Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman

“I spent them in a small town — population a little under ten thousand — that exists for two weeks a year. It pops into existence on a Friday in late July, vanishes starting two weeks later, is gone by noon on Sunday. For all its ephemeral nature it is a real small town. Nobody locks his doors. People know their neighbors — mostly the same neighbors year after year. People, even children, know their way to where their friends live. The town has restaurants, most reappearing each year. It has medical services. It has one general store and more than a hundred specialty stores. It has a university which gives no degrees and no grades, charges no tuition for classes, has no admissions requirements.” (08/13/25)

https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/the-past-two-weeks

Source: Foreign Policy
by Dion Nissenbaum

“International condemnation is not a problem as long as the Israeli government’s long-term objectives are advanced.” (08/13/25)

https://archive.is/MOOpH

Source: New York Post
by Miranda Devine

“It’s hard to believe that the Russiagate plotters are so stupid, but the declassified documents tumbling out of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s files show that, while they had a lot of power and managed to hide their nefarious activities for almost a decade, President Barack Obama’s henchmen were none too bright. The latest tranche of declassified emails has Obama’s DNI, James Clapper, telling then-National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers essentially to shut up and put his name to the intelligence community assessment (ICA) that Clapper and then-CIA Director John Brennan were cooking up, at Obama’s direction, to concoct a narrative that Russia had tilted the 2016 election to help Trump win.” (08/13/25)

https://nypost.com/2025/08/13/opinion/obama-aides-admit-russiagate-was-a-smear-campaign-against-trump/

Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by William L Anderson

“On the morning of April 19, 1995, a truck bomb exploded outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, including 19 children at a day care center in the building, and injuring hundreds more. As the FBI website tells readers, a single ex-soldier named Timothy McVeigh acted alone, being motivated by anti-government sentiment that came in the aftermath of the Waco massacre two years earlier. The FBI version, of course, is the official version and the one repeated in history books and in the New York Times. … But what if the FBI’s narrative is untrue and that several people were involved in the bombing, some of whom being either government informers or FBI agents who infiltrated right-wing paramilitary groups?” (08/14/25)

https://mises.org/mises-wire/oklahoma-city-bombing-lesson-government-lawlessness

Source: Christian Science Monitor
by Ann Scott Tyson

“Overall, Beijing is prioritizing real-world applications in manufacturing, farming, and other traditional sectors, as well as in new industries like drones and self-driving vehicles. Dr. Yu [Kai]’s focus at AISpeech fits into this pattern. He says his firm has scores of original technologies and more than 600 invention patents which leverage AI to connect people to the hardware around them. For example, AISpeech’s systems can perceive distinct voices in a crowd – what he describes as ‘the holy grail of speech processing’ – and reliably allows them to direct hardware, such as smart cars or home appliances, to execute tasks amid the commotion.” [hat tip — JR] [editor’s note: JR notes that “it seems likely to me that the authorities in China will think of other uses for these capabilities besides giving instructions to home appliances.” And it will come to the US as well – TLK] (08/12/25)

https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2025/0812/China-US-AI-competition-regulation