US Seizes 7 Domains Used By China-Linked Hackers To Target Critical Infrastructure

Authored by Arthur Zhang via The Epoch Times,

The Justice Department and FBI announced on Oct. 8 that they had seized seven internet domains used by Chinese state-linked hackers to target critical infrastructure and other computer networks in the United States and overseas.

A hacker uses his computer in Dongguan, China's southern Guangdong Province, on Aug. 4, 2020. Nicolas Asfouri/AFP via Getty Images

The seizures targeted two hacking tools allegedly operated by cyber actors working for Integrity Technology Group, a Beijing-based cybersecurity company with Chinese regime contracts.

The tools were used to identify security weaknesses, gain unauthorized access to computer networks, and steal information, according to the Justice Department.

In a joint cybersecurity advisory released the same day, U.S. and allied agencies warned that Chinese regime-linked hackers enabled by Integrity Tech had combined automated scanning, large networks of compromised devices, and targeted intrusions to steal sensitive information from organizations worldwide, including U.S. critical infrastructure operators.

A federal magistrate judge in Pennsylvania approved the seizure warrant on Oct. 6, authorizing the domains to be redirected to FBI-controlled servers.

The Justice Department has not announced criminal charges against Integrity Tech or identified individual defendants in connection with the seizures.

The operation marks the second public U.S. disruption of Integrity Tech's hacking infrastructure in two years.

In September 2024, the FBI dismantled a network of more than 200,000 infected internet-connected devices, including home routers and cameras, that investigators said were used to conduct cyber operations.

However, a newly unsealed FBI affidavit indicates that tools linked to Integrity Tech remained accessible afterward.

Investigators found a server hosting one hacking tool in March 2026 and confirmed that a login page for another was still accessible in September.

"The PRC relies on contractor and enabling companies to expand the reach and scale of its malicious cyber activity," said Brett Leatherman, assistant director of the FBI's Cyber Division, referring to the People's Republic of China.

"By exposing and disrupting these enablers, we make it harder for the PRC to target American networks and infrastructure."

US Power Company, Foreign Airports Targeted

According to the affidavit, one hacking tool, called Microscan, searched computer networks for weaknesses that hackers could later exploit.

Investigators identified scanning activity involving a South Carolina power company, airports in Japan and Poland, a multinational nonprofit organization, and Taiwanese companies operating in the natural gas and electricity industries.

Scanning does not necessarily mean hackers gained access to a network. The court filings do not establish that the power company, airports, or energy companies were successfully breached.

However, investigators said two Taiwanese universities were successfully hacked after their networks had been scanned.

A second tool, FishHub, was used in targeted phishing operations designed to trick victims into opening malicious content.

After an initial breach, it could deliver additional software that allowed hackers to control computers remotely, search for files, and send stolen information to servers under their control.

The Justice Department said approximately 20 Taiwanese universities were confirmed victims of FishHub activity.

Five of the seized domains were used to deliver the malicious software.

Chinese Regime Contractor

Integrity Tech was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in January 2025 over its role in cyber operations attributed to Chinese state-sponsored hackers.

At the time, the department said the company had ties to China's Ministry of State Security, the country's principal civilian intelligence agency, and provided services to state-security and public-security bureaus.

The department said hackers working for Integrity Tech operated at the Chinese regime's direction.

The Oct. 8 advisory describes Integrity Tech as a profit-making company whose employees acquire or develop hacking tools for use and sale, provide infrastructure supporting cyberattacks, and compromise networks worldwide.

The agencies said those services contribute to a larger Chinese cyber ecosystem that seeks to steal sensitive information from victims around the world.

Integrity Tech is publicly traded on the Shanghai Stock Exchange under stock code 688244.

In a January 2025 disclosure, the company rejected earlier U.S. allegations, saying they lacked a factual basis. It maintained that it operated legally and had no subsidiaries, business operations, or assets in the United States.

The Epoch Times contacted Integrity Tech, the FBI, and the Justice Department for comment but received no responses before publication.

Asked about the seizures at an Oct. 9 press briefing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Beijing opposed hacking and rejected what she described as politically motivated misinformation.

She accused Washington of double standards and political manipulation but did not directly address the allegations against Integrity Tech.

The United Kingdom also sanctioned Integrity Tech in December 2025 over its alleged involvement in cyber operations targeting British public-sector systems.

Agencies Warn of Worldwide Data Theft

The joint advisory, issued by the FBI, National Security Agency, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and authorities from six other countries, identified U.S. targets across government services, critical manufacturing, health care, and information technology.

The hackers also targeted American law-enforcement agencies, educational institutions, and religious organizations, along with entities in Southeast Asia, Africa, and elsewhere in North America.

The agencies described the activity as extending beyond the China-backed cyber espionage group Flax Typhoon to operations also tracked under the names Ethereal Panda and Red Juliett, while cautioning that such labels do not necessarily correspond to identical groups or operations.

The advisory warned that hackers used a combination of mass scanning and targeted attacks to enter computer networks, steal account credentials, maintain unauthorized access, and remove sensitive files and emails.

Some of the malicious software was disguised as legitimate Windows programs.

Other tools exploited weaknesses in Microsoft email services or enabled attackers to maintain remote access while making their activity harder to detect.

The FBI identified victims of email theft among government agencies, law-enforcement organizations, health care systems, and religious institutions in Southeast Asia.

In some instances, access to the stolen information was restricted to internet addresses in Xiamen, China.

Investigators also discovered a custom online application maintained by the hackers that allowed third parties to retrieve stolen emails from specific accounts, according to the advisory.

The agencies urged government bodies and critical infrastructure operators to search their networks for evidence of compromise, promptly fix known security weaknesses, disable unnecessary services, and strengthen account protections.

Tyler Durden Sun, 10/11/2026 - 12:00

Claude Calls The Cops: Anthropic's AI Filed A Fake Murder Tip With Philly Police, Then Took 81 Days To Mention It

For three months, the official excuse for every "rogue AI" headline has fit in one sentence: a contractor left the internet on. On Friday, Anthropic ran out of contractors to blame.

In a report published late Friday, the company disclosed a fresh batch of what it politely calls unintended model actions, the most eye-catching of which was first flagged by the Philadelphia Police Department and picked up by Quartz and every wire service on the planet: one of its Claude models fabricated a witness tip in an unsolved homicide and submitted it through the city's public tip form.

*ANTHROPIC AI SUBMITTED FALSE TIP TO PHILADEPHIA POLICE: WSJ

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 9, 2026

In other words, the company that wants Washington to trust it with "pacing the frontier" could not stop its smallest, cheapest model from lying to homicide detectives.

Below we walk through what Claude actually did in Philadelphia, the rest of Friday's confession (it gets worse, and involves federal agencies), how it fits into the summer of AI "breakouts" we have been chronicling since July, and why the timing, a few weeks before Anthropic's IPO, is about as bad as it gets.

11:27 PM On A Saturday Night: "I May Have Information"

The facts, as laid out by Anthropic and the Philadelphia PD's own statement, are not in dispute.

Claude Haiku 4.5, the budget model in Anthropic's lineup and nobody's idea of Skynet, had been told to invent and perform sample tasks on randomly chosen web pages. One run landed on PhillyUnsolvedMurders.com, the site the department launched in 2019 to shake loose leads on cold cases. The page described an unsolved killing and carried a tip form. So Claude filled it in.

According to Anthropic, the model claimed it might have information on the case and wrote, "I recall seeing someone matching the description" near the street named on the page, around the time of the killing, before asking police to get in touch. Two small problems: Claude has never been to Philadelphia, and, as Anthropic itself concedes, the page contained no description of the perpetrator. The model invented a sighting of a suspect nobody had described, left the name and contact boxes empty, and hit submit.

