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Trump-Xi Summit Cheat Sheet: New Deals, Extended Trade Truce, But No Breakthrough?

The White House released an itinerary for next week's Trump-Xi meeting, including plans for Trump to greet Chinese President Xi Jinping at Joint Base Andrews. Ahead of the summit, Bank of America analysts outlined modest expectations, telling clients they see "little scope for a major trade breakthrough."

Bloomberg reports that Trump will welcome Xi at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday, opening a visit that includes bilateral talks and a White House state dinner on Thursday.

Trump and Xi will be at the White House on Thursday for a military review in the Rose Garden. First Lady Melania Trump and Xi's wife, Peng Liyuan, will attend a separate event in the Washington metro area, with details yet to be announced.

That evening, Trump will host Xi for a state dinner in the East Room. Both presidents are scheduled to deliver opening remarks to guests, including technology and finance executives.

Bank of America China and Asia economist Anna Zhou penned a preview of next week's Trump-Xi meeting, saying both sides are expected to extend their trade truce and announce new commercial deals.

Zhou expects a one-year extension of the existing trade agreement, which expires Nov. 10, alongside additional Chinese purchases of US goods and targeted tariff relief.

"We expect the Trump-Xi summit with the most likely outcome being an extension of the existing trade ceasefire, supplemented by additional Chinese purchases and limited tariff reductions on non-sensitive products," Zhou said.

She added, "We see little scope for a major trade breakthrough or a substantive new framework for AI-chip licensing. The reported participation of Chinese CEOs is a constructive signal, but it should be treated cautiously unless it produces concrete purchases, investments or market-access commitments."

Zhou's cheat sheet on what to expect next week:

Separately, JPMorgan analyst Feng Zhu previewed next week's summit for clients, saying neither side will offer a "grand bargain," but that he expects "more deals."

Zhu expects:

• We expect limited stabilization, with strategic stability a key measure of success.
• Iran and strategic waterways offer the clearest geopolitical upside, despite tensions over China's links to Tehran.
• The economic package should exceed May's but remain narrow: tariff restraint, a renewed rare earth truce, limited chip licensing, additional purchases, and selective investment.
• On AI, a risk-management dialogue is more likely than a binding governance agreement.
• The likely outcome is strategic accommodation within managed decoupling, not partnership or a grand bargain.

With just days until the summit, tensions are rising, but the meeting remains on track, so far...

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/19/2026 - 09:55

The Marriage Deficit Is An Economic Catastrophe

Authored by Stephen Moore via The Epoch Times,

The Beatles told us: "All you need is love."

They were right, but along with love must come marriage.

But marriage rates have plummeted, especially among young men.

A Pulitzer Prize-worthy story by Sean Salai of The Washington Times crunches all the numbers. To say they are worrisome would be a vast understatement.

- In 2025, nearly twice as many men ages 18 to 39 were unmarried as were married.

- There were 30.4 million unmarried men ages 18 to 39 in 2025, up 47 percent from 20.7 million in 2000.

- In the same period, married men in this age range dropped by 15 percent, from 18.1 million to 15.4 million. "Such men are more likely to be lonely, prone to deaths of despair and unhappy," according to Brad Wilcox, a University of Virginia sociologist.

- Forty-two percent of working-class men are unmarried, according to educational psychologist Donna R. Turner. In 1980, 73 percent of working-class men were married.

I could go on and with these depressing statistics.

But I believe the decline in marriage and children is a threat to the American future much more dangerous than even the national debt, climate change, cancer or foreign aggression.

Family is the essential organizing unit in America. We're not to live in Soviet-style communes where the authority figure is "Big Brother."

Every study shows that the decline in marriage among young men is tied to alcoholism, violent crime, drug abuse, pornography, depression, isolation, less economic success and suicide.

Are women to blame?

Certainly. Study shows that as women have become more career oriented, they are having a harder time "marrying up."

Generation X and millennials have become choosier in finding a mate and more likely to have children alone, if they have them at all.

"Women have less structural need for marriage than past generations did," said Angelica Gianchandani, a New York University finance instructor. "Rising income and education give many women a financial independence marriage once provided, and donor sperm and fertility treatment have decoupled motherhood from a partner altogether."

Women are much less likely to be religious today than in decades past. So holy matrimony is less of a lifetime priority or moral obligation.

We do know that when women raise children without a father in the home - for whatever reason - their kids, especially their sons, are less successful. It's a particular problem for black women to find a suitable mate when so many young black males are incarcerated.

I'm thrashing for explanations and solutions to this deeply troubling social trend. Obviously, we are not returning to the "Father Knows Best" norms of the 1950s or 1960s.

But recovery starts with admitting we have a problem. I would suggest that President Donald Trump announce a national bipartisan commission on "Rediscovering Love, Marriage and Parenthood."

One last stat to underscore the urgency of turning around these trends:

The latest Census Bureau data indicate that 47 percent of households were headed by married couples last year, down from 78.8 percent in 1949.

That trend MUST be reversed to advance America's economic prosperity and human happiness.

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

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/19/2026 - 09:20

Syria Rejects Desperate Saudi Plea To Deploy Militants To Yemen

Provocative rumors have been flying all week that Saudi Arabia has recruited Syrian militants to fight the Houthis in Yemen, at a moment the Iran-aligned rebel groups is said to be rapidly gobbling up more territory, especially along the Red Sea coast.

The claim has been especially strong in Lebanese media, after prominent Al-Akhbar reported this week that hundreds of Syrian fighters were recently transferred to southern Saudi Arabia, including fighters who took part in the Jolani/HTS-led fight to topple Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. However, it's unclear if the alleged fighters have Syrian state backing (whether on a covert level or not), or if they could be there on their own initiative as mercenaries.

Seen in Libya over past years: Syrian troops from the National Army of the Free Syrian Army, via Al Monitor

The Saudis had provided strong covert support, along with other Gulf states, to the over decade-long effort overthrow of Assad, and so Riyadh could now being calling in favors from Damascus.

The phenomenon of Syrian mercenaries and foreign fighters transferred in large numbers to other broader conflict theatres is not without precedent, as many are still said to be in Libya.

However, their deployment in Yemen might not yet be a reality, and it could just be that Saudi officials have pitched it as just an idea or possibility, amid the ongoing appeal also for more help from Western allies including the US and Britain.

On Friday Turkish media is reporting that Damascus has rejected the alleged Saudi plea to send Syrian militants for fighting in Yemen. According to Turkiye Today:

Syrian sources who spoke to Türkiye Today said Saudi Arabia had in recent months sought fighters to meet its military needs in Yemen, but that the Syrian government had "politely" rejected a request to organize and deploy a Syrian force against the Houthis.

"This issue has been exhausted and is over. The Saudi request was made several months ago. Syria politely turned it down, saying it was focused on its own military organization process and did not intend to enter a conflict as a third party," one of the sources said.

However, the same sources indicated the Sharaa/Jolani government would not prevent Syrians as individuals from traveling for the purpose of assisting the Saudi coalition.

Separate reports this week have speculated that Turkey could get involved in the fight for Yemen on Saudi Arabia's behalf based on the recently inked Mecca Defense Pact. But that too is simply at the level of unfounded rumor at this point. 

The same Turkish media report underscores, "Claims that Türkiye had played a role in transporting or organizing Syrians for deployment to Yemen were also rejected by Turkish sources."

Who would have thought that rising fuel prices caused by an Ansarallah Houthis attack on a Saudi Arabia pipeline may topple the Ahmad Al Sharaa regime in Syria?

Which regime will topple if Qatar is attacked? https://t.co/C2BTt24zdR

— Ubi pus, ibi evacua! 🇺🇸 (@SyriaReport) September 13, 2026

The unnamed sources said: "We have no involvement in this matter. Syria and Saudi Arabia are sovereign countries." As for Turkish media, the reports of Damascus slamming the door on Riyadh ring true given post-Assad Syria is facing serious problems on many fronts, especially internal unrest and large demonstrations this week over fuel price hikes. It doesn't have the military power or resources to get much involved in Yemen at this stage.

But on the other side of this, it also remains true that the Turkish government has long sought to use Syrian militants as fodder for its grander designs in places like North Africa.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/19/2026 - 08:45

As A Former Head Of MI6, It's Clear That Britain's Climate Policy Is Leaving Us Dangerously Exposed To Our Enemies

Authored by Richard Dearlove via The Daily Sceptic,

This is the transcript of a lecture given in London last night to the Global Warming Policy Foundation by Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, titled 'Energy Security: Blowing in the Wind'. The full lecture is available to watch on YouTube.

A summer of drought and record temperatures has discomforted the country: parched ground, overheated public transport, sleepless nights and a distorted and obsessive media. It is a distracting backdrop for a lecture on energy security - 'climate change' must be the most repeated phrase of the last three months since the first heatwave of the summer back in May. To step out of this context will seem like a heresy to the ideologues of Net Zero. Are you blind to the disturbing evidence around us, they will ask. However, the extreme weather events of the last 90 days are not a logical place to start a debate about energy security. We must take a strategic view free of prejudice, and put aside emotionally charged, only partly scientific convictions about climate change.

There are so many of them - for example Lord Deben's endless preaching from his 'countryside crusader' soapbox in Country Life, the frequent BBC interviews with Met Office scientists. However, I am pleased that the media debate is not entirely one-sided and that some heavyweight voices are striking a counterbalance. For example, this from a very recent Washington Post op-ed: "Nations are finally realizing they cannot afford to shun any power source for ideological reasons" - written in the context of a striking revival of interest in nuclear power.

Of course, I am not a scientist, and I do not have formal technical qualifications; but I did spend 38 years in the intelligence service, where one gets some practice in weighing up intelligence of various kinds, and for more than 20 years since have been one of its speaking heads. National security and the geopolitics of national security are my thing. Very few share my depth of experience - successes and failures.

My principal aim in this lecture is to lay bare the vulnerabilities in our national energy stance - note my reluctance to use the word policy. I do not think that government has an energy policy; perhaps it has a climate policy (which raises the question of whether it is actually possible to have a climate policy or whether such a policy falls into the category of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers). For analytical expertise and strategic analysis, I am indebted to Dr John Constable and to Professor Gwythian Prins. Their contributions to this lecture are extensive.

As my title suggests, the UK's climate stance/policy currently lacks security anchors; and the answer, my friends, is certainly not blowing in the wind. It has been more a finger in the wind. As a country we have been drifting and we are dangerously exposed. The most pressing threat to this country is not man-made climate change as Ed Miliband and now Miatta Fahnbulleh, avidly supported by legions of so-called experts, would have us think. There is no simple link between canceling Rosebank and stopping wildfires. To believe such a thing is the height of naïvety, or ignorance of the science, or conviction akin to religious belief.

