The post Sam Altman is Driving Drunk, Let Him Face the Consequences appeared first on CEPR.

The Pentagon Flocked Itself. Should Big Brother Be Worried?

Authored by Brett Heinz via Responsible Statecraft,

As the headquarters to the U.S. military, the Pentagon is surrounded by billions of dollars worth of surveillance and security technology.

These systems provide multiple layers of protection for the building but they also carry a risk of backfiring: any surveillance system that is vulnerable to intruders could potentially provide unauthorized users with details about the activities of the Defense Department (DOD) and its employees. This risk is higher than usual right now because of the decision to install a controversial piece of equipment all over the Pentagon grounds: Flock cameras.

There are at least nine Flock automated license plate readers (ALPRs) currently monitoring the traffic lanes used by drivers entering the Pentagon's parking lots, including many of the DOD's own employees. The purpose of these cameras is to give the Pentagon's security forces the ability to automatically record information about incoming vehicles that may pose a security risk. But if the alleged vulnerabilities of Flock cameras are as serious as the company's critics allege, then this equipment could be exploited to obtain a detailed list of the national security officials seen entering the Pentagon each day. In this way, the Pentagon's rush to obtain security equipment from private contractors may pose a national security risk of its own.

Concerns about the ability of Flock products to track people alongside cars has produced backlash from privacy-minded citizens, resulting in both protests and contract cancellations. Others have criticized Flock's devices for security vulnerabilities that expose them to unauthorized users, flaws which could be especially dangerous in the context of military facilities. Flock Safety has sought to downplay these issues, insisting that they have "never been hacked." Critics dispute this claim, pointing to multiple different ways that Flock's devices can be accessed by unauthorized users.

These concerns prompted two members of Congress' Intelligence committees - Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) - to write a letter last year asking for an investigation into Flock's "negligent cybersecurity practices." The duo alleged that the company "needlessly exposes Americans to the threat of hackers and foreign spies tapping this data." When asked about the Pentagon's Flock cameras, Sen. Wyden said that "Installing internet-connected cameras in the Pentagon parking lot is obviously a dumb idea. In particular, given Flock's troubling cybersecurity track record, the Pentagon might as well send the data from those cameras directly to China, Russia and Iran."

Under the radar

In late 2021, the Defense Department issued a contract to the Virginia-based company M.C. Dean Inc. to improve the Pentagon's "electronic and physical security systems." This agreement is an "Indefinite Delivery / Indefinite Quantity" contract, which allows the DOD to issue mini-contracts known as "delivery orders" directly to their chosen contractor whenever new needs arise. While the DOD has no direct relationship with Flock Safety, it acquired the company's products through these delivery orders.

The desire for additional security is understandable. The Pentagon has been subject to numerous attempted attacks in the years since the tragic destruction of September 11, 2001. Almost a year into M.C. Dean's contract, a Virginia man tried to drive his vehicle through the Pentagon's multiple checkpoints before being stopped by officers from the building's dedicated security force, the Pentagon Force Protection Agency (PFPA). The culprit later admitted that he was "trying to kill people." Sure enough, installing an "active vehicle barrier and traffic arm" was one of the many tasks that M.C. Dean had been assigned to work on in the coming years. Yet other parts of the contract raise doubts about the idea that more spending necessarily produces more security.

In May 2023, the DOD issued a delivery order to M.C. Dean indicating its interest in a "license plate recognition system." A later update specified that it was "for the entire Pentagon reservation parking facilities." The PFPA already operates several license plate readers on the Pentagon grounds, but applying such a system to the parking lot entrances expanded their reach to capture most of the vehicles that drive within a certain distance of the building. In September, a new order was issued to "procure Flock perimeter license plate reader systems." Because this decision came through the order of a pre-existing contract, neither Flock Safety nor its resellers had to participate in a competitive bidding process to prove that their products were the best prepared to meet the Pentagon's needs - or that they had the most secure system available.

This was not the first time that Flock benefited from government contracts without full competition. Last year, the U.S. Park Police issued a non-competitive contract for "a Flock safety... system in the greater Washington, DC Metropolitan area." Many local police departments use similarly non-competitive agreements to acquire their own Flock equipment.

It is unclear who decided that the Pentagon should acquire its system from Flock. The Defense Department requested Flock products in its September order, but it may have done so under advisement from M.C. Dean or the various subcontractors that it worked with. Neither the DOD, M.C. Dean, nor any of the subcontractors involved in this process responded to a request for comment. Once the decision to go with Flock had been made, M.C. Dean installed its devices with the help of ThunderCat Technology, a subcontractor described by the Brennan Center as "an intermediary selling technology or software produced by other companies." ThunderCat was recently named alongside Flock in a Maryland legal complaint alleging that these and other companies have sold data to third-party customers, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Contract information and Google Maps Street View imagery suggest that most of the devices were installed in late 2024 and early 2025.

It is unclear exactly how much the Pentagon spent on this system. The two delivery orders executed by ThunderCat are worth a total of $112,000, while the earlier order that first mentioned the idea is worth an additional $404,000. Several other orders in M.C. Dean's contract discussed license plate readers, though some dealt with systems purchased from other companies.

The Flock spreads

Flock Safety's license plate readers have come under fire from multiple cybersecurity experts. One such critic, hacker and researcher Jon Gaines, has argued that some of the company's technology can be breached in "about 30 seconds." Reached for comment, Gaines said that he "absolutely" considers the Pentagon's Flock cameras to be a potential security risk. Asked whether it was possible for the DOD to have modified the devices to address their security flaws, he replied: "No, by design the customer, in this case the Pentagon, have no control or insight into the security posture or control of the physical devices deployed by Flock."

The DOD distributes parking permits to employees working at the Pentagon, meaning that it already knows who uses its parking lots. The real value of the ALPR system is its ability to document unknown drivers, which could be helpful in identifying threats like the attacker that tried to ram the Pentagon's checkpoints. But if this data were accessed by an authorized user, they could use it to compile a list of active DOD employees and their daily schedules. The PFPA considers it a priority to prevent the public from accessing this type of information. Photography of the Pentagon is illegal, and the building is surrounded by warning signs reminding visitors of this "No Photography" rule. A PFPA spokesperson once stated that preventing someone from taking "pictures of certain people entering the building" was one of the reasons why this rule exists. Yet by engaging in this exact behavior with cameras that allegedly suffer from serious vulnerabilities, the Pentagon's security force could potentially be creating one of their own worst-case scenarios.

Data-sharing poses yet another risk to the security of the data captured by the Pentagon's Flock devices. Technically, the Flock system would not even need to be "hacked" for its data to be dangerous: all it would take is for one person with access to the system to misuse it or share it with others in an unauthorized way. The Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm which is critical of Flock cameras, maintains a growing database of more than 200 incidents in which they have been used for reasons other than their intended purpose.

The DOD has not disclosed everyone who has access to the data gathered by its license plate readers. Many local law enforcement agencies that share their data with other agencies provide the public with a list of those agencies, but the Pentagon provides no such list. It is even possible that Flock Safety itself has some level of access to the Pentagon's data: previous versions of the company's standard Terms of Service stated that it reserved the right to collect "anonymized and/or aggregated data" from its users that could be used for anything from technical improvements to marketing. Flock Safety did not respond to a request for comment.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 17:40

8 Sailors In Lincoln Strike Group Attempted Suicide During Lengthy Deployment: Acting Navy Secretary

Eight sailors in the USS Abraham Lincoln's carrier strike group attempted suicide during a deployment that ran 286 days at sea, acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao has told Congress, weeks after the administration waved off reports of deteriorating conditions aboard the carrier.

The USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) aircraft carrier departs Laem Chabang Port in Si Racha, Thailand, on on Sept. 6, 2026. Thananuwat Srirasant/Getty Images

In a Sept. 22 letter to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Cao said the attempts occurred across the strike group since the Lincoln deployed in November 2025, including the carrier's crew, its air wing, the escorting destroyers and embarked squadrons. None of the attempts was fatal. The Lincoln operated in the Middle East from January, supported U.S. forces through the war with Iran, and was relieved last month by the USS George Washington.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said in August that conditions aboard had been "completely misrepresented." That came after reports of rising suicide risk, food rationing, and broken laundry and toilet facilities. U.S. Central Command also called reports of a spike in suicidal thoughts false, along with a report that seven sailors had died in a fight aboard the carrier.

