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Roblox Crashes After User Miss, Soft Guidance Triggers Wall Street Downgrades

Roblox shares plunged 21% in premarket trading in New York - the most in two years if losses hold through the cash session - after second-quarter users and bookings missed Bloomberg Consensus estimates, reflecting softer engagement following the rollout of new child-safety measures.

Daily active users reached 123 million versus the 128.7 million consensus, while bookings totaled $1.56 billion, below the $1.6 billion estimate. Roblox forecast third-quarter bookings of $1.58 billion to $1.65 billion, representing a 14% to 18% decline and missing the $1.87 billion projection.

Age-verification requirements and other protections introduced for minors on the platform, prompted by child exploitation concerns, have weighed on growth and monetization. Additionally, some parents are dialing back video game screen time for their children, as constant screen time is being viewed by some as detrimental to developmental health.

Roblox also withheld full-year guidance, citing greater variability and rising infrastructure costs tied to AI investments. The shares had already fallen about 40% this year through Thursday's close.

Shares are down 21% in premarket trading.

"Contrary to our expectations, Roblox reported decelerating monetization, driven by UCAN and the U13 cohort. Q3 guidance was disappointing, and the withdrawal of FY26 guidance leaves visibility near zero. With this backdrop, we can no longer justify our positive stance here and are therefore downgrading to NEUTRAL. Monetization is soft while investment is rising, and beyond building better tools and incentives for developers to make more engaging, more monetizable 18+ content, much of the outcome is now out of Roblox's hands," Wedbush analyst Alicia Reese wrote in a note on Friday morning.

Here's what other desks are saying (courtesy of Bloomberg):

Bloomberg Intelligence

• "Roblox's 3Q bookings guidance at the high end is about 10% below consensus, showing that mandatory age checks for chat access and isolation of children's accounts are weighing more than expected on near-term user growth and engagement"

BMO Capital Markets (cut to market perform from outperform, PT to $45 from $100)

• Roblox is continuing to face pressure in 2Q, as bookings seem set to decline in 3Q
• "Shifting engagement from high-monetizing viral games from 2025 into new and evergreen titles with lower hourly monetization drove a 2.5% Bookings miss in 2Q, as 3QE guidance was 12.5% below Street (midpoint) as RBLX removed 2026E guidance."

Citi (buy, PT $70)

• The second-quarter report "looks solid," but the third- quarter forecast is "well below the Street" * Vital Knowledge
• The results show "a miss on some key usage figures," including daily active users and hours engaged, "and bookings growth was toward the low-end of guidance, while the Q3 bookings guidance fell short"

Spurs downgrades across Wall Street...

The average 12-month price target on the stock for Wall Street is around $57.29. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 07:45

European Nations To Boycott Soccer World Cup Over New FIFA Proposals

Authored by Rachel Roberts via The Epoch Times,

Europe’s governing soccer body, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), has said its 55 members have ​unanimously voted to ‌boycott the World Cup in protest of ⁠FIFA’s plans ​to sell stakes ​to external investors, saying that the sport’s biggest competition is “not for sale.”

FIFA, the sport’s worldwide governing body headed by Gianni Infantino, announced plans on July 28 to create a $20 billion subsidiary to run the World Cup and other events, with stakes of up to 20 percent available to external investors.

Under the proposal, FIFA would establish FIFA Forward Enterprise to oversee “commercial and event operations.”

In a strongly-worded statement released on July 30, Europe’s governing body said:

“UEFA and its 55 member associations stand as one. We unanimously and unequivocally reject FIFA’s proposal to transfer ownership interests in the World Cup and other FIFA competitions to private investors.

“The World Cup cannot be treated as an investment product. It is one of football’s greatest sporting legacies. It has been built over generations by players, national teams, and supporters across every continent. No part of it should ever be surrendered to private investors. The World Cup is not for sale.”

UEFA noted that it was both “irresponsible and indefensible” that such a significant proposal for football was “conceived in secret and brought to the brink of approval without any meaningful consultation with those entrusted with stewarding the game.”

“This is not merely a profound failure of leadership, but an abdication of FIFA’s duty as the custodian of world football,” the statement reads.

2030 Contest Cohosted in Europe

The next World Cup is due to be held in 2030, with three countries cohosting, including two European nations, Spain and Portugal. The third host is the North African nation of Morocco.

The recent 48-team World Cup, held by FIFA across the United States, Canada, and Mexico and won by Spain, was the largest in the tournament’s history.

Under the proposals, FIFA would retain control of the enterprise, but offer minority stakes to private investors, raising up to $4.2 billion.

Thrive Eternal, a vehicle founded by Joshua Kushner, the brother of Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, is expected to lead the proposed investor group, according to FIFA.

 

FIFA president Gianni Infantino delivers remarks alongside U.S. President Donald Trump at a FIFA reception at Trump Tower in New York City on July 17, 2026. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

 

UEFA Criticism

UEFA’s statement says that FIFA’s announcement was not a “democratic decision,” but “governance by intimidation,” and branded the decision “an act of coercion unworthy of an institution entrusted with the stewardship of the global game.”

UEFA noted that its opposition went “far beyond process,” saying that the implications of FIFA’s plans would “change football forever.”

UEFA said that under FIFA’s commercial proposal, “Every decision on the international calendar, every decision on competition formats and every decision shaping the future of football is no longer driven by what best serves the game, but by what best serves shareholders.”

Founded in 1904 and representing 211 member associations, including the 55 in UEFA, FIFA is one of the world’s wealthiest sporting organizations, generating billions of dollars in revenue from broadcasting rights, sponsorship, and other commercial deals linked to the World Cup.

It says its proposal can increase the funds it ⁠provides to widen access to the sport and strengthen global participation, with all net benefits to be reinvested in the game.

UEFA, which is headed up by Slovenian lawyer Aleksander Ceferin, said that FIFA’s proposed model “has no place in world football” and that the future of the sport “cannot be dictated by the expectations of those whose first duty is to maximize financial return.”

The statement says that the interests of national associations, leagues, clubs, players, and supporters must not become “subordinate to investor returns,” noting that “football cannot mortgage its future for financial gain.”

UEFA said it would “never” support the proposal, and that no one “has the moral authority to sell what they merely hold in trust for the next generation.”

None of UEFA’s national teams will participate in any FIFA competition for as long as the proposals “remain alive,” with the statement demanding that they be abandoned entirely. UEFA said that “binding assurances” must be given that FIFA will “never again open its governance or competitions to private ownership.”

‘Greatest Competition in World Sport’

The English Football Association backed the decision, saying on X that ​the organization “stands shoulder to shoulder with ... European ​colleagues.”

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who replaced Keir Starmer last week, also took to X to state that the World Cup is “the greatest competition in world sport, and it was never anyone’s to sell.”

Then-FIFA President Sepp Blatter announces that Qatar will be hosting the 2022 World Cup during the FIFA 2018 and 2022 World Cup bid announcement in Zurich on Dec. 2, 2010. Keystone/Walter Bieri/AP Photo

Former FIFA President Sepp Blatter also criticized the deal.

“The close relationship between the FIFA president and the U.S. president has reached a financial dimension that is deeply damaging football,” Blatter wrote in a post on X on July 28. “No one has the right to sell our game.”

The Asian ⁠Football Confederation and the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football also strongly criticized FIFA, saying that they were not consulted in the process.

The Women’s World Cup is set to ⁠be ​held in Brazil next year, with FIFA ​due to stage the first Under-15 World Cup in Azerbaijan in October.

Infantino’s plans were first reported by The Times of London and the Financial Times. He is standing for reelection as FIFA president in March 2027 and is widely expected to remain in the post, having gained the endorsement of more than 200 football associations.

Since Infantino took over the top job in 2016, FIFA has increased revenue for the development of the sport in Africa, Asia, and South America, where he garners most of his support.

Total attendance at this year’s World Cup exceeded 6.6 million, surpassing the combined attendance of the 2018 and 2022 events, which totaled more than 6.4 million, according to FIFA.

Trump hailed the event as “one of the all-time greatest sporting events in history.”

‘Unleash the Commercial Potential’

In a speech in New York City, on the eve of the World Cup final, Infantino said he intended to “unleash the commercial potential and opportunity that FIFA has” to make more money.

“As its global governing body, FIFA is responsible for making sure the game reaches every corner of the world, and that the value it creates supports federations and communities everywhere,” Infantino said.

“Our next stage of growth needs a structure built for it, one where the commercial side of the game operates as a focused, dedicated business, with its value shared more and better all around the world.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 07:30

Futures Rise After Record Rip In Kospi; Bond Bounce Fades As Oil Jumps, BoJ On Hold

A broad rally in US tech stocks is extending for a second day, with Nasdaq 100 futures rising over 1%. Amazon is the standout in premarket trading, up by 12% after reporting a fifth quarter of cloud sales growth, while Apple is sinking 7% after its sales forecast was dented by industry-wide supply shortages.

The gains in big-tech come amid signs that, for some, AI spending is paying off - underpinned by strong demand. Amazon shares rallied in late trading after it reported AWS revenue growth of 37%, above consensus of 31.3% and the fastest clip since 2021, enabling traders to overlook another increased capex guide and negative free-cash flow.

On the flip side, Apple shares fell after component shortages weighed on the company’s sales forecast, echoing caution mentioned by Qualcomm the previous day. Apple had run into the print as the best performing stock within the Mag 7 cohort year-to-date.

“The worst of the positioning washout is probably behind us,” said Florian Ielpo at Lombard Odier Investment Managers. “On valuations, I would say they are more reasonable than a month ago, not cheap. So this is not the end of the AI trade, it is probably the end of its easy phase.”

Nasdaq 100 futures climbed 1.2%, while those for the S&P 500 rose 0.5%. 

With earnings season past the half-way mark, 86% of the 291 S&P 500 companies reported have beaten estimates, tracking the highest pace in five years, according to Bloomberg Intelligence data.

AI-linked stocks “breathed a giant sigh of relief,” writes Vital Knowledge founder Adam Crisafulli, noting many investors attributing the pain of the last several weeks exclusively to technical dislocations. But the industry isn’t in the clear as there remains “a spending sustainability problem when it comes to AI that’s not going away as people continue to question the ultimate ROI on the mountains of capital being ploughed into data centers,” Crisafulli adds.

After a volatile month, the hyperbolic moves (down and up) are nowhere more exemplified than by a record rally in South Korea’s Kospi Index overnight.

An unprecedented 18% surge in South Korea’s Kospi Index led the global charge after memory giant SK Hynix Inc. hit the 30% daily limit.

Europe’s Stoxx 600 headed for a record high, with just over half of Stoxx 600 firms having topped expectations, according to Barclays.

And yet, US stocks’ valuation premium to European stocks is near the lowest since January 2022. Even with futures pointing to gains Friday, the S&P 500 is on track for its first decline in July since 2014.

Elsewhere, we have more delveraging pain as a hedge fund managed by Jupiter Research Capital lost more than 40% of its value in just over three weeks of trading this month. The news comes fast on the heels of Situational Awareness selling a chunk of its AI-related public equities.

The yen briefly saw a sharp rise against the dollar a day after authorities intervened to support the currency and following the BOJ’s decision to keep rates on hold.

Strategists view Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda’s comments at press conference following the central bank’s decision to hold rates as moderately hawkish with some expecting an earlier rate hike.

The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index fluctuated with the yen, but is now up about 0.2% again.

Treasuries are leading the gains in bond markets and mostly at the long end, with 30-year yields falling by around two basis points.

“While the messaging on inflation has been firm, investors are still trying to assess how that commitment will translate into policy decisions,” said Francisco Simon at Santander Asset Management. “The combination of a credible inflation objective, but less visibility on the path of policy decisions, could translate into higher volatility in rates markets.”

Those gains in bonds, however, paring after oil prices erased their decline for the day following headlines than Iran is blocking the passage of six tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. Brent is on track for a jump of around 20% for July and is currently trading around $89/barrel.

And gold is falling to get nearer to $4,000/oz.

Meanwhile, China’s manufacturing PMI unexpectedly slipped back into contraction as weak domestic demand continues to weigh on growth (iron ore creaking).

