Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Charles Edward Gehrke, Deputy Division Director of Wargame Design and Adjudication, US Naval War College

The Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed. Since the beginning of the conflict involving the United States, Israel and Iran on Feb. 28, 2026, oil tanker traffic through the world’s most critical oil shipping choke point has collapsed, dropping by more than 90%.

Iran has threatened to destroy any ships, including oil tankers, that pass through the strait from the oil depots of the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea and the rest of the world. Companies that insure ships against the risks of traveling in war zones are deciding whether to issue coverage on an individual-ship basis. The international body that sets many shipping regulations has told ships’ crews that they have the right to refuse to sail into the area.

As of March 6, more than 400 tankers were stranded in the Persian Gulf, without permission from their owners to move.

But some vessels are still transiting the strait. Most of the ships still moving are those that operate outside the rules.

In maritime circles, these vessels are called the “shadow fleet.” They are vessels that ignore international restrictions on trade with certain countries, violate anti-pollution regulations, smuggle unauthorized goods or don’t want their cargo or activities too closely monitored.

They exist, even in a world filled with electronic tracking, because the world’s oceans aren’t governed the same way the land is. On land, armed personnel closely monitor carefully delineated borders, seeking to force everyone to follow clear rules. But at sea, regulation is almost the opposite. The system that governs international shipping is, at its foundation, voluntary.

The oceans run on trust

The tracking of ships is voluntary. The International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea – signed by 167 countries – requires almost every commercial vessel to carry a radio transponder that broadcasts the ship’s identity, position, speed and heading to port authorities, coast guards and commercial tracking networks.

That international agreement, which is enforced by individual countries, requires ships to leave the transponders on and active. But there is no physical mechanism preventing a crew from switching it off or broadcasting a false position.

When a vessel turns off its transponder and goes dark, it doesn’t trigger an alarm at some global maritime headquarters. There is no such headquarters. The ship simply disappears from the map. Every map.

National jurisdiction is a matter of preference, not law. Every vessel sails under the flag of a nation, and that nation is theoretically responsible for regulating and inspecting it. But in practice, a ship’s registration in a particular country is a commercial transaction. Many law-abiding shipping companies make this business decision, but this system leaves an opening for those who seek to skirt the rules.

A ship owned by a shell company in the United Arab Emirates can register under the flag of Cameroon, Palau or Liberia, or any country that may lack the resources or the incentive to conduct real inspections. Even landlocked Mongolia has a registry of oceangoing ships flying its flag.

When a vessel comes under scrutiny from port inspectors or coast guards, it can simply reregister under a different flag. Some registries even offer online registration. If the new registration is fraudulent or the registry doesn’t actually exist, the vessel effectively becomes stateless.

Then there is insurance, which is the closest thing the maritime system has to a real enforcement mechanism. Mainstream insurers, mostly based in London, require vessels to meet safety standards, carry proper documentation and comply with international trade sanctions. A ship without insurance coverage cannot easily enter major ports or secure cargo contracts with reputable firms.
Those restrictions are precisely what froze so many law-abiding ships in the Persian Gulf when war broke out.

But companies can avoid those rules, too. Two-thirds of ships carrying Russian oil – the trade of which is restricted by the U.S. and other countries – reportedly have “unknown” insurance providers, meaning nobody knows whom to call to cover the cleanup costs after a spill or collision. The enforcement mechanism works until ship owners realize they can just opt out of it entirely, using less reputable ports or transferring oil from ship to ship out at sea.

What opting out looks like

The results of this voluntary system can be surreal. In December 2025, the United States seized a sanctioned tanker called the Skipper, which was flying the flag of Guyana – even though that country had never registered it. The vessel was, in legal terms, stateless, sailing under the authority of no nation on Earth.

Another vessel, the Arcusat, went further. Investigative reporting found that it had changed its International Maritime Organization identification number, a unique seven-digit code assigned permanently to every ship. It is the maritime equivalent of scraping the VIN off a car.

Now layer these techniques together. An entity purchases an aging tanker that would otherwise be scrapped. It registers the ship through a shell company, pays for a flag of convenience, carries opaque insurance and switches off its transponder when approaching sensitive waters.

It loads sanctioned oil through a ship-to-ship transfer on the open ocean and delivers its cargo to a buyer who asks no questions. If the vessel attracts attention, it changes its name, reregisters under a different flag and starts over.

According to maritime intelligence firm Windward, approximately 1,100 dark fleet vessels have been identified globally, representing roughly 17% to 18% of all tankers carrying liquid cargo, which is primarily oil.

Why it matters now

The dark fleet did not emerge because the maritime system is broken. It emerged because the system is built on voluntary participation, all theoretically ensured by market forces.

For decades, the system worked not because it forced compliance but rather because opting out was more costly than opting in.

What changed is that international sanctions made compliance ruinously expensive and politically disastrous for some countries. A system built on voluntary participation, it turned out, could be voluntarily left.

If your national economy depends on oil exports, and the compliance system is preventing those exports, you build a parallel system. Iran began doing so in 2018, after sanctions were reimposed as part of negotiations over its nuclear development. Russia dramatically expanded that system in 2022 as restrictions hit in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine.

Now, with the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed to aboveboard maritime trade, the only vessels still moving are the ones that ignore the rules.

But the existence of the dark fleet doesn’t mean that the rules of the sea have failed. Rather, it reveals what kind of rules they always were. Illegal oil is the only oil moving in a crisis. In my view, that sends a message to those still playing by the rules: Opting out might be a viable option.

The opinions and views expressed are those of the author alone and do not necessarily represent those of the Department of the Navy or the U.S. Naval War College.

Charles Edward Gehrke does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why shadow tankers are the only ships still moving through the Strait of Hormuz – https://theconversation.com/why-shadow-tankers-are-the-only-ships-still-moving-through-the-strait-of-hormuz-277785

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Charles Walldorf, Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Wake Forest University

It’s clear that regime change is among the biggest objectives of the U.S. war in Iran.

“I have to be involved in the appointment” of Iran’s next leader, President Donald Trump said on March 5, 2026.

Trump has also said he might put U.S. boots on the ground to get the job done.

Trump now joins a long list of modern U.S. presidents – from Franklin Roosevelt to Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, George W. Bush and Barack Obama – who started wars to either overthrow hostile regimes or support embattled friendly governments abroad.

For all the parallels to history, though, Trump’s Iran war is historically unique in one critically important way: In its early stages, the war is not popular with the American public.

A recent CNN poll found that 59% of Americans oppose the war – a trend found in poll after poll since the war began.

As an expert on U.S. foreign policy and regime change wars, my research shows that what’s likely generating public opposition to the Iran war today is the absence of a big story with a grand purpose that has bolstered public support for just about every major U.S.-promoted regime change war since 1900. These broad, purpose-filled narratives generate public buy-in to support the costs of war, which are often high in terms of money spent and lives lost when regime change is at stake.

