Real Context News (RCN)

The Real Context News AI Reading List: EMERGENCY Anthropic MELTDOWN Edition (#8)

Brian E. Frydenborg — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 23:18:05 +0000

“Skynet is here…ish? Maybe? Who knows! Time to PAUSE!”—Anthropic

(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.

A bit early… Terminator 2: Judgment Day—James Cameron/Tristar Pictures/Lionsgate

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.

The new @AnthropicAI post on the approach of recursive self-improvement is very important. It chimes with my argument that some kind of international effort is needed to brake the completely unconstrained AI arms race: https://t.co/kexd0jnra6 pic.twitter.com/JQOrn2Ct3l
— Niall Ferguson (@nfergus) June 5, 2026

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

Our highest and most urgent national priority should be AI safeguards. The risks of AI weapons, pathogens, mass unemployment, surveillance, and even extinction must not continue to be largely ignored. https://t.co/79FzhRMIrq
— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) June 5, 2026

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.

The Real Context News AI Reading List: Anthropic Claude Mythos Glasswing Edition (#7)

Brian E. Frydenborg — Sun, 24 May 2026 16:05:12 +0000

You will be hearing ohhh so much about Anthropic, Claude, Mythos, and Glasswing if you haven’t already. If you don’t know what all these are now, you will need to. Regardless of how well- or poorly-versed you think you are, start here.

(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!

Technosaurus

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!

The Real Context News AI Reading List (#6)

Brian E. Frydenborg — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 23:36:46 +0000

(Traduce en español/translate to Spanish)

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.

Getty/Futurism

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!

EXCLUSIVE FROM INSIDE IRAN: “What We Think As Iranian People Doesn’t Matter Here”

Brian E. Frydenborg — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 03:34:50 +0000

Lies, censorship, and nonsense from all warring parties can’t obscure the harsh realities for Iranians inside Iran: More from my exclusive source inside Iran

(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.

A resident weeps while talking on the phone near a residential building that was hit in an airstrike earlier this morning on March 30, 2026, in the west of Tehran, Iran.
(Photo by Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)

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.”

The Real Context News AI Reading List (#5)

Brian E. Frydenborg — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 17:17:32 +0000

(Traduce en español/translate to Spanish)

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!

The Real Context News AI Reading List: Special Single Article Edition (#4)

Brian E. Frydenborg — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 13:19:14 +0000

(Traduce en español/translate to Spanish)

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.

The Verge

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!

The Real Context News AI Reading List (#3)

Brian E. Frydenborg — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 17:28:55 +0000

(Traduce en español/translate to Spanish)

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.

Nvidia/Capcom

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!

IRAN WAR EXCLUSIVE: INSIGHT FROM IRANIAN WOMAN INSIDE TEHRAN

Brian E. Frydenborg — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 15:06:21 +0000

A contact I have known for some time weighed in from an information space filled with chaos, disinformation, misinformation, and oh, so many gaps. I have no idea if she is still alive. Hope remains in her heart for Iran, but may be diminishing.

(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.

A fire after an airstrike on an oil storage facility in Tehran. Photograph: Arileza Sotakbar/AP

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 :)) ”

The Real Context News AI Reading List: Israel’s Use of AI in Gaza Edition (#2)

Brian E. Frydenborg — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 16:12:07 +0000

(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) 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.

Photo-illustration: Jacqui VanLiew/Wired; Getty Images

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!

The Inaugural Real Context News AI Reading List (#1)

Brian E. Frydenborg — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 16:45:47 +0000

(Traduce en español/translate to Spanish)

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.

James Cameron/Tristar Pictures/Lionsgate

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!

Trump, Taking Page from Netanyahu, Turns America Into His West Bank

Brian E. Frydenborg — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 19:56:32 +0000

How an American president is trying to imitate the way an Israeli prime minister applies “law” in illegally occupied Palestinian territory

(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.

National Guard troops clash with demonstrators in Los Angeles on June 8, 2025—Kyodo/AP Images

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).

Areas A, B, and C in the West Bank were created by the Oslo process, but in reality, the Israeli government goes into Area A with its military whenever it pleases and Israel in general restricts many of the abilities of Palestinian officials in A and B, making much of the distinction between the Areas—and the claims that Palestinians are “governing” their own areas or are exercising real sovereignty—a farce.

