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Sep 18, 2026 - World

A chatbot's bad guess about a cargo ship nearly dragged the U.S. into a shooting war with China this spring, CNN exclusively reported on Friday.A U.S. Special Operations Command Pacific analyst asked an AI chatbot to analyze a Chinese vessel's manifest in the Middle East amid the war with Iran, four sources familiar with the episode told CNN's Katie Bo Lillis and Zachary Cohen, who added the bot "fused together open-source intelligence with secret signals intelligence in government holdings" to wrongly conclude the ship was "hauling components" for a nuclear weapons program. The analyst then used AI again to package the finding into "a standard intelligence report" that was sent up the chain of command.According to the report, "The US military swung into action with plans to intercept the vessel, according to four sources familiar with the episode. According to two of the sources, armed members of the US military were preparing to board the ship. Military planes were in the air, one of those sources and another source familiar with the incident said. It was only just before the planned operation that officials dug deeper into the report put together by a special operations command analyst and found it had been generated with the help of artificial intelligence (AI).""Entirely false," one source called it before admitting to CNN that it "almost started a war," since any U.S. assault on a Chinese ship carried the possibility of retaliation. The scare comes as the Pentagon races to embed AI into everything from targeting to logistics, following Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's January push to "unleash experimentation" and arm three million personnel with AI tools. Critics say the technology remains dangerously unready, with a top Army cyber general recently warning AI has caused a "tenfold" spike in vulnerabilities across the Pentagon's aging networks. Insiders have described a Pentagon under Hegseth already gripped by dysfunction. Special Operations Command Pacific and the Pentagon declined to comment when pressed by CNN.

Sep 18, 2026 - World

Congressional investigators are scrambling to explain how F-35 jet parts loaded with classified stealth tech vanished into Hong Kong on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's watch.The parts have been missing since June, Politico reported on Friday. A shipment of F-35 components headed from Australia to the U.S. for repairs was mysteriously "rerouted mid-Pacific" and turned up in Hong Kong instead, three people familiar with the matter said. It's reportedly still not clear "who has possession of it now.""The shipment included one of the jet’s canopies, which covers the cockpit and contains stealth technology that only the U.S. and its allies have access to," sources told Politico. "An adversary could study the parts and potentially reverse-engineer the prized technology if it had one of the canopies."The mess triggered closed-door briefings for congressional staff starting in June, with more expected. The Pentagon's F-35 Joint Program Office would only confirm it is "aware of a shipment issue of unserviceable F-35 Lightning II components" and said it's working "to retrieve these components, investigate the incident, and place safeguards to avoid a future occurrence."Hong Kong is a Chinese special administrative region, and Beijing has a long, documented history of hacking its way to F-35 secrets, Politico reported. J.J. Gertler, a former House Armed Services Committee staffer, told Politico's Audrey Decker and Mark Satter, "It's no secret that China has been aggressively trying to get F-35 data through electronic espionage, among other means. But even if they already had specifications or other data about the part, possessing a real one can give them even more to go on and can verify or refine whatever they already had learned."Lockheed insisted it "handles every shipment with the utmost diligence," while the State Department declined comment and China's embassy claims "ignorance." The blunder lands amid mounting turmoil inside Hegseth's Pentagon, where whistleblowers describe chaos.

Sep 18, 2026 - World

Jagtar Singh Johal, from Scotland, was arrested after wedding in Punjab on alleged terrorism offencesJagtar Singh Johal, a British Sikh man who was arrested in India in 2017 in connection with alleged terrorism offences, has been granted bail by a Delhi court.Johal, from Scotland, was arrested for his alleged role in funding the Khalistan Liberation Force, which had carried out targeted killings in India’s Punjab region. Continue reading...

