Can you think of another situation that was this self-inflicted in American history?

In this interview, Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner examine the day-11 U.S.–Iran war, arguing that regime change is unlikely, costs are rising, and public support is weak. Rosner compares the conflict to Iraq and Vietnam, warning that wars launched on optimistic assumptions can spiral into prolonged disasters. Jacobsen emphasizes logistics, legitimacy, and domestic endurance as decisive factors beyond battlefield tactics. They also discuss AI ethics in military surveillance, celebrity-targeted crime in Los Angeles, Kari Lake’s turmoil at Voice of America, and the broader consequences of politicized governance, weakened institutions, and reckless decision-making in an unstable technological age today.

Rick Rosner: This is day 11 of the current U.S.–Iran war. Estimates of the cost vary, and there is no official Pentagon figure yet, so the safest phrasing is that the war is already extremely expensive and is creating broader economic disruption. Oil prices have surged, and analysts have warned about major effects on energy markets and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

Polymarket does not suggest that regime collapse is likely in the near term. Current betting markets give roughly a 7 percent chance that the Iranian regime will fall by March 31 and about an 18 percent chance that it will fall by June 30. On that basis, it looks less like a likely outcome than a long-shot gamble.

I do not know which historical examples Trump and Hegseth were referring to. Iraq is the obvious comparison, but it is not reassuring. The 2003 invasion of Iraq began on March 20, and Baghdad fell on April 9, so the regime collapsed in about three weeks. That outcome reflected very specific political and military conditions that are not easily replicated.

I do not think the United States should put boots on the ground. Tehran is a vast city of roughly 9 million people, with a metropolitan population far larger. Urban warfare would be extremely destructive and difficult. It is unrealistic to assume that an external military force could march in and topple the regime.

Gasoline prices have risen amid the conflict, though the exact figures change frequently. Recent reporting has placed the U.S. national average above $3 per gallon, with war-related disruptions contributing to the upward pressure. Polling shows significant public unease. Some surveys have found that roughly half of Americans oppose continued military escalation, while only about a third support it. Support for wars typically declines over time, so the political trajectory is uncertain.

The situation appears ill-advised and poorly planned. Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defence, served as a major in the Army National Guard and had earlier deployments. However, he never served at the senior command levels typically associated with planning and managing large-scale wars. Historically, major operations have been overseen by senior generals with extensive strategic experience.

The structural reality remains that ultimate authority rests with the president as commander in chief. Senior military officers advise and implement strategy, but they do not independently determine national war aims. That responsibility sits at the political level, and the success or failure of the war will ultimately be judged there.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: That framing makes sense. The key point is that modern wars are not decided only by battlefield tactics. They are decided by logistics, political legitimacy, economic endurance, and the ability to sustain domestic support. When any of those pillars weaken, the strategic picture can change quickly.

Iran is also a far more complex target than Iraq was in 2003. It has a larger population, a deeper state structure, and a network of regional allies and proxy groups. Even if the United States achieved tactical military success, translating that into regime change would be an entirely different challenge.

The deeper issue is that wars often begin with optimistic assumptions about timelines and outcomes. History repeatedly shows that those assumptions are frequently wrong. Strategic planning has to account not only for the best-case scenario but also for the worst-case scenario and the long, messy middle that most conflicts actually occupy. Can you think of another situation that was this self-inflicted in American history?

Rosner: The second Gulf War, the Iraq War, was built on false premises. Even though the United States initially had success with the regime falling, with Saddam Hussein removed within about a month of the ground invasion, the aftermath led to a prolonged insurgency and civil conflict that killed hundreds of thousands of people. Estimates of the total cost to the United States run into the trillions of dollars.

The central justification for the war was the claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Those weapons were never found. After the first Gulf War in 1991, when Iraq invaded Kuwait and was pushed back by a U.S.-led coalition, Saddam appeared to have avoided rebuilding such programs in any meaningful way.

The Iraq War accomplished relatively little in terms of long-term stability. It resulted in massive loss of life, significant regional destabilization, and limited strategic benefit for the United States. This current situation risks evolving in a similar direction.

