The Passcode Pirates: How Phone Thieves Steal Your Money, Identity, and Life

 

Criminals no longer need to rob your house or bank. One stolen smartphone and an exposed passcode could give them your money, identity, and entire life. You spent decades building your wealth and protecting your identity. A smartphone thief could steal both in minutes while customer service sends him your recovery code.

I have always found it amusing that modern civilization can send robots to Mars, develop artificial intelligence, and perform surgery with machines, yet still struggle to protect a person's bank account when somebody steals a smartphone. We have built a world where people can buy groceries, transfer thousands of dollars, unlock their front doors, and store their most intimate memories on a device small enough to fit inside a trouser pocket. Then we act surprised when criminals discover that stealing the device can be more profitable than robbing a bank. What a brilliant arrangement. The banks have spent centuries building vaults, hiring armed guards, and installing security cameras. Now, under the glorious banner of technological progress, we have helped move the keys to our financial lives into our pockets. And the pickpockets couldn't be happier.

I call them the Passcode Pirates. They don't need a ship, a sword, or an eye patch. They need a crowded bar, a distracted customer, and a clear view of somebody entering a passcode. Their treasure isn't buried on a tropical island. It sits inside banking applications, digital wallets, email accounts, and cloud storage. Their victims don't necessarily lose gold coins. They lose savings, personal information, access to their accounts, and sometimes memories that no amount of money can replace. The pirates of old had to chase merchant ships across the Atlantic. These modern criminals can sometimes do their damage before the victim finishes explaining the robbery to the police.

The criminal business model is almost insulting in its simplicity. A thief watches a customer unlock a phone. He remembers the passcode. He steals the device. If the phone's security settings and account protections are weak enough, he may gain access to sensitive information or use account-recovery procedures to seize greater control. I can imagine the thief's conversation with an accomplice.

"Did you get the phone?"

"Yes."

"Did you get the passcode?"

"Yes."

"Excellent. Let's see what else we bought."

The victim thinks the criminal stole a telephone. The criminal hopes he has stolen the keys to an entire life.

And this isn't some imaginary crime invented to frighten people into buying security software. In February 2023, The Wall Street Journal journalists Joanna Stern and Nicole Nguyen investigated cases in which criminals observed iPhone passcodes before stealing the devices. Their reporting described victims who lost access to Apple accounts and suffered financial losses after thieves exploited the combination of physical possession and knowledge of the passcode. One victim reportedly lost control of her Apple account within three minutes. I find that astonishing. A person can spend 20 years building financial stability, yet a criminal exploiting the wrong security weakness may cause enormous damage in less time than it takes to order lunch.

The investigation exposed an uncomfortable truth about modern security. A passcode that was supposed to protect the phone could, under certain conditions, help an attacker defeat protections on accounts connected to that phone. And once the attacker controlled the account, the legitimate owner could find it painfully difficult to regain access. Imagine buying a house, paying the mortgage for 20 years, and discovering that a burglar who stole the front-door key could persuade the security company to recognize him as the new owner. The real owner arrives with the deed, tax records, and identification, only to hear that the system cannot verify his identity. Ridiculous? Certainly. But some victims of smartphone account takeovers have faced a digital version of that nightmare.

In December 2023, The Wall Street Journal interviewed a convicted iPhone thief who described how criminals exploited stolen phones and passcodes. According to the reporting, he had made more than $300,000 through his criminal activities and could collect more than $20,000 during a profitable weekend. I wonder how many honest workers earning modest salaries would find those figures comforting. A schoolteacher spends the weekend grading assignments. A nurse works another exhausting shift. A delivery driver battles traffic to pay the rent. Meanwhile, a criminal watches somebody enter a passcode, steals a phone, and treats the resulting account access like a private cash machine.

I can imagine him explaining his occupation at a dinner party.

"What business are you in?"

"Financial services."

"Really? Investment banking?"

"Not exactly. I specialize in involuntary withdrawals."

At least traditional bank robbers had the decency to admit they were robbing banks.

And London has its own version of this ugly business. According to Metropolitan Police figures, London recorded 81,439 phone theft and robbery offenses in 2024 and 71,867 in 2025. Those figures do not mean every stolen phone led to financial fraud or identity theft. Many were stolen for their resale value. But the sheer volume reveals why criminals see smartphones as attractive targets. A stolen handset can be valuable merchandise, a potential gateway to sensitive accounts, or both.

The criminal economy can extend far beyond the person who snatches the device. In September 2026, London's Metropolitan Police announced that three men had received prison sentences totaling 25 years following an investigation into an international stolen-phone trafficking network. Detectives linked the operation to as many as 40,000 stolen phones shipped from Britain to China during 2024 and 2025. I find the scale remarkable. A phone disappears from somebody's hand on a London street. It moves through criminal intermediaries. Eventually, it may become merchandise thousands of miles away. The street thief gets his share. The middleman gets his cut. The overseas buyer gets the hardware. And the victim gets a police report and a customer-service telephone number.

That's globalization with a criminal record.

But the most outrageous part of this story isn't the international trafficking. It is the absurd relationship between smartphone theft and customer service. We have created systems that sometimes require people to prove their identity through the very devices that have been stolen. A victim attempts to access an account from another computer. The company sends a verification code to the missing phone. The victim cannot retrieve the code. The system refuses access. The criminal may already be using the device, while the rightful owner is treated like a suspicious stranger.

I can hear the conversation.

"My phone was stolen."

"I'm sorry to hear that. We've sent a security code to your phone."

"But the thief has my phone."

"Please enter the code to continue."

"How am I supposed to do that?"

"For your protection, we cannot proceed without verification."

For whose protection? The thief's?

Of course, many companies provide backup recovery methods, and a stolen phone does not automatically give a criminal access to verification messages. Strong authentication, device locks, and account protections can prevent that. But where recovery procedures depend too heavily on a single device, the design becomes a cruel joke. The victim needs access to recover the account. The account requires access to the stolen device. The customer-service system keeps repeating the same instructions. Meanwhile, the person who actually possesses the phone may have an advantage the legitimate owner no longer enjoys.

I would love to know which genius decided that sending a recovery code to a stolen device should sometimes be the centerpiece of an account-recovery process. It reminds me of a fire department telling a homeowner that the emergency exit instructions are posted inside the burning house.

