From the file of un-intelligence and how not to go to war, Russia continues rapidly grinding its own troops into shallow graves at an alarming rate.
Russia began its tank-heavy assault on the eastern Ukrianian city of Avdiivka in October last year and has lost five battalions worth of equipment since.
To put it another way:
Ukrainian analysis group Frontelligence Insight scrutinized satellite imagery and verified all 211 wrecked and abandoned vehicles. Its tally aligns with a U.S. intelligence assessment, which concluded the Russians have lost 220 vehicles around Avdiivka—and 13,000 people, too. Most of the losses occurred in the first month of the Avdiivka battle starting in early October. After a few weeks, desperate Russian commanders switched up their tactics, and sent in the infantry on foot.
American M2 Bradleys equipped with the 25mm M242 Bushmaster have been getting at least some of the credit.
“Bradleys of the 47th Mech were scything the Russians to the left and right like there was no tomorrow,” Hill wrote. Against the M-2’s powerful 25-millimeter autocannons, the Russian fighting vehicles “stood not much chance.”
In related news, from the accounting department for “fail-faster” authoritarians, Russia is predicted to increase its own suffering to 500,000 killed and wounded.
The UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has estimated that half a million Russian personnel will have been killed and wounded by 2025 if current casualties continue on the same trajectory. […] They claimed the increase “almost certainly” reflects the degradation of Russia’s forces and its transition to “a lower quality, high quantity mass army”.
It’s literally what “fail faster” results in, which should be a wakeup call to anyone thinking about such concepts in terms of AI technology safety.
Is your AI strategy fed by techno-autocrats, like the Russian degradation to lower quality in high quantity?
More to the point, American fighting vehicles are defined by human augmentation study (e.g. engineering and economics), whereas Russian leaders (like Tesla management) fell foolishly into an abyss of automation future fantasy (e.g. belief and fiction).
This isn’t just a war we can ignore, since (as in many military conflicts) it gives a window into what’s coming for everyone who touches technology. Perhaps the lesson not being discussed enough is: don’t throw your company into a big data lake when nobody knows how to swim, let alone serve as your lifeguard. This used to be called fog of war (as I warned here in 2015)
Beware especially the engineers who re-brand mistakes as being “too perfect” or completely rational, as if they don’t know who McNamara is or what he taught us. Because if you forget history you might be condemned to automate it.
In other words, you can’t learn to swim by drowning faster.
The MoD prediction also includes an estimate of up to ten years lost before Putin could train and field a notable military presence again; an epic loss of power dramatically undermining Russian national security. The question soon becomes whether Russia flailing and floundering will drag Iran or North Korea down under water with them too, spreading instability into the Mid-East and Asia.