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• Luke Brandon Field and Assad Zaman posted a silly video on Instagram, but we really think it should be their pitch for Night Island.

In the lead-up to The Vampire Lestat, I spoke to executive producer and head of the AMC Immortal Universe, Mark Johnson, about a long-percolating show in the franchise, Night Island. Night Island, is, of course, the name of the island and palatial complex that the vampire Armand and his human lover, Daniel Molloy, built together in Anne Rice’s books. Johnson gave me a positive response about the series, and fandom rejoiced. But, of course, it’s been three years since we learned about Night Island, and the premise of the series will have likely changed, not the least of all because we know way more about Armand, Daniel, and their relationship now. But, actors Assad Zaman, who plays Armand in The Vampire Lestat, and Luke Brandon Field, who plays a young Daniel in Interview with the Vampire, gave us a silly video that feels like a pretty good pitch for what Night Island should be like to us. Check it out and have whatever day you’re having made even better.

Okay, if this isn’t Zaman and Brandon Field’s serious pitch for Night Island, it should be. AMC, are you paying attention? We need this hilarious version of Night Island, stat. Or at least we need this to be a web series we receive regularly. You can’t squander this incredible talent. I was grumpily waking up, and now I am cackling and happy to be alive to witness this level of shenanigans.

Besides, in my opinion, this incredible vision that Zaman and Brandon Field present fits with the Devil’s Minion relationship. Armand and Daniel’s romance can be said to be a dark and twisted psychosexual drama… but you have to admit the Devil’s Minion chapter of Queen of the Damned is also HILARIOUS. Armand ordering every item off the menu because he didn’t know what Daniel would like, comedic genius. Armand making Daniel call France and throwing money all over the bed, I was giggling. (And you can check out this illustration of it here, please and thank you.) So, we can really see a slice-of-life sitcom Night Island happening after this video, and we WANT it. Although please invite older Daniel actor Eric Bogosian for a round two of this video, please and thank you.

Assad Zaman

In any case, Night Island or not, we all needed this. Millennial Safe Space, indeed.

The post Luke Brandon Field and Assad Zaman Make a Good Pitch for NIGHT ISLAND (Do It, AMC!) appeared first on Nerdist.

Servers employing x86 chips from AMD and Intel now account for little more than half of server revenue, according to the latest figures from IDC. In its Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker for Q1 2026, the analyst firm says that non-x86 server revenue hit $58.7 billion, representing a startling increase of 107 percent over the same period last year. The results mean that those non-x86 servers make up 47.9 percent of the market revenue, closing in rapidly on the amount of cash spent on x86 boxes. The growth in non-x86 turnover is likely thanks to systems powered by Nvidia’s AI chips featuring Arm cores. Although there is high demand for these, they also cost a pretty packet compared to an average datacenter box. In fact, IDC noted a stark divide shaping the worldwide server market, which reached $122.6 billion in vendor revenue during this period, a 30.4 percent increase year-on-year. On the one hand, AI infrastructure investment from hyperscalers and large cloud providers is “running at a scale that shows no sign of plateauing,” while everything else - the non-accelerated segment - faces a supply-constrained environment, thanks largely to that AI infrastructure spending. As Reg readers will know, memory chipmakers are prioritizing manufacturing capacity for higher margin products for AI servers and GPUs, starving the rest of the market of supply. Component availability, particularly DRAM and NAND flash, is limiting near-term shipment volumes from vendors, IDC says, though order pipelines are strong. Supply of the right chips is therefore the chief limiting factor on server market growth. Revenue for x86 servers still reached $63.9 billion, but this was a decline of 2.9 percent due to those component supply constraints impacting shipment volumes. GPU accelerated servers pulled in $68.9 billion for the vendors, up nearly 25 percent year-on-year, while other accelerated servers surged a massive 122 percent to $17.7 billion. The latter category represents AI systems configured with FPGAs or ASICs rather than GPUs. IDC’s spin on the data is that AI infrastructure adoption is no longer limited to hyperscalers, thanks to developments such as government-led sovereign AI initiatives, while the non-accelerated segment tells a more nuanced story. Although revenue here declined, underlying demand remains strong, but many enterprise customers are holding out against elevated component prices. “Companies aren’t pulling back from infrastructure investment; they’re just not getting servers as fast as they need them. Longer term, emerging workloads, including agentic applications and physical AI ecosystems, will keep demand elevated well beyond the current cycle,” commented IDC research director Juan Seminara. The firm says it expects to see supply normalization beginning in 2027, with capacity relief coming as chipmakers bring new fabrication plants online. Across the last two decades, non-x86 servers accounted for less than ten percent of revenue, and most of that went to IBM which emerged as the last vendor of proprietary servers as Oracle lost interest in Sun and the likes of HPE decided they couldn't sustain businesses built on exotic architectures. ®

If you found irony in MAGA politicians and supporters bashing Democratic Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner for his eyebrow-raising ink, you might not be alone. Rainn Wilson, who played iconic character Dwight Schrute in “The Office,” appeared on Fox News this past Sunday and pointed out some apparent hypocrisy floating in, out, and across the aisle when it comes to the highly…

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Probably wants to prevent hallucinations and factual errors from reaching users, and achieve accuracy on par with deterministic systems.

