Reagan FBI director urges caution against Gabbard, Patel
Luke Barr – December 28, 2024
The only man to lead both the FBI and the CIA urged caution to senators who might vote to confirm former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence and Kash Patel to lead the FBI, according to a letter sent to senators this week.
“I am deeply concerned about the potential nominations of Mr. Kash Patel to lead the FBI and the inclusion of Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard as DNI in intelligence roles,” William Webster, who led the FBI during the Carter and Reagan administrations and the CIA after that, said in a letter to senators on Thursday.
PHOTO: In this Dec. 18, 2014, file photo, former FBI Director and Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) under Ronald Reagan, Judge William Webster is interviewed for a documentary about directors of the CIA. (David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images, FILE)More
Webster wrote that Patel’s loyalty to Trump may cause problems.
“Statements such as ‘He’s my intel guy’ and his record of executing the president’s directives suggest a loyalty to individuals rather than the rule of law — a dangerous precedent for an agency tasked with impartial enforcement of justice,” said Webster, who turns 101 in March.
PHOTO: Kash Patel, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for director of the FBI, speaks to reporters before a meeting with U.S. Senator Ted Cruz on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., Dec. 12, 2024. (Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters)More
He said that during his tenure at the FBI, he was contacted by the president only twice — once by President Jimmy Carter, who asked him to investigate an issue, and once when President Ronald Reagan had a question about Nancy Reagan’s security.
Webster added that Gabbard’s “profound lack of intelligence experience and the daunting task of overseeing 18 disparate intelligence agencies further highlight the need for seasoned leadership.”
“History has shown us the dangers of compromising this independence. When leaders of these organizations become too closely aligned with political figures, public confidence erodes and our nation’s security is jeopardized,” he wrote. “Every president deserves appointees they trust, but the selection process must prioritize competence and independence to uphold the rule of law.”
The letter was first reported by Politico.
Webster did endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president in 2024 and Joe Biden for president in 2020.
The Trump transition team defended both Patel and Gabbard to Fox News.
“Kash Patel is loyal to the Constitution. He’s worked under Presidents Obama and Trump in key national security roles,” said Alex Pfeiffer, a Trump transition team spokesman.
PHOTO: President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be Director of National Intelligence, former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard from Hawaii, is shown at the Hart Senate Office Building, Dec. 18, 2024, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)More
Alexa Henning, a Trump transition official, also defended Gabbard.
“Lt. Col. Gabbard is an active member of the Army and has served in the military for over two decades and in Congress. As someone who has consumed intelligence at the highest levels, including during wartime, she recognizes the importance of partnerships with allies to ensure close coordination to keep the American people safe,” she told Fox News.
Americans and their leaders are to blame for returning Trump to the White House
April Lieberman – December 26, 2024
From rural Tennessee to Democratic presidential politics, I’ve lived in both worlds − of “us and them.”
Here’s my take on why:
my neighbors don’t trust Democrat
a convicted felon is returning to the White House.
There’s plenty of blame to go around.
Biden himself is among those to blame among Democrats
President Joe Biden: for selfishly pursuing the presidency despite cognitive decline, his sundowning obvious back in the 2019 primary debates.
Biden supporters and allies: First Lady Dr. Jill Biden and his family for letting him. White House staff, the Democratic National Committee, and party leaders, for enabling this epic disservice to the country. His Cabinet, profiles in cowardice, for not invoking the 25th Amendment and removing him.
Attorney General Merrick Garland: for delaying appointing a special counsel, allowing now President-elect Donald Trump to run out the clock. Rep. Jim Clyburn, for delivering Biden South Carolina in the 2020 primaries. Former President Barack Obama, for strong-arming Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota, out of the race, placing loyalty over country, then again by preemptively supporting Biden’s reelection bid, deterring primary challengers.
The Clintons: 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and coastal elites, for underestimating Trump in 2015-2016 and neglecting the Blue Wall. Former President Bill Clinton and ‘90s NAFTA Dems for decimating small towns across America, including mine. All of them (not named Bernie Sanders), for decades of ignoring rural and blue-collar voters while taking Black and Latino Americans for granted, instead pushing agendas far left of the American electorate.
Miscellaneous: Whichever idiot coined “Bidenomics,” an infuriating attempt to gaslight America.
MAGA voters and justice system are responsible for returning Trump to the White House
MAGA: For placing a racist/rapist/convicted felon over our Constitution.
