Elon vs. Altman: What Their Infrastructure Stacks Reveal About Power

Everyone’s obsessed with the Elon Musk vs. Sam Altman lawsuit. Ronan Farrow’s 18-month investigation. Molotov cocktails. Sister allegations. A $134 billion legal battle over OpenAI’s soul.

But they’re all asking the wrong question.

It’s not “who’s the good guy?” It’s not “who should we trust with AI?” It’s not even “who’s going to win the lawsuit?”

The right question is: What does their infrastructure stack reveal about their actual theory of power?

Because here’s the thing about tech founders: They lie constantly. To investors, to users, to regulators, to themselves. But their products don’t lie. The infrastructure they choose to build. What they spend billions of dollars actually constructing reveals their real theory of survival.

Don’t listen to what they say. Look at what they build.

Elon Musk and Sam Altman are building for completely different endgames. And understanding the difference tells you everything you need to know about the actual stakes of their conflict.

Elon’s Stack: Collapse-Proof Sovereignty

Let’s start with Elon, because his infrastructure stack is massive and most people don’t understand how comprehensive it actually is. Every single piece is designed to function when legacy systems fail. This isn’t paranoia; it’s strategic architecture.

Tesla: Energy Independence

Solar panels. Powerwall battery systems. Electric vehicles. Supercharger network.

Translation: You don’t need the electrical grid. You don’t need oil. You don’t need gas stations. You don’t need the energy sector’s supply chains. If the grid goes down natural disaster, cyberattack, economic collapse, political breakdown. Tesla owners keep running. Solar generates power. Batteries store it. Vehicles consume it. The entire energy loop is self-contained. That’s not about environmentalism. That’s about Energy Sovereignty.

Starlink: Communications Independence

Over 5,000 satellites in low Earth orbit. Global internet coverage. Bypasses all terrestrial infrastructure.

Translation: You don’t need undersea fiber optic cables. You don’t need cell towers. You don’t need ISPs. You don’t need government-controlled telecommunications infrastructure. If a government shuts down the internet like Iran during protests, like Russia during Ukraine invasion. Starlink still works. You have communications capability independent of state control. That’s not about rural broadband. That’s about Information Sovereignty.

SpaceX: Logistics Independence

Reusable rockets (Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Starship). Cheapest launch cost per kilogram in human history. Point-to-point Earth transport capability. Orbital manufacturing potential.

Translation: You control access to space. You can move cargo anywhere on Earth in under an hour. You can put satellites into orbit cheaper than any nation-state. You can potentially manufacture things in zero-gravity that are impossible to make on Earth. If traditional supply chains break. Shipping disrupted, airspace restricted, borders closed. SpaceX can still move things. Anywhere. Fast. That’s not about exploration. That’s about Logistics Sovereignty.

The Deeper Play: Rockets Are Mythos

The Mars colonization narrative isn’t just a business plan. It’s a founding myth.

Think about how legitimacy works:

Ancient kings claimed “Divine Right” they were chosen by the gods to rule.

Democratic leaders claim “Popular Mandate” they were chosen by the people through voting.

Elon is building something different: “Cosmic Mandate”. He’s the one saving humanity by making us multi-planetary. “I’m building the infrastructure to preserve human consciousness across multiple worlds.”

If you’re the person who saved the species from extinction by establishing a backup civilization on Mars, you’re not just a CEO. You’re not even just a political leader. You’re a Civilizational Founder. Like the people who established Rome, or the American republic, or any nation-state that becomes the foundation for centuries of subsequent history. Mars isn’t the goal. It’s the mythology that justifies rule. The founding story that makes everything else legitimate. 

[more]...

This is “Post-State Capability”. The ability to function and to maintain power when traditional state infrastructure is unavailable, hostile, or collapsed.

Elon’s not hoping for collapse. But he’s not betting against it either.

His thesis is simple: “The system will fragment. Build infrastructure that makes you powerful in the aftermath.” If collapse happens, He owns:- Energy systems- Communications networks- Logistics capability- Information channels- Labor (automated)- The founding myth (savior of humanity) That’s not a business portfolio. That’s a blueprint for post-state power.

Altman’s Stack: Acceleration-Dependent Fragility

Now let’s look at Sam Altman’s infrastructure.

OpenAI/ChatGPT: Centralized, Grid-Dependent, Fragile

OpenAI is building toward Artificial General Intelligence through massive-scale computing infrastructure. Current commitments: $1.4 trillion in data center buildout over 8 years.

This requires:

• Stable energy grid (data centers consume gigawatts → entire power plants worth of electricity)

• Chip manufacturing (NVIDIA GPUs, TSMC fabrication→ Taiwan and South Korea must remain stable and accessible)

• Cooling infrastructure (water, HVAC systems, constant temperature regulation)

• Fiber optic networks (global connectivity, low-latency communication)

• Capital markets (functioning financial system to fund trillion-dollar buildouts)

• Regulatory stability (permitting, zoning, environmental compliance, AI development allowed)

Notice the dependency structure?

Elon’s stack works when systems fail. Altman’s stack requires every system to keep working simultaneously.

The Vulnerability Comparison

Elon without electrical grid:

• Still has Tesla solar panels generating power
• Still has Powerwall batteries storing energy
• Still has Starlink satellites providing internet
• Still has rockets for logistics
• Still has underground tunnels for transit
• Still has robots for labor
• Still powerful

Altman without electrical grid:

• Data centers go dark immediately
• ChatGPT stops responding
• Training runs halt
• No product, no revenue, no value
• Completely powerless

The contrast is stark. Elon’s infrastructure is “distributed and resilient”. Altman’s infrastructure is centralized and fragile.

What Does Altman Actually Want?

So if Altman’s building such a vulnerable stack, what’s the theory?

Look at what he’s actually building with AI. Not what he says but what he builds.

He’s NOT focusing on:

• AI companionship (even though Character.ai and Replica prove this is hugely profitable)

• Entertainment AI (even though this is the biggest consumer market)

• Social AI (even though emotional dependency creates the strongest lock-in)

He’s focusing on:

• AI for scientific research (drug discovery, materials science, physics)

• AI for productivity (coding assistants, automation, reasoning)

• AI for problem-solving (complex systems, coordination challenges)

This is the tell. He’s explicitly said he was surprised people want emotional bonds with ChatGPT, and he’s not leaning into it.

Why?

by MythcoreOps |  Read more:

Images: uncredited

Birth of a Nation

From Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American: April 19, 2026

On the evening of April 18, 1775, the people who lived in the British colony of Massachusetts had gone to bed with the sun, as usual. By the evening of April 19, everything had changed. In the past twenty-four hours, soldiers from their own government had opened fire on them, killing their own people. And Massachusetts men had fired back.

It was hard to understand how things had gotten so bad. Only a dozen years before, at the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, Bostonians had looked forward to a happy future in the British empire. British authorities had spent time and money protecting the colonies, and colonists saw themselves as valued members of the empire. They expected to prosper as they moved to the rich lands on the other side of the Appalachian Mountains and their ships plied the oceans to expand the colonies’ trade with other countries.

