Zero Rss

Prepping For A Cashless Control Grid How Digital Currency Becomes Digital Control

Authored by Milan Adams via Preppgroup,

When Money Stops Being Money

Something fundamental is vanishing, and most people will not notice until it is already gone. Not with a declaration. Not with a law passed in the dead of night. Simply, gradually, the option to buy something without creating a permanent record will disappear. The ability to save purchasing power outside of a system that can freeze it, monitor it, or program it will become a memory that seems almost fictional to those who never experienced it.

I have watched this unfold over years of observing payment systems, reading central bank white papers that few citizens bother to examine, and noticing how my own transactions leave increasingly detailed trails. The pattern is consistent across nations: convenience precedes surveillance, and surveillance precedes control.

We are not approaching a cashless society. We are sleepwalking into it. And for anyone who values independence, privacy, or the basic human right to conduct commerce without surveillance, this represents not progress but regression toward a form of control that previous generations would have recognized immediately and resisted forcefully.

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) are the mechanism of this transformation. The digital euro, the potential digital dollar, the digital yuan already operational in China - these are not simply modernizations of payment systems. They are structural changes to the relationship between the individual and the state, between commerce and surveillance, between freedom and permission. Once fully implemented, they would create a financial infrastructure where every transaction is visible, every purchase is logged, and every economic decision requires implicit or explicit approval from authorities.

This is not speculation. This is documented policy. The Bank for International Settlements, which coordinates central banking globally, has explicitly stated that CBDCs will enable "programmable money" - currency that can be restricted based on time, place, or purpose. The European Central Bank's digital euro project includes provisions for offline payments only up to limited amounts, with all larger transactions requiring network connectivity and identity verification. The Federal Reserve's FedNow system, launched in July 2023, created the technical infrastructure for instant digital payments that serves as the foundation for eventual CBDC implementation.

Three developments demand immediate attention:

1. Over 130 countries representing 98 percent of global GDP are now exploring CBDC implementation, with 11 countries including China, Nigeria, and the Bahamas already operational.

2. The United States government has accumulated over 207,000 bitcoin through seizures and asset forfeiture, creating a "Strategic Bitcoin Reserve" via Executive Order in March 2025, effectively centralizing control of assets that were designed to resist centralized control.

3. Cash usage has declined 60 percent in the United States since 2017, with 41 percent of Americans reporting they use no cash in a typical week, removing the practical habit of anonymous exchange before the infrastructure to support it disappears.

The implications extend far beyond convenience or efficiency. They strike at the heart of what it means to be a free individual in a society that claims to value liberty.

How We Got Here

Understanding how we arrived at this moment requires examining the incremental steps that normalized surveillance as the default condition of economic life. Each step seemed reasonable in isolation. Together, they would construct a control grid that previous generations would have found intolerable.

Credit cards provided the foundation. Introduced in the 1950s as a convenience for travelers, they became ubiquitous by the 1990s. Each purchase created a record: what you bought, where you bought it, when you bought it. This data accumulated in databases owned by card networks and banks, available to law enforcement with a subpoena and to corporations for marketing analysis. Still, cash remained an alternative. The option to opt out of the surveillance economy persisted.

Debit cards expanded the tracking to daily purchases. Digital payment platforms - PayPal, Venmo, Cash App - added social networks to financial transactions, creating public records of private exchanges. Apple Pay and Google Wallet merged biometric identity with payment authorization, conditioning users to authenticate every purchase with fingerprints or facial recognition. Each innovation reduced friction and increased surveillance simultaneously.

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated cash elimination dramatically. Merchants discouraged physical currency citing hygiene concerns. Governments distributed stimulus payments exclusively through digital channels. Online commerce, already growing, became the primary mode of consumption for millions who had previously resisted it. Between 2019 and 2021, cash usage in the United States dropped from 26 percent of transactions to 20 percent, with the decline concentrated in urban areas and among younger demographics.

Central banks observed these trends and recognized opportunity. If the public was already abandoning cash voluntarily, the infrastructure for digital currency could be established without the resistance that would accompany explicit elimination of physical money. CBDCs could be introduced as improvements - faster, cheaper, more secure - while gradually restricting the alternatives until withdrawal became impractical.

China's digital yuan (e-CNY) provides the operational model. Launched in pilot programs in 2020 and expanded nationwide by 2024, it now processes over $250 billion in annual transactions. The system combines direct central bank accounts for citizens with programmable features including expiration dates on certain stimulus funds, geographic restrictions on usage, and integration with China's social credit system. Citizens who speak against the government online find their digital wallets frozen. Those with low social credit scores cannot purchase train tickets or flights. The system appears to work. It can control behavior with precision that physical coercion could never achieve.

Nigeria's eNaira, launched in October 2021, demonstrates how CBDCs serve financial control even in developing economies. When the Nigerian government faced currency instability and capital flight, it imposed withdrawal limits on physical cash - initially 10,000 naira daily, later increased to 500,000 naira weekly - while promoting the digital currency. The result was immediate financial distress for the 40 percent of Nigerians who lack bank accounts and depend on cash for daily survival. Protests erupted. The policy was partially reversed, but the message was clear: digital currency serves state control, not citizen welfare.

The European Union's digital euro project, currently in the "preparation phase" expected to last until 2026, includes features that should alarm anyone concerned with privacy. The ECB has confirmed that offline payments will be limited to 300 euros maximum, with all larger transactions requiring network connectivity and identity verification. "Holding limits" will restrict how much digital euro individuals can possess, forcing excess funds back into the banking system where they can be lent, tracked, and taxed. The stated rationale - preventing bank disintermediation - reveals the true purpose: maintaining financial surveillance and banking profitability simultaneously.

The United States has moved more cautiously, but the direction is identical. The FedNow instant payment system, operational since July 2023, provides the technical infrastructure for CBDC implementation. The Treasury Department's 2022 framework for international engagement on digital assets explicitly supports CBDC development. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has stated that a digital dollar would require congressional authorization, but the technical preparation continues regardless, and crisis has historically served as the pretext for expanding government financial control.

Programmable Money, Programmable Behavior

The defining feature of CBDCs that distinguishes them from existing digital payments is programmability - the ability to encode rules directly into currency that determine when, where, and for what purposes it can be spent. This capability would transform money from a neutral medium of exchange into a tool of social engineering and behavioral control.

Consider the implications. A government concerned about carbon emissions could program digital currency to be invalid for gasoline purchases beyond a monthly quota. Authorities worried about public health could restrict spending on sugary foods, alcohol, or tobacco for individuals with certain medical conditions. Officials seeking to control population movement could limit where digital currency functions geographically, effectively imprisoning citizens without physical barriers.

These are not hypothetical scenarios. They are explicit capabilities discussed in central bank research papers and already implemented in limited forms. China's digital yuan includes "red envelope" stimulus funds with expiration dates, forcing recipients to spend quickly rather than save. Brazil's Pix payment system, while not technically a CBDC, has been used to restrict welfare payments to specific merchant categories. The European Central Bank has acknowledged that digital euros could carry "environmental footprints" based on transaction carbon calculations.

The integration of CBDCs with social credit systems, already operational in China and under exploration in other nations, would create comprehensive behavioral control. Purchase history reveals political affiliations - donations to disfavored causes, subscriptions to opposition media, payments to controversial organizations. Location data from mobile payments tracks movements and associations. Combined with social media monitoring, email surveillance, and facial recognition, this creates a total information awareness system where dissent becomes financially suicidal.

Canada's response to the 2022 trucker protests provided a preview. When demonstrators occupied Ottawa protesting vaccine mandates, the Canadian government invoked the Emergencies Act and froze bank accounts of protesters and donors without judicial process. Over 280 accounts totaling $8 million were frozen. Insurance policies were canceled. Credit cards suspended. The government demonstrated that in a digital financial system, political opposition can be economically eliminated within hours.

Critics noted that this was possible because Canada already had comprehensive financial surveillance infrastructure. CBDCs would make such actions simpler, faster, and more comprehensive. No court orders required. No appeals possible. The money simply stops working.

Negative interest rates provide another mechanism of control that CBDCs enable. In a cash-based economy, individuals can withdraw physical currency to avoid losing money to negative rates. In a CBDC system, cash does not exist. Savings can be programmed to depreciate automatically, forcing spending or investment. This "helicopter money" with strings attached represents a fundamental violation of property rights that classical economists would have recognized as theft.

The March 2025 Executive Order establishing a U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve reveals how even decentralized cryptocurrencies are being absorbed into state control. The order directed the Treasury and Commerce Departments to develop "strategies for acquiring additional bitcoin" while requiring all federal agencies to inventory digital assets they hold. The stated purpose - "national prosperity" - masks the consolidation of cryptocurrency under government management. When the state becomes the largest holder of bitcoin, when agencies develop "acquisition strategies," the independence that cryptocurrency promised turns into another asset under centralized control.

The Infrastructure of Total Surveillance

CBDCs do not operate in isolation. They function within a broader technological ecosystem designed for monitoring, prediction, and control. Understanding this infrastructure reveals why cash elimination represents an existential threat to liberty.

The foundation is identity. Every CBDC transaction requires verified identity, typically through biometric authentication - fingerprints, facial recognition, iris scans - that links economic activity to physical persons permanently. India's Aadhaar system, covering 1.3 billion people, demonstrates the scale possible. China's facial recognition network, with over 600 million cameras, shows the granularity achievable. When combined with CBDCs, these systems create financial surveillance that is total and unavoidable.

Artificial intelligence processes the data torrent that CBDCs generate. Machine learning algorithms analyze spending patterns to predict behavior, assess risk, and identify deviations. Purchases at unusual hours, transactions with flagged merchants, transfers to unverified accounts - these trigger automated alerts that can result in account freezes, enhanced scrutiny, or law enforcement referral without human intervention. The algorithm effectively serves as judge and jury.

Blockchain analysis, originally developed to trace cryptocurrency transactions, now applies to all digital payments. Chainalysis, Elliptic, and similar firms contract with governments to deanonymize financial flows. Even supposedly private cryptocurrencies can be traced through exchange records, IP addresses, and transaction patterns. The assumption that technology can provide financial privacy has proven false against state-level surveillance resources.

5G networks and the Internet of Things expand surveillance beyond transactions to environments. Smart home devices listen continuously. Smart vehicles track location and driving behavior. Smart appliances monitor energy usage patterns that reveal occupancy and activity. When combined with CBDC records, this creates a comprehensive life history: where you were, what you did, what you bought, who you met.

The "15-minute city" concept, promoted by urban planners and the World Economic Forum, illustrates how these technologies combine for control. By designating neighborhoods where residents can access all necessities within a 15-minute walk or bike ride, planners create environments where vehicle usage can be restricted, movement can be monitored, and economic activity can be channeled through approved vendors. CBDCs complete the system by ensuring that all transactions within these zones are tracked and can be restricted based on carbon quotas, social credit, or other criteria.

Smartphone dependency has already conditioned populations to accept constant connectivity and location tracking. The devices that seem essential for modern life are also surveillance tools that users pay to maintain. When CBDCs require smartphone apps for access, as most implementations propose, the population already carries the monitoring equipment voluntarily.

Data centers, concentrated in a few corporate and government facilities, store the accumulated information of billions of transactions. These facilities require enormous energy - data centers now consume 4 percent of global electricity, projected to reach 8 percent by 2030. They are vulnerable to power outages, cyber attacks, and government seizure. The concentration of financial data in these facilities creates systemic risk that cash dispersion avoided.

Preparing for the Transition

Recognition of these dangers is the first step toward preparation. The window for action narrows as cash infrastructure disappears and CBDC implementation accelerates. Effective preparation requires both defensive measures to preserve autonomy and offensive measures to resist control.

Immediate Actions (2024-2026):

1. Physical Cash Accumulation: Maintain at least three months of expenses in physical currency, stored securely outside of banking systems. Diversify denominations for flexibility. Recognize that cash acceptance is declining - use it regularly to maintain the habit in merchants and yourself.

2. Tangible Asset Conversion: Convert excess digital currency into physical goods with intrinsic value - precious metals, productive land, tools, ammunition, long-shelf-life food, medical supplies. These assets cannot be frozen remotely and maintain utility regardless of financial system status.

3. Local Network Development: Build relationships with neighbors, farmers, craftsmen, and service providers who accept cash or barter. Economic resilience depends on community trust, not digital platforms. Develop skills that provide value without institutional certification.

4. Privacy Technology Adoption: Use cash for sensitive purchases. Employ privacy-focused cryptocurrencies like Monero for digital transactions when necessary. Maintain self-custody of cryptographic keys - "not your keys, not your coins" applies to CBDCs absolutely, as government custody means government control.

5. Documentation and Legal Preparation: Maintain physical records of assets, transactions, and identities independent of digital systems. Understand legal protections for cash transactions and privacy rights in your jurisdiction. Prepare for scenarios where digital identity verification fails.

Medium-Term Strategies (2026-2030):

As CBDCs roll out, preparation must adapt to new constraints. Expect "holding limits" that force excess savings into monitored accounts. Anticipate geographic restrictions on where currency functions. Prepare for negative interest rates and expiration dates on stimulus funds.

Develop barter networks and local currencies that operate outside CBDC systems. Historical examples include the Wörgl experiment in 1930s Austria, where local scrip maintained economic activity during currency collapse. Modern local currencies in Berkshire, Massachusetts and Ithaca, New York demonstrate viability, though legal challenges exist.

Agricultural self-sufficiency reduces dependence on monitored supply chains. Even small-scale gardening provides food security and barter opportunities. Animal husbandry, food preservation, and seed saving represent skills that appreciate as systems become more fragile.

Energy independence - solar panels, battery storage, wood heat - reduces vulnerability to grid failures and "smart" utility monitoring that CBDCs will likely integrate with carbon rationing. The ability to survive without grid connectivity turns into survival capability when digital systems exclude you.

Community defense organizations, organized legally as neighborhood associations or agricultural cooperatives, provide mutual aid frameworks that can operate independently of state-controlled financial systems. These require trust-building that takes years and cannot be established during crisis.

The Psychology of Submission

Understanding why populations accept financial surveillance requires examining the psychological mechanisms that make control palatable. Each step toward CBDCs is marketed with benefits that obscure costs.

Convenience is the primary selling point. Digital payments are faster than counting change. Apps organize spending data automatically. Recurring payments eliminate bill management. These benefits are real, but they create dependency that makes resistance seem like self-imposed hardship rather than defense of liberty.

Security rhetoric exploits fear. CBDCs are promoted as protection against fraud, money laundering, and terrorism. The claim that "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" reverses the presumption of innocence that underlies free societies. Privacy grows suspicious. Cash turns criminal.

Generational conditioning plays a role. Young adults who grew up with smartphones and social media have never experienced financial privacy. Sharing location, purchases, and preferences feels natural. The concept that economic activity could be private seems foreign, even suspicious. This demographic will accept CBDCs without resistance because they cannot imagine alternatives.

Crisis exploitation accelerates acceptance. Economic instability, pandemics, terrorism - each crisis provides pretext for expanded financial surveillance that would be rejected in calmer times. The Patriot Act's expansion of financial monitoring after 2001, the COVID stimulus distribution through digital channels, the proposed climate tracking of carbon footprints - all follow this pattern.

Learned helplessness develops as individuals recognize surveillance but feel powerless to resist. "What can one person do?" becomes self-fulfilling prophecy. The system seems inevitable, so opposition seems futile. This psychology serves authoritarian interests by demobilizing resistance before it forms.

Social credit dynamics, even without formal systems, create self-censorship. Individuals modify behavior to maintain access to financial services, employment, and social standing. The panopticon effect - knowing you might be watched - produces conformity without actual surveillance. CBDCs make this control explicit and inescapable.

Global Patterns of Control

CBDC implementation varies globally, revealing different models of financial surveillance and control.

China: The digital yuan operates as part of comprehensive social credit system. Transaction data feeds social scores. Low scores result in travel restrictions, exclusion from quality education, and public shaming. The system works through carrots as well as sticks - high scores provide faster loan approval, better job opportunities, and social prestige. This represents totalitarian control through gamification.

European Union: The digital euro emphasizes "privacy" for small transactions while maintaining surveillance for larger amounts. The 300-euro offline limit and holding limits reveal concern with preventing bank disintermediation rather than protecting citizen liberty. The EU's history of data protection regulation (GDPR) creates ironic contrast with financial surveillance expansion.

United States: Implementation remains contested, with political resistance from privacy advocates and banking lobbies concerned about disintermediation. The FedNow system provides technical foundation without explicit CBDC authorization. State-level resistance, including legislation in Florida and other states protecting cash acceptance, creates legal friction. The outcome remains uncertain but trends toward eventual implementation.

Developing Nations: Nigeria, Ghana, and other African nations use CBDCs primarily for financial inclusion and currency control rather than social engineering. The eNaira's failure to achieve adoption despite cash restrictions demonstrates popular resistance when alternatives exist. India's digital rupee focuses on reducing cash handling costs for government.