Other Republicans: Most of them, for striking Faustian bargains in normalizing Trump, sacrificing their integrity for power, none more craven than Sen. Lindsey Graham’s betrayal of “Amigo” John McCain on his deathbed to worship at the orange altar. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, for not saving us this national nightmare by ordering his minions to remove the Insurrectionist-in-Chief, forever barring him from federal office − Howard Baker he is not.
Right-wing Supreme Court justices: For not checking the presidency, instead placing Trump above the law, dismantling our rights and democracy itself.
Judge Juan Merchan: For delaying sentencing on 34 felony convictions until after the election, instead of letting Trump campaign from a New York City jail cell.
Media, dictators, billionaires and Congress bear responsibility too
Legacy media: For feeding the beast for ratings, and not reporting the emperor’s lack of clothes until the Biden-Trump debate debacle.
Right-wing media: All of them, particularly the late Rush Limbaugh for pioneering a talk radio of racism, misogyny, and mockery; Fox News, for admittedly “entertaining” the masses with decades of disinformation and paranoia; and Joe Rogan’s #1 podcast, for touting conspiracy theories to millions. His interview and endorsement of Trump? Huuuuge.
Dictators: Putin, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), et al., for funding Trumpworld and interfering in our elections, from stirring division online to disenfranchising voters with bomb threats.
Evangelical leaders: Most of them, for interfering in politics while claiming religious tax exemptions, radicalizing congregations, hailing a rapist as a messiah, and pushing us toward theocracy.
Congress: For pandering to gerrymandered extremes, failing to check SCOTUS, the president, or itself. But, the Senate’s abrogation of its constitutional duty to remove an insurrectionist from the presidency, forever barring him from federal office, is the greatest failure in the 248-year history of American democracy.
April Lieberman is a former appellate attorney with family experience in presidential politics, a Yale Law School graduate who studied philosophy at Vanderbilt, and Democratic politics in the backwoods of West Tennessee.
Russia’s multibillion-dollar revenue stream may soon grind to a halt, thanks to Ukraine. Its ripple effects could hit Europe
Prarthana Prakash – December 24, 2024
While Russia has lost its gas market share in Europe to the likes of Qatar and Norway since it invaded Ukraine, some countries like Slovakia and Austria still rely heavily on the supplies. (Olga Rolenko—Getty Images)
Russia’s wartime economy has been sustained, in part, by oil and gas revenues as Europe has relied on it for several decades. Key to that arrangement is Ukraine, the country Russia is at war with, as the countries have a deal in place to allow Russian gas to transit via Ukraine and reach Europe.
The deal is nearing expiry when the year ends, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has resisted renewing the contract on the same terms even if the Kremlin wants it to. This could create a worry for Russia amid the plunging value of the ruble and a protracted war.
Russia’s gas revenues from supply sent via Ukraine to Europe will be worth $5 billion this year, according to Reuters estimates. In 2023, Russia shipped about 15 billion cubic meters of gas—only a fraction of the supply to Europe pre-pandemic.
Meanwhile, Ukraine makes just $800 million from facilitating the transit of gas to Europe, the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) said last week.
“Despite reams of evidence that Russia uses gas exports to inflict harm on Europe, buyers in Moscow-friendly countries are now pressuring Ukraine to continue the transit from 2025,” CEPA experts wrote.
The dependence on Russian oil and gas supplies has built up over time. In 2022, much of that reliance needed to be rethought following the invasion, forcing gas prices to shoot up. However, governments slowly began decoupling from Russia’s gas supplies, which had a direct impact on Gazprom’s revenues as a state-owned energy supplier.
While Russia has lost its gas market share in Europe to the likes of Qatar and Norway since it invaded Ukraine, some countries like Slovakia and Austria still rely heavily on the supplies. Moreover, because of sanctions, Russia has already taken a big hit on energy-related revenues, which still account for a fifth of its GDP.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov admitted to the impending fallout on the gas transit contract as being “very difficult, requiring greater attention,” on Monday.
A sharp energy-price spike because of the gas transit contract is unlikely. Still, given that transit fees are much higher in other European countries, it could add to uncertainties, ruling them out as viable options for countries such as Hungary.
Russia’s economy has shown some cracks owing to inflation and overexposure by military-adjacent industries. But in sum, it has remained resilient despite the war being dragged on for three years.
