The Straight of Hormuz is open to any country willing to pay $2M per voyage. Any country except the U.S. and Israel.
The most important aspect of the "toll" is that Iran prefers payment in yuan, not dollars.
If Iran succeeds in nationalizing the Straight and is successful in enforcing the toll, it represents a very serious threat to the dominance of the U.S. Dollar as the world's reserve currency for trading energy.
The amazing part to me is just the perceived invincibility this small circle within the US administration has. You can find dozens of articles with a search limited to Feb 1~Feb 27, plenty of analysis warning of the risks that have now become reality, everything - the strait, no revolution, further radicalization, critically low US stockpiles, abandoning other US partners, gulf destabilization, etc.
In the fantasy imagination of some people, they really think you can take out some military targets of another country and then the oppressed masses will magically revolt, as they completely ignore the failed revolution just a month prior. Surround yourself with enough of these people while excluding and firing those who don't and this is what you get.
Honestly, the way this administration has behaved makes me think someone there is obsessed with playing Total War and thinks that’s how the real world works. It’s all about winning battles and painting the map red, white and blue (Greenland, Venezuela, now Iran) with no thought to what they want to achieve beyond that.
>Iran would have to respond and thus would have to try to find a way to inflict ‘pain’ on the United States to force the United States to back off. But whereas Israel is in reach of some Iranian weapons, the United States is not.
This is too complacent for my liking. Every rusty trawler is a viable launch platform for Shahed type drones (operational range ~2500 km per Wikipedia). Nearly every US oil refinery and LNG terminal are on the coast. And then there are floating oil platforms (e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perdido_(oil_platform))
The article then says:
>One can never know how well prepared an enemy is for something.
And:
>And if I can reason this out, Iran – which has been planning for this exact thing for forty years certainly can.
> Every rusty trawler is a viable launch platform for Shahed type drones
And where exactly are you planning to operate that trawler out of? Or are you going to send it across the Atlantic on its own (well, with a couple of tankers accompanying it, but never mind that) and hope no-one pays attention?
> operational range ~2500 km per Wikipedia
I think you either added an extra zero or were looking at the hyped prototypes rather than the models in actual use. The Shaheds have ranges in the hundreds of miles, not thousands.
> More relevantly for us, Iran is 3.5 times larger than Iraq and roughly twice the population.
Worth noting that at the time of invasion of Iraq they had about 25 million people per gemeni. They now have about 46 mil people per wikipedia. All else equal, we are comparing 25 mil to 93 mil and not half of 93 mil to 93 mil.
> And I do want to stress that. There is a frequent mistake, often from folks who deal in economics, to assume that countries will give up on wars when the economics turn bad. But countries are often very willing to throw good money after bad even on distant wars of choice.
On the other hand isn't this how the russian revolution happened? An economic crisis due to a prolonged war leading to a revolution? While i wouldn't bet money on it, it seems at least possible that something similar could happen to Iran.
I would not wager money on a revolution coming from this war, either. But if a revolution does come as a result of the war, it seems at least as likely to be in the United States as in Iran.
While I agree that a revolution in Iran is not impossible, I rather doubt that whoever comes next will be western friendly and moderate; after the indscriminate military action of the past few weeks they are probably more likely to get ayatollah'd again.
Actually, there are lots of revolutions in Europe after WWI, but keep in mind that in this case the populations were blaming their governments for starting or participating in an unnecessary war with monumental casualties. In this case, the Iran government has two useful scapegoats and any casualties could be easily ascribed to the idiots bombing girl schools and not to the idiots sending millions to their deaths under artillery fire.
>On the other hand isn't this how the russian revolution happened?
It happened because Russian empire (and German empire) lacked state security apparatus adequate to the threat. It was fixed by most authoritarian states after that, so e.g. Soviet Union survived for 70 years despite many popular uprisings, which happened almost the whole time of its existence. It went down only when elites in Moscow destroyed it from within.
He writes that the region is not very important to the USA. It's not, but it is a strategically important area, not only in terms of its location, at the nexus of Asia, Africa and Europe, but also because of the oil there.
Now the US is not dependent on Middle Eastern Oil, but Japan, China and other countries are. So controlling the region will mean a lever of power over those regions.
At present, gasoline prices in China have risen by 11% since the war started. In the U.S., they have risen by 33%.