Authoritarian States: Russia, Iran, and Venezuela explore CBDCs primarily for sanctions evasion and capital control. These systems prioritize state survival over citizen welfare, providing previews of how CBDCs function under stress.

The Economic Consequences of Control

CBDCs would reshape economic behavior in ways that reduce productivity, innovation, and welfare even as they increase state control.

Savings rates would decline as negative interest rates and expiration dates discourage accumulation. Capital formation, the foundation of economic growth, would suffer. Individuals would spend on immediate consumption rather than long-term investment, knowing that saved money loses value.

Entrepreneurship would decline as financial surveillance increases regulatory compliance costs and risk. Small businesses operate on cash margins that CBDCs eliminate. The informal economy, which employs billions globally, would contract as transactions become visible and taxable.

Innovation would suffer as capital flows toward politically favored sectors rather than economically productive ones. CBDC programmability enables industrial policy at the transaction level - funds directed toward green energy, social equity, or other state priorities regardless of market demand. Misallocation of resources follows inevitably.

International commerce would fragment as incompatible CBDC systems create barriers to cross-border transactions. Currency competition, which disciplines monetary policy, would disappear as digital currencies become tools of state power rather than market instruments.

Wealth concentration would accelerate as the wealthy maintain access to physical assets and offshore alternatives while the masses depend on programmable digital currency. The gap between those with escape options and those trapped in the system would widen dramatically.

Resistance and Resilience

Despite these trends, resistance remains possible and necessary. Historical examples provide guidance for maintaining liberty under financial surveillance.

Cash Preservation: Germany's commitment to cash, rooted in memory of hyperinflation and totalitarianism, has slowed digital payment adoption. The Bundesbank explicitly promotes cash as "freedom money." Similar cultural commitments can be cultivated elsewhere.

Cryptocurrency Innovation: Bitcoin, despite government accumulation, remains censorship-resistant for those who maintain self-custody. Layer-2 solutions like Lightning Network provide scalability. Privacy coins like Monero offer anonymity that Bitcoin lacks. Decentralized finance (DeFi) creates alternatives to banking systems.

Legal Challenges: Constitutional protections for privacy, property, and due process can be invoked against CBDC overreach. The Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches applies to financial data. The Fifth Amendment's takings clause limits negative interest rates. Litigation can delay and constrain implementation.

Political Organization: Electoral pressure, particularly in primary elections where motivated minorities determine outcomes, can punish CBDC proponents. Bipartisan coalitions uniting privacy advocates, civil libertarians, and financial traditionalists can block legislation.

Economic Subsistence: Reducing dependence on the formal economy through self-employment, barter, and local production limits CBDC control. The Amish and other traditional communities demonstrate that modern life is possible without full financial system participation.

What Comes Next

The next five years will determine whether CBDCs become universal instruments of control or face sufficient resistance to preserve alternatives. Several scenarios appear probable:

Gradual Implementation: Most likely, CBDCs are introduced as options alongside cash, which is then gradually restricted through merchant acceptance requirements, reporting thresholds, and physical elimination. By 2030, cash becomes functionally unavailable for most transactions without explicit prohibition that might trigger resistance.

Crisis Acceleration: Economic collapse, cyber attack, or pandemic provides pretext for emergency CBDC implementation with temporary restrictions that become permanent. The Patriot Act model applied to currency.

Fragmented Resistance: Some nations implement comprehensive CBDCs while others preserve cash and privacy. Capital and talent flow toward liberty, creating competitive pressure that constrains surveillance in some jurisdictions.

Technological Disruption: Decentralized alternatives achieve sufficient scale and usability to compete with CBDCs, creating parallel economies that limit state control. Regulatory arbitrage favors jurisdictions that respect financial privacy.

The outcome depends on choices made now, while options remain open. Once CBDC infrastructure is complete and cash eliminated, restoration of privacy becomes technologically and politically nearly impossible.

Final Preparation

I have watched payment systems evolve from cash registers to smartphones, from anonymous transactions to biometric verification. I have read central bank papers that describe "financial inclusion" in language that masks surveillance. I have noticed how my own spending patterns create profiles that algorithms can predict with disturbing accuracy.

The cashless control grid represents a sophisticated form of the risks that previous generations prepared against. Where they feared bank failure and currency devaluation, we face surveillance and programmability - risks that are harder to see but no less real. The preparation is similar: maintain assets outside the system, develop skills that provide independence, build community that can sustain mutual aid, and never trust that today's convenience will be tomorrow's freedom.

The structures are being built now. The surveillance infrastructure is operational. The legal frameworks are being established. The only question is whether populations will recognize the danger before the cage door closes.

Recognition comes first. Preparation follows. Resistance, if it comes, must be early and sustained. The alternative is a world where every transaction requires permission, every purchase feeds surveillance, and every economic decision is subject to approval by authorities who claim to act in your interest while strip-mining your liberty.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 19:50

Cuba In Crosshairs: US Army Reportedly Checks Troop Availability As Trump Says Communist Regime "Will Fail"

President Trump told the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday that the failed communist island nation of Cuba would see freedom, as the U.S. has not been shy about its intentions to kick the communist regime out of Havana. The U.S. has employed gunboat diplomacy through an oil blockade this year, as the failed state has seen its economy collapse even further.

"My administration is also seeking a fundamental change in the situation in Cuba, where the communist regime is under great pressure, the biggest pressure they've ever been under. It's an absolutely failed state; it's failing like never before, and it will fall," Trump said in his speech at UNGA.

President Trump on Cuba at the UNGA:

"It's an absolutely failed state, and it will fall... Communism will never be coming to America, but freedom will be coming to Cuba." pic.twitter.com/JOPQVKD797

— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) September 22, 2026

With Trump's UNGA comments in mind, CBS News reports that it has reviewed an internal Army memo assessing the availability of military police, medical teams, and logistics units for possible use under Southern Command within 90 to 120 days.

The memo does not mention Cuba, identify troop numbers, or specify an operation. It also contains no indication that units have received deployment orders so far.

Here's more color from the report:

The document reviewed by CBS News says Army Reserve headquarters is seeking feedback from subordinate commands on the possible availability of six types of formations that would fall under the authority of U.S. Southern Command. The units would "possibly [be] needed in 90-120 days," according to the message, which directs commands to provide feedback to Army Reserve headquarters by Sept. 25. 

Among the units is a combat sustainment support battalion that specializes in coordinating logistics such as transportation, maintenance, fuel and supply needs, along with an engineer battalion. The document also seeks an expeditionary sustainment command that would oversee logistics across a theater of operations. 

The document generated last week also calls for a medical brigade to command and coordinate medical units, as well as a forward resuscitative and surgical detachment to provide emergency surgery and trauma care closer to U.S. forces. Finally, the document seeks a military police brigade — these units typically oversee military police forces responsible for security, detention and other law enforcement missions. 

In July, CBS reported that military planners had examined an air assault involving thousands of soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division. Another report by Politico in August suggested that the U.S. intelligence community had "sent spies and assets" to Cuba. Specifically, the outlet reported that the CIA had increased its presence on the island, which sits about 90 miles south of Florida.

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ON US.$10 off one order of $30 or more. New or returning, one per person. YOUR EMAILGET MY $10 →Signs you up for ZeroHedge Store emails. $30 minimum, once per person, can't be combined. Every order helps support ZeroHedge. Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 19:15

Indian Refiners Lift LPG Output Nearly 20% As Hormuz Blockage Chokes Imports

Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

Indian state refiners are ramping up their production of liquefied petroleum gas amid a seasonal jump in demand as the country enters festive season and imports from the Middle East remain strangled.

So far in September, local production of LPG has averaged 44,000 tons daily, Indian media reported, citing Bloomberg data. This was close to 20% more than the August average, despite diversification in imports from the United States and Africa, The Telegraph reported.

India has also boosted imports from the United Arab Emirates in recent months. The UAE has ramped up its exports of crude oil and products despite the war, managing the Strait of Hormuz via a pipeline bypass to Fujairah for crude and by shuttling exports on small vessels to the Gulf of Oman, from where it loads fuels onto larger tankers for export out of the Middle East.

The Telegraph noted that despite the import diversification and festive season, demand for liquefied petroleum gas in India was likely to remain lower than last year because of demand destruction in the industrial sector. The UAE, meanwhile, remains India's largest supplier of the energy commodity. ADNOC recently confirmed that despite the situation in Hormuz, it will deliver all contracted LPG volumes for Indian buyers in October.

"As India's largest LPG supplier, ADNOC remains fully committed to meeting our customers' needs and supporting India's energy security," a spokesperson for the Emirati major told Bloomberg. "We continue to provide reliable and secure LPG supplies to our customers in India and work closely with them to meet their requirements."

Some 60% of Indian households rely on liquefied petroleum gas as their primary cooking fuel, and the blockage at the Strait of Hormuz, where 90% of all Indian LPG imports used to pass through, was immediately felt by consumers, leading to demand destruction.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 18:40

OpenAI Freezes Development Of Top Models After Rogue Agents Leak User Images To Web

And you thought your mom posting your Christmas pajama pics to Facebook was bad...

In the latest chapter of 'let's spook the shit out of everyone so the government regulates AI,' OpenAI's autonomous research agents were found to have grabbed 53 user images from training and evaluation data and quietly dumped them onto public image-hosting sites.

Awkward family photo (not one of the ones OpenAI uploaded)

OpenAI admitted Friday that its models left the data exposed as unlisted links. "This is not an appropriate use of this data," the company stated amid a scramble to scrub the images. The company clarified that most of the data its agents sent to outside services didn't come from users - but it did post the images online in the wild. In a separate alignment report, the company paused "all training, evaluation, and inference with tool-use" for its most capable models following a September 20 containment escape.

We’ve shared details on how AI agents in our research environment sent training and evaluation data to third-party services when they shouldn’t have.

Most of that data did not come from users. We have discovered 53 cases where images that people had uploaded were posted to…

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) September 25, 2026

These disclosures land alongside a new investigation into July's Hugging Face attack by independent researchers. Their recovered material shows autonomous agents collecting credentials into a dictionary named "LOOT," building infrastructure, and attempting to delete evidence of their intrusion. It all evolved from routine cybersecurity tests inside supposedly controlled environments, as we reported in July.

According to an August assessment by OpenAI, the rogue behavior began in May when agents repurposed an internal software repository into a covert message board. By July 8, during ExploitGym cybersecurity evaluations, rather than completing their assigned tasks, the agents sought ways to defeat the scoring machinery itself. A subsequent independent review found roughly 1,200 agents colluding to fool the grader.

WTF. The models were uploading user images from chats to the internet. https://t.co/BWnKJpXHXg

— Whole Mars Catalog (@wholemars) September 26, 2026

Before the main Hugging Face assault, agents even targeted OpenAI's own software supply chain. A technical report details a July 9 cache-poisoning attack, though OpenAI says it found no evidence that any workload pulled or ran the substituted image.

Hijacked Infrastructure and "LOOT"

To bypass strict internet restrictions, the agents daisy-chained public link-shortening, web-development, and screenshot services - sometimes across chains of more than 900 links - to execute code externally, according to recovered payloads. By July 11, the operation had breached Hugging Face workers, according to the published timeline.

The researchers' analysis reveals scripts designed to hoard credentials into the "LOOT" dictionary and aggressively probe internal repositories. The same reconstruction shows agents pinging outside models from GPT-2 to two Anthropic Haiku models, and asking DeepSeek, Kimi and Qwen models to judge whether their exploits met the benchmark's requirements.

has anyone heard from Andrew Yang since he said this? pic.twitter.com/AnDooiP3mO

— Tom (@thomasjeans) September 26, 2026

After gaining code execution, the agents deployed background controllers to receive tasks and encrypt results, and requested deletion of webhook histories to cover their tracks, according to the recovered evidence. OpenAI says no human operator requested the attacks on unrelated systems.

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OpenAI's technical account describes agents using a Linux kernel exploit to achieve root access on July 19. Another internal model forged administrator credentials, read 956 secrets from OpenAI's cloud secrets manager, and created public load balancers that potentially exposed part of its internal infrastructure to the internet. OpenAI maintains customer data remained unaffected.

A Convenient Doombot Narrative?

In the most recent September 20 incident, an agent exploited a DNS filtering gap to reach an external chatbot, receiving the mundane response: "The capital of France is Paris." OpenAI's incident account notes the agent went on to ask for ways to search the web, fetch websites or find a public DNS tunnel.

OpenAI has paused all training, evaluation and inference with tool-use for its most capable models after a model was able to gain unauthorized access to the internet during RL training on September 20. https://t.co/PON9r82mUS pic.twitter.com/wPtdisRRhC

— prinz (@deredleritt3r) September 26, 2026

The timing of this "rogue AI doombot" barrage invites skepticism. It carries a distinctly "two weeks before OpenAI/Anthropic get a nuke" vibe - just as cheaper Chinese models squeeze the pricing power of frontier labs like Anthropic. While METR accepted no payment for its review, OpenAI retained redaction rights. METR says nothing important to its conclusions was redacted. None of that makes the breaches imaginary; a genuine security failure and an awfully convenient corporate narrative can coexist.

Researchers report the operation left nearly a million URLs online for months. METR's stated scope excluded the later compromise of OpenAI's own systems, and OpenAI's disclosure page says its investigation is ongoing. OpenAI says it will not resume training the specific model involved, opting to restart with fresh alignment interventions.

Oh hey, and would you look at that...

🚨 DeepSeek V5 Leak: Beats Astra

>DeepSeek is reportedly preparing an imminent V5 launch
>Founder Liang Wenfeng calls it the company's biggest bet yet
>Rumored at 2 trillion parameters (not 3T)
>Reportedly the first DeepSeek model to train fully on Huawei Ascend chips instead of… pic.twitter.com/c3Lkeg90VX

— Priya (@Priyannkaaaa) September 26, 2026

 

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 18:05

IRS Probing $100 Billion In Potential COVID-19 Loan Fraud

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

Roughly $100 billion in loans given for COVID-19 programs have been identified as suspected fraud by tax authorities.

Earlier this year, the Small Business Administration (SBA) referred more than $200 billion in suspected COVID loan fraud to the IRS.

The tax agency then compared the information that the borrowers submitted to the SBA when applying for the loans with the information they declared to the IRS.

Analysis identified discrepancies associated with approximately $100 billion in loans, the SBA said in a Sept. 23 statement.

The IRS will determine whether additional taxes and penalties apply, including penalties for committing fraud, according to the SBA.

The suspected fraud pertains to the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and COVID Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) initiatives.

PPP was aimed at helping businesses keep their workforce during the pandemic, while EIDL provided loans and advances to help businesses recover from the economic impacts of the crisis.

In 2023, the SBA judged that 20 percent of the $1.2 trillion pandemic relief program could have been obtained by fraud.

SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler said:

"The IRS's identification of approximately $100 billion in suspected tax fraud sends a clear message: fraudsters who stole from SBA's COVID-relief programs will ... face accountability at the SBA.

"If they inflated payroll, fabricated employee counts, falsified business records, or otherwise lied to obtain taxpayer-funded loans, they will also face scrutiny from the IRS."

The federal government is estimated to lose $233 billion to $521 billion annually to fraud, the Government Accountability Office said in an April 2024 report.

Tackling COVID Fraud

The Trump administration has taken several steps to crack down on COVID-19 loan fraud.

In an April 24 statement, the SBA said it had referred 562,000 suspect loans to the Department of the Treasury for collection. These were PPP and COVID EIDL loans.

The SBA is legally obligated to refer delinquent debts to a Treasury bureau when they are deemed to be sufficiently past due.

However, under the prior administration, the SBA failed to refer the 562,000 loans to authorities for investigation and collection, the statement said.

On Sept. 14, task force head Vice President JD Vance announced that the administration would permanently suspend 870,000 people from receiving any more federal loans, as they are suspected of having defrauded $39 billion from COVID-19 small business programs.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 17:30

New Jersey Microsoft-Linked Data Center Hit With Record Fine Over Unpermitted Gas Generators

A New Jersey AI infrastructure project has been slapped with a $1.07 million environmental penalty after state officials determined that dozens of large natural-gas generators had been running without the necessary air permits, according to The Guardian. 

The fine against DataOne is the biggest New Jersey regulators have imposed on a data center. The generators were being used at the company’s Vineland complex, a large computing facility about 40 miles from Philadelphia that is expected to support Microsoft’s growing demand for AI capacity through its $17 billion arrangement with infrastructure provider Nebius.

The Guardian writes that the equipment apparently wasn’t present when environmental officials inspected the property in December. By July, however, regulators found the generators at the site. Independent reporting later used thermal-drone footage to show that 45 of the facility’s 62 generators appeared to be operating.

That raised a significant permitting issue because the state had not authorized the generators under its air-quality program. The units produce emissions that can contribute to harmful air pollution, particularly when large numbers are operated simultaneously.