For instance, Russia has built trade relationships with allies elsewhere in the world, such as China and India. “The Russian economy has adapted, and key industries have found ways to get the goods and components they need from alternative suppliers or via more circuitous trade routes,” Sergey Vakulenko, a senior fellow at Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, wrote earlier this year.
Russia calls gas sales to Europe ‘complicated’ as deal with Ukraine nears end
Reuters – December 23, 2024
Illustration shows natural gas pipeline, Russian Rouble banknote and flag
MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia said on Monday the situation with European countries that buy its gas through a transit deal via Ukraine was very complicated and needs more attention, a day after talks between President Vladimir Putin and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico.
Ukraine has said it will not be renewing a five-year deal to pipe Russian gas to Europe, which is due to expire at the end of the year, as it does not want to aid Moscow’s military effort.
The flow accounts for around half of Russia’s total pipeline gas exports to Europe, with Slovakia, Italy, Austria and Czech Republic set to be most affected if it ends.
Kremlin-controlled Gazprom also exports gas to Europe via the TurkStream pipeline on the bed of the Black Sea.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he could not give more details about Sunday’s talks between Putin and Fico, which also touched on bilateral relations and the Ukraine conflict.
Fico said that Putin had confirmed Russia’s willingness to continue to supply gas to Slovakia, although this was “practically impossible” once the Ukraine transit deal expires.
It was not clear what potential solution the two leaders might have discussed.
Slovakia has said the loss of supplies from the east would not hit its consumption and it has diversified supply contracts. However, it would drive up its costs and the country sought to preserve the Ukraine route to keep its own transit capacity.
Slovakia’s main gas buyer SPP has contracts for the purchase of gas from a non-Russian source with BP, ExxonMobil, Shell, Eni and RWE.
The benchmark front-month contract at the Dutch TTF gas hub rose by 1.52 euros to 45.33 euros per megawatt hour (euros/MWh) by 1443 GMT, LSEG data showed.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Monday criticised what he said was Fico’s lack of desire to end his country’s dependency on Russian natural resources as a “big security issue” for Europe and Slovakia.
Hungary has also been keen to keep the Ukrainian route, although it will continue to receive Russian gas from the south, via the TurkStream pipeline.
Zelenskiy said last week it might be possible to renew the transit deal, but only if Russia was not paid for the gas until after the war is over, a condition Moscow is unlikely to accept.
“You heard the statement from the Ukrainian side, and you know about the positions of those European countries that continue to buy Russian gas and that consider this necessary for the normal operation of their economies,” Peskov told reporters.
“Therefore, there is now a very complicated situation here that requires increased attention,” Peskov added.
Putin said last week it was clear there would be no new deal with Kyiv to send Russian gas through Ukraine to Europe.
(Reporting by Gleb Stolyarov, additional reporting by Jason Hovet; writing by Mark Trevelyan and Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Alexander Smith)
Russia’s economy is set to lose another source of income that Ukraine controls
Huileng Tan – December 24, 2024
Scroll back up to restore default view.
Russia’s natural-gas transit deal with Ukraine is set to expire soon, which would cut billions in revenue.
The deal’s possible end affects European countries relying on Russian gas via Ukraine.
Russia has shifted much of its energy exports to India and China amid Western sanctions.
Russia is set to lose yet another source of income for its war chest in days — and it’s Ukraine calling the shots.
An agreement to let piped Russian natural gas transit via Ukraine to Europe is set to expire at the end of the year, depriving Moscow of billions of dollars in income for its wartime economy.
European countries receiving gas from the pipeline have voiced concerns about the end of the supply, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly said that the five-year agreement will not be renewed.
Russia has meanwhile said it’s ready to extend the agreement — though President Vladimir Putin said last week that it was “clear” there wouldn’t be a new contract.
Still, the situation could change.
Zelenskyy said last week that Ukraine could consider continuing the arrangement if Russia doesn’t receive payments for the fuel until the war ends.
On Monday, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said the gas transit was complicated.
“The situation here is very difficult, requiring greater attention,” Peskov said, according to the TASS state news agency.
Russia is probably making $5 billion in gas sales via Ukraine this year
The end of the five-year transit deal would be a blow for Russia, which could make about $5 billion from gas sales via Ukraine this year alone, according to Reuters‘ calculations based on Moscow’s gas price forecast.