The U.S. is dependent on oil and the oil market is global. Even if the U.S. is a net exporter of oil, Americans still pay increased prices for pretty much everything as a result and the economy suffers. The only way around this would be a scheme in which domestic oil producers are forced to sell to American refiners at pre-war prices, similar to the "National Energy Program" that was tried in Canada during the '80's. (Spoiler: It didn't turn out well.)
Yes, the U.S. is less likely to see its pumps run dry and U.S. oil companies are going to be very happy with the increased prices. However, unless it goes the NEP route, U.S. companies are going to export more oil creating shorter supply at home. Americans will pay the same high prices everyone else will be paying. As we're seeing now, the U.S. might actually see even higher price increases than countries like China.
It was never about nuclear weapons, Netanyahu has been saying Iran was one week away for over 30 years. Europe goes along as an excuse to support politically unpopular war to maintain US support for Ukraine.
What would you expect Europe to do? It’s not like they openly support this war. The Iranian diaspora supports it, there is the secularism element, but the US doesn’t care about the Iranian people anyway
The diaspora is happy about the regime being targeted. They will be much, much more ambivalent if the US starts targeting power infrastructure and innocent people in hospitals etc start dying en masse.
A comment on this post by aerodog calling Bret a "Jew" for calling the Iranian government odious was the first comment on this post but was either removed by them or a mod. Would be good to keep up so that people can see these clowns.
It seems there's a flawed reading coming from a single point in time analysis
Region instability had ben regularly threatening freedom of navigation in the last five years
And USA may not consider the individual country strategic, but cares deeply about freedom of navigation, because the single market is basically the pillar for their hegemony.
Sarah Paine lectures give overall better lenses to look at this engagement.
As the article discusses in detail, if the US actually cares about freedom of navigation, the war was a massive own goal because it looks extremely likely to grant the current Iranian regime de facto control of the Strait.
Iran already had the strait in ransom, directly and indirectly with proxy receiving weapons. You don't get to ignore that part and call this a own goal, since inaction led to the same effective results.
The purpose of the war is to destroy the Axis of Resistance, Iran, Hezbollah and its allies, the only force standing in the way of US/Israeli hegemony in the region.
That’s a purely ideological way of looking at the situation which IMO is not sufficient. As the article states, this war was not unprovoked either, regardless of whether the provocations warrant such a response. Iran is seeking its own hegemony. Now, this does not negate your point on the hegemonic approach of US in the region. I think this war can be viewed as a power struggle between a regional and global power that’s developing into a struggle dominance and survival.
It is to benefit Israel (so it can anex more territory in Lebanon), and it has no benefit to the US. The US had already a deal with Iran, which didn't threat its own interests directly. It is like leave a snake alone, but once you step into it, it will bite you.
This war is only to benefit Israel, and right now indirectly Russia (due to the rising prices). Basically, the US is the main loser/sucker in this war, and we are all poorer for doing it.
Reason for Iran war is a fanatic Shiite regime on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons. Same regime that vowed time after time to erase Israel. 100% justified war. Should’ve been done earlier in fact.
Because Iran has been repeatedly stopped from doing it through cyber (stuxnet), sanctions, assassinations of nuclear scientists, and bombings.
Israel said the same thing about Pakistan many decades ago, and they were the only country trying to stop it from happening, but they were blocked from doing so.
That's the only reason we don't hear "Pakistan has been weeks away from a nuke for 30 years" in these annoyingly ignorant internet discussions.
I find it so puzzling that a country, which has violated the NPT multiple times, can enrich uranium to 60%, according to the IAEA, inside bunkers deep within mountains, and people with a straight face can say that they're not building a nuclear weapon. I think less of these people's basic intellectual integrity. Just go ahead and say that the theocrats in Iran should be allowed to have a nuke, be honest for once.
When Trump left the agreement Obama made with Iran all US intelligence agencies agreed that Iran was not working on a bomb. Netanyahu has screeched about Irans destruction for 40 years, he was there to lie to congress about WMDs in Iraq. This conflict is engineered.
There is no evidence Iran has an active nuclear weapons program or has had one since the early 2000s, which even the article's author seems not to know. They have enriched uranium that could be further processed and used to make weapons, but there is no evidence they are doing so or have the capability to do so (and no, Israeli government/military sources are not reliable. They have every interest to lie about Iran having/nearly having nuclear weapons)
Isn't it interesting that the country that takes the nuclear threat most seriously and tries to prevent it is also the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons?
