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National home prices rose +0.5% year-over-year between May 2024 and May 2025, according to the Zillow Home Value Index reading published last weeka decelerated rate from the +3.9% year-over-year rate between May 2023 and May 2024.
And more metro area housing markets are seeing declines.
> 31 of the nations 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 10% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the January 2024 to January 2025 window.
> 42 of the nations 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 14% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the February 2024 to February 2025 window.
> 60 of the nations 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 20% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the March 2024 to March 2025 window.
> 80 of the nations 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 27% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the April 2024 to April 2025 window.
> 96 of the nations 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 32% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the May 2024 to May 2025 window.
While 32% of the 300 largest housing markets are currently experiencing year-over-year home price declines, that share is gradually increasing as the supply-demand balance continues to shift directionally toward buyers in this affordability-constrained and post-housing boom environment.
Home prices are still climbing in many regions where active inventory remains well below pre-pandemic 2019 levels, such as pockets of the Northeast and Midwest. In contrast, some pockets in states like Arizona, Texas, Florida, Colorado, and Louisianawhere active inventory exceeds pre-pandemic 2019 levelsare seeing modest home price corrections.
Year-over-year home value declines, using the Zillow Home Value Index, are evident in major metros such as Austin (-5.5%); Tampa (-5.4%); Dallas (-3.4%); Phoenix (-3.4%); San Antonio (-3.3%); Orlando (-3.2%); Miami (-3.2%); Jacksonville, Florida (-3.0%); Atlanta (-2.7%); San Francisco (-2.5%); Denver (-2.4%); New Orleans (-2.3%); San Diego (-1.9%); Raleigh (-1.8%); Houston (-1.5%); Sacramento (-1.4%); Charlotte (-0.9%); Memphis (-0.9%); Riverside (-0.8%); Portland (-0.5%); Birmingham (-0.3%); and Seattle (-0.1%).
Click here for an interactive version of the chart below
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The markets seeing the most softness, where homebuyers have gained the most leverage, are primarily located in Sun Belt regions, particularly the Gulf Coast and Mountain West. Many of these areas saw major price surges during the Pandemic Housing Boom, with home price growth outpacing local income levels. As pandemic-driven domestic migration slowed and mortgage rates rose, markets like Tampa and Austin faced challenges, relying on local income levels to support frothy home prices. This softening trend is further compounded by an abundance of new home supply in the Sun Belt. Builders are often willing to lower prices or offer affordability incentives to maintain sales, which also has a cooling effect on the resale market. Some buyers, who would have previously considered existing homes, are now opting for new homes with more favorable deals.
Given the shift in active housing inventory and months of supply, along with the soft level of appreciation in more markets this spring, ResiClub expects the number of metro areas with year-over-year home price declines in the Zillow Home Value Index to continue ticking up in the coming months.
This softening and regional variation should not surprise ResiClub PRO membersweve been closely documenting it. ResiClub PRO members can view our latest analysis of home prices across +800 metros and +3,000 counties here.
Is it time to BeReal again?
In 2022, the photo-sharing app surged in popularity, won Apples App of the Year, and even earned its own SNL skit. Once a day, at a random time, users were prompted to post a picture of whatever they were doing. With a 2-minute timer and one shot to make it count, the apps premise was to capture real moments in real time.
But like most viral sensations, the novelty wore off. Downloads dropped, usage stagnated, and in 2023, the app was sold to French gaming company Voodoo for 500 million.
Now, BeReal wants a second chance.
At Cannes Lions this year, Managing Director Ben Moore shared the companys comeback plan. We have people that are committed to building the next big thing with BeReal, Moore told Business Insider. We can make something that really answers the demands of Gen Z, who are sick and tired of the filters, of the lenses, of the social pressure of posting something thats not going to get them the level of views and likes they would want.
Moore claims the app still has around 40 million active users, mainly in Japan, France, and the U.S. In 2023, worldwide downloads totaled an estimated 31.5 million, which dropped 60% year-over-year to 12.7 million in 2024. According to Sensor Tower, year-to-date downloads are down 50% compared to last year.
