[beloch]

"There are other similarities between Ukraine and Iran. Both are wars instigated by the leaders of great powers in the apparent belief of easy victory. Both have developed in ways those leaders did not anticipate into something like a stalemate—stalemates in which, for Russia and America alike, a lack of victory looks increasingly like defeat. Are technological changes making the role of the defender easier? Or systematically encouraging big powers to start wars they cannot win? Or is this merely a case of business as usual—great powers blundering into ill-advised wars that reflect the prevailing technologies of the day?"

------------------

Putin was advised that Russian disinfo had worked and Ukrainians would welcome Russian troops as liberators while Zelensky's government would fold immediately. His generals feared to offer a less rosy assessment because doing so would have been immediately fatal. Trump was advised that invading Iran was a very bad idea[1]. Putin's brutality led to him being misinformed, but Trump ignored good information and made a bad decision.

New technology didn't cause either of these bad decisions. It was old-fashioned arrogance, thuggishness, and stupidity.

As for drone warfare... A real X factor is going to be production capacity.

Ukraine has managed to capture manned Russian positions with only drones. Drone tech evolves so quickly that one side's technological edge can be blunted or even reversed in just a few weeks or months. Stockpiles are not to be relied upon. Being able to out-evolve the enemy is critical, but being able to turn lessons learned into new hardware immediately will likely be a deciding factor in future conflicts.

[1]https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0zrwzr519o

[notaigenerated]

Learning from the failures and being able to turn lessons into hardware/weapons modifications has *always* been a deciding factor in any conflict.

What's changed is this ability is now easily accessible.

[nkrisc]

It will be interesting (and scary) to see weapons technology developed in near real time for the conflict that is actually happening, as opposed to the one you thought would happen 15 years ago.

[nfkhd67]

The universe already created microbes. Check out how fast they can evolve.

The chimp troupe is full of itself. Its intelligence and "innovations" are highly overated. Covid brought the whole world to its knees. No intelligence or drones required.

As Lynn Margulis famously said - we are not the main show.

[nkrisc]

Interesting but I fail to see how that’s relevant to a discussion about man made weapons.

[risyachka]

> Both are wars instigated by the leaders of great powers

having nukes and a lot of empty land does not make russia "great power", and their war results match this.

[notaigenerated]

By your definition, there are no great military powers in the world right now.

[jmye]

Is that not sort of the obvious conclusion, right now? Military power is in flux, and not what it was even ten years ago?

It sure feels like “soft power” is “real” power - at least until (if) someone sorts out a defensive strategy. Bluster and bullshit appear to get very limited results, no matter how many missiles are behind them.

[like_any_other]

Trump attacked Iran because Israel was going to attack Iran: Rubio says US struck Iran fearing it would retaliate for Israeli attack - https://abcnews.com/Politics/rubio-us-struck-iran-fearing-re...

Part of a long trend: Israeli Operatives Who Aided Harvey Weinstein Collected Information on Former Obama Administration Officials to undermine the Iran Nuclear Deal - https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/israeli-operatives-...

To help make the case on Iran, Graham traveled several times to Israel in recent weeks, meeting with members of the country’s intelligence agency. “They’ll tell me things our own government won’t tell me,” he said. He spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, coaching him on how to lobby the president for action. - https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/lindsey-graham-trump-ira... (https://archive.is/G1Dt0)

Netanyahu started this war by attacking Iran. He assassinated Ali Shamkhani, Iran’s lead nuclear negotiator, deliberately sabotaging US-Iran nuclear negotiations. - https://x.com/BernieSanders/status/1934659864610918435 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Shamkhani#Assassination_at...)

[orwin]

> Trump attacked Iran because Israel was going to attack Iran

When Israel attacked Iran in 2025, Iran was very, very clear that they did not consider it an attack from the US and did not retaliate against US assets. The US choose to support israel with intel and weapons, and Iran still didn't strike at US interests. Then the US joined forces with israel to push for bigger concessions from Iran just before the ceasefire (that the US broke 8 month later, once again during peace talks).

So do not act as if Israel pushed the US into this war. This was a political and strategical choice the US made, and you should own it. People who were silent on the 2025 bombardment and are now saying "we shouldn't fight Israel war" are to me hypocrites.

[like_any_other]

Oh I'm not saying Israel's decision to attack Iran forced the US to join in on strategic or self-defense grounds. I'm saying it forced them because the US does whatever Israel tells them. That is why both US lead negotiators with Iran are Jewish [1], why US congressmen have Israeli flags outside their offices [2], why Nancy Pelosi said the #1 priority in the Capitol is Israel [3], why Netanyahu gets 3 straight minutes of applause when he starts his speech in Congress (and lots of applause interruptions later) [4].

Because when 50% of donations to the Democratic party, and 25% of donations to the Republican party, are from Jewish sources [5], it can't be any other way.

[1] In practice, critical negotiations, with Iran and elsewhere, have been put in the hands of two people, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, with close personal relationships with the president and obvious economic stakes in the relevant conflicts. - https://snyder.substack.com/p/on-superpower-suicide

[2] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2qjLaSyAWj8

[3] if this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain would be our commitment to our aid, I don’t even call it our aid, our cooperation with Israel. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1LmnQRnw8I

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6XZKE7a_F4

[5] https://www.jpost.com/us-elections/us-jews-contribute-half-o...

[orwin]

Yes of course, the party in power in the US have to get the evangelicals in their pocket, and the best way to do it is to back up Zionism (as they believe that Jesus will come back once Jews will be in control of Israel). Still, this is entirely self-inflicted.