Two historical examples

In the 1930s and ’40s, a widely accepted – and largely true – story about the dangers of fascism spreading and democracies falling galvanized national support in the United States to enter and then take on the high costs of fighting in World War II.

Likewise, in the 2000s a dominant narrative about preventing a repeat of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and stopping terrorism brought strong initial public support for the war in Afghanistan, with 88% support in 2001, and the war in Iraq, with 70% support in 2003.

With no comparable narrative around Iran today, Trump and Republicans could face big problems, especially as costs continue to rise.

No anti-Iran narrative

Iran has been a thorn in the side of many American presidents for a long time. So, what’s missing? Why no grand-purpose narrative at the start of this war?

Two things.

First, grand-purpose narratives are rooted in major geopolitical gains by a rival regime – the danger to the U.S. For the anti-fascism narrative, those events were German troops plowing across Europe and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. For the anti-terrorism narrative, it was planes crashing into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Gains like these by rivals prove traumatic to the nation. They also dislodge the status quo and provide the opportunity for new grand-purpose narratives with new policy directions to emerge.

Today, most Americans see no existential danger around Iran. A Marist poll from March 3, 2026, found that 55% of Americans view Iran as a minor threat or no threat at all. And the number who see Iran as a major threat, 44%, is down from 48% in July 2025.

By contrast, 64% of Americans saw Iraq as a “considerable threat” prior to the 2003 U.S. war in Iraq.

The poll numbers on Iran aren’t surprising. Iran is far from a geopolitical menace to the United States today. To the contrary, it’s been in geopolitical retreat in the Middle East in recent years.

In the summer of 2025, Iran’s nuclear nuclear enrichment facilities were significantly damaged – “completely and totally obliterated,” according to Trump, though there is no confirmation of that claim – during the 12-Day war between Iran and Israel.

And in recent years, Tehran has lost a major ally in Syria and witnessed its proxy network all but collapse. Iran has also faced crippling economic conditions and historic protests at home.

As the polls show, none of that has sparked a grand-purpose narrative.

Missing a good story

The second missing factor for narrative formation today is any strong messaging from the White House.

In the months prior to World War II, Roosevelt used his position of authority as president to give speech after speech, setting the context of the traumatic events of the 1930s, explaining the dangers at hand and outlining a course going forward. Though less truthful in its content, Bush did the same for nearly two years before the Iraq War.

Trump did almost none of this storytelling leading up to the Iran war. Five days before the war started, the president devoted three minutes to Iran in a nearly two-hour State of the Union Address.

Prior to that, he made a comment here and there to the press about Iran, but no storytelling preparing the nation for war. Likewise, since the war began, the administration’s stated reasons for military action keep shifting.

No wonder 54% of Americans polled disapprove of Trump’s handling of Iran and 60% of Americans say Trump has no clear plan for Iran. Also, 60% disapprove of Trump’s handling of foreign policy in general.

By comparison, Americans approved of Bush’s handling of foreign policy by 63% in early 2003.

Absent a cohesive, unifying story, it’s also no surprise there is lots of political fracturing today.

Partisan divides run deep – Democrats and independent voters strongly oppose the war. But Trump’s MAGA coalition is cracking too, with people like Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene sharply criticizing the war.

The way out

If he opts for it, there is an off-ramp for Trump from the Iran war. It’s one he knows well.

When U.S. leaders get caught up in costly regime change wars that outrun national support, they tend to back down, often with far fewer political costs than if they’d continued their unpopular war.

When the disaster referred to as Black Hawk Down hit in Somalia in 1993, killing 18 U.S. Marines, President Bill Clinton opted to end the mission to topple the warlords that ruled the country. Troops came home six months later.

Likewise, after the Benghazi attack killed four Americans in Libya in 2012, Obama pulled out all U.S. personnel working in Libya on nation-building operations.

And just last year, when Trump realized that U.S. ground troops would be necessary to topple the Houthi militant group in Yemen, he negotiated a ceasefire and ended his air war in that country with no significant political fallout.

With Trump’s Iran war, gas prices keep rising, more soldiers are likely to die, and stocks are highly volatile.

Backing down makes a lot of sense. History confirms that.

Charles Walldorf is a Senior Fellow at Defense Priorities.

– ref. Trump’s war against Iran is uniquely unpopular among US military actions of the past century – https://theconversation.com/trumps-war-against-iran-is-uniquely-unpopular-among-us-military-actions-of-the-past-century-277586

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Simone Dichiara, Assistant Research Professor of Astrophysics, Penn State

Billions of light years away in a remote part of the universe, two neutron stars – the ultradense remnants of dead stars – collided. The catastropic cosmic event sent light and particles, including a sudden flash of gamma rays, streaming through the universe. These gamma rays traveled for 8.5 billion years before reaching Earth.

In a new study, our team of astrophysicists examined this gamma-ray signal. We learned that the stellar collision it came from was likely caused by an even more catastrophic encounter – a merger between two galaxies.

This is the first time astronomers associated this type of signal with such a large-scale galactic interaction. Our finding offers new insight into how stellar collisions spread metals across the universe.

Why it matters

When two neutron stars orbit each other and finally collide – a system called a binary neutron star merger – they produce the most powerful explosions in the universe. They release intense flashes of gamma rays, which astronomers call short gamma-ray bursts. They can release as much energy as our Sun will produce over its entire lifetime in less than a couple of seconds.

These collisions can also eject debris pieces into space, which may create new radioactive elements when they collide. Many valuable elements, including gold and platinum, are forged in these mergers.

What makes the particular event, known as GRB 230906A, extraordinary is where it happened. Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope, we pinpointed the location of the explosion and identified its host galaxy as one of the faintest galaxies ever associated with a short GRB.

Observations obtained by the Very Large Telescope in Chile revealed that the burst occurred within a tangled system of interacting galaxies. Streams of stars and gas, torn out by past galactic encounters, stretched across the region. The gamma-ray burst lies directly within one of these tidal streams, suggesting it took place inside a tiny dwarf galaxy formed from the material stripped away from its host during a galaxy collision.

This is the first time that a binary neutron star merger has been linked to such an environment. This discovery reveals new homes for these cosmic collisions and shows they don’t just happen in big galaxies. It points to a new path for spreading heavy metals where we least expect them.

Our study traces the origin of these neutron star mergers back to the slow and far-reaching pull of gravity between galaxies. It tells us more about where these extraordinary events can take place and, most importantly, how the elements that make up our world came to be.

What still isn’t known

As this explosion was far away, our instruments could not measure which elements were forged in the collision. Similar bright explosions may be produced not only by binary neutron star mergers, but also by mergers involving neutron stars and black holes, or even other types of compact stellar remnants such as white dwarfs, the leftover cores of Sun-like stars.

What’s next

New powerful observatories, such as the James Webb Space Telescope and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, will enable the discovery and detailed study of distant mergers responsible for producing heavy elements.

