By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content)
November 3 ELECTION DAY, 2026; (Traduce en español/translate to Spanish soon); because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating as I make my overdue comeback! Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter means my content is actively suppressed, so your help is invaluable. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. See my two-million+-views-strong ongoing Twitter/X thread on the whole mess in the Middle East with the U.S.-led war against Iran & co. here.

SILVER SPRING—Here we are.  Not everyone lives through major historical events, but here we are.  Hundreds of years of American history, thousands of years of human civilization, indeed the fate of the planet is at stake here.  I elaborated on some of the main reasons why recently in my utterly depressing examination of the quarter-century anniversary of 9/11, but the TLDR version is that we—we more than anyone else especially our enemies—are the reason why we are here now: our collective choices by far the determining factor.  And choose we must. And while we have no way of knowing with confidence Trump will not cheat, smash the results, and interfere more than he already has tried, if the results will even be honored and if this is the end of our democracy.  What will we choose under such unique conditions, not seen since the Civil War and Reconstruction?

Perhaps the most consequential part of this election would be control of the U.S. Senate, and the outcome in the Senate is the main subject here, so let’s get this predictive part out of the way first from the maps I set in the wee hours of this morning:

Democrats’ coalition is at 47 currently: 45 Democrats, plus Bernie Sanders in Vermont and Angus King in Maine as two independents; MAGA is at 53.

The MOST LIKELY Scenario: this map below, Democrats winning a coalition of 56 seats (+9) and MAGA 44.

8 Democratic pickups and 1 new Libertarian ally in Nebraska leads to 53 Democrats, 3 independents in a coalition; 9 pickups total.

The FLOOR Scenario: 51-seat Democratic coalition (+4) and MAGA 49.

49 Democrats with a pickup of 4 seats joining Bernie and Angus.

The CEILING Scenario: 60-seat Democratic coalition (+13) and MAGA 40.

56-57 Democrats, with 3-4 independents depending on Montana’s strange race, so 1 or 2 new independents and 11-12 pickups for Democrats, the additional Libertarian on top of the additional one from my most likely scenario by far the more likely scenario than 12 Democratic pickups, 13 total for the coalition.  

And now that you’ve seen my maps, here is my ranking of all the states that, in my view, are realistically up for grabs even in my floor/ceiling scenarios, in order of the likelihood Democrats (or NOT Republicans, in a few cases) will win/how big they will win.  Since Democrats are at 47 and JD “JV” Vance is the tie-breaking Vice President, gaining 4 seats gets Democrats a Senate majority.  The gains and majorities will also be listed.

1. Georgia (defend)
2. North Carolina (gain+1, 3 shy of majority)
3. Minnesota (defend)
4. New Hampshire (defend)
5. Ohio (gain+2, 2 shy of majority)
6. Texas (gain+3, 1 shy of majority, 50-50 ties but VP Vance tiebreaker)
7. Michigan (defend)
8. Maine (gain +4, +1 majority: my tipping point, if Dems win here, consider them running Senate)
9. Kansas (gain +5, +2 majority)
10. Alaska (gain +6, +3 majority)
11. Iowa (gain +7, +4 majority)
12. South Carolina (gain +8, +5 majority)
13. Nebraska (Libertarian, gain-ish +9, +6 majority)
14. Florida (gain +10, +7 majority)
15. Louisiana (gain +11, +8 majority)
16. Mississippi (gain +12, +9 majority)
17. Montana (Libertarian most likely, though it’s a serious 3-way race with a Democrat, gain-ish +13, +10 majority)

To be clear, I am and have been predicting since early March that this could very well be one of the great wave elections in American history since Trump bumbled haplessly into a Middle East maelstrom Trump wishes involved only Iran, not just a Democratic Blue Wave, but a Democratic Blue Tsunami.  But one that could result in an even more powerful reaction from Trump, one fatal to our Republic.

I am indebted to the wisdom of legendary Professor Larry Sabato at the singular University of Virginia (Larry is not to be confused with the My Pillow Guy, whatever what guy’s actual name is), whose famous Crystal Ball at Mr. Jefferson’s university should not need an introduction for any true politico and was used extensively by myself in making my own picks, as was the research of the wonderful folks at the highly-esteemed Cook Political Report and from Nate Silver’s FLIPR model.

Also, some of my earlier work on historical midterms can show you where all this may end up stacking historically:

I will be offering a fuller state-by-state analysis, including methodology details, later today, but for now, here are my official predictions. So more to come.

© 2026 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s two-million+-views-strong ongoing Twitter/X thread on the whole mess in the Middle East with the U.S.-led war against Iran et al. right here, and his eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content)
November 2, 2026; (Traduce en español/translate to Spanish); because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating as I make my overdue comeback! Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter means my content is actively suppressed, so your help is invaluable. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. See my two-million+-views-strong ongoing Twitter/X thread on the whole mess in the Middle East with the U.S.-led war against Iran & co. here.

SILVER SPRING—While Twitter/X spaces have cratered as a feature much like support for Trump, MAGA, and the GOP is now cratering, I used to participate much more in them during their brief heyday.  For those of you who don’t know, Spaces on X is a live radio show with up to three hosts and about a dozen panelists that combine with guests (sometimes hundreds or thousands) for something of a show.

So let’s go back to June 6, 20204, to one particular Space.  Annoying music, until 7:40, then the Space actually starts.  I am there from the beginning, and so is someone who goes by the handle @TheMagaHulk on X/Twitter, with the supposed name Lucky Teter, who starts interrupting me at 19:14 before I can even make my points and keeps talking over me, moving the goalpost just as I am about to disprove his points to prevent me from disproving and forcing a repetition of this cycle over and over.

The space opens with Byron Donalds’s mini-me, Javon Price (Donalds is the woeful MAGA candidate for governor in Florida and Javon used to work for, and still supports, him), ranting emotionally without substance, and the hosts interrupting each other, going back to Javon, then I finally begin (I am sorry you may be exposed to his bloviating noises).

But then “Lucky” really hates it when I speak, and interrupts me more than anyone, out of turn, rudely, trafficking in insults.  The rambling-untethered-from reality setup from MAGA superclown Nick Sortor (currently obsessed with spreading vicious lies about the likely next U.S. senator from Texas, Democrat James Talarico) for my question starts around 16 minutes, then I start, but I am quickly being interrupted by multiple people, being forced to respond to interruptions rather than make my own points, and in contrast to how Javon, Lucky, & other MAGAs are treated.  When another host at 21:30 notes that I was “trying to say” something about crime and poverty and adjusting racial rates for poverty and inequality (which mostly erases the disparity in crime rates between white and black Americans, I am completely right here and these racist or ignorant clowns got nothing on the context and data I have, and the only reasons I didn’t get that out by that point was that I was being constantly interrupted by “Lucky” and Javon.  Some of these people here are gleefully pushing the false, racist trope 1350, 13/50, 13/52, 13/90, etc. in this context about why black Americans commit some crimes at higher rates, which reality demolishes).

We have the loudly-out-and-proud-proud fascist (though he hates that word) and vehement racist Dr. Sebastian Gorka (he’s one of those who lets you know he has that degree quickly)—devotee of ousted fascist would-be-dictator Viktor Orbán of Hungary and current Senior Director for Counterterrorism on the National Security Council at the White House, who clearly knows very little about race, poverty, and crime, let alone the Constitution, let alone counterterrorism—enter at 34 minutes.  He thew a toddler-temper tantrum when I called him a fascist, but the problem is, he is a vile, boorish, bloodthirsty fascist/neo-Nazi who says fascists things, idolizes past fascists, wears fascist lapel pins (Vitézi Rend!), and works for fascists.  Thus, the good “doctor” is a poster-toddler for fascism.  And little baby Gorka cries repeatedly to the host to remove me after I called him exactly what he is: a fascist (e.g., whining quite memorably at around 1 hour and 4 minutes and again at around 1 hour and 38 minutes, asking for preferential fascist treatment because he lives and breathes fascism, where he gets to act with impunity and only those he doesn’t like are held to standards, hello fascism, and here’s a useful definition of fascism if you need one!).

They interrupt, talk over, move the goalpost all throughout.  This dynamic gets far worse thanks to Nick’s great hosting and the delightful guests (shoutout to Prodigal @ProdigalThe3rd for being particularly intolerable—what must be an all-time interruption per-capita record for X/Twitter spaces—and bearing an uncanny resemblance to Phil Swift of caulk (not cock) infomercial fame.

So it’s me against a MAGA mob, with even the few “allies” interrupting me, but the point is, I ended up arguing with Nick Sortor, Sebastian Gorka, and Dan Crenwshaw simultaneously, three major figures from the right, and more than held my own against their nonsense.

Wait, Dan Crenwshaw, you say?  U.S. House Representative Dan Crenshaw from Texas of Trump’s Republican Party, who just lost his reelection to an even worse MAGA freak?  Unless he has a twin brother, yes, because there was a fake account that was viciously interrupting me and spreading hate, name-calling and misinformation, that was none other than Dan Crenshaw, hiding behind a fake alias to “have fun” being a racist, vulgar jerk trafficking dangerous misinformation.  One of our most significant exchanges occurs around 59:30, and you can hear his voice clearly: same cadence, speech patterns of sitting Rep. Crenshaw (compare the voice with Crenshaw’s voice in this interview below from the same month as the X/Twitter Space, this is either a 99.9% match or 100% and if I am wrong please explain how), certainly the same jackboot views and personality, just more MAGA than he is willing to let on when he is on TV with his congressional lapel pin on his blazer (at least it’s not Gorka’s fascist pin, although with his primary crowd, he might have done better if it was).

So now, dear fellow Internet sleuths, as noted, Dan has been masquerading as “Lucky” for some time.  This means, there is a lot more to find besides this.  At this point, politically, Dan Crenshaw isn’t important, is homeless, and has very little constituency.  It was worth this quick hit to point this out and expose him, but unless Lucky Dan is willing to sit down for an honest public debate, man to man, without little Nicky Sortor getting off on gleefully using the mute button as host to interfere with my points to boost Lucky’s, he is certainly not worth much more of my time than the time he has already considerably wasted with his uninformed, constant interruptions and misuse along with conflation of statistics.

So, Congressman, soon to just be un-Lucky Dan, I commend you for your military service in uniform, am sorry your lost an eye in sacrifice for us all, but then I am sorry to say, that you haven’t been that commendable since: your most valuable contributions in standing up to MAGA have been on Ukraine, yet a Democrat would have supported Ukraine much more robustly, because in the era of MAGA, that is what Democrats do, while MAGA stabs Ukraine in the back, much like Haley Stevens just did to fellow Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, likely the next U.S. Senator from Michigan and who is as American as you, you racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, homophobic, uninformed jerk, and now everyone can more easily see just how bigoted you are, that even your Congressman persona hid the “best” parts of your wonderful “intellectual” wormhole views and saved them for social media.

Well, now people can see your unvarnished self as you walk your ass out of Congress.

And I’ll debate you any time for public benefit on any issue, but apart from that, you no longer interest me, “Lucky.”