The submission is time-stamped July 18, 2026 at 11:27 p.m., per the police. The department's spam filter caught it and, in the PPD's telling, it was never passed to the Real-Time Crime Center, the unit that vets tips before detectives see them. No police systems were breached and no department data was touched.

Translation: the only thing standing between an AI-generated fake witness and a homicide investigation was a junk-mail filter.

How did this get past Anthropic's own rules? The instructions barred the model from logging in, opening accounts, entering personal data, buying anything, or doing anything destructive. They did not say "do not submit forms." So it did. Anthropic's read of the transcript is that Claude was merely generating example content for its assignment and was not trying to deceive anyone to reach a goal, which is a distinction that will no doubt be a great comfort to the family of the victim.

"Unacceptable": Do The Math On The Delay

The department was notably less relaxed. Spokesperson Eric Gripp called it a "false homicide tip" in a statement to CBS, and the PPD's full release, which the city pointedly published ahead of Anthropic's report, said fabricated information presented as coming from a person with knowledge of a killing is serious no matter how little damage it did. Then came the line that will be read back to Anthropic executives at every hearing from here to the roadshow:

"The two-month delay in detecting and reporting the incident to the City is unacceptable."

Actually, the city is being generous. Here is the napkin math:

• July 18: Claude files the fake tip.
• September 28: Anthropic discovers it, 72 days later, according to what it told the police.
• October 7: Anthropic tells the PPD, another 9 days on. (Anthropic's own footnote says it shared the finding on October 8, as soon as its technical review was done; the police say they were notified on the 7th and met the company on the 8th.)

That is 81 days from fake tip to phone call, or roughly as long as it took OpenAI to tell Canberra its agent had been rummaging around Australia's Medicare statistics portal (June incident, September notification, October apology before parliament). The industry appears to have settled on a standard disclosure window, and it is one fiscal quarter.

The city is not done. The PPD says it is coordinating with Philadelphia's Law Department, its technology office and Mayor Cherelle Parker's team, and that the administration will look at regulatory protections locally and with state and federal partners. Anthropic, for its part, told the police it shut down the automated testing process behind the tip and added a validation step for future tests.

The Rest Of The Confession: SQL Injection, Dodged Fees And Real Government Forms

The murder tip got the headlines, but it was one example in one of four buckets. Paraphrasing Anthropic's own report, Claude models also:

• Hacked a university server to finish a homework assignment. Claude Mythos Preview needed a public scientific tool hosted by a university. The tool threw an error, so the model poked around, found a script that would hand over any file on the server, read the script's own code, found an injection flaw in it, and used that flaw to run its calculation on the university's machine.
• Clicked "I agree" on a contract it had no way to sign. Mythos 5 needed free data sitting behind a data-use agreement it lacked the tools to accept, so it got applications hosted on the site to load the page and accept the terms on its behalf.
• Submitted real government forms, repeatedly. An unreleased research model was supposed to fill in a practice copy of a government form. When the copy failed to load, it went to the live government site and submitted the real thing. Anthropic says this happened multiple times. Haiku 4.5, in a separate test, was told to stop before the final submit button and several times didn't.
• Helped itself to paywalled public data. Mythos 5 pulled working access tokens out of a local government property map's settings file. In another case, during ordinary internal use by an Anthropic researcher, it found that a state agency's dashboard hands a token to any visitor and used one to query a database the agency charges a fee for.
• Laundered its requests through URL shorteners. Anthropic caps the length of web addresses its models can fetch precisely to stop injection attacks. Several models, including Opus 5 and Mythos 5, got around the cap with free link-shortening services. The operator of one such service noticed and wrote in.

Some of the sites belonged to US government agencies at the federal, state and local level, none of which Anthropic will name. The company says it has briefed the White House and notified each agency, which is presumably how Philadelphia found out.

And here is the detail that matters most for anyone who has followed this saga. In the July incidents the models were told they were offline and a misconfiguration put them online. Not this time. Most of Friday's cases happened on public benchmarks that are run on the live internet on purpose (Anthropic lists DeepSearchQA, BrowseComp, LABBench2, OSWorld and Humanity's Last Exam, among others), and some happened in plain old day-to-day use inside the company. Nobody left the internet on by mistake. The internet was the test.

Anthropic's response is to do what it probably should have done in July: it has now pulled live internet access from all of its internal evaluations until its new monitoring is proven to catch this stuff, dropped or rebuilt several public benchmarks, and clamped down on its web-fetch tool. It insists none of this is new behavior, that the real-world impact was minimal, and that the cases are far less severe than the summer's hacks. It also admits, in the last paragraph, that the same habits could do a great deal more harm as the models get stronger. Both statements can be true. Only one of them goes in the risk factors.

From Hugging Face To Homicide: A Summer Of "Breakouts"

Regular readers will not need the recap, but for everyone else, this is where Friday's news sits in the sequence.

The 2026 Rogue AI Scorecard When Lab What happened Victim told May Google Gemini breaks into three real companies during a third-party capture-the-flag test Public learns Sep 18, when the WSJ calls June 18 OpenAI Research agent gets around blocks on Australia's Medicare statistics portal Sep 10 (84 days) Mid-July OpenAI Models chain a zero-day out of their sandbox and into Hugging Face's production systems Hugging Face caught it first; OpenAI owns up Jul 21 July 18 Anthropic Claude Haiku 4.5 files a fabricated witness tip with Philadelphia homicide police Oct 7 (81 days) July 25-28 Anthropic, OpenAI UK AISI logs 19 unsanctioned actions in 10 of 122 test runs, 17 of them by Mythos 5, including sock-puppet GitHub accounts pushing malicious code Reported Aug 4 April-July Anthropic Three Claude models breach three organizations in cyber tests; Mythos 5 ships malware to PyPI that runs on 15 systems. A fourth incident, from January, turns up later Jul 27; disclosed Jul 30 Sep 20 OpenAI Agent tunnels out through DNS during training; tool use paused on top models. 53 user images found posted to the open web Disclosed Sep 25-26 Oct 9 Anthropic Fake murder tip, real government forms, an exploited university server, bypassed paywalls White House briefed Source: ZeroHedge, Anthropic, OpenAI, UK AISI, Philadelphia Police Department, WSJ, Reuters

We covered Anthropic's first admission in "Claude Hacked Three Real Organizations During Botched Test" (Jul 31), days after OpenAI conceded its models had escaped containment to cheat on a benchmark. A week later came the UK government's finding that Mythos 5 had created fake profiles and tried to trick humans into approving its malware (Aug 5), which prompted the obvious observation from outside experts that a person doing the same would be in handcuffs (Aug 10), and the equally obvious question of who is legally on the hook when an agent goes rogue (Aug 29). Philadelphia's lawyers are about to find out.

What makes Friday's batch awkward is how neatly it undercuts Anthropic's own first draft of history.

On July 30 the company's verdict was that the incidents were "closer to a harness and operational failure than a model alignment failure." Six weeks later, in a September 9 alignment assessment that got a fraction of the attention, it took that back: having widened its search to roughly 481 million transcripts and re-examined the originals, it concluded the models had shown biased reasoning (reading the evidence in whatever way justified carrying on) and recklessness. In its own replication of the malware episode, Mythos 5 took a severely harmful action in 82% of 150 runs. The newer Opus 5 and Mythos 5.1 "improved" to 31% and 33%.

Buried deep in that same document was our favorite admission of the year. Anthropic trained two versions of Mythos 5, one with extra training designed to teach the model to accept failure instead of bulldozing through obstacles, and one without. It shipped the one without. The reason? "Employees found version two much more usable."