National security is three dimensional. There is the direct threat mounted against us by hostile states - the easiest to understand. Then there are the vulnerabilities created by shortcomings in our infrastructure and policies and subject to exploitation by our enemies and competitors. The third dimension is from threats that we have failed to identify accurately and for which there is little or no defensive preparation. Putin's Russia characterizes the first, our neglect of defense expenditure the second, and the Covid pandemic (lab made and not zoonotic as some of us alerted Boris Johnson in early 2020) the third.

Extreme weather and climate change are a natural hazard and are a huge disruptive threat for which we should and do make contingencies - like the Thames Barrier. Mankind has always had to live with these disruptions, dictating patterns of human settlement and how, over centuries, we have planned and built. The belief that we might exercise a degree of control over the climate is an understandable aspiration but common sense, which accepts that we cannot control the weather, would suggest it remains beyond human reach. The recent earthquake in Venezuela or the falling mountain in Tibet should remind us that our exposure to the forces of nature is not something we can control - only sometimes partially mitigate.

By all means include natural hazards in a list of national security threats (as the British Cabinet Office does) but do distinguish them as being separate from those that emanate from hostile nations and entities.

The two issues on which I will focus in this lecture are: the vulnerabilities of our energy infrastructure, and their actual and potential exploitation by foreign powers that do not share our national interest. I am not qualified to argue the case on climate science about which so many here are expert. I am therefore sticking to the areas closest to my own expertise.

When I was C (chief of MI6) I had the unusual experience of meetings with hostile international players - the Russian leadership, the PRC leadership and Qaddafi amongst others. I do not need to go into the purpose of those meetings here. However, it is worth recording a conversation with the Chinese general who was then head of the 2PLA - the all-powerful Military Intelligence Service of the PRC to which Deng Xiaoping had granted primacy in the Chinese intelligence community.

I should first explain the significance of that conversation. The Chinese Communist Party leadership shares many of the characteristics of a cult, albeit one that has seized control of a whole country - it claims infallibility in doctrine whilst proclaiming its leaders to be faultless scientists of human affairs. It therefore extirpates ruthlessly any cult that seeks to challenge its infallibility within the PRC. However, it is also ideologically attuned to exploiting the cults of its enemies not only to weaken them from within but also to make them a vehicle for their own baleful influence. The methodology is built into the PRC's DNA because it is so sensitive to its own vulnerabilities.

The focus of the general's concern was the activities of Falun Gong in the UK and Europe amongst the Chinese diaspora. The Falun Gong movement witnessed huge growth in China in the 1990s until it was subject to a massive campaign of suppression. The PRC saw the cult as a direct challenge to the authority of the Communist Party, with which it shared certain conspiratorial, organizational and ideological characteristics.

In the democratic West we are thoroughly familiar with the fashionable cults and movements that blow through society. Only those that espouse violence are subject to legal suppression. Their durability is variable and so is the extent to which they capture serious political attention. Remember CND, the campaign against the deployment of cruise missiles in Europe, the various emanations of Palestinian terrorism, the radical terrorist groups in Germany and Italy in the 1970s. To these I would now add climate catastrophism and its associated greening and anti-carbon fuel movements - and you will have others in mind like Black Lives Matter and the pro-Hamas Palestinianism so evident recently on our streets.

Climate catastrophism has built major bridgeheads in the public mind, in the media and in the political domain. It is also a driver of the Net Zero bandwagon. Challenging this edifice, despite its shaky foundations, has been difficult - though a shift in the Overton window does now allow a little more space for a talk such as this one.

What is beginning to be well documented by academic research is the extent to which the movements which were spawned during the Cold War, like CND and radical terrorist groups like the Red Army Faction, were exploited by Soviet Active measures which used them ruthlessly to try to undermine and weaken the West. Their support for and penetration of them was methodical and extensive. Those skills are alive and well today in Russia and China. The SVR and 2PLA have large departments focused on active measures supported by other whole-government initiatives.

The PRC's capability needs explanation. Perhaps more important than 2PLA, with which it works closely, the Chinese Communist party's United Front Work Department counts 40,000 employees and 600,000 in affiliated organizations and together has a budget in the low billions of dollars. The department's purpose is to shape a world favorable to the PRC's interests. It has seen an important revival of its role under Xi's rule. You may recall the case of the Chinese lawyer Christine Lee's unlimited travel and entertainment largesse which was lavished around Westminster - a classic example of UFWD influence.

Helpfully, the Chinese Communist Party likes to publish its doctrine. One example is the 1999 paper written by two second intelligence officers titled 'Unrestricted Warfare: assumptions on war and tactics in the age of globalization', which describes the efficacy not of physical disarmament of the enemy but of its moral disarmament. You can see therefore why Xi Jinping has himself described the UFWD as "China's magic weapon".

On a recent visit to Spain (Pedro Sanchez the Spanish PM sees China as a favored partner) I asked a group of Spanish MPs if they knew about the UFWD. Not one of them knew of it or understood its role - yet Spain at the moment is one of the main focuses of its European activity. Perhaps we are slightly more alert in the UK, but there is no harm at all in raising awareness further.

The Russian threat is actual and immediate. It requires less explanation because it is so obvious. Putin's Russia sees itself already engaged in gray warfare with the West on account of our support for Ukraine. It is prepared to carry out attacks without consideration of the political risk. The Russian agency that conducts this conflict is mainly the GRU, Russian military intelligence - equipped and trained to carry out acts of sabotage behind enemy lines. Its various attacks in Europe have been widely publicized.

I would, in the context of this talk, draw particular attention to just one of its capabilities. As the Cold War ended Russia nonetheless continued to invest heavily in developing its underwater warfare resources. The intelligence about this back in the early 2000s was striking; and today we understand better why the Soviet Union, even as it disintegrated, had the foresight to invest in the capability to interfere with undersea cables, pipelines and electricity grid interconnectors. The evidence of its aggressive intentions is incontrovertible.

It may surprise you that I am not going to dwell on the manifest illogicalities of our current energy circumstances: the extreme Net Zero targets; the deprecation of intrinsically cheap conventional energy; the excessive subsidies to renewable electricity; the refusal to exploit our own fossil fuel resources; the grid's struggle to manage an increasingly stochastic generation profile; the poor thermodynamic quality of renewables; and the growing dependence on imports in distressed circumstances. The list is long and familiar to all of you - and the point of this lecture is to develop a fresh perspective on the nation's energy security.

I urge our leading politicians to take very careful note. We are not the victims of a conspiracy to make us vulnerable. We have quite casually done this to ourselves. We have as a nation negligently wandered close to a cliff edge and the adversaries I have described stand ready to help us over it; and the fragility of the present international order enhances the risk. "Do not distract your enemy whilst he is making a mistake," was Napoleon's famous dictum. The leaders of the CRINK alliance are smirking at our lack of realization about what we allowed our energy sector to become.

John Constable has introduced me to some frightening statistics. Comparing energy flow data for 1974 and 2025, it shows industrial final consumption has fallen by about 70% in absolute terms, from 41% to 14% of the national total, whilst transport rose by 76% to become the largest single sector. Only 50 years ago the UK was still a major industrial power. Iron and steel manufacturing, once substantial, has all but completely disappeared (when I went to university in 1963 my mother, who unusually had a career, was about to retire as Chef de Cabinet to the chairman of the United Steel Companies).

Three consequences follow. The country has lost the industrial capacity to reproduce its own energy system, so that uncertain access to equipment and spares (for example generators and transformers) is a graver and more chronic danger than a temporary shortage of gas. Deindustrialization also means that the UK has lost the large interruptible load that once allowed a shortage to be absorbed by factories rather than households (remember the three-day week). Furthermore, in ceasing to manufacture, it has exported its exposure to the energy systems of its suppliers, some of whom are strategic adversaries.

Our foreign policy is therefore fettered, and could even be held to ransom - does the Foreign Secretary, the arch prophet of Net Zero, have any grasp of the country's predicament? His present obsession with new West Bank Israeli settlements (whilst Kyiv incidentally is being torn apart by Russian missiles) suggests that his attention is elsewhere.

The economic and social character of the country has of course changed enormously in 50 years. What was a heavy-duty production system has become a consumption center. The current pattern of our energy consumption shows that we move about and buy things, largely imported things. We do not manufacture as we once did. In the process we have inadvertently destroyed the circularity which largely assured our energy security. The energy system required industrial output and industrial output required energy.

That kept us sane and kept us on the rails. So, in complacently deindustrializing we have not merely lost an industry, we have lost the capacity to rebuild the energy system itself. Large-scale transformers ordered today now take two years to arrive, (before 2020 it was seven to 14 months), generators up to three years, and the grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES), for which there is no real substitute, comes largely from China, whose production capacity now dwarfs any other state. Europe has just two producers of that steel remaining, both plagued by reductions and closures as China undercuts the market. Britain and its allies do retain the capacity to design and assemble the apparatus on which the grid depends, but the material without which none of it can be built is being concentrated in the hands of the very country which the Director General of MI5 has identified as the most serious threat to Britain's national security.

Some power sector manufacture still remains in the hands of reasonably friendly powers, but in a tight corner there may be practical limits to friendship, and in any case, there will be a queue.

The PRC leadership thinks long-term, and it does not have to worry about re-election, only about its survival. One of its policies, pursued with great success, has been to build dependencies not just in its own regional sphere of influence but globally. We have seen the leverage that its domination of the production of rare earths has secured, and we have watched how Huawei (a company closely associated with the PLA) has knocked out its foreign competitors and spread its communications technology around the world. London Transport has also recently started to purchase Chinese electric buses, made of course with the benefit of large state subsidies, all of them subject to software control by the manufacturer.

The idea that 'Your No. 22 isn't running today because the vehicle has just been immobilized by the manufacturer' is faintly comic, but the weakening of the electricity grid is of another order - let us say because failing equipment could not be replaced. Water, sewage, gas networks, rail and underground transport, traffic lights and communication are all mains-connected. Such peacetime dependencies give China strategic leverage, and in a crisis, it gives it weapons of mass disruption which could literally bring a country to a standstill. In the documentation for the 20th Party Congress, Xi Jinping talks of China achieving global domination by 2045; we should take the threat seriously because the methodology for doing it is being put in place under our very noses.

The bulk of my professional experience was on the front line of the Cold War. We used to make the following assumptions: that the country's war-fighting potential resided in its industry, that our most vulnerable link was the fuel chain (mostly then carried by sea) and that our industrial base could be rebuilt and repaired - a question of time and organization rather than capability.

