According https://militaryspend.org/iran... there are between 9,044 and 18,371 civilian casualties in Iran due to US air strikes. So yes, preventing collateral damage of civilians is not a priority at Pete Hegseth's "Department of War".

My violence premise is based on the fact that Trump has ordered military strikes on seven different countries during his second term so far. https://factually.co/fact-chec...

Every authoritarian regime needs some form of multi-generational conflict to justify their power over the people. Trumpism is a form of anti-democratic, authoritarian-oligarchy that exists only within the context of an eternal conflict. The conflicts only exist to distract the people from Trump and his oligarch's corruption, abuse of power, and outright theft from the American people.

In May 2025, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth disbanded the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence in the Pentagon, because in his own words, he wanted a military "focused on lethality". I think that is the real story. Pete Hegseth only cares about civilian casualties if they could potentially become a liability to himself or the President. That is also why the President ordered Marco Rubio to "dismantle" the ICC "brick by brick".

To better understand the Maven system, I highly recommend reading the book, "Project Maven" by Katrina Manson. In it she does a deep dive into the history of Maven, what it can and cannot do, and how it can be misused in the wrong hands. Maven was never intended to be a stand-alone targeting system, and the people who created it were very aware of the deficiencies of relying solely on an AI system to make military decisions. It is a great read for any military nerd who wants to understand the history of AI in military planning, and why these systems were created.

I think the blame can be correctly applied to Pete Hegseth, and Donald Trump for ordering this war, and for ordering the military to stop considering "collateral damage" when making targeting decisions. Pete Hegseth bragged about the military striking 13,000 targets in the first month of the Iran war. This is only possible if you forgo the traditional target development process, and strike targets based on thin or no current intelligence, no collateral damage analysis, and no weaponering (selecting appropriate ordnance for the target) considerations. It appears the military just took a long list of potential military targets and ordered strikes on all of them without any verification or thought of how those destroying those targets ties into a greater military strategy. This retired military officer believes that violence was the military strategy.

In my opinion, Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth and their many acolytes believe that violence is how you win human conflict, and the side that is more violent will win. Military officers who do not share his world view are suspect, possibly woke, and have to be purged. In his word view all targets are good military targets, even civilians, if their deaths result in the desired outcome, regime change in Iran. It is the same world view that has taken over policing of minority communities in America, ICE enforcement to include shooting down protesters, or Israel's military operations in Gaza and Lebanon. What military history teaches us is that unmitigated violence doesn't win wars, but only prolongs them and turns them into multi-generational wars.

If you lose a tactical jet in a MOA, Restricted Area, or Warning Area, there usually is not much chance of hurting anyone on the ground. Also special use airspace is NOTAM'd when in use to keep other aircraft not participating in the training exercise out of the area. Doing tactical training over populated areas just puts the public at risk for no good reason, other than to massage the Secretary of War's ego. As the situation in Iran continues to deteriorate for the US military, the Secretary of War will be needing more and more massaging.

I, Steve Wozniak, did not participate in the theft of the BASIC. It was funny to me to see others enjoying doing this. I had never used BASIC myself, at that time, only the more-scientific languages like Fortran, Algol, and PL-1, and several assembly languages. I sniffed the air and sensed that you needed BASIC to sell computers into homes, because of the book 101 Games in BASIC. I loved games and saw games as the key. It was the [MS] BASIC that inspired me to write a BASIC interpreter for my 6502 processor, in order to have a more useful computer.

It's hard to find people with Tim Berners-Lee's integrity. We should 'own' our own lives. It's a lot deeper than just being watched.

Without European bases, the US will lose its ability to project force beyond North America. I'm done arguing Greenland with Trumpists. You can't reason with a fool.

As a veteran of the last Regime Change/ Nation Building exercise that ended in failure, I can only think that capturing (kidnapping) Maduro was the easy part. Trump has publicly declared we're going to run Venezuela now. But removing Maduro doesn't remove his government. Marudo was just the top of the pyramid. All the other layers are still in place. So I don't know how Trump is supposed to run Venezuela, unless he proceeds with some sort of invasion. I highly doubt the rest of the Venezuelan government will simply surrender to American occupation. If anything, I think removing Maduro was a symbolic exercise for an ego-driven and insecure President, who disparately craves attention and demands respect and fear. Imho. Maduro was a marginal leader, and if anything his replacement will be far more competent and more resilient than Maduro was.

Sounds like just about every '80s action TV series. Get captured, guards leave, lock the door, turn around and have Murdock bite through the ropes until B.A. Baracus can just break free. Then free the other hostages, use tools and scrap materials that the kidnappers conveniently left behind, build some kind of armored vehicle with flame throwers, propane tanks for rockets, and use that to defeat the bad guys. Maybe if you get kidnapped for your crypto, if your hot 20-something daughter can find them, maybe you could hire the A-Team...

It was about tax breaks for billionaires. They needed to offset those tax breaks to make them revenue neutral. The GOP could have offset tax breaks against military spending and probably gotten some bipartisan support, but they chose to offset them against medical insurance for the poor, disabled, children, and the elderly. Then the GOP/Trump expected at least 7 Democrats in the Senate to be corrupt enough to go along with this, so they could call spending reductions on the poor bipartisan. When that didn't work, they lied, falsely claiming the Democrats want "healthcare for illegals". That is untrue, as illegal immigrants are not eligible for healthcare subsidies under the ACA. The GOP created this mess, and they put the Democrats in a no-win hostage situation.

The parent is obviously sarcastic. Not wise in such a forum as this.

More exceptionalism.

Always has been. If you believe that you are intrinsically superior to everyone else - the "lesser breeds without the Law" - naturally you resent anything they have or do. And you are constantly frightened that they might suddenly pop up and deprive you of your vast entitlements.

That's the logic that was used to justify the Korean and Vietnam wars. The "domino theory" - "if they win in Korea, they will win in India and Africa and eventually reach New York and take away some of the billionaires' assets to give to the poor".

Which would obviously be the end of civilisation.

Very true. It seems quite unlikely that the UK government has any information that China doesn't already know or couldn't easily obtain.

'“What I’m saying is that some Strap stuff was compromised and vast amounts of data classified as extremely secret and extremely dangerous for any foreign entity to control was compromised.

'“Material from intelligence services. Material from the National Security Secretariat in the Cabinet Office. Things the government has to keep secret. If they’re not secret, then there are very, very serious implications for it"'.

Every time I hear about such very, very secret "material from intelligence services", it turns out to be something embarrassing that the government wants to keep from its own citizens. And of course we can never be told what the terribly secret information is, because it's so terribly secret. Possibly some dirty inside knowledge about who blew up Nord Stream (obviously the USA) or all the help given to the Kiev mob (with untold billions of UK taxpayers' money but without their permission).

It's safe to say that the UK government does not have any military secrets that would matter to China - or Russia. A sardine does not frighten a whale.

Unfortunately, capitalists (especially the most successful ones) loathe and detest competition. That's why markets always tend towards monopoly and/or monopsony. Microsoft and Amazon are shining examples. Also, I suspect, Oracle judging by Larry Ellison's bank account.