[high_na_euv]

Brightest minds of US were too focused on displaying ads and making teenagers addicted to tik tokies-like stuff instead of working security, defense, etc

You couldve seen anti militsry industry sentiment on HN for years, which apparently worked for US adversaries, who knows who was behind that propaganda :)

Inb4: im from eu

[YeGoblynQueenne]

The US no longer uses its army for defense. Nobody in their immediate region dares attack them, they're too powerful ("Godzilla", in the words of John Mearsheimer). All the wars that the US has fought since WWII are nothing to do with defense. Just look at the Wikipedia article on "power projection":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_projection

The leader image is ... a US aircraft carrier (the USS Nimitz). That's what the US uses its military power for, to influence events in lands far, far away from its territory.

But, now, tell me which one of the many wars that the US has fought in after WWII did not end in disaster. Afghanistan? Iraq? Korea?

There was a meme doing the rounds the other day: "Name a character who can defeat Captain America". The answer being "Captain Vietnam". The US has faced humiliating defeat after humiliating defeat while bringing death and destruction and immeasurable misery to millions around the world.

That is what HN users seem to have an "anti" sentiment for. If you watch the news you'll be able to tell that this goes far beyond HN. The whole of US society seems to be extremely tired with those "forever wars", those senseless excursions to faraway lands, that not only do not secure US interests but turn world opinion more and more against the US. Even the US' closest allies now fear the US: vide Greenland. Anyone with more than a video game or comic book understanding of how the real world works would do well to be concerned.

Edit: also from EU, btw. Greek but living in the UK.

[chneu]

>The whole of US society seems to be extremely tired with those "forever wars",

This is the main thing I would disagree with, as an American who rubs elbows with conservatives quite a bit.

A large amount of Republican and conservative Americans want war. They're primed for a war they haven't had this generation. There are a lot of relatively young conservatives who are eager for war. A weird number of Republicans don't think we lost Iraq or Afghanistan, or a few other wars, so they aren't tired of it yet.

Like 15-25% of Americans also believe in some form of the end times prophecy involving Israel. I'm not kidding about this. The number really is that high. A lot might not openly state that they believe in it, but they were raised under a religious teaching that says it will happen. Hegseth, literally, has a crusades tattoo and openly talks about eradicating Muslims on his weekly or monthly sermon.

But yes a majority of americans, like 60%, are extremely tired of ongoing wars. But I can also drive to towns in the western US where trump still has majority support and they will openly say they support the Iran war. America is really polarized and a lot of conservatives only talk about this stuff to family now.

I grew up super rural and have to deal/work with very religious conservative Americans often enough. There are a lot more of them than people think. They've just learned to self-segregate and keep to themselves and say things a certain way.

[dinkumthinkum]

Yeah, I’m sure you are giving a very charitable interpretation of those conservatives. As far as you talking about a percentage of Americans “believing in some kind of end times,” do you have that same derision for Arabs that the Quran is true? I imagine not. There is a much a higher percentage there. It’s so ironic the condescension leftists have for Christians but not for more Muslims.

[sfRattan]

As an American, I think a better metric for outcomes of Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq is: were we trading with the before the war and are we trading with them one generation after the war? The same is even true of WWII, a more important marker afterward is that we spent the rest of the 20th century trading prosperously with Japan and Germany.

Korea: the south became an economic powerhouse with whom we now trade for critical computer components and is a generally reliable ally in the region.

Vietnam: we now trade with them happily and enjoy generally productive relations, largely because they fought us for less than two decades but fought China for centuries and centuries.

Iraq: we aren't yet a generation past, but the government they have now is better than what they had under Saddam Hussein, even if it was almost immediately subverted by Iran. And jury is out on Iran because that hot war just started.

Afghanistan: we aren't yet a generation past, but very likely the most clear failure in this list. I remember thinking in high school (during the active phase of the war): "if we actually want to make a difference, we'd have to stay a century or more, and we don't have the will to do that the way the British or Russians tried to, and even they ultimately failed to make any local changes."

