The U.S. has the world’s most advanced military, but the unforgiving economics of wars in Iran and Ukraine show quantity has a quality all its own 

The U.S. war on Iran has laid bare a dichotomy in the world’s most advanced military: high-tech weapons and AI have delivered stunning blows at unprecedented speed, while defending against the swarm of missiles and drones launched in retaliation have come at unsustainably lopsided costs.

Led by a massive air campaign, the U.S. has claimed more than 7,000 strikes on key sites, with Israel conducting a comparable number of sorties, as AI tools like Anthropic’s Claude recommend targets “much quicker in some ways than the speed of thought.” The relentless bombardment has decimated Iran’s military and leadership.

But helped by the mass production of cheap drones, the forces that are left still retain enough combat power to attack Gulf neighbors and scare away commercial tankers from the Strait of Hormuz, keeping 20% of the world’s oil bottled up.

Iran’s retaliatory barrage has also forced the U.S. and its allies to draw down expensive stockpiles of interceptors. The tactic highlights the brutal economics of the current war: missiles that cost millions of dollars each are shooting down drones that cost tens of thousands of dollars. In other words, it’s like the U.S. is using a Formula 1 racer to fight off a ...