> It's tragic how mismanaged it is.

Is it mismanaged? Sure, they spend a fair amount on administration. Sure, they spend about 10% on Mozilla Foundation stuff. But they still spend ~2/3 of revenue on software development.

And they're somewhat stuck between a rock and a hard place.

If they try to evolve their current platform, power users bitch. If they don't evolve their current platform, they lose casual users to ad-promoted alternatives (Chrome and Edge).

And they don't really have the money to do a parallel ground-up rewrite.

The most interesting thing I could see on the horizon is building a user-owned browsing agent (in the AI sense), but then they'd get tarred and feathered for chasing AI.

Part of Mozilla's problem is that the browser is already pretty figured out. After tabs and speed and ad blocking, there weren't any killer features.

Appreciate you taking the time to write out the steel man. Ascribing motive to others without an honest appraisal of the benefits of choices one might not like is lazy.

There can be good reasons for a bad thing, and it's important to factor them in when having a discussion.

> The "low and mid range" can be filled by the former high end.

With the 4-7 year support window on Android? Maybe that's why Google is trying to kill off Graphene et al.

> It's a return to battleship economics.

The real economics of battleships (and their precursor ships of the line) were:

Given expensive armaments (cannon), it is cheaper to concentrate these on a mobile platform that can geographically reposition itself than build / deploy / supply equivalent power everywhere, and the former allows for local overmatch.

Sufficiently cheap and powerful unmanned guided munitions (drones, cheap cruise/ballistic missiles, UAV/USV/UUVs) are a fundamentally different balance of power, especially with enough range.

What does make sense is a return to cheaper escort carriers, where the carrier should be as cheap as possible (preferably unmanned) as the platforms it hosts are no longer exquisite.

Cheap and covert, Operation Spiderweb changed the game

The more worrisome thing is when that's applied to naval peer states.

Someone uses a container ship, suddenly all container ships become targets, goodbye global economy for a few years.

Yes and... NASA space programs (doing rare, unknown things) are different than commercial aviation (doing a frequent, known thing with high safety). Best be careful applying solutions from the latter to the former.

Layering additional safety layers on top of a fundamentally misaligned organization process also generally balloons costs and delivery timelines (see: NASA).

The smarter play is to better align all stakeholders' incentives, from the top (including the president and Congress) to the bottom, to the desired outcome.

Right now most parties are working towards very different goals.

To me, this is the way linux wins, if it does.

Product teams deciding it's easier to ship on + customers having enough linux familiarity (from their other projects).

And the current crop of Microsoft people on the Windows team don't seem to understand building a platform in the way 90/00s Windows teams did.

It's clear MS moved a lot of their smartest people over to work on Azure products.

> And there's nothing the US can do about that.

1. Send Marines to seize Kharg island via long range air assault from 2 ARGs + land bases

2. Flood Kharg-adjacent mainland with tactical aviation to eliminate short range artillery and rocket systems

3. Fortify position on Kharg island and declare all oil revenue will be placed in US-controlled holding account, with release to Iran contingent on cooperation (re: Why occupy Kharg? Because then you have actual money in an account as leverage, while calming international oil prices and consumers, not just a blockade, which antagonizes international oil consumers)

4. Declare a buffer demilitarized zone around the Strait of Hormuz

5. Land Marines in buffer zone if necessary to monitor

~50% of the revenue to pay the Iranian military comes from oil exports. Therefore, the Iranian regime doesn't survive without oil export revenue. 90% of Iranian oil is exported through Kharg.

It's an aggressive plan, but it's feasible.

Especially because Iran has no ability to repel an invasion of the island or retake it once it's occupied.

Their only possible reaction would be to bombard troops there, destroying their own export infrastructure in the process.

Which would depend on how close to the mat the current regime wants to take this, as that would also seal their eventual downfall.

"Their only possible reaction would be to bombard troops there, destroying their own export infrastructure in the process."

Right, so if that's their only possible reaction, isn't that a bad thing for everyone? It looks like they've made it clear they're not going down without bringing everyone else with them, and why would they? What options do they have?

> they've made it clear they're not going down without bringing everyone else with them

Isn't that exactly what you would say even if you didn't mean it?

You'd think everyone would have learned by this point that none of the belligerent major world powers mean what they say anymore.

Definitely not Russia, China, and the US.

They all transparently see diplomacy and messaging around it as a tool of war. Small surprise when others do too.

I mean they seem to have made it clear by their actions. They're in an existential situation, so its not like there is any reason to hold anything back.

If your opponent is trying to turn you into Libya, then whatever you do just has to not fail as badly as that for it to be the right move. You basically become a cornered animal.

The thing about disintegrating regimes is there is no "they".

There's people with power, looking out for their own self interests. You think after a few more weeks all of the newly promoted Iranian military leadership is going to weigh a few million dollars in personal benefit against the glory of the cause and decide on the latter?

OK, so take this back to your boots on kharg island plan, where this "no they" only has the option of bombarding our troops. Are you saying they also have the option of ... Getting a few million dollars in personal benefit somehow?

The only option they have on offer is death, either fighting the us and Israel, or fighting in whatever civil war crops up after. Why would they believe in any negotiations after the last two times?