But that euphoria faded fast. Almost as soon as the war was over, to prevent colonists from stirring up another expensive struggle with Indigenous Americans, King George III prohibited the colonists from crossing the Appalachian Mountains. Then, to pay for the war just past, the king’s ministers pushed through Parliament a number of revenue laws.

In 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, requiring the payment of a tax on all printed material—from newspapers and legal documents to playing cards. It would hit virtually everyone in the North American colonies. Knowing that local juries would acquit their fellow colonists who violated the revenue acts, Parliament took away the right to civil trials and declared that suspects would be tried before admiralty courts overseen by British military officers. Then Parliament required colonials to pay the expenses for the room and board of British troops who would be stationed in the colonies, a law known as the Quartering Act.

But what Parliament saw as a way to raise money to pay for an expensive war—one that had benefited the colonists, after all—colonial leaders saw as an abuse of power. The British government had regulated trade in the empire for more than a century. But now, for the first time, the British government had placed a direct tax on the colonists without their consent, a right the king had guaranteed to Englishmen in the Magna Carta of 1215. Then it had taken away the right to a trial by jury—also a historical right—and now it was forcing colonists to pay for a military to police them.

Far more than money was at stake. The fight over the Stamp Act tapped into a struggle over a profound question of human governance: Could the king be checked by the people?

This was a question the colonists were perhaps uniquely qualified to answer. While the North American colonies were governed officially by the British crown, the distance between England and the colonies meant that colonial assemblies often had to make rules on the ground. Those assemblies controlled the power of the purse, which gave them the upper hand over royal officials, who had to await orders from England that often took months to arrive. This chaotic system enabled the colonists to carve out a new approach to politics even while they were living in the British empire.

Colonists naturally began to grasp that the exercise of power was not the province of a divinely ordained leader, but something temporary that depended on local residents’ willingness to support the men who were exercising that power.

The Stamp Act threatened to overturn that longstanding system, replacing it with tyranny.

When news of the Stamp Act arrived in Boston, a group of dockhands, sailors, and workers took to the streets, calling themselves the Sons of Liberty. They warned colonists that their rights as Englishmen were under attack. Lawyer John Adams recognized that the Sons of Liberty were changing the political equation. He wrote that gatherings of the Sons of Liberty “tinge the Minds of the People, they impregnate them with the sentiments of Liberty. They render the People fond of their Leaders in the Cause, and averse and bitter against all opposers.”

John Adams’s cousin Samuel Adams, who was deeply involved with the Sons of Liberty, recognized that building a coalition in defense of liberty within the British system required conversation and cooperation. As clerk of the Massachusetts legislature, he was responsible for corresponding with other colonial legislatures. Across the colonies, the Sons of Liberty began writing to like-minded friends, informing them about local events, asking after their circumstances, organizing.

They spurred people to action. By 1766 the Stamp Act was costing more to enforce than it was producing in revenue, and Parliament agreed to end it. But it explicitly claimed “full power and authority to make laws and statutes...to bind the colonies and people of America...in all cases whatsoever.” It imposed new revenue measures.

News of new taxes reached Boston in late 1767. The Massachusetts legislature promptly circulated a letter to the other colonies opposing taxation without representation and standing firm on the colonists’ right to equality in the British empire. The Sons of Liberty and their associates called for boycotts on taxed goods and broke into the warehouses of those they suspected weren’t complying, while women demonstrated their sympathy for the rights of colonists by producing their own cloth and drinking coffee rather than relying on tea.

British officials worried that colonists in Boston were on the edge of revolt, and they sent troops to restore order. But the troops’ presence did not calm the town. Instead, fights erupted between locals and the British regulars.

Finally, in March 1770, British soldiers fired into a crowd of angry men and boys harassing them. They wounded six and killed five, including Crispus Attucks, a Black man who became the first to die in the attack. Son of Liberty Paul Revere turned the altercation into the “Boston Massacre.” His instantly famous engraving showed soldiers in red coats smiling as they shot at colonists, “Like fierce Barbarians grinning o’er their Prey; Approve the Carnage, and enjoy the Day.”

Parliament promptly removed the British troops to an island in Boston Harbor and got rid of all but one of the new taxes. They left the one on tea, keeping the issue of taxation without representation on the table. Then, in May 1773, Parliament gave the East India Tea Company a monopoly on tea sales in the colonies. By lowering the cost of tea in the colonies, it meant to persuade people to buy the taxed tea, thus establishing Parliament’s right to impose a tax on the colonies.

In Boston, local leaders posted a citizen guard on Griffin’s Wharf at the harbor to make sure tea could not be unloaded. On December 16, 1773, men dressed as Indigenous Americans boarded three merchant ships. They broke open 342 chests of tea and dumped the valuable leaves overboard.

Parliament closed the port of Boston, stripped the colony of its charter, flooded soldiers back into the town, and demanded payment for the tea. Colonists promptly organized the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and took control of the colony. The provincial congress met in Concord, where it stockpiled supplies and weapons, and called for towns to create “minute men” who could fight at a moment’s notice.

British officials were determined to end what they saw as a rebellion. In April they ordered military governor General Thomas Gage to arrest colonial leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who had left Boston to take shelter with one of Hancock’s relatives in the nearby town of Lexington. From there they could seize the military supplies at Concord. British officials hoped that seizing both the men and the munitions would end the crisis.

But about thirty of the Sons of Liberty had been watching the soldiers and gathering intelligence. When the soldiers set out on the night of April 18, two Sons of Liberty flashed two lanterns in the steeple of the Old North Church—the highest point in Boston—to signal to watchers that the soldiers were traveling across Boston Harbor to Charlestown. Armed with that knowledge, messengers could avoid the troops and raise the alarm along the roads to Lexington and Concord.

Paul Revere and William Dawes headed for Lexington. There, they warned Adams and Hancock and then set out for Concord. They picked up young doctor Samuel Prescott, who had been in Lexington courting, on their way. British soldiers stopped Revere and Dawes, but Prescott got away and made it to Concord. As they heard the news, families set off a system of “alarm and muster” developed months before for just such an occasion, ringing bells and banging drums to alert the next house that there was an emergency.

Just before dawn on that chilly, dark April morning, militiamen had heard the news and were converging on Lexington Green. When the soldiers marched onto the Lexington town green in the darkness just before dawn, they found several dozen minute men waiting for them. An officer ordered the men to leave, and they began to mill around, some of them leaving, others staying. And then, just as the sun was coming up, a gun went off. The soldiers opened fire. When the locals realized the soldiers were firing not just powder, but also lead musket balls, most ran. Eight locals were killed, and another dozen wounded.

The outnumbered militiamen fell back to tend their wounded, and about 300 Regulars marched on Concord to destroy the guns and powder there. But news of the arriving soldiers and the shooting on Lexington town green had spread through the colonists’ communication network, and militiamen from as far away as Worcester were either in Concord or on their way. By midmorning the Regulars were outnumbered and in battle with about 400 militiamen. They pulled back to the main body of British troops still in Lexington.

