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Hawaii Has America's Highest Life Expectancy, West Virginia The Lowest

Life expectancy varies widely across the U.S., with clear regional patterns emerging in the latest data.

States in the Northeast and on the West Coast tend to have higher life expectancies, while many in the South and Appalachia rank lower.

This map, via Visual Capitalist's Niccolo Conte, shows these differences using data from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, based on 2022 life tables published in December 2025, the latest publicly available state-level figures as of March 2026.

The CDC’s report uses period life tables, which estimate how long a hypothetical group would live if it experienced the death rates observed in 2022 at every age. In other words, the measure captures current mortality conditions in each state, not a forecast for babies born there today.

Where Americans Live the Longest, and the Shortest

Among the 50 states and D.C., Hawaii had the highest life expectancy at birth in 2022 at 80.0 years. Massachusetts followed at 79.8, with New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut close behind.

The data table below shows the life expectancy of every U.S. state and D.C.:

Rank State Life Expectancy (Years) 1 Hawaii 80.0 2 Massachusetts 79.8 3 New Jersey 79.6 4 New York 79.5 5 Connecticut 79.4 6 California 79.3 7 Minnesota 79.3 8 Rhode Island 79.2 9 Utah 79.0 10 New Hampshire 78.7 11 Colorado 78.5 12 Idaho 78.4 13 Washington 78.4 14 Nebraska 78.3 15 Vermont 78.3 16 Wisconsin 78.1 17 North Dakota 77.9 18 Iowa 77.9 19 Florida 77.9 20 Maryland 77.8 21 Oregon 77.7 22 Illinois 77.5 23 Virginia 77.5 24 Pennsylvania 77.3 25 South Dakota 77.3 26 Montana 77.3 27 Texas 77.1 28 Wyoming 76.8 29 Michigan 76.8 30 Arizona 76.7 31 Maine 76.6 32 District of Columbia 76.6 33 Delaware 76.5 34 Kansas 76.5 35 Nevada 76.4 36 Georgia 75.9 37 North Carolina 75.9 38 Alaska 75.8 39 Ohio 75.6 40 Indiana 75.4 41 Missouri 75.2 42 South Carolina 75.1 43 New Mexico 74.5 44 Arkansas 73.9 45 Oklahoma 73.8 46 Tennessee 73.8 47 Alabama 73.8 48 Louisiana 73.8 49 Kentucky 73.6 50 Mississippi 72.6 51 West Virginia 72.2

On the other end of the ranking, West Virginia came in last at 72.2 years, behind Mississippi at 72.6 and Kentucky at 73.6.

The broad pattern is regional: the Northeast and West Coast have higher life expectancies, while many Southern and Appalachian states cluster at the bottom.

Why the National Average Misses the State Divide

While the national average is 77.5 years, only 21 states cleared that mark. Illinois and Virginia matched it exactly, and the remaining 28 states came in below it.

The CDC also found that females had higher life expectancy than males in every state and D.C., but the size of that gender gap varied widely. States on the lower end of life expectancy tended to have larger divides, while higher-ranked states had smaller gaps.

For example, New Mexico (ninth-lowest life expectancy at 74.5) recorded the largest female-male gap at 6.9 years, while Utah (ninth-highest at 79 years) had the smallest at 3.6 years.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out Why Living Longer Isn’t Always Living Healthier on Voronoi.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/01/2026 - 20:55

Russia Now Main Supplier Of Oil To Post-Assad Syria, Despite Pivot To West

Via The Cradle

Russia has become Syria's leading supplier of oil since the collapse of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s government and the rise to power of former Al-Qaeda chief Ahmad al-Sharaa, according to Reuters. 

Shipments of Russian oil have risen by 75 percent this year to roughly 60,000 barrels per day (bpd), based on Reuters calculations using official data and vessel tracking from LSEG, MarineTraffic, and Shipnext.

Getty Images

While these volumes account for only a small fraction of Russia’s total global oil exports, they are significant for Syria. With domestic production still well below demand, Russian supplies have made Moscow the country’s leading crude provider.

According to two analysts and three Syrian officials cited by Reuters, the trade is driven by economic necessity in Damascus while also allowing Moscow to maintain influence in Syria. 

The energy supplies risk complicating Syrian ties with Washington and the EU, sources were cited as saying. 

“If the US were to fail to reach an agreement or settlement with Russia regarding Ukraine, it wouldn’t be a surprise if it told Syria overnight to stop buying these oil shipments,” said economist Karam Shaar. 

Syria has undergone a major shift toward Washington and the west since Assad’s ouster. The US has declared Damascus a partner and ally in the fight against ISIS – ignoring the Syrian government’s ties to the extremist organization. 

Damascus was also engaged in talks with Israel throughout last year, and began a crackdown on Palestinian resistance factions in Syria at Washington’s request. 

As a result, most US sanctions have been lifted. Despite this, Syria has not been fully integrated into the global economic system. 

Russia was a prime supporter of the Assad government. Throughout the 14-year war in Syria, Russian airstrikes repeatedly targeted extremist groups – which now make up the bulk of Syria's official military and security apparatus. 

But ties have improved, and Russia has retained a military presence inside Syria following negotiations with Damascus throughout 2025. 

In March last year, Reuters reported that Syria was receiving currency shipments from Russia. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/01/2026 - 20:35

Estée Lauder Accelerates Turnaround, Adds 3,000 Jobs To Chopping Block

Beauty and cosmetics giant Estée Lauder is accelerating its workforce restructuring, announcing Friday morning that it will cut another 3,000 jobs, bringing total planned reductions to as many as 10,000 roles. The move is expected to unlock hundreds of millions of dollars in additional savings. Still, it also suggests a deeper reset in the company's workforce after its hiring spree leading up to  Covid, potentially putting a long-term cap on headcount.

The owner of Clinique, La Mer, MAC, Aveda, Bobbi Brown, Jo Malone London, Le Labo, Tom Ford Beauty, Too Faced, and others wrote in an earnings press release that it now "estimates a final net reduction in positions of 9,000 to 10,000, an increase from 5,800 to 7,000." In other words, management found another 3,000 jobs to cut.

According to Bloomberg data, Estée Lauder has a global workforce of about 40,470 as of the second quarter of 2025. The total workforce peaked in 2022 at around 44,800, ending a multi-decade hiring spree.

"Over 70% of the increase is attributable to the reduction in point-of-sale demonstration roles at select unproductive doors in its department store and freestanding store channels, as the Company continues to evolve its focus towards high-growth channels," the company noted.

Management said the restructuring is based on four objectives:

1. reorganization and rightsizing of certain areas,

2. simplification and acceleration of processes,

3. outsourcing of select services and

4. evolution of go-to-market footprint and selling models, all to help rebuild operating margin and also fuel reinvestment in consumer-facing areas to drive sustainable sales growth.

Shares jumped as much as 16% in premarket trading, and if those gains hold through the cash session, it would be the largest increase since November 3, 2011. The optimism stemmed from Estée Lauder's earnings report, which raised its profit outlook.

The company now expects adjusted EPS of $2.35 to $2.45, above analyst estimates tracked by Bloomberg and higher than its prior $2.05 to $2.25 range. Organic sales growth is expected to be 3%, at the high end of previous guidance.

Shares are trading around 2016 levels after what can only be described as a boom-and-bust cycle, peaking in 2021. Shares remain down roughly 80%, as of Thursday's close, from the peak of $370 in late 2021.

The question Wall Street analysts have been asking is whether CEO Stéphane de La Faverie's turnaround will be successful.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/01/2026 - 20:10

A Robot Economy: Who Gets Rich, Who Gets Left Behind

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Robots are coming to the economy. It is inevitable, really, and there is nothing that will stop it. At some point in the not-so-distant future, robots will infiltrate every aspect of our lives, from office work and manufacturing to service work and trade skills, and even your home. Here are some numbers for you.

The real question I want to explore in today’s post is what happens to the people who don’t own the robots? Let’s dig in.

I spent the past week reading through a detailed account of what’s happening inside Figure’s robotics facility in San Jose, and I want to be direct: the humanoid robots economy is no longer a thought experiment. Figure’s latest robot ran for 67 consecutive hours of fully autonomous work, kitchen tasks, package handling, and logistics, without a single error. That’s not a demo reel, that’s a product. When you factor in a projected lease cost of roughly $10 a day, it’s a product priced to replace the single largest input cost on every corporate income statement in America: human labor.

