AI Library
The Age of Autonomous Scientific Discovery
Kim Kyung-jin, Attorney at Law
AI Scientists and Self-Driving Labs
This book follows how AI scientists and self-driving labs are changing the way science generates and verifies claims. It covers literature-based discovery, natural-language protocols translated into robot commands, multi-agent research systems, closed-loop laboratories, materials search, the verification gap, chains of evidence, research harnesses, journal ethics, and legal responsibility.
AI Library
A New Era of Life Sciences Opened by Artificial Intelligence
Structural Proteomics, Genomic Foundation Models, Autonomous Laboratories, and Global Governance
Kim Kyung-jin, Attorney at Law
This book is a research volume compiled with artificial intelligence. A human selected the materials and structured the work, while AI models drafted the sentences and cross-checked the facts.
AI Library
The Double Structure of Digital Sovereignty
Europe’s Departure from Palantir and the Chains of American Big Tech
Kim Kyung-jin, Attorney at Law
This is a record of 2026, when European intelligence agencies and defense ministries began removing analytics tools from America’s Palantir. It covers the replacement decisions made by France’s General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI), Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), and the Netherlands Ministry of Defense; the incident in which US export controls severed an ally’s ac…
New English Edition
Artificial Intelligence in Horticulture
Kim Kyung-jin, Attorney at Law
Across five chapters and ten sections, this book examines computer vision for crop diagnosis, harvesting robots and autonomous field systems, smart greenhouses and digital twins, precision irrigation and supply-chain quality control, high-throughput phenotyping, and predictive breeding.
New English Edition
Artificial Intelligence in Food Crop Agriculture
Kim Kyung-jin, Attorney at Law
Across six chapters and eighteen sections, the book examines digital agricultural infrastructure, remote sensing, crop diagnosis, yield forecasting, precision irrigation, genomics, molecular breeding, agricultural robotics, climate-smart agriculture, and global food security.
New English Edition
The Future of Forestry and Agroforestry
Kim Kyung-jin, Attorney at Law
Driven by Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation
Across five chapters and fifteen sections, the book follows satellites, drones, LiDAR, digital twins, forest-specific language models, wildfire and pest forecasting, forestry robotics, agroforestry, timber traceability, and forest carbon markets.
New English Edition
Smart Livestock Farming: AI Enters the Barn
Kim Kyung-jin, Attorney at Law
Sensors listen, cameras watch, and artificial intelligence helps farmers decide.
Across five chapters and fifteen sections, the book follows precision livestock farming from animal health and reproduction to robotic milking, virtual fencing, digital twins, methane reduction, welfare, and data ownership.
Table of Contents
Han Dong-hoon, Busan Buk-gu Gap: A Record of the 100 Days Before and After the Election (Mar. 26-Jul. 3, 2026)
Kim Kyung-jin
Table of Contents and 13 sections
From March 26 to July 3, 2026, this record follows the spring after expulsion, the Busan Buk-gu Gap by-election, victory as an independent, and the first bill submitted in the National Assembly.
Table of Contents
Artificial Intelligence and Medicine
Kim Kyung-jin, Attorney at Law
AI in clinical care, hospitals, education, and research
AI in medical imaging, risk prediction, treatment planning, hospital operations, education, and research, with patient safety, privacy, and accountability.
[AI Library] Chapter 26: The Extension of the Ultimatum
The 2026 U.S.-Iran War and the Global Energy Crisis
Chapter 26: The Extension of the Ultimatum
Kim Kyung-jin
The 2026 U.S.-Iran War and the Global Energy Crisis
Chapter 26: The Extension of the Ultimatum
26.1 April 6 Deadline
On Saturday, March 22, 2026, at 11:44 p.m. GMT, President Donald Trump posted a message in all capital letters on Truth Social from his residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida.
If Iran does not fully and peacefully open the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours, the United States will strike Iran's power plants and obliterate them beyond recognition. We will begin with the largest power plant.
