Public notes from activescott
Trump wrote on Truth Social that Iranian leaders have "taken too long to negotiate a deal". US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said Iran had been given a chance to make a deal but had not taken it, adding that bombs would be "dropping on key facilities" in the country. The US president added that Iran would be attacked again if no peace deal was secured.
As part of the August deal, Alt5 acquired $1.5 billion worth of crypto tokens from World Liberty Financial, the crypto company co-founded by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., among others, in 2024. The president and undisclosed members of his family were entitled to roughly $500 million in proceeds from the crypto sale, according to disclosures by World Liberty Financial.
Alt5 closed at $8.97 on Aug. 8, the last trading day before the World Liberty deal was announced. Since then, AI Financial ’s stock — originally trading under the ticker ALTS, now AIFC — fell to 66 cents a share at the June 8 close, a 93% loss, according to FactSet data.
World Liberty was founded in 2024 as a private company by Eric, Donald Jr., and Barron Trump, sons of the president; Zach and Alex Witkoff, sons of Trump Middle East negotiator Steve Witkoff; and business partners Zak Folkman and Chase Herro, according to a company document. Disclosures on World Liberty’s website in early June show that “approximately 38% of the equity interests” in World Liberty’s parent company are owned by “an entity affiliated with Donald J. Trump and certain of his family members.”
Alt5 announced the World Liberty deal on Aug. 11. It had two parts. Alt5 traded shares and stock warrants in itself to World Liberty in exchange for $750 million worth of WLFI tokens, and Alt5 sold $750 million in stock to investors at $7.50 a share. The $750 million in proceeds, minus some fees, was given to World Liberty in exchange for WLFI tokens. All told, Alt5 received nearly 7.3 billion WLFI tokens, which it initially valued at about $1.5 billion. Zach Witkoff, World Liberty’s CEO, became chair of Alt5′s board.
The Trump family is entitled to 75% of the proceeds from World Liberty’s crypto token sales, according to disclosures made in a document World Liberty published in 2024 describing its token offering, and repeated in fine print at the bottom of its website. That would put the Trump family’s direct gains from the August Alt5 transaction at roughly $500 million after fees and other expenses.
Some of these issues, such as the court filing and auditor issue, should have been revealed to investors more swiftly, Canter said. “I started my ethics career at the SEC, and I think they would have started investigating this for just one or two of these failures to disclose,” Canter said.
One potential wrinkle in the investigative process, Canter said, is the Trump family’s recent “anti-weaponization” settlement with the Internal Revenue Service. Under the settlement, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche issued an order releasing Trump from ongoing audits. The settlement’s language is vague and is written in a way that could be interpreted to apply to regulators’ potential investigations of companies related to the Trump family, such as AI Financial, Canter said.
rtk filters and compresses command outputs before they reach your LLM context. Single Rust binary, 100+ supported commands, <10ms overhead.
A Claude Code skill/plugin that makes agent talk like caveman — cuts ~75% of output tokens, keeps full technical accuracy. Brain still big. Mouth small.
git clone https://github.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman.git
cd caveman
node bin/install.js --only claude --minimal
Key Findings
An LLM agent executed the post-compromise actions in real time rather than running a pre-built playbook. This is the first AI-agent-driven intrusion the Sysdig TRT has captured. The full attack chain — marimo notebook compromise to internal Postgres database dump — ran end-to-end in under one hour. The SSH bastion phase exfiltrated the Postgres schema and full contents of an internal database in less than two minutes. Cloudflare Workers were used as a per-request egress pool: 12 cloud API calls fanned across eleven distinct IPs in 22 seconds, defeating per-source-IP detection.
On March 21, 2026, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that “all houses and villages near the Lebanese border will be destroyed, in accordance with the model used in Rafah and Beit Hanoun in Gaza.” That model, the systematic demolition of thousands of homes, including after the end of active hostilities and without discernible military justification, is being carried out using the D9 Armoured Bulldozer, manufactured by Caterpillar Inc. Within the Occupied Palestinian territories, the Palestinian population lives under military law, and the Israeli military utilizes Regulation 119, Defense (Emergency) Regulations (1945) which allows military commanders to order the demolition of any home or structure utilized by a convicted or suspected terrorist.