For its relaunch, BeReal is trying to win back users by investing in advertising, primarily on other apps owned by Voodoo Games. The team is also hoping to generate buzz through micro ambassadors on college campuses and by sponsoring parties where entry requires downloading the app.
They are giving the app a facelift too, with new features like nearby, which lets users discover others in their area, and suggestions for people who post similar kinds of pictures. We really want to bring back the social aspect of what social media was built for, Moore said.
But BeReals magic wasnt in its features. It was in the cultural momenta collective pause from the algorithm for a fleeting sense of connection (even if it was just a selfie at your desk four days in a row).
Can lightning strike twice?
Basketball fans will be keeping their eye on New York tonight for the first round of the 2025 NBA draft at Barclays Center, home of the Brooklyn Nets, with an 8 p.m. ET tip-off in Brooklyn. Round two takes place tomorrow, Thursday, June 26, at the same time and same place.
There will be a total of 59 picks this year, and fans will be watching tonight to see if the Duke Blue Devils’ Cooper Flagg will be going to the Dallas Mavericks, who have the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft.
The draft also has a number of excellent shooters, led by two freshmen: Tre Johnson of the Texas Longhorns and Duke’s Kon Knueppel. It also has some excellent “3 and D” prospects, or those who excel at both three-pointers and defense: Arizona Wildcats’ Carter Bryant, Saint Joseph’s Hawks’ Rasheer Fleming, and Washington State Cougars’ Cedric Coward.
Here’s a look at the order of selections for tonight’s first round of the NBA draft.
First Round
Dallas Mavericks
San Antonio Spurs
Philadelphia 76ers
Charlotte Hornets
Utah Jazz
Washington Wizards
New Orleans Pelicans
Brooklyn Nets
Toronto Raptors
Houston Rockets (Reportedly traded to Phoenix)
Portland Trail Blazers
Chicago Bulls
Atlanta Hawks
San Antonio
Oklahoma City Thunder
Memphis Grizzlies
Minnesota Timberwolves
Washington
Brooklyn
Miami Heat
Utah
Atlanta (Reportedly traded to Brooklyn)
New Orleans
Oklahoma City
Orlando Magic
Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Boston Celtics
Phoenix Suns
Los Angeles Clippers
NBA Draft 2025: Why only 59 picks?
Instead of the usual 60 picks, this year there are only 59. Why? Blame it on the New York Knicks, who were denied their second-round pick as a result of talking to Jalen Brunson before free agency discussions were allowed in 2022, The New York Times reported. (Brunson went on become the Knicks’ best player, averaging 26 points and 7.3 assists per game, according to ESPN.)
How can I watch or stream the NBA Draft live?
In the United States, the NBA draft 2025 will air live on ABC and ESPN. ABC is available for traditional cable viewers and free with an over-the-air antenna. Cable subscribers can also watch ABC live through the ABC website and via its mobile apps.
Cord-cutters also have the option to stream ABC on a live-TV streaming service that offers the network as part of a bundle, including Fubo, YouTube TV, or Hulu + Live TV.
The 2025 NBA draft can also be accessed on SiriusXM, ESPN Radio, ESPN Deportes, and the ESPN app.
U.S. stocks are hanging near their all-time high on Wednesday as financial markets catch a breath following two big days bolstered by hopes that the Israel-Iran war will not disrupt the global flow of crude oil.
The S&P 500 was mostly unchanged in afternoon trading and sitting just 0.9% below its all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 121 points, or 0.3%, as of 12:52 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.2% higher.
In the oil market, which has been the center of much of this weeks action, crude prices stabilized after plunging by roughly $10 per barrel in the last two days. Benchmark U.S. crude rose 2.2% to $65.79 per barrel, though it still remains below where it was before the fighting between Israel and Iran broke out nearly two weeks ago.
A fragile ceasefire between the two countries appears to be holding, at least for the moment.
On Wall Street, companies involved in the cryptocurrency industry rose as the price of bitcoin continued to steam ahead with investors willing to take on more risk. Coinbase Global, the crypto exchange, climbed 1.2%, and Robinhood Markets gained 0.4% as bitcoin topped $107,000.