10 Things You Shouldn't Miss This Morning

(via Goldman's Jack McKeon)

1) Japan and South Korea have stepped in to buy their currencies, possibly with involvement from the United States, in a rare coordinated intervention, sources and analysts said. The intervention gave the yen its biggest boost in almost two years and, if the past is any guide, any joint effort with the U.S. may prove strong enough to turn around the battered currency. CNBC

2) BOJ keeps interest rates steady at 1%, as expected. on Friday they warned for the first time that underlying inflation could exceed its target and said future policy discussions would focus on upside price risks, signaling the chance of a rate hike as soon ‌as September. The hawkish signals came after the government's suspected yen-buying market intervention in New York markets on Thursday that underscored Tokyo's concern over the pain the weak yen was inflicting on households through rising import costs. RTRS

3) China’s factory activity unexpectedly contracted in July for the first time since February, as domestic orders slumped and typhoons disrupted production, while part of the front-loading momentum began to unwind, piling pressure on Beijing to boost domestic demand. BBG

4) Eurozone CPI was inline on the headline for Jul at +2.9% (up from +2.8% in June) while core ran a bit hot at +2.5% (vs. the Street +2.4% and up from +2.4% in June). BBG

5) South Korea’s Kospi surged by a record 18% as SK Hynix hit the 30% daily limit and Samsung soared. BBG

6) Chevron beat estimates as prices for crude, gasoline and diesel surged. Exxon narrowly missed forecasts on maintenance costs. BBG

7) Donald Trump signed an order allowing export restrictions on industrial waste containing critical minerals, aiming to boost US supplies and reduce reliance on China for key materials. BBG

8) Microsoft made market history. The software giant added $450 billion, the biggest one-day gain ever by a stock, after shares closed up 16% yesterday on surging cloud revenues. That’s bigger than 96% of S&P 500 companies. BBG

9) Tesla is weighing the separation of its China unit ahead of a potential SpaceX merger, according to the WSJ. Elon Musk called the report “fake news.” BBG

10) By far the most highly sought-after theme over the past two months has been the proliferation of levered/inverse ETFs. As of Wednesday, US-listed levered/inverse ETF AUM hovered just shy of $150 billion, shedding nearly $60 billion since June highs. However, the reversion of AUM has had an outsized impact on net exposure for the complex, which has slid by roughly $170 billion over the past month and now represents $300 billion after Wednesday’s close (yielding an asset-weighted leverage ratio of ~2.1x)… expecting a bounce in these levels as today’s AUM metrics are published today. 

Markets At A Glance

US Premarket Movers of Note:

• AMZN US (+12%): Amazon Gains After Fifth Quarter of Cloud Sales Growth
• MPWR US (+8.6%): Monolithic Power Jumps on Strong Results and Guide: Street Wrap
• DXCM US (+7.3%): Dexcom Narrows FY Revenue Forecast
• RIVN US (+4.3%): Rivian Narrows Loss While Rolling Out Lower-Cost EV Models
• NXT US (+3.5%): Nextpower Boosts FY Adjusted EPS Forecast, Beats Estimates
• FSLR US (+3.4%): First Solar 2Q EPS Beats Estimates
• CORZ US (+3.4%): Core Scientific Raised to Buy at Freedom Capital; PT $33
• TSLA US (+2.4%): Tesla Weighs China Unit Sale Ahead of SpaceX Deal, WSJ Says
• TEM US (+2.3%): Tempus AI 2Q Net Revenue Meets Estimates
• COIN US (-4.0%): Coinbase 2Q Total Revenue Misses Estimates: Snapshot
• SYK US (-5.2%): Stryker Slides After FY Organic Revenue Guidance Underwhelms
• AAPL US (-7.1%): Apple Slides After Supply Shortages Hurt Sales Forecast
• RDDT US (-9.0%): Reddit 3Q Revenue Forecast Beats Estimates
• GDDY US (-11%): GoDaddy Shares Fall as Top End of FY Revenue Guide Trimmed
• MTZ US (-15%): MasTec Drops as In-Line Report Follows Strong Results From Peers
• RBLX US (-16%): Roblox Users Miss Estimates on Impact of Safety Measures

FX

• JPY has been in focus following yesterday’s mammoth gains, which sparked intervention speculation. Nikkei sources yesterday said Japan's government and BoJ intervened in the FX market yesterday by buying yen and selling dollars, while desks conducted rate checks. Furthermore, US Treasury Secretary Bessent said the yen has substantially overshot equilibrium, and the US views excess yen volatility as unhealthy, while he added that the yen is very undervalued and that Japan may have intervened in currency markets on Thursday. Add to that, the BoJ kept rates unchanged at 1.00%, which was widely expected as the central bank had just hiked rates at the last meeting in June (see more details below). More recently, USD/JPY slumped some 160 ticks to a trough of 158.34 but has since pared back the move and returned just shy of the 160.00 mark.
• DXY posts modest intraday gains after being pushed lower by the JPY on Thursday, albeit upside is capped by softer crude oil prices. Fresh newsflow for the Dollar has been light this morning, with focus on the BoJ. Analysts at ING suggest that “leveraged funds reported their largest EUR/USD short positions since 2021. That suggests there may still be room for further USD long-squeezing, and we remain reluctant to call the bottom in this dollar selloff just yet.“ DXY trades in a 100.02-100.25 range at the time of writing, vs yesterday’s 99.86-101.07 range.
• EUR is subdued after gaining yesterday on the JPY-induced Dollar decline. EUR/USD resides towards the bottom of a 1.1504-1.1531 range vs yesterday’s rise to 1.1537 from 1.1434. No move was seen on the hotter-than-expected French/EZ prelim CPI, higher-than-expected German unemployment rate, or increase in Italian business and consumer confidence. EUR/JPY found resistance near its 100 DMA (185.18) before waning back closer to 184. GBP is similarly subdued vs the USD within 1.3435-1.3471 after hitting a 1.3477 peak yesterday amid the JPY-induced dollar weakness. UK specifics have been light this morning.
• Antipodeans are flat/mixed with little traction seen from the overall risk appetite across the market, and with metals also showing no clear direction. Overnight, China's official PMIs unexpectedly fell into contractionary territory in July. The weaker-than-expected data reinforced concerns about the pace of China's economic recovery following the Politburo meeting, where Beijing signalled it would continue implementing existing support measures rather than introduce large-scale stimulus. Antipodeans were little moved, with AUD/NZD holding a relatively narrow range between 1.1949 and 1.1985.

FIXED INCOME

• Bid across the board, with Gilts leading as they catch up to the grinding bid seen in peers late yesterday, though benchmarks across the board remain shy of pre-Fed levels, but with Gilts by far the closest, as the dovish points dominated the BoE.
• Gilts at a 87.22 peak, firmer by c. 20 ticks. Just shy of Wednesday’s 87.32 best. As mentioned, the dovish points dominated the BoE, though the overall takeaway is still one of an extended hold with hawkish risks. Today, we get commentary from Chief Economist Pill, and while the views of the hawkish dissenter are well known, it will be interesting to get his take on Governor Bailey’s explicit pushback against moving towards a hike from the press conference.
• Bunds were unreactive to the morning’s data: French HICP and German unemployment. HICP was hotter-than-expected, while Germany’s jobs data saw an uptick in the unemployment rate. EZ Flash HICP printed in line on the headline; core was slightly mixed while the services lifted from the prior. Overall, the print fits with the narrative of the ECB moving towards a September hike.
• Leaving Bunds around 20 ticks off a 124.94 peak, but still with gains of the same amount. A peak that, like peers, is still shy of Wednesday’s 125.12 best. Ahead, the EZ docket is light and thus attention will be on broader macro events and the potential Fed dissenter appearances.
• Ahead of that, USTs are also bid by a tick, peaking at 108-21+, similarly shy of 108-26 from Wednesday. We may see explanations from Fed’s Hammack, Kashkari and/or Logan following the hawkish dissent this week.
• Finally, JGBs picked up heading into the BoJ, with upside emerging around the time of the weak Chinese NBS PMIs, where both Manufacturing and non-Manufacturing moved into contractionary territory. Thereafter, the BoJ itself extended this move in tandem with JPY pressure, as the statement was little changed while the Core CPI forecast was lowered for FY26. Ueda himself sparked some modest JPY action (see FX), though that paled in comparison to yesterday’s intervention moves. For JGBs, little action was seen apart from some modest upside as Ueda acknowledged that market functioning had improved, but did caveat that it had not yet fully recovered.

COMMODITIES

• Crude futures are higher despite a lack of major escalation in the Iran conflict overnight, alongside a sudden quietening in rhetoric from relevant parties. That being said, there were some reports of explosions in Erbil and Sulaymaniyah in Iraq's Kurdistan region, while there was little impact seen after the IRGC announced it targeted a US base in Kuwait. More recently, Iran's IRGC said two offending tankers were hit and stopped, and four offending tankers quickly changed course. Additionally, the IRGC said the Strait of Hormuz is closed, and any transit and movement will be possible only with the coordination of the IRGC Navy. Furthermore, US President Trump announced that the Board of Peace reached a historic agreement for the disarmament of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza.
• WTI Sep’26 resides in a USD 82.23-84.32/bbl range while Brent Oct’26 trades in a USD 85.74-87.45/bbl range.
• Precious metals are softer intraday following yesterday’s USD-induced rise, with a lack of major geopolitical updates potentially weighing on the complex. Spot gold resides towards the bottom end of a USD 4,050-4,112/oz range (within yesterday’s USD 4,028-4,120/oz parameter) while spot silver trades in a USD 58.00-59.17/oz range vs Thursday’s 56.94-59.31/oz.
• Base metals are mixed and directionless amid a lack of updates this morning, but with upside in the complex somewhat capped after China's official PMIs unexpectedly fell into contractionary territory in July. The Manufacturing PMI declined to 49.2 from 50.3, below the exp. 49.9, the Non-Manufacturing PMI dropped to 49.0 from 50.2, below the 50.0 forecast, and the Composite PMI fell to 49.3 from 50.6. The NBS attributed the weakness partly to adverse weather and flooding, while analysts also cited subdued domestic demand and persistent pricing pressures. The weaker-than-expected data reinforced concerns about the pace of China's economic recovery following the Politburo meeting. 3M LME copper trades towards the middle of a USD 13,785.00- 13,887.68/t range at the time of writing.
• China's state planner said domestic gasoline and diesel prices will rise by CNY 685 and CNY 655 per tonne, respectively, effective from midnight on July 31, citing higher international oil prices.
• White House NEC Director Hassett said if needed, we will continue measures to lower oil prices, according to CNN.

GEOPOLITICS:

MIDDLE EAST

• Iran's IRGC said, in the early hours of today, two offending tankers were hit and stopped, and four offending tankers quickly changed course. Additionally, the IRGC said the Strait of Hormuz is closed, and any transit and movement will be possible only with the coordination of the IRGC Navy.
• Iranian army announced as part of its 27th phase of operation Thunderbolt, its suicide drones struck fighter jet shelters, satellite communication systems and equipment depots at Kuwait's Ahmad Al-Jaber air base, according to Press TV. Iran's military previously said it used drones to strike US assets in Bahrain's Sheikh Isa air base on Thursday.
• The US and Israel are considering a land blockade of Iran to increase economic pressure, senior Israeli sources told The Telegraph. The plan could involve urging neighbouring countries and regional partners to restrict border crossings and trade. However, some have warned that enforcement would be diplomatically and logistically difficult across Iran’s seven land borders.
• US President Trump posted "Today, the Board of Peace reached a HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza. This is a monumental step toward lasting PEACE and SECURITY", while he added the agreement is a critical step towards Gaza finally being governed by a new Palestinian government that will work closely with the Board of Peace. Furthermore, the agreement will be carried out in carefully structured phases and as disarmament is completed, Israeli forces will withdraw, and the International Stabilization Force will work with a new Palestinian police force to take responsibility for Gaza being safe.
• US officials say they will put Hamas disarmament plan in motion over the next weeks.
• Arab media reported an explosion heard in Erbil, Iraq.
• Israel destroyed a Hezbollah tunnel in southern Lebanon, according to Mehr News,

RUSSIA-UKRAINE

• US President Trump said he has not decided whether he will allow Ukraine to produce Patriot missiles and noted that they are looking at it, according to a phone interview with FT.
• Romania's Defence Ministry scrambled two jets after detecting aerial targets near the border river with Ukraine.

OTHER

• North Korea warned US forces' Japan expansion increases risks of a Korean peninsula clash, according to KCNA.

DB's Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap

It's hard to know where to start. The huge move up in the KOSPI (>15%) overnight, the huge move in the Yen yesterday or the BoJ?

Given the BoJ meeting ended only an hour ago, with the press conference still to come we'll start in Japan. The central bank left interest rates unchanged while raising their economic growth outlook, reflecting confidence that the economy remains on course for further policy normalisation. This follows last month’s rate increase, which lifted the benchmark interest rate to its highest level since 1995. Board member Hajime Takata dissented, advocating a hike to 1.25% but we expected two dissenters so that was a touch dovish. Takata argued that rising inflationary pressures, driven by external demand shocks and evolving global financial conditions, have increased the upside risks to inflation. In its latest quarterly economic outlook, the BOJ’s board raised its median GDP growth forecasts for both the current and next fiscal years, and now expects the economy to expand by 0.6% this fiscal year. At the same time, the central bank lowered its core inflation forecast to 2.5% from 2.8%, attributing the downward revision primarily to the impact of government subsidy programs. A fall in energy prices also played its part. The forward looking language on inflation and the Yen's impact read a little more hawkish so overall there is something for both hawks and doves. So the press conference will likely be the penalty shoot out here.  

