Outside the Beltway

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1. charontwo says:
   Wednesday, 11 March 2026 at 10:36

   From a Vox newsletter, AI is now behind a lot of online scams:

   Excerpt:

   At one point, Todd Hemmen, a deputy assistant director in the FBI’s Cyber Division’s Cyber Capabilities branch, described how North Korean operatives are using AI-generated face overlays to pass remote job interviews at Western tech companies — then working multiple remote positions simultaneously, funneling the salaries and any intelligence back to the regime in Pyongyang. They fabricate résumés with AI, prep for interviews with AI, and use AI to wear the “face of someone who’s not the person behind the camera,” Hemmen told the audience. Some of the most proficient actors are holding down several full-time jobs at once, all under fake identities, all enabled by tools that didn’t exist two years ago.

   That detail has been rattling around in my head since, not the least because it made me wonder how these industrious operatives can manage multiple jobs when I find just one taxing enough. But Hemmen’s story captures something deeper about the moment we find ourselves in. The AI risks getting the most airtime right now are speculative and cinematic — killer robots, AI panopticons. But the AI threat that’s here right now is a foreign agent wearing a synthetic face on a Zoom call, collecting a paycheck from your company. And almost nobody is treating it with the same urgency.

   How cybercrime got worse than ever

   Cybercrime has been a problem since the days of dial-up, but the scale of what’s happening now is staggering. The FBI reported that the US suffered $16.6 billion in known cybercrime losses in 2024 — up 33 percent in a single year, and more than doubled over three years. Americans over 60 lost nearly $5 billion. And those are just the reported numbers; Alice Marwick, director of research at Data & Society, told the Aspen Institute audience that only about one in five victims ever reports a scam. The real number is unknowable, but it’s much worse.

   And now comes generative AI to make all of this faster, cheaper, and more convincing. Phishing emails no longer arrive riddled with typos from supposed Nigerian princes; LLMs can produce fluent, regionally specific language. AI image generators can create entire synthetic identities — dozens of photos of a person who doesn’t exist, complete with vacation shots and designer handbags.

   Voice cloning has enabled heists that were science fiction five years ago: In early 2024, a finance worker at the Hong Kong office of UK engineering firm Arup transferred $25 million after a deepfake video call in which the company’s CFO and several colleagues seemed to appear on screen. All of them, it turns out, were fake. CrowdStrike’s 2026 Global Threat Report found that AI-enabled attacks surged 89 percent year-over-year, while the average time from initial breach to being able to spread throughout a network dropped to just 29 minutes. The fastest observed breakout: 27 seconds.

   Will AI cyberoffense beat AI cyberdefense?

   Why is this problem so comparatively neglected? Partly because we’ve normalized it. Cybercrime has been growing for years, driven by the professionalization of criminal syndicates, cryptocurrency, remote work, and the industrialization of scam compounds in Southeast Asia. (My Vox colleague Josh Keating wrote a great story a couple of years ago on these so-called pig butchering scams.)

   We’ve absorbed each year’s record losses as the cost of doing business online. But the curve is steepening: Deloitte projects that generative AI-enabled fraud losses in the US alone could hit $40 billion by 2027. “In the same way that legitimate businesses are integrating automation, so are organized crime,” Marwick said.

   That so much of this goes unsaid and unreported adds to the toll. Marwick’s research focuses on romance scams — people targeted during periods of loneliness or transition, slowly bled of their savings by someone they believe loves them. She told the audience that victims often refuse to believe they’re being scammed even when confronted with direct proof. AI makes the emotional manipulation far more persuasive, and no spam filter will protect someone who is willingly sending money.

   Can defense keep up? Marwick drew a hopeful comparison to spam, which nearly broke email in the 1990s before a combination of technical fixes, legislation, and social adaptation tamed it, at least to a large extent. Financial institutions are deploying AI to catch AI-enabled fraud. The FBI froze hundreds of millions in stolen funds last year.

