Links for 19 September 2026

How mass surveillance from online advertising puts journalists at risk - Committee to Protect Journalists (And it’s not just journalists, either. Targeting data is targeting data. More: Surveillance risks and the TIDALWAVE report)

The Structural Incentives Of Western Capitalism Make Competing With China Impossible by Ian Welsh. [O]ur elites don’t want to compete on price. They don’t want to compete on quality. They want moats — they want monopoly profits just for existing. Related: AI Is an Elite Crime Spree by Matt Stoller, ‘Doom Loop’: OpenAI and Microsoft Admits LLMs Are Destroying the Web and Built on Theft by Jason Koebler.

Seeing Iran: “Standing there with our eyes closed getting punched in the face” on emptywheel. Related: Iran strikes on Amazon data centers caused permanent loss of customer data by Jeremy Hsu.

Thousands of security workers for Big Tech companies are on strike in California by Pavithra Mohan. (seriously? Trillion-dollar companies are offering $0.25 - $0.65/hour raises?)

Russia is weaponizing US-built AI to make killer drones, cyberattack bots, and fake news by Patrick Tucker. While Anthropic and OpenAI were able to disrupt the schemes they discovered, such operations are likely to continue as Russia uses AI to scale production of content that aligns with Kremlin narratives, according to an August report from the Institute for the Study of War, or ISW.

Collections: Global Trade and United States Navy by Bret Devereaux. The argument here is actually quite easy to state as a series of propositions: global trade is an important part of the global economy, necessary to maintain our standards of living (and in many cases, essential for the survival of people in poorer countries) and seaborne trade makes up the overwhelmingly vast majority of all trade. Moreover, in history to this point it has been a relative constant that in the absence of major naval powers committed to freedom of navigation, pirates and states at maritime choke-points tend to emerge and seriously disrupt maritime trade. Finally, at current, only the United States maintains the kind of navy that traditionally has been necessary to keep sea lanes open, thus making the US Navy at present a ‘load bearing’ component of the global economy. Consequently, this makes the United States’ apparent turn away from freedom of navigation troubling – a move likely to be bad for Americans but also bad for everyone else.

In the War Against Oil, Bad News is Good News by Dana F. Blankenhorn. [W]ith oil suddenly fetching record prices thanks to wars in Iran and Ukraine, drilling remains quiescent. Elizabeth Edmondson, an oil analyst who now lives in North Dakota, writes that there are now 36 oil rigs operating in North Dakota, against 217 during the last oil boom. There are 310 in Texas’ Permian Basin, 45 in the Eagle Ford play across south Texas, but neither number has budged this year. It makes little sense, if you believe in oil’s future.