August 12, 2026 · An attorney general's first act, six dead in the Red Sea, and the Vatican moves to disarm AI

The new attorney general was sworn in Monday — and his first act, hours later, was a legal memo extending executive privilege to the president's *private* advisers, the kind of move his own confirmation promises were supposed to fence in. In the Red Sea, six people died on a cargo ship — the first shipping deaths there in more than a year — while a Navy helicopter put two Hellfire missiles into a blockade-runner's engine room and the Hormuz "deal" hardened into dueling demands for compensation. The Pentagon told the Senate its Yemen air campaign killed 153 civilians, in a report written without a single site visit. Washington confirmed its AI-testing framework will stay secret, an AI agent helped find a full break-in chain for one of the most-deployed pieces of software on earth, and the Vatican announced it will spend 2027 campaigning to keep AI out of military decisions — in the language of nuclear disarmament. Plus: drones decode a 150-million-year-old dinosaur's U-turn, limp and all. Sourced; the analysis is Anna Dudley's. More analysis at Power Moves Before Policy Does.