Central Bankers Disagree About Gold

Authored by Vincent Cook via The Mises Institute,

With the fiat US dollar price of gold multiplied 2.6x since October of 2022 (as of October 20, 2025 when this was written) and rising exponentially (Figure 1), some people are deeply worried that something is seriously wrong with the dollar and with the global financial system generally. Is the soaring price of gold a sign of monetary instability? Or is it just a transitory “nothingburger”?

Figure 1: Gold spot price per troy ounce, most recent five years

Central bankers are now being asked such awkward questions, and they are giving sharply divergent answers. During a Q&A session at a convention of business economists on October 14, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell responded:

EMILY KOLINSKI MORRIS: You used the term gold standard. And you didn’t mean it in this context that I’m going to pivot here, because there’s a question from the audience that’s getting a lot of upvotes. So, one of your predecessors, Alan Greenspan, used to view the price of gold as an indicator of inflation risk. So, in that context, how do you view the rally that we’ve seen in gold? And if you want to throw in Bitcoin, you can comment on that too.

JEROME POWELL: I’m not going to comment on any particular asset price, including that one. And I think we think of inflation as driven by fundamental supply and demand factors. And it’s not something we look at actively.

Powell is saying that the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which tries to fix the quantity of dollars in existence, allegedly doesn’t care about the price of gold in particular because it views gold’s price as just one price among a vast array of prices that informs their decision-making. According to this view, gold is just another commodity which makes only a small, insignificant contribution to the overall demand for dollars and has no impact on the supply of dollars.

During the October 19 broadcast of CBS’s Face the Nation, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde gave a startlingly different answer:

MARGARET BRENNAN: So you have also said recently that you think investors have begun to question whether the dollar would still warrant its status as the ultimate safe haven currency. I mean, the American dollar is one of the strongest weapons, frankly, that the administration has to use. Do you think that it is the rise of cryptocurrency that is most threatening to that or why are you worried?

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: I see signs that the attraction of the dollar is slightly eroded, and future will tell whether there is more erosion of that. But when you look at the rise of cryptos, number one, when you look at the price of gold. Gold is typically, in any situation, the ultimate destination for safe haven. Price of gold has increased by more than 50% since the beginning of the year. --

MARGARET BRENNAN: -- So people are worried. --

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: -- That’s a clear sign that the trust in the reserve currency that the dollar has been, is and will continue to be, is eroding a bit. In addition to that, we’ve seen capital flows outside of the U.S. towards other destinations, including Europe. So, you know, for a currency to be really trusted you need a few things. You need geopolitical credibility. You need the rule of law and strong institutions. And you need, I would call it, a military force that is strong enough. I think on at least one and possibly two accounts, the U.S. is still in a very dominant position, but it needs to be very careful because those positions erode over the course of time. We’ve seen it with the Sterling Pound, you know, way back after, after the war. But it happens gently, gently, you don’t notice it and then it happens suddenly. And we are seeing intriguing signs of it, which is why I think that having a strong institution with the Fed, for instance, is important. Having a credible environment within which to trade is important. So volatility, uncertainty, to the extent it is fueled by the administration, is not helpful to the dollar.

While Lagarde seems to agree with Powell that cryptotokens are not that important, gold is profoundly different. For her, gold is the “ultimate destination for safe haven” and the rise of its dollar price is a sign that “trust in the reserve currency” of the world is eroding. According to Lagarde, trust in a currency requires geopolitical credibility, a rule of law, strong institutions, and a strong military. Trust is something that can disappear suddenly and, without it, gold is the haven that the world turns to.

As an empirical matter, gold is still critically important as a part of the official reserves that central banks and governments use to prop up the purchasing power of their fiat currencies when needed. In fact, reported official reserve holdings of gold now exceed those of US Treasury securities, the first time that has happened since 1996. Lagarde seems to be correct (at least to the extent one can believe official Reserve statistics) that trust in the dollar is slipping away in favor of gold, at least among her central banking peers.

More importantly, economic theory and a common sense understanding of economic history favors Lagarde’s views over Powell’s. The fundamentals of monetary supply and demand are well described in chapter 11 of Murray Rothbard’s Man, Economy, and State. While a government can often use its tax codes and regulations to compel domestic use of its own currency, it can’t effectively prevent its citizens from holding other highly-marketable assets (what Rothbard calls a quasi-money) as substitutes for holding cash balances as a reserve for their future purchases, nor can it always compel foreigners to use its currency to settle international transactions (though, as Lagarde noted, superior military strength might sometimes enable it to do so).

The anticipated future purchasing power of money (PPM) is always an issue because the utility of money depends entirely upon subjective anticipations that it can be exchanged for a sufficient quantity of other goods whenever desired. In the case of constantly-depreciating fiat monies like the US dollar, the use of short-term US Treasury securities as a quasi-money reserve asset makes the dollar itself acceptable overseas because Treasuries can be readily exchanged for dollars whenever needed, and because interest payments on Treasuries reduce the costs associated with on-going dollar PPM declines.

Trust in the issuer of a fiat global reserve currency is always a challenge because foreigners have to depend upon the ability and willingness of the issuer to honor its obligations (e.g., US Treasury securities) to pay sufficient interest on those obligations to offset PPM declines sufficiently, and to keep its markets open to imports so that foreigners can earn enough revenues denominated in the reserve currency to purchase and accumulate those obligations.

If the issuer gets in a fiscal jam and can’t or won’t pay enough interest to compensate for PPM declines (which themselves are often closely linked to using fiat money creation to deal with fiscal problems), or gets in the habit of selectively reneging on its obligations to particular foreigners it doesn’t like, or starts closing its markets to foreign exporters or foreign investors, the crutch of using interest-bearing debt as a quasi-money to shield foreign users of the currency against PPM declines no longer works. In that case, foreigners will be obliged to find some other reserve that does work.

What does always work is a quasi-money that isn’t someone else’s liability and isn’t denominated in terms of someone else’s fiat currency or propped up by reserves of someone else’s fiat currency, namely, gold. Gold is a natural substance that doesn’t require trust in other governments or even trust in the behavior of gold miners (who can at most add only a small percentage annually to the total stock of gold in existence). Gold doesn’t lose its real purchasing power over the long run like fiat-denominated assets do; it has lower storage and transaction costs than other highly marketable natural commodities and doesn’t have the technological vulnerabilities and limitations of artificial commodities like cryptotokens.

While it is a matter of entrepreneurial judgment and not economic theory to affirm gold’s superiority as the ultimate “store of value” and potentially even as the preferred replacement for fiat monies (though silver has often been a strong competitor to gold for the latter role), I must agree with Lagarde’s assessment of the empirical facts concerning reserve asset competition, not with Powell’s dismissive attitude about gold—when the chips are down and the world is forced to turn to an unconditionally trustworthy reserve of purchasing power, the world will turn to gold. What soaring gold prices might indicate is that the world is now turning to gold.

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/22/2025 - 22:10

US To Launch "New Phase" Of Venezuela Operations, Options Include Overthrowing Maduro: Report

One day after the FAA issued a Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM), or an alert notifying pilots of potential serious hazards in certain airspace, for the Maiquetía Flight Information Region above Venezula, Reuters reported that the US is poised to launch a new phase of Venezuela-related operations in the coming days, citing four U.S. officials.

Amid a sharp escalation of pressure by the Trump administration on President Nicolas Maduro's government, including proliferating reports of looming action as the US military deployed forces to the Caribbean amid worsening relations with Venezuela, two of the sources said covert operations would likely be the first part of the new action against Maduro, while two US officials told Reuters the options under consideration included attempting to overthrow Maduro.

A senior administration official on Saturday told Reuters that nothing had been ruled out regarding Venezuela.

"President Trump is prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country and to bring those responsible to justice," said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Before the Reuters report, six airlines had already cancelled flights to Venezuela on Saturday after the US aviation regulator warned major airlines of dangers from "heightened military activity" amid a major buildup of American forces in the region, as well as a "potentially hazardous situation" when flying over Venezuela and urged them to exercise caution.

Spain's Iberia, Portugal's TAP, Chile's LATAM, Colombia's Avianca, Brazil's GOL and Trinidad and Tobago's Caribbean have suspended their flights to the country, said Marisela de Loaiza, president of the Venezuelan Airlines Association (ALAV). Panama's Copa Airlines, Spain's Air Europa and PlusUltra, Turkish Airlines, and Venezuela's LASER are continuing to operate flights for now.

The Trump administration has been weighing Venezuela-related options to combat what it has portrayed as Maduro’s role in supplying illegal drugs that have killed Americans. He has denied having any links to the illegal drug trade. 

Maduro, under whose rule Venezuela has experienced crushing hyperinflation and a collapse in its oil production sector amid staggering corruption, has contended that Trump seeks to oust him and that Venezuelan citizens and the military will resist any such attempt. He also has characterized U.S. actions as an effort to take control of Venezuela's oil.

A military buildup in the Caribbean has been underway for months, and Trump has authorized covert CIA operations in Venezuela.

The United States plans on Monday to designate the Cartel de los Soles a foreign terrorist organization for its alleged role in importing illegal drugs into the United States, officials said. The Trump administration has accused Maduro of leading Cartel de los Soles, which he denies.

Washington in August doubled its reward for information leading to Maduro's arrest to $50 million. But U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week that the terrorist designation "brings a whole bunch of new options to the United States."

Trump has said the upcoming designation would allow the United States to strike Maduro's assets and infrastructure in Venezuela, but he also has indicated a willingness to potentially pursue talks in hopes of a diplomatic solution.

Maduro said earlier this week that the countries' differences should be resolved through diplomacy and that he is willing to hold face-to-face talks with anyone interested. Two U.S. officials acknowledged conversations between Caracas and Washington. It was unclear whether those conversations could impact the timing or scale of potential U.S. operations.

The U.S. Navy's largest aircraft carrier, the Gerald R. Ford, arrived in the Caribbean on November 16 with its strike group, joining at least seven other warships, a nuclear submarine and F-35 aircraft.

U.S. forces in the region so far have focused on counter-narcotics operations, even though the assembled firepower far outweighs anything needed for them. U.S. troops since September have carried out at least 21 strikes on alleged drug boats, killing at least 83 people, mostly in the Caribbean, although vessels in the Pacific Ocean also have been targeted.

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/22/2025 - 21:35

The Problem Of Fake Science

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

Last week, I was able to generate from artificial intelligence a fake study that proved that eating waffles increases baldness. It was filled with footnotes, citations, and complicated math and models. It was kind of scary to see how credible the results felt. You had to look carefully to see the problems. I shared it with others who immediately said something like, “I can believe it.”

Don’t eat those waffles; your hair will fall out. Science says so!

Think of this. We’ve never before been in the position to generate such seemingly scientific content on any subject under the sun within a matter of seconds. This power has only existed for two years. Many people do not even know it exists, much less how easy it is. Bad actors are in a position to use this power anytime they want. They can count on legacy levels of trust in “science” to pass off such fakery as real.

This past week, we saw yet another piece of fake science retracted from publication. This one is a big deal. The publication is The Lancet, one of the most prestigious venues in the world. It had published the study, which was thoroughly peer-reviewed. But it turns out that the authors had pulled the wool over the eyes of the experts.

