Trump said a deal was in sight. On August 2, the US president said an agreement had already been reached on the Strait of Hormuz and that a deal on Iran’s denuclearization would also be secured. He said the United States would hold talks with Iran on August 3.
The world had reason to be skeptical. Only a day earlier, Trump was reportedly considering a major strike on Iran. Now, he had reversed course yet again.
Axios reported on August 1 that Trump was seriously considering strikes on Iranian energy targets in the coming days. The reported move was a response to Iran’s missile attack on a US military base in Jordan and its continued disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
Such attacks could have driven the five-month US-Iran conflict into an unprecedented escalation. But Trump had not issued a final order.
Two US officials said Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman spoke with Trump that day. The crown prince reportedly voiced concern over a planned large-scale new round of strikes and urged Trump to ease tensions rather than attack.
Trump governs America through social media.
Later that evening, he wrote on his Truth Social platform that the United States was “locked and loaded” and ready to act against Iran at any time,“at levels of Military Terror, Strength, and Power not seen since World War II”.
But in a twist, Trump said Iran and other Middle Eastern countries had asked Washington to delay the attack. Their reason, he said, was that all sides had agreed on the framework of a deal.
The framework would include the “Immediate, Complete, and Total OPENING OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT”, along with an end to Iran’s nuclear threat.
Trump said he had agreed to cancel the attack in response to that request. He said the decision was “for the future benefit of the WORLD and, likewise, the survival of a successful and prosperous Iran”, provided that all sides could reach an agreement quickly.
By August 2, Trump was declaring that an agreement on the Strait of Hormuz was already in place. He said a deal on Iranian denuclearization would follow, and that the United States would begin talks with Iran on August 3.
Israel, however, knew nothing about it.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was left completely in the dark.
Israel’s Channel 12 reported on August 2, citing senior Israeli officials, that the United States and Israel had originally planned a joint strike on Iran on August 1. When Trump changed his position, however, Washington allegedly left Israel in the dark for hours.
Israeli leaders reportedly learned that the strike had been canceled only through Trump’s social-media post. One senior Israeli official said, “For hours, we were in real uncertainty.”
Israel could only follow the latest US developments through Trump’s Truth Social platform. Senior officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz, reportedly learned through social media that the strike plan had been abruptly canceled. The official said it felt as though the United States had “left us hanging.”
At first, Israel believed the sudden US announcement might have been intended to lower Iran’s guard. But after contacting Washington, Israeli officials confirmed that the strike plan had in fact been called off.
Another senior Israeli official put the frustration bluntly: “We cannot comprehend Trump’s ultimate intentions.” With Trump able to change his mind at any moment, the Israeli military remained on high alert.
Deep Throat
** 博客文章文責自負,不代表本公司立場 **
The future belongs to artificial general intelligence (AGI). China and the United States are pursuing different strategies in the contest for global leadership.
But one US national security think tank wants to take the rivalry to an extreme. The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) has gone so far as to suggest that Washington consider extreme measures to stop China from achieving AGI first.
CNAS released “Superpowers and AGI” report late last month.
Jacob Stokes, one of the report's authors and a former White House official, called on the US to prepare itself. He listed possible extreme measures, from diplomacy and espionage to cyberattacks and coercive steps. Among them: military strikes on Chinese data centers.
Stokes, one of the authors of the report urged extreme steps, even strikes on Chinese data centers.
CNAS is headquartered in Washington and was founded in 2007. It has long advised the US government on defense, Indo-Pacific and China strategy. Its lean is hawkish.
Late last month, CNAS released a report titled “Superpowers and AGI”. The document reeks of gunpowder. It argues that the race for AGI, and the technology's potential emergence, could profoundly affect US-China competition. It could also heighten the risk of military conflict or catastrophe on multiple fronts.
The Containment Checklist
To that end, the report urges US policymakers to act on several fronts. First, ensure that American resources and technology do not aid China's AI development. Second, establish AI-focused diplomatic channels with allies and with China, so that the potential emergence of AGI is placed on the agenda. Third, develop a technically sophisticated method to track the inputs into AGI and the key performance thresholds of frontier AI systems.
The list goes on. Washington should conduct scenario exercises testing when and how the US should intervene to halt China's AGI development. It should prepare to reverse-engineer or steal the technology should China obtain AGI first. And it should limit and contain the reach of authoritarian digital infrastructure.
The most extreme proposal of all is military strikes. The South China Morning Post reported on 4 September that Stokes, deputy director of CNAS's Indo-Pacific Security Program, addressed an online event on Thursday.
His message was blunt. The US Department of Defense, the National Security Agency and other agencies should begin assessing what intelligence would be needed to justify such operations. That would pave the way for the "hard action" to follow.
The Cold War Playbook
Stokes served as a national security staffer under former US president Barack Obama. In the report he unabashedly lays out a menu of what he calls "diplomatic, espionage, cyber and kinetic measures." Among them are military strikes on the data centers that train and run China's AGI systems. He even touts preventive strikes before China develops AGI at all.
Stokes goes so far as to compare the undertaking to the way "in a past era, policymakers would learn about nuclear weapons." His declared method is to "work backwards from the science to the policy implications."
Citing assessments by research outfit Epoch AI, the report notes that the US currently leads China in advanced AI models by only "months." But it warns that China could pull off an "unexpected technological breakthrough" in fields such as robotics and "embodied AI."
Citing research institute Epoch AI data, the report sees China pulling off surprise breakthroughs.
Notably, Stokes also concedes a gap on the American side. The US government and its intelligence agencies have "not been organised for espionage to gather technological secrets for decades."
"The Height of Recklessness"
Stokes' extreme remarks have drawn questioning within the United States itself. William Hartung, a senior arms and defense budget expert at the Washington-based non-profit Project On Government Oversight (POGO), publicly slammed the report as "the height of recklessness."
Hartung warned that any strike on Chinese data centers would "risk starting a shooting war between two nuclear-armed powers". Such a war could bring tragic consequences for all concerned.
China has consistently maintained that AI should be people-centered and that intelligence should serve the good. Military applications must remain under human control. Beijing opposes turning technological issues into bloc confrontation or weaponry.
Make no mistake: technological competition is no casus belli. When individual American politicians and think-tank figures reach for threats of "military strikes" and "espionage" at every turn, they gravely violate the basic norms of international relations. They also expose a dangerous bid to politicize and militarize technology.
