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Category: Politics

Saudi-backed Yemeni government declares war against Houthis, widening crisis

Saudi-backed Yemeni government declares war against Houthis, widening crisis

The New York Times reports: The Saudi-backed government of Yemen on Sunday announced a major military campaign against the Houthi militia, a key Iranian ally, plunging the Middle East even deeper into war. In a televised speech, Rashad al-Alimi, the leader of the internationally recognized, Saudi-backed government, said that the government was seeking to reclaim all the territory it had lost to the Houthis over the past 12 years. The government and the Houthis have been engaged in fierce battles…

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Trump wants control of South America. If Bolsonaro Jr wins in Brazil, that could become a reality

Trump wants control of South America. If Bolsonaro Jr wins in Brazil, that could become a reality

Steve Bloomfield writes: Donald Trump has enjoyed very few foreign policy victories since returning to power. From failed wars to failed peace processes, his second term in office has been marked by one costly blunder on the world stage after another. In Latin America, though, the US president has a different story to tell. His administration’s national security strategy outlined how the US wanted to “restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere”. It was a brazen document, laying out how…

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AI infrastructure buildout surpasses every prior investment in American history, posing systemic risks

AI infrastructure buildout surpasses every prior investment in American history, posing systemic risks

Quartz reports: A new Brookings Institution study finds that the U.S. artificial intelligence infrastructure buildout is on pace to consume a larger share of economic output than any prior technology rollout in American history, including railroads, the interstate highway system, and the internet — while the financing structures underpinning it carry systemic financial risks. The study — authored by Columbia Business School finance and real estate professor Stijn van Nieuwerburgh — puts total spending on data centers and related AI…

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Dean Baker: If AI is crashing, the story should be jail in, not bail out

Dean Baker: If AI is crashing, the story should be jail in, not bail out

Dean Baker writes: We can’t know yet whether the Oracle meltdown, and the AI leaders’ admission that they don’t know what they are doing, will be enough to force the big money actors in the stock market to look at arithmetic, but we can hope. And if they do see reality, and the bubble begins to deflate, and the big AI companies head towards bankruptcy, we can predict what the politicians they bought will look to do: give them huge…

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I quit OpenAI because its culture is broken — the time for trial and error is over

I quit OpenAI because its culture is broken — the time for trial and error is over

David Robinson writes: What I’m about to tell you has, I realize, become something of a cliché: I resigned this week from OpenAI. I led the writing of the safety reports we published with each major launch. Now I’m joining a parade of former colleagues—at OpenAI and the industry’s other leaders—who have decided that the current path is unacceptable. I agree with other recently departed staff that the companies building this technology aren’t being nearly careful enough. But I believe…

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Zohran Mamdani is elevating politics by filling potholes

Zohran Mamdani is elevating politics by filling potholes

Lydia Polgreen writes: A few days before the leaders of the world streamed into the cavernous, marble-lined General Assembly Hall to deliver their speeches on the grave crises convulsing our combustible world, Mayor Zohran Mamdani offered his own, somewhat surprising solution to the problem of rising authoritarianism: filling potholes. “If politics cannot deliver on the block where you live, why would you trust it to deliver anywhere?” Mamdani asked a gathering of mayors from big cities across the world, explaining…

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Trump demanded that taxpayer money be used for TV ads praising him

Trump demanded that taxpayer money be used for TV ads praising him

The New York Times reports: President Trump personally instructed his budget director to use taxpayer money for TV ads praising him and his presidency, setting in motion a $20 million contract that used funds from the Department of Homeland Security, according to people familiar with the matter. The ads have run across cable and network television — on Fox News, CNN and MS Now, with football games on Fox and with national newscasts on CBS, ABC and NBC, including “Meet…

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Economic strain is pitting China’s people against each other

Economic strain is pitting China’s people against each other

From Beijing, Helen Gao writes: For years, the mood in China has been darkening. A weakening economy has left many disillusioned, a state of mind expressed privately and across the heavily controlled internet in lowered expectations and quiet anxiety. Some of that may now be surfacing in more troubling ways. In March, a man drove a heavy construction vehicle through an outdoor market in a Beijing suburb, reportedly killing several people. In June, a small aircraft crashed into a prominent…

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ICE has been dumping protester photos into a Palantir database

