UN preparing for nuclear catastrophe ‘worst case scenario’ including use of nukes in Middle East
By ELIANA SILVER, SENIOR FOREIGN NEWS REPORTER, 18 March 2026
The United Nations is preparing for a nuclear catastrophe if the Middle East war escalates further.
World Health Organization officials are monitoring the consequences of joint US-Israeli strikes on Iranian atomic sites and are remaining ‘vigilant’ for nuclear threats in the region.
WHO director Hanan Balkhy said: ‘The worst-case scenario is a nuclear incident, and that’s something that worries us the most.’
‘As much as we prepare, there’s nothing that can prevent the harm that will come … the region’s way – and globally if this eventually happens – and the consequences are going to last for decades,’ she told POLITICO.
It comes as in recent days, Donald Trump‘s AI adviser David Sacks warned that Israel could be on a path to ‘escalate the war by contemplating using a nuclear weapon.’
The UN nuclear watchdog said Wednesday that Iranian authorities had reported projectile impact at the country’s only operational nuclear power plant that caused no damage.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) ‘has been informed by Iran that a projectile hit the premises of the Bushehr NPP on Tuesday evening’, the Vienna-based agency posted on social media.
‘No damage to the plant or injuries to staff reported.’
Agency head Rafael Grossi ‘reiterates his call for restraint during the conflict to avoid any risk of a nuclear accident’, the statement said.
The Bushehr plant in southwestern Iran has the Islamic republic’s only operational nuclear power reactor and was first connected to the grid in 2011, according to the IAEA.
Tehran has been under biting US sanctions since 2018, when Washington withdrew from a deal that granted Iran sanctions relief in return for curbs on its nuclear activities designed to prevent it from developing an atomic warhead.
The US and Israel say that destroying whatever remains of Iran’s nuclear program is one of the central aims of the war.
They have long suspected Iran seeks nuclear weapons, while the Islamic Republic says its nuclear program is peaceful.
In June of last year, the US and Israel targeted shadowy nuclear infrastructure in Iran, hitting sites in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.
Balkhy explained that although there have not yet been any signs of radioactive contamination in the region, a nuclear incident could cause extreme health problems to those affected………………….
…………………….Donald Trump said those who claim Iran didn’t pose a threat are ‘not smart’ and ‘not savvy,’ adding, ‘We don’t want those people.’
His comments came after America’s top counterterrorism official resigned over the war with Iran.
In an extraordinary and unprecedented move for this administration, National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent announced he was stepping down over his objections to the US launching joint strikes with Israel.
‘It’s a good thing that he’s out because he said that Iran was not a threat. Iran was a threat – every country realized what a threat Iran was,’ the President insisted.
Trump’s AI advisor recently warned that there are ‘risks’ of an ‘escalatory approach’ by Israel.
Speaking on a podcast, David Saks said: ‘Israel could get seriously destroyed.’
‘And then you have to worry about Israel escalating the war by contemplating using a nuclear weapon.’
Sacks urged Trump to find an ‘off-ramp’ and bring the war with Iran to a swift close.
‘This is a good time to declare victory and get out,’ he added. ‘I agree that we should try to find the off-ramp.’
Intelligence gathered in the months after the strikes in June revealed the Islamic Republic desperately reconstructing a program Trump said was obliterated.
The Daily Mail exposed Iranian ‘chillers’ – sophisticated industrial equipment essential for cooling uranium – being frantically moved back into fortified underground positions as early as September 2025…………………https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15656871/UN-preparing-nuclear-catastrophe-worst-case-scenario-including-use-nukes-Middle-East.html
Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant ‘hit in strike’ as radiation update issued
A projectile struck the grounds of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant sparking fears of a terrifying nuclear incident, according to the CEO of the Russian company which runs the plant.
Joe Smith, 18 Mar 2026, https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/breaking-irans-bushehr-nuclear-power-36887601
An Iranian nuclear power plant has been hit, sparking fears of a nightmare radioactive incident.
A projectile struck the grounds of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, both Russia and Iran said. Neither country has confirmed whether there has been a release of nuclear material in the incident on Tuesday evening.
Russia’s state-run Tass news agency quoted Rosatom CEO Alexey Likhachev late Tuesday as claiming “a strike hit the area adjacent to the metrology service building located at the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant site, in close proximity to the operating power unit.” Russian technicians from Rosatom operate the plant, using Russian-made, low-enriched uranium.
Any strike on a nuclear plant risks radioactive material being released into the environment, a nightmare scenario in any war. Bushehr sits on the Persian Gulf meaning contamination of the waters could spell disaster for millions living in the Gulf States, which rely on desalination plants for their water supplies.
“There were no casualties among Rosatom State Corporation personnel,” Likhachev said. “The radiation situation at the site is normal.”
The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran later issued a statement saying “no financial, technical, or human damage occurred and no part of the plant was harmed.” Tass later reported that Iran blamed the strike on the United States and Israel.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said: “The IAEA has been informed by Iran that a projectile hit the premises of the Bushehr NPP on Tuesday evening.”