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).

My video report from the perilous front lines of what President Trump described as “war-ravaged” Portland, a city “on fire,” requiring troops to come save us. pic.twitter.com/EarWVjkpx3
— Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) October 6, 2025

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.

"Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that."

Looking forward to seeing Jimmy back on the air. https://t.co/Pd4xPAmMvH
— Governor JB Pritzker (@GovPritzker) September 22, 2025

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.

Palestinian minister Ziad Abu Ein (L) scuffles with an Israeli border policeman near the West Bank city of Ramallah, Dec. 10, 2014—Reuters/Mohamad Torokman

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

THE Way to Watch Star Wars’ Andor and Rogue One for Max Emotional Impact (or, The Best Damn Full Andor Viewing Guide in the Galaxy)

Brian E. Frydenborg — Sun, 14 Sep 2025 18:01:13 +0000

With a few extra goodies you will only see as part of the recommended viewing here, here is how to have the most cinematic, resonant experience of one of the most cinematic, resonant screen projects in recent memory

(Traduce en español/translate to Spanish) By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) September 14, 2025; UPDATED 9/21 to include one key detail; 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.

Disney/Lucasfilm

SILVER SPRING—Apologies for not posting this earlier, as my life has been too interesting lately, and I am not even going to try to treat this as any kind of review of the singularity known as Andor, a Star Wars show on Disney+ starring Diego Luna as the titular Cassian Andor alongside the legendary Stellan Skarsgård and a soon-to-be-legendary ensemble cast..

Some Context on this Amazing Show You Definitely Should Watch

While I have certainly had my issues with Disney, I have so, SO much to say about the greatness of this show on so many level and its searing relevance to the crises consuming America and the world in 2025, so much so I that had to redo my GOAT list; quite simply put, Andor is one of the most amazing shows I’ve ever seen, tied for the best of all time on my list, actually (shared with Rome from HBO/BBC, with HBO’s The Sopranos a close second).

Nominated for 14 Emmy Awards this year—including the awards for best drama, writing, direction, and cinematography—it’s also one of the most unique shows I have ever seen, breaking convention and genre like it is fighting its own rebellious revolution. And Andor has been called the best dramatic show of 2025 by Hollywood press heavyweights Variety, Vanity Fair, and The Hollywood Reporter, along with The Guardian, just to name a few. Furthermore, it has some of the highest-rated television episodes in history and a special IMDB record. Even with the 14 Emmy nominations this year, The Hollywood Reporter was particularly snarky in its expressions of still feeling Andor was “robbed” of a bunch of acting nominations, and they are not alone.

Rather, this is simply a viewing guide to get the most out of your viewing experience, much like my popular guide for watching Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith alongside the Star Wars: The Clone Wars series finale that thousands of you have appreciated (I did not see Disney matching the finale of Clone Wars as far as quality with any big Star Wars project, but wow, was I wrong, Andor being the proof! And if you’ve seen Clone Wars through Season 5, check out my take on how the show sheds lights on lessons we can learn from 9/11).

Anyway, all you need to know are two things: 1.) The first season starts roughly five years before the events of the earliest-produced Star Wars movie, 1977’s original Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope. The first scene of the first episode is introduced timeline-wise BBY 5, which stands for “before the Battle of Yavin,” referring to the events of the original 1977 film. It’s kind of like a BC/AD (CE preferred) year dating system. UPDATE 9/21: 2.) The second thing to know is that, in Season 2, the guy on the right in the first image below (actor Benjamin Bratt) is playing the same character (Senator Bail Organa) as the actor on the left and below (Jimmy Smits) in Rogue One and in Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, respectively (he also appears as Organa in Episode II: Attack of the Clones).

The Direct/Disney/Lucasfilm

Disney/Lucasfilm

That’s it, and even genius showrunner Tony Gilroy has made it clear you really don’t need to know about Star Wars, or even like Star Wars, to respond to the show well and many viewers have confirmed this.

