How Many $2,500 Foldable iPhones Will Apple Ship In Year One? IDC Has The Answer

Apple is set to unveil its first foldable iPhone at the company's September 9 product event at 1300 ET.

Ahead of what could be Apple's biggest handset launch in many years, technology market research firm International Data Corporation, better known as IDC, issued a new forecast estimating just how many foldable iPhones Apple could ship during the device's first year.

Bloomberg first reported IDC's estimate that the $2,500 foldable iPhone could generate more than 10 million shipments during its first year.

JUST IN: Apple sets September 9 for its next major launch event, where it is expected to unveil the first foldable iPhone.

— Polymarket (@Polymarket) August 26, 2026

Apple's entry into foldable smartphones, a segment of the handset industry first pioneered commercially by Chinese manufacturer Royole with the FlexPai nearly a decade ago, is forecast to help the foldable-phone market grow 12.6% this year, followed by an 18% increase next year. The iPhone maker could capture about 40% of global foldable shipments by 2027, IDC said.

Samsung Electronics launched the first mainstream foldable smartphone seven years ago. The complexity of these handsets commands premium pricing, making the category an attractive revenue stream.

Apple's foldable iPhone launch comes as IDC expects global smartphone shipments to decline by a record 16.7% this year. The industry is battling surging costs tied to a shortage of memory chips.

"The components that make AI possible are the same ones in short supply, and their cost is being passed straight through to the shelf," IDC's Francisco Jeronimo said.

Alleged Foldable iPhone Motherboard Photos Surface Online https://t.co/C9n3M48X4C pic.twitter.com/yd6E2jKKTc

— MacRumors.com (@MacRumors) August 26, 2026

Jeronimo added, "The era of the cheap smartphone has ended."

Polymarket: 

//--> //--> Will Apple release a foldable iPhone before 2027?
Yes 93% · No 8%
View full market & trade on Polymarket.

However, consumers have not necessarily shunned expensive handsets, in part because carrier financing now commonly spreads payments over 24 to 36 months.

A $2,500 foldable iPhone would cost about $104 per month over 24 months or $69 per month over 36 months, before trade-in credits.

Whether the expensive foldable iPhone becomes a smashing success will largely depend onconsumers'’ willingness to upgrade. Recent GSMA research found that consumers are keeping their smartphones for an average of three years.

For iPhones, research firm Counterpoint found that Pro model owners replace their devices after an average of 2.75 years, while buyers of standard models wait about a little more than 3 years. 

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/26/2026 - 20:30

Israel Developing Offensive Space Capabilities

Authored by Ioannis Vlahos via Antiwar.com,

Israel is currently prepared to begin development of offensive space capabilities, including systems designed to defend Israeli satellites from hostile spacecraft, and weapons (including lasers) capable of striking targets from space.

It is part of the Defense Ministry's multiyear budget plan for the space sector, which will include upgrading and expanding IDF (Israel Defense Forces) intelligence and communications capabilities. The plan will also dedicate a budget to support offensive space operations, which will focus on weapons designed to protect Israeli satellites as well as weapons designed to strike targets on Earth.

Defense Minister Israel Katz spoke earlier this summer about Israel's commitment to becoming the world leader in space-attack capabilities, a realm of warfare that has experienced a surge in Israeli military interest given its extensive use for intelligence gathering in Iran.

"One of the central goals that the prime minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and I set is that we are recruiting the best minds," he said. "As of today, no country has the ability to mount attacks in space. We must be the leading country in the world with this capability."

"If we achieve this, it will ensure the advantage of deterrence, of the ability to attack, destroy, and all of the other matters versus our enemies with large resources."

Global space warfare development has been on the rise in recent years, and some speculate that Israel's recent activity is an effort to catch up with China and Russia, who have been testing their own offensive space capabilities. US President Donald Trump has also expressed his desire for America to do the same, by signing Executive Order 14369, "Ensuring American Space Superiority."

However, experts warn that Israel and others' offensive space weapon programs have increased proliferation concerns. Satellite miniaturization, falling launch costs, and the commercialization of the space industry have also allowed more countries to create their own space programs, and not all of them are peaceful. Furthermore, space weaponry not only threatens satellites and other non-military technologies operating in space, but the growing prevalence of and reliance on the latter will make cyberattacks all the more dangerous.

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/26/2026 - 17:40

Chinese Hackers Broke Into NASA, Federal Reserve, DOJ & Senate: FBI Announces

The United States Department of Justice has on Wednesday announced US authorities thwarted a major state-sponsored hack which saw a temporary intrusion into NASA, the Federal Reserve, Senate, the DOJ, Department of Energy, and the Department of Health and Human services, along with four unnamed companies in the US and South Korea.

"Today we announced the disruption of a global botnet and hacking platform used by Chinese state-sponsored hackers to target U.S. critical infrastructure," said FBI Director Kash Patel.

"These tools were used by PRC cyber actors to hide the origin of their attacks. Thanks to the work of FBI San Diego, FBI Cyber Division, and DOJ partners, we seized adversary infrastructure and shut these platforms down," he added.

via Reuters

Domains utilized by two hacking platforms identified as "QScan" and "QTRouter" were seized by the DOJ in the large scale counter-cyberespionage operation.

Describing a pervasive botnet which was ultimately believed to be backed by Chinese state actors, The Wall Street Journal details that the "goal was to blend in with legitimate networking traffic, making the hacking activity hard to trace, federal officials say."

"The group exploited software vulnerabilities to launch cyberattacks against U.S. government agencies, power companies and hospital systems, and operated a worldwide network of hacked devices—known as a botnet—to conduct its hacking campaigns, according to Brett Leatherman, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s top cyber official," WSJ continues.

As for the specific allegation that this had state backing, the DOJ press release states:

People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-sponsored group known as “QTFY,” employed by China-based Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Technology Company, created and operated QScan and QTRouter.

The DOJ announcement additionally outlines efforts at concealment and 'plausible deniability' in the following:

QTRouter consists of these compromised IoT devices, as well as commercial proxy service devices and leased virtual private servers. QTRouter then serves as an “obfuscation network” – meaning it allows QTFY and other malicious cyber actors to conceal the PRC-origin of their computer intrusion activities because the malicious communications appear to originate from computers (such as those compromised by QScan) that are outside of the PRC and may even be local to the targeted networks. Because the seized domains were hard-coded into both the QScan and QTRouter malware and used for essential tasks such as communication and authentication, the court-authorized seizures made QScan and QTRouter inoperable. 

Neither Beijing's foreign ministry nor the Chinese embassy in Washington have officially responded to the allegations, and as has been the pattern in the past is likely to reject the US charge altogether.

Earlier this year Google was among those warning of imminent stepped-up Chinese and Russian targeting of US defense companies. 

Google's prior report seemed to preview some of the techniques on display in this latest hack. The report cited observations of "more China-nexus cyber espionage missions directly targeting defense and aerospace industry than from any other state-sponsored actors over the last two years."

//--> //--> //--> US imposes new sanctions on China by September 30?
Yes 21% · No 80%
View full market & trade on Polymarket

"But the hallmark of many operations has been their exploitation of edge devices to gain initial access," it said, referring to hardware components positioned at the edge of a network. "We have also observed China-nexus threat groups leverage ORB networks for reconnaissance against defense industrial targets, which complicates detection and attribution."

