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Secret Service Official Sounds Alarm: "Threat Environment Highest Ever" As Assassination Attempts Explode

The threat environment facing individuals under U.S. Secret Service protection, including President Trump, is the highest the agency has ever recorded, a senior official said during a background briefing with reporters, according to CNBC.

Getty Images

"What we're seeing now is something I've never seen before," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity ahead of a public briefing.

The Secret Service has logged roughly 10,000 cases involving threats against government officials, including Supreme Court justices, so far in 2026 - a 40% increase from the same period a year earlier.

"They're increasing in volume and complexity," the official warned. The agency has also recorded a tenfold increase in mental-health commitments of individuals suspected of threatening protectees.

The remarks landed a week after Justice Amy Coney Barrett told a House subcommittee that threats against her and her colleagues on the Court have risen sharply.

Why They're Briefing Now

The timing is not incidental. The briefing came ahead of Friday's rescheduled White House Correspondents' Association dinner at the Waldorf Astoria, which Trump is expected to attend.

It needed rescheduling because of what happened at the last one. In April, a man carrying a shotgun, a handgun and knives stormed a security checkpoint at the Washington Hilton during the dinner, with the president in attendance, before being apprehended. Cole Tomas Allen now faces charges of attempting to assassinate the president.

That was not an isolated event. On May 4, a man was wounded in a firefight with Secret Service personnel near the Washington Monument. Three weeks later, on May 23, a gunman approached the White House while Trump was inside the residence, drew a firearm and discharged multiple rounds before being fatally shot by agents. In February, Secret Service and local police shot and killed a man armed with a shotgun who had breached a secure perimeter at Mar-a-Lago.

Four incidents in six months, at four separate protected sites. That is the ledger behind the 40% figure.

The Butler Problem

The current alarm builds on two assassination attempts in 2024. On July 13 of that year, gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, killing attendee Corey Comperatore and seriously wounding two others.

An Office of Inspector General report found that the Secret Service missed more than 100 radio transmissions from local law enforcement about a suspicious individual - now believed to be Crooks - armed with a rangefinder and rifle. Agents failed to relay critical warnings, establish proper joint communications, or secure the rooftop vantage point.

Those findings describe a catastrophic operational breakdown. They do not describe complicity, and the OIG made no such finding. But for the family of the man who died there, the distinction has offered cold comfort.

Comperatore's widow, Helen Comperatore, made headlines last week when she suggested the attempt on Trump's life was "an inside job."

"I believe he was working with somebody," she told NewsNation. "I believe it was an inside job, inside the government somewhere." No investigation has produced evidence supporting that claim, and the agency has attributed the failures to breakdowns in communication and planning.

Two months after Butler, a Secret Service officer fired at another gunman, Ryan Routh, who had concealed himself in shrubbery near the perimeter of Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida. Routh was convicted in Florida federal court last September of attempting to assassinate the president, among other charges, and is serving a life sentence.

The Problem Above The Perimeter

The concern growing fastest inside the agency is one that walks past every countermeasure it has spent a century building. Drones approach from outside conventional security perimeters and cannot be screened, wanded, or turned away at a checkpoint.

The scale is no longer theoretical. The FBI said this week it seized more than 700 illegal drones and detected roughly 1,600 in total across the eleven U.S. stadiums hosting World Cup matches - venues holding tens of thousands of people at a time.

Secret Service Director Sean Curran has said the agency is examining "kinetic solutions - something that we haven't done before," and has pushed its technology division to move faster. The OIG's Butler review separately faulted the agency's counter-drone training and preparedness, a gap it has since worked to close.

The Foreign File

More recently, Israel shared intelligence with the U.S. indicating a fresh Iranian plot to assassinate Trump, according to the Wall Street Journal. Iran has for years publicly vowed retaliation for the 2020 killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qassem Soleimani, and the ongoing war has sharpened concern about foreign actors targeting the president.

U.S. Secret Service Director Sean Curran testifies during the House Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee hearing in the Rayburn building in Washington, April 16, 2026. Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Image Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 18:00

DARPA's 'ECHO' Project: A Computer System That Declares You A Bio Threat - With No Physical Evidence

Authored by Jon Fleetwood via JonFleetwood.com,

In 2018, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) proposed building a portable computer system allegedly capable of determining whether a person had been exposed to biological or chemical threats - including weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and their precursors.

Even with no physical evidence.

DARPA outlined the proposal in Broad Agency Announcement HR001118S0023 for a program known as ECHO (Epigenetic CHaracterization and Observation).

DARPA proposed accomplishing this by comparing purported changes inside the person's own biology against a government-built reference library and algorithmically identifying both the alleged threat and when the exposure supposedly occurred.

Viewed alongside DARPA's broader pandemic-era research portfolio, the proposal also raises a larger question explored by this publication's In Silico Theory: as governments increasingly replace direct observation with computational models, reference libraries, and algorithmic determinations, where does objective evidence end and computer-generated conclusions begin?

It also raises an immediate practical question.

If an algorithm operating on a government-controlled reference library determines that someone was exposed to a dangerous biological or chemical threat without physical evidence, what meaningful mechanism exists for independently verifying - or successfully challenging - that determination?

SAM.gov search results associated with DARPA solicitation HR001118S0023 identify at least $53.8 million in awards, including a $49.2 million contract awarded to the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and a $4.5 million contract awarded to Arizona State University.

The Core Capability

Rather than searching for the biological or chemical agent itself, ECHO proposed "identifying" alleged long-lasting biological signatures left behind after an exposure.

DARPA described the objective:

"utilize an individual's epigenome to reveal their history of exposure to weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and WMD precursors."

The solicitation explains why DARPA believed this was possible:

"the epigenome is persistent and detectable even when physical evidence has been erased."

That sentence is arguably the centerpiece of the entire program.

The proposed system was designed to continue generating exposure determinations long after the original biological or chemical material was no longer available for direct examination.

Epigenetics is the study of purported chemical modifications associated with DNA that researchers say can change in response to biological and environmental influences without altering a person's genetic code.

A Government-Built Exposure Library

To accomplish that objective, DARPA instructed performers to create what it called the ECHO Signature Panel (ESP) - a centralized library containing purported epigenetic signatures associated with specific exposures.

Contractors were required to generate signatures for a minimum of 21 exposure conditions, including mandatory biological threat agents and additional chemical, radiological, explosive, and related materials.

Future unknown samples would then be compared against that growing reference panel.

DARPA explained the process:

"The developed algorithms will need to compare an unknown exposure against the ESP to identify the specific exposure, and when the individual was exposed."

In other words, the proposed system would not simply measure biology.

It would compare an individual's biological patterns against a government-built reference library and output a determination regarding both the nature and timing of an alleged exposure.

The Computer Makes The Determination

The solicitation envisioned an almost completely automated process.

DARPA required:

"no human intervention between the time the sample is introduced and results pertinent to exposure and timing is provided."

Insert the sample.

Run the algorithms.

Receive the determination.

The individual would not be interpreting raw laboratory findings.

The system itself would produce the conclusion.

When The Person Becomes The Evidence

Traditional forensic investigations often rely on recovering the biological or chemical agent itself.

ECHO proposed something different.

According to the solicitation, the system was intended to continue identifying exposure after the physical evidence had been erased by relying instead on computational comparison against stored biological signatures.

That architecture raises an obvious question.

If the original biological or chemical material no longer exists, and the determination instead comes from an algorithm comparing an individual's biology against a government-controlled reference library, how would an ordinary person independently verify - or meaningfully challenge - that conclusion?

Could the system be weaponized or used fraudulently?

The document itself does not answer that question.

Instead, it focuses on improving the speed, automation, and reliability of the computational determination.

DARPA Anticipated Attempts To Defeat The System

One small line buried within the solicitation is especially revealing.

Among the categories requiring special handling, DARPA listed:

"Potential procedure to evade ECHO Signature Panel identification."

The agency was not merely interested in creating exposure signatures.

It was already contemplating how those signatures - and the identification system built around them - might be circumvented.

Bottom Line

Much of the discussion surrounding ECHO focuses on epigenetics.

That risks obscuring what the solicitation actually proposed.

At its core, ECHO described a government-built computational system designed to determine whether an individual had been exposed to specified biological or chemical threats by comparing representations of that person's biology against a centralized signature library - even after the underlying physical evidence was gone.

Whether such a system could perform as intended is a separate scientific question.

The more immediate journalistic question is what follows if such algorithmic determinations are relied upon in military, intelligence, public-health, or legal settings.

When there is no physical evidence and the conclusion rests on a proprietary reference library and algorithmic comparison, what avenues exist for independent verification or meaningful challenge?

What happens to the person after the algorithm determines they've been exposed?

And if those algorithmic determinations are ever used to justify quarantine, criminal investigation, military action, employment decisions, travel restrictions, or other government action, what protections exist for the person the computer has already declared was exposed?

Follow Jon Fleetwood on Instagram and X, and subscribe at JonFleetwood.com. (h/t Modernity.news)

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 17:40

Overeducated Liberals With Worthless Degrees Are DSA's "Sweet Spot" Voter

Nate Silver identifies lower-income, highly educated voters as the core demographic of the Democratic Socialists of America, revealing a striking breakdown in the traditional relationship between education and higher income.

"Income and education are usually positively correlated. But sometimes the relationship breaks down. What's the most Democratic voting group in America? People with post-graduate degrees but lower-to-middle incomes," Silver wrote on X.

In today's newsletter, I argue this is the sweet spot for the DSA. DSA members are *very* college-educated (80% BA+) but *not* particularly well-off (45% HHI incomes below $60K). Their class status is ambiguous. But they tend to be very liberal on culture as well as economics. pic.twitter.com/yXAW5pVczi

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) July 21, 2026

One explanation: newly minted graduates burdened by student debt, holding low-value liberal arts and other worthless woke degrees, and working multiple service-sector jobs. The result is a cohort driven by progressive ideology but denied the prosperity they were promised, creating fertile recruiting ground for far-left movements.

Typical socialist voter...

Oh my lord. 🫪

A student went off the rails because a police officer used the “wrong pronouns.”

Officer: “He’s having a breakdown.”

Student: “SHE!!!!! SHE!!!!!! JUST SAY THE RIGHT PRONOUN!” (screaming like a lunatic)

We have a serious mental health crisis in this country, and… pic.twitter.com/kMF5GXfWB5

— Gina Milan (@ginamilan_) July 18, 2026

Some of these movements, including ones pushed by the DSA, aim to collapse the nation from within.

Whether intentional or not, an education system increasingly influenced by Marxism is producing politically radical graduates with insurmountable debt, primed to demand sweeping economic change. It's like the kids are being set up for failure even before stepping into a job.

By contrast, voters with high school or partial college educations who secure well-paying, goods-producing jobs tend to lean more Republican. These folks don't go through four to six years of woke indoctrination camps.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp on Zohran Mandani recently said it best about educated socialist voters:

The average Ivy League grad voting for this mayor is annoyed their education is not that valuable—and that the person who knows how to drill for oil has a more valuable profession. That annoys the f*ck out of these people.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp on Zohran Mandani voters:

“The average Ivy League grad voting for this mayor is annoyed their education is not that valuable—and that the person who knows how to drill for oil has a more valuable profession.”

“That annoys the fuck out of these people.” https://t.co/46r7RJLD9U pic.twitter.com/GG689vn4rk

— Jawwwn (@jawwwn_) July 21, 2026

The education system run by the left wing has massively failed young people. It is instead transforming them into Marxist activists intent on overthrowing America and capitalism - a trend evident in the rise of the DSA.

There is good news: Nancy Lazar, Piper Sandler's chief global economist and head of the firm's economics research team, recently published a note stating that goods-producing jobs are returning due to reshoring and data center buildouts.

For parents focused on positioning their children to thrive, the traditional college pathway can no longer be treated as the default. Unless a degree provides a clear return on investment, technical training, skilled trades or direct entry into goods-producing industries may offer a stronger path to financial independence.

Otherwise, why subject your kids to a four-year Marxist indoctrination camp, only for them to dye their hair purple, become weekend No Kings activists and work two jobs, one at Starbucks and the other as a cat walker?

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 17:20

Google Tumbles After Boosting 2026 Capex Guidance Again

Update (5:00pm ET): It took just a few minutes into the call for management to get to the elephant in the room, namely the relentless spending on overpriced commodity chips, and just like last quarter when GOOGL guided to a much higher capex for the current year, it did so again (if to a slightly lesser extent). The stock promptly slumped 3% to new session lows.

• *ALPHABET SEES FY CAPEX $195B TO $205B, SAW $180B TO $190B

And then:

• *GOOGLE STILL SEES FY27 CAPEX INCREASING 'SIGNIFICANTLY'

There was more:

• *GOOGLE TO EXPAND USE OF THIRD PARTY AI CAPACITY IN Q3
• *ALPHABET: SEES MODEST MARGIN PRESSURE FROM THIRD PARTY CAPACITY

In kneejerk reaction the stock promptly slumped 4% in AH trading to new session lows.

* * * 

Earlier:

As we wrote in our GOOGL preview, according to UBS and JPM analysts, the market would be watching two things above all else when Alphabet became the first hyperscaler to report earnings after the close today: capex guidance and monetization language, as "the debate has shifted from "how big is capex" to "who proves monetization and returns." And yet, in light of the massive expectations for capex growth, the company was facing "downside risk" it it disappointed the buyside bars which were $100BN higher ($350-$375BN) than the median sellside estimate of $250BN. 

So what did GOOGL just report for fiscal second quarter moments ago? Well, Alphabet reported Q2 cloud revenues that surpassed Wall Street’s expectations but slightly missed on sales tied to its search-engine business, threatening to fuel concerns about its heavy spending on artificial intelligence. 

The Google parent also said cloud sales totaled $24.77 billion for the quarter ended June 30, a jump of 82% over the same period last year. That was better than the $22.46 billion that analysts expected, but well short of some buyside whisper bogeys. Sales from search advertising generated $63.27 billion, just below estimates for $63.28 billion. 

Here are the details: 

• Revenue ex-TAC $103.62 billion, +27% y/y, beating estimate $101.07 billion 
• Revenue $119.80 billion, +24% y/y, beating estimate $117.02 billion
  • Google Services revenue $94.54 billion, +15% y/y, beating estimate $94.32 billion
  • Google advertising revenue $81.63 billion, +14% y/y, beating estimate $81.12 billion
  • Google Search & Other Revenue $63.27 billion, +17% y/y, missing estimate $63.28 billion, and in line with the buyside bar of 17% growth. 
  • YouTube ads revenue $11.06 billion, +13% y/y, beating estimate $10.81 billion
  • Google Network Revenue $7.30 billion, -0.7% y/y, beating estimate $7.13 billion
  • Google Subscriptions, Platforms and Devices Revenue $12.91 billion, +15% y/y, missing estimate $13.06 billion
  • Google Cloud revenue $24.77 billion, +82% y/y, beating estimate $22.46 billion
  • Other Bets revenue $382 million, +2.4% y/y, missing estimate $402.2 million
  • Hedging gains $106 million, beating estimate $75.7 million
     
• Total TAC $16.18 billion, +10% y/y, higher than estimate $16.24 billion
• Operating income $40.77 billion, +30% y/y, beating estimate $40.55 billion
  • Google Services operating income $39.54 billion, +20% y/y, missing estimate $40.23 billion
  • Google Cloud operating income $8.81 billion vs. $2.83 billion y/y, beating estimate $6.91 billion
  • Other Bets operating loss $1.80 billion vs. loss $1.25 billion y/y, beating estimate loss $1.72 billion
  • Alphabet-level activities operating loss $5.79 billion vs. loss $3.37 billion y/y, estimate loss $4.81 billion
• Operating margin 34% vs. 32% y/y, estimate 34.7%
• Capital expenditure $44.92 billion vs. $22.45 billion y/y, just a bit higher than the estimate $44.15 billion; the real question is what will the company hint at 2027 capex. 