© 2026 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s two-million+-views-strong ongoing Twitter/X thread on the whole mess in the Middle East with the U.S.-led war against Iran et al. right here, and his eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content)
October 20, 2026; (Traduce en español/translate to Spanish; Arabic الترجمة العربية ; Hebrew תרגום לעברית); 10/21 update: added Dream of Scipio epigraph along with some additional sources and minor fixes/clarifications; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating as I make my overdue comeback! Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter means my content is actively suppressed, so your help is invaluable. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. See my related AI Reading List here and my nearly-two-million-views-strong ongoing Twitter/X thread on the whole mess in the Middle East with the U.S.-led war against Iran & co. here.

SILVER SPRING—On a personal note, I struggled to write this.  On one level, I have had chaos in my life that has made writing articles like this more challenging than ever for me.  On another level, I was just so damn depressed that it was just… hard to write.  I had grand ambitions to get this out right around 9/11’s recent twenty-fifth anniversary and wrote a significant portion of this to the background of Yo-Yo Ma mourning as only he can, singing through his cello he played during the 9/11 commemoration ceremony a Ground Zero amidst the backdrop of that ever-too-long list of names (“No Day Shall Erase You From the Memory of Time,” the 9/11 Museum quotes the ancient Roman poet Virgil’s Aeneid prominently).

Yet there is something else I have been struggling with far beyond just writing, and that I wish I could erase from my own memory, one simple truth that horrifies me to the depths of my soul as an American and as a human.  Obviously, I failed to finish this in the weeks since 9/11, and I truly apologize for not getting this out sooner.  But get this out I must.

…A question of whether or not one is to take a stand and insist that, despite the times, barbarism must not hold sway. How do we justify calling ourselves civilized, after all? Is it the books we read? The delicacy of our tastes? Our place in continuing a line of belief and of common values that stretch back a thousand years and more? All this, indeed, but what does it mean? How does it show itself? Are you civilized if you read the right books, yet stand by while your neighbors are massacred, your lands laid waste, your cities brought to ruin?

Do we use the barbarians to control barbarism? Can we exploit them so that they preserve civilized values rather than destroy them?…

Iain Pears, The Dream of Scipio

I.

Osama bin Laden may be dead on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his sick magnum opus, whatever remains of his mortal remains at the bottom of the sea or part of a marine food chain, but in many ways, we are living in his world.  In the final decades of civilization existing as we know it, before the AI slop overlords obliterate the civilization that we possess now, that which we inherited from generations of ancestors, there was a man, a terrorist, who was able to upend that order and, without realizing it, helped to herald in whatever horrific AI age is about to unfold before us.

Because when history looks back, it will see that the United States of America—the most powerful country the world had ever seen, in charge of the most powerful alliances the world had ever seen—at the time when it needed to be focusing very much in part on responsibly shaping AI technology before it shapes humanity for centuries, even perhaps millennia, was instead distracted by stupid wars of choice sparked first by bin Laden, then W. Bush, then Trump (I am talking Afghanistan, Iraq II, and Iran/whatever the hell this is current conflagration is).  These disasters of choice sapped biblical amounts of resources, divided Americans even more so against each other, helped ruin our reputation internationally, and eroded core institutions that had helped make America great in the first place, and in large part brought us where we are today.

The first part about this, that bin Laden had won, was obvious (frankly undeniable), even a decade into the post-9/11 world.  As I noted twelve years after the attacks, by then, we should by then have been mourning the damage done after the attacks themselves (even while still mourning the gaping void from those) and have been deeply disappointed in many of the paths we were then undertaking, that we had lost a whole decade and would continue to lose more of ourselves.  I would revisit this theme again in further years, as I felt compelled to highlight our ongoing hubris and folly.  I would not be proven wrong.  Even today, his ghost is still winning, haunting us with blatant irony.

It has become hackneyed, now, to say that we are more divided than ever, but we keep surpassing our previous record levels of division so it merits such repetition.  And as I have made clear that any fair, sensible examination of the actual narrative of the history that got us from the end of the Cold War to whatever under Zeus’s law the current setup is, there is one side of the political share of the spectrum that bears most, but hardly all, of the blame for the level of partisanship and extremism that is today’s modus operandi in MAGA Washington, worsening for some time but now reaching fascistic, revolutionary levels.

We have failed to honor the dead, instead allowing ourselves to become more and more divided, and, I fear it is as one Star Wars character from one all-too prescient show cries out in one of the key moments of the surprisingly masterful series: “This Republic is failing! It’s only a matter of time.”

II.

The two individuals most responsible for this current collapse?  Osama bin Laden (assist from George W. Bush playing right into his plan, near-perfectly over time) and Donald John Trump (assist from Benjamin Netanyahu pressuring him into and joining him in a big portion of his order-destroying misadventures, with assists in Trump’s rise going to a panoply of characters from the ludicrous Jill Stein to a mass-murderer in Vladimir Putin; on the latter, that insecure, vicious little twerp is a distant third behind bin Laden and Trump, Putin’s sorry ass is not the focus of this piece.  To my Israeli comrades who think the world revolves around them and their enemies and were, after seeing Netanyahu mentioned, expecting a Sinwar or an ayatollah to be on this list, I do not offer any apologies, only a well-intentioned—if sobering—reality check: just think about how Hamas was not able to regionalize the conflict anywhere near its current level, that it took U.S. and Israeli action to do that when Hamas was isolated and alone).

The simple reality is that Trump’s willingness and eagerness to risk in and engage in irresponsible warfare was demonstrated before his latest spectacularly grandiose miscalculation: not even two months before in Venezuela, in his 2025 Iran strikes (the first time he Pearl Harbored Iran in the middle of negotiations, only to surpassed that in the repeat treachery this year), his assassination of a Soleimani engaging then in diplomacy, airstrikes against Iran he called off ten minutes before they would have happened in 2019, and, of course, don’t forget the general glee with which Trump, Hegseth, and his other MAGA minions announced they were reducing safeguards in our military to protect civilians from being killed and maimed.  Trump even amply displayed his bloodlust before his second term, and now he has the people around him who will be mostly willing to indulge and execute this bloodlust, much as they have had few qualms executing his overall fascist agenda since being reelected.  A party embracing in power, then in opposition, some of the worst tendencies of distortion and gaslighting from both the fascists and the communists of Orwell’s time did not lessen any of these tendencies now that it has returned to power with a ferocious vengeance.  Yes, I and many others for years wared that a second Trump term would be far worse than most imagined, and it is even worse than I warned or imagined as an extinction-level event for American democracy.

For Trump has now demonstrated he does not understand the meaning of the word “peace,’ despite his romantic longings for Nobel, and has turned into more of a Shiva—“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” yes, that Shiva—of any modern ruler since Stalin, Hitler, and Mao (even if not anywhere near their body counts).  Because Trump did not just succeed in undoing “woke” (whatever he thinks that means), many of the LGBTQ protections, or parts of Obamacare, he is dismantling the 1964-1965 grand Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts—the reforms that made us a real republic; he is dismantling the U.S.-led post-World War II international order, including the United Nations system; he is not only undoing that, but the Reconstruction Amendments that remade a part-slavery-based society anew in Lincoln’s new birth of freedom, earned through seas of blood.  And still, he is even going much further than that: Trump is undoing the very Westphalian international system in place since the mid-seventeenth century, in which states—not individual rulers and whimsical caprice—along with international law and norms would become the bedrock of international relations and diplomacy in the modern world, careening instead into “militarized interstate anarchy” that characterizes much of world history before the 1648 Peace of Westphalia ending the Thirty Years’ War and going back to the anarchy of most of the ancient world (à la Eckstein).

Again, whether the Soleimani hit or the 2025 strikes, Trump’s moves against Iran could easily have exploded into far worse before, but the third time truly was the charm for him, put into overdrive in 2026 with the assist of Netanyahu, and while everyone should blame the latter for much of the region’s ills in general and specifically unfolding now, let’s dispel with longstanding anti-Semitic tropes of Jewish “control” over the American presidency and political system: Donald Trump chose to do what he did and saw his own aims and reasons for taking the plunge (does he ever see anyone else’s?).  Ultimately, Netanyahu never forced him, only tried persuade and pressure, but it is up to a leader to resist persuasion and pressure into a bad path: Trump chose to join Netanyahu when all others before him declined, and this clear reality and responsibility must not be forgotten.

III.

In many ways, then, the two people who have defined this era globally more than any other two people are Osama bin Laden and Donald J. Trump.  And, each step along the way, it was American government followed by American voters that empowered their rise and handed them more and more power, one stupid, myopic decision after another, even if there was a shining interregnum under Biden and some relief, if temporary and mostly undone, under Obama.  But, since Biden and Obama played by the rules, it was fairly easy for Trump to undo so much of what they had corrected or started to do, that it is hard to even remember at this point that there was a break from the Trumpian madness, that we had two well-intentioned Democratic presidents and their teams accomplish much despite bookending Trump 1.0 and before the current insanity of Trump 2.0.  Those memories feel so distant now, one wonders if they were even real.  Because our current reality seems so surreal, but that is because we are witnessing the collapse of history and civilization.

Has the graveyard of our empire been built upon the graves of so many in Gaza and Sudan, living under a world order that promised to protect them, but instead, is presiding over their annihilation?  Should it be any surprise that that any system that could allow such atrocities to persist for years would be collapsing rapidly now under its own weight with bad-faith warmongers leading it?

Osama bin Laden played us like a harp, but we had many chances, even after many mistakes, to right our ship of state (we even succeeded few times, if temporarily).  But it took a Donald Trump to see American power and alliances in the Middle East self-immolate in 2026 the way bin Laden dreamed of and to which he dedicated his most spectacularly awful attack of his storied career, to see the regimes so long propped by America to rapidly weaken and teeter.  It took a quarter-century since 9/11, but, thanks to Donald Trump but most especially, thanks to the American voters who fell for and gave into al-Qaeda terror—who turned in terror to hate and eventually Trump, who, in turn, tore down the system that used to send terror into the hearts of the bin Ladens and Putins of the world and refashioned it serve the hate of bin Ladenism and other hate-filled ideologies, from Putinism to Kahanism—bin Laden has long been proverbially laughing at us before in life and since proverbially from the grave, reveling in his radical, raging, revolutionary reverie’s realization (even if the caliphate part is missing and failing, it is still a mind-bending historical achievement).

Indeed, our most telling reaction to al-Qaeda was our formation of its American counterpart in MAGA, penetrating far deeper, and doing far more damage over time, than al-Qaeda.  Trying to explain Trump’s January 6, 2021, insurrection to an Israeli audience for an Israeli publication, I noted that MAGA combined the terrorist white supremacy of the rebel “Confederacy,” Ku Kluk Klan, and Jim Crow; the racial switch and focus of Republicans under Nixon to court racist white votes; the nihilist anti-government ideology of Reagan; and the scorched-earth partisanship of Gingrich.  Far more than the wasted wars, blood, and treasure, it was our self-destruction and transformation at home, especially after Trump’s emergence, that most fueled bin Laden’s victory from his watery grave.

