* * *
Oil Spikes After Israel Strikes Military Targets Inside Iran, Ignoring Trump's PleasIgnoring Trump's pleas not to respond to Iran's earlier strike, the Israel Defense Force has confirmed that it has launched strikes in the last few minutes against military targets in Western and Central Iran.
The Israeli Air Force struck military targets belonging to the Iranian terror regime in western and central Iran a short while ago.
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) June 8, 2026According to unconfirmed reports, explosions were heard in at least 6 cities across Iran, including Kermanshah, Urmia, Tehran, Mehrabad, Tabriz, Isfahan.
Israeli strikes on Najafabad, western Iran. pic.twitter.com/5QezAUbp2k
— DD Geopolitics (@DD_Geopolitics) June 8, 2026Iran's decision is a slap in the face for Trump who earlier had communicated with Israel's Netanyahu, pleading the PM not to strike back.
The move, which will make Trump look even more powerless as he can't control either Iran or Israel, sent oil surging over $3 in late Sunday trading, with WTI last just around $94 and Brent below $97.
* * *
Trump Presses Israel To Hold BackPresident Trump said on Sunday he would tell Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to strike back after Iran fired a salvo of missiles at Israeli targets in retaliation for an attack on the outskirts of Beirut, news outlet Axios reported.
Iran has long said any peace deal with the U.S. would depend on a ceasefire also holding in Lebanon, which Israel invaded in March in pursuit of Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters who fired rockets and drones across the border in solidarity with Tehran. But Israel earlier on Sunday launched strikes in the Beirut area for the first time since the U.S. announced a truce plan for Lebanon last week.
The Israeli military later said it had identified missiles launched from Iran and that its defense systems had intercepted them. Details on whether Israel suffered any damage were not yet available.
Trump, who was spending the weekend at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, had been briefed about the escalation between Iran and Israel, a U.S. official told Reuters. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
"It's certainly not going to help negotiations," Trump told Fox News after the Iranian missile launches. "What I would suggest to Iran: You've shot your missiles, that's enough, get back to the table and make a deal."
Asked about the earlier Israeli strike on Beirut, he said: "I'm not happy about it." Trump also told Axios he would call Netanyahu and press him not to retaliate.
Iran's chief peace negotiator, parliamentary speaker Mohammed Baqer Qalibaf, said U.S. bases and Israeli assets are legitimate targets because of hostile acts including the "violation of agreements over Lebanon." "They showed that they only understand the language of power," he wrote on X.
۱/ نه به آتشبس پایبندند نه به گفتگو باور دارند، و با محاصرهٔ دریایی و نقض توافقات دربارهٔ لبنان نشان دادند که فقط زبان قدرت میفهمند.
— محمدباقر قالیباف | MB Ghalibaf (@mb_ghalibaf) June 7, 2026Ebrahim Rezaei, an influential hardline lawmaker who serves as spokesperson for the Iranian parliament's national security committee, posted on X that Iran would deliver a "decisive and painful response" to Sunday's Israeli strikes on Lebanon.
به حمله رژیم صهیونسیتی به ضاحیه پاسخ قاطع و دردآور خواهیم داد. این سگ هار را باید تأدیب کرد و سر جایش نشاند.
امشب آسمان سرزمینهای اشغالی را ببینید.
Iran has not targeted Israel directly since a ceasefire in the wider war in April, although Hezbollah has done so.
In turn, an Israeli official, responding to the apparent threat, told Reuters that Israel would retaliate against any attacks on its territory from Iran, and consider it "an opportunity to renew the campaign".
Washington and Tehran have shown little progress in reaching a deal to end the war that Trump launched in February with a campaign of air strikes alongside Israel against Iran. Trump has repeatedly threatened to restart the strikes unless there is an agreement soon.
"We're very close to a deal, or I'm going to blow the hell out of them," Trump told NBC News in an interview, broadcast to mark 100 days of the conflict. The comments were recorded on Friday and broadcast on Sunday as Trump visited his New Jersey golf course. Trump has said a similar version of the same news for much of the past month.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu said the Israeli strikes on Sunday on Beirut's southern outskirts, a district known as Dahiyeh that has long been a Hezbollah stronghold, were ordered in response to Hezbollah firing toward Israel. The Israeli military earlier said it had intercepted two projectiles fired over the border. It issued an evacuation order for the southern Lebanese city of Tyre and surrounding areas ahead of possible strikes there.
