Streetwise Professor

R.A.B. (@LibertyLynx) and I have completed a document (attached) that fully details the October “pinning” of ICEYE X36 and the (serious and disturbing) implications thereof. The document also examines the depletion of US magazines in the ongoing war with Iran. That latter angle is an important story in its own right, but as will be seen, it also intersects with the X36 incident in important ways.

The document is extremely dense–purposefully, because the details are important and because it’s essential to support extraordinary findings with extraordinary evidence. Crucially, all of this information is derived from public sources. We also indicate types of non-public information that could potentially falsify our conclusions, though that would be awkward for SpaceX in particular as it would require it to falsify its own public data.

For those who prefer video–here you go. More fine work by R.A.B.

If you don’t want to dive into the details, there are a couple of key takeaways. First, in the midst of a Trump effort to flatter Putin and coerce Zelensky into a peace deal, SpaceX made possible Russia’s pinning and compromise of a satellite that both Ukraine and the US rely on for crucial intelligence. Second, Hegseth and Michael embedded xAI/SpaceX in Pentagon targeting, shutting out others (namely Anthropic); relied almost exclusively on AI for targeting, claiming that the resulting speed was war-winning, when in fact it did not result in Iran’s defeat but did succeed in speeding up the depletion of US weapon stocks. Both have materially weakened the US.

As we note, timing is a decisive causal determinant. And here the timing is quite disturbing. The SpaceX throttling of defensive Ukrainian drones and its essential role in the pinning of a US intelligence satellite (which we show could have occurred by chance with a probability close to zero) occurred in the very middle of Trump’s very public courting of Putin and very public demonization of Zelensky, all part of his frenzied pre-midterms effort to get a peace deal, shift the blame for high fuel prices, and gain some fuel price relief. It takes a Herculean effort to conclude that these events are not connected.

Pause and think about that for a moment, and think about it again after I’ve gone through some of the implications.

It is particularly appalling that the throttling and pin occurred in the context of a vain and futile attempt to seduce Putin into a peace deal. All that Trump and his minions (notably Witkoff and Kushner) have dangled before Putin are but mere baubles to him. The man has sacrificed hundreds of thousands of Russian lives and has inflicted severe short term and long term damage on the Russian economy, and the well-being of Russians, in pursuit of his obsession to conquer Ukraine. Only the delusional would think sanctions relief or business deals will deflect him from pursuing that goal. Doing things that harm US national security in pursuit of a chimerical deal is disgraceful.

The document also details several post-pin events that like waves in a pond demonstrate that something big hit the water. These are:

• Putin stated that the Russia was coordinating with “Mr. Musk” in space.
• Finland announced that it is taking control of three ICEYE satellites-X36, X37, and X38, which just happen to be the ones compromised by the pin.
• The day after the pin ended, a contractor (Stellar Exploration) that provided crucial systems that we show were compromised by COSMOS 2612’s 40 plus hour sub-kilometer stalking of X36, engaged in a restructuring transaction in the Czech Republic that reduced the ownership of the US party from 80 percent to 33 percent and gave the largest share to a Czech individual, which conveniently places the contractor under the shield of Czech and EU commercial-secrecy law. Said law protects it from any US investigation or audit short of a criminal investigation by the DOJ.

The Finnish story is woefully under-reported because it clearly implicates what happened just a few days before the Finnish announcement. Note what the article says:

The threat does not necessarily have to involve a direct attack on a satellite. Other possibilities include interference with navigation signals, attempts to take control of systems, cyberattacks on ground infrastructure and activities by other space objects that approach satellites and interfere with their operation. 

“Approach satellites and interfere with their operation.” Which is exactly what happened in mid-October.

Again, the timing of the Finnish announcement is telling.

We uncovered the information about Stellar. We only became aware of its existence when its CEO–the US citizen of Czech extraction who charitably gave up a 47 percent stake in the company the day after the pin ended–lost his mind at us on X. Not smart!: That outburst prompted us to do a little digging, which uncovered that Stellar provided the very electrical systems that were compromised by COSMOS 2612. Further digging uncovered the stock switcheroo (filed in the Czech Republic) that is a transparent attempt to impede US inquiries: Czech law shields companies with a foreign owner holding less than 33.3 percent of the stock, and after the switcheroo the CEO owned 33 percent. Only a DOJ investigation (not the Pentagon, for instance) can get past that.

This transaction is a red flag: why would anyone do it except to try to stymie an investigation? A lack of a DOJ investigation would be another.

The timing is telling here too.

Another important takeaway is what links the pinning and US magazine stories, namely the information that the Russians obtained via the pin. Information that they could not have obtained otherwise. And it involves Stellar.

Specifically, from a sub-kilometer distance COSMOS 2612 could monitor and electronically map X36’s power and radar systems in ways impossible from the 400+ kilometer distance 2612 maintained before the pin: close proximity allowed COSMOS to overcome the clutter that prevented it from extracting signals from afar. The information gained allows it to determine X36’s power and battery state, and to monitor its radar use, from its current 66-90 second trail of X36. COSMOS 2612 can therefore determine whether X36 has sufficient power before recharging to conduct surveillance over the Persian Gulf. It can consequently give Iran several minutes warning of whether surveillance is impending. Minutes Iran can use to determine whether it is safe to break concealment to launch missiles–which depleted US Patriot and THAAD stocks limit our ability to shoot down. Minutes that it can use to scurry into concealment if it is aware that eyes from the sky are gazing at them.

And as we show, the pin did not compromise X36 alone: it compromised its sister satellite X37. Which, lo and behold, is being trailed by two other COSMOS satellites.

Thus, the pin degraded US capability in the Iran theater: the two non-SpaceX satellites on which the US relies on in the Gulf are compromised, and SpaceX played a necessary role in the compromising.

That US weapons stocks were depleted by the February-April conflict is what has leveraged the adverse impact of the pin. Which leads to another portion of the document: the highlighting of the role of Hegseth and his sidekick Emil Michael in relying on AI to accelerate targeting, which resulted in the magazine depletion which leverages the adverse consequences of the pin.

Until, well yesterday, Hegseth and Michael constantly preached that speed is lethality, and bragged about how the US had used AI to dramatically speed up targeting in the Gulf, allowing more targets to be struck in less time. Indeed, they were so giddy about the efficacy of AI that they slashed the number of humans tasked to targeting in CENTCOM from 16 to 1.

But it is evident that speeding up a bombing campaign did not speed up Iranian capitulation. Nor did it deny Iran the use of important capabilities, namely asymmetric attacks that closed the Gulf of Hormuz, and missile attacks that hammered US bases in the Middle East (killing servicemen and women, and destroying many valuable intelligence and refueling planes).

What the targeting acceleration did accomplish was to speed up the expenditure of scarce US weapons. But crucially it did not speed up the replacement timeline: it will take years to replace the JASSMs, Tomahawks, Patriots, and THAADs shot off so quickly. US capability in other theaters, notably Asia-Pacific have therefore been seriously compromised.

In focusing on speed in a single theater, Hegseth and Michael ignored opportunity (“shadow”) cost–the value of these weapons in other theaters. This makes their firing of two JCS planning (J-5) chiefs look all the more suspicious. It is precisely such individuals who are responsible for taking a global perspective in designing military operations. We have little doubt that the fired (and traduced) generals raised hell about the extravagant expenditure weapons in a single theater, other theaters take the hindmost.

This all makes recent news even more striking. At a Wall Street Journal tech conference in Napa, former AI evangelist Michael suddenly turned all cautious and conservative and sober about it. He claimed the military “remains conservative about using artificial intelligence in combat,” insisted the U.S. “is not very sophisticated at AI-generated targeting,” and lectured that “there must be appropriate human judgment at every level” right as his shop floated new “AI compliance guidelines.”

“AI? AI? What’s that? Never heard of it. Does it have something to do with computers? I don’t even know how to use a computer!” Mr. Michael is apparently shocked, shocked! to find AI going on in here.

The stories we have documented are important in their own right. But they are just one element of extreme dysfunction within the Pentagon, dysfunction that will be turned up to 11 by the looming Hegseth impeachment. (Yes, the initial attempt failed: wait until January). Hegseth has allegedly threatened Trump that he is going to the mattresses rather than resign–with the message being delivered by a lawyer who is a protege of and former defender of John Gotti’s mouthpiece, and a mouthpiece for Bonnano and Geneovese associates in his own right, no less. This internecine conflict will make the dysfunction even more extreme.

And who is in the middle of all this but the suddenly sotto voce Mr. Musk. SpaceX played a central, indeed necessary, role in the pinning of X36. xAI is the central player and the main beneficiary in the suddenly amnesiac Mr. Michael’s drive to inject AI into crucial DoD decision making.

We wish we could say that this document is the end of the story. Unfortunately, it appears to be just the beginning.

The evidence for SpaceX’s vital and unilateral role in (a) the Russian intercept of the ICEYE X36 satellite (which supports Ukrainian deep strikes into Russia) and (b) throttling the white-listed Starshield terminals Ukraine uses to defend against attacking Russian drone waves is massive, and nigh on indisputable.

