Good morning. The Times pieced together the days and hours leading up to President Trump’s decision to strike Iran. It’s a story of diplomacy, deception and a secret that almost got out. We tell it below. But first, the latest news:
How they did itA team of Times reporters — Mark Mazzetti, Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman, Eric Schmitt and Helene Cooper — have a new article revealing how Trump came to his decision to join Israel’s war against Iran, and how he and the military hid their plans to ensure that the attack remained a secret. Late last week, Trump said he would take up to two weeks to decide whether to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. It was a deception: By that point, Trump had all but made up his mind. Military preparations were well underway. Trump began to muse about dropping massive bunker-buster bombs onto Fordo, Iran’s uranium-enrichment facility, just hours after Israel’s first wave of attacks, on June 13. A day later, one adviser told The Times, Trump seemed to have already decided to go through with it. At times, Trump’s penchant for social media was the biggest threat to the operation’s secrecy. Last Monday, he posted on Truth Social that “everyone should evacuate Tehran!” The next day, he revealed that he had left a meeting of the Group of 7 in Canada not to broker a Middle East cease-fire but for something “much bigger.” He added, “Stay tuned!” Inside the Pentagon and the U.S. Central Command, military planners worried that Trump was giving Iran too much warning about an impending strike. So they worked up their own ruse: They had two fleets of B-2 bombers leave Missouri at the same time, one flying east and one flying west. Flight trackers spotted the westward planes, which offered some idea of the timing of a possible attack. But those planes were a decoy. The eastbound planes crossed the Atlantic undetected, joined with fighter jets and flew into Iranian airspace. At 2:10 a.m. local time yesterday, the lead bomber dropped two of the bunker-busters on the Fordo site. By the end of the mission, 14 of the bombs had fallen.
Was it legal?Michael Crowley and Edward Wong, who cover foreign policy, explain the constitutional principles. The Constitution: Article I assigns Congress the power to “declare war” and to “raise and support armies.” But Article II designates the president as the “commander in chief” of the military. Both Republican and Democratic presidents have argued that they have the authority to order military operations without Congress. U.S. law: After the worst fighting of the Vietnam War, Congress tried asserting itself with the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which says the American president must “consult with Congress before introducing United States Armed Forces into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated.” But presidents have ignored lawmakers, claiming a narrow definition of the “introduction” of forces. Congress has done little to enforce the resolution. International law: Some experts say the United States is permitted to act if it faces an imminent attack. “It is very hard to see how the administration can meet that test,” said Ryan Goodman, a former Defense Department lawyer who now teaches at N.Y.U.’s law school. American intelligence reports said that Iran had not yet decided to make a nuclear weapon. Some scholars also say Trump violated the United Nations Charter by attacking another member state. More news
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Paul Mozur and Adam Satariano, technology correspondents for The Times, have a big story out today about how A.I. could deepen global inequality. They explain below. The A.I. boom requires huge data centers. Companies and countries are rushing to build them: The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are pouring billions into massive facilities in the desert. OpenAI, Amazon and others are building sprawling complexes in the U.S. Across Europe, governments are plotting “A.I. factories.” But most can’t keep up. Just 32 countries have the data centers needed to run tools like ChatGPT, researchers at Oxford found. Most have no major A.I. infrastructure at all. For much of the globe, the future may arrive on someone else’s terms. Why does this matter? The countries with the most computing power dominate innovation — from scientific research to weapons design. Talent follows the machines, and without them, startups struggle, scientists stall, and governments grow more dependent. Who’s being left behind? The divide is most striking in Africa and South America. By one tally, a single institute at Harvard has more A.I. computing power than all African-owned data centers on that continent combined. Across Africa, limited infrastructure has already stalled tech startups and curbed research. It’s slowing years of digital progress that were fueled by cheap smartphones and broader internet access. Who’s winning? The biggest winners of the A.I. boom are the U.S. and China. Their top tech firms provide more than 90 percent of the world’s publicly available A.I. data centers. That dominance has countries like India, Brazil and members of the European Union racing to catch up. They’re offering land, cheap energy and public funds to build data centers and buy the necessary chips. But for now, the A.I. divide looks likely to widen: This year alone, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft Google and OpenAI have pledged to spend more than $300 billion, much of it on A.I. infrastructure — an expenditure that approaches Canada’s national budget. See charts documenting the divide in our story.
Democrats need their own Trump, Galen Druke writes: a candidate who will speak to the grievances voters have with the status quo of the party. Americans treat surveillance as something that protects us. China should be a reminder of its capacity for political abuse, Megan Stack writes. Trump’s decision to strike Iran was courageous and correct, Bret Stephens writes. The Times Sale: Our best rate for readers of The Morning. Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year.
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