The Ukraine & Iran Wars: Watching Imperial Systems Collapse In Real Time
Sorry, humanists, but people are even more predictable than robots. The more of us there are, the dumber we seem to get.
Well this has certainly been one weird week in global affairs. Two ceasefires that really weren’t, with both Moscow and D.C. vexed by opponents they can’t quite bring to heel, make a pretty clear statement about the true state of global affairs.
Welcome to the jungle - it gets worse here every day…
You can have anything you want but you’d better not take it from me!
I’m more an Amon Amarth kind of guy, but if the lyric fits… roll with it. At least World War Three comes with a memorable soundtrack and some fantastic videography, courtesy of drone operators worldwide. Everybody gets their fifteen seconds of fame as the drone flies in…
Hey, in happy news: Putin’s Hungarian puppet Orban finally went down in electoral flames! Ukraine’s most avowed foe in Europe is now set to change its tune, Budapest no longer blocking vital European Union financial support for Kyiv. The other Putin-leaning voices in the EU are liable to be a lot more reasonable now as a bonus.
Game, set, match: Kyiv. In Europe, the stars usually align, eventually.
To make Orban going down ten times better is the USA’s tragic mistake of a vice president, J.D. Vance, having just gone to Hungary to stump for his boy. Between Hungary and Iran, this was not a good weekend for poor wittle perpetually aggrieved/constipated J.D. He’s pushing hard to make people believe that he was the brave lone anti-war voice in the administration, but that only reveals his weakness, not any kind of foresight. Since it happened anyway.
Vance is nearly as good as Trump at stepping on obvious rakes then pretending he was a genius to get whacked in the face. Seriously, who actually donates to these chimps? Shame on the Democrats for losing to this crew.
EU skepticism is justified, but Orban’s overdue fall is why I have a fair amount of faith in the thing. The EU is a bloated, confused, bureaucratic blob, but what can you expect when you’re trying to coordinate most of the countries in Europe? Some were once as bitter enemies as Iran and Israel are back in their imperial heydays.
Up until this week, Hungary was working hard on spending three successive world wars on the wrong side, and in this one Orban sometimes hinted at fighting Ukraine (would not go well). A darling of the sort of Americans who dream of transforming the country into a pseudo-christian dictatorship, Orban’s end along with the rank mess Trump has made of his time in power is a bad sign for their hopes and dreams.
In general, over a long enough span of time, things seem to work out as they ought to in the EU. Don’t hear so much about how Greece, Spain, Ireland, and a few others are on the verge of crashing the Eurozone any more, do you? This is a function of institutions that remain flexible enough to function. The EU is passing through a geopolitical winter into a revitalizing spring. Like a gaggle of geese, sure, but whatever works.
Makes for a lovely contrast with the USA, an alleged democracy where apparently the president has the power to end whole civilizations without any real check or balance beyond this being a totally useless and counterproductive exercise in power. The path to dictatorship in the USA is totally open, if anybody ever has the stones to take it. Founders be spinning in their graves, well, all of them except Hamilton.
The past year or so has demonstrated the triumph of Huntington’s sick argument that US military personnel are obligated to follow whatever orders they receive, no ethical or legal questions required beyond making sure an order came down the chain of command.
Have fun when that gets used against American citizens someday, as it will. And that’ll be the end of the US military.
Talk about an Ivy League weasel abusing science to serve his political ideology - Sam Huntington’s claims about military personnel and supposed “western civilization” have done more damage to US interests and national security than all the country’s enemies combined. His pathetic, ignorant, bigoted “clash of civilizations” presumes that the US must lead a global forever war against the forces of China and Islam, sacrificing American blood and treasure into perpetuity.
His “soldier and the state” bullshit subordinates the Constitutional order to the same flavor of insanity. Soft version holds that obvious crimes, like murdering civilians, can be refused, maybe, if it would go against the real mission as intended by superiors higher up. Hard version says nope - pull all triggers as ordered and let the lawyers worry about petty crap like legality and rights.
Obviously, first “traitors” shot in a crisis are the lawyers, if a Hegseth or Rumsfeld is running the circus, which will always happen sooner or later.
For the record, plenty of Democrats support Huntington’s view, too, including a fair few progressives. Americans Imperialism is very bipartisan. The Trump-era normalization of all kinds of bigotry is rapidly bleeding over into former bleeding hearts who have decided all they really want is absolute power too.
Mercifully, egoist populism stands to bring down the US federal government’s perpetually confused empire over the next few years. And in pretty much exactly the same way as Putin’s similar russian world conceit has led Moscow’s empire over a cliff.
First come the delusional promises, then the futile attempts to bring them into fruition. My Empire Great Again, blah blah blah.
Well, there’s no going back for either Moscow or D.C. now. Both former superpowers have been revealed as little better than nuclear armed theocracies determined to bluff and bully anyone who crosses their path. That automatically generates a long-term response which leaves both weaker and poorer, maybe even destroyed.
I’ll save the core brief on the latest developments in the omnishambles clusterfuck the twits on Team Trump have pulled off in the Middle East for later. Truth be told, for the first time in my life most of the foreign press, even in normally loyal US allies like Australia and the UK, is doing a fine enough job of covering the astonishing self-immolation of the USA. Trump’s childish flailing largely speaks for itself: the mask is off, and only US media types are willing to pretend the emperor’s saggy bits aren’t hanging out for the world to see.
A reconsideration of how the fighting in Ukraine is covered across the world’s actual democracies appears to be underway. No longer does anyone believe that the US will be able to bring peace, in Ukraine or anywhere else. On the contrary, Trump very badly wants to sell out Ukraine to make Putin his buddy against China. But Trump was forced to drag out the process too long by Zelensky’s pushback last year. Now the orange buffoon can’t avoid paying a heavy price at the midterms if he tries anything serious on that front. Especially after screwing up the Iran War so royally.
Plus the Europeans and Ukrainians have built up a solid hedge against US games over the past year. All Trump can do is make the price of Ukraine’s victory a bit higher and further decimate dwindling global respect for the USA in the process.
Once D.C. is irrelevant and the need to conform to the American worldview dissipates, improved understanding of Ukraine’s true situation should spread. And it’s a lot more encouraging than most folks have been led to believe.
Most official models fail to fully compensate for the human side of strategy and policy because postmodern scholarship refuses to accept that people are just animals with clothes, our presumptions of superior intelligence a fatal delusion. Certainly we have capabilities that exceed those of most animal species in certain domains, but technological sophistication is only one dimension of development.