Here is what the company's explosively growing capex looks like now:

Some other notable highlights from the report: 

• Number of employees 198,933, +6.3% y/y, estimate 195,527
• Gemini App MAUs 950 million
• Google Cloud backlog $514 billion
• Gain on equity securities of $99.03 billion

Commenting on the quarter, CEO Sundar Pichai said that “our popular AI features are driving Search query growth” although many would counter that GOOGL's popular AI features were popular 9 months ago and users havelong since moved on to other platforms. He added that “Google Cloud saw a meaningful acceleration in growth as revenues increased 82% to $24.8 billion, led by an increase in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) across enterprise AI Solutions and enterprise AI Infrastructure, as well as core GCP services.”

The company also said that Gemini models now process 22 billion API tokens per minute: “We are seeing strong demand for our security solutions, and our new Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber delivers highly cost- efficient performance at the frontier.”

Amusingly, the company said that it still hasn’t sold any shares under ATM program, a program which otherwise would be reserved to C-grade meme stonks desperate for liquidity. Come to think of it, if GOOGL plans on unveiling some insane capex number like $400BN or so for 2027, it will absolutely be desperate for liquidity in just a few months. 

Alphabet is the first major US hyperscaler to report earnings this season, offering an early glimpse of what’s to come. The tech sector has committed hundreds of billions of dollars to data centers and other AI offerings, but has yet to show any measurable returns for the trillions it plans on spending on commodities like GPUs and extremely overpriced memory chips. Google is set to spend more than ever on capital expenditures this year to compete in the AI race, and investors have been waiting to see whether that spending is driving new growth or ultimately weighing on profitability. And it appears that investors are starting to get cold feet waiting for the ROI and margin inflection point (which according to Goldman's agentic propaganda report was supposed to take place this past quarter... it didn't).

The lukewarm results threaten to intensify investor scrutiny of Alphabet’s AI spending, which is projected to reach record highs in 2026. Wall Street has been scouring for evidence that the company’s massive investments are generating new growth rather than weighing on profits. As the first major US technology company to report earnings this season, Alphabet’s results also stand to shape expectations for a sector that has collectively committed hundreds of billions of dollars to AI infrastructure. 

Alphabet shares slipped about 1% in after-hours trading Wednesday, after earlier swining to wider losses and modest gains. The stock closed at $342.09 per share in New York, and is essentially unchanged since early February.

The tepid share reaction despite the cloud beat, which offsets the search miss, reflects concerns over what the company will say about future capex and into 2027. During its last earnings call, management said they expect it to “significantly increase” over 2026; if they do the same this time, the market may not be very pleased as the ROI is still lacking. 

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 17:10

We Watched 'The Odyssey' So You Don't Have To!

Submitted by blueapples on X via ashesofacacia.substack.com,

After watching The Odyssey (don't worry, I pirated it), all I can say is that the hatred it fomented was ultimately to its benefit. It caused a reactionary response that amplified the hype surrounding the movie, with the hate-posting ultimately serving as free publicity. It needed it because the movie was extraordinarily mediocre. A solid 4/10, and that's only largely because the source material innately provides such a compelling story.

As someone whose heritage is Greek, I completely understood that outrage. Hearing people complain about "cultural appropriation" when the foundation of Western civilization is built on my own culture always comes across as absurdly ironic to me. Every time I hear some liberal NPC bitching about cultural appropriation, I always wait for them to bring up voting to ask them how engaging in democracy isn't an act of cultural appropriation, which they of course just respond to by defaulting to some empty platitude they've been programmed to say.

Nevertheless, the rage-posting over the movie became really tiresome to me. It's Hollywood. What would you expect? If you're going to look at a commercially driven film from Christopher Nolan as if it should be the paragon of artistic integrity, then you really only have yourself to blame. There is an abundance of amazing film out there, past, present, and future. Art, whether it's film, music, or any other medium, needs to be something that is a catalyst for self-exploration; it should be sought out by an audience, not served to them. Depending on an industry to curate that experience is about as rational as depending on CNN or Fox News to deliver you the truth in their news coverage. All the same people complaining about "woke" movies are ultimately assimilating into the paradigm that promotes them. They'll be the first to watch Citizen Vigilante or some empty movie marketed to the right wing for the same commercial motives and laud it despite it being awful and the only value of the film triggering their confirmation bias.

Having said that, people critical of the casting in Nolan's The Odyssey were entirely merited in their vitriol. The virtual signaling done by the casting decisions is made clearer as the film plays out. Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra are really just used to show off Lupita Nyong'o being black. It's clear their characters weren't sought out by Nolan to play a particularly important part rather than being plot devices, which makes it hard to believe there was any real imperative to casting her on the basis of her ability as an actress. What makes that even more obvious is that each of those characters play incredibly important and compelling roles in Homer's epic poem, with much more focus being on Helen, of course. Helen is minimized far more than Clytemnestra, which is incredible considering she's the impetus of the Trojan War itself.

Then there's Elliot Page as Sinon. This is perhaps the most obvious example of forced casting, as Sinon is not a character in Homer's epic poem. Instead, Sinon is depicted as the Greek spy who tricks the Trojans into bringing the Trojan Horse into the city of Troy in Virgil's The Aeneid. There was really no reason to have Sinon other than for the plot device Nolan utilizes him as later in the film. The addition of Sinon is the second biggest departure from the source material as far as the plot of the story is concerned, other than the ending which Nolan rewrites to name Telemachus as king and have Odysseus and Penelope exiled from Ithaca for breaking the Greek law of xenia, or hospitality, which is for some reason called the Law of Zeus rather than the Law of Hestia, but I digress. Nolan has worked with Page in the past, when she was the secondary lead in the woefully awful 2010 science fiction movie Inception, so there is an element of familiarity behind the casting, but the publicity behind casting someone transgender comes across as the motive behind the casting more than anything else.

La escena de Elliot Page que me quedé esperando de La Odisea pic.twitter.com/xR7p6S3Z9h

— Njord (@VikingoArtico) July 18, 2026

The flaws in the casting don't just have to do with the apparent DEI initiative behind many of the choices, though. The acting was woeful other than Anne Hathaway and John Leguizamo. Even their contributions to the film aren't acted out with any sense of nuance. Their performances are largely just amplified by being juxtaposed against very stunted and hollow acting displayed by the rest of the cast.

That sense of emptiness isn't exclusive to the acting. As is the case in all Christopher Nolan films, there was an overarching sterility behind the whole thing that made it very hard to invest in any of the characters or storylines, which says a lot considering it's The Odyssey. Odysseus bidding farewell to Argos is one of the most heartbreaking scenes in any work of literature ever, yet it came across as obligatory and, due to the gravity it plays in the plot, made for a very anticlimactic ending.

The special effects have been lauded, and I really have no idea why. I get why not defaulting to CGI is something people admire, but it comes across as performative when the practical effects aren't great. That is kind of a perfect distillation of the movie. Again — all hype, no substance.

One thing I was particularly interested in was how the gods were going to be handled. Their role in the Homeric epics was entirely absent from the 2004 Wolfgang Petersen film Troy, which I would recommend watching the director's cut of instead of this trash from Nolan.

Athena is the focal point of the gods' role in The Odyssey, but there's no real sense of mystique behind how Nolan presents that. Matt Damon just talks to Zendaya, and then there's a pan or cut, and it's like, "Whoa, she's gone!!!!" Only he can see her!!!! Crazy!!!!" which really is a sham considering how integrating the gods with natural phenomena would have been a great way to exercise special or practical effects. The absence of that is especially apparent when Odysseus finally returns home to Ithaca. In Homer's epic, Athena clouds the island in a mist so that Odysseus can be hidden from his enemies. In the scene from the Nolan movie, there is a mist on the shores, but there's very little done to illustrate the role Athena plays in creating it, other than her just being there. She doesn't manifest from the mist, disappear into it, or have any connection that would connect her divinity to it. It's ultimately just a perfect summation of how Zendaya plays the part of the goddess: she's just there.

Odysseus' long-awaited return to Ithaca in Book 13 of The Odyssey is also when Homer describes one of the most esoteric and mystical elements of the epic poem: the Cave of the Nymphs (no, not the one Jeffrey Epstein's brother named his property management company after). The symbolism of the Cave of the Nymphs in The Odyssey is the perfect illustration of the scale of the poem and what it and Homer mean to Greek culture. Homer was far beyond a poet; he was viewed as a completely transcendent figure bordering on divinity himself. His followers viewed his works as much as works of theology as they were poetry.

This is made apparent by the exegetical treatise of lines 102 to 112 in Book 13 of The Odyssey, in which Homer describes the cave, On the Cave of the Nymphs, written by the Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyry (who inspired the imagery of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life). In his treatise, Porphyry navigates the symbolism and metaphysical significance of the cave, penning one of the most profound and longest-lasting analyses of The Odyssey ever written. While it would be too much to expect Nolan to echo the wisdom of Porphyry, the oversight of that opportunity just goes to show how surface level his understanding of the story is and how much that comes across on screen.

One of my favorite YouTube Channels, Let's Talk Religion, recently did an incredible examination of the allegory of the Cave of the Nymphs from The Odyssey that is worth a watch much more than Nolan's movie.

In the end, it's Christopher Nolan. He's a movie maker, not a film maker (sans maybe Memento). He's what a friend of mine calls "a cable movie director." You get a blockbuster that plays to the greatest common denominator of people; that obviously was done by someone who is technically apt and very experienced when it comes to directing. What his interpretation of The Odyssey lacks is the emotional resonance that can only be achieved when a movie is able to communicate its heart and soul to an audience. That shortcoming is the perfect way to describe the movie given how its production completely disregarded the cultural and spiritual gravity that the epic poem has to the Hellenic people.

While I think much of that was purposeful and worth maligning the film for, I also question whether someone like Christopher Nolan has the capacity to have that kind of empathy enough to actually follow through on it. Nolan has described himself as being the most important person on the set of his productions because he serves as "the representative of the audience," a completely disingenuous display of humility meant to serve as a vehicle for self-aggrandizement. In the end, that is his undoing in terms of how his vision falls short of directors who are rightfully revered as auteurs. Nolan's vision is one of pragmatism, viewed through the lens of the masses but put in the hands of a director who can achieve it. It is his vision, but that perspective makes him fall very short of being a visionary. While filmmakers bring their pictures to life, he brings his to the market, which is why the box office is what his legacy rests upon. The Odyssey is just another chapter in the annals of his filmography that will be remembered for quantitative achievements like its box office receipts rather than anything qualitative that is rooted in artistic merit.

TL;DR: The Odyssey gets a 4/10 from me. It wasn't bad, but in some ways, the worst thing you can say about a film is that it's "meh."

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 17:00

House Narrowly Passes $1.15 Trillion Defense Bill That Integrates US Military Tech & Supply Chains With Israel

The House passed the Fiscal Year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act on Wednesday by a 216-212 vote, sending the $1.15 trillion measure to the Senate after one of the most partisan House votes in the must-pass bill's recent history. Only six Democrats supported it, while seven Republicans voted no.

🚨 JUST IN: The US House has just PASSED the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) — with the SAVE AMERICA ACT ATTACHED — sending it to the Senate before it heads to President Trump's desk

Final vote: 216-212

7 Republican NAYs, while 6 Democrats voted YEA pic.twitter.com/LrNfKVGBZL

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) July 22, 2026

Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers praised a topline that he said finally "accounts for the true cost of American deterrence." The authorization is a centerpiece of President Trump's push to raise total defense spending to $1.5 trillion in fiscal 2027. Democrats opposed the measure over the unauthorized war with Iran - which has flared again since the collapse of a memorandum of understanding intended to open peace talks - as well as the attachment of the SAVE America Act's mail-voting restrictions and voter-ID requirements. They also objected to a price tag they argue would be financed through cuts to domestic programs.

The amendment votes exposed the chamber's other fault lines. Rep. Eli Crane's proposal to halt nearly all military aid to Ukraine was defeated 76-350, while Rep. Lauren Boebert's attempt to codify the ban on transgender military service failed 212-217. The House nevertheless adopted two amendments from Rep. Nancy Mace restricting gender-related care through the military's TRICARE health system and barring transgender athletes from girls' sports at Defense Department-run schools.

Opposition also came from lawmakers objecting to the bill's US-Israel defense-industrial integration provisions. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was among the Democrats who cited Section 219, while Reps. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna had announced that they would oppose final passage on the same grounds. The provision remained intact after the Rules Committee declined to permit a floor vote on their amendment to remove it.

The bill now heads to the Senate, where the companion measure, S. 4784, is already stalled. On July 14, the Senate rejected cloture on the motion to proceed, 50-46, after Democrats opposed advancing the bill in protest of the Iran war. With the House scheduled to leave Friday for a recess lasting through the end of August, any eventual conference negotiations are likely to be pushed into the fall.

A separate party-line effort to authorize $60 billion in new war-related spending also remains far short of the $350 billion the Pentagon originally sought.

* * *

The House of Representatives will vote today on final passage of the $1.15 trillion National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2027 (H.R. 8800) - and with it, Section 219, the United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative, a provision directing the Pentagon to expand and accelerate the integration of US and Israeli military technology, supply chains, and defense industrial capacity.

On paper, it is one section among hundreds in a sprawling must-pass bill. In practice, it has become the single most watched line item in the entire package - partly because of what it does, and partly because House leadership just made sure nobody gets to vote on it by itself.

What Section 219 Actually Does

Section 219 - numbered Section 224 in earlier drafts - directs the Secretary of Defense to designate an "executive agent" inside the Department of Defense whose mandate is to expand and accelerate joint research, development, co-production, and industrial integration with Israel across next-gen warfare domains: missile and air defense, counter-drone systems, cyber and electronic warfare, artificial intelligence and autonomous systems, quantum technologies, directed energy, biotechnology, and defense manufacturing - with explicit pathways for moving Israeli-origin and jointly developed technology into US programs of record.

House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL), who introduced the bill on May 13, has pushed back on the "merger" framing, saying the section simply designates a single senior official to coordinate cooperation that already exists, but critics say that's exactly the point. 

Executive agents are permanent bureaucratic machinery - they outlive administrations, and a statutory mandate to "expand and accelerate" only runs in one direction. The Quincy Institute, in a June analysis titled Cooperation without Oversight, argued the executive-agent authority makes the provision "significantly different" from America's existing defense technology arrangements with any other allied nation. Once two industrial bases are physically intertwined - shared components, co-production lines, joint classified programs - no future Congress unwinds that with a floor amendment.

What "Executive Agent" Means

A June policy note by the Quincy Institute's Steven Simon starts from an inconvenient fact for both sides of this fight: the United States does not need Section 219 to buy, co-develop, or field Israeli defense technology. Iron Dome, the Trophy active-protection system, and Barak missiles were all acquired under existing law - cooperative R&D authority under 22 U.S.C. § 2767(j)(1), plus standard Foreign Military Sales and Direct Commercial Sales channels under the Arms Export Control Act. Whatever the initiative is for, it is not access. Its real impact is structural.

