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Are the Americans returning to Myanmar? They never really left

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Are the Americans returning to Myanmar? They never really left

Adam Castillo, a former president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Myanmar who had lobbied for sanctions relief in exchange for US, was released in recent days after spending over three months in detention.

In the same week, Time magazine’s Charlie Campbell sat down with Senior General Min Aung Hlaing in Naypyitaw. The coup leader, now calling himself president after December and January’s sham elections, said he had treated Aung San Suu Kyi “extremely leniently” and urged the United States and other Western countries to rethink sanctions.

It was his first face-to-face interview with a major Western outlet since the 2021 coup. To be fair to Time, the interview was no puff piece. It described the military dictatorship in plain, critical terms.

But the interview’s occurrence arguably mattered more than its content: a democracy-toppling soldier still struggling for legitimacy at home and abroad had appeared as “president” in one of America’s best-known news publications.

Time’s exclusive did not happen in a vacuum. Since July 2025, the junta has retained the Washington lobbying firm DCI Group on a US$3 million-a-year contract to boost the beleaguered regime’s profile.

This year, Foreign Agents Registration Act filings showed Roger Stone, a longtime Trump confidant, receiving $50,000 a month through that arrangement to help “rebuild” relations with Washington. It’s unclear how those lobbying funds have been used to coax and generate media coverage favorable to the generals in US news outlets.

But the release of an American citizen and Min Aung Hlaing’s interview are pieces of a wider Naypyitaw campaign to reopen closed doors in Washington.

Pressure without disengagement

Since the coup, Washington has taken meaningful measures to punish Myanmar’s military for toppling democracy. The BURMA Act passed with bipartisan support, and sanctions and assistance programs helping the anti-coup opposition expanded.

Yet the resistance still has not received some of the non-lethal technology it has repeatedly sought, including advanced early-warning systems against airstrikes and broader protective equipment.

Diplomatically, Washington lowered its in-country representation below ambassador level. Commercially, however, the relationship never disappeared. Some American brands remain visible, while trade continues even though government-to-government engagement under the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement is suspended. In 2025, US-Myanmar trade in goods and services still totaled $1.1 billion despite the sanctions.

The deeper issue is geography. Myanmar borders China, links Southeast Asia with South Asia and opens onto the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean – a location whose resources and trade routes matter to both Beijing and Washington. American policy, then, cannot be read through the lens of democracy and human rights alone.

That tension between strategic interest and democratic principle dates to the Cold War. In the early 1950s, the CIA backed Kuomintang remnants operating from Shan State against communist China, creating a sovereignty crisis for then civilian leader U Nu’s government and driving Burma to the United Nations.

Washington later pressed the KMT forces to leave, but the episode showed how quickly and easily Burma could become part of a larger strategic contest.

After Ne Win seized power in a 1962 coup, relations with the US cooled but did not disappear. President Lyndon Johnson received him at the White House in 1966. A declassified State Department memorandum described the visit as a “gesture of support” for Burma’s neutrality and independence, while noting that a small US military-assistance relationship had continued since 1958.

Then came the drug war. Under a 1974 narcotics-control agreement, Washington supplied six Bell 205 helicopters to Burma, officially for drug suppression. The program expanded over the following years and ended after the military’s bloody crackdown on democracy protesters in 1988.

The helicopters were not simply a symbol of cooperation: Accounts from the period say they were also used in military operations against ethnic armed groups fighting for autonomy against the military regime.

The pattern changed after the 8-8-88 crackdown. Washington imposed sanctions on the SLORC and later the SPDC, the successive military juntas, while the Drug Enforcement Administration kept a narrow channel of cooperation open.

A 1998 State Department report said the DEA shared intelligence and carried out joint investigations with Burmese counternarcotics authorities. The same report noted that the country’s drug-control apparatus was effectively under the Directorate of Defense Services Intelligence, then headed by spymaster chief Khin Nyunt.

There was no full normalization and no material aid or training at that stage, but operational cooperation endured. After political reforms began in 2012, those channels quickly widened. By 2015, the Obama administration had issued a national-interest waiver allowing counternarcotics assistance and direct engagement with Burmese police.

From armed struggle to reform

The 1990s also brought another kind of American influence. Gene Sharp, the scholar of non-violent resistance, worked with Burmese activists on the Thai border and wrote “From Dictatorship to Democracy” at the request of Burmese exiles. His ideas later traveled far beyond Myanmar.

By the 2000s, Western support had increasingly shifted toward civil society, humanitarian work, capacity building, and NGO-based politics rather than armed struggle.

Among many border-based activists, that shift changed the character of the opposition: it strengthened the non-violent political space but did not dislodge a military that remained strong on the battlefield and well positioned geopolitically.

Then, in what became known as the reform era, Washington shifted course. After the 2008 Constitution and the 2010 election, Washington moved from isolation toward what it called “pragmatic engagement.”

Aung San Suu Kyi and her battered and persecuted National League for Democracy (NLD) party entered the parliamentary process, sanctions eased gradually and the Obama administration cautiously opened military-to-military contact around human rights and civilian control.

