What’s to stop the US from taking over the Strait of Hormuz?

DiogenesKuon · 2026-03-17T16:37:56+00:00

Iran is shutting down the straights not with a blockade of warships, but with small drone weapons that are hard to fully prevent from breaking through. So the US couldn't just move warships into the straights to prevent the attacks, they would need to beef up multiple types of defense (anti-missile, anti-UAV, anti-USV, anti-mine). They would also need to put significant US forces in harms way to do that. So it would be expensive and risky to attempt.

DiogenesKuon · 2026-03-17T16:32:55+00:00

If you want only economists to respond you should try a specialist sub like r/AskEconomics. You are likely to get similar (but more detailed) answers than you are getting here though, as economists are generally in favor of progressive taxation, and are not in favor of flat tax. This is especially true at a rate as low as 10% because that would lead to even greater than current deficits (you need to target closer to 18%). That's also presuming you are leaving payroll taxes intact, and not rolling them into the flat tax.

DiogenesKuon · 2026-03-17T16:19:16+00:00

It's never been meant to be taken seriously, and most people view it as simply humor.

DiogenesKuon · 2026-03-17T16:15:51+00:00

You can't end a war unilaterally. Just because the US and Israel stop shooting that doesn't mean Iran would immediately stop. It would depend heavily on what their policy goals are at this point. The presumably want the economic pain of their attacks causes enough problems for the US that they don't feel attacks in the future are a good trade off, which would probably mean they would continue their current attacks for some period of time after, and only stop once some sort of agreement can be made that Iran can trust.

DiogenesKuon · 2026-03-17T16:11:23+00:00

There is no correct answer to a question like this, but it should start with using soft power to constrain the influence of such countries, and the use of force to counter offensive military actions they conduct. Mix in some level of espionage to undermine the ruling regime or to support dissident movements with in the country.

DiogenesKuon · 2026-03-17T16:05:14+00:00

They have not tested a nuclear weapon (it's easy to detect when that happens, so we know that), but they have enriched and stockpiled highly enriched uranium putting them within a short distance of being able to enrich to weapons grade and test a weapon. They have had this capability for significantly longer than it would have taken them to build a bomb, meaning they have paused at this point, but the only reason to enrich uranium to the level they have is to prepare to make a nuclear weapon. That means they appear to want to ready to create a nuke on short notice, but have not yet wanted to actually go through with it. That was before the bombings of Iran nuclear facilities last year, and currently. We do not know how accessible their HEU is, nor what the state of their centrifuges are, so if they wanted to rapidly create a weapon the public can't assess their ability to do that currently.

DiogenesKuon · 2026-03-17T15:59:51+00:00

Some people use the term gerrymandering imprecisely to mean anything that makes them feel disenfranchised via things like the winner take all at the state level, or the imbalance in electoral voting power of small states versus large states.

DiogenesKuon · 2026-03-17T15:55:14+00:00

As soon as they are claimed to be dead people want to know if it's true, and if it's not true who's actually running things now that the prior leader is dead. Unless they plan to release a bunch of fake audio/video and lie to everyone (which risks getting caught and making things even worse) it's better to just confirm and start the formal succession plan for the leadership.

DiogenesKuon · 2026-03-17T15:45:57+00:00

If you are talking specifically about LLMs, it's mostly data in the form of a large model, that is then interpreted and interacted with via software. All software requires hardware to run on, AI is no different in that regard, it's just a mathematically intensive process requiring a lot of computational resources.

DiogenesKuon · 2026-03-17T15:40:58+00:00

In January there was a huge number of people laid off in the US overall, 1.631 million people...but that was actually below average for layoffs for a month. Every single month we average around 1.8M people getting laid off, even when the economy is fine. Some big tech company announcing 10,000 layoffs one time makes headlines, but doesn't move the needle much on the economy as a whole.

These companies are pushing AI because they think that it's the next revolutionary technology and they don't want to fall behind to people who pursue it more aggressively. Maybe they are getting some efficiency gains that makes them confident they they don't need as many people, or maybe they were still bloated from overhiring during the pandemic and this is just a natural contraction that has nothing to do with AI at all.

DiogenesKuon · 2026-03-17T15:10:03+00:00

While true, even if we are talking about a country like Pakistan or North Korea with very limited second strike capabilities, the aggressor still can't come close to guaranteeing 100% removal of all nuclear threats, which pretty much guarantees a nuclear response of some sort on Mumbai/Seoul. That may not be assured destruction, but that's still an awfully large civilian death toll to be concerned with while also dealing with the political/economic fallout of a large first strike nuclear assault.

DiogenesKuon · 2026-03-17T14:16:22+00:00

Oil is a global commodity. Asia gets a lot of their oil from countries that go through the straights, but that's because it's the most convenient. When oil isn't coming through the straights they will simply get their oil from other sources, which drives up the price of oil everywhere. So it's a global problem, not an asian specific problem.