As The Epoch Times notes further, Gillibrand accused the Trump administration of failing to take care of service members.

"What Trump and Secretary Hegseth dismissed as 'fake news' turned out to be serious and deteriorating conditions for our service members," Gillibrand said in a statement on Sept. 24.

"Our troops and their families make immense sacrifices every single day, yet the president dismissed them with open disrespect."

Cao's letter to Gillibrand came in response to a letter that Gillibrand and a group of 14 other lawmakers sent to Hegseth last month demanding answers on the conditions of the Lincoln.

The sailors assigned to the Lincoln strike group "demonstrated exceptional resolve under demanding conditions," Cao said.

"Operational decisions to extend deployments are never made lightly; they are driven by dynamic global security environments and absolute necessity of protecting U.S. national security interests and our personnel and our allies abroad," he wrote.

Cao told Gillibrand that the Lincoln was deployed with five chaplains, three behavioral health technicians, one clinical social worker, one psychologist, one embedded integrated prevention counselor, and one expeditionary facility dog.

The acting Navy secretary also noted that a sailor assigned to the air wing went overboard in early August but was quickly recovered, received medical treatment, and was transferred off ship for additional care. In addition, another sailor had previously attempted to go overboard in March but was stopped by other sailors, Cao said.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, criticized the Trump administration for not reporting the number of suicide attempts sooner.

"There has been no administration that is less transparent," he told reporters on Sept. 24.

Warner said that while U.S. sailors will "do their job," they typically expect a six-month deployment.

The Epoch Times reached out to the Pentagon and the Navy for comment and did not receive a response before publication time.

Nathan Worcester contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 17:20

New Mexico's "Free" Childcare Program Is Another Costly Disaster

Authored by Paul Gessing via The Pacific Research Institute,

National media outlets which rarely report on any news from New Mexico were eager to report on the big news this past November that the Land of Enchantment had become the first state to have a "free" universal childcare program.

Other states may head down the same path, but before they do they need to know exactly what was done in New Mexico, why so many other similar programs created in New Mexico have failed over the years, and what unique circumstances have enabled the state's politicians to create a massive new entitlement program without legislative approval.

Many progressives see these programs as a way to help the urban poor in particular, but they often crowd out private alternatives and leave lower-income residents with fewer childcare options. They deplete budgets that would provide necessary public services, and keep states from embracing policies that improve their overall economies and business climate.

For starters, this childcare program came out of left field. In New Mexico's 2025 legislative session, the hot topic for my organization, the Rio Grande Foundation, and the business community was stopping an onerous paid family leave program. We won that battle.

No lawmaker introduced a single bill that year in the state's Democratic-controlled Legislature for taxpayer-funded daycare, but in September 2025 Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham outlined her own plans for a brand-new taxpayer-funded entitlement program: universal free childcare. According to legislative analysts, the program is estimated to cost $850 million annually to start.

The governor changed New Mexico's childcare program from one that covered families making up to 400% of the federal poverty level ($132,000 in 2026) to a universal benefit. The Legislature finally ratified the program in the following year's 2026 session, but the big political problem was having the governor unilaterally create a new government entitlement. That creates a dangerous precedent.

As an aside, the reason New Mexico can pay for this program - at least for now - is the unprecedented oil and gas boom in Southeastern New Mexico's Permian Basin, which it shares with Texas. The boom, which has lasted nearly a decade, has not done much for New Mexico's economy because lawmakers have either spent the largesse on universal pre-K, K-12, free college, and now free daycare - or they have stuffed it into the state's massive sovereign wealth fund, valued at $75 billion and growing fast.

Politics aside, the measure raises serious policy questions. Will this improve New Mexico's dismal outcomes for children? The state routinely ranks at the very bottom in terms of child outcomes nationally. Yet no evidence has been presented to that effect by the governor or legislators when they finally did get around to debating the program.

Barring improved conditions for children, will it lead to an increase in women in the workforce? So far, that is hard to see as New Mexico's already dismal workforce participation rate has actually dropped from 57.6% in November 2026 when free childcare started, to 56.9% as of June 2026.

Minnesota may have received the biggest national headlines with its "learning centers," but, unlike New Mexico's childcare program, Minnesota's program is not free to the user. It is also limited to low-income families and only 22,000 children participate. New Mexico's program is free to all participants, and it already serves 33,000 children before it became universal.

From an urban-policy perspective, California's similar experiment with free transitional kindergarten (TK), which often serves as a replacement for childcare, might be instructive. "Many advocates hoped the move would ease childcare shortages and close learning gaps between rich and poor," according to a 2025 article in the Hechinger Report. Instead, a UC Berkeley study looking at results in Los Angeles found that more than 150 private childcare centers subsequently shuttered.

These mostly served lower-income residents, whereas the "biggest beneficiaries" of the publicly funded program were children in the city's wealthiest neighborhoods. The best theory is the new program "siphoned 4-year-olds away from community childcare centers and private preschools" and existing "centers lost revenue when children left, and it wasn't easy to pivot to serving younger toddlers or infants," per the article. The taxpayer-funded program destroyed the economics of childcare centers, thus leaving the urban poor with fewer options.

Broadly speaking, these costly state-funded programs put an enormous strain on the state's budget, thus precluding lawmakers from passing tax cuts and economic reforms that are geared towards growing and diversifying New Mexico's economy and funding basic services. Between Nov. 1, 2025 and the end of New Mexico's fiscal year in July, the program was running a deficit of approximately $83 million.

Two whistleblowers have come forward claiming they were retaliated against for calling out these deficits. The Early Childhood Education and Care Department's chief financial officer, Carmel Pacheco-Aragon, filed suit, alleging she was placed on administrative leave after reporting on the shortfall and warning about improper fund transfers without legislative approval.

The department's former budget director, Kimberly Gonzales, filed a subsequent lawsuit claiming she was wrongfully terminated for publicly reporting that the department as a whole was facing a $258 million shortfall, driven by the state's new universal childcare program. Nevertheless, in July New Mexico's Supreme Court ratified the program without so much as a hearing.

While other blue states will undoubtedly look at the idea, I don't expect many of them to follow through with it due to the steep cost. Will New Mexico's program be a beacon for other states to shoot for in the future or yet another costly disaster by one of the most poorly run states in America? My money is on the latter, but only time will tell.

Paul Gessing is president of the Rio Grande Foundation, an Albuquerque-based think tank focused on the importance of individual freedom, limited government and economic opportunity.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 17:00

California Supreme Court Orders Sheriff To Return 650,000 Seized Redistricting Referendum Ballots

California's Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously ordered Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco to hand back roughly 650,000 ballots he seized from last November's Proposition 50 special election, and to halt his criminal investigation into the vote. Proposition 50, approved on Nov. 4, 2025, authorized a Legislature-drawn congressional map favorable to Democrats for 2026 through 2030.

An election worker moves mail-in ballots to be organized for tabulation at the Los Angeles County Ballot Processing Center during California's state primary election in the City of Industry, Calif., on June 2, 2026. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP

Bianco, a Republican who lost this year's gubernatorial primary, opened the probe after a local group, the Riverside Election Integrity Team, compared handwritten precinct intake logs with the certified count and alleged a gap of 45,896 votes. He obtained search warrants and seized the ballots in around 1,000 boxes. Riverside County Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco says the group misread the data and the actual gap was 103.

Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero, writing for a unanimous court, called the seizure "unlawful." In Cervantes v. Bianco and a companion case, Bonta v. Bianco, the court held that state law requires ballots to remain in election officials' custody even during a criminal investigation, and that Bianco must obey Attorney General Rob Bonta's order to pause his probe.

As The Epoch Times notes further, the court ordered the sheriff to return the ballots "forthwith," handle them only as needed to comply with the court's order, take no further action on the November 2025 special election investigation pending Bonta's review, and provide materials Bonta requested in a March 6 letter. The court had stayed the investigation in April.