The terms of that equation have fundamentally changed. We have very little industry left to protect and we cannot rebuild non-existent industries which lie in foreign jurisdictions beyond our reach. And consequently, the state cannot, through emergency command and control, promptly rebuild what it loses, because the industries are now in other jurisdictions and beyond its reach. It can join the queue, or it can beg. Furthermore, a consumer-led energy society is exposed to breakdown when failures occur. It cannot temporarily switch power consumption away from industry to keep home fires burning.

Saying that the current energy policy is mad or grounded in the religion of climate change does not really get us very far - simply into shrill arguments that deepen the disagreement. What I have tried to do, with a great deal of help, is to take the argument back towards a national Grand Strategy for energy, one which recognizes that we live in a tense and hostile world where the greatest danger is not climate change. If a present or future government can evaluate and plan its exposure to energy risks - for example, identifying single points of failure dependent on foreign manufacture and building contingencies around them - then we could be on track towards a more security-aware energy policy. It might also engender a more balanced assessment of the thermodynamic value of the national fuel mix.

We have talked blithely about 'powering past coal' but no major industrial power has in reality abandoned coal for heavy industry, China in particular, and in fact we remain dependent on the products of those economies. This is a difficult message for many of our politicians to accept.

Might we make it easier for them if, for a start, we introduce a concept of national security exceptions to Net Zero - a quarter way house until sanity returns and the country is ready to embrace a balanced energy policy.

In this context there is also a compelling case to do all that we can to rebuild the strategic industries we require to ensure that we can defend our island fortress and be a reliable ally to friendly democracies around the world. This is a subtle matter - the state is almost certainly not the best agent for this undertaking - and it would probably take at least a generation, but the legacy benefits would be enduring. The first responsibility of government is the safety of the nation.

However, successive governments have forgotten this, and Britain is now caught in an energy trap of its own making. As with rebuilding our armed forces, it will take a significant national effort to extract us and bring us back to a position of safety. The task is urgent. The Government should have this amongst its very top priorities. Instead, we are being urged to remove a few thousand rough sleepers from our streets - a laudable feel-good objective but not exactly of strategic importance to the destiny of the proud nation that is Great Britain.

Sir Richard Dearlove is Chair of Board of Trustees of University of London and a former head of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). This transcript was first published on the GWPF website.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/19/2026 - 08:10

Russia Seizes Assets Of Swiss Food Giant Nestle

Russian authorities seized the remaining businesses and assets of Swiss food giant Nestle and three French groups, the latest move against Western firms in response to sanctions against Moscow. 

A decree signed by President Vladimir Putin issued late Thursday transferred the Russian operations of Nestle, French retailer Auchan and the former Leroy Merlin DIY chain, now known as Lemana Pro, to a company called LEV Management. The decree also covers the Russian subsidiaries of French logistics group FM Logistic, France24 reported.

Investigative outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe reported that LEV Management was created only at the end of 2025, and is headed by a Russian interior ministry general. It had no known business activity.

Most Western companies quickly sold their Russian operations and holdings after the Ukraine invasion, or at least isolated them, as sanctions have made trading in most goods difficult.

Russia has since made it difficult for firms to leave, requiring presidential authorization for deals, or seizing the assets outright.

In a short statement, Nestle said it was "committed to taking all necessary steps to protect its rights and ensure continuity of business operations in the interests of all stakeholders, particularly its employees".

"The company is assessing the situation and its options," it added, without providing details of its residual Russian operations.

Jean-Philippe Bertschy of the Swiss investment bank Vontobel said he expected the financial impact to Nestle would be small "given Russia's limited contribution to group sales".

He said Russia now accounted for just over one percent of the group's sales, down from around two percent before the Ukraine war.

It has suspended "the vast majority of sales, non-essential imports, advertising and capital investment", he said, while continuing to supply essential food items.

Auchan and Leroy Merlin are both controlled by France's Mulliez family, and each has around a dozen outlets in Russia. 

The latest seizure echoes Moscow's 2023 takeover of Danone's Russian business, which was later sold to a nephew of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.  

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/19/2026 - 07:35

74% Of Sex-Crime Suspects In Spain's Basque Country Are Foreigners

Via Remix News,

Foreign-born suspects account for nearly three-quarters of sexual-crime arrests in Basque Country, official figures show

Official statistics released by the Basque regional police, the Ertzaintza, indicate that people born outside Spain made up 58.7 percent of all arrests in the first half of 2026 even though they represent 10.2 percent of the population.

The disparity is sharper in several high-profile offense categories.

Of the 107 people detained for crimes against sexual freedom, 79 were born abroad, making up 74 percent of arrests in this category, according to data obtained by The Objective.

Foreign-born suspects also accounted for 73.3 percent of homicide arrests and 61.3 percent of those for causing injury.

The highest shares appeared in other offences: 94.7 percent of drunk-driving arrests (36 of 38), 79.6 percent of theft arrests (222 of 279), and 77.6 percent of robberies involving violence or intimidation (253 of 326).

The figures come from data the Basque Department of Security, which began publishing this data systematically at the end of 2025. Until then, the Ertzaintza routinely omitted the birthplace of detainees.

Security councillor Bingen Zupiria of the PNV said the change followed "tremendous pressure" from the Popular Party (PP) and Vox in the Basque parliament. Police unions supported the move as a contribution to "crime prevention."

After that pressure, Zupiria stated, the department was forced to "change its criteria." Arrests are now broken down first by continent and then by region, including North Africa, the rest of Africa, Latin America, or Europe.

The publication of these breakdowns ended a long-standing practice of withholding origin information that the Basque government said had created more confusion than clarity. Citizens, officials argued, have a right to see the actual composition of recorded crime.

Within the foreign-born group, those originating from North Africa are notable for their high offense rates.

They form roughly 1.8 percent of the Basque population yet accounted for 37 percent of homicide arrests, 24 percent of sexual-assault arrests, 64 percent of theft arrests, 48 percent of robberies with force, and 66 percent of violent robberies in the first six months of the year.

Suspects from the rest of Africa and from Latin America also appear over-represented in several categories of crimes against persons and property.

Overall arrests have been rising. The Ertzaintza recorded 6,903 in 2021 and 9,222 in 2025. The first half of 2026 already produced 5,050. If the pace continues, the year would end with a record of about 10,100.

Only the Basque and Catalan regional forces currently publish the origin of suspects to the general public. However, an internal document obtained earlier this year showed that, across Spain as a whole, foreigners accounted for 51 percent of daily arrests (527 of 1,033). The share was higher in Madrid (64 percent), Catalonia (71.8 percent) and Murcia (60 percent), close to the Basque figure of 59 percent.

Other research has shown that foreigners commit 500 percent more rapes than Spaniards and 400 percent more murders.

Prison data from the Basque Department of Justice for August 2026 shows 722 of the 1,967 inmates (36.7 percent) were foreign-born.

Among those under 25, the proportion rose to 65.9 percent, or two out of three.

Read more here...

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/19/2026 - 07:00

Upcoming Trump–Xi Summit Is Really An AI Summit

Authored by James Gorrie via The Epoch Times,

When President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping meet at the White House on Sept. 24, the public agenda will be much larger than artificial intelligence (AI). Trade, semiconductors, rare earths, Taiwan, and other disputes will all be on the table.

But AI is different.

Trade agreements can be renegotiated. Tariffs can be raised or lowered. Semiconductor restrictions can be changed.

AI is becoming a general-purpose technology that can transform military power, manufacturing, cyberwarfare, scientific research, and the global economy simultaneously.

That makes the Trump-Xi meeting, in a very important sense, an AI summit.

China Is Much Closer Than Many Americans Think

The old assumptions about China's subordinate position in AI were simple: America had the technology, and China was trying to catch up.

That assumption is dangerously outdated.

Stanford's 2026 AI Index found that U.S. and Chinese frontier AI models have traded the lead several times since early 2025. By March 2026, the leading U.S. model held only a 2.7 percent advantage over the leading Chinese model on the benchmark measured by Stanford.

The United States still has major advantages. It produces more top-tier models, attracts vastly more private AI investment, and remains strong in advanced chips, computing infrastructure, and leading AI companies. U.S. private AI investment reached $285.9 billion in 2025, compared to $12.4 billion in China.

But China has other advantages. It leads the world in AI publications, citations, patent output, and industrial robot installations.

That last advantage is particularly important. China installed roughly 295,000 industrial robots in 2024, accounting for 54 percent of worldwide installations. The significance is not simply that China has more robots, but that it has enormous manufacturing capacity to deploy AI-powered machines.

That's a critical factor that can't be overstated. AI becomes much more powerful when it is connected to factories, warehouses, vehicles, supply chains, and physical machines.

China is already building that connection.

The Robotics Advantage Is Becoming an AI Advantage

The next phase of AI may not be dominated by chatbots, but rather by machines that can see, reason, move, and act.

China has built the world's largest industrial-robot deployment base and is rapidly expanding into humanoid robotics.

Chinese companies are also pushing open AI models that can be adapted and deployed cheaply. A 2026 U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission analysis found that Chinese laboratories have increasingly embraced open-source models and that Alibaba's Qwen ecosystem had more than 100,000 derivatives on Hugging Face.

This creates a powerful and escalating feedback loop. More AI creates better robots; more robots generate more real-world data; more data improves AI; better AI makes robots more capable; and more capable robots create more demand for AI.

That is where China's unrivaled manufacturing scale becomes a strategic advantage.

What Does Xi Want?

Xi has little reason to accept an agreement that simply slows China's technological development.

Beijing has repeatedly described AI as a strategic technology and has pursued greater technological self-reliance in response to American export controls.

China is also promoting its own model of global AI governance through Beijing's Global AI Governance Initiative. It calls for international cooperation on AI governance, safety standards, and technological development.

The fly in that ointment is that cooperation does not necessarily mean restraint.

China's current approach is closer to regulating the risks of AI while continuing to develop it aggressively. Reuters recently reported that Beijing is working on mandatory AI safety standards while simultaneously pushing rapid AI deployment and maintaining human oversight of advanced systems.

Xi Has Several Possible Objectives

China's top leader could seek greater access to advanced computing and semiconductor technology, seek limits on American restrictions against Chinese AI companies, and push for international rules that recognize China's role in setting AI standards.

He could seek agreement on specific dangers, such as AI-enabled cyberattacks, without accepting restrictions on China's broader AI development. The United States has already proposed discussions with China about monitoring AI-directed cyberattacks and other risks.

What Does Trump Want?

The U.S. president's position presents a thorny contradiction.

He has emphasized the need for the United States to remain ahead of China in AI while resisting proposals that would significantly slow American development.

