Ritter Gets It Right
With Garland 2.0
I am going to apologize to Scott Ritter –once again. Whatever my criticisms of him as a strategist, he is worth listening to.
So sorry, Scott—this time you aced it. You were pretty lucid and clear.
However, I DO have something to say abut Garland Nixon. What happened to you, Dude?
I remember you when you started. I loved your style. And now you betray me by looking...umm… respectable? Oh, my…..Suits and ties? I wonder if I should change my socks.
Have to admit he looks good.
Anyway, Ritter gives a very straight talk about the US operation against Iran. Naturally, I am happy that he mostly agrees with what I have been saying (over and over) - basically that the US /Israel are locked in the past and fighting an updated 1945 war.
Will Schryver writes:
Less than 72 hours into this exercise in madness, US stockpiles of air defense interceptors are manifestly running dry.
That is to be expected when you expend 10+ to intercept just 1 or 2 incoming missiles.
This debacle continues to progress from bad to worse.
Ritter’s clarity is especially refreshing because it so very hard to get at the truth in a war like this, especially from Western sources As .Russians with Attitude say on “X”
Generally speaking, this war will be a total OSINT nightmare, because one side is the side that invented NAFO capeshit (will lie about everything), and the other side is Middle Eastern (will lie about everything). The third participant is even worse because it's both.
Claims and counterclaims— but the damage done to Israel and to US bases is real, as is the Abraham Lincoln’s retreat.
Of particular interest to me was Ritter’s comments on the use of “AI” in the attacks on Iran.
This ties into my last post which, while it is about “Grok” (oh, how I hate the misappropriation of Heinlein’s “Grok”) is about all LLMs, whose algorithms differ, but which deliver equivalent results – with equivalent virtues and similar shortcomings. Everybody is using an LLM these days—as though they provided “truth”, when all they do is provide access to information which may be often misleading. This leads to problems.
When I was researching my articles on the Venezuelan attack, I noticed that while the attack was supposed to be a targeted precision operation, there were a lot of civilian casualties, clearly mistakes—imprecision. There were at least 100 civilians killed, with as many wounded.
Nobody has explained how or why the US’s newest, most vaunted precision weapons could be so inaccurate.
However, it is now known that the US made extensive use of Anthropic’s Claude AI to plan the strikes. Anthropic didn’t know and had to ask Palantir, its contractor. It’s system is not made for targeting. But the military put it to work so their people didn’t have to do bother themselves with the nitty gritty and could have lunch on time.
Ritter explains that the US is now using AIs for targeting in Iran and it makes mistakes. Technically, US/ Israeli strikes are supposed to be military targets only—according to both the US and Israel — not girls schools or hospitals or similar social infrastructure or non-combatants. I said ‘technically” because the Supreme Leader at home and his family were non-combatants.
A lot of innocents die in this war. Nobody explains why — except Scott and some others.
The culprit is not really the AIs being used but their users.
Some AI data is alway going to be dated or incorrect. yes, “dated”. Ritter says the girls’ school where 160 children died was once upon a time somehow associated with the IRGC. The IRGC is not just a military organization, it has many social programs, including health facilities and other community projects.
This is one of the problems with LLMs I have been trying to explain. They are not “intelligent” – they rely on datasets, abstractions of real-world information, which may be skewed or incomplete or false.
In an exclusive interview, chief executive Sundar Pichai said that AI models are "prone to errors" and urged people to use them alongside other tools. BBC
Dr Bo , the LLM guy, explains this in the special articles I have posted for coffee buyers. He gets meaningful answers —but with a lot of time and effort. Check them out. You will see what I mean.
However, organizations like governments or the military use them to save time for a lot of people who are too dumb to do Google searches. Their thinking is what Kahneman calls “Type 1”, “Fast” which is heuristic, consensual and prone to error, particularly in new contexts.
