Comment by w10-1

If decisions are actually being made based on analogies instead of analysis, the whole thing is brittle.

The entire military is predicated on physical possession and distance; that's the main reason Ukraine is a quagmire, Iran was a no-go, and Taiwan has been relatively safe.

But the next real war for the US is not for territory but to destroy its economic and financial leverage, and destroy its ability to produce those -- by cutting academic research, firing military and intelligence leadership, alienating allies, creating divisions that paralyze democracy, crashing the market, overloading government debt, and binding the Fed, so any response would be muddled and capital and people find opportunity elsewhere. Hence the political enlistment of the poor and unemployed on one hand, and single-minded capitalists on the other, to the same ends.

The trillions of dollars in AI spending and on the military do nothing to address this, and indeed make it worse by exhausting resources for real solutions.