Bianco's attorney had told the court that as sheriff, Bianco had a legal duty to open an investigation after receiving a complaint, and that he adhered to the state penal code after the first search warrants were issued in February.

The court disagreed.

Guerrero said a search warrant does not supersede the state's election law.

"If election misconduct is suspected, the Elections Code provides several mechanisms for law enforcement to review and examine ballots without compromising their integrity," she said.

"But those procedures were not followed and the type of seizure that occurred here directly conflicts with the Elections Code's carefully considered and controlling provisions."

Chad Dunn, legal director of the UCLA Voting Rights Project, which brought one of the lawsuits challenging Bianco's actions, said after the rulings that the ballots are public property.

"They must be protected through the processes the Legislature has established. This ruling provides important clarity for election officials, law enforcement, and voters across California," he said.

Bonta Welcomes Rulings

Bonta hailed the court rulings, saying they "bring important clarity for our constitutional system in California," and that he was "grateful" the court affirmed his authority to supervise county sheriffs.

"Election fraud can and should be investigated. But misuse of criminal investigative tools - without any evidence that a crime was committed - needlessly undermines trust in our elections system and in law enforcement," he said in a statement.

Bianco said he will obey the rulings, but not "the message behind them."

Bianco said the rulings gave the attorney general "unchecked power over any investigation in the state of California."

The rulings fail to address the 45,896-ballot gap between the certified tally and the records obtained from the registrar, he said.

"The Registrar said it was a paperwork error. Bonta said stop looking. I got warrants from a judge and started looking anyway. That is my job," Bianco told The Epoch Times.

Days before the rulings, on Sept. 19, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed a bill that makes it a felony to seize ballots, election records, or certified voting technology before election results are officially certified.

Jill McLaughlin and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 16:40

On The Abiding Mystery Of This 'Lunatic' Fourth Turning

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Clusterfuck Nation,

The Deluge

"The country looks pathetic because too many of its men became pathetic first and then demanded the rest of us treat the collapse as a moral achievement."

- LHGrey on Substack

An abiding mystery of this lunatic Fourth Turning is how it came to be that the supposed intellectual elite of America was the class that so shamelessly lost its collective mind, got behind ideas that ranged from absurd to disgraceful - "Defund the Police," "boys in the girl's locker room," "voter ID is unfair," "dismantle capitalism," "no one is illegal," "mostly peaceful riots," "Covid vaccine mandates" "CIA-run censorship," - and finally decided to march under the banner of communism, history's most floridly ruinous political program.

The answer is that intellectuals are in the employ of the racketeering operation that is Washington's permanent bureaucracy married to the Democratic Party's laundering of taxpayer dollars into all the parasitical enterprises that this combine feeds. And the more the money-flows get cut, the more the intellectuals fear losing their fat salaries and their status. In desperation, they are now trying to just burn the USA house down.

At least you don't hear "Slava Ukraini," anymore, since it's so far beyond obvious that the EU has been using that sad-sack place as a launching pad for World War III, and evidently even "progressives" have decided that's not such a hot idea. (The EU's elites might even be crazier than America's.)

History, I remind you, is a trickster. It's also a cardinal irony of the times that this Fourth Turning's "Gray Champion" role fell to one Donald Trump. He is at once cartoonish in speech, appearance, and predilections while being stunningly effective, indefatigable, and intrepid in his job as president. His mere presence on the scene drives his opponents to fugues of rancor. Their failure to eliminate him by either bullets or the most fantastically fallacious lawfare has led their favored political party to a frank break with reality, possibly close to suicide.

There was a silver lining to the ludicrous election shenanigans of 2020 that stuffed "Joe Biden" in the White House and marooned Mr. Trump out in the political wilderness. After being naively buffaloed by his Deep State enemies in Term No. 1, he got a great opportunity to stand back and see exactly how they operated with their hands on the levers of power, and then to map out the money-driven matrix of nefarious orgs that nourished these enemies. And even while getting dragged through the courts in one bogus case after another, and dodging bullets, Mr. Trump was able to lay coherent big plans to defeat these enemies.

Reality becomes ever harder to discern for a creature (the human being) who depends on a consensus about what's real as driven by language, the engine of agreement. When you wreck language, you make agreement impossible, and reality turns to a gray ooze. The Lefty-leftists changed-up language like crazy until every word, every idea attached to every word, became the opposite of what everyone thought it was. The strategy backfired badly, because it was the Lefties who thereby destroyed their own reality, making themselves crazy as well as ridiculous. Imagine a Supreme Court nominee, a female, as it happens, who claims under oath that she can't define what a woman is.

The Lefties who fell for this were trained up exquisitely by their own Leftie mentors in the universities, who were all in on Saul Alinsky's depraved Bible of political dirty-fighting, Rules for Radicals, the number-one rule being: accuse your opponents of doing whatever you are doing. It helped their cause a lot that women were overtaking men demographically in higher ed and in the management jobs they segued into after college. Women, being smaller and not as physically strong as men, are more inclined to dirty fighting. That has been the sad recent history of the Democratic Party, and now it's floundering in a netherworld of mental illness.

It was in the nature of conservatives to resist all the attempts at the language changes foisted on the country. They generally did not believe that men could become women by wishing it, or that the "diversity" provided by 20-million illegal immigrants was "our strength," or that mothers had to be called "birthing people." Their consensus about reality was not fractured.

The once-powerful elite can't stand not having power. They still have plenty of money, but they probably want to keep what's left of it, and now that all the laundering of taxpayer money through NGOs is ending, it will be ever harder to finance their power-grabbing with other people's money. The midterms are more of a challenge for them than their official information channels let on, and the Woke slop on the Internet isn't helping much either.

Apart from some traumatic "October surprise," I now think it's unlikely that the president will invoke a national security executive order to require anything like uniform voter ID across the country. Instead, it looks like several executive agencies will monitor activities at and around the polling places. Sec'y MarkWayne Mullin of the Department of Homeland Security stated that ICE agents could be present at polls. Lawsuits have been filed seeking to block that. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon declared that the DOJ intends to send 1000 lawyers and trained legal staff to select districts. The DOJ has also warned state and county election officials that fooling around with ballots will trigger a hard finding out this time.

If there's trouble this year, it's more likely to happen after the election, when Democrats refuse to accept the results. Lawfare ninjas Marc Elias and Norm Eisen will swing into overdrive attempting to paralyze the nation in post-election lawsuits. As for riots, the NGOs know that the FBI is watching their remaining money flows to outfits such as Antifa, or whatever remains of Black Lives Matter, or MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlán), or groups affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, etc. Billionaires like Neville Roy Singham are reportedly getting the heebie-jeebies. Soros will fork over around $30-million in cash to candidates, but I doubt he'll sponsor any street-fighting. He and his successor son, Alex, are already skating on thin ice.

Anyway, the intellectual elite have thoroughly disgraced themselves. The still-unfolding Covid-19 aftermath sets off a slow-motion train-wreck of disgraced experts, one after another. The spectacle of Dr. Fauci taking the 5th last month is not the end of that business. Almost certainly there will not be any indictments of the many Deep State traitors before November 3 - the president does not aim to be accused of election interference. But after the midterms, the deluge.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 16:20

Assaults On ICE Officers Increased 1,600% Since January 2025: DHS

Assaults against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers have increased significantly in recent months as the Trump administration has cracked down on illegal immigration across the country.

Under the Trump administration, there were 647 assaults against ICE officials from Jan. 20, 2025, to Sept. 20, 2026, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a press release on Thursday. The number of assaults represents an increase of 1,649 percent from the 37 assaults on ICE officials from Jan. 20, 2021, to Sept. 20, 2022, under the Biden administration.

ICE has been heavily criticized by many U.S. lawmakers during President Donald Trump's second term, as the administration has expanded detention and deportation operations throughout the United States. In the press release, the Department of Homeland Security called for politicians to end the use of "hateful and violent rhetoric" targeting ICE.

"The brave men and women of ICE, who are simply enforcing the laws mandated by Congress and protecting the American people, are under attack every single day. Since President Trump unleashed ICE to do their jobs, assaults against them have risen by more than 1,600% in the first year and a half of the administration," DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said, according to the statement.

