Collaboration is the exception. That collaboration is everywhere in many forms is a testament to the power of natural selection.

Social / emotional signals still exist around that word.

Because US _does_ have that, and so it _does_ significantly change the calculus. Unless you think it doesn't. In which case, we just disagree.

The reality of Hormuz was well known decades ago - even in 2002 Millenium exercise a bunch of speedboats and motorcycles stopped the US Navy from opening hormuz. [1]

Moskva was taken down by a well coordinated strike that distracted its one (1!) fire control radar. It was also alone. Those are important factors. [2]

A blanket comparison of Russia's attempts to eliminate Ukraine's industry with US Navy's ability to eliminate Iran's is ... questionable. We've flown 1000s of uncontested sorties over Ukraine, and Russia has been relegated to knocking down apartment buildings with Iran's own drones.

It is entirely possible that the US Navy is commanded by myopic idiots who fall for those tricks, but I doubt it.

Finally, it's not entirely clear that the large population won't, itself, become at least partially an asset of the resistance.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

[2]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2022/04/14/ukrain...

The only developers I know who write Java full time work in systems that take pictures of things from far away.

Then ask yourself if bad things can happen despite good intents. Truly horrible things, in fact, despite effort to prevent them.

Then, ask if this bombing was part of group A or group B.

And ask if we were trying to target people from group A or group B.

This is not an "ends justify the means" argument, I hope. But if you want to count bodies as some kind of justification for or against war because apparently morals can be reduced to addition and subtraction, you might as well at least classify the dead and causes correctly.

> . “These aren’t just nameless, faceless targets,” he said later. “This is a place where people are going to feel ramifications for a long time.” The targeting cycle had been fast enough to hit 50 buildings and too fast to discover it was hitting the wrong ones.

> The air force’s own targeting guide, in effect during the Iraq war, said this was never supposed to happen. Published in 1998, it described the six functions of targeting as “intertwined”, with the targeteer moving “back” to refine objectives and “forward” to assess feasibility. “The best analysis,” the manual stated, “is reasoned thought with facts and conclusions, not a checklist.”

> A former senior government official asked the obvious question: “The building was on a target list for years. Yet this was missed, and the question is how.”

---

> Please reason through the implications now?

It was a mistake. My girls are about to enter this level of school, as well (cool parent card). A mistake/error/tragedy can all accurately be used to describe this. It's horrible it happened. All I'm saying is that no process is perfect. It is not excusable, but it is unfortunately understandable how it happened in this situation.

> 1000s

1000s is fairly easily understood. 1/1000 is inferred b/c as you say, "public pressure" sprang up immediately after this one bombing. Iran regularly posts pictures and videos online, and human rights orgs are clamoring to find evidence. Either we are really good at suppressing the world except for this one case or there aren't that many schools being bombed. We cannot be simultaneously horrible at picking targets and suppressing evidence and also great at it in every other case. Planet labs themselves provided the pictures - they are freely available.

Yes maybe the machine lumbers on, stomping on kids, or maybe we've learned our lesson and are now perfect, but this seems like the kind of mistake that can happen, and it seems likely that the analysts involved here are now benched and I wouldn't be surprised if some corrections are happening internally. These are human beings, despite what the article would have you believe, that are doing the best they can.

> we targeted and killed young children

We killed young kids, but not on purpose. We targeted a building and intent matters. I refuse to believe anyone in the decision chain would move forward if they believed kids were going to be killed. If you do - how can you? Why would they?

We're going to quickly get into hypotheticals here. There's a lot of open threads, and believe me I hate with the fullest extent of the word violence against children. We can leave it at that.

I don't disagree there. But this is not a case of hallucination, and an existing website is a signal, not a determinant, of the real situation on the ground. However, you have made a very, very strong assumption that these targets were not carefully evaluated. One that does not seem to be present in TFA or any analysis that I've read. In fact, the article itself quotes those in the know who believe this should have been eliminated as a target.

Everyone is in their own place adapting (or not) to AI. The disconnect b/w even folks on the same team is just crazy. At least it's gotten more concrete (here's what works for me, what do you do) vs catastrophizing jobpocolypse or "teh singularity", at least on day to day conversations.

You still have to consider whether it's worth it to spend a patriot missile to intercept a drone, vs letting the drone hit, say, a billion dollar radar installation or a dozen troops.

On the manufacturing side, nobody said that all drones are intercepted with patriots. You have to look at the avg cost to intercept vs the average cost to attack, and if the ratio of those avg costs (across all attack/interceptions) is, say 100:1, and the combined GDP of the defending nations vs Iran is 1000:1, then what is the problem?

There are lower cost ways to intercept already on the market and being rolled out. See for example: https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2025/09/11/uk-to-p...

This whole "cost analysis of patriot vs drone" examines the worst case scenario at a fixed point in time and ignores layered defenses, the effect of combined GDP, learning, diminishing capabilities of attackers, and improvements by defenders.

Great Britian alone has 10x the GDP of Iran. So an interceptor costing 10:1 is (at first approx) breakeven just for GB, who would have to intercept much less than the total manufacturing capability of Iran anyway.

Then you have every rich nation surrounding Iran as well. Let alone the USA who cannot be reached but throws their weight behind interceptions.

And finally "total manufacturing capability" is set to decline in any prolonged engagement with an Iran-like nation, but GB, western EU, USA, et al, are likely to only increase production if an engagement played out.

The math looks catastrophic on paper at 10:1, but I sincerely doubt that's the right analysis. An interceptor is worth what you're protecting, not what the attacking asset costs, so long as you can keep producing them.

Boils down to the same "Typing is removed as a bottleneck but it was never the real job." And at least attempts to re-instill a lost sense of agency I see from developers here and there.

Essentially.. "The craft changes, you decide to maintain what you love or what the market rewards". So, maybe we all just loved coding so much that we happened to make money doing it? I'm not sure that's the essence of the anxiety floating around. I think it's more of an evaporating opportunity to use your experience to provide for yourself, that people are worried about.