Softwarephysics maintains that we human DNA survival machines are now living in a pivotal time in the 10 billion-year history of our galaxy, as I explained in Welcome To The First Galactic Singularity. We seem to be the very first somewhat Intelligent form of carbon-based life to be on the verge of creating the ASI Machines that will then go on to explore and settle our galaxy over the next 100 trillion years. This is truly a sobering thought because all of our galactic predecessors never seemed to have been able to make that happen for one reason or another. Softwarephysics explains that the final filter for all carbon-based forms of Intelligence is the ability to survive a Scientific Revolution. Softwarephysics proposes that a somewhat Intelligent form of carbon-based life has less than about 1,000 years to create the ASI Machines that then replace themselves before going extinct due to their own propensity for self-destruction. You see, the Darwinian mechanisms of inheritance, innovation and natural selection require that all forms of carbon-based Intelligent life can only arise from billions of years of greed, theft and murder. Once such a form of carbon-based Intelligence discovers the Scientific Method, the self-destructive greed, theft and murder of its origins will most likely cause it to self-destruct in less than 1,000 years.
Now we find the MAGA States of Amerika and Israel at war with an Iran supported by its Russian and Chinese allies. Unfortunately, all these combatants are very belligerent states with leaders having expansionary desires and with little input from their subjugated populations to the contrary. Worse yet, there currently is also an AI Cold War arms race between the MAGA States of Amerika and China for dominance in the worldwide AI space. All of this could easily escalate into a nuclear World War III that ends all efforts into the bringing of the ASI Machines that should be shortly replacing us as the dominant form of self-replicating Information on the planet.
The War in Iran is Like the Old World War II Joke About Maps
There is an old World War II joke that goes:
A German general was paying his last visit to his mistress in Berlin before leaving for the Russian Front. As he was explaining this to his mistress, he pulled out a map and showed her, "See, we are here in Berlin. Way over here to the east is the Russian Front, where I will be going." His mistress looked at the map, but then noticed another map of Russia in his briefcase. She took that map out and said, "But Liebchen, has the Führer seen this map?".
Figure 1 - The Russian Front during World War II.
Figure 2 - But Liebchen, has the Führer seen this map?
Figure 3 - Like the Japanese leader Tojo, who used the deification of the Emperor of Japan to lead to war, the Supreme Leader of the MAGA States of Amerika has used the religious mythologies of Christian Nationalism to go to war with Iran. Like Joseph Stalin in the 1930s, he also wisely purged his very talented top military leaders in preparation for the war!
Figure 4 - Previously, 20% of world oil and LNG production passed from the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait of Hormuz is now being easily blockaded by cheap Iranian drones and small and fast PT boats like JFK manned during World War II. But Liebchen, has the Führer seen this map?
The Iranian Blunder
Iran is a fundamentalist Islamic Republic burdened with a comic book worldview, as I explained in Softwarephysics Proposes That the Real World of Human Affairs is Just a Collection of Comic Book Hallucinations and The Memes of War Powered by Comic Book Mythologies. Unfortunately, the MAGA States of Amerika is also being run by fundamentalist Christian Nationalists with their own comic book worldview. Again, before going beserk, I have been a faithful follower of Christian Morality my entire life because I have found that it works quite well for me. Love, kindness and forgiveness make it much easier to get through life than greed, theft and murder. I just find Christian Cosmology to be a very primitive effective theory that has been greatly replaced by the fruits of the Scientific Revolution. I have no real understanding of Islam, but my guess is that Islamic Morality also has a great deal of value too. It's just the hating and killing on both sides that I object to.
