When a reporter says that someone in the Whitehouse gave them insider info you have to take it with a grain of salt.

But the reports that Trump's cabinet and leading republicans are demoralized since he's leading based on whims and "it's not working" are very disturbing if true.

We really may have bungled into a war, killed all those people on a whim.

Is that worse than doing it for corrupt evil reasons with an evil master plan?

I suppose it doesn't matter.

I'm also disturbed by reporting on how the military may be using AI. And not just because I don't like AI... it sounds like Pete may have put his full faith in these systems. And why wouldn't he? He's not an international policy expert. He doesn't know or care about what Iran is really like. He doesn't "understand the enemy" ...

I also think they hit the school on purpose. All this talk of "no guard rails"

@futurebird

They also have a strong aversion to 'academic elites' and so fired a load of the experts who would have been able to tell them that the machine is talking nonsense.

@david_chisnall

The US military had many "woke" policies. In every case these were pragmatic policies.

You have fair promotions and hiring so you get the best people. You study the language and culture of other countries so you can predict what they will do. You don't assonate leaders because then you will be targeted for assassination or other extreme responses. You don't attack during peace talks so people take your peace talks seriously.

@david_chisnall

You don't bomb schools because "the enemy" will use that to galvanize their public, and you will lose international support since you must either admit to being incompetent "we missed" or depraved.

Every nation on earth is able to inflict massive violence if they really wanted to. Every person is able to do this. Extreme violence is easy. I don't think they get any of this.

@futurebird You are assuming that there is a functional organization actually running our government and that they intend for this particular method of governance to continue. This is not the case. The US government has been (past tense) destroyed from within by Russian agents. What you're witnessing in Iran is the END GAME of a successful plot to destroy US hegemony.

@wyatt_h_knott

I think that's giving Russia too much credit.

@futurebird I do not. Putin has worked to corrupt Trump directly, along with many other people actually in Trump's government. THere was a multi-million dollar propaganda campaign that went along with it, repeatedly documented. The fact that other chaos actors, like Musk, jumped onboard, does not mean that this wasn't a successful operation by the FSB that went wildly better than even they expected. No one thought Americans were this stupid, but here we are.
@futurebird Just look at the most recent comments by Rubio about Ukraine and you will see that Trump's government is stiull firmly in lockstep with Putin's orders. Just understand that what he wants is nothing less than for the US to throw itself ointo it's own sword, and sacrificing Iran in that calculation is nothing to him.