“An iPhone-hacking technique used in the wild to indiscriminately hijack the devices of any iOS user who merely visits a website represents a rare and shocking event in the cybersecurity world. Now one powerful hacking toolkit at the center of multiple mass iPhone exploitation campaigns has taken an even rarer and more disturbing path: It appears to have traveled from the hands of Russian spies who used it to target Ukrainians to a cybercriminal operation designed to steal cryptocurrency from Chinese-speaking victims—and some clues suggest it may have been originally created by a US contractor and sold to the American government.” (03/03/26)
“I fled Iran at 18 under the most desperate of circumstances, making a bargain with a human trafficker who secretly abused me for years in exchange for a visa that kept me out of Iran. My birth country was made so inhospitable that to return was to face death. Last week, when I heard that Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, had been killed in a U.S.-Israeli airstrike, I felt … thankful. My thanks mostly went not to the military operation that ended his life but to the millions of young Iranians who had prepared the ground for his regime’s demise long before the first bomb fell.” (03/03/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Ryan McMaken
“The Trump administration has unilaterally—without any Congressional debate or vote, of course—forced Americans into yet another war. This time, the war is a large-scale military campaign against Iran. Was there any groundswell of public support for this war? Did the Congress vote to spend more American tax dollars on another war? Apparently not. According to a March 1 poll from Reuters, only 27 percent of Americans polled said they support the US’s new war on Iran. Needless to say, few Americans have been calling their representatives in Congress asking for yet another Middle Eastern war. So, why is the US now at war with Iran? Not even the administration appears to know for sure.” (03/03/26)
Source: Niskanen Center
by Gabe Menchaca, Steve Krauss, & Peter Bonner
“Large-scale IT modernization projects fail with remarkable regularity. They fail in private companies with strong profit incentives and unified leadership. They fail in state and local governments with narrower missions and simpler constraints. And they fail — often spectacularly — in the federal government. Entire multibillion‑dollar industries exist precisely because implementing large, complex software, including Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, is hard: technically complex, organizationally disruptive, politically fraught, and culturally destabilizing. OPM’s new HR 2.0 initiative is therefore entering hostile terrain by default. The initiative aspires to rationalize, consolidate, and modernize a sprawling thicket of federal human resources systems that has grown organically over half a century.” (03/04/26)
“After the president of peace, a man who felt deserving of the Nobel Prize, authorized a massive aerial bombardment of Iran last summer, the task of explaining away the contradiction fell to J. D. Vance. … The difference was simple: Other wars were bad because they were led by dumb presidents, but a Trump war would be good because Donald Trump is smart. Yet after the administration’s second wave of air attacks on Iran, the president’s strategy seems more sundown than Sun Tzu.” (03/03/26)
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Matthew Guariglia
“The U.S. military has officially ended its $200 million contract with AI company Anthropic and has ordered all other military contractors to cease use of their products. Why? … Anthropic had made it clear since it first signed the contract with the Pentagon in 2025 that it did not want its technology to be used for mass surveillance of people in the United States or for fully autonomous weapons systems. Starting in January, that became a problem for the Department of Defense, which ordered Anthropic to give them unrestricted use of the technology. Anthropic refused, and the DoD retaliated. There is a lot we could learn from this conflict, but the biggest take away is this: the state of your privacy is being decided by contract negotiations between giant tech companies and the U.S. government—two entities with spotty track records for caring about your civil liberties.” (03/03/26)
“Gaining knowledge is critical. Not just about the presence and use of cameras, but what is done with the images and other data as well. (Examples: who it is provided to (first- and second-hand), how it can be used to track purchases and movements, and whom we have contact with.) Knowing how they work and how to avoid and disable them is also important. For example, the QR code or magnetic strip on many cards (such as driver’s licenses) allows linking to online databases, both for getting information about us and for providing info about us to others. Opting out, whenever that opportunity is available, is also an important action.” (03/03/26)
“As news broke that the United States and Israel had launched war on Iran, two posts kept showing up over and over on my social media feeds. One was from the Israeli military’s official account, which stated an oft-repeated phrase: ’Israel has the right to defend itself’. The other was a video from the Iranian city of Minab, where the first reports of casualties were emerging. The joint U.S.-Israeli attack had hit a girls’ elementary school; the death toll kept ticking higher and higher. At the time of publication, Iranian authorities said 165 people, mostly schoolchildren, had been killed in the strike, with many more injured. Plenty has been written, in Truthout and elsewhere, about the totally incoherent justifications for this war, the illegality of it, the potential for regional disaster, the joke it has made of the very idea of diplomacy.” (03/03/26)
“Today is the first primary of the 2026 midterm elections. Voters in Arkansas, North Carolina, and Texas are kicking off the selection of Republican and Democratic candidates who will be facing off up and down the ballot in November. Polls indicate that Americans are motivated to voice their concerns, particularly surrounding rising costs (especially in healthcare and housing), threats to our democracy, political corruption, and unemployment. So, naturally, the Republican candidates running for Senate in Texas are competing to prove who is more anti-Muslim. The irony is that nearly every accusation they level at Islam mirrors the political agenda I embraced as an Evangelical Christian.” (03/03/26)
“MAGA Hardliners are mostly evangelical Trump supporters who believe a ‘deep state’ runs politics and that ‘the Left’ hates America. About 25% hold college degrees. Anti-woke Conservatives say American identity is fading and ‘woke’ ideology has ruined American education, news, and entertainment. They are the least religious group (31% atheist, agnostic, or unaffiliated) and about 40% hold college degrees. Mainline Republicans are the most optimistic about the American dream and least likely to say the country is in decline. About 25% have some college experience but no degree, and 38% hold only a high school diploma. Reluctant Right voted for Trump because he seemed ‘less bad’ than Kamala Harris. They are the least likely to identify as Republican, the least hopeful about the next four years, and the most likely to say they vote across party lines. Those distinctions aren’t just academic. They predict meaningful differences in how Trump voters weigh rights, institutions, and presidential power.” (03/03/26)
