SegfaultSeagull
SegfaultSeagull on Hacker News
UK Discover Naval Drone Component Sent Signals to China
Mathematicians warn of AI threats to profession as industry encroaches
Thinking in the Margins
I Love the Em Dash–Too Bad If AI Does Too
Challenge accepted.
In April 2024, Congress passed a $95.3 billion national-security supplemental package that included funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Indo-Pacific security. The Israel portion totaled about $26.38 billion.
Key points about that money:
Total Israel-related funding: about $26.38B. Humanitarian aid: roughly $9.15B (for civilians affected by conflicts, including Gaza). Missile defense: about $5.2B for systems like Iron Dome and David’s Sling. Weapons procurement: about $3.5B for new weapons. Other military supplies/services: about $4.4B.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/whats-us-houses-foreign-aid... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Law_118-50
Hamas (Oct 7), Hezbollah on the northern border, the Houthis in the Red Sea, Iraqi militias hitting U.S. bases — that’s been Iran’s strategy for decades.
April 2024 may have been the first direct exchange, but the war with Iran’s proxy system was already underway.
The Americans still wanted the Iranians to commit to zero enrichment, and proposed giving them free nuclear fuel for a civil nuclear program, but the Iranians refused, a U.S. official said. After the talks ended, Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner told Mr. Trump they did not think a deal could be reached."
That NYT detail is the key piece for me.
If Iran was presented with an offer of zero enrichment plus guaranteed civil nuclear fuel — meaning energy without weapons capability — and still refused, that tells you something.
Enrichment isn’t symbolic. It’s the hard technical pathway to weapons-grade material. You don’t insist on retaining it unless you want the option to cross the threshold.
The Tehran regime has funded proxies and asymmetric violence for decades. A nuclear-armed version of that regime isn’t just a regional problem — it fundamentally changes deterrence math across the Middle East and likely triggers proliferation.
If intervention now prevents a regime with that track record from getting nuclear weapons, that’s not escalation for its own sake. It’s preemption of a much more dangerous equilibrium.
You can debate costs and risks — but pretending the enrichment fight was benign ignores what enrichment is for.
The argument for this being as important (or more) is different though.
Russia launched a conventional invasion to redraw borders.
The regime in Tehran has spent nearly five decades exporting violence through proxies — Hezbollah, Hamas, militias in Iraq, Syria, Yemen — destabilizing multiple regions simultaneously while avoiding direct accountability. It’s been a long-running asymmetric war, not a single event.
If this moment marks a direct confrontation with that system, it’s not a regional flare-up. It’s potentially the first real attempt to confront a state that’s institutionalized proxy terrorism as a core strategy.
Different kind of challenge. Possibly broader consequences.
Modern militaries are already software-driven. Targeting, logistics, satellite analysis, cyber defense — it’s all code. Machine learning is just the next layer on top of systems that already exist. It’s not like we’re going from swords to Terminators overnight.
Also, opting out doesn’t mean the technology goes away. If the U.S. or other democratic countries decide “we won’t touch this,” that doesn’t slow down China, Russia, Iran, etc. It just shifts the balance toward actors who are less constrained.
There’s a real argument that better AI could reduce civilian harm. If a system can process more sensor data than a human and flag inconsistencies or uncertainty, that can make strikes more discriminate, not less. Humans under stress make mistakes too. A lot of them.
I’m much more worried about governance than the raw tech. Keep humans in the loop. Make systems auditable. Make decision chains reviewable after the fact. That’s a policy problem, not a “ban the math” problem.
The military isn’t going to stop using advanced software. The real question is whether it’s built inside systems that answer to law and oversight, or outside of them.