A House Intelligence Committee report warns artificial intelligence could become the same kind of blind spot that led to the September 11 attacks. The report cites testimony from Benjamin Buchanan, a Johns Hopkins professor and former White House Special Advisor for Artificial Intelligence on the National Security Council, who compared AI to the 9/11 Commission's original finding that the attacks stemmed from a "failure of imagination."
Could a scientist intervene in a brain experiment on the other side of the world without leaving their desk? Researchers have now demonstrated that possibility by sending commands from Chicago to a wireless brain implant in Daejeon, South Korea, 10,596 kilometers (6,584 miles) away
The standard explanation for why rain causes corrosion is that water carries dissolved salts and acids to a surface, constant drumming of raindrops abrades whatever protective coating is on it, and oxygen does the rest. Nearly all our tools to prevent this -- paints, polymer films, or oxide layers -- are built around this idea. But we've apparently been missing something important about the rain.
The Supreme Court is allowing President Donald Trump to press on with his White House ballroom project -- over a strident objection from Chief Justice John Roberts and the court's liberal wing.
Alpharetta, a prosperous suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, is home to about 67,000 people, served by about 120 local police officers. It also hosts several dozen cameras sold by Flock Safety ... read more
Non-paywall version ...
Putin pledges support to Iran, rallies leaders to challenge U.S.
www.spokesman.com
'Who knows if it will survive': Experts question how long Trump's Venezuela oil deal will last
www.politico.com
... Oil company executives and Venezuela experts are looking skeptically at the Trump administration's $100 billion plan to boost Venezuelan oil production, raising questions about whether the deal will yield significant oil any time soon " or ever.
Under the deal the White House announced Monday, the United States would receive a 35 percent stake in oil company North American Blue Energy Partners to drill for oil in Venezuela, the latest instance of the Trump administration taking shares in a private business. As part of the deal, the U.S. would have "preferential access" to 20 percent of the oil the company produces at cost.
The partnership, if successful, would kick-start oil production in Venezuela, something President Donald Trump has wanted since his administration plucked Venezuelan President Nicols Maduro from power in January. Trump and the GOP are promoting increased imports of Venezuelan crude into the United States as a possible balm for the high fuel prices that have plagued voters since the U.S. launched its attacks against Iran in late February.
Oil executives are warning, however, that the fields targeted for production will take years to develop and expressed little confidence that the deal the White House announced with a company few are familiar with would lead to much. ...
[many more concerns expressed in the article ...]
Trump says Venezuelan oil could replenish depleted U.S. stockpiles. Will it?
www.cbsnews.com
... President Trump has framed last week's deal for the U.S. government to take a stake in Venezuela's oil reserves as a boon not just for gas prices, but also for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which has dropped to historically low levels.
"One of the things I am going to do with the Venezuelan Oil is fill up the Strategic National Reserves," Mr. Trump wrote on social media Sunday, saying "the 'topping out' process will begin very shortly, and is a Gift from Venezuela to the People of the United States."
The plan could face hurdles, energy experts say. The oil produced in Venezuela is far heavier than most of the crude in U.S. reserves and would need to be converted. And rebuilding Venezuela's ailing oil industry could take years, requiring oil producers to invest billions while navigating the country's still-uncertain political and legal landscape.
"This project is very unlikely to produce new investment and new production anytime soon," said David Goldwyn, a former federal energy official who serves as president of the consulting firm Goldwyn Global Strategies and chairs the Atlantic Council's energy advisory group. He predicted the U.S. is "at least two years, if not five to seven years at best, away from seeing that production reach the SPR, directly or indirectly." ...
The Erosion of the Army
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll resigns in protest over Hegseth's management of the Army.
outsidethebeltway.com
... Hegseth seems to have a special animus toward the Army, an institution he claims "spit me out."
He fired Army Chief of Staff General Randy George, and he has pushed out other senior Army officers; at this point, the Army has no Senate-confirmed chief of staff or secretary. (George's replacement, General Christopher LaNeve, so far does not have the necessary votes to be confirmed.) ...
@#5 ... Did he ban all license plate readers or just Flock? ...
Along those lines ...
Communities Nationwide Tearing Down Flock Cameras, Quietly Replacing Them With These Brands
www.military.com
... A wave of public backlash is pulling Flock's license plate reader cameras off streets nationwide. But in many communities, surveillance isn't ending and cameras are actually just changing brands.
