Trump Says He No Longer Views Anthropic As A National Security Threat

Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump said he no longer views the artificial intelligence (AI) giant Anthropic as a national security threat.

Illustration of Anthropic on June 18, 2026. Riccardo Milani/Hans Lucas via AFP via Getty Images

"We have a situation with Anthropic, and we didn't like what they were doing, and so far I think they behaved very responsibly to our request," Trump told Axios's Marc Caputo in an interview that aired on June 19.

Caputo then asked Trump if he still viewed Anthropic and its CEO, Dario Amodei, as a threat to national security.

"Well, not now, but a week ago, maybe," Trump said, describing a meeting with Amodei at the G7 summit this week that influenced his change of heart.

"[Amodei] responded to us very quickly, because you know it's tremendous liability," Trump said. "You know, you can't play games with it. And he responded very responsibly."

The comments come one week after the Trump administration directed Anthropic to shut down foreign nationals' access to its new Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, which resulted in the company suspending access to all users entirely.

Issued on June 12, the directive from U.S. officials did not include specific details of potential security threats or concerns, according to Anthropic.

"Our understanding is that the government believes it has become aware of a method of bypassing, or 'jailbreaking' Fable 5," the company said in a statement at the time.

Trump told Axios that one of the company's competitors "turned Anthropic in" and raised alarms over the new models.

"They didn't like what [Anthropic was] doing. They were very concerned," he said.

Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

When Anthropic released Fable 5 to the general public on June 9, it said the model had exceeded the capabilities of "any model we've ever made generally available."

"It is state-of-the-art on nearly all tested benchmarks of AI capability, showing exceptional performance in software engineering, knowledge work, vision, scientific research, and many other areas," Anthropic stated.

As a "Mythos-class" model, Fable 5 is essentially as strong as Mythos, but with key safety features to make it safe for public use.

In the same announcement, Anthropic made Mythos 5 available to a small group of cyberdefenders and infrastructure providers. But after the company's decision to suspend access to all users on June 12, both models are currently unavailable.

Two days before Anthropic pulled access, Amodei wrote on X that he believes frontier models such as Mythos 5 "should face mandatory third-party testing for cyber, bio, and autonomy risks - with the power to block or revoke deployment of models that pose catastrophic risk."

Trump signed an executive order early this month asking AI firms to voluntarily submit their frontier models for government review 30 days before they're available to the general public.

At the time, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) criticized the order for only being "voluntary," saying that mandatory testing and review of frontier models is needed to "protect Americans."

Jacki Thrapp contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/20/2026 - 11:40

The Consumer Sentiment Disconnect From Economic Reality

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

The University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index just printed 44.8 in May. That’s the worst reading since the survey began in 1952. That print was lower than in 2008 and the 1980 inflation panic. It was also worse than the COVID lockdowns, yet the S&P 500 continues to climb higher, Q1 corporate earnings posted 27% growth, and weekly jobless claims sit near cycle lows. That “disconnect” has sparked many statements on social media, such as:

“GDP is growing at a healthy 2.7% in the US. GDP statistics in the US are clearly completely broken and no longer make any sense whatsoever.” – Philip Pilkington

That statement sums up many of the concerns I have read as of late, and the University of Michigan consumer sentiment disconnect from economic reality demands an honest answer. Which set of data is wrong? I think the honest answer is both, and neither. Over the last three decades, I’ve learned that surveys and behavior often part ways, and the gap usually tells you more about the survey than about the consumer. So let’s walk through what’s actually happening, because the consumer sentiment disconnect isn’t a single story. It’s three stories stacked on top of each other.

Start with the disconnect itself. If you only looked at the Michigan headline, you’d assume the country was in a depression. However, when you look at what people are actually doing, the picture changes completely.

Retail sales rose 0.5% in April and are running 4.9% above year-ago levels. In addition, Q1 earnings season has delivered an 84% beat rate on the S&P 500, well above the 5-year average of 78%, with aggregate earnings beating estimates by 20.7%. That’s the strongest surprise rate since the first quarter of 2021. Furthermore, initial jobless claims came in at 209,000 for the week ending May 16. Unemployment is sitting at 4.3%. Notably, the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model is tracking 4.3% annualized growth for Q2 as of May 21.

Notice in the chart above what’s never happened in the 25-year history of this comparison. In every prior cycle, sentiment and growth moved roughly in step. The 2001 mild recession, the Global Financial Crisis, and the COVID lockdowns all show sentiment and GDP cratering and recovering side by side. Since 2022, that relationship has broken in a way it never broke before. GDP has been running between +2% and +3% year over year for three straight years. Consumer sentiment has been running below 70 the entire time, levels that historically only appeared during deep recessions. The gap in the lower-right corner of that chart is the entire argument.

Meanwhile, the headline economic narrative making the rounds on social media insists that GDP statistics are “completely broken” and that real data show a hidden recession. Here’s the problem with that argument. The labor market, spending, earnings, and credit data all line up in the same direction. They don’t agree with the sentiment survey, but they do agree with each other. So when one indicator disagrees with five, the prior should be on the one. That’s the heart of the consumer sentiment disconnect we need to explain. We flagged an earlier version of this same divergence in February, when economic sentiment was already at odds with the strong macro data-based estimates.

Yes, There Really Is a Partisan Problem

So why is the Michigan survey saying something so different? Part of the answer is exactly what many investors suspect, and the data backs it up.

Notice in the chart above what happens at every administration handoff. In January 2021, the navy line shoots up while the red line plunges almost vertically. The two cross within weeks of Biden’s inauguration, and Independents barely budge in the middle. Then it happens again in January 2025, only sharper. Republican sentiment surges from 67 to 93 in two months, while Democrats collapse from 78 to 56 over the same window. The X-pattern at each transition is the partisan gap in action. The survey isn’t measuring the economy. It’s capturing tribal loyalty, and that mechanic is a meaningful slice of the consumer sentiment disconnect we’re trying to explain.

The Richmond Federal Reserve published research in 2024 that found something striking. Specifically, the partisan gap in consumer sentiment is now far larger than the gap by income, age, or education level. Per the Richmond Fed analysis, the gap between Democratic and Republican sentiment expanded from 21 points under George W. Bush to 25 points under Obama, and then to 45 points under Biden. That’s not noise. That’s a structural issue with how the survey is being completed.

Moreover, it gets worse. Researchers at BriefingBook documented what they call “asymmetric amplification.” Republicans swing their sentiment responses roughly 2.5 times as much as Democrats do, depending on who controls the White House. When their party wins, they go euphoric, but when they lose, they go bleak. Democrats do this too, just less violently. Importantly, adjusting only for that asymmetry closes about 30% of the gap between predicted and observed sentiment over the post-2020 period.

Fundstrat’s Tom Lee made waves last week with an even sharper critique. He pointed out that 51% of Democratic respondents are now reporting sentiment readings below the survey’s all-time worst reading of 47.6. He also flagged that around a quarter of Democratic respondents believe inflation is currently running above 100%. Clearly, that isn’t a forecast. That’s a vote.

Now layer on something most readers haven’t heard about. In 2024, the University of Michigan switched from cellular phone surveys conducted via random-digit dialing to an online-only address-based sampling method. The change began in April and was fully completed by July of that year.

U-M’s surveys director, Joanne Hsu, has consistently maintained that the methodology change produced comparable results. However, the independent research disagrees. Cummings and Tedeschi, in a widely cited analysis published in BriefingBook, estimated that the switch from phone to online interviews lowered the sentiment index by about 8.9 points, or more than 11%. They benchmarked their adjustment against Morning Consult’s continuous online sentiment survey, which uses the same five core questions but has been online since 2018. Notably, Morning Consult’s index did not show the same precipitous decline as Michigan’s headline number. That gap alone accounts for a meaningful slice of the consumer sentiment disconnect.

Tom Lee added a further claim that I’ll attribute to him because I haven’t independently verified the underlying response data. He stated that the new online survey is producing a respondent breakdown of roughly 66% Democratic and 33% Republican, which would not be representative of the U.S. adult population. Whether or not that exact ratio holds, the broader point stands. In fact, self-selection bias on online opt-in is a known issue, and the structural break in the series is real.

The Conference Board Tells a Different Story

This brings us to the question I’ve raised previously. If the Michigan number is so distorted, what does the other major survey say? The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index gives us a useful check.

Notice in the chart above just how different the two stories are. The Michigan survey’s Current Economic Conditions component is 26% below its 2008 financial crisis trough. By contrast, the Conference Board’s index, while soft, sits near its long-term average and remains well above every cyclical low of the modern era. Consider the historical anchors. In 2009, the Conference Board bottomed at 25.3. During the 2020 COVID shock, it hit 85.7. Today’s reading of 92.8 isn’t a crisis print on that scale.

Methodologically, the two surveys measure different things. The Conference Board’s index places greater weight on labor market and current business conditions. The Michigan survey places greater emphasis on household finances and inflation perceptions. When inflation perception is the dominant factor and partisan respondents spontaneously volunteer inflation rates above 100% as a protest vote, you get the Michigan number.

The real question is whether the partisan effect is mitigated in the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index? The honest answer is partly. The Conference Board doesn’t publish party-affiliation crosstabs the way Michigan does, so we can’t directly measure their internal partisan gap. However, its methodology is less exposed to the specific inflation-expectation channel where the partisan skew is most extreme. And its readings show that.

But This Time, Republicans Are Sour Too

Now here’s where the partisan-bias narrative needs an honest correction. If you stopped reading at “the Michigan survey is just upset Democrats,” you’d miss something important about the May 2026 reading.

According to the University of Michigan’s own release on May 22, sentiment among Independents and Republicans dropped to the lowest readings of the current presidential administration. Democratic sentiment, in contrast, was little changed from April. Republican long-run inflation expectations have more than doubled on a monthly basis since February 2025. The cost-of-living concern is showing up across the political spectrum, not just on one side.

Why? Two reasons. First, gasoline prices surged 12.3% in April thanks to the ongoing conflict with Iran and the supply disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz. Pump prices are at levels not seen since 2022. Gas is the most visible price in the American economy, and it’s hitting every household. Second, tariff-related price pressure is starting to filter through, and roughly 30% of respondents in early May spontaneously mentioned tariffs as a concern. Make no mistake, those aren’t imagined problems.

