James' World 2

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In Donald Trump’s fantasy world, America is invincible and impregnable.

Its military is so advanced and skillful that it can pluck a sitting head of state from a hostile country and deposit him in a New York City jail cell without losing a single soldier. It can slap punitive tariffs on any nation it likes, abandon longstanding alliances on a whim, bomb any country at any time, and freely blow up boats it may suspect of carrying drugs. America’s awesome power means it is unfettered by any rules, untroubled by any consequences. As an unfathomably rich and sprawling nation, blessed by geography and protected from its enemies by two vast oceans, why shouldn’t it do what it will?

Over the past six days, as Trump plunged the United States into a war with Iran, that fantasy of omnipotence has come crashing into reality. Undertaken for unexplained and perhaps unexplainable reasons, the war is being waged in a central node of the global economy against a disciplined, well-armed opponent with nothing to lose. America and Israel killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a dozen Iranian leaders on the first day of fighting, but Trump has clearly given little thought to what comes next. Recklessly, he has ignited a widening conflagration with no obvious end in sight. The death toll has already surpassed 1,000 people.

For America, the repercussions are just beginning. At least six American service members have been killed, and the Pentagon, pointedly not ruling out boots on the ground, has said more casualties are likely. Despite relentless attacks on Iran’s military installations, the country has responded with relentless force.

It has rained missiles and drones not only on American and Israeli targets but also on the Gulf countries — the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, chief among them — that play host to American military bases. Airports, hotels, data centers, and energy infrastructure have been struck, causing chaos. Meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial choke point for the export of oil and gas, is all but closed, sending shudders through energy markets.

This is the world Trump tries to disavow — complex and interconnected, resiliently interwoven and yet vulnerable to disruption. The Persian Gulf embodies it like no other place. An apotheosis of globalization, it is a crossroads of money, people, and power deeply intertwined with not just America’s fortunes but also Trump’s personal wealth. More than anything, it shows up — in its grounded flights, shuttered refineries, and intercepted missiles — the fallacy of Fortress America.

Trump neither sought nor received congressional approval, much less international support, for his war. But perhaps the most shocking thing about his cavalier approach is that he seems to have had no idea that the Gulf would be a target. In an interview with CNN on Monday, he professed that Iran’s attacks on American allies in the Gulf were “probably the biggest surprise” — despite the fact that just about every country in the region had warned his administration that Iran would surely attack them in retaliation for an American assault.

This thoughtlessness is part of a pattern. For one thing, the Trump administration has given no plausible explanation for the war, offering instead confused and contradictory justifications. Secretary of State Marco Rubio even suggested that America was effectively bounced into it by the prospect of an imminent Israeli attack on Iran. Trump soon weighed in, claiming that he was actually the one who pressured Israel into the venture. His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, perhaps offered the closest thing to the truth. “The president had a feeling,” she told reporters on Wednesday, “that Iran was going to strike the United States.”

For another, Trump appears strangely uncertain about where the war is heading. “The worst case would be we do this, and then somebody takes over who’s as bad as the previous person,” Trump mused on Tuesday, seated in his gilded Oval Office alongside Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany. “We don’t want that to happen,” he said, seeming to be considering this very real possibility for the first time. “It would probably be the worst.”

It is unsettling how often Trump affects astonishing indifference, as though the most powerful man in the world were merely a spectator to events he himself has set in motion — and who, in any case, has little investment in the outcome. But that curious passivity reveals a darker truth. Trump seems to believe that he, like his fantasy America, exists on a different plane, utterly untouchable by the swirl of global events. The devastating consequences of his actions are not just someone else’s fault. They are someone else’s problem, too.

That illusion cannot survive contact with material reality. The postwar consensus was built partly on a set of noble ideas about human rights and international law, but in truth, its backstop was economic interdependence. And not since World War II has there been a conflict that unfolded in a crucial global financial center. America’s major wars since then took place in nations that were on the economic periphery: Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq.

America’s last major foray in the Middle East casts a long shadow over the Iran war — it was, in many ways, the crucible that gave us Trump. But the Gulf is a fundamentally different place than it was when America invaded Iraq after 9/11. Disastrous as that decision was, the region had not yet become the indispensable node of the global economy that it is today.

There are the oil and gas, of course. The Gulf is home to about half of the world’s proven reserves of oil. Those are now imperiled: Scarcely any ships are getting through the Strait of Hormuz, and oil producers are running out of storage space. What’s more, one-fifth of the world’s liquid natural gas comes through the strait, primarily from Qatar. On Wednesday, that country shut down its liquefaction facilities and declared a force majeure, with potentially dire implications for importers in Europe and East Asia.

Yet alongside this resource wealth, Gulf nations have rapidly diversified in recent decades, transforming the region into a center of finance, aviation, technology, and tourism, as well as a home to tens of millions of people from across the globe. The sprawling airports and vast fleets of airliners in Dubai, Doha, and Abu Dhabi have made the region the busiest flight hub on the globe; about 80 percent of the world is an eight-hour flight away. The closure of these airports has not only stranded hundreds of thousands of travelers, including many Americans, but has also severed vital links between vast regions of the world.

Indeed, there are few people who would have better reason to appreciate the Gulf’s centrality than Trump. After all, his family’s company has struck billions of dollars of real estate deals in the region. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, got $2 billion in 2022 from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund for his private equity company. An investment firm tied to the U.A.E. purchased nearly half of the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company for $500 million just days before Trump’s inauguration last year. A few months later, Qatar gave Trump the lavish gift of a gilded Boeing 747.

That is all in peril now, as the war spreads ominously. On Tuesday, America torpedoed an Iranian warship with a crew of an estimated 180 people on board off the coast of Sri Lanka, more than 2,000 miles from Tehran. On Wednesday, NATO forces shot down a missile headed into Turkey’s airspace, prompting anxieties about NATO needing to trigger Article 5. On Thursday, Azerbaijan said multiple drones crossed its borders, injuring at least two people. Who knows what will be next.

And yet Trump presses on, declaring at one point that the war could go on “forever.” In a manic briefing on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth promised “death and destruction from the sky all day long” over Tehran, a densely populated city of about 10 million people. “This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”

Watching Hegseth rant about limitless killing, I remembered the words of the anticolonial poet and leader Aimé Césaire. “The hour of the barbarian is at hand,” he wrote in his “Discourse on Colonialism” in 1950. “The modern barbarian. The American hour. Violence, excess, waste, mercantilism, bluff, conformism, stupidity, vulgarity, disorder.”

If war is God’s way of teaching Americans geography, perhaps it will also serve as a lesson to Trump. It should be a simple one: Other places and other people are real, possessing their own agendas and agency — and America’s actions have consequences it cannot control. Anything else is pure fantasy.

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Photo Illustration by Damon Winter/The New York Times

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TerraPower, a Bill Gates–backed nuclear power start-up, received the federal green light to start building a power plant in Wyoming. The approval paves the way for the first new commercial nuclear reactor in the U.S. in nearly a decade.

On Wednesday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission unanimously voted in favor of TerraPower’s construction permit.

The start-up hopes to build smaller, more advanced nuclear reactors that the company says will help support the transition to clean energy from fossil fuels. Known as the Natrium plant, the reactor is not expected to come online until at least 2031.

Chris Levesque, TerraPower’s chief executive officer, said in a statement that the approval marked a “historic day for the United States nuclear industry.”

TerraPower claims that its reactor design will be easier and cheaper to build and bring online than older nuclear power plants—the last two reactors built in the U.S. in recent memory cost $35 billion and ran way overbudget and past schedule. TerraPower will still need to clear multiple other regulatory hurdles before it can come online.

A key difference between TerraPower’s reactor design and older plants is that older reactors pump water through protective shields and heavy, thick pipes into the reactor core, where it is heated through nuclear fission. The resulting steam then creates electricity. TerraPower’s design uses liquid sodium, which doesn’t reach such high pressures as water, reducing the cost of shielding. And the start-up’s plant will be outfitted with a battery storage system that will enable it to ramp up or down electricity production as needed—something older reactors can’t easily do.

The Trump administration has touted nuclear power as a potential solution for the U.S.’s rapidly rising energy demands, which are set to become more acute as planned data centers to power artificial intelligence come online.