Afghanistan was different in some respects. The United States remained there for roughly twenty years, and the total cost of the war has been estimated at around $2.3 trillion. About 2,400 U.S. service members were killed during that period. While every loss is significant, the scale was far smaller than the roughly 58,000 American deaths in the Vietnam War.

During those two decades, the United States and its allies controlled much of Afghanistan and provided a period in which the Taliban were largely kept out of major urban centers. Some analysts believed that maintaining a relatively small U.S. force—around a few thousand troops—might have sustained the government in Kabul and prevented a rapid Taliban takeover. That approach would have required ongoing financial costs and continued military risk, though casualties in the later years of the war were comparatively low.

If you are looking for other examples of large, costly American wars with questionable outcomes, Vietnam stands out. The Vietnam War cost more than 58,000 American lives and left a profound impact on a generation of veterans and on American society more broadly.

This war could become as costly and destabilizing as the Iraq War or Vietnam, depending on how deeply the United States commits to it. If the United States were to declare limited objectives achieved and withdraw quickly—for example, claiming that Iranian military capacity had been degraded—then it would not reach the scale of those earlier conflicts.

The question is whether the political leadership is willing to limit the scope of the conflict or whether it will expand into something much larger.

Jacobsen: Anthropic says the Pentagon is basing AI use restrictions on a blacklist approach.

Rosner: The issue there involves how the U.S. government wants to use advanced AI systems. Intelligence and security agencies collect enormous amounts of information: intercepted communications, open-source material, satellite imagery, and surveillance footage. The United States also has extensive camera coverage in many public spaces. The challenge is that human analysts cannot realistically review all that data, so governments increasingly turn to AI systems to filter, search, and analyze it.

The government has explored using AI tools from companies such as Anthropic to assist with analysis. Anthropic has publicly stated that it places limits on how its models can be used, particularly for civilian surveillance and for fully autonomous weapons systems. The company has argued that such uses raise safety and ethical concerns.

When companies refuse certain government uses, it can affect their eligibility for particular defence or intelligence contracts. Governments sometimes restrict or deprioritize vendors they believe will not meet operational requirements. Meanwhile, other AI companies, including OpenAI and several defence-focused startups, have been more open to collaborating with government agencies within specific policy frameworks.

The broader debate concerns whether AI should be integrated into military and intelligence systems at all, and if so, under what safeguards. Popular culture has explored these fears for decades. Films such as The Terminator and WarGames dramatized scenarios in which automated systems made catastrophic decisions without sufficient human oversight. While those stories are fiction, they raise legitimate questions about how much authority should ever be delegated to automated systems.

Many researchers emphasize that AI should remain under meaningful human control, particularly in high-risk domains such as weapons systems or strategic decision-making. The concern is not that machines suddenly become sentient villains, as in the movies, but that complex automated systems can behave unpredictably when given too much autonomy.

There is also a cultural anxiety about the pace of technological change. Modern AI capabilities are advancing rapidly, while political leadership and regulatory systems often struggle to keep up. That mismatch—very powerful technology combined with imperfect governance—makes many observers uneasy.

As for the cultural references, James Cameron, who directed The Terminator, has spent significant time in New Zealand while filming the Avatar series. New Zealand is often cited in speculative discussions about nuclear survivability because of its geographic isolation in the Southern Hemisphere, though Cameron’s relocation is primarily tied to filmmaking and lifestyle rather than geopolitical contingency planning.

The deeper issue is that societies now have extremely powerful tools for surveillance, analysis, and automation. The central question is not whether those tools will exist, but how carefully they will be governed.

Jacobsen: Shots were fired at Rihanna’s house in Beverly Hills. What are your thoughts, and is that common in Hollywood?

Rosner: It does happen, unfortunately. There have been several burglaries targeting celebrities in Los Angeles and other wealthy areas. In many cases, criminals monitor social media to figure out when celebrities are travelling or out of town, then break into their homes while they are away. Something similar has happened to several entertainers and professional athletes. If a sports team is playing an away game, for example, that can signal that a player’s home might be empty.

