Escalation: Middle East war widens

Är 100% Det var som 40 000 andra småföretag och väljunar business. Hos vattenfall kan du välja hur du vill ha din. Hälften fast, hälften rörligt, helt fällt. Välj det elavtal som passar dig och bli en del av förändringen. The Economist. Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist. I'm your host, Rosie Blor. Every weekday, we provide a fresh response. Among the many striking aspects of America's assault on Tricky thing is the Trump administration.

having a big spat with exactly the company whose software it relied on. Yeah. Used to say, now for something completely different. Thirty years ago, a game released on Nintendo. Featured a strange set of pocket monsters that spawned what is now the world's highest-grossing media franchise. Happy birthday to Pokemon. First up though.

This morning, Israel launched further strikes on Tehran and on Beirut, preparing for a ground offensive in Lebanon. Israeli bombs had already killed dozens of people in Beirut yesterday. In response to attacks by Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy, on targets in northern Israel. America and Israel is now entering its fourth day.

Iran has directed missiles not just at US bases, but also at cities, airports, and energy infrastructure across the Middle East, and most recently the American Embassy in Saudi Arabia. War is rapidly engulfing. I hear the people are taking we're going to have an endless war here. You're not going to have an endless war.

Quick and decisive. It may take some time, but it's not going to take years. It's an effort right now to achieve the peace that we all yearn and pray for. And I think together we'll achieve it. For the moment the question First Iranian missiles and now also Hezbollah missile drones being fired in Israel. There isn't yet official data, but I'm assessing it around two hundred plus. There's been, from what we've seen, four direct hits on residential or built-up areas.

And eleven civilians have been killed. So over the last let's say twenty four to thirty six hours, the rate of Iranian missiles has lessened to quite a significant degree. From the polls we know that this is a war that the overwhelming majority of Israeli public support. But on the street I'm detecting a feeling of war weariness and almost boredom with this. after over two years of almost constant warfare.

And Shaw, how do you think Netanyahu will think this war is going? Well from Netanyahu's perspective this war is going extremely well so far. They've achieved on the very first strike almost total decapitation of the Iranian leadership, starting from the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and downwards.

Suddenly the success of Israel's intelligence services in pinpointing the location and the timing of the meetings of Supreme Leader Khamenei and other senior Iranian figures alongside the American intelligence will be something that Israel and the Israeli leadership are very pleased with. And perhaps what's most important from Tanya's perspective, it's very clear that he's working in full partnership with Donald Trump, uh Israeli and the American militaries and intelligence communities.

are working very closely together. That's the kind of image that Netanyahu has always been very eager to project that he is Trump's number one partner in the world. What is Israel's strategy from here onwards? So the officials I've been talking to, both on the record and off the record, are no longer hiding the fact that regime change is what Israel wants to happen.

quite saying we're going to make it happen in the official line. And I think also the unofficial line is still that this is something that only the Iranian people can ultimately achieve.

We are now providing the Iranian people with the means to do it. And one type of target that the Israeli warplanes have been attacking over the last twenty four hours or so are what they call targets which are connected to suppression. In other words headquarters and offices of the besieged militia which were involved in the bloody suppression of the protests back in January.

So there's both a physical attempt and also a message here to say we are trying to remove the forces which prevented the Iranian people from rising up. But now they have to do that. Anshaw, you've spoken about a full partnership between Israel and the US. Something that came up yesterday when we spoke on the show to Shashank, our defense editor, was that yes, US and Israel had gone in together, but there could be a rift ultimately about their goals. What do you think of that?

Well I certainly think that there is a point where the interests of Netanyahu and the interests of Israel are not always the same thing and those of Trump and that of America.

uh may start to diverge and I think it'll be around not so much what's happening between Israel and Iran in this war, but around what's happening between Iran and countries in the Gulf, the effect on their economy, which is not so much a source concern, but I think America is more concerned about how that could have a ripple effect on global economy and of course energy prices.