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/26/2026 - 17:20

You Know Things Are Bad When This Has To Be Referred To The DOJ...

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

Texas Governor Greg Abbott is escalating the fight against what he calls discriminatory religious facilities at two of the state's busiest airports.

After DFW Airport scrapped plans for more Islamic ablution stations under pressure, Abbott has referred both Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport to the U.S. Department of Justice, demanding investigation and corrective action over existing foot-washing stations and an adjoining prayer room.

"These ablution stations single out one subset of the population for special treatment based on religion," Abbott said. "They are not interfaith chapels open to all. They exist to benefit the Muslim population alone. Government-owned airports cannot favor one religion over all others."

? JUST IN: TX Gov. Greg Abbott has referred Islamic foot washing stations at Dallas-Ft. Worth and Houston Airports to the DOJ for INVESTIGATION and ENFORCEMENT

Abbott calls the wudu stations "DISCRIMINATORY"

"These ablution stations single out one subset of the population for... pic.twitter.com/YQAAtmEuWY

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) August 21, 2026

In his letter to Attorney General Todd Blanche and Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, Abbott noted that DFW has two such stations already operating and that IAH installed one facility plus an interconnecting prayer room stocked with copies of the Quran, prayer rugs, prayer beads, and a turbah.

He previously referred the airports to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, directed a review of state grants for possible revocation, and warned that if the facilities sit on city-owned property, Texas will pursue litigation for religious discrimination at taxpayer-funded sites.

"Airports can no more offer Muslim-only bathroom spaces than they can maintain white-only bathrooms," Abbott wrote. DFW abandoned plans for additional stations in Terminal D after the initial threat. Airport officials said they accelerated review due to public attention and determined the anticipated benefits might not materialize.

?Here Are The Ritual Muslim Foot Washing Stations Inside the Dallas Ft. Worth Airport...

Yes, they are real, this is not fake news.

I'm at DFW right now and went to the interfaith chapel near Gate D40. Two massive showers greet you when you enter the small chapel. But they're... pic.twitter.com/xkpXNaauOl

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 20, 2026

Houston Mayor John Whitmire defended the IAH facilities, saying they are open to all travelers regardless of faith and were funded by fees from international airlines rather than direct taxpayer grants.

Critics of Abbott's move, including the Texas chapter of CAIR, called it an anti-Muslim political stunt. Abbott and Texas leaders frame the issue differently: government-owned airports receiving public and federal funds cannot create spaces designed around one faith's ritual requirements while ignoring others.

This latest action fits a clear pattern of pushback against what many Texans see as the steady advance of parallel Islamic institutions and preferential accommodations across the state.

Residents in McKinney recently packed City Hall and voiced fierce opposition as the council approved a major expansion for the McKinney Islamic Association. The 5.5-acre site plan includes a large sanctuary, classroom building, and gym.

More than 150 speakers signed up for the marathon session that stretched past midnight. An Iranian Christian refugee told the council, "I'm a Sharia law survivor from Iran, and I'm here to tell you, this is a dangerous ideology you're allowing in the country."

U.S. Rep. Keith Self warned of risks including child marriage and honor killings under political Islam, stating the freedom to choose one's faith "does not exist in political Islam." The council still voted 7-0 to approve after staff confirmed the plan met zoning rules.

Public schools have also drawn outrage. Students from Humble ISD's Kingwood High School and Atascocita High School were bused to Centro Islamico, operated by IslamInSpanish in the Houston area, so they could "experience Islam."

The visit included a tour, halal lunch, observation of prayer, and presentations. Parents and online commentators noted the absence of similar taxpayer-funded trips to churches or other houses of worship, calling the episode one-sided indoctrination.

Congressman Keith Self has repeatedly highlighted existing Muslim-only enclaves operating as parallel societies. He pointed to the East Plano Islamic Center, which has functioned for years adjacent to police facilities, and a similar pattern in Irving.

"Sharia is alive, well, and operating in Plano, Texas," Self said. "This is not a hypothetical or future threat. It is here, now and operational."

NEW: 'Muslim City' in Texas gets legal win after a judge ordered that the state must comply with developers.

The East Plano Islamic Community (EPIC), which has now been rebranded to The Meadow, will feature 1,000 homes, a mosque, schools, and more.

Texas leaders are worried... pic.twitter.com/HoSvNeV307

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) April 30, 2026

He described these as de facto Sharia enclaves situated next to the law enforcement facilities meant to protect communities, calling the proximity a form of intimidation.

Texas authorities have also moved against unauthorized institutions. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, at Abbott's direction, issued a cease-and-desist order to Texas American Muslim University (TexAM) in the Dallas area.

The school was operating without required state approval, marketing degree programs that included mandatory Islamic studies courses, and using the term "university" illegally.

Abbott stated Texas will not allow illegal educational institutions to operate and that legal action would follow noncompliance.

Taxpayer-funded venues have faced similar scrutiny. Epic Waters Indoor Waterpark in Grand Prairie, built with public sales tax money, advertised a private Eid event initially promoted as "Muslim only," complete with modest dress codes, halal options, and a prayer room.

After backlash the language was softened, but the episode reinforced concerns that public facilities were being reserved for exclusive religious use.

Taken together, the airport ablution stations, school field trips, city council approvals, unauthorized schools, exclusive events, and residential developments form a consistent picture.

Abbott's referral of the airports to the DOJ is the latest concrete step to enforce the principle that government facilities and public money cannot favor one religion. Texas under Abbott continues to treat equal application of the law as non-negotiable, rejecting special privileges that create two-tier systems on public property.

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 Wed, 08/26/2026 - 17:00

Don't Trust The Midterm Polls

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via The Epoch Times,

This is a lightly edited transcript of an Aug. 24 segment of the "Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words" podcast.

Let's have a periodic check on the status of the midterms that we're now less than 80 days away from. The Democrats are riding high. They feel that historical trends, i.e., 39 out of the last 41 midterms, the party in the White House loses seats, and there's not very many seats Republicans can afford to lose, and they may lose the House and Senate.

They're already, I guess you'd call it, measuring their drapes, but in the sense that they're already explaining how they're going to go after the Trump family, the Trump family associates, cryptocurrency concerns, any hangers-on, people going to the Middle East and investing. They're gonna open it wide open.

These are the people, of course, who never investigated the Biden family or Hunter Biden. That's no excuse if there's culpability, but nonetheless, you can count on a two-year investigation of Donald Trump and a never-ending impeachment inquiry, and the end of the MAGA agenda should he lose the House and the Senate.

Donald Trump is strangely confident. He now has finally hit on a strategy that he feels will work. Earlier, I called it the "Anaconda Strategy," the idea that he is squeezing a debilitated Iran. In other words, the kinetic 40 days of bombing have left the nuclear military-industrial complex in shambles.

And this time, he's not just blockading, he's not just having an embargo on goods. He is not just freezing the bank accounts of Iranian grandees. He's not just debanking the entire country. He's going to third parties and saying, "You and China and Russia and Europe have been trading with this country even while we were bearing the burden of defanging a potential nuclear renegade nation, and we're going to isolate you. We're not gonna do business with you if you do business with Iran."

And the Iranians now are crying foul. They're saying we're colonialists. But what I'm getting at, after all that military damage from Feb. 28 for the next 40 days, and after all the blockades, they're not able to withstand a renewed squeezing.