The Regulars headed back to Boston, but by then militiamen had converged on their route. The Regulars had been awake for almost two days with only a short rest, and they were tired. Militiamen fired at them not in organized lines, as soldiers were accustomed to, but in the style they had learned from Indigenous Americans, shooting from behind trees, houses, and the glacial boulders littered along the road. This way of war used the North American landscape to their advantage. They picked off British officers, dressed in distinct uniforms, first. By that evening, more than three hundred British soldiers and colonists lay dead or wounded.

Even before the British soldiers made it back down the Battle Road from Concord on April 19, militiamen—both white and Black, free and enslaved—from the Massachusetts countryside, furious that soldiers of their own government had shot at them and killed their neighbors, rushed to surround Boston, laying siege to the soldiers and British officials there.

By the next morning, more than 15,000 militiamen surrounded the town of Boston. The Revolutionary War had begun.

Just over a year later, the fight that had started over the question of whether the king could be checked by the people would give the colonists an entirely new, radical answer to that question. On July 4, 1776, they declared the people had the right to be treated equally before the law, and they had the right to govern themselves.

by Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American |  Read more:

Image: The Destruction of Tea at Boston Harbor by N. Currier, 1846 (Library of Congress)
[ed. My recollection of history classes in grade school was/is pretty spotty, so this granular account of the American Revolution - on the eve of our country's 250-year anniversary, is much appreciated. No Kings.]

Did Streaming Subscription Prices Just Hit the Wall?

There are (finally) signs that the streaming prices have hit the wall. The public simply can’t afford paying hundreds of dollars per year for each platform. So I’m not surprised that a new survey shows that 55% of consumers want to cancel subscriptions right now.

This isn’t just an idle threat. According to Deloitte, 40% of consumers have already cut back on subscriptions during the previous three months. Even more revealing: 61% say they would cancel their favorite service if the price went up by just five dollars.

Let me repeat that—they would cancel their favorite service, not just any platform.

People now complain of subscription fatigue—and for good reason. If things don’t change, it will soon reach the point of subscription exhaustion. Tech companies have created this mess, and now must live with the consequences.

They did it with three exploitative strategies.

(1) Everything got turned into a subscription. [...]

(2) You’re now punished with intrusive and endless advertising if you don’t subscribe. [...]

(3) Instead of competing on quality and service, companies focus on “audience capture”—and then exploit the captives.

That’s you, by the way—you are the captive. At least that’s how you’re treated by the big tech platforms.

Years ago, these same companies started by offering stuff for free, or at a small price. They only forced through huge price increases after they had captured a huge user base. You see that strategy at Netflix, Spotify, Instagram, etc.

These companies make little effort now to improve their offerings or user interface. In many instances, quality has declined, even as they raise prices. But consumers aren’t stupid—they can see that they’re getting a shaft that won’t cop out...

But even I can’t believe how greedily they have now implemented that strategy. Spotify has raised its price three times in less than three years. It’s now asking $12.99 per month. And if you want a family subscription—which is essential in a household like mine—the price jumps to $21.99 per month.

Those are US prices, but Spotify is doing the same thing everywhere. Last summer, the company forced through price increases in 150 countries.

YouTube is even more avaricious. The company is now raising its premium subscription to $15.99 per month. And the family rate is a whopping $26.99—that adds up to $329 per year.

Video streaming companies are playing the same game. Not long ago, Netflix charged me $9.99 per month. I recently got a notice that my new price has been “updated” to $19.99. Yes that’s more than a doubling over the course of just a few years.

But Netflix may have gone too far. The company’s stock dropped 12% last week after its latest quarterly results. Investors expected the company to raise its guidance for future earnings—because of this subscription price boost. But the company refused to do so, and took a more cautious stance.

According to Morningstar analyst Matt Dolgin:

“The market likely hoped for increased full-year guidance, given that the March price hikes came as a surprise…Growth acceleration in 2027 now seems less likely.”

The more you dig into the latest earnings report, the more ominous things look. Netflix only met expectations because of the breakup fee after it walked away from the Warner’s acquisition. Without that one-time benefit, earnings per share would have dropped year-on-year.

If you try to find some good news here for the company, it comes from Netflix’s shift to advertising. This may be its growth engine in the future—because price increases are now stirring up consumer resistance.

I’d like to be able to provide specific numbers here, but Netflix now refuses to tell us the number of total subscribers. That’s revealing in itself. Not long ago, the company bragged endlessly about subscriber growth. Their silence now tells you everything you really need to know.

Three Ways to Defeat Subscription Fatigue

You aren’t helpless here. You do have options for battling subscription fatigue. Here are three of them.

For a start, customers have learned that canceling a subscription might make sense even if they are just bluffing. It’s amazing how different the rate looks if you’re willing to walk away. I recently canceled a subscription, and was offered an 80% price cut if I would reconsider.

I’m now thinking I should cancel every streaming subscription once per year—just to see what special offer I’m missing. Even if I sign up again at the old rate, I haven’t lost anything by trying this tactic.

Another way of combating costs is a rotation strategy. Under this scenario, consumers only pay for one video streaming subscription at a time. When they want to watch something on another platform, they simply cancel the current subscription and move to the new provider. This lets them watch anything they want for just one monthly payment.

Sure, it’s a hassle. But when annual subscriptions can cost $300 per year or more, consumers are increasingly willing to go to the trouble of ‘rotating’ from service to service.

Of course, you always have the final option of just walking away. Judging by the mood of the consumer, that will start happening more and more.

by Ted Gioia, Honest Broker |  Read more:

Image: uncredited/Netflix

[ed. One more option: Earlier this year I got tired of Amazon Prime's video service - more ads and almost every movie I wanted to see was either a rental or purchase. So I quit Prime altogether (or suspended my account, as Amazon put it). Then one day I saw they had exclusive rights to some movie or other that I wanted to see; they'd increased their speed of delivery in my zip code; and I really did miss free shipping and returns. So I unsuspended my account and started paying a monthly membership fee again. But... just by turning off my service for a few months I got back to my initial lower subscription rate simply by cost averaging over the year (albeit with a few less months of service). So you don't have to quit completely, just for a few months. (Might I also note that this blog has always been ad and subscription free!)]

via: uncredited

Into the Wood Chipper

The destruction of USAID was just as dumb as it seemed

On February 5, 2025, after USAID’s name had been taken off the building, after most of its staff had seemingly been placed on leave (it was hard to be sure—HR couldn’t confirm because they were also largely locked out of the system), Nicholas Enrich was called in to justify the agency’s global health programming to the Trump administration’s newly-appointed USAID leadership.

According to Enrich, he spoke for about five minutes about USAID’s lifesaving health work: diagnosis and treating HIV and malaria, immunizing children, responding to emerging pandemics. His presentation was met by silence, which senior official Ken Jackson eventually broke. “Wow, there really is so much that USAID does that we never knew,” Jackson said.

Joel Borkert, USAID’s Trump-appointed acting chief of staff, agreed: “I had no idea you did all this. As a Republican, when I think of what USAID does in global health, I assumed it was just, you know, abortions.”