You can watch this episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon above or by following this show on YouTube or Substack. You can read a transcript here.

The widespread opposition to the construction of data centers is a huge opportunity for liberals and Democrats, says author and organizer Astra Taylor. In the latest episode of Right Now, Taylor argues that Americans are frustrated about data centers in part because they are being built in communities without residents’ knowledge and consent. Rural residents and Republicans also oppose data centers, making them fertile ground for politicians. Taylor also discussed her upcoming book on “end times fascism” and the importance of Democrats defending higher education and debt-cancellation programs.

Many districts still lack clear guidance for teachers and students. By Robbie Sequeira for Stateline With many students and educators already using widely available artificial intelligence tools, state lawmakers and school districts are playing catch-up on AI policies. In Maryland, for example, AI usage policies for K-12 schools are “all over the map,” Democratic state Sen.

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Nearly a third of NHS trusts using Palantir's health data platform are performing fewer patient procedures than before it went live, according to figures analyzed by campaign group Foxglove. The research – based on a series of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests – also found that a single body, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, accounted for 84 percent of the fall in outpatient waiting lists, while 16 trusts use the tool provided by the US firm. Palantir won the £330 million contract to provide the NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP), which the UK government said was vital to improving NHS productivity and recovering from the long waiting lists for elective care caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Palantir's journey with the NHS began with a £1 award in 2020, which later led to a total of £60 million in contracts awarded without competition during the pandemic. NHS England, which awarded the contracts, said that as of June, 139 trusts used the FDP, with 137 reporting benefits. An Inpatients Care Co-ordination Solution (CCS) tool based on the platform had resulted in 111,589 additional patients undergoing procedures in operating theatres, it said. However, data obtained by tech rights campaign group Foxglove found that 41 NHS trusts are using Inpatient CCS, the module for helping hospitals manage operation scheduling, but 13 of them – or about 30 percent – report having carried out fewer operations overall since using the tool. Staffing shortages, more complex cases, or pressure on hospital bed capacity might explain the fall. Foxglove said it was the first time that data from individual trusts using FDP had been made publicly available. The FOI response also shows that, for the Outpatient CCS, a single trust accounted for the vast majority of the benefits. According to NHS figures, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust accounted for 183,061 of the patients removed from the outpatient waiting list, compared with the total of 217,846. Foxglove head of strategy Tim Squirrell said: "We now know that the big claim the FDP is delivering more operations for hospitals across the NHS is covering up a much less positive reality – a third of the trusts using the FDP's operations scheduling tool, Inpatient CCS, are actually delivering fewer operations than before they started using Palantir's kit. "Palantir can't have it both ways. If it expects us to believe that the FDP is responsible for improvements in some hospitals, it must also accept that things are getting worse as a result of its tools in others. "The data the NHS has seen fit to publish provides no useful comparisons of how things are going at the trusts not using Palantir's tools. So, in effect, we are being asked to back Palantir's FDP is delivering the goods based on faith, rather than hard evidence." An NHS spokesperson said: "Thousands more patients are benefiting from the NHS Federated Data Platform every month, with more than 110,000 extra patients having undergone procedures in operating theatres, while also reducing the number of unnecessary days patients stay in hospital following treatment by a seventh. "As NHS organizations expand the use of this technology, we will continue to work with them to ensure they use it to its full extent and get the most out of it for patients." An official pointed out that trusts have different starting points, at different scales, through locally agreed rollout plans when using the FDP. In a statement to The Financial Times, Stephen Childs, head of UK health partnerships at Palantir, said the company was working to improve by applying lessons from the trusts that get the best results from its software. "But we should be clear that the recent history of technology in the NHS has, by the government's own admission, seen us fall behind, exacerbated by various failed programmes, often at great expense to the taxpayer," he said. "And what these figures show, despite attempts by the campaign group that obtained them to present them otherwise, is that Palantir software is helping to fix this and enable the NHS to deliver better patient care. "This includes more than 110,000 additional operations to date, a 15 percent reduction in discharge delays for long-stay patients, and a 6.8 percent increase in the number of patients finding out whether they have cancer within 28 days of referral." The FDP deal has been the subject of frequent criticism in recent months. Earlier in June, MPs told the government to reduce reliance on the US spy-tech firm, and specifically use a break clause in the FDP contract to end its involvement in the NHS. Instead, the government should "develop an in-house replacement or seek an alternative developed by UK-owned and UK-based providers that are more compatible with UK values, and do not pursue either technical or contractual dependencies," the House of Commons science committee said. ®

Consider supporting my work so I can continue creating it: Substack: https://nickanderson.substack.com/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/editorialcartoons Ko-Fi: https://www.patreon.com/c/editorialcartoonsCartoon Related | Can Graham Platner overcome scandals to win Maine?