As cities cancel their contracts with Flock Safety, more are hiring Axon instead. They are another law enforcement technology company that installs cameras that scan and track passing vehicles much as Flock cameras do, and they lack the public attention that Flock has received over the course of the past few months. ...
One of his better categories for polling has been immigration.
Now, even that is underwater.
President Trump Job Approval - Immigration
www.realclearpolling.com
...
RCP Average 7/17 - 8/31
Approve: 43.3
Disapprove: 53.5
Spread: -10.2
...
US launches new barrage of strikes on Iran around Strait of Hormuz September 1, 2026 7:13 AM EDT [Updated ~2:15 PM EDT]
www.reuters.com
... The U.S. launched new air strikes on Iranian targets on Tuesday, quashing hopes that an exchange of fire last weekend might not lead to a wider renewal of hostilities.
Oil prices had already risen after that first exchange of direct attacks since July and after reports of two tankers being hit on Monday leaving the Strait, the global oil supply waterway that Iran has effectively closed to shipping. Brent crude futures , already up 2% on the day, jumped almost 2% more on the reports.
Tehran remained defiant, warning that it would prevent oil being exported from the Gulf, despite a threat by U.S. President Donald Trump to hit Iran "hard" in response to the renewed Iranian strikes, and a warning from U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that Washington was about to impose new sanctions.
"Today at 12 p.m. ET (1600 GMT), U.S. forces began striking Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targets in Iran," U.S. Central Command posted on X. "The strikes follow recent attempted attacks by the IRGC against commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and against American service members deployed to the region." ...
From the sub-summary...
... The new CDC Director is failing us. ...
The problem is further up the management chain of HHS ...
Politics, not medical information, now seems to be running the HHS.
US refusals of crucial newborn vitamin spike, raising risk of dangerous bleeding
www.reuters.com
... The percentage of parents and caregivers in the United States refusing a standard vitamin K shot for infants at birth has accelerated sharply this year, an exclusive data analysis for Reuters found, putting more newborns at risk of life-threatening bleeding episodes.
The data confirms what a dozen pediatricians, neonatologists and pediatric critical care specialists told Reuters is a top concern: rising refusals of a life-protective shot and a growing wave of mistrust toward vaccines and other newborn interventions. ...
For decades, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has stoked that mistrust, sowing doubt about vaccines and other established medicines. The acceleration in vitamin K refusals this year aligns with his January announcement dropping recommendations for the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine, and five other standard childhood vaccines, from routine use.
The rate of newborns not receiving the vitamin K shot within a day of birth in hospitals jumped more than 57% from January through June, a review of health records for more than 1 million births nationwide by health data and analytics company Truveta revealed.
While vitamin K refusals have been on the rise for years, the Truveta analysis shows that in the first half of 2026, the rate of non-receipt was 2.5 times higher than the average rate from 2019 to 2024. It was 1.4 times higher than in 2025.
Babies are born with very low levels of vitamin K, which helps blood to clot, and are unprotected up until about six months of age, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which still recommends the shot. Without the injection, they are 81 times more likely in those first six months to have life-threatening bleeding in the brain or gut, the CDC says.
One out of five infants who experience serious bleeding will die. Without the shot, such bleeding occurs in one out of 59, opens new tab births.
"It's really terrifying. It's like we're going backwards," Dr. Nia Heard-Garris, pediatric physician scientist at Lurie Children's Hospital, Chicago, said of growing refusals. "We're trying really hard to keep little babies alive." ...
More ...
Flock Has a Powerful New AI Tool for Police. We Got Its Code
www.wired.com
... Flock's surveillance cameras have already sparked outrage. WIRED reconstructed its next-generation AI system, already in use by some police, to confirm it goes much further than tracking license plates. ...
Drawing on a network of cameras that logs the movements of drivers in more than 6,000 communities, the tool can pick out potential witnesses by how often their cars pass through a neighborhood, or surface a driver's "associates" from the cameras they pass together. Because the system also reaches police case files, 911 dispatch logs, and commercial identity records, those plates can be turned into names, home addresses, and relatives. It can search for people in an area drawn on a map based on nothing more than a physical description. ...
The suggested prompts sit in a cache of more than 450 files that WIRED found on Flock's own website, served by its login pages to anyone who loaded them. The code describes 45 tools at the AI's disposal, giving it access to plate scans and camera metadata, arrest records, case files, dispatch logs, ballistics results, and commercial databases that contain Social Security numbers, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, relatives and associates. ...
More from the article ...