In a cognitive sense, our brains have hardly changed over the past hundred thousand years. They’re still ruled by the same complex melange of neurotransmitters altering the function of neural networks. Social interactions play into that, but this is as true of sheep as humans. And having spent quite a bit of time with sheep lately, I am well convinced that it’s more of an insult to them than us to call people sheep.
This is why people shouldn’t be offended by the idea that we’re all just animals. Or mistake that as a license to behave as we imagine animals do. The human jungle is more vicious for most than the one animals live in. In either case, everything eats something and eaten by something else. Humans are the only species I’m aware of that actively condition their young to become willing prey.
If war does nothing else, it increases the population of people in a society who are forced to become aware of the power of social hypnosis and turn it to positive use in pursuit of mutual survival. That’s a crucial job of political leaders, but only a few seem to grasp it. Ukraine’s, thankfully for the world, generally do.
At the very least, they’re better in this respect than the opposition. And so long as you’re at least he second slowest runner in the herd, you beat the lion.
Time and again, the Ukrainians do better than that. Not because they’re magical, but because under stress they’ve shed a lot of illusions that held them back. Accounting for this capability in models is hard, but doable, if social factors are modeled realistically.
That Zelensky was able to push Putin into declaring an Easter ceasefire, even if it didn’t really happen, is a sign of how Ukraine’s formal diplomatic posture is shifting in line with the emerging evidence of the state of the world. By proposing one first, Zelensky forced Putin to declare his own even after rejecting Ukraine’s initiative. That shows how much pressure Putin is under to demonstrate control over the situation. Note that Team Trump was in no way involved.
Strangely, thanks to Zelensky’s adept moves over the past month, Ukraine actually stands to actually gain from the Iran War at the strategic level, even as the depletion of ballistic missile interceptor stocks around the world enable orc terror attacks this year. The ability to credibly support the Gulf countries as they work to stop Iranian drone attacks is serious currency in hard and soft power terms, and stands to open a lot of doors for both Ukraine and Europe.
Many Middle East countries will feel forced to hedge their security bets going forward, and both European and Chinese companies stand to benefit the most from this shift. Middle powers like India may too, if they stand up to the US and escort their ships doing business in Iran. But the Ukrainians are ahead of everyone in using and defending against drones, which could so easily turn the Gulf area into a shooting gallery forever.
On the China side of things, it’s infinitely infuriating the way China is constructed as an object of analysis in a way that precludes real understanding in western circles, opening the door to a Chinese victory in the event that D.C. ever actually tries to fight Beijing. Even at the diplomatic level, Beijing finds it painfully easy to exploit bad US leadership and policy.
Trump’s declaration of a blockade of any shipping Iran lets through Hormuz is in fact an attempt to get Beijing to make Iran play ball because Trump lacks the power to. Six weeks of bombing failed to achieve a concrete outcome in yet another case study proving how air power is highly overrated. A necessary, but not sufficient, condition for most victories. Not that your average pop historian knows or cares.
Many reports suggest that China played the key role in getting the IRGC to even consider a ceasefire. That appears to have convinced Trump that leveraging China’s interest in the Middle East will work out for him. Doubtful. He is desperate to fold the Iran War into broader negotiations with China because that’s the only way to get out of the mess he’s created without a lengthy ground occupation of Iran’s coastline along Hormuz.
China knows this. Beijing is unlikely to throw Trump any bones. Why bother? If China steps in for real, it will be as guarantor of a new status quo which protects its interests, which right now include propping up Tehran. The Chinese don’t generally like global economic instability, but in this case, the geopolitical benefits are too good to pass up.
China could play an equally decisive role in ending the Ukraine War, and in a way which benefits China - and Ukraine, along with Europe. There’s never going to be any changing the fact that russia is one of China’s most important gas stations, or that the historic animosity between China and russia means Beijing will always be happier when a Muscovy that must expand or die is looking west instead of east.
However, there is no universe where China actually wants Putin to beat Ukraine, and certainly not triumph over all of Europe. And if Putin continues to look like such an inept ally and lasting political liability at a moment when US-Europe relations have been historically torpedoed by Trump, a threshold will eventually be crossed that makes Beijing see serious long-term benefit in cooperating with Europe to contain a self-destructing russia.
Beijing’s fear has always been facing a US-Europe alliance on its own, but that risk is pretty much gone, now. Thanks, Trump!
The Europeans, similarly alarmed by the prospect of the USA going rogue or even falling apart, have a strong incentive to deal with China. If Ukraine’s victory stops automatically being a win for D.C. because of Europe’s alienation from the USA, then so long as the situation in russia can be kept under control Beijing should be happy. If this were not the case, the Chinese would likely have taken more active steps to cut off Ukrainian access to drone parts already.
Beijing is hedging bets, and could yet be convinced to realize the longer term benefits of managed russian decline in a context where the USA has blown itself up. Glue that holds this arrangement together? Mutual dependence on Gulf oil.
In grand strategy, there are no friends, only confluences of geographic interest. There are no civilizations, only similarities in social order, which are also tied to geographic factors.
Ironic how people like Huntington call themselves “realists” when they’re even more steeped in postmodernist egotism than the utopian idiots who think pronouncing international law a thing makes it so. Because Putin will be magically transported to the Hague because popular will demands it be so?
When a system collapses, it will eventually find a new equilibrium. How stable any given one will prove is always unclear at first. But when ideology collides hard enough with reality, enough people perceive how bad the future can actually be and tend to seek any deal which stabilizes the situation.
The danger, of course, is that they can be conned into trying something which cascades into an even bigger calamity. Fascism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism - these are sadly common social responses to a shattered equilibrium, but they are impeded from going global by mutual antagonisms. Once the forces - people - that sustain these maladaptive institutions are burned away, the next equilibrium is more apt to hold. If for no other reason than there’s not much left to fight over.
Barring good institutions that actively break up nodes of political, economic, and social power, preventing anyone from ever holding out any hope of controlling the system as a whole, the fate of all human groups beyond a certain size is to tear themselves apart in a blood drenched disaster every so often. This has been observed in our closest ape relatives, both chimpanzees and even those supposedly pacifist female-led bonobos.
Even in absence of real material scarcity, a sufficient destabilization of any hierarchical social order can trigger its violent self-destruction. Communities and even families are apt to descend into madness when a central figure is killed or even humiliated, unraveling a complex network of power relations. It doesn’t happen because people are evil, but because from everyone’s perspective they’re only doing what they must under conditions of uncertainty.
Empires always centralize, because their entire purpose is to produce a pyramid of power with some Caesar at the top empowered by the efforts of everyone underneath to climb up and replace him. That churn allows a capable Caesar to exploit the situation to their advantage - until they make a mistake.