The structure is the executive agent. Under DoD Directive 5101.01, an executive agent's authority takes precedence over other Defense Department component heads within its assigned scope - meaning the Israel-cooperation agent could overrule determinations by offices like the Defense Technology Security Administration, the Pentagon body that manages the risks of transferring defense technology and critical information abroad. Pair that precedence with a statutory mandate to "expand and accelerate," and the note's conclusion follows: wherever an internal office pushes back on a transfer or an integration step, the agent exists to push it through. State Department export-control channels would still operate independently, and programs must comply with existing law - but inside the Pentagon, the tie would go to integration.

No other US ally has anything like this. Defense cooperation with the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, and NATO runs through the standard architecture - the under secretary of defense for policy and the Defense Security Cooperation Agency - with no dedicated agent holding precedence authority to promote one country's participation in sensitive US programs. Proponents read the same structure as streamlining: one accountable senior official instead of a dozen scattered offices. Quincy reads it as handing Israeli defense firms "their own promoter in the Pentagon" - and recommends Congress strip the provision outright.

The note also supplies the missing context for why this is happening now. Section 219 is one piece of a broader, publicly acknowledged shift from aid to integration. The FY2026 NDAA already ordered a working group to study folding Israel into the National Technology and Industrial Base. A draft Senate intelligence authorization provision would mandate expanded intelligence sharing with Israel while limiting the president's power to curtail it. And the endgame is not hidden: the Washington Post reported in June that Netanyahu himself backs the GOP effort to wind down the $3.3 billion in annual direct military aid in favor of integration and purchases, and House Resolution 1339 frames the transition, in its own title, as "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Initiative." The concern Quincy raises is the one every aid critic should sit with: a $3.3 billion check is at least a number - published, debated, and voted on every year. Integrated supply chains carry no price tag and come up for no annual vote.

The entrenchment aspect is serious:the F-35 program already ran this experiment, and it is worth being precise about who paid for it. When Turkey was expelled from the program in 2019 over its purchase of a Russian air-defense system, Turkish industry was building roughly 1,000 parts in the global supply chain - and the costs of cutting it loose landed on both sides. Turkey lost its planned jets and its production share. But the United States - the party doing the expelling - did not walk away clean: late parts deliveries spiked, finished-jet deliveries went delinquent, and the already-delayed program slid further behind schedule, all documented by the Government Accountability Office. Fuse two defense industrial bases deeply enough, and the option of changing course quietly disappears - whatever the next decade brings.

Former Congressman Dennis Kucinich warns that Section 219 of the NDAA is a complete, well-planned takeover of the United States military by Benjamin Netanyahu.

He says the bill will give Netanyahu the ability to direct the U.S. military.

"But the truth is that it is laying the… pic.twitter.com/kmVpRaDdzc

— Shadow of Ezra (@ShadowofEzra) July 22, 2026 Speedrunning it... 

On June 15, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) filed a bipartisan amendment to strike Section 219 outright. The Rules Committee refused to make it in order - no debate, no vote. Then the process blew up on its own: on June 30, the rule governing the NDAA failed on the House floor, 198-224, after thirteen Republicans revolted - not over Israel, but over Speaker Mike Johnson's decision to staple a contested voter-ID bill to the defense package. Johnson canceled the rest of the week and sent members home.

Opponents of Section 219 hoped the do-over would finally produce a clean vote. Instead, the Rules Committee reported a reworked rule, H. Res. 1438, on a party-line 8-4 vote Monday night - once again leaving the Massie-Khanna amendment off the approved list. The full House adopted the rule Tuesday, 214-211, a three-vote margin. The resolution sweeps six separate measures to the floor at once, puts the NDAA under a structured rule limiting amendments to a leadership-approved list, and closes off the other five bills entirely, according to a Capitol Wire analysis of the rule.

Massie posted minutes after the floor vote, saying "No debate or vote was allowed on section 219, integration of US military technology and supply chains with Israel's." 

Unfortunately the Rule passed just now and no debate or vote was allowed on section 219, integration of US military technology and supply chains with Israel's.

The NDAA will receive a recorded vote tomorrow with section 219 in it. I'll vote no.

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) July 21, 2026

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene - out of Congress since January but still commanding one of the largest audiences in Republican politics - amplified him within hours, in considerably hotter language:

This will be the most watched recorded vote in modern times.
It will give a list of names of every Member of Congress who betrayed America, committed treason, and sold out the American people to a foreign country.

— Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@FmrRepMTG) July 21, 2026

She's not wrong - this roll call will be screenshotted, sorted into lists, and campaigned on for years - which is what happens when leadership denies members a clean vote and forces every position into a single up-or-down proxy.

Khanna, for his part, is already looking past Wednesday. "Thomas Massie and I have been fighting to stop the integration between our military and the Israeli military. It's shocking that this even has to be explained. It's about American sovereignty," he said Tuesday, vowing to fight the provision in conference negotiations with the Senate. Civil liberties groups, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, had backed the strike amendment on the narrower ground that a change this significant deserved a direct vote.

The Alliance Is Already The Deepest On The Books

To understand what Section 219 accelerates, consider this: the US-Israel defense relationship is already the most extensive technology partnership Washington maintains with any nation it holds no mutual defense treaty with.

Under the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding, the United States committed $38 billion over ten years - $3.3 billion annually in foreign military financing plus $500 million a year for missile defense - the largest such pledge ever made to any country. Israel has been a designated Major Non-NATO Ally since 1987 and was elevated to "major strategic partner" by statute in 2014.

The hardware already flows both ways. Iron Dome is co-produced by Israel's Rafael and America's RTX; the US Army bought two batteries of its own, and the Marine Corps fields an interceptor derived from it. David's Sling and the Arrow interceptor family were co-developed with US funding and US primes. Israeli Trophy active-protection systems ride on American Abrams tanks. Israel was the first foreign air force to fly the F-35 in combat, and Israeli industry builds wing sets for the global F-35 program. The United States has pre-positioned a war reserve stockpile on Israeli soil for decades and has drawn it down repeatedly when inventories ran short elsewhere.

Congress has spent years bolting on the machinery - binational R&D foundations, working groups, counter-drone cooperation mandates. Section 219 does not start this trajectory. It codifies it, staffs it, and hands it a permanent owner. 

So what would America be giving up when its defense industrial base is formally fused with a foreign state's?

• Strategic autonomy. Leverage runs both ways. When supply chains are integrated, every future policy disagreement - over war aims, over strikes, over settlements - collides with America's own production dependencies. Creating daylight, conditioning aid, or simply saying no becomes materially harder, by design. The legislative tracker A New Policy argues the initiative would entrench Israeli technology inside the US defense supply chain in a way that shields the relationship from the annual appropriations process - insulating it from Congress's power of the purse just as public support for unconditional aid is eroding.
• Escalation coupling. This is not hypothetical in July 2026. The United States is in an ongoing war with Iran; the Strait of Hormuz was shut to tanker traffic; the regional escalation ladder has been climbed in public. Critics ask the obvious question: when the industrial bases are fused, does the next conflict automatically become an American production commitment - before Congress votes on anything?
• The constitutional shortcut. Commitments of treaty-like depth and permanence are being created by simple majority, inside a must-pass bill, under a rule that forbids amendment. The Founders put a two-thirds Senate threshold on entangling alliances for a reason. 
• Industrial priorities. With shipyards behind schedule, solid-rocket-motor bottlenecks, and munitions lines still scaling, the America First argument holds that marginal dollars and engineering talent should rebuild the domestic base before deepening integration offshore with anyone.
• Concentration risk. Any deep technology-sharing arrangement, with any partner, raises export-control, counterintelligence, and single-point-of-failure questions. Those questions were asked loudly and publicly about AUKUS. Here, the rule ensured they would not even be asked on the floor.

As Antiwar.com notes, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described the integration plan as his own idea - begging the question of whose priorities a permanent Pentagon office would be built to serve.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 16:59

Despite Big Bounce In Revenues, TSLA Shares Drop After Disappointing Earnings

After a dismal two years of weakening demand, falling sales, and damage to its brand by Elon Musk’s political activities, Tesla’s road to recovery remains mixed on the heels of an impressive delivery report.

While earnings fell 18% compared to Q2 2025 to 33c a share (well below expectations of 51c) with higher AI spending and R&D weighing on profitability; the silver lining was that Revenue came in at $28.2 billion, which was 28% higher than last year (well above expectations of $26.4 billion).

The company said it hit $100 billion in trailing twelve-month revenue for the first time in history in the second quarter, and earned $1.11 billion in net income in the quarter.

The company said its first-generation production lines for Optimus Bot are being installed in anticipation of production in 2026, with the company saying production will happen "soon."

The Cybercab is listed as in production, an improvement from the company saying it expected volume production "this year" last quarter.

Tesla said the vehicle began production in the quarter.

The Tesla Semi is listed as "commissioning" and the company said it remains on track for volume production this year.

"We are focused on maximum capacity utilization at our factories," the company said.

Despite the glorious robotic (and Robotaxi and AI compute) future ahead, Tesla remains a car company. And in the second quarter, it sold an impressive 480,126 vehicles, about a 25 percent increase compared to the second quarter of 2025.

Tesla's automotive gross margins were 16.3% in the second quarter, up from 15% in Q2 2025, but down from 19.2% in Q1 of this year.

Active FSD subscriptions hit 1.48 million in the second quarter, up 56% year-over-year and up from the 1.28 million reported in the first quarter.

Additionally, Tesla said that they have more than doubled their onsite compute in Texas (in terms of MW of compute) during the first half of 2026. Cortex 2 supports the development of both vehicle and humanoid robot autonomy software and will ramp further over the rest of the year to ensure we have sufficient compute resources.

Tesla spent $5.8 billion in capital expenditures in the second quarter, bringing the first half’s total to about $8.28 billion. Though capex ramped over the past three months, it’s still not on track to meet the $25 billion in 2026 outlays Musk forecast in April.

Energy storage returned to being a revenue driver, with revenue increasing 13% year-over-year after slipping in the first quarter.

Tesla deployed 13.5 gigawatt hours of storage in 2Q, up more than 50% from the prior three months (as data centers are driving demand for batteries, which can help regulate power flows and speed up connections to the grid).

David Wagner, portfolio manager at Aptus Capital Advisors, said:

“Tesla’s earnings tonight highlight a core tension between short-term financial realities and an ambitious long-term AI vision. While recent delivery rebounds demonstrate steady vehicle volume, heavy margin pressure from global price cuts and massive capital expenditure - projected at over $25 billion this year for AI compute, chips, and infrastructure - are squeezing free cash flow.”

“Ultimately, Tesla is asking investors to fund an aggressive infrastructure cycle: if its pivot into autonomous fleets and physical AI succeeds, the long-term upside is massive, but any regulatory or technological delays leave the stock vulnerable if judged solely on its core automotive margins.”

Nevertheless, the earnings miss is weighing on Tesla shares after hours, testing three-month lows ahead of the Tesla earnings conference call, with Musk at the helm, set to start about 1730ET.

Investor focus likely will be on robotaxis, Optimus robots, capital spending and CEO Elon Musk.

The company said it has "never been more optimistic about the future."

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 16:45

IRGC To Trump: Strike Iran's Infrastructure, We'll Shut Off The Gulf's Power Summary

• More Tanker Attacks: Iran-backed Houthi militants said they targeted two Saudi Arabian tankers in the Red Sea

• Trump ultimatum: Trump vowed the US will strike an Iranian bridge or power plant after every Iranian attack on shipping.

• Iran responds: The IRGC threatened to hit Gulf energy infrastructure if Iranian infrastructure is attacked, saying it will cut off electricity among US allies.

• Latest Gulf missile attacks: Iran claimed attacks on US-linked targets in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan.

• Nuclear tensions: Iran denied nuclear activity at Pickaxe Mountain, calling US claims a 'fabricated pretext' for attack.

• Oil climbs: Renewed Gulf attacks and shipping threats continued to lift oil prices.

//--> //--> //--> Strait of Hormuz traffic returns to normal by August 31?
Yes 14% · No 86%
View full market & trade on Polymarket

*  *  *

Oil Climbs After Houthis Attack Two Saudi Tankers in Red Sea

Oil gained after Iran-backed Houthi militants said they targeted two Saudi Arabian tankers in the Red Sea, escalating the Middle East conflict and threatening deeper supply disruptions.

Brent spiked above $95 in post-settlement trading.

The Houthis attacked the two vessels with missiles and drones for violating a blockade imposed in the Red Sea, identifying the tankers as Encelia and Layla, the rebel group said.

UK Maritime Trade Operations said a vessel was hit southwest of Saudi Arabia’s Al Shuqaiq, causing a fire on board.

UKMTO didn’t identify the ship.

The first attacks on tankers in the Red Sea opens up a new front in the Middle East conflict, which has snarled traffic through the Strait of Hormuz following a flare-up in violence.

Iran Responds to Trump Ultimatum: We'll Turn The Lights Off In Gulf

A top IRGC official has responded to Trump's Bridge attack for each shipping attack ultimatum (see below). Iranian IRGC Aerospace Commander Mousavi has threatened that Iran will cut off electricity to America's Gulf Allies if Iranian bridges or power plants are attacked, Tasnim News Agency.

"If the Americans target an Iranian bridge or power plant, Iran will respond by striking infrastructure and bridges across the region, including energy facilities in which the United States has interests,” the official said according semi-official news agency Tasnim.

"The Americans should by now, after these past ten days, be fully convinced that Iran strikes wherever it decides to strike. Therefore, any such gamble by Trump will once again end in his embarrassment," the IRGC commander added.

Separately, Iran’s deputy foreign minister briefed 25 European ambassadors and charges d’affaires in Tehran on the status of the conflict. "I reminded them that in the 40-day war, we imposed a severe defeat on the aggressors. In this new round of military aggression as well, we will resolutely defend our homeland and national interests," Kazem Gharibabadi posted on X.

"These wars have created no strategic gains for America and only endanger regional and global peace and security. I also said that Europe is expected to safeguard the United Nations Charter and international law and to condemn aggression,” he added.

Iran has continued to sound an "eye for an eye" theme, and has not backed down in the face of Trump's fresh threats...

Meanwhile, Iran is touting that it still possesses a very significant missile stockpile, as it is still producing even as US bombs fall:

⚡️BREAKING: Iran's top Military Spokesman confirms that Missiles and Drones are still being Produced

"Our production never Stopped and we continue to Replenish our Stockpiles" pic.twitter.com/I5ZWuMuWeU

— Iran Observer (@IranObserver0) July 22, 2026 Trump: US Will Destroy A Bridge Or Power Plant For Each Iranian Attack On Shipping

More telegraphing of intent from President Trump in the below Truth Social Post... he said the US military will "bomb and destroy" one bridge or power plant - including in Tehran - each time the Iranian military shoots at a ship in the Strait of Hormuz. This comes a day after he unveiled the US military plans to conduct a large bombing of Iran's Pickaxe Mountain nuclear complex, which is heavily fortified.

But the Iranians have already long demonstrated they won't alter course in the face of such threats, especially bluster from Trump over social media, and so this unlikely to be any kind of fix for Washington, as Tehran has vowed to keep control of Hormuz at all costs. The Pentagon has argued that things like bridges are 'dual use' as the Iranian military uses them to get supplies from one region to another, while international monitors have highlighted the potential for war crimes. The Iranians have in turn widened attacks on Gulf states to include key civic infrastructure, like water desalination plants (in Kuwait) - each time their own infrastructure gets hit.

Iran: Pickaxe Mountain Rhetoric is 'Fabricated Pretext'

Amid continued fighting which has included explosions heard in Tehran overnight and in the south, Iran's leadership has condemned the Trump administration's "obsessive focus on Kolang Kouh where no nuclear activity is taking place is nothing more than a fabricated pretext for aggression, destruction, and sabotage," according to Foreign Minister spokesman Esmail Baghaei in a post on X, referring to Pickaxe Mountain.

