Alex DM Trefall

🚨🇺🇸🇮🇷 Tomorrow is the deadline. Here are the scenarios... Trump said Tuesday is "Power Plant Day and Bridge Day." Iran said no deal. Something has to give. Here's what could actually happen: Scenario 1: Iran blinks. Tehran accepts some version of a ceasefire, perhaps reopening Hormuz partially or allowing monitored shipping. Trump declares victory. The most optimistic outcome but the least likely given U.S. intelligence says Iran believes it has the upper hand and doesn't trust Washington at all. Scenario 2: Trump finds a reason to delay again. He's already pushed this deadline multiple times. Iran offers a small concession, maybe more Pakistani tankers through Hormuz, and Trump takes it as a sign of progress. Both sides may even quietly agree on this. It buys time without either side losing face. Scenario 3: Trump declares victory and walks away. He already told aides he'd leave with Hormuz closed. He could frame the military damage as mission accomplished, claim the new regime is "more reasonable," and punt Hormuz to an international coalition. Iran keeps the Strait. Trump keeps the narrative. The world cleans up the mess. Scenario 4: Trump goes all in. He's threatened this repeatedly and delayed every time. But the rescue mission may have emboldened him. Former aides say his confidence in his own judgment has grown. If he strikes power plants, 85 million Iranians lose electricity. Iran's response would likely be the most devastating of the entire war: desalination plants, Bab el-Mandeb, every bridge on their published target list. A retired CENTCOM commander thinks pressure will eventually work. U.S. and allied intelligence say the opposite: the new Supreme Leader is harder line than his father, and the IRGC is gaining authority, not losing it. Over a month in, Trump is still asking the same question he asked on day one. Why haven't they just given in? Tomorrow we find out what happens when that question still has no answer. Source: NYT, WSJ

Nope. It’s too late for that get out clause. “I don’t really care what you think” on Iran. YOU jumped into my timeline to gaslight us about Iran’s unprovoked attack on Sunni Muslim Arab lands & about their sectarianism. 1) Iran attacked Sunni Muslim Arab countries, and my country the UK. None of these countries had attacked Iran. 2) theocracies ARE sectarian, by definition. It is NOT sectarianism to call out the sectarianism of theocracies, such as the Shia theocracy in Iran. STOP GASLIGHTING US ON BOTH COUNTS. Like all Regressive Leftists with a white saviour complex who think it’s edgy to defend theocratic tyranny, in their delusion that they understand the Middle East better than us, YOU are the ones lecturing *us* about our life long experiences. Be silent. Stop defending theocratic tyranny in Muslim majority lands, just because you hate Israel. Shame on you. Disgusting. The world is a great deal more complex than “Russia, Russia, Russia”, and it is also a great deal more complex than “Israel, Israel, Israel” you silly clowns.

This gets to the core of the issue more than any debate about specific terms. Do you believe in democracy? Should our military be regulated by our elected leaders, or corporate executives? Seemingly innocuous terms from the latter like "You cannot target innocent civilians" are actually moral minefields that lever differences of cultural tradition into massive control. Who is a civilian and not? What makes them innocent or not? What does it mean for them to be a "target" vs collateral damage? Existing policy and law has very clear answers for these questions, but unelected corporations managing profits and PR will often have a very different answer. Imagine if a missile company tried to enforce the above policy, that their product cannot be used to target innocent civilians, that they can shut off access if elected leaders decide to break those terms. Sounds, good, right? Not really - in addition to the value judgement problems I list above, you also have to account for questions like: -What level of information, classified and otherwise, does the corporation receive that would allow them to make these determinations? How much leverage would they have to demand more? -What if an elected President merely threatens a dictator with using our weapons in a certain way, ala Madman Theory/MAD? Is the threat seen as empty because the dictator knows the corporate executives will cut off the military? Is the threat enough to trigger the cutoff? How might either of those determinations vary if the current corporate executive happens to like the dictator or dislike the President? -At what level of confidence does the cutoff trigger, both in writing and in reality? The fact that this is a debate over AI does not change the underlying calculus. The same problems apply to definitions and use of ethically fraught but important capabilities like surveillance systems or autonomous weapons. It is easy to say "But they will have cutouts to operate with autonomous systems for defensive use!", but you immediately get into the same issues and more - what is autonomous? What is defensive? What about defending an asset during an offensive action, or parking a carrier group off the coast of a nation that considers us to be offensive? At the end of the day, you have to believe that the American experiment is still ongoing, that people have the right to elect and unelect the authorities making these decisions, that our imperfect constitutional republic is still good enough to run a country without outsourcing the real levers of power to billionaires and corpos and their shadow advisors. I still believe. And that is why "bro just agree the AI won't be involved in autonomous weapons or mass surveillance why can't you agree it is so simple please bro" is an untenable position that the United States cannot possibly accept.

3) First, I must point out this is an exceptionally interesting file in part because it is actionable. It discloses two CIA file reference numbers, Epstein's 1999 request for CIA records about himself (P-1999-02450) and Epstein's later 2011 request (P-2011-00673)