Patriot interceptor stocks had fallen from roughly 2,330 to somewhere between 759 and 827. That means that US stocks are depleted until 2029.

But by late July 2026, the Pentagon began reporting shortages.

Particularly depleted was the Patriot PAC3 and THAAD that were used to intercept misses fired by the IRGC.

Its unheard of shortage we’ve never seen before.

How can the world’s richest military run short of ammunition? Why can’t factories simply make more? How much did Ukraine matter? And what goes into the costs of building them?

To answer that, forget tactics for a moment.

War is logistics and math.

The Industrial Window

Every war has three rates:

• Production (P): how fast a country manufactures materiel.

• Consumption (C): how fast combat destroys, expends, and wears it out.

• Imports (I): how fast allies and arms markets can top up the difference.

That industrial window stays open while:

P + I ≥ C

Cross that line, and units stop receiving a consistent supply. At that point, they start to get rationed.

At a tactical level, commanders begin choosing which targets deserve ammunition or protection. Units get reassigned and critical bases/positions get sacrificed. At a strategic level, planners borrow supplies from another critical theater, weakening diplomatic policy there.

There’s a word for this. It’s called strategic compression.

A country can hold territory it cannot resupply. But only for as long as its ammunition, lasts. Once consumption exceeds production plus imports, war becomes a macroeconomic constraint. Opportunity costs affects power projection, geopolitical balance of power, and eventually political legitimacy.

That is the lens through to understand America’s ammunition problem.

The Supermarket Problem

To understand why the United States ran short of ammunition, don’t start in a weapons factory.

You need to start in a supermarket.

A supermarket does not keep a year's worth of bananas in the basement. It keeps a few days' worth on the shelf and trusts a truck to arrive every night. Modern manufacturing works the same way. An electronics company does not warehouse years of televisions. It orders components when demand appears, assembles fast, and ships immediately.

This is just-in-time inventory. Or JIT in the logistics and transportation industries.

Companies love it. It lowers storage costs, cuts waste, and frees up capital, because inventory is money sitting still.

But notice the two assumptions hiding underneath. Demand has to be predictable. Suppliers have to be reliable

Now swap the bananas for explosives.

Military supply runs on the same logic. Shells, fuel, propellant, spare parts are ordered to arrive as needed, because depots are expensive and peacetime demand is predictable:

This is called logistics sustainment.

And you can already see the problem. War is what happens when demand stops being predictable. A supermarket that stocks three days of bananas is efficient. Until the whole town shows up on the same morning.

Then the trucks matter more than the shelves.

What this means

Just-in-time inventory and a military unused to high-intensity conflicts are the problem here.

What this means in simple terms:

• Material reserves don’t exist

• Ammunition reserves exist at low levels.

Western defense planners spent 30 years with a logistics system built around “just-in-time” delivery. The focus on precision munitions and low-intensity counterinsurgency, incentivized it.

What you see after 1991 is a switch. Instead of stockpiling and producing vast quantities of ammunition, supplying enough to fight current wars. Throughput was at the back of their minds.

But that assumption hit a wall in 2022. With the start of the Ukraine War, Ukraine began firing 6,000–7,000 artillery rounds per day in 2022. That pace was fast and burned through NATO stockpiles accumulated over two decades in under twelve months.

This creates a J-curve effect in defense economics:

So summarized:

• The first phase of a war burns existing inventory.

• The sustained phase requires new production at marginal cost.

If factories cannot make that handoff, a country can lose the war on a spreadsheet before losing it on a map. This goes for everything from shells and bullets to high end interceptors.

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And it works on a big assumption wars won’t last that long.

So how large was America’s hole? You need to look away from the complex interceptors misses or aircraft.

The real answer begins with one unglamorous object: the 155-millimeter shell.

The 155-Millimeter Problem

You might think the ammunition problem lives in complex weapons: cruise missiles, tanks, planes.

It doesn’t. Watch how a country makes its simplest ammunition, and you know how it fights a long war.

The answer starts with an object nobody thinks about: the 155-millimeter artillery shell.

Between February 2022 and March 2026, the United States drew down more than 3.6 million of them.

By March 2026, production had reached 36,000 shells a month. The Army’s target was 100,000.

Do the math. At that rate, replacing the lost inventory takes more than 8 years. if you do the math. That’s assuming you won’t fire another shot.

Why couldn’t it just make more?

It tried.

From 2022 through September 2025, the Army put $4.5 billion into expanding production. One new Texas facility was supposed to turn out 30,000 projectile bodies a month. By March 2026, after $469 million in spending, it had produced zero parts that met contract specifications.

You start to see that factories don’t scale when politicians announce targets. Machinery, workers, materials, testing, and certification must be in alignment and operations in place.

Which raises a stranger question: why is a metal shell so hard to make?

What Is a Shell Made Of?

A 155-millimeter shell looks simple. Crack one open, and you’ll see it isn’t:

A typical NATO shell is roughly 45–50 kilograms of steel, 7–10 kilograms of explosive fill, copper driving bands, and nitrocellulose-based propellant.

The steel is the easy part. But the chemistry is harder.

Smokeless powder starts as purified cotton linters or wood pulp, treated with concentrated nitric and sulfuric acid. Get the chemistry wrong and the powder burns wrong. The shell falls short….or the barrel bursts.

That gives artillery a surprising supply chain start:

You can order a million shells tomorrow. You can't order the acid line that fills them. Nitration capacity is slow to build, hard to substitute, and easy to overlook. Talent is also scarce.

And no single factory makes a shell:

The body might be forged in Pennsylvania. The explosive fill poured in Iowa. Assembly in Arkansas or Kansas. Propellant, fuzes, packaging, chemicals from somewhere else entirely. The Army wants to assemble 140,000 shells a month eventually. But an assembly line with no projectile bodies is a very expensive waiting room.

Then there’s the explosive itself: TNT.

The United States stopped making TNT in 1986. For the last 40 years, it’s bought it from suppliers in Poland, Australia, South America, and Asia. With haphazard attempts to rebuild its own supply locally.

More factories won’t fix this. The Army needs the whole manufacturing ecosystem. And that’s the problem:

• A shell line can be finished before the chemistry that fills it exists.

• A new assembly hall can look impressive while it waits on propellant, fuzes, and packaging.

All this takes longer to build than factories.

And all of this is for a simple munition. Interceptors require many more inputs to be useful.

A PAC-3 interceptor carries all of that and more:

The THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) used to shoot down Iranian ballistic missiles is just as complex. Maybe more:

That’s seekers, gyroscopes, actuators, thousands of electronic components with its own suppliers and its own bottlenecks.

A bullet intercepting a bullet needs guidance, and that means specialized avionics and flight systems.

The seeker alone is its own chokepoint. The Pentagon signed a dedicated framework agreement with Boeing “to triple the production capacity of seekers” because the subcontractor “delivered just 500” last year against 650–700 of demand.

Ordered today, a new PAC-3 Patriot missile takes about 42 months to arrive. A THAAD interceptor: 53. The US produces just 96 THAAD interceptors per year.

If a shell needs a cotton field, a forge, and a chemical plant? Then an interceptor needs all of that, plus a semiconductor and propellant supply chain.

But an event 30 years ago plays a role in this bottleneck.

One Plant in Utah

On May 4, 1988, a chemical plant caught fire outside Las Vegas.

The plant had 9 million pounds of a white powder on site. The fire reached the storage, and exploded, with 2 dead, and over 300 injured.

It remains the one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in American history:

What was all that powder? Rocket fuel.

Ammonium perchlorate is the oxidizer inside the solid rocket motors of nearly every major American missile: Patriot, THAAD, all of them. The propellant is rubber and powdered aluminum. The AP (as the industry calls it) is what makes it lift off:

One accident in 1989 and the missile supply ended up balanced on a single factory. 35 years later, it still is the only factory.

Rocket motor builders went the same way. Six suppliers in 2000, two by 2015. Aerojet Rocketdyne and Orbital ATK Beca, were folded into L3Harris and Northrop Grumman.

Why not just find new vendors?

Because a missile isn’t a toaster. It’s got a lot of inputs. Swap one chemical supplier, and you requalify the propellant, the motor, and the missile itself. Which means 18 months to 2 years before anything new flies.

AP and rocket engines remain a single point of failure

But even with upscaled manufacturing, it’s really the raw inputs that matter. But there’s heavy competition.

The Inputs Have Other Buyers

So, the domestic chain is brittle. At least America controls it, right?

Well, no. Remember March 2020.

Overnight, everybody wanted the same thing: the melt-blown fabric inside an N95 mask. Hospitals needed it. But so did construction crews, painters, and anyone who wanted to buy groceries in peace. One obscure material suddenly had a thousand buyers. And most of the world’s supply came from China.

The fabric didn’t change. But the line to purchase it did. A sustained black swan event changed everything.

That is the interceptor’s problem now too.

An interceptor’s radar and seeker run on gallium. One estimate counts 3,800 military uses for that metal alone.

In December 2024, China banned gallium exports to the United States. A few months later, seven heavy rare earths went behind an export license. These are critical metals in the magnets that steer an interceptor’s fins and hold its seeker on target, with missile systems named as the concern.

Until 2023, China processed 99 percent of the world’s heavy rare earths. You might have read there was a truce. There was, in 2025. But the military end-use ban was never lifted.

What this means is that civilians can wait for licenses. Missile makers are barred outright. Prices have noticed too.

There’s a second squeeze, too. These inputs don’t belong to the Pentagon. The same magnets go into electric cars. The same gallium goes into commercial chips. A Patriot competes with a Tesla for its own ingredients.

The inputs have other buyers. But the dominant seller, China, is also a geopolitical rival. This creates huge competition. An unpredictable bottleneck, since you are fighting both domestic and international restrictions.

This is what dependence means in practice: pipes that can be restricted, disrupted, or bid away while the meter is running.

Why Can’t America Import More?

You’re probably thinking: fine, production is slow. Why not just buy from allies stocks?

Because the allies are standing in the same queue. This summer, they found out where they stand in it. As the Iran war drained the stockpiles, Washington quietly started telling its customers to wait:

• Taiwan had its air-defense deliveries paused

• Poland, Norway, and the Baltics were warned to expect slips in deliveries.

• Switzerland was told its Patriots could arrive up to five years late.

Five years until an interceptor to defend your nation is finally produced and delivered. By then, the next war is beginning. Some customers stopped waiting.

Denmark canceled a Patriot order outright, then bought the French Italian SAMP/T instead. The Danes knew they were at the back of a very long line. Swiss were no different, and are shopping for a European-made substitute.

When your customers start building or buying rival products, you have a churn problem. And a production issue. The math underneath is brutal.

Already, half of America’s annual Patriot production goes to foreign buyers. As Ukraine’s president Zelensky noted, every Patriot fired over the Middle East is one Ukraine can’t get.

Imports only close a gap when somebody has surplus. During a global rearmament, nobody does. Moving interceptors from an ally’s depot to an American one moves the shortage rather than eliminating it.

Is there another way? Look at Russia.

From 2023 to 2025, Moscow imported 8 to 11 million artillery shells from North Korea. At the peak, that was half of everything its guns fired. The shells were so shoddy that half needed refurbishment before they could be used. But volume beat elegance.

That’s the thing about imports.

Imports are a faucet other people control.

“Good enough and available now” beats “excellent and delivered eventually.”

The interceptors, unlike artillery shells, are much more complex. A good enough and available now version of the Patriot, THAAD, and Tomahawk doesn’t exist in large enough quantities.

So how did the country with the trillion-dollar defense budget end up standing in its own queue?

America Planned for the Wrong War

For three decades, American war planning ran on one memory: 1991.

The victories of 1991, the Balkans, and the War on Terror hardened that assumption into doctrine.

They expected stealth, satellites, and smart bombs to destroy targets quickly. Exquisite weapons mattered more than mountains of cost-effective weaponry.

Two Chinese PLA officers spotted the trap before America did. In 1999, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui wrote in Unrestricted Warfare:

“This massive amount of weapons with unreasonable cost-effectiveness has covered the U.S. military with increasingly heavy armor, pushing them step by step toward the high-tech weapons trap where the cost stakes continue to be raised.”

Their metaphor was sharper. America, they said, was "attacking birds with golden bullets." And the translation notes a catch: "only a rich country can afford to fight this kind of war."

Here is what a golden bullet costs:

• THAAD interceptor: ~$15.5 million each. Prewar inventory was 452; by August 2026, somewhere between 234 and 278 remained. Delivery time for a new one: about 53 months.*

• Patriot PAC-3 MSE interceptor: ~$5.3 million each in the Army’s latest budget, up from a historical average of around $4 million.

• Tomahawk cruise missile: ~$4.7 million each. Congress funded 55 for $258 million in FY2026. Each can strike targets more than 1,000 nautical miles away.

Look at the top two items again. The most expensive weapons on the list don't attack anything. They defend. America built an arsenal around the bullets it fires at other bullets.

None of this means the weapons are ineffective. They are extraordinarily capable. Very few countries can match American precision strike, missile defense, sensors, or targeting networks.

But that is the high-tech weapons trap. A weapon can be tactically efficient, and economically and strategically unsustainable. The V2 was like this for the Germans during WW2.

And the trap has a trigger. It was built for wars that are short, precise, and over before the invoice arrives. It stops working when wars turn long, and when cost assymetry starts to become the main driver of victory.

Last thoughts

That is a lot of ground to cover. So in summary:

• The American arsenal isn’t empty, but it is unbalanced. The military still has weapons, but not necessarily enough of the right weapons, in the right places, to sustain a long war while supporting allies and preserving reserves for another crisis.

• Countries run out of ammunition when their political commitments grow faster than manufacturing capabilities. It wants to deter China, support allies, defend shipping, protect bases, and prepare for several contingencies at once. But its peacetime industrial base was built for smaller orders, longer timelines, and more predictable demand.

• Golden bullet weapons may work, but cost exchange rates can be ruinous. A 400 dollar drone against a 250,000 dollar interceptor means the richer side loses money faster, and money is what buys the next round. Cost-exchange ratios set the tempo.

• Good enough and available now can beat excellent and delivered eventually. Everything else, morale and tactics and alliances, sits downstream of that one subtraction.

Thanks for reading!

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For years, we’ve known about the impact of social media on world events. From the Arab Spring to the current Iran War, these events have significantly shaped the course of events in unexpected ways.

But as we get further into the century, social media has shifted from a communication tool to information warfare.

Social media is heavily affected. We know something is happening. But you might not know how this is exactly done:

Lots to dig into here. But while technology forms the foundation of information war in the AI age? It doesn’t wholly convince people of your narrative.

Do we know what is true anymore? How are governments using it? And what is the deep strategy that is used to fight an info war?

To answer that, we need to understand what info war means in the 21st century.

The bottom of this article could be cut off in some email clients. Read the full article, unbroken here.

The Shift

At one point, social media was tryly social. You logged on, connected with friends, and made connections across the world. The medium had no strategic purpose, and it had users.

That changed rapidly as social media was adopted and started to influence events. And it’s not an exception. Every communication revolution since the printing press has traced the same pattern:

1. Amusmement

2. Enthusiastic techno-utopian predictions

3. Mass adoption

4. Commoditization and commercialization

5. Ideological adoption

6. Government regulation and co-option

Every communications revolution has followed the same arc, and each time the participants believed they were witnessing liberation. They were witnessing rearmament.

Merchants, for example, adopted the telegraph as a convenience of commerce. By 1914, governments had turned it into the nervous system of mass mobilization. Radio experienced a similar effect in the 1920s and 1930s.

In each case, societies embraced the new technology without any framework of what it would do to them. Then it was pragmatically adopted later by governments that learned the theory from challenges to their monopoly on power.

Social media is now completing this passage. Part of why we are starting to see a dead internet theory become more and more real.

What is different is not that states have learned to manipulate information. But how do they change our perception of it?

How are governments influencing the narrative?

States have manipulated information since civilization began. Pay off an oracle here, exaggerate a bulletin there. But that existed in a time of information asymmetry. Few people were literate. Even when they gained literacy, control of information sat firmly with governments and big media.

But social media changed that asymmetry for the first time in human history:

Why? Because it adds an environment that no single nation can rule. Even if a nation controls a social media platform, the volume and variety of data is far too vast.