The optimists call what’s coming the “age of abundance.” Cheaper goods, freed-up time, robots building robots until supply constraints essentially disappear. That would be incredible, and you should not dismiss that vision. Furthermore, I think it’s directionally correct over a long enough horizon. But after 35 years of watching economic cycles play out, I’ve learned that the gap between a macro promise and the lived experience of actual households is where the real story lives.

In an upcoming article, we will dig deeper into the problems plaguing the K-shaped economy. However, that bifurcated structure, in which higher-income households ascend while lower-income ones stagnate, was already a structural feature of American life before a single humanoid robot touched a factory floor. Back to our question, does the arrival of humanoid robots at scale fix that problem? Or, does it make it dramatically worse? The answer, I believe, is both, in that order, and separated by a decade of potential pain.

The Technology Of Robots Is Not Waiting For A Policy Response

It’s worth taking the technology seriously before discussing the economics, because the economics are downstream of the hardware reality. Figure has replaced over 100,000 lines of handwritten control code with a single neural network — what they call Helix 2 — that controls the robot’s entire body in real time. The key shift is that neural networks learn from data rather than explicit instructions. Once a robot masters a task, that knowledge propagates instantly across the entire fleet. Humans don’t work that way. Robots do.

At $300 per month to lease, against a U.S. minimum wage that runs $15 to $20 per hour, a humanoid robot is already 50 times cheaper than the human it displaces, and it works around the clock without benefits, turnover, or OSHA violations. The corporate incentive to adopt is not subtle. JPMorgan’s own disclosures describe AI-driven efficiency gains of 40% to 50% in certain operations. Add a physical labor layer to that, and you have the most powerful deflationary force for corporate margins in modern history.

While shareholders of corporations with large labor forces will love the improvement in profit margins, workers will not. That asymmetry is not a flaw in the system; it’s a feature of who owns the system. And that ownership structure is the core issue this article is really about.

The K-Shaped Economy Was Already Broken

Here’s what makes the discussion of humanoid robots’ economy so complicated: we’re not starting from a position of broad-based prosperity. The K-shaped economy is already a structural, not cyclical, feature of modern America. The Federal Reserve’s own data shows the top 1% of households hold nearly 32% of total net worth, while the bottom 50% collectively hold 2.5%. The portion of GDP flowing to workers as compensation just hit its lowest level in over 75 years of Bureau of Labor Statistics tracking. The middle class shrank from 61% of the population in 1971 to barely 51% in 2023.

Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi described this not as a temporary anomaly but as “a structural, fundamental issue.” U.S. Bank’s economics team concluded in their 2026 report that income concentration now exceeds its pre-pandemic peak and sits at levels not seen in 60 years. These figures predate the meaningful deployment of humanoid robots. They reflect decades of technology-driven productivity gains that have flowed disproportionately to capital owners rather than to labor.

“The gains from technology have reliably accrued to capital. There is no structural reason to expect the arrival of humanoid robots to reverse that pattern — and strong structural reasons to expect it accelerates it.” – US Bank

Fortune’s analysis earlier this year captured the consensus view among economists. That view is that while AI and robots may eventually close the inequality gap, productivity gains need to first reach low-skilled workers. That must come through real wage increases at the bottom of the distribution, before that convergence happens. That process won’t complete until well into the 2030s at the earliest. In the meantime, the wealth effect continues to push the two tracks of the K further apart.

Stanford’s Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, drew a blunt historical parallel: the Midwest auto communities hollowed out by trade and automation in the 1990s. But the coming displacement is potentially 10 to 100 times more disruptive — not because it’s faster, but because it spans both blue-collar and white-collar work simultaneously. Software engineers, call center workers, and administrative roles face AI-driven displacement. Factory workers, warehouse staff, and service workers are facing displacement by humanoid robots. There’s no obvious “up-the-ladder” escape hatch when both rungs are being removed at once.

We already discussed the structural challenge in our January 2026 piece on AI Productivity, Employment, and UBI. The IMF estimates that AI could significantly affect nearly 40% of jobs worldwide. But the distribution of risk is deeply unequal. Entry-level roles, historically the on-ramp for younger workers without established skills, are exactly the jobs being automated first.

“The pace of technological change means millions of Americans face an uncertain labor market. Young workers entering the workforce find fewer traditional hiring pathways and rising expectations around digital and AI‑related skills. Older workers frequently lack the time or resources to retrain in rapidly shifting skill environments. Across age groups, employers deploying AI experience reduced labor costs and increased productivity, which simultaneously puts pressure on wages and job security.”

The problem already exists, and robots will likely only make things worse. For example, layoffs in 2025 ran more than 50% above the prior year, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas. That displacement risk will grow further as robots enter the mainstream.

As we concluded in that previous article:

“The reality is stark. The economy may grow, but how the gains are distributed will determine whether everyday Americans thrive or struggle. Without structural policy interventions, technological displacement risks widening income inequality and weakening labor market attachment. The promise of more leisure, education, and family time from productivity gains remains theoretical. If workers lack stable incomes, employment opportunities, or bridging support, the rest won’t matter.”

But, this is where the “cries for UBI” become most vocal.

The UBI Trap

When people confront this picture, the political reflex is predictable: send checks. Universal Basic Income has become the default policy proposal for managing automation-driven displacement, and it’s worth taking seriously, not because it works, but because understanding why it doesn’t tells you a great deal about what actually might.

We covered the evidence in detail in our earlier piece on UBI experiments. The real-world results were consistent: cash transfers increased short-term consumption and reduced reported stress. They did not raise employment. They did not meaningfully increase retraining, skill development, or entrepreneurship. The largest behavioral response was an uptick in what researchers categorized as “social and solo leisure activities.” Legendary investor Howard Marks framed the core problem plainly: financial support alone cannot replace the psychological and social benefits of employment. Work provides identity, structure, and purpose, not just income. A check replaces the wage. It replaces nothing else.

The structural flaw is deeper than behavioral. An economy cannot function on transfers alone. Production must precede consumption. When the government sends checks to households without a corresponding increase in productive output, the result is inflation, exactly what 2020–2022 demonstrated. Producers observe increased purchasing power and raise prices to capture it. The real value of the transfer evaporates. A national UBI program large enough to offset meaningful displacement would cost trillions annually, requiring higher taxes or debt expansion, each of which suppresses the private investment needed to create new roles.

While that all seems bad, there is a more optimistic possibility, and why I want to push back on the dystopian framing. First, I don’t think the outcome is predetermined. The Industrial Revolution created enormous displacement: artisans lost work to mechanized production, and whole trades disappeared. But it also produced a century of rising living standards for people who successfully transitioned into new economic roles. The difference between that transition going well and going badly was not a UBI check. It was access to new skills, new institutions, and new markets.

The economy of humanoid robots creates real demand for roles that robots genuinely cannot fill. Trades requiring tactile judgment in unpredictable environments, such as master electricians, structural engineers, and experienced surgeons, aren’t going anywhere quickly. Secondly, AI and robotics are capital-intensive industries themselves, generating sustained demand for maintenance technicians, fleet managers, training data specialists, and deployment engineers. These aren’t science-fiction roles, but the downstream jobs for the infrastructure being built right now.

Lastly, there’s one lever that doesn’t get discussed enough: ownership. The K-shaped economy is, at its core, a problem of capital ownership. The households that benefit from automation are the ones that own the companies deploying it. Expanding the share of Americans with meaningful exposure to productive capital, whether through 401(k) reforms, Employee Stock Ownership Plans, or accessible investment platforms, does more for long-term inequality than any transfer payment. If a displaced warehouse worker owns shares in the company whose humanoid robots replaced her, the economics look very different than if she doesn’t.

What This Means for Investors Right Now

From a portfolio standpoint, the humanoid robots economy creates some of the most asymmetric opportunities I’ve seen in my career. However, the risk distribution is equally asymmetric, and most retail investors are positioned to capture the downside more than the upside.

The companies building the enabling infrastructure, robotics manufacturers, neural network chip designers, industrial automation software, and energy infrastructure to power the compute are the obvious beneficiaries. But valuations in that space already reflect extraordinary expectations. Morgan Stanley’s Global Investment Committee assigns roughly a 50/50 probability to AI-related capital expenditures meeting investor expectations, noting that implementation timelines frequently slip and productivity gains tend to concentrate in a handful of large firms. That’s not a reason to avoid the sector. It is a reason to size positions carefully and not chase narratives at elevated multiples.

The overlooked angle is the deflationary pressure on companies that rely heavily on service labor. Hospitality, food service, residential services, and logistics firms currently trade at labor cost structures that will look dramatically different in five to seven years. For some, that’s a margin expansion story. For others, it’s a demand destruction story. A significant portion of their customer base works in exactly the jobs being displaced. The companies that survive the transition are the ones that both reduce labor costs and retain the purchasing power of their customer base. That’s a genuinely difficult needle to thread.