Europeans also need to realize that everyday Americans don't actually care about Europe very much and never truly have. It took the Lusitania to get us into World War I, Pearl Harbor (and Hitler's declaration of war) to get us into World War II, and the credible threat of the Soviet Union to keep us in Europe for decades after the war. The husk of Russia at the center of the Soviet skeleton isn't a credible threat to America, and the American reversion to the mean of isolationism began as the Cold War ended. That reversion completed sometime between 2010 and 2015. There is a new credible threat, but that is China, and even to well informed Americans Europe is slipping from their attention.

Most people in Trump's government probably don't care that much about reopening Hormuz quickly. Gas prices are only truly spiking in U.S. states where local environmental regulations have obstructed access to domestic and regional supply, and the largest of those states (i.e. California, New York) have broken against Republicans in every Presidential election (9 of them in a row) since the end of the Cold War.

[tdeck]

> As an American, I think a better metric for outcomes of Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq is: were we trading with the before the war and are we trading with them one generation after the war?

At least you're honest. Personally I can't believe someone would think it's OK to invade someone else's county and massacre civilians on the scale of Vietnam or Korea in order to establish profitable trading relations.

[Revanche1367]

It’s easy when you worship money and consider people of other races or cultures as less than human. Not that I am advocating for this view of course but a lot of Americans do even if they won’t admit it.

[dinkumthinkum]

And what do people from Arab countries think of non-Muslims? This passe anti-Americanism on here is so boring.

[Revanche1367]

What do jewish supremacists think of non-jews? See? I can play the whataboutism game too. Anti-Americanism might just be because of the repeated wars of aggression that harms the rest of the world.

[sfRattan]

> Personally I can't believe someone would think it's OK to invade someone else's county and massacre civilians on the scale of Vietnam or Korea in order to establish profitable trading relations.

Strange. I don't remember writing that trading relations afterward justify the initiation of a war. Instead, I only remember writing that it is a better metric to assess the outcomes.

It's stranger still that you read these things between the lines, when my comment specifically includes a recollection of my own disquiet with the Afghanistan War, probably the most justified war of the four enumerated, that I felt while the war was happening.

[MyHonestOpinon]

Interesting idea. You are missing Cuba from that list. There was not a war but we haven't reestablished commerce with them.

[sfRattan]

American reaction to the Cuban Revolution was deeply incompetent. The Bay of Pigs is up there with the Iran Hostage Crisis and the withdrawal from Afghanistan (and specifically from Bagram) in the list of stunning foreign policy blunders of the last hundred years.

We still don't trade with Cuba, and that is a clear sign of ongoing foreign policy failure. But who knows, in a year's time we may be trading with Cuba again. We're trading with Venezuela now.

[pjc50]

> Vietnam: we now trade with them happily and enjoy generally productive relations

Yes, but .. what was the actual objective again?

[sfRattan]

Nominally, stopping the spread of communism in Asia. Actually, stopping the spread of Chinese and Russian influence in Asia.

Our politicians did then and do now frequently miss the trees for the forest when assessing foreign crises (and I'm inverting that saying deliberately). Ho Chi Min was a nationalist first and a communist second, but all our leaders could see was a monolithic, global communist bloc. In fairness to them, hindsight is 20/20 and the Sino-Soviet split wasn't obvious to outsiders until the late 60s or early 70s.

[cbolton]

Consider the cost on local civilians of the Vietnam and Iraq wars (the GWB war likely killed more Iraqi civilians that Hussein did in 24 years). And the literal trillions of dollar these wars costed. And the real possibility that regime change could have occurred anyway by less horrific means. Are you getting at a tiny silver lining or do you actually think these wars were remotely a good idea?

[sfRattan]

> Are you getting at a tiny silver lining or do you actually think these wars were remotely a good idea?

I'm getting at outcomes, whether or not a war is a good idea in the first place. War is never a good choice, IMO, but can sometimes be a necessary choice or an inevitability.

