The Briefing

Israeli strikes hit Iranian oil storage for the first time, marking a shift from military to economic targeting that removes the natural endpoint of a campaign aimed at degrading capability. Iran's retaliatory strikes have now reached nine countries, and the conflict has killed over 1,600 people across the region.

• Israeli warplanes struck four oil storage facilities around Tehran, killing at least four workers and causing toxic black smoke over the capital
• Brent crude surged past $119 per barrel; shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has fallen 90 percent since Iran declared it closed on March 2
• At least 1,255 killed in Iran, 394 in Lebanon, 14 in Gulf states, and eight US service members; Iran named Mojtaba Khamenei as supreme leader
• The transition from military to energy infrastructure targeting matches the stated objective of 'unconditional surrender' — a war aimed at compliance, not capability

The 56-year-old son of the assassinated ayatollah was installed in a pressured online vote five days after his father's killing, with IRGC commanders lobbying assembly members from dawn. He has never held elected office and lacks the clerical rank traditionally required for the role.

• Eight of 88 Assembly members boycotted the vote; US-Israeli strikes hit the Assembly's Qom offices after votes were cast but before counting finished
• Russia pledged 'unwavering support'; Israel warned any successor was already a military target; Trump called the appointment 'unacceptable'
• Mojtaba Khamenei inherits authority over Iran's nuclear programme — 400 kg of 60 percent enriched uranium — amid active bombardment
• The 1979 revolution was fought to end hereditary rule; 47 years later, a son has inherited his father's position under wartime pressure from the military apparatus the revolution created

The waterway carrying a fifth of global oil recorded just two outbound transits on March 8, both Iranian-flagged. Iran achieved an effective blockade not through conventional naval force but through a handful of drone strikes that collapsed international insurance coverage within hours.

• Daily transits fell from 153 normally to just two on March 8; over 150 vessels are anchored outside the strait
• Iraq's oil exports dropped to 800,000 barrels per day as onshore storage filled; China's vessel traffic fell from 49 crossings per week to two
• Cape of Good Hope rerouting surged 89 percent, adding 10-14 days and 40 percent fuel costs to Asia-Europe voyages
• The entire system ran on the assumption that passage was insurable — removing that single variable stopped 20 percent of global oil supply overnight

NATO's response has fractured within and between capitals. France declared the strikes illegal while simultaneously granting US base access. Germany permitted Ramstein operations despite 59 percent public opposition. Spain barred US aircraft entirely and drew a trade threat from Trump.

• Germany permitted US operations from Ramstein Air Base; France called the strikes 'outside international law' then authorised base access for non-combat operations
• Spain barred US military aircraft; Trump threatened to 'cut off all trade with Spain' in response
• Oil past $120 per barrel and European gas prices up 30 percent; von der Leyen told ambassadors Europe is 'caught in the crossfire'
• The split exposed not a disagreement about Iran but the absence of any European mechanism capable of producing a unified strategic response to an event of this scale

Nonfarm payrolls posted their worst decline since October, well below forecasts of a 60,000 gain, while prior months were revised down by a combined 69,000 jobs. The report landed alongside an oil shock that has pushed crude past $100, creating a stagflationary trap the Fed has limited tools to address.

• Unemployment rose to 4.4 percent; labour force participation dropped to 62 percent, its lowest since December 2021
• The six-month rolling average of job creation is effectively zero; Goldman Sachs and Moody's raised recession probability to 35-42 percent
• December's reported gain of 48,000 was revised to a net loss of 17,000 — a swing of 65,000 jobs
• An energy shock arriving simultaneously with a labour market already at stall speed is a different problem from either condition in isolation

The Defense Department applied a designation previously reserved for foreign adversaries like Huawei after Anthropic refused to remove contractual prohibitions on autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. OpenAI secured a Pentagon contract within hours of the ban.

