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'Sensitive Security Situation': Israeli Army Chief Abruptly Cancels Trip To US

Via The Cradle

The Israel military's Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir has canceled a planned trip to the US due to a "sensitive security situation," Israeli news outlet i24 reported on 30 September. 

There is "increased alertness" in the army, said i24 military analyst Yossi Yehoshua. "The decision to cancel the trip was made by the military's top echelon even before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's statements yesterday regarding threats to Israel," the report added. 

Image source: IDF

A senior Israeli army source told i24, "You can't put the military on alert and fly abroad."

Zamir was scheduled to hold multiple meetings with the commander of US Central Command (CENTCOM). 

"The talks were intended to deal with joint security coordination and preparations for developments in the region. Nevertheless, the state of high alert declared in the operational units of the [military], alongside the need for close management of readiness on the ground, determined that at this time the chief of staff must remain in Israel," the outlet wrote. 

A FlyDubai jet headed from Dubai to Tel Aviv landed in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday after the Emirati pilot was attacked by his Omani copilot – reportedly in an effort to crash the plane. 

Opposition figures in Israel accuse Netanyahu of exaggerating a routine security warning weeks before the election to shift attention toward national security.

Security officials reportedly questioned the public warning and said there was no concrete intelligence linking an… pic.twitter.com/w2Bpn6r9nu

— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 30, 2026

Hebrew media reports say Tel Aviv is suspecting it was an "attempted terror attack."

One day before the incident took place, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a security establishment assessment and talks with opposition leader Yair Lapid over an alleged, pre-Israeli election "security threat" that the premier had announced earlier on Tuesday. 

"There are signs our enemies will try to attack us ahead of election," Netanyahu had announced on Tuesday.

"Don’t mess with us, not now and not ever. Our long arm will reach you anywhere and at any time," he added.

Netanyahu’s threats coincide with a US military buildup of around 50,000 troops deployed across West Asia. 

🇮🇱 Israeli PM Netanyahu secretly met UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed on Sunday and asked him to deny that he warned Netanyahu of a major Hamas attack days before October 7, a source with firsthand knowledge told Haaretz.

Haaretz reported this month that bin Zayed spent 45… https://t.co/gNUKMe5e3O pic.twitter.com/aX64iYiEc8

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) September 28, 2026

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Tyler Durden Thu, 10/01/2026 - 03:30

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The wedding comes seven months after Carrey and Min Ah made their public debut at the César Awards in Paris.

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Taiwan Plans $930 Million Sea Drone Buildout As China Expands Maritime Pressure

Taiwan is moving quickly to build a large fleet of unmanned vessels as it looks for cheaper, scalable ways to complicate any Chinese attempt to blockade or cross the Taiwan Strait, according to Nikkei Asia.

The emerging strategy combines something Taiwan already does well, building ships and sophisticated electronics, with American expertise in autonomous systems, artificial intelligence and military command networks.

The potential scale is significant. Taiwan’s navy is considering roughly 1,320 small attack drones for the water, with spending estimated at about NT$29.6 billion, or $930 million. The Coast Guard is pursuing unmanned vessels as well, creating what could become a meaningful new domestic market for maritime defense technology.

Taiwan does not need to build the industry from scratch. It already has shipyards capable of designing and producing the physical platforms, along with a deep electronics manufacturing ecosystem. What it needs are many of the technologies that turn an unmanned boat into an effective military system: secure communications, autonomous navigation, sensors, AI, command-and-control software and the ability to coordinate large numbers of vessels simultaneously.

Photos: Nikkei Asia

That is where U.S. defense technology companies are increasingly entering the picture. CSBC, Taiwan’s government-backed shipbuilder, recently partnered with Rhode Island-based Havoc to develop autonomous surface vessels using Taiwanese manufacturing and American autonomy technology. Saronic, Anduril, MARTAC, VATN Systems, Albacore, Shield AI and Auterion have also established relationships with Taiwanese organizations, including the government-owned National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology.

Havoc CEO Paul Lwin described the model simply: “American autonomy software, Taiwan-built platforms, Taiwan workforce.”

Nikkei Asia writes that domestic companies are positioning themselves for the spending wave. CSBC has developed its Endeavor Manta unmanned boat and says it has capacity to manufacture about 40 annually. Established shipbuilders Jong Shyn and Lungteh are competing for contracts, while companies better known for drones and semiconductors, including Thunder Tiger and Myson Century, are moving into unmanned maritime systems.

The attraction is partly economic. Instead of attempting to match China ship for ship, Taiwan could deploy large numbers of smaller and cheaper autonomous platforms capable of surveillance, targeting, protecting undersea infrastructure and, in some cases, carrying weapons. The war in Ukraine has provided a real-world demonstration of how unmanned systems can impose substantial costs on a conventionally superior military.

But producing thousands of drone boats is only part of the equation. They must continue communicating, navigating and coordinating in a contested environment where satellites, communications infrastructure and command centers could themselves become targets.

“The key gaps are resilient communications, AI-enabled autonomy and C2, and multi-vessel coordination,” said Cathy Fang of Taiwan’s Research Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology.

That technological gap helps explain why the growing U.S.-Taiwan partnerships matter. Taiwan can supply the shipyards, electronics manufacturing and eventually the production scale, while American defense technology firms provide much of the software and autonomy layer.