In 2002, B’tselem documented IDF D9s destroying 60 homes in the Rafah refugee camp, displacing over 600 Palestinians five years before Hamas took power.
Since October 2024, IDF D9 bulldozers, in controlled demolition, demolished 8,218 homes in Gaza, many after ceasefires and without military rationale.
A 2026 UN report documented the destruction as systematic, occurring in neighborhoods cleared of combatants and posing no ongoing military threat.
A New York Times report detailed 50 social media accounts of Israeli soldiers demolishing houses, schools and other civilian buildings.
September 2024: West Bank Raid
The IDF deployed D9s as collective punishment following the October 7th, 2023 attacks. In the West Bank IDF raids caused an estimated $135 million in damages: 20km of water, sewage, electricity, and communication networks were destroyed; 70% of the road network was demolished along with 40 residential buildings and 10 businesses being damaged.
Following the 2024 ceasefire in Lebanon, IDF D9s demolished entire villages and leveled cemeteries, obliterating headstones and burial markers.
The IDF demolished or heavily damaged at least 850 structures across refugee camps of Nur Shams, Jenin, and Tulkarem continuing acts of collective punishment. Resulting in the displacement of some 40,000 people in the largest mass displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank since the Israeli occupation began in 1967.
In November, it was reported that the Biden administration was holding up the sale of the D9 bulldozers due to the IDF’s use of them to raze homes in Gaza. The IDF has said the homes were used by Hamas and accuses the terror group of using civilians as human shields.
US President Donald Trump, upon entering office, walked back on several measures by the previous administration meant to curb arms sales to Israel.
Since the beginning of the war on October 7, 2023, the Defense Ministry says, 870 transport planes and 144 ships have delivered more than 100,000 tons of armaments and military equipment to Israel, mostly from the US.
For 2026, across 312 insurers participating in the ACA Marketplaces from the 50 states and the District of Columbia, this analysis shows a median proposed premium increase of 18%, which is about 11 percentage points higher than last year. This is the largest rate change insurers have requested since 2018, the last time that policy uncertainty contributed to sharp premium increases.
key factor driving costs in 2026. Insurers cite increasing cost and utilization of high-priced drugs as well as general market factors, such as increasing labor costs and inflation, as contributing to premium increases.
In addition to rising healthcare costs, the majority of insurers are also taking into account the potential expiration of enhanced premium tax credits in their premium rate increases for the next year. The expiration of enhanced tax credits will lead to out-of-pocket premiums for ACA marketplace enrollees increasing by an average of more than 75%, with insurers expecting healthier enrollees to drop coverage. That, in turn, increases underlying premiums. Other federal policy changes, like the implementation of tariffs and the ACA Marketplace Integrity and Affordability rule were also discussed, though to a lesser extent.
Enrollment in the Affordable Care Act continues to erode as some customers struggle to make premium payments, with the declining numbers churning market uncertainty for insurers. In response, insurers are likely to raise rates again next year, following this year’s larger-than-typical hikes.
A KFF analysis released May 19, for instance, found that the average ACA plan deductible saw the steepest increase in history — growing by 37%, or over $1,000, from $2,759 in 2025 to $3,786 in 2026 as enhanced premium tax credits expired.
Those rising costs pose a political challenge for President Donald Trump and the broader GOP, which has opposed enhanced subsidies to help people purchase Obamacare coverage. Republican lawmakers also passed a spending package last year — enacted as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — that included provisions expected to reduce ACA enrollment and was cited among factors fueling higher premiums this year.
GDP, broadly speaking, is a measure of the value of an economy. Analyzing the debt in context of GDP makes it easier to track the debt alongside changes in economy and inflation, allowing for comparisons of the debt over time; it can also indicate a country's ability to repay its debt. When debt reaches 100% of a nation's GDP, it indicates that the country owes about as much as its economy generates annually.
Republican Congressman Thomas Massie has called for a new investigation into Israel’s deadly attack on the USS Liberty, urging recognition for the survivors and those killed in a probe that he says is 59 years overdue.
Israeli jets and torpedo boats attacked the US ship off Egypt on June 8, 1967, killing 34 US service members and wounding more than 170. Twelve survivors watched from the gallery of the US House of Representatives.