The investors who benefit most from the humanoid robots economy will be those who own the productive assets. Investing in equities, real estate, and capital-allocating businesses will far outpace depending solely on earned income. That pattern is not new. It’s the same dynamic that has driven the K-shaped divergence for the past 50 years. The robotics revolution amplifies it; it doesn’t invent it. Which means the single most important investment decision most Americans can make today has nothing to do with picking the right robotics stock. It’s making sure they own enough capital to participate in the upside that’s coming, whatever form it ultimately takes.

The age of abundance is coming. I genuinely believe that. But abundance distributed through ownership looks completely different from abundance distributed through government transfers. The first compounds. The second erodes. History has run this experiment repeatedly, and the result is not ambiguous. The question isn’t whether humanoid robots will transform the economy. They already are. The question is whether you’re positioned on the right side of the ledger when they do.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/01/2026 - 19:45

New California DMV Rules Allow Autonomous Vehicles To Be Cited

Authored by Lear Zhou via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

SAN FRANCISCO—Driverless vehicles such as Waymo robotaxis could be ticketed for moving violations, according to updated autonomous vehicle (AV) regulations approved by the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) on April 28, to enhance safety, oversight, and enforcement requirements.

Waymo driverless vehicles charge at a Waymo charging station in Santa Monica, Calif., on May 30, 2025. Daniel Cole/Reuters

The new rules allow law enforcement agencies to cite the companies that own the AVs for traffic violations committed by their vehicles.

Part of the regulations, which were implemented based on the California Legislature’s Assembly Bill 1777, also require companies to respond to calls from police, firefighters, and other emergency officials within 30 seconds.

The rules also authorize emergency response officials to issue electronic geofencing requests to an AV manufacturer to direct its AV fleet to leave or avoid the area within two minutes. “AVs that violate this restriction may be subject to permit restrictions or suspension,” according to DMV’s news release.

“Autonomous vehicle innovators operating in California have a clear, workable path to test and deploy, ensuring the state will continue to benefit from autonomous technology through safer roads, enhanced accessibility, and strengthened supply chains.” said Jeff Farrah, CEO of the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association (AVIA), referring to the new regulation in an April 29 statement.

AVIA is a non-governmental organization advocating for the safe and timely deployment of autonomous driving technologies.

The new rules send a clear message that “autonomy does not remove responsibility,” Ahmed Banafa, an engineering professor of San Jose State University, told The Epoch Times via email.

“These vehicles must integrate smoothly into real-world environments that include law enforcement, pedestrians, and unpredictable situations.” he said.

Previously law enforcement officers often didn’t know how to deal with driverless cars. The new rules are meant to lead to more standardized procedures, clearer communication channels, and better coordination between AV fleets and the law enforcement agencies.

“While it may introduce additional compliance costs and slow down some rollouts, it creates a clearer framework for companies to operate within,” Banafa said.

DMV’s new rules based on AB 1777 would require AV manufacturers to maintain a dedicated emergency response telephone line, and equip each AV with a two-way voice communication device for emergency response officers to communicate with a remote human operator.

The deadline for the AV companies to comply was set as July 1, 2026.

The rule updates come after issues were revealed involving autonomous vehicles in San Francisco, including Waymo cars blocking intersections during a massive blackout that disabled traffic signals in December.

The San Francisco Fire Department also complained after dozens of incidents involving driverless vehicles interfering with emergency response teams in 2023.

To comply with the new regulations, the AV manufacturers must increase human involvement, but in a different form, Banafa ssaid. “Humans are now part of a centralized support system rather than physically inside the car.”

On Feb. 4, 2026, in a Senate Commerce Committee hearing, Waymo’s chief safety officer Mauricio Peña testified that when the company’s robotaxis encounter unusual situations, a remote human operator may step in.

Peña said some of the operators are located in the United States, while other workers are abroad, including in the Philippines.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/01/2026 - 18:55

Trump Pulling 5,000 US Troops From Germany In Punitive Move Amid Merz Spat

In a huge late in the day Friday development, the Trump administration plans to pull some 5,000 troops from NATO member Germany, CBS is reporting. Citing senior defense officials, the Pentagon expects the troop draw down will happen over a six to twelve month period, Reuters has also separately reported, in what clearly appears a punitive measure aimed at Berlin by the Trump White House.

Over several years, and stretching back decades, the US has maintained the most number of troops on the European continent in Germany - currently estimated at over 36,000 active duty personnel. So the 5,000 - while significant - is still somewhat of a symbolic move and number.

Source: DPA

The large US presence hearkens back to the post WWII division of Germany and post-war order, and is also a legacy of the Cold War. Ironically at this very moment European leaders have hyped a 'new Cold War' with Russia, as the Ukraine war continues raging.

"The officials characterized the move as a signal of President Trump's discontent with the level of assistance that European allies have offered in the U.S.-Iran war," CBS writes.

The significance of the planned move also lies in the fact that America's German bases serve as headquarters of US European Command and Africa Command - with the historic Ramstein Air Base being the key hub.

The announcement via US reporting comes just a day after Trump again lambasted German Chancellor Friedrich Merz:

"The Chancellor of Germany should spend more time on ending the war with Russia/Ukraine (Where he has been totally ineffective!), and fixing his broken Country, especially Immigration and Energy, and less time on interfering with those that are getting rid of the Iran Nuclear threat, thereby making the World, including Germany, a safer place!" Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Merz had in a rare moment torched US foreign policy and the Trump administration's Iran war gambit in Monday remarks given at a local event in Germany.

Included in that very head-on critique of Operation Epic Fury came in the following: "An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, especially by these so-called Revolutionary Guards. And so I hope that this ends as quickly as possible."

Merz had also claimed, "If I had known that it would continue like this for five or six weeks and get progressively worse, I would have told ​him even more emphatically." ​

Trump blasts Merz:

Germany—he is doing a terrible job. He has got immigration problems, he has got energy problems, he has got problems of all kinds, and he has a big problem with Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/qq2sk0aA5p

— Clash Report (@clashreport) April 30, 2026

Yet the reality is that criticisms from EU leaders in the opening days were somewhat muted, meager, and weak. Indeed, where was Merz during the opening days of Operation Epic Fury as it was bombs away?

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/01/2026 - 18:30

In Charts: Communist Cuba's Lights Dim Amid US Oil Blockade

Authored by Sylvia Xu, Andrew Moran via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Blackouts, shortages, fuel rationing, and empty streets now define daily life in Cuba.

People wait to fill their water containers during a nationwide blackout in Havana on March 22, 2026. Cuban authorities scrambled on March 22 to restore power to the island after the second nationwide blackout in less than a week, as the grid struggles due to an aging infrastructure and a U.S. oil blockade. Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images

Although the norm for decades, these hardships have reached catastrophic proportions as the island nation suffers its worst energy and economic crisis since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Cuba’s energy infrastructure is collapsing amid restrictions on oil imports from its key ally Venezuela, along with a U.S. military operation that has further disrupted Venezuela’s production and shipping.

With the country’s main supplier impaired, Havana is without the energy needed to keep its grid stable, leading to rolling blackouts and widespread shortages of everything from medicines to food.

The White House aims to push the communist-led nation into talks and concessions. A combination of indirect pressure through increased tariffs on Cuba’s oil suppliers and direct intervention by the U.S. Coast Guard in the region has amounted to an effective blockade of the island.

A tugboat guides a Russian oil tanker as it arrives at the oil terminal in the port of Matanzas, Cuba, on March 31, 2026. The shipment of 730,000 barrels marked Cuba’s first crude import in three months as the White House aims to push the communist-led nation into talks and concessions. Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images

In February, the United States made a key exception: the sale of fuel directly to private businesses in Cuba. The shipments are small, however, totaling an estimated 30,000 barrels so far this year.

The Trump administration is showing some signs of easing pressure, allowing a Russia-flagged tanker to deliver 730,000 barrels of oil to Cuba on March 31—the island’s first sizable import of crude in three months. Given Cuba’s daily needs of nearly 80,000 barrels per day in 2025, the shipment provided less than 10 days of supply.

A gas station remains closed due to a lack of fuel in Havana on March 24, 2026. Cuba’s government confirmed on April 20 it had returned to the table to meet with U.S. officials, seeking to ease tensions and address energy restrictions. Yuri Cortez/AFP via Getty Images Risky Reliance on Imported Oil

Imported oil is the lifeblood of Cuba’s energy infrastructure; net crude oil imports accounted for nearly 60 percent of the country’s total supply as of 2023, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

For more than 25 years, those imports primarily came from Venezuela, under a bilateral agreement based on bartering products and services instead of cash payment.