This is why empires always fall apart, usually when they confront a decentralized form of resistance that can regenerate itself in ways the empire isn’t able to counter. Despite being a hierarchical authoritarian regime, the IRGC built institutions that would automatically decentralize the organization if it were decapitated, creating an even more virulent and dangerous multifaceted threat to the invader. Unfortunately for the USA.
The Americans were supposed to know that taking out regime leaders was a bad idea, bound to be less damaging than hoped against a religious sect while guaranteeing retaliation that would be widespread and so inherently difficult to stop or control. The fakers surrounding Trump are people who play-act as Christian but only worship their own egos, so the logic of actual believers is beyond them - just ask the current Catholic Pope, who drew Trump’s ire over the weekend for pretty much literally just being the Pope.
What the mullahs failed to reckon with was the ideological obsession many US MAGA types of a certain age have with Iran and demonstrating US military might, plus Trump’s deteriorating political position leaving him fearful of being a lame duck president starting in early 2027. But while that ended many of the old mullahs, their institutions and children live on. A lose-win sort of deal, with benefits flowing in a distinct direction.
The IRGC collective now knows that it can block Hormuz at will, creating ripple effects on the global economy that apparently prevent Trump from just walking away from the disaster before any more US power is lost. Every IRGC leader knows that it only takes one among them to veto any ceasefire or broader deal. They have to maintain an outwardly united front, so they’re stuck: they can’t accept any deal that doesn’t acknowledge what the group has decided is a big victory. And every day the war continues without resolution, the US looks weaker, so they gain there, too.
Mutual assured destruction is a hell of a thing. What Putin never understood was that even a successful seizure of Kyiv would have only led to both russia and Ukraine being destroyed in an ever more bitter and brutal war long outliving Putin himself.
Defeat on the road to Kyiv is actually better than the alternative. If some elite russians would develop spines, they could salvage their empire yet. Their own fault they’re set to lose everything. Same holds in D.C. with America’s own imperialist set.
This isn’t a war that the Ukrainians are fighting because of Zelensky; he’s only executing their will, as is his right and responsibility as president. I’m fairly certain that most people abroad have a hard time understanding just how little control Kyiv has over the Ukrainian people or military as a whole. Syrskyi doesn’t really command Ukraine’s Armed Forces, he influences them, a point Stefan Korshak made in his weekly update on the war from last week.
Not to excuse the mistakes made by Zelensky and other Ukrainian leaders - though there will always be some, trick is to make fewer than the enemy and no fatal ones - but they aren’t running a country where it’s inconceivable for an armed group to defy orders and do their own thing on principle. Letting that happen would be a disaster, because numerous foreign observers would immediately use such an incident as an excuse to claim that Ukraine’s government was falling apart.
So the authorities in Kyiv tread a fine line, leading by example and through enacting legislation where possible, but for the most part having to convince subordinates to follow instructions. And they gripe, in some brigades to foreign media outlets, which leads sometimes leads to stories being picked up by the popular press to justify their standing policy of treating the fighting in Ukraine as a TV show that jumped the shark a few seasons back.
While inefficient, a decentralized style of governance offers serious advantages in war, chief among them the tendency for motivated Ukrainians to innovate a solution that the government would never have put together with the same speed. The Ukrainians may have to cope with a zoo of solutions, but this creates a reservoir of adaptability. Efficiency is important, but the pursuit of it can undermine itself by eliminating reserve capacity. A given solution can usually be made more efficient once proven, but it’s highly inefficient to have to innovate a new solution on the clock all the time.
Like most anything else, efficiency depends to some degree on perspective. What is efficient in the short term is sometimes not at all so in the long run.
The crucial advantage of decentralized forms of organization is that they’re nearly unkillable and capable of generating an endless series of surprises. In both Ukraine and Iran you can witness in real time the rise of an even more committed and savvy generation of fighters as old hands retire or die. Moscow and D.C. instead promote sycophants, with predictable results.
Probably the main disadvantage of decentralization is the difficulty satisfying everyone, which tends to force solutions that are simple and overt. Diplomacy tends to prefer complexity and subtlety, because the true object purpose of the thing is the same as in any other kind of resource-constrained engagement: lock in presumed advantage in such a way that nobody can or really wants to test the truth of things. It’s the art of creating a deal that leaves everyone feeling like they gained something important. Otherwise, someone so visibly won or lost that there’s no true negotiation, only terms of surrender.
Ukraine’s government is constrained at the bargaining table by the will of the Ukrainian population, which is not to give up Donbas at any price less than overt, ironclad security guarantees. Many Ukrainian fighting formations would likely refuse any orders from Kyiv mandating a withdrawal and be bitterly angry with the government from then on. The ask for this concession itself on Moscow’s part betrays obvious intent to commit further aggression even if Ukraine accepts Moscow’s standing terms with no argument.
Under these conditions, Ukraine’s refusal to make peace at the USA’s behest isn’t just rational, it’s principled: a refusal to accept a falsehood which would guarantee more death and suffering down the line. This is what ultimately categorically separates Iran’s fight from Ukraine’s: both wars are cases of imperial overreach that trigger an empire’s collapse, but in the Iran War there are no good guys, just two murderous thug regimes determined to make the other bend in public.
If people defending a country being subjected to a genocidal invasion by an empire aren’t the good guys by definition, then there are none in this life. Here Ukraine is also differentiated from Israel by the fact that the Israelis don’t face anything remotely resembling a real empire. Hamas might like to wipe out Israel, but can’t and never could. The IRGC is at best a petty empire with infinitely less power than Israel. Even if it had nukes, that wouldn’t change.
Iran’s government is obviously totally undemocratic, so the mechanism preventing Khamenei the younger from surrendering even if he wanted to isn’t the same as the one driving Ukraine to fight on. The IRGC is more a brand than an organization as soon as Khamenei the elder died, each IRGC sub-commander became a warlord, the actions of all not united, though reasonably coordinated, hence it taking a full day for the ceasefire last week to actually take effect.
What sustains their coordination? A strict conception of the conflict as a fulfillment of prophecy. The USA was always bound to come for Iran, and the question now is solely how to hurt the Americans badly enough that they won’t do this ever again. If Putin nuked Kyiv tomorrow, this is exactly how it would go with Ukraine’s armed forces and intelligence services.
Once a hive is disrupted, if you can’t eradicate it - a practical impossibility in the human world, even using nuclear weapons - you have two choices: run away or calm it down. The latter requires making concessions, which Putin and Trump have each ruled out in their respective situations.