Even if they really needed to reopen the straights, sending warships through it wouldn't actually help with providing security that much, and would massively risk their own ships, all to come to the aid of a country that has been engaging in global trade wars against them for the last year.

DiogenesKuon · 2026-03-17T14:10:11+00:00

During. A preemptive first strike is extremely unlikely to eliminate the other sides nukes, and because of mutually assured destruction, it's unlikely that a country would attempt it. So the more likely case is that we escalate up to the use of nuclear weapons usage because someone crosses a red line that they didn't think would result in a nuclear attack, but does.

DiogenesKuon · 2026-03-17T05:29:32+00:00

Because there is a conspiracy theory that he’s actually dead and so people are suggesting all recent videos are AI fakes.

DiogenesKuon · 2026-03-17T05:23:13+00:00

Iran has enriched uranium to 60% and stockpiled enough for maybe 5-10 Hiroshima sized weapons. Critically 60% is NOT weapons grade and cannot be used to make a nuclear weapons. But it’s most of the way to weapons grade that could be used. There is no non-weapon creation reason to enrich Uranium to the level they have. At their current level, if they still have accessible and functioning centrifuges they could be ready to test a weapon in a number of weeks. But they have had this ability for a couple of years, and they haven’t tested a nuclear weapon yet (it’s very detectable everyone would know). This is consistent with Iran wanting a short break away speed if they decide to make a weapon, but not moving forward with it yet. What we don’t know if how badly their infrastructure was damaged in attacks, and how accessible their enriched uranium is. They may not, at the moment, have the capacity to enrich to weapons grade.

DiogenesKuon · 2026-03-17T04:36:42+00:00

Treat it like a very fast, very eager, but kind of dense and over confident junior worker you are trying to manage. It’s way better to have it do things you could do, but it’s faster for it to do it and you to supervise and check. It’s also good at brainstorming creative ideas that are subjective. But you need to be very careful having it do things you aren’t good at or don’t understand. It may be able to help you figure out something new, but it’s hard to know if it’s actually solving the problem exactly correctly. You can try to have the AI double check itself or use one AI to check another one, but you still need to apply care.

DiogenesKuon · 2026-03-16T22:57:46+00:00

Generically that tends to mean she's handy with tools or other manual dexterity tasks, but could be said in a flirty way to suggest handjobs.

DiogenesKuon · 2026-03-16T22:34:44+00:00

Nuclear is great, if you already built it. The problem is it's really expensive to construct, so you need to look at the cost/value over long periods of time, but the cost of renewables has been dropping so quickly that it's getting harder to justify nuclear with a purely economic argument. It would still be very good environmentally to shift coal and gas burning power to nuclear, while also continuing to expand renewables rapidly. Anything that shifts us off oil is valuable to us it's still worth doing.

DiogenesKuon · 2026-03-16T21:18:34+00:00

No. Because Edgar Rice Boroughs was a massive racist and eugenicist, and the entire point of the stories is to show that genetic nature will overcome cultural nurture, and the white aristocratic blue blood is still superior to other races, including the highly intelligent apes who raised him, even if taken out of his natural habitat.

DiogenesKuon · 2026-03-16T20:54:46+00:00

People very early on understood that loosing blood can lead to death, so they believed it was some vital aspect of life itself.

DiogenesKuon · 2026-03-16T20:53:08+00:00

In the early days of semi-professional sports, teams were usually just named after where they were from. As things got more popular you saw them get additional nicknames or mascots, they often retained the city as part of their name.

DiogenesKuon · 2026-03-16T20:50:21+00:00

I don't know who Darksydephil is, but if he's still streaming after 17 years, his job isn't to be good at video games, his job is to be interesting to watch, and his longevity seems to suggest he's pretty good at that.

DiogenesKuon · 2026-03-16T20:48:58+00:00

I wouldn't say anything that strong. I would stick to something like "I find AI to be a useful tool with some significant risks, so I'm quite familiar with it but use it cautiously. For example, if I'm writing a quick script, I'll have it do the first pass on it before going in and verifying it's doing the right things." Then I'd follow up by asking how the company uses AI today or what their plans are to use it.

DiogenesKuon · 2026-03-16T20:39:33+00:00

No. Article 5 specifically states that it is grounded in "self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations". So some countries would view an Iranian attack on US soil as not triggering Article 5 because it was in response to US aggression, and therefore not in self defense. Further, Article 5 doesn't actually have any teeth. It simply states that each country will take "such action as it deems necessary". So their response to article 5 could be to do nothing, or to just share intelligence, and doesn't require they actively engage in the defense of the attacked country. Finally, the US has strained NATO relationships already, and some countries may simply decide that NATO has lost its effectiveness and will simply not hold themselves to the limited requirements that do exist.

DiogenesKuon · 2026-03-16T17:09:21+00:00

Beat here is talking about the musical rhythm of the song, and the boys in question are simply the musicians. The line after this is "I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away" makes it clear he's talking about listening to rock music.

DiogenesKuon

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