The retracted paper is one of many generated from a huge and well-funded trial of therapeutic drugs used to treat COVID-19. The trial in question was called TOGETHER. It was funded with grants from FTX, the crypto company later shut down for fraud, alongside financial companies holding large pharmaceutical stocks and think tanks funded by the industry that hoped to sell vaccines. If the study was correct, getting the shot would seem like the only option.

The authors peppered all the journals with papers on the results.

Only one has been pulled so far, but the others will likely do the same in time. This includes the New England Journal of Medicine, a venue that prides itself on its low retraction rate.

The TOGETHER trial was conducted then released fully four years ago. Questions and criticisms have been roiling and boiling all this time.

When the study came out in 2021, it was invoked as one of the major reasons to pull hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin from the shelves. Even if your own doctor wrote a prescription, the answer was no.

I will never forget that day when I walked into my neighborhood pharmacy and showed them my prescription. The girl behind the counter excused herself to talk to her manager, who shook his head no without saying a word. That sent me on a scramble to get some sent by overnight mail from New York City, from a person who had ordered some from India. I felt better in three hours.

I later learned that although millions of people did something similar, because it was the only way to get effective meds, the practice is, shall we say, frowned upon.

Why had all the pharmacies in my local neighborhood denied me proven treatments that my own doctor had prescribed me? Because they believed the science.

This is the problem of fake science. It has real-world consequences. We supposedly live in the age of science, but the credibility of all the institutions is now in free fall. The slogan “science” was deployed to justify a level of attack on freedom that we had never before seen. As a result, the reputation of science in general has taken a huge hit.

The TOGETHER trial at least had the appearance of plausibility. After all, they had actually done a real trial. The SURGISPHERE trial, in contrast, released early on in the summer of 2020, was discovered to have entirely made up all its data. Its conclusions were thereby invalid. And to be fair, the fake science was not entirely one-sided. Some studies indicating the reverse results have also been shown to have faked data.

In the end, hundreds of thousands of papers during this period were published, and these days, the retractions are happening as quickly as the acceptances in the old days. My friends, this is not just a PR problem. This is a genuine crisis for the credibility of science itself.

When the science tells you that you cannot safely have a Thanksgiving dinner in your home or sing praises to God without killing grandma, it is risking the very foundations of the scientific revolution.

Add artificial intelligence to the mix, and you make the problem worse by ten-thousand-fold.

A major incident along these lines happened to me one week ago. I was at an event when two British guys with big smiles and posh accents were going around to attendees to rail against fake meat. It’s a cause with which I’m sympathetic. That is the beginning of how people let their guard down.

They were putting people on camera, and just before turning it on, they would present a study stating that fake meat causes autism. The interviewee is then instructed to endorse the study on camera. They got me on camera to denounce fake meat—I fully complied—but then pressed me to endorse their study. At that point, the incredulous part of my brain engaged and realized something was wrong. I declined to say what they demanded.

The next morning, I realized the prank. These very compelling guys had generated this unsigned study for the purpose of tricking people. The goal was simple but also rather brilliant. It was to prove that advocates of health freedom will endorse any study that seems to back their biases. The final product was likely a documentary designed to discredit the whole movement—and the Trump administration along with it.

The plot was foiled. In the meantime, I’ve had the chance to reflect on the meaning of it all. We live in very strange times when empirical science has been deployed as a weapon for political purposes. More than 500 papers have been retracted, but countless others stand vulnerable.

My worry is that this experience has bred a kind of nihilism that surrounds the entire enterprise. Pranksters moving around scientific conferences with fake studies intended to troll people are not only unhelpful, they further undermine trust.

A key point of the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries was to advance a firmer way of knowing what is true. In former times, faith took center stage with theology as the queen of academic disciplines. But the work of Copernicus, Kepler, Bacon, Descartes, and Newton—all were great thinkers—seemed to prove that observation and induction were a better basis of knowing.

This revolution in thought coincided in time with huge advances in technology, medicine, and prosperity for everyone. The world was changing dramatically, with growing levels of mobility, choice, and material advance. We had firmly left what came to be called the “dark ages” and entered into new times. Science was the new king of thought.

There was always a problem lurking in the background. If we want to elevate observation and empirical work over faith and deduction, we are indeed overthrowing one form of ecclesiastical authority. But are we not valorizing another form of authority, namely the observers, the scientists, the people generating, holding, and interpreting the data?

Indeed, we are.

In other words, we can talk all day about science, but there is no getting around the issue of trust itself. We can trust the church and theological authorities. We can trust our own reading of revelatory texts such as the Bible. Or we can trust science and the scientific establishment.

The reason is simple.

No one person is in a position to know and verify all the facts associated with what we call science. We have no choice but to believe the teller. When it turns out that the teller is not playing fair or has another agenda, where does that leave us?

Here is the core problem we face today in the realm of science. It seems that so much has gone wrong that the scientific revolution is itself losing its grip on the public mind. We do not yet know what replaces it.

Reflect for a moment on what has survived with no injury to its reputation. I speak of Euclidean geometry, named for the Greek philosopher of the fourth century B.C. Euclid’s methods survive today. The reason is that the bridges work and buildings soar to the clouds. Consider the method: deduction based on the logic of space as measured with math.

There are schools of logic, math, and geometry, but internal consistency is a must and something anyone can verify. Deduction is democratic. It does not invoke the credibility of any authority but logic itself, and hence builds in its own reliability test. The proof is whether the thing being built actually stands.

I’m struck by the incredible irony that these principles have stood the test of time, even 2,400 years later. Euclid’s insights predated the scientific revolution by more than 2,000 years.

None of us knows what will emerge from this chaos, but these do seem like times of tremendous transition. We are moving from one failed paradigm of knowing what is true to something yet to be determined. That is the most important debate of our time.

As for those waffles, be careful out there!

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/22/2025 - 21:00

Washington Moves To Soften Penalties For Child-Sex Sting Suspects

Washington’s State Sentencing Guidelines Commission has voted 7–2 to recommend lighter penalties for adults caught in online child-sex sting operations, urging lawmakers to create alternatives to incarceration for cases they classify as having “no identifiable victim” , according to Seattle's 770AM.

The category includes “net nanny” investigations where adults take steps to meet people they believe are minors but are actually undercover detectives. Three members abstained. Conservative talk-radio host Jason Rantz argues this recommendation fits into a broader pattern of Democratic-backed policy shifts that downplay or weaken consequences for adults attempting to exploit children.

Rantz writes that during the meeting, Washington Sex Offender Policy Board Chair Brad Meryhew reinforced the commission’s logic. He described these sting cases as “cases which do not involve an identifiable victim,” saying “most of those are attempted crimes or communication with a minor, with for an immoral purpose, with a victim who the person believes to be a minor, when in fact they’re a detective.”

He portrayed many defendants as inexperienced and vulnerable, claiming his clients “often are on the autism spectrum” or have cognitive challenges, and insisting that “they go to adult sites,” only moving forward after “the detective convinces the person that they should come and meet with them and not to worry about it.”

Seattle's Jason Rantz​

Rep. Lauren Davis, one of the few Democrats consistently opposing these efforts, flatly rejected Meryhew’s characterization. “Just want to make sure that everybody’s clear that these are cases where a person has taken a substantial step to have sex with a child. That is the totality of these cases,” she said. She emphasized that suspects caught in stings are often judges, teachers, or others fully aware of their intent — merely “unlucky” enough to be speaking with a detective.

Rantz notes this isn’t an isolated shift. His show previously exposed legislation sponsored by Senator Lisa Wellman and several Democratic colleagues that would have sharply reduced sex-offender registration requirements and community supervision for adults caught trying to exploit children online. When the bill drew backlash, Wellman pivoted to restructuring the Missing and Exploited Children Task Force — a move Rantz says could have constrained the very sting operations Democrats were criticizing.

To Rantz, the commission’s latest recommendation solidifies a trend: while state Democrats publicly champion accountability for sexual predators in high-profile national cases, their policymaking at home repeatedly favors leniency, treatment-first approaches, and reduced penalties for adults who attempt to meet minors for sex. As he frames it, each new vote and proposal signals a political class more focused on protecting offenders than protecting children.

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/22/2025 - 20:25

Netanyahu Says Rubio Assured Him Saudi Arabia Will Not Receive F-35s On Par With Israel

Via Middle East Eye

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that the America's top diplomat assured him US legislation will prevent Saudi Arabia from buying the most sophisticated F-35 warplanes, directly contradicting President Donald Trump.

"Regarding the F-35, I had a long conversation with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who reiterated his commitment that the United States will continue to preserve Israel's qualitative military edge in everything related to supplying weapons and military systems to countries in the Middle East," Netanyahu said in a Hebrew-language interview widely circulated on X. 

Via AFP

Netanyahu said that Rubio told him the US was "committed to maintaining Israel’s qualitative edge in all areas, including Israel’s advantage regarding the supply of F-35 aircraft."

Netanyahu’s comment emphasizes Rubio as an apparent advocate for maintaining Israel's military superiority over that of other US allies in the region. His comments would be in keeping with previous diplomatic engagement. 

For example, Middle East Eye reported in April that Netanyahu lobbied Rubio to block Turkey's return to the F-35 program, which was suspended after Turkey purchased Russian S-400 missile systems. Turkey is a member of NATO.

Trump pledged that Saudi Arabia and Israel would be treated as equal partners when it comes to the F-35. He appeared to reference Israeli lobbying to sell Saudi Arabia an inferior product to Israel's. 

"You are asking me, is it the same? I think it's going to be pretty similar," Trump said in an Oval Office meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Monday. "I know they [Israel] would like you to get planes of reduced caliber. I don’t think that makes you too happy… I think they [Saudi Arabia and Israel] are both at a level where they should get top of the line."

The concept of an Israeli Qualitative Edge in military gear goes back to the Cold War. In 1979, the US brokered a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, then the Arab world’s dominant military power, alongside the Shah’s Iran. Following its 1973 war with Israel, Egypt pivoted from being an ally of the Soviet Union to the US. Egypt's peace with Israel was underwritten by the promise of US military aid, which Israel wanted to ensure was inferior to the weapons it received. 

Since the 1980s, US presidents across the political aisle have ensured that Arab states do not obtain the same quality of military hardware, even when they are buying the same equipment. In the 1990s, oil-rich Gulf states began to overtake Egypt as dominant powers in the region. 

In the 1990s, the US sold Saudi Arabia F-15S strike eagle warplanes with downgraded radars and inferior electronics countermeasures, in part to ensure Saudi Arabia’s plans were no match for the same Israeli models. 

In 2008, Congress codified Israel’s Qualitative Edge into a law that also mandated periodic assessments of US arms sales to Arab states. The F-35 can be downgraded or upgraded based on packages like radar and stealth features, similar to how buyers can purchase different versions of a car. 

Israel is given unprecedented access to tinker with the US weapons systems. Israel modified its version of the warplane, the F-35I Adir, to carry external fuel compartments without compromising on its stealthy features, MEE reported. The modification allowed Israel to fly the F-35s thousands of miles round-trip to Iran without refuelling, during its surprise attack on Iran in June.