Future advanced X-ray missions, such as NewAthena and AXIS, will increase our ability to identify these types of explosions.

These new capabilities will move side by side with the development of the next generation of gravitational wave detectors: Einstein Telescope and Cosmic Explorer. These will allow us to decipher the nature of these mergers, marking a new era for multimessenger astronomy. Together, these telescopes will be essential for understanding how the elements that make up our world are formed.

Simone Dichiara receives funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Eleonora Troja receives funding from European Research Council.

– ref. Astrophysicists trace the origin of valuable metals in space, from colliding stars to merging galaxies – https://theconversation.com/astrophysicists-trace-the-origin-of-valuable-metals-in-space-from-colliding-stars-to-merging-galaxies-272328

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By David Campbell, Professor of Public Administration, Binghamton University, State University of New York

The 50 American individuals and couples who gave or pledged the most to charity in 2025 committed US$22.4 billion to foundations, universities, hospitals and more. That total was 35% above an inflation-adjusted $16.6 billion in 2024, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s latest annual tally of these donations.

Media entrepreneur and former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg led the Chronicle’s Philanthropy 50 list, followed by Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Allen died in 2018, but his estate is still being settled.

The Conversation U.S. asked David Campbell, Lindsey McDougle and Hans Peter Schmitz, three scholars of philanthropy and nonprofits, to assess the significance of these gifts and to consider what they indicate about the state of charitable giving in the United States.

What trends stand out overall?

Schmitz: Higher education, hospitals, medical research, foundations and donor-advised funds – which serve as savings accounts reserved for charitable giving – drew the biggest gifts in 2025. The education and medical fields are a perennial favorite of high-dollar donors. To a degree, these preferences for supporting education and health were first expressed by Andrew Carnegie in his 1889 essay, “The Gospel of Wealth,” in which he famously claimed that “the man who dies rich dies disgraced.”

Campbell: This list changes little from year to year. Of this year’s top 20 donors, 16 have appeared at least one other time over the past five years. Six others have also made this list at least two other times since 2021. For the third year in a row, former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg is at the top of the list. He gave away over $4 billion in 2025, over $500 million more than the next highest donor.

Half of these 22 repeat top-50 givers have signed The Giving Pledge, in which they made a public commitment “to give the majority of their wealth to charitable causes in their lifetime or wills.” Their appearance on the list shows that they are making at least some progress toward that commitment.

How they give their money hasn’t changed much either. A dozen of the 22 who make this list year after year regularly fund the same causes – often their own family foundations. Donations to foundations increase the amount of money those philanthropic institutions may give away in the future, but that money might not be disbursed anytime soon. By law, foundations only have to donate or spend 5% of the money they possess every year.

McDougle: The top 50 donors gave more in 2025 than they had since 2021. But this growth is highly concentrated. Mike Bloomberg alone accounts for 19% of the $22.4 billion they gave in 2025, and the top 10 accounted for nearly three-quarters of what all 50 gave to charity.

This pattern reflects a broader reality: A small number of ultra-wealthy individuals increasingly dominate American philanthropy. This concentration is raising questions about democratic accountability, including this one: Whose priorities define the public good?

In my opinion, this kind of concentration can skew philanthropic priorities. Decisions about education, health care, climate policy and democracy can increasingly become influenced not through public deliberation, but through the discretionary choices of a few members of a financial elite.

What surprises you about the biggest donors?

Schmitz: I find it odd that MacKenzie Scott isn’t on this list. She says she gave $7.1 billion in 2025. If she had met the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s criteria, that would have landed her in first place by far. Unfortunately, the Chronicle says that MacKenzie Scott has never provided sufficient information about her generosity since becoming a major donor on her own, following her 2019 divorce from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. And that leaves her off the list year after year.

Campbell: The Trump administration’s defunding of the U.S. Agency for International Development is among the most significant events of 2025. When it began, some philanthropy scholars wondered whether wealthy donors would replace at least a portion of the lost funds.

One example of that happening: Jacklyn and Miguel Bezos, the parents of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, pledged up to $500 million to UNICEF, the United Nations humanitarian relief organization. No other donors on this list clearly made gifts for international development or foreign aid such a high priority. However, some of these donors’ foundations, notably the Gates Foundation, do support those efforts.

Similarly, it’s unclear to what extent these donors are responding to the huge funding cuts to research that the Trump administration made in 2025.

Several of them have supported medical research in the past and continued to do in 2025. Sergey Brin gave the Michael J. Fox Foundation $50 million for Parkinson’s disease research, a continuation of his past commitment to that organization. Phil and Penny Knight, the founder of Nike and his wife, announced plans to give $2 billion to the Oregon Health & Science University’s Knight Cancer Institute.

McDougle: I think it’s striking that there are no women who made this year’s Philanthropy 50 list on their own. The women listed appear only as part of a married couple, as members of a family, or within joint giving structures that include a male donor. By contrast, there are 24 male donors listed on their own.

Last year’s list included multiple women as sole donors, including two in the top 10.

The absence of women listed here who gave independently of men mirrors broader wealth disparities in the U.S.: About 86% of U.S. billionaires are men, according to the Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires list.

What concerns do you have?

Schmitz: The list excludes donors like MacKenzie Scott, but includes other very rich donors with serious ethical issues. Businessman Denny Sanford is one example. He signed the Giving Pledge in 2010. He was removed from it in 2023 after being investigated for the alleged possession of child pornography. South Dakota prosecutors ultimately declined to levy charges against the philanthropist, who ranked 14th among the top 50 donors of 2025.

The reputation of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, one of the world’s biggest donors, is also getting tarnished. In February 2026, he apologized to the staff of the Gates Foundation for his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

I suggest that the Chronicle of Philanthropy take ethically problematic behavior into consideration when it composes this annual list.

Campbell: It’s a bit surprising to see that only 19 of the top 50 donors are also on the Forbes 400, which lists the nation’s richest people. The wealthiest Americans have the most to give, and I would have expected to see more of them among the top 50 givers as well. Instead, what we see is that philanthropy is a higher and consistent priority more for some than for others, which I find disappointing.

I would like to see more members of the Forbes 400 on this list next year.

What do you expect to see in 2026 and beyond?

Campbell: We are living in a politically volatile moment, with high levels of polarization and increased concerns about democratic backsliding in the United States.

Several of these donors have made strengthening democracy a high priority, including Pierre and Pam Omidyar, and Home Depot co-founder Arthur Blank, through his family foundation. However, I don’t believe that this issue has been a high enough priority among the biggest givers in recent years. I would think that this kind of giving could increase in 2026.

McDougle: Another factor is demographic. Most of the top 50 donors are in their 60s or older. In the years ahead, philanthropy is likely to be influenced by a significant intergenerational transfer of wealth. Philanthropy scholars and consultants estimate that tens of trillions of dollars will transfer from older Americans to their younger heirs over the coming decades.