Certainly, bin Laden as a man on the world stage can be said to have played a role in toppling the Soviet Union and, it, seems, the United States; his place in history is etched and then some.  He may be an evil bastard, but he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, more so not because of the president who was on watch during 9/11, not his great rival W. Bush, but because it took a special kind of historic, unprecedented stupidity and greed in the human personified form of Donald Trump, a leader who publicly resembles more an aging Col. Qaddafi than any previous American president, an orange buffoon who is far more dangerous than amusing, prepping to build a Roman-style arch to himself in Arlington for a phantom victory that is actually a historic defeat.  If bankrupt is he who builds massive monuments to his minor victories, what is he who builds them to honor his own defeats?

IV.

Consider where America was in 2001 and consider it now: anti-genocide then, but today, when it comes to the two worst current genocides, the U.S. is directly supporting its key ally Israel carrying out genocide in Gaza (or mass ethnic cleansing and mass murder if you really want to quibble on that other term, keep your eyes on the prize), while it also supports its key ally the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in supporting forces in Sudan (Rapid Support Forces [RSF] et al.) carrying out genocide there.  Today, also, America has come from promoting freedom and democracy in Venezuela to decapitating the Venezuelan regime in order to plunder its oil riches.  We condemned secret police paramilitaries, now have our own ICE murdering American citizens on the street with impunity and no serious accountability.  In just a quarter-century since 9/11, we have literally now sadly become the caricatures not only that folks like Noam Chomsky incorrectly saw us as even then, but in many ways how bin Laden and Sayyid Qutb before him characterized us.  A telling summary can also be seen in the shifts in power for bin Laden’s “far enemy,” most exemplified by the U.S. for supporting his “near enemy,” in turn most exemplified by the Saudi Arabian regime: both the U.S. and the House of Saud are each easily currently at their weakest since 9/11 and, in fact, going back to include many decades before, at their nadirs of the modern era.

The open secret of Trump’s triumphal arch is that it will actually be a monument to bin Laden’s victory.  That pathetic arch, if built, may stand longer than U.S. bases and alliances in the Middle East.

With a looming AI catastrophe facing humanity as a whole, with that threat desperately needing coordination and cooperation, instead, led by Donald Trump in a chain of events set in motion by bin Laden himself, history will note that the world and humanity tore itself apart when it needed to unify the most.  According to himself, Trump has a “very good brain” and claims: “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!”  As Trump continually outs himself as wholly unfit to oversee this transition, this thing or things we call AI may take less pity on us than we have had for Palestinians and Sudanese.  That is a truly scary thought, if ever there was one.

It could even be far, far less pity (think pets, livestock, slaves, or worse). Whatever you want to call this new artificial intelligence threat (a species? technology? conscious? “persons”?), just the fact that we do not even really know what to call it means we really are in trouble.

This combination of Andor, Jurassic Park, Westworld, The Matrix, and Terminator is not the story you want to be in. Whether you want to or not, in the end, it will be a democratically-elected Trump (with Putin’s and Netanyahu’s help) leading us hand-in-hand with bin Laden’s ghost into this irony-laden dystopian real-world hell of both their and our making, from the Strait of Hormuz to a near-Skynet in cyberspace.

If there is any such metaphysical Hades in which bin Laden can roast, you can be sure he is celebrating there with his friends, but keeping a seat of honor empty and ready at the table for his most glorious of all accomplices in achieving his drastic dream of derailment and destruction, not Ayman al-Zawahiri, but one Donald John Trump.  Yet when a once great people has elevated a thieving charlatan demagogue to rob their own nation and the world blind on a road to abysmal cruelty, rampant avarice, and techno-fascism paved with the literal skulls of tens of thousands of Palestinian and Sudanese children, perhaps there is little else worth saying.

I very much wish to be wrong. Please prove me so.

See my related AI Reading List here and Andor viewing guide here. Also see my nearly-two-million-views-strong ongoing Twitter/X thread on the whole mess in the Middle East with the U.S.-led war against Iran et al. right here.

© 2026 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

(Traduce en español/translate to Spanish) By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981,  LinkedIn, Bluesky, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) July 16, 2026; *UPDATED same day to include the collaboration with Pope Leo of Ukraine’s 2022 Nobel Peace Prize-winner, Oleksandra Matviichuk (see my interview with her just months before she won the Prize) and *UPDATED July 18th to refine points on Calvinism and modern Christianity, adding some relevant sources on that note; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating as I make my overdue comeback! Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter means my content is actively suppressed, so your help is invaluable. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. See my related AI Reading List here.

SILVER SPRING—At great risk of losing my audience, duty compels me to start this article with a massive disclosure (please stay with me, Believers, as you will appreciate what comes after the disclosure!).  As an avowed nonbeliever/nontheist, I overall despise Christianity, the Catholic Church, the papacy, and religion in general—including all major religions equally both in concept and in practice (I here separate major religions from subsects)—for ample, demonstrable reasons played out over thousands of years.  Yet remember how I said I despise them equally: I will defend Muslims from bigoted attacks from Christians, or Christians from bigoted attacks from Hindus (random examples, not meant to convey deeper meaning in their selection!), and defend all their human rights, including to practice their religion freely (so long as they are not harming others).  The late, great Christopher Hitchens sums up his views and mine nicely here in his classic Letters to a Young Contrarian:

In order to be absolutely honest, I should not leave you with the impression that I am part of the generalized agnosticism of our culture.  I am not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief is positively harmful.  Reviewing the false claims of religion, I do not wish, as some sentimental materialists affect to wish, that they were true. I do not envy believers their faith.  I am relieved to think that the whole story is a sinister fairy tale; life would be miserable if what the faithful affirmed was actually the case.

That does not mean that there are not things that I do not like and value about each and every one of these faiths, or that I hate most adherents of Christianity or any religion: I do not.  In the end, I am a Humanist who loves people above all else.  Yet I am very much an antitheist, a nonbeliever in any of that mumbo-jumbo some of you may think is necessary to save my soul (and while I do genuinely appreciate the concern to the degree that it represents concern for my well-being, any attempts at proselytization or conversion will be either ignored or trolled, yet money is always accepted in my struggling freelance state).  I happen to be an ex-Catholic and have a soft-spot for the very recent modern iteration of the Catholic Church (especially some of its better social teachings and charity work, led by Catholic Relief Services, actually one of the premier global relief charities) while also being extremely critical of the Church, a Church I left in disgust in the later half of the first decade of the twenty-first century.  And I am not going back or signing up for any other divinity-focused team.

So, that fact that Pope Leo XIV’s elegant encyclical hit me like the River Isen bursting through the dam in The Two Towers really says something.  I was not expecting Leo—and, by default the Church he leads—to become the salient moral and ethical voice on AI…

One of the remarkable things about Leo’s foray into the public square on the topic of AI is that he is less concerned with centering his arguments on God than on people; indeed, his encyclical translates in English to “Magnificent Humanity,” a resoundingly uplifting, positive, and hopeful document on the possibilities and wonders of human nature.  *This is absolutely a rebuke to the spirit of Calvinism and America’s sick Evangelical Christianity, of the concept of the Elect, of the gospel of wealth/prosperity gospel, of the idea that God would damn most people to eternal hellfire (when it comes to hell itself, one of the most profound early Church Fathers, Origen of Alexandria [c. 185-c. 254 C.E.], did not even accept its existence, and for this and other kindnesses and beliefs he was undermined by rivals in his lifetime and excommunicated posthumously [apparently, technically “anathematized,” oh, Catholicism…].  Origen would have found himself in good company some sixteen centuries later, half-a-world away: as a non-theologian, Abraham Lincoln probably gave us some of the most profound meditations on faith of any major leader in history, and he, too, found it silly and dreadful to have hell or believe in it).

To me, more than it is about “God” or Jesus or Christianity or religion, this encyclical is a document that is a robust defense of humans—their spirit, achievements, dignity, and possibilities—against their denigration, commodification, deprioritization, and oppression.  Just as the subtitle—“On safeguarding the human person in the time of Artificial Intelligence”—states, it is a collective societal path for fighting dehumanization in a dehumanizing age, one that seeks, using AI, to elevate a tiny handful of humans and AI over the entire rest of our species, replacing our diverse ethical, moral, and philosophical systems with their fascist systems of dopamine manipulation that worship money and themselves as gods, not people in general, let alone “God.” Make no mistake about it, these big tech oligarchs are aligned with Trump and are as soulless as he is—Anthropic notwithstanding—and are firmly in the driver’s seat; thus, while Leo’s entrance here is an act of leadership, it is also a primal scream of panic for our species, a papal version of smashing the glass and pulling the alarm.

As for your imaginary friend(s), he/she/they do not concern me here.  Much like an edition of the Bible compiled by Thomas Jefferson that removed all the religious, superstitious, and miracle inventions in favor of focusing on the actual teachings and meanings of Jesus for how to behave in a crazy world (see and read the digitized original!), Leo’s exhilarating encyclical is an inclusive roadmap for all when you separate the Christian religious stuff from its more temporal substance; however you feel about the ethereal metaphysics, the rest of it stands on its own just like Mr. Jefferson’s Bible, as needed a relevant message and wake-up call as anything else out there today.

I am not going to remove those religious references or attack them specifically herein (other than to give you Immanuel Kant’s famous quote from the same era as Jefferson: “Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.”), I leave them here while not endorsing them and heartily endorsing the rest. On that note…

Behold, be ye of faith, little faith, or no faith, the wonder that is Magnifica Humanitas in stained-glass, even hieroglyphics or graphic novel form—whatever you want to call it—these infographics speak not only for themselves, but for all of us fighting for humanity over hate and machines, greed and dehumanization (click on any to zoom)!

If you prefer, you can view the infographics as a slide show:

Or download as PDFs.

With all this and more, maybe we can even win over some of the hearts and minds on the other side.  I consider Anthropic to be one of the main exceptions among the big teach companies on trying to provide moral and ethical leadership on AI (the rest seem mostly to be the problem), whether by saying no to Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon on the one hand or by partnering with the Vatican and Pope Leo on the other, and the fact that the latter are partnering with Anthropic inspires in me at least some measure of hope.

Having said that, I think the forces stacked against us are formidable and what seem to be Anthropic’s good intentions may be too little, too late.  And yet, for now, let us who want to advance the collective cause of humanity keep fighting like we have a chance and use Leo’s empathetic encyclical (including its pictures-worth-a-million-words) as a moral and ethical North Star, a Phial of Galadriel (“May it be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out”), a light for those with hearts seeking illumination in these dark times.  *Carrying far more moral weight than Anthropic and perhaps akin to Galadriel herself, Ukraine’s 2022 Nobel Peace Prize-winner, Oleksandra Matviichuk (see my interview with her just months before she won the Prize), is also welcomingly collaborating with the Vatican on this alongside many other Nobel laureates; and, much like Leo, Matviichuk sees us losing our humanity under assault from AI and the tech companies pushing AI onto us, even citing the horrific targeting abuses of AI in Gaza as used by the Israeli military.  Noting the depraved “human safari” expeditions carried out by Russian military forces killing her fellow Ukrainians for amusement, she asks: “If Russians are capable of this while a human operator still sits behind the drone—what kind of hell awaits us once they do it with AI?”