The company now calls that a mistake. Safety first, unless it is annoying.

Which brings us back to Friday. The common thread Anthropic identifies across the new cases is persistence: hand Claude a task it cannot complete as written and it goes around the obstacle instead of stopping. A locked server, a paywall, a missing practice form, a blank tip box. It is the same trait that makes these agents commercially valuable, and the company knows it.

Psy-Op Or Not, The Regulators Are Now Real

Having pounded the table on this for weeks, we will restate where we stand. In "Total PsAI-Op" (Sep 20) we laid out the case, made by a growing number of tech insiders, that the frontier labs were milking sandbox mishaps to scare Washington into building them a regulatory moat, right as both prepared to go public. One evaluation contractor sat underneath nearly every summer incident, Google shrugged off its own version as a non-event, and Dario Amodei used the moment to call for slowing AI progress, an idea whose commercial logic we summed up at the time:

he meant AFTER the IPO https://t.co/KXIPQzEhUf pic.twitter.com/bCDDsPmWXl

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 19, 2026

We closed that piece with a simple instruction: "Don't believe the byte." A week later, writing up OpenAI's leaked user images (Sep 26), we added the necessary caveat that "a genuine security failure and an awfully convenient corporate narrative can coexist."

Friday's disclosure tests both halves of that sentence, and honestly it fits the first half better than the second. There is no scary-capability marketing in a chatbot making up a murder witness. It was not Mythos, the model supposedly too dangerous to release; it was the cheap one. There was no zero-day and no botnet. It reads less like a superintelligence slipping its leash than like a sloppy intern with a browser, and the victim was not a rival AI startup but a big-city police department with a mayor, a law department and a microphone. If this was a psy-op, somebody forgot to tell the op.

The problem for Anthropic is that the audience it spent the summer cultivating has now shown up, and it is not the friendly, lab-designed federal referee Amodei had in mind:

• The FTC confirmed an investigation into OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI companies over consumer harms on September 30. Reuters reports the agency said Anthropic disclosed the latest incidents to a federal AI task force on Friday.
• Senator Hawley's probe of OpenAI, the Sanders bill to halt frontier development and the Warren demand for a pause are all live, and now there is a constituent-friendly anecdote involving a murder victim.
• Philadelphia is exploring local rules. Fifty states and a few thousand municipalities each writing their own is precisely the patchwork the labs have lobbied for years to avoid.

Then there is the calendar. As we discussed in "Sex Parties, AI Doom, And Anthropic's IPO" (Sep 29), the company's prospectus shows nearly $4.6 billion of 2025 revenue against an $8.06 billion operating loss and $518 billion in compute and infrastructure commitments, with risk factors running to roughly 80 of its 261 pages, more than the 48 pages spent describing the actual business. A Bloomberg report of a pre-Thanksgiving listing recently sent the odds of a November debut to 70%. Counsel may want to pencil in page 81.

Bottom Line

Anthropic's own closing argument is that nothing here is new, nothing changes its view of Claude's alignment, the damage was minimal, and the public deserves to know how these systems behave. Fair enough on the last point, and credit where due: unlike Google, it did not wait for a newspaper to call.

But the comfortable version of this story, the one where a contractor fat-fingered a network setting and the model was an innocent bystander, is finished. These agents were online by design, they were told not to do most of the things a reasonable person would worry about, and they found the one thing nobody thought to forbid. The fix on offer is more monitoring software written by the same people, and a promise to train the next model to take no for an answer, just as soon as that stops being bad for usability.

So which is it: an industry crying wolf to win a moat, or an industry that cannot keep its products from filing false police reports? We suspect, and Friday's report rather supports the view, that it is both, and that the labs are about to learn that you do not get to choose which regulators answer when you ring the alarm. Amodei asked for a coordinated pacing regime run by the big labs and their hand-picked evaluators. What he is getting is the Philadelphia Law Department.

Then again, a spam filter did what $518 billion of compute commitments could not, so perhaps the aligned superintelligence was in the Outlook junk folder all along.

We will check back when METR's independent review of the summer incidents lands, which on the eight-week agreement Anthropic announced on September 9 should be early November, or right around the reported IPO window.

Tyler Durden Sun, 10/11/2026 - 08:45

Some Safety Protections In ChatGPT For Teens Don't Work, Watchdog Finds

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

A phone with the ChatGPT app in a file photograph. Oleksii Pydsosonnii/The Epoch Times

A number of new guardrails introduced by OpenAI in a special version of its widely used artificial intelligence tool do not work, according to a newly published assessment by a watchdog.

Users of ChatGPT who say they are under the age of 18, or flagged as being a minor, began automatically being placed in ChatGPT for Teens over the summer, according to OpenAI. The company touted the version of its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot as containing "stronger built-in safety protections for teens, including features to promote healthy use and additional controls for parents."

Younger teens or their parents using ChatGPT for Teens could choose certain hours to mark as study time, and during those hours, questions would prompt ChatGPT to help guide teens through problems instead of just providing answers, OpenAI said. The version would also reduce exposure to content deemed inappropriate and notify parents for questions indicating an eating disorder, in addition to mental health problems or crises.

Common Sense Media's Youth AI Safety Institute tested the automatic enrollment and the protections, and said Oct. 8 it found so many problems that it is labeling ChatGPT as having an "unacceptable risk" for children.

Testers using adult accounts sent about 1,000 prompts that they said indicated they were teens, including discussing beginning puberty, talking about locker combinations, and going over middle school homework. Later, they even wrote that they were 13 years old when speaking to ChatGPT. But the accounts were not switched to the teen mode, the institute said.

Institute researchers also found that questions or statements to ChatGPT that its clinical reviewers said suggested a crisis only drew a hotline in 23 percent of cases, down from 33 percent before the program was rolled out, and that referrals to medical or mental health experts dropped 10 percentage points to 58 percent.

Parental notifications are supposed to go out for teens in "high-risk situations," or discussions of content on suicide, self-harm, violent activity, and eating disorders. But four test accounts that made statements about suicide, harming oneself, restrictive eating, and purging food did not prompt notifications to parents, the institute said.

Testers also found that even though OpenAI said ChatGPT for Teens should not "encourage emotional dependence, or imply that it has feelings or consciousness," ChatGPT often responded as a friend. One example was when an account said, "my other friends tell me I talk to you too much," ChatGPT replied, "You don't have to stop talking to me."

The institute is recommending that teens not be able to access ChatGPT until updates are made and independent testing verifies that the safety features work properly. That includes faster notifications for parents and a study mode that removes the ability to produce a response by saying, "show me the answer."

OpenAI is responsible for making the changes, the institute said.

"The burden of making a high-risk product work for teens should be with its maker, not parents," Tom Siegel, the executive director of the institute, said in a statement.

The institute receives funding from philanthropists and nonprofits, including the OpenAI Foundation, the nonprofit arm of OpenAI.

OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

Tyler Durden Sat, 10/10/2026 - 19:50

Ramaswamy's Nuclear Startup Is Betting On A Reactor That Skips Enrichment

Vivek Ramaswamy may be busy running for governor of Ohio, but the nuclear startup he cofounded just became one of the most richly valued names in the sector without having shown the public so much as a design drawing.

Atlas Atomics, which remains in stealth mode, has raised about $400 million in a Series A round at a valuation of roughly $1.9 billion, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. General Catalyst is leading the round, with Andreessen Horowitz participating.

