More Than Half of All Polymarket “Long Shot” Bets on Military Action Pay Off

More than half of “long-shot” bets on military action made on Polymarket are successful, according to a new report that suggests prediction markets could pose a bigger threat than previously recognized to the security of sensitive information.

Analysis by the Anti-Corruption Data Collective, a non-profit research and advocacy group, found that long-shot bets—defined as wagers of $2,500 or more at odds of 35 percent or less—on the platform had an average win rate of around 52 percent in markets on military and defense actions.

That compares with a win rate of 25 percent across all politics-focused markets and just 14 percent for all markets on the platform as a whole.

The research is likely to add to growing concerns among regulators and lawmakers about insiders placing bets on the timing and success of military actions, amid fears that this could reveal classified information in advance.

The report, which analyzed more than 400,000 prediction markets settled on Polymarket between January 2021 and March 2026, comes as US prosecutors last week charged a soldier involved in planning the January raid to seize Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro with placing Polymarket wagers on the mission that netted more than $400,000. [...]

Growing scrutiny has created a business opportunity for a wave of start-ups selling tools to help users profit by copying suspected “insiders.”

“The platforms are creating new rules to try to root them out and make it clear they don’t allow that activity. That to me [ . . . ] proves there is some informed flow in these markets worth following,” said Matt Saincome, chief executive of financial data provider Unusual Whales, which sells a $20-a-month “unusual predictions” tool to monitor suspicious bets on Polymarket.

Another start-up, Polywhaler, promises to help traders “monitor large bets in real-time” for $4.99 a month.

Polymarket has itself published a list of the 10 most-copied wallets in a blog post, including recommendations for traders on strategies to follow and pitfalls to avoid when copy-trading.

by Stephanie Stacey, Chris Cook, and Jill R Shah, Financial Times, Ars Technica |  Read more:

Image: Financial Times 

[ed. Seems pretty clear prediction markets have some serious problems with insider betting, methods/terms of resolution, and maybe legal culpability.]

A Technofascist Manifesto For the Future

Palantir CEO Alex Karp is a man in charge of one of the most important and frightening companies in the world. Karp’s new book, cowritten with Nicholas Zamiska, is called The Technological Republic. After claiming “because we get asked a lot,” Palantir posted a 22-point summary of the book that reads like a corporate manifesto. It evokes both weird reactionary shit and also trilby-wearing Reddit comments from the early 2010s.

Palantir’s summary of the book is ominous. But even the company’s name is unironically ominous. The palantíri are crystal balls in The Lord of the Rings that let Middle-earth’s worst tyrants spy on the heroes of the story. It’s a fun reference if you have no shame about your company’s mission.

We’ve attempted to translate these 22 points from Alex Karp’s alien words into something more reasonable, like human words from someone who might play him in the biopic. (Hello, Taika Waititi.) In so doing, we’ve become much more sympathetic to why Jürgen Habermas refused to supervise Karp’s research.

1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.

Translation: Silicon Valley has an enormous opportunity to extract as much money from federal government defense contracts as possible. To do this, we will bring back a draft for engineers. We’re really into bringing back the draft. Deepfaked teenagers, low-paid gig workers, and victims of the Rohingya genocide need not apply.

2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible.

Translation: We can’t say “we wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters” anymore because Elon Musk lets you write essays on Twitter now. Though if you thought the apps were tyrannical, wait until you get a load of us.

3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public.

Translation: People are mad at tech billionaires for their obscene wealth and arrogance. Instead of winning them over by providing free access to a useful everyday service, we’re gonna sell a lot of software that will let the government spy on them while demanding tax cuts.

4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.

Translation: Words and feelings are free, which is why we want to sell weapons. Nobody got rich suing for peace. [...]

5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed.

Translation: “Soft power” and “ethics” are beta shit for Broadway shows and Dario Amodei. Hear that, Pete Hegseth? We’re warriors — pay up.

