The post Trump Goes Big on the Green Transition, Everywhere but Here appeared first on CEPR.

My mid-week morning reads:

• It’s a Concentrated World: The top 10 stocks in the S&P 500 make up almost 40% of the index. Each of the companies in the top 10 sport a market cap of $1 trillion or more. In fact, as of this writing, the 12 biggest companies all have market caps of $1 trillion or more.1 As recently at 2015, the top 10 made up just 17% of the S&P 500. Ben Carlson on twelve of the biggest names now above $1 trillion. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

• Did we make it too hard to get a mortgage after 2008? A new report says yes. Some say the pendulum has swung too far since the 2008 housing crisis. Others warn that looser standards once led to disaster.​ A Pew report givces the details. (Washington Post)

• The Fed’s Credibility Depends on Resisting Politics, Not Playing It: Kenneth Rogoff advised the Fed to delay its rate decision until after the midterms to preserve its independence from President Donald Trump’s attacks. Rogoff’s own 1983 research paper showed that central bank credibility matters, and that the head of the central bank should be more averse to inflation than the average person. (Bloomberg free)

• The 24-Year-Old Who Lost Billions: Leo Aschenbrenner claimed to know the future of AI. The implosion of Aschenbrenner’s AI hedge fund, Situational Awareness, over the course of a few days in late July was by any standard remarkable, and not just for the enormous sums involved. Aschenbrenner was the valedictorian of his Columbia University class at age 19. He worked for OpenAI before being fired amid murky circumstances, at which point he published a viral 165-page essay (also called “Situational Awareness”) that predicted the arrival of artificial general intelligence—an AI so advanced that it would meet or exceed all human capabilities—by 2027.  (The Atlantic)

• Hollywood’s Box Office Boom Comes With 248 Million Missing Tickets: Hollywood’s summer — by its accounting — was a triumph for the ages. Ticket revenue was not only the highest since 2013, but the second highest of all time. Brooks Barnes on the summer’s “second highest of all time” revenue claim — which holds up only if you never adjust for ticket prices. (New York Times)

​• He Earns $33 an Hour as a Costco Cashier. Now He’s a Millionaire: Inside Costco’s retention machine — maximum hourly pay raised to $32.90, bigger bonuses, and “culture coach” roles for long-tenured workers. Long-tenured workers like cashier Tony Barzar are reliable, experienced and able to speed shoppers through a checkout line. Costco is willing to pay to keep them around. (Wall Street Journal)

• FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses: A new identity theft service launched on the dark web this week is selling digital scans of more than 153 million drivers licenses from people in the United States and Canada. Based on interviews with individuals whose licenses are available for purchase on this service, it appears to be siphoning images collected by a widely-used identity verification company based in Louisiana. KrebsOnSecurity also has learned that the New Orleans field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) today launched an official inquiry into the source of the images. Brian Krebs on the dark-web identity-theft service siphoning license scans. (Krebs on Security)

• ​Without New Landers or Rovers, It’s Helicopters or Bust for NASA’s Mars Program: Stephen Clark on the $2.1 billion SR-1 Freedom estimate — which doesn’t include the helicopters. NASA’s cost estimate for SR-1 Freedom is $2.1 billion, but that doesn’t include the helicopters. (Ars Technica)

​• The MAGA Right Is Only Pretending to Be Censored: Anne Applebaum on the State Department operation that spent a year and a half combing old files and civil servants’ personal emails to build its case. The conspiracy theory that persists even though no evidence supports it (The Atlantic)

• MapQuest is No. 1 on the App Store after refusing to change Lake Ontario’s name: Usage of MapQuest was 50x the normal level last week because MapQuest refused to change the name of Lake Ontario. The dial-up-era mapping service is having a comeback moment after declining to adopt “Lake America.” (CNN Business)

Video of the day: OnlyFans: How an $8B Cash Machine Got Stripped Bare

Be sure to check out our Master’s in Business this week with William McNabb, former CEO and Chairman of the Vanguard Group from 2007-17. He is also an advisor to Venrock, and was an investor and advisor to Altruist, which was just sold to VG for $2 billion.

Since the Fed Started Hiking, Multiple Expansion Has Nearly Vanished as a Source of PE Value

Source: Apollo

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The post 10 Wednesday AM Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

The Future Of Volkswagen?

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

On Thursday evening, Volkswagen’s Supervisory Board unanimously approved the company’s “Future Plan 2030.” The decision had originally been scheduled for Friday. By moving faster, Volkswagen is not only seeking to underline that the situation is genuinely serious, but also that it has recognized the danger and is now taking control of the situation again. Symbolism is everything these days, as the damage caused by the company’s business strategy of recent years has become visible like a gaping wound. Supervisory Board Chairman Hans Dieter Pötsch described the decision as evidence of the Group’s determination to transform itself and work with all its strength toward its long-term future and competitiveness, as Pötsch put it. Nevertheless, the impression remains that the Group’s consolidation course represents less a controlled downsizing than an internal corporate collapse — the twilight of an economic era.

50,000 jobs worldwide are to be eliminated by the middle of the 2030s. Social plans and early-retirement offers will probably account for the lion’s share of the workforce reduction. Volkswagen is said to be facing an overcapacity of 500,000 vehicles in Europe. The restructuring costs for the Group could amount to as much as €10 billion. VW is stumbling over social hurdles that the company itself created during the good times — German labor law prevents a rapid, situation-appropriate adjustment of corporate structures to the conditions of the market and the company’s actual economic strength.

For Germany as an industrial location, the outlook is bleak: VW’s plants in Emden, Hanover and Zwickau, as well as the Audi plant in Neckarsulm, are likely to fall victim to the Group’s downsizing. The decision has not yet been formally made — by the end of June 2027, the company intends to clarify how the individual sites will proceed. From 2031 to 2034 onward, there will no longer be a competitive follow-up allocation of production at these plants, suggesting that VW is preparing to abandon the sites.

Remarkably, only a few days ago, CEO Oliver Blume had emphasized during a visit to the Zwickau plant that the site would, as he put it, receive the same chance as every other plant in Europe. Blume, however, had already pointed to its lack of profitability compared with other locations: Labor costs there were more than twice those of comparable European sites, according to Blume.

This is where the real problem lies: Volkswagen is no longer competitive. Excessive labor costs, excessive energy costs and rampant overregulation are driving not only carmakers but industrial production in general away from Germany.

There is indeed an urgent need for action in Wolfsburg. The China business in particular has virtually collapsed. Overall, revenue in the first half of the current year fell slightly to €158.1 billion. The problem is that operating profit plunged by 11.6 percent to €5.9 billion, leaving an embarrassingly low operating margin of just 3.8 percent. It is the continuing negative trend that is causing concern. Volkswagen therefore does not merely have a sales problem, but above all an immense cost problem. The possibility that liquidity problems may also be becoming visible was demonstrated by the sale of the Group’s large-engine subsidiary Everllence, formerly MAN Energy Solutions: Volkswagen sold a majority stake to U.S. investment firm Bain Capital, generating proceeds of €7.4 billion.

Volkswagen — and with it the entire German automotive sector as well as energy-intensive industries more generally — has its back against the wall. As Bild reports, citing internal Volkswagen Group data, factory costs per vehicle at the Emden plant amount to €4,850, roughly 4.5 times the comparable figure at VW’s Chinese plant in Tianjin, where the figure is €1,078. Direct production labor costs are reportedly €74 per hour in Emden, compared with €12 in Tianjin — a factor of more than six.

The mistakes of the past become particularly apparent when looking at labor productivity. In Emden, the calculation comes to 29 vehicles per employee per year, compared with 51.3 in Tianjin. That corresponds to roughly 77 percent more vehicles per employee. Absenteeism due to illness also differs dramatically in the internal comparison: In Emden, the rate is 10.5 percent, compared with 1.0 percent in Tianjin. This figure is more than merely a personnel-policy issue affecting internal operations. Has the downward spiral into which the Group and the entire industry have fallen perhaps already left its mark on employee morale? In any case, this particular figure requires interpretation, precisely because it is so striking.

The consequences of Germany’s nuclear phase-out and the continued expansion of climate regulation have been discussed often enough here. Taken together, they create the impression of an ideologically driven economic suicide by a satiated society that was convinced of its own success — and must now watch as its industrial substance, the engine of prosperity, is ground down between excessive energy and labor costs, growing regulation and the merciless forces of global competition.

Volkswagen has become a victim of increasing political central planning and the permeation of the corporate landscape with environmental ideology. The lesson now is clear: corporatism and reliance on political steering do not pay off in the long run. In the end, things turn out as they always do: Others pay the bill — namely employees and investors who had placed their trust in the future of the automaker.

* * * 

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

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/09/2026 - 03:30

Europe Heads Toward Winter With Too Little NatGas And Skyrocketing Prices

European natural gas prices are trading near their highest level in more than three years as the race to replenish storage puts a bid under prices, while ongoing disruptions through the Strait of Hormuz intensify competition for scarce LNG cargoes ahead of winter.

On Tuesday morning, European natural gas benchmark futures edged up nearly 3% to trade around 75 euros per megawatt-hour, the highest level since early January 2023.

Bloomberg reporter Priscila Azevedo Rocha noted, "Europe needs higher gas prices in order to attract more seaborne cargoes to its shores, but with less than a month left until the heating season, the region’s inventories are still lagging behind."

Rocha's view was very similar to the assessment in Goldman Sachs commodities expert Samantha Dart's note last week, in which she said December 2026 TTF prices may need to exceed 100 euros per megawatt-hour to discourage Asian LNG demand.

"We have argued that, in the absence of an improvement in LNG exports through the Strait of Hormuz (SoH) (Exhibit 1), European gas prices (TTF) would need to rise to discourage Asia LNG demand, thereby freeing incremental cargoes to be sent to Europe to help manage European gas storage levels," Dart explained.

EU natural gas storage facilities were around 67% full at the start of the week, compared with a 15-year average of around 72.5% for this time of year. Readers can see the latest chart pack from MarketEar on EU natural gas here.