• Anthropic held a $200 million defense contract and Claude was the first LLM deployed on Pentagon classified networks
• The supply chain risk designation has previously been applied only to entities like Huawei and Kaspersky Lab
• OpenAI secured classified network access within hours; CEO Altman later admitted the deal 'looked opportunistic and sloppy'
• The dispute is the first legal test of whether national security designations can be repurposed as leverage against domestic companies whose policies the government finds inconvenient

The Turing Award winner's startup closed the largest seed round in European history on the thesis that language models are a dead end. AMI has no product, no revenue, and a $3.5 billion valuation backed by Nvidia, Toyota, Samsung, and investors across three continents.

• The $1.03 billion round at $3.5 billion valuation drew Nvidia, Bezos Expeditions, Eric Schmidt, and French institutional capital including Bpifrance and LVMH's Aglaé Ventures
• AMI's JEPA architecture learns from video and spatial data rather than text prediction, targeting robotics, manufacturing, and healthcare applications
• World Labs raised $1 billion in February; Thinking Machines Lab closed a $2 billion seed — the largest ever — creating a second front in AI development
• The sheer weight of capital flowing toward world models is turning what was an AI monoculture into something more like a species with a hedge

A peer-reviewed study in Geophysical Research Letters found statistically significant acceleration across five independent temperature datasets after filtering out natural variability. The 1.5C Paris threshold, originally projected to fall around 2045, is now expected before 2030.

• Warming rate rose from roughly 0.2C per decade (1970-2015) to approximately 0.35C per decade since 2015
• The leading explanation centres on the IMO's 2020 shipping fuel regulation, which removed sulfur pollution that had been inadvertently masking underlying warming
• Remaining carbon budget for 1.5C stands at approximately 170 billion tonnes — roughly four years at current emission rates
• The 1.5C threshold was set in Paris in 2015 with breach projected around 2045; the current range is 2026 to 2029 — the target did not move, the ground did

New rules lower the child-age exemption from 18 to 14, requiring parents of teenagers to document 80 hours of monthly work or training. Research consistently finds work requirements reduce participation without increasing employment — a 53 percent caseload drop with no measurable job gains.

• The CBO projects 2.4 million people will lose benefits monthly, including 300,000 parents of teenagers; overall cuts total $186 billion over a decade
• Brookings found work requirements led to a 53 percent drop in SNAP participation but no significant increase in employment
• Food Bank of Iowa reports distributing 60-70 percent more food daily; beginning in October, billions in SNAP costs shift to states for the first time
• The stated purpose is to move people into employment; the measured output is that caseloads fall and employment stays flat — the gap between those facts is the entire story

Engineers fixed a helium flow seal and are preparing to roll the SLS rocket to Launch Pad 39B around March 19, targeting April 1 for a 10-day crewed flyby. If it flies, it will be humanity's first crewed lunar voyage since Apollo 17 in December 1972.

• The four-person crew includes the first woman, first person of colour, and first non-American to reach deep space
• NASA's Inspector General estimates Artemis costs at $93 billion through 2025, with each SLS flight running approximately $4.1 billion
• The Trump administration proposed cancelling SLS after Artemis III; Congress secured funding for two further missions through fiscal year 2029
• Fifty-three years between crewed lunar missions is not a gap in capability — it is the length of time it took to rebuild the willingness

The FBI obtained records from an audit that already answered the question being asked — the Cyber Ninjas review found Biden won by a wider margin than certified. This is the second state where the Trump DOJ has pursued 2020 materials, following the seizure of 650 boxes from Georgia's Fulton County in January.

• Senate President Petersen complied with the subpoena and wrote 'President Trump is 100% correct' — framing compliance as endorsement
• The 2021 audit found 99 additional votes for Biden and 261 fewer for Trump; physical ballots were destroyed per Arizona's two-year retention statute
• Arizona AG Kris Mayes called the probe 'the weaponization of federal law enforcement in service of crackpots and lies'
• Both targeted counties — Fulton and Maricopa — are solidly Democratic areas in states Trump lost, investigated using records produced by his own allies that confirmed his defeat