The human cost becomes even clearer in the case of Terry Allen, whose iPhone 13 Pro was stolen in New York in August 2022. According to an April 2023 investigation by The Wall Street Journal, the criminals obtained control of his Apple account's 28-digit recovery key, leaving him struggling to regain access. His account held precious photographs, including pictures of his young nephew. After months of calls and letters to Apple, he eventually reached a representative willing to ask additional verification questions and help address the problem. I wonder how many people would remain polite after spending months begging a technology company to recognize them as the rightful owners of their own memories.

This is where smartphone theft becomes something more disturbing than ordinary property crime. Money can sometimes be recovered. A stolen credit card can be canceled. A bank may reverse unauthorized transactions after investigating them. But photographs of a deceased parent, private family videos, years of correspondence, and personal records can become irreplaceable losses when an account is permanently compromised and no independent backup exists. I find it grotesque that people can spend decades building collections of memories, only to discover that access to them depends on an authentication system that a criminal has managed to hijack.

The historical irony is impossible to miss. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for his telephone. The original idea was revolutionary but straightforward: transmit speech over distance. Nobody was proposing that a telephone should also contain a person's bank accounts, medical appointments, family photographs, identification documents, and professional correspondence. By the time Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, the telephone had begun its transformation into a portable computer. Over the following years, mobile banking, cloud storage, digital payments, and identity verification helped turn that computer into something much more powerful. I admire the engineering. What I question is the wisdom of concentrating so many essential functions in one object and then pretending that losing it is merely an inconvenience.

We used to keep our valuables in different places. Cash in a wallet. Important documents in a filing cabinet. Photographs in albums. Savings in bank accounts. House keys on a key ring. The arrangement wasn't perfect, but a criminal usually needed separate opportunities to steal separate things. Today, smartphones bring many of those functions together. A properly secured phone can protect them effectively, but a compromised phone may expose several at once. We have confused the convenience of centralization with the safety of separation. I don't know who first decided that putting every valuable possession behind the same digital door was a brilliant idea. But I suspect the Passcode Pirates would nominate that person for an award.

Apple deserves credit for responding to the documented threat. In January 2024, the company released iOS 17.3 with Stolen Device Protection, a feature designed to make stolen passcodes less useful to criminals. When enabled, it requires biometric authentication for certain sensitive actions and imposes security delays on some important account changes. Users can also choose settings that apply stronger safeguards even in familiar locations. These are meaningful improvements, not cosmetic gestures.

But I still find the sequence revealing. Criminals exploit a weakness. Victims lose money and account access. Journalists expose the problem. Public pressure grows. The company introduces stronger protection. Then consumers are expected to learn another set of security settings. I recognize that no security system can anticipate every criminal method. Nevertheless, I find it difficult to applaud an industry for solving a problem without also asking why the weakness was allowed to cause so much damage.

The banks are not innocent spectators in this drama, either. Financial institutions have powerful fraud-detection systems, transaction limits, and authentication requirements. Yet criminals continue searching for ways around them, especially when they can exploit a customer's authenticated device. I can imagine the argument inside a bank's boardroom.

"We must make banking easier."

"How easy?"

"Customers should transfer money in seconds."

"What about criminals?"

"We have security procedures."

"And if the criminal controls the customer's phone?"

"That's a complicated issue."

Complicated indeed. Particularly for the customer whose money has disappeared.

And I refuse to let consumers escape criticism altogether. We have become addicted to convenience. People complain when an application asks them to verify their identity. They complain when a bank delays a suspicious transaction. They complain when a password must be changed. Yet the same people expect absolute protection when a thief gets hold of their devices. We demand security without inconvenience, freedom without risk, and instant access without consequences. I understand the desire. I simply don't believe the world works that way.

The criminals certainly understand the contradiction. They exploit the gaps between human behavior and technological safeguards. A person enters a passcode while standing shoulder to shoulder with strangers. Another leaves sensitive notifications visible on a locked screen. Someone else stores important recovery information without maintaining an independent copy. None of these mistakes justifies theft. The criminal remains responsible for the crime. But criminals have never needed their victims to deserve punishment. They need opportunities. And opportunities are exactly what careless habits and weak security designs provide.

What makes this particularly sinister is the speed of the damage. Traditional identity theft often involved stolen documents, fraudulent applications, and lengthy attempts to impersonate someone. Modern account takeover can move faster when a criminal already controls a trusted device and enough authentication information. A password gets changed. A recovery method is replaced. An email account becomes inaccessible. Financial accounts may be targeted next. Not every criminal succeeds, and not every stolen phone is vulnerable. But the documented cases demonstrate how quickly an ordinary theft can become a struggle over digital ownership.

I also find it revealing that society has developed elaborate language to make these failures sound less frightening. We call them account takeovers, authentication compromises, credential exposure, and unauthorized access incidents. Those terms may be technically accurate. But to an ordinary victim, the meaning is simpler. Somebody stole the phone, got into the accounts, took the money, or locked the owner out. I see no reason to dress robbery in a business suit and call it a cybersecurity event when the consequences are painfully real.

The Passcode Pirates are not technological magicians. They are criminals exploiting the weaknesses of a civilization that has become dependent on portable electronics. Some operate alone. Others belong to organized networks. Some want the resale value of the hardware. Others want the information or financial opportunities connected to the device. The methods vary, but the underlying attraction is obvious. A smartphone is expensive, easy to carry, and potentially connected to assets worth far more than the phone itself.

I believe the most dangerous mistake is assuming that a passcode alone makes such a device secure. Strong passwords, biometric authentication, independent recovery methods, protected financial applications, and separate backups all matter. So does keeping the device's operating system updated and enabling available theft protections. None guarantees immunity. But layered security makes it harder for criminals to turn possession of a phone into control of a person's accounts. The goal isn't to make theft impossible. It is to prevent 1 successful theft from opening every door.

And the companies designing these systems should make that protection easier to understand and use. Security shouldn't depend on customers discovering obscure settings after a newspaper publishes another horror story. Account recovery should offer secure alternatives when a device is missing, without giving criminals an easy route to impersonate the owner. Banks should treat unusual account changes and suspicious transfers as serious warning signs. Technology companies should recognize that a device used to store money, identity information, and personal memories requires stronger safeguards than an ordinary consumer gadget.