   But the consensus at the conference was largely grim. “We’re entering this window of time where the offense is so much more capable than the defense,” said Rob Joyce, former director of cybersecurity at the National Security Agency. Marwick was blunter: “I would say generally I’m pretty pessimistic.”

   So am I. As I was writing this story, I received an email from a friend with what appeared to be a Paperless Post invitation. The language in the email looked a little odd, but when I clicked on the invite, it took me to a page that seemed very similar to Paperless Post, down to the logo. Still suspicious, I emailed my friend, asking if this was real. “Yes, it is legit,” he wrote back.

   That was enough proof for me, but I got distracted and didn’t click on the next step of the invite. Good thing — a few minutes later, my friend emailed me and others to tell us that, yes, he had been hacked.

   Bryan Walsh, Senior editorial director

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2. Mr. Prosser says:
   Wednesday, 11 March 2026 at 11:19

   I admit it. I watched Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. Through the fine fog of watching it I realized Jay looks like Pete Hegseth. Now whenever I see Pete I think Jay.https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/jay_and_silent_bob_reboot

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3. charontwo says:
   Wednesday, 11 March 2026 at 11:45

   From Israel, Israeli journalist:

   “Nadav Eyal”

   3. The Ticking Clock of War — and Oil

   Trading in oil futures between Sunday night and Monday morning was extremely volatile. At one point oil prices climbed to nearly $120 per barrel before dropping to around $84 later in the day following a series of statements by the Trump administration.

   The market appears highly sensitive to oil prices and increasingly interprets these statements as a signal that the war — regardless of what the administration says publicly — is moving toward its final stages.

   Israeli security sources say they understand that the war could end quickly, although they do not necessarily want that outcome. In their view, ending the war now could strengthen and radicalize the Islamic Republic; they would want another two weeks, though, as mentioned earlier, few believe the regime will crumble as a result.

   The energy crisis now preoccupying both the West and East Asia is central to understanding the conflict. The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that Iran has in fact increased its oil production in recent days compared with pre-war levels, reaching about 2.1 million barrels per day. According to the report, which relies on a company that monitors oil tanker movements, Iranian and Russian tankers are continuing to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. The primary destination is China.

   If these reports are accurate, they are troubling. Without a disruption of Iranian oil exports, the regime’s revenues will continue to flow. In some ways this could be worse than closing the Strait of Hormuz entirely: this means the strait is open — but effectively only for the Iranians.

   All of this highlights a fundamental challenge for decision-makers in Jerusalem and Washington. As argued here from the beginning, the Islamic Republic needs only to survive the war in order to portray itself as the victor.

   “Anyone who wants a short war should say the war might last forever,” an Israeli former general told me this week. “Long wars happen more often when one side signals distress and wants a quick end.”

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4. charontwo says:
   Wednesday, 11 March 2026 at 11:48

   @charontwo:

   If these reports are accurate, they are troubling. Without a disruption of Iranian oil exports, the regime’s revenues will continue to flow. In some ways this could be worse than closing the Strait of Hormuz entirely: this means the strait is open — but effectively only for the Iranians.

   If true, this seems incompatible with Iran mining the strait.

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5. Kathy says:
   Wednesday, 11 March 2026 at 12:03

   @charontwo:

   this means the strait is open — but effectively only for the Iranians.

   That’s the trumpiest of outcomes.

   Would the Lush or El Taco dare to attack Russian tankers heading to China?

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6. charontwo says:
   Wednesday, 11 March 2026 at 12:04

   https://popular.info/p/update-trump-says-kushner-helped

   Kushner’s largest investor is the Saudi Arabian government, which provided Kushner with $2 billion in funding in 2021. Each year, Saudi Arabia pays Kushner 1.25% of its investment, $25 million, as a “management fee.” Meaning he has received in excess of $100 million from the Saudi government over the last few years.

   Notably, “Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made multiple private phone calls to Trump” in February, advocating a U.S. attack,” according to reporting in the Washington Post. Trump’s comments reveal that Kushner used his role in Geneva to push Trump toward the outcome favored by his biggest client. Affinity Partners also received more than $200 million from the UAE. According to CNN, behind the scenes, the UAE was also lobbying Trump to strike Iran.