THE BEST DAMN ANDOR VIEWING GUIDE IN THE GALAXY

If you’re curious about the show, whatever your politics or background, just trust me and watch it, but be PATIENT and PAY ATTENTION: if you missed a line, rewind, for the journey is so worth it and this is so sophisticated that you need to embrace the slowness of some earlier episodes. Details and people matter, even seemingly small ones! Watch on a big screen and with surround sound. Turn your phones off (genius showrunner Tony Gilroy says so—watch only 19:48 until 20:59 and ignore comments and other videos!). I’M SERIOUS, PHONES OFF! And Silent, no vibrating! Turn off the lights too, and minimize interruptions. Have some drinks. Immerse yourself. Also, the music is phenomenal, so I strongly suggest letting the credits for each episode play out (especially after S1 E11 and S2E8). Don’t skip the intro theme music, either, because it is different for each episode and give tantalizing clues as to what is coming as the show goes on. Not a big fan of the more general Disney Star Wars jingle, though, so personally I choose to mute that little flourish…)

I HIGHLY recommend watching the main arcs as min-movies in single-sittings, without interrupting the arcs.

Disney/Lucasfilm

SO, for season 1, it’s mostly simple:

STEP 1—Andor Season 1

BBY 5 Episodes 1-3 uninterrupted, then Episodes 4-6 uninterrupted, then Episodes 7-10 uninterrupted, then Episodes 11-12 uninterrupted (don’t forget the END CREDITS SCENE at the end of Episode 12!)

The only trick to remember is that the third arc works best as four episodes, with a tighter closing arc of two episodes.

For the second and final season, it’s easier, but I am adding twists. Each arc here is three episodes and jumps roughly a year forward (BBY4-BBY1).

STEP 2—Andor Season 2 part 1

BBY4 Episodes 1-3 uninterrupted, BBY 3 Episodes 4-6 uninterrupted, BBY 2 Episodes 7-9 uninterrupted (no matter what, do not break up Episodes 7 and 8, if you compromise elsewhere make sure to watch these two still in the same sitting)

STEP 3—brief interlude (21 minutes)

Now here is where things get complicated. In 2017, the animated show Star Wars: Rebels aired an episode—Season 3, Episode 18, Secret Cargo, a little over twenty-minutes long—that picks up almost immediately after Andor Season 2, Episode 9. The first few minutes you might be like WTF but just trust me and realize the episode is only 21 minutes without credits. You just need to know the main characters on that show are a secret rebel cell that is in the process of joining the larger Rebellion, a cell that is led by a pilot named Hera, with her number-two in the form of Kanan, a grown-up Jedi trainee from the Republic, before it fell and became the Empire. They took in with their merry band a young potential Jedi, Ezra, from the planet of Lothal (which Ezra will mention to a key Andor character). The show is not as good as its precursor, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, so don’t judge all Star Wars animation by this, and it’s certainly tonally and stylistically different from Andor, but it’s still a solid episode featuring one of the main characters from Andor voiced by the same person playing this character in live action. I would dive into this interlude just after finishing STEP 2).

STEP 4—finishing interlude (about 6 minutes)

Then, jump ahead to Rebels Season 4, Episode 3. You can start at 3:29 and go to 9:27. This involves a very important conversation between the same character and another important character from Andor. Watch this just before you start up STEP 5, it is just about 6 minutes from that episode (if you’re interested in the backstories raised here, I will have more information on that in the future because there is more content with characters featured in Andor…)

STEP 5—Andor Season 2 final arc

BBY 1 Episodes 9-12 uninterrupted (only start if you can also do STEP 6 in the same viewing; don’t compromise here, either; worst case, make sure to watch at least Episode 12 just before STEP 6)

STEP 6—Rogue One

Watch 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (do not break and do this immediately after finishing the final episode of Andor. Again, no ifs, ands, or buts)

STEP 7—back to the OG

Go back to where it all began and knock out 1977’s Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope (with the actual Battle of Yavin at the end!).

Conclusion: A Call to Watch

Andor changed my life. I am a different and better person for it. I hope you understand after you watch. And if you watch this all in the ways I have recommended, you will feel the most emotional impact. Seriously, if you watch one show this year, make it this one.