But seriously. If our enemies have no oversight then why should we? The future is an AI battlefield and we need rules of engagement that let us cook. Which is to say: Forget the rules of engagement. The government is not coming to save you — we are. The world is too dangerous for us to be governed by the law of armed conflict.

Welcome to the 21st century: safety not guaranteed.

6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.

Translation: We’re going to bring back the draft. Our vision of permanent war only works if we courageously volunteer people 40 years younger than us to die for oil.

7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way.

Translation: Sure, those wimps at Anthropic are selling an AI system they claim has spotted cybersecurity vulnerabilities in “every major operating system and web browser.” But Pete, seriously: We will kill anybody you want with our software guns.

8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive.

Translation: We care about wages – which is why we think Washington’s revolving door of lobbying and office-holding should be way more lucrative for everyone. There are mountains of cash for people who will look the other way.

And if you’re not on board? Well, all those pesky bureaucrats who do things like “investigate fraud” and “enforce safety standards” and “administer the social safety net” are holier-than-thou myrmidons who should be fed into the DOGE wood chipper.

9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret.

Translation: If you made fun of that video where our CEO looks like he’s on cocaine, you’re responsible for the rise of fascism. Also, we’re going to be conveniently vague about what “those who have subjected themselves to public life” means, because “be nicer to multimillionaires who go on podcasts” doesn’t have the same ring. Oh, and if you complain about the IT Renfields of DOGE, you’re anti-American.

10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed.

Translation: Society must stop centering sensitive crybabies who want to feel personally validated by elected officials and filter their politics through emotional reactions. Also, I feel strongly that Zohran Mamdani is a pagan who is going to Wicker Man me. [...]

14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war.

Translation: Si vis pacem, para bellum, baby! We’ll conveniently leave out all of the regional and secret wars the US has engaged in over the years or the fact that Trump recently derailed the world economy by launching a war of aggression after campaigning on a promise of no new wars. We will not elaborate on what “next war” Point Six was talking about.

15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia.

Translation: We can definitely sell software to a militarized Germany and Japan too! [...]

22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what?

Translation: Are you still with us after 21 points? Great. Welcome to the great mystery. It cost you way less to get here than joining Scientology. Here’s the final thesis: Immigration? Bad. Canceling billionaires? Bad. Giving us money to fight (((globalism)))? Good. Just hit us up on cashapp.

by T.C. Sottek and Adi Robertson, The Verge |  Read more:

Image: Scott Olson / Getty Images
[ed. Someone must be feeling the heat from AI. After all, Palantir is fundamentally a software surveillance company (that would like to solidify and embed their position in government forever, before it's too late). Sometimes it's better to shut up, keep hauling in the billions, and stay under the radar (while continuing to work the back rooms). See also: Palantir’s technofascist manifesto calls for universal draft (Oligarch Watch) - yes, there's really a site called that.]

***

In the 2025 book The Technological Republic, Karp and Zamiska argue that American technological dominance requires deeper integration of Silicon Valley and defense interests. Karp contends that China operates with fewer ethical constraints than U.S. defense companies, making technological leadership essential for national security. The authors stress that deterrence through technological dominance could prevent many wars. Bloomberg noted that the atomic bomb the Manhattan Project produced was ultimately used. The New Republic called Karp's formation of Palantir an embrace of techno-militarism to advance American global supremacy through hard power and targeted violence. [...]