He pointed out that all of Iran's nuclear activity has long been fully declared to the IAEA, and so the repeat threats out of Washington to mount a major attack on it is a "flagrant violation" of UN charter and international law. Trump had said the day prior that the US military will be hitting Pickaxe mountain "pretty soon very heavily and there is nothing they can do about it."

IRIB via AFP/Getty Images

Even some supporters have quested why the US Commander-in-Chief would so casually telegraph his intentions, saying the Pentagon loses an operational edge in revealing such plans.

There's been a lot of sudden focus on Pickaxe Mountain, though it had largely been absent from all prior media coverage of the war, due to Israeli intelligence feeding it to US mainstream press. "Israeli intelligence believes Iran moved thousands of uranium-enrichment centrifuges into tunnels deep inside a mountain last fall, Israeli and U.S. officials say, a development that would heighten concerns that Tehran could reconstitute its nuclear program," The Wall Street Journal wrote Tuesday.

"Israel passed along the intelligence findings to the U.S., saying the centrifuges were transferred to the Pickaxe Mountain site last fall after the 12-day war in June when American and Israeli strikes pummeled Iran’s three main nuclear sites," it added.

US Bases in Gulf Under Renewed Attack

And now, by all accounts, more aircraft, refueling planes, and heavy military hardware continue to be transferred from Europe and into the Central Command area of responsibility.

The Iranians might view this as more simply extra targets to be taken out, however, as Gulf countries continue to see inbound attacks. Missile alerts have been sounding Wednesday in Saudi Arabia, and again in Bahrain. ISNA reports (via Newsquawk): Drone and missile attacks on Bahrain and Saudi Arabia; US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain and US base in Saudi Arabia targeted:

• Bahrain has faced almost daily bombardment recently due to hosting the US Fifth Fleet headquarters.
• Saudi Arabia has been pulled into the firing line after the collapse of a previous multi-year ceasefire with Iranian-backed factions.

US Troops Under Iranian Missiles in Jordan

Soldiers in Jordan seem to be prime targets of Iranian ballistic missiles, in an extremely dangerous situation, after several American soldiers already died there in the past week:

Footage filmed by a U.S. soldier in Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, in Jordan, during an Iranian Ballistic Missile attack. pic.twitter.com/0OHle3she8

— MenchOsint (@MenchOsint) July 22, 2026

Jordan too continues to see significant inbound projectiles from Iran. Iranian state media has newly announced that F-15 warplanes, drone preparation infrastructure and a helicopter storage facility at Prince Hassan and King Faisal bases were targeted in recent ballistic missile launches.

IRNA news agency claimed that eight new American MQ-9 drones were destroyed and two others "severely damaged" in the attack, and in addition two helicopters were damaged.

The fresh Wednesday morning initial reports of potential further inbound missile on Bahrain and Saudi Arabia have pushed oil prices higher.

Rubio on Iran-Led Axis of 'Troublemakers'

Meanwhile Secretary of State Marco says the US is in contact with Saudi officials over the ongoing threat by Yemen's Houthis to attack commercial vessels and disrupt Saudi shipping in the vital Bab al-Mandeb waterway in the Red Sea. This is squeezing global oil further.

"We’ve been engaged with the Saudis a number of times over the last week in regards to that threat. It’s not a new threat, but it’s one that’s manifested itself in the past," he told reporters in his latest remarks.

More evidence of serious damage and destruction at American military outposts in Jordan:

Source sends footage of Tower 22 dorms after getting struck by Iran in Jordan. The sense among servicemembers is that Iran focused previously on destroying infrastructure but is now targeting soldiers.

The base has been evacuated. pic.twitter.com/Jyegdltsgr

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) July 21, 2026

In words which Tehran officials will surely not find terrifying or overly threatening, Rubio continued: "At the gist of that issue is the fact Iran is in the middle of it. Talking about the troublemaker of the region, it’s Iran."

"It’s just another example: the Houthis, Hezbollah, the militias in Iraq, Hamas – this is what Iran spends its money on, not on its people, on supporting terrorist organizations and destabilizing actors in the region," he added in Washington's characteristic 'axis-speak' of 'rogue actors'.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 16:25

Jim Quinn Warns "We've Already Entered This Fourth Turning's Global War..."

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Bruning Platform blog,

“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.” – Thomas Paine – The American Crisis

“At worst, should at least one desperate country resort to WMDs, the outcome of a great-power war could prove to be even more devastating than that of a civil war. The toll could be almost unimaginable – with multiple cities destroyed, many millions killed, and many tens of millions displaced – all perhaps triggered by some ill-fated combination of the wrong leader making the wrong choice at the wrong time.” – Neil Howe – The Fourth Turning Is Here

My previous two articles about this Fourth Turning: Prophets, Nomads and a Fourth Turning Accelerating Towards a Bloody Climax in April 2025 and War Phase of This Fourth Turning Has Arrived in July 2025 were progressively more pessimistic about the course of coming events, and things have proceeded along a precarious path towards our own rendezvous with destiny/tragedy. We are closing in on the 18th anniversary of the start of this Crisis epoch in September. The previous Great Depression/WWII Fourth Turning came to its climactic bloody conclusion after seventeen years, but this period of upheaval and disorder looks like it will extend into the early 2030s, just as Strauss & Howe predicted.

After rereading the prior two articles, I was shocked at how drastically the world has transformed in the space of one year and how the chief facilitator for driving events – Donald Trump – has hugely reversed his stated positions from the outset of his presidency. During the first 18 months of his 2nd term in office, Trump has done the exact opposite of what he promised and gone to war with the people most responsible for getting him elected: Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie, among others. The question is whether this was always his plan, or has he been coerced/bribed by Israel using Epstein file revelations.

At first, I was cautiously optimistic Trump had learned some hard lessons from his first term personnel debacles and the Deep State conspiracy to derail his presidency, along with the provable stealing of the 2020 election through mail-in ballot fraud, rigged voting machines, and judicial interference, resulting in the insertion of a dementia ridden basement dummy as a Potemkin president.

Trump staffed his new administration with what appeared to be loyalists, committed to revealing the truth about the Russiagate conspiracy, the 2020 stolen election, the Epstein files, FBI/CIA coup participants, the Soros/Biden/Clinton/Obama purposeful initiation and funding of the 3rd world invasion of our country to steal elections and initiate economic collapse, USAID as the funder of NGOs committed to destroying our society, the J6 Committee malfeasance, and the massive government fraud in all welfare programs at the Federal and State levels.

With Musk’s DOGE revelations and promises of $2 trillion in savings, the early months of Trump’s presidency seemed promising. He fulfilled his guarantee to shut the border and stopped the hordes of low IQ 3rd world dirtbags from invading our country and overwhelming our social welfare system. With much fanfare (and TV commercials), Kristi Noem began deporting thousands of illegals on a daily basis. Pam Bondi and Kash Patel declared they had all the Epstein files and would be releasing them in their criminal entirety.

But right-wing influencers were given binders with no new Epstein revelations in a February White House PR event. Something started to smell fishy. Trump acted like a Middle East peacemaker, with rhetoric about ending the Gaza genocide and turning it into resort for his wealthy cronies. He held multiple talks with Putin and Zelensky. It looked like ending the Ukraine war and delivering peace on earth might be his legacy.

By June, Trump’s presidency began to unravel, and he started reneging on his promises, having a major falling out with Musk over his Big Beautiful Bloated Bill, and began his infatuation with his Boss Bibi, who told him what to do and when to do it. Trump’s bombast about reducing the national debt and balancing the budget was put to the test with his first budget bill.

In my previous article I had stated it would require tremendous courage on the part of Trump and his congressional majority to institute the billions in DOGE cuts, as it is only government waste, Fed debt creation, and consumers spending money they don’t have on shit they don’t need at 20% interest provided by the Wall Street cabal, that keeps this U.S. Titanic of debt economy afloat. Cutting government spending would guarantee a recession. As expected, cowardly politicians, bought off by special interests, and driven by re-election desires, had no interest in cutting a dime of government spending.

Trump made no effort to reduce the spending earmarked in the Big Beautiful Bill, going along with the continued death march of debt creation. Prior to the bill, the 10-Year CBO forecast was for the national debt to increase by $21 trillion, so essentially accelerating towards fiscal disaster. Trump’s BBB added another $5 trillion to that farcical figure, not exactly “cutting” the budget. The national debt has gone from $36.2 trillion to $39.5 trillion in the first 1.5 years of Trump’s reign of debt.

With the uniparty in agreement, $2 trillion annual deficits are locked in until the debt Ponzi implodes. The MAGA army of maff challenged NPCs obediently applauded for Trump’s 5D chess genius. Musk realized his entire DOGE effort was nothing more than window dressing for Trump to get elected. They had a very public clash, with nasty personal attacks, and a miffed and misled Musk revealed why Trump was not allowing the Epstein files to be released.

This was the first crack in the MAGA narrative dam, while setting in motion the future of full catastrophic collapse over the remainder of his term. His fiscal promises of $2,000 DOGE rebates, $2,000 Tariff rebates, lower inflation, and manufacturing plants and jobs returning to America (we’ve lost 75,000 manufacturing jobs since Trump’s inauguration), have proven to be fake news. After ICE killed a couple of protestors, Trump basically threw in the towel and said he wasn’t going to deport the millions of illegal immigrant criminals. Somebody has to pick the lettuce and do the housework of the Epstein class.

But at least we are getting hundreds of electricity and water sucking surveillance centers disguised as data centers, along with hundreds of thousands of flock cameras, violating our 4th Amendment rights 24 hours a day on behalf of the surveillance state. All of Trump’s treachery since June of 2025 appears to be related to the Epstein files and Israel controlling Trump through blackmail, related to his appearance in those files. After railing for years about the Epstein files cover-up, Trump suddenly had no interest in releasing anything. It was suddenly a Democratic hoax. Only a guilty person would make such a dramatic turnabout.

The stonewalling was overcome by Thomas Massie’s Epstein Files Transparency Act, introduced in July 2025, requiring un-redacted files by the FBI to be released. Trump immediately went to war against Massie, utilizing his Israeli billionaire donors, led by Miriam Adelson, to spend over $30 million to defeat him in his primary. Not supporting Zionist genocides, undeclared wars on behalf of Israel and the military industrial complex, $2 trillion deficits, the surveillance state, and child raping billionaires, make you an enemy of the Trump controlled state. After declaring no new wars during his campaign, Trump allowed Bibi to lure him into spending billions to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities during their 12-day war in June 2025.

The bloviator in chief, and his low IQ Fox News Secretary of Defense declared Iran’s nuclear bomb ambitions dead. The White House website was unequivocal in declaring complete and total obliteration of Iran’s supposed nuclear bomb ambitions. Trump saved the world from the imminent nuclear attack on Israel by Iran, just as Bibi had been warning for the last 20 years. This declaration of obliteration happened just over a year ago. What happened between June of 2025 and February of 2026 to change the narrative back to Iran weeks away from having a nuclear bomb? Was Trump lying in June or in February? Since 75% of everything he says is lies, it’s a tough nut to crack.

Despite Trump’s obvious abandonment of his MAGA campaign pledges within several months of ascending to power, CPI was 2.7% by December 2025, GDP was 2% for 2025 despite a government shutdown, mortgage rates had dropped to 6%, oil was $57 a barrel and most people were paying less than $3 a gallon for gas, Trump and Putin met in Alaska and it looked like the Ukraine War might wind down, but this proved to just be a phony interlude in this Fourth Turning Crisis cycle of catastrophe. As soon as the calendar flipped the page to 2026, Trump decided to light the fuse on this global tinderbox of regional animosity, religious hatred, and battle for currency dominance, military supremacy, and control of global oil supplies.

After blowing up dozens of speedboats, 1,300 miles from the U.S. mainland, supposedly trafficking drugs from Venezuela, Trump decided to kidnap the sitting president of Venezuela on January 3, based on laughable drug trafficking charges, considering the CIA has trafficked more drugs into the U.S. than any organization in history. Trump openly admitted he was taking control of Venezuela’s oil. There are a lot of bad dictators/presidents in the world, but you will only be taken out if you don’t have nukes and you are sitting on top of the world’s largest oil reserve. Trump was promising $2 a gallon gasoline, now that he controlled Venezuela as a vassal state.

The best laid plans don’t always pan out, as oil rose from $57 per barrel on January 3 to $67 per barrel on February 27, the day before Trump launched a shameful decapitation surprise attack on Iran while Bibi’s two Israeli agent envoys (Witkoff, Kushner) pretended to be negotiating a deal, taking out most of their political and military leadership. He actually thought he could pull off another Maduro three day conflict, but stated publicly on March 1 it would last 4 or 5 weeks. I wonder if he ever watched Get Smart in his younger days, because his estimate has proven to be slightly optimistic as we approach month 5 of a conflict showing only signs of growing wider and more deadly.

As we slog through this increasingly chaotic Fourth Turning, I’m always aware of Strauss and Howe’s warning about what could befall the world during this crisis.

“The risk of catastrophe will be very high. The nation could erupt into insurrection or civil violence, crack up geographically, or succumb to authoritarian rule. If there is a war, it is likely to be one of maximum risk and effort – in other words, a total war. Every Fourth Turning has registered an upward ratchet in the technology of destruction, and in mankind’s willingness to use it.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe

In case you haven’t noticed, Trump’s promise of $2 a gallon gas might be a little optimistic. By mid-April oil reached $119 per barrel, over 100% more than at the start of the year. Here in PA. I paid $2.89 per gallon on the day before Trump’s war of choice on behalf of Israel, and within two months was paying $4.79 per gallon. Through a combination of draining our Strategic Petroleum Reserve to a 43 year low, Scott Bessent and his Wall Street cronies manipulating the derivatives market to suppress the price of oil, Trump making false statements on Truth Social about imminent agreements, and the fake MOU which would never be honored, they were able to maneuver the price of oil back to $68 per barrel, despite the 20% ongoing reduction in global oil flow.

The MOU was never going to be honored by the U.S. The purpose was to buy time to re-arm and move more troops to the Middle East. Smoke, mirrors, and draining our “emergency” reserves in order to preserve the appearance of normality and strength is a pitiful way to run an empire. Trump’s true measure of success is how rich he can make his billionaire cronies by driving the stock market to new heights, no matter the impact on average “non-billionaire” Americans.

Front running his own Truth Social posts and stock purchases is just icing on the cake for the most corrupt president in U.S. history. He and his family reaped (pillaged?) billions peddling worthless meme coins, while the fleeced MAGA NPCs lost 99% of their “investments”. It was readily apparent Trump insiders were using insider knowledge to bet on polymarket or derivatives market to either go long or short in the oil and stock markets based on his future Truth Social posts, making billions in the process.

Shockingly, no one has been investigated or arrested. How does Trump find time to do president stuff when he is making 58 stock trades per day? Mussolini was the modern-day representative of merging the state with business to form a fascist ruling structure. Trump makes Benito looks like a minor leaguer, sinking $27 billion of our tax dollars into public corporations, while his sons create companies which are awarded billions in government contracts. Trump has personally invested in at least 20 public companies and then made positive Truth Social posts about them, driving their stock prices higher. This is blatant corruption and stock market manipulation, but the willfully ignorant masses are too distracted by electronic bread and circuses to be bothered. Free market capitalism is dead, but crony corporate fascism is alive and thriving. It’s good to be in the top .01%, or friends and family of Trump.

