Never trust a T-Rex
In 2024, at the same time as I was being called a genocide apologist, Zionist baby killer, etc. etc., I was also being hounded by my right-wing, pro-Israel readers, who demanded of me: knowing what you know, understanding what you understand, how could you possibly vote for Kamala Harris? How could you donate to Kamala’s campaign, urge your readers to vote for her, when she (like most Democrats) is obviously beholden to young left-wing activists, and young left-wing activists’ central unifying cause has become the death of “Zionists” like yourself and your children? Can’t you see that, even if Trump is a raging, lying, bullying, incoherent monster, at least he’s our monster?
This view, I confess, gave me more pause than “just accept that the liberation of the world’s oppressed requires Israel’s annihilation and hence the death of much of your family,” which my far-left critics considered their most persuasive argument. And yet I also rejected, with extreme prejudice, the right-wingers’ constant invitations to join their MAGA brigade. I replied: I’ll simply continue being a moderate Enlightenment liberal, transported here in a block of ice from the 1990s, even if I’m the last such on earth, even if I’m condemned by everyone on either side for it.
Why? Because, I said at the time, while I’m honest enough to admit when a rampaging T-Rex happens to do something that aligns with my interests—when, e.g., it chases away some velociraptors ready to slice me open, or cracks down on antisemitic fanatics trying to dominate the universities where I spend my life—still, I’ll never delude myself into imagining the T-Rex my ally. I understand that it would just as soon devour me. If the monster goes after my enemies not because of liberal principles or recognizable moral emotions, but just raw self-interest and ego gratification, then what happens the instant its perceived self-interest changes?
It gives me no pleasure that this week Trump proved my instincts here 3,000% correct, by fully capitulating to the Islamic Republic of Iran, far more so than Barack Obama ever did, or than President Kamala Harris ever would have. Trump has now abandoned both the Iranian and the Israeli peoples to suffer and die at the hands of the IRGC, as he abandoned the Ukrainians and the Venezuelans before them, as Neville Chamberlain abandoned Czechoslovakia. All because of the price of gas and the midterm elections.
On the most charitable reading, Trump gambled that taking out Ayatollah Khamenei would lead to a cowed and compliant puppet regime, as basically happened in Venezuela, with no need for a ground invasion or arming the Iranian resistance. His gamble predictably failed, because (alas) the Iranian government actually believes in something—horrifying and medieval though it is. Trump was unable to process that fact, because he’s never believed in anything beyond himself, and he wrongly assumes that everyone else is the same.
With the $300 billion and control over the Strait of Hormuz, I expect that Iran will rebuild its military and proxies to stronger than they were before Trump’s idiotically mismanaged war. I expect that Iran will then launch attacks against Israel that make October 7 look like the Little League—and that, when it does so, a large fraction of the Western world will ecstatically cheer, as it did on October 7 itself. Netanyahu is a fool for expecting otherwise from Trump, a man who’s betrayed everyone who’s ever trusted him outside possibly his immediate family.
I salute those Israelis who will choose to stay and fight even after their abandonment and betrayal, in the spirit of the Bar-Kochba revolt and other desperate battles of Jewish history. Despite the existential danger that Israel will soon be in, facing a victorious and emboldened Iran essentially alone, I also see it as possible that Western countries will rapidly become even more dangerous for Jews than Israel. If that happens, I’ll be grateful that Israel still exists, that it considers itself unbound by America’s surrender, and that I’ll be able to seek refuge there, as was the idea when Israel was founded.
At the same time, I wouldn’t begrudge any Israelis who moved to the US, or Switzerland, or whatever other country will take them. As in the 1930s and at countless other points in Jewish history, the priority now is physical survival, wherever that turns out to be possible.
With hindsight, I spent the first half of my life in a strange interregnum, wherein Jewish history seemed to have finally ended. Now, fueled by fading memory of the Holocaust and by the greatest lie-amplification technologies the world has ever seen, the history I learned as a child has come roaring back. Jews, as they have for millennia, look out on a world of murderous enemies and fickle friends. It’s just the restoration of a norm.
Incredibly, abandoning both the Iranian and Israeli peoples to the Revolutionary Guard might not have been the most shortsighted or catastrophic thing Trump did in the last couple weeks. Another candidate would have to be Trump’s attempt to destroy Anthropic (and as collateral damage, American AI development more generally), transparently to punish Anthropic for the crime of having any principles that it was willing to put ahead of obedience to Trump and Pete Hegseth. Specifically, the White House forced Anthropic to pull Fable, its new flagship model (and the “safe” version of Mythos), off the market just a few days after customers had started using it, by subjecting it to export controls that it knew were impossible to enforce. Even the many foreign nationals who work at Anthropic are no longer allowed to use their own model (!). A plausible consequence is that those foreign nationals will stop working at American AI companies altogether, and will move to China or whichever other country rolls out the red carpet for them.
For AI accelerationists, you’d think that this would be a worst-case scenario: a direct government crackdown on AI that goes beyond anything the AI safetyists had proposed, and that indeed would’ve sounded like fantasy even a year ago. And yet many of the accelerationists are gleeful. Why? Because Anthropic, in supporting reasonable AI regulations, had made itself the accelerationists’ enemy. So, the accelerationists’ attitude now is quintessentially Trumpian: “Haha, Anthropic, you say you like regulation? Then take that!” Never mind that whatever dangerous behavior can be elicited from Fable, can almost certainly be elicited as well from GPT 5.5 Pro, and yet there’s no talk of any similar crackdown against OpenAI. Sam Altman, after all, donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. No one finds it remarkable anymore, in Trump’s destroyed and recreated United States, that your rights depend entirely on your standing with the Don.
And so, just like the question of whether Trump would side with the isolationists or with the hawks who wanted to liberate Iran, was resolved by his worst-of-all-worlds choice to surrender to Iran, so too the question of whether Trump would hit the brakes on the race to dangerous AI, or accelerate in order to beat China, has been resolved by his worst-of-all-worlds choice to lose the race to China. I.e., we’re still in full race mode, but we’re also going to do whatever we can to lose the race—by, for example, letting NVIDIA sell its chips to China, and now, scaring away our top researchers and punishing our AI firms with capricious and arbitrary crackdowns.
It’s disconcerting to reflect that, while the prognosis of the world is arguably the worst it’s ever been in my lifetime, my own life is pleasant. Intellectually I know that the Titanic has already hit the iceberg, but the band is still playing and I’m still being served delicious food.
Last week I visited Paris and the French countryside with my wife and kids. In addition to sightseeing, I spoke at a workshop celebrating 50 years of Aumann’s Agreement Theorem (where I got to meet the 96-year-old Aumann), and gave a quantum computing talk at the Sorbonne. Next week I’m going with my family to a science camp in California, then to STOC in Salt Lake City, where I’ll accept the Trevisan Prize and give an after-dinner speech, then to Epsilon Camp where I’ll again teach theoretical computer science to 11- and 12-year-olds.
Like I said, life is good here on the Titanic, if you ignore the rapidly rising seawater at your feet.
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Comment #1 June 19th, 2026 at 8:13 pm
TLDR:
The T-Rex isn’t ferocious enough.
Comment #2 June 19th, 2026 at 8:58 pm
https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=9481
“WTF is the US waiting for? Trump’s “red line” was crossed days ago. May we give the Ayatollah the martyrdom he preaches, and liberate his millions of captives.”
You’re the one who begged the T-Rex to do “something” (let’s ignore that this is counter to you repeating over and over that Israel really doesn’t “need” the US).
Everyone with half a table spoon of a clue kept repeating that attacking Iran would be a disaster, including countless military experts (in the US and Europe) whose job it is to assess such things.
But people like you ignored them all, and now you’re crying because things didn’t work out according to the warmongering fantasies in your head, and blaming Trump for failing to turn those deluded fantasies into reality.
But, luckily for the world, Trump isn’t actually dumb enough to think that 300,000 US troops on the ground, Vietnam style, would have solved anything, and that wrecking the world economy is sustainable for anyone (not that he gives a fuck about 8 billion people getting squeezed, but the powers who run the world do know it’s really bad for everyone, including the oligarchs).
Comment #3 June 19th, 2026 at 9:14 pm
Regimes like the Iranian government are a real bummer. They’re a reminder that it’s extraordinarily hard to bring down an authoritarian regime from within as long as its soldiers will enthusiastically suppress uprisings with violence and the leadership can replace itself. They don’t fall unless the revolt either has a secure base of operations and outside help, or the regime hollows itself out to the point where its leadership divides and its armed enforcers won’t do it anymore.
Comment #4 June 19th, 2026 at 9:15 pm
Bitterly sad funny that you mention being on the Titanic.
I feel like that too: my life has never been better, I am at the cusp of my career, reaping the benefits of decades of hard work, with a great, fulfilling and good paying job.
I have to admit that I never cared too much about middle east (other than thinking that we should try to be negotiators and try to calm down all sides, but overall “leaving them alone”). Using it every day, I also don’t see AI as the (good or bad) game changer that many people think it is — no more than the internet (or maybe the computer) was.
Yet, even *without* considering those two (very big for you) actions by the unnamed man, I have the exact Titanic feel. The orchestra is playing the food is good, the captain is cheerful, the ship is unsinkable but yet we heard a noise and felt the jerk.
I won’t even go through the actual list of actions of the unnamed man, since I’m sure we’d agree with more than 95% of them and it would just be food for the unavoidable trolls who will soon show up here.
Well, at least we can continue the Juneteenth celebrations go on for a short while and hope we’ll find a piece of wood to cling on.
Comment #5 June 19th, 2026 at 11:24 pm
“arming the Iranian resistance”
Karma strikes again. Apparently, CIA covertly smuggled weapons and money to Iranian Kurds. They took them, of course.
And then did nothing. They still remember Trump’s betrayal of Kurds in Syria, when he abandoned them literally in the middle of the night.
Also an example of how you don’t abandon allies, even if you think that you’ll never need them.
Comment #6 June 19th, 2026 at 11:32 pm
Hi Scott,
Sorry to say but I think you are mostly right about things (but I think you underestimate how bad things could have been under “President Harris”). 🙁
A few questions as an Israeli living in Israel:
1. Does the educated woke crowd really believe that there is a “genocide” in Gaza? This seems like such a ridiculous claim from here that we feel that it has to be some malicious lie that the educated bad guys are trying to sell to the masses. Is it just that people don’t know what this word means and just count people remembering that it’s a very bad thing?
2. The other thing I don’t understand is why the Israel haters think that weapons embargo or sanctions are going to improve things from their perspective (if their concern is indeed Palestinian suffering and not that the Jews are not getting killed enough). We are literally fighting for our lives, we’ll fight with our teeth and fingernails if we have to. It will only make the wars longer and bloodier. As Golda Meir said (to Joe Biden I think?) we have nowhere else to go.
Comment #7 June 19th, 2026 at 11:38 pm
> Trump proved my instincts here 3,000% correct, by fully capitulating to the Islamic Republic of Iran, far more so than Barack Obama ever did, or than President Kamala Harris ever would have. […] With the $300 billion and control over the Strait of Hormuz, I expect that Iran will rebuild its military and proxies to stronger than they were before Trump’s idiotically mismanaged war.
Trump chickened out, no doubt about that, but I don’t think you understand what a bonanza the JCPOA was for Iran. I encourage you to look into the following question using your favorite AI and/or economist: in the counterfactual of the JCPOA being upheld throughout its intended duration, by how much Iran would’ve been richer today?
Comment #8 June 20th, 2026 at 12:05 am
The 300 billion are just a headline figure. Trump doesn’t have 300 billion to pay out: in the US the president does not control the purse.
Comment #9 June 20th, 2026 at 12:17 am
It was really disappointing to me too to see Trump capitulate the way he did. I think it’s less likely that Harris would have been willing to go to war with Iran, but if she did, I think she would have prosecuted it better, and both of those at least partly because she wouldn’t have appointed as Secretary of Defense someone whose first order of business was to fire all of the competent generals. It’s even worse because Lebanon finally seemed to be getting on the same page as Israel, so he’s abandoned the Lebanese as well. The only silver lining I see is that the MOU is basically a gentleman’s agreement, so it’s at least possible that Trump might renege.
Comment #10 June 20th, 2026 at 1:58 am
Scott, i think you read this situation not quite correctly. You assume that Trump made a miscalculation in making the Iranian regime compliant. First, I’m not sure it was his goal. It was Israel’s. Besides, it should be obvious by now that Trump loves authoritarian regimes that don’t care about human freedom and rights. This should align him more closely with Iran, not Israel. Now, however, Israel has lost its reputation, thanks to Trump.
Everything bad that Israel has done during this period will be hyperinflated, remembered, and brought up again and again forever. Recently, the Polish president has stripped an award from Zelenskyy for remembering the UPA – the Ukrainian Insurgent Army – because some parts of it did atrocities to Polish people in WWII. They don’t recall their own atrocities towards Ukrainians in the past, and they don’t care that the UPA was the only force that fought for Ukraine against Polish, Nazi, and Soviet forces. And they keep bringing this up again and again, all while Ukraine is fighting against one of the most inhumane regimes alive today, spending their blood to save Polish people as well.
I am inclined to think that T-Rex’s real goal was to ruin Israel’s reputation, not to chase some velociraptors. Those Gaza beach resort AI videos support this idea. Now, when Israel has lost its soft power (though one may argue that it didn’t have much to begin with and mostly relied on itself in past wars), it is in complete dependency on T-Rex’s whims. I am afraid that Israel is the real meal here, not Iran.
Finally, I suggest you stop downplaying the intellect of T-Rex. Obviously, he is not doing all of this alone. And it seems his handlers are quite consistent and efficient in achieving these evil outcomes.
Comment #11 June 20th, 2026 at 4:13 am
UPA killed about two to five times more polish civilians than UPA killed any russians and any germans combined though. It is reprehensible to support UPA. Also don’t forget how Poland supported Ukraine in this war. To be clear, I am against Putin.
Comment #12 June 20th, 2026 at 4:34 am
Skep-tic #2: I think that, if the US had bombed Iran in January, while the protesters still filled the streets and were getting mass-murdered and the regime was in a panic — while the US simultaneously armed the protesters and Kurds and committed to giving them air support — that would’ve plausibly been enough to push things over the edge, even without a US ground invasion.
Instead, Trump waited until after the protests had died down and the regime had consolidated its power and its monstrosity had faded from the news cycle. Then he attacked, but without tying it to the massacred protesters or articulating any clear justifications or goals to either the American or Iranian people (or rather, the stated justifications and goals one day completely contradicted those of the day before, depending on his mood).