Russia? France? The UK? India? Pakistan? Israel? China?
There are many countries that have used nuclear weapons.
If you're talking about the USofA they didn't try that hard at preventing Iran from enriching - they tore up a perfectly good and well functioning monitoring agreement at the start of Trump's first term.
> Please understand me: the people in these countries are not important, but as a matter of national strategy, some places are more important than others.
I assume/hope this was meant to say "the people in these countries are not [un]important"? (or just "are important")
As an entirely secular person, I believe every innocent human life is important.
He's speaking from a military, America-first perspective (which I suspect may be somewhat affected, because he is hoping to convince people who sincerely think that way). The people in these countries are not strategically important.
1. The straight of Hormuz is crazy because of the sheer amount of options Iran has to threaten shipping. It's so narrow that they can even hit ships with artillery fire. No need for missiles or drones at all! Lobbing kinetic shells may sound primitive, but anti-missile defences are designed to deal with large projectiles with minutes or hours of warning, not shell-sized projectiles that hit within seconds. If a U.S. war-ship enters the straight, they could be struck by fire from artillery that's been concealed for decades before they know they're under fire. It's also worth noting that Shahad drones have a larger range than the size of Iran, and they're hidden all over the country. Any ship transiting Hormuz or any ground force trying to land in Iran could face drone attack from anywhere in Iran, or all of it simultaneously. A few drones are easy to intercept, but give Iran a juicy enough target and they could make the decision to simply overwhelm it. Drones are a heavily parallel capability.
2. There are only a couple of lanes deep enough for large ships in the straight. So far, no ships have been sunk outright, and that's probably a deliberate choice on Iran's part. If they sink a ship at the right spot, the straight could become barricaded. Clearing that barricade under threat of fire would be a far worse pickle than what we're seeing now.
3. The critical question to ask is, "How does the U.S. end this?" Just continuing to bomb Iran is phenomenally expensive, and likely won't accomplish much. This is a regime that has been preparing for an American invasion since they overthrew the CIA-installed Shah 47 years ago. They probably never seriously expected to win an air-war against the U.S. and have obviously planned for an asymmetric conflict. The U.S. is not going to win this one without phenomenal amounts of blood, treasure, and will, but all of these are in short supply. A ground invasion of Iran would likely be worse than Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam rolled into one. The U.S. can't win this war because they simply can't pay the price. Unfortunately, the straight of Hormuz gives Iran the ability to prevent Trump from simply TACO'ing out and proceeding to invade Cuba. Iran could keep the straight closed even after the U.S. withdraws their forces, and likely will to make sure everybody knows they can control the world economy at will. They're going to expect a peace settlement, and it won't be cheap.
4. This conflict lights a fire under the behinds of all nascent nuclear states. Iran would not have been invaded if they'd managed to build nuclear weapons. Even Iran is more likely to develop nuclear weapons now. Contrary to what some think, Iran isn't going to give up their enriched uranium and end their program just because the U.S. promises not to attack them again. Something like the JCPOA only works if some level of trust is possible, but Trump personally burned that. The best the U.S. is likely to get in negotiations is a superficial promise not to develop nuclear weapons, backed up by absolutely nothing. If the U.S. decides to end the program by force, the result will also be uncertain. Say the U.S. locates and extracts Iran's HEU from those underground facilities. How will they ever be certain they got it all without occupying the whole country?
> They did not and now we are all living trapped in the consequences.
They (rich and well connected) did, but they won't have to suffer the consequences, everyone else will. The Pedo of the United States is now a billionaire that will walk away in 4 years shrugging his shoulders laughing all the way to the bank with them.
Not one person that could stop it, did stop it. Legislature is sitting on their thumbs pretending not to work for Israel and selling us out to big tech and defense spending.
All the Baby Boomers are in the south enjoying the sunshine and shrugging their shoulders.
Not a single mention of the 15.000-40.000 thousand (depending on which sources you believe) massacred unarmed protestors killed 8 weeks ago by that regime.
Nor the hundreds of thousands murder by Israel in a genocide, which is why his strategic analysis doesn't see the gulf states are at risk of collapse if they engage Iran on what is perceived to be on Israel's behalf.