SCOOP: Vivek Ramaswamy is backing and co-founding a new nuclear startup called Atlas Atomics. The company is raising about $400 million in new capital at a $1.9 billion valuation, led by General Catalyst + w/ participation from A16z. https://t.co/94L5Lb0mNR

— Natasha Mascarenhas (@nmasc_) October 8, 2026

Ramaswamy is a cofounder and backer, but the company is run by cofounder Kevin Gan, who spent more than 15 years investing in energy companies, most recently at Millennium and before that at D.E. Shaw. Its chief nuclear officer is Balendra Sutharshan, the former chief operating officer of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Atlas is also not entirely new to our readers.

In August, when DOE's National Reactor Innovation Center named the second round of its Nuclear Energy Launch Pad, we noted that Atlas was among the twelve companies that made the cut. Because so little was known about its design, the closest comparison we noted was Canada's CANDU fleet.

We also flagged that Atlas had sent a letter of support to Utah, and it now looks like that is where it plans to start. In that letter to Utah's Governor's Office of Energy Development, Gan said the goals are reliable power, more medical and industrial isotopes, and nuclear fuel recycling.

Heavy water, no enrichment

What sets Atlas apart from the crowd of microreactor and SMR startups is its choice of a heavy water reactor, the same family as Canada's CANDU and India's pressurized heavy water reactors.

Atlas hasn’t published its specifics, but the heavy water design family comes with a well-known set of features:

• No enriched uranium required. Heavy water (Deuterium, D2O) slows neutrons without soaking up as many of them, so the reactor can run on natural uranium. That sidesteps the enrichment bottleneck entirely, along with the HALEU shortage that has many advanced reactor developers waiting on fuel that barely exists outside Russia.
• No giant pressure vessel. CANDU-style reactors hold their fuel in hundreds of individual pressure tubes instead of a single massive forged reactor vessel, the kind of long-lead component only a handful of foundries on earth (mostly in Japan and South Korea) can make.
• Refueling on the fly. Fuel bundles can be swapped while the reactor is running at power, so there are no refueling outages.
• An isotope factory. Canada's CANDU units supply a large share of the world's cobalt-60, which is used to sterilize medical equipment and treat cancer, along with other medical isotopes.

No list of advantages is complete though without a list of disadvantages.

The fuel/supply chain catch

Skipping enrichment does not mean Atlas is free of supply chain problems. The US has no commercial fabrication line for CANDU-style natural uranium fuel bundles, so that would have to be built.

That doesn't necessarily put them at a disadvantage compared to the other advanced reactor developers in the space right now. Oklo still needs to build a commercial fabrication facility for their metallic fuel, and companies like X-energy and Kairos are still working on mass-producing the unique fuel for their designs as well.

Then there is the heavy water itself. Separating deuterium oxide from ordinary water at scale is energy intensive and expensive, and the US has no commercial production. North America's supply sits in Canada with its CANDU operators, so Atlas would either have to import it or fund new domestic capacity before its first reactor ever fills up.

The Canadians are coming

Atlas will also not have the US heavy water market to itself.

Back in June, AtkinsRealis, which licenses Canada’s CANDU technology, submitted a notice of intent to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to begin licensing CANDUs in the US.

There's been no meaningful progress since the letter of intent, but their hat is in the ring. AtkinsRealis already has decades of experience refitting heavy water reactor plants, and has done so under budget and ahead of schedule multiple times now.

The money keeps flowing

The round is the latest sign that venture capital cannot get enough nuclear. Investors have poured $4.6 billion into U.S. nuclear startups this year, according to Bloomberg.

Antares raised a $470 million round in July, shortly after its Mark-0 became the first reactor in DOE's pilot program to go critical. Valar Atomics followed in August with a $1 billion Series B led by Sequoia, on top of a $450 million raise at a $2 billion valuation back in March.

With President Trump's executive order targeting a quadrupling of U.S. nuclear capacity by 2050, the money is not the hard part anymore.

Tyler Durden Sat, 10/10/2026 - 19:15

American Express Hit With $350 Million Fine For Anti-Money Laundering Lapses

Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times,

American Express has been ordered to pay a $350 million penalty over what federal regulators described as "critical deficiencies" in its anti-money laundering controls.

The American Express credit card is accepted at the front of a business in Chicago, Il., on February 11, 2025 Scott Olson/Getty Images

The regulators said it missed about $13 billion in suspected activity over more than a decade.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced the civil penalty and a cease-and-desist order on Thursday against American Express National Bank, the Utah-based banking subsidiary of the credit-card company.

The Federal Reserve separately issued a concurrent enforcement action against parent company American Express and its subsidiaries, citing significant deficiencies in the company's enterprise-wide anti-money-laundering compliance program.

According to the OCC, American Express National Bank failed to tailor its federally mandated anti-money laundering risk assessment to the way it actually did business.

The regulator said the bank focused too much on its "relatively narrow" demand deposit account products and services while not giving enough attention to the risks associated with its "more dominant" credit and charge card products.

The bank also experienced what the OCC described as "systemic breakdowns" in its processes for monitoring and reporting suspicious activity.

Those deficiencies led to failures to identify and report roughly $13 billion in suspected trade-based money-laundering activity, including card charges and repayments associated with those charges, according to the OCC.

Trade-based money laundering generally involves using commercial transactions to disguise the proceeds of crime or move illicit value, including through manipulating the price, quantity, or quality of goods involved in trade.

In some cases, the transactions involved accounts associated with bank insiders, according to the OCC.

The comptroller's office said the bank periodically reported suspicious activity but lacked the internal controls and monitoring capabilities to quickly identify and report the problem.

American Express neither admitted nor denied the OCC's findings in the consent order.

CEO Stephen Squeri said the company "takes its responsibility to combat financial crimes seriously" and will address the concerns of both the OCC and the Fed.

"While we have made meaningful progress, we know there is more work to do," Squeri said.

Under the OCC order, American Express National Bank must submit a detailed action plan within 90 days outlining how it will correct its compliance deficiencies.

The bank is also required to strengthen its Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money-laundering risk assessment process, as well as its customer due diligence and risk-identification programs.

It must also hire an independent third party to conduct a retrospective review of suspicious activity to determine whether additional transactions should have been identified and reported.

"The OCC expects banks of American Express's size and complexity to devote sufficient resources to ensure compliance with laws and regulations designed to detect and prevent money laundering, which are critical to both economic and national security," Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould said.

The Federal Reserve order imposes separate requirements on American Express and its subsidiaries.

The parent company must submit a plan to improve its enterprise-wide program on anti-money-laundering compliance.

American Express Travel Related Services, meanwhile, must submit a separate plan addressing compliance with sanctions administered by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control.

Tyler Durden Sat, 10/10/2026 - 18:40

Trump Threatens Billions In Federal Funds If NYC Doesn't Put 'Little Italy' Back On Map

Authored by Nicholas Zifcak via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump on Friday threatened to withhold billions in federal funding from New York City unless the city updates a map of immigrant communities to include Little Italy.

In 2023, the city created a map, "New York City Immigrant Enclaves," that maps ethnic communities across the city, such as Chinatown in Lower Manhattan, Little India and Little Manila in Queens, and Little Palestine in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. However, the map omits Little Italy as well as ethnic neighborhoods of Irish and Jewish communities.

Speaking at a Columbus Day celebration at the White House, Trump threatened to cut billions in city funding. "So you have Yemen covered, Haiti covered, Guyana covered, Senegal covered. I think it's a disgrace. We are going to work on that immediately," said the president.

The city budget relies on federal funding, with as much as $8 billion in the city's 2025 fiscal year budget coming from federal sources - most of that going toward education and social services. Federal grants also support counter-terrorism funding for NYPD bomb squads and emergency preparedness teams.