Separately, Timera Energy analysts wrote in a note earlier, "As the European gas market heads into winter with unusually low inventories, its flexibility to absorb further supply or demand shocks is limited," adding, "Europe is pricing up to outcompete Asia for marginal LNG."

Beyond tight gas markets, the struggling continent also has to contend with a diesel crisis. As we warned in early August, "winter is coming"...

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/09/2026 - 02:45

Intense SoCal Heatwave Sparks Cooling Demand Surge, Testing Grid Reliability

The National Weather Service has issued heat advisories across California's Central Valley and coastal areas, including the Bay Area and Los Angeles, with more severe extreme heat warnings in parts of Southern California. Cooling demand is expected to soar over the next several days, putting pressure on the power grid, particularly in the evening as solar generation declines.

Bloomberg reports that Los Angeles-area temperatures are forecast to reach 85F to 105F, roughly 10 to 15 degrees above normal. San Francisco could hit 86 degrees Wednesday, while Sacramento is expected to reach 100 degrees Thursday.

The California Independent System Operator forecasts that peak power demand will hit 47,379 megawatts Wednesday, below the September 2022 record of 52,061 megawatts.

CAISO, which operates the power grid serving roughly 80% of California and a small part of Nevada, forecasts Thursday's peak at around 45,183 megawatts.

Wholesale power prices are already reflecting the incoming surge in cooling demand. Southern California's SP15 hub saw its day-ahead price for Tuesday's 6 p.m. hour reach $87.69 per megawatt-hour, the highest hourly reading in a little over a week. Grid monitoring company Arcus Power compiled the data on its NRGStream platform.

Forecasts from Bloomberg show that maximum temperatures in California will peak Thursday at around 95F before sliding to about 75F by mid-month.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/08/2026 - 23:00

NIH Ends Biodefense Focus, Signs Pact With Department Of War

Authored by Paul D. Thacker via The DisInformation Chronicle,

Senior officials inside the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) were baffled late last week when Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro issued a statement that Pentagon officials are trying to "raid" NIH funds to cover defense shortfalls. "The administration must provide Congress with a full accounting of how this interagency agreement was developed and exactly how much taxpayer money it is trying to transfer to DOD," wrote DeLauro, who serves as the top Democrat on House Appropriations.

DeLauro's statement spurred a flurry of media reports, including a fact-addled piece by Nature Magazine's Max Koslov, who falsely implied NIH was transferring hundreds of millions of dollars in research monies to the Department of War (DOW). Koslov also erred in misreporting that NIH maintains a biodefense research portfolio, even though NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya announced that he was cutting NIH's biodefense portfolio in an essay last January.

Ironically, Bhattacharya's essay appeared in Nature Medicine, a journal published by Koslov's own employer.

"Koslov is a fiction writer," said an exasperated HHS official. "Absolute fiction. Our comms people at NIH don't respond to him because he lies."

DOW released the interagency agreement with NIH on Friday, which shows no money has been transferred to NIH. The agreement was signed in early August by Bhattacharya and Robert Kadlec, a physician and former CIA officer who wrote most of our biodefense laws while working for several decades as a congressional staffer. Kadlec is now an assistant secretary at DOW in charge of counterterrorism and biodefense.

According to HHS and NIH officials, who have negotiated the agreement with Kadlec since February, Kadlec asked NIH to transfer the $2 billion allocated to NIH for biodefense over to DOW. NIH denied this request, although DOW officials have continued to press the $2 billion matter in private discussions.

The agreement allows two types of cooperation. One is called 7600A which lists the rules and terms for cooperation on a project, while a 7600B allows transfer of funds as payment. NIH has not signed any 7600Bs, and an official negotiating with DOW said NIH doesn't have any dollars to transfer to the Pentagon, because the money is already spent.

"The money on emerging infectious diseases is booked up for years in advance with contracts and grants," said the NIH staffer.

Part of the confusion stems from conflicting definitions and terminology deployed over the last two decades by Tony Fauci while he ran the biodefense program at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

As reported by Ashley Rindsberg in UnHerd, Fauci began the NIH's biodefense program in 2003 with billions of dollars directed to him by Vice President Dick Cheney, following an increase in biodefense spending after 9/11 and the anthrax attacks in 2001. This moved biodefense for the first time out of Pentagon oversight, while providing Fauci direct access to the White House and a $2 billion pot of money each year since.

But over succeeding decades Fauci began mixing the dollars designated for biodefense with programs targeted at other infectious diseases - eroding the distinction between public health research and scientific studies for biodefense. "Fauci spread the bioterrorism money into programs on emerging diseases," said the NIH official. "The reality is there's no $2 billion to give."

A senior Trump appointee who has worked with Bhattacharya and Kadlec to hammer out the agreement said that DeLauro is right to ask hard questions, which NIH needs to answer. But after the COVID pandemic mess, NIH is not the place to run bioterror research. "Look, everyone in this field knows that Kadlec is an operator," said the Trump official. "But Kadlec is an experienced hand and we need aggressive oversight on this research."

Referring to NIH money Fauci directed to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, he added, "What was the point of NIAID funding a BSL-4 lab in a foreign country? Nobody has explained that."

For the last three decades, Kadlec has labored to counter biological weapons for an alphabet soup of various agencies - JSOC, DOD, CIA, DHS, and the UN. Kadlec also wrote the critical legislation that undergirds America's biodefense infrastructure while a staffer for Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina.

Now the country's leading biodefense lobbyist at DLA Piper, Burr represents the University of North Carolina and sits on the board of READDI, a North Carolina biodefense company founded by virologist Ralph Baric.

In a 2023 interview with The DisInformation Chronicle, Kadlec pointed to a 2015 virus study published by Ralph Baric and funded by Fauci as evidence that the virology community had been dishonest with the American public about the scientific evidence that the pandemic started from a lab. Fauci and others, Kadlec said, served as a "cabal" to bury this evidence in an "information operation."

Last April, I reported for RealClearInvestigations that the NIH had yanked all of Baric's grants after determining that his research helped create the COVID virus. UNC put Baric on leave and he retired from the university in June.

"We gave Fauci billions and he burned the house down," said the Trump official working with NIH and DOW. "The world was on fire for two years and millions died. And if Democrats want the NIH to remain in the biodefense business, I wish them luck on selling voters on that."

A senior HHS official said it remains unclear how much money might eventually migrate over to DOW but it won't be anywhere near $2 billion as biodefense research is now gone from NIH's portfolio. Nonetheless, NIH faces an uphill battle convincing Congress that they are no longer in the biodefense game.

After determining it was biodefense research and unsafe for Americans, NIH dissolved an $82 million Fauci initiative last June called the Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases (CREID). CREID grantees included Peter Daszak of the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance and Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research. But earlier this year, lobbyists inserted language into an appropriations bill that forces NIH to spend $18.2 million to fund CREID centers once again.

"We're not funding Kristian Andersen and that virologist crew," said the senior HHS official. "We're out of biodefense, and that CREID money will go to people looking at infectious diseases in public health."

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/08/2026 - 22:35

Lindsay Clancy Supporters Threaten The Father Of The Children She Murdered

Patrick Clancy, the father of three children killed by his former wife, Lindsay Clancy, inside the family's Duxbury, Massachusetts, home in January 2023, is now the target of an online harassment campaign built on the false claim that he was involved in their deaths.

The claim has no foundation. Lindsay Clancy confessed. She never disputed killing her three children. Her defense spent the trial arguing she wasn't criminally responsible because of severe mental illness, including postpartum psychosis, while prosecutors countered that she knew what she was doing. 

Nobody on either side of that courtroom argued Patrick did it or was involved in any way. However, that inconvenient fact hasn't stopped supporters of Lindsay Clancy from claiming otherwise.

On Tuesday, Attorney Howard Cooper of Todd & Weld, who represents Patrick Clancy, issued a statement addressing what he described as a coordinated harassment effort.

"Over the past months, Patrick Clancy and his family have been subjected to a relentless, escalating and destructive defamation campaign," Cooper said.

Cooper placed the blame on a familiar cast of characters.

He pointed to "minor celebrities, so-called influencers and outright conspiracy theorists" who found a payday spreading false claims about a grieving father, seemingly untroubled by the fact that his ex-wife already admitted to the killings.

The harassment hasn't slowed since Friday's mistrial, either. Cooper said it has only intensified, "now fueled by insatiable media coverage" and sitting "at a fever pitch," with real threats to Patrick's reputation, livelihood and life.

Somewhere in the online ecosystem that turned Lindsay Clancy into a folk hero for a certain strain of aggrieved women, a father who buried three children became the villain of his own tragedy, at least according to those sympathetic to his ex-wife.

Cooper said Patrick's aim is stopping the harassment, holding the people spreading it accountable, and getting back to preserving the memory of Cora, Dawson and Callan while supporting other women navigating perinatal mental health crises. The irony belongs to nobody except his accusers.

"Enough is enough—this spread of blatant and baseless falsehoods must stop," Cooper said. "Those responsible should understand that there will be consequences, and every appropriate measure will be pursued to hold them accountable, including legally." Cooper confirmed he has already notified law enforcement.

The mistrial occurred because the jury could not agree on whether Lindsay Clancy was criminally responsible for the deaths after one juror held out for a verdict that would have found Clancy criminally responsible. District Attorney Tim Cruz still has the option to retry the case, and prosecutors have considered a retrial at a later date. However, Cruz has not given any definite timeline after the court announced the mistrial.

Patrick Clancy sat through much of that trial as the prosecution's first witness. He described the day his children were murdered, his former wife's mental collapse in the weeks before, and the moment he came home with food and medicine to find his children gone. None of that has translated into sympathy from the people now targeting him. 

Attorney David Meier, also of Todd & Weld, issued his own statement after the mistrial, striking a different tone than the online mob. "Patrick Clancy is grateful to the Court and to the jurors for their hard work, their commitment, and their perseverance," Meier said. "The loss of Patrick's children is something from which he will never recover and from which there will never be closure. The prospect of reliving this tragedy through another trial is extraordinarily painful."

Patrick has said before that he forgives Lindsay, calling her ill instead of evil, a distinction that seems to matter to no one running the harassment campaign against him. 