Adam Korzeniewski, the White House liaison to USAID, was similarly enlightened, and he had an idea. To help raise attention to the importance of programs to fight drug-resistant tuberculosis, “he suggested that [they] draft a simple, ‘Barney-style’ set of slides to help the political leadership grasp the dangers, referring to the purple dinosaur of children’s television.”

Korzeniewski acknowledged that most of the relevant officials weren’t “health people,” but he didn’t think that applied to him—he had recently read a book on smallpox. Enrich writes that Korzeniewski had another idea, too:

“One thing I thought of while you were talking,” he added, gesticulating wildly with his hands to conjure the image in his mind. “If you can make one of those maps like they have in Outbreak, where it shows the red growing over time as the disease spreads? You know, like the zombie apocalypse? That would be great, very effective.”

Much of Nicholas Enrich’s new book proceeds like this, describing a process so surreal that it verges on the comical until you remember that millions of lives were in the balance. Into the Wood Chipper: A Whisteblower’s Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID follows the 42-day spell that took Enrich from a relatively anonymous USAID worker to its highest-ranking health official to the author of a widely-reported memo detailing the deadly consequences of the destruction of USAID.

Into the Wood Chipper occupies the somewhat unique genre of civil service thriller, only to then verge into horror. More than anything, it was a 206-page reminder that what happened was so, so murderously dumb.

by Tim Hirschel-Burns, Together But Apart |  Read more:

Image: uncredited

[ed. See also: Everyone is misunderstanding what happened to USAID (TBA):]

***

The problem is that the development sector’s reckoning with the destruction of USAID has been largely unmoored from what actually happened. The post-mortems have tended to follow a similar recipe: a dash of lamentation and a spoonful of self-flagellation, topped with one cup of the author’s pre-existing policy preferences—all of which bear a tenuous relationship to what actually doomed USAID...

When Trump took office and DOGE went into USAID, even they didn’t plan on destroying it. But two weeks later, USAID was functionally dead. In the end, the administration terminated 83% of USAID projects, shuttered USAID as an independent agency, and kept on just 300 of USAID’s over 10,000 staff in the State Department.

Angine de Poitrine

[ed. Now for something completely different (and delightful). See also: They broke the internet. Here's how they did it.]

Ship of Fools

Behind Trump’s Public Bravado on the War, He Grapples With His Own Fears

Trump campaigned on ending foreign wars but wagered that he could solve, with American air and naval power, a national security problem that had bedeviled seven previous presidents. Now, a cease-fire is in doubt, a critical trade route has been closed for weeks and Iran’s regime has been replaced with radical new leaders, all threatening to lengthen an operation that Trump has repeatedly said would only last six weeks—a deadline already missed since the war began Feb. 28.

White House officials said they believe a breakthrough in negotiations with Iran could be reached in coming days, and they are eyeing more talks in Pakistan.

The president’s impulsive style has never before been tested during a sustained military conflict. Unlike the successful operation in Venezuela, which buoyed his confidence, Trump is confronting a more intractable foe in Iran, which is so far unwilling to bend to his demands.

 
“We are witnessing astonishing military successes that do not add up to victory and that is squarely on the president and how he’s chosen to do his job—lack of attention to detail and lack of planning,” said Kori Schake, a senior fellow at the right-leaning think tank American Enterprise Institute who served on former President George W. Bush’s National Security Council.

Soon after Trump’s holiday post, aides fielded calls from Republican senators and Christian leaders. They asked, why would he say “Praise be to Allah” on Easter morning? Why would he use the F-word? Trump swears profusely in private but usually calibrates it in public and on social media.

 

When one adviser later asked him about it, he said he came up with the Allah idea himself. He said he wanted to seem as unstable and insulting as possible, believing it could bring the Iranians to the table, senior administration officials said. It was a language, he said, the Iranians would understand. But he was also concerned about the fallout. “How’s it playing?” he asked advisers. (Iran’s parliamentary speaker called the threat reckless.)

 
On the Tuesday after Easter, he issued the most dramatic ultimatum of his presidency, saying that unless Iran struck a deal in 12 hours, a whole civilization would die.

 
Again, the post was improvisational, and not part of a national security plan, the administration officials said.

People around the U.S. and the world were gripped with fear and confusion about what the president intended to do. Behind the scenes, top aides saw the move as a way to spur negotiations in a war the president was desperately ready to end. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told others privately it was language that might actually bring the Iranians to negotiate.

 
What Trump really wanted, advisers said, was to scare the Iranians, and to end the conflict. Less than ninety minutes before his deadline, Trump announced a precarious two-week cease-fire.

 
“President Trump campaigned proudly on his promise to deny the Iranian regime the ability to develop a nuclear weapon, which is what this noble operation accomplishes,” said Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary. She said the president had “remained a steady leader our country needs.”

 
Trump is keeping close score on the war, measuring how many Iranian targets have been destroyed as a key metric of success, officials said.

‘Blood and sand’

Trump’s decision to venture into the war surprised many who knew him best. “Blood and sand,” he told advisers in his first term to describe the region, explaining why he wasn’t interested in getting drawn into any Middle East conflict.

After a persuasive February briefing from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Situation Room, and repeated conversations with a group of outside allies that included Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), he said he trusted the military to pull it off. Look, he said to advisers, at how quickly they had “won” in Venezuela, where the U.S. had, in a matter of hours, captured its president and ended with his more compliant deputy in his place.

 

In Iran, the war started with the execution of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top Iranian officials. Trump was shown clips every morning of stunning explosions across the Iranian terrain. Advisers said Trump remarked to them how impressive the military was, seeming in awe of the scale of bombs.

 
But Trump had done little to sell the American public on the war, and soon grew frustrated that his administration wasn’t getting the same kind of external praise. Leavitt attributed his frustration to what she deemed unfair news coverage of the administration. His team showed him poll results for the November midterm elections that showed him the war was dragging down Republican candidates.

 
Still, Trump himself wasn’t up for re-election—and he thought a win over Iran would give him a chance to reshape the global order in a way he couldn’t in his first term, two top officials said. Trump said early in the military operation that if we get this right, we are saving the world, according to a person who heard his comments.

 
With the strait’s closure choking off some 20% of the global oil supply, energy CEOs soon grew nervous. In mid-March, Energy Secretary Chris Wright appeared at a board meeting of the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s primary lobbying group, and said the war would be over in weeks, according to people at the meeting. The energy leaders have at times worried that war would drive up prices far more than the White House seemed to appreciate if Trump continued an escalation that matched his rhetoric, people familiar with the matter said.

Trump vacillated, people close to him said, between considering economic worries in calls with advisers including Wright and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and insisting that he was going to keep the war going. He told advisers that they needed to watch the markets, and his words often moved them.

 
But Trump quickly began ruminating on how the military action could turn into a catastrophe. [...]