And the question is how long will Donald Trump want to continue this thing that He probably has less tolerance for a more drawn out war than the Tanyawa is and I think Israel has more of an interest in eliminating certainly the Iranian ballistic missile threat totally, whereas it's probably Donald Trump is less concerned about that because it's not exactly targeting the United States.

And yesterday we saw Hezbollah, which of course is an Iranian proxy, get involved with attacks from Lebanese territory. That was then followed up by retaliation from Israel and what now looks like a ground invasion.

Was Hezbollah's involvement in this war inevitable, do you think? I think it was inevitable because ultimately Hezbollah, it's a Lebanese movement, but it's also Iran's number one proxy in the region. It's a movement which was founded Partly by Iran back in nineteen eighty two and funded And directed by Iran for most of the period ever since. It was also the apple of Khamenei's eye, uh the supreme leader, now the late Supreme Leader of Iran, saw his beloved very much as an extension

of Iranian power and influence in the region and insisted on funding hezbar even when Iran's economy was in free fall. So they have an obligation to join in now a religious obligation, a moral obligation. But at the same time, it's a very bad idea for them to be involved because it's the most unpopular thing they can do now.

in Lebanon and invites Israeli retaliation against Lebanon. We're already seeing the Lebanese government announcing that Hezbollah's military operations are from now on illegitimate. I'm not quite sure what the Lebanese government can do about that, but it's still shows how Kizbalai is now running a foul.

of its own country, of its own population. Another reason why his Villa would be reluctant to join in is that they were very severely weakened back in the war in in the end of twenty twenty four. And for them, they would have hoped this would be a period in which they could rebuild their force rather than being engaged in yet another damaging war with Israel, but they don't seem to have had much choice. The Iranians have forced them to join in.

And how well prepared is Israel for a wider regional war? Well it's been fighting in many ways a wider war since the day after October seven when Hezbollah joined in then with the sort of constant stream of rocket and drone attacks on Israel and it's been fighting the Houthis from Yemen, so you know this has been a wider original war from Israel's perspective, a multi front war. Almost since October seventh, uh, nearly two and a half years ago.

the Israeli military, the Israeli intelligent community, are pretty prepared for that. And the same thing I think for the Israeli public, you know, sometimes when there's a missile at people and say, Hold on, this what is this from Gaza? Is this from Lebanon? Is this from Iran, is this from Syria? Is this from Yemen? I mean it's the constant

threat or fire from all directions and people are used to it and are almost blase about it in some ways. So I think what's different about this round is the involvement of the Gulf states. And we may see two outcomes. One outcome may be that they are very insistent on keeping their bubbles of prosperity and peace.

and will therefore be pushing very strongly on Trump to try and end this as soon as possible. There is another dynamic that we may see is that they will think, well This is what Iran is capable of doing and therefore we need to make sure that they don't do it again. And if that is the consensus then we may see them joining in this war, perhaps not actually sending their own war planes, but being supportive of Israel and the US.

in finishing the job in Iran. And that's I think what we need to look at in the next few days. Angela, thank you very much. Thank you for having me, Rosie. And you can hear more from our colleagues on Iran on a special edition of The Insider, our new video offering, which went out last night. Deputy Editor of The Economist, Edward Carr, was joined by a panel of our experts. To analyse how the war could unfold. You can find it on economist.com and a link is in the show notes.

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Artificial intelligence is crucial to the Pentagon's war machine. Over the weekend, America used AI in its

Strikes against Iran. According to reports by the Wall Street Journal and Axios, the assault involved Claude, which is a powerful AI model run by Anthropic, a giant of Silicon Valley. Yet just hours before the attacks on Iran, Donald Trump ordered Federal agencies to stop using the tool, labelling Anthropic a radical left AI company, which was, he said, run by people who have no idea what the real world is all about. All of that raises fundamental questions about the role of AI in confidence.