> The only option they have on offer is death, either fighting the us and Israel, or fighting in whatever civil war crops up after. Why would they believe in any negotiations after the last two times?

The writing is on the wall that the US wants to end the war (and Israel won't have a choice but to follow). Which means anyone with military command authority in Iran has leverage to extract concessions from the US.

Do either of us think the current US admin is above causing a few million to appear in a bank account somewhere, in exchange for secret cooperation?

Especially when the calculus is between stick (Israeli assassination) and carrot (money), and that substantial personal wealth means power in any post-war Iranian order. Or living as a wealthy expat as plan B.

The point of regime decapitation, to give the Israeli assassinations (especially of internal security force leaders) their most strategically foresighted interpretation (instead of the more likely opportunistic one), is to shuffle people into power that haven't already made a resist vs cooperate decision.

At some point, everyone cares about their own skin and their future most.

> Do either of us think the current US admin is above causing a few million to appear in a bank account somewhere, in exchange for secret cooperation?

> Especially when the calculus is between stick (Israeli assassination) and carrot (money), and that substantial personal wealth means power in any post-war Iranian order. Or living as a wealthy expat as plan B.

No, of course we wouldn't (and I'd say shouldn't) be above that. The question is how that comes to pass.

Imagine you're some sort of Iranian official that actually has some sway in the country.

1) why on earth would you even entertain negotiations, when your enemy repeatedly uses them as cover for sneak attacks?

2) assuming you get past 1), and the us offers you money. If you take it and leave, you don't have any influence in your country anymore anyway, so what have we gained? If you take it and stay, do the people still follow you if you capitulate? And what's to stop Israel from assassinating you anyway, or launching another war 6 months from now?

The only rational move seems to be to establish deterrence by making this thing as painful as possible for everyone involved, and us invading plays right into that.

there is no way the USMC would be able to hold Kharg and the buffer zone without extensive casualties. the buffer zone would be a full-fledged combat zone, non-stop. you'd see Ukraine-at-its-worst levels of drone strikes, and the US military is not equipped to deal with that, not yet.

the Iranian missile stockpile may be drained thin, but their army and conventional equipment surpluses could absolutely maintain a consistent and aggressive pushback.

> Their only possible reaction would be to bombard troops there, destroying their own export infrastructure in the process.

it's already destroyed mate. and keeping it up and running would be a tall order when the Iranians are right there.

> ~50% of the revenue to pay the Iranian military comes from oil exports.

this is a country that convinced children to charge through minefields during Iran-Iraq; you think pay is going to stop them? or that China and Russia wouldn't give them ample weapons?

there is no winning play here

> could absolutely maintain a consistent and aggressive pushback

With 30+ km systems launchedu from flat terrain, right onshore of US air power? That's the limit of 155mm conventional, and Iran isn't launching gold-plated Excalibur rounds.

That means rocket artillery, either in unguided mode (see next point) or SRBM (of which they don't have an unlimited supply).

Enabling drone strikes at 30+ km over water against US EW looks very different than terrestrial Ukraine too.

> it's already destroyed mate

Citation-needed that the oil infrastructure on Kharg was destroyed.

> this is a country that convinced children to charge through minefields during Iran-Iraq

I expect the zeal of modern Iranian youth for the revolution is dimmed from 1980.

The difference with oil inflation is that it also directly boosts revenues in oil-producing Middle Eastern countries.

Consequently, they can offset core staple inflation (and usually choose to) to decrease unrest.

It's core inflation without high oil prices that torpedoes their fiscal options.

Perhaps it makes it less likely in the middle East, but it makes it much more likely in countries vulnerable to both oil & food price inflation.

The immigration crisis caused by Arab spring toppled many governments in Europe.

If a similar set of crises happened in the Americas it would make the US's illegal immigration situation much worse.

> The immigration crisis caused by Arab spring toppled many governments in Europe.

that was entirely of their own making, though

Including USSR!

The 2003 Iraq war was a pretty decisive military victory for the invaders. Iraqi command and control destroyed in the opening stages. About a month to complete occupation of the country.

The subsequent years were a complete clusterfuck. Largely because of a missing theory of victory, the inept neocons the administration selected to run the civilian side, and the lack of strategic military-civilian coordination.

What you say is essentially accurate and we're debating semantics, but about those semantics:

Wars end with political solutions (otherwise, people keep fighting), and the US didn't achieve a political solution the first month, and never achieved a particularly desirable one. One step they took was dissolving the Iraqi army or military, and those people reformed into militias that continued fighting the US. Was the war really over?

The US won initial battles, as expected. The war lasted much longer.

Granted! But that's insurgencies vs wars IMHO. In one, you have irregulars trying to bleed an occupying power. In the other, you have regular military forces.

The US is great at winning the latter, but sucks at winning the former (largely because of a lack of coherent political-diplomatic-military fusion on the US side).

> The US is great at winning the latter, but sucks at winning the former

Also, enemies aren't suicidal. Why would they take on US tanks, fighter planes, missiles, satellites, etc. for more than five minutes? They know they can't win that way so they quickly abandon it for what does have some success, irregular warfare / insurgency.