Sep 18, 2026 - World

A senior Iranian figure proclaimed Thursday that the Strait of Hormuz would remain closed until “criminal” President Donald Trump is removed from power — and a number of critics voiced support for the demand.Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr, a political adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, said that the strait would remain closed until both Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were removed from office, a demand that comes as traffic through the critical shipping waterway hit its “lowest level yet” and surging global oil prices break records.“Our fighters will not open the Strait of Hormuz until they bring the criminal Trump and the bloodthirsty Netanyahu down from the seat of power,” Zolqadr said, CBS News reported Thursday.With gas prices in the United States reaching unprecedented heights due to Trump’s deeply unpopular war against Iran — with “the worst still to come,” per The Washington Post — a number of Trump’s critics appeared to embrace Iran’s demands.“Honestly, I'm down with this. F--- it,” wrote Ian Smith, a former GOP congressional candidate from New Jersey and fitness entrepreneur, in a social media post on X.Dash Dobrofsky, a political commentator and writer, also embraced Iran’s terms for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, writing in a social media post on X to his nearly 200,000 followers: “Not gonna lie, this sounds like a great deal to me.”Others flagged how Iran’s new demand was directly at odds with Trump’s oft-repeated insistence that Iran was “begging” to make a deal with his administration.“Trump has said for (how many months now) that Iran is begging for a deal. Doesn't seem like it, by their actions, or their words,” wrote Chris Rossini, a senior fellow and media host at the Ron Paul Institute.And Laura Robinson, a religious podcaster and scholar, quipped that it was “kinda cool” that Iran "believed" in Americans enough to remove Trump from power to make such a demand.Iran just came out and said the Strait of Hormuz will remain closed until both Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are removed from power.Not gonna lie, this sounds like a great deal to mehttps://t.co/nyuc7GSa3e— Dash Dobrofsky (@DashDobrofsky) September 17, 2026

Sep 18, 2026 - World

The Iran-backed militia that once triggered one of the most damaging scandals of President Donald Trump's second term is back — and the president is trying to avoid a fight he already walked away from once, according to a new report.American diplomats met with Houthi representatives at the U.S. Embassy in Oman over the weekend in an effort to cool tensions and keep Red Sea shipping lanes open, a source briefed on the discussions told MS NOW. Both sides reaffirmed a ceasefire reached last year, under which the Houthis agreed not to strike U.S. targets in exchange for the U.S. standing down.That truce was born out of Trump's frustration with his military campaign that spawned Signalgate. In spring 2025, the U.S. launched a seven-week, more than $1 billion military operation against the Houthis — one that top officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, discussed on the Signal messaging app.The chats became public after then-national security adviser Mike Waltz mistakenly added a journalist to the thread, setting off months of controversy and staff turnover.Frustrated by the campaign's lack of progress, Trump halted it in May 2025 and struck the ceasefire instead.Now that decision has narrowed his options, reported MS NOW's Felicia Schwartz. With the U.S.-Iran war ongoing and Tehran controlling the Strait of Hormuz, Saudi Arabia had rerouted oil exports through the Red Sea to avoid the chokepoint.The Houthis have responded by seizing the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, threatening that backup route too and helping push gas prices higher just weeks before the U.S. midterms.Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally asked Trump last week to strike the Houthis after they took control of the strait, according to a person familiar with the call.Trump declined, telling the crown prince that Riyadh should take the lead on what the White House considers a regional security matter. Asked about the call while in Ireland, Trump called the crown prince "a good friend of mine" and predicted "everything's going to work out fine and dandy."A senior administration official said the U.S. expects the Houthis to keep honoring the ceasefire, noting the group has signaled it doesn't want to fight the U.S.But David Schenker, a former top State Department Middle East official now at the Washington Institute, said the president's rationale is both strategic and political. "Trump doesn't want to start another campaign, certainly not before the elections. We're short of munitions and already stretched."Trump's reluctance is frustrating to Saudi Arabia and Washington’s other Middle East partners who never wanted the Iran war in the first place but are now tasked with containing the fallout.“The war with Iran really exposed the vulnerabilities of a lot of our partners in the Gulf,” Schenker said. “It raises all sorts of questions about what a U.S. security commitment to the Gulf looks like.”