1) They control the flow of oil, as we're seeing now.

2) They provide a huge amount of funding to hostile forces throughout the middle east - Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, pro-Iran militias in Iraq. This destabilizes the entire region, including important partners beyond Israel (Saudi Arabia, UAE). Their support for the Assad regime in Syria and Hezbollah, who killed nearly half a million Syrians during the civil war there, also created a huge refugee crisis throughout Europe that has led to a rise in far-right parties who are reacting to the failed integration of these refugees.

3) They provide drones to Russia and instructions for how to build those drones.

4) They provide oil to Russia and China, two major geopolitical adversaries.

5) They are among the most significant propagandists that use social media to destabilize the west - having been caught repeatedly manipulating social media platforms like Reddit, Instagram, Twitter/X.

There are also some strategic benefits to the current war, especially if you're a narcissistic kleptocrat running the US:

1) We've already seen the market manipulation.

2) Every bomb dropped is a bomb taxpayers must replace; that money goes right to defense contractors

3) Then consider the American oil companies: they stand to make a lot more money from this, as their products are now more scarce and more valuable. The US, as a net exporter of oil (we import low quality oil because we're good at refining it; we export the good stuff), will make more money.

4) The disruption of the Persian Gulf hurts Russia and China far more than it hurts the US and EU. There are some US allies and neutrals who get hurt (those in east Asia, gulf oil states). But it's not a balanced impact - we definitely come out on top in the current situation in my view.

5) Electric vehicles are starting to look a lot better. Who's Trump's bff and biggest financial backer, again? Does he operate in that space?

I think the overall impact of the attacks on Venezuela and Iran sum to an attack on the hostile Russia-Iran-China axis, with the benefit of hurting some of their minor allies as well. It seems too perfect that we attack the two largest non-allied oil suppliers in quick succession for it to be coincidence. It might not be Trump's plan, but it seems like a long-standing plan to achieve a favorable geopolitical environment.

Some discussion on reddit about him: https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/1rnnq6p/though...

If it's in our interest, absolutely. Venezuela nationalized (which is a nice way to say they stole) American oil interests and companies decades ago, has assisted Russia in flouting US sanctions, and has in part enabled the drug cartels. Each of those things cost us money. We're also getting a ton of immigrants from Venezuela that we have to spend money dealing with. Venezuela could also be a much better trading partner for us in the future with a liberal democratic society. All of that is directly in the best interest for the US. Believe it or not, sometimes our interests lie outside our borders.

Isolationism is a failed policy by every nation that tries it, and this is something that used to be taught to every school child in America about our past policies. It's a shame those lessons seem to have been forgotten by our people.

> On top of that, removing a ruler without any plan for follow-up frequently makes things worse, not better. We seem to have already forgotten that removing the leadership of Iraq led to the rise of ISIS and its horrifying consequences.

This is absolutely true. You have to destroy the security forces as well, and support the elected democratic leadership. We may fail to do so in this case.

It's why the UN has an obsession with a tiny democracy in the middle east and ignores the multitude of brutal dictatorships which oppress and kill far more people around it and across the globe.

We allow brutal dictatorships to continue subjugating tens of millions of people and killing millions in the name of convention. Our international organizations (the UN in particular) are basically ruled by authoritarian regimes. Is there no justification for external powers to effect regime change? We just have to wait and watch as the dictator kills a ton of people? Oh, and of course there is Maduro's support for Putin via sanctions evasion. Even now, Venezuelans face a brutal security force that is likely to retain power, but hopefully that power fragments.

Imo we should have done this right after the last election which Maduro stole.

The reaction I'm seeing from second-hand and direct reddit comments from actual Venezualans seems really positive.

There have been widespread protests in Venezuela throughout Maduro’s regime, but especially after the election.

These 3 companies have been heavyweights since long before AI. Before AI, you couldn't get Nvidia cards due to crypto, or gaming. Apple is barely investing in AI. Microsoft has been the most important enterprise tech company for my entire lifetime.

I think the average person on the left likes to believe they have the position that “all immigration is good”. In reality, they mean all migration by nonwhite people is good (see how they talk about white or near-white people in the US, Canada, Israel). It’s this hypocrisy and obviously racist stance that bugs me.

What makes Muslim migration to Europe “good” but Jewish migration to the stateless land of Israel from 1890-1948 bad? What makes Muslims moving to the US “good” but makes all white people in the US colonizers? Either everybody gets the colonizer notation (foolish imo) or migration is a human right (like it was for the million years before the modern nation-state) and everybody needs to fucking deal with it, stop killing each other and stop condemning people for moving or for the past crimes of people who may be barely related. And if you’re going to migrate: don’t be an asshole to the people there first.

Literally the OP and the magical thing called math I did in my last post.

The rate of death in Gaza from those causes is nowhere near that CDR. The total death rate from all causes is substantially below that number (by a factor of 4).

> at least two in every 10,000 people die each day from starvation, or from malnutrition and disease.

Gaza population is 2 million * 2/10000 = 400 people dying per day in order for it to be a famine.

> After more than 700 days of war, 455 Palestinians have died of malnutrition or starvation, including 151 children, the health ministry in Gaza reported on October 1. One hundred and seventy-seven of the total number have died of malnutrition or starvation since the IPC confirmed famine on August 15, it said.

Is 455 in 700 days more than 400 per day? I don’t know, I’m having trouble doing math. Perhaps the people of HN can tell me the IPC standard is being met as the CNN article states?

Media and general literacy is apparently impossible even for journalists.

> The Pentagon has also struggled to find software that can successfully control large numbers of drones, made by different companies, working in coordination to find and potentially strike a target—a key to making the Replicator vision work.

So the software can't work with arbitrary drones. The article also talks about the high cost of some of the drones.

> Of the dozen or so autonomous systems acquired for Replicator, three were unfinished or existed only as a concept at the time they were selected, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Among Replicator’s shortcomings, officials said, is that the Defense Innovation Unit was directed to buy drones that had older technology, and it didn’t rigorously test platforms and software before acquiring them, other people familiar with the matter said.

So the military bought promises and basically funded some research. That's fine imo, they do that all the time, but their expectations did not align with results in these cases. And they didn't set good requirements for the platforms.

I expect the hopes for AI-driven drones with the ability to target individual humans by identity is probably not quite here yet. You have to get around jamming, fit any tech on a small platform, and it has to be cheap and disposable. And you don't actually want "AI", because you don't want it to mistakenly kill civilians, you want highly accurate computer vision.

In Russia and Ukraine, they are manually piloting drones that are attached by fiberoptic cable. It's cheap and effective, but requires a human pilot. At least for now, I would guess this is a much more effective (in results and cost) way to go. A human can pilot dozens of disposable drones in a day that drop their payload and are then discarded.

The real lesson is that if you’re opening a small coffee shop or bookshop or similar small business, you have to work full time and not hire people unless absolutely necessary. And if you do hire others, avoid the communists.

0. https://www.34st.com/article/2022/08/minas-world-lgbtq-coffe...

You should look up civilian death rate in previous wars, even recent ones. Civilian deaths typically outnumber combatant deaths by a factor of at least 2:1, often more like 6:1, and sometimes more.