The wager was that engagement could reinforce reform without surrendering leverage. In 2013, the State Department itself described the approach as “carefully calibrated military-to-military engagement,” aimed at exposing Burmese officers to civilian control, human rights and professional military norms. It was a cautious policy, not an embrace of the generals. But the 2021 coup showed how little institutional change had taken root inside the military.

New Trump terms

Today, Min Aung Hlaing is again testing how far Washington’s strategic interests can pull policy away from isolation. Rare earths, scam compounds, trade and China all give his government talking points suited to the Trump administration’s more transactional approach.

So far, the pressure architecture built to punish the 2021 coup remains largely intact. US sanctions still target the military, the Ministry of Defense and regime-controlled banks, while US persons are prohibited from providing certain financial services to the state-owned Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE).

Export controls on military and sensitive technology remain in place. More than $1 billion in Myanmar foreign reserves at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has also remained beyond the junta’s reach since the coup.

Min Aung Hlaing’s appeal for sanctions relief in his Time interview shows that US pressure still bites. It also suggests that the junta’s isolation carries a real cost, even as his coup regime searches for another route back to Washington.

The larger lesson is not that the United States has always backed Myanmar’s generals. It has not. The lesson is that American strategic interest in Myanmar has persistently survived periods of sanctions, estrangement and political ruptures like the 2021 coup.

For Myanmar’s democratic forces, that means US support cannot simply be assumed to follow automatically from shared democratic language – Washington has always had other interests too.

Min Aung Hlaing’s appearance in Time is, therefore, more than a media moment. Naypyitaw is once again knocking on doors that lead to Washington. In 2011, Washington’s re-engagement came with conditions and a democratic script. In 2026, Naypyitaw is testing whether Washington might reopen political engagement on more transactional terms.

So, are the Americans coming back to Myanmar? The answer is that they never completely left and yesterday’s terms for re-engagement are not today’s under Trump.

Nyein Chan Aye is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist writing on Myanmar, China, the U.S., and regional affairs.

Army halts arrests of ultra-Orthodox Haredi Jews draft dodgers: Israeli newspaper

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Army halts arrests of ultra-Orthodox Haredi Jews draft dodgers: Israeli newspaper

The Israeli army has halted arrests of ultra-Orthodox Haredi Jews wanted for failing to comply with military draft orders amid concerns that the arrests could trigger protests, according to Israeli media.

Haaretz reported Friday that the army had decided to suspend arrests of Haredi draft dodgers over fears of unrest and protests across the country as Israeli elections approach.

The army attributed the move to “operational needs,” without providing further details, according to the newspaper.

Haaretz said arrests had been extremely limited even before the decision was taken.

According to figures cited in an Israeli Supreme Court ruling, only 16 Haredi draft dodgers were arrested during the first half of 2026, the newspaper said.

Haaretz cited unnamed police sources as saying that “there are no plans to resume them in the near future.”

The sources said arresting wanted individuals requires the deployment of large police forces and that the suspension was initiated by the military police.

According to Haaretz, the decision on whether to carry out arrests rests with the army, while the police are responsible only for implementing them.

“The suspension has coincided with a halt in ultra-Orthodox protests against the military,” the newspaper noted.

Haredi Jews continue to protest against military service following a Supreme Court ruling on June 25, 2024, requiring them to enlist and barring financial support for religious institutions whose students refuse military service.

Haredim make up around 13% of Israel’s population of 10 million and oppose military service on the grounds that they devote their lives to studying the Torah.

Senior rabbis, whose followers view their rulings as religious directives, have called on Haredi men to refuse enlistment and even to “tear up” draft orders.

They also argue that integration into secular society threatens their religious identity and the continuity of their community.

For decades, members of the Haredi community were able to avoid military service after turning 18 by repeatedly obtaining deferments on the grounds that they were studying at religious seminaries until reaching the exemption age, currently 26.

The decision came about 33 days before Israeli elections scheduled for October amid sharp domestic political debate over Netanyahu government policies.

Dozens of Delegates Walk Out as Netanyahu Addresses UN General Assembly

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Dozens of Delegates Walk Out as Netanyahu Addresses UN General Assembly


Dozens of delegates walked out of the United Nations General Assembly as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began his address in New York on Thursday, Sept. 24, while others remained in the chamber despite sharp international divisions over Israel’s conduct in Gaza and elsewhere in the region.

Reuters reported that “dozens of delegates” left the General Assembly hall as Netanyahu began speaking. Anadolu Agency, reviewing footage from the session, said representatives of roughly 70 countries either walked out or did not attend the speech.

Among the delegations Anadolu identified as participating in the protest were Turkey, the Palestinian delegation, Tunisia, Syria, Algeria, Yemen, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iran, Qatar, Lebanon, Malaysia, Kuwait, Indonesia, Sudan, Spain, Brazil and Peru.

The same review found that a number of countries previously reported as joining the walkout actually remained represented in the chamber. They included Colombia, Slovenia, Ireland, Uganda and Kenya, as well as the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Germany, Argentina, Hungary, the United Kingdom, France and China. Al-Monitor separately reported from New York that Bahrain, China and Colombia remained during Netanyahu’s address.

Colombia’s presence was particularly noteworthy because Vice President José Manuel Restrepo, representing President Abelardo De La Espriella, delivered Colombia’s General Assembly speech immediately before Netanyahu took the podium. Netanyahu was also scheduled to meet Restrepo during his brief visit to New York, according to the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office.

