(Photo credit: Kylie Cooper/Reuters)The Cradle
SEP 4, 2026
US soldiers are fighting and dying in the war against Iran, which President Trump is waging on Israel’s behalf
US military officials have disabled advertising trackers on a range of phones and computers after Iran used publicly available data collected from the trackers to target US troops, Reuters reported on 4 August.
The US Air Force said it disabled the advertising identifiers on computers and mobile phones two months ago.
US Special Operations Command said it had “recently” disabled the trackers on its Windows devices.
The army stated that advertising IDs tied to mobile devices had been disabled since earlier this year.
The measures suggest that location data collected on individuals by the advertising industry and sold by data brokers can be used to track and target military personnel deployed to war zones.
Since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran in February, Iranian forces have killed 18 US service members and injured 759 more, according to the Pentagon.
Officials say the vast majority of the injuries are traumatic brain injuries, many resulting from Iranian missile and drone attacks on US bases around West Asia.
On Wednesday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick stated in an interview on CNBC that no US service members had been killed in the war.
“The way the president is playing Iran, right, there haven’t been American deaths. It’s really just an economic chokeout which the administration is now executing more broadly, and I think it’ll be very effective,” Lutnick stated. However, he apologized on Thursday, claiming in a post on X that he “misspoke.”
Lutnick is a billionaire investor, a staunch supporter of Israel, and a close advisor to US President Donald Trump.
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently boasted that he had convinced Trump and other US officials to wage war on Iran, in part with the help of nearly a thousand hours of time on US television programs.
Israel is no longer attacking Iran, leaving the burden of the war on the US military, which is running low on missile interceptors needed to defend US troops from Iranian attacks.
The US army has nearly exhausted its supply of interceptors in part to protect Israel.
A recent opinion piece in the Jerusalem Post encouraged the US to launch a ground invasion of Iran, which would lead to large numbers of US soldiers dying.
The piece, authored by retired Canadian Armed Forces officer AJ Jaff, called on the US government to take advantage of the high levels of debt among young US citizens to raise a ground force of 750,000 to 1.5 million troops for an invasion.
A large number of young people could be recruited by offering to pay off their student, credit card, and auto loans, Jaff argued.
“The economics of the indebted American 20-and 30-something make this the most efficient conversion mechanism available to the Pentagon and the Trump administration,” Jaff wrote, saying that “states generate the soldiers they need through the incentives that work on the population they have.”
At least 4,418 US soldiers were killed, and 31,994 were wounded fighting in Iraq after the illegal 2003 invasion, according to the US military.
The US war on Iraq was orchestrated by pro-Israel members of former US president George W. Bush’s administration in a bid to weaken the country – Israel’s long-time regional rival – and to gain access to Iraqi oil for Israel.
[…]
The Most Revolutionary Act 