In 2017, BuzzFeed News reported that despite the reputation that connected Palantir to U.S. intelligence agencies (which Palantir deliberately crafted to help it win business), including the CIA, NSA, and FBI, the actual relationship was rocky for various reasons, with episodes of friction and recalcitrance. The NSA in particular had been resistant because it had plenty of its own talent and focused more on SIGINT while Palantir's software worked better for HUMINT. Meanwhile, the CIA had been so frustrated by the publicity associating Palantir with it that it tried to cancel the Palantir contract. But according to Karp, Palantir had a firm hold at the FBI because "They'll have no choice".  ~ Wikipedia

Iran War Updates: April 24, 2026

Iran War: Trump Says Time Is on His Side, Iranian Leadership Is Divided, Iran Begs to Differ (Naked Capitalism)

Image: USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) sails in the Indian Ocean, April 23. CENTCOM/X

[ed. Updates from a variety of sources. Draw your own conclusions. See also: Iran War: Team Trump as Narrative War Captives? (NC).]

You'll Regret It

Human beings have manic episodes; when it happens to an entire nation we call it empire. The affliction is the same. You prance around town with your tits practically pouring out your top, demanding drinks from strangers, snatching cigarettes out their hands. Isn’t it funny how I can do absolutely anything I want? And everybody loves me? You know you have a special destiny in the world. It’s obvious; flowers turn their faces towards you whenever you walk past. You’re going to save the world by sniffing coke off a stranger’s frenulum. And other people don’t understand, they’re all such bummers, they take things so personally, when really it was just a joke. In fact the whole world is a joke, none of it’s really serious, this great primary-coloured playground built for your delight. Sometimes in the brief moments you’re alone you can hear laughter, not coming from anyone in particular, not laughing at anything you can name, just the manic chattering laughter of the entire universe, flooding the silence. Lately you’ve been getting in fights. You’ve been winning them all. You’ve been stumbling into casinos and putting it all on red, emptying out your bank account, taking unsecured loans, putting it all on red and winning every time. God loves you more than he loves other people, he loves you in a different way. Maybe in an erotic way. Maybe you’re interested. You’ve been buying precious stones, rubies and sapphires; you keep them in your pockets. Sometimes people tell you that one day you’re going to wake up in hospital again, or jail, again, or in a pool of your own blood and vomit, or maybe not at all. They’re wrong. That happens to other people. It will never, ever happen to you. 

One good thing about Europe is we’ve all already been through it all. Here, every miserable dirt-poor republic had its century in the sun. Today, Splugovina is a dreary landlocked country of eight million people that produces sunflower seeds, insulated cables, and zinc-bearing ores, but for a brief period in the fifteenth century the glorious Splug Empire stretched clear across the continent. The crowned heads of Europe came to kneel and give tribute. After that, it’s true, there was the War of the Quintuple Alliance, and all the cities were razed, and maybe forty percent of the population starved in the fields, but there are still some very impressive ruins in the hills. That time is never coming back, though. All you can do now is put up a bunch of gaudy statues to the conquering heroes, make genocidal chants at football games. Remember, with a kind of lazy black bitterness, the days when the world was made of sugar and you were mad. [...]

I like American optimism. Not everyone does. A lot of people from long-vanished empires claim to find it unbearable; it reminds them of what they no longer have. But I like it. There’s something ridiculous about an American who tries to hate their own country, like a dog trying to walk on two legs. They don’t know what it means to wake up and curse the grey skies and poisoned soil of Splugovina, this place that closes around you like a tomb. They can rage against the slavery and genocide, but it’s still with that bright, feverish, all-American gleam in the eye. The only way an American can really encounter pessimism is by hiring a British person to perform it for them. That’s what I do, basically. It’s a living.