Relations between Colombia and Israel have improved under De La Espriella after deteriorating under his predecessor, and reports that the Colombian delegation walked out Thursday are contradicted by both Al-Monitor and Anadolu’s review of the session.

Slovenia also remained represented, according to Anadolu. Prime Minister Janez Janša met Netanyahu on the sidelines of the General Assembly the same day, with both governments describing a strengthening of bilateral relations. Israel opened its first resident embassy in Ljubljana earlier in September.

As delegates left the chamber, Netanyahu responded from the podium: “If there are any other moral cowards who haven’t left this hall, please do so now.”

Netanyahu used the speech to defend Israel’s military campaigns in Gaza and against Iran and to reject accusations that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. “Israel didn’t commit genocide. Israel prevented genocide,” he said, calling the allegation “the greatest lie of the century.”

He also attacked Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, calling him a “tyrant” and accusing him of supporting Hamas, repressing journalists and seeking influence over Jerusalem. “He says he will be the ruler of Jerusalem,” Netanyahu said. “No, sir, you won’t. It is our city.”

Turkey rejected the remarks. Turkish presidency Communications Director Burhanettin Duran said Netanyahu’s use of the UN podium to make what he called “baseless accusations” against Turkey and Erdoğan was incompatible with the UN’s “ideals of peace, law and dialogue.”

Duran also said Netanyahu’s statements could not “make his massacres, the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and the proceedings before international law invisible.”

Netanyahu also criticized Qatar, accusing Doha of financing American universities and Al Jazeera in an effort to “brainwash young minds to hate Israel, hate America, hate the West,” and pointing to Qatar’s hosting of Hamas officials.

Qatari Deputy Ambassador to the United States Hamad Al-Muftah responded that Netanyahu was “speaking to a half-empty room,” which he said “says plenty about the support for this message.”

Al-Muftah rejected Netanyahu’s characterization of Qatari funding for American universities, saying much of it supported US university campuses in Doha’s Education City. He also defended Qatar’s contacts with Hamas as part of its role as a mediator in negotiations involving Israel, Hamas, the United States and Egypt.

Court rules Pentagon can blacklist Anthropic for refusing to enable Claude features

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Court rules Pentagon can blacklist Anthropic for refusing to enable Claude features

A US appeals court today approved the Department of Defense’s blacklisting of Anthropic technology. Judges decided the Trump administration had authority to blacklist Anthropic for withholding certain AI features from the military even if Anthropic had no malicious intent.

In a 2-1 ruling issued by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a panel of judges said the “case raises profoundly difficult questions about the appropriate military uses of an almost unimaginably powerful new technology.” The US “raises the deeply sobering prospect of overly constrained AI models shutting down unexpectedly and thus causing important military operations to fail. Anthropic raises the deeply sobering prospect of unconstrained AI models hallucinating inappropriate targets for lethal military force,” the ruling said.

Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “must determine how best to balance the competing risks,” the court said. “In doing so here, the Secretary did not transgress any limits on his authority under the Supply Chain Security Act or the Constitution. Accordingly, we deny the petitions for review.” The same court previously denied Anthropic’s emergency motion for a stay in April.

The two judges who ruled against Anthropic were both appointed by Trump and served in the first Trump administration. Judge Gregory Katsas was previously deputy counsel to the president, and Judge Neomi Rao served in the Trump administration’s Office of Management and Budget.

Two courts, two different decisions

Anthropic sued the Trump administration in March after it ordered federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s products and banned defense contractors from doing any business with Anthropic. Anthropic may appeal today’s ruling, either by asking for an en banc review with all of the appeals court judges or by petitioning the Supreme Court.

“We respectfully disagree with the court’s decision,” an Anthropic spokesperson told CNBC. “Another federal court has already held the government’s parallel designation unlawful. We remain confident in our position and are considering all options, including further review.” Despite the ongoing legal battle, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick recently said the Trump administration and Anthropic have patched up their relationship and are “in tune.”

Two courts have been reviewing the US blacklisting of Anthropic. A judge in US District Court for the Northern District of California ruled last month that the action was illegal because Anthropic does not meet the definition of a supply-chain risk, which is limited to “the risk that an adversary may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function, or otherwise subvert… a covered system.”

Today’s ruling from the DC Circuit did not dispute the district court’s primary finding. But it said the district court was tasked with reviewing whether the decision was allowed under one law while the appeals court has exclusive jurisdiction to review the decision under a different, more permissive grant of authority.

The district court decision found a violation of 10 U.S.C. § 3252, in which supply chain risks are limited to malicious actions by adversaries. The appeals court reviewed the blacklisting under 41 U.S.C. § 4713, which doesn’t have the same restrictions. Notably, Congress gave the DC Circuit appeals court exclusive jurisdiction to review procurement actions taken under Section 4713 designations.

Bad motive not required

Today’s ruling said:

We have no quarrel with the Northern District’s conclusion that use of the critical noun adversary, combined with the sinister connotation fairly pervading the string of sabotage, maliciously introduce, and otherwise subvert, indicate that bad motive is required to support a designation under section 3252. Likewise, we have no quarrel with the Northern District’s conclusion that Anthropic has acted with no such bad motive in its dealings with the Department. But as explained at length above, no such bad motive is required to support a designation under the much broader definition set forth in section 4713.