That shift could have substantial implications for large-scale giving. At the same time, it remains unclear whether the top 50 donors under 60 will be inclined to establish foundations. Surveys of very wealthy families suggest that younger donors often express different priorities than older ones.

Whether those preferences will reshape elite philanthropy remains an open question.

David Campbell is chair of the Conrad and Virginia Klee Foundation Board.

Lindsey McDougle is president-elect of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA).

Hans Peter Schmitz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Gifts from top 50 US philanthropists jumped to $22.4B in 2025 − Mike Bloomberg, Bill Gates and the estate of Paul Allen lead a list of the biggest givers – https://theconversation.com/gifts-from-top-50-us-philanthropists-jumped-to-22-4b-in-2025-mike-bloomberg-bill-gates-and-the-estate-of-paul-allen-lead-a-list-of-the-biggest-givers-276825

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Doug Jacobson, University Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Iowa State University

When most people think about the internet, they likely picture websites and apps. What they rarely see are the invisible services that make those experiences possible: systems that translate names into numbers, verify who you are, deliver messages and block malicious traffic.

For example, DNS, the Domain Name System, has quietly become a single point of failure. DNS is the internet’s phone book. When it fails, large parts of the internet effectively disappear, even if servers are still running.

DNS is not alone. Over the past decade, four core internet services – DNS, authentication, email and security infrastructure – have consolidated into a small number of global platforms. As a cybersecurity researcher, I see that this concentration has fundamentally changed how outages unfold. What would once have been a local failure is now often a systemic event, affecting thousands of organizations simultaneously.

The internet was designed to assume failure. Mail servers, DNS resolvers, authentication systems and security monitors were meant to be distributed and locally controlled. Today, for reasons that make economic sense, many companies and organizations outsource all four to the same handful of providers. One cloud service monitoring organization referred to 2025 as the year of the global cloud outage.

DNS, authentication, email and security

Outages are no longer rare exceptions, but a predictable byproduct of efficiency at a global scale. That pattern becomes apparent when you look at a few major outages that have affected each of the four services.

DNS outages are a prime example of systemic risk. If DNS cannot resolve a name, a website may as well not exist. A growing share of global DNS resolution now depends on a small number of providers. That concentration means that a single configuration error, routing issue or attack can ripple across much of the web.

Authentication outages are less visible to the public but often more disruptive inside organizations.

For example, on Oct. 29, 2025, Microsoft Azure experienced a major outage that disrupted authentication and access for millions of users worldwide for over five hours. Another authentication provider, Okta, suffered an outage on Oct. 3.

Authentication has become a universal gatekeeper. When identity services fail, modern organizations don’t degrade gracefully; they come to a halt.

Despite decades of predictions about its decline, email remains a central component of how employers function. Password resets, invoices, legal notices, emergency notifications and incident response coordination all depend on it. When large cloud email providers experience outages, companies and organizations not only lose communication but also struggle to recover accounts and coordinate recovery efforts effectively. In 2025, both Yahoo and Microsoft email services suffered outages.

Since many companies and organizations no longer operate independent mail systems, email outages are increasingly affecting entire industries simultaneously. In an emergency, the system that people rely on to respond may be unavailable.

Security as a service is a rapidly growing market. Cybersecurity infrastructure, including distributed denial-of-service mitigation, firewalls and bot protection, is designed to keep services online. When this infrastructure fails, it can have the opposite effect.

Misconfigured security rules and routing errors at global security providers have repeatedly blocked legitimate traffic on a massive scale. In one well-documented incident in 2024, a routine configuration change by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike caused widespread outages across thousands of unrelated websites.

Why outages are getting more expensive

Industry data suggests that while outages may be becoming less frequent, they are becoming far more costly.

The professional services organization Uptime Institute reports that more than half of major outages now cost over US$100,000, and roughly 1 in 5 exceeds $1 million. These estimated costs reflect lost revenue, stalled operations, reputational damage and, in some cases, risks to health and public safety.

Centralization magnifies these costs. A single failure now affects a greater number of users, employers and critical services simultaneously. What was once an IT problem has evolved into a multifaceted economic and societal issue.

Concentration is the real risk.

Regulators are beginning to recognize this pattern. In the United States, federal guidance now emphasizes the importance of inventorying cloud dependencies and reducing reliance on a single provider. These efforts reflect a growing realization: The greatest risk is not any one outage, but the structure of dependency that makes those outages unavoidable and wide-reaching.

Accounting for inevitable failures

The internet was designed to route around damage. In the pursuit of convenience and scale, the tech industry has rebuilt key parts of it around a small number of global trust brokers for names, identity, messaging and security. The result is a byproduct of the cloud services business model, where routine failures become systemic events.

Companies and organizations don’t need to abandon the cloud to address this issue. But I believe that it’s important to measure concentration, design for diversity, and rehearse what happens when shared services fail. Resilience does not come from perfection. It stems from choice, redundancy and the ability to fail locally rather than everywhere at once.

Doug Jacobson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why cloud service outages ripple across the internet – and the economy – https://theconversation.com/why-cloud-service-outages-ripple-across-the-internet-and-the-economy-272241

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Mehrzad Boroujerdi, Vice Provost and Dean of College of Arts, Sciences, and Education, Missouri University of Science and Technology

It has been said that trust is like glass: Once it is shattered, nothing will ever be the same. In the case of the enduring hostility between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States over the past 47 years, even this metaphor may be an understatement.

The tone of the relationship is indicative of this fact.

In 2020, Iran’s supreme leader denounced President Donald Trump as a “clown” who only pretends to support the Iranian people while ultimately plunging a “poisonous dagger” into their backs.

And in a U.S. version of this hostility, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said on Feb. 23, 2026, about the president’s approach to Iran: “I don’t want to use the word ‘frustrated,’ because he understands he has plenty of alternatives, but he’s curious as to why they haven’t … I don’t want to use the word ‘capitulated,’ but why they haven’t capitulated.”

The war that began on Feb. 28, 2026, hews to a familiar but dangerous pattern. Deep, historical mistrust, incompatible strategic interests, domestic political constraints on both sides, miscommunication and misperception, zero-sum thinking and repeated diplomatic overreach gradually pushed the relationship between Iran and the U.S. toward open conflict.

Rhetoric, not reality

When Tehran refused to yield to Trump’s demands, he described Iranian leaders in blunt terms: “They’re sick people. They’re mentally ill. Sick people. They are angry. They are crazy. They are sick.”

For a deeper understanding of Iran, policymakers in Washington could have looked to the insights of John W. Limbert, a distinguished diplomat with four decades of experience in Iranian affairs and a hostage during the Iran hostage crisis.

In 2008, as part of a U.S. Institute of Peace study of Iranian negotiating style, Limbert outlined 15 principles for Americans seeking successful negotiations with Iranian counterparts. Among his most important observations was that each side tends to assume the worst about the other, viewing its adversary as “infinitely devious, hostile, and duplicitous.”