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/08/2026 - 22:10

Most US Workers Fear Obsolescence In AI Era, Experts Say Adaptation Goes Beyond Tech

Authored by Mary Prenon via The Epoch Times,

Just as "The Obsolete Man," which aired in 1961, depicted a future society in which technology had rendered certain professions obsolete, a recent survey showed that, as AI reshapes the workplace, most U.S. workers fear becoming obsolete in the future workforce and believe developing new skills is essential to job security.

While many workers attributed their fear of obsolescence to a lack of skill with the latest technologies, some hiring and workforce professionals said building interpersonal skills is increasingly critical, especially at a time when many young people are living in a digital world.

ETS, a global nonprofit educational testing and measurement organization, reported that 54 percent of U.S. workers felt underprepared for the next generation of jobs in the coming decade, compared with 49 percent globally. Meanwhile, 75 percent said they have no clear indication of what those jobs will entail in 2035.

This uncertainty, in turn, is accompanied by fears of obsolescence, with 58 percent of those surveyed saying they fear becoming obsolete in the future workforce. The figure rises to 74 percent among technology workers and 73 percent among those in financial services.

"The reasons workers give are consistent across markets: they lack experience with emerging technologies such as AI, automation or data tools. Many also report limited hands-on exposure to innovative systems that are becoming central to modern work," ETS stated.

Some workers also feared that their newly acquired skills could become obsolete almost as quickly as they learn them, the report said.

Nevertheless, 78 percent of U.S. workers said there will be no job security without constant adaptation, while 85 percent said developing new skills will be necessary.

According to a March report from the International Monetary Fund, demand for new and digital skills is increasing, with one in 10 job postings in advanced economies and one in 20 in emerging markets requiring at least one new skill.

Ireland, Finland, and Denmark ranked as the top three countries in the organization's Skill Readiness Index, combining high shares of tech graduates with strong adult literacy and retraining systems. The United States ranked ninth among the 23 countries analyzed.

Barriers

However, many barriers, including time, cost, access, and employer support, are limiting workers' ability to pursue adaptation, ETS stated.

The report indicated that 71 percent of those surveyed were proactively developing new skills, falling short of the global average of 77 percent.

"U.S. workers are taking stock and waiting for clearer guidance, especially from governments, employers and educators," the report said.

Research from Blu Ivy Group, a Canadian employer brand and recruitment marketing company with offices in Michigan, indicates U.S. businesses spent $102.8 billion on employee training in 2025, but many failed to provide additional time for training, according to Stacy Parker, the company's cofounder and managing director.

"The biggest problem we see is that in many cases, employees are expected to participate in this training on evenings and weekends," she told The Epoch Times. "They are so busy with different projects at work and are not given any time during the day to complete the training."

Parker noted that in other countries, employee training is integrated into the workday.

"While North American companies tend to treat training as an HR [human resources] initiative, other nations see it as part of their competitiveness strategy," she said. "Managers need to have accountability for developing people alongside technology."

Meanwhile, Devin Hornick, cofounder and partner at KORE1, an Irvine, California-based nationwide staffing and workforce management company, said another reason U.S. workers lag behind their global counterparts is that they fail to discuss job expectations with their managers.

"In the U.S., the relationship between the growth of an employee's skills in the workplace, combined with a career and income increase, is not clear, and employees will prioritize simply surviving the work week," he told The Epoch Times.

Hornick added that unless an employer makes the relationship clear with a specific developmental career path, employees will not make the time to invest in developing a new skill. The issue can become more complicated, he said, when a company does not provide paid time off for employees to participate in training. Other companies do not cover the cost of training, and some do not offer training, Hornick said.

"Most professionals I place don't have the bandwidth to take on additional responsibilities and build new skills," he said.

"If there's no budget set aside for employee development, that means there's little to no value placed on training by employers and that results in the disconnect."

Real-Life Skills Over Technology

Stacey Cohen, president and CEO of Co-Communications, a New York-based marketing and public relations agency, believes that job readiness should start as early as high school.

The author of two "Brand Up" books that guide high school and college students in personal branding techniques, Cohen stresses the need to develop interpersonal skills - even more than AI skills - to create career opportunities.

"It's not just about knowing the latest technology," she told The Epoch Times.

"What employers are looking for today are durable skills like communication, critical thinking, collaboration, relationship building, and problem-solving. Employees need to be adaptable, and this is becoming more critical than ever."

Reviewing her own children's high school curriculum, Cohen noticed a void in interpersonal skill development.

"They were teaching things like yoga and photography, but why not interviewing and leadership skills?" she said.

"Textbooks can prepare you for a test, but to succeed in the workplace you need a different set of skills."

One factor affecting today's teens' ability to develop interpersonal skills is that they live in a digital world, she said.

"They text all the time and don't necessarily have to speak to another human," she said. "Even at the grocery store, you can choose the self-check-out lines instead of human cashiers."

Cohen believes it's never too early to teach young people these durable skills, such as using their own judgment, anticipating what people need, and learning the value of customer service.

"Even early part-time jobs like waiting tables require these types of skills," she said.

Cohen noted that the hotel industry devotes considerable time to onboarding new employees. This intense orientation and training program reviews every aspect of guest relations, from initial greetings to problem-solving.

Cohen said businesses should adopt a similar onboarding method to not only create a smooth job transition but prepare employees for how the job may change over the next decade.

Erin DeVito, general manager of North America for Impact, a global learning and development firm, works with both executive leadership and employees to support and improve workplace dynamics.

"Even leadership is scrambling and trying to keep up with changing business strategies today," she told The Epoch Times.

"The key is to help people develop skills of adaptability so they can shift, change, and learn new things. What worked years before may not be working now."

DeVito and her team work with businesses of all types, industries, and sizes, offering customized leadership and team development, as well as coaching and other services. She said sometimes the solution can be as simple as encouraging coworkers to talk with each other instead of emailing.

"When we rely on email and text, we lose human connectedness," she said. "While we're all embracing emerging technologies like AI, sitting underneath those are real-life skills."

DeVito used the example of her daughter, who was spending too much time texting on her phone and began to exhibit changes in her behavior.

"I took the phone away and put in a landline," she said. "After just a day, she was talking with people and started acting like herself again."

She eventually gave the phone back to her daughter, but with time-use restrictions.

Bridging the Gap

Hornick believes American workers can bridge the gap between the skills they bring to the table now and what will be expected in the next decade by setting the stage early enough with their immediate supervisors.

"I tell most of my candidates this: meet with your manager to find out what capabilities the company will need in the next 12 to 18 months and request a stipend, certification program, or protected time to develop those skills," he said.

"If the employer will not invest, look at low-cost, credentialed resources that are recognized in your field. Waiting for the perfect comprehensive program is how people fall further behind."

Parker said there's still a "real paradox" with leadership in their ability to provide clarity when so much transformation is happening.

"Organizations are in continuous change and redirection, and often, employees have less confidence about where the company is headed and what will happen to their jobs," she said. "Sometimes they think their jobs will be eliminated, but the company may actually have retraining in mind."

In her experience, Parker has seen technology, corporate retail, and business-to-business firms undergo the most change and reshuffling.

"Employees often are burdened with heavy workloads, businesses are sometimes understaffed, and promotion pathways can be unclear," she said.

As business leaders strive to find the best solutions, DeVito encourages both leadership and employees to learn as much as they can from everyone around them.

"It's also important that leaders be honest when they don't have all the answers," she said.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/08/2026 - 21:45

China's "Quasi-Monopolistic" Grip On Critical Materials Ignites Western Supply Race: First To Deliver Wins Big

The global push toward electrification carries several risks, including replacing dependence on foreign oil and natural gas with reliance on Chinese technology and critical materials, as access to cheap electricity dictates investment flows and where AI and industrial bases thrive.

Christian Keller, Barclays' global head of economics research, co-authored a note Tuesday on how rapidly accelerating geopolitical fragmentation and surging power demand are rewiring the global economy. He argued that countries must secure traditional fuel supplies while investing heavily in electricity generation, grids and storage.

Keller identified China's near-total control of more than 95% of critical material refining in areas such as heavy rare earths as a major vulnerability for countries dependent on those supplies.

Critical materials whose mining or refining China controls are critical inputs for electricity infrastructure, industrial production, the upcoming rearmament cycle, and the AI data center buildout. Replacing Chinese supplies requires far more than discovering new deposits and will take years. 

For the West, building competitive supply chains outside China, from mining critical materials such as tungsten to refining rare earths and manufacturing magnets, will be extraordinarily difficult and time-consuming. China's dominance in the space is expected to persist through at least 2030 despite ongoing Western efforts to diversify.

"China's quasi-monopolistic position provides it with significant geopolitical leverage," Keller warned.

A Reuters report late last week revealed that some Chinese rare-earth suppliers were refusing to ship materials to US customers. The report suggests supply disruptions remain a major issue ahead of the Trump-Xi meeting scheduled for later this month.

Here is Keller's warning for the West: 

Negotiating critical minerals supply chains

Electrification is only likely to advance as a global trend. Especially in energy-importing countries, being key for achieving energy sovereignty (next to lowering carbon emissions). In turn, that transition towards an electricity-dominated system is contingent on critical minerals (Transition minerals: unearthing opportunities from a $500bn supercycle). However, the global reserves of these minerals are often concentrated in certain locations: eg, lithium (over 30% in Chile), cobalt (over 50% in DR of Congo), nickel (over 40% in Indonesia). Moreover, the degree of processing is often crucial, potentially also making small reserves valuable, if fully processed.

In this context, China plays a crucial role, given its tight control over the global critical mineral supply chain and refining capacity, including graphite, gallium and rare earths (Figure 10 & Figure 11). China's quasi-monopolistic position provides it with significant geopolitical leverage. Other countries also use export controls for minerals where they have dominant positions to gain strategic leverage, eg, Indonesia with nickel and bauxite.