And so, time is actually on our side.

The second part of this strategy is Donald Trump has now put the war on the back burner. He is saying that we don't need to have ground troops. We might not even go in and bomb them again unless they egregiously attack an ally of ours or one of our carriers or ships.

We have managed it now. The strait is mostly open, and whatever the status of the nuclear stockpile or enriched uranium of the theocracy, it's pretty clear they can't get at it.

Hamas, the Houthis, and Hezbollah don't seem to be getting money. They don't seem to have enough rockets to threaten the Gulf States or Israel, at least to get through their missile defenses.

And so, we're just going to concentrate, Trump thinks, on the economy.

So, what he is doing now is he and JD Vance are barnstorming the country, and they're starting to make headway. They're not worried about the polls that show a generic 7 percent Democratic advantage and betting odds and polls that say they're gonna lose the House because they looked at the recent primaries.

Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for the Democratic senatorial seat in Michigan, was polling ahead 10 points, and he scarcely won by a point and a half.

Francesca Hong, the Wisconsin Democratic candidate for governor, was polling ahead 10 or 15 or 20 points. She lost and lost handily.

Mr. [Alexander] Vindman, who was running for Senate in Florida, was polling ahead. He lost to Ms. [Angie] Nixon, a democratic socialist.

So, what I'm getting at is the polls are worthless. And what we need to look at is what the status is right now.

The war is starting to wane. If it should end or if the Iranians crack in the next 60 to 70 days, that would be a spectacular achievement that Donald Trump - you know, we've tragically lost 17 Americans - but at a tolerable cost in blood and treasure, he ended a 50-year problem that seven presidents said was existential.

You could not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon, and the pressure that he's put on them and the damage he's inflicted would probably, in the next year or two, prompt a renewal of internal opposition against a theocracy that is bleeding.

The second thing to remember very carefully is, as I said earlier, the redistricting, the red state redistricting and the Supreme Court prohibition on racial gerrymandering might give him an additional four or five seats.

But the most important developments are money and the agenda of the new Democratic Party.

Very quickly, Donald Trump has got a war chest of about $400 million, and he's now going to use it.

He says he's going to use it all in his political action committees to help save the Republicans in the midterms.

Elon Musk said that he is going to match dollar for dollar the Democratic oligarchic class that if they start to donate in great amounts to Democratic candidates.

So, the money issue probably favors also, like, the redistricting and maybe the course of the Iran war that could wane and be not an issue.

But the most important thing to conclude is the Democratic Party. No one thought that the Democratic socialists would ever try to absorb and even seem to succeed in absorbing the Democratic Party. I mean, Nancy Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer, they've all said they have no problem with the Democratic socialists.

It's a big tent party, and they're going to help them win their seats.

But the problem is, once you have the money and the effort and the attention, and you show what the democratic socialists are, like, defunding the Pentagon, defunding the police, opening the border, mass amnesties, warring on fossil fuels, isolationist foreign policy, the transgender issue reopened with biological men now by statute free to compete in women's sports. I could go on and on.

They even want to destroy the Senate and the Electoral College, not to mention packing the Supreme Court, ending the filibuster, and bringing in new seats in the Senate by admitting new blue states such as Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.

And so, what I'm getting at is, the more we learn about the democratic socialists, and the more that the Democratic Party feels they've already taken over the apparatus of the party and they're going to join them, or at least they're not going to oppose them, they're gonna be culpable or responsible for what these people say.

And they're saying all sorts of stuff, not just anti-Semitic venom, not just anti-Israel venom, but questioning the very legitimacy of the United States government, the way that our Founders created a legislative, judicial, and executive branch, the Declaration of Independence. Our entire traditions, they're saying, are flawed at their origins.

They got worse during our maturity, and now they're god-awful right now. That's not a winning message.

So, the midterms are very much up in the air.

Contrary to historical precedent, there's still a chance that the Republicans can save both the Senate and the House.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/26/2026 - 16:20

US Universities Had Extensive Ties With Chinese Defense Research Labs, Air Force Study Finds

Authored by Arthur Zhang via The Epoch Times,

Thirty U.S. academic institutions have until Aug. 31 to examine specified foreign research ties or risk losing eligibility for future federal research funding.

A model of a Chinese-made J-35A stealth fighter is displayed at an AVIC (China Aviation Industry Corporation) stand during the 15th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai, in southern China's Guangdong province on Nov. 14, 2024. Hector Retamal / AFP via Getty Images

Seven days after the Pentagon ordered the reviews, an Air Force-affiliated institute published a study cataloging 204 interactions involving U.S. institutions and laboratories at the center of China's defense research system.

The Aug. 24 study by the China Aerospace Studies Institute (CASI) found more U.S. institution-level interactions with China's Defense Science and Technology Key Laboratories than those involving institutions from any other country.

CASI describes the Defense Science and Technology Key Laboratories as China's highest level national laboratory network for military research. The contacts it identified ranged from academic visits and conferences to coauthored technical research and formal joint laboratories in fields including aero-engines, underwater sensing, hyperspectral target detection, advanced communications, and aerospace materials.

CASI described interactions between Western researchers and Chinese military laboratories as "at the very least problematic," saying even seemingly benign exchanges could give Chinese defense researchers access to knowledge and technology useful to the People's Liberation Army.

CASI Director Brendan Mulvaney told The Epoch Times that institutional collaborations-including joint laboratories, long-term partnerships, and mutual study or training agreements-were the most concerning because they represented sustained cooperation rather than one-off encounters.

The Pentagon's Aug. 17 order directs 30 U.S. institutions to review academic, financial, and research relationships with foreign entities of concern and report what action they have taken by Aug. 31.

The Pentagon did not publicly identify the schools. According to a list DefenseScoop obtained from a U.S. official, Harvard University, MIT, the University of California-Berkeley, Duke University, Penn State, the University of Texas at Austin, New York University, and the University of Southern California are among institutions on that list that also appear in CASI's records.

The Pentagon has not said that the relationships identified by CASI prompted the Aug. 17 notices.

Purdue and Beihang Built Joint Research Labs

In 2011, Purdue and Beihang formally established the BUAA-Purdue Joint Laboratory on Energy Systems and the BUAA-Purdue Joint Laboratory on Low Emissions Combustion.

Then-Purdue President France Córdova and Beihang President Huai Jinpeng signed the agreements.

The energy laboratory paired Purdue's computational modeling with Beihang's experimental capabilities. The combustion laboratory focused on low emission gas turbine combustors used in aircraft and power generation.

Beihang records also describe the two laboratories as formal joint research arrangements and say the universities discussed broader scientific research, teaching, and faculty and student exchanges.

Beihang later described the combustion laboratory within a research program that also undertook Chinese National Defense 973 projects, a state-backed basic research program supporting its defense science and technology.

CASI identified Beihang's thermal engineering department-which oversees a Defense Science and Technology Key Laboratory for aero-engine aerodynamics and thermodynamics-as having established a joint combustion research team with Purdue.

Beihang is now on the Pentagon's Section 1286 list of foreign institutions subject to tighter research security restrictions.

Harvard Listed by Chinese Defense University as Collaborator

The Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), one of China's leading defense linked universities, currently lists Harvard among the international collaborators of its Center for Composite Materials and Structure.