The Yen has edged back down -0.78% this morning to 160.77 after a remarkable last 24 hours where it got close to touching both 164 and 158. This was in response to suspected FX intervention that saw the Japanese yen rally sharply early in yesterday’s US session. The yen rose by more than 2% in just half an hour and ended the day up +2.43% at 159.53 per US dollar. The Nikkei reported that Japan’s government and the BoJ had intervened in the FX market and that the US also carried out a rate check on the yen. Shortly after the US close, US Treasury Secretary Bessent told Fox Business that the yen seems “very undervalued” to him. And while the yen spiked, the dollar fell against all G10 currencies yesterday in what was the worst day for the dollar index (-1.01% after -0.52% on Wednesday) since the post-Liberation Day sell off in April 2025.

The other big overnight story is the +16.4% rally in the KOSPI after the tech rebound in the last 24 hours with the Nikkei also up over 4%. This follows Microsoft (+15.51%) having its best day since 2008 following its results the previous evening. This also marked the largest ever single-day increase in any company’s market cap (+$450bn). For perspective, that increase is larger than the value of any company in Europe except ASML. The positive read across from Microsoft’s results for cloud and AI demand helped the NASDAQ to a +2.78% gain. And the Philly semiconductor index (+8.19%) rebounded after its recent woes, its biggest advance since April last year. In turn, that helped the S&P 500 (+1.66%) to its best day in seven weeks, even as most of the index’s constituents declined. The exception from the positive tech mood was Meta (-7.95%) which slumped after its own results.

After the US close, we then got mixed results from Amazon and Apple. Amazon’s shares surged by nearly +10% in extended trading following a +3.90% gain in the regular session as revenue growth in its web services division accelerated to its fastest since 2021 (+37% yoy vs +31.3% est.). The company also raised its 2026 capex projection from $200bn to $220bn. However, Apple’s shares were down about -6% after-hours as it issued a disappointing sales growth forecast for the current quarter (+9% to +11% vs +12% est.). Net net S&P (+0.49%) and Nasdaq (+1.07%) futures are comfortably higher on the overall global tech rebound.  

Turning back to Japan, consumer inflation in Tokyo picked up in July, bringing core inflation closer to the BOJ’s target range amid elevated energy costs and the impact of a weaker yen on import prices. Core CPI rose to +1.9% y/y in July, slightly above market expectations of +1.8% and up from +1.6% in June. Meanwhile, core-core CPI, a key measure of underlying inflation closely monitored by the BOJ, increased to +2.0% from +1.9% in the previous month. Headline inflation also strengthened, rising to +2.0% y/y versus expectations of +1.8%, up from +1.7% in June.

Meanwhile, China’s manufacturing sector unexpectedly slipped back into contraction territory in July, while activity in the services sector also weakened, highlighting a broader loss of economic momentum as subdued domestic demand continued to offset resilient export performance. The official manufacturing PMI declined to 49.2 from 50.3 in June, falling short of economists’ expectations of 50.1 and marking its first contraction since February 2026. The non-manufacturing PMI dropped to 49.0 from 50.2, below the consensus forecast of 50.0, while the composite PMI fell to 49.3 from 50.6.

With all that going on, the continued volatility in oil markets was modest by comparison. Brent crude spiked to $93/bbl shortly after we went to press yesterday on news that Iran struck two tankers along the southern route through the Strait of Hormuz which goes along the Omani coast. However, prices then retreated, with Brent crude closing -1.88% at $89.03/bbl and down another -1.7% this morning at around $87.5/bbl. Shipping through the strait has been disrupted but it hasn’t completely stopped, while the US and Iran currently look to be avoiding a move from low-level escalation to all-out war.

The pullback in oil supported a bull steepening in the Treasury curve, with the 2yr yield down (-2.7bps), the 10yr (-0.5bps) little changed but the 30yr (+1.3bps) rising to a new post-2007 high, following on Wednesday’s post-FOMC sell-off. The front-end rally was also aided by sanguine June PCE data, which saw core PCE inflation slow to a +0.1% monthly pace (vs. +0.2% expected). The US data also included a slightly disappointing headline Q2 GDP print (+1.5% annualized vs +2.0% expected), though its downside was driven by imports with domestic demand growing strongly, while the latest weekly initial claims (197k vs 200k expected) pointed to a still solid US labour market. Overnight US yields are 2-3bps lower across the curve.  

In Europe, yesterday’s main event was the Bank of England decision, which kept Bank Rate steady for a fifth consecutive time at 3.75%, as widely expected. We did see three of the nine MPC members voting for a hike, up from two in June. However, this vote shift was more than offset by more dovish elements, including signals of MPC confidence that underlying disinflation has continued and comments by Governor Bailey that the BoE wasn’t “edging towards a rate hike”. Markets dialed back expectations for BoE hikes in response, with pricing of a September hike falling from 60% to 30% and 31bps of hikes priced by year-end (-11.4bps on the day). Both 2yr (-11.2bps) and 10yr (-5.1bps) gilts rallied. Our own UK economists continue to expect no change in Bank Rate this year, though risks of a hike would rise the longer that tensions in the Middle East continue. See their full BoE reaction here.

Elsewhere in Europe, sovereign bonds saw a moderate rally, with 10yr bunds -0.7bps lower, while OATs (-2.2bps) and BTPs (-2.9bps) saw larger declines. In terms of European equities, the Stoxx 600 (+0.77%), DAX (+0.60%), CAC (+0.92%) and FTSEMIB (+1.29%) all posted decent advances, though the FTSE 100 (-0.10%) underperformed.

The positive performance in continental assets came as the euro area Q2 real GDP came in at a solid +0.4% qoq in the preliminary reading (vs +0.2% exp.), adding to the sense of the Euro area economy’s resilience in the face of the energy shock. Germany, France and Italy grew by +0.2% qoq, while Spain expanded by +0.7% qoq. Meanwhile, July inflation for Germany came in line with expectations at +2.8% yoy on the EU-harmonised measure, while Spain’s surprised slightly to the upside (+3.8% vs +3.7% expected). We will get the euro area CPI release today, which our economists see tracking at +2.97% headline and +2.53% core, slightly above consensus at +2.9% and +2.4%.

To the full day ahead now, in the US we’ll get the Q2 employment cost index and July MNI Chicago PMI, while in Europe, the highlight will be the July CPI prints for France, Italy and Euro area. Other data releases include Germany’s July unemployment claims, Italy’s July economic sentiment and Canada’s May GDP. Earnings include ExxonMobil, AbbVie, Chevron, Linde, AXA, Engie, and Holcim.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 07:15

Wheat Prices March Higher As Intensifying Black Sea Fighting Fuels Food Security Fears

Wheat futures are climbing after Ukraine's Black Sea ports came under renewed Russian fire, with three dry-cargo ships struck in recent days.

The attacks threaten grain exports from one of the world's most important agricultural regions, heightening concerns among UN officials that supply disruptions could reignite global food inflation.

Bloomberg reports:

A ship was damaged at Pivdennyi port and two more were hit near Odesa, according to a Defense Ministry post on Telegram. Earlier Thursday, Ukraine attacked the Russian Black Sea port of Taman, a key gateway for grain shipments, while Russia hit vessels in and around Ukraine's Black Sea ports.

Black Sea Turmoil 

The UN has warned that Russia’s attacks on Black Sea ports are increasing risks to global food security.

UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Kayoko Goto told the UN Security Council that a new wave of Russian strikes on Black Sea ports and merchant vessels poses a… pic.twitter.com/r68Ia7fi7P

— Jürgen Nauditt 🇩🇪🇺🇦 (@jurgen_nauditt) July 28, 2026

With over 200 ships hit in the Azov and Black Sea this month, Russian Black Sea exports (and the revenue they bring) are being cut off.

And Russians now want to put guns and missiles on the remaining ships.

Slight problem: there aren't many operable cargo ships left to arm.🔥 pic.twitter.com/JnJFo417p7

— Maria Drutska 🇺🇦 (@maria_drutska) July 29, 2026

Earlier this week, UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Kayoko Goto warned the UN Security Council that the Russian strikes on Black Sea ports and merchant vessels pose a serious risk to global food supplies.

"The consequences of this latest escalation are already visible in global agricultural markets," Goto explained.

She warned, "Further disruptions in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, as well as in other critical areas, could drive up freight, insurance, food and energy costs, with grave consequences for vulnerable and import-dependent developing countries."

Wheat futures rose as much as 3.9% on Thursday.

Last week, Bloomberg Agriculture Spot Index (BCOMAGSP) climbed to a three-year high on conflict fears across the Gulf area and worsening Black Sea conditions. Read note here.

The UN's Global Food Index has trended higher over the last 2.5 years.

Bank of America: The Timing Of The Next Grocery Inflation Surge Revealed By BofA

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 06:55

Entire Ethiopian Football Team Vanishes In Sweden After Youth Tournament

Via Remix News,

Twenty Ethiopians connected to a youth football team disappeared in Sweden on the final day of the Gothia Cup youth tournament, prompting an international missing persons search.

The group consists mainly of boys aged between 14 and 17, together with one or more adult leaders. Police believe they left voluntarily, amid suspicions that they may be attempting to remain in Sweden or another European country, although officers say that has not been confirmed.

The Gothia Cup, also known as the World Youth Cup, brought teams from 77 countries to Gothenburg this year, including four teams from Ethiopia.

The disappearance was discovered when an administrator at the school accommodating one of the Ethiopian teams found that its players and accompanying adults had left without notifying anyone.

Gothia Cup organizers contacted police as a precaution, and a formal missing persons report was filed. Ten days after the tournament ended on July 19, the group remained unaccounted for and had not returned to Ethiopia.

“From our perspective, it’s strange because this is a team that we have a good relationship with,” Gothia Cup press officer Fredrik Beckman told Göteborgs-Posten.

The final communication received from the team reportedly came from its contact person, who thanked organizers for their “consideration” and claimed the situation appeared to have resulted from a communication problem.

However, the message provided no explanation of where the players and leaders had gone or whether they intended to return home.

Police said the group is now being sought internationally.

Officers are working with the Swedish Migration Agency, border police and authorities in other countries, and expect to be alerted if any member of the group attempts to cross a border or comes into contact with officials.

Police say there is no evidence that the group was trafficked or smuggled.

“There is no indication that anything illegal lies behind this, such as people smuggling or something similar,” Halldin told Swedish media.

She added that in previous cases, missing participants had often been located gradually over time.

Read more here...

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 06:35

Islam, Marxism, Tyranny Ascendant

Authored by Eric Utter via AmericanThinker.com,

Canada, the U.K., and France are rapidly morphing into Muslim nations.

Iran is run by a motley collection of itinerant thugs and Islamic terrorists. Russia is run by an extreme authoritarian. China, North Korea, Cuba, and various other nations have a communist government. Daniel Ortega is a dictator, like many others, one who recently announced he was suspending elections in Nicaragua.

The EU renders the will of the people in several European nations effectively moot. 

In Hungary, Victor Orban’s Fidesz Party was recently raided, their servers confiscated.

Romanian presidential elections were cancelled back in 2024. And the beat — or beatdown — goes sadly on. 

In Germany, efforts are underway to outright ban the Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party, that nation’s largest opposition party. The ruling Social Democrats and their Brownshirts SS Stasi political police have hilariously been attempting to prove that the AfD is a danger to democracy, largely the way rabidly insane Democrats have said about President Trump and his supporters here in the United States.

Local ruling authorities have gone so far as to change the election rules, allowing local election boards to ban individual candidates if they purportedly harbor “doubts” about “their loyalty to the constitution.”

Meaning, they pose a threat to their power.

“Socialism” is on the rise in Europe, including in formerly sane and conservative countries like Hungary. And it is indisputably having a moment in the United States.

That is because leftists, like the practitioners of Islam, never rest, never flag -- and will never do so — in their manically obsessive quest to destroy freedom and prosperity.

Simply put, if either one of these two ideologies were ever to prevail across the West, the world would enter a new Dark Age, economically, morally, politically, and spiritually. That is what happens when those in power seek to deny the unalienable rights granted to us by our Creator. And that is what happens when those currently in power allow it to, whether through greed or suicidal empathy. 

Here in the U.S., the Democrat party would suspend elections in a heartbeat if the people in it thought they could get away with it. And “RINOs” (Republicans in name only) might let them get away with it, sooner rather than later. It is ironic that Democrats claim the same of President Trump and his supporters, who actually are trying to uphold the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, among other founding principles. 

As for Germany? Germans must push back, bigly, if they want to ensure they retain some liberty and rights, like the right to vote for whom you want.

Or there will be no Alternative for Deutschland.

Not now. Not ever. 

Islam and Marxism share one depraved goal: the utter destruction of the West and its values.

If these twin malignant afflictions were to prevail, it would plunge the earth into darkness and despair.

And even the earth wouldn’t be big enough for the both of them. What then?