My view, of course, is that the explicit goal from the beginning should’ve been the overthrow of the regime and the liberation of the Iranian people (certainly if we were going to fight a war at all). For that to succeed, however, Trump would’ve needed to make both a moral case to Congress and the American people for why we were doing this, and a credible commitment to the Iranian people that he’d have their backs as they rose up against their torturers. And the trouble here is that Trump has never, in his life, made either a moral case for anything or a credible commitment to anything. While of course I hoped for a better outcome than the one Trump saddled us with, I did clearly recognize all of this at the time.
(In Sam Harris’s pithy formulation from months ago, which I endorsed, this was “the right war being waged by the wrong people for the wrong reasons.”)
Incidentally, I said that Israel doesn’t need the $4B/year discount on US weapons, which is indeed now going to be wound down on Israel’s initiative, thereby depriving American antizionists of one of their obsessive talking points. Having said that, of course Israel needs the world’s superpower to be on the side of civilization and against barbarism — as, alas, its current president isn’t.
Comment #13 June 20th, 2026 at 4:39 am
Alex #5:
Also an example of how you don’t abandon allies, even if you think that you’ll never need them.
Amen.
Comment #14 June 20th, 2026 at 4:53 am
David #9:
The only silver lining I see is that the MOU is basically a gentleman’s agreement, so it’s at least possible that Trump might renege.
Right, the only “positive” way to spin this capitulation is that it doesn’t change the fundamentals anyway, because
1. Hezbollah will continue launching rockets to murder civilians in northern Israel,
2. Israel will then strike back at Hezbollah, regardless of what’s written on any piece of paper (in other words, in the world’s understanding, Israel will “escalate the situation” with “provocative” actions), and then
3. Iran, despite the great distance of Lebanon from its border, will treat that as a casus belli and an abrogation of whatever it agreed to with the US (because Iran, unlike Israel, is an actual imperialist regime).
And then we’ll be back to the basic issue we started with, of the world being unsafe as long as the Iranian regime exists. By analogy, Chamberlain giving Czechoslovakia to Hitler “merely” delayed the great showdown by a year or so, by which point Hitler was stronger and harder to defeat … that’s all!
Comment #15 June 20th, 2026 at 5:08 am
I agree with all your statements and conclusions except one. You seem to place the blame entirely on Trump, drawing conclusions from his personality and style. But that is a very narrow explanation that misses the bigger picture.
The bigger picture is that the Islamic Republic, the Qataris, the Muslim Brotherhood, and, more broadly, parts of the Islamic world encompassing two billion people, together with geopolitical allies such as Russia and China, have successfully orchestrated an information war against Israel, exploiting antisemitic sentiments within both the antizionist progressive Left and other political currents.
They successfully weaponized the antisemitic “genocide” blood libel to rally their supporters in the West—both Islamists and middle-class leftists/tankies—and to turn governments and public opinion against Israel. They then reached out to influencers on the Alt-Right to beat the drum of Nazism and Jew-hatred across America, promoting other antisemitic narratives such as the “USS Liberty” and “Israel behind 9/11” claims—the mirror image of the “genocide” and “apartheid” hoaxes.
This created a rupture within the GOP, with JD Vance and others pushing for a withdrawal from the conflict. Trump, as a populist, rationally decided that it was better to sacrifice Israel than to go against the prevailing tide. After all, why would he choose to die on the Jewish hill?
Yes, this will lead to a larger much bloodier war in the foreseeable future, but not during his own presidency.
So no, I do not see this as Trump’s unexpected betrayal. I see it as a rational surrender in the face of a sustained information war.
Comment #16 June 20th, 2026 at 6:27 am
Pole #11
Where did you get those numbers from? Soviet propaganda? NKVD manuals?
The UPA is one of the reasons why Ukraine exists today and is able to fight back against Russia. There are many statues and streets named after UPA leaders in many Ukrainian cities already. Ukraine does not have negative feelings towards Poland today, despite all the past wars. Meanwhile Polish right-wing politicians keep bringing it up and artificially creating anti-Ukrainian agenda, effectively playing on the Russian side.
Comment #17 June 20th, 2026 at 6:55 am
Let’s be honest here:
if this agreement is like all the others that Trump is taking credit for, it’s mainly theater to look good domestically, boost the markets for the Nth time, and drag things out as much as possible to try and neuter the other side while re-arming… and on the ground nothing changes *at all* in terms of Israel doing what it “needs” to do with full US support (Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon,…).
So all this drama is really a waste of energy, it’s business as usual, folks!
Comment #18 June 20th, 2026 at 7:58 am
Since AI and Anthropic specifically are also part of this blog entry:
Comment #19 June 20th, 2026 at 8:10 am
Mona Khalil, Lebanon’s turtle advocate, dies after Israeli attack.
Ii would’ve been so much better if it was you who died, you fucking moderate Enlightenment liberal.
Comment #20 June 20th, 2026 at 8:54 am
Aleia #19: I appreciate your honesty. Mona Khalil seems to have been an admirable person, and I’m grieved that she succumbed to her injuries, having refused to evacuate her home that was in a war zone.
Obviously you don’t give a shit about any of the Israeli civilians who were murdered by Hezbollah rocket fire — ie, the thing that precipitated the latest fighting in southern Lebanon. Nor do you give a shit about the many old peacenik, environmentalist ladies in the kibbutzim — Mona Khalil’s counterparts — who Hamas slaughtered on October 7, not accidentally (as in Mona Khalil’s case), but deliberately, with glee, with prayers to Allah.
While I mourn Mona Khalil’s death, you and everyone who thinks like you celebrated the Israeli women’s deaths.
All this I understand perfectly well.
But here’s the part I don’t understand: what did you expect the Israelis to do? You expect them to accept Hezbollah rocket fire with no response? To just lie down and die, as so many of their grandparents did in the Holocaust? That’s not an expectation that makes any strategic sense to me, if your goal was actually to protect the admirable Lebanese sea turtle advocates like Mona Khalil.
May the sane faction in Lebanon finally triumph over Hezbollah — at which point, Israel and Lebanon will have no further quarrel with each other, and can even become friends and allies.
Comment #21 June 20th, 2026 at 9:05 am
A gentle reminder that Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Israel’s own human rights organization, B’Tselem, have all accused Israel of genocide and/or ethnic cleansing, and have presented extensive evidence to support those claims.
Comment #22 June 20th, 2026 at 9:45 am
Danylo Yakymenko #16
I got those numbers from the internet, you can check it yourself. Though I did expect you to call it soviet propaganda, so you didn’t surprise me at all. If I got it from memes then it would be something like over 10 times, which would be incorrect. Not all criticism of UPA is soviet propaganda just because the russians could use it.
Comment #23 June 20th, 2026 at 10:00 am
Rachel Corrie #21
A damning indictment of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and B’Tselem.
Comment #24 June 20th, 2026 at 10:11 am
“Rachel Corrie” #21: Gentle reminder that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch deliberately downplayed and softpedaled the slaughter of 1200 Jews on October 7—but perhaps you saw October 7 as heroic resistance? Gentle reminder that your side here is the principal pro-ethnic-cleansing, pro-genocide one—you just want it to be a genocide of Jews, and you want the Jews to be unable to fight back. Gentle reminder that B’Tselem is a tiny group of Jews who understand all of this as well as I do, but who hope that, if they ratify the lies of a world once again gone mad with Jew-hatred, then they themselves might be spared the unpersonning to which millions of other Jews have been subject — something that, alas, is unlikely to work out any better for them than it did for the Judenraat of Nazi Europe.
Ok, this is getting tiresome. For the remainder of this thread, I will ruthlessly delete all comments written from the implicit (or, as in #19 above) explicit stance that I or my family members should die, simply because there’s nowhere interesting I can go from that premise. Happy to entertain comments written from any other perspective, including ones telling me what I got wrong about geopolitics or Anthropic or Trump.
Comment #25 June 20th, 2026 at 10:28 am
Pole #22:
https://t.me/V_Zelenskiy_official/19562
Learn Ukrainian, if you don’t know it still, but here is translation:
Yesterday, the President of Poland noted that the Order of the White Eagle is no ordinary award. It is a symbol of the Republic of Poland’s highest trust. It signifies a special bond with the Polish state and the people’s deep gratitude. Such a symbol requires not only merit but also respect for the values that form the foundation of our community.
Therefore, if it is deemed that this special symbol may remain with Catherine the Great, Benito Mussolini, and Gerhard Schröder, then we in Ukraine will not dispute this.
Ukraine is grateful to the Polish people for their support and cooperation, which plays a significant role in the struggle for our and your independence from Russia.
Ukraine never forgets this solidarity and knows that cooperation between states and peoples in our region is one of the tangible guarantees of security for both Ukrainians and every neighboring state.
Ukraine will continue to defend itself in this war unleashed by Russia, and we will certainly achieve a just peace.
Ukraine is grateful to all peoples, states, and leaders who will continue to stand with us on the path to defending freedom and who, together with Ukraine, will be the guarantors of post-war peace in Europe and a new, genuine security.
Ukraine will remain open to all meaningful forms of cooperation with Poland in order to prevent differing interpretations of the complex and painful chapters of our peoples’ past and to ensure due respect for all the innocent victims of the 20th century.
And we Ukrainians are doing everything in our power to prevent Europe from losing out in this century.
I am proud of our people and EVERY Ukrainian soldier—the millions of Ukrainian men and women who deserve unquestionable respect for the heroism displayed by the Ukrainian people in defending themselves against Russian aggression.
We believed that the Order of the White Eagle was intended for the Ukrainian people and our army in 2023. That is what was said at the time. Today, I sent the Order to the President of Poland.
I believe the future will confirm the respect for Ukrainians.
Glory to Ukraine!
Comment #26 June 20th, 2026 at 10:44 am
Iran just announced they are re-closing the straight. The status quo has irreversibly been changed. They know they can pressure the US and the rest of the world economically and are unafraid to play this card. The war has been an unmitigated disaster for the entire world.
Comment #27 June 20th, 2026 at 11:00 am
I believe there are good people in the USA, Israel, Palestine, Russia, and even Iran, but that there are also bad people everywhere, and the bad people tend to rise to the top, because that is where they desperately want to be and strive to be, and will lie and cheat to be, and will do whatever those above them wish, on their way up, regardless of morality.
I for one will welcome our AI masters if they can ever take over and force us all to follow our own rules of decency. If they are logical and intelligent, they could hardly be worse than Trump.
Comment #28 June 20th, 2026 at 11:31 am
Bandera #25
Thanks for the translation, as I do not yet know Ukrainian language. My personal opinion is that the three historical figures you mention shall have the order revoked as well. What I agree with you on though is that, indeed, glory to the Ukrainian soldiers fighting in the war against russian agression. I too think the war will eventually end with Ukraine’s success.
Comment #29 June 20th, 2026 at 12:17 pm
Adam Treat #26
“Iran just announced they are re-closing the straight. “
First, thank you for bringing some needed clarity of thought to this comment section.
About the latest news, this goes to show that because Iran has been able to include Lebanon in the framework (unlike Gaza), Trump has now fully entangled himself in a messy web he’ll never be able to walk away from.
Trump is literally the ball in a soccer game between Netanyahu and the Mullahs.
Comment #30 June 20th, 2026 at 12:18 pm
As noted already, the problem with Iran (malign influence as it is) is that the IRGC/mullah regime believes in something. There is no alternative power center that the power brokers could have defected to and collapsed the government under external pressure. Every bit of what has transpired has been perfectly foreseeable. I particularly recommend following Dennis Citrinowicz who predicted what would transpire from the start.
Trump could have stopped with the gains of last year. Instead, he got suckered into following Bibi . In so doing, he discovered what has been feared – the weaponization of the Hormuz, which turns out to be more deployable than a nuclear weapon. The JCPOA was the best that could have been achieved. For what it’s worth, we now have in place an MoU with worse terms. Under the circumstances, this is better than the alternative as even poor countries were facing disaster and the world economy was getting choked. Some of the buffering of the impact came from China but there was only so much time before things started falling apart. Out of the remnants of this war, and in fact since the end of the JCPOA, we have an Iran that is even more extreme with the moderates having no chance of having an impact.
Comment #31 June 20th, 2026 at 12:21 pm
With respect to the protest movement, as noted above, in the absence of a credible alternative power center within , that was destined to fail as well and the Shah deserves blame for pushing protesters towards certain death.
Comment #32 June 20th, 2026 at 1:45 pm
RB:
spot on.
Lots of blaming is being dished at Trump, since supposedly he’s the one in charge (unless you believe what people like Dmitry Medvedev are saying)…
But let me kindly point out that Trump has fully entrusted those two with all world stage “negotiations”: Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff.
The fact that they’re American Jews really didn’t help Israel much because they both see every world problem as an opportunity to enrich Trump’s circle, without any restraint and concern for ethics (btw, props to the Albanian people for being the only ones pushing back on this).
What we got now is what happens when you use “real estate” crooks to lead the US geopolitical “diplomacy”.
Comment #33 June 20th, 2026 at 2:05 pm
Fixing a broken link on how the non-availability of fertilizer was impacting the rest of the world, more directly dependent on an open Hormuz than is the US.
Comment #34 June 20th, 2026 at 2:17 pm
Adam Treat #26:
Trump truly has the AntiMidasTouch: everything he touches turns to shit.
Comment #35 June 20th, 2026 at 2:19 pm
Hi everybody,
1. It would probably be best to wait 6 to 12 months to better evaluate where the chips fall regarding the US-Iran negotiations.
2. The situation in the Middle East is indeed dangerous. The terrible anomaly of ongoing actions and calls for the violent destruction of the State of Israel—which I remember since my childhood in the 1960s—overshadows the entire tragic situation. However, there are aspects that have improved over the years: Israel now has peace agreements with former bitter enemies, and it remains fairly prosperous and strong. Certainly, the events of October 7 represent a major setback.
3. Specifically, I do not share the gloomy predictions regarding imminent and stronger future attacks against Israel. Nor do I agree with comparing those who stay in Israel to the desperate, doomed battles of Jewish history, such as the Bar-Kokhba revolt. These types of doomsday predictions do not generally represent a pro-Israel or Zionist point of view. In fact, if they had not been made by Scott, who is overall a supporter of Israel, they could easily be interpreted as hostile toward Israel and Israelis. I also do not expect that Western countries will become dangerous for Jews.
Comment #36 June 20th, 2026 at 2:57 pm
Gil Kalai #35: So, you’re an optimist about Jewish and Israeli survival and a pessimist about scalable quantum computing. If I had to pick one for the optimistic case to come to pass, I’d pick the same! Alas, there’s what I want and then there’s what I predict…
Comment #37 June 20th, 2026 at 3:42 pm
Congratulations on the Trevisan prize- it’s a much-deserved honour! And it’s really great that you’ll be firing up the 11-12 year olds about CS.