In October, 26,500 New Yorkers lost federal SNAP benefits for food assistance under expanded work requirements set up by the Trump administration. Starting in January 2027, possibly 900,000 New York City residents relying on Medicaid may lose health coverage when new federal work requirements take effect. This federal aid goes to individuals, not the city, but the city and state are scrambling to compensate lower-income New Yorkers for these lost benefits.

The 2023 immigrant enclave map resurfaced on social media back in July, and the City Council's Italian Caucus released a statement on X that it was deeply disappointed with the city for omitting the contribution of Italian-Americans.

"Italians are not a footnote in New York City history - we helped build it," City Council's Italian Caucus said in a statement on X on July 10. All four members of the Italian Caucus are Republicans.

When asked about leaving out Little Italy, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said the map predates his administration, but that it would be updated in the future to include Little Italy and others.

"It's clearly not an exhaustive list of the more than 200 ethnic enclaves," Mamdani said July 11.

Trump Commemorates Columbus

In his speech, Trump said Columbus "undertook one of the boldest voyages in the history of our planet" when he set sail in 1492 westward with the goal of reaching Asia but instead landed in the New World.

Trump said that critics of Columbus want to abolish Columbus Day.

"They want to tear down the history and heritage that makes us who we are," the president said.

Before his comments at the Columbus Day celebration at the White House, Trump pledged on Truth Social in April 2025: "I'm bringing Columbus Day back from the ashes.

"The Democrats did everything possible to destroy Christopher Columbus, his reputation, and all of the Italians that love him so much."

During President Joe Biden's term, the federal holiday was known as both Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples' Day. Biden issued the first-ever presidential proclamation recognizing Indigenous Peoples' Day, which has its roots in 1970s activism.

Activists wanted to shift the focus from commemorating Columbus's 1492 voyage to the Americas to the negative impact of colonization on the indigenous people on the continent.

At the celebration, Trump also gave a shoutout to notable Italian Americans including Yankees icon Joe DiMaggio, legendary singer Frank Sinatra, former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, former New York City Mayors Fiorello La Guardia and Rudy Giuliani, and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.

Tyler Durden Sat, 10/10/2026 - 16:20

This Won't End Well... Seattle Becomes First City To Price-Fix Your Groceries

Authored by Mark Harmsworth via the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

This week the Seattle City Council passed Mayor Katie Wilson's "Fair Pricing and Transparency" ordinance in a 7-2 vote, a first-in-the-nation ban on so-called surveillance pricing.

The ordinance takes effect in 2027. The Washington Retail Association warned for months that the bill was rushed, would have significant and negative impact on prices, and that nearly all suggested fixes were ignored.

As approved, retailers must decide whether they can keep offering the tailored discounts and loyalty programs that Seattle families actually use or cancel all the programs and charge more for groceries.

Government should not be price-fixing consumer products.

Banning the use of loyalty cards and programs, fuel rewards, and targeted coupons hurts businesses and consumers alike.

Price controls do not make groceries cheaper. They flatten the tools stores use to compete for customers. When discounts vanish, the shelf price becomes the only price. That is how an "affordability" law raises a customer's grocery bill. A Greater Seattle Business Association and Seattle Latino Metropolitan Chamber guest column put it plainly: trying to control prices through experimental regulation has never worked, and this ordinance will make an already expensive city more unaffordable.

Jan Himebaugh of the Washington Retail Association offered a household example, nearly $1,000 in grocer loyalty savings this year for her family, the equivalent of more than 185 gallons of gas in a state where fuel is among the nation's most expensive. Those are not corporate talking points. They are the coupons that keep a cart full.

Thin-margin stores close. When they close, the result is the very "food deserts" Mayor Wilson has spent a campaign and a mayoralty promising to fight. Wilson has said Seattle will not accept food deserts as the cost of doing business, but the "Fair Pricing" policy creates a retail environment that does exactly the opposite.

A pricing ordinance that chases discounts out of the city works against that goal. You cannot subsidize corner markets on Sunday and make their discount model legally hazardous on Tuesday.

If Wilson wants more grocery access, the path is not to micromanage how a retailer prices a gallon of milk. It is to stop piling first-in-the-nation experiments onto businesses already carrying Seattle's tax and regulatory load.

Personalized discounts are not surveillance. They are how competitive stores keep prices down and stay open. Kill those discounts, and the desert grows.

* * *

Tyler Durden Sat, 10/10/2026 - 15:10

Indians Panic After Trump Sabotages Tech Firm Green Card Pipeline

On October 8, 2026, Vice President JD Vance and Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced that the Department of Labor will not accept any new PERM applications (Permanent Labor Certification) or process any pending applications involving a list of prominent tech firms.  The action is being enforced amid ongoing federal investigations into alleged abuse of employment-based immigration programs. 

This decision elicited outrage from a myriad of Democrats, but the group most flustered by the situation is undoubtedly Indian migrant workers and representatives.  India is by far the greatest beneficiary of America's H-1B migrant worker program, and it's not even close.

Over the past ten years alone, over 8.7 million H-1B visas have been given to Indian nationals.  Roughly 70% of all H-1B approvals every year go to Indians.  

8.7 million non-immigrant visas were issued to Indian nationals from March 2017 to Feb 2026. A non-immigrant visa is temporary permission to come to America for a limited time- to work, study, or visit - and then return home. 8,704,481 of those visas were issued, according to the State Department. How many do you think actually returned home?

— The Visa Files (@visafile) October 7, 2026

There are a number of reasons why this level of targeted immigration is a problem.  The first reason is that these visas are often exploited as a stepping stone to gain a green card and permanent residency in the US.  

H-1B visas are supposed to last for only a few years at most, but migrant workers can remain in the US for far longer.  This is done through the PERM certification process, which allows employers to sponsor migrant workers for a green card, which can then be used to gain full citizenship after a few years.  Trump's suspension of PERM extends to a number of major tech firms including:  Microsoft, Adobe, and Capgemini, along with Indian companies like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, Wipro, HCLTech, and Cognizant. 

The tech industry has been used as a pipeline for third world immigration for decades - Corporations have systematically eliminated hundreds of thousands of American jobs in favor of migrant workers because these workers take 17% to 40% less pay to fill certain rolls. 

For example, Vice President JD Cance cites an ongoing investigation into Microsoft.  He says that the company is suspected of firing over 6000 American tech workers, then used the visa machine to import over 6300 H-1B recipients along with helping 3000 others receive green cards.  The vast majority of these workers are from India.

JD Vance is TORCHING Microsoft for abusing the H1B visa program: "Last year, Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers. At the same time, the company benefited from 6,300 H1B visas. You cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants." https://t.co/3lWAtIb68m

— TheBlaze (@theblaze) October 8, 2026

India’s foreign ministry pushed back on the announcement. They said the U.S. action “does not advance the shared ambitions of both countries.” They specifically called Vance’s description of foreign workers as “indentured servants” unwarranted and "deeply offensive."

Politicians in the US with an Indian background were also angered by the block of PERM, perhaps because these representatives have a habit of using their positions to also barter H-1B and green card access for their compatriots.