There’s a shift now that AI and generative AI can mass-produce narratives and truth at an industrial scale, as I said before in a different article:

The volume is far too high now. Even for those who work in the field. Governments are no different. They can no longer ignore false information or block it. Instead, they must maintain narrative initiative at home and abroad.

There are many theories on how to leverage AI to help win the propaganda and information war. But I want to start with the foundation: deep integration.

The Boring Step Everyone Skips

With so many conflicting sources of truth, governments have turned to an old strategy: centralize the source of truth. Or at least multiple versions that benefit it.

This is deep integration. The fusion of technology, platforms, and data management to manage messaging.

Sounds simple. But logistically, it’s hard.

Nations must not only keep narrative consistency but also merge multiple channels into a single production system. While responding to the extremely fast velocity of social media. This is the part where AI is used the least, but it sets the foundation.

A message repeated across ten channels persuades more than the same message stated once.

What it really does:

• Narrative consistency. It’s a myth that a state loses by telling lies. It loses on its own contradictions. An adversary catches you saying two different things in two different places, points at the gap, and lets your audience finish the argument. Deep integration closes the gap before anyone can pry it open.

• Production centralization. Owning the production pipeline and the platform controls every message before it exists. I’ve said before that great powers this century need control of at least one platform of their own. They also use this on their rivals’ platforms to disrupt events.

• Framing speed. Stories move fast, and you want people locking onto one version while encouraging another to get memory-holed. The trick is to shrink the time between an event and the story you want wrapped around it. A single production line wired for AI frames faster. And when the story turns against you, it reframes faster too.

• Coordination is a capability. Belief is a judgment someone else makes. An integrated system guarantees that every channel repeats the same line at the same hour. It guarantees nothing about whether anyone believes it.

So the state can now line up its message across every platform it owns, and across a few it doesn't. You can watch it happen in both directions.

American voices are turning up on Chinese apps like Weibo and Xiaohongshu. Chinese state voices are turning up here on Substack or X.

All of them are posing as independent influencers but are hired by others. And they’re not on X by accident:

There’s nothing wrong with that, and that’s just the nature of it now.

Blocking or censoring a story is crude. Accelerating one and redirecting another narrative is the real skill. You get it to outrun the negative.

You can’t do either without centralizing production first.

Deep integration can guarantee that every channel says the same thing at the same hour. But it can't guarantee that anyone believes it.

You can build coordination, but belief gets people to buy into your narrative. But how do you do that? And how do you manufacture belief and doubt at scale?

Why Speed Compounds Now

Shaping belief isn’t easy. It requires a digital ecosystem that gives experiences rather than slogans. Call it building a vibe ecosystem, and I’ll go into that a bit more.

While deep integration gets media and government to build something even more important.

This is AI-driven media operations.

You’re probably thinking AI-driven operations = producing deepfakes or making bots sound human. That’s part of it. But what it is about is trying to reach broader and more diverse global and domestic audiences.

You’re not getting rid of the human. But you are algorithmically conditioning them based on:

• user behavioral data on websites

• responses to LLM chatbots

• dynamic recommendation engines that synthesize that data

It’s using g AI directly to accelerate a narrative, seize the initiative, tailor and personalize it in real time, and project it to new audiences. Interesting no?

There are different ways that this is done. But several things I’ve found consistently stick out:

• Narrative projection to gain ground. Most people think of narrative control as defense, but offense is more important. With the volume of data important is offense. This extends far beyond censoring sensitive topics. We're talking about subtle guidance on religion, culture, national reputation, and the principles of international relations.

• Persuades by vibes first, arguments later. The new approach is a conversation. And they are your tour guide. It's far easier when you give them something to experience and vibe through. Like a digital museum showcasing your cultural and national achievements. You have even more credibility if they can live vicariously through an influencer. Xinhua News Agency launched an AI current-affairs agent called “Xinhua Yudian”, to frame and answer questions about news.

• Digital experiences as narrative building. It's easier to create a sympathetic narrative if you give experiences. Virtual experiences and avatars create curated experiences to create narrative experiences. Saudi Arabia did this with a metaverse that let users explore Saudi heritage through avatars.

• Regional personalization. Personalization has never been easier. But most people still think of this as translation: take the message, put it in another language, done. That's not personalization. AI-driven ops can create media or interact with groups in their language. Even personalize their message and live stream it with influencer cloning,

• Plausibility. The first coherent account of an event sets the terms for every account that follows. Speed is the prize, not reach or accuracy. Responses and creating an experience/frame around this matter. Machine learning can be used to get the temperature and sentiment of emotions and prejudices to screen and target receptive audiences.

What this enables is content manipulation rather tha messaging and censorship. Or at least an agent that is skilled at framing events in ways that benefit your narrative.

China Daily has already moved on the AI-agent front specifically, contracting Tencent Cloud in 2024 to build a communication agent system for automating news production and content review.

Notice that AI operations have several parts:

• experiences

• two-way communication

• cloud platform

• personalization

• data collection

This is a superpower. Instead of wasting time refuting counter-narratives, you're shaping opinion and narratives, all the while collecting multiple types of user data.

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You can keep a captive audience entertained and locked on to a narrative vibe. But even in this case, AI doesn’t replace humans. To get full buy-in to a narrative requires a further and more proactive step…

3. Ecosystem Operations: human in the loop

We instinctively reject obvious AI-generated content or work. But if it plausible or useful to our interests and psychological well-being? We may accept it.

But this depends on the generation.

Gen Z consumers have a more negative sentiment toward AI ads than Millennials, Gen X, or Boomers viewing AI-generated work. What to do in this case?

It’s going back to the source. We still need humans to amplify, respond, and shape messaging. This goes for both countering a narrative and narrative shaping

An ecosystem operation thrives on the social aspect of social media and uses the network effect to spread its narrative. This is the core aspect of seizing and holding initiative in info wars.

Holding the initiative of the attack is harder for governments using AI and social media alone. This means using a human network to amplify the AI message:

1. Build partnerships with influencers. To get an ordinary person on board with your message, bring influencers. Better yet, create a stable of them to do your bidding. Many have outside contributors for exactly this. Or even let their reporters become influencers, while hiding their connections. Reality is that the borrowed voice is the cheapest and most credible, while state and corporate media have lower returns and less authenticity.

2. Partner with think tanks and international institutions. Spreading a broader message requires credible institutions. Think tanks buy the one thing influencer partnerships can't: duration. A sponsored post has the shelf life of a news cycle. A citation in a policy brief gets reused for a decade by readers who skip the question of who funded it.

3. Find the institutional fifth column. There is always some intellectual or NGO somewhere willing to be a mouthpiece. Trying them together and creating a network of international sponsors and advocates, which adds institutional credibility to your AI-driven ecosystem operations. Makes it look less generative and programmatic, and more an appeal to authority.

All of these lend credibility at multiple levels: to ordinary people, the credentialed, and eventually to political institutions. It’s a funnel of sorts:

To build a narrative that lasts, it is not enough for it to go viral. Virality lasts until the next exciting dopamine hit. You need to institutionalize your narrative internationally, not just let it go viral.

Core principle of info war:

The influencers gain reach and impressions. AI to industrialize the message, but you need real humans to give it credibility:

What happens in the information space outside a nation is now the core of waging an info war.

Both China and North Korean accounts have made big strides in this, judging by how both are marketing their quality of life hard:

In the past, you created broad mass messages, which People’s Daily, Prvada, or Voice of America used to create a singular message. Now, narrative and info war demands personalized ones. Individuals are served up what appeals to them best, from different accounts.

But the real force multiplier comes from knitting these actors into a coordinated network that can cross-cite, cross-promote, and cross-validate.

It means:

• An influencer references a policy brief

• The think tank cites the "grassroots" enthusiasm the influencer generated

• An international sponsor funds a conference where both appear on stage together.

Each node in the network lends its credibility to the others, creating a hall-of-mirrors effect where the same narrative appears to emerge independently from multiple authoritative sources.

AI-driven operations sit at the center, quietly optimizing who says what, when, and to whom. While mapping persona groups, messaging in real time, and algorithmically and dynamically A/B testing messages. With the help of humans like behavioral psychologists.

This was done several years ago by several major corporations in designing their social media algorithms. Some of which I worked on in my real-life work.

So Is This Good or Bad?

Now that this is happening, should we be worried about how governments are doing influence operations, and fracturing our reality? Here’s some pros and cons I’ve thought of:

Reasons I’m Concerned

1. Diplomacy runs on a shared description of events. Negotiation needs both parties to agree on what happened. Governments can disagree about what a border incident meant and still make a deal. They can't make a deal when the two publics believe different incidents occurred.

2. Confirmation bias is rampant. We have a commentary class that performs knowledge and consistently regurgitates facts and slogans. Many great thinkers and commentators have left major social media platforms, going to smaller ones with better culture. Or Discord servers that are echo chambers.

3. The state ends up reading its own output as evidence. A large share of the accounts producing that engagement belong to the operation. So the ministry reads its own bots and files the result as public opinion.

4. Speed removes the time leaders need to be wrong in private. The whole point of framing speed is to shrink the gap between an event and the story. That gap is also where officials figure out what actually happened.

Reasons I’m Less Concerned

1. The adaptation clock has barely started. Narrative and influence operations are as old as time. This is nothing new. But the hard fact is that most of us are unfamiliar with this way of propaganda war. Boomers and Gen X grew up prior to the digital age. Millennials grew up as it matured. While Gen Z was born before GenAI and most social media algos. Counters and frameworks to manage in war will emerge. But Gen AI is only 3 years old, and that’s not enough time to adapt to structural changes at a cultural, societal, or political level. Even responses to the structural benefits and abuses of the Industrial Revolution took 20 years to show.

2. Cheap signals lose value as they multiply.

   Audiences discount whatever costs nothing to make. It happened to the pamphlet, then the radio address, then the cable chyron, then the viral tweet.

   Trust moves toward whatever is expensive to fake: someone you’ve met, a local paper with a name on the masthead, an institution with something to lose. You can already see it in how people react to obvious AI output.

3. Dead internet theory. We have now reached a state were the output of media is so wide, we just want to turn it all off. Some accounts and people have silently left. This may limit the reach of a message, or force it through discredited mouthpieces.

4. Coordination has a poor conversion rate. Look at the returns. The apparatus produces output you can measure. It hasn't produced policy you can measure. Every channel says the same thing at the same hour and the audience files it under advertising.

Thanks for reading!

As always, thank you, paid subscribers, for supporting The People’s Art of War.

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This episode cuts through the noise, exploring how influencer politicians, alternative media incentives, and the attention economy are distorting our understanding of one of the most consequential wars in recent memory.

Join us as we break down the dynamics from the escalation trap forming around Kharg Island, to the water security crisis that could dwarf the oil story, to the quiet power struggle inside the White House between the Netanyahu-aligned camp and the Vance/Thiel coalition.

Hope you enjoy!

Watch on listen on Spotify. Transcript is below if you want to read.

We discuss:

• The state of the U.S.-Iran war five weeks in and what the commentary class got wrong

• Why media literacy is at an all-time low and how alternative media became part of the problem

• The influencer politician framework and how going viral replaced actual policy

• Iran’s five conditions for peace and why the Gulf states are pulling strings behind the scenes

• The escalation trap around Kharg Island and the sunk cost fallacy driving U.S. strategy

• Israel’s role in preventing de-escalation and what sovereignty really looks like in this conflict

• Why water security, not oil, may be the most catastrophic wildcard in the region

• The Vance/Thiel camp’s quiet resistance and what it means for the 2028 political landscape

Where to find Carter:

• X: CarterHLawson

Chapters

• 00:00 The State of the Iran War

• 06:05 Media Literacy and the Influence of Alternative Media

• 11:48 The Dynamics of the Current Political Landscape

• 17:59 Iran’s Conditions and the Future of the Conflict

• 32:28 Iran’s Leverage and U.S. Military Strategy

• 39:21 The Role of Israel and Regional Sovereignty

• 45:58 Water Security: A Critical Factor in Conflict

• 51:54 The Humanitarian Crisis of Water Scarcity

• 57:46 Domestic Politics and the Future of U.S. Engagement

1. The State of the Iran War (00:00)

Pplsartofwar (00:01.208)

Hi and welcome to States Craft. Today we’re again with Carter and we are discussing the Iran war. We are at almost a month now in the Iran war and we are seeing some very interesting developments, including a possible ground invasion.

Carter H. Lawson (00:18.664)

Yeah, I think we’re about five weeks into this and it does look like we are looking at some kind of ground operation of the nature of which I think will be one of the main topics on the show today.

Pplsartofwar (00:30.234)

Yes, and there’s a lot of questions here because no one is a hundred percent sure what’s going on and we’ve also seen so much misinformation going into this. The commentary ecosystem is saying everything from Kharg Island to those islands in the Persian Gulf and it just goes on and on. I mean, that brings us to the first point here: the commentary ecosystem is really performing. In fact, some people on Twitter even said it’s kind of strange that they have to ask Iran for understanding of what’s really going on rather than looking at the United States. Because what we’ve seen from Truth Social, we’ve seen from Twitter, we’ve seen from other places, there’s just been an increasing number of leaks that seem like leaks but are really just meant there to promote virality.

Every single time Trump says, “we are in the middle of a negotiation,” the head of the Iranian parliament says, “no, this is a complete lie.” And it’s just been going back and forth and back and forth on this. So I mean, what patterns have you seen that are visible in the last week? And what’s aged so badly?

Carter H. Lawson (01:45.398)

Well, I think the biggest one—and this will age badly because it’s so obvious what’s happening—is that there’s no way, especially in retrospect, for us to be able to understand this conflict without acknowledging the fact that Trump is just saying stuff that he thinks will help stall for time, will help the market feel good about what’s happening right now. It’s clear that we are going to go towards, if this conflict continues for even twice the length it’s currently gone on for, we’re looking at... I wouldn’t use the word recession, but at this point, it feels overused. I just think, definitely economic catastrophe when it comes to energy and oil, et cetera.

And for Trump, it seems that it’s not even a secret anymore that he’s just saying whatever it is to please the market. If you look at the timing of his statements, he’ll wait until just before and after the markets open to say specific things. If he wants to be a little more aggressive, he’ll wait until just after the markets closed. If he wants to say, “no, we’re in the middle of talks and negotiations,” right before the market closes, he’ll say statements like that. It’s a really dirty business and certainly should be illegal. I think history will see that exactly for what it is.

Pplsartofwar (02:56.745)

Right. I mean, Pezeshkian, the head of the Iranian government, called it out as market dumping. And I’ve seen a few accounts online such as Macro Edge and Don Johnson, who runs that account, have completely said, “look, this is a major disaster because you are having someone pumping the markets.” But at the same time, the markets are no longer believing them. And yet the market just stays up, which doesn’t really make sense because the commentary ecosystem is performing, but it’s not being priced into the markets and people are trying to wave this off.

What you’re seeing in this waving off form is different from before. Before, they kept assuming he’s chicken—the famous “taco Trump“ always chickens out. What we’ve seen from Greenland, from Panama, from all these other ones is eventually he chickens out last minute, gets an okay deal, and then spins it as this great victory. But what we’re seeing with all this is it’s different. People are insisting that he’s going to taco—and I’ve seen this from several people like Marco Papic, who’s a really good analyst, and people in the finance sphere. And there’s not just an expectation, but it also feels like there is a prayer that he will taco.

Going back to the commentary you were mentioning before, the markets aren’t pricing it in. And it’s just really interesting to watch this because they’re all predicting a ceasefire, they’re all predicting that he’s just going to walk it off, which is possible. But at this point, how much of this is an escalation trap? And how much of this is just being, in your opinion, being fueled by the commentary class here, who are just trying to speculate this and bet like we mentioned before?

2. Media Literacy and the Influence of Alternative Media (06:05)

Carter H. Lawson (04:49.556)

You know, I think media literacy is at an all-time low. And as we discussed on our Epstein episode, the role of the promise of alternative media, when it emerged about 10 years ago as the Intellectual Dark Web, as the non-mainstream media... now it’s at the point where it really is competing with top media companies. You know, Tucker Carlson’s podcast alone, I think has a larger influence than Fox News at this point in terms of viewership to actual impact on worldview ratio.

