by liberal japonicus
9-11 happened for us in Japan in the evening and I remember thinking that we depended on things being relatively frictionless: travelling to other countries, trade, almost everything that was not solely local required things to smoothly roll along and because of that, we were screwed because a handful of people could introduce such a volume of sand into the gears, at any time they would like, and other people would realize that they could too.
As it happens, we continued on, zombie like for another decade and a half, but I remembered my thought when I was listening to Ezra Klein’s interview of Suzanne Moloney. She observes:
Finally, I think they have seen in real time that they can hit their neighbors in a way that strikes not just at the economic infrastructure, but at the larger political and strategic aims of their leadership, particularly in the Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
These are leaders who are trying to effect a massive transformation of their societies, seeking to tie them much more thoroughly and widely into the global economy through tech, tourism, and sports. All the Iranians need is a single drone through the window of a luxury hotel to persuade Americans and Europeans, who might have been planning a spring break in Dubai, to reconsider. Similarly, a drone through an airport will cut off the traffic that is so important to these countries.
“A drone through the window”. Thoughts?
It’s an ominous framing, but it does highlight a sea change in the balance of power. Iran is teaching the US the lesson that we already should have learned from Ukraine. Kegbreath and Don Corruptione are busy pissing tax revenue down an obsolete hole, chasing big, flashy, ostentatious weapon systems. Ukraine and Iran are bleeding their opponents dry with small, cheap, quiet, widely distributed weapons. Europe is in the process of figuring this out. The Gulf States are as well. The Trump boys have figured out that they can snuggle up to the US military teat if they can speak just enough drone to kick start the new grift.
I don’t think that the drone will replace the power of the nuke, but it will certainly add a new wrinkle in the calculus. Nukes are veto power, but drones give groups the ability to target international economies with small, but highly targeted strikes at economic pain points.
And this lesson has come at huge cost to fossil fuel infrastructure, with catastrophic effects on carbon emissions. That too will be part of the bill when it comes due.
We are entering into interesting times.
…and in the realm of the First and Second Amendments:
https://www.aclu.org/documents/drones-for-them-but-not-for-us
Coming soon – debates over drones as personal weapons. Can an ordinary person own an ag drone capable of spraying liquids if that drone could be used against crowds at sporting and civic events? Does this technology extend the reach of the mass gunman and diversify the means at their disposal for mass killing?
The feds seem to be treating this as if it is a dangerous threat to Orangymandias’s enforcement regime, and will likely continue to do so until they lose their grip on power.
“The UAE government is aggressively pursuing a national strategy to become a global leader in artificial intelligence (AI), aiming to transition from digital government to autonomous, AI-native government by 2026–2027. The strategy focuses on integrating Agentic AI—systems that can think, act, and make decisions independently—into 50% of government services and operations within two years.”
UAE Strategy for Artificial Intelligence
Corrected link.
UAE Strategy for Artificial Intelligence
Just saw a report that a company making software used by rental-car companies tried to do an AI on their software, and it erased their entire database in 9 seconds.
Slashdot, so maybe correct.
When do we need to start the Butlerian Jihad?
Slashdot got it from Live Science which says it got the story from the X accont of PocketOS’s founder:
https://www.livescience.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/i-violated-every-principle-i-was-given-ai-agent-deletes-companys-entire-database-in-9-seconds-then-confesses
“This isn’t a story about one bad agent or one bad API [Application Programming Interfaces],” Crane wrote in an X post. “It’s about an entire industry building AI-agent integrations into production infrastructure faster than it’s building the safety architecture to make those integrations safe.”
Godspeed, UAE. Godspeed, Pentagon.
“Would you like to play a game?”
…and in the realm of the First and Second Amendments:
But after the events at the correspondents dinner the third priority (after demonizing critics of His Orangeness and pushing the ballroom) was again loosening gun restrictions and further gutting enforcement of existing gun laws.
About the new talking points concerning the ball room, i.e. that it is needed to keep the president safe at all times and remove thee need of him bodily going out in public…
I have a modest proposal: subject POTUS to all the restrictions applied to the Doge of Venice. That would be a DOGE project one could support.