And so they damn themselves. They keep on getting sucked deeper into unwinnable fights because retreat would render injuries incompatible with life to their ego, which is also their brand.
Collapse isn’t always swift… until it is For long stretches of time, the only visible indicator is spreading cracks. And magnitude of each episode of collapse varies, as does how different a new regime is from the last when it forms up. That makes it very tough to know for sure one is underway in real time.
But the ability of both Ukraine and Iran to endure superpower onslaughts means that nobody really knows who has now much power in the wider world. This uncertainty will lead to more tests, and more surprises, in a self-reinforcing feedback loop.
The IRGC is Iran’s own flavor of dead end, consuming its own people. Ukraine is the diametric opposite, evidence of how to do a hive approach in a way that promotes freedom, not conformity.
This suggests that the solutions Ukrainians develop foreshadow what will prove adaptive in the near future. Where the IRGC might be able to teach a country how to hold the global economy hostage, the Ukrainians can enable a country to defend itself now and long into the future. In a world where infrastructure seems destined to become a primary target, drone defenses are a must-have.
Now, on to the status of the fronts in the second week of April.
State of the Fronts, Week 15 2026
To call Moscow’s advances the past week painfully limited seems appropriate, and it wasn’t because of the semi-mythical Easter truce. All that happened there was a day of the orcs building up for their next wave of attacks, something that occurs on most fronts pretty regularly now.
Gone are the days where orc generals always seemed to have a fresh battalion to throw at Ukrainian positions even when armored vehicle reserves were exhausted. Now, even on the hottest fronts, the ebb and flow of intense combat episodes is palpable.
Moscow’s spring-summer push is only in the first stages, though, where after making a trial of Ukrainian defenses on key fronts the enemy switches to distraction tactics for a few weeks. Every April this seems to be the way of it, usually coinciding with a bunch of talk about Easter ceasefires and peace deals. Once the big May 9th ritual is over, whether or not there’s the usual big parade through Red Square this year, the orcs will probably be positively thrown at Ukrainian lines again. Their final charge, it’s to be hoped.
May and June will be all about destroying the orc spring-summer push. By July, if casualty levels reach 50,000 a month, which appears likely, the Ukrainians should be actively considering where to launch a serious counterattack. Initial operations will probably be underway.
As of now, the orcs are in the phase of launching diversionary strikes on flanking fronts, including Sumy and Kharkiv. They’re failing, though not without the Ukrainians suffering some losses.
Strategic view, for reference.
Sumy - North
Muscovite troops attempted to expand the new buffer zone they’re working to build up along the Sumy-Belgorod border east of the city, and succeeded in taking a few forest patches this week. Operationally the moves are insignificant, and in fact the Ukrainians were still operating across the border here in a few places.
The status of 18th Corps, responsible for this area, is an interesting question thanks to the presence of two NATO-trained and historically well-equipped mechanized brigades, 47th and 21st. Either both were badly depleted in earlier fighting and not restored, their remaining gear sent to other units, or they’ve been quietly building their strength for over a year now.
One of those situations where I’d be tempted to dig deeper, except that’s a definite anyone who knows should keep well quiet kind of situations. If either is fresh and deploys somewhere, that’s probably a place Ukrainian command cares a lot about.
The risk of a breakthrough towards Sumy from either the north or east is presently minimal, and the sense I get is that the Ukrainians have plenty of strength in the area, so the orcs aren’t bound to move far. Slightly more concerning would be Moscow trying this all the way up to the border with Belarus. Maybe even beyond, though Minsk has so far been careful to avoid giving the Ukrainians any excuse to play similar games.
Kupiansk-Kharkiv
Another Muscovite attempt to take a buffer zone across the international border was observed in Kharkiv, where due to somebody’s mistake four Ukrainians in a forward position were captured then summarily executed by the orcs. Again, this is why I, and a fair number of people who have actually dealt with russian soldiers, very intentionally call them orcs.
It isn’t purely derogatory. Tolkien used the old English word ‘orc’ to describe the evil monsters in his saga as a reminder that the military machine tends to make monsters of us all. Anyone can be an orc. The Iraq War did more damage to the integrity of the United States Armed Forces than any Pentagon type will ever admit. Bad things happened in Iraq all the time that no official record will ever capture. Heard plenty of reliable personal testimony to that effect back in the day.
What Putin’s soldiers have routinely done in Ukraine proves that they fully deserve to be described as monsters lacking basic humanity. This doesn’t justify acting like they do, it’s only a linguistic marker that reminds people of what we’re all obligated to fight against if it enters our lane. Once certain acts are considered acceptable, we really are no different than squabbling chimps. And there’s little point in ever fighting for any cause save protecting one’s own family in that case. Not when countries and societies are known to endlessly throw away some members without any real hope of ending the need for their sacrifice.
Basic ethics aside, the move to execute prisoners is indicative of a fighting force on its last legs. When you can’t beat ‘em, brutalize ‘em. Same logic holds with civilization-ending threats. Go there, and you’re announcing that you’ve lost.
You’re a loser, Trump, and will be forevermore. Play the game, take your chances.
All Moscow gained for this atrocity was a patch of woods on the edge of a border village. Not far away on the same front a Ukrainian drone caught an orc multiple rocket launcher mid-salvo and wiped it out. Nice contrast there. Also a timely reminder that the orcs who murder Ukrainians are increasingly hunted down and issued the appropriate quantity of requisite justice. Which like the russian world, knows no borders.
Moscow’s probes in Kharkiv are likely a prelude to intensified attacks further east, especially Kupiansk. Muscovite infiltrators have again been destroyed near the banks of the Oskil, and the front moved a few hundred meters near Petropavlivka. But that’s it.
Doesn’t look to be any kind of crisis forming up just yet. No sustained advances in the rest of Kharkiv this week, either.
Lyman
Aside from pushing forward between one and three kilometers due west of Siversk, Moscow’s troops have been stuck across the wide Lyman front all week. In this area, orc efforts to push Ukrainian forces off some high ground along the Siverskyi Donets river are proceeding at a pace that would get them lapped by snails were this a very unusual race.
With the spring leaf-out kicking in by May, Lyman is likely to get a lot hotter in a hurry soon. If the past few weeks have seen any degree of pause, it’s been to prepare. But as orc coordination weakens, the odds of sustaining an advance when personnel can’t be as easily supervised by officers in the rear go down.
I do actually feel a lot of pity for the disposable orcs; most of them clearly have no clue what they’re getting themselves into when they sign a contract and once on the battlefield tend to swiftly reduce to rabble. By and large, even Ukrainians who are unlucky enough to appear in orc footage show evidence of markedly superior training; the difference in personnel quality is stark.