The United Nations agency added: “No damage to the plant or injuries to staff reported.”
It remains unclear what the “projectile” that hit the complex was and neither Iran nor Russia have published images of the damage.
Scottish Labour donation linked to ‘astroturf’ nuclear campaign
Anas Sarwar’s party accepted over £7,000 from Stonehaven, a lobbying firm which represents the owner of Scotland’s last nuclear power station. Scottish Labour has sought to make nuclear power a battleground in the May election.
Paul Dobson, Billy Briggs, March 19 2026, https://www.theferret.scot/scottish-labour-astroturf-nuclear/
Scottish Labour accepted a donation from a lobbying firm linked to a controversial “grassroots” campaign pushing to overturn Scotland’s ban on nuclear power.
The £7,200 contribution came from Stonehaven, a London-based public relations (PR) company which counts the French state-owned energy giant EDF as a paying client. EDF owns Scotland’s last nuclear plant at Torness and could be one of the biggest beneficiaries if the ban on new nuclear plants is overturned.
This week The Ferret revealed close ties between Stonehaven and Britain Remade, which claims it is a “grassroots”, “pro-growth” campaign group, and is leading calls for the Scottish Government to reverse its opposition to nuclear energy.
We found that the private company behind Britain Remade had appointed senior Stonehaven staff as directors, as well as other overlaps between the firms. Britain Remade has denied that it has ever taken corporate money and insists its campaigning is not influenced by funders.
Scottish Labour said the donation, made in May 2025, related to a commercial sponsorship. Stonehaven previously donated to the Conservative party while it was led by Boris Johnson.
We reported on the donation in January, but it was wildlife campaigner Danica Priest who first highlighted its potential significance in relation to Britain Remade and renewed pressure to overturn the nuclear ban.
Several figures in Scottish Labour have come out strongly in support of new nuclear power over the last few years, and the issue is set to be a battleground in May’s Holyrood election.
The party’s leader north of the border, Anas Sarwar, has described the SNP’s opposition to nuclear as “irrational” and accused first minister John Swinney of being “stuck in the politics of the 1970s”.
Labour argues that investing in new nuclear energy could create and protect jobs and provide important back up to renewable energy generation. The Scottish Government says it is too expensive and investment is “better placed” in renewable energy.
Norman Hampshire – the Labour leader of East Lothian council where Torness is located – was among the speakers at a launch event for the ‘Scotland for nuclear energy’ campaign which was organised by Britain Remade in Glasgow in February. Glasgow MSP Paul Sweeney was also in attendance.
Former co-leader of the Scottish Greens, Patrick Harvie, claimed Britain Remade was a “collection of the usual corporate suspects pretending to be a grassroots campaign”. He branded the group “radioactive astroturf”.
Re/insurers must plan for nuclear-powered ships, says Axa XL
Reinsurers must plan for nuclear-powered ships, says Axa XL. French
reinsurer’s global head of energy transition and chief risk consulting
officer describes the preparation needed for nuclear power in shipping. Any
future insurance for these vessels would need to be ‘bespoke, extremely
high in value and likely supported by governments’, Axa XL’s Vicky
Roberts-Mills and Jarek Klimczak say.
Lloyds List 18th March 2026,
https://www.lloydslist.com/LL1156646/Reinsurers-must-plan-for-nuclearpowered-ships-says-Axa-XL
Macron names next $11.5 billion nuclear-powered aircraft carrier ‘France Libre’ as a symbol of independence
“a symbol of national independence“?
At $11.5 billion, it looks more like capture of the French government by the nuclear lobby
French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday named France´s next
nuclear-powered aircraft carrier the France Libre (“Free France”), framing
it as a symbol of national independence and a push to strengthen the
country´s naval forces, whose presence in the Middle-East region has been
significant since the start of the Iran war. Macron unveiled the warship´s
name during a visit to the shipyard in the Western town of Indret, where
its two nuclear reactors are to be built. The France Libre, which is to
enter service in 2038, will have a capacity for 30 Rafale fighter jets and
2,000 sailors, for an estimated cost of 10 billion euros ($11.5 billion).
Daily Mail 18th March 2026, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-15658609/Macron-names-nuclear-powered-aircraft-carrier-France-Libre-symbol-independence.html
UK’s nuclear research body consults on plans to cut about 200 jobs.
Britain’s national nuclear research body is consulting on plans to cut its
staffing by up to a fifth because of financial pressures, leading union
officials to question the government’s claims to be building a “golden
age” for the industry.
The United Kingdom National Nuclear Laboratory
(UKNNL) is looking at cutting about 200 jobs from a workforce of about
1,100 via a mixture of voluntary and compulsory redundancies. Described by
ministers as “the custodian of some of the UK’s most critical nuclear
skills and capabilities”, the public corporation’s research supports the
development of cutting-edge technologies in nuclear generation, defence and
other areas such as medicine.
The union Prospect, which represents staff at
UKNNL, said the proposed cuts appeared to be driven by funding problems
that had left the organisation unable to pursue its goals — and even, the
union claimed, to honour its own contractual redundancy terms — rather
than by any change of strategy.