So the partisan-bias critique is real, but it’s only part of the story. The 2026 Michigan plunge contains a partisan distortion, a methodology distortion, and a genuine bipartisan reaction to higher prices. In short, the consumer sentiment disconnect we’re seeing isn’t just noise. Pulling those threads apart matters if you want to use the data correctly.

“The Michigan survey isn’t broken. It’s measuring something narrower than the headline suggests, and what it’s measuring is real. The question is whether what it’s measuring should drive your portfolio.”

Why The Consumer Sentiment Disconnect Rarely Predicts Spending

The most important question isn’t whether the Michigan number is “correct.” It’s whether the number actually predicts anything useful for investors. Decades of research from the Federal Reserve system suggest the answer is largely “no.“

A February 2026 paper from the Kansas City Federal Reserve titled “Forecasting with Feelings” found that the link between consumer sentiment and growth in real household spending has been modest historically. The authors built two forecasting models: one using only official economic data, and one augmenting that data with consumer sentiment surveys. The sentiment-augmented model didn’t materially improve the forecast over the past 30 years. Fed Chair Jerome Powell echoed that finding in his May 2025 press conference, stating directly that “the link between sentiment data and consumer spending has been weak. It’s not been a strong link at all.”

A 2014 Boston Fed paper reached a similar conclusion. When you control for standard fundamentals such as income, employment, and wealth, the role of consumer sentiment in predicting consumption is marginal at best. People can feel terrible about the economy, yet still spend. We’ve seen that play out for almost three full years now.

The composite chart, which combines the Michigan and Conference Board indices to dampen the noise in each survey, clearly shows the broader pattern. Confidence has weakened from cycle highs, but the market has continued to advance. As we covered in our prior analysis of the confidence dichotomy between consumers and investors, there have been three other periods where stocks rallied while sentiment fell. The dot-com bubble. The mid-cycle expansion of the late 1990s. And the post-COVID period. In each of those cases, the market eventually had to reckon with reality, but the disconnect lasted longer than skeptics expected.

The composite sits at 71 today, a full 47 points below the October 2018 cycle high of 118. Over that same stretch, the S&P 500 has more than doubled, and that’s the consumer sentiment disconnect we’ve been pointing at for the better part of three years.

What Investors Should Actually Watch

If sentiment surveys aren’t reliable inputs for portfolio decisions, what is? My answer is the same one I’ve given for 20 years. Behavior beats feelings every time. So watch what consumers and businesses are doing with their money, not what they say in a survey. That single shift in focus turns the consumer sentiment disconnect from a confusing headline into a useful contrarian signal.

The takeaway from that table is simple. Five of the six categories show behavior diverging from sentiment in the same direction. People are saying one thing and doing another. When that happens at this scale, you don’t trade off the talk. You trade off the action.

That said, two items in the table do deserve real attention. Gas prices are a tax on consumers and on margins. If the Iran conflict drags into the summer driving season, demand destruction becomes a real risk for cyclical names. And tariff pass-through is the slow leak that markets keep underpricing. Importantly, those are concrete data series we can monitor, not abstract sentiment vibes. Pump prices, container shipping rates, retailer margin guidance, and consumer credit delinquencies are on the watchlist.

The Conference Board’s index, the Atlanta Fed’s GDP nowcast, the earnings beat rate, the retail sales print, and the jobless claims data all point to an economy that is slowing in some places, accelerating in others, and not remotely close to the Depression-era reading on the Michigan headline. What does this mean for investors? Stay disciplined. Watch the behavioral data. Maintain risk-management protocols. Be ready to lean in when the noise creates a real dislocation, and be ready to lean out when the data, not the surveys, actually rolls over.

Consumers are gloomy. Some of that gloom is justified, particularly around gas and inflation. But gloom is not a portfolio strategy.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/20/2026 - 10:30

Trump Mocks Italy's Meloni Over Disputed G7 Photo: 'She Wants To Be Friends Again, No Thanks!'

President Trump has once again lashed out at Italy, as Washington and this 'wayward' NATO ally continue to clash on a range of issues from Iran to Israel to Ukraine..

It follows on the heels of the cancellation of the planned diplomatic visit by Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani. President Trump on Saturday has newly taken to Truth Social to reiterate that PM Meloni "asked, over and over, for a picture with me during the G-7 meeting in France."

He continued: “She is doing poorly in Italy with her level of popularity, possibly because she turned down the United States of America, a Country that truly loves and protects Italy, when it came to denying Iran from obtaining or developing a Nuclear Weapon (But so did NATO, for that matter!).”

According to more background:

Trump’s comments were aired Friday on the La7 network. A correspondent had asked the president about Ukraine, but Trump raised Meloni and made the claim about the photo. Trump said he was not obliged to take the picture with her but that he felt sorry for her and agreed, La7 said. The broadcaster put a dubbed version of the conversation online, but not the original English audio.

Meloni has very publicly rejected Trump's version of events at the G7:

Clearly irked at President Donald Trump’s suggestion that she had had “begged” him for a photo at the Group of Seven summit earlier this week, the Italian prime minister said this was “totally fabricated.”

Bilateral defense agreements and NATO's base sharing framework allows US access to key strategic hubs for US operations in the Mediterranean - however, Italian law and a historic treaty requires parliamentary approval for anything outside that scope. 

It was in late March that for the first time Italy's defense ministry confirmed that "some US bombers" were denied landing at Sigonella – one of seven US navy bases in Italy.

Among the scenes at a G7 working lunch in France on June 16 was this...

Pool image via AP

Italy tried to frame the issue as merely bureaucratic and an issue of paperwork. Initial complaints were that the US didn't follow required permission protocol, and requested landing only while in the air and already en route to Sicily.

Meloni's office has all the while maintained it is "acting in full compliance with existing international agreements"  - while underscoring that each flight request must be "carefully examined on a case-by-case basis, as has always been the case in the past."

More of Meloni's response to Trump's latest Truth Social:

Italy's Meloni responds to Trump:

President Trump, these constant, unprovoked attacks are senseless. As for my popularity, being your friend certainly has not helped it, nor does it depend on my relationship with you.

My popularity depends on my ability to defend Italy’s… pic.twitter.com/myot615UVl

— Clash Report (@clashreport) June 20, 2026

But the truth also is that American hegemonic action in the Middle East, and the Iran conflict in particular, is deeply unpopular among the Italian population, which has long had a strongly anti-war bent especially among the youth. Meloni has tried to assure here electorate that she's never "begged" for anything from Trump.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/20/2026 - 09:55

FBI Warns That Fake FIFA Website Being Used to Steal Personal Information

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

The FBI on June 16 advised people to be wary of fraudulent websites that try to mimic World Cup or FIFA sites, as the agency warned that such websites have been used to steal personal information and sell counterfeit tickets.

In a public service announcement, the FBI stated that scammers and fraudsters have launched spoofing attempts designed to mimic FIFA’s official website as the World Cup games hosted in North America continue.

“Threat actors often create spoofed websites by slightly altering characteristics of legitimate website domains, with the purpose of gathering personally identifiable information entered by a user into the site, including name, home address, phone number, email address, and banking information,” the FBI statement reads.

The individuals behind such websites may be attempting to trick people into entering sensitive information that could be used to “create new accounts in a victim’s name and ultimately defraud the victim,” the FBI stated.

The federal law enforcement bureau noted that it has identified individuals who had attempted to collect personal information, sell counterfeit World Cup tickets or “hospitality products,” or engaged in other forms of malicious activity in connection with the scams.

The fraudulent website domains could include alternate spellings of words or use a different top-level domain, or TLD, referring to the final segment of the web address, such as .com, .gov, .org, and more, according to the notice.

Scammers may also create a deceptive version of a legitimate website, such as fifa.com, that tricks people into thinking they are going to the official website, it stated. Some include website domains that use alternate domain extensions such as “.blue,” “.beer,” “.city,” and more. Dozens of fraudulent domains were identified by the FBI that have been linked to the scheme, including fake domains related to FIFA jobs, merchandise, or tickets.

FBI officials advised people to first verify website URLs before they enter potentially sensitive or personally identifying information and to go to FIFA’s official website by typing the URL into their browser rather than relying on results produced by search engines, while also verifying that it reads fifa.com.

An Epoch Times review found that many of the websites listed by the FBI in the alert appeared to be down. However, the FBI stated that the “public should be aware that new websites will continue to appear.”

“Exercise caution when clicking on advertisements. Before clicking on an advertisement, check the URL to make sure the site is authentic,” the notice reads. “Malicious advertisements may redirect users to a different website than indicated.”

The June 16 public service announcement did not say whether anyone was victimized by a FIFA website-related scam. But victims who believe that they were targeted in a scam should file a complaint with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov, it states

Aside from combating fake websites, the FBI has also acted to keep drones away from World Cup games. Earlier this week, an illegal immigrant with a prior criminal history, including a cocaine-trafficking conviction, was arrested for flying a drone near a World Cup event in Atlanta, the FBI announced.

The World Cup lasts from June 11 until July 19, with matches being played across the United States, Mexico, and Canada.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/20/2026 - 09:20

The post Republican Claims of Massive Fraud Imply Elon Musk Is a Moron appeared first on CEPR.

The World Cup's Uneven Playing Field

Due to its truly global footprint, the FIFA World Cup has always been a celebration of diversity, both on and off the pitch.

It brings together different cultures, different playing styles and different levels of skill, professionalism and financial muscle.

However, with the tournament now over a week old, it is clear that they are playing 'football' on an uneven playing field.

As Statista's Felix Richter reports, while nations like France, Spain and England have assembled squads full of international superstars, other participants will field teams that are largely unknown to fans outside of the respective country.

According to estimates from Transfermarkt.com, there is a huge gulf in squad value between the nations traditionally challenging for the title and those happy to be part of the show.

You will find more infographics at Statista

France’s star-studded squad is worth more than 70 times as the teams assembled by Qatar, Jordan and Iraq, the least valuable squads in the tournament.

This is a reflection of the balance of power in global football, which is concentrated in Europe’s top leagues.... and correlates very well with likelihood of success.

It is partly for this reason that surprises have become increasingly rare in the world’s biggest football competition, where it’s hard to imagine a fairy tale run of a smaller nation to the tournament’s final stages.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/20/2026 - 07:35

The Brits Should Declare Their Independence, Too

Authored by J.B. Shurk via American Thinker,

British tyranny is globalism, and globalism must be destroyed.