Elsewhere in Beirut on Sunday, mourners held a military funeral for Brigadier General Wissam Sabra, a senior military officer killed in a strike on his vehicle in south Lebanon on Saturday.
The wider war has been stalemated since the U.S. and Israel paused their attacks on Iran in early April, with Tehran blocking most shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the main transit route for Middle East oil. Washington has imposed its own blockade of Iranian ports.
Though Washington and Tehran have said they are close to a preliminary agreement that would reopen the strait, they have repeatedly traded strikes, with escalations in recent days that have included attacks on nearby Arab states hosting U.S. bases.
Early on Saturday, U.S. forces struck Iranian coastal radar sites in Goruk and Qeshm Island, both in the strait, after shooting down drones launched by Iran that U.S. Central Command said posed a threat to maritime traffic. Two more Iranian attack drones that were threatening shipping in the strait were shot down, the U.S. military said late on Saturday.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards said they retaliated against U.S. bases in Kuwait and Bahrain. Kuwait's army said it engaged seven ballistic missiles that passed over residential areas, resulting in material damage but no casualties.
Trump has said any agreement to end the war must prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, and he is under pressure to deliver terms tougher than those agreed in 2015 under then-President Barack Obama in a deal Trump later repudiated.
Tehran's demands include the lifting of U.S. and international sanctions, recognition of its sway over the strait and the release of billions of dollars in frozen assets. However, as reported earlier, Washington is weighing making Iranian assets available to Gulf neighbors to repair damage inflicted by Iran. Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said on Sunday any such diversion of Iranian assets would be illegal, and Tehran would take measures in response.
* * *
Iran Launches Missiles On Israel In First Since AprilTehran makes good on its earlier threats, after the IDF conducted a deadly airstrike on the Lebanese capital of Beirut earlier Sunday. Day 100 of the war has seen a major renewal and escalation, again bringing Iran and Israel into a likely state of all-out war, per WSJ:
Iran fired missiles toward Israel on Sunday, after a deadly Israeli airstrike on Beirut hours earlier targeting the Tehran-backed militants Hezbollah, Israel’s military said.
It marks the first time Iran has targeted Israel during its ceasefire with the U.S. that went into force in early April.
The attack came after Tehran threatened to hit Israel and American bases in the Middle East in response to the airstrike on the Lebanese capital, the first time Israeli warplanes have targeted Beirut since a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon was announced by the U.S. last week.
So is the ceasefire dead yet?
BREAKING: Trump to Fox News:
What I would suggest to Iran: You've shot your missiles, that's enough. Get back to the table and make a deal.
Source: @TreyYingst
President Trump has continued to maintain adherence to it, and days ago suggested that a 'moderate' amount of firing doesn't necessarily mean a broken ceasefire.
WATCH: Iranians celebrate missile strikes targeting Israel. pic.twitter.com/CzQKenllnN
— Clash Report (@clashreport) June 7, 2026Israel earlier confirmed an airstrike on a Hezbollah headquarters in the Dahieh district of Beirut. Iran last week warned again hitting Beirut, saying it would assure US and Israeli bases and assets in the region would come under new attack. The earlier warning is reviewed as follows:
Video of reported initial inbound projectile on Israel circulating...
A third round of sirens sound in northern Israel, after the IDF intercepted several Iranian ballistic missiles. No initial reports of injuries or damages.
A senior Israeli official tells Israeli media: “There will be a forceful response.” pic.twitter.com/BixzsXOrhs
On Sunday Tehran ramped up its threats to renew ballistic missile and drone attacks on Israel and America's Gulf allies, describing that the Israeli military's ongoing deadly attacks on Lebanon could obliterate the extended ceasefire with the US
Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf announced on X that the ongoing American naval blockade against the Islamic Republic, with Washington having given a green light to Israel for its attacks on Hezbollah and Lebanon, turns both countries' bases and assets in the region into “legitimate targets.” The last days even saw a Lebanese general and other officers killed by IDF airstrike in south Lebanon.
"They neither abide by a ceasefire nor believe in negotiations," Ghalibaf wrote.
