In its conflict with Iran, the Trump administration has deployed Schelling’s design without Schelling’s discipline. The result is an outcome Iklé could have predicted: having started the war, the administration is unable to end it. open.substack.com/pub/bobbygho...

Well, turns out getting scanned through TSA by a dude with 3 spare clips prominently stashed in his tactical vest is a pretty visceral reminder of flying in South Africa during the 1980s.

When Russian forces were besieging Mariupol, they planned a strike on a hospital. To create a pretext, propagandists started laying the ground well before the assault. Now, war crimes prosecutors are building a novel case against them

Good bedtime reading for Supreme Court justices en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_...

"Calling a retreat by the name of the destination you originally intended to reach is a very old Washington tradition. But it does not make you less lost." open.substack.com/pub/bobbygho...

If you've admired the work of the international courts and tribunals, but also been dismayed by their inadequacy to the problem, or the condescension directed by some in the International Justice community toward alternative, often more political, approaches, this paper offers a sharp diagnostic.

Spoke with William Hennigan about POTUS's threat to attack Iran's "Electric Generating Plants." "[T]he president’s categorical statement represents a threat to target even civilian objects regardless of the requirement for distinction, which would be a war crime." www.nytimes.com/2026/03/30/o...

The White House and big tech have carried out a a multi-front assault on US information infrastructure. Now, Iran is using American tools and platforms to win the propaganda war www.codastory.com/disinformati...

I wrote about why Iran is winning the meme war, and how the White House, US tech leaders have surrendered a long-standing American information advantage www.codastory.com/disinformati...

Palantir is suing the small Swiss news outlet Republik. Among the revelations they will have disliked: a Swiss army assessment found that the risk of Palantir sharing data with US agencies, and of illegal privacy violations should rule out a deal.

c'mon

What works better, AI videos that propagate across every social platform in the known world, or this bullshit aired on White House TV?

This, on targeting procedures and the way that hasty reporting, dazzled by the charismatic halo of AI is obscuring both actual decision making systems and human accountability, is absolutely essential reading.

I wrote about the price of the illusion of American omnipotence that’s driving this reckless war in Iran, and so much else. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/o...

This is a shockingly vivid experience of the archive, a warning against the shredding of workplace protections, and just a stunning testimonial for the deep, under-appreciated power of progressive journalism.

The Alabama Education Television Commission forced disaffiliation from NPR for political reasons. Listenership and revenues are collapsing as a direct result.

I wrote this week about how satellite images of the Middle East are drying up, as American firms clamp down for fear of aiding Iranian targeting. That is thickening the fog of war & making OSINT harder. Some Russian & Chinese firms are filling the gap. www.economist.com/middle-east-...

Simple primer on IHL as it relates to attacks on energy infrastructure (oil storage facilities and processing plants atop giant gas fields, for example): blogs.icrc.org/law-and-poli...

It seems like this story should be getting more attention, given Donald Trump's pardon Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance.

Been waiting for someone to pick up the mantle of "a lot of post-covid new dev kinda sucks" and @davidfbrand.bsky.social does not disappoint gothamist.com/news/crappy-...

Sometimes, simply arranging the facts in their correct order is all that is needed. @ghoshworld.bsky.social does that here to devastating effect, with a reminder of the ideological roots of Modi's very bad choices.

Hard to say what will be the most fun about this: the finest minds of the Indian right bending themselves into pretzels to justify this grotesque call, Loomer justifying her record of wildly anti-Indian racism, or just watching the inevitable car crash.

This is an earthquake for East African media. The new controlling shareholder of the Nation Media Group has massive investments in politically exposed sectors like telecoms and energy, including a new gas terminal in Mombasa, and close relationships with governments in both Tanzania and Kenya.

My latest: Trump Has Crippled Iran's Navy, But Not Its Maritime Menace open.substack.com/pub/bobbygho...

Oh, Canada!

I have the dead of Fallujah on the line, sir.