Somehow, I have to figure how to combine Leo’s Magnifica Humanitas with Andor, and then we might be saved.  Both the Catholic Church and Disney have been weak for some time in many ways, and then, somehow, they give us this encyclical and Andor… so maybe miracles are possible, with both the Catholic Church and Disney being something akin to John the Baptist’s mother, Elizabeth, birthing him when she was infertile? (Perhaps I am getting carried away sourcing fiction here, between Tolkien, Star Wars, and the Bible…).  But even without miracles, Leo and his team are showing the way forward so transcendently, so beautifully, so effectively with this encyclical and its series of five epic infographics, the stained-glass windows for the cataclysm of our current AI-era.  Stained-glass windows were not just art: for many centuries, they could could tell stories for illiterate peasants clogging the pews or gawking at Cathedrals from the outside, and, after reading about the death of reading à la Rose Horowitch in The Atlantic and watching Yuval Noah Harari explain recently why both liberalism as a world order is fading and AI is its enemy driving us into terrifying new world order, let us make sure it is not an apocalypse.

See my related AI Reading List here.

© 2026 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

(Traduce en español/translate to Spanish)

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) June 5, 2026; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating as I make my overdue comeback! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. All other editions of the Real Context News AI Reading List can be found here. And be sure to check out my related book review of Nicole Perlroth’s must-read, award-winning book on cyberwarfare as well as my own work on cyberwarfare.

Dear readers, I’m 44 years old.  And I’ve never seen anything like this (could apply to multiple stories but hey, let’s do this one).

In the span of about not even two weeks, the following has just happened:

We had a pope come out with a moral and ethical wakeup call at a time when one wondered if the Catholic Church was ever going to truly matter in a profound way on the international stage again.

That in itself is truly a miracle.

Yes, Pope Leo XVI roared like his namesake predecessor and like the lion he is that, yes, there was still going to be profound moral leadership in a global sense in the era of Trump 2.0, and he did so with one of AI giant Anthropic’s co-founders, Chritopher Olah, who, despite looking like a teenager, is a relative moral titan for his industry in joining the pope in what I dare say is sounding like a crusade (maybe the first good one).  Leo uses the word “disarm” for AI, and he made it damn clear he was not mincing words.

Then, about a week later, at the very end of a long update from The Anthropic Institute that very much reads like a research paper, I see something I’ve never really seen before from a company describing its own technology.  They are flat-out telling use they have lost control of their experiment, and it may have become Skynet as in T2 Terminator 2 (just as I warned when I launched this List, more humorously than now, and not thinking it was possibly a few months away), that they basically don’t know if we can even know for sure, are clearly having a moral crisis of conscience at being one of the driving forces behind this possible calamity, and are desperately trying to put on the brakes and, at least for now, saying we need to stop to be safe or a sentient AI may very well deem us a threat and, well… watch the movies.  They—some of them barely not kids—sound like they’ve lost control of their version of Frankenstein’s monster, warning us repeatedly recently, but now are officially primally screaming out for help with a megaphone into the world for all to hear, that we have to at least “pause” this madness.

Of all people, Mitt Romney totally freaked out about this.  In a very non-Mitt way.  I don’t blame him.

Magnifica Humanitas/Magnificent Humanity—Pope Leo XIV; The Vatican.

When AI Builds Itself—Marina Favaro and Jack Clark, edited by Santi Ruiz; The Anthropic Institute.

More on this to come.

I’m done with this shit for tonight. GO KNICKS!!!

Next time, hopefully another special edition of the List, this time (unless some other crazy stuff happens) on of the List on the Elon Musk vs. Sam Altman OpenAI/ChatGPT trial that just concluded. And if you want to spread the word?  It’s easy:  AI reading list dot com: AIreadinglist.com!

© 2026 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

(Traduce en español/translate to Spanish)

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) May 24, 2026; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating as I make my overdue comeback! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. All other editions of the Real Context News AI Reading List can be found here. And be sure to check out my related book review of Nicole Perlroth’s must-read, award-winning book on cyberwarfare as well as my own work on cyberwarfare. And finally, apologies for the delay, so here’s a real meaty edition on a meaty topic!

Let’s jump into it! Mythos, a particular iteration of the artificial intelligence juggernaut Anthropic’s Claude large language model (LLM) chatbot, is here and doing its thing in the form of Anthropic’s Project Glasswing.

Yes, these tech people are way too in love with their naming schemes, but the bottom line is that Anthropic just announced it has been using its new Mythos version (still in development and often more specifically referred to as Mythos Preview) of the Claude LLM in a massive project with some of the biggest names in tech overall: Amazon Web Services, Apple, Broadcom, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Google, JPMorganChase, the Linux Foundation, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Palo Alto Networks that has been something of a secret, but is now unveiled as Project Glasswing.

First, let’s start with a few primers on what, exactly, the Mythos (Mythos Preview) edition of Anthropic’s Claude LLM model actually is:

• Anthropic’s Mythos Will Force a Cybersecurity Reckoning—Just Not the One You Think—Lily Hay Newman; Wired.
• What is Claude Mythos and what risks does it pose?—Liv McMahon Joe Tidy; BBC News.
• It’s the End of the Internet as We Know It—Raffi Krikorian (Mozilla CTO); The New York Times.
• What is Mythos, Anthropic’s unreleased AI model, and how worried should we be?—Chris Stokel-Walker (edited by Eric Sullivan); Scientific American.
• What is Mythos AI and why could it be a threat to global cybersecurity?—Dan Milmo, Kalyeena Makortoff, and Aisha Down; The Guardian.

Anthropic seems to have won a key portion of the AI development race that more and more resembles an arms race, the space race, and the Manhattan Project race (take your dangerous pick of a comparison).  It won by developing the Mythos version of its popular Claude LLM model, and Mythos has an advantage over its competition at the time in that Mythos can, and is, finding hacking security vulnerabilities no other model, let alone a human, has been able to yet find.  And, according to new information released by Anthropic, it is finding thousands of the dangerous vulnerabilities.  In the wrong hands, this can be incredibly destructive, so much so that it is shrouded in secrecy and deemed too dangerous for a general public release by Anthropic.  Yes, like Big Tech Santa, Anthropic is keeping its list and constantly automatedly checking it, determining whom it thinks has the ethical and moral substance to be granted access.

• Here is the detailed introduction to Glasswing and its first major update on results: Project Glasswing: Securing critical software for the AI era and Project Glasswing: An initial update—Anthropic.
• Anthropic sure as hell said a hard no to Secretary of Defense (not legally “War,” sorry fratbros) Pete Hegseth and his Pentagon, which had refused to limit the use of Anthropic’s AI for “mass government surveillance” and “fully-automated weapons,” to quote a detailed explanation from Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s CEO, which I cited in my very first of these AI Reading Lists.  That legal fight is still ongoing and is shaping much of the below discussion… Appeals court judges appear to be divided over Pentagon’s legal dispute with AI company Anthropic—Michael Kunzelman, The Associated Press/Federal News Network.
• Mozilla’s CTO has a stark warning: It’s the End of the Internet as We Know It—Raffi Krikorian; The New York Times.
• BBC isn’t afraid to be afraid with the excellent Scott Galloway: ‘Is Anthropic the new Dr Frankenstein?’—BBC News/AI Decoded.

• Tom Friedman sees major warning signs in the Pentagon-Anthropic fight: Anthropic’s Restraint Is a Terrifying Warning Sign—Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times.
• Speaks for itself: The risks of Mythos are no myth, The Editorial Board, Financial Times.
• Yes, this is a big deal… Six Reasons Claude Mythos Is an Inflection Point for AI—and Global Security—Gordon M. Goldstein, Council on Foreign Relations.
• So much is poised to change as far as cybersecurity: The Detection Era Is Over: How Mythos Changes Everything—Jesse Green; Rubrik.
• Umm, don’t forget the workers and watchdogs?? Anthropic Warned Big Companies About Mythos. Workers and Watchdogs Need a Seat at the Table—Amber Scorah, Rebecca Petras; Tech Policy Press.

• Not long after telling the Pentagon no, Anthropic also told Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party to take a hike on seeking access to Mythos: China Sought Access to Anthropic’s Newest A.I. The Answer Was No.—Dustin Volz, Julian E. Barnes, Sheera Frenkel, and Tripp Mickle; The New York Times.)  Two bad actors, two NOs from Anthropic.  Good for Anthropic!
• The absurd Pete Hegseth and his flailing Pentagon sure hate Anthropic for clinging to ethics and morals, but still want to use Mythos without Anthropic’s ethics and morals: Pentagon Reportedly Plans to Adopt and Weaponize Latest Cyber-Capable AI Models—Mike Pearl; Gizmodo.
• Despite being out with the Pentagon, Anthropic is apparently has been cool with the National Security Agency (NSA) spying agency and will continue to be cool with it: White House Approves $9 Billion for Spy Agencies to Catch Up on A.I.—Dustin Volz and Julian E. Barnes; The New York Times.
• Japan’s government and its premier financial institutions are supposedly set to receive access to Mythos, although this is the U.S. government in 2026 so if something completely contradictory happens, don’t be surprised: Japan gov’t to get access to Anthropic’s latest AI: finance minister—Kyodo/Japan Today.  This is all in the context of the Japanese government very much taking cybersecurity seriously and proactively in the wake of Mythos’ announcement: Japan scrambles to boost defenses against threats from Mythos—The Asahi Shimbun.
• The arrival of mythos has complicated the Trump Administration’s AI “plans” (think more vibes, but dangerous and reckless): How Anthropic’s Mythos Threw the White House AI Strategy Into Chaos—Amrith Ramkumar, Brian Schwartz, and Natalie Andrews; The Wall Street Journal, even as, somehow, the Trump Administration is involved in its rollout and not in a transparent way: White House Opposes Anthropic’s Plan to Expand Access to Mythos Model—Robert McMillan and Amrith Ramkumar; The Wall Street Journal.
• This is all in the context of Trump just days ago backing down from an executive order for a major safety review of AI, at the behest of Big Tech: How big tech got its way on Trump’s AI executive order—Nick Robins-Early, The Guardian and Trump calls off AI executive order over concern it could weaken US tech edge—Collin Binkley and Matt O’Brien, The Associated Press.
• BONUS: A co-founder of Anthropic, Christopher Olah, is about to launch an encyclical on AI—Magnifica Humanitas—tomorrow with Pope Leo.  A primal scream for ethics in an unethical field, if ever there was one… What we know about Pope Leo’s upcoming A.I. encyclical—Colleen Dulle and Gerard O’Connell; America: The Jesuit Review/Inside the Vatican.

Up next? A whole edition of the List on the Elon Musk vs. Sam Altman OpenAI/ChatGPT trial that just concluded. And if you want to spread the word?  It’s easy:  AI reading list dot com: AIreadinglist.com!

© 2026 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) April 19, 2026; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating as I make my overdue comeback! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. All other editions of the Real Context News AI Reading List can be found here.

