September 10, 2026: The Iran War, which is not yet over, has already killed over 600 military personnel, a number that may exceed a thousand before it is all over. Most, 143 aircraft of the Iranian Air Force were lost, along with 32 ships of the Iranian Navy as well as more than a hundred of the speedboats the IRGC uses to harass ships in the Persian Gulf or, as they are now trying to do, plant enough naval mines to halt traffic out of the Gulf. Those mines were disposed of as fast as the Iranians could put them into the water. American AH-64 gunships and A-10 attack aircraft went after any remaining Iranian boats, or new ones the Iranians procured to continue trying to block traffic from leaving the Gulf.

The Iranians are not accustomed to defeat; the last time they lost a war was in 1828, against the Russians. The Persians lost some territory. Persia did not become Iran until the 1930s. Many people in the region still call Iran Persia, a nation that has dominated regional affairs for thousands of years. There was an incident in 1941 when Russia and Britain feared that the pro-German Iranian ruler might seek an alliance with Nazi Germany. That was not the case, but just to be sure, Soviet, Russian, and British Empire forces launched a six-day incursion with about a dozen divisions and a few small warships. At the time, Iranian forces consisted of nine infantry divisions, several scattered across the country, plus 60 aircraft and a few patrol craft. The incursion, as violent as it was brief, resulted in 1,300 Iranian fatalities, most of them military. The British and Russians lost 62 dead and about as many wounded. The current Reza Shah (Emperor) was replaced by his son, Crown Prince Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who ruled until 1979, when Muslim religious leaders overthrew the monarchy and established an Islamic dictatorship.

The Americans are not accustomed to losing either, leaving Vietnam in 1973, undefeated but without eliminating the threat from North Vietnam. A similar situation ended the 1950-53 Korean War. Those two wars left over 80,000 Americans dead. The more recent Afghanistan War killed 2,500 Americans, followed by the Iraq War that killed 4,500 Americans. Both wars were classified as victories, but they left intermittent violence in their wake.

Another way to lose is in the media and history books. In the battle between the military and the media, the troops are losing. The reason is simple economics. For the media, military defeats are more profitable than military victories. Good news doesn't sell. This causes problems when you are fighting a war.

In the 1980s, the U.S. Department of Defense introduced the concept of Information War. This new combat arena included traditional battles over communications networks (which were growing increasingly complex and important), information itself, and the impact of mass media on military operations. This last aspect was a result of how the mass media turned on U.S. operations in Vietnam after 1968. Ironically, the Tet Campaign triggered that turnaround. This desperate attempt by the communists to trigger a mass uprising in South Vietnam was a major defeat for the communists and destroyed the local guerrilla movement, the Viet Cong. But the media spun it as an American defeat, and the Department of Defense was still trying to figure out how they could avoid repeats of the Tet experience. But while the military pondered solutions, the news business went through a transformation that rendered the Tet experience irrelevant. In the last twenty years, TV news has become less a public service and more a profit center. Ratings, and the resulting advertising revenue, became paramount. Public service went out the window, and competition for viewer eyeballs became everything.

The best example of this change was the reporting of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. During the month of fighting that led to the fall of Baghdad, 51 percent of the U.S. network news stories were negative. By late 2003, nearly 80 percent were negative. During the 2004 Presidential elections, 89 percent were negative, and by 2006, over 90 percent were negative. This was despite a long string of additional victories. The media became increasingly reluctant to interview the troops because they told a story quite different from what the TV news media was spinning.

Then something else happened. In the mid-1990s, the Internet came along, and a decade later, over a billion people were connected to it. Most young people, and an increasing number of older ones, were now getting most of their news from the internet. That's where the troops, and other non-journalists who have been to Iraq, or are still there, could tell their story. Compared to network news, the internet is amateur night. But the shift in where the eyeballs are looking is striking. The audience for the network news gets older every year. Younger viewers get their news online. While much of that news is still created by the traditional mass media, a lot of it comes from blogs and independent news analysts. Traditional news outlets matter less now than they used to, and less with each passing day.

This leaves the Department of War wondering what their Information War strategy should be. The most recent move was to pump out more raw material to the general public, and thus the independent, internet-based news outlets. These operations don't have to invent bad news in order to survive. In the end, the internet may solve the military's problem of getting an accurate report of its operations to the public.