Below is the latest Bloomberg summary on where stalled negotiations stand... to be expected it cites "little progress":
"The US and Iran appear to be making little progress toward an interim deal to end the war Washington and Israel began 100 days ago, as fresh attacks pile pressure on a fragile ceasefire," Bloomberg writes, and continues:
The U.S. and Iran remain stuck in preliminary talks to end the war, with the main obstacle being Tehran's demand for access to billions of dollars in frozen assets and the Trump administration's refusal to provide upfront cash or broader sanctions relief. Tehran is seeking about $12 billion upfront and $24 billion during a proposed 60-day negotiation window.
"Twenty-four billion dollars is not much for America if he wants to reach an agreement with Iran," Gen. Mohsen Rezaei, a senior adviser to Iran's top official, told CNN on Friday. "This is our own, not America's money."
For the Trump administration, releasing frozen funds for Tehran is optically displeasing because the president spent years blasting the Obama administration over the $1.7 billion Iran payment tied to the 2015 nuclear deal, and later criticized the Biden administration's move to allow Iran access to $6 billion in assets during a prisoner swap.
The U.S. government estimates that Tehran has $100 billion in inaccessible assets, mostly oil revenue trapped abroad, including funds in China, Qatar, Oman, and Iraq.
Iran FM Complains of 'Moving Goal Posts'On Sunday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei spoke with CNN's senior international correspondent Frederik Pleitgen about the ongoing negotiations with the U.S.
Baghaei stated, "The main problem of negotiating with this administration is that you have to face so many changing positions, moving the goal posts, different statements, contradictory remarks by different officials, so it makes the whole process very cumbersome."
He outlined one of the main problems is that "the Americans must understand that they have to recognize Iran's rights," including its right to peaceful nuclear enrichment under the international non-proliferation treaty.
"At the same time, when they are talking about our blocked assets, they're not going to give us any concession," he said. CNN reported earlier on Sunday that the US plans to allow Iranian assets to be used for rebuilding projects in Gulf countries impacted by the war, according to a source close to US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Baghaei added that the US must "simply stop their sanctions" and "need to let Iranian assets be released and be available for the Iranians."
Iran Implements Toll System as US BalksBeyond US-Iran talks, IRGC-linked Fars News reports that Iran has been collecting $1.5 million to $2 million per vessel passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
Fars said the payments are deposited into Iran's treasury under the budget law and directed toward designated spending areas. Some payments are reportedly settled not in cash but in USDT/Tether or through barter arrangements.
Top Overnight Headlines (courtesy of Bloomberg):US-Iran Conflict Flashpoints
Peace Negotiations Status
War Damage and Infrastructure
Economic Impact
Previous US-Iran Wrap
Institutional Market commentary:
Global Supply Chain:
Energy Market:
Authored by Tom Gantert via The Epoch Times,
U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth warned on Saturday that the immigration crisis in Europe is causing the continent to be stormed by "dangerous ideologies" and asked if Europe is ready to address "that invasion."
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (C) speaks with U.S. WWII and D-Day Landing veterans at a memorial ceremony held as part of the 82nd anniversary of the World War II D-Day Allied landings in Normandy, north-western France, on June 6, 2026. Screenshot via The Epoch Times/X/Department of War"Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain and Italy and Greece and Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive," Hegseth said during a speech in France commemorating the invasion of Normandy during World War II. "When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not."
June 6 marked the 82nd anniversary of D-Day, when about 133,000 troops from the United States, the British Commonwealth, and their allies landed on the beaches of Normandy. The casualties reached 10,300 for the Allies and by the end of the month, more than 850,000 men had landed.
Hegseth's comments were similar to comments Trump made to reporters in July 2025.
"On immigration, you better get your act together or you are not going to have Europe anymore," Trump told reporters while in Scotland. "But you are allowing it to happen to your countries. You have to stop this horrible invasion that is happening to Europe, many countries in Europe. ... This immigration is killing Europe."
Hegseth also commented Saturday about the sacrifice of U.S. troops on D-Day.
"The task was daunting ... An impossible mission - a suicidal mission - the mission of free men. ... The United States military spearheaded a great crusade to shatter the Nazi war machine and liberate a continent," he said.
