“The war in the Middle East keeps getting worse for President Donald Trump. The campaign to defeat Iran and establish a new order in the Middle East that left Tehran’s allies marginalized has imploded spectacularly. … ‘Don’t worry,’ politicians and war hawks told Americans, ‘Trump has a winning strategy.’ They argued that the Iranian economy and the Strait of Hormuz really weren’t all that important to the global oil market. They claimed that the ‘panicans’ were alarming their fellow Americans over nothing. ‘Sure, oil can’t get through the Strait of Hormuz, but Saudi Arabia can pump the oil to the Red Sea via its East-West pipeline.’ However, that plan literally went up in smoke last week.” (09/27/26)
“It’s reasonable to ask how AI might kill us all. We can answer that question on several levels. At the first level, AI can kill humans in the same way that humans kill humans. AI is already being used in lethal ways …. At a second level, we should remember that AI is native to computer systems; that’s where it lives. And these computer systems are increasingly in charge of everything that we do. … But at the highest level, none of these details about how AI might kill us matter. The thing that is dangerous about AI is that it could become massively more intelligent than us, and so massively more capable of controlling the environment in any number of ways.” (09/16/26)
“Pharmaceutical forecasting is untested, and the FDA is a conservative organization. Decision makers would not and should not uproot their usual process in favor of a forecasting-based one. We envision applying forecasting to the FDA gradually, increasing its prominence only after low-commitment applications have visibly succeeded. … This summer, as part of its Operation Trialblazer clinical trial reform initiative, the Trump administration announced a pilot program to speed up phase 1 trials. Incorporating forecasting into that pilot would be a concrete way of implementing this initial stage. The FDA could either employ human forecasters, partner with an AI superforecasting company, or create their own in-house software; results from this first stage would be used to calibrate its effectiveness.” (09/16/26)
“Many narratives swirl around the U.S. war with Iran as the November 3 midterm elections loom. The Left is giddy with confidence that Democrats may take control of Congress. It is therefore planning a circus of impeachments, lawfare, and investigations to neuter the last two years of the Trump administration. High gas prices and the current unpopularity of the Iran conflict, coupled with the historical reality that the president’s party has lost seats in Congress in 39 of the last 41 midterm elections, have convinced Democrats that they could win enough seats to cut off funds for the war. Yet the elections are still seven weeks away, and the sheer number of known unknowns ensures an uncertain outcome. Every side is now gaming the midterms. The Democrats believe the unpopular war can at last halt Trump’s momentum and are already declaring it all but lost. The Iranian theocracy agrees.” (09/17/26)
“A visit by perennial Trump administration negotiators Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, followed immediately by one to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Donald Trump’s claim that a ceasefire in that war is imminent might make critics suspicious of another administration attempt to pressure Ukraine for major concessions to end that bloody war, this time in exchange for a Russian stand-down in helping Iran in the administration’s war with that country. Any such obvious mutually advantageous deal could help both Russia and the United States at Ukraine’s expense.” (09/17/26)
“The phobia against human judgment is America’s unspoken taboo. As a result, the American state is floundering. The evils of bureaucratic micromanagement include: inability to adapt to new circumstances (sluggish defense procurement), diversion to rule compliance instead of doing the job (doctors and nurses spend half their time on desk work), loss of a sense of individual agency and pride (why bother when drowning in law?) and listless public cultures.” (09/16/26)
“No one today can think Jefferson to have been morally upright in all that he did. His writings and his work to achieve a liberal society—in some areas—are impossible to reconcile with his enslavement of other human beings, or the particularly cruel ways that he treated them. And yet he stands at the founding of our country. His proudest accomplishments survive, and it falls to us to explain how such a man could contain such contradictions.” (09/16/26)
“The Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the Department of Homeland Security released a scathing report last Friday about the shuttered Florida concentration camp built on an abandoned airstrip known as ‘Alligator Alcatraz’, concluding the camp failed to meet numerous health and safety standards, and that the use of ‘small metal enclosures’ was ‘unprecedented’ and posed ‘significant risks to detainee health and safety’. The report included photos, taken by OIG inspectors during an “unannounced” visit in January to the camp, showing a phone booth–sized cage set up outdoors under a temporary awning. Staff at the camp euphemistically described the cages as ‘calming areas’ where detainees could ‘reflect on their behavior choices, manage their emotions’ and, they claimed, leave whenever they wanted.” (09/17/26)
“There are few sadder images than the abandoned steel towns of America’s formerly vibrant Rust Belt, and the all-too-true trope of a once-successful miner resorting to driving for Uber. We know this is a powerful motivator and is a reason for President Donald Trump’s rise. And who better to talk about this than [JD] Vance, who emerged from dire circumstances against all odds, who knows firsthand the afflictions faced by the working poor as prices on just about everything continue to rise? Except that if you listen closely, bitter irony overflows from Vance’s populist crusade: To save the working class, he wants to adopt the exact big-government policies that broke the economy in the first place.” (09/16/26)