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The challenge for modern marketers is not whether to trust the data, but how to translate it into work that still feels human.

Key Takeaways

• Modern marketing has shifted from simple messaging to utilizing real-time data and algorithms for strategic insights.
• Effective marketers balance data analytics with human creativity to ensure campaigns resonate on a personal level.
• While AI can enhance understanding and streamline marketing, emotional intelligence and brand authenticity remain key.

Marketing used to be a simple equation: Brands speak, and people respond. What has changed is how clearly we can see behavior. Today’s marketers operate in an environment shaped by algorithms that surface signals in real time, showing us what resonates, what converts, and where attention is moving. Data is no longer a support function. It is the foundation of modern marketing.

Search engines, social platforms, and recommendation systems now influence not only how content is distributed, but how it is conceived. They reveal patterns at a scale that instinct alone never could. Used well, these systems make marketing more intentional, measurable, and responsive.

Insight alone, however, does not create a connection. Algorithms can tell us what is working, but they cannot explain why something matters to a person on the other side of the screen. The challenge for modern marketers is not whether to trust the data, but how to translate it into work that still feels human.

When machines became the audience

Most marketers understand that algorithms dictate distribution. What is less obvious is how deeply these systems have reshaped the creative process itself.

Many campaigns now start with a spreadsheet. The risk is not starting with data, but mistaking signals for strategy. When the first step is identifying high-volume keywords or analyzing last month’s engagement patterns, teams risk designing campaigns around signals instead of the people those signals represent. Creative direction has not lost its soul, but its starting point has shifted.

Data has become the compass by which we navigate ideas. It tells us what resonates, when platforms might boost or bury content and which signals matter most. This is not inherently bad. In fact, data gives us intention. But when algorithms are treated as the audience instead of the translation layer, creativity collapses into compliance.

I see this pattern often. A team identifies a clear performance signal, a headline format, a visual style or a message that begins outperforming everything else. Instead of interrogating why it works, they replicate it across channels. Engagement holds briefly, then fades as audiences tune it out. In contrast, some teams use the signal as a clue rather than a conclusion. They look for the underlying emotion or tension driving response and express it in new ways. The algorithm sees continuity, while the audience experiences something that still feels fresh.

For marketers willing to adapt, this shift has created an opportunity to build smarter, more responsive creative systems.

The optimization trap

Automation has made marketing faster and more measurable. It has also raised the stakes.

A/B testing, performance dashboards, and continuous optimization allow teams to iterate at unprecedented speed. Used well, these tools sharpen ideas and improve outcomes. Used poorly, they flatten creative work into a series of safe, repeatable patterns.

I have watched brands with strong personalities slowly sand down their edges in the name of performance. They stop telling stories and start checking boxes. Before long, their voice becomes interchangeable with everyone else in their category. You could swap the logos on half the ads in your feed and not notice.

Optimization is not the problem. When optimization becomes the goal instead of the tool, creativity starts to converge. Data should sharpen creativity by giving it direction, not by dictating outcomes. The challenge for modern marketers is not choosing between performance and originality, but learning how to scale one without erasing the other.

The human cost of machine marketing

Consumers are exhausted. Engagement rates are down, scroll speeds are up, and attention spans are shrinking, not because people suddenly lost interest in brands, but because they are drowning in sameness.

Audiences can spot content that has been calibrated for clicks instead of connection. Every time a brand chooses algorithmic safety over originality, it widens the gap between itself and the humans it is trying to reach. People want presence. They respond to brands that show up with consistency, honesty, and a clear point of view.

AI can help us listen better and respond faster, but it cannot replace empathy. Trust is built through relevance, repetition and restraint. In an environment saturated with signals, meaning becomes the differentiator.

Reclaiming marketing for people

The solution is not abandoning algorithms. They are here to stay. The opportunity is learning how to lead with them, without letting them flatten what makes a brand distinct.

AI can deepen our understanding of audiences and remove friction from execution. It can surface insights no human team could find on its own. But it is a lens, not a decision-maker. It should inform creativity, not dictate it.

To bring emotional intelligence back into AI-powered systems, marketers must translate insight into narrative. Creativity and technology are not at odds. They speak different languages. AI brings scale, speed, and precision. Humans bring judgment, memory, and meaning.

When those forces work together, brands can perform without becoming generic.

The future of creative leadership in a performance-driven world

Strong leaders start with data to understand what is working, what is shifting, and where attention is moving. They pair that intelligence with clear brand guardrails that define how insights turn into ideas.

The most effective teams operate with speed because they have both signal and structure. Data provides direction, but clarity around voice, values, and boundaries ensures execution does not collapse into repetition. That balance allows teams to launch, test, and iterate without reshaping the brand every time a metric fluctuates. Performance data informs decisions, but it does not replace creative conviction.

Algorithms can accelerate reach and efficiency, but they only amplify what already exists. Meaning, trust and memorability still come from human judgment, from what leaders choose to say, what they ignore, and how consistently they show up. In a machine-led world, the advantage is not choosing between performance and humanity. It is knowing how to operationalize both at the same time.

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The conflict in Iran may give Moscow a short-term boost economically and in Ukraine. But it has also shown the limits of Russia’s partnerships.

One early beneficiary of the full-scale U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran has been President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

His government is profiting from higher oil and gas prices that could ease Russia’s economic woes. He is throwing around the country’s geopolitical weight as an alternative energy supplier. And he stands to gain on his own battlefield if the Middle East conflict strains the supply of U.S.-made air defenses for Ukraine.

But Mr. Putin is also grappling with the arrival of a new world of unbridled American power under President Trump, which is checking Russia’s global influence and ripping up Moscow’s playbook for partnerships abroad.

For years, Mr. Putin supported anti-American authoritarian governments in Iran, Venezuela and Cuba, with little worry that Washington would use its overwhelming military power to kill, capture or push out their leaders. That has now changed, as Mr. Trump has demonstrated a willingness to disregard international norms and engage in foreign adventurism by fully exploiting Washington’s might.

Even though Iran came to Russia’s aid with critical drones at the outset of Mr. Putin’s bungled invasion of Ukraine four years ago, Russia has stood aside as the United States and Israel have pummeled Iran’s leadership and military. Moscow has issued little more than condemnatory statements that largely avoid naming Mr. Trump.

“It shows the limits of, ‘What does it mean to be a partner of Russia?’” said Angela Stent, a Russia expert and professor emerita at Georgetown University. She said the case of Iran was particularly stark given Tehran’s pivotal role in aiding Moscow in Ukraine.

The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said on Thursday that Moscow had not received any requests for assistance from Iran and that “the war that’s going on isn’t our war.”

Washington’s actions against Russia-friendly leaders have come at a head-spinning pace.

The last two months have brought the U.S.-Israeli killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; the U.S. capture of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela; and a U.S. economic blockade intended to oust the Cuban president, Miguel Díaz-Canel. In every case, Russia has offered little help.

An American president pursuing foreign heads of state in their homes and offices, unchecked by Congress, has also flipped the script on Mr. Putin, who has made his appetite for risk, willingness to use force and unpredictability central to his coercive power in the world.

“Now he’s no longer the baddest guy in town,” said Bobo Lo, a Russia analyst and former Australian diplomat in Moscow.

“He no longer is able to strike fear in the way that he had hoped. That mantle has gone over to Trump,” Mr. Lo said. “And so Putin looks, in a way, a little bit pathetic.”

The reality is that there is not much that Russia, already tied down in Ukraine, could have done to protect Iran, short of declaring war on the United States or Israel, said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, a research institute in Berlin.

Iran was already weakened by an economic and political crisis, the backdrop to failures that allowed the United States and Israel to kill Khamenei in the conflict’s opening hours.

“Given the intelligence penetration of Iran that was revealed, there was very little that Russia, even in tandem with China, could have done to undo this,” Mr. Gabuev said.

But while Mr. Putin may be holding back now, he can play a longer game. Mr. Trump has made clear that he does not necessarily intend to unseat the Russia-friendly elites in the countries where he has intervened and engage in “democracy building.” That leaves open the possibility for Mr. Putin to keep ties with them.