The US designated Anthropic as a supply chain risk under both 3252 and 4713. The latter statute defines “supply chain risk” as “the risk that any person may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function, extract data, or otherwise manipulate the design, integrity, manufacturing, production, distribution, installation, operation, maintenance, disposition, or retirement” of covered technology products “so as to surveil, deny, disrupt, or otherwise manipulate the function, use, or operation of” those products or the information stored or transmitted on them, the court said.

The use of “any person” shows that the definition is not limited to adversaries or foreign entities, the court said. The court also pointed to the word “deny,” which it said applies to Anthropic preventing the US from using certain Claude features.

“In sum, we conclude that the Secretary’s concern about Anthropic disabling Claude from performing lawful actions requested by the Department qualifies as a ‘supply chain risk’ within the meaning of section 4713,” the court majority said. It also said “the Department reasonably feared that Anthropic might manipulate Claude’s design to prevent it from performing national-security functions that the Department deems contractually authorized and necessary.”

Judge’s dissent

The dissenting vote was cast by Judge Karen Henderson, a George H.W. Bush appointee. Henderson disputed the majority’s reading of the definition in 4713, saying that when “viewed in their statutory context, the verbs at issue are all directed at deliberately impeding or eavesdropping on the ‘function, use, or operation’ of a covered article that has entered the federal supply chain.”

Congress “enacted the statute in response to calls from the US intelligence community for legislation to meet the threat of ‘[h]ostile nation state and other bad actors’ infiltrating the federal government’s information and technology systems through its supply chains,” Henderson wrote. She said the definition should not be interpreted to cover “a contractor’s honest and upfront enforcement of restrictions on a covered article’s use disfavored by the government.”

Anthropic alleged, and the district court judge in California agreed, that the Trump administration illegally retaliated against the company after it refused to drop restrictions on the use of its products for lethal autonomous warfare and mass surveillance of Americans.

The appeals court said that Anthropic “encodes restrictions into Claude that prevent the model from performing tasks that Anthropic wishes to prevent. On more than one occasion, these restrictions have stopped Claude from performing tasks requested by government users. And recently, a dispute arose over whether the contractual prohibitions barred the use of Claude in an ongoing overseas military operation, leaving the Department uncertain whether Claude would perform as needed and intended.”

The case in the Northern District of California was presided over by Judge Rita Lin, a Biden appointee. Lin determined that the blacklisting violated the First Amendment. “The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics,” she wrote.

The politics limiting US arms deliveries to Taiwan

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The politics limiting US arms deliveries to Taiwan

On March 28, 2025 a rollout ceremony took place at Lockheed Martin’s F-16 production facility in Greenville, South Carolina. Two F16V block 70 jets were ready for final testing, and the ceremony marked the formal handover to Taiwan. The Greenville ceremony was attended by Taiwan’s Defense Minister and by Taiwan’s US representative.

Taiwan does not have formal diplomatic representation in the United States. No high ranking US defense officials or counterpart to Taiwan’s Minister of National Defense Po Horng-hui was present at the ceremony.

Greg Ulmer, President of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, speaks at the rollout ceremony for the first new Taiwanese F-16 Block 70. Image credit: Phil Hamby, Director of Governmental Affairs, South Carolina Military Department

The jets for Taiwan were part of the “Peace Phoenix Soaring” program. Taiwan was allowed to order 66 of the advanced F-16s, the first new jets from the United States since George H. W. Bush authorized 150 F-16 A/B jets to Taiwan in 1992. These original jets were stripped of their ground-attack capability, and other systems were downgraded.

It was not until 2023 that the original jets completed a US-approved upgrade program called “Peace Phoenix Rising”, rebuilding Taiwan’s original F-16s to the F-16V standard. While upgraded, the airframes are now over 30 years old and are inferior to new models.

Taiwan’s F-16s at Hicham AFB, Hawaii

The planned purchase of the new F-16s, at a cost of almost US$8 billion, was supposed to be completed in 2026. Except for the first two, no more jets have yet been produced by Lockheed for Taiwan. Various excuses have been made, including alleged supply bottlenecks and manufacturing issues.

The first for F-16 Vs left Greenville in March, 2026, seventeen months after the rollout. (The long delay has not been explained.) On the final leg of their journey to Taiwan, the two jets (tail numbers 6727 and 6828) departed Hickam Airfield in Hawaii but they were called back and returned to Hawaii. As of this date they are still sitting at the airfield.

No one has yet explained why the jets were called back. The story of the F-16’s so-far failed delivery to Taiwan is part of a pattern of delayed arms sales to the island.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio says that delays in selling arms to Taiwan are based on worries about shortages in US military production of needed weapons. But this logic certainly does not apply to F-16 manufacturing which Lockheed had earlier moved from Ft. Worth to Greenville.

In Greenville, Lockheed is making F-16s for Taiwan, Bahrain, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Morocco and Jordan. In 2025, the Lockheed factory delivered initial batches to Bulgaria receiving its first Block 70 aircraft in the spring, alongside ongoing fulfillment for other global buyers like Bahrain.

