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Another Way for AI To Destroy Journalism
Popular Information
Charles: If you’re making a list of the top one hundred ways artificial intelligence will destroy the world, Caleb Ecarma has an excellent candidate for you.
Peter Thiel, one of the five scariest tech bros alive, is financing a new scheme to use AI to “subject the media’s claims to systematic investigation and judgement.”
The new company called Objection AI was founded by Aron D’Souza, the lawyer whose previous claim to fame was the Thiel-funded lawsuit that destroyed Gawker in 2016.
[Objection AI] will use an “AI jury” to “subject the media’s claims to systematic investigation and judgment.” That same system of AI adjudication assigns a numerical value—the so-called “Honor Index” score—grading the trustworthiness of individual reporters. And for a starting price of $2,000, anyone can pay for the company to review and adjudicate complaints they may have about a news outlet or reporter.
D’Souza has described Objection as a private arbitration court, which individuals can turn to when they feel they have been unfairly maligned by reporters or pundits. “Your reputation takes years to build and seconds to destroy online,” the company wrote in a recent post on X. “Objection makes adjudication fair, fast, and affordable.”
The company is funded with millions of dollars in funding from Thiel, former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan, and other investors.
Objection also leans heavily on judicial trappings to dress up its reviews, including case numbers and official-sounding case names. “Public v The Wall Street Journal,” reads a label that Objection assigned to its pending investigation of a story the paper published on Donald Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
To promote Objection, D’Souza has claimed that leading AI models apply “law consistently 100% of the time,” adding, “It’s become obvious that lawyers are probably the most displaceable profession, but judges are, too.” However, large language models used by lawyers frequently produce factual errors and hallucinations filed in court. Last week, Sullivan & Cromwell, a top Wall Street law firm, had to apologize after it submitted a key filing that contained erroneous case citations generated by AI.
When a War Isn’t a War
New York Times
Scott: Mostly it seems to have to do with law. When you don’t want to comply with the domestic and constitutional law governing war. And when you don’t want to comply with the law of armed conflict, which sets out rules over centuries about how war must be conducted in order to minimize the harelaboratedm to innocent civilians.
On this as so many other things, Donald Trump takes guidance from his friends, especially the dynamic troika of Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu and Crown Prince Bone Saw, who are so much alike in so many ways, especially in their contempt for law, accountability in any form, and—for Trump, Putin and the Crown Prince—in their love for fossil fuels and the wealth and conflict—the devil’s excrement, it is called.
In February 2022, Putin launched his invasion in earnest of Ukraine, assuring his people this would be over in a few quick weeks, it was merely a special military operation—not a war. And now Trump has followed his tutor’s path, launching a war on Iran with the same confident and false assurances, and even copying Putin’s name: a mere “special operation,” not a war. Trump has done this and gotten away with it so far because of a supine MAGA Congress, in which thin majorities are wielded not to approve Trump’s war, but to avert any deliberation or debate about it.
The legal figleaf used so far is the War Powers Resolution, which is designed to give a president warding off an attack or perceiving that one is imminent a period of 60 days to do so before coming back to Congress for approval of his military operations.
The WPR doesn’t apply to the case of an unprovoked war of choice, like the one against Iran, but it served Trump’s and the GOP’s immediate needs, which apparently are to avoid presenting a rationale for the war, stating objectives and securing consent and funding for it. That lapsed at midnight on May 1, 2026, however.
So how does Trump cope with that? Charlie Savage takes a look.
One part [of the WPR] requires presidents “in every possible instance” to consult with Congress before deploying troops into hostile situations. Another declares a narrow view of the circumstances in which presidents may do so without authorization — essentially, when the country is under attack.
If presidents make unilateral deployments, one part requires notification of Congress, and another says they must withdraw troops after 60 days if lawmakers have not since authorized the operations. Other parts also create ways for Congress to swiftly vote to terminate unauthorized hostilities right away.
How is the Senate using it?
The Senate is considering invoking a mechanism that can force presidents to withdraw troops. It voted 52 to 47 to bring up for debate a joint resolution, sponsored by Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, that would bar further use of the U.S. military for “hostilities within or against Venezuela.” Five Republicans joined Democrats in moving the measure forward.
The Republican-controlled House in December rejected similar measures, but that was before Mr. Trump bombed Venezuelan territory and launched a military incursion that seized the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro. About 80 people were killed. Mr. Trump said U.S. involvement in Venezuela may last for years.
What did Trump and Vance claim?
Mr. Trump railed on social media on Thursday at the five Republican senators who voted to take up the measure. He wrote that, “despite their ‘stupidity,’ the War Powers Act is Unconstitutional, totally violating Article II of the Constitution, as all Presidents, and their Departments of Justice, have determined before me.”
In a news conference, Mr. Vance, a Yale Law School graduate, declared that, “as the president I believe himself has already said, every president, Democrat or Republican, believes the War Powers Act is fundamentally a fake and unconstitutional law.”
Is that true?
No, at least when applied to the part the Senate measure is invoking. But technically, yes — if one misleadingly portrays the War Powers Resolution as a singular thing.
Turning Lebanon Into Gaza
New York Times
Charles: Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, has promised to repeat all of the war crimes he committed in Gaza, this time in Lebanon.
This is The New York Times at its very best: Samuel Granados, Abdi Latif Dahir and Sanjana Varghese showing exactly what this looks like in words and one devastating video after another.
An entire street is leveled. Houses and shops are flattened, including a popular cafe. This is what is left of the town of Bint Jbeil, just a couple of miles from the Israeli border, nearly two months after Israel relaunched its ground offensive in southern Lebanon.
The village of Bint Jbeil in southern Lebanon. Drone video from @amitseg, via Telegram.
The destruction of this town, a Hezbollah stronghold, is repeated again and again across southern Lebanon, a lush region of undulating vistas, where Israel has razed border villages as part of an effort to lay the groundwork for a larger occupation.
The approach, Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said, was modeled on tactics the military used in Gaza, where the Israeli military reduced entire neighborhoods, buildings and streets to rubble…
Widespread demolitions have flattened expanses of at least two dozen towns and villages near the border, with damage to government offices as well as civilian infrastructure, including schools, hospitals and mosques.
Villages are now blurred into ash, with the white of rubble marking town after town.
This is what happens when you live in a world in which many of the most powerful countries are run by mobsters, and obeisance to any kind of international law is just a distant, forlorn memory.
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