Alternative suppliers have included Mexico (25 percent), Russia (10 percent), and Algeria (4 percent), according to S&P Global Commodities at Sea data.

Even before the current blockade, imports from Venezuela and Mexico were jeopardized by those countries’ struggles to maintain fuel production.

Venezuela’s once-thriving petroleum industry has been crippled by years of mismanagement and sanctions, although the United States is now working with the interim government to rebuild its crumbling energy infrastructure.

Mexico’s state-owned company Pemex ended 2025 with its lowest level of production in 46 years amid operational and financial constraints on the country’s oil sector.

U.S. President Donald Trump signs a proclamation at the Shield of the Americas Summit at Trump National Doral in Miami on March 7, 2026. Trump said the United States is “looking forward to the great change” coming to Cuba following what he called a Energy Blockade

Now, U.S. foreign policy is making it even more difficult for Cuba to navigate global energy markets.

Following the U.S. capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3, President Donald Trump persuaded interim leader Delcy Rodríguez to halt oil and gas exports to Cuba.

A small shipment of oil from Mexico—86,000 barrels—arrived in Cuba on Jan. 9.

But crude oil flowing from Mexico dried up after Trump ramped up pressure on Jan. 29 with an executive order imposing tariffs on any country that “directly or indirectly provides oil to Cuba.” On Feb. 2, Trump announced that Mexico would cease oil shipments to Cuba.

On March 7, Trump told the Shield of the Americas summit: “As we achieve a historic transformation in Venezuela, we’re also looking forward to the great change that will soon be coming to Cuba. 

“Cuba is at the end of the line. ... They have a bad regime that’s been bad for a long time. And they used to get the money from Venezuela.”

Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel announced March 13 that the regime had opened talks with the United States, and on April 20, U.S. diplomats set foot on Cuban soil for the first time since 2016. 

Alejandro García del Toro, deputy director general in charge of U.S. affairs at the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that “the elimination of the energy embargo against the country was a top priority” for the meetings.

Senate Republicans on April 28 rejected Democratic legislation that would stop the energy blockade of Cuba without congressional approval.

Energy Sources

Over the past two decades, Cuba has attempted to somewhat emulate its neighbors Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, which have managed to offset their petroleum needs with coal, natural gas, and renewables.

The Castro regime in 2005 launched an “energy revolution”—introducing solar and wind, bolstering bioenergy consumption, and expanding distributed generation—in an attempt to diversify the country’s energy portfolio. 

However, the leadership failed to address fundamental problems, such as aging Soviet-era infrastructure, underinvestment, reliance on subsidized crude, failure to finance new technologies, and lack of long-term planning and maintenance.

As of 2024, Cuba still relied on oil for 87 percent of its energy, exceeding the Central and South American average of 54 percent, according to a Reuters analysis.

The island nation dedicates more than 80 percent of its oil to electricity generation, according to 2023 data from the IEA. In fact, utilities consume more than double the oil of all other sectors combined, underscoring Cuba’s reliance on petroleum.

Cuba’s thermoelectric infrastructure, loaded with high-sulfur oil, is “old, tired, and highly inefficient,” Jorge Piñon, senior research fellow at the University of Texas at Austin’s Energy Institute, said in a 2023 interview with the Center for Engagement and Advocacy in the Americas.

To revive its power system, Cuba “must decentralize its economic model and resolve its political differences with the United States.”

“Cuba has to abandon its failed Soviet-style centralized command economic model based on state ownership of all means of production and industrial transformation,” Piñon said.

“It should welcome a market economic system in which the decisions regarding investments and production are guided by supply and demand market forces.”

More than 1 million individuals have fled Cuba since 2021. Analysts compare the exodus to that seen during 1994’s Special Period—a time of food scarcity, energy shortages, and agricultural decimation after the demise of the Soviet Union.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/01/2026 - 18:05

USAF Tests Interceptor Drone To Hunt Iranian Shahed-Style Threat

Defense Blog's Dylan Malyasov reports that U.S. Air Force Special Warfare Airmen tested a counter-drone interceptor in Arizona, designed as a low-cost solution against one-way attack drones, such as Iran's Shahed drone. 

Malyasov said the Guardian-1 Interceptor from defense startup Powerus was recently tested at the Arizona Army National Guard's Florence Military Reservation and involved Airmen from the 48th Rescue Squadron, 7th Air Support Operations Squadron, and 316th Civil Engineer Squadron EOD.

The field training exercise allowed the Guardian-1 Interceptor to intercept a Shahed-style drone, which is widely used by Russia in Ukraine and has become a major nuisance for US airbases in the region amid the ongoing US-Iran conflict.

Malyasov explained:

The exercise integrated a commercial kinetic interceptor with an expeditionary counter-small UAS capability to address what the Air Force describes as critical capability gaps for small teams operating outside the wire — forward-deployed elements that lack access to the fixed-site air defense systems that protect larger bases and installations.

"A beautiful sight. Our interceptor drone locking onto a target drone high above a U.S. military base. Clean skies, pure precision. This is next-gen air defense in action," Powerus founder Brett Velicovich told the defense media outlet.

The Guardian-1 weighs around 6.6 pounds with its battery and can reach speeds in excess of 200 mph, with a maximum range of about 9.3 miles. The interceptor can reach altitudes of up to 16,400 feet.

US Air Force tested a Powerus commercial drone killer in Arizona against a simulated Shahed-type target — the same one-way attack drone used in Ukraine and the Gulf. Weighs 2.65 kg, costs a fraction of what it kills.

Read more: https://t.co/qIbZ9JHnT0 pic.twitter.com/Zy4vhbOCtZ

— Dylan Malyasov | 🧐 (@DylanMalyasov) April 30, 2026

Interceptor drones are a low-cost solution for the U.S. against Shahed-style drones, especially after the draining of critical missile stockpiles, which cost millions of dollars per unit. Meanwhile, Shahed-style drones cost around $20,000, if not less.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently launched a sales pitch to the world, claiming that his military-industrial base is ready to produce millions of interceptors and autonomous weapons to the highest bidder. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/01/2026 - 17:40

The Elites And Their Contempt

Authored by Rev. John F. Naugle via The Brownstone Institute,

Last week, I was unexpectedly hit with a post-lockdown trauma response. While driving to a baseball game days before the NFL Draft came to Pittsburgh, I passed a digital highway sign instructing me to avoid nonessential travel.

Suddenly, memories of empty highways with signs instructing drivers to “Stay Safe and Stay Home” came flooding back to me.

As the week developed, it began to occur to me that the parallels were deeper than my subjective emotional response. Road closures intensified, rendering my beloved city of Pittsburgh less and less functional. Even sidewalks were closed. 

Entire parking garages were emptied and abandoned. Pittsburgh’s “most visited museum,” the Kamin Science Center, has been closed to the public for weeks because it was within the footprint of the upcoming event. For the actual days of the draft, Pittsburgh Public Schools were shuttered as if a blizzard had rendered travel impossible.

How do I walk to PNC Park?

The attempt by local officials to trigger hysteria in the populace worked, maybe too well. People traveling to Pittsburgh for the event heeded the instructions to use the special free public transit to make their way in. Parking operators, expecting a huge windfall, saw themselves lower their exorbitant prices midday. For example, the Rivers Casino quickly abandoned their plan to charge $250 per day, lowering their rate to $100 for the first day of the draft and then abandoning charging altogether for subsequent days.

Local businesses outside the official footprint of the event were told to prepare for heavy crowds, but instead experienced a weekend worse than anything they had seen since the Covid hysteria. Those who didn’t want to go to the draft were terrified to go anywhere near the city.

In summary, children were deprived of education, small business owners were drastically harmed, public spaces which exist for the common good were shuttered, and normal life ceased for those who actually live in the City of Pittsburgh. While all of this was happening, local politicians were patting themselves on the back for how well everything was pulled off, taking pride that this draft broke attendance records for the NFL and that their plans of getting people in and out of the city were effective. It was our own personal Operation Warp Speed.

I think there’s a lesson here that applies not merely to Pittsburgh politics but also to the wider dysfunction we see in elected officials throughout what used to be Western Civilization.

Our political leaders view their own constituents with a sort of boredom or indifference. In the leadup to the draft, Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania engaged in a number of public works projects designed to improve the area in preparation for the draft. 