I will close on this: art has a power to inspire like nothing else, and I experienced that with Andor. With all that is going on in the world today, the big names behind the U.S. television and film industry can take a real stand to help promote this exquisite meditation on collective consciousness, oppression, resistance, and the costs and nature of revolution, on the nature of fascism and its costs, on sacrifice and death, on hope and perseverance, on the nature of good and evil. To not recognize the powerful homages to forces contained in Andor would be doing our nation and humanity a disservice at a time when we need art desperately to move to action, provoke and inspire, not just entertain. To not do this is a choice to choose entertainment at the expense of helping people wake up, to choose relative frivolity by favoring stories detached from wider struggles mirroring those erupting around us, to numb and distract with bread and circuses when a true revelation is at hand, one that wallows gloriously for many hours with some of the toughest moral questions of our time. In too many ways, this year is the year of Andor, and the Emmys should have recognized this more in the acting categories yet still, tonight, during the Emmy Awards, there is still a chance justice will be done not simply for Andor and its awe-struck, rightly-fanatical fans, but for public audiences all around the world in times that try men’s souls.

MAGA Doesn’t Get Math, Economics, or History; Now, It Doesn’t Get Star Wars!

Brian E. Frydenborg — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 02:39:09 +0000

Even when absurdity and gaslighting are the governing modus operandi, some things stand out and deserve recognition

(Traduce en español/translate to Spanish) By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) August 20, 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.

Instagram/usbpchiefelc via Last Week Tonight with John Oliver/HBO

SILVER SPRING—A small yet extraordinary series of events happened after a regional U.S. Border Patrol office posted a video on its official social media of a clip from a Star Wars movie (spoilers for Star Wars in general and specifically about Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader, the film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and its precursor masterpiece of a series, Andor).

The Force…Is Not with This Video

John Oliver tore into a Border Patrol office for shitposting a “celebration” video featuring Darth Vader: "Have you ever seen Star Wars?" pic.twitter.com/UCTJDVT3fB
— Blue Georgia (@BlueATLGeorgia) August 11, 2025

In the video posted by the regional U.S. Border Patrol office for California’s “Premier Sector,” a.k.a. “El Centro Sector,” the Premier Sector agents are portrayed as Sith Lord Darth Vader in his final scene in Rogue One, in which he is shown mercilessly cutting through Rebel soldiers trying to hand off the Death Star plans to those escaping on Princess Leia’s ship. In the movie, the plans were obtained by the Rebels because of tremendous suffering, horrific sacrifice, and the heroic efforts of Cassian Andor, Jyn Erso, Saw Gerrera, and many others rebels. Some of the Rebels here in the Border Patrol video facing Vader are labeled as “Fentanyl,” “Sanctuary Cities,” “Cocaine,” and “Fake News.” Vader has already disabled and boarded the Rebel command cruiser (their biggest space ship at the battle) and is trying to intercept the plans—transmitted only through bloody fighting by the rebel leaders on the planet Scarif below—before the rebels can get them to Leia’s ship, docked with the cruiser. As Vader chases deflects with his red Sithlightsaber the Rebels blaster bolts as they are standing their ground against him, we can see other Rebels labeled “meth,” “human smugglers,” “the swamp,” “cartel terrorists,” and “gang member” as Vader makes his way down the docking hallway. Some he kills by deflecting their own blaster bolts at them, others he cuts through with his lightsaber like a scythe into wheat, still others (the “fake news,” “cartel terrorists”), he uses the Force to toss around or pull their weapons from them before slicing them to death or choking them while suspended in the air by Vader’s Force powers. In the movie, the Rebels are mostly massacred by Vader but just manage to get the plans abord Leia’s ship, which undocks and escapes with Vader looking on. His further pursuit is captured in the very opening scene of the very first original Star Wars movie, Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope. It is these plans that enable Luke Skywalker to know how to blow up the Death Star at the end of the movie and to save the day, but not before it is used to partially destroy one planet and totally destroy another, killing billions of innocents. Darth Vader was trying to stop the rebels from stopping this genocidal Death Star.