The strait has been a particular source of frustration. Before the U.S. went to war, Trump told his team that Iran’s government would likely capitulate before closing the strait, and that even if Tehran tried, the U.S. military could handle it, The Wall Street Journal has reported. Some of the president’s advisers were caught off guard that tanker traffic would grind to a halt so quickly after the bombing began, according to a person in contact with the White House.

Trump has since marveled at the ease with which the strait was closed. A guy with a drone can shut it down, Trump has said to people, expressing belated irritation that the key waterway was so vulnerable. He has publicly oscillated between demanding support from allies to help open it and insisting that the U.S. doesn’t need or want military assistance.

In late March—about a week before the Iranians shot down the plane—Trump had ordered his negotiating team to find a way to start talks, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

By early April, the price of gas was up by more than $1 a gallon, and industry leaders worried that the market still hadn’t properly priced the risk that the war was posing to the oil supply. The president, through his force of personality, was doing a good job talking down the price of oil, but reality would soon set in, said one person familiar with the industry.

 
But they’ve been told Trump is willing to take the political hit for higher prices for a short period of time, the person said.

The president’s competing impulses, playing out in early-morning missives, concerned his aides who were growing worried the war was becoming a political albatross. [...]

  

Trump’s top aides have taken turns telling the president that he should limit the impromptu interviews because they were only convincing the public he had contradictory messages. At times, Trump would joke with Leavitt that he had talked to a reporter and made big news, but she would have to wait and see what it was, White House officials said. For a bit, he agreed to curb them—then soon returned.

Some advisers encouraged him to do a speech to the nation. White House chief of staff Susie Wiles thought it would reassure the country that Trump had a plan. Trump wasn’t initially interested. What would he say? He couldn’t declare victory. He didn’t know where it was going. He was eventually persuaded to make the address on April 1, and aides along with outside advisers filled the room hoping to encourage him.

 
The U.S. had succeeded on the battlefield and the U.S. military objectives would be completed “very shortly,” he told skeptical Americans. The speech, which didn’t clarify how the U.S. would exit the war, didn’t increase public support.

 
Minute-by-minute rescue

The repeated crises prompted by the war have led to scrambles inside the administration.
For 24 hours over Easter weekend, Trump’s team dialed into the Situation Room: Vice President JD Vance from Camp David, Wiles from her home in Florida. They received almost minute-by-minute progress reports, of the military entering Iran, the rescue planes getting stuck in the sand, the efforts to distract the Iranians. They called the last airman by a code name.

 
Trump wasn’t included in the meeting but received updates by phone.

After Trump’s subsequent threat to destroy Iranian civilization, White House officials talked to Pakistani counterparts about mediating a cease-fire. Trump was too mad at the Europeans for any of them to serve the role, administration officials said.

 
As the world waited on the president’s 8 p.m. deadline, Trump flitted between topics, aides said. He talked to officials about endorsements in an Indiana state race. His team prepped for the midterms. He listened to officials talk about cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence policy.

 
He also asked Wiles and Steve Witkoff, the U.S.’s chief negotiator with Iran, where things stood. Push them to a deal, he told Witkoff repeatedly.

 
White House concerns about security threats have been heightened, aides said.

In recent weeks, for example, Trump and his team have noticed an increase in security. On a cloudless night in April at Mar-a-Lago, every umbrella was up on the patio in an unusual arrangement, guests said. Club members were told that there was an effort to limit drone visibility, a Mar-a-Lago member said.

 
Rubio told others about standing outside his home at the military compound where he lives and watching a suspicious drone, administration officials said. Secret Service protection teams have expanded to carry weapons White House officials had never seen before.

 
Despite the high pressure moments, Trump has also told advisers he wants to talk about other topics and see the media focus on other issues. When guests showed up for a meeting of Kennedy Center officials in March, the president pulled some of them aside to talk about the ballroom he is constructing on White House grounds. Out came drawings showing a large hole in the ground—he was amazed at all that could be built underneath. Advisers said he has multiple meetings a week on the topic and views himself as the general contractor.

Also on his mind: raising money for the midterms. Hours after the war began on the last Saturday in February, he was at a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago. When some staff questioned if they should cancel it, Trump said he would have to eat dinner regardless.

 
At another gathering, one night after threatening to end Iranian civilization, Trump stood in the White House with donors and top staff for a reception ahead of America’s 250th celebration this summer. He mused about giving himself the nation’s highest military honor, the Medal of Honor, designed to honor bravery, courage and sacrifice, according to people who were at the reception.

 
He then told a story about why he said he deserved it: In his first term as he flew into Iraq for a surprise holiday visit to the troops, his jet descended in the dark toward an unlit runway. In dramatic fashion, he counted down the feet to the plane landing, and recalled how scary it was. The pilots kept reassuring him, he said, and they landed safely.
He couldn’t get the medal, he said, because White House counsel David Warrington, who was standing nearby at the event, wouldn’t allow it.

 
Leavitt, the White House spokeswoman, said he was joking.

by Josh Dawsey and Annie Linskey, Wall Street Journal |  Read more:
Images: Matt Rourke/AP; Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA/Shutterstock

[ed. When you've lost the Wall Street Journal... If they (staffers) are keeping him at arms length and somewhat removed from any form of pragmatic decision-making, then that would partly explain why so many of his posts are uninformed and contradictory.]

Reality Instruction

The idea​ of a road trip organised around trials and hearings at courthouses across the US had been in my head for years. Last autumn I found myself in a position to make it a reality. I had a month. My aim was to attend as many different kinds of criminal and civil hearing in as many parts of the country as I could. Some courts post their weekly dockets online but most don’t, so there was little scope for detailed planning. A helpful clerk in Deadwood, South Dakota told me of a jury trial that was almost certain to go ahead early in my time frame (most trials are plea-bargained out), and I had to be in New Orleans for a talk three weeks later. That gave me the bare bones of an itinerary.

I left New York at the beginning of October and headed for Chicago. The day before I arrived, ICE agents conducted a raid on a South Side apartment building, with agents rappelling from a Black Hawk helicopter and zip-tying children. Given the mayhem I’d seen on TV, the city was surprisingly calm. Families were out enjoying the sunshine in Millennium Park. Office workers strolled in shirtsleeves. Even the Chicago Immigration Court, my first destination, seemed oddly quiet. I had to pass through a magnetometer, but nobody asked what I was doing and there were no agents lurking in corridors to snatch deportable aliens, as had recently started happening in New York.

I’d had some misgivings about my project before setting off, mostly to do with the voyeuristic element. What I hadn’t imagined was the possibility of my presence affecting anyone but myself. It became apparent the moment I stepped inside the windowless courtroom. A dozen adults and children, all Hispanic, turned to me with looks of terror, and it dawned on me that, with my shaved head and pale skin, I must look like some ICE body snatcher. Mortified, I slid onto one of the wooden benches and tried to make myself invisible.

It was a master calendar hearing (the first stage in removal proceedings) and hybrid, with participants appearing remotely as well as in person. The judge was swearing in a Russian interpreter on speakerphone while a young couple from Kyrgyzstan appeared huddled on a screen. After some back and forth, the judge gave the couple’s attorney a date for 2028, when ‘their comments about their government’ would be assessed. The Department of Homeland Security, in the person of a young attorney in the courtroom, offered no objection.