It would also impact several European countries that still depend on Russia for gas, including Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Austria. There are alternative energy sources and pipelines available, but they could be pricier.
Ukraine could lose hundreds of millions of dollars a year in transit fees — a Kyiv consulting firm told Bloomberg in September that this amounted to about $800 million.
But Ukraine’s $800 million revenue from transit would just be a “paltry 0.5% of the country’s annual GDP,” analysts at the Center for European Policy Analysis, a think tank, wrote in a report last week.
They argued that it was “simply preposterous” to think that continuing the transit deal would offer Ukraine a security guarantee as Russia would want to preserve its gas flows to Europe.
This is because “Russia always put itself first,” the analysts added.
Russia diverts energy flows away from Europe
The end of the Ukraine transit route for Russia’s gas would put more pressure on Putin’s wartime economy, which has plummeted because of sweeping Western sanctions targeting its massive oil and gas trade.
Energy accounts for about one-fifth of Russia’s $2 trillion GDP. The country’s energy revenue fell 24% last year on the back of sanctions and continues to be under pressure this year as Europe weans itself off Russian gas.
Russia once accounted for as much as 40% of Europe’s gas market, but the EU has cut its reliance on the fuel since the Ukraine war.
In response, Russia has diversified its energy customer base, diverting most of its previously Europe-bound oil to India and China.
On Friday, the Russian energy giant Gazprom said in a Telegram post that it delivered a record amount of gas to China via an eastern Siberian pipeline. It didn’t specify the volume of gas it delivered but said it was above its contractual obligations with the state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation.
Donald Trump Probably Isn’t a Russian Agent. But He Wouldn’t Be Behaving Much Differently If He Were.
Fred Kaplan – December 11, 2024
Donald Trump probably isn’t a Russian agent, but he wouldn’t be behaving much differently right now if he were.
Among the main goals of the Kremlin’s foreign policy are to sow chaos and distrust within Western democracies and to disrupt the alliances that join those countries together, especially the links between the United States and Europe. The idea is that a weaker West makes for a stronger Russia—a connection all the more important as the measures of Russia’s strength on its own (economic, political, and military) are diminishing.
Many have noted Trump’s open antipathy toward alliances and his aversion to any foreign commitments that don’t yield immediate transactional gains.
His actions since he won the election—especially his nominees for high-level positions—reveal his affinity for chaos, his keen desire to sow distrust within the American political system. His aim here is not to strengthen Russia (and other authoritarian countries), though that may be among its consequences. The aim—as he and some of his more ideological cronies have proclaimed for a long time now—is to destroy the “deep state,” to concentrate power in the White House, and to weaken or punish (perhaps even incarcerate) those who try to obstruct his ambitions.
Trump is not stupid. He must know that many of his nominees to be Cabinet secretaries, agency directors, and ambassadors have no apparent qualifications to run vast bureaucracies, parse complex problems, or engage in delicate diplomacy. That’s not the point. He wants them to empty out the bureaucracies or run them into the ground. He wants them to twist the agencies into empty shells or blunt instruments of his vendettas. He wants to insult the diplomatic corps and to show foreign leaders how slight he regards their status.
Some of his nominees are meant to carry out his most perniciously personal and political campaigns. He named Pete Hegseth, a man who has never run an organization of any impressive size, to helm the Defense Department—with its $840 billion budget, 3 million employees, and wide-ranging global responsibilities—because Hegseth’s commentaries on Fox News (where he anchored a weekend show) indicate he’d happily carry out Trump’s intention to fire senior officers who don’t express utter loyalty to Trump.
He named Kash Patel to head the FBI because Patel is not just willing but sweating-ready to go after Trump’s personal and political enemies, including within the FBI itself. Patel has drawn up an enemies list already. (Trump tried to make Matt Gaetz attorney general for the same reason, but Gaetz proved too blatant a henchman for even Trump’s loyalists in the Senate to swallow—as, by the way, some of his other nominees may prove to be too.)
He named Tulsi Gabbard to be director of national intelligence because he wants to blow up the intelligence agencies, many of which he sees as teeming with enemies to himself and the country (which he views as a mere extension of himself, as in l’état, c’est moi).
