Here is the latest weekly round-up of links, with a collection of interesting articles on just a few topics: the progress (or lack thereof) of the Iran War, the hollowing out of a politicized Department of Justice, and the company to watch to gauge whether the AI bubble is bursting.

A reminder about this News Link Round-Up format: The main headlines are there to provide context and perhaps a little commentary, the headlines with the links are the original headlines from the articles, and the quotations beneath are extracts from the articles.

Subscribe now

So How Goes the War?

“He Was warned”: Insiders Say Trump Knew Consequences of Disastrous Scheme

New York Times reporter and author Jonathan Swan says his sources inside the White House claim President Donald Trump was well aware of the consequences of attacking Iran but marched forth with missile strikes regardless.

“All of this was not just predictable, but it was predicted actually,” said Swan, co-author of Regime Change. “He was warned about the munitions supply. He was warned about the potential for the Strait of Hormuz to be shut down. What happened was Donald Trump believed at a very core gut level that none of these things would happen because the war would be over quickly, because he believed that the US and Israeli militaries would crush Iran so quickly that none of these things would come to bear. But of course, that was a miscalculation that we’re now seeing play out five months later.”

Trump Keeps Making Threats. The World Has Stopped Flinching.

When President Donald Trump strode into the Rose Garden in April 2025 brandishing a poster board of tariff hikes, the world leaped as if a fire alarm had gone off. Markets shed trillions of dollars, envoys rushed to Washington, more than 75 governments scrambled to negotiate, some scrapping carefully prepped countermeasures in a rush to cut deals.

Sixteen months later, the flabbergasting threats keep piling up—to weaponize trade, annex Canada, seize Greenland, abandon NATO, annihilate Iran—but the alarm bells have gone quiet. World leaders are slower to rattle as they’ve seen the president increasingly fenced in by courts, rebuffed by Congress and strung along by Tehran—his ultimatums evaporating and poll numbers sinking….

“I’ve been a little surprised at how much his bluster has worked until now,” Shapiro said of the bravado that rattled the world at the start of Trump’s second term. It was effective, he said, because it drew on the “awesome power and deep, long-stored-up diplomatic capital of the United States”—reserves, he said, that Trump has “finally started to blow through.”

Officials “are starting to notice that he’s kind of a bully, and is quite easy to scare,” Shapiro said….

“Between threats, then bombing, then backing off, what he’s radiating to the Iranians is that he’s desperate,” said Ronald E. Neumann, a career Foreign Service officer and U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Bahrain and Algeria under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. “As experienced bargainers, that means you don’t have to lower the price.” Neumann also put it less diplomatically: “The way Trump bargains,” he said, “I wouldn’t give him money to go to the carpet bazaar.”

US Military Asks Troops for “Creative and Unconventional” Ideas to Punish Iran

The request from a senior officer at the US military command carrying out President Donald Trump’s war with Iran came in an email: We need ideas.

“We are looking for new creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran,” an officer in US Central Command’s intelligence branch wrote in a message sent Wednesday to a broad group of military analysts, according to a source familiar with the message. A second source also said that a senior US military officer sent the message last week soliciting new ideas for how to deal with Iran.

The crowdsourcing-style query, which military officials said was unusual over email, is one sign of the limited—and potentially unpalatable—options available to Trump to force Iran into a deal on his terms. Hoping to find an alternative, the official at CENTCOM kicked off the brainstorming session via email to see if anyone had a better idea. The second source said CENTCOM is looking at everything, acknowledging it needs to reevaluate the strategy….

The email preceded Trump’s threat to launch new strikes against Iran, only to call them off over the weekend after regional officials—namely Saudi Arabia’s crown prince—intervened by calling the president and urging him to de-escalate.

MBS Raises Concerns over Trump’s Plans for Massive Iran Strikes

Iran has threatened to retaliate by launching attacks against energy and infrastructure facilities in Israel and the Gulf countries.

“The Saudis expressed concern and asked for clarity about the plan of action,” one U.S. official told Axios. A second source with knowledge of the call said MBS urged Trump to de-escalate and refrain from launching the strikes….

Other regional powers, including Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Pakistan, are also pressing the US and Iran to de-escalate.

The Shallow State

How Trump’s Claims of Vandalism at the Renovated Reflecting Pool Crumbled

Read more

"Adam Smith’s most famous sentence remains one of the clearest statements in all of social science: 

"'It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.'

 "The point is simple and profound. We do not rely on the kindness of strangers to put food on the table. We rely on their self-interest. 

"The butcher supplies meat because he profits by doing so. 

"The baker rises early because customers will pay for bread. 

"Their desire to improve their own condition leads them, without any central direction, to serve ours. This is the central mechanism of a market economy. Self-interest, channelled through voluntary exchange, produces cooperation on a vast scale. No one has to love their customers or share their political views. They only have to respond to incentives. The result is a system that regularly feeds, clothes, and houses millions of people who will never meet. 

"Many ... still struggle to accept this. ... Yet the historical record is clear: societies that suppress self-interest in the name of [allegedly] higher motives tend to produce shortages, stagnation, and coercion. [Whereas s]ocieties that allow people to benefit from serving others tend to produce abundance. ...

"That simple alignment of interests remains the most powerful engine of social cooperation ever discovered."

~ Creative Deduction

SCIENCE: Penn professor claims ‘cisness’ is unnatural, ‘sex isn’t real’ in new book.

If you think sex isn’t real, you’re doing it wrong.

HOOKERS AND BLOW AIN’T CHEAP, FOLKS: From Influence Peddler to Starving Artist: Hunter Biden Claims Family is Broke in Defaulting on $17 Million Bill.

In a deposition in ongoing litigation with the law firm Winston Taylor, Hunter claimed an inability to pay the $17 million he owes his lawyers for representing him in criminal prosecutions, congressional investigations, and civil lawsuits.

Hunter claimed under oath that “I don’t own anything of any value other than — and I don’t know the value of it — my paintings which I painted myself. So that’s it. And I don’t even have any other assets at all, stocks, bonds, anything like that, savings accounts.” He also added, “My family doesn’t have any money, and it’s not their debt anyway.”

The statement about his family is curious, since Joe and Jill Biden recently received numerous book contracts and were thought to be worth millions. However, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that Joe Biden is struggling with $800,000 in debt and, ironically, increased property taxes in his blue state of Delaware on his $2.7 million home. (Moving to Florida like many fleeing blue state taxes is not a viable option for the Bidens).

Worse yet, no one wants Biden to do speeches and appearances, cutting off a lucrative post-presidency income. Not only is Biden obviously diminished in his ability to give a speech, but many Democrats blame him for the reelection of Trump by clinging to power despite his obvious deteriorating mental and physical condition.

That’s a sad state of affairs for Joe Biden, but it’s also an accurate reflection of what his cabal did to the nation.