Similar hearings followed at a clip. Some of the technicalities went over my head, but the gist was that the respondents, while admitting to being in the country illegally, were asking for asylum. Until recently, America’s conflicted attitude to immigration expressed itself in lengthy procedures that offered undocumented migrants some grounds for hope. Under Trump, judges are being pressured to dismiss cases altogether, a cynical tactic that exposes migrants to the body snatchers, and around 150 have been sacked (immigration judges are not part of the judiciary proper, but employees of the Department of Justice). Here in Chicago, both the judge and DHS lawyer appeared to be playing by the old rules, setting follow-up appearances far into the future.

The families on the benches next to me were dressed in their finest and their children sat in absolute silence. Speaking to them through an interpreter, the judge told them they’d been summoned because the government ‘thinks you shouldn’t be in the country for one reason or another’. They had a right to representation, he continued, though they would have to pay for it themselves. ‘Raise your hands if you don’t want time to look for an attorney, and just want to talk about removal from the country today.’ No hands went up and the judge set an appearance date for the following year, wishing them luck.

A woman who’d been sitting with a little boy in a braided pink suit said: ‘I just want to know. Do we have a removal order against us today?’ The judge repeated patiently that no order would be made until their next appearance.

As the room emptied out, he turned to me. ‘You’re an observer, I assume?’ I nodded, pleased by the designation, which had a reassuringly official ring. [...]

Courtroom encounters present you with just a fragment of a person’s story, from which you may or may not be inclined to infer the rest. On the face of it, these particular shards didn’t add up to much, and yet I felt encouraged in my belief that courts were still places where, to adapt a phrase of Saul Bellow’s, ‘reality instruction’ was to be had. The first time I was inside a courtroom was at the Old Bailey, in my twenties. I had dropped in on a whim and found myself lost in the exploits of a Pinteresque young crook who’d got the pampered son of a Harley Street doctor into his clutches and pressured him into using his father’s money to finance a long spree of luxury shopping and drug bingeing. When asked how he’d persuaded his victim to make yet another raid on the family coffers, the young man said: ‘I speeched him, didn’t I?’ I was never good at striking up conversation with strangers – a major drawback for an aspiring writer – but I realised that here was an arena where an endless variety of characters would reveal their stories to you without your having to utter a word. [...]

I took the scenic route towards Nebraska. White wooden farmhouses among clusters of silos appeared at regular intervals, along with ivied chimneys and other tenderly preserved ruins of bygone industry. Together they conveyed a settled, agreeable way of life, one that clearly worked well for those who enjoyed it. ‘We Know Clean!’ a sign at a rest stop declared, and it was true that everything, from the curving plough-lines in the fields to the filigreed gantries on the silos, looked amazingly clean and orderly. I could see the domed sky meet the land far ahead along the road and felt as if I were driving through an enormous glass paperweight.

I stopped for the night in Omaha, a city I’d put on my itinerary largely because I had never imagined visiting it. In the morning I went to the Douglas County District Court, where a bench trial (i.e. no jury) was just starting. The structure of a state court system usually echoes that of the federal system, with trial courts, appeal courts and a supreme court. Unlike the federal courts, however, where judges are appointed by the president, state courts have a mixture of elected and locally appointed judges, who sometimes serve fixed terms, and the jurisdiction of a given court will vary from state to state. In Omaha, a witness was describing an incident from earlier that year. He’d been eating lunch when a man approached him asking for food and money. ‘I told him I wanted to relax,’ he recalled on the stand. He’d then seen the man enter several nearby businesses, including a restaurant where he set off the sprinkler system the witness had just installed. The witness called the cops. His 911 tape was played. ‘There’s like a drunk, homeless Black man keeps entering businesses here ... He set off the fire suppressants. I didn’t see any weapon, but I don’t want to get too close to the dude ... He looked all jacked up.’

The accused (I’ll call him Fletcher), dressed in orange prison scrubs, was acting as his own defence. He’d mastered some lawyerly phrases and quickly scored a point with them. ‘Objection! Did you see me pull that alarm?’

‘I did not.’

‘No further questions!’

Unfortunately, he spoiled the effect by asking again: ‘Did you see me with your own eyes pull that particular fire alarm?’

‘No, but it wasn’t pulled before you went in and it was afterwards.’

The police officer who’d responded to the 911 call took the stand. She testified that she and her partner had found Fletcher at the back of the restaurant and been met by ‘a very rude demeanour’. ‘I was advised by Mr Fletcher: “Fuck you bitch.”’

Her bodycam footage was offered into evidence.

‘Any objection, Mr Fletcher?’ the judge asked.

Fletcher produced another courtroom phrase. ‘No, I have no objection at this time.’

He was visibly intoxicated in the bodycam footage, stumbling around a patch of waste ground and swearing colourfully.

‘Hi, how are you?’ the officer greeted him, putting on latex gloves. ‘Why’d you pull the fire alarm?’

‘What am I charged with?’

‘Disorderly conduct.’

She cuffed and frisked him.

‘What did you do today, besides drink?’ she asked. She and her partner began removing and bagging the copious contents of his pockets.

‘You’ve got a lot of stuff on you!’

‘I got a pickle in there,’ he muttered.

‘You do have a pickle!’ she said, holding it up.

She then talked to the witness who’d installed the sprinkler system. ‘I didn’t go in after him,’ he told her, ‘because I don’t know what he’s got and I don’t want to get diseased or anything.’ He showed her the damage in the restaurant.

‘What a mess!’ she exclaimed. ‘This is such a nice, up-and-coming area too.’

The real issue, the man told her, wasn’t the mess but the cost of recharging the sprinkler system, around $6000. The sum surprised her, and on the basis of it – still with the same amused, motherly air – she amended the disorderly conduct charge to a felony charge of ‘criminal mischief, $5000 or more’.

The judge called a recess. After he and the prosecutor had left the courtroom, the deputy guarding Fletcher asked him about the incident. ‘I never went into the building,’ Fletcher told him. ‘I was just down by the dumpster there.’

The deputy shrugged. ‘I don’t have a dog in the race.’

‘I never was in the restaurant, period.’

The judge returned, and now it was Fletcher’s turn to question the officer.

‘Your probable cause to detain me was disorderly conduct,’ he began. For a moment he seemed to be laying the ground for a procedural point about the charge being amended, but he quickly lost his thread and began spinning out random Perry Mason phrases – ‘Did you or did you not? ... Yes or no? ... Let me rephrase ...’ Changing tack, he offered to pay restitution for any damage he’d caused rather than go to prison, while again protesting that he hadn’t been in the restaurant. The judge stopped him, pointing out that he couldn’t testify while he was also questioning a witness, and asked whether he wanted to take the stand. He didn’t, and the state gave its closing arguments. Fletcher began talking again, more frantically now, but the judge cut him off.

‘Sir, you already made your closing statement. The court finds that the state’s witnesses are credible. I am going to find you guilty.’

