A «lonely» Ukrainian housewife traded WhatsApp messages with a Chechen commander for months. "Send me a picture," she asked. He photographed himself and a map of his unit's position pinned on the wall behind him.
The housewife did not exist — The Atlantic. 1/
"She" was a middle-aged Ukrainian intelligence officer named Serhiy. Shortly after Achmad sent the photo, a drone struck the coordinates it revealed.
His commander: "Serhiy was great at flirting. Guys in our team started asking him for dating advice." 2/
Inside occupied territory, any phone sold there comes preloaded with Russian spyware called Druge. Encrypted apps like Signal guarantee a trip to "the basement."
Resistance agents smuggle in clean phones — sometimes delivered by drone — with no SIM card and no spyware. 3/
Bolton: Damage to Iran's military infrastructure is real, but the regime stays and this deal is a significant political defeat.
Trump wanted the strait open to get gasoline prices down before November. He lost sight of the strategic issues that should have been central. 1/
Bolton: Gulf Arabs will live in fear that Tehran turns the strait on and off like a light switch.
Friends around the world wonder even more what an American commitment means. If we had taken military control of the strait at the outset, none of this would have happened. 2/
Bolton on the $300B fund Trump says the US won't pay for, the MOU says the US undertakes to create this fund "while ensuring financing of at least $300 billion."
That is a guarantee, and the US is the guarantor. If the Saudis and Emirates won't pay, it comes from us. 3X
Graham: If the Iran deal fails, Trump takes the Strait of Hormuz by force. The US will control it and charge a fee for all ships passing through.
He says he spent four and a half hours with Trump on Friday laying this out. Expand the Abraham Accords in 2026. 1/
Graham: New policy if diplomacy collapses — when Hezbollah attacks Israel, the US hits Iran directly.
Not the proxy. Iran itself. "If Iran tests control of the Strait of Hormuz by the United States, we will obliterate them." To the Iranians: that is the message. 2/
Graham: On the $300B fund he called "a Marshall Plan for Germany with the Nazis still in charge", he changed position.
If money comes from Sunni Arabs, not the West, it proves Iran changed. "Do you think Saudi Arabia will invest in a theocracy bent on destroying Sunni Islam?" 3/
Hodges on Hegseth saying Trump tested our allies and they failed over the Iran war: Absolute total horseshit. The war is now being spun as a test of alliance solidarity.
That's the mentality. And that's what's going into the NATO summit in Ankara in a few weeks. 1/
Hodges: What a childish, immature way to think about strategy — reward allies that spend enough, punish those that don't. US soldiers in Europe are not here to guard Germans or protect Poles.
It's for our interest. Just like British forces on the continent are for UK's interest. 2/
Hodges: Romania, a leader in defense spending. What happened? The rotational brigade got cancelled. Pentagon cancels an armored brigade to Poland. Thank you very much.
The president said we're sending 5,000 troops to Poland. I'm pretty sure he has no idea if that's happening. 3X
Hodges: Hard to imagine a worse outcome of this war of choice. Worse than Obama's JCPOA. Failed every objective the president laid out, and they changed the objective several times and still didn't hit any of them.
The IRGC came out of this more empowered than before. 1/
Hodges: This demonstrated the limits of American power — especially going it alone. Even with the best navy and air force, we could not achieve the strategic end state.
The technology is incredible. But we could not solve our military problem with technology alone. 2/
Hodges: The crowning moment of the G7 was Macron getting Trump to sign what we all consider a surrender document — in Versailles. The humorists wasted no time capturing the irony.
The administration didn't have the stomach for it. They're looking at midterms in November. 3X
The US may win AI and still lose the technology race — Bloomberg.
AI is only one piece of the competition with China. Twenty years ago, the US led China in 61 of 64 key technologies tracked by ASPI. Three years ago, China led in 57 of them. 1/
The bigger challenge is turning innovation into industrial power.
For example, China now manufactures 70–80% of the world’s drones, despite many core technologies being invented in the US, Europe, and Japan. 2/
US biotech remains a global leader in research, but lacks manufacturing capacity to capture the economic value of its discoveries fully.
Quantum computing still requires sustained public investment to avoid a future "quantum winter." 3/