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On Aug. 10, 1813, under cover of darkness and fog, 300 British soldiers sailed up the Miles River toward this small Maryland town.They landed on the southern end of St. Michaels, where they quickly overran the local militia. They then returned to their boats and began bombarding the town with their ships’ cannons.One of the museum’s best features is that this isn’t all history preserved behind glass. You can watch shipwrights at work restoring and building wooden boats.That much is history. What supposedly happened next is the stuff of legend.As the story goes, townsfolk hung lanterns high in trees farther inland, creating the illusion that St. Michaels was farther from the shore and sat on higher ground. The British aimed their cannons toward the lights — and overshot the town.The same darkness and fog that allowed the British to approach St. Michaels also helped shield the town from destruction.The British eventually withdrew, while St. Michaels suffered no casualties. One house did take a direct hit from a cannonball, which left a dent in its brickwork. Appropriately enough, it is known today as the Cannonball House.There is just one problem with this terrific story: No one can say for certain that the lantern trick actually happened.But that hasn’t stopped it from becoming part of the town’s identity. St. Michaels proudly calls itself “The Town That Fooled the British,” a claim displayed on the welcome sign as you enter town.And the legend is only one reason this tiny waterfront community makes an unusually good history-filled day trip.A river town’s history and industry Lynn TopelSt. Michaels sits on the banks of the Miles River, a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. Today, it is a favorite summer destination for vacationers from Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and even New York, as well as a popular draw for boating and sailing enthusiasts.Long before it became a tourist town, however, St. Michaels was established as a trading post in the mid-1600s. Trappers and tobacco farmers made up the early community. An Episcopal parish named after St. Michael the Archangel was built here and eventually gave the town its name.St. Michaels also developed a thriving shipbuilding industry and became particularly known for building Baltimore clippers. These ships were renowned for their speed and maneuverability — qualities that made them valuable for outrunning other vessels and evading blockades.That shipbuilding industry made St. Michaels a British target during the War of 1812. The British attacked the town twice in 1813 as part of their campaign around the Chesapeake Bay. A year later, British forces would move against Baltimore and bombard Fort McHenry, inspiring Francis Scott Key to write the words that became “The Star-Spangled Banner.”As the local economy shifted toward oyster harvesting and crabbing, St. Michaels’ shipyards continued to manufacture workboats suited to the Chesapeake. One example is the bugeye, a type of sailboat watermen used for oyster dredging.You can still see that maritime history up close.An easy day trip Lynn TopelWith a total area of only 1.27 square miles, St. Michaels is easy to navigate if you aren’t planning to spend the night. A day trip from Washington — less than two hours by car — or Baltimore, just over an hour away, is very feasible. Philadelphia is less than two and a half hours away.The first stop for any visitor to the area should be the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, located on 18 acres of waterfront property. With Maryland’s identity so closely intertwined with the Bay, it’s fitting that this is the only museum in the country dedicated to America’s largest estuary.Step into the welcome center, and you’ll find replicas and authentic examples of watercraft used for racing, fishing, oyster harvesting, and leisure.You will also learn how the bay and its boats played a part in American history. One of the most remarkable objects is a 23-foot canoe like the one used by enslaved man Joseph Keene, his pregnant wife, Nellie, and their seven children to escape in 1831. An experienced sailor, Keene navigated his family north up the Chesapeake, likely toward the newly opened Chesapeake & Delaware Canal and Pennsylvania. Against extraordinary odds, the entire family successfully evaded capture and reached freedom. The Bay played an integral role in the maritime routes of the Underground Railroad. Enslaved people used the Chesapeake and its network of rivers and creeks to travel north toward free states, sometimes hiding aboard commercial vessels and sometimes escaping in boats themselves. For experienced sailors like Keene, the same waterways on which they had labored could also provide a path to freedom.Dotting the museum campus are buildings devoted to different aspects of life on the Chesapeake, from sail making and decoy carving to oyster harvesting and crab picking.For younger visitors, don’t miss the water tanks with live blue crabs. Wannabe watermen can explore a life-sized skipjack, a single-mast sailing boat native to the Chesapeake, or climb into the pilot house of the Thor, a 1912 buyboat that purchased catches directly from fishing boats and transported them to market.One of the museum’s best features is that this isn’t all history preserved behind glass. You can watch shipwrights at work restoring and building wooden boats — and don’t hold back if you have questions.There’s also the Hooper Strait Lighthouse, where kids can dress up as lighthouse keepers before climbing to