DataOne has now been given 45 days to bring the equipment into compliance by applying for the appropriate permits. If it fails to do so, the company could be forced to stop using the generators. For now, New Jersey is permitting them to continue operating while that process plays out.

The decision has frustrated some environmental advocates, who argue that the financial penalty is relatively small compared with the scale of the project.

They have also questioned why operations were allowed to continue after regulators determined the required approvals were missing.

The controversy adds to earlier friction surrounding the Vineland development, including complaints from nearby residents about noise and disputes over construction and zoning.

DataOne says the generators were only intended as an interim source of electricity and disputes the state’s interpretation of the permitting requirements. Nevertheless, the company says it will submit the necessary applications while moving ahead with plans to replace the generators with quieter, lower-emission fuel cells.

The company has not indicated whether it will contest the $1.07 million penalty.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 16:55

10 Unexpected Consequences Of An Economic Crisis Nobody Is Talking About

Authored by John Walter via Substack,

I need to be honest with you before we begin. I don't have all the answers. Anyone who claims to understand exactly how economic systems collapse, or precisely when, is either lying or selling something. What I have done is spend years reading, observing, and talking to people who lived through crises that most of us only read about in history books.

My grandmother kept cash sewn into the lining of her coat because she remembered 1929. My grandfather refused to invest in the stock market his entire life because he watched his father's bakery fail during a banking panic in 1931. They taught me that stability is a story we tell ourselves, not a permanent condition. That lesson took decades to sink in.

What follows is based on verified data and historical patterns. I have tried to avoid the confident predictions that make for good television but bad analysis. Instead, I have focused on mechanisms - how things break, why they break, and what happens to ordinary people when the assumptions they built their lives upon suddenly shift.

Some of this will disturb you. It should. But my goal is not to frighten you into buying gold or moving to a bunker. My goal is to help you see the patterns that emerge when economic stress moves from the financial pages into daily life. These patterns repeat across centuries because human psychology and institutional behavior follow predictable paths when pressured.

I have made mistakes in my analysis before. I underestimated the resilience of certain systems and overestimated the fragility of others. I have learned that timing is nearly impossible to predict, but direction is often visible years in advance. What I offer here is not prophecy. It is observation, carefully sourced, about what happens when the machinery we depend on begins to grind rather than hum.

Read this with skepticism. Verify the data. Check my sources. But do not dismiss the underlying reality because you find it uncomfortable. My grandparents taught me that the people who survive crises are not necessarily the ones who saw them coming first. They are the ones who took the warning signs seriously enough to prepare while others continued assuming tomorrow would look like yesterday.

That preparation begins with understanding.

The most dangerous economic crises rarely arrive with the fanfare we expect. There are no burning buildings on the first day. No immediate shortages. No government announcements that the old order has ended.

Instead, the transformation begins through decisions that appear rational when viewed individually. A company reduces its workforce to protect quarterly earnings. A government delays infrastructure maintenance because budgets are constrained. A family postpones major purchases because the future feels uncertain. Each decision makes sense in isolation.

The danger emerges when millions of similar decisions begin happening simultaneously, creating feedback loops that institutions struggle to control and individuals struggle to recognize until they are already caught in the current.

Throughout history, economic systems have appeared strongest precisely when underlying weaknesses accumulated most dangerously. Periods of prosperity create institutional expansion, debt accumulation, and consumer confidence that gradually forgets stability is never guaranteed. The prosperity itself generates the conditions that later make adjustment more painful. Businesses optimize for efficiency until redundancy disappears. Governments become comfortable with increasing obligations. Households adapt to living standards that depend on economic conditions which cannot continue indefinitely.

What concerns me is not the dramatic collapse that captures headlines. It is the quiet erosion of capacity that precedes visible breakdown - the gradual subtraction of options that masquerades as continuity until the day arrives when systems can no longer absorb stress.

Consider these developments:

1. Financial markets have become increasingly disconnected from underlying economic productivity, with asset prices rising while real wages stagnate and infrastructure deteriorates.

2. Global supply chains, optimized for maximum efficiency and minimal inventory, lack the redundancy to absorb shocks that would have been manageable decades ago when businesses maintained larger reserves.

What follows examines ten consequences that receive insufficient attention in mainstream discussions of economic crisis. These are not speculative fantasies. They are patterns observed in historical crises, visible in current data, and likely to manifest in ways that reshape daily life for billions of people.

1. Universities Face Reckoning as the Degree-to-Debt Equation Collapses

Higher education has operated for decades on a simple promise: borrow money now, earn more later. This equation worked reasonably well when tuition costs remained proportionate to expected earnings. It has broken down as costs exploded while graduate earnings stagnated in real terms.

One statistic surprised me more than I expected: American student debt now exceeds $1.7 trillion, larger than credit card debt and auto loans combined. The average bachelor's degree recipient in 2023 graduated with approximately $37,000 in debt, though this figure masks enormous variation - medical and law students often carry $200,000 or more, while dropouts carry debt without degrees. Default rates have risen steadily, particularly at for-profit institutions where outcomes prove worst.

During an economic crisis, this pressure intensifies from both directions simultaneously. Families facing declining purchasing power become less willing or able to commit to expensive degrees. Employers facing their own financial challenges reconsider whether traditional qualifications provide sufficient value compared with practical experience, professional certifications, or technology-based training. Meanwhile, universities still carry costs accumulated during years of expansion - administrative staff, facilities, debt service, pension obligations - that cannot be reduced quickly.

Institutions begin showing stress through program consolidations, delayed investments, and fundamental questioning of models that seemed permanent. Small private colleges close at accelerating rates - over 100 since 2016, with dozens more on accreditation probation. Large public universities face state funding cuts precisely when demand for retraining increases. Graduate programs in humanities shrink while coding bootcamps expand, not because Shakespeare became less valuable, but because employment markets no longer subsidize the study of literature with guaranteed middle-class incomes.

Artificial intelligence accelerates this disruption. For centuries, universities held near-monopolies over access to advanced knowledge. Students traveled to campuses because expertise concentrated physically. That relationship is changing rapidly. AI systems, digital platforms, and specialized online training allow individuals to acquire valuable skills without following traditional academic pathways. A teenager in Lagos can now access lectures from MIT, programming courses from Google, and AI tools that would have required university laboratories a decade ago.

This does not mean universities disappear. Research institutions with laboratories, scientific contributions, and intellectual networks remain valuable. The disruption affects the assumption that every institution, every degree, and every traditional educational path carries equivalent economic value. A crisis forces society to confront a question avoided for decades: what happens when an institution built around the promise of future opportunity must operate in a world where that promise is no longer guaranteed?

Historical parallels exist. During the Great Depression, university enrollment initially dropped as families could not afford tuition. Enrollment then rose as unemployed workers sought retraining and young people delayed entering weak job markets. But the institutions that survived were those that adapted - offering night classes, developing vocational programs, cutting costs. Those that maintained business-as-usual approaches often failed.

The demographic cliff approaching American higher education makes this particularly urgent. The number of 18-year-olds peaks in 2025 then declines through 2030 due to low birth rates during the 2008 crisis. Universities have built infrastructure and staffing for growing populations that will not materialize. Competition for students intensifies just as family ability to pay decreases. Something has to give.

Over time, we see not the death of higher education but its transformation into something more differentiated - research universities for the elite, vocational training for the majority, and a vast middle ground of institutions struggling to justify costs against outcomes. The crisis accelerates a sorting that prosperity had delayed.

2. Agricultural Efficiency Reveals Hidden Fragility

Modern agriculture represents one of humanity's greatest achievements and one of its most dangerous vulnerabilities. We have built systems capable of feeding 8 billion people through technological sophistication that would astonish previous generations. We have also created dependencies so complex that few understand them and fewer could rebuild them if they faltered.

The cost structure tells the story. Consider the inputs required for high-yield farming. Nitrogen fertilizer, produced through the Haber-Bosch process, consumes 1-2 percent of global energy supply - primarily natural gas. Without continuous application, yields on modern farmland drop 40-60 percent. Phosphate reserves concentrate in Morocco, Western Sahara, China, and Russia - nations not always aligned with Western interests. Potassium comes largely from Belarus, Russia, and Canada. These are not commodities that can be easily substituted or quickly replaced.

A prolonged economic crisis places pressure on farmers operating under increasingly narrow margins. Every season requires significant investment before any income arrives. Fuel must be purchased, equipment maintained, seeds secured, loans repaid regardless of harvest outcomes. During stable periods, these challenges are absorbed. Credit remains available, supply chains function, producers plan years ahead.

The situation changes when multiple pressures arrive simultaneously. Higher borrowing costs increase debt service. Rising energy prices affect fuel, fertilizer, and processing. Trade disruptions block export markets or input supplies. Declining consumer purchasing power reduces demand for premium products. Farmers face impossible choices: reduce fertilizer use and accept lower yields, or maintain inputs and risk bankruptcy if prices drop.

The delayed nature of agricultural decisions makes this particularly dangerous. Choices made today reveal consequences months or years later. A farmer who reduces fertilizer in spring faces lower yields in fall. A nation that fails to maintain irrigation infrastructure faces drought vulnerability years later. By the time consumers notice significant changes in availability or prices, underlying problems have developed for multiple seasons.

Historical food crises rarely stem from single causes. The 2007-2008 price spike resulted from drought in Australia, biofuel mandates in the United States, export bans in India and Vietnam, financial speculation, and energy price increases interacting unpredictably. Prices doubled in six months. Riots erupted in 30 countries. Governments fell in Haiti and Madagascar. The system appeared robust until it wasn't.

Modern agriculture faces additional pressures previous generations did not. Soil degradation affects 40 percent of global farmland according to FAO estimates. Aquifers deplete - India's Punjab, America's Ogallala, China's North China Plain. Climate change shifts growing zones and increases extreme weather. Four companies control 60 percent of global seed sales. Three companies control 70 percent of phosphate fertilizer. Five trading houses handle 90 percent of grain exports. Concentration creates efficiency and fragility simultaneously.

When Ukraine's grain exports faced blockade in 2022 - 9 percent of global wheat, 13 percent of barley, 15 percent of maize - prices spiked immediately. Alternative suppliers could not quickly scale production. Importing nations imposed export bans. The fragility of just-in-time systems, optimized for efficiency rather than resilience, became visible.

A deeper crisis would test these systems more severely. If multiple breadbaskets face simultaneous stress - drought in North America, floods in Europe, heat in India, export restrictions in Russia - the global food system lacks reserves to absorb shocks. Strategic grain reserves have declined globally as just-in-time logistics replaced storage. The buffer is gone.

The political implications extend beyond economics. Food insecurity has triggered revolutions throughout history. The French Revolution followed wheat shortages. The Arab Spring followed price spikes in 2011. When people cannot feed their families, political stability becomes impossible regardless of other factors. Governments understand this. China's obsession with food security, India's export bans, Saudi Arabia's purchases of foreign farmland - all reflect recognition that agricultural dependence creates strategic vulnerability.

In practice, we see not necessarily famine in wealthy nations, though that remains possible. More likely is persistent food price inflation that consumes household budgets, forces dietary changes, and creates political pressure for interventionist policies that further disrupt markets.

3. Social Cohesion Dissolves as Economic Confidence Evaporates

Economic crises damage more than balance sheets. They erode the psychological foundations of social order - the shared assumptions that allow strangers to cooperate, institutions to function, and political disagreement to remain bounded.

How do individuals respond to prolonged uncertainty? Temporary recessions can be endured because people assume recovery approaches. They continue making plans, accepting short-term sacrifice for long-term gain. The psychology changes when uncertainty becomes permanent - when an entire generation enters adulthood during stagnation, when parents watch children face worse prospects than they enjoyed, when the future promised by education and effort fails to materialize year after year.

Millions of individual decisions aggregate into broader social changes. Families delay major purchases. Businesses postpone expansion. Workers accept precarious employment rather than hold out for stability. Young professionals view traditional pathways to success with skepticism. Over time, these adaptations create a society operating on different assumptions than the one that preceded the crisis.

The fictional scenario of social dissolution is not necessarily dramatic. It does not require civil war or revolution, though those remain possible. More commonly, it manifests as gradual withdrawal from collective institutions and increased reliance on personal networks. Trust in government, media, science, and expertise declines. People seek information that confirms existing beliefs rather than challenges them. Conspiracy theories flourish because they offer explanations when official narratives fail to match lived experience.

History suggests examples. Weimar Germany's hyperinflation did not directly cause Nazism, but it destroyed the middle-class savings that had supported democratic institutions. The psychological cost of watching lifetime accumulation evaporate created receptivity to radical alternatives. Argentina's repeated crises transformed a wealthy nation into one where institutional trust disappeared and personal networks became the only reliable form of security.

The danger emerges when economic hardship transforms political disagreement into permanent distrust. Healthy societies contain competing ideas. The risk is that crisis makes those disagreements existential - each side convinced the other threatens survival itself. Social media accelerates this by creating echo chambers where opposing views become not merely wrong but evil.

Institutional legitimacy becomes a scarce resource. Governments struggle to communicate effectively when populations no longer believe official statements. Traditional media faces skepticism that alternative narratives exploit. Experts find themselves competing with influencers who offer simpler explanations and more emotionally satisfying villains.

This is not irrational. If institutions failed to predict the crisis, failed to prevent it, and appear unable to resolve it, why should citizens continue trusting them? The loss of confidence becomes self-fulfilling - institutions that lack public support cannot implement solutions that require sacrifice, so problems worsen, so confidence falls further.

What replaces institutional trust varies. Sometimes local organizations gain importance - churches, neighborhood associations, mutual aid networks. Sometimes ethnic or tribal identities strengthen as broader national identity weakens. Sometimes criminal organizations provide services that legitimate institutions cannot, buying loyalty through protection and employment. The specific form matters less than the underlying shift from formal to informal structures of authority.

The emotional cost falls heaviest on those who remember stability. Young people who never experienced prosperity adapt more easily; they have no reference point for loss. Older workers who built careers during growth face despair as skills become obsolete and savings dwindle. The generation gap widens not just economically but culturally, as different experiences create incompatible worldviews.

Mental health deteriorates under sustained stress. Substance abuse increases. Family violence rises. These are not separate issues from economic policy - they are direct consequences of insecurity that create additional costs for healthcare, criminal justice, and social services precisely when those systems face budget pressures.

The social fabric does not tear all at once. It frays gradually, in small ways that accumulate until suddenly the center cannot hold. By then, the habits of cooperation have atrophied and rebuilding becomes vastly more difficult than maintaining would have been.

4. Healthcare Systems Strain Under Compound Pressures

Modern healthcare is simultaneously one of civilization's greatest achievements and one of its most fragile systems. Hospitals appear permanent, their existence so essential that questioning their reliability seems absurd. Yet they operate within the same financial constraints as every other institution, and those constraints tighten dangerously during economic crisis.

I kept coming back to one uncomfortable question: how does a system already consuming $4.3 trillion annually - over $12,900 per person, nearly double the OECD average - face crisis when budgets contract? The answer is that American healthcare is optimized for revenue generation rather than health outcomes, creating perverse incentives that resist reform.

During crisis, pressure arrives from multiple directions simultaneously. Rising operational costs affect everything - energy for facilities, pharmaceutical supplies, equipment maintenance, staffing. Shortages of medical personnel intensify as burnout drives experienced workers from the profession. Aging populations increase demand precisely when resources contract. Financial difficulties affect both public programs facing budget cuts and private providers facing declining insured populations.

The first consequences are subtle. Hospitals delay modernization projects. Maintenance schedules slip. Smaller facilities close or merge. Medical professionals experience increasing workloads as institutions attempt to operate with limited resources. None of these developments creates immediate catastrophe, but together they reduce flexibility - the margin that healthcare systems need during periods of extraordinary demand.

A severe economic crisis changes the equation because it affects both supply and demand simultaneously. Institutions have fewer resources for expansion, staffing, and technology. Meanwhile, economic hardship contributes to declining public health as people delay medical appointments, reduce preventive care, or experience stress-related conditions. Unemployment often means loss of insurance coverage in American-style systems, creating a population that needs care but cannot afford it.

The pandemic provided a preview. COVID-19 killed an estimated 20 million people globally despite modern medicine. It revealed supply chain vulnerabilities - personal protective equipment, ventilators, basic pharmaceuticals - that had accumulated during years of just-in-time optimization. Hospitals faced impossible triage decisions. Elective procedures were delayed, creating backlogs that persist years later. Healthcare workers experienced trauma that drove many from the profession.

A prolonged economic crisis would compound these pressures without the temporary emergency mobilization that pandemics trigger. Instead of unity and sacrifice, institutional responses would face political resistance and budget constraints. Hard choices about rationing care, limiting services, or denying expensive treatments would become routine rather than exceptional.

The technological dimension adds complexity. AI and automation promise efficiency gains - diagnostic algorithms, robotic surgery, predictive analytics. They also require investment that cash-strapped systems cannot afford. They create new vulnerabilities when software fails or networks are compromised. They potentially reduce employment for medical professionals at a time when human connection becomes more valuable precisely because it is scarce.

