Features

US special forces’ secret weapons

By using a sonic weapon in the mission to capture Nicolás Maduro, as Donald Trump appears to have confirmed, Delta Force commandos not only triggered a paradigm shift in warfare, but served poetic justice. When asked whether such a weapon had been used, the President replied: “It’s probably good not to talk about it.” But

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How Trump’s Greenland strategy could imperil his legacy

President Trump has returned home from Davos, Switzerland, basking in the glow of his latest diplomatic Houdini act. For weeks, the President made Europe shudder with fear and sputter with rage as he abruptly escalated his demand for a total US takeover of Greenland. He said he was ready to launch an invasion or reignite

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Are you long on America?

Donald Trump has completed the first year of his second presidency – and remains a truly divisive figure. He may have pulled back, after an absurd escalation, from his apparent threat to annex Greenland by force. But European leaders continue to berate him for his turbulent behavior in international affairs, and a growing number of

AI marketing is driving me to distraction

For years, retailers have been behaving like needy friends. My phone would ping. “Hi there!” an email would read, “We’ve missed you.” Who could this be? I would wonder happily, before realizing that the warm and loving message was from someone in the marketing department of the emporium from which I’d once bought a couple

The drive toward electric cars has been a disaster

Just two years ago, Mary Barra, chief executive of General Motors, declared: “We believe in an all-electric future.” She went on to claim that the challenges her company was facing in the EV market were merely temporary bumps on the road to net zero. But as Bob Dylan famously observed, things have changed. On January

Meet Katie Miller, MAGA’s Oprah

When Trump administration figures want to do a warm, humanizing interview these days, they can’t depend on the mainstream media. It’s often adversarial or downright hostile. Chatty bro podcasters such as Joe Rogan give them room to talk, but also challenge them on policy positions. Their best bet is The Katie Miller Podcast, a show

Inside the Cambodian cybercrime compounds run by Chinese gangs

The scrappy Cambodian border town of Poipet, long associated with vice and criminality, was shaken shortly before Christmas by the sound of F-16 fighter jets screaming overhead. The Thai Royal Air Force was, astonishingly, bombing a series of casinos. At least five fortified compounds were damaged, which were part of a vast industry that has

Did the American Revolution ever really end?

We Americans celebrate July 4, 1776, as our national birthday, and this year, of course, marks our 250th. But the American Revolution began before that. And when did it end? Maybe it never did. In 1812, warhawks in Congress and president James Madison – the man known to posterity as the very father of the

The deep-state vampire

To get a preliminary sense of how deep and how entrenched the deep state is, consider the State of Virginia. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, did not control either house of the state legislature. Nevertheless, he managed to get immense reforms accomplished in his four years as governor. But the Dems didn’t mind, not really. Why?

Will Congress shield the US from foreign attacks on the First Amendment?

Britain’s Online Safety Act is part of an escalating censorship war between Europe and the United States. It was sold to the British public as legislation that would protect children; in practice, it is a far-reaching internet censorship statute with explicit extraterritorial reach. The OSA purports to grant the UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, the power

NATO’s Suez moment

In 1969, Charles de Gaulle told his friend André Malraux that America’s “desire – and one day it will satisfy it – is to desert Europe. You will see.” It has taken nearly six decades, but de Gaulle’s prophecy now looks uncomfortably close to fulfillment. After years of diplomatic effort to manage, placate and charm

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Greenland and the new space race

Donald Trump’s desire for Greenland is not just about access to oil, minerals and control of the new strategic and commercial corridors opening in the region. It’s also about data. Specifically, the most important data in the world. For decades, Pituffik Space Base – formerly Thule – in Greenland has been central to US space

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How far can bravado take the US?

Operation Absolute Resolve, Donald Trump’s rendition of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, was a brilliantly executed coup. The audacious raid did not undermine international law, as many European and Democratic politicians have said. But it did expose the weakness and pomposity of the world’s multilateral bodies. Maduro traded oil for loans with China while helping Moscow

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America’s Somalis and the ‘learing’ explosion

I suspect that Somalis around the country – especially, but not exclusively, in Minneapolis – wish about now that they had spent more time studying the wit and wisdom of Gertrude Stein. Stein, had she lived in our own day, might well have become commissioner of New York City’s Fire Department. She had the one

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The Maduro raid was a triumph of American innovation

In the early hours of Saturday, January 3, Caracas went dark. Power failed across much of the city as strikes and cyber-attacks disabled critical systems. What followed was not a conventional invasion, but one of the most audacious special forces operations in modern history. Within hours, Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, had been

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