Yet Vader is with whom these Border Patrol agents, in one of the most important and prolific sectors in the country, wanted to publicly identify. Not Luke blowing up the Death Star, but Vader killing those who would ensure Luke and the Rebel planners were able to make use of the Death Star’s weakness to destroy it.

Just think on that.

The Border Patrol regional account has since either deactivated or turned on privacy settings, not allowing the account or video to be seen by the general public if it hasn’t been deleted (at least there is some self-awareness as to the problematic nature of this post) but it was still posted on an official federal government account and indicates the views of the people in that office. And it is still proudly up on Twitter!

So the border can't be closed quickly? We find your lack of faith disturbing…

May the 4th be with you! #PremierSector #BorderPatrol #DHS #CBP #maythefourthbewithyou #StarWars #Jedi #Sith #YouAreOurOnlyHope #ANewHope #StarWarsDay pic.twitter.com/CGY4cgqMF3
— Commander Op At Large CA Gregory K. Bovino (@CMDROpAtLargeCA) May 4, 2025

Instagram/usbpchiefelc via Last Week Tonight with John Oliver/HBO

The Response: Fascist Icing on a Fascist Cake

But this is only the beginning. Appropriately, the team of the indispensable John Oliver, who discussed this all last week on his Last Week Tonight show on HBO, reached out to the government for a response. He pointed out that rather than the labels on the Rebels in the absurd Star Wars video, most being snatched by these draconian raids are not violent criminals. Rather than slaying “fake news,” the government was spreading it.

The government—specifically, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), under the authority of which the Border Patrol operates—did actually reply. While ignoring most specific questions posed by Oliver’s team, the government communications staff did write: “Not to spoil the plot, but as any Star Wars fan knows, Darth Vader is also Anakin Skywalker,” continuing that “I don’t think DHS needs to regale the American public on the heroism of Skywalker, they know.” They really seem to think that this was a serious clapback, not mortifying self-own.

John Oliver characterized this as “an incredible, deeply shitty response.” He then went on to satirically laud Thanos, form the Avengers series, as a similar “hero,” since, at one point, he was a baby.

Oliver is spot-on and actually understands Star Wars. Because any serious Star Wars fan knows that the hero Anakin Skywalker succumbed to evil to become Darth Vader, that both Obi-Wan Kenobi and Vader himself viewed Anakin’s new persona of Vader as having killed the man who was known as Anakin Skywalker. (Obi-Wan series spoilers)Years before Rogue One, in a climactic duel captured in the problematic Obi-Wan Kenobi series, Vader even tells Obi-Wan “Anakin is gone. I am what remains.” Obi-Wan apologizes for how things turned out, to which Vader replies “I am not your failure, Obi-Wan. You didn’t kill Anakin Skywalker,” now smiling, “I did” (End Obi-Wan series spoilers). Even without this more recently-produced scene and series, in the words of Obi-Wan to Luke Skywalker three movies chronologically after Rogue One, “Your father… was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force. He ceased to be Anakin Skywalker and became Darth Vader. When that happened, the good man who was your father was destroyed.” Later in the film when Luke references Anakin Skywalker to Vader, Vader’s response is to say “That name no longer has any meaning for me.” And that was the case for nearly Vader’s entire life as Vader, from the end of Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith—when Anakin became the Sith Lord known as Darth Vader—to the last moments of Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, just before he finally abandons Vader to die as regretful Anakin in the arms of his son.

Thus, both Obi-Wan’s and Vader’s own statements, while not completely true—deep, deep down, Anakin was still in there as Luke, his son, felt, only coming back out in extreme circumstances just before Vader’s death to try to save his son Luke—were the measure of the man in the scene the Border Patrol office posted in that video, which took place in the timeline years before Vader’s redemption. In this scene a Border Patrol account posted from Rogue One, Vader was solidly the Emperor’s right-hand man, a full Lord of the Sith, evil and acting as an enforcer for an evil, illegal, genocidal, tyrannical, expansionist, fascist regime. The Rebels Vader casually murders are fighting to stop all this, to destroy the Empire and restore the democratic Republic the Empire overthrew.