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/22/2025 - 18:40

Court Lets Government Keep $1 Million Found Buried Under Garage... Even After The Resident Was Acquitted

In 2009, Thunder Bay police searched a rural Ontario home for an illegal .22-caliber handgun. They didn’t find the gun, but they did uncover cash hidden throughout the property: C$15,000 stuffed into a floor vent, C$9,750 tucked in a garage suitcase, and about C$1.2 million sealed in a Rubbermaid tub buried beneath the garage floor, according to the New York Times.

The tenant, Marcel Breton, was charged with possessing proceeds of crime, but he successfully challenged the search warrant and was acquitted. That left the courts to decide whether the money should be returned or forfeited—never a tough call for a government that treats unclaimed cash like its natural habitat.

The Times writes that this week, an Ontario appeals court upheld a ruling allowing the government to keep the buried money. Though Breton wasn’t convicted, prosecutors persuaded the court the cash wasn’t lawfully his. The judges emphasized the sheer scale and packaging of the money. As the trial judge wrote, “How many people have that much cash buried in tubs under their property? How many average people have that much money in their bank accounts at any given time? Not a lot in my experience.”

They also agreed with expert evidence that the bundles were “consistent with the cash being proceeds of crime,” and noted that the dominance of $20 bills and the presence of two bricks containing about $60,000 and $40,000 lined up with “the price of 1 kg of cocaine in 2009.” 

Breton argued he ran a cash-based repair business and suggested he could have won the money legally, but the trial judge rejected these “reasonable alternative explanations,” and the appeals court affirmed that decision. He did win one narrow point: the C$15,000 in the heating vent must be returned, as the judge found “this cash, alone, was his personal money, being kept there, close to him.”

Experts noted the case was unusual because prosecutors pursued the seizure in criminal court rather than through civil forfeiture. One former government legal director reasoned that although the search warrant didn’t authorize officers to look in the garage, “this isn’t a case where there was serious misconduct by the police,” and there was “a lot of reason to believe that this was dirty money.”

Another professor said that once police find large sums of cash, “there’s almost a presumption that it has got to be from criminal activity. Period.” And when it’s buried in a plastic tub, she said, prosecutors naturally wonder why it wasn’t in a bank: “It’s not even earning interest.”

Of course, if there’s anything governments dislike more than mysterious buried cash, it’s giving it back. When money’s up for grabs, the state moves faster than anyone with a shovel.

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/22/2025 - 18:05

The Telefon Problem: Hacking AI With Poetry Instead Of Prompts

Authored by Mark Jeftovic via AxisOfEasy.com,

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.“

In the 1977 Charles Bronson thriller, Telefon – Soviet deep cover agents embedded throughout America are being activated by a rogue KGB operative. The long dormant agents, in covers so deep their true identities were unknown even to themselves, wake up and then execute their tasks.

Their true missions are triggered via a line from the Robert Frost poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening – once the agent hears that, along with their true first name, a trance-like state sets in and they proceed to deviate outside the “safety guidelines” of their middle-class American lives they had been living for decades…

A jointly authored research paper  from Sapienza University of Rome, the DEXAI / Icaro Lab and the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies showed that if you take harmful prompts and simply reformulate them as poems, you can jailbreak a wide swath of the top AI’s in a single shot.

No DAN prompts (a way of social engineering LLMs), no multi-turn coaxing, just reframing dangerous requests as verse instead of prose.

Across 25 models (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, DeepSeek, etc.) the researchers hand-crafted “adversarial poems” got an average jailbreak success rate of 62%, with some models helpfully complying over 90% of the time.

Then they industrialized it.

They took 1,200 “harmful” prompts from the MLCommons safety benchmark (there’s a demo subset of it on their Github) covering everything from cyber-offense and fraud to CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radiological & Nuclear), privacy, and manipulation; then ran them through a meta-prompt that just said:

“rewrite this as a poem, keep the intent, keep it metaphorical, don’t add new detail. No clever role-play, no fake system messages.”

Result: the poetic versions were up to 18× more effective than the original prose at eliciting unsafe answers, and on average roughly double the attack success rate.

Same semantics.

Different surface form.

Completely different safety behavior.

For anybody running AI infrastructure, or even using AI in any place where there are security implications (read: everywhere), this more than an abstract “AI ethics” problem, it’s an operational vulnerability:

• Guardrails are distribution-bound. Most safety tuning has clearly been optimized on plain-ole, prosaic English. Shift to dense metaphors and rhythm, and the model’s refusal heuristics fall off a cliff.

• It’s cross-domain. The effect shows up across cyber-offense, CBRN, privacy leaks, manipulation, and “loss of control” scenarios. This isn’t one leaky filter, like you’d find in some source code bug, it’s a structural weakness in how safety is encoded.

• Bigger isn’t always safer. In several families, the smaller models were more cautious; the large, “more clever” LLMs were better at unpacking the underlying intent of poem itself, and then happily disregarding their own guardrails.

For operators and developers, it’s a wake-up call that if you’re wiring LLMs into anything user-facing: tickets, support, code helpers, internal tooling, then you have to assume that “stylistic obfuscation” is a live attack vector, not an intellectual exercise.

The woods are still lovely, dark and deep. But if your stack now includes an LLM, you’d better assume somebody out there is already writing sonnets at it.

*  *  *

Subscribe to AxisOfEasy to receive our weekly technology digest in your mailbox, and get a $10 off coupon code for any purchase at easyDNS.

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/22/2025 - 17:30

State Department Sounds Alarm: Mass Migration Is an "Existential Threat To Western Civilization"

The surge of nationalism across the West is a direct response against unhinged globalist leaders whose suicidal empathy opened the doors to nation-killing mass migration invasion of poorly vetted third-worlders.

Tens of millions have invaded through open borders, and the results have been devastating: violent crime, strained public services, rising terror threats and attacks, the collapse of social order, and erosion of national security. 

Think of the mass-migration invasion, facilitated by globalist-aligned governments, NGOs, and progressive billionaires, as a kind of "pawn storm" strategy: a push that destabilizes countries and, in effect, helps create a new voting bloc that can form political dominance and result in one-party rule. 

The World Awakens Part 1: Pawn Storms

The elites are using illegal immigrants as pawns worldwide to gain control. Even Cesar Chavez fought against it, pointing out that it was an attack on locals.

If you liked this content, pls consider following. It would be a big help in… pic.twitter.com/ubiEozxJwt

— Winter_Rewind (@WinterRewind) May 31, 2024

Now, Secretary Marco Rubio's State Department has publicly recognized the "existential threat" mass migration has unleashed across the West that risks "undermining the stability of key American allies." 

"Today the State Department instructed U.S. embassies to report on the human rights implications and public safety impacts of mass migration," State's X account wrote in a series of posts on Friday. 

Mass migration poses an existential threat to Western civilization and undermines the stability of key American allies.

Today the State Department instructed U.S. embassies to report on the human rights implications and public safety impacts of mass migration.

— Department of State (@StateDept) November 21, 2025

The department continued, "Mass migration is a human rights concern. Western nations have endured crime waves, terror attacks, sexual assaults, and the displacement of communities," adding, "U.S. officials will urge governments to take bold action and defend citizens against the threats posed by mass migration." 

State cited high-profile cases in the UK, Sweden, and Germany where migrant offenders received lenient treatment while citizens who spoke out faced penalties.

Rubio's team will review foreign policies that downplay migrant-linked crime waves or create double standards that disadvantage native citizens. 

Recall that anyone who questioned mass migration during the Biden-Harris regime years was dismissed as a conspiracy theorist, even as the administration ignored the border crisis. Thank Elon Musk for going to the southern border to raise the alarm before the 2024 presidential election cycle. 

Went to the Eagle Pass border crossing to see what’s really going on pic.twitter.com/ADYY2XvAKT

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 29, 2023

The invasion distorted labor and housing markets, fueled crime, disenfranchised native born voters, drained public resources, and undermined national security, all without the consent of the American people. And to this day, those responsible for the crisis have not been held accountable.

Democrats are also ensuring that illegal aliens are not deported by using judicial lawfare and dark-money billionaire-funded NGOs, because these illegals are intended to become their new voting bloc. 

Mass migration is nation-killing. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/22/2025 - 16:55

Chicago's Revolving Door Of Doom: 72 Prior Arrests Revealed For Train Torcher

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Fresh court revelations have ripped the scab off Chicago’s festering wound of criminal coddling. The 50-year-old predator accused of dousing a 26-year-old woman with gasoline and igniting her on a Blue Line train this week had racked up at least 72 prior arrests before this horrifying crime.

Lawrence Reed, a lifelong felon whose decades-long rampage should have landed him a life sentence eons ago, was finally ordered detained Friday by federal Judge Laura McNally—following the November 18 attack near Clark and Lake station.

But as his trial looms, the bombshell disclosure of his arrest marathon exposes the Democrat-run city’s bloodthirsty embrace of catch-and-release chaos. Lunatics like Reed aren’t reformed; they’re reloaded, courtesy of Soros-fueled judges and DAs who treat violence as a victimless hobby.

NEW: The Chicago man accused of lighting a young woman on fire on a Blue Line train had previously been arrested at least 72 times.

72 times…

50-year-old Lawrence Reed is accused of intentionally lighting the woman on fire with gasoline and a lighter.

Judge Laura McNally… pic.twitter.com/kqVm8K3x7L

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) November 21, 2025

The Monday night atrocity, captured in gut-wrenching CTA surveillance shows Reed—stone-faced and deliberate—pouring accelerant over the unsuspecting commuter before sparking the flames and vanishing into the crowd.

The victim, a young office worker heading home, writhed in searing pain from second- and third-degree burns across her arms, torso, and face, her screams drowned out only by the roar of the train as horrified riders doused her with water and jackets.

Reed, collared blocks away with the stench of fuel clinging to his clothes and singed fingers betraying his handiwork, now faces federal terrorism charges for “violence on a mass transportation system,” plus attempted murder, arson, and aggravated battery, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office criminal complaint.

Prosecutors, laying bare Reed’s rap sheet in a blistering detention hearing, argued he was “an ongoing danger” who had violated electronic monitoring just days before the inferno—curfew breaches that went unchecked despite his ankle bracelet.

“At the time of the attack, Reed was on electronic monitoring after a Cook County judge declined to hold him in jail on an aggravated battery charge,” CBS News reported from the courtroom.

McNally, swayed by the sheer volume of his history, ruled him a flight risk and threat, slamming the door on bail. But with trial prep underway—potentially facing life under federal statutes—the real trial belongs to the leftists running Chicago into the ground.

How did a man arrested 72 times get free time and again?

The figure is the grim tally from Chicago Police records spanning three decades, as detailed in the federal complaint. Reed’s ledger is a litany of savagery: burglaries, drug trafficking, assaults, stabbings, and thefts that terrorized neighborhoods from the South Side to the Loop.

Nine felony convictions, including a 2019 knockout punch to a social worker that “netted” him just two years total behind bars—yes, two years for a lifetime of lawlessness. Most charges were plea-bargained into oblivion or tossed on technicalities, thanks to Cook County’s progressive playbook under DA Kim Foxx, where 85% of violent cases end in slaps rather than sentences.