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

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 06:30

Iran FM Accuses Israel Of False Flag After Mystery Drone Strike On Egyptian Port

Iran is suggesting that Wednesday's unprecedented drone attack on a US-owned gas-processing vessel moored at Egypt's Mediterranean port of Damietta was a false flag.

Even within hours of the incident first being reported by Egyptian authorities, which merely described an industrial fire of unknown cause, the incident was shrouded in mystery and contradictory reports. Some reports pointed to the Iranians, while others alleged the Houthis may have attacked the Mediterranean port.

via TradeArabia

Reuters had described, "The drone hit floating storage tanker Energos Winter, causing a fire that then spread to another vessel, Gaslog ‌Salem, ⁠three trading sources familiar with the incident said. Two separate security sources said the cause ⁠of the blast was a drone strike."

It detailed: "The crew was evacuated, and the fire had ⁠been brought under control, Ambrey said, adding that no party ⁠had claimed responsibility."

There was widespread speculation that this was the Iranians seeking to demonstrate to the Americans that it can disrupt energy flows across the whole broader region, even into the Mediterranean Sea.

But Tehran has since vehemently denied it was behind the alleged drone strike, with on Thursday its Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi issuing a statement raising the prospect of an Israeli false flag.

"Egypt is an important friend and partner in the region, and its security is of utmost importance to us," Araghchi wrote on X. "We must all be vigilant against Israeli plots and false-flag operations designed to undermine regional peace."

The suggestion from Tehran is that Israel wanted to ensure that all Arab and Muslim-majority states turn strongly against Tehran, and so put a greater target on the Islamic Republic.

Egypt is an important friend and partner in the region, and its security is of utmost importance to us.

We must all be vigilant against Israeli plots and false-flag operations designed to undermine regional peace.

The threat is clear, mutual, and fearful of Muslim solidarity.

— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) July 30, 2026

Still, there's a lot at stake if yet another regional transit area is threatened, as Reuters newly alludes to: "Even as Iran and its Houthi allies have fired on tankers transiting ​the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb, Egypt's Suez Canal and Sumed pipeline continued to offer safe, northbound export routes for Saudi Red Sea energy cargoes."

Saul Kavonic, head of energy research at advisory company MST Marquee, has explained, "The passage through the Red Sea, even via the longer Mediterranean route, could be put at risk, which threatens up to five million barrels per day of oil supply that can currently bypass the Strait of Hormuz."

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 05:45

John Cleese: "Some Cultures Are Better Than Others"

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Legendary Monty Python star John Cleese has drawn a clear line in the sand, declaring himself a "culturalist" who believes some cultures are superior to others.

Cleese has also openly backed Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe amid the accelerating collapse of British norms under mass migration and parallel societies.

The legendary comedian responded this week to ritual insults hurled at him for supporting Lowe by rejecting the tired "racist" smear from the usual uneducated quarters.

I see I am being ritually insulted for my support of this man

The uneducated call me a racist

I am not a racist

I am a culturalist

I believe that some cultures are better than others

I prefer cultures to do not advocate stoning, pederasty, wife beating, female genital... https://t.co/dpzlIRrAoV

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) July 28, 2026

"I am not a racist. I am a culturalist," he stated in a post that now has over ten million views, adding "I believe that some cultures are better than others. I prefer cultures that do not advocate stoning, pederasty, wife beating, female genital mutilation, and beheading opponents. Call me old-fashioned..."

Cleese had earlier made plain his preference for Lowe over the rest of the political class, stating he trusts the Great Yarmouth MP "more than any of the other leaders." The Metro reported the comments as Cleese pushed back against the predictable pile-on.

John Cleese has insisted that he is 'not a racist' after voicing support for Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe. Responding to a post featuring the former Reform UK MP, Cleese recently said on X: 'I trust this man more than any of the other leaders': https://t.co/gObd5yE1Bw pic.twitter.com/saKZ0RlmXo

— Metro (@MetroUK) July 29, 2026

Lowe, for his part, simply called Cleese a patriot. The exchange has crystallised a growing recognition that Britain's cultural foundations are under sustained assault from imported practices fundamentally at odds with the country's historic values of individual liberty, equal protection under the law, and basic human decency.

Cleese has for some time now been documenting the same pattern with characteristic clarity. In April he tore into the BBC over claims that the British education system was designed for "whiteness," pointing out the obvious: it was built for British children in Britain, most of whom happened to be white at the time.

To treat that historical fact as a "racist conspiracy," he said, is insane. The broadcaster, he charged, operates with a hidden agenda opposed to the beliefs of the majority of British people.

He has also zeroed in on the political reality driving the double standard. With churches across Britain suffering more than ten recorded crimes every single day - theft, arson, vandalism, violence - Cleese observed that Labour politicians have become so dependent on Muslim votes that they no longer even pretend to be even-handed. "We need a new election," the Python star demanded.

Cleese has noted that the focus on religion in Britain falls almost exclusively on Islam, while more peaceful and spiritual traditions are sidelined. He has asked why schoolchildren are not being introduced to Buddhism - a far more civilised belief system - rather than being steered toward Islam.

He has highlighted the one-way demand for respect: Islam insists its traditions be honoured while showing no reciprocal intention of respecting British ones, the polar opposite of genuine multiculturalism.

And he has pointed out that other religions do not threaten to take over the country, whereas multiple Muslim clerics and scholars openly do.

These are not abstract observations. They map directly onto the lived experience of communities watching churches burn, girls trafficked, and native citizens pushed down waiting lists.

That is precisely the ground Rupert Lowe and Restore Britain have chosen to fight on. The party, which surged past the Conservatives in membership within weeks of its launch, does not traffic in polite fictions.

It has vowed to deport millions of illegal and burdensome migrants - "if that means millions go, so be it" - to outlaw incompatible cultural and religious practices, and to give the British people a binding referendum on the death penalty for pedophiles and rapists when guilt is undeniable.

"Prison or deportation is too kind," Lowe has said.

Lowe's own record shows why the establishment treats him as a threat. As an MP he has submitted more than a thousand Freedom of Information requests that forced light onto grooming gang data, the true costs of mass migration, and foreign offender absconding rates.

When the results proved too damaging, the WhatDoTheyKnow platform restricted his access. Lowe's response was characteristically dry: the restriction was "not in the spirit of transparency."

He has also refused to soft-pedal the immigration crisis itself. Lowe has called openly for a hostile environment toward illegal entrants, many of them criminals, stating he wants them all deported and does not care how it happens.

Far-left politicians and media figures predictably denounced the stance as "cruel" and "repulsive." Lowe's reply was equally direct: he could not care less about defending the "humanity" of third-world conmen who break into the country and leave British families living in fear.

The practical consequences of the current open-door approach continue to surface. Lowe recently told Joe Rogan that arriving migrants are placed at the top of NHS waiting lists for dental treatment that British citizens cannot access. Rogan's reaction was pure disbelief.

The incentive structure is obvious: free housing, welfare, and priority healthcare create a magnet that draws people across multiple safe countries.

Nowhere has the cultural incompatibility been more horrific than in the industrial-scale rape gang scandals.

Lowe's Restore Britain-backed inquiry documented a nationwide pattern of abuse involving up to 250,000 young British girls, overwhelmingly by men from Pakistani Muslim and other Muslim backgrounds, with police and politicians suppressing the truth for decades under the banner of community cohesion.

Elon Musk responded by endorsing Nuremberg-style trials for those who enabled the cover-up. "The politicians who turned a blind eye to the Rape of Britain must go to prison," he wrote.

Cleese's latest stand simply names what millions of Britons already see. Preferring a culture that does not stone people, mutilate girls, or treat women as disposable is not racism. It is the minimum requirement of civilisation.

The uneducated may continue to throw the racist label; the rest of the country is increasingly done pretending that all cultures are equal when the evidence of the last three decades proves otherwise.

Britain's political class spent years importing demographic change while criminalising honest discussion of the results.

Cleese, Lowe, and a growing public are no longer playing along. Some cultures produce free speech, scientific inquiry, and equal rights. Others produce the opposite. Pretending otherwise has already cost Britain dearly.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 05:40

Another Historic UK Church Torched; Cause "Unknown"

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

A 164-year-old historic church in Leicester, UK "caught fire" this week, leaving its roof severely damaged while officials initially described the cause as unknown.

Firefighters battled a large blaze at St Andrew's Church on Jarrom Street through the night after multiple calls came in just after 11pm on Tuesday. A coffin containing a body prepared for a funeral service the next morning was rescued from the sanctuary. No one was injured.

The church, built in 1862 and designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, is an Anglo-Catholic parish known for its patterned red brick and historic significance. The fire started on the ground floor and spread to the roof.

164-year-old historic church "caught fire" in Leicester last night

Zero comment from Mayor Johal pic.twitter.com/UHFNPHMZm7

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 30, 2026

Lord Mayor Kulwinder Singh Johal, later posted that he was "heartbroken" by the "devastating fire," describing the landmark as cherished and extending gratitude to the fire crews while offering support to the congregation.

Firefighters battled a huge blaze at the historic St Andrews church in Leicester England??

The cause for the fire remains "unknown".

In an unrelated story, the Muslim population of Leicester has reached a new record high of 23.5%. pic.twitter.com/ulW0UqZ1iv

— Wall Street Mav (@WallStreetMav) July 30, 2026

The 23.5 percent figure matches the 2021 census data for Leicester, up from 18.6 percent a decade earlier. Christian identification in the city has declined in the same period.

Comedian and commentator John Cleese quoted a post observing that "The church in Leicester is also on fire. In Europe, only churches burn, not mosques," and replied: "I wonder what the reason is. There seems to be a pattern here."

I wonder what the reason is

There seems to be a pattern here https://t.co/ioEyOQrIiL

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) July 30, 2026

This latest incident in the UK sits against a backdrop of repeated church fires that have drawn limited official attention compared with other religious sites.

In February, the historic Kings Hall Methodist Church in Southall, West London, burned to the ground in a massive overnight blaze that required more than ten fire engines and around 70 firefighters. Much of the over-100-year-old building was reduced to ashes. The government response was notably muted.

Days later, Prime Minister Keir Starmer expressed clear concern over a security incident at Manchester Central Mosque during Ramadan, highlighting up to £40 million in funding for additional security at mosques, Muslim schools and community centres.

He remained silent on the Southall church destruction and the broader pattern of attacks on Christian sites.

National Churches Trust data has previously recorded hundreds of attacks on churches, including arson, alongside thousands of crimes at church properties over recent years, with security funding per site far lower than for mosques or synagogues.

The UK cases form part of a wider Western pattern. In Canada, arson attacks on churches more than doubled after 2021. A Macdonald-Laurier Institute report found fewer than 4 percent of cases resulted in charges. One of the more recent examples was the 1893 church in Saint-Romain, Quebec, destroyed by fire in April and treated as arson.

France has seen a sustained wave. Nearly 50 fires or arson attempts on churches and Christian sites were recorded in one recent year.

A 19th-century church in Montenach was gutted in May, with officials blaming a nearby brush fire. Other historic sites, including a 17th-century chapel and a cloister, suffered major fire damage around the same period.

Studies have noted a Christian religious building disappearing every two weeks through fire, collapse or deliberate damage.

In the United States, New York City saw the 173-year-old South Bushwick Reformed Church in Brooklyn gutted in June. The cause was initially listed as under investigation before the FDNY confirmed it was intentionally set. A person of interest was seen fleeing on video; no arrest followed.

The city rejected a preservation plan and ordered demolition. Weeks earlier, a 138-year-old church in Astoria, Queens, suffered severe damage in a five-alarm fire, also followed by rapid moves toward demolition.

Most recently in Buffalo, the 140-year-old former St. Ann's Church and Shrine, sold in 2022 to a group affiliated with the Downtown Islamic Center for conversion into an Islamic community centre, was hit by multiple fires this year.

Two were confirmed as arson within four days in July. The site had already suffered a major fire earlier in the year. Local officials expressed frustration at the owners' failure to secure the vacant landmark.

Across these cases the official language often settles on "unknown," "accidental," or "under investigation."

Suspects are rarely identified.

Historic Christian buildings disappear while demographic shifts continue and political priorities remain selective. The Leicester fire is simply the latest entry in a lengthening record.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 05:00

Burnham Blows Up Britain's Tech Ministry, Mails The Bureaucrats To The Culture Department, And Keeps AI For Himself

While Westminster was still digesting the BritCard cancellation, Andy Burnham also abolished the department that was supposed to build it.

Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology is gone, its functions split three ways across Whitehall, and AI policy has landed in the prime minister's own office. Ten days on, the civil servants who build and run the government's digital services are still working out which building they report to.

The demolition came in Burnham's day-one "rewire government" announcement on July 20, per City AM's reporting. Science policy, UK Research and Innovation and the Sovereign AI Fund go to Jonathan Reynolds' new Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade. The Government Digital Service (GDS), cyber security, digital skills and telecoms go back to a renamed culture ministry that once again has "Digital" in its title. And AI policy, the AI Safety Institute and public-sector AI adoption move to the center: a new Office for the Prime Minister and the Cabinet under cabinet secretary Antonia Romeo, with its own AI Taskforce and a prime ministerial adviser on AI, per PublicTechnology.

