Mar 3, 2025: Marathon week 1 w/cohost station manager Ken Freedman

• Hegseth Orders Pentagon to Stop Offensive Cyberoperations Against Russia (NYT, March 2, 2025): “Over the past year, ransomware attacks on American hospitals, infrastructure and cities have ramped up, many emanating from Russia in what intelligence officials have said are largely criminal acts that have been sanctioned, or ignored, by Russian intelligence agencies.”

• The Birth of a Monster: America's Oligarchs and What They Want, by Jared Yates Sexton (Feb 26, 2026):

Musk’s actions with DOGE represent a rewiring of the system. Behind closed doors, Musk’s cronies are not only eradicating what’s left of the social safety net and regulatory systems, but installing tools of their design and control to continue its basic functioning. It’s not enough that Musk and his compatriots control funds and are purging agencies and apparatuses, they’re literally reworking it so that only they can oversee what’s left of its operations.

. . . Like Musk using Starlink as a bargaining tool in shaking down Ukraine, what is intended is a system run by and for the oligarchs in which any investigation into their activities or attempts to regulate them could be answered with a technological shutdown of government altogether. This would coincide with the usage of state power and military power, all wired with their own personal tools, to gather as many resources as possible to fulfill their individual goals, whether that is going to Mars or simply fueling their data centers and AI push. Law enforcement, operating with their surveillance and tools, would essentially be a security force to stave off dissent and protect them from societal uproar. The economy, directed by their tools, would be fully dedicated to their own enrichment, allowing them to continue hoarding resources and becoming the first generation of trillionaires, all while serving as a continually malfunctioning bomb. Social programs would evaporate. Any help would be at their choosing and we have seen enough of their white supremacist and eugenic leanings to know which way that would go. Culturally, we would be inundated with ceaseless propaganda and exposed to ever-worsening algorithmic content under their direction. And basic operational systems, much like what the FAA is doing with Starlink now, would be converted to their tools and oversight.