I find it absurd that we have reached a point where losing a smartphone can trigger panic about bank balances, family photographs, email accounts, and personal identity. A telephone was supposed to help people communicate. Somehow, we turned it into a portable headquarters for our entire existence. We made it indispensable. We made it convenient. We made it valuable. And then we created a criminal incentive to steal it.

The Passcode Pirates didn't invent that arrangement. They simply recognized its weaknesses.

And perhaps that is the most uncomfortable truth of all. The criminals have learned to see smartphones for what they really are: collections of valuable information and potential access rights disguised as everyday electronics. Meanwhile, millions of legitimate owners still think of them primarily as devices for taking photographs, watching videos, and sending messages.

I can imagine a modern phone thief standing before a judge.

"Why did you steal the victim's phone?"

"Because it was valuable."

"The phone itself?"

"No, Your Honor. Everything connected to it."

That answer would be chilling because it would expose the economic logic behind the crime.

We have made smartphones so central to daily life that the loss of 1 device can become a financial emergency, a privacy crisis, and a fight to recover personal memories. The technology industry calls this digital transformation. Criminals call it opportunity. Victims call it a nightmare.

And somewhere, after a phone has been stolen and an account has been compromised, a customer-service system may still be sending a recovery code to the missing device.

I can almost hear the thief laughing.

"Thank you for choosing our security service. Your identity is very important to us."

The tragedy is that, in the wrong hands, it really is.

 

Separate from today’s article, I recently published more titles in my

 Brief Book Series for readers interested in a deeper, standalone idea.

 You can read them here on Amazon, Walmart, Google Play, and

 Barnes & Noble bookstore.

 

 

Love Before Smartphones: When Romance Had a Heart, Dating Had a Face, and Heartbreak Didn't Need Wi-Fi

 

Love is dying, and nobody cares! Smartphones have turned romance into a ruthless marketplace where genuine affection is disappearing, relationships are disposable, and heartbreak is just another notification.

I remember a world when falling in love required something more than a smartphone, a flattering photograph, and a thumb trained to swipe right. A world when a man had to find the courage to approach a woman, look her in the eyes, and risk making a complete fool of himself. A world when a woman could spend an entire evening wondering whether the man she met at a party would call. No text messages. No Instagram stalking. No little green dot announcing that somebody was online but deliberately ignoring her. Just hope, uncertainty, and the occasional cruel silence of a telephone that refused to ring.

That world wasn't perfect. Far from it. Men lied. Women cheated. Hearts broke. Marriages collapsed. Some people played games so dirty that even today's professional dating-app manipulators would applaud. But something was different. Romance had a physical presence. Love had to leave the house. And rejection usually came from an actual human being, not from a profile that suddenly disappeared into the digital wilderness.

Today, one can meet somebody in Baltimore, flirt with somebody in Boston, and arrange a date with somebody in Los Angeles without leaving their living room. Technology calls that progress. I call it convenience. And convenience, as I have learned, is not necessarily the same thing as happiness.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, a man who wanted to meet a woman had to go somewhere. A church social. A college dance. A neighborhood barbecue. A friend's birthday party. A nightclub where the music was loud, the drinks were overpriced, and the competition was fierce. He couldn't hide behind 15 carefully edited photographs and a biography written to make him sound like a cross between Denzel Washington and Warren Buffett.

He had to show up.

And showing up was dangerous.

Imagine yourself standing across a crowded room, staring at a woman who has caught your attention. She is laughing with her friends. You are rehearsing an opening line that sounds brilliant in your head but ridiculous the moment it leaves your mouth.

"Excuse me. Have we met before?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Very sure."

Well, there went your brilliant strategy.

But that was dating.  You had to recover, improvise, and possibly walk away with your  pride bleeding all over the dance floor. Nobody could delete the conversation. Nobody could blame a technical glitch. Rejection was immediate, personal, and sometimes spectacularly embarrassing.

Yet there was something strangely beautiful about that risk. You weren't evaluating a human being through a screen. You were watching her smile, hearing her laugh, noticing how she treated the bartender, and discovering whether your personalities could survive an actual conversation.

And if the two of you liked each other, something extraordinary happened.

You exchanged telephone numbers.

Not social media handles. Not Snapchat usernames. Actual telephone numbers, sometimes scribbled on napkins, matchbooks, or the backs of grocery receipts.

That little piece of paper could become the beginning of a marriage. Or the beginning of a disaster.

Either way, it mattered.

Then came the telephone ritual. You would stare at the number, wondering whether to call immediately or wait until tomorrow. Calling too soon might make you look desperate. Waiting too long might make you look uninterested. Nobody had written the rules, but everybody seemed terrified of breaking them.

And when you finally called, you faced another problem.

Her father might answer.

"Hello?"

"Good evening, sir. May I speak with Linda?"

"Who's calling?"

"Joseph."

"Joseph who?"

Suddenly, a simple telephone call had turned into a congressional hearing.

If Linda wasn't home, you might leave a message. Or you might hang up and try again. If she didn't return your call, you had no way of knowing whether she was busy, uninterested, or simply unaware that you had called.

Today, people call that uncertainty emotional torture. Back then – when I was still a single college student, we called it “Booth” or “Tuesday”.

But waiting also created anticipation. A telephone ringing at 8:30 p.m. could make my heart jump. Hearing the voice I had been hoping to hear could rescue an otherwise miserable day.

Now, I am happily married to a wonderful woman now, and those things don't bother me anymore. But for young people these days, their smartphones can vibrate 40 times while they are eating dinner, and not a single notification has anything to do with somebody who genuinely loves them.

That's technological progress for you. We have conquered distance and somehow made genuine attention harder to find.

And then there were love letters.

My goodness. Love letters.

Before romantic feelings became disposable digital messages, people sometimes put their emotions on paper. They bought stationery. They chose their words. They crossed out embarrassing sentences. They started over. They folded the finished letter, placed it inside an envelope, and trusted the postal service with their emotional survival.

Imagine writing, "I have missed you every day since we last met," knowing that the person receiving those words might keep them for 30 years.

A text message can disappear beneath 200 other messages before lunchtime. A handwritten letter can survive inside a shoebox long after the relationship itself has died.