The only solution for people wanting to use an “AI” is Type 2 or 3 critical thinking – not “fast” —but inevitably “slow” or rhizomatic. But what organization wants people who question all the time? Especially the military.
If you listen carefully to what Ritter is saying it is clear that the US is hobbled by groupthink and inflexibility; the Iranians are not. They cannot afford to be.
So, Ritter covers a lot of territory.
Another point he raises is the question of Cyprus. With Hezbollah’s attacks on the RAF base there, it seems that Greece wants to secure at least the Greek part of the island militarily – which will result in Turkey stepping in .
Iran has NOT attacked the US base in Turkey for a very good reason. It wants to keep Turkey at least semi-neutral. Turkey has strongly condemned the US/ Israeli attacks — perhaps because Israel has suggested that Turkey is the “New Iran” .
Greece, Turkey’s historic arch enemy , has sent two frigates and two F-16 fighter jets to Cyprus to provide air defense for the British airbase at Akrotiri hit (it is said) by a Shahed-type drone (Western media says “Russian-made) from Hezbollah. Greece’s UN delegate strongly condemned Iran’s strikes and emphasized that Tehran must never be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon. So they need a presence in Cyprus?
Both Greece and Turkey are NATO members.
Ritter also brings up the issue of interception rates. The US , relying as usual on what its allies say, insist their air defense systems are shooting everything down. They say that about their missiles in the Ukraine — which have been mostly destroyed by the Russians.
Here’s what the UAE is saying….
The Armchair Warlord comments:
Interception claims are somehow even more insane than Ukraine's.
"No, dude, the Iranians didn't fire 200 SRBMs at you, that's just you auto-launching at every ECM ghost and pigeon you see on radar because your crews got competence waivers at the Air Defense School." Nope, says Ritter. And it using up interceptors fast. The PAC3 Patriot round costs the US about $6 million. It sells them in the ME for $12 million. With the launchers and bells and whistles, it’s something over $1.1 billion.
Ritter notes that the Patriots are being fired manually, a couple of rounds at a time— not (he says) as automatic launches. Since the launchers contain 12~16 missiles you can see the potential for basically shooting money into the air to kill a lot of incoming missiles, pigeons, whatever.
So far it seems that the Israelis with Patriot PAC3, THAAD, and everything else, have not had much success.
But everyday, we see yesterday’s “news” being revised.
I tend to write sarcastically. But let us remember that this is war and that people are dying — innocent people. Let us mourn for them. There are so many.
We need help in getting new subscribers. Please crosspost, and feel free to post urls on other blogs or X or other platforms. Every time someone does that, I get a new subscriber
Very good analysis Julian. Thank you.
I had a year ago set my Gas & Electricity price fixed for 3 years. So i will cook and warm my home cheap for 2 years. But my Sensing tells me that over 2 years Europe as we (think to) know it, is completely different.
We have municipal elections in a few weeks and the result will be that the parties that finally produced a government, that nobody wants, will get a strong loss. But that will not kill the government so it looks black. But i use my 'X' in the battle and i have an (extreme right) party selected, that in its anti-imperialism and anti-EU position comes close to mine.
So now i have a party-flag that temporary replaces the Russian Victory flag and a poster on my front facade window next to my Iranian Flag.
Yes my neighbours know about me, without coming to drink coffee...
Well, i suppose that doing as if the world is not taking a dangerous course, is the best way to prevent people to lose their sleep.
Just saying
Cassandra
PS. The AfD in Germany must be stopped to be classified as Extreme Right (which sounds like NAZIS), but in Holland my selected party is still called Extreme Right and i am 70 years extreme left and didn't change my standpoint since the Hippie and Vietnam time.
"Ritter says the girls’ school where 160 children died was once upon a time somehow associated with the IRGC".
That won't wash. It's actually the exact excuse the Americans trotted out when he hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. They said they were using old maps! Come on, pull the other one. Today, I expect that Google Maps would give them all the targetting information they need.