ICE has been dumping protester photos into a Palantir database

Wired reports: An explosive and newly partially unsealed court filing alleges that the US Department of Homeland Security built up dossiers on ICE observers—including their photos, license plate numbers, and other information—and stored them in a system called the Investigative Case Management database, which was built by Palantir. Palantir did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for DHS calls the case “meritless” and says that “the underlying lawsuit is based on the lie that there is a…

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Amazon’s $1 billion plan to combat data center backlash draws more backlash

Amazon’s $1 billion plan to combat data center backlash draws more backlash

Ars Technica reports: On Friday, Amazon committed to donating more than $1 billion over the next five years to communities neighboring data centers. In a press release, Amazon Web Services’ CEO Matt Garman said that communities would decide how to prioritize funds across “education, job training, energy affordability, water, and energy preservation, and local priorities.” Laying out other community commitments, Amazon also promised to ensure data centers wouldn’t increase power bills or wipe out local water supplies. Regarding the latter,…

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Is there anything FBI Director Kash Patel won’t do for Trump before the midterms?

Is there anything FBI Director Kash Patel won’t do for Trump before the midterms?

Sarah Fitzpatrick writes: Earlier this year, FBI Director Kash Patel vowed before God, Fox Nation, and Donald Trump that he would punish the “deep state” for its manifold transgressions, especially the (actually nonexistent) conspiracy to steal the 2020 election. “I’ve been with the president nearly since day one on this,” he said in an interview with Maria Bartiromo. “I can announce on your show that we’ve got all the information we need. We’re working with our prosecutors at the Department…

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Why ‘NAZA’ terrifies Israel’s liberal elite

Why ‘NAZA’ terrifies Israel’s liberal elite

Sebastian Ben Daniel (John Brown) writes: For decades, the liberal camp in Israel has cultivated a convenient and effective defense mechanism. When faced with uncomfortable moral questions about Israel’s actions, responsibility could usually be assigned to the political fringes. The culprits were always the “bad apples”: hilltop youth, far-right ministers, a rogue infantry unit, settlers nobody in north Tel Aviv would invite to dinner. This division of labor was remarkably convenient. The right committed the crimes; the liberals supplied the…

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National Science Foundation diverted $1.4 billion in funds mandated by Congress

National Science Foundation diverted $1.4 billion in funds mandated by Congress

The New York Times reports: The National Science Foundation, one of the biggest sources of federal research funding, withheld $1.4 billion that Congress had intended for research over the course of the past year, according to internal data reviewed by The New York Times. The extraordinary move — holding back about one-fifth of the N.S.F.’s primary research budget — is the latest sign of how the Trump administration is finding creative ways to work around Congress. Lawmakers from both parties…

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How Jared Kushner has profited from the Gaza genocide

How Jared Kushner has profited from the Gaza genocide

CNN reports: At the same time Jared Kushner has acted as a key negotiator in the war in Gaza, his private equity company, Affinity Partners, has held the largest stake in an Israeli firm backing businesses involved in Israel’s military campaigns, a CNN investigation has found. Kushner has skirted deeper scrutiny of this potential conflict of interest by acting as a volunteer envoy, rather than accepting a government job that would require him to disclose his finances. In the process,…

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Hegseth puts the future of warfare in the hands of major MAGA donors

Hegseth puts the future of warfare in the hands of major MAGA donors

The Guardian reports: By installing the tech billionaires Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey to advisory roles in a Pentagon project about the future of warfare, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, bestowed extraordinary influence on two of Maga’s most significant campaign donors – and both men own companies that benefit from federal defense contracting. The new project, which Hegseth dubbed “Project Meridian” in an event in Quantico, Virginia, on Wednesday, will be led by Pentagon official Emil Michael, a former Uber…

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Competitive authoritarianism in America

Competitive authoritarianism in America

Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way write: When we began writing about competitive authoritarianism a quarter-century ago, we never imagined applying the concept to the United States. Our initial study of 35 post–Cold War competitive authoritarian regimes centered overwhelmingly on postcommunist and lower- and middle-income countries with weak states and weak civil societies. But in the early twenty-first century, a set of “new” competitive authoritarian regimes emerged in countries with more established democratic institutions, such as Hungary, India, Poland, Turkey,…

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