Little evidence suggests that such hard-earned wisdom has informed recent rhetoric.

Instead, American leaders’ and media’s discussions of Iran over the past few decades have often relied on a familiar narrative: the portrayal of Middle Eastern leaders as irrational or “lunatic” figures − first, revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Saddam Hussein, followed by Moammar Gadhafi, Bashar Assad, and now Ali Khamenei.

This narrative conveniently overlooks inconvenient facts.

Getting to breakdown

It was Trump who withdrew the United States from the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran during his first term. It was also the United States that during renewed negotiations in 2025 and 2026 chose to bomb Iranian targets twice while talks were still underway.

Nor were the negotiations ever strictly bilateral. There was always an unoccupied chair at the table metaphorically reserved for a ghost participant: Israel. In my view, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu skillfully used political leverage and diplomatic pressure to shape the process publicly and privately.

When it came to Iran, Trump often violated a basic principle of diplomacy: asking Iran to concede without any reciprocity. Meanwhile, Netanyahu would repeatedly move the goal posts − asserting that Iran was on the verge of acquiring a nuclear weapon, insisting it had no right to enrich uranium on its own soil, demanding the dismantling of its nuclear infrastructure, calling for the elimination of its ballistic missile capability, and ultimately advocating regime change.

The extent to which Israeli pressure shaped successive American policies is a question historians and investigative journalists will continue to debate.

Yet responsibility for the breakdown cannot be placed on Washington and Jerusalem alone. Iranian leaders contributed significantly to making the conflict with the United States so intractable.

A corrupt, repressive and economically struggling regime relied heavily on performative anti-American politics for domestic legitimacy. Tehran matched American and Israeli rigidity with intransigence and strategic overreach of its own.

Limiting inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, failing to provide credible answers about past nuclear activities, constructing secret facilities and attempting to negotiate from a position of weakness ultimately proved disastrous when dealing with an impatient and impulsive American president.

The unknown unknowns

What comes next?

If regime change does not occur in Tehran, the two sides will almost certainly find themselves negotiating again once the fog of war dissipates.

The hostility between them will not disappear, and diplomatic niceties may become rarer. Yet diplomacy rarely requires trust; it requires interests.

I believe that future talks are therefore likely to be transactional rather than transformational. Technical and legal parameters will still need to be negotiated. Hawks and doves will continue to compete for influence in both capitals.

And the oldest rule of bargaining will remain unchanged: When you lack leverage, acquire it – then negotiate.

Mehrzad Boroujerdi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. 47 years of deep mistrust and misperception paved the way to war between Iran and the US − and complicate any negotiations – https://theconversation.com/47-years-of-deep-mistrust-and-misperception-paved-the-way-to-war-between-iran-and-the-us-and-complicate-any-negotiations-277789

Source: The Conversation – USA – By David Mednicoff, Associate Professor of Middle Eastern Studies and Public Policy, UMass Amherst

The war that the U.S. and Israeli governments launched against Iran on Feb. 28, 2026, is unprecedented in its scope across the Middle East. With the Arab Gulf states under Iranian attack, and Israel targeting Iran’s militia ally Hezbollah, even experts on the Middle East like me cannot predict the war’s course and especially its likely political consequences.

Still, to better understand this complex situation, I am paying particular attention to four major questions. How these specific issues play out will shed light on how this war might end and what it will mean for Iran, the rest of the Middle East and the world.

What does the US hope to accomplish?

One leader who began the war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has been dead set for decades on crippling, and ideally toppling, Iran’s Islamic Republic. Iran has a long track record of sponsoring militant threats to Israel and American Arab allies.

Yet U.S. President Donald Trump has not been clear on what the goals of this war are and has said even less about what conditions would lead the U.S. to cease hostilities.

Early signs are that Iran’s capacity to project force across the Middle East is now diminished. What amount of damage to Iran’s military might be enough for the White House to believe that its mission was accomplished? Or does Trump expect Iran’s current authoritarian, theocratic political system to be removed, and for Iranians to establish a government more favorable toward American interests?

Any clarity from Washington on the true aims of this war will help observers understand under what circumstances it can end and what future Iranian-American relations might look like.

How will the war affect Gulf states’ short-term or long-term relations with Washington?

The U.S. has long prioritized deep economic and strategic relationships with the Gulf Arab states, especially Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. These relationships have grown closer under Trump’s presidency.

So far, Iranian attacks have not caused significant casualties or damage to oil or commercial infrastructure in Gulf Arab states, collectively the source of 10% of the oil used in the U.S.

Indeed, some Gulf Arab states, including the United Arab Emirates, already collaborate enough with Israel that being subjected to attacks from Iran has solidified their current alliance with it and the U.S.

At the same time, Gulf Arab states value long-term political stability to preserve their status as major exporters of oil and natural gas, centers of global commerce and trade and global travel hubs. While each country has its own geopolitical priorities, none wants conflicts that leave it vulnerable.

Iran’s military strategy seems designed to raise the economic and human costs for Gulf Arabs who support the U.S. and Israel.

Greater pain for citizens of the Arab Gulf could fuel leaders there to pressure Washington to stop the war. It’s also possible that Gulf leaders will rethink or rebalance their relations with the United States or Israel should the end state of the war undermine their sense of security.

Such a rethink is more likely if the war continues for weeks and creates major shocks to the global economy. Even if the war ends well for Gulf leaders, by ending concerns about Iranian regional aggression, Washington’s willingness to put Gulf states in the path of destabilizing conflict may lead them to seek less alignment with the U.S.

Who will likely rule Iran?

Mojtaba Khamenei, the hard-line son of the previous supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has just been named his father’s replacement. This is a clear signal that Iran is not yet moving toward the more cooperative government that the Trump administration wants. But with the fluid state of the war and its effects in Iran, perhaps the most important question is who will ultimately govern the country. Given Iran’s large size, predicting a long-term political outcome at this point makes little sense.

However, several factors do not bode well for a democratically representative government that could benefit ordinary Iranians. First, the Islamic Republic has been in power for decades, going to great lengths to prevent unified political opposition. Iranians’ recent waves of protests have not meant consensus on a future political order.

Second, Iran’s political system may still have support, including among members of the clergy and army. Third, the Trump administration may hope that Iranian ethnic minorities, such as the Kurds, may attack or dislodge the remnants of the government. Yet such groups lack the level of military force to ensure success.

For these reasons, the current government or a similarly authoritarian one may well remain in place after this war.

How do Iranians and people throughout the region view the war?

The Islamic holy month of Ramadan runs this year from Feb. 18 to mid-March. It changes the basic rhythm of life for most Muslims to one in which they fast from dawn to dusk and enjoy family and communal festivity late into the night. Throughout Iran and the Arab Gulf countries, these longtime practices have been disrupted by war and nighttime bombings.

