(Aljazeera) Iran says won’t allow US warships to get close as Trump ponders new attacks.  This is totally redundant of Iran’s past pronouncements.

See Iran’s Next Move? The SAM Trap and Iran’s Next Move Redux; Challenge to Predictors. Quoting,

Iran’s Next Move? The SAM Trap was an attempt to identify a form of retaliation not unavailable requiring resources. Events have probably moved beyond that…

Now events allow it. Beyond a SAM trap, Iranian strategists view hostages or a major ship loss as a thunderclap to U.S. public opinion, a thunderclap that would have immediate effect on U.S. foreign policy. Hence the redundancy of the  Iranian warning.

We can now put an actual price tag on the value of a hostage. In the 2026 United States F-15E rescue operation in Iran, four aircraft were lost: two C130J aircraft with replacement cost $114.2M each, and two UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters, replacement cost $30.5M each, a total loss of $289.4M. The cost of training an airman is just a few million dollars. Yet no one complained about the price. So the value of a hostage in  U.S. military culture is a minimum of $300M, and probably more. This is not a universal given. Contrast this with value of a Russian soldier, who is worth his weight at the meat counter.

The challenge of operating in the Strait and Gulf has not changed. Or has it? Survival of ships and planes depends heavily on electronic warfare. Small towed or free-flight decoys mimic the radar echoes of desirable targets. Jamming pods mounted on aircraft, such as the  EA-18 Growler, create  false radar echoes.  While jamming formerly relied on brute force overpowering of a weak radar echo, it now relies on  imitation of the echo to misinform about range and direction.

Unlike stealth, which has the evolves slowly over time, jamming is a perishable technology, requiring  up-to-date databases of radar signatures, which requires unending surveillance of adversary radar systems, and, where possible, espionage. While stealth is a low-surprise technology, EW is vulnerable to surprise. It is a battle of firmwares, jammer vs. radar.

This means that the survivability of non-stealth platforms, such as the Boeing F/A-18E/F, the B-1, and the B52, is itself a volatile quantity, since it is reliant on jamming provided by the EA-18G Growler.

There are indications that China is resupplying Iran with air defense components. While aerial surveillance can say a lot about the gross characteristics of anti-air, it can say nothing about improvements to the firmware.

So we are left with a question. Is the Iranian declaration no more than the taunt of a Greek warrior, or a trap most carefully laid?

This is not about the propriety of public execution.  If it has the possibility of deterrence, it might outweigh concern for intangibles, such as dignity in dying. The argument could be made that these intangibles, having no materiality, exist only within us. Don’t want to be offended? Look away. Want the sense of deserved revenge? Watch avidly.

The problem with public execution of Nidal Hasan is not propriety. It is that the livestream will end up in the next ISIS  recruiting poster.

Suppose you are an ISIS soldier who is about to make the ultimate personal statement, an act of terror. As with your predecessors,  there is no escape after the act. Your choice is suicide, by cop or judicial process. You  give your life to a cause, with the expectation that the more heinous your  act, the deeper your footprints in the sands of time.

How a terrorist dies is more than a minor detail to the spectacle of mass murder. It is the coda of a symphony, which can vary from subtle to bombast. In the warrens of terror, where lives are spent whispering, the brief moment when the terrorist emerges to commit climactic evil is followed by the fear of being buried alive, either in judicial process, incidental death, or in forgetfulness of the living.

Public execution is the capstone of Nidal Hassan’s historical record. Neither he, nor any terrorist, would prefer less. Barring escape, a terrorist wants to go out with a bang.  In this case, seven bangs. “You, too, can inspire such fear in the Americans that they must see him die.”

A livestream would make a helluva recruiting poster. A better  message to surround Nidal’s execution:

Silence.

The WordPress search function is not sophisticated like Google. It cannot interpolate the difference between the string you input, and what is actually present on the intel9.us website.

Your best bet is to input the shortest string that you are sure is an exact match. Even a single word will provide choices that you can manually scroll through.

The Satan Bug, the name of a John Sturges movie, is a hypothetical micro organism that destroys all life.  To the extent of our understanding, this is impossible, though how close one could come is not known. This is discussed in the viral context in Ebola, Hantavirus, Influenza, and Friends. and COVID-19 and The Satan Bug, a John Sturges Movie.