the top for views over the water. Lynn TopelBut perhaps the biggest surprise at the museum has nothing to do with boats.RELATED: The ‘Little House’ books gave me a place to escape. This New York farm took me there for real. Josh SlocumFrederick Douglass lived here, tooThe home of abolitionist Frederick Douglass’ sister Eliza Mitchell now stands on the museum grounds.Eliza married a free man, Peter Mitchell, and lived in St. Michaels for the rest of her life. Their home on Lee Street was slated for demolition until it was saved and moved to the museum in 1981. Restored today, the Mitchell House gives visitors a glimpse of how a family with nine children made do with the space they had.Douglass himself spent part of his youth in and around St. Michaels while enslaved during the 1830s. He worked as a house servant, field laborer, and, later, ship caulker.His time here became an important part of the story he later told about slavery and his escape from it. Visitors can learn more about his life in an exhibit across from the museum’s welcome center. Lynn TopelThe Douglass connection adds another layer to this fascinating town. St. Michaels has its patriotic War of 1812 legend, but it also preserves the much more complicated history of the people who lived along the Chesapeake.Save room for ice creamAfter a few hours at the museum, the best way to finish the day is to find a place to sit, eat, and people-watch on the town’s main street.Talbot Street is the major thoroughfare through the historic district, lined with restored colonial and 19th-century buildings housing restaurants, antique and boutique stores, and art galleries.For the sweetest possible ending, head to Justine’s Ice Cream Parlour, a St. Michaels fixture since 1987. Check out its “Wall of Shakes,” with more than 90 classic and signature flavors.The truly ambitious can attempt the Titanic Sundae Challenge: more than six pounds of ice cream and toppings that must be consumed in under 30 minutes. “Man v. Food” host Casey Webb successfully conquered the challenge in 2019 at Justine’s Ocean City location — and visitors to St. Michaels can attempt the same feat here.By then, you will have covered a remarkable amount of American history for a town barely a square mile in size: Chesapeake shipbuilding, the War of 1812, the Underground Railroad, Frederick Douglass, and generations of watermen who made their living from the Bay.And you may find yourself wondering whether the residents of St. Michaels really did climb into the trees with lanterns one foggy night in 1813 and trick the Royal Navy into firing over their heads.There may never be enough evidence to settle that question, but after more than 200 years, “The Town That Fooled the British” is still telling the story.

Google recently reported that a China-linked hacking group ran artificial intelligence tools inside compromised networks. The technique let the hackers use victims’ computing resources and credentials while reducing the traffic that might expose them. The group also targeted North American academic, medical, military, and technology-research institutions. That is a serious warning.The disclosure followed a Justice Department and FBI operation against QScan and QTRouter, two platforms allegedly used by a Chinese state-sponsored group known as QTFY. Prosecutors say the group, employed by Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Technology, sold hacking services to customers that included China’s Ministry of State Security and People’s Liberation Army.Chinese cyberattacks are only going to get more capable. We need a concerted plan to protect our infrastructure and private information before it’s too late.Court records identify NASA, the Federal Reserve, the Departments of Energy, Justice, and Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Senate among the targets. They also list hospitals, telecommunications providers, power companies, financial institutions, and defense contractors. The public evidence does not show that every listed network was breached. Still, it’s a major concern.The operation illustrates how Beijing can combine government direction, private contractors, compromised devices, and commercial infrastructure in a sustained espionage campaign. Diplomatic engagement with Chinese leaders does not eliminate that threat, and cybersecurity policy must account for it regardless of the state of bilateral relations.On Aug. 26, the same day officials announced the QScan and QTRouter seizures, the White House declared a national emergency involving foreign-produced bulk-power equipment. The order lets the government restrict transactions involving equipment that poses an unacceptable security risk as well as identify, isolate, monitor, or replace vulnerable components.The risk is substantial. Grid operators increasingly depend on networked sensors, controllers, and other devices associated with the “internet of things.” Connectivity can improve efficiency and monitoring, but it also expands the attack surface. The fear is less that China will shut off the lights tomorrow than that it will slowly gain the ability to cause blackouts and spread panic — a security advantage it can leverage. The administration’s Cyber Strategy for America calls for hardening critical infrastructure and its supply chains, including the energy grid, data centers, water utilities, hospitals, and telecommunications systems. The recent cases show why that work must extend beyond power plants to vendors, contractors, and the devices that connect essential services.Cyber defense is only part of the problem. Washington