Because of that, many high-profile individuals invest heavily in security systems, cameras, alarm services, and sometimes in-person security guards. Maintaining that level of protection can be extremely expensive, but it has become common for people with public profiles and valuable property.

Crime patterns have also changed over time. In the United States, violent crime and street crime peaked in the early 1990s and declined significantly afterward. A range of factors contributed to that decline, including demographic changes, policing strategies, economic shifts, and higher incarceration rates during that period. At the same time, burglary and targeted property crime still occur, particularly in wealthy neighbourhoods where valuable goods are concentrated.

When criminals focus on residential burglary rather than street robbery, they often target homes that appear wealthy or temporarily unoccupied. That pattern helps explain why celebrities and high-profile athletes sometimes become targets.

Jacobsen: A U.S. judge has blocked actions taken by Kari Lake in 2025 as head of Voice of America, including certain job cuts. What is your reaction?

Rosner: Kari Lake is a former television news anchor who ran for governor of Arizona in 2022. She lost that race and later ran for the U.S. Senate in 2024. After becoming a prominent political ally of Donald Trump, she was appointed in 2025 to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the federal entity that oversees Voice of America and several other international broadcasting services.

Voice of America was created during World War II and operates as an international broadcaster that provides news and information to audiences worldwide, particularly in places where independent media are restricted. Its mandate is to present accurate news about the United States and global events while reflecting democratic values.

Several controversial management decisions, including staff reductions and organizational restructuring, marked Lake’s tenure. A federal judge later ruled that some of those actions could not proceed, effectively pausing or reversing parts of the restructuring. Judicial intervention in these cases usually centers on administrative law questions—whether proper procedures were followed, whether statutory authority was exceeded, or whether employment protections were violated.

Situations like this reflect broader tensions about how government-funded international media should operate and how much political influence should be allowed in agencies designed to provide independent journalism abroad.

The discussion then shifted to the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. USAID has long been one of the primary channels through which the United States provides humanitarian assistance abroad, including food aid, health programs, and disease treatment. Programs supported by the agency have included major efforts to combat HIV/AIDS through initiatives such as the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which has helped provide antiretroviral treatment to millions of people worldwide.

Debates about USAID often center on oversight, effectiveness, and foreign policy priorities. Supporters argue that humanitarian aid saves lives and strengthens international stability. Critics sometimes claim that the agency is inefficient or mismanaged, although audits generally find that only a very small fraction of expenditures involve fraud or improper spending.

The larger political conflict reflects competing views about the role the United States should play in global humanitarian assistance and international development.

Jacobsen: All right. We will continue tomorrow.

Rick Rosner is an accomplished television writer with credits on shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Crank Yankers, and The Man Show. Over his career, he has earned multiple Writers Guild Award nominations—winning one—and an Emmy nomination. Rosner holds a broad academic background, graduating with the equivalent of eight majors. Based in Los Angeles, he continues to write and develop ideas while spending time with his wife, daughter, and two dogs.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen is a Writer-Editor for www.rickrosner.org with more than 2,000 collaborative short-form and long-form interviews with Rick Rosner. He is the Founder and Publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343; 978-1-0673505) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN, 0018-7399; Online: ISSN, 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), Humanist Perspectives (ISSN: 1719-6337), A Further Inquiry (SubStack), Vocal, Medium, The Good Men Project, The New Enlightenment Project, The Washington Outsider, rabble.ca, and other media. His bibliography index can be found via the Jacobsen Bank at In-Sight Publishing. He has served in national and international leadership roles within humanist and media organizations, held several academic fellowships, and currently serves on several boards. He is a member in good standing in numerous media organizations, including the Canadian Association of Journalists, PEN Canada (CRA: 88916 2541 RR0001), and Reporters Without Borders (SIREN: 343 684 221/SIRET: 343 684 221 00041/EIN: 20-0708028), and others.

Photo by Brandon Mowinkel on Unsplash

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