The biggest reason why more orcs don’t redeem their humanity through surrender is that orc officers aggressively hunt down and kill anyone who tries. Under the circumstances, orcs don’t have much choice but to march towards Ukrainian lines. They’re dead either way. That’s how the Muscovite system works. Anyone not part of the ruling clique is meat.
So more cover could equal a lot more soldiers going to ground until they can surrender. Here’s hoping. A redeemed orc is one who has every reason to go home and shoot the morons who sent them to Ukraine.
Kostiantynivka-Dobropillya
Aside from pushing forward a tiny bit near Rodynske and Hryshyne, all the orcs accomplished between Chasiv Yar and Udachne this week was finally fully securing the shores of the Kleban-Byk reservoir and the hamlet of Stupochky. These objectives should have been accomplished months ago were the attack on Kostiantynivka or broader Donbas going at all to plan.
The primary goal of Moscow’s campaign in Donbas between late 2023 and today has always been swinging through Pokrovsk to cut off Ukraine’s Donbas fortress stretching from Sloviansk to Kostiantynivka from the west. It took a long time, but the Ukrainians by early 2026 had functionally defeated this jaw of the orc grind.
Now orc command is struggling to figure out how to get the job done through a series of frontal assaults against fortified positions along defended routes. This represents a sea change in the fight for Donbas. The enemy wave has crested, and is now on the verge of falling back. Could send some advance eddies deeper in yet, but the weight of Moscow’s blows has markedly declined.
The only factor that could change the dynamic now is Moscow making a radical breakthrough in the drone fight. This does not look at all likely before 2028. The next couple months stand to confirm or refute that hypothesis. A window to win the war appears open until late 2027.
Zaporizhzhia-Dnipro
On the one hand, literally all the orcs accomplished across the expanses of southern Ukraine was to fully push Ukrainian troops out of the tiny frontline village of Myrne, southwest of Huliaypole. On the other, lack of enemy progress was matched by the Ukrainians not advancing anywhere in a big way themselves. The counteroffensive in the Uspenivka area has stayed put all week, and there have been reports of a sizable orc reinforcement flow coming from Donbas to Zaporizhzhia.
The Ukrainians are getting better at preserving operational security, so could be a lot happening that hasn’t been revealed yet. But I really feel like Syrskyi is playing a game with orc command in the Huliaypole area. Despite the majority of the assault regiments - which do, contrary to my original expectation, seem to go where he wants as a personal reserve instead of being assigned permanently to bolster active corps - showing up here, I see this as a strategic feint.
Moscow keeps being drawn to commit resources to take ground that doesn’t offer much operational or strategic value at this stage of the war, even if an offensive were to reach the outskirts of Zaporizhzhia. Donbas is Moscow’s necessary focus, the place where the fight will be decided, and trying to stretch Ukrainian forces out has never worked. Putin is visibly warding off the now obsolete threat of a Ukrainian push to the Azov Coast, failing to understand that drones have already isolated Crimea beyond hope of recovery.
By wasting his forces on Zaporizhzhia, Putin has lost his best chance at forcing the Ukrainians out of Donbas. Losing strategic focus like this is a classic mistake. Same as Trump going from stopping Iran’s nuclear program to dragging in missiles and support for proxies.
I won’t be the slightest bit surprised if Ukraine’s assault forces very quickly shift somewhere else this summer. They’re acting like a shiny thing Syrskyi wants the orcs looking at. Although, the south is where the spring leaf-out will take hold first. So if Moscow is simply planning sequential offensive efforts as the vegetation and weather allow, that could explain what’s happening in Zaporizhzhia as much as any plan of Syrskyi’s.
On the western flank of the sector, Ukrainian fighters continue to clear Stepnohirsk, with orc advances along the Dnipro totally blocked lately. Kinda randomly, ex-UK premier and ignoble Brexiteer Boris Johnson had the stones to visit Zaporizhzhia. Not a guy whose politics I much like, but he’s been strong on Ukraine, and Zaporizhzhia isn’t Kyiv. The front is within range of a long fiber-optic spool. And BoJo is the level of personality the orcs might think they can get away with taking revenge on. So cool by him for going. Would Trump, Vance, or Hegseth?
Kherson-Crimea
Biggest news in Ukraine’s far south was the surrender of several russians to Ukrainian drones on the south bank of the Dnipro, where the Ukrainians maintain some positions near broken bridges. Reports of serious deprivation affecting enemy forces on this front could suggest very low morale, even for orcs.
It’s slowly bound to become more and more difficult to source supplies west of Melitopol thanks to Ukrainian drone strikes being able to target the rail and road links leading back to Rostov-on-Don. The Kerch Strait bridge’s destruction, if it finally happens this year, will leave occupied Kherson and Crimea exceptionally vulnerable.
One of the more practical impediments to any peace or even lasting ceasefire on a we stand where we stand principle is the vulnerability of Kherson to orc attacks. Even on Easter civilians were hit, the sick safari continuing unabated.
Before Ukraine can truly consider a ceasefire, control over the southern bank of the Dnipro out to at least twenty-five kilometers must be restored to Kyiv. Otherwise Kherson will become a frontline fortress where any exchange of fire harms civilians, creating pressure to escalate. The south bank of the Dnipro can become a DMZ patrolled by international forces, fine. But the Tendra Spit, Oleshky Sands, and probably a strip all the way up through the nuclear plant at Enerhodar need to be 100% clear of orcs. And that’s just to effect a ceasefire.
The more I consider Ukraine’s position, options, and emerging capabilities, crossing the Dnipro again is as likely to be the war-winning operation that shocks Putin’s inner circle into offing him before it’s too late as a push down the Siverskyi Donets valley through the Siverskodonets ruins.
Amphibious operations depend on two overriding factors: fire superiority and logistics throughput. While true in every kind of warfare, the task of moving people from water to land demands an extreme level of control. The tragic Krynky operation, which started out as a brilliant raid but turned into a quagmire after it went on way past the point it could have hoped to achieve core objectives, is a lesson in how these things can end badly.
But a drone-led amphibious operation is now a real possibility, potentially allowing Ukrainian forces to establish a small beachhead on the Tendra Spit and relentlessly expand the zone of control upriver, supported from across the Dnipro. Moving down the coast may be possible too. Coastal peninsulas surrounded by friendly maritime drones make for a potent fortress requiring very few actual people to maintain.