QuantumScape jumped 31.5% after announcing a breakthrough in its process for making solid-state batteries. Solid state battery technology promises to improve electric vehicle range, decrease charging times and minimize the risk of battery fires. But they are expensive to research and difficult to manufacture at a large scale, giving them a reputation for being a Holy Grail for battery engineers all over the world.
They helped offset a 2% drop for FedEx. It reported stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected, but it gave a forecast for profit in the current quarter that fell short of expectations.
General Mills, the company behind Pillsbury and Progresso soups, fell 4.1% after reporting weaker revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected, though its profit topped forecasts. It also said an underlying measure of profits could fall by 10% to 15% this upcoming fiscal year.
In the bond market, Treasury yields were holding relatively steady, and the yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.31% from 4.30% late Tuesday.
Yields had dropped a day before after the chair of the Federal Reserve said it is waiting for the right moment to resume cutting interest rates. By lowering rates, the Fed could help give the economy a boost, but it could also offer additional fuel for inflation.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell told a House of Representatives committee on Tuesday that he wants to wait and see how President Donald Trumps tariffs affect the economy and inflation before committing to its next move.
Powell echoed many of the same statements in testimony before a Senate committee on Wednesday and said, For the time being, we are well positioned to wait to learn more about the likely course of the economy before considering any adjustments to our policy stance.
In stock markets abroad, indexes fell modestly in Europe after rising across much of Asia.
Stocks jumped 1.2% in Hong Kong and 1% in Shanghai for two of the larger moves.
The world can now move on to face other difficult choices like tariffs and things like that, said Frances Lun, CEO of GEO Securities in Hong Kong. So I think the market is well on its way to rebound and could again reach new levels.
Stan Choe, AP business writer
AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
Bumble is cutting a third of its workforce, the latest sign that all is not well in the business of online dating.
The company informed its staff of the layoffs in a letter from founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd on Wednesday, describing the company and the dating industry as reaching an inflection point. In recent months, weve been rebuildingreturning to what makes us trusted, unique, and deeply human, Wolfe Herd wrote. But intentional rebuilding requires hard decisions.
Bumbles workforce reduction will affect 240 positions, reducing the companys head count by 30%. In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Bumble said that it expects the layoffs to save $40 million annuallycash that it plans to reinvest into product and technology development.
The company expects to pay between $13 and $18 million in costs related to the layoffs in the third and fourth quarters of the year. On Wednesday, Bumbles shares rose more than 20% on news of the layoffs and were trading around $6.26 at the time of writing.
The reality is, we need to take decisive action to restructure to build a company thats resilient, intentional, and ready for the next decade, Wolfe Herd wrote. We have reset our strategy and are going back to a startup mentalityrooted in an ownership mindset and team structures designed for faster, more meaningful execution.
Wolfe Herd left her role as Bumbles CEO at the beginning of 2024, with former Slack CEO Lidiane Jones stepping in to lead the company. In March of this year, Jones resigned for personal reasons, and Wolfe Herd again took the helm of the company she founded in 2014 after cofounding Tindernow Bumbles main rival.
Dating app decline
Bumble, which has historically put women in the drivers seat of the online dating experience, has struggled to find its footing in a post-pandemic online dating world where many former users feel burned out by the churn of dating apps. The company isnt alone in that struggledating giant Match Group announced its own major layoffs last monthbut Bumble has resorted to altering its own DNA to adapt to a changing landscape for users looking for love.
Last year, Bumble announced that men on its app would be allowed to message women first, a huge change for a dating system thats prided itself on letting women make the initial move. The feature, called Opening Moves, let women set prompts on their profiles that men could choose to respond to.
The gamble doesnt appear to have made a lasting impact on Bumbles bottom line, and the companys stock continued to slide into 2025. Bumble first went public in 2021 with its buzzy stock debuting at more than $70 a sharea distant memory from the stocks recent single digit values.
Bumbles woes are shared by Match Group, its biggest rival, which owns Tinder, OkCupid, Hinge, and a deep roster of other niche and general interest dating apps. The two competitors, which together account for nearly all of the online dating market share, lost more than $40 billion combined between 2021 and 2024.