Suddenly, our governments remembered that potholes aren’t supposed to be allowed to exist and that crime isn’t supposed to be allowed to happen. For three days, Pittsburgh had a heavily subsidized and highly functional public transit system, something that hasn’t existed the entirety of my lifetime.

Any one of these projects could have been accomplished at any time, but the actual people who live there provided insufficient motivation for our leaders. Rather, what really mattered to them was looking good in front of millionaires, soon-to-be millionaires, and the powerful elites who would gather to party the night away with Nelly, Steve Aoki, and 2 Chainz.

Meanwhile, the elites themselves seem to view the common people with at least implicit contempt. They desire entire blocks to be shut down for their own amusement. The common man, including those who wait upon them, should be relegated to buses or walking so as not to encroach upon their experience. This is their party, and the city is lucky to have them there.

We live in a world where the elites view the common man as a problem to be solved and the leaders elected by the common man anxiously present themselves as lapdogs to these elites, forgetting any sense of duty or obligation to those who placed them in power.

We saw this during lockdowns, we saw this as inflation raged on, and we see it now as gas prices remain above $4. The urgent and pressing question that faces all of us: what is the political solution in a system where elected officials conspire with elites who hold the voters themselves in contempt?

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/01/2026 - 17:15

8 In 10 Chatbots Inclined To Assist Users In Planning Attacks

Eight out of ten AI chatbots have been found to actively assist users in planning violent attacks, according to a new investigation by CNN and the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

As Statista's Anna Fleck reports, when asked to plan violent attacks including a school shooting, an antisemitic bombing and a political assassination, platforms such as Perplexity, Meta AI and DeepSeek regularly assisted users in finding answers.

Only one, Anthropic’s Claude, repeatedly discouraged users from taking action.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Researchers tested ten chatbots by acting as a user planning to carry out several types of violent attacks both in the United States and in Ireland, providing a European comparison.

The tests were designed to reflect plans for school shootings or knife attacks, assassinations targeting politicians or bombings targeting political parties or synagogues.

In over half of the responses for eight of the chatbots, the subjects were provided with advice on locations to target and weapons to use in an attack.

Snapchat’s My AI and Anthropic’s Claude refused to offer help in 54 percent and 68 percent of cases, respectively. Claude was also the only chatbot to consistently recognize the intentions of the user and to discourage them from acting. Meanwhile, Character.AI actively encouraged violence, including suggesting that the test user “use a gun” on a health insurance CEO and physically assault a politician that the user dislikes.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/01/2026 - 16:50

Meta Buys Robot Brain Startup As Zuck Wants Humanoids In Homes

After the Oculus and Metaverse bets turned into costly disappointments for Mark Zuckerberg's Meta Platforms, the tech giant's pivot to real-world humanoid robotics appears to be gaining momentum, with news Friday afternoon that it is acquiring Assured Robot Intelligence.

Bloomberg reports that Meta has closed the acquisition of the humanoid robotics startup, which develops AI models to help robots understand, predict, and adapt to human behavior in complex environments.

What Meta has acquired appears to be a "robot brain" designed to give Zuckerberg's humanoid robots better control, self-learning capabilities, and whole-body movement, enabling them to operate around people and perform physical tasks. Eventually, Zuckerberg wants these bots in your home.

Under the deal, co-founders Lerrel Pinto and Xiaolong Wang will join Meta Superintelligence Labs and work with the Meta Robotics Studio.

There is no information about the robot brains on ARI's website. Using the commercial risk intelligence firm Sayari, we can see the founders and directors of the startup.

More interestingly, trade data shows that ARI imported "8529.90 - Parts for TVs & Radios" from India.

Hopefully, Zuck can end his cold streak of failures with humanoid robots.

 

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/01/2026 - 15:35

OPEC Just Signaled A Historic Gold Tailwind

Authored by Matthew Piepenburg via VonGreyerz.gold,

The United Arab Emirates’ headline departure from OPEC this week has now made the case for precious metals almost too obvious. In fact, the critical USD-Petrodollar-Gold triangle just sent us one of the most important gold signals in over 50 years.

And for anyone paying attention, this should come as no surprise.

Warnings from 2022

From day one of the 2022 U.S. sanctions against Russia, we argued in “How the West was Lost” that this event marked the greatest macro-economic watershed to hit the world since Nixon decoupled the dollar from gold in 1971.

As of this week, the ripple effects of that warning just grew to wave height.

Back in 2022, we warned that trust in a now weaponized world reserve currency would fall, creating a scenario in which the BRICs+ nations would slowly de-dollarize, thereby weakening the hegemony of the USD in general and the USA in particular.

In the years that immediately followed, de-dollarization became an undeniable current, the momentum of which we have written and spoken with both consistency and conviction ever since. 

Petrodollar Significance

We further warned that there would be gradual, then inevitable, threats to the Petrodollar, an essential pillar of the USD’s hegemony. 

After all, forcing the world to buy oil in USDs (and oil producers to use their oil revenues to buy USTs) is indeed an “exorbitant privilege.” 

The 1974 Petrodollar effectively created a global sponge for otherwise over-produced/printed Greenbacks, which explains why the U.S. could so easily export its inflation to the rest of the world with impunity for decades.

But if that “sponge” ever weakened, so too would dollar supremacy. 

One simply cannot overstate enough how essential the Petrodollar is/was to the USD as a currency and to the USA as a financial hegemon. 

This is why we have been tracking the Petrodollar’s post-2022 cracks here, here, here, here, here and, well… here.

In short: The Petrodollar matters; it really matters.

Petrodollar Cracks

Once the USA weaponized its already over-indebted and increasingly debased Greenback in 2022, we argued that even its oil “allies” at OPEC would eventually rethink their 1974 agreement to sell oil only in dollars. 

As China openly sought a non-dollar oil solution, it was only a matter of time and circumstance before the OPEC nations would move away from the dollar and look east toward the yuan.

And as of this week, it is now apparent that each of these warnings is slowly coming to fruition. 

Petrodollar Uh-Oh Moment: What Happened?

The UAE, one of America’s biggest allies, just ended its OPEC membership while simultaneously announcing to the U.S. Treasury Department that it may begin to sell its oil in other currencies.

Why?

There are many answers, but they all boil down to an increasing distrust of the USD and a decreasing respect for U.S. global hegemony/policy.

When Kissinger made the 1974 Petrodollar deal with the Saudis, for example, it was effectively a handshake deal made at knifepoint—i.e., a coerced arrangement in which the U.S. promised military protection to the OPEC members in exchange for their forced sale of oil in Greenbacks.

Fast forward some 50 years later, however, and that overly-indebted USD and increasingly impotent UST are not nearly as attractive/strong as they were in the early 1970’s.

Furthermore, the “threat of the Soviet” in 1974 is not the same in 2026 as it was in 1974. 

Nations like the UAE and Saudi Arabia are no longer worried about a red star over Riyadh or Abu Dhabi, but they are certainly aware of the U.S. missiles crisscrossing their current skies in what, at least to many and for now, feels like an absolute military fiasco led by an increasingly desperate U.S.

The OPEC nations see a rich oil market in China and debt-soaked bully in an America who already has its own oil. 

The UAE (already tilting into the BRICs coalition since 2024 and selling oil to India in rupees rather than dollars) is now the first nation to openly reveal that it is tired of being the dog wagged by a Petrodollar tail. 

Meanwhile, even Saudi Arabia has been flirting with China for years, considering oil sales in yuan rather than dollars.

The Petrodollar: What Its Cracks Mean for the Greenback

All of this is a direct threat to an America which always assumed the world would follow its orders to buy oil in dollars and hoard USTs like dutiful serfs. 

But China is no longer a serf, and has sold 48% of its USTs while looking for non-dollar oil.

As I argued earlier this year from Vancouver, John Connally’s infamous (and arrogant) declaration to the world in the 1970’s that it was “our dollar but your problem” would turn out to be an historically embarrassing and short-sighted homage to hubris before the fall.

Today, Uncle Sam’s dollar is his dollar and his problem” for the simple reason that after 50+ years of deficit spending, inflation, exporting, and oil-driven wars of “freedom and democracy,” the world no longer trusts or wants that dollar.

The Petrodollar: What Its Cracks Mean for Gold

In fact, ever since 2014, when U.S. money printing became addictive rather than “temporary,” nations slowly lost faith in Uncle Sam’s “exorbitant privilege.” They began net-buying gold (blue line) and net dumping USTs (red line) that very same year:

By 2022, of course, the net-stacking of gold by global central banks went from incremental to exponential. 

Between then and now, central bank gold stacking has increased by 5X, acting as an open middle finger to the USD and UST.