He named Dr. Mehmet Oz, a heart surgeon turned TV doctor with financial interests galore to run Medicare and Medicaid, because he wants to gut Medicare and Medicaid.* He named Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, to run the Department of Homeland Security—a hodgepodge of 22 once independent departments and agencies with a combined budget of $108 billion (more than 16 times that of South Dakota’s state budget)—because he wants to gut homeland security.
The list could go on.
Trump has said—and may genuinely believe—that he can run the country, the economy, the military, social services, and all the rest, just fine all by himself. (Axios once assembled a list of topics that Trump has said he knows “more about than anybody.” It included money, infrastructure, the economy, trade, ISIS, energy, taxes—just about every topic involving government.)
Many of Trump’s voters think it’s great that he plans to blow up the system. That’s a big reason why many of them voted for him. No doubt, much of the system could use reforms or outright overhaul. But the people Trump wants to put in charge have no idea how to improve the system, nor are they expected to. Many citizens may come to feel buyer’s remorse when they realize just how closely their own lives and interests are intertwined with the functioning of government—something that is often taken for granted, until it doesn’t function. By that time, it may be too late.
And while the direct connection may not be clear, people might also come to take note of new dangers to national security. Foreign governments may no longer share highly sensitive information with an intelligence director who parrots Kremlin propaganda; allies who no longer regard the U.S. as a reliable protector may go their own way or make deals with adversaries; and adversaries may take America’s passivity as a green light to go bold. The Western-led “rules-based order,” which is already in grim shape, will turn to tatters.
trump, musk and the billionaires can’t wait to begin dismantling American Democracy and our Constitution: Elon Musk warns Republicans against standing in Trump’s way — or his
Thomas Beaumont, Juliet Linderman, Martha Mendoza – December 9, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump walks with Elon Musk before the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024 in Boca Chica, Texas. (Brandon Bell/Pool via AP)Elon Musk, carrying his son X Æ A-Xii, leaves after a meeting with members of congress to discuss President-elect Donald Trump’s planned Department of Government Efficiency on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A week after President-elect Donald Trump’s victory, Elon Musk said his political action committee would “play a significant role in primaries.”
The following week, the billionaire responded to a report that he might fund challengers to GOP House members who don’t support Trump’s nominees. “How else? There is no other way,” Musk wrote on X, which he rebranded after purchasing Twitter and moving to boost conservative voices, including his own.
And during his recent visit to Capitol Hill, Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy delivered a warning to Republicans who don’t go along with their plans to slash spending as part of Trump’s proposed Department of Government Efficiency.
“Elon and Vivek talked about having a naughty list and a nice list for members of Congress and senators and how we vote and how we’re spending the American people’s money,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.
Trump’s second term comes with the specter of the world’s richest man serving as his political enforcer. Within Trump’s team, there is a feeling that Musk not only supports Trump’s agenda and Cabinet appointments, but is intent on seeing them through to the point of pressuring Republicans who may be less devout.
One Trump adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal political dynamics, noted Musk had come to enjoy his role on the campaign and that he clearly had the resources to stay involved.
The adviser and others noted that Musk’s role is still taking shape. And Musk, once a supporter of President Barack Obama before moving to the right in recent years, is famously mercurial.
“I think he was really important for this election. Purchasing Twitter, truly making it a free speech platform, I think, was integral to this election, to the win that Donald Trump had,” said departing Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump, the president-elect’s daughter-in-law. “But I don’t know that ultimately he wants to be in politics. I think he considers himself to be someone on the outside.”
During the presidential campaign, Musk contributed roughly $200 million to America PAC, a super PAC aimed at reaching Trump voters online and in person in the seven most competitive states, which Trump swept. He also invested $20 million in a group called RBG PAC, which ran ads arguing Trump would not sign a national abortion ban even as the former president nominated three of the justices who overturned a federally guaranteed right to the procedure.
Musk’s donation to RBG PAC — a name that invokes the initials of former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a champion of abortion rights — wasn’t revealed until post-election campaign filings were made public Thursday.
Musk has said he hopes to keep America PAC funded and operating. Beyond that, he has used his X megaphone to suggest he is at least open to challenging less exuberant Trump supporters in Congress.
Another key Trump campaign ally has been more aggressive online. Conservative activist Charlie Kirk, whose group Turning Point Action also worked to turn out voters for Trump, named Republican senators he wants to target.
