The era of quick decisive military victories may be over. Russia has failed to defeat Ukraine after three years. The U.S. and Israel face grinding attrition with Iran. The mechanism: cheap mass-produced weapons impose costs orders of magnitude higher than themselves. A motivated defender with commercial drone technology sustains attritional defense indefinitely.
Nuclear weapons democratized deterrence among great powers in the 20th century; drone warfare is democratizing conventional military capability in the 21st. Iran, spending $23 billion on defense, has sustained combat against a nation spending $900 billion. A nation with one million motivated citizens, commercial technology access, and willingness to absorb casualties can impose unacceptable costs on any attacker.
Jiang Xueqin’s viral 2024 analysis predicted Trump’s return, a U.S.–Iran war, and American difficulties—using historical analogies including the Sicilian Expedition. His core argument: Iran spent twenty years preparing asymmetric capabilities for exactly this confrontation. Two of three predictions materialized. The lesson is not prophetic insight but that cost-asymmetric warfare produces foreseeable outcomes surprising only those clinging to conventional superiority assumptions.