British tyranny is so repulsive that the British people owe it to themselves to overthrow their government masters.  It has been two-hundred-fifty years since America’s Declaration of Independence recognized the Crown system as a threat to Americans’ lives and liberties.  English-speaking peoples still suffering under the British yoke should follow suit.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a near-total ban on social media for children under sixteen years old.  Ten of the most popular social media platforms are now age-restricted, with the toxic-leftist Bluesky platform a notable exception.  The government claims to be “protecting children” from online harm.  That’s a lie.  If the British government cared about protecting British children, government ministers and police forces would not have covered up Islamic rape gangs targeting children for three-plus decades.  The British government would not censor online reporting of foreigners murdering young Brits.  The British government has systematically chosen to sacrifice the United Kingdom’s children.

This online “safety” measure must be understood, then, as a ruse meant to expand the government’s control over online information.  Australia, New Zealand, and Canada have similar surveillance systems in place — all ostensibly erected to “protect the children” but designed, in reality, to control the speech of citizens.  In these countries, the only way to communicate with other citizens on social media platforms is to prove your age by proving your identity.  Mandatory digital identification systems are disguised as child welfare checks.  The Brits and their Commonwealth vassals have built a surveillance system to monitor citizens’ thoughts, censor unapproved speech, and promote official propaganda.

Tyrant Starmer is pushing this online surveillance infrastructure while citizens in the U.K. are protesting and rioting against the British government’s murderous mass immigration policies — which have invited foreign rapists and killers to overrun the kingdom and slaughter citizens.

Third-world barbarism is exploding across Europe.  Official Eurostat numbers show that sexual violence offenses in the European Union have doubled over the last decade.  Rapes skyrocketed 150%.  Knife crimes and murders are off the charts.  Foreign nationals who have immigrated into Europe are responsible for roughly fifty percent of violent crime.

Just as the unelected European Commission ruling the continent continues to cover up immigrant crimes and censor citizens’ online discussion of these ongoing threats, the British government is more concerned about punishing native Brits for noticing that they are under attack than repelling violent invaders from Britain’s shores.  (If Keir Starmer had been in Winston Churchill’s shoes during the Nazi Blitz, the British government would have surely helped the Germans cover up the bombings while blaming all the destruction on British citizens!)

Starmer’s government spies run a propaganda outfit that controls all public “narratives” regarding immigrant crime against native Brits.  The group of spies write and release misleading statements, presented as coming from the families of victims, that are designed to downplay rapes, murders, and other violent incidents.  While these spies use propaganda and censorship to cover up serious crimes committed by immigrants, they simultaneously engage in information warfare against British citizens by branding legitimate public concerns over safety as “disinformation,” “far-right racism,” “violence,” and “hate speech.”  This spy group in charge of monitoring and shaping the public’s thoughts has flagged “reading Shakespeare, Chaucer or Milton, or books documenting grooming gang scandals as potential indicators of far-Right susceptibility.”  The British spies — a veritable Gestapo fabricating public “truth” — plant media stories, steer online discussions, and deploy operatives to disrupt or direct public protests.

The British government claims the power to block “false information” that is “legal but harmful.”  On its website, the British government defines “extreme right-wing terrorist ideology” to include the belief that “‘Western culture’ is under threat from mass migration and a lack of integration by certain ethnic and cultural groups.”  British Technology Secretary Liz Kendall claims that it is “illegal” to promote “disorder” on social media.  Meanwhile, Starmer’s government tyrants are instructing journalists how to report immigrant attacks on British citizens.  These are the actions of dictators who do not care about “protecting the children.”

Surveying the daily violent crime by immigrants and the British government’s ongoing cover-ups, former Prime Minister Liz Truss says there is a government campaign to “undermine the family” and the “nation state.”  She says that forced diversity has corrupted the institutions and that government ministers suppress information and attack citizens while protecting barbarians.  She concludes that mass migration and government control over information are being used as weapons to destroy Western civilization.

For years, we Americans have watched the evils of globalism expand both at home and abroad in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and most of continental Europe.  Branded by its international supporters as some kind of final, utopian stage of human governance, globalism is just another Frankensteinian beast — created from all the worst parts of Marxist-communism, Leninism, Maoism, fascism, Nazism, authoritarianism, oligarchy, corporatism, elitism, and central bank hegemony.  Globalism is totalitarianism.  Its god is government, although it has created special liturgical rituals regarding an imaginary “climate change” apocalypse meant to scare the world’s peasants into accepting the supremacy of government authority and bureaucrats’ (globalism’s “priests”) centralized power over all economic transactions.

Globalist governments seek total control over the people, and every policy that globalist governments shove down our throats is meant to advance this goal of total control.  COVID was not a health emergency.  It was a government excuse to roll out digital identifications, mandatory pharmaceutical injections, “vaccine” passports capable of monitoring real-time citizen movements, and online censorship.  It was a government program meant to condition citizens to accept that government bureaucrats should be empowered with limitless authorities — including the discretion to regulate church services, close and bankrupt businesses, lockdown citizens in their homes, separate family members from dying loved ones, and quarantine citizens for non-compliance.  The “global warming/cooling/climate change/extreme weather” hobgoblin is a government-designed scare tactic identical to the COVID “emergency.”  The only difference is that the “global warming” fearmongers have been telling us that we have twelve years left to live for the last century, while the COVID fearmongers told us that we had twelve days to live unless we complied.  Manufacturing compliance was and remains globalist governments’ only strategic objective.

Globalism’s ruling elites lust for wealth, power, and total control over the public.  Their lust will never be sated.  They wish for a small collection of government and economic masters to subjugate as much of the planet’s population as possible as serfs.  Globalism is a conquering empire.  Its oligarchy of central bank popes, chosen political governors, corporate monarchs, and techno-fascist-brownshirt-bureaucrats are modern-day slavers and colonizers.  Instead of putting us in chains and whipping us when we “misbehave,” they put us in a lifetime of debt and prosecute us for expressing opinions contrary to official government orthodoxy.

Do you believe that marriage is an institution recognizing the sacred union between one man and one woman?  Do you believe that men and women are biologically different?  Do you believe that mass immigration is a threat to national security?  Do you believe “multiculturalism” and forced “diversity” destroy excellence, discount merit, and weaken the naturally salubrious bonds of common cultural heritage?  Do you believe that every human has a God-given right to self-defense?  Do you believe that Christians should remain faithful to their beliefs in both their public and private lives?  If so, globalist governments see you as an “extremist,” “right-winger,” “religious fanatic,” “terrorist,” and “enemy of the State.”  Your thoughts will be condemned.  Your speech will be censored.  You will be fined and prosecuted.  You will go to prison for your beliefs.

The best way for Americans to fight encroaching globalism over here is to support British patriots in their fight against globalism over there.  As Benjamin Franklin persuasively argued, “We must all hang together, or we shall all hang separately.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/20/2026 - 07:00

The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Danish Blend coffee, grab a seat outside, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:

• Calvin and Hobbes and the Price of Integrity: How Bill Watterson Stuck to His Guns — and Vanished: Watterson’s way of speaking about these things occasionally veers into the self-important register of grievance, the eternal complaint of someone for whom things-as-they-are never satisfy because things-as-they-were always seem better. But there’s no denying the conviction with which he fought the fight, even before he had the name-brand authority he’d later earn, even back when it really looked like he was going to lose. And he came very close to losing some of his biggest battles with the syndicate. (The Republic of Letters)

• Ken Griffin’s Billions and Billions The hedge-fund titan is an unabashed big spender, from pièds-a-terre to politics. “When I was in college, I wanted to be in private equity,” he said. He named one of the titans of that field: “Henry Kravis—that was the mission.” I pressed him to cite someone who had influenced him in the world of hedge funds—the investment firms that emerged in the nineteen-fifties with trading strategies designed to offer wealthy clients exclusivity, higher returns, and lower risks. Griffin dodged the question with a feeble joke. Early in his career, he said, whenever he told someone that he worked at a hedge fund, the response “was, literally, ‘Do you use shrubs or bushes?’ ” (New Yorker)

• Is Lloyd’s of London the world’s oldest podshop? No. But it’s sort of a bit like one: The 94 syndicates for which we have data in 2025 are not exactly individual firms. In fact, they have no legal identity whatsoever. Instead, they are bits of cordoned-off capital, which are used as conduits by 54 different managing agents to both compete and collaborate to write Lloyd’s of London insurance policies on behalf of underlying members. (Financial Times free)

• Leave It to Beaver: Everything is bigger at Buc-ee’s. Clearly Buc-ee’s is more than just a large gas station. It has come to symbolize Texas, the world-conquering juggernaut. As Steve Bannon said recently, Texas is “where the future is being built.” Or as Abbott put it in 2024, at the grand opening of the Luling location, “Beaver and Buc-ee’s are now icons across the United States. They spread Texas hospitality, great barbecue, and Beaver Nuggets wherever they go.” A lifelong Texan, I came to realize that I needed to see the future for myself. I needed to eat some Beaver Nuggets. (The Baffler)

• How trust funds made the modern world In progress we trust: In fact, trusts are everywhere. In the parts of the world which use law derived from English law, they are as important a legal concept as contracts or negligence. Nearly all shares in Britain are traded on the basis of trusts. Every home jointly owned by a couple involves a trust. They play just as important a role in America, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Hong Kong and Singapore, whose legal systems are also derived from English law. For much of their history, trusts have been an instrument of social and economic progress. They allowed married women to own property when the rest of the law prohibited it. England’s rich tradition of clubs and societies owes its origins to the institution of the trust, which enabled much greater freedom of association in the early modern and industrial period than in other European countries. The London Stock Exchange and the insurance marketplace Lloyd’s were both originally trusts. (Benedict’s Substack)

• Is spontaneity a luxury good? On line culture, algorithmic curation, and the death of wandering. On how schedule density, family logistics, and overcommitment have made spur-of-the-moment plans a class marker. Useful read whether you have kids or not. (Your Brain on Money)

• Has AI Already Killed How-To Nonfiction?: Tim Ferriss looks at his own sales data and the broader category trends for how-to nonfiction. The early evidence is hard to argue with; Sales Trends, My Personal Data, and What It Might Mean for the Future (Tim Ferriss)

• Samurai City: Works in Progress on how Edo became the largest city on Earth by 1700 — a samurai-administered megalopolis with surprisingly modern logistics. Pure delight for urbanism nerds. For three hundred years, Japan enjoyed enviable stability and peace. All it took was locking up its warlike samurai elite in the world’s least efficient city. (Works In Progress)

• “You Killed the Car” A Ferrari and a distinctive Highland Park home combined for an iconic scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. This adapted excerpt from a new book details how it all went (crashing) down. (Chicago Mag)

• Cracking stories, Gromit: Wallace’s long-suffering canine companion to tell all in memoir: After ‘bottling everything up for a long time’ the faithful pet, who has remained silent for many years, will spill the beans on the pair’s ‘pet hates and fur-vent passions’ Gromit is getting a memoir. The Guardian plays it straight, which is half the joke. (The Guardian)

Video of the day: How Ashton Kutcher Outsmarted Silicon Valley

Be sure to check out our Master’s in Business this week with Seth Klarman, CEO and portfolio manager of The Baupost Group. Founded in 1982 with $27 million in seed capital, over the past four decades, Baupost has grown to $22 billion, with annual net returns of over 20%. The legendary investor is known for his patient, risk-averse, and contrarian approach to finding deeply discounted securities across equities, distressed debt, and real estate.  He is the author of Margin of Safety (1991) and the editor of the 7th edition of Security Analysis (2023).