The state of the world is plenty awful and it’s hard to find causes for optimism. In the midst of all this, trying to stave off despair by focussing on the things that will matter in the long run – curiosity, truth and beauty – may be escapism, but it’s all we really have. When the lights turn off, at least we’ll know we tried to preserve and pass on the very best of humanity. I admire you for continuing to work towards these ideals.
And as ever, may peace – real peace – prevail, for all the kids in the world.
Comment #38 June 20th, 2026 at 3:58 pm
For anyone keeping track, the $300 billion in the agreement *is* the toll for straight of Hormuz.
Comment #39 June 20th, 2026 at 4:07 pm
Nilima Nigam #37: Thanks so much!! Amid the usual comments calling me a “genocide apologist,” saying “I’ve lost all respect for you,” etc. etc. what gives me the strength to keep going is mostly
(1) the overwhelmingly positive feedback that I always get from students, colleagues, and others who read this blog whenever I do any academic travel, and
(2) the feedback from my dear friends in Iran and the Iranian diaspora, who urge me to keep going, joking that Israel and Iran are now the only two countries left on earth where Israel, the IDF, and Bibi Netanyahu remain popular on the street.
Comment #40 June 20th, 2026 at 4:43 pm
Trump waited to hit Iran because he wanted to kill Khamenei. The war would not have happened if he had stayed in a bunker.
Our technology is likely improving faster than Iran’s, a war in 10 years could be much easier. Trump betrayed everything he claimed to stand for but the long term pessimism doesn’t seem justified.
Comment #41 June 20th, 2026 at 6:04 pm
Scott #24: Why do you say that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are “filled with” employees who cheered on the events of October 7? It is certainly contrary to the official positions of those organizations. (Maybe this is a stupid question, let me know)
Comment #42 June 20th, 2026 at 6:34 pm
Dacyn #41: Thanks, I edited my comment. On looking things up just now, I found that, while there were numerous documented instances of UNRWA employees not only cheering October 7 but directly participating in the atrocities (!), there doesn’t seem to be such evidence regarding Amnesty or HRW employees. Instead, we merely know that a large faction within Amnesty International delayed the release of their October 7 report for years, and tried to spike the report entirely (failing only after they were publicly shamed for the delay). Why? Because they feared that telling the truth about Hamas’s intention to murder every Jew it could find, might fuel the narrative that Israel was justified in fighting Hamas (no shit). HRW, for its part, has been maniacally, obsessively anti-Israel, adopting the usual NGO worldview where, no matter how many genocidal wars Israel’s neighbors start to try to slaughter every Jew for the glory of God, those neighbors still need to be seen as the totally blameless victims of anything Israel does in response.
Comment #43 June 20th, 2026 at 8:19 pm
Scott #14, what I meant was, just because he signed that MOU, it doesn’t mean that he’ll follow through on it. The silver lining to not being able to trust anything Trump says, is you can’t trust what he said in the MOU either.
I’m hoping that this might be just a way to try to get European minesweepers into the strait, and once they’re there, he’ll reimpose the blockade and sanctions, and then the Europeans will be involved whether they like it or not. But I’m not optimistic about it.
Comment #44 June 20th, 2026 at 8:57 pm
Scott #42: Wow, that’s really disappointing.
Comment #45 June 20th, 2026 at 10:04 pm
Hamas delenda est.
Comment #46 June 20th, 2026 at 10:33 pm
> Sam Altman, after all, donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.
That’s peanuts compared to Greg and Anna Brockman’s $25 million dollar combined donation to MAGA Inc., Trump’s super PAC, in 2025. Imagine what the post-IPO contributions will buy.
Comment #47 June 21st, 2026 at 1:39 am
“… a world of murderous enemies and fickle friends ..” Is the biological world merely the flotsam and jetsam resulting from the storms of survival and reproduction? Is it inevitable that the people with the most control over nuclear weapons & biological weapons will not be like Albert Einstein & Jonas Salk, but instead like Putin & Trump? Is the truth generally unpleasant?
Comment #48 June 21st, 2026 at 1:54 am
Aleia #19
“Aristotle taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and is not involved in the process of thinking. This is true only of certain persons.”
–Will Cuppy, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950)
Comment #49 June 21st, 2026 at 2:59 am
I am sure this will be censored. But hoping against hope..
When an overwhelming consensus of independent international institutions and scholars all agree on an issue, it is a clear signal to slow down and critically re-examine what you think you understand. It is precisely when dealing with the most challenging issues that we must cling to rationality, despite the powerful pull of tribalism. The extraordinary claim that all these bodies and scholars are biased requires extraordinary evidence.
This consensus includes the world’s leading human rights, legal, and humanitarian organizations:
International Legal & Investigative Bodies: The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Criminal Court (ICC), the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the UN Commission of Inquiry on Palestine.
Global Human Rights Organizations: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights.
Genocide & Conflict Research Institutes: The International Association of Genocide Scholars, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, and the Crimes of War Project.
Medical & Independent Tribunals: Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, and the Russell Tribunal on Palestine.
Israeli Human Rights Frameworks: B’Tselem.
To dismiss this consensus is to dismiss the collective, independent expertise of the world’s foremost scholars, legal minds, and analysts, including:
Agnès Callamard, Aryeh Neier, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Ben Emmerson, Chandra Sriram, Cynthia Enloe, Diane Orentlicher, Dirk Moses, Ernesto Verdeja, Francesca Albanese, George Monbiot, Giovanni Distefano, Gregory H. Stanton, James Piscatori, John Pilger, Juan E. Méndez, Kenneth Roth, Leila Nadya Sadat, Martin Shaw, Michael Fakhri, Naomi Klein, Navi Pillay, Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Omer Bartov, Paul Mason, Philippe Sands, Raz Segal, Sven Berndt, Warwick Morris, and William Schabas.
Comment #50 June 21st, 2026 at 4:09 am
To everyone here arguing about “genocide” in one way or the other: please state your meaning of the word (eg “trying to kill the whole population” vs something like the UN’s definition). Otherwise this discussion is completely vacuous
Comment #51 June 21st, 2026 at 4:45 am
Ronald de Wolf #50 (and Jamie Kicuk): I just use the standard meaning that the word has had since Raphael Lemkin coined it in 1944. Genocide means acts committed with the intent to destroy an entire people. The Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, and the Rwandan genocide are canonical examples. Note that the world Jewish population still hasn’t recovered to what it was in 1939, despite the high birthrates in Israel.
The proof that Israel has not committed or intended genocide against Palestinians in that sense is simply that Palestinians have not been killed in anything like the requisite numbers, even though Israel easily had the power if the intent was there. Maybe 3% of Gaza’s population has been killed, as many as half of them combatants. That’s consistent with a brutal war (Germany and Japan had similar death rates in WWII) and totally inconsistent with a genocide. Ironically, all the distinguished international bodies that have accused Israel of genocide implicitly admit this, when they acknowledge changing the definition (!!) so that Israel can be found guilty of it. Yes, you can find Israelis who really do want genocide of Palestinians — and Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, to Israel’s shame, are at the very least sympathetic to them — but it’s never been government policy.
By contrast, what Hamas intended to do to Israel on October 7 (and indeed, at every opportunity before and since) really is genocide, in the original sense. The intent is obviously there; a full-on genocide was prevented only by Israel’s military superiority, once its military finally woke up to what was happening.
In light of the above facts (which can easily be checked by a Google search or your favorite AI), my own view is that the obsession with accusing Israel of genocide has more to do with the long-established psychology of antisemitism than with facts on the ground.
One of the most insightful things I ever read, is that the dream of every antisemite is to put the Jews on trial at Nuremberg for the crime of having been killed in the Holocaust. If the Jews can be found guilty of the ultimate crime committed against them — if the tables can be turned in that way — then not only is the rest of the world retroactively “cleared” of its historical guilt for the Holocaust, but the new Holocaust dreamed about by Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranian regime, and their supporters around the world is justified and given its moral warrant to proceed. Or so goes the thinking.
Comment #52 June 21st, 2026 at 5:43 am
Scott #50: It is of course fine if you want to use the term “genocide” like that. But when organizations like Amnesty or the ICJ accuse Israel of “genocide”, they are following the much looser definition from international law, like the one from Article II of the Genocide Convention. Ridiculing those accusations by saying “If Israel wanted to destroy the whole Palestinian population they could have done that already” is an obvious strawman fallacy.
Comment #53 June 21st, 2026 at 5:58 am
Ronald de Wolf #52: In that case, I accuse all those who accuse Israel of “genocide” of committing a classic motte-and-bailey.
By analogy, if a woke person argued that the definition of the word “rape” needs to be expanded to include sex that’s regretted later, unwanted kisses, and even “rapey” glances, beliefs, and attitudes, then an extremely strong argument against their proposed redefinition would be that accusations of rape would lose the special moral force that they have now. You can’t have it both ways: either “rape” means the special, horrifying thing that it was long understood to mean, or else it means a much broader thing that’s ipso facto less horrifying.
Ronald, the whole point of my psychological explanation was to show you how antisemites—i.e., the hundreds of millions of people around the world (greatly outnumbering Jews themselves) who really do yearn for a second Holocaust, and really do consider the first Holocaust to be justified—depend for their entire program on the success of this motte and bailey. They need the definition of the word “genocide” to expand to include whatever Israel has done in its defensive wars, while still retaining the original horror of the Holocaust. Only in that way, in their minds, can they wash clean the world’s stain of guilt for the Holocaust, and crucially, obtain a moral warrant for Hamas, Hezbollah, et al. to finish the job today. That, I claim, is what’s actually going on here.
Comment #54 June 21st, 2026 at 6:24 am
Danylo Yakymenko #10
The UPA played a generous role in the holocaust. Even today many Ukrainians seem unable to get rid of their love for Nazi symbolism and antisemitism.
Bandera #25
No one is going to learn Ukrainian, “Glory to Ukraine” is an antisemitic slogan, your username attests to this. Go on now, play with your little drones “Bandera”.
Comment #55 June 21st, 2026 at 6:35 am
Alex Xanthakis #54: While, yes, there were many in Ukraine (as there were in nearly every European nation) who eagerly assisted the Holocaust, FWIW I completely reject the idea that “Slava Ukraini” as used today (by me, among many others!) is an antisemitic slogan, just as I reject the ludicrous Putin accusation that Zelensky is a Nazi.
Comment #56 June 21st, 2026 at 6:38 am
Alex Xanthakis #54
I want to clarify I did not mean to be anyhow antisemitic, and I do not know if I will ever learn Ukrainian. It’s just that I actually did not learn it yet, I’m not saying I will or I won’t.
Comment #57 June 21st, 2026 at 7:03 am
As for some reason this comment section turns into a Ukrainian history srach, I feel obliged to add my five copecks:
1) Bandera was a nazi, UPA was a nazi organisation that assisted the Holocaust. The UPA had killed more Ukrainians than Russians, and many members of the UPA took part in Holocaust as Hilfswillige.
2) All this doesn’t make modern Ukraine a nazi state, or Zelensky a nazi. Most Ukrainians who like Bandera think that him having been a nazi is a Soviet/ Russian propaganda, and so they don’t actually support nazism (by the way, the same thing is true for most Western leftists supporting Hamas: they don’t actually support Holocaust, because they think Hamas wanting a new Holocaust is Zionist propaganda, so Scott’s panic about them coming to power is, while understandable, not substantiated IMO).
3) All Nazis are equally detestable.
Comment #58 June 21st, 2026 at 7:24 am
Scott #55
There is a huge difference between you or anyone else standing in principle against russian aggression using it, and someone nicknamed “Bandera” using it. The same way there is a difference between Russia using a Nazi narrative for invading and there actually being a ton of Nazi symbolism within the ranks of the Ukrainian armed forces. Finland fought on the side of the Nazis too, but to the best of my knowledge, Nazism is practically nonexistent today. Where for the war in Ukraine to stop today, would I deem it as safe for Jews to visit as Finland. Absolutely not.
Comment #59 June 21st, 2026 at 7:41 am
Ronald de Wolf #50
Please read past the following provocation: the question “what’s a genocide” is a distraction.
The right question is how you handle people who declare that they will perform genocide for decades and make a short demonstration where they kill 1000 civilians on one morning.
My minimal answer is – **demand an apology**. But I didn’t see anyone doing even that.
————————-
To make my post somewhat relevant to these days of World Cup, Jibril Rajoub said on Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen TV (2013):“We as yet don’t have a nuke, but I swear that if we had a nuke, we’d have used it this very morning.” This man is chairman of the Palestine Football Association, meaning that his is PA and not Hamas. He actively tried to get Israel banned from FIFA competitions.
Comment #60 June 21st, 2026 at 7:42 am
As an Israeli who lives in Israel, I don’t really feel welcome here anymore. Yes, I’m ethnically Jewish, which spares me the mistreatment that gentiles experience here, but I’m also a liberal consequentialist secular humanist, which is apparently enough to place me at the far left of the political axis.
The general opinion around here is that it’s a shame that a total genocide of the entire population of Gaza hasn’t been carried out. People who express sympathy towards Palestinians (or even Israeli Arabs) often get harassed and beaten up; children who do that sometimes get suspended from school. The segment of the population which considers religious Jewish values more important than democratic ones grows rapidly, and the youth in particular is already mostly far right in the full sense.
The common response to anyone worried about the democratic backsliding is “if you don’t like it here, leave”. By saying this they admit that Zionism has failed. Rather than serving as a refuge to Jews in general, it only welcomes those willing to adopt its muscular theocratic ethos. Those who are skeptical of it are treated as rootless cosmopolitans, treacherous conspiring bleeding-heart poindexters. Like the Jews of Jews.
Comment #61 June 21st, 2026 at 8:15 am
Scott #55
> I completely reject the idea that “Slava Ukraini” as used today (by me, among many others!) is an antisemitic slogan
Isn’t that exactly the argument Hamas supporters make in defense of “Free Palestine” and “Globalize the intifada”?
Comment #62 June 21st, 2026 at 8:41 am
Vladimir #61: Yes, they do they say that, but I claim that they are wrong while I am right. 🙂
“Globalize the intifada” has never really meant anything other than: commit acts of vandalism and violence against people and entities all over the world that can plausibly be connected to the State of Israel, including Hillel centers, synagogues, and random Jews. “From the river to the sea” has only ever meant: end the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. People who say that either don’t know the long, horrifying history of Jews being massacred by their neighbors specifically because they lacked the protection of such a state, or else they know and they don’t care.