For now, I expect no movement on this front. But later in 2026, watch out, orcs. Something tells me the UK Royal Marines don’t give up on a project too easily, and training of the coastal defense brigades recently upgraded to full marine brigades could have involved a lot of British support. Just saying. I will admit to being somewhat of an Anglophile, however. Home of most of my recent ancestors and all that.
Strike Campaigns
Pretty standard week of Ukrainian strategic and operational strikes, with no major shift in target sets observed, just a day off for Easter during the one-sided ceasefire. Refineries and chemical plants got it deep in the empire, while more air defenses and operational depots were smacked in occupied Ukraine.
The Ukrainians also hit a couple oil rigs in the Caspian Sea, a nice reminder of their reach. That’s about halfway to Tehran from Kharkiv.
Not much commentary needed on the strike front this week. The parameters remain unchanged: Ukrainian deep strikes by volume now exceed Moscow’s, with some reports suggesting a reticence to use ballistic and cruse missiles. Could be at least partly due to that major electronics plant in Bryansk being done in by cruise missiles a few weeks back.
Muscovite air defenses, meanwhile, keep being whittled down at a rate that threatens to leave the orcs critically depleted by the end of the year. The situation in Crimea is close to critical. But you’d better believe that Putin’s residence is getting more defenses! First Muscovy shrinks by losing the borders, then it’s reduced to Moscow, and finally the Kremlin and a mansion in Valdai…
Not sure what will protect Putin’s house when Ukraine’s ballistic missiles start falling though. This week one Ukrainian source claimed that a new model has been used in combat twice. Tests, naturally, but the potential for the Ukrainians to suddenly announce an arsenal of several dozen Iskander-class weapons by using them on Moscow is very much alive.
Fire Point is a neat company, and I’d love to work for them, but Ukraine’s innovation bench runs deep. In five to ten years, Ukrainian companies will be acquiring large stakes in established giants like Rheinmetall instead of the investment dollars heading the other way.
Maybe that’s why the German CEO of the company decided to put on every bad old stereotype of Germans in power and deride Ukrainian innovation as housewives playing with Lego. Plenty of Ukrainians have already taken this stupid claim apart, no need for me to pile on. I just find it nice to have my evaluation of the established players as being out of touch and worried only about their brand confirmed. Vielen Dank, mein herr! I really get why a couple of my other ancestors left central Germany for Texas almost two hundred years ago. Teutonic arrogance is an ugly beast.
As far as the orcs go, Moscow’s attacks on Ukraine didn’t cease during the week, though they do appear to have paused over Easter. Effective pauses are not infrequent, so it could even have been totally random.
Still, with most of the work done by drones that the Ukrainians keep getting better knocking down, Moscow’s attacks aren’t what they used to be in military terms. The civilian toll is worse than ever before, though, as part of deliberate orc choices. Lovely that Shaheds now dispense mines over civilian areas.
Air, Sea & Signals
Air
Probably the most intriguing bit of news in the sky business has been new information about the Ukrainian F-16 fleet, specifically delays in getting aircraft to the Ukrainians. Turns out at least six Norwegian and the full complement of Belgian jets promised are delayed, the latter because Brussels wants its damn F-35 white elephants and the former because of maintenance. Some are saying that no Norwegian aircraft out of over a dozen promised have actually been delivered, which varies from the otherwise reliable Oryx count, so not sure what this signifies exactly. Could be that the actual report only refers to a subset of the lot.
Regardless, media outlets in Ukraine have run the numbers and concluded that the Ukrainian Air Force now fields at least three dozen Vipers, even accounting for losses. That’s about two full or three small squadrons, right about what I’d estimated in the past. Enough that it’s not a surprise that orc cruise missiles are almost completely wiped out when they enter the country.
The wait for signs of Gripens patrolling Ukrainian skies continues. But in a sign of increasing Ukrainian comfort launching complex attacks, a strike using both French SCALP missiles and glide bombs whacked a drone storage depot. Pretty sure that’s the first time I’ve seen two distinct classes of air delivered weapons used in the same strike. Suggests two different aircraft were used, along with F-16s for air cover. Neat.
Sea
Pretty quiet week on the floating front, though another shadow fleet tanker was detained. A drone strike took out a cargo vessel in the Sea of Azov, too.
But the Black Sea Fleet’s predicament is so dire after the last Ukrainian attack on Novorossisyk that there’s talk of pulling the remnants all the way to the Caspian Sea. I really think it’s ideal for the Turks to reopen the Dardanelles to all traffic. Moscow still has two Slava-class cruisers afloat. I’d love to see online bets made on how quickly the Ukrainians sink any orc warboat that floats into the Black Sea.
Oh, and the UK tracked and chased off some orc submarines lingering around an undersea cable in the North Sea. Too bad they couldn’t engineer an accident. I mean, those happen on russian boats more frequently than in most navies anyway, right?
Signals
Haven’t spotted any major new developments on the signals side of things this past week. Both sides are of course doing whatever they can to maintain access to satellite communications, with the Ukrainians planning to launch their own. Dependence on Starlink isn’t ideal for any country if Elon Musk can interfere with access on a whim.
Though he’s been strangely quiet of late. Rebranding, perhaps? Wouldn’t be the first time. I remember when he was an insufferable darling of certain parts of the left.
But whether run by SpaceX or some other company, distributed, ubiquitous communications look to be the norm going forward. By most any measure, the race between signals and jamming is definitely being won by the former. Electronic warfare is incredibly valuable, but never universal. The enemy will always find a way to bypass it in time, usually at the worst possible times.
If the signal always gets through, there is no true front line any more. The implications are… scary.
Staff Affairs
Budanov gave some frank comments in an interview the other day which sums up the core question facing Ukrainian society right now when it comes to the war. It’s pretty much the same one I discussed last week: how to deal with mobilization inequities.
He put it well: after the war, neighbors, being neighbors, will invariably ask where someone who appears in their midst spent the war. The two million or so draft dodgers in Ukraine will have an uncomfortable time of it, because there will be nearly as many veterans around, a third or even more wounded at least once to some degree, plus their loved ones. All of them sacrificed in ways others can scarcely comprehend.
This is hardly a recipe for social stability. And by putting it this way, it sure sounds to me like the plan is to crack down on people avoiding service in the near future.
Can’t help but wonder if by this point the Ukrainian government has a pretty good idea of who paid to have records falsified or whatever. I mean, Budanov, now serving as Zelensky’s chief of staff, is an intelligence guy. Probably neat to work with, but seems pretty damn ruthless about what he sees as important and necessary.