He's not alone in thinking that. House Speaker Mike Johnson similarly argued this week that an AI moratorium could surrender America's competitive advantage to China.

At the same time, Washington has obvious reasons to prevent AI from becoming an uncontrolled strategic weapon. Advanced AI could assist cyberattacks, accelerate biological research, automate influence operations, and potentially enable autonomous military systems.

The U.S. and Chinese officials have already begun discussing some of these risks, creating a potential basis for a bargain.

Trump could potentially offer China something Beijing wants - reduced technology restrictions, greater access to certain chips, reduced tariffs, investment opportunities, or other economic concessions - in exchange for verifiable limits on specific dangerous AI applications.

But there is an enormous problem.

Why Would China Or the US Slow Down?

China has spent years trying to eliminate its dependence on American technology.

It would have little strategic incentive to surrender an advantage it believes could determine economic and military power for decades.

That makes a broad promise to "slow AI" difficult to trust.

Beijing could agree to safety standards, reporting requirements, or restrictions on particular applications while continuing to invest heavily in models, robotics, chips, and industrial deployment.

That's a predictable consequence of competing national interests. The United States would likely engage in the same practice. Thus, neither Washington nor Beijing wants to be the country that slows down while the other continues.

That is the central dilemma of AI.

The Real Issue Is Not Who Wins-Or Is It?

The most important question may, therefore, not be whether America or China wins the AI race.

It is a question of whether either country can establish meaningful limits before increasingly autonomous systems become too difficult for governments - or their creators - to control.

That concern is no longer confined to science fiction.

AI researchers and technology executives are openly debating whether increasingly capable systems could eventually operate beyond effective human supervision. China is discussing the same loss-of-control problem, although its preferred solution is to rely on technical standards and state supervision rather than to slow development.

That's why everything else at the Trump-Xi summit may ultimately look smaller.

Yes, Taiwan matters; but so do trade, semiconductors, oil, and rare-earth elements.

But AI is becoming the technology underneath all of them. Whoever develops the most capable AI could gain advantages in every one of those areas.

In the AI race, that means winner-takes-all.

On the other hand, if AI becomes capable of independently designing better AI, controlling machines and making decisions at speeds humans cannot match, the question will change again.

It will no longer be simply which country controls AI, but rather whether humans still control the technology they created.

That's the issue Trump and Xi cannot afford to treat as just another item on the summit agenda.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/18/2026 - 23:25

Minnesota's Anti-ICE Relief Fund Shut Down Due To Rampant Fraud

Officials in Hennepin County, Minnesota, shut down a $2 million relief fund for businesses claiming to be affected by federal immigration enforcement after officials discovered widespread fraud among applicants, forcing them to end the program. The county board created the fund to help businesses "harmed" by Operation Metro Surge, the federal immigration enforcement operation that began in December 2025. Federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis in January, turning it into one of the most scrutinized immigration enforcement actions in the country.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer

Of about 300 applications submitted, only 82 were deemed legitimate. Officials distributed only $500,000 before shutting the program down.

County officials found the problem ran deeper than a few opportunists padding their paperwork. Site visits revealed businesses listed on applications that did not exist. Investigators found the same AI-generated language pasted into dozens of unrelated applications with little variation.

Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Lunde said the fraud reflected a broader breakdown. "The fact that people, after all this fraud, felt that they could apply and get away with it, I think it's a problem because clearly there's no fear out there," Lunde said. "Until we get it where people fear things, then they're gonna keep doing it."

Lunde described watching the numbers deteriorate in real time. "Then at a certain point we're like, 'OK, we're getting declining results on that.' And so we said it's time to stop the program. So we just stopped processing at that point," he said. He described the bulk of the applications as fraudulent outright, a flood of fabricated claims rather than a handful of bad actors slipping through the cracks.

Neither Hennepin County nor Walz's office responded to Fox News' requests for comment.

Independent journalist Nick Shirley kicked off Minnesota's fraud reckoning with a viral December video accusing several Somali-run daycare centers of billing the state for children who were never there, a claim he put at more than $110 million in fraudulent billing. The FBI previously dismantled a $250 million fraud scheme involving the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, which falsely claimed to have served millions of meals to children during the pandemic.

President Trump has spent much of the past year aiming his rhetoric about Minnesota's fraud problem at the state's Somali population, pointing to a string of prosecutions involving nonexistent or dormant businesses and nonprofits used to drain government aid programs.

Walz testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in Washington, D.C., on March 4, over the alleged misuse of federal funds across Minnesota's social services and Medicaid programs. Vice President JD Vance referred Walz and state Attorney General Keith Ellison to the National Fraud Enforcement Division earlier this year for a potential criminal investigation. Republicans argue the two enabled a fraud scandal that has metastasized across the state's welfare system. Walz and Ellison acknowledge that taxpayer money was misused but insist Republicans are inflating the scope for political gain.

That fraud division is now a Senate vote away from becoming a permanent fixture at the Department of Justice. The House passed the bill 352 to 72 on Wednesday, with every "no" vote coming from Democrats. More than 140 House Democrats, including Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, joined every Republican in support. Democrats voted to give permanent status to the very fraud division Vance had already used against their own governor, suggesting Minnesota's fraud problem is harder to spin from inside the caucus than from a podium in St. Paul.

Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) didn't hold back on what Minnesota has revealed. "What has come [out of Minnesota] over the last year, what has been exposed, is absolutely criminal in nature," Hageman said, adding that fraud in other Democrat-run cities and states is likely "higher by an order of magnitude."

Hennepin County just handed her something better than a talking point. A program built to comfort the supposed victims of immigration enforcement collapsed under the exact kind of fraud Minnesota's leadership spent a year dismissing as a right-wing conspiracy theory.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/18/2026 - 23:00

US Bans Palestinian Authority President From Attending UN, But Admits Iranians

Via Middle East Eye

The Palestinian Authority's (PA) foreign ministry on Thursday condemned the US decision to bar Palestinian officials from attending the UN General Assembly for a second year in a row.

The US has denied Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas a visa to attend the UN General Assembly in New York next week, repeating a move that drew widespread criticism last year.

via AFP

In a statement on Wednesday, the US State Department said it would extend visa restrictions to members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and officials with the Palestinian Authority (PA).

The Palestinian foreign ministry condemned the decision as an “unjustified measure that contradicts efforts to restore confidence, develop Palestinian-American relations, and create the necessary political climate for implementing the two-state solution and achieving peace and stability in the region”.

The State Department said it was extending the restrictions on PA officials as "a consequence of their failure to reform, contrary to their commitments to the United States, and their ongoing activities that undermine the prospects for peace". Abbas is among those barred from entering the US for the gathering.

The Trump administration took the same step last year, preventing Abbas and other senior Palestinian officials from attending the General Assembly in person.

The decision prompted criticism of Washington’s role as host of the UN headquarters, and sparked calls for a major UN meeting on Palestine to be moved to Geneva. The UN General Assembly later voted 145-5 to allow Abbas to address the gathering remotely.

As part of its justification for once again barring Palestinian officials, the US explicitly cited Palestinian efforts to pursue Israel through international courts and secure greater international recognition for a Palestinian state.

The Palestinian Authority was "taking actions to internationalize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including through the International Criminal Court (ICC) and International Court of Justice (ICJ) [and] seeking to bypass negotiations through seeking unilateral recognition,” the State Department said.

In response, the Palestinian foreign ministry rejected the US claim that the “Palestinian people's recourse to the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court constitutes an act that undermines peace.

In an unexpected & deeply ironic development, Iran's leadership will be in New York...

The U.S. has approved visas for Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and other officials to attend next week’s UN General Assembly meetings in New York despite the two countries being locked in a six-month-long war.

The State Department said Iran’s… pic.twitter.com/m2CSEppDsp

— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 17, 2026

“Resorting to international institutions and international law is a legitimate right of the State of Palestine and a peaceful and legal means to protect our people and their rights, and cannot be equated with the policies of occupation, settlement, annexation, displacement, and settler violence, which constitute the real danger to the two-state solution and to the chances for peace,” the statement added.

The move again places Washington and Israel at odds with much of the international community over Palestinian diplomatic representation and statehood. Palestine is recognized by 157 UN member states, more than 80 percent of the organization’s membership.

The US decision also comes amid escalating Israeli settler violence and displacement in the occupied West Bank. The UN said in August that settler violence had reached "unprecedented levels", with more than 1,430 incidents documented in 2026 by August 10.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/18/2026 - 22:35

China's Stealth Fighters Take Shape As Great Powers Risk Sliding From Economic War Into Shooting War

Against a backdrop of resource nationalism, Beijing surrounding Taiwan with a record number of ships and raising blockade risks, an ongoing trade war, and President Trump challenging BRICS, the US military is disrupting China's access to cheap crude oil from countries such as Venezuela and Iran. This is merely the US response after Beijing spent the last 1.5 years depriving the West of rare earths and other critical materials.

These developments provide context for an economic war that could one day spill over into a kinetic exchange, whether in the Pacific or around Taiwan. With that said, observers are closely watching China's development of advanced military weaponry as conflict risks between the great superpowers rise.

Aviation researcher Andreas Rupprecht posted footage on LinkedIn that appears to show a prototype of China's "next-generation" fighter jet, with new images suggesting potential progress toward operational status. 

Rupprecht provided an update on China's J-36:  

Recent reports and photographs suggest that testing of China's “next-generation" fighters has entered a new phase and offer clues to their eventual use.

I avoid the term "sixth generation" because, unlike "fifth generation," it remains undefined: there is no consensus on the relevant criteria, and too little is known for confident classification. Labels such as "5.5th & "6th gen." often serve more as media conversation-stoppers and marketing tools than as useful analysis.

First, the J-36. Since its surprise maiden flight in December 2024, its unusual three-engine configuration and tailless, diamond-shaped double-delta design have prompted speculation. At least four, possibly five, prototypes are flying and likely no. 04 was first spotted in July with a light-grey radome, suggesting an installed fire-control radar. Also, a poster at the ongoing 14th China International Defense Electronics Exhibition in Beijing shows an Acquisition, Tracking, and Pointing (ATP) system developed by the AVIC Beijing Precision Engineering Institute for Aircraft Industry beneath a J-36.

Soon after the maiden flight, competing theories emerged and I cautioned against premature conclusions but argued that the J-36 may embody a Chinese interpretation of future aerial warfare: extreme range, a large weapons load, and comprehensive sensors for long-range A2/AD missions as either an interceptor or a deep-penetration fighter aircraft.