FT 18th March 2026,
https://www.ft.com/content/fe8ac14a-0463-44ca-986b-a035a97b29ba
As Trump Talks of Taking Cuba, Havana Promises “Impregnable Resistance”
March 18, 2026, Joshua Scheer, https://scheerpost.com/2026/03/18/as-trump-talks-of-taking-cuba-havana-promises-impregnable-resistance/
As Miguel Díaz-Canel denounced escalating threats from Donald Trump, Havana made clear that any U.S. attempt to impose regime change by force would not go unanswered.
“The United States threatens Cuba publicly, almost daily, with overthrowing the constitutional order by force,” Díaz-Canel wrote, accusing Washington of manufacturing crisis conditions through an economic siege that has targeted the island for more than sixty years.
He argued that the same powers tightening sanctions and restricting fuel are now presenting Cuba’s hardship as justification for intervention — a pattern familiar across decades of U.S. policy toward governments unwilling to submit to Washington’s demands.
“They announce plans to seize the country, its resources, its property, even the economy they themselves are trying to suffocate,” Díaz-Canel said, warning that collective punishment of the Cuban people is being openly paired with renewed language of occupation. “Any external aggressor will collide with impregnable resistance.”
The warning came after Trump declared from the White House that he believed he would have “the honor of taking Cuba,” speaking as if sovereignty itself were negotiable.
The remark landed amid intensifying pressure on the island, where fuel shortages and blackout conditions have deepened under a tightening oil embargo imposed after the U.S. confrontation with Nicolás Maduro.
According to recent reporting, officials inside the administration are treating Díaz-Canel’s removal as a condition for any future talks, reviving a familiar regime-change formula dressed up as diplomacy.
Marco Rubio, long one of Washington’s most aggressive voices on Cuba, reinforced that message by saying the island “has to get new people in charge,” a statement widely read in Havana as confirmation that coercion — not negotiation — remains U.S. policy.
Yet public support inside the United States for another foreign intervention appears thin. Recent polling shows more Americans oppose than support the embargo, while only a small minority back military action against Cuba.
Meanwhile, the economic war continues to hit ordinary Cubans hardest: prolonged blackouts, fuel shortages, and collapsing infrastructure remain the immediate consequences of sanctions that Washington insists are aimed at the government.
Against that backdrop, the first delegation of the Nuestra América Convoy reached Havana this week carrying humanitarian aid — food, medicine, and energy supplies intended to bypass the blockade’s human toll.
Editors from Current Affairs joining the mission said the convoy is meant not only to deliver material support but to send a political message: that many Americans reject threats of annexation, strangulation, and forced political change carried out in their name.
“Words like “sanctions” and “restrictions” really don’t capture the reality. This is an undeclared economic war, and a lethal one. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio want to bring about regime change in Cuba, and have demanded that President Miguel Díaz-Canel resign from office. So they’re inflicting as much pain and suffering on the Cuban people as they can, in hopes of bringing the entire nation to its knees. If the blackouts continue, they will kill people; it’s possible they already have.
Now, it’s the rest of the world’s turn to come to Cuba’s aid. This month, a coalition of activists from around the globe are launching a humanitarian aid mission to Cuba to break the siege. Modeled after the Global Sumud Flotilla that attempted to bring aid to Gaza last year, the Nuestra América Convoy will converge in Havana on March 21, with participants coming from around the world by air and sea… Alex Skopic and Nathan J. Robinson: Why We’re Going to Cuba
For many on the American left, the convoy is more than a humanitarian delivery — it is a direct rejection of a foreign policy that continues to treat economic deprivation as leverage and sovereignty as conditional. At a moment when Washington openly discusses who should govern Cuba while tightening measures that deepen daily hardship on the island, the mission underscores a longer political truth: sanctions are never merely abstract instruments of pressure. They land in darkened homes, empty pharmacies, strained hospitals, and disrupted food supplies, while officials in Washington frame that suffering as evidence that the system must collapse. In traveling to Havana, the delegation is asserting that solidarity means refusing the logic that punishment can be called diplomacy when an entire population is made to absorb its cost.
At a time when American officials speak casually of deciding Cuba’s future, the deeper question is whether empire still assumes it owns that right. For Cuba, the message from Havana is equally blunt: pressure may deepen, but surrender is not on offer.
Washington’s Public Swagger Meets Private Panic Over Iran
18 March https://scheerpost.com/2026/03/17/washingtons-public-swagger-meets-private-panic-over-iran/
The White House is denying that special envoy Steve Witkoff sent back-channel messages to Iranian officials during the current war—but the denial itself is beginning to look like another chapter in Washington’s increasingly frantic damage control.
In an interview with Breaking Points, Jeremy Scahill said Iranian officials told him that the Trump administration, only days into the bombing campaign, began using intermediaries and private communications to probe whether Tehran would accept talks over an “endgame.”
According to Scahill, Iran’s answer was silence.
That silence matters because it punctures one of the White House’s most repeated claims: that Tehran is “begging” Washington for negotiations while President Donald Trump supposedly holds firm from a position of strength.