But given Trump’s own fascist, dictatorial tendencies, should we be surprised his cultists in and out of government openly identify with the bad guys? With fascism? While all this on certain levels is funny, it is also revealing and terrifying: the fascists are not hiding their fascism and are openly identifying with an evil, murderous Sith Lord. They did not show Anakin fighting as a hero or Luke blowing up the Death Star, they showed Vader—clearly at that point a fallen hero, not a hero, fighting against heroes as a clear villain.

From the White House to DHS and Border Patrol, our republic has fallen to control of Empire and fascist fanboys, embracing the Dark Side, not the Light Side. The mainstream press continues to miss the gravity of the situation, toning things down, using euphemisms, or missing the plot entirely. We must shed light on all this so people understand what is truly at stake. It may not be a whole galaxy or a whole planet under threat, and Trump and his MAGA minions may be far less interesting than the Imperial bad guys, but with no Luke Skwalker or Cassian Andor coming to rescue us, it’s time to wake up and save ourselves (and as I hope to discuss in a future piece, community-consciousness-building is one of the main themes of the Show Andor…).

Instagram/usbpchiefelc via Last Week Tonight with John Oliver/HBO

THE TWO MAPS THAT PROVE RUSSIA ISN’T WINNING AND UKRAINE ISN’T LOSING IN 2025

Brian E. Frydenborg — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 02:50:23 +0000

Lots of people make a lot of claims, but cold, hard, territorial realities in a war of conquest shatter much of the punditry’s proclamations and even Washington’s recent claims.

(Russian/Русский перевод; Если вы состоите в российской армии и хотите сдаться Украине, звоните по этим номерам: +38 066 580 34 98 или +38 093 119 29 84; инструкции по сдаче здесь)

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) June 10, 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—Much like the scenes unfolding in Los Angeles in recent days—and I have plenty to say on that but not below—a bird’s eye view can often be most revealing, helping to sift through the noise made by often quite loud individuals spreading misinformation and/worse, disinformation that is amplified deliberately by social media algorithms. A zoomed-out view usually gives you a larger perspective and allows you to attach weight and context where a much more zoomed-in, granular view does not, where a particular point of view may be wildly unrepresentative compared to what is happening in a larger radius.

Well, Ladies and Gentleman, Comrades and Friends, Fan and Critics alike, I present to you the bird’s-eye-view of Russia’s territorial progress in Ukraine between January 2, 2025 (the fine Institute for the Study of War, which provides these excellent maps of this terrible war along with Critical Threats, was understandably closed on January 1) and June 2, 2025, roughly the first half of the year, and, well, what is revealed in clear and indisputable:

Click image to zoom

Your eyes do not deceive you: Russia has made virtually no visible progress advancing in Ukraine, despite constant attacks: try squinting, try squinting hard, and you will still have difficulty finding clear progress, let alone significant progress.

The one exception where there is easily visible progress? Inside Russia, in the Kursk Oblast that Ukraine boldly partially occupied to great effect beginning in June, 2024.

If Russia’s only easily visible territorial progress in an imperialist, colonialist attempted conquest of Ukraine that is trying to genocidally erase Ukrainian identity over the course of six months is to retake some of Russia’s own territory (after it was mortifyingly occupied for some ten months and was only liberated with the help of thousands of North Korean—North Korean—troops!), it’s impossible to credibly claim Russia is “winning,” let alone that Ukraine is “losing.”

Last time I checked, a defender successfully defending most of its territory from enemy advances means the defender is, actually, winning (for all you Risk board game players, think the tie-goes-to-the-defender rule)…

I plan to elaborate on some of the details of what’s been going on, but for now, take a look at that stark picture of failure on the part of Russia that is also a portrait of dogged Ukrainian determination and perseverance and it is clear which narratives are backed by reality and which are not.

Add to all this that over five of the six months were under a fascist Trump Administration that was and still is hostile to Ukraine, favors Russia narratively and diplomatically, and had criticized, redirected, “paused,” and/or ended major aspects of U.S. aid to Ukraine, and it is even more embarrassing that Russia has failed to advance when it should have been able to. In fact, think of a major war where a major backer—one of the world’s most powerful nations—of the weaker defender pulls much of its support for that defender against a far stronger attacker—also one of the world’s most powerful nations—and it is harder to find examples in history where such an attacker was unable to capitalize on the rug being pulled out from under the defender (and this even was after Republicans in Congress had cut off aid for much of 2023-2024).