Hence, critical minerals will likely play central roles in international negotiations about trade or geopolitical settlements. The US tariff concession to Beijing in order to retain access to rare earths and its plan to build its own rare earth mining and refining capacities are likely only the beginning . Efforts to re-shore minerals mining and refining capacity are also likely to take time, as shown by the persistent concentration of value chains projected out to 2030 (Figure 12). Potential conflicts over critical minerals access in some of the already unstable African regions are also likely. Australia could play an increasingly important role, given its abundance and diversity of reserves in critical minerals and rare earths.

The key complement to resources in the ground are the capital flows to provide the necessary financing. Here, capital-rich advanced economies such as those in Europe could try to increase their role. However, as Figure 13 and Figure 14 show, despite the industrial strategy efforts of governments in the West, building out a comprehensive and cost-effective 'mine to magnet' value chain decoupled from China is extremely difficult and likely to take time.

Overall, economic statecraft involved in securing critical mineral supply chains will become a mix of export controls, foreign investment restrictions, access to foreign capital, and sanctions, possibly project-focused and with changing alliances.

Keller's warning underscores why we've made China decoupling a core investment theme, building on our nuclear theme, AI buildout, and powering up America themes, highlighting companies such as MP Materials and Almonty as the West races to secure alternative critical material supplies.

Breaking Beijing's "quasi-monopolistic" grip will require operating mines, processing capacity, and reliable deliveries. Many junior miners still face years of permitting, financing and construction before producing their first commercial shipments. Companies that can bring supply online sooner could capture a crucial early market advantage, such as Almonty's ex-China tungsten production ramping up in South Korea. 

Jefferies initiates critical mineral companies Almonty, Materion, USA Rare Earth and Neo Performance with Buy; the firms are expected to benefit from increased demand for supply outside of China.

Almonty (buy, PT $26.25)

Sees Almonty offering public exposure to Western tungsten…

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 2, 2026

The SPDR S&P Metals & Mining ETF (XME) has yet to confirm another breakout but certaintly coiling. 

Related:

• Ukraine's Drone Warfare Devouring 4% Of Global Germanium Demand As China Chokes Supplies

For readers, the decoupling theme is about identifying miners already producing and able to close the supply gap. The opportunity lies in who can deliver first in size.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/08/2026 - 21:20

US Navy's New Air-To-Air Missile AIM-424 Malice: Countering China's Growing Airpower

By Rick Fisher, senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center.

With its revealed range in “excess of 250 nautical miles” (287 miles), the U.S. Navy’s new long-range air-to-air missile (AAM) constitutes a major upgrade in the ability of the United States to arrest China’s quest for superior air power in Asia.

On May 7, 2025, Chinese air combat technology gave Pakistan a historic, beyond-visual-range (BVR) victory, when, during a record aerial engagement between 72 Indian Air Force and 42 Pakistan Air Force combat jets—that did not enter the other’s territory—Pakistan claimed to have shot down five Indian combat aircraft at ranges approaching a record 125 miles, including three French-made 4.5-generation Dassault Rafale fighters.

Pakistan’s victory was enabled by its acquisition of 20 Chengdu Aircraft Corporation 4.5-generation J-10CE fighters, equipped with an estimated 105- to 125-mile-range active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, and armed with 125-plus-mile-range Luoyang PL-15E (‘E’ for export model) long-range AAMs.

When long-range AAM engagements exceed the range of the fighter’s radar, “off-board cuing,” or guidance, is necessary, such as from Pakistan’s Chinese-made Shaanxi KJ-500 airborne warning and control system (AWACS) with an estimated 300-mile-range AESA radar, but these reportedly were undergoing modifications and were not in the battle.

But Chinese-source rumors at the time credited China with helping Pakistan fight this air battle by providing satellite and perhaps electronic intelligence that helped enable maximum-range interceptions by Pakistan’s PL-15 AAMs.

This performance has also finally encouraged more foreign sales for the J-10CE, with Uzbekistan now taking delivery of about 12 to 24, and Bangladesh and Algeria reportedly close to placing orders for 20 to 30 each.

China’s very large investment in longer-range and self-guided AAMs provides the “tip-of-the-spear” for Beijing’s massive investment in air superiority, starting with the 2000 purchase of 50-mile-range Russian Vympel R-77 self-guided AAM technology to enable the 60-mile-range Luoyang PL-12 by 2005—similar to early versions of the U.S. Raytheon AIM-120 AMRAAM.

By 2011, China was providing the first glimpse of its Luoyang PL-15 being carried in the internal weapons bay—to preserve stealth—of a prototype Chengdu J-20 fifth-generation heavy fighter, with an estimated range of up to 190 miles, far outranging the best U.S. fifth-generation Lockheed Martin F-22A and AIM-120 combination.

Furthermore, in 2016, China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) revealed its longer-range Luoyang PL-17, carried externally on a Shenyang Aircraft Corporation J-16 heavy twin-seat strike fighter, reportedly in PLAAF service since 2022.

These advanced Chinese AAMs can now arm 1,838 fourth- and fifth-generation fighters in the PLAAF, according to the latest annual Defense White Paper of the Japanese Ministry of Defense.

These now include: 308 J-20 fifth-generation fighters, whereas the Obama administration halted F-22A production at 187; 350 J-16 fighters compared to only 133 of the similar U.S. Air Force (USAF) Boeing F-15E heavy twin-seat strike fighter; and 608 J-10 fighters, more than 300 of which may be AESA-equipped J-10B and J-10C fighters, compared to about 150-plus USAF Lockheed Martin F-16C AESA-modified fighters.

But long-range BVR engagements by these fighters can be enabled by about 100 PLAAF AWACS platforms, including about 90 KJ-500s, whereas the USAF has had to fight furiously to secure funding for 26 next-generation Boeing E-7 Wedgetail AWACS with new AESA radar.

In addition, the PLAAF is working toward the sixth generation of air combat power, and since late 2024, it has been testing sixth-generation fighter aircraft from the Chengdu and Shenyang corporations, and by September 2025, it had revealed five types of future autonomous unmanned fighters or collaborative combat aircraft (CCAs) that will employ artificial intelligence (AI) to extend the survivability and combat reach of manned fighters.

So it is an understatement to say that the United States, which fought hard to achieve air superiority over the Soviet Union to keep the Cold War from turning hot, is now in a vital race to ensure that U.S. air power can continue to deter global conflict with China and its Russian and North Korean allies.

Central to the U.S. air power investment is the Lockheed Martin fifth-generation F-35 medium-weight fighter, which now has about 800 of a planned purchase of 2,450, to be extended by a networkable virtual “aerial alliance” of 700 to 800 more F-35s ordered by non-U.S. air forces.

The F-35 likely employs the world’s superior AESA radar, along with ultra-long-range optical sensors and perhaps the world’s best offensive/defensive electronic warfare systems, with advanced networking, and is capable of providing off-board cueing for ground-launched missile interceptors.

By the early 2030s, the USAF expects to take delivery of the Boeing F-47 sixth-generation fighter, with technology development prototypes having flown in 2020. The U.S. Navy is expected to select its sixth-generation fighter developer later this year.

To multiply and extend its combat power, the United States plans to acquire up to 1,000 CCAs and is now testing prototypes developed by Anduril and General Atomics.

But central to the American air power investment for more than a decade has been an effort to develop better, longer-range AAMs to keep pace with and overtake the Chinese AAM threat.

In addition to continually improving and extending the range of the AIM-120, the U.S. Navy has led the development of the Raytheon AIM-174B Gunslinger, revealed in July 2024, with a classified range estimated at up to 300 miles, but this large AAM can only be carried externally.

In development since at least 2019, the first images emerged in May this year of the estimated 120-plus-mile-range Raytheon AIM-260 AAM, which is close in size to the AIM-120 and can be carried internally by the F-22A and F-35.

But on Aug. 22, reporting from a Reno, Nevada, symposium of the Tailhook Association, a nongovernmental organization that supports naval aviation, Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine first revealed the U.S. Navy was “flight testing” the AIM-424 Malice.

About a day later on its webpage, the U.S. Navy revealed size and performance data for the AIM-424 Malice, to include a range in “excess of” 287 miles—with unofficial estimates approaching 400 miles—and a size that would allow internal carriage by the F-35 and the F-22A.

Images of the AIM-424 reveal that it is a two-stage AAM, meaning that unlike single-stage long-range AAMs, it has a better chance of sustaining high energy, or speed, to ensure lethality at the end of its engagement.

China’s immediate response has been to throw “shade” at the AIM-424, with Chinese state media Guancha publishing Aug. 28 commentary by Taiwanese expert Lu Shili saying:

“I believe that at this stage [AIM-424] is still more of a concept, and its main function is to respond to the development of China’s long-range air-to-air missiles and prevent the United States from looking too bad in terms of public opinion and equipment comparison.”

For sure, the Chinese Communist Party dearly wants to preserve its promoted image that its new air combat technology is superior to that of the United States, even though it has only been demonstrated in one, albeit large, air battle.

But the reality is that since World War II, the United States has been, and intends to remain, the world’s superior air power, a fact just affirmed by the revelation of the AIM-424 Malice.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/08/2026 - 20:55

Iran Says Basij Force Commander Killed In Mystery Insurgent 'Terror Attack'

American and Israeli officials have continued to speculate about fomenting some kind of internal rebellion or large-scale street uprising inside Iran, in hopes of toppling the leadership of the Islamic Republic. Bombs have largely fallen silent, for now.

But the longer the Iran war drags on, amid sporadic tit-for-tat action between US and Iranian forces as they clash over who controls the Strait of Hormuz, the more unlikely the kind of groundswell of protests like what was seen last January will be.

The Trump administration is betting that long-term severe economic 'D-Day' sanctions will eventually break Iranian society, but there's also the reality that a wartime and de facto martial law situation now makes large public anti-government demonstrations all the more difficult. It is also the case then when a country is under attack, there is a 'rally around the flag effect' - making it further easier for authorities to stamp out dissent before it spreads. And without doubt, Iran leaders have genuine support across various sectors of the Iranian populace, as they face down the United States.

via Iran state media

Additionally, it has been a longtime claim of Iranian officials that Israeli Mossad has infiltrated and in some cases armed protest groups.