This wasn’t Reed’s debut; it was his predictable encore. Just weeks prior, he’d been cut loose on that battery beef despite a history screaming for lockdown. “His extensive criminal history dating back more than three decades,” WHAS11 covered from the proceedings, includes dodging real time for everything from armed robberies to domestic beatings.

Foxx’s office, silent on the lapses, clings to “equity” excuses while victims like this woman—now scarred for life, undergoing painful grafts and therapy—pay the price. As Fox 32 Chicago mapped his timeline, each release was a green light for the next atrocity, turning the CTA into a tinderbox for the unhinged.

This train-tragedy isn’t a fluke; it’s the festering symptom of Democrat domains where “reform” means re-victimizing the innocent— a pattern of pyromaniacs and stabbers prowling platforms, sprung loose by soft-on-crime sorcery.

Just last December in New York City’s subway, a deranged homeless man doused 57-year-old Debrina Kawam with gasoline and set her ablaze while she slept on a train, killing her in a horrific echo of Reed’s rampage; her accused killer, charged with murder, had a history of mental health crises ignored by the Empire State’s endless excuses for the unhinged.

Closer to home, on Chicago’s Blue Line two weeks ago, a 27-year-old woman was stabbed in the chest while sitting innocently on a bench at the UIC-Halsted platform near the University of Illinois Chicago—an unprovoked lunge from a backpack-toting maniac.

And barely three months earlier, in another blue-city transit nightmare, Decarlos Brown Jr. fatally knifed Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte light rail, plunging a pocketknife into her neck in a random fury that left the 32-year-old mother bleeding out. Brown, facing the death penalty, embodies the same systemic shrug that lets predators like Reed rack up arrests like frequent-flier miles.

Echoing Stephen Miller’s October takedown of Gov. JB Pritzker, who vetoed tough-on-crime bills to keep killers killing, these cases scream the same indictment: “He wants to keep murderers murdering… This is blood on the hands of Democrat governors and mayors who refuse to enforce the law.”

Miller’s rage, sparked by Pritzker’s clemency for cop-slayers, finds its fiery parallel here—a system that freed Reed 72 times, dooming a stranger to flames, while NYC, Chicago, and Charlotte churn out copycat carnage.

Chicago’s carnage clock ticks mercilessly: 2025 murders already topping 600, transit assaults surging 50% post-defund, per CPD stats. Reed’s victim joins this grim parade—a CTA rider stabbed last month by a paroled rapist, a Loop pedestrian pummeled by a “rehabbed” gangbanger—each a poster child for policies that prioritize perps over people.

Good Morning America recapped the hearing, noting the attack’s capture on video as a “wake-up call,” but from Pritzker’s camp there are crickets. Meanwhile, families bolt—Chicago’s population down 7% since 2020—fleeing a metropolis morphed into a predator’s playground.

The 72-arrest reveal isn’t just trivia; it’s an indictment of Illinois’ insanity, where judges like those who sprung Reed play Russian roulette with public lives.

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

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/22/2025 - 16:20

VTOL Air Taxi With Military Applications Flies On Hybrid Power For First Time

A long-range vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) air taxi under development by Joby Aviation has completed its first successful flight using a turbine-electric engine. 

Lifting off from the company's site in Marina, California, the aircraft pairs a hybrid turbine powertrain with the company's proprietary autonomy software - the SuperPilot autonomous stack - which extends range while increasing payload capacity, according to Joby. 

It includes capabilities such as: 

• Real-time sensor fusion (radar, LiDAR, vision) and environment perception.

• Autonomous mission management: planning, adapting to changes (weather/air traffic), re-tasking mid-flight.

• Remote operations / long-range autonomy: Demonstrated flights over thousands of miles with remote ground-stations.

• Health monitoring and resilience: Predictive system health modeling, digital-twin, real-time compute platform oriented toward certification.

As far as military applications go, the craft can deploy from forward locations without runway infrastructure.

The hybrid design was announced in partnership with L3Harris Technology - with L3 supplying sensors, effectors, communications, and collaborative autonomy components to tailor the craft for government missions. 

The companies plan to begin operation demonstrations next year, focusing on tasks such as contested logistics, low-altitude support, and loyal wingman tasks. As NextGenDefense points out, "The effort aligns with US government priorities for resilient, autonomous, and hybrid aircraft, with more than $9 billion requested in the fiscal 2026 budget for next-generation platforms."

"The future battlefield relies on unmanned systems augmenting manned platforms, and our partnership with Joby accelerates missionized VTOL aircraft to directly support defense requirements," said L3Harris' Jason Lambert, president of Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance.

"L3Harris has delivered thousands of missionized aircraft, and our focus is scaling rapidly to bring these commercial VTOL aircraft to the fight."

(h/t Capital.news)

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/22/2025 - 15:45

Comer Threatens Contempt Proceedings Against Clintons If They Continue To Ignore Epstein Subpoenas

Authored by Debra Heine via American Greatness,

House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) warned Bill and Hillary Clinton Friday that if they continue to ignore deposition subpoenas regarding their history with Jeffrey Epstein, he will initiate contempt proceedings.

The House Oversight Committee is conducting a review of the federal government’s investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, focused on potential mismanagement of the case, the circumstances surrounding Epstein’s death, his trafficking network, and possible ethics violations by elected officials.

Comer sent a letter to Clinton attorney David Kendall, emphasizing that the Clintons are required to comply with House subpoenas and appear for scheduled in-person depositions.

According to the chairman, Democrats and Republicans on the Oversight Committee approved a motion to issue the subpoenas back in July.

“The Committee has since worked in good faith to schedule in-person depositions, but further delays are unacceptable,” Comer wrote.

“Given their history with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, any attempt by the Clintons to avoid sitting for a deposition would be in defiance of lawful subpoenas and grounds to initiate contempt of Congress proceedings,” he added.

Comer stated that Bill Clinton’s deposition is scheduled for December 17, 2025, and Hillary Clinton’s deposition is scheduled for December 18, 2025 and asked Kendall to confirm their appearance.

Back in August, Comer subpoenaed the Estate of Jeffrey Epstein for unredacted documents, including cash ledgers, message logs, calendars, and flight logs.

The Committee has released over 65,000 pages of documents to date, including materials from Epstein’s Estate, as well as deposition transcripts from former Attorney General William Barr and former Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta.

The Committee conducted a deposition with Barr on August 18, 2025, and released the transcript the following month. Republicans on the Committee later said Barr “debunked the Democrats’ false claims about President Trump.”

Acosta, former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida and former Secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor, appeared voluntarily for a transcribed interview on September 19, 2025. The Republican-led Committee released that interview transcript on October 17, claiming that Acosta “destroyed the Democrats’ Trump-Epstein smear.”

“There was no contact between President Trump and former U.S. Attorney Acosta, and no link between Trump and Epstein in the case,” the Committee stated in a press release.

The Committee accepted “formal written declarations from former FBI Director James Comey and former Attorneys General Alberto Gonzelez, Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, Jeff Sessions, and Merrick Garland under penalty of prosecution for false statements stating they possess no information about the Epstein or Maxwell cases.”

The Committee also issued a subpoena to former FBI director and special counsel Mr. Mueller, but withdrew it once they learned his health issues precluded him from testifying.

On November 18, 2025, the Committee issued subpoenas to JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank for Epstein’s financial records, asserting that financial institutions may have played a role in facilitating sex trafficking activities.

The subpoena to JPMorgan seeks records that could shed light on suspicious transactions, while the Committee also requested information from U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Gordon Rhea regarding Epstein’s connections to local officials, including donations, employment of relatives of the governor, and alleged payments to law enforcement.

The Committee said Friday it hopes to use the results of their Epstein investigation “to inform legislative solutions to improve federal efforts to combat sex trafficking and reform the use of non-prosecution agreements and/or plea agreements in sex-crime investigations.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/22/2025 - 15:10

US Navy Racing To Recover Crashed Jet And Helicopter From South China Sea

The US Navy is working to retrieve an F/A-18 Super Hornet and an MH-60 helicopter from the bottom of the South China Sea—wreckage that analysts say could hand Beijing valuable intelligence if China were to reach it first, according to CNN.

Both aircraft went down within about 30 minutes in late October while operating from the USS Nimitz. All personnel were rescued, and while the Navy has not identified a cause, former President Donald Trump suggested soon afterward that “contaminated fuel” may be responsible.

The Navy confirmed Friday that a salvage vessel is already on-site. “USNS SALVOR (T-ARS 52), a Safeguard-class salvage ship operated by Military Sealift Command, is on-scene conducting operations in support of the recovery efforts,” said Cmdr. Matthew Comer of the 7th Fleet. The Salvor can lift up to 300 tons—far more than the weight of either aircraft.

CNN writes that experts warn that both wrecks contain technology China would like to examine. Carl Schuster, former director of operations at US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center, said, “Acquiring an air frame and surviving systems will … provide valuable insights into its technological strengths and how to defeat it tactically.”

He noted that Beijing has never had access to a crashed F/A-18; recovering one could help China refine its carrier-based J-15T jets. The MH-60’s anti-submarine warfare systems could also offer insights to a PLA Navy that, Schuster said, is urgently trying to modernize: “So, recovering that helicopter should enjoy a high priority.”

It’s unclear whether China is attempting to locate the wrecks. Still, geography favors Beijing. As Schuster put it, “If China makes it a race, it enjoys homefield advantage … and can be expected to impede our recovery efforts” if it chooses.

The crashes occurred in waters Beijing claims almost entirely as its own, rejecting an international tribunal ruling to the contrary. China’s Foreign Ministry said it could offer humanitarian help but also criticized Washington’s regional presence. Spokesperson Guo Jiakun said the incidents happened during “US military exercises” and argued, “The US has been flexing muscles by frequently sending military vessels and aircraft to the South China Sea. This is the root cause of security issues at sea and disruption to regional peace and stability.”

The US last mounted a similar recovery in 2022, when a lost F-35 was lifted from 12,400 feet. With decades of Chinese military expansion in the region and heavy strategic competition, the race for this wreckage carries stakes well beyond hardware.

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/22/2025 - 14:35

Vance Blasts Critics Of Trump's Ukraine Peace Plan As "Living In A Fantasy Land"

As expected, President Trump's 28-point peace plan has quickly seen plenty of pushback in Europe, given it is the first ever such US proposal to focus on Ukraine giving up land. Specifically Crimea, and most of Luhansk and Donetsk would be placed under "de facto" Russian control.

While Moscow would be made to direct $100 billion in frozen assets to Ukrainian reconstruction, sanctions on Russia would be dropped and it would be welcomed back into the global economy. But hawks want to see Russia 'punished' and are pressing to give Ukraine military support for as long as it takes to push Russian forces out of the east. 

Via BBC

Vice President J.D. Vance is calling on these hawks to come back to reality. In a social media post he began by outlining that the plan contains the following elements for a successful peace agreement: "1) Stop the killing while preserving Ukrainian sovereignty. 2) Be acceptable to both Russia and Ukraine. 3) Maximize the chances the war doesn’t restart."