Instead, the picture emerging from multiple channels suggests something far less triumphant: an administration that expected rapid capitulation, encountered resistance, and then quietly began searching for exits.
The Story the White House Wants—and the One It Can’t Control
Scahill reported that Iranian officials described third countries carrying messages from Washington almost immediately after the bombing began.
The request was simple enough: was Iran prepared to discuss terms?
The answer, according to those officials, was no—at least not until Tehran believed it had restored deterrence and raised the cost of future U.S.-Israeli attacks.
That refusal reportedly extended to direct outreach allegedly sent through WhatsApp by Witkoff to senior Iranian officials, including Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.
The White House responded not with evidence, but with fury.
Rather than issue a standard denial, Scahill said officials sent back a statement attacking Drop Site News as “abhorrent,” accusing it of carrying water for Iran and engaging in “America Last” journalism.
The intensity of that reaction may explain why the administration’s denial has drawn more scrutiny than reassurance.
In Washington, the louder the outrage, the more often it signals a pressure point.
A Diplomatic Reality Hidden Beneath Public Swagger
Trump has publicly insisted that Iran wants talks.
But if Tehran is refusing direct engagement while Washington privately tests channels through intermediaries, the public posture begins to look less like confidence and more like performance.
Scahill’s account suggests Iran’s leadership concluded that entering negotiations too early would validate a pattern it believes has defined recent U.S. policy: negotiate, strike, then negotiate again under coercion.
Their reported demands are expansive—ceasefire terms extending beyond Iran to Lebanon and Iraq, reparations for wartime destruction, and a U.N. Security Council resolution.
Those are not the demands of a government signaling surrender.
They are the demands of a government convinced it has leverage.
Assassinations and the Elimination of Moderates
The timing is especially volatile following reports that senior Iranian figure Ali Larijani may have been killed in Israeli strikes.
If confirmed, the killing would remove one of the few figures widely viewed as capable of mediating future de-escalation.
Scahill warned that each assassination of relatively pragmatic political actors hardens the internal balance inside Iran, strengthening factions less inclined toward diplomacy.
That pattern has repeated across the region for years: eliminate negotiators, then express surprise when negotiations become impossible.
The same logic has played out in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, and now appears to be repeating inside Iran itself.
Strait of Hormuz: The War’s Economic Fault Line
At the same time, Washington’s strategic problems are multiplying in the Strait of Hormuz.
Scahill described an administration struggling to recruit allies for maritime operations after Iran demonstrated it can selectively restrict shipping without imposing a total blockade.
That distinction matters.
A full closure would trigger universal backlash.
Selective disruption punishes adversaries while preserving Tehran’s own export routes, particularly toward China.
It also leaves Washington facing a dangerous choice: tolerate strategic embarrassment or escalate naval exposure near Iranian missile range.
Trump reportedly wants allied participation.
So far, major partners appear reluctant.
Even governments normally aligned with Washington are signaling caution.
That hesitation reflects what military planners already know: every additional vessel sent into contested waters increases the odds of casualties—and with them, political consequences at home.
The Familiar Machinery of Narrative Collapse
For now, the administration continues selling a narrative of control.
But the contradiction is becoming harder to conceal:
Publicly, Trump says Iran wants talks.
Privately, according to Iranian accounts, Washington is the one reaching out.
Publicly, officials frame escalation as strength.
Privately, they appear increasingly anxious about where escalation leads.
And as always, the press corps closest to power receives selective denials while independent reporters absorb the political blowback for asking whether the official story holds.
The deeper the war goes, the harder it becomes for the White House to keep its public narrative intact. Even as Trump claims Iran is “begging” for negotiations, reporting by Drop Site News indicates his own administration has been quietly reaching out through back channels, with envoy Steve Witkoff allegedly sending private messages that Tehran chose not to answer. In the account assembled by Jeremy Scahill, Iran’s refusal reflects a belief that Washington is again seeking a pause only after misjudging how costly escalation could become—for U.S. credibility, global energy markets, and a region already pushed to the edge. Here is the larger story from Drop Site News
Iranian Officials Say They Have Been Ignoring Witkoff’s Private Requests to Talk
Trump’s special envoy has been texting Iran’s foreign minister asking to start talks. Tehran says the war will end only when Iran believes it has established long-term deterrence.
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Me and the Pope – but is he the Antichrist?
19 March 2026 Noel Wauchope, https://theaimn.net/me-and-the-pope-but-is-he-the-antichrist/#google_vignette
Following my recovery from Catholicism, I never imagined that I would become a fan of the Pope. Perish the thought that I would ever sink back into believing those weird dogmas, and agreeing to Catholicism’s punishing rules about sexuality and abortion, and so forth.
Well, I haven’t sunk back that far – yet, but I just have to applaud Pope Leo. Under the guidance of Pope Leo, Catholic spokesmen have acknowledged that artificial intelligence is a useful tool, but warn against AI “overloading us with information to the point of paralysis.” Pope Leo XIV has given a tactful, but unmistakable warning against AI taking over control of our thinking. He recently advised the priests of Rome to use “their brains more” rather than AI when preparing homilies.
