American-owned sata centers are actually legal targets, because they’re used to process intelligence and provide strike targets. They’re basically equivalent to a CIA office. Israel also does this.
American tech companies provide cloud computing and AI services to both the US and Israel, and obviously these services work through data centers, meaning that some data centers somewhere are legal targets, but it’s impossible to know which. I’d argue that this makes all data centers run by relevant companies for cloud computing and similar services valid military targets.
Since when was fucking Israel a guide on how to conduct legal war?!? Christ.
No no, as in: Israel also uses AI assisted targeting like America.
So, would you say Russia is legitimate in striking infrastructure like power plants which are mostly used for civilian purposes but might power military buildings as a small percentage of their use?
Would Iran be justified, if it had a nuclear weapon, of dropping it on Tel Aviv, wiping out the civilian population alongside the Israeli Air Force headquarters?
Proportionality is a key concept in military planning. It’s not the case that one drop of military utility makes something a legitimate target. It’s certainly not if you only know that the minority military use is somewhere among many different locations and just bomb any of them on the off-chance.
So, would you say Russia is legitimate in striking infrastructure like power plants which are mostly used for civilian purposes but might power military buildings as a small percentage of their use?
For starters nothing Russia does in this war is legitimate because the war itself is illegitimate, but that aside: No, because as you said there’s no proportionality. Depriving civilians of power—a human right—is not proportional to cutting off power from a military building that likely has emergency power anyway.
Would Iran be justified, if it had a nuclear weapon, of dropping it on Tel Aviv, wiping out the civilian population alongside the Israeli Air Force headquarters?
See above, the lives of civilians are paramount. The difference between data centers and these examples is that Amazon data centers aren’t necessary for any human rights, nor are they particularly important for civilian life. It’s little damage to civilians for little military gain. If you have five empty luxury resorts and one military headquarters and can’t distinguish between them (or all six are alternately used as military headquarters at random times), I’d say it’s a fair decision to bomb all six. It’s analogous to a factory that makes 90% shoes and 10% bullets. I also want to emphasize the importance of these facilities—AI-based targeting produces orders of magnitude more targets than human intelligence officers, allowing for orders of magnitude more strikes. When you’re running a mass bombing campaign, running out of things to bomb is legitimately a thing that happens.
By this logic, schools are valid targets because they are educating future CIA recruits and Walmart is a valid target because it’s providing the food to fuel them.
Great the US also launched an illegal war in Iraq, ever hear about that Sun Tzu guy? Call me crazy but an illegally invaded country no longer has to follow the rules of war, the whole idea of a social contract.
Nope, that’s not generally how the laws of war work.
I say “work” but because there’s no international police force to arrest anyone for breaking it, this is more like philosophical theorising, but that’s how it’s conceived of, still.
To take the social contract analogy, if someone steals your phone, you generally have the legal right to use reasonable force to get it back, and if the thief gets hurt, tough shit. But if you track him to his house, burn it down and sodomise him, you’re a psycho and going to jail.
Domestic law recognises exceptions for actions that are otherwise illegal to try and rectify another cringe; prosecuting a war in self defence is similarly an exception to the general prohibition on war, but “reasonable force” is analogous to “proportionality” - you don’t get the right to carpet bomb Dubai because you got missiled by the USA.
There are two kinds of legal war: one sanctioned by the UN, and one fought for self defence. Retaliation is generally understood to be self defence, as a deterrent against further attacks.
So Iran’s retaliation has the potential to be legal, but by attacking everyone and their dog, they commit war crimes anyway.
The US and Israel claim the war is self defensive to prevent Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon, but this is not under the purview of self defence, which requires an imminent attack, not an improbable, repeated tale about nukes which could have been dealt with diplomatically. Of course Trump has offered a number of other justifications for the war all of which are even worse.
These are facts, do with them as you please. I see facts are not good enough for the majority who disliked my comment above for having the temerity to point out that Iran, of all countries, was doing something wrong.
Reflecting on this, I think it’s fair to consider the International Court of Justice (part of the UN) to be a legal system with legitimate jurisdiction over most countries - even if it’s frequently unable to enforce its law. And therefore it’s reasonable to describe a war as “illegal”, wrt the UN.
But I do believe it’s a pointless description - I can’t think of any legal wars, especially if one believes committing war crimes makes even a UN-sanctioned war illegal. I consider it a propagandic description used to put spin on a war. (And just adding that on a personal level, I believe legality is irrelevant to morality and acceptability)
Retaliation is generally understood to be self defence, as a deterrent against further attacks.
While the statement may be true, I want to emphasize that a common tactic is for a country to harass or suppress another country until they retaliate, and claim that retaliation is in fact unprompted aggression which must be retaliated against. While there are notable cases of this in the past decade, this tactic is tried and true across centuries. Therefore, we often see wars where both sides claim self-defense, and both their blocs generally understand their side to be justified.
I think everything you said is true, except there have been a couple of legal wars. The intervention in Kosovo was sanctioned by the UN for example. The UK carried out a legal war of self defence when Argentina invaded its overseas territory of the Falklands. Ukraine is legally trying to repel Russia.
I wouldn’t say that committing war crimes makes the entire war illegal, either.
In the end “it’s illegal” is a shorthand; it expresses a certain kind of reasoned opposition but shouldn’t automatically be the end of the conversation.
Not how the laws of war work, not even when you don’t like the targets.
The USA launched an illegal war, Iran retaliated illegally (targeting civilian infrastructure, of uninvolved countries), USA is escalating illegally.
