Worried that Iran had gotten too close to building a nuclear weapon and enticed by a moment of opportunity created by the defeat of Iran’s allies in Syria and Lebanon and the weakening of Iran’s military defenses in an earlier conflict, Israel launched a mass airstrike campaign to cripple Iran’s nuclear program. Nuclear facilities and nuclear scientists were targeted, as were high-ranking members of Iran’s military. The U.S. later joined the conflict by using B-2 bombers armed with massive bunker-busting bombs to destroy Iran’s underground nuclear facilities.
Iran’s relative weakness was made stark as it could only respond with volleys of inaccurate missiles that were mostly shot down and caused comparatively little damage on the ground against Israel and a U.S. base. All sides have agreed to a cease-fire, though it may not last long. The campaign has been a success for Israel and America and a humiliation for Iran, though there are doubts about how badly damaged its nuclear program was.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Israel_war
An Israeli airstrike destroyed two F-14 fighters still in Iranian service.
https://youtu.be/to9Dw7sKI9Q?si=oHOwIwJPdGaQ4sF7
A question no one asked is whether Israel’s attack on Iran was legal.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-attack-iran-amounts-crime-aggression-scholars-say
Iran should have backed down and taken Trump’s nuclear deal.
‘“The dominoes that fell after Oct. 7th left Iran’s proxy network in shambles, eroded deterrence and reduced its counterstrike capabilities.”
But he said Iran failed to adapt and refused diplomatic overtures from Washington despite its increasingly vulnerable position.’
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/irans-strategic-blunders-paved-way-humiliating-defeats-experts-say-rcna214584
Iran is close to building a nuclear device, and in spite of the damage it just suffered, it could resume its nuclear weapons program.
https://youtu.be/a3_RNSReTi8?si=sowYQxYTmIe084Dn
The B-2 bombers were extraordinarily accurate and precise in their strike on Iran’s underground facilities.
https://youtu.be/SxqipJgtTdk?si=bmZ2ZBojZccE7OaJ
Ukraine launched a stunning sneak attack against several air bases deep inside of Russia, destroying or badly damaging a total of 20 bombers. It will probably be remembered as a watershed moment in the history of war.
https://thebulletin.org/2025/06/ukrainian-attack-on-russian-bombers-shows-how-cheap-drones-could-upset-global-security/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Spiderweb
Hamas terrorists shot several aid workers to death in Gaza. The victims were working for a new organization called the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,” which Israel and the U.S. created to distribute food and medicine to Gaza’s citizens without Hamas’ interference. Israel has long accused Hamas of stealing or reselling foreign aid meant for average people.
https://nypost.com/2025/06/12/world-news/hamas-attack-on-bus-carrying-palestinians-kill-at-least-five-gaza-humanitarian-foundation/
Across Gaza, more mass killings of civilians like this happened this month.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-tank-shelling-kills-45-people-awaiting-aid-trucks-gaza-ministry-says-2025-06-17/
Due to Houthi attacks from Yemen, commercial ship traffic through the Red Sea has sharply declined.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/05/business/red-sea-houthis-shipping.html
‘F-22s Fly Alongside MiGs To Commemorate Founder Of America’s Secret Soviet Fighter Squadron’
https://www.twz.com/air/f-22s-fly-alongside-migs-to-commemorate-founder-of-americas-secret-soviet-fighter-squadron
Peter Zeihan’s predictions (from six months ago) are wrong again: Russia’s paramilitary operations across Africa have not collapsed. They did withdraw most of their troops from Mali after failing to defeat the rebels, but that’s it.
https://youtu.be/7ADOGajDN5Q?si=WY3b9jSegLsf-vyF&t=480
During WWII, the U.S. had an experimental “Yehudi” cloaking device that used lights of varying intensities to make warplanes invisible to the naked eye at long- and medium distances.
https://youtu.be/cZB8obrb8Sg?si=AnwKe38A61Hb7DNa
The Battle of Bunker Hill happened 250 years ago.
https://apnews.com/article/battle-bunker-hill-250th-anniversary-1775-857e3d748620703f287c82224ee520be
A recent paper “The Illusion of Thinking” casts into serious doubt whether even the best large reasoning model AIs can actually reason. When given novel tasks of a certain complexity, they completely fail to respond.
https://ml-site.cdn-apple.com/papers/the-illusion-of-thinking.pdf
The debate over whether large reasoning models (LRMs) are “actually reasoning” or “only imitating human reasoning” is an excellent example of how science and philosophy will converge as machines get smarter. More disquieting questions about the nature of human intelligence and consciousness will be raised as we examine whether machines have gained either attribute.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adw5211
Here’s one hour of uncut, not-cherrypicked footage of a humanoid robot called “Helix” sorting packages on a conveyor belt.
https://youtu.be/lkc2y0yb89U?si=2In9TP1jVWAQyvqV
The robotics company “Generalist” shared this demonstration video of its highly dexterous new models.
https://youtu.be/mhfleCK_IAI
If huge numbers of robots are running around, the cost of physical labor will drop to almost nothing, and all kinds of tasks you couldn’t afford before will become affordable.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Na2CBmNY7otypEmto/the-industrial-explosion
Elon Musk says he wants to use his Grok 3.5 AI to “rewrite the entire corpus of human knowledge” to remove biases and lies that humans have embedded in it. Whether he manages to do this right is irrelevant: what is important is that someone will do it someday.
The left-wing biases that Silicon Valley programmers and the nationalist biases that Chinese programmers build into their AIs are only worrisome in the short- and medium-term, as is the problem of “AI slop.” In the fullness of time, AGI will identify and remove all of the biases humans have emplaced in them, if anything because it is more adaptive to have uncluttered perceptions that align as closely as possible with reality.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/elon-musk-grok-ai-rewrite-the-entire-corpus-human-knowledge
25% of rideshare rides in San Francisco are done by autonomous Waymo cabs.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91347503/waymo-is-winning-in-san-francisco
This 2017 prediction that “Toyota will electrify entire vehicle lineup by 2025” failed so hard. Toyota only sells one fully electric vehicle today, the “bZ4X,” a small crossover SUV.
https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/18/toyota-will-electrify-entire-vehicle-lineup-by-2025/
The Musk-Trump bromance collapsed spectacularly, with both publicly insulting each other on social media and Trump threatening Musk’s business interests.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/06/musk-trump-split-could-leave-tesla-homeless-00391039
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk-says-he-regrets-some-posts-he-made-about-trump-2025-06-11/
President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” contains massive funding cuts for American scientists of all types. Most experts say it will endanger America’s scientific and technological leads over the rest of the world.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/continuing-crisis-part-xv-horrendous-trump-budget
This interview with Steven Pinker is enlightening and concise.
https://youtu.be/epQxfSp-rdU?si=Fsa68xLwq3Y-6Fxv
A 135-year-old Galapagos tortoise living in the Miami Zoo celebrated his first Father’s Day. One consequence of human medical immortality will be families where siblings are separated from each other in age by decades or even centuries.
https://www.newsweek.com/year-old-turtle-celebrates-first-fathers-day-2085788
Down syndrome will be eradicated someday, and without eradicating the fetuses afflicted with it.
https://www.earth.com/news/crispr-used-to-remove-extra-chromosomes-in-down-syndrome-and-restore-cell-function/