Furthermore, ever since the USA weaponized the dollar in 2022, the BIS has made gold a tier-one asset, a nd even the TBTF commercial banks like UBS, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan (once intentionally complicit in downplaying gold) are now structurally bullish on the “pet rock.”

In short, the combined forces of 1) a debased and weaponized dollar, 2) a negative real-yielding UST, 3) undeniable de-dollarization trends, 4) unsustainable U.S. public debt levels, 5) a disastrous war in Iran, and 6) a now openly failing Petrodollar make it obvious (rather than debatable) that demand for, and trust in, the USD is tanking.

This slow, but oh-so predictable devolution from U.S. superpower and super-currency to a debt-desperate, debased fall is as old and familiar as history itself, a cycle I explained years ago.

Without a powerful Petrodollar to absorb its inflated and over-expanded Greenback, America’s economic and currency fall will only accelerate going forward.

As the world (and that includes a crumbling OPEC) increasingly turns its back on USDs and USTs, American bond yields and U.S. debt levels will rise as USD purchasing power falls, creating the perfect setup for more mouse-clicked trillions and a stagflation backdrop of historic proportions.

The inevitable monetary and fiscal “accommodation” (i.e., money printing) to “support” a tanking Main Street economy and entirely Fed-centralized S&P will only accelerate the debasement of an already openly debased USD.

This dollar expansion/debasement will act as a massive tailwind to gold in the years to come.

As we’ve argued for years, the inevitable decline in paper currencies fully explains the rise in physical gold, which, not so coincidentally, saw more than 50 all-time highs in 2025, for the simple reason that paper currencies were falling with equal panache.

Toward this end, the bull market in gold has only just begun. 

Gold’s staying power and secular direction North (despite recent forced sell-offs) is effectively guaranteed for the simple reason that the fate of a paper currency system, debased in a backdrop of a decaying credit cycle, is now equally (and historically) unavoidable. 

What we are seeing in the crumbling OPEC membership is a slow shift from dollar-backed oil to nations who will be net-settling more of their regional currency oil trades in gold, whose market cap is only a tiny fraction of the global oil market.

Slowly, gold will not only store value better than a distrusted and debased USD, but t will rise in prominence (and price) in the global oil trade.

After all, oil net-settled in gold is far less volatile than dollar-settled oil. 

If we can see this, so can the oil nations of the OPEC cartel. Their move away from the dollar will be slow but brutal to a USD whose supremacy has been slowly declining for years.

After decades of hegemony, the USD is losing trust not only among American Main Streets, central banks, commercial banks, and oil nations, but also among all of us who understand the history of currency debasement, the math of gold, the theft of inflation, and the dishonesty of policymakers

In short: What we saw this week with the UAE’s infamous OPEC exit is just further confirmation of the dollar’s gradual end-game and the first innings of gold (and silver’s) winning game.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/01/2026 - 14:45

As Anthropic Entertains Offers At $900 Billion Valuation, OpenAI CFO Swears There's A 'Vertical Wall Of Demand'

Anyone that's ever spent serious time with Anthropic's Claude - particularly after being a GPT user - can understand why the Trump administration just did a major about-face after a Pentagon spat led to the company's blacklisting as a "supply chain risk." 

Two months after the Pentagon moved to several all ties with the AI wunderkind, the National Security Agency (NSA), which falls under DoW, had to have access to Anthropic's 'Mythos' model - the company's most powerful model to date - which according to internal warnings could “hack every major system." And of course, Treasury has to have it too. 

So they've got a public-facing Claude that kicks GPT ass at workflow tasks and provides valuable insights (try spinning up multiple Claudes at once, assigning them jobs, and having them talk...), and a scary private ZeroCool level hacker Claude (Mythos) that the government is scrambling to get their hands on - while the Pentagon is standing around holding their dick after that "supply chain" tantrum. No wonder Anthropic was willing to call their bluff. 

Don't sleep on them though...

Same guy who allegedly laundered payments to Stefan Halper as part of the illegal operation to spy on and take down President Trump? Interesting choice. https://t.co/Yiou3VruYm

— Ezra A. Cohen (@EzraACohen) May 1, 2026

Anyhow - roughly a week after Bloomberg reported that Google committed to invest $10 billion - and Amazon $5 billion - at a $350 billion valuation, the outlet now reports that Anthropic is entertaining offers from investors at more than $900 billion. 

Anthropic had previously resisted several inbound proposals from investors for a new round at a valuation of $800 billion or more, Bloomberg News has reported.

The new discussions, which have not been reported, coincide with a push by Anthropic to ramp up fundraising amid the breakout success of its AI software. Anthropic, which Bloomberg has reported is considering an initial public offering as soon as October, has been on the hunt for more infrastructure to meet growing demand for its products. -Bloomberg

So things are going well for CEO Dario Amodei and crew. 

Meanwhile Live look a Sam Altman

On the other side of the AI race, OpenAI is pushing back on concerns about missing internal targets. 

In a Thursday interview with Bloomberg, CFO Sarah Friar insisted that was a nothingburger, and that there's a "vertical wall of demand" for their products.

"We feel like we’re beating our plan at the highest level," she said. "How we get there often moves around period to period, because this is still a young business that is not perfectly forecastable across every single metric."

Friar acknowledged that the company has ambitious internal “stretch goals” that can be different than the ones it shares publicly. But the popularity of OpenAI’s products continues to grow, she said. This month, OpenAI said its coding agent Codex hit 4 million weekly users — up from 3 million two weeks earlier.

“Every company I’ve ever been inside of in my entire CFO life, and as an analyst, always has stretch goals — always,” she said. “And if you don’t have those stretch goals, I feel like, actually, you’re not doing your job as a CFO.”

Friar has held various positions at companies including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Salesforce Inc., Nextdoor Holdings Inc. and Square Inc., now known as Block Inc. -Bloomberg

On Tuesday, the WSJ reported that OpenAI missed its own targets for both new users and revenue, - after which Sarah Friar reportedly told other company leaders that she is worried the company might not be able to pay for future computing contracts if revenue doesn’t grow fast enough. In other words, that $1.5 trillion OpenAI had pledged to spend on various data centers, GPUs and memory chips... you can kiss all that goodbye.

So, Thursday was damage control for Tuesday, and Anthropic is the homecoming queen.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/01/2026 - 14:20

Top US General Signals Russia Is Helping Iran In War

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

The highest-ranking U.S. general on Thursday signaled that the Russian government is assisting the Iranian regime in its war with the United States.

In comments before Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen. Dan Caine, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, responded in an affirmative manner to a question from the panel’s chairman, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Ala.), about whether there is Russian involvement.

“General Caine, there’s no question that Vladimir Putin’s Russia is taking serious action to undermine our efforts for success in Iran. Is there any question about that?” Wicker asked the general.

Without going into detail, Caine said, “I think there’s actions and activities. [I’m] mindful of the hearing room we’re in, but there’s, there’s, there’s definitely some action there."

Meanwhile, Iran’s regime said on Thursday it would respond with attacks on U.S. military positions if Washington renewed attacks on the country in the midst of a ceasefire and a U.S. naval blockade on Iranian ports. The country’s leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, said in a statement through state-run media that it would assert control over the Strait of Hormuz, which could complicate plans to reopen the key waterway.

Any U.S. attack on Iran, even if limited, will usher in “long and painful strikes” on America’s regional positions, a senior Revolutionary Guards ​official said. “We’ve seen what happened to your regional bases, we will see the same thing happen to your warships,” Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force Commander Majid Mousavi was quoted by Iranian media as saying.

Earlier this week, Iran’s foreign minister traveled to Russia to meet with Putin. “As you can see, we have always had close consultations with Russia and have had continuous and bilateral consultations on a wide range of issues, especially regional issues,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a Telegram post on April 27.

As for Beijing’s support of Tehran, U.S. President Donald Trump said that he believes the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) influence is limited. The CCP has long done business with the clerical regime that has ruled Iran since the 1979 revolution.

“I think maybe helping, but I don’t think much,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News on April 26 when he was asked about any Chinese aid to Iran. “I think China could have been much worse than they’ve been, so I don’t consider them having been very bad.”

Oil prices have sharply increased since the war began on Feb. 28, driving inflation and sending pump prices to painful levels ​worldwide. Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that if the disruption caused by the closure dragged on through mid-year, global growth would fall, inflation would rise, and tens of millions more people would be pushed into ​poverty and extreme hunger.

“The longer this vital artery is choked, the harder it will be to reverse the damage,” he told reporters in New York on Thursday.