Russia has also seen that Mr. Trump’s second-term impulses in foreign affairs can cut both ways.

Mr. Trump has asserted U.S. power in nations that Mr. Putin considers his own backyard, including by hosting Central Asian leaders and brokering a peace pledge between Azerbaijan and Armenia. But in other cases Mr. Trump’s actions have benefited the Kremlin beyond its dreams.

Mr. Trump’s public Oval Office showdown with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine last year elated Moscow. So did Mr. Trump’s dismantling of U.S.A.I.D., which the Kremlin long viewed as an American tool for foreign meddling, and the U.S. president’s attacks against Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

And Mr. Trump’s threats this year to take Greenland from Denmark risked rupturing NATO from within, advancing Mr. Putin’s longstanding goal of destroying the Western military alliance.

Mr. Putin has been withholding any public criticism of Mr. Trump as the Russian leader tries to secure what is most important to him: his desired outcome in Ukraine.

In an interview with Politico on Thursday, Mr. Trump once again took aim at Mr. Zelensky, not Mr. Putin, as the obstacle to peace. Though Ukrainian forces took more territory than they lost in the last two weeks of February, the first such gain since 2023, according to the Institute for the Study of War, Mr. Trump repeated what he had said to Mr. Zelensky a year ago in the Oval Office: “You don’t have the cards.”

More on the Assault on Iran

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• School Hit by Strikes in Iran: A body of evidence assembled by The New York Times — including newly released satellite imagery, social media posts and verified videos — indicates the school building was severely damaged on February 28 by a precision strike that occurred at the same time as attacks on an adjacent naval base operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

• Stranded Americans: The State Department is battling accusations from diplomats and travelers who say the Trump administration endangered U.S. citizens in the Middle East by beginning a war against Iran without adequate plans for helping Americans leave the region.

• U.S. Struck Iranian Warship:  Iran’s foreign minister accused the United States of committing an “atrocity at sea” after an American submarine torpedoed an Iranian frigate off the southern coast of Sri Lanka. The United States has long considered Iranian naval ships a serious threat.

• U.S. Public Opinion: About 60 percent of Americans disapproved of the attacks on Iran, according to a CNN poll conducted immediately after the strikes. Two other polls, by Reuters/Ipsos and The Washington Post, had similar results.

• A Distorted View of War: Iranian state media and online propagandists are striking a confident posture, despite heavy losses. Some of the content was generated by artificial intelligence.

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President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia went to a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow last month. Credit…Pool photo by Maxim Shipenkov

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Last September, roboticist Benjie Holson posted the “Humanoid Olympic Games”: a set of increasingly difficult tests for humanoid robots that he demonstrated himself while dressed in a silver bodysuit. The challenges, such as opening a door with a round doorknob, started out easy, at least for a human, and progressed to “gold medal” tasks such as properly buttoning and hanging up a men’s dress shirt and using a key to open a door.

Holson’s point was that the hard tasks aren’t the dazzling ones. While other competitions feature robots playing sports and dancing, Holson argued that the robots we actually want are the ones that can do laundry and cook meals.

He expected the challenges to take years to resolve. Instead, within months, robotics company Physical Intelligence completed 11 of the 15 challenges—from bronze to gold—with a robot that washed windows, spread peanut butter, and used a dog poop bag.

Scientific American spoke to Holson about why vision-only, or camera-based, systems are outperforming his expectations and how close we are to a genuinely useful machine. He has since released a new, more difficult set of challenges.

You designed these challenges to be hard. Were you surprised by how quickly the results came in?

It was so much faster than I was expecting. When I chose the challenges, I was trying to calibrate them so some bronze ones would get done in the first month or two, then silver and gold in the next six months, and the most difficult ones might take a year or a year and a half. To have them do basically almost all of them in the first three months is wild.

What made that possible?

I started with the premise that we have things that look impressive at a fairly narrow set of tasks—vision-only, no touch, simple manipulator, not incredible precision. That limits what you can be good at. I tried to think of tasks that would require us to break forward out of that set. It turns out I wildly underestimated what’s possible with vision-only and simple manipulators.

When I visited Physical Intelligence, I learned they don’t have any force sensing. They’re doing all of that 100 percent vision-based. The key-insertion task, the peanut butter spreading—I thought those would require force inputs. But apparently, you just throw more video demonstrations at it, and it works.

How exactly do you train a robot to do that without coding it line by line?

It’s all learning from demonstration. Somebody teleoperates the robot doing the task hundreds of times, they train a model based on that, and then the robot can do the task.

There is a lot of confusion about whether large language models (LLMs) are useless for robots. Are they?

I used to be fairly dubious of the utility of LLMs in robotics. The problem they were good at solving two or three years ago was high-level planning—“If I want to make tea, what are the steps?” Ordering the steps is the easy part. Picking up the teapot and filling it is the really challenging thing.

On the other hand, we’ve started doing vision-action models using the same transformer architecture [as that used in LLMs]. You can use transformers for text in, text out, images in, text out—but also images in, robot actions out.

The neat thing is they’re starting with models pretrained on text, images, maybe video. Before you even start training your specific task, the AI already understands what a teapot is, what water is, that you might want to fill a teapot with water. So while training your task, it doesn’t have to start from, “Let me figure out what geometry is.” It can start with, “I see, we’re moving teapots around”—which is wild that it works.

How did you come up with the “Olympic” tasks?

So part of it was a challenge, and part of it was a prediction. I tried to think of the next set of things that we can’t do now that someone’s going to be able to do soon.

Humans rely on touch to do things such as finding keys in a pocket. How do we get around that in robotics?

That’s a very good question, we don’t know the answer to yet. Touch technology is way worse, more expensive, delicate, and far behind cameras. Cameras, we’ve been working on for a long time.

The big question is: Are cameras enough? Both Physical Intelligence and Sunday Robotics [which completed the bronze-medal task of rolling matched socks] have made the bet that putting a camera on the wrist, very close to the fingers, lets you kind of see forces by seeing how everything smushes. When the robot grabs something, it sees the fingers have some rubber that deflects; the object deflects, and it infers forces from that. When smearing peanut butter on bread, the robot watches the knife deflect down and crush the bread and judges forces from that. It works way better than I expected.

What about safety?

The energy needed to stay balanced is often quite high. If a robot is falling, that’s a very fast, hard acceleration to get the leg in front in time. Your system has to inject a lot of energy into the world—and that’s what’s unsafe.

I’m a huge fan of centaur robots—mobile wheel base with arms and a head. For safety, that’s such an easier way to get there quickly. If a humanoid loses power, it’s going to fall down. The general plan seems like it’s to make a robot so incredibly valuable that we as a society create a new safety class for it—like bicycles and cars. They’re dangerous but so valuable that we tolerate the risk.

Have these results changed your time line?

I used to think home robots were at least 15 years away. Now I think at least six. The difference is I thought it would be much longer before doing a useful thing in a human space, even as a demo, was plausible.

But roboticists have seen time and again there’s a long road between “it worked in a lab and I got a video” and “I can sell a product.” Waymo was driving on roads in 2009; I couldn’t buy a ride until 2024. It takes a long time to get reliability squared away.

What’s the biggest bottleneck left?

Reliability and safety—the stuff Physical Intelligence shows is incredibly impressive, but if you put it on a different table with different lighting and use a different sock, it might not work. Each step toward generalization seems to take an order of magnitude more data, turning days of data collection into weeks or months.

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Republican lawmakers on Wednesday blocked a measure that would have restricted President Trump’s authority to continue military operations against Iran without congressional approval, even as the conflict widened into a fast‑moving international crisis.