The big promise of alternative media was: finally we’ll have investigations, we’ll have journalists without any partisan alliances even, without any alliance to any major corporation or major donor. We’ve just seen that that has not come true. I mean, certainly there are a few, but we’re still in this world where we have the whole Tenet Media scandal where you had Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, a few other big names in conservative commentary that were being paid by this apparently billionaire overseas that was really interested in conservative media. He had this whole fake profile made for this guy—turns out it was Russian intelligence the entire time as a Russian op. And I think just more and more we’re seeing, if you just crack open the hood of a lot of these people in this commentator class, you’re seeing over and over the people are doing their best to bend reality to their position instead of the opposite of it. The whole promise was we’re going to start with just the reality, then we will form positions, they will debate the ideas in the free market of ideas. And again, that is happening, but it’s not happening a lot on the top podcast charts. I’ll just say that much.

Pplsartofwar (06:10.06)

Right.

Pplsartofwar (06:25.515)

And I feel like people were expecting this debate club where people would sit down, be logical, debate points, notice things, and then further come up with conclusions. But what we’re getting here with a lot of these GeoPol accounts on X is mob rule. We’re getting mob rule. So there are so many people with so many maligned incentives getting “Elon bucks” from the platform, trying to get their bets up for Kalshi or Polymarket like we mentioned before in the gambling episode. I mean, arsonist incentive.

And then you’ve got all these, I would say, multipolar world bros who are doing this as top of funnel. What I’ve noticed is you run into an ecosystem of two or three accounts—which I think some people know who I’m talking about—who run a whole bunch of small businesses and they’re using this as top of funnel to get people to buy into their small business because they’re aligned with a certain political position, or they are aligning with the multipolar position, or they’re aligning with a pro-American MAGA position.

The point is, it’s not about what the position is, but they are using the political position to be able to sell and push a product from investment products to, I would even say, retail. And it’s the most interesting thing we’re seeing here because they’re not just collecting money from Elon bucks, but they’re also collecting money from downstream predictions. It’s all top of funnel. So it makes you wonder like, what is the incentive for these people? It’s arsonist incentive.

Carter H. Lawson (08:12.976)

Yeah, we’re in the attention economy, you know? So even building a platform no matter what it’s on is kind of seen as a valuable thing. In the same way that I think hustle culture says, “it doesn’t matter as long as you’re making the money.” It could be drop-shipping absolute crap, but hey, you’re getting your grind on. I think with influencers, it’s becoming a lot of the same thing.

And it gets to a point where it is just pretty inhumane and gross. We’re not just talking about whether something Trump said is racist or not. We’re talking about the ethics of us bombing, dropping a Tomahawk on a girls’ school in Iran. We’re talking about the ethics of regime change, the thousands of lives and cities and livelihoods destroyed in the wake of that. And that being treated as just kind of another headline. There is something kind of gross about it all.

Especially when there’s such a thick fog of war, and it really is hard to understand what’s happening. I mean, a lot of the takes you’ve seen over the past five weeks have aged so horribly. So horribly. People predicting Iran would have collapsed, people predicting the U.S. would have collapsed by now, people predicting that Israel would have used a nuke by now. I mean, you’ve seen some of the most impossibly bad takes, but it’s not about the analytical rigor of them. It’s about how well can they go viral. And in that regard, hey, everyone’s a winner. You know what I mean? And that’s kind of a problem.

Pplsartofwar (09:36.651)

And in fact, Nikita Beer and Elon had to change the algorithm and redo it simply because there was so much AI slop. There was so much polemic, kangers showing up and trying to game the system. And it was affecting their payouts. I think they practically almost... I don’t think they suspended the payouts, but they did certainly reduce it. And the commentary now is about being fast and reacting the quickest rather than actually being useful.

One point I would like to point out is this is a huge, huge difference than the Ukraine war. The Ukraine war happened in February 2022 before all this, before ChatGPT came out. And there is a huge difference. In the Ukraine war, people were trying to analyze, I would say, tank movements. They were trying to count Russian equipment. They were trying to latch onto videos and see like, what’s the changes here? What are we noticing here? Like, what’s the course of the war? Where is Zelensky? Where is Putin moving in all this? And what’s the United States doing? There was more noticing and then trying to argue and troll each other for facts. But there was a coherent framework of coherent structure coming out.

And what we’re seeing here now is after GPT came out and generative AI—generative everything—people have changed from trying to notice things to trying to create things to feed a therapy story. Some people joke like, “geopolitics is therapy for men.” It’s really true. What we’re seeing is a lot of capeshit crap. People believing, “well, this war will be the one that will end the United States hegemony,” or people saying, “this war will be the war that makes the United States rich after the end of this.”

3. The Dynamics of the Current Political Landscape (11:48)

Carter H. Lawson (11:55.153)

I mean, in your opinion, how has this changed versus 2022 and versus how people consumed news during Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam? Because you talked to me about this before when we were off the podcast, and it’s a really interesting opinion I think people need to hear. Well, first, to be able to kind of hit the ball out of the park on that, can you explain your idea of the influencer politician? You talk about this all the time on Twitter. You’ve written articles on it. It’s such a fantastic framework about thinking about so many of, especially Western leaders today. Do you mind explaining just kind of that and that idea in general?

Pplsartofwar (12:13.866)

Yeah, I can explain that first. Okay, so basically the idea of the influencer politician is that the whole point of policy is to go viral. So people would in the past... of course, all politicians are theatrical. I get this response that people say, “well, they’re just being theatrical,” not necessarily.

So Roosevelt, I mean, Hitler, I mean, we go down the line from democratic people to dictators. The point of the theatricalness was to build up support for a policy and to be able to get people out there pushing the policy so that the leader could achieve an end. That was the point.

Now, what you get with influencer politicians, you see several things. One: the influencer politician does not care about the policy. That’s the main one. They care if they go viral. They care what trends. So we see this with Trump and Kharg Island. I mean, everyone from the Iranians to average Twitter users to even a second lieutenant will know looking at Kharg Island: this is not possible to take. And when you’re broadcasting it like this, this destroys operational security, OPSEC. But Trump keeps pushing it. Why? Because it’s viral, because people are talking about it. And whether or not that operation succeeds—let’s say it fails tomorrow, maybe it succeeds—the point is, it went viral.

And the idea behind an influencer politician is that they like to gamble. Because gambling gives them great virality, they like to say things and then change it the next minute because they know that the public doesn’t have any object memory. They’ll forget things within three months. And they also know that the public likes spectacles because they have been pre-primed by social media to do that. What we get with influencer politicians is they’re constantly reacting.

They’re not setting policy. And they go after constantly exciting things, but at the same time, because they’re going after exciting things, they destroy any fundamental base that a nation has. We’re seeing this trend—of course, Trump is one—but we’re also seeing the more conservative politicians also doing this too. So, I mean, we see this with Sanae Takaichi in Japan. She’s doing that drum solo with the Korean president, which is... I get it, it’s not totally influencer politician stuff. And then Macron’s little aviator sunglasses stunt. I mean, the only two people right now who are not doing this ludicrous crap are ironically Putin and Xi.

Carter H. Lawson (14:58.445)

Yeah. And people are noticing that. I mean, I can’t find a part of the political aisle that’s not just a normie CNN viewer or Fox News viewer that doesn’t look at them with some admiration, which a lot of people find incredibly bizarre. They have a ton of issues with both of those men. But I think they just enjoy the idea of a powerful, respected, scary head of state.

Which, without even giving my own opinion, I just think, yeah, we’re just at the point with Trump where I think he thinks he gives off that impression, but it just seems at this point people around him are scared of his unpredictability, not because of any cunning he has, but because of the idiocy he’s displayed just throughout, especially the second term.

To me, the cognitive decline is so clear with him. And I think to kind of touch on the moment you’re talking about, one reason these influencer politicians can get away with just saying one thing one day and quite literally the opposite the next day is because there’s not really any big moments anymore in politics. Everything is just one in one year, out the other. What’s today’s news, what’s today’s thing? It’s like the whole world and news cycle has become TikTok. All information has become short-formatized.

Do you remember Joe Kent resigning a week or two weeks ago? It already feels like that’s old news. And to me, that’s one of the biggest things to happen domestically since the start of the war. Really? He’s going to resign? This is a man who in Special Forces had seen over 10 deployments, has had his wife killed in combat in these Middle East wars, fought in those Middle East wars, and says in his resignation letter that Israel has been the one kind of dragging us into all of these conflicts in the Middle East we’ve seen in the 21st century and even before that.

4. Iran's Conditions and the Future of the Conflict (17:59)

Carter H. Lawson (17:18.445)

He later talks on podcasts that have gotten tens of millions of views that he did all that—he had the role he did in the administration to hopefully help pull against Israeli influence, to help bring some common sense into the room, to help re-establish American interest in the executive, which is just kind of a crazy thing. I think the influencer politician’s mindset, understanding that is so crucial because I really think... you asked the question earlier, just overall impressions.

I think right now what we’re seeing is two clans are starting to emerge within the executive. I think Trump is full on with Netanyahu and the Israeli interests—we’re going to drag this war on as long as possible. Because you need to... and this is for the reasons that we talked about in our last Iran episode that we recorded last week... that Israel’s goal, their aim, is a Greater Israel, capital G.

They want territorial expansion. They want to be a hegemon in their region and they want to destroy any legitimate rivalry to their power. And right now that is the role that Iran is playing. A lot of people that have talked about wanting to give Iran a nuke, letting them develop a nuke... that’s one of the reasons they’ll cite, that certain camps cite, is that Israel being the only nuclear power in the region and being so hostile towards everyone around them, not to mention the other kind of religious hostilities and differences, is creating such an imbalance. Over the past few decades, that’s so predictable.

And here we are. I think this is their big moment. They have everything to lose, which is why they’re invested.

And then you have the other camp: the Vance camp. And I really think we have a lot of conflicting reporting about what role Vance is playing in this.

On the campaign trail, he talked about how he was opposed to this war, yet right before the breakout of this war and in the past few weeks, where has he been? Where is JD Vance?

There was talk that he was telling the president, “you know, we want to do limited strikes, nothing too crazy,” leading up to the strikes themselves. There’s talk from the Miriam Adelson-owned Israeli paper saying Vance and Netanyahu are fighting, claiming that Vance was yelling on the phone to Netanyahu—this is also in Axios—yelling on the phone to Netanyahu talking about killing the settlers in the West Bank and how awful that is.

And then you simultaneously have Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post saying that Vance has been requested by name by the Iranians to lead the negotiations. So what I think is happening here is that you have David Sacks, who’s spoken out against the war. Joe Kent has spoken out against the war. What do these three men have in common? JD Vance, David Sacks, and Joe Kent. They are all associates of Peter Thiel. They’ve all known Peter Thiel for decades. And Joe Kent’s congressional race had Peter Thiel funding. And I know for a fact that before we even get to the Trump-Vance 2024 ticket—which I believe the largest campaign contribution in American history was done by Peter Thiel because Vance was on that ticket—you have even in Vance’s Senate race, you had $15 million in donations from Thiel and $1 million in donation from David Sacks.

So it looks like they’re trying to create this coalition to say, “we are going to be against this war. We’re going to negotiate against this war.” It seems like what those Rupert Murdoch and more Israeli-aligned types are trying to do is spin the narrative that Iran is personally requesting Vance because they know that Vance will be more lenient with Iran. He won’t be as hawkish. He’ll let them get what they want. Maybe even throw in some ideas of, “he’s anti-Semitic,” because who else is in this new anti-war network? You have Tucker Carlson.

Who’s Tucker Carlson aligned with? Famously defended Nick Fuentes, who is obviously against this war. Tucker Carlson’s son, Buckley Carlson, works in JD Vance’s press office. You had calls during the whole Fuentes-led MAGA Civil War in the late fall, early winter, from Israeli-aligned individuals saying that Vance needs to fire Buckley Carlson. Vance said, “I’m not going to do that. People should be able to pursue whatever ideas they want.”

Now you might be going, “okay, so you have this wing going, what is their interest?” Is it really that Vance is “based”? Is he going to be against Israel? I don’t think it’s like that. I think the biggest benefit he and the Thiel camp see from Israel is how much they are helping in specifically the creation of tech, AI, and surveillance technologies and intelligence, right? And if Palantir is... yeah, go ahead. I know I’m outlaying a lot.

Pplsartofwar (21:48.127)

So, right, in terms of how this has affected the MAGA commentary, what patterns are you seeing here? We know that Thiel, we know that Vance and the rest are behind this, but there’s a larger narrative that these guys are starting to shape online. And it’s very interesting because what we’re seeing now from the commentary and the commentary class that supports these guys... it’s like they’ve been not only moving the goalposts, they’re tentatively just trying to justify in real time. It’s not a very aggressive reaction. It’s a very “we don’t want this,” but they’re trying to find a silver lining to all this. If you notice all the accounts on X.

Carter H. Lawson (22:42.943)

Yeah, it kind of feels like some of them are mourning in a way. You know what I mean? Because they’re talking about how this coalition that was built up—this diverse right-wing, you know what I mean? You had a massive growth in Hispanic voters, massive growth across all demographics voting Republican, voting for Trump. And it’s this whole idea of, “we’re going to throw away that big coalition we built because of the Iran war.” So I think those are kind of the MAGA anti-war types. That’s some of the angles I’ve seen.

And then I do agree. You do have people saying—how many times have you heard the statement in the past month or so—”Iran’s always been a thorn in our side. It doesn’t hurt to take them out. This is an opportunity to test out new technology, to let our warfighters do their thing.” That’s the Pete Hegseth rhetoric. I don’t buy that. And I think deep down, these people don’t buy it either.

What were the two big things Trump promised? No new wars, and we are going to do mass deportations. Well, mass deportations got thrown out the window. The numbers of last year’s deportations came out incredibly underwhelming. You had the ICE protests earlier this year seeming to be successful in their aim. And here we go. We have a war in the Middle East that I don’t even think the biggest war hawks would say, “yeah, we’re going to do a boots-on-the-ground operation in Iran a year and a half into our new administration.”

Obviously, I think this was in the works. This was the goal of this administration from the campaign. I don’t think any of this was a mistake. I just think Trump was going to be anything to anybody. You had a lot of Somalians showing up to his rallies he did in Michigan because they thought, “oh, he’s going to end the war between Israel and Palestine. That means that the West Bank will hold as it is.” But it’s like, no, dude, if you follow the money, that was never the plan. But Trump was totally fine with people thinking that as long as it got him elected.

Pplsartofwar (24:35.305)

And that’s going back to what we were saying about the influencer class too and the commentary thing. I mean, this is the American side of the equation. When we look at the commentary class on the other side of all of this, like I would say the Middle East, Pakistan, and India, we’re starting to see this sort of pattern where they... I mean, they’re going a lot farther than the American or the Western accounts in terms of trying to perform this. Like MAGA is trying to perform, obviously, but these other guys are trying to spin it as some sort of victory. I’ve seen them throw it out as some sort of victory.

I’ve seen it where like you’ve seen the Arab states or the Gulf states where if you’re in like Saudi accounts where there’s a bunch of Saudis, there’s a bunch of Gulf staters, they aren’t seeing it. It’s strange. They aren’t. Some of them are not seeing this as “United States started this war.”

Logically, it looks like that. Some of them are saying, “yeah, Iran attacked us. So we need to make sure that Iran never feels this again.” And on top of that, you’ve got these groups in India and Pakistan who are practically milking this. People look at the actual location of where these guys are—they’re playing both sides. They’re playing MAGA, they’re the multipolar guys, or they’re opening multiple accounts just to keep this rage going.

5. Iran's Leverage and U.S. Military Strategy (32:28)

Carter H. Lawson (26:14.865)

Yeah. I mean, let me ask you, what’s the best case to be made that this is a victory for the United States? I mean, are you even willing to try to make that case? Because I really am trying to open my mind to it... I don’t see a world where this is a victory for the United States. Because even if we are to say, “Iran’s the world capital, the world export of terrorism,” you’ve seen that thrown around. It’s like, trying to topple their regime and destroying Tehran, which is bigger than New York City—leveling that... I don’t think that’s going to reduce terror in the slightest. So what do you think are the benefits that will come out of this war, if any, for the United States?

Pplsartofwar (26:51.825)

There’s really none to say about this. You’re collapsing... I mean, the commentary class has mentioned this several times, but they have a point.

