In the spirit of honest debrief and as this quick intervention enters its sixth month, I thought it would be fun to make a little report card courtesy of our AI overlords. Prompts are included in the screenshots for full transparency. If you don't like it.. sorry.. I just asked the robot (chat gpt-5) the questions

Edited August 10Aug 10 by Pooter

13 minutes ago, Pooter said:

In the spirit of honest debrief and as this quick intervention enters its sixth month, I thought it would be fun to make a little report card courtesy of our AI overlords. Prompts are included in the screenshots for full transparency. If you don't like it.. sorry.. I just asked the robot the questions

Shit man, I passed every class this semester

Here's a fun one.. congrats to @ViperMan

Again.. just asking the robot.

Also I genuinely hope this all turns around and in 6 months you guys are chat gpt-roasting me for being the alarmist goofball, I so badly want reality to not suck this much

I personally love the fact that "butthurt" is one of the quantifiable characteristics.

MX leadership at a deployed location will be busy the next few weeks trying to figure out who did this since it went viral 😂

Hilarious! I love the no winner tic tac toe, a perfect impression.

That “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran” Beach Boys song works really good with Oman too as it turns out

Things aren't going well for Iran. You know this because this is the front page headliner on CNN:

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/18/business/iran-strait-of-hormuz-oil

Iran can inflict short term pain, yes. In the end, they will have fiddled themselves into irrelevancy.

Edited Tuesday at 10:11 PM1 day by ViperMan

6 hours ago, ViperMan said:

Things aren't going well for Iran. You know this because this is the front page headliner on CNN:

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/18/business/iran-strait-of-hormuz-oil

Iran can inflict short term pain, yes. In the end, they will have fiddled themselves into irrelevancy.

Anybody have a CNN subscription (lol) so we can have access to the full article and can see the actual argument here? I’d love to hear some good news but forgive me if I’m wary of war predictions from both viperman and 18-year CNN editors who happen to be Jewish seminary grads

7 hours ago, Pooter said:

Anybody have a CNN subscription (lol) so we can have access to the full article and can see the actual argument here? I’d love to hear some good news but forgive me if I’m wary of war predictions from both viperman and 18-year CNN editors who happen to be Jewish seminary grads

https://archive.ph/

Though in this case I did not need a subscription to CNN to read it

Commuter worthy read

https://warontherocks.com/managed-instability-why-the-wars-against-iran-and-ukraine-can-go-on-and-on-and-on/

12 hours ago, Clark Griswold said:

Commuter worthy read

https://warontherocks.com/managed-instability-why-the-wars-against-iran-and-ukraine-can-go-on-and-on-and-on/

Great article. I think the most insightful part is where he talks about the conditions that lead to a “managed instability” situation:

I think another condition that can lead to this state of “managed instability” is an arrogant superpower who thinks it will be a quick intervention but the country they attack perceives it as an existential threat to their existence. At that point you have the more powerful country in the conflict half assing it and the less powerful country whole assing it, which creates semi-parity and leads to battlefield/strategic stagnation.

The obvious follow up question to that is who led these superpowers to believe these would be quick and easy interventions, and what their motives might be.

15 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

https://archive.ph/

Though in this case I did not need a subscription to CNN to read it

As for the CNN ‘Iran losing control of the strait argument.’ I find it utterly unconvincing. So we’ve had some ships transit an Omani route under full emcon get through. Sweet. That’s hardly a return to normal and honestly it’s a tacit admission that Iran still absolutely has the ability to threaten normal ops through the waterway. Which was the whole point all along. No one ever said Iran controlled the strait. All they have to do is hold traffic in there at risk enough to cause disruptions that they can use for leverage.

It’s not gonna be long before they figure out a kill chain for ships that aren’t squawking and are a few miles further away.. if they haven’t already.. and then we’re back to square one. All the while we’re now committed to an enduring naval presence in the strait to hopefully claw our way back to something that (maybe) resembles the original status quo.

Edited 13 minutes ago13 min by Pooter