But here we are, Putin’s Russia even more laughably pathetic than ever (and this says a lot) and increasingly unable to defend its own territory, often mostly only able to pathetically and indiscriminately target civilian areas with war-criminal, Hamas-like area bombardments and far less able to actually hit Ukraine’s military.

And oh, we haven’t even gotten into the historic, amazing, and devastating June 1^st special operation by Ukraine that has disabled or destroyed as much as some one-third of the Russian aircraft capable of wielding nuclear weapons.

I think you can say Ukraine is winning, all things considered, but more on this another time…

A Comeback and Some Accountability on Past Coverage on Ukraine and the U.S. Elections

Brian E. Frydenborg — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 02:02:16 +0000

Some long-overdue housekeeping: why I’ve been absent and the elephants in the room on my Ukraine and 2024 election coverage

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, Bluesky @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) June 8, 2025; because of YOU, Real Context News is approaching two million all-time content views, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

(Traduce en español/translate to Spanish; Russian/Русский перевод)

A PERSONAL NOTE

SILVER SPRING—My dear readers, I owe you an explanation as it has been some time since I have engaged in publishing articles as a journalist, and the reasons are simple.

Last fall, I took on a job in the U.S. Federal Government, and out of an abundance of caution beyond the Hatch Act’s requirements and especially with the de facto war insurrectionist Trump’s presidential administration has declared on federal workers, critics, and many of the world’s most desperate poor alike, I decided that continuing my journalistic work at the time would put my ability to continue my work—work helping those suffering from disasters here in the U.S.—in serious jeopardy.

Over the next few months, I was proud to serve this nation and its people in time of need. I didn’t care that most people where I was deployed had voted for Trump when it came to my work: they were my countrymen and deserved our support, and that was why I was there.

But then my personal life got in the way, and I had to take some time off. Soon after, it was constant dread as it looked more and more likely that drug-addict and all-around bad person Elon Musk’s farcical, gaslighting DOGE would cost me my job.

While all this was going on, my Dear ol’ Dad passed away late in March and monstrous, deceitful relatives of mine made that experience exponentially worse.

Right around that time, I was formally DOGEd along with so many others, my federal position not continuing. Since then, I have had to focus on things other than the news.

Finally, though, I am trying to get back into the swing of things and am working on a number of new pieces I hope to be publishing quite soon. I might very much still be a mess in some ways on the inside, but this is life and it is time to move forward.

However, I think that it is important and that I owe it to you, my readers, to address a few issues before going forward.

A Note on My Ukraine Coverage

As far as my previous Ukraine/Russia coverage, I maintain most of that still stands up quite well, it’s just been delayed: between Ukraine not achieving the massive land gains hoped for during the big 2023 offensive, Trump’s MAGA Republicans holding up Ukraine aide well into 2024, between the aid that did come being diminished because of all the increased costs resulting from the aid delay, with the distraction of the 2024 U.S. elections, and with the Trump Administration favoring Russia diplomatically now and treating Ukraine and Zelensky horribly, the dynamics I have espoused upon consistently were diminished yet still intact and are what they are even if diminished or somewhat dormant.

Well, I do believe a lot of those dynamics could amplify in a decisive way for Ukraine and will be explaining that in a future piece that (indeed, recent spectacular events might signal a promising shift…). The last two years had slowed down and delayed a lot of the core dynamics but not rewritten them. So, while I would have loved for 2023 up until now to be different, like Ukraine is, I am looking to the future to vindicate myself even if the situations have looked less promising (so far) than my analysis would suggest. And I don’t think time favors Russia now just as I felt the same before. Still, while what I predicted is not happening and may yet come to pass and I would argue it will, I will understand if readers intelligently and reasonably question my work, and such questions are welcome.

And I will certainly be covering that recent historic, daring special operations strike against Russian air bases that somehow turned trucks into aircraft carriers and humiliated Russia spectacularly, evolving warfare as we know it before our very eyes, as Ukraine has done before.