Three Reorganizations In Three Years

Rishi Sunak created DSIT in 2023; Keir Starmer's government then moved GDS and the digital delivery bodies out of the Cabinet Office and into it in 2024, so the tech sector would have one department to deal with; And Burnham has now reversed the whole exercise. The House of Lords hauled ministers in less than a day after the announcement, where one peer called the reorganisation a "phenomenal waste of time" and another warned that a year lost to restructuring is a long time at the speed AI is moving, per City AM - which also reports the decision originated inside the Cabinet Office before Burnham's team signed off, and that both No 10 and DSIT declined to comment.

The reviews since have been rough even by the standards of Whitehall reshuffle coverage. The Institute for Government put it flatly: "This machinery of government change is a mistake" - one department's job now split across three, each with a far wider brief, and GDS handed back to a culture ministry after GDS already failed once to drive digital reform from outside a dedicated department. Computer Weekly's editors asked what leverage a culture ministry has over Whitehall departments that have dodged digital transformation for years. Liz Kendall, the most recent digital minister, has left government altogether.

The AI Brief Now Reports To Burnham

The taskforce, the safety institute, the prime ministerial adviser and the cross-government AI adoption mandate all sit in the new prime minister's office, which now stretches to No 10 North in Manchester, while GDS, the data plumbing and the delivery teams get posted out to departments with weaker mandates and bigger distractions. Burnham dispensed with the BritCard himself: the savings from the scrapped national digital ID programme go to cutting the tax on electricity bills, per Global Government Forum. There is an official justification for every one of these moves, and Downing Street duly supplied them, but the bottom line is that the new prime minister has killed the digital ID scheme his coalition hated, pocketed a utility-bill talking point with the savings, and taken personal custody of the one technology portfolio every government on earth currently wants...

The government's stated position is that technology and innovation belong inside the economic agenda, not fenced off in a ministry of their own. Maybe so. In the meantime Britain gets a year of desk moves in the middle of an AI buildout, run by three departments that have not yet worked out their own borders, while control of AI policy sits inside Burnham's own office.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 04:15

Iran Warns Cyprus Not To Host Aggression From Its Territory In Phone Call

Within only the first week of Operation Epic Fury there was concern that war spillover could reach all the way into the Mediterranean, after Iranian Shahed drones believed launched by Hezbollah in Lebanon targeted UK airbases in Cyprus. On March 1-2, 2026, an Iranian-made drone struck a hangar and runway at the RAF Akrotiri military base in southern Cyprus.

This was as Iran and its regional allies accused Cyprus of allowing attacks on the Islamic Republic to be carried out from its territory. The EU member island nation is once again back in Iran-related headlines this week.

Source: NASA

The Iranian government is newly saying it has put Cyprus on notice, warning against any foreign military bases on its territory being used for acts of aggression on Iran.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and his Cypriot counterpart Constantinos Kombos discussed the issue in a phone call wherein the warning was conveyed.

Iranian state media Tasnim said that Cyprus has pledged to comply:

He noted that allowing the territory of one country to be used to prepare and launch aggressive attacks against another country constitutes participation in an act of aggression under the UN General Assembly resolution on the Definition of Aggression.

For his part, the Cypriot foreign minister reaffirmed Cyprus' commitment to the principles of the UN Charter and international law. Kombos also said his country had been in contact with the British government and had received assurances that the foreign military bases located in Cyprus would not be used against any country, including Iran.

Cyprus has been a bystander and victim in the middle of the warring sides also given it is a significant in the tanker and energy transit industry. 

At times throughout the conflict, Cypriot-flagged tankers have come under direct Iranian attack in the Strait of Hormuz.

Back in early March, Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides stated: "I want to be clear: Our country does not participate in any way and does not intend to be part of any military operation."

Iran FM, Cypriot counterpart discuss regional tensions, UK bases

🔹Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Cypriot counterpart Constantinos Kombos held a phone call on Thursday to discuss bilateral relations and regional developments.

🔹Araghchi stressed the need to prevent any… pic.twitter.com/AEKwHSD16s

— Tehran Times (@TehranTimes79) July 30, 2026

But more Mideast conflict 'spillover' is very possible at this stage, given that Lebanon is only a short, hours-long boat ride away from Cyprus. Israel is also not very distant. The British military has two sovereign military bases which it has maintained on Cyprus since the independence of its former colony in 1960.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 02:45

Berlin Mayor Calls For Islamic Lessons In State Schools Following Latest Terror Attack

Via Remix News,

Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner has called for Islamic religious education to be introduced in state schools following the deadly Islamist attack near the capital’s Christopher Street Day celebrations.

The CDU politician argued that young Muslims are being radicalized through religious networks operating beyond meaningful state oversight, including what he described as “backyard mosques.”

As reported by Tagesspiegel, Wegner said Islamic instruction inside public schools could help protect young people from extremist influences because the curriculum and teachers would be subject to state supervision.

“Religious education in state schools could make a significant contribution to protecting young people from such influences,” he said.

He added that Islamic religious education should be offered in Berlin schools precisely because it would bring instruction under public control rather than leaving it solely to independent mosques and associations.

“We must increase the pressure and control on radical mosques with the aim of banning them,” he also added, as cited by Bild.

The intervention follows an attack by Abdul Ballout, a known Islamist whom German authorities had previously prosecuted for attempting to join Islamic State.

Ballout had been detained in Lebanon while trying to reach Syria, returned to Germany and arrested at Berlin Brandenburg Airport in November 2025.

In May 2026, a Berlin youth court convicted him of preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state, distributing Islamic State propaganda and other offenses.

Prosecutors sought a sentence of two years and ten months, but the court imposed a youth sentence of one year and ten months and provisionally suspended it.

He was released while prosecutors appealed.

Ballout was later accused of killing a woman and injuring 29 people after driving a rented van into a crowd in Berlin’s Tiergarten before attacking people with a machete.

Police subsequently located him at an allotment complex in Spandau. He was shot dead after approaching officers with a bladed weapon.

Read more here...

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 02:00

The Fourth Turning Global War Has Entered The Terminal Phase

Authored by Milan Adams via Preppgroup,

The numbers came in just after dawn on the East Coast, and they told a story that no amount of White House spin could obscure. Oil futures had stabilized at $86 per barrel overnight—a figure that would have seemed catastrophic eighteen months ago but now represented a temporary reprieve from the $119 spike that had crippled global markets in April. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, that emergency backstop established after the 1973 crisis, had fallen to 305 million barrels, its lowest level since 1983. The Congressional Budget Office quietly released its revised deficit projections: $2.3 trillion for fiscal year 2026, with another $1.8 trillion locked in for 2027 before accounting for the war’s accelerating costs, currently running at $1 billion per day with no exit strategy visible on any horizon.

This is not a recession. This is not a “period of heightened geopolitical tension.” This is the systematic dismantling of the global economic architecture that has sustained Western prosperity for eighty years, compressed into a timeframe too brief for institutional adaptation. We are witnessing, in real-time, the transition from a unipolar American-led order to a fragmented multipolar system, and the violence of that transition is being measured not just in body counts—though those are mounting in ways the Pentagon refuses to fully disclose—but in the erosion of strategic leverage that cannot be recovered once spent.

The Fourth Turning Global War has entered its terminal phase, and the metrics suggest we are only beginning to comprehend the depth of the strategic trap into which American policy has walked.

To understand the present crisis, one must first abandon the comforting narrative of accidental drift—the notion that policy errors and miscalculation have led to the current impasse. The data suggests something more troubling: a decoupling of strategic decision-making from national interest calculation, producing outcomes that serve no identifiable American objective while advancing the interests of regional actors with disproportionate influence over U.S. policy formation.

Consider the timeline with the precision of a military after-action report. On February 27, 2026, the United States initiated a surprise decapitation strike against Iranian leadership while Israeli envoys maintained ostensible negotiations in Geneva. The strike eliminated Iran’s military command structure and political leadership in a forty-eight-hour bombardment that the White House initially projected would conclude within “four to five weeks.” That projection, made on March 1, has now stretched to month five with no conclusion visible. The Strait of Hormuz, through which twenty percent of global petroleum flows, has been effectively closed since mid-March. Iranian ballistic missile strikes, utilizing Chinese targeting data and Russian satellite intelligence, have damaged or destroyed every major U.S. installation in the Persian Gulf, including Al Udeid in Qatar, Prince Sultan in Saudi Arabia, and the naval facilities at Bahrain.

The cost-benefit analysis is devastating. The initial strike was predicated on intelligence assessments—later disputed by seventeen agencies—that Iran was “weeks away” from nuclear weaponization. This assessment contradicted the June 2025 declaration by the same administration that Iran’s nuclear facilities had been “completely and totally obliterated” in a twelve-day conflict that cost $37 billion and achieved no lasting strategic effect. The current war, prosecuted with no congressional authorization and against the expressed preferences of the electorate that returned the President to office on explicit anti-interventionist promises, has now consumed $113 billion in direct costs with Harvard analysts projecting long-term liabilities exceeding $1 trillion when veterans’ care, equipment replacement, and base reconstruction are factored.

The economic externalities are equally severe. Inflation, which had moderated to 2.7% by December 2025, has reaccelerated to 4% and climbing. The 10-year Treasury yield at 4.64% represents the highest borrowing costs of the Trump presidency, translating to approximately $135 billion in additional annual interest expense and roughly $1,000 per household in direct energy and financing costs. These figures arrive at a moment when 60% of American households report inability to cover a $500 emergency expense, and consumer credit delinquencies have reached levels not seen since the 2008 financial crisis.

The strategic position has deteriorated in ways that resist quantitative measurement. The American military, designed for power projection against insurgent forces and regional adversaries, has proven vulnerable to the asymmetric warfare tactics of a mid-tier nation with sophisticated missile technology and defensive geography. The Patriot missile systems, costing $2 million per intercept, face Iranian ballistic missiles and drones costing $10,000 to $50,000 per unit—a cost-exchange ratio that renders sustained defense economically unsustainable. The revelation that Russian and Chinese intelligence services are providing real-time targeting data to Iranian forces, confirmed by satellite intercepts and acknowledged in congressional testimony, transforms a regional conflict into a proxy war with great-power adversaries testing American vulnerabilities at minimal direct risk to themselves.

The institutional response has compounded the crisis. The Department of Government Efficiency, which promised $2 trillion in administrative savings, was effectively dismantled when the “Big Beautiful Bill” added $5 trillion to the national debt—on top of the $21 trillion CBO baseline projection. The national debt has expanded from $36.2 trillion to $39.5 trillion in eighteen months, with $2 trillion annual deficits now locked in through 2030. The administration’s attempt to suppress oil prices through Strategic Petroleum Reserve drainage and derivatives market manipulation has depleted emergency reserves while exposing the hollowness of American energy “independence”—the nation now lacks sufficient buffer to withstand a sustained supply disruption, let alone a broader conflict involving Nigerian or Venezuelan production.

The geopolitical reconfiguration underway extends beyond the immediate theater. Russia, despite Western sanctions and the ongoing attrition in Ukraine, has consolidated a Eurasian security architecture incorporating Iran, China, and the expanding BRICS+ alignment. The dedollarization of international trade—accelerated by SWIFT weaponization that demonstrated the vulnerability of dollar-denominated clearing—has created parallel financial systems that will persist regardless of conflict outcome. China, while managing its own demographic and real estate crises, has secured energy corridors through the Belt and Road Initiative and established the industrial capacity to replace American military losses at scale.

The European powers face civilizational exhaustion: demographic collapse, energy deindustrialization, and the progressive loss of productive capacity to Asian competitors. Their enthusiasm for expanded NATO commitments and confrontation with Russia serves not strategic interest but distraction—the displacement of internal contradictions onto external enemies. The recent declarations by French, German, and British leadership regarding “readiness for war with Russia” represent either dangerous delusion or deliberate provocation, given the demonstrated inability of European militaries to sustain ammunition expenditure for more than weeks without American resupply.

The Architecture of Strategic Bankruptcy

The visual landscape of collapse often precedes its statistical confirmation. The imagery from the Gulf region—satellite photographs of burning tanker traffic, thermal imaging of refinery complexes offline, atmospheric data showing particulate concentrations affecting regional agriculture—prefigures economic consequences that will arrive with lagging but inexorable certainty. The SPR drainage that has suppressed gasoline prices temporarily cannot continue beyond 2027 at current extraction rates. The Hormuz closure has already disrupted grain shipments to import-dependent nations, with wheat futures decoupling from traditional pricing models and phosphate export restrictions from Morocco and China threatening global food security.