The center works on aerospace structures, smart and composite materials, sensors, structural health monitoring, multifunctional nanocomposites, and related technologies, according to its research description.

CASI also cites an earlier HIT description saying its composite materials research institute had established an overseas joint laboratory with Harvard and maintained long-term exchanges and cooperation with other foreign universities.

HIT has been on the Pentagon's Section 1286 research security list since at least fiscal 2022 and was added to the Commerce Department's Entity List in June 2020 over its alleged efforts to use U.S. technology for Chinese missile programs.

Research Reached Underwater and Missile Fields

The links also extended into published technical research.

In 2017, researchers affiliated with the University of Houston and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University joined researchers from Harbin Engineering University on a study of underwater wireless sensor networks.

The paper, published in Sensors, developed a method for accessing data through an underwater sensor network.

The authors included Houbing Song, then affiliated with Embry-Riddle; Albert M. K. Cheng of the University of Houston; and Xuefei Ma, who was affiliated with both Harbin Engineering University's College of Underwater Acoustic Engineering and its National Key Laboratory of Underwater Acoustic Science and Technology.

The author-contribution statement credits the U.S.-based researchers with experimental, analytical, and research work. Funding listed in the paper came from Chinese sources, including the National Natural Science Foundation of China, basic-research projects, and the China Scholarship Council.

CASI classified the work as research collaboration involving a Chinese defense laboratory in underwater acoustics.

Another collaboration reached into hyperspectral target detection.

A 2021 study coauthored by Ying Qu, listed with the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, developed a neural-network method for identifying anomalous targets in hyperspectral images.

One of Qu's coauthors was Xuemei Liu of Beijing's Space Vehicle Survival Technology and Effectiveness Evaluation Laboratory.

Researchers from that laboratory have separately published work on missile trajectory tracking, missile attack-and-defense simulations, and radar-seeker countermeasures.

CASI said the Beijing laboratory appears closely affiliated with a Chinese defense laboratory involved in ballistic-missile penetration technology.

Harbin Engineering University, like Beihang and HIT, is on the Pentagon's Section 1286 list.

Advanced Communications Contacts Continued Into 2025

Mulvaney said conference participation could also be consequential because of how common it is and how little scrutiny it has received compared with formal research collaboration.

Some contacts cataloged by CASI are more recent.

University of Houston professor Zhu Han delivered keynote speeches at the International Conference on Communication Software and Networks in China in both 2024 and 2025.

His 2024 keynote focused on federated learning and multi-access edge computing, technologies used to distribute artificial intelligence processing across communications networks and connected devices.

The conference listed China's National Key Laboratory of Electromagnetic Space Security among its technical sponsors.

Han returned as a keynote speaker at the 2025 conference, which again listed the laboratory among its sponsors.

CASI traces the laboratory to a predecessor known as the Defense Science and Technology Key Laboratory of Communications Countermeasures Technology.

The 2025 keynote roster also included Nian Fushun, identified by organizers as a chief scientist of test instruments at China Electronics Technology Group Corp. and its 41st Research Institute.

China Electronics Technology Group is a state-owned defense electronics conglomerate involved in radar, communications, electronic warfare, and other military technologies.

Han's University of Houston profile lists wireless networking, security, and data analysis among his research interests.

Pentagon Restrictions Take Effect

Beginning in fiscal 2026, Pentagon funds cannot be used for fundamental research involving collaboration with institutions on the department's Section 1286 list.

The restriction applies to grants, contracts, and other assistance to higher education institutions and bars Pentagon funded fundamental research from collaborating with, or using equipment from, listed entities. It also extends to employees of those institutions.

Beihang University, Harbin Engineering University, and Harbin Institute of Technology-the Chinese universities involved in several of the relationships identified by CASI-are on the list.

The 30 U.S. institutions notified this month must report their findings and any mitigation measures to the Pentagon by Aug. 31.

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/26/2026 - 15:45

Secret Service Aware Of Iranian Video Threat Against Barron Trump

Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times,

The U.S. Secret Service confirmed on Aug. 25 it is aware of a video aired by Iranian state-run media that appears to threaten President Donald Trump's youngest son, Barron, and places a $10 million bounty on him.

"The U.S. Secret Service is aware of the video and investigates anything that can be perceived as a threat toward our protectees," spokesman Nate Herring told The Epoch Times in an email. "Out of concern for operational security, we do not discuss matters of protective intelligence."

The three-minute video that first aired Aug. 24 alleges Trump's 20-year-old son is being monitored.

The video, titled "Where and how should we kill Barron Trump?" was produced by media entities affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and broadcast on Channel 3 of Iranian state television.

The clip shows the location of the university he attends, along with maps of the school. It also depicts security vehicles that drive him around. The clips also allege Barron Trump's movements have been monitored.

The Epoch Times reached out to the university about the video and didn't immediately receive a response about whether any additional security measures have been taken.

The video also claims Barron Trump communicates through voice-to-text on a gaming platform and mentions Trump Tower, where he is known to stay.

The broadcast also claims Barron Trump's gaming accounts have been located and allegedly names a couple of his friends.

Statements in the video appeared to taunt and intentionally terrorize Barron Trump and the president's family. The Epoch Times has not been able to verify whether claims made in it are legitimate.

This is the second broadcast by the Iranian regime to threaten Barron Trump.

An IRGC-affiliated news agency also broadcast a similar video in July threatening First Lady Melania Trump. It claimed to have information on her security detail, her movements and alleged security vulnerabilities.

President Donald Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, and son Barron Trump make their way to board Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, on Jan. 17, 2020, to travel to Palm Beach, Fla. MANDEL NGAN/Getty Images

At the end of the July video, the narrator says: "This is just the beginning. Barron Trump, wait for us."

The video that was broadcast this week ends with the same statement.

Since the start of the war against Iran, and the assassination of Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iranian media have issued several articles and statements threatening the lives of President Trump and his family members.

The White House referred questions about the threats against the Trump family to the Secret Service.

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/26/2026 - 15:25

Wheat Futs Surge To Three-Year High As JPMorgan, HSBC Warn Global Food Shock Is Brewing

Wheat futures surged to a three-year high on Wednesday morning as traders repriced a nasty convergence of supply risks across the global agricultural supply chain. Ongoing drone and missile attacks on critical Black Sea shipping and port infrastructure are constraining Russian and Ukrainian exports, while severe Northern Hemisphere heat waves and disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz are amplifying concerns that another food-inflation cycle could rear its ugly head next year.

Bloomberg reported that the most-active Chicago wheat contract jumped as much as 2.4% to $7.2025 a bushel, its highest level since July 2023. Futures have gained about 12% so far this month.

Russia and Ukraine, two of the world's most important breadbaskets, account for more than a quarter of global wheat exports and are also major suppliers of corn, barley, and sunflower oil. The Black Sea conflict has escalated since early July, with both sides targeting bulk carriers, ports, and other infrastructure critical to transporting grain and other agricultural products to the rest of the world.

Earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Moscow rejected Kyiv's proposal for a ceasefire covering ships carrying agricultural goods through the Black Sea. In return, Russia sought guarantees that Ukraine would stop attacking its energy infrastructure, including refineries.

Zelenskyy said Kyiv was prepared to discuss an energy truce, but only on a reciprocal basis. Reuters reported that the two sides remain divided.

