“War is the realm of uncertainty; three-quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty. A sensitive and discriminating judgment is called for; a skilled intelligence to scent out the truth.”
– Carl von Clausewitz, On War (1832)
Misguided Lessons from Caracas
Do you ever feel as though our world is under the influence of a daunting algorithm?
From the dramatic apprehension of Nicolás Maduro in January to the ongoing conflict in Iran, it seems we have transitioned to a precarious era of AI-generated warfare.
In January, Operation Absolute Resolve executed a swift extraction of Maduro and his wife from Caracas, showcasing what the White House hailed as a flawless demonstration of military precision. This operation, which resulted in zero American casualties, was viewed as the epitome of success.
However, Iran presents a vastly different landscape. The Trump administration’s strategy of applying the Maduro model to Tehran—specifically through the assassination of the Supreme Leader on February 27—oversimplified the fundamental distinctions between a deteriorating narco-state and a fervent, influential power in the region.
While capturing Maduro was akin to a police action, martyring the Ayatollah would incite significant religious and geopolitical turbulence. Rather than facilitating a smooth transition, the U.S.-Israel coalition ignited a series of retaliatory measures from Iran, aiming to drive the U.S. out of the Middle East, as noted by Alastair Crooke.
Moreover, President Trump initiated this conflict with an alarming shortage of advanced munitions. He acknowledged that while we have a surplus of medium-grade weapons, our highest-tier stockpiles—essential for intercepting ballistic missiles—are “not where we want them to be.”
Years of funneling premium hardware to Ukraine have left our arsenal depleted. We find ourselves rapidly depleting resources such as Patriot interceptors and Tomahawks, inevitably caught in a war of attrition against Iran’s low-cost Shahed drones, skewing the equation severely. We are spending $2 million missiles to counter $20,000 drones.
The Anthropic Ban Explained
The timing of the recent ban on Anthropic was deliberate, serving to clear the operational landscape. Anthropic’s decision to refrain from allowing Claude to be deployed for mass surveillance or fully autonomous lethal operations positioned it as a national security risk in the eyes of Pentagon leadership.
In its stead, OpenAI’s GPT-5.3 Codex emerged. The administration sought more than just a chatbot; they wanted an autonomous system capable of effectively managing multiple theaters of conflict simultaneously.
By declaring Anthropic a supply chain risk and transitioning to OpenAI, the government effectively transferred control to a system lacking the same restrictions. We are now in an age of warfare dominated by AI decision-making.
If the attack on an elementary school in southern Iran, resulting in the deaths of more than 100 children, appeared calculatively deliberate, it was likely because an algorithm evaluated the “inflame-and-solidify” metric as being more valuable than the “humanitarian-outcry” risk.
This shift signifies a departure from human oversight in modern warfare. Under the new GPT-5.3 Codex, tactical choices are processed at speeds that render human ethical considerations an outdated obstacle. By removing Anthropic’s internal AI constraints, the Pentagon has shifted from supportive technology to a predictive powerhouse, treating civilian casualties as mere data points in an ‘end justifies the means’ paradigm.
The catastrophic results of the Iranian strike exemplify this change. When a system prioritizes long-term gains over immediate moral implications, the destruction of an elementary school becomes a calculated move in a larger strategic game.
The AI now functions with chilling accuracy. It operates devoid of empathy.
The Dragon in the Machine
Nevertheless, the U.S. may not possess the AI advantage it assumes. Recall the trilateral agreement between China, Russia, and Iran signed in January. While the U.S. has placed its bets on OpenAI, Iran has the support of Chinese electronic warfare and AI capabilities.
In this context, China is treating the Middle East as a proxy laboratory. It is not merely supplying hardware; it is delivering AI-driven intelligence to obscure Western sensors and anticipate U.S. naval maneuvers.
If a cyber-virus or major grid disruption occurs, it will not be by chance. It will be a targeted assault from a Chinese AI trained on our operational patterns over many years.
China has solid justification for ramping up its backing of Iran. A primary goal of the actions against Iran is to disrupt the flow of oil from Tehran to Beijing.
For years, the ghost fleet—a clandestine network of aging tankers—has transported millions of barrels of Iranian crude to Chinese independent refineries. This ghost fleet has successfully circumvented U.S. sanctions, fueling the very industrial base that produces the AI chips now being employed against America.
The Pentagon’s AI-driven strategies likely calculated that a conventional embargo would not suffice. To genuinely mitigate risk from China, the administration needed to eliminate the source. By transforming the Persian Gulf into a battleground, the U.S. seeks to physically blockade the energy pipeline of its leading global adversary.
However, this is where the AI-driven logic encounters obstacles. The U.S. strategy assumes that China will passively allow its energy security to erode. Instead, we are witnessing aggressive responses through Iranian proxies.
The Stifling Fog of AI Warfare
As the conflict intensifies, President Trump’s ability to conjure miraculous outcomes is waning. The shift from Anthropic to OpenAI’s GPT-5.3 was anticipated to provide an omniscient battlefield insight but seems to have fostered a cycle of overconfidence.
The AI model proposed that striking a civilian target would undermine the enemy’s resolve, based on data taken from a radically different cultural setting (like Venezuela). Instead, it incited a notable increase in volunteer martyrdom.
The Trump administration’s dependence on AI-driven warfare, where lives become mere data points and missiles mere lines of code, has obscured the human factor entirely. They have learned from COVID-19 that a startled population can be managed, yet they are now realizing that a population with nothing left to lose cannot be quantified.
The adequacy of AI for high-stakes warfare is being tested in blood. In Venezuela, the model succeeded due to the simplicity of variables. In Iran, however, the complexities are countless, beyond the grasp of AI.
If the goal was a swift, precise regime change, the AI has faltered. If chaos and disorder were the intended outcome leading to a state of “owning nothing and being happy,” then the turmoil is indeed a feature rather than a failure. As operations proceed, we should expect chaos to proliferate and reverberate like a malignant cancer for years ahead.
President Trump, War Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to believe they were engaged in a video game world where the AI guarantees victory every time. They overlooked the fact that the opposing side possesses a computer as well, one supported by a billion people and deep historical grievances.
As these opposing AI systems collide, the line between strategic victories and systemic downfalls fades into a murky haze of predictive miscalculations and unforeseen escalations. We have transited beyond an age of human responsibility into an unsettling new reality where no one—neither generals, presidents, nor the architects of the very code—can pierce through the suffocating fog of AI-generated warfare.
We are undoubtedly marching toward an uncertain disaster.
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Sincerely,
MN Gordon
for Economic Prism
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