I really don’t understand this strategy. What do hotels in Dubai or natural gas platforms in Qatar have to do with any of this? If anything Iran may create a large coalition of countries with a strong interest in making sure this can never happen again.
toomuchtodo•1h ago
The US spent trillions of dollars and many lives during their last escapade into the sandbox, and still went home having lost. What evidence leads you to believe a coalition of countries can stamp out autonomous, independent, ideology driven, potentially perpetual attacks? The potential attack surface is enormous, and attackers need to win only once versus needing a constant, successful defense against them. “What is your threat model?”
Iran is already demonstrating how to exhaust a supply of $4M patriot missiles with $50k drones. Broadly speaking, chaos is cheap when asymmetrical power is available and successful and soft, undefended targets are numerous and readily available. The cost to defend everything at once is untenable, and in some cases, it is almost impossible to defend the target at all (artillery against an LNG loading facility, for example).
wmf•1h ago
Iran's attacks are only perpetual if they have oil and electricity, right? At a certain point we turn it all off.
toomuchtodo•1h ago
How much oil and electricity was needed for the 9/11 attack on the twin towers? Motivation was the primary ingredient. The developed world is exceptionally fragile unfortunately. Ideology has no supply chain to target.
Cyberattacks can also be performed from anywhere cost effectively. I certainly hope we haven’t underfunded and crippled CISA.
> "Our critical infrastructure is quite vulnerable. They look for outdated systems, systems that haven't been patched or are so old that they're not even patched anymore. They're weak spots and an unfortunately, as you accurately point out, those systems are largely what is the back end of so much of our critical infrastructure," he said.
ungreased0675•1h ago
toomuchtodo•1h ago
Iran is already demonstrating how to exhaust a supply of $4M patriot missiles with $50k drones. Broadly speaking, chaos is cheap when asymmetrical power is available and successful and soft, undefended targets are numerous and readily available. The cost to defend everything at once is untenable, and in some cases, it is almost impossible to defend the target at all (artillery against an LNG loading facility, for example).
wmf•1h ago
toomuchtodo•1h ago
Cyberattacks can also be performed from anywhere cost effectively. I certainly hope we haven’t underfunded and crippled CISA.
> "Our critical infrastructure is quite vulnerable. They look for outdated systems, systems that haven't been patched or are so old that they're not even patched anymore. They're weak spots and an unfortunately, as you accurately point out, those systems are largely what is the back end of so much of our critical infrastructure," he said.
https://abc7chicago.com/post/federal-agencies-us-cities-aler...