David Cameron in the UK, and Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio and several other Republicans have been talking about what Biden needs to promise in the event of Iranian retaliation for Israel’s strike on Iran’s embassy in Damascus. I think the Iranians are probably smart enough not to, but we’ll see.
The strategic situation is such that the Axis of Resistance has checkmated the Biden administration. Ansarallah rejected a set of very generous carrots this week, which means, if Republicans in Congress are willing to condemn strikes in Yemen as illegal, which they clearly are, the stick is out, too.
Israel is rapidly discrediting itself in the eyes of the world, and blowing up an embassy is the sort of thing that will continue to diminish its standing. It would be smarter, if I were the Iranians, to just let the hawks sort of be chicken littles, let them shriek as their strategic concept comes crashing down around them.
It is deeply satisfying to watch the post-9/11 strategic concept break down the same week a bunch of Republicans in Congress try to tank FISA reauthorization. An amendment to require a warrant to spy on Americans just failed in the House by a tie vote, but far more Republicans voted for it than Democrats. I’m glad the neocons are alive to see this.
The Matt Gaetz profile
It’s out in The Atlantic, finally, though predictably it mentions nothing about how he got on the wrong side of the Israelis for his stance on Iran war powers.
Read Tom Philips in Haaretz
He asks, “Has Hamas won?”
Also, there’s some more detail in Haaretz about the Intellexa deals, another one of Israel’s spyware products that has gotten way out of hand.
The Saudis more or less shut down Neom
In the city-building fad this was always one of the more dubious projects:
Saudi Arabia will downsize plans for its $500 billion NEOM linear city, The Line, as part of Mohammad bin Salman’s (MbS) 2030 vision to diversify the oil-dependent economy.
By 2030, development was planned in stages to ultimately cover a stretch of 170 kilometers of coastal desert and house 1.5 million people.
However, an unnamed official told Bloomberg on 5 April that the project would be scaled back to 2.4 kilometers, with a reduced capacity of less than 300,000 residents.
Time scoop on Project Nimbus
Google provides cloud computing services to the Israeli Ministry of Defense, and the tech giant has negotiated deepening its partnership during Israel’s war in Gaza, a company document viewed by TIME shows.
The Israeli Ministry of Defense, according to the document, has its own “landing zone” into Google Cloud—a secure entry point to Google-provided computing infrastructure, which would allow the ministry to store and process data, and access AI services. …
The version of the contract viewed by TIME was not signed by Google or the Ministry of Defense. But a March 27 comment on the document, by a Google employee requesting an executable copy of the contract, said the signatures would be “completed offline as it’s an Israel/Nimbus deal.” Google also gave the ministry a 15% discount on the original price of consulting fees as a result of the “Nimbus framework,” the document says.
Japanese companies warn of AI threat to social order
Japan’s largest telecommunications company and the country’s biggest newspaper called for speedy legislation to restrain generative artificial intelligence, saying democracy and social order could collapse if AI is left unchecked.
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, or NTT, and Yomiuri Shimbun Group Holdings made the proposal in an AI manifesto to be released Monday. Combined with alaw passed in March by the European Parliamentrestricting some uses of AI, the manifesto points to rising concern among American allies about theAI programsU.S.-based companies have been at the forefront of developing.