July 21, 2026

SKYNET SMILES (AGAIN): New F-16 Kit Hands the Controls to AI at the Flip of a Switch.

The capability was recently demonstrated by the US Air Force, marking a major step toward autonomous air combat.

The test was conducted under the Viper Experimentation and Next-Generation Operations Model (VENOM) program, a collaborative effort involving the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to advance AI for future combat aircraft.

At the heart of the project is the VENOM Autonomy Kit, an upgrade that interfaces with the F-16’s flight controls and mission systems.

It allows pilots to seamlessly switch between human and AI control while remaining in the loop to oversee the mission.

The on/off switch is hardware, not software, right?

Right?

Posted at 12:43 pm by Stephen Green

CHRISTOPHER NOLAN’S ODYSSEY: Epic for Our Times or Epic Failure?

The horse! That great military ruse, that glorious deception, that immaculate trick that continues to inspire us even today was, to its originator, nothing but original sin. In a rueful third-act speech, Odysseus laments that the cleverness of his tactics destroyed the natural bonds between people. The people of Troy were trusting and grateful for the gift, and he repaid their civility with death and destruction: He has become death, the destroyer of worlds.

If the sentiment—heck, even some of the exact words—sound familiar, it’s because Nolan has pondered them once before, in Oppenheimer, another film about another clever chap grappling with the aftermath of his destructive ingenuity.

All of this makes for great, modern drama. It also turns Odysseus into a great modern hero, a universal figure whose journey can be adapted and understood by anyone, anywhere, because it is, after all, a sojourn to understand those common creeds that make us all human. But Homer’s Odysseus, hallelujah, was never anything of the sort. He was a very specifically Greek hero, who lived by and fought for highly specific Greek virtues like kleos, or “glory,” and timē, or “honor,” virtues that, for centuries, guided and inspired the rest of Western civilization as well.

But to believe in such virtues, and to sacrifice so much to protect them, we must also believe that they are uniquely ours and that other cultures espouse other values that are sometimes incompatible with our own. We must believe, in short, that at any moment we may be overtaken by invaders who come from afar, from outside our borders, from outside our culture, who desire nothing but our subjugation and destruction, and that resisting them is key to our survival. Nolan’s Greeks spend much time fretting about such invaders—“the people from the sea”—only for his Odysseus to deliver the perfectly postmodern observation that the only real ruinous invader was he himself. If you’re wondering how this noble-sounding insight holds up to reality, pick up any book of ancient Greek history.

Nolan, sadly, picked up a very different book, Emily Wilson’s recent translation of The Odyssey, a project dedicated entirely to making Homer’s heroes come across as a gang of preening, pathetic poseurs afflicted with terminal toxic masculinity and in dire need of a smart woman to save them all from their superabundance of penis. That’s why the movie speaks in godawful modernese: In Wilson’s translation, for example, a timeless line like “Sing to me of the man, muse, the man of twists and turns” was flattened into “Tell me about a complicated man,” as if one was pleading not to the gods, but to one’s therapist; similarly, in Nolan’s film, Telemachus calls his father “dad.”

It’s a sin worthy of the gods’ ire, if the gods, that is, were anywhere to be found. Nolan banished them all off-screen. Sure, Zendaya has a few charming moments as Athena, but the world unfurling on-screen isn’t Homer’s world, with its pantheon of rageful, resentful, and magnificent deities moving the plot along. It is ours, a disenchanted world, a world in which some bearded zealots may offer a few prayers to some unseen eminence in the sky but that nonetheless rolls along of its own accord, with men, not gods, at the very center of things.

Read the whole thing.

Related: Talk about a Trojan Horse!

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

COME SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM:

“The suspect admitted in his interview that he ‘DIDN’T CARE’ if he hurt or killed anyone, regardless of whether they were federal employees or civilians.”

Or immigrants.

Posted at 12:27 pm by Stephen Green

EPIC FURY: The U.S. Campaign Against Iran Is Moving Inland: This Is No Longer a Coastal War.

As of today, July 20, Iranian media has reported attacks near Khomein and Khondab in Markazi Province, Semnan in northern Iran, the Parchin military complex southeast of Tehran, and Tabriz in the northwest, where officials said a military area was struck for the first time during the renewed campaign. Shiraz, home to an IRGC Navy facility damaged earlier this month, was also reported hit again.

CENTCOM also confirmed that the Kehuristan Bridge in Hormozgan Province was rendered unusable. The bridge links Bandar Abbas with western Hormozgan and forms part of one of the province’s main transportation routes.

Roads, bridges and railways are how Iran moves mobile launchers, fuel, ammunition and replacement equipment. Disrupting those routes makes it harder to sustain missile operations, even if launchers survive.

Stay tuned.

Posted at 11:41 am by Stephen Green

DEAFENING:

Posted at 11:25 am by Stephen Green

ESCHEW ALL MODALITIES OF COCKSUREDNESS: Morning Joe warns Democrats are doomed to more election failure in 2028 as party continues to embrace ‘extraordinarily loony ideas.’

MS NOW host Joe Scarborough devoted a sizable chunk of Monday’s Morning Joe to warning about the rise of Democratic Socialism within the Democratic Party.