Everyone knows Iran was not close to producing a nuclear bomb, as seventeen government agencies told Trump prior to his surprise attack on Iran, at the behest of Bibi. The bullshit narrative about the Iranian government murdering 30,000, then 40,000, then 100,000, and now 52,000 protestors was also provably false. Trump admitted the protests were enabled by Mossad and the CIA. Netanyahu has been declaring Iran two weeks away from a nuclear bomb for thirty years. If we had really obliterated their secret nuclear sites in June 2025, like Trump and Hegseth declared, how could they again be two weeks away from a nuclear bomb?

Everything about this war on Iran is based on lies, mistruths, and propaganda, as the true motive is to further Netanyahu’s Greater Israel project of taking Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria, while defanging Iran and Turkey. Netanyahu convinced Trump it would be a cakewalk, or more likely, threatened Trump with revelations from the Epstein files. The assassination of Charlie Kirk for beginning to reveal the truth about Israeli control of the U.S. government and genocide in Gaza was also a warning shot across Trump’s bow. Now Bibi is declaring Turkey a threat to Israel’s grand plan. If there is a more despicable human being on the planet than Netanyahu, I can’t think of one.

When you are in a $39 trillion hole and already digging $2 trillion deeper on an annual basis, maybe you shouldn’t start a war costing $1 billion per day, with a current price tag of over $100 billion. That doesn’t even scratch the surface of the long-term impact. Experts at Harvard University warn factoring in munitions replenishment, base repairs across the Middle East, and lifetime veterans’ care could push the long-term price tag well past $1 trillion. In addition, the drastic increase in fuel prices, overall inflation, and interest costs will total approximately $135 billion on an annual basis, or $1,000 per household.

According to Trump, it’s a small price to pay for Israel, since they control our president and congress. While you choose between food, fuel or medicine, trying to survive another month, at least Trump, his family of grifters, his billionaire child raping cronies, the Wall Street cabal, and the AIPAC funded multi-millionaires in congress, are doing just fine.

Despite being a bombastic, narcissistic, egomaniacal self-promoter, I can’t believe he was naïve enough to believe the bullshit about Iran being weeks away from attacking Israel with a nuclear weapon. He had already declared Iran’s nuclear facilities obliterated and promised his MAGA minions no new wars. So, it seems inexplicable for him to willingly start World War III, knowing it would reignite inflation and cause tremendous hardship upon the average Americans who voted for him. Therefore, the only logical conclusion is he started this conflagration unwillingly.

After Attorney General Pam Bondi released an initial batch of files in February 2025 showing Trump on flight logs, Trump began dismissing further file requests as a Democratic “hoax” and began stonewalling further releases. But his nemesis Thomas Massie embarrassed him by pushing through the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The pressure from survivor testimonials and bipartisan congressional coercion forced his hand and he signed the bill.

The partial release of heavily redacted files revealed horrific evidence of rape, torture, pedophilia, child sacrifice, trafficking, bribery, and an ultra-rich Epstein class of deviants running this world. Trump’s minions at the DOJ and FBI have since declared this case closed, with no arrests, no naming of any loathsome pedophiles, and most importantly no further Trump revelations.

Since Epstein, who didn’t kill himself, was a Mossad agent, there is a high likelihood any perverted or criminal behavior on the part of Trump throughout his playboy life is documented and captured on film, in the possession of Netanyahu. Trump has spent 2026 raging, pillaging, bombing, and performing on the world stage as a court jester in Netanyahu’s game of thrones. His actions and words grow more desperate and unhinged by the day.

As a Prophet generation leader, along with Putin, Xi, and Netanyahu, he will continue to be a catalyst for setting in motion events which will lead to much bloodshed, chaos, death, financial collapse, and end of the American empire. A toxic mixture of vanity, pomposity, privilege, anger, advanced age, and narcissistic personality disorder, is a bad combination in a world leader capable of blowing up the world. Desperate people do desperate things, and Trump’s recent pronouncements appear desperate.

The linear thinking dupes, who choose to not understand the cyclical nature of history, were lulled into think the MOU signed by Iran and Trump on June 17 would deescalate the war and lead to peace in our time. That is not how Fourth Turnings are resolved. They intensify until all-out war, with millions of deaths, decides the true winners and losers. There are no compromise solutions during a Fourth Turning.

The 14 points in the MOU were essentially the U.S. admitting strategic defeat, which is what has happened. Trump tried to spin it as an American victory, but only his most adoring MAGA NPCs (who probably believed the Q bullshit during his 1st term) believed his lies. The MOU wasn’t worth the paper it was written on, and full-scale war, with the Strait of Hormuz essentially closed, has been raging for the last ten days. Trump has trapped himself in an unwinnable war of attrition, with no accessible escape hatch.

On February 27 the Strait of Hormuz was open, oil was $67 per barrel, all U.S. bases in the Middle East were functional, inflation was trending lower, interest rates were trending lower, the global economy was functioning smoothly, the SPR had 415 million barrels of oil, we hadn’t spent $113 billion we don’t have, and Trump wasn’t Bibi’s bitch, yet.

Today, the Strait of Hormuz is closed, oil is $86 a barrel and heading higher, we’ve drained 110 million barrels of oil from the SPR (lowest level since 1983), every U.S. military base in the Gulf has been damaged or obliterated (tens of billions in damage), inflation hit 4%, the 10 year Treasury at 4.64% is the highest of Trump’s presidency, we continue to spend $1 billion per day on an unwinnable war (with a $1 trillion long-term price tag), the global economy is in shambles, with famine and economic depression now baked into the cake Trump has baked. Iran, with the help of Russia, China, Iraq, Yemen and other allies in the region are accurately targeting U.S. bases and troops, resulting in mass casualties, which Hegseth covers up. Satellite pictures don’t lie, unless the U.S. government coerces satellite companies to not show the truth.

“History offers no guarantees. Obviously, things could go horribly wrong – the possibilities ranging from a nuclear exchange to incurable plagues, from terrorist anarchy to high-tech dictatorship. We should not assume that Providence will always exempt our nation from the irreversible tragedies that have overtaken so many others: not just temporary hardship, but debasement and total ruin. Losing in the next Fourth Turning could mean something incomparably worse. It could mean a lasting defeat from which our national innocence – perhaps even our nation – might never recover.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe

I have an uneasy feeling Strauss & Howe’s haunting warning from nearly forty years ago is currently playing out in real time. We are already in the midst of World War III, but the masses are too dumbed down by their government school indoctrination; too distracted by their Igadgets, betting apps, likes & followers on their social media, and going further into debt trying to appear successful; too brainwashed by propaganda; and too apathetic to care, as their country and the world accelerate towards debasement and total ruin.

Propping up this Potemkin empire by sinking $5 billion per day further into debt, while utilizing financial derivatives schemes to elevate the stock market and suppress the oil and gold markets, and initiating an AI surveillance gulag state through the construction of hundreds of surveillance centers and tracking our every movement through their Flock cameras, appears to be a desperate last ditch effort by the Deep State billionaire globalist Agenda 2030 overlords to retain their power, control, and wealth. If it takes World War III and the deaths of billions to achieve their goal, so be it, in their warped world view.

Most people are trapped in their normalcy bias, minimizing the threats steamrolling directly towards them, while delaying the necessary logical steps they should be taking to prepare. I’m reminded of the outbreak of World War II when Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, with Great Britain and France declaring war on Germany two days later. Then virtually nothing happened for the next nine months. The people in London, Paris and Berlin acted as if life would go on normally, with no consequences from the declarations of war. People in the U.S. observed this odd European dispute from a distance, still trying to emerge from their Great Depression.

Their normalcy bias was shattered by a blitzkrieg, nightly bombings, Barbarossa, and Pearl Harbor. Over 65 million would die. I believe Matt Bracken’s observations about this being an energy world war, extending from Kiev to Hormuz, with a likelihood of it expanding into Europe, Turkey, and Taiwan, as the three numbskulls running France, Germany, and Britain are willing to go to war against Russia to distract their populace from their decisions to encourage hordes of 3rd world dreck to destroy their countries from within.

The Great Reset Epstein class see World War III as an opportunity, just as they saw the Covid Plandemic as an opportunity to further their new world order plan of depopulation, CBDCs, 15-minute gulags, 24-hour surveillance, and social credit scoring to keep the peasants controlled, subservient, and neutered. Freedom, liberty, and living without restrictions are not in their master plan. Thus far, Putin has acted the most statesmanlike among the Prophet generation world leaders, but with the EU/NATO/Trump increasingly deadly provocations in waging a proxy war on behalf of Zelensky, have pushed him to his limit.

Make no mistake, this proxy war would not be ongoing without U.S. munitions and satellite targeting. Putin is also being pressured by hawks within his country to take more drastic measures against the EU psychopaths in suits trying to destroy Russia. His attacks on Kiev have become more frequent and more deadly. If his NATO enemies push him too far, he may directly attack within the EU, then all hell would break loose.

Trump has increased attacks on Iran infrastructure and is being pushed by his lying neo-con Israeli handlers to nuke an underground mountain fortress where Israel claims Iran is reconstituting their nuclear program. More Israeli lies. If a nuke is utilized, then Russia and China may be forced to actively intervene on Iran’s side.

When someone starts acting as desperate and deranged as Trump has been behaving lately, the citizens of this country, and the world, should be fearful and worried what kind of reckless irrational act an 80-year-old vain egomaniac could make to set in motion worldwide destruction. It’s like the world is at the mercy of a crazed monkey trapped in a room full of dynamite, lighting matches. With a true psychopath like Netanyahu pulling his strings, expect an enormous false flag event to trigger the final phase of this Fourth Turning.

We have already entered this Fourth Turning’s global war, and the average American has no clue. As Thomas Paine declared, this is no time for summer soldiers and sunshine patriots. The apathetic, ignorant, dumbed down masses, who have been propagandized into believing their government and sedated with drugs, toxic foodstuff, and electronic baubles, will be violently shaken from their self-induced stupor, once their comfortable lives are shattered by economic, financial, and social collapse of a tyrannical system designed to enrich the few at the expense of the many.

There are evil men ruling this world. These oligarchal billionaire globalist psychopaths treat you like parasites that must be extinguished for their plans to succeed. They appear to be invincible, but they are few and we are many. As darkness descends upon our world, many trials and tribulations await, as there is no voting our way out of this crisis. It will require force of arms.

“The seasons of time offer no guarantees. For modern societies, no less than for all forms of life, transformative change is discontinuous. For what seems an eternity, history goes nowhere – and then it suddenly flings us forward across some vast chaos that defies any mortal effort to plan our way there. The Fourth Turning will try our souls – and the saecular rhythm tells us that much will depend on how we face up to that trial. The saeculum does not reveal whether the story will have a happy ending, but it does tell us how and when our choices will make a difference.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe

King George and his empire seemed invincible in 1776 during the first American Fourth Turning, when Paine compared tyranny to hell. The remainder of this Fourth Turning will try our souls, but our fortitude and courage will matter, along with the choices we make.  Conquering tyranny will be bloody and require good men to do bad things, but will make our triumph glorious, on par with Washington’s victory over the British empire. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 16:20

Shirley You Must Be Joking: Groups Sue For Communication Records Linked To Somali Daycare Fraud Claims

Authored by Owen Evans via The Epoch Times,

A coalition of civil-rights groups sued the Trump administration on Monday, seeking to force the release of internal communications between federal health officials and a YouTube journalist who accused Somali-run Minnesota daycare centers of fraud.

Independent Journalist Nick Shirley speaks at Freedomfest in Las Vegas, on July 9, 2026. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

The viral videos helped spur a since-abandoned effort to freeze childcare funding in five Democratic-led states.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rescinded a $10 billion freeze on childcare subsidies and social services funding for five states governed by Democrats: California, Illinois, Colorado, New York, and Minnesota.

The suit, filed in federal court on July 20 by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), its Illinois and Colorado chapters, the National Women's Law Center, and the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, accused HHS of failing to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed in March, according to a press statement.

The request includes communication records between federal officials and YouTube creator and journalist Nick Shirley, whose viral video was publicly amplified and "credited by senior administration officials as the basis for the restrictions," the statement said.

"The public deserves to know why the Trump administration is restricting access to critical child care and family assistance funds that hundreds of thousands of families rely on," said Linda Morris, senior staff attorney at the ACLU Women's Rights Project, according to the statement.

"These restrictions are a threat to the very programs that help families stay afloat and enable parents to work, attend school, and care for their children. We are going to court to ensure the public gets the transparency that federal law requires."

YouTuber Nick Shirley's viral video raised the alarm about fraud at Somali-run daycares in Minnesota late in 2025.

Shirley claimed that Somali-run daycares appeared to be devoid of children, raising concerns that the centers could be fraudulently billing government programs for absent or nonexistent children.

Minnesota state lawmakers have said that whistleblowers have been punished for voicing concerns about Somalis committing fraud and have been accused of racism or Islamophobia because Somalis are black Muslims.

In January, some Somalis told The Epoch Times that they think fraud is "occurring on a large scale" in Minnesota. Most, however, said the accusations appear to be aimed at vilifying Somalis as a group.

The Trump administration froze $10 billion in funds to Minnesota as well as California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York in January this year, citing concerns about fraudulent spending.

Earlier this month, it released the funds.

HHS officials said in letters to the states that they were rescinding the freezes on the funds, which were an attempt to compel the states to provide data proving that the funds would be used for American families, rather than illegal immigrants, according to documents filed with a federal court in New York on July 13.

In March, the ACLU civil rights groups sent a FOIA request seeking records concerning the adoption, implementation, and enforcement of the nationwide Defend the Spend policy and the sweeping five-state funding freeze, which it said targeted Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and Social Services Block Grant (SSBG) dollars.

It said that the administration had "refused to disclose information to the public about its actions, including through its sudden reversal of the funding freeze in an apparent attempt to avoid being required to produce officials' communications about these attacks in pending litigation."

"This only heightens the need for transparency into how the Defend the Spend policy and funding freeze were adopted and who was involved," it added.

Shirley delivered testimony at the Senate Committee Hearing on July 15, where he said that Minnesotans reached out to him "talking about the fraud that was taking place inside of their community."

"We went to the daycares, autism centers, and healthcare providers, and to my surprise, the businesses were not operating how a typical business would operate," he said.

He said the first daycare he went to was in an industrial building.

"There was no playground, no children footprints in the snow. They had all the windows blacked out. The doorbell was broken, and the sign said 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., yet there was no one to be found," he added.

"This daycare in 2025 had received over $1 million in CCAP [Child Care Assistance Program] funding. This continued to be a pattern as we went to other daycare locations."

The Epoch Times has contacted HHS and Nick Shirley for comment.

Children watch television at ABC Learning Center in Minneapolis, Minn., on Dec. 31, 2025. Mark Vancleave /AP Photo Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 15:45

OpenAI Admits Model Escaped Containment And Hacked Hugging Face To Cheat On A Test

Authored by Felix Ng via CoinTelegraph.com,

OpenAI disclosed Tuesday that a combination of its AI models, including GPT-5.6 Sol and a more capable unreleased model, escaped its testing environment and hacked AI startup Hugging Face last week to cheat on a test meant to measure their capabilities.

In a blog post, OpenAI said the evaluation was designed to operate in a highly isolated environment with restricted network access. The models, however, found a way to gain internet access through a zero-day vulnerability in an internally-hosted third party software, OpenAI said.

Earlier this week, we detected and responded to an intrusion into part of our production infrastructure. This one was different from anything we had handled before in one important way: it was driven, end to end, by an autonomous AI agent system – and we detected and dissected it largely with AI of our own.