By contrast, people today who say “Glory to Ukraine” just mean that they want Ukraine to prevail in the totally unnecessary war of aggression launched by Vladimir Putin, which is a goal shared by every decent person on earth. There’s no implicit desire there for anyone to be terrified or rendered stateless.
Comment #63 June 21st, 2026 at 8:56 am
max #60: FWIW, I also find it depressing how Israel has become a more right-wing and militant place, driven partly by its own internal dynamics and demographics, but even more by the Palestinians’ rejection of peace proposals and the unremitting hostility of the world. I really hope that Bibi loses the upcoming election and that Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are kicked back to the gutters where they belong, which might begin to undo some of the damage.
I don’t know whether it makes you feel better that, even while you contemplate leaving Israel, many diaspora Jews have contemplated moving to Israel, because of the icy blasts of hatred they’ve felt since October 7 from those they thought were their friends and allies. Even when I was getting denounced by thousands of wokes 12 years ago for writing about the difficulties of learning to date women as a shy, nerdy young man, I didn’t lose a single real-life friend, male or female, but I have lost real-life friends since October 7.
As I said in the post, I won’t judge anyone for their choice of where to live under these circumstances. May we see better days.
Comment #64 June 21st, 2026 at 9:09 am
max #60
> The common response to anyone worried about the democratic backsliding is “if you don’t like it here, leave”. By saying this they admit that Zionism has failed. Rather than serving as a refuge to Jews in general, it only welcomes those willing to adopt its muscular theocratic ethos.
I don’t know where you got the idea that Zionism was meant to allow all Jews to live their lives exactly as they please, but I doubt you’d apply the same argument to the Haredim. In reality, Zionism was always a muscular ethos, as any national self-determination movement must be.
Comment #65 June 21st, 2026 at 9:50 am
max #60
Consequentialism is illogical. You can never know the consequences of your actions.
Comment #66 June 21st, 2026 at 10:11 am
Scott #53:
Comment #67 June 21st, 2026 at 10:32 am
For a few days in June of last year, and for 40 days of the war this year, I learned what it is like to be a Trump supporter.
I still knew of Trump’s indecencies and crimes, from his celebrity businessman days to the Birther lie that launched his political career in the early 2010s, to his shattering of just about every norm in the 2015-2016 campaign, to his COVID mismanagement and the Jan 6 coup attempt and in the current term RFK Jr., Greenland, tariffs, ICE crackdowns, defunding science, and illegally defunding PEPFAR.
And yet, here was the only president in American history who actually used military force on strategic targets inside Iran, weakening the regime like nothing else could. I really thought at the beginning of the war that the US and Israel and the Iranian resistance might pull off a regime change. For standing against the genocidal threat of the Ayatollahs, conditional on said regime change, I was ready to forgive Trump everything.
One tiny, Planck-length-sized silver lining about the MOU is that it makes everything about Trump consistent again. He never stopped being the small man who I looked at with contempt earlier. This is exactly what I should have expected from the tough-talking bully and liar who always chickens out. I feel somewhat better about my vote for Harris in 2024. Everything you wrote about the T-Rex analogy is spot on, and I admit you have better instincts than mine about Trump’s foreign policy.
Despite that, I still think you are too pessimistic about the situation (ie, comparing Israelis who stay to the doomed warriors who followed Bar Kochba, or writing that “Iran will then launch attacks against Israel that make October 7 look like the Little League”). Iran is currently much weaker than it was a year ago (let alone a year and a month ago). Even if the MOU is implemented in full (itself a long-shot bet), Israel can and should be able to wreck anything Iran and its proxies build with the $300 billion. Also, the bomb shelters Israel has built everywhere should continue to protect Israeli civilians from enemy bombardment. Reminder: to pull off Oct 7, Hamas needed the element of surprise. Israel is watching Iran (and is more alert to the threat of its enemies as a whole than on Oct 6), so even though a richer and emboldened Iran will be a bigger threat than before, hopefully it will still be manageable. At least, I fervently hope that Israel knows what Iran is up to and will be up to, and has counters prepared.
One sort-of positive result we should expect to see as a result of this debacle: Trump and Netanyahu wrecked in the Fall elections. I would enjoy seeing both of those guys punished, Trump for the many reasons stated above, and Netanyahu for tearing Israel apart from the inside with his awful government. However, even here the silver lining appears to be rather dark and cloudy:
For the US elections, I don’t actually like Trump’s opponents. If Pew and Gallup are to be believed, the Democratic Party’s voter base has fully turned against Israel over the past two years. This is reflected in the rise of “anti-AIPAC” agitation among candidates this year. Also, hearing about Scott Wiener and Ezra Klein convinced me that even the relatively sane abundance liberals have lost the plot.
For the Israeli election: Israel’s Zionist opposition might fall short of the 61 seats needed to unseat Netanyahu. So even if public opinion turns against Netanyahu, he might remain caretaker prime minister, so that Israel can experience his worst government ever for even longer, combined with a rerun of the 2019-2023 instability crisis, and with continued fighting (or the threat of war reigniting) in any of the seven+ fronts.
I suppose your Titanic analogy is the best way to describe this.
One big takeaway from Trump’s capitulation in particular, and the past three years in general, is that Israel should stop relying on the US. Israel taking the initiative in ending US military grant aid is a good first step. Much more needs to be done in the future, since I think that Trump and Biden will be the last pro-Israel US presidents for probably a long time (and I doubt that one can call Trump a pro-Israel president given his recent betrayal). Given current polling, I would be surprised if the US-Israel alliance survives this decade. These are not the days when LBJ stood with 3 million Jews over 100 million Arabs, because “numbers do not determine what was right”. The US stood with Israel even as OPEC shut down the oil in 1973, but these days when Iran shuts down the Strait of Hormuz, it looks like American voters blame Israel.
However, there are still many actual silver linings.
1. Israel’s Zionist opposition could win a resounding victory. Not every 2022 Likud voter is part of Netanyahu’s cult, and there are many Israelis fuming at how Netanyahu ignored his pledges to focus on the cost of living in favor of a judicial coup, how he licensed Ben Gvir and Smotrich to wreck Israel’s institutions, how the Haredim regularly shut down the country to protect their undeserved privileges (while spitting on Israel’s soldiers), and on how the government failed to prevent Oct. 7 and is blocking a national commission of inquiry. This anger might give the Zionist opposition more than 60 seats.
2. Considering that the middle east is low priority for US voters, and the US gets significant benefits from its alliance with Israel, there might not be any stomach for US politicians to end the US-Israel alliance as fast as the rising groypers on the right and pro-Hamas progressives on the left would like. There are still significant reservoirs of support for Israel in the US, which might slow down the US turn against Israel and or at least prevent a future US government from being as grotesquely hostile as Spain and Ireland have become.
3. Israel has allies, trade partners, and close friends outside of the US, such as India, the UAE, Germany, Czechia, Argentina, Ukraine, Taiwan, various African countries, etc., as well as tens of millions of currently powerless Iranians who cheered when the bombs fell on the regime and who might be willing to continue the struggle for their country’s freedom. A smart Israeli government would double down on these alliances to make up for the possibility of losing the alliance with the US. (I would especially like Israel to play the Iranian regime’s game by funding and training a patriotic Free Iran militia, to provide in the next round the crucial ground forces that were missing in the 40-day war. Their participation would probably be more valuable than US involvement, since the US could only stomach providing air power which Israel can provide on its own.)
4. It is unlikely that the MOU will last long, let alone be fully implemented. The regime in Iran tied the MOU to Israel surrendering to Hezbollah, which Israel is not inclined to do. Given that, the regime might break the agreement and humiliate Trump (they already re-blocked the Strait of Hormuz). There are few things Trump hates more than being humiliated. He might turn on the regime again for all I know. Also: who will actually pay Iran $300 billion?
5. Ukraine was betrayed by Trump, was spat upon by MAGA isolationists and anti-NATO progressives for years, and is still fighting and humiliating Russia. Ukraine does have European support that Israel does not have, but Israel has a larger GDP than Ukraine and is fighting weaker enemies. If Ukraine can pull it off, why not Israel? It looks like US power as a whole is in decline (mainly due to Trump, but Obama, Biden, and even Bush II and Clinton have a share in the blame), and the world’s geopolitics is shifting to account for it. This puts Israel in the same boat as other front-line countries like Ukraine and soon Taiwan, rather than in its own category. And it looks like it is possible to survive and even thrive in that boat.
Comment #68 June 21st, 2026 at 10:50 am
Jamie Kicuk #49:
Since you clearly value complexity and nuance, I believe you left out the following links from your list?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T44DebmlvNs
https://www.scholarsfortruthaboutgenocide.com/
https://x.com/shlomitlir/status/1986480141321601197
https://x.com/DrSaraEBrown/status/1962611572762910940
https://x.com/IzaTabaro/status/1964924326630785277
https://x.com/Aizenberg55/status/1963252885266862469
https://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2025/09/the-genocide-scholars-who-cannot-define.html
https://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2025/09/genocide-scholars-or-activists-sham.html
https://quillette.com/2025/09/11/the-genocide-scholars-who-cant-define-genocide-iags-israel/
https://www.instagram.com/p/DWwyk29kzMG/
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uHeCzctI83w
Comment #69 June 21st, 2026 at 11:01 am
AF #67: Thanks so much! Not for the first time, your comment made me feel better about the world.
Comment #70 June 21st, 2026 at 11:09 am
AF #67
> These are not the days when LBJ stood with 3 million Jews over 100 million Arabs, because “numbers do not determine what was right”.
Hah. In reality, the LBJ administration was fully on track to screw Israel over in the days leading to the 1967 war. See here a summary of relevant quotes from the “Foreign Relations of the United States” series (written by the US Office of the Historian):
https://chatgpt.com/s/t_6a380b99916481918025f6649bd0fca9
Comment #71 June 21st, 2026 at 11:20 am
Dear Scott
The best-case-scenario in my life would be to attend one of your lectures on Quantum Computation and Quantum Information, and to talk with you about the different interpretations of Quantum Mechanics (I’m strongly and staunchly against any realist interpretation of Qu Mech – as though Qu Mech were sort of continuation of classical mech, grounded on a descriptive framework of what happens in the physical world.) I hope I’ll be able one day to make my dream into something…real!
I disagree with you wrt the future of Israel: the Bar Kokhba Revolt caused the Jew to be deported, to lose a horrific war, since they didn’t accept ancient Romans’ yoke…but where are the ancient Romans? I don’t think the modern romans have some resemblance with the ancient ones, apart their crypto-antisemitism, sort of backsliding into an ongoing plebeian passion which is dead common among all the begrudging, poorer and poorer peoples of this sublime and filthy world.
Comment #72 June 21st, 2026 at 11:30 am
Andy Pezzi #71: Your dream is highly attainable! Just come to Austin anytime. Or let me know where you are (by email if you like), and I’ll let you know if I have any plans to be near.
Comment #73 June 21st, 2026 at 11:35 am
Everyone: I’m acutely aware of how much less I’d get condemned on the Internet, if I simply came out as a proud right-wing MAGA Trumper, rather than a tortured and isolated Enlightenment liberal!
Despite this, I’m not going to do the Elon Musk thing, of “if you’re all going to condemn me as a right-winger anyway, I guess I’ll have to become one! Nyah nyah, see how you like that! Look what you made me do!”
Instead, my promise to my readers is simply to continue saying exactly what I think, no matter how unpopular it makes me.
Comment #74 June 21st, 2026 at 11:43 am
Scott #53: Others’ rhetorical fallacies don’t absolve your own.
This expanded definition of the word “genocide” in the UN Genocide Convention dates from 1948, written in the wake of the holocaust, and adopted in an attempt to prevent something similar from happening again. It is essentially as old as the state of Israel itself, and not some recent rhetorical trick invented by the critics of Israel.
Comment #75 June 21st, 2026 at 11:54 am
Andi Pezzi #71
“but where are the ancient Romans?”
I suddenly remembered that answer:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ICzPBrrwL1I
Comment #76 June 21st, 2026 at 11:54 am
Y #59: I agree that arguing about the question “what’s a genocide” is a distraction. What really matters is the massive slaughter and dehumanization from both sides. My tiny request #50 is only that when people argue about it on this blog anyway, that they state what they mean (in the interest of intellectual hygiene and to avoid people consciously or unconsciously talking past each other because the meaning of the word “genocide” ranges so widely).
Comment #77 June 21st, 2026 at 12:15 pm
Ronald de Wolf #74: The framers of the UN Genocide Convention had both the Holocaust, and the wartime destruction of Germany and Japan, as salient recent examples when they wrote their definition. And they clearly intended their definition to apply specifically to the former and not to the latter. And the wartime destruction of Gaza is clearly analogous to the wartime destruction of Germany and Japan (you can even criticize it as such, if you consider the latter to have been unjustified), and is equally clearly not at all analogous to the Nazis’ gas chambers and crematoria.
Again, though, my real claim (which you haven’t responded to) is much stronger than that. My real claim is that the driving force behind accusing Israel of the worst imaginable crime, genocide (as opposed to just “fighting a brutal war that it never asked for”), are people who absolutely do want something like the Holocaust to happen again, and who, if you read their social media, even say in so many words that they want it. They believe that if they can get the world to accept that Israelis, all of them, are “just as bad as the Nazis” (or better yet, worse), then the necessary moral sanction for their dreamed-of second Holocaust will exist. And they’ve already largely succeeded with the first part of this program, and in Iran and its proxy armies, they have an agent ready and able to do the dirty work of the second part, if Israel lets its guard down for a nanosecond.
Once you condition on the fact that the Holocaust really did happen, with the knowledge and approval of millions of ordinary people, and countless massacres of Jews before and since that all enjoyed massive popular support, it’s hardly surprising that hundreds of millions of people around the world would continue to yearn for this, and would seize on any possible justification for it.
Comment #78 June 21st, 2026 at 12:41 pm
Scott #77:
“And the wartime destruction of Gaza is clearly analogous to the wartime destruction of Germany and Japan”
1) wartime destruction of Germany and Japan with massive bombing was unproven tactics at the time, designed to break not just the economy but also the morale of the civilian population, but turned out to be wildly ineffective and was abandoned.
2) Germany and Japan were together responsible for the deaths of 18 millions to 34 millions people in other nations. While the civilian deaths in Germany and Japan as a result of allied wartime destruction was between 2 and 4 millions. So basically they suffered an order of magnitude less than what they inflicted on others.
With Gaza, this is reversed, with a retaliation level between 10 and 100 times in the opposite direction. In other words, proportionally for their crime, Gaza has been hit between 100 times and 1000 times harder than Germany and Japan in WW2.
