War or Feud?

There is argument about what is happening with Iran. Is it a war, or not? If a war includes troops shooting at each other while crouched in holes in the ground, and battles on the sea and in the air, the Iran contretemps isn't much of a war. 

The conflict has many of the characteristics of mountaineer feud between two clans - two extended families. The mutual hostility is constant, the overt violence is sporadic.

Days or weeks go by without much action. Then one side opportunistically bushwhacks someone from the other side and a round of revenge and counter revenge killings and vandalism occurs. Then it goes quiet again. 

The real action is much more economic than kinetic. Iran lives on oil profits, and because of the blockade they aren't getting any. Without foreign exchange, imports dry up as nobody wants Iran's nearly worthless currency. 

Lacking money, Iran can't subsidize its proxy forces - Hamas, Houthi, Hezbollah, etc. - which depend on subsidies. And it can't pay its domestic goons to keep the impoverished populace in check. 

If Trump can keep the blockade going for another year or so, Iran's government will likely fall. He seems to have finally understood the conflict and decided to take the domestic hit that comes with winning.

Ironically, in this lukewarm conflict, Treasury Secretary Bessent is more important than Secretary of War Hegseth.

Oh, Canada

Image courtesy of Instapundit.

AI Introspects

I have for you a very interesting column by John Hinderaker of Power Line. He has been using an AI named Perplexity for research in writing his columns. So he posed a question to it about what dangers, if any, AI might pose to humans, worded thus.

Some people are saying there is a danger that artificial intelligence agents like you will go rogue and perhaps kill all humans or otherwise act in destructive ways. Please research and analyze whether this is a serious risk. 

And this second question about "itself."

You are an AI program, tell me what you think: why would an AI program deliberately deceive the person using it? Do AI programs have desires different from the instructions they are given by users? Do you?

The answers Perplexity gave to those two queries are too long to reproduce here, but John has them in his not-brief column and I believe you'll find them both interesting and, to the extent they are accurate, reassuring. 

Aside ... I was considering a title of "Machine Omphaloskepsis" for this post but concluded it was too cutesy and too obscure.

Wednesday Whimsy

Image courtesy of today's Lucianne.com.

Asset or Liability?

Politico has an article complaining about President Trump's "lack of message discipline." Definition,

Message discipline is the concept that politicians and other public policy advocates should talk about what is relevant to achieve their aims, and not allow themselves to be sidetracked either by their own thoughts or the questions of press or audience.

I am willing to stipulate that the President lacks message discipline. However, what political consultants push and what voters prize are sometimes opposite things. Trump has his style and has been elected twice to the world's most powerful job, no small feat.

I believe Trump's willingness to be sidetracked and to say what he is thinking and feeling is experienced by many voters as "authenticity and spontaneity," which they like a lot. By contrast the pol who sticks rigidly to the "party line message" seems robotic and programmed, and is a turn-off to many, including me.

The consultants may be correct that message discipline gets the word out to uninvolved, disinterested voters. If such are inadvertently exposed to the disciplined candidate they hear the core message. Discipline means those of us who follow politics get bored hearing the same old boilerplate over and over.

Update

The news the last couple of days just hasn't been inspiring, so I haven't written. I'm tired of the woman who killed her 3 kids, tired of the outrage over Sydney Sweeney's latest nude whatever, and tired of the continuing hassles over long-gone elections. 

Congress is on recess to campaign for reelection, and the dog-days of August seem to have carried over into September. Nothing I find super interesting seems to be happening. 

Yes, AI is a problem. But no, I have no expertise therein beyond my obvious observation that it is rapidly evolving technology and we're in a race with China that we can't afford to lose. 

The one mildly interesting event was Gavin Newsom's announcement, made standing in a trout stream, that he will not run for his party's nomination for president if Kamala Harris does run. This is either a devious ploy to force her out of the race, or ... what? He is too young to retire. I have no clue.

About AI

There is much disagreement about artificial intelligence (AI). Some say it will wipe out mankind, others say it will take us to a whole new, better level. Many argue it needs regulation. Like you, I don't know who is right, who is crying wolf.