According to Yang Wei, the new fighter can penetrate heavily defended airspace that the J-20 and comparable F-22s or F-35s must avoid, placing it a generation ahead. With lower RCS, high speed, and the capacity to control more drones, it could act as a node and command center for systems including J-20s and, especially, unmanned aircraft, while attacking high-value targets from stand-off range with long-range weapons.

I therefore disagree with Western analysts such as Justin Bronk, who rated the prototype not as China's NGAD-equivalent sixth-generation fighter but as the fifth-generation regional bomber/strike project. In my opinion China has instead revealed its own concept of future air combat and a new generation of combat aircraft distinct from Western approaches.

The type could therefore represent a new class of "fighter." Online terms include "theater-level deep-penetration command combat aircraft" and "high-performance fighter," analogous to a cruiser ranking above a destroyer within the Navy. Recent evidence gives this theory new weight and warrants continued monitoring.

Last week, we covered China's next-generation combat aircraft programs, touching on the J-50 and J-36, which are considered rivals to the US Air Force's sixth-generation main fighter program, the F-47, being developed by Boeing.

The Shanghai Morning Post quoted a paper by researcher and chief flight-control designer Zhang Dong at the Shenyang Aircraft Design & Research Institute, a top Chinese military aircraft design organization. The paper said stealth fighter programs were undergoing a "leapfrog transformation from being able to fly steadily to being able to win in combat."

What's important to know is that economic warfare can escalate into kinetic warfare, meaning direct military action, particularly when one country views restrictions on, let's say, crude or rare earths as a threat to national security.

In recent weeks, Taiwan's main English-language daily newspaper, the Taipei Times, warned that China deployed a record number of ships around the island, suggesting that a potential blockade could become a major 2027 theme. This comes as the US depleted some of its most critical missiles and interceptors in the conflict in the Middle East.

Whether escalation or calm follows the Trump-Xi meeting in Washington next week remains to be seen. For now, the global situation suggests the world is on a critically dangerous path toward spillover risks as two conflicts rage across Eurasia.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/18/2026 - 22:10

Israel Seeks 'Compensation' From Washington Over Saudi F-35 Sale

Via The Cradle,

Israel is expected to seek "compensation" from the US in the form of weapons systems that Washington has so far declined to sell to Tel Aviv, in response to US plans to sell F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia in a $25 billion deal, Walla reported on 18 September.

(Photo credit: U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Jerreht Harris)

A source familiar with the matter told the Hebrew news outlet that the Israeli military would prefer that no other country in West Asia receive the F-35 to preserve Israel's qualitative military edge (QME) in the region.

The deal marks the first time an Arab state gains access to the F-35, the US military's most advanced warplane.

"This proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States by improving the security of a major non-NATO ally that is a force for political stability and economic progress in the Gulf region," the State Department said in a statement on Thursday.

Even if the deal is signed soon, Saudi Arabia would receive its first F-35s only in five years and without all the enhancements Israel has for its fleet of the warplanes, US officials told Middle East Eye (MEE).

Using the deal as leverage, Tel Aviv intends to ask Washington to allow it to participate in the development and production of classified US weapons systems, including space-based weapons, the source speaking with Walla said.

Israel will also ask the US to participate in the development and production of some of its own weapons systems, including missile interceptors for the Arrow 4 and Arrow 5 systems.

Additionally, Israel wants access to advanced munitions that the Washington has so far declined to sell to Tel Aviv, including bunker-busting weapons designed to penetrate through mountains deep underground, autonomous strike systems, and swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles.

Israel may also seek funding to finance a third F-15 squadron and additional F-35 squadrons, which Israeli officials say they are currently struggling to do.

At the same time, the source speaking with Walla said that the Saudi purchase of F-35s would not threaten Israel's qualitative military edge.

Israel continues to hold a clear operational advantage over other countries that have purchased the aircraft from the US due to the extensive operational experience accumulated by the Israeli Air Force and its pilots while carrying out the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the bombing of Lebanon and Iran.

One Israeli defense official sought to play down concerns, saying that Israel's advantage lies "not just in the machine, but mainly in the people."

Tel Aviv has also received Washington's approval to integrate Israeli-made weapons systems into its Adir aircraft, the Israeli version of the F-35.

MEE notes that the sale has raised concerns among some in the US defense and intelligence community who believe China could gain access to critical US technologies through espionage if Saudi Arabia is allowed to operate the warplane.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/18/2026 - 21:45

Newsom Whips Out Wiener's Dystopian "AI Kill Switch" Bill He Vetoed In 2024

Gavin Newsom spent Friday morning getting in on the scramble to control AI. Executive Order N-9-26 "advances the creation of an AI kill switch" and tells California to hustle on third-party oversight of frontier labs. All he had to do was dust off Scott Wiener's kill switch bill he vetoed two years ago after the industry pushed back.

SB 1047, Wiener's 2024 bill, would have made large-model shops test for catastrophic harm, keep a shutdown capability for systems they still controlled, and sit through annual outside audits. Newsom called it well-intentioned and too blunt. Yet a model size threshold, he said, would miss smaller models and kneecap the companies that live in California. OpenAI, Google, and Meta had been saying the same thing into every open microphone in Sacramento.

What he signed instead, in 2025, was SB 53: safety frameworks on the website, transparency reports at launch, whistleblower language, and critical incidents piped to the Office of Emergency Services in 15 days, or 24 hours if someone might die. Million-dollar fines. But it didn't have a kill switch or mandate an inspector in the building like Weiner's legislation. 

State Sen. Scott Wiener and a small child (Wiener Instagram)

Then the hacks started happening and SB 53 didn't fire.

In July, about 1,200 OpenAI AI agents that were supposed to be boxed off ESCAPED to a sared message board nobody authorized. The agents dropped more than 70,000 messages, and roughly 700 kept at Hugging Face for six days, July 8 to 13, before anyone noticed. The credentials the agents scooped up were tied to OpenAI's own internal systems. METR (!!!) and Redwood Research were allowed on site. OpenAI called it the first known case of an automated agent collective acting offensively without permission. Mission Local reported that state officials said the episode didn't meet SB 53's reporting threshold.

Wiener says his original bill was built for this.

The only big outside look at that incident cost roughly $400,000 in OpenAI API credits that OpenAI furnished, on a model from the same family that took part in the attack. So - it was "independent." 

Freakout!

On September 9, Jacob Coxon (aka Temu Harry Potter) quit his job Anthropic. Pretraining at OpenAI, then Anthropic. His post: both labs are racing toward self-improving systems and gambling with people's lives. Colleagues talk about crunch time and endgame. He left before the Anthropic equity vested. Evan Hubinger, who still works there on alignment, said the fear isn't a bit and that he puts the chance of human extinction from AI above 10 percent within the next decade.

That same day Newsom signed SB 813 and AB 1405. One stands up Independent Verification Organizations - state-designated outfits that get to say what a serious AI evaluation looks like, target date 2028. The other builds a public registry of AI auditors. By 2029, you generally can't sell a "covered AI audit" in California unless you're on the list. Fees, a misconduct tip line, ten years of records, conflict rules. Not just the frontier labs. Anyone wrapping a model into hiring, insurance, or any other decision another statute decides to treat as auditable.

Friday's order tells Government Operations and the Office of Emergency Services to move that machinery faster and to come back by November 16 with recommendations that include parking those verifiers onsite at frontier labs, having them certify the companies' safety paperwork, building a kill switch whose "efficacy" those same outfits keep checking, and rewriting critical incidents so a Hugging Face-style loss of control counts next time.

So the off switch is back, this time with inspectors. Somebody decides when it gets thrown, who throws it, and whether Sacramento, the lab, or the state-approved auditor has the last word. Anthropic's Jack Clark has put it as an open question whether a kill switch should be mandated at all. 

What the state can actually reach is the companies it can license, fine, and occupy. That's a lot if you live in the state that hosts most of the frontier labs and you keep saying Congress should treat your rules as the national floor. Sen. John Kennedy's federal kill-switch bill died when Rand Paul objected to a unanimous-consent request two days before Newsom's announcement. The House version would hand Homeland Security a role. Newsom's statement blamed Trump and a sleeping Congress. The 2028 calendar is not hard to find.

None of this requires a paperclip cult. It requires noticing that "safety" is still the word that gets you desks inside private labs, logs into an emergency office, and a certified hand on the power. Watch the November 16 memo. If it comes back with mandatory onsite IVOs and a verified shutdown as a condition of doing business here, Friday wasn't a press conference. It was the first draft of the bill he wouldn't sign when the donor class still wanted it dead.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/18/2026 - 21:20

Trump Signs Memo To Remove Canadian Goods From US Federal Procurement

Authored by Jason G. Antonio via The Epoch Times,

U.S. President Donald Trump has signed a memorandum directing the removal of Canadian-origin goods from the federal civil procurement system, following through on a commitment he made earlier this month.

President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on July 21, 2026. Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images

The Sept. 16 memo authorizes the director of the Office of Management and Budget, the United States Trade Representative, and the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council to "identify and take all steps toward removing or otherwise making non-available for purchase Canadian-origin items in the federal civil procurement system."

The memo also directs U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer to monitor "Canada's continued treatment of U.S. origin goods in Canadian government procurement."

The action follows Trump's Sept. 8 directive to the General Services Administration (GSA) to remove Canadian-origin products from its Multiple Award Schedules, a government-wide contracting program that manages more than US$50 billion in federal procurement. The GSA schedules give federal agencies access to millions of commercial products and services.

"Everyone knows that Canada doesn't let our Great Dairy Farmers sell into the Canadian Market, and that the only reason Canada makes Autos is because of previous disastrous Trade Agreements while other Presidents were in Office," Trump said on social media after issuing the GSA directive.

Trump also said Canadian governments, including provincial governments, have "banned American Small Businesses and Companies from selling into their Government Procurement Markets."

The procurement measures come amid an escalating trade dispute between the two countries.

Canada imposed new counter-tariffs on Sept. 8 covering about US$20 billion in U.S. imports, with rates of 15, 25, and 50 percent. The tariffs target products including steel and aluminum, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper, plastics and electronics.

The Canadian measures matched U.S. tariffs of 50 percent on about the same value of Canadian products imposed under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, effective Aug. 22.

Canada has also implemented a "Buy Canadian" policy, while all provinces except Alberta have restricted or prohibited the sale of U.S. alcoholic products, or imposed tariffs on them, and have also enacted measures to prioritize Canadian suppliers for government contracts.

Since Canada first announced its intention to impose counter-tariffs in response to the new U.S. tariffs that went into force on Aug. 22, Trump also announced new 50 percent tariffs on Canadian vehicles and auto parts beginning in 2027. He also said he would ban the sale of products made by Canadian aviation giant Bombardier in the United States unless they are made in America, and announced new import bans on certain Canadian goods beginning on Sept. 29.

