President Donald Trump on Friday announced the decision to terminate all government contracts with AI company Anthropic, after that company refused to comply with a set of demands issued by the Department of War. Anthropic had sought assurances from the Pentagon that its AI models would not be used for fully autonomous weapons or mass surveillance against Americans. Anthropic’s AI model Claude was used in the U.S. military operation that captured the former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Wall Street Journal reported.  “We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!” Trump wrote Friday on Truth Social, adding that Anthropic’s tools would be phased out of government work over the next six months. “Anthropic’s stance is fundamentally incompatible with American principles,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth wrote in a statement on X. Sam Altman, the CEO of Open AI, responded to the news by announcing his company’s own agreement with the Pentagon for Open AI’s models to be deployed in the government’s classified network.  The post Trump Terminates Federal Contracts With Anthropic appeared first on The American Conservative.

Foreign Affairs A War in Search of a Strategy The attack on Iran is an obvious folly. As one of the few realist Republicans to actively oppose the neoconservative fever sweeping the land during the ill-fated reign of George W. Bush, I must admit a familiar sickening feeling is presently in the pit of my stomach. For, as with the disastrous adventure in Iraq, the American-Israeli attack on Iran amounts to nothing so much as being a war in search of a strategy.  As was true in the early 2000s, the administration is currently—like a very bad high school debater—throwing myriad weak strategic arguments at the wall, hoping that something, somehow, will stick; that analytical quantity will somehow obviate the need for analytical quality.  First, we are told the joint attack is designed to stop Tehran from rekindling its nuclear program, the very one the president proudly proclaimed had been “obliterated” following the attack on Fordow last summer. Well, if that is the case, why the urgent rush to end a program we already got rid of eight months ago? Of course, the reality is somewhere between the crowing that went on then, and the grudging hatred of TDS-laden Democrats, who acted as if the attack was much ado about nothing. The reality is that, according to most intelligence estimates, Iran’s nuclear program has been set back for a number of years (say three to four), though certainly not forever. But this is surely far enough away that taking out Iran now is not a clear and present danger to anyone.  Second, we are told that the mullahs are threatening American lives. This also doesn’t pass the analytical laugh test. The long-range missiles some desperate neocons are touting that might be able to strike America simply don’t exist. The only Americans in harm’s way seem to be the U.S. servicemen on bases in the region. It seems beyond credible that an Iran on its knees would have chosen to strike the Americans there. There are anti-missile platforms in place to protect them, so the effect would be marginal. To do so would surely prove suicidal for a regime already on its last legs. Why on earth would the canny Iranians give their American enemies a gold-plated casus belli? Again, it simply makes no sense. Third, the White House charges that Iran amounts to a security threat impacting primary American national interests. This, too, is an exercise in delusion. The Trump administration deserves great credit for reordering admittedly creaky American geostrategic doctrine on largely realist terms. Gone has been the disastrous Wilsonian/neocon establishment blob notion that America must intervene everywhere, all the time, all at once, as if all regions were of equal importance to the country. The discredited foreign policy establishment had surely forgotten the nostrum that if you love everything, you love nothing, that failing to make strategic choices based on American national interests is a choice in itself.  Instead, in the National Security Strategy and elsewhere, the Trump team made a series of bold realist choices, making American foreign policy fit for the new multipolar era. In accordance with the Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, the Western Hemisphere comes first, then the pivotal Indo-Pacific (with much of the world’s future political growth as well as much of its future political risk), followed by Europe, and only then the Middle East. In such a circumstance, transitioning to serving as an offshore balancing power makes the most sense; America should only aggressively intervene in such an important but not pivotal region when the organic balance of power comes unstuck.  