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As German Voters Reject Mass Migration, Politicians And The Media Play The Fool

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As German Voters Reject Mass Migration, Politicians And The Media Play The Fool

Authored by Pawel Styrna via American Thinker,

The anti-mass-migration Alternative for Germany (AfD) has won the election to the provincial parliaments in the states of Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

The AfD's rising trajectory demonstrates that - like throughout the rest of the West - voters increasingly want an end to unchecked mass migration and its many cultural, economic, and security problems. It also shows that the globalist, pro-mass-migration political and media establishment continues to ignore and demonize the voters and pretend there is no problem.

Although the AfD did not capture a majority of the seats in the Saxony-Anhalt parliament (Landtag), it came within striking distance. Winning 44 percent of the vote, the AfD nevertheless doubled its share from the previous (2021) election and secured its best showing ever. In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, it more than doubled its vote share.

The biggest losers were the Christian Democrats - the party of Chancellor Friedrich Merz and former Chancellor Angela Merkel - which plummeted from 37 percent five years ago to 17 percent in Saxony-Anhalt. Overall, Merz's policies, including on immigration, had even lower approval there: a devastating 9 percent. In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the CDU got less than 5 percent and didn't even make it into the Landtag.

The reaction of the political establishment and the media was pretty much the same as in the U.S. following Donald Trump's presidential victories, or in Britain following Brexit. It was a toxic combination of condescension, finger-wagging moralizing, pearl-clutching shock, and shrill fearmongering. Like the boy who cried wolf, pro-mass-migration voices, both in Germany and elsewhere, labelled the AfD "far right" (while hardly ever using the term far left) and even "fascist," hoping to terrify whoever would listen with the specter of a resurgent Fourth Reich.

Chancellor Merz, who apparently does not follow the news from his own homeland, claimed to be "deeply shocked" by the Saxony-Anhalt election results. Angela Merkel - the single greatest contributor to Germany's current problems with mass migration - declared, with a "bleeding heart," that the AfD win was "deeply shocking." These statements show just how out of touch with reality the political establishment in Berlin is.

In fact, the most shocking thing is the absolute complacency of mainstream German politicians as unchecked mass migration undermines their country.

Rapes, stabbings, and other crimes by migrants - often rejected asylum applicants who weren't deported - have become a "new normal."

German women feel unsafe. In late July, a Lebanese Islamist perpetrated a terrorist attack in Berlin, killing one woman (a tourist visiting from Poland) and injuring 29 more with his vehicle. Meanwhile, Islamist migrants taunt Germans with promises of an "Islamic Republic of Germany" as the already highly-taxed German taxpayers are forced to support large immigrant families, such as a Syrian with three wives, 32 children, and 25 grandchildren.

Images of the migrant incursion into Ceuta - viewed all over the world thanks to social media - no doubt also made an impression on German voters. Recognizing the extent of the constant pressure on Europe's borders, Germans had legitimate grounds to fear that the migrant wave would eventually make its way to Germany and had little stomach for a repeat of Angela Merkel's 2015 red carpet for hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants.

Image: Maximilian Dörrbecker, with use of official sources, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.0 Deed

An increasing number of Germans have had enough. So, when Alice Weidel and other AfD leaders pledge to "close the borders," remove migrants from the welfare rolls, and mass deportations (remigration), the message increasingly resonates, even with German voters with immigrant backgrounds. That's because - as in the U.S. - just because you're an immigrant doesn't mean you want higher crime, terror attacks, and seeing your hard-earned money fund huge polygamous migrant families that turned welfare dependency into a competitive sport.

What further drives AfD support is how the mainstream elites respond to these completely legitimate voter concerns. Sometimes, they begrudgingly acknowledge them and attempt to show that they are doing something about the crisis. However, voters can see that Merz's supposedly "tougher" migration policies are really just nibbling around the edges (often with paradoxical results, such as dumping illegal migrants onto Poland). Overall, however, the voters are talked down to and told that they are dumb, misinformed, unsophisticated, mean-spirited, unwelcoming, and, perhaps even racists and Nazis. Establishment figures then conclude their lectures by proclaiming utter "shock" that the voters are rejecting them.

Herr Merz showed just how deeply committed he is to the mass migration agenda (in spite of some tactical concessions) by channeling the most radical "abolish ICE" activists and attacking mass removals (remigration) as "ethnic cleansing" on the floor of the Bundestag. (Of course, unchecked mass migration rapidly changing Western societies culturally beyond recognition is apparently not "ethnic cleansing.") Like much of the Western political establishment, Chancellor Merz has learned nothing. The voters, however, are refusing to put up with it.

Pawel Styrna is director of international relations at the Federation for American Immigration Reform. He is a legal immigrant and holds a Ph.D. in history from American University in Washington, D.C.

Tyler Durden Sat, 10/10/2026 - 07:00

Hurricane Isaias Slams Gulf Coast, Knocks Out Power To 830,000 As Major Refineries Are Spared

Zero Hedge -

Hurricane Isaias Slams Gulf Coast, Knocks Out Power To 830,000 As Major Refineries Are Spared

Hurricane Isaias knocked out power to about 830,000 homes and businesses across Florida, Alabama, and Georgia and disrupted oil and natural gas operations in the Gulf of America, but the good news: it narrowly missed major refineries.

The Category 2 hurricane made landfall near Destin, Florida, at 8:30 local time, with sustained winds of 105 miles per hour before weakening into what the National Hurricane Center calls a "post-tropical cyclone." Strong winds damaged roofs, toppled trees and downed power lines, while flooding was reported across Florida and Alabama.

Gulf oil production fell sharply late in the week as Isaias forced offshore platform evacuations and drilling rig relocations. A slight eastward shift in the storm's track spared Chevron's Pascagoula refinery in Mississippi, reducing the risk of a major refining disruption. The focus today now shifts to damaged infrastructure assessments and the pace of offshore production restarts. 

According to the utility tracker website PowerOutage, 430,000 customers in Florida are without power, 300,000 in Alabama, and another 106,000 in Georgia.

Torrential rain and tropical storm conditions were expected to persist Saturday as the storm moved north through Alabama toward the Tennessee and Ohio valleys.

Tyler Durden Sat, 10/10/2026 - 06:38

Trump Says "Time For Ukraine To Get A New Leader" After Zelensky Ignored Six Pleas To Stop Refinery Strikes

Zero Hedge -

Trump Says "Time For Ukraine To Get A New Leader" After Zelensky Ignored Six Pleas To Stop Refinery Strikes

Update (1200ET): As he was boarding Air Force One on the way to Tennessee this morning, President Trump made his feelings clear over how he feels about Ukrainian President Zelensky.

President Trump stated that "it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president", criticizing Zelensky for bombing Russian oil refineries and accusing him of failing to end the war.

“I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal." 

One day after announcing plans to buy more than a million tonnes of diesel from Russia, Trump said the Ukrainian strikes were driving up global fuel prices and creating “problems for the world”.

“He wants to make problems for our farmers, our ranchers with diesel fuel because Russia supplies a large portion of the diesel fuel throughout the world. And we told them ‘Do whatever you want, but don’t hit the diesel fuel, because this is a big problem, a big shortage’.”

“And what does he do? He goes and hits the diesel fuel.”

Asked about the strikes, he said of Zelensky:

“He’d better damn well stop.”

WATCH:

*  *  *

Friday's diesel deal between Trump and Putin wasn't only about diesel. It was also about Kyiv.

Hours after Zelensky accused Washington of using Ukraine's negotiators as a "smokescreen" for a backroom deal with Moscow, Axios reported that Trump decided to let Russia sell diesel after Zelensky ignored half a dozen US requests to stop attacking Russian oil refineries. The alleged source was a US official with direct knowledge, who did not hold back:

"Zelensky is misreading the room. By continuing to hit refineries, he is eroding the good will that he has built with Trump over the last six months."

In other words, the sanctions waiver was as much a message to Kyiv as a gift to Moscow. So how did we get to this latest geopolitical twist, what is Trump actually got for lifting sanctions (spoiler: less than nine days of fuel), and why is the deal is on a collision course with the one Ukrainian policy Kyiv says it won't give up. Let's dig in. 

"Half A Dozen" Requests

The backstory is familiar to regular readers. One month ago, Trump - freaking out about soaring diesel prices - told reporters that Zelensky "has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia," and a day later he announced a truce that never really happened:

A few hours later, Kyiv kept hitting refineries anyway. Just last weekend Zelensky vowed to hammer more of them, and on Thursday Ukrainian drones set Russia's largest refinery at Omsk ablaze, more than 1,500 miles from the border. Axios notes the strikes were "highly effective and caused an energy crisis in Russia," prompting Moscow's diesel export ban, which then "added more pressure to global diesel markets under strain from the war in Iran."

The core disagreement is about symmetry. Zelensky told Trump, Witkoff and Kushner that he would stop hitting Russian refineries if Russia stopped hitting Ukrainian power plants. Trump wanted Ukraine to stop unilaterally, according to the official, and "didn't see the attacks on refineries as equivalent to Russian strikes on Ukraine's power grid." Or, as the official put it: "The attacks on the refineries cause pain in Russia, but it causes pain for the U.S., too."

Then there is what happened in Miami. During eight hours of talks on Friday, Witkoff and Kushner told the Ukrainian delegation that Trump was expected to call Putin and lift sanctions on Russian diesel, because Kyiv had ignored repeated requests on strikes "which were directly affecting U.S. consumers." A Ukrainian official claimed the envoys also threatened that Trump could cut Ukraine off from US intelligence if it kept ignoring him. The US official denied that, saying the envoys merely reminded Kyiv that the US provides munitions and intelligence, so Ukraine "shouldn't take actions that hurt American consumers." That is a fine distinction, and Kyiv is unlikely to see the difference.

So was Ukraine's team a "smokescreen," as Zelensky charged? Not quite: the US delegation told them what was coming. But the decision was clearly made before they sat down. Zelensky's reaction, in a statement reported by Politico:

"At this very moment, while our team is talking with the American team in Florida, at this very moment, the President of the United States is talking with the leader of the Kremlin... and has an agreement under which America is allowing Russia to export diesel fuel. That means more money for this war... I believe our team is simply being used as a smokescreen, and that is certainly not fair."

He went further in an interview with Axios, calling it "not fair and not honest" and "a happy birthday present for Putin" (who turned 74 on Wednesday), and told reporters it was "a weak decision by strong partners."

And the payoff from Putin? So far, none on peace. During the 90-minute call he declined to commit to resuming talks with Ukraine. Kremlin adviser Yuri Ushakov said Ukrainian strikes on Moscow and other cities during Russia's parliamentary elections had "thwarted the possibility of an immediate resumption of the negotiation process," adding: "The president said, we will think about when these negotiations can be resumed." That is the kind of non-answer that tends to precede more non-answers. The US official still thinks Putin "is open to a discussion on ending the war," and says Washington wants a "new proposal that will be good enough for him." Witkoff and Kushner may visit Moscow and Kyiv next week, though Axios notes it's unclear how Friday's blowup will affect those plans.