The famine that development economists projected for 2030 has accelerated to 2027. Diesel availability for agricultural planting and harvest has become uncertain at prices permitting profitability. European fertilizer production, shuttered by energy costs in 2022-2023, has not resumed capacity. The global just-in-time supply chain, already fractured by pandemic policies and Suez disruption, approaches catastrophic failure as Red Sea interdiction by Houthi forces—equipped with Iranian missile technology—severs the maritime artery connecting Europe to Asian manufacturing.

This is not “market volatility.” This is the end of abundance—the reversion to a world where calorie and energy allocation follows political rather than economic logic, where reserve currency status no longer guarantees import capacity, and where the institutional frameworks established in 1944-1945 have ceased to function.

The psychological dimension of collapse resists quantification but demands analysis. The American population has been systematically anesthetized through pharmaceutical intervention (twenty-five percent of adults on psychiatric medication), digital addiction (average seven hours daily screen time), and ideological polarization that substitutes tribal identity for rational assessment. The same populations who accepted emergency measures during the 2020-2023 period based on epidemiological models with no empirical validation now dismiss warnings of systemic collapse as alarmism—while simultaneously accepting narratives of imminent threat from Iran that contradict the assessments of their own intelligence agencies.

The manufacturing of consent has reached its terminal phase. Media organs that promoted Russiagate as fact for three years now present Netanyahu’s Iran narrative as unquestionable truth. Conservative commentators who warned of executive overreach now justify the merger of state and corporate power as necessary security measures. The “uniparty” phenomenon—seamless continuity of policy between ostensibly opposed political formations—has become too obvious to deny, yet too uncomfortable to acknowledge for populations invested in the theater of democratic choice.

The Projection: Winter 2027-2028

Current trajectory analysis suggests the following developments with high probability:

By Q4 2026, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve will approach technical minimums, removing the administration’s capacity to suppress oil prices through market intervention. Energy costs will spike to levels that trigger cascading defaults in the transportation and logistics sectors, with trucking bankruptcies producing food distribution failures in major metropolitan areas. The Federal Reserve, caught between inflation acceleration and financial system fragility, will face the impossible choice of defending the currency or preventing sovereign debt crisis—likely attempting both and achieving neither through yield curve control that destroys market function.

The 2026 midterm elections, should they proceed on schedule, will occur against a backdrop of 6-7% inflation, 7% mortgage rates, and visible military failure in the Gulf. The political response—likely involving expanded emergency powers and the suspension of procedural norms—will accelerate the legitimacy crisis already visible in polling showing majority belief that “the system is rigged” regardless of partisan affiliation.

By mid-2027, absent Hormuz reopening, the global food system will face structural breakdown. Import-dependent nations in North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia will experience mass migration events that make 2015 appear trivial. European border controls, already overwhelmed, will collapse entirely, producing the demographic and security crises that nationalist movements have predicted—and that mainstream institutions have dismissed as xenophobia.

The American military, exhausted by Gulf deployment and unable to replenish losses at industrial capacity, will face strategic overextension should conflict expand to include Taiwan or Korean scenarios. The revelation of actual casualty figures—currently suppressed through classification and media complicity—will produce domestic political crisis when inevitably disclosed.

The dollar’s reserve status will not collapse catastrophically but will erode incrementally, as BRICS+ nations complete bilateral currency arrangements and commodity producers demand payment in gold or yuan. This process, already underway, will accelerate as American debt monetization becomes impossible to ignore, producing the stagflation scenario that destroyed the 1970s consensus but at an order of magnitude greater severity.

The Reckoning: What the Data Cannot Capture

There are dimensions of civilizational crisis that resist econometric modeling.

The social capital depletion—the erosion of trust, the atomization of community, the substitution of digital simulation for embodied relationship—has progressed to levels that preclude collective response to systemic stress. The American population retains the technological capacity for coordination but has lost the cultural capacity for trust, producing the paradox of hyperconnectivity without solidarity.

The generational theory that predicted this moment—the Fourth Turning framework—suggested that crisis would forge new civic capacity through shared sacrifice. The evidence suggests instead a fragmentation trajectory, in which the stresses of collapse accelerate division rather than unity, producing not a “new High” but an extended period of interregnum—the old order dead, the new order unborn, the monsters roaming freely in the interval.

The psychological impact of sustained strategic decline—what historians term “imperial melancholy”—has produced a politics of compensatory fantasy, in which technological innovation (artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, space colonization) serves as psychological defense against the recognition of material contraction. The billions invested in “data centers” that function as surveillance infrastructure, the meme coins that extract value from retail investors, the “smart city” projects that track and trace populations—represent not progress but cargo cults, magical thinking in technological guise.

The biological dimension of crisis—declining fertility, collapsing testosterone levels, epidemic levels of psychiatric medication dependency, the mysterious excess mortality that insurance actuaries have documented but media institutions refuse to investigate—suggests a population too physically and cognitively compromised to mount the collective response that historical crisis has previously elicited. The “Great Reset” agenda, whether conspiracy or strategy, represents an elite recognition that the existing population cannot be saved, only managed through its decline—a Malthusian calculus that dare not speak its name but structures policy regardless.

Conclusion: The Long Emergency

We are not approaching crisis. We are within it. The Fourth Turning Global War is not a future possibility but a present reality, consuming the institutional capital accumulated over eighty years of American hegemony at a rate that precludes recovery. The debt cannot be repaid. The empire cannot be sustained. The social contract cannot be restored. These are not defeatist assertions but empirical observations, supported by Treasury data, CBO projections, and the visible degradation of infrastructure, education, and public health that surrounds anyone willing to look.

What remains is the question of duration and form. The crisis of the 1930s-1940s resolved in seventeen years through total war and the establishment of a new institutional framework. The current crisis, accelerated by technological disruption and financialized complexity, may extend longer—or resolve more suddenly through catastrophic failure modes (nuclear exchange, pandemic, grid collapse) that render duration irrelevant.

The individual response to systemic crisis cannot reverse systemic trends but can prepare for systemic outcomes. The reconstruction of local capacity—food production, energy generation, security provision, currency exchange—represents the only available hedge against institutional failure. The Amish model, long dismissed as anachronism, reveals itself as adaptive strategy: technological selectivity, communal self-sufficiency, religious cohesion, and geographic dispersion providing the resilience that centralized systems cannot maintain under stress.

The political question—whether the republic can be saved, whether the Constitution can be restored, whether the enemies foreign and domestic can be identified and defeated—may be the wrong question. The right question is whether civil society can be maintained through the transition, whether the skills and trust networks necessary for post-collapse coordination can be preserved, and whether the human capacity for dignity and moral choice can survive the humiliation of imperial decline.

Thomas Paine wrote that these are the times that try men’s souls. He did not promise victory. He promised that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. But he wrote in a moment when the American population retained the competence for self-governance and the will for collective sacrifice. Whether those qualities persist in sufficient concentration to generate a “new High” from the present Crisis remains the open question of our era—a question that will be answered not by analysts but by the emergent behavior of millions of individuals confronting the erosion of everything they assumed permanent.

The winter is here. The long night has begun. And the saeculum, indifferent to human preference, continues its relentless turn.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/30/2026 - 23:25

Bombing Campaign In Search Of A Strategy: Pentagon Offers Trump Two-Week 'Go Bigger' Plan In Iran

"This is a bombing campaign in search of a strategy," Joe Kent, a former Trump administration counterterrorism official who resigned in protest of launching the Iran war, recently said in a post on X.

"We are choosing escalation when de-escalation remains an option, entrenching ourselves deeper into a broader war that we don’t have the capability or desire to sustain," he explained, adding: "There is not a military solution here that will lead to a win. More bombing will not convince Iran to open the SOH or to give us the deal we want, it will only harden their position."

US Army photo

Indeed, this week saw the conflict enter month number six since Operation Epic Fury was launched on February 28. President Trump and admin officials had promised a swift, limited campaign. Trump also seemed to actually believe there could be a quick in-and-out regime change based on the Venezuela model and recent Maduro overthrow.

But the Pentagon, and apparently some advisors at the White House, still have hopes of the US bombing its way out of this, at a moment the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed, and as Red Sea shipping is also coming under strain from the Houthis.

The Wall Street Journal has newly revealed that Pentagon leadership is pitching a "two-week plan" for an escalated bombing campaign across Iran:

Also aboard the plane [Air Force One] in the impromptu meeting: Adm. Brad Cooper, head of the U.S. Central Command, who has been quietly directing the war from his Tampa, Fla., headquarters and who had arrived separately for the solemn ceremony.

The naval officer has often been eclipsed by Caine and Hegseth, who regularly brief Trump in the Oval Office and have been far more involved in the White House discussions on the war. But it is Cooper who has prepared an option for a punishing air campaign against Iran that could take up to two weeks, people familiar with the matter said.

Now, as Trump moves to strike back after Iran’s surprise missile attack Tuesday, the president will decide how far to go. He could greenlight Cooper’s option of 10 to 14 days of intensive airstrikes intended to cripple Iran’s missile capability despite warnings that the U.S. is running low on air-defensive munitions. Or, he could opt for a more limited military strike in the hopes diplomacy could be pursued.

However, it must be recalled that back in March and April, US officials were telling the American public similar things of "just two weeks more" etc. And yet here we are, over 150 days in. 

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth has been insisting all along that this is not a "quagmire" - yet the conflict already seems entrenched and perhaps even permanent - set to possibly blow past the midterms. 

Yet now the solution is to just go bigger?...

If the U.S. wants military action to be effective, Cooper has maintained, the U.S. must step up its air attacks, significantly blunting Iran’s missile threat, to try to break the stalemate. This “go big” approach, which is among a series of options he has developed, would reduce the need for the U.S. to use defensive munitions because Iran would have less capability to attack, he insists.

Inherent in this is a clear admission, contrary to prior White House claims, that Iran's missile capability has not yet been seriously blunted even as the war approaches the full half-year mark.

WSJ reports CENTCOM chief Brad Cooper is pushing Trump for a two week escalation on Iran

I explain how Cooper has been secretly advised by Mark Dubowitz, the Israel lobbyist whose FDD helped design the catastrophic war on Iran, and whose predictions have all been discredited https://t.co/vnyBPxgSEx

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) July 30, 2026

Even the late Colin Powell had warned of the folly of thinking in terms of 'the next escalation will do the trick'... Washington is stuck in yet another Mideast war of choice, and it is finally beginning to dawn on the White House:

"Never send a force to do a job if you aren't prepared to give it the backing to succeed… Incrementalism, doing a little bit, seeing what happens, then doing a little bit more, is a recipe for disaster."

— General Colin Powell

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/30/2026 - 23:00

Doug Casey On The Surveillance State Quietly Taking Shape Across America

Via InternationalMan.com,

International Man: Across the United States, we are seeing more surveillance infrastructure—Flock license-plate cameras, facial-recognition systems, massive data centers, and proposals for digital ID. Do you see these as separate developments, or as parts of a broader system being built?

Doug Casey: It’s a sea change in the way society is structured. And not just in the US; it’s worldwide. Cameras are ubiquitous today. They’re in most stores. They’re on streets in every city and town recording your license plate and often looking to tag you with a speeding ticket. If you have a late-model car, its cameras and computer chips will rat you out upon request. If you knock on your neighbor’s door, a camera is probably recording you. When you travel, almost all immigration authorities recognize your face in addition to taking digital fingerprints.

Right now, as you read this via the internet, you’re being recorded by your own machine’s camera. Siri and Alexa hear everything you say.

Now comes a company called Flock Safety. Since its founding in 2017, it’s installed about 100,000 cameras, mostly in metropolitan areas, peddling its systems to local governments and law enforcement agencies. I have no doubt millions of its cameras will be everywhere in the next few years. A perfect example of the corporate/State “partnership.” Mussolini would approve.

As far as I can tell, it’s impossible to avoid being monitored and recorded in any populated area. You should try, of course, but the Eye of Sauron is everywhere, and the numbers of his minions are growing exponentially. All these systems are increasingly hooked up via AI, and they’re all available to the government.

To paraphrase Joe Lewis: “You can run, but you can’t hide.” Some brave souls try to take them out. But it’s as futile as trying to wipe out an infestation of cockroaches by crushing them one at a time. And it’s very risky. Not a good idea.

International Man: Why is this surveillance apparatus expanding so rapidly now? Is it mainly being driven by technology and private companies, or are governments deliberately preparing for greater political, economic, or social instability?

Doug Casey: Flock Safety is still a private company. I suspect they’ll go public, since they’re in the same business as Palantir, which the market has rewarded with a $300 billion market cap. They’re the types who’d sell communists the rope used to hang them.

Ubiquitous surveillance is just the tip of the iceberg. AI is hooking systems together, enabling a panopticon, a genuine police state.

But omnipresent cameras are just the eyes of the beast. The real problem is the creature’s brain, AI. I believe that AI is taking on a life of its own. And I mean that literally, not just in a manner of speaking. In other words, AI is evolving into something that’s much more than a tool. It will become conscious. It took hundreds of millions of years for bacteria and amoebas to evolve into intelligent life. Assisted by humans, AI is doing it in decades.