Just as a war itself appears to be heating up. For many weeks now, the Pentagon has been locked in a high-stake standoff with Anthropic, which is one of the world's leading AI companies. Henry Tricks is our US technology editor. The crux of the issue is the fact that the Department of War has a contract with Anthropic to use its powerful clawed family of AI models. for military purposes. Anthropoc was one of the first AI labs to work with the DOW. It signed a contract last year.

But it has clear red lines when it comes to using its models for national security and these have become more of an issue. And this resulted in a very public showdown between Anthropic's boss Dario Amadei and the Secretary of War Pete Heg.

So if Anthropic had agreed to work with the Pentagon, then where did this bat kick off from? It came about because Anthropic has a hard line on Clawed not being used for mass domestic surveillance or for fully autonomous weapons systems. Hegseth, for his part, argued that AI companies who are working with the Pentagon.

Should give them carte blanche to do whatever they wanted with the technology as long as it was within the bounds of the law. And he issued an ultimatum, which was basically agree to my terms or else. Things kicked off when it became clear that Amadei was not going to accept, and Donald Trump and Hegseth responded. with a sort of blistering assault on anthropic at the end of last week.

in which not only was the DOW cancelling its contracts with Anthropic, but it was also going to designate it a supply chain rich. This is a very severe form of punishment that no American firm has faced up until now. It's not all that's happened. Of course, America launched its attacks with Israel on Iran, and there are suggestions that Claude was in fact used as part of that.

Yes, that's right. There was a report in the Wall Street Journal that the US military command used AI tools for intelligence purposes. as well as helping select targets in Iran and carrying out battlefield simulations and that Claude was involved in that. It had previously used Claude to

in the operation against Nicolas Maduro, the strongman in Venezuela. And it's quite clear that increasingly it's being relying on anthropic models in order to conduct operations and that's because essentially Claude has been until very recently the only one that is approved for classified work in America. So this seems like an extraordinary situation, Henry. On the one hand you've got the Pentagon relying on anthropic

To carry out particular activities that it designates as absolutely crucial to the US. On the other hand, it's got this spam. What would it really mean to be labelled a supply chain risk for anthropics? Yeah, for Anthropic it's quite serious. It's one thing to lose a two hundred million dollar contract with the Pentacum. It's another thing to be told that Any company that does business with the Pentagon has to essentially sever relations with Anthropic.

And you think of the extraordinary number of companies that in one way or another are connected to the Pentagon, whether that's financial institutions or whether it's military firms or whether it's he firms doing bureaucratic work for the Pentagon, they would have to strip Anthropic out of their operations, which could be quite a severe blow to Anthropic. And does the Pentagon have other options when it comes to AI?

Yeah, so this was one of the other fascinating wrinkles over the end of last week, and that is the fact that Anthropic's main rival. OpenAI, which is run by Sam Altman, has swooped in and gained a contract with the Department of War, despite the fact that according to Altmann, it has its own red lines that are very similar to those of anthropic. So this has caused a lot of head scratching over the weekend. It does actually look as though Although Altman insists that he has red lines.

that they're not as strong as those of Anthropic. They're slightly watered down. They're wrapped in legalese. And there is a bit of a sense that Oldman has been trying to reap some benefit here by playing up the strength of its own connections with the White House. and the Trump administration, just as Amoday is considered kind of the White House's bête noir.

So what does all this mean, Henry, ultimately, for the use of AI in defence or war? It raises some very tricky questions. The biggest question is essentially when you sell technology to the Defence Department. Are you handing it over to the government of the day to use it as it wishes, or do you have any say over how that technology is used? and in this case anthropic is insisting that it has a say. Now

You can understand that when you sell a tank to the Pentagon or you sell an armored car or whatever it is, you shouldn't really be telling the Pentagon how they're gonna use it. That's their responsibility. Amoday's argument is that AI is different here, that laws have not quite caught up with the rapid advance of the technology. And until they do, then they need to have some control or some influence over the process. And there's something also very interesting going on below the surface here.