When reports first broke that COSMOS 2612 had tracked and cut off ICEYE X36, R (aka @LibertyLynx) immediately suspected that the Russians did not have the tracking capability to pull that off on their own, suspected SpaceX involvement, and built an orbital model to test the theory. We then ran parallel models to cross-check the results, and the attached brief lays out the case in deep, and very technical, detail. It is based on the best and most complete publicly available information, including information produced by SpaceX, which is particularly damning

In brief, to recapitulate, on 16 October 2026 the Russian COSMOS 2612 sprinted from hundreds of kilometers away from ICEYE X36 and stopped on a dime within a few hundred meters of the US/NATO satellite. The likelihood that it could have done this on its own is near zero. Moreover, SpaceX was the only entity with the information and power to permit this intercept.

Maybe the brief will cause MEGO. But an animation (also created by R) that incorporates the information is an eye opener.

When I first viewed the video it reminded me of a football sweep play, with the Russian satellite in the role of a running back following the lead block of Starlink 35856, which pinned ICEYE X36 in place, allowing COSMOS 2612 to hit the hole right next to it.

Could have been a coincidence, right? Or the Russians just got lucky, eh?

Almost certainly not.

First, the Russians would not have had the information to guide COSMOS 2612 with that degree of accuracy, especially if ICEYE X36 had the ability to maneuver (more on that later because it is crucial). Russia has no space-based tracking assets, and relies on ground-based systems which are blind for 8-10 hours (due to the earth’s curvature). Further relying on COSMOS 2612’s onboard sensors limited range would have resulted in a miss of over 100km if ICEYE X36 had engaged in a brief avoidance burn.

But there was no burn. Why not? That is the central question here, the answer to which is particularly damning.

In response to an attempted approach in June, ICEYE X36 did engage in successful evasive maneuvers. Don’t believe me? How about ICEYE’s CEO, Rafał Modrzewski, who explicitly confirmed on the record to Reuters that ICEYE actively maneuvered its satellite to evade the Russian spacecraft, and that Russian maneuvers followed. Moreover, we have confirmed this in the data: independent reconstruction of all ~3,600 public Space-Track element sets explicitly verified X36’s maneuver on 25-26 June.

So why in June, but not in October? Because it couldn’t, that’s why. And why not? Because it was pinned. By whom, and how? By SpaceX, exploiting its unprecedented control in space, courtesy in large part to FCC regulations.

In brief, SpaceX issued a collision alert to ICEYE X36 for Starlink 35856, based on an assertion that ICEYE X36 would be within .401 kilometers of Starlink 35856. Under FCC Condition 16–negotiated with SpaceX lawyers–this collision alert obligated ICEYE X36 to eschew any maneuvers. In other words, the alert fixed it in place, thereby enabling the COSMOS 2612 to engage in a braking maneuver that put it right beside the American satellite.

Damning fact #1: SpaceX’s own documentation demonstrates that the collision alert was unwarranted and unnecessary, because in fact the distance to Starlink 35856 was 4.8 to 5.0 times greater than the claimed .401 km. Based on the correct distance, no alert was needed.

Damning fact #2. Starlink satellites are known for their autonomous collision avoidance abilities. If there was a genuine .401-meter collision risk, STARLINK-35856 could have—and normally would have—autonomously pulsed its thrusters to clear the corridor. Instead, SpaceX withheld that autonomous maneuver. By choosing not to move, they intentionally shifted the legal burden entirely onto ICEYE via FCC Condition 16. (Why should SpaceX insist that a vital US intelligence satellite yield right of way to one of its many satellites that primarily provide prosaic Internet connectivity?)

In brief, SpaceX engaged in acts of commission and omission without which the intercept would have been impossible.

To add to the disturbing implications, consider the following. The Russians would have known that it would have been futile to attempt an intercept if-as had been demonstrated in June-ICEYE X36 would be free to maneuver. The sprint and braking maneuvers were costly, and it would have been irrational to engage in them if the probability of success was nil. The only way the probability of success would have been sufficiently high to justify the cost would have been if the Russians were highly confident that ICEYE X36 would be pinned. And how could they have known that?

The plausibility of coincidence or luck vanishes when one considers the fact that the intercept was contemporaneous with the throttling of Ukraine’s Starshield terminals. These were whitelisted terminals, used to guide Ukrainian drone defenses. Once a Ukrainian drone exceeded the speed limit imposed by SpaceX, its connection was dropped, making it stupid. Note that Ukrainian drones operating within Russia were already limited to much lower speeds.

And by the way, when provided this information, Grok agreed that there was no coincidence here comrade, and assigned a less than .01 percent probability to this being a random coincidence.

Musk’s shifting stories also belie any innocent explanations. At first he said that the decision to throttle Ukrainian drones was a WH decision, because Starshield is operated by the US government. But that explanation exploded later when Hegseth and Rubio both stated that SpaceX had acted unilaterally pursuant to its Terms of Service with the US government. Musk later embraced the ToS story, claiming that they prevented Ukraine from using Starshield to kill anyone, and that Ukraine had violated this provision.

They just started doing that in October, Elon? Were you shocked! Shocked! to learn that Ukraine was using Starshield/Starlink for military purposes?

Interestingly, among the people whom Musk claimed he was protecting were “poor Russian conscripts.” Putting aside the fact that Russian troops are not conscripts (although they are often shanghaied into contract service), said Russian troops are killing Ukrainians. And further, by disabling the terminals, Musk increased the lethality of Russian strikes against Ukraine and Ukrainian civilians in particular.

Interesting to know Elon’s solution to this particular trolley problem.

The main point here is that SpaceX played a central role in compromising both Ukraine’s defensive and offensive capabilities at the precise same time. And in explaining the former, he engaged in a virulent rant against Zelenskyy. In that context, any innocent explanation of the intercept crumbles.

The implications of this go well beyond the events in Ukraine, as the brief discusses in detail. Unlike legacy defense contractors, including those involved with highly classified space and satellite operations, SpaceX operates on a “CO-CO” model: contractor owned, contractor operated. This contrasts with the legacy GO-GO model, in which the government buys, owns, and operates what the contractors produce.

The contractor-SpaceX here-provides services according to a contract: the “Terms of Service” that appear so notoriously in the foregoing. It is clear that these ToS provide tremendous discretion to SpaceX to make decisions that have grave national security implications. It is also clear that these it is willing to exercise these powers in ways that are inimical to US security interests.

And don’t think this is the only time. During the Iran War SpaceX invoked its ToS to prevent the use of Starlink to mount LUCAS drone strikes against Iran. Until, that is, the Pentagon agreed to pay a 4x greater fee to SpaceX. Which reminds me of the old Churchill line: Now we know what you are. We are just haggling over price.

This is all the more disturbing given the greatly expanded role of SpaceX, and Grok in particular, in every aspect of US military operations. It is sickly ironic that Hegseth and his tech chief Emil Michael declared Anthropic a national security risk for demanding that it retain a veto over the use of Claude given that they have supplanted it with a contractor who has used such a veto to the detriment of US security interests.

In the present instance, how bizarre is it that the US military would enter into a contract which allowed its counterparty to veto decisions to kill people? After all, the military’s job is, well, to kill people. The decision to do so is vested in Constitutionally established authorities operating subject to US law. It is not vested in Elon Musk, and it is incomprehensible that the US government has entered into contracts that grant him that authority.

This is a classic problem in transaction cost economics. SpaceX provides very specific assets (specific in the technical economic sense) to the United States government, and the Department of Defense in particular. The specificity of these assets gives SpaceX incredible power to hold up the government. Contracts should be crafted to limit this holdup power. Instead the Pentagon has enabled it.

GOGO is the default organizational response to holdup problems. Given the acute severity of the holdup problems posed by SpaceX, unless the government can find a way to write much better contracts with it, it should move back to that model.

But hot-from-the-presses news suggests that this is a vain hope, at least under the Hegseth Pentagon. The Defense Intelligence Agency just released “Challenges to Security in Space: Congestion, Competition, and Cooperation.” It relies on a Russian propaganda site (topwar.ru) and TASS (!) to hype Russian capabilities (namely its ground-based Krona surveillance complex).

The reliance of this document on a trash Russian military site renders it little better than the Steele Dossier, or the hack job on Russian election interference that the outgoing Obama administration cobbled together in January 2017.

Moreover, the timing is rather, shall we say, odd. Lo and behold, the day after Elon offered his fourth explanation for throttling Ukrainian drones, specifically that if he didn’t Russia would target Starlink satellites, the DIA drops a report citing topwar.ru to warn of Russian threats to American satellites. A coincidence, surely. If you believe that . . .

But there are indications that American dogs are fighting under the carpet–specifically the State Department and the Pentagon. Rubio was clearly displeased at the Ukraine drone throttling, and the fact that this was a Musk decision. The State Department was also infuriated by the intercept, taking a complaint to the UN. And Rubio just recently fired one of Musk’s operatives. So we must hold out hope that Rubio (whom Trump surely holds in greater esteem than Hegseth, and hopefully Musk) will be able to put a stop to this madness.

Yesterday’s post presented the evidence for and the implications of Elon Musk’s throttling of Ukraine’s Starlink/Starshield access. Since then, additional evidence makes this an established fact. Most notably, reporting in the WSJ that Trump (on bended knee?) asked Musk to release his grip (and WSJ reporting today that uneven Starshield restrictions are still persisting even after Trump’s call). When asked about it, the normally no-filter Trump declined to answer. Mark that down as confirmation.