 

 

Source: Ritholtz Wealth Management

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America's Military Readiness Depends On Deployable Nuclear Power

Authored by James Durso via RealClearDefense.,com,

For decades, energy policy in Washington was debated on the basis of economics, climate change, and domestic politics. That era is over. The United States is entering a period where energy security must be recognized as a core pillar of national security and military readiness.

The global competition underway with China is not just about trade or tariffs. It is about industrial capacity, technological dominance, artificial intelligence (AI), semiconductor manufacturing, and defense production – all of which depend on a foundational requirement: abundant and reliable electric power.

America’s future military superiority will rely in part by whether the nation can generate enough resilient, secure baseload electricity to support its defense industrial base and rapidly expanding digital infrastructure.

That is why deployment of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) must be a top national priority.

The United States faces a convergence of unprecedented energy demand and an electric grid that is at capacity and is vulnerable to cyberattacks, physical sabotage, transmission bottlenecks, and extreme weather events.

Intermittent energy sources alone will not meet the scale or reliability requirements necessary to sustain America’s strategic position. The nation requires dependable, 24/7 baseload power capable of supporting critical infrastructure under all conditions – including during natural disasters, geopolitical crises, or military conflicts.

Advanced nuclear energy, delivered by SMRs, is rapidly emerging as one of the few realistic solutions capable of meeting those demands on a shorter timeline than legacy power systems.

Unlike traditional large-scale nuclear plants, SMRs are designed to be smaller, factory manufactured, and more flexible in deployment. They can be built to support specific industrial facilities, defense installations, AI infrastructure, and in remote or constrained environments where grid reliability is a concern.

The national security implications are significant.

Modern military operations are increasingly energy intensive. Defense installations, logistics hubs, shipyards, semiconductor fabrication plants, weapons production facilities, and command and control infrastructure all depend on uninterrupted electricity. Yet many of these facilities remain dependent on centralized transmission systems vulnerable to disruption.

One of the most strategically important developments in the SMR sector is the growing focus on “behind-the-meter” deployment capability — the ability to place reactors adjacent to mission-critical facilities rather than relying exclusively on long-distance transmission infrastructure.

This approach could fundamentally reshape military and industrial resilience in the United States.

Distributed advanced nuclear generation could provide secure dedicated power to defense installations, industrial corridors, AI campuses, and manufacturing hubs while reducing dependence on vulnerable grid infrastructure without competing for electric power with civilian communities. It could also improve survivability during cyberattacks, physical sabotage, or grid instability scenarios.

Equally important is the question of fuel security.

One of the least discussed but most consequential challenges facing the advanced nuclear industry is fuel availability. Several next-generation reactor concepts depend on High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU), a fuel source that lacks large-scale commercial availability in North America and is tied in part to Russian-controlled enrichment capacity.

That presents a strategic vulnerability the United States cannot afford to ignore.

Energy independence cannot exist if critical fuel supply chains remain dependent on geopolitical competitors or unstable foreign markets. Any serious national nuclear strategy must prioritize technologies capable of operating with commercially available fuel supported by secure supply chains.

This is where deployment readiness becomes critically important.

For years, much of the advanced nuclear conversation has focused on future concepts, demonstration projects, and theoretical deployment timelines. But America’s strategic competitors are not waiting. China is rapidly expanding its nuclear footprint domestically and internationally as part of a broader geopolitical strategy tied to industrial influence and infrastructure dominance. The U.S. Department of Energy reports that from 2014 to 2023 China increased installed net nuclear capacity almost three times, and that domestic experience is the basis for Beijing’s push to export 30 nuclear reactors by 2030 to countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative.

The United States must move with urgency, and the technology exists to do it now.

Today, NuScale Power is the only SMR developer with full U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission standard design approval under the modern Part 52 licensing framework and the only company currently positioned with a commercially deployable, regulator-approved SMR technology transitioning to manufacturing.

That distinction matters because licensing is the hurdle that will determine which technologies are deployed in the next decade.

Most competing SMR and Generation IV reactor companies, to include Westinghouse, Oklo, TerraPower, and X-Energy are years away from NRC approval, rely on unproven fuel supply chains, or continue operating within demonstration programs without commercially deployable designs. Many experts acknowledge that several competing technologies may not achieve meaningful commercial deployment for another decade or longer.

NuScale’s position does not simply reflect a business milestone but the reality that the United States currently has NRC-approved SMR technology with a near-term pathway toward commercial deployment at scale.

The recent collaboration involving the Tennessee Valley Authority, ENTRA1 Energy, and NuScale is important not simply because of the companies involved, but because it signals a broader shift from discussion to deployment.

The proposed initiative, potentially involving up to six gigawatts of SMR capacity, reflects growing recognition that advanced nuclear energy may soon become indispensable to supporting America’s industrial expansion, digital economy, and national security infrastructure.

This is an exciting development that underscores a reality policymakers must confront: deployment timelines matter.

The United States does not have the luxury of waiting another decade for energy technologies trapped in prolonged licensing processes, uncertain fuel pathways, or unresolved manufacturing challenges. Strategic competition is accelerating now.

This is not an argument for abandoning other energy sources. It is an argument for recognizing that advanced nuclear power is increasingly becoming an essential component of America’s long-term energy resilience strategy alongside fossil fuels and renewables.

The debate over SMRs should not be framed as solely an energy issue.

It is fundamentally about whether the United States can maintain military readiness, secure critical infrastructure, support advanced manufacturing, power the AI revolution, and preserve geopolitical leadership in an increasingly unstable world.

Energy dominance is no longer simply economic policy. It is national defense policy. Small Modular Reactors allow America to maintain its strategic advantage.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/19/2026 - 23:00

8 Frightening Forecasts For The Future Of Fraud

Fraud is entering a new era. Businesses across North America expect fraud trends like biometric fraud, deepfake scams, and synthetic identities to become more common in 2026 as criminals adopt faster and more sophisticated tools.

This visualization, created by Visual Capitalist's Julia Wendling, in partnership with Inigo for the Fraud in Data campaign’s sixth post, uses data from the Sumsub Fraud Report 2025 to explore the fraud trends businesses believe will shape the future of digital risk.

Biometric Fraud Could Become the Biggest Threat

Surveyed businesses expect biometric fraud to rise the most, with 67% predicting an increase. As companies rely more on facial recognition, voice authentication, and remote onboarding, fraudsters are finding new ways to exploit those systems.

Deepfake technology is already making identity verification harder. In the future, AI-generated videos, cloned voices, and stolen biometric data could make fraud attempts more convincing and more scalable than ever before.

Businesses also expect synthetic identity fraud to grow, with 56% anticipating a rise. Criminals are increasingly combining real and fake information to create identities that can bypass traditional fraud checks.

AI and Deepfakes Are Changing Fraud Trends

Businesses expect fraud attacks to become more automated in 2026. Around 44% predict increases in advanced AI-driven attacks, deepfake scams, and forged identity documents.

Another 33% expect AI-generated fake profiles to rise as fraudsters use generative AI tools to impersonate real users online. These scams could become faster to produce and harder to detect across financial services, ecommerce, and digital platforms.

As fraud tactics evolve, businesses may need to shift from reactive fraud prevention toward real-time risk monitoring powered by machine learning and behavioral analysis.

Data Breaches Will Continue to Fuel Identity Fraud

Data breaches are expected to remain a major source of fraud risk. About 33% of businesses anticipate more identity theft linked to stolen personal data.

Organized fraud networks are also expanding, according to 22% of respondents. As cybercriminal groups become more coordinated, fraud operations could become increasingly global and industrialized.

The Future of Fraud Trends

Companies that invest in adaptive verification systems, stronger cybersecurity, and understand the data around fraud prevention may be better positioned to respond to the next generation of threats.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/19/2026 - 22:15

How The Trump Admin Achieved Record Drug Seizures

Authored by Troy Myers via The Epoch Times,

SAN DIEGO - As the flood of illegal immigrants at the southern border slowed to a trickle, agents shifted gears. Now, they're focused on seizing drugs - in record amounts - as the border is more secure than ever, officials told The Epoch Times.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) took The Epoch Times behind the scenes at the border between San Diego and Mexico - home to the San Ysidro Port of Entry, the busiest land border crossing in the Western Hemisphere.

The San Diego sector, patrolled by thousands of federal officers, encompasses more than 56,000 square miles. That includes 60 linear miles of international boundary between the United States and Mexico, and an additional 931 miles of coastal border stretching from the California-Mexico line north to Oregon.

Officers said the success they're experiencing - not just in drug seizures, but also in fewer illegal immigrants entering the country - stems from the Trump administration's tough border policies.

"Without having four or five hundred people in detention making an asylum claim, I'm going to take those officers and say, 'I don't need you to process asylum claims, I need you out there looking for dope, looking for people smuggling, looking for those agriculture violations,'" Mariza Marin, port director at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, told The Epoch Times.

Marin said she was able to move about 180 officers from handling administrative work processing illegal immigrants to enforcement and inspection.

"That's huge; 180 individuals is huge," said Sidney Aki, San Diego director of field operations.

The Evidence

Under the Biden administration, total drug seizure amounts for fiscal years 2024 and 2023 were 573,000 and 549,000, respectively.

In 2025, the first year of the Trump administration, drug seizures were slightly more, at 583,000.