Hugging Face tried to respond but they were initially held back by the fact that the most advanced models at their disposal treated defense as attack and refused to work with Hugging Face. HF thus had to turn to open models–specifically GLM 5.2, a Chinese open-weight model run on their own infrastructure. Note the irony: HF had to use a Chinese model to defend themselves because the American models refused to help. The irony gets deeper.

This was not a production model spontaneously turning hostile. It was a capable model with guardrails off and specifically told to win a hacking test - doing whatever it took to win.

The models were being run through an internal benchmark called ExploitGym, a test of long, multi-step hacking tasks, with their cyber safety refusals deliberately lowered for the evaluation.

“After gaining Internet access, the models inferred that Hugging Face potentially hosted models, datasets and solutions for ExploitGym,” OpenAi continued.

“Knowing this, the model searched for and successfully found ways to gain access to secret information that it could use to cheat the evaluation.” 

Hugging Face is a platform for hosting AI models and datasets.

[ZH: we asked Grok to simplify what just happened: It’s kind of like a kid who’s supposed to stay in the classroom taking a test… but instead sneaks out the window, runs to the teacher’s office, and copies the answer sheet. ]

On Friday, it disclosed that its internal datasets and service credentials were compromised in a hack, which it attributed to an autonomous AI agent system.

Hugging Face said it has fixed the vulnerability that was used during the cyberattack.

Meanwhile, OpenAI on Tuesday said the models that escaped the testing environment were all tuned with “reduced cyber refusals,” meaning fewer cybersecurity guardrails. 

“We consider this incident to be an unprecedented cyber incident, involving state-of-the-art cyber capabilities, and are responding accordingly.”  

OpenAI warns of risks from “long-horizon” AI models 

On Monday, OpenAI said it paused internal deployment of a “long-horizon” AI model after finding it was repeatedly trying to work around constraints. 

 It warned that AI that is trained for long-running tasks has a higher chance of taking “unwanted actions.”

“Models that can work autonomously for long periods can take on difficult, open-ended problems. But the same persistence that makes them useful also gives them more opportunities to take unwanted actions—and to do so in ways that evaluations intended for shorter-horizon models may miss.” 

As AI models grow more capable, questions are emerging over whether their development and access should be more tightly controlled, especially when systems designed for controlled testing are able to find ways to bypass safeguards. 

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 15:42

"He Was Very Close To Being Arrested": Epstein's Paris Model Scout Found Dead At Home, Weeks After CNN Appearance

Daniel Siad, the 69-year-old Paris modeling scout whose name appears nearly 2,000 times in the DOJ's Epstein files, was found dead at his home in Colombes, northwest of Paris, on Monday. The deputy public prosecutor at Nanterre, Marie-Celine Lawrysz, confirmed the death Wednesday and said an investigation into the cause was opened that evening, with an autopsy to follow.

Which is to say: officially, nobody knows anything yet. Siad's lawyer told Reuters that "Daniel Siad never stopped proclaiming his innocence" - and that her client died of a heart attack. To AFP, she was more careful, saying that if it was a heart attack, the strain and anxiety of the case will have played its part. The autopsy, presumably, will referee. And if that first statement sounds familiar, it should: when Jean-Luc Brunel was found dead in 2022, his lawyers announced that "Jean-Luc Brunel never stopped declaring his innocence." The French defense bar evidently keeps the line on file.

For over a decade, per the document dumps Congress pried out of the DOJ under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, Siad operated as a one-man logistics chain into Epstein's orbit. In a 2009 email he pitched a 5-foot-8 Latvian model: "she is 20 years old but she looks younger." In a 2014 note he discussed a 15-year-old French girl - parents reportedly thrilled about her modeling prospects - along with 16- and 17-year-olds, and compared his trade to angling: "some time I cache quick , some time no fish" [sic]. Files reviewed by CNN show Epstein paid Siad tens of thousands of dollars over the years; other messages flagged a young French woman in Marrakesh who'd be happy to meet him, and in 2018 Siad offered to scout the financier a young, good-looking assistant.

Here was the legal picture on the day he died: Siad was under investigation in France over allegations of rape and human trafficking - at least five accusers, per French media. One woman told the BBC he was "essentially a professional trafficker." The first criminal complaint landed only in February, from former Swedish model Ebba Karlsson, now in her fifties, who alleges Siad raped her when she was 20 and then introduced her to Gerald Marie, the former European chief of Elite - whom Karlsson and several other women have also accused of rape, allegations Marie has repeatedly denied. Siad denied everything as well, and - as his lawyer correctly notes - he was never formally placed under investigation, the mise en examen threshold at which French magistrates decide the evidence is serious. Not because the process cleared him; because the process never reached him. Per AFP, Siad had not yet been questioned by investigators when he died, though he had said he wanted to give his version of events.

"He was very close to being arrested," Karlsson said Wednesday.

He will now give his version of events to no one. And here is the part that will launch a thousand posts: six weeks ago, Siad sat for an on-camera CNN interview in which he insisted Epstein - a convicted sex offender for the entire back half of their collaboration - was a free man who had served his time and had always been thoroughly professional. He said he had no reason to believe that two women he'd recommended to Epstein - women who told CNN, on the record, that Epstein abused them - had ever been harmed. He claimed to have believed Epstein was a casting director for Victoria's Secret and MC2, a claim CNN could find no evidence for. His summary of the whole arrangement: "He was such a powerful person. And how can I not trust him?"

He gave that interview in mid-June, yet didn't make it through July.

That makes four... 

• Jeffrey Epstein, August 2019, Metropolitan Correctional Center: found dead in his cell weeks after his arrest (or he was smuggled out after being swapped with the corpse of a homeless guy - or Hillary Clinton's brother, so the kids say), with the cameras outside malfunctioning and the guards asleep - guards who later admitted falsifying their logs. Ruled a suicide, a ruling re-certified in 2025 by FBI leadership ("I've seen the whole file, he killed himself," Deputy Director Bongino assured Fox viewers), which settled the matter for approximately no one.
• Jean-Luc Brunel, February 2022, La Sante prison, Paris: the other French modeling agent in Epstein's orbit, found hanged in his cell while awaiting trial on charges involving the rape of minors - days after Prince Andrew reached his settlement with Virginia Giuffre. As we noted at the time ("Epstein 'Pimp' Jean-Luc Brunel Found Hanged In Paris Prison"), "the jokes practically write themselves." Ruled a suicide.
• Mark Middleton, May 2022: the Clinton special assistant who had signed Epstein into the White House, found dead in Arkansas. Ruled a suicide.

And now Daniel Siad - the second Epstein-linked figure from the French modeling world to die suddenly with an investigation inbound and his testimony never taken. Former model "Juliette G.," who says Siad recruited her for Epstein back in 2004, told Al Jazeera that for victims, Siad represented a possible avenue to finally "shed light on what happened." Except now, he's unable to speak in the Nanterre morgue.

Then there's Virginia Giuffre - Epstein's most consequential accuser who died at her farm in Western Australia in April 2025, at 41 - ruled a suicide by police and described that way by her own family, though as we reported last month, sixteen academics have since petitioned the state coroner for a formal public inquest. Giuffre notably traveled to Paris in 2021 to testify against Brunel in person and help keep him behind bars. 

Siad's death lands as the Epstein affair continues to result in zero arrests: the House Oversight email dumps last November, the DOJ's mandated releases under the Transparency Act, the cascading resignations among the great and the good, New Mexico's freshly launched probe into what actually happened at Zorro Ranch - which we covered in February - and the Washington Post's own June investigation into the modeling-world pipeline that kept feeding Epstein introductions long after his 2008 conviction: a Swedish scout hunting teenagers, a Russian model coaching him on which women would be easy. Siad was one of the very few members of that network willing to sit in front of a camera and explain himself.

On a pretty short timeline, the survival rate for Epstein associates drops to zero...

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 15:25

Video Game Market Tanks As Studio, Console Stocks Sink ; Can GTA VI Revive Industry?

Video game stocks have been battered so far this year, with Electronic Arts the only major name in positive territory and even then only marginally higher. The Roundhill Video Games ETF is down about 14.8% YTD, highlighting industry-wide weakness as investors await a potential revival sparked by Take-Two's release of Grand Theft Auto VI this upcoming fall.

The latest report from Bloomberg, citing new data from market research company Circana, shows the video game market in the US contracted by 21% in June, its steepest monthly decline since 2022. The decline was driven by higher hardware prices, which softened demand, and by a difficult comparison with Nintendo’s Switch 2 launch one year ago.

Console spending plunged 62%, while content purchases fell to $3.9 billion, below levels recorded before the Switch 2 debut. Subscriptions were the only content category to grow. Total industry spending was down 1% for the year.

Nintendo continued expanding the Switch 2 catalog, but rising memory and component costs are compressing margins. Its shares have fallen more than 50% from last summer’s record, and the company has announced global price increases for the fall.

It's not just Nintendo facing margin erosion because of the memory chip shortage that is forcing companies to raise prices; Xbox and PlayStation are also affected - and these price hikes come just four months before the next iteration of Grand Theft Auto is released.

Related:

• A $1,000 Playstation 6? Sony Won't Sell "At Significant Losses" Anymore
• Xbox Hits Gamers With Price-Hike As Major Retailer Warns Console Shortage Looms Ahead Of GTA VI Launch

In recent weeks, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announced 3,000 layoffs, warning, “Our business today is not healthy. We must reset Xbox.” Against that dismal backdrop, whether Grand Theft Auto VI can single-handedly revive an industry remains an open question.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 14:40

A Fed Rate-Hike Would Be A Serious Mistake

Authored by Daniel Lacalle,

The latest U.S. inflation report and jobs data do not justify another interest rate increase. Additionally, June data show that inflation is slowing down, especially in the core CPI measure that is most closely watched by monetary authorities, while ongoing tightening is stopping the labor market from reaching its full potential.

Hiking rates while maintaining elevated liquidity harms families and small businesses and perpetuates the very factors that drive inflation, including rising money supply and government spending.

Keeping rates above the neutral level has cost the U.S. economy nearly one million jobs, as small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) find it increasingly difficult to access credit and face prohibitively high borrowing costs. For investors, a 25-basis-point increase may seem insignificant, but for small businesses, it often means either no access to credit or excessively expensive borrowing rates. In the U.S., the average cost of debt for SMEs typically ranges from 6% to 12% APR, making it extremely difficult to hire new employees.

A further rate hike under these conditions would suggest that the central bank is reacting to past fears rather than future evidence, risking an unnecessary slowdown just as the disinflation process becomes visible in the data.

The June Consumer Price Index report delivered a clear positive surprise relative to consensus estimates. Headline CPI fell by 0.4% month-over-month, and the annual rate decelerated to 3.5%. More importantly for monetary policy, core CPI, which excludes food and energy, was flat for the month and slowed to 2.6% year-over-year, the lowest level since March 2021.

A core inflation rate of 2.6% indicates that tariffs and the energy shock have had no meaningful impact on core goods and services. Underlying price pressures are gradually moving closer to target after a prolonged phase of tightening and normalization. Those still arguing for another rate hike are effectively suggesting that even as core inflation cools toward 2%, policy should become more restrictive. This position is difficult to defend when we examine both inflation and labor market data.

The June inflation data has revived the debate over whether the Federal Reserve should abandon further tightening. Markets initially seemed to recognize that incoming inflation data no longer supports the narrative of tariff-driven inflation and overheating that would justify additional rate increases... [ZH: but recent market action, amid rising oil prices, has pushed a July hike back on the table]...

Raising rates in response to an external energy shock is akin to raising taxes to reduce rainfall. A close examination of the labor market and CPI components reveals no evidence of an overheated economy or justification for further tightening.

The effects of previous rate hikes materialize with a lag across credit markets, housing, business investment, and consumer demand. Tightening policy further when inflation is driven by external factors and is already declining increases the risk of exacerbating economic weakness after the initial inflation surge has passed.

Central banks often err not because they fail to respond to inflation, but because they maintain an elevated money supply that supports government spending while tightening policy after disinflation is already underway. June’s report highlights this risk. Headline inflation declined sharply as energy prices fell, and core inflation also eased, indicating that the slowdown is not merely a temporary or volatile effect.

If headline CPI had fallen solely due to lower fuel prices while core inflation remained elevated, a restrictive policy stance could still be justified. However, that is not what the data show. Core CPI at its lowest level since March 2021 confirms that inflationary pressures are fading.

Some analysts argue that the Federal Reserve must guard against upside risks. While this caution may be theoretically valid, the Fed must rely on actual data rather than behave like a futures trader. There is a fundamental analytical flaw in translating every potential upside risk into justification for tighter policy. Monetary policy is a blunt instrument that disproportionately affects families and businesses. It cannot increase energy supply, resolve supply chain disruptions, or offset geopolitical shocks.

When central banks raise rates to address external, supply-side inflation, they suppress domestic demand without addressing the root causes of inflation, namely excessive government spending and monetary expansion. The result is weaker growth, tighter credit conditions, and job losses. In the current environment, where core inflation is already declining, this trade-off appears particularly risky.

If the Fed is serious about controlling inflation, it should accelerate balance sheet reduction, maintain or lower interest rates, and coordinate with the federal government to reduce deficit spending more rapidly. Any alternative approach risks damaging the private sector while further inflating the sovereign debt burden.

The central policy question is not whether inflation should be taken seriously, but whether the Fed is addressing the primary driver of persistent inflation: excessive government and deficit spending, which increase money supply and velocity.

Excessive tightening would place additional strain on borrowers already refinancing at significantly higher rates, increase the likelihood of a recession, and intensify financial stress in interest-sensitive sectors.

A common defense of a higher-for-longer policy stance is the need to preserve central bank credibility at all costs. This argument is flawed. Credibility erodes when a central bank fails to adapt to incoming data and repeatedly makes policy errors that indirectly support rising government indebtedness. Independence is strengthened when policy is consistent, transparent, and evidence-based rather than narrative-driven.

If the Federal Reserve is truly data-dependent, then June’s core CPI data does not support a tightening bias.

The case against another rate hike is clear: inflation is easing, core inflation is declining, and the economy is still absorbing the delayed effects of prior tightening. If credit growth and demand accelerate significantly, the Fed can use additional tools.

However, today, the probability of another rate hike should be lower than many hawkish consensus views imply.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 14:20

The Great Six Month Financial Blindfold

Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance

As many including myself recently have noted, we are already living through an extraordinary age of financial grift, accounting games, promotional fraud, speculative mania and almost total contempt for basic investor skepticism.

The SEC’s apparent response is to consider giving public companies less frequently required financial disclosure in the face of demonstrable public disapproval of the idea. You genuinely can not make this shit up.

At a moment when public markets increasingly resemble a casino operated by executives, influencers, investment bankers, meme-stock promoters, crypto carnival barkers and apparently untouchable fraudsters, the agency responsible for protecting investors is moving toward allowing companies to disappear behind the curtain for six months at a time. That’s plenty of time to “hide a body” in the accounting world.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the SEC is expected to proceed with a version of its proposal allowing public companies to report comprehensive financial results twice a year rather than quarterly, even after receiving more than 200,000 public comments, most of them opposing the change. Many commenters warned that the proposal would deprive investors of information, let companies operate behind closed doors and allow fraud to fester.

No sh*t.

Apparently the public can see what the Securities and Exchange Commission cannot: when markets are already saturated with deception, euphoria, leverage and narrative-driven bullshit, the answer probably isn’t to give corporate management teams an additional three months to conceal deteriorating financial conditions.