But it gets better! Today’s brief, co-authored with @LibertyLynx (who originated, architected, and built the entire SGP4 orbital, FCC regulatory, and corporate forensic investigation from the ground up), demonstrates the near certainty that in addition to undermining Ukraine’s defensive capabilities (where the 130 to 160 km/h speed cap cut Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces validated target output by 23.0%), Musk/SpaceX compromised, or at least threatened to compromise, Ukraine’s offensive capability. Specifically, its capability to attack refineries and other targets within Russia.

The brief is extremely detailed and extensive, so here’s the TLDR version (though I do encourage reading it). Ukraine relies on Starlink/Starshield to control drones for operations at the front (and the logistical zone) and counter Russian aerial attacks. It does not use Starlink for reconnaissance and targeting of strikes deep inside Russia. For that it relies on Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery from the ICEYE-X36 (NORAD 59103) satellite, operated by ICEYE US (the U.S. subsidiary of a Finnish company, operating under FCC license S3165).

Beginning on 15 October, within 48 hours of the Starshield throttle, a Russian inspector satellite, COSMOS 2612 (NORAD 68762), maneuvered to within less than a kilometer of X36 (closing to 0.76 km in the public catalog, and within a few hundred meters per optical trackers). And here’s the thing. Russia relies on ground-based radars that can only observe an orbiting satellite like X36 for narrow time windows (leaving 6 to 11 hour tracking gaps), and which do not allow it to track X36 continuously and with sufficient precision to arrange an intercept in which COSMOS 2612 compressed 364.3 hours of natural orbital drift into a 25.5-hour sprint (a 14.29x closure compression from 425 km away, cutting separation by 382.7 km relative to its pre-sprint orbit), braked, and then remained within a kilometer for more than 12 hours before moving away. (And across every Russian maneuver transition, the public Space-Track catalog lagged behind by 19.4 to 22.7 hours.)

Who can provide that real-time information? SpaceX. At the exact time COSMOS 2612 began its sprint (15 October at 04:15 UTC), X36 sat inside a 401-meter public collision alert with SpaceX’s STARLINK-35856 (NORAD 67013, where SpaceX’s private operator ephemeris diverged from public data by 15.37 to 30.13 km while carrying a 2.862 km 3D position uncertainty). Because X36 only has one trajectory, this overlapping Starlink alert pinned X36 in place—preventing it from executing a 0.5 km evasive altitude drop as it had in June (which generates 71 km/day of drift and exits a 3 km Russian braking box in 61 minutes), while requiring X36 under FCC Condition 16 to coordinate its trajectory with SpaceX. Under SpaceX’s Space Safety Terms of Service (Appendix A and Section 4(b)), committed maneuver trajectories uploaded to SpaceX are exposed to third-party sharing with a $500 liability cap (Section 10). Moreover, SpaceX tracks the 540 to 550 km orbital shell at 10 to 15 minute intervals using its 31,000 Stargaze cameras—and conveniently onboarded Chinese operators to its Space Safety platform on 6 and 16 October. Again, with its ground resources alone, Russia would have been flying COSMOS 2612 blind.

No other entity has all five of these capabilities. The intercept would not have been possible without these capabilities.

Nice little satellite you got here. A shame if anything happened to it. A threat that could only have been delivered with the help of SpaceX/Starlink/Musk. I further note that Russia has not delivered a similar threat to any Starlink asset while Tesla’s Q3 10-Q (filed 30 September) discloses $5.966 billion in rolling Chinese working-capital debt maturing between October 2026 and September 2027 and explicitly admits “presumed significant influence” over SpaceX through their shared CEO.

Goldfinger famously said: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.” The simultaneous throttling of Ukraine’s defensive capability and compromising/threatening of its offensive capability, the first definitively attributed to SpaceX and the second solely within SpaceX’s capability, makes plain that Musk has acted against Ukraine and for Russia. Enemy action, indeed.

SpaceX’s culpability here is indisputable. The only open question is whether Musk acted on his own, or in connivance with the administration/Pentagon. And just as was the case with yesterday’s post, both alternatives are disturbing in their own way.

Trump’s, Rubio’s, and Hegseth’s claims that the administration had nothing to do with throttling Starlink may or may not be true. Trump’s asking Musk pretty please to turn it back on could be genuine, or it could be Kabuki. Again, neither alternative is good. If the President of the United States is reduced to a supplicant, and Musk has the unilateral authority (shielded by commercial Terms of Service) to make decisions with such vital national security implications, and perhaps to do so in cooperation with American enemies, we are in a very bad place. Especially given how embedded SpaceX currently is within the Pentagon as we head toward Round Two with Iran.

The on again, off again battle between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky is back on, and in a big way. The trigger for this most recent outbreak was news that somebody throttled Ukraine’s Starlink/Starshield link, limiting the speed of Ukraine’s fast drone interceptors which are essential to countering Russian jet-powered drones. As documented in the attached brief/strategy memo (prepared by @LibertyLynx) Russia responded by utilizing jet drones more extensively, and delivering more effective strikes on Ukraine. Against civilian targets in Ukraine, I might add.

It’s rather remarkable how rapidly Russia recognized and responded to Ukraine’s degraded capabilities.

As the document also describes in detail, this also has implications for US national security. Most notably, it works to the advantage of Russia in its forever war against Ukraine. But that’s not all. It forces Ukraine to substitute high end interceptors for low end ones, further depleting already nearly barren magazines–which creates a call on stocks from US allies and perhaps the US itself. Given the extravagant expenditure of weapons in the Iran War, our cupboard is increasingly bare, and we have nothing to spare.

Note that I said “somebody throttled” Starlink/Starshield. That phrasing was deliberate. Because we don’t know who did so. There are two possible answers, each deeply disturbing in its own way.

The first answer is that Trump made the call. Elon Musk says it was the USG, meaning Trump. Trump denies it. Rubio denies it.

Why would Trump do this? His animosity towards Zelensky is well known, and he has long been impatient with Zelensky’s resistance to a peace deal. With the midterms approaching, and fuel prices high, Trump is even more desperate for a deal. He may therefore believe that pressuring Zelensky will break the deadlock and allow him to announce peace in our time.

But handicapping Ukraine’s defenses will not achieve this outcome, especially not in Trump’s time frame. It is fantastical to imagine that such a deal could get done in the few days prior to the midterms, and even if a deal were to be done tomorrow its impact on energy prices would be (a) modest, and (b) delayed to well after the election. As much as Trump fulminates to the contrary, energy prices are driven first and foremost by the situation in the Gulf. The loss of Russian refined and crude supplies due to sanctions (which would presumably be lifted as part of a deal) and Ukrainian attacks is at most an aggravating factor.

It is also fantastical to think that Putin is just standing by waiting to do a deal, and that Zelensky is the only obstacle to one. Indeed, measures that weaken Ukraine’s defenses will only embolden Putin to continue to fight, figuring that he can gain more against a weakened Ukraine and perhaps even achieve his goal of conquering additional territory, and perhaps the entire country. Putin will deal only if he thinks defeat is inevitable. Giving him hope of something he can call victory will only prolong the war.

So if the rationale for kneecapping Ukraine is to facilitate an end to the war in days, followed forthwith by a sharp drop in energy prices, all in time to rescue the Republicans from an electoral rout, it is beyond delusional.

And it’s also politically stupid. This–and Trump emissary Witkoff’s obsequious behavior towards Putin, and Trump’s bizarre statements about how Russia isn’t doing anything bad in Ukraine–has generated tremendous political blowback, and has played into the narrative that Trump is Putin’s puppet. So if anything, it is politically counterproductive from the perspective of the midterms in particular.

But maybe the administration’s denials are in fact truthful, and Elon Musk is in fact responsible. Think about that for a minute.

Pete Hegseth (the primary author of the failed strategery in the Gulf) says that SpaceX throttled Starlink/Starshield because Ukraine violated “Terms of Service.” What? They didn’t read the fine print and just clicked “accept”? Or they just decided in early-October to do something different that violated the ToS? Or SpaceX changed the ToS? Or Ukraine refused to cease and desist from violating the ToS and SpaceX lost patience?

What changed in the last few weeks to trigger this intervention? The “ToS” excuse begs every question that matters.

For his part, J. D. Vance said it is totes understandable that Musk decided to intervene:

JD Vance on Starlink:

Elon Musk runs a private corporation, and I think it's completely understandable that he doesn't want to get in the middle of what is a war between two state actors without the United States government effectively directing him on what to do.

I don't think… pic.twitter.com/rm9dS65ElE

— Clash Report (@clashreport) October 22, 2026

So much wrong here. For one thing, SpaceX has been “in the middle of a war between two state actors” for several years now. Indeed, SpaceX has been instrumental in staving off Russia’s invasion, both by providing Starlink to Ukraine and denying it to Russia. What would explain a sudden reluctance on its part?

Moreover, the throttling of Starlink/Starshield has impaired Ukraine’s defensive capabilities, not its ability to strike Russian territory. Denying Ukraine truly defensive capability is particularly twisted, and has already cost civilian lives. Musk somehow thinks that Ukraine defending itself is unacceptable? And just decided this last month?

