The Spectator 🇺🇸

Video of the world’s first fully robotic assault on an enemy position was given to the @TheSpectator to showcase the high-tech weapons that Ukraine is now exporting after an arms export embargo was lifted.

The Ukrainian military has developed a lightning-fast feedback loop between the battlefield and R&D units. Last November, I visited the unit behind the robotic assault, the 3rd Assault Brigade at its training and development center – the Killhouse. ✍️ @benclerkin

Inside the Killhouse: where Ukraine’s revolutionary military robots are developed The world’s first fully robotic assault on an enemy position was completed by a remotely controlled Targan (“cockroach” in Ukrainian). The video of the assault was released to demonstrate how Ukraine, long a laboratory for warfare, is now an arms showroom after a ban on exporting weapons was lifted. And the Killhouse is where many of those new weapons are developed. When I visited the Killhouse, I saw engineers modifying Targans and other UGVs with .50 caliber guns, Mk 19 40mm grenade launchers and with mines as kamikaze units. As dance music played in the workshop, engineers constructed the next generation of battlefield robotics and repaired damaged vehicles. They hammered, soldered and tested remote connections. Walls were adorned with unit flags, meme posters and hung with bazookas. Out of the window, I watched as soldiers practiced assaulting a nearby building.

“Claude Mythos Preview specializes in finding vulnerabilities in software, heralding a future in which AI-empowered hoodlums steal data from your smartphone or empty your bank account. In the United States, Mythos has elicited a reaction bordering on panic. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has directed the big banks to fortify their cyber defenses, and Anthropic has declared its creation to be too dangerous for general release. Instead, the company is sharing Mythos with a restricted list of software giants. The hope is that the model will identify the chinks in their systems before an AI-powered bad guy brings them down. This ‘Mythos moment,’ as people have begun to call it, will cost companies billions: my advice is to buy shares in the consulting outfits that will help patch holes in their code.” ✒️ Sebastian Mallaby spectator.com/article/the-ne…

RIP @SpiritAirlines. Here’s my 2021 tribute in @TheSpectator to the most American airline spectator.com/article/in-def…

“Zohran Mamdani is discovering how much more difficult seizing the means of production is than posting about seizing it on social media. To date he has delivered just one of the many radical campaign promises he algorithmized to become New York City mayor. And when he took to social media to crow about that partial win on taxing the rich, he may have inadvertently ripped a new financial blackhole in the city’s budget. Nevertheless, the Democratic party establishment, that pointedly refused to back the radical’s mayoral bid, is being seduced by his social media socialism. Barack Obama recently visited New York to be photographed with him, and Governor Kathy Hochul caved to some of his tax and spending plans. Unsurprisingly, when she gave an inch, he took a mile. Mamdani is now demanding an extra $1 billion a year to fill a budget blackhole – stabbing Hochul in the front in a stage-managed public feud.” spectator.com/article/mamdan… ✒️ @benclerkin

"Fight me, Jim Acosta: Michael Tracey" This week's personal "diary" in the Spectator USA magazine spectator.com/article/fight-…

Here are my only stipulations: that the undercard feature a mud-wrestling match between Candace Owens and Erika Kirk. Then, for the main event between Jim and me, the perimeter of the ring should be lined with Epstein survivors in skimpy bikinis. Melania Trump could even serve as the official “ring girl.” It would definitely do numbers on social media. It’s about time we all admit we’re slaves to the Master Algorithm. That’s one shadowy network I really do believe in. ✍️ @mtracey

Social media is warping our conceptions of truth in ever more radical ways. We now increasingly live in an online surreality, and we have become simultaneously credulous and disbelieving of everything. The effect is that social media now resembles the lower-rent tabloids of old, rife with fantastical pieces about aliens or sex slaves and the occult. The difference is that whereas once people might have turned their noses up at the National Enquirer or the Daily Star, now almost everyone willingly suspends their disbelief and shares the trashy material. Because, unless you happen to be the Lorna Hajdini figure in the story, it’s entertaining. 🖊️@Freddygray31

‘Now almost everyone willingly suspends their disbelief and shares the trashy material.’ Latest Americano newsletter is on the instant myth of the JP Morgan sex slave 👇

Subscribe to Freddy Gray’s Americano newsletter here spectator.com/amr/?edition=us

“These days, a malicious falsehood can become global news in a matter of seconds, especially if it contains suggestions that pants might have come off.” ✍️ @Freddygray31 on Lorna Hajdini and the willing suspension of disbelief spectator.com/article/lorna-…

The recent DC media revelry was thwarted by a blundering assassination attempt, and in my case, a drunken challenge from journalist Jim Acosta, formerly of CNN and now Substack. He asked me to “step outside” so we could settle our differences like real men. I was eager to oblige on the sidewalk in front of the Smithsonian Museum, where Substack was hosting its gala. His fury erupted when I dared approach the VIP partygoer Julie K. Brown – comically credited with having broken the Jeffrey Epstein story in 2018 with her series of painfully overrated articles in the Miami Herald. She has since enjoyed hero status, getting showered with every contrived journalism award. Julie has even had her likeness optioned for some sort of streaming-service drama. The problem is that Julie now appears to style herself as some sort of Epstein survivor by proxy, having served as a loyal mouthpiece for this multibillion dollar industry. A simple attempt to speak with her descended into a totally needless maelstrom, with Julie claiming she was somehow physically endangered – as a vulnerable Female Journalist – and needed the noble intervention of a chivalrous male posse (led by Acosta). ✍️ @mtracey: Fight me, Jim Acosta. Link to the full piece below

At St. Peter’s Church in St. George’s, Bermuda, the oldest Anglican church in continuous use in the Western Hemisphere, a photograph of the late Princess Diana with the then-Prince Charles has just been taken down. Removing the reminder of the King’s last visit to the island in 1982 was a matter of administrative prudence ahead of his arrival on Friday. A small gesture that reveals much about the respect and deference Bermudians feel towards the British monarchy. The 2022 royal tour of the Caribbean by the Prince and Princess of Wales was defined by protest, demands for reparations and independence from the British Crown. Bermuda will not repeat that performance. In 1995, the island held an independence referendum that saw 74 percent of the electorate vote against a split from the UK. It was, in many ways, a pragmatic calculation. Bermuda operates under the most devolved constitutional arrangement of any British Overseas Territory. Much like the reinsurance industry that thrives on the island, Bermuda ran the numbers, looked at the risks of total sovereign rupture and chose to retain the semi-autonomous settlement. In a jurisdiction of 64,000 people, prosperity runs on access to British passports, US capital and the kind of regulatory stability that independence movements have rarely delivered. However, to describe the relationship as purely transactional misses the deeper affection that has existed for decades on the island. ✍️ Paolo Odoli on why Bermuda is still loyal to the British monarchy. Link below to the full article

I wrote this week's "diary" for the new edition of The Spectator US magazine. I was asked to describe events in my life over the past week. No idea why they wanted me to do this, so I just talked about the weather, the NBA Playoffs, and my ongoing weight-loss journey