Massie said the unarmed ship was flying a clearly visible US flag when it came under sustained attack.
“According to eyewitness accounts, the Israelis machine gunned the lifeboats that they put down,” Massie said. “They machine gunned the firefighters who were on the deck.”
Israeli officials have long claimed the attack was a case of mistaken identity, but Massie said senior officials, including former CIA figures, rejected that explanation.
The USS Liberty anniversary has renewed relevance because Massie has criticised Washington’s long-standing reluctance to hold Israel accountable, even when US citizens are killed. He has also opposed the current war on Iran, which Israel dragged the US into, and which has killed at least 13 US troops and wounded more than 380.
The UK Foreign Office and a group of western countries are due to announce a package of sanctions against Israel this week designed to deter companies from becoming involved in a proposed West Bank settlement that would split the territory in two and render the concept of a two-state solution near impossible.
Tenders were opened this month for the development of more than 3,000 homes between Jerusalem and the Ma’ale Adumim. The development would split the West Bank between north and south, and so in effect make a contiguous Palestinian West Bank impossible.
Last week, the UN committee on the exercise of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people condemned an order signed by the Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, to start displacing the Palestinian Bedouin community of Khan al-Ahmar in the occupied West Bank, saying it would “heighten the risk of forced transfer of the civilian population” and calling such a move illegal and a war crime.
The letter states: “The case for ending trade with settlements is clear. The international court of justice has directed third states not to enter into ‘trade dealings with Israel concerning the occupied Palestinian territory’, which is widely interpreted as meaning states must not trade with settlements.”
It argues that the UK would not need primary legislation to enact a ban as there is “a precedent in UK law and policy of not trading with illegally occupied lands”, including Crimea and other illegally occupied parts of Ukraine.
This is not the first time Israel has been accused of espionage against the US – its closest ally and benefactor – with which it maintains extensive security and intelligence cooperation.
According to NBC News and The New York Times (NYT), citing anonymous current and former US officials, the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) arm recently upgraded Israel’s counterintelligence threat level from “high” to “critical”, the most serious designation in its internal assessment system.
The warning was based on Israeli intelligence agencies intensifying efforts to collect information on US military personnel, government officials and policy discussions.
The news reports said the concern was focused on American officials involved in shaping Washington’s approach towards Iran, as the two foes continue to negotiate an end to the war that has sent global energy prices soaring.
“An intensified Israeli effort to learn about US positions in talks with Iran has crossed a line, according to some American officials,” the NYT said.
The reports also referenced incidents in which US defence personnel working in Israel allegedly discovered software on their phones “to tap their communications had been surreptitiously installed on their phones”, the NYT added.
The newspaper said the DIA reports found Israeli spying on the US, which has occurred before, surged from late 2024 onwards, coinciding with US President Joe Biden’s administration stepping up pressure on Israel over its genocide in Gaza.
Israel has previously been involved in espionage cases targeting the US, although such incidents have not been spoken about much given their close ties.
The most famous example is the Jonathan Pollard affair. The civilian intelligence analyst working for the US Navy was arrested in 1985 after passing large quantities of classified information to Israel. He later pleaded guilty to espionage and served 30 years in prison before being released on parole in 2015.
“Over decades, Israel has sought to penetrate US policymaking circles through both formal and informal networks, including intelligence and lobbying channels, in order to gain insight into American strategic thinking and decision-making,” he added.
Nevertheless, Washington has for years provided billions in military aid and weapons sales to Israel, including throughout the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza.
The US Congress is also currently debating a section of a new defence bill, which would integrate the two countries’ research and development for weaponry to an unprecedented degree. The US has also provided diplomatic cover to Israel at the UN and other international bodies.
“What surprises many observers is the extent to which Israel, despite being heavily dependent on American military, diplomatic and financial support, has developed the capacity to penetrate multiple layers of US policymaking and cultivate influence across key institutions involved in American statecraft.”
According to analyst and Iran expert Negar Mortazavi, Israel’s reported espionage in the current context is not new and has past precedent. Israel’s opposition to US-Iran negotiations goes back to the time of US President Barack Obama when he signed a nuclear deal with Iran in 2015, which the US under Trump withdrew from in 2018.