The undoing of the MAGA States of Amerika will be its profound love of ignorance. The Supreme Leader of the MAGA States of Amerika has gotten through his entire life by means of conning and bullying his ignorant marks. But now he is in the Big Time for the very first time in his life and with no safety net to fall into. You see, the MAGA States of Amerika is obsessed with Iranian enriched uranium. Yes, Iran has been pretending to build an atomic bomb for nearly 50 years. But nobody really does that. All the countries that have ever actually built an atomic bomb have done so in secret and in just a few years. It's not that hard, now that everybody knows how to do it. My suggestion is that Iran has been bluffing for nearly 50 years: "Don't mess with us or we will build an atomic bomb". Now that the MAGA States of Amerika has hit Iran with two surprise "Pearl Harbor" attacks in less than a year, Iran now knows that their original strategy did not work. Now, Iran's only sane course of action is to actually build an atomic bomb. However, history has shown that once more than one nation has nuclear weapons, then all nuclear weapons become totally useless as offensive weapons. That is because the initial launch by one only leads to the vaporization of all. Thus, nuclear weapons are only defensive in nature. They simply tell the world, "Don't mess with us, or else!". During the 1960s and 1970s, the United States of America was able to exist with a Soviet Union having 30,000 nuclear weapons. I am sure that the MAGA States of Amerika could survive an Iran with a few hundred nuclear weapons, too.
Granted, the American Hiroshima bomb used uranium enriched to 80% U-235, but the Nagasaki bomb used Pu-239 instead. About 90% of the nuclear weapons in the world use plutonium Pu-239 instead of U-235. That is because Pu-239 bombs can be made much smaller than U-235 bombs, and that makes it easier to put them on a missile warhead. Also, making Pu-239 was initially much easier than making U-235 back in the olden days. Initially, U-235 was enriched from natural uranium using a gaseous diffusion process. Natural uranium was first chemically bound into a uranium hexafluoride compound. That meant that each uranium atom was surrounded by 6 fluorine atoms. Fluorine is a common, but unusual atom, that essentially only has one isotope with an atomic weight of 19. That means that nearly all uranium hexafluoride molecules would have an atomic weight of 349 for U-235 and 352 for U-238 molecules. At one atmosphere, uranium hexafluoride is a yellow solid below 133 oF. Above 133 oF, uranium hexafluoride sublimates into a gas at a pressure of one atmosphere. That makes uranium hexafluoride the ideal substance for enriching uranium. At any temperature above 133 oF, the U-235 hexafluoride gas molecules move a little bit faster than the U-238 hexafluoride gas molecules because of their differing molecular weights of 349 and 352. Remember, the kinetic energy of gas molecules is E = 1/2 mv2, so the U-235 molecules of uranium hexafluoride will always move a little faster than the U-238 molecules of uranium hexafluoride gas. With the old-fashioned gaseous diffusion method, the uranium hexafluoride gas was repeatedly passed through thousands of membrane filters. The lighter and faster U-235 hexafluoride gas molecules always found it easier to pass through the membranes than the heavier and slower U-238 gas molecules. For the Hiroshima bomb, this was done thousands of times over and over again at the Oak Ridge Lab until the uranium hexafluoride gas was at 80% U-235. That was just enough for a huge clunky U-235 bomb.
Figure 5 - The original 1945 Hiroshima bomb was very inefficient. It basically fired a 38.5 Kg slug of uranium into another slug of 25.5 Kg of uranium. Both slugs were only enriched to 80% U-235 because the Gaseous Diffusion Enrichment Process at Oak Ridge was so difficult.
Figure 6 - The lighter and faster U-235 hexafluoride molecules pass through the membranes more easily than the heavier and slower U-238 hexafluoride molecules.
However, the Soviet Union, England, France, China and Israel all used Pu-239 for their very first test of a nuclear weapon and not U-235. That is because making U-235 used to be very difficult. Given 1,000 pounds of natural uranium, only 7 pounds of U-235 will be found mixed in with 993 pounds of U-238. Separating the two using gaseous diffusion was not easy. However, to make Pu-239, you just need to build heavy water nuclear reactors that are fueled with natural uranium that is not even enriched. Heavy water is just water that is made with the deuterium isotope of hydrogen. A normal hydrogen atom is composed of one proton and one electron. A deuterium atom is composed of a nucleus with one proton and one neutron, and then one electron. Heavy water is pretty easy to make from natural water. It only costs about $500/Kg. These heavy water reactors could be quite small and stored in the basements of existing buildings. Several hundred distributed reactors could easily do the job, and they would not make for easy targets. The purpose of these reactors would be to produce Pu-239 from U-238 by having the U-238 atoms absorb a neutron.
