"With the expiry of New START...insights into nuclear deployments available from on-site inspections are lost...Against this backdrop, it is expected that satellite remote sensing will be a critical tool for assessing nuclear forces and postures."

"What worries China even more is the possibility that U.S. forward-deployed autonomous systems may eventually carry nuclear weapons. In 2023, two reports from the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center explored the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons in a Taiwan conflict…"

"Trump at some level knows he’s failing politically, cognitively and physically and wants to take it all down with him, the way that ancient rulers were buried with their slaughtered horses and servants."

"Iranian negotiators say the United States’ aims went even beyond a return to that status quo, Mr. Karimi said, to demanding shared management of the strait. “It is nonsense that America would have management of the Hormuz Strait,” he said."

"Watching the Artemis launch, I felt hope for US science for the first time in a while. The president’s budget request brought me back down to Earth."

"Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre — Pope Leo XIV’s then-ambassador to the United States...Colby and his colleagues told the cardinal, has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side."

"The war in Ukraine and instability in the Middle East are not just straining global supply chains and energy markets. They are also impacting U.S. military resources..."

There is a way out of this war if Trump wants to take it. The Iranians are making a serious offer here that promises to not only end the war, but to create sustainable peace and prosperity in the Gulf. www.foreignaffairs.com/middle-east/...

"Washington has informed Tokyo that deliveries for its order for about 400 missiles by March 2028 would be disrupted, according to people familiar with the situation."

"Strategically and systemically, China’s decarbonization efforts ... minimize risks and volatility in what leaders see as an increasingly volatile global order – especially in fossil fuels.

"The open access approach that China’s tech companies such as DeepSeek have taken fits this well and could lead to more rapid adoption of AI than in countries that rely on proprietary systems."

"The Rockefellers and Carnegies were institution builders who sought immortality by endowing universities and libraries that would survive them. Some of the philanthro-capitalists who turn up in the Epstein emails evince less concern for their posthumous legacies than for living like gods."

"Imperial decline is rarely self-contained. It is often accompanied by the emergence of a new hegemonic framework. Yet ...no single power appears poised to replace the United States in the way it replaced Britain. Instead, the emerging order is fragmented and multipolar."

Trumps's claim, like so much of the rest of his language, has no basis in reality. I really worry for these poor US soldiers heading into harm's way. They're being horribly, and tragically, misled.

"Not only were environmental justice topics removed from the plan due to a federal executive order, but as many as 33 cultural heritage sites could be impacted to make way for new construction.”

"Many observers have expressed alarm about Thiel’s and Palantir’s role in the rise of an authoritarian surveillance state and threats to human rights worldwide. So now Palantir is being handed the keys to USDA farmer data. What could possibly go wrong?" Read @karenstillerman.bsky.social's blog:

"Mr. Kairoff, who is in his 30s, said in an interview that he saw the trend partly as a “yearning for some kind of alternative” among young Americans…"

With the US-Israeli war on Iran and the Strait of Hormuz closure costing US farmers billions, UCS’s Omanjana Goswami explains why they need an off-ramp from a system that overemphasizes commodity crops and relies heavily on synthetic fertilizers and chemicals. Learn more:

My amazing @scovillepf.bsky.social @seantmanning.bsky.social has a new @ucs.org piece on what he appropriately calls Trump's "Bloody New Deal," i.e., his proposal to dump $1.5 trillion into military spending, a massive 66% increase. See: blog.ucs.org/sean-manning...

If you're wondering where the Marine Expeditionary Force that left from Okinawa might be headed, a look at a map of the strait might help inform that guess.

"If US policies in the Middle East remain on the same careless, narrow-interest course as in the Cold War, one can only begin to imagine the scope of the risks—nuclear and otherwise—facing the wide swath of actors embroiled in regional geopolitics."

He added that only Israel stood to gain materially by overthrowing the Islamic Republic, and had little concern about who governs Iran subsequently. "This is an uncomfortable truth to tell... America has lost control of its own foreign policy. But it must be told."

Learn more about heatwaves and climate change:

"According to the Guardian, a diplomat of unspecified nationality said there was reason to believe the US was dragged into war...We regarded Witkoff and Kushner as Israeli assets that dragged a president into a war he wants to get out of.” The source said."

A veteran of the Iraq war, Mr. Kent said that the arguments in support of attacking Iran, and promises of a swift victory, echoed the debate over going to war against Iraq in 2003.

"Longer term, officials and analysts suggest the war will weaken American influence, aid Chinese arguments about American decline and accelerate a middle-power arms race."

"The decision to take air defence systems from South Korea underscores how stretched US capabilities are... the US has struggled to fill requests by its Gulf partners for air defence interceptors. Gulf analysts have questioned the value of US military bases as their countries are pummelled by Iran."

"In a Cabinet meeting this week, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung confirmed the U.S. may need to relocate air defense assets to the Middle East and subsequent reports said that multiple launchers of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system were spotted moving out of a southern base."

"The full extent of damage to U.S. air defense and communication infrastructure remains unclear. Michael Eisenstadt, a director at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that the affected radars would be difficult to repair or replace."

"America’s economy is more than 40 percent more oil-intensive than China’s, even though China is a net oil importer and sources much of its oil from Persian Gulf countries, including Iran. The European Union’s economy is half as oil-intensive as America’s."