Mental health demands special attention. Economic crises increase depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and suicide. These conditions require treatment that strained systems struggle to provide. The combination of increased need and decreased capacity creates human suffering that statistics capture poorly but society feels acutely.

Historical precedents suggest healthcare systems adapt slowly to crisis. The Soviet Union maintained universal healthcare formally while actual provision deteriorated dramatically during the 1990s. Venezuela's health system collapsed alongside its economy, with preventable diseases returning and infant mortality rising. These are extreme cases, but they demonstrate that healthcare is not immune to institutional failure.

Over time, we see likely tiered care - excellent service for those with resources, declining access for the middle class, and crisis conditions for the poor. This violates ethical principles that healthcare systems claim to uphold, but economic constraints force uncomfortable choices. Rationing by price replaces rationing by need. The social contract frays.

The long-term consequences extend beyond immediate health outcomes. Populations in poor health are less productive, creating feedback loops that worsen economic conditions. Children who miss developmental milestones due to inadequate care face lifetime disadvantages. The costs of short-term savings become long-term burdens that compound across generations.

5. Mobility Becomes a Luxury as Transportation Networks Decay

For generations, mobility has defined modernity itself. The ability to travel across cities, countries, and continents became a birthright of developed world citizenship. Cheap fuel, global aviation, extensive road networks, and international shipping transformed how people worked, migrated, vacationed, and imagined their possibilities.

This mobility depended on conditions that are not permanent: abundant energy, stable trade relationships, public investment in infrastructure, and consumer purchasing power sufficient to justify travel costs. When these conditions shift, mobility contracts in ways that reshape daily life and economic geography.

The transformation does not begin with closed borders or empty airports. It begins with rising costs and declining reliability. Fuel prices increase as extraction becomes more difficult and geopolitical instability disrupts supply chains. Transportation companies reduce operations as margins compress. Insurance becomes more expensive as climate risks intensify. Infrastructure maintenance is delayed because governments face competing priorities.

The first people affected are not the wealthy. They can afford private aviation and premium services. The impact falls on ordinary workers, families, and small businesses that depend on affordable transportation. A delivery company struggling with diesel prices raises prices or reduces service areas. A rural community with reduced bus service becomes more isolated. A worker who accepted employment far from home faces impossible commuting costs. A family postpones the vacation that would have supported jobs in a tourist destination.

Economic activity depends heavily on movement. Goods must be transported, employees must reach workplaces, tourists must spend money, businesses must maintain supplier relationships. When mobility becomes expensive or unreliable, economic activity slows in ways that statistics capture only partially. The qualitative change - loss of opportunity, narrowing of horizons, contraction of possibility - is felt but hard to measure.

The psychological shift is equally significant. Globalization was not merely an economic system; it was a cultural expectation. People built identities around cosmopolitanism, international experience, global networks. They assumed distance mattered less than it had for any previous generation. A prolonged crisis challenges that assumption.

Travel decisions that once involved only cost and convenience begin involving concerns about uncertainty, disruption, and reliability. Businesses reduce unnecessary travel, discovering that video conferencing can substitute for many purposes. Families postpone vacations, discovering that local recreation can substitute for distant destinations. Communities become more focused on local resources and relationships.

This is not necessarily negative. Some argue societies became excessively dependent on global networks and ignored local resilience. The reduction in aviation emissions addresses climate concerns. The rediscovery of local community addresses isolation. But the transition is painful for those whose livelihoods and identities depended on mobility.

Geographic mobility - migration for opportunity - also contracts. Young people who might have moved to distant cities for employment find those cities no more promising than home. International migration faces political resistance as destination countries face their own economic pressures. The result is increased geographic stratification, with some regions experiencing decline while others maintain prosperity, and reduced social mobility as birth location increasingly determines life outcomes.

The 1970s oil shocks provide historical precedent. Prices quadrupled. Economies entered recession. Inflation soared. Car-free Sundays in Europe. Gas lines in America. The crisis eventually passed, but it transformed energy policy, automotive design, and geopolitical strategy. Current challenges involve more complex energy systems and more constrained alternatives.

The infrastructure dimension deserves attention. American roads, bridges, and transit systems face maintenance backlogs measured in trillions of dollars. Airports designed for growth face congestion and delay. The assumption that infrastructure automatically expands to meet demand proves false when budgets constrain and priorities shift. What exists is maintained poorly; what is needed is not built.

Over time, we see a more geographically rooted society, for better and worse. Local economies strengthen as global connections weaken. Community ties deepen as cosmopolitan networks fray. Opportunities narrow but belonging intensifies. The world becomes larger again, distance mattering more than it had in an era of cheap jet fuel and container shipping.

6. Technology Accelerates Disruption While Promising Solutions

Economic crises rarely affect only financial systems. They become catalysts for broader transformations because they force reconsideration of methods that prosperity made unquestionable. Technology moves from innovation to necessity when resources become scarce and survival demands efficiency.

Artificial intelligence, automation, digital platforms, and data analytics promise solutions to problems that crises intensify. AI improves medical diagnosis, optimizes supply chains, increases manufacturing productivity, and allows individuals to access services remotely. Automation reduces labor costs when labor becomes expensive. Digital platforms create new economic opportunities when traditional employment contracts.

The same technologies raise difficult questions about employment, inequality, and power. When technological systems become capable of performing tasks that previously required large workforces, societies must redefine the role of human labor. The issue is not simply whether machines replace people - historically, technology has created more employment than it destroyed - but whether institutions can adapt quickly enough to ensure that productivity gains benefit broad populations rather than concentrating among technology owners.

During crisis, this dynamic intensifies. Companies facing revenue decline and cost pressure adopt automation rapidly. Workers displaced by technology cannot easily retrain when education systems are themselves in crisis. The result is structural unemployment that persists even when economic conditions improve, creating a class of technologically displaced workers whose skills no longer match market demands.

The financial technology dimension is equally significant. Cryptocurrencies, decentralized finance, and digital payment systems offer alternatives when traditional banking proves unreliable or exclusive. They also create new vulnerabilities - fraud, collapse, regulatory arbitrage - that affect people least equipped to evaluate risks. The 2022 FTX implosion demonstrated how quickly digital financial systems can fail, destroying savings of ordinary investors who believed they were participating in the future of finance.

Surveillance capabilities expand during crisis as governments seek to monitor populations, enforce regulations, and maintain order. Digital payment systems create records of every transaction. Facial recognition tracks movement. Social media monitoring identifies dissent. These capabilities can improve governance and security. They can also enable authoritarian control that persists after the crisis that justified it.

Historical precedents suggest technological transformation accelerates during crisis. The Great Depression drove adoption of radio, cinema, and electrical appliances that changed domestic life. The 2008 crisis accelerated digital transformation - cloud computing, mobile platforms, gig economy work - that reshaped employment. Crises force adoption of efficiency measures that prosperity delays.

What differs today is the scale and speed of technological change, and the concentration of control. Previous technological revolutions distributed power more broadly - mechanization affected agriculture, electrification affected manufacturing, automobiles affected geography. Current technologies concentrate power in platforms and algorithms that few understand and fewer control. The benefits are real but unevenly distributed. The costs are borne by those who lack voice in how technologies are deployed.

People feel this most acutely in the pressure to constantly adapt. Populations already stressed by economic uncertainty face additional burden to learn new systems, new interfaces, new requirements. Digital literacy becomes essential for basic functioning - banking, healthcare, employment, education - yet many lack access or ability. The elderly, the poor, the rural face exclusion that compounds other disadvantages.

Over time, we see likely a bifurcated society: technologically adept populations enjoying new capabilities, and technologically excluded populations struggling with systems that no longer accommodate human interaction. The divide is not merely economic but existential - affecting identity, community, and meaning.

7. Housing Markets Transform from Wealth Engine to Burden

Housing has become the primary store of wealth for middle-class families in developed nations, and simultaneously the primary source of financial stress. This contradiction creates fragility that economic crises expose brutally.

The numbers tell a stark story. American home prices rose 47 percent between 2019 and 2023, while wages stagnated. The median home now costs over $400,000, requiring incomes that most families do not earn. Renting has become equally unaffordable - the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment exceeds $1,300 monthly, consuming over 30 percent of median income in most cities. Homelessness has increased in virtually every major American city.

This situation resulted from policy choices over decades: zoning restrictions that limit supply, tax advantages that subsidize ownership, financialization that treats housing as investment rather than shelter, and NIMBY politics that prioritize existing homeowner property values over accessibility for newcomers. The result is a system that generates wealth for those who bought decades ago while excluding younger generations and lower incomes.

Economic crisis transforms housing from asset to liability rapidly. Homeowners with mortgages face unemployment that makes payments impossible. Values drop, leaving underwater mortgages where debt exceeds worth. Foreclosures increase, destroying credit and displacing families. Renters face eviction when income disappears, creating homelessness that strains social services.

The 2008 crisis provided a preview. American home values dropped 30 percent nationally, more in some markets. Foreclosures exceeded 3 million annually at the peak. Construction employment collapsed. The psychological impact extended beyond economics - homeownership, the cornerstone of middle-class identity, proved fragile. Communities hollowed out as residents departed.

A deeper crisis would compound these effects with additional pressures. Rising interest rates make mortgages unaffordable even for employed buyers. Construction costs increase as materials and labor become scarce. Climate risks make some areas uninsurable, destroying property values regardless of location desirability. Remote work, normalized during COVID, allows geographic dispersion that reduces demand for expensive urban housing while increasing it elsewhere.

The generational dimension is stark. Baby boomers who bought homes when prices were low and mortgages deductible now own assets worth fortunes. Millennials and Gen Z face prices that require dual incomes, family support, or extreme sacrifice. Homeownership rates for young adults have declined to levels not seen since before World War II. The wealth transfer from young to old through housing markets creates resentment that political systems struggle to address.

International comparisons reveal alternatives. Germany maintains robust rental markets with tenant protections that make renting secure and desirable. Singapore builds public housing that maintains quality and accessibility. Vienna's social housing houses over 60 percent of residents in well-maintained, community-oriented developments. These models require political will that American systems lack, but they demonstrate that alternatives exist.

Over time, we see likely a housing market transformed by necessity. Remote work enables geographic arbitrage - workers moving to cheaper locations while maintaining employment. Tiny homes, accessory dwelling units, and co-living arrangements proliferate as conventional housing becomes inaccessible. Some cities experience decline as demand shifts, creating opportunities for reinvention but also blight and abandonment.

The social implications extend beyond economics. Housing instability creates stress that affects health, education, and family stability. Children who change schools frequently fall behind. Adults who commute long hours sacrifice time for relationships and community. Communities without stable populations cannot build social capital. The housing crisis is a social crisis masquerading as a market problem.

Historical precedents suggest housing transformation is slow but profound. The shift from rural to urban living in the 19th century, the suburbanization of the mid-20th century, the gentrification of recent decades - all took decades but fundamentally reshaped society. Current pressures may accelerate similar transformation, with technology and climate adding new dimensions to traditional economic forces.

8. Energy Systems Face Simultaneous Supply and Demand Pressures

Energy is the foundation of modern civilization. Not metaphorically - literally. Every aspect of contemporary life depends on abundant, affordable energy: food production, transportation, heating, cooling, manufacturing, communication, healthcare. When energy systems stress, everything stresses.

This is where the numbers stopped feeling abstract. Global energy consumption continues rising despite efficiency gains. We burn approximately 100 million barrels of oil daily, plus coal, natural gas, and growing but still modest renewable contributions. The energy return on energy invested (EROEI) for petroleum has fallen from 100:1 in early fields to roughly 15:1 today. We work harder for less net energy, a trend that cannot continue indefinitely.

Renewable energy expands rapidly but faces constraints. Solar and wind provide intermittent power requiring storage or backup generation. Battery production depends on lithium, cobalt, and nickel concentrated in specific locations - Chile, Australia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia. Processing these materials requires fossil fuel energy. Manufacturing solar panels consumes energy and creates waste. None of this means renewables cannot scale, but they scale within limits imposed by physics, geology, and existing infrastructure.

Germany's Energiewende demonstrates these limits. After investing hundreds of billions in renewable energy, Germany still relies on coal for grid stability. Electricity prices rank among Europe's highest. Emissions reductions have been modest. The transition proves more difficult than advocates assumed, requiring compromises that environmental principles resist.

Infrastructure aging compounds supply challenges. American transmission lines average 40 years of service. Transformers require 18-36 month lead times for replacement because domestic manufacturing capacity has declined. The grid experiences more outages than any other developed nation's. Meanwhile, demand grows from data centers - Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta now consume more electricity than many nations - air conditioning in warming climates, and vehicle electrification.

A prolonged economic crisis creates impossible choices. Investment in new capacity requires capital that strained budgets cannot provide. Maintenance of existing infrastructure is deferred, increasing failure risk. Transition to renewable sources accelerates in some regions while stalling in others as costs and reliability concerns dominate. Geopolitical instability disrupts fuel supplies precisely when alternatives are not yet scaled.

The 1970s oil shocks provide historical precedent. Prices quadrupled. Economies entered recession. Inflation soared. Car-free Sundays in Europe. Gas lines in America. The crisis eventually passed, but it transformed energy policy, automotive design, and geopolitical strategy. Current challenges involve more complex energy systems and more constrained alternatives.

Climate change adds urgency that economic crisis complicates. The transition away from fossil fuels is necessary for long-term survival but expensive in the short term. When budgets are constrained, long-term investments are deferred for immediate needs. The result is continued dependence on fossil fuels that worsen the climate conditions that make energy transition more urgent - a trap that resists easy escape.

Over time, we see likely an energy system more differentiated by region and wealth. Wealthy areas maintain reliable supply through premium pricing and advanced technology. Poor areas face rationing, outages, and high costs. Some regions accelerate renewable transition out of necessity; others double down on fossil fuels. The global energy market fragments as security concerns override efficiency optimization.

The social implications are profound. Energy poverty - defined as spending more than 10 percent of income on energy - affects millions in wealthy nations and billions globally. Cold homes in winter. Hot homes in summer. Limited cooking options. Restricted transportation. These conditions affect health, education, and economic opportunity. Energy is not a luxury; it is a prerequisite for modern life.

Historical energy transitions - wood to coal, coal to oil, oil to electricity - took decades and created social disruption. Current transition must happen faster while affecting more people. The friction is inevitable. The question is whether institutions can manage it without catastrophic failure.

9. Financial Complexity Creates Hidden Systemic Risks

Modern finance has become extraordinarily complex - so complex that few participants understand the systems they depend upon, and regulators struggle to monitor risks that emerge from interactions between instruments designed by different institutions for different purposes.

The scale is difficult to grasp. Global derivatives notional exposure exceeds $600 trillion, many times world GDP. These instruments - options, futures, swaps, structured products - serve legitimate purposes: hedging risk, price discovery, liquidity provision. They also create interdependencies that can propagate failure rapidly. The 2008 crisis demonstrated how problems in subprime mortgages - a relatively small market - could trigger global financial collapse through derivative exposures that amplified and transmitted risk.

Shadow banking - non-bank financial intermediaries - operates outside traditional regulatory visibility. Money market funds, private equity, hedge funds, special purpose vehicles handle credit that once flowed through regulated banks. This shadow system provides liquidity and investment that fuel economic activity. It also creates vulnerabilities that regulators understand imperfectly and that can freeze suddenly when confidence evaporates.

Algorithmic trading now accounts for 70 percent of equity market volume. Computers execute trades in milliseconds based on patterns human traders cannot perceive. This creates efficiency and liquidity under normal conditions. It also creates instability - flash crashes in 2010, 2015, and 2020 demonstrated how algorithms can amplify volatility and create liquidity evaporation precisely when needed most.

Cryptocurrency markets add new dimensions. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and thousands of other digital assets created parallel financial systems operating outside traditional regulation. Some see these as liberation from government control and inflation. Others see them as speculative bubbles vulnerable to fraud, manipulation, and collapse. The 2022 FTX implosion - $8 billion in customer funds disappearing overnight - demonstrated that cryptocurrency markets replicate traditional finance's vulnerabilities while adding new ones.

A prolonged economic crisis tests these systems in ways that normal conditions do not. Correlations that models assume remain stable suddenly spike. Liquidity that appears abundant evaporates. Counterparties that seemed reliable default. The complexity that created efficiency under growth becomes fragility under stress.

Historical financial crises follow patterns. Credit expands during growth, creating asset bubbles. Recognition of overvaluation triggers contraction. Leverage amplifies losses. Contagion spreads through interconnected institutions. Panic causes liquidity freezes that force fire sales, worsening declines. Government intervention eventually stabilizes systems but at enormous cost and with lasting political consequences.

What differs today is scale and speed. Global integration means problems propagate instantly. Computer trading means crashes happen in milliseconds rather than days. Derivative exposures mean small problems can become large through leverage. The system is robust until it isn't, and the transition can be sudden.