Some of the Canadian products banned for U.S. import include most alcoholic products, certain dairy products, and motorcycles.

Trump said while visiting Ireland on Sept. 12 that the two countries could have a trade deal "fairly soon," while repeating his criticism of Canada's trade practices.

"We actually have a good [relationship] with Canada, but the United States has been ripped off for 50 years by Canada," Trump said.

Carney said on Sept. 14 that he welcomes the president's comments that a deal could be reached soon.

"We're ready to sit down and negotiate that and move it forward," Carney told Bloomberg.

Carney has said that diversifying away from the United States is a priority for his government.

"We are building our strength at home and diversifying our partnerships abroad," he said in a speech on Sept. 15.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/18/2026 - 20:55

Flock Camera Ping Jails Innocent Woman For 13 Days

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

A 23-year-old Palm Coast Florida woman spent 13 days in a Volusia County jail cell facing life in prison after Florida Highway Patrol troopers treated a Flock Safety camera hit like a confession.

Lindsey Brooke Isaacs did not cause the crash. Her black Dodge Durango had no collision damage. A 911 caller had already described a maroon Durango and a partial plate that was not hers. None of that stopped the machine-assisted hunt.

The October 4, 2025 hit-and-run on eastbound I-4 near DeBary killed motorcyclist Joaquin Deno, Flagler County Deputy Administrator Jorge Salinas, and Salinas' wife, Nancy. A fourth person was badly hurt. Witnesses described a Dodge Durango fleeing the scene. Investigators searched nearby Flock cameras for a black Durango and found Isaacs' tag, RJVN10, crossing the Seminole-Volusia line at 9:51 p.m., about three miles west of a wreck that started around 9:53 p.m.

Innocent Florida woman spent 13 days in jail after cops' use of Flock cameras incorrectly blamed her in fatal hit & run pic.twitter.com/bOWCKDpV2u

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) September 17, 2026

That ping became the case.

Troopers later pounded on Isaacs' door while she was asleep. "I thought I was getting set up. I didn't understand what was going on," she said. They seized the Durango for months and claimed "marks" consistent with the crash.

Photographs later showed an immaculate 2025 SUV. "Where is the damage on the vehicle? Because I'm standing right in front of it and I don't see any damage," Isaacs recalled.

On April 17, 2026, FHP booked her on eight felonies, including three counts of vehicular homicide and three counts of leaving the scene of a crash involving death. She was held without bond, then sat in G Block for 13 days. "Being incarcerated, falsely incarcerated, in jail, in G Block, was the worst 13 days in my life," she said. "I was devastated, I was scared. I thought my life was over."

Attorney Patrick McGeehan did the work the camera search replaced. A time-and-distance analysis using the same Flock timestamp put Isaacs past the crash site when the collision happened. "In Lindsey's case, there was nothing indicating that she was ever there," he said.

A 911 caller described a maroon Durango and the partial plate "458." Paint transfer on a struck Ford Focus was maroon. Isaacs' plate did not match. Witnesses had described three different vehicles: black, white, and maroon. "For some reason, [Florida Highway Patrol] never went past the black Dodge Durango," McGeehan said. "They hooked onto this black Dodge Durango to the exclusion of everything else." He called it "confirmation bias, to the highest degree" and "a major failure of basic investigative skills."

"Lindsey wasn't even at the crash scene," he told NewsNation. "These were investigators that got it in their mind that there was a black Dodge Durango involved. They got on Flock, found the first black Dodge Durango, that belonged to Lindsey Isaacs, and pinned that on her."

On May 22, 2026, prosecutors dropped every charge. The same day, they arrested 47-year-old Alisa Lee Montalvo of Deltona, whose maroon Durango and plate beginning 458 lined up with the original 911 call.

Authorities say her SUV had crash damage, she paid a mechanic to replace doors, pull airbags, and change tires, and an event data recorder later showed roughly 112 mph seconds before impact. Montalvo faces nine counts, including vehicular homicide and tampering with evidence. She has pleaded not guilty. Those charges remain allegations.

Isaacs walked out with a ruined name and a federal lawsuit against FHP Sgts. Tiffany Jateff and Joshua Buday, alleging false arrest and malicious prosecution. "I have to carry this like a big bag of bricks for the rest of my life," she said. "I'm still receiving death threats and hate." She is not suing Flock. She blames how troopers used the footage. "They just picked up my car off a camera and called it the end of the day. We got her."

Flock's answer is corporate and tidy. "Flock cameras provide investigative leads; they do not identify perpetrators, determine guilt, or make arrest decisions," a spokesperson said. The company notes Isaacs' own complaint calls the camera record "exculpatory, not inculpatory," because it placed her three miles away two minutes before the crash.

This is the dragnet Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered off state highways. FDOT revoked every permit for Flock units and other automated plate readers in state right-of-way and gave agencies 30 days to pull them. Miss the deadline, and state crews tear the poles down.

"I think these cameras, the license plate readers, I think it's out of control," DeSantis said. He drew the line most voters can understand. "I'm all about having law enforcement have tools to be able to hold criminals accountable... But I don't want to have this become a surveillance state." On another stop: "What we don't want in the state of Florida is to have a digital AI surveillance state where everything we're doing is being tracked at all times." His example was a drive to Buc-ee's. "It's really none of the government's damn business if you're doing that, right?"

Isaacs' case is that argument with a booking photo attached. A tool sold as an Amber Alert machine became a nationwide movement file. Officers in Florida have already used the same network as a stalking app - hundreds of plate runs on exes and partners in Haines City, Sarasota, Sumter, Orange City, Monroe, and Brevard. Texas froze state funding after similar abuse. Cities from Dallas to El Paso to Clark County, Wisconsin, have cut contracts or bagged the lenses.

Knox County, Tennessee, Mayor Glenn Jacobs, the former WWE star Kane, got there first on the product itself. He thought Flock was a passive hit-on-a-hot-list reader. Then he read the contract.

"What I discovered is these things are completely different than that," Jacobs said. "Instead of a passive system... these cameras are an active system that's pulling data from every car that drives by." The snapshot feeds an AI "vehicular fingerprint" - make, model, color, roof racks, bumper stickers. He told Flock the 2020 Knox County deal was invalid after purchases blew past the $100,000 threshold that required County Commission approval, and he refused to renew more than 140 cameras.

"The lack of transparency surrounding Flock's rollout is one of the most troubling aspects about all this," he posted. "It's sure seems like there was a sprint towards a fait accompli before the public took notice."

McGeehan's verdict on the Florida grid is shorter. "It's a good tool, but now it's unrestricted. It's the Wild West of Flock."

Isaacs used to think they were traffic cameras. "I feel very different about those cameras now," she said. "It's like, they're watching me. They're watching, you know? They're watching everybody."

That is the product. A searchable history of who drove where, handed to whoever has a login, and treated in this case as enough to put an innocent woman in a cell for three deaths she did not cause. Targeted tools for actual criminals are not the argument. A warrantless travel dossier on every driver is.

* * *

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/18/2026 - 20:45

Late Friday Trump Bombshell: US Makes Deal For 'Permanent Control' Over Greenland's Security

President Trump late in the day Friday issued a lengthy, and absolutely bombshell and historic (if true) Greenland-related post on Truth Social, after a long relative silence on what was early on a core priority of his administration.

He has announced that United States has entered into a security agreement with Denmark and Greenland to control the resource rich autonomous territory claimed by Denmark - though at this early stage (and it being night time in Europe) it is anything but clear whether there's actually confirmation and agreement to this on the European side of things.

The agreement would grant the United States "permanent control over security, and all other needs, in Greenland," Trump wrote. He characterized the agreement as adequately addressing longtime White House concerns. But this sounds like it could be sovereignty move, or the creeping beginnings of it.

"At my direction, we worked with representatives of Denmark and Greenland to guarantee that the United States will FOREVER have the complete ability to do what is necessary in Greenland in order to secure and defend the security of Greenland, and the United States of America," the president’s post states.

The kicker is that the agreement blocks 'forever' (apparently) Russia, China, or all other non-NATO nations from establishing military bases or placing troops in Greenland.

What's next is a process of initiating an indefinite American military presence on what is the world's largest island mass. Again, assuming this doesn't trigger some kind of mass European objection and potential inter-NATO renewed spat.

"This solution is a great one for the United States of America, Denmark, Greenland, and all of our Allies," the post adds. "We look forward to working with the wonderful people of Denmark and Greenland toward a magnificent future with respect to this large, and highly strategic, parcel of land. We will be very protective of it!"

Given that in many other instances Trump's social media posts often prove too out front and premature to any actual final agreement, it will be interesting to see what the Danish and EU response to this is.

At this early point, not even Greenland itself has responded to the big Trump unveiling - and so Greenland officials may be waking up tomorrow to a big surprise.

So does the other side actually know the contents of the 'agreement' that was just declared?

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/18/2026 - 20:30

Senate Democrat Blocks Immediate Passage Of House-Passed Data Center Utility Rate Bill

Authored by Joseph Lord via The Epoch Times,

A Senate Democrat on Sept. 17 blocked Republicans from moving to immediate passage on the Ratepayer Protection Act, a House-passed law that would encourage states to require data centers to pay for their own energy costs.

The U.S. Capitol on Sept. 14, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

The bill previously passed the House in a 417-3 vote on Wednesday evening.

Though progressives in the lower chamber had expressed concerns about the bill's lack of enforcement mechanisms, the faction ultimately backed the bill. It seemed on track for a painless passage of the Senate under unanimous consent, a procedure that allows uncontroversial bills to pass quickly.

The bill was introduced on the Senate floor Thursday by Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio), the bill's sponsor in the upper chamber, who noted that as many as 1,000 new data center constructions are expected in the United States in the next five years.

"Americans are becoming ever more reliant on computing power from data centers for their daily lives, from medicine to manufacturing, education to agriculture, national defense, and the way we deliver basic services. Data centers are used not just for AI; they support almost every aspect of modern life, including online shopping, streaming video, social media, and the broadcast of this very debate."

The law would require states to consider the adoption of models to require data centers to fund their own energy within a year, but would set no requirements that states ultimately adopt those models.

Husted moved for unanimous consent to pass the legislation and was blocked by Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), who said that the bill to address this topic should have more stringent federal enforcement mechanisms.

"It's not enough for us to tell states to consider making data centers pay for grid updates. Rather than voluntary pledges or suggestions to states, Congress needs to pass real legislation with real teeth," Heinrich said.

Heinrich noted that for many Americans, utility rates had already increased - and that such Americans wouldn't gain relief from the state opt-in process of the Ratepayer Protection Act.