Troubling new estimates suggest Ukraine's agricultural exports could collapse by 54% to about 29.6 million tons during the 2026-27 marketing year, down from an earlier estimate of 64.4 million tons. Wheat shipments alone could plunge by 53% to 8.3 million tons.

Meanwhile, Russian wheat exports in August are also expected to fall by more than 50% from a year earlier. Several terminals at Novorossiysk, Russia's largest Black Sea grain-export hub, suspended operations after sustaining damage in a Ukrainian one-way attack-drone strike. The two damaged facilities have a combined annual export capacity of more than 14 million tons, according to S&P Global.

Port bottlenecks are also growing. Bloomberg reported today that as many as 70 ships were queued near the Danube's Sulina Canal. Massive shipping delays have sent freight costs surging.

More broadly, the Bloomberg Agriculture Spot Index, which tracks 10 major crop products, has also jumped to a three-year high. 

Wall Street warnings that a food crisis could erupt as soon as next year are growing louder.

The latest came from HSBC economist Jamie Culling, who covers Australia, New Zealand, and global commodities. In a Tuesday note titled "Food Prices Rising Due to the Weather and Wars," Culling warned that global agricultural "buffers are now starting to run down."

Last week, JPMorgan global economist Nora Szentivanyi issued a similar warning, saying the next global food crisis "won't be short-lived."

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/26/2026 - 14:25

Trump Admin Defends Kennedy Center Name Plan, Warns Of Demolition Risk

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times,

The Trump administration told a federal judge that the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington could face demolition without major renovations.

Lawyers for the Justice Department made the case in a late Monday filing in defense of a recent board resolution that would add language recognizing President Donald Trump on the building and rename the grounds.

The board of trustees for the center voted Aug. 13 to place the words "Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump" below the center's formal name. It also approved calling the physical site the "President Donald J. Trump Plaza."

Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), a board member, had asked U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper to block the move. Beatty's emergency motion seeks an injunction against the name recognition resolution.

In response, Justice Department attorney Brantley T. Mayers wrote that the center sits in a "financial and structural death spiral." The filing describes the building as "dangerously dilapidated, outdated, and decrepit."

"Without those efforts, the Center will deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure that will be required to be taken down, with a determination to follow on what to build on the site," the filing states, pointing toward one long-discussed alternative in the form of a large outdoor amphitheater overlooking the Potomac River.

Mayers argued that blocking recognition of Trump would cause donors to flee, financial contributions to slow, and structural work to stop.

"The crisis is so acute that, without the Trump Administration, its people, and President Trump, the Center cannot survive, either structurally or financially," the filing says.

Cooper ruled in May that an earlier board decision to rename the institution the "Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts" violated federal law. Only Congress can change the name, the judge found. Trump's name was removed from the facade in June.

The new resolution stops short of a complete rename. Administration lawyers contend it stays within the board's authority and does not violate the prior order.

A hearing is set for Thursday. The board has said it will not implement the inscriptions before Sept. 8 at the earliest.

The Kennedy Center opened in 1971 as a living memorial to the slain president. Its board, controlled by Trump appointees, has pushed renovations for months, with Trump describing the building as in poor shape and positioning the project as essential to its future.

The filing urges Cooper to deny Beatty's request, describing the recognition language as a necessary acknowledgment for the administration's role in any renovation and rescue effort.

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/26/2026 - 14:05

Yields Hit Session High After Subpar 5Y Auction Tails For 10th Consecutive Time As Foreign Buyers Shrink

While yesterday's 2 Year auction was absolutely blockbuster, today's sale of 5Y paper left quite a bit to be desired.

Starting at the top, today's sale of $70BN in 2Y paper priced at a high yield of 4.393%, which was modestly below last month's 4.408% if at the high end of all auctions in the past few years. It also tailed the When Issued 4.391% by 0.2bps, which was the 15th consecutive auction without a Stop Through, and the 10th tailing auction in a row.

The bid to cover was 2.37, an improvement to last month's 2.28 and better than the recent average of 2.32. It was also the highest bid to cover going back to November 2025. 

The internals were weaker, with foreign buyers taking down 61.5%, up from 59.2% last month if below the recent average of 65.4%. And with Directs hanging in there, and taking 28.4% of the auction, the most since January, Dealers were left holding 10.0%, the lowest since December. 

Overall, this was a solid, if notably weaker auction than yesterday's phenomenal 2Y sale, and the continued drift higher in the 10Y yield and the entire curve to session highs, confirmed the market's muted reception.

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/26/2026 - 13:49

The Unsustainable $40 Trillion National Debt

Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times,

The national debt has now passed $40 trillion. It stands at 120 percent of GDP. That should alarm us and probably does but let's just be honest: no one can conceive of such figures. They are just floating zeros and no one has any sense of whether and to what extent this portends economic doom for us. Maybe it does or maybe it doesn't.

An electronic display shows the national debt in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 19, 2026. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

You can perhaps conceptualize this better by considering household finance. The extent of the debt burden a household can handle depends on the ratio of financial inflows to outflows in the form of debt service. This is the debt-to-income ratio. Another consideration looks at assets that would need to be liquidated should bankruptcy arrive. That's the debt-to-assets ratio.

The usual financial advice for a household is to keep the debt-to-income ratio in the range of 30 percent. As for debt-to-assets, anything beyond 50 percent is overly vulnerable to shocks that could turn everything south and quickly, leading to tragedy with even small changes in interest rates, stock valuations, business fortunates, or real-estate hiccups.

And yet here we are with a 120 percent ratio of debt to GDP. This is higher than the brief blowout of the Second World War, a time when the nation was stuffed with real savings and U.S. creditworthiness was unquestioned. After the war, the nation got its fiscal house in order and it stayed that way for decades.

The turning point toward this scary debt cycle was the end of the gold standard and the Bretton Woods system that forced some degree of fiscal responsibility. Gold outflows were always going to be a consequence of extension. When the spending extravaganza of the Great Society plus the Vietnam War (guns and butter) tested the limits and nations around the world started demanding payment in specie, the United States panicked and closed the gold window for good. That was 1971 and by 1973, we had a new system: a world of floating fiat currency.

The crucial point here is that Congress no longer faced any real cost for authorizing endless spending of whatever sort. The Treasury creates the debt and sells it to bond dealers who dish it out to all takers. The buyer of last resort is of course the Federal Reserve. This is the creator of this moral hazard. It's why there is no real default premium on U.S. debt and no serious work to rate the quality of debt with any realistic measurement. It's because the Fed is there always and ever to be the buyer of last resort.

Let's put this in simpler terms. Why is it that states within the United States don't run these kinds of debts? If they do run deficits, their default risk goes up and the quality rating goes down. Most states do very well on this score with a AAA rating, whereas Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky have lower ratings. In states, there are consequences for fiscal mismanagement.

I've wondered how common the knowledge is to explain this puzzle. So I asked a conventional AI engine what it believed to be the explanation. To my amazement, the answer came back quickly and precisely: states in the union have no power to create money. Boom! That's it. That's the whole thing.

This is why every scheme for balancing the budget at the federal level has failed. There is no balanced budget amendment but it likely would not matter much anyway. We could have a quantity rule for the Federal Reserve but it would be completely unenforceable.

