Content Tagged “war”
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Palantir and the US Strike on the Iranian Girls School
This is the best analysis I’ve seen of the US military strike that killed over a hundred young girls in a school in southern Iran.
By the time the war began, “AI safety” and “alignment” and “hallucination” and “stochastic parrots” had become the terms of every argument about artificial intelligence, structuring and limiting what we could even say. Worse, “artificial intelligence” itself had come to be synonymous with LLMs. When the school was bombed, those were the terms people reached for, despite the fact that this critical apparatus offered a poor fit for the older, more mature stack of technologies involved in targeting. The real question, the question almost nobody was asking, is not about Claude or any language model. It is a bureaucratic question about what happened to the kill chain, and the answer is Palantir.
→ The Guardian: AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The truth is far more worrying
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Israel’s AI Howitzer
War is horrible. The only thing that seems more horrible than war, to me, is war that isn’t even waged by humans, but by computers.
Israel’s military has taken a step toward a more automated battlefield, deploying a new artillery system that uses artificial intelligence to compress the time between identifying a target and opening fire. The system, known as the Ro’em, was deployed by the IDF’s 282nd Artillery Regiment during operations in southern Lebanon, where it was used to strike Hezbollah rocket and anti-tank launch sites in support of ground forces.
Where its predecessor, the US-made Doher, relied on manual processes and large crews, the new system operates with a level of automation that brings it closer to a semi-autonomous battlefield machine. At the center of that transformation is artificial intelligence. Unlike traditional artillery, where targeting, loading and firing are largely manual, the Ro’em compresses these steps into a largely automated sequence. Once a target is designated by an operator or commander, the system can independently load ammunition, calculate firing solutions, aim and fire with minimal human intervention. It is also integrated into broader military command-and-control networks, allowing it to receive targets directly from intelligence systems or operational headquarters.
→ CTech: Israel’s new AI-powered artillery makes combat debut in Lebanon
What could possibly go wrong?
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Bret Weinstein & Tucker Carlson on Iran
We’ve all been told a lot of things about both Bret Weinstein and Tucker Carlson. And while I don’t agree with either of these two on a lot of topics, they are both formidable thinkers and very good speakers. I challenge you to file away your preconceived notions — that you probably got from media commentators — for two hours and just listen to this conversation. I found it very engaging and also educational:
→ Unholy War: A Conversation with Tucker Carlson on DarkHorse
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Germany Number Four Worldwide in Weapons Exports
According to the latest report on international arms transfers by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Germany has overtaken China last year to become the world's fourth biggest weapons dealer. German arms exports in 2021 - 2025 are up 15% from the 2016 - 2020 period and the country is poised to overtake Russia to claim the third place behind the US and France. 24% of German weapons exports go to Ukraine, 14% to Egypt and 10% to Israel.
This is extremely disappointing, especially when considering our country’s history.
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Fresh Hell 2: Operation Schneefluch
What would German troops even do in Greenland? And why do people suddenly care about it anyway?
→ The New York Times: A Few Dozen European Troops in Greenland Triggered Trump
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Details on the Maduro Raid
Details on the Maduro Raid:
→ Reuters: Mock house, CIA source and Special Forces: The US operation to capture Maduro
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Trump Captures Maduro
Woah. Not much details there yet, but … woah. 😲
→ CNBC: Trump says U.S. operation captured Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro
U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday the United States conducted a large-scale strike in Venezuela that resulted in the capture and removal of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Maduro and his wife were captured and removed from the country following the operation, which was conducted in coordination with U.S. law enforcement authorities, Trump said in a statement on Truth Social. No further details were provided.
CBS News reported that the U.S. Army’s elite Delta Force unit was involved in the capture of Maduro.
There was no immediate confirmation from the Venezuelan government. However, Maduro’s official Facebook page posted a video stating that attacks occurred in the states of Miranda, Aragua and La Guaira, according to a translation of the Spanish-language statement. The statement in the video added that the U.S. would not succeed in its goal of possessing Venezuela’s oil and minerals, and that Maduro had declared a national emergency and mobilized defense forces.
Explosions were reported in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, at about 2 a.m. local time (0600 GMT), according to images circulating on social media that could not be independently verified.
→ CBS News: U.S. launches military strikes on Venezuela, Trump says Maduro captured and flown out of the country
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was captured early Saturday morning by members of Delta Force, the U.S. military’s top special mission unit, U.S. officials told CBS News. The elite Army Delta Force was also responsible for the 2019 mission that killed former Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.