And how is it remotely OK for the United States to grant Musk a veto over the employment of Starlink/Starshield? Since 2023, Starshield has been under contract with the US government to provide Starlink services in Ukraine. The Pentagon was not willing to grant Anthropic the right to withhold services when it disagrees with how the Pentagon was using its AI (excuse me, SI): have they granted comparable rights to Musk? If so, why? If not, how is he getting away with exercising such power without contractual sanction?

Or maybe he’s not, and the administration is lying and it made the call.

Given how deeply embedded in the Pentagon SpaceX is now (at the expense of Anthropic, in particular), these events have disturbing implications that go far beyond Ukraine. Does the USG negotiate “terms of service” with SpaceX that give it the ability to throttle services to the Pentagon (e.g., throttling Grok) at its whim? Or can Musk exploit contract incompleteness to make unilateral decisions that impair US national security? Or is it difficult to enforce contractual terms against him because there is no alternative over a horizon of weeks or months? Under any of these possibilities, a mercurial, deeply untrustworthy, and highly conflicted individual has far too much power over American national security.

In earlier posts/briefs @libertylynx and I analyzed the holdup problems SpaceX/Grok/Musk poses. If it is indeed the case that the administration did not order the throttling, and Musk/SpaceX “understandably” did it on their own, we have been given a taste of how dangerous the holdup potential is.

There is no good alternative here. Either Trump and his administration made a decision based on delusional diplomatic, political, and military logic, or a deeply untrustworthy megalomaniac (other than the president) has the ability to make unilateral decisions that have dire consequences for American national security.

Yesterday SecWar/Defense Pete Hegseth made something of a splash with an announcement eliminating tenure at service academies. Well, the headlines were somewhat misleading. What he did was announce that in the future the academies would not offer tenure. This, of course, because existing tenure is a contractual commitment that cannot be revoked absent some rather egregious misconduct.

The effect of the change is also less than it appears because tenured or tenure track civilian faculty are non-existent at the Air Force Academy (USAFA), and a small proportion of faculty at West Point (USMA)–27 percent to be exact. Only at my alma mater, Navy (USNA) are civilians a majority of faculty, and most of those are tenured (about 70 percent). So if anything, this is aimed at Navy first and foremost.

Navy has long had a civilian-heavy faculty, and alums point to it as an indication of the greater academic rigor of USNA relative to its peers. (Perhaps that’s what really exercises Hegseth). Indeed, the “Father of the Naval Academy”-William Chauvenet-was a civilian, and responsible for its academic curriculum and hiring in its earliest days 180 odd years ago.

Chauvenet’s history is illuminating on the subject of civilian instructors. He was hired, as a civilian, to teach math to midshipmen on ships, before there was an academy. So even crusty old salts recognized the comparative advantage of civilian instruction. His dismay at the level of instruction midshipmen received led him to advocate the formation of an academy. Originally a two-year institution, he pushed to make it a full four year school. And he wanted it to be academically rigorous, and hence was a strong advocate of hiring civilian instructors. Chauvenet set the course for USNA (no pun intended), and it has sailed that course ever since. That course is fundamentally different from USMA and USAFA (which reflecting the Air Force’s origin in the Army is far more like USMA than USNA).

Chauvenet’s reputation in American academia was stellar. Yale tried to hire him, but eventually he became the chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis, where he established it as a leading academic institution.*

The age of steam, with its novel engineering challenges, was fundamental in transforming the school and its curriculum. Under steam pioneer Benjamin Isherwood, the Academy became primarily an engineering school. Isherwood was a career officer, but civilian appointments in engineering positions at USNA were common, and remain common today.

So Navy is different, and has always been different. The civilian-heavy instructional staff is reflective of that.

Even at Navy, there is less to Hegseth’s announcement than meets the eye: there is a stock-flow issue. Tenured faculty will decline one retirement (or funeral) at a time, meaning that in the remainder of this Trump term the order will have little effect on faculty composition. Since it well may be reversed under a future Secretary, the effect may be trivial. (I wonder what SecNav nominee Hung Cao, a USNA grad, thinks about this. BTW, there are rumors about that he doesn’t like Hegseth).

The reasons Hegseth gives for his order are eye-rolling:

“To ensure our educational institutions remain firmly focused on this warfighting mission, we must address the structural mechanisms that have allowed civilian academic norms to dilute our focus on lethality.” . . .“academic stagnation, faculty complacency, and institutional inability to adapt to emerging needs . . . . contributes to curriculum that drifts from the mission of educating our warfighters to the research priorities of the tenured academics.”

“Academic stagnation” and “faculty complacency” are things Adam Smith wrote about 250 years ago, and are hardly accurate characterizations of the civilian faculty I knew. Insofar as “research priorities” interfering with curriculum drift and impeding adaption to emerging needs, Hegseth is spouting nonsense. For one thing, the Academies are teaching schools, with heavy teaching loads where research input and output are low as compared to true research institutions. For another, especially with respect to technical fields in particular (which represent the bulk of civilian faculty at Navy), remaining research active actually facilitates, rather than impedes “adaption to emerging needs.” Hegseth’s statement is a slur on civilian profs at the academies.

Hegseth’s references to “lethality” and “warfighters” suggests the reasons his misguided opinions, and how they are particularly misguided with respect to Navy, where many junior officers spend their early careers managing equipment and technology or managing people who operate equipment and technology rather than pulling triggers.

That contributes to lethality. Indeed, the contribution is vital. If weapons or sensors or engineering plant don’t work, even Alexander the Great can’t make them lethal.

The irony here is that Hegseth claims to be technology-focused, with AI being a prominent example. (More on that story in the future). Well, mightn’t it be a good idea to have some officers educated in this? Wouldn’t the quality of this education be improved by faculty who are specialized in the field and who have a long term commitment to an institution where they teach it?

The only thing that saves Hegseth from his own stupidity here is the limited impact it is likely to have.

But of course there are very online Hegseth throne sniffers who offer their own stupid takes on his stupid policy:

Service academies are not, and should not try to be, butched-up colleges.

If you want the college experience as a student, the be like ‘ole Sal and go NROTC.

If you want to get a tenure track professorship, then look elsewhere to pursue that goal. https://t.co/t2Un49MGdf

— cdrsalamander (@cdrsalamander) September 29, 2026

Er, nobody-and I mean nobody-goes to an Academy to pursue an academic professorship. In fact, one pretty much has to leave an academy if one’s interests lie in that direction. Like me, for instance.** So Jeez, if you are going to try to suck up to Hegseth, at least try to make sense.

The more important part of Hegseth’s announcement is not the tenure piece, but this:

He directed the secretaries of the military departments to develop hiring plans prioritizing “institutional flexibility and contributions to the warfighting mission.”

This is problematic because hiring plans are well downstream from curriculum and curriculum design. Given the existing curriculum, there are at least two strong reasons to lean towards more, rather than less, civilian personnel.

The first is that teaching is a skill. My decades in academia have shown me that most people suck in their first couple of years in the classroom, no matter how great their domain knowledge. At the very least, it takes a few years to develop as teachers even if they don’t suck right off the bat. There’s a lot of learning by doing. Rotational military faculty (which dominate at USMA and USAFA) leave just about the time they hit their stride.

The second is specialization. The old adage about those who can’t do, teach, has something to it. Let eggheads specialize in teaching, and warfighters specialize in fighting wars, rather than having warfighters cosplay as teachers–something that is inimical to Hegseth’s stated objective.

Less flippantly, specialization offers other benefits. Specialists in a field have more domain knowledge and are on average more able to convey it than someone who parachutes in from the Rangers or whatever for a couple of years. Even more prosaically, teaching (especially with the heavy loads at academies) involves appreciable prep/setup time. Those costs are largely sunk for experienced civilian faculty teaching the same course for years. Every rotational faculty member has to incur them, and that happens every couple of years. Is that how Hegseth actually wants “warfighters” spending their time?

And just how, exactly, does one advance warfighting in Calc II? Beginning each class with a hearty “ooh-rah”? (My memories of uniformed profs at Navy–mainly in professional courses–are that they were hardly gung-ho.)

So given the curricula at the academies, reducing civilians in the ranks of professors doesn’t make sense. To the contrary.

Meaning that Hegseth should actually be focused on curriculum, rather than who delivers it. But that’s probably expecting too much from our Pete.

So the real issue is: should the academies have curricula that are comparable to rigorous civilian universities and colleges, with a considerable dollop of military-specific courses and training on top? I think the answer is yes, for several reasons.

The first is that rigorous, non-military education offers other benefits. It is a signal for intelligence and diligence. Done right (something increasingly rare these days) it trains people how to think critically and analyze, generalized skills that are clearly applicable in the military.

The second is that although each offers non-technical degrees (I was an econ major!), the bulk of midshipmen and cadets major in technical fields. (The jocks are an exception–but that’s a whole different subject). The very technical change that Hegseth talks about is a compelling reason to retain this orientation, especially since graduates are very technology facing during the early part of their service.

And even the “softer” fields provide things that advance the military mission of “lethality.” Economics, for example. One of the principles of war is “economy of force”–the efficient allocation of scarce resources to achieve objectives. That’s fundamentally a statement of economics generally that applies at tactical, operational, and strategic levels. As a specific example, constrained optimization is fundamental to economics–and directly applicable to military problems. (Linear programming was developed to optimize the allocation of ships to convoys during WWII). Logistics is in many ways applied economics, and logistics wins wars.