[jmye]

Conflating “Jewish” with “loves and supports Netanyahu” is a bald-faced antisemitic trope.

Pretending Kushner’s bullshit has anything to do with being a Jew and not being willing to sell anyone or anything for a dollar is just silly.

The pro-Israel group is just as likely, maybe moreso given the current administration and the people like Thiel running it, to be apocalyptic Christians, trying to bring on their own idiotic vision of the end times.

[like_any_other]

> Conflating “Jewish” with “loves and supports Netanyahu” is a bald-faced antisemitic trope.

I guess "Jewish has nothing to do with support for the Jewish state" would have sounded too silly, so you used Netanyahu instead. Luckily we have opinion polls to prove the "trope" true: https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/646214/suppo...

The group with the most sympathy for Israel, and least for Palestine, is, unsurprisingly, Jewish.

[kergonath]

> I guess "Jewish has nothing to do with support for the Jewish state" would have sounded too silly

It is not silly and it is true. In the same way as many Muslims don’t want to live in a theocracy and many Christians are not fundamentalists. Being a Jew, a Sionist, supporting the principle of Israel, and supporting its current apartheid iteration are all very different things.

[lukan]

"Putin was advised that Russian disinfo had worked and Ukrainians would welcome Russian troops as liberators"

And where does your inside info from the Kremlin and Putin's head is coming from?

Putin was raised in the KGB, I think he knows a bit how to get intel. And with secret war style he was very successful in 2014 seizing the Krim and some areas.

It was likely just overconfidence in the ability of the russian army in a conventional war and underestimating the will of the ukrainians to hold their ground in the beginning of the war.

If that battle in the beginning would have turned out different, Kiew would likely have fallen and then the war would have been largely over in a few days

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

Not many believed, myself included, that Ukraine was strong enough to hold of the russian army - but they did. And now both sides use Drones heavily.

[jemmyw]

Sergei Beseda chief of the FSB "fifth service" was arrested after the start of the war. https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/06/20/no-infighting-here is a story I found around it. I guess we can't be definite, but that journalist in Russia was citing sources saying that the service had essentially embezzled money and made up the data about their resources on the ground in Ukraine, and misrepresented polling data they had that Russia would be welcomed by the general population.

[lukan]

"Soldatov argued that decision makers in Moscow had approached the invasion as a police operation, not a military campaign, because they believed the Ukrainians would actually welcome Russian forces."

" a Moscow FSB agent once tried to convince him not to investigate the October 2002 Moscow theater hostage siege"

Ok, so the source is one russian journalist who was known at least since 2002 to the FSB as someone to keep away from inner sanctum information. It is something, but I doubt he got really access.

[mopsi]

Andrei Soldatov is not merely "one russian journalist". Since 2000, he has been operating agentura.ru, which publishes information about Russian security services. He is well-connected and widely considered one of the most serious independent experts on the Russian security apparatus.

[lukan]

But he is not in russia anymore since a while. I doubt his ability to get insights into the highest ranks of security let alone Putin's head himself.

[notaigenerated]

> And where does your inside info from the Kremlin and Putin's head is coming from?

It's coming from the fact that troops approaching Kyiv were supplied with 3 day rations and full dress uniforms, ready to hold a parade in Kyiv. It's also coming from US intelligence (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/russia...). And on top of that, russian propaganda literally repeated times and times again that this war will last for 3-4 days.

> Putin was raised in the KGB, I think he knows a bit how to get intel

Are you saying he planned for 5 years of war and russian economy being destroyed and also planned for over a million casualties for his army?

> underestimating the will of the ukrainians to hold their ground in the beginning of the war

There you go, you just said it yourself. That's the "insight".

[lukan]

I debated the claim that Putin believed he will be cheered on by majority of Ukrainians after conquering their army quickly.

I don't believe he had much illusions there, but he surely believed he will win in 3 days.

[sofixa]

Nope. Even if you don't trust the reporting and information coming out of Russia, it's pretty self-evident that Russia thought they won't have much of a war to fight. Half of the attack on Kyiv was done by Rosgvardia (riot police), with parade gear and musical instruments in their logistics.

You don't do that if you think you'll have a quick victory, you do that if you're certain there will barely be any war.

[Forgeties79]

> and Ukrainians would welcome Russian troops as liberators while Zelensky's government would fold immediately.

It is wild how many conflicts involve this blunder. I can’t think of a single major example where the advisors were right. It’s such a great example of believing your own propaganda and/or being too afraid to actually look under the hood of your claims to your leader.

Autocracy tends to breed lying yes men near the top I suppose.

[matusp]

There are many ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine that really welcomed the Russian army. The problem is that the rest of the country is not that happy about this.

[Forgeties79]

This has always been overblown and clearly that “many” was an insignificantly small portion of the population once the rubber met the road. Just because you have a favorable opinion of the Russian government doesn’t mean you’re going to suddenly start singing the anthem when their tanks cross the border as they bomb you/your friends (who according to Putin are all probably Nazis) out of nowhere.

So many left after all this so Ukraine’s sympathetic-to-Russia population will no longer be significant by any metric. Putin knows this. He’s lost Ukraine forever if he doesn’t make them surrender.

[emerongi]

I have it on good authority that Putin woke up, took a big fart (the housemaid was surprised), thought the smell was an Ukrainian attack and decided to retaliate. That's how the war started.

Your claims about Putin are just as good as mine.