The only way to stop the debt madness at the federal level would be to legally prohibit the Fed's open market operations (OMOs) and related large-scale asset purchases. This would largely prevent the Federal Reserve from expanding the monetary base in its primary and most powerful way. This and this alone would bring fiscal accountability to the federal level that states face all day every year.

Absent that solution, the federal government faces the same problem that a household with too much debt faces. Eventually all its income flows will be eaten up by debt service. Right now, 19 percent of federal revenue feeds the debt machine but matters are getting worse. The latest estimates from the Congressional Budget Office forecast a coming fiscal trainwreck.

The new estimates are that if net interest averages 250 basis points (2.5 percentage points) higher than CBO's baseline assumptions, 100 percent of all revenue going to the federal government will go to paying interest on the debt by 2055. That's just not that far away. That moment spells disaster.

And this is one reason why there is such a push by both parties and all stakeholders to hold down rates as much as possible. Letting them float according to free market pressures would bankrupt the country in a period of years. But therein lies another problem. Artificially low interest rates feed inflation and distort production structures.

This is why I'm not optimistic that our problems with inflation are going away anytime soon. If the Fed were really to crack down on quantitative easing, the fiscal burden of debt would explode in ways that would limit the power of politicians and utterly blow up the bond market. It appears to me that U.S. elites have decided that a persistent 3-4 percent inflation rate is a necessary tradeoff to avoid a fiscal calamity.

I'm very sorry to be the bearer of this bad news. We've gone though heck and back over the last 5 years of inflation but the problem is not going away soon. Let's further assume that the Reality Index is correct that the real inflation rate is one-third higher than official reports. At this rate, the dollar might have lost a clean 50 percent across the board of its 2019 purchasing power in one decade. This means that the fight to achieve the American dream is ongoing.

Consider too that the unfunded liabilities assumed over a 75-year horizon is closer to $80 trillion-$90 trillion, numbers that are beyond comprehension. The answer to the debt problem, then, is to bring back fiscal discipline through serious monetary reform. Let rates rise to their market level, allow that increase to feed the fullness of the yield curve, close open market operations, and expect Congress to stop its wild behavior once and for all. There are pathways out of this mess but it will require genuine political courage to pursue them.

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/26/2026 - 13:25

Trump Sends Saudi Nuclear Accord To Congress, With Israel Normalization Still Attached

It's official - a proposed agreement with Saudi Arabia on civil nuclear energy has been submitted by the White House to Congress. 

The landmark nuclear accord would mean that uranium enrichment would eventually take place on Saudi territory. However, President Trump has included a major bombshell condition: he has not backed off requiring Saudi normalization with Israel.

Saudi state media sources

"The president's position has not changed that the agreement will only move ‌forward if Saudi Arabia joins the Abraham Accords," an admin official has made clear.

The Wall Street Journal reports that "The agreement, which ‌was reached in July and would allow U.S. companies to ​export civilian nuclear technology to the kingdom, was sent to Congress on Monday, according to the U.S. official, who ⁠declined to be identified."

But officials admit expected fierce debate in Congress, as WSJ also notes: "It was not clear how Trump expects ⁠sending the nuclear deal to Congress, which has 90 session days to consider it, will advance his objectives."

"The 30-year nuclear deal calls for the construction of AP1000 reactors, a project worth tens of billions ​of dollars that would benefit Westinghouse, jointly owned by Canada-based Cameco and Brookfield Asset Management," the same report details.

The Saudis cooled on the potential for normalization with Israel in the wake of the Gaza war. Riyadh has long been demanding nothing less than full recognition of a Palestinian state before it can join the Abraham Accords.

Given at this point that this seems an impossibility from Israel's perspective, which has effectively demolished the Gaza Strip and continues squeezing the West Bank, the Saudi nuclear deal is unlikely to happen anytime soon - and could yet be many years down the line, if at all.

Meanwhile, Tehran will seize on the hypocrisy of the West allowing uranium enrichment in Saudi Arabia - and thus potential nukes - while making war on Iran and sanctioning the country for its nuclear energy program.

Any future Saudi nuclear weapon might also assure an atomic arms race in the region, and certainly the Iranians would then have greater incentive to finally build one. And it could be that they already are in secret, following the US-Israeli unprovoked attacks during Operation Epic Fury.

Why a Saudi nuclear program is not worth ending Us proliferation

Spot on article by @StrickerNonpro analysing the proliferation risks if this deal. And i would add; these proliferation risks have only increased after the Mecca agreement. https://t.co/HlG3yCUJaV

— Brian McDonald B (@iamBrianBJ) August 26, 2026

Iran sees itself as in a war for its very existence, and so would naturally respond accordingly. It also looks at nations like North Korea, who gain automatic 'respect' from Trump and others on the mere basis of possessing a nuclear arsenal.

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/26/2026 - 13:05

SoftBank Credit Risk Rises As Firm Mulls $20 Billion Bond Sale For OpenAI Stake

SoftBank Group's 8.5% notes due 2036 fell as much as 2.5 cents to about 98 cents on the dollar after Bloomberg reported that Masayoshi Son's conglomerate is considering a $10 billion to $20 billion bond offering, prompting traders to price in additional leverage and supply risk as the investment firm plans to refinance the massive bridge loan backing its OpenAI investment.

Sources familiar with SoftBank's plans said the potential bond offering could be denominated in dollars and euros, though they stressed that its size and timing could change. Proceeds would be used partly to repay a $40 billion bridge loan secured earlier this year to fund SoftBank's OpenAI investment and partly to finance additional artificial intelligence investments.

Masayoshi Son's junk-rated conglomerate plans to invest more than $65 billion in OpenAI by October, funding one of the largest private AI bets in history partly with borrowed money.

"We are considering various options to refinance the bridge loan, but nothing has been decided, including the amount for each," a SoftBank spokesperson told the outlet. 

The report noted:

Unlike most of its international offerings, SoftBank is exploring a 144A format for the first time in more than a decade, which would allow the notes to be sold to institutional investors in the US, the people said. That would help the company tap a larger pool of capital and potentially boost demand for the sale, they added.

US hyperscalers are expected to pour trillions of dollars into data centers and other AI infrastructure over the coming years. These firms have already borrowed more than $410 billion so far this year, putting pressure on debt markets. There are also $3.1 trillion in hyperscaler off-balance-sheet commitments that have come into question, as we noted in our latest report here.

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/26/2026 - 11:10

Trump Admin Pauses All Visa Appointments Worldwide

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times,

The Trump administration has paused visa appointments for applicants worldwide as the State Department launches a global training initiative at all U.S. embassies and consulates, according to a department spokesperson. Appointments for visa services will be rescheduled to accommodate the training.

The State Department offered no specific details on the training or its timeline. Officials said the initiative aims to help consular officers screen out applicants deemed likely to become dependent on U.S. public benefits. It is also intended to ensure evaluation of visa applicants comprehensively and consistently.

"A more prosperous America means ensuring that visa applicants are not likely to become a public charge, as defined under U.S. law and regulation, and not likely to become dependent on U.S. public benefits reserved for qualified Americans in need," a State Department spokesperson said in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times.

Immigrant visa applicants with scheduled interviews at U.S. embassies and consulates have been contacted about any changes to their appointments, the spokesperson said.

The State Department has not indicated how long the adjustments will last.