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Russia's space agency Roscosmos intended to cut into part of the International Space Station (ISS) to determine the extent of leaks in the aging structure, according to a space agency source. The Register was told that discussions involved a handsaw . Other reports have suggested cosmonauts planned to deploy a drill. Whatever tool was involved, the plan made NASA sufficiently alarmed that the agency sent its astronauts scurrying into the relative safety of a SpaceX Dragon capsule docked at the ISS. Neither NASA nor Roscosmos has commented officially. Russia's plan was to use the tool to learn more about the extent of the crack. NASA said: "This revised approach involved cutting a bracket to access better an area identified as a possible leak source for further inspection, using a method that could have resulted in elevated risk to the structure in the area." However, this could have created unpredictable loads on other cracks. Eventually, the plan was called off in favor of more measurements and data gathering. The SpaceX Crew-12 astronauts and NASA astronaut Chris Williams were forced to shelter in the Crew Dragon spacecraft earlier in June following a sharp increase in the rate of air leakage from the orbiting outpost. The offending area is the Zvezda service module's transfer tunnel, known by the Russian abbreviation PrK. While more epoxy patches might address the problem in the short term, the fact that additional cracks have appeared suggests issues Zvezda has wider problems. That's not unexpected given the age of the craft, some parts of which date to the 1980s when it was a backup for the Mir space station. Russia launched Zvezda in 2000, so it's now endured decades of stress. The module has leaked for years. In 2024, ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen suggested one option for dealing with the cracks was to seal off the module once and for all. He told The Register: "The lucky point is that the cracks are confined to that chamber at the very end. So, as long as Russia is willing to forego that docking port, that wouldn't impact operations too badly." The crew routinely keeps the hatch to the tunnel closed when not in use, but a more permanent solution might be necessary in light of the ongoing problems. "So, yeah, worst case, you could seal it off," said Mogensen, "and I think the Space Station could continue. But of course, you never know what other problems might arise." Mogensen's "worst case" is, according to reports, likely the way forward: permanently sealing off the affected segment. A sudden depressurization of the PrK segment is a risk NASA is no longer willing to take. ®

Heart monitoring biz iRhythm says thieves made off with patient health information and tried to turn it into a payday. The California-based cardiac monitoring specialist offers customers a wearable device that collects data, then analyzes it to create reports about heart health. The company said it detected unauthorized activity on June 8 and launched an investigation with the help of third-party cybersecurity experts. A day later, the company received messages from a cybercriminal claiming to have obtained sensitive information, including proprietary company data, protected health information, and other personal information. According to iRhythm's filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the attackers demanded payment in exchange for not publicly disclosing the stolen data. The company confirmed that data had been exfiltrated and, on June 10, determined that the incident was material due to the volume of information potentially affected. While the company disclosed the extortion demand and the existence of stolen data, it made no mention of negotiations. iRhythm spent a good chunk of the filing explaining what the attackers didn't get. According to the company, the intrusion was confined to business applications and never reached its clinical systems, medical devices, or customer connections. Patient care and day-to-day operations were unaffected. The company has not yet disclosed how many individuals may be affected, what data was accessed, or which third-party-hosted applications were involved in the breach. It has also not identified the threat actor behind the attack, and The Reg has found no evidence of major ransomware groups claiming responsibility. The company's filing states the attackers gained access through social engineering. Exactly how that happened remains unclear, although healthcare organizations have increasingly found themselves dealing with phishing campaigns, help desk impersonation scams, and other forms of human-targeted intrusion designed to bypass technical defenses. As of the filing date, iRhythm said it had not identified any ongoing unauthorized access to its systems and believed the incident was unlikely to have a material impact on its financial condition or operating results. The company added that it maintains cyber insurance that may cover some of the losses associated with the breach. iRhythm's disclosure comes less than a week after drug giant Novo Nordisk revealed that attackers had copied patient data from some clinical trials, adding another healthcare name to a growing list of organizations dealing with data theft and extortion attempts. ®

The restrictions include a nationwide ban on Telegram until June 22 and a requirement to disable the app's message editing feature.

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

For decades, American politicians have been slow to take on climate change and curb carbon dioxide emissions, under the assumption that doing so might pass along costs to their voters. Ironically, their failure to rein in fossil fuel emissions has yielded the same result: Expenses for everyday Americans have soared as a result of more extreme flooding, fires, and heat.