It was the 22nd day since the war began. After Operation Epic Fury commenced on February 28, the United States and Israel had struck over 9,000 Iranian military targets and conducted over 9,000 combat sorties. Iran's air defense systems were mostly destroyed, and over 140 naval vessels were destroyed. Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of U.S. Central Command, said the Strait of Hormuz was "physically open." But the problem was that there were no ships willing to pass through that physically open sea. The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had laid mines on the seafloor and fired drones at any vessel attempting to pass despite warnings. On March 11, the Thai-flagged cargo ship Mayuri Natali came under drone attack while transiting the strait, suffered a fire at her stern, and three crew members went missing. The Omani Navy rescued the remaining 20.
Brent crude had surged from $73 per barrel before the war to $119.50 in the third week of March. With a rise of over 55 percent throughout March, it was recording the largest monthly gain since Brent futures trading began in 1988. Retail gasoline prices in the United States had exceeded $3.45 per gallon, and energy rationing was beginning across Asia.
The 48-hour countdown passed. Global stock markets and crude oil futures markets swung wildly. And the 48 hours expired. Iran's power plants were not struck.
On Monday, March 23, just hours before the deadline expired, President Trump reversed course. He posted again on Truth Social announcing that there had been "very good and productive dialogue" between the United States and Iran, and that he would postpone the strike on power plants for five days. Brent crude fell from $113 per barrel in the morning to just above $100 in the afternoon. It was a drop of over 10 percent. The Dow Jones index rebounded 1.38 percent.
Iran's Foreign Ministry immediately denied it. "There has been no dialogue between Tehran and Washington." Iranian state media reported that Trump had "retreated from the deadline out of fear of Iran's response." A statement from a senior Iranian diplomat obtained exclusively by CBS News read: "We have received proposals from the American side through an intermediary and are reviewing them." It was not dialogue but rather the transmission of messages through an intermediary.
The five-day reprieve passed without any result. On Thursday, March 26, President Trump posted on Truth Social again.
At the request of the Iranian government, I am extending the deadline for the destruction of energy facilities to April 6, 2026, Monday, 8:00 p.m. Eastern time, an extension of 10 days.
With this, the ultimatum had been extended twice. Forty-eight hours became five days, and five days became ten days. The Iranian government again denied that it had requested an extension. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi acknowledged the exchange of messages through an intermediary but stressed that this was "not negotiation."
Though April 6 had been set as the date, the significance of that date had already been seriously compromised. The life of a military ultimatum is credibility. If a deadline passes and nothing happens, the next deadline becomes mere numbers. Iran read the two extensions as evidence that its asymmetric deterrence was working. The United States certainly had the military capability to bomb the power plants. B-2 Spirit stealth bombers had been flying over Iranian airspace since the first day of the war. But whether America was prepared to bear the consequences of those strikes was an entirely different matter.
In Islamabad, Pakistan, Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar was maintaining a back-channel between the United States and Iran. Foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey were also participating in mediation. Reports emerged that U.S. Middle East Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner had conveyed a 15-point peace proposal to the Iranian side. Iran rejected the proposal as "excessive and unreasonable" and countered with its own five-point proposal.
In the end, the April 6 deadline was not the date of a military decision. It was a mark on the calendar showing the world that the United States was unable to make a determination between military force and economic reality, and between escalating the war and domestic political pressure.
26.2 Power Plants, Oil Fields, Kharg Island, and Desalination Facilities
The president's threat was specific. It was not just power plants. On Monday, March 30, he posted on Truth Social again: "If the Strait of Hormuz does not immediately resume operations and if a peace agreement is not concluded soon, the United States will completely destroy Iran's power plants, oil fields, Kharg Island, and perhaps all desalination facilities."
Kharg Island. A coral island about 25 kilometers off Iran's mainland coast, floating in the northern Persian Gulf with a length of 8 kilometers. Ninety percent of Iran's crude oil exports pass through the terminals on this island. Daily loading capacity is approximately 7 million barrels. While most of Iran's coastline is too shallow for very large crude carriers (VLCCs) to dock, the waters around Kharg Island are naturally deep. Storage tank capacity is approximately 30 million barrels, and according to data from Kpler, approximately 18 million barrels of crude were in storage just before the war.