“This is not a joke, everybody. The funding is already being put together. Donors are calling like crazy. Primaries are going to be launched,” Kirk said on his podcast, singling out Sens. Joni Ernst of Iowa, Jim Risch of Idaho, Mike Rounds of South Dakota and Thom Tillis of North Carolina as potential targets. All four Republican senators’ seats are up in 2026.
For now, Musk has been enjoying the glow of his latest conquest, joining Trump for high-level meetings and galas at the soon-to-be president’s Mar-a-Lago resort home in Palm Beach, Florida. The incoming administration is seeded with Musk allies, including venture capitalist and former PayPal executive David Sacks serving as the “White House A.I. & Crypto Czar” and Jared Isaacman, a tech billionaire who bought a series of spaceflights from Musk’s SpaceX, named to lead NASA.
Musk could help reinforce Trump’s agenda immediately, some GOP strategists said, by using America PAC to pressure key Republicans. Likewise, Musk could begin targeting moderate Democrats in pivotal states and districts this spring, urging them to break with their party on key issues, Republican strategist Chris Pack said.
“Instead of using his influence to twist GOP arms when you have majorities in both houses, he could start going after Democrats who vote against Trump’s agenda in states where the election was a referendum for Trump,” said Pack, former communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “Otherwise, if you pressure Republicans with a primary, you can end up with a Republican who can’t win, and then a Democrat in that seat.”
___
Linderman reported from Baltimore and Mendoza from Santa Cruz, California. Associated Press congressional correspondent Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.
Mr. Trump, Do You Realize How Much the World Has Changed Since You Were President?
Thomas J. Friedman – November 26, 2024
Credit…Will Matsuda for The New York Times
Donald Trump left the White House nearly four years ago. Given his self-confidence, I suspect he is now thinking: “What could be so different? I’ve got this.”
Well, I just traveled from a reporting trip in Tel Aviv to a conference in the United Arab Emirates to a deep dive with Google’s DeepMind artificial intelligence team in London, and I think the president-elect would be wise to remember a famous aphorism: There are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen.
What I saw and heard exposed me to three giant, shifting tectonic plates that will have profound implications for the new administration.
The most significant geopolitical event
In just the last two months, the Israeli military has inflicted a defeat on Iran that approaches its 1967 Six-Day War defeat of Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Full stop. Let’s review:
Over the past few decades, Iran built a formidable threat network that seemed to put Israel into an octopuslike grip. It became widely accepted that Israel was deterred from striking at Iran’s nuclear facilities because Iran had armed the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon with enough precision rockets to destroy Israel’s ports, airports, high-tech factories, air bases and infrastructure.
Not so fast. It turned out that the Mossad and Israel’s cyber Unit 8200 had been forging what became one of the country’s greatest intelligence successes ever. They planted explosive devices in the pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah’s military commanders, developed human and technological tracking capabilities to find Hezbollah’s top leaders, painstakingly identified storage facilities in Lebanon and Syria for Hezbollah’s most lethal precision rockets and then systematically took many of them out by air in October.
The result is that Hezbollah looks likely to accept a 60-day cease-fire with Israel in Lebanon negotiated by the U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein. This is a big deal. It means that, even if just for 60 days, Hezbollah and, by extension, Iran have decided to delink themselves from Hamas in Gaza and stop the firing from Lebanon for the first time since Oct. 8, 2023, the day after Hamas invaded Israel. We will see if it lasts, but if it does, it will increase the pressure on Hamas to agree to a cease-fire and hostage release with Israel, more on Israel’s terms.
There is a reason for this. Hezbollah’s mother ship has suffered a real blow. According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s April strike on Iran eliminated one of four Russian-supplied S-300 surface-to-air missile defense batteries around Tehran, and Israel destroyed the remaining three batteries on Oct. 26. Israel also damaged Iran’s ballistic missile production capabilities and its ability to produce the solid fuel used in long-range ballistic missiles. In addition, according to Axios, Israel’s Oct. 26 strike on Iran, which was a response to an earlier Iranian attack on Israel, also destroyed equipment used to create the explosives that surround uranium in a nuclear device, setting back Iran’s efforts in nuclear weapons research.
A senior Israeli defense official told me that the Oct. 26 attack on Iran “was lethal, precise and a surprise.” And up to now, the Iranians “don’t know technologically how we hit them. So they are at the most vulnerable point they have been in this generation: Hamas is not there for them, Hezbollah is not there for them, their air defenses are not there anymore, their ability to retaliate is sharply diminished, and they are worried about Trump.”
