On February 28, the United States and Israel launched airstrikes on multiple targets in Iran and killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The first reports that the U.S. had begun attacks on Iran were extremely shocking, particularly because just a day earlier Oman’s foreign minister, Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, a key mediator in the nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran, had said at a press conference that the negotiations had made significant progress toward an agreement. Nevertheless, the airstrikes have continued without interruption. Israel--backed by the United States--has launched a ground invasion of Lebanon, no longer even trying to conceal the objective of the military operation, namely “territorial expansion.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has entered its fifth year. Military actions undertaken by a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council in the name of its “own justice” shake the principle of the rule of law. President Trump in his second term, exerting increasingly authoritarian power, has already gone beyond being merely a “Tariff Man.” On February 27, the bidding war between Netflix and Paramount Skydance over Warner Bros. Discovery ended with Paramount’s victory. While Netflix explained that it withdrew from the deal due to concerns over “the acquisition price,” coercive pressure from Trump is widely believed to be the real reason.

President Trump’s real target is CNN, owned by Warner Bros. He has long denounced CNN’s critical coverage of him as “fake news” and has even declared that he would personally involve himself in the acquisition of Warner Bros. In addition, David Ellison, CEO of Paramount--which already owns CBS--and his family are influential supporters of Donald Trump. Moreover, Trump has also said, “CNN’s management is rotten,” and this has raised concerns about blatant interference in editorial policy. Admittedly, antitrust laws pose a barrier to mergers between major media groups. Even so, given Trump’s readiness to intervene in personnel decisions at the Justice Department, fears of political pressure on the media appear increasingly realistic. 

Also on February 27, the Trump administration announced that it would exclude Anthropic PBC, an AI technology company, from doing business with all federal agencies. The decision came after Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, demanded that the U.S. military comply with the company’s terms of service, which prohibit the use of its technology to “develop fully autonomous weapons systems without human intervention” or to conduct “mass surveillance of American citizens.” President Trump reacted angrily and ordered federal agencies, as well as companies supplying goods and services to the U.S. military, to halt transactions with Anthropic. Yet in 2023, the United States itself played a leading role in the political declaration adopted at the first summit on Responsible Artificial Intelligence in the Military Domain (REAIM). The declaration referred to the need for legal measures to ensure that AI capabilities are used in accordance with international law, particularly international humanitarian law. Now, however, the United States appears to be heading in the exact opposite direction. Global predictability, the rule of law, and a path toward international cooperation are all at stake. How these can be restored is precisely where Japan can make a contribution of its own.

This Week’s Focus, February 22 – March 5, 2026
Takashi Mizukoshi, the President