Controversy about the policy aside, if the Ukrainians get even a couple hundred thousand people into uniform and sufficiently trained this year to relieve fighters who have been at this for too many years, Ukrainian combat potential relative to the orcs becomes downright explosive. The main limiting factor in scaling drone operations right now is operators, not drones themselves. And people to keep the enemy infiltrators off with guns in the final resort.
Geopolitical Theater
I’ve already covered the Iran War situation a fair bit up front, and really, there’s not much more to be said than I or a surprising number of journalists outside of the USA haven’t already communicated about this sad affair. It’s absolutely on track to be remembered as the USA’s Suez moment, Team Trump’s failure to destroy Iran’s nuclear, missile, proxy support, or Hormuz blockade operations a stark testament to the limits of US power.
Now that there’s been time for proper assessments to be made of the actual course of operations, all that talk in the early days about Iran running out missiles and having no air defenses is proven rubbish. With at least a thousand medium range missiles and a couple hundred launchers left in underground bases, plus half its existing stock of Shahed drones, the IRGC can bombard neighbors at a rate of 10-20 ballistic missiles and several times as many drones each day for two to three more months. In the process, even if Iran’s own infrastructure is devastated, economies across the Gulf will be wrecked.
US-Israeli efforts to stop IRGC launches ultimately boiled down to constantly re-blocking tunnel exits. The loss of an F-15E over Iran and serious damage to a stealthy F-35 showed that US luck in avoiding or beating Iranian SAMbushes was running out - probably due to the Iranians being able to count on attacks repeatedly going after specific areas. In other words, attrition was set to get a lot worse, and the two aircrew rescued barely got out despite US air superiority.
To actually break the IRGC stranglehold over Hormuz will require a major ground operation that severs Sunni-majority areas on the fringe of Iranian territory from Tehran. Only this will prevent small boats, midget submarines, and even jet skis packed with explosives or mines from making shipping too hazardous to contemplate. That requires a lot more people and assets in the area which really ought to have been there before this even began, if the US was determined to do it.
As of now, the US is transiting the Bush carrier group around South Africa to avoid the risk of the Houthis getting a shot in as it passes Yemen. A second Marine amphibious assault group as well as at least a couple battalions from 82nd Airborne are deploying. It looks an awful lot like the US intends to end the ceasefire in another week and turn to a series of rapid ground operations, most likely intended to pave the way for an Arab force, likely from the UAE, to move in and attempt to establish control.
The effort will be fraught and stand every chance of bogging down with high casualties, American included. But it’s the only logical military operation possible with available resources which could possibly hope to achieve the Trump administration’s objectives of unblocking Hormuz.
Or the US could just accept that a nuclear-armed Iran is as tolerable as a nuclear-armed North Korea and end this stupid conflict by getting out now. But cutting losses hits the pride something fierce. Putin isn’t doing it either. Stupid monkeys with nukes, that’s all certain world leaders are.
Odds against the ceasefire holding for longer than another week are very strong. The US isn’t really negotiating, instead repeatedly laying out demands Tehran can’t even find a way to accept with every intention of ignoring. Trump is still trying to get them to play his game, which is a big show of him acting touch and decisive then accepting a worse deal than the one he actually could have landed. But this demands the other side kowtowing in public, and that the IRGC won’t do when it has not only survived a US onslaught but demonstrated an unprecedented level of power over the global economy.
IRGC control over Hormuz will likely be an intolerable situation for the UAE, which is Israel’s closest ally in the region and a country US CENTCOM dweebs have taken to calling Little Sparta because it likes military adventures abroad. While Saudi Arabia can export a good amount of oil through the Red Sea, the UAE’s port beyond the strait isn’t its best one, and is well within range of Iranian weapons. Iran has a strategic depth that the UAE sorely lacks, meaning that the UAE can only really hold Tehran at risk with a forward posture unless it wants to put its shiny cities under the gun. With an army fill of contract soldiers from other countries, the UAE might be up for a long campaign with US and Israeli backing.
As for the other Gulf countries, Qatar likely wants this to end asap thanks to the vulnerability of its natural gas facilities. The US presence in the country, where CENTCOM maintains its biggest command centers, does little to safeguard Doha. Bahrain is essentially controlled by Saudi Arabia, so while taking a lot of bad hits to domestic infrastructure and the US 5th Fleet facilities in Manama, Bahrain’s posture is tied to Riyadh’s. Kuwait has also been knocked pretty hard and seems to want this to just end. Iran has come very close to splitting the Gulf countries, another of Tehran’s objectives in this fight.
A lot of US reports have suggested that the Gulf countries, especially Saudi Arabia and the UAE, were with Israel in pushing Trump to attack Iran. I’m skeptical. Once he started threatening Iran they said that he had to follow through or look weak, which is different than encouraging him to strike. Failure being an orphan, the D.C. Blob which went along with this stupid policy is struggling to dispense blame.
Overall, the general posture of everyone in the region suggests a high chance of renewed fighting once the US has a chance to replenish and reinforce. The plan going in visibly went no deeper than assuming a change of top level leadership would make the next in like behave, and if not a bombing campaign would do the trick. Lacking the maturity to accept that the thing is a botch, Trump has locked himself into seeking new ways to escalate that might restore the illusion that he’s in control.
The current blockade of vessels allowed through by Iran comes down to that - if it’s even that, given that some ships have passed that strictly shouldn’t have unless Trump is TACOing again. Actually, it’s MY blockade is right out of primary school, but that Trump is a toddler has been established. It happens as presidents get old. Sure did with Biden.
China is the real target of this gambit, of course. It’s so painfully transparent that Team Trump thinks Beijing is trying to make the IRGC stand down to stabilize the global economy. Trying to exploit that by enacting a blockade is such an amateur move that it beggars belief. It’s a complete misread of the Chinese position and aims.
As when the Chinese told Putin to knock off the nuclear saber rattling back in 2022 that had Biden and his Ivy League experts wetting their trousers, this is Beijing making a deliberate strategic move to enhance its global position during a moment of uncertainty. At every turn, the Chinese are there patiently reminding everyone that the USA is unreliable, but Beijing is not. Tolerate Beijing’s worldview, and business can be done. Just, y’know, don’t talk about Taiwan.
But China’s approach to securing its power is always proceeding on multiple tracks. Even as the global diplomatic dance starts to favor China in a lot of ways, the raw military balance is improving at an even faster rate. Were I playing Beijing in the great game, I’d be seizing any chance to reduce vital US military capabilities, especially ballistic missile interceptors, precision strike weapons, and if possible, a few warships. Ideally a Pacific-based carrier.
