Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Scott Hibbard
“The failures of America’s war on terror were rooted in a misdiagnosis of the problem. The Bush administration promoted the idea that the 9/11 hijackers were motivated by their hatred of American values and rejected any notion that U.S. policies contributed to either anti-American sentiment or violent extremism. ‘They’ hated us for who we are, it was argued, not what we do. … While the intent of the American military strategy was to deny terrorist groups safe havens, the practical effect was the opposite. American military interventions destabilized entire regions and created the kind of lawless anarchy in which militant groups proliferated. U.S. interventions also exacerbated anti-American sentiments and allowed militant groups to portray themselves as nationalist defenders fighting an occupying enemy.” (09/08/26)
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/911-25th-anniversary/
Source: Astral Codex Ten
by Scott Alexander
“Mechanistic interpretability is the science of ‘reading an AI’s mind’. Large language models are ‘grown, not built’. Researchers run training data through a neural network. Eventually this creates a working AI; nobody really knows how. But a neural network is just a set of simulated neurons on a computer. The person with the computer can see the neurons, the connections between them, and which ones activate when the AI answers questions. So it seems like it should be possible to ‘reverse engineer’ the AI. … Unfortunately this is very hard.” (09/08/26)
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/god-help-us-lets-try-to-learn-about
Source: Reuters
“Australia on Tuesday proposed giving social media users the option to select the content they see on their feeds, marking the next step in the government’s push to improve online safety, following its world-first social media ban for children. Under draft laws proposed by the centre-left Labor government, social media platforms will be required to notify users and offer them a choice over their default feed. Users can choose to opt in to having their default feed include personalised content recommended by an algorithm. Alternatively, they can opt out of algorithmically recommended content and instead see posts only from the friends and creators they choose to follow.” [editor’s note: If users want that and are willing to pay for it in some way, they’ll get it without government requirements – TLK] (09/08/26)
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/australia-targets-social-media-algorithms-with-new-user-choice-rules-2026-09-08/
Source: The Dispatch Podcast
“After Trump.” (09/08/26)
https://thedispatch.com/podcast/dispatch-podcast/the-very-bad-midterms-to-come-for-the-gop/
Source: Libertarian Institute
by José Niño
“Two terms, dozens of announced withdrawals, and the Army’s brigades are still unpacking their gear in Europe, the Pacific, and beyond. Rhetoric about restraint and retrenchment is one thing; the discipline to see it through is another. On that score, the Trump administration has been exactly what its critics always suspected: all talk, no action.” (09/08/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/donald-trump-is-rearranging-the-empire-not-dismantling-it/
Source: Checks & Balances
“Everybody Agrees: This is a Rule of Law Imperative.” (09/08/26)
https://chkbal.substack.com/p/everybody-agrees-this-is-a-rule-of
Source: Los Angeles Times
by Jon Duffy
“American forces are conducting combat operations in South America right now. If that comes as news, it is because the administration has disclosed the mission only in fragments, and Congress has not forced a public accounting. United States Green Berets are operating alongside Ecuadorian forces in the northern province of Esmeraldas in what the provincial governor described as joint operations against ‘narcoterrorism.’ Neither government has said which organizations the ground operations are targeting, what the troops are doing or how many Americans are involved.” (09/08/26)
https://archive.is/GMKwM
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“A 78-year-old British widow has told the BBC she is struggling to eat or sleep as the Swedish government threatens to deport her over a late post-Brexit residence application. Joyce Thomas, a retired nurse, moved to Sweden 22 years ago with her husband, who passed away from cancer three years ago. This came after they were informed by the Swedish authorities that they should have made a formal application to stay in the country after Brexit. Thomas has since had numerous applications and appeals rejected, and Tuesday marks the latest deadline for her to leave voluntarily. ‘This is absolute hell’, she said from her home in Sweden. ‘I can’t sleep, I can’t eat. You get up in the morning, you don’t know what’s going to happen.'” (09/08/26)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62k0d4px6ro
Source: Antiwar.com
by Thomas S Karat
“The Trump administration sent Congress its civil nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia. Asked what the deal permits, the president wrote: There will be no enrichment of material. His own Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, has said the opposite. The agreement gives Riyadh a pathway to enrich uranium on its own soil, and in doing so the potential for a Saudi nuclear Bomb. To placate fears Wright has put enrichment years down the road but not in doubt. Wright is describing the document. Trump is describing a country he is at war with to prevent from doing exactly this.” (09/08/260
https://original.antiwar.com/thomas_karat/2026/09/07/washington-is-underwriting-the-proliferation-it-went-to-war-to-stop/
Source: Common Dreams
by Zahra Eslami
“Summer passed. People traveled, went into nature, spent time with family, laughed, rested, and enjoyed life—and that is a good thing. Now school has started again, and children are walking back into classrooms with backpacks, excitement, and plans for another year. But for many families, there is no return to normal. Since the war in Iran began earlier this year, civilians have been killed, injured, displaced, and traumatized. Sometimes their stories reach us. Sometimes they barely break through the noise. I still think about the girls’ elementary school in Minab, where more than 100 children were killed. They were children. Students. We call children ‘angels’, and then somehow their deaths become another statistic of war.” (09/08/26)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/which-children-remember