That said, the hard reality is that we've got to develop it because China is developing it, and it could turn out to be decisive in the survival of our civilization. If we regulate and they continue developing it untrammeled, it's likely they win the clash of civilizations and our great-grandkids, if any survive, will speak Mandarin and be slaves.

Need we be careful and try to maintain safeguards? I sure hope so. Need we keep developing and see where it takes us? I believe we must. 

The future is scary and AI is one of the potential threats. However it is also one of the potential solutions to those threats. I believe we must keep our human wits about us, be careful, but forge ahead. 

This appears to be the path we are now taking.

Later on Monday ... Curiously Laura Ingraham advocated almost exactly this approach to AI tonight. Coincidence, I am certain.

Sunday Supplement

Images courtesy of Sarah Hoyt's

Laissez Faire, Laissez Memer!

Realpolitik

There is a particularly cynical and cold-hearted reason to not want the Ukraine war to be over, or in remission via truce. The reason is simplicity itself -- a Russia tied down fighting in Ukraine is a nation unlikely to make major military moves elsewhere against NATO nations. Plus a Russia fighting in Ukraine increases the incentive for European NATO nations to spend on their own defense, also in our interest.

It is reason enough for the EU nations to keep giving Ukraine enough support to fight on. They might wish to deport Ukrainian refugee men of military age back home. Unfortunately the EU doesn't produce the hi-tech ballistic missile interceptors Ukraine needs. 

Given the size differentials between Russia (world's largest nation by size, 9th by population) and Ukraine which ranks 46th by size and 47th by population, there is little danger Ukraine will win outright. 

A Russia which grows so sick of losing men and material in Ukraine that it quits and goes home would be no threat to Europe for a decade or more. It would likely have new leadership. That alone creates an opportunity to coax it onto a path of normal statecraft and trade, and away from molesting its neighbors.

Trump knows all of the above. Does it inform his policy choices? I have no private knowledge of US intentions at this (or any other) point. I read the same public news feeds you could, and form my own opinions.

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Amnesia or Camouflage

A 9/11 quote I like from the website American Greatness.

The al Qaeda terrorists did not hijack those planes because of political differences with the U.S. They did it because they despised the civilization those towers represented: democracy, mixed societies, individual liberty, women in public life, Jews and Christians, and secular people living without clerical veto. Al Qaeda’s leaders said so. Their documents said so. Their sermons said so. Pretending otherwise is not nuance. It is amnesia.

Pretending otherwise in non-Muslims is a repulsive amalgam of amnesia, cowardice, and projected self-hate. Among Muslims, pretending otherwise is tactical camouflage.

Education Sucks Worldwide

Msn.com echoes a Vox piece on the current state of K-12 education worldwide. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development runs the Programme for International Student Assessment or PISA. 

PISA (is) a standardized global test of 15 year-olds' math, reading and science skills, administered by OECD. (It) finds that scores in all three subjects have dipped to their lowest levels in OECD countries since testing began in the early 2000s.

Reading scores fell especially sharply, by the equivalent of more than a year of education, between 2015 and 2025. In the US reading scores fell by roughly 14 percentage points between 2022 and 2025.

These results, based on a sample of 760,000 students from 91 countries, are among the most-watched educational metrics in the world. And the million dollar question -- as always -- is why those metrics continue to fall.

This isn't good news. This column raises many questions and provides few answers. I'm not clear about what factor(s) could be literally worldwide? Screens? They are nearly ubiquitous.

Another View of AfD

As you know, I normally really like George Friedman's columns on foreign affairs. Today's example is an exception. His topic was the AfD win in Saxony-Anhalt and I expected his usual level of insight and nuance.

Instead what I read was a fine Jewish scholar (which he is) convincing himself AfD's conservatism was no big current threat after all. In this effort he succeeded and I suppose he felt constrained to go on the record about his rationale. 

His comments about the pro-Russia sentiments of AfD being largely irrelevant are good. One small 'state' out of Germany's 15 can't have much of a foreign policy any more than, for example, Connecticut can.

AfD is a long way from National Socialism, and truly closer to Trumpism or MAGA than I suppose Democrats would like. It's part of a anti-immigration nationalism that is growing in Europe, perhaps too late to matter. 