I feel that Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, set the course for this trend, in the condemnation of military attack as a way to resolve conflicts, and urging for human discussion and negotiation.
All good – you think? But is there something sinister about Pope Leo’s attitude to AI? Well the squillionaire Peter Thiel thinks so. He’s just given a series of lectures on Pope Leo’s doorstep in Rome. A critique of Peter Thiel’s ideas has been supplied, beautifully explained, in Australian Independent Media by Ricky Pann, also supplying this video:
It’s too much of a coincidence, that Mr Thiel has decided to make Rome the centre of his lecturing activities. The Pope has a huge worldwide influence, and his views on artificial intelligence have an impressive forcefulness and clarity. It’s pretty obvious that Thiel finds this a threat to the technological empire that he leads. And the Church recognises this – ‘Agent of chaos’ Peter Thiel is lecturing on the Antichrist at the Vatican’s doorstep.
You didn’t know that the technological geniuses who run our world can be not only so very scientifically knowledgeable, but also extremely religious. Scarily religious – I think. Thiel predicts a possible Caesar-Papist fusion, in which a tyrant – the Antichrist, joins up with government, in a sort of anti-science domination of the world. Thiel doesn’t actually see Pope Leo as the Antichrist (the Antichrist has to be young), but certainly worries about Pope Leo’s teachings.
Pope Leo is the first Pope with a formal degree in mathematics, and has called on mathematicians to be ”prophets of hope” and to integrate ethical responsibility into their technological advancements, particularly regarding artificial intelligence.
Oh dear, that’s very persuasive. Is Pope Leo indeed the Antichrist, the supporter of the facilitator of the coming Antichrist. Or is Peter Thiel a dangerous nutter?
Principled: Trump-appointed counterterrorism director Joe Kent resigns in protest over US war with Iran
ZeroHedge, 17 Mar 2026
In a massive break from President Trump and MAGA, Joe Kent, Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), announced his immediate resignation on Tuesday, citing irreconcilable opposition to the ongoing U.S. military operations against Iran.
Kent declared he could not “in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” stating unequivocally that Iran posed “no imminent threat to our nation” and that the conflict was initiated “due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.” The move comes weeks into active strikes targeting Iranian nuclear sites, leadership, and infrastructure, with Iranian retaliation underway and global oil markets feeling the strain.
Kent, a retired Green Beret with 11 combat deployments, former CIA paramilitary officer, and Gold Star husband who lost his wife Shannon in a 2019 ISIS-claimed suicide bombing in Syria, framed his exit as a defense of the “America First” principles Trump championed during his 2016, 2020, and 2024 campaigns. He praised Trump’s first term for decisively striking Qasem Soleimani and defeating ISIS without escalating into endless wars, noting that until June 2025, Trump recognized Middle East conflicts as a “trap” draining American lives and wealth. However, Kent alleges that “early in this administration, high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign” that undermined Trump’s platform, deceived him into believing Iran posed an imminent threat with a “clear path to a swift victory,” and echoed tactics used to draw the U.S. into the “disastrous Iraq war.” He explicitly compares the current situation to Iraq, warning against repeating the mistake that cost thousands of American lives.
“As a veteran who deployed to combat 11 times and as a Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel, I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people,” Kent wrote.
The resignation carries profound weight as Kent was a Senate-confirmed Trump loyalist installed in July 2025, not a career holdover. As head of the NCTC – tasked with assessing terrorist threats from Iranian proxies and beyond – Kent is directly challenging the administration’s justification for the conflict. The letter, addressed personally to the president and thanking DNI Tulsi Gabbard, signals deeper fractures in the MAGA coalition or prompts a policy pivot, Kent’s bombshell exit underscores the high personal and political stakes of America’s latest Middle East engagement.
The resignation effectively places Kent within a growing bloc of Republican lawmakers who have opposed the Iran campaign from the outset, elevating what had been a vocal but limited faction into a more institutionally significant challenge to the administration’s approach.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), longtime advocates of non-interventionist “America First” foreign policy, were among the earliest critics of the strikes, warning they risk entangling the U.S. in another costly and open-ended Middle East conflict. Both have argued in recent weeks that the operation mirrors the strategic missteps that led to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, calling for de-escalation and greater congressional oversight.
The most prominent political voice amplifying that message has been Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who has emerged as one of the war’s fiercest critics within Trump’s base. Since the first strikes in late February, Greene has repeatedly denounced the operation in media appearances and on social platforms, calling it a betrayal of Trump’s campaign pledge to avoid new foreign entanglements.
On Saturday, Greene told CNN that the Republican base is fractured“along generational lines.”
“Many of the older Americans from the Baby Boomer generation that watch Fox News all day long very much believe the talking points on Fox News, and they have spent decades of their lives convinced that fighting these wars is the right thing to do,” she explained.
Meanwhile, the knives are out. Trump’s former Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich said that Kent is a “crazed egomaniac who was often at the center of national security leaks, while rarely (never?) producing any actual work.”