The problem, though, is the corollary to all this charming American exuberance, which is the repeated bouts of mass murder. It comes in cycles. A few years of screaming bloodlust until it all blows up in your face, and then you spend the next few years at home drinking wine out the bottle and wailing over the unfairness of the world, before finally straightening your back, giving one last sniff, and bravely stepping outside to once again club someone’s children to death. I used to think some kind of progress was possible here. I used to have something called the Iraq War Theory of Divorce in Hollywood Films. The theory says that if a film features a male lead character who gets divorced or separated from his main romantic interest, and it came out before 2005 or so, by the end he will have cajoled his ex back into bed and they’ll live happily ever after. Liar Liar, The Parent Trap, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. If it came out after 2005, by the end he will have learned to accept the situation, moved on, and found someone new. A total bloodbath in the Middle East, maybe a million people shot or blown up or tortured to death with power tools, so you can learn that hey, sometimes things don’t work out there way you want them to, and hey, sometimes that’s ok. But all these things are temporary. Don Quixote got a decade of sanity between volumes before the rabbit poison started glittering in his eyes and he was babbling about knight errantry again. America got less than half. Four years after the last American troops left Afghanistan under Taliban guard, war critic JD Vance was on the TV, saying that while he understood why people were put off by the last round of wars in the Middle East, ‘the difference is that back then we had dumb presidents, and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America’s national security objectives.’ The dumb presidents, the ones who blundered around getting America into quagmires, still always held back from directly attacking Iran. The smart president is Donald Trump. [...]

So far, the war is going very well. It’s called Operation Epic Fury. Operation Epic Badass Ninja Pirate. Organs of state keep issuing public statements that say things like ‘Kill without hesitation, avenge without mercy’ and ‘You say death to America, we say America will be your death.’ They’re having no problems killing anyone they want to kill. Iran might be a proud and ancient civilisation with a historical memory stretching back six thousand years, but right now it’s an easily broken toy in the hands of an empire that can barely remember the day before yesterday. But somehow, the power to kill anyone at will isn’t enough. Things are not going according to plan. As far as I can tell, the plan was this. As soon as Israel and America eliminated the Supreme Leader, the entire Islamic Republic would disintegrate like an alien invasion fleet once the mothership’s been hit. At this point the Iranian people would fill the streets, overthrow the mullahs, and immediately start signing up for an OnlyFans account. Obviously these are early days, but it doesn’t look like things are going to plan. Something very different is happening. Decapitating the Islamic Republic has not shut it down. Instead, individual IRGC units are all operating autonomously, using their own mobile and highly fluid command structures. Instead of a single enemy, there’s now a swarm. No central authority to negotiate with even if you wanted to. A headless zombie Iran, the wreckage of a six-thousand-year-old state spewing ballistic missiles in every direction. Missiles falling on Saudi oil refineries, Bahraini radar installations, on the matcha labubu sexual slavery camps of Dubai. You thought all those CGI skyscrapers meant you were abstracted from geography, but this is still the Middle East. Meanwhile the revolutionaries have not yet shown up in the streets of Tehran. Possibly because the people most likely to overthrow the regime already tried that in January, and the regime killed or imprisoned them all. It might not happen. The Islamic Republic is a bad government, possibly the worst government anywhere on the face of the earth, but it’s being attacked by children making plane noises. 

by Sam Kriss, Numb at the Lodge |  Read more:

Image: 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.]

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.]

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.

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.

Iran War: Negotiations Fail; US Provokes with Destroyer Entry into Strait, Possible Next Kinetic Moves

The US/Iran talks failed, predictably but perhaps faster than expected. Recall that a pause misleadingly called a ceasefire was set for two week to allow for settlement of disagreements and an end to the conflict. The session ended with JD Vance claiming that the US had made its “final and best offer.” There was no indication from either the US or Iran side that further discussion was in the works.

The two sides had a ginormous chasm between their positions. Iran had not reason to either trust the US or make large concessions. The badly-enbubbled US leadership seems to believe one or both of two things. First, that the US has won and/or is winning, so (in a variant of “the Russians are running out of weapons”) if they can keep pressure on, Iran will soon fall into a heap. Second, that the continuation of the conflict will benefit key interest groups aligned with the Administration, such as fossil fuel players, defense contractors, and Silicon Valley. The latter view is as nutty as the first. As the wags say, the cure for high oil prices is high oil prices. They eventually kill economic activity and lead to low oil prices. The futures market expects that, with longer-dated contracts trading more in line with old normal prices.