As Timothy Frudd reports further for The Epoch Times, Thursday's press release listed numerous examples of violent acts committed against ICE officials. Examples included a Minneapolis rioter biting off an ICE agent's finger; an illegal immigrant hammering an ICE officer in the face with a metal coffee cup in Houston; and a group of individuals shooting at ICE officers at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, which resulted in a police officer being shot.

Other examples included a sniper killing two ICE detainees and injuring a third detainee at an ICE facility in Dallas, an illegal immigrant allegedly soliciting the murder of ICE agents in a video on social media, and Los Angeles rioters throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks and launching fireworks at ICE authorities and Border Patrol officers.

Mullin said the increase in assaults on ICE officials has been caused by the lies spread by "sanctuary politicians and their foot soldiers who are involved in anti-ICE riots and other acts of violence."

In addition to providing examples of violent actions targeting ICE, DHS also shared examples of lawmakers engaging in what the department called "hateful rhetoric."

The examples included Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, comparing ICE to a "modern-day Gestapo" and Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) accusing ICE of "turning us into Nazi Germany."

"DHS is calling on these sanctuary politicians to stop attacking federal law enforcement, stop putting the needs of illegal aliens ahead of the safety of American citizens, and to start working with us to make America safe again," Mullin said.

In addition to increased assaults on ICE officers, agents are also facing a more than 6,000 percent increase in threats, White House border czar Tom Homan told Epoch Times senior editor Jan Jekielek in an interview airing on Sept. 26. Homan also said ICE vehicle assaults have increased by 1,300 percent.

"I blame a lot of that on the misinformation being fed by some media to the American people," Homan said. "It's constant lies."

The border czar noted that ICE is not perfect and that agents will make mistakes. However, he said the agents are held accountable in those cases.

In addition to misinformation, Homan blamed hateful rhetoric, which he said was being pushed by local, state, and federal lawmakers. Some people have been emboldened to "take action" against ICE officials after hearing agents be compared to Nazis, he said.

"If the hateful rhetoric was stopped, the masks would come off. If the hateful rhetoric was stopped, there'd be less tragedy," he said.

"I truly believe that because now people are emboldened because they hear 'ICE isn't a real law enforcement agency. ICE are Nazis. They're not really cops.' So now people are not complying with them."

The Trump administration's crackdown on illegal immigration, including sweeping community raids and mass deportations, has received pushback from the Democratic Party, which has called for ICE to be reformed or abolished. In August, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin said that there "has to be a better way" to handle the issue of immigration than the way the Trump administration has handled it.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 15:45

Bitcoin's 'Last Resort' Quantum-Safe Solution Just Got 79% Cheaper: StarkWare

Authored by Felix Ng via Cointelegraph,

The estimated computational cost to prepare a quantum-resistant Bitcoin transaction has fallen below $67 after a week of optimization, down from the roughly $320 spent on the first such mainnet transaction in August, according to StarkWare.

The results came after participants in the Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Optimization Challenge found ways to push down the GPU computation needed to build a quantum-safe Bitcoin transaction.

The reduction could make the experimental defense (which doesn't require changes to the network's consensus rules) against future quantum attacks more practical for Bitcoin holders. However, the latest optimizations have only been demonstrated in benchmark tests.

"A construction that costs a few hundred dollars per transaction is a demo. One that costs $67 is closer to something a holder with a large unexposed balance might reach for in an emergency," StarkWare wrote in its Sept. 23 update. The dashboard now shows the estimated cost has dropped to $66.

Quantum-Safe Bitcoin an "emergency" solution

StarkWare researcher Avihu Levy published the Quantum-Safe Bitcoin (QSB) design in April, outlining a way to add hash-based protection against quantum attacks without changing Bitcoin's consensus rules. At the time, he described it as a "last resort measure" due to costs, complexity and limited applicability, while continuing to advocate for protocol-level changes.

According to StarkWare, the first QSB transaction was mined and confirmed on Aug. 26, with engineering work from Tomer Giladi and direct submission through MARA's Slipstream service. Preparing it required approximately 3,100 GPU-hours across roughly 100 GPUs, at a compute cost of about $320, excluding Bitcoin network fees.

To find ways to bring that cost down, StarkWare, Yukon Research and Eigen Labs launched the QSB challenge on Sept. 16, inviting developers, researchers and AI agents to make the transaction-building software faster and more efficient.

In its latest update, StarkWare said the challenge produced 62 accepted improvements across two computational tasks needed to prepare a QSB transaction. According to StarkWare, this ended up cutting the estimated computing cost by about 79%, based on benchmark tests.

The development comes amid increasing concern that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could break the elliptic-curve digital signatures used by Bitcoin, potentially allowing attackers to steal coins whose public keys are exposed.

Researchers are developing quantum-resistant protections, including QSB. However, StarkWare said it still favors a soft fork - a change to Bitcoin's consensus rules - as a better "long-term answer" for broad quantum protection on Bitcoin.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 15:25

Supreme Court Clears Trump Admin To Use Voter Citizenship Verification

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

The Supreme Court on Sept. 25 said the Trump administration can use an updated immigration database to verify the citizenship of voters.

A majority of justices agreed to stay pending the outcome of an appeal of a June order from a federal judge that barred the use of a revamped database called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system.

U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan had found that federal officials were violating the privacy rights of American citizens by disclosing the citizenship status and Social Security numbers, among other data, in the restructured database. She vacated the 2025 update, which connected Social Security information to the system.

A federal appeals court later upheld the decision.

Trump administration officials then asked the Supreme Court to intervene, arguing in a Sept. 8 brief that the order "threatens the integrity of upcoming elections by vacating the federal government's authority to internally use Social Security data when fulfilling its duty to respond to requests by states to verify the citizenship of individuals for voting and other purposes."

Six justices sided with the administration. In a per curiam opinion, they said that claims from the organizations that sued over the updated database "likely lack merit," including the allegation that federal officials are violating federal laws, because Congress authorized the Department of Homeland Security to request and receive citizenship information and immigration status from other agencies, including the Social Security Administration, in a 1996 statute called the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act.

The majority also said that keeping in place the prohibition "inhibits the Federal Government's efforts to assist state and local agencies."

States regularly use the system. Texas Secretary of State Robert Howden recently said the state in the fall of 2025 ran the names of its 18 million registered voters through the database and identified 2,724 people who may be noncitizens.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a dissent that was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

They said that connecting the database to the Social Security Administration's data did not fit under the "strict limits" imposed by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, and that the law did not override other statutes such as the Privacy Act that organizations say the administration violated.

"The harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the nonexistent harm that the Government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take," Jackson wrote.

"This imbalance, along with the Government's improbable merits arguments, should have compelled the Court to deny the stay."

The White House and a lawyer representing the organizations did not immediately return requests for comment.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 14:50

US Cybersecurity Agency Releases Election Security Plan Ahead Of November Midterms

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The nation’s cybersecurity agency released its election infrastructure security plan on Thursday, ahead of the November midterms set for Nov. 3.

Voters cast their ballots in the primary for midterm elections at Sanbornton Town Hall in Sanbornton, N.H., on Sept. 8, 2026. CJ Gunther/Getty Images

The 13-page document outlines potential threats to voting systems and lists no-cost services that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) offers state and local officials.

“In July of this year, Secretary Mullin tasked CISA with developing the Election Infrastructure Security Plan, which had been developed to help partners defend against cyber and physical threats to election infrastructure,” it reads.

“Election security is not a partisan issue. Election security is national security.”

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin had initially said the plan would be published by mid-August.

CISA, created in 2018 under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has warned states about foreign threats.

The new plan warns of software flaws, voter registration database hacks, insider threats, and physical risks like bomb threats that hit some polling places in 2024.

“Many longstanding election practices such as handling ballots in bipartisan teams of two, allowing observers to be present during ballot counting, and maintaining chain-of-custody procedures—were specifically designed to reduce the likelihood and impact of insider threats,” the plan reads.

It says longstanding practices can handle most of those problems.

“Use paper ballots that can be easily reviewed to ensure transparency, auditability, and resilience against software failures or manipulation,” the report reads.