Religion is not the primary driver of this war. Still, that war began during a sacred time is one example of an issue that might influence how the people in the middle of this conflict experience it. A less militaristic, more democratic Iranian government is a desirable outcome from a devastating war launched in violation of international law.

How popular attitudes in the region unfold will matter both to Iran’s political outcome and to whether Iran has better relations with Washington in the future.

For now, it is hard to know whether Iranians’ support for the government is growing during a major foreign attack, as it did when Iraq’s Saddam Hussein began a war against Iran in 1980. Certainly, a large swath of Iranians are content with the end of decades of Ayatollah Khamenei’s stifling rule.

Gulf Arabs may be frustrated with Washington and Tel Aviv for starting the war but also want Iran to end up with a less militant government. Most Lebanese have no love for Israel. Yet many also blame their local Iran-backed Hezbollah faction for dragging their country into the current war.

The experiences and views of these diverse populations matter. Trump has launched a war that is different from earlier American wars in the Middle East, both in the number of countries directly experiencing attacks and in the degree of direct coordination with Israel.

In addition to this war’s illegitimacy under international law, Washington has a long record of failing to achieve political results favorable to American interests after using military force in the Middle East. Given this, it is hard to believe that Operation Epic Fury will be an epic success in the long run.

However, how these four questions come to be answered in the weeks ahead will provide better indication of what this new war’s political consequences will actually be.

David Mednicoff does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Iran war: 4 big questions that help clarify the future of the Middle East – https://theconversation.com/iran-war-4-big-questions-that-help-clarify-the-future-of-the-middle-east-277473

Source: The Conversation – USA – By David Cuillier, Director of the Brechner Freedom of Information Project, College of Journalism and Communications, University of Florida

By all measures, the ability to see what the government is up to in the United States has plummeted to new depths since the beginning of the second Trump administration.

For National Sunshine Week in 2025, I wrote about secrecy creep, the adoption of federal secrecy protections implemented by state and local authorities. In Florida and throughout the United States, this threatens the public’s right to be informed about its government.

A year later, this creep toward secrecy has become an all-out slide.

As director of the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida, I track the state of government transparency in the U.S. What has changed since January 2025 is unprecedented.

Clouds in the Sunshine State

Florida is a good example of this slide. Once viewed as a leader in transparency, the Sunshine State now charges exorbitant copy fees that discourage average people from requesting public records.

According to the nonprofit MuckRock, 24% of public records requests in Florida come with a copy fee, averaging US$1,623. Only Oregon charges fees more often, at 28% of the time. Fees are intended to help agencies cover the cost of large requests, but they tend to be arbitrary and are often used as a way to get pesky people to go away.

And that’s assuming you even get the information you want. One of my own studies from 2019 indicated that, on average, if you requested a public record in Florida, you would receive it about 39% of the time, placing the state 31st in the nation.

In 2025, MuckRock put the percentage dipping lower, at 35%. In March 2026, it was at 34%.

In Florida, more and more government agencies are thwarting the public’s right to know, including attempts to hide the details behind Alligator Alcatraz, the temporary immigrant detention center built in the Florida Everglades in June 2025. The state’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, office has pushed cities to be more transparent while withholding its own records.

Members of the state Legislature are attempting to strengthen the public records law. This would improve transparency in Florida’s state government, but I’d argue it doesn’t go far enough. Other states, such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Connecticut, have implemented stronger laws, including independent enforcement of their sunshine laws, to ensure their governments comply.

It starts at the top

State and local governments appear to be taking their cues from the federal government.

President Donald Trump’s administration heralds itself as the most transparent in history, pointing to the president’s willingness to talk informally to the press or directly to the public through social media.

While that may be one definition of transparency, the federal government’s willingness to provide documents that show what the government is doing – not just what it says it is doing – has been eviscerated under the second Trump administration. Examples include:

• Refusing to provide tax returns, again, unlike every other president in modern history, and then suing the IRS for $10 billion when some returns were leaked.

• Removing government websites and databases.

• Firing the national archivist and the director of the Office of Information Policy, the agency within the U.S. Department of Justice that oversees government agencies’ compliance with requests under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA.

• Firing and pushing out experienced staffers assigned to handle FOIA requests as part of the 2025 U.S. DOGE purges. This led some agencies, such as the Department of Energy, to apply unorthodox practices, including closing out pending requests.

• Axing the new Open Government Federal Advisory Committee, which was launched to find ways of improving FOIA.

• Pulling out of the Open Government Partnership, which the U.S. helped found in 2011 to foster transparency around the globe.

Typically, the Department of Justice releases annual statistics on FOIA requests every March. When I examined initial reports posted in January, when just 11 agencies had provided their reports, backlogs – that is, requests that remain unresolved after a year – had increased 67% from the previous fiscal year. The time to process simple requests nearly doubled.

Plummeting to historical depths

In order to understand how secrecy in the United States now compares to historical precedent, I reached out to people who have researched freedom of information for decades, some going back to the 1970s.

I asked them a simple question: How does the current state of affairs in freedom of information compare historically?

Here is what they told me:

Jane Kirtley is a longtime FOIA scholar from the University of Minnesota who wrote in 2006, “The Bush administration’s contempt for the public’s right to know amounts to an organized assault on freedom of information that is unprecedented since the enactment of the Freedom of Information Act 40 years ago.”

Today, in comparison? “Abysmal,” she wrote to me via email. “It was abundantly clear from the moment Elon Musk and his ‘musketeers’ invaded and pillaged government electronic records that we have entered a new era of deletion, obfuscation, fabrication and utter contempt for the concept of data integrity and the public’s right to know.”

Thomas Susman, who helped craft the 1974 FOIA amendments and currently assists the American Bar Association, wrote in 2005 that increasing delays and backlogs threatened FOIA’s intended purpose.

In February 2026, he wrote to me that the “arc of the FOIA universe has for six decades bent toward greater public access to government information − until now. If ‘democracy dies in darkness’ (according to The Washington Post’s official slogan), America’s democracy is threatened with becoming dead meat. We’ve survived the Civil War, the Great Depression, Vietnam, Watergate and more. If we fight back hard enough, this too shall pass, though not quickly, and likely with lasting scars.”

Patrice McDermott directed Open the Government from 2006 to 2017 and pointed in 2007 to an underlying tension throughout government: “the ability – and willingness – to harness the promise of digital information for public access and accountability while not abusing its potential for control of that information.”

Today, she writes that, as Benjamin Franklin put it, we “have a Republic … if (we) can keep it” and are committed to the fight for our constitutional form of government.

Perhaps advances can be made to reverse the secrecy trend and carry out the intentions of the Freedom of Information Act, as expressed by Lyndon B. Johnson upon its adoption nearly 60 years ago: “I signed this measure with a deep sense of pride that the United States is an open society in which the people’s right to know is cherished and guarded.”