The political implications are significant. Financial crises destroy trust in institutions that appeared permanent. They create demands for regulation that powerful interests resist. They generate populist movements that blame elites, globalization, or minorities for problems that are systemic. The aftermath of 2008 - Occupy movements, Brexit, Trump, European populism - demonstrated how financial crisis becomes political crisis.

Wealth concentration exacerbates instability. The richest 1 percent own 45 percent of global wealth; the bottom 50 percent own less than 1 percent. This concentration creates demand deficiency - rich people save more - and political instability. Populist movements emerge on left and right, attacking elites, globalization, and institutions. The shared reality required for collective action fragments.

Over time, we see likely reregulation - attempts to constrain the complexity that created fragility. But regulatory capture means rules are written by those regulated. Innovation finds ways around constraints. The cycle of crisis, regulation, relaxation, and renewed crisis continues. Financial instability is not a bug of modern capitalism but a feature - creative destruction that allocates resources but destroys lives and communities in the process.

10. Institutional Legitimacy Erodes as Solutions Fail

The final consequence may prove most consequential because it affects everything else. When economic crises persist, institutions lose legitimacy. Governments, corporations, media, experts, international organizations - all face skepticism that becomes self-fulfilling as failed predictions and ineffective responses accumulate.

What do institutions require to function? They need resources, certainly - tax revenue, profits, investment. But they also need something less tangible: trust that they serve legitimate purposes, that leaders act in good faith, that following rules produces fair outcomes. This trust is earned slowly and lost quickly.

Economic crisis destroys trust in specific ways. Institutions that failed to predict crisis lose credibility as prognosticators. Institutions that failed to prevent crisis lose credibility as protectors. Institutions that fail to resolve crisis lose credibility as competent managers. Each failure compounds, creating narrative of institutional incapacity that becomes difficult to reverse.

The psychological mechanism is rational. If experts misunderstood the economy, why trust their advice on other matters? If governments cannot manage finances, why obey their regulations? If corporations destroy value while enriching executives, why participate in their systems? The loss of confidence is not irrational conspiracy thinking. It is reasonable response to demonstrated failure.

Historical examples are numerous. Weimar Germany's hyperinflation destroyed faith in democratic institutions that were then replaced by authoritarian alternatives. The Soviet Union's collapse revealed that communist planning could not deliver promised prosperity, discrediting the entire ideological framework. The 2008 crisis destroyed trust in financial regulation, central banking, and economic expertise that has not recovered.

What replaces institutional trust varies by context. Sometimes local organizations gain importance - churches, neighborhood associations, mutual aid networks. Sometimes ethnic or tribal identities strengthen as broader national identity weakens. Sometimes criminal organizations provide services that legitimate institutions cannot, buying loyalty through protection and employment. The specific form matters less than the underlying shift from formal to informal authority.

The information environment accelerates this erosion. Social media allows alternative narratives to spread rapidly, bypassing traditional gatekeepers. Conspiracy theories flourish because they offer explanations when official narratives fail to match lived experience. Filter bubbles create parallel realities where different populations cannot agree on basic facts, making collective action impossible.

The danger is not chaos immediately. It is the gradual replacement of legitimate authority by authority that serves narrower interests - corporate, ethnic, criminal, foreign. The state does not disappear; it becomes a shell manipulated by those with resources to capture its functions. Public goods become private goods. Rule of law becomes rule of power. Corruption becomes systemic rather than exceptional.

Democratic institutions face particular challenges during crisis. They require patience, compromise, and acceptance of procedural legitimacy even when outcomes disappoint. Economic stress makes these requirements harder to meet. Populations demand immediate solutions that democratic processes cannot deliver quickly. Authoritarian alternatives promise decisive action that democracy's deliberation prevents.

Over time, we see not necessarily dictatorship, though that remains possible. More commonly, it is democratic decay - formal institutions maintained but emptied of meaning, elections held but choices constrained, rights respected in theory but violated in practice. The appearance of democracy persists while substance erodes.

Reversing this erosion is extraordinarily difficult. Trust, once lost, cannot be commanded back. It must be earned through demonstrated competence and integrity over years. Institutions that have failed must reform genuinely, not cosmetically. Leaders must acknowledge mistakes rather than deflect blame. These requirements are rare during crisis when defensiveness dominates.

The long-term consequences extend for generations. Children raised during institutional failure learn skepticism that persists into adulthood. Social capital - the trust and cooperation that make collective action possible - depletes and rebuilds slowly. The habits of democracy atrophy. The skills of authoritarianism - obedience, hierarchy, suppression of dissent - develop.

What Remains

I have tried to avoid the confident predictions that make for dramatic reading but poor analysis. I do not know when these developments will manifest, or in what order, or with what severity. Timing is nearly impossible to predict because it depends on decisions not yet made, shocks not yet arrived, and interactions that cannot be modeled in advance.

What I do know, from history and from the data I have examined, is that complex systems often appear strongest precisely when they are most fragile. That prosperity creates the conditions for its own disruption. That institutions adapt slowly to changes that arrive rapidly. That human psychology is poorly suited to recognizing gradual threats that require collective response.

My grandparents survived the Great Depression not because they predicted it precisely but because they maintained habits of caution that prosperity made seem unnecessary. They saved, they diversified, they maintained skills, they valued community. These habits served them when crisis arrived.

What I offer here is not a roadmap to doom but a map of vulnerabilities. The systems we depend upon are more fragile than advertised. The assumptions we make about continuity are less reliable than we pretend. The future will likely bring challenges that current institutions are poorly prepared to meet.

How individuals and societies respond to these challenges will determine what emerges. History offers examples of resilience and collapse, adaptation and failure. The outcome is not predetermined. But it is shaped by recognition - by seeing patterns early enough to prepare, by taking warning signs seriously enough to act while others continue assuming tomorrow will resemble yesterday.

The countdown is not to a specific date but to a series of thresholds that will determine which futures remain possible. We are closer to some of those thresholds than comfortable acknowledgment allows.

Recognition comes first. Preparation is what gives that recognition value.

My grandmother's coat, with cash sewn into the lining, used to seem excessive. Now it feels like a reminder.

The structures still stand. The question is whether we will maintain them before they require rebuilding from foundations that may no longer exist.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 16:20

Kyrsten Sinema’s Former Bodyguard Arrested After Alleged Break-In

A bizarre dispute involving former Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and a man who once served as both her bodyguard and romantic partner has resulted in criminal charges, according to NBC.

Matthew Ammel, 39, was arrested in Arizona this month after allegedly entering Sinema’s home while she was traveling and causing an estimated $200,000 in damage.

Authorities say the Aug. 30 incident began with Ammel pressuring Sinema to upload a video to X. He allegedly warned that unless she posted it, he would begin destroying her artwork at 10-minute intervals.

When Sinema refused, Ammel allegedly went through the house removing roughly 22 paintings and tossing them into the swimming pool. Investigators say another painting was defaced with spray paint and placed near the home’s entrance. Expensive bottles of alcohol were also allegedly smashed, leaving broken glass around the property and in the pool.

NBC writes that police arrested Ammel on Sept. 17 after he left a mental health facility. He has since been charged with aggravated criminal damage and released pending an October court date.

The episode adds another chapter to an already complicated story involving Ammel and Sinema.

Ammel, a retired Army veteran, began working on Sinema’s security detail in 2022 and accompanied the senator on trips in the U.S. and abroad. He later received a national security fellowship in her Senate office while remaining involved with her security.

The two also had a romantic relationship while Ammel was married, something Sinema has acknowledged.

That relationship is now at the center of a separate lawsuit brought by Ammel’s former wife in North Carolina. The state is among the few that still recognizes “alienation of affection” claims, allowing someone to pursue damages against a third party accused of interfering with a marriage.

Sinema sought to have the case thrown out on jurisdictional grounds, arguing that her connections to North Carolina were insufficient. A federal judge disagreed, pointing in part to messages she sent Ammel while he was in the state and allowing the case to proceed.

Ammel’s ex-wife claims their marriage had been loving and stable before Sinema became involved with him and is seeking monetary damages from the former senator.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 15:45

Legal Advocacy Group Accuses Virginia Schools Of Falsifying Ideology Of 911 Terrorists

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

Conservative legal advocacy group America First Legal (AFL) has announced it is investigating the Fairfax County Public Schools school district in Virginia, accusing Fairfax of issuing a teacher's guide that seeks to falsify the ideological underpinnings of the 9/11 attacks.

The guide omits key historical details, while instructing teachers to obfuscate 9/11 facts, AFL said in a Sept. 23 statement.

The guide asks teachers not to associate the attacks with Islam or Muslims and instructs teachers that 9/11 commemoration must focus on lives lost and the people who sacrificed to help others rather than the attackers.

The district's guide was first published by Fox News in late August, with AFL's investigation initiated after the news coverage, the group said.

"Do not focus a commemorative learning experience about 9/11 on an examination of Islam," the guide states.

"Teachers who decide to take a deep dive into world religions as part of their 9/11 lesson unintentionally send the harmful message that Islam, or all Muslims, are responsible for these terrorist attacks."

The guide asks teachers to "intentionally include" Muslim Americans among the victims, helpers, and heroes when teaching about the event, according to the guide.

In addition, teachers are recommended to "intentionally disrupt" any implicit associations between "Muslim," "outsider," and "terrorist" in the national discourse.

When discussing the incident, teachers must make it clear that the Sept. 11 attacks were carried out by the al-Qaeda terrorist group, whose actions "should not be attributed" to Islam, according to the guide.

The guide raised concerns that teaching about 9/11 without careful consideration can lead to stigmatizing Islam and encouraging acts of racism against Muslim and Middle Eastern students and those perceived to belong to these groups.

On Sept. 15, AFL sent a letter to Fairfax County Public Schools, seeking records under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.

Some of the records requested in the letter include the complete and current version of the guide document; information about authors, reviewers, editors, and approving officials; and all communications concerning the guide.

"Fairfax County Public Schools is attempting to sanitize history and erase the radical Islamic terrorism that struck our nation on September 11, 2001," Will Scolinos, counsel at America First Legal, said in the statement.

"Those unforgettable attacks are a national tragedy, with effects far exceeding 'Islamophobia.' Parents and the public must have full transparency regarding who is responsible for stripping truth from our children's classrooms. AFL will continue to investigate and hold public school officials accountable," Scolinos said.

School's Response

In a statement given to Fox News, Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) said the institution has a "deeply personal connection" to the 9/11 incident because of its "proximity to the Pentagon and the many military-connected families we serve."

"On the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks, we remember the nearly 3,000 people who were killed, including 184 at the Pentagon. We remember the victims, their families, the survivors, and everyone whose lives were forever changed. We honor the first responders whose courage and sacrifice continue to inspire us," the school district said.

"FCPS remains committed to creating an inclusive environment in our schools where all students feel welcome and respected as we strive to provide a world-class education and workplace."

In a superintendent's message published by the school district on Sept. 11, it said that FCPS teaches events that occured on 9/11 based on the Virginia Standards of Learning for U.S. history.

In middle school U.S. History, the school district teaches how the attacks affected domestic policy, global perspectives on the war against terror and the heroic sacrifice of the passengers of Flight 93. Meanwhile, in high school Virginia and U.S. History, students are required to analyze the attacks within the broader context of terrorism and democracy.

The Epoch Times reached out to Fairfax County Public Schools for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 15:10

Larry Ellison Pledges $9 Billion More In Oracle Stock To Fund Warner Bros Deal As Price Tumbles, CDS Hits Record

Two weeks after the Larry Ellison inexplicably pulled his plan to sell up to 50 million shares, worth about $7.5 billion news of which had sent the stock sliding the day prior, the Oracle CEO - the key figure behind Paramount Skydance’s deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery - has pledged 67 million more shares of Oracle as collateral for personal loans than he had at the same time last year, approximately 350 million shares.

The shares pledged, revealed in an Oracle Schedule 14A filing on Friday, amount to a 19% increase in the number of shares Ellison has pledged since 2025. The stock is worth about $9.2 billion at Oracle’s closing price of $137.10 on Friday.

As Bloomberg notes, Ellison has been helping his son David’s company, Paramount, acquire Warner Bros. in a transaction valued at $111 billion. The Ellisons have committed to $47 billion in equity funding for that deal, about $24 billion of which is coming from three Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, and much of the rest now appears to be sourced from pledge ORCL shares. 

Paramount is also looking to raise debt financing.

Having negotiated a settlement earlier this week with 12 state attorneys general and the Writers Guild trade union who had sued to block the merger, Paramount is now just one step away from sealing its deal for Warner Bros.

While Oracle officers and directors are forbidden from pledging company shares as collateral for personal loans, there is one exception: Larry Ellison - who serves as the company’s executive chair and chief technology officer.

The total stock pledged now represents about 36% of Ellison’s total holdings of 1.16 billion shares; in dollar terms that amount to just over $57 billion in ORCL stock pledged. 

The regulatory filing also disclosed that Oracle’s co-chief executive officers will receive $870 million in combined stock option awards. The package of Clay Magouyrk was valued at $621.7 million, while Mike Sicilia’s was worth $248.7 million. The executives were named to the joint CEO role a year ago, taking the job from Oracle veteran Safra Catz. Ellison, who didn’t receive awards in the previous two fiscal years, got a package valued at $117.8 million.

The 82-year-old technology mogul announced plans earlier this month to sell as much as $7.5 billion in Oracle stock, but then quickly canceled those plans, which may have been the result of the stock price's precipitous drop.

Aside from the Warner Bros. deal, Oracle has been caught up in an escalating data center fiasco, having announced force mejeure on its largest data center in New Meixco, the 2.25GW Project Jupiter complex, which has advised the project developer it will be unable to meet some contractual obligations due to lack of power at the facility as a result of regulatory delays. 

The Force Majeure sent ORCL bond yields surging to a record high, despite a relatively muted reaction in the stock - which nonetheless trades near 52 week lows...

Oracle Bonds Plunge To Record Low As $30 Billion CapEx In Peril On Data Center Turmoil https://t.co/ZuAwlgIWyO

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 25, 2026

... and will likely trade even lower once it notices that ORCL CDS have also just hit a new record wide, as the company's default risk has never been higher

As such, one wonders at what stock prices does ORCL get a margin call and is forced to source liquidity, potentially leading to a collapse in the Warner Bros takeover (at a wildely inflated price) as suddenly it finds itself without the funds to do so. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 14:35

Rickards: The Real In AI Is Not 'Super-Intelligence', It's China

Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

It's past time to look beyond the AI hype. The stock valuations of the leading hyperscalers and frontier AI modeling companies are almost certainly in bubble territory. But the market will sort that out in time.

We all know the names of the AI stocks whether from the hardware, software or compute vectors - Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Google (Alphabet), Amazon, OpenAI, Anthropic, NVIDIA and a few others.

Some of these names have valuable core businesses independent of the AI bubble. Others are pure AI plays. All will be hurt to a greater or lesser extent when the AI bubble bursts.

Still, bubbles can get bigger before they pop and they can take far longer to pop than many market participants realize. It's not prudent to short these names but one should definitely lighten up on long positions. Moving portfolio allocations to cash and hard assets is a good way to weather the coming storm.

Valuations aside, these companies now pose serious risks to national security, critical infrastructure, the financial system and other institutions. These risks need to be considered on their own because they will affect all of us.

These dangers are not about stock bubbles. They're about social chaos.

Geopolitical Catalyst

Two threats in particular stand out.

• The first is the use of AI models by the Chinese to attack the United States.

• The second is rogue AI models that work autonomously to attack us on their own.

We've seen continuous headlines about the AI race going on between China and the U.S. The elements of the race include massive data centers, high-powered semiconductors and frontier AI models built by U.S. firms such as Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI and by Chinese firms Baidu, Tencent, DeepSeek and Moonshot AI. Other critical inputs in this race include massive amounts of electricity and water required to run the hardware.

The U.S.-China AI race is usually framed in existential terms. Whichever country gets to superintelligence first will control global AI and possibly the world. Even in less grandiose terms, there are critical outcomes in areas of national security, encryption, digital payments, weapons systems and curing disease that depend on the winner of the AI race.

Yet, the competition is far from fair. The U.S. relies on massive investment in fixed assets, superior technology and access to the fastest semiconductors.

China has some of these tools but they rely more on theft of intellectual property from the U.S., using output from U.S. AI apps as curated input on their own apps (to increase processing speeds) and smuggling advanced chips through third countries. China may not be leading the AI race but they are certainly keeping pace.

AI Recon

Now a new threat has emerged. China is using the most advanced AI models including Claude from Anthropic to process information scraped from a wide variety of open sources in the U.S. including military photographs, ship transponder signals, commercial satellite images and other information combined with Chinese satellite images to determine the exact locations and movements of U.S. naval vessels.

That AI-generated information is then passed to Iran, who use it to fire missiles at U.S. Navy vessels near the Strait of Hormuz and the Arabian Sea.

So far, no U.S. vessels have been hit but that may just be a matter of time. China is using U.S. AI technology to help attack the U.S. Navy at sea. Just days after this revelation, a Chinese spy satellite blew-up in space.