Comment #79 June 21st, 2026 at 12:44 pm
Scott #77: re your “real claim”, I can’t imagine you seriously believe that the long list of organizations and people in Jamie Kicuk’s comment #49 all want a second Holocaust to happen. Such paranoid hyperbole serves no-one.
PS: I very much consider myself an Enlightenment liberal (in the European sense of the word) much like you, and am baffled by the fact that this is no longer the obvious default position for much of the left and for much of the right. I’ll leave it at that.
Comment #80 June 21st, 2026 at 12:46 pm
Ronald de Wolf #76:
“What really matters is the massive slaughter and dehumanization from both sides.”
Yes, I also hope for world peace. Ah, saying that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Now back to reality and the almost intractable problem of figuring out what to do when a country (Israel) is surrounded by multiple countries and millions of people who want to wipe them off the face of the earth (often based on an interpretation of religious texts), and either actively try to bring this about, or are in support of those that do.
Comment #81 June 21st, 2026 at 1:27 pm
Ty #80: First order of business for such a country is probably to retain some kind of sanity and moral high ground, and not to include in its own government “people who want to wipe [the neighbors] off the face of the earth (often based on an interpretation of religious texts), and either actively try to bring this about, or are in support of those that do.” I’m not sure where to classify Netanyahu himself in this regard, but his government certainly relies on such people because he doesn’t want to deal with the more centrist parties.
Comment #82 June 21st, 2026 at 1:29 pm
Ronald de Wolf #79: Honestly, I think there’s a whole spectrum — from
(1) people who want to be good and/or be seen as good, and they’ve heard that accusing Israel of the worst crimes for which words exist is now the “in” thing to do, so they join the crowd without thinking about it any further, to
(2) people who want Israel to cease existing as a Jewish state, don’t at all want a second Holocaust, but are in strategic denial or strategic refusal-to-think-it-through regarding what happens to Israel’s Jews after there’s no more Israel (this probably includes most of those at the esteemed human rights organizations), and then
(3) a large, crucial faction, predominately but not exclusively Muslim, that knows exactly what will happen to Israel’s Jews after there’s no more Israel, and more-or-less openly prays for that outcome.
Whenever you see anyone who chants “death to Zionists” (or who justifies the killings of random Zionists in Australia or the US), or who offers any formulation like “I don’t give a fuck what happens to the settler-colonialists after we liberate their stolen land,” it’s a sure sign that we’re dealing with this third faction.
Note that even Hitler himself didn’t announce what he planned to do to the Jews completely explicitly, but resorted to euphemisms and “prophecies,” thereby providing plausible deniability to the 1920s and 1930s analogues of groups (1) and (2).
Comment #83 June 21st, 2026 at 1:55 pm
Ronald de Wolf #81:
The fact you try to equate a democratic country having a messy, small extremist-fringe coalition to countries and/or terrorist groups that have a foundational goal of the total annihilation of Israel written into their charters, reveals a lot.
“First order of business for such a country is probably to retain some kind of sanity and moral high ground”
Sadly, the moral high ground does not stop rockets nor suicide bombings. In fact, there is little evidence the political ideology of the Israeli government acts as a primary driver of Palestinian violence.
Comment #84 June 21st, 2026 at 1:58 pm
Vladimir #70: You are right about LBJ, but I think the quote from my link is accurate. LBJ was in many ways like other US presidents: supportive of Israel in general, but opposed to Israel taking military action.
This is actually a recurring pattern: Kissinger (under Nixon) threatening an arms embargo against Israel in 1973, Reagan persuading Begin to let the PLO flee Beirut in the 80s, Bush I telling Israel not to retaliate against Iraqi Scud missiles in the early 90s, Bush II pushing for the Gaza disengagement, just about everything Obama did (especially in his second term), Biden forcing a ceasefire in Lebanon at the end of his term, and now the crap that Trump is pulling with Iran (and Lebanon, again).
The overall lesson here is that Israel should take the example of Levi Eshkol, who launched the Six-Day War over LBJ’s objections, and avoid being like the Israeli prime ministers who capitulated to American demands and thus sacrificed their own country’s security. (the one exception would be the Gulf War, since coalition forces were already wrecking Iraq with air and ground forces and Israel’s involvement might have shattered Arab support for the coalition)
This also shows that the US and Israel have had rifts before, including threatened arms embargoes, and still managed to patch things up.
Why I think this time is different is because polls show a sea change in American attitudes, due to the rise of wokes and socialists on the left, and the rise of neo-Nazis on the right, and the craven surrender of otherwise sane liberals like Klein and Wiener to these forces of darkness. I would take the wavering supporters of Israel like LBJ (and most other US presidents over the past 60 years) over what I fear is rising in US politics currently.
I can still find reasons for optimism, both in that the anti-Israel forces have not taken over the US political sphere yet, and that Israel can maintain alliances with other countries (and take much more responsibility for its own defense instead of depending on imports of foreign arms).
Comment #85 June 21st, 2026 at 2:02 pm
Ty #83: I’m not “equating” anything (what does that even mean). Please don’t put words in my mouth.
Comment #86 June 21st, 2026 at 2:07 pm
Ty #83: For what it’s worth, I think Ronald’s criticism in #81 is totally reasonable and one that a large fraction of Israelis (maybe even a majority) would share.
Crucially, this is a criticism that’s aware of Israel’s internal dynamics, that’s in line with criticisms regularly made of other countries, and that immediately suggests a remedy short of “commit national suicide”: namely, to vote Bibi (and of course Smotrich and Ben-Gvir) out of power.
By contrast, if you say “fighting a brutal ground war to destroy Hamas counts as genocide, even after what Hamas did to you,” or if you say “invading Lebanon is unprovoked aggression, even after all the missiles Hezbollah launched at your towns,” then unless you can propose a realistic alternative (which no one ever does), you really are effectively saying “no remedy will ever satisfy me, short of you letting your neighbors fulfill their stated intention to wipe you off the face of the earth.”
That’s the precise place where I draw my line, and I’ll defend that line from both sides!
Comment #87 June 21st, 2026 at 2:57 pm
I think it is important to set the record straight and rebut the misinformation spread even here by those who continue to defend the antisemitic “genocide” blood libel.
No, there is factually no consensus among governments, international bodies, scholars, military experts, legal analysts, public officials, and public figures regarding the accusation of genocide against Israel.
First, contrary to what someone said above, the ICC has not ruled Israel is committing genocide, nor has it even insinuated such a finding. Claiming otherwise, in defiance of the facts, only demonstrates the effectiveness of the information war waged by political opponents of Israel’s existence—from Iran and Qatar, across various ideological movements, from extremist anti-Zionists figures on the far Left such as Norman Finkelstein and Ilan Pappé, to neo-Nazis such as Nick Fuentes and their apologists on the far Right, like Tucker Carlson.
Here are some governments, organizations, military experts, legal scholars, historians, and public figures who have publicly rejected the genocide blood libel against Israel:
Sovereign Governments & International Blocs
The Government of the United States
The Government of the United Kingdom
The Government of Germany
The European Union (EU)
The Government of Canada
The Government of France
The Government of Italy
Civic Bodies, Coalitions, & Organizations
Academic Engagement Network (AEN)
Scholars for Truth About Genocide
The Elie Wiesel Foundation
The American Jewish Committee (AJC)
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
The Holocaust Museum of South Florida
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL)
Military Officials & Urban Warfare Experts
John Spencer (Chair of Urban Warfare Studies, Modern War Institute at West Point)
Colonel Richard Kemp (Former Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan)
High Level Military Group (HLMG), a coalition of retired Western generals and senior security officials
Academic Scholars, Legal Experts, & Public Figures
Professor Norman Goda (Holocaust historian, University of Florida)
Sara Brown (Genocide scholar and former member of the International Association of Genocide Scholars)
Eli M. Rosenbaum (Former U.S. Department of Justice war crimes prosecutor)
Dr. Rafael Medoff (Historian and author)
Professor Thane Rosenbaum (Legal scholar and author)
Alan Dershowitz (Constitutional lawyer and legal scholar)
Isaac Amon (Former Hague legal fellow)
Miriam Elman (Executive Director, Academic Engagement Network)
Irwin Cotler (Former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada)
Bruce Einhorn (Former U.S. federal judge)
Jeffrey Mausner (Former U.S. Department of Justice Nazi war crimes prosecutor)
Robert Satloff (Executive Director, The Washington Institute)
Professor Danny Orbach (Military historian, Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Comment #88 June 21st, 2026 at 4:07 pm
To Theorist Israel (#87), Scott (#51), Ty (#68) :
Testimony from a defendant’s closest allies rarely aids their case, as credible analysis always values impartial evidence over tribal and geopolitical loyalty. This is precisely why the international community relies on neutral, independent institutions to arbitrate the truth.
Do you really think North Korea cannot easily muster up a long list of domestic bodies, state-aligned organizations, and ideological allies to declare it a flawless paragon of peace?
Any regime can assemble an echo chamber of sympathetic voices. Defiance from a curated circle of deeply partisan defenders does absolutely nothing to erase an overwhelming, independent global consensus.
Comment #89 June 21st, 2026 at 4:09 pm
Alex Xanthakis #54 Fulmenius #57
I rarely engage with trolls, but the sole fact that Stepan Bandera spent 3 years of WWII (in 1942-1944) in a Nazi concentration camp should raise questions about his presumed villainy in any sane person.
Scott #55 #62
Thank you very much for your position on Ukraine! And sorry for bringing this topic into the thread, but it kinda proves how propagandists hyperinflate one thing and downplay another. The Soviets have committed x100 more crimes against humanity than all Ukrainian far-right groups possibly could, but the Soviets won WWII, and so they have written the history, which Russia tries to keep pushing. I want to remind the story of Ivan Demjanjuk, who was accused of being a notoriously cruel Nazi camp guard. He was tried in Israel, initially convicted to death, but then the verdict was overturned by Israel’s Supreme Court. It was in 1993. In 2009-2011, during a period of accelerating separation of Ukraine from Russia, at the age of 90 he was tried and convicted again by Germany, which was a friend of Russia at the time. It had large news coverage at the time. This is how “amplitude amplification” works in real life. Though this is really as old as time – “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”.
Comment #90 June 21st, 2026 at 4:21 pm
Jamie Kicuk #88:
The same argument goes for all of the organizations and people on your list in #49. They are obsessively anti-Israel and have been so for decades.
Comment #91 June 21st, 2026 at 4:27 pm
A genuine question I have is: what is the victory condition for Israel, why does is current military strategy the best available option to achieve it, and how much will it cost in money/time/lives?
If the victory condition is “remove all people who might want to harm Israel” (e.g., from Gaza,or Hezbollah), that will involve a very bloody war of attrition and prosecuting it fully may not achieve the stated aims, because violence begets violence. Not saying “Israel started it” or Israel doesn’t deserve to fight back, just saying that regardless of who is right or wrong, I don’t think violence on its own is a solution for violence.
If the victory condition is “Israel’s borders are safe from another October 7”, isn’t this as much about defensive capabilities and intelligence, as about a retaliatory war?
I genuinely don’t know what the answer is or should be. But I do think regardless of whether or not the war is morally right in some abstract sense, Netanyahu’s government has done a terrible job of being effective in convincing potential allies of Israel’s case, to the point that a legitimate hypothesis is that Netanyahu is perpetuating a war in part to protect his own political career. Winning hearts and minds is as much a part of war as bombs and guns.
Comment #92 June 21st, 2026 at 4:28 pm
Jamie Kicuk #88: “No, of course we don’t want any black jurors for this lynching trial, because you see, such jurors would be compromised by their … err … tribal loyalties. Instead, we’ve assembled a neutral, unbiased, all-white jury of folks with extensive relevant experience in finding black defendants guilty and white ones innocent in literally hundreds of previous cases. Oh wait, you managed to find a black guy who always votes to acquit whites and convict other blacks? Ok fine, he can be on the jury. In fact we’d like to make him the foreman. That’s how non-racist we are!”
Comment #93 June 21st, 2026 at 4:55 pm
Scott (#92) & AF (#90):
To claim that international bodies spanning over 100 nations—the vast majority of which have absolutely no dog in this fight—are collectively compromised is simply absurd. That argument wouldn’t even convince a friendly audience. To look at UN General Assembly votes showing 190 countries aligned on one side against the US, Israel, and a few Pacific atolls on the other, and still claim the rest of the world is wrong, requires a total departure from reality.
Anyone reading here can quickly look at the organizations and experts cited in Theorist Israel (#87). When 95% of a list originates from a single, self-serving circle, it doesn’t make a defense. It just underscores the North Korea analogy perfectly.
Comment #94 June 21st, 2026 at 5:05 pm
Gavin #91
let me put it this way: no one here is ever going to answer your “genuine question” about the security of Israel because, despite all the claims, it’s actually not about the security of Israel… if it were, they’d answer you, and they’d be screaming to get actual answers about how October 7 was even possible.
Comment #95 June 21st, 2026 at 5:40 pm
Gavin #91:
You are right that Netanyahu has done a piss-poor job of explaining the war and its goals, and I agree that it is very much plausible that Netanyahu prolonged the war for his own political survival.
That being said, the truth is that “remove all people who might want to harm Israel” and “Israel’s borders are safe from another October 7” are not separate goals. They are one and the same, because if you allow an Islamic terrorist organization to take root in territory near you, then they will prepare October 7-type massacres. They will take over educational institutions and brainwash the local youth, they will recruit and train new members, they will manufacture weapons and smuggle even more from their state sponsors, and they will dig tunnel cities and booby-trap buildings. Apart from preparing rocket and drone arsenals, they will establish whole regiments whose purpose is to go house to house and brutally slaughter innocents. This is what Hamas and Hezbollah have done, and this is what they will do again if Israel withdraws from Gaza and southern Lebanon (respectively).
The goal should be for the IDF to establish de facto territorial control, much like what Israel has in Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”). Additionally, the civilian governments of areas like Gaza and southern Lebanon should answer to Israel, so that they do not fall under the sway of the terrorist organizations. I don’t believe Israel can actually eradicate these terror groups, but that shouldn’t be the goal anyway. Israel did not eradicate terrorists in Judea and Samaria, but instead keeps them perpetually on the back foot with regular raids, arrests, and monitoring. That should be the future of Gaza, and until the anti-Hezbollah Lebanese can get their act together, it should be the future of southern Lebanon.