And that is what fascinates me. The physical evidence of love.

The faded ink. The familiar handwriting. The perfume that once lingered on the paper. The envelope with the old address. The photograph tucked between the pages. Even the embarrassing spelling mistakes became part of the memory.

Of course, a beautiful letter didn't prove that its writer was faithful. During my days at the university in Nigeria, I knew many  talented liars who  could produce poetry worthy of Shakespeare while secretly dating three other people. Human dishonesty did not begin with the invention of Tinder.

But writing a letter demanded deliberate effort. I couldn't send a heart emoji and pretend I had expressed the deepest feelings of my soul. I had to find the words.

And sometimes, finding those words forced me to discover what I actually felt.

And then came the first date.

I remember when a date meant going somewhere together and actually paying attention to each other. Dinner at a neighborhood restaurant. A movie at the local theater. A walk through the park. An afternoon at the beach. Sometimes the man paid. Sometimes the woman insisted on splitting the bill. Sometimes both people were broke, and romance had to survive on ice cream and good conversation.

The important thing was that we were there.

Together.

Not sitting across from each other while secretly checking whether somebody more attractive had appeared on Tinder.

And the first kiss? That was a different kind of suspense.

You could spend an entire evening wondering whether she wanted you to kiss her. You might walk her to her front door, say goodnight, and stand there like an idiot while your mind argued with itself.

"Should I kiss her?"

"Don't be stupid."

"But she's smiling."

"Maybe she's just being polite."

Then she might lean closer. Or step back. Either way, you had to pay attention to the person standing in front of you. You had to understand that attraction wasn't permission and that a kiss meant something only when both people wanted it.

Sometimes that first kiss was magical. Sometimes it was awkward enough to deserve its own police report. But it was real. No filters. No retakes. No audience waiting to judge the performance.

And nobody had to post photographic evidence afterward.

Now, I don't want to pretend that the old days were some romantic paradise. That would be nonsense.

From what I have learned through reading various novels and watching movies, courtship in the 1950s often came with suffocating social rules. Women faced pressure to marry young, remain sexually respectable, and accept behavior from men that would be considered unacceptable today. Interracial couples faced discrimination, threats, and laws that restricted their freedom to marry. It wasn't until the Supreme Court's landmark 1967 decision in Loving v. Virginia that bans on interracial marriage were struck down nationwide.

That wasn't romance. That was society interfering with people's right to love.

And for many gay and lesbian Americans, openly pursuing a relationship could threaten their jobs, families, and personal safety. The past wasn't equally beautiful for everybody.

I also know that a woman who met a man through friends or family wasn't automatically safe from abuse, manipulation, or betrayal. Sometimes those same social networks pressured her to remain in a miserable relationship because divorce was considered shameful.

So no, I don't want to turn the clock backward and resurrect every ugly custom that came with it.

But I do want to recover something we seem to have misplaced.

The human connection.

And the statistics show just how dramatically our methods of finding love have changed.

In 2019, Stanford sociologist Michael Rosenfeld and his colleagues reported that approximately 39% of heterosexual couples in their 2017 survey had met online, compared with 22% in 2009. Their research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that online dating had overtaken meeting through friends as the most common way heterosexual couples found partners.

 

Think about that.

For generations, friends, relatives, neighbors, churches, schools, and workplaces helped bring couples together. Then the internet arrived, and within a relatively short period, computer algorithms began replacing the people who once played matchmaker.

I'm not saying that meeting through friends guaranteed a happy marriage. It didn't. But there was often a social connection between the people involved. Somebody knew somebody. A mutual friend could offer an introduction. A couple might belong to the same community.

Now you can fall in love with somebody whose friends you have never met, whose family you know nothing about, and whose entire identity consists of photographs, messages, and a biography that may have been written by artificial intelligence.

What could possibly go wrong?

Plenty, apparently.

A 2023 Pew Research Center report found that 30% of American adults had used a dating site or app. Among adults younger than 30, that figure reached 53%. The same research found that 48% of online dating users had experienced at least 1 of 4 unwanted behaviors, including unsolicited sexual messages or images, unwanted continued contact, offensive name-calling, or physical threats.

That's not exactly the romantic revolution you was promised.

Imagine telling somebody in 1985 that future generations would carry powerful computers in their pockets, use those computers to search for romantic partners, and then complain that strangers kept sending them disgusting photographs.

They would probably ask whether humanity had lost its mind.

And I wouldn't know how to answer.

But here's where the story gets complicated. Pew also found that 53% of online dating users described their experiences as positive, while 46% described them as negative. Furthermore, 42% of American adults believed online dating had made finding a long-term partner easier, compared with 22% who believed it had made the process harder.

So I cannot claim that dating apps have destroyed love. The evidence doesn't support that sweeping accusation.

People are finding spouses through these platforms. Real marriages are beginning with digital conversations. People who might never have crossed paths are discovering each other.

That's wonderful.

But I still have a serious problem with the culture surrounding modern romance.

We've turned dating into shopping.

Today you can open an app, examine somebody's face, height, education, occupation, hobbies, and political preferences, and reject that person in seconds. You don't have to hear their voice. You don't have to discover their sense of humor. You don't have to learn whether they're kind to strangers or loyal to friends.

A photograph becomes the product. A biography becomes the advertisement. And the human being behind both becomes another item in an endless catalog.

Swipe.

Reject.

Swipe.

Maybe.

Swipe.

Next.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if my parents' generation had approached courtship with that same mentality. How many marriages would never have happened because somebody wasn't photogenic enough? How many wonderful conversations would never have started because somebody was 2 inches shorter than the desired height?

And how many people would have rejected the love of their lives because the algorithm decided they weren't a suitable match?

The cruel irony is that having more choices doesn't necessarily make choosing easier.

Pew's 2023 findings showed that 37% of American adults believed dating platforms offered too many choices, while 43% believed they offered about the right amount.

I can understand that frustration.

When I was younger, meeting somebody attractive at a party could feel like a rare opportunity. I might spend the next week thinking about that person. I might make a genuine effort to get to know her. But if I believe that 500 other potential partners are waiting on my phone, why should I work through an awkward conversation with the person sitting across from me?

Why bother learning patience?

Why tolerate imperfections?

Why invest in a relationship when the next attractive face is just one swipe away?