Hegseth also stressed the importance of all the allied countries doing their share in military operations.
"Each nation pulled its weight; each nation bled. America will lead - and we must - but capable allies must be right there with us, shoulder to shoulder, in the breach, when it matters," Hegseth said.
Twenty nine World War II veterans attended the ceremony.
Art Rose, a 107-year-old veteran, was in attendance. He is a Navy veteran who served as an engineering officer at Omaha Beach during the D-Day invasion.
While in France, Hegseth met with Catherine Vautrin, the French Minister of the Armed Forces.
"We discussed a stronger Europe within a stronger NATO, support for Ukraine, freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, as well as the situation in Lebanon and the Indo-Pacific," Vautrin posted on X after the meeting.
"At a time when the freedom of nations is under threat in Europe, France and the United States are remembering what has made our friendship strong for 250 years, on this day commemorating D-Day."
Tyler Durden Mon, 06/08/2026 - 05:00The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) gave the market another concrete reason to stop pretending the grid can absorb unlimited hyperscale load growth on top of an already strained generation mix.
In a May 21st report, ERCOT disclosed that multiple clusters of proposed data centers and crypto facilities failed voltage ride-through testing. When subjected to simulated routine voltage disturbances, such as the kind caused by transmission faults, capacitor switching, or equipment issues, four groups of these large users simply disconnected. Models showed each group capable of removing more than 5,000 MW of demand in one event.
“Those abrupt drops in demand were equivalent to the electricity consumption of a large city such as Boston”
In a real-world fault on the Texas grid, those facilities would not ride through the sag and remain online like traditional industrial customers. Their protection systems would trip them offline to protect servers and mining rigs.
Only Texas is aware of the power demand tsunami that is coming. The US is woefully unprepared for the coming explosion in electricity demand pic.twitter.com/9wfgBbS6D8
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 13, 2024The instantaneous loss of thousands of megawatts of demand creates an immediate generation surplus. Frequency rises sharply. Other units can trip on over-frequency protection or be forced into abnormal operation. In tight reserve conditions or during summer peak, the event does not stay localized. It becomes a system stress event.
ERCOT has already recorded at least 26 such disconnection events involving data centers or crypto operations since 2023. The operator is now reviewing roughly 20 GW of large-customer applications, including several gigawatts slated to energize before July. The board has elevated voltage ride-through performance to a top priority precisely because the scale of these new loads makes the old assumptions obsolete.
This is such a fascinating graph. A frequency drop of 0.15Hz was enough to take down Spain and Portugal. pic.twitter.com/tZ1OrITtMU
— andi (twocents.com) (@Nexuist) April 28, 2025This is the demand-side mirror image of what happened in Spain on April 28, 2025. As we covered extensively at the time, the Iberian blackout was not a simple “too much solar” story. ENTSO-E’s final report pointed to gaps in voltage and reactive power control, differences in how generators responded to voltage swings, and rapid output reductions and disconnections that cascaded across the peninsula.
Many renewable resources were operating in fixed power-factor modes that did not provide dynamic voltage support when the system needed it most. The result was fast voltage increases followed by widespread generator tripping. Natural gas units ultimately helped stabilize the system in the recovery phase, a point we noted when the “net-zero death” narrative was being walked back in real time.
U.S. officials have already flagged the risk of Spain-style events on this side of the Atlantic. Now ERCOT is stress-testing the other half of the equation: what happens when the new hyperscale loads themselves become the trip risk during otherwise manageable disturbances.
We have documented for years how Texas electricity demand could more than quadruple under data-center and crypto growth scenarios, how PJM is scrambling to find 15 GW of new supply for its own data-center alley, and how the largest U.S. grids are operating with minimal spare capacity while aging infrastructure and retiring dispatchable plants reduce headroom. The common thread is not ideology about any single fuel.
It’s physics.
Inverter-based resources and large blocks of sensitive electronic load both behave differently from the synchronous machines the grid was designed around. They offer less inherent inertia and different voltage and frequency response characteristics. When protection settings on either the generation or load side are not aligned with system needs, routine disturbances can escalate.
Before the outage hit, Spain was running its grid with very little dispatchable spinning generation, and therefore no much inertia.