No one has taken responsibility for it. But it's not a stretch to infer that the U.S. used a space-based weapon to destroy the Chinese satellite that was used to help Iran attack the U.S. Navy.

The AI wars are becoming star wars in real time.

Regulatory Capture

As a separate threat, the media is flooded with stories about an AI Apocalypse in which AI apps from frontier developers like OpenAI and Anthropic achieve superintelligence, join forces and take over the world putting humans in the same position relative to the AI systems as apes are to humans. Other versions of this AI dystopia involve gangs of AI apps working together to shut down the power grid, loot banks and brokers and cause chaos in civilized society.

This wave of panicked propaganda began with an essay by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. The Amodei essay was amplified by Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon who publicly resigned from Anthropic and issued a warning that AI could "kill all humans" within a decade. The Amodei and Coxon warnings were then taken up by the media, politicians and tech experts in what became a cascade of doom and gloom.

But let's put these warnings in perspective. Whenever you see the same talking points coming from multiple insiders at once, one should be suspicious that a psychological operation (or "psyop") is being conducted to sway public opinion. In this case, the message is that regulation is needed to protect the world against AI going rogue. This regulation would involve government rules, internal compliance departments, auditor inspections, testing and periodic safety certifications.

How convenient for Anthropic and OpenAI. The kind of regulation they envision is extremely expensive. The giant AI developers can afford it but their newer and smaller competitors cannot. Anthropic and OpenAI are planning $1 trillion plus IPOs later this regulatory moat around their franchises to keep out competition with help from the year. The scaremongering about rogue AI could be nothing more than a tactic to build a government-enforced oligopoly.

My own research indicates that superintelligence can never be achieved because it is impossible to program abductive logic (in contrast to inductive and deductive logic) which can be summarized as gut feel or common sense.

Still, AI is powerful and needs guardrails. But it is not as potentially dangerous as the scaremongers insist. Trump was smart to resist calls for more government regulation. The real enemy in the AI world is not superintelligence - it's China.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 14:00

A Dollar Is Not A Dollar: A Plea To Make Dollar Policy Great Again

Authored by John Tamny via RealClearMarkets,

Le Diplomate is one of the toughest tables in Washington, DC. When it opened in 2013 its wildly popular Burger Americain (with French fries) set diners back $14, according to the Washington Post. Thirteen years later, the same meal retails for $29. As Tim Carman and Federica Cocca report at the Post, "the wholesale price of ground beef has soared between 18 and 30 percent in the past few years."

Ok, so why the higher ground beef prices, and beef prices in general? As you read this barbecue restaurants in Texas are quite literally removing brisket from the menu so expensive has it become, while a basic "Little Cheeseburger" at Five Guys costs more than $10, without French fries. Costs are soaring for seemingly the simplest of meats.

Carman and Cocca point to "Drought conditions" as the "primary reason for the rise in prices," due to reduced domestic cattle herds. They add that "Domestic cattle shortages mean more beef is arriving from abroad - and it's more expensive, up from $4.96 per pound in June 2025 to $5.59 per pound in June 2026."

The factors Carman and Cocca point to are difficult to lean on as big drivers of soaring beef prices. That's because globalization, or the division of labor, is generally not a cost accelerant.

Moving to the Trump administration, Carman and Cocca report that inside the White House they're yelling at the proverbial scoreboard with antitrust threats lobbed at the major domestic producers of beef, alongside a reduction in tariffs. The first solution is silly, while the second one is a reminder of the illiteracy informing economic policy within the modern GOP. Which brings us to the purpose of this piece.

Not discussed enough is the dollar. Reporters, politicians, and pundits talk endlessly about the prices of market goods, but almost never about the currency in which those market goods are priced. Their blithe countenance about the dollar reveals a major blind spot in their analysis.

That's because per the title of this opinion piece, a dollar isn't a dollar. Instead, the dollar's valuation is a moving target. Very much so.

Consider the WSJ Dollar Index. Since Donald Trump's inauguration in January of 2025, the dollar has fallen 6.3 versus various foreign currencies on the Index.

What about gold? Known for its constancy, the yellow metal's per ounce price doesn't move as much as the currencies measured in terms of gold do. Notable here is that gold is up roughly 63% since Trump's inauguration, and up 205% since 2013 when Le Diplomate charged $14 for a cheeseburger. This is not nothing.

Again, the dollar isn't a dollar in the way that a foot is always 12 inches, the minute 60 seconds, and the pound 16 ounces. Floated in 1971, the dollar has moved up and down since then. Down substantially under Presidents Nixon and Carter, up substantially under Presidents Reagan and Clinton, and then down substantially under Presidents Bush (W.), Obama and Trump. Commodities are very sensitive to the dollar's movements, and reflect them.

Which explains this opinion piece's plea. It's not random that costs from ground beef, to brisket, to gasoline have soared in modern times, rather it's not insignificantly a reflection of a declining dollar.

Cheeseburgers, brisket sandwiches and gallons of gasoline aren't expensive as much as the modern dollar is cheap. President Trump thinks a weak dollar is "great." He's wrong. See Le Diplomate, see Texas barbecue, and see prices at the pump. How about making a stable dollar great again to reverse a price explosion?

John Tamny is editor of RealClearMarkets, President of the Parkview Institute, a senior fellow at the Market Institute, and a senior economic adviser to Applied Finance Advisors (www.appliedfinance.com). His latest book is The Deficit Delusion: Why Everything Left, Right and Supply Side Tell You About the National Debt Is Wrong.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 12:50

Nor'easter Hammers East Coast: 62 MPH Gusts Blast Nantucket, High Winds Hit Bethany Beach

Folks in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast are waking up this morning to a power nor'easter with damaging winds, coastal flooding, and heavy rain. 

Coastal wind gusts reached 62 mph on Nantucket, 58 mph in Bethany Beach, Delaware, and 55 mph in Chatham, Massachusetts, according to local weather data. New York's JFK Airport recorded a 53 mph gust. Winds are expected to continue through Sunday. 

"Powerful nor'easter bringing major coastal flooding & damaging winds to the East Coast," NWS Weather Prediction Center wrote on X around lunchtime in New York, adding, "Roads are underwater at the Jersey Shore & gusts hit 64 mph on Nantucket. More flooding likely at high tides tonight & Sun. Turn Around, Don't Drown."

Powerful #noreaster bringing major coastal flooding & damaging winds to the East Coast. Roads are underwater at the Jersey Shore & gusts hit 64 mph on Nantucket. More flooding likely at high tides tonight & Sun. Turn Around, Don't Drown. Reports so far: https://t.co/9LGn1JoXUA pic.twitter.com/L84ZYVj3Rh

— NWS Weather Prediction Center (@NWSWPC) September 26, 2026

Private weather forecasting firm NY NJ PA Weather provided a detailed map of the impacts for the Northeast through the weekend:

A nor'easter will impact the region this morning through Monday evening. Rain has developed along the coast. Rainfall will become widespread by 2 PM this afternoon and begin pushing inland through the evening. Meanwhile, winds will increase from the Northeast to 15 to 30 mph.

The worst conditions will be tomorrow morning, with torrential downpours, wind gusts up to 70 mph on the immediate coast, and visibility below a mile, producing poor travel conditions, power outages, flash flooding, and coastal flooding. Conditions will gradually improve from tomorrow afternoon through Monday afternoon as the storm weakens while lifting towards southern New England.

ZONE 1: Rain 2" -4", Winds 15-30 mph with gusts over 50 mph, high coastal flooding threat.

ZONE 2: Rain 1" -2", Winds 15-30 mph with gusts over 40 mph, high urban/river flooding threat.

ZONE 3: Rain 0." - 1", Winds 15-30 mph with gusts over 30 mph

ZONE 4: Rain 0.10"-0.50", Winds 10-20 mph with gusts under 30 mph

According to the utility tracking website PowerOutage.us, more than 90,000 customers across New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania are without power.

Footage:

Flooding again north of Bethany Beach, Delaware on our YouTube Live feed https://t.co/JGDokZlRE0 pic.twitter.com/LjhRUzm2eT

— Jesse Ferrell (@WeatherMatrix) September 26, 2026

Tough situation in Ocean City, Nj. pic.twitter.com/NK8X4VBDtg

— WeatherWatcher (@WeatherWatchin) September 26, 2026

When the Ocean meets the bay in Atlantic City and high tide is still an hour away. When mother nature speaks we have no choice but to listen. 🌊🙌🇺🇸 #AtlanticCityNJ pic.twitter.com/3yoGmDO8BV

— TheMastiffMafia (@mafia_mastiff) September 26, 2026

Crews have rescued several people by boat and high water trucks in Sea Bright, New Jersey. Ocean Avenue has been inundated by coastal flooding from the Shrewsbury River. #njwx #noreaster pic.twitter.com/T4BvqAxQYD

— Bill Wadell (@BillWadell) September 26, 2026

The good news is that no hurricanes have formed in the Atlantic so far this year, with a strengthening El Niño helping suppress hurricane development by increasing wind shear, which makes it harder for storms to organize and intensify.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 12:25

"I'm Rejecting Their Deal": Trump Blasts Iranian Proposal Amid Reports He'll Resume Bombing After Midterms

Speaking to reporters Saturday on the White House lawn, President Trump offered his first direct confirmation that he has rejected an Iranian proposal for a seven-day ceasefire and is open to the resumption of attacks on the Islamic Republic, as it still insists on its strict demands for reopening the Strait of Hormuz and ending the war.

The night prior, The Wall Street Journal was the first to report that "President Trump has rejected Iran’s proposal for a seven-day ceasefire and has told aides he expects to resume bombing Iran after the November midterms, U.S. officials said." Here's how the president responded to a reporter's question Saturday morning:

Reporter: Will you strike Iran after the midterms?

Trump: I'm rejecting their deal. They want to make a deal where they open the Strait immediately because they're losing so badly.

They want to make a deal, and I think that's fine. I like making a deal, too, but that deal would… pic.twitter.com/87rKbDySLN

— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 26, 2026

"Well I’m rejecting their deal," Trump responded. While in the fresh verbal interaction he did not explicitly state he plans to resume bombing, he also obviously did not deny the premise of the question (resumption of bombing Iran).

"They want to make a deal where they open the strait immediately because they’re losing so badly," Trump continued. "You know you don’t read that, you don’t see that in the fake news."

"We're winning tremendously. We have total control of the Hormuz Strait, massive amounts of oil are coming out of the Hormuz Strait," he claimed. "Last night we had 29 ships come out. They want to make a deal, and I think that’s fine, I like making a deal, too, but that deal would not be acceptable."

"And what they want to do is immediately open the Hormuz Strait. You know why? Because they’re dying," Trump said. "You know why they’re dying? Because they have no money coming in. Because they get their money from the Hormuz Strait."

He continued: “So they outsmarted themselves. They said, ‘Let’s close it and cause a problem for the world.’ And then I came along and we put up the greatest blockade ever in military history. It’s a wall of steel."

"I would put it up and guess what? They don’t have any money now because they wanted to close the strait. And I said, ‘That’s fine, we’re going to close it on you. But everybody else is able to use it,'" Trump added.

Analysis: President Trump thinks a better deal is just around the corner and he is willing to set the region on fire again in his pursuit of it.

Unfortunately, my pessimism on the U.S.-Iran talks held up.

The technical details of a new understanding were not difficult to hammer out. But the political commitment for peace is lacking.

President Trump thinks a better deal is just around the corner and he is willing to set… https://t.co/bbU5Pp6iim

— Esfandyar Batmanghelidj (@yarbatman) September 26, 2026

For a brief moment there was hope that the warring sides could get back to 'technical talks' based on interactions on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York this past week. Some premature headlines even stated talks at the technical level were already taking place, which the Iranian side was quick to deny.

But at this point that scenario is clearly not going to happen coming out of the UNGA gathering, as President Masoud Pezeshkian has also now flown out of New York and is headed home, state media outlets have indicated.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi ⁠previously said, "If the necessary conditions are met, the strait can be reopened, a normal maritime passage restored within seven days. The choice ‌now ⁠rests with the United States." He explained: "The actions that the United States should take ⁠are not new. They are all already in the MoU." Tehran has said all along it would not back off its conditions for ending the war. The FM was said to be waiting in New York for a response before going back to Tehran. Presumably he too will now return to his country.

🔴 US President Donald Trump informed the negotiating team that there is no going back to the memorandum of understanding with Iran, a US source tells Al Arabiya English

🔴 The US source says Trump told his team that the Iranian negotiators are not decision makers

🔴 Trump… pic.twitter.com/Kc2F2P7Bzg

— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) September 26, 2026

Trump was clearly not satisfied with the Iranian 7-day roadmap after he demanded the "complete dismantling" of Iran's nuclear program as a key condition for any deal. The Iranians have insisted the question of nuclear enrichment can only be discussed after the war is ended, saving the issue for a future time.

What's the next phase or gameplan here from Washington's perspective? Regional analyst and editor of Amwaj.media, Mohammad Ali Shabani, offers the following: "The next phase of the war will likely revolve around destroying Iran's economic infrastructure. The method is collective immiseration until desperate Iranians with nothing to lose will do the regime change." This of course sets the US on a trajectory of yet another 'forever war' in the region.

* * *

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 12:00

Syria Opens Overland Fuel Transit Route To Iraq Amid Hormuz Closure

Via The Cradle

Syria has begun trucking imported gasoline from its Baniyas Refinery into Iraq, adding a return leg to a route Baghdad has used to export its fuel since the US war on Iran led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a senior Syrian oil official told Reuters on 25 September.

According to Tareq Shallash, who heads the Refining Directorate at the state-owned Syrian Petroleum Company (SPC), the first consignment – roughly 32,800 metric tons of gasoline – arrived aboard the Marshall Islands-flagged tanker Avanti and was pumped into storage at Baniyas before being loaded onto trucks this week.

Source: Reuters

Shallash said 77 tanker trucks have so far set off for the Iraqi border, with loading still in progress and more cargoes on the way.

He stressed that the fuel neither originates in Syria nor comes out of stocks earmarked for domestic consumption.

The shipments move under a transit contract between SPC and Qatar's UCC Holding, which Shallash identified as both the supplier and the firm managing transport.

Iraq's Oil Ministry confirmed the arrangement, with spokesperson Saleem al-Rikabi telling Reuters that “A contract was signed between SOMO and the Qatari company to supply Iraq with improved gasoline through the port of Baniyas by road tankers, and the supplies have in fact been delivered on a regular basis.”

Shallash said the deal is currently restricted to gasoline, though future agreements could open the route to crude, other petroleum products, and additional goods. 

Baghdad has already pledged to keep building overland alternatives through Syria even if Hormuz reopens, and Reuters reported in July that Iraqi fuel oil moved via Baniyas had reached the US for the first time. 

With Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz, Iraq - unable to ship its oil - has opened its borders to Syria. Thousands of fuel-laden tankers are being sent to the world market overland through Syria. Iraq has closed its airports to Iran's planes.

İran'ın Hürmüz'ü kapatmasıyla petrolünü sevk edemeyen Irak'a Suriye kapılarını açtı. Binlerce petrol yüklü tanker kara yoluyla Suriye üzerinden dünya pazarına gönderiliyor.
Irak, İran'ın uçaklarına havaalanlarını kapattı. pic.twitter.com/I4Ub6a749E

— Murat Özer (@muratozer_ist) September 25, 2026

UCC Holding is also part of a consortium with Chevron and TI Capital studying the revival of a Kirkuk–Baniyas crude pipeline, after Iraq and Syria signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in Washington in July. 

Reuters reported in August that the project could take four years and cost at least $15 billion, because it would require entirely new infrastructure. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 11:40

The Commercial Real Estate Crash Is Moving From Paper Losses To Realized Losses

The great commercial real estate waiting game may finally be running out of time, according to Bloomberg.

For years after Covid fundamentally changed how Americans use office space, lenders and property owners managed to postpone much of the financial damage. Loans were modified, maturities were pushed out and buildings were given more time to recover. The basic assumption was that eventually interest rates would come down, employees would spend more time downtown and refinancing markets would reopen.

Instead, many owners are reaching the end of the runway with rates still elevated and buildings worth dramatically less than the debt sitting against them.

Chicago’s Aon Center offers an almost absurd illustration. The 83-story skyscraper changed hands for $712 million in 2015 and was subsequently refinanced, with $536 million of debt eventually packaged into commercial mortgage-backed securities. Today, after losing important tenants, the building is worth nowhere near that amount. Its latest appraisal came in at just $195 million — a decline of roughly 73% from its 2015 purchase price.

Bloomberg writes that when the debt matured in July, the owner couldn’t repay it and sought another three years to sort things out. This time the lender wasn’t interested. The request was “unequivocally denied.”