What To Know

• Senate Republicans rejected a War Powers effort that sought to force congressional oversight of the expanding Iran campaign; only Senator Rand Paul broke with his party.
• The vote came as NATO air defenses intercepted an Iranian ballistic missile headed toward Turkish airspace, raising fears of a broader regional spillover.
• U.S. officials said American and Israeli forces would intensify strikes, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claiming their aircraft would soon dominate Iranian airspace.
• Israel launched another wave of attacks on Tehran late Wednesday, marking the fifth consecutive day of coordinated U.S.-Israeli operations.
• Turkey confirmed the intercepted missile originated from Iran, though its intended target remains unclear.
• China announced it would dispatch a special envoy to the Middle East as global concern deepened; several European nations deployed military assets to protect their citizens.
• Israel ordered mass evacuations in southern Lebanon as it escalated strikes on Hezbollah positions north of the Litani River.
• Financial markets steadied after days of volatility, though U.S. gas prices continued to rise amid fears of prolonged conflict.
• Iran’s death toll climbed to 787, according to the Red Crescent, including at least 175 killed in a strike on a girls’ elementary school.
• U.S. officials confirmed six American service members have died in the conflict, including four Army Reserve soldiers killed in a drone attack in Kuwait.
• Iranian leaders are weighing successors to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, with his son Mojtaba emerging as a leading candidate following the supreme leader’s assassination. at a girls’ elementary school, where a bombing killed at least 175 people, according to the organization.

Closure of Hormuz could trigger global oil shock, expert warns

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The measure would have restricted President Trump’s power to wage war against Iran without congressional authorization. U.S. officials said airstrikes were accelerating, and several nations sent reinforcements to the Middle East to protect their interests.

Here’s the latest.

Republican lawmakers blocked a measure Wednesday that would have limited President Trump’s power to continue waging war against Iran without congressional authorization, even as the conflict expanded into a wider international crisis.

Earlier in the day, NATO air defenses shot down an Iranian ballistic missile headed toward Turkey, the United States sank an Iranian navy ship in international waters, and several European nations deployed military assets to the region to protect their interests.

The Israeli military said late on Wednesday that the country’s Home Front Command has updated guidelines for the public, easing restrictions on gatherings and activities, starting on Thursday at noon. The transition, from only “essential” activities to a “limited” level of activity, was based on a “situational assessment,” the military said, but it provided no details. Gatherings of up to 50 people will be permitted, and workplaces may operate if protected spaces can be reached promptly, the authorities instructed.

The Senate thwarts a bid to curb Trump’s war powers on Iran.

Republicans on Wednesday blocked a measure that would limit President Trump’s power to continue waging war against Iran without congressional authorization, turning back a bid by Democrats to insist that Congress weigh in on a sweeping and open-ended military campaign.

The 53-to-47 vote against taking up the measure was almost completely along party lines, reflecting a deep partisan divide on the Iran war as the Senate delivered the first clear test of congressional resolve since the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes, Operation Epic Fury, began across Iran four days ago.

The Iranian and Turkish foreign ministers spoke on the phone, after NATO air defenses earlier shot down an Iranian missile headed toward Turkey’s air space, the Iranian ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, stressed that the country’s armed forces “will not rest until the complete repulsion of the enemies’ malevolence,” and defended Iran’s strikes as targeting bases used to “plan and execute aggressive operations against Iran,” the statement said. He also called for Iranian-Turkish cooperation against what he described as Israeli plots in the region. 

Lebanon’s Health Ministry said on Wednesday night that three people were killed and six people were injured in an airstrike near Beirut, the capital. Israel had previously announced new strikes in Lebanon on Wednesday night, including two targeted attacks on individuals near Beirut who were not named.

The Senate is voting on whether to bring a resolution to the floor that would restrict President Trump’s ability to continue military action in Iran, days after he began the campaign without consulting Congress.

A senior U.S. military official and a Western official said the Iranian ballistic missile that NATO air defenses shot down as it was headed toward Turkish air space had been targeting Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, a NATO member that hosts American troops and those from other allied countries. Both officials said the Iranian missile was shot down by an interceptor fired from a U.S. warship in the eastern Mediterranean. The senior U.S. official said it was shot down shortly before midnight Eastern time Tuesday by an SM-3 interceptor for ballistic missiles launched by a U.S. Navy ship.

Spain insists it is not cooperating with the U.S. on Iran war despite a White House claim.

The Spanish government on Wednesday categorically denied an assertion by the White House that the country had reversed its opposition to the war on Iran and was now cooperating with the U.S. military.

It was the latest twist in the back and forth between the United States and Spain’s left-wing government, which has been the Trump’s administration’s most vocal European critic and which has staked out an unequivocal antiwar position. In contrast, Britain, France, and Germany have issued a joint statement promising to help in defensive actions against Iran. 

The Israeli military said in a statement late on Wednesday that it “struck dozens of Hezbollah targets in Lebanon,” completing “an additional wave of strikes” aimed at Hezbollah infrastructure across Lebanon.

Late in the night in Iran, American–Israeli strikes targeted the western part of the capital, Tehran, as fighter jets attacked the grounds of Mehrabad airport, several locations west of Azadi Square, as well as the Tehransar and Chitgar neighborhoods, according to Tasnim, a semiofficial Iranian news agency.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with Hakan Fidan, the foreign minister of Turkey, about the U.S.-Israel military action that has enveloped the Middle East. The call came soon after the Turkish defense ministry said a NATO air defense system shot down a ballistic missile fired from Iran that was headed toward Turkish airspace.

“The secretary told the foreign minister that attacks on Turkey’s sovereign territory were unacceptable and pledged full support from the United States,” the State Department said

President Trump called President Emmanuel Macron of France to update him on the military campaign against Iran, according to an official in the French president’s office. Macron raised the issue of the widening conflict in Lebanon, which has been of special concern to the French. It is the first time that Trump and Macron are known to have spoken since the conflict in Iran began.

President Trump made some new comments on the war in Iran during an afternoon appearance at the White House just now. He still doesn’t seem to have an idea for who should run Iran’s government after the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“Their leadership is just rapidly going,” he says. “Everybody that seems to want to be a leader, they end up dead. It’s an amazing, an amazing thing that’s taking place before your eyes.”

He said that on a scale of 1 to 10, he would rate the American war effort a 15.

The Israeli military said in a statement late Wednesday that it had launched another “wave of strikes” on Tehran. Earlier, an Israeli military spokesman said the country had struck more than 200 targets in the Iranian capital in nearly five days of fighting.

Hegseth plans to join a campaign rally in the home district of a soldier killed in the Iran war.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is scheduled to headline a “Top Gun”-themed political fundraiser next week for a Republican congressman whose constituent was among the four American soldiers killed in the opening hours of the war with Iran. All four service members had been stationed in the district before deployment.

The event, on behalf of Representative Zach Nunn, who is facing a potentially competitive re-election race, comes as the secretary has signaled he expects more U.S. casualties in the broadening regional conflict.

President Emanuel Macron of France said on Wednesday that he had spoken with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Lebanon’s president, Joseph Aoun, and its prime minister, Nawaf Salam, to discuss the situation in Lebanon, which he called very concerning. Macron said that he had reaffirmed the need for Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group, to immediately cease its attacks against Israel, calling its strategy “a major error that endangers the entire region.” Similarly, he said, he called on Netanyahu to preserve Lebanon’s territorial integrity and “to refrain from a ground offensive.”

“It is important for the parties to return to the cease-fire agreement,” Macron said, referring to a fragile truce brokered late in 2024 and ruptured in recent days. France will continue to support the Lebanese Armed Forces, so that they can “put an end to the threat posed by Hezbollah,” he said, and he pledged to support people in southern Lebanon displaced in the renewed conflict.

Naim Qassem, the head of Hezbollah, said: “we will fight to the death and will not surrender.” He said Hezbollah’s fight “is not linked to any other battle,” indicating Hezbollah’s grievances with Israel were not solely tied to its military actions in Iran or the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and could continue even after that conflict.

Naim Qassem, the head of Hezbollah, said in a speech on Wednesday evening that the Lebanese militant group has repeatedly reiterated that “patience has limits.” Qassem said that Hezbollah adhered to the cease-fire agreement that Israel and Lebanon reached late in 2024 but charged that “Israel did not abide by any of its provisions.”

Qassem said that Hezbollah had not previously responded to Israeli attacks “so as not to be accused of obstructing diplomacy.” He also said that “the state must be effective,” in reference to the Lebanese government, calling Israeli violations of Lebanon’s sovereignty “significant.”

A U.N. panel condemns the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran.