This is going to, if this keeps going on, this is going to collapse the helium supplies. I mean, there are people telling me, “no, it’s not going to collapse the helium supplies,” and then the chip makers will bid on it. Because helium is used in making GPU chips, compute, that’s used for AI and also normal computers. But I keep seeing commentaries saying, “you know, it’s not going to do that.” But at the same time, if you have a reduction that increases the cost and because the supply is being choked out, that affects long-term planning.

And then also you’ve got all the petroleum and petroleum-derived products. People don’t realize that some of this stuff goes into roads—you use petroleum products to pave roads, for example, and insulators on electricity stuff. But the point here is none of this benefits the United States in the end. I mean, to put it straight, Trump basically cooked the United States’ reputation for the next decade. I mean, the commentators are right about that.

Carter H. Lawson (28:05.505)

And to link that to the point I was making about Vance and linking that to influencer politicians... I think this big reason why you have this coalition forming that’s against this war within the executive and their donors is this war is electoral suicide. And Vance will be asked on the debate stage by Newsom or whoever else in ‘28, “Hey, why were you so in favor of this war?” And right now he does have plausible deniability. He’s kind of been MIA. So I guess I ask everybody: watch closely some of those personalities I’ve mentioned and watch closely how the rhetoric you get out of them these next few weeks. I think that’ll be huge.

Speaking of these next few weeks, there’s all this speculation about whether we’re going to see boots on the ground. And I think it is imminent. I think the target is Kharg Island. I’m not... that is incredibly unwise. It seems like it is a suicide mission, but right now there are two options for what Trump can do. He can back down now because of the economic implications of everything happening, and that would be seen as a loss—humiliation for the U.S. And ego aside, that’s just the U.S. being seen as a power that can exercise less deterrence than it previously did. If we cannot do a successful overseas operation for more than a few weeks before falling apart and losing any strategic advantage, Russia and China are watching that. And it will say a lot.

So my last point on this is Trump is desperately trying to seek a third option. Because the first option is you retreat; the second is you escalate, which at this point means using tactical nukes or you’re going to have to do boots on the ground. You can’t just... we’ve already dropped over 10,000 bombs. What, are we just going to keep bombing? I mean, we clearly underestimated the fighting spirit and the will of this regime at large. And Trump’s desperately looking for a third option. If he’s able to capture this island—which will be an incredibly bloody operation, because right now I think you have a little over 10,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne and the Marines coming over, but he’s also talking about potentially doubling that number... he hasn’t clarified what branch or unit that would be... let’s just say we do get 20,000 troops and capture that island.

Let’s say we do it successfully. That’s a thousand lives lost. I think that’s part of the reason you’re getting this signaling so hard that this operation could happen. Because we’re trying to get the American public used to the idea that this is a strategically viable idea. So whenever there are all those deaths, you can say, “but hey, it’s part of winning this war. We need to have the economic leverage over them that they have over us. So to de-escalate, we need to first escalate.” That’s what I think the best argument for Trump could be right now.

Pplsartofwar (31:09.472)

Okay. So, I mean, this plays into another point that I wanted to talk about here, which is Iran’s conditions. Because we are, like you said, seeing this escalation of bringing in troops, bringing in the Marine units, bringing in 10th Mountain Division of all people, but ground troops. And Iran has published five conditions to end the war:

1. End all aggression.

2. Provide concrete guarantees preventing the United States from bombing Iran again.

3. War payments and compensation.

4. Sovereignty recognized over the Strait of Hormuz (basically Iran owns it as a toll booth).

In this kind of respect, I don’t know if Saudi Arabia or Qatar is going to allow Trump to de-escalate because there is a situation right now in the Gulf where you have the Kuwaitis, you have the Bahrainis, and they’re saying, “no, we need to de-escalate this.” But then you have the Saudis and you have the UAE who are on different levels saying, “no, you cannot do this after all the damage they’ve done, and you cannot let Iran own the Strait of Hormuz.” So in terms of the escalation here, how do these terms Iran gave out affect things? Are they a starting point?

6. The Role of Israel and Regional Sovereignty (39:21)

Carter H. Lawson (32:50.842)

I do think they are a starting point and I think they are upselling. Because let’s just take that fourth point: they’re not going to get reparations from the United States. So that’s basically what they’re asking for. Regarding Kharg Island, you did have the Iranian parliamentary head say that they have intel that the U.S. will attack an island, and whatever state in the region helps them will have their entire infrastructure attacked and destroyed. That’s the promise they gave out. So I think right now, Iran does have leverage just based on the snapshot of where the conditions are. They have the leverage to get those demands fulfilled, but I think they’re asking for those knowing that that’s not going to be the language that is going to get a checkmark and thumbs up from the U.S.

Pplsartofwar (33:51.81)

There is what someone cited before, though, of an escalation trap. Once Trump puts 5,000 or 10,000 troops into the theater, we get this dynamic where he’s encouraged to use them. But if he backs down, Iran is going to go after those conditions. I mean, they are a starting point, I agree, but at that point, he’s starting from a negative position and having to respond to Iran’s initiative. It gets dismissed as delusional by some people, but when you look at it, Iran is not looking to be able to... we see this in the pattern of their refusals to the US ceasefire, the 15 points. What you’re seeing here is two nations with these really extreme starting points. And not only are these extreme starting points, they’re starting points where someone has to show that they’re willing to back down.

Normally in these sorts of negotiations, you would see someone say, “okay, I can see this point, you can see this point,” or there would be a third party like Oman or Pakistan asking them to concede or show a gesture. But we haven’t really seen gestures in terms of trying to reduce those conditions, nor are we seeing diplomatic signaling showing they are trying to show good faith gestures.

Carter H. Lawson (35:35.725)

Yeah. And I think you’re right that the odds of us going to the negotiating table are getting lower the next couple of weeks, especially as you have more troops come in. We are guilty of a sunk cost fallacy right now. That’s what it feels like. We did these strikes saying it would only take four days and here we are. It’s been five weeks. We’ve had 13 bases damaged or destroyed. We’ve had a lot of casualties. And they said, “okay, we’re going to do boots on the ground now.” It’s like, okay, well, what happens when a thousand are dead in this operation to take over the island? Now what? Well, we need to send a hundred thousand troops. You see, it’s the sunk costs—we need to double down and then double down more. It just seems we’re in such a predictable trap. And Iran obviously doesn’t have the technology to reach us in conventional warfare, but if they could just continue to lure us in, we’re falling for trap after trap.

Pplsartofwar (36:57.791)

Right. And Iran wants guarantees that the US military bases in the region can no longer be used against it. They’ve been pressuring the Gulf states saying, “we don’t want them in the region.” But Iran doesn’t have the actual physical presence like troops. And just as the US cannot win a war against Iran by just bombing it, Iran cannot force the US to retreat 100% just by bombing. Yes, they’re closing the Strait, that’s essential for forcing it. But at the same time, to really force it, they need to defeat the Gulf states’ will to fight. And it doesn’t seem like the Gulf states are giving up.

So we have this situation here where you’re collapsing the global economy while these people are bickering. While both Iran and the United States are bickering over the Strait and oil prices are going up, neither can totally impose 100% outcomes on the other. A lot of people are saying the economic situation will force the United States to see rationality because trade is important, therefore Iran’s going to win this and we’re all going to go home. What’s your perception of this?

Carter H. Lawson (38:40.55)

I think that’s just naive and that’s not even an anti-Iran point. I mean, just show me based on the U.S.’s behavior in the Middle East. Does that happen? No, they are very much willing to follow up the ladder of escalation. If Iran was to escalate, the U.S. I don’t think will be the ones to go, “okay, wait a minute, let’s trail off.” And I think that’s why capturing this island will be so important to the United States. If they are able to do that operation successfully, maybe that will finally be some of that economic leverage that Iran is exercising over us.

One thing I worry the U.S.—and by the U.S. I mean commentators—I’m not sure what generals are thinking, is that I think Iran is more willing to destroy some of their own energy infrastructure than let us have it. So I could see a situation where they kind of go scorched earth on a good amount of the island. They’d rather it not be available to anybody than only be available to us through capture.

7. Water Security: A Critical Factor in Conflict (45:58)

Pplsartofwar (39:56.683)

And that’s the difference I feel like in the will to fight. Let’s say Iran does do that—they come up with a Nero plan. I mean, they burn everything down. It’s scorched earth. They prevent the United States from using the oil or stabilizing the oil prices. The question at that point is: once you’ve done that, what’s left for your country? And then what’s the next step? I feel like the United States is still thinking, “well, if we bomb them enough and we invade them enough, maybe we will get some leverage at the table.” I don’t think Iran thinks that’s going to work. But then you have Iran saying, “we’re going to burn this all down and take you all down with me.”

I keep arguing with finance people online: these people, both Trump and Iran, are fighting out of pride in a way. Trump fighting out of ego, Iran fighting out of the idea that, “we are not going to bear this humiliation any longer.” Is it even rational anymore? People are holding out for a rational actor when we are seeing China and Russia not totally sit on the sidelines, but they’re not actively intervening. And NATO is just sitting there.

Carter H. Lawson (41:36.566)

Yeah, the definition of rationality in action changes depending on who the players are. Because that’s not even to mention the religious elements involved in this conflict. And let’s not forget that the threat of peace motivates Israel. They view... let’s say that the U.S. and Iran do come to terms... “okay, we’re going to leave you guys alone in the Middle East, you leave us alone, cut us a bit of a deal.” That is unacceptable to Israel where they stand now, I think. And there have been White House staffers that have leaked to the press that they’ve expressed worry that if the U.S. were to try to de-escalate, Israel would not let that happen.

The definition of sovereignty... a lot of people just say it’s basically, “can you control your country? Can you enforce laws?” I think at the most raw, realist level, it’s: “can you tell the people of your country who to die for and who to kill?” And I think right now Israel is practicing a ton of sovereignty over the United States as it stands. You cannot understand this war without at least confronting the question of Israeli influence in American politics.

Pplsartofwar (43:29.698)

Yes. And that’s a great point because if Israel doesn’t feel like the Iranian threat is suppressed enough—and I’m going to throw in the Saudis there—they’re going to insist on trying to push the United States harder. They will say, “well, we’re going to keep taking the losses because in the long run, you may lose United States, but guess what? We’re safe and you did all the work for us.”

Carter H. Lawson (44:19.111)

Yeah, and I think specifically Israel, but some of the thoughts can be extended to Saudi Arabia. There are countries that are set on expanding their horizons, whether through land in Israel’s case or just economically, and they are willing to drain one empire to create their own.

Pplsartofwar (44:39.81)

Right, and it’s a bandwagon—it’s what John Mearsheimer called the bandwagon effect. Using another hegemon to your advantage to fight your wars for you, but also playing their lack of understanding of their interests to benefit you in the end. Because in the end, it goes like this: even when this war ends, China is still going to be trading with Iran, even if the Pahlavi Shah came back or if the Islamic Republic became more theocratic. United States is not going to gain much from this, but the Saudis had someone fight the war for them, bomb Iran for them, without compromising too many of their own armed forces.

That’s what we’re seeing here. And this is interesting because when I was looking at Unusual Whales recently, there is someone saying among the leakers that yes, if the United States commits to a ground operation—whether it’s raids or port seizures—Israel is not willing to commit any actual troops. And we don’t see the Saudis or the Emiratis bombing Iranian targets. So do they really have skin in the game or are they just using the United States to do the dirty work?

Carter H. Lawson (46:19.487)

I think the latter is exactly the case. I think they do have skin in the game, but they thought, “if I can put the U.S. on as a protective layer and throw them into this, I’ll just do that.” I actually find it very admirable. I wish our country would operate more in that way—having that much strategic insight to convince a larger empire to do your bidding and trick them into thinking it’s for some kind of religious reason or long-term legacy. That’s geopolitics.

8. The Humanitarian Crisis of Water Scarcity (51:54)

Pplsartofwar (47:01.772)

Right, and it’s not all moral. These nations are not as cupped as people think. They’re using the power of the more powerful power with a very vain, egotistical person to run all of this. But I feel like the Saudis really underestimated how far Iran would go.

Carter H. Lawson (47:52.51)

Yeah. Let’s say they help us take over the island. Well, if Iran makes good on the promise... there are desalination plants that are in a pretty focused area in Saudi Arabia. If those are destroyed, I believe that’s a majority of the clean water in the country, just unavailable now. That’s just one piece of their infrastructure that could potentially be targeted by Iran because it’s a race to the bottom. In a war of attrition, nobody wins.

Pplsartofwar (48:39.786)

Right. And no matter what side wins, it’s a Pyrrhic victory. If Iran wins, they’ve lost so much to win it that the victory cannot be followed up on politically. Just because Iran wins doesn’t necessarily mean the multipolar world is coming and Iran becomes the new regional hegemon. Afghanistan didn’t become a regional hegemon because it beat the Soviet Union. A regional leader means they can enforce their system on the countries around them and provide an alternative.

I don’t see Iran providing that alternative system because it requires a level of political skill and funding. And I don’t think oil revenues are enough. Iran will win this, I think, but I don’t think it’s going to be this cathartic victory people think. As for the United States, let’s say the United States won this—again, another Pyrrhic victory. They pretty much burned 40 years of political capital in one month. More than George W. Bush and Obama did during the Global War on Terror. They managed to burn it in a month.

Carter H. Lawson (51:15.26)

Yeah, I think now we’re at basic geopolitics here, but I 100% agree that economic trade leverage is even greater than military leverage. That’s where China’s threat comes from. People aren’t afraid of a mainland invasion by China on the United States; they’re afraid of an economic war that we could not win.

Pplsartofwar (51:58.785)

And that economic war has a lot to do with how China thinks. If we look at this, it’s creating a very inconclusive scenario. Trump is being erratic and Iran is saying, “we need guarantees you’re not going to assassinate our leaders again.” There is this existential crisis. You talked about desalination plants—everyone is focusing on oil, helium, and fertilizer. What happens if the desalination plants get hit in Saudi Arabia? It provides 80% of the water they get. It’s essential to petroleum refining, but it’s also essential for daily life. You would not have populations in Dubai or Kuwait without these. Hitting the water treatment plants in the Gulf or in Iran is more dangerous than a nuclear weapon.

Carter H. Lawson (53:41.636)

Really? Walk me more through that.

Pplsartofwar (53:46.649)

Iran is a very arid country. Water supplies were a difficulty even before all of this. They drained one of their lakes practically dry because there’s a water crisis—farms aren’t getting enough water, cities are dependent on it. Most Iranian cities are at a certain altitude for access to those water supplies. So we see a country struggling with water survival even on a good day. That’s why they invest heavily in engineering—those dams and diversion projects are essential for Iranian survival.

But then you have the flip side: the Saudis and the Gulf states are even more dependent. Iran at least has rivers and mountain water. But the Gulf states are sometimes 80% dependent on desalinated water. It’s not cheap, and they run those plants with oil. If desalination gets hit, you’re creating a refugee crisis because people can no longer get water to drink, for waste, or for crops. In the Gulf states, you are literally destroying the thing that allowed cities like Dubai to grow.

Carter H. Lawson (55:50.958)

Yeah. And talk about something that would accelerate the migration crisis in Europe. If a country of 90 million people suddenly loses access to clean water... oh my gosh. Already you have a growth in right-wing politics in Europe as a reaction to the migration crisis and only accelerating that will not help. It’s a major humanitarian crisis. If suddenly millions are coming in... that’s going to be a mess and further accelerate political problems.

Pplsartofwar (56:52.13)

Right, and it’s why Iran and Saudi Arabia have been very careful about hitting the desalination infrastructure or even dams. At that point, the other side must retaliate and that is mutual destruction. Restarting the oil refineries would take another six to eight months. No one has talked about how long it would take to restore the desalination plants because the parts and the know-how to build those systems are almost always foreign.

9. Domestic Politics and the Future of U.S. Engagement (57:46)

Carter H. Lawson (57:58.307)

What a mess, man. There’s so much lost in the fog of war that we will get in the coming weeks. I think one thing domestically to keep an eye on is the role Vance will play. If Vance does step up to the plate and does what I think he plans on doing, that will see the end of this war sooner. I’m very suspicious of Vance, but ending this war saves lives and resources. I think the Teal camp are the ones taking seriously the pivot to China—the mythical pivot that American foreign policy just hasn’t done. I think as boots go on the ground, you’re going to have the MAGA influencer class really start to turn against Trump. At least I hope so.

