“In the intricate standoff between the Pentagon and Anthropic over the use of AI in weaponry, it was easy to be distracted by the strange bedfellows-aspect of the struggle – with OpenAI becoming a willing partner of the Pentagon even while Anthropic established itself as a darling of the #Resistance. But, more importantly, the standoff represents a significant turn of the wheel in how the debate around AI has entered into cultural space. It’s no longer Big Tech behemoths one-upping each other with upgrades. It’s about the vibes, man. And the future of AI may well be a kind of extended ELIZA effect — with consumers and contractors choosing between different AIs sort of as if they were sports teams, with the competing AIs corresponding to different sides in the culture wars.” (03/20/26)
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by David Greene
“EFF joined other digital rights and civil liberties organizations in calling out the unconstitutionality of Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr’s recent threats to punish broadcasters for airing statements he disagrees with. Carr’s recent threats, like his past threats, are unconstitutional efforts to coerce news coverage that favors President Donald Trump. He wrongly claims that the FCC’s ‘public interest’ standard allows him and the commission to revoke the licenses of broadcasters who publish news that is unflattering to the government is anathema to our country’s core constitutional values.” (03/20/26)
“Cuba’s power grid collapsed Saturday leaving the country without electricity for a third time in March as the communist government battles with a decaying infrastructure and a U.S.-imposed oil blockade. The Cuban Electric Union, which reports to the Ministry of Energy and Mines, announced a total blackout across the island without initially giving a cause for the outage. The union later said the blackout was caused by an unexpected failure of a generating unit at the Nuevitas thermoelectric plant in Camagüey province.” (03/22/26)
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“Current communication technology is often immediately public, as in that example. An email message is private when it is sent but copies remain in the possession of sender, receiver, and possibly others, who may be compelled to release them if sender, receiver, or the employer of either becomes involved in a law suit or criminal prosecution. What are the consequences? One is to make communication more difficult; if you are corresponding via a public medium, arguing with someone on Facebook, it is prudent to avoid making any argument that could be quoted out of context to make you look bad. If you don’t you are likely to regret it. You may even find it prudent to avoid arguing for unpopular positions that you believe in …. Another effect is to make company executives more guarded in internal correspondence.” (03/20/26)
“It is a great tribute to the profundity of Flannery O’Connor’s work that it continues to generate quality secondary literature many years after her death. Lately the conversation has taken a philosophical turn, exploring O’Connor’s relevance to some of the defining debates within modern philosophy. An excellent example of this kind of work is Ann Hartle’s Flannery O’Connor and Blaise Pascal: Recovering the Incarnation for the Modern Mind.” (03/20/26)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Sarah Leah Whitson
“After years of flouting the UN and Geneva Conventions Israel suddenly has an attack of legal propriety now that it is on the receiving end.” (03/20/26)
“The Supreme Court on Friday revived a lawsuit from an evangelical Christian barred from demonstrating in Mississippi after authorities say he shouted insults at people over a loudspeaker. The high court unanimously ruled in the case of Gabriel Olivier, who says his religious and free speech rights were violated when he was arrested for refusing to move his preaching away from a suburban amphitheater. The city said he had shouted insults like ‘whores,’ ‘Jezebel’ and ‘nasty’ at people, sometimes holding signs showing aborted fetuses. Olivier wanted to challenge the law as an unconstitutional restriction on free speech, but lower courts stopped him from suing because he’d been convicted of breaking it. A Supreme Court case from the 1990s found people can’t use civil lawsuits to undermine criminal convictions. But the justices found that doesn’t stop Olivier from suing because he only wants to block future enforcement.” (03/20/26)