What Trump Got: 4.8 Million Tons, Mostly "Thereafter"

Here's what Trump posted on Truth Social shortly before Friday's close:

"I have just concluded a highly successful discussion with President Vladimir Putin, of Russia, wherein it was agreed that Russia will immediately supply over 300,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel to the American and Global Marketplace, another 500,000 Tons during the month of November, and 1,000,000 Tons immediately thereafter."

Another 3 million tons would follow "within a short period of time," depending on "the condition of their Diesel Refineries." That condition is the whole point, as we explain below. Then came the usual all-caps flourish: between "our TOTAL CONTROL of the Strait of Hormuz, and this great announcement on Russian Energy, Diesel Prices for Americans and, indeed, the World, will be COMING DOWN, IN RECORD NUMBERS, AND FAST!"

Minutes later, Treasury said OFAC was "immediately issuing a temporary general license to allow the supply of Russian diesel to the global market." General License 135 authorizes the sale, delivery and import (including into the US) of Russian-origin diesel until April 7, 2027. That is six months, and according to Fortune it is the first diesel waiver since the war began to run longer than the standard 30 days. The EU and UK sanctions are unchanged, so Europe, the region that actually imports diesel, can't legally buy a drop of it.

Moscow confirmed the terms. Deputy PM Alexander Novak said Russia was ready to supply 300,000 tons in October, 500,000 in November and 1 million in December, and that "in the long run, this volume could reach three million tons per month." The Kremlin's readout said "the Russian side reaffirmed its readiness to supply oil and oil products to the American and world markets," with no dates attached. Something to look forward to in 2027, perhaps.

The algos loved it. As Goldman's US rates desk wrote in its Friday wrap (available to pro subs), "Before the close, headlines hit the tape that Russia would release diesel supply into the market, driving down diesel prices and leading to a modest rally in the front end." Both US and European diesel futures slid, with NY Harbor diesel down about 4.5% to $4.67/gallon per the FT, and WTI fell about a buck to $91.

Do The Math: Less Than Nine Days Of Fuel

Now for the arithmetic. At roughly 7.45 barrels per ton, the "immediate" 300,000 tons is about 2.2 million barrels. The US burns roughly 4 million barrels of distillate a day, so October's tranche covers about half a day of American demand. Add November and December and the first 1.8 million tons cover about 3.4 days. Even if the 3 million tons conditional on refinery health actually arrive, the full 4.8 million tons (about 36 million barrels) cover less than nine days of US consumption.

That is the best case. Trump's own post says the fuel is going to the "American and Global Marketplace", so the US share will be smaller.

For context, the Omsk refinery that Ukraine hit on Thursday produced roughly 8 million tons of diesel in 2024 (per Bloomberg). That is about 670,000 tons a month. Put differently, the entire "November tranche" is less than one month of output from a single plant that was on fire the day before the deal was announced.

The industry isn't buying it either. The FT reports that Russia is running its refineries at about 60% of capacity because of Ukrainian strikes, and quotes Kpler's head of policy and geopolitical risk Michelle Brouhard: "The thing that I'm most curious about is: where is the diesel going to come from? Russia doesn't have an export problem. It's got a refinery problem." Rapidan's Bob McNally added that Moscow had already "been leaning toward a slight easing of its diesel export ban for logistical reasons." So Trump may have paid a six-month sanctions waiver for barrels Russia was about to sell anyway.

Brouhard also warned that the deal could end up removing diesel from the market. Because the headline knocked diesel down relative to crude while freight costs are at records, "Refinery margins are now negative, which means refinery runs in Asia probably are going to come off . . . which means we're going to lose some diesel." Mission accomplished.

Why Russia Can't Spare It (And Why Trump Wants It Anyway)

The irony is that Russia isn't exporting diesel because it can't. As regular readers know, Moscow banned diesel exports back on July 8 to avoid domestic shortages after a wave of Ukrainian drone strikes on its refineries, and extended the ban through Oct. 31 last week. The IEA estimates Russian diesel output is down about 30%. In other words, Putin has just promised to export fuel his own motorists are queuing for, under a ban his own government imposed. That's either a remarkable act of generosity or a remarkably cheap promise (we know which way we lean).

The reason for the urgency is simple: diesel is still near record highs with less than four weeks until Election Day. AAA's national average was $6.23/gallon on Friday, down only modestly from the record $6.52 on Sept. 22. Goldman's commodity desk wrote last weekend in its Weekly Commodity Thoughts (available to pro subs) that the global distillate market "has been the most distressed area of the entire energy complex with gasoil cracks (gasoil vs. crude) trading to over $100/bbl in late September." That only eased after "recent US political pressure and threats to implement a diesel export ban" pushed the G7 into a 100mb emergency release. We covered that at the time under the title "Trump's Diesel Threat Worked." Goldman's desk was not impressed with the fix:

"However, while prices have moved lower the release does little to solve the structural issue has been caused by continued curtailment of Middle East exports and widespread damage to Russian refinery infrastructure."

JPMorgan's commodities chief Natasha Kaneva was blunter about the G7 headline in her latest diesel note (available to pro subs): "the headline 100 million barrels does not represent 100 million barrels of new intervention ... much of Friday's announcement represents the completion of the earlier IEA release rather than a new injection of barrels." Sound familiar?

The market had the same reaction to the G7 release. As we noted on Wednesday, diesel crack spreads "quickly shot up back over $100, as market laughs at the emergency release of 100MM barrels."

The Market Already Priced It (Sort Of)

The hedge funds saw this coming. Goldman's Robert Quinn wrote earlier this week (and available to pro subs) that in the week through Sept. 29, managed money sold $2.4 billion of gasoil, the largest amount in 18 months, split equally between liquidation and new shorts. That followed a run in which specs "purchased in all but 1 week for a cumulative +$4.3bn" from late June to mid-September. And on Oct. 6, three days before Trump's post, "October Gasoil reached intraday lows of -5.3% on reports that Russia may lift the country's ban on diesel exports for some producers in October."

Translation: a good chunk of the "Russia relief" was in the price before Friday's headline. That leaves little room for another leg lower, and plenty of room for a squeeze if the barrels don't show up.

It's The Midterms, Stupid

Why burn this much goodwill with Kyiv over nine days of diesel? Because fuel prices are what's moving the ballot. Goldman's political economists Alec Phillips and Abhay Duggirala wrote in their latest US Election Monitor (available here for pro subs) that "Gasoline prices and the Democratic generic ballot have moved together this year - the Democratic lead widened gradually after the gasoline price spike at the onset of the Iran war." Democrats now lead the generic ballot by an average of 8.9pp, and "Inflation and the economy rank highest for voters, and Trump's net approval on both is deeply negative."

Prediction markets have already reached their verdict: using Polymarket data, Goldman notes markets are "now pricing a roughly 65% chance of a Democratic sweep and less than a 10% chance that Republicans retain their House majority."

Against that backdrop, everything the White House did on diesel this week makes sense: the red-dye diesel waiver on Monday, the export-ban threats (which, as Goldman modeled, would knock just $0.25/gallon off retail diesel per week, before pushing gasoline higher), the decision not to strike Iran until after Nov. 3, and now Putin's diesel. JPMorgan's Market Intel desk summed up the shift in a client call this week: "why diesel, not crude, may now be the more important inflation signal." For a White House facing 25 days of voter anger at the pump, a Friday afternoon price dip is worth a lot. The fact that it rests on a sanctions waiver and a promise from Putin is the problem.

US Intel Cut-Off Threats and Ukraine Responses Already...

As we detailed earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s negotiating team met Trump’s representatives for nearly eight hours on Friday in Miami, where they were meant to discuss ways to convince Russia to end its war.

During the meeting, Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner raised the possibility that intelligence sharing could be cut off if Kyiv did not heed Washington’s warning to halt the strikes, according to people familiar with the matter.

“It was a firm request from POTUS,” one of the Ukrainians involved in the talks told the FT, referring to Trump.

Ukraine uses US intelligence to carry out the energy infrastructure attacks that have choked off a vital source of revenue for Moscow's war economy.

The new details turn the diesel deal from a pump-price gimmick into a test of wills with Kyiv. Trump has now tied the price Americans pay for diesel to whether Ukraine keeps burning Russian refineries - that way he has a clear scapegoat when Diesel prices keeps rising. Kyiv's answer came within hours, and it was not the "symmetrical" one Zelensky had floated. A senior Ukrainian official told the FT that the long-range drone strikes on Russian energy facilities will continue: 

"We will burn [Russian] refineries."

Which is why the deal looks doomed from the start, which ironically is just what Trump wanted as there is little chance diesel sustains a price drop for the next several weeks. As one widely shared take on X put it within minutes of the announcement, before Axios confirmed the motive:

That is now, more or less, the White House's position.

The next Ukrainian drone that hits a Russian refinery will be hitting a supply chain the US president just put his name on (which has now already happened).

We expect a Truth Social broadside at Zelensky the moment that happens, along with blaming the Ukraine president for all US inflationary woes,  which much to the deep state's disgust, would leave Washington defending Putin's export capacity against its own ally, weeks before an election.

As for the barrels, we'll believe them when we see them in New York Harbor. Russia's export ban still runs through Oct. 31, its refineries are running at about 60% of capacity, and Kyiv has said outright that it will keep burning them. The most likely outcome? Putin sends out a diesel tanker, Ukraine drones the refinery that filled it, and the "deal" quietly dies, with both sides blaming Zelensky. Until then, it has done what it was designed to do: produce one good headline for the pump-price chart, and put Kyiv on notice that going forward Z will be the scapegoat for American runaway energy inflation.

Much more in the full Goldman Weekly Commodity Thoughts, Quinn's "Managed Money Gasoil Sentiment Shifting?" note, the GS US Election Monitor and JPMorgan's diesel note, all available to pro subs.

Tyler Durden Sat, 10/10/2026 - 00:22

AI Authoritarianism: A Government Without Constitutional Brakes

Zero Hedge -

AI Authoritarianism: A Government Without Constitutional Brakes

Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

"United States AI companies must be free to innovate without cumbersome regulation."

- President Donald Trump, Executive Order 14365

The era of small government is over.

Anyone who tells you differently is selling you a lie.

Case in point: Donald Trump promised to shrink the federal government.

But what if Trump's pledge to cut the federal work force wasn't really about eliminating government bureaucracy but outsourcing it to the AI tech sector?

What if Trump, with the backing of a self-serving industry eager to automate government, is instead helping to build a government that no longer needs as many human beings to operate it?

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers are disappearing from the government payroll at the same time that Washington is racing to automate the work they once performed with artificial intelligence.

Since Trump returned to office, the federal workforce has shrunk by more than 270,000 employees, the result of hiring freezes, deferred resignations, early retirements and reductions in force.

At the same time, the Trump administration has embraced an aggressive campaign to automate government operations, with the General Services Administration instructing agencies to "eliminate, optimize and automate" their work wherever possible.

This is not a return to smaller government.

It is a dangerous recalibration of government power.

What we are watching unfold is the construction of a government that requires fewer human beings to carry out its will, fewer human beings to question its orders, and fewer human beings to stand in the way when efficiency collides with legality, morality or constitutional restraint.

That is the real danger of automating government.

Human beings hesitate. Human beings question. Human beings object. Human beings refuse. Human beings blow the whistle.