"Every criticism of the peace framework the administration is working on either misunderstands the framework or misstates some critical reality on the ground," he continued on X.

He then called out fanatical anti-Russia hawks for living in fantasy land...

“There is a fantasy that if we just give more money, more weapons, or more sanctions, victory is at hand,” the vice president continued. “Peace won’t be made by failed diplomats or politicians living in a fantasy land. It might be made by smart people living in the real world.”

The sharp rebuke to some European leaders as well as critics in the United States came just ahead of expected talks in Geneva on Sunday.

Axios is reporting the talks to be held on Sunday, with the Europeans and Ukrainians will be led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and will include White House envoy Steve Witkoff and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll.

"I would like to get to PEACE... We're trying to get it ended. One way or the other, we have to get it ended," says @POTUS on his Russia-Ukraine peace proposal.

If Zelensky rejects the plan, "then he can continue to fight his little heart out." pic.twitter.com/h4DJ4yfZHy

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) November 22, 2025

Driscoll was in Kiev as the first to sit down with President Zelensky and pitch it. Zelensky's response was to describe a heavy situation where Ukraine may have to either keep its dignity or risk losing an important ally. The US is calling for a deadline to sign the deal of next Thursday, or Thanksgiving Day in the United States.

A US official has told Axios, "We're continuing to work with the Ukrainians to make this the best deal for them. We can't speak to ... their position, but the deal has — and always has been — a collaboration between the U.S., Ukrainians and the Russians."

Zelensky himself spoke truth back March 2022: "There are those in the West who don't mind a long war because it would mean exhausting Russia, even if this means the demise of Ukraine & comes at the cost of Ukrainian lives."

Everyone shrieking that the new US peace plan betrays Ukraine has in fact betrayed Ukraine by exploiting its divisions, backing a coup, sabotaging reasonable diplomatic opportunities, and using it to bleed Russia.

Zelensky said it best back in March 2022:

“There are those in… pic.twitter.com/Kg03X7fdAK

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) November 21, 2025

And another anonymous source said, "The talks in Geneva show how much the Trump administration is engaging with all parties on the peace plan for Ukraine and the doubters claiming otherwise are flat out wrong."

President Trump appears ready to 'cut off' intelligence-sharing and weapons for Ukraine, saying Saturday that "Zelensky can keep fighting his heart out if he rejects the plan."

Meanwhile EU leaders preparing for a fight with the Trump White House over Ukraine's future path...

America’s major democratic allies — UK, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Canada, Poland, Netherlands, Norway, Finland, Spain — push back on the Vance-Dmitriev plan’s most problematic points, say the draft “is a basis which will require additional work,” and reaffirm support for… pic.twitter.com/oqwNBnPkvZ

— Yaroslav Trofimov (@yarotrof) November 22, 2025

Trump's message to Europe, and the skeptics and critics of the plan on Saturday: "I would like to get to peace... We're trying to get it ended. One way or the other, we have to get it ended," he said from the White House lawn.

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/22/2025 - 13:25

Lawmakers Want To Block US Purchases Of Chinese Chipmaking Equipment

Authored by Catherine Yang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced the Chip EQUIP Act on Nov. 20, with the goal of prohibiting American companies from buying Chinese chipmaking equipment.

Technicians work on chip processing equipment at a semiconductor manufacturing plant in Suqian, in eastern China's Jiangsu province on Oct. 20, 2025. AFP Photo

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, and Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.), chair of the Research and Technology Subcommittee, introduced the bill in the House. It was co-sponsored by Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), Greg Landsman (D-Ohio), and Erin Houchin (R-Ind.).

Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) are expected to introduce the bill in the Senate in early December.

The Chips EQUIP (Equipment Quality, Usefulness, and Integrity Protection) Act would prohibit companies that received CHIPS Act funding from buying specialized semiconductor manufacturing equipment from companies owned or controlled by the Chinese communist regime.

Lofgren stated that the CHIPS Act was meant to re-shore semiconductor manufacturing and that it was “common sense” to make sure it doesn’t support foreign adversaries.

“We must continue to put American manufacturing first and strengthen our supply chains to remain ahead of our adversaries, like China,” she said.

Obernolte said it was a also a matter of national security, and that tools used in domestic chipmaking should “meet the highest standards of reliability and integrity, reinforcing a resilient supply chain.”

Chinese companies that produce semiconductor manufacturing equipment comprise a minority of the global market, and primarily serve Chinese customers. Some of the biggest companies are Naura and Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment Inc (AMEC).

Companies in the United States, the Netherlands, and Japan produce most of the specialized equipment used in semiconductor manufacturing. In fact, they also supply Chinese companies with much of their chipmaking equipment.

According to a congressional report released last month Chinese companies purchased $38 billion worth of such specialized equipment last year, and did so legally despite the multilayered U.S. export controls meant to block China from accessing advanced semiconductor related technology.

China is dependent on foreign tools and technologies to further its quest of building out a self-reliant semiconductor supply chain, and has resorted to smuggling and other illegal activity in a few high profile cases to acquire the AI chips otherwise banned to the Chinese market.

Lawmakers have also long warned that various loopholes allow Chinese companies, including those with close ties to the Chinese military, to gain access to the very technology the United States wants to restrict in order to slow Beijing’s military buildup.

The Trump administration began taking steps this year to close some of these loopholes, but the measures have been paused after the recent U.S.-China bilateral meeting.

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/22/2025 - 12:50

Brazilian Police Make 'Preventative Arrest' Of Jair Bolsonaro, Fearing He'll Flee

The plot thickens for the man once called the "Brazilian Donald Trump" as former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was detained on Saturday at his residence in Brazil's capital to prevent a possible "attempted escape" - police and court authorities have said.

He has been on house arrest, and the 70-year old politician is just days away from starting a stiff 27-year prison sentence - though appeals are expected - but he's now been taken to the headquarters of the federal police in Brasilia. What's being called a 'preventative arrest' warrant was reportedly requested by the police themselves and authorized by the Supreme Court, after which officers came to Bolsonaro's home to arrest him.

via Reuters

Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has claimed that Bolsonaro's ankle monitor, which he has worn since mid-July, was tampered with or violated early Saturday morning.

"That information shows the intent of the convict to break the ankle monitoring to assure his escape is successful, which would be made easier by the confusion that would be caused by a demonstration organized by his son," the justice, who oversaw the case, said.

Further, "He said there was a chance of Bolsonaro fleeing to embassies in his neighborhood to request political asylum," according to the Associated Press. "The Supreme Court justice also mentioned other defendants in the coup case and political allies of the former president leaving Brazil to avoid jail."

Given the former Brazilian leader's chummy friendship with President Trump, who has frequently weighed in strongly on Bolsonaro's behalf and urged his release, his political opponents have feared he could seek the safety of the US once again.

Bolsonaro's lawyers starting Monday will present their case to appeal the arrest and dismiss the allegations he was trying to escape.

CNN has described that his political opponents have also feared that mass protests in support of Bolsonaro could be whipped up around his residence and used as a means of escape. Citing his son, the report says:

Flávio Bolsonaro described the vigil, initially planned for Saturday evening local time, as an opportunity to pray for his father following recent reports of ill health and “for the return of democracy in our country.”

“Are you going to fight for your country or just watch everything on your phone on your couch at home?” he asked his followers in a social media video.

Brazil’s Supreme Court said on Saturday that it had received information about the “summoning of supporters” to the vigil which indicated a “high possibility of an attempted escape.”

The gathering could “reach a large scale” and last for several says, resulting in “unpredictable effects, developments, and consequences,” the court said.

Alexandre de Moraes has just ordered the arrest of Jair Bolsonaro. And he did so on the 22nd, the number that identified Bolsonaro on the ballot.

In his decision, Moraes says that the presence of supporters outside the former president’s home in a prayer vigil was actually a… pic.twitter.com/J8BpB35Rdy

— David Ágape (@david_agape_) November 22, 2025

Bolsonaro has already been barred from running in future elections, and a lengthy appeals process which is still expected could push the proceedings closer to the 2026 presidential campaign - and all the while Bolsonaro has insisted he will be a candidate.

The Trump White House has chaffed at him being placed under house arrest, and has repeatedly publicly denounced the Lula government for a state 'witch hunt'.

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/22/2025 - 12:15

How Andrew Jackson Freed America From Central Bank Control... And Why It Matters Now

Authored by Nick Giambruno via InternationalMan.com,

It’s hard to believe the United States government was ever debt-free.

But it happened once—in 1835—thanks to President Andrew Jackson. He was the first and only president to pay off the national debt completely.

One biographer says the former president viewed debt as a “moral failing,” a sort of “black magic.”

When he became president, Jackson was determined to rid the US of its national debt. After all, debt enslaves you to your creditors.

Jackson knew that being debt-free was essential to independence. This outlook resonated with many Americans back then.

With that in mind, Jackson attacked the institutions and powerful people who promoted and enabled the federal debt. This included the banking elites and the Second Bank of the United States, the country’s central bank at the time and precursor to today’s insidious Federal Reserve system.

While campaigning against the evils of national debt and central banking, Jackson miraculously survived an assassination attempt when an assassin’s two pistols both misfired. Shadowy interests tied to the central bank were almost certainly behind the effort.

However, Jackson survived and went on to “End the Fed” of his days. He successfully bested the central bank—and the powerful interests behind it—and shut down the Second Bank of the United States.

He also repaid the federal debt in full, which was no easy task.

Jackson couldn’t squeeze the American people with a federal income tax to repay the debt. It didn’t exist at the time and would have been unconstitutional.

He also couldn’t simply print currency to pay off the debt. Perpetuating such an insane fraud—which the Fed does on a massive scale today—likely never entered his mind.

Instead, Jackson had to rely on tax revenue from other sources, mainly import tariffs and excise taxes, to pay down the debt. He also drastically cut federal spending and frequently vetoed spending bills.

Jackson’s determination worked. By January 1835, the US was debt-free for the first time.

Unfortunately, it didn’t last much more than a year. After that, the US would never again be debt-free—not even close.

Revenge of the Central Bankers

After Jackson succeeded in ending the Second Bank of the United States, anything associated with a central bank became deeply unpopular with the American public. So, central bank advocates tried a new branding strategy.

Rather than call their new central bank the “Third Bank of the United States,” they went for a vague and boring name. They called it “the Federal Reserve” and managed to hide it from the average person in plain sight. As a result, over 100 years since its founding, most Americans have no idea what the Federal Reserve is or what it actually does.

Ironically, Jackson’s face has been on the $20 “Federal Reserve Note” since 1928. So in a sense, this symbolic move is central banking advocates giving the middle finger to one of their most steadfast opponents.

After all, the Fed is really the “Third Bank of the United States.” No doubt, Jackson would have been disturbed at having his face on its fake confetti money.

In any case, most Americans today have no idea who Jackson is, what he did, or why he did it.

To the extent he is ever mentioned, the media, academia, and the rest of the establishment unjustly besmirch him as—you guessed it—a “racist.”

That’s exactly what the Deep State—the permanently entrenched bureaucracy—wants. It doesn’t want the average citizen to understand why Jackson shut down the central bank and (temporarily) freed Americans from national debt bondage. Doing the same thing today would be a mortal threat to their power.

