Everyone talks about the AIS signal being turned off in the strait as if it is an insurmountable problem.
Ships had their AIS on before the war, and will turn it on again once they left the area. So we can just filter for ships which previously reported a location in the Persian Gulf, and now are reporting outside of it. Similarly we can count ships which were outside of the Gulf and now are inside. We don’t need the AIS to be on while they are transiting.
> This weakened Iran would have no ability […], close the strait, […]
Here is where we disagree. And i think this is the only point which matters.
I agree with you that the US always had the ability to destroy Iranian civilian infrastructure. I agree with you that doing so would cause catastrophic economic damage, civilian unrest, regime overthrow etc. It would seriously disrupt their nuclear program for sure.
What it wouldn’t do is reopen the strait. As long as some ships pay the toll those monies can be used to pay the “warfighters” and their weapons. It is relatively cheap to do so. Ukraine demonstrated this with their unmanned surface vessels. This they can do even if the whole hinterland of Iran is in flames and turmoil.
In fact the more their economy collapses the more lucrative this coastal piracy “business” relatively to other opportunities becomes. People who “before the bombing” had better things to do will find that shaking down foreign ships is still doable “after the bombing”. Some of it will be out of ideology and hate for sure, destroying all the civilian infra of a country tends to whip up emotions in people. But fundamentally they can keep doing it because it is a business which pays.
And regime overthrow won’t help with this either. In the absence of a strong central coordinating force you might get multiple separate pirate outfits camping at different parts of the coast trying to take tolls. That obviously wouldn’t improve their economic success, but would increase chaos and hinder transportation even more.
In short while the USA could destroy Iran as a nation, doing so would not eliminate the threat to shipping in the region.
Iran's "toll booth" only functions because they shoot missiles at ships that don't pay up. If they didn't shoot missiles, nobody would pay. They have no legal ability to do this; the strait is split between Iranian and Omani territorial waters. Iran does not have legal control over Omani waters. Actually enforcing their "toll" means firing missiles at ships in Omani waters who don't pay. It's a combination of piracy, terrorism, and an act of war (violation of Omani sovereignty).
This situation is unacceptable for every other Gulf country. It may not be dealt with in the coming weeks, but will be addressed in the coming months, in a similar fashion to how Somali piracy was neutralized.
Also, a neutered Iran would not have the capability of producing anti-ship missiles, which is the primary enforcement mechanic of this toll.
> The reason gyms can offer flat-rate pricing is that they bet on under-utilization, not that costs are flat.
Yes. In fact i remember hearing about a gym which offered a flat-rate pricing model but explicitly excluded certain professions from partaking in it. I remember the deal was excluding police, bouncers, models, actors and air stewardesses. They had a separate more costly tier for these people. (And I think i heard about it from the indignation the deal has caused online.)
> I would have ever ever in my life bet that Microsoft software could be shipped in a spacecraft carrying human beings.
Do you also worry when you are flying on an airplane where some other passengers carry a laptop running windows? Just because it is a computer and it is on a spacecraft doesnt mean it will harm human beings if it goes down.
If there was a possibility to hook that device up to any flight critical other stuff, or carry it in the cockpit maybe I would be worried. (am not the GP)
> I asked Claude […]. The answer confirmed my gut feeling.
And i drawn a tarot card and the card refuted your gut feeling.
Joking asside, there is no reason to suspect that an LLM is telling you correct information about how best to use an LLM. The way to confirm your thesis is by running experiments, or finding someone who has already done them. It is a valid move to use an LLM to find primary sources, but in itself the LLM is not an authority you could or should trust.
> Signal is one of the most secure communication platforms out there
That might be true amongst the communication platforms available for the average Joe. It is definietly not the most secure communication platform available for someone high ranking in the USA government.
> it is obviously not immune to human error or social engineering
Nothing is immune. But there are systems more and systems less prone to these issues.
I bet that a confident scammer is prepared to deal with things like that. They want to put you in a state where you are under time and emotional pressure and your "relative" will have a well practiced response why they can't answer your weird questions.
Imagine your crying grandson who caused a traffic accident in Mexico and the police planted drugs in his car and now he needs money to pay them off. He is in pain and probably has a concussion (explanation why he can't remember what you are asking), the police is hassling him to get off the phone (time pressure, explanation why the quality of the call is terrible). Will you get hung up on some code word he asked you to memorise years ago and you can't even know where it is anymore? And if you bring it up he just starts crying and tells you that you are his last chance to turn his life around. And you remember when he was a wee little kid and he fell and scraped his knee and you comforted him. Just the thought of pressing him on the code makes you feel like a terrible person. Or not. And then the scammer just finds someone more gullible. Theirs is a number game after all.
Ships had their AIS on before the war, and will turn it on again once they left the area. So we can just filter for ships which previously reported a location in the Persian Gulf, and now are reporting outside of it. Similarly we can count ships which were outside of the Gulf and now are inside. We don’t need the AIS to be on while they are transiting.
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