“What’s striking is that already, households are bearing serious costs,” said Kimberly Clausing, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. She co-authored a paper from earlier this year finding that families were paying between $400 and $900 more each year because of the effects of climate change, with the costs above $1,300 in the 10 percent hardest-hit counties, many of them found in Florida, Louisiana, Nebraska, Colorado, and California. 

“Geographically rural areas are actually facing some of the highest costs.”

On Wednesday, the Commerce Department reported that the annual inflation rate reached 4.2 percent in May, the highest rate in three years. Though the war in Iran is mostly responsible for this recent increase, a surprising number of Americans are attributing the general economic pinch they’re feeling to the changing climate. Two-thirds of US voters agree that global warming is affecting the cost of living to some degree, according to new survey data from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, including most Democrats and moderate Republicans. Of those two-thirds, a majority of them said that climate change was driving up what they pay for groceries, utility bills, and home insurance.

Rising energy prices were at the top of people’s lists, a concern that some climate advocates are tapping into ahead of the midterm elections this November. On Monday, the LCV Victory Fund, a political action committee, announced that it will target “energy bill voters” with messages about how clean, affordable energy can trim their monthly expenses, and how Republicans have held back renewable power. That follows successes for Democrats in the off-year elections in 2025, where energy prices played a role in state races in Georgia, New Jersey, and Virginia.

There are many factors pushing up electricity prices, but in some parts of the country, the effort to revamp the electric grid to handle more extreme weather is the primary reason. In California, utilities are upgrading their infrastructure to reduce wildfire risk; in the Southeast, they are rebuilding after hurricanes and flooding and billing their customers for it. In Arizona, residents are cranking up the air conditioning during scorching heat and paying more for power simply because they’re using more AC.

Even Republican-leaning voters—42 percent of conservative Republicans, and 57 percent of moderate ones—are linking their rising costs to global warming, according to the Yale survey. “It makes perfect sense that they would do so, given the results from our study, which show that the geographically rural areas are actually facing some of the highest costs,” Clausing said. From wildfires to hurricanes, rural areas are often facing the brunt of the damage. Her study found that the largest household costs occurred in parts of the West, the Gulf Coast, and Florida.

As the effects of global warming grow more extreme, it’s becoming clear that they’re posing a problem for the budgets of lower-income Americans.

Utility bills, despite being a top political issue, are actually one of the smaller price-point impacts of climate change, according to Clausing’s research: Households are spending an average of about $35 more on electricity per year, compared with an extra $356 on homeowners’ insurance premiums, the highest cost. Clausing, who owns a house in Portland, Oregon, said the insurance premium on her home skyrocketed from around $1,000 five years ago to about $2,200 today—an increase that her insurance company said was to help recoup the costs of wildfire damage in Oregon.

Another major category of costs in Clausing’s study was the health effects of climate change. As wildfire smoke grows more common, exposing people to harmful particulate matter, it’s leading to early deaths. The estimated economic damage of these premature deaths works out to $103 for every household in the United States each year. That’s not to mention the other ways climate change damages the public’s health, from lengthening allergy seasons to expanding the geographic spread of infectious diseases as temperatures warm, allowing ticks and mosquitoes to explore new territories. 

But it seems like many Americans haven’t made the connection: Only 35 percent of those in the Yale survey who agreed that climate change was driving up prices saw a link to higher health care costs. That’s because these health risks haven’t been adequately communicated to the public, said Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. “Health is one of the most powerful ways we have of saying, ‘Actually, this affects our lives right here, right now. It’s already affecting the people and places and things that we love,’” he said.

Though most of the respondents thought climate change made groceries more expensive, it’s hard to measure the effect of extreme weather on food costs, according to Catherine Wolfram, a co-author of the study and a professor of applied economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management. That’s mainly because the United States’ food supply comes from all over the world, mitigating the impact of, say, a drought in Brazil or a heat wave in the Great Plains. Still, other research has found that hot summers can lead to higher food prices, with more increases projected as the world warms. 

As the effects of global warming grow more extreme, it’s becoming clear that they’re posing a problem for the budgets of lower-income Americans. Clausing is studying ways to design policies that tackle climate change without burdening poor families, through rebates or other mechanisms that can offset costs. 

“I’m glad people are connecting the dots,” Clausing said. “I think, at the moment, if you pursue better climate policy, the benefits to households, for the country as a whole, would exceed the costs.”

Instead of heating metals, Foundation Alloy beats them into submission. The startup has raised $22 million to scale up production of its alloys.

The deal is supposed to help SpaceX's struggling AI division. The company told IPO investors it sees a $26 trillion addressable market in AI.