Online dating is a strange business in some ways. While hookup apps like Grindr might beg to differ, a successful dating app interaction could result in both users leaving the app for a long stretch, or even forever.
That intrinsic paradox is a tricky business to begin with, but the more dire existential threat might be that neither Match Group nor Bumble can seem to crack the code of Gen Zs dating habits. So far, that emerging cohort of eligible singles isnt very interested in paying for a subscription on a dating app and, worse yet, might be looking for love IRL, of all places.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers on Wednesday vowed to keep Chinese artificial intelligence systems out of federal agencies while pledging to ensure the U.S. will prevail against China in the global AI competition.
We are in a new Cold War, and AI is the strategic technology at the center, said Rep. John Moolenaar, the Republican chair of the House Select Committee on China, as he opened a hearing on the matter. The future balance of power may very well be determined by who leads in AI.
The hearing on Capitol Hill comes about five months after a Chinese technology startup called DeepSeek introduced an AI model that rivaled platforms from OpenAI and Google in performance, but cost only a fraction to build. This raised concerns that China was catching up to the U.S. despite restrictions on chips and other key technologies used to develop AI.
The ever-tighter race is now a central part of the U.S.-China rivalry. And so much is at stake that the U.S. must win, witnesses told the congressional panel.
The two countries are in a long-term techno-security competition that will determine the shape of the global political order for the coming years, said Thomas Mahnken, president and CEO of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
Jack Clark, cofounder and head of policy at Anthropic, told the committee that AI has built-in values.
I know that AI systems are a reflection of the societies they are built from. AI built in democracies will lead to better technology for all of humanity. AI built in authoritarian nations will . . . be inescapably intertwined and imbued with authoritarianism, Clark said. We must take decisive action to ensure America prevails.
Earlier this year, Chris Lehane, OpenAIs head of global affairs, told reporters in Paris that the U.S. and China were the only two countries in the world that could build AI at scale. The competition, which he described as one between democratic AI and autocratic AI, is very real and very serious, and the stakes are enormous, he said, for the global rails of AI will be built by one of those two countries.
The 2025 AI Index Report by Stanford Universitys Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence center has the U.S. in the lead in producing top AI models. But the report notes China is rapidly closing the performance gap, reaching near parity in 2024 on several major benchmarks. It also shows that China leads in AI publications and patents.
At the hearing, Clark urged the lawmakers to maintain and strengthen export controls of advanced chips to China. This competition fundamentally runs on compute, he said. The U.S. must control the flow of powerful chips to China, Clark said, or else you’re giving them the tools they will need to build powerful AI to harm American interests.
Mark Beall Jr., president of government affairs at The AI Policy Network, said there are a number of very glaring gaps in the U.S. export controls that have allowed China to obtain controlled chips. Lawmakers earlier this year introduced a bill to track such chips to ensure they would not be diverted to the wrong hands.
In another legislative step, Republican and Democratic lawmakers in both the House and the Senate on Wednesday introduced a bill to ban Chinese AI systems in the federal government.
The U.S. must draw a hard line: Hostile AI systems have no business operating inside our government, Moolenaar said.
The No Adversarial AI Act, as proposed, seeks to identify AI systems developed by foreign adversaries and ban their use in the U.S. government, with exceptions for use in research and counter-terrorism.
By Didi Tang, Associated Press
Zohran Mamdani, 33, a New York City assemblymember who was practically a political unknown prior to his campaign, is the presumptive winner of the New York mayoral primary.
On Tuesday evening, Mamdani led the first-choice vote count with 44% of the vote. Former Governor Andrew Cuomo, trailing at 36%, conceded the race in a major upset.
On Wednesday morning, Mamdani spoke to supporters in an emotional speech in which he quoted Nelson Mandela, saying, “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”
New Yorkers have a city where they can do more than just struggle, one where those who toil in the night can enjoy the fruits of their labor in the day, where hard work is repaid with a stable life, he continued. The mayor will use their power to reject Donald Trumps fascism, to stop masked ice agents from deporting our mayor, and to govern our city as a model for the Democratic Party, a party where we fight for working people with no apology.”