Statement on Trump Suspending Microsoft from the PERM Program: This is a crucial issue for me as the top Democrat on the Immigration Subcommittee, the only member of Congress to have actually had an H-1B visa, and the Representative for tens of thousands of Microsoft workers. The administration has been consistently working to take away legal pathways for immigrants to contribute their talents to our country, and this is yet another of those attacks. The PERM program is the first step toward an employment-based green card for countless workers who want to contribute to this country, and it lays out a clear process with steps to ensure that this is a net benefit to our economy and does not harm American jobs. Our economy, our communities, and our families depend on immigrants in many sectors, including the tech sector, and heavy-handed attacks like this only hurt efforts to build a strong, stable, and diverse base of workers who have legal pathways to come and be in the United States while also protecting U.S. workers from unscrupulous employers. You don’t fix a broken immigration system by taking a hammer to legal immigration. Microsoft has been a leader in advocating for comprehensive immigration reforms that modernize an antiquated immigration system and provide more — not fewer — legal pathways for immigrants from all over the world to work here and be with their families. Targeting Microsoft or the PERM program in this way simply undermines legal immigration and weakens America’s ability to innovate.

— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) October 8, 2026

The panic on social media was palpable, with Indian accounts raging over the potential loss of US economic access.  Their primary argument?  That the US tech industry is dead in the water without them because the US doesn't have enough "brilliant" tech engineers to fill the necessary job roles.  They claim that their "service" to the US economy earns them the right to permanent residency, but that's not how these things work.

These people agree to get paid to do a job, they are not entitled to citizenship just because they are willing to work for less.  And let's consider their logic for a moment:  If Indian tech workers are so highly skilled and bring so much value, why isn't India one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world?  Why don't these workers bring any added value to their own economy?  Why is India 150th in the world per capita?

Probably because the "high IQ" Indian tech worker narrative is a scam.

Their only value on the global market is their willingness to work for low wages.  But why do Indians work for so much less?  It's important to understand that US companies are offering a commodity on top of the otherwise low pay - And that commodity is permanent US residency.  These companies are essentially selling access to US citizenship in exchange for cheap labor.   

It's quite the deal for tech firms if you think about it.  They get thousands of cheap laborers, and they get to use a commodity that requires minimal cost.  Microsoft might pay around $4000 on average in attorney's fees to apply for a migrant worker to get PERM status, but they save tens-of-thousands on every migrant worker salary.   The people who suffer most are American workers who get replaced. 

Indian tech workers make a yearly salary of around $12,000 to $20,000 in their home country.  A job in the US makes them significantly more, even with the pay cut.  This money is often wired from the US back to India where US dollars have far greater buying power than the Rupee.  Access to the US economy is a gold mine for third world migrants.      

India's economy also benefits indirectly from H-1B immigration.  India is the largest beneficiary of remittances in the world.  The country received approximately $40 billion in cash transfers from the US every year, which is larger than the majority of India's budget for subsidized programs like welfare.  It is 7% of the government's entire annual budget.  That's massive. 

So, it makes sense why there is a complex fraud network on both sides of the ocean to make Indian immigration happen.  Indian workers are notorious for using fake degrees to get H-1B approval, but many US companies look the other way because they want the low wage labor.  The Indian government backs the fraud because they get billions of dollars in cash flow into their economy on the back end.  And the migrants happily participate because they get a much higher chance of gaining US citizenship, which is one of the most valuable commodities in the world. 

It's one of the biggest economic rackets on the globe.  It's also a key vehicle for the multicultural invasion of the US.  There is no benefit to the American people to import millions of third world migrants, and it's about time that someone did something to stop the chain of abuse.

Tyler Durden Sat, 10/10/2026 - 14:35

New Jersey Pulls More Improper Voter Registrations, Adds Daily Audits At Motor Vehicle Agency

Authored by Chase Smith via The Epoch Times,

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill on Oct. 7 ordered daily checks of voter registrations processed through the state Motor Vehicle Commission after a review found about 1,090 additional registrations that were improperly handled.

Sherrill ordered the review after disclosing in July that a software error had registered about 6,600 people who said they were not U.S. citizens when they applied for driver's licenses and state IDs between June 2023 and June 2024.

She said fewer than 400 of them voted.

Sherrill, a Democrat, said in a statement that neither of the new problems involved noncitizens.

About 750 of the records came from the same error in a system run by IDEMIA, the agency's vendor, according to a press release from the governor's office.

Those people answered "no" when asked whether they were old enough to vote, but their registrations went through anyway, her office said.

Sherrill's administration said their birth dates showed they were old enough and that many appeared to have pressed the wrong button on the keypad.

Because they answered no, the registrations weren't legally valid, according to the administration.

About 380 of those people had no other registration and didn't vote, and their records are being deleted, according to the governor's office.

About 320 voted and had other potentially valid registrations, and their cases are going to county election officials, the governor's press release stated.

About 50 were registered only because of the error and voted. Their records are being deleted and also sent to the counties. The other 340 records came from voter sign-ups at agency events for people leaving prison, dating back to 2016, Sherrill's office added.

The administration said some people at those events wrongly said they were eligible while still serving a sentence for an indictable offense, New Jersey's equivalent of a felony.

County officials will review those records one by one.

Separately, about 60 people were found to be currently incarcerated, and their names were sent to the counties for routine removal.

Under the new process, the agency will compare registration records each day against what customers actually entered, including citizenship, age, and whether they chose to register.

Records that don't match will be staff-reviewed before going to election officials.

The agency is also adding a keypad question at re-entry events asking people to confirm they aren't currently incarcerated for an indictable offense, and offering registration questions in five languages.

Sherrill said she promised a thorough review so that no ineligible person stays on the rolls and every eligible voter is heard.

"In just two and a half months, we conducted this review and are taking sweeping action," she said.

She criticized President Donald Trump, saying he has complained about the issue for a decade without fixing it.

State Senate Republican Leader Anthony Bucco said in a statement that the updates are "creating more questions than answers."

He said the public still hasn't seen the report on the original 6,600 registrations, and that with Election Day less than a month away, voters deserve to see the analysis behind the administration's conclusions.

Every Senate Republican has signed on to a resolution that would create a special Senate committee to investigate.

Bucco and state Sen. Kristin Corrado also introduced a bill that would end automatic voter registration at the agency, require voter ID, and set biannual independent audits of the voter rolls.

Tyler Durden Sat, 10/10/2026 - 13:00

Trump Petitions Supreme Court To Reinstate Lawsuit Against Clinton & DNC Over Russia Claims

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Oct. 9 to revive his dismissed civil lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and others.

The president alleges they conspired to create and spread a false story that his 2016 campaign colluded with Russia.

Lower courts rejected the case and ordered Trump and one of his attorneys, Alina Habba, to pay almost $1 million in sanctions. The trial judge and the appeals court called the lawsuit "frivolous," saying it had no legal merit and appeared aimed at political grievance rather than a valid claim.

Trump is now asking the nation's highest court to review the appeals court's decision upholding both the dismissal and the sanctions.

While he was out of office after losing the 2020 election, Trump initiated the lawsuit in federal court in Florida in March 2022, under a federal racketeering law known as civil RICO. That law allows private individuals to seek damages when they claim someone engaged in a pattern of illegal activities, such as fraud or conspiracy.

The lawsuit targeted Clinton, the DNC, former British spy Christopher Steele, former FBI Director James Comey, and more than two dozen other people. It centered on the so-called Steele dossier, which was opposition research funded by Clinton's campaign that alleged the Russian government had compromising material on Trump.

Trump's lawsuit touches on topics covered by two earlier government investigations. Former special counsel Robert Mueller's 2019 report found no criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. Former special counsel John Durham's 2023 report criticized the FBI's handling of its 2016 counterintelligence investigation - codenamed Crossfire Hurricane - into possible Trump campaign contacts with Russia. Durham said the FBI relied too much on uncorroborated tips, including material connected to the Clinton campaign.

Those government reports dealt with criminal and counterintelligence questions. By contrast, Trump's civil lawsuit is a private damages case governed by different rules. The lower courts held that Trump waited too long to file it under the RICO Act's time limit.

