Ep 103: Disintegration at the UN
Hey FRs,
This week, the boys dive into the latest from that regular laugh riot, the UN General Assembly. This time around, it was even more disheartening. I hate to say it, but Trump's relentless efforts to hollow that institution out may be one of his legitimate "successes."
As a counter-balance, they also talked Trump's very non-legitimate "success" in Greenland. 😑
Did the US pay the UN the exact bare minimum?
Washington owes the United Nations roughly $4 billion, and this week sent $725 million, just enough to stay under the threshold set by Article 19 of the UN Charter, which strips voting rights from members who fall too far behind on dues.
The amount was calculated precisely to preserve US leverage on the Security Council without actually paying what's owed. Definitely purposeful but also just super classy.
What happened when Trump pulled support from Saudi Arabia?
Planes were reportedly being loaded with bombs to help Saudi Arabia respond to last week's Houthi seizure of western Yemen's coast, including the port of Mocha, when Trump called it off overnight. The result: Houthi fighters have expanded their territorial control even further along the Red Sea, with zero pushback from the US.
Fifty thousand people are currently displaced, and the region's food insecurity is worsening. Saudi Arabia expected American follow-through and got nothing, a pattern with real consequences for the roughly $1 trillion in Red Sea shipping now rerouting around Africa.
Is the new Greenland "deal" actually anything new?
Simple answer: no. Trump announced what he called an "infinite" agreement giving the US permanent military access to Greenland, but the core terms– base rights, troop stationing, and Denmark retaining sovereignty --mirror a 1951 defense agreement between the US and Denmark that has existed for 74 years. The only additions are two new sites: an airfield and a decommissioned dog-sled patrol post.
As far as Trump deals go, it's not too bad. Denmark keeps its dignity intact while the administration claims a historic breakthrough on a deal put in place under Truman.
How close did an AI hallucination come to sparking a military crisis?
Close enough that US and Chinese officials are now negotiating a bilateral notification system for military AI incidents. ICYMI, a chatbot generated a false intelligence assessment claiming a Chinese vessel was carrying nuclear weapons, and the US military scrambled aircraft in response before the report was confirmed to be entirely fabricated.
This wasn't a rogue superintelligence. It was ordinary AI-generated misinformation nearly triggering a great-power military response, a scenario that should terrify people.
What is happening to Haitian immigrants stripped of legal status?
The Trump administration ended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians this summer and is now fitting formerly legal residents, people with no flight risk and nowhere safe to return to, with ankle monitors. This is something typically used for criminal defendants.
In a story that is unbearably sad, one Haitian teenager in the Springfield, Ohio area, a soccer player at Wright State University, died by suicide after being mocked for wearing the monitor. The policy solves nothing and has already cost a life, while US-funded food and aid programs that once supported Haiti's most vulnerable have been gutted.
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