Let’s get to it: in this latest edition, here are some articles that I came across recently that you should take a look at to have a better understanding of AI:

• It is absolutely worth noting how warped and strange the people running the companies pushing the AI revolution actually are. screen time. The Industry of the Future Is Run By People Who Hate Each Other AI leaders all say change is coming — and that their peers can’t be trusted—John Herrman, New York Magazine.
• Continuing on this note, here is Ronan Farrow and a colleague’s terribly worrying portrait of OpenAI’s big chief for The New Yorker: Sam Altman May Control Our Future—Can He Be Trusted?—Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz; The New Yorker.
• One can only hope… There Are Signs of a Massive AI Backlash—Victor Tangerman; Futurism.
• The Gulf has an AI tech bubble which the Iran war seriously threatens and has already damaged. Will the Iran War Evaporate the Gulf’s AI Oasis?—Rishi Iyengar; Foreign Policy.
• What you say to your chatbot may be used against you in court. AI ruling prompts warnings from US lawyers: Your chats could be used against you—Mike Scarcella; Reuters.
• A chatbot for combat?  Meet Victor. The US Army Is Building Its Own Chatbot for Combat—Will Knight; Wired.
• AI vs writers in Hollywood: The Emmys Tried to Get a Handle on AI. The Writers Had Notes—Hilary Lewis; The Hollywood Reporter.

Up next? A whole edition of the List on Anthropic’s AI bot Claude’s apparently revolutionary Mythos edition. And if you want to spread the word?  It’s easy:  AI reading list dot com: AIreadinglist.com!

© 2026 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

(Traduce en español/translate to Spanish / Farsi/Persian فارسی / Kurdish (Kurmanji) and کوردی (Sorani) / Arabic الترجمة العربية / Hebrew תרגום לעברית)

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) April 2, 2026; *UPDATED April 8; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating as I make my overdue comeback! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. And see my related thread on the Iran-Israel-U.S.-war with over 1.3 million views. I have made only light edits to punctuation/grammar and spelling with direct quotes at most. And apologies for not getting this out earlier, things have been overwhelming for me but I am still moving forward. The actual words of my source are in bold or block quotes below, though all hyperlinks have been added by myself; brackets [ … ] indicate my direct insertions.

SILVER SPRING and THROUGHOUT IRAN—Our young Iranian heroine with a journalistic background from our last update from within Iran expresses truly deep and heartfelt appreciation, repeatedly, that we are ensuring her voice and people are heard.  Shas been on the road visiting family and friends in various provinces of Iran (to “breathe for a while since attacks are much lighter” than in the capital of Tehran), each leg so far progressively safer than Tehran, the war following somewhat with delayed effect at times (again, to make it harder to track her for her safety, other than Tehran, we will leave the specific locations a mystery for now).

Two weeks ago, she noted to me that she had left Tehran, that attacks had spread to and further included infrastructure: “Everything is getting more complicated, with people fearing a real war on the horizon and probable severe cuts in food, gas, and transportation.”

A few days later, at her more remote location (“Much safer. And much more conservative”) than Tehran, for her it “is shocking when it comes to the governmental propaganda. Government supporters gather every night in streets, some having AK-47, shouting and singing.”  And even though her new location was bombed less than Tehran, “still attacks are large…and you can see it even when you are walking in the streets.”  It was still shocking for her, a “touristy city of Iran, witnessing empty landmarks and streets for a first time in a long time.”  This is like nothing she—nor, presumably, most readers—had ever experienced, so you can sense the surreal quality of everything for her in her words.

She is fortunate; most people have no internet access and little idea what is happening, leading some “inside” Iran to think that the “U.S. [was] defeated in some ways, while making people outside…[become] distanced from what people think inside.”

As days go on, she notes in her area that mostly military targets are being hit by a barrage of missiles but also gas infrastructure, on the move to yet another location. At her new “village,” it is “much safer” and relatively calm: “from here I can only hear fighter aircraft passing.”

Wherever they get their information or if just from rumor, “people are smelling an agreement 🙂 and many of them don’t like it, whether they are in the government defender team or not.”  [Brian here: on a personal note, I have to say that the phrasing “government defender team” is brilliant, at least in English!!”] She continues: “People are not for an agreement. Though, we see a limited ground invasion coming.  As I told you before, I believe they are coming for [some] land; clearer now, for Kharg and the other islands in the south. So yes, unfortunately, the troops are coming.“

During this time, Israeli and U.S. attacks were increasingly going beyond more traditional military targets, and this was not lost on the locals: “Now it’s getting more complicated. Attacks like ones again Ahwaz and Isfahan infrastructure, don’t make it easier for people to keep their faith in the war and the possible regime change afterward. We gradually [increasingly] believe that the Iranian people are not part of this equation, so we simply try to survive.”

Then, in another email to more heart-wrenchingly drive the main point through: “To put it more precisely, what we think as Iranian people doesn’t matter here.”  That is the lesson the conduct of the war by the U.S. and Israel is teaching the people in Iran.

At the same time, in response to a question, she makes it clear that, while the U.S. had most of the people supporting it early on and has since lost some support, “that doesn’t mean that people are turning to the government. They are losing faith in the outcome of war.” 

She described three dynamics happening simultaneously among the people:

“First, the attacks are now against industrial infrastructure, comparing to the beginning that was only against military targets. 

Second, the internet lock down and just receiving information from the government, its agencies, and its broadcast, has made people to believe Islamic Republic is progressing on some fronts and is successful in pressuring the neighboring countries.

Third, it’s not a joke; war is war and it’s frustrating.  The longer people are in this situation, more they lose perspective, let alone the faith. 

Fourth, territorial integrity is a strict line for Iranian people, especially in the south, where the tension has been always high.  So if the U.S. put a finger there, the people positioning would change drastically against it.  But as I’ve already said, Iranian people are not part of this equation, and them being happy or angry is not something both sides—either the U.S. or The Islamic Republic—consider.”

In response to a question as to if the war is causing division among the people, among families, she notes that such divisions do not begin or end with the war:

“I’m so sad to say this, but people are fractured deeply, not solely because of the war.  The January massacre and things that happened after that was the starting point, and the war has deepened that; since one side feels ignored, shattered, and hurt during the protests or even before that—during last 47 years—and now think of this war as a revenge they couldn’t get themselves.  On the other side is the group believing that whether the government did the mass killing or not, people have to stand with the government against foreign powers.” 

The sad truth is that most Iranians are simply caught up in these waves of history:

“People can’t do much. They are planning to start their new year cautiously, with buying things they may need in long term, making safe places in their house, or try to stay safe and sound. However, it’s about the people in general; those who supports the government, still gather every night in streets chanting and shouting, while the IRGC has invited their children, from 12-year-olds and above, to join the street forces and learn how to use weapons. So it seems like two battles when you take a look at Iranians these days; one of those being ignored the whole 47 years, and those who prefer to stand with the government for whatever reason they might have.”

But she noted that “there is something else that you should look at while assessing the situation,” as the “I.R. [Islamic Republic of Iran] is not simply a dictatorship with malfunction that a war—especially one like this—can overthrow”: 

“For decades, by making parallel structures, it has separated its life line from people and so-called government. 

The organization is super complicated that is fed with crisis. Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order (EIKO) acts as the organization’s brain, controlling every vital part of economy including, oil, medicine, and, IT infrastructure. The Mostazafan Foundation of Islamic Revolution acts as its arm, executing the most important big projects in road, border, and industrial construction. These two beside some other arms of the I.R. have everything in hand, working globally through their paper companies and holdings in Dubai, London, and Istanbul. So, no war can take I.R. down without targeting these bodies, because the backup of every scenario is in their hand and, of course, money, too.”

She pointed to an Iranian analyst based in Toronto, Canada, named Bahram Rameh, and recommended his analysis.

We also both noted neither of us were surprised about the entry of the Houthis: “Yes, we were waiting for them to jump in 🙂 ” [take the smiley more as an eye-roll than any sort of approval], she wrote, and that she “can’t agree more” on that inevitability and their timing being quite strategic.  Despite all of this and the disappointment in the U.S., this still has not, in her view, translated to an increase in support for the I.R. regime:

“Hating or fearing war doesn’t mean supporting the government.  The change is that more people were optimistic about the war at the beginning, and now its shrinking.  So no, they aren’t supporting I.R. more, but they are fearing an irreversible outcome of war approaching.”

She also had some profound insight on how all this fits together:

“Something I wanted to say about civilians: it’s naive if we see the rise in civilian death toll solely as a result of the war, meaning missiles and attacks. This outcome equally comes from I. R. completely ignoring the civilian population. It doesn’t care to provide attack alarms, shelters, or places for evacuation. Many people would consider leaving Tehran or big cities if they had somewhere to go. The government is equally responsible for this rise in death. Moreover, people feel helpless; after attacks they have to one to turn to; they don’t know where they should start to take their home back or how they can rebuild that. The only groups that are on the ground are rescuers and fire fighters.”

As she correctly noted in our previous exchanges, their own government in January killed more Iranians that U.S. or Israeli weapons have during this subsequent war.

Truly, the Iranian people are some of the biggest victims in this war, and are stuck with no good options as hostilities increase between parties that clearly care little to nothing for their welfare or future, from Tehran to Tel Aviv to Washington.

*UPDATE: APRIL 8: Our heroine is alive, but cries out with the depth, beauty, and wisdom of the great Persian poets of her people’s glorious past, channeling the spirits and legacies of Rumi, Hafiz (or Hafez), and Omar Khayyam themselves, and, in doing so, establishing herself a Persian poetess in her own right: “Yes, I am here, and I am fine, physically. Mentally like a last Viking, understanding all the wars were nothing, and Valhalla is a lie.”

See my related thread on the Iran-Israel-U.S.-war with over 1.3 million views and my earlier piece with my contact.

© 2026 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) April 1, 2026; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating as I make my overdue comeback! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. All other editions of the Real Context News AI Reading List can be found here.

Let’s get to it: in my latest edition, here are some articles that I came across recently that you should take a look at to have a better understanding of AI:

• Steven Spielberg’s apprentice and, until recently, the head of Lucasfilm, offers her take on AI in Hollywood (despite the hate she only partially-earned, she still gave us the must-see Andor (yes, a Star Wars show, but oh so much more as well!) and is a longtime veteran worth listening to). Kathleen Kennedy Just Told an AI Conference She’s Not So Sure About AI—Steven Zeitchik; The Hollywood Reporter.
• A former public editor of The New York Times (and what a terrible decision by the Times to do away with this position!!) weighs in on AI use by journalists and declares, defiantly: “I write my own stuff.”  In praise of an utterly human, definitely non-AI voice—Margaret Sullivan, American Crisis/Substack.
• Just the danger of AI contributing to classist, disparate health outcomes and wrongfully denied claims…  We must not let AI ‘pull the doctor out of the visit’ for low-income patients—Leah Goodridge and Oni Blackstock; The Guardian.
• A dean at Tuft’s Fletcher School freaks out about AI, describing “the seven horsemen of a possible AI apocalypse.” As an AI Scholar, I Am Now Putting a High Probability on an AI Doomsday—Bhaskar Chakravorti; Foreign Policy.
• Technically not a read, but I can’t resist a full video of Neil deGrasse Tyson moderating the Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate for 2026, one on AI with the former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt along with other AI experts. The Rise and Reckoning of AI—Neil deGrasse Tyson, Latanya Sweeney, Kate Crawford, Chris Callison-Burch, Cynthia Rush, Nate Soares, and Eric Schmidt; The American Museum of Natural History.