Pplsartofwar (59:24.255)

At least they hope so. Vance is an X-factor. But we also need to look at the elections because Trump started a major regional war during an election year. That is unheard of in American history. LBJ did it, but there was a plan to keep it going so they could get re-elected. The feeling I get off this is Trump doesn’t seem to care if he gets elected or what the results are.

Carter H. Lawson (59:57.036)

Well, there’s speculation moving to domestic politics that he’s just going to do everything he can to suspend the election and maybe exercise some wartime powers. Obviously, if he does, he’s not going to do it legally. This is certainly an interesting time to be alive. I had a professor of constitutional law say it’s an interesting time to be teaching it because normally this is the foundation of our democracy, but it’s been amazing to learn how much of this system is bendable and how much of what we took for law was actually just norms the whole time.

I think same thing on international politics—the professor’s spirit deflates as more of these problems happen. We’re entering a more barbaric, realist state of international politics. I know we agree that a multipolarity is inevitable, but yeah, I’m skeptical of it emerging as a result of this conflict.

Pplsartofwar (01:01:59.521)

Right. And what leaders and academics are seeing goes outside the frameworks they were taught in school.

Carter H. Lawson (01:02:19.87)

I think the Boomers and Gen X didn’t realize how good they had it, living in such a relatively peaceful and stable era. In the Cold War, you at least kind of knew the pieces on the board. As a young person looking at the textbooks, it’s as if we’ve entered a different timeline. People talk about the ‘60s being an age of optimism and the ‘70s being pessimism... I hate saying this, but the 2020s has taken an identity of being a more pessimistic decade. In the 2010s, there was this feeling of optimism. Now it feels like nothing ever happens, or the negative folks really have a foothold in the public conscious.

Pplsartofwar (01:03:43.594)

Yeah, I would say that there’s a rules change happening here. Geopolitics is changing. Thank you for today. This was a really productive discussion.

Carter H. Lawson (01:03:59.802)

This was really fun. Thank you for having me as always.

Pplsartofwar (01:04:04.91)

And as always, thanks for watching States Craft. This is People’s Art of War. You can find me on Substack and Twitter under the same name. You can also find Carter under @CarterHLawson on Twitter. We will be talking more about interesting topics in politics and geopolitics in States Craft.

Carter H. Lawson (01:04:30.133)

Thanks for listening.

Hormuz has always been a chokepoint, going back thousands of years. Using it as a weapon for trade and military has been used MORE than once, as we’ll soon see.

The answer is in short:

Geography is destiny.

Chokepoints like the Strait o…

Read more

Join us as we unravel the layers of misinformation, revealing the strategic underpinnings that often go unnoticed. Discover the hidden truths behind the headlines and the real impact on global stability.

Hope you enjoy!

Watch on listen on Spotify. Transcript is below if you want to read.

We discuss:

• Iran’s geopolitical strategy and regional influence

• Wjat are Iran’s Capabilities and Regional Ambitions

• The sectarian divisions and Middle East dynamics under the crisis

• The impact of US and Chinese policies on Middle East stability

• China’s De-Risking Strategy and Global Influence

• Why Information Warfare and AI Disinformation is the new normal

• How Iran plans to weaken the US economy

• How AI and information warfare in modern conflicts are the new norm

Where to find Lance Legion:

• X: https://x.com/LancesLegion

• Substack:

Lance's Legion

In-depth military and strategic analysis. Founding Members are given access to my private server and inner circle.

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAioE7UWN_tV6gVFcqQZqPw

Chapters

• 00:10 Introduction: A Fluid and Divisive Conflict

• 01:08 The Strategic Picture: US Interests and the “Black Hole”

• 03:47 Iran’s Strategy: Economic War and Outlasting America

• 08:55 The Economic War and the Will to Fight

• 13:41 The Threat and Potential Escalation

• 17:57 No Off-Ramp and the Existential Stakes

• 23:16 Air Power’s Limits and the Sunni‑Shia Dimension

• 28:44 Gulf States’ Reactions and Internal Dynamics

• 34:23 The Petrodollar and Misconceptions

• 39:44 China’s Role: De‑risking, Not Ideology

• 45:35 Information Warfare: AI Slop and Narrative Friction

• 58:31 Wars Escape Their Planners

• 01:02:28 Conclusion

Transcript

1. Introduction: A Fluid and Divisive Conflict (00:10)

People’s Art of War:
Hi and welcome to States Craft. It’s been a while and I’m again here with Lance Legion. We’re going to be talking today about a very important topic that we all know, Iran. And how are you doing today, Lance?

lance’s legion:
I’m doing well. Thank you so much for having me back.

People’s Art of War:
It’s great to have you back. It’s been a while since I talked to you or anybody on the podcast. I guess things have just been really heating up since the last time.

lance’s legion:
It’s not even just heating up, but it feels like the whole world is in disarray and so much is shifting. It’s just such a fluid and dynamic situation.

And I don’t know if you’ve noticed this yourself, but it feels like everyone is so split right down the middle—whether it’s personal GCs or whatever communities and stuff. And it’s very interesting how that’s shaking out.

People’s Art of War:
It is, and what we’re seeing is this whole situation where we’ve gone from small wars to one whole old regional war at this point that it’s very, very hard to back out of.

2. The Strategic Picture: US Interests and the “Black Hole” (01:08)

lance’s legion:
Yeah. First to zoom out: if we take into account America’s interest in the Middle East, of course it’s the case that we’re trying to interdict energy markets away from the PRC. I guess that’s the cope argument going on.

That may be true, but then again, they can still source their oil and energy needs from Russia. And if anything, this just deepens the relationship between Russia and China, which is the antithesis of what we actually want. So it’s very questionable as to the calculus of why that’s happening.

Secondarily, I’m very skeptical about the inability to get outside of this black hole that is conflict escalation. Whether it’s intentional or not, the ramifications of that choice—whether we get sucked in or we choose to go in—would be dire for the United States. And I think the big winners would be, ironically, obviously not Iran, but everyone else.

People’s Art of War:
Right. And that’s the interesting part because when we look at all of this, people are saying, well, the United States is going to be defeated by this and Trump’s going to talk. There was really no planning on this. There should have been some ground assets in the theater—like at least a Marine Expeditionary Unit or an army unit—before this popped off, and something more than an air campaign. And I really think they actually thought Iran was just going to surrender.

But what we’re not looking at is the other side: where Iran is concerned, people say Iran’s going to win and dictate all the stuff to the Gulf States. I can see where Iran’s going to win, but at the end it depends on the position where Iran and the United States are at the end of this.

Largely, and I’ve said this before, just as the United States cannot induce regime change by an air war, Iran alone cannot induce conditions where they start to overrule the Gulf states just by an air war alone. Now, to be fair to some people I’ve talked to out there, yes, I do believe that they can enforce some pretty harsh conditions by blockading the Strait of Hormuz with munitions, with anti-ship munitions, with drones.

But as far as getting a settlement where the multipolar bros say, oh, it’s going to be like Iran’s going to be the hedge of the month for the region—I don’t think Turkey or Saudi Arabia is actually going to allow that.

3. Iran’s Strategy: Economic War and Outlasting America (03:47)

lance’s legion:
Yeah, to be frank with you, the way I perceive the positive outcome for Iran… everyone talks about classical geopolitical realpolitik calculus between nation states as if the valuation of certain assets or advantages are one in the same, equally weighted. I think we fundamentally don’t have a theory of mind for the Iranian regime or we don’t understand their interests.

I don’t believe that they will actually necessarily expand their hegemonic claims in the medium term. But what I can say is that I think they have fundamentally flipped how the Middle East’s chessboard is placed.

Prior to this, most people don’t understand this, but even though the populace of the general Arab states are anti-Israel in orientation, their elites are closely connected and we’re having a very strange and new rapprochement with Israeli elites. So it’s a very strange situation because it was almost like this conflict galvanized all these Arab nations to take Iran’s side, even though there’s a lot of conflict between the Saudis and the Iranians, the Turks and the Iranians, and so on.

With the greater view of it, I think the idea for the Iranians is actually to impel the Americans into invading with the idea of either causing such economic damage to the United States, just as jihad had done an immense amount of damage to the republic, much in the same way.

I think their idea would be to make America suffer a pyrrhic victory, wreck it economically and make it a non-factor going forward in the next hundred years. This doesn’t imply that Iran will be standing up straight, being okay. Of course, they’re ready with the calculus understanding that they’re probably going to suffer a lot. But I think the idea is to finish the job ultimately of what GWOT started, which is basically the financial disruption in the United States and therefore their power abroad.

People’s Art of War:
Right. And that adds to another thing I was going to think. At this point, when I’m looking at this situation, it’s to show the world that we can not just paralyze the global economy, but we can also inflict those consequences on the global economy, which is an essential part of deterrence.

One of the most essential parts of deterrence is not just being able to say, well, I can deter you, but also being able to ratchet up the levels of that deterrence to the point that people will say, yeah, they’ve got power, and also the sustainment of that deterrence.

And the big thing I’ve been saying about Iran is we need to see how long Iran can sustain this deterrence on the global economy, which is a very, very big part because I don’t think they want other people to come into this situation again. Sustaining economic deterrence by blocking the Strait of Hormuz is probably one of the more impressive facts that we need to look at. How long can they sustain this? I think they can sustain this for a while, and it’s not just a few months either.

lance’s legion:
Yeah, I think they can do it indefinitely. Remember our campaign against the Houthis, which still exists and still interdicts all kinds of maritime travel through those straits—the Horn of Africa, basically. I think it would be near impossible to completely stop Iranian asymmetrical strikes on merchant fleets into the Persian Gulf.

And of course, disruption is not necessarily about enforcing a total blockade. What it is about is causing variance in economic prices and indexes. And if the indices are constantly volatile, the volatility abroad actually causes massive disruption domestically, especially in the United States.

Ultimately, they don’t even need to sink every single merchant ship. What they need to do is cause consumer confidence to plummet. That in and of itself causes problems. Petrol obviously becomes incredibly expensive and all the secondary and tertiary effects of that.

So long story short, I think the Iranians, not simply by utilizing FPVs and anti-ship missiles and all that kind of stuff in a kinetic sense, but they also have asymmetrical capabilities—embedded IRGC agents or spontaneous Shiite or Hezbollah-type affiliated civilians to spontaneously sabotage deep in enemy territory. So this in and of itself causes that economic disruption.

A lot of people really underestimate the fragility of the globalist system. And that’s what has everyone freaking out in the West Belt.

4. The Economic War and the Will to Fight (08:55)

People’s Art of War:
And the other thing I was thinking about here is, yes, there’s economic damage to take. We need to see how well the Americans or the Europeans or these other countries take the economic damage. And I think that’s what Iran is banking on.

Now, one thing that keeps coming up in my head consistently is that other nations in the system may not like what the United States is doing. So they’re likely to put pressure first—Southeast Asia, Vietnam. These sorts of countries are probably going to put pressure first more than the United States per se.

China has its own oil reserves, the United States has its own oil reserves. Now the price is going up, but it’s at this point not painful enough.

One thing I keep thinking about is economic warfare is important to put pressure, but how much does economic warfare actually stop people from supporting a war? At what point? Because you have to break the opponent’s will to fight.

In some ways we saw this in World War I, we saw this in the Iran-Iraq War, we see this in Russia and Ukraine. The economy takes a hit, but until the average person on the ground is actually suffering, we’ve seen it throughout history where people will just simply justify and say, well, I take that, but there’s no violence being done to me.

lance’s legion:
Yeah, it’s interesting because it’s subtle, right? The calculus for the average citizen in the West, what they care about is fundamentally domestic issues and the economy, which are the most pressing concerns in the United States specifically, but I know Europe as well.

There is a significant downturn in employment. As much as a lot of propaganda says to the contrary, the economy is not well. People are underemployed, they’re kind of shut out, and the housing market is terrible.

So I think the calculus is: why are we spending all this money? Why are we suffering the effects of stagflation and the furtherance of a conflict that has questionable real outcomes, positive economic outcomes?

Because at the same time, the IRGC, as far as I know at this time when we’re recording, hasn’t actually activated any sleeper cells to attack civilian targets in the West—only targeted, I think, military targets so far.

So I think their calculus is to cause economic discomfort, which causes domestic turmoil and exacerbates what’s already happening organically, and refraining from galvanizing political support from civilians.

For instance, 9/11 was a huge mistake in a certain way because obviously everyone’s like, well, we were attacked. That’s a very easy thing to sell to Joe Schmo, and Joe Schmo supports the war. So I think they’re walking a very fine line, and that’s why they’re focusing on the economic element.

People’s Art of War:
Right, and it’s kind of feeling like it’s not registering. So if you had like 9/11 in the United States once again, that would register. I mean we saw when 9/11 happened a huge outpouring of support, people coming together. The shock was like a shock to the heart. The entire impetus for intervention and that wasn’t really registering in the back of United States citizens’ heads. Well, there’s stakes here. We could actually get hurt.

And that’s why I’m always wondering here, two things. One, what’s the actual threat to the United States from Iran as this war goes on? Two, do you think is the reason Iran’s proxies are not doing certain things? Like for example, Houthis haven’t fired any missiles and this is a great time to do it. We haven’t seen them do it. Hezbollah is doing a campaign in Southern Lebanon and the Israelis are fighting them, that makes sense.

And then three, with all this situation, like you saw with the sleeper cells, how deadly do you think this threat is? How far do you think this could expand? Like Europe or even into other parts of the Middle East? What’s the escalation ladder?

5. The Threat and Potential Escalation (13:41)

lance’s legion:
Okay, let me handle it from bottom to top.

To answer your question, the IRGC, most people don’t know how concentrated they are actually in the far abroad. So for instance, if you go to South America and Argentina, you go to Buenos Aires, there’s Iranian agents there, in the Philippines and Suriname and so on. And of course in the United States and the West.

The MO for Shiite kind of clandestine—not terror per se, but state actor—doesn’t resort to the same Wahhabist, Sunni type of terrorist modus operandi. So I think they’re going to exclusively focus on industrial sabotage.

I don’t know if people are aware of this, but sometimes there are very few plants in the United States that store eggs, for instance. And early in the Ukraine-Russia war, a specific egg processing plant that was like the one main one for the entire Southern United States magically caught fire. A lot of people, of course, can make the case that it was totally an accident. And that’s obviously the point of clandestine action—to have probable deniability. So you’re going to see a lot of that.

I think if things escalate, you’ll start to see more severe and incisive actions take place. What I mean is probably attempted assassinations of various major politicians in the West. Maybe it could be the case and you hear some bombings of military bases or whatever, like 9/11. I don’t think that’s what’s going to happen to us.

So for the second question, it’s going to be relatively tame, a relatively traditional Westphalian type of exchange.

And then going to the first question, which is about the actual acute kinetic threats the Iranians are likely to incur upon us. Well, here’s the thing. The Iranians have modestly only accessed a few of their hypersonic missiles to target Israel and I think Qatar and some bases of the United States in the Middle East. But they have a large stockpile.

And that’s why there’s this kind of freaking out about that capability because that kind of technology, which they have proven to be advanced—very adept users of this kind of battery system. Obviously they have a lot of institutional knowledge garnered by at least a decade of ballistic missile unit actions.

So ultimately what you’re going to see is this continuous air campaign. It’s likely going to last a few months and then we’re going to figure out, well, we can’t extract the diplomatic outcome that we had intended. Therefore what we’re going to do is probably have some limited interventions on the mainland, on the coast, to interdict the blockade efforts.

And then later, likely the conflict will expand. Of course, there’s going to be a lot of asymmetrical actions taking place, both by the official government, but also at the same time by spontaneous civilians just protecting their country.

And this is very funny—I talked to some Iranian ex-pats talking about even though they oppose the regime as it stands, if someone were to invade, they would stand by that regime. So I think it would be a mistake.

You’d see a lot of unconventional strikes. I think the United States would handily defeat the conventional force, but that’s not actually where the threat would reside. It would be the unconventional asymmetrical insurgency that would pose the gravest threat to a protracted American presence.

6. No Off-Ramp and the Existential Stakes (17:57)

People’s Art of War:
And it’s very interesting because when we look at this, there’s clearly no off-ramp, no clear ones. With the entire crisis, Trump made it existential for Iran. You mentioned with going on with the ACP, which is fueling this asymmetric stuff. Trump has made it existential for Iran where you’re assassinating leaders.

