Tracy Mumford

or as Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, quote, it's bullshit.

Lastly, the president had to make a decision.

And my colleagues found that he was basically operating in an echo chamber with not a lot of pushback.

Trump was riding high off the quick operation in Venezuela, thinking Iran would go the same.

And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was for it, saying, we're going to have to take care of the Iranians eventually, so we might as well do it now.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Kaine, persistently flagged risks, but also repeatedly said it wasn't his job to tell the president what to do.

In Trump's inner circle, Vice President J.D.

Vance was the only one to make a forceful case against the war, though he ultimately told Trump, you know I think this is a bad idea, but if you want to do it, I'll support you.

The next day, Trump gave the final order.

You can find Maggie and Jonathan's full reporting in the Times app or at NYTimes.com.

And one last update on the war, which has shaken the global economy.

Markets surged in response to yesterday's ceasefire agreement, and the price of oil dropped sharply, as investors are cautiously optimistic that oil and gas will start moving through the Strait of Hormuz again.

Still, gas prices and jet fuel costs are unlikely to return to pre-war levels anytime soon.

since at least 10% of the world's oil supply has been cut off, and it will take time to reopen shuttered wells and repair damaged refineries in the Persian Gulf.

In Silicon Valley, major tech companies have been rushing to release the latest and greatest AI models, promising each one is more accurate, more capable, more useful than the last.

Yesterday, Anthropic announced it has a new one, but claimed that it's too powerful to be released to the public.

It turns out the model, known as Claude Mythos Preview, is really good at finding security vulnerabilities in software.

In theory, that's great.

It can help developers identify and patch weak points in their systems.

But that means it could also be used to identify and exploit those same weak points.