The step comes during an ongoing enforcement of federal immigration laws in President Donald Trump's second term. That effort has included revocations of visas and green cards, with applications rejected for reasons ranging from political opinions to participation in pro-Palestinian protests against U.S. ally Israel's war in Gaza.

A spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said certain behaviors and statements "may raise serious concerns for USCIS personnel reviewing an applicant's file, including espousing terrorist ideologies, expressing hatred for American values, advocating for the violent overthrow of the United States government, or providing material support to terrorist organizations," adding that such actions "warrant closer scrutiny."

Trump campaigned in 2024 on stopping illegal immigration. His administration has also made legal immigration more difficult. One example involves new and expensive fees for certain work visa applicants.

The measures have faced legal setbacks. A U.S. judge on Aug. 21 struck down a Trump administration policy that suspended issuance of immigrant visas to applicants from 75 countries. The judge ruled the policy exceeded Secretary of State Marco Rubio's statutory authority.

U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas in Manhattan called the policy - issued by the State Department in January - "patently unlawful" and said it did not comply with federal immigration law.

"Consular officers were ordered to refuse immigrant visas to nationals of the 75 designated countries, regardless of whether the consular officer had, following an individualized assessment, determined that the applicant was not likely to become a public charge and that the applicant was otherwise eligible for a visa," Vargas wrote in her ruling.

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/26/2026 - 10:50

WTI Rises After Big Product Draws, Tiny Crude Build, SPR Nears 'Tank Bottoms'

Oil prices extended their declines for a third straight day after the US plan to ramp up economic pressure on Iran spared the country’s trading partners from harsher measures for now, while mediators said they were continuing efforts to end the conflict.

“There was a lot of buildup around the announcement but what we got was more a warning about where policy is heading than an immediate shock to physical supply,” said Haris Khurshid, chief investment officer at Chicago-based Karobaar Capital LP. “Until secondary sanctions start changing who can buy, ship or even finance Iranian crude, I don’t think traders have much reason to add another geopolitical premium.”

Oman and Iran said the countries' foreign ministers discussed an agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz under a temporary framework.

Negotiations between the two countries will continue "with a view to agreeing on a permanent navigational corridor and future administration of the strait," the joint statement said.

While positive, an agreement between Oman and Iran wouldn't result in oil flows through the strait returning to prewar levels, ING analysts Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey said.

"We would likely need to see the U.S. lift its blockade on Iranian ports and ease sanctions on Iran before we see any move towards normalization."

All eyes on domestic supply (and demand) for the next tactical leg...

API

• Crude +4.2mm

• Cushing +1.0mm

• Gasoline -3.2mm

• Distillates -459k

DOE

• Crude +95k (+500k exp)

• Cushing +1.18mm

• Gasoline -2.54mm

• Distillates -2.23mm

Crude stocks rose for the 4th straight week (but it was a tiny 95k increase) while Cushing saw a modest build off tank bottoms. Product inventories saw large drawdowns..

The Trump admin drained another 3.6mm barrels from the SPR to 289.7 million barrels (1983 lows), approaching the minimum operational level for storage facilities, which ranges between 250 and 300 million barrels.

The combination of a tiny commercial crude build and sizable SPR drain created the biggest net crude drawdown in over a month...

Cushing stocks remain very near 'tank bottoms'

Distillates stocks fell back near 25 year lows...

...and the lowest seasonally on record...

US crude imports from Saudi Arabia picked up recently (but remain well below peak war levels). Crude exports fell below 4 million barrels a day, a threshold closely watched by the market to gauge demand. 

US Crude production remains near record highs and while the rig count dipped last week, it is still trending higher overall...

Refining utilization rates are at the highest seasonal level since 1998. That is, in part, due to a shrinking US refining fleet in recent years. But it’s also evidence of how hard fuel-makers are running their plants right now to capture wide margins. They plan to keep that up into the fall, with some companies even deferring maintenance.

US gasoline demand remains 'normal' for this time of year...

WTI was hovering around $81.50 (off the overnight lows) ahead of the official data (down from almost $88 last week)...

Crude is still up about 50% this year as the war - now in its sixth month - continues to disrupt the shipping of crude and refined fuels out of the Middle East.

The impact has been particularly acute in fuel markets, which have also faced a hit from Ukrainian attacks on Russian refiners. That’s helped push premiums over crude to stratospheric levels (but the crack spread is starting to decline)...

At the same time, large volumes of crude supplies continue to transit Hormuz with their satellite signals turned off.

Those volumes are in millions of barrels a day and have helped generally keep a lid on prices that had been expected to soar at the outset of the conflict.

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/26/2026 - 10:40

"This Is Crazy" - FTC Chair Responds To Soaring Chip Costs, Floats Possible Antitrust Action

We’ve covered soaring “chipflation” for months and the trend does not seem to be abating. Nvidia is reportedly informing its largest customers to expect price hikes of at least 15% for next year, possibly to set expectations of a still larger move upward… and meanwhile the semi component in the PPI looks like a 2021 memecoin:

All this has earned the attention of FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, who apparently enjoys building his own personal computers. In an interview last week in Aspen, Ferguson said he was floored by the recent explosion in prices.

“I build my own desktops at home mostly for fun, and a year ago, I decided that my rig needed to be updated, and I was like, ‘Oh well, you know, RAM is pretty cheap right now, maybe I’ll do that.’ And then the job got busy, and I was like, ‘I’ll take a look at this later.’ In six months, I looked at RAM prices and went, ‘Oh my God, I’m not building this right now. This is crazy.’”

As we covered last month, consumer electronics across the board are forecasting price hikes in the double digits, with Samsung tablets and Xbox consoles expected to increase by 20-25% by next year, per Haver Analytics. On this topic, Ferguson added that he “[does not] want consumers to have to pay way more for chips than they have to for all sorts of other applications, including the phones that we have cast all about us.”

And just yesterday, Amazon announced 60% price hikes for its major hardware products, blaming the chip shortage.

In April, Senator Bernie Moreno, who represents many car manufacturers in Ohio, wrote to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick asking the government to restrict chip exports to increase domestic supplies, citing concern that the American auto industry won't be able to compete on the global market due to "higher prices and supply delays" of chips.

FTC Chair Ferguson floated the idea of using antitrust measures to crack down on some of the chip giants, in an effort to “focus on the meat and potatoes” of what’s fueling the broader AI-related inflation crisis.

“That we can do,” he said when asked about whether his agency could intervene. “That’s just ordinary industrial organization economics and antitrust,”

FTC chair Andrew Ferguson (right) sat down with CNBC’s Brian Sullivan last week at the Technology Policy Institute’s Aspen summit.

“We know when consolidation there becomes dangerous. We know when agreements are likely to raise prices or reduce competition or cut off innovation, as opposed to trying to get out in front of the AI developers,” Ferguson continued. “It would be insane for a regulator to say, ‘I know where it’s going, and I’m going to make predictive regulatory choices on that basis.’ But further back in the supply chain, that we can apply ordinary antitrust to.”

Pressed on a hypothetical merger between Nvidia and chip designer ARM, the chairman appeared to issue a soft warning.

“I think if Nvidia and ARM were to merge, we would have to take a very careful look at that,” Ferguson said. “That is antitrust enforcer speak for, you know, we would have concerns.”

Ferguson said earlier in the conversation that keeping AI’s raw inputs competitive is his top antitrust priority.