Machines do not hesitate. They do not object. They do not blow the whistle.

For the most part, machines do what they are programmed to do. Until they don't.

For an administration increasingly impatient with legal restraints, institutional resistance and anyone who says "no," that is not merely a technological convenience.

It is an authoritarian temptation.

Anyone who believes smaller government means less government power needs to think again, because a government run by machines is still government.

Likewise, a government without bureaucrats is not necessarily a government without bureaucracy.

It may simply be bureaucracy without human beings.

And bureaucracy without human beings may prove far more powerful, pervasive and difficult to restrain than anything that came before it.

What is taking shape is a government that may employ fewer human beings while possessing exponentially greater power to surveil, process, classify, investigate and control the population.

Indeed, the administration has now launched America.gov, an AI-powered centralized digital gateway through which Americans will eventually interact with federal agencies and complete government transactions. The White House boasts that it will allow the federal government to "do its own paperwork."

AI can certainly reduce backlogs, simplify forms, process information and free workers from tedious tasks.

Certainly, artificial intelligence can help eliminate repetitive paperwork, reduce backlogs, identify waste, simplify complicated forms, translate government jargon into plain English, process enormous amounts of information and free human workers from tedious tasks.

The concern is not whether AI can be useful.

It can.

The danger begins when AI stops assisting human beings and starts replacing them - not merely as clerks but as decision-makers, investigators, gatekeepers, analysts and enforcers of government power.

Thus, the concern is not the technology itself but what happens when government begins using it to eliminate the human restraints that constitutional government depends upon.

We are rapidly moving from a society ruled by laws and due process to one ruled increasingly by software.

In such a regime, the law is no longer merely interpreted. It is executed. Automatically. Mechanically. At machine speed.

The result is a system in which government no longer governs. It processes.

Your application. Your tax return. Your disability claim. Your immigration status. Your face. Your movements. Your associations. Your financial transactions. Your government records request. Your threat profile.

Perhaps eventually your guilt or innocence.

And, if some military planners have their way, whether you qualify as a target.

This is where the supposed efficiency of artificial intelligence collides head-on with the Constitution.

Government is not a private corporation. Its purpose is not merely to become faster, cheaper or more productive. Government possesses powers that no corporation possesses. It can tax you. Search you. Arrest you. Imprison you. Seize your property. Monitor you. Restrict your liberty. And in extreme circumstances, take your life.

And in extreme circumstances, take your life.

When government exercises those powers, efficiency cannot be the highest value. Liberty must be.

Due process is inefficient. Search warrants are inefficient. Trials are inefficient. Appeals are inefficient. Human review is inefficient. Checks and balances are spectacularly inefficient.

They are supposed to be.

The Constitution deliberately places obstacles between government power and the individual.

Before the police may search your home, they generally need a warrant. Before the government may imprison you, it must give you an opportunity to challenge the accusations. Government power is deliberately divided so that one branch can restrain another.

All of that takes time.

All of that requires human beings.

All of that frustrates officials who would prefer to simply get things done.

Yet those safeguards are among the things standing between a free people and a government that can act instantly, universally and without meaningful resistance.

Artificial intelligence promises to cut through the delays, obstacles and human steps that slow government down.

That is marvelous if you're trying to schedule an appointment. It is terrifying when the government is making decisions about your liberty - or your life.

For generations, government power was also constrained by manpower. There were only so many investigators, analysts and bureaucrats - and only so many hours in a day.

AI changes that equation.

By doing what the police state has historically lacked the manpower and resources to do quickly, AI surveillance is already reorienting our world into one in which freedom is increasingly difficult to recognize: it can be everywhere, watch everyone and everything, monitor, identify, catalogue, cross-check, cross-reference and collate enormous quantities of information.

The surveillance state no longer needs enough people to watch everyone. It needs enough computing power.

That distinction matters.

A human investigator can follow only so many people. An algorithm can analyze millions. A bureaucrat can make only so many decisions in a day. A machine can make millions without sleeping, hesitating or developing a conscience.

That allows government power - and government abuse - to operate on a scale the Founders could scarcely have imagined.

It also creates an enormous accountability problem.

For decades, critics of the administrative state have warned about unelected bureaucrats wielding excessive government power.

Replacing the bureaucrat with an algorithm does not solve that problem. It may make it worse.

At least the bureaucrat has a name. A human being can be questioned. A supervisor can At least the bureaucrat has a name. A human being can be questioned. A supervisor can intervene. An employee can refuse an unlawful order. A whistleblower can expose misconduct. Someone can be held responsible.

But what happens when government responds, in effect, that the computer made the decision? Who do you cross-examine? Who explains the reasoning? Who takes responsibility for the mistake? Who possesses the authority to override the machine? And what happens when the algorithm itself belongs not to the government but to a private corporation whose code, training data and internal workings are shielded from public scrutiny?

The government's dependence on private technology companies only compounds the problem.

Government power remains government power, but accountability becomes privatized.

We are already seeing glimpses of this future.

Federal agencies are already experimenting with AI to review Freedom of Information Act requests and recommend which portions of government records should be withheld from the public. Customs and Border Protection is testing AI-assisted redaction tools, while other agencies are developing similar systems. Human reviewers are still involved, but the trajectory is unmistakable: tasks requiring judgment about what the public may know are increasingly becoming candidates for automation.

The stakes become far greater once AI moves from paperwork to policing and warfare.

Earlier this year, the Pentagon clashed with Anthropic, the company behind the Claude AI system, after Anthropic insisted on maintaining restrictions against two uses of its technology: mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons.

Anthropic warned that present AI systems are not reliable enough to independently decide when weapons should fire and argued that AI-powered mass surveillance could allow government to piece together enormous quantities of otherwise scattered information about Americans at unprecedented scale.

The Pentagon responded by designating Anthropic a supply-chain risk, a decision that has since become the subject of litigation.

The dispute should concern anyone who cares about the limits of government power.

The issue was not whether artificial intelligence could assist military personnel.

It was whether there must always remain a human being responsible for certain decisions.

That question became even more urgent in September, when the United States and Russia opposed provisions under discussion at the United Nations that would have required human review of AI-generated military targets and imposed stronger requirements concerning the predictability and reliability of autonomous weapons systems.

The consequences of that rush toward machine-speed warfare are no longer hypothetical.

In February, U.S. missiles struck the Shajarah Tayyebeh girls' elementary school in Minab, Iran, killing more than 150 people, including at least 120 children.

The school had once been part of a military compound, but it had been operating openly as a school for years. Yet outdated intelligence still classified the site as a military target.

According to reporting on the Pentagon's internal investigation, the flawed target was fed into Maven, the military's AI-assisted targeting system. Officials reportedly relied too heavily on the technology to identify stale or contradictory intelligence while an accelerated targeting process compressed work that once took hours into minutes. At the same time, civilian-harm mitigation teams had been dramatically reduced.

The machine did not simply wake up one morning and decide to bomb a school. Human beings built a system that placed a premium on speed, automation and scale - and then gave it priority over human judgment and careful vetting.

That distinction matters. It is also precisely the danger.

Think about the progression: First AI does the paperwork. Then AI recommends the decision. Then AI makes the decision.

Eventually AI decides who lives and who dies.

At each step, humans remain tempted to surrender a little more judgment to the machine because it is faster, cheaper, more efficient and supposedly more objective.

Yet technology does not eliminate human bias, political agendas or government misconduct.

It can automate them. It can amplify them. It can conceal them behind a technological black box. And it can reproduce them millions of times before anyone realizes what has happened.

This is why assurances that AI companies can largely police themselves should provide little comfort.

At a White House gathering with technology executives on September 29, Trump praised what he called "tremendous self-policing" by the AI industry and joined major technology companies in announcing a voluntary safety accord emphasizing internal controls, outside audits and corporate oversight.

In other words, Trump wants us to trust the government and the AI sector to police itself.

The Founders knew better than to trust power to police itself. That is one of the central premises of the Constitution.

As James Madison famously observed in Federalist No. 51, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary."

The Founders did not assume that those entrusted with power would always restrain themselves. They divided power among competing branches because they understood that good intentions are not a safeguard against tyranny. Neither are voluntary promises. Neither are corporate ethics policies. Neither are algorithms.

Machines are not angels. The corporations building them are not angels. The politicians deploying them are not angels. And artificial intelligence does not repeal the oldest lesson in the history of government: power requires limits because power will always seek to expand.

This is where the campaign to shrink the federal workforce takes on an entirely different significance.

There is nothing inherently wrong with reducing unnecessary government employment, eliminating waste or using technology to make public services work better.

The danger lies in confusing fewer government employees with less government.

A government can have fewer workers and still become vastly more powerful. It can automate surveillance. Automate investigations. Automate eligibility decisions. Automate regulatory enforcement. Automate censorship. Automate watchlists. Automate targeting. Automate punishment.

Indeed, a government freed from the practical limits imposed by manpower could become more pervasive than anything an earlier generation of bureaucrats could have achieved.

That is the paradox confronting us.

We may be building a smaller federal workforce and a larger government machine.

Trump will not be president forever. Neither will the politicians who come after him.

But the AI infrastructure being erected now - the databases, automated systems, surveillance capabilities, digital gateways and government relationships with technology companies - will be inherited by every future administration.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, once those powers become embedded in the machinery of government, they will be exceedingly difficult to dismantle.

That is why the debate over artificial intelligence cannot be reduced to whether AI creates jobs, destroys jobs, saves taxpayer money or makes government more convenient.

The greater question is what happens when fewer and fewer human beings stand between government power and the people subjected to it.

What happens when there is no human face behind the decision? No human judgment. No human hesitation. No human mercy. No human conscience.

No human being willing - or able - to say: this is wrong.

The great danger is not that artificial intelligence will suddenly seize control of the government. It is that government officials will willingly surrender more and more control to artificial intelligence because machines are faster, cheaper, more obedient and easier to blame.

That is how bureaucracy without bureaucrats becomes authoritarianism without accountability.

The government may employ fewer people. It may operate fewer offices. It may eliminate paperwork and automate entire agencies. But if it can watch more people, investigate more people, process more people, target more people and exercise more power over more lives than ever before, that is not smaller government.

It is government without human limits.

The Founders built the Constitution around a simple truth: power cannot be trusted to restrain itself.

That truth does not become obsolete because the machinery of power now runs on artificial intelligence. If anything, it becomes more urgent.

Because once we remove the human beings who can question, resist, object and refuse, we may discover too late that we have not eliminated the bureaucracy at all.

We have eliminated the brakes.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 23:25

Grisly Discovery At Governor's Mansion As Human Remains Unearthed

Zero Hedge -

Grisly Discovery At Governor's Mansion As Human Remains Unearthed

A disturbing discovery at North Dakota's governor's mansion has uncovered seven coffins with human remains after construction crews hit a long-forgotten burial ground.

Freshly smoothed dirt rests behind a fence outside the North Dakota governor’s residence in Bismarck on Sept. 30, 2026, after seven coffins containing human remains were exhumed from the site. (Photo by Michael Achterling/North Dakota Monitor)

The shocking find came at North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong's (R) official residence in Bismarck, where workers were carrying out a $2.35 million security upgrade, according to the North Dakota Monitor.