David Cuillier has received funding from the Democracy Fund and John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to study the state of freedom of information. He is a board member of the National Freedom of Information Coalition and he coordinates national Sunshine Week.

– ref. This Sunshine Week, Florida reflects an alarming national trend of blocking the public’s access to information – https://theconversation.com/this-sunshine-week-florida-reflects-an-alarming-national-trend-of-blocking-the-publics-access-to-information-274108

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Leonardo Macelloni, Director of the Mississippi Mineral Resources Institute and Center for Marine Resources and Environmental Technology, University of Mississippi

You may be hearing a lot lately about critical minerals and rare earth elements. These natural materials are essential to industry and modern technology – everything from cellphones to fighter jets.

They include lithium and cobalt used in batteries, neodymium for magnets in motors and hard drives, and rare earths that are essential in defense systems, lasers and medical imaging. Critical minerals are also indispensable for renewable energy systems, energy storage and digital infrastructure. Without them, modern society – and any realistic path to a world with net-zero emissions – would not be possible.

Critical minerals get their name because they’re also highly vulnerable to supply chain disruptions from global events, trade tensions or economic instability. And, today, one country dominates many critical mineral supply chains: China.

With that in mind, many governments are looking for alternative sources of critical minerals, and several companies are eyeing the ocean floor as a potential new frontier for mining them.

As a marine geologist, I know the potential for seafloor minerals is vast. But that doesn’t mean those minerals are easy to harvest. They come in several forms, from potato-size rocks scattered on the seafloor to seafloor crusts at hydrothermal vents and underwater brine pools. And they are often found in sensitive locations that are home to fragile marine life, raising questions about damage to some of the least explored and least understood parts of our planet.

Polymetallic nodules on the seafloor

When you picture seafloor mining, polymetallic or manganese nodules are probably what come to mind.

Rock-like nodules are about the size of potatoes and are found scattered on vast deep-water plains, typically 3,000 to 6,000 meters deep, in several regions, including a large area of the Pacific Ocean southeast of Hawaii.

They primarily consist of manganese and iron, though they can contain significant amounts of other metals, including valuable nickel, cobalt, copper and small amounts of rare earth elements and platinum.

Nodules form from metals that get into the ocean through erosion or from seafloor hydrothermal vents in volcanically active areas. The metal ions attach to a nucleus, such as a rock or shell fragment. Over time, layers form around that core. The growth is very slow – only a few millimeters in a million years – so larger nodules can be several million years old.

More than 17 exploration licenses exist, primarily in the Pacific’s Clarion-Clipperton Zone. Tests there have involved suctioning nodules from the seafloor to ships above. But, as of early 2026, full-scale, commercial mining has not yet begun.

Seafloor massive sulfides at hydrothermal vents

Another source of critical minerals is seafloor massive sulfides, which form near hydrothermal vents along oceanic ridges. Volcanic activity reacts with seawater, fueling bursts of marine life at these vents, and also forming rocks rich in copper, gold, zinc, lead, barium and silver.

These hot springs form where water rises through the oceanic crust at high temperatures, up to about 750 degrees Fahrenheit (400 degrees Celsius). The metals contained in these solutions precipitate on contact with the cold, oxygen-rich seawater, forming the ventlike structures known as “black smokers” because they look like factory chimneys.

The technology for mining these deposits is currently being built. The first deep-sea tests were performed by Japanese miners in their coastal waters.

Cobalt-rich crusts at seamounts

Ferromanganese crusts are another source. They form on the slopes and summits of underwater mountains known as seamounts and contain manganese, iron and a wide array of trace metals such as cobalt, copper, nickel and platinum.

Over millions of years, metals in the surrounding seawater form coatings of iron and manganese oxides, with thicknesses ranging from a few millimeters to a few decimeters, depending on the age of the seamounts.

Crust mining is technically much more difficult than nodule mining. Nodules sit on soft sediment. Crusts, in contrast, are attached to substrate rock. For successful crust mining, it would be essential to recover the crusts without collecting too much substrate, which would dilute the ore quality.

However, little is known about the marine life found on seamounts, particularly those in the most likely regions for crust exploration and mining.

Underwater brine pools

Another possible ocean source of lithium and potentially rare earth elements may lie in unusual underwater lakes called hypersaline brine pools. These salty pools are found on the seafloor in several parts of the world, but they are especially common in the Gulf of Mexico.

Brine is already the source of much of the lithium used today. Companies extract it from salty water produced during oil and geothermal operations.

Lithium becomes concentrated in brines over millions of years. As water moves through deep rocks, minerals dissolve along the way and elements like lithium can accumulate.

Extracting lithium from deep-sea brines, if it is confirmed to be there, could be more straightforward than traditional seabed mining. Technologies already exist to separate lithium from salty water.

In the Gulf, this approach could potentially use existing offshore oil and gas infrastructure, reducing the need for new construction. The brine could be pumped up, processed to remove lithium, and then returned to the subsurface.

Deep-sea mud

In the Central Pacific Ocean and off Japan, deep-sea mud enriched with rare earth elements and yttrium has been recognized as another new resource.

These deposits form from the very slow accumulation of fish debris, composed of biogenic calcium phosphate, in the deepest parts of the ocean. In 2026, a Japanese research vessel successfully drilled and retrieved deep-sea sediment containing rare earth minerals from the seabed near the island of Minamitorishima, and the Japanese government announced a deep-sea mud extraction trial would begin in 2027.

The drawbacks for marine life

While these regions likely hold vast resources, scientists know very little about the ecological conditions at the boundary between deep-sea water and seafloor sediments, especially about the microbial communities that live there.

Microorganisms are the most widespread and fundamental forms of life on Earth. They play central roles in ecosystems, nutrient cycles, and the long-term stability of the planet. The potential impacts of mechanically removing nodules from the seafloor – through cutting, scraping or lifting – on these microscopic ecosystems remain largely unknown.

In the Pacific Ocean, an experimental mining test carried out in 1978 was revisited more than two decades later. Even after 26 years, tracks left by mining vehicles were still visible on the seafloor. The disturbed areas had fewer bottom-dwelling organisms and less diversity compared to nearby undisturbed regions. Notably, no detailed assessment of microbial communities was conducted, leaving a significant gap in understanding.

Complicating the issue further, many prospective deep-sea mining areas lie in international waters, beyond the jurisdiction of individual nations.

The International Seabed Authority is responsible for regulating mineral activities in the deep ocean, but there is no global consensus on the rules, safeguards or acceptable risks associated with seabed mining. Some countries, including the United States, are discussing creating their own licenses to mine in international areas, while about 40 others are calling for a mining moratorium until the risks are better understood.

Critical minerals are the invisible foundation of modern life. As interest in deep-sea mining grows, these scientific uncertainties and governance challenges will be central to the debate.

Nothing to disclose.