At the point you start assassinating leaders, that makes it politically existential. And at that point, they’re not going to surrender because if they surrender, that means they’re going to lose their grip on power.

And then at the same time, you’re attacking their economy and then attacking their people. And at that point, it starts to be, well, is it even an attack on the regime or is it just an attack on the Iranian people?

And going back to what you’re saying, that doesn’t give very much of an offer. And when you see Iran attacking the Gulf States, some of them are not involved, some of them have been negotiators for Iran in the past—you’re creating a situation where there is literally no offering.

It’s very hard for the Gulf States and the United States at this point, given the actions that they’ve done to each other and the tit-for-tat retaliation, to not just take significant concessions to come back, but also significant economic concessions to even get people back on the table.

That’s the one thing we’re starting to see. Where is the offering? Because both Trump, the Gulf States, and at this point even Iran have created no off-ramp. And the great powers in the world order at this time—China, the European Union, Russia—there’s no negotiation. There’s no one saying, well, we need a mediator.

lance’s legion:
It’s always very interesting because America has a long experience of conducting air campaigns with the expectation of dissolving popular support for an adversary’s regime or incumbent governance, the elites. And every time we do that, it is resolutely the case that they always support their regime as opposed to where, if there was no air campaign, they would likely be on the fence or indifferent.

And again, same thing with economic sanctions. If you notice, actually it causes the local populace to start to understand that it’s not the fault of the regime that they’re poor. The regime is able to convincingly point at an outside aggressor and therefore it actually increases cohesion within.

Now, Iran is a very interesting polity itself because the Ayatollah is not simply the leader politically, but he is also something akin to the Pope. He’s a spiritual leader with international ties. So there’s a dynamic: what if someone damned the Pope? What do you expect is going to happen from that? It’s just going to piss off people.

And to say nothing, of course, that the American administration is also making, I think, maybe a miscalculation. If it’s the case that they want the regime to change and install the Shah—I heard that under-25s want the Shah to come back, but everyone older than that is very opposed to it.

At the same time, I think the stratagem is not necessarily to depose the regime, but rather shatter Iran itself. For instance, today there was a Kurdish YPG or PKK spokesperson that made the claim that they’re mobilizing the Kurds in the region that’s obviously within their homeland that they’re trying to claim within Iran.

The motivation behind that is to levy the ethnic minorities within Iran because it’s not all Farsi. There are various different ethnic composites within this state apparatus and they’re trying to pit each against each other, maybe arm them and galvanize them, give them some kind of incentive.

But resolutely, I think most of the Iranian populace actually just hates America because of the fact it’s been a multi-decade economic blockade, which they have grown up knowing that it’s America’s fault that they’re so impoverished. And it’s convincingly so.

And so now America is threatening your religious leader, killing them. Of course, I understand that only 40% of the populace is practicing Shiite Muslim, but it also affects secular people because for as much as someone may be secular, they can also understand the cultural affinity of this kind of figure in Iran.

So I think this whole thing is such a miscalculation. From what I understand, America’s hand was forced by whatever it be, some intervention from before. I think the miscalculation is more also because of the fact that they were forced into a position that was unwinnable as opposed to anything else.

7. Air Power’s Limits and the Sunni‑Shia Dimension (23:16)

People’s Art of War:
That’s a large part of this. It’s still boiling down to the Iranian people may not like the government, just like people did not like Winston Churchill much before the Blitz. But when you start bombing people and without a ground campaign or without a way to politically show people physically that they are defeated, you just harden the will of the populace, as you said.

The air-land battle doctrine of the United States gets into this idea, especially since the ’90s, the 2000s, GWOT, where you think that overwhelming air power will get them to surrender. To the point that it’s become a meme.

Before, it was, well, we’re going to use overwhelming air power in the ’90s to be able to force them to come to the table and negotiate on our terms. So air power itself was used as leverage, as one tool in our toolkit.

And then you had GWOT, of course, where people were also on the ground and air power was used to make it easier so that we could put troops on the ground.

What we’re really seeing right now is this vibe thinking where people say, well, if you just do things, then it’s going to happen. Which is basically what the Iran war boils down to. It’s one thing to plan an invasion, but it’s a totally other thing to say you want to meme it into existence using air power, which was not the case in 2003 in Iraq or 2001 in Afghanistan, or even the air campaigns we saw over Serbia in the nineties.

So, but that also brings me to another topic. I think this is one that isn’t getting discussed on Twitter: the Muslim angle.

One thing I have noticed in the Arab spaces, the Gulf States, the Twitter spaces, is there is a very strong emphasis on how this is between two different sides of Islam—the Shia and the Sunni—and that’s just not populating on the Western side. The Western commentary is all about commerce. It’s very interesting to watch it.

Some geopolitical analysts a long time ago—20 years ago, 15 years ago—were saying that the rivalry between Iran and the Saudis is of course regional rivalry, of course with petrodollar and oil, but it’s also a rivalry of two sects of religion. One who controls two mosques and then the Shia—like you said, basically the Ayatollahs who were the Shia popes. I might be over-exaggerating that, but it’s the rivalry between two sects. And that’s definitely a factor that I don’t feel Western people are thinking about.

lance’s legion:
Yeah, I noticed the same thing. Mind you, Iran’s official regime is Shiite, specifically of a very specific sect. Even within Shiite Islam, many groups and clerics of rival schools denounce the Ayatollah as kind of heretical. So even within Shiite Islam, there is this kind of division.

And on top of that, there is the division between Sunnis and Shiites. I understand that there’s this element of sectarianism and it’s why historically over the last 20 years, many of the Arab states have approximated themselves in a kind of loose, tense alliance with Israel with the interest of leveraging Israel’s capabilities against Iran.

What’s interesting is that the Saudi prince kind of did a 180 here. The last 10 years have been trending towards a kind of pro-Israel relationship, now they’re starting to have more solidarity with Iran, which is incredible considering the fact that Saudi Arabia is a staunchly Sunni country.

I know that the Wahhabists have been effectively cleared out of the elites, but it’s important to remember that the majority of their body politic are fundamentally fundamentalist Sunni Muslims.

Within MENA, these sectarian differences and divergences cause a lot of inter-seeing conflicts. Iraq was a great example, especially in the south with the Shiites taking power.

The point is, it seems like in the West, expatriate Islamic communities somehow are more united, and in the theater they’re kind of tentatively aligned, even though they’re still at each other’s throats at the end of the day.

8. Gulf States’ Reactions and Internal Dynamics (28:44)

People’s Art of War:
That’s a really good point to emphasize. I think a lot of people do see the Shia and the Sunni as two blocks when the reality is there’s divisions in this. Even the Iraqi Shia do not 100% get along with Iranian Shia either. They weren’t exactly 100% on board when they were taking orders during the Iraq war. They were very like, well, yeah, we appreciate the help, but we have our own priorities here.

One thing when we look at this too: if any of you guys look online, right now the Saudis are doing quite a bit of saber rattling. The rhetoric has shifted from, well, no, we’re just here on the sidelines to, no, Saudi Arabia will defend its own. And it’s not just Saudi. The UAE is starting to do this too as well. And that’s a very huge shift.

lance’s legion:
Yeah, for as much as people may conflate Saudi Arabia with Al Qaeda and tenuously connected to ISIS, what’s interesting is that the state itself—the Saudi princes—usually are very benign, not usually very belligerent. A lot of their actions are clandestine and muted. But it seems like they’re taking a very firm stance, although of course we have to take it with a grain of salt.

The Saudi military is very incompetent, notoriously so, compared to even other Arab regimes. I think the most competent Arab republic military was either Syria or Iraq before Saddam Hussein fell. So the Saudi Arabians, for as much as the Royal Saudi Army is well kitted out with all the Western weapons platforms and training and so on, I don’t really believe a lot in their power.

But if they’re doing the saber rattling, it’s an indicator that there’s kind of a theater realignment. I think what’s happening now is there’s kind of a solidarity against America and Israel for messing things up. So that’s my take on the situation personally.

People’s Art of War:
I mean, it kind of goes through the middle, I feel like. They’re clearly not happy that the United States and Israel wage this war without letting them know, without considering the impact on Saudi or the Gulf States.

But at the same time, I feel like there’s this: we got an enemy that’s destroying our economy. They are hitting our refineries, hitting our other settings. And that makes it existential. We have petrodollars, we have petrostates here.

For all of Saudi’s attempts under Mohammed bin Salman to try and diversify the economy or even engage in economic boosters like NEOM—I don’t understand how that’s an economic booster, it is according to the Saudis, but it hasn’t gotten them off the petrodollar.

Dubai and the UAE have kind of done that, but let’s be honest here, Dubai and the UAE is a clearing house for black market stuff, but also a logistics hub.

What we’re seeing is that the Iranians are hitting them where it hurts. And at the same time, the Saudis and the Emiratis, the Qataris, they’re in this situation where culturally and they’re kind of tribal, they cannot just back down. They have to show their people, the factions that are underneath them, that yes, we were strong.

And it shows because Saudi had a backdoor communication to Iran early in this war where they said, hey, can we just strike some random target? I don’t need to put anyone there.

lance’s legion:
If I’m going down, you’re coming down with me.

It’s interesting because I think the Iranians intuitively understand how the dynamics of specifically Saudi Arabia work, but of course the other Gulf states as well. As you alluded to before, the organization of their politics and their culture heavily emphasize retribution as a form of justice.

And so, especially an energy-centric economy, it’s a critical vulnerability that the Iranians are exploiting—it’s destabilizing the entire economy. You’re not going to just offer the other cheek because if you do so as a sovereign, no one’s going to respect you. And if you’re going to offer the other cheek, why am I not the head guy? I’m a strong guy. So it causes a lot of civil disturbance within.

So the calculus is, as you said, it’s destabilizing and it causes belligerency.

I’m sure that as things stand, many of the natural gas and oil fields are ablaze. It’s going to cause a lot of disruption in the petroleum industry. Of course, the petrodollar still exists. Hasn’t gone away, guys.

And just before we stepped on here, I just saw that America lifted the blockade for Russian petrol and, ironically enough, to Iranian petrol. So I wonder what the calculus is there. How it is that we’re going to actually make that happen, but it’s very interesting.

9. The Petrodollar and Misconceptions (34:23)

People’s Art of War:
Right, and it does show a sort of back down in a way. If you had thought this through, you wouldn’t be releasing the oil from somewhere like Russia, which you had embargoed before. You wouldn’t be releasing the oil from a country that you’re fighting right now.

I feel like when you’re reading into this, there’s all these people on Twitter timeline celebrating the end of the petrodollar. But at the same time, you look at how many things inside your room right now are made from petroleum derived products. It’s easily 30, 40, 50%.

And as long as those exist and as long as you have something that is not derived from those products, the petrodollar is not going away. With all the EV talk and all this other stuff, people are not realizing that even components inside EVs still have some petroleum derived products. So the petrodollar is not going away.

lance’s legion:
I doubt it’s going to go anywhere for at least 150 years, I would say, despite the fact that technology is advancing because ultimately the engineering technology regarding everything from chips to mundane plastic items is all derived from petrol. So it’s always going to be a reliable index.

And for as much as there’s a finite amount of oil, I just don’t see it not being a constant. So I really would hesitate or caution people to be overly optimistic of the shift away from the petrodollar because the way I see it is it’s actually going to entrench, especially as the supply of oil becomes more acute or threatened internationally, therefore causing its price to surge and therefore its salience as a currency and exchange value.

People’s Art of War:
And I mean, there’s also that talk you hear too about people saying, well, they are going to make us pay it in Chinese RMB. And I say, yeah, well, that’s a little bit funny in my head, because if you look at what it takes to do payments in another non-reserve currency, you have to set up credit lines, you have to be able to have liquidity available on the site. And that takes a significant amount of financial engineering that isn’t done in a day.

And it just feels like people have the right idea, but there’s just a lot of what I call multipolar world-kanging, where people are assuming that this stuff is going to happen overnight. Now, I’m not saying it won’t happen, but it’s going to take a lot more than doing this.

lance’s legion:
To be fair though, the multipolar world-kanging is infinitely orders of magnitude better than whatever is happening in the West. Because it’s just like a geriatric Alzheimer’s patient playing chess with someone not so intelligent. Someone who is fundamentally crippled in the mind is always going to lose. So it’s a very interesting dynamic.

I think multipolarity is more a reflection of a reality as opposed to a doctrine per se. It’s still being fleshed out. It’s a work in progress as a philosophy.

But I think it’s a massive strategic miscalculation on the part of the United States. And it’s actually going to be the cause for a hegemonic realignment.

I think that America made a huge mistake by conducting this air campaign because, as you know, they have completely emptied their stocks in Eurocom of basically Cold War deep storage weapons platforms, smart munitions, et cetera, into Ukraine, which has lasted a long time. That all got chewed up and used out.

And then of course, when this air war began, they diverted all their assets. I think it’s roughly almost 60% of the Air Force’s assets are currently being deployed in that theater itself. And they’re taking very important assets away from the Pacific theater to this Iranian weird chiasco.

If it’s the case that America truly believes the PRC is the main rival, it’s a huge miscalculation because the PRC already has peer or actually superior capabilities in a number of critical aspects, whether it’s technological, industrial capacity, etc.

And to say nothing of the huge massive population advantage it has in comparison to the West and is fundamentally united. It has a unity of action. It has a will as opposed to the West, which is completely divided at home and abroad.

The industrial base of the West is completely hollowed out by the globalists. And China was very smart about basically keeping on-shoring its hard capital investments and as well as its financial investments in the domestic theater.

Do you have any thoughts about that?

10. China’s Role: De‑risking, Not Ideology (39:44)

People’s Art of War:
If we really look at how China has been playing this, I think that a lot of what we’re seeing is a lot of pushback from people in the Middle East, Africa, the usual places about why isn’t China doing it? It’s just this kind of feeling of like they need to be doing what the Soviet Union did.

But to go back to what you’re saying, China deliberately has done this for centuries. It’s nothing new. We used to call it “managing the barbarians.” Basically anything that isn’t within our sphere—like East Asia—we generally tend to ignore.

It’s not this internal cultivation that people think; it’s more like, well, does that directly affect us? And if it’s farther away, we’re going to manage it with diplomacy rather than direct wars.

If you look at Chinese history, when they go for wars overseas, it is almost always the region right next to it—whether it’s the Korean war, invasions of the near abroad. And it’s usually in response to the idea of managing foreign powers overseas by playing them against each other and then putting the weight on the scales so that it helps our interests.

When you’re talking about the commerce angle, that’s exactly how China’s done it. China generally tries to find different ways to de-risk, finds different ways to minimize the impact of changes that are happening overseas. So what we see is investments in Indonesian oil, investments in Russian oil, investments in Azerbaijan oil, investments in Iraqi oil.

So the idea is a de-risking strategy: okay, well, if there’s a conflict here, at least it won’t hurt us as bad.

lance’s legion:
Do you mind if I just make a note? This is actually a good geopolitical lesson in teaching realpolitik. This is exactly what you want to do. You want to diversify, especially if you’re an energy poor country and you have a deficit of domestic energy production or whatever it may be. Diversification of markets are essential to maintaining cheap and abundant external imports.

With this oil thing, I’ve heard a lot of core analysis excusing this war as a means to undermine China’s energy dependency with Iran, because right now China sources 15% of its petrol from Iran. But they forget this fact that China has many markets to select from. They’re just simply going to shift.

And to say nothing, they’ve been selling a lot of their export variety, edge technologies, as anti-aircraft missile battery systems and C5ISR capabilities to the Iranians as a form of testing, shield testing for their domestic military. As we spoke about earlier in another episode, it’s actually very wise.

And many people think that they have to pursue an aggressive foreign policy much in the same way the Soviets pursued aggressive foreign policy abroad in the far abroad to Africa, Latin America, et cetera. They don’t need to do that because they’re fundamentally geopolitically spaced in a place that’s advantageous for them.

And also on top of everything, we’ve pushed Russia into their corner, which obviously it’s still an adversarial relationship. But as things stand, they still have a way out into the markets that make it effectively able to outmaneuver a blockade or some kind of restriction of market access.

People’s Art of War:
Right. And that has a lot to do with how China sees it. Generally what we saw with the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War, it’s very ideological, evangelical. They want to spread their ideology beyond their shores to increase their influence. That’s soft power projection.

