We aren’t thinking about Anthropic vs the Pentagon, the plight of the Kurds and revival of ISIS (here), murders of civilians by ICE or Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement in the Iran Contra Affair (here).

We’re thinking about the US and Israeli attack on Iran. It’s too early to size this up; it’s all about the end game. The initial assault gets a C- rating for failure to suppress the Iranian military’s capability to strike external targets.

How will this end? Ideally the Iranian people will come out with a democracy and the authoritarian regime will be defeated. Their ability affect a change will depend on if they have been supplied with the means to do so – this does not appear to be the case. Will the Iranian regime emerge with stronger support because of the people’s fear and anger over US and Israeli intervention or will Iranians applaud the effort to topple the theocracy? Will a Iranian general overthrow the Ayatollah Khameini and institute another authoritarian government or call for free and fair elections?

The US is not poised for a full scale invasion of Iran. The Iranian military has about 1.2M personnel and a formidable inventory of tanks, armored vehicles, drones and planes (defense feeds). Success depends upon the political and tactical situation inside Iran.

Did the US and Israel followed the rule of the 6 P’s; prior planning prevents piss poor performance, or is this a knee jerk reaction – Operation “Oh Shit it’s the Epstein Files.”

Donald Trump‘s track record with democracy is not good. He doesn’t want to support Ukraine. He sabotaged the Venezuelan democratic movement leaving the Chavistas in charge. He supports al-Sharaa while sidelining the Free Syrian Army and the Kurds. He supports the formation of a surveillance state in the US and is trying to leverage Anthropic to create it.

We’ll see how this goes.