A United Nations human rights panel on Wednesday strongly condemned the attacks by the United States and Israel on Iran as a violation of the U.N. Charter.

The panel, which has been investigating abuses by the Iranian authorities in their crackdown on anti-government protests, said the recent U.S.-Israeli strikes left Iranians caught between large-scale military operations and a government with a long record of gross human rights violations.

American ground troops are not a part of the U.S. military’s current plans for Iran, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said. But she added that she would not rule out any option for President Trump that is currently “on the table.”

“They’re not part of the plan for this operation at this time, but I certainly will never take away military options on behalf of the president of the United States or the commander in chief, and he wisely does not do the same for himself,” she said. President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have similarly declined to rule out any military option in recent days.

Leavitt was pressed on why no administration official had been able to articulate what imminent threat the United States faced from Iran that required them to attack it. She took exception to the question and said that President Trump “does not make these decisions in a vacuum,” and that his “decision to launch this operation was based on a cumulative effect of various direct threats that Iran posed to the United States of America.”

On Tuesday, during an Oval Office appearance with Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany, Trump suggested that he was guided by instinct. “We were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first,” Trump said. “If we didn’t do it, they were going to attack first. I felt strongly about that.”

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, defended the Trump administration against criticism that it did not do enough to evacuate Americans in the Middle East ahead of the strikes on Iran, telling reporters that the State Department had put out “many signs” and was “all hands on deck” in advising Americans in the region to exercise extreme caution and not travel to certain countries. But even after the State Department announced on Tuesday that it would arrange for military and charter flights, Americans who called a department hotline for help were told for hours not to rely on the U.S. government for assistance. The recorded message on the hotline has since been corrected, Leavitt said. Leavitt said at her briefing that the White House had seen “reports” that the son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has emerged as the person likely to succeed his father as Iran’s supreme leader, and that it was something “our intelligence agencies are closely monitoring and looking at.” Iranian officials told The New York Times that the clerics responsible for selecting Iran’s next leader wanted to announce him as early as Wednesday, but some had expressed reservations that it could make him a target for the United States and Israel.

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Clearing Rubble in Tehran

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Kendra Pierre-Louis: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Kendra Pierre-Louis, in for Rachel Feltman.

Wildlife poaching is a serious issue in many parts of the world. One way of monitoring poaching activity is to put recorders in the forest to listen for gunshots.

Pierre-Louis: Computer programs that use AI can help detect the crack of a gun. But accuracy is still a huge challenge when the forest is such a noisy place.

Freelance wildlife writer Melissa Hobson met someone who may have experienced a breakthrough: a 17-year-old high schooler who built an AI model that can accurately pick out gunshots from other jungle sounds.

What impact could this model make on gun-based poaching? Here’s Melissa with more about how it might help save elephants and other animals from the threat of illegal hunting.

Melissa Hobson: That is the sound of an African forest elephant. To the untrained ear, it might be indistinguishable from noises made by the animal’s relative, the African savanna elephant.

Both species are under threat. But while African savanna elephants are endangered, forest elephants are critically endangered. They’re also highly elusive. Living in dense tropical rainforests in central Africa and parts of West Africa, they’re very hard to find and study.

Daniela Hedwig: As such, we don’t know much about the forest elephants, and it’s very difficult to exactly know how many there still are.

Hobson: That’s Daniela Hedwig, director of the Elephant Listening Project at the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at Cornell University.

Hedwig: Our goal is to use acoustic monitoring to contribute to the conservation of the central African rainforest. We have about almost 100 acoustic units spread out in the area, covering almost 2,000 square kilometers [roughly 772 square miles] combined.

Melissa Hobson: That is the sound of an African forest elephant. To the untrained ear, it might be indistinguishable from noises made by the animal’s relative, the African savanna elephant.

Both species are under threat. But while African savanna elephants are endangered, forest elephants are critically endangered. They’re also highly elusive. Living in dense tropical rainforests in central Africa and parts of West Africa, they’re very hard to find and study.

Daniela Hedwig: As such, we don’t know much about the forest elephants, and it’s very difficult to exactly know how many there still are.

Hobson: That’s Daniela Hedwig, director of the Elephant Listening Project at the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at Cornell University.

Hedwig: Our goal is to use acoustic monitoring to contribute to the conservation of the central African rainforest. We have about almost 100 acoustic units spread out in the area, covering almost 2,000 square kilometers [roughly 772 square miles] combined.

Hobson: These sound recorders are easily hidden, obscured by the tree branches. These devices enable the Elephant Listening Project to detect elephants through the rumbling vocalizations they use to communicate with one another, even when they’re kilometers apart.

Hobson: This helps the experts learn more about the animals’ lives and population numbers without even seeing them.

But the recording devices don’t just pick up elephant sounds.

Hedwig: Acoustic monitoring is really great at recording these soundscapes and getting this really amazing picture of biodiversity by eavesdropping on nature.

Hobson: They also hear the sounds of human activity and can be an effective way of combating illegal poaching.

Hobson: Illegal hunting poses a huge threat to animals such as elephants and rhinos. In many parts of Africa and Asia, anti-poaching patrols roam national parks, often working with other law enforcement agencies to apprehend armed hunters. It’s time-intensive and incredibly dangerous.

Hedwig: These are very, very brave people that are spending very large amounts of time in the forest under not fun circumstances, really jeopardizing their lives to protect biodiversity in the forest for their children and future generations.

Hobson: But how do the teams who are responsible for conservation efforts find a poacher in the vast expanse of, for example, an African national park?

Hedwig: Looking for poachers is basically like looking for a needle in the haystack.

Conservation managers. typically, they have informants in villages, and they have intelligence that tells them if there are certain activities ongoing. But catching [poachers] is very difficult.

Hobson: Trail cameras can help, but only up to a point.

Richard Hedley is a statistical ecologist at the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute in Edmonton, Canada. He explains the limitations of camera monitoring.

Richard Hedley: Trail cameras can only detect hunters in a very limited range immediately in front of the camera.

But what sometimes happens when people are monitoring hunting activity with cameras is that often the hunters don’t want to be photographed or don’t like to be photographed, so sometimes the cameras can be destroyed by hunters that don’t want to be photographed, or they can also be stolen because they need to be placed right next to a heavily used trail.

Hobson: Meanwhile, there are several benefits to using acoustic recording devices: they can be hidden high in the canopy and far from the trail, cover a wide area, and are relatively low-maintenance.

Hedwig: Acoustic monitoring is really—if not the only method that can help you to really, systematically and in an unbiased way, collect information on where gunshots were fired.

Hobson: In 2022, Richard was part of a team that published a research paper focused on detecting gunshots from acoustic monitoring recordings.

The study took place in the protected Cooking Lake–Blackfoot Provincial Recreation Area in central Alberta, Canada. At different times of the year, people hunt ducks, geese, deer, elk, and moose in this nearly 24,000-acre park.

Hedley: So we put out about 90 recording units across the protected area and set them to record, and then we went through the recordings to try to detect the gunshots as people were hunting within that park.

And so what we were able to show in the study was that acoustic monitoring can be a very effective tool for mapping out hunting activity.

Hobson: The recordings showed Richard and his colleagues where people tended to hunt: usually in the most accessible areas of the park, closer to the roads. The data also revealed that people generally stick to the park’s rule banning hunting on Sundays.

Hedley: So there [were] moderate levels of hunting from Monday to Friday, and then hunting activity really spiked on Saturdays and went down to practically zero on Sundays.

Hobson: At the time, there were several challenges related to audio monitoring.

Hedley: A gunshot itself might last one or two seconds, but might be embedded within hours or days or even weeks of recording from a location, so that really necessitates the use of computers to help us go through all of these recordings. There’s really no way that a human would be able to do that by themselves.

Hobson: And because the microphones can pick up sounds across long distances, gunshots from farther away can sometimes be faint and hard to hear.

Hobson: Both Richard’s and Daniela’s teams have encountered similar challenges while trying to listen for hunting activity, such as making out a gunshot amid a noisy soundscape.

Hedley: And people often think of nature as being quiet, but in fact, natural soundscapes can be incredibly complex. And the reality is, we’re often not trying to find a loud gunshot in a quiet recording, but sometimes we’re trying to find quiet gunshots in loud recordings, where there’s a lot of other things going on.