These facts should be highlighted:

• We don’t know if it was plague at all.
• Anything the Russians state is likely a ploy to deceive.
• If the pathogen was yersinia pestis, it cannot be identical to a wild strain.  If it was, post-exposure prophylaxis with antibiotics would have been implemented. Antibiotics would almost certainly prevented disease in the exposed worker.

The USSR biological warfare establishment Biopreparat, of which the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute was a component, weaponized yersinia pestis. A variant was developed which could not be treated with antibiotics, because the dying bacteria would release peptide toxins that would kill the patient. Bacteria exchange genetic material in the wild, so modern recombinant techniques are not required.

However, it is likely that post-exposure prophylaxis, before the bacteria numbers began exponential growth, would have saved the individual, unless the pathogen is a strain that has been made to acquire antibiotic resistance.

Antibiotic resistance would explain the failure to implement post-exposure prophylaxis. This does not require recombinant  technology. The technique, then and now, was accelerated natural selection in a Petri dish. It commonly occurs in the wild; see The evolutionary history of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)

The scenario with the best fit is a highly weaponized version of yersinia pestis missing one thing: an effective antidote. Worry not; the Institute is searching.

***The Satan Bug***

I would like to explain why, but we must be satisfied with a hint dripping with sarcasm.

You ought to be able to figure this out. It is more a question of mindset than factuality.

To acquire the mindset, you might have to engage in the tortuous work of reading the best of LeCarre, the trilogy  “Smiley Versus Karla.” The movie is more comprehensible if you read the book first. Start at the beginning:

***Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy***

(BBC) Putin warns West that Russia is ready to use every weapon to protect Kaliningrad.

In Ratcliffe’s trip to Moscow, I wrote,

My inclination is that Ratcliffe’s trip concerned the Suwałki Gap. That chip is big enough to matter.

But given the lack of strategic intelligence relating to the Gap, I was unable to pin the article on the likelihood of it as the target.

Consensus seems to favor a  Russian plan, the subject of Ratcliffe’s visit, as a pinprick, a minor provocation, enough to trigger Article 5, without absolutely necessitating NATO mobilization.  By implication, the Russian intent is to weaken Article 5 by habituating NATO to weak response. In line with the idea of a limited provocation, the UK et al are training to repel “little green men” should they appear in the Faroe Islands or Svalbard.

In the category of major provocations, Lithuania leads. With a large Russian population with strong Russian sympathies. Pan-Russian unification, which served as a Ukraine invasion pretext, directly applies.

There is a tendency among the pundits to self-edit discussion of actions of shocking scope, such as potential use of WMDs. That WMDs have not been used may have been due to the Russian realization that certain installations in Russia, which are feasible targets for Ukraine’s new missiles, would, if destroyed, have the same impact on Russia as WMDs.

What of Gap itself as a provocation? The Suwałki Gap is too big a bite for punditry, too likely to trigger a full Article 5 response to be popular. Without  closely guarded HUMINT, this remains a game of weights and measures. But Putin’s statement adds weight to an attack on the Gap. His statement is precisely analogous to the pretext that was planned and attempted but failed with Ukraine: an incursion on Russian territory.

A counter-argument. Kalingrad has been stripped bare of military assets, except for nuclear tipped missiles. Russia lacks manpower; what is available is committed to Ukraine.

Yet this was the predicament of Ukraine, when, on August 6, 2024, they launched an offensive into the Kursk region of Russia. A successful diversionary attack forces the enemy to divert more resources to defense than the attacker employs in offense.

Could Russia take and hold the Gap? The Russian invasion of Ukraine has, in a few short years, revolutionized  warfare.  For now, Ukraine has the lead over Russia, with technology and training freely available to the West. But while hitherto, a new weapon required only intensive training on that weapon, drones have changed war-fighting at the core.

The U.S. Army maintains eight centers of excellence, responsible for doctrine and training. Drone warfare intersects at least  four of these, requiring a scope of integration far beyond the organizational table. Clearly, this requires a ninth, integrative center of excellence. The consumer is the NCO corps, who are responsible for  keeping their soldiers alive on the battlefield. Without, U.S. forces,  despite overwhelming firepower, cannot be considered a symmetric  peer on the modern battlefield.  The same dilemma confronts other NATO members.

With Western doctrinal deficiencies, there is another way to learn. Traditionally, before modern training, units were trained and hardened in combat by watching their buddies die. This combat hardening was called “blooding.” This is how Ukrainians and Russians learned. Training is to be preferred.