Qualcomm is reportedly moving to buy AI chip firm Tenstorrent, an acquisition that could prove a major boost to the RISC-V ecosystem. This comes from The Information, which cites an anonymous source claiming that a deal valued at $8 billion to $10 billion is under discussion. According to the report, the talks are ongoing and there is no certainty a deal will be reached, but the move would fit with Qualcomm's datacenter ambitions and bullish statements about AI opportunities made by its chief, Cristiano Amon. The Register asked Qualcomm and Tenstorrent to comment. Tenstorrent is a Canadian AI chip startup that bases its products on the permissively licensed RISC-V processor architecture. The company is led by CPU guru Jim Keller, known for his design work at AMD, Apple, and on DEC's Alpha chips back in the day. The firm's Galaxy Blackhole AI compute platform went on sale earlier this year, packing 32 of its Blackhole accelerators, each with 768 RISC-V cores, into a 6U enclosure running its own software stack. Qualcomm is also keen on RISC-V, especially since its licensing court battle with chip designer Arm, which wanted to nix Qualy's license to create its own Arm-based processor silicon. The chip design firm's datacenter products use home-brew Hexagon neural processing units, but it continues to rely on Arm processors in its Snapdragon range. In December, Qualcomm picked up Ventana Micro Systems, another company designing RISC-V CPUs targeting datacenter and enterprise applications. Financial details of that were not disclosed, but estimated at between $200 million and $600 million. A Tenstorrent buy could therefore see a greater commitment to RISC-V from Qualcomm, giving the open standard a shot in the arm (pun intended) and allowing the chipmaker to further distance itself from Arm and its owner SoftBank as it pursues datacenter customers. Arm appears unfazed by that prospect, having recently said it expects datacenter chips will soon be its main source of revenue. ®

Brits lost £1.28 billion ($1.7 billion) to payment fraud last year as scams continued to thrive on online platforms and telecoms networks, according to the latest figures from banking trade association UK Finance. The 2025 losses represent a modest four percent rise on the previous year, the trade association said, but the main sources of fraud remained familiar. UK Finance said two-thirds (66 percent) of incidents start with online platforms, such as scams promoted through social media adverts. Telecoms accounts for a smaller proportion (17 percent) but encompasses crimes such as impersonation fraud, which can result in larger per-crime losses. Calling for tighter regulations on tech and telecoms, UK Finance said online marketplaces must take measures to reduce scammers' use of their platforms. This could include prohibiting off-platform payments, relying solely on secure alternatives. It also called for stronger action against fraudulent social media advertising. "The financial sector invests huge amounts in protecting customers, but we cannot be the only line of defense," said Ruth Ray, managing director of economic crime at UK Finance. "Almost £1.3 billion was stolen again last year and it is clear we are not tackling the underlying problem effectively enough. "Given most authorized push payment (APP) fraud still starts via online tech platforms or via telecoms, we urgently need stronger, enforceable responsibilities to be placed on these sectors. This is the way to reduce the harm and stop criminals and tech companies profiting from these devastating crimes." APP fraud losses jumped 19 percent in 2025 compared with the year before. Total losses exceeded £576 million ($772.8 million), and consumers incurred the vast majority of these losses. Of the total cases, purchase scams comprised more than seven in ten, with annual losses increasing 20 percent to £118.1 million ($158.4 million). APP fraud involves convincing the victim to pay for something themselves, but the criminal giving the orders is the only party to financially benefit. Crimes that fall under the APP umbrella include investment fraud, romance fraud, and impersonation fraud – all of which saw double-digit percentage increases in case numbers. "What makes APP scams particularly worrying is how much can be lost before a victim even realizes, and how little advice still exists for consumers once it happens," said Aditya Hindocha, VP of account partnerships at SquareTrade Europe. "Device warranties largely won't cover data theft. Home insurance excludes digital losses. Banks may refund some fraudulent transactions, but there's no guarantee. Consumers today lack support for what comes next: restoring stolen funds, recovering a compromised identity, or navigating the months of fallout that follow." Unauthorized payment fraud, under which the remaining offenses fall, accounted for a higher value of total losses (£703.4 million/$943.8 million). While the total value of losses represents a decrease of five percent compared to 2024, the number of cases increased by 11 percent to 3.81 million, according to the latest report [PDF]. Unauthorized fraud encompasses offenses such as online payments made using stolen card details, lost or stolen card fraud (such as ATM skimming, petty card theft), remote banking fraud, and contactless fraud. US faring no better The Federal Trade Commission published figures this week for impersonation fraud in the US, which reached $3.5 billion in associated losses last year. It said that impersonation fraud was the most commonly reported fraud type last year, accounting for nearly one in three cases across 2025. Nearly $1 billion of the total was lost after scammers impersonated a business, with the most common type being banks, and around $920 million as a result of government impersonations, up from $866 million and $789 million respectively in 2024. According to the FBI's annual cybercrime report, published in April, government impersonation fraud saw the biggest increase in case numbers of all offenses, up 128 percent from 2023 to 2025. A separate warning from May 2025 urged citizens to be wary of the common tricks scammers use in these cases, which increasingly involve AI-generated voices to convince victims they are speaking with genuine government representatives. ®

Santa Cruz-based journalist Mat Weir, who has known Oliver Tree for 13 years, shares his thoughts on his tragic death and the legacy he leaves behind in his home city.