Did you even read it? He mentions that, and also He says that the regime is 'odious' right in the beginning, and is looking more from the US self interest and strategic perspective.
"It certainly did not help that the United States had stood idle while the regime slaughtered tens of thousands of its opponents, before making the attempt,"
"Now, before we go forward, I want to clarify a few things. First, none of this is a defense of the Iranian regime, which is odious. That said, there are many odious regimes in the world and we do not go to war with all of them. Second, this is a post fundamentally about American strategy or the lack thereof and thus not a post"
I don't understand what this article has to do with Hacker News.
> for the United States this war was an unwise gamble on extremely long odds; the gamble (that the regime would collapse swiftly) has already failed
Right off the bat this guy is wrong. Nobody in their right mind would bet that the regime would collapse swiftly. The US knew what Iran's military C&C looks like, and what their internal oppressive police forces look like.
The US and Israel have been pummeling them continuously, and they're not done. So much so that the one opposition leader all the Iranians in exile are talking about urged Iranians to stay home and not protest - yet.
> I don't understand what this article has to do with Hacker News.
Taiwan has roughly 10 days left of gas supply.
Oil and gas are not only used for energy, but are the primary component of many, many materials and chemicals.
Some of the oil/gas plants that were hit will take months to fix. Pipelines have stopped.
We have a huge risk of a global supply chain destabilization for any sector. Think what happened with chip supply with covid, and make it much worse since the manufacturers never did stop during covid, while there is a risk they will have to stop now.
Not all machines and production can be stopped and started immediately, so even a short interruption can have lasting and cascading consequences.
Covid thought us that the world relies too much on just-in-time production, and we lack buffers in many, many fields. This has likely not changed.
Right off the bat your response raises questions because if the US leadership knew from day one this was a protracted fight then they stand having made entirely contradictory statements regarding their intent and expectations in that regard.
> I don't understand what this article has to do with Hacker News.
The continuing slow collapse of the United States is extremely relevant to all things technology and business. The source of all our funding may be cut off. It's important to monitor what's going on there.
I stll dont understand what you are doing 10000 miles away from the presumed borders of your country, and even more why on earth you think you have the right to dictate to 90 million people (let aside the rest of the world) how to govetn themselves.
I suppose it is some right given to you from above, now where have I seen this before..
I always wondered what alternative reality are people supporting the administration are living in and this right here is the answer. As someone put it, Americans love to fool themselves in believing they are the ones 'winning' because they killed more people even if it means completely failing at the original objective.
I also love that he goes right to how much America and Israel have been pummeling Iran when the article acknowledges that to be the case, but rightly points out that even with that being true, the US is still in a losing position.
> I don't understand what this article has to do with Hacker News.
Judging by your comment history it seems to be the majority of what you discuss. Maybe you're not the best judge of what HN finds interesting or salient.
The most important aspect of the "toll" is that Iran prefers payment in yuan, not dollars.
If Iran succeeds in nationalizing the Straight and is successful in enforcing the toll, it represents a very serious threat to the dominance of the U.S. Dollar as the world's reserve currency for trading energy.
In the fantasy imagination of some people, they really think you can take out some military targets of another country and then the oppressed masses will magically revolt, as they completely ignore the failed revolution just a month prior. Surround yourself with enough of these people while excluding and firing those who don't and this is what you get.
America is isolating itself in so many ways. You could rewrite that scene and reach the same conclusion.
It's after the ramp up in production of weapons used in the shooting war started.
This is too complacent for my liking. Every rusty trawler is a viable launch platform for Shahed type drones (operational range ~2500 km per Wikipedia). Nearly every US oil refinery and LNG terminal are on the coast. And then there are floating oil platforms (e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perdido_(oil_platform))
The article then says:
>One can never know how well prepared an enemy is for something.
And:
>And if I can reason this out, Iran – which has been planning for this exact thing for forty years certainly can.
I'll leave it here for y'all to ponder.
And where exactly are you planning to operate that trawler out of? Or are you going to send it across the Atlantic on its own (well, with a couple of tankers accompanying it, but never mind that) and hope no-one pays attention?
> operational range ~2500 km per Wikipedia
I think you either added an extra zero or were looking at the hyped prototypes rather than the models in actual use. The Shaheds have ranges in the hundreds of miles, not thousands.