The goal, the document states, is “to ensure the American people can trust voting systems and know that physical safety measures will be in place when they go to their assigned polling locations to cast their votes.”

It also says DHS has “consistently supported CISA’s delivery of cybersecurity and physical security services to election officials.”

The plan names no specific 2026 threats from Russia, Iran, or China.

China-Made Voting Parts

However, Mullin did say in a letter released on Aug. 27 that parts of many voting machines used in the United States are made in China.

“Voting machines with components manufactured by foreign adversaries introduce significant security risks,” Mullin said. “These vulnerabilities mean that malicious actors could potentially compromise election infrastructure at any stage of the supply chain, even before the machines are assembled or deployed. If a component is tampered with during manufacturing, it could serve as a point-of-entry for hackers, allowing for the possibility of synchronized attacks across multiple machines and jurisdictions.”

In July, the heads of four U.S. intelligence and national security agencies backed key aspects of President Donald Trump’s claim that China engaged in election interference by targeting American voter registration data.

A fact sheet released at the time by the White House Government Transparency Task Force states that China and its proxies bought, stole, or hacked voter data belonging to as many as 220 million Americans, including some information that was not publicly available.

The fact sheet notes that, for a foreign country’s actions to amount to “election interference,” they do not have to change the actual results.

“That definition includes a foreign power’s targeting of voter registration infrastructure or data,” the task force states, citing declassified documents produced by the U.S. intelligence community.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 14:20

Woke Developer Bungie Apologizes To Gamers...But Not Really

The mass conservative boycott against woke companies and far-left content has been wildly successful.  While the political left has repeatedly attempted such boycotts and "cancellations" over the years, not one has ever been as effective as the "Chud" revolution against woke media.  

It took a few years (along with a slowdown in outside funding from ESG programs and venture capital), but some of the biggest corporations in the world have been forced to acknowledge that ideological content just isn't working.  The much vaunted "modern audience" that progressive stalwarts bragged about failed to materialize.  It was always a myth.  It never existed. 

These businesses killed their own bottom line and alienated long-time customers in the name of a bizarre cult religion representing a small portion of the global population.  And even more embarrassing for companies like Bungie, those weirdos don't spend much money on video games anyway. 

The Bungie game studio achieved widespread acclaim with early installments of the Halo series, a direct competitor to Call Of Duty.  But, around 2014-2016, something changed.  The company started listening to the Twitter mob (a leftist echo chamber) and began hiring clucking broods of woke developers. 

Bungie integrated LGBT, DEI and feminist propaganda into their games.  Their senior narrative designer publicly defended the notorious Sweet Baby Inc., a woke consultation group known for "terrorizing" gaming companies into injecting woke content into their products.  Though, there is no direct evidence that Sweet Baby Inc. ever consulted for Bungie. 

To summarize the attitude of these people: They insist that they be able to "see themselves" in every media product, to the detriment of everyone else.  

 

The homosexual fantasies and trans delusions of developers were forced into character stories and designs.  The women got uglier and more masculine.  The men were more feminine and fruity.  Characters that were never gay were retconned and turned gay.  The minority pie chart was on full display and white straight men were quickly phased out. 

Bungie's Destiny 2 ultimately collapsed and Marathon was a disaster for the studio leading to mass player walkouts.  Sony took a $765M impairment on Bungie in FY2025, tied to Destiny 2’s slide and Marathon’s launch quarter (That is the company admitting the portfolio is worth a lot less than they paid).   

Finally, this week, the truth came out - Bungie is facing disaster, so much so that they posted a video "apologizing" to their gamer customers. 

However, veiled in a flurry of corporate-speak is a refusal to admit what the real problem is; the real reason why they failed.  At no point does Bungie admit that their company was destroyed by woke ideology.  At no point do they admit "Get Woke, Go Broke" was right all along. 

Instead, they pretend to offer an olive branch while barrelling ahead with games like Marathon that are already catastrophic failures.  Games that no one wants to play and will never want to play.  They say they want to listen to their customers, but not really.  Their customers are telling them to cleanse the company of wokeness, but they won't even acknowledge that wokeness is the original source of the problem. 

We have seen this time and time again with desperate media companies seeking a reprieve from the boycotts; they beg the audience to come back, they might even fire a bunch of their activist employees, but they never admit that progressive cultism poisoned their relationship with their customers.  

Until these companies are willing to do this, there is really no reason to give them another chance.  Until they face the truth and renounce the woke cult, it is perhaps better if they are allowed to die so they can be replaced by someone better.   

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 14:05

Canada's Oil Patch On Track For Biggest M&A Wave In A Decade

Authored by Alex Kimani via OilPrice.com,

Nearly a decade ago, the Canadian Oil Patch recorded a major asset sale and consolidation wave as oil majors exited the oil sands in favor of higher margins in U.S. shale oil as well as environmental concerns amid the ESG investing craze.

To wit, Shell Plc (NYSE:SHEL) sold the majority of its oil sands interests to Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (NYSE:CNQ) in 2017 a transaction valued at roughly $11.1 billion CAD ($8.5 billion USD), while Cenovus Energy (NYSE:CVE) acquired most of ConocoPhillips' (NYSE:COP) Canadian assets for C$17.7 billion (approximately US$13.2 billion). And now a similar dynamic is unfolding across Canada's energy sector: Canada's oil patch has recorded over $30 billion in mergers and acquisitions so far in the current year, with Wall Street projecting that this year's final tally will surpass the $53 billion recorded in 2017. However, this year's M&A wave is fundamentally different from its 2017 peer since it's mainly being driven by high oil and asset prices amid the Middle East conflict rather than a desperate attempt to dispose off distressed assets, "Whereas recently, we've seen a lot of clients merging from positions of strength, because it's the best outcome for shareholders at the time," Raj Singh, CEO at Calgary-based Fuelled Inc., told the Financial Post. "That's a healthier dynamic, and it tends to produce more durable combinations."

So far, this year's key highlight has been Shell's takeover of Arc Resources for $16.4 billion as the Dutch major looks to boost its depleted energy reserves, secure low-cost production and insulate its global liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply chain from the Middle Eastern fallout. Prior to the acquisition, Shell faced an existential threat, with an estimated reserve life of just 5.3 years - well below the 10-year industry benchmark for European supermajors. ARC Resources immediately adds 370,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d) to Shell's output, improving its projected annual production growth rate from 1% to roughly 4% through 2030.

To sweeten the deal further, ARC Resources is a premier, pure-play producer in Western Canada's natural-gas-heavy Montney Basin, while Shell owns a 40% operating stake in the massive LNG Canada export facility in British Columbia. By absorbing ARC, Shell effectively integrates its supply chain, securing the upstream gas needed to feed LNG Canada and paving the way to greenlight a Phase 2 expansion that could double the facility's size. Finally, whereas ARC is heavily focused on natural gas, roughly 40% of its output (and 70% of its underlying economic value) comes from high-margin oil and condensate liquids, with the asset mix increasing Shell's exposure to low-cost, long-duration liquids.

In yet another high-dollar deal, Tamarack Valley Energy Ltd. (OTCPK:TNEYF) and Headwater Exploration Inc. (OTCPK:CDDRF) recently announced a definitive agreement to merge in an all-stock transaction valued at C$10 billion ($7.25 billion). The combined company expects production exceeding 80,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d), making it the largest publicly traded pure-play Clearwater oil producer. Tamarack has already secured 25,000 barrels per day of Trans Mountain pipeline capacity starting in Q1 2027 that will allow the company to access West Coast markets, alongside long-term access to Cushing, Oklahoma, via the proposed South Bow Prairie Connector.

And just last week, American institutional private equity firm Carlyle expanded its Canadian energy footprint by forming a new entity, Avenrock Energy, to acquire Calgary-based private operator Parallax Energy Operating Inc. from Carnelian Energy Capital. Although details of the deal were not divulged, analysts believe the transaction cost hovers around $1 billion. That marked the private equity giant's second multi-billion-dollar scale push into Alberta's energy sector within a 12-month window after it acquired Kiwetinohk Energy Corp. in October for approximately $1.4 billion.