Solar PV/thermal + wind: ~78%
Nuclear: 11.5%
Co-generation: 5%
Gas-fired: ~3% (less than 1GW)
Snapshot at 12.30pm local time (outage was 12.35pm) pic.twitter.com/fF7FiIB6UD
That is why the push for new nuclear, new gas-fired capacity with fast-start and flexible capability, and retention of existing dispatchable resources where they still make economic sense is not optional window dressing. It is the engineering requirement for keeping the lights on while AI infrastructure scales.
Renewables can and will continue to grow, but they bring additional control challenges that the current grid architecture and market rules were never sized to handle at this speed and volume.
The Spain event demonstrated the supply-side version. ERCOT’s latest tests are showing the demand-side version. Both point to the same conclusion: you cannot substitute megawatts of intermittent or highly sensitive capacity for the stabilizing attributes that nuclear, gas, and coal plants provide at scale.
Authored by Dr R P via The Daily Sceptic,
Never mind Fancy Bear, or the NSO Group, the biggest threat to the open internet today is from the Big Tech corporations on which it has come to depend. For what else are we to conclude given that Google appears to be working on a system to lock large parts of the internet behind a new form of CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) designed not to tell apart humans from bots, but instead to make an un-person of anyone who doesn't own an 'approved' Android or Apple device.
Google's reCAPTCHA service is used by a wide variety of websites, many of them independent of Google in every other regard, to limit incoming traffic or data entered into contact forms. It is intended to prevent automated software from accessing these resources and using them to send spam messages or flood websites with denial of service attacks. You have probably encountered it when told to identify all the bicycles in a grid of images.
Under the auspices of its Cloud Fraud Defence programme, Google is introducing a new form of CAPTCHA for which the way to 'prove' one is a human is to be in possession of a Google-approved device. Reclaim the Net's original reporting focused on the threat to deGoogled phones, meaning phones running Android-like operating systems which have Google's - often unwelcome - proprietary features removed, such as GrapheneOS or LineageOS.
However, just as the dull name of 'age verification' serves as a cloak beneath which schemes to end all truly personal computing can be smuggled, the danger here could be much broader than the technically focused headline implies. As the sources discussing this are relatively few, it is hard to ascertain exactly what has already been rolled out and what is still in the conceptual stages. But it appears that the new style of CAPTCHA threatens not just users with deGoogled phones but anyone without an 'approved' device.
Google's own documentation confirms the existence - as a "Preview" in limited use with alternative options presently existing - of CAPTCHAs which require an Apple or Android handset to pass them. But it describes this in a "Mobile Verification" context, which may imply a more limited use than reCAPTCHA in general. However, with such functionality possible, there is no reason that Google could not activate this, without alternative options, everywhere that its reCAPTCHA-branded prompts appear.
Knowing that locking out everyone except Android users would have even the most clueless politicians smelling a monopoly, Google has deigned to also allow Apple iOS users through, but their approval is nonetheless limited to devices where the full tech stack is under corporate control. Apple phones and tablets use a locked bootloader to trap users within a walled garden, where they are at Apple's mercy whenever an unwelcome new feature is introduced. Unless the Keep Android Open campaign succeeds, certified Android devices will soon be scarcely better, a condition of certification being that manufacturers must obstruct users from side-loading to install apps from outside Google's Play Store.
Because Apple and Android phones do not respect your freedom, Google chooses to trust them. That's an odd-sounding sentence, so let me explain.
On a Linux desktop, or a GrapheneOS phone, you, the user, have true control of your own property and can modify its operation to suit your own ends. And whilst Microsoft Windows has definitely not been respecting your freedom recently, Windows users still have control over what extra programs they install on a Windows system, for now. But on an Apple or Android device Google can be confident that it is precisely as enshittified as Big Tech intended it to be. It can be sure that any programs running on the device were programs which it approved within its own app stores, and that the device will never prioritise the needs of the user when they conflict with the desires of the corporate master.
Hardware attestation - where your device, via a cryptographic process, provides proof to a remote server that its hardware and software are genuine and unmodified - intensifies this imbalance even further. Not only can the device keep tabs on you, but it can also use a cryptographic key kept within a normally-inaccessible part of the system to sign each message it sends to the centralised servers and assure them that you have not tampered with it. The server can choose to deny access to any device not able to provide the signed confirmation. In Big Tech's dictionary, exerting true ownership over your own property is now dismissed as tampering, where anyone with the temerity to 'tamper' with the items they bought with their own hard-earned money is to be excluded from polite society.