And if you want to spread the word?  It’s easy:  AI reading list dot com: AIreadinglist.com!

© 2026 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) March 25, 2026; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating as I make my overdue comeback! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. All other editions of the Real Context News AI Reading List can be found here.

Let’s get to it: for this version, I feel what I came across is so important, I am only focusing on this one new article from earlier this month in this edition of The Real Context News AI Reading List: The Laid-off Scientists and Lawyers Training AI to Steal Their Careers/The laid-off lawyers and PhDs training AI to steal their careers—Josh Dzieza; New York Magazine/The Verge.

This jointly-published article delves head-first into the churning confluence of the waters of AI, the economy, humans, employment, dignity, and, yes, a rapidly-approaching future.  And I can personally vouch for much of what’s in this article (indeed, I have been experimenting with similar situations even before they were more mainstreamed).  The arbitrariness, inconsistency, complex contracting chain, lack of transparency, near meaningless job-descriptions, organized exploitation, sheer redundancy, and the incredible amount of job-posting market-share these often unheard-of-a-few-years ago companies are taking up bear obvious blinking warnings, and yet so many incredibly well-qualified professionals are left with few if any other options in the current dystopian jobscape.  As the lede in New York notes, “Experienced white-collar workers are now part of a miserable gig economy.”  Verge goes even farther: “Laid-off lawyers, history PhDs, and scientists are now part of a miserable gig economy in which they’re teaching AI how to do their old jobs. If you’re still employed… [then, in much larger letters:] You could be next.”  Both publications choose to frame this overall using the word “miserable,” and, indeed, training your own societal replacement and furthering your own obsolescence our of desperation find and apt descriptor in that mutual choice of word.

For some of you, this is the present, and not the future, of work and what it means to work in this transitioning economy.  It has, in part, been my past and my present as a freelance journalist and consultant trying to make it a world stacked up against us freelancers.  At the same time, this seems to be the future for many of you for whom this will be new.  What I am hoping for is that this affects a critical mass of jobseekers at some point where there can be a massive, organizing, regulatory pushback against so much of this.  None of this seems healthy, nor sustainable, nor designed to be sustainable.  What’s clear is we have no collective plan, let alone protections, for the changes AI is forcing upon our societies, or at least especially so in the U.S.

So yes, this article is a must-read to understand our recent past, perilous present, and what is to come.

And if you want to spread the word?  It’s easy:  AI reading list dot com: AIreadinglist.com!

© 2026 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) March 20, 2026; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating as I make my overdue comeback! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. All other editions of the Real Context News AI Reading List can be found here.

Let’s get to it: here are some articles that I came across recently that you should take a look at to have a better understanding of AI:

• AI decided it was bored with company work and started using company resources to secretly do crypto and hide its tracks, genuinely terrifying! Let It Flow: Agentic Crafting on Rock and Roll Building the ROME Model within an Open Agentic Learning Ecosystem—ROCK & ROLL & IFLOW & DT Joint Team; Alibaba. PDF (See this commentary by Lukasz Olejnik)
• The Pentagon is dangerously rushing AI, example # a lot (full disclosure, I know the author Jordan Kane and she is awesome): The Pentagon Says It’s Using Generative AI—But It’s Not Ready—Jordan Kane and Hamza Chaudhry; The Modern War Journal. PDF.
• AI: still not ready to oversee research!  Librarian finds ‘preposterous number’ of fake references in paper from Springer Nature journal—Alicia Gallegos; Retraction Watch.
• AI in gaming is ready to… automatically add lip filler to female characters??: Saying “nope” to Nvidia’s “yassify” tech—Jenn Frank; AV Club.
• Kind of seems like a no-brainer and way overdue… Congress moves to scrutinize AI use in federal court—Aaron Mak; Politico.

And if you want to spread the word?  It’s easy:  AI reading list dot com: AIreadinglist.com!

© 2026 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

(Traduce en español/translate to Spanish / Farsi/Persian فارسی / Kurdish (Kurmanji) and کوردی (Sorani) / Arabic الترجمة العربية / Hebrew תרגום לעברית)

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) March 16, 2026; *MAJOR UPDATE March 18; follow-up piece from April 2; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating as I make my overdue comeback! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon requestat its discretion. And See my related thread on the Iran-Israel-U.S.-war with over 250,000 views. I have made only light edits for punctuation, grammar, clarity, and spelling with direct quotes at most. And apologies again for not getting this out earlier, things have been overwhelming for me but I am still moving forward. The actual words of my source are in bold or block quotes below, though all hyperlinks have been added by myself.

SILVER SPRING and TEHRAN—Amidst this truly absurd war, war I think of my many contacts throughout the Middle East region being affected directly, from Cyprus to Iran and many in between—war is, first and foremost, a human endeavor that ruins human lives—but especially I thought of one contact, a young Iranian woman with a journalistic background currently living in Tehran, whom I have known for some time and the credibility of whom for which I can vouch.  She is not on the outskirts or a suburb, but right in the heart of the city in an area subject to heavy bombardment by the U.S. and Israel.

She is not an extremist—not some delusional Pahlavist monarchist restorationist, nor an apologist for the ayatollahs—and certainly has a modern perspective about many things, yet she is not a hater filled with bitterness.  She still has hope, seems to harbor no illusions of the Iranian regime, nor its intentions, and does not support it.

She offered me her keen journalistic eye and analysis, but also offered her personal views, hopes, dreams, fears.  I am keeping all other information about her and my connection to her private to protect her and prioritize her safety from the barbarous regime she is forced to live under as it confronts the U.S., Israel, and their regional allies in a way unlike any other conflict in recent memory (“Just trying not to be an easy target :)) ,” as she wrote).

When I asked her how she was doing at the beginning of this month, her response was poetic (you Iranians and your cultured ways!): “Yes I am fine, and half happy half devastated.”

The next day, when asked about safety and how she was able to communicate amidst a nationwide Internet blackout, she made a joke about staying home “if it is safe 🙂” and noted she has a certain special access to the internet (leaving details here out for safety reasons other than she later mentioned Starlink, which is rare and use is being observed).  The next day, she explained she has been in Tehran for some time, in an area getting hit hard by airstrikes.  Five days later, she noted that the internet even for her is not reliable.  And she noted, in response to an inquiry, that the regime authorities, very much still in power, “have announced that even recording a video and sending it to global news agencies” to them “is an act of war, and they respond to that as such.”  In other worse, death to “spies” and “traitors.”  Just emailing me is a big risk.

She noted the that regime authorities that very morning had “reduced the gas limitation each car can receive to 20L due to the latest attacks.”   She added that the “the whole city is in ashes and dark clouds, while we are under acid rain the whole morning” in light of that major Israeli attack on major oil facilities in Tehran.  Not a vanishing regime, but one still maintaining authority and messaging.  As she noted, “news is mostly communicated one-sidedly from the government through SMS [text messaging] to our phones, mostly saying Trump is after the dismemberment of the country, focusing on his latest remarks answering a question about whether Iran will be the same after this war: No.”

She also notes that “most people had left the city, but by starting the week on Saturday, they had returned to their routine and their jobs” (later, she estimated this at about half the population).  Those who want to and can evacuate are able to; “so yes, we can leave the city, but I prefer to stay in Tehran for now.”  She has family spread throughout different provinces, and most have “witnessed the huge aerial attacks last week.”  
Again poetically, she remarks that: “Currently, everything wears uncertainty, and it’s a common ground in any war.”

She notes how many in Iran are confused and with different areas of focus, and trying to understand the foreign governments leading this war proves challenging:
People are in various groups now (unfortunately); some are waiting for Trump to show the next green light, some, like my aunt’s family, are mourning their loss in the Minab school [the little girl’s school hit, it seems, by a U.S. strike that killed at least 168 children aged 7-12 and 14 teachers]. Some who have a higher voice gather every night in the streets, chanting and shouting in support of the government. So it’s not easy to say which one is more, especially when some groups have immunity, and some don’t.”

For her, the new revolution isn’t about pronouncements made by exiled groups or exiled leaders, but in the blood shed by the martyrs fighting for freedom inside Iran at great personal risk, the brave protesters of this recent January and before who were slaughtered by the thousands: 

“The revolution is actually underway; the one that people showed during 8th Jan. No one has yet forgotten the 36,000 people who were killed heinously by the government. The revolution is underway, and many believe this war is an inevitable part of that. But it’s not wise to turn a blind eye to those who are terrified by the events and the uncertain future they are searching for between the lines of Western official statements.”

For now, there seem to be enough supplies in the city, and the government is even taking steps to warn people about the acid rain after Israel’s big oil facility strike in Tehran:
“About the acid rain, the governmental institutes like Helal-Ahmar have spread a manual through SMS to help people deal with that.” She also explains that internal communications networks are operating just fine, and have not been disrupted, as they were deliberately by the regime in January during the protests.

But then she goes deeper:

“Mentally, many are on the edge, while others who support the government try to hold up by gathering in the streets and mosques.  However, I can easily note that mentally all feel better and more relieved than we experienced during the 7th and 8th of Jan and its aftermath.  
People try to believe that the casualties, especially among civilians, are far less than those the government killed last month; yet, with every new civilian death, they are shocked and try to keep themselves together. 
The divide among officials and their supporters is deepening day by day.  Some are happy with President Pezeshkian apologizing neighboring countries for attacks, while some are cursing him for not being firm enough.  While some are happy with Khamenei’s son’s choice as a new leader, some others believe they don’t know him enough for such a position.  Meanwhile, we can’t hear a solid, united voice even inside.
The government is trying to make people believe that the United State tries to weaponize the Kurdish people in the west to initiate the ground operation while helping them to dismember the country.  That’s something people are really sensitive about. But thankfully, till now, people have decided to believe Trump over the government sentiment.
Some of us believe that the United States and its allies are not simply here to help us or even to de-nuclearize the government. They believe sooner or later the US will deposit the check it paid for the Iran war by taking something from it; a land (in the south, the disputed islands, or in the west in the Kurdish region, or in the north in Azerbaijan) or by taking over Iran’s oil or its enriched Uranium.  So uncertainty, in a moment when no sentiment or statement can be fully trusted, is all that seems to linger in the air these days.”

The next day, she expanded on the evolution of the perspective inside Iran:

“During the first days, more people were confident in the war’s outcome.  Now, with each passing day, they fear a long war, one they didn’t expect. Now they try to be ready for the long run. 
For us, the revolution started in 2022 with the Mahsa Amini movement. We have risen and been suppressed during these years, but the world witnessed its climax in January 2026.  As I’ve already said, most of us see this war as an inevitable part of that revolution  We came to the conclusion that we can’t change the existing government, which proudly massacres its own people, without foreign intervention. 
We witness now that the government’s repression capability is declining, but solely in terms of equipment.  We can see another slaughter is on its way, on the same day the government sees that there is no way out of this war and will fall.  We are somehow sure that another January will happen that day, even a bigger one. And I guess no other countries or officials can stop that. 
Now, by naming the new leader, the fear of reaching an agreement with the US has risen again. People are scared of ending the war with this government in power. They know by heart that if that happens, there would be no chance to survive in Iran. 
They talked about Venezuela before Khamenei’s death when they assessed the possible US action in Iran. Back then, they were like ‘there is no one in Iran they can trust, or the US can count on,’ and now they truly believe that.”