A sentencing hearing was scheduled, and Fletcher was led away, loudly demanding a restitution hearing.

As I stood up to leave, the judge came over and asked if I had ‘any investment in the case’. ‘Just an observer,’ I replied. He nodded affably. It was unusual for defendants to act pro se, he said, and it always presented challenges. He’d originally set bond at $200, keeping it deliberately low, but Fletcher hadn’t paid. ‘He’s been having trouble in jail,’ he said, adding gloomily: ‘He’s a danger to himself.’ He and the prosecutor were both Black, and I wondered what they’d made of the witness’s barely disguised bigotry.

by James Lasdun, London Review of Books |  Read more:

Image: David Golbitz, Omaha Daily Record

Lobstergate

Defense officials typically enter the end of each fiscal year with at least one goal in mind: spend the rest of the military’s budget by any means necessary. Otherwise, “use-it-or-lose-it” funding rules force the Pentagon to forfeit its unused money and potentially see reduced funding next year.

Open the Books has tracked the annual September spending bonanza for nearly a decade. Military spending has spiked every year, regardless of which party controlled the White House.

However, there has never been anything quite like September 2025, when $93.4 billion was spent on grants and contracts. Since at least 2008 — and presumably in history — no federal agency has ever spent so much on grants and contracts in a single month. [...]

These amounts only include money sent to entities outside the government, not salaries for service members and scores of other expenses.

Instead, the shopping spree encompasses luxury food items like lobster, high-end furniture and rushed IT purchases. [...]

Protecting the Nation in Comfort

Furniture is near the top of the military’s wish list at the end of every fiscal year. Since 2008, the DoD has spent an average of $257.6 million on furniture every September — a 564% increase above the norm. In months besides September, furniture costs the military only $38.8 million on average. [...]

This year was no different. The DoD spent $225.6 million on furniture, the most since 2014. Nearly half was labeled as “office furniture.”

The purchases included $60,719 worth of chairs from the premium furniture manufacturer Herman Miller, including at least one order of their luxurious Aeron Chair for $1,844. Another $12,540 paid for three-tiered fruit basket stands.

Furniture spending today is far lower than in President Obama’s administration, when the military routinely spent $300 to $400 million every September. However, it has increased compared to Joe Biden’s administration. Since 2008, there have only been four Septembers when the DoD spent less than $178 million on furniture: the four Septembers that Biden was president. [...]

Military Munchies

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told the military in a speech on Sept. 30 that it is “completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon.”

Perhaps it was no coincidence that Hegseth took notice of his employees’ weight at the end of September. Military personnel spent the month dining in luxury.

The Pentagon spent $2 million on Alaskan king crab in September. It’s the fifth time the Pentagon under Donald Trump has spent $2 million or more on king crab in a single month: twice during his first term and three times in 2025. It’s only happened one other month in history (February 2021).

Fortune magazine recently declared that king crab has taken caviar’s place as the “hottest luxury ingredient.” One seafood merchant explains that “king crab isn’t a budget buy” due to its “remote harvesting” and “labor-intensive handling.”

The military also bought $6.9 million of lobster tail this September. Again, it was not an isolated incident; it’s been a theme of Hegseth’s spending so far.

In 2025, the DoD spent more than $7.4 million on lobster tail in four separate months: March, May, June and October. That had previously only happened once in history (October 2024).

September 2025 also saw the Pentagon purchase:

• $15.1 million of ribeye steak

• $1 million of salmon

• 272 orders of doughnuts for $139,224

• $124,000 for ice cream machines

• $26,000 for sushi preparation tables

Prime Day

Mike Weiland — the CEO of Govly, an AI company that aids government contractors — says Sept. 30 is like “Amazon Prime Day” for the federal government.

“Any company that spends less than it makes or is allocated will be seen as efficient, effective, and valuable in the market. However, this is different with the government,” Weiland wrote.

“If a government agency doesn’t spend its allocated budget funds over the course of the fiscal year, they no longer have access to those funds in the next year … The loss of their surplus funds, combined with the threat of a decline in future funding, is a recipe for serious fear amongst government agencies. Hence why they hit the panic button in August and September to spend.”

Business consultants at OST Global Solutions advise clients to “take advantage” of Washington’s rushed September spending, which they attribute to bureaucrats’ “procrastination.” OST recommends planning “an aggressive sales campaign during the fourth quarter” because “this time of year, the government contracting specialists are swamped. Many are working late and on weekends. There are some things that you should do to help them along.”

The Pentagon’s spending records support those claims. In September 2025, defense officials bought $5.3 million of Apple devices, including 400 of the new iPad Air M3 for $315,200. The same iPad with 128 gigabytes of storage is available online for just $499, but the DoD opted for the more expensive 512 gigabyte edition at a rate of $788 each.

Another $4 million was spent on Samsung products, including a 98-inch monitor with “crystal UHD display” for $4,000.

Musical instruments cost $1.8 million. That included a $98,329 Steinway & Sons grand piano for the Air Force chief of staff’s home, a $26,000 violin, and a $21,750 custom handmade flute from the luxury Japanese brand Muramatsu.

Just for good measure, the Pentagon dropped another $111,497 on footrests and $3,160 on stickers featuring Dora the Explorer, Frozen, Paw Patrol and more.

All that purchasing work must have left a big mess, because the garbage collection cost $19.3 million.

by Openthebooks |  Read more:

Image: uncredited

[ed. A grand piano for 98k... hope it wasn't used in an Air Force piano burning celebration. See also: Lobstergate: Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon faces backlash over $7 million lobster spree (Fox).]

Behind the Curtain: China Wins by Watching

Chinese President Xi Jinping has spent the Iran war doing what he does best — patiently exploiting America's distraction and discord.

Why it matters: The conflict allowed China to bolster its diplomatic leverage, clean-energy muscle and intelligence on the U.S. military — all without firing a shot or spending a dollar.

• The implications touch supply chains, energy procurement, geopolitical risk, and the race for superior AI and weaponry.

• Even with progress toward a framework for peace between the U.S. and Iran, significant disruptions continue in the Strait of Hormuz. The strategic damage is done.

The military impact is the part that should scare the hell out of Pentagon planners.

• The U.S. committed roughly 80% of its JASSM-ER stealth cruise missile inventory to the Iran fight, pulling stockpiles from the Pacific to feed it. The conflict significantly depleted U.S. supplies of Tomahawk and Patriot missiles, THAAD interceptors and drones.

• Beijing got a free masterclass in modern American warfighting: how we use AI to target, how we rotate carrier groups, how cheap Iranian drones drain our most expensive interceptors. For Chinese war planners gaming out a Taiwan invasion, it was better than any simulation.

On energy, China emerged as a huge winner of the ongoing Hormuz shockwaves.

• When oil and gas supplies get weaponized, import-dependent countries accelerate renewables. China owns over 70% of global solar, wind, battery and electric vehicle supply chains. The longer Hormuz stays disrupted, the deeper the world's dependency gets.