"It would be no small irony if America’s Middle East reached its apotheosis just as the entire region collapsed into the abyss. But that day may be coming" foreignpolicy.com/2026/03/05/i...

I would love some reporting on how the offensive use of a nuclear submarine thousands of miles from the theatre of combat affects longstanding US efforts to build new alliances, secure freedom of navigation, and constrain Chinese ambitions in the Indian Ocean and Pacific.

Today's Reliable Sources newsletter lead: I checked in with six longtime US military reporters, and they said they're struck by the lack of day-to-day details about the ongoing military operations cnn.it/4aOnRgP

yes, fair, noted this in today's edition cnn.it/4aOnRgP

In addition to all these efforts from Western outlets, it's worth noting that Al-Jazeera English is crossing live to Tehran on the regular.

Just last month, the Iranian ship torpedoed by a US submarine was participating in naval exercises hosted by India alongside vessels from Sri Lanka, Russia, the UAE, Thailand, the Philippines, South Africa, Vietnam and Seychelles www.ifrmilan26.com

Keep on incorporating these odds into your reporting, folks.

Sure, he now bestrides the culture like a colossus, but Larry Ellison also just doubled his attack surface.

"Is Claude out of the war business?" @amostoh.bsky.social was thinking hard about AI, the law, and human rights long before it was cool, and you should spare 10 minutes to listen as he joins @alixdunn.com to dig into the dispute between Anthropic and the Pentagon.

When you've built your company around fears about AI alignment, and wake up to the fact that the real problem is human alignment www.nytimes.com/2026/02/24/u...

"As our son was being shot, we were terrified that what happened to Win Rozario was going to happen to Jabez.” @gwynnefitz.bsky.social and @gregbsmithnyc.bsky.social with news of what looks like an awful situation and a huge test for Zohran Mamdani

“We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns”

Choke down the nausea and stay for the kicker. Student journalism FTW.

I sat down with Naomi Klein (@naomiaklein.bsky.social) for our Reframe series. We dug into the bizarre frame of AI as a solution to the climate crisis. Per usual, I was pretty blown away by her analysis. The stickiest insight for me is her description of a three-legged stool.

In 2016 I spent a day hanging out at the Post, sitting in meetings and talking to staff. It felt like a well-appointed pirate ship that has sailed to the edge of the abyss and returned with Bezos's wind in its sails, ready defend its treasure and launch a raid on the future. What an awful reversal.

Jacob Zuma, Jeffrey Epstein, a British fixer, and a Russian model walk into an intimate dinner in London... www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026...

There are so many lines worth a pull quote in this extraordinary @codastory.com essay by Garry Pierre-Pierre that I don't know where to start. Just read the whole thing.

"Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea showed how spreading a narrative can erode sovereignty before any force is necessary ...Is America now doing something similar to its closest ally?" Few people know this playbook like @antelava.bsky.social. Heed her.

This is exactly the future imagined by people working in tech and human rights when adoption began to accelerate. They've been warning us for a decade, and advocating for limits, but local successes in restraining police use of these tools pale beside the wholesale abuses now occurring.

It is a long time since I lived in Madison but I really, really like the work @wisconsinwatch.org is doing. This is an example both whimsical and very serious: wisconsinwatch.org/2026/01/wisc...

Sundance paid for me to travel to the festival so I could moderate a panel on the politics of AI. They pulled me last minute because of my q's for this movie and support of Ghost in the Machine. More details on the pod this week about what happened, but this thread makes me proud I got booted.

The adminstration's lies keep running head on into the bulwark that is the Times's visual investigation team: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Hamba Kahle to the unbelievably brave Renfrew Christie www.nytimes.com/2026/01/14/w...

Newsroom raids and searches of journalists are hallmarks of illiberal regimes, usually intended to intimidate journalists from reporting and to deter their sources from sharing information with them. We need to make sure these practices aren't normalized here. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/14/u...