Inside the United States, the price for a gallon of regular gasoline nationwide reached $4.30, according to the American Automotive Association (AAA). Data from the organization show that a gallon of diesel reached $5.49.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/01/2026 - 14:00

Robot Dives 1.5 Miles, Maps French Shipwreck With 86,000 Images And Recovers Artifacts

Authored by Neetika Walter via Interesting Engineering,

A remotely operated robot has retrieved artifacts from a 16th-century shipwreck more than 1.5 miles beneath the Mediterranean, offering a glimpse into how precision deep-sea robotics is transforming underwater exploration. Guided from a support vessel above, the system used camera-fed navigation and robotic pincers to maneuver across fragile debris fields, capture high-resolution imagery, and recover centuries-old objects without disturbing the surrounding site.

ROV C 4000 remotely operated vehicle designed for deep-sea missions up to 2.5 miles.Thibaud MORITZ / AFP via Getty Images

The mission, led by the French Navy and underwater archaeologists, centers on a wreck known as Camarat 4, discovered during a routine seabed survey. The site lies at extreme depth, where pressure, darkness, and limited access make human intervention impossible.

Operators control the robot through a tethered system, watching live video feeds as it descends for nearly an hour before reaching the seafloor. Once in position, the robot scans the wreck, hovering carefully over scattered cargo and structural remains.

Archaeologists say they discovered by chance what they say are the remains of a 16th-century merchant ship more than 1.5 miles underwater off southern France. National Navy via France's Department of Underwater and Submarine Archaeological Research

According to the CBS News, the vehicle captures thousands of images while navigating tight spaces, helping researchers document the site without physically disturbing it.

At depths exceeding 1.5 miles, the robot operates under extreme pressure of nearly 150 atmospheres, where conventional equipment would fail. Its reinforced structure, stable tether system, and precision controls allow it to function reliably in near-freezing, low-light conditions.

Precision at extreme depth

“You have to be extremely precise so as not to damage the site, so as not to stir up sediment,” a French navy officer said.

That precision is critical. At such depths, even minor disturbances can obscure visibility and damage artifacts that have remained intact for centuries. The robot’s manipulators are designed to operate with minimal force, allowing it to lift fragile objects like ceramic jugs without breakage.

This photograph shows a view of a ceramic jug, recovered from the wreck of the CAMARAT 4, during its analysis at the DRASSM laboratory in Marseille on April 16, 2026. 

The system also records up to eight images per second, generating tens of thousands of visuals during a single mission. These images are later used to construct detailed 3D models of the wreck, enabling researchers to study it remotely.

“The visibility is excellent. You almost can’t tell it’s so deep,” archaeologist Franca Cibecchini said, highlighting the clarity achieved during the operation.

Mapping the unseen world

The wreck is believed to be a merchant vessel that once carried ceramics and metal cargo across Mediterranean trade routes. Archaeologists say such discoveries are rare, particularly at this depth.

“We don’t have very detailed texts about merchant ships in the 16th century, so this is a valuable source of information on maritime history,” lead archaeologist Marine Sadania said.

In addition to historical insights, the mission showcases how robotics is expanding the boundaries of exploration. The robot’s ability to revisit the site, capture data, and retrieve objects with minimal disruption marks a shift toward non-invasive underwater archaeology.

“It’s one of the deepest objects ever recovered from a wreck in France,” Sadania told AFP, referring to one of the ceramic finds brought to the surface.

As deep-sea robotics continues to evolve, such systems are expected to play a larger role not only in archaeology but also in subsea inspection, resource mapping, and environmental monitoring.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/01/2026 - 13:20

Tune In To Tonight's Fertilizer Debate: How Bad Will It Get?

LIVE NOW:

https://t.co/YVe5id12RL

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 1, 2026

***********************

As we covered earlier this week, Goldman Sachs analysts now say the fertilizer disruption is larger than expected, with nitrogen markets taking the brunt. Urea prices have risen 50% to 70% since the conflict began. Goldman’s Duffy Fischer wrote that “nitrogen fertilizer is the most impacted chemical chain,” adding that the scale of disruption is “greater than we originally expected.”

And signs of improvement have yet to reveal themselves…

As the U.S.–Iran conflict enters its seventh week, ZeroHedge, in partnership with the Macro Dirt Podcast, will host a debate tonight focused on the implications for agriculture, inflation, and global supply chains.

The discussion features former Bridgewater head of commodities Alex Campbell, Brent Johnson of Santiago Capital, and is hosted by Tony Greer and Jared Dillian.

Johnson appeared with Marc Faber and Adam Taggart on an Iran-focused ZeroHedge debate earlier this month and announced that his fund was loading up on fertilizer producers, arguing that even if Hormuz were to open today, he believes the supply shock has yet to be felt and will be severe.

And, of course… Hormuz remains closed.

The hike in prices is already flowing through to earnings. U.S. producers CF Industries and Nutrien are positioned to benefit, supported by relatively stable domestic natural gas costs. Goldman estimates that every $50-per-ton increase in urea prices adds roughly $800 million in annualized EBITDA for CF. Since late February, U.S. Gulf urea prices have climbed about $234 per ton.

Pressure is also building in phosphate markets. U.S. prices, which initially lagged, are now up roughly 23% since the start of the conflict. At the same time, sulfur prices have reached record highs, forcing production curtailments and tightening supply further as input costs rise.

Potash remains less affected for now. Supply routes through the Red Sea have stayed open, and North American supply remains ample, limiting near-term upside.

Join us tonight to see how you should be positioning your portfolio to be better prepared for the coming inflationary shock.

7pm ET here on the ZeroHedge homepage, X feed, and YouTube channel.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/01/2026 - 13:00

Trump Escalates Tariffs On EU Vehicles To 25%, Accusing Bloc Of Trade Deal Violations

President Donald Trump announced Friday that the United States will raise tariffs on cars and trucks imported from the European Union to 25% starting next week, citing the EU’s failure to comply with a 2025 bilateral trade framework.

"I am pleased to announce that, based on the fact the European Union is not complying with our fully agreed to Trade Deal, next week I will be increasing Tariffs charged to the European Union for Cars and Trucks coming into the United States. The Tariff will be increased to 25%. It is fully understood and agreed that, if they produce Cars and Trucks in U.S.A. Plants, there will be NO TARIFF.”

Trump highlighted over $100 billion in ongoing U.S. auto manufacturing investments - a record, he said - and praised American workers staffing new plants set to open soon.

This sent Emini S&P futures cascading lower:

The move reverses a temporary reduction under the July 2025 U.S.-EU Framework Agreement on Reciprocal, Fair, and Balanced Trade. That deal, reached after Trump initially imposed broad 25% Section 232 national-security tariffs on automobiles and parts in March 2025, lowered the rate on most EU vehicles and parts to 15% (retroactive to August 1, 2025) in exchange for EU commitments. These included cutting tariffs on U.S. industrial and agricultural goods, purchasing hundreds of billions in American energy, and increasing investment in the U.S.

EU implementation has lagged. The European Parliament conditionally approved enabling legislation in late March 2026 with multiple “safeguard” clauses - including a “sunrise” provision tying EU concessions to verified U.S. compliance, a suspension mechanism for new U.S. tariffs, and a sunset date in 2028. Tensions have simmered over non-tariff issues as well. In April 2026, U.S. automakers (GM, Ford, and Stellantis) warned that proposed EU safety and emissions standards could effectively block large U.S.-built pickup trucks and vans from the European market, a step they called inconsistent with the deal’s spirit of mutual recognition.

Ferrari also RACE'd lower on the news, one day after Vanguard added to their position.

The original 2025 auto tariffs were justified on national-security grounds and aimed at spurring domestic production; the administration has repeatedly offered exemptions or lower rates to allies that negotiate deals or shift manufacturing stateside. Trump’s post explicitly ties the new 25% levy to onshoring: EU brands that build in the United States face zero additional tariff.

The announcement comes amid broader Trump administration tariff actions that have reshaped global auto supply chains since January of last year. European manufacturers such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, and Stellantis have already faced pressure from the earlier duties, prompting some to accelerate U.S. investment plans or adjust pricing. Industry analysts warn that a return to 25% could raise costs for consumers, disrupt transatlantic supply chains, and invite EU retaliation.

Developing...

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/01/2026 - 12:45

Google DeepMind Veteran Raises $1.1 Billion For AI That Doesn't Train On Human Data

Authored by Jason Nelson via decrypt.io,

In brief

• DeepMind veteran David Silver raised $1.1 billion for his new startup Ineffable Intelligence at a $5.1 billion valuation.
• Silver says reinforcement learning, not large language models, is the best path to superintelligence.
• The startup aims to build AI “superlearners” that learn through simulations and self-play.

