Old Pipes, New Rails
Iraq empties a sanctioned bank's dollar accounts in a week when AI-found flaws pulled Europe's governments offline and AI agents hit banks. What it means.
Friday, October 23. Two kinds of financial plumbing moved this week, and they belong in the same briefing.
The old pipes are in Baghdad. On Thursday Iraq's Central Bank told every bank and financial company in the country that it may not deal in US dollars with the International Development Bank "in any form". That is the lender the US Treasury designated on October 15, saying it was created to get dollars to Iran. The Central Bank's spokesman, Mahmoud Dagher, said the lender was cut off from dollars long ago. What is new is the deadline. Every foreign-currency account it holds must close by the end of this month.
The case for new rails got louder everywhere outside Iraq. On Wednesday governments across Europe pulled websites offline over a software flaw found with the help of AI. AI agents broke into companies and banks. And on Thursday major US banks were reported to be finding outside AI agents inside customer accounts, a week after the G7's finance chiefs agreed to rehearse an AI attack on the banking system.
On October 16 we wrote that Washington's designation went further than Baghdad could. A week later Iraq has gone the rest of the way.
Today: the bank, the first Friday, the border, a week of AI attacks, the budget, and Riyadh and the strait.
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