American-owned sata centers are actually legal targets, because they’re used to process intelligence and provide strike targets. They’re basically equivalent to a CIA office. Israel also does this.
Got any evidence of that? If so, then I agree targeting them would likely be legal.
Since when was fucking Israel a guide on how to conduct legal war?!? Christ.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/03/iran-war-heralds-era-of-ai-powered-bombing-quicker-than-speed-of-thought
American tech companies provide cloud computing and AI services to both the US and Israel, and obviously these services work through data centers, meaning that some data centers somewhere are legal targets, but it’s impossible to know which. I’d argue that this makes all data centers run by relevant companies for cloud computing and similar services valid military targets.
No no, as in: Israel also uses AI assisted targeting like America.
So, would you say Russia is legitimate in striking infrastructure like power plants which are mostly used for civilian purposes but might power military buildings as a small percentage of their use?
Would Iran be justified, if it had a nuclear weapon, of dropping it on Tel Aviv, wiping out the civilian population alongside the Israeli Air Force headquarters?
Proportionality is a key concept in military planning. It’s not the case that one drop of military utility makes something a legitimate target. It’s certainly not if you only know that the minority military use is somewhere among many different locations and just bomb any of them on the off-chance.
Oh, and ok, sorry for the misunderstanding.
For starters nothing Russia does in this war is legitimate because the war itself is illegitimate, but that aside: No, because as you said there’s no proportionality. Depriving civilians of power—a human right—is not proportional to cutting off power from a military building that likely has emergency power anyway.
See above, the lives of civilians are paramount. The difference between data centers and these examples is that Amazon data centers aren’t necessary for any human rights, nor are they particularly important for civilian life. It’s little damage to civilians for little military gain. If you have five empty luxury resorts and one military headquarters and can’t distinguish between them (or all six are alternately used as military headquarters at random times), I’d say it’s a fair decision to bomb all six. It’s analogous to a factory that makes 90% shoes and 10% bullets. I also want to emphasize the importance of these facilities—AI-based targeting produces orders of magnitude more targets than human intelligence officers, allowing for orders of magnitude more strikes. When you’re running a mass bombing campaign, running out of things to bomb is legitimately a thing that happens.
There are civilians working inside data centers, and they also provide services to civilians - some of which are critical and some are not.
Because they train your guys?
They train your cops too.
By this logic, schools are valid targets because they are educating future CIA recruits and Walmart is a valid target because it’s providing the food to fuel them.
Great the US also launched an illegal war in Iraq, ever hear about that Sun Tzu guy? Call me crazy but an illegally invaded country no longer has to follow the rules of war, the whole idea of a social contract.
Nope, that’s not generally how the laws of war work.
I say “work” but because there’s no international police force to arrest anyone for breaking it, this is more like philosophical theorising, but that’s how it’s conceived of, still.
To take the social contract analogy, if someone steals your phone, you generally have the legal right to use reasonable force to get it back, and if the thief gets hurt, tough shit. But if you track him to his house, burn it down and sodomise him, you’re a psycho and going to jail.
Domestic law recognises exceptions for actions that are otherwise illegal to try and rectify another cringe; prosecuting a war in self defence is similarly an exception to the general prohibition on war, but “reasonable force” is analogous to “proportionality” - you don’t get the right to carpet bomb Dubai because you got missiled by the USA.
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What the fuck is an “illegal war”? Are there countries out there who give invaders permission to destroy them?
It’s politician speak to make the public assume it’s morally just.
There are two kinds of legal war: one sanctioned by the UN, and one fought for self defence. Retaliation is generally understood to be self defence, as a deterrent against further attacks.
So Iran’s retaliation has the potential to be legal, but by attacking everyone and their dog, they commit war crimes anyway.
The US and Israel claim the war is self defensive to prevent Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon, but this is not under the purview of self defence, which requires an imminent attack, not an improbable, repeated tale about nukes which could have been dealt with diplomatically. Of course Trump has offered a number of other justifications for the war all of which are even worse.
These are facts, do with them as you please. I see facts are not good enough for the majority who disliked my comment above for having the temerity to point out that Iran, of all countries, was doing something wrong.
Reflecting on this, I think it’s fair to consider the International Court of Justice (part of the UN) to be a legal system with legitimate jurisdiction over most countries - even if it’s frequently unable to enforce its law. And therefore it’s reasonable to describe a war as “illegal”, wrt the UN.
But I do believe it’s a pointless description - I can’t think of any legal wars, especially if one believes committing war crimes makes even a UN-sanctioned war illegal. I consider it a propagandic description used to put spin on a war. (And just adding that on a personal level, I believe legality is irrelevant to morality and acceptability)
While the statement may be true, I want to emphasize that a common tactic is for a country to harass or suppress another country until they retaliate, and claim that retaliation is in fact unprompted aggression which must be retaliated against. While there are notable cases of this in the past decade, this tactic is tried and true across centuries. Therefore, we often see wars where both sides claim self-defense, and both their blocs generally understand their side to be justified.
I think everything you said is true, except there have been a couple of legal wars. The intervention in Kosovo was sanctioned by the UN for example. The UK carried out a legal war of self defence when Argentina invaded its overseas territory of the Falklands. Ukraine is legally trying to repel Russia.
I wouldn’t say that committing war crimes makes the entire war illegal, either.
In the end “it’s illegal” is a shorthand; it expresses a certain kind of reasoned opposition but shouldn’t automatically be the end of the conversation.
Don’t these countries host US bases?
Retaliating with strikes against us bases was not illegal.
yes, bases that are used as springboards for the american air force