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 winning a presidential award means the fleet is already at its limit
Two carrier strike groups have been in the Arabian Sea for a long time and cannot enter ports like Bahrain to replenish, so the Navy can only send oilers from Europe, Crete or the Pacific to transfer fuel at sea to replenishment oilers in the Arabian Sea, which then distribute it to ships and 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 burns 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 about two to two and a half years after maintenance ends. Now the Navy has to pull ships out of the normal cycle early to replace ships that have 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 return to port early. The end result is that reserve capacity gets burned up and ships are forced off deployment because they are 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 are discussions, 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 marshes where the Marsh Arabs live, which made Saddam's mechanized forces hard to move through; 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 recruitment 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 be operating essentially in isolation.
— JustinFuel can be transferred at sea, food cannot
The Navy 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 no longer go ashore to buy food the way they used to. Feeding two carrier strike groups is itself a huge undertaking. If they are 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 bases are not an empire, they are 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 what has been removed from Europe and the Middle East.
— JustinIf it can reverse itself on Saudi Arabia at any moment, why should 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 do not want to do deals 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 are going to strike, make it an air campaign like the one before the Iraq war, 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 cannot stop. The problem is that the US military has 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 suppression of enemy air defenses 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, requiring people to sit down and do "work that doesn't fudge," judging whether a target is really important to the enemy. This step still depends on human decision-making and cannot be replaced by Palantir or similar companies. The US military is not doing this now, it is just striking what is already on the list. Another thing that must be done is escorting: to take away Iran's leverage, you have to keep hitting targets along the coastline that threaten shipping, while sending ships to defend at sea against leakers, missiles and drones. This is a huge exercise in trust, and many companies currently do not 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
| USS Lincoln carrier deployment length | about 10 months | 4:14 |
| Normal deployment cycle for Navy surface ships | about 7 months | 5:16 |
| Full deployment cycle for surface ships | about 3 years | 6:16 |
| House vote margin on the war powers resolution | 4 votes | 20:42 |
| Supplemental budget request for Iran | reduced to $30 billion | 21:43 |
| Envisioned speed of nuclear-powered cargo ships | 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 the AI kill switch bill could hand authority to, but there is currently 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 regulation 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.