Which means that Tehran is either riper than ever for negotiations to curb its nuclear program or riper than ever for an attack by Israel or the Trump administration — or both — to destroy those nuclear facilities. Either way, Trump will face choices he did not have four years ago.
It is not only a new Iran that Trump will be dealing with but also a new Israel
There were legitimate reasons President Biden denounced the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants against Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant, accusing them of war crimes in Gaza against a Hamas enemy that deliberately embedded itself among civilians. The same court never issued an arrest warrant for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, whose army killed hundreds of thousands of his own people. The I.C.C. said Syria is not a member. But neither is Israel. It is also odd that the I.C.C. issued a warrant only for the Hamas leader Mohammed Deif, who is widely believed to be dead, and not for the very much alive Muhammad Sinwar (the younger brother of the late Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar), who is now reportedly running Hamas in Gaza and was a commander in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
But while the I.C.C. warrants are questionable, they were also avoidable. The strategy that Netanyahu has imposed on his military is one of the ugliest in Israel’s history: Go into Gaza, destroy as much of Hamas as you can, don’t be too worried about civilian casualties, then leave the remnants of Hamas in charge to loot food convoys and intimidate the local population — then rinse and repeat. Go back in, smash and leave no one better in charge, creating a permanent Somalia on Israel’s border.
Why is he doing this? Because Bibi is being directed by the far-right Jewish supremacists he needs to stay in power and possibly out of prison on charges of corruption. And the stated goal of those Jewish supremacists is to extend Israeli settlements from the West Bank right through Gaza. They oppose any scenario in which the Palestinian Authority is gradually installed in Gaza as part of an Arab peacekeeping force to replace Hamas. They fear the Palestinian Authority might then become a legitimate partner for a two-state solution.
Attention, President-elect Trump: Netanyahu will tell you that Israel is defending the free world in defeating the dark forces of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. There is truth in that. But there is also truth in the fact that he is doing it to defend a Jewish supremacist apartheid vision in the West Bank and Gaza. It’s a dirty business. If you just unquestionably wrap your arms around him, you will get yourself and America dirty, too. You will also ensure that your Jewish grandchildren will one day learn what it is to be Jewish in a world where the Jewish state is a pariah.
Artificial general intelligence is probably coming on Trump’s watch
Polymathic artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I., was still largely in the realm of science fiction when Trump left office four years ago. It is fast becoming nonfiction. And A.S.I. — artificial super intelligence — may be one day as well.
A.G.I. means machines will be endowed with intelligence as good as the smartest human in any field, but because of its capabilities to integrate learning across many fields, it will probably become better than any average doctor, lawyer or computer programmer. A.S.I. is a computer brain that can exceed what any human can do in any field and then, with its polymathic ability, it could produce insights far beyond anything humans could do or even imagine. It might even invent its own language we don’t understand.
How we adapt to A.G.I. was not part of the 2024 presidential campaign. I predict it will be a central theme of the 2028 election. Between now and then, every leader in the world — but particularly the presidents of America and China, the two A.I. superpowers — will be judged by how well they enable their countries to get the best and cushion the worst from the coming A.I. storm.
From what I heard from leading A.I. scientists and Nobel Prize winners at Google DeepMind’s conference on how A.I. is already driving breakthroughs in scientific discovery, A.G.I. is likely to be achieved in the next three to five years.
Two DeepMind scientists just won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their A.I. AlphaFold system, which predicts proteins’ structures and is already being used by scientists to invent drugs and materials all over the world. Now DeepMind is working on GraphCast, an A.I. system that can produce staggeringly precise 10-day weather forecasts in less than a minute, and on Gnome, which has identified some 2.2 million new inorganic crystals that could be useful in manufacturing everything from computer chips to batteries to solar panels.
It’s the tip of an iceberg. It will change or challenge virtually every job. While I was in Tel Aviv, I visited the lab of Mentee Robotics, an Israeli start-up, and was given a demonstration of a humanoid robot, roughly my height, powered by sensors and A.I. with humanlike hand dexterity, a voice and perception that, as its website says, “can be personalized and adjusted to different environments and tasks using natural human interaction.”
President-elect Trump, if you think blue-collar workers without college degrees are facing challenges today, wait until four years from now.