   It is unclear precisely what Kushner told Trump about his mediation session with the Iranians. The Times of Israel, quoting an anonymous administration source, said that Kushner told Trump that Iran was “basically playing games.” According to the source, Kushner told Trump that it would only be possible for Trump to strike an “Obama kind of deal“ with Iran and even that “would take months.”

   The claim that Iran was planning an imminent attack against the U.S. — the conclusion that Trump took away from his discussions with Kushner and others — is directly contradicted by U.S. intelligence agencies. Shortly after the war began, “Trump administration officials told congressional staff in private briefings on Sunday that U.S. intelligence did not suggest Iran was preparing to launch a preemptive strike against the United States interests,” according to ABC News. CNN reported that Trump administration officials “acknowledged to congressional staff that Iran was not planning to strike US forces or bases in the Middle East unless Israel attacked Iran first.” Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), the top Democrat on the intelligence committee who receives classified briefings, said, “I saw no evidence that Iran was on the verge of launching any kind of preemptive strike against the United States of America.”
7. Rick DeMent says:
   Wednesday, 11 March 2026 at 12:22

   Anyone want to guess how long it will take the management of CBS news to pull the plug on Bari Weiss? I mean it’s been one disaster after another. Anyone else would have been fired by now. I’ve seen much more competent people get fired in broadcasting for a ton less nonsense then she has brought to the table. Are all conservatives DEI hires?

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8. Beth says:
   Wednesday, 11 March 2026 at 12:29

   @charontwo:

   I mean, not if you know where the mines are.

   @Rick DeMent:

   Yes.

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9. Beth says:
   Wednesday, 11 March 2026 at 12:30

   @charontwo:

   I mean, not if you know where the mines are.

   @Rick DeMent:

   Yes.
10. Kathy says:
    Wednesday, 11 March 2026 at 13:17

    You know the popular diabetes drugs that can aid in wight loss, like Ozempic and Wegovy? It turns out there’s a rare side effect that can cause permanent blindness.

    The piece cites a 1 in 10,000 chance, and has vaguer numbers suggesting it depends on dose and absorption rate (ie injected doses are absorbed faster into the body than tablets). This is not a huge risk, but it’s a terribly bad outcome. I would not take these medications as a first treatment option.

    My sight has been ageing along with me. I’m beginning to have trouble making out small print, and now and then regular size print. So pretty soon I’ll need reading glasses. That’s as bad as I want my eyes to get.

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11. Sleeping Dog says:
    Wednesday, 11 March 2026 at 15:16

    @Rick DeMent:

    You assume that Ellison’s were seeking competency when placing Weiss at the head of CBS news. She’s doing what they want and it would always result in bad press for the network. No one blinks at Faux News’ lies as that has gone on for 30-some years now, but CBS News was a respectable source of information only a year ago.

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12. CSK says:
    Wednesday, 11 March 2026 at 15:58

    In early February, per the FBI, Iran was considering drone attacks on unspecified targets in California to retaliate in case an armed conflict was launched against it by the United States.
13. Kathy says:
    Wednesday, 11 March 2026 at 17:15

    Either Amazon has developed a love affair with unproductivity tools, or they’re making their employees train the bots they’ll replace them with.

    In a way, I hope it’s the latter, as there’s a chance it won’t work.
14. dazedandconfused says:
    Wednesday, 11 March 2026 at 18:24

    @CSK:

    Fair bet it’s a place in Florida now.

    Trump, if he ever retires, is going to have to live very very carefully.

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15. Michael Reynolds says:
    Wednesday, 11 March 2026 at 19:55

    @CSK:
    unspecified targets in California

    I’m at a hotel in Santa Monica. I’d tell which one, but they have eyes everywhere!
16. Scott O says:
    Wednesday, 11 March 2026 at 20:44

    New Mexico passes universal child care law

    https://www.governor.state.nm.us/2025/09/08/new-mexico-is-first-state-in-nation-to-offer-universal-child-care/

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