China generally in history is not as aggressive or ideological—I would say they’re not evangelical. China is not evangelical about its policy. It’s more of, well, you come to us and you learn from us, not, well, you come to us and we convert you. There’s a huge difference.

If you look at Japan, Korea, Vietnam, they’re all in the same sphere. And the reason they started to be able to take on Chinese aspects without losing their own cultural identity was because when China was the center of East Asian political life, the geopolitical center of East Asia, it was advantageous to be Chinese, to act Chinese, to be able to get benefits.

And that’s a large part of what goes into this, but I think we got off the Iran war part a little bit. I want to talk about China a little more some other time, but let’s get back to the Iran war.

So what’s your take though on the massive amount of AI slop that’s going out there? It’s insane how much the third world and the kangaroo speaker is afraid of that to the point that like Nikita Beer and Elon Houcher retrained the entire algo.

11. Information Warfare: AI Slop and Narrative Friction (45:35)

lance’s legion:
Because this is, you know, an information worker, this is called spoofing. Of course, it’s the case that there are individuals who make this that do it with the intention in some weird way to support their war effort and their sympathies.

But the utility of it is actually that the algorithm boosts it and it obscures true news and the true dynamics of the battlespace to emerge by simply blotting it out with slop.

I’m sure you felt this way. You just go to the timeline and you just can’t even watch it. You watch three of these videos at a time, which is AI slop bullshit, and you’re like, I’m just turned off. I don’t even want to know.

And so this plays to the advantage of Iran, whoever’s sympathetic to the polity, because ultimately what it’s doing is minimizing internal damage reports being taken out. So the United States doesn’t have the information initiative in this instance, as we’ve before.

Of course, the bombing of the school that killed like those hundred schoolgirls was a huge blow to the information war as well.

And then conversely, the few things that we do hear is Israel being struck. Obviously in the background, even though it’s not very much covered, we know that America is doing a lot of strikes in Iran and they’re relatively effective in degrading Iran’s military capabilities, especially in air and sea. But the average people don’t see that.

So therefore, because of the spoofing, because of the slop, we have the perception that Iran is actually holding out better than it is and therefore galvanizing support against the war because it’s leading to inconclusive results from our perspective.

People’s Art of War:
Right. And that’s what we call narrative friction. There’s a difference between the reality and then what’s being served up on there.

And it doesn’t help that the AI agents or the staff that we didn’t see during the Ukraine war are available en masse. The Ukraine war, I think, was the last real war where OSINT could say, I gathered all this information. This is my conclusions.

With the current war, it’s become, no, this is what is popular. We’re monetized, can make slop, slop videos, slop posts and push this tribal narrative on one side.

And I really think part of the danger here is that we’re getting what you called arsonist incentive. Arsonist incentive just means that, hey, well, I get money if I burn down the house. I’m going to not just burn down one house, I’ll put it down the neighborhood. And that’s what we’re getting here.

There’s a huge difference between the Ukraine war in 2022 and the Iran war now, and how much the AI slop has increased.

lance’s legion:
Yeah, technology has certainly changed it. It’s like a combat modifier.

From what I remember in the early Russian intervention—not even 2022, but early, early, like 2014—the Kremlin sought a policy of just absolute truth or silence. When the Russians came into Crimea, they denied their involvement until it was annexed.

The Russian invasion into Ukraine, of course, there were slight exaggerations on the part of the Russians. But I think they understood that pursuing a truthful policy was better than trying to create false narratives that didn’t line up with reality.

Now with AI, there’s a lot of videos that Boomers mistake as reality. And you have to remember that the median IQ and cognitive ability of reasoning and perception of the average person globally is actually pretty low. And AI is getting so good that in passing, you can believe it’s true.

So I think in the wars to come, there’s going to be a lot of this information narrative friction being purposely deployed or artificially boosted.

And monetization—another neoliberal mistake—is monetizing everything, and it causes perverse incentives. The perverse incentive is self-defeating. It’s just as you said, the arsonist incentive. So it’s a conundrum and I wonder how that’s going to develop, but it’s certainly a trend that will only increase in frequency and robustness as time goes on.

People’s Art of War:
Right, and we’ve seen this situation where they’re no longer trying to convince you. Propaganda before tried to hide the details and create some sort of strategic ambiguity about what was going on. Now, they’re not even attempting that. They just said, well, we can mass produce all this slop. So we’ll just dump it on you.

And at a certain point, once they dump it all on you, your brain turns off. So the cost of verification in this case exceeds the ability to understand and correlate what you’re seeing.

When the cost expands explosively, the average person isn’t going to even look at it. And the average analyst is not going to look at that. They’re just going to push the narrative because all that matters is speed. All that matters is to be there first. And it doesn’t matter if you’ve been verified, you can just keep going and going.

What we’re seeing here is an acceleration of propaganda at levels that we have never seen before in human history. To the point that it does not take very much to set off a war.

Even in World War I, even before the Spanish American War, the press was sending all sorts of slop, making up conspiracy, making up victories and defeats. That’s normal in the fog of war. But that was humans doing it with a printing press. There was enough time for the diplomats to go in between and try to resolve the situation.

In this case, this might even outstrip the diplomats’ ability to resolve the situation because some people have different incentives, whether it’s just starting a war or an industry that says, well, if I can get money off this, why not make it happen? And that’s the neoliberal aspect you’re talking about. The idea of money has outstripped the consequences.

lance’s legion:
And on top of everything else, the irony is it’s not the state arbitrarily propagating propaganda, but it’s organically sourced. That’s the funny thing. And that’s why it’s so challenging to counteract because it’s coming from everywhere all at once.

And so the only people privy to the reality on the ground are those in decision-making circles. And there’s so much contradicting information coming out, whether it’s through the news. For instance, how do we really know that America lifted the blockade? How do we know that it’s still sailing 30 minutes later?

And to say nothing of the fact that a lot of people have become turned off—myself, I just don’t look at the conflict day to day as I used to during the early Russian invasion of Ukraine, because none of the information actually holds up.

To say nothing of how it’s a fluid and dynamic event, human event. War is that way.

And so for me, I would give advice to your listeners: you should wait two weeks or three weeks and then check in. You’ll be able to see what is true, what isn’t true, by reading between the lines—whether it’s official press or the official organs of state giving announcements, X, Y, or Z—look at the markets.

But do not pay attention to OSINT accounts in the same way that you could semi-reliably look at OSINT accounts in the Russo-Ukraine war. So that’s the dynamic. And I think it’s only going to increase, and I think OSINT is a thing of the past, frankly. I just don’t think it’s a real thing anymore, to be honest with you.

People’s Art of War:
Funny. That’s real funny you mentioned it because in one of the articles I said before, they’ve largely figured out how to counteract those annoying Twitter posters—as that Air Force Colonel was saying—instead of trying to figure out likes and tell the truth or try and hide it harder, they just increase the volume of data.

And we’ve seen it where China has started to fly drones with signals to be able to confuse the flight radar, the OSINT guys, or people just start delaying satellite photos. So OSINT at this point starts to become a prey to volume and then a prey to rumor to the point that people become apathetic because of the volume.

And you’re not going to sustain that. It’s just getting to this point where when people hit that limit, unlike we saw in 2022 with the Ukraine war, they’re no longer trying to verify the sources or verify what’s happening. The easier thing is just to check out.

I mean, look at Twitter timeline. I’m seeing guys—I’m not going to say the name—but it’s all two, three liner stuff about reacting to what journalists are saying. Yes, we saw that before during COVID and during the Ukraine war, but the responses were funny, but they were also trying to disagree with facts.

What we are seeing now is not facts. We are just seeing people who are pushing their academic policies, who are pushing their tribal theories, but also people who are pushing, I would say, simple narratives, football narratives, where their team is winning and it’s acting like a football match with boosters in everyone.

Like Lance was saying, I’m going to say this again: wait and take time to actually understand what’s going on. Because half the stuff you see in the feed is not going to matter a week or two from now. I’m not even joking.

Do we talk about operations in Syrsk or do we talk about Mariupol all in Ukraine? No, because we’ve moved on. They were significant at the time, they were strategically important. But at the same time, you got to arrange these data inside the biggest strategic picture. And the strategic picture, as Lance is saying, is something you form by yielding.

lance’s legion:
Yes, exactly. And to say nothing, just to kind of cap it off and reiterate your point, it’s become white noise. And so the only things which are relevant anymore to pronounce about, especially these kind of drifters, all they have to do is basically they’re making their own ethical or emotional appeal. Yeah, I was trying to be kind, but it really is fan fiction from every angle.

People’s Art of War:
It’s fan fiction.

lance’s legion:
And it’s from right to left. And I think it’s a huge disservice because ultimately you only undermine your own position, of whatever kind you may be, whatever persuasion. And so the best thing to do is to retain that kind of organic credibility if you’ve run one of these accounts by refusing to do that. But of course, you’re your own person, so do whatever you want.

But this is why I don’t even make comments about it. And to say nothing, of course, there’s a lot of incentive not to report on real news because whether it’s a state actor or not, doxing and harassment and all this kind of stuff.

Ultimately, I think it’s also feeding into the fact that so much information is just simply not credible and it’s not salient.

Americans make fun of Russia because it’s five years into the three day war or whatever the three day special military operation. I think that Iran might turn into precisely a similar situation where it was at first a limited intervention with very specific and concrete objectives, which again are far outside the reach of whatever mechanism that NATO originally chose. But I think it’s only going to be a black hole. And that’s what I fear the most personally.

12. Wars Escape Their Planners (58:31)

People’s Art of War:
Right, and wars historically have a way of escaping the trajectories of the planners who created them. I mean, look at World War I, look at World War II. You have ideas, but managing the friction I feel like is the biggest test of the strategist and whether or not they can manage that friction while we can do a judo move and turn that to their advantage is the true sign of the skill with strategy.

lance’s legion:
No, and if you don’t mind me just kind of pivoting a little bit here, the way I see it, if we zoom out just to contextualize the Iranian conflict, I think what’s happening right now and the rapprochement between the United States and Russia is because we’re trying to balance the EU away from the PRC.

I know this sounds crazy, but obviously there are a number of governments within the EU which are becoming increasingly hostile to the United States. And so they’re making inroads with the Chinese as a kind of counterhegemon in a way to play one side off the other, which is very wise.

And I think what’s going to end up happening is a strategic realignment where the United States will find a way to split Russia away from economic ties with China and find a way to isolate the EU.

Though this still does not—it’s not even simply explained—but it doesn’t justify intervention just from a realpolitik perspective into Iran because the outcome of it would be at most, I don’t know, pyrrhic victory. I mean, what is the move there? What do you think is the read on the conflict? What’s the cause?

People’s Art of War:
For Iran and for this, it took Iran kinda by surprise because I feel like there is this feeling rather than the United States or just online of the rational actor. Like we place this highly, highly, high evidence on the rational actor.

People as we’ve seen in our own lives, as we’ve seen in history, constantly doing things that are totally against rational interest and it seems rational to them at the time. So understanding the premises that they have that’s rational is important.

But from what I see all this going on, whether it’s the Ukraine or the United States here, as long as there is no next steps, as long as there’s no clear offer to all of this and especially when a leader goes into a conflict and treats it like it’s a social media post or as an influencer kind of thing—it’s more impulsive because of the influence of social media.

lance’s legion:
I completely agree. I guess I don’t make any pronouncements as to how things will turn out because it’s so fluid. Just as you implied, state actors are just as irrational with irrational priors as any one individual. One thing might mean something completely inordinately more than someone else.

And so we don’t understand the reasoning matrix of the Iranian regime, especially because it’s become decapitated, which is so funny. It’s like, how are you supposed to engage in terms with a nation whose leadership you’ve decimated? And so what you’ve caused is power to become diffuse, and therefore there’s no decisive outcome possible due to that very fact.

So it’s very hard to presage what’s going to happen. All I can say is I think conflicts and their intensity and profligacy will be an ever-increasing trend in the future, especially at least in the medium term. I’d say the next 20 years, it’s going to be a continuous roll of various different flashpoints and kinetic exchanges throughout the world, especially in the third world.

13. Conclusion (01:02:28)

People’s Art of War:
Great, and we’re going to see people try and settle the score as the United States weakens and as China or some other great power doesn’t step in and give their own version of world order. And that’s an interesting topic we should talk about another time, but that’s all the time we have today. Anyways, thank you so much for being on the show.

lance’s legion:
Thanks for having me on. Thank you so much.

People’s Art of War:
And thanks for listening. If you want to find us, you can find Lance at Lance Legion on Twitter, also Lance Legion on Substack. You can also find me, People’s Art of War, on Substack, Twitter, and also on Spotify as Statescraft. Thank you for listening and we will see you again in the next episode.

👋 Welcome to a 🔒 subscriber-only edition🔒 People’s Art of War. Thank you for being a paid subscriber to The People’s Art of War. What follows is the info war playbook for an age of AI-powered disinformation.

Scrolling social media is a nightmare since the Iran War kicked off, as I talked about in a observations I made about this war.

A typical pattern:

Someone is certain Iran struck first, another is quite certain they didn’t. A third account has satellite images proving both. A fourth is calling the third a bot.

You’ve been doom scrolling for 40 minutes. You know less than when you started, and your brain is starting to get a headache. You read all of it and understood none of it.

For strategists, analysts, or people who want real news, this can be incredibly frustrating and anxiety inducing. Your brain is screaming everything is wrong, but you’re not sure how to handle it. But you need information.

But the real question is whether you understand how and how you can fight back against it.

That’s what we are going to look at today.

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The Five Ways They’re Hitting You

There’s a framework from the world of data called the Five V’s.

Originally, it described the properties of big data:

1. Volume

2. Velocity

3. Variety

4. Veracity

5. Value

The definitions for big data and data science are radically different. But the idea behind these also applies to info war, as I’ll soon show you.

In the hands of a state actor, a coordinated network of accounts, or a platform optimized for engagement, these five properties become five attack vectors . Multiplke system for disabling your judgment before you even realize it’s happening.

All five are being used against you. Let me show you how each one works.

1. They Don’t Need to Win the Argument. Just flood the zone. (Volume)

The first weapon is abundance. I talked about this briefly in other articles.

Ten years ago, running a credible influence operation was genuinely expensive. You needed resources, coordination, institutional cover. Nation-states could do it, but it required real infrastructure to make a fabricated narrative land convincingly at scale.

That ceiling is gone

[Illustration: A single person at a laptop on the left, with an arrow pointing to a mountain of documents. On the other side, a large team of people with magnifying glasses examining just one document from that mountain.]

The gap between how cheaply someone can fabricate content and how expensively someone else can disprove it is the weapon.

Fabrications outnumber verifications by orders of magnitude. Debunks never catch up. By the time a correction lands, the false version has circulated long enough to feel like established fact to everyone who saw it first.

This is why volume-based attacks don’t need to convince anyone of anything specific. The goal isn’t to win the argument. Its to flood the zone, making the space so crowded with competing claims that no single version, true or false, can be evaluated on its merits.

Strategic ambiguity used to be something military planners labored to manufacture. Now it arrives on its own, generated by rumor, bots, and the financial incentives of cheap content at scale.

2. By the Time the Truth Arrives, Nobody’s Listening (Velocity)

Truth is slow and is revealed in time. Lies move at algorithm speed.

A gap between the speed at which a fabricated claim spreads and the speed at which someone corrects it has existed for as long as propaganda has existed.

What's changed is that the gap is now permanent within the timeframe that matters for how people form beliefs about a fast-moving event.

Here’s what the lifecycle of a single fabricated image actually looked like during this conflict:

Read more

That empty space used to be one of the busiest aviation crossroads on earth. Hundreds of daily flights connecting Europe, Asia, and Africa flowed through it. CNN described it as “a hole in the sky.”

The knot of traffic cramme…

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One thing we’ve been seeing since the Iran Conflict started is the absolute tsunami of AI-generated garbage flooding every feed.

Fake videos, fabricated images, conspiracy theories spun up in seconds. People are rightfully pissed about it.

Read more

We go into how data aggregation and processing is reshaping the modern the machinery of war: data and information. From the shift toward computational autocracy to the weaponization of information, we explore a future where sovereignty is defined by code and conflicts are decided long before the first shot is fired.

We discuss:

• Data aggregation is crucial for understanding warfare dynamics.

