Weekly Preflight: 6 Things to Watch in Global Security | Week of August 3, 2026
Trump canceled the "biggest attack since World War II," Russia floated a hypersonic submarine while burning through its hypersonic missiles in Ukraine, and more!
Think of this as your weekly strategic weather report exclusively for paid subscribers. Five Six things to watch and what could break next in war, defense tech, and geopolitics. Just the pressure points most likely to shape the next seven days.
I try to keep this a no-nonsense, high-level brief to start your week… But snark occasionally seeps in.
If you want to understand how I build my OSINT dashboard, I wrote about my workflow here:
Source links in the text. Let’s jump in:
BLUF:
Trump canceled the biggest attack since World War II and Iran said there are no talks.
Russia floated a hypersonic submarine while burning through its hypersonic missiles in Ukraine.
Ebola set a weekly record for cases and deaths simultaneously.
Hungary lost 40% of its electricity in a heat wave.
Sudan killed 35 people in Darfur with a drone strike that barely made a ripple in the news.
Plus, Russian planes dropped eight glide bombs in a span of 90 minutes on residential districts of Zaporizhzhia. Stay sharp.
1. Trump Called Off “The Biggest Attack Since World War II.” Iran Says There Are No Talks
Trump said Sunday he decided not to carry out major strikes against Iran at the urging of Gulf allies Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, saying a plan was in place for US forces to carry out “the biggest attack since World War II,” but that he decided to give diplomacy more time after hearing from key Gulf leaders, as well as at the request of unnamed Iranian officials.
“Now what we’re doing is we’re talking to them in the form of a negotiation. It begins tomorrow afternoon,” he said, without providing further details or saying who would be involved.