must also decide how to evaluate Chinese companies whose technology enters sensitive American systems.Nanjing Xinjiuwei is a useful example: The government alleges that the company employed QTFY and received payments from China’s Ministry of State Security. No surprise that plenty of other Chinese companies have also engaged in espionage.The Pentagon this summer added Alibaba and BYD to its list of entities it identifies as Chinese military companies operating in the United States, effectively banning them from securing defense contracts. What took so long?RELATED: America’s adversaries are using top American tech — without telling their customers Smederevac/iStock/Getty ImagesHuawei presents a more dangerous case. The Justice Department has accused Huawei and several subsidiaries of racketeering, trade-secret theft, and concealing business in countries subject to sanctions. Separately, federal law restricts agencies and contractors from using specified Huawei telecommunications equipment, and regulators have designated the company’s equipment a national-security risk.The company’s U.S. research affiliate, Futurewei, also drew congressional scrutiny after lawmakers said it shared a California office complex with Nvidia for years. Nvidia has said its operations remained separate. Huawei’s past relationships with American universities likewise prompted several institutions to review or end research funding arrangements.The American economic system is open by nature, and this risks allowing easy access to malefactors like Huawei. Successive administrations have maintained or expanded restrictions on Huawei while encouraging alternatives in the global telecommunications market. National-security officials also cited competition with Huawei when supporting the Hewlett Packard Enterprise acquisition of Juniper Networks. That case illustrates how industrial policy can overlap with security interests.The Center for Strategic and International Studies has catalogued 224 reported instances of Chinese espionage directed at the United States since 2000. Its survey excludes espionage against U.S. allies and more than 1,200 intellectual-property lawsuits brought by American companies against Chinese entities.The policy challenge is broader than any single breach or company. The United States must secure critical networks, investigate firms on the evidence, enforce procurement and export-control rules consistently, and work with allies on interoperable alternatives.Chinese cyberattacks are only going to get more capable. We need a concerted plan to protect our infrastructure and private information before it’s too late.

The global fertility rate is crashing. Today, more than half the world’s people live in countries below replacement fertility.Many factors are playing into this predicament, but “managerial liberalism” — institutions like HR, academia, NGOs, agencies, and media pushing liberal social rules — is the main culprit according to BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre.It’s what rewards women for delaying marriage and motherhood in favor of careers and independence. It’s what treats children as a lifestyle accessory instead of the point of a people. And it’s what sells immigration as the substitute for babies.To dive into this subject, MacIntyre speaks with his friend Kevin Dolan, founder of the EXIT Group and host of the Natal Conference. MacIntyre begins by highlighting Dolan’s recent article, “Mom Is working for Moloch,” which argues that babies are being sacrificed — not at temples, but to a “Moloch” machine that runs on women’s long years of school and career.“The strongest correlation between fertility and any other sort of social science variable is educating and employing women,” says Dolan.A lot of people on the political right, he argues, view this problem “unseriously” — throwing shade at girlbosses when the problem isn’t women getting PhDs and being C-suite executives.The correlation between declining birth rates and educating/employing women, Dolan says, begins long before higher education or career ladders come into the picture. “This correlation exists at the level of like being taught to read and escaping subsistence agriculture,” he tells MacIntyre.But the only countries where this lifestyle of illiteracy and rugged farm life is the reality for women are “places where none of us want to live,” he adds.The right often tries quick-fix solutions, like cash incentives for having kids and cheaper day care, but they’re just “polishing-the-brass-on-the-Titanic-type solutions,” Dolan argues.“The sacrifice that you're asking of people to have these kids is enormous, and the kind of person who would have a kid for 1,000 bucks is not necessarily the person that you want raising kids,” he adds.The reality is people aren’t going to have families, regardless of government incentive, “unless they can do it in this deeply high-trust, relational, contextual frame,” says Dolan, “and if you try to make them do it as a transaction, they will just not do it.”The problem, however, is that managerial liberalism is designed to dissolve that world.