Kot sem že nekajkrat povedal: Ameriški napad na Irak v 2023 je (s posledičnim dramatičnim dvigom cen nafte in plina) Rusijo potegnil iz bankrota in jo znova vrnil med velesile.

Tokratni ameriški napad na Iran bo ruskemu gospodarstvu letos dal pospešek in dodatno geopolitično moč – Indija in Kitajska bosta plačevali več za rusko nafto, ker bo ta edina dosegljiva. Rusija bo nehote največji zmagovalec te vojne.  Kateri pametnjakovič je bil arhitekt tega norega napada na Irak?

(če še ne veste: Iranci so danes v Savdski Arabiji napadli največji izvozni naftni terminal na svetu in če se bodo v vojno proti Iranu vključile zalivske države, jim bodo Iranci potolkli vsa ključna nahajališča, terminale in skladišča nafte; izgubili bodo tudi svoje, toda Iranci borijo bitko za svoje preživetje).

Jože P. Damijan, Drago Babič

Slovenija se v evropskih in mednarodnih primerjavah še vedno uvršča med države z razmeroma visoko kakovostjo življenja. Po kazalnikih socialne varnosti, dostopnosti javnih storitev, nizke dohodkovne neenakosti in splošnega zadovoljstva prebivalstva praviloma presega povprečje Evropske unije. Ta rezultat ni naključen. Je posledica zgodovinsko ugodnega institucionalnega razvoja, relativno uspešne tranzicije, razmeroma uravnoteženega socialno-ekonomskega modela, vključitve v skupni evropski trg relativno stabilnega makroekonomskega okvira.

Toda Poročilo o razvoju 2025 temu uspehu nastavlja natančno in neprijetno ogledalo. Ključna ugotovitev poročila ni v tem, da bi Slovenija danes živela slabo, temveč v tem, da se Slovenija po letu 2010 vse bolj oddaljuje od razvojne dinamike, ki bi takšno raven blaginje lahko dolgoročno vzdrževala. Rast produktivnosti dela v Sloveniji že več kot desetletje zaostaja za povprečjem EU in še izraziteje za vodilnimi inovacijskimi gospodarstvi. Po letu 2020 se proces realne konvergence v BDP na prebivalca praktično ustavlja.

Slovenija je obstala v režimu nizke investicijske intenzivnosti. Podatki iz Poročila o razvoju 2025 kažejo, da so poslovne investicije v Sloveniji po krizi ostale trajno nižje kot v primerljivih državah, zlasti investicije v neoprijemljivi kapital – raziskave in razvoj, digitalizacijo, organizacijske inovacije in razvoj kadrov. Delež vlaganj v raziskave in razvoj sicer ni zanemarljiv, vendar je struktura teh vlaganj neuravnotežena: preveč sredstev ostaja ujetih v raziskovalni sferi, premalo pa jih preide v faze prototipiranja, pilotnih linij in komercializacije. Še izrazitejši je zaostanek pri vlaganjih v digitalizacijo procesov, razvoj kadrov in organizacijske inovacije v podjetjih – torej v tiste elemente, ki neposredno vplivajo na produktivnost.

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Andrew Korybko

The goal is to obtain proxy control over Iran’s enormous oil and gas reserves so that they can be weaponized as leverage against China for coercing it into a lopsided trade deal that would derail its superpower rise and therefore restore US-led unipolarity.

Trump claimed that the US’ military campaign against Iran is to “defend the American people”, while many critics have alleged (whether in jest or not) that it’s to distract from the Epstein Files, but few observers realize that it’s actually all about China. It was explained here that Trump 2.0 “decided to gradually deprive China of access to markets and resources, ideally through a series of trade deals, in order to imbue the US with the indirect leverage required to peacefully derail China’s superpower rise.”

To elaborate, “The US’ trade deals with the EU and India could ultimately result in them curtailing China’s access to their markets under pain of punitive tariffs if they refuse. In parallel, the US’ special operation in Venezuela, pressure on Iran, and simultaneous attempts to subordinate Nigeria and other leading energy producers could curtail China’s access to the resources required for fueling its superpower rise.” The resource dimension that’s relevant to Iran is a major part of the US’ “Strategy of Denial”.

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Moralni pristop k mednarodnemu pravu

Hipokritični pristop k mednarodnemu pravu v funkciji vazalnega odnosa do gospodarja:

“Legal assessments under international law will achieve relatively little in this regard… That is why now is not the moment to lecture our partners and allies; despite all doubts, we share many of their goals, without ourselves being able to actually achieve them.”

Scott Ritter:

President Trump has gambled his entire legacy on a quick and relatively bloodless victory over Iran.

His goal (and the goal of his Israeli masters/partners) is regime change.

The plan his “Secretary of War” (a name which is fundamentally at odds with the concept of a “Peace President”) has convinced him to implement involves decapitating the Iranian leadership, suppressing the Iranian security apparatus, and waiting for the Iranian people to take matters into their own hands. In his concluding remarks made in an 8-minute video posted on his Truth Social account shortly after the joint Israeli-US attacks began, Trump laid out the basic gist of his plan:

To the members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the armed forces and all of the police, I say tonight that you must lay down your weapons and have complete immunity. Or in the alternative, face certain death. So, lay down your arms. You will be treated fairly with total immunity, or you will face certain death. Finally, to the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. Stay sheltered. Don’t leave your home. It’s very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.

For many years, you have asked for America’s help. But you never got it. No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight. Now you have a president who is giving you what you want. So let’s see how you respond. America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force. Now is the time to seize control of your destiny, and to unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is close within your reach. This is the moment for action. Do not let it pass.