But that’s not Trump’s only challenge. If these A.I. powers fall into the wrong hands or are used by existing powers in the wrong ways, we could be dealing with possibly civilizational extinction events.
Which is why we need to be discussing systems of A.I. control now. And it’s why two DeepMind co-founders, Shane Legg and Demis Hassabis, were signers of a 23-word open letter, issued in May 2023, along with other leaders of the A.I. universe, which declared, “Mitigating the risk of extinction from A.I. should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”
But this can’t just be left to the companies. We tried that with social networks, and it ended badly.
President-elect Trump, you may think that your second term will be judged by how many tariffs you impose on China. I beg to differ. When it comes to U.S.-China relations, I think your legacy — as well as President Xi Jinping’s — will be determined by how quickly, effectively and collaboratively the United States and China come up with a shared technical and ethical framework embedded in each A.I. system that prevents it from becoming destructive on its own — without human direction — or being useful to bad actors who might want to deploy it for destructive purposes.
History will not look kindly on you, President-elect Trump, if you choose to prioritize the price of toys for American tots over an agreement with China on the behavior of A.I. bots.
Well, Well, Well: Trump Gives up the Game on Project 2025
Edith Olmsted – November 22, 2024
Donald Trump is taking yet another page out of the authoritarian playbook Project 2025—and it’s the one with a list of MAGA loyalists for hire.
After trying desperately, often unconvincingly, to distance his campaign from Project 2025’s unpopular, extremist policies, Trump’s transition team has been using the right-wing playbook’s staffing database to make appointments within the new administration, a source familiar told NBC News.
“There’s a lot of positions to fill and we continue to send names over, including ones from the database as they are conservative, qualified and vetted,” the source, who had worked on Project 2025, told NBC News. “Hard to find 4,000 solid people, so we are happy to help.”
Paul Dans, the former director of Project 2025, once described his plans to make a “conservative Linkedin” containing information on thousands of potential hires for the Trump administration. He envisioned it as a personnel machine for rooting out the “deep state” and replacing federal employees with devoted MAGA loyalists.
Dans hoped his system would allow Trump to make big changes fast. “If a person can’t get in and fire people right away, what good is political management?” Dans said in December.
Earlier this week, Trump nominated Russ Vought, a Christian nationalist with ties to Project 2025, to lead the Office of Management and Budget. He also nominated Brendan Carr, who wrote the Project 2025 chapter on the Federal Communications Commission, to head that government agency.
Last week, Trump nominated John Ratcliffe, another Project 2025 author, to head the Central Intelligence Agency.
Vladimir Putin Is “Gleeful” Over This Trump Cabinet Nomination
Edith Olmsted – November 22, 2024
Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination to be the next director of national intelligence may not be making you happy, but it’s certainly making someone happy: Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In Russia, the response to the former Hawaii representative’s nomination has been “gleeful,” The New York Timesreported Tuesday.
Komsomolskaya Pravda, a Russian newspaper, fawned over Gabbard in an article last week, noting that “the CIA and FBI are trembling.” The article also noted that Ukrainians considered Gabbard to be “an agent of the Russian state.”
Trump’s decision to nominate Gabbard, of all people, signals his distinct willingness to cozy up to Putin.
“Nominating Gabbard for director of national intelligence is the way to Putin’s heart, and it tells the world that America under Trump will be the Kremlin’s ally rather than an adversary,” authoritarian scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat told the Times.
Gabbard has defended Russia’s incursion into Ukraine, claiming that the U.S. had provoked Russian aggression and that Ukraine housed U.S.-funded biolabs that were developing secret bioweapons—a piece of foreign state propaganda that earned her the reputation as a Russian asset.
Virginia Representative Abigail Spanberger sounded the alarm about Gabbard on MSNBC, noting that, if confirmed, Gabbard would be responsible for putting together the president’s daily briefings, and would likely include Russian propaganda.
Former CIA Director John Brennan also voiced his concerns about Gabbard on MSNBC Tuesday. “[Gabbard] has done things and said things over the years that really [have] caused great concern about where her sympathies and sentiments lie, but also she has no experience and background in the intelligence profession,” he said.
Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy told MSNBC that Gabbard had been known to “toe the line of brutal despotic regimes.”
Russia isn’t the only authoritarian state Gabbard’s defended: She’s also backed Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Egypt’s Abdel Fattah Al Sisi.
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