The US has no good options in Iran, and an AI kill switch won't stop the models
Iran's terrain makes any ground war a non-starter, and the war of attrition at Hormuz is burning through the US military's global deployment margin; the real problem in AI regulation isn't giving DHS a kill switch, it's that nobody wants to control compute, the raw material.
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A supply ship getting a presidential citation means the fleet is already at its limit
Two carrier strike groups have been in the Arabian Sea for a long stretch, unable to pull into ports like Bahrain to reconstitute, so the Navy has to bring oilers in from Europe, Crete or the Pacific, transfer fuel at sea in the Arabian Sea to replenishment oilers, and those oilers then distribute it to the ships and the carrier air wings. This "daisy chain" has to stretch thousands of miles. The crew and military detachment of one supply ship received a Presidential Unit Citation for nearly a year of 24-7 support, which is itself a signal that the fleet has been pushed to its limit. A normal surface ship deployment is about seven months; many are now at eleven months, close to a year.
— BrianPulling ships forward early means burning through future readiness reserves
The normal cycle for a surface ship is three years: a seven-month deployment, then maintenance, training, local operations and workups, then another deployment roughly two to two and a half years after maintenance ends. Now the Navy has to pull ships out of that normal cycle early to replace ships that have already been out for nearly a year. The problem is that interrupting training and maintenance cycles early means ships break down once they get to sea and very likely have to come home early. The end result is that reserve capacity gets burned off and ships are forced out of deployment because they're broken. The McCain and Fitzgerald collisions in the late 2010s were the consequence of overuse and insufficient maintenance.
— BrianIran's terrain leaves almost no entry point for a ground war
Inside the Pentagon there is discussion, pushed by Marines and military commanders, about seizing islands including Karg Island and starting to take ground. But Iran is hard to attack from every direction: the southwest is the marshland where the Marsh Arabs live, which made it hard for Saddam's mechanized forces to pass; the north is the Alborz mountains, high and difficult; the east is the Baluch desert, basically salt flats. Every province has IRGC, Quds Force and Basij recruiting stations, so any attack will bring local militias up. And the US no longer has a Navy or Coast Guard presence in the Persian Gulf, many bases will not be rebuilt, and ground forces would essentially be operating in isolation.
— JustinFuel can be transferred at sea, food cannot
The Navy has designed a tanker-to-oiler-to-ship transfer model for fuel, but there is no similar scheme for food. Cargo ships carrying food have to come from very far away, the military still requires food to come from the US, there is almost no opportunity to buy locally, and supply officers can't go ashore to buy food the way they used to. Feeding two carrier strike groups is a huge undertaking in itself. If they're out for a year, the good food runs out first and only frozen food is left, and there are no MREs on board. They have to redesign a model for how to feed at sea in an environment where the supply line is contested.
— BrianGlobal basing isn't an empire, it's the logistics skeleton
The point of the global force posture is to serve as the skeleton of logistics hubs and logistics models that let forces flow into a region to protect critical national interests. The US has already been shrinking that skeleton in Europe and the Middle East, and now it is under attack, which means losing the skeleton for doing the next big thing in the region. The problem with this administration is that it first pursued a "denial" strategy, doing more in this hemisphere and less elsewhere, stripping away the capabilities needed to sustain combat power, and then used combat power in various places anyway. A father in the military once said that behind every infantryman there are twenty support personnel responsible for paying, clothing, feeding and maintaining equipment, and those are exactly the things being removed from Europe and the Middle East.
— JustinIf you can reverse course on Saudi Arabia at any moment, why would Iran negotiate
The US announced it would allow Saudi Arabia to develop nuclear energy, and the two sides signed documents, but then the White House press secretary said the president was changing it, and what he posts on Truth Social is government policy. In other words, an agreement with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia can be changed on a whim, without consulting the Saudis. Iran sees this: if even an ally's agreement can be reversed in an instant, what do the people inside Iran who want to negotiate use to persuade the hardliners who don't want to deal with the US? This directly weakens the incentive to negotiate. At the same time, the Houthi blockade of Bab al-Mandeb cuts off Saudi Arabia's alternative route for exporting oil via the Red Sea, and the pressure will feed through to oil markets and push the price per barrel higher.