Of course, that attitude existed before smartphones. Some people have always treated romantic partners as disposable. Technology didn't invent selfishness.

It simply gave selfish people more efficient equipment.

And nowhere is that more obvious than in modern heartbreak.

Before smartphones, a breakup could be devastating. You might lose sleep, stop eating properly, or spend hours listening to sad songs. You might avoid the restaurant where you  had your first date. You might stare at photographs and wonder what went wrong.

But eventually, distance could help.

If you didn't see your former girlfriend, you could begin rebuilding my life.

Today, a breakup can follow you everywhere.

You can wake up, open Instagram, and discover that the woman who broke your heart has posted photographs with somebody else. You can watch her vacation videos. You can read comments from strangers congratulating her on finding happiness.

And if you foolish enough, you can spend the next 3 hours investigating the new boyfriend's photographs like an unpaid FBI agent.

That's not healing.

That's emotional self-torture with unlimited data.

Then there's the modern habit of ghosting.

I find it remarkable that people who can communicate instantly with practically anybody on Earth sometimes cannot summon the courage to say, "I'm sorry, but I don't want to continue this relationship."

Instead, they disappear.

Messages go unanswered. Calls are ignored. Profiles become inaccessible. The rejected person is left wondering whether the relationship ended, whether something terrible happened, or whether the other person simply lost interest.

And yes, people disappeared before smartphones. A man could promise to call and never call again. A woman could move away without leaving a forwarding address. Silence has always been capable of cruelty.

But digital communication has made disappearing from an ordinary conversation absurdly easy.

One minute, somebody is sending affectionate messages.

The next minute, nothing.

Not even the courtesy of goodbye.

Still, the heartbreak I remember from the old days had its own peculiar soundtrack.

I think about songs like Careless Whisper, released in 1984, and End of the Road, released in 1992. Those songs captured something painfully familiar: regret, betrayal, longing, and the desperate wish to recover a love that had already slipped away.

I could sit in my bedroom with the radio playing, convinced that the singer somehow knew every miserable detail of my personal life.

Then another song would come on.

Maybe I Will Always Love You, which Whitney Houston turned into a worldwide phenomenon in 1992.

And suddenly, the heartbreak felt cinematic.

Then I wasn't simply a rejected young man sitting alone in a room. I was the tragic hero of a romantic drama nobody had purchased tickets to see.

Ridiculous?

Absolutely.

But that's what music could do.

And that's what memories still do.

A particular song can take me back to a particular street, a particular summer, or a particular woman whose name I haven't spoken in 30 years.

The relationship may be gone. The telephone number may be forgotten. The restaurant may have closed. But the opening notes of that song can bring everything back.

The laughter.

The argument.

The kiss.

The goodbye.

And sometimes, the regret.

That's another thing I miss about love before smartphones. Not because people loved more deeply, but because so many memories were tied to places, sounds, objects, and moments that couldn't be replayed endlessly on a screen.

I remember the excitement of seeing somebody unexpectedly. The nervous anticipation before a date. The long conversations that continued until the restaurant staff began stacking chairs. The handwritten birthday cards. The photographs developed at a local shop, when I couldn't immediately inspect every picture and demand another pose.

I remember the strange courage required to tell somebody, face to face, that I loved her.

And I remember how frightening those words could be.

"I love you."

A silence.

Then the question that could destroy an entire evening.

"Do you really mean that?"

There was no emoji capable of rescuing me.

I had to answer.

And my answer had to survive the look in her eyes.

Perhaps that's what troubles me most about modern romance. We've developed astonishing tools for communication, but those tools cannot do the emotional work for us. A smartphone can deliver a message in seconds. It cannot make the message sincere. An algorithm can introduce two strangers. It cannot teach them loyalty. A dating app can arrange a meeting. It cannot manufacture tenderness.

And a thousand online admirers cannot replace the comfort of one person who genuinely cares whether I make it home safely.

I don't believe the solution is to abandon technology. That would be foolish. I appreciate being able to call somebody across the country without paying the outrageous long-distance charges that once punished romantic relationships. I appreciate video calls. I appreciate the possibility of meeting somebody outside my immediate neighborhood or social circle.

But I refuse to confuse technological convenience with emotional progress.

Love still requires the same uncomfortable things it required in 1975, 1985, and 1995.

Honesty. Courage. Patience. Respect. Sacrifice. The willingness to apologize when you are wrong. The maturity to hear an answer you don't like. The discipline to remain faithful when temptation appears.

None of those qualities can be downloaded.

And none comes with a premium subscription.

So when I think about love before smartphones, I'm not mourning the absence of Tinder, Instagram, or WhatsApp. I'm mourning the gradual disappearance of ordinary romantic experiences that once demanded our full attention.

The nervous telephone call.

The letter that took days to arrive.

The first date without a glowing screen on the table.

The first kiss that belonged to the couple rather than an online audience.

The heartbreak that didn't arrive with constant photographic updates.

And the beautiful uncertainty of meeting somebody without already knowing 50 details about their life.

I know that the old world had its liars, cheaters, cowards, and heartbreakers. I know that nostalgia can make yesterday look better than it really was. And I know that some of the happiest couples alive today first met through a dating app.

Good for them.

But I also know this: when I see two people sitting across from each other in a restaurant, both staring at their phones, I cannot help wondering whether we've confused being connected with being together.

We have more ways to say hello than any generation in history.

Yet we still struggle to say what matters.

"I miss you."

"I'm sorry."

"I was wrong."

"I want to see you."

"I love you."

Maybe the greatest romantic revolution of our time won't come from another dating app, another algorithm, or another smartphone with a better camera.

Maybe it will begin when somebody puts the damn phone down, looks the person they love straight in the eyes, and starts a real conversation.

Because love was never supposed to be a competition for likes, followers, matches, and notifications.

It was supposed to be a connection between human beings.

And if I have learned anything from the forgotten world of courtship, first kisses, love letters, and broken hearts, it is this: before smartphones, we sometimes waited days to hear from the person we loved. Today, we can reach that person in seconds. But what good is reaching somebody instantly if we've forgotten how to touch their heart?

 

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Christa Pike: When Government Executions Fail, Should Prisoners Walk Free?