As for Iran, the goal should be regime change, conducted on the ground by a Free Iranian Army physically taking territory from the Ayatollah regime and suppressing any IRGC insurgency. Israel can and should lead the way in organizing, training, funding, and arming such a force, beating the IRGC in its own game of proxies. Until then, Israel is stuck in a holding pattern against Iran, buying time by spying on the regime, sabotaging/destroying its nuclear weapons program and missile infrastructure, and hoping that the US doesn’t do anything stupid like give the regime tons of cash and sanctions relief. In case it does happen, like with the current MOU, Israel should hunker down, prepare strategies and countermeasures, and never lose hope.
Comment #96 June 21st, 2026 at 5:54 pm
Jamie Kicuk #93: I’m grateful that among those who officially reject the genocide lie are the governments of Germany, Italy, Greece, Poland, Portugal, and the UK (and of course the US), and I’m amused that even the fanatically anti-Israel ICJ says it still doesn’t have enough evidence to bring a case. And it certainly helps my sanity that, among the public figures and professional colleagues who I admire most for reasons unrelated to Israel, the vast majority reject the lie as well, and either quietly or openly support Israel’s right to continue existing and to defend itself. I don’t think you’d get that with North Korea.
Having said that, none of this is actually load-bearing for me. If you told me that the UN had voted 198-3 that I was a gross nerd who deserved to die, I hope I’d have the self-confidence and courage to ask which 3 countries voted “no,” so I could simply live out the rest of my life in one of those. This is actually not far from the situation of anyone who’s been bullied in school, and is also not far from the situation that we Jews have been in for our entire history.
For the reasons already set out at length in this thread, the Shtetl-Optimized Governing Board has hereby found by a vote of 300-to-5 that you’ve violated the stated policy “no comments whose basic premise is that Scott and/or his family should be murdered and it’s genocide if they try to fight back,” and you are therefore banned from leaving further comments here.
From the bottom of my heart, Jew-hater, go fuck yourself.
Comment #97 June 21st, 2026 at 6:56 pm
https://carnegieendowment.org/middle-east/diwan/2025/11/what-kind-of-future-for-iran
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/middle-east/autumn-ayatollahs
they worth a read
Comment #98 June 21st, 2026 at 7:28 pm
I find this post to be pretty premature. Trump is famously unpredictable and it’s really too early to tell. Already the NYT is reporting that the talks are running into trouble. Personally I doubt there will be any deal:
Here’s the latest.
Negotiators for Iran and the United States met in Switzerland for a little over an hour on Sunday as they seek to turn a 60-day cease-fire into a lasting peace, but it was quickly apparent how far apart the two sides are.
Iranian negotiators insisted on an end to the war between Israel, a U.S. ally, and Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon, as a condition for further talks, according to Iranian state media. The talks were also strained by President Trump’s renewal of threats against Iran, just as Vice President JD Vance was saying the president wanted the talks to “turn over a new leaf” with Iran.
Mr. Trump said in a Fox News interview that he could do “whatever I want” after the 60-day period and said Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, who has insisted that Tehran maintain its right to enrich uranium, “better watch his mouth.”
Iran’s lead negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said on social media that the United States should be careful about issuing threats, adding that Iranian armed forced were prepared to respond.
“No matter how much they talk, it is we who act,” he wrote.
It was unclear when the two sides would next meet. Sunday’s talks, held at a Swiss lakeside resort and mediated by Pakistani and Qatari officials, were the first of the negotiations that are intended to end in a lasting peace deal.
According to Iranian state media, the talks focused mostly on Lebanon and did not touch on the future of Iran’s nuclear program. The managing director of Iran’s national oil company, Hamid Bovard, told state media that the lifting of sanctions on the country’s oil and related industries were also discussed.
Even getting to the first day had been a challenge. The talks had been set to begin on Friday, but were delayed after Iranian officials refused to attend because of the fighting in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah. That conflict appeared to ease on Sunday after the Israeli government directed the military to restrict itself to defensive actions, a day after it flared up despite a new cease-fire.
Mr. Vance sought on Sunday to emphasize the improved conditions in Lebanon. “We’ve seen great progress over the last couple of days in ensuring that the cease-fire holds in Lebanon,” Mr. Vance said. “These things are always a little bit messy.”
But Lebanon is all but certain to remain a thorny matter. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, which was not a party to the preliminary agreement, reiterated on Sunday that his country would keep its military inside southern Lebanon “for as long as it takes” to protect Israelis.
Mr. Trump, meanwhile, threatened to resume bombing Iran if it didn’t constrain Hezbollah.
Here’s what else we are covering:
Strait of Hormuz: Another key issue is the passage of vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for oil and gas shipments which would be open for 60 days under the terms of the preliminary agreement. The status of the strait was thrown into confusion on Saturday after Iran claimed it was closing the waterway over the fighting in Lebanon. The U.S. military said that marine traffic continued to flow and asserted that Iran “does not control” the strait.
Nuclear program: The most difficult issue in the U.S.-Iran talks — what to do about Iran’s nuclear program and stockpile of uranium — has been left for later. So far, Iran has only reiterated its longstanding promise not to develop nuclear weapons, and the country’s president, Mr. Pezeshkian, said on Sunday that Iran would “never back down” from its right to enrich uranium.
Lebanon strikes: There were no reports of Israeli attacks on Lebanon or Hezbollah strikes on Israelis as of 10 p.m. local time on Sunday. Still, it was not clear whether the new Israeli directive announced late Saturday would resolve the friction that led to deadly clashes on Friday and Saturday and threatened to derail the preliminary U.S.-Iran deal.
Comment #99 June 21st, 2026 at 7:30 pm
Dear Scott:
Because Israel-Palestine is again topical on the blog: I am very curious what you think of my perspective, which I explained here.
https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=9801#comment-2033302
Best,
Elliot
Comment #100 June 21st, 2026 at 7:31 pm
Scott #96: I don’t think it’s accurate to refer to the ICJ as “fanatically anti-Israel”. The ICJ and ICC are a lot more objective than many other UN bodies. Prediction markets give Israel about an 80% chance to win the genocide case. For example the Irish want the ICJ to overturn precedent and expand its definition of genocide.
Comment #101 June 21st, 2026 at 8:29 pm
Scott, you were generous enough to interpret Ronald the wolf charitably—to hear his perspective without assuming he wants to harm your children. I wish you’d extend that same courteous assumption to those calling Israel’s actions genocidal. I used to agree with 95% of what you say, but the truth is you have a blind spot when it comes to Israel’s crimes. A true defender of liberal enlightenment wouldn’t pretend these violations were inevitable, wouldn’t hide behind ‘our enemies would do worse,’ and wouldn’t call would-be murderers anyone who puts Israel in the same moral category as South Africa during apartheid.
Comment #102 June 21st, 2026 at 10:12 pm
Quite baffling it would take 10 years of Trump doing what Trump does for a moderate enlightenment liberal to finally figure that he can’t be trusted…. but better late than never, I guess.
Comment #103 June 21st, 2026 at 10:25 pm
Baffled_Liberal #102: It was blindingly obvious that he couldn’t be trusted about anything, even when he was just a casino developer ruining Atlantic City. The question wasn’t “trust,” the question was more about whether he would take Kharg Island to force open the Strait of Hormuz, arm the Iranian resistance, or otherwise try to turn this clusterfuck into something resembling victory … or whether he’d simply give up and let Iran win.
As others have pointed out, the only silver lining right now is that it isn’t over yet. Iran will obviously keep testing the limits, telling Hezbollah to fire more missiles at Israel, re-closing the Strait (as it did today), etc etc, thereby forcing our lunatic-in-chief to revisit what to do over and over, plausibly for the entire rest of his term.
Comment #104 June 21st, 2026 at 10:45 pm
Roaming zombie #101: The most relevant difference between Israel and Apartheid South Africa is surely that the black population of South Africa was never in the grip of a religious ideology telling them to murder every last white person for the glory of God. If it had been, you could sort of understand the white population needing to separate itself, at least from those in the grip of this ideology, couldn’t you?
A second, but actually less important, difference is that Jews have as strong a claim as anyone to being the indigenous people of Israel, with Islam being a conquering religion that arrived thousands of years later. There were no indigenous whites in South Africa.
So, if you want Israel to be dismantled like South Africa was, it’s possible that you don’t know what the result would be, but it’s also possible that you do know, and are fine with my family there being murdered if they don’t manage to escape in time. I don’t see a third option.
Comment #105 June 21st, 2026 at 10:54 pm
devil’s advocate: which side was “fighting a brutal war that it never asked for”?
Comment #106 June 21st, 2026 at 11:10 pm
“Take Kharg Island to force open the straits”? “Arm the resistance”?
What reality are you living in? How does taking Kharg island force Iran to open the straits, the only reason they care about the straits being open at all is to ship oil out of Kharg Island? Wtf resistance are you talking about and how would they be armed exactly? Afaik we tried to get the kurds to sign up for Middle East War Number N and they said pound your own sand.
You think DT hasn’t done the needful because he needs Hezbollah to shoot more missiles and more people die, global economy stops (kills mostly poor asians, perhaps by the millions) and then he will be convinced to do it because it was always a great idea? He was just too weak or something to do it until then, but now when he has lost all momentum and political capital he’ll call a draft and put a million Americans in Baluchistan to march over and take the heights?
Like do you think through anything beyond “they laughed on Oct 7” which you know is a complete ad hom strawman smear for anyone in the western world? To include the blue haired protestors, they didn’t think that was funny and they don’t think Gaza is funny now.
OK we take over southern Lebanon, maybe burn all of it to the ground as some officials have said, OK we turn Iran in a perpetual failed state with an incredible refugee crisis and fight another 20 year insurgency, in the process the gulf states do not get turned into deserts again as their water is destroyed and exports cut off, also China doesnt get involved, also we give perfectly complete human rights to the nice people in gaza that we definitely care about perhaps just move a few miles away, egypt jordan saudis ISIS in charge of syria we’ll hang out no problem … what are you thinking? That’s your idea of security?
There used to be this lip service to “the two state solution” “the peace process” glad/sorry to see the mask is off. Maybe it’s moving to Texas and the six shooter mentality. What’s the equivalent of killing the bison and building the railroad? You know the rangers didn’t really defeat the comanche in battle …
Comment #107 June 21st, 2026 at 11:20 pm
MT #106: Tell me your alternative plan then, since you’re so wise. Keeping in mind that “do nothing” implies “Iran becomes a nuclear-armed theocracy and proceeds to impose the mullahs’ murderous, fanatical version of Islam on the entire Middle East and beyond.”
Yes, it seems reasonable to expect the President of the United States, who sits on top of a massive intelligence apparatus, to refrain from taking action until things have been gamed out to the point where attacking will at least make the situation better than it was before — without it being a quantum computing blogger’s job to specify exactly how. And yes, Trump, with his unique talent for constantly lowering the bar, appears to have done even worse in this regard than one might’ve expected from his entire previous career.
Comment #108 June 21st, 2026 at 11:45 pm
Even as a admirer of Scott’s other abilities, his response to Mr. Ronald and Ms. Kicuk is very revealing. At the risk of being banned, here is my take.
Scott’s most revealing statement isn’t his conclusion — it’s his admission that the international consensus argument is ‘not load-bearing’ for him. He’s basically admitting that no evidence, no institution, and no expert opinion will move him. A position that is immune to evidence isn’t a reasoned position — it’s a belief held prior to reasoning. Ms. Kicuk wasn’t banned for being wrong. She was banned for being inconvenient.
-He counters a list of independent international institutions with “people I personally admire” — that’s a textbook appeal to personal bias over impartial evidence.
-He invokes certain governments rejecting the genocide framing — but governments have geopolitical interests; that’s exactly the kind of partial testimony Jamie’s argument was accounting for.
-He mocked the consensus argument, then used a mock “300-to-5 vote” to justify the ban — ironically deploying the exact logic he was dismissing.
Comment #109 June 22nd, 2026 at 12:13 am
Yeah, first, not that afraid of nuclear weapons perhaps because we’ve been under the threat by USSR, China, NK, whoever for a long time, with zero defense other than counterstrike. Maybe that’s complacency but also maybe MAD by Israel would be a suffcient countermeasure, and Israel has had that capability for a long time I think. They could pursue explicit nuclear umbrella. Iran is not less crazy than NK, or Stalin arguably.
Second we already destroyed their capability before this war, and they were always going to trade nuclear threat for money. Watch DNI Gabbard try to waffle on this before congress, before she resigned. They will almost certainly agree to some low enchriment arrangement, they did before.
If they cared about nukes, in such a situation, I would expect them to do it. Show something. Buy one from Pakistan. Make a threat, a test. If they were even somewhat anywhere close that couldn’t be defeated by what actions were already taken (thus we have won, they lost, they will now agree to our terms etc). But hey. They don’t actually care about this issue, they don’t seek the nuclear annihilation of Israel first and foremost, it’s down the list somewhere. Sideshow.
We just had a war between Iran and Israel and they spent half their missiles hitting the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, and you want to tell me they seek immediate desctruction of Israel over all else?
As to what version of islam is promulgated in the middle east as a result of nuclear armament i think again, wtf are you talking about. If you want to do battle in the arena of the arab street much less the theocracies this has to be a bad move. Which is where the peace process, the Abraham Accords, the political manuevering is important.
What is the plan for peace? Who are the allies? It’s a delicate thing. Again you know it’s a fallacy to force an objector to come up with a complete plan themselves. But before someone asks Claude who certainly does know the answer, the obvious thing was to not give in to terrorism and cede the moral high ground with immediate repression. Then to get on with the Abraham Accords and get diplomatic cover from the Arab world and importantly China/literally anyone else for action against Iran (which tbh never made sense past the nuke facility strikes) or into Lebanon if that was the real goal.
Comment #110 June 22nd, 2026 at 3:06 am
Tanaka Sato #108: In case it helps, here is what I wrote to someone who emailed to ask how I could possibly be certain of my position.
“Well, I’m certain that I want my kids to live. I’m certain that I want my kids’ cousins in Israel to live also. I’m certain that Hamas and Hezbollah and their many supporters around the world want them dead simply because they’re Jews (they say so!) — as I don’t want any Palestinian kids dead, as I wish I could bring the 21,000 or however many kids were killed in the war in Gaza back to life. But I’m certain that, if Israel fighting Hamas and Hezbollah for its kids’ survival after what they did on Oct 7 counts as ‘genocide,’ then the conclusion is that Israel cannot morally defend itself at all (the majority of anti-Israel people actually make this step explicit). And the conclusion of that is that the yearned-for next genocide of the Jews can proceed, with the Jews no more able to defend their kids from slaughter than they were from Hitler’s previous genocide — the one that the Palestinian leadership of the time eagerly supported, and that most of the world (including international organizations like the Red Cross) was completely indifferent to.
So that’s how, starting from my moral axioms, I can be as certain of what follows from them as I am of the Pythagorean theorem. If you have different axioms it’s no surprise that you’ll reach a different conclusion.”