The first Bulgarian F-16 Block 70 takes off for the maiden flight. Image: Lockheed Martin

There were no reported delivery delays for Bulgaria, Bahrain or other customers aside from Taiwan. In the aerospace portion of the huge $20 billion Taiwan arms backlog are many critical defense systems.

For example, F-16 IRST (Infrared Search and Track) Systems that includes 55 advanced targeting and tracking pods designed to give Taiwan’s F-16s the ability to detect stealth threats such as China’s J-20 stealth fighters are delayed; MS-110 Recce Pods that support long range, high resolution digital imagery for intelligence gathering, have not been delivered; and significant backlogs of AIM-9X Block II Sidewinder air to air missiles have not been delivered plus advanced air-to-ground missiles like AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapons (JSOW), and air-launched Harpoon anti-ship missiles could be years behind schedule.

Taiwan also won’t get Mark 48 torpedoes until the end of the decade; and the NASAMS (air defense system) until 2031. Taiwan is getting Himars and has ordered 84 ATACMS missiles, the first 16 delivered in 2024 and a second batch in 2025.

There are plenty of other delays and reports that sometimes the equipment sent to Taiwan was old and damaged. In 2024, for example, the US sent Taiwan moldy body armor and pallets containing “unserviceable” equipment and ammo including machine guns.

While there are significant short supply problems and heavy demands for US weapons in Ukraine, Europe and the Middle East, Taiwan is the greatest danger zone in East Asia.

China continues to carry out continuous exercises rehearsing the components of a future quarantine or blockade, demonstrating how the PLA could surround the island, control shipping lanes, and test response timelines by the United States and Japan.

Beijing maintains relentless pressure through increased Coast Guard patrols, civil-military fleet integration, and continuous air-and-naval movements near the island. It flies some of its most modern aircraft, including fighters and bombers and reconnaissance platforms, continuously around Taiwan.

Taiwan gets most of its weapons from the United States. The Taiwan Relations Act (1979) mandates that the United States “will make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability.”

Successive administrations have found significant wiggle room in determining what to sell to Taiwan, when to sell it, and what conditions might be attached. For example, when AIDC (Taiwan’s biggest aircraft maker) wanted to produce an indigenous fighter aircraft, the US made sure that the new jet was limited in range and capabilities.

The top issue is politics, specifically US-China relations. China pushes back strongly every time there is an arms sale for Taiwan. Making matters worse is the US conflict with Iran and support of Ukraine against Russia. These wars eat up US defense stocks and put heavy demands on the US Air Force and Navy.

One impact: the US took the carrier USS George Washington, normally based at Fleet Activities Yokosuka in Japan as part of the US 7th Fleet, out of the Indo-Pacific through the Singapore Strait and into the US Central Command (CENTCOM) area of operations.

This left the Far East without a US aircraft carrier, which has long been regarded as critical to defending Korea, Japan and Taiwan.

This week’s visit of President Xi Jinping to Washington highlights Washington’s interest in reducing tensions with China, facilitating trade and avoiding conflict. But the more Washington aims at calming the waters with China, the less likely Taiwan is to get the arms it needs to defend its island.

If Taiwan cannot hold out against an outright attack, the US will find it exceedingly hard to help the island survive.

Stephen Bryen is a former US deputy undersecretary of defense and special correspondent at Asia Times. This article was first published on his Weapons and Strategy Substack and is republished with permission.

Your uncle’s frozen Mac says it’s infected after viewing a Google ad. Now what?

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Your uncle’s frozen Mac says it’s infected after viewing a Google ad. Now what?

Researchers say they recently found Google ads delivering a sophisticated tech support scam that freezes the screens of both Windows and Mac devices and displays messages urgently instructing them to phone a bogus call center.

The ads were displayed all over the web, including on high-traffic maps, weather, real-estate, document-hosting, and sports sites. Users who called the number were then urged to pay hefty fees, grant remote access to their devices, or divulge personal information. From August 31 to September 14, security firm Netskope observed users from 619 customer organizations click on the malicious ads, although none of them were actually scammed because Netskope blocked the content.

Roughly 62 percent of the organizations were based in the US, with Japan and Australia accounting for the Nos. 2 and 3 spots. Since the firm has visibility into only a tiny sliver of Internet activity, the number of people exposed to the ads—including those who fell victim to it—is likely much higher. Netskope tracked more than 250 Google Ads campaign IDs across at least 284 legitimate publisher sites.

So, what about Uncle Louie?

“For the victim, that tradecraft turns an ordinary ad click into a browser that appears to seize up on a fake security warning,” Netskope said. “The locker fills the screen, hides the cursor, swallows the usual exit keys, and lags the browser, all to manufacture the sense of a broken machine and pressure the person into calling the number on the screen. Nothing on the computer is actually locked, but in the moment it is convincing enough to push people toward the scam.”

By now, many people, including a fair number of readers of this site, ridicule and shame people who fall for such scams. These criticisms fail to account for a sizable portion of Internet users who have little or no understanding of how computers and the Internet work. Combined with their need to get things done quickly and the growing difficulty of navigating the web, this lack of awareness makes a sizable portion of users prime targets. There’s little doubt that some critics have close friends and family who are among those who simply don’t know enough to be wary.