 

Christa Pike’s botched execution exposes America’s deadly hypocrisy! The government tried to kill her, failed, then saved her! Now it wants another shot? Outrageous! This isn't a video game!

I have a question for the great state of Tennessee. How many times does the government get to try to kill somebody before somebody finally says, “Enough”?

Seriously. Is this the American justice system or some twisted video game where the executioner keeps hitting the restart button until the prisoner finally dies?

Because what allegedly happened to Christa Pike on September 30, 2026, sounds like something straight out of a Hollywood horror movie. Except this wasn't Hollywood. This was Tennessee. Real needles. Real lethal drugs. Real human flesh. And a government that apparently couldn't finish the very job it had spent decades preparing to do.

According to the October 6 USA TODAY account by Amanda Lee Myers, Tennessee attempted to execute Pike, 50, for the horrific 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Executioners reportedly administered two doses of pentobarbital. Pike didn't die. After more than an hour of trying to execute her, medical personnel rushed to save her life.

Think about that for a moment.

The government tried to kill her. Failed. Then scrambled to keep her alive.

What the hell kind of justice is that?

I can almost imagine the conversation inside that execution chamber.

“Is she dead?”

“No, sir.”

“Did we give her the lethal drugs?”

“Yes, sir. Twice.”

“Well, what now?”

“Call an ambulance!”

You couldn't make this stuff up. And if you did, Hollywood producers would probably reject the script for being too ridiculous. But the most disturbing part isn't simply that Pike reportedly survived. It's that Tennessee could attempt to execute her again.

Yes. Again.

As though the first execution were a practice round. As though the government were playing a video game and had another life waiting in reserve. As though the Constitution were some inconvenient instruction manual that could be tossed aside whenever the executioner misses his target.

I don't buy it.

I believe that if a prisoner survives a lethal injection, that prisoner should never face another execution. Period.

The government had its shot. Literally. And it messed  it up.

You don't get to keep trying until you finally get it right. This isn't a video game.

Now, before somebody accuses me of defending murder, let me make something absolutely clear. Christa Pike was convicted of a monstrous crime. According to prosecutors, she and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, lured Colleen Slemmer into the woods in Knoxville in January 1995. Slemmer was tortured and murdered. Her throat was cut. Her skull was crushed with a rock.

There is nothing funny about that.

Nothing.

Colleen Slemmer was 19. She had a life ahead of her. Her mother, May Martinez, has endured decades of grief that no court ruling, prison sentence, or execution can erase.

I am not asking anybody to forget Colleen. I am not asking anybody to forgive Pike. I am asking whether a government that claims to administer justice should be allowed to turn punishment into repeated experiments in killing. Because there is a difference between holding a murderer accountable and giving the government unlimited opportunities to carry out a failed execution.

And that difference matters.

And Christa Pike isn't the first prisoner to expose the ugly machinery behind America's supposedly humane executions.

Consider Willie Francis.

In 1946, Louisiana strapped Francis, a 17-year-old Black teenager, into an electric chair nicknamed Gruesome Gertie. The state flipped the switch. Electricity surged through his body. But Francis survived.

Imagine that.

A teenager strapped into an electric chair, expecting death, feeling the electricity, and discovering that the machine had failed to finish him.

You might think the state would have considered that enough punishment for one human being.

Not Louisiana.

The government wanted another attempt.

Francis challenged the decision, and the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In January 1947, the Court ruled that Louisiana could try again. The justices treated the malfunction as an accident rather than an unconstitutional second punishment.

Francis was executed on May 9, 1947.

So much for surviving the electric chair.

I find that ruling deeply disturbing. The Court's reasoning effectively allowed the government to repeat an execution after its machinery failed. But the Constitution is supposed to restrain government power, not hand the executioner a permission slip for another round.

And there is an important legal problem here. The Supreme Court's 1947 ruling remains a serious obstacle to any claim that surviving an execution automatically creates a constitutional right to freedom. I am arguing for a new rule, not pretending that such a rule already exists.

Now consider the numbers.

According to research by Amherst College professor Austin Sarat, published in his 2014 book Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America's Death Penalty, the United States carried out 8,776 executions between 1890 and 2010. Of those, 276 were botched.

That's 3.15%.

But the figures become even more disturbing when we examine lethal injections. Of 1,054 executions using that method, 75 were botched.

That's approximately 7.2%.

Think about what that means. Lethal injection, advertised as a cleaner and more humane way to kill, had the highest recorded failure rate among the major execution methods examined in that research.

A medical-looking procedure. A prison gurney. A needle. A carefully written protocol.

And sometimes, a bloody mess disguised as modern justice.

The claim that lethal injections have been botched 11 times in the past 5 years deserves separate verification. But the broader historical record is damning enough without dressing up uncertain statistics.

And then there is Tony Carruthers.

In May 2026, Tennessee attempted to execute Carruthers by lethal injection. The execution team reportedly spent approximately 1.5 hours trying to establish the required intravenous access. They failed to complete the procedure.

The execution was abandoned.

Carruthers survived.

Governor Bill Lee granted him a 1-year reprieve.

A reprieve.

Not freedom from another execution attempt. Not a permanent commutation. Just another year with the possibility of death hanging over his head.

I can almost hear the bureaucratic explanation.

“Sorry, Mr. Carruthers. We couldn't kill you today. Please remain available while we sort out the technical difficulties.”

What a country.

And what makes Tennessee's handling of Christa Pike even more troubling is that her attorneys reportedly warned officials about her unusually small veins nearly 10 months before the execution.

They warned that establishing intravenous access could be difficult. The state proceeded anyway. After the failed execution, Pike's attorneys suggested that improperly placed intravenous lines or damaged veins might have prevented the drugs from entering her bloodstream as intended. That explanation remains an allegation, not an established finding. Tennessee ordered an investigation into the failure.

But here's what I want to know.

If government officials receive warnings that an execution procedure could fail, proceed anyway, and the prisoner suffers through a failed execution, why should the prisoner bear the consequences of that failure? Where does government responsibility begin? And where does government arrogance end?

Governor Bill Lee described Pike's failed execution as a disturbing tragedy while reaffirming his commitment to carrying out Tennessee's death sentences.

I understand his position. A jury imposed the sentence. The governor believes he has a duty to enforce it.

But duty without judgment can become cruelty.