– ref. Mining the ocean floor: 5 deep-sea sources of critical minerals essential to technology, and the fragile marine life at risk – https://theconversation.com/mining-the-ocean-floor-5-deep-sea-sources-of-critical-minerals-essential-to-technology-and-the-fragile-marine-life-at-risk-275804

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Diane Winston, Professor and Knight Center Chair in Media & Religion, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

The compulsion started soon after my marriage.

Long before e-books and audiobooks, I furtively read paperbacks whose covers of bosomy maidens and bare-chested men would have outed my obsession. Then, on a family car trip, my husband told my young stepdaughters why I liked sitting alone in the back seat.

“Diane is reading bodice rippers,” he said, citing the old-fashioned name for sexually explicit romance novels. Back then, they were my guilty pleasure.

More than 30 years later, I remain a fan of romance novels, but it’s no longer a craving I feel compelled to hide. In fact, I value the window it opens to my research interests in pop culture, religion and gender.

I’m not alone. Romantic fiction makes up almost 25% of books sold in the U.S., and the genre earned US$1.44 billion globally in 2022-23. The Bible may be the bestselling book of all time, but annual sales of romance novels even outpace the Scriptures.

Written by women, for women

Among scholars, there’s a range of opinions on the genre’s enduring popularity.

Some describe romantic fiction as the literary equivalent of Marx’s “opium of the masses.” They argue that these books are perennial bestsellers because they offer escapism and the promise of “happily ever after” – a quick sugar high to distract from the struggles of everyday life.

Other scholars cite the genre’s pedigree. Though they’re canonized as literary classics, 19th-century novels such as “Pride and Prejudice,” “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights” can also be read as romances – stories written by women and centered on women’s emotional lives, courtship and desires. In a world circumscribed by the era’s narrow gender roles, these books featured clever, often headstrong women who exercised some agency over their love lives and their fates.

In my view, this explains their popularity: 19th-century readers may have found vicarious pleasure in Jane Eyre’s journey from timid governess to independent heiress and happy wife. Likewise, Catherine Earnshaw’s decision to marry the wealthy Edgar Linton, thus abandoning the penniless Heathcliff, may have struck the female fans of “Wuthering Heights” as an understandable choice.

Nineteenth-century women had limited pastimes. Books that reflected on their own circumstances, albeit with more intrigue and drama, were catnip. But as readership grew, male authors wanted to cash in on the expanding market.

As men penned their own novels, their perspectives dominated, pushing women’s fiction to the side. Changing social mores also made the once popular “woman’s novel” seem dated.

The romance genre was revived in the 20th century when authors added more oomph to their plots and edgier characters. Daphne Du Maurier’s 1938 classic, “Rebecca,” breathed new life into gothic romances – love stories set in dreary, desolate places, intermingled with horror and suspense. And Georgette Heyer revitalized historical romance with smoldering stories such as “The Grand Sophy,” set in England’s Regency period (1811–1820).

Bodice rippers debuted in the 1970s. The name came, in part, from the covers, which often depicted a woman in a half-torn dress being embraced by a buff male. A racier take on the romance genre, they were often set in early 19th-century England and ended in happily-ever-afters. But the characters were sexually active in ways that would have shocked and scandalized Jane Austen’s heroines.

Kathleen E. Woodiwiss’ “The Flame and The Flower” (1972) is widely credited with launching the modern bodice ripper: The first romance novel published in paperback, it became a huge bestseller, despite its graphic rape scenes.

These novels, which debuted in the midst of the sexual revolution, were more explicit than their precursors, and heroines enjoyed more agency in their life choices. That said, the sex was male-driven and often implied that a “throbbing member” could send the heroine into paroxysms of ecstasy.

Lovestruck mafiosos and bull breeders

The digital revolution further transformed romance novels.

Self-publishing, digital publishing and BookTok brought new and younger readers into the mix. Anyone could become a romance novelist, leading to an array of new characters, plots and sexual adventures.

A genre that once mainly featured straight, British aristocrats now embraced Black, Latino and Asian protagonists. There were wanton witches, voracious werewolves and vampire lotharios. Some stories explored alien pairings and lovestruck mafiosos, while in others, LGBTQ characters and professional athletes took center stage. Readers drawn to bawdier fare could dive into erotic fiction, with plotlines featuring women mating with bulls, reverse harems – one woman with several men – and women consorting with multi-limbed aliens.

Many of these innovations have something in common. Rather than sticking to the male-driven plotlines of 20th-century bodice rippers, most contemporary romance writers focus on the female orgasm. Men are far less likely to rush penetration because, before seeking their release, they want their partners to experience multiple climaxes.

But contemporary female characters are not just sexually satisfied. They also enjoy successful careers and close female friends. True to real life, some are plus size or have disabilities. Others were burned in past encounters. They need suitors to scale their emotional walls before blowing their minds in the bedroom.

Women in control

Put together, the genre has undergone a 180-degree turn from the books I hid in the 1990s.

Today’s romantic fiction is less about horny couplings and happy endings and more about exploring emotional connections and power dynamics. Stories also play out the impact of race, class, gender and sexuality on relationships.

Consider the bestselling book and breakout hit HBO series “Heated Rivalry,” which explores the complicated romance between two gay hockey players. It’s beloved by straight and gay female fans for depicting a blossoming relationship characterized by emotional vulnerability rather than toxic masculinity. And it reveals a trend previously underreported: Women like watching gay men enjoying sex.

While the “Heated Rivalry” phenomenon is intriguing, readership also has skyrocketed for romantasy.

Romantasy features unconventional women navigating make-believe worlds populated by magic, faeries and dragons. Some heroines are timid, others are brazen, but they share a drive to succeed on their terms.

The genre took off in 2015 with Sarah Maas’ “A Court of Thorns and Roses,” the saga of a beautiful but impoverished teen who finds herself in the faerie court. Eleven years and two series later, Maas’ books have sold more than 75 million copies. Each novel is kinkier than the last, and they’ve even inspired some readers to spice up things in their own bedrooms.

The success of these new romance subgenres reflects a striking societal shift: Women are no longer shy about being on top. As writers and readers increasingly see powerful women in C-suites and boardrooms, they expect similar strength in the bedroom.

Although what women want has not changed over time, our ability to achieve it has. That’s why the popularity of books by, for and about women is as fervent today as when Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine in “Pride and Prejudice,” fell for Mr. Darcy. But Lizzie Bennet lived in a world where she could do only so much, hemmed in like her real-life counterparts.

Thankfully, women today enjoy more power, agency and pleasure. And thankfully, too, we have a lot more books by, for and about women as we contemplate what lies ahead.

Diane Winston does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. From bodice rippers to romantasy, romance novels are dominating the book market – and rewriting women’s sexual power – https://theconversation.com/from-bodice-rippers-to-romantasy-romance-novels-are-dominating-the-book-market-and-rewriting-womens-sexual-power-273765