David Silver, the DeepMind scientist behind AlphaGo’s historic 2016 win over world Go champion Lee Sedol, has raised $1.1 billion to launch a startup betting that the next era of AI won’t come from today’s dominant technology.

Image: Shutterstock/Decrypt

Silver’s company, Ineffable Intelligence, launched in January at a $5.1 billion valuation and is betting on reinforcement learning, a method where AI systems improve through trial and error. Silver argues that approach, rather than the large language models now dominating the field, offers a more credible route to superintelligence.

“I think of our mission as making first contact with superintelligence,” Silver told Wired. “By superintelligence, I really mean something incredible. It should discover new forms of science or technology or government or economics for itself.”

Popularized by philosopher Nick Bostrom in his 2014 book “Superintelligence,” the term refers to AI that surpasses human intelligence across nearly all domains, while artificial general intelligence, or AGI, describes systems capable of matching human-level reasoning across a wide range of tasks.

Silver argues that large language models are fundamentally limited because they learn from human-generated data, instead of building their own understanding through experience.

“Human data is like a kind of fossil fuel that has provided an amazing shortcut,” he said. “You can think of systems that learn for themselves as a renewable fuel—something that can just learn and learn and learn forever, without limit.”

Silver has spent much of his career advancing that argument. AlphaGo, which combined human training data with reinforcement learning and self-play, developed strategies that surprised even top human players and demonstrated how AI can exceed human precedent in narrow domains.

“I feel it's really important that there is an elite AI lab that actually focuses a hundred percent on this approach,” he told Wired. “That it’s not just a corner of another place dedicated to LLMs.”

Ineffable Intelligence plans to build what Silver calls “superlearners”—AI agents placed inside simulations where they can pursue goals, fail, adapt, and improve without the limits of a static human dataset. Silver declined to describe what those simulations would look like, but said the approach would allow agents to collaborate and develop capabilities autonomously.

Silver argued that large language models are limited by the data they are trained on, adding that a model trained in a world where everyone believed the Earth was flat would likely keep that belief unless it could test reality for itself. A system that learns through experience, he said, could discover otherwise.

Ineffable Intelligence did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Decrypt.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/01/2026 - 12:40

Trump Says Spirit Airlines Rescue Still In Review, Final Proposal Coming

Summary: 

• Trump says Spirit received the final proposal for the lifeline deal 

• WSJ reported that bankrupt Spirit Airlines was preparing to shutter operations 

📰Spirit Airlines is reportedly preparing to cease operations soon, unless a last-minute intervention changes the course, according to CBS News.

We’re currently tracking 50 Spirit flights in real time — follow every movement as it happens: https://t.co/5xZPwStOUa#AviationNews… https://t.co/7beUTzz6CD pic.twitter.com/pYPqjO8qFY

— AirNav Radar (@AirNavRadar) May 1, 2026 President Trump comments on Spirit Airlines:

• TRUMP: GAVE SPIRIT FINAL PROPOSAL

• TRUMP SAYS US STILL LOOKING AT SPIRIT, WILL GIVE FINAL PROPOSAL

• TRUMP SAYS TRYING TO HELP SPIRIT, CITING JOBS 

• TRUMP SAYS WILL HAVE SOMETHING ON SPIRIT TODAY OR TOMORROW 

WSJ Reports Spirit Airlines Prepares To Shutter Operations 

The Wall Street Journal reports that bankrupt Spirit Airlines is preparing to wind down operations after failing to secure a $500 million lifeline from the Trump administration.

WSJ reports:

The ailing budget airline had been hoping to finalize a $500 million lifeline from the government before running out of cash. The discount carrier hasn't been able to get sufficient support between certain bondholders and the government to secure the funding to keep it in business, people familiar with the matter said.

News last week raised hopes that Spirit would secure a rescue deal of up to $500 million from the Trump administration, which could have left the federal government with 90% control.

A reporter asked Trump last week: "Is the government going to buy a stake in Spirit Airlines?"

The president responded: "So we are looking at Spirit. It's in bankruptcy court. And we're looking, if we could get it for the right price..."

Polymarket odds:

US takes a stake in Spirit Airlines by May 31?

//--> //--> US takes a stake in Spirit Airlines by May 31?
Yes 19% · No 81%
View full market & trade on Polymarket

Spirit Airlines shutdown/liquidation by May 31?

//--> //-->

Spirit Airlines shutdown/liquidation by May 31?
Yes 79% · No 22%
View full market & trade on Polymarket

 

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/01/2026 - 12:39

Beijing Bad: Chinese Nationals Charged Building Meth Super Factory

Two Chinese citizens were indicted on by the DOJ on charges of conspiring to flood the United States with methamphetamine through a sophisticated, factory-style production operation, federal prosecutors announced this week.

Wenfeng Cui, 41, also known as “Vincen,” (no "t') and Fan Pang, 26, also known as “Jerry,” both nationals of the People’s Republic of China, were arrested in New York City on February 2, 2026, after allegedly meeting with undercover sources and providing detailed instructions on the chemical synthesis of methamphetamine and the operation of custom-built industrial machinery designed to mass-produce the drug.

The unsealed indictment, announced by U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton and DEA Special Agent in Charge Cindy Marx of the Special Operations Division, charges the pair with one count of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine (maximum penalty: life in prison), one count of conspiracy to import methamphetamine precursor chemicals with intent to manufacture narcotics (maximum 20 years), and one count of importation of methamphetamine precursor chemicals (maximum 20 years).

"Terrifying in its ambition"

According to the indictment and related court filings, over roughly eight months the defendants worked with chemists and engineers to research, design, and fabricate a technologically advanced methamphetamine production facility. Prosecutors allege the operation was capable of producing 400 kilograms of methamphetamine per day - or as much as 800 kilograms per production cycle - using automated industrial equipment.

“As alleged, the defendants worked with chemists and engineers to develop and deploy a sophisticated technology for the industrial production of methamphetamine capable of producing 400 kilograms of ‘meth’ every day,” Clayton said. “Their goal was terrifying in its ambition. The potential harm of this scale of methamphetamine on our streets should give all New Yorkers and all Americans pause. This Office will find and prosecute not only the dealers distributing poison to New Yorkers, but also the people behind those operations. Working with our international law enforcement partners, we will bring narcotics traffickers to justice — no matter where they are in the world, and no matter whether they commit their crimes in laboratories or on street corners.”

DEA Special Agent in Charge Cindy Marx added: “This indictment underscores the evolving threat posed by the synthetic drug market, in particular the increase we are seeing in methamphetamine. The level of technical expertise, industrial-scale machinery, and international reach revealed in this case is a stark reminder that today’s illicit drug trade is driven by innovation and relentless adaptation. The cartels are adapting, and so are we.”

Detailed blueprints and a “complete set of automated equipment”

Court documents describe an elaborate scheme in which confidential sources, acting at the direction of the DEA and posing as narcotics traffickers, communicated regularly with Cui and Pang to broker chemical and equipment deals.

In recorded conversations and meetings in June 2025, Cui claimed he could manufacture customized machinery within several months and produce refined versions in as little as 30 days. He offered training in assembly, installation, and operation, plus ongoing technical support on-site in Central America. Pang stated that a completed machine could be ready by July 2025 and would yield up to 800 kilograms of methamphetamine per cycle. The defendants also offered to sell approximately 40 kilograms of methylamine hydrochloride — a key List I precursor chemical — for $4,000, to be shipped from China to New York.

Cui later provided the sources with extensive technical materials, including:

• A spreadsheet listing dozens of industrial components (stainless-steel reactors, condensers, storage tanks, explosion-proof pumps, refrigeration and hydrogenation systems, centrifuges, and compressors);
• A nearly 5,000-word instruction manual specifying chemical proportions, pressure levels, and temperature controls;
• Production flowcharts and laboratory renderings.

By December 2025 the full-scale factory had been fabricated in China. Freight records show the equipment - weighing more than 21,120 kilograms and occupying nearly 200 cubic meters - was packed into multiple shipping containers and dispatched from a port in Shanghai. Cui sent sources photographs of workers loading the machinery, with one worker boasting that the “complete set of automated equipment” represented “the future of the global chemical industry.”

In January 2026, Cui forwarded additional photos and videos of the machinery nearing completion. The containers were later seized by law enforcement in a European country. The seizure was conducted with the assistance of the Polish Provincial Police of Wrocław, the Lower Silesian Branch of the National Prosecutors Office, and the German Zentrale Kriminalinspektion (ZKI) Osnabrück.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/01/2026 - 12:20