Odds and Ends — 13 March 2026

The hardest thing for the media to wrap its hands around over the last year is that Donald Trump has no plan — for anything, ever. Time and again, national pundits and the White House press corps invent a logical Donald Trump who sets, announces, and later ‘changes’ real ‘policies’ or ‘plans,’ failing to convey what is clear to anyone who is actually following events closely: In each public appearance and social media post, the Mad King Donald Trump spouts a string of words, devoid of meaning or purpose, that may or may not represent anything at all.
Every single thing he says may, at any given time, be taken as an official hard-line policy of the US government, the opening gambit to a long flexible negotiation, or a random pronouncement that will be never be mentioned again. It’s impossible to know in real-time which is which — especially so if you’re actually in the US government and in charge of translating his words into actions and plans.

https://twitter.com/lawindsor/status/2032131663761662017
- lawindsor

https://twitter.com/HQNewsNow/status/2032095561080271274
- HQNewsNow

U.S. Plan to Insure Ships Collides with Reality

This U.S.-centric idea ran counter to the market realities… Maritime war risks policies are sold mostly out of Lloyd’s of London, with foreign insurers covering foreign ships and cargo.
U.S. officials called London insurers and brokers, trying to figure out how the market operates, industry insiders said. Some have received calls asking for confidential data on the Lloyd’s market that participants have been reluctant to share.

https://twitter.com/ojblanchard1/status/2032053039566070081
- ojblanchard1

https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/2032155694338601278
- ChrisMurphyCT

Command-Shift-War

This war is notable not for its use of Artificial Intelligence, but for the fact that it is the first war that feels like it’s been launched by A.I: It’s all been done on a level less than thought. Trump’s remarks, Hegseth’s speeches; they all sound like autocompletes or snippets of half-remembered things. When Trump bellows, “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER,” he knows not what it means; he just heard it somewhere, probably on TV…
In the past, propaganda served the purposes of war; now war serves the purposes of propaganda. But the blood remains real.
A.I. will supposedly give us fully automated wars in the future, but it’s here, right now. There’s a blind automatism to this war; It’s a war without thought or deliberation, public or private. It’s war as autocomplete.

https://twitter.com/nxt888/status/2031982266499649617
- nxt888

https://twitter.com/GenghisMFKhan/status/2032128286696833196
- GenghisMFKhan

https://twitter.com/jvgraz/status/2031988611533717662
- jvgraz

Trump administration underestimated Iran war’s impact on Strait of Hormuz

Top Trump officials acknowledged to lawmakers during recent classified briefings that they did not plan for the possibility of Iran closing the strait in response to strikes.