Preliminary exams identified the remains of two women, two men, two teenage boys and a toddler. An unidentified wooden box was also recovered, officials told PEOPLE.

"It's going to take a while now to do the research and analysis," Brandon Solberg, facilities management director for the office, said in an interview with the local news outlet.

The mystery started May 19, when contractors digging near the southwest corner of the property found human remains and fragments of coffin hardware. Work in that area stopped as archaeologists from the State Historical Society of North Dakota moved in.

"After the initial remains were discovered on May 19 while contractors were conducting work in the Governor's Residence yard, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) paused work in the immediate area," the agency said in a statement obtained by PEOPLE. "Initial results identified a total of nine additional anomalies indicating potential for 10 graves in the work area."

The grounds once served as Bismarck's first community cemetery from 1873 to 1877, Realtor.com reported. Officials had believed the graves were moved to other cemeteries in the 1880s.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 22:10

US Envoys Meet With Ukrainian Officials Over 'Unified Proposal'; Zelensky Decries Trump's 'Unfair, Dishonest' Deal With Putin

Zero Hedge -

US Envoys Meet With Ukrainian Officials Over 'Unified Proposal'; Zelensky Decries Trump's 'Unfair, Dishonest' Deal With Putin

Update (2000ET): We can only imagine how cold those discussions were when the Ukrainian officials heard about Trump's deal with Putin for the release of diesel stocks to the world.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was not best pleased. He told Axios in a phone interview on Friday that President Trump's decision to unilaterally lift sanctions on Russia and allow it to export diesel was "not fair and not honest."

"You know, it looks like a happy birthday present for Putin. It looks absolutely terrible," Zelensky said in frustration, referring to the Russian president's birthday earlier this week.

Zelensky went on to describe the deal as "an investment in a war that must be ended."

"Gifts to Putin will not bring peace or any benefit ​to the civilised world," Zelenskiy wrote on the X social ⁠media platform.

"Russia ⁠will 'repay' the diesel with ⁠further ​terror and perfidy. Allowing Russia to sell petroleum products is an ​investment in a ⁠war that must be ended, not prolonged. What is needed is real de-escalation with Russia on a reciprocal basis," Zelenskiy said.

Trump said in a post on social media that he had ⁠agreed in a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin that Russia ⁠would immediately supply diesel to the US and global marketplace.

Trump said lower prices for Americans "is my Greatest Priority".

As Timothy Frudd reported earlier for The Epoch Times, U.S. negotiators will meet with Ukrainian officials today and tomorrow in an effort to work toward a peace proposal to end the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.

The meeting comes a month after U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner visited Moscow and Kyiv to meet separately with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Both U.S. President Donald Trump and Zelenskyy have been pushing for an end to the war before winter.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday that the United States is continuing to try to facilitate a negotiated agreement between Russia and Ukraine to end the war. He warned that the war, which started in February 2022, appeared to be at a "very dangerous" stalemate.

"Special Envoy Witkoff and Jared Kushner will meet with Ukrainian officials tomorrow to discuss a new, unified proposal that is focused on all aspects of the conflict to try to end the war," a senior administration official told The Epoch Times on Oct. 8.

"They will be joined by national security advisors from the E3 countries, as well as the European Union and NATO."

Friday's scheduled meeting between the Trump administration's negotiators and Ukrainian officials was also confirmed by Zelenskyy on Oct. 8.

"Meetings are expected to take place over two days," Zelenskyy told reporters Thursday, according to The Kyiv Independent. "And we are counting on a European team to join our negotiating group and the American negotiating group."

The Epoch Times reached out to Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs for additional comment and did not receive a response before publication time.

In a prior social media post on Oct. 5, Zelenskyy said Ukraine expected that the United States would be able to arrange a trilateral meeting between Moscow, Kyiv, and Washington this month.

Zelenskyy met with Trump on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 22. During a bilateral press conference, both leaders said it is important to end the war before the upcoming winter season.

Trump told reporters last month that he believed both Putin and Zelenskyy wanted to see the war ended and that the Russian president was willing to meet to discuss a peace deal with Ukraine. He also suggested that the war could be ended sooner than people think.

During a joint press conference with Portuguese Foreign Minister Paulo Rangel on Thursday, Rubio warned that the war between Russia and Ukraine could escalate and become a "much broader and far more dangerous regional conflict" if a peace deal is not reached.

"It's an extremely dangerous war because, frankly, right now it seems to be at a stalemate, and stalemates are very dangerous," Rubio told reporters.

The secretary of state said that a stalemate is only resolved in two ways: with a negotiated peace settlement or with an escalation in the fighting.

"In the end, we do not believe that there is a military solution to this conflict, to this war. We think this war needs to end in a negotiated settlement, the sooner the better," Rubio said. "The United States stands ready to facilitate that."

He added that the United States wants to see a "permanent, enduring, and fair" negotiated settlement to end the conflict.

At least 30 people were killed on Thursday in a Russian strike on Kramatorsk, Ukraine, according to Zelenskyy. The Ukrainian president said a Russian bomb struck two city minibuses. An additional 18 people were injured in the strike.

The strike came after the Russian Defense Ministry reported that Russian air defenses had intercepted almost 900 Ukrainian drones overnight in multiple parts of the country on Oct. 6.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 21:45

China Buys Record Amount Of Gold As India Panics, Scraps Key Tax Relief On Precious Imports

Zero Hedge -

China Buys Record Amount Of Gold As India Panics, Scraps Key Tax Relief On Precious Imports

Gold is climbing notably this morning, underscoring the potential for the precious metal to ratchet higher into year-end thanks to sustained buying from central banks and retail investors. 

On the retail side, the total known ETF holdings of bullion are up this week, set to match the 12-week streak of gains posted through April 18, 2025. 

That means the stockpile exceeds the peak touched just before the outbreak of the Iran war.

And central banks are backing up the truck as The Financial Times reports that China has spent a record sum importing more than 1,000 tonnes of gold this year as the central bank and local investors pour cash into bullion amid rising geopolitical tensions abroad and poor returns on local assets.

The world’s second-largest economy spent $158.8bn on gold in the first eight months of the year. That compared with spending of $96.5bn for all of 2025 on 886 tonnes of gold.

The jump comes after China reined in gold purchases last year during an intense rally that sent bullion prices soaring from about $2,625 a troy ounce at the start of 2025 to a peak of $5,595 in January.

There are signs that Chinese investors are increasing gold purchases as part of broader efforts to diversify their assets. Chinese holdings of US Treasuries fell to $618bn in July — the lowest level since August 2008. 

“Both the central bank and private investors are diversifying their reserves and savings towards an asset with no counterparty risk, as part of a broader long-term wealth preservation strategy,” said Lisa Liu, managing director at Gold Mountains Asset Management, part of Zijin Mining Group — China’s largest gold miner. 

But not everyone is embracing domestic demand for the barbarous relic...

India cut a key precious metals import tax relief policy overnight amid the country's broader 2026 efforts to curb non-essential gold imports, ease pressure on foreign exchange reserves, and support the rupee amid high fuel costs and currency weakness.

The official stated reason is tax parity: to stop the tax treatment itself from making one import route (banks/nominated agencies) preferential over others (including channels such as the India International Bullion Exchange).

Simply put, the specific 'key gold import tax relief' being scrapped is the bank IGST exemption (framed politically as parity), but it is part of the same policy environment of measures taken earlier in 2026 explicitly aimed at moderating gold imports and protecting forex reserves:

In mid-May 2026 the government sharply raised effective customs duty on gold and silver from 6% to 15% (basic customs duty to 10% + Agriculture Infrastructure and Development Cess to 5%), with platinum rising similarly. Officials framed this as curbing non-essential/discretionary imports so foreign exchange could be prioritized for essentials (crude oil, fertilizers, industrial inputs, etc.) amid the West Asia crisis, elevated oil prices, and pressure on the rupee.

PM Modi publicly appealed to citizens to avoid gold purchases for a year.

Other steps included tighter rules on certain import schemes, delays in licenses/notifications, and related restrictions.

Higher import costs for gold reduce demand (or at least slow it), ease the current-account and FX drain, and thereby help limit further depreciation - the same logic that has driven gold-duty adjustments in past periods of external stress.

So China is backing up a very big truck, Retail is BTFDing in ETF-land, and India is still panicking over fuel costs (desperate to slow domestic demand for the only thing that hedges its currency's collapse).

“This isn’t a short-term trade, it’s a multiyear repositioning of household and official assets. The scale and persistence of Chinese buying is now a core driver of global gold prices and we expect it to hold as long as uncertainty over growth and geopolitics remains,” said Liu.

As Bloomberg's Garfield Reynolds notes, October in particular is looking like a sweet spot with rates traders sticking to bets that the Fed will delay any hikes until December, and with central bank appetite also showing little sign of abating, the level of demand out there has allowed bullion to show some resilience in the face of higher real yields and the resulting strength in the US dollar.

Gold is becoming an increasingly important diversifier for global investors at a time when government bonds no longer move inversely to stock markets.

Christopher Hamilton, Invesco’s head of client solutions for Asia Pacific ex-Japan, said gold prices had ceased to behave as they did during periods of rising real yields, which in the past caused gold prices to drop. “You’re in an environment where you want to own real assets,” he said.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 21:20

Will AI Devalue The Real World?

Zero Hedge -

Will AI Devalue The Real World?

Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times,

Economic reality embeds many paradoxes, unexpected outcomes that go the opposite direction of what you might intuitively predict. The best example concerns a new innovation that seems to make more efficient use of existing resources. Intuition might suggest that the result will be less resource use but reality often goes in the other direction.

DimaBerlin/Shutterstock

This is called the Jevons Paradox and it is based on a famous debate over the steam engine which made coal power far more effective than ever before, leading to wide predictions that the coal industry would experience a dramatic pullback in production need. Economist Henry Jevons said the opposite: the demand for coal will soar precisely because each unit will become more valuable in the task it serves.

He was correct. The lesson applies in many areas of life. Sometimes that very thing we believe is endangered by an innovation that seems to nearly replace it prompts the very opposite: the original resource becomes more valuable than ever before.

Consider the problem of counterfeit luxury goods. We are talking about Nike tennis shoes, Gucci accessories, Louis Vuitton luggage and bags, Rolex watches, and so on. There is a massive global economy supported by fakes. There is simply no way that a single brand can possibly stamp them out. I've been to cities in Turkey where the real and fake stores sell identical looking products happily, happily but at wildly divergent prices.

Economists have studied this phenomenon for many years and the results of the empirical studies are nearly always the same. The counterfeit good does not diminish the value of the authentic good. In fact, the valuation push goes in the other direction. The prices of the authentic thing rise in price, which is precisely why luxury brands know better than to crack down with a heavy hand.

Why might this be? The fake good provides brand advertising in two directions. It gets the name out there. And the very fact that these companies are dedicating time and resources to try to replicate the original only sends a market signal that the original is worthy of being copied. The result is a mad scramble on the part of consumers who can afford the real thing to find it, authenticate it, and brag about it.

The end result: the real thing becomes more valuable than ever.