When will all the votes be counted?
Due to New York City’s ranked voting system, which allows voters to cast five votes on their ballot, the final tally will take some time. Since none of the candidates received more than 50% of the vote on Tuesday night, ranked choice voting will determine the true winner (though Mamdani is the clear presumptive winner) until a candidate reaches that threshold.According to the Associated Press, ranked-choice tabulations won’t start until July 1, so the city has time to receive mail-in ballots. New Yorkers and other interested parties can stay up-to-date with the latest counts on the New York Times‘ live election result page. Find it here.
What to know about Zohran Mamdani
Tuesday night’s historic win makes Mandani the first Muslim candidate to ever win the mayoral primary in the state of New York. He did so by running his campaign on issues including making New York City an affordable place for residents, by freezing rent, making childcare free, and making public transportation accessible to everyone. He also wants to increase taxes on big corporations, as well as the wealthiest New Yorkers.Mamdani positioned himself as a candidate who will fight for the people to make their lives better and easiersomething many don’t feel their leaders are all that concerned with at present. He also proved during his campaign that he would not back down in the face of name-calling and propaganda.
The young candidate managed to captivate New York voters, a population that’s heavily Jewish, while speaking up for Palestinian rights. In this contentious political climate, that’s not a small task. As the war between Israel and Hamas wages on in Gaza, pro-Palestine speech has been heavily politicized, and even deemed “hate speech” or anti-semetic in some cases. But Mamdani has repeatedly pushed back on the narrative that speaking out against the war is anti-semetic.
What has the reaction to Zohran Mamdani’s win been?
Mamdani’s presumptive win Tuesday has set off a massive reaction across the country and on social media. There seems to be a strong feeling that the candidate’s win could set off a firestorm of candidates with similar, socialist views being elected elsewhere in the nation.“Congratulations to @zohrankmamdani on an historic victory tonight,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who endorsed Mamdani, posted on Instagram. “Its time we acknowledge that not all Democrats are the same. Weve got people, theyve got money.”
While those who wanted to see the young candidate take the race are thrilled with the presumed victory, not everyone is so pleased. The historic results have sparked outrage among MAGA supporters.
Conservative commentator Laura Loomer posted a series of tweets on X in which she floated the idea that a Muslim mayor could lead to attacks on NYC. “There will be another 9/11 in NYC and @ZohranKMamdani will be to blame,” she wrote.New Yorkers forgot all about the victims of 9/11 killed by Muslims,” Loomer continued. “Now a Muslim Communist will be the mayor of New York City. Get out while you can, Loomer wrote, adding the unfounded view that Mamdani is “literally supported by terrorists.”
When is the NYC mayor general election?
While Mamdani’s presumed win is a huge victory for Democratic socialists, he still has to win the general election. Mamdani will take on Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, the lone Republican who entered the race. Sliwa is the founder of The Guardian Angels, a nonprofit known for its volunteer crime-fighting patrols.
It’s possible Andrew Cuomo will run again in the general election, too, facing off with Mamdani a second time. Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams and attorney Jim Walden will run as Independents.
The general election will take place this November.