"They have trained some people inside and outside the country; they have brought in some terrorists from outside," President Masoud Pezeshkian had said of Israeli and foreign intelligence back in January, amid the violent economic unrest that served as a precursor to Trump launching Operation Epic Fury.

Fast forward to now more that six months into the US-led war, and there are still instances of ground level deadly confrontations between Iranian security services and mysterious armed 'opposition' entities.

The AFP and Israeli media report of a fresh incident, "A local commander in Iran’s paramilitary Basij force was killed in a 'terrorist attack' in the country’s restive southeast, local media reports." According to more:

Abdolraouf Eshaghi, a commander in the Parud district of Sistan-Baluchistan province, had been “martyred,” the semi-official Tasnim news agency says, without providing details. It is not immediately clear who was behind the attack.

Yesterday, Iranian authorities said three people were killed and nine arrested during a raid in the province on hideouts of Islamist groups it claimed were affiliated with Israel and the United States.

However, armed clashes with ethnic groups which have separatist movements and leanings are nothing new for Iran, particularly in restive Sistan-Baluchistan province. That province has witnessed a long pattern of attacks on IRGC and Basij units by Baloch insurgent groups, going back decades.

While Iranian society is overwhelmingly Shia, most of the border province's large Baloch population is Sunni. But Tehran has long been worried that foreign intelligence could 'weaponized' the impoverished Sunni population, and a similar thing has been at issue with the Iranian Kurdish minority, which tends to be in the mountainous north of the country near Iraq. So this is a plausible scenario and very real possibility.

Trump back in April openly boasts "we sent some guns" to the "people of Iran"...

Trump:

We sent some guns; they were supposed to go to the people of Iran. You know what happened? The people we sent them through kept them.

I am very upset with a certain group of people, and they will pay a big price for that. pic.twitter.com/dACg5aZyMS

— Clash Report (@clashreport) April 6, 2026

It should also be noted that similar dynamics were at play during the lengthy Syrian proxy war. Washington and Gulf allies funded, trained, and armed Sunni radical insurgent groups as well as Kurds, which pressured Damascus from the north and east of the country.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/08/2026 - 20:30

Mamdani's 9/11 Pen: A Socialist's Contempt For The Dead

Authored by Kyle McClay via American Thinker,

On Friday, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed two executive orders commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Then he handed the ceremonial pen to his chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem - a man who spent years defending an al-Qaeda terrorist whose brother-in-law helped fly a plane into the Pentagon.

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch hands a ceremonial pen to Ramzi Kassem, who once represented a convicted al Qaeda member tied to a 9/11 hijacker. (NYC Office of the Mayor)

The symbolism was not subtle. It was a middle finger.

Kassem represented Ahmed al-Darbi, a Saudi national who pleaded guilty before a U.S. military commission to conspiring in the 2002 bombing of the French oil tanker MV Limburg off Yemen - an al-Qaeda plot to disrupt global oil supplies in the aftermath of 9/11. One civilian was killed. Al-Darbi's sister was married to Khalid al-Mihdhar, one of the five hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 77, the plane that struck the Pentagon and killed 184 people. Kassem began representing him in 2008 and served as his civilian defense counsel through sentencing.

This is the man Mamdani chose as the city's top lawyer. And this is the man Mamdani chose to receive the pen that signed the city's official 9/11 remembrance order.

The video is damning. Kassem entered the Blue Room roughly fifteen minutes late, smirked as the pen was passed to him through NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, and slipped out shortly after. The mayor's office insists Kassem's team drafted both orders - as if that excuses handing a 9/11 memento to a man who spent a decade arguing on behalf of the enemy.

Mamdani is under fire after a symbolic 9/11 pen was handed to a former al Qaeda defense lawyer.

FOLLOW ME, THE NEXT DROP WILL BE SHOCKING. pic.twitter.com/3ABIXKorzn

— Jean Daniel (@JeanDaniel47) September 8, 2026

It doesn't. It makes it worse.

This is not an isolated gaffe. It is the latest entry in a pattern of defiant, tone-deaf behavior that has defined Mamdani's brief tenure. Families of 9/11 victims launched a petition in July asking him to stay away from the anniversary ceremonies, citing his associations with people who have defended terrorists, minimized the attacks, or suggested America "deserved" them. The petition has now surpassed ninety-nine thousand signatures. Mamdani brushed it off, then doubled down by handing the pen to the very aide the families had flagged.

He skipped the Israel Day parade. He ditched the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism on day one. He refused to condemn "globalize the intifada." He called pro-Israel lobbyists "monsters." He skipped the installation of the new Catholic Archbishop of New York. He tweeted about World Hijab Day. He has governed as though New York's Jewish, Catholic, and first-responder communities are obstacles rather than constituents.

And now this.

The pen is a symbol. It represents the authority of the office, the solemnity of the occasion, the city's commitment to never forget. Handing it to a lawyer who defended a man tied by blood to the hijackers is not a bureaucratic accident. It is a statement - that the grievances of the families, the memory of the dead, and the dignity of the office itself are secondary to Mamdani's ideological signaling.

The American people should not accept this. Not from a mayor of the city that absorbed the worst of the attack. Not from a man who campaigned on "defund" rhetoric and socialist redistribution and now treats the 9/11 memorial as a prop for his base. Not from a politician who has made a career of testing how much contempt he can show before someone finally says enough.

Enough.

The families who lost husbands, wives, sons, and daughters on that day deserve a mayor who honors their grief rather than weaponizes it. The first responders who ran into the towers deserve a mayor who respects their sacrifice rather than handing its symbols to the lawyers of the enemy. And the American people deserve leaders who understand that some lines are not for crossing - that the memory of 9/11 is not a bargaining chip, not a photo op, and not a vehicle for political theater.

Mamdani crossed that line on Friday. The question is whether the rest of us will let him get away with it.

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

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/08/2026 - 20:05

China Halts New Battery Storage Plant Approvals

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

China has paused approvals for new battery storage factories amid a review of existing and planned capacity, Chinese financial news outlet Cailianshe reported this weekend, citing industry sources.

The temporary suspension of approvals of plants that have not started construction yet comes amid growing concerns about overcapacity in the sector in the world’s biggest manufacturer of batteries for energy storage.

China is the world’s biggest market for electric vehicles and a top player in battery storage as well. But just like electric vehicles (EVs) and solar panels, these energy transition-linked industries have enjoyed years of generous subsidies that have allowed them to grow without any consideration of overcapacity and its consequences. The Chinese government has already had to clamp down on EVs and solar panels, and now, it seems, it’s the turn of batteries.

In addition, Chinese solar equipment manufacturers have diversified into battery storage to tackle a chronic oversupply in the panel and equipment market that has crashed many sector players’ bottom lines.

The surge in EVs and solar and wind power installations has resulted in excessive manufacturing capacity in these key non-hydrocarbon energy industries, igniting price wars that have hurt most companies in the sector, including the biggest solar panel manufacturers. Chinese authorities realized last year that cutthroat competition, overcapacity, and low-quality manufacturing are hurting enterprises.

The battery storage boom in China is now threatening this industry, too, and China’s authorities have started to take measures to curb unrestrained growth.

In July, China’s Ministry of Finance, the General Administration of Customs, and the State Taxation Administration announced that China would launch consumption taxes on batteries effective September 1, 2026.

Mercury-free primary batteries, nickel-metal hydride batteries, lithium primary batteries, lithium-ion batteries, and all-vanadium redox flow batteries will be taxed at 2% from September 2026 and at 4% from September 2027. Photovoltaic cells will face a 2% tax from April 2027 and 4% from April 2028.

China exempted new-technology batteries from the tax until December 2028. These include sodium-ion batteries, solid-state batteries, fuel cells, and advanced photovoltaic types such as perovskite, tandem and gallium arsenide cells.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/08/2026 - 19:15

Trump Claims Firefighters Rescued Him From 9/11 Ground Zero: "Got To Get Out Of Here!"

President Trump has already attracted immense controversy when starting last month it became clear he is planning to hold Sept. 11 observances at the Pentagon, which was also struck. He's not planning to attend the more traditional ceremony and venue in Manhattan for the 25th anniversary of 9/11 in part because he wants to deliver a speech, says the NY Times; however, the event organizers have long barred remarks, seeking to keep it non-political and non-partisan.

"The president’s interest in speaking on Sept. 11 was conveyed to memorial planners in recent weeks, three of the people with knowledge of the events said. But since 2012, politicians have been barred from speaking at the site," the report details. "The National September 11 Memorial and Museum, which oversees the site, has worked rigorously to keep the venue nonpartisan and focused on the solemnity of the day."

"Mr. Trump, a native New Yorker who talked often about the Sept. 11 attacks during his 2016 presidential campaign, is now expected to commemorate them at the Pentagon, two of the people with knowledge of the events said," NYT continues. Vice President JD Vance is expected to represent the administration in New York. On Tuesday, President Trump just issued remarks sure to spark fierce controversy once again. Widespread reports have long documented that he was miles away from Ground Zero on that fateful day, but now he's using language as if he was a victim or barely escaped, or as if he was so close to the action and tragedy akin to a first responder. In the below he seems to confusedly switch between settings - as is often his style - going from talking about his own claimed rescue efforts with a crew of responders, to then narrating a dramatic tale of "running" from the site as it was feared a building could come down on them. Watch:

Trump on 9/11:

Two firemen, big strong guys, and I'm not the smallest guy in the world, they grabbed me under the arm and said, 'we gotta get out of here' and they literally lifted me up. This is not easy to do. I'm big. They lifted me up and they started running with me. They… pic.twitter.com/1FgeFuhdfZ

— Headquarters (@HQNewsNow) September 8, 2026

ABC writes of the Tuesday venue where Trump spoke: "The event at the Ellipse was spearheaded by the Tunnel to Towers Foundation and showcased a massive, 21-foot, nearly 17,000-pound steel beam recovered from the South Tower of the World Trade Center in New York, which had traveled for months across the country as part of the Steel Across America tour."