Worth noting that at the time of invasion of Iraq they had about 25 million people per gemeni. They now have about 46 mil people per wikipedia. All else equal, we are comparing 25 mil to 93 mil and not half of 93 mil to 93 mil.
I also used this as an opportunity to reference the now archived[0] CIA Factbook[1] which does put the 2003 Iraq population at 25 million.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47114530
[1] https://worldfactbookarchive.org/archive/2003/IZ
On the other hand isn't this how the russian revolution happened? An economic crisis due to a prolonged war leading to a revolution? While i wouldn't bet money on it, it seems at least possible that something similar could happen to Iran.
It happened because Russian empire (and German empire) lacked state security apparatus adequate to the threat. It was fixed by most authoritarian states after that, so e.g. Soviet Union survived for 70 years despite many popular uprisings, which happened almost the whole time of its existence. It went down only when elites in Moscow destroyed it from within.
Now the US is not dependent on Middle Eastern Oil, but Japan, China and other countries are. So controlling the region will mean a lever of power over those regions.
The U.S. is dependent on oil and the oil market is global. Even if the U.S. is a net exporter of oil, Americans still pay increased prices for pretty much everything as a result and the economy suffers. The only way around this would be a scheme in which domestic oil producers are forced to sell to American refiners at pre-war prices, similar to the "National Energy Program" that was tried in Canada during the '80's. (Spoiler: It didn't turn out well.)
Yes, the U.S. is less likely to see its pumps run dry and U.S. oil companies are going to be very happy with the increased prices. However, unless it goes the NEP route, U.S. companies are going to export more oil creating shorter supply at home. Americans will pay the same high prices everyone else will be paying. As we're seeing now, the U.S. might actually see even higher price increases than countries like China.
My takeaway from the war in Ukraine is: it’s going to get worse and last longer than anyone ever imagined.
Region instability had ben regularly threatening freedom of navigation in the last five years
And USA may not consider the individual country strategic, but cares deeply about freedom of navigation, because the single market is basically the pillar for their hegemony.
Sarah Paine lectures give overall better lenses to look at this engagement.
They held the threat of closing it, as a deterrent of an attack, and once attacked, they did just that.
You either live in a parallel universe, or are just spewing here propaganda.
edit: typo
This war is only to benefit Israel, and right now indirectly Russia (due to the rising prices). Basically, the US is the main loser/sucker in this war, and we are all poorer for doing it.
I've been hearing that line, from the same person for thirty years:
https://www.news18.com/world/weeks-away-by-next-spring-video...
Israel said the same thing about Pakistan many decades ago, and they were the only country trying to stop it from happening, but they were blocked from doing so.
That's the only reason we don't hear "Pakistan has been weeks away from a nuke for 30 years" in these annoyingly ignorant internet discussions.
I find it so puzzling that a country, which has violated the NPT multiple times, can enrich uranium to 60%, according to the IAEA, inside bunkers deep within mountains, and people with a straight face can say that they're not building a nuclear weapon. I think less of these people's basic intellectual integrity. Just go ahead and say that the theocrats in Iran should be allowed to have a nuke, be honest for once.
WMD 2.0 The Electric Boogaloo.
There are many countries that have used nuclear weapons.
If you're talking about the USofA they didn't try that hard at preventing Iran from enriching - they tore up a perfectly good and well functioning monitoring agreement at the start of Trump's first term.
I assume/hope this was meant to say "the people in these countries are not [un]important"? (or just "are important")
As an entirely secular person, I believe every innocent human life is important.
1. The straight of Hormuz is crazy because of the sheer amount of options Iran has to threaten shipping. It's so narrow that they can even hit ships with artillery fire. No need for missiles or drones at all! Lobbing kinetic shells may sound primitive, but anti-missile defences are designed to deal with large projectiles with minutes or hours of warning, not shell-sized projectiles that hit within seconds. If a U.S. war-ship enters the straight, they could be struck by fire from artillery that's been concealed for decades before they know they're under fire. It's also worth noting that Shahad drones have a larger range than the size of Iran, and they're hidden all over the country. Any ship transiting Hormuz or any ground force trying to land in Iran could face drone attack from anywhere in Iran, or all of it simultaneously. A few drones are easy to intercept, but give Iran a juicy enough target and they could make the decision to simply overwhelm it. Drones are a heavily parallel capability.
