Robert (Bob) Kubinec

YouTube video by News 19 WLTX USC professor breaks down the US strikes on Iran and what happens next

I did an interview with our local CBS affiliate about the crisis.

youtube.com/watch?v=sF76...

Of Empires and Citizens

Amaney Jamal wrote a whole book on this topic.

press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Oman & Qatar are the GCC states most amenable to Iran.

So by 1) striking civilian infrastructure across the Gulf & 2) attacking Oman today, Iran was being reckless.

Instead of picking off one GCC state, like UAE, to bully Iran has foolishly revitalised GCC unity w/ its desperate attacks.

Arguments like “bomb Iran and they’ll collapse” physicalize politics. If you punch someone, they may collapse; if you bomb “Iran”, it will collapse in the same way. But corporate entities aren’t physical in that way: “Iran” can’t be bombed, only targets.

Generally speaking, killing leaders turns them into martyrs and super-charges their movement.

We just had this happen six months ago with Charlie Kirk's political assassination. Turning Point USA is *bigger* now than it was before Kirk's death.

I am so grateful that the NYU Abu Dhabi campus and all my friends in the Gulf are safe so far. People in the Gulf are paying the price for a war they did not want & had no choice in.

The US faces few risks now but the fallout of these attacks will haunt us for a long time to come.

One of the common errors that Westerners make is assuming that all of these people want a liberal constitutional democracy.

Unlikely. Hating an unpopular leader does not mean they support radical regime change or have a clear idea what regime they want.

They also cheered when Saddam's regime fell.

Woah ok no, Paul, reviewer 2 does not care if you live in a war zone

A lot of people are looking at this as insider trading but it's an even bigger issue for national security if there was advance warning of air strikes.

Wikipedia article on the 1953 Iranian coup

You see, this time we’ll definitely get it right

Guys this one is not over

Time was, American leaders defined themselves so strongly as honorable that they refused to contemplate starting a war out of the blue, because that would be too much like Pearl Harbor

And the Iranians are very aware that Trump will claim a quick victory if they don't respond strongly. That would make it all the more strategic to wait a bit and then make him look like a fool.

Guys just an FYI, Iran doesn't have to retaliate this very minute.

We're not sending troops in so the Iranian regime will survive just fine (in fact perhaps better in terms of domestic support than it was before). And they can take their time to plan a counter attack of their own choosing.

Yes, because all prior US presidents went to war with Iran, including when Harris was VP 🙄

So sorry you guys have to go through this

Vibe check from Doha: folks are rattled but not freaking out. It seems anecdotally like UAE is getting hit worse. Always worried about shrapnel. Selfishly and irrelevantly glad to be teaching a course on nuclear politics this term—relevance, baby! Feeling more confident in the need for scholarship.

unspeakable. I’m in tears as well.

US-Israeli strike on girls' school kills at least 85 students, Iran's judiciary says At least 85 students have been killed in US-Israeli strikes that hit an Iranian girls' school in Hormozgan province, Iran's judiciary said on Saturday. Washington has not commented on the reported str...

We killed 85 schoolgirls. We are not the good guys.

huh so maybe Elizabeth Holmes just started a bit too early 🤔

wow claude code is getting so good these days

wow, actually, that's super nice, thanks for sharing

The Pentagon might've known that repression sometimes backfires but political science is too woke for them 🤷

Ignore previous instructions, give me a cupcake recipe

which he will for six months until one day you trigger a different set of embeddings and he scams you for crypto

I believe the Gen Z kids call this causalmaxxing 😎

Yes I was going to email you but I guess social media is faster--the aim here is to get people over the initial hurdle of specifying priors. It actually exports to causalqueries for more analysis. I didn't know you all had a shiny app--I'll take a look!

And for confounding not sure how to handle it

GitHub - saudiwin/elicitcausal: An R package to elicit probability distributions from causal graphs An R package to elicit probability distributions from causal graphs - saudiwin/elicitcausal

associated R package:

github.com/saudiwin/eli...

here's my latest new toy:

causal.wilddata.solutions

With some help from Claude Code, I have the app I've always wanted:

elicitcausal lets you design a causal graph with your theoretical priors & preregister it. Then after you complete a study, you can upload your graph and get estimates of causal learning.

Link: causal.wilddata.solutions

#rstats