It's perfectly reasonable to point out that a war initiated for the wrong reasons had good (or some good) outcomes, or that a war initiated for the right reasons had bad (or some bad) outcomes. And that all war is ultimately terrible.

Our own Civil War was initiated for the right reasons and yet it became the bloodiest war in our history. More Americans died during our Civil War than during all our other wars put together, and Britain was able to end slavery across their whole empire without any war at all, though at great national expense (continuing payments until 2015 or so) and with some bloodshed on the seas.

[leoc]

To be fair, it was bright Chinese minds at ByteDance which worked on getting US teenagers addicted to TikTok videos.

[high_na_euv]

Meta, Google did their parts too

[yomismoaqui]

I prefer having those minds focused on optimizing ad serving than on optimizing school bombings.

[polotics]

That tragedy of the Maven targeting system is very much something that could have been optimized away, so no! Ad-servers optimizing minds could have been better employed on that project. (nothing to do with Java's Maven, look it up) Someone told me: "Think! Who were these girls' parents..." and that's BS it was really a big senseless mistake, now we're clearly in Vendettastan

[high_na_euv]

I meant intercepting missiles, drones, etc

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

Having those minds eliminate targeting mistakes wouldn't make a difference?

[paxys]

Sure, "mistakes"

[bluegatty]

This has definitely nothing to do with the subject at hand.

US Forces and Defence Complex have most of the talent they need.

Even with prevailing capabilities in many areas, it's not possible to do most things. Armies are not 'magic' - we're lulled into a false sense of understanding of capabilities by focusing to much on 'special forces' and other kinds of operations.

[nitwit005]

If you have an innovative idea, it's fairly easy to sell to the public, and extremely difficult to sell to the Pentagon.

People are just making the obvious choice most of the time. Why risk your business success unnecessarily?

[platinumrad]

> You couldve seen anti militsry industry sentiment on HN for years, which apparently worked for US adversaries, who knows who was behind that propaganda

Me.

[b345]

What makes you think what the US, most probably at the behest of occupiers of Palestine, is going to do wonders for sentiment of the general public towards the US military industry? The anti-military sentiment is justified and will probably grow as more people wake up to the terrorising and dual faced nature of the US.

[cyanydeez]

The brightest minds were systematically bullied out of position, called DEI hires or accused of random crimes.

They might not have been the best, but lets not pretend we're sending our brightest minds herw.

[throwawaypath]

The brightest minds were systematically bullied out of position, called racists/transphobes or accused of random crimes.

[panick21_]

What are you talking about? Better missiles dont stop Iran from closing a tiny waterway in their border.

US weapons are pretty damn good for the most part. But trade protection is just not something fancy advanced weapons can solve.

Military planners have known this for a long time.

If anything, if you were serious you would say that the US didnt pay enough tradesmen and technician to build enough of the needed weapons.

[flohofwoe]

Would those "brightest minds" want to work for the current US government? Even if they did out of patriotism to the country, the Trump administration would have pushed them out by now and replaced with yes-men.

[0x3f]

The pay levels seem more of an inherent problem than the political winds.

[giantg2]

The people I know leaving that sector have been steadily leaving for years due to the day to day bullshit/internal politics and poor leadership that they have to put up with, not the pay nor current administration.

[0x3f]

Right but if you're a lifelong gov worker you are probably used to the pay, and it's hard to switch from gov work to startups or big tech (at least, I would see it as a thing to question). Whereas the GGP talks about people switching from the private sector (adtech, etc.) to public.

The first thing they are going to see is the salary and run a mile. That's partly why Palantir 'works'; they pay tech salaries and have a tech culture, but do gov work. Booz Allen et al were less advanced prototypes of that as well.

[giantg2]

I know people who have switched to gov work despite the pay. Then they left due to the bullshit, without anything lined up.

[TiredOfLife]

They also didn't work under Biden and Obama.

[cicko]

> im from eu

Yeah, the ultimate place of military preparedness.

[raincole]

It's not "look I'm doing better than you," it's "please don't repeat our mistakes."