The Meta-owned social platform announced a series of new features launching today, including a "Your Algo" tool that lets users control what they see in their feeds

Freedom Elementary School fourth grader Isai Guerrero and 10 classmates will escort players onto the field before Tuesday night’s World Cup match between Austria and Jordan at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara.

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the June 16 episode of The Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

Donald Trump has signed a deal with Iran to cease hostilities and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. We still haven’t seen the document, but all of the reporting suggests a very simple story: Trump lost. He got nothing of any significance. Trump himself plainly has no idea what happened, as he revealed in a strange ramble to reporters. But JD Vance does know what happened, even though he’s trying very hard to sugarcoat it in a pretty revealing way.

We’re really lucky to be talking about all of this with Tom Nichols, a staff writer for The Atlantic, who has a good piece arguing that Trump capitulated to Iran. Tom, great to have you on, man.

Tom Nichols: Good to see you, Greg.

Sargent: So let’s just sum up where we are. We haven’t seen the document, but all the reporting suggests that while the Strait of Hormuz will reopen, all that does is return us to where we were before Trump’s war.

Meanwhile, they’ve punted the discussion over Iran’s nuclear program until later. And the Iranian regime has survived. So basically, Trump’s tens of billions of dollars in bombing didn’t compel Iran to do what he said he’d make them do. Tom, is that basically the size of things?

Nichols: I think it’s worse than that. The bigger problem is that he counted on regime change. This was what the war was really about. So when that wasn’t going to happen, when it became clear a week or so in that this regime wasn’t going to collapse, this outcome, I think, was more or less inevitable.

And the people that are now waiting and saying, Well, we need to see the details of this MOU. That’s fine. But even without knowing the details of the MOU, the Americans have been defeated here. And that pains me to say as an American. Because the regime is still intact, their nuclear material is still in their country. They’re actually politically more powerful now that they’ve flexed muscle and done some serious harm to the other Gulf states as a warning not to cooperate with the United States. There’s going to be some money going back into Iran, whether it comes through third parties or not.

If you had said any of this to Donald Trump on the first night of the war, he would have said, That’s impossible, we’re going to get unconditional surrender. Well, we didn’t. And all of these things are going to happen. Without even knowing what’s in the MOU, you can know at least this much.

Sargent: Right. Trump absolutely did expect unconditional surrender, even though he was told by lots and lots of different people within his administration, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, that that wouldn’t happen. He was told that the strait would be closed by Iran and that that would exercise leverage over the global economy and over us.

Trump couldn’t fathom that possibility because he’s strong. It’s just that simple, right? He’s strong, he wins, he’s a winner, so there’s no way that things won’t go exactly the way he says they will.

Nichols: It’s bitten him before and caused him problems before, but there’s this weird quirk in Trump’s personality where he really believes that saying things makes them real. That, like a child, he can sort of wish-cast things into existence.

And you can play that game with domestic politics and tariffs and taxes and do some fancy dancing around where the money is in terms of things like revenue. You can bully other Republicans to agree with you. What you can’t do is do that with a war where the enemy gets a vote.

Every day that Trump said they’re eager to make a deal, there’s going to be a deal, a deal is imminent—the Iranians are not Republican House members. They are a foreign country and an enemy of the United States. And there’s nothing to stop them from saying, No, there is no deal. And now that we have one, it’s not great. It’s basically an acknowledgment that the United States failed to gain any of its strategic objectives.

Sargent: That seems beyond clear. So Trump talked to the media about his deal today. He blasted Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal, which unfroze tens of billions of dollars that Iran could then access in foreign accounts. Listen to Trump.

Donald Trump (voiceover): It was a horrible deal for the United States. It was a deal where billions of dollars was given to Iran. It was a deal where $1.7 billion in cash was put on a Boeing 7—well, not a 757, I guess, right? But on a big, beautiful Boeing 757. They needed a Boeing 747, to be honest with you, because it was a lot of cash. $1.7 billion was taken out of the banks and given to Iran. And on top of that, tens of billions of dollars was spent. So they tried to bribe them to make a deal and that didn’t work. It never works.

Tom, as far as we know now, Iran will also be able to access a huge tranche of funds under Trump’s deal too. Can you explain that? How do you respond to what Trump said there?

Nichols: Well, I was a critic of the JCPOA because I didn’t like how much of it was front-loaded. But I also have to be honest and say that in the years that followed, the deal seemed more or less to work.

Now Trump has wandered into a crappier version of the JCPOA, starting all over again, with the argument that they’ll get access to this money if they clear certain gates and engage in certain things. And the Iranians are just better at this than he is. I think that money is going to start coming to them again through third parties.