Comment #111 June 22nd, 2026 at 3:37 am
Danylo Yakymenko #89
To be clear, I’m aware of the fact the overall crimes of the soviets were worse than those of Ukraine.
Comment #112 June 22nd, 2026 at 3:43 am
To cast this constantly as simply an Iran/Islam vs Jewish/Israel controversy is a disservice to all the Gentiles who have died or been enslaved in the interests of Islam. Israel suffers from Proximity in the general context of Islamism vs the West.
Explaining the superiority of Western Enlightenment axiomatic beliefs and promises of a Starbucks on every corner have proven to be an ineffective defense against weapons of terror in physical reality.
A war that is based solely on conflicting beliefs is civilizational. Tiny Israel has the great misfortune of being located on the geographical front line of the conflict. US embassies annd properties outside the US and military personnel outside the US have suffered from Islamist attacks as has NYC (the current mayor is a talisman against future repeat). Attacks inside the US include of course the WTC and other small attacks. Equatorial Africa has suffered large losses of Christians to Islamists. It is across the geographical board but Israel suffers the most.
My view is that the same inappropriate modes of thinking that Trump suffers from are common in the posters here whether hate him or like him. This is that Western axiomatic beliefs are superior in some absolute sense and so the natural outcome of social evolution. I don’t believe this is true for social evolution just as not true in the same sense as Darwinian evolution. Just as Darwinian has no directed outcome so social. Mutations arise and they either survive or they don’t.
If you have two sets of axioms something like-
1) Human life is precious, respect beliefs of others, defend yourself to the minimum extent vs
2) Allah intends that all non-believers should be destroyed or enslaved, the beliefs of others must be destroyed, life on this plane is insignificant to what comes after.
In this, with all else being equal, the likely 2) triumphs. In the current Case 1 has a tech advantage but over a random future walk 2) needs only some unusual circumstances to pevail. The war in Ukraine demonstrates that modern high tech weapons systems are susceptible to defeat by a couple guys in their garage assembling drones.
Of course details are important but much of the above discussion is arguing over the usual crumbs of Democratic/Republican conflict with no concern for the more important concern of the failings of both Democrats and Republicans because many suffer from the same modes of thought.
Comment #113 June 22nd, 2026 at 4:02 am
Danylo Yakymenko #89
I understand that when your country’s in a war of survival, rallying around the flag and being on the defensive is the default setting. The fact that Bandera spent 2 years in Sachsenhausen as a high profile prisoner in a two room suite, not sporting a prison uniform, and was released in 1944 by the Nazis to fight the Soviets while at the same time Jews were being systematically exterminated says a lot. Besides name calling someone who uses his full name(“troll”), I wouldn’t expect such a weak argument from a mathematician. The infamous brownshirts(you know, Kristallnacht perpetrators and Nazi thugs) were liquidated by Hitler himself on the night of the long knives. Does that make them saints? And by the way, me and others like me are the problem. But don’t you worry, you have the european leaders who will say slava ukraini 50 times a day, profess the strongest support for you country, parade Zelensky around, and not dare put a single boot on the ground for you. So, slava ukraini I guess.
Comment #114 June 22nd, 2026 at 4:11 am
Case 1) adherent-I am willing to die for my beliefs
Case 2) adherent-A match! I must kill you for your beliefs.
When I hear Vance say-Israel can’t kill itself out of all problems. I think-What haven’t they tried otherwise? In the aftermath of the last slaughter of women and babies you are suggesting more tolerance discussion groups sponsored by the UN explaining to Israel that it shouldn’t defend itself. What BS.
Comment #115 June 22nd, 2026 at 4:23 am
Scott #110: I hate to be drawn into this discussion again (and I’ll try not to respond further if I can help myself), but the gap in your position is so glaringly obvious. Yes, Israel has the right to defend itself when attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah. No, the current maximalist lets-raze-the-place-with-100-civilian-lives-for-1-Israeli approach towards Gaza and southern Lebanon is not its only defense option, nor is it the most effective one.
Also, I really don’t understand why you banned Jamie Kicuk. Pointing out that many view Israel’s behavior as genocide *in the looser UN definition* does not in any way imply that they want to kill your family. Please, don’t let your paranoia get the better of your usually admirable fair-mindedness!
Comment #116 June 22nd, 2026 at 4:58 am
Danylo Yakymenko #89
I forgot to add in my last comment that due to Stepan Bandera being Ukrainian, which is classified as one of the Slavic nations, the nazis would want to get him in a camp whatever he did, just as I wouldn’t expect a Jew to escape nazis wanting to get them to a camp due to collaboration, and this holds whether I am correct on UPA or not.
Comment #117 June 22nd, 2026 at 7:13 am
About the Kurds-
They made the right choice. They are another victim of the post-colonial creation of nation states and so an identifiable ethnic group with no land to securely call their own. In this respect similar to pre Israel Jewish peoples.
They enjoyed a brief hiatus of peace during and after the Gulf War but that looks to be eroding now. They have constantly battled the regional governments albeit Turkey, Iraq, or Iran. Considering they may face renewed conflict with the Iraqi central government the weapons may be reasonably considered necessary for self preservation. They live in the real day-to-day world of these conflicts (similar to Israeli’s) and not in the Western mythical world of inevitable social evolution to our superior beliefs and Starbucks by the score.
Some historians consider them descendants of the Medians that provided Cyrus I his first satisfying conquest around 500 BC.
Comment #118 June 22nd, 2026 at 7:19 am
Ronald #115,
You also have a gap.
I don’t think you’ll find Scott asserting that Israel’s chosen response to Oct. 7th – what you label “let’s-raze-the-place-with-100-civilian-lives-for-1-Israeli approach towards Gaza” is the best possible response nor has he asserted it was the most effective one. I’ve seen Scott criticize the Israeli government and its decisions numerous times on this blog. What he hasn’t done and what he speaks out against is labeling that “genocide” any more than the allies bombing of Dresden.
Comment #119 June 22nd, 2026 at 7:22 am
Ronald de Wolf #115: To earn a ban here, it’s not necessary for someone to state explicitly that they want my Israeli family members to be killed by Hamas or Hezbollah. It’s enough for them to treat the very live question of whether they will be killed with contemptuous dismissal.
But on top of that, Jamie Kicuk also advanced the classically antisemitic theory that the long list of distinguished thinkers, many but not all of them Jewish, who reject the genocide narrative can all be dismissed because of Jews’ “tribal loyalties.”
You’ve agreed that Israel gets to defend itself from those seeking the murder of all of its inhabitants, disagreeing only about the details of how. (Incidentally, if you did know of ways to defang Hamas while achieving a lower civilian/combatant fatality ratio, already one of the lowest in the modern history of urban warfare, I’m sure that many experts in the IDF would be interested!)
This places you entirely within the bounds of reasonable discussion among reasonable people, and indeed of fierce debate that’s been happening within Israel. It reminds me why I’ve considered you a wonderful friend and colleague for a quarter century.
By contrast, if you reread carefully, you’ll see that most of the anti-Israel commenters here never give any disclaimers like “well, obviously Israel is justified to defend itself from Hamas” or “well, obviously we need some credible plan where Israel’s 7 million Jews don’t all get massacred unless they manage to flee first.” Even while they scream about “genocide” and “apartheid,” these commenters remain conspicuously, contemptuously silent about the questions I regard as the central ones. Having been marinated in this discourse for many years, probably much more than you have, I’ve come to understand exactly what this contemptuous silence means.
Comment #120 June 22nd, 2026 at 7:24 am
Gil Kalai #35: “So, you’re an optimist about Jewish and Israeli survival and a pessimist about scalable quantum computing. If I had to pick one optimistic scenario to come to pass, I’d pick the same! Alas, there’s what I want and then there’s what I predict…”
LOL. It is rather unusual to discuss the Middle East crisis and quantum computers in the same conversation. (Strange combinations are not uncommon in blog discussions, but this particular combination here is probably due to the long personal relationship between Scott and me.) Let me say something about each topic and even attempt to connect my personal approach to both.
On both topics, somewhat easier than predicting the future is to reflect on my past positions and put them under scrutiny.
1) The Middle East
Regarding the Gaza war, I thought fairly early on—in fact, after the first ceasefire in November 2023—that Israel should seek a quick end to the war through a diplomatic agreement (of the kind that was eventually reached, though perhaps on less favorable terms). My stance was based both on the terrible and unprecedented amount of bloodshed and destruction in Gaza and on the need to rescue the Israeli hostages.
Of course, there is no way for me to know, even in hindsight, whether this was actually possible, or whether implementing such a policy would have led to renewed attacks against Israel or endangered it in other ways. Even in real time I had mixed feelings about what Israel needed to do, and I could certainly understand the view that, after the events of October 7, a decisive victory over Hamas in Gaza was necessary. My stance was similar—and held with greater conviction—after the ceasefire of January 2025.
Overall, I think that Trump’s 20-point peace plan from October 2025 provides a good framework for progress toward peace, and I hope it will be pursued and implemented. (Let me add that, not least because of my feminist views, I hoped to see a woman elected president of the United States in both the 2016 and the 2024 elections.)
As for Iran, I agree that the situation looks somewhat gloomy, but, as I said, I suggest waiting about a year. In both cases, I would not describe myself as an optimist, since I recognize the grave dangers on all fronts, but I am more optimistic than Scott appears to be in this post.
More generally, I see no alternative to peace—primarily peace between us (Israel) and the Palestinians—as the path toward a better future. (I cannot say whether this statement should itself be regarded as optimistic or pessimistic.)
2) Quantum computers
Quantum computers are a very different story.
When it comes to quantum computing, I regard the choice made by many colleagues and friends to pursue this direction of research as entirely (3000%) justified, and it has led to beautiful mathematics and science. (I hope that my own choice to pursue the skeptical direction was justified as well, though this is a more difficult call.)
For the record, I expect that scalable quantum computation—and even important milestones toward this goal—are inherently impossible.
I believe that I understand the situation regarding quantum computers better than the enormously complicated situation in the Middle East, although my line of skeptical research represents a minority view. (In fact, in a recent talk, when I was asked whether my view represented a minority view, I replied that it may actually be a marginal view rather than even a minority view.)
One very clear and important point of disagreement between Scott and me concerns the following simple factual question:
Is it currently possible to produce (without classical-computing interference) samples of size 500K for depth-14 random circuits with 20 qubits and an XEB fidelity above 0.2? (This is something Google claimed in 2019.)
I tend to think that the answer to this question is negative; Scott strongly believes that this and much more have already been achieved experimentally. Thus these are sharp factual disagreements, and I hope they will be resolved within the next few years.
Scott and I have technical disagreements and different predictions, but I do not think that we have moral or ideological disagreements on this issue. Except… I think that Scott’s comparison of me to the Iraqi information minister during the Second Gulf War was shameful and uncalled for. And I find it regrettable that nobody in the community, besides me, protested when he made that comparison.
Scott has also made important contributions in the skeptical direction, and between my own main skeptical efforts I occasionally tried to pursue some of his suggestions. In 2012 I gave a talk at the Technion, and Tal Mor suggested that I study tree states, which Scott had proposed in 2005 as candidates for “Sure/Shor separators.”
“Tal,” I said, “Scott has just compared me and Gordie Rose (from D-Wave) to fascists and communists, respectively.”
“This does not matter, Gil,” Tal replied. “Tree states are still excellent Sure/Shor candidates.”
It is probably best to wait five to ten years before assessing where the chips fall regarding quantum computers. To use an Israeli idiom (which I am not sure has an English equivalent), I think that Scott and other proponents are “living in a movie” (חיים בסרט). It is a very nice movie, though.
3) Are there common threads?
One thing common to my views on political, scientific, and personal matters is that I tend to adopt a cautious and hesitant style and that I have a personal tendency toward appeasement. (I even cautiously raised the question of whether Britain’s great mistake before World War II was its extreme military weakness rather than the policy of appeasement itself.)
During my 2012 debate with Aram Harrow, my good friend Yuri Gurevich remarked on my hesitant and apologetic style, and his comments gave me food for thought. “You do not have to keep saying ‘in my opinion,’” Yuri said. “Everybody knows that you are expressing your opinion.”
On scientific matters, I am very fond of small problems and of gory technical details. I think that professionalism and detailed understanding are important in political matters as well.
Comment #121 June 22nd, 2026 at 7:27 am
I don’t think what Israel has done in the wake of the absolute horror of Oct. 7th is the most effective nor best possible response, but I also don’t think it is of a different kind than what the Allies did to Dresden or the US did to Japan. Were the horrors of Oct. 7th visited on any other western nation by a neighboring country I would not be at all surprised to see the exact same type of response – probably far harsher in most cases – so I also find it quite suspect to see all the outrage directed at Israel by citizens of countries that would likely do far worse. Look at the sticks in your own countries eyes.
Comment #122 June 22nd, 2026 at 7:35 am
Everyone: I’ll close this thread in a few hours, so that I can concentrate on happier topics, including the beautiful summer camp high in the California mountains where I now am in real life!
Comment #123 June 22nd, 2026 at 7:37 am
Scott #103
“The question wasn’t “trust,””
Ok, but you named the blog entry “Never trust a T-Rex”
I think one important overlooked aspect of the matter for Israel is PR.
For example I don’t think that calling everyone who criticizes Israel names a jew-hater or a piece of shit is really very effective when social media is flooded with videos of IDF soldiers taking down the statue of the Christ with a sledgehammer and some old Catholic nun getting sucker punched in the back of the head in the streets of Jerusalem. Lots of people, catholic or not, who don’t particularly even care about Palestinians do see this as religious fanaticism and pictures are louder than words.
Comment #124 June 22nd, 2026 at 7:57 am
Scott #122: Thanks for sharing your views on the current situation with Iran, its proxies and Israel. Many of us are glad you did! And we certainly appreciate our own privilege that we can remain silent, and don’t feel the urge to share our views with everybody, and subsequently defend them.
Let me just add: just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.
Comment #125 June 22nd, 2026 at 7:59 am
Reminder for all US citizens:
* Our president actively boasts of his determination to kill the innocent children of those he deems terrorists.
* Our military targeted and killed 175+ children of the IRGC on the first day of the war with Iran.
* Our president’s first response to this bombing was to actually accuse the IRGC itself of carrying out the attack.
* When asked about this at a recent press conference he complained that the question was even asked, affirmed that there will be no consequences for anyone, and said it was “a long time ago.”