The Software Upgrade Australia Didn’t Need.
18 March 2026 AIMN Editorial, By Ricky Pann https://theaimn.net/the-software-upgrade-australia-didnt-need/
Palantir and the Digital Dictator’s Operating System
Australia is undergoing a system update. It didn’t pass through a referendum, nor was it meaningfully debated in Parliament. Arriving quietly under the guise of maintenance and safety, Palantir Technologies has embedded itself into the central nervous system of Australia’s financial and intelligence apparatus. Through AUSTRAC and the Fintel Alliance, data from banks, law enforcement, and government agencies are now integrated into a single “God view”. The Australian Government is in fact investing in Palantir through stocks held by our Future Fund.
An Upgrade Without an Uninstall
Palantir represents a new phase in Silicon Valley’s evolution, a shift from consumer platforms to sovereign infrastructure. From apps designed to distract us to systems designed to govern us.
Palantir’s software deployment in Australia comes ahead of a coordinated lobbying push to expand adoption of its systems, positioning them to become a de facto operating system for governments globally through sheer market dominance.
Australia is making an unspoken admission: that social democracy is now seen as too slow and inefficient for an AI-driven world, where speed is quietly replacing human judgment. This is the great deception of hasty AI adoption.
These are the quiet admissions of a society steered by populist fear: the myth that productivity driven growth is limitless, and the delusion that automating human empathy will not edge us toward autocracy.
So where do we stop?
Do we outsource judgment.
Do we automate trust.
Do we accept a black box view of reality in exchange for speed.
The result is a feedback loop. Data feeds the system. The system reshapes perception. Perception justifies more data. Slowly, the world begins to look exactly as the software expects it to.
There’s a familiar feeling after a software update.
Nothing looks different.
The icons are where you left them.
The system boots. The coffee still tastes the same.
But something subtle has shifted.
Menus rearranged.
Permissions altered.
A few options you used to have simply evaporated.
We’re expected to accept a system that doesn’t reason, doesn’t ask permission, operates without consent, and collapses the complexity of human context, nuance, and lived experience into binary outcomes.
No announcement. No apology. Just a new normal.
The quiet inversion Orwell warned about: not brute force, but soft machinery. Not the scream, but the hum.
A world where seeing everything replaces understanding anything, where speed outranks judgment, and probability passes for truth.
The system doesn’t need to lie.
It just decides what is perceived as real.
Palantir isn’t a surveillance scandal. It’s a design choice.
Who’s Watching the Watchers?
One day, sitting on a bench, watching light move through trees, you realise something small but irreversible.
You’re no longer being seen by people.
You’re being interpreted by infrastructure.
That’s not a crisis moment.
It’s an installation moment.
And installations, once embedded deeply enough, rarely come with an uninstall option.
Australia didn’t choose authoritarianism.
It chose efficiency
We didn’t suspend democracy.
We quietly routed around it.
You don’t lose freedom all at once. You outsource it, piece by piece, to systems that promise to manage burden for us.
The pitch is seductive to politicians and bureaucrats: efficiency, seamless integration, prevention over response. But this isn’t a routine upgrade. It’s a Trojan Horse, quietly ushering in a new era of global corporatocracy.
Palantir does not merely process data; it installs a proprietary “ontology” with a map of clusters of a calculated reality that dictates to a government what is considered relevant or risky.
It replaces the presumption of innocence with algorithmic probability, shifting justice from what you did to what you might do. Once a sovereign nation relies on such a system, it no longer acts as a customer but as a dependent, outsourcing responsibility and accountability.
Authors note: I don’t mean to be nasty but…
I’m not in the habit of playing the man/woman/person instead of the ball but, this is the age of disruption in a period of brazen populism that rewards narcissism.
People like Trump, Musk, Altman, Karp and Thiel routinely make statements that are disconcerting, extreme, misleading, and at times plainly unhinged.
They face little consequence because wealth and power insulate them, reinforcing the belief that billionaire status equates to insight – despite being far removed from the lived reality of the people most affected by the chaos caused by the systems they shape.
Buyer Beware: To understand the creeping authoritarianism we as Australians just installed, we must look at the radically unhinged ideologies of the architects who designed it.
Peter Thiel: The Sovereign Dream
Founder Peter Thiel has been unusually candid about his beliefs. He has stated that he no longer believes freedom and democracy are compatible.
His worldview, influenced by René Girard’s theory of mimetic conflict, treats human society as inherently unstable, something to be managed, contained, and overseen by a competent elite.
Thiel’s Zero to One philosophy celebrates monopolies. Competition, he argues, is wasteful. Governance by consensus is inefficient. The future belongs to singular systems operated by those smart enough to bypass friction.
This worldview is not theoretical. Thiel is now a New Zealand citizen and has publicly acknowledged preparing for large scale civilisational disruption.
He owns property on New Zealand’s South Island, widely reported as part of a network of fortified survival infrastructure intended to function during a catastrophic global event, often described in Silicon Valley as an H2 scenario, a hard reset moment involving systemic collapse.