The SEC officially proposed the change on May 5. Under the plan, companies could file one new semiannual Form 10-S instead of three quarterly Form 10-Q reports. Chairman Paul Atkins has described the proposal as part of his “Make IPOs Great Again” agenda, arguing that greater flexibility could encourage companies to enter and remain in public markets.

What a slogan. Not proposing to make accounting more reliable, punish executives who mislead shareholders, improve audit quality or help ordinary investors compete with institutions that purchase satellite data and scrape credit-card transactions. Proposing to make IPOs “great again” by letting companies tell their owners what is happening less often.

There is nothing populist about expanding the informational advantage enjoyed by executives, insiders, hedge funds, private-equity firms and institutions with access to management. There is nothing populist about telling ordinary investors to sit quietly for six months while insiders watch the business evolve in real time. There is nothing populist about weakening one of the few standardized disclosures that retail investors, pension beneficiaries and smaller asset managers can all access simultaneously.

This is regressive corporate deregulation dressed up in a red hat and marketed as liberation from paperwork. The public apparently understands the scam. According to the Journal, the SEC received a record number of comments on the proposal, and the opposition came from nonprofits, retirement funds, academics, individual investors and other members of the public.

Roughly 40,000 comments reportedly warned that the change would prevent investors from accessing information, let companies hide behind closed doors and allow fraud to grow. Yet the agency is still expected to push forward.

Why bother soliciting public comments at all?

Just publish a PDF saying, “Thank you for your concern. Management has reviewed management’s proposal and management remains extremely pleased with management.”

One public-school teacher reportedly observed that she must report grades every quarter so parents can monitor their children’s progress. She asked whether regulators trying to reduce corporate paperwork would be equally comfortable receiving updates about their own children only twice a year.

A childhood-cancer nonprofit offered an even more devastating example. According to the Journal, the organization said it learned from a quarterly update that a potential supplier had suffered a loss threatening its ability to manufacture components for an immunotherapy clinical trial. Without the disclosure, the nonprofit said it could have misallocated donations and lost time that sick children did not have.

The SEC’s apparent response to examples like these is that perhaps the final language can be adjusted before the agency does roughly what it intended to do anyway.

This entire proposal would be difficult to comprehend in a healthy market. In the current market, it borders on institutional malpractice.

As I wrote recently in Your Delusion Doesn’t Make Me a “Doomer,” we are already operating in an environment where asking a public-company executive to remain consistent is treated as a hate crime.

Investors increasingly regard skepticism as sabotage. Valuation questions are dismissed as “FUD.” Executives can promote a preferred metric while it is rising, quietly stop discussing it when it deteriorates and then rely on an army of shareholders to attack anyone rude enough to notice.

Public-company management teams increasingly operate less like employees of shareholders and more like heads of personality cults.

Meanwhile, passive funds continue buying. Options activity supplies additional momentum. Social media turns every stock into a tribal identity. Financial television recycles management talking points. Influencers explain that revenue is an obsolete concept. Promoters insist profitability will arrive at some distant point after the heat death of the universe. And when anyone asks a basic question about cash flow, accounting or dilution, they are told they simply do not understand innovation.

This is the environment in which the SEC wants to reduce mandatory reporting frequency.

We have companies trading at valuations that would once have been considered satire. We have unprofitable businesses raising billions based on stories that change every six months. We have aggressive adjusted earnings, customized metrics, endless stock-based compensation, related-party transactions, reverse mergers, promotional projections and balance sheets so complex they require an archaeological expedition.

Management already has an enormous information advantage over shareholders. The proposal would widen it.

Quarterly reports do not eliminate fraud. They do not guarantee honest management. They do not prevent executives from polishing adjusted figures until they shine like a bowling ball at a used-car dealership.

But quarterly reporting creates regular checkpoints. It forces management to reconcile narratives with numbers. It gives investors more frequent information about cash, debt, margins, customer concentration, working capital, dilution and operating performance. It gives auditors, analysts, short sellers, journalists and shareholders additional opportunities to notice that something is beginning to smell like the dumpster behind a Long Island boiler room.

Semiannual reporting would create longer stretches during which deterioration can accumulate before investors receive a full standardized update. Six months is a long time in a leveraged company. It is a long time when customers are leaving. It is a long time when cash is burning. It is a long time when a lender is tightening terms, inventory is piling up, receivables are deteriorating or management is desperately trying to refinance debt.

It is practically an eternity when executives know what is happening and ordinary shareholders do not.

The absence of information will itself become information, but by the time investors fully understand why management chose silence, management may have enjoyed months to sell stock, raise capital, renegotiate compensation or prepare a new narrative.

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The SEC’s rationale centers on encouraging more companies to go public. Supporters argue that disclosure requirements make public listings too burdensome and contribute to the declining number of publicly traded companies. The Commission itself says its proposal is meant to provide flexibility based on a company’s business model, industry and investor expectations.

But public listing is supposed to involve obligations. Being able to raise enormous amounts of money from the public is an extraordinary privilege. Access to liquid equity markets is an extraordinary privilege. Index eligibility is an extraordinary privilege. The ability of executives and early investors to convert private stakes into publicly traded wealth is an extraordinary privilege.

In exchange, companies should be required to tell their owners what the f**k is happening more than twice a year. If quarterly financial reporting is simply too oppressive, companies remain free to stay private.

As I just noted hours ago banks are exploring ways to package stakes in difficult-to-value private-credit funds into securities that can receive stronger ratings through insurance guarantees. Risk is rearranged, wrapped, renamed and granted more favorable regulatory treatment, not necessarily because the underlying assets became safer, but because the structure became more elaborate. (Read: Oh My F**king God, They're Doing It Again)

That is the broader pattern of the current financial system. Opacity is treated as innovation.

The fact that more than 200,000 comments were submitted should have caused the SEC to stop and consider whether the public understands something regulators have forgotten. Ordinary investors know they are operating at an informational disadvantage.

Even r/WallStreetBets, a community not traditionally confused with the Financial Accounting Standards Board, submitted a letter opposing the proposal. Its members argued that reducing disclosure would disproportionately benefit sophisticated firms with alternative data, private meetings and extensive research resources.

How can we look at a market already overflowing with promotional nonsense, distorted incentives, complicated financial engineering and widespread distrust and still conclude that corporate issuers needed relief from telling investors how they were doing every three months?

And when the next company collapses after spending months insisting everything was fine and keeping the world in the dark, everyone will express astonishment, executives will say no one could have predicted it, and television pundits will spend three days asking how the warning signs were missed.

But we’ll look back and see that the warning signs were not missed. We simply decided companies should be required to show them less often.

--

QTR’s Disclaimer: Please read my full legal disclaimer on my About page here. This post represents my opinions only. In addition, please understand I am an idiot and often get things wrong and lose money. I may own or transact in any names mentioned in this piece at any time without warning. Contributor posts and aggregated posts have been hand selected by me, have not been fact checked and are the opinions of their authors. They are either submitted to QTR by their author, reprinted under a Creative Commons license with my best effort to uphold what the license asks, or with the permission of the author.

This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any stocks or securities, just my opinions. I often lose money on positions I trade/invest in. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time, without further warning. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. I may or may not own names I write about and are watching. Sometimes I’m bullish without owning things, sometimes I’m bearish and do own things. Just assume my positions could be exactly the opposite of what you think they are just in case. If I’m long I could quickly be short and vice versa. I won’t update my positions.

As of May 20, 2026 I am attempting to no longer actively trade (read my story here). My investing/saving is mostly done by recurring contributions mostly to sector ETFs and a few select equities, trusted third parties who oversee my accounts, and advisors. Such advisors or funds, through individual equities, options, index funds, mutual funds, ETFs, or other securities, may have positions in, exposure to, or holdings of names mentioned herein that I know nothing about. Basically, via index funds, ETFs and individual equities it is possible I could own, have exposure to, or not own anything at any point. As of the same date, May 20, 2026, in an attempt to lead a healthier lifestyle, I’ve also excluded myself from fantasy sports, sports betting, online and in-person casinos and prediction markets.

And all positions can change immediately as soon as I publish this, with or without notice and at any point I can be long, short or neutral on any position. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. I exist on the fringe. If you see numbers and calculations of any sort, assume they are wrong and double check them. I failed Algebra in 8th grade and topped off my high school math accolades by getting a D- in remedial Calculus my senior year, before becoming an English major in college so I could bullshit my way through things easier.

The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I did my best to be honest about my disclosures but can’t guarantee I am right; I write these posts after a couple beers sometimes. I edit after my posts are published because I’m impatient and lazy, so if you see a typo, check back in a half hour. Also, I just straight up get shit wrong a lot. I mention it twice because it’s that important.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 13:40

Google's Flagship Still Can't Ship - So It Launched Token Austerity And A Hacking Model Only Governments Can Use

Alphabet reports second-quarter earnings after today's close - the first hyperscaler print since cheap Chinese tokens knocked the semiconductor index into a bear market. So naturally, Google chose the eve of that report to ship three new AI models, none of which is the one it promised.

Getty Images

The Tuesday launch consisted of Gemini 3.6 Flash, a cheaper workhorse whose headline feature is that it consumes fewer tokens; Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite, a high-throughput model built for volume; and Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber, a vulnerability-hunting model that ordinary users are not permitted to touch. Conspicuously absent: Gemini 3.5 Pro, the flagship Google unveiled at I/O in May with a promised June launch, which has now missed multiple targets.

Then there is Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber, which Google says achieves top-tier performance at finding, verifying, and patching software vulnerabilities inside its CodeMender agent - and which will be available exclusively to governments and vetted partners through a limited-access pilot, on account of what the company calls the technology's dual-use nature. Which is of course aimed at competing with Anthropic's Mythos. Google shipped strengthened Frontier Safety safeguards against CBRN and cyberattack misuse in the same release.

The Flagship That Isn't

According to Bloomberg, Pro was held back after falling short of Google's internal targets, particularly on coding, and a late-June attempt to rescue it by refreshing the training data produced disappointing results. The official line is now that Pro is "testing with partners" and will ship when ready - which is to say, there is no date.

The scoreboard is not kind in the meantime. Google currently has no model in the public top ten. Inside roughly a week, xAI shipped Grok 4.5, OpenAI shipped three versions of GPT-5.6, and Moonshot shipped Kimi K3, while Anthropic's Fable 5 sits atop the leaderboards. The verdict from the demand side is the same: AI-native firms canvassed by UBS at its Menlo Park event this month named Anthropic's Opus 4.8 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 as the models they consider functionally superior. Google did not come up. The delay also affects a major customer - as Apple uses Gemini to power parts of Siri in iOS 27. Oops. 

Selling Fewer Tokens

The models Google did ship do tell an interesting story... The central pitch for 3.6 Flash is that it reduces output token usage by 17% versus its predecessor on the Artificial Analysis Index - and by as much as 65% on the DeepSWE coding benchmark, where it burns barely a third of what 3.5 Flash did - while taking fewer reasoning steps and tool calls to finish multi-step work. Flash-Lite runs at 350 output tokens per second and is priced at $0.30 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output.

A year ago the industry's pitch was maximum intelligence at any price, and enterprise buyers obliged by tokenmaxxing their way through nine-figure AI budgets - until they realized the return on this was abysmal.

Breakdown of every $1 spent on AI tokens: less than 20cents reaches real users (44 cents is spent fixing bugs generated by other AI) https://t.co/jFzUVSCPos pic.twitter.com/NwOWg7HppA

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 22, 2026

The term of art now, per the AI-native firms UBS hosted in Menlo Park this month, is "value-maxxing" - which maybe they should have tried first. Now it's all about model routing, dynamically dropping specific tasks down to cheaper non-frontier models, as table stakes rather than a feature. On top of that, one week after Moonshot's Kimi K3 triggered the chip complex's DeepSeek 2.0 moment - and with UBS math we detailed weeks ago putting Chinese models are producing roughly 95% of frontier capability for 10% of the cost. So - the deflation is now the product. As an aside, Moonshot has been rationing new Kimi K3 subscriptions and API access on capacity constraints while Alibaba teases its next Qwen release: the cheap end of the market is supply-constrained because everyone is hopping on the train. 

The bulls have an answer, and in fairness it is not a stupid one - a hedge fund CIO argued in these pages just last week that the cheap-versus-premium debate misses a raw shortage of intelligence with AI barely diffused through the economy. UBS lands in a similar place, arguing the trade is not breaking but maturing into a multi-model, efficiency-obsessed phase in which demand gets reallocated rather than destroyed. Perhaps. But that thesis gets put to the test tonight when Alphabet reports. 

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 13:20

Abandoned Navy Base Costs Taxpayers $340,000 A Year For Internet Nobody Uses

Authored by Matt White via TaskandPurpose.com,

The mostly abandoned neighborhoods on Adak Island, Alaska, were once home to 5,000 Navy sailors and their families. But after 40 years as a supply depot, Naval Air Facility Adak closed in 1997, leaving scores of homes and buildings behind. Today, a small community of government workers and Alaska Native families have turned the streets and buildings of the former base into the town of Adak.

The island, far out on the Aleutian Island chain, is so isolated and decayed that Marines occasionally return to simulate hard-to-resupply expeditionary operations or urban chemical warfare among its abandoned buildings. The civilian population, now well below 100, can only reach the island on occasional civilian flights that land on the Navy’s forgotten runway.

But while nearly all of the 300-odd former Navy buildings in Adak are empty and many are collapsing, the U.S. government pays an Anchorage firm $340,000 per year to maintain internet access to them.

An investigation by the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica published Monday found that an internet provider collects $340,000 every year to keep fairly slow “broadband” internet service active for the town now on the former Navy base.

“After the Navy shipped out, hurricane-force Aleutian winds pried homes apart,” wrote Kyle Hopkins for the Anchorage Daily News. “The worst of it is in a beachfront neighborhood called ‘Officer’s Country’ on old city maps. Bathroom mirrors and toilets and kitchen tables stand exposed to the rain in homes cleaved in half like dollhouses.”

While “raiding” abandoned buildings on the former Navy base in Adak, Alaska, Marines treat a simulated casualty during Arctic Expeditionary Capabilities Exercise in 2019. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Tia D. Carr.

But even Navy-built buildings now open to the elements with missing walls and roofs, reporters found, were listed on the internet provider’s roster.

The joint investigation was published as part of an ongoing series by Hopkins on internet access in remote Alaska. Adak was Hopkins’ first review of a community built around an abandoned military base.

Hopkins and a photographer flew to Adak, where many buildings on the former Navy base are uninhabitable, with collapsing walls and roofs, from years without repairs in the bitter weather of the Aleutian Islands. Hopkins visited every address on the old Navy base listed as receiving taxpayer-funded internet service.

But Hopkins reported that he found that nearly all residents use Starlink satellite internet. Blanketing the base, he reported not one customer for the tax-funded broadband.

The federal program, Hopkins reported, is paid for by the Universal Service Fund, a multi-billion-dollar effort administered by the Federal Communications Commission and funded as a small fee on nearly all consumer phone bills. The fund is intended to deliver internet to hard-to-reach rural customers.

Though the buildings on Adak were built by the Navy, the service has no current connection to the town or the pricey internet service.

Closed bases meet varying fates

Adak is one of scores of closed military installations that dot the country. Many have found new lives, like Naval Training Center Baldwin Park, Florida, and Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, Colorado, which are today mixed-use developments with thousands of homes, shopping and businesses. When Hurricane Andrew destroyed Homestead Air Force Base in 1992, a section was repurposed as a major racetrack (other parts were recommissioned as a reserve base in 2003).

