Droney

Above my pay grade, like many things, but it I do think the era of cheap and powerful (murderous and deadly) drones, the potential of which has been amply demonstrated by the world's most powerful militaries, has changed the reality of conflict.  This is especially true given that the countries behind those powerful militaries have stomped on any taboos about attacking civilians and especially civilian infrastructure.

If small actors can "easily" take out things like oil pipelines and desalination plants, everybody has new concerns.

I've noticed many of our foreign policy geniuses (the usual dickheads in The Discourse) have been surprisingly quiet, lately. One would expect this to be a perfect time for them to earn their keep by expressing their usual maximum belligerence on TV and in the newspapers.

What if, once again, they've all completely fucked it? 

Save Humanity From Us (By Giving Us Money And Special Treatment)

Lina Khan: actually, we've got laws for you on the books, fuckers.

Law enforcers already have authority to charge companies and their CEOs for creating and releasing dangerous, unvetted, or defective products. We shouldn’t let discussions about new legal regimes distract from the fact that there’s no AI exemption from laws already on the books — a point emphasized repeatedly during my tenure.

1. There is an extensive set of laws that govern dangerous and defective products. For example, releasing unvetted AI models or agents can violate consumer protection laws. Shipping flawed AI tools without implementing adequate measures to detect and stop rogue or defective AI agents can be an “unfair or deceptive” act or practice under the FTC Act (and analogous state laws). And some state AGs are already exploring holding AI firms and their CEOs criminally liable when their models participate in criminal activity.

2. Existing laws also prohibit “unfair methods of competition.” This covers instances where AI firms appropriate the competitively sensitive information of their customers, including through tracking their use of various tools. It can also cover instances where firms pursue dangerous behavior, aware that doing so may compel rivals to do the same.

As the Supreme Court has noted: “A method of competition which casts upon one's competitors the burden of the loss of business unless they will descend to a practice which they are under a powerful moral compulsion not to adopt, even though it is not criminal, was thought to involve the kind of unfairness at which the [unfair methods of competition] statute was aimed."

3. The highly concentrated and interconnected structure of these markets could be creating major risks and conflicts of interest. We had started investigating these partnerships and cross-investments across the stack (and released a preliminarily overview of some findings: ). 

Both federal and state enforcers should be scrutinizing these opaque relationships and inter-dependencies. We are already seeing how these relationships could undermine accountability. For example, OpenAI could face liability given the Hugging Face incident, but Hugging Face being bought up by Nvidia means that we’re unlikely to see it file a lawsuit over this — given Nvidia’s strong incentive to see OpenAI continue full speed ahead.

4. As AI tools dramatically change the landscape of cybersecurity risks and hacks, all businesses should be doubling down on having core security protections in place. Firms that fail to invest in adequate data security measures or fix known vulnerabilities can also be breaking the law. A recent analysis showed that around 1/3 of Fortune 100 companies do not even have a way to notify them about security issues. During my FTC tenure, we sued firms for poor data security practices and held CEOs liable when they were personally responsible.

5. As policymakers consider new legal regimes, we should be looking to lessons from prior efforts to govern major sectors, such as banking and other networks, platforms, and utilities. Tools like structural separations, nondiscrimination, and supervision could be key, and there’s a rich history of what works and what doesn’t. But we can and must pursue any new efforts alongside enforcing existing laws.

Sunday Happy Hour

Enjoy

Is That Good

Oil is a complicated product for so many reasons, and catastrophic predictions about the Hormuz closure have yet to materialize, but every little bit of capacity loss brings us closer to huge price spikes.

LONDON, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia will run out of oil stocks for exports ‌if it doesn't restart its major pipeline to the Red Sea within days, leading to a loss of up to 4% of global supply, Saudi oil buyers and traders said.

AI Guys

We're building God!

We're building God!

We're building God!

ok we just built the ultimate hacking tool that anyone can use and bring down the world's computers.

Oh No We Made A Planet Destroying Machine Please Give Us Money I Mean Regulate Us

The AI guys are all simultaneously saying they need to be regulated, which will mean "protected from competition and given huge sums of money" and all the usual suspects are falling for it.

Remember that Rahm Emanuel wanted Elon Musk to build a "hyperloop" rail from the airport, which would have run the same route as the existing train from the airport.

Elon Musk’s Boring Company has been chosen to build a high-speed tunnel link between downtown Chicago and O’Hare Airport that would ferry passengers in just 12 minutes. The current rail line takes nearly an hour to travel the 16 mile route — and vehicles can be caught in traffic delays that often add another hour.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is expected to announce details of the preliminary decision Thursday, with the city now set to begin negotiations to work out the details for the tunnel, which uses skateboard-like electric vehicles. 

Morning

Sunday funday.

Saturday Happy Hour

Enjoy

Our Friends, The Houthis

It seems Trump has turned his back on his former good friends in Saudi Arabia.

Stop Lis Smith Before She Kills (A Campaign) Again

This is the message that Lis Smith's organization, Majority Democrats, is pushing on Instagram.

I don't think this is true, or certainly not unarguably true. You probably win against Paxton because disgusted Republicans stay home (true swing voters are weird and you do not appeal to them like this) and you inspire Democrats to go vote. 

But even if we accept that it is true, wearing a big T-Shirt that says "I am trying to appeal to Republican voters" does not actually appeal to Republican voters! 