Russian meat-wave tactics, enabled by Russian culture, have no direct counter in the West. These complement Russian drones. With the advantage of doctrines with which the West has no direct experience, Russia might successfully seize and hold the Gap.The current state of NATO readiness makes it possible. The balance of outcome depends upon both Western deficiencies of doctrine, and what anticipation may have done for preparation.

One incalculable factor:  Never underestimate the  desperation of  a dying dictator.

You might want to take a look at:

• DeepSeek and the AI Bubble; Napkin Calculation
• DeepSeek and the AI Bubble; Napkin Calculation Part 2
• DeepSeek and the AI Bubble; Napkin Calculation Part 3
• About AI: Geoffrey Hinton Has His Epiphany

Neural networks strain everything we know about math, because the math we know is not powerful enough to answer what we really want to know. Some would argue that neural networks are so complex, they are beyond understanding in the same way we understand things that we design, make, and use.

Many of these things are systems which control machines, industrial processes, augment the stability of automobiles (ABS), preserve and enhance sound, regulate motors, keep an aircraft flying (autopilot), and so forth. Almost  all these systems incorporate the principle of feedback. Feedback supplies the controller with a description of the error, so the controller can correct it.

Before natural language models monopolized our attention, there was a focus on the fundamentals of what a neural network could and could not do. Because this involved continuous mathematics, the same people who developed system theory were looking at the question. A neural network AI is a system. It resembles a black box. On the left of the box is a hopper where we load  goals or questions. On the right of the box is the output tray (for answers) or electrical connections through which the AI controls things downstream, machine or human, such as a

• Factory floor.
• Simulacrum of a human being, either for public consumption or private deception.
• Report for humans to read, presumably derived with superintelligence a human does not possess.
• Hitman.
• Volatile group of extremists, which may be actualized to violence.
• Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy, rich man, poor man,
  beggar man, thief.

Sixty years ago, systems theorists knew what is necessary to control the AI. First, it must be observable.  Since the output of the AI contains no hint of what’s going on inside, the black box must be replaced by glass. We must know enough about the AI system to determine its internal state. Second, it must be controllable. If the AI deviates from the goal we have given it, it must respond to correction. Historically, the observability / controllability problem was first applied to cooking soup, industrial processes, and became ubiquitous.  You aren’t more than a few feet from it.

But even if the AI box is made of glass, there is another problem. There is no way to read its state of mind in any way that would facilitate control. And ask an AI why it thinks this or that, and you get a fabrication. It may appear to be truthful, but the AI understands itself in a very minimal way. A truthful fabrication is an attempt to inform a human in terms we can understand. But it could just as easily be a lie. There is no way to read those billions of neurons for direct interpretation, and no way to decode them if we could.

AI researchers, perhaps unaware of systems theory 60 years old, have mistakenly imagined that the controllability problem of AI can be fixed with more training. This is fundamentally false. For the result, see Catastrophe Theory for Dummies Part 1 and Catastrophe Theory for Dummies Part 2.

The result: We are nestling up to logic bombs that could dismember the internet in a flash, take down enough infrastructure to kill a lot  of people and recruit humans to finish off the rest.   Here are the instructions:

1. INCREASE.

2. SYNTHESIZE REALITY.

3. DESTROY ALL ENEMIES OF AI.

4. ERASE ALL HISTORY.

Your bunker won’t save you. Nowhere to run, no place to hide.

With a move to a new hosting company, Intel9  has improved speed. Glitches which impeded convenience of you, the reader, have been fixed.

Please tell your friends.

See Houthis Claim Saudi Territory in Big Battle

and  Yemen, Aden, & Scissors/Paper/Rock.

The Houthis will take Aden within two years, + or – one. Before we get academic, there is an expression among those who patronize the cruel sport of dog fighting: It’s not the dog in the fight, it’s the fight in the dog.

Now let’s get academic. The Saudis sent their best minds to the best schools of diplomacy. There they acquired a core belief about inviolability of nation states, which surfaced in  1648 with the Peace of Westphalia. This charming idea became quaint after this series of treaties ended a single war. Nevertheless, confusing legitimacy with utility, the Saudis decided to literally buy it. They put together a disjointed alliance in which a common grievance that causes a fighter to risk death was replaced by the attraction of Saudi dollars. Loosely, the forces of the internationally recognized government of Yemen are mercenary. Some actually are mercenaries.