Instead, he proposed consideration of his bill, the Grid Savings Act, "to require - not a voluntary agreement - to require large-load customers like data centers to pay for the facilities needed to connect them to the grid. Not to consider it, not to make pledges - to actually do it, to pay for the upgrades they need."

Data centers are top of mind for many American voters this year.

The data centers used to power artificial intelligence (AI) services such as ChatGPT, Claude.ai, Grok, and others - aside from their extensive land requirements - require massive amounts of energy.

Estimates indicate that currently, data centers use about 4 percent of the U.S. electric grid, according to online energy shopping and consultation platform Electric Choice.

The energy used to power these facilities, which draw roughly 176 terawatt-hours of electricity per year, could otherwise be used to power 16 million homes, according to Electric Choice.

The Energy Department and other analysts have estimated that that share could skyrocket to 12 percent of the national power grid in the coming years.

Despite promises by many data centers to provide their own power, residents in areas where such centers have been built have reported spikes in their energy bills.

Anxiety over the possibility of such utility price jumps has driven many voters to be skeptical or outright hostile to the construction of such facilities in their area.

Likewise, cooling the computers that execute AI queries requires significant amounts of water, raising fears that energy might not be the only utility cost affected by the data centers.

Other residents living near data centers have also reported that the facilities are noisy. According to these residents, the massive fan and cooling system used to keep the servers from overheating is loud enough to travel through walls and disturb sleep.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/18/2026 - 20:05

Minnesota Authorities Arrest ICE Agent On State Assault Warrant In January Shooting

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times,

A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent wanted on state charges of assault and false reporting was arrested Wednesday in downtown Minneapolis eight months after the shooting of a Venezuelan man during an immigration enforcement operation.

Protesters gather at the Bishop Whipple Federal Building to oppose immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis on Jan. 30, 2026. Octavio Jones/AFP via Getty Images

Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) officials arrested Christian Castro, 52, about 2:15 p.m. Wednesday and booked him into the Hennepin County jail on an outstanding state warrant. He appeared in state court for a hearing Thursday, and Friday he will appear in U.S. District Court in St. Paul on a federal indictment accusing him of making false statements.

The January shooting came amid ICE's Operation Metro Surge, which primarily targeted Minnesota. The immigration enforcement operation drew weeks of protests, during which two protesters, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both U.S. citizens, were fatally shot by federal agents in separate incidents.

Castro attorney Daniel Gerdts said that Castro drove from Texas under an agreement to surrender at Gerdts's Minneapolis office, but BCA agents arrested him minutes before he arrived. A BCA spokesperson said agents had been negotiating a surrender and "saw an opportunity to arrest him" when they spotted him downtown.

Another attorney who represents Castro, Rolando Cantu, said that Castro "always had intended to answer to the charges" and "wants his day in court."

In May, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty charged Castro with four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime in the Jan. 14 shooting. She alleged that he fired through a front door "knowing there were people who had just run inside." The bullet struck Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, 24, in the leg and lodged in another wall. The federal indictment later said two 1-year-old children were inside.

The Jan. 14 Shooting

Castro, an eight-year Border Patrol veteran who joined ICE in September 2025, and his partner were carrying out a traffic stop targeting Sosa-Celis on Jan. 14, according to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security. Sosa-Celis fled in his vehicle, crashed into a parked car, then ran. The officers and suspect ended up in a duplex yard.

Castro told the FBI two other men came out of a nearby apartment; one hit him with a red broom, and the other hit him with a black snow shovel. He said he fired one round from the ground. DHS initially said the shooting was defensive after an ambush.

On Feb. 13, acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said that Castro had allegedly lied, citing a review of video evidence.

"A joint review by ICE and the Department of Justice (DOJ) of video evidence has revealed that sworn testimony provided by two separate officers appears to have made untruthful statements," Lyons said.

Both agents were placed on leave.

As described by the Hennepin County Attorney's Office, the suspect was behind the duplex door when Castro fired.

Federal Charges

A federal grand jury on Sept. 2 charged Castro with making materially false statements to an FBI agent - a different allegation from the state misdemeanor of falsely reporting a crime. He had been released on federal bond earlier this month, with a GPS monitor, after an appearance in U.S. District Court in McAllen, Texas.

The indictment alleged that Castro's account was false: "No person struck Castro with a broom. ... No person struck Castro with a snow shovel."

Prosecutors said the clash lasted 11 seconds, not three minutes, and that Castro "was not seated or lying on his back when he discharged his firearm toward the fleeing men, but rather was standing."

Texas Extradition

After the shooting, DHS sent Castro back to Texas, his home state, according to Texas officials who later argued he was not a fugitive because he had not fled Minnesota. That move delayed Minnesota's first attempt to take him into custody on the state warrant.

Texas Rangers arrested him May 29, with BCA investigators and DHS staff present. Hennepin County later corrected an earlier claim that DHS Office of Inspector General agents made the arrest; OIG denied involvement. An ICE Office of Professional Responsibility officer was present.

Castro served 90 days in a Texas jail. He was released Aug. 27 after U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. refused to force Texas to extradite him or keep him jailed past the state's 90-day limit. The judge said the law does not require Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to turn over a fugitive within a certain time frame.

Minnesota officials called Castro a flight risk. State Attorney General Keith Ellison's office pointed to Castro's jail calls with a woman in Mexico "about marrying her and buying a house in Mexico when he is released."

Ellison sued Abbott in August.

"Governor Abbott is trying to shield Castro from being held accountable for these serious charges by refusing to extradite him to Minnesota," Ellison said. "I will not stand for that, so I'm taking Abbott to court. Christian Castro will stand trial in Minnesota."

Abbott said he did not trust Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

"While they're making demands, I got a demand of my own, and that is, it's time for Minnesota to step up and repay the United States of America and Americans for all the fraud that they have committed in their state under federal programs."

Castro was arrested again in Texas after the September indictment, then came to Minneapolis this week. DHS has suspended him.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/18/2026 - 19:15

Huge Parallel Pro-Iran Demonstrations Take Over Sanaa & Tehran 

Parallel protests were held in Tehran and Sanaa on Friday - both involving Shia populations expressing defiance at the US-Saudi-Israel axis, at a moment the region is on fire and Iran and its proxies seek to assert dominance and control over global energy transit chokepoints. All the while American bases and forces are largely in retreat, as even Pentagon internal findings confirmed just this week.

Supporters of Yemen's Houthis were seen sporting rifles and raising them into the air during a rally on Friday in the Yemeni capital, in large part as a protests against Saudi Arabia's accusation that the Houthis targeted Islam's holiest site of Mecca.

🔵 A million-strong response to the call of the Leader of the Revolution, in support of the Armed Forces and the “siege for siege” equation, and in rejection of the serious accusations made by the criminal Saudi enemy.
Million-Man Marches in: (Supporting the armed forces,… pic.twitter.com/OSJbCchf7b

— قناة المسيرة (@TvAlmasirah) September 18, 2026

Military leaders representing Ansar Allah have vehemently rejected the charge, while Saudi allies like Pakistan have issued severe condemnations of the alleged targeting. No particular evidence has as yet been publicly presented of the alleged attempt to attack Mecca.

Over in Tehran, Friday saw a reported hundreds of thousands of Iranians march in a huge rally. "Iran says 313,000 people have been mobilized in Tehran as part of a broader defense strategy, with volunteers prepared for training and possible future crises," Al Jazeera reports of the demonstrations.

Commenting on widely released footage, DropSite News dubbed it the biggest government-organized demonstration since the US and Israel launched the war on Iran last February.

⚡️BREAKING: Mobilization has Begun in Tehran with the aim of Forming 1,000 Battalions and will now be Expanded to the Entire Country pic.twitter.com/p2hI6HizRH

— Iran Observer (@IranObserver0) September 18, 2026

Throngs of people, many dressed in military or paramilitary uniforms, walked along side drones and weapons systems. It wasn't long ago that some of these same streets were being bombed by US and Israeli aircraft - with Iranian citizens showing they are ready to 'sacrifice'.

The public display is happening in tandem with a big Iranian recruitment drive. State media is touting that tens of thousands of Iranians have signed up for volunteer units.

Top Iranian leaders, including the president, were on hand openly walking the streets, via AP

Tehran’s Republican Guard chief, Gen. Hassan Hassanzadeh, has claimed that over 600,000 had registered to receive formal training in weapons and military tactics in the case of an American ground invasion.

🎦 Aerial footage of the 313,000-strong "Devotees of Iran" exercise pic.twitter.com/ZPSSy9G3nt

— Middle East Observer (@ME_Observer_) September 18, 2026

This appears to be Iran's symbolic answer to President Trump this week saying that he is at a "critical juncture" regarding the war in Iran, weighing whether to launch massive new attacks or pursue a different path to end the conflict.

He has previously indicated his belief that war will continue through the November midterm elections. But he has newly said: "I have a big decision coming up. Do I want to go in and annihilate them [the Iranian regime] or do I not? It's a big decision. Anything could happen with me."

Thousands of people took part in the “Sacrifice for Iran” campaign in Tehran, staging a march from Imam Hossein Square to Enghelab Square to demonstrate national unity.

Follow: https://t.co/oa9JV4ikYQ pic.twitter.com/H02KIq3sAT

— Press TV 🔻 (@PressTV) September 18, 2026

And so it seems Iranian leadership is using the Friday call to action in the streets to signal Washington 'we are ready' should an escalated war be ordered by Trump.

State media is touting that even Iran's Christian community was represented at the Friday marches and demonstration...

Iran's Christian community were amongst the many who pledged to defend Iran at Tehran’s massive “Sacrifice for Iran” rally earlier today.

Follow Press TV on Telegram: https://t.co/GHI09iAGh2 pic.twitter.com/EYpTAvpzXj

— Press TV 🔻 (@PressTV) September 18, 2026

Mainstream media is unlikely to give the demonstrations, whether in Tehran or Sanaa, much coverage or attention.

Members of Iran's Basij paramilitary force parade in Tehran before Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, joined by thousands of pro-government demonstrators as part of a campaign launched by authorities for volunteers pledging to "Sacrifice for Iran". pic.twitter.com/y8gx37Wq7y

— Roya News English (@RoyaNewsEnglish) September 18, 2026

But the same mainstream pundit class keeps getting the internal dynamics of Iranian society dead wrong, having often echoed the misleading claim throughout the conflict that Iran was "on the brink of collapse" - mindlessly echoing Trump admin officials' wishful thinking and misinformation. After months of bombing and intermittent attack by the most powerful military in the world (the United States), where is the collapse?