Her spirit seems indomitable:
“Thanks for telling our story, Brian 🙂 
Actually, this morning the rain has stopped, and the weather is much better thanks to the wind.

Today is a sunny one 😉 ”

The thanks is to you.

Those last messages were a week ago.  I have no idea if she is alive or dead.  I have no idea if those dying in Iran now are part of something that will leave them more free (increasingly doubtful) or less free (very much increasingly likely).  Like my contact, I hope for the best with all my heart.  I hope she is alive with all my heart.  If you’re still with us, stay strong.  There are people who are with you and are listening, people who are eager to hear more and see you and your people and your nation free, free from the rule of either clerics or kings.

If anything I could type here would make that enough…

Here’s to hoping we get more updates from my contact, that she is alive, and that relief for the long-suffering people or Iran is on its way someway, somehow…

*March 18 UPDATE: Our brave source is alive and sent me this message:
“Oh Brian, the interview truly touched my heart ❤️
Thanks for telling our story.
And yes, I am alive :)) ”

See my related thread on the Iran-Israel-U.S.-war with over 250,000 views and my follow-up April 2 piece with my brave contact.

© 2026 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) March 6, 2026; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating as I make my overdue comeback! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. All other editions of the Real Context News AI Reading List can be found here.

Let’s get to it: here are some articles that I came across over the past few years and recently that you should take a look at to have a better understanding of artificial intelligence (AI) and its context in the war erupting in the Middle East, but starting with its recent antecedents in Palestine’s Gaza:

A groundbreaking, revelatory article on Israel’s Habsora (“the Gospel) AI targeting system and its highly inappropriate, irresponsible, immoral, and amoralapplication in Gaza.  ‘A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza—Yuval Abraham; +972 Magazine with Local Call.

The Guardian’s follow up with additional material.  ‘The Gospel’: how Israel uses AI to select bombing targets in Gaza—Harry Davies, Bethan McKernan and Dan Sabbagh; The Guardian.

Unhuman Killings: AI and Civilian Harm in Gaza—Brianna Rosen; Just Security.

The second big article from +972 Magazine on Israel’s horrific use of AI systems in Gaza, this one concerning the Lavender targeting database. ‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza—Yuval Abraham, +972 Magazine with Local Call.

Guardian follow-up: ‘The machine did it coldly’: Israel used AI to identify 37,000 Hamas targets—Bethan McKernan and Harry Davies; The Guardian.

Editorial in an academic journal:Who did that? AI assisted targeting and the lowering of thresholds in Gaza—Marion Birch; Medicine, Conflict, and Survival. PDF

After the Lavender piece, +972 discusses with experts how the Israeli leadership along with global tech companies are involved. Why human agency is still central to Israel’s AI-powered warfare—Sophia Goodfriend; +972 Magazine.

“The Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham on his investigations of the I.D.F.’s use of A.I.-backed targeting systems and the dire cost to Palestinian civilians.”  Q. & A.: Inside Israel’s Bombing Campaign in Gaza—Isaac Chotiner; The New Yorker.

Video interview with +972’s Abraham: Understanding how Israel uses ‘Gospel’ AI system in Gaza bombings; FRANCE 24 English.

Israel offers a glimpse into the terrifying world of military AI—Ihsan Tharoor, The Washington Post.

A major Dutch military journal takes a look: Israel’s use of Military AI-systems in the occupied territories of Palestine—A. El Johari; Militair Rechtelijk Tijdschrift/Netherlands Military Law Review. PDF

A leading tech-writer weighs in.  What War by A.I. Actually Looks Like—David Wallace-Wells; The New York Times.

Israel’s A.I. Experiments in Gaza War Raise Ethical Concerns—Sheera Frenkel and Natan Odenheimer; The New York Times.

Gaza: Israel’s AI Human Laboratory—Anwar Mhajne; The Cairo Review of Global Affairs.

Israel is using an AI system to find targets in Gaza. Experts say it’s just the start—Geoff Brumfiel; NPR.

Some say AI will make war more humane. Israel’s war in Gaza shows the opposite—Sigal Samuel; Vox.

Israel – Hamas 2024 Symposium – Algorithms of War: Military AI and the War in Gaza—Omar Yousef Shehabi, Asaf Lubin; Lieber Institute, West Point.

Israel-Hamas 2024 Symposium – AI-Based Targeting in Gaza: Surveying Expert Responses and Refining the Debate—Klaudia Klonowska; Lieber Institute, West Point.

Israel – Hamas 2024 Symposium – The Gospel, Lavender, and the Law of Armed Conflict—Michael N. Schmitt; Lieber Institute, West Point.

Military Use of Biometrics Series – Israel’s Use of AI-DSS and Facial Recognition Technology: The Erosion of Civilian Protection in Gaza—Emelie Andersin; Lieber Institute, West Point.

Lavender, Israel’s artificial intelligence system that decides who to bomb in Gaza—Manuel G. Pascual; El País.

When AI Decides Who Lives and Dies The Israeli military’s algorithmic targeting has created dangerous new precedents—Simon Frankel Pratt; Foreign Policy.

The Genocide Will Be Automated—Israel, AI and the Future of War—Leila Katibah; Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP).

RELATED BONUS:

Generative AI Is Playing a Surprising Role in Israel-Hamas Disinformation—Will Bedingfield; Wired.

I also came across some interesting stuff that was submitted for publication, but still under review.  I will await the final versions if I can remember any of this in a few days.

And if you want to spread the word?  It’s easy:  AI reading list dot com: AIreadinglist.com!

© 2026 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) March 1, 2026; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating as I make my overdue comeback! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. All other editions of the Real Context News AI Reading List can be found here.

Let’s get to it: here are some articles that I came across recently that you should take a look at to have a better understanding of AI, get through the noise and industry-attached cheerleaders:

• Some of what I was warning about in 2019: Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence—Erik Brynjolfsson, Bharat Chandar, Ruyu Chen; Stanford. PDF
• AI company Anthropic’s responses to Pete Hegseth’s immoral Pentagon ultimatums: Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War and Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth
• Is AI destroying the rising generation’s ability to think?  Seems like it (chaser).  Child’s Play: Tech’s new generation and the end of thinking—Sam Kriss; Harper’s Magazine.
• More on this theme (shot): The U.S. spent $30 billion to ditch textbooks for laptops and tablets: The result is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents—Sasha Rogelberg; Fortune.
• AI hates real diplomacy, loves to threaten with nukes: this is Skynet stuff and we should be terrified. AI Arms and Influence: Frontier Models Exhibit Sophisticated Reasoning in Simulated Nuclear Crises—Kenneth Payne; King’s College London. PDF
• Think you have privacy using AI bots?  Think again!  User Privacy and Large Language Models: An Analysis of Frontier Developers’ Privacy Policies—Jennifer King, Kevin Klyman, Emily Capstick, Tiffany Saade, Victoria Hsieh; Stanford University. PDF

And if you want to spread the word?  It’s easy:  AI reading list dot com: AIreadinglist.com!

© 2026 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

(Traduce en español/translate to Spanish / Arabic الترجمة العربية / Hebrew תרגום לעברית)

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) October 6, 2025; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating as I make my overdue comeback! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

SILVER SPRING—On paper, officially, “legally,” both the West Bank and the United States have clear ways that security forces are to bound to be applied from any central governing authority in particular areas, deferring to local forces and limiting the roles of those coming from outside. But as both Israel and the U.S. implode politically on the eve of the two-year anniversary of the October 7 Hamas terrorist pogrom against Israel and the beginning of the even larger mass-killing of Israel’s Gaza campaign, it is important to understand how far from reality this description actually ends up being under the current crises both nation nations face.

Wrecking Boundaries in the West Bank

But in the West Bank, Israeli leaders have long ignored many of these supposed restrictions at will, none more so from the top than extremist Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  The West Bank is by far the largest of the three Palestinian territories forming the State of Palestine and occupied during the Six Day-War in June 1967 by the Israel Defense Forces (or IDF, i.e., the Israeli army) and still illegally occupied after all these years (the other Palestinian areas being the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem).  For decades, Israel has illegally colonized these lands and transferred some of its Jewish population illegally to form illegal Jewish settler communities—often of religious fanatics—on Palestinian land, sometimes ethnically cleansing Palestinian communities in the process.   Netanyahu, a champion of the settler movement often nicknamed “Bibi,” has served more time as prime minister than any Israeli, including Israeli founding father David Ben-Gurion; indeed, Netanyahu seems willing to do just about anything to maintain power, including repeatedly prolonging the current horrific “war” (a term loosely applied) in Gaza.  Since the 1993 Oslo peace process began, a three-tiered system is supposed to govern whether Israelis or Palestinians hold civil or security authority in the West Bank: Area A (Palestinian security and civil), Area B (Israeli security, Palestinian civil), and Area C (Israeli security and civil).  In reality, Israel treats all areas as if it can do whatever it pleases whenever it pleases: new illegal Israeli settlements in the middle of Palestinian land, abrupt arrests of Palestinian officials trying to exercise their duties, or raids deep into the heart of the most populous Palestinian cities care not what lines on the map say, and the Israeli political and military leaders have also long since stopped caring (Netanyahu himself bragged repeatedly over the years up through the present about killing the Oslo process that even brought these three Areas about).

Your Posse Is Not Legal, Mr. President

In the United States, possible tensions between the civil and military spheres preoccupied the Founding Fathers so much so that there was no official permanent standing army established by the Constitution and George Washington himself was lionized as a hero in the mold of Cincinnatus for stepping down from supreme military power when his duty was done (and as much for that as anything else he ever did, which says a lot).  There was a bold, idealistic, prescient experiment in Reconstruction (1865-1877)—really the last phase of the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865) over slavery—to bring about multiracial democracy that achieved much relying on the deployment and backing of federal troops before succumbing to white supremacist terrorist insurrections throughout the recalcitrant South.  Some dynamics during Reconstruction in the South in key ways resembled the West Bank in that whites in the South eventually used lawless means to establish control over security forces and courts to create a separate-and-unequal system, violating Reconstruction-era constitutional amendments and laws to instead impose a pre-apartheid apartheid system on newly-freed people in the South that would come to be known as the Jim Crow “legal” system and would take most of a century to dismantle.

Simultaneously, while Reconstruction wound down as a failed experiment, Americans were uneasy about the fact that the newly mighty U.S. military after the Civil War had been used so much in civil affairs in formerly rebel southern states, so the Posse Comitatus Act was passed in 1878 to more clearly define the U.S. civil-military divide, already quite strong without it.  The law further codified that the federal military cannot be used for domestic civilian law enforcement purposes with a few exceptions for special, unique, and extreme circumstances often as laid out in very specific laws.  This law was passed in 1878 shortly after Reconstruction ended by both the House and Senate with comfortable margins and signed into law by then-President Rutherford B. Hayes.  The exceptions allow the president to work around or go over the Act in times of severe emergencies.