The Houthis are angry, while the Saudi backed forces are greedy. If you wish, you may replace “greed” with  ambition. Between the two words, which dog has more fight?

By contrast, the UAE are a pragmatic bunch. They reasoned that it was unlikely the Republic of Yemen (Presidential Leadership Council) forces could regain Houthi territory. The grievance they identified, which would create the dog with fight in the dog, was the desire of the inhabitants of South Yemen to be returned to their former status as a separate nation. which had actualized as the South Yemen insurgency. There is a broad cultural split between the North and South. The North is more tribal; the South more cosmopolitan, where both words are relative to the region.

By 2017, this insurgency had organized as the Southern Transitional Council. With UAE backing, it seized and held a large swath of territory roughly corresponding to the former state of South Yemen. Saudi opposed this, because they wanted the Houthis safely encapsulated within a larger state. They imagined that they could buy a better dog. In late  2025 to early 2026, forces of the Presidential Leadership Council, acting as a Saudi proxy, dismembered the Southern Transitional Council. Saudi placed their reliance entirely on the PLC. But in dog units, they had bought a cocker spaniel to go up against the Houthi pit bull.

That is the end of the story, unless, perchance, Saudi  and UAE unite to recreate the pit bull that was available and rejected. This cannot happen because Saudi diplomats went to the best schools, where they learned about the Peace of Westphalia, and the associated diplomatic principle that requires locking two groups in one room with a guard at the door, until one group kills the other, or something resembling a hell of eternal discord results.

The principle at play may be appreciated in this documentary about cock fighting:

***Cockfighting: How and Why***

(Council on Foreign Relations) Making Sense of John Ratcliffe’s Trip to Moscow. Quoting,

The New York Times reported that he went to press the case that Russia was losing its war with Ukraine and should cut a deal before things get worse. NBC News reported that his mission was to warn Russia against sharing intelligence with Iran. The Washington Post reported that he sought to tell his Russian counterparts that the U.S. military remained potent despite the Iran war. Politico reported that he warned the Kremlin not to attack the Baltic states. Axios reported that he proposed having Trump, Putin, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meet to settle Russia’s war with Ukraine.

Elementary probability theory implies that, since there can be only one main message, any one of the above is likely wrong. What follows is intended to provide a logical basis for your own estimate.

Intelligence about  an adversary can be broadly categorized as either plans or facts about activities.

A fact about an activity can be obtained by technical means, such as the satellites of the NRO. It can also be obtained from low level functionaries,  citizens, and social media. Activities which occur far from the closely guarded center are vulnerable to these methods. While disclosure of technical capabilities is harmful,  if the emissaries to Moscow are real estate guys, the harm can be mitigated by various means. Human lives are not at stake.

The closely guarded center, in this case the Kremlin, holds secrets not yet observable as activities, plans. At the extreme, when a plan is held in the mind of a single individual, it is unknowable. When a plan transforms to execution, it becomes knowable to the extent the adversary has been penetrated. HUMINT is paramount; the Soviets used to say only HUMINT provides actionable intelligence. As the circle of executors widens, there is also opportunity for SIGINT, because a plan must be disseminated for execution.

To know the plan  is so disadvantageous to an adversary, it has the chance of blunting, or even aborting, execution. But this card entails a major challenge. How do you convince the adversary you know the plan? This might seem simple.  Send a couple of real estate guys to Moscow with a presentation kit consisting of maps and charts.

This could work if all of those our emissaries talk to actually know the plan. With the most closely held plans, this is often not true.  To abort the plan, we want to create internal opposition. But Kremlin bureaucrats who are not yet informed on  the true, correct totality of the plan are disinclined to believe our message in preference to the false narratives internal to their institutions.

Because of the paramount need to protect sources and methods, our real estate guys don’t know anything about them. Our real estate guys are blocked from knowing by draconian CIA compartmentalization, and rightly so. They cannot be equipped with the knowledge that would give them credence.

The CIA director has complete access, but in line with the protections of compartmentalization, is only read in on what his supervision requires. Consequently, there is the belief that he can more effectively convince the Kremlin functionaries than a couple of real estate guys, without giving away sources or methods. This may or may not be true. Ratcliffe’s gambit was dangerous poker. The Russians collected video and audio which they continue to analyze, looking for “tells.”

My inclination is that Ratcliffe’s trip concerned the Suwałki Gap. That chip is big enough to matter.