Photo by Tara Winstead via Pexels
Hello and Welcome to this July, 2025 issue of Hello, What Just Happened?!, a semi-comical digest of the most important news from the UK, US and the World. Look out for us every now and again, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
The World
Is the Juice worth the Squeeze?
The Pentagon is poised to cancel ~$5.1 billion worth of contracts with external consultants, such as Deloitte, Accenture, Booz Allen Hamilton and others. This is all prior to Musk’s stepping down from DOGE, presumably having decided that actually accomplishing anything constructive looked much too challenging indeed. Makes one wonder what the whole point was anyhow.
One small step for Man, one giant leap for Drones in Lorries
Ukraine launched operation “Spiderweb” (Pavutýna) against Russian military assets deep inside the enemy’s home territory, after some 18 months of planning. Mobile prefab units driven by unsuspecting drivers arrived near four major Russian Airfields (as far as Siberia, almost 3,000 miles away from Ukraine) before their roofs opened and drones flew out, piloted remotely by Ukrainian officers, to target strategic military aircraft parked on the runway with explosives.
Ukrainian President Zelensky was keen to claim that 34% of the Russian Cruise Missile capable fleet had been destroyed though the true figure appears to be closer to half of Ukraine’s initial estimate. Strategic bombers and other military aircraft were the primary targets of the 117 drones that attacked aeroplanes on airfields across five different time-zones, damaging dozens of military aircraft and completely destroying at least 10.
From one Home front to another, to another, to another
President Trump didn’t mince words on the White House lawn on Tuesday June 24th saying “they don’t know what the f— they’re doing” after commenting on Israel and Iran’s fighting. Attempting to take Iran’s nuclear threat out of the equation, the US dropped the bunker busting bombs on June 22nd after some days of publicly musing on whether or not to get involved. There was also a threat of killing Iran’s President and supreme leader Khamenei, with Trump casually bandying around the idea and asserting that the US “are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now”.
In addition to dozens of cruise missiles fired from submarines, at least 7 B-2 strategic bombers dropped 14 GBU-47 bombs (30,000lb Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs)) at ~2am local time and over about 30 minutes. The GBU-47 is the largest conventional (i.e. non-nuclear) ordnance in the US arsenal and this was its first deployment in combat. Some of the bombers flew 13,000 miles round trip and refueled mid-journey; the entire operation involved 125 US aircraft and 75 precision guided weapons.
Did this totally remove Iran’s nuclear capability? US government officials have boasted of totally destroying, obliterating, incapacitating Iran’s nuclear capability. The White House published an extraordinary article entitled “Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated – and Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News”.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is the UN watchdog on Nuclear Non-Proliferation with 191 signatory states. One of the main questions on their mind following the strikes is “what about the 400kg (~882 lbs) of 60% enriched Uranium? Where is that?”. There is concern that the chaos accompanying burying facilities under rubble gives Iran the perfect opportunity to make it’s pre-existing stockpile of too-enriched-for-civil-purposes but not quite-yet-weapons-grade Uranium disappear, at least administratively speaking (such as in the IAEA’s records).
The Internet
Fiber-optic Drones
Fiber optic cables carry the benefit of not being as easily interfered with by radio frequencies as remote wireless connections; and in a not-unrelated development, surreal, sci-fi, cyberpunk even, sights have appeared of Ukrainian fields littered with discarded fiber optic cables as drones unspool tethered fiber optics connecting them to their controllers.
In related news, the US successfully tested a microwave weapon to disarm a swarm of drones. High-Power Microwave (HPM) technology is designed to take out groups of drones simultaneously by shooting an intense burst of microwave energy in a general direction and overwhelming the circuits of electronics in its path.
The US
This land is your land ’n this land is my land
Trump’s tax cut bill that would’ve included 3,200 square miles (over 2 million acres) of public lands being sold off was blocked by the senate Parliamentarian rule keeper. The tax cut bill also includes increased military spending, cuts to public services, provisions regarding immigration, clean energy investment, the debt ceiling and much more. Some 45 votes over a 24 hour period surpassed a 2008 record for what the senate refers to as a vote-a-rama or vote-a-thon (yes, those terms are actually used on the Senate website).
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget published their assessment that Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” would add $3 trillion to the US National Debt including interest. Just how much money does the US owe? Well about $37 trillion. Here’s a handy site that shows the situation developing (spoiler alert: the debt is increasing): USdebtclock.org.
After much discussion, voting and revisions the Senate has passed a modified version of the bill (using VP Vance’s tie-breaking vote) to now be returned to the House of Representatives to be passed again, since it has significantly changed. If you’re interested in digging into the changes, here’s this handy resource from CNN showing summaries of the content side-by-side: CNN.
Any luck catching them jobs then? It was just the one job actually…
No luck catching them swans then? (to make an obscure reference to Hot Fuzz); A big part of the argument for issuing tariffs across the globe, including Australian sub-antarctic territories that are exclusively populated by penguins, was the supposed import of bringing manufacturing jobs to the US.
The Economist recently published an excellent piece on why this was always pretty badly muddled thinking, even if it was parroted by both sides of the aisle in recent years. With such key insights as observing that not even one third of American manufacturing jobs are production roles held by individuals without advanced education (i.e. a degree from a university), the article “The world must escape the manufacturing delusion” makes some pertinent observations. Was this worth blowing up the legal foundation of the global free trade system?
Civil vs. Criminal offences
Immigration offenses are generally considered, in and of themselves, to be Civil offenses (for example: 1911. 8 U.S.C. 1325). Criminal offenses are somewhat of a different legal idea. Get in trouble for a parking ticket? Usually low-level civil offenses (infractions). Murder your neighbour? Criminal. You’ll get arrested, swiftly in most civilized places, and face the full brunt of the criminal justice system.
One of the really insidious things that some of the current US administration have been really leaning into is conflating the fact of being in the US illegally with various more extreme criminal offenses. Stephen Miller (the White House Deputy Chief of Staff) has been among the most offensive in his spitting of vitriol. Look, we’re not saying Stephen Miller is a shapeshifting alien wearing human skin, since if he were he would probably make a little bit more effort to pass as bearing typical human qualities, like decency and humility.
Unmarked federal agents, often wearing masks, refusing to identify themselves while they sweep hardworking and tax-paying long-time locals into unmarked vehicles is profoundly unsettling to anyone who believes in the stated values of an egalitarian culture or hopes to participate in something resembling a democracy.
The UK
Making the UK Battle Ready, again, finally
Keir Starmer, the British Prime Minister, vowed that Britain needs to be “ready for war”. In addition to building more submarines and buying 7,000 cruise missiles from the US, the UK is going to build at least 6 more munitions factories (projected to generate over 1,000 jobs). This is in addition to an “historical renewal” of the UK’s nuclear deterrent.
When was the last time that the UK was seriously ready for a big fight? Probably when we had huge numbers of colonial subjects to help us fight (remember that the UK had millions of colonial subjects on-side in World War Two). It is perhaps more encouraging to think of the UK’s investment in defense as a part of the broader allied refocusing on the persistent threats from Russia, among other concerns. The 2025 NATO summit saw allies gather in Den Hague, Netherlands and agree to invest 5% of GDP in defense.
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