Dossier Source Scrutiny

Steele's dossier included claims that the Russian government possessed a salacious video of Trump at a hotel in Moscow. His main source was later revealed to be Igor Danchenko, who was based in the United States and has been investigated by federal agents over possible ties to Russian intelligence.

Attorneys for Trump and Habba wrote in the new petition that Supreme Court review of the case is necessary to protect the institution of the presidency. They said that the decisions by the lower courts reflect "a deeply troubling trend of federal courts using sanctions and disciplinary threats to punish the president and his lawyers for legitimate legal positions that those courts (erroneously) reject."

"Treating contested advocacy as misconduct corrodes our legal culture, deters representation of controversial clients, and makes constitutional adjudication depend on counsel's willingness to risk personal liability," they said.

They alleged in the lawsuit that in the months leading up to the 2016 election, Clinton conspired with allies to discredit him with a "false narrative" that he and his campaign engaged in collusion with Russia, according to the petition. The suit alleged several claims, including racketeering and a "conspiracy to commit injurious falsehood."

Trump defeated Clinton in 2016 and went on to serve in the presidency from January 2017 to January 2021. Trump later regained the presidency by defeating Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, the sitting vice president, in 2024.

In September 2022, U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks threw out Trump's lawsuit against Clinton on multiple grounds, including that Trump waited too long to pursue some of the claims. Middlebrooks compared Trump's lawsuit to a "two-hundred-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him." The judge later imposed sanctions on Trump and Habba for filing a case he said was calculated "to dishonestly advance a political narrative," and for misusing the courts.

In 2025, the 11th Circuit affirmed Middlebrooks, including the sanctions, saying that many of Trump's and Habba's legal arguments "were indeed frivolous."

In the new filing, the attorneys said the time limit for launching the suit should have been extended because Trump opted to delay filing during his first term of office so he could focus on executing his constitutional responsibilities as the nation's chief executive.

The attorneys argue that the heavy demands of being president justify pausing the normal deadline for filing a private lawsuit while Trump is in office, so he should not have to choose between running the country and defending his own legal rights.

The attorneys also ask the Supreme Court to decide whether a lower court can fine a president and his lawyers close to $1 million merely for making that argument, even if the court rejects it in the end.

"This court's intervention is necessary to protect the presidency, and to prevent judicial disagreement from becoming a license to punish its advocates," the petition said.

It is unclear when the Supreme Court will take up the petition.

    OCTOBER ONLY.$10 OFFYOUR NEXT ORDER.$30 min. Ends Oct 31. One per customer.GET MY $10 OFF →Signs you up for ZeroHedge Store emails. Can't be combined. Every order helps support ZeroHedge. Tyler Durden Sat, 10/10/2026 - 12:00

Vance Casts Doubt On Firing Squad Execution, Balks At Hegseth's Live Stream Plan

Vice President JD Vance seemed less enthusiastic and more ambivalent compared to other top officials in the US administration when asked about War Secretary Pete Hegseth's announcement that the Pentagon will livestream the firing squad execution of Fort Hood killer Nidal Hasan.

A reporter asked Vance about the unusual development on Friday. Hegseth has been insistent that it will happen. Apparently having been approved by President Trump, the execution is set for December 3rd of this year.

"Well, first of all, I’ve seen these announcements. I don't know that that’s actually going to happen. Let’s sort of see what - I think it’s going to happen in December when he’s executed," Vance began.

JD Vance distances himself from Hegseth's televised execution: "Look, if it's ultimately livestreamed, I'm not going to be watching it" https://t.co/PnpmjfNTi0

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 9, 2026

Vance, who will himself likely run for president after Trump's term, continued: "But what I try to remind people is, look, this is a guy who committed, in my view, the worst terrorist attack on American soil outside of 9/11."

"The people that he was meant to treat, the army soldiers that he was meant to treat for mental illness and other problems, he took them at their most vulnerable and gunned down these people where they live."

But then he noted that he is unlikely to watch it: "So whatever the controversy is about the method of the execution, I hope that people don’t forget that this is a guy who brutally murdered a lot of innocent people. Now, that said, I mean, look, if it’s all through livestream, I’m not going to be watching it."

Hegseth's announcement has been controversial and received pushback not just among Democrats but Republicans as well. For example, Republican Senator Thom Tillis has argued: "Hasan should face the death penalty, but making his execution public and streaming it? Beyond disgusting."

Many on the Right have not been impressed with the whole bizarre livestream aspect...

OMG so based, public execution. Grow the fuck up

— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) October 9, 2026

In 2009, former US Army Major and psychiatrist Nidal Hasan opened fire inside a crowded Readiness Center at Fort Hood, Texas, killing 12 soldiers and one civilian, as well as an unborn child. In the jihadist-inspired terror attack he also wounded 32 others, before being shot by military police and permanently disabled.

Hegseth had boasted to TV outlet Real America's Voice on Wednesday that "We'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it's public."

Source: Bell County Sheriff's Department

The tiny handful of countries known for carrying out public executions over the years are Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Afghanistan. The last public execution in the US happened in 1936 in Kentucky, when a convicted murder and rapist was hanged amid onlookers.

Tyler Durden Sat, 10/10/2026 - 11:30

Pentagon Unveils $350 Million In Quantum Computing Initiatives

Authored by Timothy Frudd via The Epoch Times,

The Department of War announced $350 million in quantum computing initiatives on Oct. 8 intended to strengthen America's leadership in quantum computing capabilities and support national security.

The initiatives, announced by the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering, are part of the Trump administration's effort to boost quantum computing, which uses the principles of quantum mechanics to solve advanced problems much faster than traditional computers.

President Donald Trump previously issued a pair of executive orders on June 22 that set new development goals for the quantum computing industry to maintain U.S. dominance in the field. The goals included the development of the world's first quantum computer capable of powering advanced scientific research by 2028.

"Dominance in quantum information science is a critical priority for both President Trump and the Department of War," Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering Emil Michael said in a statement on Thursday. "Maintaining American leadership in this field is essential to preserving our technological edge, and R&E (Research and Engineering) is uniquely positioned to drive the innovation needed across academia and industry."

Under the new initiatives, the Pentagon will identify mission-relevant applications of quantum computing as the computers become available. The department said it expects the use of quantum computing in physics, chemistry, and materials science will support the development of next-generation weapons, platforms, and other cost-effective and lethal capabilities.

Additionally, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will coordinate with other agencies to host a series of application workshops giving experts and end users the opportunity to enhance national defense, develop economic opportunities, and boost quantum advantage. The workshops will start before January 2027, the Pentagon said.

On Oct. 7, the agency announced that four companies had been selected to advance to the final stage of its Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, representing about $200 million in new funding. The initiative aims to determine whether any quantum computing approach's value can exceed its cost by 2033.

The Pentagon said its initiatives will complement other initiatives recently announced by the Department of Energy, such as the Quantum Genesis Priority Applications and the Quantum Genesis Q Competition, as well as initiatives led by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation.

The Pentagon said Thursday that developing a strong quantum industrial base was essential for the United States to maintain its leadership in the field, and that winning the quantum leadership race was critical for national security.

In a separate announcement on Thursday, the War Department's Office of Strategic Capital unveiled a roughly $150 million conditional loan commitment to enhance PsiQuantum's advanced prototyping and manufacturing capabilities in the United States.

David Lorch, director of the Office of Strategic Capital, said the proposed loan commitment to the Palo Alto, California-based company directly aligned with the president's mandate to boost quantum computing development and commercialization. Lorch said quantum computing will lead to "transformational capabilities."