• The war was the stress test that Beijing's energy strategy was designed for. Yes, roughly half its oil imports transit Hormuz. But the country is 85% energy self-sufficient. Renewables plus nuclear now exceed 20% of China's total energy consumed, passing oil as the No. 2 source last year. Its strategic petroleum reserves are full.

The diplomatic optics couldn't have been better for the Chinese.

• While Trump was threatening to bomb Iran "back to the Stone Ages," Beijing was quietly helping Pakistan bring both sides to the table in Islamabad — while capitals from Riyadh to Jakarta are weighing which superpower to align with.

• As Ian Bremmer points out, America's allies saw the U.S. pull missile defense assets from South Korea, leave allies in Asia without Patriot coverage, and shift naval power from the Pacific to the Gulf. The message received in Seoul, Tokyo, Canberra and Taipei: American security commitments have an asterisk.

China's AI push got a clear boost from the war's second-order financial consequences.

• The Gulf's massive AI buildout — billions from Microsoft, Oracle, Nvidia and others — faces indefinite geopolitical risk after Iranian strikes on AI-related targets across the region.

• China already has the world's second-largest AI compute capacity. It doesn't need Gulf cooperation to scale. Every dollar of Western investment that stalls in the Gulf is a dollar that doesn't build an alternative to Chinese infrastructure.

The rare earths piece, out of sight for most Americans, might be Beijing's biggest asset right now.

• There's currently no heavy rare-earth separation capacity in the U.S. at meaningful scale. China controls roughly 70% of rare-earth mining and 90% of separation and magnet manufacturing. New Pentagon procurement rules banning Chinese-sourced rare earths take effect in 2027 — but domestic alternatives won't be ready for years.

• The weapons the U.S. fired in Iran — Tomahawks, JDAMs, Predator drones — all require rare earths for their precision guidance systems. Every smart weapon expended made America more dependent on Chinese supply chains that it's racing, but failing, to replace.

by Jim VandeHei, Axios | Read more:
Image: Aïda Amer/Axios. Photo: Contributor/Getty Images
[ed. See also: 4 ways the war in Iran has weakened the United States in the great power game (The Conversation); and, Scoop: NSA using Anthropic's Mythos despite blacklist (Axios).]

***

• The National Security Agency is using Anthropic's most powerful model yet, Mythos Preview, despite top officials at the Department of Defense — which oversees the NSA — insisting the company is a "supply chain risk," two sources tell Axios.

• The military is now broadening its use of Anthropic's tools while simultaneously arguing in court that using those tools threatens U.S. national security.

Vanessa Smith (British, 1974) - The Relic (2022)

via:

Catching a Buzz

Today in Bees: Upper West Side bee distribution day. “Bees are sold by weight, like cheese or cocaine.” And scientists just discovered 5.6 million bees under a New York State cemetery. Oh, I wonder how many bees there are in this graveyard? Normal question, for scientists.

Also Today in Scientists: In Smithsonian, Margherita Bassi reports “Scientists Just Made the Most Complete Map of the Clitoris’s Sensory Nerve Network. Here’s What They Found.” Probably 5.6 million bees.

via:

Image: East Lawn Cemetery in Ithaca, N.Y., Bryan Danforth

[ed. Oh man, a good laugh to start the day : ) See also: Dr. Jesus (Defector); and Doordash Grandma (Salon).]

Earthrise vs. Earthset

Apollo vs. Artemis: How the Earth changed in 58 years (BBC)

Images: NASA

Kamikaze Warfare

One‑way attack drones: Low‑cost, high‑tech weapons ‘democratize’ precision warfare

Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have propelled drones into the headlines. The word “drone” now stretches to cover everything from hobbyist camera rigs available on Amazon to the Predator and Reaper systems the United States has relied on to fight terrorist organizations over the past 20 years.

A common ancestor in the animal kingdom can give rise, under sufficient environmental pressure, to distinct species that demand their own classification. Drones have undergone their own rapid speciation: the one-way attack drone, the medium-altitude, long-endurance and high-altitude, long-endurance drones, the collaborative combat aircraft drone – these share a lineage and a label, but in terms of cost, range and use, increasingly little else.

Nowhere is this variation more consequential than in the category of one-way attack drones: systems designed not to return home like an airplane, but to fly directly into a target and destroy it, like a bullet or a missile. Russia and Ukraine have fired millions of these at each other since 2022, and Iran has launched thousands at United States military bases and embassies, Israel and other countries in the Middle East in 2026.

The world is now in an era we call “precise mass.” In the past, military power was often determined by size – the number of knights, soldiers, guns or tanks, depending on the era, that an army had. Since the Cold War, advanced militaries have emphasized precise munitions, such as cruise missiles, gaining advantage with fewer but more accurately targeted weapons. Inexpensive but technologically sophisticated drones bring mass and precision together.

Commercial manufacturing, precision guidance and advances in artificial intelligence and autonomy have democratized the ability of militaries and militant groups to accurately strike their adversaries. This includes first-person-view, or FPV, drones – a type of one-way attack drone with interfaces like video games – that groups aligned with Iran are already using to target American forces in the Middle East.

One-way attack drones

One-way attack drones have featured most prominently in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and in the Middle East today. The first category of one-way attack drones is longer range and can travel hundreds or even thousands of miles to strike targets deep in an adversary’s territory. They are like extremely cheap cruise missiles – Iran’s Shahed-136 one-way attack drone, for instance, has a reported range of up to 1,250 miles (2,000 km) and costs between US$20,000 and $50,000 each. In comparison, America’s Tomahawk cruise missile costs $2 million each.

by Michael C. Horowitz and Lauren Kahn, The Conversation |  Read more:

Image: uncredited via

[ed. See also: How Iran’s Cheap, Low-Tech Drones Have Cost the U.S. (NYT); and, Ukraine Has Finally Given Up on Trump (Atlantic):]

***

The change in Ukraine’s public posture comes as the country’s military situation has improved, at least relative to its struggles last year. Relying overwhelmingly on their homegrown drone industry and military structure, Ukrainian forces have regained the initiative in many areas. In recent months, they have reportedly caused more casualties than Russia can replace—and have taken back more territory than Russia has seized. Along the front lines, Ukraine has strengthened and extended its so-called drone wall, which restricts the movement of flesh-and-blood Russian forces. Earlier this week, Kyiv claimed to have seized a Russian position and captured a number of Russian soldiers while exposing no Ukrainians at all, only unmanned aerial and ground vehicles.

Meanwhile, Ukrainians have gained greater confidence in launching drone strikes on mid- and long-range targets far behind the front lines, as the attack near St. Petersburg showed. Finally, Ukraine continues to bottle up Russian naval power in the Black Sea. Vessels even in the most protected Russian naval bases are no longer safe from Ukrainian attack.

For the past 15 months, U.S. officials and many Western analysts have been fixated on Ukrainian weakness. Trump infamously insisted last year that Ukrainians had “no cards” to play. But their ability to adapt even without U.S. aid has been startling. Now a global leader in drone development and manufacturing, Ukraine is reportedly planning to produce up to 7 million military unmanned aerial vehicles in 2026.