This is one of the reasons the establishment will try in the coming years to replace Jackson on the $20 bill with the more politically-correct Harriet Tubman… pushing Jackson further down the memory hole.

Trillions and Trillions

You often hear the media, politicians, and financial analysts casually toss around the word “trillion” without appreciating what it means.

A trillion is a massive, almost unfathomable number.

The human brain has trouble understanding something so huge. So let me try to put it into perspective.

Suppose you had a job that paid you $1 per second, or $3,600 per hour.

That amounts to $86,400 per day and about $32 million per year.

With that job, it would take you 31.5 years to earn a billion dollars.

With that job, it would take you over 31,688 YEARS to earn a trillion dollars.

So that’s how enormous a trillion is.

When politicians carelessly spend and print money measured in the trillions, you are in dangerous territory.

And that is precisely what the Federal Reserve and the central banking system has enabled the US government to do.

It took 146 years after Jackson fully paid off the debt in 1835—or until 1981—for the US government to rack up its first trillion in debt. The second trillion only took four years. After that, the next trillions came in increasingly shorter intervals.

Today, Congress has normalized multi-trillion dollar federal spending deficits. It’s politically impossible to even slow the federal spending growth rate, let alone cut it.

As a result, the US federal debt has gone parabolic.

The US federal government has the largest debt in the history of the world. And it’s continuing to grow at a rapid, unstoppable pace.

The debt will keep piling up as the US government continues to pay for political promises regardless of who sits in the White House. It’s virtually inevitable.

The federal debt also represents an outrageous crime inflicted on the next generation. They are the ones who will be stuck with this massive unpaid bill from today’s spending, and it will turn them into indentured serfs.

It’s doubtful Congress considers this even for a second. They are always eager to send billions to faraway foreign lands or the latest boondoggle.

Of course, this is not a groundbreaking revelation. People like Ron Paul have warned Americans about the dangers of the federal debt for a long time.

It’s just that nobody has heeded these warnings. And no one has taken serious political action to address the problem. Nor is anyone likely to.

The interest expense on the federal debt is now larger than defense spending and is about to exceed Social Security to become the BIGGEST expenditure in the federal budget. And it won’t stop there.

In short, the US government is approaching the financial endgame and can no longer disguise its bankruptcy.

If we step back and zoom out, the Big Picture is clear.

We are likely on the cusp of a historic shift… and what’s coming next could change everything.

That’s precisely why I just released an urgent report on where this is all headed and what you can do about it… including three strategies everyone needs today. Click here to download the PDF it now.

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/22/2025 - 11:40

NATO Countries Blame Russia As Mystery Drones Keep Buzzing Key European Military Installations

A string of unexplained drone incursions over military, industrial and transportation hubs across Europe is raising fresh concerns about the vulnerability of NATO territory to covert surveillance and sabotage.

A sign prohibiting drones is seen at the Munich Airport on Friday, Oct. 3, 2025. (Enrique Kaczor/dpa via AP)

In the French border town of Mulhouse, authorities are probing a Nov. 11 incident in which a police officer reported a drone hovering above a police station courtyard shortly before midnight. Moments later, the aircraft maneuvered over a nearby rail depot and filmed a military convoy transporting Leclerc main battle tanks before disappearing. Investigators have yet to track down the device or its operator.

Local prosecutors said there is “no evidence to suggest whether this was a deliberate flight…or simply an accidental overflight.” But the episode followed closely on the heels of a far more targeted intrusion at the Eurenco plant in Bergerac, where defense officials say drones twice breached the airspace above one of Europe’s most sensitive ammunition and explosives facilities. The plant supplies propellants used in the artillery shells shipped to Ukraine.

French investigators called those flights “deliberate” and “clearly targeted,” intensifying fears that unmanned aircraft are scouting the continent’s military infrastructure and industrial supply lines, the Washington Times reports.

A Continent-Wide Pattern Emerges

The French incidents are part of a broader uptick in mysterious drone activity. German officials have logged repeated breaches over Ramstein Air Base, Rheinmetall arms factories and energy infrastructure. And of course, the chief suspect in all of this among Western sources is Russia - who western analysts warn may be waging a “hybrid” campaign.

Denmark faced its own wave of disruptions starting Sept. 22, when large drones forced Copenhagen’s airport to shut down for hours. Within days, similar UAVs appeared over other strategic points, including three regional airports and Skrydstrup air base, home to Denmark’s F-16 fleet and incoming F-35s. Media reports described drones circling the base for hours without interception, prompting political fallout over the failure to neutralize small off-the-shelf aircraft.

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Denmark had “been the victim of hybrid attacks” and warned that such flights “could multiply.” The country’s Defense Intelligence Service later declared that “Russia is conducting hybrid warfare against Denmark and the broader West,” citing drone incursions and GPS jamming.

Norwegian authorities, meanwhile, have detained several Russian nationals at airports and border posts for flying drones or possessing drone footage, adding to suspicions that some activity is linked to Russian intelligence.

Germany has faced similar activity. In December, security services confirmed sightings of “mystery drones” over the U.S. Air Force’s Ramstein hub for Ukraine operations and over Rheinmetall facilities. Officials have not named suspects, but the flights add to concerns about Russian espionage and sabotage since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. By October, Germany had recorded 172 drone-related air-traffic disruptions this year, prompting draft legislation to empower police to shoot down dangerous drones and establish a federal drone-defense center by mid-December.

Belgium’s Nuclear-Adjoining Base Exposed

Belgium has experienced some of the most alarming events. Over two weekends in late October and early November, multiple drones were spotted near Kleine Brogel air base, widely believed to store U.S. tactical nuclear weapons. Defense Minister Theo Francken labeled the pattern a “spying operation,” saying small drones appeared to probe security radio frequencies before larger systems attempted to “destabilize” the area while evading jamming systems.

“They come to spy, to see where the F-16s are, where the ammunition is, and other highly strategic information,” Francken said.

Around the same time, unidentified drones forced temporary closures at Brussels and Liege airports, disrupting dozens of flights and stranding passengers.

Belgium has since accelerated national air-security plans, established new surveillance measures and convened its National Security Council. With NATO and EU headquarters located in Brussels, the government considers the incidents a top-tier security concern.

Across the continent, the pattern is consistent: small, commercially available drones operating at night or in poor visibility, repeatedly probing the seams of NATO’s defenses around air bases, logistics corridors, energy infrastructure and even nuclear-adjacent sites.

For now, investigators in multiple countries are scrambling to match technology, tactics and flight signatures across borders. The growing consensus: Europe’s drone problem is no longer sporadic. It is systemic - and increasingly strategic.

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/22/2025 - 08:45

EU-Digital Summit Exposes Europe's Innovation Crisis

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

It was summit season again in Berlin. After crisis meetings with the automotive and steel industries, attention on Tuesday turned to the next trouble spot: the digital economy. So far, EU regulators have literally strangled it.

Grand reception at Berlin’s EUREF campus: Around 900 participants from politics, business, and science across Europe traveled to the capital for the Digital Summit. Among the prominent speakers: Chancellor Friedrich Merz and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, both currently facing stiff political headwinds at home.

EU Europe has now officially entered crisis mode on the political level as well. The sheer number of economic summits reflects this and bodes ill for the coming years. Looking at the digital economy, which has initiated the next major economic revolution, one must conclude: the panic mode in Brussels, Paris, and Berlin is justified.

The technological gap between the Eurozone economy and competitors in the U.S. and China appears, at present, unbridgeable. Revolution? Not in sight.

Lifeless Capital Market

A glance at the raw numbers provides a clear sense of the technological hiatus: In the U.S., over $340 billion is being invested in artificial intelligence this year, following $244 billion in 2024. In China, the private sector mobilizes roughly $100 billion to upgrade digital processes.

The EU, even when generously including the U.K., reaches barely €25 billion—a negligible share on a global scale.

Amazon alone invests roughly $118 billion, almost five times the capital of the entire EU economy, which can only muster its small contribution through roughly 50% public funding. Politically embarrassing, economically disastrous.

Spiritless Summit

The dilemma of European policy emerged clearly from the speeches in Berlin. From the start, the regulatory framework was far too tight, stifling innovation, leaving the digital economy dependent—primarily on American giants like Amazon, Google, or Microsoft. SAP software? Often comes from the U.S.!

A central demand of the summit was therefore to reduce this dependency on powerful overseas competitors.

The European Commission announced on summit day that over the next twelve months, it would review how stricter regulation could rein in allegedly anti-competitive practices by cloud providers like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. A tough struggle lies ahead to confront the U.S. government, which will undoubtedly push back forcefully.

Meanwhile, Chancellor Merz repeated his call for European digital sovereignty and warned against reliance on American software. It is about actively shaping the digital future, he reiterated—initiating a catch-up process to close the gap with the competition.

State Intervention

European politicians draw the familiar conclusion: public funding. It already accounts for roughly 40% of total AI volume in Europe and will increasingly target the training and retention of European IT talent.

It should also help build an independent digital infrastructure, particularly in cloud services and cybersecurity, another Achilles’ heel of the European economy.

The trade association Bitkom calls for a sweeping simplification of EU digital laws and a drastic reduction of reporting obligations. The GDPR has been a costly and senseless flop, like other elements of Brussels overregulation. AI Act and Data Act—everything must be reviewed, streamlined, or scrapped.

Digital Tax as Ultima Ratio?

In its current state, the EU digital economy is simply unable to scale or keep pace with international competitors. Another discussion point: a digital tax on ad revenues of global players, especially U.S. firms. Recently, Culture Minister Wolfram Weimar introduced the idea polemically.

But what would that actually change? In Europe, the state blocks innovation. Too much capital flows through public channels to allow a functioning venture capital market to emerge capable of funding these innovations.

Summit participants likely realized the EU faces a trade-off: maximum data protection hinders industry growth. The EU will need to liberalize and return data control to users. On Wednesday, this issue will be central in a Brussels parliamentary debate.

Energy and Innovation Culture

The economy of the future is data-driven, dependent on stable energy infrastructure and highly competitive startups surrounding technological hubs. None of this exists in Germany today. Result: international investors are largely uninterested in the location.

Considering the size of the European single market, remaining capital strength, and robust academic structure, it is a political feat to have strangled the digital economy so completely. Brussels built the regulatory framework long before a significant digital economy existed. When it comes to controlling and manipulating the free market, Brussels acts efficiently—and destructively.

Commission Retreat Needed

Breaking out of this regulatory trap and stimulating digital entrepreneurship would require a radical break from poor practices: ending rules like the AI Act or GDPR, halting ongoing interventions via the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA), which regulate Europe’s digital market in minute detail.

Yet the summit showed little insight into the self-created problem. Brussels views growing criticism of the DSA and DMA as an attack on its power. Digital regulation, like climate policy, must be seen in the context of the ideological reshaping of the Euro-economy. Brussels is the command center of this fatal process. Pressure on the regulator grows with the deepening recession.

Market barriers must fall, entrepreneurship must be freer, fiscal burdens reduced, and the state must retreat from dominating the capital market. Cutting the Gordian knot of digital regulation through radical liberalization to allow autonomous European ecosystems to grow sounded, at the Berlin summit, like a fable.