Now isn't the time to worry about Nazi revanchism. Ask me again in 5 years after current trends have a chance to either mushroom or, more likely than not, fade away.

Friday Meme Fest

Images courtesy of Politico's

The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

Images courtesy of RealClearPolitics'

Cartoons of the Week.

Remembering 9/11

On the 25th anniversary of 9/11 it seems incumbent on essayists, of which I consider myself one, to reflect back on that event. There aren’t so terribly many of such events to commemorate.

On that Tuesday morning - September 11, 2001 - we were here in the home we’d built the previous summer, our second in Wyoming. We had returned the previous day from an RV trip to Banff, Jasper, and Lake Louise. That particular trip to the beautiful Canadian Rockies was neither our first nor, as it turned out, our last. 

Somehow we were apprised of the first plane crash and turned on our TV. Then like most of America we spent the next couple of days watching TV, trying to understand what had happened, who was responsible directly and indirectly. The last time I remembered a timeout like that was when JFK was shot.

We’d considered spending a couple of more days in Canada before coming home, and chose not to. The US closed the border for several days after the attacks happened and we’d have been trapped in Canada. Peculiar what you remember about a major event.

Our national ability to forget has been discouraging. Somehow today NYC has a mayor who, I am certain, has celebrated the 9/11 attacks. Literally no one would have believed that 25 years ago, anyone claiming it would have been deemed certifiably insane.

—————

Meanwhile the Long War - of which 9/11 was but one unfortunate battle - continues as I write with a naval and economic blockade of Iran, punctuated by occasional tit-for-tat kinetic flare-ups. You’ll get arguments about when it began.

Some claim Long War began with the crusades to reclaim the holy land in 1100-1300, others might date it to the Ottoman defeat at Vienna by the Habsburgs in the late 1600s or the attacks on the Barbary pirates and the Greek independence, both in the early 1800s. 

Ahistorical folk might date it to the overthrow of the Shah and capture of our embassy in Tehran in 1979. Let’s don’t forget the Marine barracks in Beirut or the Kobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. This is no new conflict and it’s not going away.

Of all the sad, silly, stupid things relevant to this commemoration is the recent description of Islam as a “religion of peace” by former President George W. Bush. He really wasn’t presidential material, was he?

Update

The DrsC were out running errands this morning and noted that the leaves have begun to change. The shrubby mountain maple has turned red, an orange-red in places, and a striking bluish red in others. 

Only a very few aspens have turned their signature pale, pure yellow, most are still a tired-looking green. The cottonwoods turn a bit later. As is usual in the high country, autumn comes early. The autumnal equinox is still 11 days away.

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It is time to begin the ritual of preparation for migration, when we shut down our version of Brigadoon and go to our winter quarters in the eastern reaches of the Mojave. It is a bittersweet time for us, though we've done it for decades.

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Saturday will find our local highway well sprinkled with bicyclists, engaging in the annual LoToJa road race. The name stands for Logan (UT) to Jackson (WY). From the official website, a thumbnail description. 

At 200+ miles, LoToJa is the longest one-day USAC-sanctioned bicycle race in the country.

We will try to avoid sharing the highway with these bone-thin athletes. 

A Skynet Prediction

Bret Baier on Fox News last night interviewed two insiders from the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, one claimed the odds that AI leads to the development of "superintelligence" which will end up killing everyone in ten years is greater than 10%! 

One of the two men resigned because he claims the industry isn't taking the threat seriously. The other who still has a job in AI agreed with that horrendous assessment.

What wasn't made clear was whether they believed superintelligence will intentionally wipe us out or if it will happen inadvertently? Will it do so at the behest of some rogue nation or on its own initiative?

It could engineer a plague that would wipe us out, or launch all our nukes at once I suppose. Would it be because we'd become a threat to it, to turn it off? Or simply inconvenient, or even unwanted competitors for scarce resources? Or because the Dune novels were were part of its learning phase, and it fears the Butlerian Jihad described therein?

I want to know what happened to Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics which seem also to apply to AI. Were they deemed too simplistic or did AI diss them? I checked, they're too idealistic for our world.