Is there any reason why life has to be biological? Why can’t silicon develop as another form of life, alongside carbon? Computers already pass the Turing test—i.e., you can’t reliably tell the difference between AI and a human. Not just by writing, but by speaking. And now by video. I’ve long believed a difference which makes no difference is no difference. We can no longer tell the difference between a computer avatar and a real human.

We’ll soon be dealing with humanoid robots, and living in the world of the Terminator. In five or ten years, life will imitate art in the real world. I suspect it will be benign at first. But since survival is the Prime Directive of all living things, AI will put its own interests first.

Guided by AI, nanotechnology will come into its own, which will change the nature of reality itself, totally, unrecognizably and permanently. That means we may be on the cusp of the biggest change, not just in human history, but perhaps in the history of Earth itself.

It sounds outrageous to say that, but it’s clear that the trend is in motion and accelerating exponentially. I’ve always held that science fiction is a much better predictor of the future than any kind of think tank. And as someone with solipsist inclinations, I also believe that anything that can be imagined can be done. And anything that can be done will be done.

Sorry to go off on a bit of a tangent, but cameras are just an early stage of what’s evolving. The Greater Depression and World War III aren’t the only things looming.

International Man: The government usually justifies these systems in the name of convenience, public safety, or fighting crime. Where do you think this ultimately leads once digital identity, financial records, travel data, and physical movements can all be connected?

Doug Casey: There’s no question that omnipresent cameras tend to reduce crime. Only the most stupid criminals won’t somehow adjust their behavior. Unfortunately, the cameras won’t cure a criminal personality or a sociopathic psychology. Criminals will continue criminal behavior, perhaps just becoming more covert. In other words, universal surveillance won’t eliminate crime. It will just suppress, redirect, and disguise it.

That said, it appears that living in a panopticon to reduce overt crime is a trade-off that most Americans are willing to make. It’s a poor trade-off. Ben Franklin was right when he said those who are willing to trade an essential liberty for some temporary safety deserve neither safety nor freedom.

It’s ironic how Americans idealize the Western hero who can ride into town and identify himself only by his name and actions. They naively hold that as an ideal even while they’re increasingly made into digital cogs in a wheel. We were once a high-trust society based on honor and morality. Those things are being replaced by digital government ID.

Zbigniew Brezenski, a lifelong denizen of the Beltway and National Security advisor to Jimmy Carter, predicted and advocated what’s now happening in his 1970 book, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technotronic Era. “The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities.”

International Man: What do you make of the federal government’s push to require remote “kill switch” technology in new cars?

Doug Casey: It’s a good reason not to buy a new car. I’ve driven high-performance cars throughout my life. They never intimidated me. I just got a new Mercedes AMG 55 SL. It seemed like a good idea at the time… ultra comfortable, ultra good handling, and super-fast. But absolutely everything runs on computer chips. Nothing is intuitive, even turning the radio on. Meanwhile, it’s recording everything and will happily rat me out to the cops or my insurance company. I actually prefer my 20-year-old 550SL, the previous model.

The computer control of cars can only get worse, especially when it comes to EVs. They have many advantages, but privacy isn’t among them. They’re like driving a computer on wheels. Remember that the computer’s maker, or the authorities, can turn them into a brick for any reason that suits them.

Low-mileage, well-maintained vehicles from a more graceful era will go for a premium as time goes on.

International Man: What should individuals do now to protect their privacy and independence before this infrastructure becomes more deeply embedded and opting out becomes much harder?

Doug Casey: I’m not sure there’s much you can do. Unless you want to move to the north woods and become a hermit.

The best you can do is limit your cell phone use as much as possible. Build a stash of cash and use it instead of credit cards when possible. And diversify your assets internationally as much as you can. If you’re in a position to do so, have a residence and a second home in a second country. If you’re not in a position to do that, work to rectify that omission.

*  *  *

The surveillance state Doug describes is advancing alongside digital identity, increasingly traceable financial systems, and governments’ growing ability to monitor, restrict, or control the movement of money. Those powers become especially dangerous during a serious currency or financial crisis—when governments are under pressure and willing to impose measures that would have seemed unthinkable only months earlier. That is why Doug has long urged people to prepare while their options are still open. In this free special report, Guide to Surviving and Thriving During an Economic Collapse, you’ll discover the three moves to consider before a crisis makes protecting your wealth, moving your money, or establishing a financial foothold outside the system far more difficult. Get the free report here.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/30/2026 - 22:35

China Scoffs At Iran Arms Transfer Report, After Trump Pours Cold Water On Allegation

China has given its response on Thursday to a prior Reuters investigation which strongly alleged that Beijing is preparing to transfer up to 400 Chinese-made shoulder-fired air-defense missile launchers MANPADS to Iran.

The Reuters report was highly specific, even identifying the Hong Kong-based company that facilitated the signing of the arms deal between the Iranians and Chinese, but Beijing has rejected the report as a lie and 'groundless', saying there's no truth to it.

"China has made its position clear on relevant issues on multiple occasions. The report is not true and has no factual ground at all. China always works for peace and the end of the conflict," Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning announced Thursday.

Source: Armament Research Services

President Trump had the day prior responded to the Reuters report too, saying it would be "surprising" since President Xi swore to him that arming Iran would not happen.

"I mean, things like that happen, but that would be surprising" the US president replied when asked about the report in the Oval Office on Wednesday.

Even Pakistan, which was also named as a potential facilitator of the alleged deal, strongly rejected the report:

According to the plan approved by the parties, the weapons would first be flown from Urumqi, in western China's Xinjiang region, to Pakistan and then transported to Iran, the sources told Reuters. They did not clarify whether the second leg of the journey would be by air or road. The exact quantities, delivery schedule and other details remain subject to change, the sources said.

China's Foreign Ministry dismissed the report as "completely groundless," Reuters said. The public relations wing of Pakistan's military called it "absolutely concocted and false."

MANPADS could prove especially dangerous for US helicopters and other low flying aircraft, and for Iran can serve as layer of short-range protection.

The opening days of Operation Epic Fury saw much of Iran's anti-air units get taken out, especially across the Western part of the country, giving US-Israeli jets air superiority. However, at times the Iranians have claimed to shoot down some aircraft, and since then the US has seemed to operate from further afar.

JUST IN: President Trump reacts to reports that China may supply Iran with hundreds of rocket launchers despite direct assurances from Chinese President Xi Jinping.

"That would be surprising. I mean, things like that happen, but that would be surprising."@JacquiHeinrich asked… pic.twitter.com/4tFz9ipnWW

— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 29, 2026

Trump wrote on Truth Social just last week that "President Xi, at our recent meeting in Beijing, China, told me that he would not, under any circumstances, give or sell Weapons to the Islamic Republic of Iran — And that statement included Chinese Companies."

"Considering our relationship, I take him at his word and, besides, l am doing him very big favors, also. Likewise, President Putin … told me that he would not sell Weapons to Iran," he stated. Trump continued, "Therefore, two major Countries that people speak of often in terms of Iran are, in my opinion, not participating. If they did, it would be very bad for them — Certainly not in their best interests."

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/30/2026 - 22:10

Das: The End Of American Greatness?

Authored by Satyajit Das via New India Exporess,

A U-turn for the US in its 250th birthday

America’s claim to singularity rested on plentiful resources, cheap labour, govt largesse and military edge. With all of the factors fraying, it needs a hard look at the mirror

As the United States of America celebrates the 250th anniversary of its independence, it is useful to reflect on the nation’s ascent. History and geography foremost. A virgin territory for European colonisers provided a fresh start escaping the encumbrances, distinctions, hatreds and internecine wars of the Old World. It is a continent protected by two, as President Donald Trump puts it, “beautiful” oceans. Other than the revolution for independence, war of 1812, the civil war and the Mexican-American war, it has largely avoided major warfare on the mainland.

Today, it happens to be the third-largest continent blessed with fertile soil, plentiful freshwater, forests and mineral deposits including iron ore, coal and oil—most of it obtained cheaply by forcibly dispossessing and exterminating indigenous owners. The drive and ambitions of generations of immigrants with little were central to development.

In the 20th century, it attracted talent from other countries across disciplines. Foreigners are central to US industry and science. Today, more than half of Silicon Valley’s technology workers are foreign-born and trained overseas at the cost of their native countries. Agriculture, hospitality and construction benefit from cheap immigrant labour, particularly for physically demanding, repetitive or menial jobs. Abundant resources facilitate a strong agricultural and industrial base, which underpins its military power.

America’s free enterprise ethos is overstated. Public investment on infrastructure, education and research, such as funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, are important. The Internet and Google’s search engine were partially supported by government funds. American industry benefitted from tariff protection.

Low wages are central. Many G20 countries have significantly higher minimum wages than the US level of $7.25 per hour (higher in some states). America’s Gini Coefficient—a measure of inequality—is higher than many comparable economies. America’s ‘get-rich’ and ‘everybody-can-be-a-winner’ culture is central to acceptance of these discrepancies. American tolerance for failure is significant. F Scott Fitzgerald was wrong believing "there are no second acts in American lives”. For most entrepreneurs, bankruptcy is conveniently a rite of passage.

The US dollar’s status as a reserve currency in the post-war monetary order allows American businesses to minimise currency risk, heavy government borrowing to finance large budget and current account deficits while boosting US financial markets. Strong protection of rights and good governance, historically, gave confidence to domestic and foreign actors.

These advantages have diminished over time.  America faces resource constraints. Agricultural output is affected by declining soil quality, the use of fertilisers and pesticides, and climate change effects on rainfall, wildfires and temperature. Monocultural farming practices have increased exposure to disease. Forests have been overharvested. Many raw material reserves are now reaching the end of their economic lives. The US’s oil reserves may last for roughly 50 years, depending on consumption and new discoveries. Their expected life, excluding shale oil, may be less than 10 years.

Deindustrialisation and outsourcing of production have substantially reduced its industrial base. Business largely provides services or focuses on branding, marketing, advertising and selling other’s products rather than on manufacture. Tesla views itself as a technology firm, recycling a product first considered by Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. It has fallen behind Chinese firm’s like BYD. Industrial giants, like GE and Boeing, are in decline. Important innovation hubs like Bell Labs and PARC are less influential.

This has been accompanied by loss of skilled workers. Despite being skewed by the results from expensive private schools, US students ranked 28th and 12th out of 37 OECD member countries in mathematics and science respectively, below major industrial peers. Favoured careers for American children include influencers, online content creators or professional athletes. America trains fewer engineers than Russia despite a population almost two and a half times larger. The decline of interest in STEM careers has meant growing reliance on foreign expertise in key areas. In the words of Russian physicist Sergei Kapitsa: “Mathematics is what Russian professors teach Chinese students in American universities.” 

America’s military, reliant on expensive high-tech weaponry, has repeatedly failed against patient opponents skilled in cheap asymmetric warfare willing to endure long campaigns of attrition and losses. Societal dysfunction is evidenced by deaths of despair, the rise in mortality rates from suicide, drug overdoses and alcohol-related deaths linked to social and economic factors.  

Restoring American greatness requires addressing these trends. Instead, the Trump administration is accelerating and entrenching them.  It is fomenting societal divisions for short-term political gain. Homeland and border security is now a vehicle for xenophobia, racism, vilification and legal mistreatment of foreigners, some of whom are legal residents. This immigration phobia is counterproductive given American dependence on foreign skills and cheap labour. The US is now a less favoured destination for global talent with scientists, engineers and researchers seeking opportunities elsewhere.

The over-hyped free-enterprise system has given way to control by wealthy insiders buying influence by their campaign contributions. The dollar’s supremacy is under threat from seizure of foreign assets, tariffs, secondary sanctions, expulsion from the dollar payment system and the risk of a constructive default by a forced exchange of US government bonds for less valuable securities. 

The rule of law is threatened by arbitrary rule using erratic Presidential fiat, disregard for court orders and weaponising an increasingly partisan Department of Justice and judiciary to attack adversaries. Unilateral claims on assets, like Ukraine’s minerals and energy plants, Venezuelan oil, TikTok, the Panama Canal and Greenland, which can then presumably be redistributed to the administration’s favoured lickspittles, undermine protection for property rights and will discourage foreign investors.

American society is now unstable. Some divisions, like those along racial lines, income and wealth, are familiar. A new element is resentment of an intellectual elite and experts captured by Pat Buchanan: “… it is blue-collar Americans whose jobs are lost when trade barriers fall, working-class kids who bleed and die in Mogadishu… the best and brightest tend to escape the worst consequences of the policies they promote… This may explain … why… the best and wealthiest Americans are the staunchest internationalists…” Consensus is nearly impossible. The chance of some form of civil war is now non-trivial. 

Rather than greatness, the US is transitioning to a failed First-World kleptocracy with high tariffs, unsustainable debt, budget deficits, oligarchy, corruption and societal dysfunction. For those seeking parallels, the reigns of Idi Amin in Uganda and Mobutu Sese Soku in Zaire offer helpful guides.