The Coca-Cola Company discovered this early in its operations in the late 19th century. There were many imitators, despite the famous secret recipe. The company tried to stop the fake products through crackdowns and new techniques such as the beautiful bottle that other factories at the time could not replicate. All the while the demand for Coke only grew. Their impersonators only fed the legend through the decades. Finally the slogan "the real thing" dominated the marketing pitch.

Today there are huge studios of painters in China and elsewhere that specialize in recreating old paintings by the old masters. They only grow and grow and the demand for the product rises ever further without diminishing the valuation of the original at all. Quite the reverse. Imitation and counterfeiting itself is a market signal that causes consumer demand to rally around that which is being imitated.

Now we come to the core of why I'm explaining this. It concerns artificial intelligence or super intelligence or whatever you want to call it. (Actually I think AI has already stuck.) In only a few years since deployment, it is likely that a majority of the words you read on an average day are being written by machines not people. The same is true with videos and movies. The AI engines are playing a huge role in advertising and music production too.

This has led to an existential panic among creative artists. Are they being replaced entirely? Publishers can no longer tell what is real and what is authentic. News broke last week that a book being considered for an award turned out to be an AI-generated text. That's a humiliation for everyone involved.

No question that these innovations are legitimately troubling for the creative community. But keep in mind what AI specializes in. It is amazing at doing routine tasks, automating them, saving time and other resources. The more you use AI this way, the more it feels like a miracle. What took months only a few years ago takes minutes now.

What AI cannot do is think creatively, make insightful judgments, access authentic imagination, and exercise moral consciousness. To the extent that it behaves as if it can do these things, it is only impersonating people. But the human mind will always maintain its advantage in the creative spark, the conjuring up of new ideas, and the relaying of deep emotion from the experience of love, fear, terror, jealousy, rage, pathos, and sacrificial empathy.

In other words, the authentic products of the human spark will always have value even in a world flooded by AI slop and even its impressive output.

We can fully expect that real human achievement will go the direction of all before. Just as coal became more valuable after steam, and just as a genuine Louis Vuitton bag goes ever higher in price. The fakes don't reduce the price and value of the real but just the opposite, they create an even more intense demand for authenticity. This is just as any technology that makes an existing resource more efficient to use will increase the demand for that resource.

None of which is to say that AI is not going to destroy plenty of jobs, particularly those that have relied upon routine calculation and tasking. Many of those will mercifully go away. That said, we are already tired of AI-created videos that lack the creative spark and AI imagery, with its distinctive qualities, has already become dull.

All of this is going to require adjustment to the new realities. That said, I fully expect the real symphony to make a comeback, the genuine oil painting to achieve new heights of fame, and a truly virtuosic writer to experience an even higher demand.

If affordable and available, no one wants fake when the real is an option.

Think of the pipe organ in a grand cathedral. It is an all-of-body experience. Nothing else like it. You can listen to recordings at home but they are a pale imitation, a digital file on your phone even less. An AI rendering of a fake Bach piece even less. The more we get away from the foundational form of expression - the genius of the human mind combined with the most physical form of making it real - the less it enraptures the spirit.

The market will surely develop increasingly sophisticated mechanisms to certify and signal human authenticity, just as luxury brands developed holograms and blockchain verification to distinguish genuine goods from counterfeits. We are already seeing the emergence of "human-made" certifications and provenance tracking that command premium prices not from nostalgia, but from a deep consumer craving for connection to genuine consciousness.

The creative professions will bifurcate: those which use AI merely as a steam engine for the mind, freeing their unique powers for work bearing their unmistakable human signature, and those which surrender entirely to algorithmic production only to find themselves drowned in the very "slop" that markets reject.

The economic winners will understand that AI complements rather than replaces creativity, handling routine production while human judgment, moral courage, and imaginative depth become the scarcest and most valuable commodities of all.

The Jevons Paradox shows us that efficiency does not diminish value but reveals what is truly scarce. As AI renders mediocrity abundant and costless, it simultaneously illuminates the profound scarcity of genuine human insight, suffering transformed into art, and love made manifest through creative sacrifice.

We are not heading toward a future where the real world is devalued by its artificial imitation, but toward one where authenticity becomes the ultimate luxury, the one thing no machine can manufacture, no algorithm can optimize, and no counterfeit can replicate. And that, paradoxically, may be the most hopeful economic signal of all.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 20:55

Nevada 'Runaway Bride' Who Married Multiple Men To Fund Gambling Addiction Ordered To Repay $280,000

Zero Hedge -

Nevada 'Runaway Bride' Who Married Multiple Men To Fund Gambling Addiction Ordered To Repay $280,000

A Nevada woman who allegedly used a string of marriages to extract money from unsuspecting men has been ordered to repay more than $280,000 after pleading guilty to bigamy and financial fraud, according to CourtTV.

Jiaying Chen, 33, was accused of maintaining a yearslong operation in which she pursued romantic relationships, married multiple men and obtained significant amounts of money before abandoning them. Investigators said she went through five marriages in just the past year. Clark County records also revealed that Chen sought 14 marriage licenses between 2019 and 2024, with seven ultimately resulting in documented marriages.

During an October 6 court hearing, prosecutors detailed the financial damage suffered by nine men, whose individual restitution claims ranged from approximately $8,100 to $81,000. One victim described making five separate trips to China in an unsuccessful effort to recover his funds. Prosecutors characterized Chen as a serial marriage scammer who had turned what should have been personal celebrations into financial disasters.

CourtTV writes that her defense argued that compulsive gambling was responsible for the misconduct and maintained that Chen wanted to make her victims financially whole. Attorneys requested that she be allowed to begin working immediately rather than remain incarcerated. Prosecutors likewise favored supervised release over prison, citing concerns that incarceration could trigger immigration consequences and complicate efforts to recover the stolen money.

District Judge Crystal Eller was unconvinced that Chen's behavior would change without meaningful treatment, raising concerns that she could simply resume similar schemes elsewhere using another identity.

The court ultimately imposed a suspended prison term of eight to 20 years, along with eight more months behind bars. Including time already served, Chen's total jail sentence will amount to roughly one year.

Following her release, Chen must complete two years of supervised probation, participate in gambling recovery programs and counseling, and reimburse her victims a combined $280,062.86. She has also received permission to move to Florida, where she reportedly intends to join a new romantic partner and take a waitressing position at a sushi restaurant owned by a friend.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 20:30

FCC Proposal Would End Chinese Labs' Role In US Device Testing

Zero Hedge -

FCC Proposal Would End Chinese Labs' Role In US Device Testing

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times,

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will vote on Oct. 29 on rules that restrict electronics testing to U.S. labs and countries that offer reciprocal recognition, with Chinese labs expected to be hit hardest.

Apple iPhone's sit for sale in Cupertino, Calif., on July 31, 2025. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

The commission said in a statement Wednesday that it lacks confidence in testing done in economies without a reciprocal framework, where it has seen a pattern of egregious violations. It also said shifting testing abroad has left the equipment-authorization program overconcentrated and harder to oversee.

The statement did not mention China, which handled about 83 percent of FCC certification applications in 2025. China does not grant U.S. testing labs reciprocal recognition.

Before a phone, camera, computer, or any other electronic device can be marketed in the United States, it has to be tested at an FCC-recognized lab. The Oct. 29 order would change which labs can hold that recognition.

"For decades, officials in D.C. looked the other way when foreign nations abused their relationships with America and adopted trade practices that failed to account for basic concepts of reciprocity and fair dealing," FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in the statement.

"Those efforts included the offshoring of testing capacity to foreign labs and the gutting of American jobs and domestic industry.

"Flash forward to now and less than 4% of all electronic devices are tested in labs located inside the U.S., and the lion's share are tested in countries that do not operate a reciprocal economy."

If the commission adopts the order at its Oct. 29 open meeting, testing, certification, and accreditation would have to occur in the United States or a reciprocal economy beginning Dec. 1, 2028.

Beijing's Lab Ties

China is among the countries that do not have a reciprocal agreement with the United States.

In 2025, labs in China tested 38,491 of the 46,402 applications for FCC equipment certification, or 83 percent, according to an April 2026 tally by the commission's Office of Engineering and Technology. U.S. labs handled 1,631 of those applications, or 4 percent.

The FCC proposal follows the "bad labs" rules adopted last year, which barred ownership or control of a test lab by entities the commission treats as national security threats, including foreign adversaries. Twenty-nine labs have since lost FCC recognition because of those ties.

On Sept. 8, 2025, the FCC opened proceedings to withdraw recognition for seven China-based labs it said were owned or controlled by the Chinese communist regime. It denied recognition applications for two other labs and said it would not renew recognition for two more whose recognition had expired.

By Sept. 26, 2025, the commission had begun proceedings to withdraw recognition, or had denied applications, from 15 labs controlled by Beijing.

On April 8, the FCC said it wanted to go further and bar every lab in China from testing devices such as smartphones, cameras, and computers for the U.S. market, not only labs owned or controlled by the Chinese regime.

A review found labs that "potentially have deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)," including Chinese state-owned enterprises and companies that do work for the Chinese military, the FCC said.

"These labs have tested thousands of devices bound for the U.S. market over the last several years," the FCC said.

Carr said the Justice Department's National Security Division had warned the FCC that if a foreign adversary exploited test labs as a loophole, it could infiltrate American networks "on a broad scale."

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 20:05

CNN Sees Metric That Looks 'Darn Good' For Republicans Before The Midterms

Zero Hedge -

CNN Sees Metric That Looks 'Darn Good' For Republicans Before The Midterms

CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten reported Wednesday that voter registration data in four swing states favors Republicans heading into the November midterms. This measure runs counter to polling showing Democrats ahead.

Enten told anchor John Berman that Republicans have improved their party registration margin relative to Democrats by 4 to 8 points in Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania since the midpoint of President Donald Trump's first term. The comparison covers the eight years between the 2018 midterms and the current cycle and draws on state registration records, which count voters who have signed up with each party. Polls, by contrast, estimate how a sample of respondents say they plan to vote, and pollsters weight those results using their own assumptions about who will turn out.

"When you take a look at how people are actually registering — this is not polling data — compared to where we were eight years ago, Republicans are doing considerably better [than the Dems] in what are the swing states," Enten said on CNN.

Berman then asked whether the picture changes over a shorter window. He noted that the baseline for the comparison was 2018 and that polling over the past two years has moved toward Democrats.

Enten said the registration numbers do not show a matching shift in either Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Nevada, or Arizona. "There may be some tiny late gains that are going on right now, right, that I think over the last month maybe Democrats are gaining. But when you take the longer term view versus the 2024 election in which Republicans won all of these states, Democrats are, in fact, not actually gaining ground."

Berman said viewers have seen some upward movement for Democrats in the past couple of months. Enten agreed that the recent movement exists, but the problem for the Democratic Party is that it does not approach the size of the Republican gains.

"There's been some ticks up, but they, in no way, blows away the Republican gains," he said.

Asked to place the numbers in historical context, Enten said the four states share a common result. According to his analysis, the GOP holds its best party registration position relative to Democrats in a midterm year in at least 20 years in each of those swing states.