This may sound like a dramatic interpretation of his intention however, considering the dots we are joining, Palantir is the practical expression of this thinking.
Its a monopoly on state intelligence designed to operate beyond the slow checks and balances of democratic process, resilient not just to crime or terrorism, but to political instability itself.
This is mostly true for all disruptive big tech firms. They grow and evolve so fast that the consequential fallout of the technology lags years behind legislation. They operate in the wild west at the expense of law, privacy, social cohesion, mental health, criminality and human rights till the sheriff arrives.
Alex Karp: The Dialectical Justifier
CEO Alex Karp presents differently. He speaks the language of philosophy, progress, and reluctant necessity. He frames Palantir through a dialectical lens, civil liberties on one side, a dangerous world on the other, resolved by a system powerful enough to neutralise chaos.
Alex Karp acts as the “dialectical justifier, using Hegelian philosophy to reframe total mass surveillance and the reduction of citizens to managed variables as a necessary, moral “synthesis” between civil liberties and global chaos.
In this framing, surveillance is not abuse but compromise.
Dominance becomes protection.
Efficiency becomes morality.
Karp has acknowledged that bad times are very good for Palantir. The company is built for crisis. It thrives on instability, on moments when societies are willing to trade uncertainty for control.
The contradiction is hard to miss. In claiming to prevent fascism by enforcing order, the system quietly adopts fascism’s core mechanism, total visibility, preemptive control, and the reduction of citizens to managed statistical variables.
It is not win lose.
It is domination.
It is founder Peter Thiel who pushes this idea of world domination into the realm of absolute madness.
Thiel delivered a series of private, unhinged lectures titled “The Antichrist”. Using cobbled-together 1st-century doomsday theology and pop-culture manga like One Piece, he attempted to frame himself and his fellow technocrats as heroic rebels holding back a demonic, stagnant global state.
If you strip away this ridiculous theatrical charade, you don’t find a philosopher. You find the Nero of Silicon Valley, a wanna be digital dictator actively engineering the end of inconvenient democracy.
Here is the actual plumbing behind the smoke and mirrors:
A: The Hypocrisy of the “Anti-Satanist” Thiel preaches that global governance and regulation are the “Antichrist” of our era. Yet, his primary engine of wealth, Palantir, is the ultimate weapon of the administrative state.
Palantir provides the data-mining backbone for ICE, the Pentagon, and global police forces. He decries the global surveillance state while acting as Big Brother’s lead software engineer.
He isn’t fighting the system as a small government libertarian; he just wants the monopoly on its operating system.
B: The Untruths of “Stagnation” In his lectures, Thiel claims the world is trapped in scientific “stagnation,” literally labelling anyone who advocates for climate change mitigation, environmental survival, or AI safety guardrails as a “Luddite” and a “legionnaire of the Antichrist”.
This is a blatant untruth used to mask regulatory capture. He doesn’t care about stagnation; he simply demands a world where his tech monopolies can operate without the friction of human empathy, environmental protection, or legal boundaries.
C: The Puppeteer Behind the Chaos Thiel presents a false binary choice between total “Armageddon” and a stagnant global state.
But he is not a prophet warning us of the fire; he is the arsonist selling the fire extinguisher.
Operating through dark money donor networks, Thiel is the primary financial engine behind figures like J.D. Vance and organisations such as the Heritage Foundation – the architects of the Project 2025 blueprint.
He is one of the chief puppeteers behind the Trump-era chaos. Thiel actively funds anti-establishment disruption to dismantle regulatory frameworks, intentionally manufacturing the very societal chaos he claims only Palantir’s mass surveillance can manage.
D: The Delusion of Superiority and Human evolution Driven by René Girard’s “Mimetic Theory,” Thiel views the general public as a mindless, moronic mob that must be controlled by elites like him.
Embracing the delusion of the Sovereign Individual, Thiel has no intention of fixing the democratic systems he helps break. Instead, he is hoarding fortified doomsday bunkers in New Zealand, actively preparing for an “H2 scenario” heralding a catastrophic, systemic global collapse.
This deep disregard for humanity culminates in an obsession with redesigning human evolution itself. Thiel treats human limitation and death as defects to be solved, pouring massive investments into transhumanism, cryonics, and young blood transfusions.
His endgame is a complete evolutionary split: engineering a future where the billionaire class achieves digital eternity as a sovereign, immortal species, leaving the masses to burn on an unregulated, collapsing planet.
This may be hard to grasp but thats the type of people Australia has entrusted their government data to.
The Verdict
Australia didn’t choose authoritarianism; it chose efficiency. We are quietly outsourcing our reality to an unaccountable technocracy.
Thiel’s lectures aren’t a warning about a coming digital dictator; they are a job application for the position.
He is the man who sells you the matches, then offers to build you a fireproof bunker for the price of your freedom.
Palantir isn’t just software. It is an installation moment. And installations this deep rarely come with an uninstall option.