Perhaps if Hegseth understood constrained optimization better, he wouldn’t have shot off a goodly proportion of our scarce weapons in fighting Iran.

An appreciation of history is also a vital war fighting skill. Many great commanders (Napoleon among them, but more recently Norman Schwarzkopf) have been students of history and applied the lessons to win battles. And to win wars–something the US has not been particularly expert at in the last 80 years. Maybe having some more liberally educated officers would help address that problem.

I use “liberally” in that sentence in its traditional sense of “liberal education.” But I have a sneaking suspicion that another sense of the word liberal is what really drives Hegseth’s hostility to civilian faculty: specifically, civilian faculty, even at academies, are politically liberal.

There’s a podcast out there somewhere in which Victor Davis Hanson describes his experience as a visiting history prof at Navy, and his shock at learning how politically liberal the faculty were. When I interviewed for the Admiral Crowe Chair at Navy (which I was offered but declined), I was taken aback at the politics of the economics faculty (and their disdain for many Midshipmen).

But here’s the thing. Most of the faculty I interviewed with were my profs when I was a Mid. Yet I had no idea of their politics, although conditional on their cohort (getting doctorates in the 1960s) it should have been pretty obvious. They taught down the middle, and didn’t poison young minds with liberal dogma. (I’m living proof of that!) Classrooms weren’t politicized by civilian profs in the 1970s. Maybe it’s different now, but I doubt it.

In sum, Hegseth’s initiative is mid-witted and ignorant, and wrapped up on bravado. But I guess at this point, that shouldn’t be surprising.

* I seem to have a weird way of following around prestigious USNA professors, Chauvenet being one and Robert Michelson being the other. After teaching at Navy (where he commenced his speed of light measurements) he went to the University of Chicago, where he spent decades. Both men have academic buildings at USNA named for them. They were pretty new when I was there.

**From time to time during a deposition, opposing counsel thinks there is a dark secret underlying my departure from Navy. So when asked why I left the academy, my stock reply is: “Because I figured out I was more cut out to be a scholar than a boat driver.”

Elon Musk enterprises are deeply embedded in the US national security establishment, most notably via SpaceX’s space ventures, but now via its xAI subsidiary and its Grok AI. The Department of War’s/Defence’s set-to with Anthropic demonstrates that an AI enterprise’s interests can potentially conflict with the Department, which could pose a security issue if the enterprise attempted to hold it up by restricting use in some way. The same risk could arise with Grok.

The embedded documents, prepared by @LibertyLynx and I, analyzes in detail the holdup potential for Grok. The basic conclusion is that the DoW has access to multiple AI providers, and can switch out at short notice–but not immediately. That matters, because in war, mere moments can count (what Patton called “the unforgiving minute”), meaning that even a fleeting withholding or even degradation of Grok (or another AI) could have dire consequences. In an optimistic case, a switch out would take 96 hours–pretty much the time that the ground campaign in Desert Storm lasted. A military eternity, in other words. That is, there are acute “temporal specificities.”

As the US military becomes more reliant on AI, especially for operational functions (e.g., targeting), the model relied on will become a potential single point of failure. As we analyze in the attached documents, failures can arise for purely technological reasons, or because of human interference with employment of the models–the latter being the holdup problem.

The reason that the Pentagon attempted to axe Anthropic was that the company demanded the power to withhold deployment of its models for purposes that it deemed incompatible with company values. That is, a deployed model posed holdup risks that the Pentagon deemed unacceptable.

It is troubling enough to extend someone as mercurial and megalomaniacal as Musk serious holdup power that the Pentagon assumed unacceptable in the case of Anthropic. If Anthropic’s values are problematic, what about Musk’s?

What is even more troubling is that Musk is deeply embedded in China. Specifically, Tesla is very dependent on China, to an extent that is barely appreciated in the United States–in large part because Musk hardly says anything about it, in contrast to his pontifications on pretty much every other subject known to man.

A majority of Tesla production is in China. Tellingly, Tesla’s output per unit of fixed assets is far higher in China than in the US. Moreover, Tesla gets appreciable funding from China. It hardly seems prudent to give an individual with such conflicting interests as Musk control over a vital defense function that requires complete reliability 24/7, and which is characterized by acute temporal specificity.

There is a fundamental economic challenge here. The government does not have a comparative advantage in developing these models, and is inherently reliant on the developers for continuous support of their operation. But given the specificity of these assets, what contracting and governance mechanisms can be put in place to protect the government against opportunistic behavior by the model developers? It’s an inherently daunting challenge, and those challenges are particularly acute when the counterparty is one of the world’s most egregious opportunists who is known for using his leverage to benefit himself. Of all the people to give leverage to . . .

Some problems could be mitigated by requiring Musk to sever his China connections. That would change his incentives, but would not change him.

Our research also raises questions about how disinterested Secretary of War/Defense Hegseth and his Chief Technology Officer, Emil Michael, were in their Anthropic decision, and their subsequent embrace of Grok.

The embedded documents analyze these issues in detail, and highlights issues that have received too little attention amidst the ongoing hype over space, digital data centers, and AI. Not that those are unimportant, and will the the subject of future similar posts.

As the Iran War rolls into its sixth week, the media (especially the virulently anti-American UK rags FT and The Economist), the Democrats, and the Europeans have declared that the US is losing. Which means things must be going pretty well!

The US and Israel are allegedly losing because the regime has not toppled, and the Straits of Hormuz are largely (though not completely) closed. The first principle of war is “the objective,” and the losing narrative implicitly assumes that regime change is the objective.

But as the US made at the outset, and as Trump reiterated in his speech earlier this week, although that regime collapse would be a great outcome, that is not the objective. Instead, the objective is to destroy the ability of whatever regime controls Iran to use ballistic missiles and especially nuclear weapons to attack neighboring and non-so-neighboring states–including those in Europe, and perhaps eventually, the US proper.

It is difficult to get a definitive assessment on the campaign’s progress in achieving this objective. The administration claims it has made substantial progress, and a few more weeks of bombing will suffice. Given the intensity of the campaign, with now approximately 20,000 precision weapon strikes on strategic targets, that is very plausible. But bomb damage assessment is an uncertain exercise, so definitive judgment is difficult, especially for those (which consists of just about everyone outside select precincts of the Pentagon and the CiA) who don’t have access to all the intelligence in the first place.

A “war of choice” narrative is wrapped up with the “losing” narrative. Many on the left and the fringe right claim that the threat from Iran was not “imminent,” so the attack is premature and reckless.

The idea that a threat must be imminent to justify preemptive action is idiotic. Hell, what does “imminent” even mean? Those blathering about imminent never say.A day before Iran decides to launch a nuke? The day before it develops the capacity to launch a nuke?

By then it would be too late. And even if Iran’s nuclear development were to behind its ballistic missile development, one of the factors that features in the losing narrative–Iran’s continued ability to launch ballistic missiles and the imperfect ability and high cost to intercept them–makes it plain that if anything the US and Israel waited too long. Every month that would have passed would have seen a large increase in Iran’s missile stockpile, and an increase in their range and payload. In not too many months this would have made any attempt to attack Iran vastly more difficult and costly, and likely impossible. And the end result would be that Iran had North Korea-like immunity from attack, and could therefore act with impunity.

Imminent, in other words, was months ago. At best, February 28 was just in time.

Insofar as Hormuz is concerned, for the US it is an economic inconvenience, with mainly distributive effects. Yes, Americans pay higher prices at the pump (but not for natural gas and hence power, because the maxxing out of US LNG export capacity means that the demand shock from the loss of Qatari supply can’t hit the US), but American producers profit accordingly. And ~$100 oil is not an economic catastrophe–been there, done that (e.g., after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and other times before, especially if you look in real terms).

The often expressed idea (especially in the media) that the US did not anticipate Iran’s action, or that it had no plan to deal with it, is absurd. I think that the plan was exactly what the US is doing. That is, Trump and the Pentagon realized that a closing of the Straits would be a cost of taking action, but the cost of opening it by force is greater, as is the cost of not taking on Iran at all. If anything, the US approach to the Straits demonstrates what the US perceived to be the cost of not acting.

There are no free lunches, and no cost free wars. The enemy always gets a vote.

And with respect to Trump personally, he had to be cognizant of the potentially steep political costs he might pay–including another impeachment ordeal. You might disagree with Trump’s decision, but that is different from saying that he made his decision without due consideration of the costs (military, economic, political, personal). Revealed preference logic implies that he perceived these costs to be less than the cost of inaction. Saying “he didn’t consider the costs” really means you disagree about what the costs are.

Hormuz is also a military challenge, no doubt. The threat can be (and has been) reduced by attacks on Iranian anti-ship missile batteries, attack speedboats, minelayers, and conventional navy, but even residual capability would pose a substantial threat.

Europe and Asia also feel the impact of the blocking of the Straits, and more so than the US given that they are net energy importers. Europe huffily refuses to do anything about the closure (well worse than that actually–see below), saying it is not their war.