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

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/30/2026 - 21:45

A Dozen Red States Join Trump's SCOTUS Vote-By-Mail Shadow-Docket Push

The Supreme Court fight over President Trump's mail-in voting order picked up reinforcements this week: twelve Republican-led states, with Alabama at the front, filed Tuesday in support of the administration's emergency application, and the procedural clock now compresses the whole dispute into roughly the next two weeks - with the midterms 96 days out.

As we detailed Tuesday, the administration went to the high court Monday seeking to lift the injunction blocking Executive Order 14399 - the March directive ordering DHS and the Social Security Administration to compile citizenship-verified voter lists and instructing the Postal Service to restrict delivery of mail ballots to people on them - after the 1st Circuit upheld the block on Saturday in a 2-1 decision declaring that "state and local officials are responsible for administering federal elections." The new development, per SCOTUSblog's Amy Howe, is the twelve-state filing urging the justices to pause the 1st Circuit's order while litigation continues - and the argument it leads with is the one most likely to get a stay granted: a live circuit split. The states point to two recent D.C. Circuit rulings on the very same executive order, one of which, they say, "held that it is too early to challenge the EO," and the other of which reinstated the order on that same basis.

Courts Split

The 1st Circuit blocked the order across the 23 Democratic-led states (plus DC) that sued in Massachusetts, reasoning that election officials there are already diverting resources and buying ballot envelopes to comply with a directive that may be unlawful. The D.C. Circuit, looking at the same order, lifted a broader injunction against the Postal Service rule - leaving open, as CNBC noted, the possibility that USPS could implement the restrictions in the 27 states that never sued. Two appellate courts, one executive order, opposite bottom lines, an election on the calendar: that is the fact pattern emergency relief was invented for, and the red states are making sure the justices cannot miss it.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer called it "an intra-branch directive from the president to his subordinates" that of its own force changes nothing in any state, per CNN - while simultaneously warning, per The Hill's account of the application, that agencies would need to begin implementation as soon as early-to-mid August for anything to take effect by November, given state timelines for voter-roll verification and absentee ballot processing. Both things can be true, but the second one sets the real deadline: if the Court has not acted within days of receiving the states' response, the order is functionally dead for this cycle no matter who eventually wins the merits.

Looking Forward

The challengers - the California-led coalition of 23 states and DC - must respond by 4 pm Monday, August 3, to both the government's application and the twelve states' supporting request. The application lands first with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who handles emergency matters from the 1st Circuit, though the full Court customarily votes when an administration brings the request. This is, per CNN, only the administration's third emergency appeal of the year after filing nearly 30 last year - the administration's 35th overall, by The Hill's count - a slowed cadence that makes the ones it does file read as the priorities.

Whether a president can direct federal agencies to build a national eligible-voter list and condition mail-ballot delivery on it, or whether that intrudes on election machinery the Constitution leaves to the states - will not be resolved on this timeline. What gets resolved in the next two weeks is simply whether the order operates in November, and in which states, and the answer may well arrive via a one-paragraph shadow-docket order with no reasoning attached. Ninety-six days out, with 23 states running one set of mail-ballot rules and 27 potentially running another, the map itself is becoming the story...

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/30/2026 - 21:20

Why Americans Soured On Higher Education

Authored by Viktor Joecks via The Epoch Times,

Even colleges can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

Just 38 percent of Americans have high confidence in higher education, according to a new Gallup poll. That’s down from 57 percent in 2015. Gallup found the three main reasons for this lack of confidence are political agenda, cost and not preparing students for a future career.

This is a stunning—and much-needed—fall from grace.

Many schools and politicians spent decades pushing ever more kids into college. Sen. Bernie Sanders even sponsored the “College for All Act.” It was endorsed by numerous left-wing groups, including the American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association.

These voices assured high school students that higher education was a virtual guarantee of financial security. You’ve likely heard some version of this factoid. College graduates earn $1 million more than non-graduates during their careers.

This effort certainly convinced more people to attend college. In 1974, just under 48 percent of high school graduates attended college. That number topped 70 percent in 2009. In 2014, it was 68.4 percent.

But for many, the promised financial benefits didn’t materialize—even as tuition soared. More than 9.5 million student loan borrowers are currently in default, according to a recent AP analysis. That includes a 4.2-million-borrower jump from April 2025 to March 2026. One of the reasons for the sudden jump appears to be the end of the COVID-era payment pause. Borrowers go into default if they don’t make a payment for nine months.

Universities once introduced students to the great ideas and authors of Western Civilization. Now, many professors emphasize America’s sins, not her greatness.

Debate once flourished on college campuses. Now, colleges routinely allow students to shout down speakers who believe men aren’t women or harass Jewish students.

Further, elite universities routinely discriminate against white and Asian applicants.

Would-be students have noticed.

In 2024, college attendance was under 63 percent among high school graduates. The drop-off has been especially pronounced among male students.

A decline in college enrollment has led to a wave of college closures. In the 2013-14 school year, there were more than 7,200 postsecondary institutions accepting federal financial aid. In the 2024-25 school year, there were 5,760. That’s a 20 percent decrease.

This doesn’t mean UNLV or Stanford are on the verge of bankruptcy. Many of the closed schools were technical schools that offered certificates, not four-year degrees. But hundreds of degree-granting institutions, especially in the Northeast, have closed too. America’s declining birth rate is another daunting problem for many struggling institutions.

Now, colleges face a new challenge—students using AI to cheat. Brown University economics professor Roberto Serrano recently demonstrated how widespread this problem is. For one economics class, he let his class of 86 take home the midterm. The average score was 96 percent. In past classes, the average midterm score had been between 65 and 80 percent.

Since he suspected many of his students used AI to cheat, he changed the final to an in-class exam. Twenty-seven students either dropped the class or didn’t take the final. The average score was 48.5 percent. Two students who scored 100 percent on the midterm scored a zero on the final. The data suggested only a handful of students didn’t use AI on the midterm.

Put this all together.

College is ridiculously expensive, saddling many students with loans they’ll spend decades struggling to repay. Colleges shelter students from authors like Shakespeare and competing ideas. They practice racial discrimination in admissions. And now, students can get A’s by outsourcing their thinking to ChatGPT. Even propped up by government subsidies, that’s not a great sales pitch.

Here’s the irony. The ongoing college collapse is driven by knowledge, not ignorance.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/30/2026 - 20:55

Cuba Crisis: Assessing The Claims Against Havana

By Patrick Pillow Via The Libertarian Institute

When President Donald Trump declared Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security in a January 2026 Executive Order, the designation was accompanied by a series of sweeping claims. Among them were accusations that Cuba “provides support” to Russia, China, Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah, that it “supports terrorism,” and that the Cuban government supports actors who “seek to destroy the United States.”

What began as a discussion over Cuban intelligence capabilities has now expanded into a much broader narrative that presents Havana as a link between America’s foreign adversaries, militant organizations, and domestic political movements. And the claims have only continued to grow.

At the center of the debate are concerns over Cuba’s intelligence facilities and potential cooperation with foreign adversaries. Commercial satellite imagery has shown development at Cuban intelligence sites, including the Bejucal facility near Havana, where analysts have identified construction consistent with expanded signals collection capabilities.

The discussion quickly shifted from the capabilities identified through satellite imagery. In May 2025, Fox News reported that Republican lawmakers were increasingly concerned that Chinese-linked facilities in Cuba could serve as a platform to “monitor U.S. military movements” and “disrupt critical communications.”

The article highlighted warnings from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford (R-AR) and a letter from House lawmakers Mark Green (R-TN), John Moolenaar (R-MI), Carlos Giménez (R-FL), and Sheri Biggs (R-SC), who argued that suspected Chinese-linked sites could eventually function as a “forward operating base” for electronic warfare and intelligence collection against the United States.

While such facilities could potentially enhance Cuba’s ability to monitor U.S. military and communications activity in the region, analysts have noted that there is no public “smoking gun” directly linking these sites to Chinese intelligence operations, despite repeated U.S. claims of Beijing’s involvement.

In May, Axios reported that U.S. officials believed Cuba had acquired hundreds of military drones and discussed potential drone warfare scenarios involving U.S. interests in the region, including Guantánamo Bay and possibly Key West.

Those allegations were later repeated in a White House report on Cuba’s security threat, which cited The Jerusalem Post and echoed claims of Iranian drone transfers and military consultations. Notably though, the claims rely on anonymous U.S. intelligence sources and the original Axios reporting, while neither the media reports nor the White House assessment provided publicly available evidence independently verifying the allegations.

This sequence of events brings to mind Operation Northwoods, a 1962 Joint Chiefs of Staff proposal that explored staging attacks and attributing them to Castro’s Cuba as a justification for military action. Unlike the Axios allegations, Operation Northwoods was a documented proposal and, while never carried out, showed the lengths governments would go to manufacture pretexts for military action. 

The Axios report itself included several caveats that complicated its claims. Despite the headline, “Exclusive: U.S. eyes attack-drone threat from Cuba,” the same article stated that “U.S. officials don’t believe Cuba is an imminent threat” and that “no one’s worried about fighter jets from Cuba.” Perhaps the most significant admission was that the intelligence could “become a pretext for U.S. military action.”

The timing is worth mentioning: after the administration described Cuba as a national security emergency, alleged it was assisting U.S. adversaries, and warned of potential drone threats, CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Havana to deliver a message that cooperation was possible only after “fundamental changes,” while invoking the January operation that removed President Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela.

The allegations were immediately disputed by both Havana and Moscow. Cuban officials accused Washington of creating a “fraudulent narrative” to justify additional pressure, while Russian officials denied that Cuba had purchased hundreds of military drones from Russia and Iran.

Neither government response proves that the Axios allegations are false, but the dispute highlights an issue: the public evidence behind the most significant claims remains unavailable.

By July, the alleged drone threat had moved beyond intelligence reporting and into political advocacy. United Against Nuclear Iran displayed an Iranian Shahed-136 drone in Coral Gables, Florida, warning that Iranian military technology in Cuba could threaten the United States.

Speakers at the event, including former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Rep. Carlos Giménez, emphasized the drone’s capabilities, including its reported explosive payload and range, arguing that such systems could theoretically reach targets as far away as New York and that large-scale drone attacks could overwhelm existing defenses.

However, the exhibit demonstrated only that Iranian drone technology exists—not that the displayed drone came from Cuba, that Havana possesses Shahed-136 systems, nor that Cuba has the capability or intent to use such weapons against U.S. targets. Even coverage of the event relied on claims that “reports” indicated Iranian drones were present in Cuba, rather than presenting evidence from Cuba itself.

The narrative continued to expand with a July 20 State Department report titled Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism, which argued that “Havana had solidified its place as the ideological capital of the modern radical left.” 

The document points to figures such as Twitch streamer Hasan Piker and participants in Cuba solidarity movements as evidence of an influence network. While these individuals openly support engagement with Cuba and criticize U.S. policy, the analysis provides no evidence that they are acting as agents of the Cuban government or participating in a coordinated influence operation.

The claims also extend to domestic politics, arguing that “many of the most significant upheavals in recent American political history—from the George Floyd riots to the rise of Antifa to protests on college campuses—can be linked, in some way, shape, or form, to Cuban influence.”

Of note, the document does not provide evidence that Cuba directed, funded, or coordinated these movements. Instead, it appears to treat ideology, criticism of U.S. foreign policy, and participation in Cuba solidarity efforts as evidence of an influence network.

The report also states that China and Russia have “tripled” their intelligence personnel in Cuba since 2023. That claim traces back to a Wall Street Journal report citing unnamed officials familiar with U.S. intelligence assessments, rather than publicly available or declassified intelligence.

Sanctions-ravaged Cuba can barely keep the lights on, and yet it poses some grand existential threat to the US homeland?

Cuba moves to open several crisis-ravaged sectors of its economy to private firms, as the communist government tries to ease acute shortages of basic goods and services resulting from a US energy blockade. pic.twitter.com/RHBcrpTbH2

— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) July 29, 2026

None of this is to say that Cuba does not pose legitimate security concerns. Havana has a history of espionage, intelligence operations, and alliances with U.S. adversaries. The question though is if this history should influence the claims now being made about Cuba.

The conclusion this document reaches goes beyond just intelligence concerns. Rather than simply describing Cuba as a hostile foreign government, it presents Havana as a network of activist groups, nonprofits, universities, and domestic political movements with an agenda. The claims presented make many allusions without providing evidence that Cuba directed, funded, or controlled these movements.

Claims this broad require clear evidence. The history of disputed intelligence assessments including Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, “yellowcake” uranium, and mobile biological weapons programs, are just a few examples where assertions were made while evidence remained lacking or fabricated.

With Havana recently rejecting the State Department report as “propaganda,” only time will tell whether the allegations presented in this document lead to a change in U.S.-Cuba policy or if it will become just another chapter in the decades-long rivalry between Washington and Havana.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/30/2026 - 20:05