The United States had already bombed Kharg Island on March 13. U.S. Central Command announced that it had struck over 90 military targets. Air defense facilities, a naval base, mine storage facilities, an airport control tower, and helicopter hangars were destroyed. President Trump called this bombing "one of the most powerful bombing campaigns in Middle Eastern history." But the petroleum infrastructure was left untouched. He stated that attacks on oil facilities had been refrained from "for reasons of decorum."
It was not for decorum. Destroying the oil infrastructure on Kharg Island would immediately halt Iran's daily crude oil exports of approximately 1.5 million barrels. According to JPMorgan's analysis, repairing the destroyed facilities would take years. The problem lay beyond that. Most of the crude oil exported from Iran goes to China. According to Kpler data, China's Iranian crude imports were 1.57 million barrels per day in February 2026 and 1.47 million barrels per day in March. Striking Kharg Island's oil infrastructure would amount to firing a direct hit at China's energy supply chain.
Inside the Pentagon, scenarios for bombing Kharg Island and scenarios for seizing it were being studied in parallel. 5,000 U.S. Marine Corps personnel and sailors were moving into the Persian Gulf. Two Marine Expeditionary Units (MEUs) were deployed. In a Financial Times interview, President Trump said that "the preferred way would be for the United States to take Iran's oil." A statement he had made to The Guardian in 1988 could become reality 38 years later. Then he had said: "I'll be tough on Iran. If they fire a single bullet at an American soldier, I'll take Kharg Island."
Iran's response was immediate. Iranian military authorities declared that if power plants or energy facilities were attacked, they would target all energy infrastructure of nations cooperating with the United States throughout the Persian Gulf as legitimate targets. Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf accused the United States of "secretly planning a ground invasion" and said the Iranian military was "waiting" for American forces.
And one word appeared: desalination plants.
Iran weaponized this word. The Gulf Arab states on the Persian Gulf coast depend on seawater desalination facilities for most of their fresh water. Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia. In these nations built upon the desert, if desalination facilities shut down, millions of people lose access to drinking water within days. Iran had already fired drones and missiles at targets near Kuwait International Airport, at Al-Udeid U.S. base in Qatar, and at Al-Dhafra base in the UAE in the early stages of the war. It demonstrated that the warnings were not empty words.
Iran's Ministry of Health commented on the U.S. threat to strike power plants as follows: cutting off electricity and fresh water supplies is like killing patients lying in hospital beds. International human rights experts and UN officials also warned that threatening attacks on civilian power plants could constitute a war crime.
Here, a conventional version of Mutual Assured Destruction was completed. If the United States destroyed Iran's Kharg Island and power plants, the Iranian economy would collapse. If Iran destroyed the Gulf nations' desalination and energy infrastructure, the entire Middle East would fall into humanitarian catastrophe. Oil prices would soar toward $200 per barrel, and global stagflation would become a reality. Analysts at Macquarie Group estimated that if the Strait of Hormuz remained closed through the end of June, Brent crude could reach $200 per barrel, equivalent to $7 per gallon for U.S. gasoline prices.
The United States had the capability to destroy Iran. Iran had the capability to take U.S. allies hostage. With their capabilities offsetting each other, President Trump's threat hung in the air, unable to be carried out.
26.3 The White House's Exit
As April 6 approached, the language emanating from the White House began to change.
On Monday, March 30, White House Spokeswoman Carolyn Levitt was asked a question before reporters: "Is President Trump willing to declare the end of the war even if Iran continues to blockade the Strait of Hormuz?" Levitt's answer was this: The United States and Israel had initiated military operations to destroy Iran's navy, dismantle its missile and drone infrastructure, weaken proxy forces in the region, and permanently block Iran's nuclear program. The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz was not included on the list of "core objectives" set by the president.