Using intelligence provided by the United States (and openly bragged about by Donald Trump in the lead up to this war), Israel attacked and killed some 46 members of Iran’s senior military and civilian leadership—including the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

This single action, more than anything else the United States has done (including yet again carrying out the war crime of perfidy by lulling the Iranians into a false sense of security through so-called “peace negotiations” that neither the US nor Israel ever intended to follow through on) shows both the moral and intellectual vacuum that exists within the Trump administration when it comes to Iran.

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Wall Street Journal:

“The precise size of the U.S. stock of air-defense interceptors—what the Pentagon calls magazine depth—is classified. But repeated conflicts with Iran and its proxies in the Middle East have been eating into the supply of air defenses in the region.”

In 12 day war, some evidence Iran conserved many missiles, including its more capable ones, in case war spiraled.

They understand the missile defense math is on their side and can potentially wait US out.

The problem: Iran drones and missiles are cheap and easy to replace. But missile defense interceptions are expensive and time consuming to build.

US might run out before they do, and they can out produce missiles compared to US interceptor production.

It’s the same broad cost-exchange problem US encountered fighting the Houthis, armed by Iran with similar cheap capabilities. That was less about interceptors/missile defense than premier U.S. guided missiles vs. cheap launchers.

US spent $7 billion bombing Houthis over about 6-7 weeks and failed to degrade Houthis’ ability to attack.

The problem v. Iran is much worse because on top of expensive offensive munitions, US and Israel are burning through defensive munitions (interceptors) too.

Trump says he wanted regime change but it seems like he thought that could happen in a week — or otherwise perhaps hoped remnants of Iran regime would “lay down arms” for “immunity.”

What happens if Iran still attacking Gulf targets a week from now, with interceptor stocks even more critical?

The level of overconfidence coming from the White House and Trump is astounding.

https://wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-races-to-accomplish-iran-mission-before-munitions-run-out-c014acbc?mod=author_content_page_1_pos_1

I may have been the only analyst to predict this in advance. Now pls listen to me carefully.

The US and Israel do not have a theory of victory. There was two very hard-to-solve problems with their war planning. 

• US-Israeli war aims are, preferably, to permanently remove Iran from the ranks of the confrontation states by toppling the regime; failing that, to disarm Iran by destroying its missile arsenal.

• Regime change cannot be accomplished by aerial bombardment. It has never been done. Without ground-force partners, there is no way to control political developments on the ground. Air coercion is simply not up to the task.

• What can be accomplished, if one is prepared to expend much of one’s magazine, is crippling and fragmenting the state. But that expands rather than constrains the possibility space. This is not a path to a clear victory for the Western powers.

• The second problem is even more immediate. This is the issue that the Iranian arsenal is simply too large for the US to disarm it. And now that, as I predicted, they are going for counter-value strikes on soft targets, how do you protect the oil monarchies? And if you can’t do that, then how you contain this? How do you prevent Iran from wrecking financial markets, the world economy, the Trump presidency, and the GOP for a generation?

• There are considerable risks of escalation here. The White House needs to game plan the exit plan here. There is no clear path to victory. And the risks are multiplying by the hour. You are not going to like where this ends up.

 

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Stanford just analyzed the privacy policies of the six biggest AI companies in America.

Amazon. Anthropic. Google. Meta. Microsoft. OpenAI.

All six use your conversations to train their models. By default. Without meaningfully asking.

Here’s what the paper actually found.

The researchers at Stanford HAI examined 28 privacy documents across these six companies  not just the main privacy policy, but every linked subpolicy, FAQ, and guidance page accessible from the chat interfaces.

They evaluated all of them against the California Consumer Privacy Act, the most comprehensive privacy law in the United States.

The results are worse than you think.

Every single company collects your chat data and feeds it back into model training by default. Some retain your conversations indefinitely. There is no expiration. No auto-delete. Your data just sits there, forever, feeding future versions of the model.

Some of these companies let human employees read your chat transcripts as part of the training process. Not anonymized summaries. Your actual conversations.

But here’s where it gets genuinely dangerous.

 

For companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon companies that also run search engines, social media platforms, e-commerce sites, and cloud services  your AI conversations don’t stay inside the chatbot.

They get merged with everything else those companies already know about you.

Your search history. Your purchase data. Your social media activity. Your uploaded files.

The researchers describe a realistic scenario that should make you pause: You ask an AI chatbot for heart-healthy dinner recipes. The model infers you may have a cardiovascular condition. That classification flows through the company’s broader ecosystem. You start seeing ads for medications. The information reaches insurance databases. The effects compound over time.

You shared a dinner question. The system built a health profile.

It gets worse when you look at children’s data.

Four of the six companies appear to include children’s chat data in their model training. Google announced it would train on teenager data with opt-in consent. Anthropic says it doesn’t collect children’s data but doesn’t verify ages. Microsoft says it collects data from users under 18 but claims not to use it for training.

Children cannot legally consent to this. Most parents don’t know it’s happening.

The opt-out mechanisms are a maze.

Some companies offer opt-outs. Some don’t. The ones that do bury the option deep inside settings pages that most users will never find. The privacy policies themselves are written in dense legal language that researchers  people whose job is reading these documents  found difficult to interpret.

And here’s the structural problem nobody is addressing.

There is no comprehensive federal privacy law in the United States governing how AI companies handle chat data. The patchwork of state laws leaves massive gaps. The researchers specifically call for three things: mandatory federal regulation, affirmative opt-in (not opt-out) for model training, and automatic filtering of personal information from chat inputs before they ever reach a training pipeline.

None of those exist today.

The uncomfortable truth is this: every time you type something into ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Meta AI, Copilot, or Alexa, you are contributing to a training dataset. Your medical questions. Your relationship problems. Your financial details. Your uploaded documents.

You are not the customer. You are the curriculum.

And the companies doing this have made it as hard as possible for you to stop.

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