But border agents seized 516,000 pounds of drugs from October 2025 through April 2026 alone. That's the first seven months of the current fiscal year for CBP, meaning five months remain for the agency to extend those numbers. And historically, summer months tend to yield higher seizure amounts, according to Department of Homeland Security data.

In April, agents seized 185,000 pounds of illegal narcotics, the biggest monthly seizure since officials began to track totals.

U.S Customs and Border Protection agents monitor border traffic outside of San Diego on May 26, 2026. Agents who had previously been tied up processing a flood of illegal immigrants under the Biden administration are seizing significant amounts of illegal narcotics compared to years prior. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

Last month, CBP announced its office of field operations had seized a historic amount of fentanyl: about 100 million lethal doses from October 2025 through May this year. According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, a lethal dose of fentanyl is about two milligrams.

"When you look at the point of where we are now compared to the course we were on previously, we are increasing our numbers and seizures," Aki said.

Methamphetamine and cocaine seizures are also surpassing previous numbers.

This fiscal year, CBP officers have seized more than 152,000 pounds of methamphetamine, eclipsing seizures for all of fiscal year 2025. They've seized more than 28,000 pounds of cocaine, surpassing fiscal year 2025 to date by about 6,000 pounds.

Federal Backing

While policy changes on immigration and the border have led to the refocusing of personnel, a top-to-bottom support system from the Trump administration has also created high morale and motivation for federal officers, they said.

Border enforcement and security, which is "emphasized significantly with this administration," continues to increase, Aki said.

Since Trump returned to the White House, he has signed executive actions designating cartels as terrorist organizations and fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed nearly a year ago, allocated $170 billion for border security and immigration enforcement initiatives.

On June 10, Trump signed a roughly $70 billion bill to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol. The Secure America Act ended a 116-day dispute over immigration funding.

The measure will fund ICE and Border Patrol through Sept. 30, 2029, going beyond the end of Trump's term.

Enforcement At An Entry Point

The Epoch Times witnessed how agents at a port of entry carry out their tasks.

The massive San Ysidro Port of Entry has a total of 34 lanes, which are funneled into seven upon entry, and two separate pedestrian walkways that allow travelers to cross the international boundary by foot.

About 42,000 to 47,000 vehicles cross per day, Marin said.

Taking into account the number of passengers in each vehicle, commercial trucks, and pedestrians, the total number of individuals entering the United States through the crossing each day likely eclipses 100,000.

The vetting process to ensure each of these travelers is abiding by U.S. law starts with what federal agents call the "primary" or "technology zone," immediately adjacent to the international boundary.

But, with the help of Mexican authorities, intelligence gathering and enforcement can extend beyond that.

Coordination with Mexico is the best it's ever been, the officials said. Sometimes, their Mexican law enforcement counterparts intercept bad actors before they even reach the U.S. border, said Justin De La Torre, chief patrol agent for the San Diego Sector.

However, with so many thousands of vehicles and individuals seeking to enter the United States each day, things can slip by Mexican authorities.

That's when the primary or technology zone comes into play. The zone is where an intelligence package begins to be built on travelers.

Border patrol agents take pictures of each car, its driver, and any passengers. Radiation portal monitors scan vehicles to ensure there are no radiological threats. This technology, Marin said, has a very low alarm threshold - for good reason.

By the time a traveler reaches a primary officer for what the agents call an "interview" before entering the country, they already know who the traveler is, their crossing history, potential criminal history, vehicles they've driven across the border, people they've crossed with, and more.

"It could be a driver that nine times we saw him in a Versa, and then we see him in a Fiat," Marin said. "'Where'd you get this car?' So the officers are trying to build that picture, and that's part of the interview."

An officer's instinct plays a major role during the interview process in catching violators.

What might appear to be innocent questions or small talk, Aki said, is actually agents trying "to poke holes" into your story. "Why did you go to Mexico? Why are you coming to the United States? Whose car is this? Why are you bringing that?'"

Meanwhile, officers are looking for physical signs that could point to nefarious activity: indicators of nervousness such as fidgeting, white knuckling, and avoiding eye contact.

Intelligence packages are also used for commercial trucks entering the United States.

Intelligence plays a massive role in intercepting large drug smuggling attempts and preventing further ones, Aki said. It can point to previous loads a truck has carried, where it came from, who loaded it, who has operated it, and whether it has ever had any compliance violations.

Marin and Aki credited intelligence with a massive methamphetamine seizure from three separate trucks over the span of a week.

"It was basically in flower pots, cement, as well as flat-screen televisions," Aki said. The seizure was based on intelligence gathering that suggested a nefarious connection and prompted further inspection. Ultimately, officers intercepted nearly 9,000 pounds of methamphetamine, Aki said.

In an example at the Texas border, officers discovered 307 hidden packages in a tractor-trailer hauling lettuce from Mexico.

Sidney Aki, director of field operations for U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s San Diego Field Office, monitors border crossings at the San Ysidro Port of Entry on May 26, 2026. Aki and other officials told The Epoch Times the border is more secure now than at any point in their careers, and in U.S. history. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times Tyler Durden Fri, 06/19/2026 - 21:30

"Only The Beginning": How To Profit From The Asymmetric Warfare Boom

Low-cost kamikaze drones are fundamentally reshaping the modern battlefield and forcing militaries to rethink procurement strategies built around expensive, high-end weapons systems.

In the Middle East, US Special Forces learned the hard way that cheap Iranian Shahed-style drones can eliminate multi-million-dollar (if not billion-dollar) communications, radar, and command-and-control nodes.

The result of this Iranian offensive with cheap drones, which exposed a missing air-defense layer over high-value U.S. military communications systems across the Gulf region, will trigger a defense procurement reset. The U.S. military is now racing to source, order, and stockpile low-cost one-way attack drones, interceptors, and counter-UAS systems before the next conflict erupts - or US-Iran ceasefire blows up.

Piper Sandler analyst Clarke Jeffries is now arriving at the same conclusion we have been highlighting:

We anticipate one of the biggest lessons of the 2020s will be how affordable drone technology fundamentally reshaped the modern combat environment and set the stage for a reevaluation of the procurement, organization and strategy of ~$3T in annual global military expenditures.

While drones have existed in the modern military apparatus for decades at this point, it was the Ukraine war (as one of the first near-peer conflicts in recent memory) which provided demonstrable evidence of how specifically lightweight and affordable systems could change the paradigm of combat.

Jeffries provided clients with a detailed overview of the nine public and nineteen private companies powering America's emerging drone industry. His takeaway: this is still the early chapters of a market set for massive growth, as the U.S. military and allied nations push the procurement cycle into higher gear next year and through the end of the decade.

He sees the first wave of the market centered on inexpensive UAS production, domestic supply chains, and rapid procurement, while the second wave will be driven by autonomy, swarming, mothership configurations, and deeper integration into command-and-control networks.

He pointed out that AI software will be as important as hardware, with platforms such as Palantir's Maven Smart System poised to turn massive drone sensor feeds into highly usable battlefield intelligence.

"With most nations averse to endure undue cost to the already punishing economics of pursuing a war, we see proliferation of Group 1-3 UAS as an inevitability and the next major technology inflection point for the aerospace and defense industry," the analyst said.

He continued: 

Democratizing asymmetric warfare; sUAS has redefined the rules of engagement. Much of modern military history has been the story of haves and have-nots, with 10 countries accounting for 72% of global military spend and dominating production of the most capable and exquisite systems. Drone technology however (and specifically small unmanned aircraft systems: sUAS) has vastly increased the accessibility and affordability of highly capable military equipment and subverted the advantage of using exquisite systems into a costly strategy. In Ukraine and Iran, drones of all sizes have become de facto standard for air campaigns launched as low-cost attritable munitions. These drones are regularly countered by more expensive defense methods: missiles, interceptors, rockets creating a challenging cost-exchange issue. Every drone launched is net dollar advantage to the belligerent firing them. With most nations averse to endure undue cost to the already punishing economics of pursuing a war, we see proliferation of Group 1-3 UAS as an inevitability and the next major technology inflection point for the aerospace and defense industry.

Jeffries lays out three key conclusions about the rapidly changing defense landscape:

Public companies flagged by Jeffries as benefiting include AeroVironment, Ondas, Red Cat, AEVEX, Redwire, Insitu and Teledyne FLIR, while private names include Anduril, Skydio, Shield AI, Quantum Systems, Performance Drone Works, DZYNE, Firestorm Labs and Neros.

An example of this technology. Meet DZYNE's BlitzBox system ... 

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

— Drone Wars (@Drone_Wars_) May 27, 2026

He noted, "Today, most militaries are still in the earliest innings of their sUAS efforts: building defensible supply chains, refining specific designs, aligning the organizational and budgetary structure to successfully field these systems."

Follow the money...

Lessons from the Ukraine & Iranian Conflicts

Notable Drone Programs

Notable UAS Contracts

The UAS Blue List

Past, Present and Future of the Drone Operator

Swarming

Rise of Mothership Drones

In a separate note, Needham analyst Austin Bohlig noted that increasing congressional support for drones and counter-drone technologies has been reflected in the FY27 National Defense Authorization Act and related appropriations bills.

Related:

• JPM Call With Axon Reveals Race To Fortify U.S. Data Centers Against Kamikaze Drone Swarms

• Goldman Sits Down With Anduril As 'War Unicorns' Reshape Defense Tech

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

• Congress Moves To Boost Drone Funding As "War Unicorns" See Possible Procurement Supercycle

The safe conclusion is that the public and private drone companies mentioned above are positioned to reap major rewards as military procurement cycles shift toward these low-cost systems and annual global military spending surges in the coming years.

Professional subscribers can find more war tech notes at our new Marketdesk.ai portal. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/19/2026 - 20:45

Elon Musk Vs The Democrats: Outcomes Vs Process

Authored by Stephen Soukup via American Greatness,

Years ago, when my oldest son was a Boy Scout, he was asked to write a report/make a presentation on a modern American “hero.” He chose Elon Musk, and I, of course, rolled my eyes so hard they nearly popped out of my head.

I knew Musk was a successful businessman, but I also knew that he was both an advocate for and a seasoned manipulator of Big Government. Tesla, for example, received a $465 million Department of Energy loan in 2010 under the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program, a Big Government scheme to encourage private companies to advance Big Government priorities (namely, fighting Climate Change by reducing carbon emissions). Likewise, Tesla was, at least at the time, commercially viable only because of the more than $1 billion ($7,500/vehicle) in federal EV tax credits claimed by its buyers. Without government greasing the proverbial wheels a bit, Tesla would have struggled to get the literal wheels rolling out the sales floor doors.