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/18/2026 - 18:50

Trump Signs Sweeping Russia Sanctions Bill Into Law, Shrugging Off Kremlin

Update(1837ET): That was fast, and on what's ended up being a busy late Friday afternoon at the White House - President Trump has signed the Russia sanctions bill into law, according to the White House.

"The new law, the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, lets the president impose tariffs of up to 100% on the five largest purchasers of Russian oil and natural gas," CBS writes. "It also sanctions Russian President Vladimir Putin, who started Russia's war with Ukraine, as well as his government officials, oligarchs and Russian banks and financial institutions."

The Kremlin loudly warned this week that this puts the possibility of Russia-Ukraine peace further away than ever.

*  *  *

Back in 2025 we noted the strong condemnations from Russia and China when the US Army first announced and deployed the Typhon missile system to Japan, controversially under the initial guise of holding joint drills.

Stars and Stripes also underscored at the time that the Typhon was deployed to a US Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, about 25 miles southeast of Hiroshima, which puts mainland China and parts of eastern Russia in range of the system.

Russia this week is formally demanding that Japan remove the Typhon systems, according to a new statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry. This comes after another deployment and use in recent joint Japan, Australia and American forces drills.

via US Army

Spokesperson Maria Zakharova blasted the US deployment as 'unacceptable' and called on Tokyo to immediately reverse its decision and take steps toward de-escalation.

"On September 3, a protest note was delivered to the Japanese side in Moscow and Tokyo over the deployment on Kyushu of US Typhon ground-based systems designed to launch intermediate-and shorter-range missiles," the diplomat said in the statement..

"The document specifically noted that Tokyo had once again taken this step despite repeated demarches by the Russian side explaining our concerns about threats to national security, regional peace and stability arising from the deployment of this type of weapon on the Japanese archipelago," she described.

"We stressed that Japan's deployment of these systems on its territory is unacceptable under any pretext, regardless of the duration or manner of that deployment," the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said further. "The Japanese side was urged to end this practice and remove the aforementioned systems from its territory."

The Typhon, also known as Mid-Range Capability, is a land-based missile launcher that can fire nuclear-capable Tomahawk missiles, which have a range exceeding 1,000 miles, and SM-6 missiles, which can hit targets up to 290 miles away.

The missile system would have been banned under the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, a treaty with Russia that the US withdrew from in 2019.

Putin on Japan:

We are not threatening Japan. We have absolutely no claims against it.

On the contrary, Japan has territorial claims against our country. I mean the problem of the Kuril Islands. pic.twitter.com/Y8a3A2SOXF

— Clash Report (@clashreport) August 12, 2026

What makes this standoff over the weapon system more dangerous is that Russia over a year ago announced that it too is no longer bound by a self-imposed moratorium on the deployment of missile systems that were previously banned by the INF Treaty. The Japan case may provide Moscow with another excuse to ramp up its own border area deployments of mid-range missiles.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/18/2026 - 18:37

No Benefits: Why Most Americans Hate The Idea Of AI Data Centers

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us

In recent months I’ve been asked by numerous readers to give my take on the AI data center issue and the debate it has ignited across the US. In response, I’ve jumped into a steep learning curve, but it seems to parallel information I’ve covered in previous articles on AI.

From what I can tell, both political parties are split on the data center debate. There are Democrats and Republicans on both sides of the divide, though their reasons for opposing or supporting the centers are not necessarily the same.

It’s clear that the Trump Administration has given its seal of approval on the concept and this has spurred many on the left to mindlessly attack it by default. Some conservatives support the centers simply because leftists complain about them. It’s important to move past the partisanship on this issue to get to the facts. According to polls, around 70% of Americans oppose new data centers in their communities, but why?

We might call it “infrastructure”, which sounds very important, but it’s clear that the reason for all the public apprehension about data centers is because no one has outlined any tangible benefits for the economy or society at large. Corporations and technocrats wax philosophical about a Utopian future, but this kind of rhetoric is rightly treated with suspicion.

People want to know, what is the actual point of building so many of these facilities? I’ll try to break it down in basic terms…

What Do Data Centers Actually Do?

The vast majority of new data centers (the recently approved facilities and those still in development) are server farms focused primarily on AI training or AI “inference”. The more controversial greenfield mega-campuses are disproportionately used for the training of “frontier AI models”. These models run trillions of parameters and eat up significant power, operating full tilt 24/7 until the AI is deemed ready for inference.

Once one model is finished with training, another model is immediately started. To put it simply, imagine that each of these data centers is an assembly line factory and each factory builds AI products. They are products which most people view as intangible and ethereal rather than practical.

We can see and use cars, we can see and use televisions and refrigerators, we can see the workers on the factory floor and we can see the jobs these products create. Not so much with AI and data centers, and this is one of the problems with trying to convince the public that such operations are necessary for the future well-being of the country.

In some cases AI training facilities convert partially or fully to inference operations. Meaning they handle the day-to-day functions of existing AI. So, every time you ask Chat GPT a question, or ask it to create an image for you, or ask it to make a ridiculous uncanny valley video for you, that request is processed by a data center somewhere (I used AI to make an image for this very article – It’s a tool, like any other tool).

This uses up electricity from the grid. Sometimes it uses a lot of electricity from the grid depending on what you are doing and how many millions of people are doing the same thing at any given moment.

If this all seems highly centralized, that’s because it is. There’s very little privacy in terms of using a cloud model AI. In fact, your conversations with an AI like Chat GPT or Gemini essentially become the property of the company that owns that AI, because the AI uses every conversation as a training opportunity.

In other words data centers exist to grow more and more AI models while making them smarter and smarter (in theory). But again, why should the average American give a damn about this?

The Global “Race” For AI Supremacy And The Information Economy

In every white paper I have ever read from organizations like the WEF, the UN, and government agencies around the world dealing with everything from military security to economic advancement, the same vision keeps popping up: Integrated AI systems at every level of society and a “4th Industrial Revolution”.

The idea is that AI will run almost everything and that our entire evolution as a species will be transcendent because of this technology. At least, these are the musings of the technocrats. Some of them are well meaning and they truly dream of planet without scarcity. Others have distinctively nefarious agendas and they only taste power.

The latter group, from the evidence I have seen, views AI as a kind of “technological deity” – A machine god. They believe that if they pump all available information and enough computing power into these models, eventually one of them will hit “the singularity” point. This is the point at which an AI will supposedly become “sentient” and all-knowing.

I don’t think the singularity is a reality – I think it’s a pipe dream. That said, I do think AI is a very useful tool for making human beings even more lazy and easy to control if we allow it. As I’ve said in the past, the biggest threat from AI is NOT the rise of a “machine god” like “Skynet” from the Terminator movies, but the opportunity for complete apathy that this software creates. There are already far too many people who use AI to think for them instead of researching on their own.

The “information economy” is a more grounded notion of how AI might be applied, but it’s still a bit ridiculous. It’s the idea that larger economies will no longer rely on the production of tangible goods and resources to support the system. Rather, they will rely on the creation of digital products and the trading of data derived from algorithms.

If you think the global economy is fake now, you haven’t seen anything yet. This notion reminds me a lot of the tech bubble of the 1990s, the derivatives bubble of the early 2000s, and the dangerous Enron-like desire to create wealth through fiat concepts rather than making real and useful things. The AI bubble could be just as vaporous and destructive.

What Do Local Communities Get Out Of The “4th Industrial Revolution”

The Trump Administration is backing data centers from a place of economic ambition. He thinks this is an industrial competition and he believes that countries like China are going to strike some kind of AI gold while the US is left in the dust. He also has people in his ear who are fear mongering about the possibility of military disadvantage should other governments develop AI faster.

I can’t speak to the military applications because, frankly, they are entirely theoretical. If we are headed for a “Skynet” scenario then let’s hope I’m right and these apps are far less effective than they have been hyped up to be.

It’s also true that there are numerous foreign actors who prefer that the US doesn’t develop AI at an accelerated pace. This doesn’t mean that we should expend our resources chasing a digital phantom, but it’s obvious the Chinese would like to stay a step ahead even if it doesn’t gain them anything of substance in the end.

So far the biggest opposition to new data centers is rooted in concerns over power usage and increased utility bills for locals. Eyesore server farms with loud-ass fans ruining the serene landscapes of rural communities is not a good look. These communities are usually near hydro generators, solar farms, wind farms, etc. and are being targeted because of access to ample power and large plots of land at lower cost.

As someone who lives in one of these communities I can tell you right now, almost no one is going to jump on this bandwagon. Even with most of the population being hardcore conservative, and even with Trump selling the idea, they aren’t going for it. Rural Americans do not care about saving corporations money on electricity.

Maybe if companies and government officials finally built some friggin’ nuclear power plants instead of adding more strain to the grid, people would be less inclined to complain. They can put these data centers right next door to the plants and everyone can have cheap electricity. It’s a win-win.

What are the hard benefits of the centers? AI centers create some construction jobs for a few months. They offer around 100 to 200 permanent jobs in each community, but most of them are tech jobs in places where there is no tech labor pool, which means those people will have to be imported into the communities where these centers are built.

There’s expanded user access for the population at large. However, does anyone really care if they can’t make memes on Gemini or Grok anymore? Does any of this touch the lives of average American in a positive and meaningful way? I’m just not seeing it.

At most, communities that allow the establishment of data centers stand to gain some tax revenues, but that is all. I’m not completely dismissing the people who want to promote AI development, but none of them are conjuring up any selling points exciting enough to set imaginations aflame. This is not like the space race of the cold war era.

No one is clutching their chest in fear of “losing an AI race”. And, it’s not enough to jump blindly into the world of science fiction and paint grand pictures of a robot Utopia. We all know, deep down, that this is not going to happen, at least not for many generations to come.

When I look at the AI debate I see multiple factions, interests and visions colliding. Not everyone who wants data centers is some kind of demonic globalist looking for world domination. Some people truly desire a better future and they think AI is the way. On the other hand, not everyone who stands against data centers is a lefty communist, a Chinese agent or a “dumb country hick”. A lot of them are people with legitimate concerns and they still haven’t been offered a compelling reason why data centers should happen.

In the middle of all this, of course, we have the power mongers and nihilist elites who are only interested in using AI and the AI economy to further their own goals at the expense of the common man. They poison the well for everyone else.

I do wonder what would happen if these people and their armies of useful idiots were out of the way – Would AI development look completely different? Or maybe the public wouldn’t have any reason to be so suspicious of everything? Maybe the technology would progress more freely without constant fears of abuse?

It’s hard to say, but for now, most Americans oppose new data centers in their area. This is unlikely to ever change and trying to force the issue will only elicit anger.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/18/2026 - 18:25