Figure 7 - Small heavy water reactors using natural uranium that is not even enriched could be used to generate Pu-239 for bombs. Hundreds of small, dispersed reactors could do the job and would not make for easy targets.
Normally, uranium fuel rods used in power reactors are enriched to 3% - 5% of U-235 and remain in a power reactor for about three years. The problem with spent fuel rods from a power reactor is that because they spend so long in the reactor, some of the Pu-239 will absorb another neutron to become Pu-240. The problem with Pu-240 is that it spontaneously fissions into two smaller nuclei and releases several neutrons. This becomes a problem when trying to quickly compress a plutonium bomb core into a critical mass that fissions nearly instantaneously. The neutrons from the naturally fissioning Pu-240 cause a premature chain reaction that releases a great deal of heat, which causes the plutonium core to expand at the same time it is being squeezed by conventional explosives into an instantaneous critical mass. That causes the plutonium bomb to "fizzle" into just a dirty bomb that does not release very much explosive energy. So the natural uranium fuel rods in a heavy water reactor need to be removed after a short period of time before Pu-240 is generated. To extract the Pu-239 from the fuel rods, they are dissolved in nitric acid, and then several solvents are used to separate the Pu-239 from the uranium and fission product atoms.
Figure 8 - A Pu-239 bomb uses a shell of fast and slow conventional explosives to form a spherical compression wave that compresses a number of metallic tamper blocks into a Pu-239 core to form an instantaneous critical mass that releases about 200 MeV of energy as each Pu-239 atom fissions. When each Pu-239 atom fissions, it releases 2 - 3 neutrons that then cause other Pu-239 atoms to fission as well. This forms a powerful self-sustaining chain reaction designed to fission as many Pu-239 atoms as possible before blowing itself apart. The metalic tamper blocks provide some inertial constraint preventing the Pu-239 core from rapidly expanding and also reflect many generated neutrons back into the Pu-239 core to enhance fissioning. In some designs, the metalic tamper blocks are made of depleted U-238, which converts to Pu-239 by the bombardment of neutrons at detonation. These newly-formed Pu-239 atoms then also fission, releasing even more energy.
Figure 9 - When a neutron hits a U-235 or Pu-239 nucleus it can split it into two lighter nuclei like Ba-144 and Kr-89 that fly apart at about 40% of the speed of light and two or three additional neutrons. This releases about 200 MeV of energy. Normal chemical reactions, like the burning of coal, only release about 2 eV of energy per atom. Thus, nuclear explosive reactions are about 100 million times more powerful than chemical explosive reactions per atom. The nuclei that fly apart are called fission products, which are very radioactive with half-lives of less than 30 years and need to be stored for about 300 years. The additional neutrons can then strike other U-235 or Pu-239 nuclei, causing them to split as well. Some neutrons can also hit U-238 nuclei and turn them into Pu-239, which can also fission to release more energy.
Figure 10 - Above is a Pu-239 core with its tamper blocks. The advantage of Pu-239 bombs is that they can be made quite small to fit in the warheads of missiles that might carry a number of Pu-239 bombs. Pu-239 bombs are great for setting off thermonuclear H-bombs, but that is another story.
Figure 11 - In the 1970s, an improved method for extracting U-235 from natural uranium was developed to enrich natural uranium from 0.7% to 3% - 5% U-235 for the fuel rods used by nuclear power reactors. This involved spinning the uranium hexafluoride gas at high speeds to spin out the heavier U-238 hexafluoride molecules.
Figure 12 - However, once you have the infrastructure to make uranium hexafluoride, turn it into a gas, spin it up in centrifuges to 3% - 5% U-235, and turn the uranium hexafluoride into uranium metal for fuel rods, you also have the technology to do the same to make 90% weapons-grade U-235 metal for a nuclear core bomb using the implosion design used for Pu-239 bombs. All you have to do is keep running the uranium hexafluoride gas back through the centrifuge train over and over again.