Scarborough, 63, said the party was at risk of alienating voters if the support continues into the next Democratic presidential race.

‘I mean, there have been some extraordinarily loony ideas coming from some of these people that have actually won races and are going to be seated in Congress, most likely,’ the former Florida Republican said.

‘Like, you know, getting rid of prisons, getting rid of cops.’

Scarborough said such policies ‘didn’t work well for Democrats before’ and ‘didn’t work well for American cities, either.’

He warned that years of success seen since were at risk of becoming undone.

‘America is getting safer again, in good part because both parties have come to the conclusion that police officers are a good thing,’ the host proclaimed.

‘Police officers make communities safer, make our children safer, make our schools safer.’

Scarborough admitted that the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) organization was just ‘one extreme’ of a political spectrum that’s widened on both ends.

‘I guess my question is why the Democratic Party is so ill equipped to deal with those extremes, brush them off, and instead focus on candidates that are mainstream who are going to end up winning most of these primaries.’

Flashback to a pre-Covid February 2020: Why is Anyone Surprised That Chris Matthews Went All Nazi Comparison About Bernie?

Matthews came on after Democratic strategist James Carville went on a diatribe against Sanders, and as the MSNBC host made reference to that, he invoked the historical episode when the Germans overran the Maginot Line and forced France to surrender in the middle of World War II.

“It looks like Bernie Sanders is hard to beat right now,” Matthews said. “I’m with Carville all the way in terms of the dangers of what lies ahead in November. They’re sitting on so much oppo research on Bernie.”

A week later, Matthews was caught in a putsch, err, pushed out of MSNBC near the end of #MeToo’s reign of terror, but as Glenn wrote at the time, “In 2020, He’s Not Crazy Enough for Them…It’s really because he dissed Bernie. The rest is just window dressing.”

And speaking of crazy!

Exit question: Obama, Where Art Thou? “The day will come when Mr. Obama will have to speak for himself. He’ll have to take up the question posed in the famous labor union anthem, ‘Which Side Are You On?’ I think we know the answer, but it will be instructive to hear it from him.”

UPDATE:

 

Posted at 10:50 am by Ed Driscoll

SKYNET SMILES: Introducing Thunder: Autonomous Attack Rotorcraft for the Near-Surface Fight. “The advantages that Thunder brings to the battlefield extend beyond its hardware – they are also defined by the centrality of software and autonomy to its performance. Anduril’s core Lattice for Mission Autonomy software delivers the trusted, flight-proven formation behaviors, separation management, and flight logic necessary for Thunder to remain useful, predictable, and safe around crewed aircraft. By translating operator intent into trusted machine-speed route, timing, tasking, and deconfliction decisions, Lattice eliminates the need for pilots to manage Thunder with a stick and rudder, enabling them to focus instead on the most important decisions at hand.”

Full autonomy is coming to the battlespace whether we like it or not.

Posted at 10:39 am by Stephen Green

HMM: Judge pauses Paramount-Warner merger.

U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín of the Northern District of California issued a temporary restraining order barring Paramount from closing the transaction, a corporate tie-up that would unite two movie studios, two streaming platforms and two news organizations under the control of David Ellison, the son of billionaire technology tycoon Larry Ellison.

Martínez-Olguín’s order said the restraining order will remain in effect for 14 days. The judge, who is presiding over the case, scheduled an Aug. 3 hearing on the states’ motion for a preliminary injunction, which would freeze the transaction while the legal process plays out.

The plaintiffs, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, sued to block the merger July 13, arguing in a 38-page complaint that it would “extinguish competition” in Hollywood.

I’m more or less agnostic on the merger, other than it might be the only way for two storied studios to survive outside the Netflix behemoth. But there’s no end of entertainment to be found in California using every means at its disposal to create a more and more hostile business climate.

Posted at 9:37 am by Stephen Green

RACISM, STRAIGHT UP:

Posted at 9:21 am by Stephen Green

CDR SALAMANDER: Cuba Libre: The Department of State’s Cuba Report.

Nice to see our foreign policy apparatus standing up to commies instead of supporting them.

Related:

Posted at 9:12 am by Glenn Reynolds

THEY’RE PANICKING:

Of course, that’s probably what happens every time the Mensheviks realize the Bolsheviks are about to slaughter them.

And the Mensheviks never, ever learn.

Posted at 8:50 am by Stephen Green

21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Bristol Myers buys Nvidia’s latest AI computing system for drug research.

The drugmaker said it will be the first life sciences company to buy an Nvidia DGX SuperPOD ​based on its Vera Rubin systems. The chipmaker unveiled its Vera Rubin architecture earlier this year as the successor to its current generation of AI computing systems.

Financial terms of the Bristol Myers investment were not disclosed. It builds on a smaller SuperPOD system the drugmaker ‌bought from Nvidia, which is ⁠around two or three generations behind Vera Rubin, BMS executives said in an interview.

Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly investing in AI infrastructure to try ⁠to identify drug targets faster and improve the odds that experimental drugs succeed in clinical trials.

We sure could use some new antibiotics in a hurry.

Posted at 8:35 am by Stephen Green