Turns out writing a weekly newsletter is hard.
I finish an issue Wednesday night, and by Thursday afternoon, the cycle begins again. Sometimes the next idea is on my mind and easy to get out, practically writing itself. Other times, I have to fight for every sentence.
But I promised myself I’d hit send every week. And lately, I’ve found a rhythm. Inbox Hero is growing, and your replies, forwards, and thoughtful notes keep me going. So thank you.
Still, some weeks I wonder if I have anything worth adding. It already feels like everything is being said, everywhere, all the time. I think we all feel it. The news cycle runs on outrage and amnesia. Trump says something inflammatory, Elon shitposts a reaction, and our feeds overflow with rabid takes until the next thing catches fire.
It’s exhausting, and intentional. Rage gets engagement and confusion keeps us scrolling.
And nestled between is an Athletic Greens ad, promising better focus in a world designed to shatter it.
So this week, I’m introducing something new: Buried Ledes.
Buried Ledes is a standing, end-of-month issue where I’ll surface the headlines, stories, and discoveries that didn’t break through, but should have. Stuff that got lost in the churn of louder, scarier, more dopamine-spiking news.
This month, a pattern emerged.
The stories below point to a shared theme: infrastructure under siege. Not just roads and cables, but the invisible scaffolding of modern life: network backbones, regulatory safeguards, even truth itself.
Some of these systems are being attacked outright. Others are quietly unraveling in fine print, legal loopholes, and bureaucratic sleight of hand.
I used a stack of AI tools, subreddits, and scraping apps to try to spot what the mainstream mostly missed.
Take a look. I’m curious what jumps out to you.
1. Undersea Internet Cables Under Attack
A new cybersecurity report flagged a disturbing pattern: undersea internet cables (the infrastructure that carries 99% of global internet traffic) are getting mysteriously cut near strategic hotspots like the Baltic Sea and the Taiwan Strait.
Russian and Chinese-linked vessels are the common thread. The incidents are growing more frequent and framed as “accidents,” but the pattern suggests state-sponsored meddling.
Hidden Weak Spot
The real story isn't the cable cuts, it's that we built the entire global economy on infrastructure we can't defend. These cables carry $10 trillion in daily financial transactions, but they're protected by... international maritime law? I think?
Compared to how we secure airports or power grids, undersea cables get a coast guard patrol and a prayer. We've created a single point of failure for civilization and left it unguarded because it's invisible.
These cable cuts are just probing attacks. Someone is mapping our weak spots, testing response times, seeing what breaks when. When a real crisis hits (Taiwan, Ukraine, the next financial meltdown) those cables won't be "accidentally" severed, they’ll be surgically targeted.
Every empire learns this eventually: the networks and infrastructure that make you powerful also make you vulnerable.
2. Environmental Review Pay-to-Play
Deep inside the “Big Beautiful Bill” is a provision that lets corporations pay a 25% application premium to fast-track their environmental reviews. At the same time, Congress eliminated funding for climate data, pollution monitoring, and endangered species tracking, meaning the agencies reviewing these projects are under resourced.
Regulation for Sale
This goes beyond environmental policy. We're watching the systematic dismantling of equal treatment under the law. Your ability to comply with regulations now depends on your ability to pay for speed.
The mechanism is brilliant in its simplicity: defund the agencies, then offer corporations a way to buy their way out of the resulting delays. The premium is technically available to everyone, but only companies that can afford an extra 25% will get timely reviews from agencies that now lack the resources to review everyone properly.
This creates a feedback loop that kills competition, as startups and smaller companies get stuck in regulatory purgatory and incumbents buy their way through. The companies that can afford to pay premiums get to market faster, generate more revenue, and can afford even more premiums next time.
We're auctioning off market access. The winners will be determined by who can afford to skip the line, not who has the best product or even who follows the law.
In five years, when every federal agency operates on this model, we'll wonder how we accidentally turned regulatory compliance into a luxury service.
3. Trump Revisits the 2016 Election
In July, DNI Tulsi Gabbard released a declassified report accusing the Obama administration of politicizing the 2017 intelligence assessment that concluded Russia interfered to help Trump. The report claims the process was rushed, selectively sourced, and shaped by political pressure from Obama-era officials.
The New York Times concedes the new material complicates the picture, but they argue it doesn’t disprove the core conclusion that Russia sought to undermine Clinton and elevate Trump.
Narrative Warfare
This story got buried because election interference fatigue is real. The moment you mention 2016 or Russia, people tune out. But this isn't another rehash of old grievances.
Trump is weaponizing the classification system. By selectively declassifying reports that make Obama look bad while keeping everything else secret, he's turned government transparency into a partisan weapon.
The precedent is scary: whoever controls classification now controls the historical record.
The real target isn't Obama or 2016. It's the concept of authoritative intelligence itself. If intelligence assessments are just "politicized documents," then future warnings about foreign interference lose all credibility. When agencies sound the alarm about 2028, Trump can point to this moment and dismiss it as partisan theater.
We're both 1) relitigating the past and 2) sabotaging our ability to identify real threats in the future. By the time actual interference happens, we'll have destroyed the very systems designed to catch it.
The infrastructure being attacked here isn't physical cables or regulatory agencies. It's our capacity to agree on basic facts about threats to democracy.