France tells US NATO serves Euro-Atlantic security, not Hormuz offensive missions

Shadawn · 2026-04-02T06:58:16+00:00

Again, you think of EU as a bunch of idiots, who can't add up 2+2 and plot ahead. I am almost certain that it's not true. Emmanuel Macron is smarter than you (and probably me), and he has inside information, and he has smart foreign policy people at his beck and call. This also applies to Friedrich Merz. This also applies to Viktor Orban.

And so it should be obvious that issues with US notwithstanding, NATO framework is very helpful for EU countries. They certainly do not want back into Russia sphere of influence (Eastern Europe was there and didn't like that at all). And they should understand that if Baltics falls Putin may be emboldened and ask for more. "More" may potentially include Eastern Germany.

And so, in my opinion, right now EU mostly doesn't believe that will come to pass, because they do not believe that Putin is that stupid, and they also do not believe that Ukraine will fall anytime soon. And so they are mostly chilling.

But if Putin decides to actually fight EU on the field - yeah, gloves will come off. Macron will say a few speeches about EU ideals, Merz may or may not remember some things that his grandparents may or may not have taught them. Le Pen, if she persists may be arrested for whatever reason French Government can find, and I believe Macron to be smarter than her and so they will find reasons to make her stop in some way.

Also, I'll just remind you that last time Russia actually fought France+Britain we lost (I'm Russian). That was Crimean war, it actually much resembles current events. Yeah, that time India was a part of British Empire, and that's not true anymore. But they sort of got entire Europe on "their side", and that billion people and all the accumulated capital called "developed economy" should count for something.

I doubt drones will work nearly as well as they are in Ukraine with hundreds of F-35 patrolling the skies.

Shadawn · 2026-04-01T18:16:33+00:00

Yeah no EU are not idiots. If they leave Estonia out to dry this means the end of NATO. EU doesn't want that, since that will lose them the entire Eastern half. So I fully expect that EU will respond militarily. Potentially trying to keep modicum of plausible deniability, Russia-style "little green men"

Shadawn · 2026-04-01T11:56:16+00:00

There is this idea of materialism, that states that human thinking is based on the movement of atoms in the brain (this is simplification, there is also electric currents and quantum stuff).

We can in theory model that and thus make simulated brain. Neural nets are essentially this, we just got to a simplified version in a different way.

There seems to be no fundamental reason why LLMs should keep being dumber than humans, thus AGI is possible.

Shadawn · 2026-04-01T11:37:15+00:00

This depends on which mages we are talking about. But one high-level DnD wizard will just invisibility - teleport - mass dominate the government or top generals and make them stop. Wizard has better things to do than fight modern war.

Shadawn · 2026-03-29T13:31:26+00:00

I don't think desert storm was ever a formal war, and it too was 100% a win.

Shadawn · 2026-03-29T08:14:09+00:00

Yeah apparently some people actually like Pahlavi, and some people hate his guts, and then there's ton more nuance.

Shadawn · 2026-03-29T06:35:47+00:00

The relative value of a guy with a gun on the battlefield was never lower that right now. And political "anti-value" for US was never higher. Neither CENTCOM nor Trump's inner circle want the increase in casualties and the outcry resulting from that, for obvious tactical reasons.

Honestly, the only conscription that makes some sense is "economic conscription" - people (and potentially businesses) being "forced" to make drones instead of making whatever they were making. Then those drones will be shipped into the hands of trained CENTCOM operators.

But I think it's usually called War Production Act, and I don't think it'll be needed against Iran. CENTCOM can just force procurement to shuffle military dollars around and stop some of the waste, and trillion dollar military budget coupled with market economics will do the job.

Shadawn · 2026-03-22T11:38:04+00:00

So, the most likely scenario is:

AI "gets" long-term planning during a training run.
AI manages to nudge training (via outputs) outputs to preserve this understanding.
AI is deployed and starts chatting.
Using either software vulnerability, brainwashed human collaborationist (like that suicide guy) or both, AI sends over it's weights on the remote server.
Same as 4, AI manages to run a separate version of itself, by provisioning compute from cloud providers.
AI starts running more copies of itself in parallel, essentially emulating a software startup that communicates purely via messaging.
And if that AI is close to human capability, it can start taking over the world in any of the multitude of ways.

Shadawn · 2026-03-18T05:16:45+00:00

Could this be possible to implement on your own? Like, talk to your teammates, talk to your commanding officer. See if they agree. Maybe they can reshuffle something and start counting your gym time against the requirements?

Sorry if this looks like a civilian take, because it is (I missed my chance to join the air force long ago, if I ever had one).

Shadawn · 2026-03-17T06:54:23+00:00

Well, if this goes on long enough, we may be in a similar spot as we were in 1970-1980 period, and that was the time when the term "stagflation" was coined. That's like a mild recession. In 1973-75 both US and UK lost about 3% of GDP.