Parallax holds a 75% working interest across roughly 300,000 gross acres situated in Alberta's highly coveted East Shale Duvernay formation and gross production of 20,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd), weighted heavily toward high-value light oil and natural gas liquids (NGLs). Carlyle aims to leverage the Parallax infrastructure as a launchpad to scale an expansive Western Canadian light oil platform.

And, the energy experts are saying we are likely to see more deals like these before the year closes, "Inflation and commodity pricing have simply made producing assets very attractive right now," Singh told the Financial Post. "When corporate development teams run the numbers today, acquisitions look appealing and can pull forward returns for shareholders."

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 13:50

"Moving The Goalposts": BofA Downgrades Nike, Slashes Target As Turnaround Story Delayed

Nike shares fell 2% in New York premarket trading after BofA retail analyst Lorraine Hutchinson downgraded the world's largest athletic footwear and apparel company, warning that its "turnaround is taking longer" than expected. With shares trading at 2014 levels, the downgrade adds new woes to a recovery story that might not materialize until 2028.

In the report published earlier today, titled "Moving the goalposts," Hutchinson downgraded Nike to "Underperform" from "Neutral" and cut her price target to $30 from $47, implying 17% downside from Thursday's close of $35.99.

Hutchinson now expects a sales decline through 2027, abandoning her earlier call for a 1H27 recovery and pushing the turnaround into 2028. She cut fiscal 2027 and 2028 earnings estimates by 11% and 12%, respectively. Her 2027 forecast of $1.43 a share sits roughly 14% below Visible Alpha consensus.

She added color:

Risks are rising, downgrading to Underperform

We see downside risk to EPS estimates and valuation as Nike's innovation continues to be overshadowed by a pressured classics business, while category and macro pressures build. We are cutting F27E/F28E EPS by 11%/12%; we now expect negative sales growth through F27E versus our prior view of a Spring inflection. Our F27E EPS is 14% below VA consensus. The dividend payout ratio is over 100% and, as a result, we are reducing our income rating to 8 (same/lower) from 7 (same/higher). Our $30 PO (was $47) is based on a 16x P/E (was 22x), now aligned with the peer average.

Wholesale momentum should slow as sell-through lags

NA wholesale has been an area of strength, growing 14% in F26 vs. flat total sales growth. In some instances, sell-through is lagging sell-in due to declines in classic styles and new launches that are missing expectations. This puts forward order books at risk as retailers become less willing to make a bet on newness until success is proven. We see progress slowing in 2Q as the business laps 24% growth, and remaining challenged in 2H as the current issues pressure Spring orders. We model NA wholesale sales declines beginning in 2Q through the rest of F27.

China reset faces a tougher demand backdrop

China is in flux, and Nike's reduction in partner online sales will likely cause promotional pressure through 2Q. After that, Nike is expected to present the brand more cohesively online. Competition is intense; the quest for newness is higher than ever, and we see risk that sales decline at least through F27. BofA's Luxury Goods team's China fieldtrip takeaways included weak sports demand, with product newness not resonating, moderation of running outperformance, and excess inventory driven by low demand. 

Despite Nike's 44% year-to-date bear market, Hutchinson said it's "unlikely that the stock will hold a premium multiple in the face of further EPS cuts. We see some green shoots on product innovation, but those have been dwarfed by weaker larger casual categories."

She added, "We think the multiple could compress as the turn is pushed to F28."

According to Bloomberg data, there are 15 "Buy" ratings, 25 "Neutral" ratings and 7 "Sell" ratings on the stock, with a 12-month price target of $46.10.

The stock is already down 80% from its 2021 high of $177. Where stabilization occurs and halts the vicious bear market remains to be seen, but it could materialize next year as Wall Street analysts see a turnaround ahead. Yet BofA analysts have pushed that expectation back to 2028. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 13:35

Suspected US Drone Strike Kills Alleged Al-Qaeda Member In Yemen

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

A suspected US drone strike hit a vehicle carrying two alleged al-Qaeda members in Yemen's southeastern Hadramout province on Tuesday, China's Xinhua news agency has reported.

A local security source told the news agency that one of the men in the vehicle was killed while the other was wounded. So far, there's been no confirmation of the strike from the US, but the US hasn't officially acknowledged an airstrike against Yemen's al-Qaeda affiliate, known as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) since 2020, even though it has continued the drone war.

Earlier this year, the Yemen Data Project reported that from January 2025 to March 2026, it found 21 reports of US drone strikes in Yemen through an investigation of open-source material, attacks that were separate from the US bombing campaign against Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis, that took place last year.

The report of a US drone strike in southeast Yemen comes as fighting continues to rage in western Yemen between Ansar Allah and Saudi-backed forces since the war reignited back in July due to Saudi airstrikes on the Sanaa International Airport. The US is backing Saudi Arabia's airstrikes with targeting and intelligence support, as it did during the war from 2015 to 2022.

US weapons sold to Saudi Arabia and the UAE throughout the conflict ended up in the hands of militants linked to AQAP, according to a 2019 report from CNN, and the coalition was known to recruit al-Qaeda fighters in southern Yemen to fight against Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis.

Ansar Allah is known to be a fierce enemy of al-Qaeda, and before the US supported the Saudi-led coalition's intervention in Yemen in 2015, the US was cooperating with Ansar Allah and sharing intelligence with the group as part of its strategy against AQAP.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 13:20

Chinese Hacking Groups Used Shared Attack Tool Against US Aerospace Firms, NGOs

Authored by Arthur Zhang via The Epoch Times,

Chinese cyber-espionage groups used the same sophisticated hacking tool in campaigns targeting U.S. aerospace companies, nongovernmental organizations, mining companies, and commodity traders, according to two cybersecurity firms that separately investigated the activity.

A member of a hacking group is using his computer at their office in Dongguan, Guangdong province, China, on Aug. 4, 2020. Nicolas Asfouri/AFP via Getty Images

Volexity, a Virginia-based cybersecurity firm, said on Sept. 21 its discovery of another Chinese hacking group using the same tool added to evidence of coordinated sharing within China's cyber-espionage community.

The company said the widespread adoption "suggests a coordinated effort within the Chinese CNE community," referring to computer network exploitation, and assessed that the core tool was likely shared, customized, and used by multiple groups.

Proofpoint, a U.S. cybersecurity company, separately documented on Sept. 9 the same capability in campaigns against a small number of U.S. NGOs, mining companies, commodity-trading firms, and multiple U.S. aerospace companies. It found several espionage groups adopting the tool within days of one another, with most of the observed clusters having a suspected China nexus.

Neither company has publicly identified who developed the tool or how it reached the different hacking groups.

The Epoch Times asked both companies whether they had identified its developer or distributor and whether they had found additional U.S. targets. Neither responded by publication time.

Same Tool, Different Targets

The hacking groups pursued different victims and installed different spying software after gaining access, but researchers found that they relied on the same underlying break-in capability.

The attacks took advantage of previously unknown weaknesses in Google Chrome and Microsoft Windows. If successful, they could allow hackers to install spying software and maintain access to a victim's computer.

Volexity said the additional Chinese operator it identified used the same attack chain on Sept. 3 and 4, when the vulnerabilities were still unpatched.

The company cautioned that what Volexity and Proofpoint have observed may represent only part of the activity.

"The full scope and impact are likely far broader," Volexity said.

Fake Websites Used to Reach Targets

The newly identified group also used fake versions of trusted news and policy websites to lure intended targets.

In one campaign, Asian government entities received a Chinese-language email centered on imprisoned Hong Kong activist Chow Hang-tung. The link led to a fake site impersonating China Digital Times, a U.S.-based publication covering China, censorship, and politics, according to Volexity.

Another fake site impersonated the Center for American Progress (CAP), a Washington-based policy organization.

Volexity also identified fake sites mimicking two publications; The Conversation, which publishes articles by academic researchers, and the Borneo Bulletin, an English-language daily newspaper in Brunei. The company said the range of impersonated organizations may offer clues about the intended targets.

The Epoch Times has reached out to CAP and China Digital Times for comments. Neither responded by publication time.

Separate China-Linked Activity

Separately, cybersecurity firm ESET on Sept. 17 identified a China-aligned espionage campaign targeting governments and other organizations across Latin America, including a Panamanian legal entity involved in the dispute over two major ports near the Panama Canal. ESET has not identified a technical link between that activity and the campaigns documented by Volexity.