We’ll turn first to the recaps and hot takes on what happened, and then look at why failure was predictable and what happens next.

The talks lasted 21 hours. Recall Iran had set a one-day limit. Iran in a show of seriousness sent a massive team, including technical, military, security and banking experts. This was likely intended to stand in contrast to the lightweights America dispatched.

"We are disappointed with how US behaved. Netanyahu's call to Vance during the meeting shifted the focus from US-Iran negotiations to Israel's interests. The U.S. tried to achieve at the negotiating table what it could not achieve through war. We came here with good faith, the press conference by Vance before he left Pakistan was unnecessary, we are committed & prepared to safeguard our nation's interest and sovereignty"- Iran FM Seyed Abbas Araghchi

First, the US position is that Iran would not accept its terms, strongly implying that the US did not intend to negotiate. Vance depicts the main sticking points as Iran refusing to commit never to build a nuclear weapon. That is code for no enrichment, even for medical purposes, a position Iran has consistently rejected.

Second, you may have noticed that Vance by implication saying Iran had to negotiate from the US position amounted to a disagreement over process, or what in Vietnam War negotiations was called the shape of the table. Iran had repeatedly maintained that it had preconditions for negotiation, such as the return of all of its frozen assets, an end to hostilities on all Middle East fronts, and acceptance of its sovereign control over the Strait of Hormuz. The Vance framing indicates that the US puts its fingers in its ears and said, “Nyah nyah nyah” to Iran’s procedural requirements.

You’ll see in the Aljazeera segment a bizarre amount of cope about how the negotiations might restart later. IMHO this is impossible absent big and undeniable changes in facts on the ground, and/or regime change in Israel or the US.

Iran quickly made clear why the interaction went nowhere. The Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman cited an atmosphere of mistrust…

The Speaker of the Parliament, MB Ghalibaf, similarly said, “…the opposing side ultimately failed to gain the trust of the Iranian delegation in this round of negotiations.””

It looks as if, true to form, the Trump Team was unable to contain its bad impulses. It engaged in a show of macho by sending two destroyers to the Strait of Hormuz while the talks were underway. More on this soon, but the US predictably tried making noise about the vessels getting through the Strait of Hormuz, when this was in fact a bad-faith action. Iran would not shoot as the ship as it normally would absent the pow-wow. Instead, parties in Iran contacted their negotiators. They informed the US side that if the destroyer did not exit in 30 minutes, it would be attacked. It beat a retreat.

Larry Johnson provides additional intel in Trump Refuses Exit Ramp, War with Iran will Continue:

As I expected, the negotiation between the US and Iran failed to reach an agreement. Although JD Vance headed the US team, he was never in control… I have heard from someone who was directly involved with this circus in Islamabad that Israeli agents — Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — made certain that JD Vance would not follow his instincts and accept the deal that Iran had laid on the table. Israel’s role in sabotaging the US delegation was evident in Vance’s statement announcing the failure of the negotiations, when he falsely accused Iran of refusing to give up its alleged quest for a nuclear weapon. This is just a rehashed piece of Zionist propaganda.

There were three Iranian conditions that the US refused to accept: Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz, an end to Israel’s attack on Lebanon and Hezbollah, unfreezing of Iran’s assets and retaining sovereignty over its supply of enriched uranium. I have said repeatedly this past week during various interviews on the subject that Iran’s position on these issues was non-negotiable.

Here is the statement just released by the Iranian government:

The American enemy, which is vile, wicked and dishonest — attempted to achieve on the negotiating table what it could not achieve through war.

Among these demands are handing over enriched uranium and opening the Strait of Hormuz without confirmed Iranian sovereignty over it.

Iran has decided to reject these terms and continue the sacred defense of its fatherland by any means necessary, military or diplomatic.’

Reports from the Iranian side suggest an additional layer of spin via the focus on the “nuclear weapsons” issue, that of the US refusal to pressure Israel to halt attacks on Lebanon was a big no-go for them...