Well, to use a phrase attributed to Trotsky, “You may not be interested in war [Europe], but war is interested in you.” And the refusals betray sunk cost fallacy thinking. The war happened and you have to optimize subject to that fact: saying that you didn’t choose to be there is irrelevant. I know where you want to go, but you can’t get there from here.

It is likely that Europe’s indignant refusal to do anything reflects not so much moral superiority, as utter incapacity. Just what could they do, given their shriveled military–and especially naval–capabilities? Moral indignation is therefore most likely a way to avoid confessing powerlessness.

Furthermore, Europe is doing things that are distinctly contrary to its interests. Most notably, several European nations (Spain, France, and perhaps Italy) are restricting US use of bases in their countries, and limiting overflights. Which will not stop the US and Israel from continuing the campaign, but which might prolong it, thereby prolonging Europe’s economic misery. This is masochistic posing.

Europe actually could do something that would not require it to employ (non-existent) military force. It could contribute the the US marine insurance reinsurance backstop. That would facilitate the reopening of the Straits. I have not heard this idea mooted, weirdly not even by the US, but definitely not by Europe.

As for the nations that at least have pretensions of global military power, the UK and France: in perhaps a reversal of traditional stereotypes, Albion is feckless, and Gaul is perfidious. British fecklessness was demonstrated by its tragi-comic inability to deploy even a single warship to defend its base in Cyprus, and its passive-aggressive denial of bases in the UK and Diego Garcia, at least for a while.

France–and in particular Macron–is objectively an American enemy right now. As popular as tertiary syphilis at home, where he can accomplish nothing, the little popinjay (whose wife apparently periodically pops upside the head) struts around the world attacking the US. But worse than his words is his active opposition–in conjunction with Russia and China–to a UN resolution advanced by the Gulf Arab states to permit the use of force to open the Straits.

Macron says that this would be impossible. Well, nobody is asking you to do it boy. Among the options lead/follow/get the hell out of the way, all you need to do is choose #3. But no. You actively decide to get in the way.

This is incomprehensible for many reasons. First, it represents a complete rejection of Arabist French foreign policy extending back decades. The reversal of French support for Israel in 1967 is a good estimate of the starting point for this policy, but through the years it has seen, for example, strong French support for Saddam, e.g., building the Osirik reactor that Israel destroyed, and including being a major arms supplier to Iraq during its gruesome war with Iran.

One Arab state–the UAE–has already expressed its disgust with France’s action by withdrawing funding from a next generation Rafael fighter project. And France can be sure that the flow of Arab capital to the country generally will dry up. Which given France’s parlous fiscal and economic situation is quite harmful.

Second, anything that defers reopening of the Straits extends France’s economic pain.

Third, France, like the rest of Europe, has been in a panic about the US exiting Nato, or at least dramatically cutting its commitment to European defense. What better argument to make for the US to tell Europe, “lots of luck! You’re on your own! Practice your Russian!” than this active opposition to the US effort in Iran.

Macron’s remarks in South Korea–a country that exists by the grace of the US and 37,000 fatal American casualties–demonstrate his idiocy in this regard. He called for South Korea and other nations, including Japan which has also been the beneficiary of American military dominance, to form an alliance in opposition to the United States. Which would provide a perfect justification for the US to cut loose the members of this coalition of the weaklings. I’m sure that would work out great for all of them.

In World War I, Germany likened its alliance with Austria-Hungary as being “shackled to a corpse.” That’s what Nato has become to the US right now, and Macron is making the corpse’s stink all the worse. Unlike Wilhelmine Germany, the US can get out the bolt cutters.

Fourth, the Europeans–and France in particular–constantly bleat about international law. Well, Iranian interference with free navigation is a flagrant violation of one of the oldest and undisputed parts of international law. But rather than allow others to enforce this law, France actively opposes it.

This is pretty much spot on:

To spotlight the absurdity of Macron's position here, Elysee is voting alongside Moscow and Beijing to obstruct the GCC bid to establish a multinational coalition with a Ch VII mandate to enforce transit rights, enshrined under UNCLOS, and their collective rights to self defense,… https://t.co/YbVqKlXDVx

— dan linnaeus (@DanLinnaeus) April 4, 2026

The absurdity of Macron’s position is manifest. The explanation is not. I am at a loss to understand what he is doing, or what he thinks he is doing, or what he thinks he will accomplish. The best explanation I have is a cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face attempt to thwart the US. But this is absurdly futile. France’s actions are an inconvenience, and will not dissuade Trump or Israel. The second best explanation is blackmail. Other than that, I got nothin’.

So wither the war? I think the most likely outcome is a 2-3 week continuation of the bombing campaign. After which, the US let the chips fall where they may. Will Iran continue to close the Straits when there is no pretext for doing so? Fairly likely, which would amp up the pressure on those more dependent on the Straits to do something.

The dispatch of 2 Marine Expeditionary Units and a brigade of the 82nd Airborne division to the region has led to all sorts of speculation about ground action. One surmise is seizure of Kharg Island, Iran’s oil export hub.

I consider this extremely unlikely. First, the USN is not going to sail a couple of amphib flotillas up a shooting gallery. Second, the force sent to the region (roughly 10,000 combat personnel) is too small. Third, even if the island is seized, it is an . . . island–making the logistical support of US troops on it difficult and vulnerable. Fourth, it is not necessary to seize Kharg to deny Iran the ability to export oil. Just mine the approaches. Turnabout is fair play.

It is more likely that Marines will be employed to seize the islands (held by Iran, claimed by the UAE) in the Straits themselves. This would likely be necessary, but not sufficient, to reopen the Straits in the absence of Iranian capitulation.

Insofar as the bombing campaign is concerned, the US does have escalatory options–and Trump has threatened and continues to threaten to use them. These include destroying crucial parts of Iran’s economic infrastructure, notably power plants and perhaps desalination facilities. The latter option has been widely decried as a potential war crime, but Iran has attacked such facilities in Gulf states, so that genie is out of the bottle.

The main reason for such escalation is to secure if not regime change, a deal with the regime that cements the US objectives and opens the Straits. And here we get into a game theory dilemma. If the threat does not achieve this, acting on it will be unlikely to do so. And Iran can credibly play crazy and refuse to cave to the threat. So in some respects this is crazy vs. crazy, or at least two parties who can credibly play crazy.

And ironically, a regime that is willing to accept such severe punishment is the best argument for the war in the first place.

It’s been a little over a week, so enough time to get a better idea of how we got here and where it’s going.

• The mullahs have been fucking around for 47 years. They are finding out, with interest. As someone who came of age during the Hostage Crisis, all I can say is it’s about time.
• So is it just revenge? Hardly.
• So why, and why now? There are many layers to this onion. The outermost one is that it has long been US policy that Iran not obtain nuclear weapons. And for good reasons, not the least of which is that there is a non-trivial probability that as Twelver fanatics they want them to unleash an armageddon that will bring back the 12th Imam. But even if you discount that, it is indisputable that Iran is a revisionist state that wants to completely revolutionize the Middle East, and destroy Israel as a part of that. Nuclear weapons would be both a shield and a sword that would advance that agenda.
• The June 12 Day War (ironic number, there) seriously set back Iran’s nuclear program. Trump then entered into negotiations with them, the objective of which (for the US) was a credible, verifiable Iranian commitment not to develop nuclear weapons. Not only did Iran reject this, it is clear that they were doubling down on their program, and also on their ballistic missile program.
• Iran has long said “America can’t do a damn thing against us.” After June 2025, Khamenei said: “Our response to the US nonsense is clear: they cannot do a damn thing in this matter.” Apparently they repeated that mantra during the negotiations.
• That the mullahs would believe this after 47 years of American fecklessness is understandable. Our bipartisan failure to deal with the problem has emboldened them, and led to this. (Those mocking “TACO” Trump probably further emboldened them).
• Trump obviously concluded that negotiations were never going to achieve US objectives, and that delay would make it more difficult for the US to achieve said objectives. Hence, let slip the dogs of war! Bombs away!
• The opening salvo was apparently somewhat opportunistic, with Israeli and US intelligence providing information that Ayatollah Khamenei and many top regime officials would be meeting for breakfast. What was on the menu? A decapitation strike.
• This is a necessary but not sufficient condition for regime change.
• But although it is clear that the US would welcome regime change–to anything less fanatical than the mullahs–it is similarly clear that the US does not have regime change as a primary objective. Instead, the objective is regime (whatever it is) emasculation.
• That is, to deprive whoever ends up in charge of Iran the capacity to project force beyond its borders. This means, certainly, denying them the capacity to make nuclear weapons. But it also means eliminating their existing ballistic missiles and destroying their capacity to make more. This includes, obviously, their existing missile fabrication facilities, but also the economic foundation necessary to fund it. Hence strikes on oil refineries.
• Thus, we are seeing the most intense aerial campaign since WWII, and given the precision and capacity of American and Israeli weaponry, arguably more intense than even that. Curtis Lemay would be beaming.