If the navy ultimately proceeds with its proposed 1,320-vessel program, the result could be more than another Taiwanese weapons purchase. It could provide the anchor customer needed to establish an entirely new domestic defense industry built around producing autonomous vessels in large numbers, with Taiwan manufacturing the hardware and U.S. companies supplying much of the technological nervous system.

Tyler Durden Thu, 10/01/2026 - 02:45

Chris Hemsworth is one proud dad after his teenage daughter beat out all the boys in a bull-riding competition.

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The Disastrous UK Disability Signal That Corroborates The US Data!

Authored by Ed Dowd: Beyond the Narrative via Substack,

The Disability Signal Across the Atlantic

On August 11 I wrote US Disabilities Hit an All-Time High of 37 Million In July: UP 23% Since Feb 2021. The BLS Current Population Survey printed 37,029,000 Americans 16 and over reporting a disability. That is seven million more people since February 2021, a 3-to-4 sigma break from the pre-2020 plateau that has not mean-reverted.

The inflection is February 2021 with the Covid vaccine rollout not in 2020 when Covid was at its most virulent strain. Alternative explanations fail the timing and the magnitude test. The UK PIP system corroborates that US survey signal with something the American series cannot give you: medically assessed new claims broken down by body system and underlying cause.

If you want to know whether that US survey signal is real, stop arguing about survey design and look at an administrative system that actually diagnoses people.

Go back to the UK Disabilities (PIP) Project we published at Phinance Technologies. The page is still up...use it. It was built so researchers, doctors, and ordinary citizens could see the same thing we saw in 2023. You can look at total body system new claims or by underlying cause new claims (best viewed on desktop) within a body system. You can pick absolute new claims, excess new claims, percent excess new claims and excess new claims z score. We also break it out by monthly and yearly data. Finally you can sort it by age group as well. Play with data and be horrified like we were in 2023. Interactive charts...all done by Phinance Technologies for free.

PIP is not the protagonist from Charles Dickens's novel Great Expectations. It is the UK's main working-age disability benefit officially known as the Personal Independence Pension program by the UK Department of Work. Claims are medically assessed. Decisions, "clearances," as noted above are coded by body system and then by underlying cause. The positive award rate has been stable at around 40 percent, so you are not looking at a sudden collapse in standards. You are looking at more people presenting with more illness...new claims, not just the stock of existing claimants, sorted monthly or yearly and by age band versus a 2016-2019 trend.

That is the advantage over the US survey. The BLS series tells you that disability exploded after early 2021 with the vaccine rollout and not in 2020 with the virus. PIP tells you where in the body it exploded, and it lets you watch the timing against the vaccine rollout curve on the same chart.

Two Body Systems Make the Point

Hematological (blood) disorders went off the rails. New excess clearances rose about 217 percent in 2021 and then 522 percent in 2022 while 2023 declined but still at an absurd 374 percent above trend. Over 300 percent above trend two years running. When looking at new claims on a monthly basis Hematology jumped early and hard almost coincident with the first doses. That is a regime change in medically assessed claims. I have posted those charts more than once on X in 2023. Something broke and the administrative system recorded it at a scale that alone should have produced a public-health investigation...it did not.

Musculoskeletal claims tell a different, equally inconvenient story. Monthly clearances sat near a "normal" 10,000 through 2020 and early 2021. Then, around September 2021, they jumped and stayed elevated above 18,000 a month. The rise did not arrive with the first lockdowns or the first COVID wave. It arrived after the mass rollout and into the booster period. Inflammation, joint and soft-tissue disease, the conditions that take people out of work and onto daily-living and mobility awards. The timing is not subtle.

Those two systems are not the whole file. Cardiovascular and neurological claims rose. Breast-cancer clearances showed large excesses in 2022 and 2023 with high z-scores. Different latencies, same calendar: the break is 2021, not 2020. That is why the UK file is useful. It is not one blob called "disability." It is a set of body systems with different clocks, all accelerating after the intervention that was supposed to end the emergency.

People will say PIP is being gamed by fraud. Look at the body-system split before you buy that. A fraud wave does not preferentially light up hematology in early 2021 and musculoskeletal in late 2021 while neurological claims print 20 plus-sigma years. An awareness campaign does not move breast-cancer clearances. Two independent disability systems, two countries, both detecting the same inflection period in 2021.

The fiscal piece is already visible in Britain. Claimant counts have roughly doubled since 2019. Psychiatric disorders are now the largest single category. Spending is on a path that forces politicians to talk about "sustainability" and tighter points tests instead of asking why so many working-age bodies failed in the same window. The US version of that conversation is coming. A permanently larger disabled share of the 16-plus US population is lower labor force participation, higher absence, higher insurance cost, and more pressure on SSDI and Medicaid. You can ignore a chart. You cannot ignore the payroll.

Bottom Line

I am not a clinician. We said that on the site in 2023 and asked doctors to explain the findings...mostly crickets. The charts are still there. Pick a body system. Pick an age band. Look at the cumulative dose curve. Watch across the many body systems how in 2020 they stay close to trend and then in 2021 they leave the trend. That is the instruction. The US disability series tells you that the population got sicker after February 2021 in the US. The UK PIP file tells you which systems broke and when.

Together they are the corroborating signal no one in official public health circles wants you to see.

The great cover up continues into 2026 and the damage is slowly compounding.

Tyler Durden Thu, 10/01/2026 - 02:00

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