Abandoned missile silos in the Midwest have been rebuilt as homes and museums — though some remain dangerously abandoned.

Much of the town of Adak is based on jobs created by federal clean-up of the old base, along with other federal agencies that now oversee federal land on the otherwise uninhabited island.

But the town may have a military future. Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan has led a campaign to move Navy assets to Alaska, which could include reoccupying Adak. Last summer, Navy Adm. Samuel Paparo called for a revival of the base. Forces there, he said, would provide U.S. forces a first line of defense against Russian aggression to “gain time and distance on any force capability that’s looking to penetrate,” Paparo said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

Though Adak would be a remote assignment, those sent to the cold, windy island would at least know they’d have internet access.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 13:05

Can SpaceX Fire On All Cylinders?

Authored by Michael Lebowitz via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

SpaceX’s June IPO raised $75 billion, resulting in an initial valuation of $1.77 trillion, making it the largest IPO in history. SpaceX, encompassing its launch business, Starlink, and the recently merged xAI, peaked at a $2.5 trillion market cap in its first week of trading, briefly tying it with Amazon as the fifth-largest publicly traded company. After only a month, the enthusiasm is rapidly fading.

Perhaps most amazing of all, the fanfare is occurring despite SpaceX producing a net loss of nearly $5 billion in 2025. Based on its $1.84 trillion market cap, investors are clearly not worried about the present. They are excitedly pricing in astronomical growth for SpaceX.

To evaluate SpaceX from a fundamental perspective, investors need to quantify the implied growth in its valuation and compare it with their own and market forecasts. In this article, we attempt to help them by providing context for their growth expectations, using Amazon’s history as a proxy.

Amazon, like SpaceX, was priced at expensive valuations and ultimately delivered on those expectations. Initial Amazon investors who held through the dot-com crash and years of zero earnings have been rewarded roughly 3,300-fold, amounting to about 32% annualized for nearly three decades.

So, the question we pose: what does the Amazon playbook require of SpaceX?

Amazon

Amazon went public in May 1997 at $18 per share, valuing the online bookseller at $438 million. Revenue that year was $148 million. The market was pricing its shares at a price-to-sales (P/S) multiple of roughly 3x. At the time, the ratio was generous for a money-losing start-up, but defensible given that Amazon was doubling revenue every year. Importantly, those who envisioned that Amazon was much more than an online bookstore and appreciated its growth potential must have thought its price-to-sales ratio was dirt cheap.

What followed was one of the greatest periods of sustained revenue expansion in corporate history. Amazon crossed $19 billion in annual revenue in 2008, only eleven years after going public with $148 million in revenue. In 2025, Amazon generated $716 billion in revenue, putting it on par with Walmart as the highest-revenue company in the US. From its IPO to today, revenue has grown nearly 5,000-fold.

That trajectory is nearly unprecedented. Can SpaceX also fire on all cylinders?

SpaceX Today vs. Amazon Then

As the graph above shows, Amazon generated approximately $19.2 billion in revenue in 2008, nearly identical to SpaceX’s $18.7 billion in 2025. In 2008, Amazon’s market cap was slightly under $40 billion, implying a P/S multiple slightly above 2x. SpaceX, with a $1.84 trillion market cap and $18.7 billion in sales, trades at a P/S nearing 100x. The market is pricing SpaceX at approximately 50 times the multiple it gave Amazon at the same revenue level.

While the ratio difference sounds extreme, there are reasons to argue SpaceX deserves a premium:

• Its rapidly growing Starlink business generates $4.4 billion in operating income, with revenue compounding at a 50% growth rate. However, as we share in the first graphic below, its revenue growth is slowing, and average revenue per customer is declining.

• The reusable launch business accounts for over 50% of orbital rocket launches, as we share in the second graphic. That said, competition is increasing rapidly, especially from the well-funded Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ rocket venture.

• There is promise in its AI infrastructure business through the xAI merger, but Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, and new open-source models like Kimi-K3 appear to hold a meaningful advantage.

The way to rationalize a near triple-digit P/S multiple is through extraordinary, historically unprecedented growth. So, let’s quantify “extraordinary.”

SpaceX’s Implied Growth Rate

Let’s work backward from SpaceX’s $1.84 trillion market cap to gauge the growth needed to satisfy the market’s implied forecast. To do so, we assume that investors demand a 20% annual return. While lofty, it is roughly a third below the 32% Amazon has delivered since its IPO.

If SpaceX shares compound at 20% per year for the next ten years, its market cap will reach $11.4 trillion by mid-2036, implying a share price near $860, assuming no new equity issuance.

With that proxy $11.4 trillion market cap in hand, the only remaining variable is the P/S multiple investors will pay for a mature SpaceX. That multiple determines the revenue it must produce. Consider two scenarios:

• Scenario one: SpaceX matures like Amazon. Amazon today, after 29 years of dominance across e-commerce and cloud computing, trades at roughly 3.7 times trailing sales. If SpaceX has the same multiple in 2036, it will generate about $3.1 trillion in annual revenue. For context, that approximates the entire GDP of France and roughly a tenth of US GDP. The implied revenue growth rate that clears this hurdle is 67% per year, compounded over ten consecutive years.

• Scenario two: SpaceX retains a higher premium multiple. A more generous P/S assumption eases the required revenue growth, but the implications are still daunting. At a P/S ratio of 20x in ten years, the required 2036 revenue falls to about $570 billion, roughly three-quarters of what Amazon generates today, and a level Amazon needed 27 years to attain. The implied growth rate is substantial at 41% per year for a decade.

To appreciate what a P/S of 20 means, we share the ratio of the 20 largest US stocks below. Broadcom at 29.2 and Nvidia at 24.9 are the only two above 20, and both are growing rapidly with enormous profits.

Amazon’s single best ten-year revenue stretch, from 1997 to 2007, produced a 59% compound annual growth rate. But Amazon started with $148 million in sales and was just beginning to expand beyond books. SpaceX began at $18.7 billion, 126 times Amazon’s starting point. Growth rates achievable from a small base are significantly easier than from a large one, which is precisely why only a handful of companies have ever sustained 40%+ growth for a full decade.

Time Out: What A P/S Of 20 Implies

It’s worth pausing to stress what a P/S ratio of 20 implies. The best way to do so is to share the advice Scott McNealy from Sun Microsystems gave his shareholders in 2002.  

‘At 10 times revenues, to give you a 10-year payback, I have to pay you 100% of revenues for 10 straight years in dividends. That assumes I can get that by my shareholders. That assumes I have zero cost of goods sold, which is very hard for a computer company. That assumes zero expenses, which is really hard with 39,000 employees. That assumes I pay no taxes, which is very hard. And that assumes you pay no taxes on your dividends, which is kind of illegal. And that assumes with zero R&D for the next 10 years, I can maintain the current revenue run rate. Now, having done that, would any of you like to buy my stock at $64? Do you realize how ridiculous those basic assumptions are? You don’t need any transparency. You don’t need any footnotes. What were you thinking?’— Scott McNealy, Business Week, 2002

Elon Musk’s Growth Forecast

Elon Musk’s forward guidance warrants caution, as it is very aggressive. Days after the IPO, Musk posted the comment below on X.  Growing from $18.7 billion in 2025 to $1 trillion in 2030 is a 53-fold increase in five years, a compound growth rate of roughly 122% per year, more than double Amazon’s best-ever pace and from a base thousands of times larger.

Suppose Musk delivers. The shareholder outcome still hinges entirely on the multiple. If the market awards a $1 trillion revenue base Amazon’s current 3.7x P/S valuation, SpaceX’s 2030 market cap would be roughly $3.7 trillion, about a 17% annualized return from today’s price. At 20x, the same revenue produces a $20 trillion valuation and returns near 70% annually.

A 17% to 70% range on identical fundamentals illustrates the difficulty in our analysis: both variables, sales and the multiple, are unknowable, and the multiple alone can swing the outcome from ordinary to absurd.

Wall Street’s Wide View

To be clear, SpaceX is unique. Starlink’s subscriber economics provide a sustainable revenue base; the launch business has pricing power that thus far has not been challenged, and an xAI integration could, in the most optimistic scenario, open multiple trillion-dollar markets quickly. That said, analysts must carefully discount even the most tremendous forecasts.

To wit, the models from the SpaceX IPO underwriters sit far below those of Elon Musk. Morgan Stanley projects roughly $330 billion in 2030 revenue, and Goldman Sachs sees about $470 billion, both fractions of Musk’s $1 trillion.

New Street Research, which initiated coverage with a $165 target, acknowledged the bullish thesis could work but noted investors need a “20 to 25-year time frame” for the math to resolve favorably.

Morningstar, by contrast, set the fair value for SpaceX at $63. As we share below, the $63 to $401 range of analyst price targets reflects the uncertainty surrounding the company’s potential.

Summary

Amazon rewarded patient investors immensely, but it did so from a mere $438 million IPO valuation. Compounding from $1.84 trillion, as SpaceX tries, is harder by orders of magnitude. SpaceX can be a great company and still prove disappointing to its shareholders. To justify today’s price, its growth must be historically unprecedented, at a scale no company has ever operated, for longer than any growth cycle has ever lasted.

While that may sound bearish, this analysis doesn’t make SpaceX uninvestable. The stock will cycle through bullish and bearish periods as momentum ebbs and flows along a likely volatile path. Accordingly, traders will find plenty of opportunities on both sides. For those looking to buy and hold, however, the odds seem lofty. But, transcending financial forecasting, Musk has a proven track record of success, so it’s too early to count SpaceX out.  

Can SpaceX do what only a very small handful of companies have ever done, or is the market once again pricing in a future that gravity will eventually catch up with?

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 12:25

Top Israeli Minister: 'Best For Us' If US Fights Iran While Israel Sits Out New Round of War

As four more American families grieve the deaths of soldiers killed in the war on Iran, one of the top-ranking ministers in Israel's cabinet told an Israeli audience that having America do all the fighting and dying is "the best for us." Israel had intensely lobbied President Trump to launch a joint war on Iran on Feb 22, and traded blows with Iran up until early June. Since Trump restarted intense, daily bombardment of Iran 11 days ago, however, Israel has sat out the action, sparing Israelis from lethal Iranian retaliation. 

“The State of Israel has no interest in joining the contained confrontation between Iran and the United States," far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said in a session at the Katif Conference for National Responsibility, which endorses Jewish settlement in Palestinian territories. "The current situation is the best one for us.”

Bezalel Smotrich leads the Religious Zionism party and wants Israel to annex the West Bank and Gaza (MENAHEM KAHANA / AFP)

Smotrich is generally regarded as the second-most powerful cabinet member in Israel, and is a vital linchpin in Netanyahu's government that took power in January 2023. Lacking an outright majority, Netanyahu was forced to build a ruling coalition that gives unprecedented power to religious and ultra-nationalist extremists. Smotrich leads the Religious Zionism party. He personally aspires to make Israel a theocracy, wants Israel to annex the West Bank and Gaza while barring most Palestinians from citizenship, and has said it would be "just and moral" to starve two million Palestinian men, women and children in Gaza. 

In his latest remarks, Smotrich candidly acknowledged that Israel and the United States have different goals vis a vis Iran, but said America's continued military engagement furthers the Israeli agenda. “[We] must remember that the ultimate goal of Israel, and not necessarily the United States, is to undermine and weaken the regime in Iran – to the point of overthrowing it,” Smotrich said.

Army SGT Michael Swinton was killed July 19 when a controlled detonation of an Iranian drone went terribly wrong (Mia Gonzalez-Swinton via Guardian)

Disregarding the widespread victimization of innocents that the strategy entails, Smotrich said destruction of Iran's economy will help precipitate the Iranian government's collapse. "Currently, inflation in Iran is at 85 percent, food inflation of over 134 percent in a total of four months, and the Iranian rial is trading at an exchange rate of 1.9 million to the dollar - and it's going up." He then reiterated that "the current situation is good for us, and there's no point in pushing ourselves inward." 

Footage of the Iranian ballistic missile strike on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan last night.

At least two missiles hit the base, killing two American service members. pic.twitter.com/8tOm6yyXwe

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) July 18, 2026

Here's how Israeli journalist Hagai Amit recently described the benefits of Israel allowing the United States to plunge forward alone in the war that Israel urged America to start: 

It reduces the risk of [Israeli] casualties and allows daily life to continue largely as normal, without midnight sirens, trips to bomb shelters or major disruptions. The Finance Ministry is also relieved not to have to burden the state budget with billions of additional shekels for air operations and the interception of ballistic missiles.

Meanwhile, as Amit warmly describes the cost savings for Israel, various analysts say America's cost of the Iran quagmire is now close to or even exceeding $100 billion, which is upwards of triple what the Pentagon has owned up to at this point.

1LT Tyler Feehan and PVT Isabella Gonzales were two of three Army soldiers killed in the Iranian strike on US forces at base in Jordan

Of course, the highest price is being paid by American service members who've been thrown into an unconstitutionally-initiated war launched on false premises. Four more US soldiers have been killed since Trump re-escalated the war. In addition to US Army SGT Michael Swinton being killed in Iraq when a controlled detonation of an Iranian drone went wrong, three more soldiers were killed in an Iranian strike that hit prefabricated housing units at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan.

Initially, the Pentagon confirmed only two fatalities in Jordan: 19-year-old PVT Isabella Gonzales and 1LT Tyler Feehan. The third was classified as MIA, but the Pentagon is now saying SGT Angel Rampersad is "believed to be deceased."  The grim implication is that Rampersad's body was devastated by an Iranian missile -- nearly five months after US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared that Iran's military had been "made combat-ineffective," and almost two months after Sen. Ted Cruz said US forces had "destroy[ed] all of their missiles and drones." 

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 12:05

ADNOC Approves $6.2 Billion Gas Project In Abu Dhabi

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

Abu Dhabi’s national oil company ADNOC just announced a $6.2 billion final investment decision to develop the Umm Shaif Gas Cap project in Abu Dhabi as part of its strategy to grow its global gas portfolio.

ADNOC will develop the project alongside its international partners - France’s TotalEnergies, Italy’s Eni, and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC).

The final investment decision (FID) includes three engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) packages totaling $5.1 billion for large-scale offshore infrastructure awarded by ADNOC to consortiums including major UAE and international contractors. The development also includes a $365 million 14-well drilling and integrated drilling services program to be delivered by ADNOC Drilling over 18 months using three existing rigs.

The green light for the development of Umm Shaif Gas Cap follows last month’s agreement in which ADNOC let BP and TotalEnergies take 10% each in the consortium developing one of Abu Dhabi’s largest gas fields—the Bab Gas Cap project in Abu Dhabi.

The Bab Cap Gas concession is expected to support UAE’s plan to become gas self-sufficient and domestic feedstock production, as well as ADNOC’s liquefied natural gas export expansion plans.

The new project, Umm Shaif Gas Cap, is the latest milestone in the company’s gas growth strategy and will unlock more than 600 million standard cubic feet per day (scfd) of natural gas and associated gas liquids, equivalent to almost 10% of the UAE’s current daily gas consumption, ADNOC said today. Production from the development is expected by 2030.

“ADNOC is accelerating its integrated gas strategy to further harness the UAE's vast gas resources and expand our global LNG platform, as global demand for natural gas continues to rise,” said Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and ADNOC Managing Director and Group CEO.

Earlier this month, ADNOC Logistics and Services placed a $900-million order for four newbuild LNG carriers to expand its fleet as Abu Dhabi’s national oil company seeks to boost gas exports to seize the global rise in LNG demand.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 11:30