Moreover, Musk publicly acknowledged that he voted for Obama and presented himself as part of the “green” business revolution, men and women who could and would “do well by doing good.”

My, how things change.

Just a short decade later, Elon Musk is, indeed, regarded as a genuine hero by most on the American political Right—and by anyone who favors free enterprise—while he is loathed and actively derided by his former friends and allies on the Left. Especially this past week, after the SpaceX IPO made him the world’s first trillionaire, the Democrats and other leftists who once loved him, partnered with him, and sang his praises loudly have shown nothing but contempt for him and hatred for his inarguable business success. As the controversial Democratic Senate nominee from Maine, Graham Platner, ominously put it, “Elon Musk just became the world’s first trillionaire. Let’s make sure he’s also the last.”

How, exactly, did we get here?

The biggest part of the story is Musk’s own political evolution, which proceeded slowly, in stages, but was accelerated at a handful of inflection points.

Of these inflection points, two stand out among the others.

The first of these took place during President Biden’s first year in office.

Biden and his administration were knee-deep in pushing a new, far more aggressive climate agenda. On his first day in office, Biden issued 17 executive orders, several of which addressed climate change and other environmental matters. Most notably, he signed an order to reinstate the nation’s participation in the Paris Accords, thereby placing a policy-making emphasis on electrification and decarbonization. A big part of that effort—as would be evinced in the “Inflation Reduction Act” passed the following year—was pushing the purchase of electric vehicles. To that end, on August 4, 2021, Biden hosted an EV “summit” at the White House. He invited three EV makers—General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis—to watch him sign another executive order, this one mandating that half of all new vehicles sold in the United States by 2030 be EVs. Of the three, GM had the largest percentage of its sales derived from fully electric vehicles—1.5 percent. Ford sat at 1.3 percent, and Stellantis didn’t even have an electric vehicle for sale in the American market. Meanwhile, Tesla was the nation’s largest EV auto seller at the time, and 100 percent of its vehicles were fully electric. Yet Musk and his company were left off the Biden team’s guest list.

What GM, Ford, and Stellantis did have, of course, was the support of the United Auto Workers Union. In fact, the three also just happened to be the largest UAW employers. Tesla, by contrast, had long fought the unionization of its factories and had been embroiled in a rather ugly dispute with the UAW. In response to the snub, Musk vented a bit, tweeting:

Biden held this EV summit. Didn’t invite Tesla.

Invited GM, Ford, Chrysler, and UAW. EV summit at the White House, didn’t mention Tesla once and praised GM and Ford for leading the EV revolution.

Doesn’t it sound a little bias? It’s not the friendliest of administrations.

Seems to be controlled by the unions.

Just under a year later, Musk reached the second inflection point, which also turned out to be his breaking point.

In May 2022, the S&P 500 ESG Index conducted its annual rebalancing. And when it did, it removed Tesla.

ESG stands for “environmental, social, and governance” investing, a strategy that purports to push corporations to address issues beyond traditional profits and losses, focusing on the broader societal impacts of their operations. I wrote a whole book about ESG (The Dictatorship of Woke Capital) in which I made the case that its flaws are numerous and disqualifying. One of the most significant of these is that ESG has no set definition. It means whatever its practitioners decide it means in the moment, based on little more than preference and convenience. And this is precisely where the S&P’s index ran into problems with Tesla.

By any objective measure, Tesla should have been a mainstay of any investment strategy focused on environmental benefits. It was and is a pioneer in carbon reduction strategies in the personal transportation market. What could be more environmentally friendly than that? The S&P, however, objected to Tesla’s procedural strategies, or lack thereof. It argued that Tesla didn’t have a published “low-carbon strategy,” or verifiable “codes of conduct.” It noted that the automaker had been accused of racial discrimination and didn’t do a great job of handling a National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigation. In short, the ESG index tossed the innovator in “E” technology off its list of acceptable companies because it valued the process of the ESG strategy more than it did the outcomes.

Needless to say, this incensed Musk. On May 18, he (once again) tweeted his frustration:

Exxon is rated top ten best in world for environment, social & governance (ESG) by S&P 500, while Tesla didn’t make the list! ESG is a scam. It has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors.

Not coincidentally, two and a half hours later, Musk returned to Twitter to make an announcement about his partisan political future:

In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party. But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican. Now, watch their dirty tricks campaign against me unfold . . .

It is worth noting here that Musk didn’t just switch parties. He radicalized. His change in partisan affiliation and political involvement was night and day.

He went from a quiet, nominally aligned center-leftist to a full-blown, aggressive libertarian-conservative. Instead of giving $1,000 here and $1,000 there to Democratic candidates, he started throwing money into politics as if he’d never miss it (in part because he never would). He backed Donald Trump with millions of dollars and then joined his administration (for free) as the leader and organizer of DOGE. The combination of the union-driven and the ESG-driven snubs sent him over the edge. Not only would he no longer support Democrats, but he would support their opponents loudly and generously.

Although it would be easy (and not entirely wrong) to say that Elon Musk’s political evolution was a self-inflicted wound by the Democrats, who enthusiastically chased him out of their party, it’s more accurate to say that the break between the two was a structural inevitability. That inevitability was inarguably exacerbated and hastened by Democratic overconfidence and miscalculation, but that’s the difference between Musk simply leaving the party and becoming radicalized for the other side. Musk’s shift away from Democratic politics was likely always going to happen and is emblematic of the long-standing tension between so-called “progressives” and actual progress. The ideology that once sought explicitly to “better” the nation and its people has become little more than a machine for creating rules, often at the expense of that improvement. Musk’s fervent embrace of the Democrats’ opponents was driven by personalities—theirs, his, and probably Trump’s.

Think about it this way...

 The Progressive coalition traditionally has very much resembled the S&P ESG index noted above. It has always been carefully managed, regulated, labor-friendly, bureaucratic, and procedure-driven. It has always been more about process than outcome. Musk, for his part, is the opposite. He is disruptive, as capitalist entrepreneurs tend to be. He favors that which moves fast, eschews established rubrics, and achieves results. He is outcome-driven and cares very little (sometimes, maybe, too little) about process. The idea that he and today’s Democrats could have remained strongly aligned is, in retrospect, incongruous.

That’s not to say that he and the GOP are perfectly aligned, but certainly his ethos fits better there, at least for the moment.

The bottom line here is that while process values have their place, they can be self-defeating, particularly when they are allowed to serve as a substitute for experience and reality.

The Democrats don’t hate Elon Musk because he’s a trillionaire. They hate him because he became a trillionaire by breaking all their dearly held and largely outmoded rules.

There’s a profound lesson in that, if anyone is willing to learn it.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/19/2026 - 20:00

Here's How 45 Countries View America

America remains one of the world’s most influential countries, but public opinion of the U.S. varies widely across the globe.

Some of its strongest support now comes from emerging economies such as Vietnam, India, and the Philippines, while favorability has weakened across several longtime Western allies.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld, ranks how people in 45 countries view the U.S. using January 2026 survey data from Morning Consult’s America Reputation Tracker.

Where Positive Views Are the Highest

Israel and Nigeria rank first in the survey, with 83% of respondents holding favorable views of America.

Morocco, Vietnam, and Peru round out the top five, highlighting how some of the strongest support for the U.S. now comes from outside its traditional circle of Western allies.

India has the highest favorability rating of any major economy at 62%, ranking ahead of countries such as Canada, Germany, and France.

Argentina also places in the top 10, underscoring how perceptions of America are often strongest in countries that view the U.S. as an important economic, security, or strategic partner.

The Countries Souring on America

Trade disputes and rising political tensions have weighed heavily on America’s image among many of its traditional allies.

Tariffs on Canada and Europe, criticism of NATO, suggestions that Canada could become the 51st state, and President Trump’s interest in acquiring Greenland have all strained relations across the Western alliance. As a result, nine of the 10 lowest favorability ratings in the survey come from Western countries, including Canada, France, Germany, and Sweden.

In response to growing uncertainty around U.S. policy, Canada has expanded economic cooperation with Europe and sought closer engagement with China.

One of the survey’s most surprising findings is that China ranks ahead of several longstanding U.S. allies. Despite ongoing geopolitical rivalry between Washington and Beijing, America’s favorability rating in China exceeds that of countries including Canada, Belgium, and Sweden.

In other words, countries that have been America’s closest partners for decades now view it less favorably than its chief geopolitical rival.

To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic on how much U.S. states rely on imports from Canada, Mexico, and China.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/19/2026 - 19:15

US Private Credit Default Rate Remains At Record High: Fitch

As we have detailed extensively, most recently here: "Blackrock's Private Credit Fund Gates Investors Again After Redemption Requests Surge ", private credit firms continue to face a flood of redemption requests...

And after this week's report from Fitch Ratings, it appears any light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train.

As Andrew Moran reports for The Epoch Times, the U.S. private credit default rate remained at a record high in May, according to the latest update from Fitch Ratings.

Private credit woes this year have taken a backseat to various headwinds and tailwinds, whether the war in Iran or SpaceX’s blockbuster debut on Wall Street.

But data suggest that pressures are still mounting for the industry.

Fitch Ratings said its Private Credit Default Rate remained at a record 6 percent in May, unchanged from the previous month.

Monitoring approximately 1,500 private credit issuers, Fitch logged 14 default events last month. Healthcare providers, business services, and industrial manufacturing each registered three events.

Six serial defaulters—issuers that have defaulted multiple times—were discovered by Fitch. Additionally, half of the default events consisted of maturity extensions under stress.

“This continued the prior month trend of maturity extensions under stress outpacing all other default scenarios,” Fitch reported.

“Five of the seven maturity extensions pushed loan maturities out by one to two years from their original maturity dates, while one extended the maturity by seven months and another extended it by one month.”

It is unclear whether the worst is over for the $2 trillion private credit sector, as more investment firms continue to see client exodus or impose capital redemption limits.

Turmoil Persists

In a recent letter to shareholders, BlackRock Private Credit Fund stated that shareholder repurchase requests reached more than 13 percent of outstanding shares in the second quarter, pushing past the investment vehicle’s 5 percent quarterly limit for the first time since it launched in June 2022.

Blackstone, the world’s largest alternative asset manager, said earlier this month that it is capping withdrawals at its flagship private credit fund as redemption requests surged in the April–June period. It reassured investors that limiting drawdowns would boost long-term gains.

