📝 🇺🇸 👨‍💻 People don't like the idea of AI companies destructively-scanning warehouses filled with books for the same reason they don't like Flock's vision of having everyone live under an AI-powered surveillance network: There is a growing fear that AI accelerationists are recklessly scaling what is arguably the most world’s most powerful force at breakneck speed with little regard for the human things that are torn asunder in the wake, whether that’s physical books, art, privacy, or the environment.

The backlash against the wholesale destruction of physical books has left some AI advocates baffled, chalking it up to ignorance, outrage at easy targets. In The Atlantic, Alex Reisner examined several of the central claims now circulating online. He wrote that part of the problem is that “the specifics of this situation are obscured by hard-to-trace purchasing histories and the silence of AI companies and other potential buyers,” leaving many unanswered questions. He also noted that among the books being destroyed are technical and academic titles, considered “rare” only in the narrow sense of being out of print. These are things the average person would presumably never read, let alone miss upon their being mulched. (And many, if not most, books end up in landfills or recycling without Big AI’s assistance.) And yet, Reisner still found plenty of cause for concern in the process of taking millions of books, denuding them of their creators, and throwing them into the maw of a chatbot. “It masks the hard work and collaboration that goes into knowledge creation, undermines incentives for authors to write books, prevents experts from finding one another, and gives companies tremendous power over what information people can access,” he concluded.

Those who wave away the outcry as the stuff of book-obsessives risk missing the essential point Reisner is getting at, one that goes beyond books. It’s the same reason people don’t like the vision of a future in which every American lives under the watchful eye of an AI-powered surveillance network, such as the notions promoted by Garrett Langley, the founder and CEO of Flock, an Atlanta-based technology company whose wares include automated license plate readers. It is the same reason people in Ohio, where I live, protested against a proposal by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency to make it easier for data centers to dump wastewater into lakes, rivers, and streams without consequence.

It’s not a mystery what links these varied assertions of tech power: There is a growing fear that the developers and proprietors of AI are recklessly scaling what is arguably the most world’s most powerful force at breakneck speed with little regard for the human things that are torn asunder in the wake, whether that’s physical books, art, privacy, or the environment. And whenever something like Project Panama comes to light, those concerns seem increasingly valid.

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2026/08/10/project-panama-anthropic-ai-books/

📎 Pedro L. Gonzalez

🇺🇸⚡️ — President Trump golfed at his Bedminster Golf Course over the weekend with an AN/TWQ-1 Avenger SHORAD system.

🇮🇷🏆🇺🇸 They Saw It Coming

How American military planners anticipated failure in Iran

In mid-February 2026, before the US military initiated the airstrikes that began Operation “Epic Fury,” the National Intelligence Council (NIC), an agency of the executive branch created to synthesize the analysis of the US’s 18 intelligence agencies, submitted to the president a classified report detailing the prospects of an attack on Iran. This assessment, first reported on in the Washington Post and subsequently confirmed by the Associated Press, painted a grim picture.

It concluded that an offensive operation launched by the US military would be unlikely to dismantle the central pillars of the Iranian government. Assassinating Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei could backfire, resulting in the consolidation of Iranian military and political structures and the activation of emergency protocols the Iranians had been preparing for years. Iran’s domestic opposition was unlikely to be able to seize power in such a scenario. A limited air campaign or even a protracted war stood a serious chance of failing to achieve regime change.

The NIC report was the final warning in a decades-long, documented history of US military and intelligence planners predicting grim strategic outcomes in a war with Iran. Official analysis anticipated every major failure of a potential conflict, from the brutal arithmetic of interceptor production to the possibility that Iran might close the Strait of Hormuz.

Given the clear historical record of American anticipation of these failures, it should now be asked why these warnings went largely ignored. If the Pentagon and intelligence community understood the bleak prospect for success in Iran, if their assessments anticipated debasification, munition shortages, the closure of Hormuz, the superiority of diplomacy, the difficulties with achieving air supremacy, and the unlikely prospect of regime change, how did they find themselves embarking on what was, by all available evidence, an unwinnable war? The answer to this question can be found in a series of leaks made shortly after the war began to The New York Times.

In the lead-up to the war, every assessment made by the Pentagon and US intelligence apparatus was directly contradicted by competing assessments made by Israeli planners and presented directly to the Trump administration. Mossad chief David Barnea traveled to Washington in mid-January and delivered a comprehensive plan to assassinate the Iranian leadership and stir mass protests to accomplish regime change.

The Israelis also presented a supporting plan to invade Iran with Kurdish proxy forces, but American strategists had already identified that the Kurds were too dispersed and disorganized to be used for this purpose, and doing so would strain relations with Turkey. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heavily lobbied the Trump administration to convince them the plan was achievable. Throughout this process, US military and intelligence officials fought fiercely to convince the administration that the plan would fail, but were overruled.

Continued ⬇️

🔗 https://open.substack.com/pub/amerikanets/p/they-saw-it-coming

🇺🇸❌⚽️ President Trump warns FIFA against replacing its president, Gianni Infantino, claiming that without Infantino at the helm, FIFA would "never be profitable again".

@CIG_telegram

🇮🇷 Iranian authorities arrest five suspects in brutal killing of religious singer by anti-government monarchists

Iranian police have arrested five suspects, including a female social media influencer, in connection with the kidnapping and murder of Basij member and religious singer Hamidreza Rajabzadeh.

According to Iranian authorities, the perpetrators confessed to the crime, during which Rajabzadeh had his heart cut out while still alive before his body was dismembered and pieces were delivered to both his family and workplace. Law enforcement officials noted that one of the suspects, a woman, attempted to flee north before being captured.

Footage documenting the graphic murder was initially released on a Telegram channel before spreading widely across anti-government online platforms. Iranian police confirmed they are actively probing whether the attack was driven by personal grievances or organized terrorist motives.

🔗 The Cradle