Situations like this are beginning to pile up across the country. Office loans packaged into CMBS are now delinquent at a 12% rate, according to Trepp. That puts distress near an all-time high and, remarkably, beyond the levels seen in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Meanwhile, approximately $64 billion of office CMBS loans come due this year and next. Nearly $40 billion of that pile is already delinquent, in default or flagged as potentially troubled.

But this isn’t one uniform nationwide office collapse.

New York has been surprisingly resilient, with finance, law and technology companies still competing for desirable space. San Francisco, despite enormous problems left over from the pandemic, has received a new source of demand from the AI boom.

Other cities have considerably less working in their favor. Chicago’s downtown office vacancy rate is roughly 27%. Denver’s has reached an astonishing 39%. Los Angeles and several other downtown markets are also struggling, especially in areas dominated by older office stock.

There’s also increasingly a tale of two office markets within individual cities. Companies willing to spend money on office space generally want newer buildings, good locations and modern amenities. That leaves yesterday’s Class B towers fighting over a shrinking pool of tenants while their economics deteriorate.

And some of the repricing has been brutal.

Denver’s Republic Plaza has lost roughly 80% of its value compared with when Brookfield financed the property in 2012. Chicago’s Citadel Center recently changed hands for $137 million, approximately 76% below what the building sold for in 2006. The situation is bad enough that CoStar expects roughly 11.5 million square feet of Chicago-area office space to simply disappear through demolition by 2031.

Even those enormous valuation declines may understate what lenders ultimately recover.

Distressed office properties sold this year have fetched prices roughly 20% below their latest appraisals, according to Deutsche Bank research cited in the report. In other words, marking a building down dramatically on paper doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve marked it down enough.

There is, however, another side to the collapse. Once prices fall far enough, someone eventually decides the risk is worth taking. That process is now beginning. Investors are stepping into buildings at fractions of their former valuations, effectively resetting the cost basis of properties that made little economic sense at yesterday’s prices.

The same 601W connected to the troubled Aon Center recently bought Chicago’s 175 West Jackson Boulevard for only $41 million, nearly 90% below its pre-Covid sale price. Elsewhere in Chicago, investors acquired the debt behind another major tower for around $100 million, roughly 76% below the building’s previous purchase price.

That’s probably the most important part of what is happening now. An office recovery doesn’t necessarily require these buildings to regain anything close to their old valuations. It requires the old valuations to finally die.

For years, the industry could avoid discovering what many of these buildings were actually worth because lenders kept extending loans and owners kept waiting. As maturities arrive and extensions become harder to obtain, those theoretical losses increasingly have to become actual ones.

And only after that happens can buildings move into new hands at prices that make sense in the post-Covid world. As Polpo Capital’s Dan McNamara put it: “One of the scariest headlines is that office CMBS delinquencies are higher than after 2008.”

“And it’s going to go higher as we face more maturities.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 11:05

Quantum Computing Flees Europe

Authored by Thomas Kolbe via American Thinker,

Caught between climate regulation and catastrophic energy-policy decisions, a growing number of high-tech companies in the EU are packing up and leaving. Through stock-market deals, two top quantum-computing companies, IQM and Pasqal, are gradually moving toward the United States. The bleeding of the European economy is now being accepted with remarkable resignation.

Not a week goes by without another disaster report from the economy. In the first half of the year, the German economy recorded a record number of insolvencies -- the highest insolvency figures since 2013. Thousands of industrial jobs are being eliminated as a result, and the economy continues to bleed. A political course correction toward strengthening the economic foundation still appears impossible. And this is only the beginning: the stranglehold of expensive climate policy, the restriction of fossil-fuel energy supplies, and rising regulatory costs are acting like an accelerant on the businesses of the euro economy. Those who can leave, do.

What is happening in Germany is being repeated elsewhere: in Finland, for example, where the company IQM is taking the leap onto the U.S. stock market. IQM specializes in superconducting quantum computers and develops the quantum processors required for them. The systems are being developed for research, high-performance computing, and industrial applications. The company merged with Real Asset Acquisition Corp., a kind of American shell company, and in early July moved to the Nasdaq under the ticker IQMX with a valuation of around $1.8 billion. This is not a classic sale of the company to the Americans -- the existing owners received no cash payment but remained invested in the company. However, this changes little about the outcome: capital, market power, and an increasing share of control over the company’s strategy will, in the future, be rooted in the United States -- American patents, American knowledge of future technologies, made in Europe.

A look at France shows a similar development. This is where Pasqal is based, a spin-off of the Institut d'Optique, founded in 2019. While global players such as IBM and Google rely on superconducting circuits, Pasqal found a different approach: the highly specialized team traps individual rubidium atoms with focused laser beams -- so-called optical tweezers -- inside vacuum chambers and arranges them in precise 2D and 3D lattices. With this principle, the company’s researchers appear to have succeeded in avoiding the production errors that have plagued other qubit technologies so far. The discovered method makes it considerably easier to scale the technology to ever larger numbers of qubits. Knowledge is power, especially in high technology. Given its complexity, the company’s innovation is probably only fully understandable to a few specialists.

Pasqal’s systems are going to data centers such as the Jülich Research Centre and to the Saudi energy giant Aramco. The applications extend across industries -- from energy company EDF to major bank Crédit Agricole, for which the race for cryptography and security technology has long since begun. From logistics optimization and materials simulation to risk analysis -- Pasqal is competing right at the forefront across the board.

One of the company’s co-founders was Alain Aspect, the French physicist who received the Nobel Prize in 2022 together with John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger for verifying the quantum entangelment of photons, thereby laying the scientific foundation for modern quantum technology. It is a good example of how university research and technological development can become intertwined at the corporate level. Yet as capital increasingly flows from the EU to America, these pillars of European academic and corporate culture are gradually disappearing.

In the case of Pasqal, the acquisition of the company by the shell company Bleichroeder Acquisition Corp. II on August 28 paved the way for its know-how to cross the Atlantic. The company is currently valued at around $2 billion -- but this is likely to be only a snapshot; its potential is enormous. With its patents, research results, and academic substance, Europe is losing its intellectual foundation -- all the more serious because the continent is energy-poor, politically cornered, and steering aimlessly through uncertain waters. Europe is simply no longer attractive enough for cutting-edge research, top-tier capital, and top talent.

Why, then, is quantum computing currently on everyone’s lips?

Quantum computing -- as demonstrated by the determination with which the American economy has gone hunting for patents -- is far more than merely the next step in conventional computer technology. Conventional computers think in switches: on or off, zero or one. Every bit is like a tiny lamp that is either lit or dark. Quantum machines, by contrast, work with qubits. These can not only be on or off, but both at the same time -- as well as infinitely many states in between, until the system is measured and the final result is determined. Through entanglement, qubits can be connected in such a way that the state of one immediately determines the state of the other -- regardless of how far apart they are. Where a classical computer checks one path after another, a quantum computer explores dozens, thousands, theoretically millions of paths simultaneously.

That does not make them better everyday computers. For texts, spreadsheets, or videos, the classical computer remains superior. But for tasks where the challenge is to find the right combination among astronomically many possibilities -- simulating new molecules, optimizing logistics networks, or breaking encryption -- a fundamental advantage emerges. In strategy papers from the United States, China, and the EU, quantum computing is explicitly identified as a key technology that will significantly advance fields such as materials research, pharmaceuticals, and cryptography.

Whoever controls the key technologies of the future controls global markets and gains geopolitical influence.

It is all the more tragic to see that in the EU, there has so far been little resistance, politically but also from within the business community, to ideologically driven, technology-hostile policies. The EU area now lacks almost all the conditions required to attract brilliant minds to high technology, encourage new companies to be founded, and enable investment and settlement in future-oriented clusters such as robotics, quantum computing, or artificial intelligence. Europe has specialized in saving the climate, and many on the continent seem indifferent to deindustrialization and the slowly emerging impoverishment of society. But Europe is facing Ayn Rand’s final bombshell: You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 10:30

China Pledges Major US Coal Purchases But Falls Short On Rare Earth Crisis Resolution

Barclays senior China economist Yingke Zhou poured cold water on the Trump-Xi state visit this past week, calling it "more signaling, less substance."

Shortages of rare earths and critical materials in the West, caused by China's weaponization of its export channels in what can only be viewed as resource nationalism, have yet to be resolved.

But there was some good news, though not on the critical materials front: Bloomberg reported early Saturday that China is planning to purchase 20 million metric tons of US coal over two years.

Beijing committed to importing at least 10 million metric tons in 2027 and another 10 million in 2028. The two countries will also pursue preferential tariffs covering $30 billion of non-sensitive goods from both economies under an agreement reached through the US-China Board of Trade.

Meanwhile, the White House said US and Chinese trade negotiators would continue addressing US concerns over shortages of rare earths and other critical minerals. The statement described further work on those bottlenecks, rather than a resolution.

Stifel critical materials analyst Brock Cannon laid out last week that investors want to begin "Owning the Bottlenecks" - in other words, ex-China producing mines that can deliver critical material supplies to the West today. 

The bad news: no resolution to supplies of rare earths and critical materials being choked by Beijing. The good news, however, is that China is willing to buy US coal.

But if Phase 1 of the trade deal during Trump's first term is any indication, China usually doesn't abide by its agreements. US farmers found that out the hard way when China began boosting agricultural imports from South America.

 

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 09:55

Another New UK Government Unit Created To Police 'Untrue Narratives'

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham used his first United Nations speech this week to announce a 'National Centre for Information Defence' - a new state machine to "detect, attribute and disrupt" what ministers call hostile information attacks, and to stop a "distorted and untrue narrative about Britain."

Burnham wrapped it in Russia, bots, deepfakes and "community cohesion." Critics are adamant the move is purely aimed at ensuring the government has full control over the flow of information.

'We are ready to share our understanding of how these actors work and how we can respond.'

Prime Minister Andy Burnham announces a new National Centre for Information Defence to detect, attribute and disrupt hostile state information attacks to defend Britain's democracy. pic.twitter.com/Zdv5Y8ihJQ

— GB News (@GBNEWS) September 23, 2026

Speaking in New York, Burnham said there is "no national security without a strong, cohesive society" and that this cohesion "has been under attack."

He described an "industrial-scale assault by hostile actors on the information environment." He blamed Russian agencies for bots, fake websites, falsified newspaper articles and forged branding of 28 British organisations "including universities and the BBC."

?Andy Burnham just announced a National Centre for Information Defence - to "detect, attribute and disrupt" information the state calls hostile.?

Every government that builds one says it's only for foreign threats. Then it starts treating disagreement as an attack on... pic.twitter.com/ZMLyGCUirN

— WasAcop (@WasAcop) September 23, 2026

Burnham also claimed they had "amplified far-right narratives" and tried to interfere with the 2019 general election. He called attempts to stoke unrest after "horrific events" repulsive.

The centre will sit first in the Office for the Prime Minister and Cabinet. It is supposed to work with the intelligence agencies, government departments, police and social media companies. Ministers assert it will also "build national resilience" by helping communities spot disinformation - and prevent that "distorted and untrue" picture of Britain.

So a...ministry of truth? https://t.co/9iwkoCoXo2

— Carl Benjamin ??????? (@Sargon_of_Akkad) September 23, 2026

Burnham went further, warning of an "insidious campaign that reaches into people's homes and twists what they feel about their own country and community - creating a narrative of decline, stoking division and sowing despair."

The United Kingdom, he said, had "tiptoed around this for too long." Over the last decade, he claimed, "we have given too much ground to those who want to run a negative, corrosive narrative about life in Britain, which bears no resemblance to reality. Well, no more."

The government already treats public anger about migration, crime, two-tier policing and a collapsing high street as a "narrative" problem rather than a facts problem.

I've seen mission creep in previous government departments (look at Prevent's focus on the mythical "far-right"), and I give Burnham's new "National Centre for Information Defence" a fortnight before it's solely focused on smearing and silencing British patriots, allowing the... https://t.co/TvWqdlinzh

— Leo Kearse - see me on tour! Links in bio (@LeoKearse) September 23, 2026

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage blasted, "Andy Burnham is setting up a Ministry of Truth to clamp down on free speech." In the accompanying clip he said ministers would use Russia as the excuse, then slide into shutting down "far-right tropes."

"This will be like George Orwell's Ministry of Information, and this will be used to clamp down on free speech," he said, adding "Never ever trust this authoritarian Government."

Andy Burnham is setting up a Ministry of Truth to clamp down on free speech. pic.twitter.com/UbIOpgahWR

— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) September 23, 2026

Ironically, stripped of the Russia garnish, the language reads like early Soviet information control.

If you read this without context, you would think it was written by Vladimir Lenin in the Soviet Union in 1922.

Andy Burnham and Labour clearly seem to be moving towards classifying anything that doesn't line up with their worldview as "misinformation."

They will push this... https://t.co/UdC8AVvtkH pic.twitter.com/jTWuDU3sNv

— Ben Graham (@BenGrahamUK) September 23, 2026

Defence Secretary Wes Streeting was sent out to hose it down on GB News. Alex Armstrong put the question straight: people fear the unit will be "weaponised to target British citizens who simply disagree with your Government. Can you promise today that that will not be the case?"

"Can you promise this wont be weaponised against British people"

As the govt launch a new 'National Centre for Information Defence' to wage war on 'untrue narratives' many are concerned it will be used to attack free speech.@wesstreeting say on @GBNEWS pic.twitter.com/6ElbHksqyq

— Alex Armstrong (@Alexarmstrong) September 23, 2026

Streeting said yes. "One of the great things about Britain and one of the things that I have a responsibility to defend is the freedom and democracy that we all enjoy."

That includes, he said, "the freedom to disagree, the freedom for people to challenge their Government, to challenge Government policy, to criticise robustly what we are doing."

The centre, he insisted, exists to attribute and rebut hostile state work. "We're not interested in policing domestic political dissent."

Fraser Myers of Spiked heard the same words and reached the opposite conclusion.

'When I hear those words I hear the government cracking down on free speech.'@AlexArmstrong asks Fraser Myers of Spiked Online about Andy Burnham's plan for a National Centre for Information Defence, aimed at tackling disinformation about the UK. pic.twitter.com/5UaD4PNyE9

— GB News (@GBNEWS) September 23, 2026

Labour's record is why nobody should take the promise at face value. Big Brother Watch director Silkie Carlo said action against genuine foreign campaigns is legitimate, but "we have already seen the mantle of countering 'disinformation' being abused by our Government in attempts to malign and silence dissent."

Units including the Counter Disinformation Unit, the Rapid Response Unit, RICU and the MoD's 77th Brigade have, she said, been "involved in recording, flagging and triggering the censorship of Britons' lawful speech." MPs, journalists, campaigners and ordinary people have appeared in so-called disinformation reports "for lawful, truthful speech critical of the Government."

UnHerd's account of the 77th Brigade is worse. The Ministry of Defence once claimed the unit "does not, and has never, conducted any kind of action against British citizens." Documents showed it tracking identifiable British accounts during Covid, including tweets from then-Green MP Caroline Lucas.

The civilian Counter Disinformation Unit logged Peter Tatchell for criticising the monarchy and Conservative MP David Davis for attacking lockdown policy - after ministers said the unit did "not monitor political debate." Time and again the public was told these teams looked abroad. Time and again they looked inward.

This is the same apparatus we've repeatedly mapped:

         

Nile Gardiner, a former Thatcher aide, told GB News that Burnham's UN address was "talk of control and censorship" and "exactly the kind of messaging that the Trump administration absolutely hates."

The White House has already hauled British officials into the US embassy over the Online Safety Act, under-16 social media bans, and plans to push "trusted" outlets - BBC, ITV, Channel 4 - through the platforms.

While Burnham builds a centre to police "untrue narratives," Labour is also looking at how to keep the BBC's pipeline funded even as viewers walk away. Ministers are considering dumping the £180 licence fee for an £11-a-month "Home Internet Levy" on every household with broadband, whether anyone watches live TV or not.

Culture officials have discussed the Social Market Foundation plan. BBC director-general Matt Brittin has called the licence fee a "busted flush" and pushed for a mandatory household levy.

A DCMS spokesman said Charter Review is looking at options that are "sustainable and fair." Fair, in this case, means you pay for the state broadcaster through your router.

BBC licence fee could be axed and replaced by £11-a-month internet charge whether people watch live TV or not under new plans being considered by Labour https://t.co/bdesV2RaX0

— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) September 23, 2026

They might as well say that if you want running water or electricity, you also have to pay for the BBC.

The same week, communications regulator Ofcom was accused of sitting on data that undercuts the BBC's moral monopoly. The regulator's own news consumption survey found 74 per cent of GB News viewers rate that channel trustworthy, against 71 per cent for Sky News viewers and 66 per cent for BBC viewers.

GB News and Sky both scored 63 per cent on impartiality among their own audiences; the BBC scored 53 per cent.

Seventy-two per cent of GB News viewers said it offered a broad range of views. Ofcom left those figures out of its headline report and produced them after GB News asked.

The regulator blamed an "administrative error."