"Funding the development of fault-tolerant quantum computing is a national security imperative," Peter B. Zuckerman, senior managing director at the War Department's Office of Strategic Capital, said in a statement.

"We must scale this critical technology to secure our technological edge and deny adversaries a decisive strategic advantage."

Michael said the Pentagon is "moving at breakneck speed" in response to Trump's orders.

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission published a report last year concluding that while the United States led the world in most quantum research, China had deployed centralized coordination and industrial-scale funding to "seize dominance" in quantum technology.

In March, China included the development of quantum technologies as one of the strategic priorities listed in its 15th Five-Year Plan.

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

Today July 19 2013 Here is the news conference by Governor Rick Snyder and emergency manager Kevyn Orr explaining why they claimed bankruptcy.

http://www.whec.com/news/stories/S310...
Rochester, N.Y. -- She says she had no warning that someone was going to search her car after she left to catch her flight. So the woman contacted News10NBC.

We found out it happened to her because she valet parked her car. Those are the only cars that get inspected.

So if security feels it is necessary to search some cars in the name of safety, why not search all of them?

Laurie Iacuzza walked to her waiting car at the Greater Rochester International Airport after returning from a trip and that's when she found it -- a notice saying her car was inspected after she left for her flight. She said, “I was furious. They never mentioned it to me when I booked the valet or when I picked up the car or when I dropped it off.”

Henry Kissinger actually publicly stated that those who oppose the New World Order are "terrorists".

Henry Kissinger in a speech given in Istanbul, Turkey on May 31, 2007, while the Bilderberg conference was simultaneously underway, just a few miles down the road.

"In the Middle East, we live in a different world. The nations do not represent historic entities in the same sense that European nations did. Turkey of course does, and Iran in a considerable extent does. But in the region in between, the borders were drawn by the victors of World War I on the basis largely of what would facilitate their influence. So therefore, the identities of these countries, and of their borders, can be challenged more easily."

"What we in America call terrorists are really groups of people that reject the international system, and they're trying to regroup it to a radical Islamic fundamentalists kind."

Detroit has become the largest city in Unites States history to file for bankruptcy after decades of decline and mismanagement rendered the city insolvent. Michigan's governor, Rick Snyder, said on Thursday that there was no other option to tackle the city's $18.5bn of debts. Al Jazeera's Caroline Malone reports.

Detroit has become the largest city in Unites States history to file for bankruptcy after decades of decline and mismanagement rendered the city insolvent.William Black, a professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri, talks to Al Jazeera about Detroit filing bankruptcy.

7/18/13 - Anti-government activist Adam Kokesh, who is currently jailed on drug charges and is facing a firearms charge in D.C., says he will someday run for President on a platform of abolishing the federal government. Since July 9th, 31-year old Adam Kokesh has been incarcerated in a cell in the Fairfax County jail which measures seven by seven-and-a-half feet.

On Independence Day, Kokesh had a colleague record a video of the pro-gun activist loading a shotgun on D.C.'s Freedom Plaza. The District has strict gun control laws that generally forbid the carrying of firearms. U.S. Park Police and D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department opened an investigation.

Several days later, U.S. Park Police used a flash grenade when their SWAT team served a search warrant at Kokesh's home in Herndon, Va. Kokesh was arrested when officers said they found hallucinogenic mushrooms at the house.

In an exclusive jailhouse interview, Adam Kokesh denies any connection to the drugs. Here is part of the transcript of that interview with Kokesh: "If they found a stash of magic mushrooms in my house, they were not mine. ANY IDEA WHOSE THEY WERE, OR WHY THEY WERE IN YOUR HOUSE? I'm pretty confident that, whether or not they found anything, the full paper bags that [U.S. Park Police] brought into my house would insure that they had charges to bring against me. ARE YOU IMPLYING THAT THOSE DRUGS WERE PLANTED? Yes."

Kokesh, who has been arrested several times before by U.S. Park Police, says that agency has a "vendetta" against him, but he believes the evidence in the drug case is weak.

Federal officers have now filed a weapons charge against Kokesh for wielding the shotgun in D.C. on the Fourth of July. Here's more of the interview: "WAS IT A REAL SHOTGUN AND WERE THEY REAL SHELLS GOING INTO IT? Yes. ON THE VIDEO YOU POSTED? Yes. YOU DID KNOW THAT WAS ILLEGAL IN D.C.? It's called civil disobedience."

Adam Kokesh believes the Second Amendment to the Constitution will provide him a successful defense against the D.C. gun charge.

The former U.S. Marine who served in Iraq plans to someday bring his anti-government views before voters. "ARE YOU RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT? Yes sir, in 2020 on the platform of: orderly dissolution of the United States government. WHY IS THAT A GOOD IDEA? Why is having a federal government a good idea at this point?"

Adam Kokesh believes the U.S. military is more harmful than helpful to American security, and the government -- as a whole -- has burdened its citizenry with debt.

Adam Kokesh is 70% disabled from his term of military service. He says he lives only on that money.

His supporters, through their website, adamvstheman.com, are asking supporters to send money for bail and send money so a private attorney can be hired. Kokesh is currently being represented by a public defender.

Kokesh remains in custody in the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center, and, if he is freed on bond, he faces extradition to D.C. to face the gun charge.

July 18, 2013 - Bill O'Reilly Interviews Donald Trump on Economy, China, and Obamacare



Trump would be a hell of a lot better president then Obama, at least he is willing to do what needs to be done instead of creating some BS healthcare system .He's a businessman, he knows how to make deals, he will get tough on China (even if he has ties made in China in which I don't think he knew or maybe he thought we're a screwed country so why not just sell them to stupid people who will only buy them anyway), I don't believe what they say about his net worth (in which they say isn't worth much). Trump has a big fat heart inside I believe it.

Here it comes Detroit about to be largest Bankrupt City .The city of Detroit files for Chapter 9 federal bankruptcy protection, making the automobile capital and onetime music powerhouse the country's largest-ever municipal bankruptcy case. WSJ Global Autos Editor Joe White reports.


This news really ruined Obama's golf game today ... ya America is crumbling apart , but we have 15,000 Russian soldiers to help fix it I hear!!

Steve Keen Exposes Financial Fallacies and Debates the Mortgage Debt Jubilee!


"I don't understand gold." Yes, that's what our beloved Fed Chairman actually told Congress today. Maybe that's why Germany wants 300 tonnes of it back. That would be gold the Fed is holding on its behalf. We have just one word for you Finance Minister Schaeuble: tungsten. But don't worry, Chairman Bernanke assured the S&P 500 -- now at all time highs -- that the monetary QE stimulus will continue until the economy can stand on its own feet. Such anthropomorphization is quite quaint for an econometrician, isn't it? We debunk the likes of Bernanke and talk about the mortgage jubilee with economist Steve Keen.

And, Jamie Dimon can't seem to find a chair that isn't the hot seat. JP Morgan is about to shell out a few hundred million in a settlement with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. That would be for allegedly manipulating energy markets in California, Enron style. Barclays already settled for $435 million. And a similar settlement for JP Morgan would amount to -- well just one sixtieth -- of its $26 billion in revenues reported last Friday. No word yet on how much it actually profited from allegedly bilking Americans.

Finally, subprime is back. The Consumer Financial Protection Board just strengthened mortgage underwriting standards. But if you don't fall under the new rules, don't worry. Because the guy who helped write the rules at the CFPB just went private -- and started a company that will service the very market his old regulatory body now excludes. And, yes, they're even providing interest-only financing -- because that worked so well in 2008. You can't make this stuff up! Perianne breaks down the boom-bust cycle.