Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • September 1, 2026 11:11 AM

@ ResearcherZero,

With regards the actually unprovoked attack on Iran by Israel[1]. And then the moops[2] in the US Congress that allowed the Executive to behave irrationally in support. Thus as far as I can tell against International Treaties… But worse against US National and International Interests and National Security.

I’ve indicated that the days of “carrier groups” was over as China then Russia have developed long range hypersonic missiles and the Ukraine and Iran have led development of Air, Surface, and Subsurface drones.

The latter can be “bottom squatting” and virtually undetectable till they launch up and become directed mines.

It’s becoming clear of late that Iran both has, and now deploys subsurface drones that attack ships in the same way that mines and torpedoes do by blowing holes in the ships hulls below the water line.

Ukraine mainly has gone for very low profile surface drones. The disadvantage of which is the damage is less for any quantity of explosive and it’s at or above the waterline. The advantage is the controlled range and attack speed and that they can overcome certain anti-submarine defences.

It’s because of these long range hypersonic missiles and mine/torpedo replacing/augmenting drones that I’ve said “the day of the carrier group” is over.

To see why we know that Russia has developed long range torpedo’s that have nuclear warheads that can navigate hundreds if not thousands of miles into harbours and ports.

Such systems can easily become “bottom squating” and if detonated below a carrier group will sink or debilitate most of it long before it’s attack aircraft or other forces can get in range.

But fun fact for the “Right to Repair” proponents, DMCA 1201 applies to the US Navy and other armed forces as much as it does to Grandpa Crabapple and his John Deere tractor and now just about every car made in the past decade.

Thus if a generator breaks down on a ship the Navy articifers who would in the past have fixed it in a day or less are now nolonger to do so. It has to either wait untill the ship reaches “safe harbour” or the Navy gets “company men” “on call out”, which is not likely to happen in a war zone.

So the ship has to “do without” now imagine what happens if it’s a food freezer or sewage macerator or down stream pumping system.

You will quite predictably get the pictures you have seen.

Many years ago Issac Asimov started writing his “Foundation Series” in one of the books he describes a war that is lost by the aggressor because of “trade goods” of the White Goods form. In short the aggressor’s home economy collapsed due to the lack of trade goods it could not manufacture and that could only be sourced by the nation under attack.

I suspect he got the idea from watching the US Manufacturing Economy collapse as Far East nations offered what the US could not make. This got worse as US Corporations first “out-sourced” then “off-shored” production for a “quick profit” as neo-con mantra demanded.

However if you don’t manufacture trade goods then you gut the wages of people who are in fact your customers. So who buys your off-shore manufactured goods?

But you also “off shore the skill base” so you can not easily bring manufacturing back on shore

Even what you do manufacture on shore is almost entirely dependent on components that can not be manufactured in the US and with the best will in the world will take 20-30 years to do so in a way that will give National Economic Security.

It’s something we can see with Russia and it’s munitions, it can not make the components for the anti-jam GNS or for the other types of precision navigation systems… So they have to “sanctions bust” at significant cost.

But there is another cost I’ve mentioned before it’s often called “Economic Churn”. Simplistically every unit of currency in an economy generates ten times as much “economic activity”…

Now consider what happens when you,

1, Remove a unit of currency from the home economy.
2, Add that unit of currency to a foreign competitive economy.

Arguably it has a hundred times the benefit for the competitive economy over the home economy.

Those neo-con “get rich quick” mantras are long term destroying the US Economy way beyond recovery.

The fact that the quirks of those mantras means the US can nolonger field a navy or supply it with systems that can be relied upon to keep it at full activity. In effect means the war was lost before it got started…

And Fridges/Freezers behaving oddly and not in a timely repairable way is just the very tip of a massive iceberg problem.

[1] It should be clear by now that the Premier is not just in political trouble but legal trouble and very probably with little doubt is an international War Criminal. The only way he can retain his position thus stay out of prison is by “endless warfare” that pleases a certain small minority thus gets him “political support”.

[2] See second meaning in,

https://everydaytrain.wordpress.com/2008/10/06/moops/

Though over time the meaning has changed a bit in England and it is now slang for,

“A group of crazy people”

That are not exactly comical, more like clowns in their behaviours that generally defy logic and reason and cause observers to just shake their heads in disbelief and at best laugh nervously.