OUR PICKSWhat America Can Learn from Iran’s Failure | Terrorism Means Something Different Now | What Happened to the War Powers Act?, and more

What America Can Learn from Iran’s Failure  (By Yair Rosenberg, The Atlantic)
The Iranian regime’s predicament shows what happens when conspiracies, rather than reality, shape decision making.
The adherence by Iran’s military and intelligence leaders to regime-sanctioned fantasies made grasping Israel’s actual abilities impossible for them. Iran’s predicament is thus a cautionary tale about what happens when loyalty to a ruling ideology—rather than capability—determines who runs a society, and when conspiracies, rather than reality, shape decision making.
The Iranian theocracy presents an acute case of this phenomenon, the early symptoms are beginning to manifest in democratic societies, including our own. Consider: Today, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is run by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a man who has cast doubt on decades of scientific research on the effectiveness of vaccines.
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, has suggested that the former Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad did not use chemical weapons against his own people in 2017 and 2018, despite extensive documentation of the attacks, including by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the previous Trump administration. 
Thomas Fugate, a 22-year-old recent college graduate who worked on Trump’s 2024 campaign, is now the interim director of the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships at the Department of Homeland Security, despite having no apparent experience in counterterrorism. 
Politicians have long rewarded their allies with plum positions. But when allegiance replaces proficiency as the primary qualification for advancement, and conspiracism replaces competency, disaster looms. Flunkies guided by regime ideology lack the capacity to understand and solve national crises. Just look at Iran.

Terrorism Means Something Different Now  (Colin P. Clarke and Christopher P. Costa, Foreign Policy)
The firewall between violent nonstate actors and conventional warfare has become highly permeable.

The Bombing of Iran May Teach an Unwelcome Lesson on Nuclear Weapons  (Mark Landler, New York Times)
Will America’s pre-emptive strike discourage other countries from pursuing a weapon — or just the opposite?

‘They’re Not Breathing’: Inside the Chaos of ICE Detention Center 911 Calls  (Dhruv Mehrotra and Dell Cameron, Wired)
Records of hundreds of emergency calls from ICE detention centers obtained by WIRED—including audio recordings—show a system inundated by life-threatening incidents, delayed treatment, and overcrowding.

AI Agents Are Getting Better at Writing Code—and Hacking It as Well  (Will Knight, Wired)
One of the best bug-hunters in the world is an AI tool called Xbow, just one of many signs of the coming age of cybersecurity automation.

What Happened to the War Powers Act?  (Julian E. Zelizer, Foreign Policy)
A 1973 bipartisan coalition promised to restore constitutional balance, but Trump’s recent actions show things didn’t work out as planned.