Trump’s Strait talk gets wavy
The US president has now suggested several times that the Iran war could end without reopening the Strait of Hormuz. On Tuesday morning, he blasted European allies for not sending forces to protect navigation through the Iran-dominated waterway, which handles a fifth of the world’s oil and gas. “Go get your own oil!” he wrote on his social media platform. Donald Trump has also said talks are ongoing with a “new and more reasonable” Iranian government. Still, thousands of US troops have just arrived in the region, possibly to seize Kharg Island or Iran’s nuclear stockpiles. Are these cross-cutting approaches part of a strategy to push Tehran for more concessions or force allies to help more? Or is there… no strategy at all right now? We will wait for the next Truth Social post to find out…
Broker for US Secretary of War accused of attempting insider trading
In the weeks before the US launched the war on Iran, a broker for Secretary of War Pete Hegseth unsuccessfully tried to make a multi-million dollar investment in a BlackRock fund that focuses on defense stocks, according to a staggering scoop by the Financial Times. The Pentagon dismissed the report as “entirely false and fabricated.” The allegation that the Secretary of War looked to buy war stocks just before launching a war raises serious questions about ethics and corruption in the administration. But the timing of the story will also fuel speculation that Trump is setting up Hegseth to take the fall for an increasingly unpopular — and seemingly unfinishable — war. Last week, at the CPAC conference, Trump made a point of saying Hegseth was the “first to speak up” in favor of a preemptive strike on Iran.
Wikipedia bans AI-generated articles
Wikipedia announced that artificial intelligence cannot be used to write its articles from “scratch.” It’s a contentious issue among the site’s volunteer editors, who are now allowed under the policy to use AI models only for copy-editing and translation. On the one hand, AI models can greatly speed up the writing process for the site’s 7 million articles. On the other hand, Wikipedia is concerned with large language models, which interpret and generate human-like text, can fabricate information. The use of AI for basic research has now exploded to the point where ChatGPT overtook Wikipedia in monthly site visits last year. Wikipedia hasn’t completely shunned AI, however. In January, the company signed a deal with AI companies that monetizes the AI model’s heavy reliance on Wikipedia’s vast online encyclopedia.
Wikipedia’s co-founder, Jimmy Wales, recently sat down for an interview with Ian Bremmer in an episode of GZERO World about the platform that’s survived two decades of culture wars, misinformation, and declining trust in traditional media. Check it out here.