Iran’s nuclear materials and equipment remain a danger in an active war zone
March 17, 2026 , Matthew Bunn, The Conversation
Before launching his war on Iran, President Donald Trump said his most important goal was that Iran would “never have a nuclear weapon.” Yet it is not clear what, if anything, his administration has planned for dealing with Iran’s stock of enriched uranium that could be used to make nuclear bombs – or its remaining deeply buried nuclear facilities and the nuclear equipment that might be in them, or hidden elsewhere.
U.S. and Israeli strikes in June 2025 seriously damaged Iran’s major nuclear facilities and killed several prominent scientists associated with the country’s nuclear program. However, contrary to Trump’s claim that the Iranian nuclear program had been “completely obliterated,” it appears that Iran had stored much or all of its enriched uranium in deep tunnels that were not destroyed.
The Trump administration’s demand, just two days before the attacks began, that Iran export its enriched uranium stocks represented a tacit acknowledgment that Iran’s government still had control of this material or could get access to it.
So, as airstrikes on Iran continue, an unclear fate faces several elements of Iran’s nuclear program, including:
- Its stock of enriched uranium.
- Its centrifuges for enriching more uranium, and parts for more centrifuges.
- Any equipment it may have for turning enriched uranium into metal, shaping it into nuclear weapons components and taking other weapons-assembly steps.
- The documents and expertise from its past nuclear weapons program.
- Its as-yet-intact nuclear facilities that are deep underground.
I have been studying steps to stop the spread of nuclear weapons – including managing the dangers of Iran’s nuclear program – for decades. My conclusion is that if all these capabilities remain in place, the war will have accomplished little in reducing Iran’s nuclear capability, while likely increasing the government’s belief that it needs a nuclear weapon to defend itself.
Where could Iran’s uranium be?
The most immediate concern is roughly 970 pounds (441 kilograms) of highly enriched uranium containing 60% of the U-235 isotope that is relatively easy to split. That’s what Iran was believed to have before the summer 2025 bombings, and much of it reportedly survived those strikes.
Over 440 pounds (200 kilograms) of it is reportedly stored in deep underground tunnels near Isfahan. Other stocks of this material are thought to be in a deep underground facility near Natanz known as Pickaxe Mountain, and in Fordow, one of the sites bombed in summer 2025.
Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, has reportedly acknowledged that the Isfahan tunnels are too deep to destroy with bunker-buster bombs like those used on the underground Fordow facility last summer. Pickaxe Mountain, under granite, would be at least as challenging a target.
What could the uranium be used for?
With just 100 centrifuges, Iran could further enrich the 60% enriched material to be 90% or more U-235 in a few weeks. That is the concentration needed for the nuclear weapon design that Iran was working on in the secret nuclear weapons program it largely stopped in late 2003.
Even without further enrichment, the 60% enriched material could be used in a bomb, either exploding with less power or using more material and explosives.
Beyond Iran using this material itself, there are other concerns. Nobody knows who might get it if Iran’s government collapses. Some lower-level people managing it might decide to try to sell it as part of trying to save themselves from the current crisis, as happened after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Government studies have warned that even a sophisticated terrorist group might be able to make a crude nuclear bomb if it had the needed uranium.
Could it be removed peacefully?
One possibility is that the current Iranian government, or a future one, might be willing to cooperate or at least acquiesce in getting rid of the country’s nuclear material. The existing Iranian government reportedly offered to blend it down to a lower concentration in the negotiations that Trump ended by attacking Iran in February 2026.
Highly enriched uranium has been removed from many cooperative countries over the years. One early example was Project Sapphire, in 1994, in which U.S. teams worked with Kazakhstan to fly some 1,280 pounds (580 kilograms) of highly enriched uranium to safe storage in Tennessee. Similar efforts have removed tons of plutonium and highly enriched uranium from scores of sites around the world, removing the risk that terrorists could get hold of that material.
Could it be captured?
Without cooperation, and with the uranium in tunnels too deep to destroy from the air, the only other option for eliminating them could be sending in a team of either U.S. or Israeli soldiers and experts while the war continues.
U.S. special forces troops have long trained with federal scientists and experts to disable or secure adversaries’ nuclear weapons and material. But it wouldn’t be easy: Mark Esper, a defense secretary in Trump’s first term, has warned that actually doing so in Iran would take a large force and be “very perilous.”
Trump has said he would only do so if Iran was “so decimated that they wouldn’t be able to fight on the ground level.”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Fundamentally, Iran’s nuclear knowledge cannot be bombed away. Ultimately, I believe, U.S. security would be best served through agreements to limit Iran’s nuclear efforts, coupled with effective international inspection, keeping watch year after year. Provisions to do that were central to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal between China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union and Iran. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the agreement in 2018, enabling Iran to make the highly enriched uranium that now poses a danger.
In my view, only diplomacy can again provide strict limits and effective monitoring in the future. But this war may well have ruined the chances for such diplomatic options for many years to come. https://theconversation.com/irans-nuclear-materials-and-equipment-remain-a-danger-in-an-active-war-zone-278008
1 This Month
Petition to revoke the licensing of the Near Surface Nuclear Disposal Facility (NSDF) at Chalk River. https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-7247
of the week – STOP SMALL MODULAR REACTORS IN CANADA
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