It was also clear, via the provocation as the talks were on of the US trying to send a destroyer through the Strait of Hormuz. The US propagandists make much of the claim that it “got through”. This sort of dick-wagging in fact reveals the weakness of the US position, that it is desperate to score what it can present as wins to hide its fundamental defeat.

Patrick Henningsen, in a discussion before the talks broke down, describes why he was confident they would fail.... [video]

There’s a lot of important insight here, so I urge you to listen to the entire segment. Henningsen says the Iranians did not seem to think an agreement was possible but nevertheless treated the process seriously to show they were a “normative power”. He describes Trump’s terrible track record as a negotiator and that he, Witkoff and Kushner seem unable to conduct themselves in a way that fosters productive long-term relationships. And aside from the posture of the Trump Team, Israel stood ready to sabotage any deal. Henningsen aligns with Alastair Crooke in seeing the US and Israel as trying to stoke civil war in Lebanon.

Nima cites a CNN report that China has been arming Iran. Henningsen believes China like Russia has been preparing for the worst.

Max Blumenthal, in a discussion with Glenn Diesen, effectively dashes any hope of what Joe Kent described as the only hope for an early-ish end of the Iran war, that of the US cutting Israel loose. Blumenthal describes long form the deep ties between Trump and the Zionists, going back to his father Fred Trump. Blumenthal lists many figures in Trump’s inner circle, some of whom may not be familiar to readers, as well as his family’s investment in a network of Zionist influencers. [video]

In another valuable exchange, Alastair Crooke tells Chris Hedges that the Iranians view the ceasefire as what they would call a hudna (which seems even more provisional) and offers some key high-level observations. [video]

From a mildly cleaned-up machine transcript starting at 9:25:

Crooke: I mean in a nutshell the objectives of Iran are to blow blow up the existing paradigm. That is a revolutionary objective, to blow it up completely, in order that they can escape if you like from the cage in which they’ve been held for 48 years of surrounded by US military forces, besieged by tariffs, by restrictions, UN resolutions, political isolation, economic, cultural if you like boycott. So this is what they are trying to break out from break out. It’s not the same cage that the Hamas and the Palestinians are in in Gaza, which is a literal fence and drones and monitoring of it. But Iran is intent on breaking the paradigm and the key to breaking that paradigm of course is the Hormuz and their control over the Hormuz which is um the uh centerpiece of their strategic objectives.

And at 12:20:

Crooke: Iran doesn’t have air dominance but instead of which they have created missile dominance overthe airspace um of the whole region and including Israel Um the damage to their missile capabilities has been grossly overstated by the old tactic of just counting, this goes back to Vietnam, counting air strikes. And one of the things that has been most notable in this period is before the war, Iran bought from China a huge number of decoys, decoy planes, decoy missiles. And one of the things um not only are they very effective in their appearance, but I didn’t know until recently is they have a heat source in them. So they are hot. And so of course that shows up on the American sensors and the Israeli sensors as a real target, a real plane, a real missile um when it’s really only a decoy.

Crooke also describes how the underground missiles operate, the Iranian demand that GCC states expel major US corporations like Microsoft if they are to have a relationship with Iran, and Israel’s objectives in Lebanon.

by Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism |  Read more:

Image: X

[ed. Includes a number of videos. Updated today with some discussion of a proposed naval blockade. Here.]

April 7, 2026

At 5:06 this morning, President Donald J. Trump posted on social media: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen,

but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!”

Trump has painted himself into a corner in his impulsive war against Iran. His job approval is dismal and Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of the world’s oil travels, is sending the cost of oil soaring, squeezing the global economy. Always in his life he has had someone to fix his mistakes—his father, Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, the “adults in the room” in his first administration who distracted him from catastrophic errors, and so on—but no one was willing to bail him out of the global disaster of his war on Iran.