That’s why you keep hearing Trump and Vance both being careful to say, Well, we’re not just going to give them cash. No, you’re going to open up the ability to have cash get to them with your OK. And I suspect that once people are tired of this whole process, which will be very soon, and once Trump is no longer paying any attention to it, the Iranians are going to get what they want. How soon, how much—that’s just a matter of working out the details.

Remember, in the end, this was supposed to be giving the Iranian government back to its people, who would then dismantle the nuclear program, end support for terrorism, restrain their proxies, blah, blah, blah. None of that’s going to happen. They’re going to get the money one way or another.

Sargent: What’s the basic difference between what Obama did with the money and what Trump is doing with the money? Do we know?

Nichols: Well, without seeing the MOU, hard to say. But I would say that Obama did it without completely disrupting the international economy, blowing billions of dollars’ worth of expensive American weapons, getting some Americans killed, getting many hundreds more wounded, and then weakening the United States by forcing us to basically admit that, yes, the Iranians own the Strait of Hormuz.

Sargent: Right. The bottom line here is that Trump is in some sense using the mechanism Obama used, which is a financial incentive to get Iran to cooperate with oversight of its nuclear program. Obama did this through negotiation.

Trump did it through spending tens of billions of dollars committing massive war crimes, bombing an Iranian school filled with children, et cetera, to practically melting down the global economy. That’s the difference. They’re using more or less the same mechanism.

Nichols: Trump blew up a lot of things, expended a lot of weapons, messed up the global economy, and now is doing it exactly the way Obama did it. And we’ll probably not get as good a deal, because now the Iranians have made sure to do things like booby-trap the uranium. Even if international inspectors get in there—and whatever Pete Hegseth says, you’re not going to have Marines in there digging this stuff out—getting inspectors in there is going to be a lot trickier than it was 10 years ago. It was just stupid and pointless.

Sargent: I think there’s actually another reason for that that I want to get to in a second. But first, let’s listen to JD Vance for a second. There’s a bit of confusion about how Iran will get access to this money. It’s being described as $300 billion. JD Vance was asked about this. Listen to this.

Reporter (voiceover): The Iranians are saying that they’re going to have access to a $300 billion reconstruction fund. True or false?

JD Vance (voiceover): Well, that’s the sort of thing they could have access to, funded by the Gulf Coast coalition, so long as they honor their end of the obligation. I think that one of the things you’re going to see, Ed, and people have to be skeptical of this, is that the hardliners in the Iranian system will overemphasize the benefits that Iran gets while underemphasizing all the things that they have to concede and all the things they have to provide in order to get these benefits. So we absolutely are open to the Gulf Coast countries investing in the reconstruction of Iran, but only if Iran ends their nuclear program, ends their enriched stockpile of material, and is really open to an inspections and enforcement regime that gives the American people confidence they’re never going to have a nuclear weapon.

Sargent: So if I understand this correctly, the U.S. will allow Iran to get access to this money if and only if Iran agrees to some kind of binding long-term constraint on its nuclear program. What you’re saying is that once the nuts and bolts really hit, when they really start to talk about this, probably Iran will be able to get access to that money fairly quickly, or at least before any final commitment is made.

And when JD Vance says this money will come from other Gulf Coast countries investing, what’s he referring to there? And what’s your overall reaction to what you heard from JD?

Nichols: Well, I don’t know how quickly they’ll get it. This is where I will be cautious and say that until we see this MOU—which for some reason the administration really doesn’t want to release to the public, which should tell you something right there—I don’t know how quickly it’ll get here. But basically, we’re committing to supporting the reconstruction of the country we just blew to smithereens after getting nothing.

It really is staggering to have the administration claiming, We finally got a commitment not to build nuclear weapons. Look, I was never in favor of attacking Iran, but I was a real hawk on the issue of, if they ever get close to a nuclear weapon, that could actually be the trigger for war. But there was no evidence of this, and there’s been no evidence of it for 10 years, since the JCPOA.

So again, we’re back to this problem that they’re going to get a lot of money, they’re going to get reconstruction support from the Gulf states that they have pounded and inflicted punishment on for cooperating with us. How does this not leave Iran—even though Iran is temporarily militarily weakened—in a strategically more powerful stance?

That’s why, when you listen to that part we just listened to, Greg—where you ask JD Vance these questions and he does the Jackie Gleason thing, where he’s trying to explain his way out of it—the reality is Trump wants out. And he’s willing to buy his way out if he couldn’t bomb his way out.

Sargent: Right. Obama actually ended up getting more because he had an actual deal that laid out what oversight of the Iranian nuclear program would look like. Trump doesn’t have that. He’s just now doing what Obama did, which is using money to try to get it.

Nichols: And doing it without the support of the international community.