“I want to make sure that the markets for the inputs for AI remain competitive. I don’t want there to develop overnight sudden bottleneck monopolies in the inputs for AI that deprive downstream users of the benefits of competition because someone upstream in the supply chain gets to jack up everyone’s prices because it’s enjoying a monopoly and maintaining it illegally,” he said.

Some foreign chip makers are already under fire for potential collusion and price fixing.

In June, a class action lawsuit was filed against the three dominant DRAM makers - South Korea's Samsung and SK Hynix and America's Micron. The lawsuit alleges that the three companies, which control ~90% of the DRAM semiconductor, have conspired to restrict the supply of memory and have driven prices up 697% compounded by 2022 to 2026. The lawsuit alleges all three companies had simultaneous production cuts and have not expanded supply despite record prices.

The lawsuit notes: “DRAM is embedded in virtually every electronic device manufactured today. When Defendants coordinate to restrict DRAM supply and inflate prices, the cost increase is passed through to consumers across every one of these product categories—smartphones, PCs, gaming consoles, servers, automobiles, and consumer electronics. No device category escapes the impact.”

If found guilty, it wouldn’t be the first time.

In the mid-2000s, Samsung and Hynix pleaded guilty to fixing DRAM prices. Samsung paid a whopping $300 million fine, the second largest criminal antitrust fine in U.S. history at the time.

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/26/2026 - 10:00

Meta Settles With US States For $16.7 Billion Over Social Media Harms To Children

Meta Platforms has reached a $16.7 billion settlement to resolve a landmark claim brought by several states that the company designed Instagram and Facebook to addict children, improperly collected children's personal data, and misled consumers about their safety. 

The deal was in a Wednesday court filing in California after a lawsuit was brought by 29 states - with attorneys for  Colorado, California, New Jersey and Kentucky - leading the group. The states argued that features like infinite scroll were purposely engineered to keep young users hooked, that Meta misled the public about the safety of its platforms for adolescents, and that the company improperly collected and monetized children's personal data in violation of federal law.

As part of the settlement, Meta must implement daily usage limits and 'nighttime blocks' for teenagers who use the company's apps like Facebook and Instagram, as well as "enhanced age assurance measures" that would prevent children from using them, and also providing parents with additional tools, CNBC reports.

Additionally, Meta is tying another $5.3 billion of the settlement to Google and TikTok adopting similar teen safety measures - cutting default teen time limits from 2 hours to 1 hour per day. 

The attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Northern Mariana Islands, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming joined the settlement.

Prior to the settlement, Meta warned that maximum statutory penalties could theoretically reach $1.4 trillion, while the attorneys general have indicated they may seek around $200 billion. That said, the company still faces thousands of lawsuits filed by school districts and individual plaintiffs alleging harms from social media. 

While shares spiked as much as 5% premarket on the news, the move was quickly reversed at market open.

h ttps://x.com/TrwendSpider/status/2092360371138932969?s=202

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/26/2026 - 09:19

The post The Rich Own the Media. They Want to Take Your Social Security appeared first on CEPR.

Q2 GDP Grew At Modest 1.5% According To Latest Revision, As Expected

While far less relevant than the rest of today's data barrage, including the core PCE report and Durable Goods data which showed a mixed real-time picture of the economy as core prices rose more than expected while core CapEx missed expectations, the BEA also reported its second revision of Q2 GDP data - yes, for the quarter ended June 30 or almost two months ago - and which came in at 1.5%, right on top of expectations, and unchanged from the previous estimate.

According to the BEA, contributors to the increase in real GDP in the second quarter were increases in consumer spending, exports, and investment that were partly offset by a decrease in government spending. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased. 

Compared to the first quarter, the deceleration in real GDP in the second quarter reflected a downturn in government spending and decelerations in investment and exports that were partly offset by an acceleration in consumer spending. Imports increased more in the second quarter than in the first quarter. 

As shown in the chart below, virtually all growth in Q2 GDP came from personal consumption, which added 2.31% to the bottom line 1.5%, GDP print, or more than all of it. On an annualized basis, personal consumption rose 3.4% q/q, beating the 3.2% median estimate and also advance reading. 

Another 1.2% came from Fixed Investment, all of which was the result of non-residential construction (data centers and intellectual property products). On the other end, Net Exports subtracted a total of 1.14% from the bottom line GDP print while the change in private inventories detracted another 0.72%. Finally government erased another 0.16% from the GDP print. 

There was some better news when it comes to real gross domestic income (GDI) which increased 2.2% in the second quarter, compared with an increase of 1.2% in the first quarter. The average of real GDP and real GDI increased 1.8%, compared with an increase of 1.7%.

And while it is especially irrelevant in light of today's much more up-to-date core PCE data, the price index for gross domestic purchases increased 5.8% in the second quarter, revised up 0.1% point from the previous estimate. The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index increased 5.3% revised up 0.2%, and the PCE price index excluding food and energy increased 3.6%, also revised up 0.2% point. However, as noted previously, this is for a quarter that ended 2 months ago so ignore all of the above.

Finally, profits from current production (corporate profits with inventory valuation and capital consumption adjustments) increased $400.9 billion in the second quarter, compared with an increase of $74.4 billion in the first quarter

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/26/2026 - 08:45

Fed's Favorite Inflation Indicator Ticks Up In July As Americans Suddenly Start Saving More

Following the CPI and PPI internals, this morning's PCE data should not offer too many surprises with expectations for the headline price Index to rise just 0.1% MoM in July (after deflating for the first time since COVID in June).

The (old) Fed's favorite inflation indicator - Core PCE (a measure of price changes in consumer goods and services that excludes volatile food and energy costs) - printed in line with expectations (+0.2% MoM and +3.3% YoY), a very slight uptick...

Services costs continue to dominate the inflationary picture...

The headline PCE rose 0.2% MoM (hotter than the +0.1% MoM expected) with a small uptick for the YoY at +3.7%...

Non-durable goods prices continued to deflate in July...

The much-watched SuperCore PCE (Services ex-shelter) saw price inflation slow on a YoY basis...

The decline in crude prices dragged the Energy component of PCE lower...

Ironically, while semiconductor prices are major contributors to inflation, it turns out that a rising (or now sideways/falling) stock market is also driving up aggregate prices as portfolio management service costs soar...

This is important because it accounted for more than half of all Core PCE Services inflation...

Under the hood, it was all Portfolio Management & Advice Services...

Higher prices were met with higher spending (+0.2% MoM notional) and higher income growth (+0.4% MoM) - both stronger than expected...

Income and spending annual growth is slowing...

On the income side, both public and private worker wage growth slowed:

• Govt worker wages drop to just 1.4% YoY, lowest since March 2021

• Private worker wages drop to 3.8% from 4.6%, lowest since March 2026

Real personal spending growth dipped notably...

...which might help explain why the savings rate inflected higher from four year lows...

"The economy remains strong and inflation isn’t dropping," says TradeStation’s David Russell, Global Head of Market Strategy. 

 "Strong consumption, spending and durable goods orders suggest the committee has room to tighten without causing a recession. These numbers support hawkish policymakers at the Fed’s committee and increase pressure on Kevin Warsh later this week. It’s getting harder for him to dodge the issue of hiking rates."

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/26/2026 - 08:43