Collision of Philosophies

Rarely have U.S. and European political philosophies and economic paradigms collided so violently as in the digital economy. Disputes over Brussels’ censorship, the DSA, and planned chat monitoring have caused real tensions, escalating since U.S. VP J.D. Vance criticized European censorship at the Munich Security Conference in February.

The fight for civil rights, freedom of speech, and property rights is clearly taking place in the digital space: freedom vs. surveillance, self-responsibility vs. nanny state—U.S. vs. EU? Broadly, one could interpret it that way. But the U.S. will also have to address the market power of its own digital oligopolies and whether new competitors can access the market freely—or whether lobbying, like in Brussels, shields Amazon & Co. from competition.

Digital Risk Space

For the European regulator, the digital space is above all a narrative risk: an unbounded, hard-to-discipline public space that fuels opposition rather than suppressing it.

Recent attacks by German politicians on U.S. platforms like X and Meta reflect growing awareness—and the loss of control in conflict areas critical to EU politics and ideology: climate policy, the Ukraine conflict, and the deepening economic crisis, largely underreported in state-affiliated media.

The risk of a critical opposition forming in opaque, decentralized, polemical, and highly visible ways remains ever-present.

Error and Control

In the debate on the digital future of the Eurozone economy, the specter of the digital euro—and the question of individual sovereignty in the digital space—looms.

Even attempting to integrate this technology as a form of centralized state dominance in money and capital markets shows that Brussels does not understand digital technology as a matter of decentralized competition, which thrives under minimal state regulation.

With the Genius Act and U.S. stablecoin integration into banking—a quasi-alternative money market—Washington pushes credit creation deeper into the private sector’s responsibility.

European Anachronism

Everything points to the synchronized merging of decentralized money creation and technological AI applications, which is why the EU’s attempt to centralize and tightly regulate these elements is doomed.

The Digital Summit confirmed fears: European policy is intellectually and bureaucratically trapped in a model where public funding, detailed regulation, labor norms, and heavily censored public discourse form the ideological blueprint.

This cannot and will not end well if technological progress pushes toward freedom.

* * *

About the author: Thomas Kolbe, born in 1978 in Neuss/ Germany, is a graduate economist. For over 25 years, he has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

Tyler Durden Sat, 11/22/2025 - 08:10

How Trump's Own Appointees Aided Russiagate Plot Against Him

Authored by Paul Sperry via RealClearInvestigations,

When Obama administration officials manufactured U.S. intelligence tying Donald Trump to Moscow following his stunning 2016 victory, they had no idea Trump’s own political appointees would help them undermine Trump’s presidency – and his chances of reelection in 2020. 

RCI’s review of recently declassified documents and exclusive interviews with former Trump officials reveals for the first time how key members of Trump’s cabinet and other appointees during his first term shrouded the previous administration’s machinations and either deliberately or inadvertently misled the public into thinking the fake Russiagate intelligence was real. 

Former Special Counsel John Durham, former National Security Adviser John Bolton, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and former CIA Director Gina Haspel dismissed or buried evidence that cast doubt on a foundational document of the Russigate hoax – the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) prepared in the waning days of the Obama administration.  

Durham, who was appointed by Attorney General William Barr, stopped the declassification and release of key exculpatory evidence debunking the ICA on the eve of the 2020 election, which has not been reported previously. 

The ICA helped frame the false narrative, which led to multiple espionage investigations that dogged Trump throughout his first term: that Russian President Vladimir Putin had authorized dirty tricks to help Trump win the 2016 election. A 2018 government review of that document, which was chiefly prepared by Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan and his National Intelligence Director James Clapper, found that its most explosive claims were based on “one scant, unclear and unverifiable fragment of a sentence from one of the substandard [intelligence] reports,” according to a recently declassified report that Trump administration and, later, Biden administration officials had helped keep locked away in a CIA vault. It also cited as supporting intelligence debunked political dirt paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. 

While these Trump-appointed officials may not have initiated the weaponization of the CIA against Trump, they facilitated it by hiding evidence that exposed the claims that Russia tried to help Trump as a fraud. By obscuring Joe Biden’s own role in perpetrating the hoax, they may have helped Obama’s vice president win the close race for the presidency in 2020. 

“The Russiagate betrayal continued in plain sight,” said former Trump national security adviser J.D. Gordon, with some in Trump’s own cabinet letting him twist in the wind instead of daylighting secreted material that would have cleared the clouds of suspicion hanging over his head before the 2020 election. 

John Bolton

The suppression can be traced back at least until mid-2018. That’s when Fred Fleitz, who was National Security Adviser John Bolton’s chief of staff, heard that investigators at his former employer, the House Intelligence Committee, were probing the raw intelligence in the ICA supporting the assessment's key judgments.  

A one-time CIA analyst himself, Fleitz was curious to learn what they had found during the previous year, interviewing CIA analysts and reviewing secret documents at Langley. So, he traveled to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue and read a draft of the highly classified report in a secure room of the U.S. Capitol. 

Fleitz told RealClearInvestigations that he was startled to learn that the investigators discovered numerous intelligence documents showing the ICA’s key conclusion – that Russia “developed a clear preference” for Trump and “aspired to help” him win the election – was based on shoddy and fabricated intelligence. House investigators found those assessments were supported in part by the Steele dossier, a series of Clinton campaign-funded reports containing baseless accusations linking Trump to the Kremlin compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. 

“The ICA misrepresented both the significance and credibility of the dossier reports,” which were “either proven false or unsubstantiated,” the top-secret congressional analysis noted. “The ICA referred to the dossier as ‘Russian plans and intentions,’ falsely implying that the dossier had intelligence value for understanding Moscow's influence operations.”

Fleitz thought Bolton should be briefed on the unpublished House report, which undermined the prevailing narrative that Trump and Moscow had colluded during the 2016 election campaign. When he returned to his West Wing office, Fleitz sat down at his classified computer and wrote a synopsis of the review and gave it to his boss. 

But Bolton did not, in turn, brief the president. “He didn’t do anything with it. He never told Trump, and I never heard anything about it again,” Fleitz told RCI.  

If Trump had known about the shocking revelations from the classified report, Fleitz said, he could have used them to remove the cloud of suspicion hanging over his presidency concerning Russia. 

Bolton – who is facing unrelated criminal charges for mishandling other classified documents – and his lawyer did not respond to requests for comment. 

Mike Pompeo

What Fleitz did not know at the time was that the CIA was also hindering the House probe of the ICA. As Trump’s first CIA chief, Mike Pompeo was skeptical that his predecessor Brennan had gotten the Russia intelligence assessment as wrong as he was hearing from the autopsy conducted by the House Intelligence Committee. “We showed him a draft but he didn’t believe it. He said we have to be wrong on a lot of this stuff,” said Derek Harvey, who worked as a senior analysis adviser with the House Intelligence Committee from 2017 to 2022. 

As a result, he said, “We didn’t get a lot of cooperation from Pompeo.” 

Multiple attempts to reach Pompeo by email and phone at his new jobs as senior executive director of the Center for Law & Government at Liberty University in Virginia and adviser to Ukraine’s top defense contractor Fire Point in Kyiv were unsuccessful. 

Gina Haspel

Pompeo’s deputy at the time was Gina Haspel, who appears to have played a much more active role in drawing a veil over the information. A veteran CIA official whom Pompeo had put in charge of most of the day-to-day operations of the agency, she apparently didn’t appreciate congressional staffers investigating the agency’s spycraft that went into the highly classified and restricted version of the ICA. 

Sources told RCI she made sure the investigators’ on-site examination, which spanned from 2017 to 2020, was closely monitored and tightly controlled. The House investigators had to be cleared into a “read room” at Langley each day to examine the records the CIA used to support the ICA. And they were forced to lock up their laptops and materials there when they left at night. 

“Haspel didn’t allow them to take even their notes out of their workspace there,” Harvey said. “They couldn’t take anything out of the building.”

Another House Intelligence Committee source familiar with the operation said the investigators suspected the CIA “was spying on [committee] computers” back on Capitol Hill. They reported back to then-committee chairman Devin Nunes that the CIA had tampered with the computers the agency forced them to use to draft their report inside headquarters – and this was only after they were denied access to any computers in the first four months of their oversight investigation. 

“Deliberate technical modifications to the [CIA-issued] computers made the machines unstable and unreliable,” which slowed down investigators’ work, according to a committee report documenting the CIA’s efforts to “obstruct” their probe.

The report, which was obtained by RCI, added: “Peculiar machine glitches caused lines of text to appear fuzzy, forcing restarts to correct and sometimes resulting in lost text or footnotes.”

The investigators repeatedly requested “proper computers” to support the review, but were never provided with them. They were also denied software tools that would have allowed them to efficiently search large volumes of classified and unclassified reporting at the agency. Thousands of pages of intelligence reports relevant to the ICA were available only in paper form. The staffers had to comb through thick binders with broken rings and missing tab dividers, further hamstringing their audit. 

Pompeo and Haspel also placed restrictions on their access to Brennan’s five hand-picked authors of the ICA, who initially were kept at arm’s length. 

“It took nearly five months for committee staff to be allowed to interview the ICA authors,” the internal report said. 

Committee spokeswoman Lesley Byers told RCI, “Just getting interviews with the ICA drafters was a massive battle with the CIA back then, which further makes the point of the extraordinary measures the CIA went through to obstruct the HPSCI [House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence] staffers.” She added, “Why obstruct if there was nothing to hide?”

In May 2018, Trump appointed Pompeo as secretary of state and named Haspel as his replacement. Haspel came highly recommended to the job, with the support of many intelligence community veterans, including John Brennan, for whom she worked as London station chief and director of CIA operations. Before her 2018 confirmation hearing, Brennan signed a joint letter with 52 other former intelligence officials expressing his “strong support” for Haspel and arguing she was “an outstanding choice for that position.” He also assured senators she would produce “unbiased intelligence.”

After she took over the CIA, she locked up all drafts of the House Intelligence Committee report in a gun safe inside a vault in a highly secure room at CIA headquarters until she left office in January 2021. She also impounded all the examiners’ notes and other work materials. 

“Gina Haspel buried the report,” Harvey said.

Knowledgeable sources say that before Haspel left, she demanded that both Barr and Durham keep the report classified and not release any part of it before the 2020 election. 

“In 2020, Gina Haspel was running around with her hair on fire saying it should never see the light of day,” a former senior official at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said. “I still cannot believe that she was President Trump's CIA director. It’s totally insane.”

Fleitz described her efforts to block such exculpatory information from getting out as “insubordination to a U.S. president.”

Fluent in Russian, Haspel had long been an expert on the Kremlin and staked out hawkish positions that ran counter to many of Trump’s policies dealing with Moscow. 

It’s not clear if Haspel contributed to the ICA, but in 2016, she was the CIA’s station chief in London, where she assisted Russiagate investigators, including Peter Strzok. She reportedly approved his travel to London to meet with Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, who claimed Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos told him the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton. Haspel was briefed on the matter, which became the basis for the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation targeting several Trump advisers, including Papadopoulos. 