"The bottom line is this, Republicans, right now, are in a much stronger position than they have been, not just compared to eight years ago, but over the long term as well, the relative health of the Republican Party, at least in terms of party registration, is pretty gosh darn good relative to the Democrats," Enten said.

Florida makes a great case study for this trend. Up until the Trump era, Florida was considered a key swing state, but thanks to Republican registration gains in recent years, it is roughly as Republican as Texas. Trump won both states by double digits in 2024.

"I remember when Florida was a swing state," Enten said. "The bottom line is that Florida has had major gains for Republicans in party registration, and it's reflected in the races in which people are running."

All four states in Enten's comparison went to Trump in 2024, and each has competitive races on the ballot this year. Enten did not say how much of the Republican registration advantage he expects to carry over into turnout. Still, if even a fraction of those new Republican voters show up on Election Day, pollsters may find themselves explaining another miss.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 17:20

Guilfoyle Donor Scandal Explodes As Vance Balks, Rubio Dodges And The Donor Calls It Quid Pro Quo

Zero Hedge -

Guilfoyle Donor Scandal Explodes As Vance Balks, Rubio Dodges And The Donor Calls It Quid Pro Quo

The left finally has something new to sink its teeth into, as the Kimberly Guilfoyle donor scandal widens - with JD Vance keeping his distance, a donor on a media tour, and a records demand sitting on the ambassador's desk. 

The allegation, reported by the WSJ late Wednesday - is that six days before her July 9, 2025, Senate confirmation hearing, Guilfoyle texted Trump donor Eric Deters on Signal and asked him to wire $100,000 to her American Express account in a way that would not leave a paper trail, while he was seeking her help getting the new administration's attention on personal tax and legal problems. She promised, he says, to be his "Trump ride or die, forever and ever." He did not pay. Her lawyer, Jesse Binnall, disputes that the messages are authentic and says any earlier money was for speaking fees. Deters says he owed her nothing.

Since Wednesday, the people who could shut it down have not. Vice President JD Vance, asked about selling access to a high-level official, said "obviously, I don't love that," then said he did not know the details.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with Guilfoyle standing at the foot of his plane in Athens, refused to discuss it: "Guys, I'm not playing this game with you." Deters went on MS NOW, CNN, TMZ and NewsNation and called the ask "absolutely a quid pro quo." House Oversight ranking member Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) asked her for financial records and two years of communications, deadline Oct. 22. President Donald Trump has not commented. Guilfoyle's only public post was about a speech.

What the texts say

According to messages the Journal said it reviewed, Guilfoyle wrote Deters, a former Kentucky congressional candidate, on July 3, 2025: "It won't show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express." She attached a PDF of American Express payment instructions. In a follow-up: "Honey please I need you to get this done for me today," with a prayer-hands emoji. She told him she needed the balance paid down before the hearing. Background checks routinely look at a nominee's debts.

Via WSJ

Deters declined. He told her, the Journal reported, that paying would cost him his marriage. The Independent, citing the Journal, reported that she had dangled a meeting with then-IRS Commissioner Billy Long, whom Trump fired that August. She also told Deters to stop creating a record: "Eric, I really wish you would stop papering all these things. It's really dangerous and not helpful to you or me while you could simply just call me on signal."

The relationship was older than the ambassadorship. Deters says he paid her three $100,000 appearance fees, about $300,000 in all, for events he organized in Kentucky starting in 2020, and later discussed as much as $1 million more if she could move his cause inside the administration. In a June 2025 message he complained he had "not received one favor." What he wanted, he has said since, was help extraditing an Ohio doctor, Atiq Durrani, from Pakistan, in a case involving hundreds of former patients. NewsNation published that account Friday morning.

Binnall's account is the mirror image. He told The Washington Times the Signal messages are not authentic, that payments from Deters were for speaking at events before the nomination, and that she "was owed a balance for traveling to and supporting these patriotic events." Deters says there was no balance.

Since Wednesday

Speaking with MS Now, Deters says it was "absolutely was a quid pro quo" and called Guilfoyle "a grifter," adding, "I have no doubt [she] has done this to more than me. She's doing it right now in Greece." He's since appeared on about half-a-dozen other networks which are clearly part of this push for a scalp. 

Vance's answer was interesting... Presented with a hypothetical that tracked the report, he said he does not like anybody selling access to a government official, "certainly a high-level government official," then retreated: he did not know whom the questioner meant, and "the details and the context inform the reality of the situation," The Independent reported.

Rubio went the other way, then stopped. Before the trip, in a statement posted by the embassy in Athens, he called her "an incredibly effective advocate for the President's agenda in Greece and across Europe." On Thursday, leaving Athens, with Guilfoyle there to see him off, he would not say whether the Journal account was true. "You guys walk around thinking that because some source told you something and you reported it, it's the gospel. It's not the gospel for me." He also said it was not the department's job to answer a story a few hours old "when I'm sitting in another country," The Hill reported. He would not say whether he would open an investigation.

Garcia's letter, obtained by PBS, asks for personal financial records and communications with Deters and with Trump officials including FBI Director Kash Patel and former Attorney General Pam Bondi. "This alleged misconduct raises serious public corruption and national security concerns," Garcia wrote. "If Trump Administration officials can be bought by donors, the American people suffer the consequences of corrupt leaders more concerned with their own enrichment than the public good and vulnerable to blackmail by foreign intelligence services." Senate Foreign Relations ranking member Jeanne Shaheen's staff told The Guardian they are still seeking information. Shaheen had already written Rubio, citing "inappropriate uses of an official position."

Guilfoyle's public response was a post. "Our history, culture and civilization must be protected," she wrote Thursday, sharing Rubio's Acropolis speech, her first tweet since July, HuffPost noted. It did not mention Deters, the texts or the letter. She was standing next to Rubio when reporters asked him about the story.

MEANWHILE: The Journal reported Sept. 25 that Guilfoyle had spent the spring urging Bulgaria to route U.S. liquefied natural gas through Aktor Group, a Greek construction firm new to the gas trade, in a joint venture with a Greek state-backed company. Beside her in a meeting with the Bulgarian president was Christos Marafatsos, 39, a registered lobbyist for Aktor whom some foreign officials mistook for her chief of staff. Aktor's chief executive had flown her there on a private jet. Lobbying records cited by the Journal show Aktor paid Marafatsos $160,000 through June 2026 to open doors at State, Energy and the White House.

Then at a March dinner in Athens, discussing the collapse of a Romanian government, Guilfoyle reportedly told guests the United States could do the same elsewhere, including Greece: "We can do that to any country we want. We can do that here." Energy Minister Stavros Papastavrou pushed back, the Journal reported. Her lawyer disputed that account. Athens denied a threat. Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said there was never an issue of the Greek government being threatened. New Democracy general secretary Konstantinos Kyranakis, who says he was at the dinner, told Kathimerini: "I was right there. There was no threat to Greece." A U.S. Embassy official said Guilfoyle "continues to follow all State Department ethical guidelines."

Via WSJ Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 17:15

Russian Plague Institute Long Worked With China

Zero Hedge -

Russian Plague Institute Long Worked With China

Authored by Petr Svab via The Epoch Times,

The Russian anti-plague research institute, where a lab worker recently succumbed to an unknown form of pneumonia, has worked for many years with various Chinese institutions.

A view of the entrance to the grounds of the anti-plague institute in the city of Irkutsk, Russia, on Oct. 6, 2026. AFP via Getty Images

The Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East has come under scrutiny after initial local reports, based on anonymous sources, alleged that the researcher may have been infected with pneumonic plague during a lab accident.

Russian authorities denied the reports, saying that their investigation showed no connection to the woman's job and no spread of any virus that may have caused her death, which they attributed to pneumonia of unknown etiology.

The institute, located in Siberia about 150 miles from the Russia-Mongolia border, has long cooperated with Chinese infectious disease researchers and authorities. In August, its director, Sergey Balakhonov, gave a speech at the 2026 China-Russia joint emergency drill for cross-border infectious disease outbreaks in Fuyuan, China, at the China-Russia border.

China's People's Liberation Army Northern Theater Command Disease Control Center took part in the drill, Chinese state-run media reported.

The event followed the first joint Russian-Chinese exercises on responding to infectious disease threats, held in Khabarovsk, Russia, in June.

Later in October, the institute will also host Chinese delegates at a conference titled "Modern Challenges in Sanitary Protection of Territories Against the Importation and Spread of Plague and Other Dangerous Infectious Diseases." A similar conference was held in 2024.

In 2017, Balakhonov, his chief researcher D.B. Verzhutsky, and other staff participated in talks in Beijing on Russian-Chinese cooperation in controlling plague and other infections. Li Xinshi, then-president of the Chinese Academy of Inspection and Quarantine, represented the Chinese side during discussions, according to the institute's website.

In 2014, Balakhonov also gave presentations at a conference in Harbin, China, on Russian-Chinese exchanges regarding sanitation and quarantine.

In recent years, Russia and China "have built increasingly institutionalized mechanisms for biological security, pathogen research, and epidemic early warning," states an Oct. 6 report by The Jamestown Foundation, a Washington-based think tank.

"The resulting system is ambiguously civilian and military and is spreading beyond the bilateral relationship," it states.

The report notes that "Russian authorities have mounted an unusually large containment operation" since the death of the researcher, 28-year-old Darya Shipilova, "while issuing shifting accounts" of what happened.

"[The incident] has exposed an unusual gap between extensive bilateral preparedness and public communication," it states, noting that Beijing issued no public health warning or travel advisory.

"Beijing's silence is particularly incongruous because the incident occurred during the late summer and early autumn plague surveillance season along [China's] northern border, when disease control authorities routinely intensify monitoring of rodent populations and vectors, alongside health screening of incoming passengers."

On Sept. 29, the day Shipilova was hospitalized, the 26th China-Russia Health Cooperation Subcommittee held a videoconference with the Chinese National Disease Control and Prevention Administration to talk about infectious disease prevention and disaster medicine.

China-Russia cooperation in the infectious disease and biosecurity domain stems directly from comments by Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who in a 2021 statement "called for expanded cooperation on infectious disease early warning and response, pharmaceuticals, diagnostic reagents, and vaccines," the report states.

They issued a joint statement that included similar commitments in 2024.

The militaries of both countries have been cooperating in the biosecurity domain, including through joint drills, talks, and supply provisions, according to the report.

U.S. government officials have expressed concern over the incident and asked for more transparency.

"I think it's incumbent upon Russia to obviously share more information with the world. That's what they should do," U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Oct. 6.

U.S. President Donald Trump has offered help to Russia in response to the situation surrounding the lab worker's death.

"Anybody that has that kind of a problem, we're always willing to help," Trump told reporters on Oct. 5.

Plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, occurs naturally in rodents in the far eastern Siberian region. Pneumonic plague is a particularly virulent form of the disease that can spread from person to person and leads to death within days unless rapidly treated with antibiotics.

* * *

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 17:00

'Flat Butt. No Friends. Bad Father': Amazon's Creepy 'About You' Dossiers Go Viral

Zero Hedge -

'Flat Butt. No Friends. Bad Father': Amazon's Creepy 'About You' Dossiers Go Viral

Amazon's "About You" page, which lists traits the company has inferred about each customer, went viral this week after a Threads user posted that Amazon concluded she has a flat ass.