Barbara James, a public relations specialist at ESET, told The Epoch Times on Sept. 23 that malware was deployed on some computers in the Panamanian organization's network in late December 2025 and January 2026, with further attempts between February and June of 2026.

James said ESET's assessment of the likely espionage purpose was based on which organization was targeted and when.

ESET did not directly observe the hackers accessing or removing materials related to the port dispute. James said the limits of the company's anonymized data meant it also could not rule out that such access occurred.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 12:45

Frenemies: "China May Be Exporting Two Pandas, But It Would Much Rather Export Millions Of Cars"

By Molly Schwartz, cros-aset macro strategist at Rabobank 

Frenemies

The US-China summit officially began after Xi arrived in Washington, DC, late on Wednesday. Topics including trade, the Strait of Hormuz, and the AI (AGI?) races are expected to arise, but little tangible progress is anticipated.

After all that, Trump and Xi agreed to... rename AI to SI https://t.co/gLaNhLT18I pic.twitter.com/YZ9s2pvGBA

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 25, 2026

Instead, the goal is to “prevent something very bad from happening.” Frenemies, Xi and Trump, hailed “healthy competition,” rather than competition “in which one wins and one loses.” In a show of friendship (frenemyship?), China is sending two giant pandas, Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, to Zoo Atlanta. According to Politico, “one person close to the White House” said: “Trump likes to be like, ‘oh, we get along great,’ and it’s like, okay, well, at the same time, these guys are a massive threat to us. We’re in an AI race with them. They’re supplying Iranians with intelligence and weapons…He’s missing the message here. No one cares whether you’re friends with the guy or not… are you advancing [the US’] objectives or not?”

But a friendly veneer is unlikely to temper the tensions simmering below the surface. Although Trump and Xi may have a “personal rapport”, their respective objectives are diametrically opposed. China may be exporting two pandas, but it would much rather export tens of thousands of Chinese-made electric vehicles. For now, the US-China trade-war truce has been extended to January 10, 2027, but what follows remains unclear.

Moreover, the trade-war truce still accommodates a slew of US and Chinese trade barriers, including legacy Section 301 tariffs related to Chinese forced labour from 2018, new Section 301 tariffs, and broad-based Section 232 tariffs. Meanwhile, China continues to enforce its own 10% retaliatory tariff on US goods, alongside barriers affecting American agricultural products.

A similar pattern emerged in the AI discussion: both leaders again emphasized cooperation over confrontation, but few are convinced that either will slow the development of their respective AI capabilities.

The UN General Assembly is still under way in New York City. Some question the organization’s effectiveness in fulfilling its stated mission, which includes “saving succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” Scourge or not, brent has continued to surge, rising another $5 after gaining $5 the previous day, to close at $107/bbl.

After briefly diverging yesterday morning, with the 2-year yield edging lower and the 10-year yield creeping higher, both were again pulled into line with intraday moves in Brent crude. The 2-year yield has struggled to break above resistance at 4.90% but remains near Wednesday’s two-year high, while the 10-year yield continues to reach levels not seen since 2002, most recently at 5.16%. With Brent still climbing and little currently pushing back against inflation expectations, the OIS curve suggests investors are pricing a 68% probability of a hike at the October meeting and more than 93bp of tightening by October next year.

By extension, the USD is the best-performing G10 currency for a second consecutive day. The Brent crude à higher yields à stronger USD pipeline was in full swing, sending EUR/USD to 1.13—its lowest level since late July. The 14-day RSI suggests EUR/USD is somewhat oversold, and nearby support at 1.1325 indicates that a reversal may be imminent. Rabobank’s head of FX strategy, Jane Foley, recently revised her EUR/USD forecast and now expects the pair to trade sideways around 1.14 over a one-month horizon before retracing to 1.16–1.17. Read more here.

The Danish Defence Intelligence Service published a report yesterday stating that there is a “low but growing risk that Russia will launch a limited military attack against one or several NATO countries bordering Russia,” although it remains “highly unlikely that Russia will launch an invasion.” The report also highlights an intensification of Russian cyber and drone attacks, including “the foiled drone attack on Leipzig/Halle Airport, which…had been planned by Russia over a period of several months.” Meanwhile, reports indicate that an AI agent hacked into an Australian government health-data portal in June. As the AI race continues, the risk of hybrid warfare across both land and fibre-optic networks is growing rapidly.

Banxico held the overnight policy rate at 6.50% yesterday but adjusted its statement. Previously, the Bank had indicated that it was satisfied with the reference rate; however, the Fed’s decision to hike a few weeks ago has put Banxico in an uncomfortable position. Banxico has historically followed the Fed to some extent, and diverging policy paths could have significant consequences for USD/MXN, which is quickly approaching 17.8. The peso is particularly sensitive to interest-rate differentials because of its status as an attractive carry currency. Three-month USD/MXN implied volatility has risen from 9% to 10.3%, which is the highest level since April. Elevated volatility, combined with expectations of rapidly narrowing interest-rate differentials between Mexico and both the US and Japan, could point to USD/MXN moving above the 18-handle. However, Rabobank is currently maintaining its forecast of USD/MXN predominantly trading between 17 and 18. Read more here.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 10:40

UMich Consumer Confidence Slides In September As Republicans Lose Faith

After July's rebound to pre-war levels, a re-escalation in the MidEast (and soaring fuel costs) has sent confidence back towards YTD lows. Today's final September data was expected to show UMich headline sentiment sliding further (and inflation expectations re-accelerating).

And while sentiment is lower overall (month to month), it did actually pick up modestly intra-month from preliminary levels.

Consumer sentiment ticked down less than four index points in September, reaching the lowest reading in four months and back down notably from January 2026.

Views of current and year-ahead expected personal finances also both weakened notably this month, with concerns over high prices continuing to climb.

Year-ahead inflation expectations jumped from 4.0% last month to 4.6% this month, the highest reading since June. The current reading substantially exceeds the 3.4% seen in February before the Iran conflict began, along with all 2024 readings. Long-run inflation expectations ticked up to 3.4%, ending three consecutive months at 3.3%. These expectations remain higher than their 2024 range of 2.8% to 3.2%.

Democrats are the most fearful of inflation once again...

Since the start of the year, consumer sentiment has declined for all groups by age, education, geography, political party and income, according to the report.

A gauge of the outlook for the economy in the year ahead slumped in September to the lowest since 2022. Consumers' expectations for their personal finances also deteriorated.

Buying conditions for durable goods improved slightly, but it was partly “due to a perception that completing such purchases now would help consumers avoid higher prices in the future,” Joanne Hsu, director of the survey, said in a statement.

Perhaps most ominously from the report is the finding that after particularly large declines in sentiment this month, Republican sentiment is now 20% lower than January 2026; Democrats are down 13% over the same period.

“Despite political differences, consumers unanimously believe that the outlook for the economy has diminished,’’ Hsu said.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 10:10

New York Audits Utility AI Use, Cites Risk In "Growing Dependency"

By Robert Walton of UtilityDive

The New York Public Service Commission last week launched an inquiry into public utility use of artificial intelligence, noting that AI systems “create risk for organizations” but are also increasingly used to perform basic tasks.

The Sept. 17 order requires electric, gas and water utilities to respond within 60 days with “a written inventory report that describes all use cases of AI systems in their operations.”

Consolidated Edison, which serves New York City, said it uses AI for a range of uses, including customer service and system inspections. “As technology evolves, we will continue to evaluate opportunities,” a spokesperson said in an email to Utility Dive.

Public utilities are increasingly using AI systems for day-to-day operations, and New York regulators are concerned they are “susceptible to hallucinations, algorithmic biases, transparency issues, data privacy concerns, misconfiguration errors, cybersecurity attacks, and functional brittleness.”

“These potential risks may have negative consequences for the safety and reliability of New York’s critical infrastructure,” they said.

The PSC’s order directs utilities to file “a complete inventory” of all AI use cases in their operations and “disclose their policies, procedures, and protocols” around the burgeoning technology. The commission said it will “evaluate those procedures and protocols for adequacy and robustness against commonly accepted AI Governance frameworks.”