Partners Group, the Swiss-listed fund manager, halted redemptions from its Global Value SICAV fund at 5 percent after withdrawal requests reached almost 10 percent.

David Layton, CEO of Partners Group, said the majority of withdrawals are coming from the retail side, which accounts for about 20 percent of overall investments.

“What you’re doing is you’re balancing the needs of certain investors—a small percentage of the fund that would like to get liquid—with the needs of the remaining segment of the investor population that would like to see that fund continue to invest and continue to compound,” Layton said in a June 3 interview with Bloomberg TV.

The Swiss private markets juggernaut later shot down reports that it would cap more fund withdrawals following a spike in drawdown requests.

“Partners Group has no intention of altering any documented liquidity mechanisms and has no plans to freeze any of its evergreen vehicles, given their portfolios are healthy and they have sufficient liquidity in line with the target allocations,” it said in a June 12 statement.

Systemic Risk ‘Less Pronounced’

Concerns that private credit could be the next subprime meltdown after 2008 and 2009 have been widespread, fueled by growing retail participation and the “SaaSpocalypse.”

Private credit is widely exposed to the software sector, accounting for up to 20 percent of its loans. When software stocks were hammered earlier in the year due to worries that artificial intelligence would upend business models, the private credit industry also took a beating.

But a chorus of market watchers argues that systemic risks are minuscule.

“Systemic risk appears far less pronounced than between sub-prime and the financial system in 2008,” LSEG analysts said in a June 15 analysis.

“We note that [private credit] largely withstood the Covid and Ukraine shocks in 2020-22 and that both lenders and borrowers are well aware of the risks involved in these loans, whence the covenant-protection is generally greater.”

Investors seem to agree, as private credit stocks joined the broader market rally over the last few days.

Still the bounce remains modest amid YTD declines...

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/19/2026 - 16:15

AI Doomsday Warnings Distract From More Imminent AI Concerns

Authored by Daniel Nuccio via The Brownstone Institute,

AI is everywhere. It’s getting incorporated into everything. That’s simply progress, we’re told. And therefore we need to embrace it, lest we look like a Luddite and let China win (whatever that means).

Yet, simultaneously, a lot of people also are afraid because of AI. Very afraid. And sometimes, we’re told that we should be afraid too.

However, in public discourse surrounding AI, there often can be a lack of detail regarding what specifically we’re supposed to be afraid of. Sometimes it is not even clear what is meant by the term “AI.”

Technically speaking, as I have touched on previously, one could argue (as some older computer scientists do) that AI is an umbrella term for a family of algorithms based in math that sometimes dates back more than a half-century. 

Practically speaking, numerous programs we’ve been living with for years like Google Maps and Amazon’s recommender system can be thought of as AI despite their lack of novelty. Yet, in public discourse, the term AI tends to refer to generative AI (e.g, ChatGPT), as well as any number of hypothetical future programs that will do everything humans can do but better, will therefore both solve all our problems while also putting most of us out of work, and also eventually just might decide to go full Skynet on us unless they decide that we’re not worth the trouble.

(Sounds pretty sexy. Perhaps someone should make a series of movies about it. Perhaps people will even like two out of five of them.)

Unfortunately, though, these more hyperbolic, sci-fi depictions of the threat(s) posed by AI tend to get more attention than, and consequently distract from, more realistic and more imminent threats pertaining to privacy, freedom, autonomy, and even just a way of life many of us have come to enjoy. 

Automatic license plate readers, facial recognition, digital grandmothers, mandatory drunk and distracted driving detection programs, any of the technologies “grandson” was shouting about in “Autonomous Delivery Robot,” and wearable recording devices that transcribe and process in-person conversations for the anti-social and easily distracted are just of a few of the more realistic threats that come to mind. (And this by no means is a complete list).

Therefore, I tend to appreciate when members of our ruling class can take a morning to have a measured conversation about fairly well-defined threats posed by this technology (or suite of technologies), as was done at the US House of Representatives’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Subcommittee’s June 4 meeting on the “AI Security Landscape.”  

Superficially, the meeting’s discussion could probably be framed in terms of “Is the greatest threat posed by AI an external one in the form of foreign hackers looking to exploit vulnerabilities in the software controlling the United States’ critical infrastructure or an internal one born from the lack of regulation and accountability for AI’s use at home?”

From watching the discussion, however, it seemed less like a matter of “either or” and more like an uncontested response of “Yes and…”

Sandra Joyce of Google, Frontier Model Forum executive director Chris Meserole, and Corridor Security Inc. CEO and co-founder Jack Cable provided testimony regarding how AI is transforming the cybersecurity landscape as digital weapons fall into the hands of the cyber-barbarians at the gates who will use those weapons to find vulnerabilities in our critical infrastructure and/or deploy ransomware attacks.

“This technology has impacted cybersecurity in profound ways for both the defender and the attacker,” stated Joyce.

“[H]ackers have more powerful tools than ever,” Cable noted, naming Mythos and GPT-5.5 specifically.

“These models aren’t just hype,” he warned.

“They are truly starting to rival or exceed humans on security tasks and do so at an unprecedented scale.”

Joyce suggested “threat actors” don’t even need something like Mythos and can be quite capable of doing a lot of damage with an older program.

Emphasizing the threats from within, Electronic Frontier Foundation senior policy analyst Matthew Guariglia stated, “The question is not how do we reign in AI, it’s how do we reign in the agencies that would unleash AI on the American public?”

In his testimony, Guariglia highlighted how the US national security state already uses a variety of tools that collect data on people without probable cause and that can make “inferences about a person’s politics, personal life, religion, and geolocation, sometimes inaccurately with major consequences.” 

Furthermore, Guariglia said, “AI also has a track record of getting things wrong, from false citations on legal briefs to a major AI mistake that sent DHS recruits to the field without proper training.” 

“There are likely more consequential examples that we don’t even know about because of classification that would prevent a more thorough accounting,” he added.

Similarly, Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL) observed, “We’re watching AI-powered monitoring systems spread to schools, to public housing, to hospitals with no transparency about how they work, no ability to challenge them, and no recourse when they’re wrong.”

In a later exchange concerning a possible scenario in which an AI program designates a city’s water supply as compromised when it is in fact fine and subsequently restricts the ability of the city’s residents to access water, Guariglia and Ramirez suggested that within the confines of current US law, transparency about how the problem occurred would likely be left up to the discretion of the city implementing the system while the question of who can be held accountable is a rather nebulous one.

Despite not quite being as sexy as battling T-800s in the streets for our lives and our livelihoods, more ransomware attacks, a further erosion of our privacy, and a lack of required transparency and accountability when HAL makes an oopsy and shuts off everyone’s water all sound pretty serious even if these things don’t quite warrant mass hysteria or a movie franchise. Perhaps they are even sufficient for reasonable concerns over the current zeitgeist to incorporate AI into everything. And maybe, just maybe, they provide reason to make us rethink our decision to connect everything in modern life to the internet.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/19/2026 - 15:30

FundStrat's Newton: Why Not Replace The FOMC With AI?

Short of abolishing the Fed (much preferred), would automating the Fed make more sense than the current system? Should we trust Kevin Warsh, Jerome Powell, and Lisa Cook to read the tea leaves each month and decree rate changes for us commoners? 

That was Fundstrat's Mark Newton’s suggestion during last night's ZeroHedge debate on his H2 market outlook. He pointed out the new chair’s plan to eliminate “forward guidance”, a term invented under the previous chair Powell in which the Fed strategically signals its plans on rate changes so that those signals themselves might change rates organically by market forces.

It’s all a big mess… but Newton and BTIG's Jonathan Krinsky also debated whether the AI trade is in a bubble and which sectors look like attractive investment opportunities. Here were Newton’s remarks on the Fed and other highlights, though we recommend watching the full debate at the end:

Automate The Fed

Fundstrat's Mark Newton believes incoming Fed Chair Kevin Warsh could face a difficult balancing act from day one.

"I think he's got his work cut out for him," Newton said, noting that Warsh will be speaking for a Federal Reserve committee that has "turned clearly hawkish" while simultaneously facing pressure from an administration that "almost always wants to cut rates to juice the economy."

Rather than focusing on rate cuts themselves, Newton argued the biggest change under Warsh may be how the Fed communicates. "My take is that there's gonna be far less forward guidance or even a dot plot under Warsh, less communication," he said. Markets have become accustomed to a steady stream of comments from Fed officials, and Newton warned that the transition could create volatility as investors try to recalibrate.

WARSH: I THINK THAT MARKETS PERFORM BEST WHEN REACTING TO INCOMING DATA, THEY WORK LESS EFFICIENTLY WHEN THEY ASK HOW WILL THE FED REACT TO THAT INCOMING INFORMATION

Finally, the 4th wall falls

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 17, 2026

Newton also mused about automating the entire FOMC, questioning the dated practice of a council of economists working with clunky tools to periodically tinker with the entire nation's (and world’s) economy.

"If there's one area that's ripe for regime change by AI completely, it's the Federal Reserve," he said. "They're looking at data going back over the last few years to try to make decisions on whether to cut interest rates, which will take twelve to eighteen months to materialize in the economy. That does not make any sense in 2026."

pic.twitter.com/qLXBEgdTQs

— ZeroHedge Debates (@zerohedgeDebate) June 19, 2026

"The AI trade will continue into 2028"

Where many see a bubble, Fundstrat's Mark Newton sees an opportunity.

"I do not see a bear market in technology," he said, arguing that the sector is likely headed for a period of consolidation rather than a major decline. Semiconductors may need to "back and fill" after their recent run, according to Newton.

He remains bullish on the longer-term AI story but did say there are signs that it’s overbought near-term. Newton highlighted the Relative Strength Index (RSI) on the highly-watched Invesco Equal Weight Tech ETF.

"That's all a good thing for tech. It's just that when an RSI level of 78 on equal-weighted technology, it's not the best risk reward for me over the next three to six months."

On banks, REITs, travel, consumer discretionary, and healthcare sectors, Newton sees improving momentum, noting that "most European and also U.S. commercial banks have been showing very good strength" while REIT ETFs are "breaking out to multi-year highs."