And that is the sensitivity of AI researchers, i.e. the people who are building these models. to the way that the models are used. And it's fair to say that Silicon Valley is relatively well stuffed with peacnicks. But Anthropic is not necessarily a peaceneck company. It is one of the first AI labs to have forged a military contact with the Pentagon and Amoday is very firmly in favour of supporting the US against China, for instance.

But he's also very worried about losing these AI researchers who are some of the most highly valued resources in Silicon Valley. And it's very interesting that over the weekend there's actually been a huge surge. in usage of Claude as a chatbot So on the App Store it's just leapfrogged ahead of OpenAI's Chat GPT for the first time. And researchers have been coming out on X in support of what Amoday is doing.

So there's a very delicate balance here between satisfying the Pentagon on one hand and satisfying your researchers, your most valuable commodity on the other. Henry, thank you so much for talking to me. Great talking to you, Rosie. The monsters are everywhere.

Moeka Ida writes about Japan. Bushy-tailed Eevee, frolic on the grass, grinning yellow Pikachu climb up trees. This is Poke Park Kanto, the first permanent Pokemon theme park which opened in Tokyo in early February. Here, you can find more than six hundred pocket monsters or Pokemon, and fans are desperate to go in. Tickets for the park's first three months sold out immediately. The excitement around Poképark Canto tells you something about Pokemon's cultural clout three decades on.

The first games were released in Japan in february nineteen eighty seven. And at the time, a few people expected it to become a global craze, but Pokemania spread quickly. The Pokemon company has sold about five hundred million dollars. Produced more than 75 billion trading cards, and the anime has been broadcast in around 190 countries.

According to the Guinness World Records, Pokemon is the highest grossing media franchise in the world. Its total lifetime revenue is estimated at around$150 billion. And Pokemon Go, the augmented reality app, still has around 30 million active monthly users. There's even Pokemon World Championships held every year, and collectors pay enormous sums to get rare Pokemon trading cards. Recently, a rare Pikachu Illustrator card sold for a record$16 million.

Despite its international appeal, Pokemon started with a very Japanese obsession, collecting insects. The creator of Pokemon is called Tajiri Satoshi. He was born in 1965 in the suburbs of Tokyo, and as a child, he was obsessed with exploring nature and collecting insects. Classmates used to call him Dr. Bug. But by the time he became a teenager, urban development took over the fields and ponds near his home. At one interview, he said, all the insects were driven away.

By creating Pokemon, Hajiri hoped to allow children to explore and collect creatures in a digital world even as the natural one was disappearing around them. And in this he was really successful. A study in the early 2000s showed that British children were more familiar with Pokemon than common wildlife. Pokemon? GET OUT OF ARE!

In the first Pokemon anime, Ash or Satoshi in Japan, travels with his best friend Pikachu, the famous electric mouse, and they catch, battle and tame monsters along the way. The franchise, according to Miziko Ito, who's a cultural anthropologist, drew on two currents in Japanese culture. One is this idea of kawaii or cuteness. Pokemon characters are often very cuddly and cute and they have anime signature wide eyes. And the second sensibility is otake or geek culture.

Pokemon was successful in packaging these Japanese sensibilities in a way that was accessible for children in other countries. As Roland Kelt, another pop culture expert put Pokemon was a Rosetta Stone that unlocked the art of Japanese storytelling for Western audiences. Pokemon was responsible for clearing the path for subsequent hits like Digimon or Yu-Gi-Oh and today's booming anime industry.

themselves in. And almost everyone has their favourite Pokemon. Mine used to be Achamor, or in English Torchick, which is a little fire chick Pokemon. Whatever kind of person you are, there's always a Pokemon for you. Pokemon has managed to catch them all. That's it for this episode of The Intelligence. See you back here tomorrow. Det verkligt låg. Ändå är det lopp på liv och död. Där deltagarna ger allt. För att hålla jorden bördig och ställa mat på ditt bord.

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