A federal judge Tuesday ordered the Trump administration to release billions of dollars in funding for the build out of electric vehicle chargers in more than a dozen states.U.S. District Judge Tana Lin in Washington state partially granted a preliminary injunction that sought to free up the money approved under then-President Joe Biden that the Trump administration withheld earlier this year. Sixteen states and the District of Columbia sued over the move, arguing that the administration did not have the authority to block the congressionally approved funds. The program was set to allocate $5 billion over five years to various states, of which an estimated $3.3 billion had already been made available.Lin ordered that funding be released in 14 of the states, including in Arizona, California and New York. But she denied granting the preliminary injunction for D.C., Minnesota and Vermont, saying that they did not provide enough evidence that they would face “irreparable harm” if the money wasn’t immediately freed up.Lin said the Trump administration overstepped its constitutional authority when it froze the funding previously approved by Congress in 2021 as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.“When the Executive Branch treads upon the will of the Legislative Branch, and when an administrative agency acts contrary to law, it is the Court’s responsibility to remediate the situation and restore the balance of power,” she wrote.The order will go into effect July 2 unless the Trump administration appeals. The Federal Highway Administration did not immediately respond to an email request for comment on the decision.The Trump administration in February directed states to stop spending money for electric vehicle charging under the program. The move was part of a broader push by the Republican president to roll back environmental policies advanced by his Democratic predecessor.States suing the Trump administration said the decision to freeze funding halted projects midstream, requiring immediate court intervention.California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, said after the ruling that the Trump administration could not “dismiss programs illegally.”“We are pleased with today’s order blocking the Administration’s unconstitutional attempt to do so, and California looks forward to continuing to vigorously defend itself from this executive branch overreach,” he said in a statement.The Trump administration argued that it was working on new guidance for the program and was only pausing future funding in the meantime.The program was meant to assuage concerns about electric vehicles and build infrastructure along highway corridors first, then address gaps elsewhere once the state highway obligations were met.Some states with projects running under the program have already been reimbursed by the Biden-era federal funds. Others are still contracting for their sites. Still more had halted their plans by the time the Trump administration ordered states to stop their spending. Regardless, getting the chargers installed and operating has been a slow process with contracting challenges, permitting delays and complex electrical upgrades.It was expected that states would fight against the federal government’s efforts to slow the nation’s electric vehicle charger build out. New York, for example, which is part of the lawsuit, has been awarded over $175 million in federal funds from the program, and state officials say $120 million is currently being withheld by the Trump administration.
Sudhin Thanawala and Sophie Austin, Associated Press
Hackers backing Tehran have targeted U.S. banks, defense contractors and oil industry companies following American strikes on Iranian nuclear facilitiesbut so far have not caused widespread disruptions to critical infrastructure or the economy.But that could change if the ceasefire between Iran and Israel collapses or if independent hacking groups supporting Iran make good on promises to wage their own digital conflict against the U.S., analysts and cyber experts say.The U.S. strikes could even prompt Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea to double down on investments in cyberwarfare, according to Arnie Bellini, a tech entrepreneur and investor.Bellini noted that hacking operations are much cheaper than bullets, planes or nuclear armswhat defense analysts call kinetic warfare. America may be militarily dominant, he said, but its reliance on digital technology poses a vulnerability.“We just showed the world: You don’t want to mess with us kinetically,” said Bellini, CEO of Bellini Capital. “But we are wide open digitally. We are like Swiss cheese.”
Hackers have hit banks and defense contractors
Two pro-Palestinian hacking groups claimed they targeted more than a dozen aviation firms, banks and oil companies following the U.S. strikes over the weekend.The hackers detailed their work in a post on the Telegram messaging service and urged other hackers to follow their lead, according to researchers at the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks the groups’ activity.The attacks were denial-of-service attacks, in which a hacker tries to disrupt a website or online network.“We increase attacks from today,” one of the hacker groups, known as Mysterious Team, posted Monday.Federal authorities say they are on guard for additional attempts by hackers to penetrate U.S. networks.The Department of Homeland Security issued a public bulletin Sunday warning of increased Iranian cyber threats. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a statement Tuesday urging organizations that operate critical infrastructure like water systems, pipelines or power plants to stay vigilant.While it lacks the technical abilities of China or Russia, Iran has long been known as a “chaos agent” when it comes to using cyberattacks to steal secrets, score political points or frighten opponents.Cyberattacks mounted by Iran’s government may end if the ceasefire holds and Tehran looks to avoid another confrontation with the U.S. But hacker groups could still retaliate on Iran’s behalf.In some cases, these groups have ties to military or intelligence agencies. In other cases, they act entirely independently. More than 60 such groups have been identified by researchers at the security firm Trustwave.These hackers can inflict significant economic and psychological blows. Following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, for instance, hackers penetrated an emergency alert app used by some Israelis and directed it to inform users that a nuclear missile was incoming.“It causes an immediate psychological impact,” said Ziv Mador, vice president of security research at Trustwave’s SpiderLabs, which tracks cyberthreats.Economic disruption, confusion and fear are all the goals of such operations, said Mador, who is based in Israel. “We saw the same thing in Russia-Ukraine.”