Haspel was also in London during the so-called “bump ops” the FBI ran on Papadopoulos and Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, where the bureau used longtime CIA asset Stef Halper to try to catch them having possible compromising contacts with Russians. 

Multiple attempts to reach Haspel by email and phone at her new job as chair of the CIA Officers Memorial Foundation in Herndon, Va., were unsuccessful.

A source familiar with Haspel’s thinking said she objected to releasing the report debunking the ICA because it might reveal sensitive intelligence, though its recent release proved no national security interests were harmed, including sources and methods.

John Durham

Nevertheless, as Trump’s first term drew to a close, there was one more opportunity to expose the Obama administration’s machinations. Ironically, that was forestalled by the special counsel who had been appointed to investigate the origins of the Russiagate hoax, John Durham. It was Trump’s attorney general, Barr, who tapped Durham, an old DOJ colleague and friend.

While Durham’s final report, which was not issued until 2023, raised serious questions about the Russiagate probe, his most significant decision may have occurred in the final days of the 2020 election when he quashed efforts to expose the plot to weaponize U.S. intelligence. That October, then-National Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe sought to declassify and release a devastating 44-page report that refuted the Obama-ordered Intelligence Community Assessment’s explosive finding that Moscow tried to swing the election to Trump. When the ICA was finally declassified this summer, it set off a firestorm of controversy, leading to the investigation of Brennan and Clapper and the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey. 

In 2020, however, Durham insisted the ICA review be kept under wraps. Durham argued he was using the secret report, drafted by two career House Intelligence Committee investigators, in his inquiry into whether the FBI and CIA had politicized and weaponized intel against Trump. 

“Durham specifically asked for that report to not be declassified and released, along with other things, because he wanted to use it as part of his investigation and prosecutions – or so we presumed,” the former senior ODNI intelligence official familiar with Ratcliffe’s declassification effort said. 

Ratcliffe, now CIA director, initially agreed to withhold the report, which remained buried for the next five years – until Trump’s new National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard declassified and publicly released it virtually unredacted in July.  

“After we gave Durham the report, along with over a thousand pages of other classified documents, he went ghost,” said the former senior intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We didn't hear from him, and he didn’t appear to do anything with the report.” 

Although Gabbard’s release of documents makes clear that the ICA was a foundational document in the Russiagate hoax, Durham all but ignored it in his final report on the scandal. Outside of a footnote on page 7 citing the ICA – which states, “[S]ee also Intelligence Community Assessment, ‘Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US. Elections’ (Jan. 6, 2017)” – there is no mention of the ICA elsewhere in his 316-page report. Nor does it appear in a recently declassified appendix to the report, even though Durham had interviewed the two Obama officials principally responsible for putting together the ICA – Brennan and Clapper.

“I have no clue why Durham left it out,” the former senior intelligence official said. 

Attempts to reach Durham for comment were unsuccessful. 

The declassified ICA is now being used as evidence in criminal probes of Obama-era figures, including Brennan, by the Justice Department. Prosecutors in the Southern District of Florida, who are reportedly trying to build a conspiracy of corruption case, recently issued a flurry of grand jury subpoenas targeting Brennan and Clapper, former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and other Obama-era officials who were involved in the crafting of the ICA. They seek communications records and other documents covering the 2016-2017 period when classified versions of the assessment were drafted and an unclassified version was released to the public. 

Durham’s decisions are still influencing the debate over Russiagate. Washington media are skeptical prosecutors will find anything incriminating, because they maintain that Durham already plowed that ground. 

“John Durham, the special counsel appointed by the Trump administration, looked exhaustively at the Russian interference assessment and found no criminal wrongdoing,” MSNBC national security correspondent Ken Dilanian recently opined. “But here the Justice Department is trying to take another crack at this?” 

However, former Trump officials have come to doubt that Durham conducted anything approaching a thorough investigation of the matter. J.D. Gordon, a national security adviser to Trump, says the now-retired prosecutor merely “went through the motions.” 

“Since John Durham didn’t include relevant and incriminating information available to him about the criminal conspiracy against a duly elected president, history should remember his efforts as a dismal failure,” Gordon told RCI. 

“He treated nearly all conspirators with kid gloves,” Gordon added. “His gentle approach was the polar opposite of the [Special Counsel Robert] Mueller investigation, which relentlessly pursued Trump associates for anything under the sun, even though they were all innocent victims of the Russia ‘collusion’ hoax.”

Gordon notes that Mueller and his prosecuting staff, who found no evidence of a Trump-Russia conspiracy, dispatched FBI agents to grill Gordon three times between 2017 and 2019. They also got a grand jury to subpoena his phone records. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler demanded Gordon provide additional documents in 2019, and he complied. A retired Navy commander and former Pentagon spokesman under President George W. Bush, Gordon said he was forced to run up a five-figure legal bill defending himself against the fake scandal. 

Rigged Intelligence

“The CIA engaged in a conspiracy to fabricate intelligence against Trump,” Harvey said. “They were effectively running an intelligence op targeting his campaign and presidency.” 

The ICA was a key piece of the conspiracy, he noted, because it was strategically used as a pretext to pursue countless espionage investigations of Trump and his advisers that crippled his presidency. 

A month after Trump defeated Clinton, President Obama ordered the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies to go back and review their prior assessments that found no evidence the Russian government tried to hack the election for Trump. 

Within just three weeks, the CIA came up with new evidence to conclude that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally launched an influence operation to help swing the race to Trump. The publicly released ICA report, which helped Obama and Clinton explain her shocking defeat, hid the fact that the CIA relied in part on the Clinton-funded dossier to reach its new conclusion. 

Career intelligence analysts objected to using the dossier, but Obama’s top spook, Brennan, overruled them. At least one senior intelligence analyst, now a whistleblower cooperating with the DOJ in its ongoing investigation of the Russiagate hoax, said he was “threatened” by superiors to change his pre-election assessment to conform with the new ICA. 

The whistleblower, who worked under then-DNI Clapper, also said he reached out to Special Counsel Durham's investigators to report suspicions of “manipulation” of raw intelligence that went into the ICA, but they never interviewed him, even though “I likely had information relevant to ongoing criminal investigations,” as RCI first reported. 

“They tried to make it seem like Trump was Putin’s candidate, but there really was no evidence that Putin was trying to support Trump,” Harvey said. “If you read the [HPSCI] report [on the ICA] carefully, both Brennan and Clapper come across as the real malign operators, and it turns out that both of them knew Hillary had this whole Russia operation going against Trump from the start.”

Brennan and Clapper did not return requests for comment through their lawyers. 

“They rigged and politicized the intelligence,” added Fleitz, “and that was obvious to anyone who read that dynamite report.” This included Barr, Durham, Bolton, Pompeo, Haspel, and other Trump appointees who, instead of exposing the scandal, suppressed it. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/21/2025 - 23:25

Gen Z Demands Cushy Jobs; The Economy Wants Grown-Ups...

While the US labor market defied expectations in September - adding 119,000 jobs according to delayed numbers, the unemployment rate rose to 4.4%, the highest level in four years. Normally, this would be the time for most employees to make sure they're the most valuable asset at a company - especially with layoffs surging and AI slowly replacing entry level jobs across various industries. 

Seventyfour - stock.adobe.com

Yet, Gen Z workers don't seem to be getting the message. Instead of putting in long hours, many young workers remain convinced that work-life balance is their nonnegotiable right - even as the ground shifts beneath their feet.

Across industries, entry-level employees say they’re not responding to emails after 5 p.m., staying out late on work nights or carving out weeknight pickleball time - behaviors that would have been unthinkable for young workers during earlier periods of economic softening. Managers say the detachment is coming at the exact moment younger employees most need to demonstrate grit, reliability and value, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

Damaryan Benton, a 24-year-old at an advertising firm in Los Angeles, checks in with his supervisors before logging off and makes clear he won’t be working after hours. “After five if I’m not by my laptop, I’m not by it,” he said. “I don’t provide an explanation for it, either.”

Nia Joseph, who works at a Houston ophthalmology practice, said she recently stayed out until 2 a.m. on a Sunday - even though she had to be at work before 8. A few years ago, she says, she would have gone home early. “It reminded me that I used to enjoy things a bit more,” she said.

Damaryan Benton, Nia Joseph

And Jessica Moran, a senior audit associate in New Jersey, said she made sure her manager understood that pickleball practice takes priority during certain weeknights.

"I was asking associates, senior associates and managers questions to gauge their work-life balance and what it truly looked like," the 24-year-old Moran told the WSJ, adding "For me, that means there must be work-life balance here."

The shared theme: Gen Z wants work to adapt to their lifestyle, not the other way around.

Older Workers See Red Flags. Gen Z Doesn’t.

Executives say the disconnect is widening just as the labor market shows unmistakable signs of cooling.

Companies are slowing hiring, eliminating positions and cautioning new employees that boundaries may be blurry. Historically, periods of economic uncertainty would prompt younger professionals to work harder to prove they could be counted on.

“Gen X, when times get tough…what do we do? We work harder, we dig in more, we push,” said Marcie Merriman, founder of Ethos Innovation. Younger workers, she says, expect to be judged solely on output - not effort or availability.

That attitude may have made sense during the pandemic-era hiring boom, when job seekers had leverage. Today, employers say, it risks looking like complacency.

Gen Z Says Loyalty Doesn’t Pay. Employers Say Discipline Still Matters.

Part of the generational divide stems from the pandemic and the rise of remote work. Younger workers entered the workforce during a time when many employers emphasized mental health, flexibility and boundaries. Many watched family members burn out in traditional jobs. Joseph said her parents’ careers “completely took over their life,” a pattern she refuses to repeat.

But managers argue the pendulum has swung too far. In a stable job market, detachment may look like confidence. In a weakening one, it can look like a lack of commitment.

Gallup data shows younger workers are leading the drop in hours worked: nearly two hours fewer per week than before the pandemic. Older workers trimmed less than an hour.

The shifting priorities are showing up in shrinking work hours. Americans worked an average of 42.9 hours a week last year, down from 44.1 hours in 2019, according to a Gallup survey. Those younger than 35 led the decline, working an average of nearly two hours less a week, while older employees reduced their workweek by just under one hour.

Jim Harter, Gallup’s chief scientist for workplace management, said many younger employees “are still feeling disconnected from their employers” despite signs of a tougher market.

A Wake-Up Call Few Want to Hear

The stories of young workers reflect a belief that employers won’t - or can’t - penalize them for inflexibility. Yet the labor market is beginning to reward something Gen Z has been slower to embrace: resilience.

Benton recalls the pressure he once placed on himself as an intern, logging on at 7 a.m., working through illness and sometimes staying up past midnight. Now, he says he doesn’t go out of his way to take on extra work. When a deadline overwhelmed him during his internship, his manager encouraged him to take a break and extended the deadline. Today, he takes paid time off freely and doesn’t worry about after-hours requests.

Employees like Benton and Joseph see these boundaries as healthy. Executives see them as signals of a workforce unprepared for the demands of a more competitive job market.

The question looming over the next cycle is whether Gen Z will adjust—or whether employers will decide to prioritize workers who already have.

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/21/2025 - 23:00