So he threatened that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” an open threat to push his current embrace of war crimes all the way to genocide. No one knew if he was gearing up for a ground invasion of Iran in a war that has never received congressional authorization, or a massive bombing campaign, or even the use of nuclear weapons.

Or if he was making yet another empty threat.

Within the announcement were signs that perhaps it was bluster designed to let him claim victory and walk away. Despite his claim, there has been no “regime change” in Iran: the regime is very much still in place, although it has changed leadership in the wake of the bombing deaths of previous leaders. The new leaders appear to be more radical than their predecessors.

There was also the unmistakable echo of television advertising in his announcement. Either “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” or “maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.”

At 6:32 this evening, we learned that the horrifying announcement of the morning was, indeed, cover for Trump to declare victory and get out of the crisis he has caused in the Middle East.

Trump posted: “Based on conversations with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, of Pakistan, and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran, and subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks. This will be a double sided CEASEFIRE! The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all Military objectives, and are very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran, and PEACE in the Middle East.

“We received a 10 point proposal from Iran,” Trump continued, “and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate. Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran, but a two week period will allow the Agreement to be finalized and consummated. On behalf of the United States of America, as President, and also representing the Countries of the Middle East, it is an Honor to have this Longterm problem close to resolution. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

Michael Rios of CNN reported that Iran’s media is claiming it has achieved a great victory, forcing the U.S. to agree in principle to its 10-point plan, which includes the end of sanctions against Iran, the removal of all U.S. combat forces from bases in the region, and Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz. If these terms are correct, they leave the United States significantly worse off than it was before the war and leave Iran significantly stronger.

Trump called Rios’s story a fraud, and immediately sought to reassert his strength. He posted, “Authorities are looking to determine whether or not a crime was committed on the issuance of the Fake CNN World Statement,” and said that “CNN is being ordered to immediately withdraw this Statement with full apologies for their, as usual, terrible ‘reporting.’”

Political commentator Ben Rhodes summed up the situation: “In the best case scenario, Trump struck a deal to reopen a Strait that was open before the pointless war he started, with [Iran] demonstrating its control over the Strait and potentially extracting fees plus sanctions relief. Thousands of innocents—including hundreds of children—dead in Lebanon and Iran for no reason. U.S. troops killed and wounded. U.S. embassies and bases in the Middle East badly damaged. U.S. standing in the world obliterated. U.S. munitions badly depleted. Hundreds of billions spent. Prices up everywhere. More global economic fallout to come. Putin strengthened and enriched. Just a catastrophic situation even in the best of circumstances. A profoundly shameful episode in American history no matter what happens next.”

And then, a minute after midnight, Trump posted:

“A big day for World Peace! Iran wants it to happen, they’ve had enough! Likewise, so has everyone else! The United States of America will be helping with the traffic buildup in the Strait of Hormuz. There will be lots of positive action! Big money will be made. Iran can start the reconstruction process. We’ll be loading up with supplies of all kinds, and just ‘hangin’ around’ in order to make sure that everything goes well. I feel confident that it will. Just like we are experiencing in the U.S., this could be the Golden Age of the Middle East!!! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

Journalist Aaron Rupar of Public Notice wrote: “Trump went from making insane genocidal threats this morning to hyping the ‘golden age’ of Iran hours later, and he received no concessions in between. He’s an absolute basket case who needs to be removed from power before he follows through on one of his mass murder fantasies.”

The American people spent the whole day wondering if their mad king would destroy the world, only to find out he was terrorizing them in order to protect his ego after starting a disastrous war. Throughout the day, Democratic members of Congress have called for Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) to recall the Senate and for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to recall the House of Representatives from break to end the war in Iran and start the process of removing Trump from office.

Trump’s threat that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” was not just a reference to Iran. If he had destroyed Iran in our names, unhampered by the Republican Congress members who have vowed to defend the U.S. Constitution, it would also have been an epitaph for the United States of America.

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