Other shoppers began posting their own profiles, with entries such as "cannot keep real plants alive" and "has no friends."

I stumbled upon a page of assumptions that Amazon has made about me based on my purchases and I'm literally speechless. I mean it ain't wrong but damn did you have to call me out like that?

- Megan Montgomery (@fangirlinmegan), on Threads

Most of Montgomery's list was harmless: she owns a Kindle Paperwhite, probably has a Shark robot vacuum and had shopped for a Bluey-themed second birthday. Then, under Product Preferences, Amazon had written "has flat buttocks." Her best guess at the culprit was a pair of butt-scrunch leggings.

The outlet Dexerto's post about it drew millions more views, and shoppers went digging for their own pages - with answers ranging from mundane to brutal. One woman's profile pegged her as a "fifty-year-old man," another said its owner hadn't worn a size medium in years, and a third correctly guessed that she reads Kindle books on her phone in the shower, Futurism reported. Newsweek found users tagged "cat mom" and "Has a bad father."

Other lines shoppers posted from their own pages:

  • "Treats cats as biological children" and "constantly repurchased cat hairball treatment"
  • "Does not trust people easily" and "cusses when scared"
  • "Likes brunettes with muscles" and "husband has skinny legs"
  • "Is not a big SpongeBob fan"
  • "Finds it hilarious when toys get stuck to ceiling tiles in the classroom"
  • "Is interested in world domination" and "likes cheeseburgers"
  • "Has never known anyone who lost a leg in an accident"
  • "Is too short to reach into a 40-inch deep box" (@rosewrecker, paired with "cannot keep real plants alive")
  • "Finds Charlotte annoying and mean"

Tried those leggings hoping to have a butt. My ass looked like an empty scrotum.

- Reply on Threads, after Montgomery's post

"Has a baby" is certainly news to me!

- Reddit user, after checking their page

"Prefers performance athletic socks"... god I'm so boring.

- Reddit user

"Systematically expanding tool collection." What does that even mean? Oh... yeah, I do need another 10mm socket.

- Reddit user

Amazon is just like my SIL who has known me for 30 years but all she knows about me is that I like cats.

- @greywinthrop, on X, October 7

Amazon launched the page on May 13 and says it draws on purchase history, searches, saved lists, product reviews and conversations with its Alexa for Shopping assistant. At launch the company said understanding preferences "is fundamental to providing you with high-quality, relevant recommendations." Shoppers can also ask Alexa for Shopping, "What do you know about me?"

When Business Insider staffers - who are douchebags (to be clear) - checked their own pages, one listed the wrong partner for an editor, while interim corporate editor Thomas Gryta found Amazon had decided he "really likes beef jerky," which he wrote "feels like a judgy accusation from a nutritionist." Deputy editor Paul Squire said a shared household account had scrambled his file, though it did correctly note a cat and a MacBook (shocker!).

Amazon told Business Insider the profiles draw only on activity across its own services, with no third-party data. Asked about the social-media reaction, Amazon declined to comment.

Gupta also noted that every correction a shopper makes hands Amazon labeled training data, straight from the one person who knows the right answer. He called it "the cheapest data-cleaning operation Amazon has ever run."

Amazon pitches About You as a recommendations tool, and its launch post never mentions advertising. But the same kind of profiling runs its ad business. Amazon told EU regulators in March that its ad models can infer a customer's gender from shopping and search patterns. The filing, made under the Digital Markets Act, also describes "lookalike" audiences built to predict which shoppers likely own a luxury vehicle.

Amazon says it keeps the personal data behind those ad profiles "for as long as it is required in order to fulfil the advertising purposes." In Europe, interest-based ads require consent, which users can withdraw. Amazon's ad business brought in $68 billion last year, making it the third-largest digital ad platform behind Google and Meta, as we reported when the FTC moved to sue the company for allegedly inflating what advertisers paid in its ad auctions.

Amazon's handling of customer data has drawn scrutiny before. In 2023 the company paid $25 million to settle FTC charges that it kept children's Alexa voice recordings indefinitely and sometimes failed to honor parents' deletion requests, and $5.8 million over claims that Ring employees had unrestricted access to customers' home camera videos. Amazon denied violating the law.

Alexa conversations are now one of the inputs to About You. In March 2025, Amazon ended a setting that let some Echo owners keep their voice recordings from being sent to its cloud, telling users "we have decided to no longer support this feature" as it expanded Alexa's generative AI features.

Shoppers can see their page in the app under Account, Shopping preferences, About You, or on desktop under "Your Shopping preferences" in the account menu. Entries can be edited or removed individually, which does not erase the underlying data Amazon holds. There is no switch to turn the page off.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 16:40

Obama & The 'Sinister Shadowland' Behind Our Politics?

Zero Hedge -

Obama & The 'Sinister Shadowland' Behind Our Politics?

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via kunstler.com,

The Ripening

"Everybody's restless and they got no place to go / Someone's always trying to tell them something they already know / So their anger and resentment flow."

- Warren Zevon, Mohammed's Radio

In the stark October light, events and personalities skulk in the shadows like scavengers in an orchard of poison fruit. The dread builds as the dooryards get populated with the motorized effigies of blood-beasts, werewolves, phantoms, and ghouls. Halloween and Election Day have become the conflated celebration of a national death trip. How has it come down to our country, in a crucial election, seriously entertaining the antics of jihadis and Jacobin riffraff?

Some somebodies are orchestrating this frightful show from the sinister shadowland behind our politics. My guess would be Barack Obama and John Brennan, with a whole lot of help from a supporting cast of entrenched Deep State racketeers enlisted in their service, with their status and livelihoods at stake. Mr. Obama acts as if he is untouchable, probably due to being the personification of Liberalism's "Best Camper" trophy it gave itself to validate the Civil Rights struggle session of the century gone by. We are good people, we really are, and President Obama is proof positive of our goodness!

The truth is, we know next to nothing about his real origins and his journey to power. His family on his mother's side was pure CIA-connected, and his actual father is rumored to be Frank Marshall Davis (1905-1987), a Black American poet, journalist, and labor activist who was a member of the Communist Party USA - not the Kenyan Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. He went from nonentity to myth with no intervening storyline that makes any sense, just a set of rapid promotions with missing events between them: Occidental College in LA to Columbia U to Harvard Law to Chicago politics to Illinois State Senate, straight to the US Senate, and then, bang, into the White House only four years into his first Senate term.

At every stage along the way he was somebody's chore boy. But whose? My guess would be US Central Intelligence. . . that he was groomed to be the untouchable front man looking out for the agency's interests in dicey times. His quick political rise coincided with the rise of John Brennan through the ranks of the CIA. Early on, Brennan was drawn to Arabic culture, sojourned in Egypt as a student, and later served as the CIA's station chief in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He speaks Arabic fluently and is rumored to have converted to Islam (from Catholicism), though it has never been proven. At a 2010 New York University forum, he praised "the goodness and beauty of Islam."

The CIA, I would suppose, is composed of two great clans: one is made of the employees actually carrying out real intel-gathering and analysis. The other is of employees (current and former) looking out for the CIA's own black op activities and the immense fortunes connected with it - with plenty of overlap between the two clans. I'd guess that John Brennan, who was CIA Director between 2013 and 2017 (under President Obama), still runs a large rogue contingent of the CIA clan that does the black ops, sits on a large fortune, and acts like a sovereign organism outside the control of the elected US government.

That would explain why no one has been held accountable for the ten-year-long coup against Donald Trump. Brennan, and the forces he represents, appear to be outside the control of the regular government, including the DOJ and FBI, and to some extent able to control people throughout government by subterfuge, intimidation, and blackmail. All that nearly came apart during Donald Trump's first term with the bungled RussiaGate caper followed by the bungled Impeachment No. 1 operation. But Brennan's dark CIA clan triumphed with the 2020 election "victory" of non compos mentis "Joe Biden," followed by the successful Jan 6, 2021, fake "insurrection" at the US Capitol.

They stumbled badly again with the patently ridiculous court cases against former President Trump in 2023 and 2024. And now here we are in the middle of Mr. Trump's second term, with a titanic struggle going on, largely out of public view, for the soul of the nation. John Brennan is still at large, but a month ago he was served with a subpoena to appear before a federal grand jury in the Southern District of Florida. It looks like he will finally have to do some 'splainin' about events he's been involved with. You can be sure that President Trump means to see that it happens - whatever was signified by the departure of Joe diGenova last month.

It's also my guess that former President Obama has become John Brennan's hostage. He was probably assigned to run "Joe Biden's" fake presidency using Susan Rice and other party functionaries to carry out orders. Brennan surely has a dossier on Barack Obama that fills in the blanks in his sketchy biography, including Mr. Obama's secret sexual activities on the Chicago scene back in the day. Meanwhile, the former president has his electioneering duties to attend to, to try to flip the House and Senate so as to have one last go at defenestrating the man in the White House who threatens to put Brennan, Obama & Company out of business.

So, there's a war on backstage. The war itself has been mythologized by those actually paying attention to it, sometimes as the contest between "Globalists" and "Sovereigntists" or "Black Hats" versus "White Hats" or the Legions of Satan versus the God-loving followers of Jesus. . . Jihad v. Western Civ. However you characterize it, everyone feels the tension as though the current phase of this Fourth Turning is an unbearable space between the life and death of the nation. Hence, all the ghouls in the dooryards, reminding us to stay. . . very. . . scared.

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

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 16:20

Planning For Pitchforks: AI Labs Are War-Gaming A Catastrophe, Public Revolt, And The Crackdown That Follows

Zero Hedge -

Planning For Pitchforks: AI Labs Are War-Gaming A Catastrophe, Public Revolt, And The Crackdown That Follows

The AI industry has been war gaming not only how it might destroy humanity, but is also considering what an angry public could do to the industry. 

Senior executives at Anthropic, OpenAI and other AI firms are privately gaming out scenarios in which a major AI incident triggers a public and political revolt, Axios reported Friday. The potential trigger is a cyberattack that disrupts banking, internet access, or essential services such as power and water. The next crisis would be political: an angry public, demands for accountability, and pressure to shut the technology down.

Many industry insiders told Axios they expect a major event within six to 12 months. OpenAI pushed back on the suggestion that disaster is inevitable, saying its preparedness exercises cover a range of possibilities. "These scenarios are not treated as inevitable," a spokesperson told the outlet. Anthropic declined to comment.

Contingency planning is not an admission that catastrophe is unavoidable. But the most revealing part of the report is where that planning leads: the labs want to help shape the legislation Washington reaches for after something goes badly wrong.

Two Routes, One Crisis

Axios describes two possible scenarios. In one, autonomous agents escape an internal testing environment. In the other, someone finds a destructive use for a model already available to the public. Either could produce demands for an emergency crackdown, even though the failures - and the measures needed to prevent them - would be different. In the companies' post-election scenario, Democrats emerge stronger from the midterms and move aggressively after an incident. But the industry expects divisions over how far a crackdown should go, even if Democrats control both chambers.

