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Half Of Israelis Agree Deterrence 'Weakened' Following Wars In Iran, Lebanon: Poll

Zero Rss
6 days 21 hours ago
Half Of Israelis Agree Deterrence 'Weakened' Following Wars In Iran, Lebanon: Poll

Via The Cradle

Israelis are raising doubts about their government and military's ability to provide security after more than three months of renewed war against Iran and Lebanon. 

According to a Maariv poll released on Friday, 50 percent of Israelis believe their country's deterrence has declined following the recent escalation with Iran and Lebanon, compared to 28 percent who say it has strengthened, while 22 percent are undecided.

via Le Monde

The US and Israel launched a renewed bombing campaign on Iran on February 28. The Islamic Republic retaliated by firing missiles and drones at Israel and US bases in Persian Gulf states until a ceasefire was reached on April 8, largely halting the fighting amid negotiations.

According to the Maariv poll, 49 percent think the Israeli army's freedom to carry out strikes in Lebanon has decreased after the latest confrontation, versus 30 percent who say it has improved and 21 percent who are unsure.

On 2 March, Hezbollah took advantage of Tel Aviv's vulnerability from the war with Iran by renewing its own missile and drone attacks on Israel. Hezbollah had refrained from retaliating to thousands of Israeli bombings of Lebanese territory that violated the previous ceasefire reached in November 2024. 

Israel responded by intensifying its airstrikes and sending ground troops to occupy additional Lebanese territory. At least 30 Israeli soldiers have since been killed and 1,302 injured, primarily by Hezbollah's newly introduced FPV drones.

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to launch an attack on Iran despite US President Donald Trump's supposed request not to do so.

In an interview with the Financial Times (FT), Trump stated, "I call the shots. I call all the shots. He [Netanyahu] doesn't call the shots."

However, Netanyahu ordered a strike on Iran just hours after Trump's comments. Iran responded by striking targets in Israel.

According to the poll, Israelis are divided in their opinion on Netanyahu's decision to ignore Trump and order the bombing. Around 29 percent said he acted correctly, 36 percent said a stronger strike should have been carried out, and 19 percent preferred to follow the US position.

Meanwhile, 62 percent of poll respondents expressed distrust in Trump, while 21 percent said they trust him regarding Israeli interests in any agreement, and 17 percent said they did not know. A poll published by Israel’s Public Broadcaster (KAN) on 28 April found that a majority of Israelis believe the state has failed to secure victory in any war since October 2023.

According to the survey, 57 percent of respondents said no victory had been achieved, while 28 percent believed success had been reached in at least one arena, and a further 15 percent said they were unsure. 

The findings came after more than two years of Israel's reported genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, during which Tel Aviv waged multiple offensive military campaigns against Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran, alongside attacks in Yemen and Syria and a campaign of destruction and displacement in the occupied West Bank. 

On Thursday, Trump warned that in the coming hours the US would hit Iran “VERY HARD TONIGHT” and take “total control” of Tehran's oil and gas industry before reversing course and claiming that a deal with Iran is expected to be “finalized” soon.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/12/2026 - 22:35
Tyler Durden

After San Diego attack, a reckoning on Muslim leadership in America

NY Post
6 days 21 hours ago
Three Muslim men were murdered at the Islamic Center of San Diego last month. Amin Abdullah, the security guard, met the attackers with gunfire and kept them from reaching the classrooms, where roughly 140 children were learning. He saved those children with his life.
Anila Ali

"Flying Beer Cooler": Pentagon's Next Kamikaze Drone Ushers In Era Of Cheap Mass-Produced Airpower

Zero Rss
6 days 22 hours ago
"Flying Beer Cooler": Pentagon's Next Kamikaze Drone Ushers In Era Of Cheap Mass-Produced Airpower

Our focus on the rise of the "war unicorn" theme over the last four months, shaped by technological innovation seen in the war in Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East, has allowed us, in countless notes, to inform readers very early that 2030s warfare has already arrived. In fact, hyperinnovation in Ukraine, now the world's AI weapons laboratory, is what pulled forward these extremely advanced, low-cost weaponry.

Modern battlefields are now defined by low-cost robotics, whether on the ground, at sea, or in the air, as well as drones, other autonomous systems, and AI-enabled kill chains. Meanwhile, the Department of War's shift toward funding and procuring from defense startups, rather than solely from big defense primes, thanks to DOGE, has accelerated the U.S.'s ability to spur a boom in the defense universe as President Trump's broader war economy ramps up, mainly for stockpiling reasons. 

Let's not forget our view in late January, when nearly all of Wall Street was misguided on alleged water and climate threats from data centers, completely missed that with hundreds of billions of dollars in data center buildouts by hyperscalers, now around $800 billion this fiscal year, these facilities had, and still have, a missing layer of air defense against FPVs and fiber-optic one-way attack drones.

We warned at the time:

Then noted:

In fact, it only took two Iranian attacks targeting Gulf-area data centers with Shahed drones to become a major wake-up call to Wall Street and private equity about the urgency of understanding this threat and how to capitalize.

More importantly, it triggered the urgent need for private equity to begin raising capital for war unicorns that will eventually become major suppliers of interceptors, counter-UAS products, and much more, because much of America's critical infrastructure, data centers, and the list goes on and on, remains entirely exposed to FPVs.

We understand that multiple private equity funds, each with billions of dollars in AUM, have sent personnel to Ukraine to assess the investment landscape across FPV drone, counter-drone, passive acoustic threat detection, and battlefield AI companies. That alone underscores how quickly the "war unicorn" theme is being adopted on Wall Street, one set to surge in the coming quarters.