• The air campaign is obviously proceeding in stages. First the standard SEAD component (or, more accurately DEAD–destruction of enemy air defenses), combined with stealth and missile strikes at very high value targets and fleeting ones (like Khamenei and the leadership of the IRGC). Now that air supremacy has been achieved, less stealthy but extremely devastating platforms–notably B-52 BUFFs (Big Ugly Fat Fuckers) and B-1 BONES–can roam at will and systematically dismantle anything we choose using JDAMs.
• The media commentary on the campaign has been predictably idiotic.
• The campaign demonstrates, yet again, that Chinese/Russian/Chinese-Russian copycat air defense systems are ineffectual. Their main use is to provide targets that must be disposed of before the real work commences.
• Speaking of China, this is another, deeper layer. Following hard on the heels of Venezuela, Trump is systematically destroying the main plinth of Chinese strategy in the Middle East. Although most commentary focuses on Iran as an oil supplier to China, that’s a secondary role. Iran-China (and Iran-Russia) is a conspiracy of revisionist powers aimed at overturning a US-dominated world order. Iran’s location at a vital energy producing region makes it an exceptionally valuable player in that game. Emasculating it is a serious blow to China’s strategic agenda.
• And eliminating Iran as a threat in the Middle East allows the US to concentrate its military and naval focus on China.
• So, like all things Trump (tariffs, Greenland, Venezuela) this is all about China too.
• The main military issue right now is the Straits of Hormuz. More by threat than action, and with the connivance (witting? unwitting?) or Lloyds of London, ship traffic through the straits has been throttled.
• The destruction of Iran’s navy is part of the US plan to deal with that, but it’s not the most important part. The main threat is from anti-ship missiles and drones. There has been little visibility into what the US (and presumably this is a US Navy/carrier air job) has been doing to Iranian SSASMs.
• Trump has mooted escorting ship traffic, but that has not started. This suggests that the missile threat is still present. Drones will be more difficult to suppress, but they are not as dangerous as missiles, especially to large tankers and freighters.
• This is particularly important because Trump’s main political pressure point that could undo his campaign is energy prices.
• Iran has attempted a Samson strategy, launching ballistic missiles at any nation supporting the US campaign, mainly through basing US military assets and personnel. This has not been particularly militarily successful, and politically it has if anything strengthened the resolve of Gulf nations to see the job through.
• The performance of the US’s erstwhile allies, especially in Nato, has been disgraceful. Leading the Parade of Shame is the UK, which deprived the US of the use of bases in Diego Garcia and the UK. And then changed its mind when the Iranians launched its missiles–as if that was a totally unexpected development. The UK then proved itself utterly impotent militarily, unable to dispatch even a single not-very-capable ship to defend places like Cyprus (which hosts UK bases).
• Spain similarly publicly denied the US the use of Rota (although US planes still land and take off there, so it is hard to know whether this is posing, or a split between the defense minister and the PM, or what).
• As an aside, this forcefully demonstrates a point I made with regards to Greenland: access by agreement is far less reliable than access by ownership. One can readily see the Danes pulling some Starmer- or Sanchez-esque stunt.
• One has to marvel at the depths to which the UK is fallen. John Quincy Adams once warned against the US becoming a “cockboat in the wake of the British man-of-war.” Now Britain is more like a kayak in the wake of the US, and is paddling pitifully on an opposite course. Starmer is of course the face of this, but it is the Labour Party more generally that bears the responsibility. Supposedly, the execrable Ed Miliband and other hard core leftist cabinet ministers pushed the 21st century’s “Boneless Wonder” (to reprise Churchill’s description of Ramsay MacDonald) to his passive-aggressive approach. How much the dependence of Labour on Muslim votes had to do with this is an interesting subject for speculation.
• The media (and social media) have been disgraceful, as should be expected. The NYT is all but openly rooting for an Iranian victory.
• The sinking by a US Los Angeles class SSN of an Iranian ship probably captures the media and social media idiocy better than anything. It was in international waters! Er, most sinkings of belligerent vessels are. It was sunk without warning! Uhm, that’s what submarines do. The crew was not rescued by the sub! Yeah. So? FFS, (a) warships have never been subject to “prize rules” that require warning and crew evacuation before sinking, and (b) prize rules for merchant shipping went by the boards in about 1915-6. The US in particular ruthlessly employed submarines in WWII and sunk both warships and merchantmen without warning and without pity. The Iranian ship should have known it was at risk, and interned itself–as another Iranian ship did, apparently learning the lesson from the sinking.
• So where to next? We are at that stage of the war where the original shock (and awe) have worn off to a considerable degree, and the military campaign grinds on. It is likely that the main objectives of destroying Iran’s nuclear, ballistic missile, aviation, and naval capabilities, and the ability to replace them, will be achieved in relatively short order. The main sticking point, as noted above, is restoring navigation in the Straits of Hormuz.
• As for what happens politically in Iran–who knows? But the important thing is–who should really care? In the US, anyways. A regime, no matter how malign in intent, poses no threat to American interests if its military capacity has been destroyed.
• This relates directly to the bleating–especially from certain elements of the MAGA right–about another forever war. These people should actually be gratified at Trump’s apparent indifference to political outcomes in Iran. Unlike the administrations that waged war in Iraq or Afghanistan, Trump quite clearly does not believe that eliminating a threat from a particular country requires remaking it in our image. Blowing the shit out of it suffices. (Venezuela provides another example of how Trump is willing to accept a regime that is less than savory, as long as it does our bidding).
• This also relates to the media drumbeat that strategic bombing has never resulted in regime change. Again–so what, if the regime is incapable of putting its malign intentions into action? And I would also note that bombing can bring about the end of wars, Vietnam being the best example. The Linebacker campaign (the Christmas Bombing) is what brought North Vietnam to the table. And it was Congress’s elimination of a threat of a resumption of such bombing that gave North Vietnam the confidence to resume the war two years later. NB: the campaign we are seeing in Iran now is Linebacker on steroids. It is the Dick Butkus (or Lawrence Taylor) of air campaigns.

Life comes at you fast in the Trump era. Less than 24 hours ago, the bombshell story was Trump/Hegseth dropping the sledgehammer on Anthropic. Then I wake up to the news of US-Israeli decapitation strikes on Iran.

I’ll wait a bit for the dust to settle (literally and figuratively) before reacting to today’s news. Yesterday’s news deserves comment.

In brief, Anthropic–the company that created Claude AI–was in negotiations with the Department of War regarding use of customized versions of Claude on classified DoW systems. The negotiations stalled over the DoW insistence that Anthropic license Claude for all “lawful uses.” Anthropic insisted that the Pentagon not use it for “mass surveillance” or “fully autonomous weapons.”

An hour before the deadline for an agreement, Secretary of War Hegseth announced that the negotiations had been terminated. But that was only the beginning.

After Hegseth made that announcement, I mused on X that Anthropic was playing a dangerous game:

Anthropic is playing a dangerous game. Think of all the levers the US has. Impeding access to chips. Pressuring suppliers of capital. Visas for personnel. Anthropic wants to be a law unto itself. It will regret trying. https://t.co/AOVFnehAhC

— streetwiseprof (@streetwiseprof) February 27, 2026

I was thinking of surreptitious pressure, with Bessent and others telling Anthropic’s input and capital suppliers to think twice about dealing with the company. But no. Within hours of announcing the end of the negotiations, Hegseth designated the company as a Supply Chain Risk, and forbade any company doing business with the Department of War from dealing with Anthropic.

This doesn't just mean that firms that deal with the USG can't use Claude. It means they can't sell Anthropic anything. Chips. Power. Hardware. Software. Paper clips. And can't invest in it or lend to it.

It's a hardcore sanctions regime. FO time.

— streetwiseprof (@streetwiseprof) February 28, 2026

Bad on me for thinking the administration would take the subtle approach!

This is a death sentence.

No doubt Anthropic will sue, and will move for an injunction. They may even get one. But that will not really help.

Consider all the suppliers to and collaborators with Anthropic (which includes Google, Amazon, and others). The risk of dealing with Anthropic just skyrocketed. Specifically, the legal risk. While litigation plods forward–and believe me, I can tell you from extensive experience Federal litigation plods–all these firms will calculate that any long-term engagement with the company could get blown up if the courts eventually side with the USG. So long term contracts, joint ventures, equity investments, and loans have a huge downside risk that didn’t exist 24 hours ago.

Real options analysis shows that the rational response to a spike in uncertainty is to defer making decisions that lock you in for an extended period until the uncertainty is resolved. So even if an injunction allows companies to continue to deal with Anthropic, they will rationally back off–way off–pending resolution. Yeah, maybe paper clip suppliers will continue to sell to Anthropic, but the real strategically important players won’t want to get locked into long-term arrangements with it.

Competition in AI is intense. The speed of innovation is intense. The legal risk itself puts Anthropic at a severe competitive disadvantage in such a hyper-fast-paced competitive environment. Thus, the punishment meted out by the process will likely be just as fatal as the actual implementation of the DoW order.

Some are calling this corporate murder. It isn’t. It is corporate suicide.

Seriously. Didn’t Anthropic CEO Dario Amoedi and his board ask Claude to generate scenarios of the effect of its refusal to toe the DoW line and which of those scenarios would be the most likely? Did he ask it if he was being an idiot? Because he was.

Now to the rights and wrongs. Here is Anthropic’s justification for its obduracy:

We support the use of AI for lawful foreign intelligence and counterintelligence missions. But using these systems for mass domestic surveillance is incompatible with democratic values. AI-driven mass surveillance presents serious, novel risks to our fundamental liberties. To the extent that such surveillance is currently legal, this is only because the law has not yet caught up with the rapidly growing capabilities of AI. (Emphasis added).