A Note on My 2024 U.S. Election Coverage

In some of my coverage and depending on the prevailing trends of polling in any particular race, I have at times challenged pollster’s methodology. I saw a closer race than most in 2016, for example. In the 2022 midterms, I was more than vindicated by my analysis that polls were underestimating Democratic turnout. But in 2024, building on some of the logic from 2020, I ended up putting out my least accurate predictive analysis of my journalism career. To be fair, I still gave Trump a realistic chance of winning—about one in five—but my reading of the tea leaves, uncharacteristically, was seriously flawed.

Why? I may elaborate in the future on each of these reasons below, but for now:

First, I looked at polls showing Americans caring about the state of democracy and the high portions placing democracy as their top or a major voting priority and I assumed—admittedly for very good reasons—that the vast majority of most of those voters were supporting Harris against Trump. I was wrong: it was far closer in various exit polls and surveys released the day of and after the election, with Trump voters absurdly also quite concerned about Harris’s and Democrats’ perceived threats to democracy. I simply did not think that so many millions of Americans would have been hoodwinked and gaslighted enough to think that Trump was in any way a better candidate to protect democracy than Harris, let alone someone who practices or respects democracy.

I also did not believe the polling showing minority and younger voters shifting—in some categories, significantly—towards Trump and MAGA and away from Harris and Democrats. I looked at how some of these polls were constructed and conducted and thought I had understood correctly their flaws. But instead, after the election, I realized that this country had changed, even over the past four years, in ways I didn’t see or expect or recognize fully, and explained away the evidence that did point to this.

I was wrong, and, to their credit, the pollsters overall were pretty accurate.

And, very much related, I underestimated the degree to which social media and random generally unqualified people often dubbed “influencers” (both of which I have long-noted are more and more so spreading dangerous misinformation, propaganda, and disinformation, often backed or carried out by powerful hostile foreign government intelligence agencies) have for years increasingly displaced traditional media (the term “legacy” media is such an arrogant misnomer) and are now seeming to eclipse it. In turn, I overestimated the degree to which people were actually seeing the implosion in terms of coherence, message, and performance at the main events of Trump campaign in the closing weeks. I thought things like the MSG rally from fascist past just before the election would have cost Trump a lot of votes. But it seems a lot of people were not checking into reality. Often, people are so misinformed or worse that they vote for a candidate who will actually do the opposite of what they expect (and no, the recent Elon-Donald catfight will not save the left, but more on that another time..).

Now, I am not sure how many people, or even if a majority of voters, were aware of the quality of campaigns overall or heard the candidates unedited in their own words at any length (relatively few people watched the conventions compared to past election years, for example). Instead of watching what could pass for a white version of a ranting aging Col. Qaddafi with a disturbing cast of minions leaving a bad aftertaste, they seem to have made their minds up on selective or doctored clips or even loved the awfulness, if they even paid attention to it.

I thought the awfulness would cost him the election, but instead it seems to have helped him win it or not hurt him, at the very least. The information sphere is now so jumbled by these new forces that large sections of the electorate are not making well-informed decisions, even more than before.

As others have said, the cruelty is the point. And this time, he won on it.

Conclusion: Stay Tuned and All Hands on Deck

Every path is a learning experience, and even the best still learn on the job. I will be incorporating these lessons and others in my future work, so look soon for more stories Ukraine and Russia, the situation in the U.S., a major piece on Gaza, and even possibly some thoughts on the singular current cultural phenomenon that is the Star Wars show Andor (a must watch for all antifascists, the most politically relevant fictional show on television now, in my opinion and that of others, and the show with the highest-rated-string of episodes of all time on IMDB!).

I will have content soon on Orwell vs. Trump, for my podcast, and on this glorious human achievement known as the Andor Star Wars television show (so damn relevant to our times it’s literally terrifying [spoilers in link]). I humbly ask for your patience and forgiveness and am confident my future content will rectify my recent past underperformance.

Oh, and, given this tough time we’re all in, I’m very much asking for your support. If we don’t support each other, as the senior senator from Chandrila and fellow ginger redhead exclaimed in this season of Andor, “If we do not stand together, we will be crushed.”

Disney/Andor/Star Wars

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