Satellite images show Iran shifted strikes to buildings where US troops slept

U.S. military installations lost critical defense systems and suffered billions in damage

Iran’s missile campaign against U.S. forces in the Middle East took a turn in July, when Tehran began taking more direct aim at the buildings American troops lived and slept in, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of tens of thousands of satellite images. By analyzing the images, the Journal identified hundreds of damaged buildings across more than two dozen installations — what the newspaper called the most comprehensive public accounting of the war’s damage to American facilities to date.

The Pentagon has said little publicly about the destruction, the Journal reported. U.S. military installations have lost critical defense systems and suffered billions of dollars in damage, and Iranian attacks have forced the United States to move troops off several bases.

The balance of power is also shifting in the financing of the AI boom, the Journal reported in a piece by Peter Rudegeair, Robbie Whelan and Jack Pitcher. For years, the companies behind America’s artificial-intelligence boom raised hundreds of billions of dollars with ease. Now lenders and investors are getting choosier about where to place their bets and are demanding tougher terms, a shift the Journal reported as signaling a new phase in the AI build-out.

Disappointing earnings reports from technology companies this week prompted a rout in AI-related stocks and bonds, leading Friday to one of the biggest market selloffs since the AI boom began, the Journal reported.

The technology’s accelerating self-development emerged in a chart published by Anthropic showing how much of the company’s AI research and development is being done by AI. As recently as March, AI led only 1% of that research; by August, it was leading 26%. “As this technology accelerates its own evolution, the risk is that we struggle to keep pace and keep it under control,” columnist Ben Cohen wrote.

The shift is visible in the snack aisle as well. Goldfish, one of Campbell’s four biggest brands, faces falling sales, and Campbell’s stock has slipped 29% over the past year, the Journal reported. Eating habits have changed, with people eating less canned soup and fewer packaged snacks, and to appeal to parents the company has embarked on a five-year quest to reinvent the children’s snack, including by making a gluten-free option.

In high-end housing developments, surfing is taking the place of golf courses, ski mountains or lakes as the main activity on offer, according to the Journal. Advances in wave-pool technology have made man-made surf lagoons the latest amenity developers are using to lure buyers, and the luxury does not come cheap — capital costs reach up to $350 million for one lagoon with a surf deck.

The items appear in the Oct. 31 edition of The 10-Point, the Journal’s newsletter guide to its coverage, curated and edited by Bharbi Hazarika and Will Horner in collaboration with Editor in Chief Emma Tucker. The edition led with the newspaper’s examination of America’s soaring federal debt and Washington’s vanishing fiscal hawks, and it pointed readers to the Journal’s live coverage of the midterm campaigns, with Election Day three days away.