The New Physics of Power

Wednesday, August 19, 2026

If I were writing a book about the U.S. war with Iran, I know exactly what the title would be. It would be President Trump's social media post of April 5, 2026, directed at the leaders of Iran: "Open the [expletive] Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in Hell " JUST WATCH!" Wars are a crucible that very often exposes changes in the physics of the world around us " who has power, who doesn't have power and how power is being wielded. Nothing better captures the new power equation produced by this war than Trump's unhinged and obscene rant at the Iranian leadership for not bending to his bombs.

Posted by Doc_Sarvis at 07:01 AM | 3 COMMENTS | permalink | Comment on This Entry |

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This new physics of war is equally present in the conflicts between Ukraine and Russia, Hezbollah and Israel, Hamas and Israel and the Houthis and everyone else. My summary of this new dynamic is that the small can now act really big, really accurately and really inexpensively. And while the big can also act really small, really accurately, it is far more expensive for them to do that while bearing the burden of vast legacy arms systems.

The net advantage, for the moment, seems to be to the small. That should keep you up at night, when you think how the emerging revolution in artificial intelligence will surely supercharge this trend, enabling the small to act even bigger, mightier and less expensively.

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Friedman. Ores: "These new weapons amplify another advantage the small have over the big: They don't have to win. They just have to avoid losing. We have to win, end the war, go home and never look back. Good luck with that now."

What is truly alarming today is how easy it is becoming for the small to act big " and by "small," I don't just mean in size, but also in age. A teenager with a laptop, a Starlink connection and an open-weight A.I. model can now disrupt a municipal water or power system by identifying and exploiting old software vulnerabilities.

So don't be surprised if one day soon you hear your mayor sounding like Trump: "Turn my water back on, you crazy ... "

#1 | Posted by Doc_Sarvis at 2026-08-19 07:04 AM | Reply

This argument was made during one of the Hezbollah vs Iran conflicts. Hezbollah only had to survive to win, and they did survive.

Lets check in on Southern Lebanon and see how it's going in 2026.

#2 | Posted by sitzkrieg at 2026-08-19 07:37 AM | Reply

Hezbollah vs Israel. The one where Hezbollah entrenched themselves and took on the Merkava 4s with a bunch of anti-tank missiles.

#3 | Posted by sitzkrieg at 2026-08-19 07:39 AM | Reply