War & the tools used to wage it

Since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran last Saturday, more than 1,000 people in Iran have died. That includes over 100 people killed in the bombing of an Iranian elementary school. The Israeli military denied involvement and the U.S. says it’s investigating what happened, though it’s worth noting that neither military apparatus has been very credible historically. Trump administration officials reportedly admitted that there were no signs Iran was going to attack first.

So, why attack Iran? The White House’s reason keeps shifting, at least publicly. Some officials cite regime change (which rarely, if ever, works out very well); others, Iran’s nuclear program. Notably, an Obama-era deal ended that program, then Trump blew up that deal, then Trump used the fallout of that deal ending as an excuse for military intervention that’s killed over 1,000 people and counting. Also, and perhaps most importantly, Iran does not have nuclear weapons and experts have disputed claims that it could soon get them.

Disinformation about the attacks and Iran’s retaliation is spreading online. Be wary of digital flight simulators posing as real footage, out-of-context pictures of battleships, old videos of previous attacks, and AI-edited stuff. MediaWise (a media literacy nonprofit Dave and I have both received funding from) recommends following sources with backgrounds in these subject areas and experience covering them professionally.

After the U.S. killed Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamenei, his son Mojtaba Khamenei appears to be a likely successor. Different waves of the Iranian diaspora in different places have had widely different reactions, from celebration and calls for U.S.-backed regime change to fear over the death and destruction this war will cause.

I’m writing this as the House of Representative is expected to vote on a war powers resolution to stop the attacks. I don’t want to leave you just feeling afraid or powerless in the face of massive war, death and destruction. So I’ll end this section by saying you can call your representatives to tell them how you feel about their vote, look up candidates running this election cycle who align with your views on this. And existing power structures often can and will let you down, so look up ways to practice direct action and mutual aid near you to do something outside the realm of electoral politics.

Sam Altman runs OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT. Dario Amodei used to work there, but left with a group of other employees to launch AI company Anthropic, which they branded as a “safety-first” alternative to OpenAI. And Anthropic doubled down on this in a Super Bowl ad for its chatbot and ChatGPT competitor, Claude.

A few days later came a now-infamous photo op where, in a moment that uncovered my repressed memories of singing the Our Father during Catholic school mass, Altman and Amodei did not hold hands when they were supposed to. (This photo op also pokes holes in Amodei positioning himself as the moral AI guy. He’s sharing a stage with India’s prime minister whose human rights record has come under scrutiny.)

More recently, Amodei has also been fighting with the Pentagon, which wanted unfettered access to Anthropic’s AI. Amodei can excuse the U.S. using his tech to wage war (which he’s been financially rewarded for), but he draws the line at the government using it to surveil its own citizens. The Pentagon gave Amodei an ultimatum: Drop the limits on how to use Anthropic’s tech, or risk Anthropic’s government contracts.

Then, the government struck a deal with OpenAI, which lets the government use their tech for “all lawful purposes.” That gives the government pretty wide discretion. And its definition of “lawful” isn’t always the same as, well, the law’s. However, Altman said they amended the agreement to prevent mass domestic surveillance, placing his trust in a government that has famously done mass domestic surveillance. After this, Anthropic’s Claude became the number one app in the app store. But before Anthropic’s canonization as an anti-Trump folk hero, it’s worth remembering its track record of contracting with the Pentagon before this.

Public comments submitted ahead of a hearing about the project were overwhelmingly negative, according to National Capital Planning Commission staff and an AI-assisted analysis from The Washington Post. You can read the public comments here.

Despite this backlash, the project was approved by Trump’s handpicked Commission on Fine Arts and will likely next be approved by his handpicked National Planning Commission.

Why is this so controversial? An organization whose job it is to preserve historic buildings sued in December to stop the project, saying the public should have been able to weigh in before Trump tore down part of a building to build the ballroom. It’s also expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, even as the administration slashes funding for welfare programs and other services.

We can’t. Because there is no U.S. hospital ship going to Greenland. But rumors to the contrary started with a pro-Trump Greenlandic bricklayer named Jørgen Boassen. He talked to Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, who is also the White House’s envoy to Greenland. He asked Landry for U.S. help for Greenland’s healthcare system.

Landry then told Trump about this, Trump asked if they needed a hospital ship, Landry said yes, and then Trump Truthed a Social about sending a hospital boat to Greenland.

The governments of both Greenland and Denmark were confused by this. They said Greenland didn’t need a hospital ship. The U.S. military also wasn’t aware of this, because they never sent such a ship.

So, does Greenland’s medical system actually need help? People in Greenland have access to universal Danish healthcare. Hospitals can be hard to reach, but Greenlandic people can travel to Denmark for free for healthcare and telehealth plays an important role.

The CEO of McDonald’s shared a video where he taste tests a menu item and seems pretty unenthusiastic about it. The video is currently in the “other brand accounts dogpile on in the comments” stage of going viral, which means traffic will die down imminently.

Is the cyberbullying actually good for business? One consultant made a pretty compelling case that it is. It brought attention to the new product sustenance human food burger, which seems to have been the video’s initial goal.

Amid this moment of heightened publicity for McDonald, it’s worth noting that the chain is still on the BDS list. BDS stands for Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions, and it’s a Palestinian-led movement against Israel’s ongoing genocide and occupation. It calls for boycotts of certain brands, including McDonald’s, which has donated meals and drinks to the Israeli military.