2. There are only a couple of lanes deep enough for large ships in the straight. So far, no ships have been sunk outright, and that's probably a deliberate choice on Iran's part. If they sink a ship at the right spot, the straight could become barricaded. Clearing that barricade under threat of fire would be a far worse pickle than what we're seeing now.
3. The critical question to ask is, "How does the U.S. end this?" Just continuing to bomb Iran is phenomenally expensive, and likely won't accomplish much. This is a regime that has been preparing for an American invasion since they overthrew the CIA-installed Shah 47 years ago. They probably never seriously expected to win an air-war against the U.S. and have obviously planned for an asymmetric conflict. The U.S. is not going to win this one without phenomenal amounts of blood, treasure, and will, but all of these are in short supply. A ground invasion of Iran would likely be worse than Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam rolled into one. The U.S. can't win this war because they simply can't pay the price. Unfortunately, the straight of Hormuz gives Iran the ability to prevent Trump from simply TACO'ing out and proceeding to invade Cuba. Iran could keep the straight closed even after the U.S. withdraws their forces, and likely will to make sure everybody knows they can control the world economy at will. They're going to expect a peace settlement, and it won't be cheap.
4. This conflict lights a fire under the behinds of all nascent nuclear states. Iran would not have been invaded if they'd managed to build nuclear weapons. Even Iran is more likely to develop nuclear weapons now. Contrary to what some think, Iran isn't going to give up their enriched uranium and end their program just because the U.S. promises not to attack them again. Something like the JCPOA only works if some level of trust is possible, but Trump personally burned that. The best the U.S. is likely to get in negotiations is a superficial promise not to develop nuclear weapons, backed up by absolutely nothing. If the U.S. decides to end the program by force, the result will also be uncertain. Say the U.S. locates and extracts Iran's HEU from those underground facilities. How will they ever be certain they got it all without occupying the whole country?
They (rich and well connected) did, but they won't have to suffer the consequences, everyone else will. The Pedo of the United States is now a billionaire that will walk away in 4 years shrugging his shoulders laughing all the way to the bank with them.
Not one person that could stop it, did stop it. Legislature is sitting on their thumbs pretending not to work for Israel and selling us out to big tech and defense spending.
All the Baby Boomers are in the south enjoying the sunshine and shrugging their shoulders.
"It certainly did not help that the United States had stood idle while the regime slaughtered tens of thousands of its opponents, before making the attempt,"
"Now, before we go forward, I want to clarify a few things. First, none of this is a defense of the Iranian regime, which is odious. That said, there are many odious regimes in the world and we do not go to war with all of them. Second, this is a post fundamentally about American strategy or the lack thereof and thus not a post"
> for the United States this war was an unwise gamble on extremely long odds; the gamble (that the regime would collapse swiftly) has already failed
Right off the bat this guy is wrong. Nobody in their right mind would bet that the regime would collapse swiftly. The US knew what Iran's military C&C looks like, and what their internal oppressive police forces look like.
The US and Israel have been pummeling them continuously, and they're not done. So much so that the one opposition leader all the Iranians in exile are talking about urged Iranians to stay home and not protest - yet.
Taiwan has roughly 10 days left of gas supply.
Oil and gas are not only used for energy, but are the primary component of many, many materials and chemicals.
Some of the oil/gas plants that were hit will take months to fix. Pipelines have stopped.
We have a huge risk of a global supply chain destabilization for any sector. Think what happened with chip supply with covid, and make it much worse since the manufacturers never did stop during covid, while there is a risk they will have to stop now.
Not all machines and production can be stopped and started immediately, so even a short interruption can have lasting and cascading consequences.
Covid thought us that the world relies too much on just-in-time production, and we lack buffers in many, many fields. This has likely not changed.
That "nobody in their right mind" would bet this does not, in fact, contradict his assertion that somebody did!
Time Traveler, rushing to a computer after seeing a Skyrim for Sale poster and seeing this post: "WHAT YEAR IS IT!!!??"
The continuing slow collapse of the United States is extremely relevant to all things technology and business. The source of all our funding may be cut off. It's important to monitor what's going on there.
I suppose it is some right given to you from above, now where have I seen this before..
Judging by your comment history it seems to be the majority of what you discuss. Maybe you're not the best judge of what HN finds interesting or salient.