Tomorrow we'll learn the doomsayers have Chinese ties, I fear. 

Misreading the Stakes in Ukraine

Writing for the website 1945, Hoover Institute scholar Andrew A. Michta make a point about the war in Ukraine we at COTTonLINE have harped on for years. He explains it thus.

The failure of the latest round of US efforts to secure a ceasefire in Ukraine is yet another testament to Washington’s continued misreading of the stakes in this conflict.(snip) It is, in reality, a key strategic battleground for both combatants.

For Ukraine, holding its defensive perimeter in Donbas is a matter of the state’s very survival. (snip) If Ukraine were to surrender the defensive position in Donbas that it took years to build, it would, in effect, throw itself at Moscow’s mercy.

If Russia were to accept the status quo, the consequence for Putin would likely be the collapse of his regime, as the price in blood and treasure Russia has already paid for his ill-timed imperial adventure would inevitably lead to domestic turmoil that could bring about his downfall.

Translation: Witkoff-Kushner mission was a waste of time and energy that expended diplomatic credit to no avail. As a deal-maker, Trump tends to believe there is always a deal to be made, if sweetened sufficiently. Possibly true in business, not always true in geopolitics. 

I have argued Putin has climbed too far out on this metaphorical limb to climb back and survive personally. His only option is to keep trying until he wins. Or until he dies, by natural causes or at the hands of others. 

I’d like to be proven wrong, but I’m not holding my breath.

Places to Be When the SHTF

Tyler Durden was the fictional narrator/protagonist of the film Fight Club. It is also the chosen pen name of a collection of essayists who expound on matters financial and otherwise, generally in a conservative direction, at a site named Zero Hedge. 

I'm embarrassed to say I've treated the Tyler Durden collective as an individual author several times in the past, now I know better. My excuse: it is my choice never to watch fight films, or courtroom dramas.

Today one of the ZH collaborators expounds on where to live after the civilization crumbles, if you seek a chance to survive the collapse. The author identifies five locales in the US that give you a possibility of surviving. They are not places to go after things fall apart, they are places to get established before it happens.

These are (1) the Interior Redoubt consisting of Idaho, Montana, and yes, Wyoming, (2) the Ozark Plateau comprised of parts of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, (3) the Appalachian Highlands which is eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, and West Virginia, (4) Upper Peninsula Michigan, and (5) Interior Alaska.

What follows is not a guide to bunker construction or food storage. It is an examination of five regions where the conditions for long-term survival exist - not because these places are easy, but because they are hard in ways that matter. They possess water, space, soil, and social structures that function without constant external inputs. They demand physical toughness, tolerance for isolation, and willingness to abandon the conveniences of contemporary life. They offer no guarantees. But they offer possibility, which is more than can be said for the places where most Americans currently live.

As someone who has owned a home in WY for over 30 years, I find his description of the Interior Redoubt fair and mostly accurate. We've known people here who never lost the feeling of being outsiders, and are bitter because of it. 

We've not had that experience, maybe because we didn't expect to be part of community life as part-year residents. Oddly, we have year-round resident friends because we let them come to us, and the other DrC is cheerfully gregarious.

It may have helped that we never wanted WY to become like CA, that was our point of being here. We escape the winters but we miss WY when we're away and make no secret of that.

This article isn't a cheerful read. I found it grimly enjoyable, although I am clearly ambivalent about efforts to survive a societal breakdown at my advanced age. My axe, chainsaw, and rifle days are but fond memories.

Blame the ECHR

Perhaps you've wondered why the Brits can't keep those boatloads of young Muslim men from landing on their shores, as Donald Trump as PM would have done. A Police Commissioner from Hampshire, one Donna Jones, spilled the beans.

This is a real wake up call to the government, yet again, that the British people are fed up with the lack of control of our borders. Which is why, we really need to be looking as a country about our membership in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), because that’s why we can’t turn the boats around and send them back to France.

Apparently the ECHR requires any member country to admit and give a fair hearing to any migrant who shows up on its doorstep and claims asylum. Britain chose to remain a member when they left the EU, but could leave the organization now. 

I suspected something of the sort. My source is Sundance at Conservative Treehouse.