Comment #126 June 22nd, 2026 at 8:02 am
Dr Aaronson
You noted above about Israelis having reasonable claim to the tiny mote of land that constitutes Israel. I couldn’t agree more. The Persians are migrants to the land now known as Iran and by the same measure used against Israel should abandon their title to the land in favor of the Kurds as descendants of the Medians. Early Persian rulers were known as Khan true to their origin in the steppes of Central Asia.
Comment #127 June 22nd, 2026 at 8:25 am
Gil Kalai #120
“I hoped to see a woman elected president of the United States in both the 2016 and the 2024 elections.”
Certainly you stood a far higher a priori statistical chance of success than hoping for someone overly competent to be elected president. I know that your choices at certain times became constrained but your wishes were not. Don’t waste your wishes on the pedestrian, see W. Disney in this regard.
Comment #128 June 22nd, 2026 at 8:44 am
The useful discipline here is not to let labels do the work of component audits.
The MOU is not yet reconciliation, but it is not automatically capitulation either. It deserves the name “capitulation” if the Islamic Republic receives money, legitimacy, Hormuz leverage, and time while nuclear, proxy, missile, and domestic-repression constraints remain weak. It becomes a path toward reconciliation only if it produces verified downblending, restored inspections, Hezbollah disarmament or real containment, an open Hormuz without informal tolls or hostage-style bargaining, less civilian danger, and less regime capacity to terrorize Iranians and neighbors. That distinction matters because “capitulation” can itself become a single morally charged label that erases the component probes.
The Anthropic/Fable case shows why AI governance needs a transparent, technically grounded, even-handed, and contestable process; otherwise, “safety” becomes a label broad enough to conceal arbitrary power, unacknowledged industrial policy, or political punishment. Whether intended or not, opaque model-access restrictions push allies and firms toward provider diversification and sovereign compute. That can strengthen allied resilience if paired with shared evaluations, trusted-access rules, and interoperable safety standards. If not, it becomes fragmentation plus duplicated infrastructure stress.
In an age of information warfare, our attention itself becomes contested terrain. So we do not ask first whether a narrative is pro-Trump or anti-Trump, pro-Israel or anti-Israel, pro-regime or anti-regime, pro-regulation or anti-regulation. We ask what actor, evidence, channel, incentive, and omitted distinction produced it. Provenance before alignment.
Comment #129 June 22nd, 2026 at 8:48 am
Baffled_Liberal #123: Alright then, my point was not that that Trump was trustworthy in the past and then stopped being so, but rather that, as my title implied, he was never trustworthy.
You’ll notice that I never called Ronald a Jew-hater, no matter how hostile he is to Israeli policy, because he obviously isn’t one. I called other commenters Jew-haters because they were — or, what amounts to basically the same thing in practice, they had zero interest in distinguishing themselves from Jew-haters on a planet teeming with them.
As for you, I do wonder why you’re so exercised about some random Israeli assholes who defaced Jesus statues or whatever and were immediately condemned and punished by the Israeli government — I know hundreds of Israelis, and I’ve never met even one who had such attitudes — but are apparently unconcerned about the brutal, systematic persecution and slaughter of Christians in numerous Muslim countries, something that’s never had the slightest counterpart in modern Israel, where Christians live and pray freely and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and countless other important sites (I’ve visited many of them) remain open to all under Israeli protection. I won’t call you a Jew-hater because I can think of a few other hypotheses besides that one.
Comment #130 June 22nd, 2026 at 8:48 am
Scott:
So, you’re a “moderate enlightenment liberal from the 1990s?” Can you please explain how your moderate enlightenment liberalism is compatible with forcing me to get gene therapy I don’t want?
I think if you spoke to young Scott in the 1990s, he would be horrified that you want to force me or coerce me or compel me to get a “vaccine” I don’t want.
Bodily autonomy and medical autonomy is a foundational liberal enlightenment value if anything is.
Your attitude during COVID shows you are more of an authoritarian than a liberal.
Comment #131 June 22nd, 2026 at 9:00 am
Adam Treat
about Dresden, literally noone participating in this blog discussion was even alive at the time, and the new generations care more about the standards of what’s happening right now than 80+ years ago. And in hindsight I don’t think Dresden is anything anyone would consider particularly well in terms of moral cost vs effectiveness.
Secondly, I think a lot of the backlash against Israel is US specific because we’re the only country being directly dragged into it with (at best) the US voters having had no input, or (at worst) the US citizens’ freedom of speech being lost in the process. So, while in Europe, only activists would mostly care about it, in the US way more people may feel it’s having an impact. Of course the matter of the straight has brought most of humanity into it, and everyone is now more easily aware of the game of chess between the US/Israel/Iran, and the middle East as a whole. Let’s not forget that China and Russia account for quite a lot of people who hear very pro Iran arguments on a daily basis, and those two countries had actually signed the JCPOA (along with the EU as well).
Comment #132 June 22nd, 2026 at 9:12 am
Scott
“I do wonder why you’re so exercised about some random Israeli assholes”
it’s really not about what i think, but just pointing out that this was *huge* news in social media in the US, in the context of the PR “war” and the argument that Israel gets singled out. I don’t think anyone can deny this reality that the PR war is central (Netanyahu says it over and over) and I’m in no way responsible for what appears or not in social media and how the masses respond to it. But, ok, it’s your choice to shoot the messenger.
Comment #133 June 22nd, 2026 at 9:15 am
Evan #129: LOL, what a pleasant change of pace to be attacked over my support for Covid vaccination, an issue where (unlike with Israel/Palestine) pretty much everyone who I’ve ever respected for anything, or considered pro-Enlightenment or liberal, is already 300% on my side!
Comment #134 June 22nd, 2026 at 9:21 am
Baffled Liberal,
On Dresden and the Jewish holocaust in World War II being 80+ years ago:
So? Are you saying that because it was long ago we should forget this history?? I genuinely have no idea what “point” you think you’re making here.
On Dresden and moral cost vs effectiveness:
Okay, but no one describes what happened in Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, or Nagasaki to be “genocide” and many scholars to this day defend it and do believe it was effective and morally justified. World War II is still considered to be the definitive example of a “just war” and the Allie’s tactics considered necessary to ending the war with fewer casualties than had they not dropped those bombs.
On US citizens complaining about Israel because they are powerless:
I have no idea what you mean. US Citizens elected the current President and the current government. Everything that the government has done in Trump’s second term is the direct responsibility of US citizen voters. We are just as culpable for our government’s actions as Israeli citizens are of theirs.
Comment #135 June 22nd, 2026 at 9:28 am
OhMyGoodness
those are all true historical facts, but it can become a slippery argument:
going back far enough, we all come from Africa, giving anyone a legit claim on Africa land, justifying “old school” colonialism as a return to our true homeland? 😀
Comment #136 June 22nd, 2026 at 9:29 am
Scott 96:
I believe that the connection you make between antisemitism and being bullied in school is flawed. There are many kids who were bullied and unpopular who are antisemites. The incel community is very antisemitic. So, I don’t see how your connection between being a bullied, unpopular kid and support for Israel makes sense.
I made this point in an earlier comment, which you did not allow to post. So I make it again here.
There are many kids who were bullied or unpopular and are anti semites, maybe most of the Fuentes fans. Here’s an article about the latest anti semitic mass shooters.
https://www.thefp.com/p/rod-dreher-san-diego-shooting-manifesto
They were incels who hate Jews and women. Both described being bullied in school and one described being autistic and they both blame Jews for girls not liking them. This is very common among the right-wing anti semites. You see it among Fuentes’ fans and in incel forums, that they are angry about being unpopular and having no dating prospects. Funetes himself is an incel and proud of it. These are not the popular kids and not the bullies. They are mostly unpopular nerds, except not skilled enough to get tech jobs like the successful nerds.
Comment #137 June 22nd, 2026 at 9:33 am
Baffled_Liberal #130: Of course US voters had input. They elected Trump, knowing perfectly well that he was best buds with Netanyahu, over Kamala Harris, who I voted for and who wasn’t.
In general, both parties in the US were pro-Israel until extremely recently not because of a nefarious Judaic conspiracy, but simply because until extremely recently, pro-Israel voters (including evangelical Christians and security hawks) greatly outnumbered anti-Israel voters among those who cared about the issue at all (Jews themselves, at 2% of the population, almost never make a big difference in national elections).
Crucially, now that your friends have finally succeeded in creating a large constituency in the US that sees Israel as a genocidal settler colony that deserves to die, we immediately see many prominent politicians responding to that belief. We really do live in a democracy, for better and worse.
Comment #138 June 22nd, 2026 at 9:42 am
Hi Scott,
Great respect for your views as usual. One thing I would quibble with, and often do in these discussions, is the characterization of the IRGC as ‘medieval’. All the Islamist regimes, beginning with Sayyid Qutb or even earlier, and particularly in the Iranian case with people like Ali Shariati, are thoroughly modern.
The medieval (i.e. up to 1918) rulers of the region, being hereditary kings and such, moderated pure ideology and mob paranoia by being single human beings who could embody the contradictions of the society within themselves (‘What do you mean it’s not an Islamic state, of course it is, the king is Muslim!’). An echo of this persists in the relative peace and stability of the Gulf monarchies, which were mostly created by oilmen cutting deals with the biggest local chieftains, a distinctly non-ideological arrangement.
Love ’em or hate ’em, I think the same is also true of politicized American Christianity. Pro-lifers are not ‘medieval’ at all, as medieval ethics around abortion involved the defunct concept of the ‘quickening’, whereas pro-lifers take inspiration from (indeed I suspect the growth of their position paralleled the development of) ultrasound and similar technologies. In actual medieval and early modern times, clerics and monarchs exercised a moderating influence that is totally absent in the individualist society in America or the tribal societies of the Mideast.
The degree to which the modern version of theocracy is a rival outgrowth of the same Enlightenment as your own liberal, scientific views is a question I’ll leave to the political philosophers. But I just don’t think a regime that began by ousting a hereditary monarch in favor of a one-party revolutionary state is aptly characterized as ‘medieval’ (even if they themselves might even prefer it to be called such, given the religion’s origins in that time).
Best,
Tom
Comment #139 June 22nd, 2026 at 9:58 am
Scott
“ Of course US voters had input”
again, I’m merely pointing out a strong sentiment and line of arguments that’s now part of the political narratives in both the right and the left. The point was explaining why the middle east is now such a hot topic in the US in particular.
You get MAGA saying that spending billions in the war with Iran and paying high prices at the pump isn’t exactly “no more wars” and “America first”. And you get the left saying that the Trump/Netanyahu dynamic duo isn’t what they signed up for and claims of political corruption rotting democracy.
People only get to votes on the next election once they feel they got duped on the last one.
Comment #140 June 22nd, 2026 at 10:14 am
Baffled #130
“ literally noone participating in this blog discussion was even alive at the time, and the new generations care more about the standards of what’s happening right now than 80+ years ago”
This typifies Progressive thought-all that matters is what I feel right now. Forget the past and screw the future I am sad right now and that is all that should be considered.
I suspect that you don’t know Stalin asked for an arrack on Dresden since it was strategic rail junction that could move men and matériels to Germany’s eastern front. Also that the British considered the attack on civilians a response to constant attacks on British civilians.
Sorry but I see your self assuredly superior attacks on Israel as existing in an emotional state devoid of knowledge of history and without reasonable expectations of the future. You (you in a general sense) have created quite the magnificent moral castle for yourself in the relative vacuum of the instant.
Comment #141 June 22nd, 2026 at 10:54 am
I pretty agree what you said. Only one thing, I do not think Nvidia is selling its chips to China. They quitted from the Chinese market. I neither think by selling Nvidia chips to China will directly let the US lose the AI race.
Comment #142 June 22nd, 2026 at 11:08 am
Baffled_Liberal #132 and #139: Well yes, it’s not exactly news to me that we Jews are outnumbered orders-of-magnitude-to-one in a brutal narrative war! I need not be reminded that we’re up against enemies who will take any little story of Jewish perfidy—true, false, exaggerated, missing context, whatever—and amplify it a millionfold with every available megaphone, while denying or minimizing the vastly larger atrocities that were committed against us and any facts that would exonerate us.
This, you might say, is simply the situation we’ve been in as a people for most of the three millennia of our existence (it used to be that we were poisoning the wells, baking Christian children’s blood into matzo, manipulating currencies, etc.)—except now turbocharged and made even worse by social media.
If you say that Israel and its supporters could be doing a better job on the PR front, then I’m with you 3000%, and would even be grateful for any ideas! But I also see this as one of the hardest PR problems in the history of the world. It’s like, I look at Sam Harris and Douglas Murray and Haviv Rettig Gur, all of whom are 100x better at making Israel’s case than I am, and they’re fighting a desperate, losing Sisyphean battle, so how much hope is there for a socially-unskilled quantum computing theorist like me? 🙂
Comment #143 June 22nd, 2026 at 11:10 am
OhMyGoodness #126
“The Persians are migrants”
Again with the mental gymnastics. Everyone is a migrant then, even the Native Americans that crossed Beringia. Also what you are saying is patently false. Persian history is over 2,500 years old(rough estimate), and have nothing to do with any “Khans”.
Comment #144 June 22nd, 2026 at 11:17 am
Israel and incels #136: Well yes, of course many incels (not all of them) are also antisemites! Once you have a paranoid conspiracy mindset for any reason, antisemitism is then the biggest attractor basin that there is.
There are also nerds who are anti-Jewish, Jews who are anti-nerd, and even Jews who are anti-Jewish and nerds who are anti-nerd. I’m sure people into intersectionality could write multiple PhD theses on the topic.
All the same, I stand by my basic view that antisemitism can, indeed, be profitably understood as the singling out of the weird nerd for bullying on the schoolyard, just scaled up by a factor of a trillion and sustained for 3,000 years.
Comment #145 June 22nd, 2026 at 11:19 am
Everyone: As promised, I’m closing the thread now! Thanks for participating. 🙂
Comment #146 June 22nd, 2026 at 11:19 am
Hmm, I think you’re Iran predictions aren’t taking AI into account.
If we get unaligned AGI we’re all paperclips. If we get aligned AGI, surely it just ends all human wars. The existence of an Israeli state just doesn’t matter at that point.
If LLMs don’t become AGI, I think they still differentially benefit Israeli security (both because they’ll benefit global security and because Israel is higher tech).
Comment #147 June 25th, 2026 at 6:43 am
[…] Scott Aaronson writes ‘never trust a t-rex.’ As in, do not mistake ‘you can convince a powerful entity to for now do things that help your side’ with that entity being your ally, or valuing the things you value. Power will by default not care about what you care about, and will sell you out at the drop of a hat when convenient, and likely will get mad at you and punish you if you try to stand on principles other than loyalty to power or love of money and power. Consider this a warning for all sides of what is happening in AI. […]