This is how you get on TV and you get big donors to give you money. This is how Lis Smith continues her career. It is not how candidates that she supports win. Ask Mallory McMorrow, who flamed out after going the full Lis.

Lis doesn't win elections. She wins her salaries.

You can argue to yourselves that the big donors and PACs that push candidates are actually not the candidates' campaigns, but sometimes they essentially are. All on the same page.

Expertise

There are many things I happily admit I know nothing about, though after having ingested The Discourse into my brain for 25 years, I am also very sure that most people who are presented as wise experts on most subjects know little more than I do about them.

This predates "bloggers" and social media. Influential opinion columnists have long held forth on whatever occurred to them in the shower that morning. TV producers and editors enlist people because they are buzzy, because they have good PR, because they fill a spot on the political spectrum that they think needs to be filled. Bari Weiss is gone from the New York Times, but people like her (not necessarily sharing her views, but equally (un)qualified and (un)intelligent) still influence who gets published there.  And, of course, she runs CBS News.

Most people who know things don't have the inclination or time to set themselves up as "public intellectuals" or even to bother submitting an oped to "Bari" for her approval. They certainly don't have time to wait for cable news producers to call them.

Dash Sulzberger, son of Pinch, grandson of Punch, great-grandson of Arthur Hays Sulzberger, great-great-grandson of Adolph Ochs, is the latest in the long line of nepo babies who run the Times. This is meritocracy.

Dash is, obviously, dumb as shit. Everything in that newspaper flows from him.

Experts, or people who actually know things, would be nice. We rarely meet them.

Morning

Slacker Saturday

Happy Hour

 ...the weekend

Sure Why Not

Berks county is nowhere near Erie, either the lake or the city which is a somewhat famous place. 

Rep. David Maloney, a Republican who represents parts of Berks County, wants to rename Lake Erie to “Lake Pennsylvania,” arguing that the state’s only Great Lake has become increasingly important to Pennsylvania’s economy and identity.

...

This is Pennsylvania’s only Great Lake,” Maloney said in a post on X. “Its modern economy and identity are increasingly tied to the boaters, anglers, families and tourists who come to enjoy it.” “Ohio has plenty of shoreline. New York already has two Great Lakes. Canada has four others,” he said. “Pennsylvania has one. Let’s call it Lake Pennsylvania!”

There is so no Lake New York or Lake Ohio. WHAT THE FUCK IS HE TALKING ABOUT 

Chat, Is This Good

Something the belligerent warmongers who populate DC really don't understand is that peace is a delicate equilibrium, too easily shattered 

Known as the Gate of Tears, this narrow passage is a critical artery for crude oil and fuel travelling from the Gulf to the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal, as well as for Asian commodities and Russian oil.

Al Jazeera’s Yousef Mawry explained that controlling Mocha could give the Houthis a “stranglehold along the Bab is a “stranglehold along the Bab al-Mandeb”.

And many existing arrangements, such as Hormuz being free-to-travel, exist because of some lingering recognition of the common good and not due to pure unenlightened self-interest.

...and more than Mocha.

After seizing the crucial city of Mocha, the Houthis have taken control of Yemen’s entire Red Sea coastline, expanding their grip over the strategic Bab al-Mandeb strait, one of the world’s most important trade routes.

I won't claim to have any real idea what the implications are.

Origin Stories

80% of the actual story here is that Adam Jentleson hitched his wagon to Fetterman, that didn't work out, so he reinvented himself as "guy who was on the left who fights the left" to get rich people to drop bags of money on his doorstep. The other 20% is, of course, this:

The way Democrats have handled the issue of transgender rights is especially resonant for Jentleson. In 2021, his spouse, the writer Benny Peterson, came out as nonbinary. Jentleson and Peterson tried to make it work, but last year, after Peterson decided to transition, the couple split up. The pair co-parent two children and still vacation together as a family, but they now live in separate houses on the same street. Amid these personal developments, Jentleson has publicly urged Democrats to recalibrate their position on trans rights, particularly as they relate to sports and to gender-transition care for children

Admittedly a bit more of a life event than Yglesias being asked to clean up after himself in the Vox break room, but still very Elon Musk antitrans politics-as-revenge.

It doesn't really matter if people's shit politics are in good faith, but it is the case that fake think tanks pushing the 370th flavor of centrism don't get money dumped on them if the people who run them aren't for sale. 

As Corrupt As They Are

They obviously don't think corruption is wrong. They just think it is their right, not yours.

Trump: "Please right your right hand. I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States. That loves us so much he can't even breath. That I will go out with my family, my friends, I'll do it any way - I don't care if I'm registered or not, I'm going to try to cheat like hell..."

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 11 September 2026 at 04:32

Scientists Had Theorized The diGenova Ethics Constraint Did Not Exist

Too much corruption even for him?

Joe diGenova submitted his resignation to Attorney General Todd Blanche amid what sources described as growing frustrations from Trump and senior DOJ officials regarding his work on the so-called "grand conspiracy" investigation based out of the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of Florida.

NYPost reporter:

The most good faith interpretation possible is that these guys believe Dems are corrupt as they are, so of course evidence of massive crimes would be easy to find.

I am sure the ethics limit does not exist. He just couldn't find shit.

Morning

Happy 9/11 day

Thursday Evening

Enjoy