A governor isn't a robot. He isn't a vending machine that dispenses death whenever somebody inserts a court order.

He has constitutional responsibilities. He has clemency powers. And he has a moral obligation to recognize when the machinery of justice has become a machinery of suffering.

By October 10, Pike had reportedly been discharged from the hospital and transferred to a prison rehabilitation facility, where she continued receiving medical care. Tennessee had suspended further executions for 2026 while officials investigated the failure.

Now imagine what another execution attempt would mean.

Another death warrant.

Another trip to the execution chamber.

Another set of needles.

Another struggle to find a vein.

Another room filled with witnesses waiting for a human being to stop breathing.

And another opportunity for the government to announce that something went wrong.

At what point does this become torture? At what point does a punishment authorized by law become an exercise in state-sponsored cruelty?

I know what defenders of capital punishment will say.

“She was sentenced to death, not to one attempt at death.”

Fine. That's the legal argument. But legality and morality aren't identical twins. History is littered with government actions that were once legal and later recognized as cruel, unjust, or indefensible. And even if the Supreme Court permits another attempt, that doesn't mean Tennessee must make one.

The governor can choose mercy without declaring Pike innocent. He can commute her sentence to life imprisonment without minimizing Colleen Slemmer's murder.

That distinction matters.

Because I refuse to accept the argument that opposing a second execution somehow means supporting the original crime.

Nonsense.

I can condemn Pike's murder of Colleen Slemmer and still condemn a government that might put Pike through another failed execution.

Both positions can be true.

Justice isn't a contest to determine who can be more brutal.

And if America wants to keep the death penalty, it should at least recognize a boundary that executioners cannot cross.

My proposed rule is simple: If the government administers lethal drugs in an execution attempt and the prisoner survives, the death sentence must be commuted to life imprisonment.

No second injection.

No second execution chamber.

No appeals to the governor for another opportunity to finish the job.

The prisoner remains accountable for the crime. The victim's family retains its right to justice. But the government loses its authority to attempt that execution again.

That's not a reward for murder. It's a consequence for government failure. And consequences, as prosecutors love to remind defendants, are supposed to matter.

I would go further. Any failed execution should trigger an independent investigation, public disclosure of what went wrong, and serious scrutiny of the officials responsible. If the state can demand accountability from ordinary citizens, ordinary citizens can demand accountability from the state. Especially when the state is exercising its most terrifying power: the authority to take a human life.

Christa Pike's case has exposed an uncomfortable truth about capital punishment in America. The government wants the public to believe that lethal injection is controlled, clinical, and reliable. But a needle doesn't magically transform killing into a medical procedure. A white sheet doesn't erase suffering. And a written protocol doesn't guarantee that the people carrying it out know what they're doing.

We can debate whether murderers deserve to die.

We can debate whether capital punishment deters crime.

We can debate whether the death penalty should exist at all.

But I believe there should be no debate about giving executioners unlimited chances to kill the same prisoner. Because once the government has tried to execute someone, administered the lethal drugs, and failed, something irreversible has already happened. The prisoner has endured the state's attempt to take their life. And the state has demonstrated that its supposedly precise procedure can go horribly wrong.

Christa Pike survived.

Colleen Slemmer did not.

That tragedy will never change.

But killing Pike after a second attempt won't bring Slemmer back. And allowing the government to repeat a failed execution won't erase the suffering of the first.

So I return to the question Tennessee cannot escape.

How many chances should the government get to kill one person?

My answer is one.

The state had its shot. Literally.

It fucked it up.

And if the government can't accept the consequences of its own failure, perhaps it has no business preaching accountability to anybody else.

Because justice isn't a video game.

And when the executioner loses, the answer shouldn't be: Insert another needle to continue.

 

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America and China: Enemies Who Cannot Afford a Divorce

 

America and China are pointing economic guns at each other—forgetting that pulling the trigger could blow holes through both economies. In plain terms, America has the chips. China has the rare earths. If this economic war explodes, there may be no clean winner—only expensive casualties.

America and China keep talking about each other like two angry neighbors standing across a fence with baseball bats.

“You need us.”

“No. You need us.”

“We can crush you.”

“Try it.”

It sounds tough. It looks tough on television. Politicians can pound podiums. Officials can announce tariffs. Beijing can restrict minerals. Washington can restrict chips. Everybody gets to look patriotic for the cameras.

Then Monday morning arrives.

Factories open.

Ships leave ports.

Farmers need customers.

Technology companies need components.

Chinese manufacturers need advanced technology.

American manufacturers need critical minerals.

Suddenly, the shouting match becomes awkward.

Because beneath all the chest-thumping sits an inconvenient economic truth: America needs China, and China needs America.

I am not saying the two countries are friends. They are strategic rivals. They compete over technology, manufacturing, artificial intelligence, military power, Taiwan, global influence, supply chains and the rules of international trade. Some of those conflicts involve legitimate national-security concerns.

But economic reality does not care about political theater.

And reality has a nasty sense of humor.

America possesses some of the world's most powerful technology, especially in advanced computing and the semiconductor ecosystem. Washington knows exactly how valuable that advantage is. That is why the U.S. Department of Commerce introduced sweeping export controls in October 2022 designed to restrict China's ability to obtain certain advanced computing chips and semiconductor-manufacturing technology. The rules targeted advanced chips, supercomputing capabilities and equipment needed to manufacture cutting-edge semiconductors. Bureau of Industry and Security

That is economic power.

Washington can essentially tell Beijing, “You want some of the world's most sophisticated computing technology? Not so fast.”

But China can reach into another pocket.

Rare earths.

And then Washington stops smiling.

According to the International Energy Agency, China accounted for about 60% of global mined production of magnet rare earths in 2024. That figure alone is impressive. But mining is not even the scariest part of the story. China accounted for about 91% of global refined magnet rare-earth output and an astonishing 94% of sintered permanent-magnet production. IEA

Read those numbers again.

91%.

94%.

That is not some tiny corner of the global economy selling chopsticks and plastic toys. These materials and magnets matter to electric vehicles, wind turbines, electronics, industrial equipment and other advanced technologies.

So the economic gunfight becomes almost comical. America reaches for the semiconductor holster.

China reaches for the rare-earth holster.

Both stare at each other.

Nobody laughs.

I call this mutually assured disruption.