The same day, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in an Al Jazeera interview that the Strait of Hormuz would open "one way or another" after military operations concluded. Either Iran would voluntarily open it in compliance with international law, or a coalition of regional nations, including the United States, would open it.
The Wall Street Journal reported even more bluntly that President Trump had told aides he was willing to end military operations against Iran even with the Strait of Hormuz remaining largely closed. The plan was to postpone the complex operation of reopening the strait and let allies, Gulf nations, and NATO take the lead.
Unpacking the meaning of this report goes like this: the United States would declare that it had smashed Iran's military capabilities and destroyed its nuclear facilities, and then depart having left control of the Strait of Hormuz,the very trigger for the war,in the hands of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, in an interview the same day with conservative outlet Newsmax, offered a separate solution. The long-term vision was to redirect Gulf nations' energy pipelines westward, across Saudi Arabia, to the Red Sea and Mediterranean, fundamentally bypassing Iran's geographical chokepoint. Technically feasible, but pipeline construction would take years. It was not an answer to the oil price shock coming just the following month.
While the White House was constructing its exit, the war continued on the ground. On March 30, a tanker laden with Kuwaiti crude came under drone attack in waters off Dubai. The Kuwait Petroleum Corporation announced that there were no casualties and no oil spill, but it was a signal that Iran was expanding its attack range to vessels beyond the strait.
The reasons why the United States began removing strait opening from its core objectives were complex.
Physically opening the strait proved far more difficult than anticipated. The U.S. Navy announced that it had sunk 16 Iranian mine-laying vessels, but removing mines already dispersed in the water was an entirely different operation. According to U.S. Navy intelligence assessment, a minimum of 12 Iranian mines were confirmed in the strait. Iran threatened to lay additional mines and warned that if the United States struck power plants, it would mine not just the strait but "the entire Persian Gulf."
Allies did not participate in escort operations. President Trump publicly criticized NATO: "NATO could help us, but to date it has lacked the courage." France, Germany, and Britain hesitated to send warships. Japan and South Korea also made no clear military contribution. China, India, and Turkey instead pursued individual transit negotiations with Iran to secure passage for their own vessels. An NPR report showing that a Panama-flagged cargo ship crewed by Chinese sailors transited the strait on March 23 demonstrates this.
Meanwhile, the largest-ever coordinated release of strategic petroleum reserves led by the International Energy Agency was contributing to temporary stabilization of oil prices. As oil prices came within a somewhat manageable range, the White House lost its motivation to escalate the war in order to forcibly open the strait.
"Opening the strait is not a core objective." This single sentence was the clearest signal that the justification for the war was being revised. When the United States started the war on February 28, it said it would protect freedom of navigation globally. A month later, it was reviewing plans to depart having ceded freedom of navigation to Iran.
26.4 The Law That Beginning a War Is Easy and Ending It Is Hard
Professor Robert A. Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, discovered a pattern in his 1996 book Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War. After analyzing more than forty air operations spanning a century, he found not a single case in which air strikes alone had brought about a change of regime in an enemy nation.
In March 2026, that pattern was repeating itself in the Persian Gulf.
On March 15, two weeks after the war broke out, Professor Pape wrote on his Substack column "Escalation Trap": "When a stronger nation starts a war and continues climbing the escalation ladder under the belief that greater force will bring victory, that nation falls into a trap of its own making." He called this the "Escalation Trap."
The trap unfolds in three stages. In the first stage, a nation uses limited force to try to control the conflict. It weakens the enemy's capabilities through precision strikes, demonstrates resolve, and forces a change in behavior. It believes escalation can be controlled. In the second stage, the enemy does not collapse. Instead, it adapts. It expands the battlefield, targets allies, and raises costs in new domains. The regional conflict spreads geographically and economically. In the third stage, the nation that started the war is forced to choose. Admit failure or escalate further. This usually leads to the deployment of ground forces or territorial occupation. This is the point where the costs and duration of war spiral sharply upward and ending it becomes sharply more difficult.
