No interior daylight

Recently: Is anyone winning the U.S.-China trade war? Kyle Chan on the economic showdown between Washington and Beijing.

Today: Can the American press cover the Pentagon from outside the building? For the first time since 1943, no major news outlets will have reporters inside—on account of a new policy demanding reporters sign away being able to report.

+ For members: How is political upheaval in South Korea affecting North Korea? Soo Kim on what’s driving Pyongyang’s increasing hostility toward Seoul.

& New music from Catherine Lamb x Ghost Ensemble ...

Developments

• Goodbye to all that. In the U.S., Fox News joined ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN on Tuesday in refusing to sign the Defense Department’s new press policy, which revokes credentials for reporters who won’t pledge not to access information the Pentagon doesn’t provide. The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, and Newsmax also declined. Starting on Wednesday, for the first time since the Pentagon opened in 1943, no major news outlets will be accredited to cover the Department of Defense—apart from One America News.
• Four bodies, not two dozen. Hamas returned only four bodies of former hostages on Monday—far short of the roughly 24 remaining—angering Israelis who expected more under the ceasefire. The Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz accused Hamas of failing to uphold commitments but stopped short of threatening military action. A Hamas official said Gaza’s devastation makes retrieval difficult. Israel is considering penalties, including limiting aid trucks and closing the Rafah crossing. The truce acknowledged some remains could take time to locate amid the destruction.
• California regulates the future alone. Governor Gavin Newsom signed multiple AI safety bills on Monday, including the nation’s first companion chatbot safeguards requiring platforms to detect suicidal ideation and disclose when conversations are AI-generated. Another bill requires large AI developers to publish transparency reports. OpenAI and Meta lobbied against the measures while Anthropic endorsed them. With no federal AI policy in place, California is now operating as either a model for other states or an example of the kind of state-by-state “patchwork” of regulations tech companies argue will stifle innovation.
• Space program contracts. Also in the U.S., NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced on Monday that it’ll lay off approximately 550 employees—roughly 10 percent of its workforce—with notifications sent Tuesday. The Laboratory’s Director Dave Gallagher said the cuts are “essential to securing JPL’s future by creating a leaner infrastructure.” The layoffs aren’t related to the government shutdown but part of a reorganization that began in July. JPL has cut roughly 900 positions over two previous rounds in 2024.
• Growth at the modest end. The International Monetary Fund released its outlook on Tuesday projecting global growth at 3.2 percent in 2025, calling prospects “dim” despite the economy holding up better than expected. The tariff shock proved smaller than feared thanks to trade deals and supply chain rerouting. But the IMF warned the outlook remains fragile with risks tilted downward. The Fund’s Chief Economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas noted that beneath the steady surface, “complex forces are at work.”

No interior daylight

The Pentagon press facilities cleared out on Tuesday. Reporters packed decades of accumulated items from their desks. Networks hauled broadcasting equipment back to bureaus. By Wednesday, for the first time since the building opened in 1943, no major news outlet will have reporters covering the Department of Defense on site—the agency that spends nearly a trillion U.S.-taxpayer dollars annually.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s new media policy demands reporters sign an acknowledgment that harm “inevitably flows” from disclosure of unauthorized information, classified or not. The policy prohibits accessing information the Pentagon doesn’t provide and bars those who refuse. 

Among those refusing: ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, Newsmax, The Washington Post, New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, and the Washington Examiner—leaving no major outlets in the building … apart from One America News.

Notably, the organizations rejecting the new policy cross ideological variation. Even outlets generally supportive of the Trump administration, including Fox—where Hegseth used to deliver opinions—Newsmax, and the Washington Times, have refused to sign.

Reporters described the mood as grim but united, with one noting that the policy reflects a defense secretary who is “actually quite thin-skinned.” The Pentagon Press Association called the policy “likely unconstitutional.” Hegseth dismissed concerns with a “goodbye” emoji.

Feature

The way of Kim Jong Un

How is political upheaval in South Korea affecting North Korea? Soo Kim on what’s driving Pyongyang’s increasing hostility toward Seoul.

In late 2023, North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un declared he no longer wanted to reunify with South Korea. Seoul was now Pyongyang’s “principal enemy.” Since then, Kim has tested new and more powerful missiles, launched his navy’s first destroyers, and unveiled a nuclear-powered submarine under construction.

Kim made this shift when South Korea was ruled by President Yoon Suk Yeol, a conservative who took a hard line against the North. But then on December 4, 2024, Yoon made a power grab: He declared martial law, disbanded the legislature, and said some members of the liberal opposition—the Democratic Party of Korea—were working with North Korea to undermine the South’s security.

Yoon’s gambit failed. Members of the National Assembly—including some from his own party—sneaked past soldiers that same night to meet in the chamber and revoke his declaration. Yoon eventually backed down, the legislature impeached him, and the Constitutional Court removed him from office in April. He’s now awaiting trial on charges of insurrection and abuse of power. On June 3, voters chose Lee Jae Myung of the DPK to replace him.

Lee has made conciliatory moves toward Kim—a major change from Yoon. He pledged to reopen communication channels with Pyongyang, suspended propaganda broadcasts into the North, and in August, the country dismantled some loudspeakers along the border.

How is North Korea responding?

Soo Kim is a former analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency and the RAND Corporation, where she tracked East Asia and the Korean Peninsula. Kim says that despite predictably bombastic rhetoric from Pyongyang about events in Seoul—and despite how hard it always is to know what’s really going on inside the North Korean regime—one thing seems clear: Kim Jong Un has no interest in engagement with South Korea.

The supreme leader is playing a long game, Kim says, and his primary interest is the survival of his family dynasty—not dissolving it in reunification. He sees nuclear weapons as his best tool for strengthening the regime, and his growing partnership with Russia is valuable too. He sees little to gain through diplomacy with the South—and meanwhile, the idea of reunifying the Korean Peninsula recedes further with each new generation in both Koreas.

‘Interius/Exterius’

Here’s some unusual, droning, contemporary-classical music from Ghost Ensemble that includes, believe it or not, frequencies outside the normal range of human hearing, aiming to go all the way down to 10Hz. That’s something you could sense as pressure or a low rumble, but not as a discrete pitch. The composer, Catherine Lamb, is creatively ambitious, believing that even if we can’t hear these frequencies as tones, we’ll feel them.