Retired Army Special Forces officer Mike Nelson criticized Hegseth's rhetoric, stating, 'That's a necessary end to achieve goals through military force - you have to kill people to achieve them. That's not the end. It's a weird obsession with death for the sake of it.'
The economics are hard to ignore. Shooting down a drone with AeroVironment's LOCUST laser system costs less than $10, using just two to five seconds of laser energy. Compare that to the interceptor missiles currently used against Iranian drone swarms, which cost orders of magnitude more and are in short supply across allied arsenals.
The paint effect was camouflage using mimicry and disruptive patterns to confuse enemy pilots. It's one image in an exhibition of around 45 paintings and posters, plus some letters and documents recording life in wartime London.
Four days into this situation in the skies over Tehran, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said, 'We're not at war right now.' This was, rather, a 'very specific, clear mission-an operation.' Operation does seem to be the preferred word in government talking points, even as it encompasses assassinating an ayatollah, torpedoing an Iranian naval ship, blowing up fuel depots and a desalination plant, and losing the lives of (so far) eight American service members along the way.
Our war fighters are leveraging a variety of advanced AI tools. These systems help us sift through vast amounts of data in seconds so our leaders can cut through the noise and make smarter decisions faster than the enemy can react. Humans will always make final decisions on what to shoot and what not to shoot and when to shoot, but advanced AI tools can turn processes that used to take hours and sometimes even days into seconds.
The White House posted a video of actual military strikes on Iran in the style usually seen in highlight videos, and started the video with a clip from Call of Duty. The real-life footage of missiles and other munitions hitting targets in Iran shows clips seen in other Trump administration videos.
The United States Munitions Stockpiles have, at the medium and upper medium grade, never been higher or better. He added that the US has a virtually unlimited supply of these weapons, insisting, Wars can be fought forever,' and very successfully, using just these supplies.
This week, the Uncanny Valley team dives into the feud that has been brewing between Anthropic and the Pentagon-and what it says about how the government interacts with tech companies. Later, Zoë Schiffer tells us why figuring out whether you are agentic or mimetic has become the new litmus test in Silicon Valley.
Anthony Glees, Emeritus Professor at the University of Buckingham, called the US and Israeli decision to attack Iran a 'war of choice' and the first red flag which previously led to the last two world wars. He claimed that the conflict in the Middle East did not start out of necessity or self-defense, but as a deliberate decision by two leaders focused on gaining power and keeping it.
A short while later, the White House posted the same photo - except that version had been digitally altered to darken Armstrong's skin and rearrange her facial features to make it appear she was sobbing or distraught. The Guardian one of many media outlets to report on this image manipulation, created a handy slider graphic to help viewers see clearly how the photo had been changed.
But logistical consistency, like coherence and gravitas, does not characterize the new NDS. It is a document that supposedly nests within the National Security Strategy, explaining at greater length the implications of overall policy for the armed forces. The 2026 version does not do that. Rather, it restates some of the basic priorities of the Trump administration but for the most part confines itself to flattery of the president, insults, and bombast.
Work crews used cherry pickers to erect the Make America Safe Again banner featuring Trump's portrait on Thursday. Ken Dilanian with MS NOW posted, This is a stunning confirmation of the grim reality, which is that Donald Trump has seized control of the once independent Justice Department and is using it to pursue his political objectivesincluding trying to punish his perceived enemies.