Hobson: Especially in a noisy jungle—against the backdrop of rain, wind, storms, rustling leaves and animals—it can be hard to tell the difference between the crack of a distant gun …Hobson: And twigs snapping.

Hobson: This means recorders often give false positives.

Certain noises are more easily confused with the sound of a firing gun.

Hedwig: And those are, most notably, breaking tree branches, sometimes also raindrops falling, even other monkey species—they sound very much like gunshots. [Laughs.]

Hedley: In our study we had quite a lot of beavers in the area, and they would slap their tail in the water, and that sometimes could sound like a gunshot in the distance. So the challenge is really to identify gunshots and distinguish them from all these other natural sources of sounds that are happening all at the same time.

We ended up throwing out a lot of the data and only looked at the loudest gunshots in the recording.

Hedwig: Our problem is that we do have detection algorithms, and we can make them so that they find the gunshots, but that comes at a cost, and that cost is that we’re detecting thousands and thousands of other signals that are not gunshots. That means that we need a person to actually look and listen to all the detections and make the final decision. And this is where acoustic monitoring and its potential really reaches a bottleneck.

Hobson: A high schooler from San Diego, California, thinks he may have found the answer. Naveen Dhar has created a neural network that picks up gunshots with relatively high levels of accuracy without also flagging the many other similar noises.

Here’s Naveen.

Naveen Dhar: I have always been interested in the natural world as far as I can remember, since, like, elementary school and then going through middle school and high school. And this whole project of building this neural network to detect poaching actually kind of started way back in eighth grade.

Hobson: At that time, Naveen was on a backpacking trip with his dad in California’s Channel Islands, where he learned about researchers who were studying the impact of sea urchins on the kelp forests there.

The scientists’ work involved lots of back-and-forth. They collected data in the field, traveled back to the mainland to upload the information and make decisions based on their findings, and then returned to the kelp forests to implement their solutions.

Dhar: I was just thinking, “There’s got to be a better way to get data that is faster than a sea urchin eating a kelp stem, right?” And so following that curiosity, I got into the fields of environmental sensing and, later on, bioacoustics, which is using sound to understand the natural environment.

Hobson: For a school paper in 11th grade, Naveen decided to study poaching and try to understand why it happens.

Dhar: I was really surprised to know that in some areas, for example, rhino-poaching rates from 2020 to 2023, they were actually rising, even though we have this 21st-century technology and we’re not living without the ability to monitor the world around us, right?

And so I was wondering, “Why is this still such a problem? Don’t we have the tools to enable rangers to effectively intercept and stop poachers?” And so I followed that rabbit hole for quite a while, and for the entirety of my junior year that was kind of what I was thinking about outside of school.

Hobson: It’s important to acknowledge that there are many social and economic issues that contribute to poaching.

Hedwig: It’s a very complex problem, you know, where poaching needs to be tackled from multiple angles.

In this context, we often talk about poachers, and we paint them so negatively, but I would like to say that the vast majority of people that are going in a national park to hunt are just, you know, people that are trying to make ends meet. We’re talking about people here that often don’t have much, and they’re trying to feed their children.

Hobson: Naveen, now 17, is well aware of the socioeconomic issues related to poaching. But given his existing interest in bioacoustics, he decided to look at the issue through this lens. His focus was on how acoustic recordings can help rangers prevent gun-based poaching.

He taught himself a programming language called Python and dove into the scientific literature to learn what had already been tried in the area of gunshot detection.

Existing detectors had some key problems, Naveen says.

Dhar: The detectors that were detecting the sounds of the gunshots, they either had too high of a false-positive rate to be deployed in the field—because otherwise it’s just like boy who cried wolf, you know; the rangers aren’t going to use the detector—and then also, the ones that were more accurate, they were specialized to one specific environment or habitat or dataset, and they were too computationally intensive to be run in real time.

Hobson: Instead, Naveen turned to neural networks, a type of machine learning model inspired by the way the human brain makes connections.

Dhar: And specifically, why deep learning, which is a type of neural network that uses many different layers of neural networks stacked on top of each other.

In this context, we often talk about poachers, and we paint them so negatively, but I would like to say that the vast majority of people that are going in a national park to hunt are just, you know, people that are trying to make ends meet. We’re talking about people here that often don’t have much, and they’re trying to feed their children.

Hobson: Naveen, now 17, is well aware of the socioeconomic issues related to poaching. But given his existing interest in bioacoustics, he decided to look at the issue through this lens. His focus was on how acoustic recordings can help rangers prevent gun-based poaching.

He taught himself a programming language called Python and dove into the scientific literature to learn what had already been tried in the area of gunshot detection.

Existing detectors had some key problems, Naveen says.

Dhar: The detectors that were detecting the sounds of the gunshots, they either had too high of a false-positive rate to be deployed in the field—because otherwise it’s just like boy who cried wolf, you know; the rangers aren’t going to use the detector—and then also, the ones that were more accurate, they were specialized to one specific environment or habitat or dataset, and they were too computationally intensive to be run in real time.

Hobson: Instead, Naveen turned to neural networks, a type of machine learning model inspired by the way the human brain makes connections.

Dhar: And specifically, why deep learning, which is a type of neural network that uses many different layers of neural networks stacked on top of each other.

Hedley: In the few short years since we did our study, neural networks have really emerged as being a dominant approach to signal classification, and they’ve shown a much better ability to reach almost humanlike performance in their ability to distinguish one sound from another.

Dhar: So what we actually do is we transform the sound into an image format. We take the sound and turn it into a spectrogram, which has the time on the x-axis, the frequency of the signal on the y-axis, and then you also have a third dimension, or the amplitude of each little coordinate in this x–y graph, which tells you how loud that specific time frequency was.

And so by converting our signals into spectrograms, we’re able to use neural network frameworks that are very efficient for image processing, and they have been really well-suited for this task because you can’t be sending your signals up to the cloud all the time. It’s just too power-intensive, right? So you need to have a detector that’s both accurate and also lightweight enough to run in real time.

Hobson: Other projects faced a problem called overfitting. That’s when a machine-learning model becomes too specialized to the dataset it was trained on.

This means it performs well with that specific situation but struggles with other datasets, such as sounds from a different habitat somewhere else in the world—for example, a model trained to detect gunshots in soundscapes from Belizean forests that couldn’t do the same with data from somewhere else in the world.

Dhar: We need these models to be able to pick up gunshots and recognize gunshots from any rainforest or habitat in the world, and each habitat comes with different acoustical properties, and the gunshots are gonna reverb differently.

Instead of taking a really large image-classification model and then fine-tuning it on this small dataset of gunshots from the rainforest, I decided to build something from the ground up.

Hobson: Naveen needed his model to understand exactly how a gunshot looks when it’s converted into a spectrogram. That’s a visual representation of the sound. The noise shows up as a clear spike followed by a fading pattern as the sound decays away.

Dhar: We wanna make sure that we capture that really sharp rise, right, and we don’t confuse it with, like, the fuzzy rise of thunder or something like that.

Hobson: Naveen says the model he developed was able to overcome these problems. It also had the benefit of being relatively small.

Dhar: Every neural network has a parameter count, which is, basically, you can think of it as, like, the amount of knobs that you’re turning to tune this model in order to better classify whatever you’re classifying. And some models, like ChatGPT, [have] many billions of parameters. This model was less than one million parameters.

But that actually helped it because it made sure it didn’t overfit to this dataset that I had. And that allowed it to, when it was only trained on a dataset from Belize, also detect gunshots from Africa and Vietnam because it wasn’t overfitting to this one specific dataset.

Hobson: To make sure the model could pick out gunshots in different habitats, Naveen also overlaid different examples of sounds from various recordings on top of his gunshot spectrograms.

The creation he made with Cornell for the Elephant Listening Project was incredibly accurate. Based on more than 30,000 recordings from Cameroon, the template detector the Cornell team used previously had a recall of around 87 percent—that refers to the proportion of gunshots it was able to pick out from the soundscape—and a precision of 0.084. The precision is how often the detector was right, meaning it didn’t produce false positives.