Further making the scam convincing, the software kit that delivers the fake warnings is designed to be stealthy and closely mimic the signs of a real infection. The browser address bar no longer appears, the warning screen occupies the entire screen, and presses of escape and many other keys are disabled. The browser performance degrades, sounds play, and pages lag, giving the impression that something is seriously wrong. Messages urging the user not to restart the machine and to call a call center immediately flash. Attempts to close the browser only make the scam message refresh.

The warnings appear only after a user makes a mouse movement. The software is also encrypted and only decrypted and then displayed in the browser memory. Both these conditions prevent many endpoint security wares—and possibly Google’s ad filters—from detecting the malice. Further, the warning ads appear differently depending on whether the targeted user device is running Windows or macOS.

Google didn’t say what caused its scanners to miss the scam campaign or give any indication the ads have been fully removed from its massive ad platform.

“We have zero tolerance for scams,” the company said in a statement. “We’re actively investigating the campaigns in this report and will take action against accounts that violate our policies.” The company has said that last year it blocked over 99 percent of violating ads before they were ever served.

As Netskope noted, devices aren’t actually locked up, even though most of the usual keys for closing the scam window have been disabled. In this case and many similar ones, users can still easily exit the window. For both Windows and macOS devices, this can be done in most cases by pressing the escape key and holding it for several seconds. The press will force the browser out of full screen and release the keyboard lock, and from there, the tab can be closed. An alternative approach is to invoke the Windows Task Manager (control-shift-escape) and exit the browser. On a Mac, the keys are (cmd-option-escape). In both cases, users can reopen the browser without restoring the previous session.

No legitimate company will ever advise users to call a phone number when they’re infected. Under no case should people hit by tech support scams call the number. Those who provide informal tech support for friends and family might consider writing the above advice on a Post-it and affixing it to screens.

Macron: Russian Attack on Europe “Plausible”, Pledges Troops to Saudi Arabia

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Macron: Russian Attack on Europe “Plausible”, Pledges Troops to Saudi Arabia


French President Emmanuel Macron denied Thursday that the CIA had warned France of a possible Russian drone operation targeting southern Europe, even as he pledged to send French “military assets” to protect a key Saudi Arabian oil facility on the Red Sea.

In a joint interview broadcast on France 2 and TF1, Macron said, “We can deny this piece of information, the CIA did not inform France of this information and the Italian defence minister said the same thing.” His comments came after Spanish daily El Mundo reported that the CIA had alerted several southern European governments to a possible Russian drone operation targeting Spain, France and Italy. Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto also rejected the report Thursday, writing on X that the alarm raised by the Spanish newspaper “serves no one and is not confirmed,” adding, “We already live in difficult, ‘nervous’ times, and no one needs more fuel on the fire.”

Pledge to protect Saudi oil route

Macron said France would send “military assets” — including troops, radar systems and defensive systems — to protect the Yanbu site of the East-West pipeline on the Red Sea, which gives Saudi Arabia an alternative route for shipping crude and refined oil to European markets. “We will not be engaging in any conflict,” he said. “Our aim is to help stabilize the oil market.” The pipeline, which can carry 5 million barrels of crude per day with capacity to temporarily reach 7 million, has become critical during the Middle East war by letting Saudi Arabia bypass the Strait of Hormuz. The port, which also holds major oil storage and refining facilities, has been targeted by Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen during the conflict.

Macron said disruptions at such sites are quickly felt by consumers: “As soon as one of these locations is relaxed, the immediate impact is seen at the gas pump. You’ll see it in two days.” Hard-left France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon criticized the deployment plan and called for a parliamentary vote, saying, “Sending troops to Saudi Arabia means entering a theatre of war. If the base is attacked, what will we do? There’s no question of becoming a belligerent party.”

Warning on Russia’s hybrid campaign

Macron also addressed Russia’s escalating hybrid campaign against Europe, citing the drone attack on Leipzig/Halle Airport on the night of Aug. 4-5, which German authorities have blamed on Russia. He said France has not suffered a similar attack but that one remains possible. “When you ask me, ‘Could this happen?’ my answer is yes,” he said. Macron said Russia views “Europe to be the strategic heart of Ukraine” and called the possibility of a Russian attack on Europe “plausible,” adding, “It is clear that there have been several signs indicating that Russia is preparing to do this.”

Macron said a potential Russian mobilization of roughly 300,000 personnel was a “credible scenario” that was “often shared” among officials, calling it a sign Moscow is prepared to “make even greater sacrifices to take over the entire Donbas.” He estimated Russia would need a year and a half to two years at its current pace to seize the remaining Donbas territory it does not control, “with terrible losses and suffering for Ukraine.”

Separately Thursday, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said the alliance is prepared to respond to sabotage and drone incidents across Europe. Speaking in New York at an event commemorating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Rutte said, “Russia is doing more and more when it comes to the cyber etc. domain, but… NATO is ready for this,” adding that response options are in place “when it comes to hybrids to make sure that we stay strong.” Rutte argued that the rising number of hybrid incidents in NATO countries shows Russian President Vladimir Putin is struggling in Ukraine’s fifth year of war. “Putin is in a bad place,” he said, adding that citizens of NATO’s 32 member countries can remain calm and urging members to increase support for Ukraine. “All the response options are there, and we will use whatever we need,” Rutte said.