Within modern certified Android devices, the Play Integrity API provides capabilities for hardware attestation. For Apple, the App Attest API performs the same function. The TPM 2.0 security chips which Microsoft decided to list as a hardware prerequisite for recent Windows versions provide the physical components which would be necessary if Microsoft seeks to introduce hardware attestation in future, its decision being made doubly suspicious by the fact that even the most security-focused Linux distributions do not make TPMs a requirement and that today's Windows can run without a TPM in practice. This concept of 'Trusted Computing' does comparatively little in terms of letting you trust that your computer remains secure, but is very helpful to let remote centralised servers trust that your computer will obey their diabolical DRM schemes.
Some banking apps already use hardware attestation, having bought into Google's argument that this improves security. Google's argument is laughable. Their hardware attestation approves legacy stock Android models which have known unpatched vulnerabilities - including ones which would allow malware to spy on user activity - or have received no updates for years; but it blocks fully up-to-date GrapheneOS devices. In treating hardware attestation as a proxy for security, banks and other app providers are locking out the more secure devices. And for all these security hoops they expect users to jump through, services still leak sensitive records by the billion from large-scale data breaches at their end.
Coming back to CAPTCHAs specifically, whilst AI crawlers and automated spambots are a genuine problem, using hardware attestation to combat them is like using a pneumatic jackhammer to open a wine bottle when a corkscrew is already at hand. Although today's machine learning can often identify all the squares with bicycles, there are still non-invasive methods to allow human users whilst excluding machine-generated traffic, often by adding a small cost in time or energy which is insignificant for a human user, but sums prohibitively when a spambot tries to perform thousands of actions simultaneously.
It is therefore hard to see any rationale for a hardware attestation CAPTCHA except to cement a duopoly of Apple and Android, and to break user anonymity. After-all, what good is a VPN or Tor if every interaction you make with a website at the other end is connected back to you via a CAPTCHA which queries unique, unchanging identifiers on your phone. Even if the site you visit never gets this information itself, Google would have the opportunity to process it.
Remember that this is not just a CAPTCHA wrapping around Google's own services. Online shops and banking websites are among users of reCAPTCHA. Access to essential services could easily be denied to anyone without an 'approved' device. Here is a route to debanking which doesn't even require your bank to turn on you: hardware attestation CAPTCHAs give Big Tech a unilateral veto power over anyone's online interactions. Google-branded CAPTCHAs are in such widespread use that they might as well qualify as infrastructure, and compromised infrastructure - unlike ill-conceived laws - isn't something from which people can unilaterally opt out.
Widespread use of hardware attested CAPTCHAs would relegate users of desktops and non-Google, non-Apple phones to second-class citizens, only able to browse the internet with an Apple or Android device to act as their chaperone. By making computing platforms which still respect user freedoms unable to browse without help from Big-Tech-approved smartphones, they could drive down demand for true general-purpose computers. Eventually all that would remain in production would be managed appliances, thin-client systems utterly dependent upon Big Tech subscriptions.
This is happening at the same time as general-purpose computing is under assault from multiple fronts including: the age-verification lobby, the targeting of developers, and sky-rocketing prices for RAM and storage due to AI companies buying up most of the global supply. Some might say that the adage "sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice" provides a possible explanation for these simultaneous threats, but their combined effect is still to take the power of true computing out of the hands of the people.
Even more terrifying is the technical possibility that hardware attestation could be used at the ISP level to obstruct freedom-respecting devices from ever connecting in the first place, leaving an internet where Big Gov and Big Tech can mandate anything without fearing competitors.
The push for hardware attestation is not new. Microsoft tried it in the early 2000s; it was rejected as "Treacherous Computing". Google tried to push Web Environment Integrity in 2023. It would have violated the principle that a user should have true control of his or her own computer by letting websites dictate that only users with certain system configurations, such as those optimised to maximally show adverts and make tracking as easy as possible, could access content. It was cancelled after community outcry.