— JustinIf you're going to strike, make it a pre-Iraq-war-style air campaign, otherwise don't
The optimistic scenario is: this time hit the right targets, and stop hitting the kind of random strike plans "written by the world's worst staff officers who were bored in the desert." To really apply pressure, you have to keep hitting every target that lets Iran control or disrupt the strait, like the air campaign before the invasion of Iraq, which requires taking on a lot of risk and a huge amount of capability, and you can't stop. The problem is the US military has consistently been unwilling to do this, because precision weapons are limited in number, hitting Shahed launchers along the coastline means the terrain is too rugged, you have to use laser-guided bombs, aircraft have to get close to the target, and you need SEAD and F-22 escorts, which significantly increases exposure. At the same time you have to escort commercial shipping, because there will always be leakers.
— JustinFrom high-value targets to high-payoff targets, it still comes down to people
Turning a high-value target list into a high-payoff target list is staff work, and it requires people to sit down and do "work that doesn't fudge it," judging whether a target is actually important to the enemy. This step still depends on human decision-making; it is not something Palantir or similar companies can replace. Right now the US military isn't doing this, it's just striking what's already on the list. The other thing that has to be done is escorting: to take away Iran's leverage, you have to keep hitting the targets along the coastline that threaten shipping, while sending ships to defend at sea against the missiles and drones that get through. This is a massive exercise in trust, and many companies currently don't believe the US can do it, so it has to be proven through action.
— JustinIn their own words · checked verbatim
I think the tell is that that resupply ship got a presidential unit citation, right, Brian? Right. Yes. Yeah, so you've got a puck going to a support ship crew and its military detachment for being out there for like almost a year essentially supporting these guys 24-7.
Brian3:14
So you eventually start burning through your your reserve capacity and you end up with ships just having to leave leave deployment because they're broke.
Brian6:16
I mean, all of Iran is tough terrain, right? Like it's either islands that are relatively barren with the exception of oil infrastructure that are within range of the mainland or its sheer cliffs or its – the Alborz mountain range that is domineering.
Justin11:26
Realistically, the global force posture existed to be a skeleton for a logistics hub or logistics model that would allow a flow of forces into regions to protect. You know, vital national interest.
Justin18:39
if you're openly saying that even with your allies, you're willing just to agree to something and then instantly change it and do other things like what is their incentive to actually go and take on the hardliners within their government who are who do not want to make a deal with the United States.
Justin23:55
I don't care what Palantir says or any of these other companies like the work of going from identifying a target to actually understanding if this thing is important to the enemy or not is where the human is still reliant.
Justin31:32
first of all, any model that needs to be stopped with government authority probably can't be stopped.
Tony40:56
Unless you do like we do with nuclear weapons and you regulate the raw material that you use to create these capabilities. So you'd have to control compute and you'd have to, you know, control, uh, but we're unwilling to do that.
Jordan52:48
Figures
| Lincoln carrier deployment length | about 10 months | 4:14 |
| Normal Navy surface ship deployment cycle | about 7 months | 5:16 |
| Full surface ship deployment cycle | about 3 years | 6:16 |
| House war powers resolution margin | 4 votes | 20:42 |
| Supplemental budget request for Iran | down to $30 billion | 21:43 |
| Envisioned nuclear-powered cargo ship speed | 30 knots | 33:36 |
| Increase in new business registrations | about 5% to 10% | 54:49 |
Glossary
- IRGC / Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
- Iran's elite military force, deeply embedded in the economy and the population, described as a gang that collects protection money.
- Marsh Arabs
- An Arab ethnic group living in the marshlands of southwestern Iran and southeastern Iraq, terrain that once hindered Saddam's mechanized forces.
- Bab al-Mandeb
- The strait at the southern end of the Red Sea, whose blockade was announced by the Houthis, cutting off Saudi Arabia's alternative route for exporting oil via the Red Sea.
- CISA / Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
- An agency under the US Department of Homeland Security that an AI kill switch bill could hand authority to, but it currently has no confirmed director.
- SMR / small modular reactor
- Small nuclear reactors, being discussed again for nuclear-powered cargo ships because of strait risk.
How to listen
Founders, investors and engineers tracking Middle East military logistics, US force readiness and the direction of AI regulatory policy, especially anyone who wants to understand how the war of attrition at Hormuz burns through the US military's global deployment margin.
After 38:50, the discussion of daylight saving time and the AI kill switch is lower density and can be skipped.