Hedwig: So there was, like, 90 percent of the detections we got were not gunshots.

Hobson: Naveen says that, using the same Cameroon dataset, the neural network he developed achieved a recall of 82 percent and a precision of 0.87. When trained on data from Belize, his model’s recall was 89 percent, and the precision was 0.93.

Dhar: And if we reduce the recall a little bit—if we’re willing to trade some of the fainter, larger-distance gunshots that were maybe, like, three kilometers [about 1.86 miles] away—then we can get pretty close to 100 percent precision, or 0 percent false positives.

Hobson: Improved accuracy brings the dream of real-time monitoring a step closer. This would make anti-poaching patrols more efficient and help them serve as better deterrents because it’s more likely potential poachers will get caught.

Hedwig: So it’s a win-win, you know? Anti-poaching patrols will be safer, and there will be less encounters that might be potentially dangerous with poachers that are often armed as well.

Hobson: Real-time acoustic monitoring could be a game changer.

Hedley: If you’re monitoring poaching, you need to know that the poaching is happening now, not six weeks ago. If you’re going to mount a response to poaching, you wanna be confident that you’re responding to an actual poaching event, rather than, say, a branch breaking in the forest.

Hobson: There are also a few logistical issues to consider before this approach can become a reality, including the technology’s storage space and battery life.

Hedwig: You need to power these recording units and the algorithms. Of course, solar would be a wonderful solution, but if you work under a closed canopy, you know, you cannot easily install solar systems.

Hobson: Processing all that data takes lots of computing power, which can slow things down. And these devices are often in remote locations where there isn’t good signal to transmit the information wirelessly back to the people who need it.

Satellite transmission is expensive and can be unreliable, and critters can also cause problems.

Hedwig: Termites and monkeys and squirrels, out of all animals out there [Laughs], really like to eat our equipment, too.

Hobson: Yet Daniela thinks we’re only a few years away from this form of monitoring becoming commonplace in tropical forests.

On top of clearly being incredibly talented, Naveen is also modest. He thinks he’s succeeded where others have struggled because the field of gunshot detection hasn’t received much attention in the past.

Dhar: I bet there are a lot of people, maybe, like, 10 years ag,o who could have solved this problem and created a very accurate neural network.

This neural network isn’t, like, this holy grail of something, you know, state of the art. It is better than the other neural networks and detectors that have been made in the past, but I guess it’s just because, you know, I’ve spent a lot of time in it. I really care about this issue.

Pierre-Louis: That’s all for today! Tune in on Monday for our weekly science news roundup.

Science Quickly is produced by me, Kendra Pierre-Louis, along with Fonda Mwangi, Sushmita Pathak, and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was reported and co-hosted by Melissa Hobson and edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.

For Scientific American, this is Kendra Pierre-Louis. Have a great weekend!

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Sunflower oil doesn’t get much attention in American kitchens. But chefs and dietitians say it should — especially if you’re looking for a heart-healthy oil that isn’t olive oil.

I realized what I’d been missing on a recent trip to the nation of Georgia, where I was struck by a simple salad of cucumbers, purple basil, and tomatoes, available on every restaurant menu. In many respects, it was just like the cucumber-tomato salads you find across the Mediterranean, but had a rich, nutty flavor that I could not account for. Eventually, I asked how it was made. It turns out that the distinctive flavor I found so memorable was a simple splash of sunflower oil. 

What is sunflower oil — and why isn’t it more popular in the U.S.?

Made from sunflower seeds, sunflower oil is widely popular in Eastern Europe and throughout the former Soviet Union — Ukraine is a leading producer. It’s also produced in Italy, Canada, and the U.S. 

When I returned home, I promptly bought a bottle at my local international grocery store, but was immediately disappointed. The flavor I remembered from my travels was nowhere to be found. It was perfectly good for cooking (I substituted it for canola oil), but I was puzzled and disappointed by its lack of personality.

It turns out, I’d made a common mistake, as I learned from Bonnie Morales, the chef-owner of Kachka in Portland, Oregon. Morales uses sunflower oil in dishes throughout her James Beard Award-nominated, Eastern Europe-inspired menu. 

“I’m very passionate about being true to the food, and so when we opened Kachka, it was really important to me that everything was sunflower oil-based,” says Morales. “But it’s also incredibly delicious. In Eastern European cooking, sunflower oil is the equivalent of olive oil to Spain or Italy. It’s what people cook with and finish with and do everything with,” she says. 

But, she cautioned, not all sunflower oil is the same.  

Refined vs. unrefined sunflower oil: which one should you buy?

Like olive oil, sunflower oil is available in more and less processed versions, Morales explains. 

Unrefined sunflower oil (sometimes labeled virgin sunflower oil) has a rich, nutty flavor. “If I’m making something where I want there to be a pronounced sunflower flavor, I’m going to use the unrefined,” says Morales. Because its delicate aroma can get lost in roasting or frying, and because of its low smoke point (225° to 350°F), Morales says unrefined sunflower oil is ideal for dressings, salads, and finishing dishes. “Like toasted sesame oil, a little goes a long way.” 

She also loves it as a drizzle on desserts. “One of my favorite applications is to drizzle it on top of dark chocolate sorbet or ice cream with a little bit of sea salt,” says Morales. “That’s my happy place.”

More highly processed sunflower oil (often labeled “refined”) is neutral in flavor, has a high smoke point (440° to 475°F), and is what Morales reaches for for frying and roasting. “Refined sunflower oil is like grapeseed oil — it has this really nice, clean quality to it that can go anywhere,” she says. 

Sunflower oil is produced primarily in Ukraine, but also in the U.S., Italy, and Canada. Credit: Md Zakir Hossain / Getty Images

How to choose the best sunflower oil at the store

When selecting a sunflower oil, read the label carefully to make sure you’re getting the one you want. “A lot of the bottles are labeled in Russian,” says Morales. You can’t tell the difference by color alone, so check the import label, which will confirm whether it’s refined or unrefined.  

As with all oils, look for a recent harvest or press date — not all sunflower oils will include one, but when they do, fresher is better — and check the expiration date, choosing one that’s as far off as possible. 

Is sunflower oil good for your heart?

Besides being delicious and versatile, sunflower oil comes with health benefits. It’s high in vitamin E — one tablespoon delivers over a third of your daily recommended intake — and is a good source of linoleic acid.  

“Plant-based oils, like sunflower oil, are rich in unsaturated fats,” says registered dietitian Chris Mohr, PhD. “Numerous large-scale studies show that replacing saturated fats with unsaturated fats from plant-based oils may lower the risk of heart disease.”

Like olive oil, cold-pressed, unrefined sunflower oil carries more of the plant’s original compounds along with its flavor. But Mohr says both refined and unrefined will confer the health benefits. “The same beneficial unsaturated fatty acids are present in sunflower oil, or any plant-based oil, regardless of the level of processing.”

Why sunflower oil matters

For Morales, sunflower oil is about more than just health or flavor. Many of her relatives no longer cook with sunflower oil. Some have wanted to distance themselves from the painful memories of fleeing their homeland; others assimilated into mainstream American culture, and embraced olive oil when it became popular in the 1990s. Sunflower oil is a way to cultivate her connection to her heritage.

“Part of what I do at Kachka is connecting back to our origins and our roots before assimilation, and that’s really important to me,” she says. “Because I’m a generation removed from that trauma, I can look at the culture a little bit more objectively and really honor and cherish the good parts. So that’s why I stick to my guns and use sunflower oil instead of other things that might be more in fashion.”

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Credit: Addictive Stock / Getty Images

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President Trump said he “might have forced” the attacks on Iran, and that it’s unclear who will take over. Oil and gas prices surged, and stock markets fell after U.S. officials said strikes would intensify.

Here’s the latest.

lobal stock markets tumbled on Tuesday, and the price of oil surged, as the widening conflict in the Middle East sent a shudder through the world economy and American and Israeli officials signaled that their bombing campaign against Iran could last weeks.

