philippines to Taiwan.

The "comparability" is that the MV-75 and UH-60 can be delivery ~14 troops into an order magnitude similar size clearing.

Cancelling Anthropic's contract, and maybe even restricting Anthropic's use as a component to DoD certain contract work might be reasonable.

However, Anthropic's lawsuits are broader than that - partly because the government's actions were broader than that.

* Trump did post a "truth" ordering all Federal agencies to stop using Claude. Anthropic claims that many federal agencies did stop using Claude, and is suing saying that the order is not lawful.

* Hegseth then posted saying that no DoD contractor can work with Anthropic or use Claude at all. This is much broader order than the actual delivered letter which is much narrower - contractors can use Claude, but you can't use Claude as part of your solutions that you deliver to DoD. Anthropic is claiming damages from the difference between the first announcement, and the actual delivered scope, and is also claiming that the actual order did not follow procedures.

* Finally, Anthropic is claiming that the pattern of behaviour by the administration demonstrate that the administration is not simply trying to protect against supply chain risk, but is actively trying to harm Anthropic out of spite.

Frankly, you just have to read Trump's or Hegseth's posts to just get the vibes that this isn't just a technocratic calculation.

For what it's worth, it seems like the actual law that would be involved (so the deliberate legislative choice) does not allow Hegseth to do what he says he wants to do: https://www.justsecurity.org/132851/anthropic-supply-chain-r...

So it's not just that there's be a transfer of power to the executive (there is), there's also straight up executive overreach.