On March 26, Professor Pape appeared on PBS Amanpour and Company and spoke more directly. When asked whether there was any historical case in which air operations had triggered a popular uprising that toppled a regime, he answered: "Not one. I have analyzed some forty cases over a period of more than one hundred years. Zero out of forty."
President Trump said to the Iranian people in his war declaration speech on February 28: "Take back your country. It is yours." The expectation was that the bombing would trigger an uprising among the Iranian people. A month passed, but no uprising occurred. According to Professor Pape's analysis, this was a predictable result. Bombing injects nationalism into an enemy nation, and as that nationalism permeates politics, it binds the regime and society together. It causes people to take bolder risks in the face of external attack.
Iran's strategy was a textbook case of what Professor Pape called "horizontal escalation." Iran did not confront the overwhelming military power of the United States directly. Instead, it expanded the geographic and economic scope of the conflict. The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Strikes on energy infrastructure in Gulf states. Missile attacks on Israeli territory. By the last week of March, even Houthi rebels from Yemen had joined the war, launching cruise missiles and drones at Israel. The Strait of Bab al-Mandeb was beginning to be threatened.
In an article contributed to Foreign Affairs, Professor Pape wrote as follows. Iran's attacks cannot be dismissed as the death throes of a dying regime. They are a strategy by which a weaker combatant alters the cost calculus of a stronger one by widening the scope of the conflict and extending its duration. And this strategy has worked in the past. In Vietnam. In Serbia.
In the United States, those costs were appearing in concrete numbers. On Saturday, March 28, "No Kings" protests took place across all fifty states. According to organizers' estimates, 8 million people participated, making it the largest single-day protest in American history. In front of the Minnesota State Capitol in Saint Paul, at least 50,000 gathered. Bruce Springsteen took the stage and sang "Streets of Minneapolis." Jane Fonda, Joan Baez, Senator Bernie Sanders, Representative Ilhan Omar, and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz addressed the crowd.
Senator Sanders's speech drew a straight line connecting the history of war to the present. "The American people were lied to about the Vietnam War. They were lied to about the Iraq War. And today they are being lied to about the Iran War." He recited specific numbers. Thirteen American soldiers had been killed and hundreds wounded since the war began, he said. In Iran, some 2,000 civilians had died and 498 schools had been struck by missiles from the United States and Israel. In Lebanon, more than 1,000 had been killed and more than one million people, or 15 percent of the population, had lost their homes. The cost of this war had already reached an estimated one trillion dollars.
The crowds chanted "End this war! End this war!" Protests broke out in Times Square in New York, on the Memorial Bridge in Washington D.C., in Dallas, in Los Angeles, and in London. In Dallas, clashes erupted between protesters and counter-protesters. In Los Angeles, protesters threw rocks and bottles at federal agents in front of a federal detention facility, resulting in nine arrests.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson referred to the event as "Trump Derangement Therapy Sessions" on Thursday, before the protests took place. President Trump made no official comments about the protests through the day of the demonstrations and the following day.
The March 30 analysis in Foreign Policy captured the situation precisely. It was an article jointly written by Professor Pape and Ali Baez of the International Crisis Group. "The Iran War Has Escaped Its Authors." The core of the article was this. There is a particular confidence that precedes a war of choice. A belief that violence can be controlled, that strikes will be sharp and objectives limited, and that escalation will be contained. And the most dangerous moment comes not with the first strike but after what appears to be success. It is the moment when leaders believe that the next escalation will succeed for the same reasons as before.
The United States could dispatch B-2 bombers and launch Tomahawk missiles with the push of a button. It could annihilate Iran's air defense systems, air force, and navy. It did all of that. And a month later, unable to open a single twenty-one-mile strait, extending deadlines, revising core objectives, it faced the largest antiwar protest in its history at home.
It took a single line on Truth Social to start the war. No one had an answer for how to end it.
Attorney Kim Kyung-jin, AI specialist
Specializing in AI legal policy . Former member of National Assembly . Author of multiple works
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Kim Kyung-jin
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