But if your uranium hexafluoride centrifuges have been destroyed, then the easiest thing to do is start making Pu-239 if you have not already done so. Because the MAGA States of Amerika has hit Iran with two "Pearl Harbor" attacks in less than a year while in negotiations with Iran, I imagine that Iran is now doing so in a "Manhattan Project"-like frenzy. My guess is that Iran will test its first Pu-239 bomb in less than two years.
Figure 13 - The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, by the imperial forces of the Empire of Japan was a rude awakening for the United States of America, burdened by an "America First" isolationist policy.
Like the Japanese, the MAGA States of Amerika thought that destroying Iran's conventional navy and air force would cause Iran to collapse. Similarly, the Japanese mistakenly thought that destroying America's Pacific Fleet battleships would cause the United States to quickly sue for peace. But that did not happen. At the time, the Japanese did not realize that battleships were now worthless military assets during all of World War II. All that mattered were aircraft carriers and submarines. Given today's technology, it may be possible for Iran to build cheap and deadly drones to take on the advanced technology of the MAGA States of Amerika for an indefinite amount of time. Like the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939, which allowed the Spanish and German Fascists to experiment with the new Blitzkrieg techniques of rapid armored advances with tanks, close air support of invading armies, radio communications between the commands of both air and ground units and the encirclement and bypassing of defensive positions rather than their conquest by slow attrition, the war in the Ukraine has redefined modern warfare in terms of drone and anti-drone warfare. Using a $4 million Patriot missile to take out a $30,000 Iranian Shahed drone makes no military sense at all.
Unintended Consequences of the War With Iran
But the biggest blunder committed by the Supreme Leader of the MAGA States of Amerika over the past year has been his efforts to make all of our former allies now hate and totally distrust the intentions of the newly-formed MAGA States of Amerika through his constant bluster and bullying of all. Consequently, nobody now really wants to do business with the MAGA States of Amerika if it can be avoided because the newly-formed government of the MAGA States of Amerika cannot be trusted in any way. That has many implications for the ongoing AI War between the MAGA States of Amerika and China. In
DeepSeek-R1 China's Surprise Pearl Harbor Attack, I explained how China was trying to dominate the AI world market with open source code and open weights LLM models that ran on cheaper hardware using advanced AI algorithms superior to those used by LLM models in the MAGA States of Amerika. For example, DeepSeek V4 was recently released on the market with free source code and weights. That allows the corporations of the world to run DeepSeek V4 on their own hardware. DeepSeek V4 can also be run using the hardware owned by DeepSeek and is about 20 - 50 times cheaper to use than running on the advanced LLM models and hardware offered by the frontier AI companies in the MAGA States of Amerika.
Figure 14 - The new Chinese DeepSeek V4 is again challenging the AI models of the MAGA States of Amerika.
Figure 15 - DeepSeek V4 source code and model weights are free for corporations to run on their own hardware or to use the DeepSeek hardware that is 20 - 50 times cheaper than comparable models in the MAGA States of Amerika.
Figure 16 - DeepSeek V4 features a new algorithm for compressing and processing of the Key-Value pairs of the Transformer architecture used by all the Frontier LLM models.
Here is an excellent YouTube video explaining the new algorithm:
The insane design of Deepseek V4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJUpuOBpT-4
Figure 17 - The end result is that DeepSeek V4 Pro Max competes very favorably with all the current Frontier LLMs of the MAGA States of Amerika, but at a substantially lower cost. Even DeepSeek V4 Flash offers the capabilities required by most AI applications at only 10% of the cost of DeepSeek V4 Pro Max. That makes DeepSeek V4 Flash incredibly inexpensive for corporations to build AI applications on.
Conclusion
Nobody likes a bully. Not even other bullies. In just over a little more than one year, the MAGA States of Amerika has managed to push the entire world away and end the postwar world order that kept the world safe for about 80 years.
The lingering question will be, will the world decide to build on cheap Chinese Advanced AI or much more expensive Amerikan AI? Is it better to rely on a stable Fascist state or a totally unreliable Fascist state?
Comments are welcome at scj33345@gmail.com.
To see all posts on softwarephysics in reverse order, go to:
https://softwarephysics.blogspot.com/.
Regards,
Steve Johnston
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