"Consumers snapping back over the next couple months" following a ceasefire success, he said, would benefit airlines, hotels, and beaten-down discretionary names. Newton specifically likes Delta, Marriott, booking companies, and apparel Ralph Lauren. 

pic.twitter.com/pnOF5LInOu

— ZeroHedge Debates (@zerohedgeDebate) June 19, 2026

Watch the full debate below, watch on Adam Taggart’s Thoughtful Money channel, or listen on Spotify.

https://t.co/jxITOFkt3p

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 18, 2026

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/19/2026 - 13:45

Outrage As Suspect In UK Toddler Crocodile Attack Released On Bail; Identity Still Hidden

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity,

The insane attack at a family-run zoo in Cambridgeshire, UK has now produced a fresh outrage.

A three-year-old boy from the area remains in critical but stable condition at Addenbrooke's Hospital after being thrown into a crocodile enclosure.

Yet, the 30-year-old man from Norfolk arrested on suspicion of attempted murder has already been released on bail until 18 September. Police assessed him as "unfit for interview" and continue to withhold his identity from the public.

Man arrested after child, 3, 'thrown into crocodile enclosure' released as suspect 'unfit for interview' https://t.co/NRmW0yzmkL

- GB News (@GBNEWS) June 19, 2026

This follows the initial reporting of the incident at Johnson's of Old Hurst zoo near Huntingdon. As covered in our earlier piece on the initial incident and rampant online speculation about the identity of the man who was arrested.

The boy and the suspect were not known to each other, and detectives from the Major Crime Unit treated the case as a serious criminal investigation from the outset.

Cambridgeshire Police confirmed the release after the assessment. Detective Inspector Verity McCann stated: "Our enquiries are ongoing as we continue to understand the circumstances surrounding this distressing incident. Our thoughts remain with the boy and his family, and specialist officers continue to support them through this difficult time."

Witnesses described a heroic intervention that prevented an even worse outcome. The zoo owner's wife reportedly jumped 15 feet into the crocodile enclosure to pull the injured toddler to safety.

Staff administered immediate medical treatment at the scene before emergency services arrived. The boy suffered serious wounds from at least one crocodile attack inside the enclosure.

Reports indicate he suffered a broken arm, a broken pelvis, likely stemming from the impact after being thrown, as well as multiple crocodile bites during the incident on Thursday afternoon.

Public anger has erupted over the decision to release the suspect.

Many see the move as further evidence of a justice system that fails to prioritise the protection of children and the public when confronted with extreme violence.

? #BREAKING: It has been confirmed that the man who threw a 3-year-old toddler into a crocodile enclosure in the UK...

...HAS ALREADY BEEN LET OUT ON BOND!!!!

The man is being described as 'mentally disabled' and police are STILL refusing to name him.

Witnesses say the zoo... pic.twitter.com/uBhxXhJkWY

- Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) June 19, 2026

Imagine living in a country where you go straight to jail for a tweet, but get bail after being arrested for 'allegedly' throwing a 3 year old baby into a crocodile enclosure! The world is watching is disbelief! pic.twitter.com/Do1ljHSofF

- Liam Tuffs (@liamtuffs1) June 19, 2026

Lunatics who throw toddlers to crocodiles probably ought not to be on the streets. https://t.co/lIijFzPlIh

- Carl Benjamin ??????? (@Sargon_of_Akkad) June 19, 2026

The pattern of releasing individuals deemed too unwell for interview while leaving the public uninformed about their identity has fuelled widespread demands for transparency and stronger safeguards.

Critics argue that mental health assessments should not automatically translate into freedom to roam when the alleged act demonstrates clear and present danger to others.

Meanwhile, Sky News headlines have drawn sharp criticism for their choice of language. The outlet repeatedly described the boy as having "ended up in crocodile enclosure" rather than stating he was thrown there.

BREAKING: Man arrested after toddler ended up in crocodile enclosure 'not fit for interview' and released https://t.co/eBomHyjDvC

- Sky News (@SkyNews) June 19, 2026

One report opened with: "A three-year-old boy who was seriously injured after ending up in the crocodile enclosure at a Cambridgeshire zoo was attacked by at least one of the reptiles, Sky News understands."

An earlier Sky News post had used similar passive phrasing: "a boy has been taken to hospital with serious injuries and a man arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a toddler ended up in a crocodile enclosure in Huntingdonshire."

"Ended up". The toddler just ended up in the crocodile pit. Funny how all these kind of things end up isn't it. https://t.co/GeLLNAFhVX

- m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) June 19, 2026

This wording stands in contrast to more direct reporting elsewhere that used "thrown into" in the headline. Passive constructions like "ended up" minimise the deliberate nature of the assault and shift focus away from the perpetrator's actions toward vague circumstance.

In high-profile cases involving violence against children, precise language matters. Euphemisms erode public trust and fuel the very speculation authorities claim to want to avoid.

The decision to withhold the suspect's identity while confirming his release on bail until mid-September compounds the problem. A man arrested for allegedly hurling a defenceless three-year-old into a pit of crocodiles is back in the community.

Britain's justice system increasingly appears calibrated to protect processes and sensitivities over basic public safety. When posting opinions online can trigger swift arrest and denial of bail, yet an alleged attempt to feed a toddler to crocodiles results in prompt release, the imbalance is impossible to ignore.

The heroic actions of zoo staff saved a life that day. The authorities' response since has done little to reassure anyone that similar threats will be met with the seriousness they demand.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/19/2026 - 13:10

US Probes Whether ASML's Advanced Chip Machine Ended Up In China

Not long after Shenzhen-based Huawei unveiled what it described as a breakthrough pathway for advanced semiconductor production at the recent IEEE ISCAS conference, the Trump administration raised concerns that one of Dutch chip-equipment giant ASML's extreme ultraviolet lithography, or EUV, machines may have fallen into Chinese hands.

Bloomberg reports that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has raised concerns that one of ASML's EUV machines may have reached China despite US-led export controls.

ASML has pushed back on Lutnick's suggestion, explaining that none of its EUV machines, used to print the tiniest circuit patterns onto advanced computer chips, have ended up in the hands of the Chinese. This report is based on sources from the outlet who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

ASML says all 314 of its operating EUV machines are accounted for globally.

More color from the outlet:

Multiple senior administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive matter, said they have evidence indicating ASML is not acting in good faith — such as exports to China of gear specifically related to EUV tools, which ASML denied to Bloomberg. These US officials, who didn't comment on Lutnick's meetings with ASML, declined multiple requests from Bloomberg for proof of the shipments, citing the sensitivity of the information and sources. They also declined to say whether they have seen evidence of an actual EUV system in the Asian country.

The dispute adds pressure on ASML, with shares in Amsterdam trading down as much as 2% on Friday. Shares have advanced as much as 81% this year due to the AI and data center buildout narrative.

Here is Citi analyst Andrew Gardiner's first take on the US Government-ASML dispute:

According to Bloomberg (6/19), US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has told ASML of concerns that an EUV machine is in China, in contravention of regulations that prevent ASML from shipping EUV to China. No evidence for the claims was provided to journalists. ASML have reiterated publicly they have never shipped a machine or EUV parts to China. ASML can "see" each of the EUV tools running at customer fabs, as the machines send back data to ASML on their operations. ASML are now in the difficult position of trying to prove a negative, when no evidence is being furnished against their position. Given our time spent with ASML over the last two decades, including with current management in recent years, we find it very hard to believe that they would jeopardise their position in the industry, their reputation, or their technological leadership just to deliver an EUV tool to China.

Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Masahiro Wakasugi comments:

US concerns about Chinese chipmakers using advanced tools made by ASML might have little impact on its sales. Bloomberg News reports that in recent meetings, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick expressed the concerns to ASML's leaders, saying one of its top machines might have made its way into China, violating US-led restrictions. But ASML says it has never shipped extreme ultraviolet lithography systems to China and has complied with tightening restrictions on deep ultraviolet tools. Also, using ASML machines to make advanced chips would probably require sophisticated tools from other foreign firms that also face restrictions. China is increasingly able to make more-advanced chips with legacy tools, so the US concerns may reflect Chinese engineering progress rather than any lapse in ASML's compliance with export controls.

Related:

• Inside The Chip Chokepoint: Goldman's Five Key Takeaways From ASML Visit

US concerns may reflect China's progress in developing advanced chips, especially after Huawei's announcement last month of a potential breakthrough in semiconductor production.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/19/2026 - 12:35

Federal Court Allows National Park Service To Replace Slavery Exhibit In Philadelphia

Authored by Jackson Richman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A federal appeals court ruled on June 18 that the Trump administration can move forward with replacing a slavery-related exhibit at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia.

FILE - A person views posted signs on the locations of the now removed explanatory panels that were part of an exhibit on slavery at President's House Site in Philadelphia, Jan. 23, 2026. AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File

The decision from the Philadelphia-based Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court ruling that had blocked the National Park Service from removing the exhibit. The city of Philadelphia had won that earlier ruling after an exhibit describing George Washington’s ownership of enslaved people was taken down.

The exhibit, located at the President’s House historic site, was removed following an executive order signed by President Donald Trump aimed at eliminating what he described as efforts to portray the United States as fundamentally racist or oppressive. The order directed the Interior Department to review and revise historical displays in national parks across the country.

As part of that effort, the National Park Service removed an exhibit in January that focused on nine enslaved individuals who lived and worked at Washington’s Philadelphia residence.

Philadelphia sued, arguing that agreements with the federal government required the city to be consulted before significant changes were made to the site. U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe agreed and issued an injunction requiring the exhibit to remain.

However, the appeals court found that removing the exhibit was not an official agency action that could be challenged under the Administrative Procedure Act. Writing for the three-judge panel, Judge Thomas Hardiman said the Park Service’s planned replacement displays still address the history of the nine enslaved people while also noting Washington’s stated opposition to slavery later in life.

According to Hardiman, the new exhibits recognize the injustices of slavery and preserve the stories and humanity of the enslaved individuals who lived at the President’s House.

The Epoch Times reached out to the Interior Department for comment on the decision but did not receive a response by publication time.

Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker criticized the ruling and pledged to continue fighting it in court.

“I will pursue every legal action possible to reverse this decision. We cannot and WILL not rest until the full story of American history – including the existence of Slavery at the President’s House here in Philadelphia – is told, for our Nation and the World to see,” she posted on X on Thursday.

Despite the appeals court decision, the original exhibit may still be restored. In a separate case, U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley in Boston recently ordered the reinstatement of all national park exhibits that had been removed under Trump’s directive. Shortly after the appeals court ruling, Kelley declined to suspend her order while the administration appeals.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/19/2026 - 12:00