Collecting intelligence is another aim for hackers
While Iran lacks the cyberwarfare capabilities of China or Russia, it has repeatedly tried to use its more modest operations to try to spy on foreign leaderssomething national security experts predict Tehran is almost certain to try again as it seeks to suss out President Donald Trump’s next moves.Last year, federal authorities charged three Iranian operatives with trying to hack Trump’s presidential campaign. It would be wrong to assume Iran has given up those efforts, according to Jake Williams, a former National Security Agency cybersecurity expert who is now vice president of research and development at Hunter Strategy, a Washington-based cybersecurity firm.“It’s fairly certain that these limited resources are being used for intelligence collection to understand what Israel or the U.S. might be planning next, rather than performing destructive attacks against U.S. commercial organizations,” Williams said.
The Trump administration has cut cybersecurity programs and staff
Calls to bolster America’s digital defense come as the Trump administration has moved to slash some cybersecurity programs as part of its effort to shrink the size of government.CISA has placed staffers who worked on election security on leave and cut millions of dollars in funding for cybersecurity programs for local and state elections.The CIA, NSA and other intelligence agencies also have seen reductions in staffing. Trump abruptly fired Gen. Timothy Haugh, who oversaw the NSA and the Pentagon’s Cyber Command.The Israel-Iran conflict shows the value of investments in cybersecurity and cyber offense, Mador said. He said Israel’s strikes on Iran, which included attacks on nuclear scientists, required sophisticated cyberespionage that allowed Israel to track its targets.Expanding America’s cyber defenses will require investments in education as well as technical fixes to ensure connected devices or networks aren’t vulnerable, said Bellini, who recently contributed $40 million toward a new cybersecurity center at the University of South Florida.There is a new arms race when it comes to cyberwar, Bellini said, and it’s a contest America can’t afford to lose.“It’s Wile E. Coyote vs. the Road Runner,” Bellini said. “It will go back and forth, and it will never end.”
David Klepper, Associated Press
Whos monitoring the situation right now?
As headlines continue to be dominated by news of missile attacks, retaliations, and calls for ceasefire, there are no shortage of situations to monitor. And X users are responding to the call to arms.
Me monitoring the situation with the boys, one X post reads. I bet hes texting other women, reads another. She doesnt know Im monitoring the situation. A third wrote: I never see you at the club. I never see you monitoring the situation.
me monitoring the situation with the boys pic.twitter.com/eiLA7lrOUF— Memelord Technologies (@memelordtech) June 14, 2025
The meme speaks to the compulsion to continually refresh social media during times of political turmoilpulling down at the top of the scroll for the next update. Its not doomscrolling; its monitoring the situation.
This isnt the first time the meme has surfaced on social media. The idea of monitoring the situation has been used in memes throughout the 2010s, making it hard to pin down exactly when the first known meme to use the phrase was uploaded online, Phillip Hamilton wrote on the website Know Your Meme.
Now, its experiencing a resurgence on X following Israels military strikes against Iran, which were followed by U.S. strikes and, most recently, Irans missile attack on a U.S. base in Qatar. In the aftermath, Google searches for is the US going to war spiked nearly 5,000%, while World War III searches surged almost 2,000%, according to Google Trends.
Reddit threads like Is WW3 slowly happening? and Do you think World War 3 is a real possibility? have been flooded with anxious users. Over on TikTok, users took a predictably unserious approach to the collective anxiety over global events. First war, whats the dress code, one post reads over footage of missiles flying overhead. When I get drafted into WW3 but they let me bring my AirPods, another viral post reads, soundtracked to Taylor Swift.
@mikaelarellano RATATATATATA #taylorswift #swiftie #ww3 I Did Something Bad – Taylor Swift
While the fears felt by people around the world as the situation continues to unfold are genuine and warrantedas those who grew up witnessing U.S. invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan can attestusing memes as a coping mechanism is nothing new.
As one X user put it: Men will literally monitor the situation instead of going to therapy.”