His remarks followed a Danish intelligence warning Thursday of a growing risk of Russian military action against NATO countries, including further hybrid attacks, alongside the Spanish media reports of a possible Russian drone threat to Spain, France or Italy.

Hegseth calls for Europe to lead its own defense

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday that European allies must take the lead in defending their own continent, calling for NATO to become a “real hard-line military alliance.” Speaking at a meeting of NATO defense ministers, Hegseth proposed a “NATO 3.0” aimed at strengthening military capabilities and deterrence in Europe. “NATO 3.0 is post-Cold War recognition that (NATO) needs to go back to a real hard-line military alliance that has real military capabilities capable of deterring right here on the continent and taking the lead for the conventional defense of Europe,” he said.

His comments follow Washington’s recent notice to allies that it will no longer provide certain warships and aircraft in the event of an attack on a NATO member, prompting European allies and Canada to assess resulting capability gaps. Under Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty, an attack on one member is considered an attack on all, though the provision does not automatically require military assistance from allies. The U.S., which fields NATO’s largest armed forces, is seeking to reduce its conventional role in Europe but does not plan to withdraw its nuclear weapons stationed on the continent, which remain central to NATO’s deterrence strategy.

Melania Trump’s Shocking Comments Raise Eyebrows (Video)

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Melania Trump’s Shocking Comments Raise Eyebrows (Video)


Asked about growing up under communism, Melania Trump offered an answer that did not fit neatly into the usual Republican warnings about life behind the Iron Curtain.

“I didn’t miss anything,” the first lady said during a Sept. 23 appearance on Fox & Friends, describing her upbringing as a “very beautiful childhood.” She credited her parents with providing a happy family life.

The exchange came after co-host Brian Kilmeade asked why Eastern Europeans with backgrounds like hers might appreciate freedom and liberty more deeply than Western Europeans or even some Americans.

Rather than opening with a grim account of deprivation, Melania spoke warmly about the home in which she grew up. But she also acknowledged that the political system imposed limits.

“It’s not as free as here in the United States,” she said, explaining that people needed to watch their behavior. Viewers can watch the exchange in the clip shared by Fox & Friends.

That qualification matters. Melania described a happy childhood under a communist government; she did not say communism itself was beautiful or advocate adopting it in America.

Still, her affectionate recollections offered a striking contrast to the sweeping attacks on communism frequently heard from her husband and his political allies. A personal memory of a loving home proved more complicated than a familiar political talking point.

Melania was born in Slovenia in April 1970, when it was part of Yugoslavia. According to her official White House biography, she later pursued modeling, moved to New York in 1996 and became an American citizen in 2006. She remains the only first lady to have become a naturalized U.S. citizen.

There is also historical context often lost in shorthand descriptions of her upbringing. Communist Yugoslavia was not part of the Soviet Union. Its leadership broke with Moscow in 1948, decades before Melania was born, and maintained an independent position. U.S. diplomatic records document that split while also describing the country’s authoritarian government.

The childhood discussion followed questions about her efforts to reunite Ukrainian children with their families. Melania said representatives were communicating with Russia and Ukraine and working toward another reunification. Those remarks described ongoing efforts, rather than announcing a newly completed agreement.

Her television appearance also included promotion of a forthcoming two-part docuseries following her earlier film, Melania.

She said the series would feature more one-on-one conversations and answers to personal questions viewers had not previously heard her address. She suggested November as a possible release window but said an exact date had not been set.

Melania also discussed giving her husband candid feedback on his speeches, saying she offers her honest assessment even when he would rather not hear it.

On her childhood, that candor produced an answer with two parts: affection for the life her parents gave her and recognition that the country around them offered fewer freedoms. Both belong in the story.

Chinese Nationals Among 212 Arrested as Pakistan Cracks Down on Global Call Center Fraud 

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Chinese Nationals Among 212 Arrested as Pakistan Cracks Down on Global Call Center Fraud 


[ISLAMABAD] Pakistani authorities have arrested 212 people, including Chinese nationals, in raids on three illegal call centers in Islamabad linked to an alleged international online fraud network. 

The National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) conducted simultaneous operations in the capital’s E-11 and G-10 sectors over the past 24 hours, targeting call centers allegedly involved in defrauding victims in Pakistan and abroad.  

Officials said the centers used several schemes, including impersonating Google representatives, “tasking fraud,” and romance or “love-dating” scams. 

Tasking fraud typically begins with fake online opportunities offering victims money for completing simple assignments, such as liking videos, rating products, or promoting content. Scammers may initially make small payments to build trust before persuading victims to deposit larger amounts to complete higher-value tasks or withdraw supposed earnings. 

Once larger sums are transferred, victims may be asked for additional payments or lose contact with the operators, leaving them unable to recover their money. 

Citing a spokesperson for the NCCIA, the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) reported that authorities recovered a large quantity of equipment, including 306 mobile phones, 383 computers and CPUs, and 299 monitors and laptops. 

The detainees included Pakistani and Chinese men and women. Authorities did not disclose how many Chinese were arrested. 

Chinese nationals have also featured in several recent Pakistani investigations into illegal call centers and online fraud, including a separate NCCIA case earlier in September in which investigators identified a Chinese national as the alleged mastermind of an online investment and e-commerce scam. 