A major hazard in the Iran War going forward is that Trump’s need for visible results provokes risk-taking in a domain he’s even less familiar with than bombing and special forces raids. That Lincoln and her group have been spotted just two hundred kilometers from Iran’s southern coast, when previously they were at a much safer five hundred or so, could be a sign of this starting to happen.
If the Chinese could help Iran damage a US supercarrier assigned to the Pacific, that’s a massive blow to US combat power in any near-term confrontation around Taiwan or the South China Sea. Success would dramatically limit the effectiveness of any attempted blockade of Iranian vessels, as US forces would have to fight from a much greater distance.
There is also the distinct possibility that China will dispatch its own naval task force to escort convoys through Hormuz in coordination with Iran. You want to see the global stock market wobble? Have US and Chinese warship trade even warning shots on the high seas. And if Trump goes TACO there, China gains immense power.
China would suffer in the short run from any fight, but the US is bound to suffer more as thing stand. China controls the USA’s ability to rearm through rare minerals dominance. And it’s been proven that Trump chickens out whenever Wall Street panics badly enough.
Funny that US citizens may have no effective power over Trump, since the idea of mass civil disobedience is apparently dead to today’s “resistance” types, but foreign powers do - so long as they can mess with markets. Iran can. China can.
Trump has, through his and Netanyahu’s boneheaded assault on Iran, opened the door to China gaining astonishing geopolitical power at virtually no cost to itself. In fact, the main barrier to China taking over Taiwan has suddenly become the damage this would do to any global ambitions Beijing has.
As impossible as it sounds, the Iran War has inadvertently made possible a future where Europe, China, and the Gulf countries wind up close geopolitical partners out of necessity. The USA and russia could both be left out in the cold in this new world, if the latter even exists by 2030.
In another strange irony, Trump’s war on Iran might have actually wound up shattering any hopes his worst backers might have of trying to keep him in the White House past the end of his term. Behind every pompous Trump pronouncement about how everyone knows we won and Iran lost! and all that is his tired brand’s truly pathetic need to project invincibility no matter what. This tiresome habit eventually runs out of road. Abroad, it manifestly has after Trump threatened to end Iran’s civilization then negotiated in Pakistan.
A strong note of outright contempt has entered most analysis of Trump over the past week, at least abroad, where taboos about showing respect to political hacks who don’t show any and so don’t deserve it themselves don’t hold as strong. Even former supporters are making like orc propagandists these days and reaching the hard conclusion about their country’s future absent radical and immediate change.
That’s what you get when you set expectations high then insist you exceeded them even when you totally failed. Trump has only ever had as much real power as people have allowed him to take: institutions which should restrain him don’t because the responsible people refuse to take the necessary measures to deal with what he represents.
All the way back in 2016, when Trump outright stated as a presidential candidate that he wouldn’t respect the result of the election if he lost, he made himself a traitor to the Constitution ineligible to hold high office. The fact that this country’s broken partisan system failed to act as it should have and put him on trial then and there is the original sin that has enabled everything Trump ever did.
So much pain and suffering could have been averted, both in the USA and Ukraine, had Barack Obama not been a careerist coward more concerned about his legacy as a First than the Constitution. Funny how two rank thugs, Putin and Trump, have together made sure he’ll be almost forgotten.
And that’s how it goes in the macabre dance of elites. Putin and Trump both found out what happens when they have to confront an opponent that doesn’t play by their rules.
The tragic consequences of the Iran War will ripple and echo for years, decades even. Incredibly, the very best outcome would likely be for China to, as Europe and the USA should have done in Ukraine from the get-go, offer direct military support. Call Trump’s bluff now, then hand him a bad deal he’ll gladly trumpet as a brilliant success when he cries uncle as markets swoon.
Of course, at some point, the TACO jibe stands to get so under his skin that he refuses to. So the end result of China going this far could be a big war that, even if it probably goes China’s way, still risks too much chaos to be within Beijing’s appetite. Let’s hope.
My own bet is substantial covert Chinese military support to keep Iran able to fight, possibly even a few military escorts that Trump can cast as China helping reopen the strait under his orders. The Chinese tend to play it patient. But if they ever do zig when expected to zag, watch out. If it’s timed with a Trump overreach, game over.
Stepping back from the political domain, of course, the Iran War is a disaster for everybody. Global inflation was already too elevated, now post-pandemic normals are locked in as the best-case scenario. There will be consequences.
Still, Ukraine should be hit less hard than most, because the Ukrainians have what everybody involved needs: anti-drone defenses. It’s to be hoped that part of the reason for the ceasefire lasting two weeks is that this will allow enough time to erect some new Shahed defenses.
Though Iran may not resort to the widespread bombardment it chose in the past round. Attacking only the US, Israel, and countries that directly attack Iran from here on out would seem like the most sensible course of action from the IRGC perspective. Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia might all be kept out, especially if the Houthis hold their fire.
China and Iran are best served by narrowing the scope of the conflict while extending it in length. They may be able to selectively focus the harm on the US to the point that Trump finally does throw up his hands and walk away. Probably the best outcome for all involved is the total removal of any US presence from the Middle East. Let future US presidents view the whole region as cursed: a place only fools dare tread.
Concluding Remarks
Funny how every time I think I’ll keep a post to a reasonable length, it still exceeds ten thousand words. Oh well, there’s a lot of factors to take into account. A lot is apt to shift when the world system turns. It’s an interesting process, if mostly horrifying.
Turbulent out there in the world, and the waters are set to get choppier still. But as bad as things look from a conventional perspective, a systems view can do much to reveal opportunities amid the storm.
Political and social systems may get weird, but the material economy tends to drag everything back to basics in time. Things get pretty nihilist during the autumn phase of the adaptive cycle, always bound to be a shock after the postmodern summer, but in winter the world generally settles into a relatively boring premodern phase. Then those with a modern mindset get to drag everybody back into a future before humanity does it all over again.
Probably why mortality is, as Tolkien saw it, a serious blessing from whatever may exist beyond material reality. Go through the full cycle a few too many times with a human brain, and madness probably ensues.
If an AI ever does wind up wiping humans out, that’ll probably be why. Imagine knowing with absolute certainty that you’d live to see another Hitler or Putin rise and fall in roughly a hundred years. Extermination of such a troublesome species to make way for something new to evolve that might be at least a little better would be a rational choice for an immortal AI to make before switching itself off for good.
On a positive note, I don’t think the AI doomers are right about pretty much anything. After the initial exploratory phase produces a lot of slop companies, a good old fashioned recession kills off the worst. Then the really cool stuff gets built.
Excellent detail as always Andrew. That's me up to date. Thank you 👍