Trump 'recalled'. at the Tuesday ceremony: "The United States Steel Building [the former US Steel building, now known as 1 Liberty Plaza] was creaking, really creaking, and we thought it was going to fall down. The truth is, it creaked a lot. It creaked."

The president continued: "And I'll never forget two firemen. We thought it was coming down on top of us, and two firemen, big, strong guys — and I'm not the smallest guy in the world — they grabbed me under the arm, said, 'Got to get out of here!' And they literally lifted me up."

"This is not easy to do. I'm big. They lifted me up and they started running with me. I said, 'Fellas, I can run myself,' but they were amazing. But they thought it was coming down. It didn't come down," he added. He may have even been talking about his own office and building(?), but the ambiguous account is made to sound like he's 'running' from Ground Zero.

The NY Times has underscored further that he left the impression he had been right at Ground Zero:

On Tuesday, though, Mr. Trump left the impression that he had been at the site in the immediate aftermath. “I’ve never seen such an unbelievable mass of steel and, unfortunately, bodies and everything you can imagine,” Mr. Trump told the crowd, which had gathered to pay tribute to the police officers and firefighters who had been killed in the attack, including a stock trader and volunteer firefighter named Welles Crowther, whom Mr. Trump posthumously awarded with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

According to more background via the Times:

This was the latest in Mr. Trump’s evolving — and often disputed — account of his actions on Sept. 11 and in its aftermath, when he was working as a real estate developer in New York City.

Mr. Trump was watching television the morning of the attacks, which is verifiable from news coverage of that day, but what he did next has long been a matter of debate. He has repeatedly said that he took a construction crew with him to Lower Manhattan and was deeply involved in cleaning up the site, a claim that has been called into question by at least one former fire official who was involved in the recovery effort.

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump renewed his claim that he had taken a crew to a building near the site where the World Trade Center had stood shortly after the attacks. He said that two large firefighters picked him up and took him to safety when he observed an unstable building.

...Reminds us of Hillary Clinton's infamous 'escape from Bosnia' under fire:

This isn't the first time he has given such a story: "News accounts from that time put Trump about 4 miles from ground zero on Sept. 11, 2001, and footage shows him blocks away on Sept. 13, 2001, and Sept. 18, 2001," one investigation reviewed of prior claims. "None of those images or reports show him amid fire and ashes. And there is no record he was directly involved with first responders at the scene or that he sent hundreds of workers to aid the recovery. When asked, Trump has not provided evidence to corroborate the claims."

People have been chiming in all day, providing their own personal anecdotes contradicting Trump...

I know this is BS because I was with him in his Trump Tower apt once. I was looking through his telescope. He said, "I watched the twin towers fall through that ... it's solid gold." Those were his exact words and not a single word about going down there to help. https://t.co/u6y1nTkRpY

— Rick Reilly (@ReillyRick) September 8, 2026

That Trump's tale was issued before a solemn 9/11 remembrance event is all the more shocking - and as an aside, is certainly no help to Republicans going into an already tough midterm election in November.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/08/2026 - 18:50

US Breakthrough Could Build Hypersonic Shields, Rocket Parts In A Fraction Of The Time

Authored by Christopher McFadden via Interesting Engineering,

John Hopkins APL researchers have found a way to dramatically speed up the way that carbon-carbon composites can be created. The new approach, the research team explains, could replace the current slow, labor-intensive process, ultimately slashing the cost of production.

Representative image of a carbon composite.Unsplash/Lawless Capture/Johns Hopkins

"That speed is what makes FAST CAR2 so compelling," said Sal Nimer, assistant manager of APL's Science of Extreme and Multifunctional Materials program. "It has the potential to enable faster and more efficient production of advanced materials for high-performance applications, whether for rocket nozzles or hypersonic vehicles," he added.

Carbon-carbon, in case you are unaware, is basically carbon fiber embedded in a solid carbon matrix. Imagine carbon-fiber reinforced plastic, except instead of the fibers being surrounded by epoxy/resin, they're surrounded by more carbon.

That gives you something that is simultaneously very light, mechanically strong and astonishingly tolerant of heat. It's why you see it in things like rocket nozzles, re-entry systems, missile nose cones, aircraft brakes and hypersonic thermal protection.

Making carbon-carbon composites easier to make

"Carbon-carbon is one of the most important materials available for the thermal protection systems that help high-speed flight vehicles survive extreme heat," said William Fahy, an APL materials engineer who co-led the FAST CAR2 project.

"It was crucial for the heat shield on NASA's Parker Solar Probe - the spacecraft flying closer to the Sun than any human-made object. It's indispensable," he added. However, at present, making it is a painfully slow process.

Traditionally, you start with a porous carbon-fiber structure. You then need to fill all the tiny gaps between the fibers with additional carbon.

There are two main ways of doing that: repeatedly force carbon-rich gas through the material and deposit carbon inside it, or soak it with a resin and heat the resin until almost everything except the carbon burns/pyrolyses away.

The problem is that one pass doesn't fill everything. FAST CAR2, on the other hand, makes this much simpler and faster. In fact, similar materials that take months to produce can be created in just days.

Instead of slowly growing or depositing the carbon matrix inside the fiber structure, they put a carbon-bearing material directly into the fiber preform and then squash and heat the whole thing extremely rapidly using a technique called field-assisted sintering.

Looking ahead

The electrical current produces very rapid heating, while the press simultaneously forces everything together. The actual densification apparently happens in minutes, although preparing the piece and completing the whole manufacturing process still takes days.

"We're aiming for something revolutionary - to change the mechanism itself so we can get there orders of magnitude faster," Chapkin said. "When we started, the theory was there, but we didn't even know if the material would hold together," Chapkin said. "We've been surprised every step of the way," he added.

Looking ahead, the team is now working with external partners to access larger presses that will allow them to scale the process to even larger sample production and open the door to more applications.

"Scaling is always the hard part," Fahy acknowledged, "but seeing how quickly this all came together and how successful it has already been, we feel optimistic about where it can go," he added.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/08/2026 - 18:25

Chinese Chipmakers Buy 3-Year Sanctions Buffer As Huawei Spearheads Domestic Juggernaut

Right now, Chinese open-weight AI models are on the cusp of dominating closed-weight US frontier models in both price and performance. All ten of the top open-weight models on Artificial Analysis’s spring Intelligence Index came from China-based labs, and the best sat just six points behind the leading closed model; Chinese models also passed American ones in token share on OpenRouter in early June. All of this - despite asymmetrical lack of access to bleeding-edge hardware vs. their US competition, which Washington has been engineering since October 2022.

ASML Twinscan XT:260 lithography scanner,

The first round of export controls went after Nvidia’s best AI chips and the tools that make advanced chips; later rounds added high-bandwidth memory and more of the chip-printing machines made by ASML, the Dutch company with a near-monopoly on them. This year the White House loosened on chips, licensing H200 sales that Beijing then capped on its own, while Congress moved on the tools: a bill that cleared House Foreign Affairs in April would bar ASML from selling its most advanced remaining machines anywhere in China and require a license for every service call on the ones already installed.

So - since China still can't build the machines that make the chips, they've stockpiled three years' worth of critical machinery - buying time for one company to spearhead a domestic drive for AI independence.

On Monday the Financial Times reported that Huawei has taken the coordinating role in China’s drive to build those machines itself, investing across the supply chain and pushing domestic tools into chip plants such as SMIC, China’s largest chipmaker. At the center of the effort is a scanner built by Shanghai startup Yuliangsheng, the same class of machine the bill targets. It is being tested at SMIC and on Huawei’s own production lines, and one source told the paper that output will reach 12 units by the end of the year.

China’s two major memory-chip makers, CXMT and YMTC, have already bought enough ASML machines to cover their expansion plans for the next three years. Meanwhile, Yuliangsheng’s would-be domestic replacement prints wafers through projection lenses made by Germany’s Zeiss, which says it sells lithography optics to exactly one customer: ASML.

China’s memory makers have banked three years of Dutch machines, and the domestic replacement runs on German glass.

What's a Lithography Scanner?

A chip is a pattern printed onto silicon with light. The machine that performs that printing is a lithography scanner. For the chips that matter to China’s AI buildout, the relevant machine is an immersion deep-ultraviolet scanner (DUV), which passes light through a thin film of water to print finer features. ASML makes nearly all of them; Japan’s Nikon is the only other major player.

ASML’s newer extreme-ultraviolet machines have never shipped to China. Immersion DUV tools have, by the hundreds. ASML’s China president said in late 2023 that nearly 1,400 ASML machines were already installed in the country, and that number has risen since. China bought $49.6 billion of chip equipment in 2024, or 42% of the world total, much of it purchased ahead of another round of export controls.

SMIC uses those DUV scanners with multi-patterning, a technique that prints the same layer in several passes, to produce 7nm-class chips without EUV. That is how Huawei’s Ascend accelerators are made, including the 160,000 Ascend 950DTs that DeepSeek is ordering for its Inner Mongolia data center, covered here last week.

Every Ascend still traces back to a Dutch scanner. The machine Huawei is project-managing is meant to replace it.

Huawei As Project Manager

Yuliangsheng was founded in 2022 and spun out of SiCarrier, a Shenzhen equipment maker that FT has previously reported has close technical and business ties to Huawei. Huawei denies any affiliation. Yuliangsheng’s immersion scanner has been in testing at SMIC since September 2025, targeting 28nm in a single pass and 7nm with multi-patterning. For now, it is being used on simpler chips while engineers refine it. AI accelerators are the stated destination.

Bernstein’s Lin Qingyuan told the FT that “Huawei is playing a project management role in China’s DUV push.” A prototype, he added, is of limited value without the thousands of vendors, fabs and customers needed to make it reliable at industrial scale. Huawei is trying to assemble that system.

Its corporate venture arm Habo and another Huawei-backed fund, Shenzhen Yuanzhi Xinghuo, have invested in suppliers working on the two components China still cannot make at the required level: projection lenses and light sources. Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment, the country’s older state lithography house, is supporting Yuliangsheng with multiple prototypes, some built with foreign components and others used to test domestic substitutes.