In other words, Amodei wants to arrogate to himself the power to require the Pentagon to act as HE thinks SHOULD BE legal, not what is legal. He wants to usurp the power of all three branches of the Federal government. That is obviously not his job.

If people believe the Pentagon has violated the law and the Constitution (in interviews he speaks of Fourth Amendment violations), they can bring suit. It is up to the courts, not Dario Amodei, to decide whether the Pentagon has or has not done so. Furthermore, Congress can act to “catch up” the law with the capabilities of AI. It’s not Dario Amodei’s job to become a law of his own.

Amodei’s argument is self-contradictory. On the one hand, he says he supports “lawful” uses. But then he says, not really, because he doesn’t like the law. Pick one, dude.

Now, you might counter that OK, then the US should just refuse to deal with Anthropic, but not try to whack it.

The Pentagon has clearly identified Claude as vital to the national defense. And, ironically, the company’s claims about its capabilities make the Pentagon’s case for it. So, the US needs Claude. The company refuses to provide it on acceptable terms. So it is necessary to compel them.

Anthropic could have chosen the easy way or the hard way. It chose the hard way. It's not murder. It's suicide. https://t.co/iBxKH0mUEk

— streetwiseprof (@streetwiseprof) February 28, 2026

Or maybe you think Anthropic’s conditions are reasonable. They are not. These terms would essentially allow the company, at its whim, to impair the DoW’s use of Claude. That is, they could “hold up” the Pentagon.

Claude is a very specific asset, especially since it would be customized for Pentagon use. Even if DoW also employed other AI, it would not be able to replace at short notice the bespoke capabilities of Claude.

No rational party will subject themselves to such a massive holdup risk. The Pentagon clearly is rational about this.

Further, Anthropic would have legal recourse in the event it believed that the Pentagon was using Claude unlawfully.

Anthropic lamely argues that

They have threatened to remove us from their systems if we maintain these safeguards; they have also threatened to designate us a “supply chain risk”—a label reserved for US adversaries, never before applied to an American company—and to invoke the Defense Production Act to force the safeguards’ removal. These latter two threats are inherently contradictory: one labels us a security risk; the other labels Claude as essential to national security.

No contradiction at all. The “safeguards”–basically, giving Anthropic a kill switch that it can activate at is whim–are utterly incompatible with Pentagon use. Claude is a vital national security tool. Hence, force it is. Perfectly consistent logical sequence of actions.

It is ironic that Anthropic is not willing to accede to the Pentagon mere weeks after it screamed about three Chinese firms training their AI systems on Claude, thereby allowing the copycats to create systems with a substantial fraction of Claude’s capability. Meaning that the Chinese already likely have the capabilities that fret Amodei so much. And you can be totally sure that China will respect Amodei’s tender concerns for our liberties, amirite? But the US government is not to be trusted with these same capabilities, apparently.

A couple of admittedly subjective reactions.

When I first looked at some Amodei vidoes, I got a Sam Bankman Friedman vibe.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on AI and the Constitution:

"It is not illegal to put cameras around everywhere in public space and record every conversation. It's a public space."

"But today, the government couldn't record that all and make sense of it."

With AI: you can map the… pic.twitter.com/wo1xEW5d6V

— cogniscendo (@cogniscendo) February 27, 2026

And wouldn’t you know, like felon Fried, Amodei is an “effective altruism” guy. This is disturbing. EA is a hyper-utilitarian “philosophy” that appeals to would be ubermenschen who often use it to justify their own psychopathy. SBF being the (imprisoned) poster child for this.

And as a general matter, be very, very, very suspicious of companies (and CEOs) that set themselves out as moral paragons. Remember “Don’t be evil”? Yeah, good times, good times. Or Bill Gates? I could go on. (And yes, Elon Musk fits too).

Lastly, maybe Amodei is suffering from Oppenheimer-like guilt and remorse over creating a power that has escaped his control. His attempt to restrict Pentagon use of the genie he freed from the bottle could be a desperate attempt to re-exert control. But he can’t. The genie is well and truly gone, and this faceoff with the Pentagon will in no way stop it.

Today marks the beginning of the 5th year of Putin’s “Special Military Operation.” Special, indeed.

The special needs military operation is more like it. (NB: “special needs” is a euphemism that replaced the previous euphemism, “retarded.” The old once canceled but now reemerging euphemism fits in place of the new one with regards to Putin’s military misadventure).

Putin appears in no mood to call the whole thing off, despite the fact that at best the campaign is stuck and at worst is actually in retrograde, with casualties allegedly now exceeding recruitment rates. Indeed, he is doubling down on his rhetoric and making moves that suggest he fears that his public’s patience is finally wearing thin.

Putin continues to cast the war as an existential one for Russia: “Russia is fighting for its future, for independence, for truth, and justice.” His remarks on Defender of the Fatherland Day are delusional: “Your competent and courageous actions, your personal bravery and determination helped to carefully plan and brilliantly execute offensive operations by our troops in the most intense sectors and directions.”

Brilliant in what universe? Competence is nowhere to be found. Especially in the Kremlin.

And Putin makes it clear, as if there was ever any doubt, that he is the Tsar of Projection–not of power, but psychological:

“They did not manage to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia on the battlefield, so the enemy is relying on individual and mass terror: this includes shelling cities, sabotaging infrastructure, and assassination attempts on government and military officials,” he told an audience of FSB officials.

All of which Russia has done in Ukraine, and on a far greater scale.

And paranoia, too

“There is an absolute need to defeat Russia. They are looking for any way, anything at all. They will push themselves to some extreme point, and then they will regret it,” he said.

And more delusion. Putin order the FSB to “strengthen the anti-terrorist protection of energy and transport infrastructure and public gathering places, provide maximum coverage for critical facilities, and, if necessary, equip them with additional security measures.”

This allegedly in response to the continuing Ukrainian attacks on Russian energy infrastructure, and specifically oil assets. This includes a recent attack at an important facility on the Druzhba pipeline.

But note: Ukraine carries out these attacks with drones and missiles, which the FSB can do fuck all to stop. This rather pathetic gesture is effectively a confession that Russia’s vaunted air defenses can also do fuck all against them. If the VKS can’t defend Russian airspace, how are spooks going to?

Perhaps the most interesting and revealing development is Russia’s intensifying Internet crackdown, including most notably a throttling of Telegram, due to the app’s alleged use in terrorist attacks in Russia and by Ukraine and the West.

What’s particularly striking about this is that Russian troops rely heavily on Telegram for battlefield communications–due in large part to the shambolic nature of Russian communications gear and infrastructure (a glaring defect that was supposed to be fixed after 2008 but obviously was not). When added to the loss of the use of Starlink terminals–which the Russian military laughably denied using for their own comms, claiming instead that they just used them to spoof the Ukrainians–the already balky and disjointed efforts on the frontlines will be even less coordinated, responsive, and effective.

So what does this imply? It implies that Putin is more than willing to sacrifice military effectiveness (such as it is)–and soldiers’ lives–to strengthen his control over the domestic information space.

And why would he do that? Well, by far the most likely explanation is that he fears growing public discontent with the war, its cost, and the glaring disconnect between what Putin says about the war and the ugly reality on the ground. Not only is Telegram an important means by which Russian troops communicate with each other, it is the primary channel by which the troops share glimpses of how the war is going, how it is fought, and the gruesome toll it is taking.

If uncensored, it is also a means by which Russians can communicate with one another, not just about the war, but about economic and social conditions that are clearly deteriorating. This is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition to undercut preference falsification. Since this falsification is an autocrat’s best friend, the risk of its unraveling is an existential threat to Putin.

Hence, he wants to put communications through the government “MAX” app–which is mandatory on all smartphones sold in Russia, and which is surveilled by the state.

Maybe Russia can resurrect Max Headroom to do PSAs. Perhaps Putin has tasked the FSB to look into the “blipverts” that featured on Max’s show. Could be just what he needs.

These measures are not those of a confident man, any more than Europe’s current censorship mania signals its civilizational confidence. Instead, they are palpable signs of Putin’s fear that the unwavering domestic support for his not so excellent adventure in Ukraine is not so unwavering and might cascade into another Russian moment a la 1905 or 1917 or 1991.

I guess if you want to be optimistic, you could view this as Putin preparing Russia for a peace/ceasefire deal in Ukraine that falls far short of the objectives he laid out, and which would make the toll in blood and treasure of the last 4 years seem completely in vain. Limiting the backlash would require an even tighter grip on the populace.

But regardless, it is a clear sign that Putin has decided that his heretofore unchallenged hold over the Russian populace is slipping as the war grinds on without success, and he must take even greater control over the information space.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is the most catastrophic self-inflicted debacle of the post-WWII world, and ranks highly among the great debacles of all history. He has succeeded in killing and mutilating over a million Russians. He has gutted the economy for years and probably decades to come. He has made Russia a pariah state increasingly dependent on a mercenary China, and his justification that the world is ganging up on Russia has become a self-fulfilling prophecy rather than a description of past reality.

And for what? To conquer a country even more dysfunctional than his own. And he can’t even accomplish that.