This is the final episode of What Rough Beast—and the first of something bigger. We’re becoming Omnishambles: same commitment to getting inside what’s huge, opaque, and frightening. Wider aperture. No more holding back. Virginia and Cy are co-hosting from here on out, and the new show launches next week. If you want to come with us, subscribe (it’s free!) at Omnishambles—link below.

For this finale, Virginia and Cy are joined by Siva Vaidyanathan—Robertson Professor of Media Studies at UVA, author of Antisocial Media—to ask: when a bomb drops on a girls’ school in southern Iran on day one of a new war, who is the author of that decision?

In this episode:

* How AI-assisted weapons systems are being used in Iran — and why authorship of the strike may be genuinely unanswerable

* The thread from Palantir in Afghanistan → Gaza as AI laboratory → Iran

* Why the 70 days it used to take to make a decision was a feature, not a bug

* Deliberative democracy, the kosher laws, and putting a brake on zeal

* Why these tools are a siren song for anyone who doesn’t want accountability

This is the last episode under this name! We’ll see you at Omnishambles.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiaheffernan.substack.com/subscribe