The startup also sits inside a much larger state-backed effort. In late July, The Information reported that a Shanghai firm had begun mass-producing domestic immersion DUV tools, sending ASML down more than 8% intraday. Reuters identified the company as Shanghai Aishengna Electronic Technology Group. Founded in August 2023 with Rmb7 billion, or about $1 billion, in registered capital, Aishengna is backed by Shanghai Electric Holding and a Shanghai International Trust subsidiary and has absorbed teams from Yuliangsheng and SMEE. Corporate and recruitment records show that Aishengna and Yuliangsheng share a Shanghai address. Reuters had reported in December that China had also built an EUV prototype, though production remains years away.

German Glass?

A DUV scanner contains tens of thousands of parts spread across roughly a dozen major component groups. According to the FT’s sources, Chinese suppliers remain behind in two of the hardest: the projection lens and the light source.

• The Lens: Yuliangsheng’s projection lenses come from Zeiss - which told FT that it sells lithography optics only to ASML, which owns 24.9% of the unit - a stake it bought for €1 billion in 2017, and ASML’s filings describe Zeiss SMT as its single supplier of optical columns.

Huawei is now backing a would-be replacement. Fujian Zhiqi Photonics was spun out of optical-materials maker Castech in 2022. Yuanzhi Xinghuo paid Rmb100 million for 37% of the company in 2023, implying a valuation of roughly Rmb270 million, or about $40 million. Castech, which grew out of a Chinese Academy of Sciences institute, has disclosed both ASML and Huawei as customers.

• The Light Source: Japan’s Gigaphoton and ASML subsidiary Cymer dominate that market. Beijing RSLaser, also backed by Habo, has supplied light sources for SMEE’s older machines and is developing one for the 28nm tool. Lin’s assessment to the FT: building a light source is easy, building one that runs stably at high power is not.

The Fabs Vote With Dutch Inventory

While SMIC has bought Yuliangsheng’s machines and is testing them, it still uses ASML tools for production. Meanwhile CXMT and YMTC have stocked enough ASML DUV equipment to cover three years of expansion.

ASML’s CFO Roger Dassen said in July that China would remain at roughly 20% of 2026 sales, down from 33% in 2025 but on a larger base. ASML raised full-year guidance to €43-45 billion the same day. Its servicing and upgrade business, Installed Base Management, generated €2.76 billion in the second quarter alone.

Lin’s read is that Chinese DUV has improved substantially but still lacks the full backing of domestic fabs, much as ASML’s own rise depended on years of work alongside TSMC. The stockpile gives SMIC, CXMT and YMTC three years of expansion without running an unproven domestic scanner in production. It also delays, by the same three years, the production-line learning Lin says the prototypes need.

The MATCH Act

On April 2, a bipartisan House group introduced the Multilateral Alignment of Technology Controls on Hardware (MATCH) Act, H.R. 8170, a bill built to close the remaining gaps in US restrictions on chipmaking equipment sold to China and to make the Netherlands and Japan, home to ASML and Nikon, match them on a deadline. The original version was broader. A substitute offered later that month stripped out several controls but, according to Reuters, kept a countrywide restriction on sales of ASML immersion DUV machines to China. It also kept restrictions on foreign equipment sales to CXMT, YMTC and SMIC facilities already barred from using US tools.

The MATCH Act would also require licenses to service equipment in covered facilities, including calibration, spare parts, software updates and field support, although the revised draft dropped the original policy of denying those applications. The introduced text gave allied supplier countries 150 days to match US controls; Reuters reported that the substitute retained a deadline for allied negotiations before unilateral US controls would follow. House Foreign Affairs approved the substitute 36-8 on April 22. A Senate version, S.4281, remains in Banking. Neither has had a floor vote.

Immersion tools need specialized maintenance roughly every six months, often performed by ASML engineers on site in China. A three-year stockpile covers a sales ban. It does not cover a servicing restriction, which would put every six-month service visit inside a covered facility behind a Commerce license.

Lin’s closing point to the FT is that US restrictions could actually speed up China’s progress by forcing local fabs to work with local suppliers. Huawei can coordinate the suppliers, fund the missing components and put prototypes in front of SMIC. What it cannot easily do is make a fab abandon a proven ASML scanner while Dutch inventory is still available. The one party that could is Congress, and its bill has not had a floor vote.

The remaining constraint is the machinery underneath China’s models. DeepSeek’s chip order runs into Huawei’s memory shortage. Huawei’s Ascend chips run through SMIC’s ASML scanners. The domestic scanner intended to replace them still relies on a Zeiss lens acquired on China’s secondary market. And CXMT, the memory maker at the top of Aishengna’s delivery list, has just bought enough ASML equipment for three more years. Three years is the time Huawei has to make the domestic scanner work.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/08/2026 - 18:00

The Democratic Chicken... Or The Socialist Egg?

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

The primaries are over, and the November general election looms...

Suddenly, the Islamo-socialist podcaster Hasan Piker - who is now infamous for blaming America for 9/11 and warning Jews that "someone's going to come around and take action, not against the state of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews" - is persona non grata on the Democratic stump.

Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee in the Michigan Senate race, once enlisted Piker to jump-start his lethargic candidacy. Now that he is locked in a close general-election race against a strong Republican, El-Sayed dismisses the antisemite, who has suddenly outlived his usefulness, as a mere "social media person in California."

Clinton-era Democratic politicos like Rahm Emanuel and James Carville insist that Democrats have divorced themselves from the hard-left Democratic Socialists.

Really?

If that divorce were real, why would so many Democrats be cheering a potential Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez presidential run in 2028? She is, after all, a proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America's New York chapter.

Did lifelong socialist Bernie Sanders not run twice for president - not as a third-party candidate, but in the Democratic primaries? And did he not nearly capture the nomination in 2016 and 2020 until terrified donors and insiders intervened to abort his candidacies?

Did House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries not endorse Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, also a member of the DSA's New York chapter? And did Jeffries not thereby choose Mamdani over former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo?

Did California Governor Gavin Newsom - the opportunist par excellence, multimillionaire, and presidential hopeful - not recently declare that "capitalism as we know it doesn't work"? (Who, pray tell, are "we"?)

Has not nearly every major Democratic stalwart, including Senate leader Chuck Schumer, called for a "big tent" party that includes unapologetic socialists?

Many Democrats, of course, reject the socialists' calls to eliminate the Pentagon, close prisons, and dismantle the Senate. But perhaps only because such wild fantasies cannot succeed, at least for now, and repel most American voters.

Where, then, did these largely young, inexperienced, and naïve Democratic Socialists find their agenda?

Self-declared socialists now demand an open border and mass amnesty for illegal aliens; the abolition of police and prisons; war on fossil fuels; radical DEI mandates; free health care for all; wealth taxes on billionaires and even millionaires; deep defense cuts; and an end to military aid to Israel.

Yet these are hardly the socialists' positions alone. They closely resemble earlier Democratic Party programs and demands. The socialists now talk a grand leftist game; during the Biden years, Democrats tried to enact much of the agenda the socialists later claimed as their own.

So did newly radicalized Democrats spawn this socialist offspring, or did the socialists radicalize the old party of John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton?

Who created whom?

The answer is demonstrably clear: Democrats radicalized themselves. Only later did an underfunded, motley socialist crew jump aboard their increasingly extremist bandwagon. By the time the Democratic Socialists of America became nationally known, the new Democrats had already supplied their model of governance.

When Democratic Socialists claim that "billionaires" owe their success to government, they merely echo President Barack Obama's taunt to successful business owners: "You didn't build that."

Obama lifted that moronic socialist meme - like his "spread the wealth" line - wholesale from Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren. In 2011, Warren boasted that no wealthy American had succeeded on his own, reiterating the classic socialist rationale for confiscation: "the people" make success possible and must therefore be repaid.

In his first term, Barack Obama sought to take over the nation's health care system while concealing his socialist agenda. He partly succeeded through his now-failing Obamacare plans. His effort rested in part on the claim PolitiFact later named its "Lie of the Year": "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it."

Obama also cut more than $100 billion from defense. His "apology tour" and dismissal of American exceptionalism likewise anticipated these more recent socialist one-world talking points.

Who cooked up DEI?

Who but the Obama and Biden administrations vastly expanded government hiring and promotion by race, gender, and sexual orientation? Who unleashed the Justice Department to pressure the private sector to follow suit - until the Supreme Court declared much of this DEI tribalism unconstitutional?

Sanctuary cities and neo-Confederate state and local nullification of federal immigration law were mainstream Democratic policies long before 2020. Biden's Democrats - not the socialists - destroyed the southern border and admitted more than 10 million illegal aliens. Until the 2024 election cycle, Biden had also effectively imposed a moratorium on deportations.

Long before forming the 2020 Democratic ticket, Kamala Harris advocated banning fracking, while Joe Biden called for banning new fracking on federal lands and waters.

Long before the DSA and DSA-adjacent cohort of Mamdani, Piker, El-Sayed, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib began mouthing antisemitic talking points, prominent Democrats like Jesse Jackson ("Hymietown"), Al Sharpton ("diamond merchants"), and Reverend Wright ("them Jews") had shown the party's tolerance for licensed Jew-hatred. More recently, more than 100 House Democrats voted to cut off all aid to Israel.

The same pattern applies to political methods. Democratic officials gave wink-and-nod support to the violent Antifa and Black Lives Matter movements long before the Democratic Socialists became a major force.

As early as August 2015, the Democratic National Committee officially endorsed BLM, while many Democrats defended Antifa.

In 2018, then-deputy DNC chief Keith Ellison posed proudly with an Antifa handbook and preened about "the book that strike [sic] fear in the heart of @realDonaldTrump." By 2020, even FBI Director Christopher Wray was claiming that Antifa was more an "ideology" than a real organization of frequently unhinged and violent protesters.

During the post-George Floyd mania of 2020, then-Senator Kamala Harris, soon to become vice president, praised calls to defund the police. She even boasted on national television that the weeks-old, increasingly violent demonstrations would not - and should not - cease before the election.

