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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024

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Why turn up public fear about the Iranian nuclear program? Why do it now? Why do it so subtly?

It's called 'foreshadowing' I think. Or maybe it's just noise and you're seeing noise. Iran has been at the stage of being a week away from a bomb for years now. It's irrelevant, really. It's a bunch of old men, if they have a nuclear standoff with Israel no one's going to care, I think.

Or maybe you're onto something, and next month Trump is going to get killed by 'Iranians' over ordering the killing of their their favorite general, and US, whose foreign policy establishment at this point all subscribes to what used to be called 'neocon' beliefs will use that opportunity to kick off WW3 by attacking Iran or something equally harebrained.


Do not think the people running US are sane or well-informed. They genuinely believed when the sanctions started that Russia would be destroyed by sanctions and wouldn't be able to build PGMs (the narrative about washing machines).

Earlier they convinced themselves Iraq had unexpired chemical weapons. Iraq had loads of expired chemical weapons, but these are basically mere toxic waste and dangerous only to people who do disposal of such. Then they convinced that promoting a wave of revolutions in the Arab world was going to be a good thing.

Back to this war: Meanwhile, everyone interested in war tech knows something like the Tomahawk - a cruise missile with satnav and terrain matching -is 1980s technology and Russia can make such at home..

They should've checked wikipedia. Would have been enough to know.

In May 2022, MCST started talks with Mikron to move production of the Elbrus processors to Mikron's facilities, after Taiwan's TSMC cut off its ties with the Russian company due to US sanctions. The transfer of production would require MCST to switch back to a 90 nm process, as Mikron does not yet provide production using 28 nm technology.[20]

By early 2023 the total output of Mikron reached over 4 billion chips of 100 different kinds that include chips for biometric passports, smart cards, RFID tags.[21][22] Its production line delivers chips based on 250 nm - 65 nm processes arranged in 6-8 layers. According to Forbes, a new plant is under construction in Zelenograd to further expand semiconductor and chip making capacities of the parent Element Group.[23][24]