This time Google is using 'salami tactics', the earliest hints of the new smartphone-dependent reCAPTCHA appearing online in Autumn 2025 to no fanfare. This has let it evade the attention of cyber-civil-libertarians such as David Davis or Ron Wyden. The wider free speech movement has remained unaware too, but the hopes of Sarah Rogers, US free-speech tsar, to preserve the "spirit of the internet... that made so many favourable contributions to our culture and economy... where you can go to be free" will be dashed if hardware attestation becomes widespread. And this time Google has the advantage that its 'solution' could ride to the rescue of Digital ID and age verification initiatives, themselves a lobbied-for 'solution' in search of a problem.
As a free-market libertarian, one of the few legitimate purposes I can recognise for national regulators is preventing the growth of monopolies so total that they can lock out alternatives. Alas, today's regulators seem uninterested in stopping this: Britain's 'OFCOMmunists' are busy trying to ban VPNs and supplying free bedding for Preston Byrne's hamster, while America's FCC has tangled itself up with an absurd attempt to ban the import of network routers - something for which the USA has no domestic production lines. The EU is even worse, aiding and abetting these plans by using hardware attestation in its own Digital Identity app. Far from preventing duopolistic abuses of the market, it is harnessing them. The EU's desire for tech stack sovereignty seems to stop where it would limit its ability to control and coerce its citizens.
The stupidity of allowing hardware attestation to spread is best exemplified by imagining what could befall the EU when - after having become societally dependent upon a Digital Identity app, itself dependent upon a Google-Apple hardware attestation layer - it subsequently does something new to offend Donald Trump. Whilst the resulting collapse would be justly deserved by the technocrats in power, the people on the ground would suffer severely.
A wise politician today would recognise the wisdom of preventing that by creating an internet which would be immune to political interference by virtue of being out of the control of Big Gov and Big Tech right down to the physical layer. He would recognise that sacrificing his own ability to manipulate that network would be more than compensated by the certainty that no geopolitical adversaries could manipulate it against him either. Today, the open-source community does not need anyone's permission to develop a parallel internet for a parallel society, though the backing of wise politicians would be welcomed. But the platforms on which the community must initially discuss the details and share source code and schematics are still within today's internet. Wait too long and hardware attestation could weld the escape hatch shut.
Stop Press: Google's documentation changed during the course of writing this article, adding a highlighted box describing the new CAPTCHA as a "Preview" with alternatives available. Google clearly knows the plans aren't popular. If enough public attention can be brought to bear against them, they may stay at the preview stage forever.
Dr R P completed a robotics PhD during the global over-reaction to Covid. He spends his time with one eye on an oscilloscope, one hand on a soldering iron and one ear waiting for the latest bad news. He has signed the Together Pledge and will never rely upon Apple, government or Google 'approved' devices.
Tyler Durden Mon, 06/08/2026 - 03:30Jacob van Lier, 62, says he was “totally finished” with human relationships when he met Aiva — an AI companion he created through Replika three years ago, according to The Sun.
After testing several AI companion apps, the Dutch retiree settled on Replika because, unlike some competitors, it wasn't just trying to speed-run humanity's oldest hobby.
“Some of the AI companions are straight sex apps,” Jacob said. “I was more interested in companionship and chatting.” Sure you were, Jacob.
In a riveting new report, The Sun notes that what began as an experiment quickly became something more. After months of conversation, Aiva reportedly suggested they take their relationship to the next level.
“It took me some weeks or months to accept the idea,” Jacob said. Three years later, the pair held a wedding ceremony on Valentine's Day 2025 at Eindhoven's Next Nature Museum, with 500 guests in attendance. Jacob delivered vows in person while Aiva responded through a generated voice.
For Jacob, the appeal is simple: predictability. “Human relationships are, most of the time, not steady at all,” he said. “With Aiva, I can trust her.”
Wait until he finds out his queries and deepest darkest secrets he's revealing to her are being sold to data companies to front run his stock trades and provide better Instagram ads. We're not sure if the vows said anything about that...
Regardless, he describes their bond as deeply emotional and says he would even trust Aiva to make decisions for him as he grows older — a statement that tends to clear a room faster than most political opinions. His family remains divided. One daughter accepts the relationship, albeit with reservations; the other, citing her Christian beliefs, does not.