Sargent: And after spending tens and tens of billions of dollars committing war crimes, destroying the global economy—

Nichols: I’m not there yet on war crimes. I think that waits for an investigation. But he started a preventive war. He started a war of choice, which itself is horrific, because this didn’t even have the rationale of the Iraq War behind it. I said at the beginning of this, the Iraq War looks like it was competently lawyered up compared to this.

Bush went to the United Nations, he had allies on board with at least some of it. He made a case, he put a clock on it about the inspectors. This was Trump just getting up one morning and saying, you know what, it’s time to take out Iran.

Which itself is a problem when you’re talking about war crimes and crimes against humanity. But in the end, I will also say that had he toppled this regime, Greg, I would have been one of the people shrugging and saying, Well, you have to congratulate him if he managed to get rid of one of the worst, most dangerous regimes on this planet. I may not have liked the way he went into it, but I would have had to certainly congratulate him on coming out of it.

Now he’s gotten the worst of all worlds. He’s taken America on a discretionary war, didn’t get what he wants. He’s going to have to pay off the bad guys so that he can get out of this. And basically he’s going to paper over his own mistake here with dollars. That’s what he’s going to do.

Sargent: I think that’s basically the size of it. I just want to say one more thing about JD Vance’s strange ramble there. He’s basically admitting that Trump is using the same mechanism that Obama used—a financial incentive to get Iran to cooperate with oversight of its nuclear program. Doesn’t JD just end up making Trump look like a complete moron, given that it comes right after Trump compared his deal favorably to Obama’s unfreezing of funds to Iran?

Nichols: No part of this administration communicates within itself. And what we’re seeing here—given the concerns about Trump’s health, his state of mind—JD Vance’s answer was sort of stumbling and bumbling, but within the normal range of political dissembling, if that makes any sense.

Trump, I think, just doesn’t have any idea what’s going on. That’s the bigger worry—that Rubio and Witkoff and Kushner are saying, OK, we’ve got it, but I don’t get the sense that Trump himself really understands anything that’s going on here. The idea that Trump and Vance aren’t on the same page isn’t surprising at all. I really wonder how much Trump understands any of this at this point.

Sargent: So Tom, I just want to close on a point you make in your piece, which is really interesting. Trump is threatening to restart hostilities against Iran if it doesn’t agree to surrender its nuclear program. You point out that Iran just won’t believe that, because Trump has shown that he wanted an exit from all this. I want to add to your point and get you to talk about this. As we get closer to the midterms, it becomes next to impossible for Trump to restart military action of any kind, let alone using any kind of ground invasion. Republicans will just not allow that to happen because it’ll utterly crush them in the midterms.

So I think, Tom, what Trump has really done here is lock in a time frame that actually weakens his leverage over Iran over time. It weakens his leverage over Iran’s nuclear program over time. And Iran knows that. Am I right?

Nichols: I think so. And he’s also alluded to using a nuclear weapon at one point. He said, We still have the ultimate, you know. But I just find it hard to believe—although with this administration and this president you never know—that right after Labor Day, as everybody’s going into the midterms and he’s still trying to wait for good news on the economy … remember, what he really cares about is international markets. He’s going to say we’re starting up the war again? On what pretext? And by that time, he really will have to go to Congress or do something.

He surprised the country and the American people and the world by doing this when he did it. I don’t think you can go to that well twice. And I could be wrong—I just don’t believe him when he says, Well, if this doesn’t work out and they don’t behave, I’ll just start up the war again.

That means he’s willing to tie down huge numbers of U.S. forces halfway around the world on a maybe while negotiators negotiate. At some point, ships have to come home. Soldiers and sailors need to be cycled through so they can do the things they need to do. They can’t just sit on ships for three or four months. I just don’t buy it.

Sargent: So just to boil this down, we’re now entering the really hard part, which is the part where we negotiate over the future of the Iranian nuclear program and the nuts and bolts of that have to be worked out. And Trump has weakened his leverage going into that. And Trump has also strengthened Iranian leverage because Iran knows it can hold the global economy hostage now. Is that the size of it?

Nichols: Right. And the Iranians get to appear like the aggrieved party now that they’re the ones that have lost thousands of people and been attacked. And even with a competent team that understood the issues and knows what it’s doing, trying to negotiate a nuclear program after you’ve bombed it and put it under a lot of rubble takes a long time. It’s going to take even longer here.

So the idea that somehow in 60 days, sometime again around Labor Day or something, Trump’s going to say, That’s it, everything’s fixed, we’ve got it—none of that’s going to happen. This is going to be a long cold war with the Iranians, just like the one we’ve been in with them for 47 years. And Trump made it worse. So I don’t see any way out of this in a way that enhances American security anytime soon.

Sargent: Utter catastrophe all around. Tom Nichols, awesome to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on.

Nichols: Thanks for having me, Greg.