The idea that present-day Iran is a threat to such a regional balance of power is ludicrous. The economically illiterate mullahs have ruined the economy; the nuclear program has been decisively set back; the government has been forced to shoot thousands of their own children to stay in power; Iranian proxies are just a shadow of their former selves, whether they be Hamas, Hezbollah, the departed Assad regime in Syria, the chaotic Iraqis, or the piratical Houthis. To put it plainly, these are not the attributes of a power about to run the table and upend the strategic regional order in the Middle East. So, no, I’m not terrified by this point, either.  That leaves the real reason (I think) for the attack: regime change. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put it far more plainly and (blessedly) directly: The goal of the attacks is to end the existential threat that comes from the regime of the ayatollahs. But if this is the truth, it can just as simply be dispensed with.  Iran certainly does pose a greater risk to Israel than to the United States, in terms of geography, missile wherewithal, and the like. But as American interests are not the same as any other country’s (including even longstanding allies such as Israel), why in the world should that motivate the Americans to such folly? We are here to serve American interests, and no other. Anyone not willing to get on board such an obvious statement really shouldn’t be seriously listened to, certainly not in terms of the American strategic debate, which should only revolve around this country’s specific national interests.  Second, Iran is not (despite neoconservative and Mossad whisperings) in a state of revolutionary ferment; it is not a house of cards that one more bombing is likely to tumble. Even if the grand ayatollah is dead (as some reports now say), the regime itself shows no signs of crumbling. Rather, during recent, tragic demonstrations, the reverse was proven. Despite tens of thousands of its people taking to the streets, and despite assurances from Reza Pahlavi, the desperate crown prince, that portions of the pivotal Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) would join the people, nothing of the sort happened.  My political risk firm has done a good deal of work evaluating what it takes to mount a successful revolution, whether in France, the U.S., Russia, China, or Cuba. One of the essential factors across the board is for mid-level members of the security establishment (the army, intelligence services, interior ministry) to go over to the people: colonels, majors, and captains first fraternizing with the demonstrators, and then helping to actively arm them. This is the essential political risk step in any revolutionary process, the alchemy that turns mere unrest into sustained political change. Yet, recently, and despite the callow crown prince’s assurances, nothing of the sort happened. Rather than coming over to the people, the IRGC murderously shot them down. There is absolutely no indication—that whatever happens to the ailing ayatollah—that this is a house of cards that is about to fall.  The driving force behind all this is what statisticians call the “hot hand fallacy,” that because someone has been lucky (for example, you’ve made four three-point baskets in a row) you will continue to be so. The administration emerged victorious from its gamble in Fordow, and likewise in Venezuela after breathtakingly snatching Maduro. But the notion that such success will effortlessly continue is just that, a fallacy. For one, those were very specific, limited missions, with very clearly defined metrics for success and failure. This time, with rolling strikes over many days, the mission is lengthier, and crucially—as we have just made crystal clear—the yardstick for success and failure is not just obscure; it simply isn’t there.  It is almost impossible to succeed in foreign policy if the terms of that success are not made plain; here, as was true with Iraq, all we have is a war in search of a strategy. If this were to succeed on such terms, it would amount to a first in history. However, what is surely at risk is one of the high points of the Trump era: The idea that we must stop fighting ill-conceived wars of choice and serve the needs of “America First.” The post A War in Search of a Strategy appeared first on The American Conservative.

President Donald Trump suggested that he could nominate Texas’s Senator Ted Cruz as a justice on the Supreme Court at a rally in Corpus Christi Friday. Trump called Cruz an “amazing guy” and joked that he would be an easy nominee to confirm because he would have support from both parties in the Senate.“He’s the only guy I know, he’ll get 100 percent of the Democrat vote, 100 percent of the Republican vote. They want to get him out of there. He is such a pain in the a**, but he’s so good and so talented,” Trump said. Trump has floated Cruz as a Supreme Court justice before, but the senator has said he would decline the nomination. The post Trump Floats Cruz for Supreme Court appeared first on The American Conservative.

“Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will [America’s] heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.” So spoke Secretary of State John Quincy Adams in a speech to the House of Representatives on July 4, 1821. On February 28, 2026, America went abroad to destroy a monster — the Islamic regime that has plagued the people of Iran and much of the world since it seized power in 1979. President Trump, who launched the attack under his Article II powers in coordination with Israel, called upon Iranians to overthrow the Islamic regime, but he justified the air and naval attack on U.S. national security grounds, especially Iran’s killing of Americans since the 1980s, the threat posed by the regime’s growing arsenal of ballistic missiles, and its avowed goal of obtaining nuclear weapons. President Trump’s brief address announcing the attacks cited Iran’s “unending campaign of bloodshed, mass murder targeting the United States, our troops and the innocent people in many, many countries.” Trump cited the regime’s taking of American hostages in 1979, the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. military personnel, the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, the killing of American military personnel in Iraq by Iranian proxies, attacks on American vessels in shipping lanes, its promotion and funding of terrorism throughout the world, the Iranian-supported Hamas attack on Israel, and the recent massacre of Iranian citizens who were protesting against the regime. And Trump accused Iran of attempting to rebuild its nuclear weapons program. The president’s list of Iranian and Iranian-sponsored attacks against Americans is reminiscent of the powerful argument set forth by the late Norman Podhoretz in his book World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism. Podhoretz wrote the book based on his articles that appeared in Commentary in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks on America by Al Qaeda. Podhoretz’s book was a full-throated support of the Global War on Terror launched by the George W. Bush administration. Podhoretz portrayed the geopolitical threat of Islamofascism to the previous totalitarian threats of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. And while Trump is seeking regime change in Iran, there is no sense that [he] will seek to transform Iran into a Western-style democracy. Podhoretz’s list of justifications for the Global War on Terror included Iran’s taking and holding of American hostages in 1979; the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in October 1983, by Iranian-supported Hezbollah; the bombing of the American embassy in Kuwait in December 1983; Hezbollah’s kidnapping and murder of CIA station chief William Buckley and the taking hostage of other Americans between 1982 and 1992; the September 1984 truck-bombing of the American embassy annex in Beirut; Hezbollah’s hijacking of a Kuwaiti airliner and killing of two American passengers in December 1984; Hezbollah’s hijacking of an American airliner and murder of an American naval officer on the plane in June 1985; the seizing of the Achille Lauro and murder of a wheelchair-bound American in October 1985 by PLO terrorists backed by Libya; the first bombing of the World Trade Center in New York in 1993 by Al Qaeda terrorists; the attempted assassination of former President George H.W. Bush in Kuwait; the November 1995 car bombing near a building housing U.S. military advisers in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that killed five Americans; the June 1996 truck bombing of Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 U.S. airmen and wounding 240 other U.S. citizens; the 1998 car bombings of our embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 12 Americans; that attack on the Cole in 2000; and culminating in the 9/11 attacks. Not all of those attacks on Americans and U.S. interests were tied to Iran, but many of them were. Podhoretz viewed the Islamic state of Iran as the Clausewitzian center of gravity in the war against what he called Islamofascism. The Bush administration seemed to agree and sought and achieved regime change in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also attempted to transform those countries into Western-style democracies, with disastrous results. Wars always have unintended consequences. In On War, Clausewitz famously wrote that “Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult.”  The “friction” of war, Clausewitz explained, “corresponds to that which distinguishes real war from war on paper.” Trump as a candidate and as president denounced the endless wars of the Global War on Terror. And while Trump is seeking regime change in Iran, there is no sense that if the U.S.-Israeli attacks result in regime change, the Trump administration will seek to transform Iran into a Western-style democracy. That would be a fool’s errand. What would replace the Mullahs in Iran — should they fall — is unknown and unknowable. READ MORE from Francis P. Sempa: The Court Strikes, But the Tariffs March On America Should Celebrate Nixon, Not the Washington Post Anchors Away: The Perils of Our Shipbuilding Imbalance