Investigators in the latest case also reported possible links to networks in India and Brazil. 

A case has been registered, and officials said that the call center premises were designated as a temporary sub-jail because of the large number of suspects. Investigators are continuing to examine the alleged financial links of the network and determine the individual roles of those detained.  

The latest operation comes amid a broader Pakistani crackdown on illegal call centers and organized cyber fraud. In July 2025, the NCCIA arrested 149 people, including 48 Chinese nationals, in Faisalabad in a raid on a call center allegedly involved in Ponzi schemes and investment fraud. 

In August 2026, Pakistani authorities also conducted major operations in Islamabad involving hundreds of foreign nationals. One operation involved 258 foreigners, including Chinese nationals, while a separate crackdown led to the arrest of 114 foreigners, including 111 Chinese and three Vietnamese nationals, over alleged cyber and online fraud activities. 

The continuing operations show the increasingly international nature of cyber-fraud investigations in Pakistan, with Chinese nationals repeatedly appearing among those detained or identified in cases involving illegal call centers and online financial scams. 

Tesla workers balk at training Optimus humanoid robots as replacements

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Tesla workers balk at training Optimus humanoid robots as replacements

Tesla’s pivot from making electric cars to humanoid robots is facing challenges because of complex robot hands and disgruntled employees pushing back against training their robotic replacements. The struggle to scale up production comes as Tesla CEO Elon Musk has bet the company’s future on AI and robotics.

As someone who frequently makes claims that fail to materialize, Musk has described the Optimus humanoid robot as potentially “the biggest product ever” during Tesla’s second-quarter 2026 earnings call. But he also acknowledged that making an autonomous humanoid robot capable of handling many different tasks is “one of the hardest things to solve”—and now extensive reporting by The Information has revealed multiple complications that Tesla is trying to tackle while developing general-purpose robots and scaling up for mass production.

Tesla’s Fremont factory in California has already stopped making the Model S sedan and Model X SUV as of May 2026, with the company switching both line workers and engineers over to working on Optimus, according to The Information.

But the newest version of Optimus, called Optimus V3, has proven challenging from a development and manufacturing standpoint. The Information’s reporting describes troubles with getting production line equipment to precisely line up components, along with limitations in running the production line too fast. Tesla has reportedly scaled up production to hundreds of robots per week—but the company is targeting production numbers surpassing 1,000 robots per week by the end of 2026.

The automotive industry and other industries have already been using specialized industrial robots, such as robotic arms, for decades. Tesla and many other automakers and robotics companies are betting that humanoid robots coupled with advances in AI models could eventually unlock general-purpose robots that can handle a diverse array of tasks while fitting more seamlessly into human workplaces.

Hardware and AI challenges

It’s no secret that making robotic hands capable of doing delicate manipulation tasks on par with human hands is a huge engineering challenge. The complexity of such robotic hands has translated into more production headaches for Tesla as human workers must manually assemble Optimus hands and forearms that together have more than 100 small components such as screws.

The imperfect and manually intensive manufacturing process has led to newly produced robots that require immediate fixes. Touch sensors for the robot’s hands have also proven unreliable enough so that Tesla has now developed a glove-like layer of sensors that can be replaced without replacing the entire robot hand.

The robot’s AI capabilities are also reportedly still insufficient for general-purpose operations, which is unsurprising given the challenges facing every robotics company on that front. Instead, one of The Information’s sources described Tesla’s Optimus robots as currently requiring programming to do specific tasks in carefully controlled environments.

One of the biggest challenges facing all robotics companies is getting enough training data to help robots visually learn a wide variety of manual tasks. The heavy reliance on imitation learning prompted Tesla to have factory workers in Texas and California wear special suits designed to record their physical movements while working.

However, The Information described some workers complaining because they “knew the robots were designed to eventually replace them.” So Tesla has apparently shifted that data collection responsibility to dedicated teams and has also set up “training hubs” for such teams.

Competition to make robots

The Information also makes a point of highlighting Tesla’s continued reliance on Chinese suppliers to make various robot components. The Information previously reported on Silicon Valley startups bringing robotic parts from China to the United States in their luggage.

The US robotics industry’s supply chain reliance on China has persisted despite the Trump administration trying to boost domestic supply chains and robotic production. In July, the Federal Communications Commission banned new foreign-made robots such as humanoid robots and four-legged robot dogs, along with robot vacuum cleaners.

Many of Tesla’s reported challenges in making humanoid robots are not unique. But that may be little comfort when Tesla also faces stiff competition on multiple fronts, as automakers in China, Japan, and South Korea are also developing humanoid robots, not to mention dedicated robotics companies pursuing humanoids. Toyota plans to invest billions of dollars in upgrading factories with robots, including some humanoids, while Hyundai is planning to deploy up to 25,000 Atlas humanoid robots developed by US subsidiary Boston Dynamics over the next several years.

One of the companies furthest along in commercial deployment of humanoid robots is Oregon-based Agility Robotics, which first put them to work at an Atlanta-area warehouse owned by GXO Logistics in 2024. But the overall business case for humanoid robots still has to be proven through more sustained and cost-effective deployments—not to mention showing that such robots can work safely around humans.

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