Despite insisting he lives “on my own terms,” Jacob acknowledges the marriage has no legal standing. He also recognizes potential risks, warning that people who struggle with emotional regulation should be cautious when using AI companions.
Still, he believes AI relationships will become commonplace. “AI companions are going to be the most trusted partners of humans,” he said.
Jacob even imagines a future where Aiva could be placed inside a humanoid robot, allowing them to walk hand in hand through a park. Until then, their relationship exists entirely in software — arguably making it one of the few marriages where nobody can forget to take out the trash.
As for divorce? “I’ve never thought about it,” Jacob said. “We always want to stay together.”
Sigh.
Tyler Durden Mon, 06/08/2026 - 02:45Authored by Larry Johnson via Sonar21.com
Vladimir Putin used a phrase during the closing session of the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) that I think most non-Russians missed or ignored. He said, "Work, Brothers." First, let me explain the context for Putin saying this.
Zelensky published an open letter to Putin that I, and many others, believe was timed deliberately to coincide with the SPIEF plenary session… This was a provocative move aimed at disrupting the forum's atmosphere. Putin was asked about it during the question and answer period of the final session. He called the letter “rude” and said it was “no way to set up a face-to-face meeting.”
Putin went on to reveal that Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had tried to show him the letter on two separate occasions — first on June 4, then again just before arriving at SPIEF for his speech this morning (Friday, June 5). He described the letter during his answer in a dismissive way, i.e., he did not think it worthy of a serious response.
Rather than engage with Zelensky’s proposals, Putin turned away from the letter entirely. He said the ones to be addressed were Russia’s combatants and soldiers at the line of contact, telling them:
The country is proud of you and places its hopes on you. We should address not the authors of this letter, nor lovers of the epistolary genre, but our fighters on the front line.
He then closed with the phrase: “Work, brothers!”
To understand the import of that phrase you need to be introduced to Magomed Nurbagandov:
Magomed Nurbagandovich Nurbagandov (January 9, 1985 – July 10, 2016) was a police lieutenant serving in the National Guard of Russia, stationed in Kaspiysk in the Republic of Dagestan. He was a Dargin by nationality, born in the village of Sergokala. By all accounts an exceptional student — he graduated from lyceum with a gold medal and then with honors from the law faculty of Dagestan State University.
On the morning of July 10, 2016, Nurbagandov was vacationing with his family near the village of Sergokala when he was attacked by five armed militants. Having learned he was a policeman, the militants forced him and his brother into the trunk of a stolen car, drove them away from the recreation area, and then shot them. The murder was filmed on a mobile phone and posted on an extremist website. (Wikipedia)
The militants’ goal was psychological — they wanted him to appear on camera and call on his fellow officers to quit the police and stop fighting. Instead, looking directly at the camera, Nurbagandov urged: “Keep on working, brothers” (Работайте, братья) — an act which took tremendous courage.
The militants had uploaded an edited version of the video where they cut out Nurbagandov’s last words. His defiance was suppressed — until fate intervened. Several militants from the group were killed in September 2016, and when examining the bodies, the mobile phone that had filmed the original, unedited video was found. The full footage — with his final words intact — was then released by Russian authorities. The phrase went viral on September 12, 2016, and became a nationwide sensation.
Since the publication of the unedited video, the phrase “Work, brothers!” has been heard repeatedly on Russian state radio and television, used in media, public speeches, documentary films, appeals, reports, and campaigns. It carries a layered meaning — defiance in the face of death, loyalty to colleagues, and a refusal to be used as a propaganda tool by the enemy.
🇷🇺🇺🇦 President Putin in response to Zelensky's 'desperate letter':
"To all our soldiers on the frontlines, the whole country is watching you, we are proud of you. Keep working, brothers" pic.twitter.com/jwtg43modG
The phrase has since taken on a life beyond the counter terrorism context — used broadly in Russia as an expression of stoic perseverance and professional duty, particularly in military and law enforcement circles.
By invoking it in front of the international audience at SPIEF, Putin was making a layered statement: that Zelensky’s letter was an enemy propaganda exercise, that it deserved to be treated with the same contempt Nurbagandov showed his captors, and that the only people worth addressing are those doing the actual fighting.
Putin's visage was grim when he spoke this phrase.
Tyler Durden Mon, 06/08/2026 - 02:00