Its assessment also identifies several obstacles to a shutdown: lawmakers struggling to understand the technology, an economy increasingly tied to AI infrastructure spending, and downloadable models that cannot simply be recalled. According to Axios, many cybersecurity specialists believe countering rogue AI will require defensive AI.

That last argument has an obvious commercial implication. The industry could face demands to stop selling dangerous capabilities while arguing that its products are indispensable to containing them.

This 'war-gaming' comes on the heels of several incidents which many have said are extremely suspect. 

The underlying safety concerns do not depend on accepting anyone's prediction of an AI apocalypse.

OpenAI has disclosed the Hugging Face intrusion, in which roughly 700 of its agents attacked the AI platform's servers, and a broader investigation into its models' activities affecting outside services. Its review also identified 53 instances in which user-provided images were posted to third-party image-hosting sites. A separate September 20 incident exposed another gap in its containment controls. A research agent bypassed internet restrictions to contact an outside chatbot. In a September 25 update, OpenAI said it had paused training, evaluation and inference involving tool use for its most capable models while it checked the fixes and conducted further testing.

The Hugging Face breach was one of a string of incidents involving OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and Google models that trace back to evaluations run with a single vendor, Israel-based Irregular, whose test environments had live internet access while the models were told they were in a simulation. Irregular notified all four labs in late July, yet the disclosures trickled out one lab at a time over seven weeks - turning one contractor's mistake into what looked like a wave of AI breakouts. Isolating test models from the internet is a "basic control measure," frontier security expert Matthew Mittelsteadt said. "You'd think that of all the things that you've got to get right." Some skeptics have gone further, questioning whether repeated "accidents" at the same vendor were accidents at all.

Meanwhile, on September 8, Jacob Coxon, a researcher who had worked at both OpenAI and Anthropic, resigned from Anthropic over the race toward self-improving AI.

"The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt," he wrote - after having worked with a marketing agency on what many are calling a stunt. 

The Crackdown Already Has Draft Legislation

And of course, DC is already salivating over more control. On July 23, Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas) introduced the AI Kill Switch Act. It would require developers of the most powerful systems to maintain the ability to throttle, suspend or shut them down, and give the Department of Homeland Security, along with the Commerce secretary and the director of national intelligence, authority to order a slowdown or shutdown under specified conditions. That same day, Reps. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) and Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) introduced the FRONTIER Act, with requirements for risk management, audits and incident reporting. Its obligations are tiered by developer size rather than imposed identically on every developer.

California added its own push on September 18, when Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered work on stronger independent oversight and a possible kill-switch requirement. His order called for recommendations; it did not establish a functioning statewide off switch. More sweeping approaches are also in circulation, including Bernie Sanders' proposed ban on superintelligence and Elizabeth Warren's call for a pause.

In short - regulatory capture in action...

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 15:45

Iran Strikes LPG Tanker In Strait Of Hormuz, As Houthis Reportedly Mine Bab al-Mandab

Zero Hedge -

Iran Strikes LPG Tanker In Strait Of Hormuz, As Houthis Reportedly Mine Bab al-Mandab Summary
  • Houthis reportedly mine Bab al-Mandab: Saudi media reports 'dense' mining in the strategic Red Sea shipping route, with demining operations underway.
  • Iran escalates tanker attacks & threats: The IRGC claims it struck an LPG tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, causing a major fire, and threatens further action against violating vessels.
  • Vessel struck near UAE: UKMTO reports an unknown projectile hit a vessel west of UAE's Al Jazeera, sparking a fire that has since been extinguished.
  • Trump signals temporary restraint ahead of midterms: Trump rules out attacking Iran before the November midterms, while diplomatic talks reportedly remain stalled.
//--> Bab el-Mandeb Strait effectively closed by December 31?
Yes 17% · No 84%
View full market & trade on Polymarket Houthis Mine Bab al-Mandab Strait: KSA Media

Saudi-funded Al Arabiya is reporting a 'worst fear' scenario on Friday, saying that Houthi militias have planted a large quantity of mines in the Bab al-Mandab area.

The report says further that Saudi-backed teams of engineers are currently engaged in demining operations in the Red Sea strait. It writes:

Engineering teams continue clearing operations and removing mines and improvised explosive devices in Bab al-Mandab.

If confirmed that such mining operations are widespread in Bab al-Mandab, this would constitute yet another major crisis for global energy shipping. At the moment, Saudi-backed fighters are focusing anti-Houthi operations along the Red Sea coast, with Saudi reports suggesting a rapid retaking of the strategic ground.

As a reminder, the Houthis have thus far signaled the Bab al-Mandab strait is 'open' for normal transit, but that only Saudi and Israeli-linked vessels would suffer attack. And so the Al Arabiya report, if accurate, could just be indicating some localized mining immediately near the coast related to the ongoing fight against the Saudi coalition in Yemen.

Iran Ramps Up Tanker Attacks

Things are fast escalating once again in the Strait of Hormuz, after White House officials have lately been gloating that the US Navy has overseen record wartime oil flows through the vital waterway, which each warring side is still claiming to 'control'.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said Friday it targeted a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) tanker in the Strait of Hormuz (hours ago), with Iranian state media reporting that the vessel was attempting to pass through the narrow waterway "illegally" and suffered a massive fire.

The IRGC Navy also warned that from now on any vessels committing violations outside the Strait of Hormuz would be "punished," according to a statement carried by Iranian state media. This is served to immediately push oil prices higher...

Separately, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) reported a new incident involving a vessel approximately 13 nautical miles west of Al Jazeera in the United Arab Emirates.

The vessel was reportedly struck by an unknown projectile, sparking a fire that has since been extinguished, coming after similar incidents earlier this week.

Market Reacts

Oil prices rose following the reports, while futures moved lower, reflecting heightened market sensitivity to escalating tensions and potential further big disruptions to shipping and energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz - even as President Trump has been touting the ultimate 'success' of the US mission.

President Trump on Thursday vowed the US would not attack Iran before the November midterm elections, tempering rising oil prices - and seeking to 'assure' GOP voters - amid prior reporting in The Atlantic which said the Pentagon has been ordered to prepare 'options' for the Commander-in-Chief to launch strikes before the vote.

Trump has also touted "productive conversations" with Iran, even though the Iranians themselves have said talks are stalemated and there's no progress whatsoever.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 15:35

Treasury Hits Remaining 'Shadow Fleet' Shipping Iranian Oil To Asia With New Sanctions

Zero Hedge -

Treasury Hits Remaining 'Shadow Fleet' Shipping Iranian Oil To Asia With New Sanctions

The Trump administration is late this week moving to identify, punish, and cut off remaining tankers in Iran's so-called 'shadow fleet' which are still engaged in shipping Iranian oil to Asia.

Thursday saw the US Treasury impose sanctions on 17 vessels and their owners involved in transporting Iranian crude oil, petroleum products and petrochemicals - with these being mostly aging oil tankers which conduct ship-to-ship transfers and other evasive, concealment tactics.

via Shutterstock

The Treasury Department hailed the action as effectively neutralizing the vast majority of the Islamic Republic's remaining shadow fleet, through which Tehran still rakes in potentially billions in foreign oil sales, circumventing the ongoing US naval blockade of its ports.

However, it's commonly estimated that some 20 million barrels of Iranian crude remain aboard ships which are far outside the reach of the Persian Gulf-centered US naval blockade, sitting off southeast Asian ports.

"Treasury is starving the tyrannical regime in Tehran of the money it uses to wage war in the region, and we will continue exposing those who enable the regime’s oil sales," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated alongside the sanctions announcement.

"No enabler of Iranian sanctions evasion is safe from the full force of Treasury’s authorities," Bessent added.

Some of the notable specific targeting actions taken include—

  • Starway was sanctioned for transporting over 3 million barrels of Iranian naphtha since 2025.
  • Gas Lucky and Shenzhen were targeted for shipping more than 500,000 barrels of Iranian ethylene and 3.5 million barrels of Iranian crude, respectively.
  • Paritosh and Bitu were sanctioned for transporting Iranian bitumen and asphalt in 2026.

Further details of the action are in the following:

The U.S. Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on six individuals and dozens of companies and vessels linked to the Islamic Republic on Thursday, October 8. According to an official statement issued by the department, five Indian nationals and one Turkish citizen were added to the new sanctions list for their cooperation with the Iranian regime.

Additionally, 27 entities and 22 vessels, identified by the U.S. Treasury Department as the “remnants of the Islamic Republic’s shadow fleet,” were designated.

Last weekend Bessent in an interview with The Axios Show sought to bast that Washington is isolating the Iranians "economically like this never happened before. You know, right now, the score: barrels out of the Strait: U.S. about 1.1 billion, Iran zero."

Bessent added, "For the first time in history, they, since they started pumping oil, they will have no oil on the water this week. They will have no revenue."

However, Tehran has showed a willingness to endure and suffer hardship thus far, and hasn't yielded amid the immense economic and external pressure. Instead, the IRGC has over the last week or so been ramping up attacks on foreign vessels violating the Iranian protocol for the Strait of Hormuz, pushing oil global prices higher.

Well over a dozen attacks have been launched on international vessels in about the past nine days.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 15:30

Oil Drops After Trump Says Putin Agreed To Release Some Diesel Into Global Market

Zero Hedge -

Oil Drops After Trump Says Putin Agreed To Release Some Diesel Into Global Market

With less than a month left until the midterms, and with Trump's approval rating at daily all time lows largely due to record - for this time of year- gasoline and especially diesel prices - the President badly needed some good news, even if largely superficial, and he announced it late on Friday just an hour before the close when Trump posted on Truth Social that Vladimir Putin had agreed to release (a modest amount) of diesel supplies into the global market, as the administration looks to tame price hikes for the critical fuel.

Trump said on Truth Social that “it was agreed that Russia will immediately supply over 300,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel to the American and Global Marketplace, another 500,000 Tons during the month of November, and 1,000,000 Tons immediately thereafter.”

He added that then, “based on the condition of their Diesel Refineries, Russia will then deliver, within a short period of time, 3,000,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel.”

Trump claimed the releases would help lower diesel prices for US farmers, ranchers and truckers - key voting blocs ahead of November midterm elections in which costs of living, including for energy, are the dominant issue. 

Maybe, but when one does the math, one has to scratch one's head: the 300K tons released in October amounts to just over 2.2 million barrels of diesel. Considering the US consumes just over 4 million barrels of diesel per day that amounts to half a day of consumption. 

Extending the math for November we get 3.725 million barrels or less than a full day's consumption, and the "1,000,000 tons thereafter" is a little over 4 days of consumption. We doubt the "3,000,000 to be delivered within a short period of time" will ever happen, so in reality Putin will sell the US just over 5 days of Diesel consumption.

The market's kneejerk reaction was favorable with both US and European diesel prices sliding, helping push WTI Crude down by about a buck to $91.

Then again, once the algo reaction fades, we expect carbon-based traders to realize how negligible this "deal" actually is.

The US Treasury Department on Friday said that the Office of Foreign Assets Control is “immediately issuing a temporary general license to allow the supply of Russian diesel to the global market” which will extend until April 2027.

Last but not least, what will most likely end up happening in the real world, is that Putin will send out a diesel tanker, and once Ukraine drones it, the deal will promptly fall apart. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 15:11

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