“We've created a world that humans don't want to raise families in. Like, that's just a fundamental, like a spiritual indictment of the world that we live in,” says Dolan. “We got to fix that.”To hear Dolan and MacIntyre on what they think has to give if families are going to form again, watch the full episode above.Want more from Auron MacIntyre?To enjoy more of this YouTuber and recovering journalist's commentary on culture and politics, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Shortly after September 11, the U.S. government passed the ingeniously titled Patriot Act. Are you a decent, self-respecting soul who loves America and hates those who hate you? Most Americans nodded vigorously and responded with a resounding yes. Citizens accepted federal wiretaps and financial monitoring as reasonable trade-offs for national security.Over the next two decades, local police departments began using license-plate readers. Private companies cashed in on the madness, covering suburban front porches with internet-connected video doorbells. Flock cameras now turn ordinary commutes into one giant, searchable tracking database. And that guy sitting across from you on the subway? He might be wearing a creepy pair of Meta glasses, filming you without your permission, and preparing to do God-only-knows-what with the footage.If it can happen in Texas, it can happen anywhere in America.Things are bad, but as my grandmother used to say, when you think you’ve hit rock bottom, always remember that hell has a basement.She was right.In Dallas, the city government recently partnered with a tech firm called City Detect to put AI cameras on ordinary garbage trucks. As the trucks roll through residential neighborhoods, high-resolution cameras photograph homes, driveways, and front yards. Algorithms then scan the images for potential violations, from overgrown lawns and peeling paint to structural disrepair and discarded junk. China gives citizens a social credit score. Dallas now has something that sounds eerily familiar: a “blight score.” To be clear, Dallasites aren’t being rated on political loyalty or on whether they should be allowed to purchase a plane ticket. But the underlying idea is unsettlingly similar. Technology collects information about ordinary people, then analyzes it and turns what a camera sees into a data point that can trigger authorities' attention.And this is where the legal defense of public surveillance comes in. The traditional argument is simple. If something can be seen from a public road, you have little or no expectation of privacy in it. A police officer or code inspector standing on a public sidewalk can look at your front yard for hours without obtaining a warrant. City Detect relies on precisely this principle. The company says its software automatically blurs human faces and vehicle license plates before storing the imagery. In other words, you may not be personally identifiable in the database, but your house, driveway, lawn, and property can still be photographed, analyzed and flagged.That distinction may satisfy the lawyers, but it doesn't necessarily satisfy the citizen, nor should it.Surveillance creepApplying continuous, AI-driven surveillance across an entire city fundamentally changes how local government operates.This dynamic flips the traditional relationship between citizens and law enforcement. Throughout American history, government investigation required either initial suspicion or a formal complaint before it resorted to observation. Automated garbage truck cameras reverse that sequence by subjecting every property owner to preemptive, systematic photography. An algorithm evaluates the physical condition of a private residence first, and the city issues a notification second. Dallas residents now receive automated courtesy notices regarding their property conditions without a human inspector ever stepping foot on their pavement.The immediate result is the industrialization of minor administrative oversight. Local governments purchase turnkey surveillance systems from private vendors because automated enforcement generates predictable revenue while reducing payroll costs. Cities may introduce these systems as simple administrative tools, but once the technology exists to continuously scan an entire city, its uses can easily expand beyond the original purpose.RELATED: These popular Wi-Fi routers can detect motion — inside your home Iaremenko/Getty Images And if it can happen in Texas, supposedly a conservative state that prides itself on individual liberty, it can happen anywhere in America.City Detect insists that its databases remain separate from law enforcement networks and that private companies retain ownership of the operating algorithms. No one of sound mind should be reassured by these promises. Public records requests and corporate partnerships regularly bridge the gap between municipal records and law enforcement access. Once a high-definition image of a private driveway is stored on a cloud server, the legal barriers that restrict access by law enforcement, tax assessors, or civil litigants can quickly disappear.Future shockThe primary danger of localized algorithmic monitoring lies in its future capabilities. Big Brother is a lot like the national debt; it never gets smaller, only bigger.The software deployed on garbage trucks today identifies tall weeds, discarded mattresses, and stray trash. Upgraded models could easily detect subtle physical changes over time. The idea that your driveway parking patterns and home additions could be recorded in the not-so-distant future may sound absurd, but it shouldn’t.Today, the surveillance state no longer requires specialized federal agents or hidden listening posts to monitor everyday life. You live in a country where every commute and porch delivery feeds an all-knowing database. That is troubling and infuriating. But perhaps the most worrying aspect is how difficult it will be to put the genie back in the bottle. Once those in charge learn they can watch everything, why would they ever choose to watch less?