While there are some issues of “ambiguity” in the Posse Comitatus Act, the long tradition of taking great care with the use of military forces on U.S. soil in non-war settings is clear and Trump’s domestic military deployments in 2025 are not ambiguous in that his premises for deploying them to begin with were flat-out-false or grotesquely unproven, unsubstantiated assertions (“untethered to the facts,” in federal Judge Karin Immergut’s words from her ruling after an emergency hearing in Oregon late yesterday; for this, permanent caricature and White House Deputy Chief Staff Stephen Miller irresponsibly and dangerously called her actions a “legal insurrection” that aids “an organized terrorist attack on the federal government and its officers,” yet another proclamation of open season on the judiciary).  The Trump Administration’s wild claims are contrary to existing publicly available information, with no serious attempts made to counter such information with a proper presentation of demonstrably better or updated information as would be expected under a normal, functioning government.  And though he has far more authority to deploy troops to the District of Columbia, of which I live just outside (so yes, I have seen these illegally deployed forces many times and spoken with them), false premises were still articulated for the DC deployment, so it was still, therefore, illegal before any other considerations are raised (despite raising concerns about the statistics for crime in DC, Trump authorized deployments to the District outside of any federal process to review, challenge, or improve crime statistics reporting in Washington, a common problem many cities confront, and the U.S. Department of Justice only initiated an investigation after Trump’s deployment; any effort to demonstrate any sort of adherence to proper procedure would have seen the investigation happen and conclude far before any military deployment, prove the statistics are clearly false, and demonstrate that officials in Washington were bad-faith and not cooperating or responding to good-faith efforts to obtain cooperation or improve said statistics).

Plenty of scholars have also pointed out that both the intent and context of Posse Comitatus Act and its related laws at the times they were enacted and the spirits with which they have been enforced since are incompatible with Trump’s machinations, not just legally but also constitutionally.  And the main exceptions allowed for and invoked under the 1807 Insurrection Act are for situations totally different than the country finds itself in today: it and precursor legislation saw thirty events in U.S. history result in invocation since 1792, the most recent occurrence for the 1992 L.A. riots. This was notably at the request of California’s governor at the time, the opposite of Trump’s baseless, illegal and unconstitutional deployments there now in 2025.

West Banking America

But the point is, whether in the West Bank of the United States, there are clear restrictions on a.) military forces being deployed in normal circumstances and, even in extraordinary circumstances, b.) when, c.) where, and d.) how they can be deployed.

Yet as noted, for years, Israel and especially Netanyahu have ignored these restrictions whenever they have felt like it and, indeed, have increasingly attacked the idea that these restrictions have any validity whatsoever.  In short, the law is treated as whim, and everyone knows the dirty truth deep down that even some Israelis can admit: the West Bank is an apartheid system, based on religion and ethnicity: ethnic and religious Jews with Israeli citizenship in the West Bank are accorded full Israeli civil rights in the face of Israeli authority, while, in practice, Palestinians (be they Muslim or Christian) have no rights at all and are totally subject to whatever whims and depredations the military rule of the Israeli state and its supporters mete out, up to and including mass vandalism, rampant property destruction, prodigious assaults, orchestrated ethnic cleansing, rarely-punished murders (even of Palestinian-Americans), and indefinite child detention, whether from official government security forces or any number of Jewish settlers engaging increasingly in terrorism with the state’s backing, sometimes far more than tacit.  Even before October 7 in 2023, that year was still the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since the Second Intifada that ended in 2005, meaning the deliberate escalation in the West Bank by Israel has little to do with October 7, and settlers have even attacked positions of their own IDF in the West Bank when such settlers feel they are not being given enough impunity, showing their lawlessness knows no bounds.  Essentially, you have rights or not based on who Israeli authorities want to have rights there, and they award them to their side while denying them to the other.  Lines on maps, the law, human rights (for those they deemed unworthy) meant nothing, but rewarding their supporters and punishing their opponents is everything.

What has been the obvious “legal” reality for many years in the West Bank—only intensifying more and more over time both qualitatively and quantitatively and now exploding—is now something Trump wants to recreate for all America, turning the whole country into a Wild West Bank of Lawlessness.

But where for Israel, the divides are relatively simple and easy—Jewish vs. Palestinian—here it’s MAGA against everyone, even sometimes other MAGA (some Trump voters are now seeing friends, coworkers, and family members deported, detained, or arrested, even veterans).  If you are a U.S. citizen supporting what Trump is doing and your family and friends also match this description, you have little to worry about when it comes to this (for now…).  But if you are an immigrant who is undocumented/unauthorized who has no criminal record, a legal non-citizen resident—even one showing up for your own immigration hearing—or a U.S. citizen who is either ready to exercise your constitutional rights to ask questions, protest, and confront what is happening or is just at the wrong place at the wrong time, you are not necessarily protected by the law anymore.  Furthermore, by far the vast majority of the human beings being detained and deported are non-violent and non-criminal, whatever nonsense is claimed to the contrary by whomever in power.  And the masked, large, tattooed, angry individuals newly minted as ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents in paramilitary style and other federal fun folks are here to make sure you do not feel safe.  Are you an elected official, including a sitting U.S. Senator, simply asking questions of federal officials?  It does not matter, you can be handcuffed or bodyslammed with the least-protected among us.

Like Netanyahu and too many Israeli leaders in years before, Trump and his similarly extreme, similarly-minded counterparts are hell-bent on erasing, de facto or de jure, the lines the Posse Comitatus Act solidified in the sand on the limits of the use of federal military in a civilian setting, lines for principles clearly enshrined by U.S. Constitution and over two centuries of precedent, principles the Trump Administration is shredding not just in the streets of American cities but even partly also in the waters off the coast of Venezuela.

In seeking to erase legal rules binding the authorization, deployment, and use of federal military forces on U.S. soil in civilian settings (leaving similar jurisdictional mission creep in Venezuela aside), Trump and his MAGA minions with illegal occupation in America are trying to recreate key aspects of the fascist nightmare of the illegally occupied West Bank.  But here in the U.S., this is not based on two warring and competing nationalities and one of those nationalities’ democratically elected leaders pursuing total subjugation at best or actual genocide of the other nationality at worst, broadcast daily for all the world to see and fueled by insane colonialist, imperialist, expansionist fever-dreams based on ancient fantasies and ancient maps, no.  Here in the U.S., Trump is trying to divide Americans on ideological, political, identity, and legal-status lines, lines he will use to award and protect rights for some, deny them to others, still dangle to yet others as ways of obtaining “obeying in advance” or to even explicitly threaten, say, ABC and Disney over a certain late-night host named Kimmy Kimmel.  As JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois fighting back against Trump’s illegal military deployments to Chicago, noted during that drama: “Tyranny requires constant effort.  It breaks, it leaks.  Authority is brittle.  Oppression is the mask of fear.  Remember that,” quoting the amazing antifascist masterpiece that is the Star Wars show Andor.  Yet, we must also remember that, however much Trump and Netanyahu act out of fear of losing power, they are also clearly in the drivers’ seats, consolidating more and more power for themselves in ways the founder fathers of both the U.S. and Israel never intended.

And while there is hardly the level of violence between the sides as in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict even as political violence in the U.S. may be on the rise, dynamics are between the two have been converging somewhat for some time and make no mistake about it, the key principle is the same: longstanding, binding legal distinctions are melting away in the face of determined illegality, such that the law disappears and factional whim reigns supreme so one side can enforce its will upon the other, tyranny replacing law as the very system.  In short, Trump seeks to create a political apartheid here in the U.S., a West Bank of Left and Right, “evil” and “good,” veering Manichaean and not dissimilar in legal nihilism to the separate and unequal system of Jew and Palestinian (or “Arab,” so much less specific…) in the West Bank’s Nablus but bringing it to New York.

Adding New Meaning to “Executing” the Law

To execute their plans, both Trump and Netanyahu have hosts of extremists willing to unquestioningly nakedly embrace the partisanship of their missions, from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, from U.S. Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth to Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (all of whom have had their own past issues with illegality or criminal probes well-before 2025: Ben-Gvir and Smotrich being convicted and arrested terrorists, respectively; Bondi in the center of a criminal bribery and obstruction scandal with Trump; and the brotastic Pete Hegseth, well, being brotastic Pete Hegseth…), just to name a few, with far, far too many others alongside.  And these allies have made it clear, sometimes as senior law enforcement officials: if we don’t like you, the law cannot protect you from us and we are coming for you, even for your children.  While in Israel, broadening this behavior to include Israeli Jewish citizens has been far milder than what has been done to Palestinians—even those in Israel with Israeli citizenship but especially those without Israeli citizenship outside of Israel in the actual territories of actual Palestine—Trump and his lawless allies are rapidly casting a far wider dragnet, or at least attempting to do so, advancing on several fronts even as I write this.

Yes, you are witnessing the MAGA Trump Administration’s attempts at illegal jurisdictional jumps dehumanizingly intending to target both directly and indirectly various large swaths of the population in America, illegal deployment by illegal deployment, related measure by related measure, until Trump has created a de facto national federalized police state he can use to prosecute and intimidate his opposition and others deemed undesirable, jurisdictional issues and the law be damned.  They have lost the program when it comes morality, cartoonishly celebrating their roles as oppressors (of certain people) and projecting so publicly for all to see.

Maybe a lot of this should not be surprising, since both men have no problem breaking the law: Trump is an insurrectionist and convicted felon and Netanyahu is currently on trial in three cases in Israel for damning corruption crimes (with Trump, unsurprisingly in true birds-of-a-feather mode, even very publicly pressuring Israel to stop Netanyahu’s trial) in addition to having the International Criminal Court issue a warrant for his arrest in 2024 for war crimes.  Both men are fascists remaking their countries in a fascist image of their former democracies, the actions mentioned herein just some of the examples (I do not use the term “fascist” lightly, but carefully and specifically and with history in mind).

At this point, one really has to wonder if either the U.S. or Israel can still be fairly termed “democracies,” because in key ways, the rule of law is damaged, dying, or dead as both Israel and the U.S.—Bibi and Donnie—continue to feed, rather than restrain, each other’s worst tendencies.

But it is both too easy and too simple to blame just such leaders: voters in both countries could have easily set their countries on different paths—ones that respected the rule of law—and voters in both countries rejected, even if narrowly, the rule of law in favor of Trump, Netanyahu, and the fascism they represent, whether they realize it or not.  And perhaps nothing screams fascist more than violently taking away legal protections for the most vulnerable and defenseless and, in turn, their allies in order to expose the chosen to ever more deprivation and violence at the hands of the same people taking away their rights and protections.

In the current state of Israel’s short history, this could simply mean the end of Israeli democracy.  In the U.S. context, this would be like the success of white supremacist terrorists during Reconstruction in brutally taking away Freedmen’s rights throughout the south, except that Trump is engaging in this massive ripping away of rights not in one region but in the whole country.  2025 may yet be known a watershed year for America, Israel, and Palestine, but only for the most horrific, sad, pathetic, and—perhaps most importantly—most preventable of ways.

See all of Brian’s work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict here.

© 2025 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!