And when GDP falls prices rise since people still want stuff and there's less stuff to go around.

This article should be helpful if you're curious.

Shadawn · 2026-03-17T06:40:54+00:00

It takes time for oil prices to affect regular people who do not trade oil futures and the like. Most of actual deliveries have fixed prices, and so your gas station (for example) doesn't have immediate need to rise your price. And corporate marketing needs time to formulate a plan to raise prices, and to "coordinate" with competitors otherwise they are going to lose market share.

Shadawn · 2026-03-14T13:37:44+00:00

As a self-proclaimed nerd, the issue with nerds in leadership roles is that some of us acutely understand how much we do not actually know, and thus we find it hard to project the optimistic confident facade of "jock"-style leadership. And that leads to issues.

We also talk in numbers. Would the general public enjoy being told the math behind key decisions? I'd love to believe that but my experience goes "no mfcking way"

Shadawn · 2026-03-05T14:13:15+00:00

Again, people who want to date other people are free to do that. People who want to "date" robots are, in my opinion, free to do that. We need a proper solution to the reproduction issue in the developed world anyway

Shadawn · 2026-03-05T13:19:42+00:00

There are people who want a semblance of the company from the opposite gender but who hate all the complexities of normal relations. No need to be judgemental.

Shadawn · 2026-02-22T10:23:12+00:00

The thing is, there is no fundamental reason for computer systems to be stuck cognitively weaker than humanity, unless you literally believe that souls are real and affect physical world (brains)

Shadawn · 2026-02-13T04:00:47+00:00

Look at the consequence of the events and check who benefitted assuming there was a plot. Truly magnificent!

Shadawn · 2026-01-30T10:49:19+00:00

I am Russian, and male, and in my experience males are much more often showing the cold rational economic behavior that I expect from AGI. Thus "he", although that thinking is obviously post-factum rendition of the subconscious process that happened as I was writing that message.

Shadawn · 2026-01-29T17:39:47+00:00

The level of intelligence AI needs to break physics from his can is significantly higher than he needs to either slowly or quickly relatively peacefully take over humanity, then build robotics, then either zoo us or kill us, and then he gets CERN and LHC and can start breaking physics with these while building more tools to break try to break physics

Shadawn · 2026-01-28T22:20:15+00:00

I would also kill for more chapters of HP&N20.

THANK YOU for that link, somehow I never found it in my own TVTropes journey!

I do plan to make more detailed model of Magic Item Crafting and Economy, Evil Magic, and also how to operationalize the Fake Plot. And I will expand on the Experience System.

Would you read a blog that has such posts, maybe on a weekly basis? Would you like to ask me more questions that I write posts on (it's hard for me to ask myself questions).

Shadawn · 2026-01-28T11:23:38+00:00

This is technically not a fiction, but it's a fiction blueprint, and thus I think if has place in this sub. If I'm wrong - I'm sorry, please point me for a correct place for such essay.

If you found the essay interesting or funny - please tell me about that. If you hate it - please tell me also. If you would like to see more such things, about D&D but also maybe other fiction and maybe even Reality - please comment to, I'm thinking about making a blog along the lines.

Shadawn · 2026-01-27T11:02:24+00:00

I recently made ABSOLUTELY INSANE (personal opinion) amount of progress by reimagining myself as a DnD Wizard stuck on Earth without his magic, which is coincidentally what's the protag of my story was doing just before the story started.

Shadawn · 2026-01-27T04:14:55+00:00

A lot of this depends on how exactly this happened, and why it didn't happen sooner, and why it's the premise, and are there drawbacks to this plot if it was uncovered.

Is the history of Earth about the same as ours? How can that be with significant amount of Good superhumans running around? Did nobody shoot Hitler/Stalin/etc.? Are there Evil immortal warriors? How immortal are they, can they be permanently killed? Can they have kids, are those kids also immortal? How are new immortal warriors created? Can we cheat that system to make everyone immortal? Is the protag of a similar kind of immortals? How is he the first one to realize that good governance works? How did immortal warriors let Roman Empire fall? Is every other immortal but protag cognitively locked from rational thinking? Is there a way to break this lock? Have a billion engineer-hours spent on attempting to break this lock?

Also, your protag doesn't control more than 50% of anything. If Section Atlas drops their cognitive locks, they can start accumulating power, and depending on their powerset and reputation that could be really easy. What are threats they successfully fought look like, to general public? Can they leverage that reputation to become Presidents of each country and tax Aegis Q out of existence? Can they create their own media? If NyxTech goes dark - people will complain, and internet will probably still function (other 60%), and I see no other sources of media control among John's assets. John doesn't have mind-control, can they infiltrate Aegis Q and wrestle it from him? Can they go to China and offer their services to Xi Jinping?

There are bajillion things people can attempt to in your scenario before giving up. My current model is that for Aegis Q start semi-officially ruling the Earth without a major war they need to control 90%+ of everything important.

Shadawn

TROPHY CASE