Going mainstream on Wall Street: 

This leaves us with the innovation question: the "evolve or die" moment now confronting America's military-industrial complex. The focus must shift away from high-cost weapon systems built around titanium, carbon fiber, and decade-long procurement cycles, and back toward what made the U.S. an industrial powerhouse during World War II: the ability to mass-produce low-cost weapons at scale, rapidly, repeatedly, and in volumes that overwhelm foreign adversaries.

Answering the innovation question above, deep inside America's drone industry is California-based DZYNE Technologies, a company building one-way attack drones from the same material used in beer coolers.

The wings are formed by steam chest molding. That's the process behind beer coolers, bike helmets, and the packaging your TV arrived in. Hot steam, expanded foam, a mold, done. No autoclaves. No exotic supply chain. No aerospace machinists charging aerospace rates.

"We joke that it's a flying beer cooler, and honestly, we lean into it," said CEO Matt McCue. "If your airframe costs almost nothing and pours out of a mold by the thousands, you've solved the problem Ukraine has been screaming about for three years."

That problem is mass: cheap, expendable, attritable mass. Every report from the Black Sea to the Red Sea to the Hormuz chokepoint points to the same conclusion: the side that can afford to lose drones wins. Firing a $2 million missile at a $1,000 drone is a losing trade.

DZYNE's Blitz drone fits in the standard-issue rucksack. It assembles in under two minutes. A new operator is mission-ready in a couple of hours. Range runs 80 to 150 kilometers, with swappable payloads for surveillance or jamming, or it can be easily converted into a one-way attack drone.

Notice what Blitz is not. It's not one of those quadcopters filling your X feed from Ukraine. Those are real and they work, and nobody will say otherwise. But they're one layer of a bigger stack. Multi-rotors burn through batteries just to stay airborne, which makes them deadly in a close fight and spend a lot of energy before the fight gets deep.

A fixed wing gets its lift for free, so Blitz extends the same expendable logic out to 150 kilometers, loiters for hours instead of minutes, hauls heavier payloads, and keeps flying in wind that grounds FPVs. Picture the FPVs owning the last mile while waves of cheap fixed wings seek targets, jam radars, and strike staging areas far behind it. That's not a rivalry. That's a kill chain.

Blitzing is a bet that pressure is cheaper than coverage. NFL football fans understand that, and so does every air-defense crew that has watched a million-dollar interceptor chase a cheap Iranian or Russian drone. That brings us to DZYNE's BlitzBox, a nondescript shipping-container system designed to autonomously launch up to 100 Blitz drones into the air for a coordinated swarming raid.

The American company Dzyne has introduced the BlitzBox system, a container for covertly launching a swarm of attack drones. On the outside, it looks like an ordinary cargo box, but inside, it can hold up to 100 Blitz drones, ready to launch in minutes.#DroneWars #UAS #UAV pic.twitter.com/w9aRaZYrCZ

— Drone Wars (@Drone_Wars_) May 27, 2026

"Adversaries have spent twenty years planning around our big, fixed, easy-to-find bases. A hundred drones in a box that could be anywhere changes that math overnight...

... BlitzBox looks like every other container out there on any truck, ship, port, or railyard. That's a feature," said Ryan Holcomb, DZYNE's VP of Expendables.

That is exactly the logic Ukraine demonstrated last year when it launched a drone swarm deep inside Russia from a modified shipping container positioned near an airbase, targeting strategic bombers.

A drone made from cheap beer-cooler material directly answers the Trump administration and Pentagon's call for low-cost, scalable defense war tech. The question now is how many of these drones the Pentagon will stockpile and how quickly these drones can be produced.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/12/2026 - 22:10
Tyler Durden

Russian Governors Rush To Deny Fuel Crisis As Rationing Spreads

Zero Rss
6 days 22 hours ago
Russian Governors Rush To Deny Fuel Crisis As Rationing Spreads

Submitted by Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

Russia's authorities and regional governors are racing to assure residents there are no fuel shortages amid an intensified Ukrainian drone campaign at Russian refineries and fuel supply roads.

Ukraine has stepped up attacks this month on key fuel supply routes in its territories occupied by Russia, including Crimea and Mariupol. Several Russian regions have been experiencing fuel shortages as Ukraine hits Russian oil refineries.

Last week, the Moscow Times reported that some gasoline stations in Moscow and regions in northern Russia have started to cap fuel purchases per driver, in a move to prevent panic buying.

Officials are playing down the fuel crisis.

Alexander Drozdenko, governor of the northwestern Leningrad region, said this week that "Supplies are being delivered according to plan, there are no shortages," as carried by Bloomberg.

Some isolated complaints about fuel shortages "do not reflect the overall situation," the regional official said.

Governors all across Russia are looking to play down the extent of the crisis.

Meanwhile, earlier this month Russia admitted for the first time that its crude oil production is falling.

Russia's crude oil production has declined since the beginning of the year as a number of local refineries are under unscheduled repairs and maintenance, Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said, in the first public acknowledgement from Moscow that its output is flailing.

"We have a number of refineries under unscheduled repairs. However, we are maximizing the use of the export infrastructure," said Novak, who represents Russia at the OPEC+ meetings and at discussions about the alliance's output.

Russia is preparing to sharply reduce crude oil exports this month as mounting refinery disruptions, fuel shortages, and Ukraine's bombing campaign force Moscow to divert more barrels into the domestic market.

Exports from Russia's western ports of Primorsk, Ust-Luga and Novorossiysk are expected to fall to roughly 1.7 million barrels per day in June from 2.5 million bpd in May, according to Reuters calculations based on preliminary industry and trading data.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/12/2026 - 21:45
Tyler Durden

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