Speaking to reporters at the start of a White House meeting with Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany, President Trump said he made the decision to go to war to pre-empt Iranian attacks. “We were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack,” he said. “They were going to attack if we didn’t do it.”At the beginning of this meeting, Merz said that in today’s meeting with Trump, “we will talk about the day after. What will happen then if they are out.” It was a sign of the nervousness around the world about the seeming lack of a clear plan for what will happen in Iran after this war ends.

Trump claims he has “the right” to stop “all business” that the United States does with Spain. He turns Scott Bessent, his Treasury secretary, who affirmed Trump’s declaration that he had the right to tariff.

Trump also just asserted on oil prices, “as soon as this ends, those prices are going to drop, I believe lower than even before.”

It’s an indication that Trump may see higher prices at the pump as a vulnerability in this midterm election year.

Trump was asked how worried he was that his war with Iran would result in rising oil prices that “damage the economy.” After a bit of back and forth, Trump conceded: “If we have a little high oil prices for a little while, but as soon as this ends, those prices are going to drop.”

Trump complained that the Biden administration “gave away a lot of high-end” munitions to Ukraine, while insisting that “we still have a tremendous amount of munitions.”

It is an indication that the war in Iran could make it harder for Ukraine to get access to the sophisticated, U.S.-made weaponry that has been key in allowing Kyiv to ward off Russian strikes and to hit targets behind Russian lines.

When Merz first visited Trump in the Oval Office, last June, he spoke so sparingly that some in the German news media compared him to a movie extra. This time, he might have even fewer lines.

Trump also just asserted on oil prices, “as soon as this ends, those prices are going to drop, I believe lower than even before.”

It’s an indication that Trump may see higher prices at the pump as a vulnerability in this midterm election year.

Trump was asked how worried he was that his war with Iran would result in rising oil prices that “damage the economy.” After a bit of back and forth, Trump conceded: “If we have a little high oil prices for a little while, but as soon as this ends, those prices are going to drop.”

Trump complained that the Biden administration “gave away a lot of high-end” munitions to Ukraine, while insisting that “we still have a tremendous amount of munitions.”

It is an indication that the war in Iran could make it harder for Ukraine to get access to the sophisticated, U.S.-made weaponry that has been key in allowing Kyiv to ward off Russian strikes and to hit targets behind Russian lines.

When Merz first visited Trump in the Oval Office, last June, he spoke so sparingly that some in the German news media compared him to a movie extra. This time, he might have even fewer lines.

Trump compared the war with Iran to his operation seizing President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, where “we kept the government totally intact” under the country’s new leader, Delcy Rodriguez. But he quickly made it clear that the situation in Iran was totally different, given that the U.S. and Israeli bombings have killed so many senior Iranian officials that soon, Trump said, “we’re not going to know anybody.”Merz, speaking after a long stretch of watching Trump answer questions, says higher oil prices from the war were hurting the global economy and a reason to try to end the war quickly.

Trump said Germany was letting America land in certain places when helpful. “We’re not asking them to put boots on the ground.”

Trump is now dinging the United States’s European allies who aren’t going along with his war efforts. “We’re going to cut off all trade with Spain; we don’t want anything to do with Spain,” he says. “By the way, I’m not happy with the U.K. either.”

He adds, “This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with.”

Trump just said, “Some of the European nations have been helpful, some haven’t” in the war. He singles out Germany as helpful and Spain as unhelpful. Trump is now complaining about Spain, saying American forces could not use its bases for the attacks on Iran.

Trump is now dinging the United States’s European allies who aren’t going along with his war efforts. “We’re going to cut off all trade with Spain; we don’t want anything to do with Spain,” he says. “By the way, I’m not happy with the U.K. either.”

He adds, “This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with.”

Trump just said, “Some of the European nations have been helpful, some haven’t” in the war. He singles out Germany as helpful and Spain as unhelpful. Trump is now complaining about Spain, saying American forces could not use its bases for the attacks on Iran.

“I guess he is, some people like him,” Trump said when asked if Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi was an “option” to run the country. Trump says he “seems like a very nice person,” but also concedes it’s probably not realistic.

Vice President Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are sitting beside him, on a couch in the Oval.

Trump also offered the number of protesters killed by the government in Iran as another rationale for the war.

Trump is asked what the worst-case scenario in Iran could be. “I guess the worst case would be we do this and then somebody takes over whose as bad as the previous person, right,” he asks. “That could happen.”

When asked who he’d like to take over, he gave a blunt answer: “Most of the people we had in mind are dead.”

He said their backup option after those people are now also dead. It’s a stunning admission from the president. The U.S.-Israeli military operation is killing the same people it wants to run the country it is attacking.

Trump is now dinging the United States’s European allies who aren’t going along with his war efforts. “We’re going to cut off all trade with Spain; we don’t want anything to do with Spain,” he says. “By the way, I’m not happy with the U.K. either.”

He adds, “This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with.”

Trump just said, “Some of the European nations have been helpful, some haven’t” in the war. He singles out Germany as helpful and Spain as unhelpful. Trump is now complaining about Spain, saying American forces could not use its bases for the attacks on Iran.

“I guess he is, some people like him,” Trump said when asked if Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi was an “option” to run the country. Trump says he “seems like a very nice person,” but also concedes it’s probably not realistic.

Vice President Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are sitting beside him, on a couch in the Oval.

Trump also offered the number of protesters killed by the government in Iran as another rationale for the war.

Trump is asked what the worst-case scenario in Iran could be. “I guess the worst case would be we do this, and then somebody takes over whose as bad as the previous person, right,” he asks. “That could happen.”

When asked who he’d like to take over, he gave a blunt answer: “Most of the people we had in mind are dead.”

He said their back-up option after those people are now also dead. It’s a stunning admission from the president. The U.S.-Israeli military operation is killing the same people it wants to run the country it is attacking.

Trump’s assertion that “I might have forced Israel’s hand” in attacking Iran undermines the rationale for the war that Secretary of State Marco Rubio presented just yesterday. Rubio told reporters that the United States faced an imminent threat because Israel was about to attack Iran, and that Iran was poised to retaliate against U.S. forces.

This is the first time Trump has taken questions in public since he launched the war against Iran. Up until now, he’s only taken phone calls from individual reporters and posted on social media.

Trump is now dinging the United States’s European allies who aren’t going along with his war efforts. “We’re going to cut off all trade with Spain; we don’t want anything to do with Spain,” he says. “By the way, I’m not happy with the U.K. either.”

He adds, “This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with.”

Trump just said, “Some of the European nations have been helpful, some haven’t” in the war. He singles out Germany as helpful and Spain as unhelpful. Trump is now complaining about Spain, saying American forces could not use its bases for the attacks on Iran.

“I guess he is, some people like him,” Trump said when asked if Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi was an “option” to run the country. Trump says he “seems like a very nice person,” but also concedes it’s probably not realistic.

Vice President Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are sitting beside him, on a couch in the Oval.

Trump also offered the number of protesters killed by the government in Iran as another rationale for the war.

Trump is asked what the worst-case scenario in Iran could be. “I guess the worst case would be we do this and then somebody takes over whose as bad as the previous person, right,” he asks. “That could happen.”

When asked who he’d like to take over, he gave a blunt answer: “Most of the people we had in mind are dead.”

He said their back-up option after those people are now also dead. It’s a stunning admission from the president. The U.S.-Israeli military operation is killing the same people it wants to run the country it is attacking.

Trump’s assertion that “I might have forced Israel’s hand” in attacking Iran undermines the rationale for the war that Secretary of State Marco Rubio presented just yesterday. Rubio told reporters that the United States faced an imminent threat because Israel was about to attack Iran, and that Iran was poised to retaliate against U.S. forces.

This is the first time Trump has taken questions in public since he launched the war against Iran. Up until now, he’s only taken phone calls from individual reporters and posted on social media.

Trump says “just about everything’s been knocked out,” referring to Iran’s navy, air force, and anti-aircraft systems. Merz briefly chuckles as Trump says that.

It’s clear that the United States has done significant damage to Iran’s military already, but it’s not clear that its military has been devastated in the way Trump described — especially since Trump has said the war could go on for several more weeks.

Trump is taking questions from reporters. He’s asked first if Israel and Netanyahu forced his hand to attack Iran.

“No, I might have forced their hand,” Trump says. “If anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand,” he repeats a moment later.

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