10 Sunday Reads
Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• I Deliberately Bet Like a Problem Gambler . DraftKings Made Me a VIP . Jake Pearson blew $1,800 in one night chasing losses with bigger bets, a textbook warning sign. The next day DraftKings invited him to audition for its VIP program. ( ProPublica )
• How Cities Are Forced to Funnel License Plate Data to a Massive Federal Surveillance Program : How the federal government built a massive database of license plate reader data through an anti-drug trafficking program. ( 404 ) see also 19 Out of 21 Late-Model Cars Tested Shared Data With 3rd Parties, Including Big Tech : Infotainment screens and connected features are now standard, and a new study finds nearly every car tested is passing driver data along to outside companies. A new study from Northeastern University finds late-model vehicles and their companion apps are sending vast swaths of information out. ( Road & Track )
• Inside Man: How Chinese spies used lies, love and betrayal to target the Federal Reserve : The’ descent from senior Fed official to espionage suspect appears to have been driven by his desire for female companionship. This desire was exploited by a Chinese government agent, who became increasingly entwined in Rogers’ professional and personal life. Rogers’ indiscretion was later exploited by online blackmail scammers, ultimately leading to his downfall. Eamon Javers reconstructs the espionage case against former Fed economist John Harold Rogers. ( CNBC )
• The Volunteer Internet Sleuths Hunting Down Rogue AI Agents : After OpenAI disclosed how its agents had broken loose, independent researchers like Selena Zhang started digging for themselves. Gerrit De Vynck on what they’re finding. ( Washington Post )
• Insurance doesn’t protect US adults from medical debt, Commonwealth Fund finds : One-third of privately insured adults have unpaid debt to a healthcare provider, illustrating how medical debt isn’t limited to uninsured people or those facing major medical emergencies. ( Healthcare Dive )
• She’s 28, Loves God and Her Family, and Might Be the Reason You Can’t Have Kids : No IVF. No surrogacy. No polygenic tests. Emma Waters is leading a national fight against fertility tech—with her hot husband’s permission, of course. ( Wired ) but see The Babies Left Behind in America : Caitlin Dickerson on the family-separation fallout of ICE enforcement, starting with Estela Garcia and 2-year-old Eber and the morning routine they share. ( The Atlantic )
• Ospreys are disappearing along the East Coast. Scientists think they know why . At the center of a widening crisis for one of the nation’s great wildlife comebacks is a fish most Americans would hardly recognize. Mark Robichaux on Bryan Watts, the William & Mary biologist who watched the Chesapeake become home to the world’s largest breeding population of ospreys after DDT, and is now watching it unravel. ( Washington Post )
• The CIA Killed Him. The Navy Blamed My Friend. : Seth Hettena on former Navy SEAL Dan Cerrillo, who went to his grave insisting he took the fall for a prisoner’s death in Iraq that the CIA was responsible for. ( Seth Hettena )
• The Unitary Executive Theory in All of Its Historical Perversity : Jack Rakove, the Stanford constitutional historian, on the misinformed idea underlying much of John Roberts’s Supreme Court. ( Washington Monthly ) see also Why Do So Many People Think Trump Is Good? David Brooks takes the question seriously rather than rhetorically. (From July 2025.) The work of the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre helps illuminate some central questions of our time. ( The Atlantic )
• The Four TV Shows That Heralded America’s Fall : “The Sopranos,” “The Wire,” “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad,” besides being among the best shows the medium has ever produced, together served as a televisual Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Two hundred years from now, when people look to understand life in the United States in 2026, they’d be well advised to bypass whatever happens to be playing currently on TV. ( NY Times )
Video of the day : China’s “Revolutionary” Concrete Is Already Cracking — Experts Call It a Scam
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Omar Aguilar, President, Chief Executive Officer, and Chief Investment Officer of Schwab Asset Management, which runs more than $1 trillion across over 100 ETFs, mutual funds, and separately managed account strategies. He has held both the CEO and CIO titles since 2022
The Senate map is up for grabs
Source: Washington Post
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