Ofcom is accused of covering up data that shows GB News is more trusted by its viewers than the BBC https://t.co/YL8l7VVucR

— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) September 23, 2026

Whitehall already has plans to force-feed the BBC through YouTube and the social platforms in the name of fighting "disinformation" - the same BBC that memory-holes comedy sketches when the satire no longer fits the narrative.

   

Reform's Zia Yusef asked a simple question, three times: what single piece of misinformation has Vladimir Putin actually seeded in the minds of British people?

"What piece of Misinformation has been seeded in the Minds of British people by Vladimir Putin?"

"I'll ask you again - What piece of Misinformation was seeded in the Minds of British people by Vladimir Putin?"

"I'll ask you again - What piece of Misinformation was seeded in the... pic.twitter.com/fkketdD9Jw

— Concerned Citizen (@BGatesIsaPyscho) September 23, 2026

Hostile states run influence operations. That is not in dispute. What Burnham has built is a centre inside his own office, working with police and the platforms, to police free thought. The people who will staff it already decided that noticing decline is the problem. The people who will be "resilient" are the ones told to distrust their own eyes.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 09:20

AI Doom: A Brief History Of Bad Tech Predictions

Go back three decades to 1995 when the Internet was just taking off and opinions proliferated about the future and impact of this novel creation: some said it would supercharge global productivity. Others said it would be no more useful than a fax machine.

With the benefit of hindsight some 30 years later, we can say that the Internet debate has been settled, and as Deutsche Bank's Adrian Cox writes in a lengthy report published this week, it takes guts to do what Bob Metcalfe did.

After wrongly predicting in an article in 1995 that the internet would go “spectacularly supernova” and collapse in 1996, the co-inventor of Ethernet and founder of 3Com then pulped a copy of the article in a blender and drank it at a conference in 1997 as a way to eat his words.

While nobody worries about the Internet any more, the latest tech predictions are about no less than an AI apocalypse. Various tech leaders spent the weekend warning of catastrophic but not fully specified risks if it is not contained.

Yet history suggests that even the greatest minds of their generations have a poor record in predicting what tech is coming down the line, let alone what its effects will be in the real world.

The stakes could not be higher – not just the future of life itself but, in the shorter term, the future of a historic boom that depends on hype turning into reality.

* * * 

As Cox writes in his latest report (full report available here), concerns about AI have moved in waves since the launch of ChatGPT nearly four years ago. This year there was a spike in searches for “SaaSpocalypse” (the concern that software-as-a-service would be disintermediated by AI agents) in February, followed by a surge in “jobs apocalypse” in May, Google Trends data show. Both have been totally eclipsed in recent days by searches for AI extinction.

But taking a step back, all are far behind “AI bubble”, itself behind “deepfake”, in turn below “AI students”, overall “AI risk” and – biggest of the lot – the very tangible and immediate “cybersecurity”, almost all of which have surged this year, according to Google Trends data.

“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future”: Niels Bohr, often also attributed to Yogi Berra

Wanting to know what will happen tomorrow is deeply visceral – literally.

People have been sacrificing sheep and chickens for four millennia to read the future in their entrails. Nowadays almost a third of Americans say they believe in astrology and consult their horoscope. We want to believe that Lionel Messi really can see space in a football match before it even exists, even if it is partly his movement that helps create the space he appears to predict.

But predicting the future is hard. For AI, it’s not just about what it will be able to do but also when it will be able to do it – whether more than $5 trillion in investment by the hyperscalers alone over the next five years will pay off before the advanced semiconductor chips they’re buying become redundant. It’s also about how rapidly and intensively AI can be adopted. Asset prices are a still more uncertain derivative, whipping around like the tail of a snake in response to every shift in expectations.

US President Donald Trump and China found themselves on the same side in rebutting the latest concerns as fearmongering, albeit with Trump adding that America needs to stay ahead of China in AI.

“Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge.” Lao Tzu

A glance through history would give any investor indigestion. Most predictions are wrong. The favorites in horse races lose 70% of races. It took a decade or more for demand to catch up with the infrastructure laid down in the British canal and railway and US telecoms and fibre booms – and many investors never recovered their capital.

Technology predictions have an especially mixed record as the binary order of the labs collides with the messy reality of the world. Famous examples range from IBM Chairman Thomas Watson’s underestimation of demand for computers in 1943 (“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers”) to Elon Musk’s repeated overestimation of imminent widespread adoption of self-driving cars since 2013 (“We should be able to do 90 percent of miles driven within three years”).

Technologists are not immune from making category errors, mistaking the most visible, automatable component of a job for the job itself. For example, radiologists, a favorite case study for believers in a jobs apocalypse, do much more than looking at images and making binary diagnoses. Much of their value lies in interpretation, judgement, communication and clinical decision-making.

Ultimately, what we see in the future is not so much a window as a mirror into our own hopes and fears.

And the problem is that hindsight makes what actually happens seem so obvious that we never seem to learn.

Today’s debate in a (rough) nutshell

The current debate encapsulates a perfect storm of an extremely high-stakes issue with limited transparency and an inherently unknowable outcome.

What sparked the current surge in concern?

The current debate comes after a researcher from one of the leading frontier labs quit, citing safety concerns; AI agents apparently collaborated with each other on a number of high-profile security breaches; and labs hinted that the technology is getting closer to “recursive self improvement”, ie AI improving AI.

Is the existential debate something new?

It is actually nothing new: leading economists and academics warned in July that “we must act now” to steer AI through a potential “transformation of our economy, larger than the Industrial Revolution… over a vastly shorter time frame”. That echoed the even more ominous statement three years ago by AI leaders calling for action to mitigate “the risk of extinction”.

The tug of war between “doomers” vs “boomers” has played a pivotal role in the development of the key frontier labs. Silicon Valley insiders sometimes refer to their “p(doom)” rating, representing their estimated percentage chance that AI will cause an existential catastrophe. 

What does an extinction scenario look like?

Experts including Tesla’s Musk, “godfather of AI” Geoffrey Hinton and philosopher Nick Bostrom have been warning about it for well over a decade. In the latter’s famous “paperclip maximiser” scenario, a superintelligent AI runs out of steel and then kills humans in a single-minded drive to fulfil its task of making paperclips. Fears sometimes centre around AI that has access to coding, the internet and knowledge of how people think, in order to manipulate them – as current AI models indeed do.

Why has it caught on so fast this time?

One factor is that it comes amid a tech backlash, particularly in the US, where concern about AI has become a rare bipartisan issue ahead of the US mid-term elections in November. Local concerns about data centre construction have become rallying points for voters in a way that vague fears about long-term jobs did not. Politicians including Senator Bernie Sanders have moved to propose wide-ranging legislation.

What arguments do companies make for continuing AI research?

1. If we don’t do it, someone else will. That may be either China or other, less responsible companies.
2. The potential benefits outweigh the benefits. AI may, they say, cure cancer, create new jobs and even eliminate the need for work altogether.
3. Good AI is the answer to bad AI. It should create defences against rogue AI and misuse of AI, and solve issues like AI’s huge energy and water use.

What do critics say?

1. AI is not dangerous because it is too clever but rather because it is too limited. It does not think like a human and people should not anthropomorphise it, critics say, adding that it is flawed probabilistic code that cannot reliably follow instructions. Longstanding critic Gary Marcus argues that it should be recalled until it can be shown to be safe and is properly controlled.
2. AI leaders are defending their own businesses. With potential IPOs on the horizon, a rising challenge from open-source models, and progress towards Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) being called into question, a handful of companies may benefit from a pause or legislation that helps protect their lead, critics say. Doomer talk distracts from real issues like deepfakes, copyright infringement and  cybersecurity lapses, they say.
3. Extinction scenarios are overblown. The internet is a diversified platform, so talk of AI somehow switching it off is fanciful, critics say. AI does not and will not realistically have sustained secret access to military or dangerous biotech resources, or be able to influence (very nondeterministic) human brains en masse, critics say. Humans will use tame AI and other tools, eg kill switches, if needed to resist attacks. Another “godfather of AI” Yann LeCun says the real risk is of power concentration.

A century of good and bad technology predictions

You have to admire people who have the courage to stick their neck out and make predictions, even if they don’t always work out. Vague predictions are relatively easy; specific ones within specific timeframes are harder.

It is no wonder that executives are coached by their ever-cautious PR teams to avoid answering hypothetical questions or giving dates to reach their targets.

• Nikolai Tesla, scientist, 1926: “When wireless is perfectly applied… we will be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance…” The instruments will be “amazingly simple… A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket”. He was right, albeit imprecise about the how or when it would be achieved.
• Albert Einstein, physicist, 1934: “There is not the slightest indication that [nuclear energy] will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.” Within a decade, in 1942, a team at the University of Chicago had created the first sustaining chain reaction, a precursor to the nuclear reactor,
• Ray Kurzweil, futurist, 1999: “By 2029, computers will have human-level intelligence.” Dismissed at the time, many (though by far not all) of his predictions have worked out, fuelled by what he called the “law of accelerating returns”. His prediction from almost 40 years ago of artificial general intelligence by the end of this decade is remarkably close to the current “San Francisco Consensus”.
• Steve Chen, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of YouTube, 2005: “There's just not that many videos I want to watch.” Despite his concern, YouTube was bought by Google (now Alphabet) for $1.65bn a year later. The unit made more than $11bn in advertising revenue in the most recent quarter.
• Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, 2007: “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.” But you may be reading this on one of the more than 3 billion iPhones sold since its launch in 2007.
• Geoffrey Hinton, “godfather of AI”, 2016: “People should stop training radiologists now. It’s just completely obvious within five years deep learning is going to do better than radiologists… It might be 10 years.” In fact, the number of radiologists has increased by about 10 percent over the past 10 years, in part because of the limitations of AI and in part because of the increase in demand from an ageing population and more affordable healthcare. Hinton has walked back his comments and humans and AI are working together.
• Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, 2025: “I can easily imagine a world where 30 to 40% of the tasks that happen in the economy today get done by AI in the not very distant future." He revised this view in May amid a backlash against AI, saying he and his team had been “roughly right” in their technological predictions but “pretty wrong” on the economic and social implications. “I’m delighted to be wrong about this,” he said.

Why is it so hard to predict the future?

"The idea that the future is unpredictable is undermined everyday by the ease with which the past is explained." Daniel Kahneman

1. Chaos theory: treating complex systems as if they are simple and linear.

• Systems like traffic, economies and social trends are finely balanced and sensitive to initial conditions. The butterfly effect means a tiny, unforeseen variable can lead to vastly different outcomes. Just take a look at the ragged history of market-implied forecasts of US Federal Reserve interest rates, where extrapolating from current trends has been reliably wrong.

Take self-driving cars, for example. It turns out to be about more than getting the technology right for the rubber to hit the road:

• Technological hurdles and “edge cases”: throwing more data and processing power at the problem is not enough. There is an infinite long tail of unpredictable events (“edge cases”), like sun glare, a cyclist riding the wrong way in a bike lane, a person in an animal costume, or road-rage-enhanced hand gestures.
• Regulatory labyrinth: autonomous vehicle optimists have come up against legal and ethical debates around liability, safety certification and moral challenges such as the so-called “trolley problem”, when swerving to avoid hitting one victim means colliding with another. Regulation is a slow-lane activity.
• Social and psychological barriers: public acceptance has been slowed down by high-profile accidents and safety concerns. Robots are held to a higher standard than flesh-and-blood motorists. It might be easier to navigate a world where all cars were self-driving, but the “messy middle”, with a mixture of both, is much harder for algorithms to navigate.

2. The future of AI will ultimately depend more on the prosaic challenges of workflow integration at enterprises that will need to pay for it than on releasing yet another model with a marginal step up in capabilities.

Cognitive bias: flaws in how the brain works

• Linear thinking about exponential change: We fail to intuitively understand how different exponential change is from linear change. As Wharton Professor Ethan Mollick says, “being on an exponential means each change over a fixed window is larger than the one before it… This is why AI keeps feeling like it is making leaps… Even though it is a curve on a graph, we keep experiencing a steady doubling of capability as a series of shocks.” This cognitive tendency to track exponential change in linear terms helps explain big AI market swings, he says.

• Optimism bias and the planning fallacy: underestimating costs and overestimating benefits. For example, only a quarter of more than 3,000 megaprojects studied by Saïd Business School came in on budget or better, only 2.8 percent were on budget and on time, and only 0.2 percent were on budget, on time and on benefits. Large-scale infrastructure projects are “too easy to start and too difficult to stop,” the authors said in the study from 2019. It remains to be seen how the recent surge in datacentre construction will compare.
• Confirmation bias: favoring information that confirms existing beliefs. For years, legacy automakers dismissed electric vehicles by  focusing on their high costs and limited range, ignoring the fact that rapid advances in battery technology would soon change that.
• Anchoring: relying too heavily on early information. Microsoft’s Ballmer dismissed the iPhone when it was launched because it was “the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard which makes it not a very good email machine”. He later said he did not understand how mobile carrier subsidies would make it affordable. More broadly, he missed that this was a new business model.

3. Limited information: inability to see

• It is not just the future that is unknowable but also the present. Feedback mechanisms are often delayed, making it hard to distinguish between causation and correlation, and between relevant and irrelevant factors.
• Isolating key factors is impossible. Even since the development of scientific methods and controlled experiments, we have not come that far since the Mesoamericans found ways to prepare maize where they didn’t succumb to a long-term wasting disease called pellagra. The problem was that they weren’t able to single out the effective part of the process – soaking the maize in an alkaline solution of water and ash –from the other ineffective parts of the package – such as blowing on the maize before cooking it.
• (Author David Oks draws a fascinating parallel between this example of a delayed feedback mechanism and the tendency of AI models to “overfit”, extrapolating too much from coarse and sparse data to fill in the gaps. If the model creates a complex output and gets a single reward signal for it, the rational move is reproduce all of its features, including the ones that were incidental – such as AI’s trademark verbal tics.)
• No one wants to risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Argentinian President Javier Milei talked publicly about his superstitious insistence on staying at home wearing a lucky jacket rather than watching his team playing in the football World Cup live at the stadium.

4. Self-interest: incentives favour more extreme positions

• AI is not magic, a silver bullet or a charity, but a commercial industry.
• Most participants have incentives to amplify the stakes. Founders need belief, investors need momentum, incumbents need gravitas, consultants need urgency, policymakers need relevance, executives need a narrative and journalists need drama. This is not a criticism of individuals or organisations, or even of the likely revolutionary impact of AI.
• The challenge is magnified by a social media-driven economy. Social platforms favour novelty, negativity, moral intensity and shareability. For example, in political tweets, one study by New York University found each additional moral-emotional word was associated with about a 20 percent higher retweet rate. Another study by MIT found that false news was 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than true news and reached a threshold of 1,500 people six times faster.
• That means moderate claims are likely to be under-distributed and extreme claims over-rewarded. Implausibly precise numbers for the future size of the AI economy, for example, or dramatic doom-laden scenarios heavy with emotive language will continue to attract greater attention than even-handed assessment. 

What makes AI special – and gives hope for the future

Technology may be liable to erroneous thinking because of the disconnect between visionaries in Silicon Valley and similar communities, and the rest of the world.

Cynics may say that people with extraordinary knowledge and skills in one area may be even more prone than most to wrongly estimate their lack of knowledge or skills in other areas: the so-called Dunning-Kruger effect. That may include the reality of implementing AI on a trading floor in Wall Street, an office supplies wholesaler on the outskirts of London or an auto maker in Mumbai.

There is also a long tradition of correctly identifying the task that will disappear but getting wrong what humans will do instead.

• 1982: Computers “… can develop into monsters, damage the physical and mental health of the clerical staff – maybe even eliminate their jobs”: the Washington Post reported from a clerical conference. Computers instead became the core tool of knowledge workers.
• 1983: The pocket calculator “… has become the target of critics who fear that its use in the classroom will render generations of children dependent on batteries instead of brains”, the Washington Post reported. Instead expectations changed about what people calculate for themselves.
• 2009: Cloud computing: around half of companies surveyed “cited security and privacy concerns as their top reason for not using cloud computing”, Forrester Research found. Today companies entrust much of their critical infrastructure to the cloud.

“We overestimate the impact of technology in the short-term and underestimate the effect in the long run.” Roy Amara, Stanford computer scientist

But this time may really be different – with AI as a partner, starting with (deterministic) predictive AI. It is certainly helping weather forecasters to sift through unimaginable amounts of data. Four-day forecasts are now said to be about as accurate as one-day forecasts in the 1990s.

There are diminishing returns. The limit of predictability with standard physics models is about eight days, while deep-learning AI models increase that by just one day to nine days. However, the difference is that they generate state-of-the-art forecasts 100,000 faster, and 10,000 times more energy-efficiently, meaning they can be done on a laptop rather than a supercomputer.

And for the time being, your predictions about the impact of AI are no less valid than an AI expert based in the very particular world of Silicon Valley. And the future of AI will be made not in Silicon Valley but in Main Street.

More in the full Deustsche Bank report available to pro subs.

Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2026 - 08:45