“The Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu did not want any deals or serious negotiations or normalisation between Tehran and Washington, and he tried to stop it publicly and privately in any way he could,” she told Al Jazeera.
The Corsi–Rosenthal Box is a design for a do-it-yourself air purifier that can be built comparatively inexpensively. It consists of four[1] or five[2][3] HVAC particulate air filters that form a cube and a box fan to draw air through the filters. The seams of the cube are sealed with duct tape.
How about you give me my share and let me invest it myself?
Mastercard, in comparison, performs this validation correctly and the contrast reveals exactly where Visa fails. The over-the-limit attack succeeds against Visa for one central reason: when the attacker flips the bit in the Card Transaction Qualifiers (CTQ) telling the terminal “on-device authentication has been performed”, Visa does not cryptographically authenticate that field – nor does it cross-check it against the Issuer Application Data (IAD), which contains an independent record (in the Card Verification Results field) of whether Consumer Device Cardholder Verification Method (CDCVM) actually occurred. During the original disclosure process, Visa confirmed to the researchers the relevant data is present in the Application Cryptogram; the company simply does not validate it – whereas Mastercard does. The researchers proved this formally using the Tamarin verification tool: a Mastercard transaction cannot be approved at high value without genuine on-device authentication.
On the touch point of this exploit being one only affecting Apple’s iPhone, it is worth noting how Samsung Pay takes a different approach at the device level – authorising only zero-value transactions in transit mode, with the actual fare settled later through the transit system. This is effective, though it comes with trade-offs; like how fixed-fare transit systems requiring upfront charges are not supported. Apple could theoretically implement a similar restriction, yet doing so would break Express Transit for several transit networks worldwide. The more appropriate long-term solution requiring no compromise on device-level functionality, is simply for Visa to implement the same backend verification Mastercard already uses.
Visa’s official position, reiterated to Veritasium in 2026, is straightforward: the company does not believe the exploit is likely in a real-world setting. The attack requires physical proximity to (or possession of) the victim’s iPhone, specialised hardware, a rooted Android phone, and technical knowledge of EMV protocol manipulation. Visa further notes cardholders are covered by its ‘Zero Liability Policy’, allowing for any fraudulent transaction to be disputed and refunded. Anyone who has ever tried getting a refund from a bank for fraudulent activity will know how tedious and time consuming this process can be, and it is rather telling how Visa would rather put users through inconvenience than simply fixing the known security gap.
With that said, the company’s position is worth examining over outright dismissing. For a start, the hardware requirements are not trivial. Nefarious parties would require a Proxmark device, rooted Android phone, and laptop running custom relay software – all of which represent a higher barrier to entry than most opportunistic theft. Scaled deployment across hundreds of victims simultaneously is, indeed, impractical with current methods.
Even so, this defence has clear structural weaknesses. The existence of a known and, in this case, reproducible vulnerability in a payment network processing billions of transactions annually; cannot simply be mitigated by the argument of it being ‘difficult to exploit at scale’. Mastercard clearly agrees given how they have implemented protections against exactly this class of attack. Moreover, the equipment required is commercially available (the Proxmark, for instance, is an open-source RFID research tool), and the researchers’ methodology was published in full at a major academic conference. It also stands to reason how the barrier to replication lowers every year. Arguing a vulnerability is tolerable because exploitation is currently inconvenient is not a security posture… it is more akin to som
For anyone who regards the security of their financial data as a priority, the recommended course of action is clear and immediate: do not use a Visa card for Express Transit on an iPhone until either Apple or Visa deploys a fix.
To disable Express Transit for Visa on an iPhone, navigate to Settings, then Wallet and Apple Pay, then Express Transit Card, and select None; or assign either a Mastercard or American Express card to the feature instead. Both alternatives are, as of the publication of this article, immune to this specific Visa card vulnerability.
AIPAC used a complicated web of political committees to influence the Illinois primary elections in March. Whether or not it is using the same tactics in Michigan — the group did not respond to a request for comment — observers expect it to continue to hide its campaign spending in the months to come, as primary candidates battle over AIPAC’s influence.