During the Cold War, the terrifying phrase was “mutually assured destruction.” Nuclear powers understood that launching the missiles could invite missiles flying back in the opposite direction. Economic warfare is obviously not nuclear warfare, and I would never pretend that the human consequences are comparable. But the strategic logic offers a useful analogy: when both sides can inflict serious damage, pulling the trigger becomes considerably less attractive.

America can hurt China.

China can hurt America.

Congratulations. Everybody wins the ability to lose.

We have already watched a version of this movie.

In 2018, the United States imposed tariffs on a broad range of Chinese imports. China retaliated against American products, including agricultural goods. Then American farmers discovered something politicians sometimes forget: your enemy can also be your customer.

And customers have weapons too.

They can stop buying.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture later estimated that retaliatory tariffs reduced American agricultural exports by an annualized $13.2 billion from mid-2018 through the end of 2019. Soybeans took the biggest beating, accounting for nearly 71% of those annualized losses, or roughly $9.4 billion. Iowa suffered estimated annualized agricultural trade losses of $1.46 billion, while Illinois lost about $1.41 billion.

That is where trade-war slogans meet dirt.

A soybean farmer does not deposit patriotism at the bank.

He deposits money.

China had been a gigantic buyer. In 2017, China represented 65% of global soybean imports. American soybean exports to China were worth $12.3 billion that year and represented 63% of all U.S. agricultural exports to China.

Then came the economic fistfight.

China slapped a 25% tariff on American soybeans in July 2018. In January 2018, China bought about $2.5 billion worth of U.S. soybeans. By July, purchases had fallen to roughly $140 million. By November, they had fallen to $0.

Zero.

That is what an economic punch looks like.

But here comes the punchline.

China could not simply wave a magic wand and replace every American soybean.

During the first half of China's 2018–2019 soybean marketing year, Chinese imports of American soybeans dropped by nearly 22 million metric tons, or 89%, compared with the same period a year earlier. China bought more from Brazil and Canada. Yet those additional purchases still failed to replace everything China had lost from the United States. China's total soybean imports during that period ended up nearly 9 million metric tons, or 20%, lower.

Beautiful.

America hurt.

China adjusted.

China hurt America.

America adjusted.

Everyone paid somebody.

And politicians called it winning.

Rare earths tell an equally revealing story. The problem is not new. In 2012, the United States, Japan and the European Union challenged Chinese restrictions involving rare earths, tungsten and molybdenum at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The dispute involved export duties, quotas, licensing requirements and other restrictions. In 2014, WTO rulings found key Chinese restrictions inconsistent with China's obligations. China subsequently removed the measures that had been found inconsistent.

Why did major industrial economies care enough to fight China at the WTO?

Because these obscure-sounding materials sit quietly inside the modern industrial machine.

Nobody wakes up in Baltimore screaming, “Where is my neodymium?”

But people want cars, iPhones, electronics, power systems, defense technology and advanced machinery. Somewhere behind many modern products sits a complicated supply chain involving minerals, magnets, chips, specialized machinery, software, intellectual property and manufacturing capacity.

That is the dirty little secret of globalization.

Countries can hate each other's governments while their factories remain practically married. And the marriage between America and China is ugly, suspicious and argumentative, but it is still enormous.

U.S. Census Bureau figures show that in 2025 America exported about $106.0 billion in goods to China while importing about $308.7 billion from China. That is roughly $414.6 billion in 2-way goods trade in a single year. Even during the first 7 months of 2026, U.S. exports to China totaled about $65.2 billion while imports totaled about $156.4 billion.

Those numbers expose the comedy better than any speech I could write.

Imagine two businessmen screaming, “I want nothing to do with you!”

Then one writes the other a billion-dollar check.

“Still hate you!”

“Same here.”

“Shipment arrives Tuesday?”

“Tuesday.”

That is the U.S.-China economic relationship.

Of course, America should diversify critical supply chains. Depending heavily on a strategic rival for materials essential to national defense and advanced manufacturing is dangerous. China, likewise, has obvious reasons to reduce its dependence on American and allied technology. No serious country should voluntarily place its economic throat completely inside another country's hand.

But diversification is different from fantasy.

The fantasy says America can economically crush China without feeling serious pain itself.

The opposite fantasy says China can economically cripple America and walk away smiling.

History says otherwise.

Supply chains are not light switches. A government cannot spend 30 years building an interconnected global production system and then yell “divorce!” on Friday afternoon and expect a clean separation by Monday morning.

Factories must be built.

Mines must be developed.

Minerals must be processed.

Engineers must be trained.

Customers must be found.

Capital must be invested.

Contracts must be rewritten.

Infrastructure must be constructed.

Technology must be developed.

And somebody must pay.

That somebody eventually includes ordinary people.

The bill arrives disguised as higher prices, lost exports, disrupted production, government subsidies, weaker profits or fewer economic opportunities.

So when I hear Washington and Beijing talk as though economic warfare is a painless game of national toughness, I reach for the popcorn.

America says, “We have the chips.”

China says, “We have the minerals.”

America says, “We have the world's largest high-income consumer market.”

China says, “We have enormous manufacturing capacity.”

America says, “We can find other suppliers.”

China says, “We can develop our own technology.”

Fine.

Do it.

Both countries should reduce dangerous dependencies where national security genuinely demands it. But neither side should confuse resilience with economic suicide.

Because the real contest is not about proving who can hurt whom.

We already know the answer.

Both can.

The smarter question is how much pain each country is willing to inflict upon itself just to make the other country bleed.

That is why I reject the childish picture of America and China as economic enemies who can simply destroy each other and ride triumphantly into the sunset. Their relationship is much uglier and much more interesting. They are competitors tied together by supply chains, consumers, technology, commodities, capital and industrial necessity.

They can weaken those ties.

They can diversify them.

They can weaponize them.

They can even spend decades trying to replace them.

But today, neither side can pretend the other is economically irrelevant.

America needs China, and China needs America.

That may offend nationalists in Washington. It may offend nationalists in Beijing. Too bad. Economics does not salute flags.

And if America and China insist on behaving like two men fighting inside the same lifeboat, each punching holes under the other's seat, eventually they may discover the oldest lesson on the water:

It does not matter whose side of the boat has the hole.

Everybody gets wet.

 

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