• Why the five V’s of data—velocity, volume, value, variety, and veracity are a key part of modern info and data war in the age of AI.

• How AI and data processing enhance decision-making capabilities in military contexts.

• Why human involvement remains vital in data war despite living in an age of AI.

• How Information warfare plays a significant role in shaping political narratives.

• Why The future of warfare will increasingly rely on data and technology.

• The role of data in the calculus of military engagement and autocracy.

• The internet may become more regionally and politically fragmented.

• Why understanding data relationships is key to effective military strategy.

• How the role of private companies in national security is growing.

Where to find Lance Legion:

• X: https://x.com/LancesLegion

• Substack:

Lance's Legion

In-depth military and strategic analysis. Founding Members are given access to my private server and inner circle.

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAioE7UWN_tV6gVFcqQZqPw

Chapters

00:00 Understanding Data Aggregation in Warfare

06:15 The Five V’s of Data

11:47 The Role of Information in Political Control

18:26 The Evolution of Warfare and Technology

24:55 Data Processing and Decision Intelligence

31:51 Human in the Loop vs. Autonomous Systems

40:35 The Impact of Data on Military Strategy

49:00 The Future of Warfare and Autocracy

55:47 Information Warfare and Narrative Control

Mentions during the episode:

• PLA Data Support Force: https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/online-analysis/2024/05/chinas-new-information-support-force/

• PLA’s Strategic Support Force: https://digitalcommons.ndu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=china-strategic-perspectives

• Palantir’s Gotham: https://medium.com/@k3vin.andrews1/palantir-gotham-from-9-11-to-ai-d875d039d55b

• Palantir’s Foundry: https://medium.com/@adiodejiroheem/learning-palantir-foundry-as-an-engineer-a-deep-dive-into-ontologies-pipelines-and-adaptability-05056f0f8005

Military Concepts

• The Three Warfares (三种战法): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_warfares

• Fifth Dimension Operations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_dimension_operations

• Information and Data War Doctrine from Japanese Self Defense Force (Japanese):
  https://www.nids.mod.go.jp/publication/commentary/commentary267.html

• Kill Chain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_chain_(military)

• AI & The Military Decision-Making Process (MDMP)

  • Artificial Intelligence-Enabled Military Decision-Making Process: Marine Corps University Press: AI-Enabled MDMP

  • Decision-Based AI and the Strategic Reordering of Military Power: National Defense University: Decision-Based AI

  • AI-Driven Data Management:

    U.S. Army War College: Mission Command & AI

Data Concepts

• What is an ontology?: https://www.ontotext.com/knowledgehub/fundamentals/what-are-ontologies/

• The 5 V’s of Big Data: IBM: The 5 V’s of Big Data

• Human-in-the-Loop (HITL): IBM: What is Human-in-the-Loop?

Geopolitics & Historical Context

• Arab Spring & Social Media: Brookings Institution: The Role of Social Media in the Arab Uprisings

• Japan Self-Defense Forces Demographic Crisis: The Diplomat: The JSDF’s Recruiting Crisis

• Electronic Warfare & Radar Spoofing: C4ISRNet: Electronic Warfare News & Insights

Japan has entered a new era of geopolitical resolve.

After her landslide victory in February’s snap election, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has shifted the national conversation on an important part of the Japanese Constitution.

In the devastating aftermath of the Pacific War, a defeated and devastated Japan wrote the 1947 Peace Constitution. In it, Arti…

Read more

Thank you for your continued support! I'm enhancing your member benefits to bring you even more value. Starting with exclusive podcast episodes for paid subscribers.

I'll still be writing member-exclusive articles. But this is a new way for me to answer your questions and dive deeper into topics.

First up: a deep-dive into a December article several of you have been asking about:

We discuss:

1. Understanding interaction change is crucial for recognizing surface-level events.

2. Systemic change involves deeper shifts in power dynamics within a system.

3. Systems change refers to the complete transformation of rules governing a system.

4. Recognizing these changes can help in seizing business opportunities.

5. The structure of a system defines the limits of possible changes.

6. Interaction changes are often the most visible but least impactful in the long run.

7. Career implications can be assessed by observing leadership changes and their justifications.

8. Signals of potential layoffs can often be found in communication from management.

9. Understanding the dynamics of a system can help strategists make informed decisions.

10. Being able to abstract from interaction to systemic change is a valuable skill. Systemic change in corporations often involves a power shift and reduction in headcount.

11. Identifying opportunities requires understanding both interaction and systemic changes.

12. Political dynamics in the workplace can influence career advancement.

13. AI is set to augment jobs rather than completely replace them.

14. Understanding the rules of the system is crucial for career success.

15. Building coalitions and networks is essential in navigating corporate environments.

16. The current AI bubble will eventually pop, leading to new job definitions.

17. Systemic changes can be subtle and require careful observation to identify.

18. Career opportunities can arise from understanding the dynamics of change.

19. It’s never too late to learn about systemic and interaction changes.

Timestamps

• 00:00 Introduction to Political Changes

• 02:04 Understanding Interaction, Systemic, and Systems Change

• 05:54 The Importance of Recognizing Changes

• 08:43 Applying Changes to Business and Politics

• 11:31 Real-World Examples of Change

• 14:22 Career Implications of Change

• 17:15 Identifying Signals of Change

• 20:04 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

• 29:36 Understanding Systemic Change in Corporations

• 33:39 Identifying Opportunities Amidst Change

• 38:23 Navigating Political and Business Dynamics

• 41:15 The Impact of AI on Job Dynamics

• 55:04 Preparing for Future Systemic Changes

Carter and People’s Art of War discuss the implications of the Epstein files on government legitimacy and public trust. They explore the public's reaction to the scandal, the role of media and investigative journalism, and the political ramifications for upcoming elections. But the generational perspectives on the scandal, the impact of conspiracy theories on shaping the scandal

We discuss:

1. Trust in government is eroding, exacerbated by the Epstein files.

2. Public reactions reveal a mix of outrage, disbelief, and a desire for accountability, but lacks genuine investigation.

3. Media coverage of the Epstein scandal is fragmented and often sensationalized.

4. Generational differences shape how people perceive the Epstein files and government corruption.

5. Conspiracy theories complicate public understanding of the scandal.

6. The role of technology and social media influences public perception and engagement.

7. A crisis of legitimacy in government leads to widespread cynicism.

8. New political institutions are necessary for future governance.

9. Education and critical thinking are essential for informed citizenship.

10. Maintaining a healthy information diet is crucial in today’s media landscape.

Where to find Carter:

• X: https://x.com/CarterHLawson

• Telegram: https://t.me/carterhlawson

Timestamps

• 00:00 The Epstein Files and Government Legitimacy

• 02:55 Public Reaction and Political Implications

• 06:03 Media Landscape and Investigative Challenges

• 08:42 Generational Perspectives on Corruption

• 11:54 Conspiracy Theories and Public Discourse

• 14:59 Information Diet and Personal Responsibility

• 21:58 The Role of History in Modern Discourse

• 25:19 The Crisis of Legitimacy in Governance

• 26:51 Normalization of Corruption and Public Outrage

• 29:40 The Erosion of Shock and Moral Legitimacy

• 31:54 Cynicism and the Gen Z Perspective

• 36:50 The Need for New Institutions and Ideas

Mentions during the episode:

Essential Reading & Journalism

• Whitney Webb: One Nation Under Blackmail (Vol. 1 & 2) – These volumes trace the intersection of intelligence and organized crime.

• Ryan Grim: Drop Site News – The investigative outlet where Ryan Grim and Jeremy Scahill are currently breaking stories on the Epstein-intelligence nexus.

• James Patterson: Filthy Rich: The Jeffrey Epstein Story – The book mentioned as a more “establishment” take on the case. Also a series on Netflix.

• Breaking Points: Podcast/YouTube – Mentioned as a platform where Ryan Grim and others cover these issues.

Strategy

• The Strategy of "Flooding the Zone": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood — A communication strategy mentioned as a way to introduce so much information that the public can no longer parse underlying reality.

• Jus Ad Explorationem (The Right to Spy): Source

  Relates to the “international espionage” mentioned in the episode. This legal framework explores how peacetime spying operates at the edge of “international legitimacy”.

The Philosophical & Moral Frameworks

• The Mandate of Heaven: Source

  A Chinese political philosophy referenced to describe how a dynasty (or government) loses legitimacy through debauchery and moral decay.

• Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality: Source

  Expands on the “moral hypocrisy” of the “moral elite” discussed in the episode. Nietzsche argues that when motivational icons are linked to “indulgent excess,” moral language itself erodes, leading to “moral exhaustion”.

• The Social Contract & The Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes: Source

  The foundational text for the idea that a “Leviathan” (centralized government) is necessary to balance social frictions—a center the speakers argue is now missing.

• Plato’s Allegory of the Cave: Source

  Cited as the first step to escaping the “digital slop” and understanding the difference between shadows (media narratives) and reality.

We discuss:

1. Why data warfare is a critical aspect of modern conflict.

2. The PLA’s data support force plays a significant role in China’s military strategy.

3. Information warfare is about shaping perceptions and narratives.

4. Palantir’s technology aids in decision-making and data organization.

5. Recommendation systems can be weaponized for information warfare.

6. The centralization of data is crucial for effective military operations.

7. Cultural differences influence how data is utilized in governance.

8. The future of warfare will heavily rely on data and technology.

9. Palantir’s influence extends to law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

10. How each’s role shows a different social contract in the digital age.

Where to find Lance Legion:

• X: https://x.com/LancesLegion

• Substack:

Lance's Legion

In-depth military and strategic analysis. Founding Members are given access to my private server and inner circle.

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAioE7UWN_tV6gVFcqQZqPw

Timestamps

• 00:00 Introduction to Data Warfare

• 02:53 Understanding the PLA Data Support Force

• 05:50 Information Warfare and Unrestricted Warfare

• 08:31 The Role of Palantir in Modern Warfare

• 11:49 Information Warfare Tactics and Strategies

• 14:35 The Mechanics of Recommendation Systems

• 17:31 Palantir’s Functionality and Applications

• 20:45 Simulation Modeling in Military Operations

• 23:44 Data Centralization in Military and Intelligence

• 26:37 Comparing PLA and Palantir’s Approaches

• 29:40 The Future of Data Warfare and Centralization

• 32:30 Challenges and Limitations of Data Systems

• 35:42 Palantir’s Role in Law Enforcement

• 38:38 Cultural Differences in Data Management

• 41:39 The Political Implications of Data Control

• 44:26 The Future of Global Power Dynamics

• 47:23 The Role of Technology in Centralization

• 50:36 The Impact of Data on Social Contracts

Mentions during the episode:

• PLA Data Support Force: https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/online-analysis/2024/05/chinas-new-information-support-force/

• PLA’s Strategic Support Force: https://digitalcommons.ndu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=china-strategic-perspectives

• An overview of the PLA Strategic Support Force (prior to 2024 reforms): https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/Books/Chairman-Xi/Chairman-Xi_Chapter-12.pdf?ver=2019-02-08-112005-803

• Palantir’s Gotham: https://medium.com/@k3vin.andrews1/palantir-gotham-from-9-11-to-ai-d875d039d55b

• Palantir’s Foundry: https://medium.com/@adiodejiroheem/learning-palantir-foundry-as-an-engineer-a-deep-dive-into-ontologies-pipelines-and-adaptability-05056f0f8005

• The 2024 PLA Restructuring (Information Support Force): https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Article/4157257/a-new-step-in-chinas-military-reform/

• Fifth Dimension Operations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_dimension_operations

• Information and Data War Doctrine from Japanese Self Defense Force (Japanese):
  https://www.nids.mod.go.jp/publication/commentary/commentary267.html

• Unrestricted Warfare: https://www.c4i.org/unrestricted.pdf

• Science of Military Strategy by Chinese Academy of Military Sciences: https://a.co/d/01Mrtxdn

• Strategy of Tension: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_of_tension

• The Strategic Support Force and the Future of Chinese Information Operations: https://cyberdefensereview.army.mil/Portals/6/Documents/CDR%20Journal%20Articles/The%20Strategic%20Support%20Force_Kania_Costello.pdf

👋 Welcome to a 🔒 subscriber-only edition🔒 of my Learn Strategy series: Learn Strategy Plus. Each edition goes in deeper into strategy and tactical basics, without all the jargon.

Is it possible to win without fighting?

Winning without fighting is a very famous line from Sunzi’s Art of War. And has varying interpretations. Here’s the original quote:

It can be vague. So there’s so much debate I find (even in China, Japan, and Korea) about what it even means.

Some say it’s do nothing and win. Others say it is avoiding fighting altogether. While some think it’s only outmaneuvering an opponent. Some people, not wanting to investigate, write it off as mysterious orientalism or complete nonsense.

But how do you really win without fighting?

The secret lies in observation and orientation. And for that let’s use another well-known method to strategists and tacticians:

The OODA Loop.

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What is the OODA Loop anyways?

The OODA Loop was created by American fighter pilot and military strategist John Boyd to explain how to gain a competitive advantage in fast-moving environments.

Originally designed for air-to-air combat, his framework has since become a cornerstone for decision-making in business, sports, and emergency management.

But I’d like to keep it simple for Learn Strategy readers. Its centered around these generally these four phases:

• Observe. Collect raw data and information from your environment to identify changes and emerging threats. This stage requires keeping an open mind to see situation as it truly is, not as you expect it to be.

• Orient. Filter and interpret your observations based on your experiences, culture, and existing knowledge. This is the most critical phase because it shapes your mental model and determines how you perceive the reality of the challenge.

• Decide. Formulate a plan or choose a specific course of action based on your mental orientation. This step involves weighing potential outcomes and selecting the strategy most likely to succeed in the current context.

• Act. Execute your chosen decision and immediately begin monitoring the results to start the cycle over again. The goal is to act faster than your opponent can react, effectively “resetting” their own loop and maintaining the initiative.

The main phases where “win without fighting” happens is in the observe and orient phases.

It is essential to shape the opponent in these phases to defeat themselves by mistakes and false assumptions. Then pressure, occupy advantageous space, or even attack the openings they create.

That is the essence of the phrase “Win without fighting”.

It is to scramble their perception of reality at the adversary’s internal clock and decision-making. It is not destruction first. It is the strangling and paralysis of their resources, decision-making, and strategic will.

In politics, this is architecture of constructive ambiguity and controlling a narrative. You force your rival to expend political capital.

In business this is disrupting an established equilibrium. You defeat them by making their entire biz model a monument to the past.

In daily life this is preservation of emotional sovereignty. You become a mirror, and dictate the pace of an interaction, and the pace of your boundaries, and gain respect.

But this leads to another question and a pragmatic one:

How do you jam the loop?

A rule I tell my mentee to win without fighting, means you must jam the opponent higher up the chain.

Defeating them before they get to the act stage is just as important. Yes, winning without fighting means locking the opponent in a recursive loop.

You need to think of it as a chain:

Observation shapes how an opponent orients. Orientation shapes how they decide and act. So you get them stuck there, perpetually burning energy, buying time or space.

What I mean is that it is far superior to defeat an opponent at the observation phase, or even the orientation phase, over the decision and acting phase.

But great strategists defeat the opponents by jamming them at the observation phase….

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The extraction of Nicholas Maduro by US special forces came as a shock to many in the international community. Not only was a head of state captured, but he was taken prisoner. Then packed away to a foreign land, while the government figures out what to do next.

But as we watch the fallout from the U.S. extraction of Nicolás Maduro, we are witnessing the…

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London recently approved the construction of the Chinese Embassy after a years long fight over it.

Fun fact: this is ridiculously common in diplomatic circles. Saw this a few times during my time in DC and overseas. Its a drawn out process.

When you hear about a delay in embassy construction, it is almost never about bad weather or budget overruns. It i…

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If you were a revolutionary who just toppled a century-old regime, where would you place your seat of power?

The answer is pretty consistent: right were the old one was!

From the Spanish Conquistadors to the Bolsheviks new power almost always chooses to build on the ruins of the old. And quite literally in some cases:

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Look at any social media platform now, and the effect of influencers is undeniable. There’s tech influencers. There’s geopol influencers. And there’s even war influencers.

Regardless of the influencer, the commentary class now dominates our thoughts. They get excusive access to state media outlets. Or even access to areas that normal journalists wouldn’…

Read more