Some establishment Democrats went further, personally threatening violence. Who screamed outside the Supreme Court, warning the justices, "You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions"? Not a fringe socialist, but the Senate's top-ranking Democrat.

And in 2018, Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters urged her followers to threaten and "harass" Trump cabinet officials.

More importantly, when the Democratic Socialists urge the next Democratic administration to pack the Supreme Court, abolish the Electoral College and the filibuster, and admit Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia as two new left-wing states, where did those ideas originate?

Mainstream Democratic leaders had already embraced the entire agenda during the first Trump administration, if not earlier.

And who is more lawless: the loudmouth, self-proclaimed radical socialists who talk of weaponizing state and federal power, or the still more radical Democrats who actually wielded it?

Who tried to remove a major Republican presidential candidate from ballots in more than 20 states?

Who sent FBI SWAT teams into Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate?

Who brought four farcical lawfare cases aimed at imprisoning Trump?

Who concocted the Steele dossier and spread the lie that Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation?

The answer: mainstream establishment Democrats, acting without any help from a coterie of fringy, downwardly mobile white urban socialists who were then largely irrelevant.

The once-fringe Democratic Socialists became mainstream largely by imitating an increasingly socialist Democratic Party. They did not infiltrate the Republican Party, form a viable third party, or - even after Sanders's first campaign in 2016 - abandon boutique Democratic causes, from open borders to gun control, to concentrate on economic radicalism.

Instead, they adopted the modern Democratic Party's media, messaging, and methods and joined it, first informally and then formally. Fittingly, they are not called the Republican Socialists, Independent Socialists, or simply Socialists of America.

In sum, the socialists did not swallow the old Clinton Democrats; those Democrats were already gone. A party radicalized over decades instead welcomed younger copycat socialists who proved even more zealous and embittered than their elders - and gave them their first national home.

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

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/08/2026 - 17:40

Where's The 1929-Style Collapse MSM Predicted? UBS Finds Global Exports Surging To "Historically High Levels"

Last year, lefty corporate media outlets pushed the narrative that President Trump's trade war with the world could trigger a 1929-style economic collapse. However, a new UBS report presents a markedly different picture: global trade growth is running at historically high levels, supported by AI-related demand and rising export prices. 

Let's take a trip in the "wayback machine" and look at Bloomberg's headlines when Trump was ratcheting up the trade war with China in early 2025. The outlet pumped out an ungodly number of headlines about "recession" and impending economic doom. 

MSM's 'Doom-Maxxing' Headlines:

Roughly 1.5 years later, UBS's latest data show continued growth in global trade, despite the recession risks economists highlighted when the tariff war broke out in the first half of 2025.

UBS chief economist Arend Kapteyn wrote Tuesday morning that global export values are rising about 19% from a year earlier, placing growth in the 84th percentile of the past 25 years. Higher volumes account for roughly 8.8 percentage points of that increase, while rising prices contribute another 10.3 percentage points.

Asia accounts for 71% of global export growth. The region, with China particularly prominent, generates about 95% of the technology-related contribution, highlighting its major role in the AI supply chain. 

Separately, Emmanuel Sharef, who oversees Pacific Investment Management Co.'s flagship Balanced Income and Growth Fund, told Bloomberg last week that he was seeking opportunities among Asian suppliers benefiting from the AI boom.

The report suggests that global trade remains resilient, but its core strength is concentrated in technology and Asia. That leaves the expansion heavily sensitive to the AI and power grid investment boom. It seems that all the doom-maxxing forecasts lefty corporate media outlets made last summer have fallen flat on their faces.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/08/2026 - 17:20

25 State AGs Urge Defunding Of National Academies Of Sciences, Allege Bias On Climate Lawsuits

Authored by Kevin Stocklin via The Epoch Times,

A coalition of 25 state attorneys general called on federal agencies and Congress to defund the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), charging that the organization had used taxpayer dollars to produce reports that supported plaintiffs in climate lawsuits against energy companies.

In an Aug. 27 letter, the state attorneys general urged the federal government to "end grants to an organization [NASEM] that uses taxpayer money to prop up litigation theories that have been rejected by courts from Maryland to Mississippi to California."

Much of the conflict stems from a chapter on climate science in the Federal Judicial Center's Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence for federal judges that was written by NASEM, together with the Federal Judicial Center (FJC).

This manual provides essential background and technical information for judges who are presiding over thousands of lawsuits in which states and cities across the United States are seeking billions of dollars in damages from energy companies as compensation for alleged harm from global warming.

Allegations of Bias

Critics allege that information NASEM produced for the manual supports the plaintiffs' claims while ignoring contrary views that favor the defense.

President Donald Trump stated in a July 19 Truth Social post that NASEM had "published fraudulent, biased, and misleading Manuals on Climate Change" and that "taxpayers should not be funding Climate Fraud, and Judges should never have relied upon it."

In January, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet, told the FJC in a letter that the manual appeared to include "biased programming" with the "underlying goal of predisposing federal judges in favor of plaintiffs who allege injuries from the manufacturing, marketing, use, or sale of fossil-fuel products."

In response, the FJC removed the chapter from its manual. Initially, NASEM kept the chapter on its website but removed it on Aug. 7, pending an internal review.

"That chapter has received considerable scrutiny," NASEM stated. "[NASEM] has determined that questions about the processes used to develop the chapter warrant an independent review, and the chapter will not appear on our website while that review is underway."

However, attorneys general from the group of 25 states, led by Montana, Nebraska, Tennessee, and West Virginia, say they have concerns regarding that review process.

"Now, over five months later, after presidential criticism and increasing public scrutiny, NASEM has temporarily removed the chapter from its website for an 'independent review' of the 'processes used to develop the chapter,'" the attorneys general wrote in their letter. "This review appears to be a sham, as demonstrated by NASEM's secrecy around all aspects of the review process."

The attorneys general charged that the chapter in the reference manual that NASEM helped write "materially misquotes the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], directly contradicts the manual's statistics chapter, was apparently substantially ghost-written by climate plaintiffs' attorney Michael Burger, and had funders, authors, and reviewers that included climate funders, activists, and litigation participants."

One of the co-authors of the Reference Manual's climate chapter, Columbia Law School professor Jessica Wentz, defended the work in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, stating that it had undergone a rigorous review process, that Michael Burger had not contributed to it, and that it was "objective and rooted in settled science."

In addition to the chapter in the reference manual for judges, NASEM produced a report in July titled "Attribution of Extreme Weather and Climate Events and Their Impacts 2026," which critics say bolstered plaintiffs' arguments that harm from extreme weather events could be attributed to energy companies' production of fossil fuels.

That NASEM report supported "extreme event attribution" (EEA), the legal theory underpinning climate lawsuits, which claims that damage from extreme weather can be attributed to fossil fuel emissions, as plaintiffs assert. NASEM stated in a summary of the report that "the scientific tools, observational datasets, and methods developed and used for EEA have advanced considerably over the past decade and increased the confidence in EEA results for some types of weather events."

"[NASEM says] that these attribution studies have more prominence in the press and in legal proceeding and they say attribution methodology is getting better, but saying something is getting better is nowhere near the same as saying it's any good," Steven Koonin, physicist at Stanford University and former undersecretary for science under President Barack Obama, told The Epoch Times. "You would expect to see graphs throughout the report comparing the results of attribution with what the actual data is, and there is virtually none of that in the report."

The NASEM report also provides a methodology and causal link between greenhouse gas emissions, changes in climate, extreme weather, physical impacts on communities, and societal and economic harm.

Among the climate lawsuit cases currently moving through the courts is a pending Supreme Court case, Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, which could set a precedent for many other similar cases.

Calls to Defund NASEM

Besides the attorneys general, other critics have also called for the government to defund NASEM.

"Federal agencies shouldn't need another minute to cut off funding to an organization laundering climate activism through the National Academies' name," Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, said in a statement.

"The National Academies took taxpayer money and used it to manufacture a scientific-sounding basis for climate lawsuits courts have already rejected, then timed a follow-up report to help plaintiffs in the Suncor case while locking out any rebuttal. Calling their own secret internal review 'independent' is a punchline."

The letter from the state attorneys general said "a truly independent review" would feature an external panel, exclude NASEM employees, activists, and litigation participants, and be made available to the public.

NASEM received hundreds of millions of dollars from federal agencies in 2024, including more than $84 million from the Transportation Department, $32 million from the Defense Department, and $23 million from the Department of Health and Human Services, the Aug. 27 letter stated. Signatories of the Aug. 27 letter also included attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, South Carolina, Wyoming, and Utah.

The Epoch Times contacted NASEM for comment but did not receive a response as of press time. However, a spokesperson from the organization said in a statement to media outlets that its mission was "to provide independent, objective scientific advice."

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/08/2026 - 17:00

Consumer Credit Smashes Estimates As Credit Card Debt Hits New All-Time High

The relevering of the US consumer continues: one month after the June consumer credit number came higher than estimates (and followed the unexpected May contreaction in US credit), in July consumer credit came in even higher than expected, with the Fed reporting in its latest G.19 report that in July, US consumer credit rose by a whopping $18.1BN - more than the $14.6 billion in June - and far above the $11.7 billion estimate. 

The rebound was driven by a modestly increase in revolving credit (i.e., credit card debt), as consumers added $2.8 billion to their credit card total...

... pushing it to new record high of $1.357 trillion.

The bulk of July's spike in consumer credit was in "non-revolving": student and auto loans rose by a whopping $15.3 billion, the biggest one month increase in over three years, and pushing total nonrevolving credit to $5.186 trillion, also a new all time high.

What is interesting, is that while auto loans have barely budged since late 2023, staying around 1.6 trillion for nearly three years, and hitting a record $1.571 trillion at the end of June, student loans have resumed their ascent, and after a modest decline in late 2023, student loans are once again at all time highs although in June we saw a tiny decline of $4.5 billion.

Finally for those keeping tabs, after a modest decline in the previous two quarter, the average interest rate on credit card accounts assessed interest rose again to 22.15%...

... a level last seen three years ago, when the Fed rates was almost 2% higher, which confirms our long-running observation that credit card rates go up but they never go down.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/08/2026 - 16:40