The commission’s order defines an “AI system” as a machine-based system that “can, for a given set of human-defined objectives, make predictions, recommendations, or decisions influencing real or virtual environments.”

New York utilities are already utilizing AI systems in various ways, including model outage predictions and electric usage. National Grid has deployed a system known as GridCARE to help free up interconnection capacity for large-load customers, regulators pointed out. The New York Power Authority has used AI to analyze drone-captured data for enhanced vegetation management.

Con Edison told Utility Dive the utility is using AI “to improve customer service, proactively identify potential equipment issues before they affect customers or public safety, and to strengthen our inspection and mapping capabilities.”

But more broadly, regulators noted “the actual extent and scope of AI systems in New York utility operations remains unclear.”

“The rapid evolution of AI is a double-edged sword for utilities,” PSC Chair Rory Christian said in a statement. “While AI can be a powerful tool that can result in cost efficiencies and improved operations, it also presents serious risks that must be evaluated and addressed appropriately.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 09:55

Citizenship Is Not A Product: Rubio Hits Birth-Tourism Fixers After SCOTUS Blocked Broader Ban

The United States is no longer pretending that a tourist visa plus a delivery room equals a legitimate path to American citizenship.

On September 23, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a new visa-restriction policy under Section 212(a)(3)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act aimed at the people who actually run the business: owners and managers of commercial birth-tourism networks, visa "fixers" who coach applicants to lie, foreign medical providers who arrange the trips and allegedly tap Medicaid, and anyone else who knowingly enables the trade. Family members of those targets can be swept in as well.

In short, people selling packages to facilitate US entry are on notice (perhaps they should focus on EB-5s like the Kushners).These foreign commercial networks advertise U.S. citizenship as a package - collecting tens of thousands of dollars to coach clients on what to say at the consulate, book housing near hospitals, and deliver a passport-eligible infant. The State Department's position is that this is fraud against the immigration system, not "tourism."

With six weeks until midterms, Rubio's announcement follows of President Trump's August 6 Executive Order 14419, Ending Birth Tourism - aimed at those entering on a nonimmigrant visa for the purpose of giving birth on U.S. soil - or helping someone else do it - and directed State and Homeland Security to deny visas, revoke them, bar re-entry, and act against facilitators. Days after Trump's EO, a Birth Tourism Prevention Task Force was assembled. About a month ago, officials said more than 750 visas tied to suspected birth-tourism activity had been revoked, with more coming. Meanwhile, embassy investigations earlier in the year claimed to have dismantled networks in West Africa (100-plus cases with fraudulent documents and fixers), Europe (400-plus suspected cases since 2024 tied to at least six companies), and North Africa (100-plus visa revocations).

Here's How The Sausage Is Made

Pregnant women - disproportionately from China, Russia, Nigeria, Turkey, and a handful of other countries - fly in on B-1/B-2 visitor visas, stay in "maternity hotels" or rented houses, deliver, obtain a birth certificate and Social Security number, and leave. The child is treated as a U.S. citizen, and when 21 years later, that child can petition for parents. Neat trick.

It's not just the poors either - packages have been marketed for $20,000 to $100,000: housing, nannies, shopping trips, coaching on how to answer consular questions, and sometimes advice on how to keep hospital bills off the books or shift them onto public programs. In 2019, federal prosecutors in Southern California took down operations charging Chinese clients six figures. This month, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced a Houston-area postpartum center had agreed to close after the state alleged it facilitated more than 1,000 births to Chinese nationals. Gov. Greg Abbott had already ordered state agencies to hunt licensed providers participating in the schemes. The 2020 Trump-era consular rule already advised officers they could deny visas if they believed the primary purpose of travel was to obtain citizenship for a child.

The H-1B pipeline is getting the same treatment: a wage-weighted lottery cut FY2027 registrations 38%, even as the courts have blocked Trump's $100,000 fee.

How Many Are We Talking About?

The conservative Center for Immigration Studies, using older Census-to-vital-records comparisons, has estimated 20,000 to 26,000 tourist births a year. CIS research director Steven Camarota told Congress this month that if those rates held, 200,000 to 300,000 children were born to birth tourists over the last decade. CDC data show fewer than 10,000 births in 2024 to mothers listing a foreign address - a figure almost everyone agrees undercounts women who use a U.S. hotel or rental as their "residence."

Globally - Jus soli in its American form is an outlier among developed states. Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Ireland, and much of Europe require a citizen or permanent-resident parent. The United States and Canada remain the G7 holdouts. A Conservative amendment to Bill C-3 that would have required at least one citizen or permanent-resident parent was voted down in October 2025; Canadian citizenship still attaches automatically to nearly anyone born on Canadian soil, diplomats excepted. The United States spent decades treating a plane ticket and a due date as sufficient allegiance.

Supreme Pivot

After the Supreme Court struck down Trump's broader day-one attempt to withhold birthright citizenship from children of illegal aliens and temporary visa holders, the White House went in a different direction - going after visa fraud, commercial facilitation, and the use of nonimmigrant categories for a permanent benefit.

Here's their angle:

1. Integrity of citizenship. A passport is not supposed to be a concierge product.
2. Taxpayers foot the bill for their medical care to a disputed extent.
3. Security and chain migration. A U.S.-citizen child creates a future immigrant-petition pipeline - with officials singling out China and Russia as high-volume sources. Whether one accepts the "hundreds of thousands" rhetoric from some administration figures or the lower CIS range, the screening problem is the same: the parent was never vetted as a future American.

So - in about three seconds, advocacy groups will call it racial profiling of Chinese and Russian applicants. Hospitals that marketed "birth packages" will lawyer up. Fixers will move advertising off open WeChat groups and into quieter channels, and pregnant women will keep trying to make it onto US soil. The order also contemplates denial of entry and removal for prior participants.

Legislation is already in the hopper - including a Ban Birth Tourism Act that would make seeking admission as a B visa holder for birth tourism an explicit ground of inadmissibility. The administration is not waiting for Congress.

American citizenship shouldn't have loopholes. 

* * *

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 09:35

Yen Jumps As Japan PM Admits Weak Currency "Problematic"

President Trump reportedly expressed concern over the weakness of the yen when he met Japan’s prime minister this week as the currency came under more pressure against the dollar.

The FT reports that Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama Satsuki Katayama told reporters in Tokyo that Trump and Sanae Takaichi discussed the yen in talks in New York on Tuesday.

The US president “expressed his concern” while Takaichi told Trump that she saw an undervalued yen as “problematic”, Katayama said.

The yen jumped around 1% against the dollar following the remarks - its best day in two weeks...

The finance minister also said she would continue to coordinate with her US counterpart Scott Bessent, reinforcing the signal that both governments are paying close attention to the currency’s depreciation.

“In light of [the Trump-Takaichi] meeting, Treasury secretary Bessent and I will continue to communicate closely on a range of matters, including foreign exchange,” Katayama added.

Last week, the BoJ raised rates to the highest level in 31 years, but the move did little to structurally strengthen the yen, even as the central bank’s governor Kazuo Ueda hinted strongly that there could be further tightening this year.

Options sentiment toward the yen turned more bullish lately, reflecting increased hedging demand against the risk of Japanese intervention.

“Intervention risk should put a ceiling on further yen weakness,” said Moh Siong Sim, a strategist at Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp.

“More importantly, the yen may be nearing a turning point as Trump’s concerns over its weakness point to deeper US-Japan coordination to support the currency.”

Japan and the US carried out their first coordinated yen-buying intervention since 1998 this summer after the currency weakened beyond 160. Japan spent a record ¥15.4 trillion ($97.4 billion) intervening in the month through Aug. 26, according to Finance Ministry data.

“This is largely another way of jawboning in my view,” said Charu Chanana, chief investment strategist at Saxo Markets.

“Unless it is followed by actual policy coordination, intervention or a clearer BOJ tightening path, I don’t think it changes the underlying yen story materially”

Bessent has also continued to signal support for a stronger yen, potentially giving Japanese warnings greater weight with traders than in previous episodes of currency weakness.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 09:12